Part 17

She said no more, for she was not yet ready to have him recognize her. Besides, in the dim light she might have made a mistake. Watching his chance until there was absolutely no one in sight of the building, the young man at last gave the word.

Julia’s gymnasium practice was of great service to her now. Opening the window wider, she sat for a minute on the sill. Then as she put her foot on Philip’s shoulder, by an adroit movement she maintained her balance while he knelt low enough to permit her to jump to the ground.

In a second she was on her feet, and no one but Philip had perceived her strange exit from the building.

Her hat had fallen off, receiving the full force of the jar of reaching the ground; and Philip, turning to speak to her, was amazed to find that it was Julia whom he had assisted. He gave ready answers to her questions, wondering that she did not know of his intended return.

“I haven’t heard from Edith lately,” said Julia, “and we have all been so busy with the mid-years that we might have failed to hear an even greater piece of news than your coming, although this really is very important,” she hastened to add, lest Philip should think her altogether ungracious. “It’s nearly three years since you went away,” she continued after a moment’s silence.

“Is it? But tell me, Julia, how did you manage to shut yourself up in the Library? Is it the fashion for Radcliffe girls to do that kind of thing now? In my day you used to be more conventional. But we must hurry to a car, you are hungry.”

“Oh, indeed I am not,” returned Julia. “Please let us walk—that is, if you have time. They must have finished dinner at Mrs. Colton’s half an hour ago, and I’d so much rather know what you have been doing these three years. I have only heard general rumors from Edith and the others.”

So Philip, nothing loath, gave her a glowing account of life on the ranch, of the various people he had met and the things he had learned. “It was harder sometimes than studying,” he said, “the life out there. But it did me good, and now I’m going to work in a different way. I’ve promised my father to work for my degree. What a fool I was to cut those examinations! I’ll have a good half-year’s work to make them up. But I may have time for a little law, too; I’ve promised my father to try for the bar. Even if I do not practise, it will be a good foundation for business. The old gentleman rather wants me to look after things and relieve him.”

Mr. Blair had never been considered an overworked man, and Julia smiled at the thought of Philip’s relieving him. But Philip to-day was evidently very different from the Philip of three years before. He no longer spoke in a drawl and the note of personal vanity was lacking. When they reached Mrs. Colton’s, Philip went indoors with Julia, and Ruth was louder than Julia had been in her expressions of surprise at his return to Cambridge. He told the story of the rescue in a fashion that was amusing, if embarrassing to Julia. Looking at him as he sat by the droplight in Mrs. Colton’s library, she could see that he had grown stouter and browner, and that no one could now accuse him of looking too effeminate.

Ruth and Mrs. Colton congratulated Julia on getting safely out of the building.

“Of course it wasn’t as bad as if you had been in the Agassiz or Peabody Museums, with stuffed animals and bottled fishes or old Indian relics to keep you company.”

“Yes, I’m thankful enough,” responded Julia; “also that I was rescued without being arrested as an escaped burglar.”

“That reminds me,” said Philip, starting up, “that I must return and see that that window is fastened. I must hunt up a janitor or something of the kind.”

So almost before they realized it, Philip went off, promising to call on them soon.

Then Ruth and Mrs. Colton insisted on Julia’s having the dinner that they had saved for her; and Julia, thinking over the happenings of the past two hours, realized that Philip had neither referred to that last Class Day interview, nor had he thanked her for her advice nor apologized for his long silence, and yet she was sure that she and Philip were better friends than they had ever been before.

“Julia,” said Ruth the next morning, as the two sat in the conversation room, preparing and looking over some of the notes of their Shakespeare lesson. “Julia, I do not wonder that Philip and his friends used to laugh at us just a little when we were Freshmen, if we were at all like those two meandering through the hall.”

“But, my dear, we never walked with our arms about each other’s waists, nor scampered through the halls, nor—”

“Nor wore pigtails,” continued Ruth, gazing again at the Freshmen. “One of those girls, by the way, Minnie Crosfut, has been confiding some of her woes and sorrows to me. She thinks that the upper class girls are not sufficiently devoted to prayers. She thinks that attendance should be compulsory, and that it isn’t fair for Freshmen to have more than Seniors.”

“What an idea! Freshmen are no more obliged to go than Seniors. We all know that at ten minutes of nine every morning there will be prayers in the Auditorium, and as ministers of three different denominations officiate in turn, most girls can suit their special theological tastes, but no one _has_ to go. There are apt to be more Freshmen there, but I’m afraid that the whole thing turns largely on the question of convenience. Girls who have a nine o’clock recitation are apt to come down here early enough for prayers. Freshmen from a distance have usually promised their families before leaving home.”

“And Pamela?”

“Oh, Pamela comes because she is a minister’s daughter, and because her conscience is always active. But most of us, I am sure, attend prayers two or three times a week. Tell your Freshman that she should be more observing. And now, to work; I am half sorry that we took this Shakespeare course.”

“Julia! You to express such a sentiment! I am astonished. Why, it seems to me the finest course we have had this year; at least it has meant more to me. Every word now in every play that I read seems to have such depth. I am always looking for the hidden sense. Yet I do wish that sometimes the meaning were a little plainer. What do you make of this, ‘Oh, such a deed as from the body of contraction plucks the very soul’? What is contraction?”

“Why, he gave us the note, ‘Power of making a contract.’”

“Yes, I should have written it on the margin, but my book is so covered with notes that sometimes I trust to memory. I am anxious to finish this this morning, so as to be free to enjoy the party this evening, for this afternoon I am obliged to go to town.”

“Oh, yes, the party, the Sophomores’ farewell to us. I wonder what they have planned? I hear that it is to be something very original. There’s Polly with her camera; perhaps she knows.”

But Polly, although she had more than a mere idea of what the Sophomore party would be, declared she was pledged to secrecy, and she invited Julia and Ruth to go upstairs with her while she took a picture of the “Fair Harvard” room.

This was a recitation room on the second floor, and Polly had been waiting a time when it should have no classes, and when the light should be favorable for a photograph. She meant to have a photograph of every nook and corner of the old building for the album that she was making. The “Fair Harvard” room deserved its name, for the author of the famous college song had married a member of the Fay family, and in a room of the old house he had written the well-known stanzas. His portrait and an autograph of the poem, now hanging between the windows, gave the room more interest than belonged to any other in the whole building.

“You will give me a print?” begged Ruth when she had finished.

“No, indeed, not one.”

“Why, Polly Porson, are you growing mean?”

“No, generous!”

“It doesn’t look like it. I have been expecting a whole set of your photographs. Why do you refuse?”

“Come downstairs and I’ll show you.”

Julia and Ruth followed Polly to the bulletin board in the anteroom, whereon were displayed the cards of girls who were ready to do various things by which they could earn a little money. There was a notice from one girl that she was prepared to paint the Radcliffe seal in water colors, and from another that she would execute the Harvard or the Radcliffe seals in burnt wood. Other girls advertised that they were anxious to do mending or typewriting. One girl offered to frame photographs in passe-partout, and others to make hand-painted picture frames.

“There!” cried Polly, pointing to an excellent photograph of the Fay House library, with a card stating that complete sets of Radcliffe views could be obtained from the girl who had made this print.

“If I should give my photographs away, I should be taking money out of her pocket. You and Julia and almost every girl in the class can easily afford to buy Madge Burlap’s photographs, and I happen to know that she needs the money. She’s one of the girls of whom the college is bound to be proud. Since she’s willing to earn, she must be encouraged in her efforts. That’s why you can’t have my photographs—for love or money.”

“I accept your apology, Polly, and now good-bye until this evening.” Seizing Julia by the arm, Ruth hurried her off to the Shakespeare class.

When evening came, the Seniors were welcomed by the Sophomores at the house of one of their members, whose house in Cambridge was large and attractive. Across one side of the long drawing-room was a table covered with a crimson cloth. When the Sophomores and their guests had all assembled, a double quartette from the former class sang an amusing song of greeting, and then at a given signal the cloth was lifted, and one by one the Seniors were invited to come forward and gaze upon the photographs that had been hidden under the cloth. Each Senior had a book given her in which to record her guess as to the identity of the girls whose photographs were here displayed.

“They’re all Seniors,” said Madge Burlap, “although you mightn’t think it, Seniors at the age of ten or under; and if you don’t recognize yourselves at that age, why we shall think that you are less clever than you profess to be.”

The Sophomores had been at work all winter, collecting the pictures that they now displayed. They had tried to get them, so far as they could, from friends of the Senior rather than from the girl herself, as they wished the class as a whole to be surprised by the collection. Besides photographs, there were a few miniatures and daguerreotypes, while of Pamela and one or two other girls there were only tintypes to show.

“You are not asked,” said the President of the class, “to say whether the homeliest child has grown into the prettiest Senior, or the reverse; we shall give the prize for plain, unvarnished guesses.”

When the books were all in, it was found that Pamela had come the nearest to guessing the whole number, although even she had made two mistakes. The prize was an order on the class photographer for a dozen photographs, and everything considered, perhaps no one could have appreciated this more than the Vermont girl.

As the spring wore on, the entertainments offered the Seniors came, as Polly said, “fast and furious.”

Grateful though the class was for all the attentions lavished on them, they enjoyed these various parties much less than the entertainments given them in their Freshman year. Then four years of college life lay before them. Now it was nearly all behind; and though they appreciated the dignity of being Seniors, wearing the cap and gown, still not a few of them would have given much to be at the beginning rather than at the end.

Polly was one exception to this sentimentality, which toward the spring recess seemed to take possession of her class.

“Four years more of examinations, a whole year of English A, a year of daily themes, unexpected hour examinations in History I, at least two years of superior smiles from girls who know more than we do,—no, thank you! I am very glad to let the dead past bury its dead. But if any of you really long for four years more, I should advise you to return for a season of post-graduate work. Any one who distinguishes herself sufficiently may be the sword to open the Harvard oyster from which to extract the Ph.D.”

“Yes, if we could be Freshmen with Seniors’ experience life would indeed be ideal, although as it is, it is real and terribly earnest, and I wonder that we can take time even in the recess for Julia’s house party.”

XXVI THE HOUSE PARTY

When Mrs. Barlow offered Julia the house at Rockley for a party during the Easter recess, the offer was promptly accepted. “I have ordered the house put in readiness for our return,” wrote Mrs. Barlow from California, “although we shall not reach Boston until the first of May. I am sure that you must have worked very hard this winter, and that the breath of sea air will be just what you need before hot weather sets in. There is room for a dozen girls, and everything will be arranged for your comfort. You must not hesitate to ask for whatever you wish.”

In making the list of the girls to be invited, Julia and Ruth were long in consultation. Clarissa and Pamela, Lois and Polly, were certainties, and there were three or four others about whom there was no doubt.

“There’s Annabel, too,” said Julia. “We must ask her.”

Ruth looked closely at her friend. “But do you care to have her? Are you not asking her chiefly on my account?”

“I thought you might like her, even though you and she are less intimate than you once were. But she is Class President, and she is much more genuine than she was a year or two ago.”

“She tries to _seem_ more genuine,” responded Ruth. “But Annabel can never be absolutely sincere. We must take her as we find her.”

“Oh, we all understand her now,” replied Julia, “and as she certainly is entertaining, it seems to me worth while to invite her.”

Annabel, therefore, was one of the group that sat on the broad piazzas at Rockley or wandered on the beach in the warm April sun. Although it was vacation, each girl had set herself some task to be done before returning to college. Therefore, for three hours in the morning all were allowed to bury themselves in their books. Dante, Schiller, Greek and Latin Classics, Von Holst, Fichte, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Seignobos, and other awe-inspiring books were strewn over the library table, although any girl who touched her books except in the mornings was at once forcibly reprimanded by her classmates. An exception was made in the case of Polly and Clarissa, who both were studying practical Astronomy. So ardent were they in their search for variable stars that the other girls decided that it would be cruelty to force them to give up the opportunities afforded by Rockley. Therefore they spent nearly every evening on a little balcony, muffled in shawls. The wide, unbroken stretch of sky gave them the best of views, and, armed with opera-glasses, they carried on their search with great perseverance. Clarissa, indeed, announced that she had found almost enough material for a thesis, and that star-gazing could be a very profitable performance, “when carried on by a prudent person like myself,” she added _sotto voce_.

For exercise, wheeling was the favorite diversion of the twelve, and some to whom this part of the country was new were enthusiastic over the pilgrimages to Salem, Marblehead, and other historic places. At Salem, where Amy also was spending her vacation, they had a glimpse of Mrs. Redmond and her studio. Polly, who had money for whatever she wished, bought a pretty little water-color sketch of the beach at Rockley, and Annabel talked about having her miniature done. Fritz Tomkins, Amy’s great friend, came down to call while the Seniors were there. He expressed himself as perfectly delighted to meet a group of Radcliffe girls, explaining that although he had been a whole year at Harvard, they were the first students from the woman’s college whom he had met.

“You ought to have called on Ruth and me,” said Julia, with a mischievous attempt at patronizing Fritz, “and we would have introduced you to some one of your own age. We know several girls in the Freshman class.”

“Thanks,” said Fritz, “but you know that at Harvard we hardly realize that there is such an institution as Radcliffe. It makes so little—”

“Yes, it makes very little disturbance in Cambridge, and we would hardly realize the existence of Harvard had we not the advantage of knowing its Faculty pretty well,” retorted Ruth.

“I understand that you could hardly get on without them,” and thus the good-natured bantering between the two went on for some time longer, and in the end it was hard to tell with whom the advantage lay.

One evening at Rockley Julia announced that she had arranged for a “confession conference.” She would give no satisfaction as to her meaning until the whole dozen had assembled in the library before the open fire.

Then, producing a red-bound book, she declared that its pages were blank, except that one page in every five had in turn the names of each of the girls present.

“I am going,” she said, “to ask each girl to tell me what Radcliffe has meant to her, and then I am going to beg her to tell what her real ambition was in coming to college, or better, what she intends to be when she leaves. Let us take an hour to collect our thoughts and write; then another hour to read and discuss what has been written. Later, with your permission, these confessions will be handed to the Confession Recorder (and she laid her hand on Polly’s shoulder) to be copied into this book. I wish that the whole class would do something of the same kind. But at the end of ten years, how interesting it will be to see how near we twelve have come to our ideals.”

“Or how far we have fallen below them,” murmured a voice that sounded like that of Annabel.

Thus, with pencils and writing pads, the twelve set to work, for Julia’s proposal had the charm of novelty, and met no opposition. But when the time came for reading what had been written, the majority of the girls told what they hoped or planned, without confining themselves strictly to their notes.

Polly said that she had chosen to come to college because she was fond of study, and because it had been her father’s pleasure to tutor her in the classics. Out of a family of five girls, she had thought that one ought to have as good an education as a boy. “Besides,” she added, “it seemed rather a good joke to shock all our friends and relations, who thought it a terrible thing for a girl to go to college. Most people in the South still think so, although I have converted a few. Papa was a Harvard man,” she added in an undertone, “and that’s why I came to Radcliffe, and that’s all I have to say.”

“But what have you learned?” asked Clarissa. “That’s part of the game.”

“Oh, everything,” responded Polly, “but chiefly that I am not the very brightest girl in the world, as some of my friends and admirers used to try to make me believe, when I lived down South.”

“And your ideal?” asked Julia.

“Oh, I’m going to write the great novel of North and South. The subject is a large one, still I think that I can conquer it, but it will be years yet,” and Polly sighed heavily—for Polly.

We know how Clarissa and Pamela happened to come to Radcliffe. Clarissa now confessed that she had learned at Cambridge that it was a good thing to live in a conventional place for a time and get the sharp edges rubbed off. She added that at school she had always been considered the smartest girl, but Radcliffe, she had found, was made up of the smartest girls from a good many schools, and the majority seemed to be able to hold their own quite as well as she. “What’s the matter with basket ball?” cried two voices in unison from the other side of the room, and Clarissa hastened to declare her ideal. This was, she said, to stay quietly at home with her parents for the next two or three years. “They think that I’ve been away too long, but if I really wish a profession at the end of that time, they will not interfere with my studying.”

Pamela, after a moment’s hesitation, said that she had found Radcliffe a most encouraging place, and that instead of subduing a girl, as Clarissa implied, she thought that it tended to make her less timid.

“Which shows,” interposed Polly, “that Radcliffe is very like the chameleon inspected by several persons, each of whom gave a different account of the little creature.”

Pamela added that she was going to try for a European Fellowship, and, if possible, spend a year or more at the American School at Athens.

Lois confessed that the pure love of study had drawn her to college, and Radcliffe had been her choice, because while attending it she could also live at home. “Although,” she added, “I believe that there is no better college. Yet I so love study that even without Radcliffe I should have studied by myself. But college has been wonderfully broadening for me, especially during the past year, when I have had so many delightful friends. As to my ideal,” she concluded, “I am ashamed to say that my purpose has changed somewhat. I may not study medicine—at least not at present. I am going to teach for two years, and at the end of that time I shall try to go abroad for special research in Philosophy. There are certain theories that I can work out by myself while teaching and—after that—”

“Lois,” cried Esther Haines, one of the group, “mark my words, in two years you will be marching to the altar to the tune of ‘The Wedding March.’”

“Nonsense,” cried Lois, “I am the last one to—” But the others, noticing that Lois was evidently embarrassed, could not resist the temptation of teasing her.

In time it was Annabel’s turn, and she announced that she had happened to come to Radcliffe merely because when on shipboard on her return from Europe she had met a Harvard man who had told her that this was the coming college for women, and that it was the thing for every clever girl to be educated there. “‘Clever,’” murmured Polly, “there’s nothing bashful about Annabel.” The latter added that she wasn’t sure that she had learned as much as she had expected, but for the present she should rest content, as she meant to devote the next two or three years to society, as her father had taken a house in Washington. But just as some of those present were thinking that Annabel was as vain as ever her tone changed a little, and she said in a somewhat more humble voice, “To be perfectly honest, I really have learned some things at Radcliffe, and later in the evening, if you will let me, I wish to make a little confession of my own.”

As if with one impulse Clarissa and Polly looked at each other significantly. Her meaning to the others was not so clear. Even Julia, failing to understand, hesitatingly gave her impressions of Radcliffe and her aims.

“You needn’t tell us your aims in life,” cried Clarissa; “to do so would be tautological, as you have been telling us constantly, ever since you came to college.”

“Why, Clarissa!” and Lois looked almost angry. “You would have us believe that Julia is the most egotistic girl in the class.”

“I am not unfair,” retorted Clarissa, “for you must agree that Julia is likely to have, after leaving college, much the same aim that she has had during her college days,—that of making every one about her as happy as possible.”

Applause followed Clarissa’s explanation, and Julia withdrew from the room in confusion to order more logs for the fire.