So, on fine nights during the next week she kept vigil alone in the Prefects' Room. Three nights passed without result and Clare began to be anxious: Reenie was obeying the injunction to silence most conscientiously, but it was obvious that she would very soon want to know what Clare was doing about her 'clue'. There was little risk of Elsie Butterfield saying anything. She was a fat, sleepy, unobservant girl, interested in nothing but bed, mealtimes, and the date of the end of term. Clare was sure she had not even seen the prowler when Reenie woke her.
She caught Jennifer on the fourth night. She had kept awake in her own room until nearly one o'clock, judging it sounder strategy to take her quarry as she came in rather than intercept her on her way out, when she might produce some more or less acceptable excuse for being downstairs and deny any intention of going out of school. The other nights Clare had watched she had found the fastening of the window in place; still she had waited for an hour or two on the off−chance that she might observe something. This night she found the window−catch undone.
It was a cloudy night, but not raining. She had brought her torch with her in order not to have to switch on the lights, which might be seen shining out across the lawn. She settled herself in the most comfortable of the Prefects' easy−chairs in a position blocking the route from the window to the door, and waited.
She was not very concerned about the shock she might give Jennifer. An adventurer must expect alarms, and there was an even chance that she would have some companions. Clare felt the humour of being on the side of law and order and smiled in the darkness, anticipating the fun of telling the whole story to Niall.
Her mind went, as usual, to Brackenbine. She could open her reveries of Niall at will and find ever new wonders and joys, like turning the pages of some marvellous book. Two hours passed and she was unconscious of any tedium. She looked at her watch by the dim light of her torch shining through her fingers and saw that it was ten to three. The longer Jennifer was out the less likely it seemed that she would be alone; there must be more fun than solitary mouching round the grounds to keep her so long out of bed. Clare prepared to deal with a gang.
It could have been no later than three, however, when she sat up, alertly listening to footsteps outside. Soon there came a scuffling and scratching at the window. Clare listened critically; she and her companions in old days had taken infinitely more precaution and had been much better burglars than this. A gust of fresh, cold air blew on her and someone jumped down into the room very close to her. She rose and switched on her torch, speaking quietly as she did so. Her heart smote her at the great sob of fear she heard.
In the first flash of her torch she had recognised Jennifer Gray, and a glance at the window behind her revealed no one else. Clare lowered the beam of her torch, and keeping carefully between Jennifer and the door, gave the girl a little time to recover.
“Is there someone else with you, Jennifer?” she asked then, in a low, kindly tone.
Jennifer's voice was wildly unsteady. She was almost crying with fright, but her fright began to change to anger as she answered.
“Someone else? Where? There's nobody else! Why are you trying to stop me? What do you mean by jumping out at me like that? What right have you got to spy on me?”
“Calm down a bit,” said Clare. “If you go climbing out of school at night you know somebody will ask questions if they spot you. And don't shout. Nobody else knows you're out but me, and there's no need to wake the whole school up.”
“I don't care!” Jennifer retorted, lowering her voice all the same to a furious whisper. “I hate the whole lot of you! And you—you —you've got no right, Clare Lydgate...”
“I don't care a hoot what you do, you little ass,” said Clare coldly. “You can stay out catching pneumonia all night as far as I'm concerned, but don't you realise there are other Prefects? I'd better tell you that someone saw you coming in last Saturday morning and reported it to me. You can thank your stars they didn't tell Miss Linskill first.”
Jennifer advanced to her, standing in the pool of light that fell from the torch. She had regained almost complete control of herself now, and when she spoke again her tone was defiant.
“I don't believe you!” she said. “Nobody's seen me. Nobody knows but you, and I know how you know. You're trying to stop me, but you won't. You can't frighten me with Miss Linskill. Tell her! Tell Miss Sperrod! Then see what I can tell them about you. Perhaps you think I couldn't tell them a few things about you going to Brackenbine?”
“Brackenbine?” said Clare sharply. “What's that got to do with it? Everybody knows I go to Brackenbine.” “Yes? Over the wall? At night?”
The vindictive sneer in the girl's voice so roused Clare that she could have slapped her. She controlled herself and said in a hard tone:
“What do you mean? What nonsense are you talking?”
“Oh, you can lie,” said Jennifer, coolly impudent. “You would, of course. You'd have to. But there's no need to lie to me. I know.”
“Know what? If you have the cheek to stand there and tell me to my face that I go over the wall to Brackenbine when I can perfectly well go round by the road every day, I don't know whether you're a bigger fool than you are a liar.”
“All right,” said Jennifer. “I'm a fool, am I? Well, perhaps you can deny that you went over the wall the first Saturday night after the beginning of term? Perhaps you can deny that they were your tracks I saw in the snow the next morning?”
“Tracks in the snow?” Clare gave a scornful sniff. “You'd better invent some better tale than that.”
Her scoffing infuriated Jennifer. Her whispered reply was venomous. “Invent? I'll tell you what you've seen. Perhaps you haven't seen little horsemen through a window? Perhaps you haven't seen someone they all think is dead, alive and riding in a coach? Perhaps you haven't seen people bound by their hair to trees for disobeying him? Perhaps your left ear doesn't smart sometimes? Perhaps you don't dream?”
Clare fell back against the table. The beam of her torch wavered as her hand trembled violently. Jennifer seemed to have frightened herself by her own outburst; Clare heard her breath coming in sobs and noticed, for all her own distress, that the other girl's legs were trembling. Her legs were bare beneath her short grey coat and she had a new scratch on one knee. Clare watched the red line shudder as the muscles twitched uncontrollably.
She stared, fighting hard against an anguish that was melting her very bones. Never had she felt at once such desolation and such fear. It was not only that a whole solid, happy world had collapsed: if the world of Brackenbine had dissolved suddenly and left nothing but the drab emptiness that existed before, she could in some fashion have endured that sorrow; but in collapsing, it had opened a dreadful gulf from which unspeakable things came clambering out at her.
She shuddered and struggled free of the clutching things. She lifted the torch, and gripping Jennifer's shoulder with her other hand, looked into her face. The younger girl's eyes were wide and terrified. It seemed to Clare that only now was she realising the full horror of what she had said. Faced with that white, appalled look, Clare found some shreds of courage and common sense among her own ruins. First she held her torch close to Jennifer's cheek and brushed back the thick hair from her ear. She saw there, in the lobe, a tiny puncture. It appeared in the torchlight like a little spot of angry red inflammation.