Part 7

“Three thousand dollars! An enormous sum for an undergraduate to owe.” Although Philip had lately come of age, Julia knew that he had no money of his own. She knew, too, that although Mr. Blair was liberal to his children he had a strong dislike for debt. She wondered if he would come forward and pay this for Philip.

“It’s an old debt,” said Philip. “It was made last year. Part of it is money I really owe, but the greater part is on notes I endorsed for Farlong.”

Julia had heard of Farlong. He was a law student from a distance, who had made a great display for a year or two. Then the failure of his father—a rather notorious stockbroker—had brought his college career to a close.

“Yes,” continued Philip, “I was so foolish as to let Farlong invest a little money for me. Of course I lost it, and more, too, than I put in. Then Farlong lent me some money, and when the crash came I was considerably in his debt. I’ve been able to renew the notes, but now they have to be paid, and with interest the whole sum is three thousand dollars. So you can see that I have enough on my mind just at present.”

As he talked Julia realized that she could not help him.

“The very best thing,” she said, “is for you to go at once to your father. It’s a large sum, but for a year or two you can economize, and it will be worth a great deal to get this load off your mind.”

“I don’t know,” and Philip sighed heavily, at the same time closing with a snap the watch-case in which he carried the picture of Adelaide Cain.

Except for the danger of offending Philip, Julia would have liked to laugh at his feeling for Adelaide Cain. Adelaide was a distant cousin of his, several years his senior, who had been engaged several times. She was fond of attention; and as her latest engagement had been broken off the past summer, she had let Philip dance attendance upon her while she was travelling with Mrs. Blair’s party in Europe. Philip had imagined that she really cared for him, and had written her many letters after his return. At last Miss Cain had announced her engagement to another. Philip felt greatly aggrieved by this news. His self-love had been injured. Yet, if he had been willing to admit it, his present discomfort was caused by his money loss rather than by the loss of the friendship of Adelaide Cain. But it relieved his feelings a little to complain of the unkindness of this fickle young lady.

“Now make a clean breast of it to your father,” cried Julia in parting. But Philip merely shrugged his shoulders.

June came in as a hot month, making harder the final examinations of the year. There was hardly a Radcliffe girl who did not go about with a wilted air, as if life had lost all its charm. The cool corners of Fay House were occupied by students, and the beauty of the tree-shaded streets and the flower-laden gardens was wasted on them.

Julia, Ruth, and even the discreet Pamela herself were no better than their fellows in this matter of examinations. Pamela, indeed, was especially nervous in her dread of falling below “A” in something. With the hope of a scholarship before her, she felt that she could afford nothing less than perfection. Julia and Ruth, coaching each other in Latin and English, studied throughout long, fragrant evenings, when they would infinitely have preferred sitting idly on Mrs. Colton’s little piazza.

On her way from town one day as she stepped on the open car, Julia saw Philip upon the running-board. He carried his dress-suit case, and in a hurried glance Julia saw that he looked worn and tired.

“Why, what is it?” she asked, as he took a seat beside her.

“What is what?”

“Why, you have a very melancholy air.”

“I thought I told you that I had several things to worry me.”

“And I advised you to tell your father.”

“Well, I’ve told him. I’m going in town to tell him something else now, and also to bid my mother and Edith good-bye. They sail for Europe to-morrow.”

“To sail to-morrow? Why, how strange! They will miss your Class Day.”

“_My_ Class Day!” Philip laughed sharply. “_My_ Class Day! Why, I haven’t any Class Day. I haven’t any Class, for that matter.”

Julia was almost overcome by what he had said. In the first place, she found it almost impossible to realize that Edith was starting for Europe without letting her know her plans—without bidding her good-bye. At least at the first moment it had been very hard to understand this; if Philip’s second statement should prove true, that he was to have no Class Day, it threw some light on Edith’s departure. The car thundered over Harvard Bridge; a fresh breeze blew from the river, and life seemed a little better worth living than it had a half-hour before. Julia looked down the river toward the city. Her eyes fixed themselves on the tower of the old gaol, and on the streets that ran up the hill, until at last they rested on the golden dome of the State House. The golden dome seemed to burn itself into her brain, and whenever again she thought of this interview with Philip it seemed to dance before her eyes.

“What do you mean, Philip, about your Class Day?”

“Why, just what I said. I’m going to throw it all up. I told you that if I couldn’t straighten things out I wouldn’t stay. Well, I’ve slipped up entirely on one of my examinations, and that has settled the question of my degree. My father is beside himself, he is so disappointed. He’s making a great fuss about that money, too. I suppose that he’ll pay it, but I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t pay any Class Day bills, too. So that even if I could stay for my degree, I couldn’t have much fun Class Day. I’m going to cut it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I’m going to cut it all—Cambridge, College, everything.”

“But the Law School—you are coming back to the Law School?”

“No, indeed, I’ve had enough of study.”

Had Philip looked closely at Julia he might have noticed an involuntary smile. It did not seem to Julia as if in the past few months Philip had been overworked.

“Yes,” he continued, “I’m going on a ranch, or something of that kind. Jim Devereux is out in Dakota, and he has always been asking me to come out. I’ll go for the summer and see what chance there is for a fellow out there.”

“But I can’t help thinking how disappointed your mother and Edith will be. I know that Edith has set her heart on your Class Day. Why, her dress is all ready. She wrote me about it the other day.”

“Well, she could wear it just the same if she weren’t going away. There are others in the Class, and she has had invitations. But my mother won’t stay. They’re going straight to London. Anyway, Edith isn’t really out yet, and next year will be time enough for her Class Day.”

Philip’s tone made Julia think of the boy who whistled to keep his courage up. They were near the Square.

“I hope I’ll see you soon,” she said, as Philip began to gather up his belongings preparatory to leaving the car.

Philip paused for a moment, bending down to shake hands with her before jumping off. “I am not quite sure,” he said hesitatingly. “I should like to have a talk with you, but I am really going away at once.” Before she could ask him when, he had swung himself down and was hastening toward the Yard. He had murmured an explanation about an engagement, and Julia had taken this as an apology for his leaving her so abruptly. As she recalled the interview word by word, she wished that she might have had a good talk with Edith. The next day was so hot that Julia went down to Rockley for Sunday, and there, naturally enough, she found them all talking of Philip’s failure to get his degree. “It all comes,” said Mr. Barlow, “from letting a boy have his own way in everything. I suppose that Philip has never had an ungratified wish. When his father was in college students had to study. I know how it was, for we were in the same class. But now—why, study is merely incidental. They elect this or they elect that, and it is all a matter of whim.”

“So students were altogether perfect in your day, Uncle Robert,” said Julia a little mischievously. “Then it wasn’t you who told me of a whole class that was at least half expelled?”

“Rusticated, my dear, or suspended; not expelled,” responded Mr. Barlow with a smile. “Oh, I dare say that we were not exactly perfect, but then, you know boys will be boys.”

“Yes, but as I understand it, Philip hasn’t even been rusticated, and still less expelled. It’s only that he can’t get his degree this year.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Barlow, “it seems to me that that is bad enough.”

“Oh,” interposed Brenda, “I shouldn’t wonder if he’d get it next year. Philip always could get anything he wanted if he’d take the trouble.”

“It’s a pity that he hadn’t taken the trouble this year. Really, I sympathize with his father. He has spent much money on Philip, and here he sees him leave Cambridge with a kind of stigma, for that is what it amounts to. I doubt that that ever happened to a Blair before. They may never have been brilliant, but they’ve always had a respectable standing in college. I don’t wonder that Mr. Blair is annoyed.”

“But Edith,” cried Brenda, “just think of Edith! She told me when she came home last autumn that she was very tired of Europe, and here she is dragged off again at a few days’ notice, and she wanted so much to have a jolly Class Day. Even if Philip isn’t there she might manage to have a good time. She has as many invitations as I have, and there are Tom Hearst and Will Hardon and all the others whom she knows so well.”

“Remember, Brenda,” cried Mrs. Barlow warningly, “that you are going this year only by special favor. You are a year younger than you ought to be on your first Class Day.”

“I know it, I know it, mamma, but I shall enjoy it just as well as if I were a year older. Besides, I shall go next year, too,” and Brenda pirouetted several times around the piazza.

Later in the evening, as Julia sat on the piazza looking out at sea, at the lamps revolving in the distant lighthouse and the moon rising from the water, her thoughts still lingered with Philip. The moon, at first a large crimson disk near the horizon, had been transformed into a smaller golden sphere nearer the zenith, and still Julia sat there wondering if Philip had left Cambridge, wondering if he would become a ranchman, wondering if he would think it worth while ever to come back for his degree.

Fay House, when Julia returned to it, had begun to take on its summer expression. The finals were over, and the entrance examinations had not begun. Very few girls were visible in the house, although there was a double set on the tennis ground and a group watching the game. But within there was an almost deathly stillness. The conversation room no longer re-echoed to undergraduate quips and jokes, and the little brass figures, appliquéed to the black wooden pillars of the mantle-piece as Polly had described them, gazed on deserted chairs. The magazines and periodicals were strewn untidily on the tables. Into this room Julia wandered this Monday afternoon. She fingered some of the magazines idly and then she turned toward the window. As she did so she gave a start, for there in a chair with her handkerchief over her face was a girl. Evidently she was asleep, for she did not stir as Julia drew near. The sight of the Vermont girl there—for it was Pamela—seemed to Julia like an echo of something that had happened. She remembered that it was in this very corner of this very room she had found Pamela looking so forlorn on the day of the first Idler reception. As she gazed at her now, Julia realized that in her absorption of the past few weeks, with a kind of unintentional selfishness, she had really hardly seen Pamela. Indeed, she had scarcely thought of her. Julia’s approach wakened Pamela, and as she pulled the handkerchief from her face, Julia noticed that she looked worn and thinner than usual.

“How cool you look!” Pamela exclaimed, as Julia took her hand. Pamela herself wore a stiffly starched shirt waist of rather clumsy cut, a high linen collar, and a heavy woollen skirt. Julia, in an écru muslin finished with a ruffle at the wrist and a soft ribbon at the neck, appeared in contrast the picture of comfort.

“What are you going to do this summer, Pamela?” asked Julia suddenly. She wondered if Pamela might not be worrying about the future. As the latter seemed to hesitate over her reply, she added, “Why couldn’t you come home with me to dinner, and then ride somewhere with me on the electric cars, to Newton, or to Arlington, if that would suit you better?”

“Oh, I wish that I could!” cried Pamela. “But you know I am busy still at Miss Batson’s. Couldn’t you call for me after tea?”

“Yes, indeed. Will seven o’clock be too early?”

“Oh, I can be ready then, easily.”

Julia was prompt at the appointed hour, and before Pamela could interpose she was warmly greeted by Miss Batson and introduced to three of the boarders who were seated on the steps.

As they reached the car, Julia, with her arm in Pamela’s, said rather brusquely, “You haven’t failed in your finals, have you?”

“Why, no! But why do you ask?” Pamela’s tone was one of extreme surprise.

“Oh, I wished to startle you into telling me what troubles you.”

“Perhaps I am foolish,” responded Pamela, “but I’ve been wondering whether it’s really worth while to go on. Perhaps I oughtn’t to come back next year.”

“I suppose you haven’t had a mark below ‘B.’”

“I’ve had only one ‘B.’”

“And everything else was an ‘A’?”

“Yes,” she replied, “but I am afraid that you think me very conceited to tell you.”

“Not when I asked you. Well, if the trouble isn’t marks, it must be money. I should think that you might tell me just _what_ it is. You do not look as well as you did when you entered, and you were not exactly robust then.”

“I suppose it’s partly the hot weather,” responded Pamela, sighing. “Then, besides, I’m pretty tired of Miss Batson and her household. I’m glad that she is going to close her house this summer. Otherwise I might be tempted to stay on—to save expense. She’s going to take the first vacation she has had in years, and visit some relations in the West, and she has been able to rent her house for three months.”

“Then I suppose that you will go up to Vermont for the summer?”

Pamela received this question in silence, and Julia saw that it had been ill-advised. Thus for several minutes they rode on without speaking. The cool air was refreshing; the electric lights here and there at the side of the road threw strange shadows from the trees. There was a certain pleasant weirdness in the scene.

Pamela was the first to speak. “I do not really wish to go up to Vermont. They think that I ought to teach. They think that it is foolish for me to continue at college when I might be earning. Besides, my aunt’s house is crowded now, and there isn’t a room that I could have. If I knew what I ought to do next year, I could tell better about this summer.”

“Do next year?” repeated Julia. “Why, you wouldn’t think of doing anything but come back to college—with _your_ record.”

If Julia had noticed Pamela’s smile, she would have known that its wanness was not entirely the result of the flickering electric light. Her voice, however, betrayed her.

“It may not be wholly a matter of choice.”

“But you’ve applied for a scholarship?” Julia realized now that the question was a question of money.

“Yes, but I can’t know about it until the autumn. There are so few scholarships and so many applicants.”

“I suppose that we ought to turn our faces homeward. It’s getting late,” said Julia.

Then as they waited by the side of the road for the car bound Cambridge-ward, Julia saw what she ought to do. During the ride she had been pondering, and had it been any one but Pamela she would have made an offer of direct help for the next college year. This would have meant so little to her, and so much to the Vermont girl. But there was something in Pamela—an independence of spirit in spite of her shrinking demeanor—that prevented her doing this. Yet now as from a clear sky she seemed to hear the echo of a speech that had actually fallen unheeded on her ears a week or two before. It was the lamentation of a friend of Mrs. Barlow’s who bewailed her young son’s deficiencies in Greek.

“It’s disgraceful that Teddy is so unwilling to study, and his father is determined to have him enter with Greek. If I had my way he’d give it up. Now I suppose that we shall have to have a tutor. It will be a nuisance to have an extra man in the house, but I suppose it can’t be helped. If it were anything but Greek I suppose that we might have a woman, but as it is, I suppose that we must make the best of it.”

As this conversation came back to her, Julia wondered that at the time she had not thought of Pamela. Possibly it was because the words had not been addressed to her directly that they had made so little impression. That very night she would write to Mrs. Hadwin, and if it was not too late, she would do her best to get the position for Pamela.

“Pamela,” she whispered, after they had taken their seats in the returning car, “Pamela, I feel almost certain that I can find something for you to do this summer. If it isn’t the thing that I have in mind this minute it will be something similar. I can’t say more at present, but I wish that you would trust me and believe me entirely your friend.”

“Thank you, of course I trust you. You have been so kind ever since the very first day. You remember my fountain pen?”

Both girls laughed at the remembrance.

“Because I’ve been so despondent this evening you mustn’t think that I am always forlorn,” said Pamela, “only it is very hard sometimes for a girl to work out things all alone, and I really have no one to advise me.”

“Sometimes I feel very lonely, too,” said Julia; and as Pamela’s hand touched hers in a mute response, she felt that they were now really going to understand each other.

That very evening Julia wrote to Mrs. Hadwin, and so strong did she make her case that before the end of the week all the arrangements had been made, and Pamela was the engaged tutor for Teddy. Her term was to last three months from the last week in June, and Pamela was to accompany the family to the seashore. The change of air was in itself likely to be good for Pamela, and Julia congratulated herself on the sudden thought that had brought this piece of good luck to her friend.

“Yet if Pamela had not been able to show such a fine record for her work in the classics, any effort of mine might have been perfectly useless.”

XII HARVARD CLASS DAY

Had Jane Townall stayed in Cambridge until Commencement, Julia might have had more interest in the Radcliffe Class Day. But illness in her family had called Jane home as soon as her examinations ended.

“I am sorry not to get my degree from the hands of the President at Commencement, but I’m glad to escape the flurry of Class Day. I really could not afford the expense. I’m coming back, though, for my Ph.D. sometime. I’ll take that in person.”

“There’ll be no Radcliffe Ph.D. next year, nor yet the year after,” said Polly, shaking her head.

“Oh, it will be years before I return,” responded Jane cheerfully. “I must save the money first. By that time women will be receiving the Ph.D. from Harvard itself.”

“Doubt it!” cried Polly.

“Well, I’d come back cheerfully for the two years of graduate study, even without the Ph.D. at the end.”

“I’m not with you there,” interposed Clarissa, who had joined the group. “When I’ve earned a Ph.D. I’ll try to get it.”

“Then you wouldn’t have been a contented Annex graduate, with a certificate instead of a degree, stating that you had received an education the equivalent of that for which the degree of A.B. is given at Harvard College.”

“Poor things!” replied Clarissa. “No, I couldn’t have borne all that they bore. I’m not that kind of a pioneer.”

Jane had secured a fine position in an Indiana High School for the coming year, and her regrets at leaving Cambridge were mingled with pleasure at the prospect opening before her of having a fair income.

Julia and Ruth returned to Cambridge the day before Harvard Class Day. As evening came they worried about a few overhanging clouds, yet when Friday came, the girls, looking through the trees shading their window, saw that it was a regular Class Day sky, blue, cloudless, while the air coming in over the casement was warm and sultry.

“Julia,” cried Ruth at breakfast, “how _can_ you be so calm? I feel as if I might be Brenda, I am so excited. I’ve always longed for a real Harvard Class Day. I was only a little girl when my cousin Augustus was a Senior, and I remember how I stood about and watched his sisters dressing for his spread. Even a year in Cambridge hasn’t destroyed the glamour surrounding the day. Yesterday, when I saw that the seats had been put up around the Tree, I felt that the curtain was about to be lifted from the show. You are too calm, Julia, you really are, and you have such a lovely dress!”

“It is no lovelier than yours, Ruth. Come to my room when you are dressed; I am very anxious to see it on you.”

The girls were now on their way upstairs, and when a half-hour later Ruth entered Julia’s room, each girl gave an exclamation of delight. A third person might have found it hard to tell which dress was the more beautiful, Julia’s white organdy, with its rows and rows of tiny lace-edged ruffles, or Ruth’s yellow muslin worn over a pale yellow slip. Ruth was a brunette with Irish blue eyes, and her yellow gown and leghorn hat with yellow crush roses was very becoming. Julia’s white hat had a pink lining, and was very becoming to her rather colorless type. “You look like a white rose just touched with pink,” exclaimed Ruth, in a rather unwonted vein of poetry.

The two girls walked in a leisurely fashion to Fay House, where, according to the arrangements made by Mrs. Barlow, Toby Gostar, Nora’s younger brother, met them to escort them to Memorial Hall. Here in the Chapel Brenda and Nora and Mrs. Barlow were waiting.

“We were so afraid that you would be late,” cried Brenda as they approached. “You know that our tickets won’t be good for anything after half-past ten. The doors are opened to the public then.”

“As it is now only quarter-past ten, Brenda, your anxiety was rather misplaced, but as we are now all here we can hasten to our seats.”

Mrs. Barlow, gathering up her voluminous skirts, marshalled her quartette to the narrow wicket gate through which so many, many thousands of persons have entered Sanders Theatre, and up the broad stairs into the great amphitheatre. Toby stayed behind to take his chances with the ticketless throng, crowding around the outer door.

“It’s like a garden,” said Ruth, gazing about on the rows of seats rising tier above tier, filled for the most part with young women and girls, whose light gowns and flower-trimmed hats gave the place the aspect of a flower garden.

There were mothers there, of course, or an occasional father; but on the whole the great interior was given up to girls, who fanned themselves and listened to the orchestra, and wondered if it wasn’t almost time for the Class to appear. Very promptly at eleven o’clock the Class _did_ appear, fresh from the service in Appleton Chapel and the breakfast at the President’s. The Marshals led the way, one of whom was Philip’s friend, Tom Hearst; and as the rest of the Seniors in cap and gown followed closely and took their places in the seats on the floor, every girl in the theatre tried to identify her own brother or cousin or friend.

“It does seem too bad about Philip,” and Nora leaned over toward Julia; “besides, if he hadn’t failed so, Edith would have been here. Just think of her near England at this very minute, when she ought to have been here.”