A SURPRISE FOR THE ORCHID CLUB
“Please, Miss Leslie, Miss Remson says will you come to her room and
bring Miss Monroe with you? She’d like to see you right away.” Annie
beamed her whole-hearted regard upon Leslie, to whom she was indebted
for various pleasant gratuities.
“I’ll be with her in ten minutes. Miss Monroe has gone out to mail a
letter. She’ll be back directly.” Leslie closed the door upon Annie’s
retreating back with slow reflectiveness. “I wonder,” she murmured: “I
wonder.”
“Miss Remson just sent Annie for us,” she said to Doris as the latter
entered, her perfect face in charming relief against the dark bear’s fur
collar of her coat. Her head was bare and her hair was massed gold in
the lamplight.
“For us?” Doris lifted her dark brows. “Why?”
“Don’t know. I think I’m due to hear something unpleasant,” Leslie
returned with frowning conviction. “I saw it coming this morning.”
“Saw what coming?” Doris looked concerned. “I mean, what did you see?”
Leslie explained as well as she could. “I can’t kick, you know. Here it
is, January, and I’ve had smooth sailing. But I’m going to hit the
rocks, I guess. The question is: Who supplied the rocks, and how big are
they?” Leslie finished with mocking humor.
“If you really are correct in your suspicion, Leslie, you can blame
Julia Peyton for the whole thing,” Doris spoke with anxious warmth. “She
supplied the rocks, if there are any. But she is so untruthful, no one
will take her word long for anything. She has probably woven a weird
tale about the Rustic Romp. I’ll soon put a stop to it if I can find out
what she has said.”
“It may not be that at all.” Leslie shook her head. “It’s more apt to be
something I did when I was on the campus before. I did so many things I
shouldn’t have done. She may have happened to unearth one of them.
Well,” unconsciously Leslie squared her shoulders, “let’s go and see.”
“Come in, girls.” To their surprise Doris and Leslie found Miss Remson
standing in the door of her upstairs sitting room, evidently on watch
for them. She beckoned the girls into the room and closed the door
quickly.
“There,” she declared, “I am as well pleased to have no one see you. I
am so angry. Gr—r—r!” The little woman accompanied the growl with a
violent shake of the head. “I know you’d prefer me to be direct, Leslie.
Read this.” She handed Leslie a folded paper. “Then we’ll talk.”
Leslie unfolded the sheet, scanned it eagerly, then passed it on to
Doris with a bitter little laugh. “Here’s the rock,” she said. “It’s a
big one.”
“Outrageous!” Doris cried out indignantly, letting the fateful petition
flutter to the floor.
Leslie picked it up and re-read it. “No one is to blame but myself,” she
asserted doughtily. “I’ll not have you annoyed, Miss Remson, by anything
I’m responsible for. I’ll leave the Hall tomorrow and go back to the
Hamilton House. At least I’ve Prexy’s permission to finish my course
here.”
“You’ll _not_ leave the Hall, Leslie. Such a contemptible thing for a
crowd of girls to do,” Miss Remson’s eyes showed an angry sparkle.
“Not half so bad as the things I——”
“Now, now, Leslie. This is the present, you know.” Miss Remson said
soothingly. “That petition is only the beginning. Read this. But, first,
glance at the signature.” She tendered Leslie a thicker fold of paper.
“Dulcie Vale!” Leslie’s voice rose in astonishment as she scanned the
well-remembered signature: “Dulciana Maud Vale.” “Now I begin to
understand what it’s all about. Please, pardon me, both of you, while I
give Dulcie’s latest outbreak the once-over. ‘The Leslie Cairns’ List,’”
she read out. “That’s exactly like Dulcie Vale, the little stupid.”
Miss Remson waited silently for Leslie to read the several sheets of
typed paper. At last she glanced up with a laugh of satirical amusement.
“Dulcie must have hired a stenographer to type this. She never typed it
herself,” was her characteristically unexpected comment. “Here is a full
account of the crimes of Cairns, Doris. Only Dulcie has tied the truth
up in an awful snarl. Read about me in this monograph. If you are still
my friend after you read it, you deserve a friendship medal.”
“That petition was handed to me last night after the meeting in the
living room,” Miss Remson said. “I read it, and went to Miss Peyton
before the ten-thirty bell rang. Her name heads the list, you see. I
suspected her as being at the bottom of the trouble. I told her very
sternly that I should expect to meet her committee of three next day at
noon in my office. Today at noon Miss Ferguson came to my office with a
great pretence of dignity. She brought with her this outrageous piece of
spite work,” she indicated the list Doris was perusing, her beautiful
face utterly impassive.
“She said she would prefer me to read the list she handed me, then she,
Miss Peyton and Miss Waters would meet me in conference. At first I
thought of handing the list and petition back to her with a lecture.
Instead, I accepted the list and said that I would take up the matter
with them in three days. As yet I had nothing to say. They went away.
There was nothing else for them to do.” Miss Remson’s lips tightened.
“Once upon a time, Leslie,” she continued, “Ronny Lynne and I held a
meeting in the living room. You remember why.”
“Yes, I remember.” Leslie flushed. “I wish I had been wise enough to
profit by the experience of that evening.”
Miss Remson referred to the eventful evening during Leslie’s sophomore
year at Hamilton when she had called a meeting in the living room of
Wayland Hall in order to see justice done to Marjorie Dean. Leslie had
then been the prime mover in an unworthy attempt to traduce Marjorie
which had ended in deserved defeat for Leslie.
“Forgive me for mentioning it.” The little manager flashed Leslie a
smile of stanch friendship. “History may repeat itself. I wish you would
leave this matter entirely to me, Leslie. Think nothing further of it.
Don’t consider leaving the Hall. This report of you compiled by Dulcie
Vale is grossly untrue.”
“It is, of course, garbled. It’s an entirely different story of the
hazing than the one she wrote in the letter to President Matthews. That
was our finish at Hamilton. Dulcie ought to do well writing fiction.” In
the midst of her dejection Leslie could not refrain from this humorous
thrust at Dulcie.
“It’s too bad, Leslie.” Doris looked up from the papers in her hand, her
tone one of affection. “You are doing your best to make up for what you
once did that wasn’t honorable. We all make plenty of mistakes. Only it
takes a brave person to go back and try to retrieve them. I’ll stand by
you. So will the Travelers.” She came over to where Leslie sat, elbow on
chair, chin in hand, her dark face immobile as an Indian’s. She put a
reassuring arm across Leslie’s shoulders.
“You are a good pal, Goldie.” Leslie raised her head from her hand in an
upward appreciative glance. “I’ve always said that, even when we
squabbled.”
“I shall continue to be a good pal,” Doris assured, smiling. Secretly
she intended to find a means, if she could, to make the signers of the
petition feel ashamed and foolish.
When the two friends left Miss Remson’s sitting room a few moments later
Doris went to her own room instead of stopping in Leslie’s. There she
found Muriel industriously writing to her fiancé, Harry Lenox.
“Tell me about a meeting that once took place in the living room
downstairs because of something Leslie said about Marjorie,” she began
abruptly.
“Um-m. Wait a minute until I have wound up my weekly love letter to my
intended,” giggled Muriel. “That’s what Annie calls the plumber she is
going to marry. My intended!” Muriel repeated the phrase admiringly.
“Isn’t that sweet?”
“How romantic you are!” Doris duplicated the giggle.
“Ain’t I jist?” Muriel came back buoyantly. “You ought to read my
letters to Harry. They are almost business-like enough to be signed
‘Yours very truly.’ Would you like me to read you this one?”
“Mercy, no. I should not care to hear it.” Doris said with amused
stress.
“And I shouldn’t care to read it to you,” Muriel replied with great
affability.
“Nor to tell me about that meeting, either,” reminded Doris slyly.
“Oh, yes, the meeting.” Muriel appeared to remember vaguely Doris’s
question. “Why don’t you ask—. No, you wouldn’t care to do that.” Muriel
stopped, surveying Doris quizzically.
“You mean ask either Leslie or Marjorie,” Doris said quickly. “Not if I
can help it.”
“What has happened?” Muriel continued to eye Doris shrewdly.
“That’s what I should like to tell you.”
“Don’t be afraid to confide in me,” Muriel assured flippantly. Sobering
her merry features, she added: “I’ll tell you about the meeting.” She
snapped her fountain pen shut, leaned back in her chair and recounted a
trifle sketchily the happenings of the eventful meeting in the living
room in which Marjorie had figured so prominently.
“Poor Leslie.” Doris shook her head pityingly after Muriel had finished
the little story. “What a lot of trouble she has made for herself in the
past. I’m so glad everything is different with her now. I’m glad I found
myself in time. We girls who’ve been left without our mothers when we
are children to grow up in the care of servants are bound to be selfish,
even unprincipled. What ought I to do, Muriel? You are so clever at
suggestion. I have an idea that the way to deal with these girls is to
show them themselves from the standpoint of foolishness. Such attempts
from a group of students at injuring another student are so terribly
underbred, I think.”
A sudden mischievous smile overspread Muriel’s face. “I know a good way
to do,” she said. She began outlining a plan which seemed to amuse her
more and more as she continued. Before she had finished speaking both
she and Doris were laughing.
“Let’s go and tell it to Miss Remson now,” Doris proposed eagerly. She
held out her hand to Muriel.
“The present is ours.” Muriel blithely accepted the hand and away the
two went. When they returned to their room almost an hour later they
left Miss Remson smiling over the surprise she had in store for the
Orchid Club.
For the next three days Julia and Mildred held long, concerned confabs
regarding what Miss Remson intended to do about the petition. Her
manner, when they had talked with her, had been impersonal. They argued
it as a good sign, however, that she should have asked for three days in
which to consider the matter.
“If she had been down on us for getting up the petition she would
probably have exploded like a firecracker,” Mildred declared to Julia on
the afternoon of the second day as they came from Science Hall. “We may
be doing her a favor by objecting to Miss Cairns. It may be that she
disapproves of Miss Cairns, too, but has to walk softly because Prexy
has shown such marked partiality in her case.”
“Miss Remson likes Miss Cairns,” differed Julia. “She makes quite a good
deal of fuss over her. Of course, there is just a chance that she only
pretends to like her on account of her father’s money.”
“The P. G.’s don’t act as though they knew a thing about the petition,”
Mildred observed triumphantly. “They are too busy with plays and college
welfare work to trouble themselves to watch us.”
“It’s a good thing. I’m glad Miss Dean isn’t at the Hall now. Miss
Remson would surely tell her about our petition. She is Miss Remson’s
pet. She used always to be stirring up things here and interfering in
the girls’ private affairs. Doris Monroe is the only one I am uncertain
of. She is really Miss Cairns’ friend. Let her hear a word of this
business!” Julia paused impressively.
“Oh, she isn’t so formidable. She dearly loves to swank. She is
altogether too top-lofty to suit me.” Mildred’s face clouded. Doris’s
superior air was a great cross to her. “She poses with that white fur
motor coat, and white car on purpose to keep herself before the campus.”
“She knows better than to be top-lofty with me,” Julia said in an
independent tone. “I am the only girl on the campus who made her
understand that I’d not fall down and worship her.”
“Hm-m,” was Mildred’s sole response. It reminded Julia forcibly of
Clara. Clara had signed the petition, but had secretly regretted the
act. She was hourly growing more disgusted with Julia and frequently
wondered how she had ever even believed she liked her quarrelsome
roommate. She was no longer jealous of Mildred. She detested the bold
freshman more than ever, and derived a resentful pleasure from the
thought that Julia and Mildred could not possibly stay friends for any
length of time.
On the morning of the third day Miss Remson called Julia and Mildred
into her office from the breakfast table to inform them that she would
meet the Orchid Club as a body in the living room that evening at eight
o’clock to discuss with them the matter of the petition.
At half past seven Annie ushered Marjorie, winsome and smiling into the
kitchen by way of the back door. “Miss Remson’s in her sitting room
watching for you, Miss Marjorie,” she gigglingly announced. Annie was
under the impression that a huge joke was to be played upon someone. She
had no idea as to what it might be, or who was the victim. She merely
giggled in sympathy.
Up in Miss Remson’s room Marjorie found Leslie Cairns, Doris Monroe,
Muriel Harding and the manager awaiting her arrival at the Hall. As she
had spent the previous evening with them in the same sitting room she
responded to her friends’ laughingly significant greetings in the same
spirit.
“Now girls,” Miss Remson addressed the quartette in her bright fond
fashion. “I leave the carrying out of the program to you. Keep in line
behind me when the door is opened and I step into the living room. If
objection to your presence at the meeting is made, let me talk to the
objectors.”
“We’ll be silent as specters till it comes our turn to talk,” Muriel
assured, her velvety brown eyes twinkling her enjoyment of the occasion.
At precisely eight o’clock Miss Remson’s doubled fist beat an imperative
little tattoo on the living room door. A small blue-eyed freshman with a
worried expression opened the door. She sent up an abashed “Oh!” and
watched the line of five file into the room in amazed fascination. The
manager led her companions straight up the aisle formed by the
arrangement of rows of chairs, oblivious to the growing murmur of voices
which attended her progress up the room. She paused near the two chairs
set in an open space at the end of the room which were occupied by the
president and vice-president of the Orchid Club. The four girls grouped
themselves behind her. A dead stillness descended upon the room. It was
an ominous stillness such as precedes a storm.
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