Miss Ashton's New Pupil Part 10

It was a relief to all the teachers when the Friday night came. The girls in gala dress crowded early into the hall; Miss Ashton and the teachers, also in full dress, followed them soon; and five minutes before the time appointed for the opening of the evening entertainment the hush of expectation made the room almost painfully still.

Miss Ashton had requested that the pieces should be sent in to her the previous day. She had been surprised more at their number than their excellence, indeed, there was but one that did not, on the whole, disappoint her; that one delighted her.

She intended to read, not the best only, but the poorest, thinking, perhaps, as good a lesson as could come to the careless or the incapable would come from that sure touchstone of the value of any writing,--its public reception.

The names were to be concealed; that had been understood from the beginning, yet, with the exception of Kate Underwood, who was more used to the public of their small world than any of the others, there was not a girl there who had not a touch of stage fright, either on her own account, or on that of her "dearest friend."

There were essays on friendship, love, generosity, jealousy, integrity, laziness, hope, charity, punctuality, scholarship, meanness. On youth, old age, marriage, courtship, engagement, housekeeping, housework, the happiness of childhood, the sorrows of childhood, truth, falsehood, religion, missionary work, the poor, the duties of the rich, houses of charity, the tariff, the Republican party, the Democratic party, woman's suffrage, which profession was best adapted to a woman, servants, trades' unions, strikes, sewing-women, shop-girls, newspaper boys, street gamins, the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, Queen Victoria and the coming Republican party into the government of England, the bloated aristocracy, American girls as European brides, the cruelty of the Russian government, Catholic religion, Stanley as a hero, Kane's Arctic adventures.

Miss Ashton had made a list of these subjects as she looked over the essays, and when she read them aloud, the school burst into a peal of laughter.

She said, "I cannot, in our limited time, read all of these to you. I will give you your choice, but first, let me tell you what remains.

There are six poems of four and five pages length. The subjects are:--

"The Lost Naiad; Bertram's Lament; Cowper at the Grave of His Mother; A New Thanatopsis; Ode to Silence; Love's Farewell.

"I promise you," she said, "you shall have these, if nothing more."

A slight approbatory clapping, and she went on:--

"If I am to read you the t.i.tles of the stories I have on my desk, it will go far into the alloted time for these exercises; but, as some of you may think they would be the most interesting part, I will give you your choice. Those in favor, please hold up their hands."

Almost every girl's hand in school was raised, so Miss Ashton went on:--

"Bob Allen's Resolve; The Old Moss Gatherer; Lady Jane Grey's Adventure; The Brave Engineer; How We didn't Ascend Mt. Blanc; Nancy Todd's Revenge; Little Lady Gabrielle; Sam the Boot-black; Christmas Eve; Thanksgiving at Dunmoore; New Year at Whitty Lodge; Poor Loo Grant; Jenkins, the Mill Owner; Studyhard School; Storied West Rock; Phil, the Hero; How Phebe Won Her Place; Norman McGreggor on his Native Heath; Our Parsonage; How Ben Fought a Prairie Fire; The Sorrows of Mrs. McCarthy.

"These are all," and Miss Ashton laughed a merry laugh as she turned over the pile. "I am much obliged to you for your ready and full answer to my proposal. If I am a little disappointed at the literary character of some of the work, I am, as I have said, pleased by your ready response. If I should attempt to read them all, we should be here at a late hour, and lose our spread, so I will give you the poems, as I promised, and as many of the essays and stories as I can crowd into the time previous to nine o'clock."

Miss Bent, who was the teacher of elocution, now stepped forward, and out of a pile separated from the larger one of ma.n.u.scripts took up and read the six poems; then followed, in rapid succession, essays and stories, until at ten minutes before nine, the school having evidently heard all they wished with the spread in prospect, Miss Ashton said,--

"I have reserved the best--by far the best--of all these contributions for the last. Miss Bent will now read to you 'Storied West Rock!'"

Miss Bent began immediately, and though the hands of the clock crept on to fifteen minutes past nine, not a girl there watched them; all were intent on the absorbing interest of the story.

When it was finished, Miss Bent said, "This is so excellent that I feel fully justified in departing from the promise Miss Ashton made you, that your pieces should not have the name of the writer given; with her leave, it gives me great pleasure to say, this touching and excellently written story was composed by one of our own seniors, Susan Downer."

"Three cheers for Susan Downer!" cried Kate Underwood, springing from her seat; and if ever boys in any finishing school gave cheers with greater gusto, they would have been well worth hearing. Even Susan found herself cheering as noisily as the rest, and would not have known it, if Dorothy, her face radiant with delight, had not stopped her.

Then followed the spread, "the pleasantest and the best one that was ever given in Montrose Academy," the girls all said.

CHAPTER XVI.

STORIED WEST ROCK.

When Marion Parke went back to her room the night after Miss Ashton's entertainment, she was in a great deal of perturbation. The t.i.tle of Susan Downer's story, on its announcement, had filled her with surprise, for since her coming to the school she had never before heard West Rock mentioned. When she had asked about it, no one seemed even to have known of it, and that Susan should not only have heard, but been so interested as to choose it for the subject of her story, was a puzzle! But when the story was read, and she found it, in all its details, so exactly like her father's, her surprise changed to a miserable suspicion, of which she was heartily ashamed, but from which she could not escape. Sentence after sentence, event after event, were so familiar to her, nothing was changed but the names of the women who figured in the story.

The first thing she did after coming to her room was to take the magazine from under the Bible, and open to the story. There was an ink-blot on the first page, which some one had evidently been trying to remove with the edge of a knife. It must have been done hastily, for the leaf was jagged, and most of the ink left on.

This Marion was sure was not there the last time she had opened the magazine; some one had dropped it recently. Who was it?

She hastily re-read the story. Yes, she had not been mistaken, Susan Downer's story was the same!

Was it possible that two people, her father and Susan, who had never been in New Haven, but might have known about Goff and Whalley from her study of English history, though not about West Rock as her father had seen and described it, could have happened upon the same story?

How very, very strange!

Marion dropped the magazine as if it was accountable for her perplexity; then she sat and stared at it, until she heard the door opening, when she s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, and hid it away at the bottom of her trunk.

It was Dorothy who came into the room; and Marion's first impulse was to go to her and tell her all about it, ask her what she should do, for do something she felt sure she must.

Dorothy saw her, and called,--

"Marion! isn't it splendid that Sue wrote such a fine piece? I feel that she is a real honor to our cla.s.s and to Rock Cove! Her brother Jerry will be so happy when he hears of it."

"Why, Marion!" catching sight of Marion's pale face, "what is the matter with you? You look as pale as a ghost. Are you sick?"

"No-o," said Marion slowly. "O Dody! Dody!"

"Marion! there is something the matter with you. Sit down in this chair. No, lie down on the lounge. No, on your bed. You'd better undress while I go for the matron. I'll be very quick."

"Don't go, Dody! Don't go," and Marion caught tight hold of Dorothy's arm, holding her fast. "I'm not sick; I'm frightened."

But in spite of her words, indeed more alarmed by them, Dorothy broke away and rushed down to the matron's room, who, fortunately, was out.

Then she went for Miss Ashton, but she also had not returned. So Dorothy, unwilling to leave Marion alone any longer, went back to her.

While she was gone, Marion had time to resolve what she would do, at least for the present; she would leave Susan in her own time and way to make a full confession, which she tried to persuade herself after a little that she would certainly do. So when Dorothy came back she met her with a smile, told her not to be troubled, that it was the first time in her life such a thing had ever happened, and she hoped it never would again.

"But you said you were frightened," insisted Dorothy, "and you looked so pale; what frightened you?"

Marion hesitated; to tell any one, even Dorothy, would be to accuse Susan of such a mean deception. No; her resolve so suddenly made was the proper one: she would keep her knowledge of the thing until Susan herself confessed, or a.s.surance was made doubly sure; for suppose, after all, Susan had written the story, how could she have known about it in that magazine? She had never lent it to her; she had never read it to any of her room-mates, or to any one in the school, proud of it as she was. Indeed, the more she thought of it, the more sure she was that she ought to be ashamed of herself for such a suspicion, and, strange as it may seem, the more sure she also was, that almost word by word Susan had stolen the story.

"I was frightened at a thought I had, a dreadful thought; I wouldn't have any one know it. Don't ask me, Dody, please don't; let us talk about something else," she said.

Then she began to talk rapidly over the events of the evening, not, as Dorothy noticed, mentioning Susan or her success. Dorothy wondered over it, and an unpleasant thought came into her mind.

"Can it be that Marion is jealous of Sue, and disappointed and vexed that her piece wasn't taken any more notice of? I'm sure it was an excellent story, 'How Ben Fought a Prairie Fire.'" Marion had read it to her before handing it in, and she had been much interested in it, but it didn't compare with Susan's, and it wasn't like Marion to feel so. She never had shown such a spirit before.

Neither Susan nor Gladys came to their room until the last moment allowed for remaining away. Susan was overwhelmed with congratulations on her success. The teacher of rhetoric told her she felt repaid for all the hours she had spent in teaching her, by the skill she had shown in this composition, and if she continued to improve, she saw nothing to prevent her taking her place, by and by, among the best writers in the land. Kate Underwood pretended to be vexed, "having her laurels taken away from her," she said "was not to be borne;" and Delia Williams, the rival of Kate in the estimation of the school, made even more fun than Kate over her own disappointment. Some of the girls made a crown of bright papers and would have put it on Susan's head, but she testily pushed it away.

Susan's love of prominence was well known in the school, and even this small rejection of popular applause they wondered over.

And when the girls began to cl.u.s.ter around her, and to ask if she had ever been to that West Rock, if there was really such a place, and if all those things she wrote of so beautifully had ever happened? she was silent and sulky; and in the end, crowned with her new honors, at the point in her life she had always longed for, and never before reached, she looked more like a girl who was ashamed of herself, than like one whose vanity and love of praise had for the first time been fully gratified.

She dreaded going to her room; she was afraid something to mar her success was waiting for her there. She wished Marion Parke had never come from the West, that Gladys had never been weak enough to take her in for a room-mate. In short, Susan was more unhappy than she had ever been before. Gladys, full of frolic with a large clique of girls in another part of the room, had not given her a thought.

To have Susan write so good a story had been the same surprise to her that it was to every one; but the reading was no sooner over, than she had forgotten it, and if the teacher had not told her it was time she went to her room, she would also have forgotten there was any room to go to.