Chapter XVII: A Private Detective

In spite of the surface frivolity, there was in Polly a strong vein of common sense. Therefore, as she thought more and more deeply about the newspaper article she became convinced that great injustice had been done Clarissa. She was naturally puzzled, for the notes so unkindly quoted were certainly from the Kansas girl’s note-book. Only too well she remembered having read them herself, and having laughed at some of the hits. But how had the newspaper obtained them? Without having talked with Clarissa directly, without having had more than the whispered word at the party, she yet knew that the Kansas girl was not to blame. She began to set her wits at work. To solve the mystery she must turn private detective.

One Wednesday afternoon she dropped into the pleasant drawing-room at Fay House; “the most homelike place,” she often said, “this side of Atlanta.” Indeed, many other Radcliffe girls were in the habit of saying the same thing, only instead of Atlanta they named Pittsburg, or Topeka, or Kalamazoo, or, in short, the particular city or town which each called her home.

“The first month I was in Cambridge,” Polly had said to the President, “I was right smart homesick and miserable. I felt like I couldn’t stand it. But when I came in here, and saw you seated at the tea-table, beside the open fire, I felt like I were with my grandmother, and that this was a place where I could lay aside all my forlornness. You don’t mind my comparing you to my grandmother? I reckon it isn’t perfectly polite.”

But the widow of the great scientist, who was proud to admit her threescore years and ten, smiled with her accustomed grace, saying in reply:

“No, indeed, my dear, I am only complimented by the comparison.”

Nor was Polly the only one who felt the restful influence of the drawing-room at Fay House; the quaint old-fashioned room, with its oval ends, curving outward, with its dull green satiny wall-paper, and the old-time couch and easy-chairs covered in flowered crimson.

Girls who entered it for the first time were impressed by the dainty silver and china of the tea-table, and they would turn from the life-size portrait of Mrs. Agassiz between the windows to the majestic figure of the President herself presiding over the teacups, and neither picture nor living figure suffered by the comparison.

On this particular Wednesday afternoon, not so very long after the publication of the alleged lecture of Professor Z in the yellow journal, Polly, after paying her respects to Mrs. Agassiz, seated herself at the further side of the room. She did not linger as was her wont around the tea-table, for two distinguished guests had entered just behind her. One was a Frenchwoman, of international reputation, and the other a distinguished Englishman, making a study of our institutions. The former was accompanied by a well-known member of the Harvard Faculty, and the latter by two Bostonians whom he was visiting.

“Isn’t it just lovely,” said a little Freshman seated near Polly, “to see such great people? That’s what I like about Boston and Cambridge. You’re always meeting people who seem to belong in books.”

“Yes,” replied Polly mockingly, “it’s a liberal education just to look at them. Let’s talk French, and see if our accent improves through breathing the same atmosphere with Madame X.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean exactly that,” replied the Freshman, “only we certainly _do_ learn things here that we couldn’t get out of books.”

“Yes, yes, dear, you’re certainly right, and I only wish that we could get yon Englishman to tell us how he manages to wear that monocle, and yet look perfectly happy.”

The Freshman glanced at Polly to see if she was in earnest, and made some remark to which Polly returned no answer.

Polly’s thoughts indeed had begun to wander, sent off by a word or two from a girl standing with her back to her.

“She hasn’t found it out yet, or she wouldn’t speak to her,” were the words that fell on her ear. Looking toward the door she saw that Clarissa had just entered, and had paused for a moment to say a word to Annabel, who as usual was the centre of an admiring group.

Clarissa passed on to pay her respects to the President; and while Polly was reflecting on what she had heard, she saw the girls in the group leave Annabel one by one to join Clarissa, standing at the other side of the fireplace. Annabel frowned as she moved toward Polly’s corner. She and the girl with her did not notice Polly, for they stood with their backs to her.

“Yes, it is rather bold—really very bold, but she never cares what any one thinks. She has so much—so much—”

“Effrontery, I should call it,” replied the other, who was well known to be a worshipper of a rising star, such as Annabel was now supposed to be. “But I know that you never like to say anything disagreeable.”

“Well, of course, one should be very careful;” and Annabel sighed the sigh of the needlessly perfect person.

Upon this, Polly, rising suddenly, faced around, and with a hasty nod to Annabel joined Clarissa at the other side of the room.

The few apparently unimportant words that she had heard had helped her far along with her detective work. She could not, however, altogether conceal her feelings, and slipping her arm through Clarissa’s, she led her back toward Annabel and her friends.

“Behold the rising star!” she exclaimed; “for of course,” she added in explanation, “you’ve heard that Clarissa is to have leading part in Julia’s operetta.”

“Why, Polly,” said Clarissa, “I had not—”

“Don’t contradict,” responded Polly, “our plans are made, and there isn’t a question but that you have the most manly tone, and gait, and—”

“Why, Annabel, I thought that you were to have the chief part!” interposed her friend.

“Oh, she’ll be in it,” rejoined Polly, in a somewhat patronizing tone, assumed for the occasion, “if not in the chief part.”

Then she moved away, still leaning on Clarissa’s arm, and Annabel had no chance to retort. The foreign guests had gone to inspect the other parts of Fay House, and the drawing-room was filling with girls whose lectures for the day had ended.

“Oh, Polly,” cried Clarissa, as the two friends left the room, after paying their respects to the President and Dean. “Why, Polly, I can’t act; I don’t belong with those girls at all. Ruth Roberts, you know, barely tolerates me, and she’s to be the manager.”

“Nonsense, she isn’t the whole thing. Besides, I happen to know that she _does_ want you.”

“What about Annabel?”

“Well, we can’t really leave her out. Her voice isn’t remarkable, but she acts pretty well; and since she’s been playing with the Cambridge Dramatic Club, she’s been considered our representative actor. Besides, she’s a great friend of Ruth’s.”

“I know it,” responded Clarissa. “You surely ought to have Annabel; but can I pull all right with those girls?”

“Of course, and I am to be a dapper little dandy. Though we are to be rivals in love, we can support each other.”

So at last Clarissa yielded, and after the mid-years, rehearsals went on pretty rapidly. There were, after all, several good parts in the operetta; and Ruth, viewing everything with the critical eye of a business manager, was certain that the performance would bring even more than she had hoped.

“Clarissa herself wouldn’t be so bad,” said Ruth one evening, as she and Julia sat in the study after dinner, “but I can’t say that I like her friends. She has a rather scrubby lot of hangers-on. Look at those two this afternoon!”

“Why, I saw nothing to criticise.”

“You never do, Julia, but they certainly hadn’t a word to say for themselves, and their clothes were frightful. Clarissa’s red coat is bad enough, but she is rather fine-looking, and she is so decidedly unlike any one else that you don’t have to apologize for her. But those others were so—so nondescript.”

“Ruth,” exclaimed Julia, with a shade of reproach, “you have changed very much the past year. You used to think Belle’s exclusiveness silly, but you are tending that way yourself.”

“You are not in earnest!”

“Of course, you’ll never be just like Belle. But you have begun to think too much about appearances.”

“But you are too amiable, Julia. As we can’t be intimate with all the girls we meet, we might as well choose the most congenial. We can’t let all kinds of girls take up our time.”

“My time isn’t so valuable. I can spare a little even to all kinds of girls.”

“Yes, but even on Mondays, sometimes, there are such queer girls. They make an unfavorable impression on people from town who call. Don’t you remember when Mrs. Blair came out? Now, if she had only met Annabel Harmon or Elizabeth Darcy, how different it would have been!”

“Annabel Harmon!” Julia wondered why she so disliked Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel, for Annabel was a popular girl, hardly less so than Elizabeth Darcy. She was well-bred and interesting. “I never can thoroughly trust any one who spends her spare time reading French books,” Clarissa had said laughingly, although Julia would have hesitated to put it quite so definitely.

Ruth, however, was apparently fascinated by Annabel, and constantly quoted her with admiration. Annabel had a dislike for plain things and plain people. By this, she was careful to explain, she did not mean necessarily things that were ugly or people who were poor. “_Some_ ugly things are really very beautiful, and some poor people are far from plain. The only kind of plainness that I object to is commonness; I hate ordinary things.”

Yet if any one had taken the trouble to note down the things that Annabel called “common,” it would have been found that in her eyes these were the inexpensive things, and the girls whom she described as ordinary were usually those who were not rich either in money or influential connections.

Julia saw that Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel had made a change in her, not altogether to be commended.

“I wish you liked Lois Forsaith as well as you like Annabel. I do wish that she had a little more fun. She takes life so seriously. Really, I can’t understand it. I should die, or at least I should want to, if I had as much to do.”

“She has only four courses this year.”

“Oh, I do not mean her studies entirely, but at home. She has a certain amount of housework to do. She helps her two younger brothers with their lessons, and she always has some regular sewing on hand.”

“Really!” exclaimed Ruth in some surprise. Julia had never said much to her about Lois’ family.

“They say that Lois would have had the highest record in the class last year if she hadn’t stayed out to nurse her little sister. It was just before the finals, and she had to lose one of her examinations.”

“Couldn’t she make it up?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, she will have a chance, but of course it makes a difference in her year’s record.”

“I never feel quite sure of Lois,” said Ruth. “She always has that far-away manner, as if she were looking right over your head. I am never sure that she remembers me.”

“Why, I have not noticed that,” responded Julia. “I think her delightful. She shakes hands so warmly, and she always says something worth hearing.”

“But I don’t think that she’s a really popular girl.”

“That’s not to her discredit. Popularity is no evidence of—of—”

And Julia hesitated, seemingly at a loss for a word.

“True greatness,” interposed Ruth. “No, popularity is not a test of true greatness. But I would not say that Lois is unpopular.”

“If Lois could, she would take a larger part in our social life,” added Julia. “It’s very hard for a girl to live at home while she’s going to college. It’s like serving two masters, and one of them has to suffer. Lois will get the most possible out of her studies, but she can’t be interested in every little thing.”

“You’re a regular champion,” and Ruth threw a kiss to Julia, as she turned to leave the room.