------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XII FIRST COMPLICATIONS I “The Elms” school for girls consisted of a trio of high-pillared Colonial buildings on the main street of Mount Hadley, Massachusetts. They stood behind lofty arches of towering trees that were old when Washington passed through to inspect Ticonderoga. Mount Hadley had an atmosphere possessed by many scholastic, hilltop New England towns,—wide-verandahed, leisurely, sharply colored, exclusive. From its diminutive brownstone Memorial library to its chaste white churches, it expressed simplicity, asceticism, grace and dignified charm. The nasturtium-flavored individuality of the town stood in clearly defined contrast to the clash and clatter of muddy-guttered, smoky-scented, foreign-populated paper cities farther down the Connecticut. A ninety-minute suburban trolley service connected it with Springfield, Massachusetts. Madelaine Theddon was entering her second year at “The Elms” when, upon emerging from the college store-and-postoffice early one September evening, she saw a motor-car draw to the near-by curb and a man leap out. He blocked her way with easy self-confidence. She recognized Gordon Ruggles. Physically, Gordon seemed to have attained maturity in a year. He had gained in height at an expense of girth. His auto togs made him look still taller and older. But his twisted front tooth was as prominent and his eyelid flopped as badly as ever. “Hello, Madge!” he cried. “Still sore?” “I’ve never been ‘sore’ at you, Gordon. That’s a coarse and unkind thing to say!” “Well, you swallowed all the guff Aunt Grace handed you about me.” “Please don’t talk so, Gordon. If you haven’t been—well, interesting, it’s because you haven’t seemed to me to live up to the best that’s in you.” “You didn’t talk that way the first time we met, Madge—when Aunt Grace was showing me the gate. You seemed like a regular girl, for a time. Then right off you got stiff—stiff as froze mutton.” “You didn’t act very gentlemanly around my home afterward, Gordon. Your behavior displeased my mother. I couldn’t help charging that displeasure against you.” “You made me feel for a time, Madge, as if you’d give a fellow a chance. Then you turned the glassy stare on me like—like—all the rest.” Gordon said this in a hard, dry self-pity which he knew intuitively how to employ with deadly effect on Madelaine’s type of femininity. “Mother asked you not to try to see me or find out where I’d started in school. She begged you to go away and leave me alone. And you haven’t paid the slightest regard to her. Is that honorable? What ‘chance’ do you want?” “What right did she have to ask it? She flung me a dare. Because I took it and smoked you out, she’s sore. And she’s gypping my game—with you.” “Just what is your ‘game,’ Gordon?”