MOVING IN
BETTY WALES, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her trim little
figure enveloped in one of her famous kitchen aprons, stood on a
chair in the china closet of Morton Hall, covering the top shelves
neatly with sheets of white paper. One of the three richest men in New
York, very damp and red in the face from his exertions, was screwing
in hooks for pots and pans in the pantry next door. A rising young
architect was helping the pretty wife of a distinguished psychology
professor wash dishes, ready to put on Betty’s carefully spread papers.
A would-be literary light was hanging pictures on the softly-tinted
walls of the house parlor. Up-stairs Georgia, Babbie, and Eugenia Ford
were superintending the efforts of the night-watchman and a janitor
to arrange a bed, a bureau, a wash-stand, a desk, and two chairs to
the best advantage in rooms guaranteed by the rising young architect
aforesaid to be perfectly capable of holding those articles,--or, in
the case of double rooms, twice the number.
Betty Wales wasn’t very tall, and the shelves were high and very,
very long. Her arms ached from stretching; her back was tired from
spreading innumerable rugs; her brain reeled with dozens of petty but
important details. But she worked on doggedly, pushing back her curls
wearily when they got in her eyes, ordering, coaxing, or bullying her
distinguished assistants, her mind intent on one thing: Morton Hall
must be ready for the girls when they came to-morrow.
It was all because the matron had sprained her wrist--this hurry and
scurry and confusion at the last minute. She had hoped every day to be
able to come on and take charge of the settling, and from day to day
they had waited, until finally Prexy, realizing that they had waited
much too long, had asked Betty to take charge in her place. The matron
was coming that afternoon at five, with her arm still in a sling. Betty
had promised to meet her. Jim Watson was keeping track of the time,
and Mr. Morton’s car would be ready to take her to the station. At
distractingly frequent intervals the door-bell rang, and Mary Brooks
Hinsdale had to stop wiping dishes to answer it. In the end Betty
always had to go, but Mary saved her time and anxiety about appearances
by finding out who each visitor was.
“Never mind the smut on your left cheek,” she would say. “It’s only
another person come to apply for a job as waitress, and she’s much too
untidy herself to notice a small smut.”
Or, “This time you must take off your apron, Betty. It’s Prexy--he says
he’ll only keep you a minute, but it’s important.”
Or, “A strange looking freak of a girl, Betty. If she hadn’t acted so
completely scared, I’d have said you couldn’t be bothered. She looked
as if she might jump into the next county if I suggested taking you her
message.”
And each time Betty smilingly hopped off her chair, greeted her visitor
as cordially as if she was not feeling--to quote Mary Brooks--exactly
like a cross between a reckless ritherum and a distracted centipede,
and got back to her shelves as soon as she could possibly manage it,
stopping on the way to encourage Mr. Morton, hurry Madeline, and warn
Jim to wipe the dishes dry.
[Illustration: “YOU MUST TAKE OFF YOUR APRON”]
“Everything must be spick and span,” she insisted, “to start us off
right.”
At last Jim called “Four-forty-five, Betty,” and she jumped down
again and ran to her room--the only place in the house that hadn’t
been settled a bit--to dress. But she was so tired that she ended by
unceremoniously borrowing Eleanor’s fur coat to put on over her mussy
linen dress, and ordered Jonas to take her for a restful little spin up
Elm Street. And so she managed to be all smiles and sparkles and pretty
speeches of welcome for the matron, who was a nice motherly lady with
the loveliest snow-white hair, and a sense of humor that twinkled out
of her blue eyes and discovered everything comical about Betty--even to
the mussy linen under the borrowed elegance--before Jonas had seen to
the baggage and rushed his passengers up to Morton Hall.
As Betty opened the door shrieks of mirth floated out to them from the
matron’s rooms.
“Excuse me one minute, Mrs. Post,” she said hastily, “while I see if
everything is ready for you.”
The whole company of “Settlers,” as Madeline called them, not excepting
the under-janitor and the night-watchman, were gathered in Mrs. Post’s
cozy sitting-room.
“Where is she?” demanded Jim eagerly, when Betty appeared.
“Didn’t she come after all?” asked Georgia disappointedly.
“We’ve got ready the loveliest chorus of welcome,” explained Madeline,
with a complacent wave of the hand at her fellow workers. “A Settlers’
Chorus, with solos by some of the most distinguished Settlers.
Now, Betty, don’t look so horrified. Any sensible matron will be
tremendously flattered by such a unique attention.”
“It’s perfectly respectable, Betty,” Mary Brooks Hinsdale assured her,
“and Mr. Morton and Mr. Watson and the night-watchman will never have
another chance to be in a Harding show.”
“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Morton, who had been so engrossed in
studying his part that he had not noticed Betty’s arrival. “I’ve heard
a great deal about Harding shows, but I certainly never expected to be
in a troupe. Bring on your audience, Miss B. A., or I shall forget my
lines.”
There was no use arguing. “All right,” agreed Betty, “only please
remember that she’s a stranger to Harding ways, and don’t do anything
to shock her too much. While the entertainment is going on, I’ll make
us all some tea.”
But nobody would listen to that proposition for a minute. Betty, being
herself chief Settler, must hear the Settlers’ Chorus. It ended by
Mr. Morton’s summoning Jonas to make the tea--each Settler having
unselfishly insisted upon being the one to do it. But Jonas was so
entranced by the sight of his master singing a doggerel stanza in
praise of the Admirable Architect, to a tune that he fondly supposed
to be “A Hot Time,” that he let the water boil over to begin with, and
then steeped the tea until it was bitter and had to be thrown away.
After Mr. Morton’s performance had been duly applauded, the
night-watchman sang to the Beneficent Benefactor, and Madeline sang to
the Courageous Captain, meaning Mrs. Post herself. The Daring Defender
was of course the night-watchman, glorified by Babbie as worthy of a
gift of “salad and ice and all things nice”--in memory of the supper
the three B’s had spilled on his head when they were freshmen. Madeline
was the Esthetic Elevator because she hung pictures and planned
entertainments in a way to elevate the taste of the inmates, and Betty
was the Flossy Furbelow, who sat and watched other people work. The
alphabet ended with F, the chorus explained,
“For Settlers must work
While others may rhyme.
We’d have gone farther
If there had been time.”
But they had gone far enough to put Mrs. Post at her ease with
everybody. While fresh tea was being made by the contrite Jonas, the
Settlers escorted her triumphantly over her domain, and she praised
everything and thanked everybody and seemed to fit so beautifully into
the niche she had come to fill that Betty fairly danced with relief and
excitement. If only the girls caught the right spirit as easily!
But of course some of them didn’t. There was the Thorn, who roomed on
the ground floor next to Betty, and who ran in twenty times during the
first week to make an absurd complaint or ask an impossible favor.
There was the Mystery up in her tower; she locked herself in so
ostentatiously that she offended her next door neighbor, who promptly
announced her intention of leaving such a “cliquey” house. There was
the Goop, whose table manners were only equaled by the fine disorder
of her apartment. She had been assigned to a double room, but she had
to be tactfully transferred to a single, on the tearful complaint of
her roommate; and more tactfully urged to pick up her possessions, and
not to eat with her knife. Then there were the Twin Digs, to whom the
ten o’clock rule was as if it had never been, and the Romantic Miss,
who professed bland and giggling innocence in regard to campus rules
about gentlemen callers. Jim named them all, except the Mystery, in the
last confidential chat that he and Betty had together, and he made her
promise solemnly to keep him informed of their escapades.
“For I feel like a sort of Dutch uncle to all the Morton Hall-ites,” he
explained. “May I run up once in a while to see how you are getting on?”
“May you? Will you?” was Betty’s enthusiastic response.
“There might be some little changes,” went on Jim boldly. “The only
real test of a house is to live in it a while. If there is anything
that doesn’t suit, you’ll let me know?”
Betty promised to do that also, and Jim departed, divided between
encouragement at Betty’s cordial invitation and her promise to write,
and a conviction that before he had shut the door she had forgotten
his very existence in rapt absorption in her official plans and
perplexities.
The housewarming was a “Madelineish” success--that was foreordained--in
spite of the Mystery’s refusal to attend it, the Thorn’s loud
declaration that it was an absurd idea, and the Goop’s first
using part of her costume for a dusting cloth and then losing it
all in the unfathomable depths under her bed. Of course it was
absurd--deliciously absurd--the Thanksgiving of the Purple Indians.
The Purple Indians lived in blue tents in the depths of a pink forest.
Their clothes were travesties of the latest shades and modes. They
were thankful for the beautiful color-scheme of their world, for the
seclusion and leisure of their lives. Presently they were discovered by
a band of New Women, who converted them to suffrage, dress-reform, and
the pursuit of culture, and marched them off to a Female College where
they could live to learn--not to eat and to dress. There were sly local
hits at the doll fad, the faculty’s latest diversions, the department
societies, the frivolities of Harding life in general.
With a few exceptions the Morton Hall girls entered into the affair
with spirit, making friends over the rehearsals and committee meetings,
displaying much executive ability, and encouraging Betty to feel that
in spite of some small disappointments in the character of a few of
those who had been chosen, most of the Morton Hall-ites were fine
girls, well worthy the help they were receiving in such generous
measure.
The Mystery fully justified her title. She was a bundle of
contradictions. In spite of her curious craving for isolation, she
seemed hungry for friendship and sympathy. She was painfully anxious
for a part in the play and surprised Madeline by suggesting a clever
little scene to be added to it; but all of a sudden she declared
the scene would be too silly, refused to write it out, and was with
difficulty persuaded to keep her part in the performance.
She seemed to have made no friends in her three years of college life,
and she assured Betty forlornly that there was no one she cared to ask
to the play. But when Betty told Binks Ames, and Binks humbly begged
for an invitation, the Mystery acted frightened and embarrassed, and
disappeared the minute the play was over, leaving Binks to spend the
rest of the evening as best she might.
“I think she’s your kind,” Betty told Mrs. Post. “I’ll poke up the Goop
and console the Thorn, if you’ll try to clear up the Mystery--and cheer
her up too.”
So Esther Bond found herself repeatedly invited into Mrs. Post’s
cheerful little sitting-room for tea and a good talk in the dusk of the
afternoon. Often just before ten Mrs. Post would tap on the tower room
door, and step in for a cheerful inquiry about “lessons” and a friendly
good-night. At first the Mystery resented these intrusions as spying on
her jealously guarded seclusion. She accepted Mrs. Post’s invitations
sulkily because she could not well refuse, and sat, glum and silent, in
the chair farthest from her hostess, as though intent on preventing all
intruders from scaling her wall of reserve.
But gradually she melted. Mrs. Post was so friendly, so impervious to
sulks and melancholy. It was so evident that her interest had nothing
to do with curiosity--that she knew and cared nothing about the
Mystery’s place in the college world. Best of all, she never referred
to the Mystery’s habit of locking her door; she might never have
noticed it from her unconscious manner.
One night the Mystery sat down quite close to Mrs. Post, and the
feeling of intimacy that comes from sitting close together in the
firelight unsealed her lips. She told Mrs. Post about her lonely
childhood spent on her grandfather’s farm.
“He was awfully poor,” she explained. “The farm was mortgaged, and
everything was old and forlorn and coming to pieces. Once the Humane
Society officers arrested him for driving a lame horse to town. I was
with him. I remember how ashamed I was. I begged him to let me go back
and live with my mother. Then at last he told me that mother was dead,
and that my father had treated her cruelly and had refused to take care
of her ‘brats.’ I shall never forget the sting of that word. It drowned
out the shame of being arrested for cruelty to animals. Well, the next
year the mortgage was foreclosed and the farm sold. The shame of that
killed my grandfather. My grandmother went to the poorhouse, and I went
to work for a family in the village, where I could earn my board and
have a chance to go to school. I used to think I’d like to teach.”
“Well, you can in a year more,” Mrs. Post told her cheerfully. “It’s a
noble calling.”
“I shall hate it all the same,” declared the Mystery fiercely.
“Oh, no, you won’t, child,” Mrs. Post told her, patting her shoulder
gently. “You mustn’t quarrel with your bread and butter. Who sends you
to Harding?”
“A woman I worked for once at home pays part of my expenses. I shall
return it all as soon as I can. That’s all I shall have to work for
now,” she added bitterly, “except bread and butter. My grandmother died
when I was a freshman.”
“Just let me read you the last letter I had from my daughter, who is a
nurse,” Mrs. Post would say at this stage of the Mystery’s confidences.
“Or no,” after a minute’s vain search for her reading glasses, “you
read it to me, dear.”
The daughter who was a nurse was a cheerful, placid creature, with a
simple, optimistic belief in the joy of life and the nobility of her
profession. The Mystery enjoyed the letters in spite of herself, and
was divided between contempt and envy of the writer.
One night the Mystery crept shamefacedly down from her lonely tower
just to kiss Mrs. Post good-night. She found that good lady in a state
of joyous excitement over the engagement of the daughter who was a
stenographer.
“She is the oldest of the family,” she explained. “She’s helped me, and
helped keep the other girls in school, and given Bella nearly all the
money she needed for her nurse’s course. She’s worked hard, and she has
never complained. Now I hope she can have a nice easy time.”
“So do I,” said the Mystery heartily. “And, Mrs. Post, I’m going to try
not to complain and not to hate so many people and things. Maybe I can
find a bright side to life if I try. I guess you think I’m a grumbler,
but I’ve had a lot to make me one.”
“I know you have, dear,” Mrs. Post told her soothingly.
But the Mystery shook her head. “No, you don’t know, dear lady.
Nobody knows. I’ve never told you the real big trouble--I couldn’t.
Good-night.”
To Betty the Mystery continued cold and forbidding, and Betty wisely
decided to leave her to Mrs. Post.
“There are people I don’t especially like,” she reflected, “and of
course there are people who don’t like me. The Mystery is evidently
one of them. I must write Jim and tell him what a hit his tower room
makes with her, even if I can’t get near her.”