"Well, weakness then, and a mistaken notion that there is no place like Bryn Mawr."
IV
The beauty of the long June evening was not to be resisted, and as soon as dinner was over, the students hurried out of doors. An air of relaxation was everywhere noticeable. Those fagged out by examinations gained cheer and liveliness from the more careless, or loitered about in unregarded lassitude not disturbed by any sense of obligation as contributors to the brimming talk of their companions. It was the perfection of easy intercourse where every sentence is a free-will offering.
However far the little knots of good company might wander, they sooner or later gathered about the steps of Taylor Hall to listen to the senior singing. The effect was almost like a stage setting in its perfection, the grey buildings, the intense green of the grass, the blossoms on the trees, the dresses of the girls, the group upon the steps, with the rays of the setting sun falling full upon it. This custom of singing on the steps was an innovation on the manners of the first years, but an innovation picturesque and pathetic. Its pathos touched the group of alumnæ standing at a little distance from the steps. Throughout the afternoon they had almost fancied themselves students again; now they had stepped aside and had become mere spectators, while the seniors were making the most of their last days.
Before the singing stopped darkness had crept upon the scene. Taking advantage of it Ellen slipped away unnoticed and wandered down the hillside. As she heard the strange voices singing the old songs, she suddenly perceived how far she had drifted away from her college days—from all that had been revived by the chatter of the afternoon. She could not but feel that Marjorie's power of awakening those trifling memories, and Edith's quick response to her whims and sallies, her humorous allusions indicated not a less, but a greater share in all that was vital and permanent than any she could claim for all her seriousness. A passionate regret rushed over her, aware now that in her hurry, her business, her very faithfulness, she had lost, almost past recovery, many of the privileges that had been hers; that, in her pursuit of ends, worthy enough to be sure, she had made no demands on the really precious things in her experience at college. For in this moment of reflection, those trivial and petty reminiscences, mere accidents in their student-life, became for her the summons to an act of recollection.
She had strolled across the daisy field and was standing on the brow of the hill looking out toward the west. The moon had risen. Seen in its light the sweep of landscape seemed to her more picturesque, fuller of appeal to the imagination. Details were lost sight of, contrasts of light and shade emphasized. The slope before her lay in the full moonlight. Beyond it a clump of trees showed dark against the lucent sky. In the farther distance the hills were wrapped in a soft mist, brightened here and there by the gleams from the clustered houses. The familiar scene was full of remembrances, but remembrances for the most part of her friendship for Marjorie and Edith. Long tramps across those hills had been their favourite exercise through the winter. The daisy field, the haunt of idle moments in the warm days of spring or autumn, had also been for them a special sort of study, reserved for choicest reading. Toward it too they had always wandered after the Sunday evening meeting. As they walked along their talk would drift from the subject of the evening to things more personal, closer to their hearts, their individual perplexities, their individual faiths. Each one was then at her best, in the light of sympathy, showing herself as good or as noble as she really was. Those conversations, assumed to her kindled imagination, an actuality, a power, hitherto unperceived, becoming not only the record of their preferences in all matters great or small, their criticism of the activities and the thoughts of their own little world, but also the measure of their share in it. The little world thus recalled to her, had, she was beginning to remember, its care for holiness, for truth, for courage, and it had too its care for orderliness and beauty in its very frivolities—and there had been a discipline really stimulating even in that. The genius of the place expressing itself in this care showed itself in light-hearted frolic no less than in scholastic endeavor, for it determined the way in which things were done rather than actual achievements, thus uniting in voluntary submission to its influence those whom individual powers separated from one another, informing them with its spirit, till it became a part of them, not to be changed without the loss of something individual.
How vivid it all was, how persistent, yet how baffling its secret! Why could she not penetrate this secret and possess it? But as before she could neither arrest nor depict the ideas that were passing to and fro in her mind. Her thoughts flew to her speech. In it she had ignored everything but the definite, the tangible, and in so doing she had failed. Yet, even if she could seize the sentiment and translate it into words, she dreaded misapprehension—she could not forget her audience.
"Oh, here you are, Ellen," Marjorie broke in on her reverie, "I've just been singing your praises. It seems there are difficulties in the way of self-government, and I thought I'd help them by giving them a bit of our experience. So I told how you brought us through that bitter time, when we so nearly lost our liberties. As I told them I realized as never before how impossible it is to pass on experience. I could see before me the faces of the girls so drawn, so stern, with that pitiful sternness that only young faces catch; and then I seemed to hear Dr. Rhoads in chapel that next morning, reading to us that chapter about Grace and Law; and I could remember just how he stopped and looked at us after he read the words,—'For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid,'—and then went on to tell us that he believed that those words expressed our spirit and that as long as that spirit guided us we could be trusted to govern ourselves. It seems strange that while the impression of that time will never fade from our minds, we can pass on nothing but the tradition. There is no Dr. Rhoads now," she continued after a pause, "and I think I miss him more than I do any one else. He always used to gather up the events of our life here and put them into their proper relations."
"Yes, he entered with all his heart into the college spirit just as though he were one of us," agreed Edith.
"And for that very reason," said Ellen, "no part of his influence is lost. That spirit is the touchstone for all of us. However variable it is the one thing that persists and, so far, it has been as he understood it. Each student, whatever her gifts, must make it her own if she is ever to be anything but an alien here."