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“In one of them. There’s been a hole in the other one for a long time – two years at least.”
“Would you mind letting me see that coat?”
He lifted the blue overcoat from a hook on the door and placed it on a chair beside Miss Steel.
“Am I a suspect?” he asked politely. “Has anything been lost?”
The detective seized the overcoat and began rummaging through the pockets with a practised hand.
“Yes,” she answered; “something has been lost, and extremely disagreeable things have been said by the owner about it.”
“About me?” asked the Professor, still groping in the dark.
“No, no; about the girl who lost it.”
“Miss Brown?”
The detective did not reply. She had run her hand through the hole in the pocket and was now searching the corners between the lining and the cloth.
“Ha!” she cried at last, exactly like the detective in a play. “Here it is!”
With a swift movement she extricated her hand from the bottomless pocket and displayed between her thumb and forefinger a large emerald ring.
“Why, that’s the ring of my cousin, Judith Blount!” exclaimed the Professor in amazement. “And I have had it in my pocket all this time. Great heavens! what an extraordinary thing, and how did it get there?”
“Miss Blount forced Miss Brown to take charge of it while she was playing football. After Miss Brown came to from her faint, she must have been very cold and slipped her hands in the pockets of this coat for warmth – ”
“She did,” confirmed the Professor.
“And the ring slipped off. When she found it was lost she got up at dawn next day and went out in her slippers in the snow to find it, and nearly caught her death. But she’s had no thanks for her trouble from your relation, I can assure you. Nothing but abuse – ”
“What!” shouted the Professor. “You mean to say that Judith has dared to insinuate – ”
“She has,” said Miss Steel.
“And she whom Miss Brown has shielded – great heavens! this is too much.”
He began walking up and down the room in a rage.
“Shielded from what?”
“I am not at liberty to tell you,” he replied. “The girl repented of what she did. I know that, but she’s an ungrateful little wretch.”
A scholarly professor of English literature, however, is no match for a well-trained detective, and with a knowing smile on her lips the inspector rose to leave.
“You may return the ring,” she said. “It will be a great relief to Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky to know it has been found. She was about to give up two acres of good apple orchard to pay for it; the land, in fact, which was to provide the money for her college expenses.”
And with that she sailed out of the room and went straight to the home of President Walker, with whom she spent the better part of an hour.
Professor Green followed close on her heels. He did not pause at Miss Walker’s pretty stucco residence, however, but hastened down the campus and rang the bell at Queen’s Cottage.
Miss Brown was in, he learned from the maid. She had only arrived from the Infirmary that afternoon.
The Professor waited in the sitting room deserted by the students at that hour, those who were not studying in their rooms being at Vespers. Presently Molly appeared, looking very slender and tall, like a pale flower swaying on its stalk.
The Professor rushed up and seized her hand unceremoniously.
“My dear child!” he cried, “how am I ever going to make my apologies to you for all this trouble of which I have been the unconscious cause?”
“For what – ” began Molly, too much astonished to finish her question.
“The ring! The ring! It’s been concealed in the ragged lining of my shabby old overcoat all this time, and that clever detective of dormitories, or whatever she is, ferreted it out just now. Perhaps I should have thought of it myself; but, you see, I hadn’t even heard the ring had been lost. I am afraid you suffered a great deal.”
“I did at first; but after I grew better I never let myself slip back into that state again. I kept believing it would be found. I was so sure of it that I haven’t really been unhappy at all. You see, everybody is so beautifully kind and no one believed – ”
“Great heavens!” interrupted the Professor, storming excitedly around the room, “that ungrateful, wicked girl to have made such an accusation – she shall hear from me what she owes to you! I’ll take the ring to her myself later. She is my cousin, and her brother is as near to me as my own brother, but – ”
“You aren’t going to tell Prexy?” cried Molly.
“I must. Besides, I nearly gave it away to Miss Steel.”
“Oh, well, if that’s the case, she knows already. She’s a detective, and if you let two words slip, she can easily guess the rest. There’s no keeping anything from her. You may be sure Prexy knows it by this time.”
“I’m rather relieved,” said the Professor. “Judith will probably be well punished; but she should be.”
“I’ve always wondered,” said Molly, after a short pause, “why Judith did it.”
The Professor looked at her closely with his humorous brown eyes.
“Have you no idea why?” he asked.
“Except for mischief and to annoy the seniors,” she answered.
“Possibly,” he said. “A girl who has been spoiled and petted as she has will give in to almost any whim that seizes her. However, such actions are not tolerated at Wellington, and she will have to learn a few pretty stiff lessons if she expects to remain here.”
Then Professor Green shook hands with Molly, gave her a little paternal advice about taking care of her health, and took his departure. His next destination was the President’s house, where he waited in the drawing-room until Miss Steel had terminated her interview. He was prepared for a round scolding from his old friend, who had known him since his early youth, but the President was inclined to be lenient with the young man.
“It all goes to show,” she said at the end of the interview, “that murder will out. But why did the foolish girl do that mischievous thing? What did she have to gain by it?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Jealous of some one prettier and more popular than herself, probably,” he answered.
The President sighed.
“Who can understand the intricacies of a young girl’s heart,” she said. “I have been studying them for twenty years, and they are still a closed book to me.”
When Professor Green a little later returned the emerald ring to his cousin, he cut the visit as short as possible. He told her that she had deliberately and wrongfully accused one who had shielded her even at the risk of offending the President of Wellington College, and that it was he who had given the detective, already suspicious, the clue she wanted.
Judith wept bitterly, but her cousin showed no signs of relenting.
“If you want to be loved,” he said, “learn unselfishness and gentleness and truthfulness. These are the qualities that make men and women beloved. You will never gain anything by cheating and lying.”
The end of the episode was a pretty severe punishment for Judith Blount. She was suspended from college for three weeks and was compelled to resign from all societies for the rest of the winter. She left college next morning early, and no one saw her again until after Christmas, when she returned a much chastened and quieted young woman.
A few days after she had gone Molly received a note from her from New York. It read:
“DEAR MISS BROWN:
“Will you forgive me? I am very unhappy.
“JUDITH BLOUNT.”You may be sure that Molly’s reply was prompt and forgiving.
CHAPTER XXII
CHRISTMAS – MID-YEARS – AND THE WANDERTHIRST
There are few lonelier and more dismal experiences in life than Christmas away from home for the first time. Molly felt her heart sink as the great day approached. One morning a trainload of chattering, laughing girls pulled out of the Wellington station. Judy hanging recklessly to the last step, waved her handkerchief until Molly’s figure grew indistinct in the distance, and Nance on the crowded platform called out again and again, “Good-bye, Molly, dear. Good-bye!”
Molly almost regretted that she had ever left Kentucky, as the Christmas train became a point of black on the horizon.
“I might have ended my days as a teacher in a country school-house and been happier than this,” she thought desperately, starting back to college.
Some one came running up behind her. It was Mary Stewart who had been down to see some classmates off. She was to take the night train to New York.
“When do you get off?” she asked, slipping her arm through Molly’s like the good comrade she was. “I’m surprised you didn’t leave yesterday, with such a long journey before you.”
“I’m not going home this Christmas,” replied Molly.
“Not going?” began Mary. “You’re to be left at Queen’s by yourself?”
Molly nodded, vainly endeavoring to smile cheerfully.
“Then you’re to go with me. I’ll come right along now and help you pack,” announced Mary decisively.
“But, Mary, I can’t. I haven’t anything – money or clothes – ”
“Don’t say ‘but’ to me! I’ve got everything. I’ve even got the drawing-room to myself on the night train to New York. You shall go with me. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. We’ll have a beautiful Christmas together. Since mother’s death, five years ago, Christmas has been a dismal time at our house. You’ll be just the person to cheer us up. It will be like having a child in the house. You shall have a Christmas tree and hang up your stocking. Father will be delighted and so will Brother Willie.”
Thus overruled, Molly was borne triumphantly to New York that same evening, and spent one of the most wonderful Christmases of her life in Mary’s beautiful home on Riverside Drive. As her mother and godmother both wisely sent her checks for Christmas gifts, she was not embarrassed by any lack of ready money. She was even rich enough to purchase a new evening dress and a pretty blouse which Mary had ordered to be sent up on approval, and not for many a year afterward did she guess why those charming things happened to be such bargains. But Molly was a very inexperienced young person, and knew little concerning prices at that time.
Mary’s father was a fine man, quiet and self-contained, with a splendid rugged face. He treated his only daughter with indescribable tenderness, and called her “Little Mary.” They did not see much of “Brother Willie,” a sophomore at Yale, and very busy enjoying his holiday. He regarded Molly as a child and his sister as an old maid, but condescended to take them to the theatre twice.
But all good things must come to an end, and it seemed just a little while before Molly found herself back at her old desk in her room at Queen’s, writing a “bread-and-butter” letter to Mr. Stewart, which pleased him mightily, since Mary’s guests had never before taken that trouble.
Judy came back radiantly happy. She had had a glorious time in Washington with her “vagabond” parents, as she called them. Nance, too, had enjoyed her Christmas with her father and busy mother, who had come home to rest during the holidays. Only one of Queen’s girls did not join the jolly circle that now congregated in the most hospitable room in the house to “swap” holiday experiences. But a letter had arrived from the missing member addressed to “Miss M. C. W. Brown,” and beginning: “My Dear Molly Brown.”
“Good-bye,” the letter ran. “I’m off for Europe and Grandmamma, by the Kismet, sailing the eighteenth. I am afraid I was too much like a bull in a china shop at college. I was always breaking something, mostly rules. I’ve done lots of foolish things, and I am sorry. They were jokes, of course, most of them, and intended to frighten silly self-important people. I’ve learned a great deal from you and your friends, but I’d rather practice my new wisdom on other people. If you ever see me again you’ll find me changed. I may enter a convent for a few years in France and learn to keep quiet. You did what you could for me, and so did the others. You are a first rate lot and you make a jolly good freshman class. I shall miss you, and I shall miss old Wellington. I wouldn’t have come back this year if I hadn’t felt the call of its two gray towers. Somehow, it’s been more of a home to me than most places, and when I’m quite old and forgotten I shall go back and see it again some day. Good-bye again, and good luck. I’ve told Mrs. Murphy to give you my Persian prayer rug. It’s just your color of blue.
“F. ANDREWS.”Molly read the letter aloud and the girls were half sorry and half relieved over its contents. After all, Frances was a very disturbing element, but as Margaret Wakefield announced later at a meeting of the G. F. Society, she had responded to kind treatment, and she, Margaret, moved that they send her a combination steamer letter of farewell and a bunch of violets to cheer her on her lonely voyage. The movement was promptly seconded by Molly, carried by universal acclaim, and the resolution put into effect immediately.
After Christmas comes the terror of every freshman’s heart – the mid-year examinations. As the dreaded week approached, lights burned late in every house on the campus and nobody offered any interference. Behind closed doors sat scores of weary maidens with pale concentrated faces bent over text-books.
Judy Kean made a record at Queen’s. She crammed history for thirty-six hours at a stretch, only stopping for food occasionally or to snatch a half hour’s nap.
It was Saturday and bitter cold. Examinations were to begin on Monday, and there yet remained two more blessed days of respite. Molly, in a long, gray dressing gown, with a towel wrapped around her head, had been cramming mathematics since six in the morning, and now at eleven o’clock, she lifted her eyes from the hated volume and looked about her with a dazed expression as if she had suddenly awakened from a black dream. Nance had hurried into the room.
“Molly, for heaven’s sake, go to Judy. I think she’s losing her mind. She has overstudied and it has affected her brain. I can’t do anything with her at all.”
“What?” cried Molly, rushing down the hall, her long, gray wrapper trailing after her in voluminous folds.
She opened Judy’s door unceremoniously and marched in.
The room looked as if a cyclone had struck it. The contents of the bureau drawers were dumped onto the floor; the closet was emptied, clothes and books piled about on the bed and chairs, and Judy’s two trunks filled up what floor space remained.
Judy herself was working feverishly. She had packed a layer of books in one of the trunks and was now folding up her best dresses.
“Julia Kean, what are you doing?” cried Molly in a stern voice.
Judy gave her a constrained nod.
“Don’t bother me now. There’s a dear. I’m in a dreadful hurry.”
Molly shook her violently by the shoulder. She had a feeling that Judy was asleep and must be waked up.
“Get up from there this minute and answer my question,” she commanded.
“What was your question?” asked Judy with an embarrassed little laugh. “Oh, yes, you asked what I was doing. I should think you could see I wasn’t gathering cowslips on the campus.”
“Are you running away, Judy?” asked Molly, trying another tack.
“Yes, my Mariucci,” cried Judy, quoting a popular song, “‘I’m gona packa my trunk and taka my monk and sail for sunny It.’”
Molly refused even to smile at this witticism.
“I know what you’re doing,” she exclaimed. “You are running away from examinations. You’re a coward. You are no better than a deserter from the army in time of war. It’s bad enough in time of peace, but just before the battle – I’m so ashamed and disappointed in you that I can hardly understand how I ever could have loved you so much.”
Judy went on stolidly packing, rolling her clothes into little bundles and stuffing them in anywhere she could find a place between her numerous books.
“Have you lost your nerve, Judy, dear?” said Molly, after a minute, kneeling down beside her friend and seizing her hands.
“I suppose so,” said Judy, extricating her hands, and speaking in a hard, strained voice in an effort to keep from breaking down. “I’d rather not stay here and be disgraced by flunking, but there’s another reason beside that, Molly. I know I look like a deserter and deserve to be shot, but there’s another reason,” she wailed; “there’s another good reason.”
“Why, Judy, dearest, what can it be?” asked Molly gently.
“They’re going to Italy,” she burst out. “They’re sailing on Monday. I got the letter to-day, and, oh, I can’t stand it – I can’t endure it. They’ll be in Sicily in a few weeks – and without me! Mamma hates the cold. So do I. I’m numb now with it. Oh, Molly, they’ll be sailing without me, and I want to go. You can’t understand what the feeling is. There is something in me that is calling all the time, and I can’t help hearing it and answering. In my mind I can live through every bit of the voyage. At first it’s cold, bitter cold, and then after a few days we get into the Gulf Stream and gradually it grows warmer. Even in the winter time the air is soft and smells of the south. At last the Azores come – cunning little islands snuggling down out there in the Atlantic – and finally you see a long line of coast – it’s Africa; then Gibraltar and the Mediterranean – oh, Molly – and Algiers, lovely Algiers, nestling down between the hills and looking across such a harbor! You can see the domes of the mosques as you sail in and Arab boys come out in funny little boats and offer to row you to shore. It’s delightfully warm and you smell flowers everywhere. The sky is a deep blue. It’s like June. And then, after Algiers, comes Italy – ”
Judy had risen to her feet now, and her eyes had an uncanny expression in them. She appeared to have lost sight entirely of the little room at Queen’s, and through the chaos of books and clothing, she was seeing a vision of the South.
“Come back to earth, Judy,” said Molly, gently pulling her sleeve. “Wouldn’t your mother and father be angry with you for giving up college and joining them uninvited?”
“Angry?” cried Judy. “Of course not. Even if I just caught the steamer, it would be all right, they would fix it up somehow, and they would be glad – oh, so glad! What a glorious time we will have together. Perhaps we shall spend a few weeks in Capri. I shall try and make them stay a while in Capri. Such a view there is at Capri across the Bay. Papa loves Naples. He even loves its dirtiness and calls it ‘local color.’ We’ll have to stay there a week to satisfy him, and then mamma will make us go to Ravello. She’s mad about it; and then I’ll have my choice – it’s Venice, of course; but we’ll wait until it’s warmer for Venice. April is perfect there, and then Rome after Easter. Oh, Molly, Molly, help me pack! I’m off – I’m off – isn’t it glorious, Italy, when the spring begins, the roses and the violets and the fresias – ”
Judy began running about the room, snatching her things from the bed and chairs and tossing them into the trunks helter-skelter. Molly watched her in silence for a while. She must collect her ideas, and think of something to say. But not now. It was like arguing with a lunatic to say anything now.
At last Judy’s feverish energy burned itself out and she sat down on the bed exhausted.
“So you’re going to give up four splendid years at college and all the friends you’ve made – Nance and me and Margaret and Jessie, and nice old Sallie Marks and Mabel, all the fun and the jolly times, the delightful, glorious life we have here – and for what? For a three months’ trip you have taken before, and will take again often, no doubt. Just for three short, paltry little months’ pleasure, you’re going to give up things that will be precious to you for the rest of your life. It’s not only the book learning, it’s the associations and the friends – ”
“I don’t see why I should lose my friends,” broke in Judy sullenly.
“They’ll never be the same again. They couldn’t after such a disappointment as this. You see, you’ll always be remembered as a coward who turned and ran when examinations came – you lost your nerve and dropped out and even pretty little Jessie has the courage to face it. Oh, Judy, but I’m disappointed in you. It’s a hard blow to come now when we’re all fighting to save ourselves and pull through safely. And you – one of the cleverest and brightest girls in the class. Don’t tell me your father will be pleased. He’ll be mortified, I’m certain of it. He’s much too fine a man to admire a cowardly act, no matter whose act it is. You’ll see. He’ll be shocked and hurt. If he had thought it was right for you to give up college on the eve of examinations, he would have written for you to come. It will be a crushing blow to him, Judy.”
Judy lay on her bed, her hands clasped back of her head. There was a defiant look on her face, and she kicked the quilt up and down with one foot, like an impatient horse pawing the ground. Then, suddenly, she collapsed like a pricked balloon. Burying her face in the pillows, she began sobbing bitterly, her body shaking convulsively with every sob. It was a terrible sight to see Judy cry, and Molly hoped she would be spared such another experience.
Without saying another word, Molly began quietly unpacking the trunks and putting the things back in their places. Then she pulled the empty trunks into the hall. This done, she filled a basin with water, recklessly poured in an ample quantity of Judy’s German cologne, and sitting on the side of the bed, began bathing her friend’s convulsed and swollen face. Gradually Judy’s sobs subsided, her weary eyelids drooped and presently she dropped off into a deep, exhausted sleep.
Nance crept into the room.
“She’s all right now,” whispered Molly. “She’s had an attack of the ‘wanderthirst,’ but it’s passed.”
All day and all night Judy slept, and on Sunday morning she was her old self once more, gay and laughing and full of fun. That afternoon she was an usher at Vespers in Wellington Chapel, with Molly and Nance, and wore her best suit and a big black velvet hat.
She never alluded again to her attack of wanderthirst, but her devotion to Molly deepened and strengthened as the days flew by until it became as real to her as her love for her mother and father.
Once in the midst of the dreaded examinations they did not seem so dreadful after all. The girls at Queen’s came out of the fight with “some wounds, but still breathing,” as Margaret Wakefield had put it. Molly had a condition in mathematics.
“I got it because I expected it,” she said.
But Judy came through with flying colors – not a single black mark against her. Jessie barely pulled through, and her friends rejoiced that the prettiest, most frivolous member of the freshman class had made such a valiant fight and won.
CHAPTER XXIII
SOPHOMORES AT LAST
“Freshman, arise!Gird on thy sword!Captivity is o’er.To arms! To arms!For, lo! thou artA daring sophomore!”The words of this stirring song floated in through the open windows at Queen’s one warm night in early June. Moonlight flooded the campus, and the air was sweet with the perfume of lilac and syringa.
A group of sophomores had gathered in front of the house to serenade the freshmen at Queen’s, who had immediately repaired to the piazza to acknowledge this unusual honor paid them by their august predecessors.
“I think it would be far more appropriate if they sang:
“‘When all the saints who from their labors rest,’”remarked Mabel Hinton, who, in order to make a record, had studied herself into a human skeleton.
“Well,” said Molly Brown, “when I left home last September, one of my brothers cheerfully informed me that I looked like ‘a rag and a bone and a hank of hair.’ I am afraid I don’t feel very saint-like now, because I have gained ten pounds, and I’m not tired of anything, except packing my clothes. I’m so sorry to leave blessed old Queen’s that I could kiss her brown cheek, if it didn’t look foolish.”
“Well, go and kiss the side of the house then,” put in Judy. “You have a poetic nature, Molly; but I wouldn’t have it changed. I like it just as it is.”
“Do you know,” interrupted Margaret Wakefield, “that Queen’s, from having once been scorned as a residence, has now become a very popular abode, and there were so many applications for rooms here for next year that the registrar has had to make a waiting list for the first time in connection with Queen’s. Think of that at old Queen’s!”