FEBRUARY RUSHING
Mademoiselle was a prophet. Her letter to Marquis brought back a prompt
reply, addressed to the principal of the Marston High School, and
confessing that the “Fool-killer,” though it had been executed in the
Beta Sigma fraternity house, was every stroke his work and entirely his
fault. He offered an apology to every teacher caricatured, both for
the personal affront and for his own error as regarded influence and
example, and explained that, when he had refused to answer Mr. Talbot
on the ground that it was dishonourable to tell tales, he had been led
by a desire to amuse his Beta Sigma brothers--not in the least by a
wish to turn suspicion on any other person. In fact, though he was
ashamed to confess it, he had not once thought of that as a consequence
of his act, until he had received Mademoiselle’s letter.
The communication was frank and manly; Marquis Granville was president
of the class which would be graduated from Marston in June; his record
as a student had been exceptionally brilliant up to this time; and he
was the son of a wealthy, influential citizen. One or all of these
reasons may have worked in his behalf. At any rate, when he came back
to school after the holidays, the matter had been hushed, and he and
Bobs were both found in their old places.
Meanwhile, the Christmas holiday had been a merry, busy time for
Jacquette. There had been numerous sorority engagements, the most
important of which was the annual luncheon, given at one of the
fashionable hotels for the entertainment of out-of-town chapters of
Sigma Pi; but she had firmly declined invitations to three alluring
fraternity dances, and had not only saved some hours for study, but had
gladdened the hearts of her grandfather and Aunt Sula by finding time
to show a little of the old Brookdale interest in the home Christmas
celebration.
She had tried, too, to take Mademoiselle’s advice about putting “the
little Quisses and Bobses” out of her thoughts, and she came back to
school in January with her face set in the right direction. All that
month she studied hard, doing the best work of her year, and, when
the semi-finals came, her marks averaged high enough to pass her in
everything. They were not marks to be vain over, but at least they gave
her the chance to go on and do better in the coming half.
Then came February, with its influx of new girls from grammar-school.
“You’ll have to be easy with me this month, Tia,” Jacquette said, as
she was starting for school one morning in the first week of the
new half. “February is the great rush time of the whole year for
sororities; even more so than September. You see, the girls that get
through grammar school in February instead of June are the brightest
ones. That’s the reason we go after them so hard. Of course I’m
remembering our bargain, and I’m not going to let Sigma Pi interfere
with my studies--not if I have to sit up all night to do them--but you
mustn’t expect me home right after school for awhile, because there’ll
be spreads and pledging and all kinds of things going on, every
afternoon.”
“It won’t be keeping the bargain, though, if you have to ‘sit up all
night’ to do lessons,” Aunt Sula reminded.
“I know; I didn’t mean _quite_ all night!” Jacquette laughed,
coaxingly. “And truly, Tia, it’s a very special time, different from
all the rest of the year. Explain it to grandpa, please, so he won’t
worry. Oh, by the way,” she called over her shoulder, as she hurried
down the walk, “the girls were crazy over those sandwiches I made for
the spread yesterday. They want me to bring thirty more just like them,
Friday.”
Aunt Sula smiled, and sighed, as she closed the door; but she would
have sighed without the smile if she could have looked into one of the
halls at Marston, a half hour later, where two semi-circles of excited,
angry girls were lined up opposite each other, each with a spokesman in
the centre of its group.
Blanche Gross was acting for Sigma Pi, with Jacquette Willard close at
her elbow, while on the other side, Margaret Howland was peeping over
the shoulder of Bertha Maxwell, the Kappa Delta leader.
The quarrel was about the new girl who had been pledged Sigma Pi the
day before.
“We understand you stooped so low as to go out to Winifred’s house,
last night, and actually try to get her mother to make her take off her
Sigma Pi ribbons!” Blanche was saying, hotly.
“We certainly did talk to her mother,” Bertha Maxwell answered for the
Kappa Deltas. “We intend that Winifred Pierce and her mother shall
have their eyes open about Marston sororities. It’s not fair to take
possession of a girl and overwhelm her without giving her a chance to
see other sororities and make up her own mind. We want Winifred to come
to our spread this afternoon and meet our girls, and her mother said
she could do it, too.”
“Well, we say she can’t, and what we say about our pledges counts just
a little more than what their mothers say, you’ll soon find out!”
“Oh, does it! That will sound so pleasant to her mother!”
“Go and tell her! Hurry! Take the first car! We’ve understood, before
now, that Kappa Delta made a specialty of telling tales.”
“Go right on, Blanche Gross!” Bertha flung back. “You can’t trust your
pledge to stay with you if she finds out about other sororities, that’s
the trouble!”
“No such thing! We’d trust her anywhere, but----”
“Never mind!” Bertha broke in, tragically. “Remember one thing:
By fair means or foul, we’ll have your pledge at our spread, this
afternoon--see if we don’t!”
A door opened. “My little children--my little children!” said the soft
voice of Mademoiselle Dubois. “Tardy!--every one of you! Scamper, pets!”
The girls scattered. It was an incongruous sight, these tall,
well-dressed young ladies, quarrelling like children. As they
separated, with resentful glances at one another, Bertha drew
Margaret’s arm through hers, but Margaret looked back over her
shoulder with a half ashamed expression, and Jacquette, meeting her
eyes, remembered their happy friendship in Brookdale, and felt suddenly
foolish.
As she turned to go into the cloak-room, Mademoiselle spoke to her.
“My little Willard,” she said, “in this school there are twenty-five
teachers, all trying to pump knowledge of various kinds into the
heads of a thousand or more little children. This is called getting a
high-school education, but I ask you, honey, if these little heads are
quite, quite full of something else, how can the knowledge be put in?”
Jacquette felt the force of this appeal, but, none the less, her
strongest feeling, as she took her seat, was lively curiosity to know
just what was being done to protect that Sigma Pi pledge from the Kappa
Deltas.
At the beginning of second hour, she hurried into the hall and met
Mamie Coolidge, who had all the news and told it eagerly. One of
the Sigma Pi girls, she said, had gone to the principal and had him
excuse her from the first two hours of school, on the plea that she
must attend to some necessary business, and two more of the girls had
secured the same kind of an excuse from their room teachers. Then they
had gone out to the corner drugstore and had telephoned, not only to
Winifred’s mother, warning her against the dishonourable Kappa Deltas,
but to some of the Sigma Pi alumnæ, and to certain mothers of Sigma Pi
girls, who might do something during the day to influence Mrs. Pierce
in favour of Sigma Pi.
“Did the girls cut two hours of school to do that telephoning?”
Jacquette asked, uneasily.
“Oh, yes; ’twas nothing but study hours for any of them,” Mamie
answered, carelessly. “They didn’t miss any recitations, at all.
Mercy, that’s the least they could do for Sigma Pi, if they’re loyal,
I should say! Oh, and Jacquette, Mrs. Pierce promised that Winifred
shouldn’t go to the Kappa Delt spread, and the girls have decided to
have a special initiation to-morrow and take her in right away, just to
show the Kappa Delts. That is, they want to if the rest of you agree.
Blanche and Etta are planning it now. It’s study period for them; so
they can.”
That was all Jacquette had time to hear, and she was late at her
algebra class, as it was.
After school, the Sigma Pi girls met, and parcelled out the work for
the initiation, next day. Blanche Gross offered her entire house,
because her family was away, and Jacquette, besides bringing a cake,
was appointed to act on the committee escorting Winifred to the place
of her initiation. Accordingly at half-past nine the next morning, she
went over to Mamie Coolidge’s, where Winifred had been summoned to
appear.
Blanche lived only a few blocks from Mamie’s home, but, as Winifred
must be made to believe that her initiation would be in some mysterious
quarter out at the north end of the city, it was necessary to blindfold
her and give her a long street-car ride. So Mamie Coolidge and Flo
Burton, both freshmen and both irrepressible romps, were decking her
for the journey, as Jacquette came in.
They had braided her black hair in seven tight pigtails, each of
which was so stiffly wired that they had been able to make it stand
out in wonderful spiral twists, giving a Medusa effect that was quite
startling. On the top of her head they had pinned a thimble-like opera
bonnet of a fashion long gone by, and, for dress, she had on a long,
bedraggled white petticoat, topped by a man’s black coat, the tails
of which were pinned up across the back in two large pockets. These
pockets were filled with faded roses and ferns, and Winifred was to
carry in both hands a large bunch of wilted carnations.
The finishing touch was the bandage over her eyes. It was a red
bandana, padded with cotton, to prevent a single ray of light from
getting in.
Jacquette had never seen a Sigma Pi pledge taken out on the street
looking quite so much like a scarecrow, and, before they started,
she took Mamie and Flo aside to remonstrate. But they declared,
with giggles of delight, that they had received instructions from
headquarters, and weren’t going to have them interfered with by a
freshman. So the party set out.
As they were going down the front steps, Winifred stumbled and nearly
fell headlong. “Now, girls!” Jacquette exclaimed, speaking out before
the pledge in forgetfulness of sorority rules. “You can’t take Winifred
on the car with her eyes bandaged like that. It’s dangerous. It
wouldn’t do a bit of harm to loosen it just enough so that she could
see the ground she’s walking on.”
“It certainly would do harm, for it’s against orders!” Flo Burton
insisted, in her most important manner, and, as she spoke, she took
Winifred by the arm and turned her around several times. “Now,
Winifred, follow my voice,” she said.
Flo was chairman of the committee, and evidently meant to have that
fact remembered, but there was one thing Jacquette could do, and that
was to keep a close hold of Winifred’s hand. She did this faithfully,
telling her when to step up and down, and which way to turn, until at
last, with a sigh of relief, she seated her safely in the car.
[Illustration: _So Mamie and Flo were decking her for the journey_]
Most of the people who saw them get on, laughed at poor Winifred’s
plight. A few looked disgusted; everyone stared. Two rakish-looking
fellows took advantage of the general merriment to attempt a flirtation
with Jacquette, who sat as close to Winifred as she could without
coming in contact with the spiky braids which stuck out dangerously in
all directions.
The party rode to the end of the line and got off without mishap.
Winifred was marched a little way in several directions, turned round
and round till she was dizzy, to the amusement of a group of spectators
who had stopped to watch the unusual sight, and then bundled on to the
homeward car, thoroughly convinced that she was bound for the outskirts
of the city.
As they started back again, Jacquette, still sitting by Winifred,
caught a few words of what Flo and Mamie were saying in their seat
across the aisle. They were discussing a spicy, original plan for the
afternoon initiation, and they mentioned the name of a senior Sigma Pi
who, Mamie was sure, would help them carry it through.
Jacquette knew enough of initiation methods to guess pretty correctly
at the part she missed hearing, and into her thoughts, as the car
rolled along, came that clause in her bargain with Aunt Sula, “Nothing
that could offend the delicacy of a sensitive, modest girl.”
Only lately, Louise and some of the other seniors had finished revising
the Sigma Pi constitution so that there was nothing, now, in the
written ceremony, which violated this condition, but it was evident
that the girls intended to introduce their “stunt” as a surprise, and
put it through before anyone had time to object.
At last, cautioning Winifred not to move until she came back, Jacquette
slipped into the vacant seat in front of the other girls, and said,
“I couldn’t help hearing, girls, and I just want to say, I wish you
wouldn’t. It seems to me it’s cruel--and not very modest.”
“There you go, Jacquette Willard!” Flo answered in an exasperated
undertone. “You’re nothing but a freshman, yourself, but you try to
run the whole sorority. We know who’s been putting Louise Markham up
to spoil the Sigma Pi initiation! It’s the tamest one in school, I do
believe. A person might as well join a church and have done with it!
It just makes me wish I’d gone some other sorority, where the girls
believe in having a little fun!”
“But Flo,” Jacquette protested, determined to keep her temper,
“Winifred’s so young, you know--only fourteen! And her mother asked us
especially to give her an easy time, because she’s so delicate. Her
hands are cold as ice, now, and her heart’s going like a trip-hammer.”
“Pooh! What of it?” Flo retorted, and Mamie added, “What’s an
initiation good for, Jacquette, if it doesn’t frighten them? You’re too
soft-hearted, that’s the trouble with you.”
Jacquette had intended to leave Winifred for only a minute, but the
discussion held her, and block after block flew past while they sat
there arguing. Suddenly, they all realised, with a start, that the
car was stopping at their corner. Jacquette sprang to help Winifred,
and the other girls followed in a rush, but they were late, and the
conductor, either not noticing, or not caring, that Winifred was
blindfolded, started the car with a jerk before she was off the step.
She might have fallen, anyway, for her foot had caught in the torn
ruffle of the long white petticoat, but, with the sudden start, she
lost her balance, pitched forward, plunging through Jacquette’s arms as
if they had been paper, and fell, face downward, with her head almost
under the wheels of a passing wagon.
There were shouts from the passengers; the car stopped again, and
nearly everyone jumped off to crowd around the spot where Winifred lay.
Jacquette was down on the ground, trying, with shaking fingers, to
untie the bandage that blinded Winifred’s eyes, and shuddering at sight
of the blood that flowed from a cut on the poor girl’s cheek. Winifred
was not unconscious, for she had groaned when they turned her, and had
cried out,
“Oh, my knee! It’s my knee, girls!”
The conductor was blustering about the idiocy of parents who
allowed their daughters to do such things, when suddenly, a stout,
sandy-whiskered man who had been engrossed with his newspaper in the
rear car, came pushing through the crowd, and stopped in blank horror
at sight of the grotesque little figure stretched out on the ground.
“Winifred!” he ejaculated, and Winifred--her eyes uncovered, now, her
face bruised, her queer little bonnet tumbled off and trampled on, but
her dreadful Medusa braids still rampant--reached out her hand to him,
and answered piteously,
“Oh, papa! Where did you come from? Were you on this car? Don’t worry,
darling! It’s only--my initiation!”
Not one of the girls had ever seen Winifred’s father, and not one of
them could think of a person who would have been less welcome at that
moment. He paid scant attention to them, however. His orders were quick
and sharp, and a carriage was there to take Winifred home sooner than
seemed possible. In the meantime, he had been examining her injuries,
taking the conductor’s number, and listening, now and then, to a
fragment from the jumble of versions offered by the passengers who
crowded about.
When he had Winifred safely in the carriage, he turned to Jacquette,
whose murmured sympathy and offers of help had gone unheeded.
“I should like your name and address, young lady,” he said, without
noticing the other frightened girls who had withdrawn into the
background as soon as he appeared, and, when Jacquette had told him who
she was, he added, with suppressed indignation, “I will take care of my
daughter, now. As for you, I advise you to go on to the initiation you
were planning, and tell your society that Winifred Pierce will never
become a member of it as long as she has a father to take care of her.”
“Papa! _No!_” came a pleading voice from the carriage, but her father
stepped in and slammed the door, and they drove away.
Twenty minutes later, three dejected-looking girls presented themselves
in the library at Blanche Gross’s house, and told their story.
In spite of the impromptu character of the initiation planned for
Winifred, the girls had taken advantage of their unusual freedom in
Blanche’s beautiful, empty home, to make the ceremonies even more
elaborate than usual. A dozen of them had been flying around merrily,
some making chocolate and arranging the table in the dining-room, while
others, in the basement, prepared for certain mysterious business which
was to take place there.
Now, they all sat, limp and speechless, except for broken exclamations
of dismay, until at last, Mamie Coolidge broke the spell by saying,
“As far as I’m concerned, I think Winifred Pierce’s father owes us
an apology! Everybody knows, nowadays, that you have a right to do
anything you please at initiations!”
This was too much for Jacquette. Without stopping to consider whether
she was a freshman or a senior, she began to speak her mind. She
declared that, in her opinion, it was the Sigma Pi girls who owed the
whole Pierce family an apology, whether it turned out that Winifred
was seriously hurt or not, and, as she spoke the last word, Louise
Markham applauded.
But Louise was alone, and no one followed. All around the room were
resentful faces, and, little by little, the truth came out. Jacquette
had made herself too much of a leader from the start. She wanted to
manage everybody, and she had an idea that the whole sorority ought to
bow down to her ideas. They weren’t going to stand it any longer!
That was the substance of the complaint, and that was how it happened
that, long before she was expected, Jacquette astonished Aunt Sula by
walking into the house, and announcing dramatically,
“Tia, I’m done with Sigma Pi forever!”