Happy House.
by Jane D. Abbott.
CHAPTER I
THE LETTER
Through the stillness of a drowsy June day broke the intoning of the library bell, chiming the hour.
Three heads lifted quickly to listen. Three pairs of eyes met, the same thought flashed through three minds.
"Won"t we miss that bell, though? I"ve seen grads when they"ve come back stand perfectly still and listen to it with their eyes all weepy looking. That"s the way we"ll feel by and by," one of them said slowly.
"And the chimes used to make me dreadfully homesick! Don"t those frosh days seem ages ago?"
The third girl slammed the lid of the trunk that occupied the centre of the disordered room. She crossed to the window.
Over the stretch of green between the dormitory and the campus many people were slowly walking. Their fluffy dresses, their gay parasols, the aimlessness of their wandering steps marked them as visitors. The girl in the window frowned as she watched them.
"I always hate it when the campus fills up with gawking, staring people! It ought to be kept--sacred--just for us!"
One of the three laughed merrily in answer.
"How selfish that sounds, Claire! Haven"t all those people come to see one of us graduate? This is their day--ours is past." She stopped short. "Did you see Thelma King"s sister at the cla.s.s-day exercises?
She"s a _peach_! She"s going to enter next fall. She"s a leader in everything at the High where she goes. She"ll make a good college girl; you could see the right spirit in her face. How I envy her!
It"s dreadful when you think of new ones--coming--taking our places! I wish I was just beginning my Freshman year--I"d even be willing to endure Freshman math."
The third of the group who had been sitting on, the floor staring out over the tree tops with the dreamy gravity of one who--as long ago as yesterday--graduated from the great University, suddenly interrupted.
"Dear girls, cease your whining! What do those pieces of sheepskin reposing somewhere in the mess on yonder bureau stand for? Remember what that man said yesterday--how we mustn"t think this Commencement is the end of anything--it"s just the beginning. Why, this new world that"s been born out of the frightful war is full of work for our trained minds and hands! We mustn"t look back for a minute--we must look ahead!" Thrilled by her own words she leveled a reproachful glance upon her two companions.
Claire sighed. "I never could get the inspiration from things that you always seem to, Anne. I guess I"m not built right! I couldn"t make myself listen to _half_ that man said. I can"t think of anything right now but what a job it"s going to be getting everything into that trunk.
Mother was heartless not to stay over and do it for me!"
"Never mind, Claire, we"ll help you. Of course you and I can"t see things in the big, grand way that Anne can because she"s found herself and we haven"t. But when our work _does_ come we"ll do it! It may not be off in Siberia or China or Africa--like Anne"s--but, wherever it is, I guess our Alma Mater won"t be ashamed of us!" The girl"s eyes softened with the pa.s.sionate tenderness of the new graduate for her University.
Back in the freshman days a curious chance had drawn these three together. Then, for four years, years of hopeful effort, aspirations and youthful problems, the currents of their young lives had intermingled closely; now each must go its way. The moment brought the pang that comes to youth at such a parting. Their bonds were something closer than friendship. Behind them were months of the sweetest intimacy that youth can know--ahead were the lives they must live apart out in a world that cared nothing for college ideals and inspirations, where each must find her "work" and do it, so that "her Alma Mater might be proud!"
Statistics, even in a university, would be dull if, now and then, Fate did not play a trick with them. Upon the roster of the cla.s.s of Nineteen-nineteen had been entered two names: "Anne Leavitt, Los Angeles, California; Anne Leavitt, New York City."
When one thinks that in the great world war there was an army of, approximately, seventy-five thousand Smiths alone, and a whole division of John Smiths, one need not marvel that two Anne Leavitts came that October day to the old University. Doubtless, in those first trying days, they pa.s.sed one another often and did not know, but a week later, when Professor Nevin in First Year French, read slowly from his little leather book: "Miss Anne Leavitt," two girls jumped to their feet and in astonishment, faced one another.
"_I_ am Anne Leavitt!" spoke the larger of the two.
"And _I_ am Anne Leavitt, too!" laughed the smaller.
A snicker ran around the room. Professor Nevin frowned and stared--first at his little worn book and then at the two offending young women. Of course he was powerless to undo what had been done years before! And as he scowled, across the cla.s.sroom one Anne Leavitt smiled at the other. When the hour ended the recitation they walked away arm in arm, laughing over the ridiculous situation.
At the Library steps they were joined by another girl from the French cla.s.s. She had run in her eagerness to overtake them.
"Are you _really_ both Anne Leavitts?" she asked breathlessly.
They a.s.sured her solemnly that they were and that they didn"t know just what to do about it--old Professor Nevin had been so funny and upset.
They all three laughed again over it all. And there in the golden warmth of that October day began the friendship of these three--for the third girl was Claire Wallace.
The students in the University found countless ways of distinguishing between the two Anne Leavitts. One was tall and grave with a meditative look in her deep-set eyes; the other, a head shorter, had a lightness about her like an April day, reddish curly hair and an upturned nose. One Anne Leavitt had never been called anything but Anne, the other, since her baby days, had been Nancy. The more intimate of the college girls called them Big Anne and Little Anne.
The professors, dignified perforce, read from their rolls, "Miss Anne Leavitt, California--Miss Anne Leavitt, New York."
In name only were the two girls alike. Anne had been born with the legendary "silver spoon" and its mythical fortune. When her father and mother died a friend of her father"s, as guardian, had continued the well-regulated indulgence that had marked her childhood. Because she possessed an iron will and early acquired a seriousness and dignity beyond her years, she was always a leader in each of the boarding schools to which she progressed. Whatever Anne wanted to do she always did, and yet, in spite of it, she had reached her college days unspoiled, setting her strong will only for the best and obsessed with a pa.s.sionate longing for a service that would mean self-sacrifice.
She thought now she had found it! Two weeks from this very day she, would sail for a far-off village in Siberia to teach the peasant children there and bring to the pitiful captivity of Russian ignorance the enlightenment of American ideals. So big and wonderful seemed the adventure that, girl-like, she had paid little heed to the small details. Nancy and Claire Wallace worried more than she!
"You"ll never get enough to eat and how will you ever keep your clothes clean," sighed Claire, who loved pretty frocks.
"And we can"t send you things, either, for they"d never reach you--some of those awful Bolshevists would be sure to steal them!"
Madame Breshkovsky, the little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution, had made several visits to the University, and Anne, with the others, had listened over and over to her vivid, heartrending stories of the suffering needs of the children of the real Russia. It had been after such an evening that Anne had given herself to the cause. So that, when Nancy and Claire fretted excitedly over the hardships and dangers of the undertaking, she had only looked at them with the question in her grave, dark eyes: "What matters it if perhaps Anne Leavitt does lack a few clothes and food and some silly luxuries if she is doing a little, little bit to help her fellowmen?"
Nancy Leavitt, like the beloved Topsy, had just "growed up." To her chums, in her own spirited way, she had once described how: "Ever since I can remember there were always just Dad and I. When he wanted to go anywhere he used to pick me up like a piece of baggage and off we went.
Half the time I didn"t go to the same school two years in succession.
And he used to teach me, too. Oh, how homesick I was when I came here--without him. We"re just like pals!"
Nancy"s physical well-being had been watched over by nurses of almost every race and color. She knew a little Hindoo and from the old Hindoo "ayah" she had caught bits of Hindoo mysticism. She had romped and rolled with j.a.panese babies; she had lived on a ranch in Mexico until bandits had driven them away; she had trudged along behind her father over miles of trail in Alaska. And the only place she had ever called "home" was a tiny flat in New York, where her father kept the pretty furniture that Nancy"s mother had bought when a bride. Back to this they would come after long intervals, for a little respite from their wanderings, and for Nancy the homecoming was always an excitingly happy one from the moment she ran down to Mrs. Finnegan"s door for the key to the lugging out again of the two little trunks, which meant a sudden departure for some distant land.
College had brought a great change into this gypsy life and a grief at the separation from her "Dad." But as the weeks had pa.s.sed her letters to him read less and less like a wail of homesickness, and were filled more and more with the college happenings and whole pa.s.sages devoted to girlish descriptions of her new friends.
For the last two years her father had been overseas as senior newspaper correspondent with the American Expeditionary Force, and it would be weeks before he could return. That thought added now to the lonely ache in Nancy"s heart as she stared at her chums and wondered what it would seem like to live day after day without seeing them!
These three had trod together up the Paths of Learning until they were pa.s.sing now the Gateway of Life; and yet, right at that moment, all of them, even Anne, felt childishly lonely and homesick for the shelter of the University they were leaving.
That was why the chiming of the Library clock, that had marked the pa.s.sage of happy time for more than one generation of youth, brought a shadow across each of the three young faces.
A little wistfulness crept into Nancy"s voice. "Your life"s all cut out for you, Anne. It"s positively thrilling! Though I"d make an awful mess out of any such undertaking. And Claire has her family.
I"ll just go to New York and get the key from Mother Finnegan and work like mad on the "Child." I want to finish it before Dad comes home. I shall send it, then, to Theodore Hoffman himself--I might as well hitch my wagon to the tiptoppest star--or whatever it is you do! Of course it isn"t as grand as going to Russia, but I"m going to work, and some day, maybe, I"ll be famous all over the world!"
"Little Anne Leavitt, the great dramatist!" murmured Big Anne fondly.
Claire Wallace, confronting nothing more serious than the squeezing of her belongings into the huge trunk, was stirred with envy. Nancy had her "Child"--not a youngster but a growing pile of ma.n.u.script, Anne had her "crusade" among the unfortunate children of Siberia--she had nothing ahead but to join her family at their summer home, an estate that covered hundreds of acres on Long Island.
"I wish you"d come home with me, first, Nancy! You heard mother say how much she wanted you to come and we will have a beautiful time and then you can see Barry."
Nancy frowned sternly. She had several reasons for frowning--she thought. Of course she would really like to go to Merrycliffe with Claire; she loved to frolic, and the last term had been a pretty hard grind, but her whole future depended upon her finishing her play and Claire simply must _not_ coax her! Then the other reason was Barry.
Barry was Claire"s brother recently returned from long service in France, decorated by each of the allied countries. Toward him Nancy and Anne, quite secretly, felt an unreasonable and growing dislike.
Neither of them had ever laid eyes on him but, ignoring the injustice, based their antipathy solely on the fact that "Claire talks of nothing but Barry until you feel like shutting your ears!"
Nancy had, more than once, declared that "she could just see him strutting around with all his medals, letting everyone make a lion of him, and she loathed handsome men, anyway--they lacked character" and Anne said "_her_ heart went out to those boys whose every minute in the trenches had been an unrecognized and unrecorded act of heroism." Of course they both carefully kept their real feelings from little Claire, who was too dear to them to ever hurt in any way, so that, when she talked "Barry," if they were only politely attentive, in her proud enthusiasm, she never noticed.
Now Nancy, instead of saying truthfully that "_she_ wasn"t going to spend her summer helping make a parlor pet out of the "lion,"" simply shook her head and frowned.