CHAPTER XXI
DRAMATICS
There are pleasanter places to be at midnight than the dark room of astrange water tower, but Betty was not frightened. She tripped over sometool as she felt for the door and discovered that she had lost her senseof direction completely.
"I'm all turned around," was the way she expressed it. "I must start andgo around the sides, feeling till I come to the door."
Following this plan, she did come to the door and confidently turned theknob. The door stuck and she rattled the knob sharply. Then theexplanation dawned on her.
The door was locked!
Could it have a spring lock? she wondered. Then she remembered a daywhen, on exploration bent, a group of girls had made the trip to the roofand the kindly Dave McGuire had taken a key from his pocket and unlockedthe door of the little room for the more adventurous ones who wanted toclimb up and see the inside.
"It was a flat key, like a latch key," Betty reflected. "The girls musthave had the door unlocked for me to-night, but I don't think they wouldfollow me and lock it. That would be mean!"
However, the door was locked and she was a prisoner. It was inky blackand at every step she seemed to knock over something or stumble againstcold iron. Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, andshe made out the outlines of something against the wall.
"Why, there is a window--I remember!" she said aloud. "I wonder if I canreach it."
Cautiously she felt her way around and stretched up tentative fingers.She could barely touch the lower frame.
Then, for the first time, Betty felt a little shiver of fear andapprehension. It was close in the tower room, and the smell of oil anddead air began to be oppressive. She had no wish to shout, even if shecould be heard, a doubtful probability, for she had no mind to be rescuedbefore the curious eyes of the entire school.
"I'll get out of it somehow, if I have to stay here all night," she toldherself pluckily. "Oh, my goodness, what was that?"
A tiny sawing noise in one corner of the room sent Betty scurrying tothe other side. She would have indignantly denied any fear of mice orrats, but the bravest girl might be excused from a too closeacquaintance thrust upon her in the dark. Betty had no wish to put herfingers on a mouse.
"How can I get out?" she cried aloud, a little wildly. "I can't breathe!"
In the uncanny silence that followed the sound of her voice, the sawingnoise sounded regularly, rhythmically. In desperation Betty seized aniron crowbar she had backed into on the wall, and hurled it in thedirection of the industrious rodents.
"Now I've done it," she admitted, as with a clatter and a bang that, shewas sure, could be heard a mile away, an evident avalanche of toolstumbled to the floor. Her crowbar had struck a box of tools.
But the silence shut down again after that. Betty did not realize thatthe water tower was so isolated that even unusual noises inside it wouldnot carry far, and with the door and the window both closed the room waspractically sealed.
The sawing noise was not repeated, there was that much to be gratefulfor, Betty reflected. She wondered if she could batter down the door.
"I'll try, anyway," she thought wearily.
And then she could not find the crowbar! Around and around she went,feeling on the floor for the tools that had clattered down with such aracket and for the iron bar she had hurled among them. Not one tool couldshe put her hands on.
"I must be going crazy," she cried in despair. "I couldn't have dreamedthose tools fell down, and yet where could they have gone? There's nohole in the floor--"
Now Betty's nerves were sorely tried by the lonely imprisonment, the badair, the heat, and the darkness, and it is not to be wondered at that herusual sound common sense was tricked by her imagination. Her fancysuggested that the weight of the tools might have torn a hole in thefloor, they might have dropped through to the roof, and Betty herselfmight be in momentary danger of stepping into this hole.
Nonsense? Well, wiser minds have conceived wilder possibilities undersimilar trying conditions.
"I won't walk another step!" cried poor Betty, as she visioned thisyawning hole. "Not another step. I'll wait till it's light."
But she waited, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, and the darkness ifanything grew blacker. She had no idea how long she had been locked inthe room, and she could not calculate how far off the morning might be.
"I'll put my hands out before me and creep," she said finally. "Thatought to be safe. Perhaps I can find something to stand on to reach thatwindow. I guess I could drop to the roof from there."
Stiffly and painfully, she began to crawl, holding out her hands beforeher and starting back time and again as she fancied she felt an openingjust ahead. But when she brought up against a step ladder she forgot herfears in the joy of her discovery.
It was a short ladder, but she dragged it over to the window and put itin place and mounted it, all in the twinkling of an eye. By stretching toher full height, she was able to raise the creaky window, but to herdismay the roof offered a very long drop. She had not realized how highshe had climbed.
"Dave was fussing with ropes and buckets the other day," she recalled."Now I wonder--wouldn't it be the best luck in the world if I couldfind a rope?"
Hope was singing high in her heart now, but she almost despaired of suchgood fortune after a diligent search. Then something told her to feelabout again on the floor. Round and round she went, getting her fingersinto spider webs and sticky substances that renewed her inward shuddersbecause she could not identify them. And when she found the rope, a tarrycoil, she also solved the mystery of the tools. They had fallen downbehind the coil of rope and were effectively fenced off from the circleof floor explored by the bewildered Betty.
It was the work of a moment to tie one end of the rope to a heavy stapledriven under the window sill, and then, closing her eyes to the pitchblack void beneath her, Betty let herself slide down to the roof. Herhands were cruelly scratched by the rope fibres and she was too tired tocare about the evidences of her flight.
"If anybody wants to know about that rope and the locked door, let 'em!"she sighed defiantly.
Bobby woke up as Betty came in the door, and then there were questionsgalore to be answered. Betty was covered with dust and her clothing wastorn and rumpled. Bobby declared she looked as if she had been to war.
"I feel it," admitted Betty. "Let me take a hot bath and get into bed.And, Bobby, promise me on your word of honor that you'll call me in themorning. Whoever locked me in expects me to stay there till I'm missed,and I want to walk into breakfast as usual."
She half regretted her instructions when Bobby called her at seven thenext morning, but Betty was nothing if not gritty, and she sleepilystruggled into her clothes. Ada Nansen's look of utter astonishment whenshe saw Betty come into the dining room with the rest for breakfast toldthose in the secret what they had already suspected.
"Bobby must have heard her listening at our door last night," saidBetty. "What am I going to do? Why nothing, of course! That was part ofthe stunt, or at least I'm going to consider it so. My card is there, sothey'll know I fulfilled my part."
Dave McGuire scratched his head when he found the rope and the openwindow, but he wisely said nothing. He had two keys, and one he hadloaned at the request of the senior class president to a fellow student.The other key, for emergency use, hung on a nail in the fourth storyhall. That was the key Dave found in the door lock when he made his earlymorning tour of inspection. "But the young folks must be having theirfun," he said indulgently, "and, short of burning down the place, 'tisnot Dave McGuire who will be interfering with 'em."
Mid-term tests were approaching. Bobby, who, with all her love of fun,was a hard student, felt prepared and went around serenely. ConstanceHoward had, most humanly, neglected, so far as the teacher of mathematicspermitted, the study that was hardest for her, her algebra. She now spenthours in "cramming" on this, meanwhile complaining to those of herspecial chums who would listen to her of
"the unfairness of being made tostudy algebra."
"I can add--with the use of my fingers--and subtract and divide andmultiply--at least I know the tables up through the twelves. Of what usewill a's and b's and x's, y's and z's ever be to me?"
"Constance, you know that's nonsense," Bobby told her. "We're every oneof us here because we want to play a bigger part in life than thetwo-plus-two-is-four people, and we've got to dig in and prepareourselves. If you'd do your work when you ought to, you wouldn't be insuch an upset state now."
"Yes'm," grinned Constance, and went back to her belated work.
Betty had found that her year away from school had made it hard for herto concentrate her mind on her studies, and while she had notdeliberately neglected her work, as Constance had in her algebra, she hadnot always kept up to the highest pitch. She was working furiously now,with the tests to face so soon, and with it went the resolve to be morestudious from day to day during the rest of the school year. Theconcentration was becoming easier, too, as the term advanced, and, theteaching at Shadyside being of the best, she felt sure she would feelthat she had accomplished something by the end of the year.
The Dramatic Club of Shadyside woke to ambition as the term progressed.Soon after the mid-term tests, which all the girls, even Constance,passed successfully, by dint of threat and bribery, each student was"tried out" and her ability duly catalogued.
Betty liked to act, and proved to have a natural talent, while Bobby,professing a great love for things theatrical, was hopeless on the stage.Her efforts either moved her coaches to helpless laughter or caused themto retire in indignant tears.
"She is--what you call it?--impossible!" sighed Madame, the Frenchteacher, shaking her head after witnessing one rehearsal in which Bobby,as the villain, had convulsed the actors as well as the student audience.
"Well then, I'll be a stage hand," declared Bobby, whose feelingswere impervious to slights. "I'm going to have something to do withthis play!"
Ada Nansen was eager to be assigned a part--the players were chosen onmerit--and she aspired modestly to the leading role, mainly because, thegirls hinted, the heroine wore a red velvet dress with a train and astring of pearls.
But Ada, it developed, was worse than Bobby as an actress. She wasself-conscious, impatient of correction, and so arrogant toward the otherplayers that even gentle Alice Guerin was roused to retort.
"I haven't been assigned the maid's part yet!" she flashed, when Adaordered her to remove several stage properties that were in the way.
"Give it to her, Alice!" encouraged the mischievous Bobby. "That girlwould ruffle an angel."
Alice and Norma were both valuable additions to the Dramatic Clubranks. Norma especially proved to be a find, and she was given thehero's part after the first rehearsal while Alice was the heroine'smother. Betty, much to her surprise, was posted on the bulletin boardas the "leading lady."
Down toward the end of the list of the cast was Ada Nansen's name as"the maid."
"She'll be furious," whispered Bobby. "Miss Anderson told Miss Sharpe,when she didn't think I could hear, that Ada wasn't really good enough tobe the maid, but that they hoped she would sing for them between theacts. Miss Anderson said if they didn't let her have some part she'd beso sulky she wouldn't sing."
A rehearsal was held in the gymnasium after school that afternoon, and asshe went through her first act Betty was uncomfortably conscious of Ada'sglowering eyes following her. When the cue was given for the maid, Adadid not move.
"That's your cue, Ada," called Miss Anderson patiently.
"I've resigned, Miss Anderson," said Ada clearly. "It's a little toomuch to ask me to play maid to two charity students."
Norma and Alice shrank back, but Betty sprang forward.
"How dare you!" she flared, white with rage. "How dare you say such athing! It's untrue, and you know it. Even if it were so, you have noright to say such an outrageous thing."
Betty was angrier than she had ever been in her life. She possessed alively temper and was no meeker than she should be, but during the pastsummer she had learned to control herself fairly well. Ada's cruel taunt,directed with such a sneer at the Guerin sisters that every girl knewwhom she meant, had sent Betty's temper to the boiling point.
"Easy, easy, Betty," counseled Miss Anderson, putting an arm about theshaking girl. "You're not mending matters, you know."
Then she turned to Ada, who was now rather frightened at what she haddone. She had not meant to go so far.
"Ada," said Miss Anderson sharply, "you will apologize immediately beforethese girls for the injustice you have done to two of them. What you havejust said is nothing more nor less than a lie. I will not stoop to put mymeaning in gentler phrases. Apologize to Norma and Alice at once."
Ada set her lips obstinately. The teacher waited a moment.
"I will give you just three minutes," she declared. "If at the end ofthat time you still refuse to obey me, I will send for Mrs. Eustice."
Ada shuffled her feet uneasily. She had no fancy to meet Mrs. Eustice,whose friendship for the Guerins was well known. Mrs. Eustice had ahot white anger of her own that a pupil who once witnessed it couldnever forget.
"Well, Ada?" came Miss Anderson's voice at the end of the three minutes.
Ada hastily stumbled through a shame-faced apology, painful to listento, and then, the angry tears running down her face, turned and dashedfrom the room.
Betty Gordon at Boarding School; Or, The Treasure of Indian Chasm Page 21
