Betty Wales, Senior Part 21

By dinner time the astonis.h.i.+ng news had spread over the campus. Roberta Lewis was going to be Shylock. She hadn't been in but one play since she entered college and then she took somebody's place. n.o.body had thought she would get it. n.o.body knew she could act except Betty Wales. Betty found out about her somehow--she was always finding out what people could do,--and she got her in at the last minute because Mr. Masters didn't like Jean's acting,--or somebody didn't. Roberta's was magnificent. They wanted her for Portia too. Mr. Masters had said it was a great pity there weren't two of her. How did she take it? Why, she acted shy and bored and distant, just as usual. She seemed to have expected to be Shylock!

But she wasn't "just as usual." She was sitting by her window in the dark, with Mary Brooks's picture clutched tightly in one hand and her father's in the other, and she was whispering soft little messages to them.

"Dear old daddy, you were in all the fraternities and societies, and on all the college papers and the 'varsity eight. Well, I'm on one thing now. You'll have one little chance to be proud of me, perhaps, after all these four years.

"Now, Mary Brooks, do you see what I can do? I couldn't write and I couldn't be popular or prominent or a 'star' in any of the cla.s.ses. I'm not that kind. But after all I shall be something but just one of the Clan before I leave.

"Oh, I wonder if Mary and father would like to sit together at the play."

While Roberta was considering the probability that they would, Betty knocked her soft little knock on the door. Roberta always knew Betty's knock.

"Come," she called in a queer, trembly voice. How was she ever going to thank Betty for seeing what no one else saw, and helping her to stick to it and get her chance in a nice quiet way that wouldn't make her feel awkward if she failed?

But Betty didn't give her time to open her mouth. "You dear old thing!"

she cried. "Oh, I am so happy! I never thought you'd get it. Honestly, I didn't. I just thought you might as well try. Roberta, you ought to hear the things Mr. Masters has been saying about you."

Roberta laughed happily. "It's nice, isn't it?" she said. "Didn't you think I could get a part? You were the one who told me I ought to try."

"Yes," said Betty solemnly, "I thought you'd get one of the Sals probably--you know the ones I mean,--Solanio, and the others that sound like him. We call them the Sals for short, I never dreamed of your being Shylock, any more than I planned for you to be Ermengarde. You did it every bit yourself, Roberta Lewis, by just happening to come around at the right times."

"And by coming to the right person," added Roberta.

But Betty only laughed at her. "It's bad enough to be blamed for things you've done," she said. "I simply won't be praised for things I haven't done. I never was so pleased in my life. Roberta, Miss Kingston says you're a genius. To think of my knowing a genius! I must go and tell Helen Chase Adams."

Down-stairs Madeline was telephoning to Clara Madison, who, owing to her strong prejudice against bed-making, still lived off the campus. "A dark horse," she explained, "is a person like Roberta Lewis. I didn't have time to tell you this morning. Good-b----Oh! haven't you heard? She's going to be Shylock. No, the committee haven't announced it yet, but Mr.

Masters shouted it aloud in the corridor at college hall. Don't forget what a dark horse is, Clara."

The B's, innocently supposing that Roberta was out because her windows were dark, were celebrating in Nita's room, while they awaited her return. This meant that Babbie was doing a cake-walk with an imaginary partner, Babe a clog-dance, and Bob a highland fling, while Nita hugged her tallest vase and her prettiest teacup and besought them to stop before Mrs. Kent came to see who was tearing the house down.

Bob stopped first, though not on account of Nita's bric-a-brac or a possible visit from Mrs. Kent.

"Nita," she demanded breathlessly, "did you say Betty thought of Roberta?"

"Yes," Nita a.s.sented. "n.o.body else on the committee knows her at all except Rachel, and she is as surprised as the rest of us."

"Gee!" Bob's tone was deep with meaning. "Then I know who won't like it."

"Who?" Babe ended her dance to ask.

"Jean Eastman," said Bob solemnly.

Babe gave her a disdainful glance. "How much brains do you think it takes to find that out, Bob Parker? Of course she won't like it."

But Bob only smiled loftily and declared that if Roberta hadn't come in by this time they must all go straight home to dinner.

CHAPTER XII

CALLING ON ANNE CARTER

Pleasant things generally submerged the unpleasant ones at Harding, so Betty's delight in Roberta's unexpected success quite wiped out her remembrance of Bob's theories about Jean, until, several days after the Shylock trials, Jean herself confirmed them.

"I want to be sure that you know I'm going to try for Ba.s.sanio," she said, overtaking Betty on the campus between cla.s.ses, "so you can have plenty of time to hunt up a rival candidate. I can't imagine who it will be unless you can make Eleanor Watson believe that it's her duty to the cla.s.s to try. But this time I hope you'll come out into the open and play fair, or at least as nearly fair as you can, considering that you ought to be helping me. I may not be much on philanthropy, but I don't think I can be accused of entirely lacking a sense of honor."

"Why Jean," began Betty, trying to remember that Jean was hurt and disappointed and possibly didn't mean to be as rude as her words sounded, "please don't feel that way. It wasn't that I didn't want you for Shylock. Of course Roberta is one of my best friends and I'm glad to have her get the big part in the play, because she's never had anything else; but I didn't dream that she would get it."

"Then why did you drag her in at the last minute?"

Betty explained how that had happened, but Jean only laughed disagreeably. "I consider that it was a very irregular way of doing things," she said, "and I think a good many in the cla.s.s feel the same way about it. Besides--but I suppose you've entirely forgotten that it was I who got you on the play committee."

"Listen, Jean," Betty protested, anxious to avoid a discussion that would evidently be fruitless. "It was Mr. Masters, and not I or any of the other girls, who didn't like your acting, or rather your acting of Shylock. And Mr. Masters himself suggested that you would make a better Ba.s.sanio. Didn't Barbara tell you?"

"Oh, yes," said Jean, "she told me. That doesn't alter the fact that if you hadn't produced Roberta Lewis when you did, Mr. Masters might have decided that he liked my Shylock quite well enough."

"Jean," said Betty, desperately, "don't you want the play to be as good as it possibly can?"

"No," retorted Jean, coolly, "I don't. I want a part in it. I imagine that I want one just as badly as Roberta Lewis did. And if I don't get Ba.s.sanio, after what Barbara and Clara Ellis have said to me, I shall know whom to blame." She paused a moment for her words to take effect.

"My father says," she went on, "that women never have any sense of obligation. They don't think of paying back anything but invitations to afternoon tea. I must tell him about you. He'll find you such a splendid ill.u.s.tration. Good-bye, or I shall be late to chemistry." Jean sped off in the direction of the science building.

"Oh, dear," thought Betty, sadly, "I wish I weren't so stupid and so meek. Madeline can always answer people back when they're disagreeable, and Rachel is so dignified that Jean wouldn't think of saying things like that to her."

Then she smiled in spite of herself. It was all such a stupid tangle.

Jean insisted on blaming her, and Roberta and the committee had insisted on praising her for finding 19-- a Shylock, when she never intended or expected to do anything of the kind. "It just shows," thought Betty, "that the things that seem like deep-laid schemes are very often just happenings, and the simple-looking ones are the schemes. Well, I certainly hope Jean will get Ba.s.sanio. Eleanor's window is open. I wonder if she can hear me."

"Oh, Eleanor," she called, when the window had been opened wider in response to her trill, "there isn't any committee meeting this afternoon. Don't you want to go with me to see Anne Carter? Let's start early and take a walk first. It's such a lovely glitter-y day."

The "glitter-y" day foregathered with a brisk north wind after luncheon, and it was still mid-afternoon when Betty and Eleanor ran up Miss Carter's front steps, delighted at the prospect of getting in out of the cold. At the door they hesitated.

"It's so long since I've regularly called on anybody in college,"

laughed Betty, "that I've forgotten how to act. Don't we go right up to her room, Eleanor?"

"Why yes. That's certainly what people used to do to us in our freshman year. Don't you remember how we were always getting caught with our kimonos on and our rooms fixed for sweep-day by girls we'd never seen?"

"I should think so." Betty smiled reminiscently. "Helen Adams used to get so fussed when she was caught doing her hair. Then let's go right up. We want to be friendly and informal and make her feel at home. She has the front room on the second floor. Helen spoke of its being so big and pretty. I do hope she's in."

She was in, for she called a brisk "come" in answer to Betty's knock.

She was sitting at a table-desk by the window, with her back to her door, and when it opened she did not turn her head. Neither did Jean Eastman who sat beside her, their heads together over the same book.

Jean was reading aloud in hesitating, badly accented French, and paid even less attention to the intruders than Miss Carter, who called hastily, "In just one minute, Miss Harrison," and then cautioned Jean not to forget the elisions.

"But we're not Miss Harrison," said Betty laughingly, amazed and embarra.s.sed at the idea of meeting Jean here.

At the sound of her voice both the girls turned quickly and Miss Carter came forward with a hearty apology for her mistake. "I was expecting some one else," she said, "and I thought of course it was she who came in. It was very stupid of me. Won't you sit down?"

"But aren't we interrupting?" asked Betty, introducing Eleanor.