NEWS AND A DISCOVERY
Jean and Frieda were not to be found on either of the two great side
porches, where the Primrose Hall girls spent many recreation hours on
these warm Indian summer afternoons, but just in front of the sorority
house with “Theta” engraved above the door, Olive spied Jean surrounded
by a dozen girls. She was talking in a very animated fashion and had her
back turned so that she did not see Olive, who started to run toward her
and then hesitated and flushed. Each girl in the group was known to her
by name, all of them were Juniors and her classmates and yet not one of
them, except Geraldine Ferrows, had ever voluntarily held five minutes’
conversation with her. Did she have the courage now to thrust herself
among them and to interrupt Jean? Only the thought that Ruth must be
waiting for them with news of Jack braced her. “Jean,” Olive called
softly and then in a louder tone, “Jean!”
At once Jean swung round, but at the same moment twelve other pairs of
eyes stared poor Olive up and down.
“Oh, I am so glad you have come, Olive,” Jean exclaimed, her brown eyes
shining with enthusiasm, “for it has all been arranged that I am to join
the ‘Theta’ Society and I do hope that you will come in with me. Then we
are going to form a dramatic club in our sorority and after a little
while give a perfectly stunning play. I am sure the girls will want you
to take part in it, for you see Olive can act better than any one of us,
or at least she used to when we had charades at Rainbow Lodge.” Jean
paused, feeling a peculiar change in the atmosphere about her. Would no
one echo her invitation to Olive? And why had her friends drawn away in
silence unless something was the matter, for Olive was standing right
before them with her cheeks crimson and biting her lips to hide their
trembling?
Jean stamped her foot with a flash of her old anger. “If you think for
an instant, Margaret Belknap,” she said, turning to her best friend in
the little company, a tall, distinguished, but plain-looking girl, “that
I will be in things and do things without Olive, why—” But Olive took
Jean softly by the arm. “Please don’t say anything, dear,” she
whispered, and then as Jean caught the message she had come to give her,
without further thought of anything or anybody at Primrose Hall, the two
friends hurried off together. Jean was not so conscientious about trying
to find Frieda, but leaving word with the maids to send her after them,
in a few moments the two girls appeared at the reception room door.
“Ruth, you darling,” they called in chorus and then turned white faces
to stare at each other and at the tall figure that rose to greet them
holding Frieda’s hand in one of his. “It is Peter Drummond, gooseys;
don’t you know him?” Frieda cried happily. “Some one told me we had a
caller and I came in here expecting to find some strange, horrid
visitor, and when I saw Peter I forgot I wasn’t a little girl any longer
and most hugged him. You might say you think it good of him to come to
see us,” she ended, rather crossly.
“We thought you were Ruth, Mr. Drummond,” Jean replied, coming to
herself sooner than Olive, “but of course we are terribly glad it is
you; only—why—the truth is, we expected Ruth to be able to tell us that
Jack was better or something. Just think, we haven’t seen old Jack in
weeks, ages it seems.” Jean put out her hand to take hold of their
friend’s when Olive spoke: “I think Mr. Drummond has come to tell us
about Jack instead of Ruth,” she said in a slightly strained voice. “I
am afraid that Jack isn’t so well as we hoped she would be and Ruth
couldn’t leave her. Won’t she ever be able to walk again like other
people? Have the doctors said? Tell us, please, quickly what has brought
you to see us, for anything is better than suspense.” And still for a
second Peter Drummond did not reply.
The first cause of his silence was that Frieda, entirely surprised at
Olive’s interpretation of his visit, had unexpectedly burst into tears.
“Come now,” Mr. Drummond said finally, patting Frieda’s hand, “it isn’t
so bad as all this. Olive did guess the truth and I have come to tell
you about Jack. Perhaps she isn’t so well as we hoped, for she can’t
join you at school just at present or get about very much. The fact is—”
Mr. Drummond cleared his throat, “well, the surgeons are not quite sure
of Jack’s condition yet and must wait a while longer and keep her very
quiet before they can decide. But I saw her a minute the other day and
she and Ruth send you their love and Jack hopes boarding school isn’t so
dreadful as she thinks it must be and— Why doesn’t some one else say
something, for never before in my life have I been with three women and
had to do all the talking?” And Peter, with a man’s embarrassment at
being the bearer of ill news, looked at the ranch girls with pretended
indignation.
“Are you sure you have told us the truth, Mr. Drummond?” Jean asked, and
their visitor, not in the least offended by the question, emphatically
bowed his head.
Jean turned to the other two girls. “Then Olive and Frieda, I don’t
think we need be frightened,” she said stoutly, “though of course we are
terribly disappointed at not having Jack here at school with us, I have
always felt she would be well some day. Even if the surgeons should say
she won’t, my money is on old Jack!”
Instantly Frieda’s face cleared at Jean’s courageous attitude, though
Olive looked considerably depressed. But at this minute Mr. Drummond, to
divert everybody’s attention, turned toward Frieda. “Will somebody tell
me, please, what is the trouble with the youngest Miss Ralston, for if
two weeks at boarding school can affect her like this, What will a whole
year do?”
Instinctively Frieda’s hand went up to her Psyche knot. “Don’t tell Jack
and Ruth,” she begged, and then, tossing her blonde head: “Oh, tell away
if you like, Peter Drummond. I haven’t any disease, if that’s what you
mean; I am just not a baby any longer.”
Peter’s expression was a funny mixture of gravity and amusement. “If
it’s old age that is afflicting you, Frieda,” he said pulling at his own
heavy iron-gray hair, “then you’ve got about the worst disease in the
world and the most incurable, but I didn’t really think it was apt to
overtake one at fifteen.” Seeing that Frieda looked injured, he turned
again to Olive and Jean. “The Harmons have been awfully nice to Jack and
Ruth and they are coming out here to see you pretty soon. There is a
queer old house in this neighborhood where an old relative of theirs
lives. The house is supposed to be haunted, or at least there is some
mystery about it. I wonder if you girls have seen it?”
“I have,” Olive answered quickly and Jean laughed.
“How on the face of the earth do you know you have seen the place Peter
is describing, Olive?” Jean questioned, “for he hasn’t told you the name
of it or what it looks like or anything to identify it.”
Olive looked puzzled. “Yes, I know it is funny, but it is a place called
‘The Towers,’ with a high tower at the top of it and a balcony and queer
little windows.” Quite unconsciously Olive had closed her eyes, because
for some strange reason she seemed to be able to recall the house she
had seen on the morning of her early walk better with her eyes closed.
Mr. Drummond smiled at her. “Olive is right, the place is called ‘The
Towers.’ I remember now,” he repeated. “I wonder if because Olive is
perhaps a gypsy or an Indian, she is going to be a fortune teller.” But
because Olive’s face had crimsoned at his speech his tone changed. “My
dear Olive, suppose you are half Indian, why on earth should you care?
There isn’t the least disgrace in it, is there?” And Olive noticed that
Mr. Drummond’s speech ended with a question.
But he had now risen, picking up from the table near him a large box and
a small one. The large box he handed to Jean. “You are please to conceal
this from the powers that be, if it’s against boarding school laws to
eat candy,” he said and then stood turning the smaller box about in his
hand, surveying it thoughtfully. “This is a gift to you girls from
Jack,” he remarked finally. “Miss Drew tells me it contains a great
surprise, and as I haven’t the faintest idea what is inside of it, may I
be present at its opening?”
The girls allowed Frieda to tear off the paper covering outside the
parcel. Inside a white velvet box was revealed which opened with a
spring. Instantly Frieda touched this spring there were three cries of
“Oh,” followed by a moment’s silence. On the white satin lining of the
box were three crescent-shaped pins as large in circumference as a
quarter. The pins were composed of seven lovely jewels shading from red
to pale violet. Each girl took her gift from the box, regarding it with
characteristic expressions. Jean’s eyes were dancing with delight, the
dimple showing at the corner of her mouth, Frieda’s blue eyes were bluer
than ever and her cheeks pinker, while Olive’s eyes were overclouded and
her face quivered with pleasure.
[Illustration: THERE WERE THREE CRIES OF “OH,” FOLLOWED BY A MOMENT’S
SILENCE]
“They are the loveliest things I ever saw in my life and the grandest,
and now Jean won’t be able to pretend we are poor any more,” Frieda
announced.
“Ah, but maybe Jack is a fairy godmother, and even poor girls may have
fairy godmothers,” Jean teased.
“I think none of us have guessed yet what Jack intends our gifts to
suggest,” Olive added slowly, her eyes still resting on the glowing
colors of the jeweled pins. “Don’t you see, Mr. Drummond, that our pins
represent rainbows? I have been repeating the rainbow colors to
myself—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. And here are
seven jewels of the same colors in our pins.”
Peter Drummond took Olive’s pin in his own hand. “Right you are, and
Jack has beaten me at my own game. For I have been collecting jewels all
my life and never thought of so pretty an idea as this. Here is a garnet
to start with for the red, then a topaz for the orange, a yellow diamond
next, an emerald for the green, a sapphire for blue, a blue opal for
indigo and last of all an amethyst for the last shade of violet.”
“They are to make us think of the ranch and the lodge and the mine and
all the good things that have come to us through a rainbow,” Jean said
thoughtfully and then more huskily, “I guess Jack is pretty homesick.”
Frieda made a dive toward the floor at this moment, rising up with a
piece of paper in her hand. “This fell out of the jewel case when I
opened it, but I hadn’t time to pick it up then,” she announced. “Oh,
goodness gracious, Jack, of all people, has written us a poem!” And
Frieda read:
“Here are seven colors in nature and art,
What I think they mean I wish you from my heart;
Here’s red, that good courage may fill you each day
And orange and yellow to shine on your way.
Here’s green for the ocean to bear us afar
To some lovely blue land ’neath an opal star.
And yet to the end shall we ever forget
Our own prairie fields of pale violet?”
“It is a rather hard poem to understand, but it rhymes pretty well,”
Frieda ended doubtfully.
Olive’s loyalty left no room for criticism. “It’s beautiful, I think.
And I know what Jack means at the end. If we ever do go to Europe, as we
sometimes have planned, we must never forget the Rainbow Ranch. You
know, Frieda dear, that the alfalfa clover is violet and not pink and
white like the clover in the east.”
But the poem could not be further unraveled because Mr. Drummond had now
to tear himself away in order to catch his train back to New York.
Hurrying out into the hall, with the three ranch girls close behind him,
he suddenly came to an abrupt stop. He had nearly run into a young
woman, who also stood still, staring at him with reproachful blue eyes
and a haughtily held head.
“Peter, that is, Mr. Drummond, how could you come down here when I told
you not to?” the girls heard Jessica Hunt say with the least little
nervous tremor in her voice.
Mr. Drummond bowed to her coldly. “I am very sorry, Jessica, Miss Hunt,”
he returned coldly, “but I had not the faintest idea of seeing you at
Primrose Hall. You do not know it, but the ranch girls are my very dear
friends and my visit was solely to them.” Peter was moving majestically
away when a hand was laid for the briefest instant on his coat sleeve.
This time a humbler voice said, “Forgive me, Peter, I might have known
you would never trouble to come to see me again.”
That evening as the ranch girls were dressing for dinner Jean poked her
head in Olive’s room. “Olive Ralston, has it ever occurred to you that
Peter Drummond may have recommended Primrose Hall to us because a
certain young woman named Jessica Hunt taught here? Men folks is deep,
child, powerful deep, but as the book says, ‘we shall see what we shall
see.’ I wonder, though, why girls and men can’t fall in love and get
married without such a lot of fussing and misunderstanding. Think how
Ruth is treating poor Jim! When I fall in love I am not going to be so
silly and tiresome. I am just going to say yes and thank you too and
let’s get married next week.” Jean’s face was very serious for the
moment and also very bewitching.
But Olive answered her with the voice of prophecy. “Jean Bruce, you will
have the hardest time of us all in making up your mind when you are in
love.”