Part 5
Saturday, October Second, Three to Five. You are invited to attend a Founders’ Tea, Douglas Dormitory, Hope College, Virginia Parks’s Study.
“Diffident, modest, and correct,” said Kit, critically, when she showed them to Anne. “Now, what are you going to have to eat, Anne? Isn’t there something besides just plain tea? Couldn’t we fix up some kind of glorified lemonade?”
“I’ve got it all down,” answered Anne. “Grape juice, ginger ale and lemons. Sound good? And six kinds of sandwiches and cookies.”
“It’s perfectly swell,” exclaimed Kit. “Aunt Della told me when I first started in that I could give a party for the girls, and this is it. After it is all over I’ll tell her about Jeannette, and I know she’ll enjoy it and approve.”
“Is Ginny going to decorate the study for the occasion?” asked Anne. “We ought to have something sort of different, don’t you think?”
“Pioneer stuff would be the only thing, and I don’t know where we’d scare that up.”
“There’s a whole cabinet of them in the Dean’s room at the college.”
The two girls looked at each other wisely. The subject really needed no argument or discussion. Kit said briefly, “I’ll try. I think I can get some of them anyway if I approach Uncle Bart as a humble student seeking knowledge.”
All unprepared for the onslaught, the Dean sat enjoying his after-dinner smoke that evening when Kit came to the door and knocked.
“Come in,” he called a little bit testily, looking over his glasses at the intruder. “I don’t think I can talk with you just now, my dear,” he said, “I’m very busy working out a dynasty problem.”
“Oh, but I’d love to help,” Kit pleaded, “and I did help before on the aborigines of Japan, didn’t I? I even remember their names, the Ainos.”
“This is early Egyptian. Something you know nothing whatever about.”
“Just mummies?” inquired Kit.
The Dean coughed, and turned back to the pamphlets before him. “Remains have been discovered,” he began in quite the tone he used in Assembly, “of the lost tribe of the Nemi. When the Greeks, my dear, obtained a foothold in Carthage and along the Mediterranean coast, the Nemi remained unconquered and retreated to the mountain fastnesses, west of the source of the Nile.”
“Well, I know all about that,” Kit answered, perching herself on the arm of a chair, across from him. “Just see,” and she counted off on her fingers, “Livingstone-Stanley--Victoria Falls--Zambesi--and Kipling wrote all about the people in _Fuzzy-Wuzzy_.”
“No, no, no, not a bit like it,” the Dean exclaimed. “My dear child, learn to think in centuries and epochs. The long and short of it is, there have been some very wonderful remains of the Nemi recently discovered, and I have been honored by a commission from the Institute to write a complete summary of the results of the expedition and its historic significance.”
“Don’t you wish you’d been there when they dug them up? That’s what I’d love, the exploring part. I should think it would be dreadfully dry trying to make bones sit up and talk, when you are so far away from it all.”
“They are not sending me bones,” replied the Dean with dignity, “but they are sending me the Amenotaph urn, and a sitting image of Annui. I believe with these two I shall be able to establish as a fact the survival of the Greek influence in ancient Egypt. My dear, you have no idea,” he added warmly, “how much this explains if it is true. There may be even Phoenician data before I finish investigating.”
“Phoenicians,” thought Kit, although she said nothing. “Yes, I do remember about them, too. Tin--ancient Britain--and something about Carthage.” Then she said aloud very positively and earnestly, “I know I can help you a lot with this, Uncle Bart, if you will only let me, because history is my favorite subject, and the reason I came to speak to you tonight is this. We girls are going to have a Founders’ Tea, Saturday afternoon. Just a little informal affair, but I’d like to give it a--” She hesitated for the right word, and the Dean nodded encouragingly, being in a better mood.
“Semblance of verity? Are you preparing a treatise?”
“No. I want something they can look at. And I knew if I told you about it, you’d let us take a few of the old things out of that cabinet in your room at the college. All I need would be--well, say a few portraits of any of the founders of Hope, and any of the relics of the Indians or French explorers.”
The Dean graciously detached a key from the ring at one end of his watch chain.
Kit left with it as though she bore a trophy. The next day the last preparations were completed for impressing on the girls of Hope College the honor of having a Founder’s granddaughter in their midst.
11. The Mysterious Guest
“I think you ought to preside, Kit,” Virginia said as she arranged the table. “It’s your party, and you ought to serve.”
“Takes too much concentration,” Kit returned. “Anne’ll help you. I want to have my mind perfectly clear to manage the thing. You see, Jeannette doesn’t know a thing about it yet, and there’s no knowing how she’ll take it. Wouldn’t it be funny if she got proud and haughty and marched away from our Founders’ Tea?”
“I don’t think you ought to spring it until after we’ve had refreshments. Food has such a mellowing effect on people. It’s all a question of tact, though. If I were you, I’d talk to them in an intimate sort of way instead of lingering too much on the historic value. Better straighten Malcolm, over there. He looks kind of topply.”
Kit regarded the framed steel engraving of Malcolm Douglas almost fondly. It occupied a prominent spot specially cleared for it in the middle of the wall.
Backed by Della’s approval and interest, Kit had called at several homes where the descendants of other founders lived, and the results were gratifying. Mrs. Peter Bradbury had contributed two Indian blankets and a hunting bag, besides an old pair of saddle bags used by an early missionary bishop in the Northwest. From the cabinet in the Dean’s room had come mostly records, old documents carefully framed, and several letters written by the founders themselves.
“Golly,” Kit said as she gave a last touch to her exhibit, “of course these are important, but I like the Indian and hunting things best. I wish I could run away with that double pair of buffalo horns that belonged to Dr. Gleason’s granduncle or somebody. I like them better than anything.”
A quick rap came on the door, and before Virginia could even call “come in” Peggy entered with her usual galaxy behind her, Amy, Georgia, and a newcomer from Iowa, Henrietta Jenkins.
“Tony Conyers sent word she’d be ready in five minutes,” said Georgia. “She’s got a lot of the girls in there with her. Ginny, I think this is a perfectly stupendous idea of yours.”
“’Tisn’t mine,” answered Virginia, “it’s Kit’s. This is her party. Her coming-out party at Hope.”
“Oh, are you the founder’s granddaughter?” Amy inquired, her eyes opening wide.
“No, I’m not,” replied Kit. “I wish this minute I could tell you about my ancestors. I’ve got some beauts. Peggy, don’t sit on the almonds. They’re right behind you in that glass dish.”
The room filled up rapidly with people. Kit declared after she had been the rounds four times that she felt exactly like the lecturer in a museum, telling the history of the relics over and over again. Nobody but Anne knew how anxious she was as the minutes slipped by and no Jeannette appeared. It would never do to have a climax happen without the surprise of her presence to carry it off. The refreshments had all been served, and the clock on top of the bookshelves showed that it was five, when Virginia called; “You’d better start in on your Founders’ talk, Kit. We’ve only got about half an hour.”
There was a baffled look in Kit’s eyes, as she picked up the challenge and rose from her chair. Virginia must know perfectly well how untimely it was to start to spring the surprise while there was a running chance of Jeannette appearing. Still there was a hush, and the girls faced her expectantly.
“As you all know,” began Kit, “the old bronze tablet in the lower hall carries names on its roll of honor which not only uphold the glory of Hope College, but also of the entire town of Delphi, of the entire state, I may say of Wisconsin.
“There are few of us here today, if any,” continued Kit slowly, one eye watching the concrete walk across the campus from the nearest window, “who can boast of a Hope founder in her family.”
“I can, almost,” interrupted Tony, “my sister Marie was engaged for a little while to Bernard Giron. If she had only married him, we would have had a ‘Founder’ in the family.”
“Tony,” said Kit, severely, “I am dealing with facts, not prospects, and you ought not reveal any family secrets, either. I say it is a great honor to be a direct descendant of a ‘Founder,’ and we have one in our class. A girl, too modest to take advantage of her grandfather’s record.” She paused impressively, but with a quickening gleam in her eyes, as there suddenly came in view a hurrying figure in a gray suit on the campus walk. It was Jeannette herself, late, but in time to create the desired sensation.
Kit drew a deep breath, and plunged back to her subject, considering exactly the time it would take for the belated guest to reach the study.
“Since all the girls here belong to this dormitory, it seems appropriate that the founder whose memory we honor should be Malcolm Douglas. His portrait hangs on the wall, evidently taken from an old likeness.” Oh, how she wished the family could hear her now! “There is no more adventurous or thrilling career in the annals of historic Delphi than that of the illustrious Scotchman. Making his way through the perils of the wilderness, he came from Quebec with a party of fur traders and pioneer explorers.”
“Don’t hit too far back, Kit,” interrupted Peggy, alertly. “If he was a founder, you can’t have him trotting over wilderness trails with Marquette and Lasalle, you know.”
“Nevertheless,” responded Kit, ignoring her, “he is one of the founders of this college. He came here in his early twenties, and married Lucia, the daughter of Captain Peter Morton. Their daughter was Mary, and, girls, she was the mother of one of our classmates, the very same Mary who went through Hope and graduated with high honors. You’ll find her initials carved in Number 10 across the hall, and her portrait--the only one I could find--is in this graduating group.”
The girls all crowded forward to look at the group photograph which Kit held out to them, just as a knock came at the door. For one dramatic instant Kit held the knob, her back against the door as she announced in almost a whisper, “The granddaughter of Malcolm Douglas.”
The girls leaned forward, eagerly, every eye fixed upon the door. As Kit said later to Anne, “Goodness knows who they expected to see, but I almost felt as though I had promised them a two-headed man, and then had sprung Jeannette. Wasn’t she marvelous, Anne? The way she stood the introduction and the shock of finding herself the guest of honor. As I looked at her, I thought to myself, you may be Douglas, and you may be Morton, fine old Scotch and English stock, but if it wasn’t for the dash of debonair Flambeau in you too, you could never carry this off the way you’re doing.”
Jeannette was not the only person present who had to fall back on inherent caste for their manners of the moment, but Tony was the only one that gave an audible gasp. Even Peggy and Georgia smiled, and greeted the Founder’s granddaughter in the proper spirit.
She was dressed in a plain gray suit, but Kit gloried in the way she took her place beside Virginia at the table, and answered the questions of the girls with laughing ease.
“Of course,” she said, with the little slight accent she seemed to have caught from her father and old Grandmother Flambeau, “I thought everyone in Delphi knew. For myself, I am proud of him, and of all my mother’s people, but I am also proud of being a Flambeau. You girls do not know perhaps that some of my father’s people helped to found Fort Dearborn, and they were very brave and courageous voyagers in the early days of New France.”
Peggy really rose to the occasion remarkably, Kit thought. Probably the most jealously guarded membership in the prep classes was that of the Portia Club, and yet, before the tea was over, she had invited Jeannette to attend the next meeting and be proposed for membership.
“We’re not going to try a whole play at first, just famous scenes, and I know you’d fit in somewhere and enjoy it. Don’t you want to, Jeannette?”
Jeannette shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I shall be glad to help always, if you wish to make me one of you.”
“What do you think of that?” Anne said on the way home. “Kit, you certainly have discovered a flower that was born to blush unseen.”
“It will take her out of her shell, anyway,” Kit replied happily. “And I do think the girls came up to the mark splendidly. How I’d like to hear what they’re saying about us now, behind our backs, but they acted their parts nobly when I swung that door open, and there stood, just Jeannette!”
12. Homesick
No qualms of homesickness visited Kit the first two months after school opened. Not even New England could eclipse the glory of autumn when it swept in full splendor over this corner of the Lake States. Down east there was a sort of middle-aged relaxation to this season of the year.
But here autumn came as a gypsy. The stretches of forest that fringed the ravines rioted in color. The lakes seemed to take on the very deepest sapphire blue. No hush lay over the land as it did in the East, but there were wild sudden storm flurries, a feeling in the air as if there might be a regular tornado any minute.
Hardly a Saturday passed but what Kit was included in some fall picnic hike or else she was off to a football game. The Dean never joined these, but occasionally Della did and thoroughly enjoyed them. And once, toward the end of November, in the very last of Indian summer weather, they took a weekend tour up to Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls.
“I only wish,” Rex said, “that we could come up here next spring when they have their big logging time. It’s one of the greatest sights you ever saw, Kit. I have seen the logs jammed out there in the river until they looked like a giant’s game of jackstraws. Maybe we could arrange a trip, don’t you think so, Mom?”
“I don’t see any reason why not,” replied Mrs. Bellamy.
“But I won’t be here then,” protested Kit.
“Oh, you’ll stay till the end of the spring term, dear,” Della corrected, and right then Kit experienced her first pang of homesickness. Would she really be away from home until next June? Even with this novelty of recreation, backed by wealth, she felt suddenly as though she could have slipped away from it all without a single regret, just to find herself safely back home with the family.
One weekend while Jean was home at Maple Grove, she and her mother were talking together about Jean’s work. Doris and Tommy with Jack had walked over to Woodhow to help Mr. Craig, so Jean and her mother were alone.
Each time Jean came home she found herself turning with a sigh of relief and safety from the city life to the peace of the hills. It was her comment on this to her mother that had prompted their talk.
“Are you going to begin looking into job possibilities while you are in New York, Jean?” asked her mother. “I think if you are really serious about a career, you should begin getting interviews for a job next year.”
“No Mom,” replied Jean. “I think I have reached an important decision. I wasn’t going to tell you until my course was over and I was positive I was right, but I’ll tell you now since you asked. I love Ralph more than I do a career and if he asks me to marry him, I’ll say yes. I’ve learned to analyze my feelings and I am quite sure my love for art is only a hobby. To have a happy marriage like yours and Dad’s is, is the most important thing I want.”
“You have made a wise and difficult decision, my dear,” said Mrs. Craig tenderly. “Your father and I have felt all along that Ralph was ideally suited for you, but we wanted you to make your own decisions first.”
Just then, the mailman brought Kit’s next letter and Jean read it over her mother’s shoulder. A little puzzled frown drew Jean’s straight dark brows together.
“She’s getting homesick, Mother. Kit never writes tenderly like that unless she feels a heart throb. I never thought she’d last as long as she has--”
But Mrs. Craig looked dubious.
“She seems to have made such a good impression. I hate to have her spoil it by jumping back too soon. It’s such an opportunity for her.”
Jean stopped washing the dishes and gazed out of the kitchen window toward the fields, where none but the crows could find a living now.
“I don’t blame her a bit if she wants to come back home before summer, Mom. Money isn’t everything.”
“That’s true,” sighed her mother. “But it’s a shame not to take advantage of it when it comes your way.”
“Just the same, if I were you, I’d write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation if she wanted to.”
But Becky took an entirely different view of the matter when she was consulted. “Fiddlesticks,” she said. “No girl of Kit’s age knows what she wants two minutes of the time. She isn’t needed here at all, Margaret. Doris is getting plenty old enough to take hold and help.”
So two letters went back to Kit, and in hers Mrs. Craig could not resist slipping a hint that perhaps it would be a wise thing to ask the Dean about ending her visit at Christmas time.
But Jean added in hers, “Mother’s afraid you are homesick, or that they may be tired of you by this time, but if I were in your place, I’d try to stay until June. Dad thinks the house may be done in time for us to go into it next month, but we’ve had lots of wet weather, and Becky says it would be horribly unhealthful to move in before the plaster has had a chance to thoroughly dry. Matt goes down every day with Dad, and they’ve kept the fire going in the furnace, so I suppose that will help some, but there isn’t a particle of need for your coming back, except Mother’s dread that you may be homesick, and you’re getting too old to mollycoddle yourself, where there’s a big interest at stake.”
Kit read this with a frown. “It’s so nice to have been born Jean, and speak on any subject as the oldest,” she said scornfully. “I know perfectly well that Mom needs me when she is moving back into the new house, and I never expected to stay so long when I came, anyway.”
She stopped short, meditating on just what this queer, choky feeling was that had swept over her. She knew that she would have given up everything, the new friends she had made, and all the winter’s fun at Hope College, just to be safely back home.
13. Frank Apologizes
Kit was doing some homework in the library one Saturday morning, when all at once she was conscious of someone who stood at the west end of the room, looking at her. For a moment Kit was absolutely speechless, not believing the evidence of her own eyes. But the next minute Billie’s own laugh, when he found out he had been discovered, startled her with its reality.
“Billie Ellis,” she exclaimed, springing to her feet and scattering reference books and notepaper helter-skelter. “How on earth did you ever get way out here?”
Billie colored slightly, as he always did at any display of emotion, and tried to act as if it were the most natural and ordinary thing in the world for him to appear at Delphi, when he was supposed to be in Washington in school.
“We had our exams last week, and Frank had to come out to Minnesota for the government, so he took me along to help him.”
“Billie, are you really after bugs and things--I mean, are you going to really be a naturalist?”
“I guess you’d kind of call it being a business naturalist,” laughed Billie. “I don’t think I’ll ever live in a shack on a mountainside, and write beautiful things about them, now that I know Frank. You want to roll up your sleeves and pitch in like he does.”
“Is he here now?” asked Kit eagerly.
“Yep.” Billie nodded out of the window toward Kemp Hall, the boys’ dormitory. “After we found out that you didn’t live here, we were going on down to the Dean’s to find you, but he looked over the boys’ freshman class, and found he had a cousin or nephew or somebody on the list, Clayton Diggs.”
“I know him,” Kit said. “He’s awfully nice. I’ve got to be back for lunch, and you’re coming down with me, of course. How long can you stay?”
“Just this afternoon. We’re going back on the five forty-five, and catch the night express out of Chicago. If you wait here, I’ll chase after Frank, ’cause he’ll want to have lunch with the Diggs boy, and he can join us later.”
Kit walked along the path which crossed the campus. The coming of Billie unexpectedly, just at a time when she was feeling her first homesickness, struck Kit as a rare piece of luck. But with only five hours to visit with him, she knew it would be all the harder after he had gone. He joined her on a run as she reached the sidewalk, and they hurried down to the Dean’s just in time for lunch. Kit beamed when she introduced her friend from the hills to Della and the Dean.
“Don’t you remember, Uncle Bart,” she asked eagerly, “my talking about Billie? Well, here he is.”
The Dean’s gray eyes twinkled as he surveyed Billie over the tops of his glasses. “You come highly recommended, young man,” he said.
“You could have a lovely time studying over Uncle Bart’s Egyptian Scarabs, Bill,” said Kit. “Weren’t you telling me something about a place in China where they had a whole grove filled with sacred silkworms, Aunt Della? You see, Billie’s main interest is insects and birds.”
Miss Peabody smiled and nodded, looking from one young face to the other. Never before had youngsters sat lunching at that table with her and her brother in quite such a way. The Dean usually took his meals in absolute silence when they were alone together, for he held that desultory conversation disturbed his train of thought. But since Kit’s coming, it had been impossible to check her flow of talk, until now the Dean actually missed it if she happened not to be there.
After lunch they all went into the library to look over the Dean’s newly arrived treasures, the Amenotaph urn and the statue of Annui.
“Well, gol-lee,” exclaimed Kit, as she stood before the plain, squat, terra-cotta urn, “is that the royal urn? I expected to see something enormous, like everything else that is wonderful and ancient in Egypt.”
“My dear,” the Dean replied happily as he bent down to trace the curious, cuneiform markings that circled the urn. “This antedates the time of the Captivity and Moses. I cannot tell positively, until I have opened it and deciphered what I can of the papyrus rolls within. If it should go back to Moses, it will be wonderful. I cannot believe that it is contemporary with Nineveh. Della, you can recall how overjoyed I was when we unearthed that library of precious clay under the Nineveh mounds years ago. Think of reading something which was written by living man several thousand years before that.”
“What fun it must have been,” Billie remarked. “If you wanted to write anything in those days, you just picked up a handful of mud and made a little brick out of it, and wrote away with a stick, didn’t you?”
“Stylus, my boy, stylus,” corrected the Dean absently. “Yes, it did away with much of our modern detail.”
“Where’s the statue, Uncle Bart?” Kit asked.
“It’s just behind you, my dear. And it’s perfect. Perfect,” murmured the Dean.