(no subject)
We leave Leslie roaring along the road realizing that she has fallen in love with Howard Letchworth, and, not coincidentally, at high risk of wrapping her car around a tree.
Meantime Allison was dashing over fallen trees, climbing rocks, and pushing his way between tangled vines and close-grown laurel, up and up through the college woods, and across country in the direction of the quarry, a still, wonderful place like a cathedral, with a deep, dark pool at the bottom of the massive stone walls. There were over-arching pines, hemlocks, and oaks for vaulted roof with the fresco of sky and flying cloud between. It was a wonderful place.
This is a bit of a mood shift. We will see why in a minute.
He need not have worried about the quarry and the deep, dark pool. He kept telling himself all the way up that he need not, but when he reached the top and came in sight of her he knew it. Knew also that he had been sure of it all along.
So we do not have to worry about a suicide with all the stigma thereof, which would probably render any relations ineligible. She sits there looking upward in a heavenly sort of manner. He speaks up.
“I came to find you, Jane. Leslie told me everything and I have hunted everywhere. But when you were not at college I somehow knew you would be here.
"Somehow" being "Leslie got the story from the kitchen-boy and bribed him to be quiet" but that's not very romantic. We'll stick with this line.
I wanted to find you--and--enfold you, Jane
Has this become a romance novel for amoebas?
wrap you around somehow with my love and care if you will let me, so that nothing like that can ever hurt you again. I love you, Jane. I suppose I’m a little previous and all that, being only a kid, as it were,
This guy needs to spend a little while proposing to, I don't know. Trees, or his hat, and work his way up to the girl he wants to be his better half. This is terrible.
“Perhaps I’m taking a whole lot for granted,” he said humbly. “Perhaps you don’t love me--can’t even like me the way I hoped you do. Oh, Jane, speak quick, and tell me! Darling, can you ever love me enough? You haven’t drawn your hands away! Look up and let me read your eyes, please---”
Well, he's muddled his way to better ground.
No, she had not drawn her hands away, and she did not shrink from his supporting arm--and she was the kind of girl who would not have allowed such familiarities unless
Yes, okay. She's not the Freshman Vamp (who is locked in combat with the Swell Dude right now) and you'd think we could get through the book's first proposal where the proposee is paying attention without a few side tips on a girl's standard of conduct.
Ah! She had lifted her eyes and there was something blindingly beautiful in them, and tears--great wonderful tears, so sweet and misty that they made him glad with a thrill of beautiful pain! Her lips were trembling. He longed to kiss her, yet knew he must wait until he had her permission---
“Allison! Listen! You are dear--wonderful--but you don’t know a thing about me!”
“I know all I want to know, and that is a great deal, you darling, you!” And now he did kiss her, and drew her close into his arms and would not let her go even when she struggled gently.
Some waiting for permission, jeez.
“Allison, listen. Listen--please! I must tell you! Wait---!”
She put her hands against his breast and pushed herself back away from him where she could look in his face.
“Please, you must let me go and listen to what I have to say!”
Will she reveal her identity as the mild-mannered civilian who turns into the Freshman Vamp??
“I’ll let you go when you tell me yes or no, Jane. Do you, can you love me? I must know that first. Then you shall have your way.”
Jane’s eyes did not falter. She looked at him, “You promised, you know---!”
“Yes, Allison--I love you--but--NO! You must not kiss me again. You must let me go, and listen--You promised, you know---!”
The dialogue break in there does suggest a new speaker, repeating after Jane, has elbowed their way in. Probably Clive Terrance, the intrusive hound. I wouldn't put it past him. There is an invisible scuffle as they sort themselves out. After some stuff about Jane's socially inconvenient forger father, who has made her a poor social match for Allison and damaged her standing, she explains:
“Allison! Listen!” broke in Jane gravely, stopping the torrent of words with which he was attempting to silence her. “It isn’t what you think at all. My father wasn’t a forger! He was a good man!”
But she won't let him tell anyone that and claims he can't prove it anyway. Then there are paragraphs of a story in which a crooked businessman involves and frames her innocent father, shattering her heart when the papers publish "CHURCH ELDER ARRESTED." As he dies, he vows Jane to silence, since she can't prove that he was innocent and he doesn't want to destroy the crook's family. The crook's wife and daughter hound Jane with untrue accusations of her father stealing from them.
“It would have done the good that those two women wouldn’t have gone around snubbing you and telling lies about you---”
“Oh, well, after all, that didn’t really hurt me---”
“And that brazen girl wouldn’t have dared come here to the same college and make it hot for you---!”
What? What?? What's going on again?
“I knew from the first mention that it must have been Eugenia Frazer. No girl in her senses would have taken the trouble to do what she did to-day without some grievance---! Oh, that girl! She is beyond words! Think of anybody ever falling in love with her! I’d like the pleasure of informing her what her father was. Of course, though, it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t help her father being what he was, but she could help what she is herself. I should certainly like to see her get what’s coming to her---!”
Yes, although beautiful, self-sacrificing Jane has thrown herself under the bus rather than destroy Eugenia and her mother's happiness, makeup-wearing Eugenia is a bitter harpy. Who would have thought that a girl wearing makeup in one of these books had a bad heart?
The tall trees whispered above their heads, and the birds looked down and dropped wonderful melodies about them, and Leslie stormily drove her car back and forth on the pike and sounded her klaxon loud and long, but it was almost an hour later that it suddenly occurred to Allison that Leslie was waiting for them, and still later before the two with blissful lingering finally wended their way out to the road and were taken up by the subdued and weary Leslie, who greeted them with relief and fell upon her new sister with eager enthusiasm and genuine delight.
You'd think after the first fifteen minutes Leslie would go back and get a search party, scandal or no scandal.
An hour later Allison, after committing his future bride to the tender ministries of Julia Cloud, who had received her as a daughter, took his way collegeward. He sent up his card to Miss Frazer and Miss Brice and requested that he might see them both as soon as possible, and in a flutter of expectancy the two presently entered the reception-room. They were hoping he had come to take them out in his car, although each was disappointed to find that she was not the only one summoned.
Where everyone is going to be living at the end of all this is a great mystery. Once they throw Clive out they will be only one room richer.
Allison in that few minutes of waiting for them, seemed to have lost his care-free boyish air and have grown to man’s estate.
Grace writes this as if it's an unusual thing. He washes back and forth like the tides.
“I have come to inform you,” he said with a bow that might almost be called stately, so much had the tall, slender figure lost its boyishness, “that Miss Bristol is my fiancée, and as such it is my business to protect her. I must ask you both to publicly apologize before your sorority for what happened this morning.”
That's quite an opening volley.
“You had all to do with it. Miss Frazer, I happen to know all about the matter.”
“Well, you certainly don’t,” flamed Eugenia, “or you wouldn’t be engaged to that little Bristol hypocrite. Her father was a common---”
Allison is sounding completely unlike himself. It's possible those mind-control cookies have actually been part of their daily diet since they moved here, and Julia is now capable of channeling herself through him at a distance. Especially since he finishes off:
"I fancy it may be rather unpleasant for you to remain in this college longer unless this matter is adjusted satisfactorily.”
Eugenia does not crack under pressure. Eunice does.
Eunice Brice began to cry. She was the protégée of a rich woman and could not afford to be disgraced.
“I shall tell them all that you asked me to make that motion for you and promised to give me your pink evening dress if I did,” reproached Eunice tearfully.
As an aside, "Eunice Brice" is a terrible name because I find myself trying to pronounce them the same.
“Tell what you like,” returned Eugenia grandly, “it will only prove you what you are, a little fool! I’m going up to pack. You needn’t think you can hush me up, Allison Cloud, if you are rich. Money won’t cover up the truth---”
“No,” said Allison looking at her steadily, controlledly, with a memory of his promise to Jane. “No, but Christianity will--sometimes.”
Which refers only to Jane's father's posthumous self-sacrificial taking of the fall, but makes it sound like Christian Endeavor is in the business of cover-ups and providing alibis. The Freshman Vamp will come bust up their little meeting if he's not more circumspect. Eugenia gets ready to go home. However, there's still an air of suspicion hanging around Jane, who can prove nothing and whose eligibility is only backed by her fiance's trust.
When Allison reached home a few minutes later Julia Cloud put into his hand a letter which his guardian had written her soon after his first visit, in which he stated that he had made it a point to look up both the young people with whom his wards were intimate, and he found their records and their family irreproachable. He especially went into details concerning Jane’s father and the noble way in which he had acted, and the completeness with which his name had been cleared. He uncovered one or two facts which Jane apparently did not know, and which proved that time had revealed the true criminal to those most concerned and that only pity for his family, and the expressed wish of the man who had borne for a time his shame, had caused the matter to be hushed up.
Oh, fine. Except for her poverty Jane is innately high-class in every way with a spotless familial reputation, ready to be accepted to Allison's social level.
“Then I’m glad we never said anything to Eugenia! Poor Eugenia! She is greatly to be pitied!”
Allison, a little shamefacedly, agreed, and then owned up that he had “fired” Eugenia, as he expressed it, from the college.
“O, Allison!” said Jane, half troubled, though laughing in spite of herself at the vision of Eugenia trying to be lofty in the face of the facts. “You ought not to have done it, dear. I have stood it so long, it didn’t matter! Only for your sake--and Leslie’s---!”
“For our sakes, nothing!” said Allison. “That girl needed somebody to tell her where to get off, and only a man could do it. She’ll be more polite to people hereafter, I’m thinking. It won’t do her any harm. Now, Jane darling, forget it, and let’s be happy!”
A student just expelled another student, which he could do because he is A Man. It's a good thing Howard has spent this whole novel of consistent age, or he'd have to convey the Popeship on the Dean or some other manly miracle. But with Jane having been suddenly rendered super-marriagable, we have other eligibilities to establish.
“Be careful, Allison, some one is coming. I think it’s that Mr. Terrence.”
“Dog-gone his fool hide!” muttered Allison. “I wish he’d take himself home! I certainly would like to tell him where to get off. Leslie’s as sick of him as I am, and as for Cloudy, she’s about reached the limit.”
“Why, Allison, isn’t Leslie interested in him? He told Howard that they were as good as engaged.”
Gasp! Horror! Wait, he didn't. He said Leslie's and his families had thought about getting them married at some point, but he, Clive, did not consider that binding. So why should Leslie?
“Leslie interested in that little cad? I should say not. If she was I’d disown her. You say he told Howard they were engaged! What a lie! So that’s what’s the matter with the old boy, is it? I thought something must be the matter that he got so busy all of a sudden. Well, I’ll soon fix that! Come on up to Cloudy’s porch, quick, while he’s in his room. Cloudy won’t mind. We’ll be by ourselves there till dinner is ready!”
Actually, he was completely uninterested in why Howard was so busy. But this is neither here nor there. We leave the two lovebirds barging through Julia's room to go hang out together on her little balcony. We go to Howard skulking around campus thinking about how Leslie will come to his graduation with Clive. He cannot bear the thought.
As it was, he meditated trying to get some one else to take his place, and was on his way to arrange it, just before the hour for the afternoon exercises to begin, when suddenly he saw, coming up the wide asphalt walk of the campus, young Terrence, and the girl who had come to be known among them as the “Freshman Vamp.”
He has not been able to pry off her mask and discern her true identity. She would fling him through a wall if he tried.
With a sudden impulse he dashed over to Julia Cloud, and forgetful of his late estrangement spoke with much of his old eagerness; albeit trying his best to appear careless and matter-of-fact:
“Isn’t Leslie hereabouts somewhere, Miss Cloud? I believe I promised to show her the ivy that our class is to plant.”
You'd think the Freshman Vamp would stop such villainry as deliberately planting ivy.
“I will!” he said, and was off like a flash. On his way down the campus he thrust some papers into a classmate’s hands.
Wait a minute, I'm confused. He was at campus. Then he was with Julia, so he must have gone to her house before coming back to the campus. Then:
Never in all his running days had he run as he did that day. He made the station in four minutes where it usually took him six, and was at the Cloud Villa in two more, all out of breath but radiant.
What station? A train station? How did he buy a ticket and get there? Was it a streetcar station? Did they have those?
It was rather disheartening to find the front door locked and only Cherry to respond to his knock.
HI CHERRY! It's only disheartening for him because he's so focussed, I'm sure. Cherry brings up Clive to call him a "fisheyed lady-man," which is most unladylike. Cherry tells him that Leslie went canoeing by herself, which is sure to distress Julia if she finds out about it. Cherry is not terribly troubled by that second point. Doubtless this means that Julia has not yet collapsed into wobbling jelly in front of the maid, doubtless because she can just fire her should Cherry misstep and express a desire to go dancing.
So Howard Letchworth sets off in pursuit. Once again, Grace waxes poetic about rippling water, dripping hemlocks, and Howard's sure and athletic pursuit. He comes across Leslie in poetic attitude of despair, and asks her what's wrong.
He scarcely knew what he was saying, so anxiously he watched her. Was she hurt or in trouble, and if so, what was the trouble? Did the vapid little guest and the Freshman Vamp have anything to do with it?
The best part of that is that Grace has quit putting "vamp" in quotes and just capitalizes "Freshman Vamp" as if she thinks it's her title too. She probably doesn't think it's a cloaked superheroine name, but that's where modern viewpoints win.
It certainly was a good thing that the creek was shallow at that point and the canoes quite used to all sorts of conditions. Howard Letchworth waited for no invitation. He arose and stepped into Leslie’s boat, pinioned his own with a dextrous paddle,
So he stepped from one canoe to the other without securing either first. Boy, would I have liked to have seen that. He is lucky it's not very shallow. Grace doesn't explain how he splashed into the creek first, but we the reader know that he is now having this discussion dripping wet.
and gave attention to comforting the princess. It somehow needed no words for awhile, until at last Leslie lifted a woebegone face that already looked half-appeased and inquired sobbily:
Bleh, they're both watery. What a pair.
“Company! That! Now, Howard, you weren’t jealous of that little excuse for a man, were you?”
Howard colored guiltily:
“Why, you see, Leslie, you are so far above me---”
“Oh, I was, was I? Well, if I was above you, where did you think that other ridiculous little simp belonged, I should like to know? Not with me, I hope?”
that other ridiculous little simp
that other ridiculous little simp
Wow, Leslie's letting him have it with both barrels.
“But you see, Leslie---” somehow the great question that had loomed between them these weeks dwarfed and shrivelled when he tried to explain it to Leslie---
“Well---?”
“Well, I’ve just found out you are very rich---”
“Well?”
“Well, I’m poor.”
FINALLY.
“But I thought you just said you loved me!” flashed Leslie indignantly. “If you do, I don’t see what rich and poor matter. It’ll all belong to us both, won’t it?”
“I should hope not,” said the young man, drawing himself up as much as was consistent with life in a canoe. “I would never let my wife support me.”
I don't see why, at this point, he doesn't just step out of the canoe and stand in the creek for this.
“Well, perhaps you might be able to make enough to support yourself,” twinkled Leslie with mischief in a dimple near her mouth.
“Leslie, now you’re making fun! I mean this!”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it, give away my money?”
If Leslie could just maintain a consistent age, I'd really like her. She delivers the snappiest zingers I've seen from a GLH character.
“Leslie, this is a serious matter with me---”
“Well, it is with me, too,” said Leslie, suddenly grave. “You certainly have made me most unhappy for about three weeks. But I’m beginning to think you don’t love me after all. What is money between people who love each other? Only something that they can have a good time spending for others, isn’t it? And suppose I should say I wouldn’t let you support me? I guess after all if you think so much of money you don’t really care!”
Fine, fine. I really like Leslie.
“I see, Leslie! I was a fool. You darling, wonderful princess. No, keep your money and I’ll try to make some more and we’ll have a wonderful time helping others with it. I suppose I knew I was a fool all the time, only I wanted to be told so, because you see that fellow told me you and he had been set apart for each other by your parents---!”
A sudden lurch of the canoe roused him to look at Leslie’s face:
It's a good thing Grace specified the creek was shallow, or both the lovebirds would be drowned by now. But Leslie is not done being competent. Howard has things to do in the graduation ceremony, and she hears the bells and realizes he can't miss it.
Leslie’s fingers were already at work with the other canoe, tying its chain to the seat of her own.
“Now!” she turned and picked up her paddle swiftly, handing Howard the other one. “Go! For all your worth! You mustn’t fail on this day anyway!
Ba-ZING!
Beat it with all your might!”
“It’s too late!” said the man reluctantly, taking the paddle and moving to his right position.
“It’s not too late. It shan’t be too late! Paddle, I say, now, one--and--two--and---!”
And they settled to a rhythmic stroke.
And they get there! Julia is there, raising the question again of where she was when Howard was talking to her that was neither home nor campus, and we get our last line reassuring us that whatever happens, Julia will still have her throne:
Then into the eyes of Julia Cloud there came a vision as comes to one who watching the glorious setting of the sun sees not the regretful close of the day that is past, but the golden promise of the day that is to come.
We will never know if she next welcomes a Christian Endeavor Cloud or Christian Endeavor Letchworth. It's really too bad. I could have done with another book on that Leslie as she appeared in her final incarnation.
Meantime Allison was dashing over fallen trees, climbing rocks, and pushing his way between tangled vines and close-grown laurel, up and up through the college woods, and across country in the direction of the quarry, a still, wonderful place like a cathedral, with a deep, dark pool at the bottom of the massive stone walls. There were over-arching pines, hemlocks, and oaks for vaulted roof with the fresco of sky and flying cloud between. It was a wonderful place.
This is a bit of a mood shift. We will see why in a minute.
He need not have worried about the quarry and the deep, dark pool. He kept telling himself all the way up that he need not, but when he reached the top and came in sight of her he knew it. Knew also that he had been sure of it all along.
So we do not have to worry about a suicide with all the stigma thereof, which would probably render any relations ineligible. She sits there looking upward in a heavenly sort of manner. He speaks up.
“I came to find you, Jane. Leslie told me everything and I have hunted everywhere. But when you were not at college I somehow knew you would be here.
"Somehow" being "Leslie got the story from the kitchen-boy and bribed him to be quiet" but that's not very romantic. We'll stick with this line.
I wanted to find you--and--enfold you, Jane
Has this become a romance novel for amoebas?
wrap you around somehow with my love and care if you will let me, so that nothing like that can ever hurt you again. I love you, Jane. I suppose I’m a little previous and all that, being only a kid, as it were,
This guy needs to spend a little while proposing to, I don't know. Trees, or his hat, and work his way up to the girl he wants to be his better half. This is terrible.
“Perhaps I’m taking a whole lot for granted,” he said humbly. “Perhaps you don’t love me--can’t even like me the way I hoped you do. Oh, Jane, speak quick, and tell me! Darling, can you ever love me enough? You haven’t drawn your hands away! Look up and let me read your eyes, please---”
Well, he's muddled his way to better ground.
No, she had not drawn her hands away, and she did not shrink from his supporting arm--and she was the kind of girl who would not have allowed such familiarities unless
Yes, okay. She's not the Freshman Vamp (who is locked in combat with the Swell Dude right now) and you'd think we could get through the book's first proposal where the proposee is paying attention without a few side tips on a girl's standard of conduct.
Ah! She had lifted her eyes and there was something blindingly beautiful in them, and tears--great wonderful tears, so sweet and misty that they made him glad with a thrill of beautiful pain! Her lips were trembling. He longed to kiss her, yet knew he must wait until he had her permission---
“Allison! Listen! You are dear--wonderful--but you don’t know a thing about me!”
“I know all I want to know, and that is a great deal, you darling, you!” And now he did kiss her, and drew her close into his arms and would not let her go even when she struggled gently.
Some waiting for permission, jeez.
“Allison, listen. Listen--please! I must tell you! Wait---!”
She put her hands against his breast and pushed herself back away from him where she could look in his face.
“Please, you must let me go and listen to what I have to say!”
Will she reveal her identity as the mild-mannered civilian who turns into the Freshman Vamp??
“I’ll let you go when you tell me yes or no, Jane. Do you, can you love me? I must know that first. Then you shall have your way.”
Jane’s eyes did not falter. She looked at him, “You promised, you know---!”
“Yes, Allison--I love you--but--NO! You must not kiss me again. You must let me go, and listen--You promised, you know---!”
The dialogue break in there does suggest a new speaker, repeating after Jane, has elbowed their way in. Probably Clive Terrance, the intrusive hound. I wouldn't put it past him. There is an invisible scuffle as they sort themselves out. After some stuff about Jane's socially inconvenient forger father, who has made her a poor social match for Allison and damaged her standing, she explains:
“Allison! Listen!” broke in Jane gravely, stopping the torrent of words with which he was attempting to silence her. “It isn’t what you think at all. My father wasn’t a forger! He was a good man!”
But she won't let him tell anyone that and claims he can't prove it anyway. Then there are paragraphs of a story in which a crooked businessman involves and frames her innocent father, shattering her heart when the papers publish "CHURCH ELDER ARRESTED." As he dies, he vows Jane to silence, since she can't prove that he was innocent and he doesn't want to destroy the crook's family. The crook's wife and daughter hound Jane with untrue accusations of her father stealing from them.
“It would have done the good that those two women wouldn’t have gone around snubbing you and telling lies about you---”
“Oh, well, after all, that didn’t really hurt me---”
“And that brazen girl wouldn’t have dared come here to the same college and make it hot for you---!”
What? What?? What's going on again?
“I knew from the first mention that it must have been Eugenia Frazer. No girl in her senses would have taken the trouble to do what she did to-day without some grievance---! Oh, that girl! She is beyond words! Think of anybody ever falling in love with her! I’d like the pleasure of informing her what her father was. Of course, though, it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t help her father being what he was, but she could help what she is herself. I should certainly like to see her get what’s coming to her---!”
Yes, although beautiful, self-sacrificing Jane has thrown herself under the bus rather than destroy Eugenia and her mother's happiness, makeup-wearing Eugenia is a bitter harpy. Who would have thought that a girl wearing makeup in one of these books had a bad heart?
The tall trees whispered above their heads, and the birds looked down and dropped wonderful melodies about them, and Leslie stormily drove her car back and forth on the pike and sounded her klaxon loud and long, but it was almost an hour later that it suddenly occurred to Allison that Leslie was waiting for them, and still later before the two with blissful lingering finally wended their way out to the road and were taken up by the subdued and weary Leslie, who greeted them with relief and fell upon her new sister with eager enthusiasm and genuine delight.
You'd think after the first fifteen minutes Leslie would go back and get a search party, scandal or no scandal.
An hour later Allison, after committing his future bride to the tender ministries of Julia Cloud, who had received her as a daughter, took his way collegeward. He sent up his card to Miss Frazer and Miss Brice and requested that he might see them both as soon as possible, and in a flutter of expectancy the two presently entered the reception-room. They were hoping he had come to take them out in his car, although each was disappointed to find that she was not the only one summoned.
Where everyone is going to be living at the end of all this is a great mystery. Once they throw Clive out they will be only one room richer.
Allison in that few minutes of waiting for them, seemed to have lost his care-free boyish air and have grown to man’s estate.
Grace writes this as if it's an unusual thing. He washes back and forth like the tides.
“I have come to inform you,” he said with a bow that might almost be called stately, so much had the tall, slender figure lost its boyishness, “that Miss Bristol is my fiancée, and as such it is my business to protect her. I must ask you both to publicly apologize before your sorority for what happened this morning.”
That's quite an opening volley.
“You had all to do with it. Miss Frazer, I happen to know all about the matter.”
“Well, you certainly don’t,” flamed Eugenia, “or you wouldn’t be engaged to that little Bristol hypocrite. Her father was a common---”
Allison is sounding completely unlike himself. It's possible those mind-control cookies have actually been part of their daily diet since they moved here, and Julia is now capable of channeling herself through him at a distance. Especially since he finishes off:
"I fancy it may be rather unpleasant for you to remain in this college longer unless this matter is adjusted satisfactorily.”
Eugenia does not crack under pressure. Eunice does.
Eunice Brice began to cry. She was the protégée of a rich woman and could not afford to be disgraced.
“I shall tell them all that you asked me to make that motion for you and promised to give me your pink evening dress if I did,” reproached Eunice tearfully.
As an aside, "Eunice Brice" is a terrible name because I find myself trying to pronounce them the same.
“Tell what you like,” returned Eugenia grandly, “it will only prove you what you are, a little fool! I’m going up to pack. You needn’t think you can hush me up, Allison Cloud, if you are rich. Money won’t cover up the truth---”
“No,” said Allison looking at her steadily, controlledly, with a memory of his promise to Jane. “No, but Christianity will--sometimes.”
Which refers only to Jane's father's posthumous self-sacrificial taking of the fall, but makes it sound like Christian Endeavor is in the business of cover-ups and providing alibis. The Freshman Vamp will come bust up their little meeting if he's not more circumspect. Eugenia gets ready to go home. However, there's still an air of suspicion hanging around Jane, who can prove nothing and whose eligibility is only backed by her fiance's trust.
When Allison reached home a few minutes later Julia Cloud put into his hand a letter which his guardian had written her soon after his first visit, in which he stated that he had made it a point to look up both the young people with whom his wards were intimate, and he found their records and their family irreproachable. He especially went into details concerning Jane’s father and the noble way in which he had acted, and the completeness with which his name had been cleared. He uncovered one or two facts which Jane apparently did not know, and which proved that time had revealed the true criminal to those most concerned and that only pity for his family, and the expressed wish of the man who had borne for a time his shame, had caused the matter to be hushed up.
Oh, fine. Except for her poverty Jane is innately high-class in every way with a spotless familial reputation, ready to be accepted to Allison's social level.
“Then I’m glad we never said anything to Eugenia! Poor Eugenia! She is greatly to be pitied!”
Allison, a little shamefacedly, agreed, and then owned up that he had “fired” Eugenia, as he expressed it, from the college.
“O, Allison!” said Jane, half troubled, though laughing in spite of herself at the vision of Eugenia trying to be lofty in the face of the facts. “You ought not to have done it, dear. I have stood it so long, it didn’t matter! Only for your sake--and Leslie’s---!”
“For our sakes, nothing!” said Allison. “That girl needed somebody to tell her where to get off, and only a man could do it. She’ll be more polite to people hereafter, I’m thinking. It won’t do her any harm. Now, Jane darling, forget it, and let’s be happy!”
A student just expelled another student, which he could do because he is A Man. It's a good thing Howard has spent this whole novel of consistent age, or he'd have to convey the Popeship on the Dean or some other manly miracle. But with Jane having been suddenly rendered super-marriagable, we have other eligibilities to establish.
“Be careful, Allison, some one is coming. I think it’s that Mr. Terrence.”
“Dog-gone his fool hide!” muttered Allison. “I wish he’d take himself home! I certainly would like to tell him where to get off. Leslie’s as sick of him as I am, and as for Cloudy, she’s about reached the limit.”
“Why, Allison, isn’t Leslie interested in him? He told Howard that they were as good as engaged.”
Gasp! Horror! Wait, he didn't. He said Leslie's and his families had thought about getting them married at some point, but he, Clive, did not consider that binding. So why should Leslie?
“Leslie interested in that little cad? I should say not. If she was I’d disown her. You say he told Howard they were engaged! What a lie! So that’s what’s the matter with the old boy, is it? I thought something must be the matter that he got so busy all of a sudden. Well, I’ll soon fix that! Come on up to Cloudy’s porch, quick, while he’s in his room. Cloudy won’t mind. We’ll be by ourselves there till dinner is ready!”
Actually, he was completely uninterested in why Howard was so busy. But this is neither here nor there. We leave the two lovebirds barging through Julia's room to go hang out together on her little balcony. We go to Howard skulking around campus thinking about how Leslie will come to his graduation with Clive. He cannot bear the thought.
As it was, he meditated trying to get some one else to take his place, and was on his way to arrange it, just before the hour for the afternoon exercises to begin, when suddenly he saw, coming up the wide asphalt walk of the campus, young Terrence, and the girl who had come to be known among them as the “Freshman Vamp.”
He has not been able to pry off her mask and discern her true identity. She would fling him through a wall if he tried.
With a sudden impulse he dashed over to Julia Cloud, and forgetful of his late estrangement spoke with much of his old eagerness; albeit trying his best to appear careless and matter-of-fact:
“Isn’t Leslie hereabouts somewhere, Miss Cloud? I believe I promised to show her the ivy that our class is to plant.”
You'd think the Freshman Vamp would stop such villainry as deliberately planting ivy.
“I will!” he said, and was off like a flash. On his way down the campus he thrust some papers into a classmate’s hands.
Wait a minute, I'm confused. He was at campus. Then he was with Julia, so he must have gone to her house before coming back to the campus. Then:
Never in all his running days had he run as he did that day. He made the station in four minutes where it usually took him six, and was at the Cloud Villa in two more, all out of breath but radiant.
What station? A train station? How did he buy a ticket and get there? Was it a streetcar station? Did they have those?
It was rather disheartening to find the front door locked and only Cherry to respond to his knock.
HI CHERRY! It's only disheartening for him because he's so focussed, I'm sure. Cherry brings up Clive to call him a "fisheyed lady-man," which is most unladylike. Cherry tells him that Leslie went canoeing by herself, which is sure to distress Julia if she finds out about it. Cherry is not terribly troubled by that second point. Doubtless this means that Julia has not yet collapsed into wobbling jelly in front of the maid, doubtless because she can just fire her should Cherry misstep and express a desire to go dancing.
So Howard Letchworth sets off in pursuit. Once again, Grace waxes poetic about rippling water, dripping hemlocks, and Howard's sure and athletic pursuit. He comes across Leslie in poetic attitude of despair, and asks her what's wrong.
He scarcely knew what he was saying, so anxiously he watched her. Was she hurt or in trouble, and if so, what was the trouble? Did the vapid little guest and the Freshman Vamp have anything to do with it?
The best part of that is that Grace has quit putting "vamp" in quotes and just capitalizes "Freshman Vamp" as if she thinks it's her title too. She probably doesn't think it's a cloaked superheroine name, but that's where modern viewpoints win.
It certainly was a good thing that the creek was shallow at that point and the canoes quite used to all sorts of conditions. Howard Letchworth waited for no invitation. He arose and stepped into Leslie’s boat, pinioned his own with a dextrous paddle,
So he stepped from one canoe to the other without securing either first. Boy, would I have liked to have seen that. He is lucky it's not very shallow. Grace doesn't explain how he splashed into the creek first, but we the reader know that he is now having this discussion dripping wet.
and gave attention to comforting the princess. It somehow needed no words for awhile, until at last Leslie lifted a woebegone face that already looked half-appeased and inquired sobbily:
Bleh, they're both watery. What a pair.
“Company! That! Now, Howard, you weren’t jealous of that little excuse for a man, were you?”
Howard colored guiltily:
“Why, you see, Leslie, you are so far above me---”
“Oh, I was, was I? Well, if I was above you, where did you think that other ridiculous little simp belonged, I should like to know? Not with me, I hope?”
that other ridiculous little simp
that other ridiculous little simp
Wow, Leslie's letting him have it with both barrels.
“But you see, Leslie---” somehow the great question that had loomed between them these weeks dwarfed and shrivelled when he tried to explain it to Leslie---
“Well---?”
“Well, I’ve just found out you are very rich---”
“Well?”
“Well, I’m poor.”
FINALLY.
“But I thought you just said you loved me!” flashed Leslie indignantly. “If you do, I don’t see what rich and poor matter. It’ll all belong to us both, won’t it?”
“I should hope not,” said the young man, drawing himself up as much as was consistent with life in a canoe. “I would never let my wife support me.”
I don't see why, at this point, he doesn't just step out of the canoe and stand in the creek for this.
“Well, perhaps you might be able to make enough to support yourself,” twinkled Leslie with mischief in a dimple near her mouth.
“Leslie, now you’re making fun! I mean this!”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it, give away my money?”
If Leslie could just maintain a consistent age, I'd really like her. She delivers the snappiest zingers I've seen from a GLH character.
“Leslie, this is a serious matter with me---”
“Well, it is with me, too,” said Leslie, suddenly grave. “You certainly have made me most unhappy for about three weeks. But I’m beginning to think you don’t love me after all. What is money between people who love each other? Only something that they can have a good time spending for others, isn’t it? And suppose I should say I wouldn’t let you support me? I guess after all if you think so much of money you don’t really care!”
Fine, fine. I really like Leslie.
“I see, Leslie! I was a fool. You darling, wonderful princess. No, keep your money and I’ll try to make some more and we’ll have a wonderful time helping others with it. I suppose I knew I was a fool all the time, only I wanted to be told so, because you see that fellow told me you and he had been set apart for each other by your parents---!”
A sudden lurch of the canoe roused him to look at Leslie’s face:
It's a good thing Grace specified the creek was shallow, or both the lovebirds would be drowned by now. But Leslie is not done being competent. Howard has things to do in the graduation ceremony, and she hears the bells and realizes he can't miss it.
Leslie’s fingers were already at work with the other canoe, tying its chain to the seat of her own.
“Now!” she turned and picked up her paddle swiftly, handing Howard the other one. “Go! For all your worth! You mustn’t fail on this day anyway!
Ba-ZING!
Beat it with all your might!”
“It’s too late!” said the man reluctantly, taking the paddle and moving to his right position.
“It’s not too late. It shan’t be too late! Paddle, I say, now, one--and--two--and---!”
And they settled to a rhythmic stroke.
And they get there! Julia is there, raising the question again of where she was when Howard was talking to her that was neither home nor campus, and we get our last line reassuring us that whatever happens, Julia will still have her throne:
Then into the eyes of Julia Cloud there came a vision as comes to one who watching the glorious setting of the sun sees not the regretful close of the day that is past, but the golden promise of the day that is to come.
We will never know if she next welcomes a Christian Endeavor Cloud or Christian Endeavor Letchworth. It's really too bad. I could have done with another book on that Leslie as she appeared in her final incarnation.