CHAPTER XIV

“TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE”

Fortunately the two girls had not to spend a minute in looking for Jean, for no sooner had they entered the front hall of the school than she was seen talking with a group of friends.

“Hello,” she cried, pleased to find that Gerry and Olive had been out together for a walk and grateful for what she thought Gerry’s friendliness to Olive.

Olive went straight up to her, too much in earnest to be abashed by the presence of others. “Come on up to our sitting room, Jean,” she begged, “for Gerry and I have something to talk to you about that must be decided at once.”

It was a pity that Olive must be in such a hurry, Gerry thought a little impatiently, and also a pity that she had used her name in speaking to Jean and plainly wished her to be present at their coming interview, for there was, of course, a possibility that Jean might be a good deal vexed at her interference. But as Jean left her other friends immediately, slipping one arm through Olive’s and another through Gerry’s and propelling them as rapidly as she could up the broad stairs, what was there for Gerry to do but to surrender and let things take their course?

“Whatever weighty problem there is on your mind, Olive Ralston, that you wish me to help you solve,” Jean exclaimed gaily, as they reached their own door, “kindly remember that three heads are better than one, even if one is a dunce’s head, else I should never have allowed Geraldine Ferrows to be present at our council.” And giving each of the girls an added shove, the three of them plunged headlong into the sitting room.

Frieda was not to be seen, but to their surprise there before their open fire Jessica Hunt sat peacefully, holding a large open box of flowers on her lap, with her cheeks a good deal flushed, possibly from the heat of the fire.

“I beg your pardon, children, for having taken possession of your apartment in this way,” she explained, “but I happen to have a present for you sent through my care and it seemed to me that the surest way to find you was to wait at your own hearthstone until you chose to appear.” While Jessica was speaking she was holding out the box of flowers toward Jean and Olive. “Mr. Drummond has sent you these with a note to me asking me to see that you get them.”

With cries of delight the two ranch girls, pouncing on the great box, which was brimful of violets, buried their noses in its fragrances.

“They are just too lovely and too Rainbow ranchy for anything,” Jean exclaimed, thrusting a bunch into Gerry’s hand. “Won’t Frieda be homesick for her violet beds when she sees them, even if she is so enraptured with boarding school that she hardly talks of home any more?”

While Jean was speaking Olive was busily lifting the flowers from the box. Just toward the last she discovered a separate bouquet, wrapped in white paper and bearing a card with a name inscribed upon it.

“This is for you, Miss Hunt; it has your name upon it,” Olive announced, trying to look entirely unconscious, although she and Jean both guessed at once that the gift of the large box of flowers to them had been made largely in order to include the smaller offering inside it.

Jessica, assuming a far-away expression of complete indifference, took the flowers; they were lilies of the valley encircled with violets and it was difficult for any girl to conceal her delight in them.

Watching her with her head slightly to one side and a dangerously demure look on her face, Jean said suddenly, “I wonder, Miss Hunt, how long you have known our Mr. Drummond? You see, we are awfully fond of him and he has been very good to all of us, especially to Jack. Sometimes I have wondered if he could think you and Jack look a little bit alike? Olive and I think you do. But we don’t know anything about Mr. Drummond except that he is terribly rich and terribly good looking and very kind. Can’t you tell us something more?”

Jessica shook her head gravely. “I am afraid that is all I can tell you about Peter, I mean Mr. Drummond, that is of any importance. Just that he is rich and good looking and kind. He is so rich that he has never done anything or been anything else, and I have known him a great many years, since I was a small girl and he was a big boy and we used to live near one another in Washington Square, before my father died and we lost some of our money.”

“Well,” Jean returned reflectively, “it seems to me that it is a good deal to be just rich and good looking and kind, for there are lots of people who are not one of those three things.”

And though Jessica was not feeling especially happy at the moment, Jean’s words made her smile. “That is true, dear,” she returned, “but I am afraid that I want a man to be more and to mean more in this world than just that.” She was about to leave the room when Olive put her hand on her arm. “Don’t go, Jessica, Miss Hunt I mean,” she apologized, “but I so often think of you as a girl like the rest of us. I want to talk to Jean about something and I wish you to stay to help me make her behave sensibly.”

Still unsuspicious of what Olive had in mind, but realizing now that it was important, else she would not have called in so many persons to her assistance, Jean put down her flowers and coming up to her friend placed one hand on each of her shoulders, looking closely with her own autumn-toned brown eyes into her friend’s darker ones.

“Out with it, Olive Ralston. What on earth is it that you wish me to do that requires so much persuasion?”

And Olive, equally in earnest, likewise put her hands on Jean’s shoulders, so that the two girls made an unconscious picture illustrating the old proverb: “United we stand, divided we fall.”

“I want you, Jean, please not to be a goose,” Olive pleaded.

Gay laughter rang out in response. “I knew, Olive, from the first that you were going to ask me something I could not grant,” Jean returned plaintively. “Has any one in this world ever heard of a goose who chose to be one?”

Her listeners could not help smiling, but Olive’s mood was too intense for interruption. Without allowing Jean another opportunity for a moment’s speech she began her request, imploring her to join the Theta Society at once and not to put it off a day longer than necessary. “For how, dear, can you do me the least good by not belonging when the girls want you so much and when if you don’t you may lose your chance at the Junior election,” she ended.

“And who, Olive, has been telling you that I am not already a member of the Theta Society and that my chance for the presidency will be influenced if I am not?” Jean inquired angrily, although she did not glance toward any one for her answer save Olive.

But Gerry Ferrows was not in the least a coward, neither did she feel in any sense a traitor either to Jean or to Olive, so now she moved quietly forward.

“I told Olive, Jean,” she answered, “and you may be angry with me, but I have no intention of playing a sneak. For the life of me I cannot see how it will hurt Olive for you to join the Thetas without her and it will hurt you very much in your election if you don’t. Olive is not going to be invited to become a member if you stay out and you may lose the class presidency if you are so obstinate.”

Olive turned to Jessica Hunt. “Won’t you please tell Jean that Gerry is perfectly right and that there is no other way of looking at this matter?” she entreated. “She will just break my heart if she does not, and I can’t see a bit of sense in her position.”

“I can,” Jessica answered briefly, “but I would rather not say anything at all until I have heard just how Jean feels about this whole business.”

A grateful look was flashed at her, but Jean moved first toward Gerry.

“I am awfully sorry I was cross, Gerry,” she murmured, “because of course I know you are being good as gold to me and only acting for what you believe to be my good, but I don’t think either you or Olive in the least understand my position. I am not staying out of the Theta Society for Olive’s sake; I am staying out for my own.”

“But that can’t be possible,” both the other girls urged.

“Gerry Ferrows,” Jean said, “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to think quietly of what your opinion of another girl would be (leaving me out of the case entirely) if that girl should win out in a big matter like a class election by turning her back on her best friend and more than her friend, her almost sister. And you, Olive, suppose you had no part in this business at all, or suppose you and I had changed places, what would you think of a girl who would say to another group of girls, ‘Yes, thank you, I am very grateful indeed to you for permitting me to enjoy your superior society, even if you do think the people whom I love and who belong to my family are not worthy of association with you?’ I, of course, am humbly delighted to be a renegade and a traitor if you will just let me play with you.” And Jean’s brown eyes were flashing and her face was pale, yet she laughed a little at her own fierceness.

“Oh, I won’t pretend that I didn’t think at first of doing just this thing that you girls are begging me to do,” she went on, “and I argued it all out in my own mind that I wouldn’t hurt Olive by joining the Theta’s, but I never could persuade myself that such an action would not hurt me. See here, dear,” and Jean’s usually merry lips were trembling as she spoke again directly to Olive. “How could it injure you for me to forget our friendship and happy years together at the ranch, for wouldn’t you still be true and loyal and devoted to me? But poor little me, and what would I be? Wouldn’t I have to live with myself day time and night time knowing exactly what kind of a wretch I was? No, sir-ee,” and here Jean struck a highly dramatic attitude, pretending to slip her fingers inside an imaginary coat. “In the words of that famous gentleman, whether Henry Clay, or Patrick Henry, or Daniel Webster, I can’t remember, ‘I would rather be right than President!’”

“Bravo, Jean,” called Jessica’s voice from the doorway, “I take off my hat to you! Gerry, Olive, please don’t argue this question any further with Jean, for she has just said something that we all know to be a fact: ‘To thine own self be true. Thou canst not then be false to any man.’”

Gerry cleared her throat, pulling at her short hair rather like an embarrassed boy than a clever girl of seventeen. “All right, Jean,” she conceded; “maybe you are right, and of course you are if you feel as you say you do, so I shall not try to make you change your opinion.”

But Olive, equally miserable and unconvinced, standing alone in the center of the room, said to Jean, “You are dreadfully good, but I don’t care what you say, I simply can’t allow you to sacrifice yourself in the way you are doing for me. I must find out how to prevent it and I warn you now that I shall write to Jack and have her ask you to change your mind.”

Jean only laughed. “It would be so like old Jack to ask a fellow to be a poor sport,” she teased, “but for goodness sake don’t let us talk about this tedious subject any longer and do let us put the kettle on and all take tea, for I have talked so much I am nearly dying of thirst.”

Around a small table the four girls placed themselves, the ranch girls getting out their tins of cakes and chocolates kept for just such occasions, and nothing more of a serious character was said until they were all comfortably sipping their tea. And then Jean turned to Olive.

“Look here, Olive, I want to ask Gerry a question, if it won’t hurt your feelings too much, and while Miss Hunt is here with us it seems to me the best time to ask it. Gerry, of course we have known for some time that there has been some gossip about Olive going the rounds of the school, but we have never known who started it nor just what the story is. Would you mind telling us?”

Instead of answering Gerry hesitated, her homely, kindly face showing nervousness and discomfort.

“Is the story just that Olive does not know who her parents are and that we ranch girls found her several years ago with an Indian woman and that she may be of part Indian blood?” Jean continued inexorably.

Gerry nodded her head. “Yes, and the story came originally through the Harmons, I believe, though they meant no harm.”

“Is that all the tale or has anything else been added?” her questioner continued. And Gerry answered with her eyes on her saucer, “Yes, that is all.”

“Then please tell every girl at Primrose Hall that what they have heard is perfectly true,” Jean blazed, although she was trying to speak calmly. “I can see now that we have made a mistake; it would have been better if we had been perfectly candid about Olive’s past from the first. There never has been a minute when we would have minded telling it, if any one of the girls had come and asked us, but lately I have thought that some extra story must have been hatched up about poor Olive and joined to the true one, for I simply couldn’t believe that any human beings could be so horrid and so stupid as the Primrose Hall girls have been to Olive, unless they had been told something perfectly dreadful about her. Well, I don’t think I care a snap about being class president of such a set of girls,” Jean added impolitely, forgetting one of her guests. “Olive Ralston, I don’t believe you are any more an Indian than I am, but I want to say just this one more thing and then I positively promise to stop talking: For my part I would rather have good red Indian blood in my veins than the kind of thin white blood that must run in the veins of such a horrid set of snobs. Gerry, dear, I do beg your pardon and of course I don’t mean you, but if I hadn’t been allowed to speak this out loud, I should certainly have exploded.”

Gerry’s head dropped. “Well, perhaps I have belonged to the snobs, too, Jean,” she answered truthfully, “but if Olive will forgive me and make up, perhaps some day we may be friends.”

Slowly the sitting-room door now opened and a languid figure, clothed in a marvelous dressing gown of pale blue silk and lace, with yellow hair piled high on its head, entered the room. “What on earth is Jean preaching about?” the voice of no other person than the youngest Miss Ralston inquired. “I have just been across the hall with Mollie and Lucy Johnson and I declare she has been talking steadily for an hour.”

Jessica Hunt made some laughing explanation, but Olive and Jean could only stare in amazement at Frieda. Where on earth had she gotten so marvelous a kimono? It really looked like a stage affair. But at this instant, beholding the violets, Frieda, forgetting her grown-up manner for a moment, jumped at them. “Aren’t they too beau-ti-ful?” she said like the small girl who once had taken care of her own violet beds at The Rainbow Lodge.