SAINT VALENTINE'S ASSISTANTS
If Eleanor had taken Kate's advice and indulged in a little calm
reflection, she would have realized how absolutely reasonless was her
anger against Betty Wales. Betty had been told of the official
objections which made it necessary for Eleanor to be withdrawn from the
debate. Her action, then, had been wholly proper and perfectly friendly.
But Eleanor was in no mood for reflection. A wild burst of passion held
her firmly in its grasp. She hated everybody and everything in
Harding--the faculty who had made such a commotion about two little low
grades--for Eleanor had come surprisingly near to clearing her record at
mid-years,--Jean, who had stupidly brought all this extra annoyance upon
her; the class, who were glad to get rid of her, Betty, who--yes, Jean
had been right about one thing--Betty, who had taken advantage of a
friend's misfortune to curry favor for herself. They were all leagued
against her. But--here the Watson pride suddenly asserted itself--they
should never know that she cared, never guess that they had hurt her.
She deliberately selected the most becoming of her new evening gowns,
and in an incredibly short time swept down to dinner, radiantly
beautiful in the creamy lace dress, and--outwardly at least--in her
sunniest, most charming mood. She insisted that the table should admire
her dress, and the pearl pendant which her aunt had just sent her.
"I'm wearing it, you see, to celebrate my return to the freedom of
private life," she rattled on glibly. "I understand you've found a
genius to take my place. I'm delighted that we have one in the class.
It's so convenient. Who of you are going to the Burton House dance
to-night?"
So she led the talk from point to point and from hand to hand. She
bantered Mary, deferred to Helen and the Riches, appealed in comradely
fashion to Katherine and Rachel. Betty alone she utterly, though quite
unostentatiously, ignored; and Betty, too much hurt to make any effort,
stood aside and tried to solve the riddle of Eleanor's latest caprice.
On the way up-stairs Eleanor spoke to her for the first time. She went
up just ahead of her and at the top of the flight she turned and waited.
"I understand that you quite ran the class to-day," she said with a
flashing smile. "The girls tell me that you're a born orator, as good in
your way as the genius in hers."
Betty rallied herself for one last effort. "Don't make fun of me,
Eleanor. Please let me come in and tell you about it. You don't
understand----"
"Possibly not," said Eleanor coldly. "But I'm going out now."
"Just for a moment!"
"But I have to start at once. I'm late already."
"Oh, very well," said Betty, and turned away to join Mary and Roberta.
Eleanor's mind always worked with lightning rapidity, and while she
dressed she had gone over the whole situation and decided exactly how
she would meet it; and in the weeks that followed she kept rigidly to
the course she had marked out for herself, changing only one detail. At
first she had intended to have nothing more to do with Jean, but she saw
that a sudden breaking off of their friendship would be remarked upon
and wondered at. So she compromised by treating Jean exactly as usual,
but seeing her as little as possible. This made it necessary to refuse
many of her invitations to college affairs, for wherever she went Jean
was likely to go. So she spent much of her leisure time away from
Harding; she went to Winsted a great deal, and often ran down to Boston
or New York for Sunday, declaring that the trips meant nothing to a
Westerner used to the "magnificent distances" of the plains. Naturally
she grew more and more out of touch with the college life, more and more
scornful of the girls who could be content with the narrow, humdrum
routine at Harding. But she concealed her scorn perfectly. And she no
longer neglected her work; she attended her classes regularly and
managed with a modicum of preparation to recite far better than the
average student. Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and
she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness.
She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate,
and when Mary Brooks innocently inquired "what little yarn" she told the
registrar, that she could get away so often, Eleanor fixed her with an
unpleasantly penetrative stare and answered with all her old-time
hauteur that she did not tell "yarns."
"I have a note from my father. So long as I do my work and go to all my
classes, they really can't object to my spending my Sundays as he
wishes."
Betty observed all these changes without being in the least able to
reconcile them with Eleanor's new attitude toward herself. Unlike the
friendship with Jean, Eleanor's intercourse with her had been
inconspicuous, confined mostly to the Chapin house itself. Even the
girls there, because Eleanor had stood so aloof from them, had seen
little of it, so Eleanor was free to break it off without thinking of
public opinion, and she did so ruthlessly. From the day of the class
meeting she spoke to Betty only when she must, or, if no one was by,
when some taunting remark occurred to her.
At first Betty tried her best to think how she could have offended, but
she could not discuss the subject with any one else and endless
consideration and rejection of hypotheses was fruitless, so after
Eleanor had twice refused her an interview that would have settled the
matter, she sensibly gave it up. Eleanor would perhaps "come round" in
time. Meanwhile it was best to let her alone.
But Betty felt that she was having more than her share of trouble; Helen
was quite as trying in her way as Eleanor in hers. She had entirely lost
her cheerful air and seemed to have grown utterly discouraged with life.
"And no wonder, for she studies every minute," Betty told Rachel and
Katherine. "I think she feels hurt because the girls don't get to like
her better, but how can they when she doesn't give them any chance?"
"She's awfully touchy lately," added Katherine.
"Poor little thing!" said Rachel.
Then the three plunged into an animated discussion of basket-ball, and
Rachel and Katherine, who were on a sort of provisional team that
included most of the best freshman players and arrogated to itself the
name of "The Stars," showed Betty in strictest confidence the new
cross-play that "T. Reed" had invented. "T. Reed" seemed to be the
basket-ball genius of the freshman class. She was the only girl who was
perfectly sure to be on the regular team.
It is one of the fine things about college that no matter who of your
friends are temporarily lost to you, there is always somebody else to
fall back upon, and some new interest to take the place of one that
flags. Betty had noticed this and been amused by it early in her course.
Sometimes, as she said to Miss Ferris in one of her many long talks with
that lady, things change so fast that you really begin to wonder if you
can be the same person you were last week.
Besides the inter-class basket-ball game, there was the Hilton House
play to talk about and look forward to, and the rally; and, nearer
still, St. Valentine's day. It was a long time, to be sure, since Betty
had been much excited over the last named festival; in her experience
only children exchanged valentines. But at Harding it seemed to be
different. While the day was still several weeks off she had received
three invitations to valentine parties. She consulted Mary Brooks and
found that this was not at all unusual.
"All the campus houses give them," Mary explained, "and the big ones
outside, just as they do for Hallowe'en. They have valentine boxes, you
know, and sometimes fancy dress balls."
And there the matter would have dropped if Mary had not spent all her
monthly allowance three full weeks before she was supposed to have any
more. Poverty was Mary's chronic state. Not that Dr. Brooks's checks
were small, but his daughter's spending capacity was infinite.
"You wait till you're a prominent sophomore," she said when Katherine
laughed at her, "and all your friends are making societies, and you just
have to provide violets and suppers, in hopes that they'll do as much
for you later on. The whole trouble is that father wants me to be on an
allowance, instead of writing home for money when I'm out. And no matter
how much I say I need, it never lasts out the month."
"Why don't you tutor?" suggested Rachel, who got along easily on a third
of what Mary spent. "I hope to next year."
"Tutor!" repeated Mary with a reminiscent chuckle. "I tried to tutor my
cousin this fall in algebra, and the poor thing flunked much worse than
before. But anyway the faculty wouldn't give me regular tutoring. I look
too well-to-do. Ah! how deceitful are appearances!" sighed Mary, opening
her pocketbook, where five copper pennies rattled about forlornly.
But the very next day she dashed into Betty's room proclaiming loudly,
"I have an idea, and I want you to help me, Betty Wales. You can draw
and I'll cut them out and drum up customers, and I guess I can write the
verses. We ought to make our ad. to-night."
"Our what?" inquired Betty in an absolutely mystified tone.
Then Mary explained that she proposed to sell valentines. "Lots of the
girls who can't draw buy theirs, not down-town, you know--we don't give
that kind here,--but cunning little hand-made ones with pen-and-ink
drawings and original verses. Haven't you noticed the signs on the 'For
Sale' bulletin?"
Betty had not even seen that bulletin board since she and Helen had
hunted second-hand screens early in the fall, but the plan sounded very
attractive; it would fill up her spare hours, and keep her from worrying
over Eleanor, and getting cross at Helen, so she was very willing to
help if Mary honestly thought she could draw well enough.
"Goodness, yes!" said Mary, rushing off to borrow Roberta's water-color
paper and Katherine's rhyming dictionary.
So the partnership was formed, a huge red heart covered with hastily
decorated samples was stuck up on the "For Sale" bulletin in the
gymnasium basement, and, as Betty's cupids were really very charming and
her Christy heads quite as good as the average copy, names began to
appear in profusion on the order-sheet.
Mary had written two sample verses with comparative ease, and in the
first flush of confidence she had boldly printed on the sign: "Rhymed
grinds for special persons furnished at reasonable rates." But later,
when everybody seemed to want that kind, even the valuable aid of the
rhyming dictionary did not disprove the adage that poets are born, not
made.
"I can't--I just can't do them," wailed Mary finally. "Jokes simply will
not go into rhyme. What shall we do?"
"Get Roberta--she writes beautifully--and Katherine--she told me that
she'd like to help," suggested Betty, without looking up from the chubby
cupid she was fashioning.
So Katherine and Roberta were duly approached and Katherine was added to
the firm. Roberta at first said she couldn't, but finally, after
exacting strict pledges of secrecy, she produced half a dozen dainty
little lyrics, bidding Mary use them if she wished--they were nothing.
But no amount of persuasion would induce her to do any more.
However, Katherine's genius was nothing if not profuse, and she
preferred to do "grinds," so Mary could devote herself to sentimental
effusions,--which, so she declared, did not have to have any special
point and so were within her powers,--and to the business end of the
project. This, in her view, consisted in perching on a centrally located
window-seat in the main building, in the intervals between classes, and
soliciting orders from all passers-by, to the consequent crowding of the
narrow halls and the great annoyance of the serious-minded, who wished
to reach their recitations promptly. But from her point of view she was
strikingly successful.
"I tell you, I never appreciated how easy it is to make money if you
only set about it in the right way," she announced proudly one day at
luncheon. "By the way, Betty, would you run down after gym to get our
old order sheet and put up a new one? I have a special topic in
psychology to-morrow, and if Professor Hinsdale really thinks I'm clever
I don't want to undeceive him too suddenly."
Betty promised, but after gym Rachel asked her to stay and play
basket-ball with "The Stars" in the place of an absent member. Naturally
she forgot everything else and it was nearly six o'clock when,
sauntering home from an impromptu tea-drinking at the Belden House, she
remembered the order sheet. It was very dusky in the basement. Betty,
plunging down the steps that led directly into the small room where the
bulletin board was, almost knocked down a girl who was curled up on the
bottom step of the flight.
"Goodness! did I hurt you?" she said, a trifle exasperated that any one
should want to sit alone in the damp darkness of the basement.
There was no answer, and Betty, whose eyes were growing accustomed to
the dim light, observed with consternation that her companion was doing
her best to stop crying.
As has already been remarked, Betty hated tears as a kitten hates rain.
Personally she never cried without first locking her door, and she could
imagine nothing so humiliating as to be caught, unmistakably weeping, by
a stranger. So she turned aside swiftly, peered about in the shadows for
the big red heart, changed the order sheet, and was wondering whether
she would better hurry out past the girl or wait for her to recover her
composure and depart, when the girl took the situation out of her hands
by rising and saying in cheery tones, "Good-evening, Miss Wales. Are you
going my way?"
"I--why it's Emily--I mean Miss--Davis," cried Betty.
"Yes, it's Emily Davis, in the blues, the more shame to her, when she
ought to be at home getting supper this minute. Wait just a second,
please." Miss Davis went over to the signs, jerked down one, and picking
up her books from the bottom step announced without the faintest trace
of embarrassment, "Now I'm ready."
"But are you sure you want me?" inquired Betty timidly.
"Bless you, yes," said Miss Davis. "I've wanted to know you for ever so
long. I'm sorry you caught me being a goose, though."
"And I'm sorry you felt like crying," said Betty shyly. "Why, Miss
Davis, I should want to laugh all the time if I'd done what you did the
other day. I should be so proud."
Miss Davis smiled happily down at her small companion. "I was proud,"
she said simply. "I only hope I can do as well week after next. But Miss
Wales, that was the jam of college life. There's the bread and butter
too, you know, and sometimes that's a lot harder to earn than the jam."
"Do you mean----" began Betty and stopped, not wanting to risk hurting
Miss Davis's feelings.
"Yes, I mean that I'm working my way through. I have a scholarship, but
there's still my board and clothes and books."
"And you do it all?"
Miss Davis nodded. "My cousin sends me some clothes."
"How do you do it, please?"
"Tutor, sort papers and make typewritten copies of things for the
faculty, put on dress braids (that's how I met the B's), mend stockings,
and wait on table off and on when some one's maid leaves suddenly. We
thought it would be cheaper and pleasanter to board ourselves and earn
our money in different ways than to take our board in exchange for
regular table-waiting; but I don't know. The other way is surer."
"You mean you don't find work enough?"
Miss Davis nodded. "It takes a good deal," she said apologetically, "and
there isn't much tutoring that freshmen can do. After this year it will
be easier."
"Dear me," gasped Betty. "Don't you get any--any help from home?"
"Well, they haven't been able to send any yet, but they hope to later,"
said Miss Davis brightly.
"And does it pay when you have to work so hard for it?"
"Oh, yes," answered Miss Davis promptly. "All three of us are sure that
it pays."
"Three of you live together?"
"Yes. Of course there are ever so many others in the college, and I'm
sure all of them would say the same thing."
"And--I hope I'm not being rude--but do girls--do you advertise things
down on that bulletin board? I don't know much about it. I never was
there but once till I went to-day on--on an errand for a friend," Betty
concluded awkwardly. Perhaps she had been an interloper. Perhaps that
bulletin board had not been meant for girls like her.
Miss Davis evidently assumed that she had been to leave an order. "You
ought to buy more," she said laughingly. "But you want to know what I
was there for, don't you? Why yes, we do make a good deal off that
bulletin board. One of the girls paints a little and she advertises
picture frames--Yale and Harvard and Pennsylvania ones, you know. I sell
blue-prints. A senior lends me her films. She has a lot of the faculty
and the campus, and they go pretty well. We use the money we make from
those things for little extras--ribbons and note-books and desserts for
Sunday. We hoped to make quite a bit on valentines----"
"Valentines?" repeated Betty sharply.
"Yes, but a good many others thought of it too, and we didn't get any
orders--not one. Ours weren't so extra pretty and it was foolish of me
to be so disappointed, but we'd worked hard getting ready and we did
want a little more money so much."
They had reached Betty's door by this time, and Miss Davis hurried on,
saying it was her turn to get supper and begging Betty to come and see
them. "For we're very cozy, I assure you. You mustn't think we have a
horrid time just because--you know why."
Betty went straight to Mary's room, which, since she had no roommate to
object to disorder, had been the chief seat of the valentine industry.
"You're a nice one," cried Katherine, "staying off like this when to-day
is the eleventh."
"Many orders?" inquired Mary.
Betty sat down on Mary's couch, ruthlessly sweeping aside a mass of half
finished valentines to make room. "Girls, this has got to stop," she
announced abruptly.
Mary dropped her scissors and Katherine shut the rhyming dictionary with
a bang.
"What is the trouble?" they asked in chorus.
Then Betty told her story, suppressing only Emily's name and mentioning
all the details that had made up the point and pathos of it. "And just
think!" she said at last. "She's a girl you'd both be proud to know, and
she works like that. And we stepped in and took away a chance of--of
ribbons and note-books and dessert for Sunday."
"May be not; perhaps hers were so homely they wouldn't have sold
anyway," suggested Katherine with an attempt at jocoseness.
"Don't, please," said Betty wearily.
Mary came and sat down beside her on the couch. "Well, what's to be done
about it now?" she asked soberly.
"I don't know. We can't give them orders because she took her sign down.
I thought perhaps--how much have we made?"
"Fifteen dollars easily. All right; we'll send it to them."
"Of course," chimed in Katherine. "I was only joking. Shall we finish
these up?"
"Yes indeed," said Mary, "they're all ordered, and the more money the
better, n'est ce pas, Betty? But aren't we to know the person's name?"
Betty hesitated. "Why--no--that is if you don't mind very much. You see
she sort of told me about herself because she had to, so I feel as if I
oughtn't to repeat it. Do you mind?"
"Not one bit," said Katherine quickly. "And we needn't say anything at
all about it, except--don't you think the girls here in the house will
have to know that we're going to give away the money?"
"Yes," put in Mary, "and we'll make them all give us extra orders."
"We will save out a dollar for you to live on till March," said Betty.
"Oh no, I shall borrow of you," retorted Mary, and then they all laughed
and felt better.
On St. Valentine's morning Betty posted a registered valentine. The
verse read:--
"There are three of us and three of you,
Though only one knows one,
So pray accept this little gift
And go and have some fun."
But if the rhyme went haltingly and was not quite true either, as Betty
pointed out, since Adelaide and Alice had contributed to the fund, and
the whole house had bought absurd quantities of valentines because it
was such a "worthy object" ("just as if I wasn't a worthy object!"
sighed Mary), there was nothing the matter with the "little gift," which
consisted of three crisp ten dollar bills.
"Oh, if they should feel hurt!" thought Betty anxiously, and dodged
Emily Davis so successfully that until the day of the rally they did not
meet.
That week was a tremendously exciting one. To begin with, on the
twentieth the members of both the freshman basket-ball teams were
announced. Rachel was a "home" on the regular team, and Katherine a
guard on the "sub," so the Chapin house fairly bubbled over with pride
and pleasure in its double honors. Then on the morning of the
twenty-second came the rally with its tumultuous display of class and
college loyalty, its songs written especially for the occasion, its
shrieks of triumph or derision (which no intrusive reporter should make
bold to interpret or describe as "class yells," since such masculine
modes of expression are unknown at Harding), and its mock-heroic debate
on the vital issue, "Did or did not George Washington cut down that
cherry-tree?"
Every speaker was clever and amusing, but Emily Davis easily scored the
hit of the morning. For whereas most freshmen are frightened and appear
to disadvantage on such an occasion, she was perfectly calm and
self-possessed, and made her points with exactly the same irresistible
gaucherie and daring infusion of local color that had distinguished her
performance at the class meeting. Besides, she was a "dark horse"; she
did not belong to the leading set in her class, nor to any other set,
for that matter, and this fact, together with the novel method of her
election made her interesting to her essentially democratic audience. So
when the judges--five popular members of the faculty--announced their
decision in favor of the negative, otherwise the junior-freshman side of
the debate, 19--'s enthusiasm knew no bounds, and led by the delighted
B's they carried their speaker twice round the gym on their
shoulders--which is an honor likely to be remembered by its recipient
for more reasons than one.
As the clans were scattering, it suddenly occurred to Betty that, if
Emily did not guess anything, it would please her to be congratulated on
the excellence of her debate; and if, as was more likely, she had
guessed, there was little to be gained by postponing the dreaded
interview. She chose a moment when Emily was standing by herself in one
corner of the gymnasium. Emily did not wait for her to begin her speech
of congratulation.
"Oh, Miss Wales," she cried, "I've been to see you six times, and you
are never there. It was lovely of you--lovely--but ought we to take it?"
"Yes, indeed. It belongs to you; honestly it does. Don't ask me how, for
it's too long a story. Just take my word for it."
"Well, but----" began Emily doubtfully.
At that moment some one called, "Hurrah for 19--!" Betty caught up the
cry and seizing Emily's hand rushed her down the hall, toward a group of
freshmen.
"Make a line and march," cried somebody else, and presently a long line
of 19-- girls was winding in noisy lock-step down the hall, threading in
and out between groups of upper-class girls and cheering and gaining
recruits as it went.
"Hurrah for 19--!" cried Betty hoarsely.
"Take it for 19--," she whispered to Emily, as the line stopped with a
jerk that knocked their heads together.
"If you are sure---- Thank you for 19--," Emily whispered back.
"Here's to 19--, drink her down!
Here's to 19--, drink her down!"
As the chorus rose and swelled Betty felt, as she never had before, what
it meant to be a college girl at Harding.
As Betty was leaving the gymnasium she met Eleanor face to face in the
hallway.
"Wasn't it fun?" said Betty, shyly. Perhaps, now that the debate was
over, Eleanor would be ready to make friends again.
"Patronizing the genius, do you mean?" asked Eleanor slowly. "I hope she
didn't buy that hideous salmon-pink waist with your money."
"Oh, Eleanor, how did you ever find out?" cried Betty, deeply
distressed. Only a few of the Chapin house girls knew anything about the
disposition of the valentine money, and not even the rest of the firm
had been told who had received it. So Betty had thought the secret
perfectly safe.
"No one told me about your private affairs," returned Eleanor
significantly. "I guessed and I congratulate you. The genius will be a
useful ally. She will get all the freaks' votes for you, when----"
"Eleanor Watson, come on if you're coming," called a voice from the foot
of the stairs, and Eleanor marched blithely off, without finishing her
sentence.
Betty stared after her with unseeing eyes. So that was it! She was to
blame because Jean had told her of Eleanor's predicament--told her
against her wish. And now she was supposed to be trying to get votes.
"Votes for what, I wonder? How perfectly absurd!" said Betty to the
brick wall she was facing. But the appropriate smile would not come, for
the absurdity had cost her a friend whom she had loved dearly in spite
of her faults.