VII
The moon plainly was coming up in a hurry behind Dalton as Esther paused at the entrance to her room, for though still invisible it filled with light the air outside all the windows. Against this pale-blue background Hilda on the sill was making coffee in a tall green porcelain pot. The air was full of the spicy steam.
"Dégenérée!" laughed Esther. "Didn't you have coffee for dinner?"
"Dinner was a long time ago," replied Hilda sententiously. "Besides, I didn't have enough. Where have you been? Your frock is clammy."
"In the Harriton family graveyard, first, sitting on the steps over the wall and listening to a woodthrush. Did you ever have enough?" Esther added, lighting a lamp as she spoke, while the brass teakettle winked in the soft light and the outside earth vanished. "Hilda, it's a good world."
"A well-enough world," answered Hilda crossing the yellow patch to get the delicate cups. As she returned with them Esther studied her black serge skirt and caught it up.
"Cat-hairs!" she affirmed. "How was Helen?—I've not seen her for a long time. And how was Pasht? He has a black soul."
"He's uncommonly beautiful. If you go to Chapel to-morrow," said Hilda irrelevantly, "you will hear the President announce that I am appointed a Reader in English for next year. Pretty good, isn't it, for a Canadian who is Scotch?"
"That's all right, Doctor Railton," murmured Esther congratulating her and adding, "Then I'm sure of you here next year." This was before the days of Low Buildings, and Readers lived in the Halls where and how they could.
Esther lay back in her chair, admiring the tarnished frame of a quaint oval mirror that reflected a really admirable Japanese water-colour of Hilda's. She was glad the study would be unchanged another year, and quiet. She thought, too, with a little shudder of the hot bad air of crowded rooms, the loud noise of voices, the indecorous bustle of a life made up of many acquaintances.
"I am going to Spain this summer to look at some Arabic manuscripts," she said at length. "You'd better come too. If we cross cheaply and don't travel we can live on nothing. Berenson says the Spanish galleries are full of wonderful pictures, practically unknown."
"My dear, I've a family," laughed Hilda ruefully.
"Didn't you say last night that they were going to the winds of heaven this year and that you didn't know what to do? Represent to them, moreover, that one shouldn't lose so superb a chance of doing me. Seriously, I shall take a whole stateroom, not having forgotten the seasick German girl I came home with last time, and you'd much better occupy the other berth. Indeed, I can't travel alone in Spain, you know."
Her eyes were fixed on eighteen square inches of pinkish brocade pinned against the wall—her Christmas present to Hilda and a ruinous extravagance. A chance word, from a lecture, she had caught up and fancied once, came back: "Nobody frames the multiplication table and hangs it on the wall." But surely that was because the multiplication table was shallow and petty and strikingly untrue: there were tracts of knowledge infinite and unfathomable where one would never tire.
The things, she realized, which one does not ask too much of—and the people—are the things which are forever surprising one with unguessed possibilities.
"Curiosity, after all, is the only insatiable emotion," said Esther out of her experience, and there were always more little bricks: one might even in time when one had read all the rest, go and dig some up with one's own hands.
Georgiana Goddard King, '96.
[STUDIES IN COLLEGE COLOUR]
The great bell clangs out through the morning air—through the snowflakes that thicken it, sending its summons over the white-crusted campus. The slippery walks are crowded with black figures moving towards Taylor Hall, single, in groups of twos and threes, wrapped close with shawls and hoods, half of them umbrellaless. Voices fall as they enter and amid friendly jostling around the bulletin board and in the cloak-room whispered greetings are exchanged. Then upstairs to the silent chapel, with its white windows made whiter by the frost; a stillness seeming to fold it round. The black mortar-boards nod their tassels in cheery greeting; subdued talk between neighbours fills the room with a low hum. A sudden hush; the talk stops; the heads are still; a moment's pause and the service has begun. All are together for once in the day, with no distinctions of class or grade. All are alike children, and children of Bryn Mawr. At the close of the prayer another moment's silence. Then a sudden movement. The bell clangs out again. A general rush to classes, to the office, to one's room. The day has begun.
The sunlight is streaming in through the broad windows. It dances among the leaves of the red geraniums on the window-sill and falls upon the carpet in bright spots and bands. The bookcase and the two shelves of the little mahogany desk are crowded with a confusion of much worn, many-coloured volumes. Over the Dresden inkstand and disordered files of papers and pencils a small brass dragon mounts guard. Dainty cups shine on the white tea-table, which bears for its motto the words of the March Hare:
"It's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the tea things between whiles."
On the Turkish scarf which drapes the mantel stands a ginger-jar full of yellow roses. Across the rocking-chair is thrown a college gown, while tennis balls and rackets strew the floor. The divan is filled with flowered cushions innumerable, and half-buried among them is the mistress of all this colour and confusion. She is reading "The Republic."
It was a warm afternoon in May. The shadows were lengthening on the campus, and the air had all the stillness of midsummer. On the grass near the gravel walk a robin was hopping and pecking. Two black-gowned figures had just passed slowly by, and now all was still again. A sparrow who had been hovering for several minutes over head alighted close by the robin.
"Ah!" said the robin, "could you but fancy what you have lost! Two seniors conversing together. Did you not perceive them?"
The sparrow would gladly have concealed his ignorance on such classic ground, yet, constrained by curiosity, with hanging head he asked, "What may seniors be?"
"Seniors," replied the robin. "Do you not know, then, that seniors are the sovereigns of this place? Indeed, I assure you, it is true. We have their own confession for it. Listen while I tell you the words of these two as they passed by.
"'Well, it is almost over,' said one. 'And next year what do you suppose will become of the college?'
"'It is too dreadful to think of,' said the other. 'Some of our class may come back as graduates. That is the only hope.'
"'And even then they cannot help the Undergraduate Association. And they will be too few to manage Self-Government. Oh, this dear old college! It is too terrible to think of leaving it to go to rack and ruin. And just when everything is in the best condition possible! Imagine the Editorial Board without some member from '93! And the standard of class work is sure to fall next year.'
"'And the gymnasium, too. To be sure most of us are making up conditions in the gym, but then——'
"'Oh, there is no help for it! The college is sure to go down now. And it has been rapidly rising for four years! It is too cruel!'"
The robin paused. Then he hopped confidingly towards the sparrow and, cocking his head on one side, whispered, "If you will take the trouble to listen you will hear conversations like that every spring on this campus. Now you know what seniors are."
L. S. B. S., '93; G. E. T. S.,'93.
[EPOCH MAKING]
The morning after the freshman play found the gymnasium looking somewhat forlorn. The portable stage had lost part of the discreet drapery that masked its front below the footlights, and now recklessly displayed its crazy supports to the public eye; the footlights themselves were a mass of blackened tallow in their battered tin sockets; the faded green canton-flannel curtains which had served as a forest background for the last act of Prince Otto, and been torn from half their rings at its end when Seraphina and the prince tried to make a simultaneous entry in response to applause, trailed limply from their remaining supports, and seemed to beg for the friendly shadows of the property-room to hide their rents and tatters. In the corners of the stage, the groups of branches which had simulated the primeval forest drooped their withered heads in mournful wise against their too evident props, and like the grey cambric rocks and tin-foil rivulet which occupied the centre of the scene, were hardly recognizable as parts of last night's fairy woodland.
Even less recognizable, but scarcely so forlorn, the actors in the performance soon began to drop in, at first one by one, and then in little groups of two or three. They came in fresh and smiling and full of misdirected zeal for the work of clearing up; most of the later arrivals came from the basket-ball field, and flung down their gayly-coloured golf-capes just where they would be most in the way; and all of them, as they went about pulling down the decorations, and piling borrowed properties into bewildering heaps for return to their owners, chattered incessantly of last night's great success.
The November sunlight fell in yellow, dusty shafts through the high windows above the running track, spilling its pale brightness on the cluttered floor and stage, and spread even into the alcove where the horizontal bars jostled the horse and the rowing-machines in ignominious confusion and with a general shamefaced air of being huddled out of the way. The position of the yellow rays indicated ten o'clock, and the busy workers, having accumulated rugs, curtains, costumes, bric-a-brac, a number of potted plants, and the fragments of a pasteboard fireplace, in heterogeneous piles on every side, were beginning to wonder if they could ever straighten them out again, when the arrival of three or four fresh recruits gave them an excuse for resting while they reported progress.
Their labours, indeed, spoke for themselves. Peggy Dillon, the class chairman, who headed the reinforcements, opened her round blue eyes aghast at the dusty chaos which greeted her, and found herself bereft of speech by the look of modest pride which beamed from all the faces before her; but one of her companions, a handsome girl with a certain air of authority about her, was equal to the occasion.
"Dear me, how enterprising you all are!" she exclaimed, coming forward with a comprehensive smile; "there is really a great deal accomplished already. (Don't look so utterly overcome, Peggy, if you can help it.) You must have worked like beavers to get all those curtains down."
The workers, hot, dirty, and dishevelled, beamed with redoubled brightness upon the speaker, and upon the havoc they had wrought, and tasted all the sweetness of being appreciated. Pauline Van Sandford was a tall girl who carried her head rather high, and spoke with a good-humoured imperiousness. Perhaps these things added weight to her remarks. With a very creditable show of gratification, she went on,
"And nearly all the properties in piles!" Here a gasp from Peggy, who had just discovered her pet cast in one of the said piles under a section of the stage-steps, warned her to hasten her climax; she worked up her remarks to quite an enthusiastic close, and then, apparently consumed with anxiety for the workers' fatigue, she fell upon the helpful band, and fairly swept them from the gymnasium upon a wave of appreciative solicitude.
"Do go home and lie down, all of you—no, it's really too much to expect—no, don't think of staying, we can do all the rest—no, you are too good, and we are awfully grateful, but—there!" She slammed the door upon the bewildered objects of her gratitude, and then, falling back against it, exchanged looks of despair with her companions.
"Who would ever have thought they'd get at it so early!" wailed Peggy, on her knees beside a particularly hopeless-looking heap of articles; "will some one help me to rescue my poor Clytie? Shirley, lend a hand with these steps."
Shirley Nairn, a slender girl with a big, soft, dust-brown pompadour, brown eyes, and a firm little chin which half contradicted their gentleness, began cautiously to lift away the boards. She had a fluttering grace in all her movements like that of a bird just lighting. "Rescue is the word," she said; "there is still hope for most of the things, but unless we do a lot before lunch, those Vandals will be back again, and next time there will be nothing left but chips."
In spite of the discouraging outlook, an hour or two of hard work did wonders. Curtains and costumes went to the property-room, the faded forest hid its head in a corner, the borrowed chairs and rugs and rubber-plants found themselves grouped in something like order, and the rescue party sank at last upon a mattress in the alcove to wipe its heated brow, and survey results.
"There is less damage done than you would think," observed Katharine Holland; she was a girl of that ineffectual type that must always appeal to some one, and she now turned her long brown face and mournful eyes towards Shirley. "Except for Peggy's Clytie, and a few smashed pots, and that long tear in Miss Meredith's leopard-skin, most things seem to have been miraculously spared. There is a special Providence that watches over idiots."
Still inspecting her very grimy hands, Shirley said, "They aren't really idiots, but you can't leave them to themselves. We should have had a committee."
"It's all my fault; I neglected it," began Peggy meekly.
"We are all just as bad," Pauline interrupted in a decided tone; "Louise is stage manager, and I am business manager, and look at our behaviour: we have both been wasting valuable time on our essay appointments when we should have been attending to business."
As self-accusation seemed the order of the day, each of the small party came forward to blame herself, and did it thoroughly and at some length. When a soothing pause came at last, Shirley said meditatively,
"I heard Miss Meredith say the other day that women couldn't work together effectively, because woman isn't a political animal."
Charlotte Meredith's masters degree and undisputed cleverness gave no small weight to her opinion among the undergraduates, but Pauline, as her cousin and protégée, stood less in awe of her than most of the freshmen; she had even dared to christen her, quite openly, "the Cynic." It was Pauline, therefore, who now voiced the meeting's dissent from Miss Meredith's dictum. Woman could be a political animal, if she chose, and was properly directed. All that the class of '9— needed was to be taught to think before they acted.
Louise Ferguson, a small bustling girl with red hair, wanted to know how you were going to teach them to think. They might be able to do it separately, but when you took them in the mass, they were just like a flock of sheep, and class meetings merely a game of follow-my-leader. No matter how clever and sensible the individual girl was, a class of sixty-three girls was capable of any idiocy on the spur of the moment. "Look at the number of classes who elect their presidents, and then hate them ever after. Look at the case of the class who barred out their temporary chairman, and then spent the rest of their college career wishing they had elected her. They never know what they want, or if they do, they don't know enough to get it."
"Thanks awfully," crowed Peggy; "all the bouquets are coming my way. '9— made me chairman, therefore they did not want me. Q. E. D. Thanks ever so much!"
As Louise and Peggy were roommates, their differences could be left for private settlement. Louise therefore took no notice of this interruption, beyond a threatening scowl at the speaker, and, sticking bravely to her point, appealed to Pauline for support. In Pauline's opinion class politics were usually unintelligent, but she did not agree that there was no help for it. When the spirited discussion which this remark brought on had run its rather ineffectual course to no conclusion, the two disputants fell silent, and four of the little group found themselves looking shyly at Shirley Nairn.
Three of the girls had come up together from the Airlie School in New York, and Pauline Van Sandford was their leader; Peggy Dillon was a Philadelphia girl who had chanced upon a room in the "Airlie corridor" of Pembroke East, and whose short-lived ascendency in '9—'s affairs had declined, very early in her chairmanship, into dependence upon Pauline; but Shirley Nairn lived in Merion, and the four knew very little about her, except that her schoolmates from the Briony School of New Haven counted on her to win the class presidency from the Airlie candidate. So now they eyed her sideways, and waited for her views on class politics as expressing class intelligence; and the pause was just beginning to be uncomfortable when she lifted her head.
"We might try to better things in our own case," she said tentatively; "there ought to be a way to make class politics intelligent, but we can only prove it by doing it."
"How?" asked Louise, while Pauline rapidly decided that Shirley Nairn did not have that square chin for nothing. Then, taking the floor herself, Pauline opined that the whole trouble lay in too hasty action. "We women," she said, rather grandly, and with her usual air of decided conviction, "we women make up our minds before we think; we look at a few arguments, listen to our friends' opinions, leap to a conclusion (usually all wrong), and score another foolish vote."
Peggy's groan of mock despair, which followed this speech, and was meant to preface a lively protest, was robbed of effect by the sudden sound of Taylor bell, ringing for lunch-time; and the parliament of five forthwith dissolved. But as they dispersed, Pauline pledged them all to come to her room that evening for further discussion of the subject. They met there accordingly, with a few other high souls who were ripe for reform; they discussed; and from their discussion there grew a plan.
When the class of '9— assembled a few days later in Denbigh Students' Parlour, they expected to nominate and forthwith elect their permanent officers; but on the latter point a considerable surprise was in store for them. After the nomination votes for president were cast and counted, and the result announced—Shirley and Pauline far in the lead, and very close together, Peggy a modest third, and a few other names straggling hopelessly in the rear—the chairman rose to tell them that a change in the usual order of proceedings was proposed. The nominations for president were now before them; the election was postponed, by order of the chair, until that day week, in order that during the interval the class might weigh well its measures before taking the final—Peggy's tone almost implied, the fatal—step. In the stupefied silence which followed this announcement, she went on to give the arguments in favour of the new course. It would give them time to look into the qualifications of the candidates and form their decision intelligently; it would prevent mistakes which they might deplore hereafter; and—superbly—it would mark the beginning of a new epoch in class politics. The candidates were bound in honour not to canvass for themselves, or to allow others to do so, and the final ballot was to be cast according to each voter's conviction of what would be best for the class. No haste in deciding, no prejudice, no regard to personal influence; but careful consideration, and final action on the highest and most disinterested grounds—that was the idea.
When the other nominations were in, and the meeting adjourned, the class of '9— went its various ways homeward sorely bewildered. It does not do, as a rule, to call upon a freshman class for too much disinterested consideration when it is just recovering from the effects of a freshman play; but the undergraduate mind will usually rise to a hook that is baited with the word "epoch-making." So the members of '9— eager to make an epoch, fell very earnestly and ardently to work at the business of weighing and comparing the two chief candidates before them; Peggy's name was very little under discussion, for her chances were hardly to be considered seriously, and, as interest centred in the presidency, the candidates for other offices got very little attention. But concerning the merits and demerits of Shirley and Pauline, the course of debate ran high and warm; during the seven days assigned them, the freshmen talked of little else, and strove hard to prove, by quite a heated exhibition of partisan spirit, that they were political animals after all, while the two principal nominees affected an Olympian indifference to the result, and used a dignified reserve when greeting each other in the corridors of Taylor. And amused upper classmen made laughing guesses as to the outcome of the campaign.
But the new plan did not work exactly as its framers had expected, and in a day or two there were rumours that things were going wrong. By the middle of the week these rumours had gathered such strength that Charlotte Meredith, M. A., and Fellow of Bryn Mawr College, felt called upon to visit her freshman cousin, and hear the news. Accordingly she knocked at the door of 39 Pembroke East on the afternoon of the fifth day following the nominations. Charlotte Meredith, whom Pauline called the Cynic, was a tall, slight girl, pale and clean-looking, with quantities of very black hair; she had bright, near-sighted grey eyes behind her glasses, and walked with a stoop; her usual expression was one of whimsical boredom. There was probably no one in the world whom Pauline would have cared less to see at her door that afternoon, but she welcomed the unexpected guest with almost her usual readiness, and tried to cover the real hollowness of her greeting by eager hospitality in the line of tea and jam. Peggy was there, too, spreading crackers with a worried air; and both girls seemed somewhat harassed by Charlotte's questions as to the outlook for the election, delivered with her habitual slight drawl and air of fatigued politeness.
"I take a lively interest in it," she told them, in a tone expressive of anything rather than liveliness, as she stirred her tea; "and I hope you won't let the fact that you are both candidates embarrass you. This impersonal campaign of yours is highly novel, and your effort to elevate class politics into a thing of moral beauty smacks delightfully of altruism, but may I ask how the thing is likely—in the vulgar phrase—to pan out?" She nibbled her cracker appreciatively, and gave the discomfited pair a questioning smile. Peggy squirmed a little, and said nothing; but Pauline burst out,
"The whole affair is too miserable and humiliating for words, and has panned out like—like—Charlotte, it is literally past speech! I am ashamed of belonging to such a small-minded sex, for the girls have acted abominably."
Charlotte smiled benignly. "As I understand that your reform is in part a crusade against a statement of mine that woman is not a political animal, would you mind telling me whether their abominableness throws any light on that point?"
"Political animals?" cried Pauline; "I should say they were! If we have a rag of reputation left by the end of the week, I shall be surprised."
"And by 'we' you mean——"
"Shirley Nairn and myself; Peggy seems to have been spared."
"Yes," Peggy assented with the utmost affability, "they are after bigger game, thank Heaven!" And then, the flood-gates being opened, Charlotte was favoured with a full, if not very coherent account of '9—'s enormities. Events had taken a course which was not to be wondered at. In the ranks of '9—, deliberation had brought on discussion, discussion had led to dispute; and in the clash of warring factions, each side had brought so many charges of unfitness against the opposing candidate that Pauline declared her own character, as well as Shirley's, blackened for life.
"That is doing fairly well for a purely impersonal campaign not yet five days old," was Charlotte's grim comment; "I suppose you do not lack for friends to keep you posted on the state of public opinion."
"My dear Miss Meredith," responded Peggy genially, "the only reason that the door is not at this moment besieged with news from the seat of war is that the rest of the class are at freshman drill, which Pauline and I are sinfully cutting. Only think, Polly, how their tongues are wagging even now! And how——"
A resounding knock at the door cut her short.
"There!" she groaned resignedly, "drill must be over. Come in!" And as the three turned towards the door, Pauline said savagely, "Here come all my dearest friends!"
But it was Shirley Nairn who pushed the door open, and at sight of Charlotte stopped doubtfully on the threshold. Over her shoulder, they saw the frightened face of Katharine Holland. Shirley was looking at Pauline.
"I have something rather important to say," she said; "it concerns us both, and"—she hesitated for a barely appreciable second—"and no one else. Except Miss Holland," frigidly, with a glance over her shoulder.
"Oh, come in, come in!" cried Pauline, "and if it is about this wretched election, let us have it out. Charlotte and Peggy know the worst, I think. Come in."
Shirley advanced, and Katharine shrinkingly followed her; the uneasy air of the latter, and her apprehensive looks, made Charlotte sit up with an expression of interest.
"The plot thickens," she soliloquized to her teacup; and Pauline, hearing her, knit her brows impatiently.
"Well?" she said rather shortly to Shirley. Her tone brought a flush to the other's cheek; she hesitated for another moment, and then said coldly,
"Miss Holland will explain."
Upon being brought thus abruptly into prominence, Katharine Holland silently besought them all for mercy with her shamed eyes; then, urged by a monitory look from Shirley, who leaned beside the table in frozen silence, she brought out a foolish and pitiable tale. It was simply an account of various silly slanders, some directed against Shirley, and others against Pauline, with which she confessed she had regaled a company of upper classmen, apparently only to amuse them; and she interrupted her confession with weak excuses, like a guilty child. In her humiliation she made an uncomfortable spectacle, but Shirley said sternly, "Finish."
"Oh, let her be!" cried Pauline, impatient of the scene; "who cares to hear all this? We know it already."
"There is one thing yet," said Shirley, "but I will tell it myself; I made her tell all the rest, so that you might know whether you ought to take her word against me. She has accused me of going about to ask for votes." The speaker's tone was stout enough, but she leaned heavily on the table, "so I brought her here to retract it."
Stung by a generous indignation, Pauline sprang to her feet. "Would you have believed that of me?" she cried. "She need not trouble to retract it." Then, turning to Katharine, "That is quite enough, Miss Holland," she said, and the penitent stumbled to the door.
As the door closed upon her, Charlotte, who had finished her tea in silence, put down her cup with an air of decision, and turning to Shirley, said suddenly,
"Wasn't it a little hard on her, Miss Nairn?"
"To punish her for telling a campaign lie?" demanded Shirley.
"Please leave the campaign out of the question for a moment. She doesn't seem particularly venomous; don't you think she deserved a little mercy?"
"She is a poor creature," said Shirley setting her lips, "and deserves nothing."
"She is a poor creature," Charlotte assented in her easy drawl, "whom you have made poorer by the loss of her self-respect. Why?"
"Because she lied about us," retorted Pauline, rushing in to defend their joint position.
"Would you even have given her lies a thought," asked her cousin with a little more animation, "if they hadn't interfered with your precious campaign? You have just made her pay for your own mistake in attempting the impossible; you began by trying impersonality in politics, and you have ended by humiliating a classmate for indulging in a few exaggerated personalities at your expense. Is it very consistent?"
Struck dumb by surprise at this attack, Pauline did not answer, but Shirley broke in, with hot cheeks,
"It was a case of self-defence, Miss Meredith."
Charlotte, as she rose to go, smiled complete comprehension into the younger girl's troubled eyes; it was easy to see that the rivals already valued each other's good opinion beyond the votes of the class, and she scented fresh developments. "They won't be a bad team," she decided on her way home.
Her departure left the other three somewhat at a loss for words, but Shirley, with an evident effort, broke the uncomfortable silence.
"We've made a mistake somewhere," she said hopelessly, "and everything has gone miserably wrong; but I hope you will believe that I meant well, even in bringing Katharine Holland here." And she turned towards the door.
"Don't go," said Pauline; "sit down, and have some tea." Then seeing that the other hesitated, "You know that I don't care a rap about those tales, and I know that you don't either," she said, stoutly. "I am glad that you came. Won't you please stay?"
Peggy, who had been absorbed in circumventing the treacherous tendencies of her jam-sandwich, emerged victorious from the struggle to say soothingly,
"Nobody ever believes campaign lies, anyway."
"Except the voters," was Shirley's dry response, as she dropped into a chair.
During the next half-hour, both Pauline and Shirley announced their unalterable intention of withdrawing from the race; each declared that, for the good of the class, the other ought to be president, but neither would consent to her rival's retiring, so that, as Peggy said, the only way out was for both to stay in. The debate ended in a decision to abide the issue, and ignore the slanderous tongues, whereupon they parted much uplifted in spirit, and were very solemn at dinner that night, as befitted noble-hearted victims who suffered for their efforts to elevate their kind.
On the evening before the election, Charlotte Meredith caught Shirley in the act of waylaying an Airlie freshman in the hall. Her victim, in gymnasium dress, with her mask and foil, was evidently overdue at a fencing-lesson, and anxious to be off, but Shirley was pitiless, and pinned her to the spot, while she discoursed at length.
"The impersonal campaign is still on, I see," murmured Charlotte, as she passed.
Shirley's face blazed. "I was telling her the truth as to some lies about Pauline," she flashed out, and then looked as if she could have bitten her tongue for speaking.
The freshman, grateful for an interruption, escaped.
"You needn't have told me that you were canvassing for Pauline, any more than Pauline needed to tell me this morning, when I met her coming out of a Briony girl's room, that she was canvassing for you. A fine consistent pair you are! But it won't make any difference," she added, darkly, with a return to her usual whimsical manner.
The evening of the election buried the reform fathoms deep; for Peggy was elected president. When the little band of reformers entered the students' parlour, where the class was already assembled, they received the impression of a huddled flock of sheep, with lowered heads at bay. The evening's proceedings deepened this impression. The class of '9— was worried and bewildered and disgusted; it had travailed in the throes of indecision until it sickened of both alternatives, and fell, like many another, upon the middle course. That course was the choice of Peggy, astonished Peggy, by an overwhelming majority in the good old follow-my-leader fashion; while Pauline and Shirley watched their airy fabric of reform topple to ruin, and then talked of other things during the counting of the votes.
Charlotte Meredith laughed over the result with the rest of the on-lookers, but, rather surprisingly, took the part of the would-be reformers, after a subtle fashion of her own. "After all," she remarked, with an air of elaborate deference to a loudly critical sophomore, "even you and I, Miss West, were freshmen once." And Miss West turned a slow red, and refrained from speech.
It was Charlotte's custom to have her freshman cousin at most of her small teas, so Pauline found nothing remarkable in the appearance, about this time, of a small card on her table, reading, "Tea at five. C. M."; but it was embarrassingly unusual to find in her cousin's study, not the expected circle of graduates, with a senior or two, but only Charlotte herself and Shirley Nairn. The two guests were duly regaled with tea and bonbons by Miss Meredith, who, ignoring late events, tried to put them at their ease. In her whimsical way, she liked them both. There was, however, a spark of covert amusement in her eyes as she passed the teacups; and Pauline, writhing inwardly under this satirical observation, finally came out with:
"I suppose you were pleased with the result of our campaign."
"Naturally," said Charlotte blandly. "One likes to have a guess confirmed—and I was sure of the result; in that way I was pleased. And you?"
Pauline, playing with her teacup, remarked that people weren't usually pleased with having made fools of themselves. Her tone asked for a contradiction, but it did not come, and the three sat silent, listening to the singing of the kettle over the spirit-flame, until Shirley said abruptly:
"Miss Meredith, you were right about the political animals."
Charlotte raised her eyebrows enquiringly, but was perhaps not surprised by what she heard; she may have already reflected that defeat, always hard to bear, comes in its most unbearable form when it makes its victims ridiculous. Shirley and Pauline, having been baulked by very small means in a project of mighty import, had a galling sense of the absurdity of their position, and were bitterly ready to turn on their ungrateful classmates. Therefore Charlotte had the satisfaction of seeing them come over to her point of view with exaggerated enthusiasm. They could not put too strongly the impossibility of any attempt to educate women politically; they thought that a few—a very few, they sadly added—might be trusted for public-spirited and disinterested action; but the mass of women were not large-minded enough to rise above personal considerations.
"What other considerations did the poor things have, in your case?" asked their hostess. "A class president's duties are not so weighty that she needs any distinguished qualifications, and the choice is simply a matter of personal liking. You insisted on a week's analysis of personal likes and dislikes, and the natural result was exaggeration and slander."
The freshmen sat in crestfallen silence. They had acknowledged their defeat; must they now acknowledge that it was deserved? Putting down her plate and leaning a little forward in her chair, Charlotte regarded them earnestly.
"Let me tell you something," she said; "I have not lived in college six years for nothing; I have learned a great deal in that time; but it did not take me six years to learn not to waste my energy on trifles. In this campaign of yours, you have used up an amount of force which would have accomplished wonders in a serious cause. Has it paid?"
"I'm afraid not," they said.
"It is an odd thing, too," said Charlotte, in a casual tone, "to notice that in nine cases out of ten the popular instinct is a safer guide than the popular reason. Your class reasoned itself into a frenzy, and then, by instinct, did the right thing."
At this unexpected tribute to their conqueror, the two vanquished leaders looked a bit blank; perhaps they had nursed a faint egotistical hope of some day seeing the class brought to a realizing sense of its mistake in electing Peggy, and Charlotte's view was a blow. She saw the effect of her words.
"They did the right thing," she repeated, "in choosing a girl who will be an excellent figurehead for—a coalition—" Charlotte smiled, a little self-complacently; she rather prided herself on the sensitiveness of her feeling for things that were in the air—"a public-spirited, disinterested——"
"Oh, don't!" pleaded Shirley; "I am sick of it. We have been talking awful cant, haven't we?"
"Suppose we talk about that," said Charlotte.
And they did. They talked about it until the late sunlight faded, and twilight came down on the little study; and then, in the gathering gloom, they talked about it still, and all the more freely. The older girl, who had tilted with windmills in her time, opened her heart to these young Quixotes, fresh from their first fall, on the difference between cant and college spirit; and the two freshmen, sitting in the twilight with tingling cheeks, pledged themselves silently to the larger vision.
As they wended their way homeward across the dusky campus, they were very silent; when Pauline spoke once, it was only to say, "I am sorry I called her the Cynic."
And Charlotte, watching their dark receding forms as she leaned from her open window, hoped that she hadn't been preaching. It was the old, old antithesis between enthusiasm and experience; and after all there was much to be said for enthusiasm. Those two youngsters had brought something out of their mischance, if it was only their liking for each other. "I wish I were a freshman again," sighed Charlotte to the stars.
Cora Armistead Hardy, '99.
[A REMINISCENCE]
We had met, after two years or so out in the "wide, wide world" of which we had sung so dolefully, the last weeks of senior year. I discovered that Evelyn had substituted soft "fluffs" for the stiff collars she had clung to tenaciously through four years of college, and she admitted that after the first shock she quite liked the new way I did my hair. Later she also admitted that she made a practice of carrying a parasol, or even of wearing a hat, when it was excessively sunny. Emboldened by the confession, I ventured to produce some embroidery and went to work as if such femininity had always been my pose. Then we talked, and exchanged various bits of news about the members of the class who had wandered so far since our separation.
"Wasn't it sad about Janet?" I asked at last. And then as Evelyn kept silent, I went on, "you knew, didn't you?—She died last November just a little while after her engagement was announced. It was typhoid fever. I thought you knew, of course."
"Yes, I knew," said Evelyn, and went on examining the bookcase.
"I think I'll tell you about it," she exclaimed at last. "It won't do any good. But I think I'd like to tell you. You know Janey and I were awfully good friends while she was at college. We even thought of rooming together, but we were both so well satisfied with our single suites that we decided not to. We were almost like roommates, though. Janet always saw that I was registered when I went home and I always stole rolls for her when she was locked out from breakfast. We wore each other's clothes indiscriminately. I have one of her handkerchiefs yet. You know how it was. We were just awfully good friends."
"I know—Janet would do anything under the sun for any one she liked—go on."
"Well, then she left college. She didn't like it—one bit. She was perfectly frank and said she wanted to come out before she was twenty. Do you know how it is in those western towns? They think a girl is antique when she's twenty-one. She came out and was a great success, I believe. You know how she stopped writing to first one, then another of us, and we were all rather hurt about it."
"Well, she was a disappointment. I had always thought her so superbly loyal, and we heard that she said college was 'such a bore.'"
"Yes, I believed that too, but not until I had written several letters after she had stopped. Finally I gave up and thought I'd never hear from her again. I felt pretty bitter about it. At last she wrote me and told me of her engagement. Just the real old Janey, it was—called me by some absurd nickname she'd invented, confessed that she'd been horrid about not writing, and then said that although the engagement wasn't to be announced immediately, she wanted me to be one of the first to know, and would I congratulate her?"
"When was this?" I asked, after a pause. Evelyn had seized my scissors and seemed to be too much interested in snipping ends of embroidery silk to remember Janet or me, or any one else. She dropped the scissors and took up a book of college kodaks. I repeated my question, just to remind her that I was still there.
She turned her back and went on. "That was some time in May. It came to me at a most unpropitious time. Some member of the family had been ill and I was tired and cross and feeling unjustifiably righteous. So I sat down then and there and told poor old happy Janet how nice and high-minded I had been about writing and how unfriendly she had been. I said of course I hoped she would be happy and all that but of course after this long hiatus we could never be friends in the same old way. Oh, it was an icy letter, just as politely nasty as I could make it! I sent it off and afterwards I felt just exactly the way I used to when I was a small child and had been naughty and wanted to make up. But I didn't. I tried to forget it. I was very busy and had a lot of people visiting me, last summer. So the thought of Janet didn't come into my head very often and when it did I mentally changed the subject. Of course I never heard from her again.
"One day, after we came back to town I was reading, not thinking of anything but the book—Janey least of all. Nothing in that book could have reminded me of her. I read it over afterwards to see. I looked up all of a sudden, thinking of Janet—thinking of her as if I had been with her an hour before. I dropped the book and felt as if I had just seen her, standing at the door in a familiar kimono, and heard her addressing me for the first time by that ridiculous nickname that she had just invented. I had heard through some people from her town that she was going to be married soon. My pride simply vanished. I dashed up and wrote her in the good old friendly way, told her what a nice lady she was and how often I thought of her, what I had been doing, and all sorts of natural old things, as if I had been writing to her regularly for years. I sent that letter off wondering if she would answer. Two days later I heard somehow that she had typhoid fever, but I thought that if she got my letter she would surely answer somehow, though she had been ill for days then."
Evelyn turned and showed me a photograph of herself and Janet laughing and entwined in an attitude of exaggerated affection.
"The next thing I heard of Janey," she continued, "was the news of her death and I shall never know whether she received my letter."
Clara Warren Vail, '97.
[CATHERINE'S CAREER]
"Now, Jack, please don't be sentimental. You know how I hate it. Besides you have interrupted me just when I was convincing you that education will solve the race problem, and that is annoying." Poor Jack! Catherine little imagined what courage that interruption had taken. Nor did she realize how unheeding he had been as she rolled forth her arguments. (She had just been reading an article in The North American Review.)
"But, you know, I have been wanting to speak for..."
"I thought you knew better, too," Catherine continued a little sorrowfully, "a person of my ambitious aspirations" (Catherine lived for ambitious aspirations), "isn't going to be happy settling down into a general entertainer and housekeeper for mankind, always sweet and pretty and dainty, standing every evening on the little porch all tumbling over with honeysuckle, dressed in white with a red rose tucked in my belt (that's your ideal, isn't it?) and a hand stretched forth in undulating curves to welcome you. This way." Catherine stood up, balanced herself and nearly fell down. "No, I can't even do it. And then I'm not 'sweet and lovely.' I hate 'sweet and lovely' girls. Why, every girl who hasn't any looks, or any brains, or anything else, is considered 'sweet and lovely.'"
"I never said you were 'sweet and lovely.'"
"Oh! then you consider me horrid and disagreeable, do you? Well, that's flattering. No, I can't marry you. Such a catastrophe has never once entered my head." Catherine grew pensive. "I can't imagine anything more frightful than playing the piano, arranging flowers, and being charming, to eternity." Jack had jumped up from his seat by the piano and stalked over to the window where he stood biting his lips and beating the floor with one foot, gazing out into the black night with an impatiently reflective air. When Catherine finished, he spoke half to himself and half to the night.
"Just what Charlie Dickenson warned me would happen. 'See here, old chap,' he said, 'if you don't want to be the laughing stock of the whole club you'd better steer clear of Catherine Neville. Those college girls are chock full of notions. I suppose she does like you in a way, because you listen to her theories. But it is a ticklish business. Remember poor Harry Cockran, the trouble he had!' ... I thought she liked me. But I see now that one can't expect anything sensible from them." Catherine did not appear to listen. She was playing a series of changing chords on the piano. But the chords grew louder and louder and gradually passed into the minor key, until at the last word she spun round on the stool.
"Sensible?" she exclaimed. "That depends upon the point of view. I think we are extremely sensible. For we can be reached only through our minds, not through our emotions. Any girl can fall in love. But few have the strength of mind to see that they are needed for loftier careers. We have ideals, aims, purposes."
"Exactly. You long to be strong-minded, to take to platforms, stand up for poor oppressed womankind, and generally make a lot of trouble. Why all the men say that nothing would induce them to marry college girls. They think it's ruination of a nice, pretty, sensible girl to send her to college, and let her head get filled with all sorts of ideas. I tell you it ruins them with the men. But I had rather hoped you were an exception, or at least above the average."
"You men are too exasperating. You inherit from your grandfathers poor, foolish, worn-out ideas that stick in your stubborn, narrow-minded little brains. No amount of eloquence on my part could convince you of anything else. I might talk myself blue in the face, and there you would sit, placid and serene in the error of your judgment. Nothing could change you, except, perhaps, a change of grandfathers. I suppose you consider it woman's place to—bask in your radiance. Well, I sha'n't argue with you. What's the use? I hate a quarrel. Why don't you go? Don't you see that I have had enough of you? Don't you see that I am annoyed with it all?" Catherine was walking impatiently up and down the room, tearing the roses at her belt—his roses—and flinging the petals on the floor. "I hope I shall never see you again." Then, in a lower tone, "(No, I can never love him. I am thoroughly convinced of that.) What are you waiting for? No, I shan't say good-bye. I shouldn't feel it. I am thoroughly miserable. I thought you were such a good friend of mine, too. I can't be polite. I'm tired of being polite when I feel rude. I am tired of hearing all this twaddle about marrying college girls. I think you might have had more tact." Catherine rushed from the room and upstairs.
Jack Livingston heard the door at the top of the stairs shut, not quite gently.
Catherine Neville was a junior at Bryn Mawr. Most people considered her proud because of a certain haughty reserved exterior, but her intimate friends who had pierced the reserve knew her to possess a really genial nature, and on occasions to become quite mellow and entertaining. But it was only with a favoured few that she descended to jocosity. She was conceited, too. There is no doubt about it, but who that ever amounts to anything isn't? at least just a little bit. Perhaps she was spoiled. But if that was the case, it was scarcely her fault, because she was an only child, and had always been pampered and praised and led to consider herself a really remarkable young person. As a small child her mother had looked upon her as a budding genius, and had cherished and retailed to forcedly enthusiastic friends her various idiosyncracies—undoubted signs of genius. But when she grew a little older, and scorned dolls and "The Five Little Peppers," things had gone too far. "A little genius is all very well, but a great deal is so conspicuous," Mrs. Neville used to say. (The Nevilles belonged to a very old Philadelphia family.) The last straw in a long line of disappointments came, however, when Catherine announced her intention of going to college. "A daughter of the Nevilles in college! Preposterous! It is all very well for a girl who has her own living to make. But a Neville!" And Mrs. Neville and Mrs. Neville's friends held up their hands in indignant, old-fashioned horror. Catherine had also indelicate aspirations toward a career. But she kept these to herself until she was safely launched upon her freshman year. Even then her plans were very misty. She thought perhaps she would consent to being considered a second Mrs. Browning, or possibly a George Eliot. It was a dreadful blow to Mr. and Mrs. Neville when Catherine passed all her examinations. Up to that time they had kept themselves happy with the thought that Catherine might fail. Of course Catherine was very clever, but they had always heard that it took a monstrosity to pass the Bryn Mawr entrance examinations. Mr. and Mrs. Neville were especially vexed because their plans had all been upset, and they had formed such delightful ones, too. She was to have a "coming out" tea in November, followed by a series of dinners, culminating in a ball early in January—with a possible wedding at Easter. What more could a girl wish? But Catherine was undoubtedly peculiar. She refused to be trotted out at teas and put through her paces at the Monday evening dancing class. She said that dinners bored her, and balls were a frightful nuisance, and she didn't want to be married off. And so it was that Catherine never "came out," but passed into that atmosphere of social depravity and advanced ideas that old-fashioned conventionality has associated with a woman's college.
Is it to be wondered at that Catherine had lost her self-control just a little bit this evening? College with her was a very tender subject. Nevertheless as she stood upstairs with her head near the crack of the slammed door waiting to hear the front door latch, she felt desperately ashamed of herself. But how could she be expected to give up the pet dreams of her youth—all at once and for a man? She didn't like him much, anyway, and she still longed for her career. In fact she quite expected it and such an emergency as falling in love had never once entered her mind. Of course she had seen a great deal of Jack, but he had never been anything to her, at all. Yet he was quite nice, infinitely nicer than the rest of the men. They bored her. The conceited little idiots thought every girl they saw in love with them, and that all they had to do was to sit and be adored. But Jack somehow was different. He had so much more to him. He was so big and fine, so noble looking. He had such good-looking shoulders. Somehow she liked to see them around. She might have stood him for his shoulders, at least, until the end of the Christmas vacation. But it did make her furious to hear men run down college girls and say that they didn't want to marry them. Just as if the college girls were pining for them! Men would be much nicer if they didn't consider themselves charmers. "Still it will be frightfully dull now for the last few days at home," Catherine thought as she fixed her hair. She was used to seeing him about. And now no one would ask her to go skating. She didn't want to go skating with any one else. And they used to have such interesting talks together too! Well, it was all over now. She might as well go to sleep. So she snuggled up in the down comfortable and said she would make her mind a blank. But there was always a little something there, edging her on to the forbidden subject with most annoying insistence. Jack was always mixed up in her thoughts, and she kept wondering if he really cared for her. Of course it was nothing to her. But it is nice to be liked, and somehow it worried Catherine dreadfully to think that perhaps he didn't care for her. "Oh, but he must care or he never would have spoken as he did," Catherine exclaimed out loud. And then, frightened at her own voice, she muffled her head in the bedclothes.
Catherine's thoughts wandered off to her freshman year and that afternoon early in spring when she had received the telegram from her father—
"Mr. Livingston will call at eight o'clock.
"W. D. Neville."
Catherine had read it slowly for the second time and wondered who on earth "Mr. Livingston" was and what she had done that deserved this punishment. She finally decided that Mr. Livingston was a friend of her father's, some nice old gentleman who took an interest in the higher education of women, and wanted to be taken around the college. "Night's a bad time," she reflected, and speculated happily on the chances of $10,000 toward the library building. Nevertheless she did not feel quite comfortable until she was safely at dinner with the doors closed. One never knows what elderly men interested in the higher education of women may do. They are always so intensely interested. He might come out in time for dinner, just for the beneficial experience of seeing how this strange product of the human race eats, and whether or not, as has been said, it lives exclusively on fish. "He is probably of a deeply enquiring nature and will want statistics," Catherine mused. "I must review mine. Let me see. There are sixty-seven 'grads,' one hundred and nine freshmen, and——" But, alas! these were all she knew. Well, she could at least explain the "Group System." A complexity of that sort would be something for the old gentleman to gloat over. She knew it quite well now. She had just had some lessons on it from the sophomore next door. And then, of course, there was the seventeen per cent. statistic. How stupid in her to forget that! She had heard it often enough, at least twice a month since she entered. "Yes, that will make a very good beginning," and Catherine sprinkled her beef so vigorously with salt that she was forced to send for a second supply.
Dinner had just reached the salad stage, when the maid whispered to Catherine, in mysterious tones, that there was a gentleman in the hall who wished to see her. "Mr. Livingston!" she gasped, and rushed out. "How fortunate that dinner is almost over! But perhaps the poor man is starving. Oh! but I can't have him in. I'll be hard-hearted. I'll hope that he had a chicken sandwich and a glass of milk at Broad Street Station. But what a strange man for father to send!" Catherine thought as she cordially grasped the hand of a beery object in the dark corner of the hall. "I beg yir pardin, miss, but I'm Jim Maloney, and me wife as does yir laundree is very poor, en has siven childrin en wants to be paid." The man held toward her a soiled, rumpled half sheet of lined paper. "One dollar and twenty-nine cents," Catherine read between the blots, and remarked to herself that there were only five children last week. But supposing there had been twins, she ran singing upstairs and munificently raised the amount to one dollar and thirty cents. "The dollar and a quarter is easy, but four cents is such a difficult amount!" she said, excusing her extravagance, while taking her seat at the dinner table again. "One always has to hunt through all one's coat pockets, stamp boxes, and various trays and receptacles on the bureau, and do at least fifty cents' worth of nervous worry and scurry, perhaps even then not finding the four cents." Catherine was happy again, for she still had forty minutes of liberty, ample time in which mentally to run through a possible conversation with an inquisitive elderly gentleman and arrange all her material in paragraphs with a suitable introduction and conclusion. She felt as if she were going to make an address, and had a wild desire to begin. "Esteemed elderly gentleman, it gives me great pleasure to expound to you this evening the—etc." But of course that would never do.
At exactly five minutes after eight Mr. Livingston's card was handed to Catherine. "Elderly and investigating gentlemen are exasperatingly prompt," she murmured. "He has evidently taken the 7:15 train from the city and has killed time about the campus or been lost for ten minutes," she thought, as she glided downstairs, settling the bow of her ribbon collar primly in front. "Yes, Mr. Livingston," she rehearsed, "the freshman class contains one hundred and seven girls, average age, eighteen; average height, five feet five inches; average weight—— Oh, dear me! I've forgotten my average weight, and that was to have led to such interesting discussions of the comparative amount of nutriment in the different preferred foods."
Just at this moment Catherine reached the door of the reception-room, gave her belt a last little twitch straight and walked in. From the least brilliantly lighted corner of the room arose a tall, broad-shouldered man of twenty-five. Poor fellow! He had shrunk there from pursuing pairs of eyes! "Dear me, it isn't the inquisitive, elderly gentleman after all," Catherine pouted disappointedly as she and Mr. Livingston took their seats at the extreme ends of a long sofa. "Now, my plans are all upset." Catherine wanted to say, "Who are you, anyway? Why aren't you inquisitive and elderly? That type is so interesting!" But that didn't seem polite, and he looked harmless, so she spoke of the weather, and the walk from the station, the ride out in the train, and the people one sees in Broad Street Station, and hoped that time would unfold the mystery. Just then the top of a head and two eyes rose perpendicularly above the window-sill in front of them, remained stationary for a few seconds, and then sank slowly, followed by a suppressed giggle and the sound of fleeing footsteps. They both saw the eyes, and both being interested in proceedings outdoors, forgot for a moment the absence of conversation.
"Yes, Mr. Livingston," Catherine finally droned forth absent-mindedly. "There are one hundred and seven in the freshman class, average age, eighteen, average height, five feet five inches, average weight, two hundred and eighty pounds, and only seventeen per cent. will marry! At least——"
"How extraordinary!" interrupted Mr. Livingston, while Catherine awoke with a start and wondered if a little fresh air would not be beneficial to both of them. Another pair of eyes arose above the window-sill. There was a second pause and Mr. Livingston said that he thought it would be delightful to look at the grounds. They waited a moment just to satisfy the curiosity of a third pair of eyes and then wandered out on to the campus. It was deliciously balmy, but as it was nine o'clock on a moonless night their horizon was limited. Still by peering industriously they could distinguish a few dark objects that Catherine explained to be trees, and by means of her descriptive powers (she never knew she had any until that night), Mr. Livingston was enabled to enjoy the distant prospect of Rosemont and the rolling hills beyond. When they returned to the reception-room, Catherine felt quite recovered from her little attack of absent-mindedness and hoped that the air had been equally beneficial to her uncommunicative visitor. "I have been talking too much," she thought as she watched the careful descent of eyes number four. "Poor Mr. Livingston has not had a chance to enlighten me on the subject of his personal history. I must be silent." A fifth pair of eyes appeared at the window, and the silence was unbroken for such a long time that Catherine in desperation launched forth upon Political Economy theories. (Political Economy and History were her majors, and she always turned to them in times of need.)
And so it continued all evening. Catherine was still ignorant of her visitor's history, but she had counted twenty-seven pairs of eyes. She wondered if Mr. Livingston's and her count agreed. She had counted hers on her fingers, but had a dreadful feeling that she had made a mistake of a hand somewhere and was five too many. Mr. Livingston looked mathematical. She longed to ask him how many he had seen. Finally the witching hour of ten arrived. There was a scampering of footsteps through the hall and a long tolling of Taylor bell. A maid wandered uneasily up and down before the reception-room door. Catherine knew it was time to put the lights out, but somehow said nothing, for she had noticed certain symptoms of uneasiness in her visitor, and felt they were about to culminate in the "good-bye" that had been worrying him since half-past nine. They did culminate, at twenty minutes after ten, when he at length departed. Catherine wondered why men stay two hours and a quarter when they come for a half-hour call. Perhaps they think that they don't appear to be enjoying themselves if they leave before their two hours and a quarter is up. The substance of the letter that Catherine had mailed to her father that night briefly stated would read: "Who on earth is Mr. Livingston? Please restrain him from calling again."
Gradually Catherine returned to the present. She didn't see how Jack could care very much. Then she bounced over on to the cold side of the bed and held her eyes tight shut. Still her thoughts rambled on.
The next day Catherine looked pale and wan. Her mother thought she had better stay in bed and rest because there were only four days left of the vacation and she mustn't go back to college all worn out. But Catherine thought she needed air. The house oppressed her, so she decided to go for a walk in her most becoming clothes. Jack always went to the office between nine and half-past. Perhaps she might meet him. But what could she do if she did meet him? Bow stiffly? That would not be especially satisfactory, but what else could she do? She couldn't appear sorry for what she had said last night. And yet she would like to have him find it out—indirectly. No, she wouldn't go to walk. It wouldn't look well. She would take her mother's advice after all, and go to bed.
Jack in the meantime felt like a culprit. He had spoiled everything by his inane lack of judgment. He ought to have known better. He should at least have remembered the career. It was all up with him now. But he felt sure she liked him. If he had only made a few pretty speeches, complimented her a little and broken the ice gently! He feared he had been a little abrupt. But it wasn't his fault if he couldn't talk. He meant a lot more than the other fellows who have it all at their fingers' ends. But girls never can appreciate fine men. Anything does, if it is only well-dressed. And yet Catherine had really shown a great deal of discretion. In fact she had openly preferred him to the other men. Somehow she had always evinced much pleasure in his conversation. Perhaps it was because he listened to her theories and the other men wouldn't. Oh, but it couldn't have been that! Anyway, he had enjoyed hearing her talk. He couldn't bear the chatter of most girls. Yes, she was a fine girl, always well groomed and a thoroughbred, the kind of girl with whom a man liked to be seen walking down the street. Perhaps she hadn't meant it all. He thought he ought to call again, but he didn't exactly care to go where he wasn't wanted. Still he decided to throw aside his pride and call that evening at the Nevilles, just as if nothing had happened.
But all his hopes were shattered when the maid informed him at the door that Miss Catherine could not see any one that evening. "A polite way of asking me not to call again," thought Livingston, as he hurried off. He was really annoyed now and vowed never to go near the place again. The maid forgot to tell Catherine about the call.
John Livingston had recently been admitted as junior partner into the firm of W. D. Neville & Co. His rise had been rather phenomenal. Five years ago, in the summer time, three weeks after receiving his A. B., he started out bravely to work his way up in the world from the very beginning, and having entered the steel and iron works as an ordinary labourer, he had come to be a foreman of the shops. It was then that he attracted attention by his remarkable industry and popularity among the workmen, and thus came to Mr. Neville's notice. Mr. Neville at once appreciated his clear business head and knack of getting along well with men and pushed him on, so that he passed from one position of trust to another until he was finally admitted into the firm as a junior partner.
Worldly people might have imagined that Mr. Neville had designs when he sent Jack Livingston out to call on his daughter at Bryn Mawr, and when he encouraged his coming to the Neville house, especially during the holidays. Frequently—two or three times a week—Jack was asked to dine until it became such an expected event that he always stayed to dinner without being asked. But any one who knew the family at all well would laugh at the worldly idea, for Mr. Neville well knew the fruitlessness of forming designs upon Catherine's future. In fact no one realized so well as Mr. Neville that Catherine had no time for anything except her career and that she didn't care for men. All she wanted was peace and a name for herself. Perhaps Mr. Neville was dubious about Catherine's ability to become a Mrs. Browning or a George Eliot. (He was an exceedingly practical man.) "Of course Catherine is exceptionally clever," he used to say. Nevertheless he felt or at least hoped that her mind was well balanced, and doubted the arrival of those expected bursts of genius on which she built so many castles in the air.
During the four days that remained of the Christmas vacation, Jack persistently refused to come to the Neville house to dinner. He was always busy packing or something. This was a bad sign. To be sure Jack was going to Chicago in a week, but every one knows that a man never starts his packing until eleven o'clock on the night before his departure. He goes into the first store he sees on the day of his arrival, buys all the things he has forgotten and never again mentions the subject. Therefore Mr. Neville was a little worried, but he kept quiet and reassured himself by thinking that Jack's shunning the Neville house was merely a phase in an ultimately satisfactory love affair. He did not tell Mrs. Neville his plans or his woes. He knew her too well, and never confided delicate little matters like this to her kind-hearted, bungling management. Poor Mrs. Neville! with the best intentions in the world, she always ruined everything.
Catherine, in the meantime, was not at all like herself. She moped, scolded, and was generally irritable and unpleasant. Her mother could not imagine what had happened. Catherine was so changed; she sat around and looked mysterious and gloomy and absolutely refused to go anywhere. To be sure she had never been riotous in her pursuit of pleasure, but still she had always gone about a good deal, and had really seemed to enjoy things in a characteristically unbending way. But now all was different. Mrs. Neville was in despair and promptly jumped to the conclusion that Catherine was suffering from nervous prostration brought on by overwork at college. Mrs. Neville had always said she would have it, and really there was nothing else that could make her act so queerly. "Catherine is so energetic," she told her friends when they came to console. (They all felt sorry for Bessie Neville. Her daughter was such a disappointment. Their own daughters all did embroidery in the morning, and went to teas with their mothers in the afternoon.) "Catherine must be in everything," she said, "and never is satisfied to do things half-way. No wonder the child has broken down. I shan't let her go back. No," and she set her mouth firmly, "health after all is the first thing to consider." Nevertheless their old family physician persuaded her that there was nothing like work for nervous prostration, so Catherine, in spite of the firmly set mouth, appeared at college just in time to register. However, she was loaded down with pills, tonics and strict injunctions to write all developments of symptoms.
Catherine was glad to get back. She had never spent such a disappointing holiday. Yet though she felt horribly mournful and wandered about with the gloomy, tragic expression of a person with a past, she hoped she could fight it down, work and forget everything. She would either have to do that or be wretched always. For she knew Jack would never come near her again. Of course she did not want to see him. She was simply annoyed at his neglect. Why, from what her mother said, it seemed as if Jack had absolutely planned his "good-bye" call at the house to miss her, and had then apologized as if he hadn't known. Well, everything had happened for the best. She was really becoming too much interested in Jack Livingston. But now she could forget it all, and work and make something out of her life.
With mid-years, a twenty-four page essay, Latin and English private reading and all sorts of unfinished odds and ends of labour, one's previous misfortunes vanish behind the rapidly accumulating wretchedness of the four weeks after the Christmas vacation. This is the period at Bryn Mawr when one wonders what on earth became of the first part of the semester, and one firmly resolves this time at least to keep good resolutions and never again be guilty of such improvident idleness; this is the period when one wakes up on bright, crisp mornings to the wretched realization that an examination is due next day in a subject of which one knows or feels that one knows absolutely nothing; this is the period when, after struggles too painful to describe, one turns up on the fatal morning pallid but resolute, armed with a pen and scraggy blotter and with Tennyson's immortal words "theirs but to do or die," ringing in one's ears; this is the period when after seizing the examination questions one thrills or congeals in proportion to the number of intimate friends, bowing acquaintances or total strangers there enrolled. Nevertheless one survives even the worst, though in a more or less battered condition, and after two weeks punctuated with these periods of violent searching thought and despairing drains on the imagination, one at length emerges into the happy serenity of the middle of February.
So Catherine having passed through the wear and tear of mid-years had almost recovered from her attack of nervous prostration. One day she was sitting on the floor in her study chatting happily with some friends. They had finished their chocolate, and the empty cups had been pushed just wherever it was most convenient to put them and most inconvenient for them to be, when Emily Ashurst broke into the general talk with, "By the way, Catherine, I had a letter this morning from a friend of mine in Chicago, which I think will probably interest you. You know Jack Livingston, don't you?" Catherine nodded, and grew a little pinker than usual. "You know, he went to Chicago early in January on business connected with some steel works out there. Well, he was quite popular and taken around a lot and now they say he is engaged to a girl there, a Miss Lyla—oh, bother!—well she is exceedingly pretty—just the sweet, piquant marrying kind that a man adores. They say it was a most romantic affair. Sort of love at first sight. He is perfectly devoted and her friends are delighted with the match. Mr. Livingston has taken them all by storm." But Catherine was not particularly enthusiastic, so the conversation drifted on to basket ball possibilities for the spring. Catherine, however, was not in the least interested in basket ball now, though she was considered one of the most promising forwards. She felt awfully tired, and was secretly relieved when there was a general uprising from the floor and all her guests departed in a flock. Then she was left to her own unhappy thoughts and the concentration of chocolate cups in the one spot that always appealed most strongly to the naturally sympathetic disposition of the maid when she came to straighten up in the morning.
"Jack didn't care at all then," she said, and swallowed a pill. She felt that her nervous prostration was returning, and the pills were the least objectionable of the medicines. "If he had cared he never would have become engaged within six weeks," she sighed. But she didn't see why she should care. He was nothing to her. But her father would be so disappointed. He was interested in Jack and didn't approve of men under thirty getting married. And then it really was most inconsiderate after the way he had spoken to her. "I suppose I shall have to write and congratulate him. That's a bore! I never know what to say to engaged people, anyway. Yet I should like to write to him, just to show that there is no ill-feeling, and that I am really quite pleased to hear that he has at last persuaded some one to take him. I'll make the letter rather stiff and formal. Yes, I must write. But suppose he isn't engaged after all, wouldn't it seem as if I were forcing myself into a correspondence with him? No, it wouldn't appear well to write, at least, until the engagement was confirmed." Catherine glowed with newly awakened hope. She was glad she had decided not to write, for she dreaded to involve herself in any more awkward predicaments. They were so wearing on the mind.
In the meantime the day was drawing near when Catherine's story must be handed in for The Lantern. But nothing seemed to have developed. On several occasions she had sat down, well provided with white receptive sheets of paper, ready to pour out her soul. She had gnawed her pencil and looked bored for half an hour, and then had jumped up and rushed outdoors for some fresh air. Each time she had been expectant and eager to jot down the ideas she thought would crowd into her mind. (One never knows what may happen when one is actually provided with pencil and paper.) But somehow nothing had come, and she really felt now that she was altogether too wretched for ideas.
In desperation she decided to prune and nourish a little love story based on her own affair. It would amuse her, and no one need know that it was not purely imaginary. You can make things so much more real and vivid when drawing from your own feelings and experiences. Of course she would exaggerate a great deal and make it more interesting. And in her story the heroine could write a letter of congratulation to the hero in Chicago, a letter meant to be cold and formal, but into which had crept, in spite of herself, a plaintive, sorrowful strain. (Catherine thought that part quite romantic.) The hero on receipt of the letter could be very much mystified. He was not engaged and had no intentions of becoming engaged, though there had been a rumour. But reading between the lines he should see the heroine's love for him—this part of course could be entirely imaginary—pack his dress-suit case and take the first train for Philadelphia. He should then rush out to Bryn Mawr and throw himself at the heroine's feet, and all would end happily. (Catherine sighed deeply.)
The end, however, presented difficulties, for where should she have the hero throw himself at the heroine's feet? The reception-room was such a public place. (She thought of the pursuing pairs of eyes that hunt one out of the darkest corners of reception-rooms.) Finally she fixed upon the Vaux woods. It was such a picturesque spot, she knew Jack would have liked it. "Yes," she said to herself, "he must restrain his feelings until the heroine has bowed him into a portion of the Vaux woods, where they will be uninterrupted by giggles."
The story was handed in, and toward the end of May made its appearance in the pages of The Lantern.
In the meantime Jack Livingston, on the shores of Lake Michigan, was becoming desperately tired of going to dinners and looking out for the Chicago interests of the firm. He wanted to see some one who really cared for him, some one who would ask him out to dinner, even if he did not represent W. D. Neville & Co., of Philadelphia. He wanted to be asked out, fondled and admired a little for himself. Perhaps he was homesick. At any rate he decided to shirk social duties and spend an evening quietly with the Hammersleys. There was such an air of homelikeness and happiness about their evenings. Charlie Hammersley had been an upper classman of his at college, who had married a Bryn Mawr girl a few months before. And now they had a cozy little box just within the margin of respectability of the North End. They were still at dinner when Jack arrived. So he threw himself into an armchair by the library table and reached out for a magazine. The first he threw aside; he was tired of actresses' pictures, and hated novelettes. But something prompted him to investigate the next, though it was unfamiliar. "The Lantern, Bryn Mawr," he gasped in pleasant surprise, while he ran his eye eagerly down the table of contents for a certain well-known name. Before long he was buried in Catherine's little love story.
When the Hammersleys came in from the dining-room, they found Jack standing with one arm against the mantelpiece and a far-away expression in his eyes. He started when he saw them with an, "Oh! ... awfully glad to find you in ... You see I've just dropped in to say good-bye before starting for Philadelphia, to-morrow morning."
"Philadelphia?" Mrs. Hammersley asked in surprise. "You're an old fraud. I won't believe a word of it. You know you said you never wanted to see the place again. Besides you sent word by the maid that we mustn't hurry because you had come to spend one of those old-fashioned eight-to-eleven evenings with us. Shall it be whist or hearts to-night? Lyla, you'll make a fourth? ... Let's have hearts to-night. I don't feel strong enough for whist."
"No, really, I can't. You know, I should like it above all things. But I have my trunk to pack and arrangements to make. I'm going rather suddenly. You see I've just decided." Jack wished he was not clutching The Lantern so tightly in his left hand.
At Bryn Mawr finals were over and the "'Varsity" had been picked, so that all excitement was now centred in the alumnæ game. After years of success, the undergraduates had got into the way of looking upon this game as a walk-over. (It is hardly the fault of the alumnæ if one or more years of leisure do not add to their agility!) But now that the alumnæ had the last year's seniors, the champions of the college, to choose from, the under-graduates secretly trembled.
For this reason there was unusual excitement over the game, and the greater part of the college was sitting cross-legged around the basket ball field cheering excitedly, while a few rushed importantly up and down, flourishing lemons and towels. It was the beginning of the second half, and neither side had scored. The undergraduates felt weak, while the small group of alumnæ at one corner of the field were clutching each other excitedly. Every one was too much interested in the game to notice a tall, broad shouldered man who had just joined the outskirts of the crowd and was anxiously following with his eyes every movement of the 'Varsity's most graceful forward. But two minutes of play remained, the ball seemed rooted in the alumnæ territory and the undergraduates were pale and heaving with suppressed woe, when the alumnæ lost the ball and it passed quickly down the field into the hands of the 'Varsity's tall, graceful forward. For one silent second she aimed, and then amid shrieks of joy the ball spun cleanly into the basket, while, with a little gasp of pain, Catherine Neville, the 'Varsity's pet forward, sank fainting upon the ground. Her ankle was badly sprained. When Catherine recovered consciousness, the tall, broad shouldered man from the outskirts of the crowd, was leaning over her, a most distressed expression in his eyes. In spite of her pain, Catherine gave a little gasp of pleasure. "He does care for me after all," she murmured under her breath. Her eyes grew dim and she felt herself going off again into unconsciousness.
Another summer had passed by and the juniors were now seniors, but one of the most popular members of the class was missing. Catherine Neville was to be married in November. As she said to one of her friends, she was satisfied, and Jack was satisfied, and they didn't see why they should wait. Anyway, Jack was awfully lonely out in Chicago, all by himself, and it was her duty to go out and cheer him up.
Catherine had decided upon her career. She had found her purpose in life.
Harriet Jean Crawford, 1902.