Betty Wales, Freshman

by Edith K. Dunton

What did it matter? She had known it all before. She had said those very words herself. But she had thought–she had been sure that other people did not understand it that way. Well, perhaps most people did not. No, that was nonsense. Lilian Day had achieved a position of prominence in her class purely through a remarkable alertness to public sentiment. Margaret Payson, a girl of a very different and much finer type, stood for the best of that sentiment. Eleanor had often admired her for her clear-sightedness and good judgment. They had said unhesitatingly that she was a failure; then the college thought so. Well, it was Jean Eastman’s fault then, and Caroline’s, and Betty Wales’s. Nonsense! it was her own. Should she go off in June and leave her name spelling failure behind her? Or should she come back and somehow change the failure to success? Could she?

She had no idea how long she sat there, turning the matter over in her mind, viewing it this way and that, considering what she could do if she came back, veering between a desire to go away and forget it all in the gay bustle of a New York winter, and the fierce revolt of the famous Watson pride, that found any amount of effort preferable to open and acknowledged defeat. But it must have been a long time, for when she pulled herself on to her seat and caught up the paddle, she was shivering with cold and her thin dress was dripping wet with the mist that lay thick over the river. Slowly she felt her way down-stream, pushing through the bank of fog, often running in shore in spite of her caution, and fearful every moment of striking a hidden rock or snag. Soft rustlings in the wood, strange plashings in the stream startled her. Lower down was the bewildering net-work of islands. Surely there were never so many before. Was the boat-house straight across from the last island, or a little down-stream? Which was straight across? And where was the last island? She had missed it somehow in the mist. She was below it, out in the wide mill-pond. Somewhere on the other side was the boat-house, and further down was a dam. Down-stream must be straight to the left. All at once the roar of the descending water sounded in Eleanor’s ears, and to her horror it did not come from the left. But when she tried to tell from which direction it did come, she could not decide; it seemed to reverberate from all sides at once; it was perilously near and it grew louder and more terrible every moment.

Suddenly a fierce, unreasoning fear took possession of Eleanor. She told herself sternly that there was no danger; the current in Paradise River was not so strong but that a good paddler could stem it with ease. In a moment the mist would lift and she could see the outline of one shore or the other. But the mist did not lift; instead it grew denser and more stifling, and although she turned her canoe this way and that and paddled with all her strength, the roar from the dam grew steadily to an ominous thunder. Then she remembered a gruesome legend that hung about the dam and the foaming pool in the shadow of the old mill far below, and dropped her paddle in an agony of fear. She might hurry herself over the dam in striving to escape it!

And still the deafening torrent pounded in her ears. If only she could get away from it–somewhere–anywhere just to be quiet. Would it be quiet in the pool by the mill? Eleanor slipped unsteadily into the bottom of her boat and tried to peer through the darkness at the black water, and to feel about with her hands for the current. As she did so, a bell rang up on the campus. It must be twenty minutes to ten. Eleanor gave a harsh, mirthless laugh. How stupid she had been! She would call, of course. If she could hear their bell, they could hear her voice and come for her. There would be an awkward moment of explanation, but what of that?

“Hallo! Hallo–o-o!” she called. Only the boom of the water answered.

“Hallo! Hallo–o-o!”

Again the boom of the water swallowed her cry and drowned it.

It was no use to call,–only a waste of strength.

Eleanor caught up her paddle and began to back water with all her might. That was what she should have done from the first, of course. She was cold all at once and very tired, but she would not give up yet.

She had quite forgotten that only a little while before it had not seemed to matter much what became of her. “But if I can’t keep at it all night—” she said to the mist and the river.