Kitabı oku: «Marjorie Dean, College Senior», sayfa 3
Her manner of expression, rather than her remarks, induced the laughter of her companions. Nor did she realize that she had turned her eyes upon the freshmen as she spoke, with a look of bored endurance far from flattering to them. Unfortunately the tall girl happened to catch it, as well as the ripple of laughter. Her face darkened. Her retroussé nose elevated itself even higher.
“Isn’t that girl with the big brown eyes simply gorgeous?” exclaimed a pert-looking freshman with shrewd black eyes. The girls they had been watching were now out of sight.
“A regular dream of beauty,” praised another. “Her complexion was like a magnolia petal.”
“My, but you two are crushed on that – well, quite pretty girl,” the tall leader said in a slightly miffed tone. “My eyes are larger than hers,” she added.
“Oh, no, Gus, they certainly aren’t a bit larger,” flatly contradicted a stolid-looking girl with eyeglasses.
“They certainly are,” maintained the tall girl.
“Don’t grab all the bouquets, Gus,” lazily advised Calista Wilmot, the black-eyed girl. “Leave a few for someone else.”
“Sha’n’t. I want ’em all myself.” The reply was careless rather than ill-humored. “Anyhow there was nothing startlingly beautiful about that one girl you folks are raving over.”
“Oh, I think there was,” differed the freshman with the eyeglasses, with a positiveness that courted argument.
“Do you suppose they were freshmen?” A plump blonde girl with a pleasing face tactfully propounded this question. Anna Perry, the stolid freshman, and Augusta Forbes never agreed on anything. Charlotte Robbins purposed to nip rising argument in the bud if she could.
“No, indeed,” Augusta assured. “The tall one with the black hair is a post graduate. I inquired about her. She rooms three doors up the hall from Flossie and me. I haven’t seen the others before. I don’t care to again.” A glint of wounded pride appeared in her eyes as she made this announcement.
“Why, Gus?” demanded three or four voices.
“Because they are snippy. Didn’t you see the disgusted way that one girl in light blue looked at us? Much as to say, ‘Oh, those silly freshmen!’ They are all upper class girls. I don’t admire their manners. They were making fun of us, I’m sure. They have no time for mere freshmen.”
“Gus talks as if it were a positive crime to be a freshman in the eyes of the upper class students.” Calista Wilmot lifted her thin shoulders. “I’ve always heard they go by preference rather than class in taking up a freshman.”
“They do not.” Augusta seemed determined to oppose her companions. “The juniors and seniors at college are awfully high and mighty. I have been told that they are very patronizing to the freshmen. They shall not patronize me. I won’t submit to it. This business of the freshmen having to defer to upper class students is all nonsense. I shall assert myself from the start.”
CHAPTER VI – THE REBUFF
“Leila, do you think we should have spoken to those freshies and extended the hand of friendship?” Marjorie inquired half doubtfully as the party, now seven strong, loitered along their way to the Hall. The balminess of the still September night made them reluctant to go indoors.
“Not tonight,” Leila reassured. “Plenty of time for that. Did I rush into your pocket the first time I saw you, Beauty? I did not. Remember Selma, Nella, Vera and I were at Baretti’s when you five girls walked in there on your first evening at Hamilton.”
“Give us credit. We didn’t whoop like a war party of Comanches, did we?” This from Jerry, who had not yet brought herself to a tolerant view of the noisy party of freshies.
“You did not. We four made more noise than you. That was nothing compared to these Bertramites,” Leila’s criticism held indulgence.
“You said the tall one and the ‘tow-head’ were at the Hall. It would not surprise me to find the whole aggregation there. The others may have arrived while we were marching around the campus, making calls on people who were not at home. I see our finish.” Jerry groaned loudly. “The majority of the sixteen freshmen Miss Remson spoke of!”
Jerry’s surmise proved correct. The same group of girls they had encountered at Baretti’s on the previous evening trooped into the dining room the next morning just as the Lookouts were finishing their breakfast.
“The strangers within our gates,” announced Jerry. “It’s up to us to remember ’em. What? I’m really growing fond of that ‘What?’ I can understand why Miss Cairns was so fond of it.”
“I think it is a foolish expression,” condemned Muriel, her eyes twinkling.
“Then never indulge in it, my dear Miss Harding,” cautioned Jerry. “May I venture to inquire what the pleasure of this distinguished company is today?”
“Unpack, if our trunks come,” returned Ronny and Marjorie together. “I wish Helen would hurry up and get here,” Marjorie continued. “We all ought to go over to Hamilton Arms to see Miss Susanna. I’d not care to go without Helen, though.”
“What’s a journey without the ninth Traveler?” propounded Ronny. “Have you any idea when she’ll be here?”
No one had. At eleven o’clock that morning, however, Jerry signed for a telegram. She hustled up stairs with it to impart the good news that Helen Trent would arrive on the four-ten train from the North. The trunks having been delivered shortly before ten o’clock that morning, unpacking was in full swing.
“We’ll all go to the station to meet her,” planned Jerry. “Only eight of us can’t very well squeeze into Leila’s roadster. Four of us will have to go in a taxi.”
“I’d better call Kathie on the telephone and tell her and Lillian to be ready,” was Marjorie’s spoken thought. “Lillian isn’t a Traveler, but she ought to be asked to join us. She has been so dear to Kathie and Lucy especially, and to us, too.”
“We might as well be the Ten Travelers as the Nine,” agreed Jerry. “I’d like Lillian to meet Miss Susanna, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes; only we can’t take her with us to Hamilton Arms without having first explained all about her and asked permission to bring her.”
“I know it. Do you believe our little old Travelers’ club is really important enough to leave to Hamilton as a sorority? It was different with the Lookout Club. We were regularly organized with constitution and by-laws, etc. This is very informal; secret, one might almost call it.”
“I have thought about that, too,” Marjorie replied. “I’ve also thought we ought to ask Robin and Portia to join – in fact the Silvertonites who have stood by us since our freshie days. There are Ethel Laird and Grace Dearborn, too. They have been devoted to us.”
“Don’t forget Eva Ingram and Mary Cornell,” added Jerry. “They certainly stood by us when we had that row with the Sans during our freshman year.”
“I meant to count them in,” Marjorie nodded. “Once, this past summer, I made a list of names. There were nineteen, counting the original nine of us. I didn’t count Phil or Anna Towne or Barbara Severn. They are still to come. If we leave the club as a sorority to the next senior class, they will be the first girls chosen.”
“The Nineteen Travelers.” Jerry critically tried out the title. “That sounds as well as the Nine Travelers. I don’t know but better.”
“We really need the whole nineteen if we are really going to accomplish laying a foundation for a dormitory,” was Marjorie’s energetic declaration. “I mean that figuratively. If we manage to get the site for a dormitory this year we’ll have done well. We don’t even know whether those boarding house properties are for sale.”
“If they aren’t, we might find another site, even better. There is plenty of open ground below them.”
“Yes; but it belongs to the Carden Estate and isn’t for sale. I asked Miss Susanna about it last June. She knows all about the land near the college and Hamilton Estates. She explained to me the reason for that row of houses along that little street. You know we wondered why they were there.”
“It always looked to me as though a couple of city blocks of third rate houses had been picked up and dumped down just outside the campus limits for no particular reason,” was Jerry’s view of it.
“Well, there’s a reason,” smiled Marjorie. “The workmen who built Hamilton College lived in those houses while the work was in progress. It took almost five years to build our Alma Mater, Jeremiah. By the workmen, I mean the foremen and more important of the builders. I don’t know where the laborers lived. In the town of Hamilton, I presume. Those houses were considered very sizable and comfortable in Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s day, Miss Susanna said.”
As the two busied themselves with their unpacking, they continued to talk over the project of enlarging their little circle to nineteen members. Until their particular allies had returned to Hamilton nothing could be done.
“Wait until college has opened, then I’ll call a meeting. We’d best have it in Leila’s and Vera’s room. It is larger than ours. Between you and me, Jeremiah, what ought we to do about the freshies?” Marjorie straightened from her trunk, her arms full of wearing apparel, and stared dubiously at Jerry.
“What?” This time the ejaculation came involuntarily. On her knees before her trunk, Jerry’s head and plump shoulders had been temporarily eclipsed, as she dived into the trunk to fish up the few remaining articles at the bottom. “Oh, yes, I got you.” Jerry had comprehended a second after Marjorie had spoken.
“What you said at breakfast about the strangers being well within our gates, made me feel that we ought to begin to try to get acquainted with them. We promised Miss Remson to help them get settled, if we could. I don’t mind their being noisy.” Marjorie paused.
Jerry eyed her quizzically. “You think they are too much like the Sans to be a positive comfort around the house, now don’t you?”
“They seemed a little that way to me,” Marjorie admitted. “The Sans were older by a year or two than these girls when they entered Hamilton. These freshies are very juvenile acting.”
“They acted last night as though they didn’t care a button whether they met anyone else or not. A sufficient-unto-themselves crowd, you know. Still, if we hold off from them, they may feel that we are puffed up over our senior estate. The best way, I guess, is to cultivate them. We can be friendly, but a trifle on our dignity at the same time.”
“We’ll probably meet them in the halls and on the veranda during the next day or so. That will start the ball rolling. I’d rather not make any calls until I’ve had one or two chance encounters with some of them. Being on station duty is different. It is a detail.”
“I hate to butt into a stranger’s room, freshie or no freshie,” Jerry agreed. “You know how we felt when the three Sans came to call before we had hardly taken off our hats.”
In spite of Marjorie’s ever ready willingness to be of service when needed, she still retained a certain amount of shyness which had been hers as a child.
“I am not afraid of being snubbed by these lively freshie children,” she presently said, with a trace of humor. “I don’t care to intrude on them unless I am truly sure they want to know us.”
“They don’t know what they want or what they don’t want,” calmly observed Jerry. “I am not enthusiastic over them, Marvelous Manager. I’ll try to be a conscientious elder sister to them, but it will be an awful struggle.”
Marjorie laughed at this. Jerry chuckled faintly in unison. The unexpected invasion of Lucy, Katherine Langly and Lillian Wenderblatt put an end to confidence. The will to labor also languished and was lost in the ardor of meeting and greeting.
Invited to stay to luncheon, the ringing of the bell found Jerry’s and Marjorie’s room in a state of temporary disorder. Every available space was piled with feminine effects.
“Things are in an awful uproar.” Jerry waved her arm over the chaotic array. “The worst is over with our unpacking done. It won’t take long after luncheon to put this stuff where it belongs. Glad you girls came to the Hall. It saves us the trouble of going after you.”
Ronny and Muriel now appearing, the seven girls went happily down to luncheon. As a result of Jerry’s and Marjorie’s talk regarding the freshman arrivals at Wayland Hall, both were prepared to be conscientiously friendly on sight.
A trifle ahead of their companions in descending the stairs, at the foot of the staircase they encountered Augusta Forbes, Calista Wilmot and Florence Hart, the “tow-head,” just entering the hall from the veranda. The eyes of the two sets of girls met for an instant. Marjorie smiled in friendly, unaffected fashion, intending to speak. Jerry emulated her example. To their surprise Augusta Forbes put on an expression of extreme hauteur; Florence Hart stared icily out of two pale blue eyes. Calista Wilmot, however, smiled cheerfully, taking no notice of her companions’ frozen attitude.
It was all done in a second or two. Marjorie’s color heightened. She felt as though she had received a slap in the face. The smile fleeing from her lips, she treated the haughty pair to a steady, searching glance. Then she quietly withdrew her gaze.
CHAPTER VII – MAKING SURE PROGRESS
“Now what was the matter with them?” Jerry demanded, as she and Marjorie entered the dining room. “Were we properly snubbed? No mistake about it. They must have heard what I said about them last night.”
“I don’t recall that you said anything very dreadful about them,” returned Marjorie.
“I compared them to Comanches and expressed my general disapproval of their howls,” confessed Jerry cheerfully. “Only they didn’t hear me say anything. Leila said as much as I. Neither of us meant to be ill-natured. You know I usually say outright whatever I think in a case of that kind.”
“Those two freshies acted as though they were angry with us for some unknown reason or other.” Marjorie knitted her brows. “They’d hardly have behaved like that simply because they didn’t know us and resented our smiling at them on that account.”
“That would be the height of snobbishness,” replied Jerry. “We’d better tell the girls. They may try to be helpful and get a snubbing, same as we did.”
Seated at table, Jerry proceeded to tell the others of the incident. Be it said to her credit she made no attempt to retail it as gossip. She bluntly stated what had happened and warned them to keep their helpfulness at home.
“That’s too bad,” Lillian Wenderblatt said sympathetically. “It puts you all at sea as to what to do next. You say the one girl returned your smile. Perhaps when you know her better you can find out what ails the other two.”
“They can’t have a grievance against us when they don’t know us,” Marjorie said. “I shall let those two alone for the present and confine my attention to some of the other freshies.”
With this she dropped the incident from her thought and speech. After luncheon, as she redressed her hair to go to the station, it recurred to her disagreeably. She half formed the guess that Elizabeth Walbert might have made the acquaintance already of these two freshmen and prejudiced them against herself and her friends. Miss Walbert could not possibly have a just grievance against her. Their acquaintance had been too brief. As a former friend of Leslie Cairns, however, she probably held rancor against the Lookouts.
Marjorie sturdily dismissed this conjecture as not in keeping with her principles. She felt it unfair to accuse Elizabeth Walbert, even in thought, of such an act. She resolved to take Lillian Wenderblatt’s advice and cultivate the acquaintance of the black-eyed girl who had shown signs of affability. She might then, eventually, learn wherein lay the difficulty.
A rollicking afternoon with her chums, crowded with meeting and welcoming at least twenty seniors who had returned to college on the same train as Helen Trent, drove the disquieting incident from her mind. Helen was the last one of the nine girls, who had long been intimate friends, to return to Hamilton. Lillian now added as the tenth “Traveler,” the band of friends were in high feather. Helen was triumphantly escorted to the Lotus from the station and there feted and made much of. Arriving at ten minutes past four o’clock, it was after six before she saw the inside of Wayland Hall. Three rounds of ices apiece had also dampened the ardor of all concerned for dinner.
“These joyful ice cream sociables are appetite killers. There goes the dinner gong and yours truly is listening to it without a snark of enthusiasm. I think I’ll forego dinner and finish straightening my traps,” declared Jerry. Now returned to her room, Jerry viewed her still scattered possessions with distinct disfavor.
“You had better go down and eat something,” advised Marjorie. “You will be ravenous about bedtime, if you don’t. We haven’t a thing here to eat except candy. As a late feed it’s conducive of nightmares, Jeremiah.”
“Wise and thoughtful Mentor, so it is,” grinned Jerry. “I’ll take your advice.”
“If I see that black-eyed girl who smiled at me downstairs I shall speak to her and start things moving,” Marjorie said with decision. “I won’t ask her the very first thing what was the matter with her friends, but I’ll do so as soon as I am a little bit acquainted with her.”
Marjorie found no opportunity to put her resolve into execution that evening. The freshman in question was seated at a table the length of the room from the one at which she sat. The two freshmen who had shown such utter hauteur had seats at the same table as their black-eyed friend. Marjorie had not even an opportunity to catch the other girl’s eye.
The following morning, as she started across the campus with Ronny for a stroll and a talk in the warm early autumn sunshine, fortune favored her. Seated on a rustic bench under a huge elm tree were two of the freshmen she was anxious to come into touch with. One was the black-eyed girl, the other the plump blonde.
“It’s a splendid opportunity, Ronny.” Marjorie took Ronny by the arm. “Come along. I am going to speak to them. No time like the present, you know.”
“All right, lead the way.” Ronny obligingly allowed Marjorie to propel her toward the bench where the duo were seated.
“Good morning.” Marjorie stopped fairly in front of the rustic seat, her brown eyes alight with gentle friendliness. “Isn’t the campus wonderful today? This is one of its happy moods. I always say it changes in expression just as persons do.”
“Good morning.” The black-eyed girl’s tones were as friendly as her own had been. The fair-haired girl also acknowledged the greeting with a nod and smile. “Truly, I agree with you. I think this campus is the most magnificent piece of lawn I ever saw or expect to see.”
“I see where the good old campus has made another friend.” Ronny now broke into the conversation nicely started between Marjorie and the freshmen. “Marjorie, this person here,” Ronny playfully indicated her chum, “calls it her oldest friend at Hamilton.”
“I don’t wonder. I hadn’t thought of it in that light before,” returned the blonde freshman half shyly.
Both freshmen showed a certain pleasure mingled with reserve in having thus been addressed by the two seniors.
“If you don’t mind, I am going to bring that seat over there up beside yours.” Marjorie promptly got into action. “Then we can all have a sunny morning confab. It is high time we began to get acquainted with our little sisters,” she finished laughingly.
Together she and Ronny carried the nearby seat to a place beside the one holding the two freshmen. Then conversation began afresh, a trifle stiffly at first. Soon the four were laughing merrily over Calista Wilmot’s humorous narration of her first day at Bertram Preparatory School when the taxicab driver had, at the start, misunderstood her and carried her to the opposite end of the borough in which the school was situated.
“He landed me with a flourish in front of the main entrance to the Bertram Academy for young men,” she related. “I saw a crowd of young men playing football on a side lawn. That was queer, I thought. I didn’t see a sign of a single girl. He set my luggage down on the drive. In another minute he would have been off and away. I had paid him before we started. I called out to him to wait and asked him if he was sure it was the Bertram Preparatory School for Girls. Right then we came to an understanding. Maybe I didn’t drive away from that school in a hurry. I had a perfect string of mishaps that day, big and little.” She continued to relate them to her amused listeners.
An hour slipped away unheeded by the congenial quartette under the big elm. Marjorie made no approach to the subject on her mind. The two freshmen asked numerous impersonal questions regarding Hamilton College and its traditions. They made but scant reference to their own friends except to remark that there were twelve of them at Wayland Hall.
“Look, Ronny.” Marjorie pointed to the chimes clock in the chapel tower which showed eleven. “We must go. I promised to go over to Silverton Hall to see Robin Page before luncheon. We’ll have time just for a hurried call.”
To her new acquaintances she explained: “Miss Page is a very dear friend. She came back to Hamilton on the seven-thirty train last night. Would you like to go with us to Silverton Hall? I am sure she will be glad to meet you.”
The two girls, thus invited, exchanged eager glances. It was evident both wished very much to go. Still, for some reason, they hesitated to accept.
“I don’t know – ” began Calista doubtfully. “Not today, I think.” She adopted a tone of sudden decision.
“Some other day, I hope,” supplemented Charlotte Robbins, the blonde girl. She looked almost appealingly at Marjorie.
“Any day,” was Marjorie’s cordial response. “My room, or rather Miss Macy’s and my room is 15. Delighted to be of service to you. Miss Lynne and I will make you a real call some evening this week.”
“Our number is 20. I hope you will come and see us.” Charlotte Robbins emphasized the will as though she had definitely made up her mind to be cordial.
After Marjorie and Ronny had left them, the two freshmen regarded each other in silence for a moment.
“Now we have gone and done it!” exclaimed Charlotte with a short laugh. “What else could we have done?”
“Nothing,” replied Calista with conviction. “Gus is going to be as cross as two sticks. She is so stubborn, once she makes up her mind to be.”
“She has made a mistake about Miss Dean and Miss Lynne, at least. They are sweet.”
“I don’t want to quarrel with Gussie over this business.” Calista knitted reflective brows. “In spite of the numerous wordy tilts she and I are always having, I’m awfully fond of Gus. A more generous girl never lived, and she is so square, too.”
“She’s the baby who wouldn’t grow up,” Charlotte said with a whimsical smile. “She’s good as gold when she wants to be good. She roars like a spoiled infant when she is crossed. The best way to do is to stand by the courage of our convictions. We like these two seniors. They appear to like us. We’ll just have to make Gus understand that.”
