Kitabı oku: «Marjorie Dean, College Senior», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXIII – “GETTING EVEN”

Due to the unexpected quarrel which had sprung up between herself and Leslie, Elizabeth had gained no fruitful suggestions regarding ways and means of hazing from Leslie Cairns. She told herself she did not care. No doubt Leslie would have coolly advised her to “drop it.” This the vengeful girl had no intention of doing. Her spleen against Augusta Forbes had grown to an extent which made her determined to “even up” with the detested freshie, no matter how great the risk of detection. She firmly believed herself to be too clever to be detected.

The first days of a stormy March whistled and shrieked across the campus before Elizabeth hit upon a scheme which seemed within her scope. Fortune appeared to favor her in that Augusta exchanged sharp words with Alma Hurst and Ida Weir, the two freshmen who made it hardest for her on the basket ball team. The trouble occurred between the halves of a practice game. Elizabeth chanced to be standing near enough to the two, as a spectator, to hear a part of it. It gave her an excuse to seek out Alma and Ida that evening and have a confidential talk with them. Both players were bitter against Augusta, who had, as usual, been valiantly standing up for her rights. Elizabeth’s crafty insinuations, which grew soon to open denunciation of Gussie, fell upon willing ears. Thereafter the trio were to be found with their heads together as they formulated their plot against independent Gussie.

Continued stormy weather forced Elizabeth to abandon the idea of tying Augusta to a tree on the campus and leaving her there. It also meant too great a hazard. Three of them could hardly manage the tall, broad-shouldered freshie when it came to a question of physical strength. She had tried to coax a sufficient number of girls into her scheme and had failed. She decided to resort to the method she had earlier employed of doing some mischief to Augusta’s room. Over and over the three plotters discussed the subject, proposing this trick and that. Many of the proposals were too hard for accomplishment to be considered more than briefly. Every now and then one or the other would hit upon something that could be added to the list which they had made up of depredations easy “to get away with.”

“The time has come to act,” were the words with which Elizabeth greeted the two freshmen one afternoon. They had met her by appointment in the library. Neither lived at Wayland Hall. She had cunningly warned them against coming there until they should have “put over the great stunt.” Then no suspicion could, later, be attached to them.

“Glad to hear it,” Alma Hurst said with a disagreeable smile. “If ever I detested a girl I do that overgrown, domineering freshie. You can’t make me believe that she didn’t go to Miss Dean with a great long string of yarns about us. Miss Dean wrote me a hateful note. In it she claimed the sports committee had been observing us for quite awhile. I know they hadn’t. I wouldn’t believe her any sooner than I would Miss Smarty Forbes.”

“Better not let any of Miss Dean’s friends hear you say that.” Elizabeth arched her eye-brows with a knowing air. “Her crowd think her perfection. She is awfully influential on the campus. I never tried to put anything over on her for fear of getting into difficulties.”

“I’ve heard she was a power here.” The accompanying shrug denoted supreme indifference. “I’m not likely to come within conversational range of her crowd. She doesn’t approve of me, nor her pals, either. Miss Forbes gets all the babying from them. Can’t say I admire their taste.”

Elizabeth gave a contemptuous sniff. “Miss Dean pretends to be very noble and talks a lot about observing Hamilton traditions. She treated me abominably the day I landed on the station platform, a freshie.” For the twentieth time Elizabeth recited her imaginary grievance. The tale was, as usual, a far departure from truth. It impressed her listeners because they wished to be impressed by it.

“I’m not surprised.” Alma was still smarting from the merited rebuke Marjorie had delivered her by letter. “She’s been so unfair toward us. Proffy Leonard allows her to run basket ball. Speaking of hazing – was she hazed two years ago? I heard so, and that the girls who hazed her were expelled from college. I heard they were seniors.”

“They were seniors,” nodded Elizabeth, “seventeen of them. They weren’t found out until late last year. If you are caught hazing a student, off goes your head. We must be careful. No reason why we shouldn’t get away with our plan, though. This is what we’ll do and when we’ll do it. I am – ”

“Did Miss Dean know who hazed her? Who reported the seventeen seniors?” demanded Ida Weir with manifest uneasiness.

“I don’t know what Miss Dean knew. One of the hazers betrayed the others and left college.” Elizabeth proceeded to paint Dulcie Vale’s treachery in lurid colors. “Don’t worry about being caught,” she frowned, impatient at the interruption. “I know how to manage matters. The girl who planned the flivver that shut her crowd out of college thought herself a wizard. She was far from being one.”

“I wouldn’t consider such a risky scheme for two seconds if I weren’t bent on making things lively for that big booby of a Miss Forbes.” Alma’s eyes flashed vindictively. “Go ahead, Bess. We won’t interrupt you again.”

“Very well.” Elizabeth accepted the apology as her due. “To begin with, we will muss up her room on the night of the next show Miss Dean’s crowd give. I hear they are going to put on a concert soon. They have made a lot of money with those two plays they’ve already given. Catch them asking any of us to take part,” she interpolated enviously. “I wouldn’t if they begged me to be in one. But that’s neither here nor there. The night they give their old concert everybody from Wayland Hall will be over at the gym attending it. We’ll buy tickets for it. Supposedly, we’ll be there; only we won’t. Who can prove that we were not there? Not an easy matter? What?” Elizabeth intensely admired this imitation of Leslie Cairns on her part.

“Fine!” exclaimed Alma. “Since we don’t room at Wayland Hall, no one can possibly suspect us, Ida.”

“Suppose anyone happened to see us coming to the Hall?” Ida proposed to regard the risk from all points.

“No one will see you,” cut in Elizabeth pettishly. “You will have to come over here after everyone has started for the concert. I have a latch key that fits the front door. I found it one day in the hall near Remson’s office. I heard afterward, she had lost her key, but I hung on to the one I found. I’ve used it after ten-thirty several times. Maybe it isn’t a convenience! You can let yourself into the house with it and run upstairs in a flash. If one of the maids happened to see you she wouldn’t pay any attention to you, unless you came in too late. You’ll have to strike a happy medium as to the time you get here. Most of the girls will be gone from here by a quarter to eight. You ought to arrive at ten minutes of eight.”

“Easiest thing in the world,” Alma said confidently. “No one would think twice about seeing us. If they should it would only be to conclude we had come over to the concert with some of the Wayland Hall crowd. That key makes everything lovely. We’ll be able to let ourselves in without a bit of fuss.”

“Next I’ll tell you the programme.” Under pretense of showing the two freshmen what, to a casual observer, would have passed for notes made in the library, Elizabeth carefully went over with them the list of depredations to be carried out in Augusta’s room.

“Maybe she won’t look sick when she comes from the concert and sees what has happened!” gleefully predicted Alma. “It will serve that uppish room-mate of hers right. I’ll see she doesn’t escape. What about your room-mate, Bess? Can you keep the stuff we shall use out of her sight entirely?”

“She never sees anything but her books,” was the contemptuous reply. “Leave all that to me. I know what I’m doing. Remember what I say. No one will ever guess who upset baby’s room. It will go down in the annals of Wayland Hall as an absolute mystery.”

CHAPTER XXIV – VANDALISM

The March days came and went, cold and frost-bitten for the most part, and still Marjorie’s letter to Miss Susanna met with no reply. Each day Marjorie wondered if she would be summoned to President Matthews’ office as a result of a report lodged with him by the last of the Hamiltons against Elizabeth Walbert. Not that the doctor needed her testimony to substantiate Miss Susanna’s complaint. She had an idea the irate old lady might leave her name out of it entirely. Should Miss Susanna mention her as having been a witness to the mishap, Doctor Matthews would no doubt insist on sending for her privately. He could not fail to be interested in the news that she had had an acquaintance of some standing with Brooke Hamilton’s great-niece. She thought this because of the talk she had once had with him concerning Hamilton Arms and its eccentric mistress.

The “Wyshinge Welle” had been received with great enthusiasm. At the earnest request of the faculty it had been repeated a week from the night of its first performance. The second audience was composed of faculty and friends of the faculty residing in the adjacent suburban towns who were interested in matters germane to Hamilton College.

In writing the quaint play Katherine had shown actual genius. So had Leila Harper in staging and producing it. The Nineteen Travelers were delighted with it and planned to pass it on, to become a regular yearly performance at Hamilton. Phyllis Moore had assisted Leila in the production of it, so that she might be proficient in stage managing it the next year. Both performances of the play added twenty-four hundred dollars to the Fund.

With spring on the threshold, Marjorie and Robin announced their concert as next on the list of entertainments. It was to be given the latter part of April. The latter part of May would come the musical revue to end their season. They calculated that the year’s efforts would net them over five thousand dollars. Phyllis and her orchestra would be vital to the concert. So would Robin, Blanche Scott and half a dozen students with exceptionally fine voices. Marjorie wished Ronny to give one dance, an exquisite interpretation called “The Return of Spring.” Marjorie had seen her dance it in private several times. It was her favorite of Ronny’s many wonderful interpretations. Robin had arranged an off-stage chorus of voices to go with it which rendered it even more beautiful.

Whenever Marjorie stopped to think of the yawning gap between herself and Miss Hamilton it made her sad. She tried to keep it out of her thoughts as much as possible. Like a good soldier she marched on toward the end of her hike through the Country of College, face front, steps firm and steady. The eight girls who had been entertained at the Arms never mentioned Miss Susanna’s name to her. She had told them all in confidence what had occurred, feeling it was their right to know of the estrangement.

She had been strongly tempted to send her offended friend tickets for the play recently given. She had refrained from doing so, fearing lest the old lady would return them, plus a check for the sum they amounted to. As the date of the concert approached, she wished often that Miss Susanna would attend it. She was an ardent lover of music, and Marjorie was very proud of the programme. It was highly representative of the best in music. She knew her wish to be entirely in vain. Even if Miss Susanna and she were on good terms, the last of the Hamiltons would not honor the campus with her presence.

The weather turning warm and balmy, even for April, the night of the concert saw the fast-reviving campus aflutter with delicate evening finery. The students were only too glad of an opportunity to display the pretty new evening frocks most of them had worn for the first time at home during the Easter holidays.

The afternoon preceding the concert a wholesale laying out of evening frills went on at Wayland Hall. Elizabeth Walbert’s outfit for the evening did not consist of dainty wearing apparel. A stroke of sheer good luck had brought Miss Schultz a dinner invitation to the home of Professor Wenderblatt. The professor was giving a dinner to fourteen guests prior to the concert. Miss Schultz had dressed and departed before six o’clock, leaving Elizabeth a free hand from then on.

The moment the dining room opened she hastened in to dinner, ate hurriedly and rushed upstairs again. The motley outfit she produced from her dress closet and carefully set out on the floor of her room would have puzzled anyone excepting herself. She knew the precise use of each article. She was also prepared if she found Gussie’s door locked. She had long since learned that the key to her door would unlock that of Gussie’s.

Half-past seven saw Wayland Hall practically emptied of its residents. There were no reserved seats save those on the front row down stairs, which had been given over to the faculty. It was a case of the earlier the arrival the better the seat. The gymnasium doors opened at seven-fifteen.

Quarter to eight saw two dark forms emerge from behind a clump of fast-greening bushes on the lawn of Wayland Hall. Alma and Ida had arrived at twenty minutes to eight and had sought cover until they were assured of a clear coast. After five minutes’ wait, during which time no one left the Hall, they decided it was safe to proceed on their way.

“Hurry and open the door,” whispered Ida in an agony of suspense as Alma fumbled in a small purse for the key. “This porch light is a dead give-away.”

“Ah-h-h!” Alma drew a soft breath of satisfaction as the key turned smoothly in the lock.

First glance showing them an empty hall, they fled up the stairs like true conspirators. Reaching the second floor they made for a door at near the south end. Ere they were half way to it it opened. Quick as a flash they dodged into it.

Three-quarters of an hour later a young woman in evening frock and cape stepped serenely out on the veranda of the Hall. She steered a straight course for the gymnasium. At intervals of ten minutes apart two more young women emerged from the Hall and hurried gymnasiumward. Each one of the trio was securely certain she had not been observed.

The concert came to an end at ten o’clock. It had been as well received as had the other entertainments of the season under the expert management of the good little firm of “Page & Dean.” The usual pleasant hum of enthusiastic voices, uttering remarks congratulatory to those who had taken part, was heard as the large audience streamed out of the gym’s wide doorway and into the star-studded night.

The Bertram freshies had attended in a body, with the exception of Charlotte Robbins. She had been a proud participant in the concert. Possessed of a full, sweet contralto voice, she had been asked to contribute a solo. Her chums were justly elated over “Charlie’s rise.” Augusta had planned a dinner to be given in her honor at Baretti’s the next evening.

“Little old Bertram hasn’t done so badly this year,” exulted Flossie Hart as the merry crowd of chums mounted the steps of the Hall. “Gus made the team. We’ve all had small parts in the two plays the Travelers have given. Now Charlie has had her inning.”

“You sang beautifully, Charlotte, truly you did,” praised Gussie warmly. “Honestly, girls, I’m simply crazy over Marjorie Dean. She is the sweetest girl I ever knew. I want to say it now because I once misjudged her so.”

“I knew you’d see it some day, Gus,” broke in Calista Wilmot. “I’m as glad as you that we have all amounted to a little as freshies. It is nice to be noticed, rather than have to be always in the background.”

It was in this happy frame of mind that Gussie and her companions climbed the stairs to their room.

The mild hazing to which Augusta and Flossie had been subjected earlier in the year had prompted them to lock the door of their room while at meals or when both were out in the evening. The persecution having stopped as suddenly as it had begun, gradually they grew careless. On this particular evening they had not locked their door.

Gussie, being a foot or two in advance of Flossie, half opened the door and felt for the button to throw on the electric light. The nearest hall light was several doors from her room. Hence the interior of the room was in comparative darkness. She uttered an impatient exclamation as her exploring fingers failed to find the button. She took a quick step into the room only to discover that something had suddenly happened to her feet. The soles of her satin evening slippers had acquired something which crackled and rustled and clung. She cried out and lurched clumsily forward in her amazement, only to trip against something else which threw her headlong against the center table.

“For goodness’ sake, Flossie, keep out!” she loudly warned. “Go for some matches. We’ve been hazed again. Oh, why didn’t I lock the door?”

Her warning came too late. Florence had followed her, only to find her own feet immeshed in the same sticky trap.

“It’s fly paper, that’s what it is,” she sputtered. Floundering into the hall, she now called out in wrathful discovery. “Wait until I free my slippers of it and I’ll go for some matches.”

Out in the hall Flossie ripped her slippers clear of the sticky paper with a forceful hand. Rolling it into a loose ball she started with it for the stairs, her indignation running high. Meanwhile Gussie had flapped to the open door and was engaged in ridding her own slippers of the incumbrance.

Straight to Miss Remson’s own room sped Flossie, determined this time to spare no one. She and Gussie had heretofore silently endured – but no more of it. A few excited sentences and the manager, who had also just returned from the concert, was hurriedly accompanying her upstairs, a lighted candle and a box of matches in hand.

Examination by candle rays of the spot where the electric push button should be showed that it was still there, but temporarily eclipsed. It had been neatly covered over by a smooth piece of cardboard tacked securely to the wall. In the dark the feel of the cardboard would be similar to that of the wall paper. The cardboard ripped off and the light thrown on, the havoc, already partially revealed by candle light, showed only too baldly. What Gussie had fallen over was one of three wooden soap boxes. These had been placed in a row and covered with a blue serge coat belonging to her. On the top of the middle one was a quart can of white paint. Stumbling, she had tipped it over and it now plentifully bedecked her coat, the rug, the skirt of her turquoise blue evening frock and her blue satin slippers.

From door to center table, from table to the two chiffoniers, which stood at each end of the room, were spread sheets of sticky fly paper. The two couch beds had been dismantled, and the mattresses, pillows and bed clothing had disappeared. Every mirror in the room had been painted in large checks of red and blue. On one of the dressing tables was coiled a huge mottled rubber snake which elicited a general cry of horror on first sight. The door of both girls’ dress closets stood wide open, revealing every item of wearing apparel in each, lying in disorderly heaps on the floor.

The crowning outrage was a crude effigy of Gussie made from a handkerchief bag and a dark green velvet one-piece frock of hers on a hanger. The handkerchief bag, stuffed, served as a head; the frock on the hanger, the body. Gussie’s blue velvet sports hat topped the effigy. The whole figure had been smeared with very thick molasses and feathered. The feathers had come from one of the couch pillows, the slashed case of which lay on the floor. It was a decidedly discouraging sight. The three shocked, amazed women gazed dumbly at the damaged room.

“A band of savages couldn’t have done much more,” was Miss Remson’s curt opinion. “You girls had better move into the room Miss Langly formerly occupied for the night. Your bedding will have to be found. It is in the house somewhere, I presume. It is too late to make inquiries about it tonight. There will be a searching inquiry tomorrow in this house or my name is not Miranda Remson. Such vandalism against another student! To say nothing of the damage done to the room! The rug is ruined by that white paint. A workman alone can remove the paint from the mirrors. Dear knows where the bedding is. Shocking, and disgusting!”

Seized by a sudden thought, Gussie went to one of the open windows and leaned far out. Presently she left the window and announced: “I think the bedding is on the ground under the windows. Please let Flossie and I go down and see. If it is there, we can bring it in at the back door, and up the back staircase. No one will see us. The mattresses are light. I can carry them, one at a time. Flossie can carry the smaller pieces. I’d rather stay in my own room tonight, if I can.”

Flossie, meanwhile, had been engaged in gathering up the fly paper and putting the room partly to rights. Miss Remson having given a reluctant consent, the two freshmen went down stairs on the trail of the lost bedding. As Gussie had thought, there it was, under the windows from which it had been dumped to the ground.

The chimes had sung a silvery eleven and the wall clock ticked off half an hour more before a semblance of order settled down upon the outraged room. Miss Remson had long since left the two victims of the hazing.

“You know who did this?” interrogated Gussie, the moment the manager had retired from the room.

“T don’t know, but I think it was Miss Walbert and some of her pals.” quickly returned Flossie. “What’s the use of suspecting her when one can’t prove a single thing against her? She chose a good night. Who can prove that she wasn’t at the concert?”

“We can’t,” returned Gussie gloomily. “I wish I had just one little proof against her. I believe some of the team helped her. Alma Hurst dislikes me most. Perhaps she was mixed up in it. Miss Remson is going to call a meeting. It won’t do any good. It will only put the hazers on their guard. One real bit of proof against Elizabeth Walbert would do more good than forty meetings.”