New Horizons

by Lois Gladys Leppard

  “Adrian,” Mandie said under her breath. She took the white envelope and quickly slipped it into the pocket of her full skirt.

  Celia heard her and grinned. “Adrian. He won’t give up, will he?”

  Mary Lou grinned at Mandie and teased, “Oh, a beau in Ireland!”

  Mr. and Mrs. Dunnigan overheard the remarks and smiled as everyone headed back toward the Dunnigans’.

  It didn’t take long for Mr. Dunnigan and Mr. Ryland to get the carriage unloaded, and with Mary Lou’s help, the girls soon had all their clothes hung up and everything in place.

  “Now, shall we go to the flower shop?” Mary Lou asked.

  “I would like to freshen up a little before we go,” Mandie told her friends. “I’ll only be a minute or two.” She headed down the hallway toward the bathroom.

  “It should only take two minutes at the most to open that letter and read it,” Mary Lou teased.

  “We’ll be down in the parlor,” Celia called to Mandie. She couldn’t keep the grin off her face.

  In the bathroom, Mandie quickly opened the letter and pulled out the one sheet of paper. She read, Just a note to let you know that I shall be sailing for America shortly and will spend some time in your city. I do hope you will be remaining in Charleston for the summer. Upon arrival I shall contact you at your college. Until then, Adrian.

  Mandie straightened up and said to herself, “I hope you don’t get here before I go home for the summer. I doubt that you’d ever find me in my little hometown in North Carolina.” She quickly stuck the letter back inside the envelope, rushed into her room, and buried it in her pile of scarves and ribbons in the bureau drawer.

  As she hurried down the stairs to join her friends, she muttered to herself, “Too many things happening at once.”

  Mandie wasn’t sure whether she wanted to see Adrian when he came to the United States or not. He had seemed interesting when she had met him in Europe last summer, but that was a long time ago, and they didn’t seem to have much in common.

  “Oh well, I have plenty of time to decide about that. School won’t be out for a while yet.”

  Rushing into the parlor, she felt herself blush when Mary Lou and Celia grinned at her.

  “Come on, let’s go,” she said, continuing to walk toward the front door. “We don’t have a whole lot of time left today.”

  Mary Lou and Celia smiled at each other and hurried after her.

  chapter 14

  The next day the newspaper published an article about the burglaries that had been happening around town. It mentioned Sol Jacks as a suspect, since he had apparently been into some questionable dealings recently, and how he had suddenly fled town.

  Mandie, Celia, and Mary Lou read the article together at breakfast that morning.

  “He jumped onto a boat bound for Africa?” Mandie was both shocked and angry. “Now the police will never be able to catch him!”

  “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about him using those diagrams he still has to break into more houses,” Celia said.

  And with the absence of Sol Jacks came the absence of burglaries. The law officials decided that the locksmith was indeed their guilty man.

  The school year neared the end. There were concerts, lectures, and out-of-town visitors speaking on various topics; and the worry about final examinations began to spread among the girls.

  Both Mary Lou and Grace had strict standards they had to meet in order to receive an extension on their scholarships for the next year. And Mandie, Celia, Mary Lou, and Grace often studied together on subjects they were taking.

  The other girls at the college were still aloof and hostile with them at times. George Stuart’s sister continued staring and smirking at Mandie whenever she saw her. April Snow and Polly Cornwallis just ignored Mandie and Celia and Mary Lou.

  One day Mandie wanted to look at books at the antique bookstore and Celia went with her. Mary Lou and Grace had to stay behind to study for their final exams. Mandie promised to pick up Mary Lou at four o’clock.

  On their way to Meeting Street, Celia remarked, “You know, Mandie, this would be an opportunity to ask the bookstore owner questions about your grandfather.”

  “Don’t you remember? We tried that before and it didn’t work,” Mandie replied.

  “Do you think there’s a possibility she might have old newspapers in her shop?” Celia asked.

  “I had not thought about that,” Mandie replied. “I don’t remember seeing anything but books there, but we could ask Mrs. Heyward if she keeps any old newspapers.”

  When they entered the shop, Mrs. Heyward was busy talking to an elderly lady. “That’s a question I get very often, but I’m sorry to say that we don’t keep any old newspapers. They are too much trouble. However, you can go to the newspaper office and look at every paper they have ever put out.”

  “I thank you for the information,” the lady said, looking around. “I’ll just take a look at your books, then.”

  Mandie and Celia also looked at the books on the shelves, but Mandie was so deep in thought that she only pretended to see the books in front of her. “I wonder where the newspaper office is,” she finally whispered to Celia.

  “Mrs. Heyward could probably tell us, if you want to ask,” Celia replied.

  “No, I’d rather ask Mr. Ryland. I’m sure he would know,” Mandie said.

  “And I’m sure he could take us there,” Celia added.

  “If we go right now, we’ll have time to stop in the newspaper office before we have to pick Mary Lou up from the college,” Mandie said. “Come on, I’ll look for a book some other time.”

  They hurried outside to where Mr. Ryland was waiting with the carriage.

  “Mr. Ryland, do you know where the newspaper office is?” Mandie asked as they approached him.

  “Oh sure. Do you want to go there?” Mr. Ryland replied.

  “Yes, sir, I’d like to look up some old newspapers concerning something I heard about,” Mandie explained.

  “Then we go,” he said.

  The newspaper building was tall and slender, three stories high, and stood between a dry goods store and a hardware store. Mandie looked up at it and asked, “Mr. Ryland, does the newspaper use the whole building?”

  “Oh yes, miss, they do. You see, they’ve been here a long time, and they save every newspaper they’ve ever printed. It takes a big building to hold all of it,” he replied as they stood by the carriage.

  “Would you please wait for us while we’re in there?” Mandie asked. “We shouldn’t be too long.”

  “Certainly, miss, I’ll be right here,” he replied.

  Mandie and Celia pushed open the heavy front door and found themselves in a large room, most of which was fenced off by a large counter at the front. They could see several desks where people sat working on papers. One man was hollering over a telephone in an effort to be heard on the other end of the line. Two men were standing in the far back corner of the room, evidently arguing loudly with hands waving, enforcing whatever was being said.

  Mandie looked at Celia as they stood at the counter. “What do we do now, I wonder? No one seems to have noticed us come in.”

  “If we could get past this counter, we could probably get someone’s attention,” Celia said, looking around for an opening.

  The two men standing in the back stopped talking, and one came toward the front but stopped before he got to the counter. He looked up and saw the girls and then walked away, ignoring them.

  “Well, how do you like that?” Mandie said. She suddenly raised her voice and yelled, “Mister, we have a question.”

  The discussions in the room stopped immediately and everyone stared at the two girls, but no one came forward.

  “Please, could we speak to someone?” Mandie said to no one in particular.

  The man who had started forward before finally came to the counter. “What do you ladies want?” he asked in a harsh voice.

  “We would like to ask about l
ooking at copies of old newspapers, please,” Mandie said, trying to sound older so they wouldn’t ignore her again.

  “You want to look at old newspapers?” the man replied. “No way, miss, not today. We are in the process of putting the paper to bed and don’t have time. Come back another day.” He started to walk away from the counter.

  “If you would just show us where they are, we won’t bother you,” Mandie said, determined to get into the papers.

  “I’m sorry, miss, but you cannot get into the archives without someone supervising, and I said we’re too busy today,” the man said. “Now scram, get out of here.”

  Mandie straightened her shoulders, pushed out her chin, and said, “I have never run into such a rude man before. We will leave so you can do your screaming at someone else.”

  Mandie and Celia were distinctly aware that they had become the center of attention in the room. So they quickly turned around and opened the front door to head outside as conversations began and everyone started talking at once again.

  Mr. Ryland saw them coming and stepped forward. “Did you get to see whatever you wanted to see?” he asked.

  “Oh no, we didn’t see anything but a huge room full of ill-mannered men,” Mandie replied, and she related the events to him.

  “They were just too busy to be bothered with us,” Celia said when Mandie was done. “We can come back another day.” The girls climbed into the carriage.

  “Where to now, misses?” Mr. Ryland asked.

  “I wonder if the library might have some old newspapers,” Mandie said.

  “Do you know where the public library is, Mr. Ryland?” Celia asked.

  “The public library? I am not sure about that, miss,” Mr. Ryland replied. “Perhaps we could drive around and you could watch for it.”

  Mandie flipped open the watch she wore on a chain around her neck. “We’d have time to find it before we have to pick up Mary Lou, but we won’t be able to go inside and look at records.”

  “All right, let’s at least find it,” Celia said.

  Mr. Ryland drove up and down streets, but the girls could not spot the public library.

  “We might as well go on to the college and wait for Mary Lou. There’s not enough time left to do anything else,” Mandie said.

  “Yes, miss,” Mr. Ryland said, shaking the reins.

  “Oh good, this time of day the parking spaces will be in the shade of the trees. It has turned out to be an awfully warm day, hasn’t it?” Celia commented.

  “It certainly has—in more ways than one,” Mandie said with a little laugh.

  As they came to the front of the college, Mandie leaned forward and said, “Look, there’s one of those motorcars—and it’s taking up several parking spaces.”

  “I wonder who it is driving that thing,” Celia said.

  “I do believe it’s a young woman,” Mandie said as they came closer.

  “You’re right,” Celia replied. “Now, who can she be?”

  “I don’t know, but who does she think she is to take up so many parking spaces?” Mandie said disgustedly.

  Mr. Ryland slowed their carriage down as they got closer, and then he came to a stop near the motorcar. He looked back at the girls.

  “That woman should move her motorcar, Mr. Ryland. There is barely enough space for us to even park,” Mandie said to him. Then, looking at the woman in the vehicle, she called out, “You have to move. There’s not enough space.”

  “I have to move?” the woman replied, laughing. “I’ll sit here all day if I want to.”

  Shocked, Mandie said, “No, you won’t, either. If you don’t move, I’ll go inside the office and get someone to come out here and make you move.”

  Several other people were standing around and could hear the conversation. There was a lot of snickering.

  Suddenly the motorcar lurched forward with a big roar, out of control.

  Mr. Ryland’s horse panicked and sped off with the carriage. Mr. Ryland lost control, and the carriage swerved into a rock wall on the side of the road. There was a loud crash, and Mr. Ryland was thrown from the carriage. Mandie was hit by the debris and passed completely out. Celia quickly jerked up her long skirts and jumped forward, trying to grab the reins.

  “Whoa, boy, whoa, boy!” she called to the horse as she tightened her hold on the reins. “Steady now, boy. Whoa, whoa,” she called in a soothing voice. The horse slowed down, and she managed to get him to stop. He was stomping his feet and snorting.

  She jumped down from the carriage, her skirts held high, and raced to soothe the frightened horse as she managed to tie the reins around a lamppost. Rushing back to the carriage she found Mary Lou and Grace trying to help Mandie. Other people were bending over Mr. Ryland as he lay unconscious on the road.

  “Mandie! Mandie!” Celia cried, tears streaming down her face. Her skirts were twisted and she had lost her hat.

  “Celia, we need to get a doctor,” Mary Lou said, quickly looking around.

  “Mr. Ryland looks like he’s hurt pretty badly,” Grace said.

  The girls who had been standing around the motorcar began fussing. “Mandie shouldn’t have started all this arguing, anyhow,” one was saying.

  “She thinks she can have her way about everything,” a tall girl said.

  “It’s all her fault,” another one said.

  Grace stood up and yelled back at the crowd. “It was not her fault. I saw everything. I was standing right here. That woman deliberately drove her motorcar into the carriage.”

  “Mandie’s just a stuck-up snob who thinks she can buy anything she wants,” one girl said. “She and her grandmother are snooty, filthy-rich people without a sense of decency.”

  Grace hastily approached the girl who said this. “Let me tell you one thing. Her grandmother gave me my scholarship or I wouldn’t have been able to come to college here. And I pray for her every day because of it.”

  Mandie was groaning, but she was still unconscious as she lay in the carriage.

  A young man pushed his way through the crowd, saying loudly, “Please let me through. I’m Dr. Zeager.” He was carrying a medical bag and he quickly got to Mandie to examine her. “She needs to go to the hospital immediately. So does the man lying out there in the road.” He stood up and sternly said, “Please stand back.”

  A man who was with him came through the crowd, picked up Mandie, and carried her to another carriage that had stopped in the road. Then he and the doctor picked up Mr. Ryland and put him in the carriage next to Mandie.

  “We have to go with her,” Celia screamed at the doctor through the noisy crowd.

  At that moment another carriage had pulled up and stopped. Celia glanced at it and immediately recognized the driver as Mr. Donovan, the driver Mrs. Taft had originally tried to hire at the beginning of the school year. Celia called out, “Please, Mr. Donovan, can you take us to the hospital?”

  Mr. Donovan hurried down from his carriage and came to help Celia out of the carriage. “Miss, what on earth has been going on here?” he asked. “Come quickly. We will follow the doctor.”

  “Mary Lou, Grace, come on!” Celia called to them, and they climbed into Mr. Donovan’s carriage.

  The doctor drove his carriage at a high rate of speed, and Mr. Donovan kept up with him. Celia tried to talk against the noise of the carriage to explain what happened.

  “That motorcar was taking up too many parking spaces, and suddenly it just sped into our carriage, Mr. Donovan. Oh, I’m so worried about Mandie,” she said as tears streamed down her face.

  “And poor Mr. Ryland,” Mary Lou added.

  “I intend finding out who that woman was driving that motorcar and see that she is punished for it,” Grace said firmly. “I also intend reporting those girls to the college for the remarks they were making.”

  “Oh, what about the carriage Mandie’s grandmother bought for her and Celia? It was so damaged I don’t believe it will run anymore. And we just left it in the street back ther
e,” Mary Lou said, trying to glance back.

  “I saw some boys trying to move it out of the street,” Grace said, trying to calm her friends down.

  It was only a few blocks to the hospital, but it seemed like miles as Mandie and Mr. Ryland lay there unconscious. Finally the doctor turned the carriage through the gate and pulled up in front of a huge stone building.

  Suddenly people from the hospital came running out and took Mandie and Mr. Ryland inside. Grace, Celia, and Mary Lou followed but were stopped by a nurse in the front reception room.

  “I am Rita, Dr. Zeager’s nurse. I’m sorry, but you are not allowed to go inside until a doctor says you can. Please wait out here.” She indicated a row of chairs against the wall. “I will let you know the condition of the patients as soon as possible.” She hastily went through a door into the other part of the hospital.

  Celia was crying and Mary Lou tried to console her.

  “I need to let someone know about Mandie,” Celia said. “Her mother doesn’t have a phone, but I think her grandmother does. I just hate to get Mrs. Taft involved in this. I can imagine what will happen if she arrives.”

  “But you have to let someone know, Celia,” Mary Lou said.

  “I wish I could call my mother, but we don’t have a phone at our house yet, either. We live on a horse farm way out in the country,” Celia said.

  “I thought you looked like you were experienced with horses when you took on the task of controlling that horse just now,” Grace said.

  Celia shivered as she said, “I haven’t had anything to do with horses since one threw my father and killed him several years ago.” Fresh tears streamed down her face.

  “You saved Mandie’s life, Celia, because you knew how to control a runaway horse,” Mary Lou said, reaching to put an arm around her.

  “I’m worried about her. We don’t know how badly she is hurt,” Celia said, beginning to shake all over.

  Grace looked around, saw a stack of blankets on a shelf behind the counter, and got up to get one for Celia.

  “Thank you,” Celia said in a shaky voice.

  They waited for what seemed to be hours before the doctor finally came out to speak to them.