THE GLEE CLUB CONCERT.
"If a cross-section could be made of this house, it would be rather
amusing," exclaimed Judy Kean. "In every room there would be one girl
buttoning up another girl."
It was the evening of the Glee Club concert, and nearly everybody not a
freshman was going to dine somewhere before the concert. Judy and Nance
were invited to the McLeans', and Molly was to have dinner with Mary
Stewart and her guests in the Quadrangle apartment. During the process
of dressing there was a great deal of "cross-talk" going on at Queen's
that night. Through the open doors along the corridors voices could be
heard calling:
"Has anyone a piece of narrow black velvet?"
"Margaret, don't you dare go without hooking me up!"
"Who thinks white shoes and stockings are too dressy?"
"Oh my, but you look scrumptious!"
Molly had saved her most prized dress for this occasion. It was the one
she had purchased the Christmas before in New York and was made of old
blue chiffon cloth over a "slimsy" satin lining, with two big old rose
velvet poppies at the belt. It was cut out in the neck and the sleeves
were short. Just before coming back to college, she had indulged in long
ecru suede gloves, which she now drew on silently. She had received a
letter from her mother that morning and her heart was heavy within her.
The letter said:
"The investment I made last summer has not turned out well. The young
son has assured me that the family intends to pay back all the
creditors, and I am trying not to worry. In the meantime, my precious
daughter, you must not think of giving up college, as you offered in
your last letter; that is, until this term is over. Then we will see
what can be done, although I am obliged to tell you that things do not
look very hopeful about any present funds. Jane is to take a position
in town as librarian and Minnie intends to start a dancing class. Your
brothers and sisters and I will get on, but oh, I did so want you to
have the advantages of a good education."
"But so much else goes with the education," Molly protested to herself.
"So many pleasures and enjoyments. Somehow, it doesn't seem fair for me
to be going to glee club concerts when all my family are working so
hard."
"Have you any stamps, Judy?" she asked suddenly, as she hooked that
young woman into her dress.
"As many as you want up to a dozen," answered Judy. "They are in the
pill box on my desk."
Molly made her way through Judy's tumbled apartment and helped herself
to the stamps.
"I'll return them to-morrow," she said absently, drawing a letter from
her portfolio, slipping one stamp into the envelope, and sticking the
other on the back.
"What in the world are you writing to a real estate firm for, Molly?"
demanded Judy, looking over Molly's shoulder.
"Oh, just answering an ad."
"Are you so rich that you are going to buy a farm?"
"I wish I were."
Judy's curiosity never gave her any peace, and she now desired earnestly
to know why Molly was corresponding with this strange firm.
"If it turns out well, I'll tell you," said Molly; "but if it doesn't,
you'll never, never know."
"You mean thing, and I thought you loved me," ejaculated Judy.
"I do. That's why I won't tell you. If I did, I would have to inflict
something worse on you, and you wouldn't be so thankful for that part."
"I shall burst if I don't know," cried Judy in despair.
"Burst into a million little pieces then, like the Snow Queen's looking
glass and get into people's eyes and make them see queer Judy pictures
and think queerer Judy thoughts."
"Meany, meany," called Judy after her friend, who had seized her gray
eider-down cape and was fleeing down the hall.
"I love all this," thought Molly, as she hastened up the campus to the
Quadrangle. "I adore the gay talk and the jokes--oh, heavens, but it
will be hard to leave it! I understand now how Mary Stewart felt when
she almost decided not to come back this year and then gave up and came
after all."
Molly felt she would enjoy the sensation of being waited on at table
that night instead of waiting herself, as she had done about this time
last year at Judith Blount's dinner. She wondered if there would be a
poor little trembly freshman to pass the food. But Mary was too
kind-hearted for such things and had engaged two women in the village to
cook and serve her dinner.
The other guests had not arrived when Molly let herself into the
beautiful living room of the apartment, which was now turned into a
dining room. The drop-leaf mahogany table had been drawn into the middle
of the floor and was set with dazzling linen and silver for eight
persons.
"I wonder who the other two are," thought Molly.
"Is that you, Molly, dear?" called Mary from the bedroom. "Well, come
and hook my dress--" how many yards of hooks and eyes had Molly joined
together that evening! "And here's something for you. Willie, when he
found out you were taking him, sent you some violets."
"Heavens!" cried the young girl, after she had finished Mary and opened
the large purple box. "Oh, Mary, this bunch is big enough for three
people."
"It's only intended for one, and that's you," laughed the other.
The bouquet was indeed as large as a soup plate.
"I don't think I'd better wear them to dinner. I couldn't see over them.
I should feel as if I were carrying a violet bed on my chest."
"And so you are. No doubt it took all the violets from one large double
bed for that bunch. But you had better wear them at first, and take
them off at the table. Brother Willie is one of the touchiest young
persons imaginable. Father and I have always called him 'the sensitive
plant.'"
Hastily Molly pinned on the enormous bunch, which covered the entire
front of her dress.
"They are coming now," she said, hearing steps in the next room; and,
peeping through the door, she beheld "Brother Willie" himself,
resplendent in his evening clothes, in company with two other equally
resplendent beings, all wearing white gardenias in their buttonholes.
"My goodness, they look like a wedding!" Molly whispered to her friend.
"Aren't they grand?" laughed Mary. "And here I am as plain as an old
shoe, and never will be anything else."
"You are the finest thing I know," exclaimed Molly, tucking her arm
through her friend's and allowing herself to be led rather timidly into
the living room.
The third girl at this fine affair was another post-grad., and presently
Molly rejoiced to see Miss Grace Green enter with her brother, Edwin.
Miss Green looked very pretty and young. She kissed Molly and told her
she was a dear, and smelt the violets and pinched her cheek, glancing
slyly at the three young men, any one of whom might have burdened her
with that huge bouquet. And did not such bouquets argue something more
than ordinary friendship?
As for the Professor, he glanced at the bouquet almost before he looked
at Molly. Then he shook her stiffly by the hand and, turning away,
devoted himself to the post-grad.
"Do they know that my mother has lost all her money in their cousin's
mine?" Molly thought. "Perhaps that's the reason why Professor Green is
so cold tonight. He's embarrassed."
At dinner Molly sat between Will Stewart and an elegant, rich young man
named Raymond Bellaire, who talked in rather a drawling voice about
yachting parties and cross-country riding and motoring. "At college, you
know, the fellahs are awfully set on those little two-seated electric
affairs." What car did Molly prefer? Molly was obliged to admit that
she preferred the Stewart car in New York, whatever that was, it being
the only one she had ever ridden in.
The young man screwed a monocle into one eye and looked at her. He was
half English and had half a right to a monocle, but Molly wished he
wouldn't screw up his eye like that. It made her want to laugh. However,
he didn't appear to notice at all that she was endeavoring to keep the
irresistible laugh-curve from her lips. He only looked at her harder,
and then remarked:
"I say, by Jove, you'd make a jolly fine Portia. Did you ever think of
going on the stage?"
"Oh, no; I'm going to be a school teacher," answered Molly.
"School teacher?" he repeated aghast. "You? With that hair and--by
Jove--those violets!" His eyes had lighted on the mammoth bunch. "Tell
that to the marines."
Molly flushed.
"The violets haven't anything to do with my teaching school," she said a
little indignantly. "And neither has my hair. Didn't you ever see a
red-headed school teacher?"
"Not when her hair curled like that and had glints of gold in it."
"You're teasing me because I'm only a sophomore," she said, and turned
her head away.
"No, by Jove, I'm not though," protested Raymond Bellaire, looking much
pained. But Molly was talking to Willie Stewart at her right.
That young man was the most correct individual in the matter of clothes,
deportment and small talk she had ever seen. She thought of his splendid
father, who had started life as a bootblack.
"I wonder if he's pleased with his fashion-plate son?" she pondered.
She didn't care for him or his friends. They were not like the jolly
boys over at Exmoor, who talked about basket-ball and football, and
swopped confidences regarding Latin and Greek and that _awful_ French
Literature examination, and what this professor was like, and what the
Prexy said or was supposed to have said, and so on. It was all college
gossip, but Molly enjoyed it and contributed her share eagerly. She
tried a little of it on Brother Willie.
"Are you taking up Higher Math. this year, Mr. Stewart?" she asked.
"Oh, after a fashion," he answered. "I don't expect to stay at college
after this year. I'm going to Paris to finish off."
Molly wondered what "Higher Math. after a fashion" really meant.
At the concert later it was a relief to find herself next to Professor
Green, who had scarcely looked in her direction all through dinner. At
first she felt a little embarrassed, sitting next to the Professor, who
was a great man at Wellington. She began silently to admire the packed
audience of young girls in light dresses with a generous sprinkling of
young men in evening clothes.
"You'll probably be a member of the club next year, Miss Brown," the
Professor was saying. "I'm sure you must sing. I am surprised they have
not found it out by this time. Next winter you must----"
"I doubt if I am here next winter," interrupted Molly, and then blushed
furiously and bit her lip. She wished she had not made that speech.
"Is anything going to happen that will keep you from coming to college
next winter?" he asked, glancing at the violets.
"How can I tell what will happen?" she answered childishly.
"Then, why not come back next year?"
"Because--because----" she began. "Oh, here they come!" she interrupted
herself to say, as the members of the Glee Club filed slowly out and
took their seats. "Aren't they sweet in their white dresses?"
"Very!" answered the Professor, "but what's this about next year? It was
just idle talk, wasn't it?"
"No, no," whispered Molly, for the first number was about to begin;
"hasn't Mr. Blount told you anything?"
"Why, no. That is, nothing about you. What on earth?"
"Didn't you have a list of the stockholders?"
"You mean of the Square Deal Mine?" he asked in entire amazement.
"Yes."
"I have a list, but what of it?"
"My mother's name is there--Mrs. Mildred Carmichael Brown."
"Great heavens!" groaned the Professor. Then he sunk far down in his
seat and buried his face in his program.
Jenny Wren opened the concert with this song, which suited her high,
bird-like voice to perfection:
"'Oh, I wish I were a tiny,
Browny bird from out the South,
Settled among the alderholts
And twittering by the stream;
I would put my tiny tail down
And put up my little mouth,
And sing my tiny life away
In one melodious dream.
"'I would sing about the blossoms,
And the sunshine and the sky,
And the tiny wife I mean to have,
In such a cosy nest;
And if someone came and shot me dead,
Why, then, I could but die,
With my tiny life and tiny song
Just ended at their best.'"
There was something so moving about the little song that Molly felt she
could have melted into a fountain of tears like Undine; and she was
obliged to smile and smile and pretend that her heart wasn't breaking
because her tiny life and tiny song at Wellington--her beloved
Wellington--were soon to come to an end. The Professor, too, was
stirred. He glanced once at Molly's smiling lips and tearful eyes and
blew his nose violently. Then again he contemplated the program with
great interest.
During the intermission, Molly and Will Stewart went visiting down the
aisle. Half the audience was moving about, talking to the other half,
and the hall was filled with the buzz of laughter and conversation.
"I love it! I love it!" Molly kept repeating to herself. "There couldn't
be anything more perfect than college. Oh, do I have to give it up?"
"Hey, Miss Molly!" called Andy McLean in a nearby seat, while Judy and
Nance and George Theodore Green were waving violently to her, and
Lawrence Upton was shaking hands with her and assuring her that the
dinner had been a failure because she hadn't been there. Fortunately,
Judith was well out of ear-shot behind the scenes. The Williams sisters,
from across the aisle, were calling in one voice:
"Molly, come and meet our brother John."
Margaret Wakefield, causing a sensation with her distinguished father,
and enduring the gaze of the entire audience with the calmness of one
reared in the public eye, detained her for a moment to introduce her to
the famous politician.
"A real belle," said Miss Grace Green to her brother, leaning across two
seats to speak to him, "is one who is just as popular with women as
with men, and Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky appears to be a general
favorite."
The Professor looked at his sister absently. Apparently, he hadn't heard
a word she said.
He was saying to himself:
"I think I'll let the tenor sing that little lyric that begins: 'Eyes
like the skies in summer.'"
After a while the delightful affair was over, and Molly, feeling
immensely happy in spite of her anxious heart, had been escorted to
Queen's. Professor Edwin Green, hastening into his room, flung his hat
in one direction and his coat in another, and sat down at his desk.
Without an instant's hesitation, he seized a pencil and the first scrap
of paper he found and began to write:
"Dear Richard:
"I know that your cares are many, but get to work on the score
of the opera. I find that by working at night for a week I shall
be able to finish the last act and make all the changes you
suggested. We must launch the thing now. I have overcome all
scruples, as you called them, and I want nothing more than to
get the opera into some manager's hands. If you think that Blum
& Starks will take it up, you had better see them at once. My
name may be used and everything that goes with it in the way of
previous unimportant literary efforts. It's unusual, of course,
for a Professor of English Literature to write a comic opera,
but the very unusualness may give it some publicity and help the
thing along. I have made one change without conferring; given
the tenor-lover the baritone-villain's song: 'Eyes like the
skies in summer.' Write something very pretty for that, will
you, old man? The money we may make on this will help some in
the present critical family situation. I understand that there
have been a good many failures in light opera this winter, and
the managers are looking for good things. It may be that we
shall strike at the psychological moment.
"Yours, E. G."
The august Professor then wrote two other letters; one to a firm of
bankers and one to his publishers. At last, getting into an old dressing
gown and some very rusty slippers, lighting a long, black cigar and
drawing his student's lamp nearer, he took an immense roll of manuscript
from a drawer and fell to work. It was three o'clock before he turned in
for three hours of troubled sleep.