CHAPTER IXTHIS VAIN SHOW
It was the first evening at college in their junior year. Upon coming out of the dining-room Lila caught sight of Bea waiting at the elevator door. Dodging three seniors, a maid with a tray, and a man with a truck full of trunks, she made a dash for the new arrival who in a sudden freak of perversity danced tantalizingly just beyond reach.
“You imp! And I haven’t seen you for three months. Help me!” she beckoned to Berta who that moment emerged from dinner, “run around that side and catch her.”
But Bea, swiftly subsiding from her mischievous agility, stood still and regarded them with an air of surprised, sad dignity as the two flung themselves upon her.
“Young ladies, I am astonished at such behavior. Leading juniors—real, live, brand-new juniors—and to display such lack of self-restraint,such disdain of gracefulness and repose! Oh!” her voice changed magically, “oh, you, dear sweet, darling girls, I love you pretty well.”
“Then why,” queried Berta, gasping as she released herself, “then why, I repeat, do you endeavor to choke us to death?”
“Because,” answered Bea, as she meekly allowed Lila to straighten her hat while Berta rescued her satchel from the middle of the corridor, “because you are so nice and noble and haven’t any false feeling about little tokens of affection like that. In fact, you haven’t any false pride or anything false, and I have a tale of woe to tell you by and by. Hereafter I intend to be a typical college girl, not an exception.”
The promised by and by proved to be the hour of unpacking after chapel services. While Bea was emptying her satchel that night she snatched up a little fringed napkin and shook it vigorously before the other girls.
“See the crumbs! Thereby hangs the tale. Now, listen.
This summer we have been feeling rather poor at home, you know. My father’s firmwas forced to make an assignment. It wasn’t his fault, you understand; it was because of the hard times. Every few days we would hear of a bank closing its doors or a factory shutting down. People have been cutting off expenses in all directions. Of course my family has to economize. I am thankful enough to be able to come back to college. About a dozen girls in the class have dropped out this year of the panic. I knew that I could earn fifty dollars or more by tutoring and carrying mail, if I once got here. That will help quite a lot toward books and postage and ordinary personal expenses. Father said he could manage the five hundred for board and tuition. You had better believe that I do not intend to be needlessly extravagant, when my mother is keeping house without a maid, and my father is riding to his office on a bicycle.
Now I rather suspect that this explanation is no excuse for the foolish way I behaved on the journey to college that September. But the summer has been so horrid, and two or three acquaintances changed around after the failure and treated us as if we had ceased tobe worth noticing. Of course I know that such persons are not worth noticing themselves, still it did hurt a little. I guess the reason why I pretended to have plenty of money while traveling with Celia was because I was afraid of being hurt again. And then too I remembered how she had said one evening the year before when we were playing Truth that she despised stinginess beyond any other vice. That had made an impression on me because I was just going to say the very same thing myself.
Celia is a new student who is to join our class this year. We met her last spring when she came up from a boarding-school in New York to visit a senior. You remember her? It was at a fudge party in her honor that we played the game of Truth, to which I have already alluded. She is the kind of person who is generally asked to be an usher at a hall play or on Founder’s Day. She is tall, holds her head high, has an air. The doctor herself said when she saw her in chapel the evening of her visit, “Who is that striking girl?” She dresses beautifully too; and I think I shall ask her to let me put down hername for two dances next month, if my cousin and his roommate come from Yale for the reception.
Being new to the college atmosphere, she had an excuse for the way she acted on the journey. An excuse that I did not have, you know—and I know too. But as for that, more anon, anon! At present I start in and continue by stating that on a certain September day I was sitting by myself in the Union Station at Chicago, while I waited for my train. I had arrived two hours before, and I was hungry, and I was also, as explained above, strongly inclined to be economical. And therefore I was eating my luncheon out of a pasteboard box, instead of going to a restaurant.
On my lap was a fringed napkin upon which reposed one slice of chocolate cake with frosting, one big peach, and seven large white grapes each containing at least three seeds. Just at the very moment when I took a bite of the peach, hoping that none of the weary passengers around me was taking notes, for that peach was certainly juicy,—just at that exact moment, I happened to glance across tothe door. There was Celia Lane, with her head higher than ever, looking up and down for an empty seat. And the only empty seat in the whole waiting-room was next to mine. And my lap was strewn with an economical luncheon.
It was silly of me. I admit that once and forever, and shall not repeat it again. But like lightning her remark about stinginess flashed into my mind. Before she had taken the second step in my direction, I had crammed all those seven grapes into my mouth, bundled the napkin with crumbs, cake and pit into my satchel, shoved it under the bench, and rose nonchalantly swallowing the grapes whole as I haughtily lifted my chin in order to survey my worthless companions. Then of course my eyes fell upon her, and I started forward in vivacious greeting.
I don’t believe she had recognized me before, for she said, “Oh!” with a queer little gasp. Then she put out her hand in that cordial way of hers. It made me think that I was the person she had been longing to find. She inquired what road I was going on, and said, “Ah, yes, what a charming coincidence!”But honestly it seemed to me that there was a worried expression in her eyes.
And there I sat miserably shaking in my old shoes. It may appear funny to you, but it was an awful feeling. Even now months afterward I never want to smile at the memory. You see, it costs five dollars to ride in a Pullman car from Chicago to New York. I had planned to go into the common passenger coach until nightfall, and thus save two dollars and a half toward books for the new semester. That sounds a bit mean and sordid, doesn’t it? And I know my family would have objected if I had told them, because the sleeping-cars are much safer in case of accidents. Oh, how I hated to say anything about it! You can’t imagine. I wonder how Berta would express it with literary vividness. Maybe she might say that she “shrank in every fibre.” But it was worse than that—I just didn’t want to, I simply couldn’t.
WE HANDED OVER FIVE DOLLARS APIECE
WE HANDED OVER FIVE DOLLARS APIECE
The hand of the clock kept moving around—oh, lots faster than it had done before Celia appeared. When it was nearly time for the train to be ready, I began to mutter and mumble and finally managed to remark that I thought I had better see about engaging my berth. What do you suppose? She gave a sort of astonished jump and exclaimed, “Why, I must too.” So we both marched over to the agent’s window and handed over five dollars apiece. I was dying to ask her to go shares with me, because one berth is plenty—or, I mean almost plenty—large enough for two. But though I opened my mouth a few times and coughed once, I absolutely did not dare to propose such a penurious plan. She might have thought me close-fisted, and perhaps she would not have slept very well either.
No sooner had we settled ourselves in the sleeper, than I began to worry about the meals. Naturally she would assume that I intended to go into the dining-car every time. Most of the girls do as a matter of course. In fact I remember feeling condescending whenever I saw anybody eating from a box while the other passengers were filing down the aisle, or up, whichever it happened to be. This year I was to be one of the brave unfortunates left behind in their seats.
Well, very likely you understand that people while traveling really ought not to eat soheartily as usual. Much food in a dining-car clogs the system and ventilates the pocketbook, so to speak. I appreciated myself hard for being right and noble and abstemious and foresighted—with respect to the semester’s expenses, you perceive, and also self-denying and self-reliant. There are a number of selfs in that sentence, likewise in the idea and in my mind at the time. I don’t believe honestly that poverty is good for the character, though Berta says that she knows it isn’t good for anything else.
Celia and I went out to sit on the rear platform of the observation-car. The scenery was not particularly interesting in comparison with Colorado; and consequently I had spare energy for meditating on Emerson’s essays and his observation that “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” I wish I were strong-minded. To reflect sincerely, however, I don’t believe it is so much a question of a strong mind as of a weak imagination. If I had been unable to imagine what Celia might think, doubtless I wouldn’t have bothered about it.
But I was bothered. The sensation of botherationdeepened and swelled and widened as supper time drew nearer and nearer, and every moment I expected to hear the waiter’s voice intoning behind me, “Supper is now ready in the dining-car.” What made this state of affairs all the sadder was the memory of springing gladness inspired by the same sound on previous journeys. I sat there dreading and dreading and dreading. And then, what do you think? Celia was asking me about Lila and Berta and Robbie Belle and the fun we have and incidentally something about the work. I was talking so fast that I forgot all about being poor. When the waiter’s voice suddenly rang out at the end of the car, I jumped up instantly just as I had always done on former occasions of the same nature. And I exclaimed, “I am simply starved to death.”
Then I remembered and sat down so quickly that my camp-chair tipped against Celia and knocked her over so that she might have fallen off the platform if there had not been a railing around it. That catastrophe created such a flurry of anxieties, apologies, and so forth, that I succeeded in letting the crisisslip past unmolested. At least, that first crisis did. The second crisis arrived a little later when the voice behind us rang out again with, “Second call to supper in the dining-car.” I glanced sidewise at Celia just in time to catch her glancing sidewise at me. That made me spring lightly to my feet, I can tell you. Was she getting suspicious? Was she too courteous to suggest an extravagance the refusal of which might hurt my pride? Was she wondering why I seemed to have forgotten that I was starving to death, if not already starved?
So I said in a tone of patient consideration, “Shall we wait any longer, Miss Lane?” She jumped up like a flash, and her face was quite red.
“No, indeed! Not on my account certainly.” She emphasized the my so distinctly that I was sure she suspected. That dreadful thought caused me to stiffen my manner, and as hers had been strangely stiff all the afternoon, we were awfully polite to each other during supper. Each of us insisted upon paying the bill and feeing the waiter. It was terrible. I couldn’t afford to pay it all, and yetI was too silly to give in gracefully, especially as some other passengers were listening, and the waiter hovered near. Finally it resulted in his receiving twice the sum, half for the bill, and half for a fee. I hope he appreciated it.
Then we talked politely to each other for an hour or two before going to bed. And in the morning, there was the problem of breakfast confronting me.
The problem woke me early. Being poor is bad for the health as well as bad for the character, I think. Probably it is bad for the soul also. Or maybe it is not the poverty so much as being ashamed of it that perverts a person’s life. Well, actually I almost cherished the deceitful plot of getting up so early that I should be already dressed before Celia would appear, and then I could tell her that I had been so hungry that I had eaten my breakfast alone. It would have been true too, because I intended to nibble my malted milk tablets behind a magazine. But this plan came to naught; for when I poked my head out between the curtains I saw Celia herself staggering toward the dressing-room with her satchel.Thereupon I lay down again and nibbled the tablets in the berth. That would enable me to assert truthfully that I was not hungry and did not care for breakfast in the diner.
Oh, dear! Wasn’t it awful! I did tell her that very thing, and she said she didn’t believe she was hungry either. Then we were polite to each other till noon. When the waiter’s dreaded voice once more rang out, I made my little speech that I had been composing all the morning. It was as follows:
“Don’t wait for me, Miss Lane. I consider that over-eating is a heinous fault among Americans, and so I have decided to omit the dining-car for the remainder of this journey. Pray, do not let me keep you.”
She said, “Why, that’s exactly what I think, too.”
Just fancy! And there I was almost famished. I thought she would leave me at once, and I could have a chance to eat the luncheon spoiling in my box. Chicken sandwiches and jelly and olives and salted almonds and fruit and cake and everything good. I had been thinking of it for hours.
What could I do? There she sat, and thereI sat in plain sight of each other, being in the same seat for the sake of sociability, though her section was the one in front of mine. She seemed rather quiet and formal—not so much stiff as limp, so to speak. Still there was no cordiality about it. Just as I felt I could not stand starvation another minute, she rose and said she believed she would go into the observation-car for a while. She did not invite me to accompany her, and I made no offer to go. I simply sat and smiled and watched her fumble in her bag for a few minutes before extricating what was apparently a rolled up magazine. Then she marched down the aisle. The instant she had vanished into the vestibule, I made a dive for my box. In just thirty seconds I had consumed half a sandwich and a slice of cake. I kept my eyes on the spot where she had disappeared, you had better believe. Oh, wasn’t I silly? But then, I promised not to allude to that obvious fact again. That lunch tasted good. And I had plenty of time to eat all I wanted, though I cut short the chewing process.
When it was all down to the very last olive, I brushed off all the crumbs I could see, anddecided to walk into the observation car and be polite again. So I did. And what do you suppose? Through the glass at the rear I saw her sitting sort of sidewise so that one eye could watch the door where I was entering. It seemed to me that she gave a little quiver as I came within view, and then actually she threw something overboard. People always see more than you think they do. At least I saw that, and she thought I didn’t, for when I emerged upon the platform she looked up with a surprised smile of welcome and said, “Isn’t the river beautiful!”
I said, “Oh, isn’t it!” and then I gazed at it very hard and attentively so as to give her a chance to wipe the spot of jelly from her shirtwaist. She had been eating her luncheon too. She had carried it wrapped up in the funneled magazine. She had been ashamed to acknowledge that she needed to be economical, too. I saw it all in a flash. She had intended to ride in the common coach and save pullman fare, just like me. And there we had been racing, neck and neck, trying to keep up with each other.
“Oh, dear!” I said at last, “I wish we hadtaken a berth together and saved our two dollars and a half apiece.”
I heard her give a little gasp and I felt her staring at me. The next minute she said, “There are crumbs on your necktie too.” And then she bent down her head and laughed and laughed and laughed till I had to laugh too.
“I hope it’ll be a lesson to us,” I said at last.
She wiped the tears from her lashes. “It will be. I expect to be repenting for weeks ahead,—at least, until my next allowance comes in. But, you! Why, Miss Leigh, it seems so queer. I thought the college girl was different as a rule—independent and frank and—oh, pardon me—and—and so forth.”
“She is,” I assured her sadly, “as a rule. But I am an exception. I prove the rule.”
CHAPTER XCONSEQUENCES
For her junior year Bea was fortunate enough to secure a mail-route, the proceeds of which helped to make her independent of a home allowance for spending money. To tell the truth, however, she enjoyed the work even more than the salary. While distributing the letters she felt a personal share in every delighted, “Oh, thank you!” in each ever-unsatisfied, “Is that all?” or the disappointed, “Nothing for me to-day?”
From her own experience and observation during the years already past, she was particularly interested in the different pairs of roommates who came within the scope of her daily trips. In a certain double lived two freshmen, one of whom always greeted her with, “Oh, thank you!” whether the mail was addressed to her or to her roommate. But when the roommate answered the knock, she invariably exclaimed, no matter how much was handed to her, “Is that all?”
More than once in her reports to Lila, Bea declared that it was about time for a wave of reform in the vicinity of Ethelwynne Bruce. Perhaps she might even have contemplated the possibility of engineering something of the kind herself, if she had not been too busy to spare the necessary thought-energy. In the course of events, fate with its machinery of circumstances added an extra lesson to Ethelwynne’s college course.
It happened one evening during the skating season.
Ethelwynne with her skates jingling over her arm came shivering into the room. “Oo-oo-ooh!” Her teeth chattered. “Wynnie’s freezing. Do shut that window and turn on the heat, Agnes. It is hard lines to live in a double with a regular Polar bear direct from the land of Sparta. You ought to keep it up as high as forty degrees anyhow.”
“Sh-h!” The smooth dark head at the desk bent lower over the water-color before her. “Don’t interrupt this minute. There’s a dear. I’ve got to catch this last streak of daylight——”
“But it isn’t daylight,” fretted Ethelwynne, “the moon’s up already. And I’m so chilly! I wish you would help me make some hot chocolate.”
“Look at the thermometer. Ah, one more stroke of that exquisite saffron on the stem! Hush, now. Look at the thermometer, look at the thermometer,” she muttered abstractedly while concentrating all her mental attention in the tips of her skilful fingers.
Ethelwynne stared at her a moment before giving a little chuckle that ended in a shiver. “Look at the thermometer, look at the thermometer,” she echoed sarcastically, “I reckon that’ll warm me up, won’t it? Like somebody or other who set a lighted candle inside the fireless stove and then warmed himself at the glowing isinglass. Suppose your old thermometer does say seventy or eighty or ninety or a hundred? Maybe it is telling a story. Why should I trust an uneducated instrument that has never studied ethics? Now listen here!” She lifted her skates and poised them to throw from high above her head. “Hist! if you don’t drop those hideous toadstools of yours and begin to sympathizewith me this instant, I shall hur-r-rl this clanking steel——”
Agnes still painting busily raised one elbow in an attitude of half-unconscious defense.
“——upon the floor-r-r!”
At the crashing rattlety-bang Agnes sprang to her feet with a nervous shriek. Ethelwynne dived for her skates and felt them carefully. “I tried to pick out the softest spot on the rug,” she complained whimsically, “but there wasn’t any other way to wake her up. And I simply had to have some sympathy. Oo-oo-ooh, Wynnie’s freezing!”
Agnes had returned to her brushes and was wiping them dry in heartless silence.
“Wynnie’s freezing, I say.”
“Say it again,” counseled the other’s calm voice. “I am so provoked at myself for jumping at every little noise! It is shameful to have so little control over my own nerves even if I am tired. Ah! what was that?”
“Jump again,” advised Ethelwynne in a tone that was meant to be serene but proved rather jerky. “It was nothing but my teeth chattering and clicking together.”
“Generally it’s your tongue,” retorted Agnes with interest but broke off in this promising repartee to exclaim with genuine anxiety, “Why, Wynnie, child, you have a regular chill. Lie down quick and let me cover you up. Have you been out skating ever since I left you on the lake?”
“Yes, I have,” she replied with an air of defiance, “you needn’t preach. I couldn’t bear to come in. Everybody out. We had square dances, shinney-on-the-ice, wood tag. Perfectly glorious! Such a splendid elegant sunset behind the bare trees! I simply had to stay. Beatrice Leigh and her crowd were there. A big moon came sailing up. We skated to music—somebody whistled it. I couldn’t bear to stop. I wanted to stay, I tell you. I wanted to stay.”
“Hm-m,” said Agnes, “I wanted to stay too. But what with the Latin test to-morrow and this plate for the book on fungi to be sent off in the morning, I managed to tear myself away.”
“You’re different. Oo-oo-ooh!” Ethelwynne shivered violently again. “You like to deny yourself. You enjoy discipline. Itgives you pleasure to do what you hate. You love duty just because it is disagreeable.”
“My—land!” Agnes clutched her own head. “The infant must have slipped up a dozen times too often. Did the horrid bad ice smite her at the base of the brain? Poor little darling! Is her intellect all mixedy-muddle-y? We will fix it right for her. We’ll give her a pill.”
“I think I have caught cold,” moaned her roommate from the depths of the blankets.
Agnes looked judicial. “Our doctor at home has a theory that people take cold easily when they have been eating too much sweet stuff. He says that colds are most frequent after Thanksgiving. Now I wonder—I believe—why, you surely did go to a meeting of the fudge-club in Martha’s room last night. Ethelwynne, did you eat it? Did you eat it even after all the doctor said to you about your sick headaches?”
“Of course I ate it. How do you expect me to sit hungry in a roomful of girls all digging into that plateful of brown delicious soft hot fudge with their little silver spoons, and I not even tasting it? I hated to make myselfconspicuous before the juniors there. They would think I am a hypochondriac, and Berta Abbott might have said something to make the others look at me and laugh. I don’t believe the stuff hurts me a particle. Doctors always want you to give up the things you like best.”
“Oh, Ethelwynne!” groaned Agnes, “you never deny yourself anything. It is the only trait I don’t like in you. Now you have caught a dreadful cold just because you could not refuse the candy. You must break it up with quinine.” She fetched a small box from the bureau in her bedroom. “Here, open your mouth.”
The other girl opened her mouth obediently. “I love pills. We’re homeopaths, you know. Once when I was a baby, I got hold of mother’s medicine chest and ate all the pellets. I thought they were candy. Sweet—oh, delicious! I used to enjoy being sick. And now this nice big chocolate-coated pill!” She sprang up suddenly, her face twisted into an expression of agony. “Oh, oh, oh!”
Agnes white as a sheet flew to her side. “What is it? Quick, quick, Wynnie! Is ityour heart? Your head? A darting pain! Where, oh, where?”
“Crackie!” Ethelwynne ruefully rubbed her mouth. “I’ve been sucking that pill.”
After a moment’s struggle to retain her sympathetic gravity, Agnes gave way and dropping her head on her hands shook alarmingly for at least half a minute.
“I told you I was a homeopath,” expostulated Ethelwynne, “how was I to know that allopaths always swallow their pills whole?”
“Wh-wh-why did you suppose it was coated with chocolate?” gasped Agnes.
“So as to improve the taste of course and tempt me to eat it. I am fond of chocolate. If it is my duty to eat a pill, I want it to be inviting. I don’t want to do anything that I don’t want to do, specially when I am sick. Well, anyhow, I shall never touch another.”
However, by bedtime Ethelwynne was feeling so miserable that finally after long urging she consented to swallow another dose of quinine in the orthodox way. She allowed Agnes to put a hot water bottle at her feet and to tuck in the coverlets cozily; and then she tried to go to sleep. But that was another story. Itwas a story of fitful jerks and starts, of burning fever alternating with shivering spells, of terrifying dreams and wretched haunted hours of wakefulness. At last the longed-for morning stole in at the windows to find her eyes heavy, her limbs languid, her brain muddled and dull, her head roaring.
It was the quinine that had done it—she knew it was—unspeakably worse than the cold unattended. Worried Agnes acknowledged that the dose might effect some systems violently.
“But it has broken up your cold,” she pleaded, “that’s certainly gone.”
“What?” said Ethelwynne fretfully, “don’t mumble so and run your words together. I can’t hear the gong very well either. And the Latin test is coming the first hour after breakfast. I haven’t had a chance to review an ode. I feel so wretched! Oh, me! oh, me!”
Ethelwynne never forgot that Latin test. The very first line written by the instructor on the blackboard smote her with despair. She had never been able to translate from hearing anyhow. This morning when MissSawyer took her seat on the platform and opened her book, Ethelwynne bent forward anxiously, every nerve alert and strained. What was the first word? Oh, what was it? She had not caught it. It sounded blurred and mazy with no ending at all. And the next—and the next! And the third! Now she had lost it. The first was gone. She had forgotten the second. The voice went reading on and on. She floundered after, falling farther and farther behind. There wasn’t any sense to it, and she couldn’t hear the words plainly, and everything was all mixed up. The other girls seemed to understand. They were writing down the translation as fast as they could scribble—at least some of them were. But she could not make out a particle of meaning. It was Agnes’s fault—it was all her fault. She had coaxed her to take the quinine, and now she could not hear plainly or think or remember or anything.
In wrathful discouragement she turned to the rest of the questions. One or two were short and easy. She managed to do the translations already familiar. But when she reached the last part and attempted to writedown an ode which she had memorized the week before, she found that many of the words had slipped away from her. The opening line was vivid enough, then came a blank ending in a phrase that kept dancing trickily from spot to spot in her visual imagination of the page. Here she recalled two words, there three, with a vanishing, vague, intangible verse between. The meaning had slid away utterly, leaving only these faulty mechanical impressions of the way the poem had looked in print. Struggle as she would, the thought frolicked and pranced just beyond the grasp of her memory.
Ethelwynne bit her lip grimly and put the cap on her fountain-pen. It was not the slightest use. Miss Sawyer had always told them to learn the odes understandingly, not in parrot fashion. It was better to submit a blank than a paper scribbled with detached words and phrases. It was all Agnes’s fault—every bit. She had forced her to swallow that pill—the pill that had muddled her brain and dulled her hearing—the pill which was causing her to flunk in Latin. She had known that ode perfectly only the previous day. Itwasn’t her fault—it was entirely Agnes’s. She would go instantly and tell her so.
And she went the moment class was over. To be sure, she did not go so fast as she wished, for her head had a queer way of spinning dizzily at every sudden movement. Once or twice her knees faltered disconcertingly in her progress down the corridor. But at last she reached the room and walked in with a backward slam of the door.
Agnes was putting the final touches to the water-color drawing of exquisite fungi before her.
“Sh-h,” she murmured, “don’t interrupt. Just one more stroke—and another—now this tiny one. There, it is finished. Professor Stratton sends her manuscript off to-day and she is waiting for this. Think of it! Thirty dollars for this sheet of paper! Thirty whole big beautiful dollars to send home for Christmas. They need it pretty badly. I’ve worked hours and hours, and now they shall have a real Christmas! I know what mother wants and couldn’t afford——”
Ethelwynne stamped her foot. “It was all your fault. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t think.I couldn’t remember. The pill did it. You made me take it. You always think you know best. You’re always preaching and advising. You wanted to make me flunk. You knew it would make my ears ring and my head whirl. You did it on purpose. I shall never forgive you, never, never, never!”
“What!”
At the tone Ethelwynne suddenly shivered, threw herself on the couch, and fell to crying weakly. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it at all. I only wanted to say something horrid. I wanted you to suffer too. I just wanted to say it, and so I did say it. Oh, oh, oh, I am so miserable! I want to go home.”
Agnes paid no attention. In her sudden sharp resentment at the preposterous accusation, she had swung around in her chair, and her elbow had tipped over the inkwell, spilling the contents over the desk. She sat staring in horrified silence at her ruined drawing.
Finally Ethelwynne puzzled by the continued stillness peered with one eye from the sheltering fringes. She sprang up with a jump.
“Agnes, your beautiful fungi!”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come,” called Agnes in mechanical response. There was a pause; then the knob turned and the visitor entered with diffident step.
Ethelwynne hastily smoothed her hair with one hand and felt of her belt with the other. “Oh, good evening, Professor Stratton,” she stuttered from surprised embarrassment, “I mean, good morning. How do you do? Won’t you sit down?”
Agnes turned to look, and rose in sober greeting.
“You see it is spoiled,” she pointed to the ink-splotched drawing. “It was an accident. You don’t know how exceedingly sorry I am, Professor Stratton. The work on your book can go on without it, I hope.”
The older woman forgot her incorrigible shyness in dismay. “What a shame! How distressing!” She hurried forward impulsively to examine the sheet. “Since you brought it to me last night I have been exulting in the thought of it. You have great talent for such work. The time you have spent on it! How distressing!” She stoppedin thoughtful fear that she might be adding to the girl’s disappointment. “An accident, you say? How did it happen?”
“Something startled me so that I twirled around in my seat, and my elbow knocked the ink over. I—I am very sorry.” Her lips felt stiff. Ethelwynne watching with miserable eyes saw her moisten them. They were drooping at the corners.
“It is my fault,” she burst out hurriedly, “it is all my fault. I made her jump. I startled her on purpose. I said mean things to her because I felt like saying them. I felt like saying them because I had flunked in Latin. And I flunked in Latin because I took a p-p-pill—oh, no, no! I mean, because I caught cold from staying out on the ice too long. And I stayed out long because I wanted to. And the reason why I caught cold from staying out too long was because my digestion was upset from eating fudge when the doctor told me not to. And I ate the fudge because I wanted it. And it is all my fault. It is all because I do things just because I want to do them and not because I ought to do them or ought not to do them. Iought to leave them undone, you know. And Prexie says that most miseries in life come from that attitude of I-do-it-because-I-want-to-do-it-and- I-don’t-do-it-because-I-don’t-want-to-do-it. And now Agnes won’t have thirty dollars to send home for Christmas. And it is all my——”
“Hush!” said Agnes, “hush, now, dear! That’ll be all right. It was my fault anyhow. I should have had better control of my nerves and learned not to let myself get startled.” She smiled reassuringly across the bowed head into Professor Stratton’s concerned eyes.
“I will see what I can do about holding back the manuscript till you reproduce the drawing,” said the older woman, “it is barely possible that I can manage it.”
As the door closed softly behind her, Ethelwynne lifted her tear-wet face.
“Agnes, do you think it was the pill that did it?”
“Did what? Everything?”
“Oh, no, no! Was it the pill that made me flunk in Latin?”
“I don’t know,” she answered doubtfully, “perhaps it helped.”
“I want to say it was the pill. I want to believe it was the pill. I want to, but I won’t, because it wasn’t—not really way down underneath truly, you know. It was my own selfish self.” She reached up both arms to draw Agnes closer in a repentant hug. “Wynnie’s sorry,” she said.
CHAPTER XIA GIRL TO HAVE FRIENDS
“Laura!” It was a soft little call sent fluttering in through the keyhole. “Laura, are you there?”
Laura with her chin propped on her hands at one of the broad sills stirred uneasily in her chair and glanced sideways at her roommate who was seated before the other window. Lucine had stopped reading aloud and was regarding the door with an irritable frown on her vivid dark face.
“I do wish, Laura, that you would tell Berta Abbott that an engaged sign on our door means nothing if not the desire for undisturbed privacy. She is the most inconsiderate person in the junior class. This is the third time——”
“Laura!” called the voice again, “answer me! I know you are in there. I’ve simply got to speak to you one minute. It’s awfully important.”
Laura half rose with a pleading smile toward Lucine who motioned her indignantly back to her seat.
“Laura Wallace, stay right there. You promised to help me revise this essay. You know that I can’t do it alone, because I haven’t a particle of critical ability; and the editors say they cannot print it as it is now. You are exceedingly selfish to think of deserting me just when I most need your suggestions. The board of editors meets to-night to choose the material for the next number of the magazine, and if they decline this again I shan’t be eligible for election next month. You promised.”
“Laura, there’s something I’ve got to ask you. If you don’t come out, I shall have to take this sign down and walk in my own self. Laura! Ah!” The door swung open and tall Berta popped in. Slamming it behind her, she stood with both hands on the knob, her eyes fixed with an expression of innocent inquiry upon Lucine who had halted in the middle of her sudden dash across the floor, her hand still outstretched toward the key.
“Excuse me, Miss Brett. Were you just goingout? I’m glad I did not disturb you. Shall I hold it open for you?” She stepped to one side and waited gravely without moving a muscle till Lucine after a withering stare had stalked angrily back to her window. The corner of Berta’s mouth gave a quick, queer little twitch before settling back into proper solemnity.
“Come, Laura. You’d better. I shan’t keep you long.” At her imperious gesture Laura slid out of the room at an apologetic angle, her head twisted for a final shy glance back at Lucine who was apparently absorbed in her papers.
When safely outside in the corridor Berta seized her about the waist and whirled her away from all possible earshot through cracks and transom.
“Now then, exit the ogre, or rather eximus nos, leaving the ogre alone. For what particular reason is she trampling all over you to-day? I didn’t catch all her last speech. You don’t mean to say that you have promised to help her with her writing?”
“Yes,” Laura nodded her rough curly head. She was a delicate little thing with the irregularfeatures that generally accompany such hair. Her beauty lay in her expression which brightened charmingly from minute to minute since her escape. “Oh, how good the air smells!” she stopped to lean from an open window. “Lucine shivers at every draught. It is hard to manage the ventilation to suit two persons in the same room. I smother——”
“Of course you smother—and you smother a good many more hours than she shivers. Trust her for that. Such a little ninny as you are! Don’t forget that you have agreed to room with my best little sister when she enters next fall. You would not have been thrust in with Lucine Brett this year if I could have prevented it.”
“Oh, but if I can’t come back—you know, I’m almost sure I shan’t come back. And anyhow I’m the only friend she has. I’ve got to stick to her. If you could hear her mourning over her loneliness! Nobody cares for her—nobody in all the world! And the girls don’t like her. I promised to be her friend. She—she needs me.”
“Humph!” growled Berta sourly, but somehow her arm was stealing around theslight shoulders so far beneath her own, “that’s the silly kind of a person you are. If any creature needs you, from a lame kitten to a lion with a toothache, you’ll cling. Idiocy, that’s what it is! Your brother warned me last summer to restrict your charities. And now to help her with her writing, and she your most dangerous rival for the editorship!”
“Ah, but she doesn’t know it, you understand. She doesn’t know that I am eligible. The editors have been so awfully kind to me and gave me book reviews to do and reports to make, and they printed my verses and two editorials. Every freshman who has had so many words published is eligible for election on the board at their annual meeting next month. Lucine’s last story was clipped so much that she is short about two thousand words; and this is her last chance to qualify by getting her essay accepted for the next issue. I’ve got to help.”
“Yes, certainly you’ve got to help a rival qualify for a competition in which she is likely to defeat you. Do you realize that?” Berta swung Laura around in front of her andstudied her curiously while she spoke. “You are a good steady worker, you understand. You have critical ability and a simple, sincere style. If elected you would make an excellent editor, but—now listen, but, I say, you are not a genius like Lucine Brett. She is brilliant. Oh, I acknowledge that, even if I do despise her for being selfish and disagreeable and ego——”
“Hush! She tries—she doesn’t understand——You mustn’t talk that way. I won’t listen. I promised to be her friend. She wonders why the girls don’t like her.”
“And yet she expects you to help her defeat you! She is willing to accept that sacrifice from you! When it means so much to you that——”
“Oh, hush, Berta!” Laura slipped out of the range of that keen straight-ahead gaze and nestled under the protecting arm again. “She doesn’t know that I am eligible, I tell you. My articles weren’t signed usually except with initials. And she is not thinking about other girls’ qualifications—she’s bothered about her own. It’s got to be a fair race with everybody in it, if they want to be. Ofcourse she will be elected—there isn’t a doubt—and I’ll be as glad as any one.”
“Yes!” Berta’s voice veered from sarcasm to genuine anxiety. “You’ll be glad—but you’ll be glad at home. You can’t come back to college—you told me so yourself—unless you are elected editor. That’s why I called you out just now. Did your uncle really say that he was disappointed in your career here?”
Laura cleared her throat. “He doesn’t like it because I haven’t won any honors yet. Don’t you know how almost every girl here came from a school where she was the brightest star and carried off all the prizes and things like that? My uncle doesn’t understand. He thinks it is the fault of the college because I haven’t done anything great. Oh, you know, Berta. I—I do hate to talk in such a conceited way. He doesn’t realize that I am not brighter than the rest and can’t dazzle. He wants me to win an honor that he can put in the papers at home. He says if I don’t distinguish myself this year, I might as well stop and go to the Normal next fall. He thinks college is too expensive. This editorship is the only chance, because—becausethere isn’t anything else for our class now that the offices are filled and committees appointed. He didn’t like it because my articles in the magazine were signed with initials and not the whole name. He said, ‘Well, niece Laura, let me see your name printed plain in that list of editors, and then we’ll decide about next year.’ He—he’s disappointed.”
“And yet,” Berta spoke slowly, “you are going to help Lucine Brett with that essay. And you know how much my little sister cares about being at college with you.”
Laura gave a startled jump and turned to run. “Oh, Berta, I had forgotten. She’s waiting. I’ve stayed too long. She’ll be so angry!”
“Let her,” growled Berta; but Laura had fled.
Meanwhile Lucine when left alone had dropped the sheets of her essay in her lap and planting her elbows on the sill crouched forward, staring miserably out at the brown soaked lawn flecked with sodden snowdrifts in the shadows of the evergreens that were bending before a rollicking March wind.
“Nobody cares,” she mourned, “even Laura doesn’t care whether I succeed or not. I want the girls to like me, but they won’t.”
Tears of self-pity dimmed her lashes when Laura slipped timidly into the room and after a worried glance at the scattered papers resumed her former seat.
“Now, Lucine, if you will read that last paragraph once more, I will try to see where the difficulty lies. It—it’s fine so far.”
Lucine looked down at her essay, then across at the attentive small face that appeared quite plain when fixed in such a worried pucker. “No,” she said at last, “I won’t. You are not interested in the essay or in my hopes of success. You offer to help merely because you think it is your duty. I refuse to accept such grudging friendship. You toss aside my affairs at the slightest whim of an outsider, and then expect me to welcome the remnant of your mental powers. No, thank you.”
Laura bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she said, “you ought not to feel that way about it. I do truly wish to help you all I can. Please!”
Lucine made a half-involuntary movementto gather up the sheets; then checked herself. “No, I have too much pride to play second fiddle. Your neglect has wounded me deeply, and I do not see how I can ever forgive you. To forsake me for such a shallow, disagreeable person as Berta Abbott is an unpardonable insult.”
Laura gave a little shiver and lifted her head sharply. “I have tried to be your friend. I have endured—things. But I won’t endure this—I won’t—I can’t. Berta is my friend. You shall not speak of her like that to me. Say you’re sorry—quick! Oh, Lucine, say you didn’t mean it and are sorry.”
“I am not sorry,” said Lucine distinctly, “and I did mean it. I am glad I have dared to speak the truth about her. She is shallow and disagreeable.”
“And what are you?” Laura sprang to her feet. “A conceited selfish inconsiderate——” She clapped her hand to her mouth with a quick sobbing breath. “Oh, Lucine, we can’t be friends. I’ve tried and tried, but we can’t.”
From beneath lowered eyelids Lucine watched the slight little figure hurry to thedoor and vanish. Then rising abruptly she jerked a chair in front of her desk, slapped down a fresh pad of paper, jabbed her pen into the inkwell, shook it fiercely over the blotter—and suddenly brushing the pages hither and thither she flung out her arms upon them and buried her face from the light.
A few minutes later Laura entered noiselessly and stopped short at sight of the crouching form with shoulders that rose and fell over a long quivering sob. Laura took one step toward her, next two away; finally setting her teeth resolutely she glided softly across the room and patted the bent, dark head. For an instant Lucine lay motionless; then with a swift hungry gesture she reached out her arms and swept the younger girl close to her heart.
“Laura, I can’t spare you, I can’t spare you. You are all I have. Forgive me and let me try again. It is an evil spirit that made me talk that way. And, oh, Laura, dear, I want you to like me better than you like Berta. I need you more.”
Laura put up her mouth in child-fashion for a kiss of reconciliation. “I like youboth,” she said, and freeing herself gently stooped to pick up the loose leaves of the essay. “Shall we go on with revising this now, Lucine? It is due this evening, you know. The board meets at eight in the magazine sanctum.”
Lucine watched her with a wistfulness that softened to tenderness the faint lines of native selfishness about her mouth. “Laura, I want you to room with me next year. We can choose a double with a study and adjoining bedrooms. It will make me so happy. Do you know, last autumn when I lived in the main building and you away off in the farthest dormitory, I used to sit in a corridor window every morning to watch for you. I care more for you than for any one else. I shall teach you to care most for me next year.”
Laura seemed to have extraordinary trouble in capturing the last sheet, for it fluttered away repeatedly from her grasp and she kept bending to reach it again. Lucine could not see her face.
“Will you,” she repeated, “will you room with me next year, Laura?”
Laura coughed and made another wild divein pursuit of the incorrigible paper. “Let’s not talk about next year,” she mumbled uncomfortably, “it is so far off and ever so many things may happen before June. Of course,” she faltered and swallowed something in her throat, “I’d love to room with you, if—if I can. But now we must hurry with this essay.”
“Well, remember that I have asked you first,” said Lucine, “and I can’t spare you.”
Laura said nothing.
After the essay had been read and discussed by Laura whose critical insight was much keener than Lucine’s, the older girl settled herself to rewrite the article before evening. Dinner found her still at her desk, fingers inky, hair disordered, collar loosened in the fury of composition. In reply to Laura’s urgent summons to dress, she paused long enough to push back a lock that had fallen over her brow.
“Don’t bother me now. I’m just getting this right at last. Go away. I don’t want any dinner.” The pen began again on its busy scratching.
“Lucine, you know the doctor warned youto be more regular about eating. Whenever you work so intensely, you always pay for it in exhaustion the next day. Do come now and finish the essay later.”
The rumpled head bent still lower. “I wouldn’t drop this now for thirty dinners or suppers. It’s good—it’s fine—it’s bound to be accepted—it means the editorship. To sacrifice it for dinner! Do go away. I wish you would leave me alone.”
Laura turned away silently. If the success of the article was in question, she certainly could not interfere further. Lucine wrote on, paying no heed to the gong except for the tribute of an impatient frown at the sound of many feet clicking past in the corridor, with a rustling of skirts and light chat of voices. At seven when the bell for chapel again filled the halls with murmur and movement, she only shrugged uneasily and scribbled faster. By half-past she had finished and was re-reading it for final corrections. Then folding it with a smile of weary contentment, for at last she knew that it was sure of success, she set out to carry it to the magazine sanctum.
Down the stairs and through the lower corridorshe hastened toward the plain wooden door whose key she hoped next year to claim for her own fingers. The transom shone dark, and no voice yet disturbed the quiet of the neighborhood. Evidently the editorial board had not yet begun to assemble for the business session. Lucine decided to wait till they arrived, so as to be certain that the precious essay reached their hands in safety. If she should drop it through the letter slit in the door, it might be overlooked.
Curling up on a window ledge in a shadowy corner behind a wardrobe she waited while dreamily gazing at the moon which was sailing through clouds tossed by the still rollicking wind. Ever since her first glimpse of the magazine’s brown covers, she had determined to become editor-in-chief some time. Now this essay would surely be accepted, and when printed this month would render her eligible for election as the first sophomore editor. From that position she would advance to the literary editorship next year, and then to be chief of the staff when she was a senior. Then—ah, then the girls would be eager and proud to be friends with her. And Laura would beglad she had not forsaken her in her early struggles. So far she had been too busy with her writing to make friends and keep them. It took so much time and was such a bother to be friendly and do favors all the while. But by and by she would have leisure to grow unselfish and show the girls how noble and charming and altogether delightful she could be—by and by. Meanwhile her work came first. She simply had to succeed in winning this editorship.
While Lucine lingered there, leaning her forehead against the cool pane, footsteps sounded from around the transverse; and two figures, arm in arm, strolled nearer. They glanced at the dusky transom, laughed over the tardiness of their stern editor-in-chief, and sat down on a convenient box to wait.
Lucine after an intent scrutiny to identify the two seniors as subordinate editors turned again to the moon, and listened half unconsciously to the low trickle of words till suddenly her own name roused her alert.
“Yes, they’re the favorite candidates.” It was Bea’s voice that spoke. “If Miss Brett completes her quota of lines this month shewill undoubtedly have the best chance in the election, even if she is personally unpopular. She is exceedingly self-centred, you know, and does not trouble herself even to appear interested in anybody else. Her manner is unfortunate. However she is unquestionably the ablest writer in the class though little Laura Wallace is a close second. Berta knew her at home and is very fond of her. Laura and Berta’s sister Harriet have always been special friends.”
“Is Laura eligible? I do think she is the sweetest child!”
“Didn’t you know it? Her work has been mainly inconspicuous contributions signed only with initials. Stuff like that counts up amazingly in the long run. She is a better critic though not so original as Miss Brett. For my part I think the editor-in-chief ought to be primarily a critic, but perhaps I am wrong. Anyhow the theory is that the election goes to the best writer. I’m sorry. I half wish Miss Brett would fail to qualify. The editorship means such a heap to Laura.”
“How?”
“Her uncle who pays her expenses here israther queer—thinks he ought to see more results of her career. He’s disappointed because she doesn’t gather in prizes as she did in the country schools. She may in her senior year, but freshmen don’t have much chance to win anything more than an honorable record. He doesn’t believe in college anyhow and consented to send her under protest. Now he threatens to stop it if she doesn’t do something dazzling this year.”
“Poor infant! What a ridiculous attitude! But since that is the case, why not vote her in? Lay the circumstances before the board, and they’ll elect her.”
“Oh, no, they won’t. The board is altogether too scrupulous and idealistic this season to let personal feelings interfere. You’re rather new to office as yet. Mark my words and trust me: if Miss Brett qualifies, she will be elected. I know—and that’s why I wish she wouldn’t.”
“There come the others. See that pile of manuscript. We’ll be lucky if we get away at midnight. I only hope nobody will ask me to compose a poem to fill out a page; my head feels as if stuffed with sawdust.”
Lucine turned her head slowly to watch the group of girls wander into the office and light the gas amid a flutter of papers and dressing-gowns mixed with sleepy yawns and tired laughter. Then some one shut the door. Lucine was still sitting in the shadowy window-seat, her essay clutched tightly in her hand.
After a minute she rose, walked toward the door, and lifted her arm as if to knock. Then giving herself an impatient shake she swung around and hurried down the corridor as far as the transverse. There she hesitated, halted, half swerved to retrace her steps, stamped one foot down hard, brought up the other beside it, and clenching both fists over the essay fled from the neighborhood.
When she reached her room, she paused to listen. Hearing no sound she slipped inside, threw the essay into a drawer, locked it, and put the key in her pocket. Then after a wistful glance around she stooped to pick up Laura’s white tam from the couch, pressed it against her cheek for a moment, and laid it gently in the empty little chair where Laura had sat while listening to the essay that afternoon.
“Laura,” she whispered, “I can’t spare you, Laura. You shall come back next year, and we shall room together again, you and I.”
Without a backward look toward the drawer where the manuscript lay buried, Lucine gathered up note-book and fountain-pen and departed for the library. She walked slowly through the long apartment, glancing into alcove after alcove only to find every chair occupied on both sides of the polished tables that gleamed softly in the gaslight. Finally she discovered one of the small movable steps that were used when a girl wished to reach the highest shelf. Capturing it she carried it to the farther end of a narrow recess between two bookcases and doubled her angular length into a cozy heap for an evening with Shelley’s poem of “Prometheus Unbound.” That was to be the English lesson for the next day.
As she read verse after verse, the music of the wonderful lines soothed her restless mood, and the beauty of the thought that love and forgiveness are stronger than selfishness lifted her to a height of joyous exaltation. The idea of Prometheus suffering all agonies forthe sake of men came to her like a revelation. While she pondered over it, suddenly like the shining of a great light she understood the truth of “he that loseth his soul shall find it.” The Christ-ideal of self-sacrifice meant the highest self-realization.
“My cup runneth over, my cup runneth over,” sang Lucine in her heart, as she read on and on. “I have been blind but now I see. It has been always true, always, always. My cup runneth over. Listen:
“‘It doth repent me; words are quick and vain;
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine,
I wish no living thing to suffer pain.’”
“Laura!” Lucine raised her head dreamily. She was unconscious of how the evening hours had drifted past, leaving only a few lingering students here and there in the library. She could not see the two girls bending over the table on the other side of the bookcase behind which she was nestling. But their voices floated mistily to her ears.
“Laura, remember that you have promised to live with my sister next year. Don’t letLucine coax or frighten you out of it. You have promised.”
“But if I don’t come back?”
“Well, anyway you have promised to room with Harriet if you do. We’ll choose a parlor away off at the other end of the campus from Lucine, so that I can protect you from her demands. You’ve been growing thinner and whiter all the year. Now, remember. Don’t you give in to her selfishness. She is able to take care of her precious self without killing you in the process. Promise.”
Lucine heard a sigh. “I’ve promised to be her friend and I do care for her dearly; but I want with all my heart to room with Harriet, if I can manage to get back for next year. I’m almost sure I shan’t. Now, see here, does this verb come from vinco or vincio? I’m so sleepy I can’t read straight.”
Lucine very white about the lips was sitting erect in her corner. “My cup runneth over, my cup runneth over,” echoed faintly in her brain. “My cup runneth over and Laura likes her best and the essay is up-stairs and I wish no living thing to suffer pain—suffer pain. My cup runneth over. ‘Pain, painever, forever!’ I won’t, I won’t, I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t! To sacrifice it all for her and then—and then to be forsaken!”
Lucine glided from the recess, passed swiftly from the library, climbed the stairs to her room, moved toward the drawer which held the essay, and felt for the key in her pocket. It was gone. It must have fallen out while she read, doubled up on the low step. In wild haste now, for the minutes were flying and the board of editors might even now have adjourned, she hurried back to search. The green baize doors swung open in her face, and Berta and Laura came loitering out, their arms around each other, their heads bent close together affectionately.
“Lucine, oh, Lucine!” Laura at sight of her slipped away from Berta, “what is the matter? What has happened? Didn’t they accept the essay?”
Brushing her aside Lucine swept on into the library, turned into the recess, and dropped on her knees beside the step to look for the stray key. Her eyes fell upon the open book which lay face downward whereshe had forgotten it. Then she remembered. “I wish no living thing to suffer pain.”
It was long past ten o’clock and the corridors stretched out their dusky deserted length from one dim gas-jet to another flickering in the shadows, when Lucine crept back to her room. Laura raised a wide-eyed anxious face from the white pillow.
“Lucine, I couldn’t sleep until I knew.”
The older girl sat down on the bed and drew the little figure close.
“When you are editor, Laura, will you try to like me still? And will you keep on forgiving me and helping—helping me to deserve to have friends? And will you—will you teach me how to make Harriet like me too?”
“Oh, Lucine!” Laura flung her warm arms around the bowed neck. “I know what we shall do next year, if I can come back. The idea has just struck me. You and Harriet and I shall room together in a firewall with bedrooms for three!”