Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus Part 22

Suppose Evelyn had involved herself in some fresh difficulty. To Grace the thought was distinctly disturbing. Still she felt that it was not within her province to interfere. After all it might be nothing of vital importance, merely a girls' disagreement.

Resolutely dismissing the matter from her mind, Grace thought no more of it. That evening Evelyn came to her as she sat reading in the living room and, in her most distant manner, notified Grace that she intended to go to the dance to be given by the Gamma Kappa Phi, a Willston fraternity, at their fraternity house. Miss Hilton, a member of the Overton faculty, would chaperon her. There were four other freshmen besides herself invited.

Grace made no objection to Evelyn's announcement. After the severe reprimand she had received it was hardly probable that Evelyn would again misrepresent matters. Quite by accident the next day she encountered Miss Hilton upon the campus, and the teacher confirmed Evelyn's story by mentioning the dance and inquiring if Grace had been asked to do chaperon duty. "I am surprised that you weren't," had been Miss Hilton's comment when Grace answered that her services had not been solicited.

Grace had smiled to herself as she went on her way. She was not in the least surprised at not being invited by Evelyn to play chaperon. She was glad that she had not been asked. She decided that she would not have accepted. The dance was to be held on the Friday evening of the following week, and on the Sat.u.r.day morning after she would be on her way to Oakdale.

How long and yet how short the days seemed that lay between her and home. Long because of her impatience to see her father and mother, short because of the multifold details to be attended to in Harlowe House.

"I'm so tired," she sighed when, at seven o'clock on Friday evening, she saw her trunk and Emma's safely in the hands of the expressman. "Thank goodness our packing is done and gone and out of the way. Let's do recreation stunts to-night, Emma. Suppose we call upon Kathleen and Patience. Incidentally we can pay our respects to Laura Atkins and Mildred Taylor. If they aren't busy we might have a quiet celebration just for auld lang syne at Vinton's. We can be home by ten o'clock."

"All right," agreed Emma, who knelt on the floor, her gla.s.ses pushed above her forehead, wrestling valiantly with a refractory strap of her suit case. A moment and she had buckled it into place with a triumphant cluck. "There, that won't have to be done at the last minute. Shall I telephone the girls that we are coming? It's after seven now."

"Yes, do."

Emma left the room returning shortly.

"They are all at home. The sooner we reach Wayne Hall the sooner the celebration will begin," she reminded.

"Then we'll go at once."

Five minutes later the two young women were on their way across the campus. As they neared Wayne Hall a limousine pa.s.sed containing Miss Hilton, Althea Parker and a freshman friend of Evelyn's. Althea was driving. She bowed curtly to Grace and Emma as her car whizzed by them.

"They are going for Evelyn, I suppose," commented Emma.

"Yes. Oh, bother!" exclaimed Grace, "I've forgotten a letter to Arline which I must mail to-night. Will you wait until I go back for it?"

With light feet Grace sped across the campus, letting herself into the house with her latch key. As she stepped into the hall, a buzz of voices caused her eyes to be fixed on the living-room. Through the parted curtains she saw a dazzling figure which was standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by a group of admiring girls.

It was Evelyn, looking like some wonderful fairy vision in a gown of apricot satin and chiffon, embroidered with exquisite little sprays of tiny rosebuds. The excitement of wholesale admiration had deepened the blue of her eyes to violet and her usual expression of bored indifference had changed to one of intense animation, due to her love of adulation. Grace watched her fascinatedly for a moment, then, remembering that Emma was waiting for her, she hurried on upstairs for her letter and out of the house, un.o.bserved by the group of girls in the living room.

"Was I gone long?" she asked as she rejoined her friend. "I stopped for a minute in the hall to look at Evelyn Ward. She was posing in the middle of the living room for the benefit of an admiring populace. She is going to the Gamma Kappa Phi dance. Miss Hilton and Miss Parker and some of our girls composed the populace. I suppose I ought to have gone in and spoken to them instead of slipping out like a criminal, but I didn't wish to lose time. Really, Emma, I can't begin to tell you how beautiful Evelyn looked!"

"Her white silk evening gown is a work of art. I wish I had a sister Ida to sew for me," commented Emma.

"Oh, she wasn't wearing her white silk. Her gown was apricot satin and--" Grace came to an abrupt stop. "Why--she--that was a new gown. How could she--"

"Have a new gown when her sister is too ill to make it," supplemented Emma dryly.

Two pairs of eyes exchanged questioning glances.

"She may have brought it with her when she came to Overton," said Grace.

"She is very secretive, you know. All along she may have been saving it for some such occasion as this dance."

"True enough," admitted Emma. "Always take people at their face value until you find they haven't any," she added cheerfully.

"I shall," declared Grace. "I'm not going to spoil my Easter vacation by worrying over something that is really Evelyn's own affair."

CHAPTER XXI

THE PUZZLE DEEPENS

Grace experienced a pleasure in being at home for Easter so deep as to be akin to pain. When as a student at Overton she had traveled happily home for her Christmas and Easter vacations there had been a difference.

Then, her cla.s.smates had much to do with making it easier to be away from her adored father and mother. But now that she had bravely launched her boat on the tempestuous sea of work, she found that home was a far distant sh.o.r.e, for whose cheery lights she often yearned. To be sure Emma was a never-failing source of consolation, but there were more times than one when the clutching fingers of homesickness were at her throat.

To Mr. and Mrs. Harlowe, Emma Dean was an unfailing source of amus.e.m.e.nt and delight. In Hippy, too, she found a kindred spirit, and when Elfreda arrived the funny trio was complete. It seemed to Grace that she had not laughed so much in years. Anne, Jessica and Reddy had not been able to join their friends for the Easter holidays and were loudly mourned and sorely missed. Tom Gray managed to come on for a two days' visit and cause Grace the only unhappy moments she spent at home by again asking her to give up her beloved work to marry him.

"I'm so sorry for Tom," she confided to her mother, on the night before leaving home to return to Overton, "but I can't give up my work, even for him. Really and truly, mother, I wish I did love Tom in the way he wants me to love him, but I don't. I feel toward him just as I felt when I first met him. He's a good comrade; nothing more."

"If you loved Tom, your father and I would be glad to welcome him as our son, Grace," was her mother's quiet reply. "He is a remarkably fine type of young man, but unless you reach the point where you are certain that he is, and always will be, the one man in the world for you, you would be doing not only yourself but him too, the greatest possible injury if you promised to marry him."

"That is just it!" exclaimed Grace. "I told him so, but I know that didn't console him. Last June when I came home from Overton I thought perhaps I might say 'yes' later on. But now that I've been working for almost a year I find I'd rather keep on working. It would be dreadful, of course, if some day I should suddenly discover that I did love him enough to marry him and then he shouldn't ask me. That isn't likely to happen. I don't believe I could give up my work for any man. My whole heart is in it."

In spite of her declaration of unswerving loyalty to her work, more than once, Tom's fine resolute face rose before Grace on the return journey to Overton. During the afternoon Emma, usually loquacious, became absorbed in a book, so that Grace, who could not settle herself to read, had altogether too much opportunity for reflection.

She was inwardly thankful when the lights of Overton twinkled into view.

Emma was still deep in her book. "We are almost there, Emma," she reminded.

Emma glanced out of the window, then closed her book and began to gather up her belongings.

"I wonder how things are at Harlowe House," mused Grace, as they crossed the station platform. "Come on, Emma. There's a taxicab just turning into the station driveway."

Three minutes later they were speeding through the silent streets. It was after nine o'clock and there were few persons pa.s.sing.

"No place like home," caroled Emma as they let themselves into Harlowe House. In the living-room they found Louise Sampson and half a dozen girls. At sight of Grace and Emma, Louise came quickly forward.

"We thought you would come!" she exclaimed, "so we decided to watch for you. We have hot chocolate and sandwiches. Do say you're hungry."

"We are ravenous," a.s.sured Emma, "and as soon as we make a trip upstairs and dispossess ourselves of our goods and chattels we'll come to the party."

"Everything has gone beautifully," Louise confided to Grace, when later she dropped down on the window seat beside her, where the latter had established herself with a sandwich and a cup of chocolate. "Only one thing bothered me, and that was the way Miss Reynolds moped. She and Miss Ward had a quarrel and poor Miss Reynolds still goes about looking like a red-eyed little ghost. No one can find out her trouble and no one seems to be able to comfort her. One day last week I almost thought I saw Miss Ward crying too, but I must have been mistaken. She is too proud to cry over anything. There are several letters for you, Miss Harlowe. I put them in the top drawer of your desk in the office."

At the word "letters" Grace had risen to her feet. "You'll excuse me if I go for them at once, won't you?" she asked.

"Of course," smiled Louise.

A goodly pile of letters met her eyes as she opened the drawer. Grace ran through the envelopes with eager fingers. The square thin envelope with the foreign postmark meant a letter from Eleanor Savelli. There was one from Mabel Ashe and another from Mabel Allison, Arline Thayer and Ruth Denton were also represented in the collection and on the very bottom of the pile lay a square envelope addressed in Anne's neat hand.

Grace pounced upon it joyfully, and, laying the others on the slide of her desk, tore it open and became immediately absorbed in the closely written sheets. When she had finished reading the letter she laid it down, then picking it up again turned to a paragraph on the last sheet.

"I promised to try to help Miss Ward," wrote Anne. "Well, I have practically secured an engagement for her with Mr. Forest. It is an ingenue part in 'The Reckoning,' which is to run in New York City all summer, at his theater. If she can come to New York as soon as college closes Mr. and Miss Southard wish her to stay at their home. We can soon tell whether she can play the part or not. If she can't, Mr. Southard will be able to give her 'bits' in his company, but the other part is by far the best engagement if she can make good in it. Both Mr. and Miss Southard say, however, that they must have a letter of consent from her sister before they will undertake launching her in the theatrical world.

They will write her if Miss Ward wishes them to do so. It is a really great opportunity for her. You know how easily and delightfully I earned my way through college. Let me know as soon as you can, Grace, what she wishes to do."

Grace read this paragraph half a dozen times. Her other letters lay unheeded before her. Finally she gathered them up and, with the open letter in her hand, went slowly upstairs. At Evelyn's door she paused and listened. She heard the sound of some one moving about within. Yes, Evelyn was still up. Grace rapped boldly on the door.