Part 26 (1/2)
”Who told _you_ I was going to run away from home?” flashed Mignon, whirling fiercely upon Marjorie.
”No one told me,” was the steady admission. ”It just came to me all of a sudden. If I'm wrong, forgive me. If I'm right, then please don't do it.” Marjorie's voice rose beseechingly. ”You have everything in the world to make you happy. Your father loves you, even if he _is_ angry with you now. No one else will ever take care of you as he has.”
”My father _hates_ me,” contradicted Mignon savagely. ”If he really cared for me he could never send me away to be a prisoner in a convent school. Yes, I am going to leave home, and you nor anyone else shall stop me. Everybody hates me and I hate everybody!” The last word ended in a pa.s.sionate sob of mingled rage and humiliation. Mignon was now tasting the bitterness of one against whom the world has turned.
”Poor Mignon.” Moved by sincere pity, Marjorie laid a comforting hand on the would-be refugee's arm.
That gentle expression of sympathy, accompanied by the tender little caress, stirred into life an emotion hitherto unknown to Mignon's rebellious soul. a.s.sailing her as a climax to the strain of the past few days, it completely unnerved her. Her self-control vanis.h.i.+ng she dropped her suitcase and burst into wild weeping. Winding her arms about the sobbing girl, Marjorie tried to soothe her as best she might.
Fortunately for them, no pa.s.ser-by intruded upon the little scene. Only the complaining rain lent its monotonous accompaniment to Mignon's sobs.
”Let us go back to your house, Mignon,” proposed Marjorie practically with a view toward bracing up the weeper. ”Someone is likely to come along and see us. You will go, won't you?”
”Yes,” came the husky reply.
”All right.” Making an effort to speak with the utmost cheerfulness, Marjorie loosed her hold on Mignon and picked up the suitcase. ”I'll carry it,” she said. ”It's only a little way to your home. But first, I must stop at that little house over there and tell Captain to wait for me longer. I'd like to have a talk with you and you know I am to see your father. Is he at home?”
”Yes. In the library. I left the house by the back entrance so that he wouldn't see me. I hid my suitcase outside,” confessed Mignon in a low, shamed voice. ”I was going to New York to see Rowena. She promised to help me get on the stage. Her uncle is a theatrical manager.”
”I'm glad you have changed your mind,” was the hearty a.s.sertion.
Marjorie was thinking that she was not in the least surprised to learn that Rowena Farnham was at the root of Mignon's flight.
”I would never have hidden the money if it hadn't been for her,” Mignon continued bitterly. ”Still, it's my fault, after all. I shouldn't have listened to her. But this is the end. I'm going to be different, even if my father sends me away to school. I guess I started wrong and somehow could never do right. I deserve to be punished, though. It just breaks my heart when I think of not graduating from Sanford High.”
Marjorie listened in wonder. Was it really lawless Mignon who had just spoken so penitently? Could it be that her better self had at last found the light? ”You _are_ going to graduate from Sanford High,” she declared staunchly. ”We must go to your father and tell him everything. I'm sure he'll understand.”
Mignon sighed at the prospect ahead of her, yet she made no dissent to Marjorie's plan. She had small faith in her father's clemency, but she had at last taken a step in the right direction and she was resolved to go on. ”We might as well go to the front door and ring the bell,” she said dejectedly. ”I know he'll be terribly angry, but I'll have to stand it.”
Mignon's prediction of her father's anger was not an idle one. Of the excitable Latin temperament, his indignation flamed high when the two girls entered the library where he sat quietly reading and Mignon haltingly confessed to him the details of her interrupted flight. His scathing words of rebuke brought on a second flood of tears. Mignon crumpled up in a big chair, a figure of abject misery. It was then that Marjorie took the floor and in her sweet, gracious fas.h.i.+on earnestly pleaded clemency for the weeper.
It was the most difficult task she had ever undertaken to perform.
Exasperated beyond measure, Mr. La Salle at first utterly refused to consider her plea. He could not find it within his heart to forgive his daughter. He was bent on punis.h.i.+ng her with the utmost severity and her latest defiance of him served to strengthen his determination.
Marjorie's repeated a.s.sertion that by her confession Mignon had already proved her sincerity of purpose appeared to carry small weight.
”You do not know this ungrateful one as I, her father, know her,” was his incensed retort. ”Often she has promised the good behavior, but only promised. Never has she fulfilled the word. How then can she expect that I shall forgive and believe her?”
”But this time Mignon _will_ keep her word,” returned Marjorie with gentle insistence. ”I am sure that if her mother were living she would forgive and believe. No matter what I had done, _my_ mother would forgive me. If I were truly sorry she would believe in me, too. You are nearest of all in the world to Mignon. Won't you try to overlook the past and let her come back to the senior cla.s.s? Whatever else displeases you in her, she has at least been successful in her studies. She stands high in all her cla.s.ses. She is Professor Fontaine's most brilliant pupil in French. It does seem hard that she should have to give up now what she has so nearly won.”
Without realizing it, Marjorie had advanced a particularly effective argument. Mignon's high standing in her various cla.s.ses during her high school career had always afforded her father signal pleasure. Thus reminded, paternal pride awoke and struggled against anger. Marjorie's reference to Mignon's mother had also touched him deeply.
Following her earnest little speech, a brief interval of silence ensued, during which Mr. La Salle stared gloomily at his weeping daughter. Moved by a sudden rush of pity for his motherless girl, he walked over to her and rested a forgiving hand on her diminished head. Very gently he addressed her in his native tongue. Marjorie felt a rush of unbidden tears rise to her own eyes, when the next instant she became witness to a tender reconciliation which she never forgot.
It was nearer two hours than one before she prepared to say good night to the two for whom she had done so much. Brought at last to a state of sympathetic understanding such as they had never before known, father and daughter were loath to part from this sincere, lovely young girl. To Mr. La Salle's proposal to see her safely to the house where her mother awaited her, Marjorie made gracious refusal. She was anxious to get away by herself. The whole affair had been extremely nerve-racking and she longed for the bracing atmosphere of the outdoors as an antidote to the strain she had undergone.
She was visited by a feeling of intense impatience when, stepping into the hall, accompanied by Mignon and her father, the former humbly asked her to delay her departure for a moment. Leaving her, Mignon sped up the front stairs, returning almost instantly. Announcing to her father her wish to go with Marjorie as far as the gate, the now smiling man saw his guest as far as the veranda and retired into the house.
”I have something to give you,” began Mignon, as they started down the walk. ”It's-that--” she faltered briefly ”--that letter Lucy Warner wrote you. I found it in the locker room. I saw it fall out of your blouse-and-I-took it-and-read it. I know it was wrong. Then I kept it. I was angry-because you wouldn't tell me about you and Lucy that day at Miss Archer's. I-made-Lucy think you _had_ told me about it. She wouldn't believe it, so I said, 'What about the Observer?' She thought I knew something I didn't know at all. I had no idea what 'the Observer'
meant. To-morrow I shall go to her and tell her so,” she continued bravely. ”I'm sorry for all the hateful things I've done to you and said about you. You are the finest, truest girl in the whole world, Marjorie Dean. You've done something for me to-night that I'll remember and be grateful to you for as long as I live. There's not much left of my senior year but I am going to try to make my last days in Sanford High count. Some day I hope I can prove to you that I am worthy of your friends.h.i.+p. But not yet.” With this she shoved the troublesome letter into Marjorie's limp hand.
Bereft for the moment of speech, Marjorie clutched the letter, wondering again whether she were actually awake, or living in a queer dream.