“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.
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.
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:
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!”
“It’s because it’s the residence of a distinguished person,” announced Molly. “I think we should put a brass plate on the front door, stating that in this house lived a class president who possessed every attribute for the office. She was versed in parliamentary law, she had an executive mind, and she was beloved by all who knew her.”
Margaret was pleased at this compliment.
“Voyons, voyons, que vous me flattez!” she exclaimed. “It’s your warm Southern nature that makes you so enthusiastic. Now, the real reason why old brown Queen’s, with her moldering vines, is so popular all of a sudden is because you are here.”
It was Molly’s turn now to be pleased.
“We won’t argue such a personal matter,” she said, squeezing Margaret’s hand. “But I’m glad I’m booked here for next year. I was afraid Nance would want a ‘singleton,’ she has such a retiring nun-like nature.”
“Me?” exclaimed Nance, disregarding English in her amazement. “Why, I’ve had the happiest winter of my whole life with you, Molly. If there’s a chance for another one like it, I’m only too thankful.”
“Certainly Mary Carmichael Washington Brown is a modest soul,” thought Judy, who happened to know that her friend had had some five or six tempting offers to move into better quarters the next year at no greater expense to herself. One was from Mary Stewart, who was to return next winter for a post-graduate course. Another was from Judith Blount, who had proposed Molly for membership in the Beta Phi Society next year, and had furthermore invited the surprised young freshman to take the study of her apartment for a bedroom and offered her the constant use of her sumptuous sitting room.
Certainly, if ever there was an expression of true remorse and repentance, that was one, Molly thought, and the allusion to roommates reminded her that she must say good-bye to Judith, for there would be no time in the morning for last farewells.
“I am going over to the Beta Phi house for a minute,” she announced. “Any one want to come along?”
Margaret and Jessie, who had friends in that “abode of fashion,” as it was called, joined her, and presently the three white figures were lost in the shadows on the campus.
“She is going to say farewell to black-eyed Judith,” observed Judy in a low voice to Nance, “and all I would say is what the colored preacher said: ‘Can the le-o-pard change his spots?’”
Nance smiled gravely. She did not possess Judy’s prejudiced nature, but her convictions were strong.
“Do you think she’s a ‘le-o-pard,’ Judy?” she asked.
“She may be a domesticated one,” said Judy, “of the genus known as ‘cat.’”
“Aren’t you ashamed, Judy?” exclaimed Nance, reprovingly.
But it must be confessed that a few doubts still lurked in her own heart concerning the sincerity of proud Judith’s repentance.
In the meantime, the three freshmen had separated in the upper hall of the Beta Phi House, and Molly had given a timid rap with Judith’s fine brass knocker.
Instantly the door flew open and she found herself precipitated into a roomful of people, at least it seemed so at first, who had just subsided into quiet because some one was going to play.
Molly was about to retreat in great confusion when Miss Grace Green seized one hand and Mary Stewart the other. Judith came forward with a show of extreme cordiality and Richard Blount left the piano and actually ran the full length of the room, exclaiming:
“It’s Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky!”
Molly knew she was breaking into a party, but there was nothing to do but make a call of a few minutes and then take her leave as gracefully as possible under the circumstances.
Professor Edwin Green had also shaken her by the hand warmly, and pushing up a chair had insisted on her sitting down. They had all drawn their chairs around her in a semicircle, and Richard Blount had brought over the piano stool and placed it directly in front of her so that he could look straight at her.
In fact, here sat the little freshman, blushing crimson and painfully embarrassed, enthroned in a large armchair, and gathered around her was a circle of very delightful, not to say, admiring persons.
As one of these persons was Judith’s brother and two were her near cousins, Molly thought she could explain their excessive cordiality. They knew the story of the ring and they were anxious to make amends.
She recalled, with a furtive inner smile, the last time she was in those rooms, when, as a waitress, she had upset the coffee on the Professor’s knees. How glad she was that the painful experience was well over and forgotten by now. But she was glad about many things that evening. She was happy to see that Mary and Judith had made up their differences, and were once more friends. She knew that Mary, who had the kindest heart in the world, could never stay angry long.
“I didn’t know that Judith was giving a party,” Molly began, still very much embarrassed. “I just dropped in to say good-bye because I am leaving to-morrow morning.”
“To-morrow morning?” repeated Richard Blount. “Wasn’t it lucky for me you happened in to-night. I had expected to call on you to-morrow afternoon, and think how disappointed I should have been to have found the nest empty and the bird flown.”
“So you are really off to-morrow?” broke in Professor Green. “I am so sorry. I was going to ask you to have tea in the Cloisters with my sister and me in the afternoon.”
Again Molly smiled to herself. Tea in the Cloisters, with a distinguished professor and his charming sister! Only nine months before she had been a lonely, shivering little waif of a freshman locked in the Cloisters. The words of the sophomore “croak” came back to her:
“I am sorry that my ticket is bought and my berth engaged, and the expressman coming for my trunk to-morrow at nine,” she said. “If all those things were not so, I should love to drink soup——” she stopped and flushed a deep red.
What absurd trick of the mind had made her say “soup”? “I mean tea,” she went on hastily, hoping no one had heard the break.
Miss Green was talking with Mary Stewart. Richard Blount was twirling on the piano stool, his hands deep in his pockets, and Judith was engaged at a side table in pouring lemonade into glasses.
There was a twinkle of amusement in the Professor’s brown eyes, and he gave Molly a delightful smile.
“I must be going,” she said anxiously, rising.
“Not till you’ve had a glass of lemonade, for I made it myself,” said Richard, gallantly handing her one on a plate.
Molly looked doubtfully toward Judith.
“I don’t want to be like that young man in the rhyme,” she said.
Everybody laughed, and Judith suddenly becoming a model hostess, exclaimed:
“Indeed, you must stay, Molly, and have some lemonade. Richard didn’t make it at all. He only squeezed the lemons.”
Molly, therefore, remained and had a beautiful time, and when she really did take her departure the entire party, including Judith, escorted her across the moonlit campus to the door of Queen’s. But Molly was still certain that it was the ring episode and nothing else that made them all so polite and attentive.
And so she informed Nance and Judy that night as she unlocked her trunk for the third time in ten minutes to stuff in some overlooked belonging.
But Judy sniffed the air and exclaimed:
“Ring, nothing! It’s popularity!”
Molly smiled and went to bed, feeling that her last day at Wellington had been a decided improvement on the first one.
The next morning Queen’s Cottage was a pandemonium of trunks and bags and excited young women, rushing up and down the halls. Cries could be heard from every room in the house of:
“The laundress hasn’t brought my shirtwaists! Perfidious woman!”
“The expressman’s here!”
“Is your trunk strapped?”
“I’ve got to sleep in an upper berth.”
“Don’t forget to write me.”
“Where are you to be this summer?”
“I can’t get this top down and the trunk man’s waiting!”
“Oh, dear, do hurry! We’ll miss the bus!”
“Young ladies, the bus is coming,” called the voice of Mrs. Markham from the front door.
And then, with a fluttering of handkerchiefs and many a last call of “good-bye,” the bus-load of girls moved sedately down the avenue.
Molly, looking back at the twin gray towers of Wellington, understood why Frances Andrews wanted so much to return.
“How glad I am to be only a sophomore,” she cried. “I shall have three more years at Wellington!”
THE END.
Transcriber’s Note: Besides some minor printer’s errors the following correction has been made: on page 172 “Professor” has been changed to “President” (the doctor at one side, the President at the other). Otherwise the original has been preserved, including inconsistent spelling and hyphenation.