Читать книгу Molly Brown's College Friends - Speed Nell - Страница 2

The only home Nance Oldham had ever known she had made herself after she left college. Her childhood and girlhood had been spent in boarding houses with her patient father, while her brilliant mother made occasional hurried and preoccupied visits to them. There had been a time when Nance had felt bitterly towards her mother because she was not as other mothers were, but the realization had finally come to her that her mother could no more be as other mothers than other mothers could be as Mrs. Oldham was. She had decided that instead of her mother’s being a mistake, that she, Nance, was the mistake. She should never have been born; but now that she was born she intended to make the best of it. The fact that she had never had a home made a home just that much more precious and desirable in her eyes.

What a lovely home this square old brick house on the campus made! Nance remembered well in her college days that it was not such a very attractive place, rather bleak, in fact. It needed a mistress, the soul of a house; and now in place of the blank uncurtained windows of old days, Molly’s genial hospitality and kindness seemed to look out from every pane of glass. The college girls named Mrs. Edwin Green “The Fairy Godmother of Wellington.” She was called into consultation on every occasion. The President of Wellington wondered if it were not incumbent upon her to offer Molly a salary for her services.

“I don’t know what we would do without her. I believe the college would simply go to pieces without Mrs. Edwin Green.”

The students, old and young, rich and poor, flocked to the brick house which they dubbed “The Square Deal.” There Molly administered advice and love and sympathy with absolute impartiality, also with perfect unconsciousness that she was the guiding star of the student body.

“She is the only really truly democratic person I ever knew, – of course, besides O. Henry, and I didn’t exactly know him,” Billie McKym declared. “She and O. Henry simply don’t regard money one way or the other in their judgment of persons. Now most social workers think of the rich as necessary evils in the way of pocketbooks and such. They really take no interest in anyone who does not need financial or moral help, but Molly and O. Henry are just as good to the rich as the poor.”

Billie was back at Wellington taking extra courses that she wasn’t certain what she was to do with, but she felt anything was preferable to coming out into society in New York, which was the inevitable sequence the moment she was through with college.

Billie rather resented the guest at the Square Deal as did many of Molly’s youthful friends.

“There’s never any seeing Molly alone now,” she grumbled.

“Never!” agreed Mary Neil, a red-headed junior who had what she termed a “mash” on Mrs. Green. Molly, being totally unaware of this, was ever causing the poor girl to turn green with jealousy.

“To think of her stopping the ‘Would-be’s’ just because Miss Oldham’s mother died, and she didn’t even think enough of her to put on mourning,” asserted Lilian Swift as she peeped in the mirror over the mantel to adjust her own very becoming black and white hat, worn as second mourning for a great-aunt who had left her a legacy.

These girls were assembled in the library at the Greens’, waiting to see their friend. That evening the “Would-be Authors’ Club” was to have met, but Molly, their president, had felt it best to postpone it because of Nance’s recent bereavement. The “Would-be Authors” was now a flourishing organization with a waiting list that almost stretched around the campus. They met together for mutual benefit and encouragement and sometimes for discouragement. The only requisite for membership was to scribble at fiction. On coming into this club it was necessary to pledge oneself to take a criticism like a man. No matter how severe a drubbing your story called forth, you must smile and smile.

“Girls, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, but Mildred had got chewing-gum in her hair and I simply had to get it out before her whole wig stuck together,” said Molly as she came in with Dodo in her arms and Mildred trotting after her like a veritable little colt following its dam. “My friend, Miss Oldham, will be down in a moment.”

The girls looked at one another meaningly.

“I want all of you to like my friend,” continued Molly, as though she could divine their thoughts. “She has had a hard time and she needs the companionship of young people more than anyone I know.”

Molly then told them of Nance’s devotion to her mother and father, of her thwarted ambition, of her unselfishness and cleverness.

“It seems strange for her not to wear mourning for her mother,” said Lilian.

“Perhaps it does, but when you think of it, what you wear has nothing to do with your feelings. It is in a way part of Nance’s unselfishness that she did not put on mourning. Her father disliked it, her mother could not abide it, and as she said, it meant a new outfit which she could ill afford. It is a great deal easier just to give up to grief and exude gloom than it is to be cheerful and radiate light and happiness.”

Molly was in a measure irritated by Lilian’s criticism of her beloved Nance, but Lilian was a person who always spoke her mind no matter what was involved, and she had a certain sturdiness and honesty of opinion that disarmed one.

“Well, that’s all right,” she answered bluntly, “but while she is being so unselfish about her clothes, why doesn’t she spunk up a bit about the ‘Would-be Authors?’”

“What about them?”

“Why, postponing the meeting because she is in such deep grief.”

“That wasn’t Nance. I am responsible for that foolishness. She only found out about it to-day and declares she will go back to Vermont if I dare make a single change in my way of living. I want all of you to get messages to the club to be sure and come this evening.”

“Bully for Nance!” cried Billie McKym.

Nance came into the room just as Billie was cheering her.

“I’m mighty glad it’s bully for me, if I’m the Nance. But why ‘Bully for Nance’?”

“Just because you are here with Mrs. Green and can come to our literary club this evening,” said Billie with a straight face.

“But I am no scribbler,” declared Nance.

“But you are a wonderful critic,” said Molly. “Among so many scribblers it is well to have one sane person willing to compose the audience. It is my turn to read to-night and I want your criticism.”

“If I can come in that capacity, I am more than willing,” smiled Nance as she settled herself to her knitting.

“I remember many times you saved me from making a bombastic goose of myself on my college themes,” laughed Molly. “What I flattered myself was pathos, under your cool judgment turned out often to be bathos.”

Molly leaned over and gave her friend an affectionate pat. At this show of love, Mary Neil jumped up so suddenly that she upset little Mildred, who was sitting on the sofa by her, and without saying a word rushed from the room.

“What on earth!” exclaimed Molly.

“The suddenness of Mary, – that’s all,” declared Billie.

“Good title for a story!” said Lilian, getting out a note-book.

“Oh, you scribblers!” laughed Nance.

Little Mildred was picked up and comforted and in a short while the visitors took their departure.

“Molly, do you know what was the matter with that interesting looking red-headed girl?” asked Nance as they settled to the delights of a twilight chat, while Nance busily plied her knitting needles on the long drab scarf that seemed to grow under her agile fingers like magic.

“I have no idea.”

“She was jealous of me. I noticed how she looked at me when I came in and she never said a single word while all of us were chatting. Then the moment you gave me a little pat, she jumped up as though she had received an electric shock and fled.”

“Absurd! I hate to think it of Mary.”

“It’s true all the same. Didn’t you know she was crazy about you?”

“No, and I don’t want to know it. A girl had better be beau-crazy than have these silly cases with other girls. I am going to put a stop to it in some way.”

“How, may I ask?”

“I might do like Peg Woffington and put my hair up in curl papers and appear at my very worst.”

“Well, dearie, your worst might be so much better than some person’s best that that might not work. But don’t think I’ve got a case on you.”

“Never! We were foolish enough college girls but we never were that foolish. I can’t remember anyone in our crowd having these silly mashes. Can you?”

“Unless it was the affair Judy Kean had with Adele Windsor. Do you remember when poor Judy turned up with her hair dyed a blue black?”

“Do I?” and the friends went off into peals of laughter just as Mrs. McLean ushered herself into the firelit room.

“The door was open so I came right in,” announced that dear woman. She caught Nance’s hands in a strong grasp and drew the girl towards her. “I am glad to see you, my dear,” she said simply. Her well-remembered Scotch accent fell pleasingly on Nance’s ear.

“The violets were lovely. I thank you so much,” faltered Nance.

Molly wondered at the embarrassment of her friend. She had longed to talk to Nance about Andy McLean but did not know how to begin. She shrank from prying into her guest’s affairs, but the eternal feminine in her was on the alert for the romance she had no doubt was there.

“And now I must tell you all about Andy,” said his fond mother. “I know you want to hear about him, – eh?”

“Indeed we do,” put in Molly quickly, while Nance tried to go on with her knitting, but I am afraid dropped more stitches than she picked up.

“He has resigned from the hospital staff in New York where he was doing so splendidly and is to go to France as an ambulance surgeon.”

“Oh!” came involuntarily from Nance.

“Splendid!” cried Molly.

“It is what he should do,” declared his Spartan mother. “His father and I would not have it otherwise. Of course, the States will be at war before the month is out and Andy might wait and enlist with his own country, but in the meantime he is needed, and sadly needed, by my country, mine and his father’s.”

“He will come see you before he sails, will he not?” asked Molly.

“Of course! He may spend a month with us.”

“That will be splendid indeed.”

Nance said nothing, but the flames that sprang from the wood fire lit up a very rosy countenance.

“I must be going now. I only ran in for a moment to bring the news of my Andy and to see this little friend again. Come to see me, both of you,” and the doctor’s wife was gone.

“Molly! I should never have come to you!” said Nance the moment the door closed on their visitor. Katy, the Irish nurse, had come for the baby. Little Mildred had fallen asleep, her head in Nance’s lap.

“My darling girl! Why?”

“I can’t spoil Andy’s visit to his mother. If I am here, it will be spoiled.”

“Nance, how can you say so?”

“Because it is the truth. He will have to see me, and he hates me.”

“He couldn’t!”

“He left me two years ago in a rage and swore it was over for good and all; and he couldn’t have said such things to me if he had not hated me.”

“And you – do you hate him?”

“Of course not!” and again the flickering fire showed off her blushes.

“Did you say nothing to him but nice things?”

“We-ll, not exactly, – but he said the things he said first.”

“Were the things he said worse than the things you said?”

“No!” with a toss of her independent head, “I gave him back as good as he sent.”

“You shouldn’t have done it. You knew how the things he said hurt, and with your superior knowledge of what it meant to be wounded, you were cruel to hurt him so.”

“But he should have known! That kind of philosophy is above me. Suppose the Allies conducted their warfare under those principles, what would become of us? Germany hit first and France and Belgium knew how it hurt, and so they should not have hit back. There is a big hole in your reasoning, honey.”

“But that is not the same. Germany and France didn’t love one another, while you and Andy – ”

“Well, it is all over now!” and Nance composed herself and tried to go on with her knitting. Molly thought in her heart perhaps it was not so “over” as Nance thought.

“Why did you and Andy quarrel?”

“I had promised when Father no longer needed me that I would – would – marry him. How could I tell that Mother would want to come live with me when poor Father was gone? Andy came as soon as he learned of Father’s death and seemed to think I could pick right up and marry him, and when I objected to such unseemly haste he said I had been flirting with him. The idea of such a thing! He got it into his head that Dr. Flint, the physician who had been with us through poor Father’s long illness, was the cause of my holding back.”

“A young doctor?”

“Ye-es!”

“Was he – was he – attentive?”

“Perhaps – well, yes – he did propose to me but I had no idea of accepting him. Andy should have known me well enough to realize that I couldn’t be so low as to jilt him. When Andy came, Mother had just told me that she never expected to leave me again. I never did have a chance to tell this to him, he was so angry and so jealous. He wanted me to marry him immediately and leave Vermont, – and how could I when Mother was home, sick and miserable and reproaching herself for having been away from Father so much?”

“Did your mother not know of your engagement to Andy?”

“No-o! You see, poor Mother was not – was not the kind of mother one confided in much. Afterwards, when I nursed her through all those months, she was so softened if I had had anything to confide I should have done so, but then there was nothing left to confide.”

“Poor old Nance!” said Molly lovingly.

“Well, I’m not sorry for myself a bit. No doubt I might have gone whining to Andy and made him take back all the things he said, but I am no whiner. It was a good thing we found out in time we could say such things to each other!”

“Maybe it was a good thing to find out in time how it hurt to say such things and have such things said to one, and then it would never happen again,” said the hopeful Molly.

Nance divined that Molly was thinking how best she could bring these two estranged lovers together, and determined to frustrate any matchmaking plans the young matron might be hatching.

“Promise me, Molly, you will not say a thing to Andy or to anyone. It is something that is hopelessly mixed up and my pride would never recover if Andy should know that I cared.”

“You do care then?”

“Of course I care! I never had very many friends and if I cared for Andy enough to engage myself to him, I could not get over it ever, I am afraid. But you have not promised yet.”

“I promise,” said Molly sadly. “But if you love Andy, it does seem so foolish – ”

“But remember you have promised!”