Part 13

“This morning!” cried one of the girls. “Then it’s a wonder that she wasn’t notified earlier. Why, it takes no time for a telegram to travel from Atlanta to Boston.”

“A telegram!” cried Ruth, who had just come behind the scenes; “why, that reminds me. But what’s the matter with Polly?”

“Why, she’s just had news of her father’s death, and she must feel dreadfully to think that she has been acting this evening, for he died, they say, this morning.”

While Elspeth was speaking Ruth had turned very pale. She put her hand in her little velvet chatelaine and drew out a yellow envelope, apparently another telegram. Without a word to the others she walked up to Polly and Julia.

“This is a telegram that came early in the evening, before we began; you ought to have had it.”

But Polly did not wait for further explanation; she tore open the envelope. Then after reading the telegram, she thrust it inside her dress.

“I cannot forgive you,” she cried. “How could you let me sing? My father died to-day, and what will they think of me when they hear that I sang just the same! I will not forgive you.”

The stern words were followed by violent sobs.

This outburst was so unlike the lively, amiable Polly that her friends were only too glad when Julia’s carriage was announced; and leaning on Clarissa’s arm, she was led away, closely followed by Julia.

The girls who were left behind speculated as to what Polly would do; whether she would start for home immediately; whether her feeling would continue to be bitter toward Ruth for withholding the telegram.

“Yet it doesn’t seem altogether like Ruth,” said Elspeth. “Fond as I am of Polly, I feel that there may be some mistake. I am sure that Ruth could not have known about the telegram; could not possibly have held it from Polly if she knew what was in it.”

But unluckily among those whose thoughts were favorable to Ruth, Julia was not to be counted. Her disapproval of Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel now seemed to have been well founded. She felt sure that unintentionally Ruth had adopted Annabel’s rather easy standards of duty to others. “The greatest good of the greatest number,” Annabel was apt to offer as an excuse for some action which other girls called selfish. For when criticised she would try to prove that while one or perhaps two girls were injured by something that she had said or done, an indefinite number of indefinite people would approve, and therefore might be benefited by it. Annabel had a smattering of philosophy, as she had of other subjects, obtained before studying them; and had she learned more of the philosopher whom she quoted almost unconsciously, she would have known that above all other rules he set the Golden Rule. To do unto others as she would have others do to her was certainly not a guiding star of Annabel’s conduct.

Thus, after all, there had been an element of tragedy in the operetta that had once meant only sunshine to those who were working and planning for it. Polly Porson, speeding Southward, would have felt doubly forlorn had not Clarissa been with her. For the Western girl had insisted on going with her friend, and though her absence from Cambridge at this time meant some loss in the coming examinations, she would not have listened had any one attempted to dissuade her from going. She did her part, too, in softening Polly’s feeling toward Ruth, and she was surprised to find how earnestly she could champion the cause of a girl who had so often seemed anything but friendly toward her. But while she knew that Ruth had taken no pains to conceal a certain dislike for her, she realized that it was a case of mere personal antipathy, unaccountable, perhaps, as such things often are, or to be accounted for by the fact that in every way the two girls had received a very different training.

“But I’m sure that Ruth wouldn’t do a mean thing, and to have kept that telegram from you would have been mean beyond description.”

Polly, absorbed in her sorrow, and thinking more about the meeting with her mother and little sisters, had little to say, although firmly fixed in her mind was the thought that Ruth really had served her own ends by holding the telegram from her.

Clarissa was soon back at Cambridge, and by good luck lost not a single examination through her absence. She would not even admit that her sudden trip, by interfering with her study, had lowered her standing. When the blue-books were all in she was able to announce triumphantly that her average was higher than ever before. “Which proves,” she had said to Elspeth, “that cramming is a luxury and not a necessity.”

Julia did not stay in Cambridge this spring for either the Radcliffe or the Harvard Class Days. She went with her aunt and Brenda to New Haven for the ball game, where Arthur Weston was their host; and although he was as polite as he could be, Julia knew that all his interest was really in Brenda. Arthur, whose brother had married Brenda’s sister, was fond of calling Brenda sister-in-law, and for the same reason he had adopted Julia as a cousin. By a strange coincidence, he, like Philip, had failed to take his degree the preceding June. This was due to ill-health, which had kept him from college part of the year. But unlike Philip, he had been willing to take his place with the next class, and indeed seemed as well pleased as if graduating with his own class. Brenda’s disposition, too, was as volatile as Arthur’s, and she carried a blue parasol, wore blue flowers, and altogether seemed to have forgotten the existence of Harvard and her former love for Harvard red. It was hard for Julia to understand such heartlessness as this,—for so she had to regard it,—as until very lately all Brenda’s college feeling had been for Harvard. Yet Brenda herself would not admit that it was really a strong personal preference for Arthur that had made her forego her Harvard allegiance. She fell back on the excuse of relationship, and on the fact that she had caused the accident which had finally resulted in Arthur’s losing a year at college.

“For although he knows that it was an accident, still it certainly was my bicycle that hurt his foot, and I ought to make up by showing all the interest I can in his college. Between us,” she added confidentially, “I think that Harvard Class Day is really more fun; still, I’m having about the best time of my life here at New Haven, although I do not quite see why it should be.”

But Julia understood, and Mrs. Barlow understood, and they smiled indulgently when they saw the two young people strolling off under the New Haven elms.

When the gaiety of the late spring was over, Julia was glad to be back again at Rockley. She needed rest, and she had the good sense to spend her summer quietly. In the early autumn, with her aunt and uncle, she made a tour of the mountains, and the keen air put her in even better trim for her autumn’s work.

XX JUNIORS

To follow all the happenings in the college course would take more time than may well be given now. The beginning of the Junior year found Julia and her friends all so accustomed to college life that they could hardly imagine themselves existing without a well-planned scheme of work. As Juniors, they were more constantly deferred to by the girls in the two lower classes, and they could not but realize that they were near the Senior class, and that at the end of another year they would be almost at the end of their college course. Many new girls wandered about the halls of Fay House, and among them Julia was delighted to have Nora included, for Ruth and Julia had not fully made up their misunderstanding of the spring. If they had spent the summer together, things might have been different. But they had been separated for a longer time than ever before since their friendship began; and while neither reproached the other, both realized the coolness between them.

Nora was only a Special student, and she always referred to her studies in rather humble tones. But she worked zealously, and confided to Julia that she might possibly enter the regular course, and end by studying medicine, if her parents would only consent. But Julia, though she did not doubt Nora’s sincerity, still realized that there were many things that might prevent her carrying out these rather impossible plans.

Polly, in sombre black and somewhat quieter in manner, was still Polly, and she and Clarissa were constantly together. With Julia and Lois she was always cordial, and she still continued to tease Pamela whenever the occasion presented. But at sight of Ruth her flow of words always ceased. It was plain that she found it very hard to forgive.

This year Annabel and Ruth were a little less intimate than formerly. Yet this did not bring Julia and Ruth any nearer. They still roomed together, still went back and forth to Fay House together. Those who knew them best did not realize that anything had come between them. But they themselves, while realizing the change, would not touch on the subject that lay so near their hearts. The spot on the apple, the rift in the lute, of these and many other similes Julia often thought, but she would not take the first step to mend the breach. She waited for Ruth’s explanation, and Ruth waited for Julia’s apology, and each day the two moved farther away from each other.

As to Polly, in some way she and Ruth contrived never to meet face to face, a feat not impossible, since they happened to have none of the same courses, and since Polly’s mourning for her father kept her from taking an active part in the social life of the college.

There were various changes in the grouping of those girls who had been most together in their first two years.

Pamela alone, among those whom we have known the best, went on her way undisturbed. She had not been present at the little outbreak at the close of the operetta. In a general way she knew that there had been trouble, but she had asked no questions about it. In any case, she would have been sure that Julia was entirely right. Her summer, spent as before in tutoring, had helped greatly to free her from care. The scholarship, again awarded to her, the two Boston boys whom she was to tutor twice a week in Greek, had made her third year at Radcliffe a certainty. She continued to live at Miss Batson’s; and although her duties were lighter and she had a room to herself, the good boarding-house keeper declined the weekly payment that Pamela conscientiously offered.

“If you had a room twice as big as that little attic, and on the first floor front, it would just be a comfort to have you here, without your paying a cent. All my young ladies say they have just been getting culture ever since you came here, and that’s worth more than money to all of us.”

So Pamela felt herself to be almost rich, as she gathered her treasures about her in the little French-roofed chamber. Chief among them was a Tanagra figurine, a replica of the lady with the hat that Julia had insisted on her accepting the year before. On the shelf below were her Dante books, and near them some of her father’s Greek books, as well as those that she used in her own classes.

Under the great professor, who in this country stands for the study of Dante, she was reaching heights even more blissful than those reached through her study of Greek.

As to Clarissa, she and Polly each had a grievance, and each was bound to help the other right a wrong—or perhaps I should say, each meant to help right the other’s wrong. Polly kept her eye on Annabel, and Clarissa—well, Clarissa had a theory that in time she hoped to prove true.

There were many girls, unluckily, who looked on Clarissa with decided disfavor, believing her the author of the objectionable article; or at the best, they thought that she had unwisely let others use her note-book improperly. Two or three little coteries, therefore, some of them made up of very agreeable girls, were inclined to avoid Clarissa. So Polly, realizing this state of affairs, was all the more anxious to prove that her friend had been wronged. But how prove it?

One morning half a dozen girls clustered before the bulletin board. The assortment of notices touched every side of college life. One in which Polly Porson had had a large part read:

Freshmen and New Specials are Cordially invited by the Juniors to a reception, Wednesday, October 31, in the Auditorium, at 4.30 P.M.

Polly’s part had consisted of the dainty pen-and-ink drawing showing at the top a vivacious girl with arms extended, while at the side was a troop of smaller girls, presumably the Freshmen and Specials, with accompanying verses:

“School is over, oh, what fun! Lessons finished, work begun. Who’ll laugh gayest? Let us try. Who’ll talk loudest, you or I?”

Near by was a card giving information about the College Settlement Association, and others announcing a trial of voices for the Glee and Choral Clubs. But most conspicuous of all were the notices of the various athletic clubs, and these notices seemed to awaken a lively discussion among the girls standing before the board.

“R. A. A.—Will all who wish to join please pay,”

read one of them, adding, “Oh, I’ve joined and paid, too. I’m more interested in the basket ball.”

“Well, the managers mean business,” added another, pointing to a notice:

“Basket Ball, 189—

“Great need of candidates. All that can, come out and try for the teams, whether they played last year or not.”

“That isn’t for me,” said one of the girls, who happened to be a Sophomore.

“We’re going to have a strong team this year.”

“Oh, yes,” continued a classmate, “the Juniors can’t do a thing to us unless Miss Hert—”

“Hush!” exclaimed the first speaker, and turning her head slightly, the second girl saw Clarissa and Pamela approaching, arm in arm.

But as the two friends disappeared in the distance, a third girl, a Junior, said, “Yes, Clarissa’s the girl we want but Alma Stacey is determined—”

“I know that she’s been pretty severe toward Clarissa.”

“Well, Annabel says—”

“Oh, Annabel—”

“Well, Annabel says that she believes that Clarissa would do almost anything after playing that trick on her.”

“What, about Mr. Radcliffe, the so-called Mr. Radcliffe?”

Polly at this moment had passed them a second time, although now without Clarissa.

Quickly guessing the subject of their conversation, she interposed.

“Oh, breathes there a Radcliffe girl so silly as to think that Clarissa had anything to do with that book-plate affair?”

Whereupon the others, Juniors and Sophomores, admitted that they had not wholly believed Clarissa responsible for Annabel’s discomfiture, although one of them added that there seemed little doubt that Clarissa had sanctioned the newspaper article. Yet, if Polly could not make an adequate reply to this (for not yet had she completed her detective work), she assured them that Clarissa was so popular that she had been urged to join the basket ball team, and that through her the class was to reach a pinnacle of fame in athletics.

Indeed, during this year it seemed as if athletic rather than scholastic glory was the thing most sought for. The new Gymnasium had given an impetus to all kinds of athletics, and with the increasing size of the classes, the long-delayed class spirit was beginning to develop.

Julia was a spectator at the Athletic Reception given by the Freshmen, and she laughed and applauded all the sports from the potato races to some of those trials of skill that required great proficiency. She had sprained her ankle very slightly soon after college opened, and this prevented her usual gymnasium work.

It was natural that there should be many little coteries at Radcliffe, and that some should be more devoted than others to study, and others more devoted to the lighter side of college life. Julia, now that she and Ruth were less inseparable, found herself turning more and more to Lois, and for Lois she began to feel even more sympathy than for Pamela. Although Pamela had had to struggle, she still had been able on the whole to carry out her plans. Lois, on the other hand, had constantly been obliged to contend with an unsympathetic family. Her mother thought that on leaving the High School she ought to have been contented with a year in a training school. This would at once have fitted her for public school teaching. Money certainly was needed in the family, and Lois was not selfish. Yet when a relative, appreciative of her talent and ambition, offered her the money for the four years’ tuition at Radcliffe, she felt it to be not only a privilege, but a duty to accept. Lois in accepting, however, in the midst of her college work had constantly the feeling that she ought to consider her family more. It was indeed a difficult task to which she had set herself, to be both the dutiful daughter at home and the college student keeping her studies of first importance. It was the old story of trying to serve two masters; she was unable completely to please her family, and she lost much of the joy of college life because she could give so little time to the pleasant idling in which a girl must indulge if she wishes to be popular.

Even to herself, Lois perhaps never said that she wished to be popular. Yet she had an inborn spirit of leadership; and if she had listened to the urgings of her friends, she would have allowed herself to be a candidate for the Idler Presidency.

“It’s perfectly useless,” she remonstrated. “I haven’t the time, I haven’t the least chance of success. Besides, a great many other girls are much better fitted for the office. Honestly, I don’t think that I have a single qualification.”

“Ah, but you’d make such an ornamental President,” said Polly teasingly, knowing that this was the least sensible argument to use, for Lois not only seemed quite unconscious of her own attractiveness, but disliked these frivolous remarks. Yet although Polly spoke thus teasingly, she was in earnest in what she said.

“I haven’t enough energy myself to electioneer,” she had said to Julia, “but I’m going to make myself as agreeable as I can to everybody; and if you will help, and if Clarissa will help, and in fact if every one will help, why, Lois shall be the Idler President.”

“Naturally, if every one helps,” and Julia smiled; “but of course you can count on me, for I should be only too glad to see Lois loaded with honors. I consider her the very ablest girl in the class. What a credit she’ll be to us on the Commencement platform, with second-year honors, and a _summa cum_, and probably with a prize or two thrown in!”

Polly, if the truth were known, was perhaps more anxious to have Lois regarded as a probable candidate because she had heard that Annabel was also turning her thoughts in the direction of this office. Therefore, early and late, and without making her efforts too evident, she tried to create a sentiment in favor of Lois, so that when the election should come, it would seem the most natural thing in the world for her to be chosen.

On the whole, in this its Junior year the class was more united than ever before. At the Junior luncheon, more than one of those who responded to the toasts called attention to this fact. Annabel was still Class President, and indeed most of the class officers remained the same. But I am not sure that Polly would have admitted that this was a real sign of class unity. Annabel was still a conspicuous figure at the Idler theatricals, and she had even written a little play herself. Some of her admirers said that it contained passages that were wittier than anything in the operetta. But the authors of the operetta, composer and librettist, were not disturbed when this was repeated to them. Julia was not ambitious to shine again as a composer, at least for the present. Her very success had made her realize her own limitations, and she decided to make no further effort in this direction until she had perfected herself in the underlying principles. Nor did Polly intend to appear before the world as a full-fledged author. So the praise of Annabel, as sung by her special admirers, did not disturb her.

A few of the girls who were especially fond of society went out more than during the first two years. Some attended the Cambridge Assemblies, and an energetic group arranged a series of Junior dances, which, sanctioned by those in authority, proved altogether delightful. Julia attended the Assemblies largely because Brenda urged her to, and Brenda and a crowd of young people from town came out to them.

Clarissa went to the Junior dances, but she was not sufficiently in society to be asked to the Assemblies. Clarissa, however, had a faculty of enjoying herself at all times, and she did not show that she felt certain slights offered her, notably that of keeping her off the team.

In the natural course of events, she should have been chosen captain, but the influence of Alma Stacey was strong, and Clarissa was not even on the team.

But college festivities were not the only pleasures offered the girls. Not a few of the class who lived at home in Boston or Cambridge or the suburbs entertained at their own houses. An occasional tea, an evening of private theatricals, all these things relieved delightfully the monotony of study. Yet to a popular girl they offered great temptations for wasting time, and in college life, as in the outside world, it was hard to draw the line between necessary and unnecessary amusements. But when a wave of whist swept through the class, some of the more sedate began to protest.

“Oh, but it strengthens the mind, it really does,” pleaded Polly, when Julia remonstrated; “and you know I’m not dancing—or anything,” glancing down at her black gown.

“Yes, but afternoon whist parties, and two or three of them a week! Why, you will soon have no mind for anything else.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure of that, though it’s time to begin to study a little, as the mid-years are coming. But you look so sad over it, Julia, that I may swear off, like our old friend Rip.”

“I hope that it will be a different kind of swearing off from Rip’s. Otherwise—”

“Well, it shall be otherwise for the rest of the year, so far as whist is concerned, so worry no longer, fair creature,” and Polly went away laughing.

XXI A FORTUNATE ACCIDENT

One morning in January Lois entered Fay House with what Clarissa would have called a “long-drawn face,” and with traces of tears in her eyes. She had a letter in her hand, crumpled shapelessly.

The postman had given it to her as she was leaving her house in Newton, and she had been carrying it without realizing that she had it. Now, as she drew off her gloves, she saw the letter, and as she smoothed it out, again her eyes filled with tears.

To a certain extent the letter seemed like a death warrant, for it contained news that the relative who had been paying Lois’ tuition could do so no longer, and that not even the payment for the second half-year would be forthcoming. This to Lois meant that with the mid-years her Radcliffe work must end. Moreover, recent family troubles made it almost necessary that it should end. The required sum was not so very large, but for Lois it was absolutely unattainable. It was too late in the year for a scholarship award, and indeed the idea of holding a scholarship was distasteful to her. There was no one from whom she could borrow, no one to whom she was willing to confide her private affairs. She knew that there were schools in some of the smaller towns where she would be accepted as a teacher even without the college degree, and immediately she decided she would go to an agency to learn where there might be a vacancy.