Carney's House Party/Winona's Pony Cart, Page 2

  She set herself at once to her problem.

  “I believe I’ll pretend it’s a topic for Miss Salmon,” she thought, a smile bringing a dimple into her left cheek.

  Miss Salmon was her history professor and Carney admired her clear orderly thinking. Miss Salmon would analyze the problem like this…

  Not having a notebook and pencil, Carney addressed a chipmunk, peeping out from under a blackberry bush.

  “One. Why don’t I want Isobel to visit me this summer?

  “Two. Are my reasons valid or invalid?

  “Three. Decision.”

  The chipmunk ran away, and no wonder, Carney thought. Put into words, her dilemma was astonishing. Isobel was not only beautiful, but charming. Fascinating, the girls always called her. And Carney liked her. She had been as flattered as she was surprised at Isobel’s suggestion last spring that they room together. But in spite of living with her—happily, too—through the whole year, Carney didn’t want her to come to Deep Valley.

  She knew that Isobel wanted to come. Not that she had said so! She had subtly insinuated the idea—by looking eagerly at Carney’s home pictures, by animated questions about the Deep Valley Crowd. Carney herself was direct to the point of bluntness, and she was always irritated by Isobel’s circumlocutions.

  “She’s so Eastern,” Carney thought resentfully, and was immediately aware that Miss Salmon would not approve of such a label. There were plenty of frank Easterners and devious Westerners, of course.

  Carney tried to search out the cause of her inhospitality.

  “I’m not jealous of her,” she began.

  This was true. Carney had never been jealous in her life. Yet she had been, she admitted, a little startled when Isobel was chosen for the Daisy Chain and she herself left out. In Deep Valley she was considered outstandingly pretty. Not that it had ever mattered. She just took it for granted.

  She was pretty now as she sat under the pine tree. She had a dainty figure, softly pomped dark hair, bright eyes, and a skin as fresh as apple blossoms.

  Part of her charm lay in her immaculate neatness. Her middy blouse was snowily white, the red taffeta tie crisp and spotless. Part of it lay in her bubbling gaiety, quenched now by earnest introspection.

  Yes, she thought, having Isobel preferred to her had come as a bit of a shock.

  “Though I ought to be used to shocks by now, after two years.”

  She had come to Vassar wearing, she realized, a mantle of complacency. She was a Sibley of Deep Valley, Minnesota. But no one at Vassar had ever heard of the Sibleys or of Deep Valley either, and they didn’t know much even about Minnesota. Some girls thought there were Indians running wild in the streets out there.

  Moreover, they thought that all culture and refinement ended at the Hudson. They were too polite to say so, but their opinion was implied in their kindly curiosity. They were astonished at how well she played the piano. They were amazed that her clothes were so modish, and it meant nothing to them when Carney explained that she and her mother had bought them in Minneapolis. They confused Minneapolis with Indianapolis and both cities seemed equally remote.

  “They haven’t any idea how nice the Middle West is,” she thought, with a sudden longing for it. She had returned to Minnesota last summer feeling that nothing she had seen in the East was half so beautiful as that rolling green country, with its generous farms, its groves and fertile pastures, a tree-fringed lake around every turn of the road.

  Of course, she liked the East, too.

  She had spent a week-end with Isobel in East Hampton, glimpsing unfamiliar luxury, seeing her first golf course, eating her first shore dinner. (She thought lobster far inferior to chicken.) She had loved the Atlantic Ocean, the great crashing breakers drawing their ruffles of foam in proud retreat across the sands.

  She was fascinated, too, by what she had seen of New York. It was as though, in that great city, folding doors were pushed apart and she was reluctantly introduced to wonders—Maude Adams in Chantecler, the Metropolitan Opera, Tschaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.

  Miss Chittenden, Vassar’s piano teacher, had been impressed with Carney’s talent and had taken her to play for Matthew Lang. Carney was still stung by what he had said to her. But meeting the famous pianist had been important. It was one of the experiences which had molded her.

  She could almost feel herself being molded, a piece of wet clay, in the powerful hands of the East.

  She loved Vassar. She was proud that in two years she had made a small place for herself—not so small either, for she was vice president of her class. And she warmed when she thought of the fun she had had with the girls—Sunday breakfasts in their rooms, bacon bats down by the brook, the secret preparations for dedicating their Class Tree this spring. How they had fooled the freshmen!

  “Just the same,” she said aloud, “I’d like to see a few boys.”

  At home she not only had three brothers, but boys were barging into the house all the time. One went riding, or walking, or picnicking with a boy as freely as with a girl.

  At Vassar, for some mysterious reason, boys were put in a class with poison ivy. No young man was admitted unless he came laden down with references and credentials. And then he was entertained stiffly in the parlor in sight of everybody!

  Dances were unbelievably stuffy, beginning at four in the afternoon. And whenever Carney went down the Hudson to attend a dance at West Point with her old friend Tom Slade, she had to take a chaperon and it cost twenty-five dollars.

  “Twenty-five dollars just tossed away!” she thought. “Tom and I have never felt romantic about each other.”

  Carney had never felt romantic about any boy, except Larry Humphreys. He had been her beau through her first two years in high school. When she was fifteen he had moved to California and for four years now they had never missed a week in writing to each other. Somehow he had kept her from getting interested in other boys although she had always had more than her share of attention.

  Her friend Betsy Ray was visiting in California. Carney had had a letter from her, which she almost knew by heart.

  “I’ve done gone seen him! And he’s most attractive. I don’t think you’ll be a bit disappointed in him, Carney. Maybe you’ll be a little afraid of him. I was. He always seems to be laughing at me, and he has a sort of…touch me not, I’m already spoken for…air. Now who has spoken for him, Miss Caroline Sibley?”

  Carney shook herself.

  “You came here to think about Isobel and whether you should ask her to come out to Minnesota,” she rebuked herself sternly.

  She had written to her mother suggesting Isobel’s visit, secretly hoping her mother would settle everything by saying it was out of the question. But an answer had come today, and to her dismay it contained a cheerful acquiescence.

  “The Andrews are back from Paris as you have probably heard. They are living in St. Paul, and I’ve invited Bonnie for July. Why don’t you have Isobel come at the same time? It would be a sort of house party.”

  It would be a house party all right, Carney thought. But how much nicer to have just Bonnie! Bonnie had been her dearest friend before she went off to Paris. And Paris would not have changed Bonnie, Carney knew. She would be just the same. It would be Isobel who would seem strange and exotic in Deep Valley.

  Carney had a sudden recollection of her home—the large frame house, its gray-blue paint faded; the wide vine-covered porch with its rain-washed chairs; the trampled side lawn where her brothers were allowed to play ball; the old barn transformed into a garage.

  In Deep Valley the Sibley house was…the Sibley house. It was not the most modern or elegant in town but certainly one of the most important. Her father was the banker. He was a pillar of the Presbyterian church. His people and her mother’s, too, had come from fine eastern families, and had helped to lay the foundations of society in the Minnesota town.

  But they didn’t have a tennis court or swimming pool. There wasn’t any wicker or cretonne on the po
rch. And there was just Olga, the hired girl, in the kitchen, no white-capped maids such as she had seen at Isobel’s.

  It was a spacious comfortable home, with good furniture, her piano and her father’s books. Over all the airy rooms it bore the print of her mother’s exquisite housekeeping. But her father and brothers pressed their own suits and shined their own shoes on Sunday morning, and at the breakfast table they discussed the Sunday School lesson. Carney couldn’t picture Isobel there; she just couldn’t picture it!

  “Good gracious!” she thought. “Am I getting ashamed of my home?”

  Frowning, she brought herself back to Miss Salmon and the questions.

  “I don’t want Isobel to come because she’s Eastern and I’m tired of the East. I don’t want her to come because she’s so grand. I don’t want her to come because I want to be alone with Bonnie. I’m a selfish pig. She shall come.”

  With which announcement Carney jumped up and her dimple flashed. As always, her smile changed her look from demure primness to mischief. It showed white, slightly irregular teeth that folded in front into a piquant peak. It was irrepressibly mirthful.

  Shaking out her white skirts, she started back down the hill.

  As she came out of the pine woods into Matthew Vassar’s orchard, she heard the long whistle of the west-bound train. Her thoughts always followed it for at least a fleeting moment half across the continent and home. Next week she would be on it. And in July Isobel would be on it, too.

  The sun was getting low now. Down on the campus girls in middy blouses and skirts, girls in ankle-length cotton dresses, girls in gym suits modestly concealed by skirts and coats, were hurrying along the paths to their rooms in the various buildings.

  “Where, oh where are the gay young Soph’mores,

  Where, oh where are the gay young Soph’mores…”

  Carney hummed skipping down the hill, forgetting to assume the dignity of one who was “Safe now in the Junior Class.”

  2

  Isobel’s Man

  CROSSING THE PINE WALK which encircled the campus with a dim, pungently scented, green-roofed lane, Carney ran into her friend Sue. She almost literally ran into her, for Sue was advancing at a breakneck pace, her hair flying, her wide-set blue eyes big with excitement.

  “Carney! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “You never could guess! Something absolutely thrilling!” She grasped Carney’s arm. “Isobel,” she announced dramatically, “is entertaining a man!”

  “Jiminy! Who is he?”

  “I haven’t any idea. But they’re down in the parlors. He’s terribly handsome, sitting with his arms folded, looking scared. Isobel looks as cool as ice cream. She’s talking and laughing away.”

  “You’ve been peeking?”

  “Of course. Everybody has.”

  Carney’s chuckle was a small explosion of mirth. “Come with me?” she asked.

  “Sure. There are Win and Winkie,” Sue added. “Let’s get them to go, too.”

  Sue and Carney ran toward The Circle, an area quite properly round, rimmed first by pines and then by a border of flowers. The 1897 Class Tree spread its broad boughs in the center. Here croquet, tennis, hockey and basketball were played. There was a cinder path for track. At the Gate House, where equipment was stored, Win and Winkie were hooking skirts over their gym suits with that propriety decreed by Vassar’s supreme authority.

  They were tennis stars, roommates and great friends. Win was tall, dark and vivacious; Winkie was short, with thick braids of light hair bound about her head, and deceptively grave eyes.

  “Win! Winkie! What do you think?” Carney and Sue cried together.

  “I’ve stopped thinking. Exams are over,” Winkie said.

  “President Taylor has eloped with the Lady Principal?” offered Win.

  “Don’t be silly. This is important,” said Carney, but she paused to let Sue deliver her own scoop.

  “Isobel is entertaining a man!”

  Win received the news with due excitement, but Winkie looked disappointed.

  “What of it?” she asked, shouldering her tennis racket.

  “We’re going to peek. Want to come?”

  “Not me. I want a bath before dinner.”

  “I’ll go,” said Win joyfully. “But oughtn’t we to get Peg? She’ll never forgive us if we don’t.”

  They hurried into the back door of Main and into the elevator. Peg lived in a single alley on the fourth floor. There was a sign on her door.

  “Engaged! Keep out! This means you!”

  “Just ignore it,” advised Win. “She’s packing, but what’s that compared to a visiting man?”

  A barrage of knocks brought a reluctant turn of the knob, and the three girls shouted: “Isobel’s entertaining a man!…They’re down in the parlors…We’re going to peek. Want to come along?”

  “Of course,” said Peg, annoyance giving place to delighted interest. She was a large, gentle girl with curly hair. “Just wait till I wash my hands,” she added.

  “Peg would wash her hands if she were running to a fire,” said Carney.

  “So would you,” teased Sue.

  “But a man! I haven’t seen a man who wasn’t faculty for weeks and months.”

  “Neither have I,” said Win. “Not since I followed Peg’s father all over the campus to smell his cigar.”

  “I almost swoon,” said Sue, “when Carney puts on her father’s dress suit for dancing in J.”

  “You’re all nutty,” said Winkie. “So long.”

  But Peg was ready now. Four strong again, they rushed back to the elevator.

  Down on the second floor, they strolled with elaborate carelessness along the wide hall which ran from the dining room to the entrance stairs of Main. There were suites of connecting parlors on either side.

  “They’re sitting on the right-hand side,” Sue whispered, and the girls turned their eyes to the right.

  Isobel’s guest sat in a horsehair chair; Isobel was opposite on a sofa. He was indeed a handsome young man, wearing a stiff high collar. But he had relaxed now to the point of unfolding his arms. In fact he was leaning forward looking at Isobel.

  She had already dressed for dinner in a soft pale silk and was wearing her coral necklace and bracelets, the ones that came from Florence. Her golden brown hair was, as usual, slightly disordered, breaking at every twist into airy curls. She didn’t so much as glance at the girls, but gazed at the young man with adoring interest. Now and then her low, lazy laugh floated out.

  The girls traversed the hall once, twice, chatting with false vivacity and glancing furtively into the parlor.

  “We’d better go now. She’ll be mad,” Carney whispered.

  “He’ll be leaving in a minute anyway; it’s almost time for dinner.”

  “And we have to dress.”

  Reluctantly the four withdrew. But Isobel and her guest were not left unchaperoned for long. The elevator disgorged a group of freshmen.

  “Is it true that Isobel Porteous is entertaining a man? Which parlor?” they asked.

  Leaving Peg at her fourth-floor room, Carney, Sue, and Win proceeded along the corridor which was filled with the trunks, suitcases, and hatbags of departing students. It was enclosed by glass and looked out on the campus. Such corridors ran across the front of Main on every floor. Matthew Vassar had provided them so that his young ladies might take their constitutionals even in bad weather. A pioneer in many ways, he had believed that exercise was beneficial to young females. Unfortunately each corridor deprived a row of bedrooms of outside air. It was one of the reasons Carney liked rooming in North Tower.

  They reached this retreat by a winding stair, which ascended all the way from the bottom floor and emerged into a small central hall with a skylight above it and doors all around. Carney and Isobel lived in the southwest corner room, Win and Winkie opposite, Sue alongside. These girls had been friends since they had met at supper
on the first night of college, freshman year. Peg, too, was one of the group but she liked the comfort of the sitting room attached to the bedrooms in her alley.

  The room Carney shared with Isobel was large, with two beds. It was furnished in golden oak which Carney thought very pretty, but Isobel had brought in her own mission oak desk and easy chair. There was a couch full of pillows, making a nest for Carney’s doll. Suzanne, her beloved baby since childhood, was now the mascot of North Tower.

  There was a tea set with a spirit lamp. A built-in cupboard held Whitman’s Instantaneous Cocoa, sugar, crackers, jelly, and other supplies. On the wall were the banners of many colleges—Leland Stanford, a gift from Larry; West Point, representing Tom; Yale, from one of Isobel’s flames. There were pictures by Burne-Jones and Maxfield Parrish, framed photographs of friends. Larry’s photograph had the place of honor on Carney’s desk.

  The two windows were high and opened in. Carney crossed to one now and looked out, into the treetops and the rooftops of old Main. She wasn’t romantic, like her friend Betsy Ray, but she liked living in Main.

  It was the first and oldest building; originally it had housed the entire college. (Originally, she had heard, each room had been provided with just two hooks for dresses. When someone protested, old Matthew Vassar had said, “Why, that’s enough. One hook for her everyday dress, and one hook for her best dress.”)

  It was a long brick building four stories high with groups of towers at either end. Isobel, who had been everywhere, said that it resembled the Tuileries. Above the main entrance, which looked down a tree-lined avenue to the Old Lodge Gate, was part of the original sign, “Vassar ——— College.” That blank had once held the word “Female.”

  “An institution once there was