CHAPTER VI

THE BLIGHTED BEING

KATHARINE HOLLAND was distinctly unpopular during her first weeks in the Ryder School. Miss Lucilla Ryder treated her courteously, but Miss Lucilla's courtesy had a frappe quality not conducive to heart expansion. Miss Emmeline showed even more than her usual gentle propitiatory kindliness toward the quiet, unresponsive girl, but kindliness from Miss Emmeline had the flavour of overtures from a faded daguerreotype or a sweetly smiling porcelain miniature. It was a slightly vague, impersonal, watery kindliness not calculated to draw a shy or sensitive girl from her reserve.

The teachers, all save Belinda, voted Katharine difficult and unimpressionable. As for the girls, having tried the new pupil in the schoolgirl balance, and having found her lamentably wanting in appreciation of their friendliness, they promptly voted her "snippy," and vowed that she might mope as much as she pleased for all they cared--but that was before they knew that she was a "Blighted Being."

The moment that the cause of Katharine's entrance into the school fold and of her listless melancholy was revealed to her schoolfellows, public opinion turned a double back-somersault and the girl became the centre of school interest. Her schoolmates watched her every move, hung upon her every word, humbly accepted any smallest crumbs of attention or comradeship she vouchsafed to them. No one dared hint at a knowledge of her secret, but in each breast was nursed the hope that some day the heroine of romance might throw herself upon that breast and confide the story of her woes. Meanwhile, it was much to lavish unspoken sympathy upon her and live in an atmosphere freighted with romance.

Amelia Bowers was the lucky mortal who first learned the new girl's story and had the rapture of telling it under solemn pledge of secrecy to each of the other girls. Sentiment gravitates naturally toward Amelia. She is all heart. Possibly it would be more accurate to say she is all heart and imagination; and if a sentimental confidence, tale, or situation drifts within her aura it invariably seeks her out. Upon this occasion the second-floor maid was the intermediary through which the romantic tale flowed. She had been dusting the study while Miss Lucilla and Miss Emmeline discussed the problem of Katharine Holland, and happening to be close to the door--Norah emphasised the accidental nature of the location--she had overheard the whole story.

Norah herself had loved, early and often. Her heart swelled with sympathy, and she sped to Amelia, in whom she had discovered a kindred and emotional soul.

Fifteen minutes later Amelia, in one of her many wrappers, and with but one side of her hair done up in kids, burst in upon Laura May Lee and Kittie Dayton, who were leisurely preparing for bed. Excitement was written large upon the visitor's pink and white face. She swelled proudly with the importance of a bearer of great tidings.

"Girls, what do you think?" She paused dramatically.

The girls evidently didn't think, but they sat down upon the bed, big-eyed and expectant.

"Cross your hearts, hope to die?"

They crossed their hearts and solemnly hoped they might perish if they revealed one word of what was coming.

"You know Katharine Holland?"

They did.

"Awful stick," commented Laura May.

Amelia flamed into vivid defence.

"Nothing of the sort. I guess you'd be quiet too, Laura May Lee, if your heart was broken."

With one impulse the girls on the bed drew their knees up to their chins and hugged them ecstatically. This was more than they had hoped for.

"Yes, sir, broken," repeated Amelia emphatically.

"How d'you know?" asked Kittie Dayton.

"Never you mind. I know all about it."

"She didn't tell you?"

"No, she didn't tell me, but I know. She's madly in love with an enemy of her house."

"Not really?" Laura May's tone was tremulous with interest.

Kittie gave her knees an extra hug. "It's like Romeo and Juliet," she said. Kittie was a shining light in the English Literature classes.

Satisfied with the impression she had made Amelia gathered her forces for continuous narrative.

"You see, her folks have got lots of money, and she's their only child, but her father's an awful crank and her mother don't dare say her soul's her own."

"Don't Katharine's father like her?"

Amelia was annoyed.

"If you'll keep still, Kittie, I'll tell you all about it. If you can't wait I won't tell you at all."

Kittie subsided, and the story flowed on.

"He adores her, but he's very stubborn, and there's a man he hates worse than poison. They had some sort of a business quarrel a long time ago, and Mr. Holland is as bitter as can be yet and never allows one of his family to speak to one of the other family. He said he'd shoot any Clark who stepped a foot on his grounds."

Amelia's face was radiant with satisfaction. Her voice was hushed for dramatic effect.

"There's a Clark boy," she went on; then, not pleased with the ring of her sentence, began again.

"The hated enemy has a son." That was much better, and it gave her a good running start. "He's handsome as a prince, and perfectly lovely in every way." Miss Lucilla hadn't confided this fact to Miss Emmeline, but there are some things one knows instinctively, and Amelia believes in poetic license as applied to drama. "He's been away at school, but he came home last June, and he and Katharine got acquainted somewhere. She didn't dare tell her father she had met him, but she loved him desperately at first sight." Once more Miss Lucilla's bald facts were being elaborated.

"Did he fall in love that way, too?" Kittie was athirst for detail.

"He was crazy over her the minute he set eyes on her, and he just had to see her again, and he got a friend to take her walking and let him meet them, and it went on that way until they got so well acquainted that he could make love to her, and then they got rid of the friend and used to go walking all by themselves, and finally somebody saw them and told Katharine's father. My, but he was mad. He sent for Katharine and she wouldn't lie to him. She said she and the young man were engaged and she was going to marry him, and her father swore something awful, and her mother cried, and Katharine was just as white as marble, but she kept perfectly calm." Amelia was warming to her work. "And they imprisoned her in her room, and her father used to go and try to make her promise she'd never speak to her lover again, and her mother used to cry and beg her to give him up. But they couldn't break her spirit or make her false to her vows, and finally they decided to send her away, so they wrote to Miss Lucilla and told her all about it. Miss Lucilla said she hated to have such a responsibility, but that they offered so much money she didn't feel she could refuse to take the girl--and that, anyway, the parents probably knew best, and it was for Katharine's best interests she should be separated from the boy. So Mr. Holland brought Katharine here, and she's not to stir out without a teacher, and she's not to have any mail save what passes through Miss Lucilla's hands and is opened by her, and she's not to receive any callers unless they bring a note from her father, and she's not to write letters except to her mother."

"How'll they help it, I'd like to know? They can't watch her all the time," chorused the two listeners, each mentally devoting her inkstand, pen, stationery and services as postman to the cause of unfortunate love.

"How we've misjudged her," sighed Laura May.

"I thought it was funny she came here when she's so old. She must be eighteen, isn't she?" asked Kittie.

"Pretty near. I'd elope and defy my cruel parents if I was eighteen, but she says she won't elope--that she'll wait until she's twenty-one, and then if her father won't give in, and can't show her anything bad about the man, she'll marry him anyhow. Miss Lucilla had a talk with her, and she said Katharine seemed to be a very nice girl and very reasonable except when it came to breaking off her love affair, but that she was just as stubborn as a rock about that."

"What do you suppose they'll do?"

Amelia meditated, turning the searchlight of memory upon her favourite novels.

"Well, she may waste away. She's pretty thin. I guess her father would feel dreadful when he stood by her deathbed. And then her lover may persuade her to fly with him. I wish she'd let me help her fly. Or she may just wait till she's twenty-one and then leave home with her father's curses on her head, and if she did that her mother'd probably die of grief, and everything her father'd touch would fail, and finally he'd be a lonely, miserable old man and send for Katharine to forgive him, and she'd bring her little daughter to him and----"

"Why, Amelia Bowers!" protested Kittie, whose slow brain had been following the rapid pace with difficulty, and who had not lost her schoolmate in the cursed and married heroine.

"Well, it's pretty dreadful any way you fix it. She's a Blighted Being," said Amelia cheerfully. "We must be very considerate of her. Good-night."

She hurried away, intent upon spreading her news before the "lights-out" bell should ring, and with each telling the tale grew in detail and picturesqueness.

The next morning the girls began being considerate of Katharine. If the Blighted Being noticed the sudden change of attitude it must have occasioned her some wonder, if not considerable annoyance. She was not a girl to air her wrongs nor bid for sympathy, although she was not brave enough to assume a cheerful manner and keep her heartache out of her face. She learned her lessons, did her tasks, was respectful to the teachers, polite to the girls, but she held aloof from everyone--was, in the arrogant fashion of youth, absorbed in her own unhappiness. Occasionally, when she met Belinda's smiling, friendly eyes, her face softened and an answering smile hovered around her sensitive lips, but the relaxing went no further.

Amelia and her mates found the victim of parental tyranny an absorbing interest. They missed no word or act or movement of hers when she was with them. They offered her caramels and fudge with an air of fervent sympathy. They left the best orange for her at breakfast. They allowed her to head the crocodile during morning walk, day after day, and allotted the honor of walking with her to a different girl each day, the names being taken in alphabetical order.

They gave her the end seat on the open cars, in church, at the theatre. They surreptitiously sharpened her pencils and cleaned her desk for her. They made offerings of flowers. They volunteered to loan her their novels even before they had read them.

And Katharine, not understanding the spring from which all this friendliness flowed, unbent slightly as the days went by, paid more attention to the life around her, yet kept the tightly closed lips and the unhappy eyes. She was very young, very much in love, and her pride suffered even more than her heart. Mr. Holland's method of parental government was, to put it mildly, not diplomatic.

James, the handy man of the school, was the only person upon whom she was ever actually seen to smile, but she appeared to have a liking for James. Amelia several times saw her talking to the man in the hall, and once something white and square passed from the girl's hands to the man's.

"She's getting James to mail letters," announced Amelia breathlessly, breaking in upon Laura May and Kittie.

"Bully for James!" crowed Kittie inelegantly. "But won't he catch it if Miss Lucilla finds out."

Miss Lucilla didn't find out, but an avenging Nemesis apparently overtook James, for a few days later he failed to appear at the school in the morning, and the cook had to attend to the furnace.

Later came a most apologetic note from the missing handy man. He was ill--seriously ill. The doctor had forbidden his leaving the house for at least a week. He was greatly distressed--in English of remarkable spelling--because he was inconveniencing Miss Ryder, but he didn't want to give up the place altogether, and if he might be allowed to send a substitute for a week or so he would surely be able to take up work again at the end of that time. He had a friend in mind--a nice, respectable young fellow who would do the work well and could be trusted even with the silver--a bit youngish, perhaps, but willing and handy. Should he send him?

Miss Lucilla answered by messenger. The young man was to come at once. The snow must be shoveled from the steps and walk before time for the day scholars to arrive. She hoped James would soon be able to return, but she would give his friend a trial.

Half an hour later a manly young fellow in very shabby clothes presented himself, had an interview with Miss Lucilla, who told her sister that he seemed a very decent person, and adjusted to his shoulders the burden of duties laid down by James. He bore the burden lightly, did his work with cheerful conscientiousness, and made himself useful in many ways unknown to the former incumbent. Norah and the other maid smiled upon him ineffectively.

"Always ready to lend ye a hand at an odd job, but divil a kiss or a bit of love-making behind the door," Norah explained to Amelia, who had sniffed an incipient romance below stairs when she first saw the new man.

Miss Lucilla congratulated herself upon the addition to her staff of servants and sought an excuse for letting James go altogether and cleaving to his friend. The teachers sang the praises of Augustus, the girls found him obliging and resourceful in smuggling, the servants couldn't pick quarrels with him. Evidently here was a gem of purest ray serene--that pearl beyond price, a perfect servant.

The incomparable Augustus was seldom in evidence above the basement, save when he went to the study for orders, moved the furniture, or did odd jobs of carpentering; but he was intrusted with the cleaning and setting in order of the big schoolroom, and Katharine Holland was occasionally in his way there. She liked to study before breakfast.

One Tuesday night, when study hour was over, the girls had gone to their rooms, and the downstairs lights were out, Belinda sat in her room, correcting examination papers. She struggled through the pile, reached the last paper, and found that several sheets of it were missing. A careful search in the room failed to bring them to light; and the Youngest Teacher, with a frown of vexation between her pretty brows, picked up a match, girded her dressing gown about her, and making no noise in her knitted bedside slippers, went swiftly down the stairs.

The door of the large schoolroom, where she expected to find her missing papers, was closed; and as Belinda stopped before it she fancied that she heard a murmur of voices beyond the door. She hesitated, smiled at herself, struck a match sharply, and threw open the door.

There was a sudden movement in the room--a smothered exclamation. The light of the match fell full upon a man who held a girl in his arms.

So much Belinda saw before she put out her hand to the electric button and turned on the light.

Before her stood the incomparable Augustus, shabby, handsome, defiant; and to his arm clung Katharine Holland, white and frightened, but with her head up and a challenge in her eyes.

Belinda stared for a second in bewilderment. Then she understood. She tried to remember that she was a teacher and to fix the culprits with an icy glare, but Belinda is not very old herself, and in common with all the world she loves a lover. The situation was shocking--but--the look on the girl's face was too much for the Youngest Teacher's severity.

Impulsively Belinda held out her arms.

"Oh, you poor child," she said. "You poor, foolish, hurt child." Her voice was athrill with tenderness. Her face was aglow with the mother-love that lives in the woman heart from doll days to the end of life.

With a little sob the girl moved forward blindly. Belinda's arms went round her and drew her close.

"Hush, dear. Don't cry. This is all wrong, but you've been very unhappy and you didn't mean to do wrong."

The Youngest Teacher's eyes met those of the boy who stood, crimson-cheeked, uncertain, under the glare of the electric light; and she studied his face--a good-looking, determined face, with honest manliness under its boyish recklessness.

"It wasn't fair," she said softly. "It wasn't fair to her. You would take care of her better than this if you loved her."

The recklessness faded, leaving the manliness.

"They've treated us abominably."

"Yes, I know, but she is only seventeen--and clandestine meetings are vulgar and dangerous."

"Her father can't give any reason except that ridiculous family feud."

"A scandal would furnish an excellent reason, and justify him in his attitude toward you."

"But there isn't going to be any scandal."

"Suppose someone else had found you here and told the story broadcast."

He winced.

"But I can't live without seeing her sometimes."

"Then your love is a very small, boyish thing. A man who loved her could wait."

He had come forward now and was looking straight into her accusing face.

"I suppose you are going to tell Miss Ryder, and Katharine will be sent home in disgrace?"

Belinda shook her head. "What I do depends upon you. Perhaps I ought to tell. I owe a duty to Miss Ryder--but then I owe something to Katharine, too. She needs sympathy and sane counsel more than harshness. I think you are honest--though that was a dishonest, underhand trick of yours. If you will give me your word of honour as a gentleman not to try to see Katharine again while she is here I will say nothing about this."

He hesitated, looked down at the rumpled head upon Belinda's shoulder.

"Shall I do it, Katharine?"

Belinda's face flamed indignantly.

"Are you coward enough to shift the responsibility to her? Aren't you man enough to do what is best for her, no matter what she says?"

The broad shoulders squared themselves.

"I'll promise."

"Does any one know about this escapade?"

"James."

"Can you shut his mouth securely?"

"I will."

"You would better go now."

He moved a step nearer.

"Good-by, dear."

Katharine lifted a tear-stained face.

"You'll not stop caring?" There was a sob in her voice.

"It's only a question of waiting, sweetheart," he said gently; "and we love each other well enough to wait."

He looked beseechingly at the Youngest Teacher, who, being a very human pedagogue, turned her back upon the tragic young things; but a moment later she held out a friendly hand to the departing lover.

"Good-by. I'll trust you."

"Good-by. You may. I do love her. Be good to her," he added brokenly as he disappeared through the door.

Belinda was good to her; and long after the girl was asleep, the Youngest Teacher lay awake, puzzling over problems of right and wrong, of duty and impulse, of justice and mercy.

"They are only children," she said from her pinnacle of two-and-twenty years.

"But children's hurts are hard to bear while they last," her heart answered promptly.

"Perhaps I was all wrong. Probably I ought to have been more severe--but now I've promised"--and Belinda was asleep.

The next morning the incomparable Augustus had disappeared from the horizon. The faithful James, attired in a sporty new suit, new shoes and necktie, and looking astonishingly well and prosperous for a man who reported himself as just back from the gates of death, was once more in his accustomed place.

"James is a good soul, but Augustus had so much more resourcefulness and initiative," said Miss Lucilla regretfully.

"He had," agreed Belinda.