Hester's Counterpart: A Story of Boarding School Life

"It was lovely of you girls to come down here to meet me. I had a lovely time with Aunt Debby. Yet I am glad to get back to school."

While she had been speaking, she had drawn off her gloves and had thrown back her coat. The girls had given no response to her greeting, but stood with their eyes fixed upon her. The exclamation which Berenice gave sounded much like one of exultation; for Hester Alden was not wearing a pin.

Hester felt conditions about her. She gave the three girls a quick hurried glance as though to grasp the intangible something which she felt. Then she continued her way down the corridor. Berenice was not easily offended. Catching step with Hester, she walked with her.

"Did you lose your pin, Hester?" she asked. "You had such a pretty pin on when you left school Saturday morning. I noticed at once that you didn't have it on now. Do you suppose you lost it?"

"No, I did not. I left it home purposely."

"Indeed. If I had such a pin I am sure I would wear it. There are only one or two girls in school who have diamonds. If I had a pin with a diamond in it, I am sure I'd be only too anxious to wear it."

"But that did not happen to be a diamond. It is a very cheap little pin which belonged to Aunt Debby – that is, it belonged to me, and I'd rather keep it than wear it."

Berenice gave her shoulders a shrug, lowered her eyelids until her eyes looked like little beads. She would prove to the girls that what she had said was true. Every one of Hester's friends had heard the report but had refused to discuss it. Erma laughed in derision at the mention of it. "Oh, you silly thing," she cried, "to come to me with such a story. Don't I know Hester better than that."

And Mellie, Mame, Renee, and Sara stopped the tale-bearers in their story. Yet while they tried to be true, in the heart of each one was a doubt. Had they not seen the pin many times? Had it not disappeared weeks and weeks ago; and had they not seen Hester wear it home, and that when Helen was absent? Proof was brought before them and they tried to ignore it. They tried to strengthen themselves in their position by believing that Helen had found the pin and had neglected to tell them.

Hester's friends would have let the matter pass, giving her the benefit of a doubt, but there was in school a different set who were easily influenced and stood ready to believe anything that was told them. This set with Berenice as instigator, took it upon themselves to ostracize Hester.

It was the custom of the students to loiter in the parlor after dinner, gathering about in groups. Someone talked; others drew about the piano; while others arm in arm walked up and down in confidential talk. One evening as Hester joined one of these groups, the talk ceased. There was an attempt to resume it, but it was fruitless. The group scattered, leaving Hester alone. This occurred several times. Hester was not supersensitive; neither was she dull. She knew that something had gone amiss, and that she had purposely been snubbed. But not by so much as a glance did she show that she was conscious of the treatment. She lingered a few moments longer, made a pretense of playing a piece and then went to her room and took up her books.

"They will not treat me so a second time," she said to herself. "They'll never have the satisfaction of knowing that I observed them."

It was all very well to speak bravely, but the sting was deep. She had determination and pluck enough not to bewail. She took up her lessons and vented her energy in getting them out.

She was not alone in observing the conduct of the younger set. The girls of her own hall had also seen what had taken place.

Not in this alone, did the younger girls express themselves. At recreation hour, which followed the evening study period, they were accustomed to gather in little groups in one of the rooms. At these times, the chafing-dish was brought into use, and the air was heavy with the odor of chocolate. By contriving, the younger set managed that Hester no longer made one of the party.

One evening, Erma and Mame took the girls to task on this matter. Emma and Louise expressed themselves strongly. Hester had been guilty of the greatest dishonesty and they meant to cut her dead.

"Are you taking it upon yourself to mete out judgment?" asked Mellie gently. "I should scarcely feel myself equal to such a great work. You are not sure that Hester is guilty. You are surmising. Who knows but Helen found the pin."

"I know," exclaimed Berenice. "I took it upon myself to ask her."

"You must have had – " Erma began with some show of feeling, but stopped herself suddenly and laughed instead. What was the use in turning the matter into a tragedy. "Well, if you begin to cut people, you little freshmen, bear in mind that other girls can do the same. Hester is my friend and will continue to be. If she is not treated as I am treated, then I am treated badly."

"It's a case of love me, love my dog, is it?" asked Berenice.

"It's a case of treat my friends as you treat me. If Hester is not at the next fudge party, then you may expect me to leave and furthermore, you need expect no invitation to any spreads that I have anything to do with."

She went her way. The younger girls shrugged their shoulders. It was considered very fine to be entertained by the seniors and to be accepted by them as friends. The freshmen who had been so favored did not wish to forgo these joys. On the other hand, they did not like the idea of giving up their independence and running at the beck and call of any senior.

Berenice's words about asking Helen in regard to finding the pin, had put Erma's convictions to rout. She tried to comfort herself in the thought that Berenice was not always reliable in her statements. It was sorry comfort at the best. A heroic course then presented itself to Erma. The thought no sooner presented itself to her than she determined to put it into play.

"This evening after study hour, I intend making some hot chocolate. Marshall shall buy me some nice fresh wafers when he goes down the street."

"Thank you, I shall be there," said Mame.

"No, you shall not. That is what I wish to speak to you about. The moment the half-hour bell rings, I wish you to go down to Hester Alden's room and I wish you to keep her there until I call to you and her to come. But not for worlds must you let her know that there has been anything premeditated about the affairs."

"Oh, not for the worlds," said Mame. "I do not quite grasp your idea, but I'll do as I am told though I die for it."

"You'll not die, Mamie. The good die young, so I see a long, long life for you. You will be rewarded for your goodness. I shall save the biggest cup for you and I'll fill it twice without so much as your hinting."

"I am your servant from henceforth. Two cups of cocoa to be had not for the asking, and big cups at that."

Promptly at the recreation hour, Mame hurried off to see Hester. There was something she wished done for the paper and Hester wrote so beautifully. Helen went away and left them. The sound of voices came up to them from Fifty-four.

"Erma asked me to come down for some hot chocolate," suggested Hester. But Mame refused to take the hint.

"Yes, she asked me too. She'll call us when it's ready. She knows that I am up here. Now, about this editorial. I'd rather write a novel than an editorial any time. In novels, something may be done; but in editorials, one must just think. Would you say this, Hester?"

She began her reading on an abstract subject which was a theme worthy of a logician and Hester was compelled to listen.

Meanwhile, down in Fifty-four, a number of girls had gathered. Erma was making good use of the chafing-dish while Renee was passing salt wafers and blanched almonds. Erma was laughing merrily, as she poured the cocoa. In the midst of her activities her brooch fell from her collar on to the table.

"Good thing, I heard it," she exclaimed, drawing the attention of the entire room to it. "If I had dropped it in the hall or on the campus, I might never have found it, just as you did, Helen. You never found your pin did you?"

"No," said Helen. Her reply was given curtly as though her mind were on other matters.

"I told you so," cried Berenice with a show of exultation, looking from one girl to another. They had become suddenly quiet at Helen's reply.

"I told you so," she repeated. Then turning to Helen, she continued. "I can tell you where it is. I saw it and so did several of the others. But they are afraid to tell."

"Not afraid," said Mellie gently. "Fear was not what kept us silent."

"Hester Alden knows where it is," continued Berenice. "While you were at Exeter, Hester went home. I met her in the hall and walked with her to the triangle. I saw the pin on her tie. It was partly hidden by the ends of her tie. When she came back, she did not have it with her. I was not the only girl who saw it. They all feel as I do about it. Hester Alden took your pin."

She looked about the room with an air of malicious triumph. What could the girls do or say now? The gauntlet had been thrown down and they could not fling it back. It must lie there, for Hester could not be defended. Gentle, soft-spoken Mellie arose to the occasion. "I hope you are happy now, Berenice," she said. "But I do not see how you can be after such an act. You have deliberately done what you could to ruin Hester's reputation and what have you gained by it? Nothing at all, except those who have heard, care just a little less for you."

During these remarks, Helen had sat silent on a heap of cushions piled high on the floor. At Berenice's first words, she had grown pale but she listened without a word. What could she say or do? While Mellie spoke, she decided the course she would take. If the girls misunderstood her meaning, well and good. She loved Hester. It was a queer worthless sort of love which would make no show of sacrifice for its object. She reasoned thus while Mellie was speaking. Then she looked from one girl to the other.

"What startling things you say, Berenice. What pin have you reference to?"

"Your heirloom with the diamond in it?"

"Oh, that," with an air of assumed indifference. "Is that the one that you have in mind? Yes, I found that three weeks ago. Where do you think I found it?" She looked about at the girls, but gave them no opportunity to answer. "I found it in a little box along with some other trinkets. The box had been put on the closet floor and got pushed back in the corner. I was hunting about for some hooks and eyes and came across it quite by accident."

A sigh of relief was felt. The girls had been sitting with every muscle rigid. Now, they relaxed and a buzz of laughter and talk began. Berenice was far more discerning than the other girls there. Something in Helen's manner was beyond her comprehension.

"Did you really know then that Hester Alden had your pin and was wearing it?"

Helen nodded brightly as she replied. No one noticed that she ignored the second question that Berenice had put to her.

"Why, certainly, I knew that Hester had it. You take up very strange ideas, Berenice. I'd put Hester and the pin from your mind from this minute. I give you my word of honor that I knew that Hester had the pin."

Erma laughed delightfully. Her voice ran the scale and came back with an echo of triumph in it. Her plan had succeeded beyond her most sanguine expectations.

"I have forgotten the girls," she said, "and the cocoa almost gone." Going to the hall, she called to Sixty-two. "Hester Alden, are you and Mame going to stay there all night? The bell will ring in a few moments, and you will have no chocolate."

CHAPTER XIII

From this time on, the younger set of girls made a point of being kind to Hester. Feeling that they had misjudged her they tried to repay by an excess of kindness. Hester was a responsive creature. She had no ugliness in her heart. Spite was a quality that had not entered into the composition of her character. So when the girls showered her with kindness, she responded heartily and put from her heart, the bitter thoughts which had been there.

Helen, after the brave stand she had taken in regard to Hester, was troubled. She felt that she had been placed by Hester's shortcomings in an unpleasant position. She had deceived her girl friends. To be sure, she had not told them a word which was not strictly true, but they had misunderstood her and she knew it. To make matters worse, she had deliberately constructed her sentences that they might be deceived and yet she was telling the truth. Taking it all in all, it was a paradox. She hated deception, and Hester had placed her in such a position that she had been compelled to put a double meaning to her words.

So the little plan which Erma had worked out had the effect of widening the breach between the occupants of Sixty-two.

Hester had been grieved by the treatment she had received from Helen; but after the choice of substitutes, sorrow gave place to anger at the injustice accorded her. When the anger had gone, a steadiness of purpose came to Hester. She resolved to treat Helen with courtesy, nothing more; to be untouched by her in any way. Hester set her lips firmly and raised her head proudly. She had caught little mannerisms from Debby Alden, just as she had caught the principle which had actuated her conduct: not to cry out and let every one know when one is hurt.

When she came back from the two-days' visit with Aunt Debby and Miss Richards, she had mastered her feelings to a great extent. She never failed to greet Helen upon rising; she bade her a courteous good-night when bed-time came. They spoke together of little school affairs, but the long confidential talks had gone. They were well-bred strangers together for a time. They were spoiling the best part of the school year by what they pleased to think was their heroism. It would have been far easier and more fruitful of good results had they taken each other sharply to task, and blurted out what they had against each other. It would have been an easy matter, for each would have discovered that there existed no cause for an estrangement between them.

Down in the city, Debby Alden was spending the best year of her life. She had continued her music until her playing had passed the apprentice stage. She read the classics with Miss Richards. The townspeople had found her charming in her gracious thought for others. She was practical and thoroughgoing, and they filled her hands with church and charity work. Debby had not an idle, lonely moment. To do her justice, she gave no thought to what people might be thinking of her. She had too many thoughts outside herself to give Debby Alden much thought.

She had proved the statement that it is a woman's own fault if she is not beautiful by the time she has forty years to her credit. Debby's beauty was of form and feature, and beyond this, the beauty which radiates from holding high ideals and living up to them. People did not merely like or admire this elder Miss Alden. Those words were weak to express the sentiment they held for her. They loved her, perhaps because Debby had in her heart an interest and love for every human creature that she met. Hester wisely had not mentioned to her aunt the little disturbance at school. This was partly due to unselfishness, and partly that there had been nothing tangible to tell. It would be very foolish to run and cry, "I have had my feelings wounded, but I do not know why." Pride, too, was one of the important factors of her silence. She could tell no one – not even her dear aunt – that the girls had, for some reason, held her in disfavor.

But Debby Alden had not lived with Hester sixteen years without understanding her. The girl had barely entered the cottage and removed her wraps before Debby knew that something had gone wrong. Debby asked no questions, according to Hester the same privileges she demanded for herself – to have hurts and wounds without being questioned concerning them.

At the sight of Hester's troubled face, Debby Alden's old fears came back to her. Had someone at the school brought up the subject of the girl's parentage? Had someone told her that she had been thrown upon the world a waif, and none of her people had cared to look for her?

Saturday evening, the three of the household gathered about the grate fire. Miss Richards had her embroidery and Debby had taken up a book; but neither was in the mood for work. Hester was filled to the brim with school. She was fairly bubbling over with stories of what the girls had done; who had been campused, and who had been called into the office.

Debby Alden listened to the chatter as though it were the profoundest wisdom.

"And, Aunt Debby, what do you think? I missed Mrs. Vail again last week. She came to take Helen for a ride and intended asking me to go with them, but Sara and I had gone around the campus and so I missed my ride and did not meet Mrs. Vail. Does it not seem strange, Aunt Debby, that I should always miss her? I fell in love with her picture, you know, and I was very anxious to know her. Don't you think it's very funny?"

"I do not know that it is funny," replied Debby. "It has just happened so. Does the young man come with his mother?"

"Rob? Sometimes he does. He comes very often alone. Several times, Miss Burkham permitted me to go down to the reception hall with Helen and talk with him. Last week, when we had a reception, he was there, and he talked to me a long, long time. I think he is the nicest boy I ever knew. I think he is nicer than Ralph Orr. Don't you think so, Aunt Debby?"

"You must remember that I met him but once, Hester. I liked him very much. He had such a nice boyish manner."

"Boyish. Do you know how old he is?"

"I am sure he is under seventy," said Debby with a smile.

"Surely," said Miss Richards in her droll, quiet way, "he must be younger than I am. I am only sixty-three."

Hester laughed. "You are making fun of me. He really isn't a boy. He is twenty-one and a senior in a Medical School. My, but he has strong nerves! I asked him if it didn't make him tremble to see the surgeons cut the flesh from one. He said it never phased him. That was his expression – never 'phased' him. I rather like the expression. It sounds just like what you might expect from a college boy. Don't you think so?"

"I never knew college boys," began Debby Alden, but stopped suddenly. She remembered in time that James Baker had been a college boy. " – I never knew many, not enough to know what language to expect of them."

Hester had not caught the hesitancy in Miss Alden's speech. Miss Richards had and looked up in time to see another Debby Alden than the Debby she had always known. This Debby had the flush of sixteen years in her cheeks and the tender light of day-dreams in her eyes.

Just a moment, Debby Alden sat thus. Then the woman came back where the girl had been. "What more?" she asked Hester. "Of what else does this wonderful lad talk?"

"Everything, Aunt Debby. I really do not believe there is a subject that he cannot talk upon."

The women could not restrain a smile at this girlish exhibition of the confidence of youth.

"He's traveled and he's been in school, and he is an athlete. He told me a great deal about school life. That was while we talked together at the reception. Helen was surprised that he talked so long to me. She says that he generally speaks to everyone for a few minutes and then goes. He must have talked to me a half an hour."

"And then he went home?" suggested Debby. Hester blushed. "No, Miss Burkham came up and said that I must remember there were other guests who demanded some of my time, and I had to excuse myself."

Debby Alden in her thoughts gave thanks to Miss Burkham.

Hester continued her chatter. She needed no encouragement for when she was once on a subject she generally threshed it so thoroughly that nothing but chaff remained.

"But Robert told me that he generally said but a few words to each lady present and then went home. But somehow from the very first, he said I did not seem a stranger to him. He felt that he had always known me. That was why he sat so long and talked with me and I wish that Miss Burkham would have attended to something else then, and let me alone."

This was said in the most childlike, guileless manner. Debby Alden almost gasped for breath. She was about to remonstrate at the expression of such opinions when a glance from Miss Richards restrained her. That lady was not at all alarmed, only amused at Hester's talk.

"But Eva does not know all I know," said Debby to herself. "If she did, she would find it no laughing matter."

When Hester had gone to bed, leaving Debby and Miss Richards yet at the fireside, the latter took up the conversation.

"You are needlessly alarmed, Debby. There is not a bit of danger about Hester's having her head turned. She looks upon Robert just as she did upon Ralph. He is a good companion. That is all. Perhaps, she is a little flattered by having a college boy notice her at all. I remember when I went to school, I did the same thing. If a cadet spoke with us, we held our heads high and if he asked us to dance, our heads were turned. We really cared not at all for the cadets, but the uniforms were very handsome. That was fifty years ago, Debby Alden, and girls have not changed one whit."

She smiled as she thought of the old school days. She was far enough away from them now to know what was mere childish pleasure which had left its pleasant fragrance clinging to all the years between.

"Nevertheless, no one knows what may result from these conversations. I shall speak to Hester."

"My dear Debby, I beg that you consider and do nothing of the sort. Hester is a child with no thought of being anything else. Why should you put other thoughts into her head? You will do just such a thing if you discuss the subject further with her. Let her talk with the young man at the reception if she wishes to and Miss Burkham does not object."

"She appeared so much interested. I am afraid – "

"Nonsense. You would hedge Hester about with your fears. It is just a wholesome girlish interest which is right and proper for one normal young person to show in another. Had it been otherwise, Hester would not have talked so freely."

Yet, Debby was not satisfied. "You know that very serious love affairs are started in just such a boy-and-girl fashion."

"Surely. I know it. I know also that I do not think it altogether a bad fashion. Robert Vail, if I read him right, is an excellent young man. The Vails are people who are above reproach. So what cause would you have to complain, Debby Alden, if these half-hour talks should be taken seriously?"

"In the abstract, your ideas are worth while," said Debby. She could not laugh at the matter as Miss Richards was doing. "But in the concrete, they are wrong from beginning to end, and cannot be applied to Hester's case. Hester must never marry. Knowing that, I intend to keep her from falling in love, for I would not have her be unhappy."

There was tragedy in her voice which Miss Richards saw fit to ignore.

"At the same time, keep the rain from falling and the days from growing shorter. One is as easily done as the other. You will pardon my frankness, Debby, but I think you are about to make a mistake with Hester. You may restrain and educate her to a certain extent, but you cannot control her thoughts or her emotions. No one can do that for another. Guide Hester as far as your power lies; advise and admonish her, but she must live her own life; make her own mistakes and shed her own tears over them. You and your love must not shield her from that. She is herself to make of herself what she will.

"I cannot understand why you should wish her not to marry. In my mind, it is a fitting state for men and women, else the Lord would not have sanctioned it."

Debby could make no answer to this. Miss Richards bent over her needlework. She and Debby in all their years of intimacy, had but once before discussed the question. It had been Hester and Hester's future which had brought it up. The two women sat in silence for some minutes, when Debby said, "You cannot understand in what way life must be different for my girl. You do not understand and I cannot explain."

"Very well. But bear this in mind, Debby. You must not take the responsibility too heavily upon yourself. You are able to do a limited amount. There is a greater power in Hester Alden's life, than you. It is omnipotent and has a greater conception of life than your feeble mind can grasp."