Marjorie Dean, Post-Graduate

CHAPTER IX. – THE FAIRY TALE PRINCESS

“Never blame us,” Leila said. “Weren’t those houses but a rubbish heap the day we came, Midget?” She appealed to Vera for corroboration.

“Why, of course they were,” emphasized Vera. “We thought you’d be surprised to see them torn down. We were.”

“Surprised?” Marjorie repeated exultantly. “I’m simply amazed, astounded, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, stupefied by such a piece of good fortune. It’s just what both Robin and I wanted.”

“We worried during Commencement week because we hadn’t the time then to see a firm of Hamilton contractors about having those houses torn down. You and Vera knew that, Leila Harper. You’re implicated in this surprise somehow,” Robin accused.

“My word as an honorable Irishman, I had not a thing to do with it,” protested Leila, though she laughed.

“But you haven’t said you didn’t know who had. Never mind. I know. It was Miss Susanna. It must have been either she or President Matthews. He wouldn’t have had – ” Marjorie paused to think of a phrase which would describe the stately president’s disinclination to intrude upon their project.

“The nerve,” Vera supplied with a giggle.

Marjorie fell suddenly silent as she watched the busy workmen moving to and fro in their task of demolishment. The work, hers and Robin’s great enterprise, had begun. She was thrilled by the thought of it.

“Time to be going, Midget.”

Leila’s voice broke into Marjorie’s dream of the glory of work and the romance of worthy deeds. Marjorie could not tear her glance from the fascinating scene of labor. Yes; she and Robin had Miss Susanna to thank for this unexpected lift in their program.

“No one but Miss Susanna could have thought of this and then gone ahead and done it,” Vera now said in a tone that partook of reverence as she started the car. “She wanted you and Robin to see what had been done as soon as you set foot in Hamilton. She told us to make it our business to lead you to it.”

“Oh, wait until I see her!” Marjorie looked happy anticipation. Now they were coming into full sight of the velvety green campus. “Dear first friend, how are you?” she cried, stretching a hand of greeting toward the spread of living green.

Vera smiled in sympathy of the whimsical fancy. “You’re as full of whimsies as Leila,” she said. “She can almost convince one that Ireland is full of leprechauns and banshees.”

From the beginning of the campus wall the distance to the central gates of the college was quickly covered by Vera’s car. In the tonneau of the car Robin was still busy expressing her wonder to Leila of the surprise Miss Susanna had given them. Marjorie, however, remained silent as the roadster neared the main entrance. She was in the grip of many emotions. Her mind reverted to a day when she and her four Sanford chums had entered the gates of Hamilton College for the first time as explorers, seeking the treasures of an unknown region.

“Remember the stranger within thy gates,” she was thinking. At first no one had “remembered” them, to their grieved chagrin. Then had come Helen Trent and then Leila and Vera. Their kindly offices had marked the beginning of fellowship at a college where snobbery had been the order of things instead of democracy which the founder, Brooke Hamilton, had made every effort to establish. Now, at the beginning of her fifth college year, she was returning to a Hamilton in which democracy had become a watchword. She experienced a swift exultation of spirit in thinking of the blessed change.

As the car passed between the massive stone gate posts Vera slackened speed and continued more slowly along the central campus drive. Came a turn to the left. Wayland Hall raised its handsome gray stone height only a few yards distant. Against the emerald of its short cropped lawn brilliant-hued verbenas, zenias and salvia flaunted beds of luxuriant bloom. Later in the season, cannas, gold and scarlet, and summer’s queen, who arrives late, the ever popular dahlia, would have sway. Still later, hardy chrysanthemums would carry on the scheme of beauty.

Over one side of the veranda a late-flowering, creamy-pink climbing rose trailed its double fragrant clusters. At an end of the veranda purple and white clematis stars wove a mantle against a background of green. The spicy scent of garden pinks and tiger lilies was in the air. Wayland Hall rejoiced in a riot of flowers of which Miss Remson, its energetic little manager, took tender care. The buzzing of a select delegation of bees engaged in a honey-hunting expedition seemed the drowsing, humming voice of mid-summer itself.

On the veranda a small, wiry, familiar figure was watching the approach of the automobile and waving a preliminary greeting. Miss Remson’s thin pleasant face grew brighter with welcome as she stood at the head of the steps, her eyes on the car as it slid onto the open space before the house.

Marjorie was the first one out of the car. It had hardly stopped when she skipped agily from it and ran toward the erect waiting figure. Miss Remson came half way down the steps to meet her and the two embraced with joyful vigor.

“My dear Marjorie, you are so very welcome. How I have missed you and all of my girls this summer.” Miss Remson still held Marjorie’s hands in hers. “So glad you are to stay at the Hall with Marjorie, Robina.” She offered a cordial hand to Robin. “I am proud to have the illustrious firm of Page and Dean under my roof.”

“And what of the firm of Harper and Mason?” demanded Leila. “Ah, there’s a firm of note! Now tell me – where can you find it’s equal?”

“Where, indeed?” was Miss Remson’s question.

“They’re a couple of bandits. They held me up behind the station and Lawless Leila snatched my bag,” Marjorie accused. “While my supposed partner, here,” she indicated Robin, “helped the daylight robbers.”

“Shocking!” Miss Remson did not look in the least shocked. She entered into the spirit of teasing with zest. “I must be careful not to allow them inside the Hall. I’ll have their luggage brought down and set out on the lawn. I had no idea I was harboring two such desperadoes.”

“Arrah, don’t be hard on us now!” Leila became coaxingly Hibernian. “You should be thinking of how lonely you were before Midget and I came wandering into the Hall. Had you even a long-faced, would-be freshie for company? You had not.”

“I can afford to leave ‘lonely’ out of my vocabulary, now that I have some of my old household back again.” Miss Remson exulted.

“And for that you may escort our old friend, Bean, as Leslie Cairns would have it, into the Hall,” Leila graciously permitted. “Midget and I will be doing the same for our old friend Page.” Leila possessed herself of Robin’s traveling bag. Vera doughtily insisted on carrying Marjorie’s bag.

“Set the bags in the hall, girls, and come into the dining room,” Miss Remson directed as they entered the house. “I made a pitcher of tutti-frutti nectar, your old favorite, and Ellen baked three-layer cream cake this morning. Don’t tell me you have just had luncheon.”

“But we have,” Robin said regretfully. The others swelled the chorus. Vera had an inspiration. It dawned while the tall frosted glasses were being filled.

“Let us drink Miss Remson’s health in the nectar now and keep the cake for a spread when we come home tonight. Shades of the ten-thirty rule! We can’t even remember what you sound like.”

“There ain’t no such animal,” asserted Robin. “I thought we were to dine at Baretti’s but the mind of this aggregation seems to have changed.”

“That sounded like Jerry. Wish she were here. Giuseppe will have to miss seeing us tonight,” Vera said lightly. “I’m in favor of a spread instead of dinner. I know the rest of you are or I’d have been drowned out with objections when I proposed it.”

“The spread will be spread right here in the dining room,” Miss Remson announced. “I’ll expect you when I see you. You’ll find me in the office. As soon as you’re here the party will begin.”

“You are as good as gold to us, Miss Remson,” was Marjorie’s appreciation. Taking up her glass of delicious amber-colored punch with its tempting dashes of plump scarlet cherries she proposed a toast to their kindly friend.

“We forgot to tell you where we were going, Miss Remson,” Marjorie said apologetically when the commotion attending the drinking of the toast had subsided. “We’re going to Hamilton Arms to see Miss Susanna. Robin and I feel as though we could hardly go there soon enough to thank her for her latest perfectly splendid kindness to us. You must know about it?” She fixed inquiring eyes on the manager.

“Yes; Leila and Vera told me. We thought you would go to see her first of all.”

“I wish you were going with us,” Marjorie said regretfully.

“This isn’t the age of miracles,” the manager retorted with dry humor.

“Some have come to pass. There are sure to be more some day.” Marjorie chose to take this hopeful view. She knew of no two persons whom she would rather bring together than Miss Remson and Miss Susanna Hamilton. She wished each to discover and appreciate the other’s manifold virtues. Miss Susanna, however, refused to extend her acquaintance on the campus. Aside from the two or three formal interviews she had had with President Matthews none but the nine girls who were Marjorie’s intimates had been accorded her favor.

“Into the midst of the toast drinking now dashed a slender, brown-haired girl in a white linen frock. Her color ran high with happy anticipation; her eyes were dancing. Marjorie set her half-filled glass of nectar on the table in time to prevent a spill and gathered in the newcomer.

“Katherine Langly, and such a whirlwind! Who’d ever suspect you of being faculty?” she cried. “Leila was going to telephone you.”

“Who told you to come here? Now I know you met a leprechaun hiding behind a tree on the campus and he whispered in your ear and slipped away.” Leila looked uncanny wisdom.

“I never saw sign of one, but I did see old Amos. I was over at Wenderblatts and he came there to mow the lawn. He’d been mowing the campus just below the Hall and he told Lillian and me that he had seen Miss Dean and some more young ladies getting out of a car in front of the Hall. As soon as I heard I ran for the Hall. Lillian had callers so she couldn’t come. She sent her dearest love.” Katherine poured forth this explanation with an animation she had never possessed in her freshman and sophomore days at Hamilton.

Marjorie watched her in fascination. She was well content with the change in Katherine. Once she had been a sad, subdued, retiring mouse of a girl. She had now blossomed into a lively, high-spirited young woman. The youngest member of the faculty she was respected by her colleagues for her brilliant mentality. She had also won high honors in the Silver Pen, a literary sorority, as an author of unusual promise.

Kathie’s arrival was the signal for a second round of nectar.

“I’ll have to be it, much as I hate to,” Vera presently mourned her tone particularly despairing.

“What is it you must be? Nothing your Celtic friend can save you from,” was Leila’s solicitous but rash promise.

“A time clock,” sighed Vera. “I’m the only one of this fivesome who has any idea of the value of time. If we don’t start for the Arms soon it may be Miss Susanna’s bedtime before we arrive there.”

“You must go with us, Kathie,” declared Marjorie. “The more Travelers, the merrier. We’re five of the old crowd, and I think it’s great to have even that number together again.”

“Of course I’ll go. You don’t think I’d let you run off to the Arms without me, do you?” Kathie’s eyes sparkled with the gaiety of the occasion.

“We’d never do that; never-r-r!” Vera assured with a dramatic roll of “r.”

“You must have known what Robin and I did not know until this afternoon,” Marjorie said happily. “When were you at the Arms last, Kathie?”

“Last Tuesday afternoon to tea. Yes, I knew.” Kathie flashed Marjorie a radiant look. “I was so glad. It was splendid in her.”

Before Marjorie could reply Vera called out a second warning. “Shoo, shoo, shoo!” she cried, whisking in and out among her chums and relentlessly driving them toward the dining room door. Laughing, Miss Remson strolled after the fleeing, giggling girls.

The little manager was about to call a last word to the party as they began to descend the steps when the purr of an approaching automobile brought all eyes to bear upon it. One of the railway station taxicabs was now coming to a stop before the Hall. The instant it stopped the driver sprang from it to open the tonneau door. Next a girl in a silver gray dust coat and close-lined gray hat which suggested Paris emerged from the machine. She cast a slow unhurried glance toward the group on the veranda, then turned toward the driver in leisurely fashion and addressed him.

He dived into the tonneau, reappearing with a large leather label-spattered bag. The new arrival handed him his fare with the barest glance at him. He picked up the bag and started with it toward the veranda. She followed him, wearing an expression of such utter boredom it impressed itself upon the knot of girls to whom she was a stranger. One other point also impressed them. That point was her unusual beauty.

It seemed to Marjorie that she had never seen a girl so beautiful, and in such an unusual way. Her thick fine hair was like pale spun gold as it showed itself from under her small hat. Her skin was dazzling in its purity. Her eyes reminded Marjorie of the sea on a calm day. Only she could not be sure whether they were blue or green. Her features were not small but were admirably regular. She carried herself with the lovely, indifferent grace of a princess. Into Marjorie’s fanciful mind suddenly popped the old-time fairy-tale beginning: “Once upon a time there was a lovely princess.”

“Now whom have we here?” muttered Leila in Marjorie’s ear.

Marjorie could not reply. The girl had reached the steps and was now composedly mounting them. She paid no more attention to the group on the steps than if they had not been there. She made an authoritative motion to the taxicab driver to place her bag on the veranda floor beside the door. She found the bell and rang it, looking even more bored.

As the stranger’s fingers pressed the electric button Miss Remson stepped to her side. “I am Miss Remson, the manager of Wayland Hall. What can I do for you?” she asked courteously.

“Oh, are you Miss Remson?” She regarded the brisk, little woman with indolent blue-green eyes. Her sweet, indifferent drawl went perfectly with her unconcerned appearance. “I am Miss Monroe. You have my father’s correspondence. I am here a trifle earlier than he mentioned in his letter to you. That need not signify,” she added carelessly.

Careful not to intrude the Five Travelers had moved on down the steps and away from the Hall. Vera had parked the car farther down the drive.