Brenda's cousin at Radcliffe
by Helen Leah Reed · English · Gutenberg #48720 · 479,653 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Brenda's cousin at Radcliffe
A story for girls
Author: Helen Leah Reed
Illustrator: Alice Barber Stephens
Release date: April 16, 2015 [eBook #48720]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48720
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRENDA'S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE ***
_Copyright, 1902_,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
_All rights reserved._
Published October, 1902
UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
TO
MRS. LOUIS AGASSIZ,
THE HONORED FIRST PRESIDENT OF RADCLIFFE COLLEGE,
WHO HAS HAD NO SUCCESSOR IN OFFICE, AND
WHO CAN HAVE NO SUCCESSOR
IN THE AFFECTION OF RADCLIFFE GRADUATES
[Illustration: “One morning half a dozen girls clustered before the
bulletin board”]
Brenda’s Cousin at Radcliffe
_A Story for Girls_
BY
HELEN LEAH REED
Author of “Brenda, Her School and Her Club”
“Brenda’s Summer at Rockley,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1903
That the young girls for whom it is written may see in “Brenda’s Cousin”
a clear picture of Radcliffe College undergraduate life is the sincere
wish of the author, who hopes also that her fellow-graduates may
overlook the one or two slight anachronisms necessary to a contemporary
picture.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. New Acquaintances 1
II. The Freshman Reception 12
III. The First “Idler” 22
IV. Pamela’s Perseverance 29
V. College Callers 38
VI. Setting to Work 47
VII. All Kinds of Girls 56
VIII. The Mid-years 66
IX. Two Catastrophes 76
X. Discussions and Discussions 90
XI. Efforts to Help 100
XII. Harvard Class Day 115
XIII. Various Ambitions 130
XIV. In Disguise 143
XV. Angelina 157
XVI. Who Wrote It? 168
XVII. A Private Detective 180
XVIII. Work and Play 189
XIX. The Operetta 201
XX. Juniors 211
XXI. A Fortunate Accident 222
XXII. Annabel and Clarissa 233
XXIII. Clouds Cleared Away 243
XXIV. Seniors All 255
XXV. A Strange Meeting 268
XXVI. The House Party 280
XXVII. Nearing Class Day 293
XXVIII. Commencement—and the End 311
ILLUSTRATIONS
_From Drawings by Alice Barber Stephens_
“One morning half a dozen girls clustered before the bulletin
board” _Frontispiece_
“‘An American girl’—she spoke with emphasis—‘is her own best
chaperon’” _Page_ 85
“Clarissa moved about the room, explaining” ″ 174
“Lois made the bandage and put it on with a professional air” ″ 225
“‘Julia,’ said Ruth the next morning, as the two sat in the
conversation room” ″ 274
BRENDA’S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE
I
NEW ACQUAINTANCES
A drop of ink splashed on the cover of Julia Bourne’s blue-book.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, I wasn’t thinking,” murmured an apologetic
voice, as Julia glanced up in surprise. A small, pale girl standing
beside her desk had evidently held her fountain pen point down with
disastrous result.
“Oh, it did no great harm,” responded Julia, dexterously applying her
blotter. Like the other girl, she spoke in an undertone, for silence was
still the rule of the room.
“I’m thankful, however, that my book was closed,” she said to herself,
as the other passed on. “A blot on an inner page might prejudice the
examiner, and I shall need all his good-will.”
It was the Tuesday before the opening of college, and examinations were
going on to enable some students to take off conditions imposed by the
June finals, or to permit others—like Julia—to anticipate some study of
the Freshman year.
Before handing in her book Julia corrected some errors, for there still
lacked ten minutes of the close of the examination hour. As she sat
there reading the printed questions, one by one, she was thankful for
the cool day. How insufferably hot had been those two Junes when she had
taken her preliminaries and her finals! Old Fay House then had swarmed
with girls, lively, solemn, silent, chattering, short, tall, thin,
stout, dowdy, attractive,—but why enumerate? They were as varied in
aspect, and probably in disposition, as those other girls who never
think of college. In comparison with the spring crowds, the girls to-day
were but a handful.
Julia, glancing toward the window, caught a glimpse of the yellowing
elms of Garden Street, and a soft September breeze blew across her
cheek. Then her eye wandered to the photograph over the old-fashioned
mantle-piece, and she thought that the class-room, except for its chairs
and desks, was like the sitting-room of a private house.
Julia handed in her book promptly, but some of the others gave theirs up
reluctantly, as if to say, “Oh, for ten minutes more, or even five
minutes. It would make all the difference in the world to me.” One of
these girls, who was tall and strong-looking, with short, curling hair,
expressed her feelings emphatically.
“I don’t see,” she said, as Julia and she left the room together, “how
you got through so soon. You haven’t been writing for ten minutes. Why,
if we had five hours instead of two, I should still need an hour more.
Weren’t you frightened to death at the preliminaries?”
“I barely survived,” replied Julia, entering into the other’s mood.
“There’s an art in taking examinations that I’m only beginning to
learn.”
“Well, the worst is over! Harvard, they say (and of course it’s the same
with Radcliffe), is the hardest college to enter and the easiest to
graduate from. That’s why I left my happy Western home. I don’t mind
struggling to get in, but I want an easy time after I’ve once entered
college.”
“You’re from the West?” queried Julia.
“Oh, yes, from ‘the wild and woolly West’ as you call it here. I took my
preliminaries in Chicago, although my home’s farther off. Our colleges
are just as good as any East, at least Pa says so. But I said ‘the best
isn’t too good for me, and if Harvard’s the best of all for men, why
Radcliffe must be the best for women.’ As soon as I’d thought it out I
made up my mind to come here. I couldn’t have done better, could I?”
“Why, Radcliffe has a pretty good standing in this part of the world.”
“You don’t speak with enthusiasm.”
“Oh, I was only thinking that a good education can be obtained in a
Western college. I’ve lived in the West myself,” she explained.
“Let me embrace you,” cried the Western girl, impulsively, fortunately
without suiting the action to the word.
“You see it makes me tired the way people here pretend not to know
anything about the West; but I honestly believe that you realize where
Kansas is, and that St. Louis and Chicago are a few miles apart, and
that the Mississippi is east of the Rocky Mountains.”
“Oh, you could probably give me points in Western geography.”
“Perhaps, but let me introduce myself. My name is Clarissa Herter, and
my home is Kansas. My age is a little more than it ought to be—for a
Freshman—for I’ve wasted a year at college elsewhere.”
Julia smiled at this frank inventory, and she felt that she could do no
less than tell Clarissa something about herself.
“So you’re an orphan!” cried Clarissa, “and you’ve lived with relatives
for two years or more. Well, you must have had a pretty good disposition
to stand all the wear and tear. There’s nothing so hard as living with
relatives—except one’s parents. As to your personal appearance, it suits
me right down to the ground—don’t look at your boots,” she added. “I
include them in the list.”
Just then a proctor approaching introduced to the two the timid girl who
had blotted Julia’s book.
“I asked for the introduction,” said the newcomer, whose name was
Northcote, “because I wished to apologize for my carelessness.”
“Now, really,” responded Julia, “the blot did no harm.”
“But if it had gone through the cover?”
“Oh, that would have been nothing.”
“But I fear that I did more mischief than you think. There’s a little
ink spot on the side breadth of your skirt, and I’m sure that it came
from my pen.”
“Oh,” cried Julia, looking where Pamela pointed, “that spot may have
come from my own pen; and besides, the gown has seen its best days.”
“Well, I’m very sorry,” continued Miss Northcote.
In the meantime Clarissa had risen from the low, red couch, on which
they had been sitting. “You must be a New Englander.”
“I’m from Vermont.”
“I thought so,” cried Clarissa. “You have a well-developed conscience.
You seem to be apologizing for something that perhaps you didn’t do.”
“Let us go upstairs to the library,” interposed Julia, noticing that
Miss Northcote was made uncomfortable by Clarissa’s badinage.
“Isn’t it pleasant! I had no idea it was so homelike!” exclaimed Julia
on the threshold of the library.
“Do you mean you haven’t been here before? Why, I explored the whole
building from top to bottom last June. I didn’t wait for a special
invitation,” cried Clarissa.
“It was so warm then!” Julia felt almost bound to apologize.
The room that they had entered justified the term “homelike” to the
fullest extent. It had none of the stiffness of a college hall, although
shelves of books were everywhere, always invitingly within reach. The
deep-mullioned windows, the high mantle-piece and broad fireplace all
had a decided charm. From the window that Julia approached, through the
elms that shaded Fay House, there was a glimpse of the Soldiers’
Monument on the Common, and nearer at hand the time-scarred Washington
Elm. After looking into one or two smaller rooms filled with books,
Clarissa suggested that they go into the open air.
“There must be something of the gypsy in my blood, for I begrudge every
minute spent indoors at this season. Clarissa! Clarissa!” she cried
dramatically, “you must out and walk.”
“Is your name Clarissa?” asked the Vermont girl.
“Why not? Doesn’t it suit me?”
“Well, it’s strange,” responded the other, “for I am called Pamela.”
“How odd! Why, people may begin to call us ‘the heroines,’ unless we
show them that we’re made of stronger stuff than Richardson admired.”
“Poor Richardson! How he would be horrified to see us modern girls going
to college! You must belong to sentimental families to have those
names.”
“I was named for my aunt,” explained Pamela with dignity.
“Well, I’m afraid that my mother took ‘Clarissa’ from a novel,” admitted
the Western girl.
After leaving Fay House, the two others walked with Julia toward Brattle
Street. They had gone but a short distance when Clarissa exclaimed with
surprise that it was nearly one o’clock.
“My luncheon is at half-past one,” said Julia, “but perhaps yours is
earlier.”
“Yes, at my boarding-house we are very plebeian. At one o’clock we have
dinner, not luncheon, while you, I dare say, have dinner at half-past
six.”
“Of course,” replied Julia, while Clarissa, echoing “of course,” added,
“Then you must be a regular swell. But I thought that I’d feel better to
find a boarding-place in Cambridge, where their manners and customs are
like ours at home.”
Not to leave Pamela out of the conversation, Julia asked her if she had
found a boarding-place, and Pamela replied that she had not yet decided
on a house. She might have added that all the rooms that thus far she
had seen were beyond her slender purse. Before they reached Julia’s
door, Pamela bade the others good-bye.
“She’s almost too good, isn’t she?” was Clarissa’s comment as Pamela
disappeared in the distance.
“I like her,” returned Julia, begging the question.
“Oh, so do I; with that neat little figure, and those melancholy gray
eyes, she is my very idea of a Puritan maiden. You are something like
one yourself,” she concluded, “and I hope that you’ll let me call on you
occasionally.”
“Why, of course, and I will call on you, too, if I may.”
Thus with the feeling that each had made a friend, the two Freshmen
parted, both looking forward with interest to the college year.
Julia went to Rockley that same Tuesday afternoon, and was warmly
welcomed by Brenda at the station. The younger girl, it is true, teased
her cousin about being a Freshman, yet at the same time she showed so
much affection, despite her teasing, that she hardly seemed the same
Brenda who not long before had found in every act of Julia’s some cause
for dissatisfaction.
Rockley was the summer place of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Barlow, the uncle
and aunt with whom, for two years, Julia Bourne had made her home. It
was on the seashore, little more than twenty miles from Boston, and
Julia had passed two happy vacations there. She had gone to live with
her uncle and aunt soon after her father’s death, and had completed her
preparation for college at Miss Crawdon’s school, the same school that
Brenda and her intimate friends attended. Brenda, Edith, Nora, and Belle
were inseparables, while Julia had been more intimate with Ruth Roberts,
the Roxbury girl who was now her room-mate at Cambridge.
The Barlows were to stay at Rockley until late October, and Mrs. Barlow
regretted that Julia must spend that beautiful autumn month in
Cambridge. She remarked at dinner that Julia looked pale, and said that
she and Brenda had decided that this resulted from examinations.
“Why, you can’t imagine how weak _I_ feel,” Brenda had added, “after an
examination. You know that Miss Crawdon makes us have them, though few
of us are going to college.”
“It pleases me,” Mr. Barlow had interposed, “that you and your friends
should get even this indirect advantage from Radcliffe. In time the
average private schoolgirl may have an equal chance with boys.”
“Why, papa, you never have wished me to go to college.”
“No, my dear, but I often have thought that you suffered at school—”
“Yes, papa, I _have_ suffered at school, often.”
“My idea of suffering probably differs from yours. I mean that you
suffer from a lack of thoroughness. Thoroughness is the first essential
of college preparation.”
“Why, papa, girls can fit for college at Miss Crawdon’s. Julia and Ruth
and several others prepared for the examinations. But let us change the
subject,” said Brenda, adding, “What are those Radcliffe girls like? Are
they very queer?”
“Why, no indeed,” replied Julia loyally. Yet even as she spoke she had a
vision of Pamela and Clarissa, to whom Brenda might apply her adjective,
although to each in a different way.
“After all,” interposed Mr. Barlow, “thirty-five years ago who would
have imagined girls in college? Why, even twenty years ago a man would
have been thought foolish to prophesy that within his lifetime girls
would be admitted to full Harvard privileges.”
“Oh, but papa, it isn’t really the same as Harvard. The boys say that it
is quite different.”
“Then it’s a difference without much distinction. Professor Dummer the
other day told me that Harvard and Radcliffe students have identical
examinations in all subjects, as well as the same courses of study. But
I will grant that in athletics and that kind of thing they haven’t the
same chance as Harvard boys.”
At this moment the long glass door was pushed open, and Philip stood
within the room. The whole family greeted him heartily, for they had not
seen him since his return from Europe. He told them that his mother and
Edith had decided to stay a month longer abroad, and that he was
spending a day or two on his yacht in Marblehead Harbor.
“On Thursday I must be in Cambridge, and after that the ‘Balloon’ goes
out of commission for the season.”
The young people soon went out on the piazza, where they made themselves
comfortable with cushions and wraps.
“It’s a great thing to be young,” said Mr. Barlow, as their laughter
rippled through the open window. Two girls from a neighboring cottage
had joined them, and with them was their brother, also a Harvard
undergraduate. They had more in common with Brenda than with Julia, and
thus the latter was free to answer Philip’s many questions about
Radcliffe.
Although two or three years Julia’s senior, Philip had of late acquired
the habit of turning to her for advice. To himself he admitted that her
level-headedness had more than once saved him from making a fool of
himself. Philip Blair had just escaped being spoiled after the fashion
of most only sons with plenty of money. His parents had always been so
ready to consider his wishes that he had come to think the quick
gratification of his tastes a necessity. Because he was good-looking and
had agreeable manners, older men and women were apt to flatter him, and
his schoolmates fed his vanity in their eagerness for his friendship.
Without being really weak, Philip was easily influenced; and though in
school he never had been in disgrace, more than once he had been near
suspension from college. A certain indolence made it hard to shake off
his undesirable associates. But even the slow-thinking Edith had
discovered that Philip had a real regard for Julia’s opinion.
“Mamma and I are very glad that Philip likes to talk to a sensible girl
like Julia, for we were afraid that his head might be turned, with so
many silly girls always running after him.” Philip’s college
friends—those whom he asked to dine with him sometimes, or took to call
on Edith’s friends—were afraid of Julia.
Hearing that she was fitted for college, they could not understand how
Philip had the courage to talk with her, or even to dance with her. They
supposed that he was polite to her simply because she was a friend of
Edith’s. “Not that she isn’t a nice-looking girl, but she must be
frightfully strong-minded to think of going to college.”
Knowing the Harvard sentiment toward Radcliffe, therefore, Julia was
prepared for more or less teasing from Philip, and yet as she bade him
good-bye she was pleased to be able to remind him that he had said
hardly a thing to discourage her about her college career.
II
THE FRESHMAN RECEPTION
When Julia approached Fay House on Thursday, the opening of the term,
there were girls on the steps, girls in the halls, girls besieging the
Secretary’s office with questions; old students stood about discussing
all kinds of things, from their summer experiences to their proposed
courses of study. But the Freshmen were less often in groups. In single
file they waited their turn at the office, or sat in the conversation
room, catching scraps of wisdom from the lips of the older girls who
passed by.
“Oh, last year I had five and a half courses, but I’ve promised papa to
be more sensible and limit myself to four, so as to have some time for
other things.”
This from a serious-looking girl, and then from another more frivolous,
“Well, I tried to forget everything this summer, except how to have a
good time. It was delightful not to have even a theme or a forensic on
my mind. I was a walking encyclopedia last June, but now I feel
absolutely empty-headed.”
“What in the world,” came from another group, “possessed you to take
Pol. Econ. this year? I thought you were trying for honors in classics.”
“So I am,” in a rather melancholy tone; “but I’m tired of having nothing
but Greek and Latin. My future bread and butter may depend on them, as
I’m to be a teacher of the classics, but I’m indulging in Pol. Econ. as
a luxury.”
“A luxury! Well, you’ll pay for it.”
Julia, seated at the reading table, was not only amused by these bits of
conversation, but was interested in watching the passing girls.
“Isn’t it great?” cried Ruth, joining her. “It’s a little like the first
day at school, and yet it’s different. Who is that queer-looking girl,
she’s actually bowing to you,” with an intonation of disapproval; “why,
you don’t know her, do you?”
“Yes, I met her yesterday. She’s a Freshman from the West.”
Clarissa now reached them, grasping Julia’s hand with a hearty “Well, I
_am_ glad to see you!”
“Have you chosen your electives yet?” asked Julia, after a minute or
two. “Aren’t they bewildering?”
“It isn’t the elective, I’ve been told,” responded Clarissa, “but the
man who gives them that makes the difference. The younger the
instructor, the worse his marks. He thinks that he shows his own
importance by making ‘A’ and ‘B’ marks few and far between. I’m going in
for all the starred courses I can get, for then there’ll be more chance
of my having real professors to teach me.”
Ruth hurried Julia away from Clarissa to an appointment with a history
professor. He had wished to talk with them before consenting to their
entering his class. He was pleased to find them so interested, adding,
as he gave his consent:
“You must be prepared for hard work, as Freshmen are rarely permitted to
take this course. I hope that you read Latin at sight, for you may have
to make researches in some old books.”
Then he bowed and left them, and Ruth looked at Julia, and the latter,
understanding the question that Ruth would ask, replied, “Of course I’ll
help you;” while Ruth, whose Latin was weaker than Julia’s, responded,
“You always were a dear.”
Julia and Ruth had arranged to board in the same house, having separate
bedrooms, but sharing a large study. This was a square, corner room,
with three windows. One looked down on a bit of old-fashioned garden,
and the other two gave a view of some of the stately houses on Brattle
Street. Their landlady, or hostess, as she liked to be called, was the
widow of a Harvard instructor, who, besides a widow and two children,
had left a slim little book on the Greek accusative. Mrs. Colton always
had the book in plain sight on her library table, and she believed that
had her husband lived he would have been one of the most distinguished
of the faculty. She had long refused to open her house to Annex, or
Radcliffe, students. Like many other conservative people, she did not
approve of the presence of women students in Cambridge, and she did not
care to encourage the new woman’s college by taking its students to
board. But when the new Harvard dormitories made it harder for her to
get the right kind of students to take her rooms, she began to think
about the possibilities of Radcliffe. When she happened to hear that
Mrs. Robert Barlow was looking for a home for her niece, she immediately
sent word that she would be very glad to have her consider her rooms.
She saw that it would give her house prestige to have Julia and Ruth her
first Radcliffe boarders. Mrs. Barlow and the girls were well pleased
with the rooms, especially as Mrs. Colton was to take no other boarders.
Ruth and Julia would hardly have been girls, however, had they been
perfectly satisfied with the arrangement of the furniture as planned by
Mrs. Colton and Mrs. Barlow. With the exception of a few pictures, the
study was supposed to be in perfect order on that first Thursday of the
term. But Julia, when they went upstairs after luncheon, decided that
the divan must be moved from the windows to the corner opposite the
fireplace, and Ruth suggested that the library table should go from the
centre to a recess near the mantle-piece. Chairs ranged stiffly against
the wall they pulled out into more inviting positions, and moved many
other things. They both agreed that several pictures must be rehung, and
Ruth began to jump about from mantle-piece to table to make the changes.
“Oh, do be careful!” cried Julia, as Ruth stepped from a chair to the
table, with a framed Braun photograph under her arm, and a half-dozen
picture nails in her hand. “Do wait,” she added, “until we can find some
one.”
“Wait for whom? We can’t call the chambermaid, and Mrs. Colton would be
of no more use than—well, than you, Julia. Besides, I’ve hung more
pictures than you could count; and—why, what’s that?” she concluded, as
a very loud knocking at the door sounded through the rooms. Forgetting
the picture under her arm, as she turned she let it fall with a crash to
the floor.
“Gracious!” cried Master Percival Colton, astonished at the sight of one
Radcliffe girl standing on a narrow mantle-piece with another sitting on
the floor picking up fragments of broken glass.
“I hope nothing’s hurt,” said Percival politely, though hardly
concealing his curiosity as he handed Julia two letters. Then he turned
away rather sadly, as the girls neither explained what had happened nor
what they intended to do about it.
“Come down, Ruth,” cried Julia, as Percy disappeared. “Clarissa Herter,
that Kansas girl, has sent her card with these letters that she found on
the bulletin board. She thought that we might like to have them. Oh,
they’re invitations!” she added, as she opened her envelope.
“The Senior, Junior, and Sophomore classes at home in the Auditorium,
Saturday, September 30. 4 to 6.”
“Our first college invitation, and from the upper classes, too! Well,
it’s evident that they don’t intend to haze us.”
Hardly had Julia and Ruth stepped into the Auditorium that Saturday
afternoon when a girl with a ribbon badge greeted them warmly. From a
table near the door she took two slips of paper, and, pinning one on
Julia’s dress, said pleasantly, “You must excuse my being so
unceremonious, but we find that this is the best way of making girls
acquainted with one another, by giving them slips of paper with their
names written on them. I honestly think that you feel more like talking
to a girl if you know her name. Your slips are white, but we old girls
wear blue.”
“But how did you know which slips of paper to give us?” asked Ruth, as
she received a decoration like Julia’s.
“Oh, I was interested, that is, I asked particularly who you were the
other day,” replied the older girl in a flattering tone. “But now I must
find your Senior for you,” she concluded; “perhaps you haven’t met her.”
“My Senior?” asked Julia. “Why, how in the world do I happen to have
one?”
“Excuse me, then, until I find her. She will tell you all about it.”
Soon Julia found herself standing before a tall, plain girl with
glasses, who wore her Senior’s gown ungracefully.
“This is your Senior adviser, Miss Townall, Miss Bourne. I am sure that
you will like each other;” and the vivacious usher, asking Ruth to
accompany her, turned away to find Ruth’s Senior.
“Miss Darcy is always bright and cheerful,” said Miss Townall, making an
effort to talk to Julia.
“Yes, indeed, I like her immensely. She’s a Sophomore, I suppose?”
“Yes, and very popular.” Jane looked at Julia, as if at an utter loss
for a subject of conversation, until Julia asked her to explain the
system of assigning Senior adviser. In giving information Jane waxed
eloquent, and explained that the Emmanuel Society made the arrangements,
bringing it about that each Senior should take charge of one Freshman,
holding herself ready to give her any needed advice.
“Some of them have two,” added Ruth, who had rejoined them.
“Oh, naturally, for there are always more Freshmen than Seniors; but
dear me, it’s bad enough to have one on your mind,” said Jane
tactlessly.
“There, I didn’t mean that,” she apologized, at once conscious of her
own awkwardness. “Of course I’m delighted to be of help to any Freshman,
but there is so much danger of giving the wrong advice, and—” so Jane
went on explaining and explaining, as people are apt to when once they
have made a mistake, without greatly improving the state of affairs.
“But where is your Senior, Ruth?” asked Julia, to put Jane more at ease.
“Oh, I left her talking to that Western girl. She seemed so deeply
interested in her that I thought I might be in the way. We have been
introduced, however, and if she wishes to speak to me again, she may
take the trouble to find me.”
Julia wondered if Ruth’s annoyance had come from anything said or done
by Clarissa. Already she had seen that Ruth did not like the Western
girl.
As the rooms began to fill with girls, Julia and Ruth recognized many
whom they had seen at examination time, and among them a number from
their own classes. Coffee and chocolate and sherbets were served from
small tables, and the girls who served and the ushers who helped them
were kept busy.
“Not sherbet, but college ice,” corrected a girl at one of the tables.
“You’ll grow heartily sick of it in the next four years.”
Then Clarissa, to whom she spoke, replied, “Oh, a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet; and therefore, as a Freshman I’ll ask for another
glass. I suppose that our class will never again be as important as
now.”
“Probably never again at Radcliffe, at least until the end of your
Senior year. We take the Freshmen up tenderly, treat them very kindly on
the first Saturday of the term, and then drop them suddenly. Unless a
Freshman shows unusual ability, we are apt to forget all about her.”
“Then I’ll see what I can do to make myself remembered,” retorted
Clarissa, as if accepting a challenge.
In the meantime Julia and Ruth had again run across Miss Darcy, and the
latter had inquired if it would be an unheard-of thing for her to change
her Freshman adviser.
“You can do it, of course. It has been done occasionally, but if I were
you I’d wait. So few girls do make a change.”
“I fear that you think me notional.”
“Oh, no,” responded Miss Darcy. “I feel that you are going to be—that
is, that you _are_—the typical Radcliffe girl, and that naturally means
everything agreeable.”
“Yes, indeed, if we may judge by those who are here to-day.”
“Ah! we are in holiday attire now, but you will like us even at our
worst.” And Julia and Ruth, looking about them, agreed that Radcliffe in
holiday attire was well worth seeing. The rooms were prettily decorated,
and most of the girls wore light and becoming colors. There was little
formality, and each girl was not only at liberty to speak to her
neighbor, but was sure to be met more than halfway.
Finally, before they separated, the Glee Club girls gathered around the
grand piano, and one merry song after another was sung, to the great
delight of the Freshmen. One that made the most impression was “The Only
Man,” which, although unfamiliar to many of the new girls, was already
counted a classic of its kind. Even Jane Townall had been known to laugh
at its merry strains.
The song told of a young man who was invited to a Radcliffe tea, who,
when he reached Fay House, saw only women in sight:
“The poor young man stood trembling there,
And looked about for aid,
He’d never been afraid before,
But now he was afraid.
He gave one long, last lingering look,
Then rushed out at the door.
I think that he’ll think twice before
He comes here any more-ore-ore.
“Now all you Harvard men attend!
If ever you get a bid
To a Radcliffe tea, be sure and see
If any others did.
Do you think that you could face the fate,
From which our hero ran,
Among four hundred Radcliffe girls,
To be the only man-an-an?”
There were several other stanzas, and as the hero was described as a
particularly brave athlete, the refrain following each stanza was
particularly entertaining, for it went somewhat in this fashion:
“He could face the Yale rush line,
He’d been captain of the nine,
He was not afraid to dine
On the new Memorial plan;
But he’d never thought to be,
At a full-fledged Radcliffe tea,
The only—only—only—only—man.”
III
THE FIRST “IDLER”
“Who’s going to the Idler?” cried Clarissa one morning to a group around
the bulletin board.
Then a little Freshman spoke up timidly, “Why, can any of us go? I
thought that it was a club meeting.”
“Oh, the Idler is the only unexclusive institution that I’ve struck in
this part of the world. Just sign the constitution and you’re in it for
life. Come, you must join; we must make our class felt.”
Pressing nearer the board, one of the group read aloud that all
Radcliffe students, regular or special, were invited to a meeting of the
Idler Club on Friday afternoon at half-past four in the Auditorium.
Accordingly, they were all in their places before the appointed hour.
The Auditorium was overflowing, and some girls even had chairs in the
aisles. Ruth and Julia leaned on the ledge of the window opening from
the conversation room.
“Why don’t they begin?” asked Ruth impatiently, at quarter of five. But
even as she spoke there was a lull in the conversation, and a rather
commanding figure rose on the platform.
“That is the President of the Idler,” whispered Ruth, “Mary Witherspoon.
I had her pointed out to me the other day.”
Miss Witherspoon made an address that was clear and to the point. She
congratulated the old students on the prospect of a successful year for
the Idler; she welcomed the new students very heartily, and expressed
the hope that all present would at the close of the meeting enroll
themselves on the Idler’s membership list. She alluded to the fact that
nothing was imposed on them beyond signing the club’s very simple
constitution and paying the small annual dues.
“I hope, however, that all Radcliffe girls who can do anything to
entertain us, who are willing to act or sing, or even write plays, will
speak with me or with some of the Idler officers on the subject. We
cannot afford to let any talent lie hidden; and if a girl is too modest
to let us know what she can do, some one else will be sure to tell us,
and then we shall be obliged to issue some kind of a mandamus to compel
her to be amusing.”
All laughed at this, and when quiet was restored Miss Witherspoon
announced as the entertainment of the afternoon a farce written by two
Idler members, who for the present preferred to be anonymous. Thereupon
the curtain rose on a pretty stage set for a drawing-room scene. In the
background were two tall plants and a bookcase and a fine water-color on
an easel; in the foreground a tea-table, daintily spread, and beside it
two young girls drinking tea, and discussing the advantages and
disadvantages of a college education.
It was clear as the dialogue proceeded why the authors wished to be
anonymous; for there were many local hits, and the applause showed that
the audience recognized the college types depicted. The college partisan
also created much amusement by describing the homeless creature
constantly roaming the world in search of culture.
Julia and Ruth, moving about after the play, saw many of the ushers of
the Freshman reception. Now, as then, Elizabeth Darcy was one of the
most conspicuous. The refreshments served were very simple,—a punch bowl
filled with lemonade stood on a table in the conversation room,
surrounded by plates of cakes.
Ruth was soon seized by some of her own special friends, and Julia
wandered over toward the Garden Street windows. She probably would not
have noticed the girl sitting in a corner behind the periodical case had
not a nervous voice exclaimed, “Oh, I am so glad to see you!”
As she recognized Pamela, Julia felt a pang of conscience. Absorbed in
her own affairs, she had hardly remembered the Vermont girl. Now she
greeted her most cordially, and as Pamela came out of her corner she saw
that her face as well as her clothes had a dejected expression. Her
dull-brown hair was brushed back tightly, her linen collar was fastened
with an old-fashioned brooch. There was no useless furbelow about her
non-descript grayish gown, and she wore an expression to match her
attire.
But Pamela brightened as Julia held her hand. “Oh, I’m so glad to see
you,” she repeated; “I have been very lonely.”
“Lonely! with all these girls about you?” and Julia glanced toward the
girls swarming over the lemonade table, and toward the hall where there
were still girls, and girls, and girls.
“I’m lonely because there _are_ so many girls here,” responded Pamela.
“I know so few, and every one else seems to have a special friend.”
Again Julia felt that twinge of conscience. She herself had not been
altogether guiltless.
“Why, I am your friend, and I’m going to call on you at once, and you
must come to see us some Monday soon. We are to be at home Mondays after
four.”
This cordial invitation was cordially accepted, but Julia noticed that
Pamela did not give her own address.
“You know every one,” the latter exclaimed, as she and Julia walked
toward the Auditorium.
“Well, between us Ruth and I have met most of our class. But you ought
to know them, too.”
“Oh, I never dare speak first to a girl.”
“But you ought not to feel timid in the presence of mere Freshmen, like
yourself or myself.”
“I never can make up my mind to speak to them. I don’t see how I ever
dared speak to you.”
“A drop of ink, don’t you remember? That did it”
“Oh, of course it was my duty to apologize.”
“Well, then, just spill a glass of lemonade over one or two of those
pretty gowns, and you’ll be justified in speaking to the wearers of
them.”
Though Pamela wondered if Julia was quizzing her she was not offended.
Julia, realizing that Pamela was more serious than most Freshmen,
thought that she might enjoy meeting some of the older and more studious
girls. Looking around to see whom among them she could introduce to her,
she quickly saw Elizabeth Darcy. But Elizabeth was a conscientious
usher, and as soon as she had attended to the wants of one girl she flew
toward another. Her eye fell on Julia just when the latter, after
following her across the room, had half despaired of a chance to speak
to her.
“Good afternoon, Miss Bourne,” she said, holding out her hand. “Won’t
you let me get you something, lemonade or chocolate?”
“Oh, thank you,” responded Julia, “but I wish to ask a favor. May I not
introduce you to a Freshman who has not many friends? She is near the
door.”
Elizabeth glanced toward Pamela, standing in a limp and uninteresting
attitude. Her quick eye undoubtedly noted every detail of clothes that
showed unmistakably the stamp of the country dressmaker.
Elizabeth smiled sweetly, as she would have smiled under even more
trying circumstances.
“I am ever so sorry, but I am frightfully busy this afternoon. Some
other time, Miss Bourne, but now I could not give a minute to your—your
friend; and besides, I haven’t time for any new girl unless I should
happen to take a very great fancy to her as I have to you.”
In spite of the touch of this flattery, Julia justly felt annoyed with
Elizabeth. “After all,” she reflected, “ushers ought to make themselves
as agreeable as possible to all Freshmen, and it isn’t quite right for
one of them to decline an introduction.”
Elizabeth had hastened off with polite excuses, and Julia saw her join a
group of lively girls at the other side of the room. “She is not working
very hard now,” she thought, moving toward Pamela. She had gone only a
few steps when a rather shrill voice called her by name. Turning, she
recognized a bright little Southerner who sat near her in English.
“Where are you bound? You look like you had something on your mind,”
cried the Southerner, whose name, Julia vaguely remembered, was Porson.
“Why, I have a fellow Freshman on my hands; she knows hardly any one,
and I would like to introduce her, and—”
“Well, I am at your service if you think that I will fill in the blank.
You know this is my second year, though my first as a Freshman, and I
always like to meet new girls.”
“Why, thank you,” responded Julia, “I should be delighted. She is in
English ‘A,’ too, so you will have one bond of interest with her.”
Pamela was still standing where Julia had left her, but as the two girls
approached she held out her hand with a “Good-bye” to Julia.
“I must go now, it is past five o’clock,” she said.
“But that is early,” responded Julia. “I wish that you could stay
longer, for I have brought Miss Porson to meet you. She is in our
English class.”
But even after the introduction Pamela would not linger.
“I really must go,” she said nervously. “It is past five o’clock.”
“Why, you speak like Cinderella,” cried Miss Porson gaily; “she had to
go home at some unheard-of early hour—or was it a late hour? At any
rate, nobody ought to be a slave to time.”
The little Southerner with her allusion to Cinderella did not know how
nearly she hit the truth. But Pamela, unduly sensitive, winced at the
comparison. After bidding the two good-bye, she hastened up North Avenue
toward Miss Batson’s.
“Isn’t she a little—just a little odd?” inquired Miss Porson, after
Pamela had gone away.
“I cannot say,” responded Julia, “I know her so slightly. I ran across
her a day or two before college opened, and in some way I feel drawn
toward her, although I have seen little of her.”
IV
PAMELA’S PERSEVERANCE
When Pamela Northcote first found herself in Cambridge it seemed, as the
children say, “too good to be true.” It had long been her dream to study
some day under Harvard professors, but in this world dreams so seldom
are realized that she was genuinely surprised that her dream had come to
pass. Yet Pamela herself had been her own fairy godmother, and to her
own efforts she owed her appearance at Radcliffe.
Pamela had been but a little girl when women first began to study at
Cambridge. Even then she made up her mind that if she could she would
sometime be an Annex student. The road had been a hard one, but here she
was. “It’s worth all I’ve been through to come here, worth it all.” Yet
she sighed, thinking of her difficulties in getting enough money to
warrant her entering Radcliffe.
Pamela had been early left an orphan, and an uncle and aunt had given
her a home, if not grudgingly, at least not always cheerfully. They did
what they could for her physical comfort, but they would not encourage
her in her desire to go to college; and had they been willing to
encourage her, they could not have helped her. They had no money to
spare for superfluous things, and a college education—at least for a
woman—was certainly a superfluity.
That she should go to college had seemed to Pamela a filial duty. Her
father, whom she remembered but dimly, had worked his way through a
small New England college and later through the Harvard Divinity School.
In a trunk of old letters Pamela had found one of her father’s written
to her mother when Pamela was a baby. “If our boy had lived I should
count no sacrifice too great that would enable me to send him to
college.” A diary of her father’s in the same trunk showed Pamela how
prayerfully he had dedicated his baby boy to the ministry. But the boy
had lived only a year, and Pamela knew that he felt this loss keenly.
“If my father had lived he would have wished me to go to college; he
would have had me study with him until I was ready. It is my duty to
make the most of myself, to be as nearly as I can like what his son
might have been.” So Pamela worked and struggled to get a little money
together for her college education. Although her desire for a Harvard
course seemed presumptuous, Cambridge was her goal. There was a good
academy in the town where she lived, and this simplified her
preparation. In the vacations she taught a country school, and she
decided that when she had three hundred dollars she would venture it all
on a year at Cambridge,—provided, of course, that she could pass the
examinations. Now it happened that the very year in which she was to be
graduated from the academy, a prize was offered by a rich townswoman to
be awarded to the student, boy or girl, in the Classical Department who
should pass the best examination. Pamela wore herself almost to a shadow
studying. She won the prize, a scholarship of two hundred dollars, given
on the condition that the winner should spend the money on a college
course. Colleges were recommended to Pamela in which this sum would have
paid almost the whole cost of tuition and board, but the young girl
would have none of these. She saw in the winning of the prize a
dispensation that she was to attain her long-cherished hope of going to
Cambridge. She passed most of her entrance examinations that spring,
drawing somewhat on her slender capital for the journey to Boston, and
in September she passed the remainder. On entering Radcliffe, therefore,
her assets consisted of three honors from the examinations and three
hundred dollars in money. Two-thirds of this money was the academy prize
and one-third was her savings of several years. The brain that she had
inherited from her father and the courage that had come to her from her
mother were not backed by great physical strength. She was stronger,
however, than she looked, and she did not fear her course at Radcliffe.
Yet Radcliffe does not offer unalloyed bliss even to a girl as earnest
as Pamela, if she has to cogitate too long on the best way of making
both ends meet. Out of her three hundred dollars Pamela knew that she
must spend two hundred dollars for tuition, and she wondered how she was
to make one hundred dollars cover board, lodgings, and incidentals for
the year. She made no account of clothes, as she did not intend to add
to her slender wardrobe for another twelve months. Half of her tuition
would not be due until February, and if worse came to worse she thought
that she might draw on her tuition money for her board of the first
half-year. Yet this was a resource only if everything else failed. She
felt that if she could carry herself through the first half-year, some
way of earning the money to make up the deficit would present itself in
the second half-year.
The day before college opened Pamela went to see an elderly woman who
had been a friend of her mother’s who kept a small millinery shop in one
of the northern suburbs of Boston.
“I admire your spirit,” said Mrs. Dorkins when Pamela had described her
efforts to find a cheap boarding-place. “I knew you’d have a hard time
to find a place you could afford; and if you won’t be offended, I’ll
tell you how you might be comfortable without its costing you much.”
“Why should I be offended, Mrs. Dorkins? I know that you wouldn’t
propose anything that wasn’t right.”
“Well, a thing may be right without being exactly what you’d like. I
can’t forget that your father was my minister; and when I remember what
a good man he was it seems’s if you ought to have everything you want
and not humble yourself.”
“But you haven’t told me, Mrs. Dorkins, what it is that you have in
mind.”
“Well, a cousin of my late husband’s lives in North Cambridge; she takes
young women lodgers, who get their breakfast with her and their tea.
They have dinner in the City in the middle of the day, for they are all
of them employed—bookkeepers, or sales-ladies, or something of that
kind. There’s only four or five and they’re real nice girls, and steady
pay, though they can’t afford big prices. Now she wants some one to help
her with her work—my cousin does. Not a regular servant, for she does
the cooking and hard work herself. But she’d like some one to set the
table and wait on them morning and evening a little. She said that if
she could get some one that didn’t want much pay, she’d give them a good
home, and they could have all the day to themselves and most of the
evenings. Now Pamela, if you was willing to do this you wouldn’t have to
pay board and—”
Pamela’s heart beat violently while Mrs. Dorkins talked. This was just
the kind of thing she wanted. Her subconsciousness immediately set down
as wrong the feeling of pride which at first threatened to stand in the
way of her accepting it.
“Oh, Mrs. Dorkins, you are very kind; that is really the kind of thing I
have been looking for, only—only—”
“Yes, I know just how you feel, Pamela, but remember what Holy Writ says
about pride. Not that I don’t think you’ve a right to feel as you do.
Your father was a perfect gentleman, though he never had much money, and
was born at Bearfield where I was born, too.”
“Oh, it really isn’t that, Mrs. Dorkins, it really isn’t pride,” and
Pamela meant what she said. “Only—”
“Well, then,” said the practical Mrs. Dorkins, “I’ll go over to
Cambridge to-morrow and take you to Miss Batson’s. I’m sure you’ll suit,
and I hope that you’ll like her. She has a neat little place, and she’ll
treat you well.”
It happened, therefore, that on the very day after the opening of
college Pamela found herself moving her possessions to Miss Batson’s
French-roof cottage. She was to do certain work in consideration of room
and board, and she was to have a fair amount of time to herself. Miss
Batson did not offer her, nor did she desire, any money payment for her
services. Indeed, she considered herself almost rich. She had room and
board provided for her for the year, and after paying her tuition fees
of two hundred dollars she would have one hundred dollars left for
books, clothes, and incidentals. This to her seemed a very large sum.
Yet there was one thing that troubled her. She would have liked a room
to herself, and she found it hard instead to regard as a bedroom the
sofa-bed in Miss Batson’s little plush-trimmed parlor. But in a few days
she became fairly contented with this arrangement, and toward nine
o’clock each evening would close the folding-doors so that she might go
to bed without disturbing Miss Batson’s boarders, who often entertained
visitors in the little front room.
For her study she had a corner of the dining-room table; and though her
work was often interrupted by questions and comments from Miss Batson,
who would look in upon her occasionally, she still reflected that she
might have been much worse off. Yet sometimes she sincerely pitied
herself. “It isn’t exactly pleasant to be living in a house without a
single corner that I can call my own. I can never invite any one here to
see me. For although Miss Batson is very kind, I know that she regards
me as ‘help,’ a refined species of ‘help’ to be sure, but still only
‘help.’”
She had felt strongly drawn to Julia Bourne, and she hoped that she
might be able to see much more of her. Yet she reddened as she thought
of Julia in much the same way that she reddened whenever the subject of
her boarding-place came up. Although she was a minister’s daughter,
although she realized the sin as well as the folly of false pride, she
yet felt uncomfortable whenever she reflected that to the unprejudiced
observer, indeed to any one except Mrs. Dorkins, she might seem to be
only Miss Batson’s “help.”
Miss Batson’s boarders could not understand her. They were young women
who earned fairly good pay, as expert bookkeepers or clerks. They knew
that Pamela was a student, and one or two of them were sorry that so
delicate a looking girl should be obliged both to work and to study.
“It isn’t that the work is so hard,” said the youngest of the
bookkeepers, “but to think of a little thing like her studying those
great books. I’ve noticed her coming in in the evenings, and she’s
always loaded down with books. Anybody’d have to wear glasses if they
spent all their time looking into books. I wouldn’t do it myself. Why,
it must be most as hard as school teaching, and I always thought that
that was dreadful.” Yet Miss Batson’s young ladies (for in this way did
their landlady always speak of them) in spite of these occasional
criticisms were proud to have a college student living in the house.
They were inclined to be very friendly, and Pamela sometimes reproached
herself for keeping them at a distance. Their well-meant familiarities
annoyed her, and she found it hard to conceal her feeling. In
consequence she was much lonelier at Miss Batson’s than she need have
been.
It was rather an understanding than an arrangement that she should be at
home in the afternoon in time to help Miss Batson prepare her half-past
six tea. This meant that Pamela should be at home by half-past five; and
as she always walked home from the Square, she had to leave Fay House by
five o’clock. There was really no hardship in this, since all
recitations were over by half-past four. On the other hand, Pamela had
decided that to do her duty by Miss Batson she ought to refrain from any
part in the social life of the college, for she had learned that nearly
all the clubs and receptions were held between half-past four o’clock
and six.
It was on this account that she had given up the Freshman reception. In
spite of her Spartan resolve, Pamela had just a little longing for the
fun that certainly formed a legitimate part of college life. Although
she had had more than her share of care, although of a more serious
temperament than many of her classmates, she was still girl enough to
see the possibility that Radcliffe offered for social enjoyment. Yet
with this perception came a sense of her own lack of adaptability to
people; instead of attracting them, she felt that she rather repelled
those whom she met.
V
COLLEGE CALLERS
One afternoon as Julia and Ruth were walking toward Elmwood a human
whirlwind stormed past them, composed, as it seemed, chiefly of woollen
sweaters and legs in knee breeches.
“There,” said Ruth, “what geese boys can make of themselves! Actually, I
think that I recognized Philip among them.”
“Yes, I believe he’s in training.”
“Well, I’m glad that he has something to do. But I wonder that he and
Will haven’t called on us.”
“Seeing us may remind them. I know that they have been intending to
call.”
Julia’s surmise proved correct, and that very evening the cards of the
two Seniors were brought to them. When Julia and Ruth went downstairs to
see them, Philip said in half apology:
“We’ve often wandered in this direction in our evening strolls, but we
have never had the courage to come in.”
“What in the world made you so courageous tonight?”
“Well, you see,” said Will, “Philip came back to the club after dinner
with glowing accounts of you both. He said that he could not see that
you had changed a hair since coming to Radcliffe.”
“What in the name of common sense did he expect?” Ruth’s voice had a
note of indignation.
“Why, we expected a great alteration. In the first place, to be typical
Radcliffe girls you ought to wear glasses. Then I am sure that you ought
to have had a huge bundle of books under your arm, and your clothes—it
gets on my nerves to see the clothes most of the Cambridge girls wear; I
suppose they are Radcliffe girls. But I could see that you looked as
up-to-date as Edith.”
Philip, almost out of breath with the exertion of explaining himself,
was disconcerted by the laughter that greeted his words.
“It is greatly to be feared,” said Ruth, “that the typical Radcliffe
girl would be as hard to find as the average Harvard student. I haven’t
seen either of them yet. But it’s really too funny for you to have
expected Julia and me to develop our college peculiarities so soon. Give
us time and we may become typical.”
“Ah, well, of course now,” said Philip, “I did not expect to find you
entirely changed, although you know yourself that college might make a
difference.”
“Naturally we’d rather not belong to the tiresome class of persons who
are always the same, yet we do not wish our friends to find us altered.”
“No, you were well enough before,” and Will glanced toward Ruth.
“So you thought it best to let well enough alone?”
“Now, really you are severe! But not to dwell on personalities—how do
you like your rooms here? They seem very domestic.”
“These are not our special rooms,” explained Julia; “our study is
upstairs.”
“When are we to see your study, or ‘den,’ as I suppose you will come to
call it?”
“I’m afraid that you would not think it typical enough to be called a
den.”
“But when _are_ we to see it?”
“Oh, later we’ll give you a tea, with Aunt Anna or Mrs. Blair to
chaperon us. You’ll have a chance then to offer any amount of advice.”
“We’ll give you points that may be useful next year.”
“Ah! next year we’ll be Sophomores, and Sophomores know everything,”
retorted Julia.
“Yes, and sometimes more than everything. _We_ did, didn’t we, Philip?”
“I should say so! I’ve never since been so wise as I was in that
Sophomore year. I’d almost like to be a Sophomore again.”
“You may have the chance,” interposed Will, “if you drop down a class at
a time.”
Philip looked uncomfortable.
“Be careful, please; no twitting on facts.”
“On facts?” queried Ruth. “Is it as bad as that?”
“Oh, the Faculty has a wretched habit of giving a fellow warnings,
especially at the beginning of the Senior year, just to see how he will
take them.”
“Why,” said Julia, “I should take them as warnings.”
She saw by Philip’s expression that there was more than a mere
suggestion of truth in what Will had said, and she resolved at the first
favorable opportunity to have a serious talk with him. She remembered
that the preceding year he had spoken of one or two conditions to be
worked off before the close of his Senior year, and she began to fear
that he had neglected to do this. In spite of his little affectations,
Philip had a charm for Julia. At least she felt a genuine interest in
him, partly on his own account, and partly because she was so fond of
Edith. She hoped that he would make more of himself than some of the
young men in his set had thought it worth while to make of themselves.
While her thoughts were wandering, the conversation of the other three
went straight on.
“If we only knew what you would like,” Philip was saying, “we might give
you something more substantial than points for your room. I have a fine
‘To Let’ sign that was hung out originally somewhere down in the ‘Port.’
I haven’t really room for it, and—”
“Oh, that’s only black and white. When you make a present, you ought not
to be mean,” said Will. “What’s the matter with that barber’s pole that
you cherish so carefully in a corner of your room? I hear that its
former owner is still searching for it. A Radcliffe room would really be
a safer retreat for it than yours.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t get these girls into trouble. If I present them with
anything it must be something ennobling,—a tidy, or—or—a picture-scarf,
or something of that kind.”
“We haven’t a tidy in our room,” interposed Ruth triumphantly.
“Then it must have a very unfeminine appearance,” responded Philip. “I
am sorry that Radcliffe influences are so hardening. It wasn’t that way
when you helped in that Bazaar. Don’t you remember what work I had to
find something suitable for a college room, and there was nothing to be
had but tidies, and dolls, and things like that? Your minds were all
feminine enough then.”
“I remember that I found just what I wanted,” said Will, smiling at
Ruth. “A very beautiful sofa pillow, with a crimson ‘H’ embroidered upon
it.”
As it was Ruth who had made this pillow for the Bazaar given by the Four
Club, and as Will had insisted on buying it as soon as he learned that
it was the work of her hands, she naturally looked conscious at this
reminiscence.
Thus the conversation of the four young people flowed on; and although
the girls tried not to be too serious, they really did glean some useful
information from the two Seniors. The gossip of undergraduates about
professors, their fancied insight into the methods of their instructors
is harmless enough. Yet critical listeners might have questioned the
correctness of some of the judgments so glibly put forth by Philip and
Will.
Philip, to tell the truth, was surprised to find himself encouraging the
girls in their college career by even these scraps of information. He
liked Julia so well that he could not reconcile himself to her going to
college.
“It is different,” he had said to her magnificently one day at Brenda’s,
“it is different, of course, in the case of a man. If he doesn’t go to
college he doesn’t amount to much. People think it’s because he can’t
get in, and that kind of thing. But for a girl, why you know that it
really hurts her in the opinion of most people if she goes to college.”
Like his sister Edith, Philip was occasionally rather tactless, although
both had the best intentions in the world.
“I hope that I won’t be hurt, at least in the opinion of my friends, by
going to college,” said Julia quietly.
“Of course not,” rejoined Philip. “I might feel that way about some
other girl, but not about you.”
Julia accepted the apology, but she remembered the incident. She thought
of it again, as she sat before her fire that evening, and then her
thoughts travelled toward Brenda. Brenda, too, had never really approved
of Julia’s going to college.
“It was funny, although not exactly amusing,” reflected Julia, “when she
let Belle persuade her that it was an affront to the family when I
wished to study anything so unconventional—for a girl—as Greek. Yet
all’s well that ends well, and Brenda is so different now that I can
hardly believe that it is only two years since she was so pettish and
inconsiderate.”
Yet although Brenda had certainly improved in the past two years she was
still as far from perfection as most young girls of sixteen or
seventeen. She was still impulsive, and disinclined to receive advice.
But remembering her past mistakes, she was less ready than formerly to
find fault with Julia.
One thing that had brought the two girls together was a common interest
in a poor Portuguese family. The helpless Rosas living at the North End
had appealed very strongly to Julia, and for a time she had feared that
she might not be able to do much for them, because Brenda and her three
most intimate friends had undertaken to make the mother and children
their especial protégés. At length Julia’s opportunity had come, and she
had not only shared in the Bazaar by which “The Four” had raised money
for Mrs. Rosa, but she had also assisted in moving the family from the
North End to a healthier home in the pretty village of Shiloh.
Since then the Rosas had apparently prospered, and Julia could think of
them with satisfaction. Her interest in them had a double thread, for
besides sympathizing with their helplessness, she felt that but for the
Rosas, and the events connected with their removal to Shiloh, she could
hardly have had so complete an understanding with Brenda.
Yet in her heart Julia realized that as they grew older she and Brenda
were likely to see less rather than more of each other, their tastes
were so very different. Brenda had still a year more of school before
her, and when that was completed she would enter society. For a few
years life would be a whirl of pleasure, and she would give
comparatively little time to serious things. She was bound to be a
butterfly of fashion, though her father and mother would have encouraged
her had she wished to take life more seriously. On the other hand, they
would have been glad had Julia, their niece, shown some interest in
other things besides her studies.
“I do care for other things,” said Julia to herself, as she sat before
the fire this evening. “I do care for other things, though it is hard to
make Aunt Anna and Uncle Robert believe that I am not entirely bound up
in my studies. I really believe that I should enjoy a year of society
almost as much as Brenda. But the trouble is, I might grow to care for
it too much. I love study, too, and I should be afraid that if I were to
put aside my plans for college, even for a single year, I might in the
end regard college work as a task, and wake up too late to find society
all hollow. No, it is better as it is, although Aunt Anna feels that she
has failed in her duty to me, because she cannot introduce me formally
to society.”
To some girls situated as Julia was, the line of work that she had laid
out would have been hard to follow; for although not a great heiress,
she had inherited fortune enough to make her perfectly independent. Her
purpose in going to college was not to fit herself to earn her living.
“I should like to feel that I _could_ earn my own living if I should
ever lose my money. It is not pleasant to feel that one is only a
consumer, a cumberer of the ground, and not a helper.”
Now Julia had already discovered that not all the girls in college were
there to carry out the loftiest aims. Some were as evidently bent on
enjoying themselves as the girls of Brenda’s set. Even thus early in her
Freshman year Julia had noted the difference between the two classes,
the workers and the shirkers. Of course, in her short time at Radcliffe,
she had not attempted to put all her acquaintances into one or the other
of these classes. But she had already seen considerable difference in
the methods of her classmates. Some sat dreamily, even idly, through a
lecture, making only occasional notes. Others hung on the words of their
instructor, writing pages and seeming fearful of losing a word.
Some took down the names of any books the instructor named as useful for
further reference. Others seemed absolutely indifferent to everything of
this kind.
Julia was not really a severe critic, and she made allowances. “I must
not forget to tell Brenda that there are, at least, two or three girls
at Radcliffe who really enjoy frivolity.”
VI
SETTING TO WORK
Pamela never for a moment felt any lack of liberty in Cambridge, in
spite of the fact that she had less of real leisure than most of her
classmates. Her life at Radcliffe was so much nearer her ideal than
anything she had previously known that she was in a state of constant
thankfulness. Clarissa, on the contrary, found the very atmosphere of
the college restraining.
So few were the rules at Radcliffe that Clarissa had a breezy way of
forgetting that any existed. She disregarded, for example, the notice in
the catalogue that students could board only in houses approved by the
Dean. She was therefore surprised when the request came that she should
call at the office to explain why she had chosen a house where several
Harvard men were boarding.
“What funny ideas they have here in Cambridge,” she had said when
describing the interview. “Why, Archibald is my third cousin, and we
grew up together. My mother and father would just as soon have him in
the same house. They’d know that he would look after me. He’s horribly
serious. I wonder if the powers that be here in Cambridge ever heard of
co-education?”
“Oh, the rule is intended for the greatest good of the greatest number,”
replied Julia, to whom she had told her tale of woe. “With fascinating
youths in every house where Radcliffe girls board, think of the hours
that might be wasted in matching wits!”
“Fascinating!” responded Clarissa disdainfully; “there’s little chance
that I would waste time over them. Of course Archibald offered to move,
but there were two other Freshman youths in the house, and so I had to
go. My present abode is most domestic with ‘Home, sweet home’ worked in
worsted on the walls, and a plush-covered album and two Radcliffe
students as the chief adornments of the parlor. That ought to suit you,
Julia—oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Bourne.”
“Why not Julia?”
“Oh, I notice that people here are so afraid to call one another by
their first names. For my part, I always think of the Christian name
first. It has so much more character.”
“So few people call me ‘Julia’ that I am always pleased to add a new
friend to the list.”
“Well, then, since you are so very kind,” responded Clarissa, smiling,
“perhaps you’ll let me give you some suggestions about the approaching
mid-years. I believe that I am on the high road to success.”
“Then do tell us,” cried Ruth, who had just entered the room.
“Well, I show a frantic interest in all the reference books mentioned,
and I’ve even bought one or two of them. I also make a special note of
any witticism—alleged witticism—of my instructor. Then I’m building up a
scholarly reputation by adorning my room with books and plaster casts.
When I have a brass tea-kettle I shall be ready for company. But it will
be tiresome to keep that tea-kettle polished.”
“It’s less trouble than you might think,” said Julia, laughing. “That’s
the advantage of owning a roommate.”
“Well, you are an angel. Miss Roberts, do you do all the polishing in
this establishment?”
“Ah! it wouldn’t be becoming to disclose how much work I do.”
“Oh, well,” said Clarissa, “it’s a fair division of labor after all for
you to do the rubbing and scrubbing, while Julia does the æsthetic and
ornamental for the two.”
Ruth colored at this remark, and Julia looked up in surprise at the
careless Clarissa. But the Western girl, unconscious of offence, was
looking at the photographs on the mantle-piece.
Before Clarissa turned around, Ruth, gathering up her books, had left
the room.
“Why did she leave us?” asked Clarissa, discovering her absence.
“Oh, she often studies in her own room. Only on Monday afternoon does
she feel perfectly free.”
“I see,” responded Clarissa, “I am a little in the way to-day.”
“Not as far as I am concerned,” responded Julia. “I’ve been studying and
I am glad to have a little rest.”
“A little intellectual rest,” responded Clarissa, “as the Bostonian says
when he goes to New York. Well, I ought to come on Mondays, only there’s
always some one else here.”
Julia was accustomed to Clarissa’s badinage, but Ruth unfortunately did
not like Clarissa as well. Julia therefore regretted her ill-considered
remark.
Clarissa spent much time bewailing the fact that she had to be a
Freshman at Radcliffe when she had already spent a year in a Western
university.
“Pa promised me,” she said, “eight hundred dollars a year for three
years, and I suppose that I ought to save out of that for my fourth
year. I never imagined that I should have to spend four years at
Radcliffe; it’s just ridiculous to have to begin all over again.
However, what can’t be cured must be endured. But Pa will always think
it was my fault in some way that I didn’t get admitted a Sophomore.”
“But you’ve made it clear to him?”
“Oh, yes; but it’s hard to make any one not on the spot understand just
how things are. I might get through in three years, just as some of the
boys do, but I can’t make up my mind to grind. There are so many
interesting things to see and do in Boston. I really can’t pin myself
down to hard study. In the first place, I can’t get used to the methods.
It seems as if there is nothing to do but listen to lectures and take
notes. I’m only beginning to understand how to take notes.”
“It’s a science in itself,” said Julia.
“I should say so,” continued Clarissa. “I shouldn’t like to have any one
see what a hodge-podge I made of my note-books the first three or four
weeks. I couldn’t make head nor tail of them until I had borrowed the
notes of one of the model girls to interpret them by.”
“It was hard for all of us,” said Julia, “at least it was for me.”
“Well, our first hour examination showed that we must remember the
instructor’s words, that it wasn’t enough to imbed them in
hieroglyphics. Allusions that I had considered mere ornaments I soon
found ought to have been taken seriously. Little innocent references to
some reserved book were of more importance than hours of lectures. Alas!
alas!”
Julia smiled at her expression of sorrow.
“You need not laugh,” said Clarissa. “I had meant to do most of my
reading next summer, and I had not even taken the trouble to note the
names of the books referred to. But I find that having electives does
not mean that you can elect to study or not, just as you please. The
mid-years will be serious enough, judging by the samples we have had.”
Clarissa was not the only Freshman to find difficulty in accustoming
herself to Radcliffe methods. Many others, unused to the lecture system,
had rested too securely in the hope that before the mid-years they could
make up all deficiencies. As the college year went on they were bound to
find, like all preceding Freshmen, that lectures in the end were far
more stimulating than recitations from even the best of text-books, and
in the course of time, too, even the dullest was likely to acquire the
art of successful note-taking.
The hour examinations at irregular intervals before Christmas were often
rude awakeners for careless girls. Others were agreeably surprised to
find their marks better than they had hoped.
“It’s uncertainty that kills one,” said Clarissa. “I mean to work so
that my mid-years will give me ‘B,’ or at any rate ‘C’ in English. The
warning, you will see, shall not have been in vain. I used to think that
I knew something about Rhetoric, but it seems that I was wrong, though I
studied it years ago in the High School.”
Although Clarissa’s rather original manner of expressing herself did not
wholly meet the approval of her English instructor, since the first
examination he had expressed a certain restrained approval of some of
her written work.
In November even the shyest Freshmen had begun to find their place at
Radcliffe, and to feel that they had some individuality. The classes,
relatively small compared with Harvard, enabled the members of each
class to know one another by sight and name, even if the acquaintance
went no further. But the new girls were impressed by the fact that
intimacies in no way followed class lines. The elective system made it
possible in many courses for Freshmen and Seniors to sit side by side,
nor did a Senior lose dignity by associating with the lower classes.
Clarissa constantly commented on this evidence of a spirit so different
from that to which she had been accustomed at her Western college.
Pamela accepted everything at Cambridge as a matter of course. Nothing
seemed strange to her because she had expected everything to be strange.
Whatever was, was right for Pamela, so far as Radcliffe and Cambridge
were concerned, and she lacked Clarissa’s bubbling energy, which
constantly sought some object to reform.
“I can’t say that I disapprove of the present state of things, though I
really cannot understand it. Here we are in the same town with
hundreds—yes, thousands—of students, and yet we see few of them at close
range, and then those we know are only our brothers or cousins or
something of that kind.”
“‘Something of that kind’ is delightfully indefinite,” said Polly
Porson, the little Georgian whose condescension as a Sophomore had won
Julia’s gratitude at the beginning of the term. “You speak like you were
disappointed,” continued Miss Porson, “but if you stop to think, it’s
well that we have so little to distract us. We are not forbidden to
cross the college yard if we really wish to. But only think what a
nuisance if they were permitted to walk about our little campus!”
“Do you suppose that there is any rule against it?” asked Clarissa
mischievously.
Polly laughed in reply. “Well, the average undergraduate would almost
rather be suspended for three months than find himself within our
grounds. Some of them make a virtue of not knowing just where Fay House
is, and you’d be surprised to find that many explain with pride that
they’ve never met a Radcliffe girl.”
“We must change all that,” cried Clarissa. “Not that we are anxious to
have the acquaintance of those callow youths,—for they must be callow to
look at us in that tone of voice,—but we must do something or have
something here that will make them anxious to know us better.”
“We can get along very well without their society,” interposed Elspeth
Gray, who happened to be passing through the conversation room where
Clarissa and Polly and one or two others were talking. “We’re not
exactly cloistered here in Cambridge, as girls are at some colleges.
Most of us have the society, more or less, of real men, and we do not
depend on undergraduates.”
“All the same,” said Clarissa, “we might have a little more fun here.
Now, Polly Porson, you must admit that it’s a trifle slow here for a
college town.”
“Most of us were not looking for fun when we undertook to come to
Radcliffe. Cambridge never had the reputation of being very amusing. But
I’ll tell you something to raise your spirits. Rumors of the charm and
wit of the Idler theatricals have begun to penetrate the brick walls of
Harvard, and last year we heard of sorrow in college halls because men
were not admitted to the performances. What we couldn’t attain through
our work we have accomplished by our play. They wouldn’t lift their
hands to read one of our examination books, but they would give more
than the admission fee to see us act.”
“Aren’t they permitted to come?”
“No, indeed, although we really ought to find some way of letting them
reciprocate our interest in the yearly Pudding theatricals.”
“We ought to be able to get up something to interest them,” said
Clarissa.
“Can you act?” asked Polly abruptly.
“Why, yes, after a fashion,” responded Clarissa.
“Well, then, do give your name to Miss Witherspoon. It isn’t the easiest
thing in the world to find girls willing to do their part. But there!
you must have heard the invitation given at the first meeting.”
“I heard it without taking it to myself. I’m not the person of talent
for whom the Idler is looking.”
Whatever her other faults, Clarissa could not be accused of vanity.
VII
ALL KINDS OF GIRLS
Among the girls in her Latin course one had a particular charm for
Julia. She was tall, slight, and graceful, with waving brown hair. Lois
lived in Newton, and often for exercise she walked at least as far as
Watertown after lectures. Sometimes Julia walked with her; and although
Lois was not too confidential, Julia had gradually learned many things
about her. She knew that Lois made her own clothes, and that home duties
prevented her spending much time in Fay House frivolities.
So far as she could, Lois had elected studies that would count toward
her proposed medical course. She was bright and cheerful, and always
ready to help others.
“She is certainly very clever,” Ruth had said appreciatively one day
after Lois had given her a suggestion as to the proper translation of a
very difficult passage. Julia was glad that Ruth liked Lois so well, for
she had not smiled on her friendship with Clarissa and Pamela.
Polly Porson liked Lois, too, although she was in the habit of saying
that her energy tired her.
“You look as fresh as a rose!” she exclaimed one morning, as Lois, with
cheeks pink from exercise, came into one of the smaller recitation rooms
where two or three girls were studying together.
“Well, I ought to have a color,” said Lois. “I’ve walked over from
Newton.”
“Why, Lois Forsaith,” cried Polly, and “Lois Forsaith!” echoed Ruth.
“Why in the world do you walk on a day like this?”
“This is just the kind of day for a walk. I had to stay indoors
yesterday because my mother was ill, and on Sundays there is so much to
attend to. I hadn’t time even to go to church. But the walk to-day has
set me up again, and I feel equal to anything.”
“Walking is as bad as the gym.,” cried Polly Porson; “in the South we
wouldn’t think either exactly ladylike. Why, until I came North I’d
never walked a mile, really I never had, just for the sake of walking, I
mean.”
“That’s nothing to be proud of,” commented Ruth. “Besides, I’d like to
see any one try to walk on your Georgia roads—those red clay roads. I
was in Atlanta once, and I know them. We were there two days on our way
from Florida, and the roads were so bad that I wondered that feet in
Georgia hadn’t become rudimentary from disuse.”
“Now, it isn’t so bad as that,” said Polly.
“Bad!” repeated Ruth. “Why, we started to drive one afternoon and our
wheels sank deep into red clay until we were nearly buried alive.”
“Now, it isn’t so bad as that everywhere,” reiterated Polly. “You ought
to have gone out Peach Tree Street; that’s a right good road, with a
fine sidewalk, too.”
“Oh, I’ve seen Peach Tree Street, too, and I’ll admit that there’s no
excuse for your not walking there.”
Polly sank back in her chair. “I never could see the sense in walking
where a horse could carry you.”
“Or even an ox cart,” added Ruth mischievously; “that seemed to be the
favorite Atlanta vehicle.”
“I wonder that you stand her teasing,” said Lois; “you are more amiable
than I should be.”
“Well,” responded Polly, “this is my second year at Cambridge, and if I
would I could tell a tale of Cambridge mud that would make Atlanta shine
in contrast.”
“Yes, Atlanta mud is red,” murmured Ruth. But Polly took no notice of
the interruption, and the conversation drifted from Atlanta and
Cambridge mud to a more general putting forth of opinions of New England
weather, a never-failing topic when two or more persons from outside New
England are gathered together.
“Give me the bleak New England climate before any other,” cried Lois. “I
haven’t travelled, but I have seen the products of the other climates,
and ours has the greater staying power every time.”
“You’re right smart cruel,” cried Polly; “I will never lend you my
note-books again.” Whereat all the others laughed, for it was Polly and
not Lois who was ever the borrower. The note-books of Lois, were models
of conciseness and neatness, and she was ever ready to lend them to
those girls who needed, or thought that they needed, assistance. The
borrowers were not always shiftless. Some were simply careless girls,
who found it easier to sit idle during a lecture than to write. Some,
indeed, had difficulty in following the lecturer and filling their
note-books at the same time. To such girls the loan of a note-book like
that of Lois was a great boon. They could copy her work in a time that
was short compared with what would have been necessary to decipher,
expand, and rewrite their own half-intelligible notes.
As for Lois herself, she often found it hard to lend the note-book which
she liked to have by her side when preparing for the class-room. It was
equally hard to refuse when a girl asked the favor in particularly
beseeching tones. On reflection, however, it seemed selfish to Lois
generally to refuse merely because she might wish to refer to the book,
and it happened that her note-books for one or two of the courses were
travelling half the time. While Polly Porson was one of the most
persistent of the borrowers, Lois never refused her requests. She was
fond of Polly, although it would be hard to imagine two girls more
unlike than the ease-loving little Southerner and the self-restrained
Massachusetts girl. The two were, nevertheless, the best of friends,
though Lois was a girl who had few intimates. For one thing she was too
busy, and for another she had little inclination to spend all her spare
time talking or walking with other girls.
Even on this brisk, cool morning, although she had no lecture for half
an hour, Lois did not sit down with Ruth and Polly and the others. She
lingered scarcely five minutes, and almost before they had missed her
she was up in the library, with books and writing material before her,
ready for a half-hour’s work.
“Why, where’s Lois?” cried Polly, suddenly discovering her absence.
“Hard at work somewhere, I’ll warrant you. She never wastes a minute,”
replied one of the group.
“As if it would be a waste of minutes to stay here and talk with us! I’m
sure we have just finished a most enlightening discussion of the
difference between Southern and Northern mud. We might have progressed
to a discussion of the difference in Fauna, Flora, and other natural
features of the two regions.”
“You forget that _I_ am here,” retorted Ruth; “it was I with whom you
were chiefly carrying on the discussion. If the others permit it and you
still wish it, we can continue.”
“Oh, no, indeed,” answered Polly, “I assure you that I do not wish it.
You can see that I bear no malice, for I had forgotten that it was you
who had said all those dreadful things about my native State.”
“Could contempt go further?” sighed Ruth. “You would have been willing
to prolong the discussion with Miss Forsaith, but you think it isn’t
worth while with me.”
“Speaking of Lois,” responded Polly, “I wish that she would amuse
herself more. It’s only frivolous persons like me who can sing and act
and study, too.”
“Oh, but Lois can act splendidly, if she only _will_,” said one of the
Sophomore by-standers. “I do wish that she could be induced to help us
with the Emmanuel play this spring.”
“The trouble is,” said a deep voice, “that Radcliffe girls are too
indifferent to fame.”
The other girls looked up and saw Clarissa slipping into a seat beside
the table.
“It seems ridiculous that there should be such trouble to get girls for
the theatricals.”
“Perhaps many would not think it fame, even if they should distinguish
themselves on our Auditorium stage.”
“Then they look at things with a jaundiced eye. Already there are
traditions—I have heard them myself—about girls who have acted in our
college plays,” said Clarissa, “and the greatest were the girls who made
up best in men’s parts.”
“There, Polly,” cried the Sophomore, “you must be on the high road to
glory, for,” turning to Clarissa, “you have probably heard that she is
our very best man. Last year she just brought down the house. You really
ought to see her; she’s immense.”
“That’s more than you are most of the time,” and Clarissa turned to
Polly. “What do you wear, seven league boots, or something of that
kind?”
“Not exactly,” replied Polly, “though if you’ll come round to my room
sometime I’ll show you some of my properties.”
“They’d be worth seeing,” said the Sophomore, “especially if you’ve kept
that gold-laced coat, Polly, and the high boots.”
“’Deed I have,” replied Polly; “the boots are likely to be in more than
one play before summer. I’m promised for at least two.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” cried Clarissa. “You are the very kind of girl
to act well. I’ve overheard you taking people off once or twice in the
conversation room, and you hit them to the life.”
Polly reddened a trifle at Clarissa’s words. It flashed through her mind
that she had sometimes mimicked Clarissa, and she hoped that this was
not what the Western girl had overheard.
There was no trace of resentment in Clarissa’s face, though Polly made a
mental note that after this she would not entertain her friends with her
impersonations outside of her own room.
It was time, indeed, for Polly to make this resolve, for without
intending it she had gained the ill-will of several by using her powers
of mimicry too freely. “Ill-will” is perhaps too strong a word, although
it takes more than the average amount of philosophy to make a girl proof
against ridicule. Comparatively few persons really care to see
themselves as others see them, and annoyance, if nothing stronger, is
apt to be felt against the individual, whether friend or foe, who
attempts to portray us as we appear to those about us.
It was now late in December, and the greater number of Freshmen had
become known to the girls in the upper classes. Here and there was one
who, like Pamela, had little to say to her fellow-students, and had as
little to do with those in her own class as with those above her. The
majority, perhaps, were like Julia and Ruth, friendly toward all with
whom they came in touch, yet never forgetful of the fact that they were
at Radcliffe first of all to study, and that other things must be
secondary.
Clarissa was in many ways unusual. She seemed always ready for pleasure,
and she spent so much time exploring the historic streets and buildings
of Boston that her friends wondered how she contrived to keep up with
her college work. Nevertheless, although there was no ranking in the
classes at Radcliffe, and although there were no recitations to give a
girl a chance to distinguish herself, Clarissa made it perfectly evident
that she did not neglect her work. She asked intelligent questions in
the class-room, and it was rumored that her marks in the hour
examinations had been particularly good. These hour examinations, held
occasionally without much warning, were tests covering a limited ground.
They gave a girl a chance to recover herself, if she found that she had
not been thorough in her subject, before the severe mid-years.
Some girls did not care for Clarissa. They thought her too pushing; and
although partly right in this, they would have been more correct had
they said that she was merely no respecter of persons. If she wished to
speak to a girl she addressed her without hesitation, regardless of the
fact that she had not been introduced. Strange though it may seem, some
girls objected to this, preferring, as they said, “to choose their
acquaintances.” Not many, however, were so foolishly formal, and
Clarissa’s chief fault consisted in a certain harmless officiousness, a
readiness to do things which really were within the province of some
other girl. She had promptly joined the Emmanuel Society, for example,
and had been a member hardly a month when she told the President of
Emmanuel that she had invited Mrs. Skillington Squails, of Chicago, to
speak before the Society on her approaching visit to Boston.
Now it happened that both meetings of the Society that were to be held
during Mrs. Squails’ visit had been already provided with speakers whom
it was impossible to put aside. Moreover, it was decidedly out of place
for a new member like Clarissa to make a suggestion of this kind. There
was an executive committee of the Society whose duty it was to make all
arrangements regarding speakers, and Clarissa ought at least to have
consulted this committee before writing to Mrs. Squails.
“I’m awfully sorry,” she said when the matter was explained to her. “But
it seemed to be such a good chance to get Mrs. Squails, that I thought
that I ought to secure her as soon as I heard that she was coming East.
You know that she’s in great demand, and she never gets less than fifty
dollars a lecture. But she knows me very well; she stayed at our house a
week the last time she came down into our State, and she would have
spoken before our Society for nothing to oblige me, and she’d consider
it an honor to speak at Radcliffe.”
Mrs. Skillington Squails was an effective speaker, and her subject, “The
Organization of Women Workers,” might have come within the scope of the
Emmanuel programmes. But unfortunately, Mrs. Squails had recently been
speaking on the stump for a very unpopular political party, and to
invite her to address Radcliffe girls would have drawn considerable
adverse criticism on the college.
The President of the Society thought it fortunate that the other
speakers could not be put aside for the Chicagoan, and in the end
Clarissa was spared the embarrassment of having to explain that her
invitation was not official by hearing from the latter that for the time
being she had given up her visit to Boston. Although the President of
the Emmanuel and her committee had been very careful not to speak of
this officiousness of Clarissa’s, in some way, possibly through Clarissa
herself, the story had leaked out, and nearly every one who had not met
her asked to have her pointed out. They were all anxious to see the
audacious Western Freshman.
Polly Porson, when she heard the story, had entertained a group of girls
with a mock interview between Clarissa and Ernestine Dunton, the very
serious and conscientious President of the Emmanuel. She remembered that
this portrayal had taken place late one afternoon in the conversation
room; and although she had glanced out into the hall to make sure that
there were no listeners besides those whom she had undertaken to
entertain, there was the possibility that Clarissa might have passed
through the hall unobserved. The thought of such a possibility made the
careless Polly rather uncomfortable, and in consequence she was now
especially cordial to Clarissa.
VIII
THE MID-YEARS
“It’s comical, isn’t it, to see those woe-begone faces erstwhile so gay
and cheerful?” said Clarissa, meeting Julia one morning in January at
the foot of the main stairs of Fay House. “Let us stand here and watch
the martyrs pass.”
“Laughing at your fellow sufferers!” responded Julia; “surely you are
not out of misery yourself.”
“No, indeed, I have two more; but I’d rather die with my boots on, as
the miners say, than be killed by inches. Now just look there!”
As Clarissa spoke two girls approached, one stumbling along with her
eyes fixed on a book, the other wearing dark green glasses that made her
pale face look almost ghostly.
“You can’t pass without speaking!” Clarissa’s voice compelled attention,
and the girl with the book looked up, showing the usually bright face of
Elspeth Gray, while the girl in glasses responded in the accents of
Polly Porson.
“I’m nearly dead, I really am, with one examination to-day and another
to-morrow! I had a perfectly lovely time the first week, for not one of
my mid-years came early. I went to two matinées and a Symphony Concert,
had a girl from New York over to spend the week with me; but the next
week when I began to study I found I’d lost the taste for cramming, and
I’ve sat up nights since. It was three A.M. when I went to bed last
night, or this morning—which was it?—and my eyes are nearly wrecked.”
Polly from a seat on the stairs looked up at Clarissa, who was standing
in front of her.
“I’m glad that I can’t see very well,” she continued. “I should hate to
discover that you were laughing at me, Clarissa.”
“Well, I do think that you are very silly.” Clarissa drew herself up.
“Look at me! I’ve gained two pounds since the first of January.”
“Why! haven’t you had to work? You are an exception, and this is only
your first year, too.”
“Certainly I have been working,” responded Clarissa, “but I haven’t been
worrying. There’s little difference to me ’twixt ‘A’ and ‘B’ and ‘C’ and
‘D.’”
“Very well,” said a Junior, overhearing, “we shall see. I felt that way
myself when I was a Freshman. But a change came over the spirit of my
dream when I received my marks. I’d always thought myself a pretty
bright person before that, but when I found that I had nothing higher
than a ‘B,’ and that in only one course, while ‘C’s’ were alarmingly
prevalent on my record, I made up my mind after that to take
examinations seriously. I did better in June—I really did.”
“Yes, indeed,” interposed Polly. “I mean to do better in June myself.”
“According to your own account, you did not plan well for these
mid-years. Wouldn’t it have been better to have spent an hour or two
earlier in the year in study instead of cramming it into a week?
Wouldn’t that have been more consistent?” asked Julia.
“It might have been more consistent,” responded Polly, “but it wouldn’t
have been half as pleasant. I never _did_ believe that consistency was a
diamond of the first water. Besides, it’s _much_ more exciting to leave
most of your work to the last. If I were running a race I’d always make
my greatest effort on the last round. To be sure, I’d feel a little
better now if my eyes weren’t so troublesome. But I must go on. Elspeth
and I have some German to attack—just a trifle, you know: ‘Minna von
Barnhelm,’ ‘Wilhelm Tell,’ ‘Iphigenia,’ and one or two other little
things of that kind,” and she made a gesture of affected carelessness.
“Well, good-bye! Elspeth furnishes eyes for me at present, and looks up
all the words in the dictionary, while I provide the free translations.
Free enough,” she concluded with a laugh, as she disappeared up the
stairs.
“There,” cried Clarissa, “I can see that Polly is worried. She’s been
summoned to the office once or twice for cutting, I hear. She told of it
herself,” she added, lest Julia should wonder how Clarissa had learned
this.
Many Radcliffe girls, undoubtedly, took their examinations too severely.
They withdrew to their rooms at the beginning of the mid-years, and came
out only to get books from the library or for examinations. Yet though
cramming is a bad habit, it is so firmly fixed on all students that
until examinations themselves are abolished it will last. Poor students,
who have wasted the lecture hours and neglected the prescribed reading,
cram because otherwise they might fail outright, and so bring their
college course to an untimely end. Good students, who have neglected
nothing through the term, cram to assure themselves that they have done
the very best by their chosen subjects. Between the men and the women
students of Cambridge, however, there is one marked point of difference.
With the growth of Harvard the profession of tutor is of increasing
importance. Young men of small money and large ability after their
Freshman year often defray the greater part of their expenses by
tutoring. Many, indeed, of the youths who seek the aid of tutors have
never even tried to keep up with the regular lectures. By some occult
reasoning they calculate that it requires less mental effort to wait
until the approach of the examinations for their great spurt. The gist
of the courses they desire is then given them by an expert who in a few
hours covers the work of the half-year. Lazy men, athletic men, and men
lacking the mental momentum to carry them through college are the
mainstay of numbers of impecunious students. Radcliffe as yet has had no
attractions for girls disinclined to study. The majority have had high
standing in the preparatory schools, and they go to college intending to
do their best. If the Polly Porsons have been inattentive to some
lectures, or if they have neglected part of their reading, they work
with a will in the weeks just before examinations. But they scorn the
help of tutors, or of printed notes. At the worst they borrow the
note-books of some other girl, or they meet in little groups of two or
three to put one another to the test with difficult questions. Informal
meetings of this kind are the nearest thing that Radcliffe can show to
the Seminars (disapproved by the Faculty), devised for the smoothing of
the way for Harvard students.
Clarissa was one of those who liked to study in company.
“I am twice as sure of myself when I have done a little thinking aloud.
Come on, Polly, one more hour will make us perfect in English. I need
you to hear me say the ‘Canons,’ and exercise me a little on ‘shall’ and
‘will,’ and then I shall know whole pages of the English Literature
Primer. It’s too bad that we haven’t had more courses together, for we
work together splendidly; don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” said Polly, “especially as you have eyes and I haven’t. I am
going to make up questions out of my head to test you, for I mustn’t
look much on my book.”
“Oh, that will be all right,” responded Clarissa. “Besides, I have some
examination papers—those of the past two or three years—and I am going
to use them for your especial torment. It will strengthen your mind to
answer the questions.”
“Thank you, but if my mind required strengthening I don’t believe that
cramming would help. A cup of good strong coffee would be more to the
point.”
“There,” cried Clarissa, “you’ve given yourself away. I have been
wondering how you kept yourself awake until three A.M. as you boast of
doing. If coffee does it I have only half as much respect for you as I
thought I had. If I could look in upon you some midnight soon, and find
you drinking strong coffee, with your head swathed in wet towels—for
this I am told is the habit with coffee-bibbers—I’d punish you as you
deserve.”
“I plead guilty,” cried Polly, “to the coffee drinking. Why not, since I
have a little gas-stove of my own? But the wet towels, ugh! I could not
stand anything so clammy. But come! time flies, and if you are in
earnest about that symposium, let us hasten to my rooms.”
Many girls studied wholly by themselves. Pamela was one of these, and
Lois another. Pamela in this, as in other things, was solitary from
necessity rather than from choice. She had hardly a speaking
acquaintance with most of the girls in her classes, and it occurred to
none of them to ask her to join them. She for her part was too timid to
make the first advances. Lois, on the other hand, would have been
welcomed by many a little study group. But she was of a decidedly
independent disposition, and she felt that she could accomplish more by
herself, and with a smaller expenditure of time.
Her disinclination to be one of a crowd stood in the way of Lois’
popularity. Her fellow-students admitted that she was bright and
amiable, and that she seldom said sarcastic things. But they felt that
she was not deeply interested in them as individuals, and in consequence
they were inclined to criticise her. It was harmless criticism, but it
tended to increase the feeling that Lois was not exactly popular.
Julia and Ruth, studying together, rejoiced that they had the same
electives. Ruth was unduly flurried and worried, and she and Julia sat
up until midnight many nights when they might better have been in bed.
“The worst of it is,” sighed Ruth, after her last examination, “my
cramming hasn’t helped me an atom. Not one of the four papers had a
question that I could not have answered before I began to cram.”
“Yes, and if you hadn’t sat up so late grinding you would probably have
been in a better state for work. You’ll take things more sensibly in
your Sophomore and Junior years. Only Freshmen and Seniors work
themselves into a fever. Freshmen are inexperienced and nervous, and
Seniors never feel quite sure that they are going to pass in everything;
but Sophomores and—”
“I can’t say that I agree with you, Miss Darcy,” said Jane Townall.
“I’ve always tried to do my duty by all my instructors, but I never went
into an examination, even in my Sophomore and Junior years, without an
enormous amount of preparation. It seems to me that most girls do the
same.”
“Oh,” responded Elizabeth carelessly, “it all depends on the kind of
girls one knows. _Your_ friends, of course, are more serious than mine.
But you all make a mistake. You have lost five pounds, and you look as
if you had lost your last friend, too.”
With this Elizabeth hurried off to join Polly Porson, for they both
belonged to the same clique of rather lively girls just at this time
beginning to promote theatricals, tableaux, and other frivolities,
calculated to show that Radcliffe girls had other talents besides the
purely scholastic.
“It’s easy for Miss Darcy to talk,” said Jane Townall, turning to Ruth,
as Elizabeth moved away. “The loss of a grade would not hurt her; she is
not going to teach, and it will be all the same to her whether she gets
a plain degree, or a _cum laude_.”
“She does pretty well, though,” interposed a girl who had just joined
the group. “She showed me her marks last year, and there was nothing, I
think, below ‘B.’”
“Oh, there’s an art in getting marks, just as there is in achieving
greatness of any other sort. Perhaps you are not aware, Freshmen,” and
the speaker turned toward Ruth and Julia, “that one principle in
selecting courses is to choose those demanding the least work, and at
the same time yielding the highest marks. There’s a curious relation
between the two. The easier the course and the smaller the amount of
work in it, the higher the mark. Elizabeth goes in for such things as
Semitic 12 and Fine Arts 1, and—oh, well, we know the list. They are
studies that make for culture and high marks.”
“Also,” said another girl, “Elizabeth believes in making a good
impression on her instructors. She will break into a lecture three times
in the course of the hour to ask a question which sometimes has only the
slightest connection with the subject. But often it gives the instructor
an opportunity for a series of footnotes to the lecture in the shape of
original remarks, and he ends by believing Elizabeth to be the most
intelligent girl in his class. He keeps this in mind when her blue-book
falls into his hand. This is one secret of her succeeding without
working, for _she_ says that she does not work, and _you_ say that she
gets good marks.”
“In other words, she ‘swipes’ marks,” interposed Clarissa.
Jane Townall looked uncomfortable at the tone of the discussion.
Personalities were distasteful to her.
“Miss Darcy is very pleasant,” she ventured; “every one likes her. I
envy a girl who has the faculty of making herself agreeable to every
one.”
Jane meant to pay Elizabeth a very high compliment, but the two Juniors
in the group laughed heartily.
“That’s just it,” said the taller of the two. “Elizabeth does try to
make herself agreeable to every one. She would rather be called
uneducated than unpopular. I shouldn’t wonder,” she concluded with a
smile, “if she had designs on the Idler. But then, she’d make a fairly
good President.”
“Oh, but what a change after Miss Witherspoon! Besides, I’d rather see a
girl like Lois Forsaith.”
“Oh, well, of course. By the time she is a Senior her turn may come, but
at present it’s out of the question. Indeed, I doubt that she’d ever be
elected, however strongly some of us might wish it. She’s too
independent; and though she doesn’t make enemies, she wouldn’t have
enough people to work for her at an election. She hasn’t many intimate
friends. You’ve got to belong to a clique if you want to hold office, or
else be tremendously and surpassingly beautiful or rich.”
“Well, Lois isn’t that exactly. She’s just a good all-round kind of girl
with considerable talent, and she’s so independent that nobody ever
quite appreciates her.”
“Well, I’m sure,” said Jane Townall primly, as the group broke up, “I
feel as if in some way I had done Miss Darcy an injury. I really did not
mean to make her a subject of discussion when I spoke of the ease with
which she takes her examinations. I hope that I didn’t do her any
injustice. I’m sure that I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you didn’t, Jane; you wouldn’t hurt a fly, we all know that,”
exclaimed one of the Juniors with a surprising flippancy. Jane was
Julia’s Senior adviser, and her four months at Radcliffe hadn’t lessened
her awe of Seniors in general, and of Jane in particular. For although
Jane was awkward—unused to conventional society—and wrapped up in her
studies, she had more than once gone out of her way to help Julia; and
while she was timid about offering advice, when asked to give it she was
always logical and painstaking in what she said.
IX
TWO CATASTROPHES
One Monday soon after the mid-years Julia and Elizabeth were walking
down Garden Street in the face of a rather sharp wind. Elizabeth, like
all who are not Boston bred, complained of the spring winds as if they
were more vicious than in her native New Jersey. Passing the old
graveyard, she laughingly reminded Julia that Longfellow’s “dust is in
her beautiful eyes,” applied to one who lay buried within the First
Parish enclosure, and that some wit had commented that dust was always
in some one’s eyes in Cambridge.
“Yet it’s an interesting old graveyard,” said Julia, “and sometime I
hope to go inside and study some of the inscriptions.”
“We all _mean_ to do those things,” responded Elizabeth, “when we are
Freshmen. I did myself last year. Christ Church is almost next door to
Fay House, and it’s one of the many that Washington honored. But I doubt
if you go within it before your Senior year, unless you make it your
regular church. But, dear me! What is that?”
A white shower was falling at their feet, and, looking up, the two saw
Pamela, the very picture of despair. The three girls were almost in
front of the old Dane Law School, now given up to the uses of the
Co-operative Society, and the sidewalk was slightly glazed with ice. The
wind, blowing strong in the faces of Julia and Elizabeth, had apparently
carried the slight figure of Pamela before it. Evidently, too, she had
been shopping at some Harvard Square grocer’s, and in her efforts to
keep herself from slipping, her black woollen bag had turned over, and
its contents were scattered. If the grocer had tied up tightly that
five-pound paper bag of granulated sugar there might have been no
catastrophe; but in some way the string had loosened, and Pamela stood
helpless, as the stream of sugar poured itself out on the sidewalk under
the very eyes of the fastidious Elizabeth Darcy. Elizabeth passed on
with a gesture of annoyance. On the steps of the Co-operative she had
seen two or three youths whom she knew, and she did not intend to make
herself one of a ridiculous group. Julia did not follow her, as she
swept up the steps of the Co-operative. Nor did the Harvard youths
accompany her. Elizabeth was accustomed to attention; and though these
three raised their hats politely, and although one stepped forward to
open the door, she noticed that the others hastened toward Julia.
Julia, too, had recognized the young men before she began to help
Pamela, and had she acted on impulse, she might have passed on with
Elizabeth, for she knew that Philip was only too ready to criticise
anything strange in the appearance of a Radcliffe girl. But Julia would
not have been Julia had she deserted Pamela.
The bag itself had slipped from the Vermont girl’s hands, and a
note-book or two, and a number of loose sheets lay on the sidewalk. To
save these papers from a coming gust, Philip and Will rushed forward.
Had Julia not been there they might have hesitated to intrude on Pamela.
Yet their natural chivalry would probably have triumphed.
“Never mind the sugar,” whispered Julia to Pamela, and the young men as
politely ignored it.
Julia, then picking up the bag, replaced the papers and note-books that
had been gathered up. Pamela, thoroughly abashed, tried to take the bag
from her friend, with a feeble “Let me do it,” but Julia, finishing her
self-imposed task, introduced Philip and Will to Pamela.
“We’re going to the car office,” she replied in answer to Philip’s
question. Therefore, across the Square, accompanied by the two young
men, Pamela and Julia threaded their way between two lines of electric
cars.
“We’re evidently dismissed,” said Philip, as Julia bade them good-bye at
the office; and after a word or two more, Will and he went back in the
direction of the Yard.
“That was rather plucky in Julia, wasn’t it?” said Will.
“What?” asked Philip, who sometimes seemed to have the obtuseness of his
sister.
“Why, the way she tried to make that girl feel comfortable—I didn’t
catch her name. But she’s evidently a shy creature, and she had got
herself into a scrape with all that sugar on the sidewalk.”
“I thought that she was rather bright-looking,” responded Philip,
“though her clothes were pretty freakish.”
“Well, I fancy we were rather in the way as long as we couldn’t help
much. Julia has probably carried the girl home with her. Did she open
her mouth to you?”
“Who, Julia?”
“No, the other girl. I didn’t hear her say a word.”
“Oh, she said ‘yes’ once and ‘no’ twice,” replied Philip, laughing.
“Ah!” sighed Pamela, standing beside Julia, “I hope I’ll never see any
sugar again. I’m not bound to do errands for Miss Batson.” Then, as
Julia looked puzzled, she began to explain. “Miss Batson is my—” she
hesitated. She could not truthfully say “landlady,” so she tried again.
“She has the house where I live. She has boarders, and sometimes I do
errands for her. It seems easy to carry her things in my bag, but
to-day—”
“Were you on your way home?” interposed Julia, to draw her mind from the
recent catastrophe.
“No, I was going to Fay House to study.”
“Well, then, please come home with me. Ruth and I are always at home
Mondays, but you have never called on us.”
Pamela hesitated. Every hour counted in her scheme of work. But the
temptation was strong, and she went on with Julia. Although the latter
remembered that Pamela had never invited her to call, she realized that
she herself might have done various little things to make the way
pleasanter for one who was so evidently alone. She could see that Pamela
would not make friends easily, and she had noticed her at none of the
college affairs since that first Idler.
“College ought to be broadening,” thought Julia, “and yet I believe that
it has made me extraordinarily selfish. I haven’t the least excuse to
offer for neglecting Pamela, for I saw at the beginning of the term that
she would need a friend.”
Pamela’s eye brightened as she stood on the threshold of Julia’s pretty
room. “How lovely it is!” she exclaimed.
The open fire blazing on the hearth certainly gave the room a cheerful
aspect, and the little tea-table added to the homelikeness of the scene.
Poor Pamela sighed, the comfort appealed to her. There on the table lay
several of the newest books,—one a volume of criticism that had
attracted great attention; another, and the best of all in Pamela’s
eyes, a history of Italian Art, very fully illustrated. She recognized
the cover, and could hardly keep her hands from it.
The general tone of the draperies was old blue, always a restful color
when not used in excess. The curtains were of a soft rep in this shade,
and beneath them were spotted muslin short blinds. Two of the
easy-chairs were covered in old blue corduroy, and a third, of soft
brown ooze leather, was particularly inviting. There were two or three
small water-colors hanging there, but the pictures on the wall were
chiefly photographs from the old masters. There were three Rembrandt
heads, life-size, and a Madonna of Botticelli, as well as his head of a
Florentine lady. A Turner etching hung on the little space at the edge
of the mantle, and two or three etchings of minor importance closed the
list of pictures. Julia’s piano filled one recess, and a bookcase that
she had had made especially for the room filled the other.
Before Pamela could protest that she intended to stay but a few minutes,
she found herself with hat and coat off, cosily seated before the fire.
Julia flung herself on the divan between the windows.
“I really feel tired! That wind was very wearing. After all, home is a
good place on a day like this. I will have the tea sent up before four
o’clock, or rather the hot water, for I make the tea myself. Oh, here is
Ruth! Do like a good girl touch the bell. I like to start with the water
hot,” explained Julia, filling her kettle with water from Mrs. Colton’s
kitchen. With the aid of the alcohol lamp the water soon boiled. Then
putting three coverfuls of tea from the caddy into a china teapot, she
covered the teapot with an embroidered cozy.
“Please notice,” cried Ruth, “our silver caddy. An old grand-aunt of
mine presented it to me in her delight that we were to have a tea-table.
She had feared that college would destroy our domestic tastes.”
“Yes,” added Julia, “we have made a great impression on our relatives by
demanding things for our tea-table. When they asked what we wished for
our rooms they evidently expected us to say dictionaries or other books.
But here is a fascinating set of spoons from my cousin Brenda—every
handle different; and Aunt Anna gave me this biscuit jar, and Edith
Blair worked these doilies.”
“Is that a Tanagra figure?” asked Pamela abruptly, pointing to the
bookcase. “How I envy you!”
“Take it down,” said Julia, “if you wish to examine it close at hand,
although it’s only a replica,” she added apologetically.
“Oh, _may_ I?” exclaimed Pamela, lifting it from the broad top of the
bookcase. And while the conversation flowed on she examined the
figurine, fondly noting every graceful line.
No one who looked at Pamela could fail to comprehend that she must be
more or less stinted for money. She herself would have told you, had you
asked her, that she knew that her gray gown was of rather dowdy make,
although she might not have realized as clearly as the onlooker just
where the seams were crooked, or in what particular places the skirt
hung unevenly. Pamela had at the best a limited wardrobe, and her
village dressmaker had not kept pace with city styles. Pamela herself,
unskilled with the needle, even when she knew that a garment might be
improved, had not the ability to make the change. She consoled herself
with the thought that no one in Cambridge was likely to notice her. She
was too obscure to be criticised. She had always admired Julia’s gowns,
so pretty and so simple, yet with the hall-mark of good workmanship.
Pamela was a lover of beauty in every form, and she now wished vaguely,
as she watched Ruth moving about the room, that she herself possessed at
least one gown that she could wear as gracefully as Ruth wore hers. Ruth
was giving little touches to the furniture, moving one chair farther
from the fire, pulling another out of a corner. Julia had excused
herself for a moment to rearrange her hair in the inner room, “in case,”
she said, “that we should have some more critical callers.”
Hardly had she left when there came a loud rapping at the door.
“Come in!” cried Ruth. “It must be Percy Colton. He often runs up after
school,” she added in an aside to Pamela.
The door was thrown open with a bang, and there on the threshold stood
Clarissa, tall, almost overpoweringly tall, with a smile on her face, a
flush of crimson on her cheeks, and a winter coat of a much brighter
crimson on her back. Two other girls were with her, whom she immediately
introduced to Ruth as Miss Burlap, of Kansas, and Miss Creighton, of
Maine.
“It is so much better,” she said, immediately explaining, “to know from
just what State a girl comes. You know what to talk about from the
start, and you can account sooner for her peculiarities.”
Ruth smiled at this sally, although she was not inclined to approve much
that Clarissa said or did, and she was glad to see Julia emerging from
the bedroom. Julia’s greeting was very cordial to Clarissa and her
companions, and Clarissa when she caught sight of Pamela greeted her as
a long-lost friend.
Hardly, however, was the interchange of greetings over when the
half-open door was pushed open wider. “More visitors!” exclaimed Ruth.
“How exciting!”
Mrs. Blair entered Julia’s study with lorgnette raised. The action was
involuntary. She had found the stairway at Mrs. Colton’s rather narrower
than stairways she was accustomed to, and had used the lorgnette to help
her find her way. Julia hastened forward to greet her, while Edith and
Brenda, with less ceremony, pushed past Mrs. Blair into the centre of
the room.
“Why, how perfectly delightful!” cried Ruth, and “What a surprise!” said
Julia; and the room which a few minutes before had seemed large and
comparatively quiet now appeared small, crowded, and bustling. The four
girls who knew one another best were chattering, and the four other
girls, Pamela, Clarissa, and the two friends of the latter, tried not to
show too much interest in the trio that had just entered. Mrs. Blair
continued to survey the scene through her lorgnette until she had seated
herself in an easy-chair.
“Why, it’s even prettier than when I was here before,” cried Brenda in
her rather high-pitched voice. “You have two new chairs and a new
etching and several cups,—at least there are certainly two new ones.”
“I dare say,” responded Julia; “you must remember that you have been
here only once this year.”
“It is really a very pleasant room,” added Mrs. Blair, looking about
her; “not nearly as unconventional as I had supposed.” Mrs. Blair had
hesitated a little before the last word. “Feared” was what she would
have said had she not corrected herself in time.
[Illustration: “‘An American girl’—she spoke with emphasis—‘is her own
best chaperon’”]
“Ever since you’ve been at Radcliffe,” said Edith, “mamma has been
awfully afraid that you would turn into something unconventional. That’s
one reason we brought her out here to-day. We wished her to see that
even in a college room you could still be yourself.”
“Now Edith,” cried Mrs. Blair, “I knew that Julia could not change, but
of course I can’t quite get used to a girl’s having rooms just like a
Harvard student.”
“Well now, Mrs. Blair, you can see that ours are not just like theirs. I
only wish that they were. There’s no such luck in sight as yet for
Radcliffe students as a fine dormitory for our own use like Claverly or
Hastings—or even Holworthy. We can’t have suites of rooms and private
bath-rooms, and all the fine things that Philip and his friends have.”
“No,” added Ruth, “we haven’t any proctor, even, to keep watch over us.”
“That’s one of the things that would trouble me a little. _Whom_ do you
have for chaperons?”
Clarissa could no longer keep silent.
“An American girl”—she spoke with emphasis—“is her own best chaperon.
I’ve travelled hundreds of miles alone myself. I’ve even gone to
lectures alone—at night—and no one ever was rude to me. Indeed, I’d like
to see any one try to be! He wouldn’t try it a second time.”
Julia and Ruth looked slightly uncomfortable during this outburst.
Brenda and Edith began to giggle, and the others discreetly kept their
eyes cast down.
Mrs. Blair unconsciously raised her lorgnette again.
“Why, certainly,” she said, “a young girl need not look for rudeness. I
was merely thinking that she would be better with her own family.”
“Oh, but if she can’t have her own family, isn’t it the next best thing
for some other person’s family to offer her a home?”
“But I do not like the idea,” said Mrs. Blair, “of your living outside
of dormitories.”
“But the great charm of our life here is its independence,” said Julia
politely. “You know, too, that our boarding-places must be approved by
the Dean; and if we are very hard to manage, we can be reported by our
landladies.”
“But do they ever do it?”
“Well, I have heard that no Radcliffe girl has ever had to be
reprimanded severely. For my own part, I feel bound to behave even
better here than I would at home.” In her eagerness to do her college
justice, Ruth forgot that she was taking Clarissa’s side of the
argument.
“Besides,” added Julia, “many Radcliffe girls live at home in Boston, or
Cambridge, or the suburbs, coming to the college only for lectures, so
that we ought not to be under more restrictions than they.”
“I did not mean to start so serious a discussion,” said Mrs. Blair. “I’m
glad to see your piano here, Julia; music is so womanly an
accomplishment;” and Mrs. Blair sipped her tea with satisfaction. “You
make a good cup of tea, too.”
“Then you can report that we are fairly feminine?”
“Yes, indeed, Julia. But come, girls, we promised to look in on Philip
toward five o’clock.”
While Brenda and Edith were saying their last words Pamela in her corner
sat unnoticed with the Tanagra figure in her lap. Clarissa, meanwhile,
talked to Mrs. Blair with surprising ease.
Mrs. Blair was accustomed to deference even from her special friends,
and it seemed strange to have this young person meet her on impersonal
grounds, and talk to her merely as any girl might to any woman. Mrs.
Blair looked at Clarissa intently, without the lorgnette. She had always
heard that there was something queer about college girls. Here was one
of the species close at hand, and those other girls in the corner, who
had had so little to say to her. They were all rather badly dressed, at
least one could see that their gowns were not tailor-made. Julia, of
course, was not an ordinary college girl. She was Mr. Barlow’s niece who
had chosen to go to college, and it did seem a pity that she had to know
all kinds of people. These were the thoughts flitting through Mrs.
Blair’s mind as she stood there waiting for Brenda and Edith. As they
stood there the handle of her umbrella became entangled in her lorgnette
chain. “Permit me,” said Clarissa, trying to help her. But after a
little effort a sudden jerk sent the umbrella against the brass fender,
and a bit of the delicate ivory carving was broken.
“Now, it’s of no consequence,” protested Mrs. Blair, as Clarissa
apologized for her carelessness. Then with a farewell that was as
cordial for Clarissa as for the others, Mrs. Blair, with her furs and
rustling skirts and polished manner, had departed, and the room seemed
large and quiet again.
“After all,” sighed Clarissa, “there is something in a society manner,
for I suppose that’s what you’d call Mrs. Blair’s pleasant way of saying
things that she doesn’t exactly mean. Though I must have seemed a clumsy
creature, she almost made me believe that I’d done right in breaking
that bit of ivory. It’s the first time I’ve seen a grande dame at close
range, and it’s refreshing—for a change. Dear me!” and Clarissa turned
to Pamela, “nursing a doll? I hadn’t noticed before just what you were
doing.”
Pamela reddened under this chaffing, for at Clarissa’s words Miss
Burlap, of Kansas, and Miss Creighton, of Maine, turned their eyes
toward her.
“It’s a Tanagra figure,” said Pamela; “it belongs to Miss Bourne.”
“Oh, I’m just as wise as I was before. It looks like some kind of a
heathen idol, and you gaze at it as if you adored it.”
“Come, Miss Herter,” said Julia, hastening to the relief of Pamela.
“Even Freshmen in Cambridge are expected to know something about Greek
Art. You’d better get a catalogue of the Boston Art Museum, and the next
time you go there you can study the Tanagra figures.”
“Well,” replied Clarissa, “I’ll take your advice. But now I must be off.
‘Answers to Correspondents’ always declare that it’s rude to outstay an
earlier caller, but Mrs. Blair and your cousin so fascinated me that I
forgot my manners.”
So Clarissa and her friends went away, but Pamela, at Julia’s request,
stayed a little longer. Two or three other pleasant Radcliffe girls
dropped in, and she enjoyed their bright, informal conversation. She
found afterwards that to meet any one at Miss Bourne’s was sure to open
a pleasanter acquaintance than any casual introduction.
The memory of this Monday afternoon cheered her as she set the table
that evening, and waited on Miss Batson, and washed the dishes. Fate,
indeed, had been particularly kind to her, for Miss Batson, who was apt
to be absent-minded, had herself bought sugar that afternoon, forgetting
entirely that she had asked Pamela to get it.
X
DISCUSSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
The Easter vacation had come and passed, and Pamela was pleased to find
herself again attending lectures. She had been a little lonely, for
almost all of her classmates had been away somewhere “for fun or for
clothes,” as Polly Porson put it. Polly and Clarissa had gone together
to New York, where the former had an aunt, and their talk now turned on
Art exhibitions, Waldorf musicales, and things of that kind. Julia,
yielding to her aunt’s entreaties, had fixed her mind more or less
attentively on clothes. Lois had had to put her own time and strength
into remodelling and shaping the lighter summer clothes. Whereas in
Julia’s case her greatest sacrifice of time came in the unescapable
“fittings” which she had to undergo at the dressmaker’s. Pamela had had
neither fun nor new clothes to console her in the vacation. She had been
unable to afford the trip to Vermont, and indeed she did not intend to
return home for the summer holidays, unless she should fail to find some
employment in vacation that would help her pay her expenses during the
next college year. Her one luxury through the recess had been frequent
trips to Boston. She had wandered to her heart’s content through the Art
shops, and she had spent many hours in the Art Museum. She had saved
car-fare by walking one way to Boston, and this exercise in itself had
probably been an advantage to her, as in winter she had had little time
for long walks. The fresh spring air as she walked along blew many
cobwebs from her brain. For Pamela was not of a hopeful temperament, and
she could not help wondering where she should get her income for the
coming year. Her aunt’s letters were not altogether cheerful. Between
the lines she could read that continued disapproval of her ambition for
a college degree. “If you had gone to the Normal School,” read one of
the letters, “you’d be almost ready now to take a school. Perhaps you
might have had a chance at the Academy. They say that Miss Smith is
going to be married.”
“They’ll feel better if I tell them that I’m likely to get a scholarship
at the end of another year. Oh, I do hope that I shall take second-year
honors! That will make the scholarship almost certain. If I could earn
fifty dollars above my expenses this summer, and if Miss Batson will
give me the same chance next year, why, I can certainly hold on until I
get a scholarship. Ah, me!”
The sigh was perhaps not to be wondered at, for Pamela saw clearly the
uphill road that lay before her. Sometimes she could not help
contrasting herself with Julia and Clarissa, and the others before whom
life seemed to spread out so delightfully. She listened with interest to
all that these lighter-hearted girls had to tell of their vacation
experiences, and she bent with redoubled energy to her work. May was at
hand, and nobody can be utterly down-hearted in May, with the trees
bursting into bloom, and the air growing softer and sweeter, and the
bright spring sun touching everything with gold, making even literary
Cambridge a pleasant place for the hundreds of students who cross the
Yard to the halls of Harvard, or walk through Garden Street to Fay
House. Yet despite spring sunshine, Pamela shrank into herself, and even
Julia could not drag her out of her routine.
“It isn’t right,” Clarissa remonstrated, “to think so much of Xenophon,
Plato, and Euripides. They may have been very able men, but to think of
them alone will make you one-sided.”
“If you had studied Greek you’d be less frivolous,” remarked Julia, as
Clarissa picked up a slip of paper with printed questions that fluttered
from one of Pamela’s books. Clarissa read aloud from the paper:
“‘IX. Write on the results, to logic and ethics, of the work of
Socrates, and the impression which it made on his contemporaries as
illustrated in “The Clouds.”’ Is it strange,” she commented, “that
Pamela is half in the clouds and here? ‘Write an account of the life and
professional activity of Lysias.’ It would be more seasonable to write
an account of the professional activity of the catcher on the Harvard
nine. Throw aside this foolish paper, Pamela! Why, the heading says,
‘Divide your time equally between Lysias and Plato.’ Your aunt in
Vermont ought to know about this.”
“Don’t crumple it,” cried Pamela, flushing under this badinage. “I save
all my examination papers; that was a mid-year.”
“To make a scrap-book?” queried Polly, who had joined the group. “Excuse
my smiles, but it seems so comical to care tenderly for examination
papers. Why, I tear mine up, and throw my blue-books into the fire.
Lecture notes are more entertaining. Clarissa’s, for example! Clarissa,
if your notes in History 100 should be published, they would contribute
greatly to the gaiety of nations. You must not let them fall into the
hands of the profane.”
The lecturer in History 100 had a rather original method in dealing with
his subject. His style was colloquial, and when in his opinion the
occasion demanded it, he used expressions that bordered pretty closely
on slang. Nevertheless, he had a fine command of his subject, and that
he was a valued member of the Faculty was shown by his standing near the
head of his department. That he shattered some of the idols that his
students had worshipped did not lessen the value of his teaching. After
expressing his own views fully (and sometimes jocosely), he would always
refer them to numerous books, by reading which they could inform
themselves on the other side of the subject. Although open, perhaps, to
some criticism from an academic point of view, Professor Z (for so he
was nicknamed from one of his most popular courses) was a stimulating
instructor, and his Radcliffe students set a high value on what they
learned from him.
Nevertheless, Polly and even the sedate Pamela were almost convulsed
with laughter as Clarissa read from her note-book what she claimed to be
one of Professor Z’s lectures. “Stage directions,” as Clarissa called
them, had been used very freely. “Here he frowned.” “At this point he
stroked his moustache and looked inexpressibly bored.” “At quarter-past
three he told us that he thought that Cromwell did not deserve any
further attention, at least from him, and that we’d all be happier for a
little respite from Puritanism. Whereupon he left us—fifteen minutes to
the better.”
“How would you like Professor Z to see your note-book?” asked Polly
mischievously.
“Why, I shouldn’t care. I never do behind any one’s back what I could
not just as well do before his face. The worst, I suppose, that he could
give me would be a ‘D;’ but I think, on the whole, that he would be
rather amused that I had had sufficient interest to take notes at once
so literal and so copious.”
“Yes, but don’t let that book fall into the hands of outsiders. They
might feel that we were not under sufficiently serious influences. You
New Englanders are so serious.”
“Julia’s the only New Englander here. You mustn’t be too severe,” said
Polly.
“No, indeed,” rejoined Clarissa; “but speaking of Jane—”
“Who spoke of Jane?”
“Well, _if_ we were speaking of Jane, it seems to me that we should all
say that she looks tired—too much work and no play. She’s something like
you, Pamela, only more so, though she has the excuse of being a Senior.
But speaking of Seniors (we really _were_ speaking of Seniors this
time), there’s Jane herself. Come, Jane,” and Polly raised her voice
slightly, that Jane, who was passing the door, might hear her.
It was after half-past four, and Polly, Pamela, and the others were
sitting in one of the vacant recitation rooms.
“Come, Jane,” said Polly, “we wish you to tell us why you have abjured
society of late. There have been several teas lately where you were
especially expected, which were remarkably desolate on account of your
absence.”
At this Jane looked uncomfortable. Was Polly making fun of her?
Julia’s more serious tones reassured her.
“Yes, tell us, Jane. Ruth and I had the special honor the other evening
of pouring chocolate at Professor Judson’s; his wife is some kind of a
cousin of Uncle Robert’s. But why weren’t you there? You belong to the
Philosophical Club.”
“Yes,” added Polly. “You _would_ have enjoyed meeting some of your
fellow sufferers from Harvard; there were several sedate youths among
them, Jane, exactly your style. The paper was most improving; every
social gathering in Cambridge has to be opened with a paper. Why weren’t
you there?”
“Clothes,” replied Jane laconically, smoothing the folds of her black
student gown.
“Oh, I suppose that you do not care to go where you cannot wear that
becoming cap and gown.
“Oh, Jane! oh, Jane! oh, Jane! oh, Jane!
Never did I think that you were so vain.”
Jane’s discomfort increased under Polly’s fusillade.
“I might be more comfortable in my cap and gown,” she retorted, “but
they would be as unsuitable as my brown merino in some places, and that
is the only best gown that I own.”
“I’m sure that it’s, it’s—”
“No,” said Jane gravely, as Julia stumbled; “no, it is neither beautiful
nor becoming. But it has been very useful to me this winter. I wear it
at our college functions with few qualms. It is only when I am invited
outside that I am disinclined to wear it.”
“Isn’t that rather foolish? In these days woman can be perfectly
independent about her clothes.” And Clarissa gave her curly head the
toss of independent “Young America.”
“No one can live entirely to herself, even in the matter of clothes,”
Jane explained. “If a hostess goes to the trouble and expense of
providing a pleasant evening for her friends, her guests should wear
festival attire. You are ‘asserting a false mood.’ Isn’t that what
Shaftesbury would say?” And she turned to Polly, who of all present
alone happened to be in her Philosophy class.
“Yes,” said Clarissa, “I agree with you there. I never could understand
why people in the East wear ugly clothes at times when they ought to be
in their best bib and tucker. When I am invited anywhere—which isn’t
often—I always try to wear something bright and cheerful.”
“The poster girl!” murmured Polly under her breath.
“I’d rather be called a poster girl than a mummy,” said Clarissa,
“though you, Jane, in your brown merino would be more welcome at some
functions than others I could name in purple and fine linen.”
“And I will wear my brown dress and never look too fine,” hummed Polly.
“You remember that Jennie Wren married Cock Robin, who seems to have
been a fairy prince among the birds. Every one knows that you are sure
of a _summa cum_, Jane Townall, so that you ought to be able to wear
what you like at any time.”
“I can’t speak for Jane,” interposed Julia, “but I am sure that in
accepting invitations we ought to think of what the hostess would like.
Don’t frown, Clarissa.”
“Oh, of course you are more in society than we are.”
“Nonsense, that isn’t fair,” replied Julia. “But college girls ought to
place themselves above the criticisms of those who do not look below the
surface.”
“One shouldn’t think too much of appearances. Who cares for
narrow-minded people? We must take the world as we find it.”
“I suppose so,” sighed Clarissa. “If I had worn a conventional Boston
costume, perhaps Mrs. Blair would not have gazed at me the other day as
if I were some newly discovered species. Next year I’ll appear out in—”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” cried Polly, “but let us do the proper
thing by putting the matter to the vote.”
“Resolved, that no Radcliffe student shall accept an invitation to a
festivity in Cambridge, or the adjoining suburb Boston, unless arrayed
in a becoming light gown.”
“Low-necked?” questioned Clarissa.
“Cream-white?” asked Jane with unwonted levity.
“Color and style to suit the complexion of the wearer,” replied Polly.
“Only no more dingy street gowns and hats at evening receptions.”
Though there wasn’t a dissenting voice, all knew that they were in
earnest to only a limited extent. Yet the discussion showed that dress
was a subject demanding some attention from even the busiest college
girl. It could not be dismissed with a word. “If a hostess fears that I
shall mortify her she needn’t invite me.” A busy girl naturally cannot
give much time to shopping and dressmakers. Often she has little money
to give to either. Yet by exercising care and taste, the girl with a
small purse can often work wonders. The world of college undergraduates
long since decided that there is no real connection between genius and
dowdy dress, and that the wearer of a well-fitting gown need not lack
mental ability.
There was some point to this discussion because invitations to affairs
outside of the immediate college now came occasionally to even the
quietest of the Freshmen. One or two of their professors invited them to
receptions. Some of the girls living at home in Cambridge or Boston
entertained more or less. In addition there were various college affairs
to which the outside world was invited, and those students who acted as
hostesses or ushers were especially conspicuous.
Simplicity was the keynote of most of the entertainments offered outside
of Radcliffe, as well as in the college itself. This was disappointing
sometimes to the occasional girl, conscious of her father’s wealth, who
had come to Cambridge expecting this wealth to count for as much in her
college life as it had counted at her own home. Yet no girl at Radcliffe
was ever so dull as not to discover speedily that plain living really
set the standard in Cambridge, and that any departure from simplicity
was really regarded as blamable rather than praiseworthy.
XI
EFFORTS TO HELP
Julia, one spring afternoon, waiting in Edith’s library for Edith to
return from down town, was in the midst of a conversation with Philip.
His woe-begone face might have made her laugh had she not fortunately
realized that one cannot long retain her influence over the person she
has laughed at.
“If she hadn’t written me herself,” Philip was saying, “I couldn’t have
believed it. It seems he’s a member of Parliament, too. Well, I may be
something myself sometime. She might have waited. I can’t fix my mind on
anything now, and I fancy mother and Edith will be disappointed when I
can’t get my degree.”
“What have they to do with it?” cried Julia. “I’m sure that they have
always encouraged you.”
“Why, if they hadn’t disapproved of Adelaide Cain, she might not have
been so heartless, and then I should be in better spirits now.”
“You can’t imagine,” said Julia, “that Adelaide Cain threw you over just
because your mother disapproved of her? She hasn’t the reputation of
being so conscientious.”
“How hard girls are to one another!” exclaimed Philip in his most
cynical tone.
“Nonsense! nonsense!” and Julia laughed. “I’m positive that in three
months you will rejoice that Miss Cain preferred some one else. But did
you mean what you just said about your degree?”
“Well, my degree is certainly awfully shaky. There was a scrape I was in
in my Freshman year. They kept me on probation, and they do not seem to
think that I have lived it down. Then I have two exams. to make up, one
I lost when I was sick and another I failed on, and some of my work this
year is a little uncertain. I’ve a good mind to cut it all now and
quit.”
“What! leave everything, without taking your degree? No, indeed, Philip,
you mustn’t do it!”
“Well, I’ve only a few weeks, and—and—well, I suppose that I might as
well make a full confession. I have a lot of debt hanging over me, and I
cannot tell my father.”
“Oh, Philip!” Julia threw a great deal of feeling into her tone. This
last trouble seemed much more serious than either of the other things of
which Philip had spoken. She felt that it was to his advantage that Miss
Cain had set him aside, and she knew that if he applied himself he could
make up his deficiencies in his studies. But a matter of money—she
hardly knew how to advise him.
“It’s three thousand dollars.”
“Three thousand dollars! An enormous sum for an undergraduate to owe.”
Although Philip had lately come of age, Julia knew that he had no money
of his own. She knew, too, that although Mr. Blair was liberal to his
children he had a strong dislike for debt. She wondered if he would come
forward and pay this for Philip.
“It’s an old debt,” said Philip. “It was made last year. Part of it is
money I really owe, but the greater part is on notes I endorsed for
Farlong.”
Julia had heard of Farlong. He was a law student from a distance, who
had made a great display for a year or two. Then the failure of his
father—a rather notorious stockbroker—had brought his college career to
a close.
“Yes,” continued Philip, “I was so foolish as to let Farlong invest a
little money for me. Of course I lost it, and more, too, than I put in.
Then Farlong lent me some money, and when the crash came I was
considerably in his debt. I’ve been able to renew the notes, but now
they have to be paid, and with interest the whole sum is three thousand
dollars. So you can see that I have enough on my mind just at present.”
As he talked Julia realized that she could not help him.
“The very best thing,” she said, “is for you to go at once to your
father. It’s a large sum, but for a year or two you can economize, and
it will be worth a great deal to get this load off your mind.”
“I don’t know,” and Philip sighed heavily, at the same time closing with
a snap the watch-case in which he carried the picture of Adelaide Cain.
Except for the danger of offending Philip, Julia would have liked to
laugh at his feeling for Adelaide Cain. Adelaide was a distant cousin of
his, several years his senior, who had been engaged several times. She
was fond of attention; and as her latest engagement had been broken off
the past summer, she had let Philip dance attendance upon her while she
was travelling with Mrs. Blair’s party in Europe. Philip had imagined
that she really cared for him, and had written her many letters after
his return. At last Miss Cain had announced her engagement to another.
Philip felt greatly aggrieved by this news. His self-love had been
injured. Yet, if he had been willing to admit it, his present discomfort
was caused by his money loss rather than by the loss of the friendship
of Adelaide Cain. But it relieved his feelings a little to complain of
the unkindness of this fickle young lady.
“Now make a clean breast of it to your father,” cried Julia in parting.
But Philip merely shrugged his shoulders.
June came in as a hot month, making harder the final examinations of the
year. There was hardly a Radcliffe girl who did not go about with a
wilted air, as if life had lost all its charm. The cool corners of Fay
House were occupied by students, and the beauty of the tree-shaded
streets and the flower-laden gardens was wasted on them.
Julia, Ruth, and even the discreet Pamela herself were no better than
their fellows in this matter of examinations. Pamela, indeed, was
especially nervous in her dread of falling below “A” in something. With
the hope of a scholarship before her, she felt that she could afford
nothing less than perfection. Julia and Ruth, coaching each other in
Latin and English, studied throughout long, fragrant evenings, when they
would infinitely have preferred sitting idly on Mrs. Colton’s little
piazza.
On her way from town one day as she stepped on the open car, Julia saw
Philip upon the running-board. He carried his dress-suit case, and in a
hurried glance Julia saw that he looked worn and tired.
“Why, what is it?” she asked, as he took a seat beside her.
“What is what?”
“Why, you have a very melancholy air.”
“I thought I told you that I had several things to worry me.”
“And I advised you to tell your father.”
“Well, I’ve told him. I’m going in town to tell him something else now,
and also to bid my mother and Edith good-bye. They sail for Europe
to-morrow.”
“To sail to-morrow? Why, how strange! They will miss your Class Day.”
“_My_ Class Day!” Philip laughed sharply. “_My_ Class Day! Why, I
haven’t any Class Day. I haven’t any Class, for that matter.”
Julia was almost overcome by what he had said. In the first place, she
found it almost impossible to realize that Edith was starting for Europe
without letting her know her plans—without bidding her good-bye. At
least at the first moment it had been very hard to understand this; if
Philip’s second statement should prove true, that he was to have no
Class Day, it threw some light on Edith’s departure. The car thundered
over Harvard Bridge; a fresh breeze blew from the river, and life seemed
a little better worth living than it had a half-hour before. Julia
looked down the river toward the city. Her eyes fixed themselves on the
tower of the old gaol, and on the streets that ran up the hill, until at
last they rested on the golden dome of the State House. The golden dome
seemed to burn itself into her brain, and whenever again she thought of
this interview with Philip it seemed to dance before her eyes.
“What do you mean, Philip, about your Class Day?”
“Why, just what I said. I’m going to throw it all up. I told you that if
I couldn’t straighten things out I wouldn’t stay. Well, I’ve slipped up
entirely on one of my examinations, and that has settled the question of
my degree. My father is beside himself, he is so disappointed. He’s
making a great fuss about that money, too. I suppose that he’ll pay it,
but I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t pay any Class Day bills, too. So
that even if I could stay for my degree, I couldn’t have much fun Class
Day. I’m going to cut it all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, I’m going to cut it all—Cambridge, College, everything.”
“But the Law School—you are coming back to the Law School?”
“No, indeed, I’ve had enough of study.”
Had Philip looked closely at Julia he might have noticed an involuntary
smile. It did not seem to Julia as if in the past few months Philip had
been overworked.
“Yes,” he continued, “I’m going on a ranch, or something of that kind.
Jim Devereux is out in Dakota, and he has always been asking me to come
out. I’ll go for the summer and see what chance there is for a fellow
out there.”
“But I can’t help thinking how disappointed your mother and Edith will
be. I know that Edith has set her heart on your Class Day. Why, her
dress is all ready. She wrote me about it the other day.”
“Well, she could wear it just the same if she weren’t going away. There
are others in the Class, and she has had invitations. But my mother
won’t stay. They’re going straight to London. Anyway, Edith isn’t really
out yet, and next year will be time enough for her Class Day.”
Philip’s tone made Julia think of the boy who whistled to keep his
courage up. They were near the Square.
“I hope I’ll see you soon,” she said, as Philip began to gather up his
belongings preparatory to leaving the car.
Philip paused for a moment, bending down to shake hands with her before
jumping off. “I am not quite sure,” he said hesitatingly. “I should like
to have a talk with you, but I am really going away at once.” Before she
could ask him when, he had swung himself down and was hastening toward
the Yard. He had murmured an explanation about an engagement, and Julia
had taken this as an apology for his leaving her so abruptly. As she
recalled the interview word by word, she wished that she might have had
a good talk with Edith. The next day was so hot that Julia went down to
Rockley for Sunday, and there, naturally enough, she found them all
talking of Philip’s failure to get his degree. “It all comes,” said Mr.
Barlow, “from letting a boy have his own way in everything. I suppose
that Philip has never had an ungratified wish. When his father was in
college students had to study. I know how it was, for we were in the
same class. But now—why, study is merely incidental. They elect this or
they elect that, and it is all a matter of whim.”
“So students were altogether perfect in your day, Uncle Robert,” said
Julia a little mischievously. “Then it wasn’t you who told me of a whole
class that was at least half expelled?”
“Rusticated, my dear, or suspended; not expelled,” responded Mr. Barlow
with a smile. “Oh, I dare say that we were not exactly perfect, but
then, you know boys will be boys.”
“Yes, but as I understand it, Philip hasn’t even been rusticated, and
still less expelled. It’s only that he can’t get his degree this year.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Barlow, “it seems to me that that is bad enough.”
“Oh,” interposed Brenda, “I shouldn’t wonder if he’d get it next year.
Philip always could get anything he wanted if he’d take the trouble.”
“It’s a pity that he hadn’t taken the trouble this year. Really, I
sympathize with his father. He has spent much money on Philip, and here
he sees him leave Cambridge with a kind of stigma, for that is what it
amounts to. I doubt that that ever happened to a Blair before. They may
never have been brilliant, but they’ve always had a respectable standing
in college. I don’t wonder that Mr. Blair is annoyed.”
“But Edith,” cried Brenda, “just think of Edith! She told me when she
came home last autumn that she was very tired of Europe, and here she is
dragged off again at a few days’ notice, and she wanted so much to have
a jolly Class Day. Even if Philip isn’t there she might manage to have a
good time. She has as many invitations as I have, and there are Tom
Hearst and Will Hardon and all the others whom she knows so well.”
“Remember, Brenda,” cried Mrs. Barlow warningly, “that you are going
this year only by special favor. You are a year younger than you ought
to be on your first Class Day.”
“I know it, I know it, mamma, but I shall enjoy it just as well as if I
were a year older. Besides, I shall go next year, too,” and Brenda
pirouetted several times around the piazza.
Later in the evening, as Julia sat on the piazza looking out at sea, at
the lamps revolving in the distant lighthouse and the moon rising from
the water, her thoughts still lingered with Philip. The moon, at first a
large crimson disk near the horizon, had been transformed into a smaller
golden sphere nearer the zenith, and still Julia sat there wondering if
Philip had left Cambridge, wondering if he would become a ranchman,
wondering if he would think it worth while ever to come back for his
degree.
Fay House, when Julia returned to it, had begun to take on its summer
expression. The finals were over, and the entrance examinations had not
begun. Very few girls were visible in the house, although there was a
double set on the tennis ground and a group watching the game. But
within there was an almost deathly stillness. The conversation room no
longer re-echoed to undergraduate quips and jokes, and the little brass
figures, appliquéed to the black wooden pillars of the mantle-piece as
Polly had described them, gazed on deserted chairs. The magazines and
periodicals were strewn untidily on the tables. Into this room Julia
wandered this Monday afternoon. She fingered some of the magazines idly
and then she turned toward the window. As she did so she gave a start,
for there in a chair with her handkerchief over her face was a girl.
Evidently she was asleep, for she did not stir as Julia drew near. The
sight of the Vermont girl there—for it was Pamela—seemed to Julia like
an echo of something that had happened. She remembered that it was in
this very corner of this very room she had found Pamela looking so
forlorn on the day of the first Idler reception. As she gazed at her
now, Julia realized that in her absorption of the past few weeks, with a
kind of unintentional selfishness, she had really hardly seen Pamela.
Indeed, she had scarcely thought of her. Julia’s approach wakened
Pamela, and as she pulled the handkerchief from her face, Julia noticed
that she looked worn and thinner than usual.
“How cool you look!” Pamela exclaimed, as Julia took her hand. Pamela
herself wore a stiffly starched shirt waist of rather clumsy cut, a high
linen collar, and a heavy woollen skirt. Julia, in an écru muslin
finished with a ruffle at the wrist and a soft ribbon at the neck,
appeared in contrast the picture of comfort.
“What are you going to do this summer, Pamela?” asked Julia suddenly.
She wondered if Pamela might not be worrying about the future. As the
latter seemed to hesitate over her reply, she added, “Why couldn’t you
come home with me to dinner, and then ride somewhere with me on the
electric cars, to Newton, or to Arlington, if that would suit you
better?”
“Oh, I wish that I could!” cried Pamela. “But you know I am busy still
at Miss Batson’s. Couldn’t you call for me after tea?”
“Yes, indeed. Will seven o’clock be too early?”
“Oh, I can be ready then, easily.”
Julia was prompt at the appointed hour, and before Pamela could
interpose she was warmly greeted by Miss Batson and introduced to three
of the boarders who were seated on the steps.
As they reached the car, Julia, with her arm in Pamela’s, said rather
brusquely, “You haven’t failed in your finals, have you?”
“Why, no! But why do you ask?” Pamela’s tone was one of extreme
surprise.
“Oh, I wished to startle you into telling me what troubles you.”
“Perhaps I am foolish,” responded Pamela, “but I’ve been wondering
whether it’s really worth while to go on. Perhaps I oughtn’t to come
back next year.”
“I suppose you haven’t had a mark below ‘B.’”
“I’ve had only one ‘B.’”
“And everything else was an ‘A’?”
“Yes,” she replied, “but I am afraid that you think me very conceited to
tell you.”
“Not when I asked you. Well, if the trouble isn’t marks, it must be
money. I should think that you might tell me just _what_ it is. You do
not look as well as you did when you entered, and you were not exactly
robust then.”
“I suppose it’s partly the hot weather,” responded Pamela, sighing.
“Then, besides, I’m pretty tired of Miss Batson and her household. I’m
glad that she is going to close her house this summer. Otherwise I might
be tempted to stay on—to save expense. She’s going to take the first
vacation she has had in years, and visit some relations in the West, and
she has been able to rent her house for three months.”
“Then I suppose that you will go up to Vermont for the summer?”
Pamela received this question in silence, and Julia saw that it had been
ill-advised. Thus for several minutes they rode on without speaking. The
cool air was refreshing; the electric lights here and there at the side
of the road threw strange shadows from the trees. There was a certain
pleasant weirdness in the scene.
Pamela was the first to speak. “I do not really wish to go up to
Vermont. They think that I ought to teach. They think that it is foolish
for me to continue at college when I might be earning. Besides, my
aunt’s house is crowded now, and there isn’t a room that I could have.
If I knew what I ought to do next year, I could tell better about this
summer.”
“Do next year?” repeated Julia. “Why, you wouldn’t think of doing
anything but come back to college—with _your_ record.”
If Julia had noticed Pamela’s smile, she would have known that its
wanness was not entirely the result of the flickering electric light.
Her voice, however, betrayed her.
“It may not be wholly a matter of choice.”
“But you’ve applied for a scholarship?” Julia realized now that the
question was a question of money.
“Yes, but I can’t know about it until the autumn. There are so few
scholarships and so many applicants.”
“I suppose that we ought to turn our faces homeward. It’s getting late,”
said Julia.
Then as they waited by the side of the road for the car bound
Cambridge-ward, Julia saw what she ought to do. During the ride she had
been pondering, and had it been any one but Pamela she would have made
an offer of direct help for the next college year. This would have meant
so little to her, and so much to the Vermont girl. But there was
something in Pamela—an independence of spirit in spite of her shrinking
demeanor—that prevented her doing this. Yet now as from a clear sky she
seemed to hear the echo of a speech that had actually fallen unheeded on
her ears a week or two before. It was the lamentation of a friend of
Mrs. Barlow’s who bewailed her young son’s deficiencies in Greek.
“It’s disgraceful that Teddy is so unwilling to study, and his father is
determined to have him enter with Greek. If I had my way he’d give it
up. Now I suppose that we shall have to have a tutor. It will be a
nuisance to have an extra man in the house, but I suppose it can’t be
helped. If it were anything but Greek I suppose that we might have a
woman, but as it is, I suppose that we must make the best of it.”
As this conversation came back to her, Julia wondered that at the time
she had not thought of Pamela. Possibly it was because the words had not
been addressed to her directly that they had made so little impression.
That very night she would write to Mrs. Hadwin, and if it was not too
late, she would do her best to get the position for Pamela.
“Pamela,” she whispered, after they had taken their seats in the
returning car, “Pamela, I feel almost certain that I can find something
for you to do this summer. If it isn’t the thing that I have in mind
this minute it will be something similar. I can’t say more at present,
but I wish that you would trust me and believe me entirely your friend.”
“Thank you, of course I trust you. You have been so kind ever since the
very first day. You remember my fountain pen?”
Both girls laughed at the remembrance.
“Because I’ve been so despondent this evening you mustn’t think that I
am always forlorn,” said Pamela, “only it is very hard sometimes for a
girl to work out things all alone, and I really have no one to advise
me.”
“Sometimes I feel very lonely, too,” said Julia; and as Pamela’s hand
touched hers in a mute response, she felt that they were now really
going to understand each other.
That very evening Julia wrote to Mrs. Hadwin, and so strong did she make
her case that before the end of the week all the arrangements had been
made, and Pamela was the engaged tutor for Teddy. Her term was to last
three months from the last week in June, and Pamela was to accompany the
family to the seashore. The change of air was in itself likely to be
good for Pamela, and Julia congratulated herself on the sudden thought
that had brought this piece of good luck to her friend.
“Yet if Pamela had not been able to show such a fine record for her work
in the classics, any effort of mine might have been perfectly useless.”
XII
HARVARD CLASS DAY
Had Jane Townall stayed in Cambridge until Commencement, Julia might
have had more interest in the Radcliffe Class Day. But illness in her
family had called Jane home as soon as her examinations ended.
“I am sorry not to get my degree from the hands of the President at
Commencement, but I’m glad to escape the flurry of Class Day. I really
could not afford the expense. I’m coming back, though, for my Ph.D.
sometime. I’ll take that in person.”
“There’ll be no Radcliffe Ph.D. next year, nor yet the year after,” said
Polly, shaking her head.
“Oh, it will be years before I return,” responded Jane cheerfully. “I
must save the money first. By that time women will be receiving the
Ph.D. from Harvard itself.”
“Doubt it!” cried Polly.
“Well, I’d come back cheerfully for the two years of graduate study,
even without the Ph.D. at the end.”
“I’m not with you there,” interposed Clarissa, who had joined the group.
“When I’ve earned a Ph.D. I’ll try to get it.”
“Then you wouldn’t have been a contented Annex graduate, with a
certificate instead of a degree, stating that you had received an
education the equivalent of that for which the degree of A.B. is given
at Harvard College.”
“Poor things!” replied Clarissa. “No, I couldn’t have borne all that
they bore. I’m not that kind of a pioneer.”
Jane had secured a fine position in an Indiana High School for the
coming year, and her regrets at leaving Cambridge were mingled with
pleasure at the prospect opening before her of having a fair income.
Julia and Ruth returned to Cambridge the day before Harvard Class Day.
As evening came they worried about a few overhanging clouds, yet when
Friday came, the girls, looking through the trees shading their window,
saw that it was a regular Class Day sky, blue, cloudless, while the air
coming in over the casement was warm and sultry.
“Julia,” cried Ruth at breakfast, “how _can_ you be so calm? I feel as
if I might be Brenda, I am so excited. I’ve always longed for a real
Harvard Class Day. I was only a little girl when my cousin Augustus was
a Senior, and I remember how I stood about and watched his sisters
dressing for his spread. Even a year in Cambridge hasn’t destroyed the
glamour surrounding the day. Yesterday, when I saw that the seats had
been put up around the Tree, I felt that the curtain was about to be
lifted from the show. You are too calm, Julia, you really are, and you
have such a lovely dress!”
“It is no lovelier than yours, Ruth. Come to my room when you are
dressed; I am very anxious to see it on you.”
The girls were now on their way upstairs, and when a half-hour later
Ruth entered Julia’s room, each girl gave an exclamation of delight. A
third person might have found it hard to tell which dress was the more
beautiful, Julia’s white organdy, with its rows and rows of tiny
lace-edged ruffles, or Ruth’s yellow muslin worn over a pale yellow
slip. Ruth was a brunette with Irish blue eyes, and her yellow gown and
leghorn hat with yellow crush roses was very becoming. Julia’s white hat
had a pink lining, and was very becoming to her rather colorless type.
“You look like a white rose just touched with pink,” exclaimed Ruth, in
a rather unwonted vein of poetry.
The two girls walked in a leisurely fashion to Fay House, where,
according to the arrangements made by Mrs. Barlow, Toby Gostar, Nora’s
younger brother, met them to escort them to Memorial Hall. Here in the
Chapel Brenda and Nora and Mrs. Barlow were waiting.
“We were so afraid that you would be late,” cried Brenda as they
approached. “You know that our tickets won’t be good for anything after
half-past ten. The doors are opened to the public then.”
“As it is now only quarter-past ten, Brenda, your anxiety was rather
misplaced, but as we are now all here we can hasten to our seats.”
Mrs. Barlow, gathering up her voluminous skirts, marshalled her
quartette to the narrow wicket gate through which so many, many
thousands of persons have entered Sanders Theatre, and up the broad
stairs into the great amphitheatre. Toby stayed behind to take his
chances with the ticketless throng, crowding around the outer door.
“It’s like a garden,” said Ruth, gazing about on the rows of seats
rising tier above tier, filled for the most part with young women and
girls, whose light gowns and flower-trimmed hats gave the place the
aspect of a flower garden.
There were mothers there, of course, or an occasional father; but on the
whole the great interior was given up to girls, who fanned themselves
and listened to the orchestra, and wondered if it wasn’t almost time for
the Class to appear. Very promptly at eleven o’clock the Class _did_
appear, fresh from the service in Appleton Chapel and the breakfast at
the President’s. The Marshals led the way, one of whom was Philip’s
friend, Tom Hearst; and as the rest of the Seniors in cap and gown
followed closely and took their places in the seats on the floor, every
girl in the theatre tried to identify her own brother or cousin or
friend.
“It does seem too bad about Philip,” and Nora leaned over toward Julia;
“besides, if he hadn’t failed so, Edith would have been here. Just think
of her near England at this very minute, when she ought to have been
here.”
“I dare say that she is more comfortable at this very minute than we
are. Only imagine how refreshing an ocean breeze would be blowing over
our heads.”
“Oh, Julia, how terribly matter of fact you are!”
Julia’s feelings, however, were deeper than her jesting words implied.
In the group below, as she recognized one after another of Philip’s
friends, she realized how much he was losing. There is only one Class
Day for each undergraduate; and although he may make up scholastic
deficiencies, and get his degree with some other class, if he loses his
Class Day, something has gone that can never be made up to him.
So although Julia listened to the Oration with its review of the Class
history and its promises for the future, although she gazed with
admiration at the fluent Poet whose lofty lines were delivered in a
rather feeble voice, although she laughed at the witticisms and local
hits of the Ivy Oration (without always seeing the force of the joke),
her thoughts sometimes were wandering far away. Indeed, it is to be
feared that the last part of the Oration was lost upon her, for when the
Class rose in a body to sing the Class Ode to the air of “Fair Harvard,”
she was surprised to find that the first part of the Class Day programme
was ended. Of course, like many others, Nora and Brenda and Julia and
Ruth lingered to scan the scattering throng for familiar faces.
Naturally, too, Tom and Will and other Seniors whom they knew came up to
shake hands with them, and receive their congratulations on having
reached this point in their career; and naturally, too, these same young
men escorted Mrs. Barlow and her charges first to the “Pudding” spread
(where nothing resembling pudding was to be had, except, perhaps, the
ice called frozen pudding), and then from the “Pudding” to one or two
private spreads, and then—why, then before they knew it it was four
o’clock, and every one was wondering if it wasn’t almost time to go to
the Tree. Where had the day gone?
“Ah, here you are!” exclaimed a cheerful voice, as Nora and Julia stood
on the lawn of Wadsworth House, a little tired, a little the worse for
wear, holding their empty plates, and wondering how they had managed to
lose sight of Mrs. Barlow and Brenda and Ruth.
“Oh, papa!” cried Nora, for the cheerful voice belonged to Dr. Gostar.
“Oh, papa, I didn’t know that you were coming out. How delightful! Are
you going to the Tree? But there, I suppose that you haven’t a ticket;
they’re so very hard to get.”
“Ticket!” and there was genuine merriment in Dr. Gostar’s laugh. “Why,
you are forgetting who I am. I’m a graduate, and Class Day belongs
partly to the graduates. At least, the Tree part of it does.”
“Oh, then we’ll see you there. What fun!”
“You’ll hear me certainly. Really, I ought to be saving myself now for
the cheering. But I met Mrs. Barlow just outside; she had to go with
Brenda and Ruth to Matthews for a little while. Elmer Robson was with
them; there was something in his room that he was anxious to show
Brenda. Mrs. Barlow felt that she could go when I promised to take you
under my wing. We are to meet in Stoughton, where Will Hardon has a room
looking out on the Tree.”
“But I thought that his rooms were in Holworthy?”
“So they are. But he thought that it would be pleasant for his guests to
have a room to rest in before going to the Tree and near it. By the way,
we have no time to spare,” looking at his watch. “If you are ready,
young ladies, I shall be happy to escort you, although I’m rather
surprised that you haven’t some younger cavalier.”
“Well, papa, we have had, but you see the Seniors have all gone off now
to dress for the Tree, and even Toby, after he had gone with us to one
or two spreads, seemed to grow restless. I suppose he thinks there’d be
more fun with some of his classmates. There are a few undergraduates
hanging about on the outskirts of things.”
“I hope that he hasn’t neglected you.”
“Oh, no, indeed”—Julia was the speaker—“oh, no indeed, he has been
remarkably entertaining. He pointed out all kinds of amusing college
personages, and cleared the way for us through several crowds, and saw
that our plates were heaped with ices, and altogether has been very
helpful.”
“He really has, papa,” added Nora. “You see the Seniors can pay little
attention to any single person, they have so many to look after. It’s
the greatest fun to see them trying to be equally attentive to half a
dozen persons at once when all the time they’re dying to talk to some
one person by herself. Even Will Hardon, who seldom is disturbed, was
half beside himself. He hadn’t had a chance for a word with Ruth, and
wherever he was to-day there were three tall, thin cousins of his from
New York who wished to know about everything and to see everything, and
who hardly left his side for a moment. I think that Ruth was
disappointed, too.”
“Why, Nora!” and Julia shook her head in disapproval. But Dr. Gostar was
too much absorbed in the scenes in the Yard to notice this speech of
Nora’s.
“Why, papa, you seem to see a great many people you know.”
“I certainly do, daughter; that is one of the charms of Class Day.
Presently I may run upon some old classmate whom I have not seen for
twenty-five years. He is here escorting his daughters; and although my
head is gray, and his may be bald, we shall rush into each other’s arms
and—”
“Why, who is he, papa?” cried Nora, without realizing that she was
interrupting.
“Oh, I haven’t the least idea; the particular man does not matter. It
will be some one with whom I can renew my youth. Why, if it wasn’t for
Class Day some of us old fellows would forget that we had ever been
young.”
“Why, papa, nobody considers you old. I heard Mrs. Everlie the other day
call you a perfect boy.”
“I certainly feel like one to-day, escorting two fair damsels through
the College Yard.”
“Oh, listen! listen!” cried Julia, as the sound of gruff huzzas came to
them.
“They have begun to cheer the buildings; you know that that is the
ceremony,—a pause before each old building, and a loud cheer for it,—the
Seniors’ farewell to Harvard.”
They had now almost reached Stoughton, pushing their way through the
crowd. On the steps of University Hall and other buildings, rows of
people were seated, who evidently were mere sight-seers, without any
real connection with the Class. There were small boys and girls among
them, and men and women in holiday dress, evidently sight-seers from the
City. In the throng hurrying across the Yard there were now a good many
undergraduates, and anxious chaperons trying to collect their charges,
and pretty girls in delicate dresses hurrying toward the Tree enclosure.
From the door of Stoughton Dr. Gostar and his party hastened upstairs to
the upper room which had been secured for them. It was a large, square,
old-fashioned room, furnished rather more simply than those occupied by
Philip and Will in Holworthy, and it was far plainer than the elegant
apartments of Tom Hearst in Claverly.
As the others had not yet arrived, Julia and Nora tiptoed around,
looking at the curious gray and blue steins on the mantle-piece, the
fencing foils and masks on the wall, the two or three old colored prints
of stage coach and sporting scenes.
“Hm, hm,” cried Nora, “whoever he is, the classics do not occupy all his
time. Just look at those membership certificates; he seems to belong to
every athletic society in the college. And his books, where are his
books?”
“Why, here,” cried Julia, “on this shelf behind the door. There are a
whole dozen of them;” and Nora, stepping forward, read off their titles,
which proved, by the way, to be the titles almost entirely of college
text-books.
“But, my dear, you mustn’t expect them all to be book worms; it takes
every kind of individual to make up a college, just as in the outside
world,” remonstrated Dr. Gostar in answer to Nora’s gibes at the
non-literary taste of the owner of this room.
Before more could be said, Mrs. Barlow and Ruth and Brenda appeared,
attended by Toby and another undergraduate, who was introduced as the
owner of the room. The latter was a mild-mannered, young-looking Junior,
not at all the athletic individual—at least in appearance—whom the girls
had pictured from the trophies and other adornments of the room.
“There, Mrs. Barlow, I hand my charges over to you,” and Dr. Gostar
hurried off to join the Alumni around the Tree. In a few minutes Mrs.
Barlow and the others followed, leaving the room in Stoughton to some
other guests of Will’s, who were to watch the Tree exercises from the
windows.
Already the throng in the Yard was crowding toward the Tree enclosure,
and the ticket holders had hard work to thread their way among curious
by-standers. Within the enclosure the sun beat down hotly, except in one
corner where the brick walls of the neighboring buildings cast a shade.
Following the boys, Mrs. Barlow and the girls scrambled up over the
rough wooden benches,—“just like circus seats,” said Nora,—and at last,
a little out of breath, and with many apologies to those whom they
disturbed in their progress, they reached their own places.
Now, although Brenda and her friends did not then realize it, these Tree
exercises were to have a peculiar interest from being almost the last
under the walls of Stoughton. The space was too limited for the
thousands who felt that they had a right to be spectators, and already
plans were making for a change of place and a somewhat different
performance.
As the Alumni came in, taking position some distance from the Tree, the
girls caught sight of Dr. Gostar and two or three sedate Bostonians of
his age seating themselves on the grass, and looking as cheerful and
merry as the youngest undergraduate there. The Alumni had marched within
the enclosure with a band of music at the head, and then had followed
the Freshmen, with the Sophomores second and the Juniors last. Each
formed a separate circle around the Tree, and when the signal was given
all rose and cheered lustily for every college official from the
President to John the Orangeman. The Chief Marshal, a tall, handsome
fellow, led the cheering, and at last at a given signal the students in
each circle, joining hands, whirled at a mad rate around the Tree. When
they had sung the Class Ode, the Marshal threw his hat against the Tree,
and then the wild scramble for the flowers began. It was difficult for
those who knew them best to recognize their especial Seniors in the
shocking bad clothes and old hats that they wore. But many a mother,
when she discovered her boy, was sure that he must come away with broken
limbs, if he escaped alive from the wild scrimmage. They pommeled one
another, formed themselves into human ladders, flung one another off
from the sides of the Tree. Yet strange to say, no one received serious
injury, and the few who reached the glowing wreath were loudly cheered,
even by those who thought the whole affair rather brutal. Those who
stripped the wreath from the Tree flung the fragments down among their
classmates, and in the end nearly every one had a flower or two as a
memento. As Tom and Will pressed through the crowd with fairly large
bouquets—at least they could be seen by Brenda and her friends—the girls
wondered if any of the trophies should pass to them. While they stood
for a moment waiting a chance to pass down to the Yard, Mrs. Barlow
pointed out one distinguished person after another among the spectators
at the Tree, including the British Minister, the Secretary of the Navy,
the Governor of New York, and innumerable literary and professional men
of note. Many of them undoubtedly were there as relatives of Seniors,
and some probably found it a distinction to be the father of a boy who
was the idol of his class for this thing or that,—athletics and social
graces sometimes ranking ahead of scholarship.
When Will and Tom reached Mrs. Barlow’s group their flowers were rather
impartially distributed among the four, and the boys hurried on to array
themselves in proper Senior garb. They all met again at the Beck spread,
and from that they went to one or two smaller teas, sitting in windows
that overlooked the quadrangle until the Yard had been illuminated.
“Fairyland only faintly describes it,” said Julia, looking at the
wonderful labyrinth of lanterns and colored lights shining above the
crowds in gay attire threading the paths, or seated on the grass.
Julia was loath to leave the scene even for a glimpse of the dancers in
Memorial and the Gymnasium. When an opportunity therefore came for her
to go back to the rooms in Holworthy under Toby’s protection, she was
glad enough to go. She was a little tired now, and did not sit in the
window, and when Toby seemed restless, she advised him to go back to
Memorial, as she would be perfectly comfortable in the easy-chair that
he had drawn up for her. She added that she would not be at all lonely.
Hardly had Toby left her when a familiar voice fell on her ear.
“Toby told me that you were in here, Julia, but where are you?”
Julia rose from the easy-chair, the deep back of which hid her from
view.
“Why, Philip! How in the world do you happen to be here? I thought—”
“No, I haven’t actually left this part of the world. I’ve been down to
the shore for a day or two getting my things together. I’m off to-night
by the midnight train. But I couldn’t resist a glance at Class Day.
Besides,” a trifle less defiantly, “I thought that I might see you,
Julia.”
“Oh, yes,” replied Julia, “we’re all here, Ruth and Brenda and Nora;
they’ll be coming back from Memorial after a while.”
“Oh, I’ll be out of the way before that. I made Toby swear not to say a
word about me. No, I didn’t expect really to see any one, though I hoped
that I might run across you.”
“I’m awfully sorry that things have gone badly with you, but next year—”
“No, I’m not coming back next year, nor am I going to cry about spilled
milk. What’s the good? Nobody really cares what becomes of a fellow. Of
course a family is mortified when he doesn’t get his degree, and I’ve
had it heavy enough from my father for the money he’s had to put up for
me. But you are a sensible girl, Julia, and I’ve wanted to tell you that
in many ways you’ve done me a lot of good. Sometime, perhaps, I may show
you that I’ve profited by some of your advice.”
“I’ve never given you any real advice.”
“Indeed you have. Of course I’ve had it from other people, too. But
you’ve said some things that really have made an impression. But there,
what’s the use of talking? Sometime you’ll see that I’m not as black as
I’m painted. So now I must be off, for I’ve some things to attend to in
the Square, and I don’t want the others to find me here. There’d be such
a beastly lot of explaining,” and so with a sudden farewell, Philip
hurried out of the room. Julia, looking from the window, followed him
for a moment until he was lost in the crowd. At this moment the Glee
Club, stationed on the green, sang “Fair Harvard,” and Julia wondered if
the pathetic music struck Philip’s ears with the sadness with which it
fell on hers.
Not long after this Mrs. Barlow and the girls appeared. The latter were
by no means ready to go home, tired though they were after their long
day. But Mrs. Barlow was firm; and in spite of the protests of Tom and
Will and one or two others, they left the Yard before half-past ten.
XIII
VARIOUS AMBITIONS
The summer passed quickly away, as vacations have a fashion of doing,
even when one is young, and Julia and Ruth and Polly and Clarissa and
Lois and all the other college friends met again in October, well and
happy. Polly had been at Atlantic City, Clarissa had joined her family
at the White Mountains, Pamela had been on the South Shore with her
pupil, Nora had spent the summer in Maine. Lois alone of this group of
friends had had practically no change of scene; she had stayed in Newton
all summer, and yet she returned to college looking as bright as any of
the others. Julia’s summer does not form properly a part of her
Radcliffe days, and yet it is only fair to say that Julia’s summer had
been somewhat different from what might have been prophesied in June.
The first weeks had been spent in attendance on her Aunt Anna, who had
fallen ill with a slow fever in the early spring. When she was better
the doctor had ordered a complete change of air, with the result that
Mr. and Mrs. Barlow and the two girls had made a tour of the British
Provinces. Coming back to college from so many points of the compass,
the Sophomores all had naturally much to tell. They registered
themselves promptly on the first Thursday of the term; they chose their
electives and changed their minds as often as the authorities would
permit. They studied the notices on the bulletin board and the schedule
of recitations, and advised one another in tones much more confident
than a year ago. They did their part at the Freshman reception to make
the incoming class feel perfectly at home, and they began to develop a
class spirit. Now “class spirit” is something which had only just begun
to develop at Radcliffe, and indeed at this time some of the upper class
girls, absorbed in their work, were disinclined to believe that it had
an existence. Different things were contributing to this class feeling.
One was the increasing interest in athletics. Each class had its basket
ball team and its own athletes, or gymnasts as perhaps we ought to say,
in whose triumphs it took a genuine pride. Clarissa had come to the
front as one of the best athletes of her class, and the Sophomores with
her help expected to lead in the spring meet. Julia, too, found herself
suddenly conspicuous from a very simple thing, or at least it seemed
simple to her. She had always had some talent for musical composition,
and had studied Composition before entering Radcliffe. But the course in
Harmony under the distinguished head of the Music Department had been a
revelation to her, and she had begun to venture on little flights of her
own. One of her songs, a setting of William Watson’s, “Tell me not now,”
Polly had picked up as it lay in manuscript on her desk. Now Polly had a
sweet, bird-like voice, and she rushed to the piano and trilled off:
“Tell me not now, if love for love
Thou canst return,
Now while around us and above
Day’s flambeaux burn.
Not in clear noon, with speech as clear,
Thy heart avow,
For every gossip wind to hear;
Tell me not now.”
Julia herself, as she listened, found her own music more interesting
than she had imagined it. Polly, when she had finished, turned around
with an amused expression:
“Well, well, I am perfectly surprised that you are so sentimental, Julia
Bourne.”
“Oh, nonsense!” responded Julia, “but you sing it like an angel.”
“Yes,” said Polly, “this time I’ll accept the compliment without
protest, for with your leave (or without it) I’m going to sing this at
the next Idler. I’ve been asked to sing something, and I’ll take care to
let every one know that you are the composer of this sentimental ode.
You! the stern person who used to frown on me last spring when I wanted
to go to Riverside on canoe expeditions that meant a _solitude à deux_.
Ah, Julia, this song shows that you are human like the rest of us;” and
Polly held high above her head the manuscript that Julia tried to seize.
Thus Julia made her first appearance before her fellow-students as a
composer, for Polly sang “Tell me not now” with great effect that Friday
afternoon; and Julia, who hitherto had had comparatively few
acquaintances outside of her special set, now found herself an object of
interest to the whole club.
“The next thing,” said Ruth, with genuine pride in Julia’s triumph, “the
next thing we’ll have you composing an operetta.”
“Nonsense!” cried Julia. “An operetta! I couldn’t do it.”
“Why not? Three or four operettas have been composed and given by
Radcliffe girls with great success. Why, I came out with my mother the
year ‘A Copper Complication’ was given, and I never saw anything more
entertaining in my life. What one girl can accomplish another can, I
mean if she has the same kind of talent. Why, there have been several
Radcliffe operettas—‘Princess Perfection,’ ‘A Copper Complication.’”
The urgings of Polly and Ruth, however, might not have led Julia to take
up the work had not the Emmanuel Society needed funds. It had committed
itself to assist in maintaining a reading-room at the North End for
working girls, and its expenses had been heavier than the first
estimates. In no way could money be so readily raised as through an
operetta, and as Julia was especially interested in this Society, she at
last consented to see what she could do.
“For any one with talent like yours it isn’t so very hard,” said Polly
persuasively. “Ruth and I will help you with the book, and then you must
have some good soprano solos—for me—and some manly contralto solos,
probably for Clarissa, if we can only get her to take them; and then
there must be a soubrette song or two—we’ll find the soubrette, and
there must be a man’s funny part, like Charles River, the ‘winter man’
in ‘A Copper Complication,’” and Polly spun round the room, singing:
“Now since men are always busy in this lovely summer time,
I get my little innings when I can,
As I wanted to offset a bit the summer girl’s éclat,
I call myself a winter man.
I drive out, I dine out at functions divine,
At parties I dance with the belle of the ball.
It is in the winter I have my good time.”
“Oh, no indeed!” interrupted Ruth. “Julia’s opera will have no frivolous
Charles River. Her hero, I’m sure, will be a most serious person with
high purpose.”
“And a low voice, that is, low for an alto,” cried the irrepressible
Polly.
“There,” said Julia, smiling, “as my part is to be so small, I need not
have hesitated about undertaking it. You are arranging for the words and
the speakers, and the music is only—”
“Now, Julia, of _course_ the _music’s_ the thing, the chief thing, but
there’s a certain type of song that’s taking, and we have to think what
will best suit our prima donnas, when once we have secured them. You
have no idea how shy they are. I shouldn’t care to be the business
manager of this affair,” and Polly flung herself on the couch, while the
others laughed at her affected melancholy.
Yet in spite of this badinage, the girls of Julia’s group, as well as
some others with special literary or dramatic talent, began to work for
the success of the operetta. The music was left entirely to Julia; but
the libretto, or “book” as they all preferred to call it, was to be a
composite production. The sentimental lyrics were nearly all assigned to
Ruth; the comic words for the most part grew. Girls are more considerate
than boys. Their jokes are seldom “grinds” on the professors, and they
are even fairly tender toward the various branches of a college
curriculum. The gibes, therefore, of Radcliffe plays were more apt to be
directed toward local faults, such as muddy sidewalks and dusty streets.
Yet after all, the operetta was entirely secondary to regular college
work. Hardly a girl in Julia’s class sought the name of “grind,” and few
deserved it. The absence of the dormitory system, the very fact that
many Radcliffe students reside with their parents while attending
college, makes for a normal life in which home interests and society
have their place as well as study. This is as it should be, and is not
to be criticised unless a girl assumes too many social duties in
addition to her college obligations.
The autumn calendar was marked by several events of special significance
to the Sophomores. Not the least of these was the class election, in
which Julia and Ruth took more part than in that of the preceding year.
There happened to be in their class about twenty girls from a large
preparatory school,—a public High School,—and these girls had been a
power at the Freshman elections. Indeed, so certain was their ticket to
be elected that the rest of the class had put up few candidates. By this
second autumn, however, the situation had changed somewhat. Girls like
Julia and Ruth, who had entered with none of the advantages of a backing
of comrades, were now pretty well known. The Freshman Class President
proved unpopular, and had shown so little special ability that not even
her personal friends favored her re-election. Several were anxious to
have Clarissa a candidate, and the friends of Annabel Harmon intended to
put her up. Somewhat to Julia’s surprise she found Ruth favoring
Annabel. The latter had been a Special, until late in the year she had
become a Freshman. Annabel was a pleasing girl, able to talk eloquently
on any subject,—so eloquently that those who looked beneath the surface
sometimes doubted her knowledge of the things she talked the most about.
Julia, reproaching herself for unfairness, disliked having Ruth so
intimate with Annabel.
Julia championed Clarissa as a candidate, because she saw that the
Western girl was a born leader, and because she admired her frank, open
nature.
“I object to Clarissa,” Ruth had said, “because she makes so many
foolish jokes. She doesn’t seem to me to represent the class properly.
Now, Annabel is always dignified, and college girls are so criticised
that one who is conspicuous ought to be conventional.”
Julia perceived that Ruth was already under Annabel’s influence. She was
a year or two older than the average Freshman. This was not due to lack
of ability, but to her having decided rather late on a college course.
She had entered at the beginning of February—just after the mid-years in
the winter before Ruth and Julia entered Radcliffe. She was rather proud
of having become a regular Sophomore: and indeed for a girl of Annabel’s
rather indolent disposition, this was something to be proud of. Only a
girl of her egotism would have aspired so early in her career to become
Class President. Julia felt almost positive that Annabel could not
succeed, but Annabel herself knew better. She had begun to work for the
office the preceding year. What had been the meaning of the little
luncheons that she had given from time to time, to which she had bidden
not only her intimates, but those girls most likely to be of use to her?
As she was not a Freshman then, they may not have suspected her motives;
but the little luncheons, and the lending of valuable books, and the
flattering letters written at just the right time, and, above all, a
manner which said to each one to whom she was talking, “You really are
the cleverest girl in the class, and I wish that other people had the
good sense to find it out,”—all these things had done their work; and
when the ballots were counted, Miss Harmon was President, and Clarissa
Herter had no office. Ruth had been the only candidate for Secretary,
and the office of Vice-President had gone to a Latin School girl. It
couldn’t be said that there was much feeling over the election, or
anything approaching dissension. Yet two or three who, like Julia, were
dissatisfied felt that Annabel did not deserve so marked an honor. The
sharper-sighted had seen too much of her wire pulling. Nevertheless, a
little later when the Sophomores had their class luncheon, even those
who did not especially like her had to admit that Annabel made a
charming presiding officer, and as toast mistress (though the toasts
were drunk only in cold water) she was, as the newspapers might have
said, “particularly felicitous.”
Soon after the class luncheon the Sophomores gave the Freshmen a dance
in the Auditorium. Although girls danced with girls and no masculine
person was present (except the youth who assisted in moving the
furniture), all said that they had enjoyed it as much as if it had been
a co-educational affair (this was Clarissa’s general term for the
occasional affairs in which Harvard and Radcliffe students mingled).
Even Pamela was seen in some of the square dances, with a pretty little
Freshman. The principles of the little Freshman as well as her ignorance
of waltzing prevented her dancing anything but the lancers and Portland
fancy. So while the others were whirling in the waltz, or leaping
through some of the more modern dances, Pamela and the Freshman, in
Clarissa’s words, “carried on a desperate flirtation.”
Prosperity had agreed with Pamela; she looked stronger, and her cheeks
had more color than formerly. Although she still lived at Miss Batson’s,
and although the loud colors of the furniture and the loud manners of
the boarders still grated on her nerves, she found the work that she had
to do less burdensome than in her Freshman year. The money earned by her
summer of tutoring sufficed to pay more than half the tuition fee of her
Sophomore year; and to keep her young pupil up to the mark, she had been
engaged to go to him twice a week during the school year. Thus all her
tuition fees were more than provided for. Although she had not secured
the scholarship on account of the number of competitors, an allowance
had been made her by the Students’ Aid Society. She could thus see that
she could make both ends meet for the year, and as to the future, she
felt sure that she could provide for that when the time came. Pamela,
though always independent and persevering, since coming to Cambridge had
acquired a hopefulness formerly unknown. To this extent, if in no other
way, she had felt the broadening influence of Radcliffe,—or shall we say
of the great University under whose shadow lies the woman’s college?
At the Open Idler, Pamela wore a pretty pale pink gown of soft veiling,
simply made, but extremely becoming. Julia found it hard to get Pamela
to accept this simple gift. She had thought at first of a subterfuge, of
pretending that the gown had been made for her, and that because of the
dressmaker’s mistake she had had to discard it. But on second thought
she decided that frankness was the best. When she found that Pamela had
decided not to go to the Idler because she had no suitable gown, she
brought forward the one that she had had made.
“How pretty it is! What an exquisite color, and so simple!”
“Yes,” Julia had responded, “and it is for you! I had it made because I
knew that you couldn’t possibly attend to anything so frivolous, with
all that you have to do this year. If you do not wear it, it shall hang
in my closet until the moths eat it. Come try it on!”
So almost before she realized what she was doing, Pamela had arrayed
herself in the pretty, soft, clinging gown, and as she looked in the
long mirror she hardly recognized herself. “If I could pay for it,” she
murmured, “if you would let me.”
“Why, yes,” responded Julia, “certainly, in five years or twenty years,
whenever you can do it as well as not, I shall be happy to let you pay
for it. Of course I would rather make it a present. But if you prefer, I
will accept payment for it any time after five years—not before. That
will be so much clear gain for me. For if you should not take the gown
it would hang in my closet until the moths had made way with it.”
“Oh, Julia, what nonsense!” And then Pamela, though seldom voluble,
expressed her gratitude very warmly. Hoping to pay for it in the future,
she was very glad to accept the gown; and Julia, observing Pamela so
perfectly at ease,—such wonders will good clothes work,—felt more than
repaid for her forethought.
This Open Idler of their Sophomore year happened to be the first one for
Julia and Rut
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