Kitabı oku: «Marjorie Dean, High School Senior», sayfa 14
CHAPTER XXVI – HER BETTER SELF
The week following Jerry’s return to the Lookouts, together with the restoration of their cachéd money, took on a distinctly festival tone. A round of jolly little merry-makings went on at the various members’ homes, on each occasion of which Jerry was the guest of honor. Her aggravating behavior of the past was completely obliterated by the Lookouts’ joy at her return to them.
Quite the contrary, Mignon La Salle was speedily beginning to realize that “the way of the transgressor is hard.” It was not remorse for her despicable conduct that had forced this knowledge upon her. The moment that the money, which she had tantalizingly withheld from the club out of spite, was out of her hands, her courage came back with a rush. She had already reached the stage of upbraiding herself for having thus been so easily frightened, when a dire calamity befell her.
Three days after she had dispatched William to Harriet’s home with the fateful package, her father returned. Having occasion to enter the First National Bank of Sanford on business, he heard there a tale from its vice-president that sent him hurrying from the bank in wrathful quest of his unmanageable daughter. In taking this step, Mr. Wendell had been actuated by what he believed to be the best of motives. As a close friend of Mr. La Salle, the vice-president had deemed it his duty to inform the Frenchman of the affair. A rigid advocate of the belief that the younger generation was allowed entirely too much liberty, he had not been in sympathy with the delicate consideration the Lookouts had exhibited toward Mignon. He was of the opinion that she should be severely punished, and accordingly constituted himself as a committee of one to act in the matter.
Completely out of patience with his lawless daughter, Mr. La Salle had left the bank, enraged determination in his eye. He had proceeded directly to Sanford High School, insisting there that Mignon be released from study for the day. With no word of greeting other than a stern, “Wicked, ungrateful girl, I have found you out,” he marched her home with him. Once safely in the confines of his own residence, he let loose on her a torrent of recrimination, half English, half French, that reduced her to the lowest depths of terrified humility. At the end of it, he pronounced doom. “You shall go to a convent school at once. You shall not have the honor to graduate in the same class with the excellent young women you have so shamefully treated. In a convent school, all the time you will be watched. Then, perhaps, you will learn that it pays not to do wrong.”
In vain Mignon wept, pleaded, promised. This time her father was adamant. He sternly forbade her return to Sanford High School and would hardly allow her to leave the house. He visited Miss Archer, stating gloomily to the surprised principal that due to Mignon’s own failings he had decided to remove her from high school and place her in the more strict environment of a convent school. To her kindly proposal that he give his erring daughter another chance, he made emphatic refusal. “She has defied me one time too often,” he declared. “Now she must of a truth be severely punished.”
He wrote a note to the Lookout Club, apologizing for his daughter’s shortcomings, and he also wrote another, much in the same strain, to Marjorie Dean, thanking her for past kindnesses and releasing her from her promise. In the note to Marjorie he stated his unrelenting resolve regarding Mignon. Though she had small reason to feel sympathy for Mignon, nevertheless Marjorie pitied her whole-heartedly. As she solemnly remarked to her captain, it was very hard on Mignon to be snatched from school almost on the very eve of her graduation.
Meanwhile, Mignon was racking her troubled brain for some means of evading the fate her father had thrust upon her. Thus far she had not dared write Rowena and confess that she had been frightened into returning the Lookouts’ money. She had known only too well the weight of her friend’s displeasure even in small matters. Rowena would never forgive her for thus having so easily given in. Urged on by the conviction that no one save Rowena could suggest a way out of her present difficulty, Mignon finally sat down and wrote her a most garbled account of her defeat. She represented herself to be the victim of a deep-laid plot and a much-abused person all around. She ended with a vigorous tirade against her father and appealed desperately to Rowena for help out of her difficulties. Her father was already in communication with the head of the school to which he had decreed she should go, she informed Rowena. “If you are truly my friend,” she wrote, “try to think of some way to help me out of this trouble.”
By keeping an alert watch on the mail, Mignon managed to lay hands on Rowena’s answer to her plea, which arrived three days after the sending of her letter to her boon companion. It arrived at her home during her father’s absence and she lost no time in locking herself in her room, there to read it undisturbed. The first two pages consisted entirely of Rowena’s brutally frank opinion of her for being so cowardly. The third and fourth, however, held a suggestion that fairly took Mignon’s breath. At first she mentally flung it aside as impossible. Considering it further, she became better pleased with it. After a half hour of somber reflection, she decided to adopt it.
Mignon was not the only one, however, who had a problem to consider. Marjorie Dean was also wrestling with a difficulty of her own. Since the receipt of Mr. La Salle’s note, she had thought frequently and sorrowfully of wayward Mignon. Several times she had attempted to answer the Frenchman’s note, but could think of nothing to say. She did not approve of his plan to cut his daughter off from the graduation she had so nearly won. Still, she could hardly set down her opinion in a letter to him. After several days of troubled reflection, she decided to go to him and ask him to reconsider his determination.
To her friends she said nothing of this; to her captain she said a great deal. Mrs. Dean made no attempt to dissuade her. “You must fight it out by yourself, Lieutenant,” she counseled. “If you feel that Mignon is really worth your good offices, then by all means go to her father. Remember, she has never played fairly with you. You are still in the dark as to what means she employed to estrange poor little Lucy Warner from you.”
“I know it,” sighed Marjorie. “Still, I feel so sorry for her that I can’t bear to stand by and not try to help her. I think I’ll go to Mr. La Salle’s office after school is over for the day.”
In order not to arouse her friends’ curiosity, she strolled home from school with them as usual. Stopping merely to salute her captain, she faced about and hurried toward the main street of the little city on which his office was situated. To her deep disappointment she found his office locked. It meant a trip to his residence after dinner that evening. She must lose no further time in obtaining an interview with him, else it might be too late. He had written that Mignon was to be sent away immediately.
When she started out for the office the sky had looked threatening. Before she reached home it had begun to rain, and by dinner time a heavy downpour had set in that bade fair to keep up steadily all evening. Not to be thus easily disheartened, Marjorie waited until almost eight o’clock, then announced her determination to go at any rate.
“Then I shall go with you,” decided her mother. “You shall not go alone to Mignon’s house. We will drive in the automobile. There is a poor woman who lives near the La Salles on whom I ought to call. I will stop at her home and wait for you there while you make your plea to Mr. La Salle.”
This was highly satisfactory to Marjorie. A few minutes later, prepared to face the storm, Marjorie and her captain had repaired to the Deans’ small garage at the back of the house for the automobile, and were soon driving through the rain on their double errand of mercy.
“You needn’t bother to take me the rest of the way, Captain,” assured Marjorie, as they neared the shabby little house where Mrs. Dean was to make her call. “It’s only a block. I’ll run fast and hardly get wet. My hat and raincoat will stand the bad weather.”
“Suit yourself,” smiled her mother as Marjorie skipped lightly out of the car. “Don’t be too long, dear. I will wait for you, but try to come back within the half hour.”
“Always obey your superior officer.” Her hand to her soft felt hat, Marjorie made jaunty salute. Then she flitted on up the street and was soon lost in the blackness of the night.
Her mind on her errand, she hurried along, paying small attention to the discomfort of the falling rain. The La Salle estate, which occupied half a block, lay just around a corner from the place where she had alighted. Her head bent, she made the turn just in time to collide sharply with a pedestrian who was approaching on a run from the opposite direction. The force of the collision sent a suitcase that the latter was carrying to the sidewalk.
“I beg your pardon,” began Marjorie. “Did I – ”
“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” demanded an angry voice, as the owner of the suitcase stooped to recover it.
At sound of the familiar tones, Marjorie cried out: “Mignon La Salle! Why, Mignon, you are the last person I expected to see on such a night.” Pausing, she regarded the still stooping girl in pure astonishment. To meet Mignon hurrying along on foot through the rain, minus an umbrella and burdened with a suitcase struck her as being decidedly peculiar.
Mignon straightened up with an angry jerk. “You’ve made me lose my handbag,” she accused furiously. “I let go of it with my suitcase when you came blundering along and crashed against me. You’ve always brought me bad luck, Marjorie Dean. I wish you’d never came to Sanford to live. I’ll miss my train and it will be your fault. Don’t stand there like a dummy. Help me hunt for my bag. I’ve got to make my train. Do you hear me?”
Already Marjorie was bending low, her anxious hands groping about on the sidewalk in search of the lost bag. Mignon, too, was hunting frantically for it, keeping up a continuous fire of half-sarcastic, half-lamenting remark.
“Here it is,” cried Marjorie, as her searching fingers came in contact with the leather of the bag. “I’m glad I found it and I’m sorry I made you drop it.” Privately she was wondering at Mignon’s apparent agitation. It was far more intense than her anger.
Both girls straightening up simultaneously, Marjorie caught full sight of Mignon’s face under the flickering gleam of a neighboring arc light. It was white and set and her black eyes held a hunted, desperate look. Without a word of thanks she snatched the bag from Marjorie’s hand, picked up her suitcase and started on.
Yet in that revealing instant under the arc light a sudden, terrifying apprehension laid hold on Marjorie. Mignon’s pale, tense features, her evident haste, the suitcase, her frenzied determination to make the train, the fact that she was rushing through the rain on foot to the station – all seemed to tally with the dreadful suspicion that gripped Marjorie. Could it be that Mignon was running away from home?
To think was to act with Marjorie. In a flash she was speeding to overtake the fleeing girl, now a few yards ahead of her. Catching up with Mignon, she cried out on impulse, “You mustn’t run away from home, Mignon! Please, please go back with me! When I met you I was on my way to your house to ask your father if you couldn’t stay in Sanford High and graduate with our class.”
“Who told you I was going to run away from home?” flashed Mignon, whirling fiercely upon Marjorie.
“No one told me,” was the steady admission. “It just came to me all of a sudden. If I’m wrong, forgive me. If I’m right, then please don’t do it.” Marjorie’s voice rose beseechingly. “You have everything in the world to make you happy. Your father loves you, even if he is angry with you now. No one else will ever take care of you as he has.”
“My father hates me,” contradicted Mignon savagely. “If he really cared for me he could never send me away to be a prisoner in a convent school. Yes, I am going to leave home, and you nor anyone else shall stop me. Everybody hates me and I hate everybody!” The last word ended in a passionate sob of mingled rage and humiliation. Mignon was now tasting the bitterness of one against whom the world has turned.
“Poor Mignon.” Moved by sincere pity, Marjorie laid a comforting hand on the would-be refugee’s arm.
That gentle expression of sympathy, accompanied by the tender little caress, stirred into life an emotion hitherto unknown to Mignon’s rebellious soul. Assailing her as a climax to the strain of the past few days, it completely unnerved her. Her self-control vanishing she dropped her suitcase and burst into wild weeping. Winding her arms about the sobbing girl, Marjorie tried to soothe her as best she might. Fortunately for them, no passer-by intruded upon the little scene. Only the complaining rain lent its monotonous accompaniment to Mignon’s sobs.
“Let us go back to your house, Mignon,” proposed Marjorie practically with a view toward bracing up the weeper. “Someone is likely to come along and see us. You will go, won’t you?”
“Yes,” came the husky reply.
“All right.” Making an effort to speak with the utmost cheerfulness, Marjorie loosed her hold on Mignon and picked up the suitcase. “I’ll carry it,” she said. “It’s only a little way to your home. But first, I must stop at that little house over there and tell Captain to wait for me longer. I’d like to have a talk with you and you know I am to see your father. Is he at home?”
“Yes. In the library. I left the house by the back entrance so that he wouldn’t see me. I hid my suitcase outside,” confessed Mignon in a low, shamed voice. “I was going to New York to see Rowena. She promised to help me get on the stage. Her uncle is a theatrical manager.”
“I’m glad you have changed your mind,” was the hearty assertion. Marjorie was thinking that she was not in the least surprised to learn that Rowena Farnham was at the root of Mignon’s flight.
“I would never have hidden the money if it hadn’t been for her,” Mignon continued bitterly. “Still, it’s my fault, after all. I shouldn’t have listened to her. But this is the end. I’m going to be different, even if my father sends me away to school. I guess I started wrong and somehow could never do right. I deserve to be punished, though. It just breaks my heart when I think of not graduating from Sanford High.”
Marjorie listened in wonder. Was it really lawless Mignon who had just spoken so penitently? Could it be that her better self had at last found the light? “You are going to graduate from Sanford High,” she declared staunchly. “We must go to your father and tell him everything. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Mignon sighed at the prospect ahead of her, yet she made no dissent to Marjorie’s plan. She had small faith in her father’s clemency, but she had at last taken a step in the right direction and she was resolved to go on. “We might as well go to the front door and ring the bell,” she said dejectedly. “I know he’ll be terribly angry, but I’ll have to stand it.”
Mignon’s prediction of her father’s anger was not an idle one. Of the excitable Latin temperament, his indignation flamed high when the two girls entered the library where he sat quietly reading and Mignon haltingly confessed to him the details of her interrupted flight. His scathing words of rebuke brought on a second flood of tears. Mignon crumpled up in a big chair, a figure of abject misery. It was then that Marjorie took the floor and in her sweet, gracious fashion earnestly pleaded clemency for the weeper.
It was the most difficult task she had ever undertaken to perform. Exasperated beyond measure, Mr. La Salle at first utterly refused to consider her plea. He could not find it within his heart to forgive his daughter. He was bent on punishing her with the utmost severity and her latest defiance of him served to strengthen his determination. Marjorie’s repeated assertion that by her confession Mignon had already proved her sincerity of purpose appeared to carry small weight.
“You do not know this ungrateful one as I, her father, know her,” was his incensed retort. “Often she has promised the good behavior, but only promised. Never has she fulfilled the word. How then can she expect that I shall forgive and believe her?”
“But this time Mignon will keep her word,” returned Marjorie with gentle insistence. “I am sure that if her mother were living she would forgive and believe. No matter what I had done, my mother would forgive me. If I were truly sorry she would believe in me, too. You are nearest of all in the world to Mignon. Won’t you try to overlook the past and let her come back to the senior class? Whatever else displeases you in her, she has at least been successful in her studies. She stands high in all her classes. She is Professor Fontaine’s most brilliant pupil in French. It does seem hard that she should have to give up now what she has so nearly won.”
Without realizing it, Marjorie had advanced a particularly effective argument. Mignon’s high standing in her various classes during her high school career had always afforded her father signal pleasure. Thus reminded, paternal pride awoke and struggled against anger. Marjorie’s reference to Mignon’s mother had also touched him deeply.
Following her earnest little speech, a brief interval of silence ensued, during which Mr. La Salle stared gloomily at his weeping daughter. Moved by a sudden rush of pity for his motherless girl, he walked over to her and rested a forgiving hand on her diminished head. Very gently he addressed her in his native tongue. Marjorie felt a rush of unbidden tears rise to her own eyes, when the next instant she became witness to a tender reconciliation which she never forgot.
It was nearer two hours than one before she prepared to say good night to the two for whom she had done so much. Brought at last to a state of sympathetic understanding such as they had never before known, father and daughter were loath to part from this sincere, lovely young girl. To Mr. La Salle’s proposal to see her safely to the house where her mother awaited her, Marjorie made gracious refusal. She was anxious to get away by herself. The whole affair had been extremely nerve-racking and she longed for the bracing atmosphere of the outdoors as an antidote to the strain she had undergone.
She was visited by a feeling of intense impatience when, stepping into the hall, accompanied by Mignon and her father, the former humbly asked her to delay her departure for a moment. Leaving her, Mignon sped up the front stairs, returning almost instantly. Announcing to her father her wish to go with Marjorie as far as the gate, the now smiling man saw his guest as far as the veranda and retired into the house.
“I have something to give you,” began Mignon, as they started down the walk. “It’s – that – ” she faltered briefly “ – that letter Lucy Warner wrote you. I found it in the locker room. I saw it fall out of your blouse – and – I – took it – and – read it. I know it was wrong. Then I kept it. I was angry – because you wouldn’t tell me about you and Lucy that day at Miss Archer’s. I – made – Lucy think you had told me about it. She wouldn’t believe it, so I said, ‘What about the Observer?’ She thought I knew something I didn’t know at all. I had no idea what ‘the Observer’ meant. To-morrow I shall go to her and tell her so,” she continued bravely. “I’m sorry for all the hateful things I’ve done to you and said about you. You are the finest, truest girl in the whole world, Marjorie Dean. You’ve done something for me to-night that I’ll remember and be grateful to you for as long as I live. There’s not much left of my senior year but I am going to try to make my last days in Sanford High count. Some day I hope I can prove to you that I am worthy of your friendship. But not yet.” With this she shoved the troublesome letter into Marjorie’s limp hand.
Bereft for the moment of speech, Marjorie clutched the letter, wondering again whether she were actually awake, or living in a queer dream. Mignon’s revelation had laid the last ghost. She had untied the final knot in the tangle of her own making. More, she had given the best possible proof of sincere repentance. “Mignon,” it was now Marjorie’s voice that trembled, “you’ve already proved yourself my friend. I’m glad for your sake and Lucy’s and mine that you were so brave as to tell me about the letter and return it to me. All I can say is: Let us forget and be friends.”
