CHAPTER 3
With her exit from the beau monde and her entrance upon the broad stage of University life, Carmen seemed to have awakened from the lethargy which her abrupt transition from mediaeval Simití into the modern world had occasioned. The static struggle to hold her own against the rushing currents of materialism had turned at length in her favor. Her lamp had been kept alight. The lethal influences which rose about her like stupifying fumes in the courts of fashion had been lifted and swept away by the fresher and more invigorating breezes into which her bark had now been drawn.
She plunged into her new work joyously; yet not without a deeper comprehension of its meaning than that of her fellow-students. She knew that the University was but another stepping-stone, even as her social life had been; another series of calls and opportunities to “prove” her God to be immanent good. And she thankfully accepted its offerings. For she was keenly alive to the materialistic leadings of the “higher education,” and she would stand as a living protest against them.
It had not taken her long to discover the impotence lying at the heart of so-called modern education. She had not been slow to mark the disappointment written upon the faces of many of her fellow-students, who had sought in vain a great awakening light in those sacred precincts of learning, but, their confidence betrayed, were now floundering in the devouring morass of materialism. To her keen insight the University stood revealed as the great panderer to this latest century’s obsessing idea that the true function of education is expressed in the imparting of changing, human information and a training for the business of earning one’s daily bread according to the infamous code of the world’s carnal social system. The University did not meet the most urgent need of the race by equipping men to stand against the great crises of human experience. It did not teach men to lay aside the counterfeit man of material sense; but rather emphasized the world’s belief in the reality of this man by minutely detailed courses in his mundane history and the manifestations of his pitiable ignorance in his wanton crimes and watery ambitions. To Carmen, God was the most insistent fact of creation. And mankind’s existence could find its only justification in ceaseless, consecrated manifestation of His harmonious activity. True, the University vaguely recognized God as infinitely competent. 27 But in the same breath it confessed its utter ignorance of a demonstrable knowledge of Him, to know whom alone is life. True, these men of worldly learning prayed. But their hollow prayers bore no hope, for they knew not how to gain answers to them.
And yet the girl remained in her new environment, awaiting the call to “come up higher.” And meantime she strove to gain daily a wider knowledge of the Christ-principle, and its application to the needs and problems of her fellow-men. Her business was the reflection of her Father’s business. Other ambition she had none. The weak, transient, flighty, so-called intellectual life which she saw about her sent no call across the calm currents of her thought. Her education was religious in the strictest, deepest sense, for she was learning to know God.
Though the girl pursued her way quietly, unwilling that the notoriety which had been fastened upon her should mark her as an object of curiosity, yet her story soon spread among University circles, and the first semester was a scant two weeks old before her name had been debated in the numerous Sororities and Women’s Clubs, and quietly dropped. Negro blood coursed in her veins; and the stigma of parental disgrace lay dark upon her. She lived with a woman of blackened reputation––a reputation which waxed no brighter under the casual, malicious comments of J. Wilton Ames, whose great financial strength had made him a Trustee of this institution of learning. If Carmen divined the comment that was passed concerning herself, she gave no indication. But Hitt and Father Waite knew that the girl had not found favor in the social and fraternal organizations of her mates; and they knew why.
“A curse upon such little minds!” mused Hitt, when he could no longer restrain himself. Then he called a student to his desk one day, at the conclusion of his lecture.
“Miss West,” he said, “you are leader in the most prominent Sorority in the University. I want you to give Miss Carmen Ariza a bid.”
The girl shook her head. “She is not desirable.”
“But the charges against her are unfounded! They are flagrantly false!” stormed Hitt.