IIA CASE OF INTERFERENCE
"What I want to know," said the chairman of the committee, wearily, "is just this. Are we going to give theLady of Lyons, or are we not? I have a music lesson at four and a tea at five, and while your sprightly and interesting conversation is ever pleasing to me—"
"Oh, Neal, don't! Think of something for us! Don't you want us to give it?"
"I think it's too love-making. And no one up here makes love. The girls will howl at that garden scene. You must get something where they can be funny."
"But, Neal, dear,youcan make beautiful love!"
"Certainly I can, but I can't make it alone, can I? And Margaret Ellis is a stick—a perfect stick. But then, have it! I see you're bent on it. Only I tell you one thing—it will take more rehearsing than the girls will want to give. And I shan't do one word of it publicly till I think that we have rehearsed enough together. So that's all I've got to say till Wednesday, and Imustgo!"
The door opened—shut; and before thecommittee had time for comment or criticism, their chairman had departed.
"Neal's a trifle cross," suggested Patsy, mildly. "Something's the matter with her," said Julia Leslie. "She got a note from Miss Henderson this afternoon, and I think she's going to see her now. Oh, I haven't the vaguest idea—What? No, I know it's not about her work. Neal's all straight with that department. Well, I think I'll go over to the Gym and hunt out a suit. Who has the key to the property box now?"
The little group dissolved rapidly and No. 18 resumed its wonted quiet. "There's nothing like having a society girl for a room-mate, is there, Patsy?" said the resident Sutton twin, opening the door. She and her sister were distinguishable by their room-mates alone, and they had been separated with a view to preventing embarrassing confusion, as they were incredibly alike. "Couldn't I make the Alpha on the strength of having vacated this hearth and home eighteen times by actual count for its old committees?"
"I've put you up five times, Kate, love, but they think your hair's too straight. Couldn't you curl it?"
Kate sniffed scornfully. "I've always knownthat the literary societies had some such system of selection," she said to the bureau. "Now, in an idle moment of relaxation, the secret is out! Patsy, Iscornthe Alpha, and the Phi Kappa likewise."
"I scorn the Phi Kappa myself, theoretically," said Patsy.
"Do you think they'll take in that queer junior, you know, that looks so tall till you get close to her, and then it's the way she walks?"
"Dear child, your vivid description somehow fails to bring her to my mind."
"Why don't you want her in Alpha? But be careful you don't wait too long! You're both leaving me till late in the year, you know, and then, ten to one, the other one gets me!"
"A little violet beside a mossy stone is a poor comparison, Katharine, but at the moment I think of no other. I am glad you grasp the situation so clearly, though."
"But, truly, I wonder why they don't take that girl—isn't her name Hastings?—into Phi Kappa? She writes awfully well, they say, and I guess she recites well enough."
The other Sutton twin sauntered in, and appearing as usual to grasp the entire conversation from the beginning, rolled her sister offthe couch, filled her vacant place, and entered the discussion.
"But, my dear child, you know she won't make either society! She's too indifferent—she doesn't care enough. And she's off the campus, and she doesn't go out anywhere, and she is always alone, and that speaks for itself—"
"Oh, I'm tired of talking about her! Stop it, Kate, and get some crackers, that's a dear! Or I'll get them myself," and Patsy was in the hall.
Kate shook her head wisely at the bureau. "Something's in the air," she said softly. "Patsy is bothered. So is Neal. And there are plenty of crackers on the window-seat!"
Miss Margaret Sewall Pattison sauntered slowly down the stairs. For one whose heart was set on crackers she seemed strangely indifferent to the hungry girls standing about the pantry with fountain pens and lecture books and racquets and hammocks under their arms. She walked by them and out of the door, stood a moment irresolutely on the porch, and then, as she caught sight of Cornelia Burt coming out of the dormitory just beyond, she hurried out to meet her.
"Busy this hour, Neal?" she said.
"No," said Cornelia, briefly. "Where shall we go?"
"We can go to the property box and get some clothes," said Patsy, "and talk it over there."
In the cellar of the gymnasium it was cool and dim. The beams rose high above their heads, and a musty smell of tarlatan and muslin and cheese-cloth filled the air. Patsy sat on an old flower-stand, and pushed Cornelia down on a Greek altar that lay on its side with a faded smilax wreath still clinging to it.
"What did she say to you, Neal?" she asked.
Neal looked at the floor. "She was lovely, but I didn't half appreciate it. I was so bothered and—vexed. Pat, I didn't know the Faculty ever did this sort of thing, did you?"
"I don't believe they often do," said Patsy. "Did she read that thing to you, too?"
"Yes. Patsy, that's a remarkable thing. Do you know, when I went there I thought she was going to call me down for taking off the Faculty in that last Open Alpha. The girls say she hates that sort of thing. You know she always says just what she thinks. And she said, 'I want to read you a little story, Miss Burt, that happened to come into my hands, and that has haunted me since.'"
"How do you supposeshegot hold of it?" queried Patsy.
"I don't know, I'm sure. I certainly shouldn't pick her out to exhibitmythemes to!—I never saw them together."
"I think I saw them walking once—well, go on!"
"'For theMonthly?' said I.
"'No,' said she. 'I think the author would not consent to its publication.' And then she read it to me. Pat, if that girl has suffered as much as that, I don't see how she stays here."
"She's too proud to do anything else," said Patsy. "Go on."
"Then Miss Henderson said: 'I needn't tell you the value of this thing from a literary point of view, Miss Burt.'
"'No,' said I, 'you needn't.'
"'Very well,' said she; 'then I'll tell you something else. Every word of it is true.'
"'I'm sorry,' said I."
"Oh, Neal! I cried when she read it to me! I blubbered like a baby. And she was so nice about it. But I hated her, almost, for disturbing me so."
"Precisely. So I said: 'And what have you read this to me for, Miss Henderson?' And then she told me that the girl in the story wasWinifred Hastings. She has always lived with older people and been a great pet and sort of prodigy, you know, and was expected to do great things here, and found herself lonely, and was proud and didn't make friends, and got farther away from the college instead of nearer to it, and all that. And I said, 'I suppose she's not the only one, Miss Henderson.' And she looked at me so queerly. 'Mephistopheles said that,' said she."
"Oh! Neal! How could you? I—why are you so cold and—"
"Unsympathetic? I don't know. We all have the defects of our qualities, I suppose. Miss Henderson was quite still for a moment, looking at me. I felt like a fly on a pin. 'Why do you try so hard to be cruel, Miss Burt?' said she, finally. 'I think you have an immense capacity for suffering and for sympathy. Is it because you are afraid to give way to it?' And I said, 'Exactly so, Miss Henderson. I never go to the door when the tramps come.'
"'Neither did I, once,' said she, 'but I found it was a singularly useless plan. You've got to, some time, Miss Burt.'
"'That's what I've always been afraid of, but I'm putting it off as long as I can,' said I.
"And then she told me that this was thefirst time that she had done anything of this kind for a long while. 'I don't believe in helping people to their places, as a rule,' she said. 'They usually get what they deserve, I fancy. But this is a peculiar case. You suppose she is not the only one, Miss Burt? I hope there are very few like her. I have never known of a girl of her ability to lose everything that she has lost. There are girls who are queer and erratic and somewhat solitary and perhaps discontented, but they get into a prominence of their own and you call it a "divine discontent," and make them geniuses, and they get a good deal out of it, after all. There are girls who are queer and quick-tempered, but good students, and devoted to a few warm friends, and their general unpopularity doesn't trouble them particularly. There are the social leaders, who don't particularly suffer if they don't get into a society, who are popular everywhere, and get the good time they came for. But Winifred Hastings has somehow missed all these. She got started wrong, and she's gone from bad to worse. She is not solitary by nature, and yet she is more alone than the girls who like solitude, even. She is not naturally reserved, and yet she is considered more so than almost any girl in college. I believe herto have great executive ability. I consider her one of the distinctly literary girls in her class,—and if there is anything in essentially "bad luck," I do honestly believe that she is the victim of it. Her characteristics are so balanced and opposed to each other that she can't help herself, and she does things that make her seem what she is not. Her real self is in this story. You can see the pathos of that!'"
Neal drew a long breath. "Did she say that to you?" she concluded.
"No, not exactly. She told me that she was speaking to me as one of the social influences of the college. I felt like a cross between Madame de Staël and Ward McAllister, you know. And then she spoke of the power we have, the girls like me, and how a little help—oh, Neal! itdoesmean a good deal, though! I can't make people take this girl up, all alone! The girls aren't—"
"They are! They're the merest sheep! If you do it, they'll all follow you. That is, if she's really worth anything. Of course, they aren't fools."
"She sat on me awfully, though, Neal! I said, 'I suppose you think we ought to have her in Alpha, Miss Henderson.' She gave me a look that simply withered me. 'My dearMiss Pattison,' said she, in that twenty-mile-away tone, 'I am not in the habit of suggesting candidates for either of the societies: I must have made myself far from clear to you.' And I apologized. But it's what she meant, all the same!"
"Of course it is. Well, I suppose she's right. It isn't everybody would have dared to do that much. I respect her for it myself. You are to launch her socially, I am to—"
"Neal Burt, I think you ought to be ashamed! Didn't Miss Henderson tell you how Winifred Hastings admired you?"
"Yes. She said that I was the only girl in the college whose friendship—Oh, dear! I wish she had gone to Vassar, that girl! Heavens! It's half-past three! I must go this minute. Well, Patsy, we're honored, in a way. I don't think Miss Henderson would talk to every one as she has to us, do you?"
"No," said Patsy, gravely, "I don't. You know, Neal, just as I was going, she said, 'Of course you realize, Miss Pattison, that only you and I and Miss Burt have seen this story?' 'I understand,' said I. 'Perhaps I have done this because I understand Miss Hastings better than she thinks,' she said. 'I—I was a little like her, myself, once, Miss Pattison!'"
"Yes," said Neal, "she told me that."
"I don't see why Miss Henderson doesn't take her up herself, if she understands her so terribly well," scowled Patsy. "She looks just like the kind of girl to be devoted to one person and all that, you know. Miss Henderson could go for walks with her and—"
"Too much sense!" said Neal, briefly. "She wants to get her in with the girls. That sort of thing would kill her with the girls, and she knows it."
"Oh, bother! Look at B. Kitts—she's a great friend of Miss Henderson's, and look at yourself!"
"Not at all," Neal returned decidedly. "Biscuits was in with your set long before she got to know Miss Henderson, and I knew Marion Hunter at home before she came up here. It's all very well to chum with the Faculty if you're in with the girls, too, but otherwise—as my friend Claude says, Nay, nay, Pauline! Besides, Miss Henderson doesn't go in for that sort of thing anyhow—she's too clever."
"Oh, well, I suppose itisbest for us to do it. I guess she's right enough," said Patsy, rising as she spoke, "and I suppose we can do it as well as anybody, for that matter."
They mounted the stone steps and came out into a light that dazzled them. "There she is!" said Patsy softly, as a tall girl, plainly dressed, walked quickly by them. Her face was strangely set, her mouth almost hard, her eyes looked at them with an expression that would have been defiant but for something that softened them as they met Neal's. She bowed to her, hardly noticing Patsy's "Good afternoon, Miss Hastings!" and hurried off to the back campus. Behind were two freshmen loaded with pillows. "Isn't that Miss Hastings?" said one.
"Yes. She's going to leave college."
"Oh! Well, we can lose her better than some others I could mention," said the prettier and better dressed of the two. Then, catching sight of Patsy and Neal, she stopped and blushed a little. "Did—did you get my note, Miss Burt? Will you come?" she asked prettily. Neal smiled.
"Why, yes, I shall be pleased—at four on Saturday, I think you said?" And then as the two moved on she added, "I heard you say something about Miss Hastings: is it true she's going to leave?"
"Yes," said the other freshman, importantly. "Immediately, she told Mrs. White.I'm in the house with her. I think she said next week. She's disappointed in college, I guess. Well, I should think she would be. She—"
"I trust the college has given her no reason to be," said Neal, gravely. "I sometimes think her attitude—if that should happen to be her attitude—somewhat justifiable." And before the freshman could recover, Miss Burt and her friend were halfway across the campus.
Patsy sighed with admiration. "Oh, Cornelia, how I reverence you!" she said. "I couldn't do that to save my soul. No. Once I tried it, and the freshman laughed at me. I slunk away—positively slunk."
But Neal did not laugh. "I can't see what to do," she half whispered, as if to herself. "Next week—next week! Why then, why then, it's all over with her. She's thrown up the sponge!"
Patsy peered into Cornelia's face and caught her breath. "Why, Neal, do you care? Do you really care?" she said. Neal looked at her defiantly through wet lashes. "Yes, I do care. I think it's horrible. To have her beaten like this!—I have to go now. Be sure to come to Alpha to-night!"
"When Cornelia leaves, she leaves sudden,"said Kate Sutton, from the window. "Coming up?"
Patsy stamped slowly up the two flights, and rummaged in a very mussy window-box for a silk waist. Her room-mate listened for some expression of grief or joy to give the tone to conversation, but none came; so she began on her own account.
"Martha says," indicating her twin, who was polishing the silver things with alcohol and a preparation fondly believed by her to be whiting, but which incessant use had reduced to a dirty gritty gum, "Martha says she knows who's going in to-night."
"Oh, indeed?"
"Yes. She says it's Eleanor Huntington and Leila Droch. She knows for certain."
"Great penetration she has—they've never been mentioned," returned the senior, absent-mindedly, grabbing under the chiffonier for missing hair-pins.
A shriek of triumph from the twins brought her to her knees.
"Aha! I told you they weren't in it! Perhaps you'll believe me again! Perhaps I can't find out a thing or two!"
The twins shook hands delightedly, and Patsy, irritated at her slip, grabbed again forthe hair-pins, incidentally discovering a silver shoe-horn and a fountain pen.
"Very clever you are—very," she remarked coldly. "Quite unusual, and so young, too. No wonder your parents are worried!"
This was a bitter cut, for the twins were industriously engaged in living down the report that the Registrar had in their freshman year received a note from Mrs. Sutton imploring her to curb if necessary their passion for study, which invariably brought on nervous headaches. This was peculiarly interesting to their friends, who had never remarked any undue application on their part and were, of course, proportionately eager to caution them against it. They squirmed visibly now and changed their tone abruptly.
"They say that Frances Wilde was terribly disappointed about making Alpha—she'd much rather have got Phi Kappa," said Kate, with a mixture of malice and humility.
Patsy was silent. Martha grinned and took up the conversation.
"But her heart would have been broken if she hadn't gotten in this year," she returned amiably.
Patsy turned and glared at them, one arm in the silk waist.
"What utter nonsense!" she broke out. "As if it made any matter, one way or the other! As if it made two cents' worth of difference! You know perfectly well that it's no test at all—making a society. Look at the girls who are in! It's a farce, as Neal says—" She stopped and scowled at them defiantly. The twins gasped. This from a society girl to them, as yet unelect! Even for a conversation with the Sutton twins, with whom, owing to their own contagious example, truth was bound to fly out sooner or later, this was unusual. It was odd enough to discuss the societies at all with perfectly eligible sophomores who might reasonably expect to enter one or another sometime and who were nevertheless yet uncalled; but the twins discussed everything with everybody, utterly regardless of etiquette, tradition, or propriety, and their upper-classroom-mates had long ago given up any ideas of reserve and discipline they might have held.
Martha gasped but promptly replied. "That's all very well for Cornelia Burt," she said, with the famous Sutton grin. "Anybody who made the Alpha in the first five and was known well enough to have been especially wanted in Phi Kappa and even begged to refuse—"
"How did you know that, Martha Sutton?"
"Oh! how did I? The President confided it to me one day when he was calling. As I say, Neal Burt and you can afford to talk; you can say it's a bore and all that and make fun of the meetings—"
"I don't!"
"You do! I heard you growling about it to Neal. And Bertha Kitts said she'd about as soon conduct a class prayer-meeting as Phi—Oh, not to me, naturally, but I know the girl who heard the girl she said it to! Heard her tell about it, I mean.
"It's all very well for you, but you'd feel differently if you were out! It's just like being a junior usher. There are plenty of spooks in, but there aren't many bright girls out. Everybody knows that lots of the society girls are pushed in by their friends and pulled in for heaven knows what—certainly not brains! But, just the same, you know well enough that you can count on one hand all the girls in the college that you'd think ought to be in and aren't. You don't know anything about it, for you were sure of it and everybody knew it, but the ones that aren't, they're the ones that worry! Why, I know sophomores to-day that will cry all night if they don't get their notesand their flowers and their front seat in chapel Monday!"
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Oh, nonsense, indeed! Won't they, Katie?"
"Sure!" returned her sister, placidly.
"I guess Alison Greer will cry all right, if she's not in!"
Patsy bit her lip and tapped her foot nervously. Then she shrugged her shoulders and opened the door, turning to remark, "You don't seem to be wasted away, either of you!"
"Oh, we! We're all right!" replied Martha, comfortably. "We never expected it sophomore year, anyhow. Nothing proddy about us, you know. Too many clever girls in the sophomore class, you see. But we expect to amble in next year, we do. And violets from you. And supper at Boyden's. Oh, yes! Don't you worry about us, Miss Pattison, we're all right!"
Miss Pattison sighed: sighs usually ended one's conversations with the twins, for nothing else so well expressed one's attitude.
"It's a pity you're so shrinking," she contented herself with observing. "I'm afraid you'll never come forward sufficiently to be known well by either society!" And she went down to get her mail.
II
There was a full meeting of the Alpha that Saturday night. The vice-president was lobbying energetically in behalf of a sophomore friend who would prove the crown and glory of the society, if all her upper-class patroness said of her could possibly be true. There was but one place open for the rest of the term, for the society had grown unusually that year, and some conservative seniors had pressed hard on the old tradition that sixty was a suitable and necessary limit, and put a motion through to that effect, and every possible junior had been elected long ago. So the vice-president was distinctly hopeful. Amid the buzz and clamor of fifty-odd voices, the president slapped the table sharply. "Willthe meeting please come to order!" she cried. A little rustle, and the handsome secretary arose. "The regular meeting of the Alpha Society was held—" and the report went on.
"Are there any objections to this report?" asked the president, briskly. "Yes. It's far too long," muttered Suzanne Endicott, flippantly. The president looked at her reproachfully, and added, "If not, we will proceed to the election of new members—I mean the new member. As you probably know, there is butone place left, according to the recent amendment, and I think that we will vote as usual on the three that are before us, and elect the one having the most affirmative ballots. Are there any objections to this method?" There were none. The vice-president glanced appealingly at the girl she was not quite sure of and smiled encouragingly at the sophomore she had successfully intimidated. The secretary rose again. "The names to be voted on this evening are Alison Greer, '9-, Katharine Sutton, '9-, Marion Dustin, '9-," she announced. "I may add that Miss Sutton has the highest marks from the society, and that if we don't take her this time there is very little doubt that Phi Kappa Psi will. They'll be afraid to risk another meeting."
"That's true," said somebody, as the buzzing began again. "We're carrying this point a little too far. I declare, it's harder to decide on the people that aren't prods than anybody would imagine. We know we want 'em sometime, but we put it off so long—"
"Kate Sutton's awfully bright! I think she should have been here before. I've been trembling for fear we'd lose her by waiting so long—"
"Still, Marion issucha dear, and it's prettylate for a girl that's been known so well for so long, without getting in, it seems to me," said the vice-president, skilfully. "Why didn't she get in before if she was so bright?"
"And there's Martha, too. They're just alike. I think Martha's a little brighter, if anything. Shall we have to take 'em both?"
"No. The girls all say to give her to Phi Kappa, and tell 'em apart by the pins!"
"Like babies!"
"How silly!"
"To be perfectly frank, Miss Leslie, I must say I don't think so. Alison is an awfully dear girl, and all that, but I hardly think she represents the element we hope to get into Alpha. I'm sorry to say so, but—"
"The voting has begun," said the president. "Will you hurry, please?"
"Miss President," said Cornelia Burt, rising abruptly, "may I speak to the society before the voting?"
"Certainly, Miss Burt," said the president. There was an instant hush, and the girls stood clustered about the ballot-table in their pretty, light dresses—a charming sight, Neal thought vaguely, as she hunted for the words to say.
"I know perfectly well that what I am aboutto propose is quite unconstitutional," she began, and to her own ears her voice seemed far off. How many there were, and how surprised and attentive they looked! They were no fools, as she had said. They represented the cleverest element in the college, on the whole, and they had, naturally enough, their own designs and inclinations—why should they be turned from them in a moment?
"I know that no girl is eligible for voting upon until she has been read two meetings before, and been properly put up for membership, and all that," said Neal, quietly, with her eyes fixed on Patsy's, who tried to evade them. Poor Patsy. She wanted Kate to get the society in her sophomore year! "But I am in possession of certain facts that seem to me to warrant the breaking through the constitution, if such a thing can ever be done."
The silence had become intense. An ominous look of surprise deepened on the girls' faces, and the president looked doubtfully at the secretary.
"I think I am quite justified in believing that I have not the reputation of a sentimental person," said Cornelia. She had herself well in hand, now. The opposition that she felt nerved her to her customary self-possession.A little grin swept around the room. She was, apparently, quite justified.
"I have been in the Alpha as long as any one here," said Neal, quietly still, "and in all this time I have never proposed any one for membership in it. I have voted whenever I knew anything about the person in question, and I have never blackballed but once. I think I may say I have done my share of work for the society—"
There was a unanimous murmur of deep and unqualified assent. "You have done more than your share," said the president, promptly.
"I mention these things," said Neal, "in order that you may see that I recognize the need of some apology for what I am about to propose. I want to propose the name of Winifred Hastings to-night, and have her voted on with the rest. If it is a possible thing, I want her elected. That she would be elected without any doubt, I am certain, if only I could put the facts of the case properly before you. That she must be elected, now, to-night, is absolutely necessary, for by another meeting she will have left the college—left it for the lack of just such recognition as membership in the society will give her."
Cornelia Burt was a born orator. Neverwas she so happy as when she felt an audience, however small, given over to her, eyes and ears, for the moment. She stood straight as a reed, and looked easily over their faces, holding by very force of personality their attention. She spoke without the slightest hesitation, yet perfectly simply and after no set form. Insensibly the girls around her felt conviction in her very presence: they agreed with her against their will, while she was speaking.
"Before I go any farther, I want to tell you that Miss Hastings is no friend of mine," said Neal. "I hardly know her. Only lately I have learned the circumstances that led me to take this step. I feel that I must do this thing. I feel that we are letting go from the college a girl whose failure in life, if she fails, will be in our hands. We can elect these others later: Winifred Hastings leaves the college next week. And, speaking as editor of the college paper, I must say that she carries with her some of the best literary material in the college. You ask me why we have never seen it—I tell you, because she is a girl who needs encouragement, and she has never had it. She can do her best only when it is called for. Some of you may think you know her—maythink that she is proud and solitary and disagreeable: she is not.Thisis the real girl!"
And, stepping farther into the circle, Cornelia, by an effort of memory she has never equalled since, told them, with the simplest eloquence, the pathetic story of Winifred Hastings' life, as she had written it. She did not comment—she only related. Her keen literary appreciation had caught the most effective parts, and she had the dramatic sense to which every successful speaker owes so much. Under her touch the haughty, solitary figure of a scarcely known girl melted away before them, and they saw a baffled, eager, hungry soul that had fought desperately, and was going silently away—beaten.
Cornelia Burt had made speeches before, and she made them afterward, to larger and more excited college audiences, but she never held so many hearts in her hand as she did that night. She was not a particularly unselfish girl, but no one who heard her then ever called her egotistic afterward. Her whole nature was thrown with all its force into this fight—for it was a fight.
Perhaps there is nowhere an audience less sentimental and more critical than a group of clever college girls. They see clearly for themost part, and, like all clever youth, somewhat cruelly. They object to being ruled by any but their chosen, and however they admired her, Cornelia was not their chosen leader. It was not because her speech was able, but because it was so evident that she believed herself only the means of preventing a calamity that she was striving with all her soul to avert, that she impressed them so deeply.
For she did impress them. When she ended, it was very quiet in the room. "I have broken a confidence in telling this," she said. "The girl herself would rather die than have you know it, I'm sure, and now—I feel afraid. It has been a bold stroke; if I have lost, I shall never forgive myself. But oh! Icannothave her go!"
She sat down quickly and stared into her lap. The spell of her voice was gone, the girls looked at each other, and a tall, keen-eyed girl with glasses got up. "I wish to say," she said, "that while Miss Burt's story is terribly convincing, still this may be a little exaggerated, and, at any rate, think of the precedent! If this should be done very often—"
"But it won't be!" cried some one with a somewhat husky voice, and Patsy rudely interrupted the speaker. Dear Patsy! Shecrushed her handkerchief in her hand and said good-by to Kate: she would have liked to put her pin in Kate's shirt-waist, and now—now Phi Kappa would get her! When Patsy spoke, it was with the voice of eleven, for she carried at least ten of the leading set in the Alpha with her.
"I think we are all very glad to realize that there won't be many such cases—most people have compensations—we ought to be willing to break the constitution again for such a thing, anyhow—and, Miss President, I move that Miss Hastings be voted upon by acclamation!"
"I second the motion," said the vice-president, quickly.
"It is moved and seconded that Miss Hastings be voted upon by acclamation," said the president. "All in favor—"
"Miss Hastings has yet to be proposed," said some one, after the vote.
The president looked at Cornelia.
"I propose Winifred Hastings, '9-, as a member of the Alpha Society," said Cornelia, with flaming cheeks and downcast eyes. She dared not look at them. Were they going to punish her? She heard the motion announced, she heard the name put up.
"All in favor please signify by rising," said the president, and only when the Alpha rose in a body did Cornelia lift her eyes.
They were all looking at her, and she stepped a little back.
"I cannot thank you," she said, so low that they leaned forward to hear. "It was no affair of mine, as I said. But—I think you—we—shall never regret this election." And then they applauded so loudly that the freshmen on the campus could not forbear peeping under the blinds to see what they were doing. They saw only the president, however, as she stepped back to the table and said with an air of relief—for, after all, emotion is very wearing—"We will now proceed to the literary programme of the evening!"
"But Neal, dear," said Patsy, as they settled themselves to listen, "do you think she'll stay? (Oh, Neal! I'm so proud of you!)"
"Shut up, Patsy!" said Neal, rudely. Then, as she thought of what Miss Henderson had told her of Winifred Hastings: "You are the only girl whose friendship"—she blushed. Then, assuming a bored expression, she looked at the girl who was reading. "I fear there's no doubt she will!" said Cornelia Burt.
THE THIRD STORY
IIIMISS BIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
"I wouldn't have minded so much," explained Katherine, dolefully, and not without the suspicion of a sob, "if it wasn't that I'd asked Miss Hartwell and Miss Ackley! I shall die of embarrassment—I shall! Oh! why couldn't Henrietta Biddle have waited a week before she went to Europe?"
Her room-mate, Miss Grace Farwell, sank despairingly on the pile of red floor-cushions under the window. "Oh, Kitten! you didn't ask them? Not really?" she gasped, staring incredulously at the tangled head that peered over the screen behind which Katherine was splashily conducting her toilet operations.
"But I did! I think they're simply grand, especially Miss Hartwell, and I'll never have any chance of meeting her, I suppose, and I thought this was a beautiful one. So I met her yesterday on the campus and I walked up to her—I was horribly scared, but I don't think I showed it—and, said I, 'Oh, Miss Hartwell, you don't know me, of course, but I'm Miss Sewall, '9-, and I know Henrietta Biddle of Bryn Mawr, and she's coming to see me for two or three days, and I'm going to make alittle tea for her—very informal—and I've heard her speak of you and Miss Ackley as about the only girls she knew here, and I'd love to have you meet her again!'"
Miss Farwell laughed hysterically. "And did she accept?" she inquired.
Katherine wiped her face for the third time excitedly. "Oh, yes! She was as sweet as peaches and cream! 'I shall be charmed to meet Miss Biddle again, and in your room, Miss Sewall,' she said, 'and shall I bring Miss Ackley?' Oh, Grace, she's lovely! She is the most—"
"Yes, I've no doubt," interrupted Miss Farwell, cynically; "all the handsome seniors are. But what are you going to say to her to-day?"
Katherine buried her yellow head in the towel. "I don't know! Oh, Grace! I don't know," she mourned. "And they say the freshmen are getting so uppish, anyway, and if we carry it off well, and just make a joke of it, they'll think we're awfully f-f-fresh!" Here words failed her, and she leaned heavily on the screen, which, as it was old and probably resented having been sold third-hand at a second-hand price, collapsed weakly, dragging with it the Bodenhausen Madonna, a silver rack of photographs, and a Gibson Girl drawnin very black ink on a very white ground.
"And if we are apologetic and meek," continued Miss Farwell, easily, apparently undisturbed by the confusion consequent to the downfall of a piece of furniture known to be somewhat erratic, "they'll laugh at us or be bored. We shall be known as the freshmen who invited seniors and Faculty and town-people to meet—nobody at all! A pretty reputation!"
"But, Grace, we couldn't help it! Such things will happen!" Katherine was pinning the Gibson Girl to the wall, in bold defiance of the matron's known views on that subject.
"Yes, of course. But they mustn't happen to freshmen!" her room-mate returned sententiously. "How many Faculty did you ask?"
"I asked Miss Parker, because she fitted Henrietta for college, at Archer Hall, and I asked Miss Williams, because she knows Henrietta's mother—Oh! Miss Williams will freeze me to death when she comes here and sees just us!—and I asked Miss Dodge, because she knows a lot of Bryn Mawr people. Then Mrs. Patton on Elm Street was a school friend of Mrs. Biddle's, and—oh! Grace, Ican'tmanage them alone! Let's tell them not to come!"
"And what shall we do with the sandwiches? And the little cakes? And the lemons that I sliced? And the tea-cups and spoons I borrowed? And that pint of extra thick cream?" Miss Farwell checked off these interesting items on her fingers, and kicked the floor-cushions to point the question.
"Oh! I don't know! Isn't there any chance—"
"No, goosey, there isn't. See here!" Grace pulled down a letter with a special delivery stamp from the desk above her head, and read with emphasis:
DEAR Kitten,—Just a line to say that Aunt Mary has sent for me at three days' notice to go to Paris with her for a year. It's now or never, you know, and I've left the college, and will come back to graduate with '9-. So sorry I can't see you before I go. Had looked forward to a very interesting time, renewing my own freshman days, and all that. Please send my blue cloth suit right on to Philadelphia C. O. D. when it comes to you. I hope you hadn't gotten anything up for me.With much love,Henrietta Biddle.Bryn Mawr, March 5.
DEAR Kitten,—Just a line to say that Aunt Mary has sent for me at three days' notice to go to Paris with her for a year. It's now or never, you know, and I've left the college, and will come back to graduate with '9-. So sorry I can't see you before I go. Had looked forward to a very interesting time, renewing my own freshman days, and all that. Please send my blue cloth suit right on to Philadelphia C. O. D. when it comes to you. I hope you hadn't gotten anything up for me.
With much love,Henrietta Biddle.
Bryn Mawr, March 5.
"I don't think there's much chance, my dear."
"No," said Katherine, sadly, and with a final pat administered to the screen, which still wobbled unsteadily. "No, I suppose there isn't. And it's eleven o'clock. They'll be here at four! Oh! and I asked that pretty junior, Miss Pratt, you know. Henrietta knew her sister. She was in '8-."
"Ah," returned Miss Farwell, with a suspicious sweetness, "why didn't you ask a few more, Katherine, dear? What with the list we made out together and these last extra ones—"
"But I thought there wasn't any use having the largest double room in the house, if we couldn't have a decent-sized party in it! And think of all those darling, thin little sandwiches!—Oh well, we might just as well be sensible and carry the thing through, Gracie! But I am just as afraid as I can be: I tell you that. And Miss Williams will freeze me stiff." The yellow hair was snugly braided and wound around by now, and a neat though worried maiden sat on the couch and punched the Harvard pillow reflectively.
"Never mind her, Kitten, but just go ahead. You know Caroline Wilde said it was all right to ask her if she was Miss Biddle's mother's friend, and there wasn't time to take her all around, and you know how nice Miss Parkerwas about it. We can't help it, as you say, and we'll go and get the flowers as we meant to. Have you anything this hour?"
With her room-mate to back her, to quote the young lady herself, Miss Sewall felt equal to almost any social function. Terrifying as her position appeared—and strangely enough, the seniors appalled her far more than the Faculty—there was yet a certain excitement in the situation. What should she say to them? Would they be kind about it, or would they all turn around and go home? Would they think—
"Oh, nonsense!" interrupted Grace the practical, as these doubts were thrust upon her. "If they're ladies, as I suppose they are, of course they'll stay and make it just as pleasant for us as they can. They'll see how it is. Think what we'd do, ourselves, you know!"
They went down the single long street, with the shops on either side, a red-capped, golf-caped pair of friends, like nine hundred other girls, yet different from them all. And they chattered of Livy and little cakes and Trigonometry and pleated shirt-waists and basket-ball and Fortnightly Themes like all the others, but in their little way they were very social heroines, setting their teeth to carry bystorm a position that many an older woman would have found doubtful.
They stopped at a little bakery, well down the street, to order some rolls for the girl across the hall from them, who had planned to breakfast in luxury and alone on chocolate and grape-fruit the next morning. "Miss Carter, 24 Washburn," said Grace, carelessly, when Katherine whispered, "Look at her! Isn't that funny? Why, Grace, just see her!"
"See who—whom, I mean? (only I hate to say 'whom.') Who is it, Kitten?"
Katherine was staring at the clerk, a tall, handsome girl, with masses of heavy black hair and an erect figure. As she went down to the back of the shop again, Katherine's eyes followed her closely.
"It's that girl that used to be in the Candy Kitchen—don't you remember? I told you then that she looked so much like my friend Miss Biddle. And then the Candy Kitchen failed and I suppose she came here. And she's just Henrietta's height, too. You know Henrietta stands very straight and frowns a little, and so did this girl when you gave Alice's number and she said, 'Thirty-four or twenty-four?' Isn't it funny that we should see her now?—Oh, dear! If only shewereHenrietta!"
Grace stared at the case of domestic bread and breathed quickly. "Does she really look like her, Kitten?" she said.
"Oh yes, indeed. It's quite striking. Henrietta's quite a type, you know—nothing unusual, only very dark and tall and all that. Of course there are differences, though."
"What differences?" said Grace, still looking intently at the domestic bread.
"Oh, Henrietta's eyes are brown, and this girl's are black. And Henrietta hasn't any dimple, and her hands are prettier. And Henrietta's waist isn't so small, and she hasn't nearly so much hair, I should say. But then, I haven't seen her for a year, and probably there's a greater difference than I think."
"How long is it since those seniors and the Faculty saw Henrietta?" said Grace, staring now at a row of layer chocolate-cakes.
Her room-mate started. "Why—why, Grace, what do you mean? It's two years, Henrietta wrote, I think. And Miss Parker and Miss Williams haven't seen her for much longer than that. But—but—you don't mean anything, Grace?"
Grace faced her suddenly. "Yes," she said, "I do. You may think that because I just go right along with this thing, I don't care at all.But I do. I'm awfully scared. I hate to think of that Miss Ackley lifting her eyebrows—the way she will! And Miss Hartwell said once when somebody asked if she knew Judge Farwell's daughter, 'Oh, dear me—I suppose so! And everybody else in her class—theoretically! But practically I rarely observe them!' Ugh! She'll observe me to-day, I hope!"
"Yes, dear, I suppose she will. And me too. But—"
"Oh, yes! But if nobody knows how Miss Biddle looks, and she was going to stay at the hotel, anyway, and it would only be for two hours, and everything would be so simple—"
Katherine's cheeks grew very red and her breath came fast. "But would we dare? Would she be willing? Would it be—"
"Oh, my dear, it's only a courtesy! And everybody will think it's all right, and the thing will go beautifully, and Miss Biddle, if she has any sense of humor—"
"Yes, indeed! Henrietta would only be amused—oh, so amused! And it would be such a heavenly relief after all the worry. We could send her off on the next train—Henrietta, you know—and dress makes such a difference in a girl!"
"And I think she would if we asked herjust as a favor—it wouldn't be a question of money! Oh, Katherine! I could cry for joy if she would!"
"She'd like to, if she has any fun in her—it would be a game with some point to it! And will you ask her, or shall I?"
They were half in joke and half in earnest: it was a real crisis to them. They were only freshmen, and they had invited the seniors and the Faculty. And two of the most prominent seniors! Whom they hadn't known at all! They had a sense of humor, but they were proud, too, and they had a woman's horror of an unsuccessful social function. They felt that they were doomed to endless joking at the hands of the whole college, and this apprehension, though probably exaggerated, nerved them to theircoup d'état.
Grace walked down the shop. "I will ask her," she said.
Katherine stood with her back turned and tried not to hear. Suppose the girl should be insulted? Suppose she should be afraid? Now that there was a faint hope of success, she realized how frightened and discouraged she had been. For it would be a success, she saw that. Nobody would have had Miss Biddle to talk with for more than a few minutes anyhow, theyhad asked such a crowd. And yet she would have been the centre of the whole affair.
"Katherine," said a voice behind her, "let me introduce Miss Brooks, who has consented to help us!"
Katherine held out her hands to the girl. "Oh, thank you!thankyou!" she said.
The girl laughed. "I think it's queer," she said, "but if you are in such a fix, I'd just as lief help you as not. Only I shall give you away—I shan't know what to say."
Grace glanced at Katherine. Then she proved her right to all the praise she afterward accepted from her grateful room-mate. "That will be very easy," she said sweetly. "Miss Biddle, whom you will—will represent, speaks very rarely: she's not at all talkative!"
Katherine gasped. "Oh, no!" she said eagerly, "she's very statuesque, you know, and keeps very still and straight, and just looks in your eyes and makes you think she's talking. She says 'Really?' and 'Fancy, now!' and 'I expect you're very jolly here,' and then she smiles. You could do that."
"Yes, I could do that," said the girl.
"Can you come to the hotel right after dinner?" said Grace, competently, "and we'll cram you for an hour or so on Miss Biddle's affairs."
The girl laughed. "Why, yes," she said, "I guess I can get off."
So they left her smiling at them from the domestic bread, and at two o'clock they carried Miss Henrietta Biddle's dress-suit case to the hotel and took Miss Brooks to her room. And they sat her on a sofa and told her what they knew of her alma mater and her relatives and her character generally. And she amazed them by a very comprehensive grasp of the whole affair and an aptitude for mimicry that would have gotten her a star part in the senior dramatics. With a few corrections she spoke very good English, and "as she'd only have to answer questions, anyhow, she needn't talk long at a time," they told each other.
She put up her heavy hair in a twisted crown on her head, and they put the blue cloth gown on her, and covered the place in the front, where it didn't fit, with a beautiful fichu that Henrietta had apparently been led of Providence to tuck in the dress-suit case. And she rode up in a carriage with them, very much excited, but with a beautiful color and glowing eyes, and a smile that brought out the dimple that Henrietta never had.
They showed her the room and the sandwiches and the tea, and they got into theirclothes, not speaking, except when a great box with three bunches of English violets was left at their door with Grace's card. Then Katherine said, "You dear thing!" And Miss Brooks smiled as they pinned hers on and said softly, "Fancy, now!"
And then they weren't afraid for her any more.
When the pretty Miss Pratt came, a little after four, with Miss Williams, she smiled with pleasure at the room, all flowers and tea and well-dressed girls, with a tall, handsome brunette in a blue gown with a beautiful lace bib smiling gently on a crowd of worshippers, and saying little soft sentences that meant anything that was polite and self-possessed.
Close by her was her friend Miss Sewall, of the freshman class, who sweetly answered half the questions about Bryn Mawr that Miss Biddle couldn't find time to answer, and steered people away who insisted on talking with her too long. Miss Farwell, also of the freshman class, assisted her room-mate in receiving, and passed many kinds of pleasant food, laughing a great deal at what everybody said and chatting amicably and unabashed with the two seniors of honor, who openly raved over Miss Biddle of Bryn Mawr.
As soon as Katherine had said, "May I present Miss Hartwell—Miss Ackley?" they took their stand by the stately stranger and talked to her as much as was consistent with propriety.
"Isn't she perfectly charming!" they said to Miss Parker, and "Yes, indeed," replied that lady, "I should have known Netta anywhere. She is just what I had thought she would be!"
And Miss Williams, far from freezing the pretty hostess, patted her shoulder kindly. "Henrietta is quite worth coming to see," she said with her best and most exquisite manner. "I have heard of the Bryn Mawr style, and now I am convinced. I wish all our girls had such dignity—such a feeling for the right word!"
And they had the grace to blush. They knew who had taught Henrietta Biddle Brooks that right word!
At six o'clock Miss Biddle had to take the Philadelphia express. She had only stopped over for the tea. And so the girls of the house could not admire her over the supper-table. But they probably appreciated her more. For after all, as they decided in talking her over later, it wasn't so much what she said, as the way she looked when she said it!
But only a dress-suit case marked H. L. B. took the Philadelphia express that night, and a tall, red-cheeked girl in a mussy checked suit left the hotel with a bunch of violets in her hand and a reminiscent smile on her lips.
"We simply can't thank you; we haven't any words. You've helped us give the nicest party two freshmen ever gave, if it is any pleasure to you to know that," said Katherine. "And now you're only not to speak of it."
"Oh, no! I shan't speak of it," said the girl. "You needn't be afraid. Nobody that I'd tell would believe me, very much, anyhow. I'm glad I could help you, and I had a lovely time—lovely!"
She smiled at them: the slow, sweet smile of Henrietta Biddle, late of Bryn Mawr. "You College ladies are certainly queer—but you're smart!" said Miss Brooks of the bakery.
THE FOURTH STORY