Speed Nell
Molly Brown's Sophomore Days
CHAPTER VII.
THE GLEE CLUB CONCERT
"If a cross-section could be made of this house, it would be rather amusing," exclaimed Judy Kean. "In every room there would be one girl buttoning up another girl."
It was the evening of the Glee Club concert, and nearly everybody not a freshman was going to dine somewhere before the concert. Judy and Nance were invited to the McLeans', and Molly was to have dinner with Mary Stewart and her guests in the Quadrangle apartment. During the process of dressing there was a great deal of "cross-talk" going on at Queen's that night. Through the open doors along the corridors voices could be heard calling:
"Has anyone a piece of narrow black velvet?"
"Margaret, don't you dare go without hooking me up!"
"Who thinks white shoes and stockings are too dressy?"
"Oh my, but you look scrumptious!"
Molly had saved her most prized dress for this occasion. It was the one she had purchased the Christmas before in New York and was made of old blue chiffon cloth over a "slimsy" satin lining, with two big old rose velvet poppies at the belt. It was cut out in the neck and the sleeves were short. Just before coming back to college, she had indulged in long ecru suède gloves, which she now drew on silently. She had received a letter from her mother that morning and her heart was heavy within her. The letter said:
"The investment I made last summer has not turned out well. The young son has assured me that the family intends to pay back all the creditors, and I am trying not to worry. In the meantime, my precious daughter, you must not think of giving up college, as you offered in your last letter; that is, until this term is over. Then we will see what can be done, although I am obliged to tell you that things do not look very hopeful about any present funds. Jane is to take a position in town as librarian and Minnie intends to start a dancing class. Your brothers and sisters and I will get on, but oh, I did so want you to have the advantages of a good education."
"But so much else goes with the education," Molly protested to herself. "So many pleasures and enjoyments. Somehow, it doesn't seem fair for me to be going to glee club concerts when all my family are working so hard."
"Have you any stamps, Judy?" she asked suddenly, as she hooked that young woman into her dress.
"As many as you want up to a dozen," answered Judy. "They are in the pill box on my desk."
Molly made her way through Judy's tumbled apartment and helped herself to the stamps.
"I'll return them to-morrow," she said absently, drawing a letter from her portfolio, slipping one stamp into the envelope, and sticking the other on the back.
"What in the world are you writing to a real estate firm for, Molly?" demanded Judy, looking over Molly's shoulder.
"Oh, just answering an ad."
"Are you so rich that you are going to buy a farm?"
"I wish I were."
Judy's curiosity never gave her any peace, and she now desired earnestly to know why Molly was corresponding with this strange firm.
"If it turns out well, I'll tell you," said Molly; "but if it doesn't, you'll never, never know."
"You mean thing, and I thought you loved me," ejaculated Judy.
"I do. That's why I won't tell you. If I did, I would have to inflict something worse on you, and you wouldn't be so thankful for that part."
"I shall burst if I don't know," cried Judy in despair.
"Burst into a million little pieces then, like the Snow Queen's looking glass and get into people's eyes and make them see queer Judy pictures and think queerer Judy thoughts."
"Meany, meany," called Judy after her friend, who had seized her gray eider-down cape and was fleeing down the hall.
"I love all this," thought Molly, as she hastened up the campus to the Quadrangle. "I adore the gay talk and the jokes – oh, heavens, but it will be hard to leave it! I understand now how Mary Stewart felt when she almost decided not to come back this year and then gave up and came after all."
Molly felt she would enjoy the sensation of being waited on at table that night instead of waiting herself, as she had done about this time last year at Judith Blount's dinner. She wondered if there would be a poor little trembly freshman to pass the food. But Mary was too kind-hearted for such things and had engaged two women in the village to cook and serve her dinner.
The other guests had not arrived when Molly let herself into the beautiful living room of the apartment, which was now turned into a dining room. The drop-leaf mahogany table had been drawn into the middle of the floor and was set with dazzling linen and silver for eight persons.
"I wonder who the other two are," thought Molly.
"Is that you, Molly, dear?" called Mary from the bedroom. "Well, come and hook my dress – " how many yards of hooks and eyes had Molly joined together that evening! "And here's something for you. Willie, when he found out you were taking him, sent you some violets."
"Heavens!" cried the young girl, after she had finished Mary and opened the large purple box. "Oh, Mary, this bunch is big enough for three people."
"It's only intended for one, and that's you," laughed the other.
The bouquet was indeed as large as a soup plate.
"I don't think I'd better wear them to dinner. I couldn't see over them. I should feel as if I were carrying a violet bed on my chest."
"And so you are. No doubt it took all the violets from one large double bed for that bunch. But you had better wear them at first, and take them off at the table. Brother Willie is one of the touchiest young persons imaginable. Father and I have always called him 'the sensitive plant.'"
Hastily Molly pinned on the enormous bunch, which covered the entire front of her dress.
"They are coming now," she said, hearing steps in the next room; and, peeping through the door, she beheld "Brother Willie" himself, resplendent in his evening clothes, in company with two other equally resplendent beings, all wearing white gardenias in their buttonholes.
"My goodness, they look like a wedding!" Molly whispered to her friend.
"Aren't they grand?" laughed Mary. "And here I am as plain as an old shoe, and never will be anything else."
"You are the finest thing I know," exclaimed Molly, tucking her arm through her friend's and allowing herself to be led rather timidly into the living room.
The third girl at this fine affair was another post-grad., and presently Molly rejoiced to see Miss Grace Green enter with her brother, Edwin. Miss Green looked very pretty and young. She kissed Molly and told her she was a dear, and smelt the violets and pinched her cheek, glancing slyly at the three young men, any one of whom might have burdened her with that huge bouquet. And did not such bouquets argue something more than ordinary friendship?
As for the Professor, he glanced at the bouquet almost before he looked at Molly. Then he shook her stiffly by the hand and, turning away, devoted himself to the post-grad.
"Do they know that my mother has lost all her money in their cousin's mine?" Molly thought. "Perhaps that's the reason why Professor Green is so cold tonight. He's embarrassed."
At dinner Molly sat between Will Stewart and an elegant, rich young man named Raymond Bellaire, who talked in rather a drawling voice about yachting parties and cross-country riding and motoring. "At college, you know, the fellahs are awfully set on those little two-seated electric affairs." What car did Molly prefer? Molly was obliged to admit that she preferred the Stewart car in New York, whatever that was, it being the only one she had ever ridden in.
The young man screwed a monocle into one eye and looked at her. He was half English and had half a right to a monocle, but Molly wished he wouldn't screw up his eye like that. It made her want to laugh. However, he didn't appear to notice at all that she was endeavoring to keep the irresistible laugh-curve from her lips. He only looked at her harder, and then remarked:
"I say, by Jove, you'd make a jolly fine Portia. Did you ever think of going on the stage?"
"Oh, no; I'm going to be a school teacher," answered Molly.
"School teacher?" he repeated aghast. "You? With that hair and – by Jove – those violets!" His eyes had lighted on the mammoth bunch. "Tell that to the marines."
Molly flushed.
"The violets haven't anything to do with my teaching school," she said a little indignantly. "And neither has my hair. Didn't you ever see a red-headed school teacher?"
"Not when her hair curled like that and had glints of gold in it."
"You're teasing me because I'm only a sophomore," she said, and turned her head away.
"No, by Jove, I'm not though," protested Raymond Bellaire, looking much pained. But Molly was talking to Willie Stewart at her right.
That young man was the most correct individual in the matter of clothes, deportment and small talk she had ever seen. She thought of his splendid father, who had started life as a bootblack.
"I wonder if he's pleased with his fashion-plate son?" she pondered.
She didn't care for him or his friends. They were not like the jolly boys over at Exmoor, who talked about basket-ball and football, and swopped confidences regarding Latin and Greek and that awful French Literature examination, and what this professor was like, and what the Prexy said or was supposed to have said, and so on. It was all college gossip, but Molly enjoyed it and contributed her share eagerly. She tried a little of it on Brother Willie.
"Are you taking up Higher Math. this year, Mr. Stewart?" she asked.
"Oh, after a fashion," he answered. "I don't expect to stay at college after this year. I'm going to Paris to finish off."
Molly wondered what "Higher Math. after a fashion" really meant.
At the concert later it was a relief to find herself next to Professor Green, who had scarcely looked in her direction all through dinner. At first she felt a little embarrassed, sitting next to the Professor, who was a great man at Wellington. She began silently to admire the packed audience of young girls in light dresses with a generous sprinkling of young men in evening clothes.
"You'll probably be a member of the club next year, Miss Brown," the Professor was saying. "I'm sure you must sing. I am surprised they have not found it out by this time. Next winter you must – "
"I doubt if I am here next winter," interrupted Molly, and then blushed furiously and bit her lip. She wished she had not made that speech.
"Is anything going to happen that will keep you from coming to college next winter?" he asked, glancing at the violets.
"How can I tell what will happen?" she answered childishly.
"Then, why not come back next year?"
"Because – because – " she began. "Oh, here they come!" she interrupted herself to say, as the members of the Glee Club filed slowly out and took their seats. "Aren't they sweet in their white dresses?"
"Very!" answered the Professor, "but what's this about next year? It was just idle talk, wasn't it?"
"No, no," whispered Molly, for the first number was about to begin; "hasn't Mr. Blount told you anything?"
"Why, no. That is, nothing about you. What on earth?"
"Didn't you have a list of the stockholders?"
"You mean of the Square Deal Mine?" he asked in entire amazement.
"Yes."
"I have a list, but what of it?"
"My mother's name is there – Mrs. Mildred Carmichael Brown."
"Great heavens!" groaned the Professor. Then he sunk far down in his seat and buried his face in his program.
Jenny Wren opened the concert with this song, which suited her high, bird-like voice to perfection:
"'Oh, I wish I were a tiny,
Browny bird from out the South,
Settled among the alderholts
And twittering by the stream;
I would put my tiny tail down
And put up my little mouth,
And sing my tiny life away
In one melodious dream.
"'I would sing about the blossoms,
And the sunshine and the sky,
And the tiny wife I mean to have,
In such a cosy nest;
And if someone came and shot me dead,
Why, then, I could but die,
With my tiny life and tiny song
Just ended at their best.'"
There was something so moving about the little song that Molly felt she could have melted into a fountain of tears like Undine; and she was obliged to smile and smile and pretend that her heart wasn't breaking because her tiny life and tiny song at Wellington – her beloved Wellington – were soon to come to an end. The Professor, too, was stirred. He glanced once at Molly's smiling lips and tearful eyes and blew his nose violently. Then again he contemplated the program with great interest.
During the intermission, Molly and Will Stewart went visiting down the aisle. Half the audience was moving about, talking to the other half, and the hall was filled with the buzz of laughter and conversation.
"I love it! I love it!" Molly kept repeating to herself. "There couldn't be anything more perfect than college. Oh, do I have to give it up?"
"Hey, Miss Molly!" called Andy McLean in a nearby seat, while Judy and Nance and George Theodore Green were waving violently to her, and Lawrence Upton was shaking hands with her and assuring her that the dinner had been a failure because she hadn't been there. Fortunately, Judith was well out of ear-shot behind the scenes. The Williams sisters, from across the aisle, were calling in one voice:
"Molly, come and meet our brother John."
Margaret Wakefield, causing a sensation with her distinguished father, and enduring the gaze of the entire audience with the calmness of one reared in the public eye, detained her for a moment to introduce her to the famous politician.
"A real belle," said Miss Grace Green to her brother, leaning across two seats to speak to him, "is one who is just as popular with women as with men, and Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky appears to be a general favorite."
The Professor looked at his sister absently. Apparently, he hadn't heard a word she said.
He was saying to himself:
"I think I'll let the tenor sing that little lyric that begins: 'Eyes like the skies in summer.'"
After a while the delightful affair was over, and Molly, feeling immensely happy in spite of her anxious heart, had been escorted to Queen's. Professor Edwin Green, hastening into his room, flung his hat in one direction and his coat in another, and sat down at his desk. Without an instant's hesitation, he seized a pencil and the first scrap of paper he found and began to write:
"Dear Richard:
"I know that your cares are many, but get to work on the score of the opera. I find that by working at night for a week I shall be able to finish the last act and make all the changes you suggested. We must launch the thing now. I have overcome all scruples, as you called them, and I want nothing more than to get the opera into some manager's hands. If you think that Blum & Starks will take it up, you had better see them at once. My name may be used and everything that goes with it in the way of previous unimportant literary efforts. It's unusual, of course, for a Professor of English Literature to write a comic opera, but the very unusualness may give it some publicity and help the thing along. I have made one change without conferring; given the tenor-lover the baritone-villain's song: 'Eyes like the skies in summer.' Write something very pretty for that, will you, old man? The money we may make on this will help some in the present critical family situation. I understand that there have been a good many failures in light opera this winter, and the managers are looking for good things. It may be that we shall strike at the psychological moment.
"Yours, E. G."
The august Professor then wrote two other letters; one to a firm of bankers and one to his publishers. At last, getting into an old dressing gown and some very rusty slippers, lighting a long, black cigar and drawing his student's lamp nearer, he took an immense roll of manuscript from a drawer and fell to work. It was three o'clock before he turned in for three hours of troubled sleep.
CHAPTER VIII.
A JAPANESE SPREAD
One morning every girl at Queen's discovered by her plate at the breakfast table a strange rice paper document some twelve inches in length and very narrow as to width, rolled compactly on a small stick.
"What's this?" demanded Margaret Wakefield, unrolling her scroll and regarding it with the legal eye of an attorney perusing documentary evidence.
Across the top of the scroll swung a gay little row of Japanese lanterns done in delicate water colors, and in characters strangely Japanese was inscribed the following invitation:
"Greetings from
Otoyo Sen:
Your honorable
presence is requested on
Saturday evening at the insignificant fête in the unworthily apartment of
Otoyo Sen.
Otoyo muchly flattered by joyful acceptance."
Fortunately, the little Japanese girl, overcome by shyness after this rash venture, had not appeared at breakfast and was spared the mirthful expressions on the faces of the girls around the table.
"Well, of all the funny children," laughed Molly. "Nance, let's offer her our room. She can't get the crowd into her little place."
"Of course," said Nance, agreeable to anything her roommate might suggest.
Not a single girl declined the quaint invitation and formal acceptances were sent that very day.
Otoyo was so excited and happy over these missives that she seemed to be in a state of semi-exaltation for the better part of a week. She rushed to the village and sent off a telegram and before Saturday morning received at least a dozen mysterious boxes by express. They were piled one on top of the other in her room like an Oriental pyramid and no one was permitted to see their contents.
All offers of assistance were refused the day of the party. Otoyo wished to carry out her ideas in her own peculiar way and needed only a step-ladder. If it was not asking too much, would the beautiful and kind friends not enter their room until that evening? Removing all things needful in the way of books and clothes to Judy's room, the beautiful and kind friends good-naturedly absented themselves from their apartment from ten in the morning to seven-thirty that evening. Molly spent the afternoon in the library studying, and Nance called on Mrs. McLean and drank a cup of tea and ate a buttered scone, while she cast an occasional covert glance in the direction of Andy junior's photograph on the mantel.
It was well before eight o'clock when the inquisitive guests assembled, and there were at least twenty of them; for Otoyo's acquaintance was large and numbered girls from all four classes. They met downstairs in a body and then marched up to the third story together.
"Let's give her a serenade before we knock," suggested Judy, and they sang: "The sweetest girl in Wellington is O-to-yo." Any name could be fitted into this convenient and ingenious song.
Otoyo flung open the door and stood smiling before them. Her manner was the very quintessence of hospitality. She wore a beautiful embroidered kimono and her hair was fixed Japanese fashion. Even her shoes were Japanese, and she carried a little fan which she agitated charmingly to express her excited emotions.
All her English forsook her in the excitement of greeting her guests and she could only repeat over and over again:
"Otoyo delightly – Otoyo delightly."
"Well, I never," ejaculated Nance, entering her old familiar room, now transformed into a gay Japanese bazaar.
"Is this the parent of all the umbrella family?" demanded Judy, pointing to an enormous parasol swung in some mysterious manner from the centre of the ceiling and resembling a large fish swimming among a numerous small-fry of lanterns. The divans were spread with Japanese covers, and over the white dimity curtains were hung cotton crepe ones of pale blue with a pink cherry-blossom design. In one corner stood a vase, from which poured the incense of smoking joss-sticks. Funny little handleless cups were ranged on the table and lacquered trays of candied fruits, rice cakes and other indescribable Japanese "meat-sweets," as Otoyo had called them. The little hostess flew about the room exactly as the Three Little Maids did in "The Mikado," waving her fan and bowing profoundly to her guests. Presently, sitting cross-legged on the floor, she sang a song in her own language, accompanying herself on a curious stringed instrument, a kind of Japanese banjo. She was, in fact, the funniest, queerest, most captivating little creature ever seen. She loaded her guests with souvenirs, little lacquered boxes, fans and diminutive toys.
"I feel as if I were a belle at a grand cotillion with all these lovely favors," exclaimed Jessie Lynch.
"Of course, you would always be laden with favors," said Judy; "that is, if you could get all your beaux to come to the same cotillion. You are like the sailor who had a lass in every port. I strongly suspect you of having an admirer in every prominent city in the country."
Jessie laughed and dimpled.
"No," she said; "I stopped at the Rocky Mountains."
Otoyo, who had been listening closely to this dialogue, suddenly bethought herself of a new sensation she had provided for her friends, which she was about to forget.
"Oh," she cried, "I nearlee forgetting. American girl love fortune telling? So do Japanese. You like to have your fortune told?" she asked, cocking her head on one side like a little bird and blinking at Jessie.
"Would she?" cried a dozen ironical voices.
"I hope it's nothing disagreeable and there's no bad luck in it," said Jessie, drawing a slip of paper from a flat, shiny box. "But it's all in Japanese," she added, with much disappointment.
"Otoyo will translate it. Won't you, you cunning little sugar-lump?" asked Molly.
"Everybodee choose and then I will make into English," said the small, busy hostess, flying from one to another on her marshmallow soles.
"Me first of all," cried the eager Jessie. "I had first draw."
Otoyo took the slip and, holding it under a lantern, translated in a high, funny voice:
"He happy who feesh for one and catch heem, than feesh for many and catch none."
The wild whoop of joy that went up at this unexpectedly appropriate statement made the lanterns quiver and the teacups rattle.
Some of the others were not so appropriate, but they were all very amusing. Mabel Hinton, who had been nicknamed "old maid" the year before, drew one which announced:
"Your daughters will make good matches."
The girls laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks at this prediction, and Mabel was quite teased.
"I'd like to know why I shouldn't have a family of marriageable daughters some day," she exclaimed, blinking at them with near-sighted eyes while she wiped the moisture from her large round glasses.
Nance's fortune was a very sentimental one and caused her to blush as red as a rose.
"Love will not change, neither in the cold weenter time nor in the warm spreengtime under the cherry-blossoms when the moon ees bright."
"Oh, thou blushing maiden," cried Judy, "canst look us in the eye after this?"
Molly's was rather comforting to her troubled and unquiet heart.
"Look for cleer weather when the sky ees blackest."
Of all the mottoes, Judy's was the funniest.
"Eef thy hus-band beat thee, geeve heem a smile."
"Smile indeed," exclaimed that young woman when the laughter had died down; "I'll just turn the tables on him and beat him back, Otoyo. American young lady quite capable of giving honorable husband a good trouncing with a black-snake whip."
Otoyo opened her eyes at this. It was doubtful whether she could appreciate the humor of her mottoes, but she enjoyed hearing the girls laugh; she realized they must be having a good time if they laughed like that – really genuine, side-shaking laughter and no lip-smiles for politeness' sake.
"Who's heard the news about Judith Blount?" asked one of the Williamses, after the party had broken up and only the Queen's girls remained.
Molly and Judy and Nance exchanged telegraphic glances. They had been careful to keep secret what Mrs. Kean had written her daughter, and they were curious to know just how much the others knew on the subject, which was now always uppermost, at least in Molly's mind.
"She's sub-let her apartment, furnished, to that rich freshman from New York, whose father's worth a fortune a minute from gold mines and oil wells, and she, I mean Judith, is taking the empty singleton here."
"You don't mean it!" cried a chorus of voices.
"It seems to me I heard that a Mr. Blount lost a lot of money," observed Margaret. "It must have been her father."
"How are the mighty fallen!" exclaimed Edith Williams. "I should think she'd have gone anywhere rather than here."
"She couldn't get in any of the less expensive places unless she had taken a room over the post office in the village."
"Poor Judith!" ejaculated Jessie. "I've known it for a week."
To save her life Molly could not keep a tiny little barbed thought from piercing her mind: "Is it fair for Judith to stay at college when I have to leave? Has she any right to the money that's paying her tuition?"
Molly turned quickly and began gathering up the débris from the tea-tables. Anything to get that bitter notion out of her head.
"Let's be awfully nice to her, girls," she said presently. "I'm sure she's terribly unhappy. Remember what success we had with Frances Andrews last year just through a little kind treatment."
"Judith is a different subject altogether," said Margaret, argumentatively. "She has such a dreadful temper. You never can tell when it's going to break loose."
With the Goddess of War sitting among them at this moment, nobody dared betray by the flick of an eyelash that there were others whose tempers were rather uncertain. Only Jessie observed:
"Well, Margaret, dear, you got the better of her that time at the Ledges, temper or no temper."
"I doubt if she takes to poverty as a duck to water," here put in Judy. "She'll make a very impatient tutor, and I'd hate to have her black my boots. She might throw them at my head."
"She is certainly not subdued by her reverses," remarked Jessie. "She's just like a caged animal. I never saw anything to equal her. I went over there this afternoon and she was packing. She almost pitched me out of the room. Of course, it's very luxurious at Beta Phi House, but her little room here isn't to be scorned. It's really quite pretty, with lovely paper and matting and chintz curtains and wicker chairs."
Suddenly a wave of indignation swept over Molly. Nobody had ever seen her look as she looked now, burning spots of color on her cheeks and her eyes black.
"What right has she – how dare she – she should be thankful – " she burst out incoherently. Then she stamped both feet up and down like an angry child and flung herself face down on the couch in an agony of tears. It was a kind of mental tempest, resembling one of those sudden storms which come with a flash of lightning, a roaring crash of thunder and then a downpour of rain.
"Why, Mary Carmichael Washington Brown," exclaimed Judy, kneeling beside poor Molly, "whatever has come over you?"
Little Otoyo was so frightened that she hid behind a Japanese screen, while the other girls sat dumb with amazement.
The Williams girls were intensely interested, and Margaret, always consistent and logical in her decisions, knew very well that there was something serious back of it.
"Please forgive me," said Molly presently, wiping her eyes and sitting up as limp as a rag. "I'm awfully sorry to have spoiled the evening like this. I didn't mean it. It just slipped out of me before I knew it was coming."
"Why, you old sweetness," exclaimed the affectionate Judy, "of course, you are forgiven. I guess you ought to be allowed a few outbursts. But what caused it?"
"I think it was nervousness," answered Molly evasively.
But the girls began to realize that it was not entirely nervousness. It occurred to them now that Molly had been preoccupied and strangely silent for some time. Occasionally she gave way to forced gaiety. Twice she had started on walks, changed her mind and come back, without giving any excuse except that she was a little tired. It was, in fact, a condition that had come about so gradually that they were hardly aware they had noticed it until this sudden breakdown.
"She's dead tired and ought to get to bed this minute," remarked Nance, caressing her friend's hand.
"Dearest Molly," said Jessie, who was moved by a gentle sympathy always for those in trouble, "go to bed and get a good rest. It was just nice and human of you to get mad once in a thousand years and we love you all the better for it."
They were good friends, all of them, Molly felt, as they kissed her or pressed her hand good-night, while Nance and Judy hastened to clear off the divan and put up the windows to blow out the heavy, incense-scented air.
It was Otoyo, however, who brought the tears back to poor Molly's eyes.
"Dear, beautiful Mees Brown," she said. "You must not think it will come wrong. It will come right, I feel, surelee."
"What is it, Nance?" whispered Judy, after they had got their friend to bed.
Nance shook her head.
"Heaven knows," she answered. "But it's something, and it must be serious, Judy, or she never would have let go like that."
