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Title: College girls
Author: Abbe Carter Goodloe
Illustrator: Charles Dana Gibson
Release date: September 29, 2023 [eBook #71753]
Language: English
Original publication: NYC: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLEGE GIRLS ***
College Girls
[Illustration: “IS IT THIS?"]
College Girls
By
Abbe Carter Goodloe
Illustrated by
Charles Dana Gibson
New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
1895
_Copyright, 1895, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons_
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
_Page_
_A Photograph_, 1
_An Aquarelle_, 17
“_La Belle Hélène_,” 37
_As Told by Her_, 67
_A Short Career_, 95
_An Episode_, 107
_Her Decision_, 145
_Revenge_, 163
_The College Beauty_, 187
_A Telephoned Telegram_, 203
“_Miss Rose_,” 213
_A Short Study in Evolution_, 225
_The Genius of Bowlder Bluff_, 243
_Time and Tide_, 267
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“_Is it this?_” _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
_She stopped and her face grew whiter_, 12
“_They wanted him to put them in his stories_,” 14
_The political economist_, 76
“_It has been a long while since you were a student here_,” 78
“_How kind you are_,” 90
“_You cannot imagine how anxious the girls are to see you_,” 174
“_Play!_” 176
_A rather chilling influence_, 230
_She had stolen furtive glances at her_, 232
_When the two women were within a few feet of each other_, 240
A PHOTOGRAPH
There was a great deal of jangling of bells, and much laughter and talk,
and the chaperon, who was an assistant Greek professor, looked as if she
had never heard of Aristophanes, and listened apparently with the most
intense interest to a Harvard half-back eagerly explaining to her the
advantages of a flying wedge; and when the College loomed in sight, with
its hundreds of lights, and the sleigh drew up under the big _porte
cochère_, and while a handsome youth was bidding his sister, the hostess
of the party, an unusually affectionate good-by, she explained to the
rest how very sorry she was she could not invite them in. But the
Harvard men, in a feeling sort of way, said they understood, and after
much lifting of hats and more laughter, the sleigh went off, and the
chaperon and her charges were left standing in the “Centre.”
She confessed then that she was extremely tired and that she did not
think she ever cared again to see the “winter sports.” She thought the
sight afforded her that afternoon, of two nice boys, very scantily
clothed and with bloody faces, banging away at each other until they
could hardly stand, compared with the view of those same young gentlemen
the week before at the College, immaculately dressed and with very
good-looking noses and eyes, was entirely too great a strain on her. So
she went off to her study and left the excited and pleased young women
to stroll down the corridor to Miss Ronald’s room, to talk it over and
to decide for the twentieth time that Somebody of ’94 ought to have come
off winner in the fencing match, instead of Somebody else of ’93.
The room they went into was a typical college room, with its bookstands
and long chairs and cushions and innumerable trophies, of which Miss
Ronald was rather proud. She was a stylish girl, with New York manners
and clothes, and a pretty, rather expressionless face, strongly addicted
to fads, and after almost four years of college life still something of
a fool. She had become popular through her own efforts and the fact that
she had a brother at Harvard. If a girl really wishes to be a favorite
in college she must arrange to have some male relative at a neighboring
university.
The sleighing party over to Harvard for the winter sports had been an
especial success, so her guests took off their wraps and settled
themselves in her chairs in a very cordial sort of way, and discussed
amiably the merits of the tug-of-war, while someone made chocolate.
After a while, when they had all had their say about the pole-vaulting
and the running jumps, the conversation flagged a little and the room
came in for its share of attention.
There was a comparative stranger among the guests--a Miss Meredith--to
whom Miss Ronald could show her numerous souvenirs for the first time.
She was especially glad to have them to show to this particular girl
because she thought they would impress her--although it would have been
a little difficult for a casual observer to understand just why, for as
Miss Meredith was led around the room by her hostess, from the screen
made of cotillion favors and the collection of lamp-post signs presented
to her by Harvard admirers afflicted with kleptomania, over to the
smoking-cap and tobacco-pouch of some smitten undergraduate, anyone
could see what a handsome girl she was, and though more plainly dressed
than the others, that she seemed to be thoroughly at her ease. Perhaps
Miss Ronald expected her to be impressed because she had taken her up,
and had first introduced her to this set and made a success of her. No
one had known anything about her or her people, and she had entered
shortly before as a “special student,” and therefore belonged to no
particular class. She was evidently a little older than Miss Ronald and
her friends, and her face was somewhat sad, and there was a thoughtful
look in the eyes. She seemed to be rather haughty, too, and as if afraid
she would be patronized. But Miss Ronald, whose particular craze in the
beauty line was a cream complexion, gray eyes, and red-brown hair, had
declared the new-comer to be lovely, and even after she had discovered
that this handsome girl was not of her own social standing, that her
people were unknown and unimportant, she still declared her intention of
cultivating her. She had found this harder to do than she had expected,
and so, as she led her around the room, she rather delighted in the
belief that she was impressing this girl by the many evidences of a gay
social career.
The others, who had seen all the trophies many times before, and who
knew just which one of Miss Ronald’s admirers had given her the Harvard
blazer, and where she had got the Yale flag and the mandolin with the
tiger-head painted on it--for Miss Ronald, being a wise young lady,
cultivated friends in every college--sat back and talked among
themselves and paid very little attention to what the other two were
doing. They were a little startled, therefore, by a low exclamation from
the girl with Miss Ronald. She had stopped before a long photograph-case
filled with pictures of first violins and celebrated actors and college
men--all the mute evidences of various passing fancies. Miss Ronald, who
was putting away the faded remains of some “Tree-flowers” and some
pictures of Hasty Pudding theatricals, looked over at the girl.
“What is it?” she said, carelessly, and then noting her pallor and the
direction of her gaze she laughed in an embarrassed little way and went
over to her.
“Is it this?” she said, taking a half-hidden photograph from among the
jumble of pictures and holding it up to the view of all.
It was the photograph of a young man, a successful man, whose name had
become suddenly famous and whose personality was as potent as his
talents. He was not handsome, but his fine face was more attractive than
a handsome one would have been. There was a look of determination in the
firmly closed lips and square-cut jaw, and an indefinable air of the man
of the world about the face which rendered it extremely fascinating. On
the lower edge of the picture was written his name, in a strong, bold
hand that corresponded with the look on the face.
“My latest craze,” said Miss Ronald, smiling rather nervously and
coloring a little as she still held the picture up. There was a slight
and awkward pause, and then half a dozen hands reached for it. There was
not a girl in the room who had not heard of this man and wished she knew
him, and who had not read his last book and the latest newspaper
paragraphs about him. But their interest had been of the secretly
admiring order, and they all felt this girl was going a little too far,
that it was not just the thing to have his picture--the picture of a man
she did not know. And as she looked around and met the gray eyes of the
girl beside her she felt impelled to explain her position as if in
answer to the unspoken scorn in them. She was embarrassed and rather
angry that it had all happened. She could laugh at the first-violins and
the opera-tenors and the English actor--they had only been silly
fancies--but this one was different. Without knowing this man she had
felt an intense interest in him and his face had fascinated her, and she
had persuaded herself that he was her ideal and that she could easily
care for him. She suddenly realized how childish she had been and the
ridiculousness of it all, and it angered her.
“Of course I know it isn’t nice to have his picture--in this way--” she
began defiantly, “but I know his cousin--it was from him that I got this
photograph--and he has promised to introduce us next winter.” She seemed
to forget her momentary embarrassment and looked very much elated.
“Won’t that be exciting? I shan’t know in the least what to say to him.
Think of meeting the most fascinating man in New York!”
“Be sure you recognize him,” murmured one of the girls, gloomily, from
the depths of a steamer-chair. “I met him last winter. I had never seen
a photograph of him then, and not knowing he was _the_ one, I talked to
him for half an hour. When I found out after he had gone who he was, I
couldn’t get over my stupidity. My mother was angry with me, I can tell
you!”
Each one knew something about him, or knew someone who knew him, or the
artist who illustrated his stories, or the people with whom he had just
gone abroad, or into what thousandth his last book had got. They all
thought him a hero and fascinatingly handsome, and they declared with
the sentimental candor of the very young girl, that they would never
marry unless they could marry a man like that--a man who had
accomplished great things and had a future before him, and who was so
clever and interesting and distinguished-looking.
The girl who had had the singular good fortune to meet him was besieged
with questions as to his looks and manner of talking, and personal
preferences, to all of which she answered with a fine disregard for
facts and a volubility out of all proportion to her knowledge. They
wondered whether his play--he had just written one, and the newspapers
were saying a great deal about its forthcoming production--would be as
interesting as his stories, and they all hoped it would be given in New
York during the Christmas holidays, and they declared that they would
not miss it for anything.
Only one girl sat silent, her gray eyes bright with scorn--she let them
talk on. Their opinions about his looks, and whether he was conceited or
only properly sensible of his successes, and whether the report was true
that he was going to Japan in the spring, seemed indifferent to her. She
sat white and unsmiling through all their girlish enthusiasm and
sentimental talk about this unknown god and their ideals and their
expectations for the future--and when the photograph, which had been
passed from hand to hand, reached her, she let it fall idly in her lap
as though she could not bear to touch it. As it lay there, a hard look
came into her face. When she glanced up, she found Miss Ronald gazing at
her with a curious, petulant expression.
Suddenly she got up and a look of determination was upon her face and in
her eyes. Their talk was all very childish and silly, but she could see
that beneath their half-laughing manner there was a touch of
seriousness. This man, with his fine face and his successes and personal
magnetism, had exercised a strange fascination over them, and most of
all over the pretty, sentimental girl looking with such a puzzled
expression at her.
After all, this girl had been good to her. She would do what she could.
She stood tall and straight against the curtains of the window facing
the rest and breathing quickly.
“Yes--I know of him,” she said, answering their unspoken inquiry. “You
think you know him through his books and the reviews and newspaper
notices of him.” Her voice was ringing now and she touched the picture
lightly and scornfully with her finger.
“I know him better than that. I know things of him that will not be told
in newspaper paragraphs and book reviews.” She paused and her face grew
whiter. “You read his stories, and because they are the best of their
kind, the most correct, the most interesting, because his men are the
men you like to know, men who are always as they should be to men,
because there is an atmosphere of refinement and elegance and pleasing
conventionality about them--you think they must be the reflex of
himself. O yes! I know--the very last story--you have all read it--who
could be more magnificent and correct than _Roscommon_? And you think
_him_ like his hero! There is not one of you but would feel flattered at
his attentions, you might easily fall in love with him--I dare say you
would scarcely refuse him--and yet”--she broke off suddenly.
“There was a girl,” she began after a moment’s hesitation, in a tone
from which all the excitement had died, “a friend of mine, and she loved
him. Perhaps you do not know that before he became famous he lived in a
small Western town--she lived there too. They grew up together, and she
was as proud of him--well, you know probably just how proud a girl can
be of a boy who has played with her and scolded her and tyrannized over
her and protected her and afterward loved her. For he _did_ love her. He
told her so a thousand times and he showed it
[Illustration: SHE STOPPED AND HER FACE GREW WHITER]
to her in a thousand ways. And she loved him! I cannot tell you what he
was to her.” They were all looking curiously at her white face and she
tried to speak still more calmly.
“Well, after a time his ambition--for he was very ambitious and very
talented--made him restless. He wanted to go East--he thought he would
succeed. She let him go freely, willingly. His success was hers, he
said. Everything he was to do was for her, and she let him go, and she
told him then that he could be free. But he was very angry. He said that
he would never have thought of going but to be better worthy of her. He
succeeded--you know--the world knows how well he has succeeded, and the
world likes success, and what wonder that he forgot her. She was
handsome--at least her friends told her so--but she was not like the
girls he knows now. She was not rich, and she had never been used to the
life of luxury and worldliness to which he had so quickly accustomed
himself. But,” she went on, protestingly, as if in reply to some
unspoken argument or some doubt that had assailed her, “she could have
been all he wished her. She was quick and good to look at, and
well-bred. She could have easily learned the world’s ways--the ways that
have become so vital to him.”
She stopped, and then went on with an air of careful impartiality, as if
trying to be just, to look at both sides of the question, and her
beautiful face grew whiter with the effort.
“But, of course, she was not like the girls he had met. He used to write
to her at first how disgusted he was when those elegant young ladies
would pet him and make much of him and use him and his time as they did
everything else in their beautiful, idle lives. He did not like it, he
said; and then I suppose it amused him, and then fascinated him. They
would not let him alone. They wanted him to put them in his stories, and
he had to go to their dinners and to the opera with them. He said they
wanted someone to ‘show off’; and at first he resented it, but little by
little he came to like it and to find it the life he had needed and
longed for, and to forget and despise the simpler one he had known in
his youth-----”
She stopped again and pulled nervously at the silk fringe of the
curtain, and looked at the strained faces of the girls as if asking them
whether she had been just in her way of putting the thing. And then she
hurried on.
“And so she released him. He had not been, back in two years--not since
he had first gone away, and she knew it would be easier to do it
[Illustration: “THEY WANTED HIM TO PUT THEM IN HIS STORIES”]
before she saw him again. And so when she heard of his success and how
popular he was, and that he was the most talked about of all the younger
authors, she wrote him that she could not be his wife. But she loved
him, and she let him see it in the letter. She bent her pride that
far--and she was a proud girl! She told herself over and over that he
was not worthy of her--that success had made a failure of him, but she
loved him still and she let him see it. She determined to give him and
herself that chance. If he still loved her he would know from that
letter that she, too, loved him. Well, his answer--she told me that his
answer was very cold and short. That if she wished to give him up he
knew she must have some good reason.”
Someone stirred uneasily, and gave a breathless sort of gasp.
“That was hard,” she went on. She was speaking now in an impassive sort
of way. “But that was not the hardest. She saw him again. It was not
long ago----” She stopped and put one hand to her throat. “She had gone
away. She desired to become what he had wished she was, although she
could never be anything to him again, and she was succeeding, and
thought that perhaps she would forget and be happy. But he found out
where she was, and went to her. Something had gone wrong with him. You
remember--he was reported to be engaged to a young girl very well known
in society--the daughter of a senator, and a great beauty. Well, there
was some mistake. He came straight to my friend and told her that he did
not know what he had been doing, that she was the only girl he had ever
loved and he asked her forgiveness. He told her that his life would be
worthless and ruined, that his success would mean less than nothing to
him if she did not love him, and he implored her to be what she had once
been to him and to marry him.”
Miss Ronald looked up quickly, and the petulant expression in her eyes
had given place to a look of disdain.
“What did she say then?” she asked.
The girl shook her head, mournfully.
“She could not,” she said, simply. “She would have given her soul to
have been able to say yes, but she could not!”
When the door had quite closed behind her, they sat silent and hushed.
Suddenly Miss Ronald walked over to the window, and picking up the
photograph where it had fallen, face downward, she tore it into little
bits.
AN AQUARELLE
Allardyce felt both aggrieved and bored when he found that his sister
had gone off with a walking-party and was not likely to return for an
hour or two. He had this unwelcome bit of news from the young woman in
cap and gown who had come from the office into the reception-room and
was standing before him, glancing every now and then from his face to
the card she held, with a severely kind look out of her gray eyes.
“I telegraphed her I was in Boston and would be out,” remarked
Allardyce, in an injured tone.
“Yes,” assented the young woman, “Miss Allardyce had left word in the
office that she was expecting her brother, but that as he had not come
by the 2.30 or 3.10 train, she had concluded he was detained in Boston,
and that if he did arrive later he was to wait.” She added that he would
be obliged to do so in any case, as there was no express back to Boston
for two hours, and that if he would like to see the college while he
waited she would send someone to take him over it.
But Allardyce seemed so doubtful as to whether he cared to become better
acquainted with the architecture of the college, and so disappointed
about it all, that the kindly senior felt sorry for him and suggested
sympathetically that he “might amuse himself by strolling through the
grounds.” She could not have been over twenty, but she had all the
seriousness and responsibility of an undergraduate, and Allardyce
suddenly felt very young and foolish in her presence and wondered hotly
how old she thought he was, and why she hadn’t told him to “run out and
play.” He decided that her idea was a good one, however, so he took his
hat and stick and wandered down the south corridor to the piazza.
Standing there he could see the lake and the many private boats lying in
the bend of the shore, each fastened to its little dock, and beyond, the
boat-house with the class practice-barges, slim and long, just visible
in the cool darkness beneath. He thought it all looked very inviting,
and there was a rustic bench under a big tree half-way down the hill
where he could smoke and get a still better view of the water.
So he settled himself quite comfortably, lit a cigarette, and looked
gloomily out over the lake. He assured himself bitterly that after
having been abroad for so many years, and after having inconvenienced
himself by taking a boat to Boston instead of a Cunarder to New
York--his natural destination--in order to see his sister, that she was
extremely unkind not to have waited for him. He was deep in the mental
composition of a most reproachful note to her when he discovered that by
closing his eyes a little and looking intently at the Italian Gardens on
the opposite side of the water, he could easily fancy himself at a
little place he knew on Lake Maggiore. This afforded him amusement for a
while, but it soon palled on him, and he was beginning to wonder moodily
how he was ever to get through two hours of the afternoon, when he saw a
young girl come out of the boat-house with a pair of sculls and make her
way to one of the little boats. She leaned over it, and Allardyce could
see that she was trying to fit a key into the padlock which fastened the
boat to its dock, and that after several attempts to undo it she looked
rather hopelessly at the lock and heavy chain. He went quickly down the
hill and along the shore. He was suddenly extremely glad that he was in
America, where he could be permitted to speak to and help a girl, even
if a total stranger, without having his assistance interpreted as an
insult.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, lifting his hat. “Can I be of any help?”
The girl looked up a little startled, but when she saw the tall,
good-looking youth, she smiled in a relieved sort of way and rose
quickly from her knees.
“Indeed, yes,” she said, without any embarrassment. “I can’t unlock
this; perhaps you can.”
Allardyce took the key, and kneeling down fitted it in its place and
turned it with very little effort. The girl looked rather ruefully at
him as he jumped up.
“Thank you,” she said in a politely distant way. “I don’t see why I
could not have done that. I am very strong in my hands, too.”
Allardyce smiled indulgently. All girls were under the impression that
they were strong. At any rate this one was tremendously pretty, he
decided--much prettier than the stately senior he had encountered up at
the college, and he was glad there were no cap and gown this time. He
was aware, of course, that he ought to lift his hat and move on, and not
stand there staring at her, but his previous solicitude had made him
feel sociable.
“Perhaps you will let me put the oars in for you,” he suggested. He was
rather alarmed after he had spoken, but when he glanced at the girl to
see how she had taken his further self-invited assistance he found her
looking at him in a very friendly way. All at once he felt quite elated
and at his ease. It had been a long while since he had had much to do
with American girls, and he concluded that all that had been said about
their charming freedom and cordiality of manner had not been
exaggerated. But when he had put the sculls in the boat it occurred to
him that it would not do to presume too far on that freedom and
cordiality, and that if he was not to depart immediately--and he felt no
inclination to do so--he must offer some sort of explanation of himself.
“I am waiting for my sister,” he remarked genially.
“Oh! your sister,” echoed the girl.
“Yes--Miss Allardyce. Perhaps you are in the same class,” he hazarded.
She looked at him for a moment in a slightly surprised way, and then out
across the water, and Allardyce saw, as she turned her head away from
him, that she was smiling.
“No,” she said slowly, “but I know her quite well.”
“Ah! I’m glad of that,” said the young man, boldly and cheerfully. “Now
I feel quite as if I had been properly introduced! ‘_Les amis de nos
amis_,’ you know!”
The girl smiled back at him. “I am Miss Brent. By the way, your sister
has the distinction of being the only Allardyce in college. It’s a
rather unusual name.”
“Yes,” assented Allardyce, delightedly. “Scotch, you know.” And then in
a sudden burst of confidence--“My people were Scotch and French. I have
been educated abroad and have come home for the law course at the
University. Awfully glad to be in America again, too, for, after all, I
am an American through and through.” He pulled himself up sharply in
some confusion and amusement at his unusual loquacity.
But the girl before him did not seem to find it strange, and was quite
interested and politely attentive.
“And where is your sister?” she demanded.
“Oh, that’s the essential, and I forgot to mention it,” he replied,
laughing a little and digging his stick into the soft earth. “She’s gone
off walking!” and then he went on insinuatingly and plaintively--“And I
don’t know a soul here--never was here before in my life--and there’s
no train to Boston, and I have to wait two hours for her!”
The young woman smiled sympathetically. “That’s too bad,” she said, and
then she looked doubtfully at Allardyce. He seemed very young and to be
having a rather bad time of it, and there is an unwritten law at the
college which constitutes every member of it the natural protector and
entertainer of lost or bored strangers.
“I am going across the lake for water-lilies,” she went on after a
little hesitation. “If you care to come you may, and pull me about while
I gather them. It is hard work to do it alone.”
“You are very kind,” said Allardyce promptly, “and it is very nice of
you to put it that way. It will be a great favor to me to let me go.”
He rowed her across the water in the direction of the Italian Gardens,
and they found a good deal to say to each other, and she seemed very
unaffected and friendly, although Allardyce fancied once or twice that
when she replied to some of his remarks her voice trembled in an odd way
as if she were secretly amused. But he thought her delightful, and he
was very much obliged to her for taking him off his hands in this way,
though he could not help feeling some surprise at her invitation. Of
course he could not imagine such a thing happening to him on the
Continent. No French or German girl would have the chance or enough
_savoir faire_ to treat him as this girl was treating him. He told her
all this in more veiled terms when they had reached the water-lilies,
and he had turned around in his seat and was carefully balancing the
boat while she pulled the dripping, long-stemmed flowers. Miss Brent
laughed outright at his remarks, and Allardyce laughed good-naturedly
too, although what he had said did not strike him as being at all
amusing. But he was glad that she was so easily diverted. He reflected
that perhaps her invitation had not been entirely disinterested--that
she considered it as stupid to go out rowing alone, as he did to wander
around the college without his sister--and that as she had been kind
enough to save him from a solitary afternoon, it was his part to be as
amusing and entertaining as possible.
“You must not consider us in the light of very young girls,” she
explained. “You know this is a woman’s college.”
“That’s what is so nice,” returned Allardyce confidently. “You are girls
with the brains and attainments of women. That is a very delightful
combination.” He gave her an openly admiring, rather patronizing glance.
He did not mean to be superior or condescending, but he reflected that
in spite of her ease of manner she was yet in college, and so must be
very young. He seemed to himself to be quite old and world-worn in
comparison.
Miss Brent looked over at the college towering up on the other side of
the lake.
“How do you like it?” she asked politely, after a moment’s silence.
“Oh, I didn’t see anything of it,” replied Allardyce easily, leaning his
elbows comfortably on the unshipped oars. “I got my walking papers
promptly from a young woman up there, and so I left. She rather
frightened me, you know,” he ran on. “Awfully severe-looking,
cap and gown, and that sort of thing. I thought if that was
only an undergraduate I didn’t want to encounter any of the
teachers--professors, I believe you call them--and so I fled. You do
have women professors, don’t you?” he inquired with a great deal of awe.
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Well--they must be pretty awful,” he said cheerfully, after a moment’s
pause.
The girl straightened up cautiously, pulling at the rubber-like stem of
an immense lily.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said carelessly. She was bending over the side
of the boat, and Allardyce could not see her face; but he heard the
laugh in her voice again. “There! there’s a _boutonnière_ for you.”
Allardyce caught the lily she swung toward him by the stem, and stuck it
in his coat.
“I suppose that’s about the size of the Russian Giant’s button-hole
flower,” he remarked frivolously. They were quite good friends now.
Allardyce looked over at the college again.
“You must find it pretty slow up there,” he said confidentially. “Can’t
imagine how you girls exist. You ought to go to a Paris boarding-school.
You can have no end of fun there, you know.” He was nodding his head
enthusiastically at her. “I have a cousin at one in the Avenue Marceau.
Went to see her just before I sailed and it was tremendously amusing.
These French girls are awful flirts! When I went away every girl in that
school came to the windows and looked at me. It was rather trying, but I
felt that for once I knew what popularity was!”
Miss Brent buried her face in the biggest lily of the bunch.
“And--and what did you do?” she inquired, in suppressed tones.
“Oh--I? Why I bowed and smiled at the whole lot. Must have looked rather
like an idiot, now I come to think of it; and my cousin wrote me she
got into no end of trouble about it. One of the _maîtresses_ happened to
see me. But it was great fun while it lasted. And after all where is the
harm of a little flirting?” he concluded, judicially.
“Where indeed?” assented the girl, with a laugh.
“That’s right--I am glad to hear you say that,” broke in Allardyce,
approvingly. “There’s something wrong with a woman who doesn’t cry or
flirt--it’s a part of her nature,” he went on, with the air of having
made a profoundly philosophic discovery. “You know you agree with me,”
he urged, insinuatingly.
She shook her head.
“Personally I don’t know,” she said; “you see I am so busy----”
“Oh! I say,” cried Allardyce, “you don’t mean you study as hard as that!
Of course,” he added impartially, “it’s all very well for some girls to
grind--” he stopped in alarm as the girl drew herself up slightly.
“I hope my sister doesn’t study too much,” he hastened to add, lamely.
Miss Brent put her handkerchief suddenly to her lips, which were
trembling with laughter.
“I don’t think you need worry!” she said.
Allardyce was considerably mystified and a little offended.
“But she’s very bright,” added the girl, quickly; “especially in
mathematics, where I see most of her; but I believe she is not a very
hard student.”
“Well,” said Allardyce, jocosely; “I’ll tell you a secret. I am the hard
student of the family, and that’s much better than that my sister should
be, I think. I don’t approve of girls working too hard. It makes them
old--takes away their freshness--especially if they go in for
mathematics. Do you know I have never been able to imagine a girl
mathematician anyway,” he ran on, confidentially. “Always seemed like a
sort of joke. Now there was that English girl--what was her name, who
was worse than a senior wrangler? Her photographs were just everywhere.
I was in Cambridge that summer and they were in all the shop-windows,
and I would stop and look carefully to see if they were not different
from the ones I had seen the day before. For they were quite pretty you
know, and I was always hoping that there was some mistake and that they
had got some other young woman, entirely innocent, mixed up with her.”
There was so much genuine distress in his tone that Miss Brent made an
heroic attempt not to laugh.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “don’t say that--some people think I am good at
mathematics myself.”
Allardyce shook his head at her. “I’m sure it’s a mistake--you are
trying to impose on me,” he said, with mock severity. “At any rate I am
glad my sister is guiltless of any such accusation. We are under the
impression that she goes in for a good time at college--at least one
would suppose so from her letters. I got one from her just before I left
Paris in which she gave me a very amusing account of some blow-out
here--some class function or other, and she seemed dreadfully afraid
that the faculty would get hold of the details. She says you stand
tremendously in awe of your faculty. Wait a minute--I’ve got the letter
here somewhere,” he went on, fumbling in his pockets. “Didn’t think much
of the affair considered in the light of a scrape, but she seemed to
think it exciting and dangerous to the last degree. That’s where you
girls are so funny--you think you are doing something immensely wrong
and it is just nothing at all. I see I haven’t the letter with me; but
perhaps you were in it all and know a great deal more about it than I
do.”
Miss Brent suddenly twisted herself around in the boat, and reached for
an especially big lily.
“No--” she said, “I--I don’t think I was there. Will you pull a little
on the left oar--a little more, please. It’s that lily I want!”
“There’s another thing about girls,” resumed Allardyce meditatively and
kindly, when the boat had straightened back. “You seem to think it a
terrible calamity, a disgrace, to get plucked in an examination. Now a
man takes it philosophically. Of course, it isn’t a thing one especially
cares to have happen one; but it doesn’t destroy a fellow’s interest in
life, nor make him feel particularly ashamed of himself. He just goes to
work with a tutor and hopes for better luck next time. That’s the best
way to take it, don’t you think? But perhaps you don’t know anything
about it. Ever get plucked?--I beg your pardon,” he added hastily.
But the girl did not appear at all offended.
“Oh, you mustn’t ask that,” she said, leaning back and laughing at him;
“at any rate,” she added, with an air of careful consideration, “I don’t
think I ever got ‘plucked’ in--mathematics. And now you must take me
back.”
Allardyce gave a shudder of mock horror. “Oh, mathematics!” he said,
picking up the oars.
When they were half-way across the lake Allardyce saw a young girl
standing on the shore waving at them.
“Why,” he said, looking intently at the figure, “I believe it is my
sister.”
Miss Brent leaned forward.
“Yes, it is your sister,” she said slowly, and she smiled a little.
Miss Allardyce kissed her brother with a great show of affection, and
told him how sorry she was to have missed him. “And I am sure it was
very good of you to have taken care of him,” she went on impressively
and gratefully, turning to Miss Brent. But that young lady disclaimed
any merit.
“We’ve had a delightful afternoon,” she declared, “and your brother has
been very good to pull me about and keep the boat from tipping over,
while I gathered these lilies. I am very glad to have met him. Good
afternoon.”
“Charming girl!” murmured Allardyce, appreciatively, digging his stick
in the earth, and leaning on it as he looked after Miss Brent.
“We had an awfully jolly time together,” he went on, to the girl beside
him; “sort of water-picnic, without the picnic.”
Miss Allardyce looked sharply at her brother. Something in his manner
made her anxious. “How did you meet her?” she demanded.
“Oh! that’s the best part,” said Allardyce joyously. “Wasn’t introduced
at all. I offered to unlock her boat for her, and I liked her looks so
much that I hated to go away, so I asked her if she was in your class,
and she said ‘No,’ but that she knew you, and that I considered was
introduction enough. We just went off together and had a very good time.
Lucky for me that somebody took me up when my own sister went off and
left me,” he added reproachfully.
Miss Allardyce shook her head impatiently. “Never mind about me.” She
looked anxiously at her brother. “What did you say to her?”
“Oh! I don’t remember exactly;” he replied vaguely and cheerfully. “We
talked a good deal--at least _I_ did,” with a sudden realization of how
he had monopolized the conversation. “About French boarding-schools and
women professors and getting plucked in examinations, and I told her
about that scrape you wrote me of. She hasn’t a bit of nonsense about
her,” he went on enthusiastically. “She didn’t say much, but I am sure
she agreed with me that girls are by nature flirts, and not
mathematicians.”
Miss Allardyce gave a little gasp. “Well,” she said, with a sort of
desperate calmness, “you’ve done it now! Do you know who that was you
were talking to? That was the assistant-professor of mathematics. Oh!
yes, I know she looks awfully young, and she is young. I suppose you
think a woman has to be fifty before she knows anything. Why she only
took her degree two years ago, and she was so tremendously clever that
she went off and studied a year in Leipsic and then came back as
instructor in mathematics, and this year when one of the
assistant-professors was called suddenly to Europe, she was made
assistant-professor in her place, and they say she’s been a most
wonderful success. And I know she is pretty; but that doesn’t prevent
her examinations from being terrors, and I didn’t get through the last
one at all, and if you told her about that scrape, and that women ought
not to be mathematicians----” she stopped breathlessly and in utter
despair.
Allardyce whistled softly and then struck his stick sharply against the
side of the little dock. “Well,” he exclaimed indignantly, “she’s most
deceitfully young and pretty,” and then he turned reproachfully upon his
sister. “It’s all your fault,” he said; “what did you go off walking
for?”
“LA BELLE HÉLÈNE”
_Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, Rhinebeck-on-Hudson_
BALTIMORE, October 20th.
My Dearest Alma: As we have been confiding our joys and woes to each
other for the last twenty-five years, it is to you I naturally write
about this new trial which has come into my life. You will probably
think it _peu de chose_, but I assure you, my dear, that if you really
and truly put yourself in my place you will realize that it is an
annoyance. Henry’s child has at last written to me that she “has
finished her studies for the present” (!) and is coming to America to
spend the winter with us. You _must_ see, Alma, that this is slightly
appalling. I have never seen her--not since she was a little thing with
enormous gray eyes and a freckled nose--and I know absolutely nothing
about her except what Henry wrote me from time to time, when he stopped
his eternal wanderings long enough to remember he had a sister. But
judging by the education he gave her--and I consider it simply
deplorable--and the evident taste she had for it, and later for “the
higher education of woman,” I feel distressingly positive that I cannot
approve of the child. I am very sorry now that I did not make an effort
to go to her when her father died in England, five years ago, but she
wrote me that she had friends there who were doing everything for her,
and that she was coming directly to America to enter college according
to her father’s wishes, and that there was really no need to disturb
myself about her. I could see, Alma, the effect of the independent,
strange existence she had led, in that letter. It repelled me. Now,
Eleanor, I am sure, would have been completely prostrated, the dear
child!
So she came directly to Boston, and I, being so busy with my own
preparations for taking Eleanor and Margaret to Paris, simply could not
arrange to go on to Boston to see her. As of course you know, we
remained abroad four years, and last year, when we returned and I
expected to see Helen at last, she wrote me a letter which I got just
before leaving Paris, saying that she had decided to go to Oxford for a
year to take a course in mathematical astronomy at the Lady Margaret
Hall. So we passed each other in mid-ocean.
Fancy, Alma! I knew when I read that letter what kind of a girl she was.
One of your hard students, engrossed in books, without one thought for
dress or social manners! I am afraid she will prove a severe trial. And
just when Eleanor is counting on having such a gay second winter and
Margaret is to début. It is a little hard, is it not, dear? Thank
Heaven, I shall never have to blame myself as Henry would have to do if
he were alive. At least _I_ have seen to it that my daughters have had
the education which will fit them to ornament society, the education
that I still believe in notwithstanding all this talk of colleges for
women and advancement in learning, and college settlements and
extensions, and Heaven knows what besides!
_My_ girls have had first, the best of training at Mrs. Meed’s, and then
four years at _Les Oiseaux_, you know. They speak French perfectly, of
course, and Margaret has even tried Italian and German. They both ride
and drive well, and Eleanor plays and sings very sweetly. But what is
the use of my telling you about them when you know them so well?
I only wish, Alma, you could tell me something about _Helen_! Just
think, I have never even seen a photograph of her! It is one of her
fads not to have them taken, from which I argue that she is very homely,
very opinionated, and very strange. Eleanor has two dozen in different
poses, I am sure. The only information I have at all about Helen’s looks
is from Margaret, who saw her for an hour in Brookline--it was five
years ago--just before we sailed. She had run up to see a Boston friend
for a few days, and of course she was very young and has probably
forgotten, but she insists that Helen was rather pretty. However, I do
not attach the least importance to what Margaret says, because, as you
know, she is so good-natured that she always says the best of everyone;
and then her tastes are sometimes really deplorable--so unlike
Eleanor’s! Besides, her description of Helen does not sound like that of
a pretty girl. She says she wore her hair parted and back from her face,
and was slightly near-sighted. Think of it, Alma! For the hair, _encore
passe_, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Wenzell have made that so much the fashion
lately that one might forgive it; but short-sighted! Eye-glasses!
Spectacles perhaps! Hard study since may have completely ruined her
eyes. I greatly fear she will show up very badly beside Eleanor’s
piquant beauty and Margaret’s freshness.
She writes me that she will be here in a month, so that it is time I was
seriously considering what I am to do with her. Of course, with the
severe education she has had, she probably dislikes society and could
not be induced to go out, knowing well that she could not shine in it;
but as my brother’s child she must be at least introduced properly, and
she can then subside gracefully. Of course, where there are two such
attractive girls in the house as Eleanor and Margaret, she cannot hope
to compete in social honors with them, and will probably much prefer in
any case to continue her studies or go in for charitable work, or
something of that sort.
My dear Alma, I have just read over this letter and am shocked to see
how much I have written about this affair. Forgive me if I have wearied
you and--yes, _do_ give me some good advice.
Are you going to Carlsbad?
The girls are out of town for a few days, or would send love as I do.
Very affectionately yours,
MARIAN MORRISON.
P.S. They say a woman cannot write a letter without a postscript, and I
believe it! Tell me what to do about H. How had I best introduce her to
society? Don’t you think a dinner--where she could sit beside someone
whom I could especially choose as suited to her--and where she would not
be too much _en évidence_? A dance would not do at all--I doubt if she
_can_ dance, poor girl!
M. M.
_Mrs. Franklin Bennett to Mrs. Olmsted Morrison._
October 22d.
MY DEAREST MARIAN: How could you think me so cold-blooded as to consider
such a piece of news as your letter contains “_peu de chose_”? I feel
for you, I assure you. What a dilemma! The dear girls! how do they like
the idea? Margaret, as you say, will probably not mind, but Eleanor--so
exquisitely pretty and stylish! It will be rather a thorn in the flesh,
I imagine. O! how I wish I had children--two such lovely girls as yours
would make life a different thing for me!
Of course, the dinner. How could you think of anything else! Invite some
of the professors from the University for _her_, and have the rest of
the company of young society people, so that Eleanor and Margaret can
enjoy it too.
Oh, my dear, I would like to write a long, long letter about this, but I
am in such confusion and hurry! Mr. Bennett has been ordered to
Wiesbaden for the winter, and we sail in a week. I wish I could be in
Baltimore to help you, but it is impossible, of course. I count on your
writing me all your plans, and just how Helen appears, and whether it is
all as dreadful as you now fear. Address to the Langham Hotel until
November 25th, after that, care Brown, Shipley, as usual. Good-by. I
have a thousand things to tell you of, but must put them off until I
reach London and have a moment to myself.
As ever,
Devotedly yours,
A. B.
P.S. Don’t look too much on the dark side of things. I knew a
Philadelphia girl once--the niece of old Colonel Devereaux you know--and
she was rather pretty and quite good form, though a college girl. I
think, however, she had been but _one_ year to college.
A. B.
_Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, the Langham Hotel,
London, W. C._
BALTIMORE, November 15th.
DEAREST ALMA: Your note, which was so welcome and which came so long
ago, would have had an earlier answer had I not been a little sick, and
so busy and worried that I have not had time or heart to write even to
you. So you can imagine in what a state I am.
The girls came back to town shortly after I last wrote you, and we held
a sort of family council about Helen. The dear girls were charming, and
Eleanor bore it very bravely. She says she will give Helen hints about
her hair, and will implore her not to wear spectacles, but rimless
eye-glasses.
We are very much worried about her gowns. Of course her own taste is not
to be depended upon, and I hardly fancy her income would justify her in
leaving her toilette entirely with a _grande couturière_, even if she
would dream of doing such a thing, which I very much doubt. Her father,
you know, left the bulk of his fortune to found a library in
Westchester. He always said he never intended to leave Helen enough to
tempt anyone to marry her for her money. Poor Henry--what a strange,
misguided man! But then, of course, he could not foresee that his
daughter would be an ugly duckling, and strong-minded and college-bred,
and all that. Oh, yes, of course he must have known about the college.
But at any rate, man-like, he did not realize how unattractive Helen
would be.
Well, as I say, we talked it over, and the girls agree with me that the
best thing is a dinner. Eleanor was for having it a small affair. She
said it would be truer kindness to Helen, but Margaret, who is very
blunt sometimes, I am sorry to say, said she thought “we ought to give
Helen a chance,” as she rather vulgarly expressed it, and insisted so
strongly on it that we gave in, and have decided to have a dinner, and
invite some of Eleanor’s friends later to a small dance. This will
relieve Eleanor of some of her more pressing social obligations, and she
will also be able to introduce Margaret to some of her particular set
before she makes her formal début later in the season. A débutante
cannot have too many friends.
And so, after talking it over, we determined to invite Professor Radnor,
of the University. He is a comparatively young man--about forty-five, I
judge--and though far from handsome he is considered very interesting, I
believe, to those who understand him. He is of good family, too--one of
the Radnors of Cliff Hill, you know. He and Helen can talk biology or
whatever it is he professes--I really forget what it is. Then there is
Colonel Gray--I shall invite him because he was an old friend of her
father, and though very grumpy and disagreeable, and apt to bore one to
death with his interminable war stories, still I always invite him to
the house once a year, and he is to be depended upon to come; and
indeed, Alma, I am so perplexed to know whom to invite that I really
cannot pick and choose. Then I think I shall have the new rector at “All
Souls.” He is a young man, an Englishman, and as stupid as the
proverbial Britisher; very high church, and as I have not yet invited
him to dinner, I think the choice of _him_ rather diplomatic. It really
has been too much of an exertion to get up a dinner-party for him alone,
and indeed Eleanor cannot bear him, she says; but with her usual
sweetness has consented to have him come if Helen and Margaret will take
him off her hands. He and Helen will doubtless find much to say to each
other about Dr. Bernardo, and the People’s Palace, and that sort of
thing. I think with these three I can safely let the girls take care of
the rest, and invite younger people who will be congenial to them. I
say younger people, for Helen must be twenty-three or four, and she will
doubtless seem much older and graver. You see I shall be prepared; I
know this will be an ordeal, but I mean to do the best for her that I
can. I shall have everything as handsome as possible--the girls are
particularly anxious about it--as Eleanor proposes asking young
Claghart, the new artist, you know, who is making such a name for
himself.
Helen will be here in a week. I shall send out the invitations in a day
or two, so as to have no refusals--dinner engagements are already
getting numerous. I shall let you know all about Helen and the
dinner-party. I know you are as interested as myself in this, and that
you sympathize with me. Poor Henry! to think that he should have given
me a niece who has spent the best years of her life shut up in colleges,
and ruining health and looks in sedentary, intellectual pursuits!
The Kinglakes were here yesterday and send their kindest regards to you.
Good-by! A thousand best wishes for a happy trip. _Do_ tell Mr. Bennett
how much I hope he will be improved by Wiesbaden.
Write soon to your devoted friend,
MARIAN M.
_Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Colonel Ralph Gray._
MY DEAR COLONEL: Of course it is to you, Henry’s oldest friend, that I
write first to tell the charming news that his daughter Helen is coming
to us in a week. She has “finished her studies for the present,” so she
writes, and we are at last to see the dear child. We are delighted to
have her come, and feel that she must meet you at once. You will
certainly find her to your taste, as she is so highly educated and not
at all like these society girls whom you justly condemn as utterly
frivolous.
We have arranged a little dinner-party for Thursday, the twenty-fourth,
and positively count on you to come and put us all in a good humor with
one of your inimitable war stories.
Most cordially your friend,
MARIAN V. MORRISON.
Friday, November the eighteenth.
_Mrs. Morrison to the Reverend Percival Beaufort._
MY DEAR MR. BEAUFORT: Will you give us the great pleasure of seeing you
at dinner on Thursday evening, at half-past eight? Only severe illness
has kept me from asking this favor long ago, so that I very much hope
nothing will prevent your accepting now. Eleanor tells me to remind you
that the Young People’s Guild has been changed to _Wednesday_ evening,
so at least _that_ will not interfere with your acceptance. If you come,
virtue will not be its own reward in this case. I have a niece whom I am
particularly anxious you should meet. She is intensely interested in all
charities--especially London charities--and is very quiet and charming,
if not exactly pretty. But I am sure you agree with me that beauty is
often only a snare!
The girls particularly wish to be remembered.
Most truly yours,
MARIAN V. MORRISON.
Friday, November the eighteenth.
_Mrs. Morrison to Professor Albert Radnor, Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore._
November the eighteenth.
MY DEAR PROFESSOR RADNOR: Can we persuade you to abandon your lectures
and experiments long enough to dine with us on the evening of the
twenty-fourth? I know we are very frivolous and not at all the people to
interest _you_, however much _you_ interest _us_, but I fancy I shall
have someone here whom you will be glad to meet. I want you to know my
niece, Miss Helen Hammersley. She is an immensely clever girl--has
taken her degree at one of our famous women’s colleges, and has just
returned from a year of Oxford and the Bodleian, so that I feel
reasonably sure she will be able to _listen_ intelligently to you, at
any rate. She is greatly interested in your specialty, and will
certainly esteem it the greatest privilege to meet such a noted
authority on the subject as yourself.
I will take no excuse.
Very sincerely your friend,
MARIAN V. MORRISON.
_Miss Eleanor Morrison to Miss Grace Fairfax, Washington, D. C._
November 19th.
DEAREST GRACE: We are sending out invitations to dinner and small dance
afterward in honor of a cousin of ours, Helen Hammersley, who is coming
from England to spend the winter with us, and of course we thought of
you first and foremost. You must come and save the situation with your
brilliancy and tact. There! can you refuse me after that? To tell you
the truth, dear, we are all awfully worried about the whole thing. We
none of us know Helen at all, and we are simply _au désespoir_ about her
because she is such a strange girl. She has been at college for five
years--first in America and then at Oxford, and we all feel miserably
sure of what an impossible sort of girl she is. She even took some sort
of honor in mathematics at Oxford--just fancy! What she is going to be
like in a ball-room no mortal can guess! So we have done the best we
can--mamma has invited some old fogies to entertain her, and I propose
we make our end of the table as much of a shining contrast as possible.
I shall ask that Canadian you adore so--Reggie Montrose--for you, and
your brother Jerry for Margaret, and shall reserve Wayne Claghart for
myself; so please take warning and let that youth severely alone. He is
my especial property, and I consider him simply the nicest man I know.
He has hinted two or three times that he would like to sketch my head.
He needn’t be afraid of my refusing, if he’d only ask me outright! I
shall tell Helen, of course, that I asked him because he has lately
returned from England, and she has just returned, etc., etc., but I’m
afraid he’ll be so far away from her and she’ll be so busy talking
theologies with Professor Radnor (forgot to tell you mamma has asked
him!), and the East End with Percy Beaufort, that I don’t think she’ll
have a chance to stun him with her learning. Besides, I don’t think he
is the man to devote much time to _that_ sort of a girl.
Now, don’t disappoint me! I count on you. Later there will be a lot of
people in--the usual crowd, you know--and if you’ll say positively
you’ll come, we will make it a small cotillon and you shall lead with
Reggie.
I’ll let Margaret write to Jerry--they are such chums, but you be sure
and make him come. Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, let him know about Helen’s
homeliness and flabbergastering attainments, or he won’t stir a foot.
Good-by. Expect you down Wednesday. Telegraph me you will come.
As ever,
ELEANOR.
_Miss Eleanor Morrison to Reginald Montrose, Esq., Murray Hill Hotel,
New York City._
November 19th.
DEAR MR. MONTROSE: Thank you so much for that lovely philopena present.
How charming of you to have thought of _that_! Won’t you take dinner
with us next Thursday, at half after eight, and let me thank you in
person? After dinner you may dance the cotillon with Miss Fairfax.
There! is not that an inducement? I have a cousin whom I want you to
meet, too--she is just returning to America and is very learned, and not
quite your style, I fear, but she will doubtless be good for you after
_me_!
Most cordially yours,
ELEANOR MORRISON.
_Miss Eleanor Morrison to Wayne Claghart, Esq., Twenty-third Street, New
York City._
SATURDAY, November 19th.
DEAR MR. CLAGHART: Do you remember your promise to run down to
Baltimore? Well, I shall expect you to keep it next Thursday. We are to
have a little dinner and a dance afterward (perhaps I should say a
dinner and a little dance--no, the adjective belongs to both), and I
shall certainly expect you to be on hand. Your fame has preceded you, of
course, and a great many very nice young women are simply existing on
the thought of meeting Mr. Wayne Claghart, the artist! Shall I reserve
the very prettiest and nicest of them all to dance the cotillon with
you?
Hoping to see you without fail,
Very sincerely yours,
ELEANOR MORRISON.
_Miss Margaret Morrison to Mr. Jeré Fairfax, Washington, D. C._
November 19th.
DEAR JERRY: Eleanor has a dinner on for next Thursday, and we want you
to throw over all your numerous engagements for that evening and come to
us. Do, Jerry--and favor me a lot--I forgot to say there was a german
afterward--and be generally nice to your débutante, Margot. As an
inducement I will say that we’ve got a jolly surprise for you. Eleanor
don’t want me to tell, but I’m going to. Our cousin, Helen Hammersley,
is coming to spend the winter with us--it’s for her the dinner is being
given--and mamma and Eleanor are in despair about her. I don’t believe
she’s half bad, but they say she’s awfully ugly, and too smart to be
nice. I suppose she is awfully erudite--is that the word? Wears specs,
and dresses like everything, I suppose. Wonder if she ever danced the
german--she can have a sprained ankle if she don’t know how.
As ever,
MARGARET.
_Telegram--Miss Grace Fairfax to Miss Eleanor Morrison, Baltimore._
WASHINGTON, November 20th.
Delighted to come. Charmed to lead with R. Have two new figures. Order
little French flags for one set favors.
GRACE.
_Telegram--Miss Grace Fairfax to Miss Eleanor Morrison._
WASHINGTON, November 22d.
Terrible attack tonsillitis. Doctor says positively cannot go.
GRACE.
_Miss Eleanor Morrison to Miss Marie de Rochemont, Charles Street._
MY DEAR MISS DE ROCHEMONT: Much to my surprise and annoyance I have this
moment found an invitation which I thought had been mailed to you
several days ago. It must have slipped out of the other notes some way
and has been lying under some papers here on my desk ever since. Can you
forgive this mischance and accept so tardy an invitation? It will give
us all the greatest pleasure to see you at half after eight. I
especially want to introduce to you a cousin of mine just returned from
the other side. She has been in college all her life, and I want her to
meet some of our most charming society girls to rub her shyness off and
make her take more interest in social life. Perhaps you may convert her!
Hoping that no previous engagement will prevent our seeing you Thursday,
Most sincerely yours,
ELEANOR MORRISON.
_Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, care of Brown, Shipley
& Co., London._
November 25th.
MY DEAR ALMA: What a surprise! I can scarcely collect my thoughts
sufficiently to write intelligently on the subject. I really was never
more surprised in all my life--more intensely and thoroughly surprised.
But I must try and tell you connectedly all about it. To begin
with--Helen did not come on the twentieth as we had expected, but
telegraphed us that she was detained in Boston and would not reach
Baltimore until the morning of the twenty-fourth. This was very
annoying, as I was most anxious about her gown for the dinner, and then
I imagined that she would be utterly dragged out after travelling all
night. Dear Eleanor would have been, I am quite sure. But Helen seems to
be one of those distressingly healthy people--no nerves, no
sensitiveness. She quite laughed when I asked her if she were not tired!
Well--she came on the eleven-five train, and, Alma, she is not at all
the kind of person I had expected. She is even handsome after a certain
style of her own--not one that I admire--not at all Eleanor’s style. But
certainly it could be much worse. The men even seemed to find her quite
good-looking. She has certainly preserved her complexion wonderfully
well--and as for her being short-sighted! Between ourselves I am sure it
is only an excuse for using a very beautiful lorgnon, and for looking
rather intently at one in a sort of meditative way which I consider
rather offensive, but which Percy Beaufort told me he found most
attractive. He is very disappointing, by the way; I had expected so much
of him, but I find him quite an ordinary young man.
I was really shocked at Helen’s levity. I had expected from her superior
education that her mind would be above trivialities, but the way she
laughed and seemed to enjoy the conversation of Reggie Montrose and
Jerry Fairfax! and if she had confined her attentions to those boys!
But, Alma, she even tried to infatuate Colonel Gray and Professor
Radnor! Two such men! She is far from being the quiet, thoughtful
student I had expected to so enjoy. Why, she had the audacity to say to
Colonel Gray, after one of his irascible explosions at things in
general--“My dear Colonel, you are a living example of squaring the
circle--quite round yet full of angles!” You know how rotund the Colonel
is, Alma. Think of it! To Colonel Gray, whose irritability is simply
proverbial. And he actually seemed to enjoy it! Men of a certain age
seem to be only too willing to make fools of themselves if a young girl
looks at them. And Percival Beaufort, who is so interested in London
charities, could not extract one word from her on the subject, I
believe; at any rate I distinctly heard her giving him an animated
account of the last “Eights Week,” and he was inquiring solicitously who
was the coxswain for Magdalen! Even Professor Radnor seemed to lose his
head, though I believe she talked more sensibly to him than to the
others, for he told me that she was one of the few women he had ever met
who seemed to thoroughly understand Abel’s demonstration of the
impossibility of solving a quintic equation by means of
radicals--whatever that means.
By the way, we need not have worried about her gown at all. It was quite
presentable, and had in it a quantity of rare old point d’Alençon which
Helen says Henry picked up in Paris. It quite vexed me to think that I
have none of that pattern--it is especially beautiful.
Eleanor would add a word, but she is feeling quite ill this morning,
dear child! She was so worried over the dinner. At the very last moment
Grace Fairfax failed her, and she was obliged to invite Marie de
Rochemont in her place. We were especially sorry that Grace could not
come, and that Jerry did. He is getting completely spoiled; his
assurance and inconsiderateness are truly wonderful.
By the way, we have changed our plans for the winter slightly. We are
going to the Bermudas for a month, and Helen will visit friends in
Boston for the rest of the winter. Write soon and let me know how Mr.
Bennett is feeling. Address here, all our mail will be forwarded.
As ever, your devoted friend,
MARIAN MORRISON.
_Mr. Jeré Fairfax to Miss Grace Fairfax, Washington, D. C._
BALTIMORE, November 25th.
DEAR GRACE: I suppose I’ve got to keep my solemn promise to write to you
all about the blow-out, though it’s an awful effort for me to write
letters, and I’m so razzle-dazzled too! You simply weren’t in it! She’s
stunning! The fellows all call her “La Belle Hélène.” Claghart started
the name and it took like wildfire. The fair Eleanor is furious. She
looked perfectly insignificant by the side of that magnificent creature.
What the dickens did Margaret mean by her letter? Why, Helen Hammersley
is a perfect beauty. It isn’t good to spring a surprise like that on a
fellow. Bad for one’s nerves. Claghart is terribly shaken. Found out she
had met ever so many celebrated artists, English and French, and they
jawed for hours. Fact is Claghart’s got the cinch on the rest of us
because she’s so awfully interested in art--I heard her tell him so. Oh!
I almost forgot to tell you the joke! You see, Mrs. Morrison had put her
up at her end of the table, with the rector of All Souls on one side of
her--the old duffer!--and that fossil, Professor Radnor, on the other,
and of all people in the world that ante-bellum specimen, Colonel Ralph
Gray, opposite! Think of that, with Montrose and Claghart and myself at
the other end, cut off from her by half a dozen married people! Think of
the injustice, the tactlessness of such a proceeding! Well, I simply
determined to shake things up a bit, so after the bird I said, as
sweetly as only yours truly can say, “Mrs. Morrison, I was at the
Dwights’ the other evening to a progressive dinner-party. Charming idea,
don’t you think?” I knew all the men would back me up, and sure enough
Reggie Montrose sang out, “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Morrison! Why not try it
to-night?” and before the words were fairly out of his mouth, Claghart
had jumped up with his wine-glass and his napkin in his hand, and was
moving up one seat nearer “La Belle Hélène.” Of course there was an
awful muss and Eleanor was furious, I could see, but she pulled herself
together and smiled awfully sweetly at Claghart. Marie de Rochemont
turned perfectly green--give you my word of honor. Margaret was the only
one who seemed really not to mind. She’s a nice little thing, but she
won’t have much show in society if Helen Hammersley is around.
I wish I could tell you about “La Belle Hélène,” but I’m not much for
descriptions. She’s different from any girl I ever knew--not very tall,
but awfully good figure--fixes her hair like those stunning girls of
Gibson’s you know, and she’s got a way of looking at a fellow--earnest
and yet half laughing--that’s enough to drive one out of one’s senses.
She’s got that _je ne sais quoi_, you know--something awfully fetching
and magnetic and all that sort of thing. (You’ll think me a drivelling
idiot!) She wore a beauty of a gown, white satin--or gauze, I’m not sure
which. Was going to ask Claghart--being an artist he’s up to such fine
distinctions--but forgot it. I say, Grace, why don’t your gowns look
like that? You’d better ask her who built hers. Tell you what, she’s
just fascinating--not stiff or uppish a bit, but she’s got a certain
sort of dignity you girls don’t seem to acquire, some way or other.
She simply hoodooed old Gray, not to mention Percy Beaufort, the
Professor, and several dozen others, including your devoted brother.
There was one solemn moment at the cotillion when every man in the room
was around her. The other girls looked black, I promise you! What the
deuce, Grace, makes you girls so jealous? I actually believe Eleanor
didn’t like her cousin’s brilliant success at all, and yet you told me
she was so anxious about it. Can’t make you girls out.
You say she’s been to college all her life and is awfully smart? Well, I
suppose she is--she looks that way--but she didn’t come any of it on us.
And yet she’s clever, that’s sure, for she knows all the points of
difference between the Rugby and Association game, and I heard her
talking golf with Claghart and telling Professor Radnor that dancing was
a healthful amusement, and he was asking her, in the most idiotic way,
if she’d teach him the two-step. Wasn’t that rich! And old Gray said to
a lot of fellows in the smoking-room that, “By Jove, she was the
handsomest girl he’d seen in a quarter of a century, and that if she was
an example of a college-bred girl he wished they’d _all_ go to college.”
Well, I must stop. I really believe, Grace, this is the longest letter I
ever wrote, and I want you to put it to my credit--understand? and the
next time I try to arrange a trip to Mount Vernon with certain people,
you’ll please be more amenable to reason--See?
I think I’ve told you everything except that I’m going to stop here for
a few days--they’re always asking me, you know, and I told Margaret last
night that I’d accept this time. Eleanor looked as if she didn’t half
like it. Why not, do you suppose? But I can’t tear myself away. I’m
desperately in love with “La Belle Hélène,” besides I’m awfully
interested in watching the running between Claghart and Montrose. It
will be a close finish, I think, with Claghart in the lead, Montrose a
good second, and a full field not far behind. Excuse sporting instincts
and language.
As ever, your aff. brother,
JERRY.
How’s your throat? Better, I hope. Hers is lovely--“like a piece of
marble column”--at least that’s what Reggie confided to me at 3 G. M.
this morning.
J. F.
AS TOLD BY HER
The waiters had served the coffee and were retiring in long rows down
the sides of the big dining-hall. The rattle of knives and forks and the
noise of general and animated talk were subsiding, and the pleased,
expectant hush which always precedes the toasts, was falling upon the
assembly. At the lower end of the room, farthest from the
“distinguished-guest” table, the unimportant people began to turn their
chairs around toward the speakers and to say “’Sh!” and “Who’s that?” to
each other in subdued whispers, and the seniors grasped their sheepskins
less nervously and began to realize their importance and the fact that
they were no longer undergraduates but full-fledged alumnæ. And with the
realization came a curious disagreeable sensation and a queer tightening
in the throat, accompanied by a horrible inclination to shed tears over
the closed chapter of their lives. Then they fiercely thought how their
brothers act under similar circumstances, and wished they were men and
could give the class yell and drink champagne to stifle their feelings.
That being impossible they tasted a very mild decoction of coffee and
turned their troubled eyes to the far end of the room, and wished
ardently that the President would get on her feet and say something
funny to make them forget that this was the end, the last act of
politeness on the part of the faculty to them, that they were being
gracefully evicted, as it were, and could never be taken back upon the
same terms or under the same conditions.
It was the annual Commencement dinner to the retiring senior class, and
the senior class was, as usual, feeling collapsed and blank after the
excitement of Commencement week and the discovery that they were B.A.’s
or B.S.’s, and that the world was before them and there would be no more
faculties to set them going or haul them up, but that they would have to
depend on their own faculties in the future. There was the annual
foregathering of brilliant men and women whose presence was to be an
incentive to the newly fledged alumnæ, and the display of whose wit and
wisdom in after-dinner speeches was to be a last forcible impression of
intellectual vigor and acquirements left on their minds.
Suddenly the President arose. She stood there, graceful, perfectly at
ease, waiting for a moment of entire silence. Her sensitive, bloodless
face looked more animated than usual, her brown eyes quietly humorous.
It was a face eminently characteristic--indicative of the element of
popularity and adaptability in her nature that made her, just then, so
valuable to the college. When she spoke her voice carried a surprising
distance, notwithstanding its veiled, soft quality, so that those
farthest from her were able to catch and enjoy the witty, gnomic,
sarcastic manner of her speech.
What she said was taken down by the shorthand reporter smuggled in for
the occasion by the enterprising class-president and is enrolled in the
class-book, so it need not be recorded here; but when she had finished,
the editor of one of the foremost magazines in the country was smiling
and nodding his head appreciatively, and a man whose sermons are
listened to by thousands every Lord’s Day leaned over and made some
quick side remark to her and ran his hands in a pleased, interested way
through his long hair; and the young and already famous President of a
certain college said, on rising, that he felt very genuine trepidation
at attempting any remarks after that. He fully sustained his reputation,
however, of a brilliant talker, and was followed by the honorary member
of the juniors, whose post-prandial speeches have made him famous on
both sides of the water.
The room became absolutely quiet, save for the voice of the speaker, the
occasional burst of applause, and the appreciative murmur of the
listeners. Outside, the afternoon began to grow mellow, long shadows
thrown by the pointed turrets of the building lay across the green
campus, the ivy at the big windows waved to and fro slightly in the cool
breeze. Attention flagged; people began to tire of the clever, witty
responses to the toasts and to look about them a little.
At one of the tables reserved for the alumnæ, near the upper end of the
room, sat a girl dressed in deep mourning. Her face was very beautiful
and intelligent, with the intelligence that is more the result of
experience than of unusual mental ability. There were delicate, fine
lines about the mouth and eyes. She could not have been more than
twenty-four or five, but there was an air of firmness and decision about
her which contradicted her blond--almost frivolous--beauty and lent
dignity to the delicate figure.
After awhile she leaned back in her chair a trifle wearily and looked
about her curiously as if for changes. The general aspect of the place
remained the same, she decided, but there were a great many new
faces--new faces in the faculty, too, where one least likes to find
them. Here and there she saw an old acquaintance and smiled
perfunctorily, but, on the whole, there was no one present she cared
very much to see. She had just come to the conclusion that she was sorry
she had made the long journey to be present at the dinner when she
became conscious that someone was looking intently at her across the
room. She leaned forward eagerly and smiled naturally and cordially for
the first time. And then she sank back suddenly and blushed like a
school-girl and smiled again, but in a different way, as if at herself,
or at some thought that tickled her fancy. It certainly did strike her
as rather amusing and presuming for her to be smiling and bowing so
cordially to Professor Arbuthnot. She remembered very distinctly, in
what awe she had stood of that learned lady, and that in her
undergraduate days she had systematically avoided her, since she could
not avoid her examinations and their occasionally disastrous
consequences. She recalled very forcibly the masterly lectures, the
logical, profound, often original talks, which she had heard in her
lecture-room, though she had to acknowledge to herself reproachfully,
that the matter of them had entirely escaped her memory. She had been
one of a big majority who had always considered Professor Arbuthnot as a
very high type--perhaps the highest type the college afforded--of a
woman whose brains and attainments would make her remarkable in any
assembly of savants. In her presence she had always realized very keenly
her own superficiality, and she felt very much flattered that such a
woman should have remembered her and not a little abashed as she thought
of the entire renunciation of study she had made since leaving college.
She wondered what Professor Arbuthnot might be thinking about her--she
knew she was thinking about her, because the bright eyes opposite were
still fixed upon her with their piercing, not unkindly gaze. It occurred
to her at last, humorously, that perhaps the Professor was not
considering her at all, but some question in--thermo-electric currents
for instance.
But Miss Arbuthnot’s mind was not on thermo-electric currents; she was
saying to herself: “She is much more beautiful than when she was here,
and there is a new element of beauty in her face, too. I wonder where
she has been since, and why she is in mourning. She was unintelligent, I
remember. It’s a great pity--brains and that sort of beauty rarely ever
go together. Her name was Ellis--yes--Grace Ellis. I think I must see
her later.” And the Professor gave her another piercing smile and
settled herself to listen to a distinguished political economist--a
great friend of hers--speak.
The Political Economist got upon his feet slowly and with a certain
diffidence. He was a man who had made his way, self-taught, from poverty
and ignorance to a professorship in one of the finest technical schools
of America.
There was a brusqueness in his manner, and the hard experiences of his
life had made him old. He spoke in a quiet, authoritative way. He
declared, with a rather heavy attempt at jocoseness, that his hearers
had had their sweets first, so to speak, and that they must now go back
and take a little solid, unpalpable nourishment; that he had never made
a witty or amusing remark in his life, and he did not propose to begin
and try then, and finally he hinted that the President had made a very
bad selection when she invited him to respond to the toast--“The Modern
Education of Woman.” As he warmed to his subject he became more gracious
and easy in manner. He spoke at length of the evolution of women’s
colleges, their methods, their advantages, their limitations; he
touched upon the salient points of difference between a man’s college
life and that of a girl; differences of character, of interests, of
methods of work. And then he went on:
“I believe in it--I believe firmly in the modern education of woman. It
is one of the things of most vital interest to me; but my enthusiasm
does not blind me. There are phases of it which I do not indorse. I
object to many of its results. The most obvious bad result is the
exaggerated importance which the very phrase has assumed.” He smiled
plaintively around upon the company. “Are we to have nothing but woman’s
education--_toujours l’éducation de la femme_? There is such eagerness
to get to college, such blind belief in what is to be learned there,
such a demand for a college education for women, that we are overwhelmed
by it. Every year these doors are closed upon hundreds of disappointed
women, who turn elsewhere, or relinquish the much-prized college
education. The day is not far distant when it will be a distinct
reproach to a woman that she is not college-bred.” He looked down
thoughtfully and intently and spoke more slowly.
“It is this phase of it which sometimes troubles me. Life is so rich in
experience for woman--so much richer and fuller for woman than for
[Illustration: THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST]
man--that I tremble at this violent reaction from nature to art. To-day
woman seems to forget that she must learn to live, not live to learn. At
the risk of being branded as ‘behind the times,’ of being considered
narrow, bigoted, old-fashioned, I must say that until woman re-discovers
that life is everything, that all she can learn here in a hundred times
the four years of her college course is but the least part of what life
and nature can teach her, until then I shall not be wholly satisfied
with the modern education of woman.”
When he ceased there was an awkward and significant silence, and the
editor looked over at him and smiled and shook his head reprovingly. And
then the President got up quickly and with a few graceful, apropos
remarks restored good-humor, and taking the arm of the distinguished
divine, led the way from the dining-hall to the reception-rooms, and
people jostled each other good-naturedly, and edged themselves between
chairs and tables to speak to acquaintances, and there was much laughter
and questioning and exclamations of surprise and delight, until finally
the long procession got itself outside the dining-hall into the big
corridors.
At the door Professor Arbuthnot caught sight of Miss Ellis again. She
beckoned to the girl, who came quickly toward her.
“I am tired and am going to my rooms for awhile, will you come?” The
girl blushed again with pleasure and some embarrassment.
“I should be delighted,” she said simply, and together they walked down
the broad hallway.
“It’s very good of you,” she broke in nervously, looking down at the
small, quiet figure beside hers--she was head and shoulders taller than
the Professor.
“Not at all,” declared Miss Arbuthnot, kindly. “I want to see you--it
has been a long while since you were a student here--four or five years
I should say--and you recall other faces and times.”
“It has been four years--I can hardly believe it,” said the girl,
softly. She wondered vaguely what on earth Miss Arbuthnot could wish to
see her for--she had been anything but a favorite with the faculty as a
student, but she felt very much flattered and very nervous at the
attention bestowed upon her.
When she reached Professor Arbuthnot’s rooms, the embarrassment she had
felt at being noticed by so distinguished a member of the faculty
visibly increased.
[Illustration: “IT HAS BEEN A LONG WHILE SINCE YOU WERE A STUDENT
HERE”]
The place was typical--the absence of all ornament and feminine
bric-à-brac--the long rows of book-shelves filled with the most advanced
works on natural sciences, the tables piled up with brochures and
scientific magazines, enveloped her in an atmosphere of profound
learning quite oppressive. She had never been in the room but once
before, and that was on a most inauspicious occasion--just after the
mid-year’s. She wondered uneasily, and yet with some amusement, if
Professor Arbuthnot remembered the circumstance. But that lady was not
thinking of the young girl. She was busy with her mail, which had just
been brought in, opening and folding up letter after letter in a quick,
methodical way.
“More work for me,” she said, smiling; “here is an invitation to deliver
six lectures on electro-optics.” The girl looked at her admiringly.
“Absolutely I’ve forgotten the very meaning of the words; and as for
lecturing!” she broke off with a little laugh. “Are you going to give
them?”
“Yes: it makes a great deal of work for me, but I never refuse such
invitations. Besides I shall be able to take these lectures almost
bodily from a little book I am getting out.” Professor Arbuthnot went
over to the desk and lifted up a pile of manuscript, and smiled
indulgently at the girl’s exclamation of awe.
“It isn’t much,” she went on. “Only some experiments I have been making
in the optical effects of powerful magnets. They turned out very
prettily. I have a good deal of hard work to do on the book yet. I shall
stay here a week or two longer, quite alone, and finish it all up.”
The girl touched the papers reverently.
“Here is a note I have just received from Professor----” (Miss Arbuthnot
named one of the most distinguished authorities of the day on magnetism
and electricity). “I sent him some of the first proof-sheets, and he
says he’s delighted with them. We are great friends.”
The girl’s awe and admiration increased with every movement. She looked
at the small, slight woman whose intelligent, ugly face had an almost
child-like simplicity of expression, contrasting strangely enough with
the wrinkled, bloodless skin and piercing eyes. Her hair, which was
parted and brushed severely back, was thickly sprinkled with gray.
She gasped a little. “You actually know him--know Professor----?”
Miss Arbuthnot laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said; “we often work together. We
get along famously; we are ‘sympathetic’ in our work, as the French
say.”
The girl swept her a mock courtesy.
“I feel too flattered for anything that you deign to speak to me,” she
said, laughing and bowing low.
Professor Arbuthnot looked pleased; she was far above conceit, but she
was not entirely impervious to such fresh, genuine admiration. She was
feeling particularly happy, too, over the results of her
experiments--particularly interested in her work.
“If you are so impressed by that,” she laughed, “I shall have to tell
you something even more wonderful still. I have just received an
honorary degree from ---- College. It was quite unexpected, and I must
say I am extremely pleased. It is very agreeable to know that one’s work
is appreciated when one has given one’s life to it.”
It seemed to the girl, with these evidences of success appealing to her,
that a life could not be more nobly spent than in such work. She went
slowly around the room after that, looking at a great many interesting
things. At books with priceless autographs on their title-pages, and
photographs of famous scientists, and diagrams of electrical apparatus,
and editions in pamphlet form of articles by Professor Arbuthnot,
published originally in scientific journals.
The girl suddenly felt sick and ashamed of herself. It struck her very
forcibly just how little she knew, and how she had neglected her
opportunities.
“What an awful ignoramus I am!” she burst out at length. “I don’t know
what these mean; I have only the vaguest idea what these men have done.
How different you are! Your life has had a high aim and you have
attained it. While I----!” she stopped with a scornful gesture. “If it
were not for Julian I believe I would come back here and start over!”
Miss Arbuthnot looked at her critically. She admired the girl’s beauty
tremendously--it was her one weakness--this love of beauty. She never
looked at herself in a mirror oftener than necessary.
“Ah! Julian; who is Julian?”
The girl blushed again--she had a pretty way of flushing quickly.
“Julian?--why he’s my husband. I forgot to tell you that I married my
cousin, Julian Ellis, as soon as I left college.”
“Really!” Miss Arbuthnot came over and sat down on the divan beside the
girl. “You look so young,” she said, rather wistfully. “And you have
been married four years?”
The girl nodded. “It seems much longer,” she said. “I have had--a great
deal of trouble.”
“Tell me about it,” said the older woman kindly. But the girl was much
embarrassed at the idea of talking of her own little affairs to
Professor Arbuthnot.
“I am afraid it would only bore you,” she said, hurriedly. “Your
interests--you are interested in so many----”
But Miss Arbuthnot was firm. “Let me hear,” she insisted.
“I’m sure I hardly know what there is to tell,” the girl began
nervously. “My father was much opposed to my marrying Julian. He did not
wish me to leave college; and he did not believe in cousins marrying. He
said that if we did he would disinherit me--you know he is rich. But
Julian and I were in love with each other, and so of course we got
married.” She stopped suddenly and drawing off her glove looked at her
wedding-ring. Professor Arbuthnot watched her curiously. The girl’s
simple statement--“and of course we got married” struck her forcibly.
She wondered what it would feel like to be swayed by an emotion so
powerful that a father’s commands and the loss of a fortune would have
absolutely no influence upon it. She could not remember ever having felt
anything like that.
“Julian was awfully poor and I of course had nothing more, and so we
went to Texas--Julian had an opening there,” she went on. “It was
awfully lonely--we lived ten miles from the nearest town--and you know
what a Texas town is.” Miss Arbuthnot shook her head. She had never been
west of Ohio.
The girl gave a little in-drawn gasp. “Well, it’s worse than anything
you can conceive of. I think one has to live in one of them and then
move away and have ten miles of dead level prairie land between you and
it to know just what loneliness is. But we were so happy, _so_ happy at
first--until Julian was taken ill.” She leaned back against the couch
and clasped her hands around her knees.
“It was awful--I can’t tell you,” she went on in a broken voice. “But
you know what unspeakable agony it is to see what you love best on earth
ill and suffering, and you nearly powerless to do a thing. And how I
loved him! I never knew until then what he was--how much of my life he
had become. You must know what agony I went through?” she looked
interrogatively, beseechingly at the woman beside her.
Miss Arbuthnot looked away. “I am not sure--I--I was never in love,” she
said uncertainly. A curious wave of jealousy swept over her that she who
had been such a student, whose whole life had been a study, should have
somehow missed experiences that this girl had lived through already. The
girl shook her head softly, pityingly, as if she could hardly believe
her.
“I shall never forget it, and that night,” she went on, closing her eyes
faintly. “I thought he was dying. I had to have a doctor, but I was
afraid to leave him. I remember how everything flashed through my mind.
It was a decision for life or death. If I left him I knew I might never
see him alive again, and yet if I did not----” She opened her eyes wide
and clasped and unclasped her hands. “It was the most horrible moment of
my life.”
“My poor child!” Miss Arbuthnot put her hand timidly on the girl’s arm.
She suddenly felt absurdly inexperienced in her presence.
“I got Ivan’s saddle on him--I don’t know just how--and we started. It
was about two o’clock I remember. The prairie looked just like the sea,
at night--only more lonesome and quite silent. I was horribly
frightened. Even Ivan was frightened. He trembled all over--it’s a
terrible thing to see a horse tremble with fright.”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Professor Arbuthnot, “that you rode
twenty miles in the dead of night, alone upon a Texas prairie?”
“Yes,” answered the girl mechanically. “It was for Julian,” she added as
if in entire explanation.
Miss Arbuthnot looked at her; she could not realize such wealth of
courage and devotion. She wondered with a sudden, hot shame whether she
would have dared it had she been in this girl’s place.
“I don’t think I ever prayed before--really _prayed_ you know,” she ran
on meditatively as if she had forgotten the Professor’s presence. “It
was dawn when we got back.” She stopped entirely and looked out through
the window onto the cool green campus. Miss Arbuthnot scarcely dared
move. There was something so intimate, almost sacred in the girl’s
revelations.
“Did he live?” she inquired softly at length.
The girl turned her face toward her. An almost illuminated look had come
into it.
“Yes--the doctor saved his life, but he said if I had been two hours
later----!”
“_You_ saved his life!” Professor Arbuthnot got up and walked to the
window. She could not quite take it all in. The girl appeared entirely
different to her. She was looking at a woman who had saved the life of
the man she loved.
“And then--” the girl gave a little laugh--“I fainted--wasn’t it
ridiculous? I _am_ such an idiot. It makes me ashamed to think of it
now--when there was so much to be done--and for me to faint!” She gave
an impatient little shake of the head.
“I am sure you never did anything so silly as to faint!” She glanced
admiringly at Professor Arbuthnot.
“I don’t think I ever experienced any emotion sufficiently strong to
make me.” Miss Arbuthnot spoke so grimly that the girl jumped up
hurriedly.
“I’m awfully afraid I am boring you and keeping you from your work----”
She gave a glance at the manuscript upon the desk. “I’m sure you are
wanting to get at it, and think me very troublesome to tell you all this
about myself.”
Professor Arbuthnot looked at her a moment.
“Sit down!” she said imperiously. “I am learning more than if I were
working on the physical principles of the nebular theory!”
The girl gave a gay, puzzled little laugh.
“Are you making fun of me? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
Miss Arbuthnot waved her remark away impatiently.
“And after you had recovered from your fainting spell, what happened?”
“Oh--I helped the doctor and we pulled Julian through together somehow.
And then I went to work. He was ill all winter--something had to be
done--I sing fairly well----”
“I remember now,” broke in Miss Arbuthnot. “You used to sing at College
Vespers. I liked your voice.”
The girl gave a gasp of pleasure. She felt immensely flattered that
Professor Arbuthnot had liked to hear her sing.
“Thank you,” she said feelingly. “I got a position in a church choir and
I went into town three days in the week and gave lessons. I made four
hundred dollars that winter.” She broke off with a little laugh. “I
don’t think I ever felt so good in all my life as when I counted up and
found that I had really made four hundred dollars for Julian! I never
understood before why poor people want to get married--it’s for the fun
of working for each other I think. It’s the most satisfying sensation I
know of.” She glanced up at the woman beside the window. Miss Arbuthnot
nodded absently. She was thinking of her safe investments--she had
accumulated a good deal of money during her long years of teaching and
her people had all been well off and she had never given a cent to
anyone except in presents and trifling remembrances and organized
charitable work. A strange desire grew upon her to share her life with
someone. She looked with troubled eyes at the girl who had suddenly made
her work and her life dissatisfying to her.
“I don’t understand”--she murmured--“and didn’t you ever regret--regret
your wealth and social position?--the other life you had known?”
“I think it’s my turn not to understand,” said the girl slowly with a
puzzled look. “You mean did I regret marrying Julian?”
Miss Arbuthnot nodded. An angry little flush mounted to the girl’s
cheek, and then, as if the mere thought was too amusing to be taken
seriously:
“Regret marrying Julian? O! Professor Arbuthnot--and then there was
little Julian, you know. He was the dearest, the sweetest--wait, I have
his picture.” She pulled at a little silk cord about her neck and drew
forth a small miniature case. In it, painted on porcelain, was the head
of a child with the blond beauty of its mother. As the girl looked at it
her eyes filled with tears and she bent over it sobbing and kissing it
passionately.
“That is all I have to regret,” she said. “He was two years old when he
died--that was almost a year ago. I couldn’t tell you what he was like.
I think he was the brightest, prettiest, sweetest boy in the world. You
ought to have seen his hands and feet--all dimples and soft pinkiness
and milky whiteness--and his eyes and long lashes----!” she stopped
breathlessly.
Professor Arbuthnot looked at her wonderingly. She went over to her and
looked down at the crushed figure.
“You have loved and loved again and lost. You have been a mother and
your child is dead,” she said slowly. “I would sympathize with you if I
knew how.”
The girl caught her hand.
“How kind you are! I never speak of this--I hardly know how I came to do
so with you. I am sure I must have wearied you.” She put the locket back
and began to draw on her gloves again slowly.
Professor Arbuthnot said nothing. In the last hour she had had glimpses
of a life and a love
[Illustration: “HOW KIND YOU ARE”]
she had never known, and the revelation silenced her. She had sometimes
reproached herself that the studious calm, the entire absorption of her
life in her work had been exaggerated, and as she looked at the slight
figure in its black gown, at the pale face with its sombred, youthful
beauty, the conviction was borne in upon her, by this little breath from
the outside world, by the life of this girl as told by her, that the
insularity of her existence had been a mistake. A sudden intense
dissatisfaction and impatience with her life took hold upon her.
The girl rose to go. She stood there hesitating, embarrassed, as if she
wished to ask something, and rather dreaded doing so.
“I--I shall have a great deal of time this winter,” she hazarded,
twisting the ring of her fan slowly round and round her finger, “and I
am going to study--indeed I am!” She glanced up quickly, as if afraid
Professor Arbuthnot might be smiling. “I know you think it foolish for
me to try, but you don’t know how you’ve inspired me this afternoon!”
She went on enthusiastically. “You and everything here make me realize
intensely how little I know, and I am going to begin and really learn
something. You don’t know how much obliged I’d be if you would tell me
a little how to begin--what to start on--something easy, adapted for
weak intellects!”
She looked up smiling and with heightened color at Professor Arbuthnot.
She still stood in so much awe of her and was so afraid of being laughed
at!
But that lady was not laughing at all. She looked preternaturally grave.
“It seems to me,” she said slowly, “that you and the natural sciences
can get along admirably without each other. Why, child, you have lived!”
she cried with sudden vehemence. She went over and shook her gently by
the shoulder. “You are twenty-four and I am fifty! In four years you
have crowded into your life more than I shall ever learn!”
The girl looked at her wonderingly, puzzled.
“Have you forgotten so soon what we heard this afternoon--that ‘life is
everything, that all that you can learn in a hundred times the four
years of your college course is but the least part of what life and
nature can teach you?’” She pushed the girl toward the door.
“When you are tired of living come back to me.”
She stood and watched the girl, with the mystified, half-hurt look on
her face, disappear down the corridor. When she had quite gone she went
in and stood at the window for a long, long while looking out at the
deepening shadows, and then she seated herself grimly at her desk and
wrote to her publishers that they would have to delay the appearance of
her book, as she felt she needed a vacation and would have to give up
work on it for awhile.
A SHORT CAREER
She was so noticeably pretty and stylish, with that thorough-bred air of
the young girl to whom life has always been something more or less of a
social event, that she attracted a great deal of attention, though, of
course, she very properly appeared to be oblivious of that fact. Even
the baggage-master, when she caught his eye, hastened toward her and
bestirred himself generally in a way that is not characteristic of
baggage-men on the Boston and Albany, or any other road. She noticed
vaguely that he seemed rather surprised when she gave him her four
trunk-checks and he assured her with elaborate politeness that the train
would stop at a certain small station without fail, to let off several
hundred young women who wished to go directly to “the College.”
When Miss Eva Hungerford, on the completion of an enthusiastic college
career, wrote to her young Philadelphia cousin, Margaret Wright, that
she ought to take a college course, it was quite in despair of really
inducing that young lady to do so, and only in the vain hope of saving
her from an early and ill-considered marriage with an extremely nice
Harvard youth, who declared that he would cheerfully forego his senior
year if her parents would give their consent.
It was therefore with both delight and surprise that, just before
starting for Europe, Miss Hungerford received a rather gloomy letter
from her young cousin, who said that with such a brilliant example
before her, and deeply impressed by the weighty arguments in her
cousin’s letter, she had told the Harvard man that she was much too
young and ignorant to marry, and fully convinced that society was a
hollow sham, she had determined to devote the next four years to those
pursuits which had raised her cousin so far above the ordinary girl. She
was even greatly interested, she said, in her preparations for the
entrance examinations which she would take at Philadelphia, and the
chances of her being admitted. Miss Hungerford was quite touched by the
little tribute to herself contained in the letter, and wrote a most
cordial answer, and rather upbraided herself for having thought so
lightly of her cousin. But her mother seemed to be distressingly
sceptical about Margaret’s heroic determination, and said she shouldn’t
wonder if some misunderstanding with the Harvard man were not at the
bottom of it. But Miss Hungerford was confident that such a lofty
purpose could have been born only of some noble sentiment, and refused
to have her faith in her young cousin shaken by such a supposition.
When Miss Wright got off the train at the pretty little station, she
found herself in the midst of a sufficiently large crowd of young women,
all of whom seemed to be aggravatingly well acquainted with each other,
and who set about in a most business-like way to get where they wanted
to go, some taking “barges” and omnibuses, others striking out easily
over the roads in the direction of the college. Being totally unfamiliar
with the place and somewhat bewildered by the number of girls, Miss
Wright thought she would simply take a carriage and get up to the
college as quickly as possible.
She never told anyone but her best friend what were her sensations on
reaching the big building and being “numbered” for an interview with one
of the assistant professors, instead of seeing the president herself, as
she had expected to do; or how hurt she felt at being totally ignored by
the vast majority of busy, rather severe-looking young women, or how
grateful she felt to a patronizing Sophomore who talked to her kindly,
if condescendingly, for a few moments and who took her through unending
corridors to her rooms. Later in the day she found two or three girls
who wore tailor-made travelling gowns and seemed ill at ease, and they
all huddled together in a corner of one of the big corridors and talked
rather helplessly to each other. They would have liked to know what the
peals on the big Japanese bell meant, and if they were expected to do
anything about it, but they were afraid to ask anyone, because they were
not sure which were the professors and which the students.
When it came her turn to see the assistant, she felt quite ready to go
home. She had made out a list of studies which she thought she would
like, but when she showed it to the professor, that astute lady very
kindly but firmly told her that it was ill-advised and made her out
another. She had wanted to study mathematical astronomy, because a
Harvard man had said a chum of his studied it and found it “immense,”
and besides she thought the name would impress her friends; but the
professor pointed out to her that she would have to take the entire
course in mathematics before she could hope to do anything with the
astronomy. It was the same way with several other things, and she
found, when the interview was over, that her list consisted mostly of
freshman studies. She was rather disheartened by this, but remembered
that Miss Hungerford had been a full freshman, and so she determined to
go to work conscientiously.
And she did work very hard, but there were a great many young women who
seemed to have had a much more thorough previous education than herself,
and though she was not in the least snobbish, she was secretly surprised
and a little bit aggrieved by their evident disregard of her superior
gowns. She might as well not even curl her hair, she thought
gloomily--most of the best students wore theirs back in a rather
uncompromising way, and she thought it might have some influence for the
better on her mind, and half-way determined to do it. But when she saw
how she looked with it straight and pulled quite back, she gave it up
for fear the Harvard man (who though so near, maintained a stony silence
and invisibility) should happen to come over to the college to see some
other girl.
When the winter concerts began and the young women were inviting their
friends out from the “Tech” and Harvard and Amherst, and other places
which to any but the college mind would seem appallingly distant, she
sat resigned and alone, and wondered what her people would think if
they could see her looking so sad and deserted. Her friends, she knew,
would feel sorry for her, and would at last believe in her determination
to go through the course.
When she had been at college about four months and was beginning to
realize how little she knew, and how infinitely far off the president
still seemed, and the effect of the study of chemistry on a brain
unprepared for it, and was pitying herself for looking so pale and thin
under her anxieties--one of the favorite concerts of the year was given.
A celebrated violinist and his wife, a charming singer, were coming out.
It was the last concert before the Christmas holidays, and one of the
tailor-made girls with whom she had become intimate since that miserable
first day had invited a lot of men out and had asked her to help
entertain them. As every one knows, it is a long-established custom in
that college for those young women who are so fortunate as to have a
large masculine acquaintance to ask their friends to help them “take
care” of the surplus male element.
Miss Wright was feeling very blue that evening and had just about made
up her mind to stay at the college through the Christmas vacation, that
she might spare her parents the distress of seeing her so worn and
changed; so that when the tailor-made girl came to ask her to see after
some of her friends for her, she thought that probably she was entitled
to some recreation for the good resolution she had made. But she was now
much too indifferent to men and such things to bestir herself very
greatly, so she only put on her next most becoming gown and descended
languidly to find the people.
Her friend saw her first and made a little dive at her through the
circle of youths around her, and bore her to them with quite an air of
triumph. And then, while she was trying to hear the names and remember
where they came from, she suddenly saw a Harvard man coming toward her,
and looking very much surprised and intensely happy, and somewhat
embarrassed. She had just time to wish she had put on the other gown,
when the bell for the concert sounded and everybody began to rush down
the corridor. Somehow they got left behind the others, and as the place
was crowded and they did not seem to care much for the celebrated
violinist, who really played exceptionally well that evening, they
considerately took seats against the wall behind everybody, where they
could talk to their hearts’ content.
And they really must have talked quite a good deal, for when the last
bell sounded for all the visitors to go and the driver of the big
college sleigh (which was really an omnibus on runners) was shouting
himself hoarse in the “centre” and in nervous asides assuring the
excited and aggrieved passengers already assembled and waiting that they
would all be late for the last train that night if the remaining few did
not hurry up--while all of this was going on, the Harvard man was still
sitting with her on the pedestal of a plaster statue in a darkened
corner of a corridor, assuring her that they could be married just as
soon as the finals were over, and that though he was sure to be made a
marshal he would not wait for Class Day for anything which he could then
think of under the sun, and that instead of sending out invitations to a
spread in Beck, he would give his friends a delightful shock by
substituting his wedding cards for them, and while the other fellows
were working like beavers at the Tree, or filling dance cards for their
friends, or wearing themselves to shreds dancing with their friends’
friends, they could be in a boat half-way over to the other side. And
she was saying she didn’t think she would come back after Christmas so
as to have plenty of time to get her gowns and things ready, and that
she did not think she was really and truly fitted for college life;
which he interrupted to assure her that he was certain she already knew
vastly more than he did, and that he would telegraph her mother and
father about the whole thing before he slept, and that if the answer was
favorable he would send her some flowers the next day as a token. And
then when the coachman’s patience had quite given out and they heard the
sleigh go dashing away from under the _porte-cochère_, before she could
realize it he had kissed her once quickly and jumped down the steps four
at a time, and was out of the door tearing after the vanishing coach.
The next afternoon Miss Wright received an enormous box full of Mabel
Morrison roses, and her tailor-made friend, not understanding the
significance of the flowers, thought it was rather shabby on her part
not to offer her some. About the same time of day the Harvard man sent a
long and explicit telegram to the agent of the Cunard Line for the very
best stateroom on a steamer sailing on or about the 20th of the next
June, and blushed boyishly and then laughed a little at its
“previousness,” as he signed the application for “Mr. and Mrs. Roger
Pervere, New York,” six months before his wedding-day.
AN EPISODE
Judge Cahill drew his chair a trifle nearer the fire and the tall,
muscular young man who was with him, and who bore so striking a
resemblance to him as to be unmistakably his son, dropped into one
opposite. They had finished their late dinner and were on the way to the
library, but the elder man had paused before the big chimney-piece,
standing meditatively for a few moments, and had finally seated himself
comfortably and evidently with no immediate intention of proceeding to
the library beyond.
“The whole arrangement is just what I have planned and hoped for all my
life,” he said at length, with a bright look at the young man opposite.
“And we have a capital chance of talking it over together to-night. It
is rather lucky that your aunt is away for a few days, Dana. Your sister
will be delighted. You must write to her at once that it is _un fait
accompli_ and that she must leave college for over Sunday and come in
and celebrate with us!”
“Oh! it will doubtless seem a mere trifle to Louise in comparison with
her own arduous duties and tasks,” responded young Cahill, laughing a
little and offering a cigar to his father, who refused it with a slight
shake of his fine, white head.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll smoke one,” he said, lighting his own.
“Oh! I don’t mind at all,” said the elder man; and then absently and
sadly, as he pushed the thick, silvery hair back from his forehead with
a quick decisive motion habitual with him:
“I wish your mother could have lived to see this, Dana!”
The younger man made an inarticulate murmur of assent and regret, and
then they both sat silent, staring into the crackling logs, while the
butler moved noiselessly about, putting a decanter and glasses on the
table and turning down the lamp a bit and folding back the screen. The
younger man was making a rather unsuccessful attempt to recall his
mother. He remembered her vaguely as a boy of eight remembers, and she
had always seemed to him rather like some beautiful woman of whom he had
read than his own mother; and the portrait of her in the drawing-room,
although he could recall every feature, every line of it, was like the
picture of any other beautiful woman he might have seen in a gallery
abroad or the year’s Academy. At last he looked up, and shaking the ash
from his cigar, said, with rather an effort--
“You have been most kind, sir. I scarcely think I deserve so much at
your hands. I shall try to be all you wish.”
Judge Cahill looked quickly around. “That’s right! that’s right, my
boy!” he said heartily, and with a touch of surprise in his voice. “You
have always been what I wished--not very studious, perhaps”--he laughed
indulgently, “but you always stood fairly well at the University, and
although you have doubtless done a great many things of which I know
nothing and of which I do not wish to know,” he added quickly and
decidedly, “still I believe you have lived a life which you have no need
to be ashamed of. I know that you are honest, and truthful, and
straight, and that I can trust you, and that the responsibilities which
you are to assume will make you even more upright and ‘square,’ if
possible.”
He glanced admiringly and affectionately at the athletic young figure
sitting easily before him, at the well-shaped head and pleasant blue
eyes and finely-cut mouth of the young man.
“You might have been so different,” went on the older man, musingly,
and with a certain whimsicality. “You might never have been willing to
go through the University; or worse still, you might never have been
able to get through; or you might have made debts that even I would not
have felt willing or able to pay; or you might have been unwilling to
supplement your college education with the years of travel which I
thought necessary; or you might have had so decided a dislike for the
law that it would have been impossible for me to take you in the firm as
I am now so delighted, so proud to do; or you might have married too
soon and ruined your life. In short, you might have been a
disappointment--and you are not.”
The young man shifted his position a little, and tumbled the burnt end
of his cigar into the ash-tray at his elbow.
“You are very kind, sir,” he repeated. “I am not quite equal to telling
you just how kind you seem to me, and how proud I am to be the junior
member of the firm. I feel a legal enthusiasm kindling within me which I
am sure will land me on the Supreme Bench some day!” And then he went on
more seriously, and with an anxious note in his voice. “But I hope you
are not deceiving yourself about me, sir. If you remember, you _did_
have to pay debts for me at the University, and there was one time when
I thought active measures would be taken to prevent my finishing my
course even if I had been quite inclined to continue, as indeed I was;
and I am not very clever, and shall never be at the head of my
profession as you are, sir!”
Judge Cahill leaned back and laughed easily.
“I had quite forgotten those little incidents, Dana!” he said, “and do
you know, it seems to me that we are unusually complimentary and
effusive to each other to-night. I am congratulating myself on having
such a son, and you on having me for your father! Well--it is not a bad
idea. A little more demonstration in our family will not hurt anything.”
He paused slightly, and then added: “Your mother was not very
demonstrative.”
Again young Cahill murmured an assent as he looked reflectively into the
fire. He could just remember that she had not seemed very fond of
himself.
“But Louise is demonstrative enough,” he said, at length.
“Yes--yes, indeed,” replied his father, readily. “Louise is very
affectionate and enthusiastic. She seems tremendously interested in her
college--much more so than you were in yours,” he added with another
laugh.
Dana Cahill got up leisurely, and stood by the chimney-piece thrusting
his hands in his pockets and looking thoughtfully into the fire.
“I am thinking, sir,” he began, hesitatingly, “of what you have said
about my having lived straight. I want to be fair about it. I _have_
lived better than some. I have done nothing to be ashamed of, as you
said, sir, and I cannot think of anything just now to speak of which
would illustrate my point. But I cannot help thinking that your ideals
and principles are so much higher and purer than those of most young men
of to-day, that I may have fallen short of them in a great many ways of
which you do not dream.” He moved back uneasily to his chair and dropped
into it. “I do not mean in the more vital questions. I have done nothing
dishonorable, nothing that I could not afford to do according to the
world’s standard.”
The elder man looked at him, and a shade of annoyance and uneasiness
crept into his face.
“Well?” he asked, finally.
Young Cahill looked up, and his frank, boyish face wore a rather
perplexed, troubled expression.
“Well,” he said, “that’s all--unless--” he stopped suddenly and lit
another cigar rather nervously.
“Unless what?” insisted the elder man, the uneasiness and annoyance
betraying themselves in his voice.
“But,” he added, quickly; “don’t tell me anything that you might later
regret telling, or anything very disagreeable if you can help it, for I
confess you have been so satisfactory, so thoroughly all that I wanted
my son to be, that I shrink from hearing anything to your detriment.”
“I don’t know that it is exactly to my detriment, for after all, I was
thinking of a particular case to illustrate what I said a while ago, and
I am pretty sure that most of the men I know wouldn’t think seriously of
it for a moment; but I acknowledge that I have never felt satisfied with
myself about it all.” He threw back his head and stared fixedly at the
ceiling for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“By Jove, sir! we are getting demonstrative,” he said. “Do you feel
yourself equal to being a father confessor besides just an ordinary
father?”
Judge Cahill smiled in a perfunctory way.
“If your conscience is in such a bad way as to need confessing, Dana, I
shall be very glad to hear, although I, of course, cannot give you
absolution.”
Cahill paused a moment.
“That’s so, sir,” he said, finally. “After all it is hardly worth while
troubling you about such a small thing, and one that happened so long
ago, and which is settled now, rightly or wrongly, forever.”
He stood up as if to say good-night, but the elder man did not rise and
sat looking thoughtfully at the blaze with the uneasy, surprised look
still on his face.
“It is not about business? nothing that affects your character for
honesty and fair dealing?” he said at length, interrogatively.
“Oh, no!” replied Cahill, quickly.
Judge Cahill looked inexpressively relieved. He poured out a little wine
and drank it off quickly, as if he had experienced some moment of sharp
emotion which had left him faint. The younger man noticed the action and
went on hastily.
“It was nothing--only about a girl whom you never heard of, and
myself--something that happens to two-thirds of the men one meets--it is
really of little consequence, though it has worried me, and since I have
spoken of it at all, I may as well tell you about it, sir.”
But it was a very fragmentary story that he told and the facts, as he
reviewed them hastily, seemed absurdly commonplace and inadequate to
the amount of worry he had given himself.
“It was five years ago, sir, you remember, just after I left college,
and went out to Nevada for the summer with Lord Deveridge and the rest
of that English syndicate. It was when they bought ‘The Bish’ mine, you
know. Of course we went about a great deal. They were so afraid of being
swindled, and there had been such pots of money lost out there by
English syndicates, that they determined to investigate fully and take
every precaution. So they went around trying to sift things out, and
there were a great many complications of all sorts which occasioned a
great deal of delay, and there were so many conflicting rumors about the
value of the mine, that I began to think they were never going to wind
up things. Deveridge and I got awfully tired of pottering around after
all sorts of men, meeting an expert geologist here and a committee
there, and never getting at anything; so we finally decided to cut the
whole thing for two weeks and go off on a little shooting expedition.
Two or three others joined us, and we had magnificent sport for four
days--and then I sprained my bad ankle again.” He stopped suddenly. “It
is very curious how things happen,” he said at length, with a little
laugh. “If it hadn’t rained the morning of the Springfield game, the
ground wouldn’t have been wet and I wouldn’t have slipped in that last
scrimmage, and my ankle wouldn’t have been sprained, and I wouldn’t have
wrenched it on that mountain road, and I wouldn’t have been laid up two
weeks in the house with her, and none of this would have happened.”
But the elder man was in no mood for trifling.
“You were saying----?” he began, anxiously.
“That I hurt my ankle and had to limp to the nearest inhabited place and
stay there until it got better. Of course the others went on. They were
coming back that way and stopped for me. I was all broken up at not
being able to enjoy the shooting, but my ankle gave me so much trouble
at first that I didn’t have a great deal of time to think about it; and
then it began to dawn on me that she--the daughter I mean--was unusually
pretty and refined and quite different from her parents seemingly,
and--and--there was nothing else to do, sir, and I am afraid that I
acted as most young men would act under similar circumstances.”
“You mean,” said his father, with an uncompromising directness which
Cahill thought rather brutal and unnecessary, “you mean that you made
love to the girl?”
The young man nodded.
“She was very pretty, you know, and it was only for a short time, and
she must have seen--have realized--that there was a difference, that
there was nothing to it. It was only the most incipient flirtation--the
same thing that goes on at Bar Harbor and the Pier and Newport among a
different class of people.”
Judge Cahill said nothing, rather to the young man’s discomfiture, so he
ran on, hurriedly:
“They were very poor, and I paid them liberally for what they did for
me. I confess I rather lost my head about the girl for a week! She was
strikingly pretty, but she had only the most elementary education and
was absurdly unconventional. Of course it was nothing, sir, and I don’t
flatter myself that she felt any worse when I left than I did--at least
she never made any sign,” he added, meditatively.
“I can see how, from your point of view, it appeared nothing, Dana,”
said the elder man, gravely, at length. “But I hope this is the only
episode of the kind in your life,” he continued, after a moment’s pause.
The younger man stood up with a rather relieved look on his face.
“Indeed it is, sir! and I think the fact that I have let it worry me so
much is proof that I am a novice at it. The whole thing was so
unimportant that I feel rather ridiculous for having spoken of it. There
was never anything serious in the affair, and of course, sir, I did not
dream--I knew it would be impossible to bring her here. You--my
sister----” he stopped and looked around him rather helplessly.
“Of course,” assented the elder man, readily. “I am glad you got
yourself so cleanly out of such an entanglement. As you say, it was
commonplace and unimportant. Have you ever heard anything of her since?”
“O, no! I saw her for two weeks and then we parted with mutual regret,
and that was all, sir! Your too complimentary remarks recalled the whole
episode to my mind, and made me feel rather hypocritical, for I confess
that I consider that sort of thing extremely caddish. There’s no excuse
for it.”
“There is not, indeed,” assented the elder man, rising. “And it has
further surprised me, because you have always seemed rather indifferent
to women, Dana--almost too much so. Well--I am glad you told me. Your
life has been clean, indeed, if you have no worse things to tell of than
a two weeks’ flirtation with a little Western girl!” He laughed again--a
deep, hearty laugh, with a relieved ring in it.
“Good-night!” he said. “To-morrow you will please get to the office
promptly as a junior member should! ‘Cahill, Crosby, and Cahill’ sounds
very imposing, doesn’t it, Dana? much more so than merely ‘Cahill and
Crosby.’ I’m delighted, my boy! And it is especially good to think that
you are back with me. What with your college life and travels, and law
study, I have hardly seen anything of you for ten years, and at my age
one cannot spare ten years--it is too big a slice out of the little cake
left! Good-night!”
“Good-night, sir!” responded the young man, heartily, as he held the
door open for his father to pass into the library.
And then he reseated himself before the fire and smoked another cigar
and recalled a great many details that had somehow slipped his memory
when talking to his father, and he felt distinctly relieved and glad to
get away from his own thoughts when he remembered an engagement which
took him out immediately.
* * * * *
At Easter Miss Louise Cahill left college to spend the vacation at her
home in Boston. It was possibly because she was small and blond and
quite irrepressible that her most intimate friend, Edith Minot, of
Baltimore, whom she brought home with her, was tall and rather stately,
with a dark, severe beauty quite in contrast to that of Miss Cahill.
They were alike, however, in a great many ways, in their young
enthusiasms and in their devotion to art--they worshipped Israels and
Blommers and Herzog--and in their vast interest in electrical inventions
and discoveries, and in their sympathy with whatever was weak or ill or
oppressed, and in modern charities and college settlements. They had
been great friends at college, where Miss Minot had taken her degree the
year before, but they had seen little of each other since, Miss Cahill
having returned to finish her college course and Miss Minot having been
abroad until late in the fall, and having then been much taken up with
the social life of Baltimore.
Miss Cahill was very much afraid that society had spoiled Miss Minot,
and that she would be less interested in art for art’s sake, and in
university extensions and college settlements and organized charitable
work. She was therefore much delighted and very enthusiastic to find
that her friend was not at all changed in the ten months of absence, but
that in the midst of her travels and social pleasures she had contrived
to devote a great deal of time to the things that had always interested
her, and that she had studied the Guild Hall Loan Exhibit and the East
End with equal enthusiasm, while in London, and was greatly interested
in Nikola Tesla’s latest experiments and in college settlements. It was
the college settlements that interested her most, however.
“But I think,” she explained earnestly that evening to her friend and
young Cahill, after the Judge and his sister had gone into the
library--“I think that although there are more interesting and dreadful
things to be contended with at the Chicago Settlement, and although
Rivington Street is on a much larger scale, still I think I like the
Boston College Settlement the most. Perhaps it’s because I know it
better, or because it is not quite in the slummiest slums, or because
I’m so interested in my protégée there--at any rate, I like it best.”
Miss Cahill looked plaintively at her brother.
“Just think, Dana, when Edith was at college she used to spend her
Christmas vacations in Tyler Street. Don’t you think she’s very brave
and good? I’m sure I’m only too glad to give my money, and I’m greatly
interested in it, and awfully pleased when the others go; but I don’t
think I could possibly stay there myself! And I actually believe she
came near refusing my invitation to come here, because she thought she
ought to go to the settlement!”
Cahill laughed easily.
“That is hard on us, Miss Minot. Think of having to compete in
attractions with the college settlement, and only just managing to come
out ahead!” He was not thinking very much of what he was saying--he was
looking at the sombre, beautiful eyes, with the lids slightly lowered
over them, and the sensitively cut lips and air of thorough breeding of
the girl before him; and he was saying to himself that he had been
singularly unfortunate to have always been away in Japan, or at the law
school, or in Paris, when Miss Minot had visited his sister.
A little touch of color crept into the clear pallor of the girl’s
cheeks.
“How unkind of you and Louise!” she exclaimed, smiling. “You must know
there could be no question of what was _nicest_ to me. I’m very sorry
that I like dances and the opera and luncheons and all that so much, but
it is so, and the people at the college settlement are very good to let
me come in now and then, and try to help a little and ease my conscience
a little for all its self-indulgence and worldly pleasures. So you must
not think better of me than you should!”
“Don’t believe her, Dana!” interposed Miss Cahill, indignantly. “She
does it all because she’s so awfully _good_, and she never brags about
it as I would do, I’m sure, and they all adore her down there, and the
little boys beg for her flowers, and the little girls have to be kissed,
and the teachers are always delighted to see her,” she ran on,
breathlessly and triumphantly.
Miss Minot looked up. “I do love the little children and they interest
me tremendously,” she said. She leaned forward eagerly, and appealed to
Cahill. “Don’t you see,” she said, “how easy it is to become interested
in that sort of thing? One doesn’t have to be particularly religiously
inclined or even ordinarily good--it’s just the human nature of it which
touches one so. You ought to see them,” she went on, still appealing to
Cahill. “They are so interested and amused in their ‘clubs,’ which meet
different afternoons in the week, and they are so anxious to get in even
before the others leave! I have seen them climbing up in the windows to
get a look at the good times the others were having, and waiting about
at the door in the cold until that ‘club’ should have gone home and left
the warm rooms and the playthings, and the cheerful, bright teachers to
them. It rather puts our society functions to shame, where no one goes
to a reception until the receiving hours are half over, or to the opera
until next to the last act.”
“And you ought to see how fond they are of her,” insisted Miss Cahill,
admiringly. “She lets them get on her prettiest gowns and muss her, and
she is so patient! I keep at a distance, and tell them they are very
good and I hope they are having a nice time.”
Cahill laughed.
“Philanthropy made easy, is what suits you, Louise!”
“But it isn’t philanthropy at all,” objected Miss Minot, “unless it’s
philanthropy to us outsiders to be allowed to go and help and share a
little of the pleasure and culture of our selfish lives. Really you
ought to see the children,” she went on, eagerly. “I don’t believe
Palmer Cox’s brownies or ‘pigs in clover’ are such favorites anywhere
else, and you wouldn’t imagine how interesting the making of a
pin-cushion cover could be; and I never thought ‘Daisy Bell,’ and ‘Sweet
Marie,’ and ‘Mollie and the Baby and I,’ were really pretty tunes until
I heard a little girls’ club singing them in excellent tune, and with an
appreciation of the sentiments quite astonishing.”
Cahill nodded a trifle absently. He decided that he had never seen any
girl’s face quite as lovely or that appealed to him so as this girl’s,
and that she was very different from most of his sister’s college
friends, who were such serious young women and who rather over-awed him,
and with whom he was never entirely at his ease.
“And then the women in the evening! They like the singing best, I think.
It is wonderful to watch them when she sings for them, and I think her
voice never sounds so beautiful as then.”
Cahill looked up interrogatively.
“She?” he said.
“It’s her protégée, Dana,” interposed Miss Cahill. “Edith won’t tell you
the straight of it, so I shall. Edith found her already at the
settlement. She was awfully poor, but she had this glorious voice and
she was trying to support herself, and earn enough to have her voice
trained. And she would come over Sunday evenings--she lived near the
settlement--and sing for the men and women. You ought to see how they
appreciate it and how they listen to her quite quietly, as if astonished
and charmed into silence. She is nearly as poor as they, and it is all
she can do for them, she says--I forget what she did, type-writing or
something--and she was going to an awfully bad teacher and getting her
voice ruined, and so Edith made friends with her in that way. She has
now sent her to Alden and really supports her so she can devote herself
entirely to her music.”
Miss Minot glanced quickly up in a little embarrassed way.
“Louise is terrible!” she said, laughing. “But you cannot imagine how
wonderfully beautiful her voice is. It is one of those naturally perfect
voices--she had always sung, but never suspected what an extraordinary
gift she had until two or three years ago. It’s such a tremendous
satisfaction to do something for a voice like that. One gets so tired
spending on one’s self and cultivating one’s own little society voice,
that can just be heard across the drawing-room if everyone keeps quite
still! Alden says she will be ready for Marchesi in six months, and for
the Grand Opera in a year.”
“And one of these days, when she is a great prima donna and has married
a marquis, or a count at least, she will come back and patronize you and
send you a box for the matinée!” remarked Cahill.
Miss Minot shook her head smilingly.
“You are very cynical and you don’t know her in the least. She is very
beautiful and very fine and most grateful--absurdly grateful.”
“And she adores Edith,” put in Miss Cahill. “She has been her only
friend and confidant, and she worships her and treats her as if she were
a goddess, and I believe she would have her hands chopped off or her
eyes burned out, or be executed quite cheerfully, to show her devotion.”
Miss Minot looked openly amused. “I don’t know about all that, I’m
sure!” she said, “but I don’t think she would patronize me. Besides it
would not be strange if she were cynical and hard like yourself, Mr.
Cahill,” she went on smiling over at him, “for she has had a great deal
of trouble already.” The girl pushed her chair back a little, and her
fine, earnest face grew grave and perplexed.
Miss Cahill gave a little gasp. “I _knew_ she had a history, Edith! She
looks like it. She is awfully pretty,” she went on, turning to her
brother. “I have seen her several times at the settlement, but we are
not friends yet--I doubt if she even knows my name. I would like to know
her, though--there is something so sad about her eyes and mouth, and her
voice makes one cry.”
“And Alden--you know Alden, Mr. Cahill?--well, he’s rather brutal,
sometimes--thinks only of his art--and he told her one day that she was
particularly fortunate to have had a great trouble in her life, and that
it would do more for her voice than ten years of training. You ought to
have seen how she looked at him! But men _are_ brutal; it was a man who
made her suffer first. She only told me part of the story, I don’t quite
understand, but I know it nearly broke her heart, young as she was, and
that she will never get over it or be the same again. I am not sure,”
went on the girl thoughtfully, “it was before she came to Boston, but I
don’t know the details, and of course I could ask no questions. She met
him quite a while ago, out West, I believe, where she lived, and she
thought he loved her, he led her to believe so, and she loved him, I
know. He must have been quite different from the men she had known. He
had everything and she nothing. It was a sort of King Cophetua and the
Beggar Maid episode, only the king was not kingly at all, and when the
time came for him to go, he left her quite calmly.”
Her face was flushed now and her eyes wide open and shining with the
indignation she felt. It struck Cahill again that she was the handsomest
girl he had ever seen, and he liked her so--aroused and animated--even
better than coldly beautiful. He was not listening very much to what
she was saying, but he was watching her quietly and intently, the nobly
poised head and low forehead with the hair growing so beautifully on it,
and the rounded chin and firm, rather square jaw. As he looked at her
the conviction was borne in upon him that she was a girl who would be
capable of entire devotion or utter renunciation, and that she would be
implacable if her confidence were once destroyed.
“It must be a fine thing for a man to do,” she went on, scornfully, “to
make a girl love him and believe him nobler, and better, and stronger
than he is, and then to undeceive her so cruelly! And a girl like this
one, too! That was the worst of it. It is bad enough when the girl and
the man have equal chances--when they know each other’s weapons and
skill, and when they can retire gracefully and before it is too late, or
when they are already so scarred up that one wound more makes no
difference. But when the advantages are all on one side--when one is so
much stronger than the other! It may be because I am so fond of this
girl, or it may be because I am even yet unused to the world’s ways, and
the four years spent in college and away from such things may have made
me super-sensitive, but however it may be, it seems a despicable thing
to me!” She stopped short, and the indignation and scorn in her voice
rang out sharply.
Cahill moved uneasily and looked around him. He had been so absorbed in
watching the girl’s face that he had hardly taken in what she had been
saying, but in some vague way he felt jarred and restless.
“And then,” continued Miss Minot, “if only she did not take it as she
does--if she were only angry, or indifferent, or revengeful even--but
she loves him still and she would do anything for him. She would be
capable to-morrow of sacrificing herself and her love if she thought it
would make him happier. Such devotion is as rare as genius.”
Miss Cahill leaned far forward, tracing out the delicate inlaid pattern
of the table with the point of her silver letter-opener.
“If I were engaged to a man,” she said, thoughtfully, “and were to
discover that he had treated a girl so, I would give him up, no matter
what it cost me.”
“And you, Miss Minot?” said Cahill, “what would you do?” He felt a
sudden, sharp curiosity as to her answer, and a vague apprehension of
what she would say. The girl lifted her head proudly.
“It would not be any effort for me to give such a man up,” she said,
quietly.
Cahill stood up restlessly. This girl had touched upon something which
he would have liked to forget. Of course it had been greatly different
in his case, he assured himself, but he felt uneasy and sore. And then
he smiled. There was something which struck him as pathetically amusing
in the seriousness of these two girls. They were so young and untried
and utterly unworldly, and they took such a tragic view of such a
common-place affair, and were so ready to be sacrificed for their high
ideals and principles.
“You are very severe,” he said at length, with a rather forced laugh.
“If we are all to be judged like that it will go hard with us.” But he
could attempt no excuse or explanation with the girl’s beautiful,
indignant eyes upon him, and presently the talk drifted off in other
channels.
It was about two weeks after this that Cahill began to realize just how
deeply in love he was with Edith Minot. She had interested him from the
first, and her very dissimilarity from most of the society girls he
knew, the nobility and seriousness of her nature beneath a rather cold
and conventional manner, and the young purity of her presence had struck
him as being the finest and most attractive things he had ever seen. He
had been with her a great deal in the two weeks she had spent with his
sister, and he had had a great many opportunities of finding out just
how superior she was to most girls, how witty and clever she could be,
and what native dignity and fine simplicity of character she possessed,
and how sincere and truthful she was. They had gone together to teas and
receptions, and small dances, and the numerous post-Easter weddings, and
the fact that she was his sister’s guest made it very easy for him to
see a great deal of her without any gossip or talk. But delightful as
all that had been, he was glad now that she was going back in a few days
to her own people, and that he could go down in a decently short time
and tell her what he could not tell her in his father’s house and which
he had found so hard to withhold. The uncertainty in which he was as to
whether she cared for him or not made him restless and very properly
despondent, although he sometimes fancied that she was less cold to him
than to the others, and that if she talked with him about certain things
of particular interest to her, it was because she valued his opinion and
friendship. And he was much pleased and very flattered when she appealed
to him about her different schemes, and was even ready to sacrifice
their last day to the college settlement.
“I really must go to Tyler Street to-day,” Miss Minot had said. “It’s my
last chance. I have been very selfish, and have been having entirely too
good a time. Why, I haven’t even seen my boys or heard the Prima Donna
Contessa!” She turned and smiled at Cahill as she spoke. “By the way,”
she continued, “why don’t you and Louise come with me and hear her sing?
I have sent her a note telling her to meet me at the settlement at four
o’clock, and I know she will be only too pleased to sing for us. It is
quite wonderful, you know.”
“Of course we will go,” assented Miss Cahill briskly, while her brother
aquiesced cheerfully, if less enthusiastically. It occurred to him that
it would be as well for him not to be alone with Miss Minot any more, if
he intended to hold to his resolution of not speaking just yet.
It was rather late when they started for the settlement, and by the time
they had walked down Tyler Street from Kneeland--they left the carriage
at the corner of Kneeland--they found that it was quite four and time
for a club, the members of which were enthusiastically crowding around
the door waiting for permission to enter, and playing leap-frog and tag
and imperilling life and limb by walking on the spiked iron fence in
their frantic attempts to see in the windows. But when they caught sight
of Miss Minot they stopped playing and jumped down from the fence and
threw away their shinny sticks, and began to all talk at once at her,
and to tell her what they had been doing during the winter, and that
they hadn’t been absent from school but twice or ten times, or not at
all, as the case happened to be, and they all seemed to have had a
surprising number of deadly diseases, of which fact they were
inordinately proud; and there were several still on the waiting list,
who wanted her to intercede for them to have their names put in the club
books, so they could go in and have a good time with the others; to all
of which, and a great deal more, she listened sympathetically and
interestedly. And as she stood so, the eager, softened expression on her
face, laughing and talking with the children crowding around her, the
boys grabbing at her hands and the little girls touching shyly the gown
she wore, it seemed to Cahill that he had never seen her quite so lovely
and lovable. He felt an amused sort of jealousy as he saw her run
lightly up the steps with her slim hands held tightly by two very dirty
and very affectionate little boys, with the rest swarming after her and
hemming her in; and when the front door was finally opened and she and
his sister disappeared with them into the rooms beyond, he felt rather
aggrieved and out of it.
He found himself in a narrow little hall and was just wondering what he
should do with his hat and stick, when she came out from the inner room,
closing the door behind her. She was laughing in a breathless, pleased
way, and her face had a little flush on it as she turned to him.
“Please take off my coat,” she gasped, leaning against the balustrade of
the steep little stairs. “I’m going to amuse them until the Prima Donna
comes--she isn’t here, at least I don’t see her anywhere. Louise is
playing for them now.” Cahill could just catch the sounds of a piano
above the shrill laughter of the children. They were quite alone in the
little hallway, and as he bent down to take off her coat, a sudden, wild
impulse overcame him. He forgot everything except that he loved her and
must tell her so, and he held her tightly while he spoke rapidly and
earnestly. It suddenly seemed preposterous to him that he could have
dreamed of waiting another week to find out whether she loved him or
not; she must tell him then and there, he said, quick, before anyone
came. And although she did not, in fact, tell him anything at all, he
was so content with her eyes as she turned toward him that, bending
down, he gave her one quick kiss after another.
And then the sound of the piano ceased and they heard a scramble of
running feet at the door, which was thrown open by Miss Cahill.
“Where are you? come in!” she cried.
As Cahill and Miss Minot went into the room beyond, a girl came slowly
down the stairs which they had just left. Her face was pitifully white
and drawn, and there was a scared, surprised look in her eyes which was
not good to see. When she reached the lowest step she stopped
thoughtfully, leaning heavily against the stairs’ rail.
“I saw them,” she said, softly and tremulously to herself. “I saw them,
and there is no possibility of a mistake. I don’t understand anything
about it--how it has happened--but it was _he_--it was _he_! If she
loves him--and she does love him--I saw it in her face, there is but one
thing for me to do--there is no other way now.” She put both hands on
the banister and swayed slightly toward it in her effort to control
herself. “She has been everything to me, has done everything for me. And
if I love him--and I _do_ love him!--there is a million times more
necessity for me to do it.” Her lips worked painfully and silently for a
moment.
An instant later she had crossed the narrow passageway, and throwing
open the door, stood there smiling faintly, with the hurt, frightened
look still on her pale face. Miss Minot was the first to see her. She
moved toward her, swiftly catching both the girl’s hands in her own, and
dragging her forward to where Cahill and his sister were standing.
“The Prima Donna Contessa!” she said, gayly. “May I introduce Miss
Cahill, Mr. Cahill----” but she stopped suddenly, for she saw Cahill
take a step forward while a dull red suffused his face.
“You!” he said--“you!” His voice sounded an octave higher than usual and
there was a queer, excited ring to it.
The girl drew back in a puzzled, half-offended way. But Cahill left his
sister’s side and crossed quickly to where the girl was standing.
“Great heavens!--you!--aren’t you--?” he began, but the girl interrupted
him quickly.
“Excuse me,” she said, in a politely distant tone.
“Don’t pretend--” he began again with a curious insistance in his voice;
and then he stopped, putting his hand heavily on the back of a chair
near him and looking at Miss Minot and the girl standing beside her. An
agony of apprehension took hold upon him.
The girl made a little gesture of surprise and turned proudly and
indifferently to Miss Minot.
“I don’t think I understand,” she said quietly to her.
The nonplussed, vacant look on her face made Cahill hesitate. He looked
fixedly at her. The red had left his face now and it showed a strange
pallor. He was just conscious of the cold, astonished look on Miss
Minot’s face, and that his sister was staring blankly at him. He pulled
himself together sharply.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, with slow difficulty. “I have made a
stupid mistake--I thought--” he stopped and drew a sharp breath.
The girl’s eyes met his steadily for a moment, and then she smiled again
slightly.
“Oh, certainly,” she said, easily. “I have reminded so many people of so
many other people that I am getting quite used to it! Resemblances are
so often deceiving.”
Cahill looked at her in a curiously relieved way.
“And here we are, standing talking,” she ran on, “while the children are
waiting to sing! They have learned some very pretty Easter hymns. You
shall hear them.”
She spoke rapidly and directly to Cahill as though she wished to prevent
him from talking, and her voice sounded strained and monotonous. She
went over to the piano quickly and seated herself, and presently, when
the children had got through their songs, she began to sing alone, and
that evening both Miss Minot and Miss Cahill agreed enthusiastically
that she had never sung like that before, and that if the director of
the Grand Opera had heard her he would have signed a contract with her
on the spot.
Miss Minot was rather disappointed that Cahill did not seem more
impressed.
“I don’t believe you enjoyed it half as much as I thought you would,”
she said, reproachfully to him. It was late, and they were just leaving
the drawing-room, but he had held her back for an instant while the
others passed on into the big hall.
“And isn’t she lovely and a great artist?” she insisted.
Cahill looked down at the severely beautiful face beside him, and for an
instant the feeling of dread and apprehension which had swept over him
that afternoon returned with redoubled force. He felt again the sudden,
awful shock the sight of that girl’s face had been to him, the intense
relief on discovering his mistake. He realized acutely and for the first
time just how impossible it would ever be to tell her of that episode in
his life which the girl’s face had recalled, and which he had once felt
impelled to tell his father, and he determined to make up to her in
every way that a man can, for his silence. The possibility which had
faced him for a moment, of losing her, had made her inexpressibly dear
to him, and in that instant he had realized passionately all that the
loss of her would mean to him. He had felt unutterably glad that the
danger had been averted and that she need never know. He did not mean to
deceive her, but as he held her hand and looked at her, he had but one
thought, one fierce desire--to keep that look of trust and happiness
forever on her earnest and beautiful face. He leaned forward slightly.
“How can I tell anything about any other woman when _you_ are there?” he
said, argumentatively, smiling at her. “You didn’t expect me to take
much interest in the _timbre_ of her voice or her trill when you had
just told me----”
“Oh, yes--I know--I never told you anything,” objected the girl,
laughing and drawing away her hands. “And you were so dramatic--so
curious when you met her, that if I had--known you longer, I think
absolutely I would have demanded an explanation. Isn’t that what they
say in books--‘demand an explanation?’”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what they say in books. No book ever
told me anything about _this_!”
The girl turned her shining, happy eyes upon him.
“How unutterably silly of me,” she said, breathlessly. “For a moment you
said she was so like someone, and she had told me her story, I hardly
know what I thought--imagined.” She spoke in little, broken pauses, and
as she finished she laid her hand timidly on Cahill’s arm. “You said she
reminded you of----”
The young man laughed happily. “The mere idea!” he said, touching her
hands softly, and then he added lightly, as they moved toward the door:
“What she reminded me of was an episode in my life that happened long
ago and which was very uninteresting and unimportant.”
HER DECISION
Miss Eva Hungerford was having a _mauvais quart-d’heure_, or to speak
more exactly, _une mauvaise demi-heure_. She was lying in a long chair
near her dressing-table, the pale-green satin cushions tucked closely
around her, and her hands held tightly over her eyes to keep out any ray
of sunlight that might enter the spectrally darkened room.
She was thinking hard. Once, when she partially emerged from her
abstraction, she decided with reproach that she could not remember to
have thought so hard for so long a time since leaving college, though in
the meanwhile she had written a tragedy and a small volume of sonnets.
The occasion called for thought. In half an hour he was to be there, and
she had understood from his manner the evening before that she must have
an answer ready for him.
It was all very tiresome. She had warded him off so far, but that could
not go on forever. She had felt a little frightened; he had looked at
her in a way she had never imagined he could look, and she had been
devoutly thankful that just then her “most intimate friend” (even
authors have “intimate friends”) had come in with her brother to make
arrangements about a coaching party for the following Saturday. But she
could not hope for a much longer reprieve. There was a note in his voice
that she could not mistake, as he asked her when he could see her alone.
She wondered now why she had told him at half-past four the next day.
Why had she not said next week, or after she got back from Mexico, or
any other time more remote than the present?
“Yes,” she acknowledged to herself, “I was afraid: and not of him but of
myself. That is the humiliation of it. What was it I read in Ruskin?
That it all ends with Tom, Dick, or Harry? I don’t believe it. At any
rate, I shall not give up my career for any man.”
Miss Hungerford always spoke of her “career” to her friends with a sad
sort of expression, as if it cut her off from them in some unexplainable
way, and made her not of this world. Unconsciously she enjoyed the
mingled admiration and awe of the less ambitiously intellectual of her
“set” when they heard that she was really going to college. When she
came home at vacations they gave her afternoon receptions and
luncheons, because, though of course they never breathed it to her, they
had met with a flat failure when they tried to get their brothers and
masculine friends to come for dinner-dances and “small and earlies.”
“Why, she’s awfully pretty!” they would exclaim when the men pleaded
engagements.
“She’s terribly clever, isn’t she?” they would ask, warily. “Why, of
course, Eva Hungerford is just too bright for anything, but she never
makes one feel it. She doesn’t take a mean delight in showing off one’s
ignorance. She talks just like we do,” they would declare, and the
brothers would smile peculiarly and vanish.
But even her warmest friends admitted that she was carrying things too
far when, at the end of her college career she announced her intention
of taking a course in old English at Oxford, and then of going to France
to study the literature.
“No, I am not going over in the Winthrop’s yacht, nor am I going
coaching with them through Ireland,” she would explain. “I do not mean
to travel much. I intend to study seriously. Of course, I shall take my
summers off and enjoy myself, but I have a serious end in view, which I
must not lose sight of.”
Miss Hungerford had a rather classic face, and looked like a true
Spartan when she would say that. Her friends would be either dumb with
admiration at such explanations or, sometimes, the more venturesome
would try to lure her from her purpose. But she only looked with pity on
such attempts.
She was away two years, and although she had tried to keep up with her
friends, on returning she found a great many of them married and more or
less occupied with affairs which had no part in her life. This saddened
her very much and made her more than ever determined to pursue her
“career.” She had very few difficulties to contend with. There had been
one slight interruption. While in Paris the young Comte de la Tour, whom
she had first met at the American minister’s, had taken up a great deal
of her time. When he proposed, she had refused him so calmly that she
felt justified in admiring herself. She was rather mortified, however,
on thinking it over, to find that for a whole month afterward she had
not been able to fix her mind on anything serious, and had accepted a
great many invitations out. This taught her a lesson. She had discovered
that “to be serious, to do her best work, men must not divert her
thoughts.” She wrote that down in her commonplace book, so that it would
be a perpetual warning to her.
When she got home, her mother and father were delighted to find her no
more changed. They had feared the worst from her letters. Her mother,
hearing that old English script was very hard on the eyesight, had,
after a good cry, resigned herself to glasses. She was intensely
relieved to find that there was no occasion for her resignation, and in
her happiness to find that Beowulf had not injured her daughter’s
vision, herself helped to select a teak desk and bookcases for a
“private study” for her. She even sanctioned an edition in pomona green
and gold, of the French tragedy and sonnets. These books were not as
much reviewed as Miss Hungerford had thought they would be, but her
friends admired them intensely and generally came to her with them, that
she might write her name on the title-page.
But scarcely had the room been arranged for hard work (Miss Hungerford
had determined to spend the next few months in writing a curtain-raiser
for Daly’s), when another and more serious interruption occurred.
She never knew just how it happened. Certainly she had never encouraged
him, though she had sometimes suspected her mother of doing so, and
assuredly Paul Stanhope in no way corresponded to her ideal hero. A few
years ago she would not have admitted that she had a masculine ideal,
but now, as she put another cushion under her shoulder, she was forced
to admit to herself that she might have one. Stanhope was big and strong
and handsome. So far he answered to her ideal. But was he intellectual?
He drove a four-in-hand splendidly, but that was hardly an intellectual
employment. Was he literary? She remembered that in speaking once of
Matthew Arnold’s “Monody on the Death of Arthur Hugh Clough,” she had
noticed a distinctly blank expression on his face, and that he had tried
to turn the conversation. But Miss Hungerford had been too quick for him
and had herself changed the subject. That was one of her best points, as
she acknowledged to herself. She could adapt herself to the people she
happened to be talking to. But could she do so for a lifetime? Miss
Hungerford shuddered and pressed her hands more tightly over her eyes,
as if to keep out the vision of a husband who did not appreciate
allusions to the “Cumnor cowslips.”
Then in some way the phrase “Art is long” got into her head. She knew
it, and was not afraid. She had said it to herself a thousand times to
keep up her courage. She knew she was only beginning. Still she did
think the critics might have noticed more positively that she was
beginning. But nothing should turn her from her purpose. She was sure
the American drama needed fresh material, fresh workers. She had studied
French methods, and had determined to devote the rest of her life to
adapting them to the American stage. Her youth would be well spent in
regenerating our drama and elevating our literature, though she should
not become famous until she was an old woman. Even with such high
resolves for our country’s good, Miss Hungerford could not entirely
relinquish all hope of becoming renowned.
“An old woman!” She jumped up and, drawing the silk curtains slightly,
gazed at herself in the mirror. She leaned forward and breathed lightly
on the glass, so that the reflection might be more soft and exquisite.
“It must be hard to lose one’s good looks!” she said, half aloud.
Generally, when Miss Hungerford was tempted to be vain, she laid it all
to an exalted, abstract love of the beautiful. Now she put her hands
through her hair at each side and drew it down loosely, so that her face
was half in shadow and altogether charming. And then she put it back
suddenly, for she remembered that it had fallen down so once when she
and Stanhope were riding together, and he had looked at her in a very
openly admiring way. When he had next called she had worn it so, and his
look and exclamation of delight when she had entered the room had warned
her what risks she was running.
She turned impatiently from the mirror and picked up a book that her
“most intimate friend” had sent her several days before. She had not
read it, because she had found that it commenced with a very modern love
scene, and she never read love scenes. Miss Hungerford, who had a taste
for epigram, once told her friend that “the science of reading is to
know how to skip,” and she usually skipped the _lui et elle_ dialogues,
but if they occurred in a classic, and she felt that she had no right to
omit anything (she was a very conscientious sort of person) she summoned
all her fortitude to aid her in getting through. Now she opened the book
and read a few pages. After all, it did not seem absolutely repulsive.
She decided that she had not given the book a fair trial, and she
noticed with some surprise that, curiously enough from the description
of him, the hero of the story must resemble Paul Stanhope. But when she
found that she was thinking of Stanhope she put the book down.
“I am certainly getting frivolous,” she thought severely.
“I will go up to my study. I can think better there.” As she passed her
little French clock, she noticed with a slight shudder that it was
twenty minutes after four. She stopped suddenly and rang a bell. “I will
make it easy for both of us,” she decided; “I will order tea served as
usual, and I will just tell him very calmly how impossible it is for me
to take upon myself any other career than that of a student and writer.
No one can possibly be sentimental over a tea-urn and champagne
biscuits,” she thought with relief. When the man appeared she gave him
instructions to bring in the tea-things at five precisely. “That will
make our interview short and yet give me time to settle it all at once
and forever,” she thought. “Afterward we can discuss every-day affairs,
and I am sure he will recognize how wisely I have acted, and we can be
very good friends,” and she passed slowly up the stairs to her
particular den.
She felt stronger now, more certain of herself. The first sheets of her
“curtain-raiser” were lying on her desk, and the sight of them
encouraged her. For a moment a bewildering vision of a crowded theatre,
a storm of applause, and herself, seated behind the curtains of a box,
seeing, hearing her own piece, took possession of her. She even heard
cries for the author, but of course her duty to herself and her family
would prevent her appearing publicly as the writer of the play. She
could see no objection, however, to being pointed out as “Miss
Hungerford, you know, the brilliant young authoress.” Yes, life was a
failure, art was everything! Nothing should ever come between her and
her work.
Then she sat down at her desk and tried to write. She remembered the
keen sense of pleasure she always experienced when she had finished a
sonnet or scene of a play, but she was thinking now of how she would
receive Stanhope. “I will give him my hand in a very quiet, friendly way
that will show at once what my decision is. Nothing shall make me alter
or give up my career.”
But it was very hard to give up everything, and she was very young and
her friends thought her beautiful. Could there be no compromise? After
all life need not be so dreary, and Paul Stanhope was distinctly the
nicest and most eligible man she knew. Any number of girls liked him
tremendously, and she sighed as she thought that she was keeping some
girl from getting a very good husband indeed. This idea, though not
wholly distasteful to her, brought her sharply back to her resolutions,
and she picked up her Calderon. She had been reading it the day before
and had left it turned down at the page. Suddenly a great pity for
Calderon took possession of her. After all he was so dead now! Could he
know how famous he was? Was he famous while he lived? Did his fame bring
him love and happiness? She did not even know. Underneath the Calderon
lay a copy of a poet’s works--a poet now famous and beloved, but who had
died miserably poor and unknown. By the side of this volume lay the last
number of a popular magazine. She had bought it because it contained a
story by a man whom all the world was talking about. She had read in the
morning’s paper that he had just been divorced from his wife. The sight
of the book sickened her. She turned away and opened the case where she
kept her Shakespeare, and took out a book at random. It was the sonnets.
He, too, the greatest and wisest, had been wretchedly unhappy.
Suddenly the futility of all effort took hold of her. Suppose she should
drudge her life away, never taste of happiness, die, and be only known
as “Hungerford the dramatist.” She shuddered. In the years to come many
people might not even know whether “Hungerford” had been a man or a
woman. But she could never hold up her head again if she should
relinquish her “career” now. What would her friends think? She felt that
she had burned her ships behind her when she had published her tragedy,
and that the eyes of her world were upon her.
She wished she were not so stylish and so distressingly well off in this
world’s goods. Geniuses, she reflected, were always ugly and poor. Only
lately had it come to be considered not infra dig. to grow rich off
one’s brains. She would have liked to be an old-time ugly,
poverty-stricken genius. As that could not be, however (her family might
have objected to being dispossessed of a most generous income), the best
thing she could do was to work on to the end. Better to die in harness,
nobly striving after perfection, than to live to an ingloriously happy
old age. She saw herself a melancholy woman, whose youth and beauty had
fled before the exhausting demands of her genius. Fame had come, but too
late. Her name was on every lip, but death awaited her. Nothing was left
her but to choose her biographer and epitaph. She had long thought that
the lines (adapted) from the “Adonais” would be very appropriate:
“Peace, peace! she is not dead, she doth not sleep;
She hath awakened from the dream of life!”
She considered them very sweet, and Shelley had always been one of her
gods. There was a sort of poetical justice in the selection. She felt
very sad and firm.
Just then someone tapped at the door, and a card was handed her. She
trembled a little as she took it, but there was no change in her voice
as she told the man to take Mr. Stanhope to the library and that she
would be down immediately.
But she did not go at once. She stopped at her own door and went to the
mirror, where she loosened her hair a little at the sides, and after
looking critically at the effect, she went slowly down the stairs. At
each step she repeated to herself “I must be firm. My career before
everything.”
She was saying this over to herself for the twentieth time when she
found, rather to her dismay, that she was at the door. Pushing aside the
curtains, she extended her hand as she planned to do, but something in
Stanhope’s expression as he came quickly toward her made her falter and
let it drop to her side. The next thing she knew he had his arms around
her and she was not repulsing him. He had not given her the least chance
to explain, she thought indignantly. She would never have allowed it if
he had given her a moment’s time! As for Stanhope, no idea of
explanation entered his head. He saw no necessity for one.
After a while she told him that she did not love him, but he did not
seem to believe her, and she could think of no way of proving it after
what had happened. Then she assured him that she had always planned to
spend her life in writing and study, and that it was impossible for her
to marry him. But he declared that there were no end of writers in the
world and absolutely but one woman who could be his wife, so that he did
not think her decision just or warranted. And then he went over to her
very tenderly and asked her if she really cared more for her musty books
and a “brilliant career” (Stanhope was careful to use the word “career”)
than she did for a man who loved her so devoutly that he would willingly
lay down his life for her? At this Miss Hungerford cried a little, and
he put her head on his shoulder while she thought about it.
While they were thus engaged the clock struck five and the servant
appeared punctually with tea-things. He was much confused when he caught
sight of them, and Miss Hungerford privately determined to speak to the
man for his officiousness.
The wedding was very brilliant and Miss Hungerford’s “most intimate
friend” was maid of honor. She never told the bride, but she told
everyone else, “that she had never expected Eva Hungerford to marry and
give up her career, but that she was thankful it had happened, and she
was sure she would be happy!”
In the meantime Daly’s is without the curtain-raiser.
REVENGE
Miss Atterbury put the paper she was reading carefully and slowly down
upon the table. It was the _Boston ---- _, and there was a long article
upon the first page marked ostentatiously around with a blue
lead-pencil, and headed in glaring letters, “Athletics in Girls’
Colleges.”
There was a dangerous gleam in Miss Atterbury’s dark-gray eyes, and she
seemed a trifle more than her ordinary five feet eight inches as she
drew herself up and turned, with that careful repression of irritation
which always denotes the extreme limit of self-control, upon an
inoffensive freshman, comfortably installed in the window-seat, playing
a mandolin.
“I was in Antwerp two weeks last summer,” she remarked, with careful
emphasis, “and I heard the cathedral chimes play ‘La Mandolinata’ twice
every five minutes, I think. I would be obliged if you would play
something else, or even stop altogether for a while--I have something
important to talk about just now.”
The freshman stuck her pick guiltily in the strings, and shifted her
position upon the cushions into one of extreme and flattering attention,
while the four girls who had been playing whist over in a corner turned
hastily around toward Miss Atterbury.
“What is it now, Katharine?” inquired Miss Yale, reproachfully, laying
down her cards. “She always takes things so terribly _au grand
sérieux_,” she explained plaintively to the rest. Miss Yale had her
rooms with Miss Atterbury, and stood rather in awe of that young woman,
and was very proud of her athletic prowess, and could always be relied
upon to tell her friends “that Katharine Atterbury was the captain of
the senior crew, and could pull an oar as well as a ‘Varsity stroke, and
that the champion tennis-player of a certain year had said that she was
an antagonist to be feared and respected.”
“_This_ is what is the matter,” said Miss Atterbury, in a tragic voice,
picking up the paper. “I don’t know who it is that writes such absurd,
such wilfully misleading articles about us, but I do know that if I
could get at him I would----”
What Miss Atterbury would do was apparently too awful to speak of just
then.
One of the girls got up and went over to her.
“But what is it?--what have they said about us now?” she inquired,
impatiently.
“What they are always doing--poking fun at us,” replied Miss Atterbury,
hotly, and with a fine disregard of grammar. “To read this article one
would imagine that we were imbecile babies. One would think that a girl
was as weak as a kitten, and didn’t know a boat from an elevator, or a
five-lap running track from an ice-wagon, or a golf club from a
sewing-machine. He--whoever the man is who wrote this ridiculous
article--seems to think that all our training and physical development
is a huge joke. He don’t even know how stupid he is. That’s the worst of
it--he isn’t even aware of his unutterable, his colossal ignorance!”
“Wouldn’t it be fun to have him drawn and quartered, as an awful
example, a sort of warning to the other newspaper men not to write about
what they are totally ignorant of, and to leave us alone,” suggested the
inoffensive little freshman, with a base but entirely successful attempt
to get back into Miss Atterbury’s good graces.
The senior gave her a brief but cordial glance, and then ran on:
“Something must be done about it. I’m tired of reading this sort of
trash about women’s colleges. It is time the public was learning the
true state of things--that girls can and do swim, and row and play golf
and tennis, and run and walk about, just as their brothers do, and that
we have courage and muscle enough to go in for football even, except
that we have some _little_ regard for our personal appearance!”
“And it’s so degrading and irritating to go home in the vacations, and
have one’s brother tease one to death about it all, and try to be funny,
and ask one if the color of one’s gymnasium suit is becoming, and if the
golf captain knows the caddie from a cleek,” interposed Miss Thayer, a
pretty blond girl who got up slowly and sauntered over to Miss
Atterbury, putting her face over that young lady’s shoulder to get a
look at the unfortunate paper. As she did so she gave a little cry of
surprise.
“Why, I know the man who wrote that,” she gasped. “There! J. E. N.--see
those initials at the end?--they mean Jack Newbold. I remember now he is
writing for that paper. He told me this summer at the sea-shore that he
was going in for newspaper work. His grandfather owns this paper, you
know, and has promised him half a million when he is twenty-five if he
will go through the whole thing--learn everything a newspaper man must
know. He didn’t want to do it much, but, of course, he would go in for
almost anything sooner than lose all that pile of money.”
Miss Atterbury looked thoughtfully and intently at Miss Thayer.
“You say he is a friend of yours?” she demanded, slowly.
“Oh, yes; we got to be very good friends this summer. He taught me how
to play fifteen-ball pool--that’s about all he knows,” went on the girl,
scornfully. “He’s an awful duffer about everything else. You ought to
see him play tennis! It’s not very edifying, but it’s awfully funny.”
Miss Atterbury gave a little gasp of delight.
“That’s too good to be true,” she said, enthusiastically.
Miss Thayer rather stared. “Why?” she demanded, and then, without
waiting for a reply, she swept on. “You wouldn’t think so if you had to
play doubles with him! And he simply can’t walk--gets awfully tired, he
says. _I_ think it’s his clothes. Gets ’em in London, and they are
terribly swell and uncomfortable. And he is always afraid his collar is
going to melt; it’s quite painful to be with him on a warm day. And I
couldn’t induce him to come out in my cat-boat with me. Said he didn’t
think a girl could learn to handle one with any degree of safety. Did
you ever hear of anything so unjust? I think he was _afraid_.”
Miss Atterbury was leaning on the table now, and her countenance had
assumed such a cheerful look that the freshman felt quite relieved and
ventured to pick up her mandolin again.
“Go on!” demanded the senior, delightedly.
“Well, I don’t know anything more,” declared Miss Thayer, impatiently.
“Isn’t that enough for you? He’s no good at out-door sports, and what he
is doing writing us up or down is more than I can imagine. He oughtn’t
to be allowed to do so. He don’t know anything about it at all, and I
should think he would be ashamed of himself. I suppose his editor told
him to do it, and he simply ‘made up’ and put down everything he had
ever heard about us, and worked in all the old jokes about girls’
colleges.”
Miss Atterbury got up slowly.
“Well!” she said, impressively, to Miss Thayer, “I’m sorry if that young
man is much of a friend of yours, for we have got to make an example of
him. I suppose you know him well enough to invite him out here Monday
afternoon?--for you’ve got to do it,” she added, with calm decision.
Miss Thayer said she thought she might venture on that simple act of
courtesy, though she could not quite understand why Miss Atterbury was
so anxious to see him since she disapproved of him so entirely; to which
that young woman replied that she wished to see him once, so that she
might never see him again, and that the next day she would explain her
plans, in which she expected their hearty co-operation.
* * * * *
Mr. Jack Newbold had just comfortably installed himself in the 1.50 B.
and A. train, when it occurred to him that he might possibly have made a
mistake as to the time Miss Thayer expected him. He pulled out the note
which he had received from her, and read it again.
“MY DEAR MR. NEWBOLD: I have been so interested in what you have
written about athletics in girls’ colleges! I saw the article in
your paper and knew immediately by the initials that it was your
work. Ever since seeing it I have been wishing to redeem my promise
to have you come out here and see our college.
“All the girls are anxious to see you. I hope you won’t mind
receiving a great deal of attention! You know how enthusiastic and
unconventional college girls are, and you are of the greatest
interest to us just now. Miss Atterbury, a charming girl, is
especially eager to meet you. Don’t be _too_ flattered! But we
shall all be delighted to see the man who has so ably written up
girls’ colleges, and unless I hear from you to the contrary, shall
look for you out Monday afternoon by the 1.50 train.
“Of course I shall expect you to take dinner and go to the concert
in the evening. I tell you this now, so you can wear just the right
‘dress’--men are so ridiculously particular about their clothes!
“Very cordially yours,
“ELEANOR THAYER.”
Mr. Jack Newbold was not a particularly vain youth, but he had a slight
feeling of satisfaction on perusing that note which made him settle
himself even more comfortably in his seat and resign himself cheerfully
to the short journey.
“Had no idea that article would make such a sensation,” he was saying to
himself, “and I’m glad she expects me by this train. Of course she will
bring her trap to the station for me. I believe the college is quite a
little distance from the town. Nice little trap--she drives well for a
girl, I remember.” And then he fell to wondering whether he had selected
just the right things to wear. “Girls are so deucedly critical,” he
soliloquized, and it had been rather hard to decide on just what would
be in good taste for an afternoon call and would still do without change
for the concert in the evening, and he rather complimented himself on
his judicious selection, and was assuring himself that the particular
shade of his gloves had not been a mistake, when he found that he was at
the station.
Miss Thayer welcomed him effusively.
“I knew you wouldn’t have the vaguest idea of how to get up to the
college,” she was saying, “and so I came down for you myself. No, I
didn’t bring my trap. I knew you would enjoy the walk up, and I wanted
to show you it myself. I remember how fond you were of walking, last
summer,” she added, with a bright smile at him.
Newbold stared a little.
“I don’t think,” he began doubtfully; but Miss Thayer interrupted him
quickly--
“You cannot imagine how anxious the girls are to see you. Each one wants
to show you what she is particularly interested in. Really you are quite
a martyr--I mean a hero--in our eyes! We will go up this way,” she ran
on. “It’s a little longer and there is a pretty bad hill, but of course
a man doesn’t mind a little extra exertion, and it’s even more beautiful
than the other way.”
Newbold said he would be charmed to go any way that Miss Thayer might
choose, but that he didn’t want to lose any of his visit at the college,
and that perhaps it would be wiser to take the short cut. But Miss
Thayer said that if they walked a little faster they would get there
just as soon, and he would see the finer view, too. So they started off
briskly, and Newbold wished that he had worn the other pair of patent
leathers, and finally, when he felt ready to drop, and thought they must
have walked about five miles, and she told him they had only two more to
go, he blamed himself most severely for not having firmly refused
anything but the short cut and a cab. One of Miss Thayer’s friends who
met her told her the next day that she was glad to see that she had
joined the Pedestrian Club, and that she had often wondered why she had
not done so before.
“I hardly think it is worth while to go into the drawing-room now,”
remarked Miss Thayer, argumentatively, as they strolled up the broad
drive to the college. “I see Miss Atterbury down there on the campus
playing tennis, and I promised to bring you to her immediately,” she
went on. Newbold felt a horrible inclination to say that he didn’t care
if he never met Miss Atterbury, and that personally he would very
[Illustration: “YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW ANXIOUS THE GIRLS ARE TO SEE
YOU”]
much prefer going into the drawing-room and stopping there for the rest
of the afternoon, in the most comfortable chair to be found; but he
managed to murmur a weary assent to Miss Thayer’s proposition, and
together they started down the steep hill at the bottom of which
stretched the campus. But he could not seem to keep up with Miss Thayer,
and by the time he had reached the tennis grounds and had decided that
in all probability his heart would never beat normally again, he was
conscious that he was bowing, and that Miss Atterbury, flushed from
playing, was standing before him and was laughing and saying--“I don’t
often give acquaintances such a warm welcome!” The next thing he knew
was that someone had thrust a racket into his hand, and he heard, as in
a dream, Miss Thayer telling her friend that Mr. Newbold was a splendid
tennis-player, and that she would have to do her best to beat him, but
that she hoped she would for the honor of the college. And then he found
himself, somehow, walking over to the court, and, before he could
protest, Miss Atterbury was on the other side, and was asking him kindly
but briskly if he were ready to play. He thought he was as near ready as
he ever would be, so he said “Play!” and waited resignedly for her
serve.
It was just after Miss Atterbury had piled up an appalling number of
games against him, and he had come to the conclusion that he knew what
it would be like to stand fire from a Krupp gun, and had decided that
tight patent leathers and a long coat were not just what he would have
chosen to play tennis in, that he saw Miss Atterbury, to his intense
relief, throw down her racket and run up the hill a little way. She was
back in an instant with Miss Thayer and a tall, handsome girl, carrying
a lot of golf clubs. When young Newbold saw the golf clubs he felt so
tired that he thought he would sit down on the cold ground, although he
knew how dangerous such a proceeding was, especially when he was so
painfully aware of how hot his head was and how clammy his linen felt.
“Mr. Newbold!” he heard Miss Atterbury say, “I want to present you to
Miss Yale. She is the captain of the Golf Club, and I knew you would
want to meet her. Anyone who is such an authority on the subject as you
proved yourself to be in that article would, of course, want to see the
links out here.”
“Ah! thank you!” murmured Newbold; “but I play very little, you know,
and I wouldn’t interrupt your game for the world!”
But Miss Yale told him how interested she
[Illustration: “PLAY!”]
had been in his article, and that she wouldn’t feel that she had done
her duty by the college unless she showed him the links, and that he
really must come with them and tell them whether the meadow-land was too
stiff a bit of ground to be gone over. And so Newbold found himself
trudging wearily along again between Miss Atterbury and Miss Yale, who
seemed as fresh as though they hadn’t moved that day. The links seemed
distressingly far off, and the holes absurdly distant from each other.
His arms ached so from tennis that he could scarcely hold the driver
Miss Yale gave him.
“I wish you would drive off this tee once--men do that sort of thing so
much better than girls,” she was saying, admiringly. “They don’t seem to
need any practice at all--just comes natural to them.” Newbold had a
very distinct impression that it hadn’t come at all natural to him, and
he would greatly have preferred not trying before Miss Yale and the knot
of young women who had drawn together at some little distance, and were
very obviously watching him under the shallowest pretence of hunting for
a lost ball. He felt desperately nervous, and his nervousness did not
tend to disappear when he made a frantic try at the ball, digging a hole
in the ground about a foot in front of the tee, and almost hitting Miss
Atterbury, who jumped back with a little cry very unlike her ordinary
calm self.
“I--I beg your pardon,” he began, desperately; but Miss Atterbury
assured him that she was all right, and urged him to try again. He did
so, and although he balanced himself cautiously on one foot and then on
the other, and snapped at the ball several times before trying to hit
it, and wobbled his driver after the most approved methods, he topped
his ball miserably, and had the mortification of seeing it land in a
most difficult hazard. And then he watched Miss Yale drive off with a
good backward swing of her club, which hit the ball “sweet and clean,”
and sent it a good ninety yards.
“Of course, as you said in your article,” remarked that young woman,
picking up her clubs and starting off energetically after the ball,
“this is no game for women. It is pre-eminently a man’s game, and a
woman’s short collar-bone is never such an obvious mistake as in golf. A
man can do so much with a driver or a cleek or a lofter, and the walking
is so easy for him, and he is so entirely independent of the weather.”
Newbold murmured inarticulate assents as he walked wearily by her. He
wondered if she could keep up that pace all around the course, and he
especially wondered how far around it was. He had a great deal of
difficulty in getting his ball out of the hazard and lofting it up a
steep hill, and he savagely wished that he had joined that golf club all
his friends were urging him to join, and decided firmly to do so before
he slept that night, and to engage the professional’s services for
himself, and to practise till he could drive a ball off without utterly
destroying all the turf in the vicinity.
They were on the second round, and Newbold was roughly calculating that
his erratic plays had made him walk about three miles, and was wondering
if he could live to get up the hill in front of him, when he saw Miss
Thayer and Miss Yale, who were three holes ahead of him, coming back
toward him.
“You look awfully tired and hot,” said Miss Thayer, sympathetically.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like golf? But what an absurd question!
Anyone who could write the article on athletics _you_ did must like it.
Only, I suppose, girls seem such duffers at it, to you!”
Newbold looked at her sharply. He had an uneasy suspicion that she was
laughing at him, but he was too tired to think of any way of finding out
whether she was or not, and so he walked on taciturnly and sufferingly.
“I have such a nice surprise for you,” ran on Miss Thayer. “But I won’t
tell you what it is yet.” She pulled out her watch. “It is just a
quarter to four now, and I think the surprise will not be ready until a
quarter after. Can you possibly wait that long?”
Newbold said he thought he might if he could sit down; but Miss Thayer
said she disapproved of getting over-heated and then cooling off
rapidly, and that she thought they had better keep moving until it was
time to see the “surprise.” So they strolled across the grounds, and the
two girls seemed to meet an astonishing number of friends, all going
their way. And while Newbold was vaguely wondering what their
destination might be, and what new torture was in store for him, he
heard Miss Yale say, in what sounded to him like the voice of an
avenging angel:
“I think we had better show Mr. Newbold our new running-track while we
are waiting. He is so interested in such things, and he might suggest
some improvements.” And then Newbold felt himself irresistibly compelled
to walk on farther and farther. He wondered sadly why they thought _he_
knew anything about running-tracks for girls, and decided that his
humorous remarks on the subject in his article had been a great
mistake.
“Do you think it’s a fair track?” inquired Miss Yale, anxiously, as they
came in sight of it. “It is an eight-lap track, you see, and of course a
great many girls only go around four times at first--girls get tired so
absurdly easy! Now I suppose men think nothing of making two miles at a
time--it is just play for them. Men are so strong--that is their
greatest fascination, I think,” she ran on enthusiastically. “Haven’t
you seen foot-ball players after a hard practice game start off and run
two miles around the track, and seem to think absolutely nothing of it?”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Newbold, unwarily and warmly. “Fellows are so
different from girls, you know. A girl cries when she’s tired, doesn’t
she? Well, a man just keeps going, you know, and doesn’t let it make any
difference to him.”
“I am so glad to hear that, Mr. Newbold,” said Miss Yale, with prompt
and suspicious sympathy, and a sudden firmness of tone, “because I
wanted dreadfully to ask you to try the track, but hated to do so, for I
knew you were tired--at least you look so. But since you just keep
going, and it doesn’t make any difference to you, why I would be so
awfully obliged if you would run around three or four times. I want to
see just how you hold your head and arms. I don’t believe we do it in
the best way, you know.”
It was a rare and pleasingly curious sight that Miss Yale and Miss
Thayer and a great many other young women assembled near the track,
apparently by a strange coincidence, looked upon. It is not often that
one has the chance of seeing an immaculately dressed youth, with flushed
and desperate countenance, tear madly around an eight-lap track in the
presence of a number of flatteringly attentive young women. It occurred
to Newbold as he dashed around and around that it would be far
preferable to keep going until he fainted away or dropped dead, than to
stop and encounter the remarks and glances of those young women. They
would at least feel sorry for him in that case, he thought, gloomily.
But even that modest and simple desire was not granted him. As he
started on the fifth lap he heard Miss Yale call to him to stop. He had
a wild inclination to pay no attention to her, but to keep going on and
on, but as he got nearer he saw her step out toward him and put up a
warning hand.
“Thank you so much,” she said, warmly. “I think we have all had a lesson
in running which we shall not forget soon. I hope you are not tired?”
she went on, anxiously.
Newbold said, “Oh, no!” but he felt very tired indeed. His feet ached
horribly and his head felt hot and dizzy, and there were queer, sharp
pains shooting through his body which made him think forebodingly of
pneumonia.
“The surprise is ready--Miss Atterbury is going to have the crew out for
your especial benefit!” went on Miss Yale, triumphantly. “Don’t you feel
complimented? And you are to pull Miss Thayer and myself about while
they go through a little practice for you. Not much, you know, but just
enough to show you the stroke and speed we get. The boat is a
beauty--but then, of course, you know so much more about it than we do!
I imagine from your article that you must pull an oar capitally. Miss
Thayer says a cat-boat is your especial hobby, though.”
“Did Miss Thayer say that?” began Newbold, hotly. “Beastly things, I
think--hate ’em!”
Miss Yale smiled incredulously and brightly at him.
“How modest you are!” she said, admiringly. “Ah! there is Miss
Atterbury!”
Newbold saw some one waving frantically at them.
“Come on!” exclaimed Miss Yale; “we want to see them start off--that’s
the best part.”
Newbold never remembered afterward how he got across the intervening
space, or how he got into a boat with the two young women. The first
thing he heard was Miss Atterbury asking him anxiously how he liked the
new sliding-seats, and what he thought of the proportions of the boat,
and about outriggers in general, and where he thought they could be
built best and cheapest. Newbold felt about as capable of instructing
her on such points as of judging the pictures at a Salon exhibit, and he
longed, with a longing born of utter exhaustion and desperation, to get
away. As he wearily pulled the heavy, unwieldy boat about after the
light practice-barge, which kept an appalling distance ahead of him, he
decided within himself that the physical development of women had been
carried to an absurd and alarming extent, and that men simply were not
in it with them when it came to endurance and enthusiasm, and that he
had made the mistake of his life when he wrote that article on athletics
in girls’ colleges, and that his chief might talk until he was blue in
the face before he would ever consent again to write about anything of
which he knew so little.
They were very disappointed when he told them firmly that he could not
stay to dinner or to the concert, but that he had a pressing engagement
that would take him back to the city. And they said that there were
still the Swedish gymnastics and basket-ball and pole-vaulting to see,
and that they were afraid he had not enjoyed himself or he would have
got rid of that engagement in some way; but he assured them impressively
that he had never spent a more instructive or peculiarly interesting
afternoon in his life.
Miss Thayer took him back to the station in her trap, and remarked on
how much shorter the way seemed with a good horse; and when she bade him
good-by she told him that she would be looking out for another article
in his paper, and that she would be much disappointed if his visit had
not inspired him to write something. To which Newbold replied that that
was his pressing engagement--he was going back to the city to write
another article on athletics in girls’ colleges, and that he thought it
would be different and better than the former one, but that he would not
put his initials to it this time.
THE COLLEGE BEAUTY
It was a sort of farewell party, and the young woman who was going away
and who was the object of so much solicitude and tender concern was
sitting, enshrined as it were, on a divan covered with a Navahoe Indian
blanket and surrounded by innumerable cushions, while the rest hung
about her or took up precarious attitudes on the table in dangerous
proximity to the student lamps, or settled themselves in steamer-chairs,
or sat upon the tiger-skin on the floor. That is, the American girls
did; Kan Ato, the pretty Japanese who had come arrayed in a gorgeous new
kimono--dull blue embroidered splendidly in silver--sat upright and very
stiffly in the window-seat with the dark red of the curtains showing off
her jet black hair and her gown wonderfully well; while the tall Scotch
girl, a cousin of the guest of honor, had trusted her generous
proportions to the only large, comfortable American chair in the room.
There was a great deal of noise and confusion and questioning, and Miss
Lavington, as she leaned back against her cushions, half wished that
after all the doctor had not let her come. She had been very ill--a
short, sharp attack of typhoid--and although she had enjoyed
tremendously the wine jelly, and the violets, and the hushed, anxious
tones of her friends as they inquired after her at the infirmary, and
the many remarks about her good qualities and how clever she was in
Conic Sections--“just as if she were really dead,” as she said--still
she felt rather too weak properly to appreciate her friends’
enthusiastic sympathy at such close range. And then the thought of going
away--and so far away--had made her feel blue and dispirited.
She was a very pretty English girl, whose father--a colonel in an Indian
regiment--had sent her to America in the care of a sister of his who had
moved to “the States;” and so it had come about that, instead of being a
Girton or Newnham girl, she had matriculated at this American college.
And now her father had written decisively for her to come out and join
him in India, and her college friendships and ties were all to be
broken. He had been writing about it for some time, and her illness had
finally precipitated the affair. She had only waited until she grew
strong enough to start, and the following day had been decided upon.
The long sea-voyage would be the very thing for her, the doctor had
thought.
She was trying to explain to the interested young women just what route
she would take, and was rapidly filling their souls with envy at the
familiar mention of Brindisi and Cairo and Aden, when there was a knock
and a quick opening of the door and a girl came into the room. She was a
very beautiful young woman, and when she sat down on the divan beside
Miss Lavington she seemed suddenly to absorb all the attention and
interest, and to become in some magical way the guest of honor and
centre of attraction. She met with a very enthusiastic reception, for
she had that afternoon gained the tennis championship for her class--she
was a senior--and had not yet changed her white flannel suit with
scarlet sumach leaves worked on it, and as she dragged off her soft cap,
one could see that her hair still lay in damp curls upon her forehead.
After she had entered the room one would have realized that they had
really been waiting for her. Her mere presence seemed to make a
difference. It was this magnetic quality which rendered her so
irresistible and all adverse criticism of her so absurd. People might
differ as to her beauty--there were some indeed, who said that she was
too large, or that her eyes were not very expressive, or that her mouth
was too small, but they all fell under her influence in some remarkable
way, and were very much flattered when she asked them to drive with her,
and never failed to point her out to their friends as “the College
Beauty, you know;” and even those who honestly wondered how she ever got
through her examinations were forced to admit that she had a great deal
of natural talent, which she did not always care to exercise. She was a
fine tennis player too, using either hand equally well, and when the
Tennis Association got itself into debt and she saved the situation by
beguiling, in some inexplicable way, the famous musical organization of
a certain university into giving a concert for its benefit, her
popularity reached its climax. To the less sought-after girls, her
composure and ease of manner while surrounded by an admiring circle of
college men was nothing short of marvellous, and the recklessly generous
disposal which she made of these youths to her less attractive friends
seemed to betoken a social prodigality little short of madness.
Miss Lavington looked at her imploringly.
“Make them keep quiet, won’t you?” she said. The Beauty looked around
her--“Are you trying to make her ill again, so she can’t go?” she
asked.
Her words had the desired effect, and the girl who had been twanging
abstractedly at a banjeurine put it down.
“She oughtn’t to leave!” she declared, plaintively. “It’s a shame! Here
we are, just beginning the semestre, and she’s only half through her
college course anyway, and just because her father wants her she has to
give up everything and go.”
“Yes, and you know she’ll be sure to have jungle-fever or get bitten by
a cobra or something, and die,” suggested someone cheerfully, if a
trifle vaguely.
The girl lying on the tiger-skin looked up.
“I know why her father wants her,” she began calmly. “There is an
officer--young, handsome, well born, a fine place in Surrey or Devon or
Kent, been in the family for generations, old uncle, no children--just
the thing for her. Her father will take her up to some place in the
Himalayas to spend the summer, and he will arrange for the handsome,
young, etc., officer to be there, and next fall we will receive the
cards. It sounds just like one of Kipling’s stories, doesn’t it?”
They were all laughing by the time she had finished, but The Beauty,
looking at the girl beside her, suddenly stopped smiling. There was a
conscious flush on Miss Lavington’s face which set her to thinking, and
then she glanced over to the big Scotch girl and waited an instant.
“Tell us all about it,” she said finally to Miss Lavington. The girl
looked up quickly and then dropped her eyes again.
“There isn’t much to tell,” she began. The others were listening now.
Even Kan Ato, smiling in her pensive, oriental way, leaned far forward
so as not to lose a word.
“He isn’t rich and he hasn’t any place in Surrey--or anywhere else that
I know of, except perhaps in India,” she went on. “But he is young and
handsome. We used to know each other when we were children--he is a sort
of cousin--but I haven’t seen him for years. We used to be very much in
love with each other.” She smiled. “My father writes me that he says he
is still in love with me, and so--perhaps we are to be married.”
“I knew it,” sighed the girl on the tiger-rug, in a satisfied sort of
way.
The Beauty looked at the English girl curiously. “And you haven’t seen
him for years? and yet you think of marrying him! How do you know you
will love him now?--you are both changed--you may be two totally
different people from the children who fell in love.” She had spoken
vehemently and quickly, and Miss Lavington gazed at her with languid
surprise.
“You are not in love with him yourself?” she said, smilingly.
The girl made a quick, impatient gesture.
“I am speaking seriously,” she said. “You are several years younger than
I am, and you don’t know what you are doing. Don’t let your
father--don’t let anyone--persuade you to bind yourself to a man you
don’t know, whose life has been so vitally different from your own as to
render the possibility of sympathy between you very slight.”
Miss Lavington looked at her rather coldly.
“You are interesting yourself unnecessarily,” she said; “I loved him not
so many years ago--it cannot be possible that so short a time would
change us completely.”
The Beauty leaned her head back with sudden wearied look on her face. “A
few years at our time of life makes all the difference in the world,”
she said, earnestly. “What pleased and interested and fascinated us at
eighteen might very possibly disappoint and disgust us at twenty or
twenty-two. I do not mean to preach,” she said, smiling deprecatingly
and turning to the rest, “but you know as well as I what an influence
this college life has on us, and how hard it is to go back to former
conditions. If we get stronger here we also get less adaptable. We are
all affected by the earnestness and the culture and advancement of the
life we lead here for four years, whether we will or no, and it is very
hard to go back!”
They were all looking at her in amazement. The Beauty was not much given
to that sort of thing. She stopped abruptly as if herself aware of the
sensation she was creating, and laughed rather constrainedly.
“Don’t marry your handsome officer unless you are in love with him!” she
said insistingly still to the girl beside her. “Don’t mistake the
childish affection you felt for him for something deeper. You have your
whole life before you--don’t spoil it by precipitation or a false
generosity or a reckless passion!” There was an anxious, troubled look
in her eyes.
The girl still stretched out on the tiger-skin glanced up again at The
Beauty. “I seem to have started a subject in which you are deeply
interested,” she said gayly to her. “And one in which you have had
enormous experience too. Do you know you have an almost uncanny way of
fascinating every man who comes near you. It’s a sure thing. None of the
rest of us have a chance. I believe you could marry half a dozen or so
at any time that you would take the trouble to say ‘yes’!”
The girl addressed looked openly amused--“Please take a few off your
list,” she said. But the other refused to notice her remark and ran on
in her light way.
“And they are all so nice too--it is really hard to choose, but I think
on the whole I prefer a certain young man who shall be nameless. Now,
would you call his devotion to yourself ‘mad precipitation or a false
generosity or a reckless passion?’” She moved herself lazily over the
yellow skin until her head rested against the girl’s knee.
“And he is such a nice, eligible youth too. I hope you are not going to
spoil his life by refusing him. Only think how lovely it would be to
have one’s father-in-law representing the majesty of these United States
at an Emperor’s court,” she went on, turning gayly to the others. “And
he is so handsome and clever! He will be representing Uncle Sam himself
some day, and she will be reading up the rules of court etiquette and
receiving invitations from the Lord Chamberlain to dine with the Queen,
and fuming because the Grand Duchess of something or other has the
right to walk in to dinner before her.” She was not noticing the girl’s
significant silence. “Of course he is just the man for you--you wouldn’t
make any but a brilliant match, you know, with your beauty and society
manner. But just for the present--well, next winter you will début, and
you will be much talked about, and the youth will not be with his father
at the European capital, but will be very much _en évidence_ here, and
then--after Easter we shall get _your_ cards!”
She twisted her head around, smiling, so as to get a look at the girl’s
face above her. It wore so grave and hopeless an expression that she
gave a little cry.
“Forgive me,” she said, confusedly, “but you do love him, don’t you?”
The Beauty turned her eyes away and shook herself slightly, as if
awakening from a dream.
“As confession seems to be the order of the hour,” she said in a dull
tone, and smiling peculiarly, “I don’t mind owning that I do love him
very much.”
She got up abruptly and moved toward the door amid a chorus of protests,
but she would not stay. At the threshold she turned to Miss Lavington.
“Send your things down by the coach,” she said. “If you will let me I
will be glad to drive you to the station myself to-morrow.”
* * * * *
When she got to her own study she found a letter thrust under the door
with the familiar number of her room scrawled upon it in pencil. She
picked it up, and as she looked at the address an expression of profound
dislike and weariness came into her face. She opened the door slowly and
put the letter down upon her desk, looking at it thoughtfully for a few
moments. The handwriting was irresolute and boyish. She shivered
slightly as she took the letter up with sudden resolution and tore it
open. As she sat there and read it a look of hatred and disgust and
utter hopelessness, strangely at variance with her usual brilliant
expression, settled harshly upon her lovely, young face.
“MY DEAREST WIFE,” it ran, “Forgive me! but this is about the only
luxury I indulge in!--calling you in my letters what I dare not call you
as yet before the world.
“I am in a retrospective mood to-night, and feel like writing all sorts
of things which I am afraid you won’t much like. Do you know I think
that college is doing you harm! Don’t get angry at this, but sometimes
I’m afraid you have repented of our boy and girl runaway match; but God
knows I haven’t, and I’m glad I didn’t go to college but came out West
and went to work for us both. I haven’t succeeded very brilliantly and
may be the life has roughened me a bit, but I guess you can have the
best there is out here, and I am still as devoted to you as in those old
days of the summer before you went to that confounded (excuse me!)
college, when you were just eighteen and I barely twenty-one. How
interminably long four years seemed to wait then! But it was a case of
getting married secretly and of waiting, or of not getting you at all.
Sometimes I can hardly stand it, and I’d come back now and take you
away, if I wasn’t so afraid of that blessed old father of yours--but I’m
just as big a coward as I was three years ago, when I couldn’t screw up
courage enough to go to him and tell him that he’d have to relinquish
his pet scheme of sending his daughter to college, for she belonged to
me. Whew! what a scene we’d have had! It was best to wait, I suppose.
“After all, only a year and then I can claim you! Have you changed any?
I’m afraid you’re way ahead of me now. I always had an uncomfortable
suspicion that you were very much my superior, and I have half fancied
that perhaps you only loved me because I was so madly--so passionately
in love with you. Did I over-persuade you? have you ceased to love me?
Sometimes I get half sick with fear. You are all I have! But after all I
feel safe enough--I know you too well not to know that you will never
break your promise--even one you hate. But you know I’ll never hold you
to that marriage--though it was all valid enough--if you don’t want to
be held. I can simply blow my good-for-nothing brains out.
“I won’t write any more to-night. There is so much swearing and noise
down in the street that I can hardly think; besides I don’t feel just
like it, and lately your letters have only irritated me. But I won’t
complain, for I know how generously you have acted and what brilliant
prospects you have given up for my precious self!
“Devotedly yours and only yours,
“G. G. B.”
A TELEPHONED TELEGRAM
When Miss Eva Hungerford married Stanhope there was one young lady
intensely glad of it, although it was whispered that there were also two
or three who were quite the contrary. But Mrs. Renford Phillips--once
Miss Violet Featherstone--had particular reasons for rejoicing, and she
wrote a long letter to Miss Hungerford when she heard of the engagement,
and said that she hoped “by-gones would be by-gones now, and that she
was sure her friend would be a broader-minded and more perfect woman, if
that were possible, now that she was going to have the additional
experience of getting married.”
Miss Hungerford wrote her a most cordial reply, and the two girls, for
several years slightly estranged, became again the friends they had been
during the first three years of their college life.
The blow had fallen very suddenly, and Miss Hungerford had found it hard
to forgive what she called, in her heart, her friend’s tacit deceit and
culpable silence. But, as she wrote in her reply to Mrs. Phillips’s
letter, her opinions had undergone a decided change, and she felt that
perhaps she had been a little hard on her friend and had not understood
her feelings and the pressure brought to bear upon her, and she
acknowledged that circumstances might materially alter one’s views and
actions. And Miss Featherstone, who had been the most talked about girl
in college during the last semestre of her junior year, and who had
suffered acutely under Miss Hungerford’s indifferently concealed
displeasure and surprise at her conduct, replied that now she could be
truly happy in her husband and her home, and insisted that Mr. and Mrs.
Stanhope should visit her in the Berkshire Hills that summer.
This they did, and though, of course, each thought her husband much the
handsomer and more distinguished-looking, still they were very
affectionate toward each other, and planned to be at Cowes together the
next summer for the yachting.
As has been said, their estrangement happened very suddenly and came
about by an unfortunate occurrence one morning in the office of the
college.
Anyone who has never had the privilege of being in that office on a
Monday morning, just after chapel, can have but a faint idea of
pandemonium. The whole seven hundred students seem to be revolving
about. There are the young women standing around, waiting to take the
next train into Boston, not having been able to go on the early express
because they had foolishly forgotten to get a leave of absence on the
Saturday previous, and who are furtively trying not to see their friends
who are not going on at all, so as to keep from having to attend to
their commissions; and there is the girl who is telephoning for roses to
wear at the concert that night, and those who are booking boats and
tennis courts, and others reading bulletins; and when there is an extra
commotion and the crowd is forced back a little to let the cords be
pulled up around the desk so as to clear a space; and when the carrier
comes in and tumbles the big mail-bags into the middle of it with one
hand and unlocks them at apparently the same instant with the other; and
when about ten young women fall upon the bags and rend their contents
from them, and begin to assort and number and tie up the letters, all
the time besieged by their excluded friends to give them their mail on
the spot as they are going away, the noise and excitement reach a
climax.
But it is all very pleasant and enlivening except the telephone bell,
which rings constantly and is wearing on the nerves. It rings not only
for all telephone messages but for all telegrams, for the college, being
a mile or so from the telegraph station, everything is simply telephoned
up to save delays, and that a long and continuous procession of small
messenger boys may not be forever circulating between the college and
the station.
It was this unfortunate custom of telephoning telegrams, unknown of
course to the majority of outsiders, that precipitated the affair. On
that particular Monday morning, when the confusion in the office was at
its worst, the telephone bell suddenly rang unusually loudly and long,
and the nervous Freshman on duty jumped toward it with a warning motion
to the rest to keep quiet.
“Hush! it’s a telegram,” she said in a moment, and instantly there was
silence, for a telegram is always dreaded where there are so many to
whom it could bear ill news. She reached for a pad of paper and a pencil
to take it down. From the other end came “Important. Repeat slowly as I
deliver it.” The nervous Freshman said “All right,” and braced herself
against the support to write.
“To Miss Violet Featherstone.” The docile Freshman repeated it and then
said “Wait!” and looked around.
“If Miss Featherstone is here,” she remarked, “she can come to the
telephone;” but someone volunteered the information that Miss
Featherstone had left by the early train for Boston, and the telephoning
proceeded.
“My darling--” the Freshman gasped a little and then repeated slowly “My
darling.” There was some suppressed commotion for an instant among the
crowd around the doors, and the two at the telephone went at it again.
“I have not heard from you for three days.”
“I have not heard from you for three days,” mumbled the Freshman.
“What is the matter? Renford Phillips.”
“What is the matter? Renford Phillips.”
* * * * *
When Miss Featherstone reached the college that afternoon she thought
she detected a suppressed excitement about the whole place, though she
felt rather too tired to think much about it, but when she got to her
room she found a telephone message for her which made her sink weakly
into a chair.
An appalling vision of the consequences rose before her. She tried to
think connectedly, but the effort was too much. Her only thought was of
the effect it would have on her friend Eva Hungerford. She would go to
her immediately and find out how much she knew.
As she went along the corridors more than one acquaintance smiled
knowingly at her, but she only hurried on. When she reached Miss
Hungerford’s rooms, she found that young lady looking dejectedly out of
the windows. Her melancholy turned to stony haughtiness, however, when
Miss Featherstone approached her tremblingly.
“Yes, the whole college knew of it,” she assured her. “The message had
been telephoned up when the office was crowded, and by this time
everyone was aware of what her best friend had not known.”
Miss Featherstone rebelled a little under Miss Hungerford’s chilling
glance and attempted to explain, but her friend was very sad and firm,
and said she did not see how any explanation could do away with the fact
that Violet Featherstone had broken the solemn vow they had made
together never to marry, but to devote themselves to serious study as a
life-work. But when Miss Featherstone quite broke down under her
friend’s disapprobation, Miss Hungerford relented a little and asked her
if she were really so fond of Renford Phillips, and if she thought life
with him in Morristown would compensate her for the loss of Oxford and
the Bodleian. Miss Featherstone cried a little at that, and said she
thought it would, and that she had started a hundred times to tell her
dearest friend about her engagement, but she knew how she thought about
such things, and how she would lose her respect for allowing anything to
interfere with their plans for mental advancement. And Miss Hungerford
only sighed and wrote that night to her mother that another of her
illusions had been dispelled, but that she was firmer than ever in her
determination to make something of herself.
Miss Featherstone did not return for her degree, but had a pretty church
wedding that summer at Stockbridge, and Miss Hungerford sent her a very
handsome wedding gift, but refused to be present at the marriage. They
did not write to each other much the next year, and Miss Hungerford
worked so hard that the Faculty had to interfere, and when she left
college with a B. S. degree, smiling sadly and saying that she would be
a bachelor as well as an old maid, everybody remarked what a superior
girl she was to her friend Violet Featherstone.
“MISS ROSE”
She was always called that, and there were very few of the seven hundred
students who really knew or cared whether it was her little name or her
family name. The uncertainty about it seemed particularly appropriate
someway--her whole personality was vague. That is at the beginning;
later----
For the first month she passed comparatively unnoticed. In the wild
confusion of setting up household gods and arranging schedules, hopeless
as Chinese puzzles, of finding out where the Greek instructors can see
you professionally, and when the art school is open, and why you cannot
take books from the library, and when the elevator runs, anyone less
remarkable-looking than an American Indian or the Queen of the Sandwich
Islands is apt to be overlooked. But after the preliminary scuffle is
over and there is a lull in the storm, and one begins to remember
vaguely having seen _that_ dress or face before somewhere, and when one
no longer turns up at the history or art rooms instead of the chemical
laboratories, and when one ceases to take the assistant professor of
physics for the girl who sat next to you in the trigonometry
recitation--then the individual comes in for her share of attention.
“Miss Rose” possibly got more than her share. Curious young women soon
began to nudge each other, and ask in whispers who she was. And just at
first there were covert smiles and a little cruelly good-natured joking,
and the inevitable feeble punning on her name and withered looks. There
were some who said she could not be more than forty-five, but they were
in the minority, and even the more generously inclined could not deny
that her face was very old and wrinkled and tired-looking, and that her
hair was fast getting gray around the temples, though her eyes still
retained a brilliancy quite feverish, and an eager, unsatisfied sort of
look that struck some of the more imaginative as pathetic. As a freshman
she seemed indeed to be hopelessly out of place--though not so much so,
perhaps, as the little Chicago beauty who was so much more interested in
her gowns and looks than in her work, that at the beginning of her
second semestre she went home with an attack of pneumonia, brought on by
having been left out in the cold after an examination in conic
sections.
That type, however, is not uncommon, while “Miss Rose” was especially
puzzling. They could not quite understand her, and there were even some
among the august body of ridiculous freshmen who somewhat resented her
entrance into their ranks, and wondered rather discontentedly why she
did not join the great body of “T-specs” to which she so evidently
belonged.
But it was characteristic of this woman that she preferred to begin at
the beginning and work her way up--to take the regular systematic grind
and discipline of the freshman’s lot--to matriculating in an elective
course where she could get through easily enough if she were so
inclined. She saw no incongruity in her position; she rarely seemed to
notice the difference between herself and the younger, quicker
intellects around her, and she worked with an enthusiasm and persistence
that put most of the young women to shame. That she had taught was
evident--in what little out-of-the-way Western town, or sleepy Southern
one, no one knew; but sometimes there were amusing little scenes between
herself and the professor, when the old habit of school-room tyranny
which she had once exercised herself was strong upon her, and she lapsed
unconsciously into the didactic manner of her former life. And sometimes
she became discouraged when the long lack of strict mental discipline
irked her, and when she saw in a glimpse how far she was behind the girl
of nineteen beside her, and how hopeless was the struggle she was making
against youth and training. There were moments when she realized that
she had begun too late, that the time she had lost was lost
irretrievably. But the reaction would quickly come and she would work
away with renewed energy, and they were very patient with her and would
lend her a helping hand where a younger student would have been let most
severely alone, to sink or swim after the approved method.
But if her mathematics and chemistry and Tacitus left much to be
desired, there was one field in which she shone resplendently. “No one
could touch her”--as one young woman slangly but enthusiastically
remarked--“when it came to the Bible.” There she was in her glory, and
her vast knowledge of the wars of Jeroboam and Rehoboam, and her
appalling familiarity with Shamgar and the prophets, and the meaning of
the Urim and Thummim, and other such things, was the envy and despair of
the younger and less biblically inclined. And if at times she was a
trifle too prolix and had to be stopped in her flow of information,
there was very genuine regret on the part of the less well informed.
And in time she came to make a great many friends. Her peculiar ways no
longer struck them as comical, and if anyone had dared make reference to
the plainness of her gowns or the strict economies she practised to get
through, that person would have very soon discovered her mistake; and
they pretended not to know that she would not join any of the societies
because of the dues, and that she did her own laundry on Monday
afternoons. Indeed, she was so kindly disposed and so cheerful and
helpful, and seemed so interested in all the class projects and even in
the sports, at which of course she could only look on, that little by
little she came to be a great favorite, and the one to whom the rest
naturally turned when there was any hitch or especial need for advice.
And then, of course, as she was not to be thought of in the light of a
possible candidate for president or vice-president or captain of the
crew, or any of the other desirable high-places, those misguided young
women who did have such literary, social, or athletic aspirations would
go to her and confide their hopes and fears, and in some strange way
they would all feel very much more comfortable and happy in their minds
after such confessions. And so she got to be a sort of class
institution in a very short while, and the captains of different stylish
but rather un-nautical freshman crews vied with each other in
invitations to “come over the lake” with them, and the president of the
Tennis Association sent her a special and entirely superfluous
invitation to the spring tournament on the club’s finest paper, and the
senior editor of the college magazine, whose sister was a freshman, was
made to ask her for a short article on the “Study of the Bible,” and at
the concerts and receptions many young women, kindly and socially
disposed, would introduce her to their brothers and other male relations
who had been enticed out, before taking them on to see the lake, or a
certain famous walk, or the Art Building, or the Gymnasium.
* * * * *
It was about the middle of the winter semestre that it happened, and of
course it was Clara Arnold who knew about it first. Miss Arnold had
liked “Miss Rose” from the beginning. She had taken a fancy to the
hard-working woman, who had returned it with wondering admiration for
the handsome, clever girl. And so Miss Arnold got into the habit of
stopping for her occasionally to walk or drive, and it was when she went
for her to go on one of those expeditions, that she discovered the
trouble. She found “Miss Rose” sitting before her desk with a crumpled
newspaper in her hand, and a dazed, hopeless expression on her face
which cut the girl to the heart. Her things were scattered about the
room, on the bed and chairs, an open trunk half-filled stood in one
corner. Miss Arnold stared around in amazement.
“The bank’s broken,” said “Miss Rose” simply, in answer to her
questioning glance, and pointed dully to the paper. “I might have known
that little bank couldn’t hold out when so many big ones have gone under
this year,” she went on, half speaking to herself.
Miss Arnold picked up the paper and read an article on the first page
marked around with a blue pencil. She did not understand the
technicalities, but she made out that the “City Bank” of a small town in
Idaho had been forced to close, and that depositors would not get more
than five or ten cents on the dollar.
“Every cent I’ve saved up was in that bank!” The woman turned herself
slowly in her chair and laid her face down on the desk with her arms
above her head. She spoke in muffled tones into which a strange
bitterness had crept.
“I’ve worked all my life--ever since I was twenty--to get enough money
to come to college on. I had barely enough to stay here at all--and
now--” she stopped suddenly, breathing hard. “I haven’t been here a year
yet,” she broke out at last.
“Well, I’ll have to go back to teaching. Great heavens! I thought I’d
finished with _that_!”
Miss Arnold seated herself on a clear corner of the bed.
“Look here, ‘Miss Rose,’” she said, excitedly, “of course you aren’t
going to stop college now, when you’re doing so well and--and we all
like you so much and--and you’re just beginning your course.” She
stumbled on--“Has everything gone?--can’t you do something?”
“Miss Rose” looked up slowly--“Everything,” she said grimly, and then,
with the pathetically resigned air of one who has been used to
misfortunes and has learned to accept them quietly, “I’ve worked all my
life, I suppose I can go at it again.” She looked around her. “I’ll be
gone this time to-morrow, and then I won’t feel so badly;”--she put her
head down on the desk again.
Miss Arnold looked thoughtfully at her for a few minutes and then, with
a sudden movement, she got up and went out, closing the door softly
behind her.
It was about nine o’clock that evening and “Miss Rose” had almost
finished packing. She was feeling particularly disheartened and was
taking the books from the cases one by one in a very mournful way, when
she heard footsteps and a subdued but very excited whispering outside
her door. She got up languidly and threaded her way among the books and
cushions and odd articles of clothing heaped up on the floor. As she
opened the door, the light from her student-lamp fell upon the very red
face of a freshman propelled apparently into the room by the two or
three others behind her, who seemed to have a wild desire to efface
themselves entirely.
“Miss Rose,” gasped the blushing freshman in the van, “here--here is a
letter for you. We’ve just had a class meeting--” she looked nervously
at the others who were edging away.
There was an indistinct chorus from them which sounded like “hope you’ll
accept,” and then they retreated with as much dignity as possible, but
in great haste.
“Miss Rose” opened the letter and gave a little cry as a check for a
good round sum drawn on the class treasurer fell to the floor. And then
she sat weakly down on the bed and cried a little from pure happiness as
she read it all over.
“The class of ’9--have just heard of ‘Miss Rose’s’ financial
embarrassment occasioned by the failure of the ---- City Bank, and being
most unwilling to lose so valuable and appreciated a member, beg that
she will accept the enclosed and continue with the class until the end
of the year.”
A SHORT STUDY IN EVOLUTION
A college for women is generally looked upon by the outside world and
the visiting preachers as a haven of rest, a sort of oasis in the desert
of life, a Paradise with a large and flourishing Tree of Knowledge of
which one is commanded to eat, and where one is happily ignorant of the
“struggle for life,” and the woes and evils of the world.
Such views have been so often expressed and inculcated that it appears a
little ungracious and stubborn to insist that the bishop who comes out
and delivers a sermon once a year, or the brilliant young graduate from
a neighboring seminary--who is sent because the dean has been suddenly
called away and who is quaking with fear at the ordeal--cannot possibly
know all about a girl’s college life and its temptations and its trials
and its vanities.
When the heterogeneous mass of humanity which makes up a big college is
got together and in close relation for ten months at a time, there is
bound to be action and reaction. When New York society girls and
missionaries’ daughters from India, and Boston Latin-school girls and
native Japanese, and Westerners and Georgians and Australians and
“Teacher Specials,” and very young preparatory-school girls, are all
mixed up together, it inevitably happens that there is some friction and
many unexpected and interesting results. One of these is that it not
infrequently happens that a young woman leaves college an entirely
different person from the girl who took her entrance examinations, and
sometimes the change is for the better and sometimes for the worse, or
it may be unimportant and relate only to the way she has got to wearing
her hair, or the amount of extra money she considers necessary. At any
rate, a noticeable change of some sort always operates in a girl during
her four or five years’ stay at a college, and when she goes home “for
good” her friends will criticise her from their different points of
view, and will be sure to tell her whether she is improved or not.
When Miss Eva Hungerford returned for her senior year at college, having
been greatly disappointed in one of her friends, she determined to make
no new ones, but to work very hard and keep a great deal to herself. She
succeeded so well in her efforts that, after she had been there three
months, she became aware that she knew absolutely none of the new
students. They were an indistinguishable mass to her, with the exception
of two or three noticeably pretty, and about the same number of
extremely homely young women whose physique rendered them conspicuous.
To her uninterested gaze the large majority seemed to be distressingly
like all previous freshman classes, and endowed with the same modest
amount of good looks and intellectual foreheads.
But in college life it is a strange fact that while upper classes find
it rather difficult to become acquainted among the lower ones, owing, of
course, to the unwritten code which prevents a senior from appearing
interested in any but those of her own class, yet the incoming students
are allowed and take every opportunity of ingratiating themselves with
upper-class girls, without injury to their dignity. But Miss Hungerford,
who had surrounded herself with quite an impenetrable air of seniority,
and who was so extremely handsome and distant-looking, by her appearance
and bearing had exercised a rather chilling influence on young aspirants
for an introduction, and was secretly very much looked up to and feared.
She was not entirely unconscious of the effect she produced, and was
therefore decidedly surprised one day to receive a call from a freshman
who lived only a few doors from her, but of whose existence she had not
been aware. She thought the child--she was very young, not more than
sixteen--uninteresting, and that it was an evidence of extremely bad
taste, and unconventionality on her part to call in that unprovoked way.
But she was very polite to her uninvited guest, and asked her the usual
questions, and the girl, who was very naïve, replied with a loquacity
quite trying to her hostess.
Miss Hungerford was rather indignant after her visitor had gone, and
wondered why she had had to be interrupted in an analytical study of
“Prometheus Unbound,” to listen to a child tell her that she had never
been out of Iowa before, and that her mother had not wanted her to come
to college, but that her father had always said she should have “a
higher education,” and so, after presumably much domestic wrangling, she
was there. Miss Hungerford could not remember much else of what the
young girl had told her, having listened rather absently to her replies,
but she had a distinct impression that her visitor was not at all
good-looking, with only a fine pair of eyes to redeem her pale face, and
that her clothes were atrocious, and that she was
[Illustration: A RATHER CHILLING INFLUENCE]
_gauche_ and decidedly of a social class that Miss Hungerford was not in
the habit of mingling with away from college. For even in a very
democratic college there are social grades, and although it is the thing
to meet in a most friendly way at all class functions, still, a narrow
line of distinction may be perceived on social occasions.
Altogether Miss Hungerford felt rather aggrieved and hoped she would not
be bothered again. But she was. Miss Betty Harmon, of Sioux City, Ia.,
had had a fearful struggle with her timidity and retiring nature, when
she called on Miss Hungerford, and having gained a victory over herself,
she had no intention of resigning the benefits. So she would smile first
when they met in the corridors, and was not above showing how much she
appreciated a few words from Miss Hungerford in praise of her tennis
serve, and that young woman was even uncomfortably conscious that her
youthful admirer had more than once followed her to the library, where,
under pretence of reading, she had stolen furtive glances at her. Later
there were notes, and roses, and requests to go boating.
Miss Hungerford strongly objected to such proceedings, not only because
she did not wish to be rendered ridiculous by an insignificant freshman
from Iowa, but also because she was a very sensible girl, and entirely
disapproved of the “eclectic affinity” business, and she had no
intention of allowing the young girl’s admiration for herself to develop
into that abnormal sort of attraction that exists between girls in so
many schools and colleges.
The temptation to exalt some upper-class girl into an ideal and lavish
upon her an affection which in society would naturally fall to the lot
of some very unideal boy, or man, is one of the greatest ordeals a
college girl goes through, and one who successfully resists all
inducements to become a “divinity student,” or who gets out of the
entanglement without damage to herself, is as successfully “proven” as
was Lieutenant Ouless after his little affair with Private Ortheris.
Even the least romantic girl is apt to find unexpected possibilities in
her nature in the way of romantic devotion, so that it was not
surprising that Miss Betty Harmon, unimaginative and unsentimental as
she was, should have admired so extravagantly as handsome and
interesting a girl as Eva Hungerford. The crude Western girl found
something extremely attractive in the senior--grace, a social ease and
distinction, and that indefinable magnetism which a wealthy, consciously
beautiful girl possesses.
[Illustration: SHE HAD STOLEN FURTIVE GLANCES AT HER]
But Miss Hungerford, who had no notion of getting herself talked about,
and whose Eastern sensitiveness and prejudices were continually being
shocked by the younger girl’s crudities, so persistently frowned down
upon and ignored her under-class admirer, that even Miss Harmon’s
devotion paled, and the roses and notes and boating excursions ceased.
She began to perceive that the faint line of social distinction, so
rarely perceptible in the college, had been drawn in her case.
During the last semestre of the year Miss Hungerford, who was very tired
and busy, seemed almost oblivious of the young girl’s existence, and
even forgot to smile at her when they met on the campus. And when on her
Baccalaureate Sunday a box of white roses--the last mute expression of
Miss Harmon’s expiring affection--was handed her without any card, she
wondered who had sent them and concluded they must have been ordered by
a man she knew.
* * * * *
Three years after leaving college Miss Hungerford married, much to her
friends’ surprise, and a year after that she and her husband went
abroad. Of course they went to Paris, where Mrs. Stanhope, who had spent
much time there after leaving college, had a great many friends, and
innumerable dinners were given to them and they enjoyed themselves very
much, until it got so cold that Mrs. Stanhope said she must go to
Cannes. Of course it immediately struck Stanhope, who adored his wife,
that it was entirely too cold to stay in Paris, and so they went south,
though their friends made a great fuss over their departure.
They stayed away much longer than they had intended, having been enticed
into going to Malta by some American acquaintances, and when they got
back to Paris hundreds of interesting things seemed to have happened in
their absence, and a great many people and events were being talked
about of which they knew nothing. But the wife of the American minister,
who was an old friend, went to see Mrs. Stanhope immediately to invite
her to an informal dinner the next evening, and stayed the entire
afternoon, telling her of everything that had happened and who all the
new people were--the New American Beauty for instance. She could not
believe that her friend had not heard of nor seen _the_ New Beauty.
“Why, haven’t you ever seen her pictures--and the notices of her?”
Mrs. Stanhope was slightly aggrieved. She knew absolutely nothing about
her.
“And I am completely astonished that they aren’t talking of her at
Cannes.”
Mrs. Stanhope reminded her friend that she had been immured at Malta
since leaving the Riviera.
“Oh, well, of course her fame has reached there by this time. Why, all
Paris is talking about her--and you know yourself”--observed that astute
lady, impressively--“how much it takes to make Paris stop and look at
you.” Mrs. Stanhope said “Yes,” and wanted to know who The Beauty’s
people were, and where she had come from.
“Oh, I don’t know,” declared her friend. “No one seems to inquire. She
is so beautiful and sufficient in herself that one does not care much
for the rest. They are immensely rich--recently, I believe--though you
would never know it from her manner. She is charming and thoroughly
well-bred. Her father, I hear, is a typical American business man--not
much _en évidence_, you know. He leaves that to his daughter, and she
does it very well. He is a Senator--or something--from the West, and
made such a name for himself at Washington that they thought he was too
bright to stay there, so they sent him over here to help settle that
international treaty affair--you know perhaps--I don’t, I only pretend
to.”
“How did she do it?” demanded Mrs. Stanhope, in that simply
comprehensive way women have when talking about another woman.
“Oh, she just started right in. Courtelais raved over her, and her
father paid him twenty thousand dollars to have her painted. The Colony
took her up, and the rest just followed naturally. The portrait is
really charming, though she was dressed--well, I don’t think any French
girl would have sat in that costume.”
“Is she really so beautiful?”
“Well--not regularly beautiful, perhaps--but charming and fascinating,
and awfully clever, they say--so clever that very few people suspect her
of it, and--oh! well, you can judge for yourself to-morrow evening. By
the way, everyone says she is engaged already--Comte de la Tour. You
used to know him, I think.” She rose to go. “He is very much in love
with her, that is evident.” She thought it best to let Mrs. Stanhope
have that piece of news from herself. She did not wish her friend to be
taken at a disadvantage, especially in her own house.
Mrs. Stanhope felt the least bit startled. She had known the Comte de la
Tour very well indeed in Paris, several years before, and he had been
very much in love with her, and had appeared quite genuinely
broken-hearted when she refused him. She had not seen him--he had not
been in Paris when she was there during the earlier part of the
season--but with the comforting faith of people who have never been in
love, she had always believed that he would get over his devotion to
her, though she felt a rather curious sensation on hearing that her
expectations had been so fully realized, and she felt a pardonable
curiosity to see the girl who had made him forget her.
She dressed very carefully for the American Minister’s the next evening,
and looked a little more than her usual handsome self, when her carriage
turned rapidly into the Avenue Hoche. She was somewhat late, and
although the Minister and his wife were old friends, she felt worried
with herself, for she had made it a rule to be punctual at all social
functions, and when she entered the rooms she could see that the guests
wore that rather expectant air which signifies that dinner is already
slightly behind time. She hurried forward and denounced herself in
polite fashion, but her hostess assured her that several others had not
yet arrived, and, much relieved, she turned to speak to a bright
newspaper man, an old acquaintance, who had arrived in Paris during her
absence.
“I am so glad to find you again,” he murmured in his drawl; “they tell
me you have been to Malta. How fortunate for you! I suppose now you have
been happy in an idyllic, out-of-the-world way, and have not heard a
word about Brice’s accident, nor the newspaper duel, nor the New
Beauty----”
“But I am not happy, and shall not be until I see your Beauty,”
protested Mrs. Stanhope. “I’ve heard about her until I have an
all-devouring curiosity to behold her. I haven’t even seen _the_
portrait, or a photograph!”
He fell away from her in mock surprise and despair, and was about to
reply, when the portières were drawn aside and Mrs. Stanhope saw coming
into the room a very beautiful young girl, with a rather childish,
mobile face, and magnificent eyes. She seemed to know everyone, and
bowed and smiled right and left in an easy, bright sort of way. Mrs.
Stanhope would have known this was The Beauty, even if her entrance had
not been accompanied by that significant hush and rather ridiculous
closing up of the men in her wake. There was a special charm about the
soft contour of her face, and the heavy white satin of her gown, though
rather old for such a young girl, set off her beauty admirably.
“Looks just like one of Goodrich’s girls, doesn’t she?” murmured the
man at Mrs. Stanhope’s elbow. But that lady was not paying any attention
to his remarks. She was looking in a puzzled fashion at the girl’s face,
and wondering what there was about it so familiar.
“Isn’t she deliciously beautiful?” he insisted, “and clever! I found it
out quite by accident. She’s very careful about letting people know how
well informed she is. She’s been to a college somewhere,” he ran on.
Mrs. Stanhope was not listening. She was still looking, in a rather
abstracted way, at the young girl who was holding a little court on the
other side of the room. Her hostess rustled up.
“I am going to send my husband to bring The Beauty to you,” she said,
laughingly, and swept across the room. In a moment Mrs. Stanhope saw the
girl take the Minister’s arm, and, followed on the other side by the
Comte de la Tour, start toward her. For some inexplicable reason she
felt annoyed, and half wished to avoid the introduction. The newspaper
man was interested. Mrs. Stanhope had never posed as a professional
beauty, and she was too noble a woman to have her head turned by
flattery, but that did not alter the fact that she had been considered
the handsomest woman in the American colony at Paris, and, of course,
she knew it. He thought it would be interesting to see how the
acknowledged beauty received the younger one.
When the two women were within a few feet of each other, and before the
American Minister could say “Mrs. Stanhope,” they each gave a little cry
of recognition, and it was the younger one who first regained her
composure and extended her hand. She stood there, flushed and smiling,
the lights falling on her dark hair and gleaming shoulders, making of
her, as the newspaper man had said, one of “Goodrich’s girls.” The
childish look had gone out of her eyes, and a little gleam of conscious
triumph was in them. There was just a shade of coldness, almost of
condescension, in her manner. While the Comte was looking from one to
the other, in a rather mystified way, and the American Minister was
saying, “Why, I didn’t know--I thought--” Mrs. Stanhope’s mind was
running quickly back to her first meeting with the girl before her, and
she could only remember, in a confused sort of way, what this girl had
once been like. And so they stood for a moment--it seemed an
interminably long time to the men--looking a little constrainedly at
each other and smiling vaguely. But the older woman quickly recovered
herself. She had no notion of being outdone
[Illustration: WHEN THE TWO WOMEN WERE WITHIN A FEW FEET OF EACH
OTHER]
by the girl before her, and spoke brightly.
“I did not recognize you! How stupid of me! But you see the ‘Beatrice’
confused me, and then the French way everyone has of pronouncing
H-a-r-m-ö-n completely put me off the track!”
She tried to be very friendly, and the young girl smiled and looked
easily--the newspaper man thought almost defiantly--at her, but it was
plain to the three onlookers that in some inscrutable way the meeting
had been unfortunate, and they each felt relieved, in an inexplicable
fashion, when dinner was announced and the snowy, gleaming length of
damask and silver and wax lights stretched between the two women.
* * * * *
That night the Comte thought a good deal about the reception of his
_fiancée_ by the woman he had once loved, and decided that the American
woman was a trifle _exigeante_, and wondered whether Mrs. Stanhope had
really expected him never to marry.
The American Minister confided to his wife that he was disappointed in
Eva Stanhope, and that she had always appeared so free from vanity and
so superior to the little meannesses of women that he was very much
surprised at the way she had acted.
The newspaper man, being exceedingly wise in his generation, smoked
three cigars over it on the way to his hotel, and then--gave it up.
THE GENIUS OF BOWLDER BLUFF
Miss Arnold found him wandering aimlessly, though with a pleased,
interested look, around the dimly lit College Library. She had gone
there herself to escape for a few moments from the heat and lights and
the crowd around the Scotch celebrity to whom the reception was being
tendered, and was looking rather desultorily at an article in the latest
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, when he emerged from one of the alcoves and
stood hesitatingly before her. She saw that he was not a guest. He was
not in evening dress--it occurred to her even then how entirely out of
his element he would have looked in a conventional dress-suit--but wore
new clothes of some rough material which fitted him badly. He was so
evidently lost and so painfully aware of it that she hastened to ask him
if she could do anything for him.
“I’m lookin’ fur my daughter, Ellen Oldham,” he said, gratefully. “Do
you know her?”
He seemed much surprised and a little hurt when Miss Arnold shook her
head, smilingly.
“You see, there are so many----” she began, noting his disappointed
look.
“Then I s’pose you can’t find her fer me. You see,” he explained,
gently, “I wrote her I wuz comin’ ter-morrer, an’ I came ter-night fur a
surprise--a surprise,” he repeated, delightedly. “But I’m mighty
disappointed not ter find her. This is the first time I ever wuz so fur
east. But I hed to see Ellen--couldn’t stan’ it no longer. You see,” he
continued, nervously, “I thought mebbe I could stay here three or four
days, but last night I got a telegram from my pardner on the mountain
sayin’ there wuz trouble among the boys an’ fur me ter come back. But
I--I jest couldn’t go back without seein’ Ellen, so I came on ter-night
fur a surprise, but I must start back right off, an’ I’m mighty
disappointed not ter be seein’ her all this time. Hed no idea yer
college wuz such a big place--thought I could walk right in an’ spot
her,” he ran on meditatively--“I thought it wuz something like Miss
Bellairs’s an’ Miss Tompkins’s an’ Miss Rand’s all rolled inter one. But
Lord! it’s a sight bigger’n that! Well, I’m glad of it. I’ve thought fur
years about Ellen’s havin’ a college eddication, an’ I’m glad to see
it’s a real big college. Never hed no schoolin’ myself, but I jest set
my heart on Ellen’s havin’ it. Why shouldn’t she? I’ve got ther money.
Hed to work mighty hard fur it, but I’ve got it, an’ she wanted ter come
to college, and I wanted her to come, so of course she came. I met
another young woman,” he continued, smiling frankly at the girl before
him; “she wasn’t so fine-lookin’ as you, but she was a very nice young
woman, an’ she promised to send Ellen ter me, but she hasn’t done it!”
Miss Arnold felt a sudden interest in the old man.
“Perhaps,” she began, doubtfully, “if you could tell me what her class
is, or in what building she has her rooms, I might find her.”
He looked at the young girl incredulously.
“Ain’t you never heard of her?” he demanded. “Why, everybody knew her at
Miss Bellairs’s. But p’r’aps”--in a relieved sort of way--“p’r’aps you
ain’t been here long. This is Ellen’s second year.”
Miss Arnold felt slightly aggrieved. “I am a Senior,” she replied, and
then added courteously, “but I am sure the loss has been mine.”
She could not make this man out, quite--he was so evidently
uncultivated, so rough and even uncouth, and yet there was a look of
quiet power in his honest eyes, and he was so unaffectedly simple and
kindly that she instinctively recognized the innate nobility of his
character. She felt interested in him, but somewhat puzzled as to how to
continue the conversation, and so she turned rather helplessly to her
magazine.
But he came over and stood beside her, looking down wonderingly at the
unfamiliar words and accents.
“Can you read all that?” he asked, doubtfully.
Miss Arnold said “Yes.”
“Jest like English?” he persisted.
She explained that she had had a French nurse when she was little, and
afterward a French governess, and that she had always spoken French as
she had English. He seemed to be immensely impressed by that and looked
at her very intently and admiringly, and then he suddenly looked away,
and said, in a changed tone:
“I never hed no French nurse fur Ellen. Lord! it wuz hard enough to get
any kind in them days,” he said, regretfully. “But she’s been studyin’
French fur two years now--p’rhaps she speaks almost as good as you do by
this time--she’s mighty smart.”
Miss Arnold looked up quickly at the honest, kindly face above her with
the hopeful expression in the eyes, and some sudden impulse made her
say, quite cheerfully and assuringly, “Oh, yes--of course.”
She was just going to add that she would go to the office and send
someone to look for Miss Oldham, when a slender, rather pretty girl
passed the library door, hesitated, peering through the half-light, and
then came swiftly toward them.
With a cry of inexpressible tenderness and delight the old man sprang
toward her.
“Ellen!” he said, “Ellen!”
She clung to him for a few moments and then drew off rather shyly and
awkwardly, with a sort of _mauvaise honte_ which struck disagreeably on
Miss Arnold, and looked inquiringly and almost defiantly from her father
to the girl watching them.
“This young woman,” he said, understanding her unspoken inquiry, “has
been very kind to me, Ellen--we’ve been talkin’.”
Miss Arnold came forward.
“I think we ought to be friends,” she said, graciously. “I am Clara
Arnold. Your father tells me this is your Sophomore year.”
The girl met her advances coldly and stiffly. She had never met Miss
Arnold before, but she had known very well who she was, and she had
envied her, and had almost disliked her for her good looks and her
wealth and her evident superiority. She comprehended that this girl had
been born to what she had longed for in a vague, impotent way, and had
never known. She wished that Miss Arnold had not witnessed the meeting
with her father--that Miss Arnold had not seen her father at all. And
then, with the shame at her unworthy thoughts came a rush of pity and
love for the man standing there, smiling so patiently and so tenderly at
her. She put one hand on his arm and drew herself closer to him.
“Father!” she said.
Miss Arnold stood looking at them, turning her clear eyes from one to
the other. It interested her tremendously--the simple, kindly old man,
in his rough clothes, and with his homely talk and his fatherly pride
and happiness in the pretty, irresolute-looking girl beside him. It
occurred to her suddenly, with a thrill of pity for herself, that she
had never seen her father look at her in that way. He would have been
inordinately surprised and--she felt sure--very much annoyed, if she had
ever kissed his hand or laid her head on his arm as this girl was now
doing. He had been an extremely kind and considerate father to her. It
struck her for the first time that she had missed something--that after
providing the rather pretentiously grand-looking house and grounds, and
the servants and carriages and conservatories, her father had forgotten
to provide something far more essential. But she was so much interested
in the two before her that she did not have much time to think of
herself. She concluded that she did not want to go back to the Scotch
celebrity, and resolutely ignored the surprised looks of some of her
friends who passed the library door and made frantic gestures for her to
come forth and join them. But when they had moved away it occurred to
her that she ought to leave the two together, and so she half rose to
go, but the man, divining her intention, said, heartily:
“Don’t go--don’t go! Ellen’s goin’ to show me about this big college,
an’ we want you to go, too.”
He was speaking to Miss Arnold, but his eyes never left the girl’s face
beside him, while he gently stroked her hair as if she had been a little
child.
And so they walked up and down the long library, and they showed him the
Milton shield, and dragged from their recesses rare books, and pointed
out the pictures and autographs of different celebrities. He seemed
very much interested and very grateful to them for their trouble, and
never ashamed to own how new it all was to him nor how ignorant he was,
and he did not try to conceal his pride in his daughter’s education and
mental superiority to himself. And when Miss Arnold realized that, she
quietly effaced herself and let the younger girl do all the honors, only
helping her now and then with suggestions or statistics.
“You see,” he explained, simply, after a lengthy and, as it seemed to
Miss Arnold, a somewhat fruitless dissertation on the splendid copy of
the “Rubaiyat” lying before them--“you see I don’t know much about these
things. Never hed no chance. But Ellen knows, so what’s the use of my
knowin’? She can put her knowledge to use; but, Lord! I couldn’t if I
hed it.
“You see it was like this,” he continued, cheerfully, turning to Miss
Arnold, while the girl at his side raised her head for an instant and
uttered a low exclamation of protest. “We lived out West--in a minin’
camp in Colorado--Bowlder Bluff wuz its name. Awfully lonesome place. No
schools--nothin’, jest the store--my store--an’ the mines not fur off.
Ellen wuz about twelve then”--he turned inquiringly to the girl, but
she would not look up--“about twelve,” he continued, after a slight
pause, and another gentle caress of the brown hair; “an’ I hedn’t never
given a thought to wimmen’s eddication, an’ Ellen here wuz jest growin’
up not knowin’ a thing--except how I loved her an’ couldn’t bear her out
of my sight” (with another caress), “when one day there came to ther
camp a college chap. He wuz an English chap, an’ he wuz hard-up. But he
wuz a gentleman an’ he’d been to a college--Oxford wuz the name--an’ he
took a heap of notice of Ellen, an’ said she wuz mighty smart--yes,
Ellen, even then we knew you wuz smart--an’ that she ought to have
schoolin’ an’ not run aroun’ the camp any more. At first I didn’t pay no
attention to him. But by an’ by his views did seem mighty sensible, an’
he kep’ naggin at me. He used to talk to me about it continual, an’ at
night we’d sit out under the pines and talk--he with a fur-away sort of
look in his eyes an’ the smoke curlin’ up from his pipe--an’ he’d tell
me what eddication meant to wimmen--independence an’ happiness an’ all
that, an’ he insisted fur Ellen to go to a good school. He said there
wuz big colleges fur wimmen just like there wuz fur men, an’ that she
ought to have a chance an’ go to one.
“An’ then he would read us a lot of stuff of evenin’s--specially poetry.
Shelley in particular. And yet another chap, almost better’n Shelley.
Keats wuz his name. P’rhaps you’ve read some of his poetry?” he
inquired, turning politely to Miss Arnold. Something in her throat kept
her from speaking, so she only lowered her head and looked away from the
drawn, averted face of the girl before her. “He wuz great! All about
gods an’ goddesses an’ things one don’t know much about; but then, as I
take it, poetry always seems a little fur off, so it wuz kind of
natural. But Shelley wuz our favorite. He used to read us somethin’
about the wind. Regularly fine--jest sturred us up, I can tell you. We
knew what storms an’ dead leaves an’ ‘black rain an’ fire an’ hail’ wuz
out on them lonesome mountains. An’ sometimes he’d read us other things,
stories from magazines, an’ books, but it kind of made me feel lonesomer
than ever.
“But Ellen here, she took to it all like a duck to water, an’ the
college chap kep’ insistin’ that she ought to go to a good school, an’
that she showed ‘great natural aptitude’--them wuz his words--an’ that
she might be famous some day, till at last I got regularly enthusiastic
about wimmen’s eddication, an’ I jest determined not to waste any more
time, an’ so I sent her to Miss Bellairs’s at Denver. She wuz all I
hed, an’ Lord knows I hedn’t no particular reason to feel confidence in
wimmen folks”--a sudden, curious, hard expression came into his face for
a moment and then died swiftly away as he turned from Miss Arnold and
looked at the girl beside him. “But I sent her, an’ she ain’t never been
back to the camp, an’ she’s been all I ever hoped she’d be.”
They had passed from the faintly lighted library into the brilliant
corridors, and the man, towering in rugged strength above the two girls,
cast curious glances about him as they walked slowly along. Everything
seemed to interest him, and when they came to the Greek recitation-rooms
he insisted, with boyish eagerness, upon going in, and the big
photogravures of the Acropolis and the charts of the Ægean Sea, and even
a passage from the “Seven against Thebes” (copied upon the walls
doubtless by some unlucky Sophomore), and which was so hopelessly
unintelligible to him, seemed to fascinate him. And when they came to
the physical laboratories he took a wonderful, and, as it seemed to Miss
Arnold, an almost pathetic interest in the spectroscopes and Ruhmkorff
coils, and the batteries only half-discernable in the faintly flaring
lights.
And as they strolled about he still talked of Ellen and himself and
their former life, and the life that was to be--when Ellen should become
famous. For little by little Miss Arnold comprehended that that was his
one fixed idea. As he talked, slowly it came to her what this man was,
and what his life had been--how he had centred every ambition on the
girl beside him, separated her from him, at what cost only the mountain
pines and the stars which had witnessed his nightly struggles with
himself could tell; how he had toiled and striven for her that she might
have the education he had never known. She began to understand what
“going to college” had meant to this girl and this man--to this man
especially. It had not meant the natural ending of a preparatory course
at some school and a something to be gone through with--creditably, if
possible, but also, if possible, without too great exertion and with no
expectation of extraordinary results. It had had a much greater
significance to them than that. It had been regarded as an event of
incalculable importance, an introduction into a new world, the first
distinct step upon the road to fame. It had meant to them what a titled
offer means to a struggling young American beauty, or a word of
approbation to an under-lieutenant from his colonel, or a successful
maiden speech on the absorbing topic of the day, or any other great and
wonderful happening, with greater and more wonderful possibilities
hovering in the background.
She began to realize just how his hopes and his ambitions and his belief
in this girl had grown and strengthened, until the present and the
future held nothing for him but her happiness and advancement and
success. It was a curious idea, a strange ambition for a man of his
calibre to have set his whole heart upon, and as Miss Arnold looked at
the girl who was to realize his hopes, a sharp misgiving arose within
her and she wondered, with sudden fierce pity, why God had not given
this man a son.
But Ellen seemed all he wanted. He told, in a proud, apologetic sort of
way, while the girl protested with averted eyes, how she had always been
“first” at “Miss Bellairs’s” and that he supposed “she stood pretty well
up in her classes” at college. And Miss Arnold looked at the white,
drawn face of the girl and said, quite steadily, she had no doubt but
that Miss Oldham was a fine student. She was an exceptionally truthful
girl, but she was proud and glad to have said that when she saw the look
of happiness that kindled on the face of the man. Yet she felt some
compunctions when she noted how simply and unreservedly he took her into
his confidence.
And what he told her was just such a story as almost all mothers and
fathers tell--of the precocious and wonderful intellect of their
children and the great hopes they have of them. But with this man it was
different in some way. He was so deeply in earnest and so hopeful and so
tender that Miss Arnold could scarcely bear it. “Ellen” was to be a
poet. Had she not written verses when she was still a girl, and had not
the “college chap” and her teachers declared she had great talents?
Wait--he would let Miss Arnold judge for herself. Only lately he had
written to Ellen, asking her if she still remembered their lonely
mountain-home, and she had sent him this. They had strolled down the
corridor to one of the winding stairways at the end. He drew from his
large leather purse a folded paper. The girl watched him open it with an
inexpressible fear in her eyes, and when she saw what it was she started
forward with a sort of gasp, and then turned away and steadied herself
against the balustrade.
He spread out the paper with exaggerated care, and read, with the
monotonously painful intonations of the unpractised reader:
“Ye storm-winds of Autumn!
Who rush by, who shake
The window, and ruffle
The gleam-lighted lake;
Who cross to the hill-side
Thin sprinkled with farms,
Where the high woods strip sadly
Their yellow arms--
Ye are bound for the mountains!
Oh! with you let me go
Where your cold, distant barrier,
The vast range of snow,
Through the loose clouds lifts dimly
Its white peaks in air--
How deep is their stillness!
Ah! would I were there!”
As he read, Miss Arnold turned her eyes, burning with an unutterable
indignation and scorn, upon the girl, but the mute misery and awful
supplication in her face checked the words upon her lips. When he had
finished reading, Miss Arnold murmured something, she hardly knew what,
but he would not let her off so easily.
What did she think of it?--did she not think he ought to be proud of
Ellen? and was the “gleam-lighted lake” the lake they could see from the
piazza?
He ran on, taking it for granted that Miss Arnold was interested in his
hopes and dreams, and almost without waiting for or expecting replies.
And at last he told her the great secret. Ellen was writing a book. He
spoke of it almost with awe--in a suppressed sort of fashion. She had
not told him yet much about it, but he seemed wholly confident in its
future success. He wondered which of the big publishing houses would
want it most.
Miss Arnold gave a quick gasp of relief. There was more to this girl,
then, than she had dared to hope. She glanced eagerly and expectantly
toward her, and in that one look she read the whole pitiable lie. Ellen
was looking straight ahead of her, and the hopeless misery and shame in
her eyes Miss Arnold never forgot. All the pretty, weak curves about the
mouth and chin had settled into hard lines, and a nameless fear
distorted every feature. But the man seemed to notice nothing, and
walked on with head uplifted and a proud, almost inspired look upon his
rugged face.
“When will the book be finished, Ellen?” he asked, at length.
The girl looked up, and Miss Arnold noted with amazement her wonderful
control.
“It will not be very long now, father,” she replied. She was acting her
difficult part very perfectly. It occurred to Miss Arnold that for many
years this girl had been so acting, and as she looked at the strong,
quiet features of the man she shuddered slightly and wondered how it
would be with her when he knew.
* * * * *
When the carriage which was to take him to the station for the midnight
train into Boston had driven from the door, the two girls looked at each
other steadily for an instant.
“Come to my study for a few moments,” said the younger one, imperiously.
Miss Arnold acquiesced silently, and together they moved down the long
corridor to Miss Oldham’s rooms.
“I want to explain,” she began, breathlessly, leaning against the closed
door and watching with strained, wide-opened eyes Miss Arnold’s face,
upon which the light from the lamp fell strong and full.
“I want to explain,” she repeated, defiantly this time. “You had no
right to come between myself and my father! I wish with all my heart you
had never seen him, but since you _have_ seen him I must explain. I am
not entirely the hypocrite and the coward you take me for.” She stopped
suddenly and gave a low cry. “Ah! what shall I say to make you
understand? It began so long ago--I did not mean to deceive him. It was
because I loved him and he thought me so clever. He thought because I
was quick and bright, and because I was having a college education, that
I was--different. In his ignorance how could he guess the great
difference between a superficial aptitude and real talents? How could I
tell him--how could I,” with a despairing gesture, “that I was just like
thousands of other girls, and that there are hundreds right here in this
college who are my superiors in every way? It would have broken his
heart.” Her breath came in short gasps and the pallor of her face had
changed to a dull red.
Miss Arnold leaned forward on the table.
“You have grossly deceived him,” she said, in cold, even tones.
“Deceived him?--yes--a thousand times and in a thousand ways. But I did
it to make him happy. Am I really to blame? He expected so much of
me--he had such hopes and such dreams of some great career for me. I
_am_ a coward. I could not tell him that I was a weak, ordinary girl,
that I could never realize his aspirations, that the mere knowledge that
he depended and relied upon me weighed upon me and paralyzed every
effort. When I loved him so could I tell him this? Could I tell him
that his sacrifices were in vain, that the girl of whom he had boasted
to every man in the mining camp was a complete failure?”
She went over to the table and leaned her head upon her shaking hand.
“If my mother--if I had had a brother or sister, it might have been
different, but I was alone and I was all he had. And so I struggled on,
half hoping that I might become something after all. But I confessed to
myself what I could not to him, that I would never become a scholar,
that my intellect was wholly superficial, that the verses I wrote were
the veriest trash, that I was only doing what ninety-nine out of every
hundred girls did, and that ninety-eight wrote better rhymes than I.
There is a whole drawerful of my ‘poetry’”--she flung open a desk
disdainfully--“until I could stand it no longer, and one day when he
asked me to write something about the mountains, in desperation I copied
those verses of Matthew Arnold’s. I knew he would never see them. After
that it was easy to do so again.” She stopped and pressed her hands to
her eyes.
“I am the most miserable girl that lives,” she said.
Miss Arnold looked at her coldly.
“And the book?” she said at length.
Miss Oldham lifted her head wearily.
“It was all a falsehood. He kept asking me if I were not writing a book.
He thought one had only to write a book to become famous. It seemed so
easy not to oppose the idea, and little by little I fell into the habit
of talking about ‘the book’ as if it were really being written. I did
not try to explain to myself what I was doing. I simply drifted with the
current of his desires and hopes. It may seem strange to you that a man
like my father should have had such ambitions, and stranger still that
he should have ever dreamed I could realize them. But one _has_ strange
fancies alone with one’s self out on the mountains, and the isolation
and self-concentration of the life give an intensity to any desire or
expectation that you, who live in an ever-changing world, cannot
understand.”
Miss Arnold looked at the girl curiously. She wondered for the first
time if there was any excuse for her. She had a singularly strong moral
nature herself, and she could not quite understand this girl’s weakness
and deceit. The fact that she loved her father so deeply only added to
the mystery.
She arose. “If I were you”--she began, coldly, but Miss Oldham stopped
her.
“It is all finished now,” she said. She, too, had arisen, and was
standing against the door, looking down and speaking in the monotonous
tone of someone reciting a lesson.
“I have decided, and I shall go to my father, and I shall say, ‘I have
deceived you; I have neither courage nor honesty. There might have been
an excuse for another girl--a girl who did not understand you or who did
not love you, or who did not know just how much her success meant to
you. For me there is none. I, who knew how strange the idea at first
seemed to you of your daughter’s being an educated, accomplished girl;
I, who knew how little by little the idea became a passion with you, how
proud and how fond you were of her, how you worked and prayed that she
might be something different and better than the rest--I, who knew all
this, have still deceived you. There is but one thing I dare ask you,
Will you not let me go back to the mountain with you, and serve you and
be to you the daughter I have not been as yet?’”
She stopped suddenly and looked at Miss Arnold.
“That is what I must do, is it not?” she asked, dully.
Miss Arnold went over to her.
“That is what you must do,” she said, gently.
It was almost two weeks later when Miss Arnold, coming in from a long
walk, found a letter lying on her table. It bore an unfamiliar postmark,
and the superscription had evidently been written in great haste or
agitation. She tore it open with a feeling of apprehension.
“My punishment has come upon me,” it ran. “My father is dead. I got a
telegram at Denver--they met me at the foot of the mountain. I cannot
say anything now. As yet I have but one thought and one comfort--he
never knew! Think of me as you will--I am glad he never did!
“E. O.”
TIME AND TIDE
It was the usual scene at College theatricals. There was the inevitable
six-foot tenor in a white muslin dress, abnormally long blond plaits,
and a high falsetto which _would_ descend every now and then into a
barytone; and there was the German bass-villain who took unpardonable
liberties with the tenor-maiden, considering the latter’s muscular
superiority; and there was the wicked and beautiful maid with very much
blackened eyebrows and very much rouged cheeks, who forgot every now and
then and winked knowingly at some particular chum in the audience; and
there were the usual hitches in the curtain, and the heat and lights,
and crowds of students and rapt young women from neighboring
institutions of learning, who were gazing with mingled admiration and
pity at the wonderfully large hands and feet of the prima-donna and
soubrette.
Every now and then, chinks of daylight came in from lifted blinds,
damaging the looks of the tenor’s complexion considerably, and the
German villain was getting hoarse, and the ballet refused to repeat the
“butterfly” dance, and the student enthusiasm was beginning to flag. At
last, however, the _finale_ came. The tenor fell happily, if a trifle
heavily, into the arms of the barytone, whose operatic _raison-d’être_
had up to that moment been rather obscure, the German villain gave a
last gasp, and the chorus came out firm and strong on the pretty
refrain, and then everybody got up and walked about, and the men
introduced their friends to the young women with them, and everybody
said it was a great success, if a trifle warm, and then they all went
home and said it wasn’t as good as “last year’s.”
Miss Elise Ronald and her chaperon and party stood near the door,
talking to several men, and waiting for the tenor, who was a particular
friend and who had invited them over. It seemed to them that he was a
great while making his appearance, and they were very anxious to know
what he was doing. They would have been much shocked if they had known.
Mr. Perry Cunningham was swearing. In his frantic hurry to get out of
the extraordinary muslin dress and blond wig, and wash the paint and
mongolian and pearl powder off his face, everything seemed to have gone
wrong. To add to the excitement and worry his “dresser” had misplaced
some of his things, and the stage-manager was trying to buttonhole him
to talk business.
The chaperon, who was tired standing, said she would walk on with the
rest, and that Miss Ronald would please follow the moment Mr. Cunningham
arrived. So the girl said “yes” very obediently, and was left standing,
talking with her brother and a youthful freshman who had asked to be
presented. As time passed and no Mr. Perry Cunningham appeared, Miss
Ronald delicately hinted to her brother that he had best hunt him up and
tell him that she was waiting; but that amiable youth, with delightful
optimism, assured his sister warmly that “Cunningham would soon be out
of his fancy togs and would turn up all right,” and disappeared in the
direction of Hemenway.
It was only a short while later that Mr. Cunningham did come up,
breathless and profusely apologetic, and the freshman with rare
discreetness, divining that his presence was not absolutely necessary,
bowed and moved off.
“Awfully sorry, Miss Ronald,” gasped Cunningham, “’spect I kept you
waitin’ an awful time. That--that ‘dresser’ of mine put half my things
with another fellow’s and I had a time getting them straight.”
Miss Ronald said it did not matter and that the chaperon had gone on
with the rest, and that they were to catch up.
“You know we must get that 5.50 train back to the College,” she
explained. So they strolled up Harvard Square, and Miss Ronald assured
Cunningham that his solo in the second act was the gem of the operetta,
and Cunningham was saying impressively that he was glad _she_ liked it,
when it occurred to both of them that the chaperon and the rest of the
party had somehow disappeared.
“Did they intend getting the train in Boston or going over to Allston
for it?” asked Cunningham.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Miss Ronald, helplessly. “How stupid of
me--I never thought to ask!”
Cunningham said it would be rather easier, he thought, to get over to
Allston, and that they had probably gone that way. So they boarded a car
and got to Allston at ten minutes of six--“excellent time,” as
Cunningham remarked walking inside the station to buy the tickets. He
was gone so long that Miss Ronald started in after him, fearing every
minute to hear the train come thundering up. When she saw him she knew
by his face that something was the matter.
“The ticket-man has just told me this confounded train doesn’t stop at
Allston,” he said, coming quickly toward her. “It’s an outrage--the
company oughtn’t to run its trains so irregularly. It’s a beastly shame!
How’s a person going to remember where a train stops and where it
doesn’t?” he added excitedly, and a trifle vaguely.
Miss Ronald was very much disturbed and a little indignant. Cunningham
felt very sorry for the girl and inclined to blame himself for the
mistake, but Miss Ronald assured him that it was not his fault, and that
what he had to do now was to think how best they could get back to the
College. It was while they were standing on the platform “thinking,”
that the 5.50 from Boston rushed by and they caught sight of the anxious
face of the chaperon at the window.
“Nice people to go off and leave me this way,” soliloquized Miss Ronald,
indignantly. Cunningham walked inside to scrutinize the time-table. When
he came out his face wore so hopeful an expression that Miss Ronald
brightened visibly. “I have a scheme,” he declared. “There’s a train
into Boston that comes along in fifteen minutes and that will get us in
there at 6.25--too late to get the 6.22 out; but we can go to the
Thorndyke and have a little dinner, and catch the 7.30 which will get
you to ‘the College’ at 8.17. You see it would take us at least two
hours to drive over, so that by my plan we shall have our dinner and get
back as soon as if we started now with a trap. And if you will wait here
a minute, I’ll telegraph your chaperon that we will be out on the 7.30,
so she won’t be uneasy about you.”
He was so evidently pleased and relieved with his arrangement that Miss
Ronald hadn’t the heart to offer any objections. They got up to the
Thorndyke and secured a delightful table by an open window, and by the
time they had ordered a rather elaborate dinner, Miss Ronald’s righteous
indignation at her abandonment by the chaperon had stifled any feelings
of remorse at her consent to Cunningham’s “scheme.” So they ate in peace
and talked about the operetta and their friends, and she was enjoying it
all immensely, and had quite forgotten her anxiety to get back to
College and her keen doubts about the propriety of the adventure, when
her eyes happened to fall upon a bronze clock on the mantel at the other
end of the room, and she gave a little cry of dismay. Cunningham
followed the direction of her gaze and said “by Jove” under his breath
in a very forcible sort of way. He pulled out his watch and found it
tallied uncompromisingly with the clock. He beckoned sharply to the
waiter.
“Is that clock _exactly_ right?” he demanded, excitedly. The waiter
assured him that the clock’s record was unimpeachable.
“There is simply no use trying to make that 7.30 in three minutes, Miss
Ronald,” remarked the youth, mournfully. “It’s all my fault. I was
enjoying myself so much that I never noticed how late it was,” he went
on, remorsefully. “Now I suppose you’ll be in no end of a scrape. What
do they do to you when you come in late? Send you to the dean?”
His evident anxiety and utter ignorance of the rules of the College
would have amused Miss Ronald if she had not been so hopelessly
dejected. As it was, she made an heroic effort to brighten up and smiled
sadly at Cunningham. “No--they only put us on bread and water for a
week,” she said, at which feeble attempt at a joke they both laughed
miserably.
Cunningham called the waiter again.
“Bring me a Boston and Albany time-table,” he said. When the man came
back with the precious bit of paper, the girl and the youth bent
anxiously over it.
“There’s a train at nine o’clock and one at nine-thirty,” he said. “The
nine o’clock is a slow train, stops everywhere, and only gets you to
the College ten minutes sooner than the other.”
Miss Ronald looked so miserable that Cunningham began to feel very
desperate indeed. He determined to do something to lighten her despair.
“Suppose we go up-town and see Sothern in ‘Sheridan?’” he suggested. “We
can get down to the station for the nine-thirty, and we can see the
first two acts. It’s a charming play--ever seen it?”
Miss Ronald said “No--o,” and was not sure that they had better go to
the theatre, but she did not wish to go to any of her friends and tell
them of her rather ridiculous predicament, and there was nothing for it
but to consent to the theatre plan. So Cunningham called for the bill
and they strolled slowly up to the theatre to kill time. They took seats
far back so as to be able to escape easily. “Sheridan” is a very pretty
play, as everyone knows, but Cunningham felt so responsible for the girl
that he was much too nervous properly to appreciate it. He saw, however,
that Miss Ronald was enjoying herself very much, and he decided to stay
till the last moment, but kept his watch open in his hand for fear of
running over the time. He knew they could get to Kneeland Street in
seven or eight minutes with a cab, and so, at exactly fifteen minutes
after nine, he arose and told Miss Ronald it was time to go. They wasted
a few moments getting out, and then Cunningham called a cab and told the
driver to go to the Boston and Albany station as fast as he could.
It may have been these unfortunate directions, or it may have been
Fate--at any rate, at the corner of Washington and Essex Streets there
was a sudden commotion and noise; Cunningham and Miss Ronald felt a
terrible jolt, and a great many people seemed to have sprung suddenly
out of the earth and to be asking them if they were hurt. As they were
not at all hurt they were rather indignant, and Cunningham jumped
impatiently out of the cab to see what all the fuss was about. He was
not long in ignorance. The horse lay on its side with a broken shaft
sticking up and the harness half off him. The coachman was swearing
impartially at the people about him, and an ice-wagon with which the cab
had collided stood by unhurt, the driver of it in a hopeless state of
intoxication and wrath. Cunningham looked anxiously around him, and to
his consternation not another cab was in sight. There seemed to be a
lull in the traffic of the street, and very few people or vehicles were
to be seen except those collected around the scene of the accident. The
two drivers were wrangling and swearing at each other, so that nothing
was to be got out of them. Cunningham made use of some strong language
for his private satisfaction. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-five
minutes after nine, and they would have been at the station if the
break-down had not occurred. He went quickly back to the cab.
“Miss Ronald,” he said, “the horse has fallen down and broken the shaft.
There isn’t another cab in sight, and we mustn’t waste any time getting
away, or the police may detain us to tell what we know of the accident.
I don’t see anything to do but to run for it,” he added, with a frantic
attempt to speak cheerfully.
The girl got quickly out of the cab. “This is terrible, Mr. Cunningham,”
she gasped. “We _must_ catch that nine-thirty train. The College is
locked at ten o’clock, and I am _obliged_ to be there by that time.”
Cunningham grabbed her hand firmly in his. “Now run!” he said. There
were a great many people who stopped to look at the two figures tearing
down Washington Street, and they particularly enlisted the sympathetic
attention of a great many small boys along the way. One policeman,
thinking it was a case of abduction, started after them but gave up the
chase before long, having never gone in much for sprinting, and it being
an unusually warm night in May. It was indeed a rather uncommon sight.
The girl’s clothes and correct air made her particularly noticeable,
while Cunningham in a silk hat, Bond Street coat, and patent leathers,
was a conspicuous object as he swung lightly down the street under the
lamps and electric lights.
When they turned into Kneeland Street, the girl’s courage and strength
failed her. Kneeland Street itself is a disgrace to Boston. It is not by
any means the street a young man would choose to walk on with a young
lady in the evening--indeed it is not the street one would choose to
walk on in broad daylight with a policeman in hailing distance.
Cunningham could have cursed himself for the whole thing. He drew the
girl closer to him and walked swiftly on. When they got in sight of the
station he glanced fearfully at the big clock. It stood at exactly half
after nine, but he comforted himself with the thought that the outside
clock is always fast, though he was not sure just how much.
“Can you run any more?” he asked anxiously of the girl. For answer she
started ahead feverishly.
The man was locking the gate. “Can’t open it--train just pulled out.”
Cunningham looked viciously at the official.
“Can’t you whistle her back?” he demanded, furiously. The man smiled
derisively, and commenced talking to a trainman who sauntered up just
then with an oil-can and hammer in his hand. Cunningham went back to
where Miss Ronald was standing. The girl burst out laughing somewhat
hysterically.
“We need a chaperon badly, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, nervously. “We
don’t seem able to take care of ourselves at all.”
“Yes,” assented Cunningham, gloomily. “It seems easy enough in the
abstract to catch a train, but some way we don’t seem to understand
quite how it’s done,” he added, ironically. “I will go and find out when
the next train leaves, and may be if we are careful and start for it an
hour before time, and if the station doesn’t burn up, or all the cab
horses fall down dead, or the trains stop running, we may be able to
make it.”
Cunningham walked up to the ticket-agent. “When is the next train out?”
he demanded, sternly.
The man glanced up impatiently from a calculation he was making and
said, shortly--“11.10.”
Cunningham strolled back to the girl. “It is obviously impossible to
wait here an hour and forty minutes,” he said. “Suppose we go back to
the theatre and see the last act. We’ve only missed one act at most, and
the last is the prettiest of all.”
Miss Ronald was too miserable to object or make any suggestions, so they
got into a cab and Cunningham gave minute instructions to the driver not
to fall off the box and kill himself, or let the horse walk out of the
harness, and to be particularly careful about the wheels coming off, and
not to try to demolish any ice-wagons that might be harmlessly roving
the streets. The driver took these remarks good-humoredly, but was
naturally much mystified, and after thinking it over concluded that
Cunningham was either very drunk or very crazy.
They got back to the theatre in a short time and saw the success of “The
Rivals,” and the duel and the just exposure of the infamous Matthews,
and wished heartily that their affairs were as happily wound up as those
of the fair Miss Linley and Sheridan.
It was just ten minutes of eleven when they started back for the Boston
and Albany station. Cunningham had retained the cab they had come in and
had given still further and more minute directions to the driver, so
that as they settled themselves back on the stuffy cushions, they
thought they could reasonably hope to get the train in time and safety.
When they entered the waiting-room Miss Ronald saw with a sigh of relief
that it was just eleven o’clock. There was plenty of time, and it was
with a somewhat triumphant air of having conquered immense difficulties,
of having fought bravely a hard fight, that Cunningham walked up once
more to the ticket-office.
“Two tickets, please,” he said briskly as he handed out a dollar bill.
The man looked at him for a moment as if making an effort to remember
where he had seen him before.
“This is the through express to New York. You’ll need more stuff than
that to get two tickets,” he said, jocosely.
“You told me”--gasped Cunningham.
“Yes,” asserted the man. “You asked me when the next train went out and
I told you. Of course I thought you knew where you were going,” he
added, derisively.
Cunningham began to feel very desperate indeed.
“Well,” said he, slowly and carefully. “If there is a train that leaves
any time to-night for Wellesley, break the news to me gently, and then
come and put me on it half an hour before it starts, and tie my ticket
to my coat, and put me in charge of the conductor. Otherwise--” he went
on impressively, “I may get lost, or wreck the train, or stop the
locomotive.”
Then he went back to Miss Ronald and told her the news. She had had a
very pronounced liking for Mr. Perry Cunningham up to that time, but it
occurred to her that he seemed terribly lacking in practicality, and
that she was very much disappointed in him. She decided firmly what her
answer would be to him if ever he should propose--though it is but fair
to state that Mr. Cunningham had no thought of proposing, unless it was
proposing how best to get back to College.
At 11.25 the last accommodation train pulled out with a very miserable
young woman and a very remorseful young man on it.
At exactly 12.9 it left them standing on the platform of a pretty
station, with not a cab to be seen, wondering how they could get up to
“the College.” Miss Ronald said she thought they had better walk, by all
means; that they had not had any excitement or fatigue all evening, and
that a mile walk at midnight would be just the thing for them; that they
might run part of the way if they found walking too slow, and that she
often went out and ran around a while in the middle of the night just
for the fun of the thing. (Miss Ronald was getting sarcastic--misfortune
had embittered her naturally sweet disposition.)
Mr. Cunningham said hotly that he understood what she meant, and that no
one could possibly be more sorry about the whole thing than himself, and
that if necessary he would come over in person the next day and explain
it to the President herself. But Miss Ronald said haughtily that, owing
to the telegram they had sent, everyone probably thought her safe at the
College, and that there would be no need of explanations. If any were to
be made she preferred to make them herself.
After that they walked swiftly and quietly up the long shaded paths. The
fresh, earthy smell of the sward and early spring flowers, and the cry
of the night birds, and the big College buildings standing out every now
and then sharply defined in the moonlight, or shadowed by the great
trees, with here and there a solitary light shining at some professor’s
window, made it a very beautiful and impressive scene. But Miss Ronald
was too unhappy to think much about it and walked haughtily and silently
on, and Cunningham could not enjoy it for the remorse he felt and the
knowledge that Miss Ronald--however, unreasonably--was angry with him.
Besides, he was wondering what on earth was to become of him for the
rest of the night. It was three miles to the nearest hotel, he thought
gloomily, and he would have to take the first train into Boston in order
to get over to Cambridge in time for a lecture which he did not wish to
miss.
* * * * *
Miss Clara Arnold awoke very suddenly and very thoroughly. Her heart
gave an awful bound and then stood quite still in a most uncomfortable
sort of way. There was no doubt about it--there were people on the
piazza just outside her room and they were talking in low but excited
tones. All the horror of her situation came upon her, and in one instant
she wished more fervently than she ever thought she could wish for
anything, that she had taken her friends’ advice and had not decided on
a room on the ground floor opening on a piazza. All their warnings and
talk of burglars and tramps came vividly to her as she lay there quaking
with fear. She could hear quite distinctly the tread of feet outside,
and the gentle but firm shaking of the big doors that opened from the
broad corridor on the piazza. A sickening sense of fear possessed her
and a suffocating pressure was on her lungs. She wondered with all her
soul where the night-watchman was, and whether she had better scream or
lie quite still. She was trying to decide this when she thought she
heard her name called. She sat up, listening intently. And then she
heard quite distinctly a girl’s voice saying, hopelessly:
“It’s no use--you can’t get that door open and I can’t make Clara hear!”
Miss Arnold gave a gasp and then jumped out of bed and into a tea-gown
and Turkish slippers. She went quickly into her study and called softly
to the girl outside.
“Elise, is that you? Just wait a minute!” and then there was more
muffled talk outside and a man’s voice in a relieved way saying:
“Oh, it’s all right now--how glad I am! I--I wish I could begin to tell
you, Miss Ronald, how awfully cut up I am about it”--but the girl
stopped him.
“I quite understand, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, stiffly. “You had better
go now. I am sorry there is no hotel nearer.” And then Miss Arnold heard
a muttered good-night and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel, and as
she opened the doors a moment later Miss Ronald fell limply into her
arms.
They sat up and talked it all over for an hour, and Miss Ronald said she
was intensely disappointed in Perry Cunningham, and that she could
never, never forgive him. Miss Arnold contended that she did not quite
see what there was to forgive; it had all been unfortunate, and she
thought that Mr. Cunningham had done all he could--that he hadn’t kept
the train from stopping at Allston, nor did he make the cab run into the
ice-wagon, nor could he compel the New York express to stop for them,
and that if he forgot to look at his watch at the Thorndyke--why, she
did so too. And she told Miss Ronald frankly that she might have been
more civil to him, considering that he had had all the trouble on her
account and was now walking three miles in order to get a place in which
to sleep for three hours. And she added that she thought if anyone was
to be angry about the affair it was herself, since she had taken Miss
Ronald for a burglar and had been frightened nearly to death. And
finally Miss Ronald grew rather remorseful at the thought of how she had
sent the boy off, and of how truly considerate he had been through the
whole affair, and of what good friends they had once been, and she went
to sleep with the good resolution to write him a very nice note the next
day. And on the following morning, when an immense box of roses came
with Mr. Perry Cunningham’s card tucked humbly in one corner and almost
out of sight, Miss Ronald restored him to full favor and wrote him a
charming letter inviting him out for the next week to Float-Day.
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