A QUESTION OF ECONOMY
“I love music myself,” said Robbie Belle, lifting serene eyes from her porridge, “but to-day is Thanksgiving Day.”
“Oh!” sighed Berta, as she clasped her hands—those thin nervous hands with the long fingers that Robbie Belle admired all the more for their contrast with her own dimpled ones, “think of hearing Caruso and Sembrich together in grand opera! I could walk all the way on my knees.”
“What!” cried Robbie Belle in wide-eyed astonishment, her spoon half way to her mouth, “walk seventy miles! And miss the Dinner?”
The graduate fellow at the head of their table looked quite sad as she nodded her pretty head, though to be sure her napkin was hiding her lips.
“Why!” gasped Robbie Belle, freshman, “but Dinner is to begin at three and last till almost six. And we are going to have salted almonds and nesselrode pudding and raw oysters and chocolate peppermints and turkey and sherbet and macaroons and nuts and celery and Brussels sprouts and everything. We are painting the place-cards this morning and one is for you. It is a shame for you to sacrifice it just to hear grand opera, Miss Bonner. Are you really intending to take the nine o’clock train?”
Again the fellow nodded. Robbie Belle’s wondering gaze rested a moment on Berta’s gypsy face alight now with an intensity of longing. Deliberately depositing her spoon on one side of her saucer and her buttered bit of roll on the other she devoted her entire attention to this marvel.
“I cannot understand,” she said clearly, “it is only singing. And to-day is Thanksgiving Day. It comes once a year.”
Miss Bonner brushed her napkin across her mouth rather hurriedly and excused herself from the table. Robbie Belle watched her retreating down the long vista of the dining-room.
“Would you honestly choose to go with her if you could, Berta?” she asked, “grand opera is only something to see and hear and then it is all over.”
“Oh, Robbie Belle!” groaned Berta, “how about the Dinner? That is only something to eat, and then it is all over too.”
“Why don’t you go if you want to?” inquired Robbie Belle as she reflectively picked up her roll again. “We can invite somebody else to take your place at the table. Bea and Lila are going to the hothouse for smilax and chrysanthemums.”
“Why don’t I go?” Berta leaned back and drew a long and melancholy sigh from the bottom of her boots. “Girls,” she turned to the others who were still lingering over their breakfast, “she asks why I don’t go to hear grand opera. And it costs two dollars railroad fare even on a commutation ticket, and seats are three dollars up, and I have precisely thirty-seven cents to last me till Christmas.”
“Oh,” commented Robbie Belle repentantly, “I didn’t think. I’d love to pay for all of you, only I haven’t any money either.”
Berta clutched at her heart and bent double in a bow of gratitude unspeakable. Robbie Belle continued to stare at her thoughtfully. “If you truly want to, Berta, we might save up and go to the opera some other day. I’m willing.”
“Willing! Dear child! Willing! Behold how she immolates herself upon the altar of friendship! She is willing to go to grand opera and sit listening to sweet sounds from dawn to dark——”
“Oh, Berta!” interrupting in alarm, “not from dawn to dark really? How about——”
“Luncheon?” the other caught up the sentence tragically. “Ah, no, but calm thyself, dear one. Be serene—as usual. There is an intermission for luncheon. We could go to a restaurant. It would be a restaurant with a vinegar cruet in the centre of the table and plates of thick bread at each end and lovely little oyster crackers for the soup. Perhaps if you had two dollars extra you might order terrapin.”
“And pickles,” put in Bea generously, “with striped ice-cream.”
“And angel food with chocolate frosting an inch thick,” contributed Lila.
“It’s a long time till spring,” said Robbie Belle regretfully, “but very likely we will need all that while to save it up.”
As it turned out, they did need all that while to save it up. For beauty-loving Berta with her eternally slim purse and hopelessly meagre account-book, the plan at first seemed only a vision of the moment. Nobody can save out of nothing, can she? Robbie Belle, however, had a stubborn fashion of clinging to an idea when once it became fixed. Her ideas, furthermore, were apt to be clean-cut and definite. This is how she reasoned it out:
If a girl receives five dollars a month from home to pay for books and postage and incidentals, she is entitled to whatever she saves from the allowance. Every time this girl refrains from writing a letter, she has really saved two cents or the value of the stamp, to say nothing of the paper. Whenever she walks down town instead of riding, she has a right to the nickel to add to the fund in the back of her top bureau drawer. If she buys a ten-cent fountain-pen instead of a dollar one, she virtually earns ninety cents. If she rents a grammar for twenty-five cents instead of paying one dollar and a half for a new book, she is a thrifty person who deserves the difference. Every time she declines—mournfully—to drop in at the restaurant for dinner with a crowd of friends, or refuses to join in a waffle-supper, Dutch treat, she is so much nearer being a melancholy and noble capitalist.
“Yes, that’s all right for you,” assented Berta airily when told of this working theory, “but supposing you don’t have the money to save in the first place? I fail to receive five dollars a month from home or even one dollar invariably; and I always walk to town and never enter the restaurant except to wait while you save ten cents by buying half a pound of caramels when you want to buy a whole pound.”
“They’re forty cents a pound, Berta,” objected scrupulous Robbie Belle. “I really saved twenty cents yesterday, you see.”
“Ah, of course, how distressingly inaccurate of me. And I also—I saved five dollars and fourteen cents by using my wash-stand for a writing-table instead of buying that bargain desk for four dollars and ninety-eight cents. The extra fifteen was saved on the inkwell I did not buy either. I say, Robbie Belle Sanders, let’s save the entire sum by denying ourselves that set of Browning we saw last week.”
Robbie Belle looked grieved. “You always make fun of everything. You act as if you didn’t care.”
Berta turned away for a minute, and stood gazing from the window of her little tower room. The window was small and high, but the view was wide and wonderful toward the purple hills in the west. At length she said something under her breath. Robbie Belle heard it and understood. It was only, “I’m afraid.”
Robbie Belle knew that Berta was afraid of caring too much. She had listened once in twilight confidence under the pines to the story of how Berta had been all ready to start for college three years before, when a sudden family misfortune changed her plans and condemned her to immediate teaching. In the bitterness of her disappointment she had vowed never to set her heart on any plan again.
Walking over to Berta’s side Robbie Belle took the listless hand in both her comforting ones.
“Even if we shouldn’t manage it this year, you know, we could try again next year. We might earn something extra during the summer.”
“Next year!” echoed Berta under her breath. “I can’t count on next year—I dare not. You do not understand, for your scholarship is certain through the course, while mine depends on what Prexie thinks I am worth. I am under the eye of the faculty. Don’t talk about next year. I am pretending that this is the last time I shall be here in October, then in November, then in December. I look at everything—the lake, the trees, the girls, the teachers, the dear, dear library, and say, ‘Good-bye! Good-bye, my college year.’ They may not help me to come back, you know. If I really try not to expect it, I will not be disappointed in any case. Of course, I am not worth four hundred dollars to them. I am afraid to hope for it.”
“Why, you are the brightest student here. Bea says so and you know it!” exclaimed Robbie Belle indignantly; “there isn’t any question about your being granted another scholarship when you apply for it next spring. They weigh everything—intellect, personality, character, conduct. Never you fear. If they give only one scholarship in the whole college, it shall be to you. You are superstitious: you fancy that if you do your best to expect the worst, the best will happen, because it is always the unexpected that happens. Only of course, that isn’t true at all.”
Berta was smiling mistily around into the fair face. “Dear old Robbie Belle! Will Shakespeare was right—‘there’s flattery in friendship’—it makes me rejoice. The trouble, you see, sweetheart, lies in my character. I misdoubt me that Prexie will spurn my plea if he hears how often we have a meeting of the fudge club at a tax of two cents per head. Let’s save up that two cents for the Opera fund.”
Robbie Belle drew a deep sigh. “All right,” she agreed with a doleful glance toward the particular blue plate in which she was accustomed to pour her share of the delicacy. “Anyway the doctor calls fudge an ‘abomination.’ Bea will scold because she hates scrimping. But then she doesn’t care so much as we do for music unless it is convenient.”
Berta’s contributions were the result of more active exertions than the other’s passive self-denial. She sat up one night till two o’clock to dress a doll. Every fall a few hundred dolls were distributed to be dressed by the girls for the Christmas tree at the Settlement House in the city. Some of the students took dolls and paid other girls to make the clothes. Berta earned a dollar by helping Bea with the three which that impulsive young woman had rashly undertaken. In February she composed valentines and sold them to over-busy maidens who felt unequal to rhyming in the reaction after the midyear examinations. In March she painted Easter eggs and in April she arranged pots of growing ferns and flowers from the woods. By May the fund was complete and the tickets were bought.
As the longed-for event drew nearer, Berta made a string of paper dolls and joyfully tore off one for each passing day.
At last the morning dawned. Robbie Belle was dreaming that she had fallen asleep in fifth hour Latin. It seemed as if the instructor called her name and then came walking down from the platform, thump, thump, thump, in her broad-soled shoes. It was unladylike to thump so heavily, thought Robbie Belle in the midst of her confused dismay over having lost the place in the text as well as forgotten the translation. The thumping sharpened to a rat-tat-tat upon the bedroom door.
“Robbie Belle, Robbie Belle, you lazybones! The night watchman has knocked twice already. Get up, get up this instant! We’re going to hear Grand Opera to-day! O-o-ooh!”
Robbie Belle lifted her head to listen. “Berta Abbott, you’ve got a chill. I hear you shivering. Hurry into your clothes this minute. I’ll bring you the quinine.”
Quinine! Berta shivering from excitement laughed softly to herself. Dear old Robbie Belle! Quinine on this wonderful day! Listen! That was the twittering of swallows under the eaves. A squirrel peered in at her window, his bright eyes twinkling. It was too bad that he did not enjoy music. But perhaps he did after all. Hark! that was a robin. And listen! There sounded the full-throated whistle of a brown thrush. The world was ringing with music—beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! And she was going to hear Grand Opera to-day! That had been her most precious dream next to coming to college. To come to college and to hear Grand Opera too!
“My cup runneth over! My cup runneth over,” she chanted softly to herself, while from Robbie Belle’s room rose a faint noise of deliberate dressing, subdued splashing, slow steps, a rustling that was almost methodical in its rhythm.
“Berta,” she announced, appearing with hat set straight and firm over her smooth dark hair, her coat over one arm, her umbrella neatly strapped, “I think I shall carry my Horace, for it is a two-hours’ ride, and to-day is Saturday and after Sunday comes Monday.”
Berta clapped her hands over her ears, “Go away, go away to your breakfast, miserable creature! Horace! that worldly wise old Roman! With the river before your eyes, the beautiful river in May!”
“The next ode begins, ‘O Fons Bandusiæ!’—a fountain, you understand,” protested Robbie Belle in injured tones, “he loved the country. I wanted to read it aloud to you and get in my practice on scansion that way. I am learning to do it quite well. Listen! ‘Splendidior vitro-o-o,’” she declaimed, dragging out the syllables to lugubrious length.
“Dear Robbie Belle,” murmured Berta pleasantly, “if you breathe one line of that stuff on this journey I shall throw you into the river myself—cheerfully.” She nodded vigorous approval of her own sentiments, and her contrary hair seized the opportunity to tumble down again in resentment of impatient fingers. “Oh, Robbie Belle, come and twist this up for me, won’t you? We shall be late for the train. I don’t believe we care for breakfast anyhow.”
“Not care for breakfast!” Robbie Belle shut her mouth determinedly. She walked over to the wardrobe, pinned Berta’s hat securely on the fly-away hair, caught up her jacket, tucked the tickets into her own pocket, and sternly marched her scatter-brained friend out of the room and down the corridor.
“It’s gone to her head,” she muttered sadly as if communing with herself, “the idea of music has gone to her head. I must address her soothingly. Yes, yes, we’re going—we’re going soon, don’t worry. But we’re a-going clothed and in our right mind—mine at least, and fed.”
On tiptoe they flitted down to the big empty dining-room. A special breakfast was being served to the dozen or more students who intended to take the early train to the city. The unaccustomed stillness in the vast apartment usually vibrating with clatter of dishes and chatter of tongues seemed dreamlike to Berta in her exalted mood. Robbie Belle found it necessary to exert her firmest authority in order to get Berta to eat even a roll and swallow a cup of chocolate.
Two of the seniors who were going shopping lamented that they had neglected to apply for opera tickets until the house had been sold out. Berta gazed at them pityingly. To have the money and to be in the city, and yet not to be able to go! Why hadn’t they thought of it in time? She had anticipated it years in advance. This world was full of queer people—all sorts of people who did not care for music, and even some who did not care for books. Wasn’t it the strangest thing—not to care!
When somebody consulting her watch announced that the special electric car was to leave the Lodge Gates for the station in seven minutes, Berta dropped spoon and napkin in eager haste to depart. Out into the corridor and around the balusters to the messenger room where they were required to register their names and destination. At the foot of the broad staircase hung the bulletin board in the pale flicker of a lowered gas-jet. The morning light was brightening through the windows beyond. Berta halted mechanically to scan the oblong of dark red in search of possible new notices. Something may have been posted since chapel last night.
Ah, yes, there was a fresh square of white tucked under the tapes that marked the felt into convenient diamonds. Berta read it at a glance.
“All students requiring financial assistance for the coming year are requested to make written application to the President before May 10th. It is understood that those receiving such aid will exercise all reasonable economy in avoiding unnecessary expenditure.”
Berta did not move, though her mobile face seemed to harden in a curiously stony expression. She read the notice again. Robbie Belle came breezily from the messenger room.
“Anything new, Berta? You look queer.” She followed the direction of the fascinated eyes. She read it slowly and drew a deep breath.
“So we can’t go after all,” she said.
Berta seemed to wake up suddenly from a trance. “Robbie Belle!”
“I can’t help it,” doggedly though the smooth forehead had clouded in a quick frown of pain at the cry, “it would not be honest. I didn’t know before.”
“It’s our own money,” protested Berta defiantly.
“But our scholarships are the same as borrowed.”
“ANYTHING NEW?”
“The tickets are bought and paid for.”
Robbie Belle caught a glimpse of figures emerging from the dining-room. “There come those two seniors who forgot to get seats in advance. Isn’t it lucky! Now we can sell them ours.”
“Give me my ticket,” demanded Berta’s voice sullenly, “you never cared.”
“But it is not honest,” repeated Robbie Belle stubbornly. “I never thought of it in that light before. It is not honest to spend five dollars and more for a luxury while we are living on borrowed money.”
“Give—me—my—ticket.”
The seniors rustled past. To Berta their laughter sounded far away. “Oh, girls, we’ll have to hurry! Hear that bell jangle.”
“The conductor does it on purpose to see us run. We have three minutes yet. Those two freshmen by the bulletin-board are going.”
“It is not honest,” said Robbie Belle.
Fragments of gay chatter floated back to them. “Caruso and Sembrich in Lucia di Lammermoor! Fancy! It is the most wonderful combination of extraordinary talent—genius. I shall certainly go if I have to stand up every minute of the three hours.”
“It is simply wicked to miss such an opportunity.”
“Important part of our education, isn’t it? I only wish my thesis were on the ‘Development of the Drama.’ I should employ the laboratory method most assuredly.”
“The critics say that such a chance as this does not occur more than once in a century.”
“It is not honest,” said Robbie Belle, back in the shadowy corridor before the bulletin-board.
“Will you give me my ticket?”
Robbie Belle flinched before the passionate low tones, and the roseleaf color in her cheeks went quite white. She handed Berta both tickets. “You may do what you like with mine,” she said and turned slowly away.
Berta fled in the wake of the hurrying seniors. Her head buzzed with frantic arguments. It was her own money—she had earned it. Nobody had a right to dictate what she should do with it. Robbie Belle never could see more than one side of a question. To forbid unnecessary expenditure just because she accepted a loan to carry her through college! Who was to say whether it was unnecessary or not? The Opera was part of her musical education. She would repay the scholarship with interest at the earliest possible date after she began to earn a salary. What meddling insolence! The girls who held scholarships were the brightest and finest in college—some of them. And to treat them as if they were extravagant, silly little spendthrifts! It was honest. Hadn’t she denied herself everything all the year—clubs and dinners and drives and flowers and ribbons and gloves and new books and fine note-paper and that cast of the Winged Victory which she had wanted and wanted and wanted? Not that she assumed any credit for such self-denial—it simply had to be, that was all. But now, this was different. She owed it to herself not to miss such a wonderful occasion. A chance in a century—that was what the senior said.
Ting-aling, ting-aling! jangled the bell madly. The conductor paused, his hand on the strap. A breathless girl sprang upon the platform, darted into the car, tossed a packet upon a convenient lap.
“There are two seats for the Opera. We can’t go.” And she had leaped from the moving steps and vanished through the great iron gates of the Lodge.
Back in the dormitory before the bulletin-board Miss Bonner, the graduate fellow, was staring at the new placard. She gave a slight start of astonishment at a glimpse of Berta hastening past her. Then because she had heard the story from Robbie Belle two minutes earlier, she pretended to be absorbed in the notices, for she suspected that any comment would start the tears that Berta was holding back. However, she was smiling to herself after the girl had vanished up the stairs. When the gong struck for breakfast, she halted at the faculty table to whisper a few words to the professor in her special department. The professor answered, “How glad I am!”
“And you really believe that it would have prejudiced the scholarship committee against Miss Abbott, if she had persisted in this extravagance? She has worked so hard to earn it.”
“I understand,” the professor was sympathetic but unswerving from her convictions; “it seems somewhat cruel when one considers how passionately fond of music the child is. Still you must remember that this scholarship fund is the result of endless self-denial. I have known several alumnæ, to say the least, who have sacrificed greater privileges than visits to the Opera for the sake of contributing an extra mite. Would it be just for one who benefits from the economy of others to spend in self-indulgence?”
Meanwhile Berta, unconscious of the fact that her whole college career and the future to be moulded by it had depended upon her decision to do right in this apparently insignificant respect, had trudged up to a certain lonely room. Robbie Belle lifted a wet face from a consoling pillow.
“Berta!” It was like a soft little shout of triumph. “I knew——”
Berta swallowed a lump in her throat and managed to smile a whimsical smile from behind dewy lashes.
“Maybe we’ll have clam chowder for luncheon,” she said, “and then won’t those two seniors be sorry!”