Jane Allen, Center

by George Cary Eggleston

  CHAPTER XXVII--WHAT THE "BUGLE" BLEW

  Jane was going to New York with Mrs. Weatherbee. For some reason notfully explained the director wished particularly to have Jane with her.The long waits and short intervals possible with such talent as was tobe sought out, for the Golden Jubilee Concert of Wellington, made itimperative that Mrs. Weatherbee have with her an assistant who could dosome of the waiting, if not any of the interviewing, so for thatreason, ostensibly, Jane was chosen.

  The reliable old car, paradoxically called the Cozy Roadster, waited atthe broad stone steps, bright and early Thursday morning, and the waiteven with prompt Peter at the wheel, was calculated to be of shortduration with Mrs. Weatherbee as passenger.

  "Good bye, Jane," called Judith, "give my love to little old New York."

  "Oh, Janey! Here is the _Bugle_! Just out. You can read it on thetrain," shouted Drusilla, thrusting a copy of the much-awaited paperinto the gloved hand of Jane.

  Then they were off. The three hours train ride to New York Cityafforded both Mrs. Weatherbee and Jane a welcome opportunity to glimpsethe world outside of Wellington. Also Mrs. Weatherbee might rest, andJane might read.

  Jane could scarcely wait to fulfill the usual train formalities beforerunning her anxious eyes over the short columns of print in search ofWhispers from Wellington. There were the Breslin Breezes, and theCarlton Clatter. Yes, there it was! Wellington Whispers!

  Jane read over the usual announcements. The basketball news appearedand there was the report of the Barn Swifts Extravaganza. She saw theprint as a whole, but one line stood out as if entirely capitalized. Itwas:

  "Helka Podonsky, the Mystery of the College!"

  Then followed a pacifying account of Helka's wonderful talent, and theintimation that she might be a royal personage in hiding. Jane ran herdeep gray eyes over the column, and as she read they seemed to deepen,intensified with indignation, so that the fires usually hidden, nowthreatened to blaze outright. In sort of a panic she quickly passed thelittle sheet to Mrs. Weatherbee. Followed such an adjusting of glasses,and such a poring over that column, Jane need not wait to hear what thedirector thought of the astonishing publication. Every move indicatedintense indignation. Finally Mrs. Weatherbee looked up, caught Jane'seye and breathed deeply.

  "Who could have done that?" she exclaimed in a very low voice.

  "Isn't it awful?" Jane returned.

  "Have you any idea how it came--about?"

  "The reporter, Miss Nevins, was with Marian Seaton at the Breslingame," Jane answered frankly. "Of course, Marian--dislikes Helen."

  "Oh, that's it! Well, this seems to be the final stroke. I have doneeverything possible, and made all sorts of allowances for Marian,because she has been handicapped by a frivolous mother, and anindulgent father. Of late when affairs at Wellington assumed a reallyserious turn, I felt our patience and endurance had been exhausted, andI may tell you, my dear, Miss Seaton was marked for leavingWellington."

  "Oh, that would be too bad," sighed the considerate Jane.

  "Yes, I agree with you, but Miss Seaton has given so much annoyance.Only your own intervention more than once saved her. And this, in faceof the fact that you were the most--abused victim of her idiosyncracies.But this is altogether too serious to admit of forgiveness. There's notelling what mischief that absurd article may work."

  Jane accepted again the despised sheet, and reading the disputed"story" over more carefully, she visioned all sorts of dire calamitiescoming to defenceless little Helen, through this open announcement of"The Mystery of Wellington College." It was too awful--too horrible,after all their carefully executed plans, to save her from publicity.

  * * * * *

  As the train sped on to New York scenes at Wellington had also shifted.Marian Seaton and Dolorez Vincez were having their inevitablereckoning.

  Dolorez had sought out Marian--going so far as to lie in wait for theharassed girl, as she left the grounds for her noon trip to thepostoffice.

  "You have got to come in here and listen to me," commanded the youngwoman, who had been posing as a young girl. She grasped the arm ofMarian, the latter frightened to the point of running away. "Do youthink you can leave me like this?"

  "But, Dolorez," begged Marian, "I did not promise to do anything I havenot done. I got all the girls to agree to take treatments----"

  "Yes, but what you should have done was to get that firey little Allenout of the way. She has spoiled everything. Now, what am I to do withall this junk," indicating a miscellaneous collection of stuff,misnamed furniture, that glared at both girls from piles and heaps inall four corners of the disordered room.

  "You seem to forget, Miss Vincez, that it is I who am really sufferingfrom all this," spoke Marian with prideable hauteur. "I have gottenmyself all but expelled from college, I have lost every friend, and Ihave done something, the result of which I am afraid to--to contemplate.And now you are going to charge me with failing you!"

  A scornful laugh accompanied by the shrugging of a pair ofover-developed shoulders, was Marian's answer. Dolorez was anadventurer--and Marian her latest victim!

  "You are very squeamish, it seems to me for one in your place," sneeredthe Brazilian. "What about your debts?"

  "Oh!" gasped the overwrought Marian. "Please don't!"

  To express at least conditional pity for Marian Seaton is but human.She had made flagrant mistakes, but after all she was only a poor,neglected girl. Neglected by a foolish, frivolous mother, and variouslyindulged or rashly disciplined by a father, who made his money stormingthe business world through the medium of over-worked and underpaidemployees. His blustering ill-trained nature had served him in a waywith factory workers, but it was not the sort of method from which toexpect success when applied to a young, good-looking and ambitiousgirl, his only daughter Marian. Not knowing what it was she missed inher short life, the girl, now stood confronted with a record of deceit,and debts, and school dishonor. We will not yet condemn her without atleast a trial.

  The two, Marian and Dolorez, had stormed and threatened, until it wasclear neither could hope to obtain any satisfaction from the other,under such conflict. Marian finally broke away literally from hercaptor, who now stood in the doorway of the ill-fated beauty parlor,glaring after the vanishing figure, all the venomous hatred, andavengeful threats glaring from her black eyes, and striking through theill-natured lines of her Latin features.

  "You will hear from me later, my high-strung American," she all buthissed. "I do not admit a bunch of feather-headed girls are betterfighters than I."

  But Marian was running down the path, and was fortunately well out ofhearing.

  Within a recreation room, Judith, in Jane's absence, became prompterand promoter of all things necessary and interesting to Jane'sadherents. Naturally, the _Bugle_ news all but disrupted the day'sprogram, and now, in the noon hour, Judith and her friends weredevouring and discussing that astonishing article concerning Helen.

  "Well, what if she is a noble," lisped Clare Bradley, "wouldn't that benice?"

  "Lovely, of course," flared back Dickey Ripple. "But suppose shedoesn't want to be a noble?"

  "Oh, well, then she needn't," finished the inconsistent blonde.

  "That's not it at all," explained Judith. "We don't want Helendisturbed and run after by a lot of notoriety seekers."

  "Certainly not," agreed Drusilla. "Suppose they come down on us andransack the place----"

  "And carry you off by mistake," Grazia could not refrain from adding.

  "I always knew there was something queer about Helen," added Minette,with undisguised banality.

  "Yes, that is, she was smarter than any girl you ever met," correctedWeasie Blair. "That was the queer part of her."

  "And that hateful reporter! Wait until she comes around here againsnooping for news!" contributed Dorothy Blyden.

  "Yes, just wait!" vociferated Ted Guthrie.

  "At any rate," ordered Judith. "We must see to it that every
_Bugle_ iscornered on the campus. Not a line of this must by any chance comeunder Helen's eyes."

  "We will raid every house and sweep up every path," volunteeredDrusilla. "I love Helen Powderly and I am going to see that she hasfair play."

  "Bravo!" chorused the girls, now scattering at the call of the gongsounding the one thirty session.

  Still one more scene, important to our story, is being enacted atWellington. Helen, in her solitary room, is quivering with suppressedexcitement. She has had a letter from Stanislaus--her friend and herprotector. He has, at last, found she is alive, and at WellingtonCollege. And his letter came to the girl, who is truly in hiding,through their mutual friend, Alice Mahon, a social service worker ofNew York City.

  "Dear, dear friend!" sighed Helen happily. "How very soon I may tell mydear Jane and Judith who you are! Very soon I may throw off my cloak ofdisguise. I, Helka Podonsky, so long in the servitude of dishonestcaptors."

  Once more she read the brief note penned in Polish. How much those fewprecious words meant to her!

  "Just a little while more," she sighed, folding the note as if it mightescape from her holding. "Just until Stanislaus comes."

  And that afternoon Helen Powderly appeared at her class, smiling andhappy, all unconscious of the _Bugle_ and its baneful story.