By this time the usually self-contained Margaret was weeping bitterly in Jean’s arms, while she patted her reassuringly on the back. Gerry looked utterly exhausted, her hair was in a perfect tumble and a smut ornamented one of her cheeks. Frieda had turned toward the wall and Lucy and Mollie Johnson each had an arm about her.
“Well, girls, the game is up, isn’t it?” Jean spoke first, but Olive simply would not accept what her eyes had already told her.
“It isn’t true, Jean hasn’t been defeated, has she Gerry?” she entreated, squeezing the hand that held hers.
“Winifred Graham has just been elected president of the Junior class at Primrose Hall for the coming year!” Gerry announced stoically, and then there was a sudden sound of weeping from all parts of the sitting room.
“Why, goodness gracious, girls, don’t take things like this,” Jean insisted, being the only dry-eyed person on the scene. “Margaret dear, you are positively wetting my shirtwaist. Of course, I am sorry not to have been elected, but I’m not disappointed, as I haven’t thought lately that I could be. And please, this isn’t anybody’s funeral.” Then Jean kissed Margaret and walked over to shake hands with Gerry.
“You have both worked terribly hard for me and I never can cease to be grateful to you, but now that things are all over do let us show the girls that we can take defeat gracefully anyhow. Please everybody stop crying at once and come on with me to shake hands and offer my congratulations to Winifred Graham. Wouldn’t we look a sorry set if the next time she beheld us we should all appear to have been washed away in tears? The first person that looks cheerful in this room shall have a five-pound box of candy from me in the morning.”
Of course Jean’s suggestion that Winifred Graham should not learn the bitterness with which they accepted their defeat had an immediate effect, as she had guessed it would, upon Gerry and Margaret. Both girls stiffened up at once.
“Jean is perfectly right,” Margaret immediately agreed, “for it will never do in the world for us to make a split in our Junior class just because things have not gone as we wanted. Lots of the girls did vote for Jean and if we take our defeat bravely, why Winifred Graham and her set can’t crow over us half so much as if we show our chagrin.”
Gerry made such a funny face over the prospect of Winifred’s crowing that everybody was able to summon a faint laugh.
“Come on at once then, let us go and offer our congratulations to Winifred while we have our courage screwed to the sticking point. For my part I would rather do my duty and remember my manners without delay.”
And Jean opened the door, believing that all her friends would follow her. Once in the hall, however, she soon discovered that Olive was missing and going back called out softly: “Come on, Olive, and help us congratulate the winner. You wouldn’t have us show an ugly spirit now, would you?”
But Olive quietly shook her head. And as Jean was by no means sure how Winifred might receive any attention from Olive, she forbore to insist on her accompanying them. Should Winifred be disagreeable under the present circumstances Jean was not perfectly sure of being able to keep cool; and of all things she must not show temper at the present moment. Besides, her few minutes’ conversation with Olive, before the coming of the girls to announce her defeat, had evidently borne good fruit, for Olive did not appear particularly distressed at the result of the election. After a first moment of breaking down she had entirely regained her self-control. Truly Jean was delighted at seeing her so sensible.
One, two, three minutes passed after the other girls’ departure and an entire silence reigned in the room, Olive standing perfectly still. Had Jean been pleased because she had accepted her failure so sensibly? Sensibly! why Olive had not spoken simply because she could not trust herself to speak. She had not cried, because in the first moments of humiliation and regret, there are but few people who can at once summon tears. Of course, Olive was taking the affair too seriously and Jean’s view was the only reasonable one, but she had not been defeated herself, she had stood in the way of her friend’s victory and this last blow had come to her after months of coldness and neglect on the part of her classmates, which she had borne bravely and in silence. Now Olive was through with courage and with silence.
At last she seemed to have made up her mind to some action, for the relief of tears came. Going into her own room, Olive flung herself face downward on the bed, giving herself up to the luxury of this weakness. When she arose her face wore a look of unusual determination. Whatever her fight, it was ended now. First she walked over to her bureau and there unlocking a small iron safe took out a sandalwood box, a box which all who have followed her history, know to be the single possession she had rescued from the Indian woman before running away from her for the last time.
The girl carried her few treasures to her desk and before beginning the letter she plainly intended writing, she picked them up one by one, looking at them closely, the silver cross and chain worn on the evening of the dance, the small book only a few inches in size, and the watch with the picture of a woman’s face in it, the picture that Ruth and the ranch girls had always believed to look like Olive.
At the face she looked longest, but after a few moments this also was laid aside for the work she had in mind.
“DEAR RUTH” (her letter read):
“I write to tell you that I am not willing to remain longer as a student at Primrose Hall. I am sorry to trouble you with this news and if Jack is too ill to be worried, please do not mention this to her. I have tried very hard to bear my difficulties here and truly I would have gone on without complaining, for I can live without the friendship of other girls so long as you and the ranch girls care for me, but what I cannot bear is to be a drawback to Jean and Frieda and to stand in their way as I do here. I do not know what to ask you to do with me, for I cannot go back to live among the Indians until I know more than I do now and am able to teach them. Can I not go to some little school where the girls will not care so much about my past? But if you are not willing for me to do this, and I know how little I am worthy of all you and the ranch girls have done for me, you must not mind if I find some work to do, so that I can make my living. For no matter what happens, I can remain no longer at Primrose Hall.
“With all love, OLIVE.”
And when the letter was finished Olive, whose head was hot and aching, rested it for a moment on the desk upon her folded arms. When she lifted it, because of a noise nearby, Miss Katherine Winthrop was standing only a few feet away.
“I beg your pardon, I knocked at your door, Olive, but you must have failed to hear me and then I came inside, for I wanted to talk to you.”
The fact that Miss Katherine Winthrop in some remarkable fashion seemed always to know, almost before it happened, every event that transpired at Primrose Hall, with the causes that led to it, was well recognized by her pupils. So of course she now knew not only that Winifred Graham had been elected to the Junior Class presidency, but the particular reason why Jean had been defeated.
“I am sorry to have you see that I have been crying, Miss Winthrop,” Olive said, knowing that there was no use in trying to disguise the truth. “I know you think it very foolish and stupid of me.”
Miss Winthrop sat down in a big chair, beckoning the young girl to a stool near her feet. “Well, I suppose I do usually discourage tears,” she answered with a half smile; “at least, I know my girls think I am very unsympathetic about them. But I suppose now and then we women are just obliged to weep, being made that way. What I want to talk to you about is Jean’s defeat at the election this afternoon. You feel responsible for it, don’t you?”
Why be surprised at Miss Winthrop’s knowledge of her feelings, as apparently she knew everything? So Olive merely bowed her head.
“I want to ask you to tear up the letter which you have just written asking your friends to let you leave Primrose Hall because of what has happened.”
Miss Winthrop’s eyes had not apparently been turned for an instant toward the desk on which her letter lay, and even so she could not have seen inside a sealed envelope. Olive stared, almost gasped. “How could you know, Miss Winthrop?”
Miss Winthrop put her hand on Olive’s dark hair, so black that it seemed to have strange colors of its own in it. “I didn’t know about your letter, dear, I only guessed that after the experience you have passed through this afternoon, with what has gone before, you were almost sure to have written it. And I want to ask you to stay on at Primrose Hall.”
Olive shrank away, shaking her head quietly. “I have made up my mind,” she returned; “I have been thinking of it before and now I am quite determined.”
A moment’s silence followed and then in a different voice, as though she were not speaking directly to the girl before her, Miss Winthrop went on. “I believe there are but three types of people in this world, be they men or women, that I cannot endure,—a coward, a quitter and a snob. Unfortunately I have discovered that there are among the girls here in my school a good many snobs. I guessed it before you ranch girls came to me and now that I have seen what you have been made to suffer, I am very sure. But, Olive, I want you to help me teach my girls the weakness, the ugliness, the foolishness of snobbery. And can you help me, if though not a snob, you are one or both of the other two things I have mentioned?”
“A coward and a quitter?” Olive repeated slowly, wondering at the older woman’s choice of these two words and yet knowing that no others could express her meaning so forcibly.
“But I would not be going away on my own account, but for the sake of Jean and Frieda,” she defended.
“I think not. You may just now be under that impression, but if you think things over, does it not come back at last to you? You feel you have endured the slights and coldness of your classmates without flinching and it has hurt. Yes, but not like the hurt that comes to you with the feeling that your presence in the school is reflecting on Frieda and Jean. They do not wish you to go away, Olive, they will be deeply sorry if you do and whatever harm you may think you have done them has already been done and can’t be undone. No, dear, if you go away from Primrose Hall now it is because of your own wounded feelings, because your pride which you hide way down inside you has been touched at last!”
Miss Winthrop said nothing more, but turned and looked away from her listener.
For Olive was trying now to face the issue squarely and needed no further influence from the outside. By and by she put her small hand on Miss Winthrop’s firm, large one. “I won’t go,” she replied. “I believe Ihavebeen thinking all this time about myself without knowing it, You made me think of Jack when you spoke of a coward and a quitter, for they are the kind of words she would have been apt to use.”
Miss Winthrop laughed. “Oh, I have been a girl in my day too, Olive, and I haven’t forgotten all I learned. Indeed, I believe I learned those two words and what they stood for from a boy friend of mine long years ago. Now I want to talk to you about yourself.” The woman leaned over, and putting her two fingers under Olive’s sharply pointed chin, she tilted her head back so that she could see in sharp outline every feature of the girl’s face.
“Olive, your friend Miss Drew told me on bringing you here to Primrose Hall what she and your friends knew of your curious story, of their finding you with an old Indian woman with whom you had apparently lived a great many years. I believe that the woman claimed you as her daughter, but though no one believed her, your Western friends have never made any investigation about your past, fearing that this Indian woman might again appear to claim you.”
“Yes,” the girl gratefully agreed.
“Well, Olive, I have seen a great deal of the world and very many people in it and since the idea that you are an Indian worries you so much, I want to assure you I do not believe for a moment you have a trace of Indian blood in you. Except that you have black hair and your skin is a little darker than Anglo-Saxon peoples, there is nothing about you to carry a remote suggestion of the Indian race. Why, dear, your features are exquisitely thin and fine, your eyes are large. The idea is too absurd! I wonder if you could tell me anything about yourself and if you would like me to try to find out something of your history. Perhaps I might know better how to go about it than your Western friends.”
For answer Olive rose and going over to her desk, returned with the sandalwood box containing her three treasures. “This is all I have of my own,” she said, first putting the box into Miss Winthrop’s lap and then tearing up the letter just written to Ruth, before sitting down again on her stool near the older woman. Gratefully she touched her lips to Miss Winthrop’s hand, saying: “I would like very much to tell you all I can recall about myself, for lately queer ideas and impressions have come to me and I believe I can remember a time and people in my life, whom I must have known long before old Laska and the Indian days.”
Miss Winthrop nodded. “Tell me everything you can recall and keep back nothing for fear it is not the whole truth or that I will not understand. Whoever your father and mother may have been, you certainly have ancestors of whom you need not be ashamed.”
Then Olive, clasping her fingers together over her knee with her eyes on the floor, began to speak. And first she told the story of the Indian village and of Laska and how she could not recall a time when she had not spoken English as white people speak it, then of her years at the Government school for Indians taught by a white woman, who had always been her friend and assured her that she was not of the same race as the Indian children about her. But in proof of this she had nothing save the ornaments in the sandalwood box, which, in the interest of her story, Miss Winthrop had not yet examined.
Yes, and one thing more Olive could remember. Through all the years she had lived with the Indian woman there had come to old Laska in the mail each month a certain sum of money, large enough to keep her and her son in greater wealth and idleness than any of the other Indians in the village enjoyed. But from what place this money had come nor who had sent it Olive did not know, and so to her this fact did not seem of great value, although Miss Winthrop’s face had shown keen interest on hearing it.
“Was there not a postmark on the outside of the letter, Olive?” she demanded.
Clasping her fingers over her eyes in a way she had when puzzled, the girl waited a moment. “Why, yes, there was,” she said slowly. “How strange and stupid of me never to have thought of this before! The postmark was New York! But New York meant nothing to me in those days, Miss Winthrop, except just a name on a map at school. You cannot guess how strange and ignorant I was until the ranch girls found me and began teaching me a few things that were not to be found in school books. But no one could have sent money to Laska for me from New York. I must have been mistaken and this money did not come for me as I have always hoped. Laska must have received it for some other reason.” And then Olive, either from weariness or disappointment, stopped in her narrative, not as though she had told all that she knew, but because she could not quite make up her mind to go on.
A few moments of quiet waiting and then Miss Winthrop spoke again:
“The money was sent Laska for your care, Olive, I am sure of it. But this story of the Indian woman and your life there you have told to other persons, to the ranch girls and your chaperon, Miss Drew. What I most wish you to confide to me are the ideas and impressions of the years when you may not always have lived in the Indian village.”
Sadly the girl shook her head. “Miss Winthrop, the fancies that I have had lately have been too ridiculous for me to feel I can confide even to you, kind as you are to me. For how can it be possible that a human being can remember things at one time of their life and not have known them always? Why, since my arrival at Primrose Hall, do I seem to recall impressions that I did not have at the Rainbow Ranch?”
The older woman did not reply at once, as she was pondering over the question just asked her. “Olive,” she returned slowly, “I believe I can in a measure understand this problem that troubles you. Half the memories that we have in the world come through association. It is the sight of an object that recalls something in our past which brings that past back to us. Now when you were living at the Rainbow Ranch the memory of your life with Laska, the fear that she might take you away from your friends, was so close to you that you thought of little else. But now you are in an entirely different place, the fear of the woman has gone from you; it is but natural, I think, that new and different associations should bring to life new memories. What is there that you have been recalling in these past few months?”
And still the girl hesitated. “It is so absurd of me,” she murmured at last, “but one of my most foolish ideas is that I have seen the big, white house where Madame Van Mater lives at some time before. Of course, I know I have not seen it, for I have never been in this part of the world before. But the other day, standing at the window, I suddenly remembered a description of the Sleepy Hollow scenery, which I must have read and learned long years ago, though I never thought of it until that moment.”
Miss Winthrop’s face was now more puzzled than the speaker’s by reason of her deeper knowledge of life. “Go on,” she insisted quietly. “Can you recall anything more about the house and do you think that you ever saw Madame Van Mater before the other day?” The strange note in her questioner’s voice was lost upon the girl at her feet.
“No, I never saw Madame Van Mater in my life and I do not like her,” Olive returned quickly. “The furniture inside the house did not seem familiar, only the outside and the tower room and those ridiculous iron dogs guarding the front door. But I want to tell you something that seems to me important—of course, my impression about Madame Van Mater’s home is sheer madness. What I really can remember is this—” Olive stopped for a moment as though trying to be very careful of only telling the truth. “I remember that when I was a very little girl I must have traveled about from one place to another a great deal, for I do not think I ever had a home nor do I remember my mother. My father, lately I have believed I have a real impression of him,” and Olive’s eyes, turned toward her teacher, were big with mystery and hope. “He must have been very tall, or at least he seemed so to me then, and I went about with him everywhere. Finally we came to a place where we stayed a much longer time and there Laska first must have come to take care of us. I think now that my father must have died in that place, for I can not remember anything more of him and ever afterwards I lived on with Laska and the Indians. That isn’t very much to know and of nothing am I perfectly certain,” Olive ended with a sigh, seeing that Miss Winthrop had not spoken and supposing therefore that she considered her idle fancies of little account.
The older woman now sat with one elbow on the arm of her chair, her hand shading her eyes so that it was impossible to catch the expression of her face. Whatever idea had come to her with the hearing of her pupil’s strange story, she did not now mean to reveal.
“It is all very interesting, Olive,” she answered, quietly, “and surely very puzzling, so that I am not surprised at your putting but little faith in your own recollections, for I cannot see any possible connection between your travels in the West as a little child and your idea that you had seen some old house like ‘The Towers.’ But there is one person who can tell us something of your early history without doubt—and that person is this woman Laska! She kept you with her all those years for money and probably pretends that you are with her still, so that she continues to receive the same money each month, else she would have made another effort to get hold of you. Well, if the love of money has made the Indian woman keep your secret, perhaps an offer of more money will make her tell it. We will not speak of this, Olive dear, to any one in the world at present, but I will write to your old teacher at the Government school in the Indian village and perhaps through her aid we may reach this Laska.”
Olive made no answer, for to have expressed ordinary thanks in the face of so great interest and kindness would have been too inadequate. What could she say? Besides, Miss Winthrop was now looking at her few treasures in the sandalwood box.
“I have seen your cross and chain before,” she said, letting it slip through her fingers as once more she examined its curious workmanship, “but this little book—why, it is written in Spanish and is a Spanish prayer book.” Then for a second time Miss Winthrop put her hand under Olive’s chin, studying the unusual outline of her face. “I wonder if you are a Spanish girl, child, for that would explain why you are darker than most Americans and why you have so foreign an appearance?”
Olive, silently opening the watch, lifted the picture inside it to her friend’s gaze.
Miss Winthrop looking at the picture nodded, and then began turning the watch over in her hand; strangely enough, not so deeply interested in the photograph as in the watch itself. “This watch was sold here in New York, Olive, and I have seen one exactly like it years ago.” Her voice trembled a little and she seemed fatigued. “But don’t let us talk of this any more this evening, as it is nearly dinner time. I am going to ask you to trust me with these trinkets of yours, as I want to study them more closely.”
And without another word Miss Winthrop quietly arose and left the room.
Several weeks had passed since the interview between Olive and Miss Winthrop on the evening of Jean’s defeat, and now the Christmas holidays at Primrose Hall were well nigh over. For twelve days, save for Olive and its owner, the great house had been empty of all its other pupils and teachers; now in another thirty-six hours they would be returning to take up their work again.
The time had been long and lonely for Olive, of course, for Jean and gone into New York to visit Gerry Ferrows and Margaret Belknap and Frieda had departed south with the two Johnson sisters. The ranch girls had not wished to leave Olive alone and each one of them had offered to remain at school with her, but this sacrifice could hardly be accepted because Olive had made no friends who had wished her to be with them. Jessica Hunt would have liked to have had Olive visit her, but she had no home of her own and her sister’s apartment was crowded with babies; Margaret and Gerry, who had been kinder since their common disappointment, had invited her for week ends, but these Invitations Olive had quietly declined. All she would have cared for in a trip to New York was an opportunity to see Jack, and this privilege was still denied the ranch girls.
Of course, Ruth had been informed that Olive was to be left alone at Primrose Hall with only Miss Winthrop as her companion during the holidays, and one afternoon had hurried out to see what arrangements could be made for her pleasure. However, after a serious half hour’s talk with Miss Winthrop and a shorter consultation with Olive, she had gone away again content to leave the fourth ranch girl in wiser hands than her own.
And though the two weeks may have been long and lonely for Olive, yet they had never been dull, for each moment she was hoping and praying to hear some news from old Laska and each hour being drawn into closer intimacy with Miss Winthrop. For now that the discipline of school life had been relaxed, the principal of Primrose Hall showed herself to her favorite pupil in a light that would have surprised most of her students. She was no longer unsympathetic or stern, but treated Olive with an affection that was almost like a mother’s. Each evening in her private study before a beautiful open fire the woman and girl would sit close together under the shadow of “The Winged Victory,” reading aloud or talking of the great world of men and cities about which Miss Winthrop knew so much and Olive so little. But of the secret of the girl’s past her new friend did not encourage her to talk for the present.
“If you have told me all you know, Olive, then it is better for us not to go into this subject again until we hear from the Indian woman, and then should she fail us, I must try to think of some other plan to help you.”
And so one by one the holidays went by, as days will go under every human circumstance, and yet no word had come from Laska, though it was now the afternoon of New Year’s eve. Olive had been alone all morning and unusually depressed, for although she had not heard what she so eagerly waited to hear, she had learned that the surgeons had at last decided an operation must be performed on Jack. Ruth had written her that there was supposed to be some pressure from a broken bone on Jack’s spine that made it impossible for her to walk, and although the operation might not be absolutely successful, Jack herself had insisted that it should be tried.
The snow had been falling all morning and the neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow had never been more beautiful, not even in its Indian summer mists. If Olive could go for a walk she felt that she might brace up, for certainly she did not intend to let Frieda and Jean find her in the dumps on their return from their holidays. Miss Winthrop would probably go out with her, as she had been attending to school matters all morning, seeing that the house was made ready for the return of her students, and Olive felt the fresh air might also do her good. They had eaten lunch together, but Miss Winthrop had not been seen since.
While Olive dispatched one of the maids to look for her friend she herself went into the rooms where she had been accustomed to find her in the past two weeks, but neither in her study, nor in the library, nor in the drawing rooms, could she be found and by and by the maid came back to tell Olive that Miss Winthrop had gone out and would probably not return till tea time. She had left word that Olive must not be lonely and that she must entertain herself in any way she desired. Well, Olive knew of but one thing she wished to do: she would go for a walk and she would go alone. School was not in session, so school rules were no longer enforced, and by this time Olive had become thoroughly familiar with the nearby neighborhood.
Instead of a hundred-dollar check, which had been Jack’s Christmas present to both Jean and Frieda in order that they might have their Christmas visits to friend’s, she had given Olive a brown fur coat and cap. Olive had not worn them before, but now, with the snow falling and the thought of Jack in her mind, she put them both on. For a minute she glanced at herself in her mirror before leaving the house and though her vanity was less than most girls’, she could not help a slight thrill of pleasure on seeing her own reflection in the mirror. Somehow her new furs were uncommonly becoming, as they are to most people. The soft brown of the cap showed against the blue-black darkness of her hair and in her olive cheeks there was a bright color which grew brighter the longer and faster she trudged through the lightly falling snow.
Olive did not know the direction that Miss Winthrop had taken for her walk, but half guessed that she must have gone for a visit to Madame Van Mater, as she was in the habit of calling on the old lady every few days and knew Olive’s dislike to accompanying her. Indeed, she had not been inside “The Towers” nor seen its mistress since her first and only visit there. But now she set off in the direction of the house, hoping to find her friend returning toward home.
The walk through the woods, Olive’s first walk in the vicinity of Primrose Hall, was now a familiar one and less dark because the trees had long ago cast off their cloakings of leaves and were covered only with the few snowflakes that clung to them. No man or woman who has lived a great deal out of doors in their youth fails to draw new strength and cheerfulness from the air and sunshine, and Olive, who had left school thinking only that Jack’s operation might not be successful and of the pain her friend must suffer, now began to dwell on the beautiful possibility of her growing well and strong as she had been in the old days at the ranch and of their being reunited there some day not too far off. Then she had been weakly believing that she would never hear news of herself, that old Laska was probably dead or had disappeared into some other Indian encampment. Now with her blood running quickly in her veins from the cold and the snow, she determined if Laska failed her to go west the next summer and try to trace out her ancestry herself. Miss Winthrop, Ruth and the four ranch girls she knew stood ready to help her in anything she might undertake.
“It is a pretty good thing to have friends, even if one is bare of relations,” Olive thought, coming out of the woods to the opening where she could catch the first glimpse of the big white house. “I wish Miss Winthrop would come along out of there,” she said aloud after waiting a minute and finding that standing still made her shiver in spite of her furs. “I wonder why I can’t get up the courage to march up to that front door past those two fierce iron dogs, ring the bell and ask for her. I don’t have to go into the house, and as it is growing a little late, Miss Winthrop would probably prefer my not walking back alone. Besides, I want to walk with her.”
Like most people with only a few affections, Olive’s were very true and deep, and now that she had learned to care for Miss Winthrop, she cared for her with all her heart.
Slowly she approached the house, hesitating once or twice and looking up toward the tower room as though she were ashamed to recall her own foolishness on the afternoon of her introduction to it. There was no one about in the front of the house, not a servant nor a caller. For a moment Olive stopped, smiling, by one of the big iron dogs that seemed to guard the entrance to the old place. She brushed off a little snow from the head of one of them and, stooping, patted it. “Isn’t it silly of me to think I remember having seen you?” she murmured. And then Olive’s hand went up swiftly to her own eyes and she appeared to be brushing away something from them as she had brushed the snow from the statue of a dog. “I haven’t seen you before, I have only heard about you. And I haven’t seen this old house, but I have been told about it until I felt almost as if I had seen it,” she announced with greater conviction in her tones than she had ever used before, even to herself, in trying to recall the confused impressions of her childhood.
But now, instead of going up the front steps of the old house and ringing the bell, she hesitated. And while she waited the door was suddenly opened and into the white world outside Miss Winthrop stepped with an expression on her face no one had ever seen it wear before—one of surprise and wonder, anger and pleasure.
“Olive, is it you?” she said just as if she had expected to find the girl waiting outside for her on the doorstep. “Come in to Madame Van Mater. We have something to tell you.”
“I SUPPOSE I CANNOT DENY THE PROOFS YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME.”“I SUPPOSE I CANNOT DENY THE PROOFS YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME.”
“I SUPPOSE I CANNOT DENY THE PROOFS YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME.”
“I SUPPOSE I CANNOT DENY THE PROOFS YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME.”
In the same high carved chair that she had used on the afternoon of Olive’s first meeting with her, Madame Van Mater now sat apparently waiting for someone, for her hair and complexion were as artistically arranged and she was as carefully dressed as ever. At the stranger girl’s sudden entrance with Miss Winthrop she showed no marked surprise.
“Turn on the lights, please, Katherine, and bring the girl close to me,” she commanded in almost the same tones that she had used on a former occasion, and now for the second time Olive found herself facing the old lady and being critically surveyed by her. Again, with almost unconscious antagonism, their glances met.
“I suppose I cannot deny the proofs you have brought to me, Katherine Winthrop, that this girl is my granddaughter,” Madame Van Mater said coldly, “and I am obliged to confess that her appearance is not what I feared it might be, considering my son’s marriage. However, I do not see the least trace of resemblance in her to any member of my family.” And possibly to hide the trembling of her old hands, Madame Van Mater now picked up a number of papers with which the table in front of her was strewn. “You may sit down, child,” she remarked turning to Olive, “and Katherine Winthrop will explain the extraordinary circumstance of your connection with me. Because I tried to keep you as far away from me as possible, fate has therefore brought you here under my very nose. It has ever been the way of circumstances to thwart me.”
Not understanding in the least what Madame Van Mater was talking about and yet feeling a sudden curious weakness in her knees, Olive dropped into a chair which Miss Winthrop had at this instant placed near her.
“Sit perfectly still a moment, Olive dear,” Miss Winthrop interposed. “Strange and improbable as it may seem to you to hear that you are the granddaughter of Madame Van Mater, it will not take long for me to explain the necessary facts to you. Years ago your grandmother had an only child, a son of whom she was very proud, and as her husband had died some time before, all her great wealth was to be given to this son. She hoped that some day he would be a great lawyer, a statesman, and that he would make his old family name known all over the world. Well, by and by when this son had grown up, he cared nothing for law or any of the interests that his mother wished and one day announced to her and to me that he had chosen the stage as his profession. It is not worth while for me to try to explain to you what this decision meant to his mother and to me then,” Miss Winthrop continued; “but twenty years ago the stage did not hold the position in the world that it does to-day, and even now there are few mothers who would choose it as the profession for their only sons. Well, there were many arguments and threats, but as your father was determined on his own course, he went away from this part of the country to the far west and there after several years we learned that he had married. I knew that your mother had died soon after her marriage and some years later your father, but I was never told that they had left a child. Only your grandmother, of course, has always known of your existence, for since your father’s death she has been paying this Indian woman Laska to have charge of you. The fact that Laska has now sent me papers signed by your grandmother’s own hand makes it impossible for your relationship to be doubted.” Miss Winthrop now paused for a moment.
Olive was not looking at her, but at Madame Van Mater. “You did not wish to recognize me as your granddaughter because you did not believe my mother a lady?” she asked quietly.
“Precisely,” Madame Van Mater agreed.
“I see. It is all strangely clear to me now. I thought I remembered this house because my father had talked of it so much to me that I really believed I had seen it myself, his bedroom in the tower, the old dogs at the front door that he used to play with as a child and all the story of Sleepy Hollow. Well, I am sorry for your sake, Madame Van Mater, that Miss Winthrop has discovered my father’s name and people, but for my own I am very glad.” And Olive’s eyes turned toward the picture of the boy on the wall. “I suppose that when my father was ill he wrote and asked you to care for me and that is how you came to hear of Laska?” she questioned. And again the old woman bowed her head.
Very quietly Olive now got up from her chair. “Shall we be going back to school, Miss Winthrop?” she inquired. “I believe I would rather not stay here any longer at present.”
In ten minutes the two women, the young and the older one, were walking home through the winter dusk together, Olive keeping a tight clutch of Miss Winthrop’s arm, for now that she was well away from “The Towers” and the cold woman who was its mistress, she felt frightened and confused, as though the story she had just heard was a ridiculous dream.
“Yes, it is very, very strange,” Miss Winthrop had reiterated over and over again in the course of their walk, “but I cannot believe that the queer accidents of life are accidents at all. I believe that it has always been intended that you should some day know your own people and for that reason you were brought from your home in the West to this very neighborhood.”
After a while when Olive had found her voice she said, “I do not like my grandmother, Miss Winthrop, and I feel sure that we will never like one another. But I am very glad, because if she had cared for me she might have wished me to leave the ranch girls, and not for all the world can I give up them.”
There was another moment of silence and then Miss Winthrop spoke again: “I cared for your father once very deeply, Olive, and I have cared in the same way for no one else since, but I also felt as your grandmother did about the work he chose to do and so here in the old garden at Primrose Hall we said good-bye one afternoon for all time. I suppose my pride was greater than my love for him, but I have been sorry since. Now I care very much for my old friend’s daughter and hope she will let me be her friend.”
“She has been more than that already,” Olive returned fervently; “no one save Jack has ever been so kind.” And then both women talked only of trivial matters until after dinner time that evening.
In Miss Winthrop’s study from eight o’clock until nine Olive sat with her portfolio on her lap writing a long letter to Ruth Drew, disclosing to her the story of the afternoon and asking her to keep the discovery of the secret of her ancestry from Jacqueline Ralston, if she felt it better that Jack be not informed at present. And at her desk during the same hour Miss Winthrop was also engaged in writing Ruth. Carefully she set forth to her how through the efforts of Olive’s former teacher at the Government school and by the payment of a sum of money (which seemed very large to the Indian woman), Laska had been induced to surrender certain papers proving that the old mistress of “The Towers” at Tarry dale was undoubtedly Olive’s grandmother. Though the news had come as an entire surprise to Olive, her grandmother was not so wholly unprepared for the revelation. For it seemed that Mrs. Harmon had known of the existence of a young girl, the daughter of her first cousin, who was being taken care of by an Indian woman somewhere in the state of Wyoming. On meeting Olive at the Rainbow Ranch the summer before and learning of her extraordinary history she had wondered if the girl could have any connection with her own family. Although she had not really believed this possible, knowing that Olive had come as a student to Primrose Hall, she had confided the girl’s story to her aunt and Olive’s first visit to “The Towers” had been of great interest to both women. However, Madame Van Mater’s first survey of Olive had set her mind at rest. This girl, whom Donald believed to resemble his mother, was to her mind wholly unlike her; neither could she catch the faintest resemblance to her son, who had been supposed to be like his cousin, Mrs. Harmon. Then Olive’s quiet beauty and refined appearance had also satisfied Madame Van Mater that this girl could not be her granddaughter, for she believed that Olive’s mother had been of too humble an origin to have had so lovely a daughter. Besides, did not old Laska continue to receive the allowance sent her each month for her granddaughter’s care?
In a few lines at the close of Miss Winthrop’s letter of explanation to Ruth she added the only apology that could ever be made for Madame Van Mater’s behavior. The proud old woman had not understood how ignorant this Indian woman Laska was, nor had she dreamed that Olive was being brought up as an Indian. She had simply told the woman to continue as Olive’s servant until such time as the girl should reach the age of twenty-one, when she intended settling a certain sum of money upon her. She had not wished that this child of her son’s should suffer, only that she should not be troubled with her nor compelled to recognize her as her heiress and the bearer of her name.
By and by, however, both Olive and Miss Winthrop grew weary of their long letter writing and Olive, coming across the room, placed herself on a low stool near her companion, resting her chin on her hands in a fashion she had when interested. Both women talked of her father; they could recall his reading aloud to them hour after hour and Olive believed that she must have learned by rote Washington Irving’s description of Sleepy Hollow valley when she was only a tiny girl and that her first look out of her father’s bedroom window had suddenly brought the lines back to her recollection.
Till a little before midnight there were questions to be asked and answered between the two friends, but just as the old year was dying with the twelve strokes of the clock in the hall, Olive said good night. She was half way out the door when she turned back again and Miss Winthrop could see by the color in her cheeks that there was still another question she wished to ask.
“Do you think,” she asked finally, “that my mother could have been such a dreadful person? I do not think I ever saw a lovelier face than her picture in my father’s watch.”
Miss Winthrop looked closely at Olive, remembering how her strange and foreign beauty had always interested her. “No, my dear, your mother could most certainly not have been dreadful,” she answered. “I think I heard that she was a Spanish girl and these curios you have and your own appearance make me feel assured of the fact. It was because your grandmother was informed that your mother was a singer or an actress, that she felt so deep a prejudice against her. But the real truth is that she never forgave her son and wished never to hear his name mentioned as long as she lived.”
With a little shiver at the thought of such a nature as the old woman’s at “The Towers,” Olive went on up to her own room to bed.
In less than forty-eight hours after the close of the last chapter Primrose Hall was once more emptied of its silences and loneliness and gay with the returning of its students now that the holiday season was well past.
Most of the girls came back in groups of twos and threes, since trains at Tarrydale were numerous, but every now and then the school carryall would be loaded up with girls, hanging on to the steps, sitting in one another’s laps. And it happened that in one of these overloaded parties Jean and Frieda arrived at Primrose Hall together.
There was so much excitement, of course, in the arrival of such a number of students at one time and so much kissing and embracing among some of the girls tragically separated from their best chums for two weeks, that in the general hubbub Jean and Frieda noticed no special change in Olive. If Jean thought at first that she had looked a little tired she forgot about it in a few minutes. The girls had so many stories to tell of their own experiences, there was so much running back and forth from one room to the other, so much unpacking of trunks and bestowing of forgotten gifts, that the three ranch girls really saw very little of each other without outside friends being present until almost bedtime that night.
Then at nine o’clock, with only an hour to spare before their lights were turned out, they met before their sitting-room fire, wearing their kimonos, their hair down their backs, prepared at last for the confidential talk to which for different reasons they had all been looking forward for some time.
A sign with “No Admittance” printed on it hung outside their door and on the floor in convenient reach of the three girls sat two large boxes of candy, one presented to Frieda upon leaving Richmond, Va., and the other a farewell gift to Jean from Cecil Belknap in New York.
For the first moment so great was the satisfaction of the three girls at being reunited that nobody spoke, and then all at once they began talking in chorus.
“I think I ought to have the first chance to tell things, as I am the youngest and have been the farthest away,” Frieda protested.
Of course Jean and Olive were glad enough to give Frieda the first chance, but now as she began to speak, very naturally both of them turned their attention full upon her. It was strange, for of course Frieda had had a wonderful visit—what girl in a southern city fails to have—and yet in spite of all her accounts of dances and dinner parties and germans given for the school girls in Richmond during the holidays, both Jean and Olive noticed that she did not look as cheerful as usual, but that, if it were possible to believe such a thing, a fine line of worry appeared to pucker her brow.
“Frieda Ralston, you have been going too hard and seeing altogether too much of life for such a baby,” Jean insisted when Frieda had triumphantly cast a dozen or more pretty trinkets received as favors at germans at their feet.
But Frieda had only obstinately shaken her head, “I haven’t either, Jean,” she declared, “Mrs. Johnson says it does not hurt girls to have a good time in the holidays if they only study hard and behave themselves properly at school.”
“Well, perhaps you are just tired, Frieda,” Olive suggested.
And again the youngest Miss Ralston disagreed. “I am not tired. Why should you girls think there is anything the matter with me?” And she turned such round, innocent blue eyes on her audience that it became silenced. For five, ten minutes afterwards Frieda continued to hold the floor, and then in the midst of an account of a party given at the Johnson home she had suddenly stopped talking and thrown herself down on the floor, tucking a sofa pillow under her blonde head. “Maybe I am tired to-night on account of the trip home,” she confessed; “anyhow I don’t want to talk any more just now. I suppose, Olive, you haven’t anything special to say, just having stayed here at school with Miss Winthrop. So Jean, you tell us what you did in New York.”
Because Jean took up the conversational gauntlet so promptly, both the older girls failed to notice that before Frieda had even ceased talking her eyes had filled with tears.
The story Jean told of her visits to Gerry and Margaret in New York City was not exactly like Frieda’s, for though Jean was several years older than her cousin, in New York school girls are never allowed the same privileges that they enjoy in the South. But Jean had been to the theatre many times and to luncheons and twice Mrs. Belknap had taken Margaret and Jean and Gerry to the opera in her box. “Yes, Cecil Belknap had been very nice and she had liked him a little better, though she still thought him horribly vain,” Jean confessed, in answer to a leading question from Frieda. Then she, too, abruptly concluded her story. “There is just a weeny thing more I have got to tell everybody when the lights go out,” she concluded, “but I am not willing to tell now.”
Frieda reached out for comfort toward her box of candy, popping a large chocolate into her mouth.
“Now, Olive, you please tell us what you did while we went away like selfish pigs and left you for most two weeks. You must have had a dreadfully dull time!” Frieda suggested indulgently.
Olive laughed quietly. “Well, I didn’t have exactly a dull time; at least, not lately.”
Another chocolate passed from the box to the youngest girl’s lips.
“Oh, I suppose you mean that Miss Winthrop was kind to you and you took long walks together and things like that. I believe Miss Winthrop is really fond of you, Olive, even more than she is of Jean and me. I wonder why?”
At this both the girls laughed. “Oh, I suppose it is because she thinks Olive the most attractive of ‘The Three Graces.’ Baby, of course you and I are the other two,” Jean interrupted. “But I hope, Olive dear, that she was good to you.”
And at this simple remark of Jean’s, Olive’s face suddenly flushed scarlet. “Yes, Miss Winthrop has been good to me, better than any one else in the world except you ranch girls,” she replied.
Struck by something unusual in her friend’s face and expression, Jean’s own face suddenly sobered. “What do you mean, how can she have been so unusually kind to you?” she questioned. Then with a sudden flash of illumination. “Olive Ralston, you have something important on your mind that you want to tell us. I might have guessed that you have been keeping it a secret ever since we returned, letting us chat all this nonsense about our visits first. Don’t you dare to tell us that Miss Winthrop wants to adopt you as her daughter and that you have consented, or none of us will ever forgive you in this world!”
Still Olive hesitated. “Truly, I don’t know how to tell you yet,” she murmured, “though I have been planning a dozen different ways of starting in the last two days.”
“That is it, then, Jean has guessed right,” interrupted Frieda darkly. “I suppose it has happened just as a punishment to us for having left you alone at Primrose Hall during the Christmas holidays. Of course Miss Winthrop decided that we really do not care much for you and for all her coldness to the other girls she needn’t try to deceive me; she is just crazy about you, Olive!” Frieda now began really to shed tears. “But whether you like Jean and Ruth and me or not, I never could have believed that you would be so cruel as to turn your back on poor Jack when she is too ill to speak for herself,” she finished.
“Hush, Frieda,” Olive returned sternly. “That is not what I want to tell you. Of course Miss Winthrop has asked me to live with her if you should ever wish to stop taking care of me, but I don’t want to live with her if you ranch girls want me. I was only trying to explain——”
“What, for heaven’s sake, Olive?” Jean demanded, now nearly as white and shaken as her friend, seeing Olive’s great difficulty in making her confession.
“Jean, Frieda,” Olive began, speaking quietly now and in her accustomed voice and manner, “it is only that since you have been away Miss Winthrop has found out for me that I am not an Indian girl. I am not even a western girl, or at least my father was not a Westerner. You remember the day we went to see the Harmons at ‘The Towers’ and old Madame Van Mater stared at me so strangely and scolded Donald for thinking I was like his mother. She did not wish me to look like Mrs. Harmon because Mrs. Harmon was my father’s first cousin and——”
“Oh, Olive, what are you talking about? You sound quite crazy!” Frieda interposed.
And then Olive went on, even more clearly and rapidly telling the other girls the history of her father and of herself as far back as she had learned it. “Oh, I know you can’t believe what I have told you all at once, girls, for it does sound like a miracle or a fable and we never would have believed such a story had we read of it in a book. But Miss Winthrop says that every day in the real world just such wonderful things are happening as my coming here to Primrose Hall in the very neighborhood where my father used to live and finding my grandmother alive. In any newspaper you pick up you can run across just such an odd coincidence.” As Olive had been allowed to talk on without interruption, of course she believed by this time that both Jean and Frieda understood the news she had been trying to make plain to them. Frieda had risen to a sitting posture and was staring at her with frightened eyes, Jean was frowning deeply.
“You mean?” said Jean helplessly. “You don’t mean?” said Frieda at the same moment, and then, to relieve the tension of the situation the three girls giggled hysterically.
“Please begin right at the beginning and tell the whole story over again, Olive, and I will try to understand this time,” Jean had then commanded and patiently Olive went through the whole tale again.
Therefore it was small wonder that they forgot about the bedtime hour, until a knock at the door startled them. Jessica Hunt was preceptress of their floor for the evening and, as Miss Winthrop had already told her something of Olive’s history, she readily allowed the ranch girls a half hour’s extra talk. She could not help their lights going out at ten o’clock, however, but the ranch girls did not really care. A candle under an umbrella makes an excellent light and no one outside can be any the wiser!
Perhaps it was their two weeks of separation, perhaps it was Olive’s strange story, for rarely had the three girls felt more devoted to one another than they did to-night. They were sitting with their arms about one another when Olive jumped up. “Please lend me the candle a minute,” she begged unexpectedly, “I have been talking so much about myself that I forgot I had some letters for you. They may be important.”
In another moment, coming back from her desk, she dropped several envelopes in Jean’s and in Frieda’s hands. “I suppose if they are Christmas cards you can see them by this light,” she said carelessly, “but if they are letters you had best wait till morning.”
With a quick gesture Frieda tore open one of her envelopes and the paper enclosed was neither a card nor a letter. “Oh, my goodness gracious, what ever am I going to do?” she asked desperately, seeing three large black figures staring at her even in the dark. “I have but ten cents in all this world and I owe a bill of one hundred and fifty dollars!”
The reason for the line in Frieda’s brow was now disclosed. Instead of having saved any of her hundred-dollar Christmas present during her Christmas visit she had spent every cent of it. Now, without waiting for her to find out what she could do to get the money for her dreadful bill, the wretched, unkind shop people had sent it her on the very first day of the New Year.
“I don’t like to borrow money of you and Olive, Jean, when I haven’t paid back the last,” Frieda said, after a slight, uncomfortable moment of surprise on the part of the other ranch girls, “but what can I do? I suppose I have just got to write to Ruth and Jack, asking them to pay it for me.”
“How could you ever have made such a bill, Frieda?” Jean demanded, looking over her cousin’s shoulder in the flicker of the candle light.
“Clothes,” the answer came back in a weak, small voice.
Unexpectedly Jean laughed. “Oh, well, I need not preach, baby. What I wanted to tell you myself, when the lights went out, is that I became a backslider in New York and with Ruth’s consent told Gerry and Margaret that we were not absolutely paupers. I just had to spend some of the money I had saved, the things in New York were so fascinating. So I haven’t much left to lend you, Frieda, and I am awfully sorry, for Ruth says the mine is not yielding quite as much as it formerly did and we must all be economical, for such a dreadful lot of money is needed right away for Jack. I am pretty glad we did not tell the girls at Primrose Hall that we were rich, because it may turn out that we are not after all; gold mines are often uncertain.”
“Then I suppose I will have to go to prison for debt,” Frieda murmured. And both older girls were heartless enough to laugh. “Oh, no, it need not go as far as that, Frieda,” Olive assured her, “for I have hardly spent a cent since coming to Primrose Hall, so I have nearly enough to help you out, so you need not worry. Besides Miss Winthrop says that however much I may dislike my grandmother and she me, I cannot refuse to allow her to do for me now that she has discovered my whereabouts, for the money that is now hers shouldrightfullyhave come to my father even though she did not wish him to have it.”
“Remember the fortune the old gypsy told you, Olive,” Jean repeated, just as they were separating for the night. “‘And a fortune untold, Shall make for your feet a rich pathway of gold.’ I used to think she meant our mine.”
In the weeks that followed the discovery of Olive’s connection with the wealthy old patroness of Primrose Hall a student of psychology would have had an interesting opportunity in the study of the changed attitude of her schoolmates toward her. In the first place, from being an Indian girl of uncertain origin, Olive had suddenly become a heroine of romance and also there was the possibility that she might in time be an heiress, should her grandmother change in her feelings toward her and disinherit the Harmons. In any case, the law would certainly allow her some portion of the old estate. So you see that instead of being looked down upon as the most undesirable student at Primrose Hall, the fourth ranch girl had suddenly become exalted upon a pedestal, and perhaps it is just as deceptive in this world to look up to other people as it is to look down upon them, since a fair judgment can only be attained by standing face to face.
Truly Olive had no more desire for this second false position than she had for the first, but now her shyness, once regarded as ill breeding, was called haughtiness and her classmates stood a little in awe of her. The position was indeed a trying one for everybody concerned in it, for scarcely could the girls who had been unkind to Olive, now throw themselves about her neck begging her forgiveness, simply because so unexpected a turn had come in her fortunes. Of course, some of the unwise girls did do this, but not those with better judgment and taste, for they understood that Olive must be approached more slowly and with greater tact.
Among this second class of girls was Winifred Graham. Now no one could be more vexed than she was with herself for her persistent snubbing of Olive from the first day of her entrance into Primrose Hall, not because she liked Olive any better than she had at first, but because Winifred only cared for persons who might be useful to her, and now this ridiculous Olive with her romantic history, might be very useful indeed. The point at issue was the bestowal of the Shakespeare prize of several hundred dollars, given each year by Madame Van Mater to the Junior students in Jessica Hunt’s class. Mention has been made before that the three girls who stood closest in line for this prize were Winifred, Olive and Gerry. Now Winifred supposed that Olive would of course withdraw from the contest, since she could hardly take a prize presented by her own grandmother, but what Winifred feared was that Olive might throw the balance of her influence in Gerry’s favor. Very carefully she now undertook to show her change of feeling toward the ranch girls without offending them or making them suspicious by too great haste. A confidential talk with Jessica Hunt, who had always been their friend, was one of the methods Winifred first employed, but there was little assistance to be had from Jessica. For in the first place Jessica declared immediately that Olive was not to give up her effort to win the Shakespeare prize. Jessica had talked the matter over both with Olive and Miss Winthrop and they had decided in council that Olive need not give up her cherished ambition on account of her altered connection with Madame Van Mater. The prize had been freely offered without reservations to whatever girl in the Junior class should have the best yearly record, write the best Shakespeare essay at the close of the school year and give the best recitation from any one of the Shakespeare plays.
Not approving of Olive’s continuance in the contest, Winifred had then freely expressed her opinion to Jessica and afterwards to Olive, but though her manner was now entirely friendly, her protest had not the least effect upon Olive’s decision. Indeed, when things had settled down into routine again Olive continued to work harder than ever during the following winter and spring months. Of course, her position among her classmates had altered somewhat; Margaret and Gerry were both her friends as well as a number of other girls who had never been actively disagreeable, but with Winifred, Olive could not keep up more than a faint pretense of friendliness. At heart the two girls did not like one another and no amount of veneering can ever cover a real antagonism of temperament. They exchanged greetings in their class rooms and several times Winifred called on the ranch girls, but as her visits were never returned, she had to try other methods of softening the hostility her own unkindness had created, hoping that before the school year was over something would give her a chance to win their liking.
One month after the return of the Primrose Hall students from their Christmas holidays the Theta Sorority had solemnly and with distinguished rites received Olive and Jean into their mystic order. When finally the invitation, so much discussed, had been extended to the two ranch girls they had not known what to do in the matter. Of course, they had not wished to show continued ill feeling, so with Jessica’s advice, had joined the society, afterwards greatly enjoying the pretty club house and the frequent informal entertainments which the sorority gave during the rest of the school year.
So month after month rolled pleasantly and less eventfully on at Primrose Hall. Weekly visits at the command of her grandmother were still made by Olive to “The Towers.” At first Miss Winthrop had been in the habit of accompanying her and later Jean and Frieda, but there were times when pilgrimages had to be made alone. Why they had to be made at all Olive did not understand, for Madame Van Mater still showed but little liking for the granddaughter whom circumstances and Miss Winthrop had surely thrust upon her. If she liked any one of the three ranch girls it was Jean, for as usual Jean had not really felt the least fear of her and when they had made their first call it was with difficulty that she refrained from giving her hostess a piece of her mind in regard to her treatment of Olive. Perhaps Madame Van Mater’s age prevented her from receiving the scolding and perhaps her manner. For instead Jean told her the story of the ranch girls’ discovery of Olive and of how much she had previously suffered. And perhaps this story worked as well as the scolding, since the old mistress of “The Towers” abruptly invited Jean to tell her nothing more of this woman Laska, but of their life at the Rainbow Ranch. Although all three girls could be eloquent on the subject of the ranch, Jean was allowed the floor and three times in the course of the conversation Madame Van Mater actually had laughed aloud, a proceeding most unusual with her. Perhaps after all, in spite of her hardness and pride, the old woman had not been altogether happy over her treatment of her son’s child, even though she believed that her son had forfeited her love and consideration by his own actions. But whatever her reasons, thus far kept to herself, Olive was forced to continue the weekly calls.
One afternoon in April, when Miss Winthrop was busy with school matters and Jean and Frieda were engaged in a game of basketball, Olive found herself compelled to go alone to see her grandmother. And she was particularly vexed over this special visit, as she had wished to join the other girls in their game.
Always until this afternoon Olive had been received by Madame Van Mater with entire formality in the old drawing room, where they had had their two memorable meetings, but to-day she found the drawing room empty and while she waited a maid came to say that she was kindly to walk upstairs.
Anything was better than the stiffness and coldness of the old drawing room! Because the spring day was cool, Olive on going upstairs found her grandmother before an open fire wrapped about with silk shawls and comforts. Her hair was, of course, piled as high as usual and her costume as handsome, but it was plain to see that she was not so well.
“Kindly don’t come near me, as I am suffering from a severe cold,” she announced, as Olive approached to shake hands with her, never having at any time offered her any more intimate greeting.
Olive sat down, trying to look properly interested, but really feeling bored and uncomfortable at the thought of the next half hour. These calendar-like visits and the fact that Jack Ralston was still a prisoner in New York were the only worries she now seemed to have at Primrose Hall.
“I am sorry you are ill,” she began politely, only to have her remark waved aside.
“I am not ill,” Madame Van Mater returned, “only not well; but if I were there are other more important matters than my health which I wish to discuss with you this afternoon; therefore am I very glad to see you alone.”
There was no answer to be made to this statement. Olive had never attempted to be hypocritical with her grandmother by pretending to feel any affection for her. She now simply sat perfectly still and respectful, waiting to hear what was to be said next. But rarely had she looked more attractive than on this afternoon. In the first place, her walk had given her a bright color and she was wearing a particularly becoming frock.
Miss Winthrop had insisted that Olive always dress with great care on these visits to her grandmother, so this special frock, which Ruth lately had sent from New York, was now worn for the first time. It was of some soft material of silk and wool made with a short waist and softly clinging skirt of a bright golden brown with a girdle of brown velvet. Olive was very slender always and of only medium height, but her dark coloring was rich and unusual and now her expression was gayer and in some unconscious way she seemed more confident and less timid in her manner than formerly.
For several moments after her first long speech Madame Van Mater continued to study the appearance of the young girl sitting opposite her, and then, without the least warning of her intention, said abruptly: “Olive, I suppose you have not understood why I have insisted on your coming to see me so regularly and constantly since my discovery of your connection with me. You may, of course, have guessed, but if you have not I am prepared to tell you this afternoon. I have been studying you and I am now willing to say that I have in the past done you a great injustice. However much my son disappointed me by his choice of an occupation and by his marriage to your mother instead of Katherine Winthrop, I had no real right to cast off from me all responsibility in regard to his child. You are not altogether what I would have you to be, you have less social ease of manner and less conversational ability than I desire in my granddaughter; but I am prepared to overlook these faults in you now, Olive, or at least to give you time to conquer them. What I am coming to is this. I have recently decided to make reparation to you by having you come here to live with me when your year at Primrose Hall is passed, and if I find you as refined and as capable of being managed as I now suppose you to be, I am prepared to change my will, making you heir to the greater part of my estate and giving my grand-niece and nephew, Donald and Elizabeth Harmon, only the portion formerly intended for you. You need not thank me; I am doing this simply because I wish to do it. And also because it will please Katherine Winthrop, who is one of the few persons for whom I have always cared.”
Olive smiled, although the smile did not really cross her lips, but seemed somehow to drift across her entire face. “I had no intention of thanking you, grandmother,” she returned quietly, “only of refusing your offer. It may be very kind of you to desire me to live with you, but I thought you understood that nothing and no one in the world could ever persuade me to stop living with the ranch girls so long as they wish me to be with them. And even after we are grown up and they marry or anything else happens, why, even then, I have plans of my own.”
“Ranch girls, fiddlesticks,” exclaimed Madame Van Mater, far more inelegantly than one would have thought possible to her. “Of course, I wish to say nothing against these friends of yours; under the circumstances I am even prepared to be grateful to them for their kindness to you, but surely you cannot expect to live forever on their bounty, and what can they offer you in the way of social opportunity? I believe they have no parents to introduce them into society, only this chaperon named Ruth Drew and some man or other who manages their ranch.”
Olive flushed and then smiled. “I don’t believe I am very anxious or very well fitted for social opportunity,” she answered, “but I don’t think you need worry about the ranch girls, for when the time comes for them to take any part in society I am sure they will find opportunities enough. I wrote Jack only a few weeks ago, ten days after her operation was over, that as soon as she was well enough and whenever she wanted me to, I would go back with her to the ranch or we would travel or do whatever was best for her. Of course, we don’t any of us know yet whether Jack’s operation was successful, but Jean and Frieda and I have positively made up our minds that nothing will induce us to be separated from her after this year.”
“You are talking school girl nonsense,” Madame Van Mater returned coldly, “but naturally I do not care to argue this question with you. I shall have Katherine Winthrop put the matter before you. But you can rest assured, Olive, of these two things: In the first place, that if at any time you displease me I can leave my money to any one whom I may select, as my husband’s will gave his estate entirely into my hands; and in the second place, that if I desire to control your actions, you are not yet of age and I, and not the ranch girls, am your natural guardian.”
Very few times in her life had Olive ever known what it was to be violently angry, and yet no matter how gentle one’s nature anger must get the best of all of us now and then. Quickly the girl now got up from her chair and crossing the room faced Madame Van Mater with an expression as determined as her own. “Please understand that I do not want to defraud either Donald or Elizabeth Harmon of the money you have always promised them. They have been very kind since the discovery of my connection with them and of course you must be more fond of them than you can ever be of me. The truth of the matter is that though I don’t want to be rude or unfair, I do not like you, grandmother, nor do I feel that I can ever forgive the years of your neglect of me. Do you think it is quite fair for you now to speak of being my natural guardian when for so many years you desired nothing so much as that my name should never be mentioned to you? Please don’t let us talk of this ever, ever any more, but understand that I shall never leave the ranch girls.”
Plainly Madame Van Mater was amazed at Olive’s unexpected anger, for until this moment her granddaughter had always seemed to her rather too gentle and shy. Now the old woman simply shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “You may go,” she replied, “but of course, Olive, I shall decide later what course in regard to you I shall consider it advisable to take.”
So with scarlet cheeks and feeling more obstinate than ever before in her life, Olive, finding herself dismissed, rushed for consolation to Primrose Hall.