CHAPTER XVI
NO MARTYR’S CROWN
Beth bolted both the doors, once having entered Number Eighty, and refused to open either, though she knew that it must be Molly Granger who came and softly tapped upon the panel.
It was some time after Beth had got into bed that Molly tried to get in. The party in Mamie Dunn’s room could not have immediately broken up on Beth’s departure.
The latter lay quietly in her bed and thought matters out, coolly. She did not weep. She realized that she had done a foolish thing in trying to become the comrade of these girls who had so much more of this world’s goods than she could ever hope to possess.
“I am different from them all—different, even, from Molly,” she told herself. “I can keep dear Molly’s friendship—I prize it too highly to lose it for any cause; but I cannot be even her social equal.
“I have come here with the avowed intention of earning part of my expenses. That immediately puts me on a different plane from the girls who never have to think of money—only how to spend it! Maude Grimshaw, hateful as she is, is more than half right. My place is with Cynthia Fogg.
“I have a year before me in which to get established here in my proper place. I can be helpful to many of these girls. I must be helpful. And I must be helpful for money. There are things I can do, and that they need done, and for which they will willingly pay me. I am not ashamed of any decent means to earn money—why should I be?
“Such time as I have aside from the study and recitation hours and such physical exercises as I need, must be devoted to earning money. Why! there are thousands and thousands of girls situated just as I am, who are making their way through school and college. Just because I happen to be in a school for wealthy girls, should make no difference. What will be the odds, whether they like me or not, a hundred years from now?
“Nor will I sport the willow,” declared Beth, “nor wear the martyr’s crown!
“That Maude Grimshaw is half right on another point, too. I must do anything—anything that is decent—for money. I can’t be too particular.
“I won’t dawdle around here like an abused chicken, looking for sympathy. I don’t need sympathy. What did I come to Rivercliff School for, anyway?
“Why! I came to work—in two ways. I’ve taken hold of my lessons all right, I flatter myself,” went on Beth, answering her own question, “and now I must think of taking up my other branches. I am to take a special course of training—learning to make money. I’ll begin to-morrow.”
And with this resolve she finally went to sleep, and slept soundly. Beth Baldwin was blessed with a strain of practical, common sense.
She could be hurt as easily as most naturally refined girls. She was by no means thick-skinned. Only, she could grit her teeth and go at a thing that had to be done, and without weeping over it.
In the morning, almost before Beth had her bath and was dressed, Molly burst in—but in no jolly mood, as was plain.
“Oh, my dear! Oh, my dear!” she wailed, seizing Beth about the neck. “I haven’t slept half the night for thinking of you. That nasty, mean, horrid Maude Grimshaw——”
“And a cup of tea!” interposed Beth, laughing. “No more of that, Molly—if you love me. In the language of my younger brothers, ‘forget it!’”
“But it isn’t to be forgotten. And I told them all after you came away last night——”
“Now, Molly dear, if you tell so much you’ll be completely empty and will collapse—sure,” declared Beth, laughing.
“But, Beth!”
“But, Molly!” mocked Beth.
“Don’t you care, Beth Baldwin?” cried Molly.
“If I do, I don’t want to wear the martyr’s crown,” and Beth smiled. “Come, my dear! ‘What can’t be cured must be endured.’ And it had better be endured cheerfully—don’t you think?”
“But it can be cured, I tell you!” cried Molly, very much excited. “Do you suppose the really nice girls of Rivercliff are going to allow a little clique of stuck-up things to insult and abuse a girl who has positively done no wrong? We think too much of our school itself to allow such a blot to stand——”
“That sounds very fine, dear,” said Beth, calmly, “although your metaphor is hazy. And it is awfully nice of you and your friends to stand up for me. But there is something to be said on the other side, I guess.”
“On whose side—yours?”
“No. I fancy I have very little standing in the premises, when it comes to the facts,” and Beth laughed again, though rather bitterly. “I mean on the side of Maude Grimshaw and her crowd.”
“Oh, them!” sniffed Molly, disgustedly, as well as ungrammatically. “What about Princess Fancyfoot?”
“She can claim to hold the welfare of Rivercliff quite as high as you and your friends do,” Beth said argumentatively. “She believes that the school is for a certain class of girls—and for no other. And, really, the girls themselves bear out her claim, don’t they? Am I not about the only poor girl here?”
“Well, I’m sure!” exclaimed Molly, “I’m not rich.”
“What! with seven aunts to support you?” laughed Beth, bound to keep a cheerful tone in all the argument.
“But that has nothing to do with it.”
“Yes it has. If I were Maude Grimshaw I should probably feel just as she does. I am an interloper. But I am here,” added Beth, with vigor, “and I mean to stay and get what I came to Rivercliff for.”
“Hurrah!” cried Molly. “Then you will fight ’em?”
“Fight? Certainly not. I have no reason to. I tell you, dear, that I was in the wrong—besides being in wrong! I should not have gone to Miss Dunn’s party. I tell you I am not one of you, and cannot be one of you, save in my standing in classes.”
“Oh, Beth! What do you mean?” wailed Molly.
“I am going to keep to myself—‘flock together,’ as it were,” and again Beth laughed, and this time quite cheerfully. “No, no, Molly! It’s of no use to try to get me into your class in society. I should merely be a ‘hanger-on’—and I should positively hate myself for such sycophancy.
“Let me be myself. I am poor; no getting around it. Girls from whom I hope to earn money won’t treat me as their equal. At least, not these girls at Rivercliff, for the true feeling of ‘equality in knowledge’ has never become a tenet of this institution, as it has in so many colleges.”
“Goodness!” cried Molly. “You mean we are a school of snobs?”
“Very near it! very near it!” returned Beth, allowing herself some small display of malice for the moment. “But, yet, you are not to be blamed.”
“I am sure, Beth Baldwin, you cannot accuse me——” began Molly, when Beth swooped down upon her, seized her in her arms, and cried:
“Don’t be hurt, dear! You are the lovingest girl that ever lived. But you are not ‘the whole push,’ as Marcus would say. You mean well, and you could influence some of the other girls, I know; but I would merely cause a schism in the school if I went your way.”
“What do you mean?”
“A few of your nice girls would always be taking up cudgels for me. That would cause friction and do me more harm than good. I must quietly withdraw from too much publicity. Let me go my own placid way. I positively will not accept any invitations to private parties of any kind,” and Beth laughed. “Never again!”
“Oh, Beth! That’s just what we intended to do. Every girl that likes you agreed to invite you, one after another, to little parties, and so show those stuck-up things that you were more and more popular.”
“I thought so!” exclaimed Beth, and she smiled through her tears now. “It is very lovely of you—and of your friends. But I am going to excuse myself from all such affairs. Yes, I mean it. This is my room. Those girls who like me can always find me here at a proper time. But I shall make it a rule to attend no other private social ‘orgies.’”
“Oh, Beth!” wailed Molly, again. “You are shutting yourself off from everything!”
“Oh no, dear.”
“Oh yes, you will!”
“No. I shall not be shutting myself off from the most necessary thing in my life here at Rivercliff School,” Beth declared firmly.
“For pity’s sake! what is that?”
“Work. If I am not socially connected with any clique of girls I shall stand a better chance of getting work from all.”
“Cracky-me! What work?” gasped Molly.
“You didn’t think I was in earnest!” cried Beth.
“But—but—you have a whole year to think of work.”
“No. I have a whole year—or, almost—to earn what I need for next year. I must take opportunity by the forelock, for he will certainly be shaved close for me behind. A regular ‘Riley cut,’ to quote my slangy brother again. I must not let the first opportunity get by me.”
Nevertheless, this expected and much longed-for opportunity, did not at once appear, as Beth hoped. She proved to her own satisfaction, however—and in time to Molly’s—that her attitude toward the other girls was the wiser one.
She refused every invitation that came to her, explaining quietly why in each case. If the girls wanted her, they were welcome in her room during the short time in the day when visiting back and forth was permissible.
Many learned to like her—some to admire her—in that first month of school. Some offered help that Beth could not accept; but they meant it kindly. Some few had suggestions that led to the new girl earning small sums; but nothing regularly.
Indeed, it was her own bright mind and thought that opened the first really broad path to a certain independence. She seized this opportunity by its forelock at the first monthly social evening of the whole school, arranged by Miss Hammersly.
All through the school year these monthly socials in the huge drawing-rooms were the principal events of the kind. There was music and dancing and a collation. Sometimes there were visitors. The girls looked forward to the parties with delight.
And as she sat in her pretty poplin in the great reception hall, quite popular enough, she thought, Beth had an idea. This season skirts were worn very short, but the high boots had not come in. As she glanced up the stairway she had a continual panorama of silk-clad ankles, as the girls tripped up and down.
She already had heard some of the girls complain of the hard wear their silk stockings received. Every girl in the school (including herself) wore some quality of silk hose. The pair she had on were darned; but so neatly that it would have taken very close inspection to discover the mended place.
That was one thing Mrs. Baldwin had taught Beth—how to darn neatly. She sat now, with the music and confusion about her, and an endless procession of silk stockings paraded before her mental vision.
The very next day she sent off for silks of all shades, needles, stocking feet of good quality, and other necessities, and in a week she put Molly’s artistic ability to the test. Molly demurred at first; then she entered into the idea hopefully. She did her very best in lettering the card Beth tacked up outside of Number Eighty:
SILK STOCKING HOSPITAL
Major & Minor Operations Performed
“Well, there’s some fun in that,” admitted the jolly one. “At least, the sign will make ’em laugh.”
But Beth looked for more serious returns than mere amusement.