“’TWERE BETTER BY FAR TO HAVE MATCHED OUR FAIR COUSIN WITH YOUNG
LOCHINVAR”
Gwen and Jan held a council of war. But it was a long time before
they reached the council. It took so long to tell the history of the
campaign which “Miss Lochinvar”--worthy of her name--had been waging,
single-handed and alone, in her cousin’s behalf. It was a story full
of “I thoughts,” and “I saids,” and “she saids”; of “I founds,” and “I
heards,” and “she dids.” Gwen could not sit still to listen, but walked
up and down the room, eyes flashing and cheeks burning, till Tommy
Traddles--sensitive, like all cats, to perturbation in the air about
him--jumped up on the top of the bookcase, and watched her with large,
disapproving eyes, doubtless thinking that people who did not belong to
the feline family were most foolishly excitable over trifles.
The result of the girls’ consultation--when they reached that
point--was that Gwen and Jan left home early on the following morning
together, and when Gladys followed later she was met at the door
by Miss Larned’s maid, requesting her immediate attendance in that
personage’s private room.
“Probably they’re going to expel me this time,” thought the victim of
previous injustice. “I don’t care. It’s the meanest school in New York,
anyway!”
She ascended the stairs slowly, “standing with reluctant feet” at the
threshold of the Misses Larneds’ sanctum a moment before she knocked.
Opening the door at the permission to do so, she saw an amazing sight.
There were both the august sisters sitting as if in judgment, flanked
by Miss Arnold, the English teacher. There were Gwen and Jan flushed,
trembling, plainly quivering with excitement. And--most wonderful of
all--there was Daisy Hammond dissolved in tears, looking “as though she
could not look anywhere,” as Gladys said afterward.
“Ahem! Miss Gladys Graham, we have sent for you,” began the elder
Miss Larned, portentously. “We have learned that we were mistaken in
thinking you guilty of a shocking action, in punishment of which you
were deprived--as we supposed justly and with full cognizance on your
part of the cause of our decision--of your part in the Christmas play.
We have but just learned that you were absolutely guiltless of the
offense.”
“I told you I hadn’t done anything, and I didn’t know what made you
pounce on me,” said Gladys, so embarrassed by this flood of Johnsonian
English, of which she did not understand half the words, as well as
perturbed by the fact dawning on her that instead of being expelled she
was being reinstated, that she expressed herself with inelegant brevity.
At another time Gladys’s “pounce” would not have passed unreproved. As
it was, Miss Larned resumed what her pupils disrespectfully called “her
language.”
“A letter fell into our hands, purporting to be written by you,
on a certain imported paper which you alone possessed,” Miss
Larned continued. Gladys started, and looked at Jan, who nodded
significantly. “The letter proposed a course disgraceful in itself and
injurious to the school. Miss Hammond was supposed to have been the
recipient, and she had indignantly repudiated what was apparently your
base proposition. We have discovered that Miss Hammond was the sole
author of the letter; that by apparent accident she contrived it should
fall into our hands. Her motive was envy of your superior part in the
coming play and the desire to have you deprived of it, knowing that,
if this were to happen, she would be assigned the part in your stead.
Her plot has been so far successful. But for your cousin, Miss Howe,
the true culprit would not have been discovered. Actuated by firm faith
in your innocence, as well as affection, she has devoted herself to
discovering the truth. Chance put into her hands the clue of what we
intended--charitably to you--to retain a secret. She has worked upon
that clue very cleverly, and, armed with her proofs, laid the case
before us this morning. Miss Hammond, seeing the futility of doing so,
has attempted no extenuation of her wrong, but confesses it fully. We
therefore restore to you our confidence and regard, expressing also
our regret that you have undergone this trial, which will doubtless
be beneficial to you, nevertheless. And we also request that you once
more assume the rôle of the princess in the play. Your sister and your
cousin will resume their parts if this arrangement pleases you.”
Gladys was sustained from actual collapse by the formality of this
lengthy address, but she was dreadfully upset, and had great difficulty
in murmuring her agreement to this arrangement. Miss Larned, seeing
that she was overwhelmed by the revelations so suddenly poured forth
upon her, graciously arose and held out her hand in amicable dismissal.
“We will excuse you, Miss Gwendoline and Miss Gladys Graham, from
attendance on your classes to-day. You, too, Miss Howe, may be excused.
And you, Miss Hammond, will hardly be in a fit condition mentally to
apply yourself. You will, therefore, keep holiday to-day, reporting at
the usual hour to-morrow. And I need not say, I trust, that as this
melancholy affair was preserved a secret when Miss Graham was supposed
to be the guilty one, so it will be close guarded now that we have
learned who is really culpable, much more culpable, I regret to say,
than we had thought Miss Graham in the first instance. You will not
mention to any of your mates, young ladies, the matters which have been
discussed, the facts which have transpired in this room this morning.”
Miss Larned, Miss Agatha Larned, and Miss Arnold bowed to the four
girls, who found themselves in the hall they hardly knew how.
Daisy Hammond, sobbing bitterly, held out her hand to Gladys, but she
put both her hands behind her back with a movement of aversion. “No,
Daisy Hammond,” she said decidedly. “I don’t say I won’t forgive you
sometime, but I won’t do it now. Gwen was right about you, and I never,
never will go with you again. I wouldn’t have minded anything else,
because we were chums, and I never was better than you were. But I
couldn’t do anything like what you did. To write a letter and pretend
it was mine, and use the paper I gave you for it, and then write an
answer to it yourself, and let me be put out of the play and disgraced,
and never say one word! And pretend every minute you were my friend,
and so sorry for me that they could hardly tease you into playing the
princess--oh, my! I never heard of such a humbug! No, sir, Daisy, we’re
never friends again as long as I live. And I’m dreadfully sorry--it’s
the worst thing I ever heard of--you’re a regular Benedict Arnold!” And
with which parting shot, drawn from her slender armory of historical
lore, Gladys turned away forever from her treacherous friend, her head
held high, but with tears running down her cheeks.
Gwen, Jan, and she made their way homeward with difficulty, for Gladys
had to be told the whole story, and it was impossible to get her to
grasp it when Gwen and Jan were talking together, and all three were
dodging the carriages spinning down Fifth Avenue.
The entire day was spent in ceaseless talking over the affair. Mrs.
Graham was captured, and the history of her daughter’s wrongs was
poured into her indignant ears. Sydney had to learn the story on his
return in the afternoon, and Jack grew so angry, and quiet Viva so
excited hearing it discussed that only Jerry preserved anything like
her ordinary state of mind. Jan was a heroine. Mrs. Graham could
hardly express her admiration for the silent determination with which
she had set to work to clear Gladys. Mr. Graham was told at night what
had been going on at school, and after first declaring wrathfully that
he would take Gladys away from the Misses Larneds’, he ended in hearty
laughter over what he termed Jan’s pluck, and compromised on a luncheon
and a theater-party to be given in her honor. This was the way in which
Mr. Graham’s interference in family matters often ended.
“May I come in, Jan?” called Gladys’s voice at Jan’s door at bedtime.
“Of course,” said Jan, hastily opening to the slender figure in the
blue eider-down robe which solemnly entered, and would have seated
itself on Tommy Traddles in the rocking-chair but that Jan rescued him.
“I can’t say what I want to,” Gladys began, almost timidly. “But I
came to thank you for what you’ve done for me. It isn’t clearing up
the row--though that’s a good deal,” Gladys continued quickly as
Jan started to speak. “Of course it is simply fine to get back my
part, and have every one understand that the Superior Ladies [this
was Gwen’s name for the Misses Larned, by a transposition of “lady
superior”] were wrong about me. But it’s the way you stood by me. And I
know I’ve been mean to you, Janet. I hated to have you come here, and I
snubbed you, and I made fun of you, and I neglected you----”
“Oh, stop, for goodness’ sake, Gladys! That’s all right!” cried Jan,
not relishing this outburst of self-abasement.
“And I called you Miss Lochinvar,” continued Gladys without heeding.
“No, it was Syd dubbed me that, and I’m proud of the name. I like it
better than my own--now,” said Jan.
“Yes, it suits you,” said Gladys in the same monotonously melancholy
tone. “I read over the poem to-day, and you’re very much like him.
Brave and straight, and everything you try goes through. But I didn’t
mean it like that. I meant it nastily. But I have learned a great deal,
Janet. I shall never be such a foolish girl again. It is an awful thing
to find out your friends are perfectly horrid.”
Jan tried not to laugh, but did not succeed very well. Gladys could not
be quite simple even under sincere feeling, such as Jan felt sure was
moving her now.
“You haven’t found that out about everybody, Gladys. And, honestly, I
think the Hammond-Gilsey crowd isn’t much of a loss,” she said.
“No,” said Gladys sadly. “Gwen was right. They’re vulgar, ill-bred
girls. But I don’t see why I couldn’t know that as well as Gwen did.
And, besides, I’m kind of sorry I know it now. But I haven’t found out
you’re mean. I have found out you’re the very nicest girl I ever saw.
And what I wanted to ask you was if you thought, after a while--a long,
long while--you could forgive me, and like me a little bit?”
“Why, Glad, I don’t even remember I have anything to forgive!” cried
Jan, throwing her arms impulsively around the neck of the small figure
of humble contrition. “And I do like you now--no, I don’t! I love
you--aren’t you my own cousin, and aren’t we going to be friends?”
“I am going to be _your_ friend, and I’m going to try to be the
kind of girl you are,” said Gladys, returning Jan’s warm kisses
heartily, but in a chastened manner. “I would rather you wouldn’t say
you love me yet, because if you do it must be just for Gwen’s sake, or
because I’m your cousin, and I want you to love me anyway--because I’m
worth loving.”
“Of course you’re worth loving, Gladys. And I think this trouble at
school is a perfect blessing!” cried Jan. “You were all mixed up with
that worldly, silly lot of girls, and it was just as bad for you!
You’ll be ever so much more sensible and nicer when you are done with
them.”
“I hope so,” returned Gladys, evidently not in a mood to take a
hopeful view of herself. “If I had been sensible I wouldn’t have liked
them--Gwen didn’t. You never can like me as well as Gwen, because she
really is sensible, and she’s dreadfully clever, and then she’s been
pretty nice to you all along. Just think of my caring because those
girls knew you hadn’t any money! Shouldn’t you have supposed I’d have
known they weren’t ladies, and that you were, and not have cared--just
despised them?”
“Yes,” said Jan, stifling a yawn, for an exciting day had left her
too sleepy to enter into discussions, moral or social. “I guess people
are like things to eat--you like some from the start, and others you
have to learn to like. The Hammonds were a sort of puff paste, and too
much of them gives you indigestion. Don’t you bother any more about me,
Gladys. We’ll have such good times together that you’ll forget you ever
were mortified by your Western cousin.”
“Don’t, Jan,” said Gladys gravely. “I’m so ashamed.”
“Now that’s a healthy feeling. I’m always an angel for several days
after I’ve been ashamed of myself,” laughed Jan, kissing her crushed
visitor good night.
Jan fell asleep with Tommy Traddles purring at her feet and something
very like a purr in her own heart, so full of content it was. For the
first time she felt that her peaceful conquest of the Graham family was
accomplished, that there was not one under that roof that night that
did not love her, and to whom her coming was not a matter for which to
be glad. Sydney had been indifferent, but now they were the best of
friends. Gladys had disliked her, but she bade fair to love her more
than Gwen did. And her Aunt Tina had bade her good night with positive
affection in her kiss, a kiss that was not usually given when she left
her to sleep. Jan felt very happy, very grateful for the love that was
springing up around her, not realizing that it was a case of the mirror
of which her mother had written her, which Thackeray had said gave back
one’s own expression.
Jan was so full of unselfish love that she diffused warmth, and the
chill of the big brownstone house was fast disappearing in the glow of
her unconscious girlish sweetness.
But it was part of her charm that she should never think such thoughts
as these. Instead, she wondered happily and sleepily how it was that
everybody was proving so nice, and resolved to do all she could to make
the Christmas play a complete success.