"KEEP OUT"
Hope College was founded in 1871. This date was graven on the corner
stone, which the Dean had been careful to show Kit, telling her at the
same time how the first settlers through the middle Northwest followed the
customs of the Puritans and Cavaliers.
"A church, a schoolhouse for every clearing, and a college before the
county court-house."
It seemed queer to Kit to think of Hope College as being any kind of an
historic pile, but Rex had assured her anything that dated before Custer
was ancient history, and if you wanted to get almost prehistoric, you went
back to Lewis and Clarke, and the Jesuit explorers.
"Why, back at Gilead," Kit told him, "even the mounting stone at Cousin
Roxy's had 1721 on it."
The college was built of gray field stone covered with climbing woodbine
and Virginia creeper, and it dominated the little town. There were five
buildings in the campus group, the main building, laboratory, library and
gymnasium, boys' dormitory, and chapel.
Kit never forgot the first morning when the classes met in Assembly Hall,
and the Dean addressed them on the work and aims of the coming year. For
the life of her, she could not keep her mind on all he was saying or the
solemnity of the moment, because, just at the very last minute when the
chapel chimes stopped ringing, Marcelle Beaubien entered through the dark
green swinging doors at the back of the big, crowded hall. It seemed as
though every one's eyes were watching the platform, but Kit saw the
slender, silent figure standing there alone. She was dressed in black, a
thin black lawn, with collar and cuffs of dark red linen, and her heavy
brown hair was braided in two long plaits down her back. She waited there,
it seemed to Kit, expectant on the threshold of opportunity, not knowing
which way to go, and without a friendly hand extended to her in welcome or
guidance.
Norma Riggs, who sat next to Kit, glanced back to see what had attracted
her attention, and made a funny little deprecating sound with her mouth.
"I never thought she'd have the nerve to really do it," she whispered.
"Isn't she odd?"
A quick impulsive wave of indignation swept over Kit, and she rose from
her seat, passing straight down the aisle without even being aware of the
curious glances which followed her. She took Marcelle by storm.
"You're in my class, aren't you?" she whispered quickly. "It's right over
here, and there's a seat beside me. I don't know any one either, and I'm
so glad to see you, so I'll have some one to talk to."
Marcelle never answered, but smiled with a quick flash of appreciation,
the smile which always seemed to illumine her rather grave face. She
followed Kit back to the latter's seat, and Norma exchanged glances with
her right-hand neighbor, Amy Parker. Kit was altogether too new to
realize just exactly what she had done. Being the Dean's grandniece, she
considered herself unconsciously a privileged person. As a matter of
course, Miss Daphne had accompanied her that morning, and introduced her
to four or five girls in the sophomore "prep" class, who came from the
representative best families of the town. Also, as a matter of course, she
had been welcomed as one of them, but Kit, with her democratic notions,
never even realized that she occupied one of the seats of the mighty, in a
circle of the favored few, and that she had smashed all tradition by
introducing into that circle a Beaubien. In fact, even if she had known,
she would probably have been thoroughly indignant at any such spirit among
the girls themselves.
Jean and Helen were the natural-born aristocrats in the family, Kit always
said. They loved to feel themselves aloof and not part of the populace.
"The sedan chair and palanquin for both of you," Kit had been wont to say,
scornfully, "but give me a good horse and a wide trail, or if I can't
have the horse, I'll hike."
And here she loved to quote Stevenson's "Vagabond" to them.
"Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
"Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above,
And the road below me."
The whole morning was taken up with the assigning of students to classes.
Kit loved the curious bustle and excitement of it all. It was so different
from the small high school back home, and there were many more boys and
girls than she had expected to see. Almost, as she passed from room to
room, through the different buildings, she wished she were staying right
there as a year pupil. Amy introduced her to her closest friend, Peggy
Barrows, a girl from South Dakota, who took them up to her quarters in
one of the dormitories.
"Dear me," Kit said, looking around her speculatively. "I wish I were
going to live here. Peggy, you'll have to entertain us often. It's so kind
of solitary and restful, isn't it, up here?"
"Solitary," scoffed Peggy. "I've been here four days getting settled, and
you might just as well call the side show of a circus solitary. There
isn't even the ghost of privacy. I'm mobbed every time I try to sit and
meditate."
"Who wants to meditate, anyway?" asked Amy. "Don't you feel 'the rushing
torrent of ambition's flood sweeping away the barriers' and--what else did
the Dean say?"
"Log jam," Kit put in. "That's what he meant, log jam of laziness. Have
you discovered all these shelves in your wardrobe? I'd take off those
doors and hang lovely velvety curtains in front and make a bookcase out of
it."
"Will you gaze upon her Chinese tea cupboard," exclaimed Norma, standing
before the high black box, with one middle shelf, and little green and
gold curtains hung before the tea set. "Where did you purloin that, Peg?"
"Peter gave it to me for fifty cents. It used to be a dumb waiter, and I
painted it black myself. Isn't it beautiful? Have you seen Charity's room?
Wait." Peggy darted out of her door and across the hall. On the door
opposite a card bore the legend in large black letters:
"KEEP OUT."
"STUDY HOUR."
"That's perfectly ridiculous," she said, tapping just the same. "Nobody's
studying to-day. Let us in, Charity."
A sound of scraping over the floor, and muffled giggles came to the
waiting ones in the hall, then the door was thrown wide, and Kit caught
her first glimpse of Charity Parks, the best loved girl at Hope. She was
about seventeen, but a short, roly-poly type, with curly rumpled hair and
gray eyes that never seemed to keep from mirth. There were five other
girls with her, and spread over the couch, chairs, and table were writing
material and papers.
"We're frightfully busy, girls," Charity said, discouragingly. "What do
you want?"
"Just to look at your room. Isn't it inspiring, Kit? This is Kit Robbins,
Charity."
"Hope you'll like it at Hope." Charity gave Kit her hand with a warm grip.
"I'm from the east, too, only not so far as you are, but we think
Pennsylvania's east, out here. How do you like the decoration?"
Kit liked it, and said so emphatically. The room was in Chinese blue and
black, tea table, chiffonier and two chairs painted a dull black, and the
walls tinted a soft deep gray blue.
"I hunted all over Chicago for Chinese things, and I found a few. Isn't
this a celestial rose jar? I think it's big enough for a pot of basil. Who
was the gentle poet that sang of the lady who buried her fond lover's head
in a flower pot and watered it with her tears?"
"Bet you use it for orange punch before the year is up," Peggy laughed.
"Oh, Kit, she makes wonderful fruit punch. Each guest brings her own
favorite fruit, then Charity mashes them all together and it's delicious."
"I wish I stayed here all the time," Kit exclaimed. "You miss the fun,
being a day student, don't you?"
"Never mind, child," Charity told her consolingly, "we will have some
special daylight celebrations all for you. Now clear out, girls, because
I'm dying to lay out the first edition schedule."
"Charity's editor of the '_Glamour_,'" Peg said. "The boys call it the
'_Clamour_,' but we don't mind. It used to be the '_Gleam_,' but we
thought 'Glamour' carried more intensity with it. Kit's going to dash off
some little simple trifle in spare moments for us, aren't you? Amy writes
poetry, free verse. Show them that bit you made up in Assembly."
Amy took out a sheet of copy paper from her Ancient History, and read
aloud:
"Oh, wayward maid,
Hast strayed
Too far from native strand.
Lost in a maze, the savage gaze
Becomes a frightened, spellbound gaze,
By fond ambition fanned."
"Sounds just like Pope, doesn't it?" said Kit. "I like that last line, 'by
fond ambition fanned.'"
"Seek not the sacred hall of fame,
Cling to thy simple life,
On Hope's high banner, Beaubien,
Shall never, never----"
But Kit interrupted pointblank. She was sitting up very straight on the
divan, with a certain expression around her mouth, and a very steady
purposeful look in her eyes, which even Jean at home paid attention to.
"Just a minute," she said, quickly. "Do you mean Marcelle Beaubien?
Because if you do, I don't think that's fair."