Then at recess one of the girls came from the office with a message for her.
“Elsie, your cousin Katharine wants to speak with you at the telephone.”
Elsie’s heart beat wildly as she rose from her desk to go to the telephone. Not in all the weeks she had been away from her aunt’s had there come a sign or word from any of them except her uncle. He had written her a comforting little note the first week of her absence, telling her that they were missing her greatly, but he was proud of her that she could follow in the way of duty. He also enclosed a substantial check, which he asked her to use for little things that she might find lacking in her home, things to which she had been accustomed lately, and which she might miss. He said he should be happier to think she had them. She had responded by a frank, loving letter thanking him fervently, accepting the check, as she knew he would want her to do, and be terribly hurt if she did not, and telling him what a dear, precious uncle he was and how glad she was he was her uncle.
She had also written to her aunt dutifully and pleasantly, hoping that she was forgiven for insisting on following her present course, but trying to make it plain that she still felt even more strongly that it was the path of right, and begging that they would come out and see for themselves.
Not one word had she received in reply.
Later she wrote to each of her cousins, but nothing came in answer. The fourth week she wrote to her aunt again, and tried once more to make plain what she was attempting to do for her home, her father and brothers; but still nothing came of it. After that she settled down to the inevitable, and with many a tear tried to resign herself to the break with those who were so near and dear to her. She knew of course that they were away at their seashore cottage. But they had plenty of time to write.
Now, when the sudden, unexpected message came that Katharine was at the telephone waiting to speak with her, her limbs trembled beneath her, and things in the schoolroom seemed confused and whirling for just an instant. But she rallied, smilingly thanked the messenger, and went to the phone. Her hand trembled a little as she took up the receiver; but she managed to control her voice and say, “Hello!”
Yes, it was Katharine’s voice, but cold and distant, almost condescending in its reserve.
“Is that you, Elsie? Mamma wished me to phone for her and say that she has arranged to have some of your friends here this evening, and she would like you to come directly here from school and remain all night.”
“O Katharine! How dear of Auntie!” exclaimed Elsie, her heart all aglow with warmth, utterly forgetful of the cold tone in which the invitation was uttered. “But I’m so sorry I can’t come! It would be just beautiful, and I’m perfectly hungry to see you all; but it’s just impossible tonight. You see I promised Eugene I’d be at home early to help him with something—”
Katharine’s cold voice cut in on her explanation.
“Mamma has not been at all well since you left us in that unceremonious style, and you certainly owe it to her to do as she asks, especially when she has planned something for your pleasure. Telephone your brother you cannot come. You can help him another time. Mamma needs you now, and the other people are all invited.”
“I’m so sorry, dear!” wailed Elsie. “Anything else in the world, almost, I could put off; I would find some way to do it; but this is very important. You see Eugene—”
“Oh, very well,” interrupted Katharine again, “of course you have a perfect right to choose whom you will please, regardless of how much you hurt your best friends. I will tell Mamma what you say. Good-bye.”
“But Katherine!” Elsie’s voice broke in a sob. Katharine had hung up!
The bell was ringing for the close of recess, and Elsie dragged herself back to her desk, and she struggled to regain her self-control; but she looked fairly stricken all the rest of the morning, and one of the teachers at noon-time had told her she looked wretched, asked whether she had a headache, and advised her to go and lie down.
It was not until almost time for the afternoon session to close that it suddenly came to her that life was not all made up of sorrowful things. There would be those in her home who would be watching for her and glad to see her. It was hard to have her aunt and cousins take things this way, and treat her like an alien and a stranger merely because she had seen her duty and gone back to her father’s house; but that house was growing more dear every day, and her father and brothers were obviously doing all they could in their poor way to welcome her and make her happy. She would not despond. She would forget the sorrowful, and turn to the bright. How thankful she ought to be that Eugene wanted her, that he was really in college and making good, that he was eager to study for that examination, and that she could help him.
She straightway put out of her mind the uncomfortable happening, and set to work on what she had promised to do for her brother. She selected a few books from the school library to take home with her, and worked at them diligently all the way out to Morningside. She arranged to have dinner on the table the minute her father and the boys came home, so that no time need be lost in the evening; and she put on her prettiest house-frock, and went down smilingly, smothering a sigh over the merry company who were probably assembling at her aunt’s dinner-table at about that time. She had chosen. She had put her hand to the plough, and she would not look back.
While they were at dinner, Bob Lowe arrived at the front door, and called for Jack. Elsie’s troubled look caught the boy’s eyes, and he smiled back at her.
“Don’t you worry, kid,” he whispered as he went by her to go out and speak to his friend. “I’m not going. That couch looks good to me if you’re going to read.” She nodded brightly. She certainly was going to read, and some of the things she would read would be along lines that would help him to get ready for his examinations next fall, but she didn’t mean to let him know it. She meant to make it interesting to him and hold him at home; that was all; and a thrill of gladness shot through her. Here was a reason why she should have been at home tonight, another justification for her answer to Katharine’s invitation. It had troubled her so all the afternoon that she had had to seem ungrateful and unkind to her aunt. But now, here, if she had been away this evening, Jack would most certainly have gone out with Bob Lowe; and that was never a thing to be desired.
It was a difficult task she had set herself, to combine an interesting evening of reading with a thorough review of half a semester’s work in an English literature class, but she managed to do it after a fashion, and for two whole hours she read and commented and handed out facts for Eugene to set down in a list which he should look over and memorize on his way to the university in the morning.
They began as soon as dinner was over, the father dozing over his paper by the big table in the lamplight for a time, and going up early to bed. By nine o’clock they had gone briefly over the ground that the class had covered in the ten weeks since the semester’s work had begun; and Eugene flung down his pencil with a yawn, and threw himself back in the chair.
“That’s enough, Elsie. I guess I’ll manage to scrub through with all that crammed in my brain. I’ll go over some of those things again in the morning. There’s just one more thing I want to do tonight, and I guess I’d better quit this and get at it, for it’s likely to last me all night. There’s a tough old nut of a problem in algebra lesson for tomorrow, and none of the fellows had got it so far when I left this afternoon. I’d like to get it if I could. It would impress the prof, and make him give me good marks all year. They say it counts a lot what you get the first semester. They sort of get in the habit of marking you that way. Besides, I need a good mark or two to carry me through; and, if I am recommended by the math prof, I’ll likely be asked on the basketball team. There’s even a chance I might get on the varsity team, though it’s not likely, but they’re short one man, and they’ve spoken to me. It’s up to me to get in with that prof, for what he says goes in athletics. If he says you’re not up in your marks enough to play, it’s
no use trying anything else. But you don’t know much about college algebra, do you?”
“Well, I might work at it and see if I get the same results you do,” said Elsie, smothering a yawn and sitting up bravely. She had had a hard day, and felt a sudden ache in her back and head. But she drew a pad toward her, and got out her pencil, setting down the problem as Eugene read it aloud to her. Jack lay on the couch and annoyed the cat with a feather he had pulled from one of the cushions, tickling her nose and eyelashes and toes delicately, and enjoying her renewed surprise and vexed response to each effort.
They had not been working on the problem three minutes when the silence of the room was broken by a ring of the doorbell. Elsie and Eugene looked up annoyed; but Jack dragged himself alertly from his couch, and went to the door. He was ready now to go out for a while if Bob Lowe had returned for him. He had had his rest and felt refreshed.
Chapter 18
But the visitor was not Bob Lowe, who would have beckoned Jack outside the door. This man stepped inside, and took off his motor-cap with an air of haste and eagerness.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said pleasantly as he noticed the two at work around the table.
Under his breath Eugene was uttering an exclamation of extreme annoyance, though he rose politely enough. He began to figure out how he could take his problem and “beat it” upstairs.
“I’ve just dropped in to see whether you all wouldn’t like to take a little spin with me in my new car. I really don’t enjoy doing things alone. Besides, it’s a glorious night. The moon is full, and is flooding everything with silver. What do you say? Will you all go?”
He looked from one to the other of them eagerly.
Jack’s eyes were alight at once. “What kind is it?” he asked.
Elsie did some quick thinking. She saw the eagerness in Jack’s face, the sudden light and then gloom on Eugene’s, and he glanced back at the unfinished problem; and she made her resolve.
“You’re very kind,” she began with that quick lift of her chin that betokened decision. “It would be lovely to go, but Eugene and I have a tough proposition on hand in the shape of a tricky problem in algebra that has to be done for an eight-o’clock class tomorrow morning; so I guess we’ll have to decline. I know Jack would love to go with you for a while, though.”
The kind, keen eyes of Stewart were searching her face as she talked. He was trying to determine whether it was duty to her brother, or only an excuse.
“Indeed, Elsie, you’re not going to stay home for me,” declared Eugene, turning upon her quite blusteringly. “If anybody stays at home, it’ll be me. But I won’t! Let the old problem go hang. I couldn’t get it anyway. Why worry?”
The visitor watched the chasing of pleased surprise, of real eagerness, and of final anxiety over the sensitive face of the girl, and was satisfied.
“What’s the matter with our all tackling that problem first, and then taking the ride?” he asked. “Come show me what it is. I used to be good at math when I was in college.”
Before they could protest they were all settled down again around the table, while Jack went out to cover up the engine and look admiringly at the shining new machine standing alluringly in the moonlight with the long stretch of white road like a ribbon all ready for it to leap out upon. He was happy as a king to get a chance to ride in the new machine, one of the best and most expensive high-powered machines made.
When he sauntered back into the house impatiently to see whether the others were not ready, he found it all very still in the living-room, where three heads were bent over three respective papers, and three pencils were ciphering away like express trains.
Jack sat down in a big chair and furtively studied the fellow.
Cameron Stewart had thrown off his fur-lined overcoat, and it trailed on the floor regardless of its richness. His hair was ruffled up quite unconventionally, and his brows were knit. His fingers worked swiftly with a sureness as if they were going a familiar way. Presently he looked up, and spoke to Eugene.
“Got any result yet?”
“A sort of one,” said Gene gloomily.
“Let me see what you’ve done.”
He reached out, and took Gene’s paper, touching the rows of figures lightly as he ran down the lines.
“All right so far,” he said with authority as though he were the author of the problem, “but why did you do this?”
“I don’t know,” answered Eugene lamely. “Guess because I’d tried everything else.”
“Well, but what was it you wanted to find here? What were you after?”
“Why, a common denominator.”
“Exactly. How do you do that? What’s your rule?”
“Oh! Why! I certainly am a nut!”
He reached out for his paper, and began to figure again rapidly, the visitor watching him sharply and Elsie rising and looking over his shoulder, eager to find out where she had been wrong.
“That’s right. Go on. You’re on the right track,” encouraged Stewart as Eugene’s pencil hesitated at another crucial point.
Jack sat watching, a half-wistful expression in his eyes. Would he ever be figuring away like that, understanding all that jargon? Not that he cared in the least for the figuring or the jargon, more than as it represented the custom of the classic realm of the university, where one played football with a halo of knowledge about one’s head.
“Well there!” exclaimed Eugene at length, as his frantic figuring came to an end, and signs and symbols covered the entire sheet of paper. “Is that right? Gee! I believe it is! Where’s that book? It belonged to a fellow in last year’s class, and he had the answer written down. Hooray! Yes, it is. Thanks awfully, Stewart. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been all night at it, and not got it then, unless Elsie got onto it. I certainly am obliged to you.”
“Oh, I didn’t do a thing but make you use your own brains,” answered the visitor happily as he began to put on his overcoat again.
“Well, I guess that’s about the size of it. You see I’m new at brain-work.” Eugene’s voice was slightly deferential. It had lost the contempt and conceit wherewith he had propped his own conscious lack. He had been made to see for the first time in a succession of years where he had been wrong, and a bit of real humility was pleasantly upon him. There is nothing that sits more pleasantly upon an arrogant young man than a sudden infusion of sincere humility and gratitude.
“You’re all right, old fellow; you’ll soon get onto it again,” said Stewart, slapping him genially on the shoulder in a way that would have been resented by Eugene a short half-hour before. Now it warmed his heart with comradeship, the surprising comradeship of one who had proved himself a superior in something.
“Now for our ride!” said Stewart. “Bring plenty of wraps; the night is rather cool. I have two big, warm rugs.”
Five minutes more, and they were out in the car, leaping over the white road, the sharp, invigorating November air striking their faces refreshingly after their evening of hard work, and the moon paving the world with silver.
Out into the country they shot, past the lights of Morningside—the little inn, and the Country Club; past the gold links and the bridge where the creek slid silverly under; through lanes where bare branches met overhead and grave cedars whispered spicily; between fields of ghostly corn-shocks huddled in groups murmuring uncannily of better days; where mists rose in white wreaths over a swamp; with the lights of the distant riverboats and lighthouses on the other hand, they rushed, quiet for the most part, happy with a kind of joy of newfound friendship that none of them could have explained.
Jack was in the front seat beside his host. He had gone there as a matter of course, with the eagerness of a boy who is bound to be at the point of greatest interest. It never occurred to him that Stewart might have preferred someone else. He simply located himself there without question.
Stewart would have enjoyed having Elsie beside him. He wanted to talk to her. Yet he reflec
ted that, after all, this arrangement was better all around. So the conversation, what there was of it, became general, and delightful to all.
Jack and Stewart grew quite chummy over the machine, talking over its various good points, Stewart explaining several things that Jack had not understood before, and Jack in his turn giving an intelligent reason for so-and-so being as it was, with the superiority of one who knows machinery and understand its laws. Each began to have a rising respect and liking for the other.
Eugene on his part could not get over his elation about that problem.
“Some class!” he kept saying under his breath to Elsie. “Won’t it be great if I’m the only one that has that problem tomorrow morning? That guy sure has a head on him. Didn’t take him long to straighten the old problem out, and he saw my mistake the minute his eye lit on it. Take notice to the way he made me do the work, though? He might have been the prof the way he put me though. But I like him all right, all right! Good-night, but he must know a lot!”
Elsie sat back thoughtfully, reflecting that about now the party at her aunt’s was at its height, and she was not a bit sorry she had not gone. Not for the world would she have missed all that had happened this evening, from the hard work with her brothers up to the crowning wonderful ride in the fairy world of moonlight. Tomorrow might ring its cares and crosses; it doubtless would; but she would always be glad she had had this evening just as it had been. She was quite ready now to forgive the intolerant youth for his criticisms last May, since he had helped her brother out of his difficulty.
Elsie hurried away from school the next day as soon as the session was over, and took the trolley to her aunt’s. She had decided to go and see whether her aunt was really ill, as Katharine had intimated, and if possible to make plain the importance of her own presence at Morningside. But, when she reached the house, she found no one at home but the maid, who said that her aunt had gone out to make calls. Elsie gave one glance about the beloved rooms where she had spent so many happy hours, and her eyes filled with tears; but she turned hastily into the little reception room to hide them from the maid, and said she would sit a few minutes at the desk there and write a note to her aunt before she left.
THE HONOR GIRL Page 14