CHAPTER XXI.A SURPRISE FOR THE ORCHID CLUB
“Please, Miss Leslie, Miss Remson says will you come to her room and bring Miss Monroe with you? She’d like to see you right away.” Annie beamed her whole-hearted regard upon Leslie, to whom she was indebted for various pleasant gratuities.
“I’ll be with her in ten minutes. Miss Monroe has gone out to mail a letter. She’ll be back directly.” Leslie closed the door upon Annie’s retreating back with slow reflectiveness. “I wonder,” she murmured: “I wonder.”
“Miss Remson just sent Annie for us,” she said to Doris as the latter entered, her perfect face in charming relief against the dark bear’s fur collar of her coat. Her head was bare and her hair was massed gold in the lamplight.
“For us?” Doris lifted her dark brows. “Why?”
“Don’t know. I think I’m due to hear something unpleasant,” Leslie returned with frowning conviction. “I saw it coming this morning.”
“Saw what coming?” Doris looked concerned. “I mean, what did you see?”
Leslie explained as well as she could. “I can’tkick, you know. Here it is, January, and I’ve had smooth sailing. But I’m going to hit the rocks, I guess. The question is: Who supplied the rocks, and how big are they?” Leslie finished with mocking humor.
“If you really are correct in your suspicion, Leslie, you can blame Julia Peyton for the whole thing,” Doris spoke with anxious warmth. “She supplied the rocks, if there are any. But she is so untruthful, no one will take her word long for anything. She has probably woven a weird tale about the Rustic Romp. I’ll soon put a stop to it if I can find out what she has said.”
“It may not be that at all.” Leslie shook her head. “It’s more apt to be something I did when I was on the campus before. I did so many things I shouldn’t have done. She may have happened to unearth one of them. Well,” unconsciously Leslie squared her shoulders, “let’s go and see.”
“Come in, girls.” To their surprise Doris and Leslie found Miss Remson standing in the door of her upstairs sitting room, evidently on watch for them. She beckoned the girls into the room and closed the door quickly.
“There,” she declared, “I am as well pleased to have no one see you. I am so angry. Gr—r—r!” The little woman accompanied the growl with a violent shake of the head. “I know you’d prefer me to be direct, Leslie. Read this.” She handed Leslie a folded paper. “Then we’ll talk.”
Leslie unfolded the sheet, scanned it eagerly, then passed it on to Doris with a bitter little laugh. “Here’s the rock,” she said. “It’s a big one.”
“Outrageous!” Doris cried out indignantly, letting the fateful petition flutter to the floor.
Leslie picked it up and re-read it. “No one is to blame but myself,” she asserted doughtily. “I’ll not have you annoyed, Miss Remson, by anything I’m responsible for. I’ll leave the Hall tomorrow and go back to the Hamilton House. At least I’ve Prexy’s permission to finish my course here.”
“You’llnotleave the Hall, Leslie. Such a contemptible thing for a crowd of girls to do,” Miss Remson’s eyes showed an angry sparkle.
“Not half so bad as the things I——”
“Now, now, Leslie. This is the present, you know.” Miss Remson said soothingly. “That petition is only the beginning. Read this. But, first, glance at the signature.” She tendered Leslie a thicker fold of paper.
“Dulcie Vale!” Leslie’s voice rose in astonishment as she scanned the well-remembered signature: “Dulciana Maud Vale.” “Now I begin to understand what it’s all about. Please, pardon me, both of you, while I give Dulcie’s latest outbreak the once-over. ‘The Leslie Cairns’ List,’” she read out. “That’s exactly like Dulcie Vale, the little stupid.”
Miss Remson waited silently for Leslie to read the several sheets of typed paper. At last she glanced up with a laugh of satirical amusement.“Dulcie must have hired a stenographer to type this. She never typed it herself,” was her characteristically unexpected comment. “Here is a full account of the crimes of Cairns, Doris. Only Dulcie has tied the truth up in an awful snarl. Read about me in this monograph. If you are still my friend after you read it, you deserve a friendship medal.”
“That petition was handed to me last night after the meeting in the living room,” Miss Remson said. “I read it, and went to Miss Peyton before the ten-thirty bell rang. Her name heads the list, you see. I suspected her as being at the bottom of the trouble. I told her very sternly that I should expect to meet her committee of three next day at noon in my office. Today at noon Miss Ferguson came to my office with a great pretence of dignity. She brought with her this outrageous piece of spite work,” she indicated the list Doris was perusing, her beautiful face utterly impassive.
“She said she would prefer me to read the list she handed me, then she, Miss Peyton and Miss Waters would meet me in conference. At first I thought of handing the list and petition back to her with a lecture. Instead, I accepted the list and said that I would take up the matter with them in three days. As yet I had nothing to say. They went away. There was nothing else for them to do.” Miss Remson’s lips tightened.
“Once upon a time, Leslie,” she continued,“Ronny Lynne and I held a meeting in the living room. You remember why.”
“Yes, I remember.” Leslie flushed. “I wish I had been wise enough to profit by the experience of that evening.”
Miss Remson referred to the eventful evening during Leslie’s sophomore year at Hamilton when she had called a meeting in the living room of Wayland Hall in order to see justice done to Marjorie Dean. Leslie had then been the prime mover in an unworthy attempt to traduce Marjorie which had ended in deserved defeat for Leslie.
“Forgive me for mentioning it.” The little manager flashed Leslie a smile of stanch friendship. “History may repeat itself. I wish you would leave this matter entirely to me, Leslie. Think nothing further of it. Don’t consider leaving the Hall. This report of you compiled by Dulcie Vale is grossly untrue.”
“It is, of course, garbled. It’s an entirely different story of the hazing than the one she wrote in the letter to President Matthews. That was our finish at Hamilton. Dulcie ought to do well writing fiction.” In the midst of her dejection Leslie could not refrain from this humorous thrust at Dulcie.
“It’s too bad, Leslie.” Doris looked up from the papers in her hand, her tone one of affection. “You are doing your best to make up for what you once did that wasn’t honorable. We all make plenty of mistakes. Only it takes a brave person to goback and try to retrieve them. I’ll stand by you. So will the Travelers.” She came over to where Leslie sat, elbow on chair, chin in hand, her dark face immobile as an Indian’s. She put a reassuring arm across Leslie’s shoulders.
“You are a good pal, Goldie.” Leslie raised her head from her hand in an upward appreciative glance. “I’ve always said that, even when we squabbled.”
“I shall continue to be a good pal,” Doris assured, smiling. Secretly she intended to find a means, if she could, to make the signers of the petition feel ashamed and foolish.
When the two friends left Miss Remson’s sitting room a few moments later Doris went to her own room instead of stopping in Leslie’s. There she found Muriel industriously writing to her fiancé, Harry Lenox.
“Tell me about a meeting that once took place in the living room downstairs because of something Leslie said about Marjorie,” she began abruptly.
“Um-m. Wait a minute until I have wound up my weekly love letter to my intended,” giggled Muriel. “That’s what Annie calls the plumber she is going to marry. My intended!” Muriel repeated the phrase admiringly. “Isn’t that sweet?”
“How romantic you are!” Doris duplicated the giggle.
“Ain’t I jist?” Muriel came back buoyantly. “You ought to read my letters to Harry. They arealmost business-like enough to be signed ‘Yours very truly.’ Would you like me to read you this one?”
“Mercy, no. I should not care to hear it.” Doris said with amused stress.
“And I shouldn’t care to read it to you,” Muriel replied with great affability.
“Nor to tell me about that meeting, either,” reminded Doris slyly.
“Oh, yes, the meeting.” Muriel appeared to remember vaguely Doris’s question. “Why don’t you ask—. No, you wouldn’t care to do that.” Muriel stopped, surveying Doris quizzically.
“You mean ask either Leslie or Marjorie,” Doris said quickly. “Not if I can help it.”
“What has happened?” Muriel continued to eye Doris shrewdly.
“That’s what I should like to tell you.”
“Don’t be afraid to confide in me,” Muriel assured flippantly. Sobering her merry features, she added: “I’ll tell you about the meeting.” She snapped her fountain pen shut, leaned back in her chair and recounted a trifle sketchily the happenings of the eventful meeting in the living room in which Marjorie had figured so prominently.
“Poor Leslie.” Doris shook her head pityingly after Muriel had finished the little story. “What a lot of trouble she has made for herself in the past. I’m so glad everything is different with her now. I’m glad I found myself in time. We girls who’vebeen left without our mothers when we are children to grow up in the care of servants are bound to be selfish, even unprincipled. What ought I to do, Muriel? You are so clever at suggestion. I have an idea that the way to deal with these girls is to show them themselves from the standpoint of foolishness. Such attempts from a group of students at injuring another student are so terribly underbred, I think.”
A sudden mischievous smile overspread Muriel’s face. “I know a good way to do,” she said. She began outlining a plan which seemed to amuse her more and more as she continued. Before she had finished speaking both she and Doris were laughing.
“Let’s go and tell it to Miss Remson now,” Doris proposed eagerly. She held out her hand to Muriel.
“The present is ours.” Muriel blithely accepted the hand and away the two went. When they returned to their room almost an hour later they left Miss Remson smiling over the surprise she had in store for the Orchid Club.
For the next three days Julia and Mildred held long, concerned confabs regarding what Miss Remson intended to do about the petition. Her manner, when they had talked with her, had been impersonal. They argued it as a good sign, however, that she should have asked for three days in which to consider the matter.
“If she had been down on us for getting up thepetition she would probably have exploded like a firecracker,” Mildred declared to Julia on the afternoon of the second day as they came from Science Hall. “We may be doing her a favor by objecting to Miss Cairns. It may be that she disapproves of Miss Cairns, too, but has to walk softly because Prexy has shown such marked partiality in her case.”
“Miss Remson likes Miss Cairns,” differed Julia. “She makes quite a good deal of fuss over her. Of course, there is just a chance that she only pretends to like her on account of her father’s money.”
“The P. G.’s don’t act as though they knew a thing about the petition,” Mildred observed triumphantly. “They are too busy with plays and college welfare work to trouble themselves to watch us.”
“It’s a good thing. I’m glad Miss Dean isn’t at the Hall now. Miss Remson would surely tell her about our petition. She is Miss Remson’s pet. She used always to be stirring up things here and interfering in the girls’ private affairs. Doris Monroe is the only one I am uncertain of. She is really Miss Cairns’ friend. Let her hear a word of this business!” Julia paused impressively.
“Oh, she isn’t so formidable. She dearly loves to swank. She is altogether too top-lofty to suit me.” Mildred’s face clouded. Doris’s superior air was a great cross to her. “She poses with that white fur motor coat, and white car on purpose to keep herself before the campus.”
“She knows better than to be top-lofty with me,”Julia said in an independent tone. “I am the only girl on the campus who made her understand that I’d not fall down and worship her.”
“Hm-m,” was Mildred’s sole response. It reminded Julia forcibly of Clara. Clara had signed the petition, but had secretly regretted the act. She was hourly growing more disgusted with Julia and frequently wondered how she had ever even believed she liked her quarrelsome roommate. She was no longer jealous of Mildred. She detested the bold freshman more than ever, and derived a resentful pleasure from the thought that Julia and Mildred could not possibly stay friends for any length of time.
On the morning of the third day Miss Remson called Julia and Mildred into her office from the breakfast table to inform them that she would meet the Orchid Club as a body in the living room that evening at eight o’clock to discuss with them the matter of the petition.
At half past seven Annie ushered Marjorie, winsome and smiling into the kitchen by way of the back door. “Miss Remson’s in her sitting room watching for you, Miss Marjorie,” she gigglingly announced. Annie was under the impression that a huge joke was to be played upon someone. She had no idea as to what it might be, or who was the victim. She merely giggled in sympathy.
Up in Miss Remson’s room Marjorie found Leslie Cairns, Doris Monroe, Muriel Harding and themanager awaiting her arrival at the Hall. As she had spent the previous evening with them in the same sitting room she responded to her friends’ laughingly significant greetings in the same spirit.
“Now girls,” Miss Remson addressed the quartette in her bright fond fashion. “I leave the carrying out of the program to you. Keep in line behind me when the door is opened and I step into the living room. If objection to your presence at the meeting is made, let me talk to the objectors.”
“We’ll be silent as specters till it comes our turn to talk,” Muriel assured, her velvety brown eyes twinkling her enjoyment of the occasion.
At precisely eight o’clock Miss Remson’s doubled fist beat an imperative little tattoo on the living room door. A small blue-eyed freshman with a worried expression opened the door. She sent up an abashed “Oh!” and watched the line of five file into the room in amazed fascination. The manager led her companions straight up the aisle formed by the arrangement of rows of chairs, oblivious to the growing murmur of voices which attended her progress up the room. She paused near the two chairs set in an open space at the end of the room which were occupied by the president and vice-president of the Orchid Club. The four girls grouped themselves behind her. A dead stillness descended upon the room. It was an ominous stillness such as precedes a storm.