“No, indeed she isn’t,” declared Roberta loyally. “She’ll be a fine one. She’s awfully clever, only she makes people think she isn’t, because she knows how to put on her clothes.”
“And it’s one mission of the modern college girl,” announced Madeline oracularly, “to show the people aforesaid that the two things can go together. Let’s go to Smuggler’s Notch Monday to celebrate.”
CHAPTER VI
HELEN ADAMS’S MISSION
The particular mission that Madeline had discovered for the modern college girl was one that Helen Chase Adams would never probably do much to fulfil. But Helen had a mission of her own—the mission of being queer. Sometimes she hated it, sometimes she laughed at it, always it seemed to her a very humble one, but she honestly tried to live up to its responsibilities and to make the most of the opportunities it offered.
The loneliness of Helen’s freshman year had made an indelible impression on her. Even now that she was a prominent senior, an “Argus” editor, and a valued member of Dramatic Club, she never seemed to herself to “belong” to things as the other girls did. She was still an outsider. An unexplainable something held her aloof from the easy familiarities of the life around her, and made it inevitable that she should be, as she had been from the first, an observer rather than an actor in the drama of college life. And from her vantage point of observation she saw many strange things, and made her own little queer deductions and comments upon them.
On a certain gray and gloomy afternoon in November Helen sat alone in the “Argus” sanctum. She loved that sanctum—the big oak table strewn with books and magazines, the soft-toned oriental rugs, and the shimmering green curtains between which one could catch enchanting glimpses of Paradise River and the sunsets. She liked it as much as she hated her own bare little room, where the few pretty things that she had served only to call attention to the many that she hadn’t. But to-day she was not thinking about the room or the view. It was “make-up” day for the sketch department—Helen’s department of the “Argus.” In half an hour she must submit her copy to Miss Raymond for approval—not that the exact hour of the day was specified, but if she waited until nearer dinner-time or until evening Miss Raymond was very likely to be at home, and Helen dreaded, while she enjoyed a personal interview with her divinity. Curiously enough she was more than ever afraid of Miss Raymond since she had been chosen editor of the “Argus.” She was sure that Miss Raymond was responsible for her appointment, but she had never gotten up courage to thank her, and she was possessed by the fear that she was disappointing Miss Raymond in the performance of her official duties. So she preferred to find Miss Raymond’s fascinating sitting-room vacant when she brought her copy, to drop it swiftly on the table nearest the door, and stopping only for one look at the enticing prospect of new books heaped on old mahogany, to flee precipitately like a thief in the night.
The copy for this month was all ready. There was Ruth Howard’s monologue, almost as funny to read as it had been in the telling, next, by way of contrast, a sad little story of neglected childhood by a junior who had never written anything good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen’s own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted it to go into the “Argus.” She had rather expected that Jane Drew would ask for it for the main department of the magazine; but she hadn’t, and her copy had gone to Miss Raymond the day before. The other verses were also stamped with Miss Raymond’s heartiest approval, and like the rest of the articles that Helen had collected, they were the work of a “nobody.” Helen’s vigorous unearthing of undiscovered talent was a joke with the “Argus” staff, and her own great pride. But to-day she was not in a benevolent mood. She had refused all through the fall to have anything of her own in the “Argus”; she did not believe in the editors printing their own work. But these verses were different; she loved them, she wanted people to see them and to know that they were hers.