FOUR SOPHOMORES AND A DOG
The last recitation of the winter term was over, and the corridors were alive with girls hurrying this way and that, pinning on their hats, buttoning jackets, crowding into the elevator, unfurling umbrellas, and chattering all the time.
“Hope you’ll have the nicest sort of a time!” “Don’t stay up too late!” “Good-bye!” “Oh, good-bye!” “Be sure to get well rested this vacation!” “Awfully, awfully sorry you wouldn’t come home with me, Gertrude, you bad child! But I know you won’t suffer from monotony with Berta and Beatrice in the same study.” “Hurry, girls, there’s the car now. Just hear that bell jingle, will you!” “Good-bye, Gertrude, and don’t let Sara work too hard!” “Oh, good-bye!”
Gertrude felt the clutch of arms relax from about her neck, and managed to breathe again. This was one of the penalties—pleasant enough, doubtless, if a person were in the mood for it—of being a popular sophomore. For a minute she lingered wearily in the vestibule to watch the figures flying down the avenue to the Lodge gates. How their skirts fluttered and twisted around them, and how their hats danced! Their suit-cases bounded and bumped as they ran, and their umbrellas churned up and down in choppy billows before the boisterous March wind. There! the last one had vanished in a whirl of flapping ends and lively angles beyond the dripping evergreens.
As she was turning languidly away, a backward glance espied two girls emerging from one of the dormitories far across the flooded lawn. They came skipping over the narrow planks that had been laid in the rivers flowing along the curving walks. The first was Berta swathed in a hooded waterproof; and the second, of course, was Beatrice, a tam flung askew on her red curls, her arms thrust through a coat sleeve or two, a laundry bag swinging from one elbow, and a tin fudge pan clasped tenderly and firmly beneath the other, while with the hands so providentially left free she stooped at every third step to rescue one or the other of her easy-fitting rubbers from setting out on a watery voyage all by itself.
“Hi!” she gasped after a final shuffling dash, as she caught sight of immaculate Gertrude, “I wore your overshoes. Hope you don’t mind. They’re not very wet inside, and I brought over your things so that we can move into our borrowed study right off now.”
“Where are my things?” asked Gertrude with natural curiosity and perhaps unnatural calm.
“Here,” jerking the laundry bag, “it holds a lot—brushes, soap, nightgown, toothpowder, fountain-pen, note-book, everything. Berta carried your mending basket. You needn’t bother one bit.”
“I’ll run back and forth for anything you want,” volunteered Berta hastily at sight of an irritable frown on the usually serene brow of handsome Gertrude.
“You’re cross!” commented Bea with a cheerful vivacity that was exasperating to the highest degree, considering that everybody ought to be worn down to an unobtrusive state of limp inertia after the three busy months just concluded, “you’ve been cross ever since Sara——”
“Berta, lend me your gossamer and rubbers, please,” when Gertrude was unreasonably provoked she had a habit of snapping out her words even more clear-cut than usual. An instant later she swept forth into the rain only to stop short and hurry in again before the door had swung shut. “We might as well look at the study first,” she said in a more gracious tone, “and we can draw lots to see who is to have the inside bedroom. I dare say the change to this building will be a rest.”
Berta took quick survey from the window to explore the cause for this amazing wavering of purpose.
“Ah!” she murmured in swift enlightenment, “it’s Sara. She’s coming over the path.”
A peculiar expression flitted across Bea’s ingenuous face—an expression half quizzical, half sorry. “Then we’d better follow Gertrude’s example, and clear the track. She’ll cut us dead again—that meek little mouse of a girl! And I don’t blame her for it either, so there!”
Berta tucked a pensive skip in between steps as they moved through the gloomy corridor past rain-beaten windows. “It wasn’t like Gertrude to burst out like that just because Sara came late to our domestic evening, but it did spoil the fudges and the game and everything.”
“And not to give her a chance to explain!” fumed Bea’s temper always ready to flame over any injustice. “Before she could open her lips, Gertrude blazed up, cold as an icicle——”
“What?” interpolated demure Berta with her most deeply shocked accent, “an icicle blaze?”
“Oh, hush, you’re the most disagreeable person! I wish Lila hadn’t gone home. Well, she did just that. She said the artistic temperament was no excuse for discourteous falsehood—or she almost the same as said it—meaning breaking your word, you know, for Sara had promised she would come at eight, and there it was quarter to nine. She said that it might be wiser next time to invite somebody more reliable about keeping engagements. Sara did not answer a word—only went white as a sheet and walked out of the room. Now she even cuts us—because we were there—stares right over our heads when we meet her anywhere.”
“I’m sure Gertrude was sorry the minute she had spoken. And she’s been working awfully hard over committees and the maids’ classes and the last play. She was tired and nervous up to the brim, and then to wait and wait and wait for Sara. Why, I was getting cross myself.”
“Well, why doesn’t she beg Sara’s pardon then, and make it all right?” demanded the young judge severely. “Sara has always simply worshiped her, but because she never has made mistakes nor learned how to apologize, and everybody admires her and flatters her, she is too proud to say she was wrong. It’s plain vanity—that’s what it is. She can’t bear to make herself do it.”
“She’s unhappy,—that’s what I think, though she sort of pretends she doesn’t care.”
“She’s cross as a bear—that’s what I think,” snapped Bea, “and Sarah has dark circles under her eyes. It’s dreadful—those two girls who used to be inseparable! Quarrels are—are horrible!” The impetus of this conviction almost succeeded in hurling its proprietor against the water cooler at the bathroom door. “Say, Berta, what if you and I should quarrel, with Robbie Belle and Lila one thousand miles away?”
“I’m too amiable,” responded Berta complacently, “sugar is sweet——”
The tin cup dropped with a flurried rattle against the fudge pan. “Oh!” a shriek of dismay, “my dear young and giddy friend, we’re all out of sugar. What if we should want to make anything to-night? Let’s run back to the grocery by the kitchen this minute.”
Owing to this delay, Gertrude had been in the study for more than ten minutes, staring out at the trees writhing in the wind, when she was startled by the sound of a suffocated shriek, followed by a scamper of four thick-soled shoes, the heels smiting the corridor floor with disgracefully mannish force. The door flew inward vehemently, and Bea shot clear across the room to collapse in the farthest corner, hiding her face in the fudge pan while her shoulders quivered and heaved terrifyingly. Berta walked in behind her, and after one reproachful look, sat down carefully in a rocker and brushed her scarlet face before beginning to giggle helplessly.
“You’re the meanest person! Beatrice Leigh, you knew I was turning into the wrong alleyway, but you never said a word. You wanted to see me disgraced. The door opened like magic, and there she stood as if she had slid through the keyhole. She stood there plastered against the wall and—and—regarded us——”
“Oh!” moaned Bea in ecstasy, one fiery ear and half a cheek emerging from the kindly shelter of the fudge pan, “she glared. She wondered why those two idiotic individuals were stalking toward her without a word or knock or smile, when suddenly the hinder one exploded and vanished, while the other ignominiously—stark, mute, inglorious—fled, ran, withdrew—so to speak——”
“Why didn’t you say something?” groaned Berta. “I simply lost my wits from the surprise. She was the very last person I expected to see anywhere around here. How in the world did she happen to borrow the next room to ours? She’ll think we were making fun of her—that we did it on purpose. She’s awfully sensitive anyhow!”
“Well, you two are silly!” commented Gertrude, her face again toward the driving storm. “Who was it? Not a senior, I hope, or a faculty?”
Bea straightened herself abruptly, the laughter driven sternly out of every muscle except one little twitching dimple at the corner of her mouth. “It was Sara,” she exclaimed, “and she is pale as a ghost. She has never been so strong since waking up on that boat and finding a burglar trying to steal the ring off her finger during the holidays. You know how she jumps at every sudden noise, and she’s been getting thinner and thinner, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself clear down to the ground.” Here the dimple vanished in earnest. “I know I’m ashamed of myself, and so’s Berta. Even her lips were white. Now we’ve hurt her feelings worse. I didn’t think. Nice big splendid excuse for a sophomore, isn’t it?”
“There’s the gong for luncheon,” was Gertrude’s only reply as she moved toward the door.
Bea’s flare of denunciation had subsided quickly in her characteristic manner. She sat absently nibbling the handle of the obliging pan, while staring after the receding figure, its girlish slenderness stiffened as if to warn away all friendliness. “She’s stubborner than ever. I say, Berta, let’s reconcile them.”
“Oh, let’s!” in echoing enthusiasm, adding as the beauty of the plan glowed brighter, “they’ll probably thank us to the last day that they live. I know I would, if it were Robbie and I who were drifting farther and farther apart.”
“Very likely,” responded the arch-conspirator, beginning at the lower edge of the tin doubtless itself delicious from long association with dainties, “but the question is: How are we going to do it? One is proud, and the other is proud too. I don’t see exactly how we can fix it.”
As Berta did not see either, they decided with considerable sound sense meanwhile to go to luncheon. The next day after many minutes of discouraging meditation mingled with a few hours of tennis in the gymnasium, an idea came to them. While they rested on the window ledge, watching Gertrude stroll to and fro in the sunshine balmy at last, Bea began to waste her breath as usual.
“‘To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow drags out its weary course from day to day,’” she quoted with mindless cheerfulness, only to interrupt herself good naturedly, “say, Berta, do you realize that the third to-morrow aforementioned is April Fool’s Day? I wish something interesting would happen. This is the most monotonous place in vacation.”
“To-morrow never is, it always will be,” corrected the carping critic.
Bea with indifference born of long endurance paid no attention. “I say!” rapturously as the idea began to dawn upon her inward vision, “let’s reconcile them with a joke.”
“All right,” agreed her partner with most charming alacrity, “what joke?”
The question was rather a poser, as Bea was inclined to take only one step at a time and utter one thought as it obligingly arrived, without anxiety about the next. This tendency had occasionally landed her high and dry on the shores of nothingness in the classroom.
“Oh, um-m-m, I haven’t determined that point yet. It isn’t only great minds that move slowly.” Gertrude’s cape swung into view at the turn of the walk. “Berta, she looks awfully lonesome, doesn’t she?”
“Well,” argued the other, “nobody can expect us to do all the tagging around ourselves, especially where a contemporary is concerned. If she wants us to walk with her, she might omit a few snubs now and then. I’m tired of chasing after her.”
“The trouble is that you are not a faithful friend, faithful friend,” rattled Bea, “man’s faithful friend, the dog. Oh, oh, oh, Berta, I have an idea!”
“Noble girl!” Berta patted her on the head. “I generously refrain from comment.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. I feared you could not deny yourself that remark about keeping my idea, as I might never get another. But this one is an idea about a dog. Let’s find a puppy to give Gertrude for a soothing companion this vacation. I love puppies.”
“The question is: does Gertrude also love puppies? Or is it a joke?”
“Let’s get a dog and surprise her with it April Fool’s morning. He will be such a friendly little fellow and so faithful that her conscience will sting her——”
“I must acknowledge that you are a humane, tender-hearted individual. To plot a stinging conscience——”
“Oh, hush, Berta! Do be nice and agreeable. I’m awfully tired this week, and I really need some distraction. The corridors stretch out empty and silent, and breakfast doesn’t taste good at all, and—and I want to do something for Sara.”
“Oh, all right!” Berta spied the glint of an excitable tear and shrugged the weight of common sense from her shoulders. “I’m with you.”
Three days passed—three days of blue sky and fluffy clouds and air that sent Bea dancing from end to end of the long stone wall while Berta stumped conceitedly along the path in her new rubber boots. Gertrude wondered aloud why two presumably intelligent young women insisted upon spending every morning in foolish journeys over muddy country roads. Noting an unaccustomed accent of peevishness in the energetic voice, Berta began to worry a bit over the likelihood that such petulance was due to impending sickness. Bea jeered at this, though with covert side glances to detect any signs of fever. In her secret soul, where she hid the notions which she dimly felt looked best in the dark, she reflected that an attack of some mild disease might be a valuable form of retribution, and also afford the invalid leisure to repent of her sins. Still she did not quite like to mention this thought aloud, as it seemed too unkindly vengeful with regard to any one so obviously miserable as Gertrude.
One day on charitable plans intent the two conspirators dragged Gertrude out across the brown fields to have fun building a bonfire, as they had done the previous spring. But somehow the expedition was not much of a success—possibly because the wood was too damp to burn inspiritingly. On that other occasion Sara had been with them, and had kept them laughing. She could say the funniest things without stirring a muscle of her small solemn face. That stump speech of hers given from a genuine stump had sent them actually reeling home. This year—alas!—while returning to college rather silently, they saw Sara plodding toward them with an air of being out for sober exercise, not pleasure. The moment she spied them, she deliberately retraced her steps, and vanished through a hole in the hedge. This incident set Gertrude to chattering so excitedly about nothing in particular that the others knew she cared even more than they had fancied.
On the evening of the last day of March, Bea and Berta came rushing into the dining-room twenty minutes late for dinner. When they both declared that they did not want any soup—their favorite kind, too—Gertrude sighed impatiently over countermanding her order to the maid. It seemed as if she were not getting rested one bit this vacation, though she did nothing but read novels all day long. She felt sometimes as if she were hurrying every minute to escape from herself and her own thoughts. Everything irritated her in the strangest way. In all her busy healthful life she had never been nervous before. It was not hard work that had worn upon her. The doctor told them when they were freshmen that no girl ever broke down from work unless worry was added. Gertrude knew perfectly well what torturing little worry was gnawing away in her mind. She kept telling herself that her speech to Sara had been true—it was so—Sara had broken her engagement—and she could not, could not, could not humble herself to apologize. In fact, Sara was the one who ought to offer apologies. And all this time wilful Gertrude refused to acknowledge even to herself that she was juggling with her conscience in the desperate determination to hold herself free from blame in her own esteem. She simply could not beg anybody’s pardon, and she was not going to do it, because—well, because she had not been to blame—so there!
On this particular evening, after five solid minutes of silence on the part of her exasperating roommates, she raised her heavy eyes, and let them rest expressionlessly on the two wind-freshened faces, till Bea’s roses blossomed to her hair.
“We’re not doing anything,” rebelliously, “you are so boss-y.”
“Moo-oo,” muttered Berta to her plate. “Bow-wow-wow.” Bea choked over her glass and fled precipitately, leaving her partner to capture a pitcher of milk ostensibly to drink before going to bed.
Of course they would have regretted missing dessert as well as soup, if Gertrude had not asked permission to carry some of the whipped cream to her room. It was easier to do something unnecessarily generous than to beg Sara’s pardon—which was merely plain hard duty. The girls were not in the study when she entered with her offering, but soon Bea dashed in and dropped breathlessly on the couch, with a conspicuous effort to act as if accustomed to arrive without her present double. Gertrude listened unsuspiciously to the flurried explanation that Berta was kept by a—a—a—friend, before she revealed the brimming trophy from dessert.
Bea clapped her hands. “Oh, you darling! the very thing! Won’t that pup”—an abrupt and convulsive cough subsided brilliantly into, “that pet of a Berta be pleased! I’ll take it to her this instant.”
However, she did not invite Gertrude to accompany her, and upon her return after a prolonged absence, she conducted herself with odd restlessness. In the intervals of suggesting that they put up an engaged sign or read aloud or darn stockings or play patience before going to a certain spread, she stared at the clock. Promptly at eight she escaped from the door, near which she had been lingering for the past quarter-hour, with the carefully distinct announcement that she was going after Berta, and later she might attend the spread.
Five minutes later she was bending over a fluffy little creature nestling on Gertrude’s best pillow in one of the partitioned off bathrooms at the end of the corridor.
“He’s been pretty good,” said Berta as she surrendered the spoon, “and he likes the cream, only the bubbles in it keep him awake, I think. Somebody hammered at the door so long that I had to stuff a lot into his mouth every time he started to cry.”
Bea assumed her station of nurse with businesslike briskness. “Hurry back to Gertrude, and coax her to go to that spread if you can. She’s terribly blue to-night. Be sure to get back here at nine, and I will take my turn at the party so that nobody will be too curious about this affair. At ten we shall both be here to decide about the night.”
“Then we can hook the door on the inside, and climb over the partition. Won’t it be fun! I wonder if I shouldn’t better practice doing it now,” and Berta looked longingly at the black walnut precipice.
“You trot along this instant, and don’t let Gertrude suspect anything for the world. Be just as natural as you know how—more than ever before in your life. I reckon I shall put him to sleep in a jiffy.”
“Try it,” called the ex-nurse with laconic scorn, “I’ll allow you the full hour for the experiment.”
It must have been a very full hour indeed, to judge from Bea’s feelings as the minutes dawdled past. It seemed to her that instead of flying with their sixty wings, according to the rhyme, each minute trailed its feathers in the dust as it shuffled along. At first, it was amusing to watch for the mouth to open, and then pop in a spoonful of cream. But this soon became monotonous, especially when she learned that no matter how long she sat motionless beside the pillow, the bright little eyes blinked wide awake at her slightest stir to rise.
It was lonesome in that end of the great building. Their suite and Sara’s room next to it were the only ones occupied in that neighborhood during the vacation. This bathroom was as much as forty steps distant even from that populated spot, and not a single footfall had sounded in the corridor since Berta had disappeared into the gloom. The light from the outer apartment glimmered dully over the partition. At intervals in the stillness, a drop of water clinked from the faucet out there. Bea found herself holding her breath to listen for the tinkle of its splash. Outside the small window, a pale moon was drifting among fluffy clouds.
More than once Bea rose with exquisite caution, and stole to the outer door, only to hear a plaintive whine, while four clumsy paws came pattering after her. Then followed more minutes of soothing him with cream, and watching for the little woolly sides to cease heaving so piteously. Perhaps after all it would have been wiser to have left this troublesome joke with his mother on the farm.
By the time this vague suggestion had wavered into her consciousness, the strain of waiting and listening began to re-act on her temper. Of course, Berta had forgotten all about her watching there alone in the dark. Berta was selfish and thoughtless and heedless. That very afternoon, while they were bringing the puppy to college, she had almost tipped the buggy over into a puddle. Berta had no right to impose upon her like this, and make her do the worst part of the work every time. Why, even when they went calling together, Bea always had to do the knocking and walk in first and manage the conversation and everything. And now Berta was having fun at the spread, and it must be near ten o’clock, for the watchman had already shuffled softly past and turned the gas still lower. And she knew her foot was going to sleep, and she could never feel the same toward Berta Abbott again.
Bea was so sorry for herself that her lip began to quiver over a sobbing breath, when steps came hurrying helter-skelter, the door banged open, and Berta dived in.
“Oh, Bea, I’m dreadfully sorry! I couldn’t get away before. They held me—actually—and made me jig for them, and sing that last song I wrote. The preserved ginger was so delicious that I saved some for you. Nobody suspects a thing. How is the little dear?”
Bea rose with impressive dignity till the straightening of numb muscles inspired an agonized, “Ouch!” and a stiff wriggle. It was every bit Berta’s fault, and she evidently didn’t care a snap. She would show people whether they could walk all over her and never say boo! She would not lose her temper—oh, no! she would not utter a word—not a single one of all the scorching things she could think of. She would just be dignified and self-possessed and teach certain persons that she did not intend to be imposed upon one instant longer. Therefore, Miss Beatrice Leigh flung open the door and stalked away without a backward glance.
“Hulloa!” ejaculated Berta, staring blankly after her, “what’s your rush?”
No answer; merely a somewhat more defiant swing of the slender shoulders vanishing in the dusk of the deserted corridor.
“What shall we do with the dog? You borrowed him—you’re responsible—it’s your idea,” following in a puzzled flurry as far as the threshold. “Shall I lock him in alone? I said all along it was silly.”
Those insolent shoulders sailed silently around the transverse and out of sight.
After a petrified moment, Berta drew a deep breath, and threw back her head while the crimson of quick resentment flamed from neck to hair. That was a nice way to be treated, when she had simply done her best not to arouse suspicion, exactly as Bea had warned her. She took two steps hastily away from the spot; then turned slowly and glanced in at the soft heap of white showing dimly on the darker blur of the pillow. She certainly did not propose to spend the entire night in playing nurse to anybody, especially after Bea had insulted her so unpardonably. It had been Bea’s idea all along too, and Berta had worked herself nearly to death to make it a success. The miles and miles she had tramped through the mud—and all to no result! Now everything was spoiled, and everybody had quarreled with everybody else. Whereupon Berta marched away to bed, leaving the swinging door unhooked and the outer door ajar. Bea was indisputably right in criticising her fellow conspirator as heedless.
At midnight Gertrude sprang from her pillow, both arms flung out into the darkness, every nerve quivering as she listened for a second scream. She had chosen the inside bedroom that had a window opening on the corridor. Now in the breathless silence, she heard a swift creak ending in the bang of an up-flung sash. A swish of light garments, a thud shaking the floor outside, and then bare feet flying in frantic haste past her room and into the alleyway.
A crash against the study door, and the knob rattled wildly. “Let me in, quick, quick! Help, Gertrude, help!”
There was a flash of white across the floor, the lock grated, and Sara was in Gertrude’s arms. Portières rustled apart, and two more apparitions loomed pallidly in the dark.
“Hulloa!” gasped Berta’s voice, while a woodeny click from Bea’s direction told of Indian clubs snatched bravely in readiness for war.
“Light the gas, girls,” ordered Gertrude quietly; “there, dear, don’t be frightened now. See, we are all here. We will take care of you. What was it startled you?”
“I don’t know. It was dark. Something moved. I heard something. I was afraid.”
Gertrude felt her tremble, and held her closer. Over the bowed head she spoke with her lips to the other two. “That steamboat shock.”
Bea caught the idea impulsively. “Oh, Sara!” she exclaimed, “you’re only nervous. You’ve often waked up and screamed a little ever since that night on the boat. It’s nothing. Crackie! but you frightened us at first!”
Sara lifted a white face. “This was different,” she said; “this was something alive. Hark!”
They leaned forward, listening. Yes, there was a footstep outside, muffled, stealthy. A board creaked. Something was breathing.
Gertrude and Berta looked at each other in quick challenge for mutual courage. All the other rooms at that end of the building were vacant; the long dark corridor stretched out its empty tunnel between them and available help. What could four girls do?
“We can scream,” said Bea.
“Lock the door—and the inner window—quick!” Gertrude flew to one, Berta to the other. “Sara, take this Indian club. Now if it really is—anything, scream. But don’t run. Don’t scatter. Scream—scream all together. Ah!”
The footsteps were coming down the alleyway toward the door. Bea filled her lungs, and opened her mouth in valiant preparation.
“Wee-wee-wee, bow-wow!” Two little paws scratched at the door.
Bea’s breath issued in a feeble squeak, as she dropped neatly down upon the floor and buried her face in her hands.
Berta swooped upon her. “The puppy!”
Gertrude felt herself freed from the encircling arms. She moistened her lips. “I am sorry, Sara, about the other night. I am—sorry.”
The pale little face upturned toward hers began to glow as if touched with sunshine. “I was late because Prexie kept me. I should have explained, but—but it hurt. I knew you were sorry.”
Berta sat up as if jerked into position by a wire, and briskly brushed the hair out of her eyes.
“Listen, Bea,” she whispered to a small pink ear half hidden by red curls, “they’re reconciled.”
“So are we,” said Bea, “please open the door for the puppy.”