by Jean Webster
Before the throbbing reality of this romance, Rosalie's poor little history paled into nothing.
Then the plot began to thicken. Studying the lists of incoming steamers, Mae announced to her room-mate that he had landed. He had given his word to her father not to write; but she knew that in some way she should hear. And sure enough! The following morning brought a nameless bunch of violets. There had been doubters before--but at this tangible proof of devotion, skepticism crumbled.
Mae wore her violets to church on Sunday. The school mixed its responses in a shocking fashion--nobody pretended to follow the service; all eyes were fixed on Mae's upturned face and far-off smile. Patty Wyatt pointed out that Mae had taken special pains to seat herself in the light of a stained-glass window, and that occasionally the rapt eyes scanned the faces of her companions, to make sure that the effect was reaching across the footlights. But Patty's insinuation was indignantly repudiated by the school.
Mae was at last triumphantly secure in the rôle of leading lady. Poor insipid Rosalie no longer had a speaking part.
The affair ran on for several weeks, gathering momentum as it moved. In the European Travel Class that met on Monday nights, "English Country Seats" was the subject of one of the talks, illustrated by the stereopticon. As a stately, terraced mansion, with deer cropping grass in the foreground, was thrown upon the screen, Mae Mertelle suddenly grew faint. She vouchsafed no reason to the housekeeper who came with hot-water bottles and cologne; but later, she whispered to her room-mate that that was the house where he was born.
Violets continued to arrive each Saturday, and Mae became more and more distrait. The annual basket-ball game with Highland Hall, a near-by school for girls, was imminent. St. Ursula's had been beaten the year before; it would mean everlasting disgrace if defeat met them a second time, for Highland Hall was a third their size. The captain harangued and scolded an apathetic team.
"It's Mae Mertelle and her beastly violets!" she disgustedly grumbled to Patty. "She's taken all the fight out of them."
The teachers, meanwhile, were uneasily aware that the atmosphere was overcharged. The girls stood about in groups, thrilling visibly when Mae Mertelle passed by. There was a moonlight atmosphere about the school that was not conducive to high marks in Latin prose composition. The matter finally became the subject of an anxious faculty meeting. There was no actual data at hand; it was all surmise, but the source of the trouble was evident. The school had been swept before by a wave of sentiment; it was as catching as the measles. The Dowager was inclined to think that the simplest method of clearing the atmosphere would be to pack Mae Mertelle and her four trunks back to the paternal fireside, and let her foolish mother deal with the case. Miss Lord was characteristically bent upon fighting it out. She would stop the nonsense by force. Mademoiselle, who was inclined to sentiment, feared that the poor child was really suffering. She thought sympathy and tact--But Miss Sallie's bluff common-sense won the day. If the sanity of Saint Ursula's demanded it, Mae Mertelle must go; but she thought, by the use of a little diplomacy, both St. Ursula's sanity and Mae Mertelle might be preserved. Leave the matter to her. She would use her own methods.
Miss Sallie was the Dowager's daughter. She managed the practical end of the establishment--provided for the table, ruled the servants, and ran off, with the utmost ease, the two hundred acres of the school farm. Between the details of horseshoeing and haying and butter-making, she lent her abilities wherever they were needed. She never taught; but she disciplined. The school was noted for unusual punishments, and most of them originated in Miss Sallie's brain. Her title of "Dragonette" was bestowed in respectful admiration of her mental qualities.
The next day was Tuesday, Miss Sallie's regular time for inspecting the farm. As she came downstairs after luncheon drawing on her driving gloves, she just escaped stepping on Conny Wilder and Patty Wyatt who, flat on their stomachs, were trying to poke out a golf ball from under the hat-rack.
"Hello, girls!" was her cheerful greeting. "Wouldn't you like a little drive to the farm? Run and tell Miss Wadsworth that you are excused from afternoon study. You may stay away from Current Events this evening, and make it up."
The two scrambled into hats and coats in excited delight. A visit to Round Hill Farm with Miss Sallie, was the greatest good that St. Ursula's had to offer. For Miss Sallie--out of bounds--was the funniest, most companionable person in the world. After an exhilarating five-mile drive through a brown and yellow October landscape, they spent a couple of hours romping over the farm, had milk and ginger cookies in Mrs. Spence's kitchen; and started back, wedged in between cabbages and eggs and butter. They chatted gaily on a dozen different themes--the Thanksgiving masquerade, a possible play, the coming game with Highland Hall, and the lamentable new rule that made them read the editorials in the daily papers. Finally, when conversation flagged for a moment, Miss Sallie dropped the casual inquiry:
"By the way, girls, what has got into Mae Van Arsdale? She droops about in corners and looks as dismal as a molting chicken."
Patty and Conny exchanged a glance.
"Of course," Miss Sallie continued cheerfully, "it's perfectly evident what the trouble is. I haven't been connected with a boarding-school for ten years for nothing. The little idiot is posing as the object of an unhappy affection. You know that I never favor talebearing, but, just as a matter of curiosity, is it the young man who passes the plate in church, or the one who sells ribbon in Marsh and Elkins's?"
"Neither." Patty grinned. "It's an English nobleman."
"What?" Miss Sallie stared.
"And Mae's father hates English noblemen," Conny explained, "and has forbidden him ever to see her again."
"Her heart is broken," said Patty sadly. "She's going into a decline."
"And the violets?" inquired Miss Sallie.
"He promised not to send her any letters, but violets weren't mentioned."
"H'm, I see!" said Miss Sallie; and, after a moment of thought, "Girls, I am going to leave this matter in your hands. I want it stopped."
"In our hands?"
"The school can't be stirred up any longer; but the matter's too silly to warrant the teachers taking any notice of it. This is a thing that ought to be regulated by public opinion. Suppose you see what you can do--I will appoint you a committee to bring the school back to a solid basis of common sense. I know that I can trust you not to talk."
"I don't exactly see what we can do," said Patty, dubiously.
"You are usually not without resourcefulness," Miss Sallie returned with a flickering smile. "You may have a carte blanche to choose your own methods."
"And may we tell Priscilla?" Conny asked. "We must tell her because we three--"
"Hunt together?" Miss Sallie nodded. "Tell Priscilla, and let it stop at that."
The next afternoon, when Martin drove into the village to accomplish the daily errands, he dropped Patty and Priscilla at the florists, empowered by the school to purchase flowers for the rector's wife and new baby. They turned inside, their minds entirely occupied with the rival merits of red and white roses. They ordered their flowers, inscribed the card, and then waited aimlessly till Martin should return to pick them up. Passing down the counter, they came upon a bill-sticker, the topmost item being, "Violets every Saturday to Miss Mae Van Arsdale, St. Ursula's School."
They stopped and stared for a thoughtful moment. The florist followed their gaze.
"Do you happen to know the young lady who ordered them vi'lets?" he inquired. "She didn't leave any name, and I'd like to know if she wants me to keep on sending 'em. She only paid up to the first, and the price is going up."
"No, I don't know who it was," said Patty, with well-assumed indifference. "What did she look like?"
"She--she had on a blue coat," he suggested. As all sixty-four of the St. Ursula girls wore blue coats, his description was not helpful.
"Oh," Patty prompted, "was she quite tall with a lot of yellow hair and--"
"That's h
er!"
He recognized the type with some assurance.
"It's Mae herself!" Priscilla whispered excitedly.
Patty nodded and commanded silence.
"We'll tell her," she promised. "And by the way," she added to Priscilla, "I think it would be nice for us to send some flowers to Mae, from our--er--secret society. But I'm afraid the treasury is pretty low just now. They'll have to be cheaper than violets. What are your cheapest flowers?" she inquired of the man.
"There's a kind of small sunflower that some people likes for decoration. 'Cut-and-come-again' they're called. I can give you a good-sized bunch for fifty cents. They make quite a show."
"Just the thing! Send a bunch of sunflowers to Miss Van Arsdale with this card." Patty drew a blank card toward her, and in an upright back hand traced the inscription, "Your disconsolate C. St. J."
She sealed it in an envelope, then regarded the florist sternly.
"Are you a Mason?" she asked, her eye on the crescent in his buttonhole.
"Y--yes," he acknowledged.
"Then you understand the nature of an oath of secrecy? You are not to divulge to anyone the sender of these flowers. The tall young lady with the yellow hair will come in here and try to make you tell who sent them. You are not to remember. It may even have been a man. You don't know anything about it. This secret society at Saint Ursula's is so very much more secret than the Masonic Society, that it is even a secret that it exists. Do you understand?"
"I--yes, ma'am," he grinned.
"If it becomes known," she added darkly, "I shall not be responsible for your life."
She and Priscilla each contributed a quarter for the flowers.
"It's going to be expensive," Patty sighed. "I think we'll have to ask Miss Sallie for an extra allowance while this committee is in session."
Mae was in her room, surrounded by an assemblage of her special followers, when the flowers arrived. She received the box in some bewilderment.
"He's sending flowers on Wednesdays as well as Saturdays!" her room-mate cried. "He must be getting desperate."
Mae opened the box amid an excited hush.
"How perfectly lovely!" they cried in chorus, though with a slightly perfunctory undertone. They would have preferred crimson roses.
Mae regarded the offering for a moment of stupefied amazement. She had been pretending so long, that by now she almost believed in Cuthbert herself. The circle was waiting, and she rallied her powers to meet this unexpected crisis.
"I wonder what sunflowers mean?" she asked softly. "They must convey some message. Does anybody know the language of flowers?"
Nobody did know the language of flowers; but they were relieved at the suggestion.
"Here's a card!" Evalina Smith plucked it from among the bristling leaves.
Mae made a motion to examine it in private, but she had been so generous with her confidences heretofore, that she was not allowed to withdraw them at this interesting point. They leaned over her shoulder and read it aloud.
"'Your disconsolate C. St. J.'--Oh, Mae, think how he must be suffering!"
"Poor man!"
"He simply couldn't remain silent any longer."
"He's the soul of honor," said Mae. "He wouldn't write a real letter because he promised not to, but I suppose--a little message like this--"
Patty Wyatt passing the door, sauntered in. The card was exhibited in spite of a feeble protest from Mae.
"That handwriting shows a lot of character," Patty commented.
This was considered a concession; for Patty, from the first, had held aloof from the cult of Cuthbert St. John. She was Rosalie's friend.
The days that followed, were filled with bewildering experiences for Mae 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."