Chapter Twenty Nine.
Tripos Week.
The Tripos week! Every third-year girl felt as if life and death trembled in the balance during those eventful days. They woke on the Monday morning with much the same feeling as that of a patient who expects to have an arm amputated at eleven, and is morally convinced that she will sink beneath the strain, and when at seven o’clock a second-year friend crept into the study, tray in hand, and administered sympathising cups of tea, the final touch was given to the illusion.
Darsie quailed before the prospect of those three-hour papers. Experience had proved that she was not at her best in examinations; imaginative people rarely are, since at the critical moment the brain is apt to wander off on dire excursions into the future, envisaging the horrors of failing, instead of buckling to work in order to ensure success. Historical French Grammar in especial loomed like a pall, and she entered the Mission Room at Saint Columba’s with the operation-like feeling developed to its acutest point.
For several minutes after taking the first paper in her hand Darsie found it impossible to decipher the words. The type danced mistily before her eyes; and when at last letters shaped themselves out of the confusion, the last state was worse than the first, for she was convinced—drearily, hopelessly convinced—that she could not answer a single question out of the number.
She laid down the paper, and steadied herself resolutely. All over the room other girls were sitting on hard, uncomfortable chairs before tables like her own, some motionless and stunned-looking like herself, some already setting briskly to work. On the walls, among a number of quotations, “Help one another!” stared her in the face with tragic significance, and again: “How far high failure overleaps the bounds of low successes.” Failure! She lifted the paper again, and decided with a glimmer of hope that she could answer at least one question, set to work, and scribbled for life until the last moment of the prescribed three hours! What exhaustion! What collapse! Positively one’s legs wobbled beneath one as one trailed wearily Newnhamwards. What a comfort to be fussed over and petted, treated as distinguished invalids whom the College was privileged to tend!
The Tripos girls “sat at High” at the head of the room, surrounded by attentive Dons, with the V.C. herself smiling encouragement, and urging them to second helpings of chicken (chicken!!). By the time that it was necessary to start forth for the afternoon’s ordeal they felt mentally and physically braced, and the operation feeling lessened sensibly.
At the afternoon’s ordeal, however, the weariness and depression grew more acute than ever, and on the walk home the comparing of answers had anything but a cheering effect. No girl was satisfied; each was morally convinced that her companions had done better than herself. Where she had failed to answer a question, a reminder of the solution filled her with despair. Of course! It was as simple as ABC. She had known it off by heart. Nothing short of softening of the brain could explain such idiotic forgetfulness.
It was a kindly custom which separated the sufferers on their return to College, each one being carried off by her special second-year adorer to a cheery little tea-party, for which the most congenial spirits and the most delectable fare were provided. Here the tired senior was soothed and fed, and her self-esteem revived by an attitude of reverence on the part of the audience. The second-year girls shuddered over the papers; were convinced that never, no never, could they face the like, and suggested that it would be a saving of time to go down at once.
Later on that first evening, when Marian White appeared to put her invalid to bed, she bore in her hand a letter from Margaret France, which Darsie hailed with a cry of joy.