Part 12

“If Lois could, she would take a larger part in our social life,” added Julia. “It’s very hard for a girl to live at home while she’s going to college. It’s like serving two masters, and one of them has to suffer. Lois will get the most possible out of her studies, but she can’t be interested in every little thing.”

“You’re a regular champion,” and Ruth threw a kiss to Julia, as she turned to leave the room.

XVIII WORK AND PLAY

The added strain of rehearsals was more, perhaps, than some of the performers ought to have had. But few of them neglected lectures, and they buoyed themselves with the hope that all this work would be over before the middle of May, when they could devote themselves wholly to study.

Julia, perhaps, felt the strain more than the others. To do the operetta justice she gave up many things that she would have enjoyed. Rehearsals came so often on Fridays that she was rather glad that this year she had not attempted to attend the Symphony rehearsals in the City. She had taken four tickets for the Cambridge course, and Ruth and Mrs. Colton regularly accompanied her. The use of the fourth ticket she offered from time to time to various girls who had not subscribed for the course.

She had had to draw the line at social gaieties, although she made occasional exceptions, as, for instance, in the case of the coming-out parties of Brenda and Nora. She entered into both of these affairs with the zest of a débutante, and was greeted cordially by a number of those of whom she had seen so much during her first year in Boston. But she noticed that some of Brenda’s special friends either avoided her or treated her with a deference that made her uncomfortable, since her years did not seem to warrant it.

“It’s because you know so much,” Brenda had explained. “They’re afraid of you.”

“Well, they needn’t be. I’m sure that I never display my knowledge, and besides, I haven’t much to display. They’d find it out if they’d talk with me.”

“Oh, Julia! You do know a tremendous amount. I feel all shrivelled up when I think of it. Besides, every one has heard about the operetta. I feel proud enough, I can tell you, when any one speaks to me about it.”

“You used to object to a learned cousin.”

“I don’t now, as long as she doesn’t make her learning a reproach to me. That’s one thing very nice about you, Julia, you never scold me for not going to college.”

“You may come to it yet. Besides, you are studying this winter, are you not?”

“Now, Julia, don’t ask me how many times I’ve gone to my Literature class. There’s so often a luncheon or something more interesting that comes the same day, and when there isn’t I’m too tired to enjoy it. So I’ve missed more or less, but there’s a Current Events on Mondays and I’m always there. It gives me something to talk about, and I’m thankful enough, with a stupid partner, to fall back on Armenian atrocities, or the Abolition of the House of Lords, or even the Silver Question.”

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” quoted Julia, and Brenda replied brightly:

“But less is more dangerous, and Nora says—there, that reminds me, have you heard of the engagement?”

“Not Nora’s?” queried Julia.

“No, indeed. Nora says that she’s going to Radcliffe next year, and she isn’t likely to let herself be interfered with by anything so frivolous as an engagement. But I should think that you might have guessed. It’s Frances.”

“I’ve had suspicions,” responded Julia, “from a letter Frances wrote me some time ago.”

“Yes, she’s always been so chummy with you since that time she thinks you saved her life. But I was surprised, and isn’t it funny that he’s a minister, at least he’s going to be? This is his last year in the Divinity School. Just imagine Frances a minister’s wife!”

“It would have been harder to imagine a year or two ago.”

“Yes, Frances has changed since that accident, and then, of course, he’s her second cousin—or third—and she can do lots of good with her money,” Brenda concluded somewhat incoherently.

Although Julia did not go to many parties, she yet had more or less enjoyment from certain phases of Boston life. Her aunt’s house was still “home,” and thither she went every Saturday. Many Radcliffe students, like their fellow-students at the University, were surprised to find that Saturday was not a holiday, and that only by a skilful arrangement of courses could one have the day free. But on Saturday afternoon, all who could went home or paid visits. At her aunt’s behest Julia often took with her one guest or another to the Beacon Street house, and often after dinner a little party went to a reading, or a lecture by some great authority, or to a musicale. Julia always regretted that Pamela could so seldom be one of her Saturday guests. But Pamela, who, in this her second year at Miss Batson’s, was less sensitive than formerly about her position, was apt to say laughingly that Sunday was her busy day, since all the young ladies were then at home.

She might have added that she never liked to miss the Sunday morning service in the little Memorial Chapel beyond the Washington Elm. There, as in other churches, seats were reserved for Radcliffe students. The music and the liturgy, so unlike the simple Congregational service to which she had been accustomed, rested and helped her, and she atoned for departing from the rigid forms of her father’s church by holding a little Bible Class at Miss Batson’s on Sunday afternoon. There in the dining-room she collected three or four small girls from the quarry district some distance away, and gave them a helping hand, and taught them many things that they could hardly have learned from books. No wonder that she could not accept Julia’s invitations! If she had had no other reasons she would have plead that she was not in touch with the young circle that gathered in Mrs. Barlow’s hospitable house. Occasionally she went there to dine on Saturday. This was usually after she had paid a visit to the Art Museum, where her beloved Tanagra figures and the Parthenon friezes still charmed her. She had had some scruples this year in electing Fine Arts, for she knew that it was considered one of the soft courses chosen by certain students more anxious to get marks than to learn. But if many other students had taken Fine Arts in Pamela’s spirit, it would soon have ceased to be a reproach. For she verified every statement in her text-book, and looked up every reference made by her professor, and some of her friends laughingly plead with her not to set the standard so high, as henceforth every student taking the course would be expected to do equally well.

Pamela was not in the operetta, for the artistic side of her nature had not been developed in the direction of music. Yet from time to time she looked in at rehearsals. She was proud of Julia’s work, for she felt as if no success could be too great for one who had been so kind to her. She was fond of Polly, too, and she had enough good sense not to be offended even when the laugh was directed against the class of girls of which she herself was a type. For though she was only one of many who were at Radcliffe for study exclusively, she felt that she could bear a little ridicule, since the butterflies themselves were sure to come in for a share.

She was interested, too, in Clarissa’s part in the operetta; and although she knew that many otherwise charitable girls had held Clarissa in suspicion since the publication of the newspaper article, she, too, like Polly, had more faith in the Western girl. She even thought of doing a little detective work herself, in a quiet way.

One mild morning in early May a group of girls stood at the foot of the side entrance to Fay House. “Get your hats! get your hats!” cried Polly, approaching the group from the house. “I’m going home for the largest hat I own, and I intend to tie it on with a veil.”

Clarissa and one or two of the other hatless girls began to ask Polly her meaning. But Polly, declining to answer, walked off with a paper, apparently a letter, held dramatically to her heart.

Clarissa followed her to the shade of a tree at the edge of the tennis ground, and there Polly read the note to her:

“My dear Miss Porson,—May I see you Friday or Saturday between nine and eleven o’clock.”

And the signature was that of the Dean.

“Yes,” said Polly reminiscently, “it’s true that I’ve been walking hatless to the Square,—like several others I could mention,” and she glanced significantly toward Clarissa.

“But you ought to know,” said Elspeth Gray, who had joined them, “that that isn’t the thing in a conventional place like Cambridge.”

“Yes, but going without a hat seems to be in the direction of the plain living and high thinking toward which we’re always encouraged.”

“But what did the Dean say to you, Polly? I cannot imagine her being unduly severe.”

“She wasn’t severe. She couldn’t be. I left her feeling not that I had been reproved, but simply advised.”

“Was nothing said about sitting on the stairs? I saw you on the landing yesterday, and some of our instructors complain bitterly of this. They say that it is too much like the behavior of schoolgirls, and—”

“As long as they express their feelings merely in words,” responded Clarissa, “I can bear it. I wish that they would bestow our marks upon us in words. A postal card is so much harder to bear when it is stamped officially, ‘French Department. Your mark in French 11 is C.’ The big, blue ‘C’ that they make of such an enormous size, sprawled across the card.”

“I never mind,” said Elizabeth, who had joined the others.

“Nor would we,” responded Clarissa politely, “if our marks, like yours, were most likely ‘A.’ You see the postmen, like the policemen and the car conductors in this cultured community, set a value on real intellect, and I hate to have them know that I am not at the very head of my class. I don’t wish to sail under false pretences, but I should be happier if my instructors would only spare me the big, blue ‘C.’ It always makes me feel giddy, as the English say.”

“Oh, Clarissa, you’d pun if you were dying.”

“Well, I can afford to be cheerful, for I’ve had an invitation,” and she read from a card that she drew from a note-book, “Le Cercle Français de l’Université Harvard requests the pleasure of your presence on Tuesday evening, May 17.”

“You are in luck. I hear that it is to be a delightful affair; but now before we go home for our hats, let us stroll over to Vaughan House, and patronize Mrs. Hogan and her buns.”

A luncheon-room had been fitted up in Vaughan House, a dwelling recently bought by the Radcliffe Corporation. It was only a step from Fay House, across the little campus, and both inside and out it preserved the aspect of a comfortable dwelling. The lunch-room, to be sure, had small wood tables of true restaurant style and a counter; and the coffee and chocolate were drawn from metal reservoirs, with spigots, in true restaurant fashion.

The three friends, for Elizabeth had not come with them, sat at a table beside an old graduate, who was spending the year in Cambridge for post-graduate work.

“Why, it doesn’t seem long,” she said, “since we used to carry our own sandwiches to Fay House in a little pasteboard box, and feel extremely thankful for the cup of hot tea or chocolate brought by the housekeeper to the little room back of the conversation room. If she went off before we could pay her, we would hide our dimes or half-dimes in the sugar bowl, and she always trusted us as we trusted her.”

“Can you remember the very beginning of Radcliffe?” asked Polly, “when it was called ‘The Annex’?”

“I wasn’t here myself, then,” said the other, smiling; “that was in 1879, but my sister came a year or two later, when the classes met either at the houses of the professors or in the little house in Appian Way. The library, I believe, comprised two or three shelves of books in another house, and a course with half a dozen students was considered extremely large.”

“Just think of it!”

“My own experience goes back to 1886 when we moved into Fay House. But it was so different then. I sometimes wonder if you students of to-day realize your advantages.”

“I rather think that we have more fun,” said Polly. “I am afraid that you used to take life too seriously.”

The older girl smiled.

“We had to be very much in earnest because we felt that if we made our college work secondary to social interests we were likely to be criticised. The college girl was not so numerous then as she is now, and she was a target for almost any one who wished to criticise her. But I don’t blame you undergraduates for getting all the fun you can, and your music and your athletics in many ways must be very beneficial.”

“She means you, Clarissa. She has heard what an ornament you are to the R. A. A.,” cried Polly.

“Oh, no; you mean Polly, do you not?” asked Clarissa of the graduate. “You have heard of her prowess as an actor, and then you know she’s written nearly all the book for the operetta. The rest of us have just put in a few jokes.”

“I have had my eye on you both,” responded the older girl, “and I approve of you, for you have not yet begun to make study secondary to fun.”

Nor was the graduate wrong in her criticism. While work may have been to a certain extent neglected by the actors and singers in the operetta in the weeks immediately preceding the performance, they all knew that when the rehearsals were over they would work with redoubled energy.

The advance sale of tickets was so good that Ruth went about with a beaming face. She was interested in the North End reading-room to a rather unusual extent, and had set her heart on their clearing five hundred dollars from the two performances.

A week before the last rehearsal Julia had asked Angelina to spend all her time in Cambridge. There were so many little things that she could do in helping the girls about their costuming that it seemed as well to have her near for a week or two. Angelina could be spared, and Julia knew that the week or two in Cambridge would be almost as thoroughly a treat to her as a trip to New York to many another girl. Angelina had become more reconciled to her life at Shiloh, although she still continued to say frankly that she would prefer the city. Yet she had so enjoyed being of acknowledged use to her mother, and Julia had so praised her for her growing skill in housekeeping, that she was almost reconciled to her quiet life. All “The Four” had continued their interest in the Rosas. Brenda and Nora had provided their Christmas tree, with assistance, of course, from Julia. Julia had planned a little collection of books arranged in two or three small travelling libraries for the use of the Rosas and their neighbors, and when a check of good size came from Edith, to be applied to the use of the family, there was hardly any evident need to supply.

Edith and her parents were in Europe. They had felt keenly the fact that Philip had left college under a cloud, and it was even rumored that they might stay away another year. Julia, naturally enough, thought often of Philip, for that last interview with him had been rather thrilling, and while many of her friends were planning for the coming Class Day, she had made up her mind to leave Cambridge as soon as she could after the examinations. “If I live through the operetta,” she said to herself, for she felt the strain of the last rehearsals. When she thought of Philip, putting even the most charitable construction on his silence, it seemed as if he might have written to her.

Indeed it was only by a chance word dropped by Nora and other girls that she heard anything about him. They had their information from their brothers or some of their friends. Julia herself might have heard more directly had she been willing to bring up Philip’s name to Tom Hearst or some of his friends. But she would not ask questions, feeling as she did that Philip might have kept her informed of his whereabouts. Yet she knew that he had spent the most of the winter on a ranch in South Dakota, not so very far from the Black Hills; and when reports of the extreme cold in that region came to Eastern readers, who wondered how Philip enjoyed this rather hard life—Philip who had been used to all the luxuries provided for a rich man’s son at Harvard. But Philip did not write, and Julia would not ask even Ruth about him, although Ruth and Will Hardon were great friends.

XIX THE OPERETTA

It was the last rehearsal but one, not the dress rehearsal, but the “half-dressed rehearsal,” as Clarissa called it. At the dress rehearsal a large number of undergraduates, and special friends of the performers were to be admitted, and then was to come the performance from which so much was hoped. But the dress rehearsal would be so much like a real performance that the present occasion was regarded as something very important.

Nearly all the chorus were wearing the short peasant skirt, and strutted about seeming on the whole well pleased with their own appearance. But the prima donnas were in ordinary attire, for their bespangled robes were too elaborate to be dragged about on the dusty stage. Polly and Ruth in bicycle skirts were rushing among the players, now giving directions to this one, then to that.

“You must stand better, and do come nearer to the front; and when Miss Harmon is singing, look toward her. You are supposed to be hanging on every word of hers (which we’re not usually in reality).”

The last words, of course, were _sotto voce_, and the chorus for the time being made a great effort to obey the energetic Ruth. Occasionally some girl, forgetting how much depended on her, would draw her neighbor aside for a tête-à-tête, to the great annoyance of the energetic managers.

Julia, in her chair in the centre of the floor below the stage, held the score, and from time to time contributed her word of criticism. But she was glad enough to have Clarissa and Annabel and Polly and Ruth bear the most responsibility, as it troubled her to have to pay too much attention to details. Clarissa and Annabel were lovers in the play, and to Polly this seemed rather ridiculous, feeling as she did that she had special insight into the dislike of Annabel for Clarissa. Clarissa, however, seemed unaware that Annabel was less than friendly; and although the latter was not always as perfectly amiable as the Princess in a light opera ought to be, the rehearsals had, on the whole, passed off pretty well. Polly herself, as it happened, was almost the centre of interest in the play. This had come about by accident rather than by actual intention on the part of Julia. She was a disguised Queen, disguised as a youth of humble birth, who had escaped from court for a frolic, whose grace and wit carried everything before her. Although she was apparently Clarissa’s rival for a while, everything was explained when at the very end her disguise was revealed. The operetta abounded in pleasing duets, bright dialogues, and witty hits and gibes. But the jokes and hits were never bitter nor purely personal. They were directed against the peculiarities of certain groups of students rather than against the students themselves. Cambridge, too, came in for its share of ridicule, although the jokes on this subject were rather threadbare, as they had all been used in other years by Harvard or Radcliffe undergraduates, in their dramatic performances or college publications.

On the whole, it was a composite production rather than the work of any one individual. Even in the matter of the music, Julia had accepted more than one suggestion made by her friends, and in one or two instances she had composed the words of the lyric, while Polly had composed the music. In the work of composing and arranging the operetta there had been really no friction, and all had been eager to make the affair a success. On this day, when the final performances were so near, there was hardly a girl who did not rejoice that they had come to the end of their weeks of work. Ruth was particularly gratified as they turned away from the hall. She gave a hop, skip, and a jump, undignified, perhaps, for a Sophomore, though expressive of her feeling.

“Hundreds of dollars!” she cried. “My dreams have been filled with them since yesterday, and we have sold nearly all our tickets.”

“But there will be expenses, dear child. You mustn’t forget that,” said Polly, who was one of the group.

“Oh, of course, but there will be enough left. I’m glad, too, that the whole performance will be so creditable, and we ought to be thankful enough that no one has been ill, or for any other reason obliged to give up her part. Anything like that would drive me to distraction, for we have no understudies.”

“Oh,” said Julia, “every one has given every one else so much advice that I am sure that any one who has watched the rehearsals could take the part of some other girl at a moment’s notice.”

“I’m not so sure,” responded Ruth, accepting her friend more seriously than the latter intended. “One or two of the parts might, perhaps, be taken, but not Polly’s. She puts a new touch in at almost every rehearsal, and honestly, I think that she has made the thing the success that it is. Excuse me, Julia, I didn’t mean that we owe more to the performers than to the composer.”

“Why, indeed,” replied Julia, “I understand exactly what you mean, and it is fortunate that Polly’s father was not as ill as she feared a week or two ago, for if she had had to go South it would have made a great difference to us.”

Nor were the girls wrong in their expectations. The dress rehearsal went off with all the sparkle and life that they had hoped. The regular performance they felt to be a more trying occasion than the rehearsal, for the audience included so many persons from Boston, as well as from Cambridge, whose judgment carried great weight. But critical or not, they were thoroughly appreciative of the pretty operetta. More than once were the singers and actors called before the curtain; and had Julia not been too modest, she, too, would have answered the calls that were made for her. Some of those who were not ardent admirers of Annabel were pleased that she did not—apparently could not—eclipse Polly and Clarissa. Sweet though her voice was, it was not powerful, and her self-consciousness often spoiled the effect of her acting. Brenda, of course, was at the play, and a large party of her gay young friends from the City. In the party were Tom and Will and a number of college men, and Julia, sitting among them, felt that she was almost as merry in spirit as they. Yet more than the praises of these young people, Julia appreciated those of her uncle and aunt who sat in the tier of seats just behind; for her aunt was apparently satisfied by the commendation she received for the operetta that her devotion to her work was not going to separate her entirely from young people of her own age.

“But this operetta, my dear, is on the whole so frivolous that I have some hope that college is not going to deprive you entirely of your interest in society.”

At the close of the performance, as the actors stood behind the scenes listening to the commendations of their friends, a telegraph messenger pushed his way among them with a dispatch for Polly.

Polly’s color faded as she heard him ask for her, and she turned to Julia with an appealing “Read it” as she laid the slip of yellow paper in her hand.

Quickly grasping its contents, Julia threw her arms around her friend.

“Come, my carriage is ready.”

But the carriage did not appear for more than five minutes, during which Polly’s sobs were painful to hear.

“It’s her father,” explained Clarissa to a group of girls who had withdrawn some distance from the weeping Polly. “He died this morning, according to the telegram.”