XII
From Miss Elizabeth Stockton
to Miss Carolyn Sawyer
Lowell, Nov. 20.
Carol dear: I am writing in a great hurry, as I have an engagement at four, to tell you that I have decided not to return to-day, as I intended. Will you get the key of 32 from Mrs. Driscoll, as Kitty goes home over Sunday, so it will be locked, and get out my mink collarette and my silver toilet things and my blanket wrapper, and I think there is twenty dollars in my handkerchief case. I am extremely disturbed and confused—when one is really responsible for anything one feels very much disturbed. Of course, I don't believe a word of it—it's all folly and nonsense—but still, six years is a long time. Of course, you don't know at all what I mean, dear, and I'm not sure I do either. I forgot to say that I'm probably not coming back to college this year. Mamma feels very worried about my health—you know I didn't sleep very well nights, and I used to dream about Livy. Anyway, she and Papa are going abroad early in the spring, and really, Carol, a college education isn't everything. If I were going to teach, you know, it would be different, but you see I was almost finished at Mrs. Meade's—I was taking advanced work—and it isn't as if I had had only the college preparation. Then, if we go abroad, I must do something with my French. You know there was simply no chance to practise conversation in such a large class, and I was forgetting it, which Arnold thinks would be a pity. He speaks very fine French himself. Then, you see, there'll be all the galleries and everything and the Sistine Madonna and the cathedrals—they're so educative—everybody admits that. It's hardly to be supposed that Geometry and Livy are really going to be as broadening to me as a year of travel with Papa and Mamma, is it? And though I never said anything to you about it, I really have felt for some time that there was something a little narrow about the college. They seem to think it is about all there is of life, you know, with the funny little dances and the teas and all that. Even that dear Miss Hunter is really un peu gâtée with it all—she thinks, I believe, that a college education is all there is for anybody. She told Mamma that I wasn't well—she wanted me to keep my high grade. Oh! Carol! there are better things than grades! Life is a very much bigger thing than the campus even! I think, dear, that one really ought to consider very frankly just what we intend to do with our lives—if we are going to marry, we ought to try to make ourselves cultivated and broad-minded, and in every way worthy to be—Oh, Carol, dearest, I'm terribly happy! It isn't settled, of course: I am utterly amazed that they all seem to think it is, but it isn't. Only probably if I still feel as I do now, when we get back, I shall ask you, dear, what we promised each other—to be my bridesmaid—the first one! I'm thinking of asking Sally and Grace and Eleanor—all our old set at Mrs. Meade's, you know. I think that pink, with a deep rose for hats and sashes, would look awfully well on all of you, don't you! It seems a long time since I was in Northampton: the girls seem very young and terribly serious over queer little lessons—or else trying to play they're interested in each other. Arnold says he thinks the attitude of so many women is bound to be unhealthy, and even in some cases a little morbid. I think he is quite right, don't you? After all, girls need some one besides themselves. I always thought that Mabel Towne was very bad for Katharine. Will you send, too, my Shelley and my selections from Keats? The way I neglected my reading—real reading, you know—oh! c'était affreux! I'm learning the loveliest song—Arnold is very fond of it:
Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie?
L'heure s'enfuit, le jour succède au jour.
Rose ce soir, demain flètrie—
Comment vis-tu, toi qui n'as pas d'amour?
I'm going out now for a walk. I'm sure you'll like Arnold—I think you said you met him. He doesn't remember you. Remember me to all the juniors I met, and if you see Ethel Henderson, tell her I'll write to her when I get time. Excuse this pointed pen—I'm learning to use it. Arnold hates a stub.