Chapter 14

The next two weeks before the Delta Gamma Theta initiation went off smoothly enough, so far as Eleanor Landers was concerned. There was only one real fly in the ointment she had so industriously concocted. That was Mark Torrance's sudden renewed attention to Kathy Edwards in class. Not that Eleanor could find a really justifiable basis for resenting what he did, because, after all, it was entirely concerned with classwork. Just the same, she was furiously jealous.

It began the Wednesday after her session with Deeana Mason. Mark Torrance had asked his students to write an original short story, taking one of the classic plots from the great writers of the 19th century and adapting it to modern setting and action. The assignment had been given on Monday, and a number of students turned theirs in by Wednesday, though the deadline was the following Monday. Kathy Edwards was one of these, and Eleanor saw her linger after class to hand the handsome brown-haired professor a neatly typed manuscript which he took with a smile. And as she went out the door, she couldn't help seeing that he was talking to Kathy, who was smiling happily and nodding.

For her own theme, Eleanor decided to borrow the idea of De Maupassant's "The Necklace," that classic short story which relates how a woman of modest means borrows an expensive necklace from her best friend, loses it and spends the rest of her life in abject poverty trying to replace it, only to learn that the necklace was made of paste. Blithely, she adapted it around two young men who were after the same girl, whom they venerated as the paragon of all feminine graces and virtues. One of the suitors went heavily into debt trying to build his job and social status to an economic level that would give his beloved all the material advantages she could ever desire. Meanwhile, the other married her, only to find that she was a sham and cheat; at the end of the story, Eleanor had the two men meet and the husband offered to free the girl to the rival, who accepted because now she had come down to his own level.

When she turned it in on the following Monday, Mark Torrance curtly nodded and thanked her as she took her seat. She smiled to herself. He was so adorable when he looked stern and forbidding; only she in the whole class knew that he was just the reverse when it came to things that really mattered, like making love. He was sure to sell his novel and it would be a bestseller; she could daydream about the wonderful trips they would take, the sights they would see, the parties she would give as the beautifully dressed, patrician wife of the famous Mark Torrance.

Midway through the period, he informed the students that he was going to read one of the entries submitted, because in his opinion it was good enough for magazine publication after a few minor revisions and copy editing had been made. And to Eleanor's annoyance, he proceeded to read Kathy Edwards' effort. Grudgingly, she had to admit to herself that it was good, so far as writing style was concerned. As to the plot, she thought it simpering, just like Kathy herself.

Then Thursday, the day before the start of Hell Week, she was walking on campus back to the GDT house after her final class when Dave Vandenburg, sauntering along with two heavily set seniors, hove into view. He stopped her with a loud, jovial, "Hi, Elly baby! How's about that date this weekend? You know you promised me one."

His two cronies eyed her with an insolent deliberate-ness that made her cheeks flush; it was the kind of stare which a fellow gives a girl when he is mentally undressing her. Tossing her head, she retorted, "I know I did, Dave. But you ought to know the rule. I can't date anybody on campus till after Hell Week."

"Hey, that's right. It starts tomorrow night, doesn't it?" He nudged the senior to his left, a black-haired, surly-faced youth whose flattened nose and bruised cheekbones suggested that he had either been in a good melee or else was on the football team. "Hey, Bob, I always had me a yen to watch how gals 'nishiate one another, didn't you?"

"Me, I'd sure like to 'nishiate this one right here," Bob guffawed, and the other senior, florid of complexion, with a cowlick of ash-blonde hair growing out over his forehead, grunted assent: "Any time, boy. Any time at all. Hi, sweet stuff! My name's Pat Guffy. If Dave don't take a shine to you, I'll give you a break."

"Thank you very much, but no thanks. I've got to go now. Nice meeting you fellows. I'll see you later, maybe next week or so, Dave. Goodbye," Eleanor's voice was edgy with annoyance as she moved past the trio. The wolf whistles Bob and Pat launched after her made her cheeks flame even more hotly. She bit her lips irritatedly; Dave Vandenburg was going to be difficult to handle. Those two frat brothers of his weren't a helpful influence. She could remember when he had been worshipfully awed by standing next to her; now, under their aegis, he had greeted her as if she were a call girl whose services he had recently purchased. Being with two seniors had undoubtedly given him, a junior, reckless courage.

But the imminent event of Hell Week made her quickly dismiss the unpleasant incident from her mind, along with Kathy Edwards' preferential treatment in Mark's classroom. The next order of business was becoming a Delta Gamma Theta member, off probation and at last accepted as one of the reigning beauties of Marwell's most elite social groups. Eleanor believed that a logical mind was one of the most important things there was. First things first, each item neatly in its place.

After that, the next. And the next would be the announcement of her engagement to Professor Mark Torrance...

"Well, this is it, I guess!" Eleanor turned to her three roommates, Ruth Jorgenson, Myrna Henshaw and Marcia Alton, her eyes sparkling, her color high. It was just two minutes of eight, and Deeana Mason had just knocked at the door of their room to call out, "Get ready for summons, pledges!"

The seven newcomers to Delta Gamma Theta had been locked in their rooms as soon as they had come back from final class this Friday afternoon, and Mrs. Emmons had served them supper on a tray at six, then locked them up again, remarking only that they were to be dressed and ready for initiation promptly at eight.

Eleanor had taken special pains with her make-up and costume for the festivities which opened Hell Week. She had shampooed her hair and, to make herself look more demurely innocent, combed it away from her forehead, then made a Psyche knot at the back so that an ingenuous sheaf dangled like a corn tassel in the wind. The eyebrow pencil had widened and deepened the arch of her coppery brows to make her green eyes seem more child-like, and she had applied an indelible soft orange shade to her lips and sought to hide the all too obvious flaw of her small, sensually ripe mouth. She wore green satin toreador pants with a black, tooled leather belt that snugged in her waist excitingly, with a soft shirred white silk blouse whose sleeves gathered at the wrists. Charcoal-brown nylons and strap-on brown leather thong sandals completed the ensemble. And through her deliberate toilette, she had quipped to her roommates about how the victim takes extra care with an appearance before the guillotine and other remarks of that ilk, to show how flippantly unconcerned she was with the proceedings.

It was like a child whistling in the dark, because, to tell the truth, Eleanor Landers was inexplicably scared. The past week, even her Big Sister and sponsor, Deeana

Mason, had seemed impersonally cool towards her. Cissy, of course, had given her scathing and reproachful looks, but Cissy didn't like her anyway; Deeana did, or so she had thought. But perhaps it was that with Hell Week so close, no impartiality could be shown. After it was all over, everybody would be good friends again. She liked the DGT girls, or at least most of them. She would ask Mark to let her have a special party for just them to break the news of the engagement. And then, during the Christmas holidays, she'd take Mark up to Chicago to meet her parents. Dad would be impressed for once. He'd see that she hadn't wasted her time even in this exile to which he'd sent her. And Laura would have something to talk about at all her society teas and bridge parties. A real professor, and a famous novelist into the bargain! Life was going to be just perfect in a few short weeks. And once they were married, she would try to be a good wife to Mark. He had turned out to be such a surprisingly assertive lover that she might not have to look for any consolation beyond her own bedroom...

The door suddenly opened, and Cissy Williams stood on the threshold. "Pledge Jorgenson, step forward. You shall be first to be tested," she announced.

Golden-haired Ruth gulped, looked nervously at her comrades. "Are-aren't we all going together?" she quavered.

"Silence, pledge," was Cissy's curt reply. "You have only to obey. Advance towards me at once."

Ruth was wearing the same blue Capris and matching blouse she had had on that Sunday when Eleanor had sneaked Deeana's letter into Kathy's coat pocket. She was an exceptionally attractive girl, her golden hair falling in a long thick pageboy about her dimpled shoulders, her hips and bosom maturely ample yet temptingly firm, her skin a baby's pink, with big blue eyes and a sweet, ripe, tremulous mouth distinctive features of her classically heart-shaped face. As she slowly and reluctantly approached Cissy Williams, that lovely, kissable mouth was visibly quivering.

"Oh no-d-don't blindfold me, please!" she quavered as the pudgy senior swiftly whisked a black bandanna over her dilated eyes and deftly knotted it tightly at the back of her head.

"Silence, I said, pledge! Now come along. I'll lead you, you won't fall!"

With a despairing sigh, Ruth let herself be led by the wrist, and Cissy closed the door and locked it, then led the frightened pledge down the stairs and on to the kitchen, where the closet door opened on a narrow stairway that led to the rear of the basement recreation room.

"G-gosh," Myrna Henshaw nervously giggled, "wonder what they're going to do?"

"I hope it's not too tough. I'm just a big baby," Marcia Alton shyly confessed. But Eleanor lit a cigarette, sat down on the couch and crossed her lovely legs, waggling a sandaled foot with the utmost nonchalance. "Relax, girls," she drawled, "it's strictly kid stuff. They'll just try to scare you, that's all. You know the faculty'd never let them get away with tough hazing."

"Looks like they're going to take us one at a time. I'd feel better if I had company," Myrna Henshaw avowed...

The recreation room had been divided into two sections for Hell Week hazing. A thick chintz curtain hung exactly in the middle, separating the vast chamber. In the back section, through which Ruth Jorgenson was to be led, there were ping-pong tables, a billiard table, lounging chairs and couches, a projection screen and movie projector, even a miniature soda fountain-the gift of an affluent mother of a girl whom DGT had accepted five years ago. On the other side of the curtain, the rugs had been rolled up and the stone floor was bare. Right in front of the curtain was a rectangular table at which the officers were to sit, and in front of each of the side walls as well as along the wall of the main entrance, there were loveseats, flat wooden benches, straight-backed chairs and even two small divans, to make room for the sorority sisters.

Marian Johler, Laura Caldwell and Deeana Mason sat at the table. There was a full attendance of the chapter tonight, thirty-two members besides the three officers at the tribunal table. DGT pennants were scotch-taped on the walls on this side of the curtain. But there were other preparations visible for the ensuing and traditional "tests of courage." Several wide deep metal buckets, containing tepid water and coils of spaghetti-the well-known "worms" which are a standby for nearly every sorority initiation, whether it be high school or college-were placed on the floor near the main door. Another bucket, closer to the tribunal table, contained a cake of ice, and blonde buxom Bessie Quilici, a senior DGT member, was using a small saw to hack out dagger-like pieces to be used as "branding irons."

Finally, on the flat wooden benches against the walls, one saw an array of pinewood paddles of assorted sizes and shapes, with short taped handles and the sorority letters burned deep into the wood. All was in readiness. As Deeana heard the hesitant steps of the first pledge led on by Cissy behind the curtain, she put her finger to her lips to command silence, and a hush fell over the assemblage.

"I demand admission for a humble acolyte who comes before her peers to be tested for the right to sit among them," Cissy called in a sonorous voice from the other side of the curtain.

"Advance, then, and identify this unworthy neophyte," called Deeana. Before her and her two officer cohorts, three tall white candles stood, which she now proceeded to light.

Cissy drew aside the curtain at the edge of the wall, and led the awed and not a little frightened Ruth Jorgenson to the end of the room, then turned her at the door to face the tribunal table. "I speak in petition for Pledge Ruth Jorgenson," she announced.

"Is she ready to undergo the three rigorous tests by which we mean to test her worthiness to join our exalted ranks, Sister Williams?" Deeana solemnly inquired.

"She is, Illustrious Madame President."

"Prepare her for the first test, then. To you, pledge, I say, courage and be valiant."

"Oh-g-gosh, w-what are they g-going to do?" Ruth whispered, loudly enough for the waiting girls to hear, and stifled giggles savored her growing trepidation. Cissy knelt down and removed Ruth's sandals and bobby sox, so that her shapely feet were bare. Then she led the trembling golden-haired young Venus to one of the wide pails of "worms," and bade her lift one foot and lower it, then the other. Ruth squealed and tried to grab for her blindfold; but Cissy, aided by a handsome, tall, black-haired junior DGT member, Jean Fergosa, held her by the wrists and compelled her to stand for five minutes in the "worms." During that sojourn in the pail, Marian Johler, to the suppressed delight of the watching girls, described Ruth's ordeal with lurid terms like "Do you feel the giant angleworms crawling about your toes, pledge?" till poor Ruth was frantic with aversion.

She was then led forward to the table, forced down on her knees and maintained by two girls, each of whom bore down on one of her shoulders, while a third girl knelt behind her and grasped her wrists tightly behind her back.

"Now, pledge," Deeana intoned, "if you are to become our worthy sister and to share the mystic secrets of our rituals, you must agree to be branded with the secret letters of our society."

"B-branded?" Ruth stammered, squirming on her knees, "oooh, no, no, please, no, don't!"

"Can it be, Sister Williams, that this lowly pledge lacks courage? Must we then expel her in disgrace from our midst before she has even endured the second of the required tests?" Deeana demanded.

Cissy Williams, her face working convulsively as she strove to hold her back bent down to the blonde: "Now, Ruthie honey, you don't want to let your Big Sister down, do you? Why, I was branded myself-three times, and it didn't kill me. If you don't agree of your own free will, you'll be black-balled, do you want that?"

"N-no," Ruth whispered in a dying voice, "only tell them to make it quick! Ohh, migosh!"

Cissy nodded to the two girls who were pinning the pledge's shoulders; they at once unbuttoned her blouse, revealing her magnificent, closely spaced breasts sheathed in a tight beige-nylon bra. Ruth uttered a hoarse cry of fright and embarrassment. "I'll brand you myself, as a Big Sister should," Cissy told the wriggling candidate, while the two girls resumed their tight grip of her shoulders. Taking a rubber glove and donning it on her right hand, Cissy went over to the pail of ice and selected a long dagger-like sliver, then slowly approached Ruth Jorgenson. The girls pulled her back, while the third girl took a firmer grip on the blonde's slim wrists with one hand and tugged on her curls with the other. Cissy approached the gleaming sliver towards the pink satiny chest, and a piercing yell resounded as Ruth tried to throw herself even farther back and away from the supposed branding iron.

But Cissy went on till she had drawn the initials "DGT" on the flinching bare skin of the sobbing pledge, and then straightened. "She has passed the second test, Madame President," she announced.

"Then there remains only the last and most rigorous of all. She shall run the gantlet of our Amazonian warriors to determine her stamina," Deeana pronounced, and made a sign.

Cissy took hold of Ruth's wrist and lifted the still whimpering blonde pledge to her feet, whispered something into her ear which seemed to quiet the girl's fears, and then led her back to the door, had her get down on all fours. After assuring herself that Ruth's blindfold was still in place, she walked forward to the double line which had been formed by the sorority sisters and took her place at the very head. Thus seventeen girls stood facing one another, each holding a paddle at the ready, while Cissy, alone at the very start of the gantlet, awaited her sponsored charge. "Now, pledge, crawl forward till you are told to stop," she called. And slowly, her face taut with anxiety of the unknown ordeal, Ruth advanced.

At last she passed before Cissy Williams, who drew back her paddle and swung it vigorously across the plump jutting hindquarters so impudently molded out by the tight Capri pants. Ruth wailed and scrambled forward amid gales of laughter. But they weren't too harsh on her, for Ruth Jorgenson was generally well liked. Nonetheless, by the time she crawled past Laura and Deeana, tears were running down her flushed cheeks and when she was allowed to rise and remove her blindfold, she began to hop from foot to foot, woefully rubbing her well paddled posterior with both hands. Cissy, an arm round Ruth's shaking shoulders, consoled and congratulated her; she was now officially a member of Delta Gamma Theta. And then she was led out of the recreation room by her Big Sister, who took her to one of the sorority girls' rooms so that she couldn't tell her companions what awaited them...

Myrna was summoned next, and Eleanor Landers glowered with impatience at this nerve-wracking suspense. Marcia Alton was beginning to pace up and down, and the redhead irritably snapped, "Cut it out, Marcia. That won't hurry it up any! Damn it, why didn't they take us all at once?"

It seemed ages before again the sound of the key in the lock was heard and then the door opened. It was Jean Fergosa, Big Sister to Marcia Alton, and it was Marcia who was told to advance and submit to blindfolding. Once again, the door was closed and locked on Eleanor, who found herself alone with her thoughts. The tension was beginning to get under her skin. She got up and paced the floor for a few minutes, oblivious to the fact that she had chided Marcia Alton for the very same show of nervousness. Then she lit a cigarette, crushed it out after a moment, only to light another almost immediately.

Glancing at her wristwatch, she saw that it was nearly eleven. What the devil were they doing to the girls, anyway? She could guess why they hadn't brought Ruth and Myrna back to the room; it was so they wouldn't reveal the things that had been done to them. Well, it wouldn't faze her; the only thing that bothered her was this frightfully long delay. She had been ready three hours ago. Why did it take so long?

Beads of sweat had begun to glisten on her creamy forehead. She lit still another cigarette, got up, went over to the window and peered out into the darkness. The first snow of winter had fallen late this afternoon. In another month, she'd be getting ready for Christmas and the triumphant homecoming with her fianc‚, Professor Mark Torrance. That and acceptance by Delta Gamma Theta in four short months-no other girl on campus could boast such achievements. Yes, and besting timid little Kathy Edwards. That was something too, though of course it paled by comparison with the other two goals attained.

The key turned in the lock, the door opened, and Deeana Mason stood on the threshold, dressed in the white robe of office, with the red Greek letters sewn across her bosom, her face grave and stern.

"Pledge Landers, step forward and submit yourself to the tests of courage," she said.

"Sure, I'm ready, Dee," Eleanor's voice trembled despite her relief that the atrocious suspense had finally come to an end.

"I'm going to blindfold you, Eleanor."

"Go ahead. We're all equal tonight, aren't we, Dee? I don't want any special privileges." Eleanor forced an ingratiating smile as Deeana stepped forward and wound the black bandanna tightly over her eyes.

"I'm going to be your Big Sister tonight, Eleanor," Deeana's voice was somber, "but I'm also acting as president, you understand. There's just one thing I have to tell you. We've decided to initiate you and Kathy Edwards together. Come along. I'll lead you down the stairs safely. You can trust me, Eleanor."

"Kathy and me together?"

"Yes. It's unusual, but there are reasons. Now come along. They're waiting."