Part 9

They were on the second round, and Newbold was roughly calculating that his erratic plays had made him walk about three miles, and was wondering if he could live to get up the hill in front of him, when he saw Miss Thayer and Miss Yale, who were three holes ahead of him, coming back toward him.

“You look awfully tired and hot,” said Miss Thayer, sympathetically. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like golf? But what an absurd question! Anyone who could write the article on athletics _you_ did must like it. Only, I suppose, girls seem such duffers at it, to you!”

Newbold looked at her sharply. He had an uneasy suspicion that she was laughing at him, but he was too tired to think of any way of finding out whether she was or not, and so he walked on taciturnly and sufferingly.

“I have such a nice surprise for you,” ran on Miss Thayer. “But I won’t tell you what it is yet.” She pulled out her watch. “It is just a quarter to four now, and I think the surprise will not be ready until a quarter after. Can you possibly wait that long?”

Newbold said he thought he might if he could sit down; but Miss Thayer said she disapproved of getting over-heated and then cooling off rapidly, and that she thought they had better keep moving until it was time to see the “surprise.” So they strolled across the grounds, and the two girls seemed to meet an astonishing number of friends, all going their way. And while Newbold was vaguely wondering what their destination might be, and what new torture was in store for him, he heard Miss Yale say, in what sounded to him like the voice of an avenging angel:

“I think we had better show Mr. Newbold our new running-track while we are waiting. He is so interested in such things, and he might suggest some improvements.” And then Newbold felt himself irresistibly compelled to walk on farther and farther. He wondered sadly why they thought _he_ knew anything about running-tracks for girls, and decided that his humorous remarks on the subject in his article had been a great mistake.

“Do you think it’s a fair track?” inquired Miss Yale, anxiously, as they came in sight of it. “It is an eight-lap track, you see, and of course a great many girls only go around four times at first--girls get tired so absurdly easy! Now I suppose men think nothing of making two miles at a time--it is just play for them. Men are so strong--that is their greatest fascination, I think,” she ran on enthusiastically. “Haven’t you seen foot-ball players after a hard practice game start off and run two miles around the track, and seem to think absolutely nothing of it?”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Newbold, unwarily and warmly. “Fellows are so different from girls, you know. A girl cries when she’s tired, doesn’t she? Well, a man just keeps going, you know, and doesn’t let it make any difference to him.”

“I am so glad to hear that, Mr. Newbold,” said Miss Yale, with prompt and suspicious sympathy, and a sudden firmness of tone, “because I wanted dreadfully to ask you to try the track, but hated to do so, for I knew you were tired--at least you look so. But since you just keep going, and it doesn’t make any difference to you, why I would be so awfully obliged if you would run around three or four times. I want to see just how you hold your head and arms. I don’t believe we do it in the best way, you know.”

It was a rare and pleasingly curious sight that Miss Yale and Miss Thayer and a great many other young women assembled near the track, apparently by a strange coincidence, looked upon. It is not often that one has the chance of seeing an immaculately dressed youth, with flushed and desperate countenance, tear madly around an eight-lap track in the presence of a number of flatteringly attentive young women. It occurred to Newbold as he dashed around and around that it would be far preferable to keep going until he fainted away or dropped dead, than to stop and encounter the remarks and glances of those young women. They would at least feel sorry for him in that case, he thought, gloomily. But even that modest and simple desire was not granted him. As he started on the fifth lap he heard Miss Yale call to him to stop. He had a wild inclination to pay no attention to her, but to keep going on and on, but as he got nearer he saw her step out toward him and put up a warning hand.

“Thank you so much,” she said, warmly. “I think we have all had a lesson in running which we shall not forget soon. I hope you are not tired?” she went on, anxiously.

Newbold said, “Oh, no!” but he felt very tired indeed. His feet ached horribly and his head felt hot and dizzy, and there were queer, sharp pains shooting through his body which made him think forebodingly of pneumonia.

“The surprise is ready--Miss Atterbury is going to have the crew out for your especial benefit!” went on Miss Yale, triumphantly. “Don’t you feel complimented? And you are to pull Miss Thayer and myself about while they go through a little practice for you. Not much, you know, but just enough to show you the stroke and speed we get. The boat is a beauty--but then, of course, you know so much more about it than we do! I imagine from your article that you must pull an oar capitally. Miss Thayer says a cat-boat is your especial hobby, though.”

“Did Miss Thayer say that?” began Newbold, hotly. “Beastly things, I think--hate ’em!”

Miss Yale smiled incredulously and brightly at him.

“How modest you are!” she said, admiringly. “Ah! there is Miss Atterbury!”

Newbold saw some one waving frantically at them.

“Come on!” exclaimed Miss Yale; “we want to see them start off--that’s the best part.”

Newbold never remembered afterward how he got across the intervening space, or how he got into a boat with the two young women. The first thing he heard was Miss Atterbury asking him anxiously how he liked the new sliding-seats, and what he thought of the proportions of the boat, and about outriggers in general, and where he thought they could be built best and cheapest. Newbold felt about as capable of instructing her on such points as of judging the pictures at a Salon exhibit, and he longed, with a longing born of utter exhaustion and desperation, to get away. As he wearily pulled the heavy, unwieldy boat about after the light practice-barge, which kept an appalling distance ahead of him, he decided within himself that the physical development of women had been carried to an absurd and alarming extent, and that men simply were not in it with them when it came to endurance and enthusiasm, and that he had made the mistake of his life when he wrote that article on athletics in girls’ colleges, and that his chief might talk until he was blue in the face before he would ever consent again to write about anything of which he knew so little.

They were very disappointed when he told them firmly that he could not stay to dinner or to the concert, but that he had a pressing engagement that would take him back to the city. And they said that there were still the Swedish gymnastics and basket-ball and pole-vaulting to see, and that they were afraid he had not enjoyed himself or he would have got rid of that engagement in some way; but he assured them impressively that he had never spent a more instructive or peculiarly interesting afternoon in his life.

Miss Thayer took him back to the station in her trap, and remarked on how much shorter the way seemed with a good horse; and when she bade him good-by she told him that she would be looking out for another article in his paper, and that she would be much disappointed if his visit had not inspired him to write something. To which Newbold replied that that was his pressing engagement--he was going back to the city to write another article on athletics in girls’ colleges, and that he thought it would be different and better than the former one, but that he would not put his initials to it this time.

THE COLLEGE BEAUTY

It was a sort of farewell party, and the young woman who was going away and who was the object of so much solicitude and tender concern was sitting, enshrined as it were, on a divan covered with a Navahoe Indian blanket and surrounded by innumerable cushions, while the rest hung about her or took up precarious attitudes on the table in dangerous proximity to the student lamps, or settled themselves in steamer-chairs, or sat upon the tiger-skin on the floor. That is, the American girls did; Kan Ato, the pretty Japanese who had come arrayed in a gorgeous new kimono--dull blue embroidered splendidly in silver--sat upright and very stiffly in the window-seat with the dark red of the curtains showing off her jet black hair and her gown wonderfully well; while the tall Scotch girl, a cousin of the guest of honor, had trusted her generous proportions to the only large, comfortable American chair in the room.

There was a great deal of noise and confusion and questioning, and Miss Lavington, as she leaned back against her cushions, half wished that after all the doctor had not let her come. She had been very ill--a short, sharp attack of typhoid--and although she had enjoyed tremendously the wine jelly, and the violets, and the hushed, anxious tones of her friends as they inquired after her at the infirmary, and the many remarks about her good qualities and how clever she was in Conic Sections--“just as if she were really dead,” as she said--still she felt rather too weak properly to appreciate her friends’ enthusiastic sympathy at such close range. And then the thought of going away--and so far away--had made her feel blue and dispirited.

She was a very pretty English girl, whose father--a colonel in an Indian regiment--had sent her to America in the care of a sister of his who had moved to “the States;” and so it had come about that, instead of being a Girton or Newnham girl, she had matriculated at this American college. And now her father had written decisively for her to come out and join him in India, and her college friendships and ties were all to be broken. He had been writing about it for some time, and her illness had finally precipitated the affair. She had only waited until she grew strong enough to start, and the following day had been decided upon. The long sea-voyage would be the very thing for her, the doctor had thought.

She was trying to explain to the interested young women just what route she would take, and was rapidly filling their souls with envy at the familiar mention of Brindisi and Cairo and Aden, when there was a knock and a quick opening of the door and a girl came into the room. She was a very beautiful young woman, and when she sat down on the divan beside Miss Lavington she seemed suddenly to absorb all the attention and interest, and to become in some magical way the guest of honor and centre of attraction. She met with a very enthusiastic reception, for she had that afternoon gained the tennis championship for her class--she was a senior--and had not yet changed her white flannel suit with scarlet sumach leaves worked on it, and as she dragged off her soft cap, one could see that her hair still lay in damp curls upon her forehead.

After she had entered the room one would have realized that they had really been waiting for her. Her mere presence seemed to make a difference. It was this magnetic quality which rendered her so irresistible and all adverse criticism of her so absurd. People might differ as to her beauty--there were some indeed, who said that she was too large, or that her eyes were not very expressive, or that her mouth was too small, but they all fell under her influence in some remarkable way, and were very much flattered when she asked them to drive with her, and never failed to point her out to their friends as “the College Beauty, you know;” and even those who honestly wondered how she ever got through her examinations were forced to admit that she had a great deal of natural talent, which she did not always care to exercise. She was a fine tennis player too, using either hand equally well, and when the Tennis Association got itself into debt and she saved the situation by beguiling, in some inexplicable way, the famous musical organization of a certain university into giving a concert for its benefit, her popularity reached its climax. To the less sought-after girls, her composure and ease of manner while surrounded by an admiring circle of college men was nothing short of marvellous, and the recklessly generous disposal which she made of these youths to her less attractive friends seemed to betoken a social prodigality little short of madness.

Miss Lavington looked at her imploringly.

“Make them keep quiet, won’t you?” she said. The Beauty looked around her--“Are you trying to make her ill again, so she can’t go?” she asked.

Her words had the desired effect, and the girl who had been twanging abstractedly at a banjeurine put it down.

“She oughtn’t to leave!” she declared, plaintively. “It’s a shame! Here we are, just beginning the semestre, and she’s only half through her college course anyway, and just because her father wants her she has to give up everything and go.”

“Yes, and you know she’ll be sure to have jungle-fever or get bitten by a cobra or something, and die,” suggested someone cheerfully, if a trifle vaguely.

The girl lying on the tiger-skin looked up.

“I know why her father wants her,” she began calmly. “There is an officer--young, handsome, well born, a fine place in Surrey or Devon or Kent, been in the family for generations, old uncle, no children--just the thing for her. Her father will take her up to some place in the Himalayas to spend the summer, and he will arrange for the handsome, young, etc., officer to be there, and next fall we will receive the cards. It sounds just like one of Kipling’s stories, doesn’t it?”

They were all laughing by the time she had finished, but The Beauty, looking at the girl beside her, suddenly stopped smiling. There was a conscious flush on Miss Lavington’s face which set her to thinking, and then she glanced over to the big Scotch girl and waited an instant.

“Tell us all about it,” she said finally to Miss Lavington. The girl looked up quickly and then dropped her eyes again.

“There isn’t much to tell,” she began. The others were listening now. Even Kan Ato, smiling in her pensive, oriental way, leaned far forward so as not to lose a word.

“He isn’t rich and he hasn’t any place in Surrey--or anywhere else that I know of, except perhaps in India,” she went on. “But he is young and handsome. We used to know each other when we were children--he is a sort of cousin--but I haven’t seen him for years. We used to be very much in love with each other.” She smiled. “My father writes me that he says he is still in love with me, and so--perhaps we are to be married.”

“I knew it,” sighed the girl on the tiger-rug, in a satisfied sort of way.

The Beauty looked at the English girl curiously. “And you haven’t seen him for years? and yet you think of marrying him! How do you know you will love him now?--you are both changed--you may be two totally different people from the children who fell in love.” She had spoken vehemently and quickly, and Miss Lavington gazed at her with languid surprise.

“You are not in love with him yourself?” she said, smilingly.

The girl made a quick, impatient gesture.

“I am speaking seriously,” she said. “You are several years younger than I am, and you don’t know what you are doing. Don’t let your father--don’t let anyone--persuade you to bind yourself to a man you don’t know, whose life has been so vitally different from your own as to render the possibility of sympathy between you very slight.”

Miss Lavington looked at her rather coldly.

“You are interesting yourself unnecessarily,” she said; “I loved him not so many years ago--it cannot be possible that so short a time would change us completely.”

The Beauty leaned her head back with sudden wearied look on her face. “A few years at our time of life makes all the difference in the world,” she said, earnestly. “What pleased and interested and fascinated us at eighteen might very possibly disappoint and disgust us at twenty or twenty-two. I do not mean to preach,” she said, smiling deprecatingly and turning to the rest, “but you know as well as I what an influence this college life has on us, and how hard it is to go back to former conditions. If we get stronger here we also get less adaptable. We are all affected by the earnestness and the culture and advancement of the life we lead here for four years, whether we will or no, and it is very hard to go back!”

They were all looking at her in amazement. The Beauty was not much given to that sort of thing. She stopped abruptly as if herself aware of the sensation she was creating, and laughed rather constrainedly.

“Don’t marry your handsome officer unless you are in love with him!” she said insistingly still to the girl beside her. “Don’t mistake the childish affection you felt for him for something deeper. You have your whole life before you--don’t spoil it by precipitation or a false generosity or a reckless passion!” There was an anxious, troubled look in her eyes.

The girl still stretched out on the tiger-skin glanced up again at The Beauty. “I seem to have started a subject in which you are deeply interested,” she said gayly to her. “And one in which you have had enormous experience too. Do you know you have an almost uncanny way of fascinating every man who comes near you. It’s a sure thing. None of the rest of us have a chance. I believe you could marry half a dozen or so at any time that you would take the trouble to say ‘yes’!”

The girl addressed looked openly amused--“Please take a few off your list,” she said. But the other refused to notice her remark and ran on in her light way.

“And they are all so nice too--it is really hard to choose, but I think on the whole I prefer a certain young man who shall be nameless. Now, would you call his devotion to yourself ‘mad precipitation or a false generosity or a reckless passion?’” She moved herself lazily over the yellow skin until her head rested against the girl’s knee.

“And he is such a nice, eligible youth too. I hope you are not going to spoil his life by refusing him. Only think how lovely it would be to have one’s father-in-law representing the majesty of these United States at an Emperor’s court,” she went on, turning gayly to the others. “And he is so handsome and clever! He will be representing Uncle Sam himself some day, and she will be reading up the rules of court etiquette and receiving invitations from the Lord Chamberlain to dine with the Queen, and fuming because the Grand Duchess of something or other has the right to walk in to dinner before her.” She was not noticing the girl’s significant silence. “Of course he is just the man for you--you wouldn’t make any but a brilliant match, you know, with your beauty and society manner. But just for the present--well, next winter you will début, and you will be much talked about, and the youth will not be with his father at the European capital, but will be very much _en évidence_ here, and then--after Easter we shall get _your_ cards!”

She twisted her head around, smiling, so as to get a look at the girl’s face above her. It wore so grave and hopeless an expression that she gave a little cry.

“Forgive me,” she said, confusedly, “but you do love him, don’t you?”

The Beauty turned her eyes away and shook herself slightly, as if awakening from a dream.

“As confession seems to be the order of the hour,” she said in a dull tone, and smiling peculiarly, “I don’t mind owning that I do love him very much.”

She got up abruptly and moved toward the door amid a chorus of protests, but she would not stay. At the threshold she turned to Miss Lavington.

“Send your things down by the coach,” she said. “If you will let me I will be glad to drive you to the station myself to-morrow.”

* * * * *

When she got to her own study she found a letter thrust under the door with the familiar number of her room scrawled upon it in pencil. She picked it up, and as she looked at the address an expression of profound dislike and weariness came into her face. She opened the door slowly and put the letter down upon her desk, looking at it thoughtfully for a few moments. The handwriting was irresolute and boyish. She shivered slightly as she took the letter up with sudden resolution and tore it open. As she sat there and read it a look of hatred and disgust and utter hopelessness, strangely at variance with her usual brilliant expression, settled harshly upon her lovely, young face.

“MY DEAREST WIFE,” it ran, “Forgive me! but this is about the only luxury I indulge in!--calling you in my letters what I dare not call you as yet before the world.

“I am in a retrospective mood to-night, and feel like writing all sorts of things which I am afraid you won’t much like. Do you know I think that college is doing you harm! Don’t get angry at this, but sometimes I’m afraid you have repented of our boy and girl runaway match; but God knows I haven’t, and I’m glad I didn’t go to college but came out West and went to work for us both. I haven’t succeeded very brilliantly and may be the life has roughened me a bit, but I guess you can have the best there is out here, and I am still as devoted to you as in those old days of the summer before you went to that confounded (excuse me!) college, when you were just eighteen and I barely twenty-one. How interminably long four years seemed to wait then! But it was a case of getting married secretly and of waiting, or of not getting you at all. Sometimes I can hardly stand it, and I’d come back now and take you away, if I wasn’t so afraid of that blessed old father of yours--but I’m just as big a coward as I was three years ago, when I couldn’t screw up courage enough to go to him and tell him that he’d have to relinquish his pet scheme of sending his daughter to college, for she belonged to me. Whew! what a scene we’d have had! It was best to wait, I suppose.

“After all, only a year and then I can claim you! Have you changed any? I’m afraid you’re way ahead of me now. I always had an uncomfortable suspicion that you were very much my superior, and I have half fancied that perhaps you only loved me because I was so madly--so passionately in love with you. Did I over-persuade you? have you ceased to love me? Sometimes I get half sick with fear. You are all I have! But after all I feel safe enough--I know you too well not to know that you will never break your promise--even one you hate. But you know I’ll never hold you to that marriage--though it was all valid enough--if you don’t want to be held. I can simply blow my good-for-nothing brains out.

“I won’t write any more to-night. There is so much swearing and noise down in the street that I can hardly think; besides I don’t feel just like it, and lately your letters have only irritated me. But I won’t complain, for I know how generously you have acted and what brilliant prospects you have given up for my precious self!

“Devotedly yours and only yours,

“G. G. B.”

A TELEPHONED TELEGRAM

When Miss Eva Hungerford married Stanhope there was one young lady intensely glad of it, although it was whispered that there were also two or three who were quite the contrary. But Mrs. Renford Phillips--once Miss Violet Featherstone--had particular reasons for rejoicing, and she wrote a long letter to Miss Hungerford when she heard of the engagement, and said that she hoped “by-gones would be by-gones now, and that she was sure her friend would be a broader-minded and more perfect woman, if that were possible, now that she was going to have the additional experience of getting married.”