Mertelle. Having accepted the first installment of sunflowers, she could
not well refuse the second. Once having committed herself, she was lost.
Candy and books followed the flowers in horrifying profusion. The candy
was of an inexpensive variety--Patty had discovered the ten-cent
store--but the boxes that contained it made up in decorativeness what
the candy lacked; they were sprinkled with Cupids and roses in vivid
profusion. A message in the same back hand accompanied each gift, signed
sometimes with initials, and sometimes with a simple "Bertie." Parcels
had never before been delivered with such unsuspicious promptitude. Miss
Sallie was the one through whose hands they went. She glanced at the
outside, scrawled a "deliver," and the maid would choose the most
embarrassing moments to comply--always when Mae Mertelle was surrounded
by an audience.
Mae's Englishman, from an object of sentiment, in a few days' time
became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible
as his taste in candy. He ran to titles which are supposed to be the
special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette,"
"Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no
avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert--and was bent upon eliciting all
the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae's life became
one long dread of seeing the maid appear with a parcel. The last straw
was the arrival of a complete edition--in paper--of Marie Corelli.
"He--he never sent them!" she sobbed. "Somebody's just trying to be
funny."
"You mustn't mind, Mae, because they aren't just the sort that an
American man would choose," Patty offered comfort. "You know that
Englishmen have queer tastes, particularly in books. _Everybody_ reads
Marie Corelli over there."
The next Saturday, a party of girls was taken to the city for shopping
and the matinée. Among other errands, the art class visited a photograph
dealer's, to purchase some early Italian masters. Patty's interest in
Giotto and his kind was not very keen, and she sauntered off on a tour
of inspection. She happened upon a pile of actors and actresses, and her
eye brightened as she singled out a large photograph of an unfamiliar
leading man, with curling mustache and dimpled chin and large appealing
eyes. He was dressed in hunting costume and conspicuously displayed a
crop. The picture was the last word in Twentieth Century Romance. And,
most perfect touch of all, it bore a London mark!
Patty unobtrusively deflected the rest of the committee from a
consideration of Fra Angelico, and the three heads bent delightedly over
the find.
"It's perfect!" Conny sighed. "But it costs a dollar and fifty cents."
"We'll have to go without soda water _forever_!" said Priscilla.
"It is expensive," Patty agreed, "but--" as she restudied the liquid,
appealing eyes--"I really think it's worth it."
They each contributed fifty cents, and the picture was theirs.
Patty wrote across the front, in the bold back hand that Mae had come to
hate, a tender message in French, and signed the full name, "Cuthbert
St. John." She had it wrapped in a plain envelope and requested the
somewhat wondering clerk to mail it the following Wednesday morning, as
it was an anniversary present and must not arrive before the day.
The picture came on the five-o'clock delivery, and was handed to Mae as
the girls trooped out from afternoon study. She received it in sulky
silence and retired to her room. Half a dozen of her dearest friends
followed at her heels; Mae had worked hard to gain a following, and now
it couldn't be shaken off.
"Open it, Mae quick!"
"What do you s'pose it is?"
"It can't be flowers or candy. He must be starting something new."
"I don't care what it is!" Mae viciously tossed the parcel into the
wastebasket.
Irene McCullough fished it out and cut the string.
"Oh, Mae, it's his photograph!" she squealed. "And he's per-fect-ly
beau-ti-ful!"
"Did you ever see such eyes!"
"Does he curl his mustache, or it is natural?"
"Why didn't you tell us he had a dimple in his chin?"
"Does he always wear those clothes?"
Mae was divided between curiosity and anger. She snatched the photograph
away, cast one glance at the languishing brown eyes, and tumbled it,
face downward, into a bureau drawer.
"Don't ever mention his name to me again!" she commanded, as, with
compressed lips, she commenced brushing her hair for dinner.
On the next Friday afternoon--shopping day in the village--Patty and
Conny and Priscilla dropped in at the florist's to pay a bill.
"Two bunches of sunflowers, one dollar," the man had just announced in
ringing tones from the rear of the store, when a step sounded behind
them, and they faced about to find Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale, bent on a
similar errand.
"Oh!" said Mae, fiercely, "I might have known it was you three."
She stared for a moment in silence, then she dropped into a rustic seat
and buried her head on the counter. She had shed so many tears of late
that they flowed automatically.
"I suppose," she sobbed, "you'll tell the whole school, and everybody
will laugh and--and--"
The three regarded her with unbending mien. They were not to be moved by
a few tears.
"You said that Rosalie was a silly little goose to make such a fuss over
nothing," Priscilla reminded her.
"And at least he was a live man," said Patty, "even if he did have a
crooked nose."
"Do you still think she was a silly goose?" Conny inquired.
"N--no!"
"Don't you think you've been a great deal more silly?"
"Y--yes."
"And will you apologize to Rosalie?"
"No!"
"It will make quite a funny story," Patty ruminated, "the way we'll tell
it."
"I think you're perfectly horrid!"
"Will you apologize to Rosalie?" Priscilla asked again.
"Yes--if you'll promise not to tell."
"We'll promise on one condition--you're to break your engagement to
Cuthbert St. John, and never refer to it again."
Cuthbert sailed for England on the _Oceanic_ the following Thursday; St.
Ursula's plunged into a fever of basket-ball, and the atmosphere became
bracingly free of Romance.
III
The Virgil Strike
"I'm tired of Woman's Rights on Friday afternoons," said Patty
disgustedly. "I prefer soda water!"
"This makes the third time they've taken away our holiday for the sake
of a beastly lecture," Priscilla grumbled, as she peered over Patty's
shoulder to read the notice on the bulletin board, in Miss Lord's
perpendicular library hand.
It informed the school that instead of the usual shopping expedition to
the village, they would have the pleasure that afternoon of listening to
a talk by Professor McVey of Columbia University. The subject would be
the strike of the women laundry workers. Tea would be served in the
drawing-room afterwards, with Mae Van Arsdale, Harriet Gladden, and
Patty Wyatt as hostesses.
"It's not my turn!" objected Patty, as she noted the latter item. "I was
hostess two weeks ago."
"That's because you wrote an essay on the 'Eight Hour Day.' Lordie
thinks you will ask the professor-man intelligent questions; and show
him that St. Ursula's is not a common boarding-school where only
superficial accomplishments are taught, but one in which the actual
problems of--"
"And I did want to go shopping!" Patty mourned. "I need some new
shoe-strings. I've been tying a knot in my old ones every day for a
week."
"Here she comes," whispered Priscilla. "Look happy or she'll make you
translate the whole--Good morning, Miss Lord! We were just noticing
about the lecture. It sounds extremely interesting."
The two smiled a perfunctory greeting, and followed their teacher to the
morning's Latin.
Miss Lord was the one who struck the modern note at St. Ursula's. She
believed in militant suffragism and unions and boycotts and strikes; and
she labored hard to bring her little charges to her own advanced
position. But it was against a heavy inertia that she worked. Her little
charges didn't care a rap about receiving their rights, in the dim
future of twenty-one; but they were very much concerned about losing a
present half-holiday. On Friday afternoons, they were ordinarily allowed
to draw checks on the school bank for their allowances, and march in a
procession--a teacher forming the head and tail--to the village stores,
where they laid in their weekly supply of hair ribbons and soda water
and kodak films. Even had one acquired so many demerits that her weekly
stipend was entirely eaten up by fines, still she marched to the village
and watched the lucky ones disburse. It made a break in the monotony of
six days of bounds.
But every cloud has its silver lining.
Miss Lord preceded the Virgil recitation that morning by a discussion of
the lecture to come. The laundry strike, she told them, marked an epoch
in industrial history. It proved that women, as well as men, were
capable of standing by each other. The solidarity of labor was a point
she wished her girls to grasp. Her girls listened with grave attention;
and by eagerly putting a question, whenever she showed signs of running
down, they managed to stave off the Latin recitation for three quarters
of an hour.
The professor, a mild man with a Van Dyke beard, came and lectured
exhaustively upon the relations of employer and employed. His audience
listened with politely intelligent smiles, but with minds serenely
occupied elsewhere. The great questions of Capital and Labor, were not
half so important to them, as the fact of the lost afternoon, or the
essays that must be written for to-morrow's English, or even that this
was ice-cream night with dancing class to follow. But Patty, on the
front seat, sat with wide, serious eyes fixed on the lecturer's face.
She was absorbing his arguments--and storing them for use.
Tea followed according to schedule. The three chosen ones received
their guests with the facility of long-tried hostesses. The fact that
their bearing was under inspection, with marks to follow, did not
appreciably diminish their case. They were learning by the laboratory
method, the social graces that would be needed later in the larger
world. Harriet and Mae presided at the tea table, while Patty engaged
the personage in conversation. He commented later, to Miss Lord, upon
the students' rare understanding in economic subjects.
Miss Lord replied with some complaisance that she endeavored to have her
girls think for themselves. Sociology was a field in which lessons could
not be taught by rote. Each must work out her own conclusions, and act
upon them.
Ice-cream and dancing restored the balance of St. Ursula's, after the
mental exertions of the afternoon. At half-past nine--the school did not
retire until ten on dancing nights--Patty and Priscilla dropped their
goodnight courtesy, murmured a polite "_Bon soir, Mam'selle_," and
scampered upstairs, still very wide awake. Instead of preparing for bed
with all dispatch, as well-conducted school girls should, they engaged
themselves in practising the steps of their new Spanish dance down the
length of the South Corridor. They brought up with a pirouette at
Rosalie Patton's door.
Rosalie, still in the pale blue fluffiness of her dancing frock, was
sitting cross-legged on the couch, her yellow curls bent over the open
pages of a Virgil, tears spattering with dreary regularity on the lines
she was conning.
The course of Rosalie's progress through senior Latin might be marked by
blistered pages. She was a pretty, cuddling, helpless little thing,
deplorably babyish for a senior; but irresistibly appealing. Everyone
teased her, and protected her, and loved her. She was irrevocably
predestined to bowl over the first man who came along, with her ultra
feminine irresponsibility. Rosalie very often dreamed--when she ought to
have been concentrating upon Latin grammar--of that happy future state
in which smiles and kisses would take the place of gerunds and
gerundives.
"You silly little muff!" cried Patty. "Why on earth are you bothering
with Latin on a Friday night?"
She landed herself with a plump on Rosalie's right, and took away the
book.
"I have to," Rosalie sobbed. "I'd never finish if I didn't begin. I
don't see any sense to it. I can't do eighty lines in two hours. Miss
Lord always calls on me for the end, because she knows I won't know
that."
"Why don't you begin at the end and read backwards?" Patty practically
suggested.
"But that wouldn't be fair, and I can't do it so fast as the others. I
work more than two hours every day, but I simply never get through. I
know I shan't pass."
"Eighty lines is a good deal," Patty agreed.
"It's easy for you, because you know all the words, but--"
"I worked more than two hours on mine yesterday," said Priscilla, "and I
can't afford it either. I have to save some time for geometry."
"_I just simply can't do it_," Rosalie wailed. "And she thinks I'm
stupid because I don't keep up with Patty."
Conny Wilder drifted in.
"What's the matter?" she asked, viewing Rosalie's tear-streaked face.
"Cry on the pillow, child. Don't spoil your dress."
The Latin situation was explained.
"Oh, it's awful the way Lordie works us! She would like to have us spend
every moment grubbing over Latin and sociology. She--"
"Doesn't think dancing and French and manners are any good at all,"
sobbed Rosalie, mentioning the three branches in which she excelled,
"and I think they're a lot more sensible than subjunctives. You can put
them to practical use, and you can't sociology and Latin."
Patty emerged from a moment of revery.
"There's not much use in Latin," she agreed, "but I should think that
something might be done with sociology. Miss Lord told us to apply it
to our everyday problems."
Rosalie swept the idea aside with a gesture of disdain.
"Listen!" Patty commanded, springing to her feet and pacing the floor in
an ecstasy of enthusiasm. "I've got an idea! It's perfectly true. Eighty
lines of Virgil is too much for anybody to learn--particularly Rosalie.
And you heard what the man said: it isn't fair to gage the working day
by the capacity of the strongest. The weakest has to set the pace, or
else he's left behind. That's what Lordy means when she talks about the
solidarity of labor. In any trade, the workers have got to stand by each
other. The strong must protect the weak. It's the duty of the rest of
the class to stand by Rosalie."
"Yes, but how?" inquired Priscilla, breaking into the tirade.
"We'll form a Virgil Union, and strike for sixty lines a day."
"Oh!" gasped Rosalie, horrified at the audacity of the suggestion.
"Let's!" cried Conny, rising to the call.
"Do you think we can?" asked Priscilla, dubiously.
"What will Miss Lord say?" Rosalie quavered.
"She can't say anything. Didn't she tell us to listen to the lecture and
apply its teaching?" Patty reminded.
"She'll be delighted to find we have," said Conny.
"But what if she doesn't give in?"
"We'll call out the Cicero and Cæsar classes in a sympathetic strike."
"Hooray!" cried Conny.
"Lordy does believe in Unions," Priscilla conceded. "She ought to see
the justice of it."
"Of course she'll see the justice of it," Patty insisted. "We're exactly
like the laundry workers--in the position of dependents, and the only
way we can match strength with our employer, is by standing together. If
Rosalie alone drops back to sixty lines, she'll be flunked; but if the
whole class does, Lordie will _have_ to give in."
"Maybe the whole class won't want to join the union," said Priscilla.
"We'll make 'em!" said Patty. In accordance with Miss Lord's desire, she
had grasped some basic principles.
"We'll have to hurry," she added, glancing at the clock. "Pris, you run
and find Irene and Harriet and Florence Hissop; and Conny, you route out
Nancy Lee--she's up in Evalina Smith's room telling ghost stories. Here,
Rosalie, stop crying and dump the things off those chairs so somebody
can sit down."
Priscilla started obediently, but paused on the threshold.
"And what will you do?" she inquired with meaning.
"I," said Patty, "will be labor leader."
The meeting was convened, and Patty, a self-constituted chairman,
outlined the tenets of the Virgil Union. Sixty lines was to constitute a
working day. The class was to explain the case to Miss Lord at the
regular session on Monday morning, and politely but positively refuse to
read the last twenty lines that had been assigned. If Miss Lord proved
insistent, the girls were to close their books and go out on strike.
The majority of the class, hypnotized by Patty's eloquence, dazedly
accepted the program; but Rosalie, for whose special benefit the union
had been formed, had to be coerced into signing the constitution.
Finally, after a wealth of argument had been expended, she wrote her
name in a very wobbly hand, and sealed it with a tear. By nature,
Rosalie was not a fighter; she preferred gaining her rights by more
feminine methods.
Irene McCullough had also to be forced. She was a cautious soul who
looked forward to consequences. One of the most frequently applied of
St. Ursula's punishments was to make the culprit miss desserts. Irene
suffered keenly under this form of chastisement; and she carefully
refrained from misdemeanors which might bring it upon her. But Conny
produced a convincing argument. She threatened to tell that the
chambermaid was in the habit of smuggling in chocolates--and poor
harassed Irene, threatened with the two-fold loss of chocolates and
dessert, sullenly added her signature.
"Lights-out" rang. The Virgil Union adjourned its first meeting and went
to bed.
* * * * *
Senior Latin came the last hour of the morning, when everyone was tired
and hungry. On the Monday following the founding of the Union, the
Virgil class gathered outside the door, in growing perturbation as the
actual time for the battle approached. Patty rallied them in a brief
address.
"Brace up, Rosalie! Don't be a cry-baby. We'll help you out if the last
lines come to you. And for goodness' sake, girls, _don't_ look so
scared. Remember you're suffering, not only for yourselves, but for all
the generations of Virgil classes that come after you. Anyone who backs
down now is a COWARD!"
Patty established herself on the front seat, directly in the line of the
fire, and a slight skirmish occurred at the outset. Her heavy walking
boots were conspicuously laced with pale blue baby ribbon, which caught
the enemy's eye.
"That is scarcely the kind of shoe laces that a lady adopts. May I ask,
Patty--?"
"I broke my other laces," Patty affably explained, "and since we didn't
go shopping on Friday, I couldn't get any more. I don't quite like the
effect myself," she conceded, as she stuck out a foot and critically
surveyed it.
"See that you find some black ones immediately after class," Miss Lord
acidly suggested. "Priscilla, you may read the first ten lines."
The lesson progressed in the usual manner, except that there was a
visible tightening of nerves as each recitation was finished, and they
waited to hear the next name called. Conny's turn ended with the
sixtieth line. No one had gone beyond that; all ahead was virgin jungle.
This was the point for the Union to declare itself; and the burden, true
to her forebodings, fell upon poor trembling little Rosalie.
She cast an imploring glance toward Patty's sternly waiting countenance,
stammered, hesitated, and miserably plunged into a sight translation.
Rosalie never had the slightest luck at sight translations; even after
two hours of patient work with a dictionary, she was still extremely
hesitant as to meanings. Now, she blindly forged ahead,--amid a profound
hush--attributing to the Pious Æneas a most amazing set of actions. She
finished; and the slaughter commenced. Miss Lord spent three minutes in
obliterating Rosalie; then passed the lines to Irene McCullough.
Irene drew a deep breath--she felt Conny encouragingly patting her on
the back, while Patty and Priscilla, at either hand, jogged her elbow
with insistent touch. She opened her mouth to declare the principles
that had been foisted upon her over night; then she caught the cold
gleam of Miss Lord's eye. Rosalie's sobs filled the room. And she fell.
Irene was fairly good at Latin--her sight translation was at least
intelligible. Miss Lord's comment was merely sarcastic, as she passed
to Florence Hissop. By this time the panic had swept through the ranks.
Florence would like to have been true to her pledged troth, but the
instinct of self-preservation is strong. She improved on Irene's
performance.
"Take the next ten lines, Patty, and endeavor to extract a glimmering of
sense. Please bear in mind that we are reading poetry."
Patty raised her head and faced her superior in the manner of a
Christian martyr.
"I only prepared the first sixty lines, Miss Lord."
"Why did you not finish the lesson that I gave out?" Miss Lord inquired
sharply.
"We have decided that eighty lines are more than we can do in a day. It
takes too much time away from our other lessons. We are perfectly
willing to do sixty lines, and do them thoroughly, but we can't consider
any more."
Miss Lord for a moment simply stared. Never had she known such a
flagrant case of insubordination. And it was purely insubordination,
for Patty was the most capable person in the class.
"What do you mean?" she gasped at last.
"We have formed a Virgil Union," Patty gravely explained. "You, Miss
Lord, will appreciate the fairness of our demands better than any of the
other teachers, because you believe in unions. Now, the girls in this
class feel that they are overworked and underpa--er--that is, I mean the
lessons are too long."
Patty fetched a deep breath and started again.
"Eighty lines a day doesn't leave us any time for recreation, so we have
determined to join together and demand our rights. We occupy the
position of skilled laborers. You can get all the girls you want for
Cæsar and beginning Latin, but you can't find anybody but us to read
Virgil. It's like the laundry trade. We are not just plain boilers and
starchers; we are fancy ironers. If you want to have a Virgil class, you
have _got_ to have us. You can't call in scab labor. Now, we aren't
trying to take advantage because of our superior strength. We are
perfectly willing to do an honest day's work, but we can't allow
ourselves to be--er--to be--"
Patty fumbled a moment for her word, but in the end she brought it out
triumphantly.
"We can't allow ourselves to be exploited. Singly, we are no match for
you, but together, we can dictate our own terms. Because two or three of
us can keep up the pace you set, is no reason why we should allow the
others to be overworked. It is our duty to stand by one another against
the encroachments of our employer. We women are not so advanced as men.
But we are learning. Upon the solidarity of labor depends the life of
Rosalie. In case you refuse to meet our demands, the Virgil class will
be obliged to go out on strike."
Patty pronounced her ultimatum, and leaned back with folded arms.
A moment of silence followed. Then Miss Lord spoke. The class went down
in hopeless, abject terror before the storm. Miss Lord's icy sarcasm
was, in moments of intensity, lightened by gleams of fire. She had Irish
ancestors and red hair. Patty alone listened with head erect and steely
eyes. The red blood of martyrs dyed her cheeks. She was fighting for a
CAUSE. Weak, helpless, little Rosalie, sniffling at her elbow, should be
saved--the cowardice of her comrades put to shame. She, single-handed,
would fight and win.
Miss Lord finally drew breath.
"The class is dismissed. Patty will remain in the schoolroom until she
has translated perfectly the last twenty lines. I will hear her read
them after luncheon."
The girls rose and pressed in a huddled body toward the hall, while
Patty turned into the empty schoolroom. On the threshold she paused to
hurl one contemptuous word over her shoulder:
"Scabs!"
* * * * *
The lunch bell rang, and Patty at her desk in the empty schoolroom heard
the girls laughing and talking, as they clattered down the tin-covered
back stairs to the dining-room. She was very tired and very hungry. She
had had five hours of work since breakfast, with only a glass of milk at
eleven o'clock. Even the pleasurable sensation of being abused did not
quite offset the pangs of hunger. She listlessly set about learning the
morrow's lesson in French History. It dealt with another martyr. Louis
the Ninth left his bones bleaching on the plains of Antioch. The cause
was different, but the principle remained. If she was not to be fed
until she learned the Latin--very well--she would leave her bones
bleaching in the schoolroom of St. Ursula's.
An insistent tapping sounded on the window. She glanced across an angle,
to find Osaki, the Japanese butler, leaning far out from his pantry
window, and extending toward her a dinner plate containing a large, lone
slab of turkey.
"Leave plate in wastebasket, Missy," he whispered hoarsely.