Part 5

“Thank you,” she said feelingly. “I got a position in a church choir and I went into town three days in the week and gave lessons. I made four hundred dollars that winter.” She broke off with a little laugh. “I don’t think I ever felt so good in all my life as when I counted up and found that I had really made four hundred dollars for Julian! I never understood before why poor people want to get married--it’s for the fun of working for each other I think. It’s the most satisfying sensation I know of.” She glanced up at the woman beside the window. Miss Arbuthnot nodded absently. She was thinking of her safe investments--she had accumulated a good deal of money during her long years of teaching and her people had all been well off and she had never given a cent to anyone except in presents and trifling remembrances and organized charitable work. A strange desire grew upon her to share her life with someone. She looked with troubled eyes at the girl who had suddenly made her work and her life dissatisfying to her.

“I don’t understand”--she murmured--“and didn’t you ever regret--regret your wealth and social position?--the other life you had known?”

“I think it’s my turn not to understand,” said the girl slowly with a puzzled look. “You mean did I regret marrying Julian?”

Miss Arbuthnot nodded. An angry little flush mounted to the girl’s cheek, and then, as if the mere thought was too amusing to be taken seriously:

“Regret marrying Julian? O! Professor Arbuthnot--and then there was little Julian, you know. He was the dearest, the sweetest--wait, I have his picture.” She pulled at a little silk cord about her neck and drew forth a small miniature case. In it, painted on porcelain, was the head of a child with the blond beauty of its mother. As the girl looked at it her eyes filled with tears and she bent over it sobbing and kissing it passionately.

“That is all I have to regret,” she said. “He was two years old when he died--that was almost a year ago. I couldn’t tell you what he was like. I think he was the brightest, prettiest, sweetest boy in the world. You ought to have seen his hands and feet--all dimples and soft pinkiness and milky whiteness--and his eyes and long lashes----!” she stopped breathlessly.

Professor Arbuthnot looked at her wonderingly. She went over to her and looked down at the crushed figure.

“You have loved and loved again and lost. You have been a mother and your child is dead,” she said slowly. “I would sympathize with you if I knew how.”

The girl caught her hand.

“How kind you are! I never speak of this--I hardly know how I came to do so with you. I am sure I must have wearied you.” She put the locket back and began to draw on her gloves again slowly.

Professor Arbuthnot said nothing. In the last hour she had had glimpses of a life and a love

she had never known, and the revelation silenced her. She had sometimes reproached herself that the studious calm, the entire absorption of her life in her work had been exaggerated, and as she looked at the slight figure in its black gown, at the pale face with its sombred, youthful beauty, the conviction was borne in upon her, by this little breath from the outside world, by the life of this girl as told by her, that the insularity of her existence had been a mistake. A sudden intense dissatisfaction and impatience with her life took hold upon her.

The girl rose to go. She stood there hesitating, embarrassed, as if she wished to ask something, and rather dreaded doing so.

“I--I shall have a great deal of time this winter,” she hazarded, twisting the ring of her fan slowly round and round her finger, “and I am going to study--indeed I am!” She glanced up quickly, as if afraid Professor Arbuthnot might be smiling. “I know you think it foolish for me to try, but you don’t know how you’ve inspired me this afternoon!” She went on enthusiastically. “You and everything here make me realize intensely how little I know, and I am going to begin and really learn something. You don’t know how much obliged I’d be if you would tell me a little how to begin--what to start on--something easy, adapted for weak intellects!”

She looked up smiling and with heightened color at Professor Arbuthnot. She still stood in so much awe of her and was so afraid of being laughed at!

But that lady was not laughing at all. She looked preternaturally grave.

“It seems to me,” she said slowly, “that you and the natural sciences can get along admirably without each other. Why, child, you have lived!” she cried with sudden vehemence. She went over and shook her gently by the shoulder. “You are twenty-four and I am fifty! In four years you have crowded into your life more than I shall ever learn!”

The girl looked at her wonderingly, puzzled.

“Have you forgotten so soon what we heard this afternoon--that ‘life is everything, that all that you can learn in a hundred times the four years of your college course is but the least part of what life and nature can teach you?’” She pushed the girl toward the door.

“When you are tired of living come back to me.”

She stood and watched the girl, with the mystified, half-hurt look on her face, disappear down the corridor. When she had quite gone she went in and stood at the window for a long, long while looking out at the deepening shadows, and then she seated herself grimly at her desk and wrote to her publishers that they would have to delay the appearance of her book, as she felt she needed a vacation and would have to give up work on it for awhile.

A SHORT CAREER

She was so noticeably pretty and stylish, with that thorough-bred air of the young girl to whom life has always been something more or less of a social event, that she attracted a great deal of attention, though, of course, she very properly appeared to be oblivious of that fact. Even the baggage-master, when she caught his eye, hastened toward her and bestirred himself generally in a way that is not characteristic of baggage-men on the Boston and Albany, or any other road. She noticed vaguely that he seemed rather surprised when she gave him her four trunk-checks and he assured her with elaborate politeness that the train would stop at a certain small station without fail, to let off several hundred young women who wished to go directly to “the College.”

When Miss Eva Hungerford, on the completion of an enthusiastic college career, wrote to her young Philadelphia cousin, Margaret Wright, that she ought to take a college course, it was quite in despair of really inducing that young lady to do so, and only in the vain hope of saving her from an early and ill-considered marriage with an extremely nice Harvard youth, who declared that he would cheerfully forego his senior year if her parents would give their consent.

It was therefore with both delight and surprise that, just before starting for Europe, Miss Hungerford received a rather gloomy letter from her young cousin, who said that with such a brilliant example before her, and deeply impressed by the weighty arguments in her cousin’s letter, she had told the Harvard man that she was much too young and ignorant to marry, and fully convinced that society was a hollow sham, she had determined to devote the next four years to those pursuits which had raised her cousin so far above the ordinary girl. She was even greatly interested, she said, in her preparations for the entrance examinations which she would take at Philadelphia, and the chances of her being admitted. Miss Hungerford was quite touched by the little tribute to herself contained in the letter, and wrote a most cordial answer, and rather upbraided herself for having thought so lightly of her cousin. But her mother seemed to be distressingly sceptical about Margaret’s heroic determination, and said she shouldn’t wonder if some misunderstanding with the Harvard man were not at the bottom of it. But Miss Hungerford was confident that such a lofty purpose could have been born only of some noble sentiment, and refused to have her faith in her young cousin shaken by such a supposition.

When Miss Wright got off the train at the pretty little station, she found herself in the midst of a sufficiently large crowd of young women, all of whom seemed to be aggravatingly well acquainted with each other, and who set about in a most business-like way to get where they wanted to go, some taking “barges” and omnibuses, others striking out easily over the roads in the direction of the college. Being totally unfamiliar with the place and somewhat bewildered by the number of girls, Miss Wright thought she would simply take a carriage and get up to the college as quickly as possible.

She never told anyone but her best friend what were her sensations on reaching the big building and being “numbered” for an interview with one of the assistant professors, instead of seeing the president herself, as she had expected to do; or how hurt she felt at being totally ignored by the vast majority of busy, rather severe-looking young women, or how grateful she felt to a patronizing Sophomore who talked to her kindly, if condescendingly, for a few moments and who took her through unending corridors to her rooms. Later in the day she found two or three girls who wore tailor-made travelling gowns and seemed ill at ease, and they all huddled together in a corner of one of the big corridors and talked rather helplessly to each other. They would have liked to know what the peals on the big Japanese bell meant, and if they were expected to do anything about it, but they were afraid to ask anyone, because they were not sure which were the professors and which the students.

When it came her turn to see the assistant, she felt quite ready to go home. She had made out a list of studies which she thought she would like, but when she showed it to the professor, that astute lady very kindly but firmly told her that it was ill-advised and made her out another. She had wanted to study mathematical astronomy, because a Harvard man had said a chum of his studied it and found it “immense,” and besides she thought the name would impress her friends; but the professor pointed out to her that she would have to take the entire course in mathematics before she could hope to do anything with the astronomy. It was the same way with several other things, and she found, when the interview was over, that her list consisted mostly of freshman studies. She was rather disheartened by this, but remembered that Miss Hungerford had been a full freshman, and so she determined to go to work conscientiously.

And she did work very hard, but there were a great many young women who seemed to have had a much more thorough previous education than herself, and though she was not in the least snobbish, she was secretly surprised and a little bit aggrieved by their evident disregard of her superior gowns. She might as well not even curl her hair, she thought gloomily--most of the best students wore theirs back in a rather uncompromising way, and she thought it might have some influence for the better on her mind, and half-way determined to do it. But when she saw how she looked with it straight and pulled quite back, she gave it up for fear the Harvard man (who though so near, maintained a stony silence and invisibility) should happen to come over to the college to see some other girl.

When the winter concerts began and the young women were inviting their friends out from the “Tech” and Harvard and Amherst, and other places which to any but the college mind would seem appallingly distant, she sat resigned and alone, and wondered what her people would think if they could see her looking so sad and deserted. Her friends, she knew, would feel sorry for her, and would at last believe in her determination to go through the course.

When she had been at college about four months and was beginning to realize how little she knew, and how infinitely far off the president still seemed, and the effect of the study of chemistry on a brain unprepared for it, and was pitying herself for looking so pale and thin under her anxieties--one of the favorite concerts of the year was given. A celebrated violinist and his wife, a charming singer, were coming out. It was the last concert before the Christmas holidays, and one of the tailor-made girls with whom she had become intimate since that miserable first day had invited a lot of men out and had asked her to help entertain them. As every one knows, it is a long-established custom in that college for those young women who are so fortunate as to have a large masculine acquaintance to ask their friends to help them “take care” of the surplus male element.

Miss Wright was feeling very blue that evening and had just about made up her mind to stay at the college through the Christmas vacation, that she might spare her parents the distress of seeing her so worn and changed; so that when the tailor-made girl came to ask her to see after some of her friends for her, she thought that probably she was entitled to some recreation for the good resolution she had made. But she was now much too indifferent to men and such things to bestir herself very greatly, so she only put on her next most becoming gown and descended languidly to find the people.

Her friend saw her first and made a little dive at her through the circle of youths around her, and bore her to them with quite an air of triumph. And then, while she was trying to hear the names and remember where they came from, she suddenly saw a Harvard man coming toward her, and looking very much surprised and intensely happy, and somewhat embarrassed. She had just time to wish she had put on the other gown, when the bell for the concert sounded and everybody began to rush down the corridor. Somehow they got left behind the others, and as the place was crowded and they did not seem to care much for the celebrated violinist, who really played exceptionally well that evening, they considerately took seats against the wall behind everybody, where they could talk to their hearts’ content.

And they really must have talked quite a good deal, for when the last bell sounded for all the visitors to go and the driver of the big college sleigh (which was really an omnibus on runners) was shouting himself hoarse in the “centre” and in nervous asides assuring the excited and aggrieved passengers already assembled and waiting that they would all be late for the last train that night if the remaining few did not hurry up--while all of this was going on, the Harvard man was still sitting with her on the pedestal of a plaster statue in a darkened corner of a corridor, assuring her that they could be married just as soon as the finals were over, and that though he was sure to be made a marshal he would not wait for Class Day for anything which he could then think of under the sun, and that instead of sending out invitations to a spread in Beck, he would give his friends a delightful shock by substituting his wedding cards for them, and while the other fellows were working like beavers at the Tree, or filling dance cards for their friends, or wearing themselves to shreds dancing with their friends’ friends, they could be in a boat half-way over to the other side. And she was saying she didn’t think she would come back after Christmas so as to have plenty of time to get her gowns and things ready, and that she did not think she was really and truly fitted for college life; which he interrupted to assure her that he was certain she already knew vastly more than he did, and that he would telegraph her mother and father about the whole thing before he slept, and that if the answer was favorable he would send her some flowers the next day as a token. And then when the coachman’s patience had quite given out and they heard the sleigh go dashing away from under the _porte-cochère_, before she could realize it he had kissed her once quickly and jumped down the steps four at a time, and was out of the door tearing after the vanishing coach.

The next afternoon Miss Wright received an enormous box full of Mabel Morrison roses, and her tailor-made friend, not understanding the significance of the flowers, thought it was rather shabby on her part not to offer her some. About the same time of day the Harvard man sent a long and explicit telegram to the agent of the Cunard Line for the very best stateroom on a steamer sailing on or about the 20th of the next June, and blushed boyishly and then laughed a little at its “previousness,” as he signed the application for “Mr. and Mrs. Roger Pervere, New York,” six months before his wedding-day.

AN EPISODE

Judge Cahill drew his chair a trifle nearer the fire and the tall, muscular young man who was with him, and who bore so striking a resemblance to him as to be unmistakably his son, dropped into one opposite. They had finished their late dinner and were on the way to the library, but the elder man had paused before the big chimney-piece, standing meditatively for a few moments, and had finally seated himself comfortably and evidently with no immediate intention of proceeding to the library beyond.

“The whole arrangement is just what I have planned and hoped for all my life,” he said at length, with a bright look at the young man opposite. “And we have a capital chance of talking it over together to-night. It is rather lucky that your aunt is away for a few days, Dana. Your sister will be delighted. You must write to her at once that it is _un fait accompli_ and that she must leave college for over Sunday and come in and celebrate with us!”

“Oh! it will doubtless seem a mere trifle to Louise in comparison with her own arduous duties and tasks,” responded young Cahill, laughing a little and offering a cigar to his father, who refused it with a slight shake of his fine, white head.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll smoke one,” he said, lighting his own.

“Oh! I don’t mind at all,” said the elder man; and then absently and sadly, as he pushed the thick, silvery hair back from his forehead with a quick decisive motion habitual with him:

“I wish your mother could have lived to see this, Dana!”

The younger man made an inarticulate murmur of assent and regret, and then they both sat silent, staring into the crackling logs, while the butler moved noiselessly about, putting a decanter and glasses on the table and turning down the lamp a bit and folding back the screen. The younger man was making a rather unsuccessful attempt to recall his mother. He remembered her vaguely as a boy of eight remembers, and she had always seemed to him rather like some beautiful woman of whom he had read than his own mother; and the portrait of her in the drawing-room, although he could recall every feature, every line of it, was like the picture of any other beautiful woman he might have seen in a gallery abroad or the year’s Academy. At last he looked up, and shaking the ash from his cigar, said, with rather an effort--

“You have been most kind, sir. I scarcely think I deserve so much at your hands. I shall try to be all you wish.”

Judge Cahill looked quickly around. “That’s right! that’s right, my boy!” he said heartily, and with a touch of surprise in his voice. “You have always been what I wished--not very studious, perhaps”--he laughed indulgently, “but you always stood fairly well at the University, and although you have doubtless done a great many things of which I know nothing and of which I do not wish to know,” he added quickly and decidedly, “still I believe you have lived a life which you have no need to be ashamed of. I know that you are honest, and truthful, and straight, and that I can trust you, and that the responsibilities which you are to assume will make you even more upright and ‘square,’ if possible.”

He glanced admiringly and affectionately at the athletic young figure sitting easily before him, at the well-shaped head and pleasant blue eyes and finely-cut mouth of the young man.

“You might have been so different,” went on the older man, musingly, and with a certain whimsicality. “You might never have been willing to go through the University; or worse still, you might never have been able to get through; or you might have made debts that even I would not have felt willing or able to pay; or you might have been unwilling to supplement your college education with the years of travel which I thought necessary; or you might have had so decided a dislike for the law that it would have been impossible for me to take you in the firm as I am now so delighted, so proud to do; or you might have married too soon and ruined your life. In short, you might have been a disappointment--and you are not.”

The young man shifted his position a little, and tumbled the burnt end of his cigar into the ash-tray at his elbow.

“You are very kind, sir,” he repeated. “I am not quite equal to telling you just how kind you seem to me, and how proud I am to be the junior member of the firm. I feel a legal enthusiasm kindling within me which I am sure will land me on the Supreme Bench some day!” And then he went on more seriously, and with an anxious note in his voice. “But I hope you are not deceiving yourself about me, sir. If you remember, you _did_ have to pay debts for me at the University, and there was one time when I thought active measures would be taken to prevent my finishing my course even if I had been quite inclined to continue, as indeed I was; and I am not very clever, and shall never be at the head of my profession as you are, sir!”

Judge Cahill leaned back and laughed easily.

“I had quite forgotten those little incidents, Dana!” he said, “and do you know, it seems to me that we are unusually complimentary and effusive to each other to-night. I am congratulating myself on having such a son, and you on having me for your father! Well--it is not a bad idea. A little more demonstration in our family will not hurt anything.” He paused slightly, and then added: “Your mother was not very demonstrative.”

Again young Cahill murmured an assent as he looked reflectively into the fire. He could just remember that she had not seemed very fond of himself.

“But Louise is demonstrative enough,” he said, at length.

“Yes--yes, indeed,” replied his father, readily. “Louise is very affectionate and enthusiastic. She seems tremendously interested in her college--much more so than you were in yours,” he added with another laugh.

Dana Cahill got up leisurely, and stood by the chimney-piece thrusting his hands in his pockets and looking thoughtfully into the fire.

“I am thinking, sir,” he began, hesitatingly, “of what you have said about my having lived straight. I want to be fair about it. I _have_ lived better than some. I have done nothing to be ashamed of, as you said, sir, and I cannot think of anything just now to speak of which would illustrate my point. But I cannot help thinking that your ideals and principles are so much higher and purer than those of most young men of to-day, that I may have fallen short of them in a great many ways of which you do not dream.” He moved back uneasily to his chair and dropped into it. “I do not mean in the more vital questions. I have done nothing dishonorable, nothing that I could not afford to do according to the world’s standard.”

The elder man looked at him, and a shade of annoyance and uneasiness crept into his face.

“Well?” he asked, finally.

Young Cahill looked up, and his frank, boyish face wore a rather perplexed, troubled expression.

“Well,” he said, “that’s all--unless--” he stopped suddenly and lit another cigar rather nervously.

“Unless what?” insisted the elder man, the uneasiness and annoyance betraying themselves in his voice.