Guilty or innocent, Minerva Higgins displayed an inscrutable face next day, and the juniors, lacking all necessary evidence, were obliged to admit themselves outwitted; but they let it be known that jokes of that class were distinctly foreign to Wellington notions, and woe be to the author of them if her identity was ever disclosed.
In the meantime, Molly was busy with many things. As usual she was very hard up for clothes, and was concocting a scheme in her mind for saving up money enough to buy a new dress for the Junior Prom. in February. She bought a china pig in the village, large enough to hold a good deal of small change, and from time to time dropped silver through the slit in his back.
“He’s a safe bank,” she observed to her friends, “because the only way you can get money out of him is to smash him.”
The pig came to assume a real personality in the circle. For some unknown reason he had been christened “Martin Luther.” The girls used to shake him and guess the amount of money he contained. Sometimes they wrote jingles about him, and Judy invented a dialogue between Martin Luther and herself which was so amusing that its fame spread abroad and she was invited to give it many times at spreads and fudge parties.
The scheme that had been working in Molly’s mind for some weeks at last sprung into life as an idea, and seizing a pencil and paper one day she sketched out her notion of the plot of a short story. It was not what she herself really cared for, but what she considered might please the editor who was to buy it as a complete story, and the public who would read it. There were mystery and love, beauty and riches in Molly’s first attempt. Then she began to write. Butit was slow work. The ideas would not flow as they did for letters home and for class themes. She found great difficulty in expressing herself. Her conversations were stilted and the plot would not hang together.
“I never thought it would be so hard,” she said to herself when she had finished the tale and copied it out on legal cap paper. “And now for the boldest act of my life.”
With a triumphant flourish of the pen, she rolled up the manuscript and marched across the courtyard to the office of Professor Green.
“Come in,” he called, quite gruffly, in answer to her knock. But when she entered, he rose politely and offered her a seat. Sitting down again in his revolving desk chair, he looked at her very hard.
“I know you will think I have the most colossal nerve,” she began, “when you hear why I have called; but I really need advice and you’ve been so kind—so interested, always.”
“What is it this time?” he interrupted kindly. “More money troubles?”
“No, not exactly. Although, of course, I am always anxious to earn money. Who isn’t? But I have a writing bee in my head. I’ve had it ever since last winter, although I confined myself mostly to verse——”
Molly paused and blushed. She felt ashamed to discuss her poor rhymes with this learned man nearly a dozen years older than she was.
“There’s no money in poetry,” she went on, “and I thought I would switch off to prose. I have written a short story and—I hope you won’t be angry—I’ve brought it over for you to look at. I knew you looked over some of Judith’s stories.”
“Of course I shan’t be angry, child. I’m glad to help you, although I am not a fiction writer and therefore might hardly be thought competent to judge. Let’s see what you have.” He held out his hand for the manuscript. “On second thought,” he continued, “suppose you read it aloud to me. Girls’ handwriting is generally much alike—hard to make out.”
Molly, trembling with stage fright, her facecrimson, began to read. The professor, resting his chin on his interlocked fingers, turned his whimsical brown eyes full upon her and never shifted his gaze once during the entire reading, which lasted some twenty-five minutes. When she had finished, Molly dropped the papers in her lap and waited.
“Well, what do you think of it? Please don’t mince matters. Tell me the truth.”
The professor came back to life with a start. She knew at once that he had not heard a word.
“Oh, er—I beg your pardon,” he said. “Very good. Very good, indeed. Suppose you leave the manuscript with me. I’ll look it over again to-night.”
She rose to go. After all she had no right to complain, since she had asked this favor of a very busy man; but she did wish he had paid attention.
“Wait a moment, Miss Brown, there was something I wanted to say. What was it now?” He rubbed his head, and then thrust his hands into his pockets. “Oh, yes. This is what I wantedto say—have an apple?” A flat Japanese basket on the table was filled with apples. “Excuse my not passing the basket, but they roll over. Take several. Help yourself.”
He made Molly take three, one for Nance, one for Judy and one for herself. Then he saw her to the outer door, bowing silently, all the time like a man in a dream.
The next morning the manuscript was returned to Molly by the professor after the class in Literature. It was folded into a big envelope and contained a note. The note had no beginning and was signed “E. G.” This is what it said:
“Since you wish my true opinion of this story, I will tell you frankly that it is decidedly amateurish. The style is heavy and labored and the plot mawkishly sentimental and mock heroic.“Try to think up some simple story and write it out in simple language. Do not employ words that you are not in the habit of using. Be natural and express yourself as you would if you were writing a letter to your mother. Write about real people and real happenings; not aboutimpossibly beautiful and rich goddesses and superbly handsome, fearless gods. Such people do not really exist, you know, and you are supposed to be painting a word picture of life.“You have talent, but you must be willing to work very hard. Good writing does not come in a day any more than good piano playing or painting. I would add: be yourself—unaffected—sincere—and your style will be perfect.”
“Since you wish my true opinion of this story, I will tell you frankly that it is decidedly amateurish. The style is heavy and labored and the plot mawkishly sentimental and mock heroic.
“Try to think up some simple story and write it out in simple language. Do not employ words that you are not in the habit of using. Be natural and express yourself as you would if you were writing a letter to your mother. Write about real people and real happenings; not aboutimpossibly beautiful and rich goddesses and superbly handsome, fearless gods. Such people do not really exist, you know, and you are supposed to be painting a word picture of life.
“You have talent, but you must be willing to work very hard. Good writing does not come in a day any more than good piano playing or painting. I would add: be yourself—unaffected—sincere—and your style will be perfect.”
Molly wept a little over this frank expression of criticism, although there did seem to be an implied compliment in the last line. She reread the story and blushed for her commonplaceness. Surely there never had been written anything so inane and silly.
For a long time she sat gazing at the white peak of Fujiyama on the Japanese scroll.
“Simple and natural, indeed,” she exclaimed. “It’s much harder than the other way. Unaffected and sincere! That’s not easy, either.” She sighed and tore the story into little bits, casting it into the waste-paper basket. “That’s the best place for you,” she continued, apostrophizing her first attempt at fiction. “Nobody would ever havelaughed or cried over you. Nobody would even have noticed you. My trouble is that I try too hard. I am always straining my mind for words and ideas. Now, when I write letters, how do I do? I let go. I never worry. Can a story be written in that way?”
“How now, Mistress Molly,” called Judy, bursting into the room. “Why are you lingering here in the house when all the world’s afield? Get thee up and go hence with me unto the green woods where we are to have tea, probably for the last time before the winter’s call.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Molly.
“Why, the usual crowd, and a few others from Beta Phi House.”
“But you’ll never have enough teacups to go around, child,” objected Molly.
“Oh, yes, we shall. There are two other tea baskets coming from Beta Phi. There will be plenty and some over besides. Rosomond Chase and Millicent Porter were so taken with my basket last year that they each bought one. Ofcourse Millicent’s is much finer than mine or Rosomond’s.”
“I dare say. But I don’t think I want to go, Judy.”
The truth was Molly never felt in sympathy with those two Beta Phi girls, who represented an element in college she did not like. They dressed a great deal, for one thing, especially Millicent Porter, the girl who had sub-let Judith Blount’s apartment the year before.
“Now, Molly, I think you’re unkind,” burst out Judy. She never could endure even small disappointments. “They are awfully nice girls and they want to know you better. They said they did.”
“Well, why don’t they come and see me? That’s easy.”
Judy did not reply. She was pulling down all the clothes in the closet in a search for Molly’s tam and sweater. She was in one of her queer, excited moods. Could it be that Judy thought the sparkling coterie from Queen’s was being honored by these two rich young persons fromBeta Phi? Molly rejected the suspicion almost as soon as it entered her mind. No, it was simply that poor old Judy was obsessed with a desire to get into the “Shakespeareans,” and by courting the most influential members she thought she could make it.
Molly pulled her slender length from the depths of the Morris chair where she had been lolling.
“Very well,” she said resignedly. “I was meditating on my ambitions when you broke in on me. You are a very demoralizing young person, Judy.”
Judy laughed. She made a charming picture in her scarlet tam and sweater.
“Come along,” she cried, “and ambitions be hanged.” She seized her tea basket under one arm and a box of ginger snaps under the other.
“Why, Judy, I am really shocked at you,” exclaimed Molly. “I think I’ll have to give you another shaking up before long. You’re getting lax and lazy.”
“Nothing of the sort. I only want to enjoylife while the weather is good. It’s lots easier to think of ambitions on rainy days.”
The other girls were waiting on the campus: the Williamses, Margaret and Jessie, Nance and presently the two Beta Phi girls. Rosomond Chase was a plump, rather heavy blonde type, always dressed to perfection and bright enough when she felt inclined to exert her mind. Millicent Porter was quite the opposite in appearance; small, wiry, with a prominent, sharp-featured face; prominent nose, prominent teeth and rather bulging eyes. She talked a great deal in a highly pompous tone, and her voice always slurred over from one statement to another as if to ward off interruption. She seemed much amused at this little escapade in the woods, quite Bohemian and informal.
The Queen’s girls could hardly explain why she appeared so patronizing. It was her manner more than what she said; although Margaret insisted that it was because she monopolized the conversation.
“We didn’t go to listen to a monologue,” Margaretthundered later when they were discussing the tea party. “We came to hear ourselves talk.”
What surprised Molly was the attention that the young person of unlimited wealth bestowed upon her.
“Come and sit beside me, Miss Brown, and tell me about Kentucky,” she ordered.
“I am afraid I haven’t the gift of language,” replied Molly, without budging from her seat on a log. “Ask Margaret Wakefield. She’s the only conversationalist in the crowd.”
“I suppose Mahomet must go to the mountain, then,” observed Miss Porter, and she moved graciously over to the log, where she regaled Molly with a great deal of wordy talk.
“If she’s going to do all the conversing, it might as well be on something interesting,” thought Molly, and she started Millicent on the topic of silver work. This young woman, rich beyond calculation, had an unusual talent which had not been neglected. She worked in silver.
“Her natural medium,” Edith had observed when she heard of it.
She could beat out chains and necklaces, rings of antique patterns, beautiful platters with enameled centers with all the skill of a real silversmith.
Molly listened with polite interest to Millicent’s lengthy description of her art. There was often an unconscious flattery in the sympathetic attention Molly gave to other people’s talk. It had the effect of loosening tongues and brought forth confidences and heart secrets. She was a good listener and the repository of many a hidden thought.
“I am only going to college, you know, to please papa,” Millicent was saying. “He thinks I should be finished off like a piece of statuary or a new house. I would much rather do things with my hands. I can’t see how I am to be benefited by all these classics. In the sort of life I shall lead they won’t do me any good. Society people never quote Latin and Greek or make learned references to early Roman history and things of that sort. It isn’t considered good form. Modern novels are the only things peopleread nowadays, but papa is determined. Now, with silver work, it’s quite different. I love it. I love to make beautiful things. I have just finished a grape-vine chain. The workmanship is exquisite. My sitting room is my studio, you know, and I work there when I am not busy with stupid books. You seem interested. Do you know anything about silver work?”
Molly admitted her ignorance on the subject, but Millicent did not pause to listen. Her voice slurred over from the question to her next outburst.
“I like beautiful rich colors. I intend to design all the costumes for the next Shakespearean performance. If I had been born in a different sphere in life, I should have divided my time between silver work and costuming. I can draw, too, but it’s more designing than anything else.”
Then Millicent, encouraged by Molly’s sympathetic blue eyes, lowered her voice and plunged into confidences.
“The truth is,” she said, “we were not so—er—well-to-do two generations ago. My great-grandfatherwas an Italian silversmith. Isn’t it interesting? He was really an artist in his way, and made wonderful vessels for the church, crucifixes, and things like that. I tell mamma I believe her grandfather’s soul has entered into my body. But that isn’t all. Now, if I tell you this, will you promise never to breathe it? It’s really a family secret, but it accounts for my love of rich, beautiful things. I can sew, you know. I adore to embroider. If I had to, I could easily make all my own clothes——”
“But that’s nothing to be ashamed of,” broke in Molly.
“No, no. That isn’t the secret. The secret is where I got the taste for such things. You promise not to mention this?”
“I promise,” replied Molly gravely, repressing the smile that for an instant hovered on her lips.
“The silversmith grandfather had a brother who was a merchant. He had a shop in Florence where he sold all sorts of beautiful fabrics, velvets and brocades and lots of antique things.”
“No doubt it was an antique shop,” thought Molly.
“Mamma remembers it well, and the shop is still there to-day, but it’s in other hands.”
Molly felt much amusement at this explanation of heredity. It would not be difficult to add a few lines to Millicent’s small, thin face and place it on the shoulders of the old silversmith or of his brother, the dealer in antiques. How would they feel if they could hear this granddaughter conversing about society and the classics?
“But I have rattled on. Here I have told you two family secrets. But of course they will go no farther. You know more about me than any girl in Wellington. Won’t you come over to dinner with me Saturday evening and see my studio?”
“I am so sorry,” said Molly, “but I have an engagement,”—to try to write a sincere, natural, simple short story, she added, in her mind.
“Oh, dear, what a nuisance! Can you comeSunday? They have horrid early dinners Sunday, but no matter.”
Molly was obliged to accept, anxious as she was to keep out of the Beta Phi crowd.
“By the way, do you act?” asked Millicent abruptly.
“A little,” answered Molly, and that ended the tea party.
In the evening Judy was slightly cold to Molly. It was almost imperceptible, so subtle was the change, and Molly herself was hardly aware of it until her friend, stretched on the couch reading, suddenly closed her book with a snap and remarked:
“Considering you dislike the Beta Phi girls, you certainly managed to monopolize one of them.”
“Judy!” remonstrated Nance, shocked at this unaccountable exhibition of temperament.
Molly said nothing whatever, and presently she slipped off to bed.
“We’ve all got our faults,” she kept saying to herself, but she was bitterly hurt, nevertheless.
Judy did have her failings, the faults of an only child spoiled by indulgent parents. But they were only on the surface, impulsive flashes of irritability that never failed to be followed by deep, poignant regret when the tempest had passed.
The next morning Molly was wakened by the fragrance of violets, and, opening her eyes, she looked straight into the heart of a big bunch of those flowers lying on her chest.
“Goodness, I feel like a corpse,” she exclaimed.
Scrawled on a card pinned to the purple tissue ribbon around the stems of the violets was the following inscription:
“For dearest Molly from her devoted and loving Judy.”
“For dearest Molly from her devoted and loving Judy.”
“The poor child must have got up early this morning and gone down to the village for them,” she said to Nance. “And she does hate getting up early, too.”
Thus the coldness between the two girls came to a temporary end. Molly did not go to the Beta Phi House to dinner on Sunday. Millicent sent word that she was ill with a headache and would like to postpone the visit. Some of the Shakespeareans came to the apartment of the three girls to call one evening, but they were Judy’s friends, invited by her to drop in and have fudge, and Molly and Nance kept quiet and remained in the background. If Judy was working to get into the Shakespeareans, she should have the field to herself. The three visitors, seniors all of them, left early, but in some mysterious way the news of their call spread through the Quadrangle.
“Which of you is boning for the ‘Shakespeareans’?” Minerva Higgins demanded of Nance next day.
This irrepressible young person had alreadyacquired a smattering of college slang and college gossip. But still she had not learned the difference between a freshman and a junior.
Nance drew herself up haughtily.
“Miss Higgins,” she said, “there are some things at Wellington that are never discussed.”
“Excuse me,” said Minerva, making an elaborate bow.
But Nance did not even notice the bow. She had gone on her way like an injured dignitary.
The air was certainly full of rumors, however. Everybody, even the faculty, wondered upon whose shoulders the Shakespeareans’ highly coveted honors would fall. The new members of this distinguished body were always chosen after the junior play, preparations for which were now under way. There had been first a stormy meeting of the class. It was quite natural for President Wakefield to want all her particular friends to form the committee to choose a play and select the actors, and it was equally human of the Caroline Brinton forces to resent the old clique rule. But Margaret was amighty leader and would brook no interference. So the Queen’s girls were the ruling spirits of the entertainment. Judy was chairman of the committee, and was to have the principal part in the play, it being tacitly understood that she wanted to show the Shakespeareans what she could do.
It was like the scholarly group to give a wide berth to the modern comedies and melodramas usually selected by juniors for this performance, and to settle on “Twelfth Night.”
“We can never do it,” Caroline Brinton had announced in great vexation. “We haven’t time and we have no coach.”
But she had been calmly overruled and “Twelfth Night” it was to be, with daily rehearsals except on Saturdays, when there were two.
Molly was cast for the part of Maria, the maid. And she was glad, chiefly because the costume was easy. Judy was to play Viola, Edith Williams, Malvolio, and the other parts were variously distributed, Margaret being Sir Toby Belch.
When a college girl reaches her junior year her mind is well trained to concentrate and memorize. Two years before, perhaps only Edith Williams, whose memory was abnormal, would have trusted herself to memorize a Shakespearean part. But the girls were amazed now at their own powers. Miss Pryor, teacher of elocution, was present at many of the rehearsals, criticizing and suggesting, and hers was the only outside assistance the juniors had in their ambitious production.
It was probably through her that the accounts of their ability were noised abroad, and on the night of the play there was a great rush for seats. The president herself was there and many of the faculty. Professor Green had a front balcony seat looking straight down on the stage.
“Goodness, but I’m scared!” exclaimed Molly, peeping through the hole in the curtain at the large assembly.
“Heaven help us all,” groaned Nance, dressed as an attendant of the Duke.
“Don’t talk like that,” Judy admonished them.“We must make it go off all right. Molly, don’t you forget and be too solemn. Your part calls for much merriment, as the notes in the book said.”
“Don’t you be so dictatorial,” said Nance, under her breath, hoping instantly that Judy, in a high state of nerves and excitement, had not heard her.
When the seniors began thumping on the floor with their heels and the sophomores commenced clapping, Molly’s mind became a vacuum. Not even the first line of her part could she recall.
At last the curtain went up and the play began. She had no idea how Judy had conducted herself. A girl near her said:
“She certainly had an awful case of stage fright, but she’ll be all right in the next act.”
The words had no meaning to Molly, and she sat like a frozen image in the wings until Nance touched her on the shoulder and whispered:
“Hurry up.”
Then she stepped into the glare of the footlights. Her blood ceased entirely to circulate.Her hands became numb. Icy fingers seemed to clutch her throat, and when she opened her mouth to speak, no voice came. She remembered making a fervent, speechless prayer.
In an instant her blood began to flow normally. She felt a wave of crimson surge into her cheeks, and she heard her own voice speaking to Margaret, stuffed out with sofa cushions to resemble Sir Toby Belch.
When the scene was over there was a great clapping of hands. It sounded to Molly like a sudden rainstorm in summer. And, like a summer shower, it was refreshing to the young actors in the great comedy.
“Good work, Molly,” Margaret whispered. “I think we carried that off pretty well. If only Judy doesn’t get scared again the thing will go all right.”
“Did Judy have stage fright?” demanded Molly, in surprise.
“You mean to say you didn’t know? She almost ruined the scene.”
“Poor old Judy,” thought Molly, “and just when she wanted to do her best, too.”
Judy did improve considerably as the play progressed, but even a friendly audience has an unrelenting way of retaining first impressions; or perhaps it was that poor Judy, sensitive and high strung, imagined the audience was cold to her and so allowed her spirit to be quenched. There were no cries for “Viola” from the people in front, and there were many for Malvolio, Sir Toby and Maria.
Again and again these three actors came forth and bowed their acknowledgment. During the intermission several of the freshmen ushers carried down bouquets of flowers. Jessie received two from admirers who appeared to keep a running account at the florist’s in the village. A splendid basket of red roses and a bunch of violets were handed over the footlights for Molly, and when she was summoned from the wings to appear and receive these floral offerings she flushed crimson and remarked to the usher:
“There must be some mistake. They couldn’t be for me.”
A ripple of laughter went over the entire house. There was another burst of applause which again brought Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky into prominence through no fault of her own.
The card on the magnificent basket of roses made known to her the fact that Miss Millicent Porter had thus honored her. The card on the violets merely said: “From a crusty old critic who believes in your success.”
“I thought Millicent Porter had a big crush on you,” observed Margaret later in the green room. “There’s no doubt about it now after this noble tribute.”
“Nonsense,” said Molly. “It’s because she has so much money and likes to spend it.”
“On herself, yes, buying clothes and big lumps of silver to play with; but not on you, Molly, dear, unless she had been greatly taken with your charms.”
Molly had seen a few college crushes and consideredthem absurd, a kind of idol worship by a young girl for an older one; but because she had been so closely with her own small circle, she had escaped a crush so far.
“I’ll never believe it,” she said. “I’m much too humble a person to be admired by such a grand young lady. She sent the roses because she had to recall her invitation to dinner.”
“Only time will prove it, Miss Molly,” answered Margaret.
The play ended with a grand storm of applause and college yells. Not in their wildest dreams had the juniors hoped for such success.
“It’s difficult to tell who was the best, they were all so excellent,” the president was reported to have said.
Finally, to satisfy the persistent multitude, each actor marched slowly in front of the curtain, and each was received with more or less enthusiasm.
“Rah-rah-rah; rah-rah-rah; Wellington—Wellington—Margaret Wakefield,” they yelled; or“What’s the matter with Molly Brown? She’s all right. Molly—Molly—Molly Brown.”
In the intoxicating excitement of this fifteen minutes nobody realized that Judy had withdrawn from the group of actors and hidden herself away somewhere behind the scenery. There was some speculation in the audience as to why Viola had not filed across the stage with the others, but since Judy’s really devoted friends were all behind the scenes, there was no one to bring her out unless she chose to show herself with the others.
“Wasn’t it simply grand?” cried Jessie, the last to taste the sweets of popularity. The hall was still ringing with:
“Jessie—Jessie—she’s all right!” when she bowed herself behind the curtain and joined her classmates in the green room. Then there came cries of:
“Speech! Speech! Wakefield! Wakefield!”
Margaret, as composed as a May morning, stepped to the front of the platform and gave one of her most appropriate addresses to the joyof the audience and the intense amusement of the faculty.
“Think of that child, only eighteen, and making such a speech! They are certainly a remarkable group of girls. So much individuality among them,” said Miss Walker to Miss Pomeroy, at her side.
“And rare charm in some of the individuals,” added Miss Pomeroy. “The little Brown girl, for instance, who, by the way, is as tall as I am, but so thin that she seems small, has magnetism that will carry her through many a difficulty in life. They tell me she is almost adored by her friends.”
In the meantime the juniors, entirely unconscious of these compliments from high places, and perhaps it was quite as well they were, had just missed Judy from their midst.
“Didn’t she go before the curtain with the rest of us?” some one asked.
“But how strange, when she had the leading part.”
“I thought I heard them give her the yell.”
“Judy, Judy,” called Molly.
“Here I am,” answered a muffled voice from behind the scenery.
Presently Judy appeared, showing a face so white and tragic that her friends were shocked. With a tactful instinct most of the girls hurriedly gathered their things together and disappeared, leaving only the intimates in the green room.
“Why, Judy, dearest, why did you hide yourself, and you the leading lady of the company?” exclaimed Molly reproachfully, when all outsiders had departed.
“Don’t flatter me, Molly,” Judy answered, in a hard, strained voice.
“But you were,” said Molly, “and you acted beautifully.”
“I ruined the play,” said Judy angrily. “I ruined the entire business, and you made me do it.”
“Oh, Judy,” cried Molly, “you are talking wildly. What do you mean?”
“You did. You upset me completely when you said: ‘don’t be so dictatorial.’ I never heard youmake a speech like that before. And just as I was about to go on, too. It was cruel. It was unkind. If it had come from any one else but you——”
“Here—here,” broke in Margaret. “Really, Judy, you’re losing your temper.”
“She never said it, anyhow,” cried Nance. “I said it myself.”
“She did say it, Nance. You’re just trying to screen her,” replied Judy, who had worked herself into a nervous rage.
“Is this going to be a free fight?” asked Edith, who always enjoyed battles.
Molly was gathering up her things.
“Not as far as I am concerned,” she answered, in a trembling voice.
As she went out she looked sorrowfully back at Judy, but not another word did she say.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Judy Kean?” cried Nance. “You’re jealous and that’s the whole of it,” and she flung herself out of the door after Molly. The others quickly followed. Certainly sympathy was against Judy.
And what of poor Judy left all alone in the gymnasium?
Torn with anger, remorse, jealousy and disappointment, she threw herself face downward on the empty stage.
Presently the janitor came in and switched off the lights.
Molly and Nance had little to say to each other that night as they undressed for bed. Nance was still filled with hot indignation over Judy’s “falling-off” as she called it, and Molly had no heart for conversation. The door to Judy’s bedroom at the other end of the sitting room was closed and they were not surprised when she did not call “good night” as was her custom. Nobody looked in on them. It was late and the Quadrangle was soon perfectly still.
Under the sheets, her head buried in the pillows, Molly cried a long time, softly and quietly, like a steady downpour of rain. It seemed somehow that her beloved friend, Judy, had died, and that she was grieving for her. At last, worn out, she fell asleep. It was a very heavy sleep. She felt as if her arms were tied and she wassinking down into space and, as is always the case with dreams of falling, she waked with a nervous leap as if her body had hit the bed and rebounded. As she fell she had dreamed that she heard a voice calling. Never mind what it said; already the word, whatever it was, was a mere pin point in her memory. It had flashed through her mind like a shooting star across the sky. It was brilliantly illuminating for the instant. Molly was sure that it meant a great deal. It was an important word, and it had an urgent significance. For the tenth of a second her mind had been wide awake, and now it was quite dark again.
Molly leaped out of bed and began pulling on her clothes.
“Why am I dressing?” she thought. “It is because I must—hurry!”
“Hurry,” that was the word. It came back to her now, quietly and significantly.
Nance wakened and sat up in bed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I must hurry. Don’t stop me,” answered Molly.
Nance looked at her curiously.
“You’ve had a nightmare, Molly,” she said.
Molly glanced up vaguely as Nance switched on the light.
“Have I? I don’t know, but I must make haste, or I’ll be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Wake up, Molly. You’re asleep. Nothing is going to happen. You are here, in your own room.”
“Yes, yes. I understand, but I must hurry. Don’t stop me, Nance. You may come if you like, but don’t stop me.”
Nance had often heard that it was dangerous to awaken sleepwalkers too suddenly, and she believed now as she saw Molly slipping on her skirt and sweater that she was certainly asleep.
“Dearest Molly,” she insisted. “This is college. You are in your own room. It’s a quarter to twelve. Don’t go out of the room.”
Molly took no notice. Nance turned on another light and slipped across to Judy’s room. She must have help, and Judy was the nearest person.
“Judy’s not in her room,” she exclaimed suddenly, in a scared voice.
Molly gave a slight shudder.
“It’s Judy who needs me,” she said. “I was trying to remember. I couldn’t make it out at first. Put on your things, Nance. Don’t delay. Put out the light. We must hurry.”
Nance got into a few clothes as fast as she could. She slipped on tennis shoes and an ulster and presently the two girls were standing in the corridor.
“Where are we going, Molly?” asked Nance, now under the spell of the other’s conviction.
“This way,” answered Molly, looking indeed like a sleepwalker as she glided down the hall to the main steps.
If the girls had glanced back they would have noticed a figure creep softly after them.
“But the gate is locked,” objected Nance.
“I know, but we’ll find another way. Come on.”
Down the steps they hastened noiselessly. At the bottom, instead of going straight ahead, Molly turned to the left and led the way to a sitting room for visitors on the ground floor of the tower. The windows of the Tower Room, as it was known, looked out on the campus. They were small, deep-silled, and closed with iron-bound wooden shutters like the doors into the cloisters. Mounting a bench, Molly opened the inside glass casement of one of the windows and drew back the bolt which secured the shutter. Then she hoisted herself onto the sill, crawled through the window, and holding by both hands dropped to the ground. Nance, of a more practical temperament, wondered how they would ever get back into the Tower Room; but blind, unquestioning faith is an infinitely stronger staff to lean upon than uneasy speculation, as Nance was one day to find out.
“When the night watchman makes his rounds, will he see the window open in the tower?” shethought. “And if he does, what will he do? Give the alarm at once or try to find out our names and report us? If he reports us, what then? We may be expelled, or suspended or punished in some awful way.”
So Nance’s thoughts busily shaped out these tragic events as she followed Molly out of the window and dropped to the gravel walk below. The tower clock struck twelve while the two girls flitted across the campus. It was a strange adventure, Nance pondered, and one she would never have undertaken, or even considered, alone. But then her instincts were not like Molly’s. The inner voice which spoke to her sometimes was usually the sharp, reproving voice of a Puritan conscience. It spoke to her now, but she turned a deaf ear to it for once.
It told her how absurd she would appear to other people in this dangerous midnight escapade; what risks she was running. Judy, of course, had spent the night with one of the other girls, it said. It troubled her mind with whispers of doubts and fears; it ridiculed and abused her,but not once did it weaken her determination to follow Molly wherever she intended to go. And presently, when Molly quickened her footsteps into a run, Nance kept right at her elbow like a noonday shadow, foreshortened and broadened.
Molly turned in the direction of the lake. Nance’s heart gave a violent thump. She had believed all along that they were taking a short cut across to the gymnasium, instead of following the gravel walk.
“Molly, you don’t think——” she began breathlessly.
“Don’t talk now. Hurry,” was Molly’s brief reply.
Across a corner of the golf course they flew, and before Nance could take breath for another dash through a fringe of pine trees she caught sight of the waters, as black as ink. She clutched Molly’s arm.
“Did you hear anything?” she asked, in a frightened whisper.
They waited a moment, straining their ears in the darkness.
From the middle of the lake came the sound of a canoe paddle dipping into the water.
Molly breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s all right,” she said, and they hastened down to the platform of the boathouse.
In another moment they had launched a small rowboat and were out on the lake.
“Will Judy Kean never learn sense?” Nance thought impatiently. “She’s just like a prairie fire. It only takes a spark to set her going and then she burns up everything in sight.”
Nance had never been able to understand why Judy could not hold her passionate, excitable temperament more in control. She, herself, had learned self-denial at an early age. But that was because she had a selfish mother.
“How did you ever guess she would be here, Molly?” she asked, as the prow of the boat cut softly through the waters of the lake with a musical ripple.
Nance was rowing, and Molly, who had never learned to handle oars, was sitting facing her.
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I dreamedthat some one said ‘hurry,’ and the lake seemed to be the place to come to.”
Some two hundred feet beyond they now made out the silhouette of a canoe. Judy—of course it was Judy; already they recognized the outline of her slender figure—kneeling in the bottom of the boat, had stopped paddling. She held up her head like a startled animal when it scents danger. It occurred to Nance, watching her over her shoulder as they drew nearer, that there was really something wild and untamed in Judy’s nature. She remembered that, the first morning they had met her at Queen’s, Judy had laughingly announced that she had been born at sea on a stormy night. But it was no joking matter, Nance was thinking, and she fervently wished that Judy would learn to quell her troubled moods.
The next instant the two boats touched prows. The little canoe, the most delicate and sensitive craft that there is, quivered violently with the shock of the collision and sprang back. As it bounded forward again, Molly held out her hand.Instinctively Judy grasped it, and the two boats drew alongside each other.
“Crawl into our boat, Judy, dearest,” said Molly. “It will be easier to pull the canoe to shore if it’s empty.”
Judy prepared silently to obey. But a canoe is not a thing to be reckoned with at critical moments. Just as Judy raised her foot to step into the other boat, the treacherous little craft shot from under her, and over she toppled, headforemost into the waters. Fortunately, she was an excellent swimmer, and the star diver of the gymnasium pool. But the lake was not deep, and when she came up, sputtering and puffing, she found herself standing in water that was only shoulder high.
Nance often thought, in looking back on this painful episode, that nothing they could have said to Judy would have brought her so completely to her senses as this cold ducking. Certainly, if Judy had actually planned to jump into the lake, her wishes were most ludicrously carried out, and the struggle she now made to climbback into the boat showed that she was not anxious to stay any longer than she could help in the icy bath. It was a sight for laughter more than for tears, sensible Nance pondered with a slight feeling of contempt—that of Judy, struggling and kicking to draw herself into the boat. Indeed, she almost managed to upset them, too; but she did tumble in somehow, shivering and wet but extremely contrite.
“How did you know I was out here?” was the first question she put, when, having seized the rope on the prow of the canoe, they headed for shore.
“I didn’t know. I only guessed,” answered Molly.
“She was up and dressed before she even knew you were not in your room,” announced Nance.
“I was a fool,” exclaimed Judy, “and I know now what good friends you are to have come for me. I don’t know exactly what I intended to do out here,” she went on brokenly. “I felt ashamed to face any one, even mamma and papa. I might——” she broke off, shivering. Rivuletsof water were pouring from her wet clothing into the bottom of the boat. She still wore the costume she had worn in the last scene of the play.
“I’ll give you my ulster as soon as we land, Judy,” said Nance, rowing with long rapid strokes which sent the boat skimming over the water.
“I’m just a low-down worthless dog,” went on Judy, taking no notice of Nance’s interruption. “There’s no good trying to apologize, Molly. Words don’t mean anything. But when the chance comes—and the chance always does come if you want it—I’ll be able to show you how sorry I am for what I did, and how much I really love you.”
“You showed me what a real friend you were last winter, Judy,” broke in Molly, “when you gave up your room at Queen’s for my sake. I wasn’t angry about what happened at the gym. I was hurt of course because I’m a sensitive plant, but I knew it would be all right in the end because we are too close to each other now tolet a few hasty words come between us. But here we are at the boat landing.”
Having tied the two boats in the boat house, which was never kept locked, they hurried back to college. Nance insisted upon Judy’s putting on her ulster.
“You know I’m never cold,” she said.
“You girls will just kill me with kindness,” exclaimed Judy humbly.
But Nance did not even hear this abject speech. The question of how they were to get back into the Quadrangle was occupying her mind.
“We’re taking an awful risk,” she observed to Molly, in a low voice. “There is no other way but the window, I suppose.”
“I can’t think of any other way,” answered Molly, “unless we ring the bell over the gate and alarm the entire dormitory.”
“Suppose the night watchman has closed the window? What then?” demanded Nance.
“Why, we’ll just have to find some other way, then,” answered her optimistic friend.
But the window in the Tower Room was wide open, just as they had left it.
The doubting Nance still had another theory.
“Suppose the night watchman has left it open on purpose to catch us when we come back?” she suggested.
“I do wish you would stop hunting up troubles, Nance,” ejaculated Molly irritably. “I never found supposing did any good, anyhow.”
Nance, thus rebuked, said nothing more.
Molly, boosted by the other girls, pulled herself onto the window sill and climbed into the room. She looked about her cautiously. But Nance’s fears were groundless so far. The room was perfectly empty.
“Let down a chair,” whispered Judy.
There were no small chairs about, however, and she was obliged to choose a bench.
“How are we to get it back again?” she asked, after Nance had clambered in, and Judy, halfway through, paused to consider this question.
“Hurry, the watchman,” hissed Nance, on thelookout at the door. “He’s coming down the side corridor.”
The next instant Judy had leaped into the room, and the three girls were tearing along the hall and up the steps, Judy leaving a trail of water behind her. The watchman had seen them. They could hear the beat of his steps on the cement floor as he ran. The fugitives reached the upper corridor just as he arrived at the first landing on the stairs.
“Kick off your pumps, Judy, and pick up your skirts. He’ll trace us by the wet trail if you don’t.”
Another dash and they were in their sitting room, the door locked behind them. Oh, blessed relief!
Judy, in her stocking feet, was holding up her skirts with both hands. Nance had seized one of the slippers and she thought that Molly had the other.
But the final excitement of that eventful night was veiled in mystery.
As they had burst into their sitting room,some one ran swiftly across the room, through the passage into Judy’s room and into the corridor. They dared not follow and run the risk of meeting the night watchman, probably standing at that moment at the end of the corridor trying to trace that path of water, which, thanks be to Nance’s prudence, ended there and was lost on the green strip of carpet.
Below in the Tower Room the windows of the casement flapped back and forth in the wind which was rising steadily, and on the path below stood that telltale bench.
“Anyhow,” said Molly, “there’s only one person who knows we were out to-night and, whoever she is, she can’t tell without giving herself away.”
When the dressing bell rang next morning, three heavy-eyed and extremely weary young women felt obliged to pull themselves together and appear at the breakfast table. Judy had caught cold, and to disguise this condition had plastered pink powder on her nose, and now held her breath almost to suffocation to avoid coughing in public.
“Have you heard the news?” demanded Jessie, hurrying in late and sitting next to Nance.
“Why, no. What is it?” asked Nance calmly.
Molly felt the color rising in her cheeks, and Judy buried her snuffles in a long letter from her mother.
“There’s the greatest tale going around the Quadrangle! Everybody is talking about it,” continued Jessie. “One of the chambermaidsstarted it, I think, because she told it to me just now.”
“What is it?” asked Edith Williams impatiently.
“Some of the Quadrangle girls were out last night gallivanting. They climbed through the Tower Room window, left a bench outside and the window open. I suppose the watchman frightened them before they could hide all traces.”
“That sounds like a wild freak,” commented Katherine. “What do you suppose they were doing?”
“They might have been doing lots of things,” replied Jessie mysteriously. “The maid said the watchman thought they had been driving or motoring with some Exmoor boys.”
“Whew!” ejaculated a sophomore. “I’m sorry for them if they are found out. I happen to know Prexy’s feelings about escapades like that.”
“Why? Were you ever caught?”
“No, of course not. Don’t you see me sittinghere at the table? But my older sister was in the class with a girl who was caught. She was a campus girl.”
“What happened to her?” demanded Judy, forgetting her cold in the interest of the story.
“Bounced,” answered the sophomore briefly.
The Williamses and Jessie looked at Judy with mixed feelings of surprise; not because they noticed her cold or regarded it with any suspicion, but because, when they had parted company with her the night before she had been in the throes of a jealous rage and had spoken most insultingly to her best friend. Their glances shifted to Molly. The two girls were seated side by side. Judy was leaning affectionately against Molly’s shoulder while they looked together at a picture post card sent by Mary Stewart from France.
“All bets are off,” whispered Edith to her sister. “They have made it up. Molly is an angel of forgiveness. We were wrong for once.”
“And Margaret was correct.”
“A pound of Mexican kisses and two pounds of mixed chocolates,” said Margaret in Edith’sother ear. “I’ve won my bet, I hope you’ll take notice.”
“We were just taking notice,” answered Edith.
“But there’s some more of the story,” piped out Jessie again. “Don’t you want to hear the most exciting part?”
“Heavens, yes. Did they catch them?” asked several voices.
“No, no, but one of the girls was wet,” announced Jessie impressively. “She left a trail of water after her all the way up the steps.”
“I should think they could have traced her by that,” said Margaret.
“They could have if she had kept on trailing, but she must have remembered and held up her skirt, for it stopped right there.”
“Wise lady,” put in Katherine.
“She must have been canoeing and not driving, then,” observed Margaret. “Else why the significant fact of wet clothes?”
“Nice night to go canoeing in, cold and dark. Strange notion of pleasure,” remarked Edith.
“Well, there’s more still to come,” announcedJessie, when they had finished commenting on this remarkable escapade.
“For heaven’s sake, Jessie, you’re like a serial story of adventure—a thriller in every chapter. What now?”
“Well,” said Jessie, “you may well prepare for a thriller this time. The watchman found something.”
“What? What?” they cried, and Nance, Judy and Molly joined in the chorus with as much excitement as any of the others.
“He found a slipper.”
Judy made an enormous effort to keep her hand from trembling, as she raised her coffee cup to her dry, feverish lips. Molly, as usual under excitement, changed from white to red and red to white. Nance alone seemed perfectly calm.
“I don’t see how they can prove anything by that,” she observed. “There are probably fifty girls or even a hundred who wear the same size shoes here. Molly is the only girl I know of who wears a peculiar size, six and a half triple A.”
“Well, ‘one thing is certain and the rest is lies,’ as old Omar remarked,” said Margaret, rising from the table, “and that is, all juniors can prove an alibi last night. No junior would ever go gallivanting on the night of the junior play.”
“Hardly,” answered Nance, who had risen to the occasion with fine spirit and tact. Molly’s face resumed its normal color and Judy looked relieved.
“The thing they will have to do,” said Edith, “is to find the other slipper. And if the owner of that slipper takes my advice she’ll drop it down the deepest well in Wellington County.”
Molly and Nance and Judy hurried through breakfast and rushed back to their apartment. They locked all the doors carefully and gathered in Judy’s room.
“We have nearly fifteen minutes before chapel,” said Nance, speaking rapidly. “Judy, are your things dry? Get them quickly. They may search our rooms. Miss Walker is pretty determined once she’s roused, I hear.”
Judy gathered up the stiff, rough-dry garments that had been hanging on the heater all night, while Molly found tossed in a corner the mate to the fatal slipper. Judy held up Viola’s dress of old rose velvet.
“It’s ruined,” she exclaimed, “and that’s another complication. Suppose——”
“Don’t suppose,” interrupted Molly hastily, snatching the dress away from her. “Hurry, Nance, where shall we put them?”
For a temporary safe hiding place they chose the interior of the upright piano. Then they hastily made their beds, set their dressing tables to rights and dashed off to chapel just as the matron appeared on an ostensible tour of inspection.
It was possible that she was not being very vigilant with the juniors, however, that particular morning, knowing that they were one and all engaged in producing a very important play the night before. At any rate, she only glanced casually around, saw nothing incriminating and departed to the next room.
The president looked grave and worried at chapel, but, contrary to expectations, she had nothing to say after the prayer.
“It’s a bad sign,” observed a student. “When Prexy doesn’t say anything, she means business.”
Except for a few moments at lunch, the three girls did not meet in private consultation again until late in the afternoon. There was a busy sign on their study door. Molly smiled knowingly to herself, and gave the masonic tap.
“It’s a good idea,” she thought, “and will keep out inquisitive people until we decide what to do.”
She found Judy stretched on the sofa, feverish and coughing, while Nance was dosing her with a large dose of quinine and an additional dose of sweet spirits of niter.
“You’re going to kill me, Nance,” Judy was grumbling.
“For heaven’s sake, be quiet,” scolded Nance. “You haven’t any voice to waste. Molly, will you make her a hot lemonade? I think we hadbetter get her to bed and cover her up with all the comforts so as to bring on a perspiration.”
“Only one?” inquired Judy.
“Get up from there and go to bed,” ordered Nance. “The inspection is over and there won’t be any chance of another one to-day. You’ll have to miss supper to-night. We’ll say you have one of your sick headaches.”
Judy obediently got out of her things while Molly flew around making hot lemonade, and Nance hung a blanket over the heater and pulled down their three winter comforts off a shelf in the closet.
Judy meekly allowed herself to be smothered under a mountain of covers, while she drank the lemonade with childish enjoyment.
“You always make good ones, Molly, darling, because you put in enough sugar. I’ll probably be melted into a fountain of perspiration like Undine, only she went away in tears,” she complained presently.
“That’s the object of the treatment,” answered Nance sternly. “Whatever is left of you afterthe melting process is over is quite well of the cold.”
Molly could have laughed if she had not been thinking of something else very hard.
The two girls sat down on the divan and began a subdued and earnest conversation.
“What are we to do with these things, Molly? We can’t leave them in the piano because the moment some one sits down to play we’ll be discovered.”
“Murderers take up the planks in the floor and hide their bloodstained clothing underneath,” observed Molly. “But we can’t do that, of course.”
They took the bundle from its hiding place and looked over the garments.
“I have an idea,” announced Nance, who had many practical notions on the subject of clothes. “Suppose we take the dress to the cleaner’s in the village and have it steamed.”
“Why can’t we steam it ourselves over the tea kettle?” demanded Molly. “We can and we’ll do it right now and press it on the wrong side. If it hadn’t been so much admired, it wouldn’tmatter so very much, but some one’s sure to ask to see it or borrow it or something. How about the underclothes? Can’t we smooth them out with a hot iron before they go to the laundry?”
They set to work at once to heat water and irons, and presently were engaged in restoring the old rose velvet to a semblance of its former beauty.
“What are we going to do about that slipper?” demanded Molly, pausing in her labors.
“I’ve made up my mind to that,” replied Nance. “We must bury it.”