VICTORY
At her escape into the corridor Berta paused for a moment in the shadow of the staircase to brush the excitement from her glowing face. She winked rapidly once or twice in hopes of smothering the sparkle in her eyes, but succeeded only in nicking a happy tear drop from her lashes. Then she smoothed the dimple from her cheek and tried to straighten her lips into the sober dignity proper for a senior who was on the honor list and had just come from an interview with the critic of her commencement essay.
Her efforts were all in vain, however, for at the very minute that the dimple came dancing out again and the rebellious mouth quivered back into its joyous curves, somebody with a swift tap-tap-tap of light heels flew down the stairs in a rustle and a flutter and darted toward Berta.
“They’ve come! They’re here! The Board of Editors is going to meet in the lecture room immediately to open the boxes. Four big beautiful boxes full of splendid great books all in green with gilt lettering. Hurry! Hurry quick yourself! You’re head literary editor. It’s really your book—the ideas, editorials, verses, farce, everything! The sale opens at five. Everybody’s crazy to see the new senior Annual. Our Annual! Oh, Berta!” She seized the taller girl around the waist and whirled her down the hall till loose sheets of paper from her dangling note-book flitted merrily hither and yon.
“Bea, take care! You’re crumpling my essay.”
“Your essay? Oh, that’s so! Senior president, Annual editor, honor girl, commencement speaker, graduate fellow-heigho! She ‘bore her blushing honors thick upon her.’ No wonder you look uplifted. Listen! Behold! Tell me, do her little feet really touch the solid humble earth?”
As mischievous Bea stopped, with anxiety and awe written large on her saucy features to investigate Berta’s shoes, a door near them opened and a slender woman with fast-graying hair and a curiously still face emerged. There was the ghost of a twinkle in her gray eyes. The transom had not been entirely closed.
“Miss Abbott, may I take that essay again, for a few minor suggestions? If you will drop in after chapel I shall have it ready for you. Permit me once more to congratulate you on its excellence and originality. It has never been my pleasure to read any undergraduate work of greater promise.” She withdrew after the nicker of a quizzical smile in Bea’s direction.
That young lady gasped and then happening to notice that her mouth was ajar carefully closed it with the aid of both hands.
“Berta Abbott! To have your essay praised by Miss Thorne the terrible, who never approves of anything, and yet you stand there like a common mortal! You live, you breathe, you walk, you talk, just the same as you used to do! She says it has promise. I do believe that she never said as much before about anybody except maybe Shakespeare when he was young. Oh, just wait until she sees the Annual!”
Berta had colored hotly. “Bea, don’t tell anybody, please. Of course, I care what she says. I care most of all—I care heaps—about her opinion that the qualities are—are promising. But if I should fizzle out and never amount to anything! It’s all in the future, you see, and I’d be so ashamed to have the girls quoting her now. If I shouldn’t win the fellowship, if I had to go to teaching next year and give it up——”
Bea pounced upon her. “You’re a nice sweet girl, and I love you to distraction. Don’t you worry about that fellowship, but trot up-stairs with me this instant and help hammer the covers off those boxes. You’ll be surprised!”
“Shall I?” said Berta idly, as she followed in Bea’s eddying wake, “I don’t see how, since I read the proof and corrected the lists of names.”
“Hm!” Bea turned confidentially and shot an alarming sentence toward her companion. “Well, I’ll tell you; everything you wrote is signed. The other editors did it last thing—sometimes your initials, sometimes your name. It’s for the sake of your reputation.”
“My reputation!” exclaimed the victim. “Oh,” she groaned, “they did that? Oh, my land! My name on everything. I shall sink through the floor. Run, run quick!”
The corridors were almost deserted during that recitation period. There was no stray freshman in sight to gaze scandalized at the vision of two reverend seniors racing toward the lecture room door. Berta dashed in just as the chairman of the board, with hair flying and cheeks flushed from the exertion, was brandishing a hatchet in one hand and a splintered fragment of wood in the other. The business editor hammered away with characteristic energy at the ragged remnants. The rest stood around waiting as patiently as possible in their weaponless zeal. Several glanced up and grinned provokingly at the appearance of their head literary editor.
“So you’ve heard the news, have you?” began the artist, “you look wild. We knew you’d never consent to sign the things yourself, and it was rank injustice to let you do the work and receive no special credit. Even the ideas are yours, but we couldn’t tag a name to them. Wish we could. That one for the main feature—the pictures of distinguished alumnæ——”
“Hold on!” the chairman backed into a convenient corner before Berta’s frenzied reproaches, “it’s all right. We added a note of explanation. Nobody will blame you for writing so well. And the initials are very small anyhow. Here, look!” She made a dive for the box, ripped off a second board with quick blows, snatched away the wrapping paper underneath, and dislodged a handsome green volume from its snug nest. She thrust it into Berta’s hands. “It’s your book really more than anybody’s—your first published book.”
Berta took it, sat down in a desk-chair near by, and turned the leaves slowly with fingers that trembled from nervousness.
Bea bent over her shoulder. “It seems as if that name of yours is on every page,” she teased, “pretty name, don’t you think? And isn’t it a beautiful, beautiful book! Wide margins, heavy paper, clear print, fine reproductions. Won’t the girls be delighted with those pictures of the basket ball teams! See, ah, there is the page of photographs. You suggested that the editors should appear as the babies they used to be forty years or so ago. What a dear little curly-head you were at the age of two, Berta! I want to hug you.”
The embarrassment began to fade from Berta’s expression as she gazed at the baby faces before her. “That’s the great thing I miss at college, don’t you, Bea? There aren’t any babies here. We ought to borrow some once in a while to vary the monotony of books. I have three little nieces at home, you know. Such darlings! I wish I had one here now this minute.”
“Which do you choose—the baby or the book? Oh, Berta! Would you sacrifice this book for a mere child? This beautiful, splendid, green book with gilt lettering and your name scrawled everywhere?”
“The oldest baby looks a good deal like that photograph of me,” continued Berta softly, “she is named after me, too. I wish you could see her. The way she holds up her little arms and clings to you! I haven’t seen her since last September.”
“Hark!” Bea sprang from her perch on a desk-arm. “There are the girls now clamoring for admission. It must be the hour for the sale to begin. Isn’t it fun! Fly, Berta Abbott, flee and bury your blushes. The play is now on.”
Berta fled. She felt an impulse to creep away into some dark corner till all the excitement—and criticism—had subsided. Of course, it was rather pleasant, she acknowledged reluctantly to her candid self. There was something down underneath tingling and glowing. Very likely it was gratified vanity. Everybody liked to be praised and admired, but not too much, for that was uncomfortable. It was like being set upon a pinnacle and stared at. And she did care. She had worked hard and long for success. She had proved that she could work. Now if she should be granted the foreign fellowship, she could go on and on, step by step, till some day perhaps she might become a famous college professor or maybe the president of a university. That would be accomplishing a career worth while.
Berta never quite remembered how she screwed up resolution enough to enter the dining-room that night and face the storm of congratulations, affectionate jests, and laughing taunts over her eminence. The last copy of the Annual had been sold before the gong whirred out its summons to dinner; and dozens of dilatory students were already besieging the chairman for an extra edition. After dinner Berta was captured for a dance in parlor J till chapel time. The lilt of the music was still echoing in her ears, her heart beating in happy rhythm to its harmony, when at last she slipped into the back pew and leaned her head against the wall, her lips relaxing in happy curves, her hands lying idle in her lap.
Prexie’s voice sounded soothingly far away. Generally he read a chapter first, then gave out the hymn, and after the singing he always led in prayer. It hardly seemed worth while to listen when one’s own thoughts were so pleasant. Berta dropped her lashes to hide the shining light of gladness. Weren’t they dear, dear unselfish girls to rejoice with her and for her! She loved them and they loved her. The best part of any triumph was the consciousness that victory would please her friends and her family. Her mother would be glad, and her father, the small brothers and sisters, and even the pretty little sister-in-law. Eva would not understand entirely, for she hated to read and cared about nothing but the babies since Robert had died. Robert would have sympathized, since he had loved study almost as much as he had loved Eva. When he decided to marry, he gave up his science and went into a bank. He chose a wife and children instead of congenial ambition. If he had lived, he would have been glad in Berta’s success. Maybe when the baby nieces grew old enough to understand, they would be proud of their famous aunt. It was very, very sweet to feel that people were proud of her.
Listen! Berta straightened suddenly and then leaned forward. What was Prexie saying? Why, he hadn’t even opened the Bible yet. “—and so, as the essays submitted in competition were all remarkably good, the judges would have experienced great difficulty in reaching a decision if it had not been for one exceptional even among the dozen most excellent papers. The prize for the best Shakespearean essay has been unanimously awarded to Miss Roberta Abbott.”
A low murmur swept over the bright-hued congregation. Several faces in the pew before her turned to smile at Berta. She smiled back half involuntarily and gripped her fingers together, conscious only of a smothering sensation and a wonder that her chest kept heaving faster and faster. It frightened her to have things happen like this one after another. She had won the Shakespearean prize. How much was it? Thirty dollars? Fifty? It didn’t matter. She could take baby Berta to the seashore with her. She had won. The girls would get tired of congratulating her.
Hark! Prexie had gone on speaking.
“Accordingly,” he was saying as Berta braced herself once more to attention, “I am sure you will agree with me that the faculty acted justly and wisely this afternoon in electing Miss Roberta Abbott to hold the European Fellowship this coming year.”
The murmur this time swelled to a soft tumult of fluttering and whispering, which broke here and there into a muffled clapping, for everybody liked Berta. But when more faces turned in joyous nodding toward the back pew they found no answering smile. Berta in panic had slipped down the aisle and vanished through the swinging doors into the dusky corridor.
“Ah, Miss Abbott!” The messenger girl overtook her at the foot of the broad staircase. “Here is a special delivery letter for you. It was brought from town five minutes ago.”
Berta glanced at the address. Yes, it was from her sister-in-law as she had expected. Eva was always falling into foolish little flurries and rushing to consult friends and relatives by mail or wire or word of mouth. Possibly this important communication was a request for advice about the babies’ pique coats. It could wait for a reading till Berta had found a safe refuge from the girls who would certainly surround her as soon as chapel was over. They would follow Robbie and Bea.
Where could she go to escape the enthusiasm? Her room would be the first point of attack, and Bea’s the second. Ah, now she recalled Miss Thorne’s speech about calling for the commencement essay at this hour. She might as well go there now and wait till her critic should return from services, if indeed she had attended them to-night.
At the door Berta knocked and bent her head to listen, then knocked again. Still no answer. She waited another minute, her eyes absently hovering over the plants that banked the wide window there at the end of the transverse corridor. The evening breeze sweet from loitering in clover fields drifted in through the open casement. Miss Thorne was very fond of flowers. That was a queer trait in a person who seemed to care so little for persons. There always seemed something frozen about this gray-haired, immobile-faced woman with her stern manner and steely eyes. Sometimes Berta thought of her as like a dying fire that smoldered under smothering ashes.
Berta turned the knob gently and entered. A faint rosy glow from the lowered drop-light shone on the piles of papers and scattered books on the library table. The curtains rippled in the sudden draught caused by the opening of the door, and a whiff of fragrance from a jar of apple-blossoms on the bookcase floated past the visitor. Berta glanced around with a little shrug that was half a shiver. A room frequently partakes of the nature of its occupant; and the atmosphere of this one always made her heart sink with a quiver of loneliness over the strange chill of lifelessness there in spite of the rosy drop-light, the fluttering curtains, and the drifting breath of flowers. It was a large room with many easy chairs in it—and they were all empty. Even when Miss Thorne was there it seemed lonesome, perhaps because she was such a slender little woman and so icily quiet.
Berta chose one of the empty chairs and read the letter. Then she let the sheets fall loose in her lap and sat there without moving while the minutes went creeping by and the transparent curtains rippled now and then in the evening breeze. Through the window she could see a great star hanging above the peak of a shadowy evergreen that stirred softly to and fro against the fading sky. Once the twilight call of a distant robin sounded its long-drawn plaintive music, and Berta felt her lip tremble. She raised her hand half unconsciously to soothe the ache in her throat.
Miss Thorne glided in. “Good evening, Miss Abbott. May I add my congratulations, or am I right in concluding that you have taken refuge here from the persecutions of your friends? It is a great pleasure to me to know that you will have the opportunity to keep on with your studying this next year. You must allow me to say so much at least. And now, with regard to the essay——”
Berta watched the slight figure move noiselessly about in the act of making tea.
“I wished to call your attention particularly, Miss Abbott, to the qualities which strike me as most promising. A vast amount of futile effort is wasted every year by workers who have not yet recognized their special talents. There is continual friction between the round peg and the square hole, and vice versa. Now in your case, when you are ready to plan your course of study for your graduate work abroad——”
“Don’t!”
The tone was so sharp that Miss Thorne lifted her head quickly and shot a keen glance at the girl before her. The attractive face had grown strained and the eyes were burning restlessly.
“What is it, Berta?” No student had ever heard her voice so soft before. “You are in trouble.”
Berta looked at her for a moment without replying. Then she picked up her letter, folded it carefully in its original creases, and fitted it into the envelope. “Yes,” she said at last, “I am in trouble. My sister-in-law has lost her income from a foolish investment, entirely her own fault, and she is utterly helpless. My parents have no money to spare. There is nobody else but me to support her and the three babies. She writes that a position in the high school will be vacant next year and I ought to apply at once.”
Miss Thorne sat silent. “And there is no other way?” she asked after what seemed a long, long time.
“None,” answered Berta.
“You will give up the fellowship, your hopes of doing exceptional work? You will sacrifice all your ambition and take up the drudgery of teaching in an uncongenial sphere for the rest of your life?”
“Well, I can’t let the babies go to an orphan asylum, can I?” demanded the girl brusquely to conceal the pain, “there is no one else, I tell you.”
The woman rose and put both arms around the girl. “Berta, dear,” she said, “you are right. Once I hesitated at the point where you are now. I had to choose between the demands of home and the invitation of ambition. I let the home-ties snap, and—here is my empty room. Now there is nobody that cares.”
Berta glanced around again with a little shiver. “There isn’t any question about it for me,” she said, “I’ve got to take care of the babies. And”—she straightened her shoulders suddenly as if throwing off a weight, “it won’t be so hard when I get used to the idea, because, you see, I—love them.”
Faithful Robbie Belle had found out her refuge somehow and was waiting in the corridor. With that comforting arm across her shoulders, Berta poured out the story of her sudden disappointment.
At first Robbie was silent. Then she spoke gently: “But, Berta, you have had the four years at college, you know, and four years are a good deal. There are thousands and thousands of girls who never have even that.”
“I know,” answered Berta, her voice smothered against the convenient shoulder. “And that thought helps—at least, I think it will help to-morrow.”
Robbie’s strong, warm hand sought and clasped Berta’s nervous fingers. “All right,” she acquiesced cheerily. “Now who do you suppose wrote that epilogue in last year’s Annual?
| “‘We go to meet the future, strong of soul, In sunlight or in shadow, holding fast The inviolable gift the years enroll; The Past is ours; nothing can change the Past.’” |
END