THE SHADOW CLUB
LLOYD'S return to the old ways came about so naturally next morning,
that no one seemed to notice her sudden desertion of Ida. Just after the
morning recess began, little Elise Walton came running up to Allison,
crying excitedly, "Oh, sister! Give me your handkerchief! Quick!
Somebody has upset a bottle of ink on Magnolia Budine's hair, and it's
running all over everything!"
Before Allison could fish her handkerchief from her sleeve, where she
had thrust it during recitation, Lloyd seized a basin of water and
hurried out to the back hall door. There stood Magnolia, her head craned
forward like a turtle, as far as possible over the steps, to keep the
ink from dripping on her dress. Half a dozen little girls were making
excited passes at it with handkerchiefs, slate-rags, and sponges.
"Heah!" cried Lloyd, putting the basin down on the step. "Bend ovah,
Magnolia, and dip yoah head in! Anna Louise, you run and get anothah
basin in the hall, and Marguerite, ask some of the big girls to bring a
bucket of watah. It'll take a tubful to soak this out."
Whatever the Little Colonel undertook was thoroughly done, and when
Magnolia emerged from the last vigorous rinsing, only a faint green
tinge remained on the flaxen hair. But that would not wash off, Lloyd
declared. She had had a similar experience herself when she was in the
primary grade. It would simply have to wear off, and that process might
take days.
Kitty and Allison with all the girls of their set had crowded around to
see the amusing sight, offering advice and laughing all the time the
performance lasted. As she worked Lloyd related her own experience. Rob
Moore had tipped the bottle of ink on her head one day, when they were
writing letters to Santa Claus, and Mom Beck had washed her hair every
day for a week to get it out.
Finally, turning her charge over to the primary girls with a couple of
towels and directions to rub her dry and leave her in the sun to bleach,
Lloyd led the way to the swing, where they sat laughing and joking over
Magnolia's accident until the bell rang again.
The school had laughed at Magnolia from the first day, when an old
carryall stopped in front of the seminary and she climbed out with a
huge carpet-bag in her hand. It was the most old-fashioned of
carpet-bags, an elaborate pattern of red roses on each side. And she was
the most old-fashioned of little girls, buttoned up in a plain-waisted
bright blue merino dress, with many gathers in the full skirt. It was
such a dress as her grandmother might have worn when she was a child.
Her light hair was drawn back tightly behind her ears, and braided in
two little tails. She was fat and awkward and shy, and so awed by the
strange surroundings that a sort of terror took possession of her when
she found herself alone among so many unfamiliar faces.
It was Lloyd Sherman who came to the rescue when she saw tears of fright
in the round, blue eyes. Lloyd had begun the school term with a
resolution to keep true to the talisman she wore, the little ring that
was to remind her constantly of the "Road of the Loving Heart" which she
wanted to build in every one's memory. This was her first opportunity.
She led the little stranger to the principal's room, and stayed beside
her until she was delivered safely into the matron's hands. Later it was
Lloyd who saw her in chapel looking around in bewilderment, uncertain
where to go, and beckoned her to a seat near her own. And again at
roll-call, when somebody tittered at the unusual name, and the child's
face was all afire with embarrassment, Lloyd's friendly smile flashed
across to her was like a rope thrown to a drowning man, and she could
never forget to be grateful for it.
As she was in the primary department, she could only worship Lloyd from
afar during the day, but as rooms were assigned irrespective of classes,
and hers was in the same wing and on the same floor with Lloyd's, she
often left her door ajar in the evening, in the hope of seeing her pass,
or hearing her voice in the hall. Once she heard Ida call her Princess.
The name struck her fancy, and as "_The Princess_" Lloyd was henceforth
enshrined in her adoring little heart. Lloyd often caught her admiring
glances in chapel, and several times found little offerings in her desk
on Monday mornings, when the old carryall came back from the Budine farm
with the little girl and the huge carpet-bag.
There was an enormous red apple one time, polished to the highest degree
of shininess; several ears of pop-corn at another, and once a stiff
little bunch of magenta zinnias and yellow chrysanthemums. There was
never any name left with them. Lloyd guessed the giver, but she did not
realize what a large place she occupied in Magnolia's affections, or how
the child choked with embarrassment till she almost swallowed her
chewing-gum, whenever Lloyd chanced to meet her in the hall with a
friendly good morning.
"Let's go down to the playhouses and see if the green is bleaching out
of Magnolia's hair," proposed Lloyd at the afternoon recess, with all
her old-time heartiness; and again the girls forgot to wonder why she
stayed with them instead of wandering off with Ida to the orchard.
Just as they reached the spring a shout went up from the circle of
little girls gathered around Magnolia. She was facing them defiantly,
her fat little face red with mortification.
"What's the matter, Elise?" asked Allison, in a big-sister tone. "Why
are you all teasing Magnolia?"
"I'm not teasing her," cried Elise, indignantly. "I told her just now
not to mind anything they said, and I'd lend her my paper-doll bride to
play with till next Friday afternoon."
"She said that she learned to read in a graveyard, off of the
tombstones," giggled Anna Louise, "and it seemed so funny that we
couldn't help laughing."
Magnolia hung her head, twisting a corner of her apron in her fat little
fingers, and wishing that the earth would open and swallow her. She had
seen the amusement in the Little Colonel's face, and it hurt worse than
the ridicule of all the others combined. She felt that she must die of
shame.
"That's nothing to laugh at," said Betty, seeing the distress in her
face, and divining what the child was suffering. "I used to have lovely
times in the old graveyard at the Cuckoo's Nest. Don't you remember how
peaceful and sweet it was, Lloyd?" she asked, turning to the Little
Colonel, who nodded assent. "Davy and I used to walk up there every
afternoon in summer to smell the pinks and the lilies, and read what was
carved on the old stones. And we'd sit there in the grass and listen to
the redbirds in the cedars, and make up stories about all the people
lying there asleep. And Davy learned most of his letters there."
"That's the way it was at Loretta, wasn't it, Maggie!" exclaimed Elise,
encouragingly. "Tell them about it."
But Maggie hung her head and twisted the toes of her stubby shoes
around in the dust, unable to say a word.
"I'll tell them, then," said Elise, turning to the larger girls. "They
used to live near the convent at Loretta, and one of their neighbours, a
girl lots older than Maggie, used to take her up to the graveyard nearly
every day. There wasn't any place else to go, you know, and it was
lonesome out there in the country. This girl was named Corono, after one
of the Sisters who was dead. She had been awfully good to both their
families, when they were sick, and Corono and Maggie used to make
daisy-chains and crowns out of the honeysuckles and roses, 'cause Corono
means crown, and put them on her grave. And every time they would go,
Maggie would learn a new letter off one of the tombstones, and after
awhile she got so she could read."
"How interesting!" exclaimed Lloyd, all unconscious of the way her words
set Maggie's heart to beating with pleasure. Elise turned toward her
with a motherly air that seemed very funny considering that she was
smaller than the child whom she was championing so valiantly. "I'm going
to ask them about that album right now, Maggie. You run back to school
and get it."
Glad of any excuse to make her escape, Maggie started off to the house
as fast as her fat little legs would carry her. Deprived of their sport,
the smaller girls returned to their playhouses and the older ones
strolled leisurely back toward the seminary. Elise tagged along beside
Lloyd and Allison.
"Maggie has gone to get her autograph-album," she explained. "It used to
be her mother's when she went to school at the convent, but now it's
Maggie's. Not more than half the leaves are written on, and her mother
said she could use it if she'd be very careful. She wants you girls to
write in it. She has had it in her desk for two weeks, trying to get up
her courage to ask you, Lloyd, but she was afraid you would laugh. I
told her I wasn't afraid. _I'd_ ask you. She wants all the big girls to
write in it, but she said 'specially '_The Princess_.'"
"The Princess!" echoed Lloyd, in surprise.
"Yes, that's what she calls you all the time. 'Cause you were that in
the play, I suppose. She thinks you are the loveliest person she ever
saw, and says if she could just look like you and be like you for one
day, she'd die happy. And once"--Elise lowered her voice
confidentially--"she told me that when she says her prayers every night,
she always prays that some day she'll grow nice enough for you to like
her."
"The poor little thing!" cried Lloyd, much touched. "To think of her
caring like that! You tell her, Elise, that of co'se we'll all write in
it. I shall be glad to."
Elise ran on after Maggie, happy in the accomplishment of her kindly
assumed mission, and presently came back with the book which she left in
Lloyd's hands.
"Look, girls, what a funny old-fashioned thing it is!" cried Lloyd,
turning to Katie Mallard, who with Betty and Kitty were just behind
them. All the others came crowding around also.
"Heah is 'Album of the Heart' in gilt lettahs on the back, with such
funny plump little cupids sitting in the rose-wreath around it."
"And, oh, see!" cried Betty, glancing over her shoulder at the
delicately traced names of the gentle nuns, and the girls who had been
playmates of Maggie's mother in a far-away past. "They are all dated
over forty years ago."
"Of course," answered Katie. "Nobody is old-fashioned enough nowadays to
have an autograph-album. They are _so_ old-timey and out of date."
"Wait a minute, please," said Betty, as Lloyd slowly turned the leaves.
"What is that verse signed Sister Corono? Oh, it is an acrostic. See?
The initial letters of each line, read downward, spell Martha. That must
be Mrs. Budine's name."
Several voices read the verse in unison:
"_M_ay thy life be ever led
_A_long the path of duty,
_R_ich in deeds of helpfulness,
_T_hat fill sad hearts with beauty.
_H_appiness shall then attend thee,
_A_nd all the blessed saints befriend thee."
"Isn't that sweet?" cried Betty. "I'm going to write one for Magnolia.
There's something pathetic about that child to me. She looks so wistful
sometimes. She's dreadfully odd, but it's mean of the girls to laugh at
her."
"I'll do something extra nice, too," said Lloyd. "I can't write poetry,
but I'll copy a bar of music from one of the Princess Winsome songs. I
think notes look so pretty copied in pen and ink."
"I'll paint a magnolia blossom in water-colours," said Allison, not to
be outdone by the others.
"And I--oh, I'll draw a kitten for her to remember my name by," said
Kitty, laughing.
As both Allison and Kitty had real talent for drawing, the girls who saw
the pages they decorated were moved to envy; and when Betty added an
acrostic on the name Magnolia, nobody had a word of ridicule for the
little Album of the Heart, that was serving two generations as a
storehouse of sentiment. Betty's verse was passed around the school:
"_M_ay our friendship be as sweet
_A_s the flower whose name you bear.
_G_irlhood days are fleet.
_N_o others are half so fair.
_O_ like a violet pressed,
_L_et my name on this page long dwell,
_I_n after years to recall
_A_ schoolmate who wished you well."
When the girls read that, an autograph-album fever broke out in the
school. Every one came to Betty for an acrostic. She spent all her
playtime writing them. She ate all her meals struggling inwardly with
the hard initials in such names as Pinkie, Ursula, and Vashti. She even
dreamed rhymes in her sleep.
Lloyd copied music until her fingers ached, for everybody requested a
verse of a Princess Winsome song. Kitty drew whole colonies of kittens,
and Allison, finding it impossible to paint a flower typical of each
name presented, took to painting a single forget-me-not above her name.
The teachers, too, suffered from the epidemic, and even people outside
the school, until the principal found twenty-three letters in the
mail-bag one morning, all addressed to a well-known writer of juvenile
stories, whose books were the most popular in the school. An
investigation proved that because one girl had received his autograph,
twenty-three had followed her example in requesting it, and not one of
them had enclosed a stamp; nor had it occurred to them that an author's
time is too valuable to spend in answering questions, merely to satisfy
the idle curiosity of his readers.
"One stamp is of little value," said the principal, "but multiply it by
the hundreds he would have to use in a year in answering the letters of
thoughtless strangers, who have no claim on him in any way."
Twenty-three girls filed out into the hall after the principal's little
talk that followed, and slipped their letters from the mail-bag. Ten of
them threw theirs into the waste-basket. The others, who had asked no
questions and were more desirous of obtaining their favourite author's
autograph, opened theirs to enclose an envelope, stamped and addressed;
but few more letters of the kind went out from Lloydsboro Seminary after
that.
Kitty, Katie, Allison, Betty, and Lloyd all pounced upon Miss Edith one
morning before school, each with an album in her hand. Miss Edith
clutched her hair in mock despair. "These make the seventh dozen I have
been asked to write in this week," she declared. "Life is too short to
hunt up a different sentiment for each one. I must use the same verse
for everybody."
The girls perched on the desks around the rostrum, as she spread out the
books before her and began to write. They always loved the few moments
they could snatch in Miss Edith's room before school, and felt that her
autograph would be one of the most valuable in the collection.
"This is one of my favourite verses," said Miss Edith, as she passed the
blotter over the last page, and read it aloud:
"This learned I from the shadow of a tree
That to and fro did sway upon the wall:
Our shadow-selves--our influence--may fall
Where we can never be."
"I want to tell you a little incident that fastened it in my memory. I
have a friend teaching in one of the mountain schools of Kentucky, who
told me of two girls who came to the door one day, asking to be admitted
as students. Each carried a bundle of clothes wrapped in a newspaper.
That was all they had--no money to pay their tuition, no way of paying
their board unless they were allowed to work for it. They had walked
forty miles to get to that school. Their home was twice the distance
away, but their uncle, who was a tin pedlar, took them half-way in his
wagon. They were a week on the road after they left him, where his route
branched off from theirs. They stopped at night in some village or
farmhouse to which he directed them.
"Nobody had the heart to tell them that there was no room for students
who could not pay their way, neither could any one turn away such
ambition. But the school was poor. It is kept up by donations from
benevolent people, and it was only by great self-sacrifice that the
teachers could take them at all.
"The following vacation, while I was at the sea-shore, I had a letter
from this friend, and happened to speak of it and the two girls to a
wealthy lady whom I met there. She seemed so interested that I read her
my friend's letters. They were so full of the struggles and hardships of
those mountain people that she was greatly interested and touched, and
began corresponding with the principal of the school herself. The
outcome of it was that she sent a check for ten thousand dollars to
endow scholarships. Of course these two girls were the first to be
benefited by the gift, and next June they will be graduated from the
school with honour, fitted to become teachers themselves, far in advance
of the time it would have taken had they been obliged to work their way
through. Instead of plodding along, using the greater part of their time
and strength in laundry work or sewing, they could go on with the
college course uninterrupted. They are going to start a school
themselves in the mountains, nearer their own home.
"Now that lady never saw those girls, and they were as unconscious that
their influence was touching a life a thousand miles away as that tree
out yonder, throwing its shadow across on the Clovercroft lawn. They
simply stood in their places and reached out as far as they possibly
could after what was good and high and worthy in life; but for years and
years to come, students who profit by that endowment will be grateful
for the shadow cast by those two ambitious girls."
Miss Edith never preached. She did not go on to tell them, as Miss
McCannister would have done, that they were responsible not only for the
influence of their daily living upon others, but for the effect their
shadow-selves might cast on others far beyond their reach. She only
pointed to the flaming red leaves of a gum-tree outside the window, and
the shadow swaying partly on the high picket fence, and partly across
the Clovercroft lawn, then passed the albums back with a smile. Then the
girls filed slowly out to chapel.
It was a warm October day, and as Allison took her seat by an open
window in the history class an hour later, she found it hard to fix her
thoughts on the old French and Indian wars. It was so much pleasanter to
look with dreamy eyes through the haze of the Indian summer, which Mom
Beck said was the ghost-smoke from the peace-pipes of old dead and gone
chieftains.
She watched the slow fluttering to earth of the pale yellow maple
leaves, and listened to the soft rustling of the gorgeous red leaves on
the gum-tree to which Miss Edith had pointed. Once or twice she started,
recalling her thoughts to the history lesson with an effort as she
remembered the girls who were hungry enough for an education to walk
forty miles for it and work for their board. She thought vaguely how
eagerly they would have improved their opportunities had they been in
her place. They would have taken a lively interest in the old wars,
instead of sitting in idle day-dreams.
All at once, as Allison watched the swaying of the gum-tree's shadow on
the fence and lawn, a thought came to her that made her seize a pencil
and a piece of paper. Writing notes was forbidden in Miss McCannister's
classes, but Allison could not wait until recess to share her brilliant
thought with Lloyd. With her big eyes fixed innocently on Miss Bina's
fishy ones, she scribbled slowly on the paper without once looking down:
"_Let's form a Shadow Club, with Miss Edith's verse for a motto. A. W._"
It took much manoeuvring to succeed in passing the slip of paper to
Lloyd, who sat several seats in front. When it finally reached her she
did not dare turn round to nod a pleased assent, but Allison knew that
her suggestion was received favourably, for Lloyd's hand at once went up
to readjust the bow at the back of her hair, and two fingers wagged
violently for an instant out of Miss Bina's sight. Had it been her
thumb, Allison would have interpreted the signal to mean no; but from
the rapid wagging of the two fingers she knew that Lloyd was much
pleased with the idea.
Allison's plan, as she outlined it to Betty, Lloyd, and Kitty at recess,
in one of the swings, was to form a club that should be not only fun for
themselves, but of some real benefit to the girls of the mountain
districts. The Christmas before, the little circle of Busy Bees, to
which Elise belonged, had sent two barrels of clothes and toys to them,
under Mrs. Clelling's supervision. She had organized the circle, and was
deeply interested in the work. Now Allison proposed that the club should
earn money for the same purpose. She grew quite enthusiastic planning
the fair they could hold in the spring. "Kitty and I could paint
calendars and sachets and paper dolls, you know, Lloyd, and you and
Betty could embroider things."
"Katie Mallard crochets the cunningest little doll-caps you ever saw,"
suggested Kitty. "Of course we'll have her in it."
A warm glow came into the Little Colonel's heart. Here was her chance to
do something for Ida. "Let's have just a little bit of a club," she
urged; "not more than half a dozen. If we begin to invite generally,
it's impossible to draw the line where we can stop. We can't ask all the
school, for if we have refreshments, for so many, each meeting will be
like giving a big pa'hty. But half a dozen of us could get together
whenever we felt like it, and have the cosiest kind of a time with our
chafing-dishes, without the rest finding it out. Then nobody would feel
hurt."
"Here's four of us to begin with," said Kitty, "and if we have Katie
there's five. Shall you ask Corinne?"
"I wish we could," said Betty, "but that would leave Margery out, and it
would never do to ask them and not have Anna Louise and Marguerite. It
must be all or none in that crowd."
"I wish you all would be willing to ask Ida," said Lloyd, imploringly.
"She does such beautiful leather-work, and that brings better prices
than anything we can make."
"I am sure I'm willing," said Betty, cordially.
"I have no objection," said Allison, remembering the pleasant things Ida
had said about her, and Kitty, who cared little who was in the club or
out of it, so long as she had Katie Mallard, echoed her sister's
consent.
"As it is a Shadow Club, we'll keep dark about it," said Kitty. "The
girls need never know we've formed one. We ought to meet in the dark to
carry out the idea of its name. How would it do to have the haunted
house of Hartwell Hollow for our meeting-place?"
"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Lloyd, with a shiver. "That's too spooky, but if
you and Allison and Katie can make some excuse to spend the night at
the seminary some time, we'll have a midnight suppah."
"I think we might tell mother and Mrs. Mallard about the club," said
Allison. "They can keep a secret, and we'll have lots nicer times and
better refreshments if we let them into it."
"Well," agreed Lloyd, "but we mustn't let a single girl find it out.
They'd be mad as fiah to be slighted this way. Cross yoah heart and body
now, every one of you, that you'll not breathe it to a soul."
Three hands instantly imitated her solemn gesture.
"We'll have the first meeting at The Beeches," said Allison, "because I
got up the club. I'll get mother to telephone to the principal to let
you and Betty and Ida come over to supper Saturday."
Lloyd danced away to recitation so happy that her face fairly beamed.
She managed to spell across to Ida on her fingers that the invitation
she had coveted was hers at last.