Marjorie Dean, College Junior

“I wish I had been there.” A wolfish light flashed into the wide, babyish blue eyes. “It must have been quite a party. Leslie,” Elizabeth decided that the time had come to speak for herself, “you said once that I couldn’t be a member of the Sans because there was no vacancy; that the club must be kept to the number of eighteen. There is a vacancy now. The club has only seventeen members. Why can’t I fill that vacancy and become the eighteenth member? I don’t mind because it will be only for the rest of this year. I shall count it an honor to have been a Sans even that long. I will certainly make a more loyal Sans than Dulcie was.”

Leslie drew a long breath. The wished-for moment had come. She was in fine fettle to deliver to the ambitious climber the “turn-down” she had earned.

“Why can’t you become a member of the Sans?” she asked, then drew back her head and indulged in soundless laughter. “Do you think it would make you very happy to join us?”

“You may better believe it,” Elizabeth made flippant reply. More seriously, she added: “You know how my heart has been set upon it from the very first.”

“Yes, I know. The fact of the matter is,” Leslie measured each word, “there is one great drawback to your joining.”

“If it is about money, I am sure my father has as much as the fathers of the other members,” cut in Elizabeth. “Our social position in New York is – ”

“All that has nothing to do with the drawback I mentioned.” Leslie waved away Elizabeth’s attempt at defending her position. They were not more than half way across the campus, but Leslie was tired of keeping up the suspense of the moment. Her head ached violently. She was so utterly disgusted with the other girl she could have cheerfully pummeled her.

“Then I don’t quite understand – ” began Elizabeth.

“You’re going to – at once. We dropped one girl from the Sans for being a liar and a gossip. What would be the use in filling her place with another liar and gossip. That’s the drawback. It applies strictly to you.”

Leslie stopped short in her walk and faced her companion, her heavy features a study in malignant contempt. Elizabeth’s eyes widened involuntarily this time. She could not believe the evidence of her own ears. Her moment of stupefaction gave Leslie the very opportunity to continue and finish her remarks before the other had time for angry defense.

“You would have been nothing socially on the campus if I hadn’t taken you up,” she said forcefully. “The other girls in my club, it is my club, didn’t like you. I had a good many quarrels with a number of them for trying to stand up for you, you worthless little schemer. If you had had one shred of principle or gratitude in your deceitful composition, you would have come to me at once with the first story against the club which Dulc told you. But you did not. You simply gossiped all she said to you to other students on the campus. Dulcie told you things about us that were ridiculous. You not only listened to them. You repeated them, making them worse.

“I had heard of your tactics before I sent for you to ask you about Dulc. I wanted to pump you and hear what you had to offer. I made it my business afterward to look up your record as a tale-bearer. Some little record! I know exactly to whom you have talked and what you have circulated concerning the Sans. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Such ingrates as you have no sense of shame. Now, I believe, you understand why the Sans don’t care to put you in Dulcie’s place. It would merely be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. Of the two, you are worse than Dulc. She is a liar, but stupid. You are a liar and tricky.”

“Don’t you dare call me a story-teller again,” burst forth Elizabeth in a fury.

“I didn’t say story-teller. I said liar. I never mince matters. I’ve said that to you before.” Leslie stood smiling at the culprit, the soul of mockery.

“You won’t be at Hamilton long enough to insult me ever again, Leslie Cairns,” threatened Elizabeth, a world of vindictiveness in every word. “I don’t believe you, when you say that Dulcie hasn’t told the truth. I guess Dulcie knows enough that is true to make it very uncomfortable for you. I’ll help her do it, too. No one can speak to me as you have and expect I won’t get even.”

“Try it,” challenged Leslie. “Unless you have Dulcie to back you you can’t prove one single thing against our record at Hamilton. Dulcie doesn’t care to make trouble for herself. You couldn’t get her to go with you to headquarters. She has either to be graduated from college with a fair rating or fall into a bushel of trouble with her father. Let me give you and Dulc both a last piece of advice. You’ll tell her all about this, of course, only you will be careful not to mention wanting her place in the club. Keep a brake on those mill-clapper tongues of yours for the rest of the year.”

Without giving Elizabeth time for another outburst of wrath, Leslie wheeled and started away at double quick. The other girl forgot dignity entirely and pursued the senior, talking shrilly as she ran. She might as well have pursued a fleeing shadow. Leslie set her jaw and increased her pace. The enraged sophomore kept up the chase for a matter of yards, then stopped. Placing her hands to her mouth, trumpet fashion, she hurled after Leslie one pithy threat: “You’ll be sorry.”

CHAPTER XXII – PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

The approach of the Christmas holidays called a halt in the internal war which raged between the Sans and their two betrayers. Having delivered her ultimatum to Elizabeth Walbert, Leslie promptly proceeded to forget her, so far as she could. As a result of the tactics she had pursued with both Dulcie and Elizabeth, she was more at ease than for a long time. She was confident she had bullied both to a point where they would hesitate before doing any more idle talking about the Sans’ misdemeanors. Every day which passed over her head without mishap to herself was one day nearer Commencement and freedom. She had no regret for her misdeeds. She was merely in fear lest they might be brought to light.

She had lost all interest in leadership at Hamilton. Her one idea now was to end her college course creditably and thus earn her father’s approval. Natalie Weyman was on better terms with her than were the other Sans. They found her moody indifference harder to combat than her bullying. She was interested in nothing the club did or wished to do. “Go as far as you like, but let me alone,” became her pet answer to her chums’ appeals for advice or an expression of opinion.

“The Sans have become so exclusive they’ve nearly effaced themselves from the college map,” Jerry remarked to Marjorie several days after their return from the Christmas vacation at home.

“They have had to settle down and do some studying, I presume,” was Marjorie’s opinion. “They used to be out evenings a good deal oftener than ever we were. I’ve wondered how they kept up at all.”

“Leila said that Miss Vale had been conditioned two or three times, and had to hire a tutor to help pull her through. I notice she doesn’t go around with any of the Sans. You remember I spoke of her having changed her seat at table the next day after that fuss up in Miss Cairns’ room.”

“I have seen her with Miss Walbert a good deal lately. It seems odd, Jeremiah, that, after all the trouble we had with those girls as freshies and sophs, we should be almost free of them this year. It has been such a beautiful, peaceful year, thus far. We’ve had the gayest, happiest kind of times. If only we could keep Leila, Vera, Kathie and Helen with us next year everything would be perfect.”

“Would it? Well, I rather guess so. Gives me the blues every time I stop to think about losing them. Just when we are traveling along so pleasantly, too. Here we are, victorious democrats. We know Miss Susanna, even if we don’t dare boast of it. We’ve been entertained at Hamilton Arms; something President Matthews can’t say. You and Robin are successful theatrical managers. Oh, I can tell you, everything is upward striving.

“’Tis as easy now for hearts to be true,

As for grass to be green and skies to be blue.

’Tis the natural way of living”

gayly quoted Marjorie, patting Jerry’s plump shoulder in her walk across the room to find a pencil she had mislaid.

“I wish we would hear from Miss Susanna,” she continued, a little wistful note in the utterance. “Perhaps she did not like our Christmas remembrance. She doesn’t like birthday observances. She loves flowers, though. So she couldn’t really regard those we sent her as a present. And that letter was delightful, I thought. We may have made a mistake in sending the wreath.”

The letter to which Marjorie referred was a composite. Each of the nine girls had contributed a paragraph. They had tucked it into a box of long-stemmed red roses which they had selected as a Yule-tide offering to the last of the Hamiltons. With it had gone a laurel wreath, to which was attached a large bunch of double, purple violets. They had asked that the wreath be hung in Brooke Hamilton’s study above the oblong which contained the founder’s sayings.

“I don’t believe Miss Susanna is on her ear at us,” observed Jerry inelegantly. “She will write when she feels like it. Maybe she thought it better to postpone writing until she was sure we were all back at college after Christmas. When did you last hear from her?”

“Not since she sent me the money for the tickets for the show. I bought those tickets for her myself. She didn’t understand, I guess. I re-mailed the money to her, explaining that they were from me. Since then I have heard not a word from her. I should have taken the tickets back to her instead of mailing them, but I was so busy just then. Besides, I don’t like to go to the Arms without a special invitation.”

Almost incident with Marjorie’s worry over Miss Susanna’s silence came a note from her new friend, appointing an evening for her to dine at Hamilton Arms.

“I am not asking your friends this time,” the old lady wrote, “as I prefer to devote my attention to you, dear child. I could not answer the Christmas letter for I had no medium of expression. I loved it, and the flowers. Best of all, was the honor you did Uncle Brooke. You may show this letter to your friends, extending to them a crabbed old person’s sincere thanks and good wishes.”

Marjorie kept her dinner appointment with Miss Susanna and spent a happy evening with the old lady. Miss Hamilton showed active interest in the subject of the recent revue. The obliging lieutenant had brought with her a programme which the old lady insisted in going over, number by number, inquiring about each performer. She expressed a wish to hear Constance Stevens sing and asked Marjorie to bring Constance to Hamilton Arms if she should again come to Hamilton College.

“I was truly sorry to have missed that show,” the last of the Hamiltons frankly confessed. “It would never do for me to set foot on that campus. I should be on bad terms with myself forever after; on as bad terms as I am with the college.”

“I’ll tell you what we might do, Miss Hamilton,” Marjorie ventured. “We could give a stunt party here, just for you, at some time when it pleased you to have us here. Perhaps Constance would come from New York for a day or two. She isn’t so far away. Then Ronny and Vera would dance and Leila sings the most charming ancient Celtic songs.”

Her lovely face had grown radiant as she described her chums’ talents, and again, for her sake, Miss Susanna had softened toward all girlhood. She had assented with only half-concealed eagerness to Marjorie’s plan.

Two days after Marjorie’s visit to her, she sent her a check for five hundred dollars, asking that it be placed with the money earned from the revue. The youthful managers had charged a dollar apiece for tickets with no reservations. To their intense joy and amusement, the gross receipts amounted to six hundred and seventy-two dollars. Their only expenses being for printing and lighting the gymnasium, they had, counting Miss Susanna’s gift, a little over one thousand dollars with which to start the beneficiary fund.

Anna Towne had done good work among the girls off the campus. Due to her efforts they had been brought to look upon the new avenue of escape from signal discomfort, now open to them, as an opportunity to be embraced. Marjorie had said conclusively that the funds at their disposal were to be given, not lent. She argued on the basis that money thus easily gained should be distributed where it would benefit most, then be forgotten. The girls who were struggling along to put themselves through college would have enough to do to earn their living afterward without stepping over the threshold of their chosen work saddled with an obligation.

It took tact, delicacy and more than one friendly argument to establish this theory among the sensitive, proud-spirited girls for whose benefit the project had been carried out. Gradually it gained ground and a new era of things began to spring up for those who had sacrificed so much for the sake of the higher education. The money so easily earned by Ronny’s nimble feet, Constance’s sweet singing and the talent of the other performers revolutionized matters in the row of cheerless houses, in one of which Anne Towne resided. Ability to pay a higher rate for board brought better food and heat. The drudgery of laundering was lifted, the work being intrusted to several capable laundresses in the vicinity. Those who had kept house abandoned cooking and took their meals at one or another of the boarding houses. According to Anna Towne, the restfulness of the changed way of living was unbelievable.

As successful theatrical managers, Robin and Marjorie had rosy visions of a dormitory built where several of the dingy boarding houses now stood. Perhaps by next year they would have the means to buy the properties. They purposed agitating the subject so strongly, during their senior year, that, at least, a few of the students among the other three classes would be willing to go on with the work.

Both had agreed that they had set themselves a hard row to hoe, yet neither would have relinquished the self-imposed task. In the first flush of their ambition they had asked Miss Humphrey to ascertain, if she could, whether the regulations of the college forbade the erection of more houses on the campus. She had returned the answer, that, owing to a peculiar will left by Mr. Brooke Hamilton, the consent to build on the campus would have to come from Miss Hamilton, who had been prejudiced against Hamilton College for many years.

This was a disturbing revelation to Marjorie. She was fairly certain that Miss Susanna would never give any such consent. She therefore promptly abandoned the idea and laid her plans for the outside territory.

As the winter winged away Marjorie made more than one visit to Hamilton Arms. Occasionally her chums accompanied her. The Nine Travelers gave their stunt party at the Arms on Saint Valentine’s eve. To please their lonely hostess they dressed in the costumes they intended wearing at the masquerade the next evening. Constance and Harriet managed to get away from the conservatory for three days, and a merry party ate a six o’clock dinner with Miss Susanna so as to have plenty of time for the stunts afterward.

Discreet to the letter, their visits to Hamilton Arms were known to no one outside their own group. Over and over again, when alone with the old lady, she would say to Marjorie: “I had no idea girls could be honorable. I had always considered boys far more honest and loyal.”

“You and Miss Susanna Hamilton are getting very chummy, aren’t you?” greeted Jerry, as Marjorie sauntered into their room one clear frosty evening in March, after having had tea at Hamilton Arms.

“I don’t know whether we are or not.” A tiny pucker decorated Marjorie’s forehead. “I always feel a little uncertain of how to take her. She is kindness itself, then, all of a sudden, she turns crotchety and says she hates everything and everybody. Then she generally adds, ‘Don’t take that to yourself, child.’”

“She thinks a lot of you or she wouldn’t be so friendly with you. She looks at you in the most affectionate way. I’ve noticed it every time we have been to the Arms with you.”