Kit of Greenacre Farm Part 8

The door opened with a little, light, deprecating tap first from Miss Daphne's finger-tips. She glanced around the side of it cautiously to be sure she was not disturbing the Dean, and smiled whimsically when she saw the two. The Dean's pipe had gone out, and he was leaning over the desk listening as eagerly as though he had been a boy himself, while Kit, with her hands clasped behind her head, chatted. Usually people conversed with the Dean, they never chatted, and Miss Daphne realized that Kit had already pa.s.sed the outposts of the Dean's defenses.

CHAPTER XI

"KEEP OUT"

Hope College was founded in 1871. This date was graven on the corner stone, which the Dean had been careful to show Kit, telling her at the same time how the first settlers through the middle Northwest followed the customs of the Puritans and Cavaliers.

"A church, a schoolhouse for every clearing, and a college before the county court-house."

It seemed queer to Kit to think of Hope College as being any kind of an historic pile, but Rex had a.s.sured her anything that dated before Custer was ancient history, and if you wanted to get almost prehistoric, you went back to Lewis and Clarke, and the Jesuit explorers.

"Why, back at Gilead," Kit told him, "even the mounting stone at Cousin Roxy's had 1721 on it."

The college was built of gray field stone covered with climbing woodbine and Virginia creeper, and it dominated the little town. There were five buildings in the campus group, the main building, laboratory, library and gymnasium, boys' dormitory, and chapel.

Kit never forgot the first morning when the cla.s.ses met in a.s.sembly Hall, and the Dean addressed them on the work and aims of the coming year. For the life of her, she could not keep her mind on all he was saying or the solemnity of the moment, because, just at the very last minute when the chapel chimes stopped ringing, Marcelle Beaubien entered through the dark green swinging doors at the back of the big, crowded hall. It seemed as though every one's eyes were watching the platform, but Kit saw the slender, silent figure standing there alone. She was dressed in black, a thin black lawn, with collar and cuffs of dark red linen, and her heavy brown hair was braided in two long plaits down her back. She waited there, it seemed to Kit, expectant on the threshold of opportunity, not knowing which way to go, and without a friendly hand extended to her in welcome or guidance.

Norma Riggs, who sat next to Kit, glanced back to see what had attracted her attention, and made a funny little deprecating sound with her mouth.

"I never thought she'd have the nerve to really do it," she whispered.

"Isn't she odd?"

A quick impulsive wave of indignation swept over Kit, and she rose from her seat, pa.s.sing straight down the aisle without even being aware of the curious glances which followed her. She took Marcelle by storm.

"You're in my cla.s.s, aren't you?" she whispered quickly. "It's right over here, and there's a seat beside me. I don't know any one either, and I'm so glad to see you, so I'll have some one to talk to."

Marcelle never answered, but smiled with a quick flash of appreciation, the smile which always seemed to illumine her rather grave face. She followed Kit back to the latter's seat, and Norma exchanged glances with her right-hand neighbor, Amy Parker. Kit was altogether too new to realize just exactly what she had done. Being the Dean's grandniece, she considered herself unconsciously a privileged person. As a matter of course, Miss Daphne had accompanied her that morning, and introduced her to four or five girls in the soph.o.m.ore "prep" cla.s.s, who came from the representative best families of the town. Also, as a matter of course, she had been welcomed as one of them, but Kit, with her democratic notions, never even realized that she occupied one of the seats of the mighty, in a circle of the favored few, and that she had smashed all tradition by introducing into that circle a Beaubien. In fact, even if she had known, she would probably have been thoroughly indignant at any such spirit among the girls themselves.

Jean and Helen were the natural-born aristocrats in the family, Kit always said. They loved to feel themselves aloof and not part of the populace.

"The sedan chair and palanquin for both of you," Kit had been wont to say, scornfully, "but give me a good horse and a wide trail, or if I can't have the horse, I'll hike."

And here she loved to quote Stevenson's "Vagabond" to them.

"Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me.

"Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I ask, the heaven above, And the road below me."

The whole morning was taken up with the a.s.signing of students to cla.s.ses.

Kit loved the curious bustle and excitement of it all. It was so different from the small high school back home, and there were many more boys and girls than she had expected to see. Almost, as she pa.s.sed from room to room, through the different buildings, she wished she were staying right there as a year pupil. Amy introduced her to her closest friend, Peggy Barrows, a girl from South Dakota, who took them up to her quarters in one of the dormitories.

"Dear me," Kit said, looking around her speculatively. "I wish I were going to live here. Peggy, you'll have to entertain us often. It's so kind of solitary and restful, isn't it, up here?"

"Solitary," scoffed Peggy. "I've been here four days getting settled, and you might just as well call the side show of a circus solitary. There isn't even the ghost of privacy. I'm mobbed every time I try to sit and meditate."

"Who wants to meditate, anyway?" asked Amy. "Don't you feel 'the rus.h.i.+ng torrent of ambition's flood sweeping away the barriers' and--what else did the Dean say?"

"Log jam," Kit put in. "That's what he meant, log jam of laziness. Have you discovered all these shelves in your wardrobe? I'd take off those doors and hang lovely velvety curtains in front and make a bookcase out of it."

"Will you gaze upon her Chinese tea cupboard," exclaimed Norma, standing before the high black box, with one middle shelf, and little green and gold curtains hung before the tea set. "Where did you purloin that, Peg?"

"Peter gave it to me for fifty cents. It used to be a dumb waiter, and I painted it black myself. Isn't it beautiful? Have you seen Charity's room?

Wait." Peggy darted out of her door and across the hall. On the door opposite a card bore the legend in large black letters:

"KEEP OUT."

"STUDY HOUR."

"That's perfectly ridiculous," she said, tapping just the same. "n.o.body's studying to-day. Let us in, Charity."

A sound of sc.r.a.ping over the floor, and m.u.f.fled giggles came to the waiting ones in the hall, then the door was thrown wide, and Kit caught her first glimpse of Charity Parks, the best loved girl at Hope. She was about seventeen, but a short, roly-poly type, with curly rumpled hair and gray eyes that never seemed to keep from mirth. There were five other girls with her, and spread over the couch, chairs, and table were writing material and papers.

"We're frightfully busy, girls," Charity said, discouragingly. "What do you want?"

"Just to look at your room. Isn't it inspiring, Kit? This is Kit Robbins, Charity."

"Hope you'll like it at Hope." Charity gave Kit her hand with a warm grip.

"I'm from the east, too, only not so far as you are, but we think Pennsylvania's east, out here. How do you like the decoration?"

Kit liked it, and said so emphatically. The room was in Chinese blue and black, tea table, chiffonier and two chairs painted a dull black, and the walls tinted a soft deep gray blue.

"I hunted all over Chicago for Chinese things, and I found a few. Isn't this a celestial rose jar? I think it's big enough for a pot of basil. Who was the gentle poet that sang of the lady who buried her fond lover's head in a flower pot and watered it with her tears?"

"Bet you use it for orange punch before the year is up," Peggy laughed.

"Oh, Kit, she makes wonderful fruit punch. Each guest brings her own favorite fruit, then Charity mashes them all together and it's delicious."

"I wish I stayed here all the time," Kit exclaimed. "You miss the fun, being a day student, don't you?"

"Never mind, child," Charity told her consolingly, "we will have some special daylight celebrations all for you. Now clear out, girls, because I'm dying to lay out the first edition schedule."

"Charity's editor of the '_Glamour_,'" Peg said. "The boys call it the '_Clamour_,' but we don't mind. It used to be the '_Gleam_,' but we thought 'Glamour' carried more intensity with it. Kit's going to dash off some little simple trifle in spare moments for us, aren't you? Amy writes poetry, free verse. Show them that bit you made up in a.s.sembly."

Amy took out a sheet of copy paper from her Ancient History, and read aloud:

"Oh, wayward maid, Hast strayed Too far from native strand.

Lost in a maze, the savage gaze Becomes a frightened, spellbound gaze, By fond ambition fanned."

"Sounds just like Pope, doesn't it?" said Kit. "I like that last line, 'by fond ambition fanned.'"

"Seek not the sacred hall of fame, Cling to thy simple life, On Hope's high banner, Beaubien, Shall never, never----"

But Kit interrupted pointblank. She was sitting up very straight on the divan, with a certain expression around her mouth, and a very steady purposeful look in her eyes, which even Jean at home paid attention to.

"Just a minute," she said, quickly. "Do you mean Marcelle Beaubien?

Because if you do, I don't think that's fair."