Molly Brown's Junior Days

Furthermore, Judith felt for the first time the pleasure of doing something for someone else. It was a matter of infinite secret joy to her that she had been able to help Madeleine with her studies. In a way she had constituted herself tutor to the little Southern girl; had criticized her themes; given her a boost in the dreaded French Literature and carried her over the blighting period of mid-year examinations. Madeleine had spent Christmas with the Blounts at a boarding house in New York and had given them a taste of Southern conversation, humor and anecdotes that had made that dreary time for them to blossom with new enjoyments.

And now Judith was learning to iron. At first she handled the iron quite awkwardly, but in a few minutes she became interested and the pile of handkerchiefs rapidly decreased.

“Of course, it isn’t as if either one of us expects to have to iron handkerchiefs always,” went on Madeleine, “but it doesn’t hurt us to know how, just the same, and I have always found that doing common things well only made one do uncommon things better. Now, I intend to be a Professor of Mathematics. I don’t know where nor how, but those are my intentions. There’s no ironing of jabots connected with mathematics, but somehow I feel that ironing jabots well makes me more proficient in mathematics.

“By the way, have you settled on anything to do yet? It’s time you began to think about it, unless you decide to take a Post Grad. course and be with me next year. That would be perfectly grand, wouldn’t it?”

Madeleine’s small pretty hands paused an instant in their busy fluttering over the garments she was sprinkling, and she smiled so sweetly upon Judith that the black-browed young woman felt moved beyond the power of speech and could only smile silently in reply.

Oh, heavens, it was good to have a friend! Madeleine had come at a time when she most needed her; when the whole world was nothing but a black, hideous picture and life was a dreary waste. Not her mother, not Richard, not Cousin Edwin, could take the place of Madeleine.

“You know I always said I wouldn’t work for a living, Madeleine,” she answered presently, gulping down these new, strange emotions.

“My dear, we all say such things, but it’s only talk. And, after all, it’s better to work than to be an object of charity. Think of making your own money; having it come in every month – say a hundred dollars, or even more – earned by you? Why, it’s glorious. It’s better than running across a gold mine by accident or inheriting a fortune, because you have done it yourself. I intend to earn a great deal of money. I shall rise from being a teacher to having a splendid school of my own. It will be the most fashionable school in the South and all the finest families will send their daughters there. And what will you be in my school, Judith? Because you must commence now to work up to that eminence. Will you be part owner with me?”

Judith laughed.

“You’re an absurd, adorable, sweet child,” she said, and went on ironing busily.

After all, life was not so desperately unpleasant.

There was a knock on the door. Judith put down the iron hastily and retreated to the window. She had not yet reached the point where she was willing for others to see her engaged in this menial work.

“Come in,” called Madeleine, without stopping an instant.

To Judith’s relief, however, it was Mrs. O’Reilly.

“A note for you, Miss Blount, and the man’s waiting for an answer.”

Judith tore open the envelope impatiently. It was a bill of two years’ running, amounting to nearly forty dollars, from the stationery and candy shop.

On the bottom she was requested to remit at once.

“Tell the man – anything, Mrs. O’Reilly. I can’t see him. That’s all.”

“Certainly, Miss,” said the Irish woman with a good-natured smile.

“These poor young college ladies was in hard luck just like the men sometimes,” she thought as she turned away.

Judith sat down and began to think. Richard was having a great struggle to keep her at college, her mother and himself at the boarding house, and her father in a sanitarium. It would really be unkind to burden him with that bill; but what was to be done?

“Is it that old stationery man again?” asked Madeleine, who had inherited a profound contempt for dunning shopkeepers.

“Yes, it is, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Why don’t you put an advertisement in the ‘Commune’? You have no idea how it will bring in work. And then hang out a shingle, too. People have got to learn to recognize you as a wage-earning person before they come around and offer you things to do.”

“But what can I do? I don’t know how to iron well enough to take in laundry, like you.”

A voice outside called:

“Is this Miss Madeleine Petit’s room?”

“Come in. Can’t you see the name on the door?” answered Madeleine. “There’s only one Petit at Wellington and I’m the lady.”

Millicent Porter now entered.

She looked smaller and more shriveled than ever in a beautiful mink coat and cap and a velvet dress of a rich shade of blue that breathed prosperity in every fold.

“This is the region where signs are out asking for work, isn’t it?” she asked in a pleasantly patronizing, unctious voice.

“We don’t ask for work. We announce that we do it and the work comes,” replied Madeleine, eyeing the visitor with a kind of humorous pity.

“Be that as it may,” said Miss Porter, “I have some work I want done and I’m looking for a very competent and reliable person to do it.”

Judith winced at the word “reliable.”

“This isn’t a servants’ agency, you know, Miss Porter,” answered the spunky Madeleine. “Those words are generally used when one engages a cook or a housemaid. What is the work like?”

“I’m going to give an exhibition of my silver work at the George Washington Bazaar. I may sell some of it if I can get the price, and what I want is a skillful and re – or rather clever – ” Madeleine blinked both eyes rapidly at the substitution – “person to help me get it in order. Most of it is awfully tarnished and it will need a good deal of polishing.”

“How much will you pay a skillful, clever person?” demanded Madeleine, determined to drive a good bargain and shrewdly guessing the kind of person she had to deal with.

“I’ll pay ten dollars,” answered Millicent glibly.

“What are the pieces like?”

“Oh, there are chains, necklaces, platters and bowls, and a lot of ivory things I have picked up in Europe that must be carefully washed.”

“We’ll do the work for fifteen dollars,” announced Madeleine. “No less.”

Judith could hardly preserve a grave countenance while this bargaining was going on between the rich Miss Porter and her funny little Southern friend.

“I think that’s too much,” declared Millicent.

“Not at all. The work requires care and, as you say, reliability. It might be stolen, you know.”

Madeleine snapped her eyes.

“Very well, then,” said Millicent in a resigned tone of voice. “It’s a great deal to pay, but I suppose I can’t do any better. I hear you do everything well, Miss Petit.”

“Miss Blount will do this,” answered Madeleine. “If I do things well, she does them better. Now, where do you want them cleaned? Down here or up at your place?”

“Oh, I would never let them out of my studio,” cried Millicent. “She must come there, where she can be under my eye.”

“But – ” objected Judith, and paused at a glance from Madeleine.

It would be a crushing blow to her pride for her to go back to her old rooms and rub tarnished silver for this perfectly insufferable Millicent Porter. Yet fifteen dollars loomed up as quite a considerable sum, and, with five dollars added, could be paid to the stationery man on account.

Did Judith realize in her secret soul that the bitter dose she was now swallowing was only a dose of the same medicine she had once forced others to swallow?

“Very well, then,” said Madeleine, “we’ll give you as much of Friday and Saturday as will be necessary. We’ll take a lunch up on Friday so that we won’t have to come back for supper – ”

She waited a moment, wondering if Millicent would not invite them to supper at the Beta Phi. Hospitality was so much a part of her upbringing that it was impossible to conceive it lacking in others.

“I thought Miss Blount was to do the work.”

“She will. I shall work under her as assistant rubber.”

So, the bargain was clinched and Millicent departed.

“Disgusting little reptile!” cried Judith when the sounds of her footsteps died away in the hall and the door banged behind her.

Could Judith forget that she herself had once belonged to that overbearing class?

“Don’t get all stirred up, Judith, it’s bad for your digestion,” ejaculated Madeleine. “That girl is nothing but a mere ripple on the surface. She’s ridiculous, but there’s no harm in her. I am really sorry for her, because she doesn’t belong anywhere. She could never make a friend, and she will never know what it is to be really liked. She thinks she’s a genius because she’s learned how to beat out a few tawdry silver chains, and as soon as she finishes one she locks it up in a box and takes it out about once a decade to look it over. Why, she’s just a poor, starved, little creature without a spark of generosity in her soul. What does she know about living and happiness?

“You and I know how to live,” Madeleine continued, flourishing her iron. “We’re in the procession. We’re moving on, learning and progressing. We’re going up all the time. I tell you the highest peak in the Himalayas is not higher than my ambitions. And I intend to take you with me, Judith, and when we get to the top we’ll look back and see poor, little Millicent Porter, shriveled to nothing at the bottom!”

Judith gave a strange, hysterical laugh. Suddenly she flew across the room and embraced her friend.

“You could make me do anything, Madeleine,” she cried. “Scale the Himalayas or cut a tunnel through them.” Taking her friend’s small, charming face between her two hands, she looked her in the eyes: “Madeleine,” she said, “did you know I used to be a blind girl? You have healed me. I am beginning to see things as they are.”

CHAPTER XIX.

A WARNING

The girl who had been blind and could see and Madeleine of the unconquerable soul appeared in Millicent’s sumptuous apartment promptly at three o’clock on Friday afternoon.

They carried with them a suitcase containing the implements of their labor, taken chiefly from Madeleine’s rag bag: some old stockings; several wornout undervests and polishing cloths made from antiquated flannel petticoats; also a bottle of ammonia and two boxes of silver polish.

“Well, here we are,” announced Madeleine, unconcernedly, when Millicent had opened her door to them. “I hope you have the things out and ready. Our time is valuable.”

Of no avail were Millicent’s pompous and important airs. Madeleine insisted on treating her as a familiar and an equal.

“I have put you in the den. You will be less disturbed and you can use the writing table to spread things on. Please be care – ”

“Have you made an inventory?” interrupted Madeleine.

“No,” faltered Millicent. Why was it that this poverty-stricken little person took all the wind out of her sails?

“Make it please at once in duplicate. Keep one yourself and give us the other.”

“But – ” began Millicent.

“No, we will not touch a thing until the inventory is made. No ‘competent, reliable’ person would think of doing work like this without an inventory. We’ll wait in the other room until you have made it.”

There was nothing to do but proceed with the inventory. It was plain that Madeleine knew the manner of person she was dealing with.

While the two girls waited in the big sitting room, now a studio, Madeleine drew a book from her ulster pocket and began to study. The little Southerner was never idle one moment of her waking day and the other seven hours she put in sleeping very soundly. Judith began to look about her.

The room was little changed from the old days, except that it was even richer in aspect. There were some splendid old altar pieces on the walls and a piece of beautiful old rose brocade hung between the studio and the den. But, after all, what did it come to? Was anyone really fond of Millicent with all her wealth? Why, Judith, poor and forgotten, had made a friend. She felt small tenderness toward the rest of the world, but she loved Madeleine.

Molly Brown came into the room at this stage in Judith’s reflections.

“Why, hello, girls!” she exclaimed cordially, shaking hands with the silver-rubbers. “Where is Millicent?”

“She is making an inventory of her valuables before we begin to clean them,” replied Madeleine, smiling sweetly and blinking both eyes at once. “We insisted, because it would have been unprofessional not to have had one.”

“The idea!” said Molly. “No, it wouldn’t. Besides, you’re not professionals.”

“Yes, we are,” insisted Madeleine. “Everything we do for money is professional work.”

“Oh, very well,” laughed Molly, “and I suppose you’ll polish them up so carefullee that some day you’ll be admirals in the Queen’s Navee.”

“Nothing less,” said Madeleine. “It’s my theory exactly.”

“Oh, Molly,” called the voice of Millicent from the den, “please come and help me with this stupid thing. I can’t seem to get it straight.”

And that was how Molly came to be admitted into Millicent’s inner sanctum where she kept her most valued possessions under lock and key.

The top of a heavy oak chest rested against the wall and inside was a perfect mine of silver articles, many of them Millicent’s own work; there was also a quantity of small ivory figures collected by her in her travels.

“I’ll lift out the things and call their names and you can copy each one twice, like this: one silver necklace – grape-vine design.”

Molly sat down and began to make the list. They were nearly finished when Rosomond Chase’s voice was heard in the next room.

“Millicent, please come out for a moment. I want to see you on business.”

Molly, left alone, went on with the list, taking each article from the box and noting it carefully twice on the inventory.

In the meantime Millicent and her friend were having a secret conference in the bedroom, while Madeleine and Judith silently waited in the studio. The two silver-rubbers were presently startled by the apparition of Molly standing in the doorway. She had the look of one fleeing before a storm, her face very pale and her eyes dilated with horror. She started to speak, but checked herself and closed the door behind her. Then, hurrying into the room, she said in a low, strained voice:

“Madeleine, I would not advise you to do any work for Miss Porter.”

The two girls exchanged a long look.

“Do you really mean that?” asked Madeleine.

“I was never more in earnest in my life.”

“But, can’t you explain?” demanded Judith Blount.

Molly shook her head and rushed from the room.

“Come on, Judith,” said Madeleine, slipping on her ulster.

“But, this is absurd!” objected Judith again.

“Child,” exclaimed her friend, “don’t you know human nature well enough to understand that a girl like Molly Brown would never have given a piece of advice like that without knowing what she was talking about?”

“She’s jealous because she would like to earn the money herself.”

“Nonsense,” said Madeleine. “She is not that kind. You know perfectly well that she is the most generous-hearted, unselfish girl in Wellington. She wouldn’t injure a fly if she could help herself, and I think we had better take her advice.”

But Judith was stubborn.

“We’ve come to do the work. Why go?”

Having once committed herself to this menial labor, she wished to see it through. After all, whatever Molly had against Millicent Porter couldn’t concern them, and in the end Madeleine reluctantly gave in.

Presently Millicent and Rosomond came into the room.

“What became of Molly Brown?” demanded Millicent suspiciously.

“She couldn’t wait,” answered Madeleine briefly.

“Was there anything the matter with her?”

“She seemed in perfectly good health as far as I know, but you had better hurry up with the inventory, Miss Porter. We are losing time.”

Rosomond helped Millicent with the remainder of the list, and by four o’clock Madeleine and Judith were installed in the den hard at work. All afternoon and evening they toiled and the next morning they appeared soon after breakfast and started in again.

“This is easier than cracking rock, and the pay is considerably better, but I am just as tired between the shoulders as a common laborer,” Madeleine exclaimed, rubbing the last tray until she could see her own piquant little face reflected in its depths.

“As for me, I feel as if I had been drawn and quartered,” complained Judith. “It’s worth more than fifteen dollars. We should have asked twenty.”

“I would have asked it, if I had thought she could have been induced to part with so much money, but I saw that fifteen was her limit.”

Judith laughed.

“You’re a regular little bargain driver,” she said admiringly.

“No, not always,” answered Madeleine. “Only when I meet another one.”

“Well, I am glad we undertook it, and I am gladder still we have finished it,” said Judith.

They arranged the silver on half of the table, and the small army of carved ivory ornaments, for which Millicent seemed to have a passion, on the other half. Then, removing the loose gloves which had protected their hands, they put on their things and marched into the next room with expectant faces. For the first time in all her life Judith had earned a sum of money, and the humblest wage-earner was not more anxious for his week’s pay than she was.

“Will you please inspect the work, Miss Porter, and give us our money? We are tired and want to go home,” said Madeleine.

Millicent was propped up against some velvet cushions in the window seat. There was an expression of nervous worry on her thin sallow face, and around her on the floor lay the scattered bits of a note she had read, re-read, and torn into little pieces.

She was in a very bad humor, and her warped nature was groping for something on which to vent its accumulated spleen. She rose from the window seat, swept grandly into the next room and glanced at the tableful of silver and ivory.

“It looks fairly well,” she said; for Millicent was one of those persons who grudged even her praise. “What was the amount I promised to pay?”

“I dare say you haven’t forgotten it so soon,” answered the intrepid Madeleine. “Fifteen dollars.”

“Oh, was it so much? Will this evening do? I haven’t that sum on hand just now. I’ll have to go down to the bank.”

“A check will do, then,” said Madeleine, sitting down in one of the carved chairs.

“I never pay with checks. I only pay cash. I would prefer to draw out the money and pay you this evening.”

“Nonsense,” exclaimed Madeleine. “Besides, you know very well that the bank closes on Saturdays at noon, and it’s now nearly four o’clock.”

“So it does. Then you will have to wait until Monday.”

“We won’t wait until Monday,” ejaculated Madeleine. “We haven’t been rubbing silver for our health. You’d better look around in your top drawer and see if you can’t scrape fifteen dollars together, because I tell you plainly if you don’t you’ll regret it.”

“How regret it?” asked the other suspiciously. “I’m not obliged to pay it until Monday, and I won’t,” she added stubbornly.

It was growing late. The girls were exhausted and hungry. They had eaten no lunch except crackers and cheese. At last Judith, utterly crushed with disappointment, drew Madeleine aside.

“Suppose we leave her,” she said. “I can’t stand it any longer.”

Without another word they took their departure, leaving Millicent still in the window seat looking pensively out on the campus. They were hardly outside before she sprang to the door and locked it. Then she hastened to the den and began to pack feverishly and with trembling nervous hands. Wrapping each article of silver in tissue paper, she placed it in the chest on a bed of raw cotton. When the table was entirely cleared, she closed and locked the chest and, addressing a tag, wired it to the handle.

Next she drew a trunk from the big closet and packed it with her best clothes. This done, she crept downstairs to the telephone and engaged Mr. Murphy to call that night for an express box and a trunk.

The Beta Phi girls were all at a Saturday night dance at one of the other houses when Mr. Murphy called. Millicent explained to the matron that her rooms were too crowded and she was sending some of her things back to New York.

As quietly as possible she drew her other two trunks from the closet, and by three in the morning the rooms were entirely dismantled and all drapery and pictures carefully packed away. These also she locked and tagged with the precision of one who intends to lose nothing, no matter what’s to pay. One more task remained. This was performed in the privacy of the den behind closed doors. When it was done there stood on the table a square box addressed in artistic lettering to “Miss M. Brown, No. 5 Quadrangle.”

Placing her watch on her pillow, Millicent now rested for several hours without sleeping. At last, at seven o’clock, dressed for a journey, with suit case, umbrella and hand bag, she crept softly downstairs and plunged into the early morning mists.

Not once did she glance back at the two gray towers as she hastened down to the station, and when the seven-thirty train for New York pulled in, she boarded it quickly and turned her face away from Wellington forever.

CHAPTER XX.

THE PARABLE OF THE SUN AND WIND

If Molly had been carrying a stick of dynamite she could not have held it more gingerly than the square box she was taking to President Walker on Monday morning.

“That was the reason I never liked her,” she thought, mentioning no names even in her own mind. “I wonder if it is true that she couldn’t help it. It must be, when she was so rich. What could she want with Minerva’s medals or Margaret’s initialed ring? Both M’s, though,” she thought, half smiling.

“Oh, Miss Brown,” cried a voice behind her, and Madeleine Petit came tearing across the campus as fast as her little feet could carry her. “Is it true that Millicent Porter has run away from college?”

“I’m afraid it is,” answered Molly.

“She owed us fifteen dollars,” cried Madeleine tragically. “She promised to pay this morning, and I have just heard rumors that she has disappeared, bag and baggage.”

“You did do the work for her?” asked Molly.

“Yes, really, against my will. I knew you would never advise without having something to advise about. But Judith was determined, and the only reason I gave in was because she had never done any work before, and I thought it would be good for her to make a start. She was so happy over earning the money. It was really wonderful to see how she brightened up. And when we couldn’t get a cent out of Miss Porter on Saturday afternoon, poor old Judith was so disappointed that she cried. Think of that.”

“What a shame,” exclaimed Molly, appreciating Judith’s feelings with entire sympathy. “I’m sure I should have cried if I had done all that hard work and then couldn’t collect.”

“But what are we to do? Must we sit back quietly and let the rich trample the poor? Don’t you think she is coming back?”

“I think not,” answered Molly.

“Did you find out something those few minutes you were in the den?”

Molly nodded her head.

“Is she – ”

The two girls exchanged frightened glances.

“And her father a millionaire, too! Well, I never,” cried Madeleine. “I think I’ll just drop him a letter,” which she accordingly did that very day. But she never received an answer, and the debt still remains unpaid.

In the meantime Molly was closeted with Miss Walker for ten minutes.

“It’s strange,” said the President. “I just had a letter this morning from an old friend at the head of a private school warning me about this unfortunate girl who was a pupil there.”

But Molly was loath to discuss the matter, and still more loath to keep stolen property in her private possession. She placed the box on the President’s desk and hastened away as soon as she politely could. That afternoon there appeared on the bulletin board the following unusual announcement: