CHAPTER XX—STEMMING THE TIDE

One reaction after another made up the program of Wellington, and directly after the big practice game, at which Judith turned her ankle, Jane was confronted again with Helen’s plea that she be allowed to withdraw from college. All the minor anxieties of the little Polish girl cemented now into the one great obstacle of terror—that a girl should have called her mad!

“Mad! Mad!” Helen kept repeating, and so great was her distress that Jane actually feared for a collapse of nerves, if not for some real mental disturbance.

“We must go to Mrs. Weatherbee,” Jane insisted, as Helen sobbed and sighed in her room, declining to be comforted and refusing to go out for any exercise. “I must talk it over with her. She is motherly and kind, and will know best what to do.”

“But please no!” begged Helen. “I would not that you ask Mrs. Weatherbee. It would mean so much trouble, and I cannot stand more.”

“But, Helen dear, it is our only way of bringing those hateful girls to their senses. I will not agree that they go along unpunished, when they deliberately take every occasion to cause you fear and anxiety. We cannot stop them if——”

“Oh, but my dearest friend!” begged Helen. “You will not do that! I could not stay at Wellington if you ask for any action by the faculty.”

Jane was baffled. Why did Helen always insist upon secrecy? Why could she not go to Mrs. Weatherbee and demand that Marian and her followers be compelled to desist? For a moment or two she pondered: then decided to ask Helen outright.

“Helen dear, can you not tell Jane, why you do not want any assistance from the faculty? Why do you always—seem to fear—something?”

It was extremely difficult for Jane to express herself so directly to the very much alarmed little Helen, but the time had come, Jane felt, when the question should be put straightforward and frankly.

Helen looked like someone about to be executed—or as one might imagine such an unfortunate looking. Her big dark eyes fairly blazed, and she put her two hands up in a most tragic pose.

“My friend! My benefactress!” she exclaimed. “You will not ask me—all now. I will tell you with gladness soon—I hope, but for a little time wait—till poor Helka can speak,” and she fell in a heap, crumpled and miserable at Jane’s feet. Never had Jane seen anything so like tragedy enacted in a school girl’s room. Never before had she witnessed such a scene as this, so wrought with dark and mysterious foreboding. She pressed a kind hand on the black head that lay upon her knee, then raised the tear-stained face.

“Helen dear, I believe you!” she whispered. “Whatever may be the real motive, I know it is an honest one, and I shall do as you ask. Of course, I feel helpless to assist you, as I should like, as I am prevented from asking the aid of those empowered to help us all at Wellington, nevertheless, I guess we can do something. We girls are as strong at least as our opponents, and we have right on our side. So cheer up, Helen dear! Come out, try to pretend you are over your nervous spell, so that they will have less chance to criticise. You must promise me something, too, little girl! See, I have promised you!”

“Oh, yes, Jane dear, ask and I promise!”

“That you will not ask to leave Wellington!”

From a look of fear and horror, gradually there stole into the dark misty eyes an expression of determination. With it the proud head again assumed its poise, Jane had so often thought to be almost regal, and the flaming cheeks composed now into a mold of beauty and dignity.

“I shall agree to the wish!” declared Helen, taking Jane’s hand, and pressing it to her lips. “As you ask it I shall give it. I will not go away from the dear Wellington.”

“There, that’s the spirit, Helen. If you take that attitude you will conquer all comers,” she said rather irreverently, considering Helen’s meager store of paraphrased English.

“Yes, I will try! It is more noble to stand up than to—fall!” answered Helen, thus betraying her actual knowledge of Jane’s argument. “I will not be a coward—I will fight as my—father—my brother. They did not lay down at Warsaw! They fought to death!”

Again Jane was conscious of the atmosphere of tragedy. Somehow Helen was very unusual, and Jane confessed to herself just now, rather difficult. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, Jane was still firm as ever in her belief that Helka Podonsky was a persecuted girl, an artist, and probably a born aristocrat. Surely all this was guarantee of her worth and reliability.

The tapping at Jane’s door, for some moments left unanswered, became more insistent, and satisfying herself that Helen had regained her composure, Jane now proceeded to answer the summons.

As the door opened two blue eyes blazed in.

“Jane Allen!” sang out Clarisse Cummings, she known as the prettiest freshie. “We are having an awful time; and I have been appointed a committee of one to come to your highness (this with a jerk of a curtsy) to beg arbitration.”

“Come in, Clarisse,” Jane interrupted. “I have not much time before class, but I shall be glad to help you if I can.”

“Oh, you surely can. Hello, Nellie!” to Helen. “Where ever have you been? Sick?”

“Just nerves,” assisted Jane, as Helen smiled a “non vult” to the charge. “Helen has been working very hard with her violin, and sometimes out of doors at that. Strange we have so little understanding of the artistic temperament.”

“Oh, yes—of course,” faltered Clarisse, and her manner gave clue to Jane that the “arbitration” requested might have something to do with Helen.

“I knew you must be sick, Nell,” purred the pretty one, “and I insisted you should not be put out until we had heard your side.”

“Put out?” asked Helen, awakening at last to a sign of interest.

“Yes, you know you have not been to drill for days, and we have to have the show before the sophs get ahead of us. They always have their show right in the glories of Hallowe’en, and the witches get all played out——”

“And tangled up in their broom sticks, until the very best hair dressers among us cannot untangle the wigs,” finished Jane. “You are perfectly right, Clarisse. You youngsters have been working hard at your show for weeks, and you cannot allow the sophs to get the barn first. What’s the real difficulty?”

Clarisse squatted down on the big floor cushion, her skirt just touching her knees by the scantest rim. She doubled her feet backward in regular style of the Jap-Turk-Indian, etc. Pencil threatening her red lips with poisonous smudges and “eyes right” as her squad would have described it, the pretty one attempted to impart to Jane information certainly not intended for Helen’s ears. Seeing her confusion Jane mercifully attempted to relieve it.

“Suppose you rest this afternoon, Helen,” she said. “I shall take your excuse in, if you wish.”

“Oh, thank you, but I am sure I feel all right now,” replied Helen, taking the cue signalling her departure. “I always feel refreshed when I have talked with my very good friend.”

“That’s nice of you, dear,” Jane accepted, opening the door. “Run in again after two thirty. I shall be at leisure and glad to see you again. By that time you will know exactly how you feel about taking a furlough.”

The military term was one with which the Polish girl was entirely familiar, and she guessed rightly that Jane had used it to convey the idea of a possible “furlough” from class work. Helen was still very shaky, still far from being convinced that her persecutors would be silenced with their insidious gossip, and until all this could be satisfactorily straightened out, Helen might find it necessary to remain away from the general assemblages.

Smiling, she withdrew. Then Clarissa untwined her ankles and assumed the aggressive.

“Oh, Jane—Miss Allen!”

“Jane is better, Clara. What can I do for the prettiest little freshie of them all?”

“Now don’t tease, please,” and blue eyes vied with dimples as star attractions. “I am so excited——”

“I see you are!”

“Miss Allen!” quite severely. “Are you really laughing at me?”

“Why, Clara, my dear, cannot an old friend tease just a little bit to show her love for the Babes? You know, Clara, sometimes I am so sorry I have to grow up.”

Reassured, and again smiling, Clarisse took on still another attitude, determined to emphatically emphasize the seriousness of her mission. She could not guess that Jane’s apparent joking had a motive, if not sinister, then deeply planned. Jane was stalling. She was using up time to kill time, and she played against time for time. All of which college girls are supposed to understand as within the ethics of school girl diplomacy.

“Well, Janie, it is this way,” again attempted the persistent freshman. “We have our show all planned. It is entirely original—we wrote every word of it and Nellie composed the music. Did you know that?”

“No, I did not!” admitted Jane, now showing interest.

“Of course you didn’t. It was all a deep secret. But just when we were ready to drop the girls down the chimney—oh, that was another secret——”

“Trust me. I shall never disclose the dark, dire secret,” Jane assured her.

“No, I am sure you will not. You see, the story called for two girls to come down the barn chimney——”

“Barn swallows,” suggested Jane.

“No, chimney sweeps,” corrected Clarisse. “The story was laid in London, and we had Mad Madge of Moscow. Of course that was Nellie because she had to play the violin—just fiddle away all the time.” Jane was beginning to see light. Mad Madge for Helen in the face of the perfidious gossip declaring her really mad!

“It all went perfectly beautiful,” Clarisse declared, “until some girls said—well, they said it was so easy for Nellie to act the mad part she must be—what the other girls said she was.” Little Clarisse was too childlike, and too well bred to bolt out with the accusation that Helen had been called mad. But Jane sensed the story as clearly as if it had been actually screened before her eyes. Yes, in all Helen’s school affairs, this gossip was now injecting its poison. Even so absurd a story gained credence with action like rolling a snowball, growing as it turns.

“But why let such foolish talk influence you?” asked Jane.

“Oh, we didn’t! Indeed we didn’t!” This with wide-eyed consternation. “But the trouble was with the tickets. When we went to the campus house all along the other side not a girl would accept a ticket——”

“Don’t you think that was just a case of boycott?” suggested Jane.

“Well, maybe so. But we had to have the Flip-Flops. You know we call those girls who are always changing quarters the Flip-Flops. Isn’t that a dreadful name? But Dickey Ripple stuck it on.”

“They are changeable, to say the least, and they do stunts very like the Flip-Flop,” Jane agreed, “still it is not a pretty title to sail under.”

“No, I realize that,” apologized the gullible Clarisse, “and I didn’t mean to use the horrid word again. First thing we know it will slip out in faculty hearing, then we will be disciplined. Well, anyway, where was I at?”

“At distributing your invitations. You said they were refused. On what grounds, Clara?”

“First, because we had Nellie in the cast, and second, because they said she might get—flighty and land knows only what. I am sure they could not have meant she might get dangerous.”

Rare sense for a freshman, Jane decided. All the other flings at helpless little Helen could not include that of being “dangerous at large.” Jane considered for a moment. Clarisse waited, eager and hopeful.

“And just what was it you wanted me to do?” asked Jane finally.

“Why, to call a meeting, and announce our play, and put Helen down as a special attraction. Her violin is wonderful, and you know it is the very first time she has consented to play in public.”

Clarisse was quite breathless now, and Jane fell back bewildered. After all, the little girls demanded nothing extraordinary, but simple as the request was, Jane could not promise to grant it.

“I fear Helen would not like that,” she replied carefully. “You know artists are very queer about any publicity previous to their grand debut. And Helen has such a wonderful concert planned for her real coming out,” said Jane.

“Oh, but just here in school couldn’t matter. Really, Miss Allen, we will be completely lost if you do not assist us,” and again the dimples melted into little leaks, that threatened to overflow at the mouth ends.

“All right, dear. I will see if I can arrange it,” assented Jane, “but you know I have to consult the executive committee about calling a meeting. We might do it more simply, and more effectively, some other way. At any rate, you may count on us. We won’t see our little freshman outclassed by such underhand methods.”

“That’s just it. Why don’t you tell Mrs. Weatherbee?”

“Oh, it seems too silly! And besides you recall our pledge not to carry tales to the faculty! You wouldn’t have your president be the first to break the very rule she was most insistent upon adopting?”

“Oh, no, that’s so,” agreed Clarisse. “I remember now, you did say we were not to carry tales. Very well, I am satisfied. I think, as a committee of one I have been quite a success, thanks to our president,” and she made a perky bow.