Kitabı oku: «Molly Brown's Freshman Days», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XIII
TRICKERY
It was several days before the G. F.’s had an opportunity to practise any of their new resolutions on Frances Andrews. The eccentric girl was in the habit of skipping meals and eating at off hours at a little restaurant in the village, or taking ice cream sundaes in the drug store.
At last, however, she did appear at supper in a beautiful dinner dress of lavender crêpe de chine with an immense bunch of violets pinned at her belt. She looked very handsome and the girls could not refrain from giving her covert glances of admiration as she took her seat stonily at the table.
It was the impetuous, precipitate Judy who took the lead in the promotion of kindliness and her premature act came near to cutting down the new club in its budding infancy.
“You must be going to a party,” she began, flashing one of her ingratiating smiles at Frances.
Frances looked at her with an icy stare.
“I – I mean,” stammered Judy, “you are wearing such an exquisite dress. It’s too fine for ordinary occasions like this.”
Frances rose.
“Mrs. Markham,” she said to the matron of Queen’s, “if I can’t eat here without having my clothes sneered at, I shall be obliged to have my meals carried to my room hereafter.”
Then she marched out of the dining room.
Mrs. Markham looked greatly embarrassed and nobody spoke for some time.
“Good heavens!” said Judy at last in a low voice to Molly, “what’s to be done now?”
“Why don’t you write her a little note,” replied Molly, “and tell her that you hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings and had honestly admired her dress.”
“Apologize!” exclaimed Judy, her proud spirit recoiling at the ignoble thought. “I simply couldn’t.”
But since her attack on Molly, Judy had been very much ashamed of herself, and she was now taking what she called “self-control in broken doses,” like the calomel treatment; that night she actually wrote a note to Frances and shoved it under the door. In answer to this abject missive she received one line, written with purple ink on highly scented heavy note paper:
“Dear Miss Kean,” it ran, “I accept your apology.
“Yours sincerely,“FRANCES LE GRAND ANDREWS.”
“Le Grand, that’s a good name for her,” laughed Judy, sniffing at the perfumed paper with some disgust.
But she wrote an elaborate report regarding the incident and read it aloud to the assembled G. F.’s at their second meeting.
In the meantime, Sallie Marks had her innings with the redoubtable Frances, and retreated, wearing the sad and martyred smile of one who is determined not to resent an insult. One by one the G.F.’s took occasion to be polite and kind to the scornful, suspicious Frances. Her malicious speeches were ignored and her vulgarities – and she had many of them – passed lightly over. Little by little she arrived at the conclusion that refinement did not mean priggishness and that vulgarity was not humor. Of course the change came very gradually. Not infrequently after a sophomore snub, the whipped dog snarled savagely; or she would brazenly try to shock the supper table with a coarse, slangy speech. But with the persistent friendliness of the Queen’s girls, the fires in her nature began to die down and the intervals between flare-ups grew longer each day.
Frances Andrews was the first “subject” of the G.F.’s, and they were as interested in her regeneration as a group of learned doctors in the recovery of a dangerously ill patient.
In the meantime, the busy college life hummed on and Molly felt her head swimming sometimes with its variety and fullness. What with coaching Judy, blacking boots, making certain delicious sweetmeats called “cloudbursts,” – the recipe of which was her own secret, – which sold like hot cakes; keeping up the social end and the study end, Molly was beginning to feel tired. A wanness began to show in the dark shadows under her eyes and the pinched look about her lips even as early as the eventful evening when she posed for the senior living picture show.
“This child needs some make-up,” the august senior president had exclaimed. “Where’s the rouge and who’s got my rabbit’s foot? No, burned cork makes too broad a line. Give me one of the lighter colored eyebrow pencils. You mustn’t lose your color, little girl,” she said, dabbing a spot of red on each of Molly’s pale cheeks. “Your roses are one of your chief attractions.”
A great many students and some of the faculty had bought tickets for this notable occasion, and the gymnasium was well filled before the curtain was drawn back from a gigantic gold frame disclosing Mary Stewart as Joan of Arc in the picture by Bastien Le Page, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There was no attempt to reproduce the atmospheric visions of the angel and the knight in armor, only the poor peasant girl standing in the cabbage patch, her face transfigured with inspiration. When Molly saw Mary Stewart pose in this picture at the dress rehearsal, she could not help recalling the story of the bootblack father.
“She has a wonderful face, and I call it beautiful, if other people don’t,” she said to herself.
As for our little freshman, so dazed and heavy was she with fatigue, the night of the entertainment, that she never knew she had created a sensation, first as Botticelli’s “Flora,” barefooted and wearing a Greek dress constructed of cheesecloth, and then as “Mrs. Hamilton,” in the blue crepe with a gauzy fichu around her neck.
After the exhibition, when all the actors were endeavoring to collect their belongings in the confusion of the green room, Sallie Marks came running behind the scenes.
“Prexy has specially requested you to repeat the Flora picture,” she announced, breathlessly.
“Is Prexy here?” they demanded, with much excitement.
“She is so,” answered Sallie. “She’s up in the balcony with Professor Green and Miss Pomeroy.”
“Well, what do you think, we’ve been performing before ‘Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family,’ like P. T. Barnum, and never knew a thing about it,” said a funny snub-nosed senior. “‘Daily demonstrations by the delighted multitude almost taking the form of ovations,’” she proceeded.
“Don’t talk so much, Lulu, and help us, for Heaven’s sake! Where’s Molly Brown of Kentucky?” called the distracted President.
Molly came forth at the summons. Overcome by an extreme fatigue, she had been sitting on a bench in a remote corner of the room behind some stage property.
“Here, little one, take off your shoes and stockings, and get into your Flora costume, quick, by order of Prexy.”
In a few minutes, Molly stood poised on the tips of her toes in the gold frame. The lights went down, the bell rang, and the curtains were parted by two freshmen appointed for this duty. For one brief fleeting glance the audience saw the immortal Flora floating on thin air apparently, and then the entire gymnasium was in total darkness.
A wave of conversation and giggling filled the void of blackness, while on the stage the seniors were rushing around, falling over each other and calling for matches.
“Who’s light manager?”
“Where’s Lulu?”
“Lulu! Lulu!”
“Where’s the switch?”
“Lulu’s asleep at the switch,” sang a chorus of juniors from the audience.
“I’m not,” called Lulu. “I’m here on the job, but the switch doesn’t work.”
“Telephone to the engineer.”
“Light the gas somebody.”
But there were no matches, and the only man in the house was in the balcony. However, he managed to grope his way to the steps leading to the platform, where he suddenly struck a match, to the wild joy of the audience. Choruses from various quarters had been calling:
“Don’t blow out the gas!”
“Keep it dark!”
And one girl created a laugh by announcing:
“The present picture represents a ‘Nocturne’ by Whistler.”
Then the janitor began lighting gas jets along the wall and finally a lonesome gas jet on the stage faintly illumined the scene of confusion.
The gigantic gilt frame outlined a dark picture of hurrying forms, and huddled in the foreground lay a limp white object, for Botticelli’s “Flora” had fainted away.
The confusion increased. The President joined the excited seniors and presently the doctor appeared, fetched by the Professor of English Literature. “Flora” was lifted onto a couch; her own gray cape thrown over her, and opening her eyes in a few minutes, she became Molly Brown of Kentucky. She gazed confusedly at the faces hovering over her in the half light; the doctor at one side, the President at the other; Mary Stewart and Professor Green standing at the foot and a crowd of seniors like a mob in the background.
Suddenly Molly sat up. She brushed her auburn hair from her face and pointed vaguely toward the hall:
“I saw her when she – ” she began. Her eye caught Professor Green’s, and she fell back on the couch.
“You saw what, my child?” asked the President kindly.
“I reckon I was just dreaming,” answered Molly, her Southern accent more marked than ever before.
The President of the senior class now hurried up to the President of Wellington University.
“Miss Walker,” she exclaimed, her voice trembling with indignation, “we have just found out, or, rather, the engineer has discovered, that some one has cut the electric wires. It was a clean cut, right through. I do think it was an outrage.” She was almost sobbing in her righteous anger.
The President’s face looked very grave.
“Are you sure of this?” she asked.
“It’s true, ma’am,” put in the engineer, who had followed close on the heels of the senior.
Without a word, President Walker rose and walked to the centre of the platform. With much subdued merriment the students were leaving the gymnasium in a body. Lifting a small chair standing near, she rapped with it on the floor for order. Instantly, every student faced the platform, and those who had not reached the aisles sat down.
“Young ladies,” began the President in her calm, cultivated tones that could strike terror to the heart of any erring student, “I wish to speak a word with you before you leave the gymnasium to-night. Probably most of you are aware by this time that the accident to the electric lighting was really not an accident at all, but the result of a deliberate act by some one in this room. Of course, I realize, that in so large a body of students as we have at Wellington University there must, of necessity, be some black sheep. These we endeavor, by every effort, to regenerate and by mid-years it is usually not a difficult matter to discover those who are in earnest and those who consider Wellington College merely a place of amusement. Those who do consider it as such, naturally, do not – er – remain with us after mid-years.”
To Molly, sitting on the platform, and to other trembling freshmen in the audience, the President seemed for the moment like a great and stern judge, who had appointed mid-years as the time for a general execution of criminals.
“I consider,” went on the speaker in slow and even tones, “idleness a most unfortunate quality, and I am prepared to combat it and to convince any of my girls who show that tendency that good hard work and only good hard work will bring success. A great many girls come here preferring idleness and learn to repent it – before mid-years.”
A wave of subdued laughter swept over the audience.
“But,” said the President, her voice growing louder and sterner, “young ladies, I am not prepared to combat chicanery and trickery by anything except the most severe measures, and if there is one among you who thinks and believes she can commit such despicable follies as that which has been done to-night, and escape – I would say to her that she is mistaken. I shall not endure such treachery. It shall be rooted out. For the honor and the illustrious name of this institution, I now ask each one of you to help me, and if there is one among you who knows the culprit and does not report it to me at once, I shall hold that girl as responsible as the real culprit. You may go now, and think well over what I have said.”
The President retired and the students filed soberly and quietly from the gymnasium.
“How do you feel now, dear?” asked President Walker, leaning over Molly and taking her hand.
“Much better, thank you,” answered Molly, timidly.
“Could you hear what I was saying to the girls?” continued the President, looking at her closely.
“Yes,” faltered Molly.
“Think over it, then. And you had better stay in bed a few days until you feel better. Have you prescribed for her, doctor?”
The doctor nodded. He was a bluff, kindly Scotchman.
“A little anæmic and tired out. A good tonic and more sleep will put her to rights.”
Mary Stewart had telephoned for a carriage to take Molly home, and Judy, filled with passionate devotion when anything was the matter, hurried ahead to turn down the bed, lay out gown and wrapper and make a cup of bouillon out of hot water and a beef juice capsule; and finally assist her beloved friend – whom she occasionally chastened – to remove her clothes and get into bed.
“I may not have many chances to wait on you, Molly, darling,” she exclaimed, when Molly protested at so much devotion. “I may not have a chance after mid-years.”
If she had mentioned death itself, she could not have used a more tragic tone.
“Judy,” cried Molly, slipping her arms around her friend’s neck, “I’m not going to let you go at mid-years if I have to study for two.”
CHAPTER XIV
AN INSPIRATION
“This is like having a bedroom salon,” exclaimed Molly with a hospitable smile to some dozen guests who adorned the divans and easy chairs, the floor and window sills of her room.
Surely there was nothing Molly liked better than to entertain, and when she had callers, she always entertained them with refreshments of some kind. Often it had to be crackers and sweet chocolate, and she had even been reduced to tea. But usually her family kept her supplied with good things and her larder was generally well stocked.
She lay in bed, propped up with pillows, and scattered about the bed were text-books and papers.
“You’ve been studying again, you naughty child,” exclaimed Mary Stewart, shaking her finger. “Didn’t Dr. McLean tell you to go easy for the next week?”
“Go easy, indeed,” laughed Molly. “You might as well tell a trapeze actor to do the giant-swing and hold on tight at the same time. But it’s worth losing a few days to find out what loving friends I have. Your pink roses are the loveliest of all,” she added, squeezing her friend’s hand.
“Tell us exactly who sent you each bunch?” demanded Jessie, passing a box of ginger-snaps, while Judy performed miracles with a tea ball, a small kettle and a varied assortment of cups and saucers. “I have a right to ask you,” continued Jessica, “because you asked the same question of me last Tuesday when two boxes came.”
“No suitor sent me any of these, Mistress Jessica,” answered Molly, “because I haven’t any. Miss Stewart sent the pink ones, and the President of the senior class sent the red ones. Judy brought me the double violets and Nance the lilies of the valley, bless them both, and another senior the pot of pansies. The seniors have certainly been sweet and lovely.”
“There’s one you haven’t accounted for,” interrupted Jessie.
“The violets?” asked Molly, blushing slightly.
“Oh, ho!” cried Jessie in her high, musical voice, “trying to crawl, were you? You can’t deceive old Grandmamma Sharp-eyes. Honor bright, who sent the violets?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I suspected Frances Andrews, but when I thanked her for them, she looked horribly embarrassed and said she hadn’t sent them. I was afraid she would go down and get some after my break, but thank goodness, she had the good taste not to.”
“You mean to say they were anonymous?” demanded Jessie.
“I mean to say that thing, but I suppose some of the seniors who preferred to remain unknown sent them.”
“It’s just possible,” put in Mary, and the subject was dropped.
“Let’s talk about the only thing worth talking about just now,” broke in Judy. “The Flopping of Flora; or, Who Cut the Wires?”
“Why talk about it?” said Molly. “You could never reach any conclusion, and guessing doesn’t help.”
“Oh, just as a matter of interest,” replied Judy. “For instance, if we were detectives and put on the case, how would we go about finding the criminal?”
“I should look for a silly mischief-maker,” said Mary Stewart. “Some foolish girl who wanted to do a clever thing. Freshmen at boys’ colleges are often like that.”
“You don’t think it was a freshman, do you, Miss Stewart?” cried Mabel Hinton, turning her round spectacles on Mary like a large, serious owl.
“Oh, no, indeed. I was only joking. I haven’t the remotest notion who it is.”
“If I were a detective on the case,” said Mabel Hinton, “I should look for a junior who was jealous of the seniors. Some one who had a grudge, perhaps.”
“If I were a detective,” announced Margaret Wakefield, in her most judicial manner, “I should look for some one who had a grudge against Molly.”
“Of course; I never thought of that. It did happen just as Molly was about to give the encore, didn’t it?”
“It did,” answered Margaret.
The girls had all stopped chattering in duets and trios to listen.
“Has any one in the world the heart to have a grudge against you, you sweet child?” exclaimed Mary Stewart, placing her rather large, strong hand over Molly’s.
The young freshman looked uncomfortable.
“I hope not,” she said, smiling faintly. “I never meant to give offence to any one.”
Pretty soon the company dispersed and Molly was left alone with her two best friends.
“Judy,” she said, “will you please settle down to work this instant? You know you have to write your theme and get it in by to-morrow noon, and you haven’t touched it so far.”
Nance was already deep in her English. Molly turned her face to the wall and sighed.
“I can’t do it,” she whispered to herself; “I simply cannot do it.” But what she referred to only she herself knew.
In the meantime Judy chewed the end of her pencil and looked absently at her friend’s back. Presently she gave the pad on her lap an impatient toss in one direction and the pencil in another, and flung herself on the foot of Molly’s couch.
“Don’t scold me, Molly. I never compose, except under inspiration, and inspiration doesn’t seem to be on very good terms with me just now. She hasn’t visited me in an age.”
“Nonsense! You know perfectly well you can write that theme if you set your mind to it, Judy Kean. You are just too lazy. You haven’t even chosen a subject, I’ll wager anything.”
“No,” said Judy sadly.
“Why don’t you write a short story? You have plenty of material with all your travel – ”
“I know what I’ll write,” Judy interrupted her excitedly, “The Motives of Crime.”
“How absurd,” objected Molly. “Besides, don’t you think that’s a little personal just now, when the whole school is talking about the wire-cutter?”
“Not at all. We are all trying to run down the criminal, anyhow. I shall take the five great motives which lead to crime: anger, jealousy, hatred, envy and greed. It will make an interesting discourse. You’ll see if it doesn’t.”
“The idea of your writing on such a subject,” laughed Molly. “You’re not a criminal lawyer or a prosecuting attorney.”
“I admit it,” answered Judy, “and I suppose Lawyer Margaret Wakefield ought to be the one to handle the subject. But, nevertheless, I am fired with inspiration, and I intend to write it myself. I shall not see you again until the deed is done, if it takes all night. By the way, lend me some coffee, will you? I’m all out, and I always make some on the samovar for keeping-awake purposes when I’m going to work at night.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Judy,” sighed Molly, as the incorrigible girl sailed out of the room, a jar of coffee under one arm and her writing pad under the other.
At first she wrote intermittently, rumpling up her hair with both hands and chewing her pencil savagely; but gradually her thoughts took form and the pencil moved steadily along, almost like “spirit-writing” it seemed to her, until the essay was done. It was half-past three o’clock and rain and hail beat a dismal tattoo on her window pane. She had not even noticed the storm, having hung a bed quilt over her window and tacked a dressing gown across the transom to conceal the light of the student’s lamp from the watchful matron. Putting out her light and removing all signs of disobedience, she now cheerfully went to bed.
“Motives for crime,” she chuckled to herself. “I suppose I’m committing a small crime for disobeying the ten-o’clock rule, and my motive is to hand in a theme on time to-morrow.”
The next morning when Judy read over her night’s work, she enjoyed it very much. “It’s really quite interesting,” she said to herself. “I really don’t see how I ever did it.”
She delivered the essay at Miss Pomeroy’s office and felt vastly proud when she laid it on the table near the desk. Her own cleverness told her that she had done a good thing.
“I don’t believe Wordsworth ever enjoyed his own works more than I do mine,” she observed, as she strolled across the campus. “And because I’ve been bon enfant, I shall now take a rest and go forth in search of amusement.” She turned her face toward the village, where a kind of Oriental bazaar was being held by some Syrians. It would be fun, she thought, to look over their bangles and slippers and bead necklaces.
In the meantime, Miss Pomeroy was engaged in reading over Judy’s theme, which, having been handed in last, had come to her notice first. Such is the luck of the procrastinator.
She smiled when she saw the title, but the theme interested her greatly, and presently she tucked it into her long reticule, familiar to every Wellington girl, and hastened over to the President’s house.
“Emma,” she said (the two women were old college mates, and were Emma and Louise in private), “I think this might interest you. It’s a theme by one of my freshman girls. A strange subject for a girl of seventeen, but she’s quite a remarkable person, if she would only apply herself. Somehow, it seems, whether consciously or unconsciously, to bear on what has been occupying us all so much since last Friday.”
The President put on her glasses and began to read Judy’s theme. Every now and then she gave a low, amused chuckle.
“The child writes like Marie Corelli,” she exclaimed, laughing. “And yet it is clever and it does suggest – ” she paused and frowned. “I wonder if she could and doesn’t dare tell?” she added slowly.
“I wonder,” echoed Miss Pomeroy.
“Is she one of the Queen’s Cottage girls? They appear to be rather a remarkable lot this year.”
“Some of them are very bright,” said Miss Pomeroy.
“Louise,” said the President suddenly, “Frances Andrews is one of the girls at that house, is she not?”
“Yes,” nodded the other, with a queer look on her face.
“She’s clever,” said the President. “She’s deep, Emma. It is impossible to make any definite statement about her. One must go very slowly in these things. But after what happened last year, you know – ”
She paused. Even with her most intimate friend she disliked to discuss certain secrets of the institution openly.
“Yes,” said Miss Pomeroy, “she is either very deep or entirely innocent.”
“Some one is guilty,” sighed the President. “I do wish I knew who it was.”
Judy’s theme not only received especial mention by Miss Pomeroy, but it was read aloud to the entire class and was later published in the college paper, The Commune, to Judy’s everlasting joy and glory. She was congratulated about it on all sides and her heart was swollen with pride.
“I think I’ll take to writing in dead earnest,” she said to Molly, “because I have the happy faculty of writing on subjects I don’t know anything about, and no one knows the difference.”
“I wish you’d take to doing anything in dead earnest,” Molly replied, giving her friend a little impatient shake.
