CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST NIGHT AT SCHOOL
Miss Leland's school wore that sober title with a somewhat frivolous air. It seemed to be saying, "Oh, call me a school if you want to—but don't take me seriously." It was like a pretty girl, who puts on a pair of bone-rimmed spectacles in fun and assumes a studious expression, while the dimples lurk in her cheeks.
It was a low, rambling, white building, with a stately colonial portico, and broad porches at each wing. In front, an immaculate lawn swept to the trim hedges that bordered the road; in the back, this lawn sloped downward to a grove of trees, which were now almost bare. Under them stood several picturesque stone benches, while just beyond lay a wide, terrace-garden with a sun-dial in the centre. Altogether, it resembled a pleasant country place, dedicated to merriment and good cheer.
Through the dusk of a rather bleak autumn night, its friendly lights shone out comfortably as the two Prescotts jogged up to the door in the station wagon.
The trip up from the Broadmore Station had not, however, been a lively one, despite the fact that two other girls besides the Prescotts had taken the hack with them; the first spasm of homesickness having evidently seized them all simultaneously. One of the girls, a little, sallow-faced creature, sat like a mouse in her corner, and by occasional dismal sniffles, gave notice that she was weeping and did not want to be disturbed. The other, a plump miss with scarlet cheeks and perfectly round eyes, had bravely essayed a conversation.
"Are you going to Miss Leland's?"
"Yes."
"Is this your first year?"
"Yes."
"What's your names?"
The Prescotts gave her the information, and she told them in exchange that her name was Maizie Forrest, that she was from Pittsburgh, that she had a brother at Yale, and another at Pomfret, and that she thought it no end of fun that they, the Prescotts, were going to Miss Leland's. After this flow of confidence, conversation languished and expired in the silence of dismal thoughts.
The hack drove up to the door, and deposited the four girls on the steps. Then they entered the hall, from which was issuing a perfect babel of feminine squeaks and chattering.
As Nancy and Alma stood together, frankly clinging hand to hand, a husky damsel rushed past them and precipitated herself on the neck and shoulders of the conversational Maizie.
"Maizie, darling!"
"Jane, dearest! When did you get here?"
"Been here hours. My dear, we're going to room together! Isn't that scrumptious?"
"Perfectly divine. Where's Alice?"
"Hasn't come yet. Come on, let's go see M'amzelle."
The small, weepy girl stood still gazing mournfully at the rapturous meetings about her.
Nancy looked at her sympathetically, but she felt much too blue and strange herself to try to urge anyone else to be cheerful.
"I don't know where we go, or what we're supposed to do, do you?" she whispered to Alma.
"No. I hope to goodness it's near supper time. There, I think that's Miss Leland."
A tall, very thin, very erect lady, wearing nose-glasses attached to a long gold chain, and with sparkling, fluffy white hair that made her face look quite brown in contrast, was descending the stairs. Several of the girls rushed to her, and she kissed them peckishly. Evidently they were old pupils. Nancy and Alma heard her asking them about their dear mothers and their charming fathers, and where they had been during the summer, and if (playfully) they were going to work very, very hard. And the girls were saying:
"Dear Miss Leland, it's so nice to be back again!"
Nancy and Alma approached her a little uncertainly. The other girls drew back and frankly stared at them. "New girls," they heard whispered, and for some reason the appellation made them both feel terribly "out of it."
"Miss Leland," began Nancy, coloring, "I—I'm Anne Prescott—I—this is my sister Alma—I—er——"
"Why, yes. I'm so glad you got here safely," said Miss Leland, quite cordially, taking Nancy's hand and Alma's at the same time. "Of course you want to know where your room is. You two are going to room together to-night, anyway. Later you will probably have different roommates. Now, let me see—Mildred, this is Anne Prescott, and this is Alma. They are new girls, so I'm going to count on you to help them find themselves a little. They are going to be next door to you to-night, so will you take them up-stairs?"
A very handsome, very haughty-looking girl, with gray eyes and a Roman nose, shook hands with them briefly. The sisters followed her in a subdued silence. She was the sort of girl plainly destined to become one of the most frigid and formidable of dowagers; it was impossible to look at her profile, her fur coat, or to meet her cold, critical glance without immediately picturing her with a lorgnon, crisply marcelled gray hair, and the wintry smile with which the typical, unapproachable matron can freeze out the slightest attempt at an unwelcome friendliness on the part of an inconsequential person. Her last name was weighty with importance, since she was the daughter of Marshall Lloyd, the well-known railroad magnate.
"I shan't like her," Nancy remarked to Alma, when this young lady had indicated their room to them, and left them with a curt announcement that they should go down-stairs in fifteen minutes.
"She is sort of snob-looking," agreed Alma, throwing her hat on her narrow white bed. "But there's no sense in being prejudiced against a person right away. Goodness, this room is chilly. I wish we knew somebody here. I hate being a new girl. Everyone else sounds as if they are having such a good time. I feel dreadfully out of it, don't you? And all the girls look at you as if they were wondering who in the world you are."
"Well, it's only natural that we feel that way now," said Nancy, trying to sound cheerful. "Come on, we've got to hurry."
From the line of rooms along the corridor issued the unceasing chatter of gay voices; there was a continual scampering back and forth, bursts of tumultuous greetings, giggles, shrieks. Alma, comb in hand, stood at the doorway, listening with a wistful droop to her lips. Two doors down, four girls were perched up on a trunk, kicking it with their patent-leather heels, and gabbling like magpies. In the room opposite, five girls, curled up on the two beds, were gossiping blithely, while a sixth, a pretty, red-haired girl, was gaily unpacking her trunk, flinging her lingerie with great skill across the room into the open drawers of the bureau, which caught stockings and petticoats very much as a dog will catch a bone in his mouth. They were all having such a good time—and they all seemed to have a lengthy history of gay summer's doings to relate. Each one jabbered away, apparently perfectly regardless of what the others were saying.
"Oh, my dear, I did have the most marvellous time——"
"Dick told me——"
"Are you going to come out next winter——"
"Margie's wedding was perfectly gorgeous—and I caught the bouquet——"
"Tom is coming down for the midwinter dance——"
"Who is that frump who's rooming with Sara——"
"Dozens of new girls. Hope some of 'em are human, anyway——"
"Come on, Alma. Hurry! You haven't even washed yet," said Nancy, impatiently. "We've got to go down-stairs——"
"Yes, and stand around gaping like ninnies," added Alma, morosely, coming back to the mirror, and beginning to brush out her thick, yellow hair.
"It'll be ever so much nicer when we come back here after the Christmas holidays," said Nancy, busily polishing her nails, to hide the mist that would creep over her eyes. "To-morrow we can fix up this room a bit—if we can put up some chintz curtains, and get a few books and cushions around, it'll be as good as home, almost."
"But—but Mother won't be here, and neither will Hannah—boo-hoo!" And here Alma quite suddenly burst out crying, wrinkling up her pretty face like a child of two. With the tears dripping off her chin, she continued to brush her hair vigorously, sobbing and sniffling pathetically. Nancy looked up, and, unable any longer to control her own tears, while at the same time she was almost hysterically amused by Alma's ridiculously droll expression of grief, began to sob and giggle alternately. Alma, still clutching the brush, promptly threw herself into Nancy's arms, and there they sat, clinging together, and frankly wailing like a pair of lost children, in full view of the corridor.
"I—I want to—g-go h-home——" sniffled Alma.
"I—I don't like that girl with th-the n-nose——" wailed Nancy. "D-Do f-fix your hair, Alma. I-If you're l-late for d-dinner w-we'll be expelled. Here——" she tried to twist up Alma's unruly mane, hardly realizing what she was trying to do, while Alma tenderly mopped Nancy's wet cheeks with her own little, soaking handkerchief.
"I—I say! You two aren't howling, are you?" inquired a drawling, utterly amazed voice from the doorway. The two girls looked up, their hostile expressions plainly asking whose business it was if they were howling—but promptly their hostility vanished.
A very tall, astonishingly lank girl was standing in the doorway, feet apart, and hands clasped behind her back, regarding them amiably through a pair of enormous, bone-rimmed goggles. Every now and again, she would blink her eyes, and screw up her face comically, while she continued to smile, showing a set of teeth as large and white as pebbles.
"You were saying something about being expelled. Are you expelled already? Ex plus pello, pellere pulsi pulsum—meaning to push out, or, as we say in the vernacular, to kick out, fire, bounce. Miss Drinkwater likes us to note the Latin derivations of all our English words, and I've got the habit. You two seem to be lachrymosus, or blue—by which I take it that you are new girls. I sympathize with you, although I am an ancient. Two years ago this very night, I wept so hard that I nearly gave my roommate pneumonia from the dampness. How-do-you-do?" With this unconventional preliminary, accompanied by one of the friendliest and most disarming grins imaginable, the newcomer marched over to the bed and shook hands vigorously.
"My name is Charlotte Lucretia Adela Spencer. Really it is. You must take my word for it. But I only use the 'Charlotte.' The others I keep in case of emergency. I room next door, with Mildred Lloyd—who, incidentally, is a perfect lady, while I am not. I was born in the year 1903, in the city of Denver, Colorado—but of that, more anon. It's tremendously interesting, but if you—is your name Alma?—if you don't get your coiffure coifed, you'll miss out on our evening repast. Wiggle, my dear, wiggle!"
Thus urged, Alma "wiggled" accordingly; and while she carefully washed her tear-stained face, and put up her hair, their visitor, sprawling across the bed, kept up a running fire of ridiculous remarks, all uttered in her peculiar, dry, drawling voice, and punctuated with the oddest facial contortions. Yet, in spite of her nonsense, there was very evidently a good deal of real sense, and the kindest feeling behind it, and her singular face, too unusual to be called either plain or pretty, beamed with satisfaction when she had won a genuine peal of laughter from the two dejected Prescotts.
"We'd better go down now. To-night of course everything is more or less topsy-turvy. My trunk, I think, must be still out in Kokomo, Indiana, or some such place. I don't even expect to see it for another month or so. But I don't mind. I'm a regular child of nature anyway—it's just Amelia who's pernickety about our appearing in full regalia every night for dinner. Amelia is Leland, of course. She's tremendously keen on preserving a refining influence about the school, and I think she looks on me as a rather demoralizing factor. There goes the gong."
The three went down-stairs together, Charlotte linking herself between Nancy and Alma.
As if by magic, the din of a few moments before had been lulled. The fifty or sixty girls had gathered in the large reception room, where a wood-fire was blazing up a huge stone chimney, and where Miss Leland, wearing a dignified black evening dress, was seated in a pontifical chair, chatting with eight or ten of her charges, with the air of a gracious hostess. All the voices had sunk to a lower key.
"Is everyone here?" She looked about her, and closing the book she had been toying with led the way into the dining-room beyond, where the ten or twelve small tables, with their snowy covers, and softly shaded candles gave the room more the appearance of a quiet restaurant than the ordinary school refectory.
Charlotte Spencer sat with Nancy at a table near Miss Leland's; while Alma found herself separated from her sister, and relegated to another table where she was completely marooned among five strange girls.
Charlotte introduced Nancy to a sallow maiden with prominent front teeth, named Allison Maitland, to a statuesque brunette named Katherine Leonard——
"The school beauty," was her brief comment. "And this is Denise Lloyd, sister of Mildred, my roommate. Hope we have soup."
"Are you any relation to Lawrence Prescott, who goes to Williams?" asked the beautiful Katherine, turning to Nancy with a slightly patronizing air. Nancy vaguely disclaimed a kinship that might have won her Miss Leonard's interest, and thereby quickly lost some of it.
"No, she's not, she says," said Charlotte. "Is he a beau of yours? 'Yes,' replied the girl, a soft blush mantling her damask cheek. 'Naturally he's a beau of mine. Who isn't?' and with this keen retort, she again lost herself in her maiden meditations. But I'll tell you who she is a relation of—she's the thirty-second cousin once removed of 'Prescott's Conquest of Peru'—aren't you, Nancy?"
"Charlotte, you're a scream," said Katherine, with an affected laugh, and turning to Nancy, she went on, speaking in a mincing voice, and always placing her lips as if she were continually guarding against spoiling the symmetry of their perfect cupid's bow. "You know, we always expect Charlotte to say funny things."
"I'm the school buffoon, in other words," commented Charlotte, dryly—evidently not much liking to be marked as a professional humorist. "I'm supposed to be 'so amusin', doncherknow'—and consequently, everyone is expected to haw-haw whenever I open my mouth. But if you listen carefully, you'll be surprised to hear that at times I talk sense. Now, Allison here is the school genius. You'd never suspect it, but she is. I wish to goodness that new waitress would bring me some more bread. It isn't considered stylish around here to have the bread on the table, but I do wish they'd consider my appetite."
"Is that perfectly sweet-looking girl over there your sister?" asked Katherine, indicating Alma, her slightly patronizing air still more pronounced.
"Your new rival for the golden apple, Kate," remarked Charlotte, with a grin. "And a blonde, too."
Katherine flushed, and tried to laugh off her annoyance at Charlotte's impish teasing.
"I think she's perfectly lovely."
"Oh, handsome is as handsome does, so they say. The question is has she a beautiful soul. Now, my soul is something wonderful—if it would only show through a bit," murmured Charlotte. "I'm plain, but good, as they say of calico. There's a rumor to the effect that Cleopatra was very ugly; hope it's so. There are two alternatives for an ugly woman—either to be tremendously good and noble, or to be very, very wicked—I can't make up my mind which career to choose. It's an awful problem."
"I'm going to take muthick lethons thith year, Tharlotte—with Mithter Conthtantini," lisped Denise Lloyd. "Don't you think he'th jutht wonderful?" Denise did not resemble her sister in the least. She was a plump, roly-poly girl of sixteen, still at the giggly, gushing stage of her life—but much more likable than the haughty Mildred.
She turned to Nancy, with the polite desire of including the new girl in the conversation, and went on with a blush, "Mithter Conthtantini is jutht wonderful. Are you going to take muthick lethons? You'd jutht love him! And bethides, if you take muthick, you can drop thience."
"I don't think I could get very far with the piano in one year," said Nancy with a smile.
"Oh, he doethn't teach piano. He teacheth violin."
"And of course, the violin is so much simpler," remarked Charlotte. "Mr. Constantini has a rolling black eye, and an artistic temperament—inclined to have fits, I think——"
"Fitth, Tharlotte!" cried Denise, in bitter reproach. "Why, he'th jutht lovely! He doethn't have fitth at all!"
"Well, it sounds as if somebody were having fits, to hear all the awful squeaks and groans that come out of the music room, while one of our rising Paganinis is having her lesson. I always imagined that it was poor Mr. Constantini," replied Charlotte, mildly. "Anyway, the point is, that Constantini is a beautiful creature, and consequently a year of violin is considered infinitely more improving than a year of science. Personally, I think that the study of the violin ought to be forbidden under penalty of the law, except in cases of the most acute genius. I think that the playing of one wrong note on the violin ought to be punishable by a heavy fine, and playing two, by imprisonment for life, or longer. There are times when I feel that hanging is far too good for Dolly Parker. She ought to be boiled in oil, until tender——"
Nancy laughed.
"So you take the year of science? That's where I belong, too, I suppose."
"Tharlotte plays the piano jutht beautifully," said Denise. "She compotheth——"
"My brother calls it decomposition," said Charlotte, reddening, as she always did when any of her talents were lauded, and trying to turn it off with a joke.
Miss Leland rose, and the room became silent, since she appeared to be about to make an announcement.
"To-night, girls, there is, of course, no study-hour, and special privileges are extended to you all," she said, in her clear, well-trained voice. "You have an hour for recreation after dinner, and I hope that all the old girls will make a point of helping our new girls to forget that they are not at home. Prayers will be at nine, as usual, and you will not be required to be in your rooms before nine-forty-five. No doubt you all have a great deal to talk about, so I am going to be lenient with you to-night. To-morrow, the regular school regime will be resumed."
"Hooray! Nancy, you and Alma are herewith cordially invited to my room to a negligee party at nine-twenty sharp. I had the good sense to bring a few delicacies with me, leaving my trunk to the tender mercies of the express company." Charlotte rose, and taking Nancy's arm, filed out of the dining-room with the other girls, behind Miss Leland. But in the living-room, a small band of girls fell upon Charlotte.
"Come along, old dear. Some dance-music now. Come on." And they bore her off to the piano, deposited her almost bodily upon the bench, and opened the keyboard. Three others rolled back the rugs from the polished floor, and in a moment a dozen couples were spinning around as gaily as if they were at a ball.
Nancy, a prey to her usual shyness in the midst of strangers, clung close to the piano, where Charlotte, without pausing in her astonishingly clever playing, reached up, and drew her down on the piano bench, from where she could watch Alma.
Alma's prettiness and natural gaiety was having its usual success. The younger girls crowded around her, the older girls petted her. Even the frigid Mildred made her dance with her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright again. By some indescribable charm she had walked into instant popularity.
Without a shadow of envy, Nancy watched her, proudly. Alma was easily the prettiest girl in the school—everyone must like her, everything must go smoothly and gaily for her. There were people like that in the world—people who didn't have to be wise or prudent—some kindly providence seemed always to protect them from the consequences of their lack of common sense, just as kindly nature protects the butterflies.
The dancers stopped one by one. Some gathered in groups about, the fire, others clustered in the window-seats—one or two practical souls had gone to their rooms to put away some of their things.
Charlotte's nimble fingers began to wander idly among the keys. Nancy watched her curiously, listening in some surprise to the change in the music. She felt an instinctive fondness for this big, whimsical, friendly girl, and knew very well that underneath her nonsense lay a streak of some fine quality that would make an unshakeable foundation for a genuine friendship. She would have liked to talk to Charlotte by herself; but Charlotte was already talking in her own way. She seemed to have quite forgotten Nancy and everyone else in the room, and with her head bent over the keys, she was playing for herself. Little by little, the other girls stopped talking. She did not notice that at all. Nancy listened to her playing in astonishment. It was far beyond anything like ordinary schoolgirl facility. It was full of genuine talent and poetry, now smooth and lyrical, and again as capricious and impish as some of her own moods.
She raised her head, and looked at Nancy with an absent-minded smile.
"Like music?" Nancy nodded.
"I believe you really do. You aren't just saying so, are you? Well, I like you—ever so much. Listen, don't get the idea that everything I say is meant to be funny—sometimes—I'm very serious—you wouldn't believe it, would you?"