NEW YEAR’S EVE
Several weeks had passed since the interview between Olive and Miss
Winthrop on the evening of Jean’s defeat, and now the Christmas holidays
at Primrose Hall were well nigh over. For twelve days, save for Olive
and its owner, the great house had been empty of all its other pupils
and teachers; now in another thirty-six hours they would be returning to
take up their work again.
The time had been long and lonely for Olive, of course, for Jean and
gone into New York to visit Gerry Ferrows and Margaret Belknap and
Frieda had departed south with the two Johnson sisters. The ranch girls
had not wished to leave Olive alone and each one of them had offered to
remain at school with her, but this sacrifice could hardly be accepted
because Olive had made no friends who had wished her to be with them.
Jessica Hunt would have liked to have had Olive visit her, but she
had no home of her own and her sister’s apartment was crowded with
babies; Margaret and Gerry, who had been kinder since their common
disappointment, had invited her for week ends, but these Invitations
Olive had quietly declined. All she would have cared for in a trip to
New York was an opportunity to see Jack, and this privilege was still
denied the ranch girls.
Of course, Ruth had been informed that Olive was to be left alone at
Primrose Hall with only Miss Winthrop as her companion during the
holidays, and one afternoon had hurried out to see what arrangements
could be made for her pleasure. However, after a serious half hour’s
talk with Miss Winthrop and a shorter consultation with Olive, she had
gone away again content to leave the fourth ranch girl in wiser hands
than her own.
And though the two weeks may have been long and lonely for Olive, yet
they had never been dull, for each moment she was hoping and praying to
hear some news from old Laska and each hour being drawn into closer
intimacy with Miss Winthrop. For now that the discipline of school life
had been relaxed, the principal of Primrose Hall showed herself to her
favorite pupil in a light that would have surprised most of her
students. She was no longer unsympathetic or stern, but treated Olive
with an affection that was almost like a mother’s. Each evening in her
private study before a beautiful open fire the woman and girl would sit
close together under the shadow of “The Winged Victory,” reading aloud
or talking of the great world of men and cities about which Miss
Winthrop knew so much and Olive so little. But of the secret of the
girl’s past her new friend did not encourage her to talk for the
present.
“If you have told me all you know, Olive, then it is better for us not
to go into this subject again until we hear from the Indian woman, and
then should she fail us, I must try to think of some other plan to help
you.”
And so one by one the holidays went by, as days will go under every
human circumstance, and yet no word had come from Laska, though it was
now the afternoon of New Year’s eve. Olive had been alone all morning
and unusually depressed, for although she had not heard what she so
eagerly waited to hear, she had learned that the surgeons had at last
decided an operation must be performed on Jack. Ruth had written her
that there was supposed to be some pressure from a broken bone on Jack’s
spine that made it impossible for her to walk, and although the
operation might not be absolutely successful, Jack herself had insisted
that it should be tried.
The snow had been falling all morning and the neighborhood of Sleepy
Hollow had never been more beautiful, not even in its Indian summer
mists. If Olive could go for a walk she felt that she might brace up,
for certainly she did not intend to let Frieda and Jean find her in the
dumps on their return from their holidays. Miss Winthrop would probably
go out with her, as she had been attending to school matters all
morning, seeing that the house was made ready for the return of her
students, and Olive felt the fresh air might also do her good. They had
eaten lunch together, but Miss Winthrop had not been seen since.
While Olive dispatched one of the maids to look for her friend she
herself went into the rooms where she had been accustomed to find her in
the past two weeks, but neither in her study, nor in the library, nor in
the drawing rooms, could she be found and by and by the maid came back
to tell Olive that Miss Winthrop had gone out and would probably not
return till tea time. She had left word that Olive must not be lonely
and that she must entertain herself in any way she desired. Well, Olive
knew of but one thing she wished to do: she would go for a walk and she
would go alone. School was not in session, so school rules were no
longer enforced, and by this time Olive had become thoroughly familiar
with the nearby neighborhood.
Instead of a hundred-dollar check, which had been Jack’s Christmas
present to both Jean and Frieda in order that they might have their
Christmas visits to friend’s, she had given Olive a brown fur coat and
cap. Olive had not worn them before, but now, with the snow falling and
the thought of Jack in her mind, she put them both on. For a minute she
glanced at herself in her mirror before leaving the house and though her
vanity was less than most girls’, she could not help a slight thrill of
pleasure on seeing her own reflection in the mirror. Somehow her new
furs were uncommonly becoming, as they are to most people. The soft
brown of the cap showed against the blue-black darkness of her hair and
in her olive cheeks there was a bright color which grew brighter the
longer and faster she trudged through the lightly falling snow.
Olive did not know the direction that Miss Winthrop had taken for her
walk, but half guessed that she must have gone for a visit to Madame Van
Mater, as she was in the habit of calling on the old lady every few days
and knew Olive’s dislike to accompanying her. Indeed, she had not been
inside “The Towers” nor seen its mistress since her first and only visit
there. But now she set off in the direction of the house, hoping to find
her friend returning toward home.
The walk through the woods, Olive’s first walk in the vicinity of
Primrose Hall, was now a familiar one and less dark because the trees
had long ago cast off their cloakings of leaves and were covered only
with the few snowflakes that clung to them. No man or woman who has
lived a great deal out of doors in their youth fails to draw new
strength and cheerfulness from the air and sunshine, and Olive, who had
left school thinking only that Jack’s operation might not be successful
and of the pain her friend must suffer, now began to dwell on the
beautiful possibility of her growing well and strong as she had been in
the old days at the ranch and of their being reunited there some day not
too far off. Then she had been weakly believing that she would never
hear news of herself, that old Laska was probably dead or had
disappeared into some other Indian encampment. Now with her blood
running quickly in her veins from the cold and the snow, she determined
if Laska failed her to go west the next summer and try to trace out her
ancestry herself. Miss Winthrop, Ruth and the four ranch girls she knew
stood ready to help her in anything she might undertake.
“It is a pretty good thing to have friends, even if one is bare of
relations,” Olive thought, coming out of the woods to the opening where
she could catch the first glimpse of the big white house. “I wish Miss
Winthrop would come along out of there,” she said aloud after waiting a
minute and finding that standing still made her shiver in spite of her
furs. “I wonder why I can’t get up the courage to march up to that front
door past those two fierce iron dogs, ring the bell and ask for her. I
don’t have to go into the house, and as it is growing a little late,
Miss Winthrop would probably prefer my not walking back alone. Besides,
I want to walk with her.”
Like most people with only a few affections, Olive’s were very true and
deep, and now that she had learned to care for Miss Winthrop, she cared
for her with all her heart.
Slowly she approached the house, hesitating once or twice and looking up
toward the tower room as though she were ashamed to recall her own
foolishness on the afternoon of her introduction to it. There was no one
about in the front of the house, not a servant nor a caller. For a
moment Olive stopped, smiling, by one of the big iron dogs that seemed
to guard the entrance to the old place. She brushed off a little snow
from the head of one of them and, stooping, patted it. “Isn’t it silly
of me to think I remember having seen you?” she murmured. And then
Olive’s hand went up swiftly to her own eyes and she appeared to be
brushing away something from them as she had brushed the snow from the
statue of a dog. “I haven’t seen you before, I have only heard about
you. And I haven’t seen this old house, but I have been told about it
until I felt almost as if I had seen it,” she announced with greater
conviction in her tones than she had ever used before, even to herself,
in trying to recall the confused impressions of her childhood.
But now, instead of going up the front steps of the old house and
ringing the bell, she hesitated. And while she waited the door was
suddenly opened and into the white world outside Miss Winthrop stepped
with an expression on her face no one had ever seen it wear before—one
of surprise and wonder, anger and pleasure.
“Olive, is it you?” she said just as if she had expected to find the
girl waiting outside for her on the doorstep. “Come in to Madame Van
Mater. We have something to tell you.”
[Illustration: “I SUPPOSE I CANNOT DENY THE PROOFS YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO
ME.”]