CHAPTER XII
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
There was some movement downstairs now. Ruth Fielding heard a dooropen and a voice speak in the lower corridor. Perhaps it was MissScrimp, the matron. But every one of the skylarkers had cut to bed,and the dormitories were as still as need be.
"Oh, Ruth!" gasped Helen, from her muffling bed clothes. "Did you hearit?"
"Did I hear what?" panted Ruth.
"Oh! I was so frightened. There is something _dreadful_ about thatfountain. I heard whisperings and rustlings there; but the harp----"
"They did it to scare us," declared Ruth, in both anger and relief.She _had_ been badly frightened, but she was getting control of herselfnow.
"Then they frightened themselves," declared Helen, sitting up in bed."You heard the harp?"
"I should say so!"
"We were all at the window listening to hear if you would be frightenedand run," whispered Helen. "Oh, Ruthie!"
"What's the matter, now?" demanded her chum.
"I--I tried to help them. It was mean. I knew they were trying toscare you, and I helped them. I wasn't so scared myself as I appearedwhen I came in."
"WHAT?"
"I don't know what's made me act so mean to you this evening," sobbedHelen. "I'm sure I love you, Ruth. And I know you wouldn't havetreated me so. But they said they were just going to have some funwith you----"
"_Who_ said?" demanded Ruth.
"Mary Cox--and--and the others."
"They told you they were coming to haze us?"
"The Upedes--ye-es," admitted Helen. "And of course, it wouldn'thave amounted to anything if that---- Oh, Ruth! was it truly the harpthat sounded?"
"How could that marble harp make any sound?" demanded Ruth, sharply.
"But I know the girls were scared--just as scared as I was. Theyexpected nothing of the kind. And the twang of the strings soundedjust as loud as--as--well, as loud as that fat man's playing on theboat sounded. Do you remember?"
Ruth remembered. And suddenly the thought suggested by her frightenedchum entered her mind and swelled in it to vast proportions. Shecould, in fact, think of little else than this new idea. She hushedHelen as best she could. She told her she forgave her--but she said itunfeelingly and more to hush her chum than aught else. She wanted tothink out this new train of thought to its logical conclusion.
"Hush and go to sleep, Helen," she advised. "We shall neither of us befit to get up at rising bell. It is very late. I--I wish those girlshad remained in their own rooms, that I do!"
"But there is one thing about it," said Helen, with half a sob and halfa chuckle. "They were more frightened than we were when they scuttledout of this room before you returned. Oh! you should have seen them."
Ruth would say no more to her. There had been no light lit in all thistime, and now she snuggled down into her own bed. The excitement ofthe recent happenings did not long keep Helen awake; but her friend androom-mate lay for some time studying out the mystery of the campus.
Miss Picolet was out of her room.
The old Irishman, Tony Foyle, had mentioned chasing itinerant musiciansoff the grounds that very evening--among them a harpist.
The evil-looking man who played the harp on board the steamship, andwho had so frightened little Miss Picolet, had followed the Frenchteacher ashore.
Had he followed her to Briarwood Hall? Was he an enemy who plagued thelittle French teacher--perhaps blackmailed her?
These were the various ideas revolving in Ruth Fielding's head. Andthey revolved until the girl fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, andthey troubled her sleep all through the remainder of the night. Forthat the man with the harp and Miss Picolet had a rendezvous behind themarble figure on the campus fountain was the sum and substance of theconclusion which Ruth had come to.
In the morning Ruth only mentioned these suppositions to Helen, butdiscussed them not at all with the other girls, her new school-fellows.Indeed, those girls who had set out to haze the two Infants, and hadbeen frightened by the manifestation of the sounding harp upon thecampus, were not likely to broach the subject to Ruth or Helen, either.For they had intended to surround their raid upon the new-comers' peaceof mind with more or less secrecy.
However, sixteen frightened girls (without counting Ruth and Helen)could not be expected to keep such a mystery as this a secret amongthemselves. That the marble harp had been sounded--that the ghost ofthe campus had returned to haunt the school--was known among thestudents of Briarwood Hall before breakfast time. Jennie Stone wasquite full of it, although Ruth knew from the unimpeachable testimonyof Jennie's nose that _she_ was not among the hazers; and the soundingof the mysterious harp-strings in the middle of the night reallyendangered Heavy's appetite for breakfast.
The members of the Upedes who had been so pleasant with them at theevening meeting seemed rather chary of speaking to Ruth and Helen how;and, anyway, the chums had enough to do to get their boxes unpacked andtheir keepsakes set about the room, and to complete varioushousekeeping arrangements. They enjoyed setting up their "goods andchattels" quite as much as they expected to; and really their schoollife began quite pleasantly despite the excitement and misunderstandingon the first night of their arrival.
If the crowd that Ruth was so sure had hazed them were slow aboutattending on the two Infants in the West Dormitory (as their buildingwas called) there were plenty of other nice girls who looked into theduet in a friendly way, or who spoke to Ruth and Helen on the campus,or in the dining room. Miss Polk and Madge Steele were not the onlySeniors who showed the chums some attention, either; and Ruth and Helenbegan secretly to count the little buttons marked "F. C." which theysaw, as compared with the few stars bearing the intertwined "U" and "D"of the Upedes.
Just the same, Helen Cameron's leaning toward the lively group or girlsin their house who had (it seemed) formed their club in protest againstthe Forward Club, was still marked. The friends heard that the lastnamed association was governed by the Preceptress and teachers almostentirely. That it was "poky" and "stuffy." That some girls (notaltogether those who formed the membership of the Upedes) considered it"toadying" to join the Forward Club. And on this second day Ruth andHelen saw that the rivalry for membership between the clubs was verykeen indeed. A girl couldn't have friends among the members of boththe F. C.'s and the Upedes--that was plain.
Many new girls arrived on this day--mostly from the Lumbertondirection. That was another reason, perhaps, why Ruth and Helen wereshown so little attention by the quartette of girls next door o them.They were all busy--even Heavy herself--in herding the new girls whomthey had entangled in the tentacles of the Upedes. The chums foundthemselves untroubled by the F. C.'s; it seemed to be a settled factamong the girls that Ruth and Helen were pledged to the Upedes.
"But we are _not_," Ruth Fielding said, to her friend. "I don't likethis way of doing business at all, Helen--do you?"
"Well--but what does it matter?" queried Helen, pouting. "We want toget in with a lively set; don't we? I'm sure the Upedes are nicegirls."
"I don't like the leadership of them," said Ruth, frankly.
"Miss Cox?"
"Miss Cox--exactly," said the girl from the Red Mill.
"Oh--well--she isn't everything," cried Helen.
"She comes pretty near being the boss of that club--you can see that.Now, the question is, do we want to be bossed by a girl like her?"
"Then, do you want to be under the noses of the teachers, and toadyingto them all the time?" cried Helen.
"If that is what is meant by belonging to the Forward Club, I certainlydo not," admitted Ruth.
"Then I don't see but you will have to start a secret society of yourown," declared Helen, laughing somewhat ruefully.
"And perhaps _that_ wouldn't be such a bad idea," returned Ruth,slowly. "I understand that there are nearly thirty new girls coming toBriarwood this half who will enter the Junior classes. Of course, thePrimary pupils don't count.
I talked with a couple of them at dinner.They feel just as I do about it--there is too much pulling and haulingabout these societies. They are not sure that they wish to belong toeither the Upedes or the F. C.'s."
"But just think!" wailed Helen. "How much fun we would be cut out of!We wouldn't have any friends----"
"That's nonsense. At least, if the whole of us thirty Infants, as theycall us, flocked together by ourselves, why wouldn't we have plenty ofsociety? I'm not so sure that it wouldn't be a good idea to suggest itto the others."
"Oh, my! would you dare?" gasped Helen. "And we've only just arrivedourselves?"
"Self-protection is the first selfish law of nature," paraphrased Ruth,smiling; "and I'm not sure that it's a bad idea to be selfish on suchan occasion."
"You'd just make yourself ridiculous," scoffed Helen. "To think of acrowd of freshies getting up an order--a secret society."
"In self-protection," laughed Ruth.
"I guess Mrs. Tellingham would have something to say about it, too,"declared Helen.
It was not the subject of school clubs that was the burden of RuthFielding's thought for most of that day, however. Nor did the arrivalof so many new scholars put the main idea in her mind aside. Thistroubling thought was of Miss Picolet and the sound of the harp on thecampus at midnight. The absence of the French teacher from thedormitory, the connection of the little lady with the obese foreignerwho played the harp on the _Lanawaxa_, and the sounding of harp-stringson the campus in the middle of the night, were all dovetailed togetherin Ruth Fielding's mind. She wondered what the mystery meant.
She saw Tony Foyle cleaning the campus lanterns during the day, and shestopped and spoke to him.
"I heard you tell Jennie Stone last night that you had to drive streetmusicians away from the school grounds, sir?" said Ruth, quietly. "Wasthere a man with a harp among them?"
"Sure an' there was," declared Tony, nodding. "And he was a sassydago, at that! 'Tis well I'm a mon who kapes his temper, or 'twouldha' gone har-r-rd wid him."
"A big man, was he, Mr. Foyle?" asked Ruth.
"What had that to do wid it?" demanded the old man, belligerently."When the Foyles' dander is riz it ain't size that's goin' to stop wano' that name from pitchin' into an' wallopin' the biggest felly thativer stepped. He was big," he added; "but I've seen bigger. Him an'his red vest--and jabberin' like the foreign monkey he was. I'll showhim!"
Ruth left Tony shaking his head and muttering angrily as he pursued hisoccupation. Ruth found herself deeply interested in the mystery of thecampus; but if she had actually solved the problem of the sounding ofthe harp at midnight, the reason for the happening, and what reallybrought that remarkable manifestation about, was as deep a puzzle toher as before.