“Oh,” she cried, “are we really allowed to walk in this wonderful place?”
“As much as you like before six P. M.,” answered Frances. “How do you do, Miss Pembroke?”
A tall woman with a grave, handsome face was waiting under the arched arcade to go through the door.
“So you decided to come back to us, Miss Andrews. I’m very glad of it. Come into my office a moment. I want a few words with you before supper.”
“You can find your way back to Queen’s by yourself, can’t you, Miss Brown?” asked Frances. “I’ll see you later.”
And in another moment, Molly Brown was quite alone in the Cloisters. She was glad to be alone. She wanted to think. She paced slowly along the cloistered walk, each stone arch of which framed a picture of the grassy court with an Italian fountain in the center.
“It’s exactly like an old monastery,” she said to herself. “I wonder anybody could ever be frivolous or flippant in such an old world spot as this. I could easily imagine myself a monk, telling my beads.”
She sat down on a stone bench and folded her hands meditatively.
“So far, I’ve really only made one friend at college,” she thought to herself, for Nance Oldham was too reserved to be called a friend yet, “and that friend is Frances Andrews. Who is she? What is she? Why do her classmates snub her and why did Miss Pembroke, who belonged to the faculty, wish to speak with her in her private office?” It was all queer, very queer. Somehow, it seemed to Molly now that what she had taken for whirlwind manners was really a tremendous excitement under which Frances Andrews was laboring. She was trying to brazen out something.
“Just the same, I’m sorry for her,” she said out loud.
At that moment, a musical, deep-throated bell boomed out six times in the stillness of the cloisters. There was the sound of a door opening, a pause and the door closed with a clicking noise. Molly started from her reverie. It was six o’clock. She rushed to the door of antique design through which she had entered just fifteen minutes before. It was closed and locked securely. She knocked loudly and called:
“Let me out! Let me out! I’m locked in!”
Then she waited, but no one answered. In the stillness of the twilit courtyard she could hear the sounds of laughter and talking from the Quadrangle. They grew fainter and fainter. A gray chill settled down over the place and Molly looked about her with a feeling of utter desolation. She had been locked in the Cloisters for the night.
CHAPTER III
THE PROFESSOR
Molly beat and kicked on the door wildly. Then she called again and again but her voice came back to her in a ghostly echo through the dim aisles of the cloistered walk. She sat down on a bench and burst into tears.
How tired and hungry and homesick she was! How she wished she had never heard of college, cold, unfriendly place where people insulted old friends and they locked doors at six o’clock. The chill of the evening had fallen and the stars were beginning to show themselves in the square of blue over the Cloisters. Molly shivered and folded her arms. She had not worn her coat and her blue linen blouse was damp with dew.
“Can this be the only door into the Cloisters?” she thought after the first attack of homesick weeping had passed.
She rose and began to search along the arcade which was now almost black. There were doors at intervals but all of them locked. She knocked on each one and waited patiently.
“Oh, heavens, let me get out of this place to-night,” she prayed, lifting her eyes to the stars with an agonized expression. Suddenly, the high mullioned window under which she was standing, glowed with a light just struck. Then, someone opened a casement and a man’s voice called:
“Is anyone there? I thought I heard a cry.”
“I am,” said Molly, trying to stifle the sobs that would rise in her throat. “I’ve been locked in, or rather out.”
“Why, you poor child,” exclaimed the voice again. “Wait a moment and I’ll open the door.”
There were sounds of steps along the passage; a heavy bolt was thrust back and a door held open while Molly rushed into the passage like a frightened bird out of the dark.
“It’s lucky I happened to be in my study this evening,” said the man, leading the way toward a square of light in the dark corridor. “Of course the night watchman would have made his rounds at eight, but an hour’s suspense out there in the cold and dark would have been very disagreeable. How in the world did it happen?”
By this time they had reached the study and Molly found herself in a cozy little room lined from ceiling to floor with books. On the desk was a tray of supper. The owner of the study was a studious looking young man with kindly, quizzical brown eyes under shaggy eyebrows, a firm mouth and a cleft in his chin, which Molly had always heard was a mark of beauty in a woman.
“You must be a freshman?” he said looking at her with a shade of amusement in his eyes.
“I am,” replied Molly, bravely trying to keep her voice from shaking. “I only arrived an hour or so ago. I – I didn’t know they would lock – ” She broke down altogether and slipping into a big wicker chair sobbed bitterly. “Oh, I wish – I wish I’d stayed at home.”
“Why, you poor little girl,” exclaimed the man. “You have had a beastly time for your first day at college, but you’ll come to like it better and better all the time. Come, dry your eyes and I’ll start you on your way to your lodgings. Where are you stopping?”
“Queen’s.”
“Suppose you drink some hot soup before you go. It will warm you up,” he added kindly, taking a cup of hot bouillon from the tray and placing it on the arm of her chair.
“But it’s your supper,” stammered Molly.
“Nonsense, there’s plenty more. Do as I tell you,” he ordered. “I’m a professor, you know, so you’ll have to obey me or I’ll scold.”
Molly drank the soup without a word. It did comfort her considerably and presently she looked up at the professor and said:
“I’m all right now. I hope you’ll excuse me for being so silly and weak. You see I felt so far away and lonesome and it’s an awful feeling to be locked out in the cold about a thousand miles from home. I never was before.”
“I’m sure I should have felt the same in your place,” answered the professor. “I should probably have imagined I saw the ghosts of monks dead and gone, who might have walked there if the Cloisters had been several hundreds of years older, and I would certainly have made the echoes ring with my calls for help. The Cloisters are all right for ‘concentration’ and ‘meditation,’ which I believe is what they are intended to be used for on a warm, sunny day; but they are cold comfort after sunset.”
“Is this your study?” asked Molly, rising and looking about her with interest, as she started toward the door.
“I should say that this was my play room,” he replied, smiling.
“Play room?”
“Yes, this is where I hide from work and begin to play.” He glanced at a pile of manuscript on his desk.
“I reckon work is play and play is work to you,” observed Molly, regarding the papers with much interest. She had never before seen a manuscript.
“If you knew what an heretical document that was, you would not make such rash statements,” said the professor.
“I’m sure it’s a learned treatise on some scientific subject,” laughed Molly, who had entirely regained her composure now, and felt not the least bit afraid of this learned man, with the kind, brown eyes. He seemed quite old to her.
“If