CHAPTER VIIFOUR SOPHOMORES AND A DOG
The last recitation of the winter term was over, and the corridors were alive with girls hurrying this way and that, pinning on their hats, buttoning jackets, crowding into the elevator, unfurling umbrellas, and chattering all the time.
“Hope you’ll have the nicest sort of a time!” “Don’t stay up too late!” “Good-bye!” “Oh, good-bye!” “Be sure to get well rested this vacation!” “Awfully, awfully sorry you wouldn’t come home with me, Gertrude, you bad child! But I know you won’t suffer from monotony with Berta and Beatrice in the same study.” “Hurry, girls, there’s the car now. Just hear that bell jingle, will you!” “Good-bye, Gertrude, and don’t let Sara work too hard!” “Oh, good-bye!”
Gertrude felt the clutch of arms relax from about her neck, and managed to breatheagain. This was one of the penalties—pleasant enough, doubtless, if a person were in the mood for it—of being a popular sophomore. For a minute she lingered wearily in the vestibule to watch the figures flying down the avenue to the Lodge gates. How their skirts fluttered and twisted around them, and how their hats danced! Their suit-cases bounded and bumped as they ran, and their umbrellas churned up and down in choppy billows before the boisterous March wind. There! the last one had vanished in a whirl of flapping ends and lively angles beyond the dripping evergreens.
As she was turning languidly away, a backward glance espied two girls emerging from one of the dormitories far across the flooded lawn. They came skipping over the narrow planks that had been laid in the rivers flowing along the curving walks. The first was Berta swathed in a hooded waterproof; and the second, of course, was Beatrice, a tam flung askew on her red curls, her arms thrust through a coat sleeve or two, a laundry bag swinging from one elbow, and a tin fudge pan clasped tenderly and firmly beneath the other,while with the hands so providentially left free she stooped at every third step to rescue one or the other of her easy-fitting rubbers from setting out on a watery voyage all by itself.
“Hi!” she gasped after a final shuffling dash, as she caught sight of immaculate Gertrude, “I wore your overshoes. Hope you don’t mind. They’re not very wet inside, and I brought over your things so that we can move into our borrowed study right off now.”
“Where are my things?” asked Gertrude with natural curiosity and perhaps unnatural calm.
“Here,” jerking the laundry bag, “it holds a lot—brushes, soap, nightgown, toothpowder, fountain-pen, note-book, everything. Berta carried your mending basket. You needn’t bother one bit.”
“I’ll run back and forth for anything you want,” volunteered Berta hastily at sight of an irritable frown on the usually serene brow of handsome Gertrude.
“You’re cross!” commented Bea with a cheerful vivacity that was exasperating to the highest degree, considering that everybody ought to be worn down to an unobtrusivestate of limp inertia after the three busy months just concluded, “you’ve been cross ever since Sara——”
“Berta, lend me your gossamer and rubbers, please,” when Gertrude was unreasonably provoked she had a habit of snapping out her words even more clear-cut than usual. An instant later she swept forth into the rain only to stop short and hurry in again before the door had swung shut. “We might as well look at the study first,” she said in a more gracious tone, “and we can draw lots to see who is to have the inside bedroom. I dare say the change to this building will be a rest.”
Berta took quick survey from the window to explore the cause for this amazing wavering of purpose.
“Ah!” she murmured in swift enlightenment, “it’s Sara. She’s coming over the path.”
A peculiar expression flitted across Bea’s ingenuous face—an expression half quizzical, half sorry. “Then we’d better follow Gertrude’s example, and clear the track. She’ll cut us dead again—that meek little mouse ofa girl! And I don’t blame her for it either, so there!”
Berta tucked a pensive skip in between steps as they moved through the gloomy corridor past rain-beaten windows. “It wasn’t like Gertrude to burst out like that just because Sara came late to our domestic evening, but it did spoil the fudges and the game and everything.”
“And not to give her a chance to explain!” fumed Bea’s temper always ready to flame over any injustice. “Before she could open her lips, Gertrude blazed up, cold as an icicle——”
“What?” interpolated demure Berta with her most deeply shocked accent, “an icicle blaze?”
“Oh, hush, you’re the most disagreeable person! I wish Lila hadn’t gone home. Well, she did just that. She said the artistic temperament was no excuse for discourteous falsehood—or she almost the same as said it—meaning breaking your word, you know, for Sara had promised she would come at eight, and there it was quarter to nine. She said that it might be wiser next time to invitesomebody more reliable about keeping engagements. Sara did not answer a word—only went white as a sheet and walked out of the room. Now she even cuts us—because we were there—stares right over our heads when we meet her anywhere.”
“I’m sure Gertrude was sorry the minute she had spoken. And she’s been working awfully hard over committees and the maids’ classes and the last play. She was tired and nervous up to the brim, and then to wait and wait and wait for Sara. Why, I was getting cross myself.”
“Well, why doesn’t she beg Sara’s pardon then, and make it all right?” demanded the young judge severely. “Sara has always simply worshiped her, but because she never has made mistakes nor learned how to apologize, and everybody admires her and flatters her, she is too proud to say she was wrong. It’s plain vanity—that’s what it is. She can’t bear to make herself do it.”
“She’s unhappy,—that’s what I think, though she sort of pretends she doesn’t care.”
“She’s cross as a bear—that’s what I think,”snapped Bea, “and Sarah has dark circles under her eyes. It’s dreadful—those two girls who used to be inseparable! Quarrels are—are horrible!” The impetus of this conviction almost succeeded in hurling its proprietor against the water cooler at the bathroom door. “Say, Berta, what if you and I should quarrel, with Robbie Belle and Lila one thousand miles away?”
“I’m too amiable,” responded Berta complacently, “sugar is sweet——”
The tin cup dropped with a flurried rattle against the fudge pan. “Oh!” a shriek of dismay, “my dear young and giddy friend, we’re all out of sugar. What if we should want to make anything to-night? Let’s run back to the grocery by the kitchen this minute.”
Owing to this delay, Gertrude had been in the study for more than ten minutes, staring out at the trees writhing in the wind, when she was startled by the sound of a suffocated shriek, followed by a scamper of four thick-soled shoes, the heels smiting the corridor floor with disgracefully mannish force. The door flew inward vehemently, and Bea shotclear across the room to collapse in the farthest corner, hiding her face in the fudge pan while her shoulders quivered and heaved terrifyingly. Berta walked in behind her, and after one reproachful look, sat down carefully in a rocker and brushed her scarlet face before beginning to giggle helplessly.
“You’re the meanest person! Beatrice Leigh, you knew I was turning into the wrong alleyway, but you never said a word. You wanted to see me disgraced. The door opened like magic, and there she stood as if she had slid through the keyhole. She stood there plastered against the wall and—and—regarded us——”
“Oh!” moaned Bea in ecstasy, one fiery ear and half a cheek emerging from the kindly shelter of the fudge pan, “she glared. She wondered why those two idiotic individuals were stalking toward her without a word or knock or smile, when suddenly the hinder one exploded and vanished, while the other ignominiously—stark, mute, inglorious—fled, ran, withdrew—so to speak——”
“Why didn’t you say something?” groaned Berta. “I simply lost my wits from the surprise.She was the very last person I expected to see anywhere around here. How in the world did she happen to borrow the next room to ours? She’ll think we were making fun of her—that we did it on purpose. She’s awfully sensitive anyhow!”
“Well, you two are silly!” commented Gertrude, her face again toward the driving storm. “Who was it? Not a senior, I hope, or a faculty?”
Bea straightened herself abruptly, the laughter driven sternly out of every muscle except one little twitching dimple at the corner of her mouth. “It was Sara,” she exclaimed, “and she is pale as a ghost. She has never been so strong since waking up on that boat and finding a burglar trying to steal the ring off her finger during the holidays. You know how she jumps at every sudden noise, and she’s been getting thinner and thinner, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself clear down to the ground.” Here the dimple vanished in earnest. “I know I’m ashamed of myself, and so’s Berta. Even her lips were white. Now we’ve hurt her feelings worse. I didn’tthink. Nice big splendid excuse for a sophomore, isn’t it?”
“There’s the gong for luncheon,” was Gertrude’s only reply as she moved toward the door.
Bea’s flare of denunciation had subsided quickly in her characteristic manner. She sat absently nibbling the handle of the obliging pan, while staring after the receding figure, its girlish slenderness stiffened as if to warn away all friendliness. “She’s stubborner than ever. I say, Berta, let’s reconcile them.”
“Oh, let’s!” in echoing enthusiasm, adding as the beauty of the plan glowed brighter, “they’ll probably thank us to the last day that they live. I know I would, if it were Robbie and I who were drifting farther and farther apart.”
“Very likely,” responded the arch-conspirator, beginning at the lower edge of the tin doubtless itself delicious from long association with dainties, “but the question is: How are we going to do it? One is proud, and the other is proud too. I don’t see exactly how we can fix it.”
As Berta did not see either, they decided with considerable sound sense meanwhile to go to luncheon. The next day after many minutes of discouraging meditation mingled with a few hours of tennis in the gymnasium, an idea came to them. While they rested on the window ledge, watching Gertrude stroll to and fro in the sunshine balmy at last, Bea began to waste her breath as usual.
“‘To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow drags out its weary course from day to day,’” she quoted with mindless cheerfulness, only to interrupt herself good naturedly, “say, Berta, do you realize that the third to-morrow aforementioned is April Fool’s Day? I wish something interesting would happen. This is the most monotonous place in vacation.”
“To-morrow never is, it always will be,” corrected the carping critic.
Bea with indifference born of long endurance paid no attention. “I say!” rapturously as the idea began to dawn upon her inward vision, “let’s reconcile them with a joke.”
“All right,” agreed her partner with most charming alacrity, “what joke?”
The question was rather a poser, as Bea was inclined to take only one step at a time and utter one thought as it obligingly arrived, without anxiety about the next. This tendency had occasionally landed her high and dry on the shores of nothingness in the classroom.
“Oh, um-m-m, I haven’t determined that point yet. It isn’t only great minds that move slowly.” Gertrude’s cape swung into view at the turn of the walk. “Berta, she looks awfully lonesome, doesn’t she?”
“Well,” argued the other, “nobody can expect us to do all the tagging around ourselves, especially where a contemporary is concerned. If she wants us to walk with her, she might omit a few snubs now and then. I’m tired of chasing after her.”
“The trouble is that you are not a faithful friend, faithful friend,” rattled Bea, “man’s faithful friend, the dog. Oh, oh, oh, Berta, I have an idea!”
“Noble girl!” Berta patted her on the head. “I generously refrain from comment.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. I feared you could not deny yourself that remark aboutkeeping my idea, as I might never get another. But this one is an idea about a dog. Let’s find a puppy to give Gertrude for a soothing companion this vacation. I love puppies.”
“The question is: does Gertrude also love puppies? Or is it a joke?”
“Let’s get a dog and surprise her with it April Fool’s morning. He will be such a friendly little fellow and so faithful that her conscience will sting her——”
“I must acknowledge that you are a humane, tender-hearted individual. To plot a stinging conscience——”
“Oh, hush, Berta! Do be nice and agreeable. I’m awfully tired this week, and I really need some distraction. The corridors stretch out empty and silent, and breakfast doesn’t taste good at all, and—and I want to do something for Sara.”
“Oh, all right!” Berta spied the glint of an excitable tear and shrugged the weight of common sense from her shoulders. “I’m with you.”
Three days passed—three days of blue sky and fluffy clouds and air that sent Bea dancingfrom end to end of the long stone wall while Berta stumped conceitedly along the path in her new rubber boots. Gertrude wondered aloud why two presumably intelligent young women insisted upon spending every morning in foolish journeys over muddy country roads. Noting an unaccustomed accent of peevishness in the energetic voice, Berta began to worry a bit over the likelihood that such petulance was due to impending sickness. Bea jeered at this, though with covert side glances to detect any signs of fever. In her secret soul, where she hid the notions which she dimly felt looked best in the dark, she reflected that an attack of some mild disease might be a valuable form of retribution, and also afford the invalid leisure to repent of her sins. Still she did not quite like to mention this thought aloud, as it seemed too unkindly vengeful with regard to any one so obviously miserable as Gertrude.
One day on charitable plans intent the two conspirators dragged Gertrude out across the brown fields to have fun building a bonfire, as they had done the previous spring. But somehow the expedition was not much of asuccess—possibly because the wood was too damp to burn inspiritingly. On that other occasion Sara had been with them, and had kept them laughing. She could say the funniest things without stirring a muscle of her small solemn face. That stump speech of hers given from a genuine stump had sent them actually reeling home. This year—alas!—while returning to college rather silently, they saw Sara plodding toward them with an air of being out for sober exercise, not pleasure. The moment she spied them, she deliberately retraced her steps, and vanished through a hole in the hedge. This incident set Gertrude to chattering so excitedly about nothing in particular that the others knew she cared even more than they had fancied.
On the evening of the last day of March, Bea and Berta came rushing into the dining-room twenty minutes late for dinner. When they both declared that they did not want any soup—their favorite kind, too—Gertrude sighed impatiently over countermanding her order to the maid. It seemed as if she were not getting rested one bit this vacation, though she did nothing but read novels all day long.She felt sometimes as if she were hurrying every minute to escape from herself and her own thoughts. Everything irritated her in the strangest way. In all her busy healthful life she had never been nervous before. It was not hard work that had worn upon her. The doctor told them when they were freshmen that no girl ever broke down from work unless worry was added. Gertrude knew perfectly well what torturing little worry was gnawing away in her mind. She kept telling herself that her speech to Sara had been true—it was so—Sara had broken her engagement—and she could not, could not, could not humble herself to apologize. In fact, Sara was the one who ought to offer apologies. And all this time wilful Gertrude refused to acknowledge even to herself that she was juggling with her conscience in the desperate determination to hold herself free from blame in her own esteem. She simply could not beg anybody’s pardon, and she was not going to do it, because—well, because she had not been to blame—so there!
On this particular evening, after five solid minutes of silence on the part of her exasperatingroommates, she raised her heavy eyes, and let them rest expressionlessly on the two wind-freshened faces, till Bea’s roses blossomed to her hair.
“We’re not doing anything,” rebelliously, “you are so boss-y.”
“Moo-oo,” muttered Berta to her plate. “Bow-wow-wow.” Bea choked over her glass and fled precipitately, leaving her partner to capture a pitcher of milk ostensibly to drink before going to bed.
Of course they would have regretted missing dessert as well as soup, if Gertrude had not asked permission to carry some of the whipped cream to her room. It was easier to do something unnecessarily generous than to beg Sara’s pardon—which was merely plain hard duty. The girls were not in the study when she entered with her offering, but soon Bea dashed in and dropped breathlessly on the couch, with a conspicuous effort to act as if accustomed to arrive without her present double. Gertrude listened unsuspiciously to the flurried explanation that Berta was kept by a—a—a—friend, before she revealed the brimming trophy from dessert.
Bea clapped her hands. “Oh, you darling! the very thing! Won’t that pup”—an abrupt and convulsive cough subsided brilliantly into, “that pet of a Berta be pleased! I’ll take it to her this instant.”
However, she did not invite Gertrude to accompany her, and upon her return after a prolonged absence, she conducted herself with odd restlessness. In the intervals of suggesting that they put up an engaged sign or read aloud or darn stockings or play patience before going to a certain spread, she stared at the clock. Promptly at eight she escaped from the door, near which she had been lingering for the past quarter-hour, with the carefully distinct announcement that she was going after Berta, and later she might attend the spread.
Five minutes later she was bending over a fluffy little creature nestling on Gertrude’s best pillow in one of the partitioned off bathrooms at the end of the corridor.
“He’s been pretty good,” said Berta as she surrendered the spoon, “and he likes the cream, only the bubbles in it keep him awake, I think. Somebody hammered at the door solong that I had to stuff a lot into his mouth every time he started to cry.”
Bea assumed her station of nurse with businesslike briskness. “Hurry back to Gertrude, and coax her to go to that spread if you can. She’s terribly blue to-night. Be sure to get back here at nine, and I will take my turn at the party so that nobody will be too curious about this affair. At ten we shall both be here to decide about the night.”
“Then we can hook the door on the inside, and climb over the partition. Won’t it be fun! I wonder if I shouldn’t better practice doing it now,” and Berta looked longingly at the black walnut precipice.
“You trot along this instant, and don’t let Gertrude suspect anything for the world. Be just as natural as you know how—more than ever before in your life. I reckon I shall put him to sleep in a jiffy.”
“Try it,” called the ex-nurse with laconic scorn, “I’ll allow you the full hour for the experiment.”
It must have been a very full hour indeed, to judge from Bea’s feelings as the minutes dawdled past. It seemed to her that insteadof flying with their sixty wings, according to the rhyme, each minute trailed its feathers in the dust as it shuffled along. At first, it was amusing to watch for the mouth to open, and then pop in a spoonful of cream. But this soon became monotonous, especially when she learned that no matter how long she sat motionless beside the pillow, the bright little eyes blinked wide awake at her slightest stir to rise.
It was lonesome in that end of the great building. Their suite and Sara’s room next to it were the only ones occupied in that neighborhood during the vacation. This bathroom was as much as forty steps distant even from that populated spot, and not a single footfall had sounded in the corridor since Berta had disappeared into the gloom. The light from the outer apartment glimmered dully over the partition. At intervals in the stillness, a drop of water clinked from the faucet out there. Bea found herself holding her breath to listen for the tinkle of its splash. Outside the small window, a pale moon was drifting among fluffy clouds.
More than once Bea rose with exquisitecaution, and stole to the outer door, only to hear a plaintive whine, while four clumsy paws came pattering after her. Then followed more minutes of soothing him with cream, and watching for the little woolly sides to cease heaving so piteously. Perhaps after all it would have been wiser to have left this troublesome joke with his mother on the farm.
By the time this vague suggestion had wavered into her consciousness, the strain of waiting and listening began to re-act on her temper. Of course, Berta had forgotten all about her watching there alone in the dark. Berta was selfish and thoughtless and heedless. That very afternoon, while they were bringing the puppy to college, she had almost tipped the buggy over into a puddle. Berta had no right to impose upon her like this, and make her do the worst part of the work every time. Why, even when they went calling together, Bea always had to do the knocking and walk in first and manage the conversation and everything. And now Berta was having fun at the spread, and it must be near ten o’clock, for the watchman had alreadyshuffled softly past and turned the gas still lower. And she knew her foot was going to sleep, and she could never feel the same toward Berta Abbott again.
Bea was so sorry for herself that her lip began to quiver over a sobbing breath, when steps came hurrying helter-skelter, the door banged open, and Berta dived in.
“Oh, Bea, I’m dreadfully sorry! I couldn’t get away before. They held me—actually—and made me jig for them, and sing that last song I wrote. The preserved ginger was so delicious that I saved some for you. Nobody suspects a thing. How is the little dear?”
Bea rose with impressive dignity till the straightening of numb muscles inspired an agonized, “Ouch!” and a stiff wriggle. It was every bit Berta’s fault, and she evidently didn’t care a snap. She would show people whether they could walk all over her and never say boo! She would not lose her temper—oh, no! she would not utter a word—not a single one of all the scorching things she could think of. She would just be dignified and self-possessed and teach certain personsthat she did not intend to be imposed upon one instant longer. Therefore, Miss Beatrice Leigh flung open the door and stalked away without a backward glance.
“Hulloa!” ejaculated Berta, staring blankly after her, “what’s your rush?”
No answer; merely a somewhat more defiant swing of the slender shoulders vanishing in the dusk of the deserted corridor.
“What shall we do with the dog? You borrowed him—you’re responsible—it’s your idea,” following in a puzzled flurry as far as the threshold. “Shall I lock him in alone? I said all along it was silly.”
Those insolent shoulders sailed silently around the transverse and out of sight.
After a petrified moment, Berta drew a deep breath, and threw back her head while the crimson of quick resentment flamed from neck to hair. That was a nice way to be treated, when she had simply done her best not to arouse suspicion, exactly as Bea had warned her. She took two steps hastily away from the spot; then turned slowly and glanced in at the soft heap of white showing dimly on the darker blur of the pillow. Shecertainly did not propose to spend the entire night in playing nurse to anybody, especially after Bea had insulted her so unpardonably. It had been Bea’s idea all along too, and Berta had worked herself nearly to death to make it a success. The miles and miles she had tramped through the mud—and all to no result! Now everything was spoiled, and everybody had quarreled with everybody else. Whereupon Berta marched away to bed, leaving the swinging door unhooked and the outer door ajar. Bea was indisputably right in criticising her fellow conspirator as heedless.
At midnight Gertrude sprang from her pillow, both arms flung out into the darkness, every nerve quivering as she listened for a second scream. She had chosen the inside bedroom that had a window opening on the corridor. Now in the breathless silence, she heard a swift creak ending in the bang of an up-flung sash. A swish of light garments, a thud shaking the floor outside, and then bare feet flying in frantic haste past her room and into the alleyway.
A crash against the study door, and theknob rattled wildly. “Let me in, quick, quick! Help, Gertrude, help!”
There was a flash of white across the floor, the lock grated, and Sara was in Gertrude’s arms. Portières rustled apart, and two more apparitions loomed pallidly in the dark.
“Hulloa!” gasped Berta’s voice, while a woodeny click from Bea’s direction told of Indian clubs snatched bravely in readiness for war.
“Light the gas, girls,” ordered Gertrude quietly; “there, dear, don’t be frightened now. See, we are all here. We will take care of you. What was it startled you?”
“I don’t know. It was dark. Something moved. I heard something. I was afraid.”
Gertrude felt her tremble, and held her closer. Over the bowed head she spoke with her lips to the other two. “That steamboat shock.”
Bea caught the idea impulsively. “Oh, Sara!” she exclaimed, “you’re only nervous. You’ve often waked up and screamed a little ever since that night on the boat. It’s nothing. Crackie! but you frightened us at first!”
Sara lifted a white face. “This was different,”she said; “this was something alive. Hark!”
They leaned forward, listening. Yes, there was a footstep outside, muffled, stealthy. A board creaked. Something was breathing.
Gertrude and Berta looked at each other in quick challenge for mutual courage. All the other rooms at that end of the building were vacant; the long dark corridor stretched out its empty tunnel between them and available help. What could four girls do?
“We can scream,” said Bea.
“Lock the door—and the inner window—quick!” Gertrude flew to one, Berta to the other. “Sara, take this Indian club. Now if it really is—anything, scream. But don’t run. Don’t scatter. Scream—scream all together. Ah!”
The footsteps were coming down the alleyway toward the door. Bea filled her lungs, and opened her mouth in valiant preparation.
“Wee-wee-wee, bow-wow!” Two little paws scratched at the door.
Bea’s breath issued in a feeble squeak, as she dropped neatly down upon the floor and buried her face in her hands.
Berta swooped upon her. “The puppy!”
Gertrude felt herself freed from the encircling arms. She moistened her lips. “I am sorry, Sara, about the other night. I am—sorry.”
The pale little face upturned toward hers began to glow as if touched with sunshine. “I was late because Prexie kept me. I should have explained, but—but it hurt. I knew you were sorry.”
Berta sat up as if jerked into position by a wire, and briskly brushed the hair out of her eyes.
“Listen, Bea,” she whispered to a small pink ear half hidden by red curls, “they’re reconciled.”
“So are we,” said Bea, “please open the door for the puppy.”
CHAPTER VIIICLASSES IN MANNERS
Gertrude’s brother paid another visit to his sister at Class Day. At least, he was supposed to be visiting his sister, but it was really Bea who took charge of him during all that radiant June morning while Gertrude, as chairman of the Daisy Chain committee, was busy with her score of workers among the tubs of long-stemmed daisies in a cool basement room. Bea had immediately enrolled the young man as her first assistant in the arduous task of gathering armfuls of the starry flowers in the field beyond the dormitories.
After that labor was finished, and even Lila had deserted her for the sake of an insensate trunk that demanded to be packed, Bea conducted her companion to the lake. There through the golden hour of midday they drifted in the shadow of the overhanging trees along the shore. Once they paddled softly around the little island at the end, and a colony of baby mud-turtles went scramblingmadly from a log into the water. When the brother began to fish for one with an oar, Bea protested in a grieved tone.
“But you don’t seem to realize that I am worrying about freckles every minute that we stay out here in the broad sunlight. What are trees for if not to provide shade for girls without hats? And anyhow it is unkind to seek to tear a turtle from his happy home. If you do that, I shall never, never consent to admit you to our highest class in manners.”
“Highest class in manners,” he echoed, “that sounds promising. Is it another story?”
“It certainly is,” replied Bea, “and if you are very good indeed and will keep the boat close to the bank from the first word to the last, I will tell you all about it.”
Berta called it our classes in manners, but Miss Anglin, our sophomore English teacher, said that it was every bit as bad as gossip. When Berta told her that she was the one who had started us on it by advising us to read character in the street-cars, she looked absolutely appalled, and groaned, “What next?”
This was the beginning of it. When Miss Anglin took charge of our essay work the second semester, she explained that we should be required to write a one-page theme every day except Saturday and Sunday. Lila almost fainted away, because she hates writing anything, even letters home. Robbie Belle looked scared, and I opened my mouth so wide that my jaw ached for several minutes afterward. But Berta kept her wits about her. She said, “Miss Anglin, we are all living here together, and we see the same things every day. I’m afraid you’ll be bored when you read about them over and over. Why can’t some of us choose intellectual topics?”
By intellectual topics she meant subjects that you can read up in the encyclopædia. Miss Anglin sort of smiled. “Do you truly think that you all see the same things day after day? How curious! Have you ever played a game called Slander?”
“Yes, Miss Anglin,” said Berta, and went on to tell how the players sit in a circle, and the first one whispers a story to the second; and the second repeats it as accurately as she can remember to the third; and the third tellsit to the fourth, and so on till the last one hears it and then relates it aloud. After that the first one gives the story exactly as he started it. It is awfully interesting to notice the difference between the first report and the last one, because somehow each person cannot help adding a little or leaving out a little in passing it on to the next. That is the way slander grows, you know. The gossip may be true at first, or almost true, but it keeps changing and getting worse and worse and more thrilling as it spreads till finally it isn’t hardly true at all. That is how our classes in manners turned out.
Well, to go back to that day in the rhetoric section. Miss Anglin saw that we were discouraged before we had commenced and we didn’t know how to start; and so she began to suggest subjects. For instance, she said, one girl might wake up in the morning——Oh, but I am forgetting her application of the illustration from the game of Slander. She said that if no two persons receive the same impression from a whispered story spoken in definite words, it is probable that no two pairs of eyes see the same thing in the same way, tosay nothing of the ideas aroused in the different brains behind the eyes. One girl might wake up in the morning, as I was saying, and when she looks from the window she sees snow everywhere—provided it did snow during the night, you understand. Then she writes her daily theme about the beautiful whiteness, the shadows of bare trees, diamond sparkles everywhere and so forth. Another girl looks out of that very same window at the same time, and she doesn’t think of the beautiful snow merely as snow; she thinks of coasting or going for a sleigh-ride or something like that. And so her theme very likely will prove to be a description of a coasting carnival or tobogganing which she once enjoyed. Another girl looks out and thinks first thing, “Oh, now the skating is spoiled!” Her theme maybe will tell how she learned to skate by pushing a chair ahead of her on the ice.
Berta raised her hand again. “Well, but, Miss Anglin,” she said, “suppose it doesn’t snow?”
Berta is not really stupid, you know, quite the reverse indeed, but she is used to havingthe girls laugh at what she says. They laughed this time, and Miss Anglin did too, because she knew Berta was just drawing her out, so to speak. She went on to give other examples about the things we see while out walking or shopping or at a concert, and finally she drifted around to character-reading. She said a street-car was a splendid field for that. The next time one of us rode into town, she might try observing her fellow travelers. There might be a working-man in a corner, with a tin-bucket beside him. Maybe he would be wearing an old coat pinned with a safety-pin. By noting his eyes and the expression of his mouth the girl could judge whether he was just shiftless or untidy merely because his wife was too busy with the children to sew on buttons. She told a lot of interesting things about the difference between the man who holds his newspaper in one hand and the man who holds his in both. Some temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary, and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down firmly and decidedly at every step—though of course it needn’t be thumping—whilea dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts his head to listen, you can tell if he has executive ability or not.
Before the bell rang at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble over the threshold.
“Oho!” jeered Berta, “you’re careless. That’s as easy as alpha, beta, gamma.”
She meant a, b, c, you understand, but she prefers to say it in Greek, being a sophomore.
“But she isn’t careless,” protested Lila, “she’s the most careful person I ever met. The sole of her shoe is split, and that is the reason she stumbled.”
“Why is it split?” demanded Berta in her most argumentative tone; “would a nobly careful and painstakingly fastidious person insist upon wearing a shoe with a split sole? No, no! Far from it. If she had stumbled because the threshold wasn’t there, or because she had forgotten it was there, the inference would be at fault. I should impute the defect to her mentality instead of to her character,alas! A stumble plus a split sole! Ah, Robbie Belle, I must put you in a daily theme.”
Robbie Belle looked alarmed. “Indeed, Berta, I’d rather not. I was going to trim it off neatly this morning, but I have lent my knife to Mary Winchester.”
“Ha! lent her your knife!” declaimed Berta sternly, “another clue! This must be investigated. Why did she borrow your knife?”
“To sharpen her pencil,” answered Robbie. “I made her take it.”
“Her pencil! Her pencil!” muttered Berta darkly, “why her pencil? Are there not pens? Mayhap, ’tis not her pencil. Alas, alas! Her also I thrust into a daily theme.”
“She’s snippy about returning things,” said Lila, “she acts as if she didn’t care whether you do her a favor or not. I don’t like her.”
“She’s queer,” I said.
Now I had a perfect right to say that because it was true. Mary Winchester was just about the queerest girl in college. Everybody thought so. But I shall say no more at present, as her queerness is the subject of the restof this story. If I told you immediately just how she was queer and all the rest of it, there wouldn’t be any story left, would there?
Well, as the weeks whirled past, we studied character and wrote daily themes till we were desperate. Robbie Belle grew sadder and sadder until Berta suggested that she might describe the gymnasium, the chapel, the library, the drawing rooms, the kitchen, and so forth, one by one, telling the exact size and position of everything. That filled up quite a number of days. When Miss Anglin put a little note of expostulation, so to speak, on the theme about the corridor—it was, “This is a course in English, not mathematics, if you please,”—Berta started her in on the picture gallery. There were enough paintings there to last till the end of the semester. Of course, such work did not require her to read character. Robbie Belle didn’t want to do that somehow; she said it seemed too much like gossip.
However, at first, it wasn’t gossip. For instance one day Lila and I collected smiles. We scurried around the garden and dived in and out of the hedge in order to meet as manypeople as possible face to face. Then we took notes on the varieties of greeting and made up themes about them. Miss Anglin marked an excellent on mine that time. For another topic we paid one-minute calls on everybody we knew. When they looked surprised and inquired why we did not sit down, we frankly explained that we were gathering material for an essay on Reading Character from the Way a Person says “Come in!”
After we had been grinding out daily themes for three weeks we began to long for something to break the monotony. My brain was just about wrung dry, and Lila said she simply loathed the sight of a sheet of blank paper. One afternoon while I was struggling over my theme, Berta threw a snowball against my window, flew up the dormitory steps, sped down the corridor, gave a double rat-tat-too on my door, and burst in without waiting for an answer.
“Listen! Quick! I have an idea. It struck me out by the hedge. Why not study manners as well as character? Why not divide——”
“Go away. That snowball plop against thepane spoiled my best sentence. This is due in forty minutes. I’ve written up my family and friends and books and pictures, my summer vacations—a sunset at a time, my little——”
“Why not divide everybody, I say——”
“——dog at home,” I continued placidly. “I’ve composed themes about the orchard, the woods, the table-fare, the climate, the kitten I never owned, the thoughts I never had. To-day I was in despair for a subject till I happened to borrow one of your cookies and——”
“You did! My precious cookies! Burglar!”
“——bite it into scallops. Ha! an idea! I arranged myself on the rug with much care in order that I might stretch out the process to a whole page of narration. Thereupon I nibbled off the corners of the scallops till the cookie was round and smooth again. Next I bit it into scallops and then I nibbled off the corners; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit——”
“You did! Oh, I wish I——”
“——and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled, till there was nothing left but the hole. Now I am writing a scintillating and corruscating theme about it. Go away.”
Berta turned toward the door. “Some day you’ll wish you had listened,” she declared in accents heavy with gloom, “some day when you can’t think of a single thing to write about, and the hand keeps moving around the clock, and the paper lies there blank and horrible before your vacant eyes, and your pen is nibbled so short that your fingers——”
“I didn’t mean go away,” I said, “I meant, go on. Tell me about it.”
“Nay, nay! To lacerate my feelings, spurn my proffered aid, insult my youthful pristine zeal, and then to call me back—in short, to throw a dog a bone! Nay, nay!”
“Oh, Berta, be sweet. Tell me. You know that I think you have the most original ideas in college.” After I had coaxed her quite a lot, she told me her new scheme. It was something like advanced character reading and biology combined. Just as scientists classify trees and plants in botany, Berta proposedthat we should divide the students into different classes according to their manners.
“It will be so improving and instructive too,” she pleaded, “we’ll be paragons of politeness before we finish them all. We’ll be so particular about our highest class that we will notice every little thing and thus take warning.” She paused a moment; then, “Did you hear me say thus?” she inquired. When I nodded, she gazed at me sadly. “People who belong to the highest class never gesticulate; they use spoken language exclusively. Furthermore, as to the thus. I wondered if an up-springing sense of courtesy persuaded you to refrain from hooting at such elegant verbiage. That would be a sign of benefit already derived from the classes. By the way, it was Mary Winchester who inspired the idea.”
“Oh, but she has no manners at all!” I exclaimed before I thought.
“That is precisely the point. I met her flying along like a wild creature on her bicycle, eyes staring, hair streaming in the wind. At least, some locks were streaming. She gave the impression of a being utterlylawless. Then I thought——See here, Miss Leigh, are you interested in my thoughts?”
“Yes’m,” I answered meekly.
“Then drop that pen and pay attention. Even the girls who are to belong to the second class in manners know how to do that. Well, I thought that she hardly ever accepts an invitation, and she looks as she didn’t expect anybody to like her, and she minds her own business and does exactly as she pleases generally. My next important thought was that sometimes she cuts me in the hall, and sometimes she doesn’t, just as she happens to feel. That led to the philosophic reflection that politeness is a question of law.”
“Ah, pardon me, Miss Abbott, but I remember from a story which was read by my teacher about forty years ago when I was in the fourth reader that
“‘Politeness is to do or say
The kindest thing in the kindest way.’”
“That’s what I meant. The law of kindness—that’s what politeness is. Listen to the logic. Mary Winchester is lawless, hence she breaks the law of kindness, hence she has nomanners, hence it will be fun to divide everybody here into various classes according to their manners.”
So that is the way our classes began.
It was awfully, awfully interesting. Robbie Belle said she didn’t want to; but Berta and Lila and I talked and talked and talked. We sat in the windows and talked instead of dancing between dinner and chapel. We talked after chapel, and on our way to classes or to meals. And of course we talked while we were skating or walking or doing anything similar that did not demand intellectual application. Lila even talked about the classes in her sleep. We discussed everybody who happened to attract our attention.
Finally we had sifted out all the candidates for the highest class except three. One was the senior president, pink and white and slender and gentle and she never thumped when she walked or laughed with her mouth open or was careless about spots on her clothes or forgot the faces of new girls who had been introduced to her. The second was a professor who was shy and sweet and went off lecturing every week. The third was a teacher wholooked like a piece of porcelain and always wore silk-lined skirts and never changed the shape of her sleeves year after year. Not one of the three ever hurt anybody’s feelings.
Miss Anglin was obliged to go into the second class because she had moods. No, I don’t mean because she had them,—for sometimes you cannot help having moods, you know—but because she showed them. She let the moods influence her manner. Some mornings she would come down to breakfast as blue as my dyed brilliantine—(how I hated that frock!)—and would sit through the meal without opening her mouth except to put something into it; though on such occasions we noticed that she rarely put into it very much besides toast and hot water. On other days she made jokes and sparkled and laughed with her head bent down, and was so absolutely and utterly charming that the girls at the other tables wished they sat at ours, I can tell you. We three were exceedingly fond of her, but we agreed at last after arguing for seven days that true courtesy makes a person act cheerfully and considerately, no matter how she may feel inside.
There were about nine in that second class, and fourteen in the third and twenty in the fourth, when we started in on Mary Winchester.
Lila and I were rushing to get ready for the last skating carnival of the season. Some one knocked at the door. It was Mary, but she didn’t turn the knob when I called, “Come.” She just waited outside and gave me the trouble of opening it myself. Then in her offish way she asked if we were through with her lexicon. After I had hunted it up for her, she happened to notice that Lila was wailing over the disappearance of her skates.
“I saw a pair of strange skates in my room,” she said and walked away as indifferent as you please.
Now wouldn’t any one think that was queer?
It made Lila cross, especially when she found that the skates had three new spots of rust on them. March is an irritable month, anyhow, you know. Everybody is tired, and breakfast doesn’t taste very good. She sputtered about the rust till we reached the lake where we found two big bonfires and three musicians toplay dance music while we skated. Imagine how lovely with the flames leaping against the background of snowy banks and bare black trees! Berta and Lila and I crossed hands and skated around and around the lake with the crowd. When we stopped in the firelight, Lila looked unusually pretty with her rosy cheeks and her curls frosted by her breath. Berta’s eyes were like stars. Of course Robbie Belle was beautiful, but she did not associate much with us that evening. After one turn up and back again while we discussed Mary Winchester, she said she thought she would invite our little freshman roommate for the next number.
We kept on talking about Mary. Lila was insisting that she ought to be put in the tenth class or worse, while Berta maintained that she wasn’t quite so bad as that. I kept thinking up arguments for both sides.
Lila counted off her crimes, and she didn’t speak so very low either. “Mary Winchester doesn’t deserve a place even in the tenth class. Why, listen now. You admit that she borrows disgracefully and never returns things. At least, she helped herself to my skates. Itis almost the same as stealing. She has no friends. She always goes off walking alone, and sits in the gallery by herself at lectures and concerts. Everybody says she is queer.”
“Miss Anglin thinks girls in the mass are funny,” I volunteered, “though maybe they are not any more so than human kind in the bulk. She says that we all imagine we admire originality, but when we see any one who is noticeably different from the rest, we avoid her. We call her queer and are afraid to be seen with her.”
“Mary Winchester’s independence is commendable,” protested Berta. “I envy her strength of character. She ignores foolish conventions——”
“As for instance, the distinction between mine and thine,” interrupted Lila, “you don’t live next to her, and you don’t know. Her disregard for the property rights of others indicates a fatal flaw——”
“Fatal flaw, fatal flaw!” chanted Berta mischievously, “isn’t that a musical phrase! Say it fast now, and see if it tangles your tongue.”
I was afraid Lila would feel wounded, so I remarked hastily that we agreed that Mary was not polite; the question was as to the degree of impoliteness.
“Even Robbie Belle acknowledges that she is not a lady,” chimed in Berta; “she said it when Mary wanted to take that stray kitten to the biological laboratory. She declared it would be happier if dead.”
“And it wasn’t her kitten either,” I contributed. “Robbie found it up a tree. It is necessary to weigh every little point in a scientific study like this.”
“Don’t you see, girls, that Mary Winchester does not come from good stock,” began Lila, “of course she isn’t a lady. Her attitude toward the rights of others is certain proof that her family has a defective moral sense. Perhaps her brother——”
“Oh, let’s follow out the logical deductions,” cried Berta. “That course in logic is the most fascinating in the whole curriculum. See—if a girl lacks moral judgment, she either inherits or acquires the defect. If she inherits it, her father doubtless was dishonest. Maybe he speculated and embezzled or gambledor something. If she acquired it through environment, her brother must have suffered likewise as they were presumably brought up together. So perhaps Mary Winchester’s brother was expelled from college for kleptomania.”
“Then,” said Lila triumphantly, “how can we possibly put her into even the lowest of our classes in manners?”
“Hi, there!” I started to scream before the breath was knocked out of me by colliding with some girls who had been skating in front of us. One of them had caught her skate in a crack, and we were so intent on our conversation that we bumped into them, and all tumbled in a heap. Nobody was hurt. That is, nobody was hurt physically. We picked ourselves up and went on skating as before. It was not until days later that we discovered what had been hurt then. It was Mary Winchester’s reputation. Those girls in front had overheard part of our remarks. And they thought that we were talking about real facts instead of just analyzing character.
It was exactly like a game of slander, only worse. The rumor that Mary Winchester’sfather was a gambler and that her brother had been expelled from college for stealing spread and grew like fire. You know, as I said before, she was a queer girl—so queer in countless small ways that she was conspicuous. Even freshmen who did not know her name had wondered about the tall, wild-looking girl who had a habit of tearing alone over the country roads as if trying to get away from herself. Naturally when such a report as this one of ours reached them, they adopted it as a satisfactory explanation. They also, so to speak, promulgated it.
The first we knew of the rumor was from Robbie Belle. It was the afternoon before the Easter vacation, and Lila and I were in Berta’s room to help her pack her trunk. At least Lila held the nails while Berta mended the top tray and I did the heavy looking on. When Berta stopped hammering and put her thumb in her mouth, I remarked that nobody who squealed ouch! in company could belong to our highest class in manners.
Lila’s expression changed from the pained sympathy of friendship to the scientific zeal of character study. “Girls, have you noticedMary Winchester lately? It is the strangest thing! She seems more alone and alien than ever. The girls avoid her as if she had the plague. In the library and the corridor to-day it was as plain as could be. They stop talking when she comes around. They watch her all the time though they try not to let her know it. Of course, she couldn’t help feeling it. They point her out to each other, and raise their brows and whisper after she has passed. She moves on with her head up and her mouth set tight. Her manners are worse than ever.”
“When I met her this morning, she looked right through me and didn’t see anything there, I reckon,” said I, “and, oh, Lila, you were mistaken about her borrowing your skates without leave. It was Martha who had them that morning. In rushing to class she got mixed up and threw them in at the wrong door, that’s all. Our example is corrupting the infant.”
Berta forgot her aching thumb. “Something is wrong. Mary’s eyes are those of a hunted creature. Driven into a corner. Everybody against her. I wonder——”
Robbie Belle walked slowly into the room, her clothes dripping with water.
“Mary Winchester fell into the lake,” she said, “you did it.”
In the silence I heard Berta draw a long sigh. Then she dropped her hammer.
“She broke through the ice,” added Robbie Belle.
“But the ice is rotten. How did she get on it?” asked my voice.
“She walked,” answered Robbie Belle, “I saw her.” Then she crossed over to Berta, put both arms around her neck, hid her face against her shoulder, and began to shake all over. “I helped pull her out, and she fought me—she fought——”
At that moment little Martha, our freshman roommate, came running in. “That queer girl jumped into the lake. I saw them carrying her to the infirmary. She did it because everybody knows her father is in the penitentiary. They heard about it at the skating carnival. Her brother is an outlaw too——”
Robbie Belle lifted her head. “She hasn’t any brother, but it is true about her father.The doctor knows. She wonders how the story got out. It was a secret. Mary changed her name. She—she fought me.”
I heard Berta sigh again. It sounded loud. Lila sat staring straight in front of her with such a horrified expression on her white face that I shut my eyes quick.
When I opened them again, Miss Anglin stood in the doorway. I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life. But we did not tell her then about our classes in manners. We waited till one day in June when she asked us how we had managed to win Mary out of her shell.
As I look back now I cannot possibly understand how we succeeded. It was the most discouraging, hopeless, hardest work I ever stuck to. Over and over again Berta and I would have given up if it had not been for Lila. She said that she dared not fail. Of course Robbie Belle helped a lot in her steady, beautiful way. Martha did her best too, partly because she was so sorry about her share in the affair of the skates. In fact all the girls were perfectly lovely to Mary after the doctor had persuaded her not to throw everything upand run away to hide. By and by she realized that it was no use to refuse to be friends.
Indeed she is a dear girl when you get to know her real self. Her unfortunate manner—it was unfortunate, you know—had been a sort of armor to shield her sore pride. She had been afraid of letting anybody have a chance to snub her. That was the reason why she had seemed so offish and suspicious and indifferent and lawless and queer.
Do you know, I never heard Robbie Belle say a sharp thing except once. She said it that day when we were telling Miss Anglin about the classes. It was: “Whenever I want to say something mean about anybody, I think I shall call it a scientific analysis of character.”