Part 9

When the class of '9-- assembled a few days later in Denbigh Students' Parlour, they expected to nominate and forthwith elect their permanent officers; but on the latter point a considerable surprise was in store for them. After the nomination votes for president were cast and counted, and the result announced--Shirley and Pauline far in the lead, and very close together, Peggy a modest third, and a few other names straggling hopelessly in the rear--the chairman rose to tell them that a change in the usual order of proceedings was proposed. The nominations for president were now before them; the election was postponed, by order of the chair, until that day week, in order that during the interval the class might weigh well its measures before taking the final--Peggy's tone almost implied, the fatal--step. In the stupefied silence which followed this announcement, she went on to give the arguments in favour of the new course. It would give them time to look into the qualifications of the candidates and form their decision intelligently; it would prevent mistakes which they might deplore hereafter; and--superbly--it would mark the beginning of a new epoch in class politics. The candidates were bound in honour not to canvass for themselves, or to allow others to do so, and the final ballot was to be cast according to each voter's conviction of what would be best for the class. No haste in deciding, no prejudice, no regard to personal influence; but careful consideration, and final action on the highest and most disinterested grounds--that was the idea.

When the other nominations were in, and the meeting adjourned, the class of '9-- went its various ways homeward sorely bewildered. It does not do, as a rule, to call upon a freshman class for too much disinterested consideration when it is just recovering from the effects of a freshman play; but the undergraduate mind will usually rise to a hook that is baited with the word "epoch-making." So the members of '9-- eager to make an epoch, fell very earnestly and ardently to work at the business of weighing and comparing the two chief candidates before them; Peggy's name was very little under discussion, for her chances were hardly to be considered seriously, and, as interest centred in the presidency, the candidates for other offices got very little attention. But concerning the merits and demerits of Shirley and Pauline, the course of debate ran high and warm; during the seven days assigned them, the freshmen talked of little else, and strove hard to prove, by quite a heated exhibition of partisan spirit, that they were political animals after all, while the two principal nominees affected an Olympian indifference to the result, and used a dignified reserve when greeting each other in the corridors of Taylor. And amused upper classmen made laughing guesses as to the outcome of the campaign.

But the new plan did not work exactly as its framers had expected, and in a day or two there were rumours that things were going wrong. By the middle of the week these rumours had gathered such strength that Charlotte Meredith, M. A., and Fellow of Bryn Mawr College, felt called upon to visit her freshman cousin, and hear the news. Accordingly she knocked at the door of 39 Pembroke East on the afternoon of the fifth day following the nominations. Charlotte Meredith, whom Pauline called the Cynic, was a tall, slight girl, pale and clean-looking, with quantities of very black hair; she had bright, near-sighted grey eyes behind her glasses, and walked with a stoop; her usual expression was one of whimsical boredom. There was probably no one in the world whom Pauline would have cared less to see at her door that afternoon, but she welcomed the unexpected guest with almost her usual readiness, and tried to cover the real hollowness of her greeting by eager hospitality in the line of tea and jam. Peggy was there, too, spreading crackers with a worried air; and both girls seemed somewhat harassed by Charlotte's questions as to the outlook for the election, delivered with her habitual slight drawl and air of fatigued politeness.

"I take a lively interest in it," she told them, in a tone expressive of anything rather than liveliness, as she stirred her tea; "and I hope you won't let the fact that you are both candidates embarrass you. This impersonal campaign of yours is highly novel, and your effort to elevate class politics into a thing of moral beauty smacks delightfully of altruism, but may I ask how the thing is likely--in the vulgar phrase--to pan out?" She nibbled her cracker appreciatively, and gave the discomfited pair a questioning smile. Peggy squirmed a little, and said nothing; but Pauline burst out,

"The whole affair is too miserable and humiliating for words, and has panned out like--like--Charlotte, it is literally past speech! I am ashamed of belonging to such a small-minded sex, for the girls have acted abominably."

Charlotte smiled benignly. "As I understand that your reform is in part a crusade against a statement of mine that woman is not a political animal, would you mind telling me whether their abominableness throws any light on that point?"

"Political animals?" cried Pauline; "I should say they were! If we have a rag of reputation left by the end of the week, I shall be surprised."

"And by 'we' you mean----"

"Shirley Nairn and myself; Peggy seems to have been spared."

"Yes," Peggy assented with the utmost affability, "they are after bigger game, thank Heaven!" And then, the flood-gates being opened, Charlotte was favoured with a full, if not very coherent account of '9--'s enormities. Events had taken a course which was not to be wondered at. In the ranks of '9--, deliberation had brought on discussion, discussion had led to dispute; and in the clash of warring factions, each side had brought so many charges of unfitness against the opposing candidate that Pauline declared her own character, as well as Shirley's, blackened for life.

"That is doing fairly well for a purely impersonal campaign not yet five days old," was Charlotte's grim comment; "I suppose you do not lack for friends to keep you posted on the state of public opinion."

"My dear Miss Meredith," responded Peggy genially, "the only reason that the door is not at this moment besieged with news from the seat of war is that the rest of the class are at freshman drill, which Pauline and I are sinfully cutting. Only think, Polly, how their tongues are wagging even now! And how----"

A resounding knock at the door cut her short.

"There!" she groaned resignedly, "drill must be over. Come in!" And as the three turned towards the door, Pauline said savagely, "Here come all my dearest friends!"

But it was Shirley Nairn who pushed the door open, and at sight of Charlotte stopped doubtfully on the threshold. Over her shoulder, they saw the frightened face of Katharine Holland. Shirley was looking at Pauline.

"I have something rather important to say," she said; "it concerns us both, and"--she hesitated for a barely appreciable second--"and no one else. Except Miss Holland," frigidly, with a glance over her shoulder.

"Oh, come in, come in!" cried Pauline, "and if it is about this wretched election, let us have it out. Charlotte and Peggy know the worst, I think. Come in."

Shirley advanced, and Katharine shrinkingly followed her; the uneasy air of the latter, and her apprehensive looks, made Charlotte sit up with an expression of interest.

"The plot thickens," she soliloquized to her teacup; and Pauline, hearing her, knit her brows impatiently.

"Well?" she said rather shortly to Shirley. Her tone brought a flush to the other's cheek; she hesitated for another moment, and then said coldly,

"Miss Holland will explain."

Upon being brought thus abruptly into prominence, Katharine Holland silently besought them all for mercy with her shamed eyes; then, urged by a monitory look from Shirley, who leaned beside the table in frozen silence, she brought out a foolish and pitiable tale. It was simply an account of various silly slanders, some directed against Shirley, and others against Pauline, with which she confessed she had regaled a company of upper classmen, apparently only to amuse them; and she interrupted her confession with weak excuses, like a guilty child. In her humiliation she made an uncomfortable spectacle, but Shirley said sternly, "Finish."

"Oh, let her be!" cried Pauline, impatient of the scene; "who cares to hear all this? We know it already."

"There is one thing yet," said Shirley, "but I will tell it myself; I made her tell all the rest, so that you might know whether you ought to take her word against me. She has accused me of going about to ask for votes." The speaker's tone was stout enough, but she leaned heavily on the table, "so I brought her here to retract it."

Stung by a generous indignation, Pauline sprang to her feet. "Would you have believed that of me?" she cried. "She need not trouble to retract it." Then, turning to Katharine, "That is quite enough, Miss Holland," she said, and the penitent stumbled to the door.

As the door closed upon her, Charlotte, who had finished her tea in silence, put down her cup with an air of decision, and turning to Shirley, said suddenly,

"Wasn't it a little hard on her, Miss Nairn?"

"To punish her for telling a campaign lie?" demanded Shirley.

"Please leave the campaign out of the question for a moment. She doesn't seem particularly venomous; don't you think she deserved a little mercy?"

"She is a poor creature," said Shirley setting her lips, "and deserves nothing."

"She is a poor creature," Charlotte assented in her easy drawl, "whom you have made poorer by the loss of her self-respect. Why?"

"Because she lied about us," retorted Pauline, rushing in to defend their joint position.

"Would you even have given her lies a thought," asked her cousin with a little more animation, "if they hadn't interfered with your precious campaign? You have just made her pay for your own mistake in attempting the impossible; you began by trying impersonality in politics, and you have ended by humiliating a classmate for indulging in a few exaggerated personalities at your expense. Is it very consistent?"

Struck dumb by surprise at this attack, Pauline did not answer, but Shirley broke in, with hot cheeks,

"It was a case of self-defence, Miss Meredith."

Charlotte, as she rose to go, smiled complete comprehension into the younger girl's troubled eyes; it was easy to see that the rivals already valued each other's good opinion beyond the votes of the class, and she scented fresh developments. "They won't be a bad team," she decided on her way home.

Her departure left the other three somewhat at a loss for words, but Shirley, with an evident effort, broke the uncomfortable silence.

"We've made a mistake somewhere," she said hopelessly, "and everything has gone miserably wrong; but I hope you will believe that I meant well, even in bringing Katharine Holland here." And she turned towards the door.

"Don't go," said Pauline; "sit down, and have some tea." Then seeing that the other hesitated, "You know that I don't care a rap about those tales, and I know that you don't either," she said, stoutly. "I am glad that you came. Won't you please stay?"

Peggy, who had been absorbed in circumventing the treacherous tendencies of her jam-sandwich, emerged victorious from the struggle to say soothingly,

"Nobody ever believes campaign lies, anyway."

"Except the voters," was Shirley's dry response, as she dropped into a chair.

During the next half-hour, both Pauline and Shirley announced their unalterable intention of withdrawing from the race; each declared that, for the good of the class, the other ought to be president, but neither would consent to her rival's retiring, so that, as Peggy said, the only way out was for both to stay in. The debate ended in a decision to abide the issue, and ignore the slanderous tongues, whereupon they parted much uplifted in spirit, and were very solemn at dinner that night, as befitted noble-hearted victims who suffered for their efforts to elevate their kind.

On the evening before the election, Charlotte Meredith caught Shirley in the act of waylaying an Airlie freshman in the hall. Her victim, in gymnasium dress, with her mask and foil, was evidently overdue at a fencing-lesson, and anxious to be off, but Shirley was pitiless, and pinned her to the spot, while she discoursed at length.

"The impersonal campaign is still on, I see," murmured Charlotte, as she passed.

Shirley's face blazed. "I was telling her the truth as to some lies about Pauline," she flashed out, and then looked as if she could have bitten her tongue for speaking.

The freshman, grateful for an interruption, escaped.

"You needn't have told me that you were canvassing for Pauline, any more than Pauline needed to tell me this morning, when I met her coming out of a Briony girl's room, that she was canvassing for you. A fine consistent pair you are! But it won't make any difference," she added, darkly, with a return to her usual whimsical manner.

The evening of the election buried the reform fathoms deep; for Peggy was elected president. When the little band of reformers entered the students' parlour, where the class was already assembled, they received the impression of a huddled flock of sheep, with lowered heads at bay. The evening's proceedings deepened this impression. The class of '9-- was worried and bewildered and disgusted; it had travailed in the throes of indecision until it sickened of both alternatives, and fell, like many another, upon the middle course. That course was the choice of Peggy, astonished Peggy, by an overwhelming majority in the good old follow-my-leader fashion; while Pauline and Shirley watched their airy fabric of reform topple to ruin, and then talked of other things during the counting of the votes.

Charlotte Meredith laughed over the result with the rest of the on-lookers, but, rather surprisingly, took the part of the would-be reformers, after a subtle fashion of her own. "After all," she remarked, with an air of elaborate deference to a loudly critical sophomore, "even you and I, Miss West, were freshmen once." And Miss West turned a slow red, and refrained from speech.

It was Charlotte's custom to have her freshman cousin at most of her small teas, so Pauline found nothing remarkable in the appearance, about this time, of a small card on her table, reading, "Tea at five. C. M."; but it was embarrassingly unusual to find in her cousin's study, not the expected circle of graduates, with a senior or two, but only Charlotte herself and Shirley Nairn. The two guests were duly regaled with tea and bonbons by Miss Meredith, who, ignoring late events, tried to put them at their ease. In her whimsical way, she liked them both. There was, however, a spark of covert amusement in her eyes as she passed the teacups; and Pauline, writhing inwardly under this satirical observation, finally came out with:

"I suppose you were pleased with the result of our campaign."

"Naturally," said Charlotte blandly. "One likes to have a guess confirmed--and I was sure of the result; in that way I was pleased. And you?"

Pauline, playing with her teacup, remarked that people weren't usually pleased with having made fools of themselves. Her tone asked for a contradiction, but it did not come, and the three sat silent, listening to the singing of the kettle over the spirit-flame, until Shirley said abruptly:

"Miss Meredith, you were right about the political animals."

Charlotte raised her eyebrows enquiringly, but was perhaps not surprised by what she heard; she may have already reflected that defeat, always hard to bear, comes in its most unbearable form when it makes its victims ridiculous. Shirley and Pauline, having been baulked by very small means in a project of mighty import, had a galling sense of the absurdity of their position, and were bitterly ready to turn on their ungrateful classmates. Therefore Charlotte had the satisfaction of seeing them come over to her point of view with exaggerated enthusiasm. They could not put too strongly the impossibility of any attempt to educate women politically; they thought that a few--a very few, they sadly added--might be trusted for public-spirited and disinterested action; but the mass of women were not large-minded enough to rise above personal considerations.

"What other considerations did the poor things have, in your case?" asked their hostess. "A class president's duties are not so weighty that she needs any distinguished qualifications, and the choice is simply a matter of personal liking. You insisted on a week's analysis of personal likes and dislikes, and the natural result was exaggeration and slander."

The freshmen sat in crestfallen silence. They had acknowledged their defeat; must they now acknowledge that it was deserved? Putting down her plate and leaning a little forward in her chair, Charlotte regarded them earnestly.

"Let me tell you something," she said; "I have not lived in college six years for nothing; I have learned a great deal in that time; but it did not take me six years to learn not to waste my energy on trifles. In this campaign of yours, you have used up an amount of force which would have accomplished wonders in a serious cause. Has it paid?"

"I'm afraid not," they said.

"It is an odd thing, too," said Charlotte, in a casual tone, "to notice that in nine cases out of ten the popular instinct is a safer guide than the popular reason. Your class reasoned itself into a frenzy, and then, by instinct, did the right thing."

At this unexpected tribute to their conqueror, the two vanquished leaders looked a bit blank; perhaps they had nursed a faint egotistical hope of some day seeing the class brought to a realizing sense of its mistake in electing Peggy, and Charlotte's view was a blow. She saw the effect of her words.

"They did the right thing," she repeated, "in choosing a girl who will be an excellent figurehead for--a coalition--" Charlotte smiled, a little self-complacently; she rather prided herself on the sensitiveness of her feeling for things that were in the air--"a public-spirited, disinterested----"

"Oh, don't!" pleaded Shirley; "I am sick of it. We have been talking awful cant, haven't we?"

"Suppose we talk about that," said Charlotte.

And they did. They talked about it until the late sunlight faded, and twilight came down on the little study; and then, in the gathering gloom, they talked about it still, and all the more freely. The older girl, who had tilted with windmills in her time, opened her heart to these young Quixotes, fresh from their first fall, on the difference between cant and college spirit; and the two freshmen, sitting in the twilight with tingling cheeks, pledged themselves silently to the larger vision.

As they wended their way homeward across the dusky campus, they were very silent; when Pauline spoke once, it was only to say, "I am sorry I called her the Cynic."

And Charlotte, watching their dark receding forms as she leaned from her open window, hoped that she hadn't been preaching. It was the old, old antithesis between enthusiasm and experience; and after all there was much to be said for enthusiasm. Those two youngsters had brought something out of their mischance, if it was only their liking for each other. "I wish I were a freshman again," sighed Charlotte to the stars.

_Cora Armistead Hardy, '99._

_A REMINISCENCE_

We had met, after two years or so out in the "wide, wide world" of which we had sung so dolefully, the last weeks of senior year. I discovered that Evelyn had substituted soft "fluffs" for the stiff collars she had clung to tenaciously through four years of college, and she admitted that after the first shock she quite liked the new way I did my hair. Later she also admitted that she made a practice of carrying a parasol, or even of wearing a hat, when it was excessively sunny. Emboldened by the confession, I ventured to produce some embroidery and went to work as if such femininity had always been my pose. Then we talked, and exchanged various bits of news about the members of the class who had wandered so far since our separation.

"Wasn't it sad about Janet?" I asked at last. And then as Evelyn kept silent, I went on, "you knew, didn't you?--She died last November just a little while after her engagement was announced. It was typhoid fever. I thought you knew, of course."

"Yes, I knew," said Evelyn, and went on examining the bookcase.

"I think I'll tell you about it," she exclaimed at last. "It won't do any good. But I think I'd like to tell you. You know Janey and I were awfully good friends while she was at college. We even thought of rooming together, but we were both so well satisfied with our single suites that we decided not to. We were almost like roommates, though. Janet always saw that I was registered when I went home and I always stole rolls for her when she was locked out from breakfast. We wore each other's clothes indiscriminately. I have one of her handkerchiefs yet. You know how it was. We were just awfully good friends."

"I know--Janet would do anything under the sun for any one she liked--go on."

"Well, then she left college. She didn't like it--one bit. She was perfectly frank and said she wanted to come out before she was twenty. Do you know how it is in those western towns? They think a girl is antique when she's twenty-one. She came out and was a great success, I believe. You know how she stopped writing to first one, then another of us, and we were all rather hurt about it."

"Well, she _was_ a disappointment. I had always thought her so superbly loyal, and we heard that she said college was 'such a bore.'"

"Yes, I believed that too, but not until I had written several letters after she had stopped. Finally I gave up and thought I'd never hear from her again. I felt pretty bitter about it. At last she wrote me and told me of her engagement. Just the real old Janey, it was--called me by some absurd nickname she'd invented, confessed that she'd been horrid about not writing, and then said that although the engagement wasn't to be announced immediately, she wanted me to be one of the first to know, and would I congratulate her?"

"When was this?" I asked, after a pause. Evelyn had seized my scissors and seemed to be too much interested in snipping ends of embroidery silk to remember Janet or me, or any one else. She dropped the scissors and took up a book of college kodaks. I repeated my question, just to remind her that I was still there.

She turned her back and went on. "That was some time in May. It came to me at a most unpropitious time. Some member of the family had been ill and I was tired and cross and feeling unjustifiably righteous. So I sat down then and there and told poor old happy Janet how nice and high-minded I had been about writing and how unfriendly she had been. I said of course I hoped she would be happy and all that but of course after this long hiatus we could never be friends in the same old way. Oh, it was an icy letter, just as politely nasty as I could make it! I sent it off and afterwards I felt just exactly the way I used to when I was a small child and had been naughty and wanted to make up. But I didn't. I tried to forget it. I was very busy and had a lot of people visiting me, last summer. So the thought of Janet didn't come into my head very often and when it did I mentally changed the subject. Of course I never heard from her again.