I
Anita Fiske was no longer wholly absorbed in the student life. This was all she herself understood. Any one else would have seen only generosity on the part of the Fates in the pleasant passing for her of busy days; that is, were it not customary to refer to the interposition of the Fates chiefly on occasions of dire calamity or of some especially flagrant instance of human incompetence or indolence—and indolent or incompetent Anita was not.
The right to be described by very different adjectives would have been granted to her by the most captious critic in her college world. There is a lack of finality in the judgment of this world; even members of it could be brought to agree, if you specifically raised the point, to the truism about the test through the larger issues in the world outside. They could indeed justly claim that their estimate of capability was a very decently fair one; also their estimate of capacity for enjoyment; but, unfortunately for the final value of their opinion, sometimes later on the fortunate possessor of these excellent capabilities and capacities may insist on turning to pursuits calling for another set of capabilities which she does not possess; on the other hand, since she is obviously very young, her capacity for enjoyment may remain as great and yet insist on a change of diet and she remain hungry while trying to satisfy herself with once fancied dainties. Such a double falling away as this from the true faith may even occur before the close of her college days. But—there are some perversions merely temporary of the true and correct inclinations.
This fact might comfort the critic in certain cases, perhaps in that of Anita Fiske, should any of the above considerations be held to apply to her. Her world would certainly have dismissed summarily such foolish speculations. For where, it would say, could you find one more obviously and conspicuously fitted to the grave charm and still, harmonious activity of the student life?
Anita was the daughter of a clergyman who, after years of conscientious if not over-successful care for the spiritual welfare of a country town, was accused of ultra-liberal tendencies and to avoid vain discussion had resigned his pulpit and moved to New York. The family migration had occurred but a few months before Anita entered college; she was a New Yorker in name only,—she avowed this somewhat sadly, for a passionate affection for this city of her adoption was one of the anomalies in her character. So at least her friend Isabel Oakley felt, for Isabel was a born New Yorker, a younger member of the most light-hearted of families. The Student and the Gayety Girl their companions nicknamed the two friends, calling them after characters in a play given two years earlier.
One grey February afternoon Isabel roused Anita who sat looking out with wide eyes on the still winter country.
"Come, you lazy object, you dream too long. Is it of the life history of a root?—a Gothic root, I fear—with due respect to your preference for mould over mere modern earth. I insist upon—well, not snow-balling," as she looked from her goodly height down on the slender figure, "but at least on a race when we have left the proprieties of the village behind."
"Very well—but I scorn your insinuation in regard to roots. Look at this."
She drew her friend down beside her and pushed the yellow curtains more wide apart. The pale light of a winter afternoon fell across long stretches of snow and on burdened trees, bending down heavy branches as though to rest their weight on the firm earth; and sometimes a little mass of feathery snow slipped noiselessly from its uncertain bed and roughened where it fell the smoothness of the white ground.
In a few minutes the two were going down the walk and out through the old entrance between low walls, now mere shapeless mounds in their covering of tangled, snow-laden vines. Anita seemed even more slender, though perhaps a trifle taller, than one would have imagined seeing her crouched on the window-seat. She had quick mouselike movements and walked with sudden little starts as if she feared to lag behind, and from her grey eyes all dreaminess was gone. The other girl moved smoothly and easily with the swinging gait of a strong young animal and held her head high to the cold wind that came over the open valley from the hills in the west. Strands of bright hair blew over her forehead and were tossed back as they threatened to blind her quick brown eyes.
On the bridge over the railroad the wind cut sharply. It poured along the black road below, between high banks the whiteness of which was beginning to grow dim in the unequal contest with smoke and cinders. A woolly St. Bernard leaped from a neighbouring garden to greet Isabel as the two hesitated for a moment; when they started again he fell in behind and trudged patiently on, with only an occasional gambol which resulted in much floundering, the snow being deep and his paws at their clumsiest age.
Beyond the last houses of Rosemont village the girls bent to a long, slow hill and, in spite of quickened breath, refreshed themselves after the long silences of the morning and early afternoon, and the ordered speech of the classroom, by wandering remarks, quick question and answer and an admiration for the fretwork of trees against the sky more freely expressed but less interjectional than is perhaps the custom among other more frankly emotional girls.
Their talk instinctively drifted back to the work they cared for, though with avoidance of detail of necessary drudgery or the friction in routine. Truly original work only Anita had; but Isabel's interest in original work was as deep as her own and perhaps more free from the jar of conflicting desires. This interest of hers would have been another cause of perplexity to a self-appointed critic of the two. Isabel was a society girl by birth and tradition, and at college, through the impetus of all her previous associations and also through the adaptability which gained her immediate wide acquaintance, she was confirmed in her destiny—popularity. But, though the instinct for much intercourse with one's kind and the superabundance of animal spirits may close to their possessors the gates within which the still scholar lives, yet even such may truly care for those quiet places and look almost with reverence on the things which there stand first. In this fashion Isabel regarded the work in which Anita was already noteworthy—in their small world—and in which it was possible that she might stand above the rank and file even in the world of research outside, if the promise of these first years should be fulfilled.
The talk turned to an Icelandic saga on which Anita was working.
"Have you tried doing it in verse as that bit was done in an English magazine last winter?" Isabel asked, "or did it ring better in prose—but I am afraid of the excellences of prose. Of course the original I can only respect from afar,—but that German professor's version—what was his name?—had, I know, sacrificed the real spirit to a monumental accuracy. Now please don't tell me you too prefer his version, as you do the Revised, for that same sordid reason."
"Most excellent Churchwoman! you object to change in the Authorized nearly as much as you would to a change in the Prayer Book. But really that piece that came out lately—of the saga, not the Prayer Book,—was quite inaccurate," Anita musingly added. "I am puzzled. I should care immensely about doing the whole thing as you have wanted me to. Bits go well. I confess I have done several when the spirit moved too hard. I could go on now I know." She raised her voice to be heard in a sudden gust. "It was written, or sung rather, to such a tune,—but up in the Seminar room the passion for accuracy falls on me and a sense of pride comes when I detect the accurate Professor Wirthau in an error. I quite despise that piece in English you spoke of. But now, come, I am in the other mood. Let us go into partnership. You have a turn for verse. I supply dry fact and you transform it into poetry. Let a few of your friends work for you and drop from some one committee—or will this have to wait till next year?"
"Next year!" Isabel smiled at her friend. "You are an institution here, Nita, no one would dream of breaking your work off, but mine, such as it is, comes this year to its natural end in an A. B. and next year I shall be disporting myself among—well, not Norse sea kings. My little sister is to come out with me, you know, and as mamma is not strong I believe my superior age and learning are to serve all but the formal needs of a chaperon."
"You a chaperon!" And Anita looked with amusement at her friend.
"I assure you I should make an excellent one. You mistake my character. It is almost portentously tempered with gravity. Will you race me from the church," she looked up at the deserted and lonely Church of the Good Shepherd they were then passing, "to the other, the cathedral?"—to St. Thomas of Villa Nova, she meant.
"Poor Mr. Clumsy-paws," Anita stopped panting, "he is far behind."
After the tired dog had caught up with them, looking reproachfully, they left behind the bleak church which lifts its golden crosses with uncompromising directness to the winter sky.
Through the fantastic snow twilight an hour later, they climbed the winding hill road to the college. Yellow lights shone steadily in ordered array—a few dark figures passed by somewhere—then a bell rang out suddenly and they hurried in. Yet before turning to the serious duty of preparing for dinner Anita let herself again be caught by her more alert friend idling at the window.
"Another problem, is it? in addition or subtraction?"
"Subtraction," she turned from the cool stars and rushing wind to the staid greeting of books and manuscript, "but what I am subtracting is, perhaps, no such loss after all—an unknown quantity, you see."