Laurels Are Poison

There was a programme of twenty-four dances, with space for extras, supper was to be at half past nine, and the party would be declared over at eleven.

There were banked flowers and evergreens on the front and sides of the dais, sitting-out corners had been devised with skill, taste and discretion, an orchestra, hired at Mrs Bradley’s expense from Leeds, was looming behind the potted plants, and except for the one or two students who had asked for week-end leave, the whole of the College was prepared to be en fete.

Mrs Bradley had bought a new frock, not for herself but for Deborah. She had sworn Kitty to secrecy, and, to the mystification of the whole Hall, had sneaked her out of Miss Topas’s lecture on Richard the Second with the full connivance and support of that enthusiast for Plantagenet kings, and had taken her, George driving, all the way to London, where they had spent the night at an hotel. Next morning they had gone out and chosen the frock, judging it for size and fit by one which Mrs Bradley had borrowed (on the excuse that she wanted to try it on?) and at nightfall on the Friday they made a triumphant return, pulled Deborah out of ‘a mess of English essays’, said Kitty, recounting the exciting story to an awe-stricken group, and put the frock on her.

Mrs Bradley had had no voice in the buying. Kitty knew exactly what she wanted, and dragged Mrs Bradley into and out of seven shops before discovering the object of her choice in the eighth.

‘But what’s all this about?’ asked Deborah, pardonably bewildered.

‘Birthday present,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly.

‘But — I can’t — you can’t give me a birthday present!’

‘Oh, yes, I can. You’re nearly a member of the family,’ replied Mrs Bradley, sitting down and watching the kneeling Kitty.

Kitty got up.

‘You’ll have to put your evening shoes on,’ she said. ‘I can’t see what anything looks like in those slippers. Where are they? I’ll get them… Ah, that’s it. Now see how it goes when you walk… Have a look at yourself in the long glass.’

She sat back on her heels, looked at Mrs Bradley and lifted her eyebrows.

‘Thank you, child,’ said Mrs Bradley.

Jonathan, meanwhile, had established himself solidly with both students and staff at the College. Athelstan, in fact, was the envy of every other Hall, not even excluding Columba, for having, as Miss Cartwright put it, an eligible male on the premises.

‘But he isn’t eligible. The Deb.’s hooked him,’ observed Laura, with neither gracefulness nor truth. Alice pointed this out by contradicting her immediately.

‘She didn’t hook him! What a thing to say!’

‘All right. All right. No offence. I merely intended to convey that his eligibility is all washed up and disconnected,’ replied the heckled one, scrubbing dirt out of an abrasion on her left shin with her tooth brush. ‘Some golfing fiend in the Second Eleven took a slap at me in a practice game this afternoon,’ she explained, when the others expostulated with her on the score of her activity. ’I must get the dirt out. I might get blood-poisoning.’

‘Not as likely as you’ll get it from that germy object,’ said Alice, trying to remove the tooth brush by main force from Laura’s grasp.

‘Look out, ass! You’ll break the handle. Leave me alone. I’m nearly through,’ said the surgeon, returning undeterred to her scrubbing. ‘Wonder when old Kitty will be back? The old scout is losing all the fun of being in a Mixed Hall, isn’t she?’

Jonathan enjoyed himself. He was not in the least bashful, took all his meals, including breakfast and tea, in public, under the eyes and on the tongues of forty interested girls who made inventories and laid bets respecting his likes and dislikes in the matter of food, was supplied with manly bottles of beer by Bella, to whom he made love in the kitchen, made idiotic and extremely well-camouflaged advances to Deborah, and was snubbed firmly, this to the indignation of Miss Cartwright, who had conceived a violent passion for the young man and talked openly in Hall of Deborah’s coldness and of how he must be breaking his heart in secret, to which challenging gambit Laura unhesitatingly, unanswerably and very coarsely replied.

On the night of the dance there was much speculation as to how he would be dressed. Jonathan had received definite instructions from his aunt on this point, and appeared, ‘white tie perfectly rendered’ as Laura observed to her circle, in tails and with his hair brushed.

‘All my own work,’ said Kitty, pleased with the murmurs of admiration which greeted his appearance, first in Hall and then on the dance floor. ‘I fluttered that butterfly tie of his with these two hands. But you wait till you see the Deb.’

‘Girls,’ she added, later, coming up to Laura and Alice just before the young gentlemen arrived from Wattsdown, ‘he’s asked me for my programme, and I’m having two with him, one in each half.’

‘You lucky thing!’ said Miss Cartwright. ‘Never mind, I bet I get him at least twice in a Paul Jones.’

‘I bet she does, too,’ said Laura, grinning. The entrance of the Wattsdown contingent, fingering their ties and otherwise preparing themselves for the fray, ended the conversation and gave rise to other, although not dissimilar, interests.

Miss Crossley sat with Mrs Bradley during a waltz and the foxtrot that followed it, and confessed that she felt very nervous.

‘Oh, you mustn’t do that. Don’t think about ten o’clock and after. I can scarcely recognize some of the students. Who is the dark girl in green, with gold shoes?’

‘That is Miss Milper, of Edmund,’ replied Miss Crossley. ‘I don’t suppose you would notice her in the ordinary way. She is what I call one of the two-year brigade.’

‘And by that you mean…?’

‘Well, she’s engaged now, and she will be married in two years’ time, I imagine. Then good-bye to all the time