A LITTLE SOCIAL CLIMBER
The black curly head of the sobbing intruder slowly raised itself from
her arms at Leslie’s inquiry. The expression of the round, tear-stained
face she turned toward Leslie was a mixture of shame, defiance and
appeal.
“I know I’ve no business to be here,” she quavered half apologetically.
“I mean like this.” Steadying her voice, she went on with: “I knocked on
your door. It was open a little. When I knocked it opened wider. Then I
saw there was no one in here. I thought perhaps you’d be back soon, and
wouldn’t mind if I waited for you. I just had to see you I feel so-o
ba-d-d.” The words ended in a mournful child-like wail. The girl’s black
curly head went down again upon her arms.
“Don’t cry. Buck up, and get up,” advised Leslie tersely. “Have a chair,
then go ahead and spill your troubles.” She already had a shrewd idea of
the nature of Jewel Marie Ogden’s business with her.
She waited until the downcast freshman had risen from the floor, to
slump dejectedly into the depths of a broad-armed wicker chair, then she
seated herself in a chair directly opposite that of the other girl.
“Now, go ahead,” she directed cheerfully. “I’m listening.”
“I can’t find a room, or even half a room, on the campus,” burst out
little Miss Ogden. “Miss Remson told me to go tomorrow to see the
managers of the other campus houses, but I went tonight. I couldn’t bear
to wait till tomorrow. I was afraid I might miss the chance of getting a
room. It was no use.” She shook a disconsolate head. “None of them had a
single vacancy. I don’t want to leave—Hamilton—I—want—to—” she faltered,
her red lips again beginning to quiver.
“Why don’t you try one of the boarding houses off the campus?” Leslie
had decided that there was no use in reminding the downcast freshman
that she alone was responsible for her present disappointment. “I know
of two that are up to the campus houses in excellence. The dormitory has
even better accommodations than the campus houses, but I’ll say it is
probably full to overflowing.”
“No, no,” came the positive answer, “I must be on the campus, or else go
away from here. I hate the very thought of a dormitory. Nothing—I mean,
not for me,” the little girl hastily objected.
Leslie noted the hasty emendation with a slight smile. She suspected
that slang came far easier to Miss Ogden than the “side” she had put on
at the station.
“I have a reason, a very strong reason, for wishing to live on the
campus,” Miss Ogden began again eagerly, “I can’t bear to give up hope.
I came to your room to ask you if you think there’d be any chance for me
with the senior you told me about. Is she surely going to take a
roommate?”
“Yes I know positively, because she is my pal.”
“Then why don’t you and she room together?” The freshman’s face
brightened. “If you should, then maybe the other girl and I could—”
“No, you couldn’t,” Leslie interrupted patiently. “Doris Monroe, the
senior I mentioned to you, is very fond of the girl she’s going to room
with. I like rooming alone. There; you have it.” Leslie made an
explanatory motion of the hand. She suspected the little girl of having
designs upon her room, but of lacking the final spurt of temerity to ask
outright again for a half of it.
“I guess I’d best go.” Miss Ogden half rose from the chair. Then she
plumped down upon it again, and began to cry. “I—wouldn’t you, couldn’t
you—Oh, I know you’ll—hate me—for being so—so—nervy, but—if you’d only
take—me—as a—a—roommate for—for a while, maybe I might be able to
find—another room on the campus—later. Truly, I’d try—not—to be a
bother, and to—to—find another room as soon as I—could,” the tearful
pleader wound up with a long sobbing gurgle.
Leslie stared at her uninvited visitor, her immobile features giving no
clue to her racing thoughts. She was tempted to comment with a touch of
good-natured satire: “No doubt about your nerve.” Immediately the
impulse died, and her brain took up seriously the problem she was
facing. Should she, or should she not, consider this stranger’s welfare,
rather than her own? A roommate would certainly not add to her
happiness. Fond as she was of Doris, they got along much better in
separate rooms. Her own fault. Leslie refused to blame Doris for what
she was wont satirically to style as “Cairns’ moods and tenses.”
“You can’t see me, at all, can you?” Hurt pride at length steadied the
freshman’s tone. She pulled herself together and rose with a kind of
hopeless finality that caused Leslie a pang of self-reproach.
“No; I don’t,” she answered with blunt honesty, “not yet, but I’m
considering you as a roommate. Don’t say a word.” She held up an
arresting hand. “Just sit tight. Let me think things out.”
“Oh-h-h I—” Miss Ogden subsided meekly, her black eyes fixed hopefully
upon Leslie.
Leslie began a thoughtful survey of the room, her glance roving from one
to another of its luxurious appointments. “The chaise longue will have
to go. I’ll give it to Miss Remson,” was her mental decision. “She’ll
have to have a day bed like mine, and a chiffonier. I won’t give up my
color scheme, though I _am_ giving up half my room. Good-bye to a happy
life. Hard luck, Cairns II. The dress closet’s large, thank goodness. I
can get along with half of it. We can use the same dressing table. Hope
she hasn’t the mirror habit.” Aloud she said: “I’ve considered. You may
come in with me, if you like. I’ll warn you, beforehand, I’m not always
sociable. I like to be let alone.”
“I won’t bother you a bit; truly I won’t. And you’re sure you want—I
mean, you’re willing I should come?” The other girl’s downcast features
had lost their doleful droop.
“No; I’m not willing—yet, but I have a heart.” Leslie’s slow smile
appeared briefly. “We’ll let it go at that. I’ll speak to Miss Remson
tomorrow about having a couch bed brought in here, temporarily, for
you.” She went on to explain her plan for the re-arrangement of the
room.
“I’ll pay for whatever furniture you are going to buy on my account,”
instantly proposed the freshman. “I have lots of money. I’d love to do
it.”
Leslie shook her head, “No; leave that part to me. I have my own reasons
for asking you to do so. Perhaps, some day, I may ask you to make me a
promise on that very account.”
“I’ll promise now to do whatever you may ask me to do in the time to
come.” There was evident gratitude in the earnestly-spoken reply.
Leslie eyed the little girl with new interest. There seemed to be more
to Jewel Marie that might be likable than had at first appeared on the
surface. “Thank you,” she said simply.
“There’s something I’d like to tell you. I’d not care to have anyone
else on the campus know it, though. It’s about myself—a secret. No one
at Warburton ever found it out—I mean—” came a pause. The freshman’s
black eyes were again focussed upon Leslie with solemn intensity.
Leila’s jesting Celtic protest, “Tell me nothing,” hovered behind
Leslie’s lips. She did not utter it, instead waited in silence for her
visitor to continue at will.
“I believe I can trust you with my secret,” the girl went on hurriedly.
“It seems necessary for me to tell you. You see, you don’t understand
me, at all. I tried to put on airs at the station today, because—I’m not
like that, really I—” Again she came to an uncertain pause. “Would you
mind if I told you about myself?” She was watching Leslie rather
timidly, divining the latter’s unflattering lack of curiosity regarding
her affairs.
“No.” Leslie’s “No” was kindly.
“But you are not very keen about it, are you?” persisted the freshman.
“Forget it,” was the succinct advice. “Go ahead with your story.”
“Well,” the little girl drew a long breath, “it’s like this. Until I
went to Warburton prep last year, I’d always lived a different life from
other girls. At the station I spoke of Warburton as though I’d started
there as a freshman. I hadn’t. I’d never been in any other school. I’d
always had a governess. I—I’m a child of the circus.”
“What?” Leslie straightened with a sudden interested jerk.
“The child of a circus,” Jewel Marie repeated. “I certainly gave you a
jolt that time, now didn’t I?” She broke into a little laugh.
“Yes. You sound interesting. Go on,” Leslie encouraged.
“Have you ever heard of ‘Chiquita,’ the child trapeze wonder?”
“Let me think. Have I?” Leslie considered for a moment. “No,” she
returned, “I haven’t. I never cared much about circuses, even as a
child. With what circus did you travel?”
“One called ‘Fernando’s Mammoth Shows.’ That was a long time ago when I
was six years old. I’m nineteen now. My father, Harvey Ogden, owned the
show, in partnership with the ringmaster, Fernando de Castro, a Spanish
Mexican. They used his name for the circus because they liked it better
than Ogden for circus purposes. My mother was Spanish. She was a star
trapeze performer. She and my father were married when she was
seventeen.”
Now started on the story she had longed to confide to Leslie the
narrator spoke in short dramatic sentences. “I began working in the
ring, doing acrobatic stunts when I was seven. By the time I was ten I
was doing a trapeze act with my mother. We showed mostly in Mexico, and
in the southern part of the U. S. When I was eleven we were caught in a
flood. We were showing in a town along the Mississippi River when the
flood came. It cleaned out the circus. My father was drowned. My mother
was saved, but she contracted pneumonia, and died two weeks later in a
hospital. Fernando and his wife, Fleurette, a bareback rider, and I were
up in the town shopping when the flood came. The circus lot was near the
river and a good deal lower down than the rest of the town. Twenty-two
of our people, besides my father, were drowned. It was terrible.”
“It must have been.” Leslie had assumed her characteristic pose of elbow
on chair, chin in hand. She was leaning forward a trifle, a sure
indication of her sympathetic interest.
“Nandy, that’s what I always called him, and Fleurette and I went to
Mexico City after the flood. My father and mother had left me quite a
lot of money, and Nandy had himself appointed as my guardian. It was up
to Nandy and Fleurette to find another engagement, for Nandy had put
most of his money into the circus, and lost it through the flood. I
wanted to work, too, but none of us cared about going back again to
circus life. My parents had wished me to become well-educated. Finally
Nandy thought out a trapeze act for Fleurette and me. She was fine on
the trapeze, too, and we went into vaudeville, with Nandy as manager. We
toured the U. S. for three years, and made plenty of money, for we were
headliners. After that we went to Europe and Nandy featured me as ‘La
Petite Oiseau.’ We stayed in Europe, working, until last year. During
all that time I had a tutor, an English woman, Miss Jaffrey. She was an
awful frump, but she knew how to tutor. She had a sister who was
teaching French at Warburton prep. She arranged for me to go to school
there, without letting the dean know I was a professional. Nandy said it
wouldn’t do to let it be known at school that I was a trapeze performer.
While I was at Warburton, Nandy took a job as manager of a vaudeville
house in Paris. Fleurette grew too stout for fast trapeze work so she
quit the business. Nandy fixed me up a dandy solo act and I worked, off
and on, last summer at the Paris house he was managing.
“I had to carry out my father’s and mother’s wishes about going to
college, so I wrote to half a dozen colleges for bulletins. I picked
Hamilton College, but I lost the bulletin before I’d more than hardly
glanced at it. If Jaffrey’d been with me she’d have written to Hamilton
and arranged everything for me, but she left me when I went to
Warburton. I meant to write for another bulletin, but I hate to write
letters, so I let it go, thinking it would probably be as easy to get a
room on the campus as it would be to get one in a hotel. I remembered
something about Hamilton Hall and made the mistake of taking it for a
campus house. Now you understand what an idiot I was to make such a
silly mistake,” the little girl ended ruefully.
“I’m understanding one thing,” Leslie leaned forward, one hand extended,
“you’re a clever kid. You needn’t be ashamed of letting it be known on
the campus that you are a professional. Why keep it a secret?”
“I’d rather no one here, except you, knew it,” the other girl exclaimed
in quick alarm. “You must promise me you won’t tell anyone what I’ve
told you—my story in confidence. Promise me—”
“Don’t worry. You may rest assured no one will ever learn it from me,”
Leslie interrupted. “I give you my word. There’ll be no come-back.”
“Thank you. I _know_ I can trust you.” Alarm slowly faded from the
freshman’s worried features. “There’s no disgrace in having been a
circus performer,” she went on after a moment’s hesitation, her tone
defensive. “The trouble is this. Circus folks are mostly misunderstood
by the public at large. They aren’t low and ignorant as is too often
supposed, the performers, I mean. They are sober, quiet, good-living
people who are obliged to take the best possible care of themselves so
as always to be in good physical trim for their work, which is generally
dangerous. I’m not ashamed of my circus life, or of my circus friends.
It’s not that.” She shook her black head almost vehemently. “It’s only
that I’ve said good-bye to that life. I shall never again do
professional trapeze work. Entering Hamilton is the beginning of my new
life. I want to be like the girls are who come from aristocratic
families. I’m not. I understood that much soon after I’d entered
Warburton. That was hot air, most of what I said at the
station—pretending I was somebody at Warburton. I—I wasn’t. I knew only
a few girls—none of them belonged to the toppo social gang that ran
things there.”
A bright flush mantled the little girl’s round cheeks as she made this
confession. “I don’t want to be a snob—never that, but I’d love to be
what the circus crowd call ‘a fine lady.’ I’d love to have poise and
distinction; an air, you know.” She crested her black head in an
unconscious imitation of her idea of aristocracy. “_You_ are like that.
So are those two girls who were with you at the station. The little girl
was so sweet, and had such lovely manners. I’m going to try to be like
her.”
“Don’t try to be like anyone but yourself,” Leslie advised emphatically.
“Make your own personality count. I don’t agree with you about keeping
your circus life a secret. Hamilton used to be a snob shop, but not now.
Cleverness counts for more than money here. You’re an artist in your
line. The girls would go crazy over your trapeze stunt, and you, if they
knew about you.” Leslie already had a managerial eye upon the little
girl for a vaudeville show she and Leila were in process of planning as
a first offering at the Leila Harper Playhouse.
“No, no.” There was active distress in the refusal. “It wouldn’t do.
Girls are queer. They might pretend to admire me here on the campus,
then turn around and try to down me because I’d been with a circus.”
“The upper class students wouldn’t—”
“But I’m a freshman,” cut in Miss Ogden, “and I want to stand well with
my own class. It might make a great difference. I saw that crowd of
freshmen who came to the Hall this evening. They looked awfully toppo. I
shouldn’t care to have them know about my circus life. I’d love to be
friends with _them_. They certainly showed class.”
A great light suddenly burst upon Leslie. So that was the way things
were with Jewel Marie. There was nothing she felt privileged to offer in
the way of advice that the socially-ambitious freshman might care to
hear. She would have to discover for herself that all was not gold that
glittered.
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