Chapter 26: Great Excitement

For several moments all was confusion. While trying not to show an inconsiderate curiosity, the girls behind the tables could not help leaving their places, though they stood at a fair distance from the spot where Julia and Miss South and two or three older women were trying to do what they could to revive Madame Du Launy. Although she had not actually fainted, she was certainly not herself, and for several minutes she leaned back in her chair with her eyes half-closed. Yet although she looked pale and almost pitiful with the lines of age clearly showing in her face, she would not accept help from any one, not even the glass of water which they offered her. At last, after a time that seemed longer than it really was to those who stood by, she opened her eyes, and without a word to those standing near, motioned to her man.

“My carriage, at once,” was all she said, then motioning to him again she took his arm, as she rose from her seat. Turning for a moment toward Julia who had extended her hand, “Good-bye, dear,” she murmured as she started to walk with stately step across the room.

The whole thing had been so strange—Madame Du Launy’s fainting-spell, and her peculiar manner on coming to herself, that those who stood near instead of making any comments only gazed after the old lady in surprise. In the midst of the excitement Miss South, too, had slipped away, and on making enquiries about her Julia was told that she had gone home.

Yet although at the very moment of this strange occurrence no one had had much to say, when the girls gathered in little groups aside, their tongues swung back and forward with great energy.

“What in the world could have caused it?” was asked on every hand, and many were the guesses and speculations as to what had caused the little scene.

“Oh, old ladies ought not to try to go to festive places like this,” said one of the girls glancing around the long room with its walls paneled with mirrors, its decorations of vines, and plants, and bright streamers.

“Especially old ladies who have hardly set foot in the house of any one else for fifty years, more or less,” added another.

“Well, even then I don’t see what made her faint,” said Nora, who happened to have heard the last remark. “There wasn’t anything particularly exciting going on here.”

“Oh,” replied Belle, “it had something to do with Miss South. I stood where I could see Madame Du Launy’s face, and when she fainted she had just met Miss South’s eye, and didn’t you notice, Miss South looked as if she would like to faint herself!”

“How ridiculous!” said a girl who had newly joined the group, “you always see more than any one else does, Belle.”

“What if I do? I am just as often right, and you can see for yourself that Miss South is not here now. I noticed that she hurried away as soon as she could.”

“What if she did?” cried Nora; “I do think, Belle, that you are sometimes perfectly ridiculous. Any number of people are not here now, who were in the room half an hour ago.”

“Oh, you know what I mean, Nora; mark my words there is something queer about the whole thing.”

“How in the world, I wonder, did Madame Du Launy happen to know about the Bazaar?” asked Frances Pounder.

“Why, Frances Pounder, where have you been?” cried Nora.

“Why, yes, Frances Pounder, where have you been?” echoed Belle. “Haven’t you heard of the tremendous intimacy that has sprung up between Julia and Madame Du Launy since she rescued her little Fidessa from the park police? It really is a wonderful story, and we all expect Julia to be the old lady’s heir.”

“Come, come,” interrupted Nora, “we can’t afford to waste our time gossiping; we should be thankful that Madame Du Launy ventured to come here at all, for she bought any number of things, and paid good prices, and now if we do not return to our tables, we may lose all the patronage of the other old ladies who are wandering about.”

So two by two the little crowd dispersed. Some of the girls went behind the tables, while others hovered about, picking and choosing what they should buy according to their purses or their taste.

But to tell all the happenings of that afternoon and evening would take a longer time than can be spared to it now. In the evening not only the fathers and uncles of many of the girls came upon the scene, but Philip and his friends appeared to form a small army of purchasers. The latter were not on the whole inclined to buy very expensive things, though they patronized the refreshment table so steadily that Belle had to beg one of the New York boys to become assistant cashier. They also almost swept the flower booth clean of cut flowers and plants, to the loss of the little patients in the children’s hospital, who might otherwise have been benefited, had any flowers been left over. Yet although I say that they did not buy a great deal I must not be misunderstood. They did carry off all kinds of little things that they thought would raise a laugh in their college rooms. Philip, for example, bought a work-basket, lined with pink and white silk, grumbling as he did so that this was the nearest approach he could find to crimson. Besides that he paid a good price for the doll which he had admired, and which Nora had mischievously reserved for him by pinning to it a card bearing his name. He also bought a small hammock of twisted ribbons, in which he said he intended to suspend the doll in a conspicuous place over his mantelpiece.

Tom Hurst had to buy two or three tobacco pouches, and in addition he chose a rattle, the covering of which Nora had knitted and decorated with bells.

“Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,”
quoted Nora, as he carried away his purchase, at the same time presenting him with a wisp of straws from a broom, which she had tied together with a piece of crimson ribbon. “To be forever cherished,” responded Tom, as he walked off with his trophies, in a tone that made the usually unsentimental Nora blush.