CHAPTER XV
DISAPPOINTMENTS
It was the day of the great basket-ball game. In half an hour more the gymnasium would be opened to the crowd that waited in two long, sinuous lines, gay with scarfs, banners and class emblems, outside the doors. Now and then a pretty girl, dressed all in white, with a paper hat, green or yellow as the case might be, and an usher's wand to match, darted out of one of the campus houses and fluttered over to the back door of the gymnasium. The crowd watched these triumphal progresses languidly. Its interest was reserved for the other girls, pig tailed and in limp-hanging rain-coats, who also sought the back door, but with that absence of ostentation and self-consciousness which invariably marks the truly great. The crowd singled out its "heroes in homespun," and one line or the other applauded, according to the color that was known to be sewed on the blue sleeve beneath the rain-coat.
The green line was just shouting itself hoarse over T. Reed, who had been observed slinking across the apple orchard, hoping to effect her entrance unnoticed, when Eleanor Watson hurried down the steps of the Hilton House, carrying a sheet of paper in one hand. Hearing the shouting, she shrugged her shoulders disdainfully and chose the route to the Westcott House that did not lead past the gymnasium doors. As she went up the steps of the Westcott, she met Jean Eastman coming down, her white skirts rustling in the wind.
Jean looked at her in surprise. "Why, Eleanor, you're an usher too.
Aren't you going to dress? It's half past two this minute."
"Yes," said Eleanor curtly, "I know. I'm not going to usher. I have a headache. Jean, where is my basket-ball song?"
"How should I know?" said Jean, smoothing the petals of the green chrysanthemums that were festooned about her wand. "On the paper with the rest, isn't it?"
[Illustration: THE GREEN LINE WAS SHOUTING ITSELF HOARSE]
"No," said Eleanor, "it's not. I didn't go to the class 'sing' last night, but this noon somebody left a song sheet in my room. You said they chose mine, Jean."
"I said," corrected Jean, "that I thought they chose it. I was on the song committee, but I didn't go to the meeting. From your description I thought it must be one of those that Kate said was taken."
Eleanor held out the paper to Jean. "Whose are these?"
Jean glanced hastily down the page. "Why, I don't know," she said, "any more than you do—except that first one to the tune of 'St. Louis.'" She hummed a lilting measure or two. "That's our prize song all right, and who do you think wrote it?"
"Who?" demanded Eleanor fiercely.
"That little Adams girl—the one who rooms with Betty Wales. T. Reed told me she'd been working on it for weeks."
Eleanor's eyes flashed scornfully. "I should think it ought to be fairly decent then," she said.
"Well, it's considerably more than fairly decent," said Jean cheerfully. "I'm freezing here, Eleanor, and it's late too. Don't bother about your song. Come over to the gym. with me and you can go in the back way."
"No, thank you," said Eleanor in frigid tones, and went back as she had come.
To be beaten, and by Helen Chase Adams, of all people! It was too humiliating. Six basket-ball songs had been printed and hers rejected. No doubt the other five had been written by special friends of the committee. She had depended on Jean to look after hers—although she had not doubted for a moment that it would be among the very best submitted— and Jean had failed her.
Worse yet, the story on which she had staked her hopes had come back from
Miss Raymond, with a few words of perfunctory, non-committal criticism.
Miss Raymond had not read it to her class, much less sent the "Argus"
editors after it.
"Does she know, too?" questioned Eleanor. "Does she think that because I've cheated once I can't ever be trusted again, or is it just my luck to have them all notice the one thing I didn't write and let alone the things I do?"
It was two weeks since Mr. Blake's lecture, and in that time she had accomplished nothing of all that she had intended. Her idea had been to begin over—to blot out the fact that once she had not played fair, and starting on a clean sheet, repeat her triumph and prove to herself and other people that her position in college affairs was no higher than she deserved. But so far she had proved nothing, and every day the difficulties of her position increased. It was almost more than she could manage, to treat the girls whom she suspected of knowing her secret with exactly her accustomed manner. She had not been able to verify her suspicions except in the case of Beatrice Egerton. There was no doubt about her. When the two were alone together she scarcely took pains to conceal her knowledge, and her covert hints had driven Eleanor into more than one outburst of resentment which she bitterly regretted when it was too late. It was absolutely impossible to tell about Betty. "She treats me exactly as she did when Jim was here," reflected Eleanor, "and just as she did last year, for that matter. If she doesn't know it's no particular credit to her, and if she does—" Eleanor could not bear the idea of receiving kindness from people who must despise her.
Jean ran on to the gym., shivering in her thin dress, and muttering savagely over Eleanor's "beastly temper."
As she passed the sophomore-senior line, one and another of her friends shouted out gay greetings.
"Hurry up, Jean, or we shall get in before you do."
"You sophomore ushers look like a St. Patrick's Day parade."
"Tell the people in there that their clocks are slow."
"All right," said Jean, hanging on to her unmanageable paper hat.
As she passed the end of the line, Beatrice Egerton detached herself from it, and followed her around the corner of the gym. "Oh, Miss Eastman," she coaxed. "Won't you let me go in with you? I shall never get a place to see anything from way back there in the line."
Jean eyed her doubtfully. She wanted to oblige the great Miss Egerton.
"I'm afraid all the reserved seats are full by this time," she objected.
"Oh, I don't want a seat," said Beatrice easily. "I'll stand on the steps of the faculty platform. There's no harm in that, is there?"
"I guess not," said Jean. "Come on."
The doorkeeper had gone up-stairs for a moment, and the meek little freshman who had her place only stared when Jean and Miss Egerton ran past her without exhibiting their credentials.
"Thanks awfully," said Miss Egerton, sitting down on a pile of rugs and mattresses that had been stacked around the fireplace. Jean went off to get her orders from the head usher. There was really nothing to do but walk around and look pretty, the head usher told her. The rush to the gallery had begun, but the janitors and the night-watchman were managing that. Of course when the faculty began to come—
"Oh, yes," said Jean, and hurried back to Beatrice.
"Good-looking lot of ushers," she said.
Beatrice nodded. "You have a lot of pretty girls in 19—."
"To say nothing of having the college beauty," added Jean.
"Of course," said Beatrice. "Nobody in college can touch Eleanor Watson for looks. There she is now, talking to Betty Wales and Kate Denise."
"No," chuckled Jean, "that's Laura Perkins. Their back views are amazingly alike, but wait till you see Laura's face. No, the lady Eleanor wouldn't come to the game. She's in the sulks."
"Seems to be her chronic state nowadays," said Beatrice. "Talking to her is like walking on a hornet's nest. What's the particular cause of grievance to-day?"
"Oh, the committee didn't accept her basket-ball song," said Jean, "and I was on the committee."
Beatrice lifted her eyebrows. "She actually had the nerve to write—to hand one in?"
"Oh, that wasn't nervy," said Jean. "The girls wanted her to—l9— is awfully shy on poets. What I don't admire is her taste in fussing because it wasn't used."
Beatrice smiled significantly. "Did she tell you about her story?"
"What story?"
"Oh, a new one that she handed in for a theme a week or so ago."
"What about it?"
"Why, Miss Raymond didn't notice it particularly, and Eleanor was fussed to death—positively furious, you know. I was with her when she got it back."
"How funny!" said Jean. "But don't they say that Miss Raymond is pretty apt to like everything a girl does, after she's once become interested? I suppose Eleanor was taking it easy and depending on that."
Beatrice's face wore its most inscrutable expression. "But, my dear," she said, "if you knew all about that other wonderful story—the famous one—"
There was an unusual commotion at the door opposite them. By flower- bedecked ones and twos the faculty had been arriving, and had been received with shouts and songs from the galleries and escorted by excited ushers across the floor to their seats on the stage. Miss Egerton had stopped in the midst of her sentence to find out whose coming had turned the galleries into pandemonium and brought every usher but the phlegmatic Jean to the door.
"Oh, it's Prexy and Miss Ferris and Dr. Hinsdale, all in a bunch," she said at last. "How inconsiderate of them not to scatter the fireworks!" She turned back to Jean. "As I was saying, if you knew all about that wonderful story—"
Betty Wales, hurrying to help escort her dear Miss Ferris to the platform, caught sight of the two on the mattresses, noticed Jean's look of breathless interest and Beatrice's knowing air, and jumped to exactly the right conclusion. With a last despairing glance at Miss Ferris she turned aside from the group of crowding ushers, and dropped down beside Jean on the mattings.
"Have you heard the latest news?" she asked, trying to make her tone perfectly easy and natural. "The freshman captain was so rattled that she forgot to wear her gym. suit. She came in her ordinary clothes. They've sent an usher back with her to see that she gets dressed right this time. Isn't that killing?"
"Absurd," said Beatrice, rising. "Jean, you haven't done anything yet; you're too idle for words. I'm going up to jolly Dr. Hinsdale."
In her heart she was glad of the interruption. She had said just enough to pique curiosity. To tell more would have been bad policy all around. Betty Wales had arrived just in the nick of time.
But Jean was naturally disappointed. "Betty Wales," she said, "do you know what you interrupted just now? Beatrice Egerton was just going to tell me the inside facts about Eleanor's story in the 'Argus.'"
"Was she?" said Betty steadily. "If there are any inside facts, as you call them, don't you think Eleanor is the one to tell you?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Jean carelessly. "Eleanor's so tiresome. She wants to be the centre of the stage all the time. Shouldn't you think she'd be willing to give other people a little show now?"
"Why, she is," returned Betty vaguely.
"Not much," asserted Jean with great positiveness. "She's sulking in her tent this very minute because the girls aren't singing her basket-ball song. Anybody who wasn't downright selfish would be glad to have girls like Helen Adams get a little chance."
"Eleanor's tired and doesn't think," suggested Betty.
"You'd better go down to the door," said the head usher. "The 'green' faculty are coming in swarms."
The game went on much as last year's had done. First one gallery shook with forbidden applause, then the other. Sophomores sang paeans to their victories, freshmen pluckily ignored their mistakes. T. Reed appeared as if by magic here, there, and everywhere. Rachel Morrison played her quiet, steady game at the sophomore basket. Katherine Kittredge, talking incessantly to the bewildered freshman "home" whom she guarded, batted balls with ferocious lunges of her big fist back to the centre field, where a dainty little freshman with soft, appealing brown eyes, half hidden under a mist of yellow hair, occasionally managed to foil T. Reed's pursuit and sent them pounding back into the outstretched arms of a tall, ungainly home who tossed or dropped them—it was hard to tell which—into the freshman basket. It was a shame to let her play, the sophomores grumbled. She was a giantess, not a girl. But as the score piled up in their favor, they grew more amiable and laughed good- humoredly at the ineffectual attempts of their guards to block the giantess's goals.
Betty watched it all with keen interest and yet with a certain feeling of detachment. It was splendid fun, but what did it matter after all who won or lost? The freshman centres muffed another ball. Up in the "yellow" gallery she saw a tall girl standing behind a pillar unmistakably wink back the tears. How foolish, just for a game!
It was over at last. Miss Andrews announced the score, congratulating victor and vanquished alike on clean, fair play. Betty joined in the mad rush around the gym., helped sing to the team and to the freshman team and finally retired to a quiet corner with Christy Mason, who had come back to see the game and get a start with her neglected work before vacation. Betty gave her the Students' Commission key with a little sigh of satisfaction.
"It's a good deal of responsibility, isn't it?" she said.
Christy nodded. "If you take it seriously. But then isn't life a responsibility?"
Helen was sitting alone in their room when Betty got back, her eyes shining like stars, her plain, angular little face alight with happiness.
"I say, Helen," began Betty, hunting for the hat-pins that still fastened a remnant of her once gorgeous paper hat to her hair, "your song was great. Did the girls tell you?"
"Some of them," said Helen, shyly. "Some of them didn't know I wrote it.
One asked me if I knew."
Betty laughed. "Did you tell her?"
"No, I didn't," said Helen, blushing. "I—I wanted to, awfully; but I thought it would seem queer."
"Well, plenty of them knew," said Betty, mounting a chair to fasten her wand over a picture.
"Of course,"—Helen's tone was apologetic,—"it's a very little thing to care so much about. I suppose you think I'm silly, but you see I worked over it pretty hard, and I don't have so very many things to care about. Now if I were like you—"
"Nonsense!" said Betty, descending suddenly from her lofty perch. "I couldn't write a line of poetry if I tried from now till Commencement."
"Oh, yes, you could," said Helen, eagerly. "Well, if I were like Eleanor
Watson then—"
"Helen," said Betty, quickly, "you're not one bit like her."
Helen waited a minute. "Betty," she began again shyly.
"Yes," said Betty, kindly.
"I'm awfully sorry you couldn't have your wish, too."
"My wish!" Betty repeated. "Oh, you mean about being on the team. I don't mind about that, Helen. I guess I was needed more just where I was."
Helen puzzled over her answer until the supper-bell rang.
Betty's problem stayed with her all through the bustle of last days and on into the Easter vacation. Even then she found only a doubtful solution. She had thought that Mr. Blake's decision, of which Dorothy had told her as soon as possible, would close the incident of the story. Now she saw that the affair was not so easily disposed of. Beatrice Egerton was an incalculable source of danger, but the chief trouble was Eleanor herself. Somehow her attitude was wrong, though Betty could not exactly tell how. She was in a false position, one that it would be difficult for any one to maintain; and it was making her say and do things that people like Jean, who did not understand, naturally misinterpreted. Why, even she herself hated to meet Eleanor now. There was so much to hide and to avoid talking about. And yet it would certainly be worse if everybody knew. Betty puckered her smooth forehead into rows and rows of wrinkles and still she saw no way out. She thought of consulting Nan, but she couldn't bear to, when Nan had always been so pessimistic about Eleanor.
It was not until the vacation was over and Betty's train was pulling into Harding that she had an idea. She gave a little exclamation. "I've got it!"
"Got what?" demanded her seat-mate, who was a mathematical prodigy and had been working out problems in calculus all the way from Buffalo.
"Not one of those examples of yours," laughed Betty, "only an idea,—or at least about half an idea."
"I don't find fractions of ideas very useful," said the seat-mate.
"I never said they were," returned Betty irritably.
It had occurred to her that if there was any way to get Eleanor to confide in Miss Ferris, perhaps matters might be straightened out.
The missing half of the idea, to which Betty had not the faintest clew, was—how could it be done?