Part 2

When they reached the little study, Ellen nodded to the two girls sitting near the window and flung herself into an easy chair by the tea table, glad to rest her mind with a counter distraction. She knew the disputants well and felt as much at home with them as with Edith.

Louise Fisher had been her room-mate at college, distinguished for her common sense and independent ways and a warm advocate of the business career for women, all women married or single. Many a satirical picture had Ellen drawn in those days, of Louise's ideal of domestic happiness. But Louise had become engaged before she graduated, to a man immeasurably her superior in mental ability, and she had settled down to echoing his opinions. Ellen often wondered if no ghosts sat opposite to Louise at the breakfast table; but she could not disturb her by any amount of banter.

Evelyn Ames, the other disputant, had been an enigma at college. She had attracted many on first acquaintance; but had baffled them at the point where acquaintance ripens into intimacy. No one dared call herself Evelyn's friend, except such as were content with the formal graciousness of her ways. And yet she had been a force in college life, had shown both courage and enthusiasm at critical moments.

She had recently announced her engagement, and was naïve in her disclosures of her own feelings in the present discussion. She was thoroughly at her ease with her companions; for since she had left college, she had surprised many, whom she had before held at a distance, into very real friendships, taking them unawares by her affection for Bryn Mawr and its associations. These three had discovered that her inaptitude for fellowship at college was the result of a former starvation of her affections. The daughter of a widow, a woman of small means, of cold nature and social ambition, Evelyn had not been allowed to find out the softer side of her nature, till she had been sent to Bryn Mawr by a rich and domineering relative.

When Edith and Ellen joined them, Louise was saying, "The only way is to try to divert his mind from his work."

"But that doesn't seem to me at all the nicest way," said Evelyn. "I think you ought to be able to help a man in his work."

"At that rate," said Edith, as she poured out a cup of tea, "Ellen should marry a public man and help him write his----"

"Yes," sniffed Louise contemptuously, "like Mrs. Jones, Dick says----"

"Oh, Nell," and Evelyn turned quickly to Ellen, "somebody told me about the speech you're to make. What a splendid chance you've got."

"I don't know about that," answered Ellen, "it's the hardest thing I ever had to do. I can't for the life of me----"

"But just think," interrupted Evelyn, "it means Bryn Mawr. That's what we think of when we think of college. Oh! I wish I could just for once say what I think of the dear place. But I never can talk about it in a sensible way."

"Just as well," put in Edith, "it's one of the things it doesn't pay to be sensible about."

"Edith, what do you mean?" interjected Louise, "when you speak in public you can't talk twaddle. Dick says, common sense is the only thing that holds people."

"He's faithful to his opinions anyway," answered Edith with a friendly nod, "you've just as much as ever."

"But, Nell," asked Evelyn, leaning forward in her interest, "what are you going to say?"

"That's what I don't know. I've gone from pillar to post trying to find out and----"

"No wonder you're weary," said Edith, "wasting your time that way. Why on earth didn't you ask us? Please tell us where you did go."

"Oh, to several places," answered Ellen evasively. "I never thought of bothering you people, you have so many outside things to attend to."

"Yes to be sure, husbands and children and all the----"

"You know that isn't what I mean," objected Ellen, setting down her teacup. "You always say you aren't interested in movements."

"Oh, no!" corrected Edith, "not movements."--

"Well, anyway I didn't succeed with the other people. 'College training fits us to be citizens'; 'college teaches us to live by ideas'; 'college is of value to none but those gifted with a susceptibility for the exquisite refinements of the intellectual existence.' What am I to do with that?"

Edith and Evelyn exchanged amused glances, while Louise looked scornful. Ellen continued, "I have to think how my words will affect Bryn Mawr, and also how they will strike my audience."

"Don't forget yourself," said Edith. "You've a way of leaving a bit of yourself behind when you get to work."

"Oh, it will come to you, don't fear," broke in Evelyn. "You do all that sort of thing so well, you'll be sure to make a hit. You couldn't help it talking about Bryn Mawr. If only I could do it. My four years there made life worth living."

"Come now, Evelyn," said Edith teasingly, "it will never do for you to say things like that, and you just engaged. Please think of poor Mr. Brandon. He'll get to hate Bryn Mawr, and I won't blame him a scrap. You must----"

"That has nothing to do with it," protested Evelyn, looking embarrassed, "but I know nothing could have been at all as it is if I hadn't gone there. With me the trouble wasn't so much a dearth of resources as a lack of opportunity for devotion. When I got to college I found that the thing demanded of me was devotion to Bryn Mawr. Every one expected it and I gave myself up to serving the first thing that needed me."

"But that wasn't anything in Bryn Mawr," objected Louise, "that was you."

"Don't you think," interposed Edith, "that the personal romance of our lives takes the place of all impersonal romance of that sort in time?"

"Perhaps," assented Evelyn slowly, "but it is the one romance that hasn't to rub up against realities. We lived there in a world of our own creation--a land of dreams. Our dreams for Bryn Mawr may always be realized; they are never shown to be impossible."

"Well, really," exclaimed Louise, "you seem to be getting very high falutin, all of you. My feeling about college is that if it hadn't been for my friends it would have been a hateful place--all hard work and nothing else. It's the friendships you make there that count."

"To be sure they count," said Edith, "but you might say the same of boarding-school. I know what it is. It's the student government."

"Now just listen to that," cried Ellen, "you're as bad as other people, you don't agree at all. You, Edith, talk of self-government, but that isn't general. And I can't tie myself down to Bryn Mawr. We all think Bryn Mawr the best of----"

"Twenty years hence this weather May tempt us from office stools; We may be slow on the feather, And seem to the boys old fools. But we'll still swing together And swear by the best of schools,"

sang a merry voice in the doorway and with one accord the girls sprang to their feet to welcome the singer. But she continued serenely,--"The same idea may be found in the lines of another well-known song:

"'When the cares of life o'ertake us--'"

The last lines were lost in the vehemence with which Ellen and Edith greeted the newcomer.

"You piece of absurdity," urged Edith impatiently, "stop your mimicry and tell us how you got here."

"Without adventure, my excitable Edith, till I came upon this strange gathering, perhaps the strangest gathering ever known to the scientist,--for as Leuwenhoek says----" The change of voice in the last words, and the immediate response from her listeners showed a traditional joke. But she went on immediately, "I'm on my way to Bryn Mawr and I dropped in to remind you that you've all promised to bear me company. I was afraid you might forget. A trip there from Philadelphia is less of an undertaking than one from Emmonsville, Montana. And I'm going to pass the night with you, fair Ellen. I wrote to you warning you of my intention about two weeks ago. My trunk is already at your house, and I have been there; but was sent to bring you home. Your mother was afraid you would forget you were to dine with Mrs. Boughton and help her with a Dean or a Bishop,--something architectural and impressive."

"I had forgotten all about it and I haven't a minute to lose," said Ellen, as she and Marjorie hurried off amid the protests of the others.

Ellen begged Marjorie to come upstairs with her and amuse her while she dressed; but Marjorie refused to talk, insisting on hearing all about Ellen's visits of the afternoon. She passed her comment on the characters in the narrative, comment genial, friendly, sympathetic, till Ellen came to Bertha Christie's part. On a sudden Marjorie's indignation blazed out.

"Ellen, is it that you have failed to understand Bryn Mawr, or that you have willfully misunderstood? You have accepted the judgment of the outside world and have treated those freaks as representatives of Bryn Mawr. Have you forgotten how they were ignored, jeered at, anything but accepted by everybody but a few freshmen? They defied college spirit, mocked at common sense and still do. And the world sets them down as types! Bertha Christie with her menagerie of intimates intolerant of the commonplace! I could pity them if people like you didn't make them of so much importance."

"Intolerant, maybe I am," in answer to a feeble protest from Ellen, "I'm rather proud of being intolerant of a set of sophisticated hermit-crabs, a few puling nuns who've gone to school to the melancholy Jacques. No wonder I hear queer things about Bryn Mawr when you go to them for ideas and pass by Edith and Evelyn and a host of others. It's enough to make one turn cynic. Tolerance! Tolerance of evil, breadth of mind it calls itself, is the most discouraging thing I meet with. And yet how absurd it all is. You, so well-balanced, so lofty in your aims, going to those geese to learn wisdom----"

"They're not geese," protested Ellen at length, "they're unusually clever girls."

"'A goose,' please remember," quoted Marjorie, regaining her temper with the reassertion of her sense of humour, "is none the less a goose, though sun and stars be minced to yield him stuffing! You'd better be off or you'll have to apologize to the Bishop for keeping him from his dinner."

II

Greatly to her astonishment Ellen found that she had fallen to the Bishop's care at dinner. She was not, however, easily appalled by distinguished people, and she chatted lightly to the stranger. His beautiful face, benignant and merry, set her completely at her ease,--the secure ease of the American woman, it seemed to him as he made mental notes of the effect produced by the exquisite dress, the vivacity and readiness, the almost boyish frankness, the worldly wisdom. And all the time he wondered why there recurred to him the thought of a serious nature, an intellectual nature, free from worldliness and triviality.

Ellen was giving herself up to the enjoyment of the moment, giving her best to a listener so responsive and stimulating and she was all the more ready to do so because of the concentrated thought of the day. But she was not to escape for long, for she heard her companion say, "You have been a student at Bryn Mawr, they tell me, Miss Blake, and I have been greatly interested in hearing so; for I think it a most lovely spot, quite an ideal sort of place. Its airs of age are very clever too, very deceptive. It impressed me as an old place. An almost reverential feeling stirred me, so marked was the sense of dignity. It is in a word academic. Everywhere one may see that bewildering mixture of history and aspiration."

"We can't help feeling a little proud that after so few years of existence it should begin to be impressive as well as beautiful," said Ellen, who hardly welcomed the return to the subject that had engrossed her thoughts so long, though she could not resist the enthusiasm of one familiar with the English universities.

"Of course, in this country one never wonders at rapidity of growth, but I must confess that æsthetic charm does not always accompany it. That delightful president of yours has secured both."

"She is a worker of wonders. She has plans for the place now that exceed all our dreams."

"Of course years may mellow the ugliest spot and association endear it, but after all 'virtue is loveliest in lovely guise.' The gift of beauty is not to be despised. Even the most casual visitor must acknowledge a spell in that college of yours altogether independent of the mysterious charm that you who know it intimately find for yourselves,--to some degree what I am sure people would find in my own university were they to go there ignorant of its wealth of history. But they are outsiders," he continued musingly, almost as though he had forgotten the existence of the girl to whom he was talking, "they see only the outward show, they are forever shut out from a share in that spirit that is the immortal part of the university, that persists in spite of change."

The old man's memories awoke at these words, and in his reminiscences he unfolded for Ellen picture after picture of that old world school, and flattered her with a sight of the thing her Alma Mater might become. For she listened to tales that made distant things seem real and present to her, stories of the frailties of men whose names had been beacons to her intellect. Her emotions were stirred by the tender humour that summoned up for her the personalities that had touched his own boyhood, and had left their impress on the life of Oxford.

The bishop's attention was challenged by a gentleman across the table with a question on South Africa, and for the rest of the evening Ellen shared her friend with the other guests.

Before she left she found a chance to tell Mrs. Boughton how delightful her companion had been. "Well, Ellen, to be candid," with an indulgent smile at the girl whom she liked in spite of her brains, "I should not have honoured you so much had he not asked to have you for a neighbour. But you needn't lay the credit to your attractions. I was running over the people he would meet this evening and when I came to you, that he might not expect an angel, I mentioned your only faults,--that you had been to college and spelled woman with a large W. But I told him that as a rule you kept these peculiarities in the background. However it was your having been to college that interested him, for he wanted to see what sort of women Bryn Mawr turned out. Of course I told him he couldn't judge by you--you were an exception--that he would have to see a few specimens like your friend Miss Christie or Augusta Barneson Coles."

As she drove home Ellen's thoughts turned to Marjorie Heywood and her plans for the next day. The talk at dinner had decided Ellen to go with the others. Though she lived so near, she found little pleasure in going out to Bryn Mawr nowadays, for everything seemed changed and she felt nothing but resentment that the past should have been so easily forgotten, its ways so quickly superseded.

Her careless reading of Marjorie's letter had made her arrival a surprise, and Ellen experienced a sense of relief at Marjorie's appearance. Her relief showed how apprehensive she had been of the changes possible in ten years' time, and above all in a ten years so trying as those that Marjorie had passed through. Just when she had seemed well started in her chosen work she had had to give up everything and care for a worthless brother. She had had to fight poverty for herself and him, and for him disease and evil. The cheerful letters that had come to Ellen now and then, had brought her little satisfaction, they were so impersonal. It had been in vain that Edith reminded her that Marjorie had always been impersonal, reticent. Putting herself into everything she did and said was her way of talking about herself. It had been in vain too that Edith contended that Marjorie's enthusiasm for righteousness and humorous freshness of mind were her safeguard against old age. "Marjorie will be just the same," she maintained, "when she is a hundred years old." To-night for the first time, Ellen believed her. Ten years! Could it be ten years? And Marjorie still the same, the old spirit of raillery gleaming in her eyes, the irresistible quiver at the corners of the mouth?

Ellen found her mother and Marjorie in the full swing of a good talk. They had been linked in their sympathetic understanding of one another since early in freshman year, when Marjorie had spent a Sunday with Ellen. And to-night they had no remembrance of the interval that had passed since they had last been together. Ellen longed to throw herself into one of the easy chairs and share in the ardour of conversation; but she remembered her speech.

"If I am to fall in with your plan, and I am afraid I am too weak to defy your indomitable will, I must write that wretched speech to-night. I don't dare trust myself to write it at Bryn Mawr with you to beguile me," was her answer to Marjorie's entreaties that she should stop and tell them all about her evening.

"Oh, sit up all night, if you'll get to Bryn Mawr by doing it," answered Marjorie with a nod to Mrs. Blake who was about to remonstrate. "I'll assist you by the subtle influence of my presence and read the while.

"What do I want to read? Oh, anything at all, thank you, Mrs. Blake,--something that will keep me from interrupting Ellen. Yes, that's just the thing," and she took the book that Mrs. Blake handed her and started upstairs.

As the girls reached the room Ellen said, "I've a good mind to give the whole thing up. I'm perfectly hopeless about it."

"You'll do nothing of the kind," asserted Marjorie. "You'll just sit down there and write."

"It will be a perfunctory business at that rate," objected Ellen, "I don't feel as though I could write a word."

"Never mind that," retorted Marjorie, "but just see that you get through with it to-night. A body can't get any good of you with it on your mind. And that's one of the things I came on for."

With that Marjorie opened her book and Ellen sat down to her task. It went slowly at first. She wrote little and that with constant reference to her notes. But after a time she seemed to find the thoughts coming more quickly.

Marjorie's book did not seem to hold her attention. Her thoughts seemed borne beyond it, and her eyes wandered about the room, noting the restfulness of the golden brown on the walls, the preponderance of etchings--landscapes for the most part--the low bookcase stretching the full length of the wall, the ornaments, obviously the choice of one more susceptible to form than to colour. There was in the room nothing brilliant, nothing conspicuous. Taking in the details, her glance came at length to rest on Ellen herself as she bent over the old-fashioned desk. She was turned so that Marjorie could see a little more than her profile. And Marjorie's expression was one of affectionate amusement as she watched the serious, almost stern lines of the face, the gravity in the eyes, when they were occasionally raised.

For some time Marjorie observed her closely and then broke in upon the silence with,--"I'm drifting irresistibly to conversation or drowsiness, I don't know which, but in any case I'd much better away to bed. So good-night and good luck."

Then just as she reached the door she turned laughingly to Ellen and said, "Your hair is just as nice as ever; but I'm afraid you've got the world tied to your little finger."

But Ellen merely nodded and smiled at the sound of Marjorie's voice, not hearing one word of the taunt.

III

Marjorie had had her way and the five friends were now spending the last day of their visit to Bryn Mawr, as they had spent the others, picking up old threads and discovering new ones.

The changes since their day were many and to Marjorie, seeing them for the first time, they seemed like personal affronts, rousing in her that passion of resentment which is the lunacy of the graduate. The old gate was done away with. The old road no longer existed. A long stretch of buildings struck her eye unfamiliarly. Taylor had shrunk itself among the trees and its dear ugliness was retired from the gaze of approaching visitors. But the alterations were so skillful that the alumnæ soon felt an admiring ownership in them and quickly embraced the changes.

Almost the only familiar figures to be seen were those of college servants there since the beginning, one of whom, William, once well-nigh universal in his activities, was now so highly differentiated that he seemed to do nothing but carry the mails. He was a repository of traditions, and he delighted forlorn alumnæ by his air of proprietorship in the past as well as in the present. Small wonder that, when they found their doings sunk into a mere tradition and marked the shortness of memory and self-importance of the undergraduates, they turned for cheer to William's flattery and refused to consider its ambiguities.

"No, no, miss, none of our young ladies now are like the young ladies when you were here. In your time they certainly was young ladies.

"And your name, miss? It's the same I suppose, I'm afraid to call any of you by name, there's so many married, you see, and they might be offended if I didn't remember the gentleman's name, you see. I keep track of you all by reading the list of names and who's dead and married. Talking of marriages, miss, so Dr. ---- is married. Well, he's the last of our professors I'd a thought of marrying. Well, changes is changes, miss, when all's said and done."

On this their last afternoon, Susan Everett and Beatrice O'Hara had joined the five where they were sitting under the cherry tree in front of Taylor. Their talk was of the undergraduates and the zest with which they listened to tales of those first days.

"Their seeming disregard of us and our doings is the result of ignorance, not of indifference," Edith was saying, "but their curiosity is now thoroughly aroused."

"Oh, yes indeed," groaned Marjorie, "they've decided they'll collect the traditions and if you've the age of Methuselah and the memory of Macaulay, they wind you up and you can be doing nothing at all but telling them stories. And you've to stop and explain to them who the Polyglot is and the Gifted, and even I can't quite make clear to them those treasures of individuality. All you get for your pains is, 'Oh yes! one of the professors.'"

Her plaint seemed to be justified, for across from Pembroke some girls came running and when they saw the group under the tree, one of them called out,--"Oh, here you are, Miss Heywood! May we not come and learn some more history?"

And as though Marjorie's consent were a foregone conclusion, they sat down on the grass at her feet and settled themselves as children will for the treat in store.

"Come, Tommie, tell us a story and play the fool for us, as you used to do," said Susan Everett lapsing into the old name and desirous that Marjorie should assume her old character.

"I should have drifted naturally into my accustomed rôle, had you kept still a moment; but introductory remarks are death to spontaneity. And, like Amanda Jones, I want my little fun spontaneous.

"Now, you never knew Amanda Jones," she continued to the undergraduates, "but by that historic utterance she deprived you of a custom. Did you ever think why you never had a class-day at Bryn Mawr? You know you never have had one, and if you ever do the ghost of Amanda Jones will haunt the campus.