Kitabı oku: «Marjorie Dean, Marvelous Manager», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XVI
THE REASON WHY
“Oh, Marjorie Dean; dear old Marvelous Manager! I’m so glad you’ve come back to the campus. I feel like squealing for joy. I was never before quite so glad to see anyone!”
Marjorie, first off the train of her party, walked straight into Robin Page’s welcoming, outstretched arms. The Sanford-bound party had left the campus under rain-threatening skies. They were returning to find Marjorie’s first Hamilton friend decorated with a carpet of soft cold white. On Saturday the weather had grown colder. Sunday afternoon had brought a mild snow storm.
“Gracious; you must have missed me! This is surely a cordial reception, Pagie dear.” Marjorie laughed her pleasure of re-union as she warmly returned Robin’s hearty embrace.
“I have; I have,” Robin’s tones rose in a mild wail. “Oh, you lucky gang,” she cried, surveying fondly the eight returned Travelers. “I drove your car down tonight, Vera. Leila’s hasn’t come home from the repair shop yet.”
Robin kept up a lively chatter as she was passed from one to another of the octette. Her extreme charm of face and manner made her place in the hearts of the little coterie of friends a very individual one. A less sensible girl than Robin might easily have been spoiled by the knowledge of her peculiar power to charm.
“Phil and Barbara ought to be here, too.” Robin made a searching survey of the white, drifted platform with her eyes. “They started out to see if they could beg, borrow or steal a car. They wanted to come with me, but I told them to go and hunt a car of their own. I said: ‘When you find it you may bring it to me,’” laughed Robin. “I knew we’d need two cars. I didn’t care to call a station taxi. Wait till you hear my reason for cutting out those same taxies.” Robin’s delicate face hardened a trifle. “It’s a very good – ”
A sharp little shout of welcome broke in upon what Robin was saying. Phil, Barbara and Gussie Forbes suddenly appeared on the platform. Phil and Barbara were escorting Gussie with a great show of respect. Each had her by an arm. Both were endeavoring to look dignified. Gussie was frankly giggling her enjoyment of the situation.
“Captured a soph; tallest in captivity; absolutely primitive; untamed, probably belongs to the cave dwellers union,” recited Phil, indicating Gussie with an enthusiastic flourish. “She may even be a Celt.” Phil arched significant brows at Leila.
“May she, indeed?” Leila pretended deep surprise.
“You heard me say she might be,” Phil retorted grandly. “Anyway, she has a car that’s not in the repair shop. That’s more important this evening than being a Celt.”
“Now where is the one who told you that?” Leila glared about her, as if determined to hunt out the offender.
“You mustn’t be too personal.” Phil put her hand to her lips. Shielding them cup-fashion she said in a loud whisper: “Keep quiet. She mustn’t suspect the reason we invited her.”
“I doubt if she ever finds out,” was Leila’s satirical assurance.
“Poor, benighted soph.” Vera turned a pitying look on the primitive, untamed soph who returned it with a bold wink.
“She seems to understand a few things,” Muriel made equally sarcastic comment.
“I’ll guarantee not to ditch the car, even if I do have an untamed air,” chuckled Gussie. “Come on, Travelers. No place like home when home’s a good place. Six to a car. Come, choose your east. Come, choose your west.”
The Travelers obeyed the call, laughingly dividing themselves into two groups. Robin, Marjorie, Muriel, Phil, Lucy and Vera took possession of Vera’s car. Leila, Jerry, Kathie, Barbara, Ronny and Gussie fell to Gussie’s big high-powered touring car. They were all in an uproariously merry mood as their frequent peals of laughter went to testify.
Phil magnanimously volunteered to forego the delights of re-union and drive the car so that Robin could tell the girls the campus news. Lucy elected to ride on the front seat beside her. “Such a noble act deserves the reward of my company. Besides, I’ll hear the same news later. There’ll be at least half a dozen editions of it,” she slyly prophesied.
Marjorie’s first eager question: “How did everything go?” set Robin off on an account of the calamity that had overtaken the dormitory girls on Thanksgiving morning. She had just reached the point in her narrative where she and Barbara and Phil had piled the umbrellas belonging to the dormitory girls into the automobile and started for the inn when Phil brought the car up in front of Wayland Hall and called out in stentorian tones: “All out. Step lively.”
“I’ll have to tell you the rest when we are settled again up in Marjorie’s room. This is the Tragedy of Page minus Dean, in two acts. Wait till you hear the sensational climax of Act One,” Robin animatedly informed the absorbed listeners.
The brightness of reunion had been gradually fading from Marjorie’s face as she listened to Robin to give place to an expression of almost stern gravity. Robin had not yet brought Leslie Cairns into the narrative. Nevertheless her name had suddenly leaped into Marjorie’s mind. Why Robin’s recital of her difficulties with two warring Italian garage owners should have reminded Marjorie of Leslie Cairns she was momentarily at a loss to understand. She conceived a swift, unbidden, formless suspicion of Leslie which she instantly tried to dismiss as unworthy. It continued to tantalize her brain until she recalled with relief that it was the mention of the Italians as garage owners that had brought Leslie to the fore in her mind. Leslie herself was a prospective garage owner.
Half an hour later when Robin had resumed her story to her interested audience of chums Marjorie sat, chin on hand, staring in secret bewilderment at Robin as the latter indignantly recounted the sensational mud-spattering climax of Act One, with Leslie Cairns as the villain. Her curious, flitting suspicion of Leslie had not then been idle. She felt as she might have if she had suddenly reached up and picked her conviction of Leslie’s treachery out of the atmosphere.
“Phil insisted from the first that Leslie Cairns had an object in view when she stood in the store watching us from behind the palms. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Afterward, when she deliberately ran her car through that mud puddle as hard as she could drive it, and as close to our car as she dared, I decided Phil was right,” Robin asserted with an energetic bob of her head.
“What do you think her object was, Phil? Leslie Cairns’, I mean?” Vera voiced the curiosity of the others. “Do you think she heard about the dinner to the off-campus girls from her friends?”
“Of course. She must have. Hard to say what her object may have been. She was probably hunting mischief. When she couldn’t find any to do, it put her in a worse humor than ever with us and she vented her spite in a mud-spattering act.” Phil accompanied her opinion with a contemptuous shrug.
“That ends the first act, ladies and Gentleman Gus,” announced Robin. “The second act has nothing to do with Leslie Cairns. It features Guiseppe Baretti, the hero of the hour and the knightly defender of the dormitory girls.” She accompanied the announcement with flamboyant gestures.
“Thank you for special mention.” Gussie stood up and bowed.
“You’re welcome,” beamed Robin. “I couldn’t resist including you. It sounded well.”
“It’s a poor way to do, to be calling attention to oneself in the middle of a story,” grumbled Leila. “My fine old Irish manners tell me that.”
“Ask them to tell you to practice the lost art of silence,” Muriel blandly requested. “When you get the information pass it on to Gentleman Gus. Whisper it so we can’t hear it. We’re anxious to hear the rest of Robin’s tale.”
“Ah, but you have an idea you are talking!” Leila exclaimed with withering sarcasm.
“Taisez-vous.” Robin shook a playfully threatening finger at the merry gabblers. “I’ll resume before you have time to interrupt me again. After Phil, Barbara and I got our mud shower we hustled to Silverton Hall. We were late for dinner; awfully late, but everybody was good to us and the dinner was splendiferous. We started for the gym the minute we had finished dinner. Gussie, you can tell the crowd about the game afterward. I want to keep to the subject of my own troubles as a promoter, minus a partner. It was a great game. I’ll say that much.”
“Gentleman Gus is the best player I ever saw tackle a game,” Phil praised. “That’s all. ’Scuse me for interrupting.” She cast a comical glance at Robin, who returned it with a reproving one, then continued:
“When the game was over I went outside the gym wondering if Signor Baretti really had been able to reduce those provoking Italians to reason. He was waiting just outside the double doors. I know by the way he smiled that he had found some way of helping us. He told me he had managed to make Mariani let him have four taxies and that he had his own large car and a smaller one he used when making hurried business trips. I still had Vera’s car. We had come over from Silverton Hall in it. His big car would easily hold ten passengers, by having the taxies make a second trip all the off-campus girls would be taken care of.”
“Mariani himself was driving one of the taxies. You should have seen the expression on his fat face! He was so peeved at Baretti he didn’t know which way to look!” Phil interposed, laughing at the memory of the miffed Italian’s grouchy face.
“Baretti had the machines lined up on the branch drive east of the gym. I asked him if the men could be depended to bring the girls back to the campus after supper and come for them after the dance. He said: ‘Yes-s, I tell again. Then sure.’” Robin imitated the inn-keeper briefly. “He marched up to the first, then the others, and said about six words to each; except Mariani. He and Guiseppe had quite an argument. I could tell by the way they wagged their heads and shrugged their shoulders and made gestures to go with almost every word they said. Finally Signor Baretti came over to me and said very proudly that it was all right; to tell the ‘dorm’ girls to get into the machines. Just about that time – ”
“We came along with our little chug wagons,” broke in Gussie mischievously. “That’s all. Don’t forget to give us credit.”
“Don’t worry. I never forget,” recklessly boasted Robin. “Yes; Gentleman Gus, Calista, Norma and Laura came along again with their cars and the taxies didn’t have to make a second trip. Lillian couldn’t come. Their dinner was so late. Besides they were entertaining at her home in the evening. Mariani furnished the same four taxies out to the campus in the evening at the usual rate. After the dance he only sent two, and the drivers said they couldn’t come back. I was positively green with rage. I tried to catch Mariani on the ’phone, but he wouldn’t answer. The girls helped out again and we managed to land the last ‘dorm’ on her own doorstep a little after midnight.”
“Did you tell Guiseppe of Mariani’s second flivver?” Vera asked. “If you haven’t, you’d better. He will wish to know it. He’ll think you haven’t much confidence in him if you don’t let him know.”
“It was too late to bother him that night, and I was so busy Friday and Saturday I didn’t have time to go and see him. I intend to tell him.”
“Did the busses run again on Friday? Are they running now?” were Marjorie’s questions, uttered in quick succession.
“No, sir; they aren’t running yet. And Mariani isn’t giving good service. I know of a number of different girls who have since then ’phoned for taxies, and have had no service. Whenever they’ve called on the ’phone about it, no one at Mariani’s garage has seemed to know anything,” Barbara finished disgustedly.
“What did Signor Baretti say about the busses not running? Did he find out what the trouble was?” Again it was Marjorie who questioned.
“He hadn’t found out the reason when he came to the gym after the game on Thursday. He said he would, though. I know he will. He is the never-give-up kind. When he does find out we’ll hear from him.” Robin said this with the utmost confidence.
“And now, may a poor, timid Irish woman ask a question?” Leila had been listening to Robin, an inscrutable smile touching her red lips. Her bright blue eyes were alive with a cold sparkle which Jerry had once declared looked like fire behind ice.
“Do ask it.” Jerry had instantly marked the expression. She straightened in her chair, the picture of expectation. Leila was about to say something startling.
“That I will.” Leila flashed Jerry a knowing smile. “What has Leslie Cairns to do with the second act of the Tragedy of Page minus Dean?”
“Now you have asked a question.” Ronny’s gray eyes gleamed shrewdly as she brought out the crisp commendation. “When we fit an answer to that very leading question we’ll probably know why the busses stopped running.”
CHAPTER XVII
A QUEER JOKE
Leila’s frank assumption that Leslie Cairns had been a secret Thanksgiving Day disturber could not fail to find lodgment in the minds of the girls gathered in Marjorie’s room that snowy Sunday afternoon. There was not one among them who did not know considerable about Leslie Cairns’ underhanded methods of trouble-making. They knew, too, that she had oftenest directed her spite against Marjorie. Marjorie was adored for her beauty, as Leslie was disliked for her lack of it. Her unfair treacherous ways made her unprepossessing features even more ugly in their girlish eyes.
Be it said to their credit they tried not to discuss Leslie any more personally than could be helped under the circumstances. All of them were of the same opinion. Leslie had not gotten over her grudge against Marjorie. She had chosen to strike at a time when she knew Marjorie would not be on the campus to guard her benevolent interests.
“She’s as relentless as an Indian,” was Jerry’s opinion of the ex-student. “It’s a good thing for Bean that she has me to protect her.”
Marjorie did not take the indignant view of Leslie Cairns’ further attempt to persecute her which her comrades entertained. Still she was now more concerned about it within herself than she had been in her earlier campus days when Commencement was a far-distant prospect. Now she was a promoter. She smiled to herself whenever the word crossed her brain. She was a promoter of democracy; a promoter of happiness. Before she had gone through the gate of Commencement she feared that she had been far more interested in her welfare than she had that of others. Now her work demanded the thought of others above her personal wishes and inclinations. It became more than ever necessary that she should make it her business to guard the interests of those who would benefit by and through the efforts of Page and Dean.
“Between you and me,” she said confidentially to Jerry the next afternoon in the privacy of their room. “I wish Leslie Cairns would go on an expedition to Alaska, Kamchatka, Bolivia, Tasmania or any other far away point where she’d be neither seen nor even heard of for a long time.” Marjorie’s tone was anything but vindictive. Her brown eyes regarded Jerry somberly.
“Your wish and your tone don’t harmonize,” criticized Jerry. “Why wish your worst enemy almost off the face of the earth in such a mournful tone? Which shall I believe?”
“Either or neither. Suit yourself,” Marjorie stood before the mirror of her dressing table adjusting a chic little green velvet hat to just the right angle on her curly head. The hat placed to her satisfaction she swung round from the mirror saying forcefully, “It makes me weary, Jerry, even to have to think of Leslie Cairns. She isn’t my worst enemy. She’s her own. I wish someone could make her understand that. But not I.”
“Who?” Jerry looked up in mock alarm from the translation into French which she was in indifferent process of making. “I hope you didn’t mean me, Bean.”
“No, not you.” Marjorie’s merry laugh was heard. “I don’t know who. I won’t allow myself to label Leslie Cairns as dangerous. In the past she usually overreached herself every time she started trouble.”
“You are living in the present, Bean,” Jerry staidly corrected, “and Les, as her pals used to call her, is living in our village, too, and right on the job. She’s like an epidemic. No one knows how or when she may break out. Things were whizzing along on wheels when we went home at Thanksgiving. Next day it rained and the busses all stopped running. They aren’t running yet. Now we can’t blame Les for the rain, but what about the busses?”
“I’ll answer that question when I come back from Baretti’s. I’m sure that is what Signor Baretti wishes to talk about.” Marjorie had that morning received a note from the Italian asking her and Robin to come to the restaurant at three o’clock that afternoon. “Bye, Jeremiah. See you later. Truly I’ll be back to dinner.”
She encountered Robin when within a few steps of the inn looking her prettiest in a mink-trimmed suit of brown and the smartest of mink hats.
“Such magnificence!” Marjorie exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me there was to be a display of fashion on the campus this P. M.?”
“Didn’t know it myself until I went over to the Hall after I left the Biology laboratory this afternoon. There I found a big box on purpose for Robin. I ordered this suit in New York just before I came back to Hamilton. I had to write two hurry-up letters to the tailor about it, but – here it is at last.” Robin took a jaunty step or two ahead of Marjorie better to display her new costume.
“It’s a work of art,” Marjorie smilingly told her with her ready graciousness. “Guiseppe won’t realize that I’m present when you burst upon him in all your glory.”
“Well – not quite so bad as that,” Robin disagreed, chuckling. “He’ll probably say, first thing, that if you had been here the busses wouldn’t have stopped running.”
“That’ll do. I think we’re even now.” Marjorie’s eyes were dancing. She was a lovely picture of blooming girlhood, the dark green of her long coat with its wide collar and bands of black fox bringing out more fully the apple blossom tint of her rounded cheeks.
“So, Miss Dean, you come back again. I am glad.” Baretti had hastened from the far end of the room to greet his callers. “You have the nice time at home? Your father and mother, they are well?” he asked with polite interest. “I think I never know before two such nices ones as your father, your mother.” The Italian had been introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Dean during the previous June when they had come to Hamilton to attend the Commencement exercises.
“They are very well, thank you, Signor Baretti. I have brought back their best wishes to you. They especially asked me to tell you that they appreciated your message to them.” The innkeeper had sent them a message of good will in his sincere, if broken English.
“That is good; verra good for me. When you write the letter, perhaps you have the time say my good wishes once more to them,” he asked, slightly hesitant. “Now come, both of you. I have the fine maple mousse today. My Italiano boys in the kitchen make. None can make better than these.”
“We adore the maple mousse your boys make!” Robin assured Baretti. Marjorie echoed her warm praise of the dainty.
They obediently followed him to one of the vacant tables and seated themselves in the chairs he pulled out for them. He stood for a moment ceremoniously waiting for one or the other of them to ask him to join them.
“I hope you aren’t too busy to sit down at the table for a few minutes and tell us about the busses,” Marjorie cordially paved the way.
“What you think, Miss Page; Miss Dean?” the little proprietor leaned earnestly forward. An apple-cheeked Italian waitress had been sent for the maple mousse. “Sabani send me the word he don’t run the busses – not if I say so hundred times. Ha, ha, ha!” Baretti threw back his head with a derisive laugh.
“How encouraging!” Marjorie exclaimed with light mockery. In spite of the difficulties that had overtaken Page and Dean she could not resist smiling over the child-like message of defiance Sabani had sent to Baretti.
The Italian understood her tone and said. “Now you only make the fun of me, Miss Dean.”
“What does Sabani intend to do about sending busses over the campus route?” Robin asked anxiously. “Why has he cut the campus out? All the answer we’ve ever received from him to those two questions is that two of his busses are laid up for repairs and the third is running entirely on the Bretan Hill route.”
“A-a-ah; he only makes the talk. He don’t tell nothin’ true. Nev-ver-r Sabani tell the truth. He say me the same he say you, Miss Page. I say him: ‘Look you; this my eye.’ Put my finger to my eye like this. ‘I see two your busses run in town yesterday.’ Then he is verra mad, but he tell me verra smart: ‘Oh, yes; you see. That one bus make only one trip to West Hamilton, then break down again.’ I tell him I am not foolish. I know what I see. I say: ‘What is the matter you don’t want to give the dorm girls the service?’”
“That was straight from the shoulder.” Marjorie nodded her approbation.
“Good for you, Signor Baretti.” Robin lightly clapped her hands.
“He give me the verra queer look. Mebbe he is the little scared. I speak to him verra quick – look me so mad.” Baretti straightened in his chair and gave an illustration of his idea of stern, offended dignity. “Then he say he don’t know what I mean. I tell him he will know soon, an’ he won’t like. Then he is more scare. He say he tell me somethin’ verra private. This is it. He don’t like take the dorm girls to the campus in the bus for he is mad because they ride too much in Mariani’s taxies. Mariani is the nemico to him. That mean hate verra hard. I laugh at him. I say him that is the mos’ bigges’ lie he tell yet.”
“What an excuse!” Robin turned disgustedly to Marjorie. “It’s so flimsy it hardly holds together in the telling. The dormitory girls hardly ever patronize the taxies on account of the expense, Signor Baretti,” she explained to their host. “Sabani appeared well pleased in the beginning to have those seventy-two fares twice a day, not to mention the extra campus traffic he received. I never trusted that man.” Robin shook a disapproving head.
“Naw.” Baretti forgot manners and indulged in his pet “Naw” by way of expressing his contempt. “Well, I say him, ‘Nev-ver-r you min’, Sabani, I know the way to do.’ I laugh and go way from him. I think of Floroni who drive one the busses. I know he don’t like Sabani. I go in the street watch for him. He is drive the bus to Breton Hill. I have to wait long time for him. I drive my car out on the pike, wait for him there. I say to him come to my restaurant tonight after he make last trip. That is ten of the clock. He say he will.”
“And did he keep his word?” Marjorie asked eagerly. Two pairs of bright eyes fixed themselves upon the Italian. Neither girl had missed the note of triumph which had sprung into his voice.
“Yes, oo-h, yes,” was the instant reply. “Floroni is my frien’. Now he is my driver for my truck. I give him this place. He tell me he don’ want work mor’ for Sabani, for he is no good. He say he can’t give up the place when he has the family to work for. Then I say him: ‘You don’t like Sabani. You say me: Why he treat the dorm girls so bad; don’t give them any service with the busses?’”
Baretti made an eloquent pause as his black eyes sent a triumphant gleam toward one then the other of his listeners. They watched him in expectation.
“Floroni say: ‘Yes, I tell you, Sabani don’t tell me nothin’. I see an’ hear myself. Sabani get plenta mona becaus’ he don’t run the busses to the campus.’”
“Plenty of money because he doesn’t run the busses?” cried Robin her eyes widening with surprise. “I can’t see how that – ”
“Yes-s;” the little proprietor interposed, a trace of excitement ruffling his quick, stolid assent. “He get that mona becaus’ Miss Car-rins give to him. She go to his garage two days before Thanksgiving; talk to him there. It is in the morning verra early. Floroni and the other drivers take out the busses. Floroni happen walk by her. He hear her tell Sabani this: ‘What you care, an’ I make worth the time.’ He don’t know then what she mean. Day befor’ Thanksgiving Sabani say him, ‘I give you holiday tomorrow; mebbe more days. Two the busses need the repairs. I pay you jus’ same as when you drive but you stay in the garage. You wash the cars; do such things.’ And so it is. He don’t like, but he need the mona’.” The Italian spread his hands with a deprecating gesture. “He say, Miss Car-rins make all the trouble.”
Listening to Baretti’s information concerning the bus trouble it occurred to both Robin and Marjorie in the same instant that they might have expected to hear the name of Leslie Cairns as the real power of malice. Robin’s flash of surprise at Baretti’s first accusation against Sabani instantly died out. She knew that it was not the first time that Leslie Cairns had bribed her way to her objectives.
“Then there is no certainty as to when the busses will begin running again,” Marjorie said, brows contracted in a reflective little frown. “What ought we to do, Signor Baretti?” She glanced appealingly at the little man.
“Ah, that is the way I like! I am the one to help you. It is already done. Tomorrow you see the busses run to the campus again with the dorm girls.” Baretti made this promise almost gleefully.
“Tomorrow!” two voices rose simultaneously.
“Yes-s.” Baretti surveyed the amazed firm of Page and Dean with his broadest, most beaming smile. “This morning I have go to Sabani. Aa-h-h, but we have the fight; but not with the hand.” He doubled a fist and shook his hand. “It was the fight talk. I scare him; make him think I know all he say to Miss Car-rins; all she say him. Then I tell him I will go to the mayor of Hamilton an’ tell the mayor what he have done. The mayor will take away his license for the bus line. ‘I make you many troubles, for you deserve, you don’t run the busses to the campus tomorrow.’ After while he say he will do it. He say Miss Car-rins tell him it was the joke she want play on the dorm girls. I say him it is the poor joke, but not so bad as the joke I will play on him if he don’ run the busses to the campus tomorrow.”
