Читать книгу Molly Brown's Junior Days - Speed Nell - Страница 3

Life in the Quadrangle hummed busily on. The girls found themselves in the very heart of college affairs. As a matter of fact the old Queen’s circle had been somewhat restricted, having narrowed down to less than a dozen; whereas now, they associated with many times that number and were invited to a bewildering succession of teas and fudge parties.

Also they were nearer to the library, the gymnasium, the classrooms and the cloisters. Here, during the warm, hazy days of Indian summer Molly loved to walk. It was not such a popular place as she had imagined with the Quadrangle girls, and often she was quite alone in the arcade, bordered now with hydrangeas turning a delicate pink under the autumn suns.

One afternoon, a few days after Margaret’s fudge party to discuss the question of Minerva Higgins, Molly sought a few quiet moments in the cloistered walk. It was a half hour before closing-up time, but she would not miss the six strokes of the tower clock again, as she had on her first day at college two years before.

She usually confined her walks to the far side of the arcade, keeping well away from the side of the cloisters on which the studies of some of the faculty opened. That afternoon she carried her volume of Rossetti with her, and pacing slowly up and down, she read in a low musical voice to herself:

Waves of rhythm ran through Molly’s head, and when she reached the end of the walk she turned mechanically and went the other way without pausing in her reading.

Many girls studied in this way in the cloisters and it was not an unusual sight, but Molly made a picture not soon to be forgotten by any one who might chance to wander in the arcade at that hour. She was still spare and undeveloped, but the grace that was to come revealed itself in the girlish lines of her figure. Her eyes seemed never more serenely, deeply blue than now, and her hair, disordered from the tam o’shanter she had pulled off and tossed onto a stone bench, made a fluffy auburn frame about her face. Molly was by no means beautiful from the standpoint of perfection. Her eyebrows and lashes should have been darker; her chin was too pointed and her mouth a shade too large. But few people took the trouble to pick out flaws in her face or figure. Those who loved her thought her beautiful, and the few who did not could not deny her charm.

Presently she sat down on a bench, continuing to declaim the poem out aloud, making a gesture occasionally with her unoccupied hand. After reading a verse, she closed her eyes and repeated it to herself. Opening her eyes between verses, she encountered the amused gaze of Professor Edwin Green who, having seen her in the distance, had cut across the grassy court and now stood as still as a statue leaning against a stone pillar.

“Oh,” exclaimed Molly, with a nervous start.

“Did I frighten you? I am sorry. I should have walked more heavily. It’s unkind to steal up on people who are reading poetry aloud.”

“I was learning the – something by heart,” she said, blushing a little as if she had been detected in a guilty act. After all, it was the professor who had introduced her to that poem and given her the book last Christmas, but that, of course, was not the reason why she was so fond of the poem she was studying.

“How do you like the Quadrangle?” he asked. “Are you comfortable and happy?”

Molly clasped her hands in the excess of her enthusiasm.

“I was never so happy in all my life,” she cried. “It is perfect. Our rooms are beautiful, and a sitting room, too. Think of that, with yellow walls and a piano!”

The professor looked vastly pleased. For an instant his face was lighted by a beaming, radiant smile. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets and pressed his lips together in a thin line of determination.

“I feel as if I were one of the workers inside the hive now,” Molly continued.

“And all the difficulties about tuition have been settled?” he asked. “Forgive my mentioning it, but I felt an interest on account of my close relationship to the Blounts.”

“Oh, yes. The money from the two acres of orchard settled that. You see, whoever bought it, whether it was an old man or a company – for some reason the name is still a secret with the agent – paid cash. They rarely do, mother says, and the money is usually spent in driblets before you realize it. Mr. Richard Blount expects to settle with his father’s creditors in a few months. My sisters are working. They say they enjoy it, but they are both engaged to be married,” she added, smiling.

“Did the orchard yield a good crop this year?” asked the professor irrelevantly.

“Oh, splendid. The apples were packed in barrels and sent away. Several of them were sent to mother as a present. Very nice of the owner, wasn’t it?”

“Very,” replied the professor, fingering something in his pocket absently.

“The owner of the orchard has it kept in fine condition. The trees have been trimmed and the ground cleared. Mother says she’s ashamed of her own shiftlessness whenever she looks at it. The grass was as smooth as velvet all summer until the drought came and dried it brown. I used to go there summer mornings and lie in a hammock and read. I didn’t think any one would care. There’s no harm in attaching a hammock to two trees. Mother says I don’t seem to remember that we are no longer the owners of the orchard. I have played in it and lived in it so much of my life that I’ve got the habit, I suppose.”

The professor cleared his throat.

“You said the ground sloped slightly, did you not?”

“Yes, just a gradual slope to a little brook at the bottom of the hill. The water seems to cool the air in summer. It never goes dry and there is a little basin in one place we used to call ‘the birds’ bath tub.’ Such birds you never imagined! They are attracted by the apples, I suppose. But there are hundreds of them. They sing from morning to night.”

“You paint a very attractive picture, Miss Brown. It must have been hard to give up this charming property.”

“But you see we haven’t given it up exactly. It’s there right against us. We can still look at it and even walk under the trees. No one minds. And see what I have for it! Nothing could ever take the place of college – not even an apple orchard.”

A sharp voice broke in on this pleasant conversation.

“Cousin Edwin, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Judith Blount appeared hastening down the walk.

The professor watched the advancing figure calmly.

“Well, now you have found me, what do you want?” he asked.

Molly detected a slight note of annoyance in his voice. She had a notion that Judith was one of the trials of his life.

“I have rewritten the short story you criticized for me last week, and I want you to look it over again.”

He took the roll of paper without a word and thrust it into his coat pocket.

Molly rose.

“I must be going,” she said. “It must be nearly six o’clock.”

Judith promptly sat down on the bench facing her cousin, who still leaned against the stone pillar.

“Don’t you think it’s a little chilly to be lingering here, Judith?” he remarked politely, as he joined Molly.

“It wasn’t too chilly for you a moment ago,” answered Judith hotly.

But she rose and walked on the other side of the professor.

“How do you like your rooms?” he asked presently.

“I hate them,” she replied, with such fierce resentment that Molly was sure that Judith was glad to have something on which to vent her angry mood. “Thank heavens, this is my last year. I detest Wellington. I have never been happy here. It’s brought shame and misfortune on me. It’s a horrid old place.”

“Oh, Judith,” protested Molly, unable to endure this libel on her beloved college.

“My dear child, you can’t blame Wellington for your misfortunes,” interposed the professor, who himself cherished a deep affection for the two gray towers.

“It is hard to live in the village instead of at college,” said Molly, feeling suddenly very sorry for the unhappy Judith.

But Judith was in no state to be sympathized with. All day she had been nursing a grievance. One of her friends in prosperity at the Beta Phi House had turned a cold shoulder on her that morning; and Judith was so enraged by the slight that her feelings were like an open sore.

She turned on Molly angrily.

“You ought to know,” she said. “You had to do it long enough.”

“Judith, Judith,” remonstrated the professor. “Can’t you understand that you gain nothing, and always lose something, by giving way like this? Denouncing and hating make the object you are working for recede. You’ll never get it that way.”

“How do you know what I’m working for?” she demanded, more quietly.

“We are all of us working for the same thing,” he answered. “Happiness. None of us proposes to get it in the same way, but all of us propose to reach the same goal. What would give me happiness no doubt would never satisfy you.”

“You don’t know that, either. What would give you happiness?” Judith asked, with some curiosity.

The professor paused a moment, then he said calmly:

“A little home of my own in a shady quiet place with plenty of old trees, where I could work in peace. I have always fancied an old orchard. There might be a brook at one end – ”

Molly smiled.

“He’s thinking of my orchard,” she thought.

“There must be hundreds of birds in my orchard,” went on the professor, “and the grass must always be thick and green, except perhaps when the drought comes and it can’t help itself – ”

The six o’clock bell boomed out.

“Have an apple,” he said, taking two red apples from his pocket and giving one to each of the girls.

Then he opened the small oak door and stood politely aside while they passed out.