CONGRATULATIONS
By this time the usually self-contained Margaret was weeping bitterly in
Jean’s arms, while she patted her reassuringly on the back. Gerry looked
utterly exhausted, her hair was in a perfect tumble and a smut
ornamented one of her cheeks. Frieda had turned toward the wall and Lucy
and Mollie Johnson each had an arm about her.
“Well, girls, the game is up, isn’t it?” Jean spoke first, but Olive
simply would not accept what her eyes had already told her.
“It isn’t true, Jean hasn’t been defeated, has she Gerry?” she
entreated, squeezing the hand that held hers.
“Winifred Graham has just been elected president of the Junior class at
Primrose Hall for the coming year!” Gerry announced stoically, and then
there was a sudden sound of weeping from all parts of the sitting room.
“Why, goodness gracious, girls, don’t take things like this,” Jean
insisted, being the only dry-eyed person on the scene. “Margaret dear,
you are positively wetting my shirtwaist. Of course, I am sorry not to
have been elected, but I’m not disappointed, as I haven’t thought lately
that I could be. And please, this isn’t anybody’s funeral.” Then Jean
kissed Margaret and walked over to shake hands with Gerry.
“You have both worked terribly hard for me and I never can cease to be
grateful to you, but now that things are all over do let us show the
girls that we can take defeat gracefully anyhow. Please everybody stop
crying at once and come on with me to shake hands and offer my
congratulations to Winifred Graham. Wouldn’t we look a sorry set if the
next time she beheld us we should all appear to have been washed away in
tears? The first person that looks cheerful in this room shall have a
five-pound box of candy from me in the morning.”
Of course Jean’s suggestion that Winifred Graham should not learn the
bitterness with which they accepted their defeat had an immediate
effect, as she had guessed it would, upon Gerry and Margaret. Both girls
stiffened up at once.
“Jean is perfectly right,” Margaret immediately agreed, “for it will
never do in the world for us to make a split in our Junior class just
because things have not gone as we wanted. Lots of the girls did vote
for Jean and if we take our defeat bravely, why Winifred Graham and her
set can’t crow over us half so much as if we show our chagrin.”
Gerry made such a funny face over the prospect of Winifred’s crowing
that everybody was able to summon a faint laugh.
“Come on at once then, let us go and offer our congratulations to
Winifred while we have our courage screwed to the sticking point. For my
part I would rather do my duty and remember my manners without delay.”
And Jean opened the door, believing that all her friends would follow
her. Once in the hall, however, she soon discovered that Olive was
missing and going back called out softly: “Come on, Olive, and help us
congratulate the winner. You wouldn’t have us show an ugly spirit now,
would you?”
But Olive quietly shook her head. And as Jean was by no means sure how
Winifred might receive any attention from Olive, she forbore to insist
on her accompanying them. Should Winifred be disagreeable under the
present circumstances Jean was not perfectly sure of being able to keep
cool; and of all things she must not show temper at the present moment.
Besides, her few minutes’ conversation with Olive, before the coming of
the girls to announce her defeat, had evidently borne good fruit, for
Olive did not appear particularly distressed at the result of the
election. After a first moment of breaking down she had entirely
regained her self-control. Truly Jean was delighted at seeing her so
sensible.
One, two, three minutes passed after the other girls’ departure and an
entire silence reigned in the room, Olive standing perfectly still. Had
Jean been pleased because she had accepted her failure so sensibly?
Sensibly! why Olive had not spoken simply because she could not trust
herself to speak. She had not cried, because in the first moments of
humiliation and regret, there are but few people who can at once summon
tears. Of course, Olive was taking the affair too seriously and Jean’s
view was the only reasonable one, but she had not been defeated herself,
she had stood in the way of her friend’s victory and this last blow had
come to her after months of coldness and neglect on the part of her
classmates, which she had borne bravely and in silence. Now Olive was
through with courage and with silence.
At last she seemed to have made up her mind to some action, for the
relief of tears came. Going into her own room, Olive flung herself face
downward on the bed, giving herself up to the luxury of this weakness.
When she arose her face wore a look of unusual determination. Whatever
her fight, it was ended now. First she walked over to her bureau and
there unlocking a small iron safe took out a sandalwood box, a box which
all who have followed her history, know to be the single possession she
had rescued from the Indian woman before running away from her for the
last time.
The girl carried her few treasures to her desk and before beginning the
letter she plainly intended writing, she picked them up one by one,
looking at them closely, the silver cross and chain worn on the evening
of the dance, the small book only a few inches in size, and the watch
with the picture of a woman’s face in it, the picture that Ruth and the
ranch girls had always believed to look like Olive.
At the face she looked longest, but after a few moments this also was
laid aside for the work she had in mind.
“DEAR RUTH” (her letter read):
“I write to tell you that I am not willing to remain longer as a student
at Primrose Hall. I am sorry to trouble you with this news and if Jack
is too ill to be worried, please do not mention this to her. I have
tried very hard to bear my difficulties here and truly I would have gone
on without complaining, for I can live without the friendship of other
girls so long as you and the ranch girls care for me, but what I cannot
bear is to be a drawback to Jean and Frieda and to stand in their way as
I do here. I do not know what to ask you to do with me, for I cannot go
back to live among the Indians until I know more than I do now and am
able to teach them. Can I not go to some little school where the girls
will not care so much about my past? But if you are not willing for me
to do this, and I know how little I am worthy of all you and the ranch
girls have done for me, you must not mind if I find some work to do, so
that I can make my living. For no matter what happens, I can remain no
longer at Primrose Hall.
“With all love, OLIVE.”
And when the letter was finished Olive, whose head was hot and aching,
rested it for a moment on the desk upon her folded arms. When she lifted
it, because of a noise nearby, Miss Katherine Winthrop was standing only
a few feet away.
“I beg your pardon, I knocked at your door, Olive, but you must have
failed to hear me and then I came inside, for I wanted to talk to you.”
The fact that Miss Katherine Winthrop in some remarkable fashion seemed
always to know, almost before it happened, every event that transpired
at Primrose Hall, with the causes that led to it, was well recognized by
her pupils. So of course she now knew not only that Winifred Graham had
been elected to the Junior Class presidency, but the particular reason
why Jean had been defeated.
“I am sorry to have you see that I have been crying, Miss Winthrop,”
Olive said, knowing that there was no use in trying to disguise the
truth. “I know you think it very foolish and stupid of me.”
Miss Winthrop sat down in a big chair, beckoning the young girl to a
stool near her feet. “Well, I suppose I do usually discourage tears,”
she answered with a half smile; “at least, I know my girls think I am
very unsympathetic about them. But I suppose now and then we women are
just obliged to weep, being made that way. What I want to talk to you
about is Jean’s defeat at the election this afternoon. You feel
responsible for it, don’t you?”
Why be surprised at Miss Winthrop’s knowledge of her feelings, as
apparently she knew everything? So Olive merely bowed her head.
“I want to ask you to tear up the letter which you have just written
asking your friends to let you leave Primrose Hall because of what has
happened.”
Miss Winthrop’s eyes had not apparently been turned for an instant
toward the desk on which her letter lay, and even so she could not have
seen inside a sealed envelope. Olive stared, almost gasped. “How could
you know, Miss Winthrop?”
Miss Winthrop put her hand on Olive’s dark hair, so black that it seemed
to have strange colors of its own in it. “I didn’t know about your
letter, dear, I only guessed that after the experience you have passed
through this afternoon, with what has gone before, you were almost sure
to have written it. And I want to ask you to stay on at Primrose Hall.”
Olive shrank away, shaking her head quietly. “I have made up my mind,”
she returned; “I have been thinking of it before and now I am quite
determined.”
A moment’s silence followed and then in a different voice, as though she
were not speaking directly to the girl before her, Miss Winthrop went
on. “I believe there are but three types of people in this world, be
they men or women, that I cannot endure,—a coward, a quitter and a snob.
Unfortunately I have discovered that there are among the girls here in
my school a good many snobs. I guessed it before you ranch girls came to
me and now that I have seen what you have been made to suffer, I am very
sure. But, Olive, I want you to help me teach my girls the weakness, the
ugliness, the foolishness of snobbery. And can you help me, if though
not a snob, you are one or both of the other two things I have
mentioned?”
“A coward and a quitter?” Olive repeated slowly, wondering at the older
woman’s choice of these two words and yet knowing that no others could
express her meaning so forcibly.
“But I would not be going away on my own account, but for the sake of
Jean and Frieda,” she defended.
“I think not. You may just now be under that impression, but if you
think things over, does it not come back at last to you? You feel you
have endured the slights and coldness of your classmates without
flinching and it has hurt. Yes, but not like the hurt that comes to you
with the feeling that your presence in the school is reflecting on
Frieda and Jean. They do not wish you to go away, Olive, they will be
deeply sorry if you do and whatever harm you may think you have done
them has already been done and can’t be undone. No, dear, if you go away
from Primrose Hall now it is because of your own wounded feelings,
because your pride which you hide way down inside you has been touched
at last!”
Miss Winthrop said nothing more, but turned and looked away from her
listener.
For Olive was trying now to face the issue squarely and needed no
further influence from the outside. By and by she put her small hand on
Miss Winthrop’s firm, large one. “I won’t go,” she replied. “I believe I
_have_ been thinking all this time about myself without knowing it, You
made me think of Jack when you spoke of a coward and a quitter, for they
are the kind of words she would have been apt to use.”
Miss Winthrop laughed. “Oh, I have been a girl in my day too, Olive, and
I haven’t forgotten all I learned. Indeed, I believe I learned those two
words and what they stood for from a boy friend of mine long years ago.
Now I want to talk to you about yourself.” The woman leaned over, and
putting her two fingers under Olive’s sharply pointed chin, she tilted
her head back so that she could see in sharp outline every feature of
the girl’s face.
“Olive, your friend Miss Drew told me on bringing you here to Primrose
Hall what she and your friends knew of your curious story, of their
finding you with an old Indian woman with whom you had apparently lived
a great many years. I believe that the woman claimed you as her
daughter, but though no one believed her, your Western friends have
never made any investigation about your past, fearing that this Indian
woman might again appear to claim you.”
“Yes,” the girl gratefully agreed.
“Well, Olive, I have seen a great deal of the world and very many people
in it and since the idea that you are an Indian worries you so much, I
want to assure you I do not believe for a moment you have a trace of
Indian blood in you. Except that you have black hair and your skin is a
little darker than Anglo-Saxon peoples, there is nothing about you to
carry a remote suggestion of the Indian race. Why, dear, your features
are exquisitely thin and fine, your eyes are large. The idea is too
absurd! I wonder if you could tell me anything about yourself and if you
would like me to try to find out something of your history. Perhaps I
might know better how to go about it than your Western friends.”
For answer Olive rose and going over to her desk, returned with the
sandalwood box containing her three treasures. “This is all I have of my
own,” she said, first putting the box into Miss Winthrop’s lap and then
tearing up the letter just written to Ruth, before sitting down again on
her stool near the older woman. Gratefully she touched her lips to Miss
Winthrop’s hand, saying: “I would like very much to tell you all I can
recall about myself, for lately queer ideas and impressions have come to
me and I believe I can remember a time and people in my life, whom I
must have known long before old Laska and the Indian days.”