Part 11

“Come, Miss Harmon, be fair; it is one thing to write nonsense intended only for one’s own eyes, and another to put it before the public. Clarissa, I know, did not have the notes published.” Then Polly turned away.

Polly was by no means comfortable as she left Fay House, and the better to disprove the accusation made by Elizabeth, she went to the stationer’s in the Square to buy a copy of the newspaper. It was the last one to be had. “It’s been in the greatest demand,” explained the attendant. “Some kind of a college article, I believe; I haven’t had time to look at it myself.”

Polly folded the paper and walked down Brattle Street. “I believe I’ll ask Clarissa point blank.” Polly had a slightly uncomfortable doubt as she thought of the article, and it happened, as it so often does happen in such cases, that when she met Clarissa she could not ask the question. “If she hasn’t heard, it would only disturb her,” was her excuse. Afterwards she was sorry that she had not at once gone to her.

Within twenty-four hours almost every one at Radcliffe had read the article. Those who did not own papers borrowed them, and the critics and partisans of Clarissa ranged themselves strongly on one side or the other. Some, while blaming Clarissa for letting her notes get into print, said that it was no more than Professor Z deserved, since the tone of his lectures had never been sufficiently academic. Others were glad that he was now absent on his Sabbatical year, for if he were lecturing in Cambridge they were sure that his wrath would have been pretty keenly felt. Ruth, of course, took Annabel Harmon’s view of the affair. Julia, while loath to think that Clarissa had done this in a spirit of malice, thought that she had allowed herself to be carried away by the spirit of fun, without realizing that the whole thing was a deflection from the straight line of honor. She and Pamela discussed the matter at some length, and very quickly agreed that the relation of a professor to a small class was a confidential relation, and that only an instructor who was on very good terms with his class would talk to them after the fashion of Professor Z. Consequently, to quote his direct language was like telling family secrets.

Yet with it all nobody dared speak to Clarissa. They quoted what this professor or that professor’s wife had said; how one had declared that nothing would induce him to lecture at Radcliffe, how another had termed this the natural result of trying to benefit women,—they would merely hold up their benefactors to ridicule,—and still no one dared reprove Clarissa. The Western girl wrapped herself in a forbidding manner, and not even Polly dared speak of the article or its effects.

But one day, turning the matter over in her mind, she came to a decision. “A party will be the very thing,” she said to herself, “and Clarissa shall give it. Ruth and Julia and Lois Forsaith, oh, yes, and Pamela, and two or three others,—as many as she can afford chairs for,—it will be the very thing.”

Clarissa’s room was in a small, neat house in a neat side street. Her landlady had other boarders, but she took a real interest in them all.

Clarissa’s room looked on a little yard filled with pear trees, and the children of the neighborhood played constantly under her windows. This did not disturb her, for her nerves were not near the surface. Sometimes she called the children to her room and gave them a treat of fruit or sweet things. Mrs. Freeman’s other boarders thought Clarissa rather frivolous. One of them was a timid Freshman who studied unremittingly. Two of the others were graduate students, delving into zoölogy, and other “mussy sciences” (Clarissa’s phraseology), and the fifth was an inoffensive Sophomore. The two graduates roomed together. Clarissa had the best room in the house, but the Freshman had a small room under the eaves. The Freshman sometimes complained that she had made a mistake, and that she should have had a room in a lodging-house where she could have boarded herself with the aid of a chafing-dish and gas stove.

“And starve to death, with nobody nigh to hinder,” said Clarissa. “I’m glad that kind of thing is not encouraged at Radcliffe. But I wish that you had the room on my floor, instead of those zoölogists. Often about ten P.M. when I’ve finished studying I’d slip in and talk with you. Sometimes I knock on the zoölogical door, but if they let me in I feel like a criminal, for I can see that they are making a great effort to be polite, while they wish me a thousand miles away. They like to study well into the small hours, but as they pay for their own oil nobody can well object. I’m not half as entertaining to them as those squirmy things they keep in bottles. The only real gaiety in which they ever indulge is an ethical discussion with Pamela; just imagine the combination, ethics and zoölogy!”

The other girl laughed. “You might start a discussion at your party.”

“No, thank you, it’s to be a poster party, nothing more nor less improving than posters will be considered worthy of mention.”

Clarissa had yielded to Polly’s plans for the party, understanding the spirit in which it had been arranged. It had been talked of indefinitely before the affair of the newspaper; and although Polly did not now explain why she was so anxious to have her friend turn entertainer at this particular time, Clarissa understood, and Polly knew that she understood.

Nearly all who had been invited responded to Clarissa’s invitation, and one windy evening they gathered very contentedly around the open fire in her room. Clarissa’s room was as different as possible from Julia’s. To its rather homely furnishings she had added various things that had caught her fancy without regard to any scheme of art. There was a vivid Navajo blanket over her couch, and two Indian baskets from the Southwest on a bracket in a corner. Some Japanese fans were displayed over the mantle-piece, and just above them hung in a black frame a fine photograph of the Arch of Titus. But the other three walls, whether beautiful or ugly in the matter of their everyday decorations, for this evening were hidden by posters—posters large, small, ugly, beautiful, covered every spot.

“I know,” said Clarissa, in explanation, after welcoming her guests, “I know that posters have gone out of fashion. That is partly why I’ve taken them up. I had thought of offering prizes to the girl who could guess the artist of the largest number, but instead of that I’m going to explain them myself. Lo! here is a pointer that I brought over from Fay House this very afternoon.” So armed with the long wooden stick, Clarissa moved about the room, explaining much after the fashion of an auctioneer who has something to dispose of.

“This you will see is undoubtedly French. You could tell it by the anatomy of the cats, if in no other way. Such creatures were never seen on this side of the Atlantic. Jim got it for me. The real name of the work of art is ‘Lait Pur Sterilisé;’” and as she paused for a moment, they all gazed with fitting admiration on the child in a red dress drinking from a bowl under the envious eyes of three cats.

“Well, it’s better,” said Polly, “than some of those greenery yallery things. No wonder Aubrey Beardsley died young.”

“Oh, Polly, you artless creature, didn’t you dote on the Yellow Book?”

“Not I,” replied Polly. “I measured Mrs. Patrick Campbell as once portrayed there, and in proportion to the length of her head as there shown she must be about ten feet tall.”

“Why, Polly, I didn’t realize that you knew so much about Art.”

“Oh, I know more things than I am sometimes credited with,” and there was an undertone of deeper meaning in Polly’s voice.

“Here’s a Grasset,” continued Clarissa, resuming her explanations. “Isn’t it a beauty?”

“No, no, Clarissa,” said Julia, “I like this better;” and rising, she put her hand on a poster with a Puritan maiden carrying mistletoe.

“You show your taste,” said Clarissa, “that’s a Rhead.” Though hung near Dudley Hardy’s “Gaiety Girl” in poster land, the two did not seem inharmonious neighbors. Not far from them was Bemliardt’s Jeanne d’Arc, and for fifteen minutes or more Clarissa kept her friends amused with the poster show. Before her art lecture was quite at an end, Julia as assistant hostess had lit the lamp under the chafing-dish, and then when the others found that fudge-making was the next thing on the programme, each one wished to offer her own receipt, and to the great surprise of the company it was found that each receipt varied a little from the others.

“First you grate a pound of chocolate into the chafing-dish,” began Polly.

“Oh, not a pound—half a pound at first,” interrupted Julia.

“It’s a great deal better to begin by melting your butter, and then put in a pint of milk,” added Ruth.

“I never use any milk,” interposed Clarissa.

“Then you let it simmer half an hour,” resumed Polly.

“Oh, there isn’t any fixed length of time,” cried Ruth again; “just let it cook until it’s done.”

“How do you know when it’s done?”

Then followed a Babel of voices, as each one told what she thought the proper test; and a listener, I fear, who knew nothing of fudge-making, would have had hard work to select a working receipt from the directions given by these merry girls.

By the time the fudge was ready the ball had been set rolling, and it was evident that Clarissa’s party was a success. While Ruth and Lois were superintending a second chafing-dish, in which a rarebit was preparing, Polly picked up a guitar and began to accompany herself, as she sang the opening lines of one of the Radcliffe classics, “The Mermaid.”

“That’s just the thing to cheer us up.”

“As if you needed cheering! But here it is!” And Polly struck the chords with a firm hand, as she sang about the little mermaid who

“Could not even speak Acroparthianic Greek, And she’d no instruction in Theology. One day she found, as she swam around, A Radcliffe catalogue, Which shone afar like an evening star From out the mist and fog. She paused to rest on a billow’s crest, In a wreath of sparkling foam, And when she had read what the catalogue said, She decided to leave her home. She saw at once that she was a dunce And ought to go to college. So dressed in her best with a hat from Céleste, She set out for the shrine of knowledge. The cars were so filled she was almost killed, But she found she could easily swim Up Garden Street, that road so neat That has Radcliffe on its brim.”

The last two lines were loudly applauded, for the mud of Garden Street was constantly ridiculed by the college girls to be beyond description. The song proceeded to describe the advent of the mermaid at Fay House:

“She told her race, and her boarding-place, And her age (less a year, maybe), But when the question came, ‘What’s your grandma’s middle name?’ She wept and turned to flee.”

“The regular Boston question,” said Clarissa, with an expression of scorn.

“Don’t interrupt,” cried Ruth, as Polly sang the chorus of each verse.

“Oh, the ocean swell is all very well For frivolous sport and play, But the cultured mind you’ll seldom find Beneath the salt sea spray.”

Other songs followed this,—the “Hunting Song” from the “Princess Perfection,” snatches from one or two real operas; and at last as they sat around the open fire drinking lemonade—for the rarebit was now a thing of the past—Clarissa turned down the lights, and proposed that they should tell weird stories. No one of the eight or nine present was excused. Even Ernestine Dunton had to do her part, and she had unbent to an extent that was astonishing to Ruth and Clarissa; for in the preceding year when she had been their Senior adviser, she had seemed the personification of seriousness. She was now back at Radcliffe as a graduate student, and in certain ways she had begun to unbend.

As her friends bade her good-night, Clarissa knew that her party had been a success; for Polly, lingering a little behind the others, put out her hand and whispered, “You know that we don’t believe that you did that foolish thing, don’t you?” and Clarissa, returning the pressure, replied, “Of course you could not believe it.”

XVII A PRIVATE DETECTIVE

In spite of the surface frivolity, there was in Polly a strong vein of common sense. Therefore, as she thought more and more deeply about the newspaper article she became convinced that great injustice had been done Clarissa. She was naturally puzzled, for the notes so unkindly quoted were certainly from the Kansas girl’s note-book. Only too well she remembered having read them herself, and having laughed at some of the hits. But how had the newspaper obtained them? Without having talked with Clarissa directly, without having had more than the whispered word at the party, she yet knew that the Kansas girl was not to blame. She began to set her wits at work. To solve the mystery she must turn private detective.

One Wednesday afternoon she dropped into the pleasant drawing-room at Fay House; “the most homelike place,” she often said, “this side of Atlanta.” Indeed, many other Radcliffe girls were in the habit of saying the same thing, only instead of Atlanta they named Pittsburg, or Topeka, or Kalamazoo, or, in short, the particular city or town which each called her home.

“The first month I was in Cambridge,” Polly had said to the President, “I was right smart homesick and miserable. I felt like I couldn’t stand it. But when I came in here, and saw you seated at the tea-table, beside the open fire, I felt like I were with my grandmother, and that this was a place where I could lay aside all my forlornness. You don’t mind my comparing you to my grandmother? I reckon it isn’t perfectly polite.”

But the widow of the great scientist, who was proud to admit her threescore years and ten, smiled with her accustomed grace, saying in reply:

“No, indeed, my dear, I am only complimented by the comparison.”

Nor was Polly the only one who felt the restful influence of the drawing-room at Fay House; the quaint old-fashioned room, with its oval ends, curving outward, with its dull green satiny wall-paper, and the old-time couch and easy-chairs covered in flowered crimson.

Girls who entered it for the first time were impressed by the dainty silver and china of the tea-table, and they would turn from the life-size portrait of Mrs. Agassiz between the windows to the majestic figure of the President herself presiding over the teacups, and neither picture nor living figure suffered by the comparison.

On this particular Wednesday afternoon, not so very long after the publication of the alleged lecture of Professor Z in the yellow journal, Polly, after paying her respects to Mrs. Agassiz, seated herself at the further side of the room. She did not linger as was her wont around the tea-table, for two distinguished guests had entered just behind her. One was a Frenchwoman, of international reputation, and the other a distinguished Englishman, making a study of our institutions. The former was accompanied by a well-known member of the Harvard Faculty, and the latter by two Bostonians whom he was visiting.

“Isn’t it just lovely,” said a little Freshman seated near Polly, “to see such great people? That’s what I like about Boston and Cambridge. You’re always meeting people who seem to belong in books.”

“Yes,” replied Polly mockingly, “it’s a liberal education just to look at them. Let’s talk French, and see if our accent improves through breathing the same atmosphere with Madame X.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean exactly that,” replied the Freshman, “only we certainly _do_ learn things here that we couldn’t get out of books.”

“Yes, yes, dear, you’re certainly right, and I only wish that we could get yon Englishman to tell us how he manages to wear that monocle, and yet look perfectly happy.”

The Freshman glanced at Polly to see if she was in earnest, and made some remark to which Polly returned no answer.

Polly’s thoughts indeed had begun to wander, sent off by a word or two from a girl standing with her back to her.

“She hasn’t found it out yet, or she wouldn’t speak to her,” were the words that fell on her ear. Looking toward the door she saw that Clarissa had just entered, and had paused for a moment to say a word to Annabel, who as usual was the centre of an admiring group.

Clarissa passed on to pay her respects to the President; and while Polly was reflecting on what she had heard, she saw the girls in the group leave Annabel one by one to join Clarissa, standing at the other side of the fireplace. Annabel frowned as she moved toward Polly’s corner. She and the girl with her did not notice Polly, for they stood with their backs to her.

“Yes, it is rather bold—really very bold, but she never cares what any one thinks. She has so much—so much—”

“Effrontery, I should call it,” replied the other, who was well known to be a worshipper of a rising star, such as Annabel was now supposed to be. “But I know that you never like to say anything disagreeable.”

“Well, of course, one should be very careful;” and Annabel sighed the sigh of the needlessly perfect person.

Upon this, Polly, rising suddenly, faced around, and with a hasty nod to Annabel joined Clarissa at the other side of the room.

The few apparently unimportant words that she had heard had helped her far along with her detective work. She could not, however, altogether conceal her feelings, and slipping her arm through Clarissa’s, she led her back toward Annabel and her friends.

“Behold the rising star!” she exclaimed; “for of course,” she added in explanation, “you’ve heard that Clarissa is to have leading part in Julia’s operetta.”

“Why, Polly,” said Clarissa, “I had not—”

“Don’t contradict,” responded Polly, “our plans are made, and there isn’t a question but that you have the most manly tone, and gait, and—”

“Why, Annabel, I thought that you were to have the chief part!” interposed her friend.

“Oh, she’ll be in it,” rejoined Polly, in a somewhat patronizing tone, assumed for the occasion, “if not in the chief part.”

Then she moved away, still leaning on Clarissa’s arm, and Annabel had no chance to retort. The foreign guests had gone to inspect the other parts of Fay House, and the drawing-room was filling with girls whose lectures for the day had ended.

“Oh, Polly,” cried Clarissa, as the two friends left the room, after paying their respects to the President and Dean. “Why, Polly, I can’t act; I don’t belong with those girls at all. Ruth Roberts, you know, barely tolerates me, and she’s to be the manager.”

“Nonsense, she isn’t the whole thing. Besides, I happen to know that she _does_ want you.”

“What about Annabel?”

“Well, we can’t really leave her out. Her voice isn’t remarkable, but she acts pretty well; and since she’s been playing with the Cambridge Dramatic Club, she’s been considered our representative actor. Besides, she’s a great friend of Ruth’s.”

“I know it,” responded Clarissa. “You surely ought to have Annabel; but can I pull all right with those girls?”

“Of course, and I am to be a dapper little dandy. Though we are to be rivals in love, we can support each other.”

So at last Clarissa yielded, and after the mid-years, rehearsals went on pretty rapidly. There were, after all, several good parts in the operetta; and Ruth, viewing everything with the critical eye of a business manager, was certain that the performance would bring even more than she had hoped.

“Clarissa herself wouldn’t be so bad,” said Ruth one evening, as she and Julia sat in the study after dinner, “but I can’t say that I like her friends. She has a rather scrubby lot of hangers-on. Look at those two this afternoon!”

“Why, I saw nothing to criticise.”

“You never do, Julia, but they certainly hadn’t a word to say for themselves, and their clothes were frightful. Clarissa’s red coat is bad enough, but she is rather fine-looking, and she is so decidedly unlike any one else that you don’t have to apologize for her. But those others were so—so nondescript.”

“Ruth,” exclaimed Julia, with a shade of reproach, “you have changed very much the past year. You used to think Belle’s exclusiveness silly, but you are tending that way yourself.”

“You are not in earnest!”

“Of course, you’ll never be just like Belle. But you have begun to think too much about appearances.”

“But you are too amiable, Julia. As we can’t be intimate with all the girls we meet, we might as well choose the most congenial. We can’t let all kinds of girls take up our time.”

“My time isn’t so valuable. I can spare a little even to all kinds of girls.”

“Yes, but even on Mondays, sometimes, there are such queer girls. They make an unfavorable impression on people from town who call. Don’t you remember when Mrs. Blair came out? Now, if she had only met Annabel Harmon or Elizabeth Darcy, how different it would have been!”

“Annabel Harmon!” Julia wondered why she so disliked Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel, for Annabel was a popular girl, hardly less so than Elizabeth Darcy. She was well-bred and interesting. “I never can thoroughly trust any one who spends her spare time reading French books,” Clarissa had said laughingly, although Julia would have hesitated to put it quite so definitely.

Ruth, however, was apparently fascinated by Annabel, and constantly quoted her with admiration. Annabel had a dislike for plain things and plain people. By this, she was careful to explain, she did not mean necessarily things that were ugly or people who were poor. “_Some_ ugly things are really very beautiful, and some poor people are far from plain. The only kind of plainness that I object to is commonness; I hate ordinary things.”

Yet if any one had taken the trouble to note down the things that Annabel called “common,” it would have been found that in her eyes these were the inexpensive things, and the girls whom she described as ordinary were usually those who were not rich either in money or influential connections.

Julia saw that Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel had made a change in her, not altogether to be commended.

“I wish you liked Lois Forsaith as well as you like Annabel. I do wish that she had a little more fun. She takes life so seriously. Really, I can’t understand it. I should die, or at least I should want to, if I had as much to do.”

“She has only four courses this year.”

“Oh, I do not mean her studies entirely, but at home. She has a certain amount of housework to do. She helps her two younger brothers with their lessons, and she always has some regular sewing on hand.”

“Really!” exclaimed Ruth in some surprise. Julia had never said much to her about Lois’ family.

“They say that Lois would have had the highest record in the class last year if she hadn’t stayed out to nurse her little sister. It was just before the finals, and she had to lose one of her examinations.”

“Couldn’t she make it up?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, she will have a chance, but of course it makes a difference in her year’s record.”

“I never feel quite sure of Lois,” said Ruth. “She always has that far-away manner, as if she were looking right over your head. I am never sure that she remembers me.”

“Why, I have not noticed that,” responded Julia. “I think her delightful. She shakes hands so warmly, and she always says something worth hearing.”

“But I don’t think that she’s a really popular girl.”

“That’s not to her discredit. Popularity is no evidence of—of—”

And Julia hesitated, seemingly at a loss for a word.

“True greatness,” interposed Ruth. “No, popularity is not a test of true greatness. But I would not say that Lois is unpopular.”