TIA
“Who mended the rip in my glove?” Jacquette demanded, as she stood in
her coat and hat, ready to start for school. “Tia, you angel! Stop
hiding behind that paper!”
A pair of brown eyes laughed over the top of the newspaper. Then a
slight woman in a dark red morning gown, emerged into sight. “I do feel
guilty,” she admitted, roguishly. “I ought to have trained you so well
that you’d have mended it yourself.”
“Oh, I think you’ve done pretty well, considering the material you had
to work on,” was the light-hearted answer, and Jacquette stopped to
rearrange her hat before the mantel mirror as she spoke. “You don’t
know how afraid I was all day yesterday that some of the sorority
girls would call me to account for that glove! They’re frightfully
particular about such things.”
“Do they mind little things like a button missing from a shoe?” Aunt
Sula asked, demurely. “If they do, I think I’ll petition them to labour
with someone I know.”
“Oh, dear, does that show? I didn’t think it could with this long
dress. It seems to me I can’t get time to do the things I ought to.”
Two months of school had gone, and Jacquette was living, with her
grandfather and Aunt Sula, in a comfortable little home only a few
blocks from Malcolm Granville’s large one. The pearl-set blue and gold
pin, worn over her heart, proclaimed that she had been initiated into
her sorority, and her beautiful hair, tucked up in the back of her
neck, and thoroughly hidden by the conventional big bow, was witness
to the fact that the Sigma Pi girls considered long, curly braids too
childish.
Not only had all the dresses brought from Brookdale been lengthened,
but Aunt Fannie, prompted by Uncle Mac’s fondness for his pretty niece,
had amused herself by buying several new gowns for her, so that Aunt
Sula, whose loving interest had gone into every garment Jacquette had
worn since she was a tiny girl, felt an odd pang as she gazed after the
smart young woman who started for school, morning after morning, in
unfamiliar costumes.
Sula Granville had not married, but her heart was a mother heart, and
the love she felt for this child of her only sister was mother love.
Ever since she came to Channing, she had been missing Jacquette’s sunny
presence about the house, missing the spirit of helpful comradeship
which she had grown to depend on in the Brookdale home, but, at the
same time, she had realised that Jacquette was breathlessly busy from
eight in the morning, when she started for high school, until ten and
after, every night, and the more she studied the condition, the more
helpless she found herself in coping with it.
“I know how full your time is,” she sympathised, now; “couldn’t you
plan to come home right after school, to-day, and do some of the
left-overs?”
“Sorority meeting, Tia.”
“I thought that was last Monday.”
“That was a special. This is the regular one, and it’s a matter
of loyalty to go. We have to pay a fine if we’re not there. And,
to-morrow, Tia, there’ll be rush doings--a spread, you know--that will
last till dinner time. And oh, by the way, I want Molly to iron my lace
waist so that I can wear it to-morrow. The Kappa Delts are working
awfully hard to get this girl we’re after, and it’s understood that
we’re to sport up when we give a spread, so the new girls will get the
impression that Sigma Pi is the nicest bunch there is.”
“Oh! A girl chooses her sorority by the way its members dress, does
she?”
“Tia, that’s teasing! First impressions do count, you know.”
“I see. Well, this begins like a gay week. See what the postman
brought, just now. Uncle Mac has sent us tickets for the concert,
Wednesday afternoon, because he noticed that the orchestra was going to
play some of the Grieg music you worked at so hard, last year. Wasn’t
he good?”
A worried frown puckered Jacquette’s forehead. “It was dear of him,”
she said. “But we Sigma Pi girls have promised to go up and work in the
new sorority rooms after school, Wednesday and Thursday both. There are
pillows to make and curtains to hem and no end of things to do.”
“Oh! Well, we can change the tickets to Friday.”
“That won’t do either.” Jacquette looked a little shame-faced as she
said it. “Friday afternoon we all have to sew on the new robes we are
making for the initiation, and Saturday, the initiation takes all
day, you know. So there it is, every afternoon this week taken, and
Wednesday night Quis wants to bring a Beta Sig friend of his over here,
and then I told the girls I’d make my pillow for the sorority rooms
before Saturday. That will take at least two evenings, and you know,
Tia, I have to keep a _little_ time for studying!”
The apologetic tone of this last statement was too much for Aunt Sula.
“Have to keep time for studying besides doing all that sorority work?”
she asked, with an air of gentle surprise.
Jacquette pouted, and then laughed. “You make me think of Mademoiselle!
Yesterday, there was an announcement of a basket-ball game on the
blackboard, and down at the foot it said, ‘Come, girls, and help us
yell!’ She looked at it; then she said, in her sweet, soft voice.
‘Come--girls--and help us--_yell!_ So refined! So suggestive of a lady!
Come--girls--and help us--_yell!_’ Not another word, and wasn’t I glad
I hadn’t written it! But that gentle sarcasm belongs to her. It doesn’t
to you, Tia.”
“Doesn’t it?” Aunt Sula leaned forward and took her girl’s hands in
both of hers. “Then I’ll say it in my own way. Jacquette, I am making
up my mind that I’m sorry you joined the sorority.”
“Oh, you mustn’t speak like that to me, Tia! It’s disloyalty to Sigma
Pi to listen to it. Say anything you want to about me, but I can’t
let you talk against my sorority. There’s Louise!” Jacquette added,
brightening suddenly, as the Sigma Pi whistle sounded outside. “I’ll
have to go, dearest. Good-bye.” And off she flew.
“Hurry!” Louise called, as Jacquette came down the steps. “Quis was
here, but he couldn’t wait. The boys told him there were things doing
over at school.”
“What kind of things?” Jacquette asked, half running to keep up.
“Oh, the senior boys are up to something again. You know last week
they painted those big, white ‘Naughty-eights’ all over the side-walks
and the juniors worked all night, I guess, scrubbing them off with
turpentine, and putting ‘Naughty-nines’ in their place. Quis wanted to
drop it, then. He’s class president, you know, and wants to keep things
dignified, but some of the boys wouldn’t stop, and----”
“Look there!” Jacquette exclaimed, suddenly, as, from two blocks away,
both girls beheld a monster Indian in war-paint and feathers, limply
hanging by his neck to the flagstaff on the topmost peak of the school
building. A placard adorned his chest, bearing, in huge letters, the
legend, “’09.”
“That’s what they’ve done! Hanged the junior class in effigy. But how
did they ever get it up there?”
As the girls neared the school, a cluster of their Sigma Pi sisters
opened almost silently to receive them. Everybody was crowding around
Mr. Branch, the principal, to hear what he was saying. Marquis, as
class president, had just disavowed all knowledge of the prank.
“That hung there all day yesterday, to amuse people on their way to
church,” said Mr. Branch in a tone of annoyance. “It’s a break-neck
climb, but the one who put it up knows how to get it down!”
A silence fell.
“Who did it?” he challenged, after a pause, and then a boy who had just
come racing down the street, elbowed his way through the crowd, and
took off his hat to the principal.
“I did, sir,” he said.
Mr. Branch looked into the frank, sunburned face. “You ought to be
past such foolishness, Drake,” he replied, gravely, but the sternness
had suddenly gone from his voice. “You’re a senior, this year,
remember. I shall expect you to take it down at the noon hour.”
“Who is that boy, Louise?” Jacquette asked, eagerly, as Mr. Branch
strode into the building and the pupils went trooping after.
“That’s Bobs Drake, the captain of the football team and idol of the
school. Didn’t you notice Mr. Branch when he looked at him? That’s the
way with all the teachers. They can’t be cross with Bobs more than a
minute at a time.”
“Shouldn’t think they could! He’s splendid. But how is he ever going to
bring that Indian down?”
“We’ll see how at noon. I’ll wait for you at this door,” said Louise,
as they parted.
Promptly at twelve, the two girls hurried out, just in time to see
Bobs Drake throwing off his coat and buttoning his blue sweater close.
The ring of boys and girls around him was growing thicker every minute.
“I know where there’s a ladder, Bobs,” some one volunteered.
“No, thank you,” said Bobs, cheerfully, and, without an instant’s
hesitation, he began shinning up an oak tree, whose branches grazed
the school windows. From a perch in that, he swung himself lightly
to an addition which leaned against the main building, and, safely
landed there, made a low bow to the admiring crowd now gathered. After
that, by the aid of window ledges and cornices, he clambered to the
many-gabled roof and began to climb--nimbly, cautiously.
The late October wind crackled with a brittle sound through the
yellow-brown leaves of the oaks. It flapped sharply at the girls’
gowns, as they stood there with the cold autumn sunlight shining down
on their upturned faces. Suddenly, a gust of it snatched Bobs’s cap
from his head, and swept it a block away before the best runners in
Marston could capture it, but sure-footed Bobs, undisturbed, stood
up on the highest gable, in the midst of an exultant shout from his
spectators, and calmly watched the race to the end, before he knelt
again, and crept carefully, slowly, along the last ridge-pole, straight
to the Indian’s side!
“’Rah for Bobs! Bobs! Bobs! Bobs!” came from below, and then a silence
fell while everyone watched to see what he would do next. Before they
had seen, it was done. Whipping a ball of heavy twine from his pocket,
Bobs had tied one end around the Indian’s neck, had cut the cords which
bound him to the flag-staff, and was swiftly lowering him down the
front of the building.
With a whoop, seniors and juniors closed upon the helpless dummy, but,
in the end, the seniors triumphed, and bore the abject Indian, torn
limb from limb, to a vacant field near by, where they promptly set fire
to him.
It was a tame cremation, though, with few spectators, for all the
girls and most of the boys had lingered to see that Bobs got safely
down. Everyone realised that there was actual peril in the feat he
had undertaken so gaily, and each danger point passed in the downward
climb brought forth a noisier cheering. Once he missed his footing
and slipped, the length of his body, down the steep roof. The crowd
held its breath, but he stopped himself somehow, and struggled back to
safety, amid a tremendous yelling. At last, leaping down to the lowest
roof, he caught a branch of the tree, went hand over hand into the
boughs, and slid down the trunk to the ground, where he found himself
looking straight into the rosy face of a girl with golden hair, who
was clapping her hands and shouting “Hurrah!” with the best of them.
Bobs had never seen her until that minute, but, involuntarily, his hand
went to his capless head. “Thanks, I’m sure!” he said, with a merry
twinkle. Then his admirers closed around him and carried him off to the
lunch-room.
“What was that he said to you, Jack?” asked a resentful voice over her
shoulder.
“Oh, Quis, are you there? He said ‘Thanks,’ that was all. I don’t know
him, you see. Wasn’t it great?”
“Great foolishness, yes! Don’t you know you mustn’t let fellows
speak to you until they’ve been introduced?” Marquis answered, in
an undertone, and Jacquette, turning away with the girls, felt,
suddenly, that the time might come when she should outgrow her cousin’s
leading-strings.
The week slipped away, after that, and Saturday came. The Sigma Pi
initiation, fixed for that day, was to take place at Nell Brewster’s,
but early in the forenoon, two girls came down the street, leading
a third, who was blindfolded, and deposited her in the laundry at
Jacquette’s home, without a word to anyone. Jacquette had already gone
over to Nell’s and presumably had offered the use of her house to the
sorority, for, a little later, Miss Granville found another strange
girl in the pantry, taking a double handful of cookies out of the jar,
and, still later, two more walked into the front door, without greeting
of any sort, seated themselves in the living-room, and staid there,
silent, for an hour.
Aunt Sula had some difficulty in explaining these “initiation stunts”
to her courtly old father, especially after he had tried in vain to
make polite conversation with the two girls who had been rendered deaf
and dumb by their vow of silence.
“Nothing excuses such rudeness, daughter,” he remonstrated, shaking his
silvery head. “I don’t like this sorosis Jacquette is in.”
“Sorority, father,” Miss Granville prompted, with a smile.
“Call it what you will; it’s just as bad,” he persisted. “Those girls
are too young to run such a society. They’ve proved it, to-day.”
At ten o’clock that evening, a telephone inquiry brought back from
Jacquette the word that the initiation was over, but refreshments
were not, and that a crowd of Beta Sigs, Quis among the number, had
discovered what was going on, and had broken into Nell’s house, and
insisted on being served with some of the goodies. “Oh, we’re having
such fun, Tia!” Jacquette concluded. “Don’t sit up for me, you and
grandpa. Quis will bring me home, and I’ll come as soon as I possibly
can.”
Old Mr. Granville went to rest, then, shaking his head over the change
since the good old days in the country when his daughters were young,
but Aunt Sula sat in her room and waited. It was after midnight when
she finally heard the careful click of the front door latch and the
creak of the stairs as a much-subdued girl crept up.
The feasting at Nell’s had lasted a little too long, and had been a
little too noisy. Before the party had dispersed, Mr. Brewster, a
blunt, outspoken man, had come down to the dining-room, where the boys
were pelting each other with cake, and had given them a piece of his
mind as to proper hours and fitting behaviour. Most of the girls had
cried; the boys had gone home insulted and angry; but, all the time,
deep in her heart, Jacquette had felt that Nell’s father had just cause
for his action, and now, as she laid off her wraps in her own room, she
owned to herself that she was ashamed of the Sigma Pi initiation.
Not since Brookdale had she needed, as she did at that minute, to talk
things over with Aunt Sula, and when she saw the light still burning at
the end of the hall, she went to the door, and peeped in.
Sula Granville, in a pale blue wrapper, sat before the fire brushing
out her long dark hair. She looked extremely girlish in the dim,
flickering light, but Jacquette was not thinking of this as she paused
in the doorway. Her heart was hungering for the sympathy which had
always been hers, at need, from the only mother she had ever known, and
she hesitated, now, because of a vague, unhappy feeling that something
had come between them. It was a relief, then, when Aunt Sula, looking
up, held out her hands without a word, and the next instant found
Jacquette on her knees with both arms round the blue wrapper.
Little by little the story of the evening came out, and, when she had
heard it all, Aunt Sula said, “Come down here, girlie, with your head
on my knee--the old Brookdale way.”
The tired girl slipped to the floor, and a grateful, mothered feeling
came to her as she felt a gentle hand smoothing her hair for a minute,
before Aunt Sula began:
“You told me once, Jacquette, that every girl who joined Sigma Pi was
allowed to except her mother, or guardian, when she took her pledge of
secrecy. Do you remember?”
“Y-yes,” came the doubtful answer. “The girls did say so before I
joined, but I’ve found out since that they won’t excuse your doing it
unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“And the result is, as you said the other day, that no outsider can
judge sororities quite fairly, because the best part is secret. Now, I
want to judge Sigma Pi fairly. I want you to tell me all the good and
beautiful things about it.”
There was a pause, while Jacquette thought this over. Then she
offered, tentatively:
“Surely you’ve noticed, Tia, how much more careful I am of my personal
appearance? That’s sorority influence.”
“Good, too, unless it leads you to spend more money than you can afford
on your wardrobe and to look down on the non-sorority girls who can’t
dress so well,” Aunt Sula agreed. “It has occurred to me, though, that
when this elaborate attention to dress crowds out time for the care of
one’s own bedroom, the sorority hasn’t taught quite daintiness enough.”
Jacquette looked guilty, but she went on, sturdily, “A sorority
encourages a spirit of sisterhood, Tia. We have to take vows to love
each other always, and help each other, and accept criticism from each
other without getting angry.”
“Sisterhood.” The echo was gentle. “What do you think, yourself,
Jacquette, of a sisterhood with twenty girls which makes you
unsisterly to all girls outside that clique?”
“Well, at least, it trains us to be loyal friends.”
“Perhaps; but if loyalty to Sigma Pi makes you disloyal to duty at home
or in school, isn’t there something wrong with it?”
Into Jacquette’s thoughts flashed the memory that two of her Sigma Pi
sisters had deliberately missed their afternoon recitations, the week
before, because they considered it necessary to take a girl they were
“rushing” to the matinee. “But, Tia,” she hurried on, defensively, “you
forget its effect on scholarship. We’re ashamed to fall below passing
mark, because our pin will be taken off if we do.”
Aunt Sula looked thoughtful. “I wonder if a sorority can help
scholarship while it uses up so many study hours?”
“Oh, it does! And then, it’s good social training for us, too.”
“Does it teach you to give the Sigma Pi whistle to a girl a block away,
when I’m walking and talking with you on the street?” Aunt Sula put in,
quizzically.
“No; but that whistle is the accepted way of hailing each other. All
the girls do it; haven’t you noticed? Here’s another good point,
though--a sorority interests nice girls in each other instead of their
having their heads full of boys. And then--well, isn’t that enough?”
“Not quite. Don’t you think that, as long as your pledges are forced
to do things which make them a nuisance to outsiders, you’re giving
outsiders reason to think you girls are too young and foolish to have
charge of a secret society?”
“You mean our making that girl steal cookies!” Jacquette dimpled, in
spite of herself, at the recollection.
“Yes; everything of that sort. And one more thing; I want to know,
positively that there is nothing in the Sigma Pi initiation that could
offend the delicacy of any sensitive, modest girl.”
Jacquette recalled a certain rite at which one of the pledges had
balked in the initiation the day before, and flushed uncomfortably.
Just then the bronze clock on the mantel struck one with a silvery
note. Aunt Sula looked up, as if answering.
“That’s so,” she said; “it’s too late. An initiation that takes all day
ought not to run into the night like this. Jacquette,” she concluded,
“I’ll make this bargain with you. I’ll be a friend to Sigma Pi, and
never criticise it except as I may suggest something when we are all
alone, if you’ll try your best to change these points I’ve spoken of.”
“Oh, Tia!” Jacquette protested, lifting her head. “You forget that I’m
one insignificant little freshman. The girls wouldn’t listen to me.”
“One insignificant little freshman with the courage of her convictions
can do something. I only ask you to try your best.”
The golden head dropped again, and the little clock ticked away minute
after minute while the soft light of the fire wavered over two still
figures. At last the tall girl stood up. “I’m going to try,” she said,
very gravely. “Give me your hand, Tia. Put your fingers this way. No,
this way. There. It would be wrong for me to tell this to anyone else
in the world outside of my sorority--and the girls might not understand
how it’s right for me to tell even you--but that’s the Sigma Pi grip on
our bargain! Good-night, darling.”