In hall itself the absence of Margaret France made a big blank. Having passed her tripos with a first class, Margaret had placidly returned home to help her mother in the house, and take part in an ordinary social life. “What a waste!” cried her Newnham acquaintances, but Margaret’s friends, remembering her own words on the subject, believed that she had chosen the better part.
With October came the return to Newnham, and for the first few weeks an access of grief and depression. It was hard to fall into the old life shorn of its greatest interest, to be reminded of Ralph at every turn, to see his friends pass by, laughing and gay, while his place was blank.
Then it was that Darsie discovered the real tenderness of heart which lies beneath the somewhat callous exterior of the college girl. Freshers, second-year girls, even austere thirds themselves, combined to surround her with an atmosphere of kindness and consideration. No word of sympathy was ever spoken, but almost every hour of the day brought with it some fresh deed of comfort and cheer. Offerings of flowers, tendered by a friend, or laid anonymously on “burry” or coffin; bags of fruit and cake, invitations galore, surprise visits to her own study, each in turn bringing a gleam of brightness to the day. Plain Hannah, too, dear old plain Hannah! In the midst of her grief Darsie was filled with amusement at Hannah’s unique fashion of showing her sympathy. Hot water evidently commended itself to her mind as the ideal medium, for at a dozen hours of the day and night the door of Darsie’s study would open and Hannah would appear on the threshold, steaming can in hand. Early morning, eleven o’clock, before lunch, before tea, before dinner, before cocoa, before bed, Hannah and her can never failed to appear. For the first half of the Michaelmas term Darsie might literally have been described as never out of hot water.
And now it was the Lent term; eight months had passed by since the date of Ralph’s death, and it surely behoved Darsie to rise above her depression, and to throw herself once more into the full, happy life of the house. She was thankful to do it, thankful to welcome dawnings of the old zest, to feel her feet involuntarily quicken to a dance, to discover herself singing as she moved to and fro. The winter had passed; spring was in the air. It seemed right that it should be in her heart also.
As usual in the Lent term, hockey was the one absorbing subject outside “shop,” and Hannah Vernon, now advanced to the lofty position of captain, had special reasons for welcoming her friend’s reviving spirits.
One chilly day in February she entered Darsie’s study with a somewhat unusual request.
“The girls are getting restive, and think that it’s quite time we had another fancy match. They want me to arrange one on the spot. It’s so blighting to be told that one is so clever, and looked to for inspiration. Every idea forsakes one on the instant. You’ve been hibernating for an age, you ought to have lots stored up!”
“I haven’t—I’ve grown hideously dull. What did we have last?”
“Thicks against Thins! Never shall I forget it! To play forward padded with three separate cushions, and with shawls wound round your limbs, is the sort of thing one rises to once in a lifetime, but never twice. I made an adorable fat woman! The Thins had no spirit left in them when they beheld my bulk. I vote that we don’t have anything that involves padding this time. One never knows one’s luck.”
“No–o! I think we might hit on something more subtle,” Darsie ruminated, with her eyes on the ceiling. Her reputation of being the Newnham belle remained unchallenged after two separate incursions of Freshers.