RESCUING MONTANA MARIE
Pre-Christmas excitements and Christmas gaieties were alike things of
the past. Harding was bleak and snow-bound in the clutches of a real
old-fashioned New England January. And the college cynics declared
gloomily that the cold and forbidding weather was a symbol of cold and
unforgiving faculty hearts.
“There are too many of us,” sighed Straight, who was more worried than
she cared to admit over her record in junior argument. “Prexy thinks
this college is getting too big. Maybe it is, but can’t they wait till
next year to have it get smaller? It’s rather hard on us, I think, to
try to crowd us out, just because they calmly let in such a huge mob of
freshmen.”
“Well, the whole huge mob wanted to come and passed its exams all
right,” argued Fluffy. “So how could it be lawfully kept out? But
imagine the freshmen’s states of mind about now, poor things, with
all these horrid rumors flying around. Why, if I were a this year’s
freshman I believe I should give up the game and end my days in a
boarding-school.”
“You would!” sniffed Straight. “You’re a nice one to sympathize with
frightened freshies. You never got warned in your life!”
“Well, just the same I’ve been scared times enough,” demurred Fluffy.
“Being scared hasn’t anything to do with a good reason for being
scared, specially not for freshmen.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Straight reflectively. “I’ve seen several
prods act speechless with fright, but I always thought it indicated
that they weren’t genuine prods at all,--only clever bluffers.”
“You mean me for one, I suppose,” said Fluffy cheerfully. “Now just to
show you that I’m a really-truly prod and no bluffer, I’ll take you
home and tell you about a priori argument. And then maybe you’ll have a
little more respect for the high quality of my brains.”
Montana Marie O’Toole shared keenly in the prevalent mood of
depression. Her radiant smile was dimmed; her cheerful interest in
each and every aspect of college life waned. She concentrated her mind
on her work so violently that she grew pale and thin under the strain.
Betty and the Concentrating Influence united in protests against the
wanton sacrifice of so much youth and beauty; but Montana Marie stood
firm.
“It’s now or never for little me. I’m bright enough to see that far in
front of me,” she told them with forced gaiety. “I guess I can better
afford to lose a little sleep and exercise than I can to risk failing
in these awful mid-years.”
A little tremor of fright and nervous dread shook Miss O’Toole’s fine
shoulders, and Betty, feeling that she had been pushing her protégée
much too hard, took her out for a walk and a merry dinner at the
Tally-ho, at which kind-hearted Fluffy poohed at mid-year terrors,
Madeline Ayres led Marie on to reminisce of dear old Paree, Babbie
Hildreth won her heart by asking advice about bridesmaids’ dresses,
and the mirth of the company in general left her utterly forgetful of
math., Latin prose, and English One, of concentration, mid-years, and
the strenuous life of a conditioned freshman.
“I’ve had a perfectly grand time,” she told Betty, as they parted in
the corridor at Morton Hall. “Gracious, but I do love a good time.
I’d like to do nothing but enjoy myself for one solid week. I shan’t
work so hard after mid-years are over--if I’m not over then too.”
Marie’s laugh at her own joke was rather spiritless, and her expression
grew suddenly serious. For mid-years would not be over for another
two weeks, and Mrs. Hinsdale’s long round of visits had resulted
disastrously to progress in Latin prose. Connie could not help with
that, but she was splendid about the originals in solid geometry.
“If I owned a school,” Marie told her gratefully, “I’d hire you and
Mrs. Hinsdale and Miss Mason, and I guess Miss Adams, to teach there.
Only of course Miss Adams wouldn’t leave Harding, and Mrs. Hinsdale
couldn’t leave her husband, and Miss Mason is going to Germany next
year to study. But you’d come, wouldn’t you? Only of course I don’t own
a school, and I don’t suppose I ever shall.”
“I’m just as much obliged for your offer,” Connie told her brightly.
“Now you’d better go right to bed and get well rested. It’s less than a
week before you’ll have to begin to cram.”
“What in the world do you mean by cram?” inquired Marie blankly.
Connie explained, and Marie gave a despairing sigh. “Blanket your
windows, or get a special permit from the matron, drink coffee, tie a
wet towel around your head, and study till three A. M.,” she repeated
aghast. “Well, I guess I will go right to bed. Just the thought of this
cramming prospect makes me tired. Is it compulsory?”
Connie explained the official disapproval of cramming, and then quoted
the famous rhyme about the luckless wight who
“did not hurry
Nor sit up late to cram.
She did not even worry
But--she failed in her exam.”
“I see,” said Montana Marie briefly. The next morning she went
down-town and bought a copper coffee-maker. It matched her
chafing-dish, added greatly to the elegance of her tea-table, and
was the envy of every Morton Hallite. Montana Marie listened politely
to the popular chorus of admiration, and said nothing about the real
reasons which had actuated her extravagant purchase.
Betty Wales knew nothing about the coffee-maker, or Connie’s ideas on
cramming; but she was quite as worried about her protégée’s prospects
as Montana Marie could possibly be herself.
“The poor thing is perfectly sure she’s going to flunk,” she told the
B. C. A.’s at a special tea-drinking called by Mary to discuss the
impending crisis.
“Oh, well, so is every freshman sure she’ll flunk,” condoled Babbie
Hildreth easily, “and most sophomores.”
Betty nodded. “Of course. The difference is that the rest won’t flunk,
except a few who aren’t expecting to, and Marie will, I guess, from all
that I hear.”
The acting tutors exchanged surreptitious glances, and reluctantly
agreed that Betty was right.
“Has she really lost her nerve--given up the ship?” asked Madeline
thoughtfully.
“Oh, no,” Betty told her, “she’s trying harder than ever. She’s
determined to pass.”
“She’s working too hard, probably,” said Mary thoughtfully. “She really
knows a good average amount about Latin prose.”
“Her themes are fair now,” put in Madeline.
“She knows heaps more about freshman lit. than I ever did,”
acknowledged Helen Adams.
“When she isn’t nervous about it she can reason out her geometry pretty
well,” Christy testified. “She’s naturally quite logical.”
“Then,” said Babbie Hildreth, looking sternly at the official tutors,
“if you’ve done your duty, as you imply that you have, and she’s fairly
well up in everything, why in the world are you so pessimistic about
her exams?”
Mary answered for them all. “She is all right enough when she’s only
reciting to us, or even in regular class work. But she realizes that
the faculty are going to be extra-fussy with her, because of her
conditions and the general situation. She never passed a formal exam in
her life till she came here last year----”
“And then she flunked more than she passed,” put in Madeline flippantly.
“She thinks, like all little freshmen, that everything depends on
mid-years, and she’ll get nervous and excited, and write utter
nonsense,” ended Mary, disregarding the interruption.
“Give her soothing syrup,” suggested Madeline, who refused to take
Montana Marie’s troubles seriously. Babbie frowned at her, and then,
leaning forward on one elbow, she frowned at space, thinking very hard
indeed about the far-away days when she was the prettiest, the idlest,
the most reckless, and the cleverest of the famous “B” trio, and had
mid-years of her own and Bob’s and Babe’s to worry about, and plan to
scrape through somehow, for the honor of the B’s and the “finest class”
of 19--. Everybody else was thinking, too, but Babbie was the first to
have an articulate idea.
“Why, Babe used to be just that way,” she said in a surprised tone.
“If she crammed a lot and got to thinking how terrible mid-years are,
why, she couldn’t do anything. And Bob was just the opposite--never
paid attention in class, just dawdled along, and then sat up all night
with the text-book for the course and some prod’s note-book that she’d
borrowed, and next day she could answer anything. After mid-years
the faculty always thought they’d misjudged Bob.” Babbie giggled
cheerfully. “Babe really knew heaps more. We used to have such times
persuading her to frivol all mid-year week.”
“How’d you do it?” asked Madeline idly.
“Pretended to frivol ourselves. Did frivol some to get her started. Got
up anti-cram movements. Insinuated that we weren’t going to sit up a
single night that year. Oh, it was an awful bother getting Bob a chance
to grind and keeping Babe from grinding and tending up to things a
little myself,” ended Babbie with a reminiscent sigh.
“Well, it’s lucky you had such a lot of practice,” Mary Brooks Hinsdale
told her sweetly, “and that you came back here this week to see about
the big fireplace for the Robert Thayers’ library. Because you are
qualified to act, and are hereby elected to act, as chairman of the
committee on the mid-year madness of Montana Marie O’Toole. Betty, the
assistant tutors, and everybody else who is needed to divert her mind,
are hereby elected to the committee. We’ll get that child through yet,
Betty Wales; so please don’t look so discouraged.”
Betty laughed. “I was only thinking what a stupid I am, not to have
planned all this long ago myself. Of course you’ll get her through!
Why, I believe you could get a broomstick doll through mid-years.”
“We are a clever lot,” agreed Madeline complacently. “Well, I must
go. Plan the campaign, Babbie, assign parts, and we’ll come in strong
at the finish. And the finish shall not involve the finish of Montana
Marie. Nay, it must not,” she went on in melodramatic tones. “Montana
Marie is a treasure. To bury her in her native state or to return her
to dear distant Paree would be to deprive the Harding firmament of its
brightest star--and me of my most treasured understudy for a heroine.”
“There she goes again on her Literary Career,” cut in Mary scornfully.
“Come home with me for dinner, Babbie, and make plans for the great
campaign. I almost promised George to go and call on his new assistant
this evening, but I, for one, am capable of unselfish renunciation.
And the moral of that,”--Mary fastened her furs and linked arms with
the submissive Babbie,--“is: when the new assistant is a frump, George
really shouldn’t ask me to call on her. Good-bye, Betty. If you think
best, you might relieve Prexy’s mind about his over-conditioned
freshman. Not knowing us as well as you do, he may be getting quite
desperate.”
The thought of mid-year week had been a nightmare to Montana Marie.
Studying every minute, sitting up half the night, worrying, hurrying,
spending your time on the questions you weren’t asked and forgetting
the answers to the ones you were--that, in brief, had been her notion
of the fatal occasion. But a few days before the ordeal she began to
get some new ideas. Betty called her into her cozy room at the Morton
to say encouraging things about the effort she was making and to advise
her not to overwork. Pretty Babbie Hildreth came to call, said more
flattering things about Marie’s valuable opinions of bridesmaids’
dresses, and hoped, very casually, that she wasn’t planning to cram;
it was just a silly freshman trick, and always did more harm than good.
Madeline Ayres dragged Marie off to a matinée at the Junction. Helen
Adams took her for a walk at the hour appointed for an English lesson.
“And we talked all the way about men,” Marie told Connie afterward.
“Imagine Miss Adams getting on to that subject! She knows quite a lot
about it, too. I suppose she takes her ideas out of Shakespeare and
Thackeray and Scott and the rest of the classics. I’ve found some of
them right here in ‘Much Ado about Nothing.’ I never thought of finding
useful ideas in Shakespeare on a real practical subject like men.”
When mid-year week was actually upon her, Montana Marie had no time
to grow nervous, or frightened or discouraged, or to overwork. The
B. C. A.’s left her mornings and early afternoons undisturbed, save
for friendly offers of help from the tutors. But about four there was
always some fun afoot. A walk, a skating or snow-shoeing party, a
sleigh-ride in Mary’s trim cutter,--then a merry dinner at the Tally-ho
or the Belden, and after that you were much too sleepy to sit up and
study. So Connie and the new coffee-maker retired behind a screen, and
Montana Marie slept the dreamless sleep of those who have had their
fill of fresh air.
The first examination she pronounced “pretty fierce.” The next “wasn’t
bad.” English, she declared, she really enjoyed.
“And what do you think,” she told Connie in great excitement, “I got
in Shakespeare’s ideas about men. I chose it for my theme subject. I
may not know much about Shakespeare, but I know a lot about men. I
shouldn’t be surprised if that theme made a hit.”
It did. The freshman English teacher showed it to Miss Raymond, and
Miss Raymond read it to a senior theme-class as an example of the value
of having something to say before you tried to say it.
And so Montana Marie O’Toole passed through the ordeal of mid-years
unscathed save for a low-grade or two.
“And what is a low-grade or two?” inquired Babbie scornfully. “Even
prods get those.”
“I’ve learned a lot this last week,” Montana Marie informed Betty
gratefully. “I’ve learned to do an outer edge on the ice, and to
skee--if it isn’t too much of a hill. And I’ve learned what it means to
really concentrate your mind. I thought before that it meant to work
all the time, just as hard as you can. But it doesn’t. It means to
work like anything till you’re tired, and then play like anything till
you’re rested. Now that’s my style. Me for concentration. Concentration
for mine,” ended Montana Marie, whose smile had recently got back all
its former brilliant radiance.