CONSPIRATORS
Suite No. 59 was “seething with conspiracy”, as Betty Barnes declared.
“No, thank you, I haven’t time to come in, or to be a Catiline.” Upon
which Virginia Morris, also of the Cicero class, appropriately cried,
“How long, O Carver, will you abuse our patience?”
“O tempora, O mores!” added Lilian North.
“Mercy, Lil, you don’t mean to say you remember that!”
“Only that. I recognized it when I found it. It is a pet expression of
my father’s. Why didn’t you ask Hilary to come in?”
“Nothing doing,” replied slangy little Isabel Hunt. She it was whom
Cathalina had seen as the small cyclone whirling past on that first day.
“Hilary wouldn’t do it.”
“We’re not going to do anything bad,” said Eloise.
“No, but I think her little conscience would hurt her.”
“And why not Cathalina, then?”
“O, she’s too high and mighty, and besides she’s only in the beginning
Latin class.”
“So are you,” Eloise and Lilian, who were high-minded girls, did not
much relish the implication that Hilary and Cathalina would not consider
this an exactly noble undertaking.
Isabel laughed. “That’s so, but I am a ‘bold spirit, my hearties’!”
“Well, what are we going to do?” asked Lilian.
Diane pretended to tear her hair.
“I’ve thought of several schemes that we might try, nothing very smart,
but she’s new here and we might have some fun out of it.” This was from
Virginia. So with gigglings and whisperings and putting together of
heads bright and mischievous, they laid their plans for a trick or two.
“I’ll be on hand,” said Isabel, “if it takes days, because we want to
try this first, as it, ladies and gentlemen, is the one which will do
_us_ the most good. And now it all depends on a closed door!”
“It does,” replied Virginia, with which mysterious saying, all the
conspirators save the hostesses took their departure.
For several days after this meeting, about ten minutes before the time
for the Cicero class, Isabel Hunt, books under her arm, as if on her way
to some class, would stroll carelessly by Dr. Carver’s door. At last
there came a day when it was closed. Turning, Isabel waved wildly at
Diane, who was also coming early and was just within the outside door at
the end of the hall in “Randolph,” first floor.
“I saw her there,” returned Diane, also whispering, “went by on purpose.
Now if she’ll just forget to look at her watch and only keep her nose in
her book! The electric bell hasn’t been working for a day or two, so
she’ll not be reminded.”
They waited a few minutes, then Isabel slipped up to the door and with
two or three “stickers,” hastily pasted up a notice which she had been
carrying for days.
NO CICERO TODAY
ADVANCED LESSON OF
TEN LINES
“Now you go up front,” said Isabel, “and head ’em off there. Tell ’em
notice up, no lesson today.
“I’ll stay to watch her and catch ’em from upstairs, and the outside
door. She’ll never suspect me if she does come out an’ spoil it all,
’cause I’m not in the class.”
“She might think we’d had you put the notice up. Ten lines looks a
little suspicious, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, because she would give at least thirty, Grace said, but the class
wouldn’t get any good of it if they had to get a whole lesson, and after
all this trouble!”
“Well, don’t let anybody get by you to try the door,—by mistake, of
course; nobody would want to!”
“Sh-sh!” warned Isabel, “go along.”
The girls began to arrive for class, one or two at a time at first.
Fortunately for the scheme the Latin room was at a corner of the
building, where the noise of the dismissal of classes was least, and the
learned Doctor was very absent-minded.
The sound of the last bell had died away. Isabel and Grace kept count
and knew that the last Cicero girl had come and gone, those who did not
understand with thankful, smiling looks and no disposition to go to the
door to view the notice more closely, and those who were in the plan
with careful tip-toeing and looks of joy.
Grace whisked up the stairs in the front of the building, and Isabel up
the back stairs, there to meet and giggle, as Dr. Carver at last opened
her door and came out in perplexed surprise. She looked up and down the
hall, and even went out to the front entrance. Then coming back, she saw
the notice. Isabel, who had been leaning over the bannister to see Dr.
Carver’s movements, backed away into Grace’s arms with a suppressed
shriek. “I wish you had seen her face when she caught sight of that
notice! She’ll finish all of us tomorrow sure! Let’s pass the word
around to have perfect lessons!”
Grace took a peep, but turning hastily, caught Isabel’s arm. “Hurry,
she’s coming up!” Up the second flight to the third story they tiptoed,
right over the angry Doctor’s head, and thankful they were that she was
fat and slow.
“Come on; we’ll be in the library reading, and not together.”
“Not I,” said Grace, “I’m going to be safe in my little room over at
Greycliff Hall. Watch me get down the front stairs!”
The next day faces of great innocence met Dr. Carver’s shrewd looks.
After marking her roll, she made a few sarcastic remarks about pupils
who had nothing better to do than play tricks. “It is an evidence of low
order of intellect,” said she. More than once she looked sternly at one
of the girls who was a gay little thing and rarely had her lessons, but
was entirely innocent of any part in this.
“If I did not know that this class is not capable of getting even the
usual number of lines, and that I would punish the innocent with the
guilty, I would give you a double lesson for tomorrow. But for the
present we shall let it go. After this, when you see a notice on a
teacher’s door take the trouble to try the door and see if the notice
has been put up by authority. Under similar circumstances, hereafter,
each pupil will receive a zero for the recitation missed. And let me
remark that if any of you are interested in passing the course, you can
ill afford to have a zero included among grades that are none too high
as it is!”
And the Cicero class surely had reason to squirm that day. No matter how
fine the reading, Dr. Carver asked the most unheard of questions
(according to their story), and pushed the discussions of subjunctives
until, as Eloise said afterward, they all knew that they had never even
heard anything before about a Latin verb, let alone understanding it!
Ordinarily Eloise and Hilary were ready for the questions on syntax, but
today they only shook their heads at the rapid fire of questions put in
the “scientific” foreign fashion of making everything as profound and
obscure as possible. With dazed eyes they watched the satisfied way in
which the offended Doctor of Philosophy recorded grades after their
efforts to recite, “zeros at most,” said Eloise, “and no doubt she had
invented something lower, maybe a zero minus.”
All was quiet for several days. Then Isabel met Helen Paget in the
corridor one morning and whispered, “I’m ready to be offered up
again,—two acts at once this time!” She burst into No. 52, where Hilary
was in the midst of a theorem, with, “Where’s Cathalina? I’ve got to see
her!”
“I think that she took her books down to the rocks. She said that Childe
Harold’s address to the ocean would sound better down there.”
“What’s she reading that for?”
“Collateral in Lit.”
“My, does she take that,”—and Isabel was gone.
Five minutes later a flying figure reached and scrambled over the rocks
to a high point where Cathalina was sitting and gazing dreamily out over
the lake. Her bright hair was blowing about in a fresh lake breeze, her
grey-blue sweater buttoned tightly around her. Once arrived, Isabel was
in no hurry to explain her object and stood like a rosy bird, balancing
on a rock, her hands in the pocket of her sweater, which was red.
“Cooler, isn’t it?” she remarked.
Now Cathalina had not fancied Isabel very much. Isabel’s slangy speech
and pert ways did not attract her, though she tried to be friendly to
the little girl. To tell the truth, Cathalina’s inclinations were not of
the sort that admitted readily a number of girls to intimacy. That fact
was of course a protection to her, but also kept off for a time at
least, some of the girls who were worth knowing. Hilary at this time had
the better attitude for girls’ school,—helpful, kind and pleasant to
every one, yet independent, fearless on matters of right and wrong, and
confiding her private affairs chiefly to that best of confidents, her
mother.
“Will you save my life, Cathalina?” asked Isabel brightly, as she sat
down on a convenient rock at Cathalina’s feet. She secretly admired
Cathalina very much and wished that she could be like her. She also felt
Cathalina’s disapproval of her rough ways, but from some spirit of
perverseness, was moved to be a little worse than usual when in
Cathalina’s presence. This afternoon, however, a different spirit
established itself. Isabel’s artistic eye and spiritual sense were
touched by something “angelic”, as she called it, about Cathalina’s
serious face and dreamy expression, while Cathalina thought that she had
never known Isabel so sensible and sweet.
“How can I ‘save your life,’ Isabel?” asked Cathalina at last,
remembering Isabel’s greeting which had been forgotten in the talk which
followed.
Mischief came back into Isabel’s eyes. “You are not taking German are
you?”
“No.”
“Does anybody but Hilary and a few of us know that you can speak it?”
“No.”
“Can you write it?”
“Yes,” and Cathalina was laughing by this time. “I can’t say that I’m
proud of it now. I’d rather remember my French.”
“Well, this is the scheme. We want to get Dr. Carver out of her room a
few minutes before Virgil begins, and after she has unlocked her door,
of course. Virgil comes after lunch, you know. Some one of the class
will put a note on her desk, without being seen, if possible. If she is
seen and reported she won’t really know anything about it, for it will
be handed her in the hall and we are going to pass it through several
hands to some one who doesn’t know anything about our doings!” Isabel
giggled. “We want to pretend the note comes from the German professor,
just for fun. One of the girls has his initials, so it wont be ‘forgery’
for her to sign them to the note. Now will you write the script for us?”
“Why don’t you write plain English?”
“O she’d get on to the writing, and besides she’ll feel complimented at
first sight. Patricia says she reads all those awful German books about
Latin! She’ll take the note to him and they’ll laugh about it, that’s
all. And we’ll have time to put our little present on her desk!”
If the truth were told, some of the girls hoped to embarrass their
victim in some way and get even for the times when she had so seriously
embarrassed them in class. Isabel did not know this, though if she had
it would probably have made no difference; for Isabel was not given to
thinking about consequences!
“Please do it, Cathalina?” Isabel looked very pretty, pushing back her
short, curly locks as she wheedled Cathalina.
“O, all right,—depends upon what you want me to say. I won’t tell any
‘whoppers.’ See me tonight before study hours.”
Isabel went off jubilant. “She’ll do it, girls, but we’ll have to fix it
up all right, because Cathalina isn’t the kind of a girl that will write
just anything.”
“Make it short and snappy,” said Diane, “like this: ‘Dear Fraulein
Carver—May I see you in the library a few minutes before class? Yours,
E. F. S.’—or something like that,—however Cathalina wants it.”
As this seemed harmless enough, and none of the girls seemed to realize
the fact of deception, Cathalina wrote the message in German script and
Ellen F. Smith signed her initials, going into the library to “keep the
date with our ‘beloved teacher.’” Lilian who was in the Virgil class,
succeeded in placing the note on the desk while Dr. Carver stood near
the door conferring with one of the other girls. Then Lilian slipped
back into the hall to notify the girl who stood in a retired corner with
a cunning gray kitten, its throat tied with a pretty blue ribbon, from
which dangled a card. The girls had spent some time thinking over what
to put on the card, the most spiteful suggestion being “TO A CAT”. “Be
Good To Me; I’m Young,” was Eloise’s idea, but they finally decided to
say, “If you don’t like girls, maybe you like kittens,” and one of the
girls had spoiled a dozen cards or more in writing it artistically.
Cathalina had been worried over the kitten part of the performance and
made the girls solemnly promise that they would prop open a crack in the
cover of the old-fashioned desk.
“Don’t worry, Cathalina, we aren’t cruel,” said Diane, pretending to be
offended.
“O, I know that, Diane!”
The class, as usual, was gathering in the back part of the room, near
the windows, in little groups, some listening while a good student read
the hard passages to them. There was then, no difficulty in placing the
kitten without notice. And when, after a little, a scratching and mewing
began, the last bell rang, and Dr. Carver came in radiant. She located
the cat instantly, while the girls were taking their regular places,
held it up with a sarcastic smile in full view of the class, an
unsmiling company, carried the meek animal to the door, dropped it in
the hall and shut the door with more of a bang, doubtless, than she had
intended.
That was all there was of incident, and Dr. Carver was so absent-minded,
letting one recitation after another pass without comment or correction,
that the girls dared to let their own minds wander from the text long
enough to wonder what was the matter.
“Cat and all and the Doctor scarcely mad!” Lilian whispered as the class
left the room.
“She didn’t even read the card!”
“She must have had a legacy or something.”
“Perhaps a letter from her lover.”
“Lover! Her!” was the reply to this, ungrammatical but vigorous.
“I wish he’d write oftener, then!”
Later, from suite 52, where the arch conspirators had assembled, came
shrieks of laughter. Isabel was one who could appreciate a joke even on
herself. “Honestly, girls, it was the funniest thing I ever saw. She was
like a different woman. I sat by the table, reading, of course, and only
Ellen and two other girls were in there. And just as the first bell
rang, who should come in but Der Herr Professor! You know how he looks,
all frowzy and wild, with his spectacles and that high collar! Well, he
went over to the German alcove and began to pull out the books in a
hurry. Presto, appeared Dr. Carver, and bless you, didn’t he start
toward her all beaming and nodding, with his hands full of books!
“‘My dear Doctor Garver,’”—here some of the girls nearly doubled up at
Isabel’s imitation (she was taking expression). “‘I have found dose
texts ve vere gommenting on last night.’ Then they went on with such a
spiel as you never heard! Dr. Carver looked real human, you know, and
the old Dutchman—’scuse me, Cathalina, also your Holland
ancestors,—_Deutchman_,—looked at her as if she was the only
understanding soul he’d met since he landed.”
“Very likely she is,” remarked Hilary.
“I need not have worried. They never even _saw_ me there! I wish you had
seen her coquettish look as she flirted out of the room when the second
gong rang.” Isabel adjusted an imaginary pair of glasses and looked over
her shoulder. “‘So kind of you, Professor Schafer.’ It was a shame for
Ellen and me to enjoy it all to ourselves!”
“So your jokes kind of fell flat?” asked Hilary with a mischievous look.
“Yes,” answered Isabel, “after all our trouble to find that kitten, and
me coaxin’ Cathalina half a day more or less!”
“But maybe we’ve started a real romance,” suggested Eloise.
“What did you do with the kitty?” asked Cathalina.
“It’s all right. Dotty Banks, one of the little girls, was to watch for
it and take it back if necessary, and she showed me a long fresh scratch
it gave her, so I guess she caught it all right!”
“I’m glad it turned out as it did,” said Cathalina later, as she and
Hilary were at their lessons. “We aren’t allowed to play practical jokes
at home. If it had—a—mortified her at all, I’d have felt guilty,
although,” and here Cathalina’s lips set firmly a moment,—“she deserves
’most anything for the way she does in class.”
“Father says that when we try to pay back it hurts us the worst,”
replied Hilary. “I’m not preaching, please, but such pranks take a lot
of time and aren’t so very smart or funny in the end. Let’s try to keep
out of them. If you could get hold of Isabel, Cathalina, you would do
her a lot of good. She and Avalon just about worship you.”