CHAPTER X

“FOR A LAGGARD IN LOVE AND A DASTARD IN WAR”

It seemed to Jan that each day was full of happenings of late. She was so much interested and had become so much a part of the life around her that she had not time to be homesick any more. First of all, there was Sydney and his affairs, which troubled her, though he had told her that her five dollars had purchased him temporary relief, and that he was considering ways of taking her advice and of earning money after school hours with which to pay his indebtedness.

And, strangely enough, there was Gladys, though nothing had seemed less likely than that this particular cousin should ever engross Jan’s thoughts.

The vague rumors floating about the Misses Larned’s school of great things to be done at Christmas had crystallized into the delightfully definite announcement that the girls were to give a play. And these thrilling tidings were followed by the still more exciting news that Gladys had been chosen for the principal part--that of an unfortunate princess, who, at the end of the play, came into her own again--from which Gwen, whose talent exceeded her sister’s, was excluded because of her height. The secret leaked out that the only competitor with Gladys in the minds of the teachers who made the cast was Daisy Hammond, and it did not tend to soothe the feelings of that young lady, already deeply chagrined that Gladys had been preferred to her. But she did not allow her wounded vanity to make any difference in her friendship for Gladys, treating her with more rather than less affection during these trying days, a fact to which Gladys triumphantly called Gwen’s attention as “perfectly sweet and dear of Daisy.”

There came a day--a dreadful day--however, less than a week after the matter of the distribution of the parts had been settled when the elder Miss Larned--and the more awful Miss Larned, if there were degrees in the awe-inspiring qualities of the sisters--came into the class-room and announced that for reasons into which it was not necessary to enter, but which were deemed quite sufficient by the faculty, the principal part in the Christmas play had been transferred from Miss Gladys Graham to Miss Daisy Hammond. Miss Gladys, she added, had been assigned the rôle of second court lady.

There was a silence more profound than mere absence of speech as this announcement fell on the ears of the first class, and it realized what it meant. “Second court lady!” Why, it was only a “thinking part,” a mere figure which trailed in and out, swelling the number of attendants on the principals in the play! What could have happened? For evidently this was a punishment inflicted upon Gladys, but for what? All eyes turned upon the deposed princess, who sat staring at the desk whence her sentence had proceeded, turning rapidly every shade and color of which the human countenance is capable, tears starting to her eyes, her lips quivering, but with such a look of blank amazement visible through her grief that most of her mates decided on the spot that whatever might be wrong Gladys was as ignorant of it as they were. Daisy Hammond’s face wore a look of gentle commiseration and regret, combined with wonder. She kept looking toward Gladys and raising her eyebrows inquiringly, while she shook her head in a vaguely expressive manner. As soon as recess came a buzz of voices rose on every side, and all the girls rushed to Gladys to ask what she had done to offend Miss Larned and receive such a crushing blow. They found Daisy Hammond with her arms around her friend, begging her to tell her what had happened to make Miss Larned do “such a horrid, horrid thing,” and assuring her that she would not “think of playing a part which had been taken from darling Gladys.”

“There hasn’t the least bit of a thing happened,” Gladys said in reply to the chorus of inquiries. “I don’t know anything more about it than you do. But I don’t care. If they want Daisy to play the princess, let her play it. The only thing I hate is being disgraced like this before the whole school, all for nothing.”

“Go to Miss Larned and ask her why she has changed her mind,” advised Dorothy Schuyler. “Tell her we all think she is offended with you, and you think so, too, and tell her you aren’t asking to be given the part, but you do ask for a chance to defend yourself if she thinks you have done wrong.”

“That’s the thing to do, Glad,” said Gwen decidedly. “Come on. I’ll go with you, and if she isn’t fair to you I’ll throw up my part, and so will Jan.”

An irrepressible gleam of triumph which shot across Daisy Hammond’s face before she could repress it, and a quick glance between her and Ida Hammond and Flossie Gilsey, did not escape the keen eyes of “Miss Lochinvar,” whose suspicions were alert. Nor was she less sure that she had seen the glance when Flossie Gilsey said sweetly: “You won’t spoil the play, Gwen! You know no one could take your place.”

This was strictly true, for Gwen had real dramatic talent and had been given a rôle requiring more acting than that of the heroine, for she was the leader of the princess’s enemies and had some telling lines and situations.

“I certainly shall not care about spoiling the play, even if my getting out of it did spoil it, if my sister is unjustly treated,” said Gwen. “Come on, Gladys. We’ll let you know, girls, what Miss Larned says.”

The Grahams came back before many minutes, Gladys in tears, Gwen with a flushed and angry face. “She won’t explain one bit,” said Gwen. “She says it is a matter of which the least said the sooner it’s mended. She insists that Gladys understands, and she says that is all that is necessary.”

“But you don’t understand, Gladys?” asked Cena North.

Gladys gave her head a despairing shake. “Not any more than you do--not any more than if I had just landed from China and couldn’t speak a word of English,” she said. “I do think it is the meanest thing!”

The summons to return to the class-room came at that moment, as a corroborative murmur arose on all sides.

“Did you tell her you wouldn’t act?” whispered Daisy Hammond to Gwen. But Gwen shook her head. “I said nothing about any one but Gladys--_yet_,” she replied. Gwen, like Jan, was suspicious of treachery.

Gladys was escorted home by the sympathizing trio with whom she most consorted, but Gwen and Jan walked home together, holding an indignation meeting as they walked.

“Those Hammonds are as sweet as pie to Glad, but I wouldn’t trust them,” Gwen said. “Daisy Hammond was wild to be the princess, and she knew if Gladys could be got out of it she would be put in, for she was second choice for the part in the first place. I’m just certain that crowd is at the bottom of it!”

“So am I,” Jan agreed. “Let’s try to find out what they’ve done and straighten it out! It’s a perfect shame not to give a girl a chance to explain. I’m so sorry for Gladys! I’ll never rest till it’s made right.”

“What a trump you are, Jan,” said Gwen, stopping short to gaze admiringly at her cousin. “You never bear the least grudge. Glad has been perfectly nasty to you often, and now she’s in trouble you’d do anything to pull her through!”

Jan colored. “I’m not a saint, Gwen,” she said. “I don’t enjoy being snubbed, but I think it’s mean and low to try to get square with people. If you can’t fight a thing out at the time, drop it, I say. I just despise people who keep up and keep up and dwell on fusses--even if they were in the right in the first place that puts them in the wrong, to my way of thinking. I don’t believe that’s goodness in me. I do so hate such petty ways of quarreling. I’d feel low and ill-bred if I remembered rows and waited a chance to get square. However, as to Gladys, I don’t want to get square with her. I’ve been sorry she didn’t like me, but I don’t feel any spite toward her. Besides, she’s my cousin, my blessed mother’s own niece, and your sister, and Syd’s sister, and the sister of all of you, and it would be a queer thing if I wouldn’t stand by my own cousin.”

Gwen, remembering how she had scolded Gladys for not standing by this very “own cousin” of hers, still thought it fine in Jan to be so generous, but she continued her way without further expression of that opinion, resuming her animated discussion of Gladys’s wrongs.

That afternoon Gwen and Jan went to see the Misses Larned in the freedom of hours out of school. They intended firmly, though respectfully to decline to appear in the play if their teachers persisted in refusing to allow Gladys opportunity of clearing herself of whatever she might be accused.

Jan’s part was insignificant, for she was not suspected of histrionic ability, nor was her experience in acting in the barn in distant Crescendo known to “the Hydra’s” heads, but Gwen was a loss which threatened the play with disaster, and Miss Larned--the elder and the only one whom the girls found at home--stooped from her dignified height to expostulate with her.

“It is quite natural and in one sense laudable that you should espouse Gladys’s cause, Gwendoline,” she said. “But I assure you, you are mistaken in so doing. We are justified in making the change that has been made, and we are acting kindly in making it with no complaint of Gladys--merely making it. Gladys understands perfectly why it is done, and you should trust us--trust me, in fact--sufficiently to assume that I am acting wisely.”

“Miss Larned,” said Gwen, trying to control the wrath this stately speech aroused, but betraying it in her heightened color, “you think you are acting wisely, but I think--we all think--you are dreadfully mistaken. As to Gladys’s knowing what all this is about, I was with her when she solemnly told you that she did not know. Gladys has plenty of faults, but in all the fourteen years of her life I never knew her to tell an untruth if you asked her anything straight out, as you did this morning. When Gladys says she doesn’t know, _she doesn’t know_. And if it comes to trusting any one, I must trust my own sister’s word when I know I can. If Gladys was untruthful I would be fair enough to own it--to myself, anyway--and keep still. But lying is not a Graham fault, and I know Gladys is in the dark about what makes you take her part from her. And I want to ask you if you think it is fair to condemn any one without a hearing?”

“I can not allow you to question my judgment, Gwendoline,” said Miss Larned. “The matter is closed.”

“Very well. Then I must ask to be excused from taking any part in the play, Miss Larned,” said Gwen rising, with hardly less dignity than Miss Larned herself.

“Gwendoline, you will put us to serious inconvenience. There is no one in the school competent to act the part assigned you save yourself,” said Miss Larned. “You should have the success of the play, the honor of your school, when strangers will come to witness your efforts, sufficiently at heart to sacrifice something for it.”

“I have the honor of my sister a little nearer my heart than the honor of the school, Miss Larned,” said Gwen. “I care more what people think of Gladys than what they think of the acting, though I would have worked hard to make that play go. But as to any one taking my place, my Cousin Janet here has been trying my part at home and she acts it better than I do. She has acted a great deal before she came to New York. She could do it, if she would. I certainly must resign it under the circumstances.”

Jan looked at Gwen in surprise at this suggestion, not guessing that it was a bit of pure malice, intended to heighten Miss Larned’s regret.

That lady turned to Jan graciously. “Janet an actress!” she exclaimed. “I am surprised. Though Janet has shown such admirable scholarship since we had the pleasure of receiving her into our care, I do not know why I should wonder at discovering this accomplishment to be hers. Then, my child, if your cousin persists in her refusal to listen to reason, and to injure herself and us for her sister’s sake, I will give her part to you, if you are as capable of performing it as she thinks you.”

“Thank you, Miss Larned,” said Jan hastily, “but I wouldn’t take it for the world. I feel just as Gwen does about Gladys--of course, because an own cousin is the very next thing to your sister--and I must give up even the little part in the play which I have already learned. I wouldn’t take part in it for anything unless Gladys has a chance to clear herself of whatever you think she has done and is proved guilty. Neither Gwen nor I would take her part if she deserved punishment. We only want you, please, to let her know what she is accused of.”

“I have told you that she already knows. If she does not choose to tell you, that is her own affair. I must wish you good-day, young ladies. I really have no time to waste on arguments with my pupils.” And Miss Larned made them a curt bow of dismissal and sailed from the room, leaving them to find their way out as they could. She was not dull enough to fail to perceive that Gwen had suggested Jan’s acting merely for the pleasure of hearing the girl refuse to accept the part.

With this small satisfaction to comfort her, Gwen returned slowly with Jan to her home. It was maddening to feel that the Christmas festivities were to end in disgrace to Gladys, loss of her own part in the play, which Gwen could not help knowing she could act well, and universal discomfort. And still less endurable was the situation to both Gwen and Jan that they felt convinced that Gladys’s friends had acted treacherously toward her and that they were powerless to prove their theory or bring about justice.