Now, mamma in the role of a gay deceiver is sublime. The fact that she
is trying to play a part and perhaps setting "an awful example" makes
her miserable, although she sometimes succeeds in concealing the fact
until afterwards. I saw that we were in for a delightful morning, and
would probably end by missing the train. We loitered unscrupulously in
front of shop windows, apparently entranced by everything from hardware
to cigars. We sauntered in and out of countless dry-goods places in
quest of dark-blue ribbon of such an unusual shade that Boston had never
seen its like; we paused for half an hour, now and then, to inquire the
price of diamond tiaras and alabaster clocks set with rhinestones; we
bought a bouquet of frost-bitten roses (I had to carry it) from a
one-armed man, and tarried to hear his reminiscences of life in a
sawmill; we went to pianola recitals, phonograph exhibits, and assisted
at an auction sale of bar-room furniture. And papa wearied not. Mamma
and I were nearly dead, but he not only wasn't bored,--he seemed to be
having the time of his life. We could n't devise anything too silly and
futile and tiresome for him to enjoy, and as the time before the train
left was beginning to grow ominously short, mamma at last resorted to
heroic measures.
I don't think she had formed any definite plan when she abruptly led us
into the subway; but our going there was probably not unconnected in her
imagination with the boundless opportunities for losing oneself in the
sewers of Paris and the catacombs of Rome. The subway may or may not
resemble these historic places,--I'm sure I don't know,--but, at any
rate, after we had been there five or six minutes we lost papa.
We all three had stood aimlessly watching the cars whizz up to the
platform and away again into the subterranean dusk, until papa (this was
his first sign of impatience) mildly remarked, "I think, dear, that as
you and Tommy seem to be rather attached to this place, I 'll buy a
newspaper." Then he strolled off, and mamma clutched me. We watched
him approach the news-stand and pick up a magazine. His back was partly
turned.
"It 's our only chance," said mamma hoarsely, with a half-guilty,
half-affectionate glance towards the news-stand. I understood and,
seizing her hand, ran with her to the nearest car. An instant later we
were buzzing through the bowels of the earth in quite the opposite
direction from the pawn-shop.
To tell the truth, the only thing I knew about the locality of Mr.
Hirsch's establishment was that we should never reach it unless we got
out and took a car going the other way. This we did, and when I thought
we had gone far enough on the return trip and we emerged once more into
the daylight, we seemed to be miles from the place--the only place--from
which I could have found my way. So we jumped into a cab and told the
man to drive as quickly as he could to that place. (I had to describe
it at some length, as I don't as yet know the names of many streets
here.) He was very intelligent, however, and it was n't his fault that,
after we had jolted along for four or five blocks, the horse fell down.
We left him lifting one of the poor thing's nervous hind legs in and out
of the tangled harness. He looked as if he were trying to solve some
kind of a gigantic, hopeless puzzle. We hurried on for about a quarter
of a mile, and then I suddenly discovered that we had been in the right
street all the time. It was one of those queer streets that never look
familiar when you 're going the other way. I confess it took a great
deal of courage to impart this discovery to mamma; but she appreciated
the fact that we had very little time to lose, and did n't stop to point
out to me that if I ever become a business man, I 'll be a failure. The
horse was on his feet again when we got back to the cab, so we jumped in
once more, and after an interminable drive (half of me was out of the
window most of the time, like a Punch-and-Judy doll, directing the
cabman) we finally drew up in front of the pawn-shop. It was then that
we really distinguished ourselves.
"I've come for my watch," I said to Mr. Hirsch. He gave me the look of
a bird of prey. It reminded me of an eagle I had seen once,--an eagle
that had been stuffed by an amateur. He held out his hand and spoke a
solitary, fateful word. Mamma's face--in the excitement of the moment
she had pushed up her veil--became dim with horror; her features for an
instant were positively incoherent.
"The ticket?" she whispered gropingly. "It's in the bottom of my trunk."
Mildred and papa and a group of porters, peering up and down the street
like a concourse of Sister Annes, were on the curbstone in front of the
hotel when we got back. The baggage was piled on a wagon, papa looked
haggard and years older than when I had last seen him, and Mildred gave
us a haughty stare as we alighted. Mamma was hustled wildly from the
cab to the carriage, and I had time merely to peck hastily at their
tense faces and gasp good-by. As the carriage swung around the corner,
mamma appeared for a moment at the window, exclaiming, "I 'll send it to
you in my first letter," and then sank from view. This afternoon, when
I returned to my peaceful little abode in Cambridge, who should be in
his room but Berri? He was at his desk, bending earnestly over a big pad
of thesis paper.
"You've finished it, after all," I said, for the floor near his chair
was littered with neat manuscript.
"Yes, it's finished,--fifty beastly pages of it," Berri answered, as he
jumped up to meet me. I wanted to ask him all about it,--how he had
managed to do it during the gayeties of Washington, and if it had taken
much time. But he said rather wearily,--
"Oh, don't let's talk about it; I 'm so sick of it," and began at once
to question me about my trip to New York. We chatted for about half an
hour, and then I got up to go into my room and unpack my trunk. Thesis
paper is n't like the ordinary paper on which themes are written; it has
a margin on all four sides, and as I had never used any, I went over to
Berri's desk to examine a sheet of his.
"Why, you 've had the thing type-written," I exclaimed; for there was a
pile of type-written notes in front of the thesis paper. "Why don't you
hand it in that way instead of copying it again? Your hand is so hard
to read."
Berri wrinkled his forehead in a queer, annoyed kind of way; then he
looked confused and blushed a little, and finally he gave an
uncomfortable laugh.
"Oh, Granny, you 're so brutally guileless," he murmured. "Why can't
you just see and understand things? It sounds so much worse than it
really is, when you make me say it in so many words." Even then I
didn't altogether grasp the situation.
"You mean that somebody helped you?" I asked. That did n't seem to me
worth making such a fuss about, somehow.
"Well, that's a very refined and ladylike way of putting it," he
answered. "I got a man in the Law School to write it for me, and paid
him ten dollars for his trouble."
I had never thought much about this sort of thing, and it was impossible
all at once to know just where I stood in the matter. I didn't know
what to say, and I think I blurted out,--
"Oh, Berri, I 'm so sorry."
"Well, I 'm sorry you know about it," Berri mused drearily. "No, I 'm
not, either," he added quickly, after a moment; "I 'm darned glad,--for
now that you know, you can do what you like; I 'm not playing the
hypocrite, anyhow. Only, don't talk to me about it. I 've thought the
whole thing over from every point of view; it's the only thing I can do.
I 'm willing to run the risks, and I 'm going to do it."
It was impossible to go back to other topics after that, so I went into
my room and unpacked my trunk. I don't believe I ever unpacked so
carefully and put everything away so neatly before. Mrs. Chester came
in and complimented me as I was finishing. It must have been because I
was thinking.
With all my thinking, however, I can't say that I 've got much farther
than I was when Berri first told me. I simply know that he oughtn't to
have done it, and am very, very sorry that he has. If he tried to
defend himself in any way, I could have it out with him; but he does
n't. When he finished copying the thesis, he came into my room and
said, "I 'm going over to drop this through Fleetwood's door; do you
want to go along?" and I went with him, hoping that at the last minute
he might, in his unexpected way, change his mind. On the way over he
did burst out with,--
"You see, it's this way: If I didn't know Fleetwood so well, I should
n't do it; I shouldn't care. But he'll think, if I fail to hand in the
written work, that I'm presuming on the fact that we 've breakfasted
together at The Holly Tree and gone to the theatre and all that. I hate
that kind of thing." I tried to make him see that Fleetwood would n't
look at it in this way at all, and that even if he did it would be his
fault, not Berri's. But Berri answered: "You need n't go on to tell me
how dishonest it is,--I know all that. I 'm not worse than lots of other
people, though;" and by that time we had reached Fleetwood's door. I
put my hand on his arm as he was about to drop the thesis through
Fleetwood's letter-slide and said, "Please don't, Berri; wait until
to-morrow morning, anyhow;" but he pushed the roll through the door, and
as it fell with a thud inside, he laughed and answered,--
"Too late. Now I'm going to forget about it." He went to town for
dinner, and I had mine about an hour ago at Mrs. Brown's. I was the only
one there. In a few minutes I have to go out again, as I promised----
_Later_.
Just as I had written that far, the front door opened and slammed and
the tin steps clattered as they only do when Duggie is coming up. The
loneliness of the house, and the feeling that college opened to-morrow,
and Duggie on the stairs all took me back to my first evening in
Cambridge. The only difference was that instead of going to his own
room Duggie this time came bursting into mine.
"I came to say good-by," he exclaimed; and when I got over my
astonishment, he went on to tell me that he had decided during the
vacation to go away--to Europe--and stay until Class Day. He had never
told me before that he had taken his degree in three years, and that it
would n't have been necessary for him to come back this year at all if
he had n't wanted to. He has been entitled to his degree for months;
but of course he is anxious to graduate with his own class in the
spring. He has n't talked to any one about going abroad, as he was n't
sure of it until a few days ago.
"I 'm leaving on the midnight train to-night," he said, "and I came out
here on the chance of your having got back. My family are all in the
country, I left them this afternoon." I wanted to tell him how sorry I
was that he was leaving us, and how glad I was that he could go; but
somehow I don't think I showed what I really felt. The time was so
short (I had promised Duncan Duncan to help him with some Advocate
editorials at half past eight), and those things never seem to sound the
way I should like to have them. But in a way I had an opportunity to
let him know how I felt toward him, for while we were sitting there, he
laughed and said,--
"As you won't stay and talk to me, I think you might at least do the
next best thing. You know I 've always wanted to read this, and now that
I 'm going away, you ought to let me." Then he took my diary from the
mantelpiece and pretended to read the first page.
My first impulse was to ask him not to. If he had been going to stay in
Cambridge, I should n't have let him, of course; but as he was leaving
in a few hours and seemed anxious to read the thing, and as it really
did n't make any difference whether he did or not, I finally let him.
"I don't see why you want to, and you probably won't get beyond the
first few pages, but you may," I said.
So I left him by the fire with the diary in his hand. I thought perhaps
I should find a note about it when I got back this evening, but I
didn't.
*XII*
Poor Berri! I felt so sorry for him. I do yet, in fact; for although
things can't possibly turn out in the way he thinks they may, I can't
tell him so, and he lives in a state of perpetual dread. But it won't
last long now; Duggie's steamer must have almost reached Southampton by
this time, and it won't take more than a week or eight days for Berri to
hear from Duggie himself. I came very near giving the thing away at one
time. It's hard not to, although I realize that Duggie was wise when he
asked me to let matters take their course.
It just happened that the next day after Berri had delivered his thesis,
the talk at luncheon turned on cheating at exams and handing in written
work that is n't your own. The sentiment against cheating seemed to be
strong, partly from a sense of honor and partly from a sense of risk.
As a matter of fact, I don't see how fellows can very well manage to
cheat here--during an examination, that is to say--even if they want to.
There are always a lot of proctors prowling up and down the room, ready
to jump on anybody who has suspicious-looking bits of paper on his desk,
or who seems to be unduly interested in his lap or the condition of his
cuffs. And then, besides, assuming that the instructor occasionally
gets absorbed in a newspaper and the proctors stroll to the windows to
watch the muckers throwing snowballs in the Yard, how could a student
prepare himself for this rare opportunity? It may be different in
courses that involve the exact sciences, where certain definite formulas
copied on a small bit of paper might be of use; but in the sort of
things I take, one would have to conceal upon oneself the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Ploetz's Epitome of History, Geschmitzenmenger's Ancient
Art, or the Dictionary of Biography, in order to accomplish any really
effective deception.
With written work it seems to be easier. If a man hands in a theme or a
thesis in his own hand, the instructors are more or less forced to
accept it as original, unless of course it was taken outright from a
book and they happen to be familiar with the book. From what the
fellows at the table said, there must be more of this sort of thing done
than I had imagined; although, since Berri opened my eyes, I could
believe almost anything. One of the fellows told about a student--a
Junior--he had heard of who succeeded in getting himself fired two or
three years ago in a rather complicated way. He was engaged, and his
lady-love sent him a poem in one of her letters, saying that she had
written it for him. The letter arrived while he was struggling with a
daily theme; so he murmured to himself, "Tush! I 'll copy Araminta's
pretty verses and send them in as my own; as they have just gushed from
her surcharged heart into her letter, no one will be the wiser." A few
days later the omnivorous Advocate asked permission to print them, and
as they had received words of praise from the instructor, and as the
fellow by that time had no doubt begun to believe he had written them
himself, he allowed them to be published under his name. Somebody sent
a copy of the Advocate to Araminta, who replied with an indignant letter
to her _futur_; and while he was trying to think up an explanation of
the matter with which to pacify her, somebody else came out in the
Crimson with a most withering communication, asking how the Advocate
dared to print as original a poem that had been written by his
grandfather, the late Donovan H. Dennison, whose complete poetical works
("Dan Cupid and other Idyls") could be found in the college library at
any time. Whereupon the student, disgusted at his lady-love's
dishonesty in palming off the late Donovan H. Dennison's verses as
original, broke his engagement; and the college, disgusted with the
student for precisely the same reason, "separated" him (to use the suave
official phrase) from the University.
There was, as I said, a great deal of talk at luncheon that day about
cheating. Some of the men seemed to think the presence of proctors
during an exam was insulting; but, as Bertie Stockbridge remarked,--and
this struck me as unanswerable,--"If you don't cheat yourself and don't
want to, what difference does it make whether they 're there or not?
And if you do cheat, why, of course, proctors are necessary." In the
matter of dishonest written work the same honorable sentiments were
expressed. Everybody was sincere, but I could n't help realizing a
little that they could not have had very much temptation as yet. If it
had n't been for Berri, I probably should have laid down the law as
loudly as the rest. But he sat there eating in silence, irritated and
oppressed by so much high-minded babbling, and I hated to hurt him by
adding to it. Usually he is one of the last to leave the table. That
day, however, he hurried through his luncheon and slipped away alone.
Oh dear! (How silly those two words look written down, and yet it was
what was passing through my mind as I wrote them.) I suppose that what
I really mean is, How tiresome it is that a person's acts don't begin
and end with himself! There doesn't seem to be any limit to the reach
of their influence. It would be so much more simple and easy if you knew
just where the consequences of a mistake or an indiscretion, or whatever
you choose to call it, began and ended. Now, for instance, take Berri
and the thesis. Of course, I think it was all wrong, and was sorry he
handed it in; but I wasn't going to let it make any difference in my
feelings toward Berri. As far as I am concerned, I don't think it has
made a difference. Yet the beastly thing cast a sort of gloom over the
house. For Berri after luncheon that day rather avoided the table in
general and me in particular. What his object was in doing this, I
don't know. It was probably just a feeling on his part; but it made me
feel as if I 'd been putting myself on a moral pedestal somehow, and
that Berri saw in me a perpetual accusation. Our relations became
indescribably changed and sort of formal, and I did n't see how I could
make them different. What could I have done? There was nothing, under
the circumstances, for me to say. He stopped in my room that night to
warm himself for a minute before going to bed, but I don't think he said
anything except that it was snowing outside.
The next day we had the blizzard. People here usually assume that in
the part of the country I come from we have nine months of winter and
three of cold weather. But nevertheless I had to come to the staid and
temperate East to see the kind of a winter storm you read about in
books,--the regular old "Wreck of the Hesperus" kind, in which the crew
are "swept like icicles from the deck," and able-bodied men get
hopelessly lost and are frozen to death in their own front yards. I was
to have dined in town that night with Hemington, who had tickets for a
Paderewski recital. But he did n't turn up, so I joined some fellows
who found me in the restaurant eating alone, and afterwards went to the
theatre with them. It was snowing when we left the restaurant; in fact,
great, wet cottony flakes had been falling at intervals all day. (It
reminded me of those marvellous paper weights I haven't seen for years
and years,--glass globes filled with water in which a white, powdery
sediment swirls and drifts and finally settles in the most lifelike way
on a beautiful little tin landscape. What's become of them all, I
wonder?) But there was no wind, and it was n't particularly cold, so I
don't think that anybody suspected what was going to happen before the
show was over.
It took an unusually long time to get out of the theatre that night; the
people in the aisles hardly moved at all. But after we had forced our
way through the crowd, and climbed over seats, and finally reached the
narrow corridor leading to the entrance, we saw why it was. The ones
who had got to the door first were afraid to leave. Within an hour or
two the wind had risen and risen until it screamed through the streets,
blasting up the fallen snow in wild bewildering spirals and then
fiercely slapping it back again in slants of hard, biting cold. From
the door of the theatre it was impossible to see beyond the curbstone,
except when the half-obliterated lights of a cab lurched by over the
drifts. The rumor went through the crowd that the wires were down and
that all the cars had stopped. No one seemed to know quite what to do.
Just as the people nearest the door would make up their minds to start
bravely out, a thick hurricane would strike erratically in at them,
causing the ladies to shrink back with little exclamations of dismay.
Nobody's carriage had arrived, and the few cabs that appeared ploughed
laboriously past us. Our crowd waited a few moments,--more to share the
excitement of the others than for anything else; then we turned up our
collars and plunged out.
Standing at the door of the theatre, the world outside had seemed to me
to be in a sort of insane uproar; but as soon as we got away from the
human babble, and I lifted my head and opened my eyes and deliberately
relaxed my ears, so to speak, I found the city almost solemnly silent.
Every now and then, when we came to a cross street or turned a corner,
there was, it is true, a sudden shriek and a sort of rattle of fine
stinging ice particles; but as long as I could keep myself from being
confused inside of me, while we were floundering over drifts and
burrowing with our heads through the walls of wind that blocked the way
and seemed to be falling on us, I could n't help noticing the terrible
muffledness of everything. It was as if the place were being swamped,
blotted out, suffocated.
When we reached the hotel where we had dined earlier in the evening, the
other fellows went in to have something to eat, but for several reasons
I decided not to. In the first place, I promised papa that I would try
to economize, and I had already unexpectedly squandered two dollars on a
theatre ticket, owing to Hemington's failure to appear. Then I felt that
if I did n't make a dash for Cambridge right away, I should n't get
there at all. (As a matter of fact, I never did reach there until nine
the next morning, but it was n't because I did n't try hard enough. The
other fellows put up at the hotel.) So I just shouted that I was going
on, and as we were all about half frozen, no one stopped to persuade me
not to.
Well, I found a string of cars about a mile long that were rapidly
turning into Esquimau huts, and was told by one of the conductors that
something had broken down ahead, and that, as the snow-plough could n't
get by, they probably would n't move again until morning. He thought,
however, that the other line was running; and I started to grope my way
to Bowdoin Square.
I would n't go through that experience again for gold and precious
stones; and I can't imagine now why I did it in the first place, except
that I had acquired by that time a kind of pig-headed determination to
reach Cambridge, and did n't know what I was in for. It was n't so bad
while I was staggering along by the side of the blocked cars; they were
lighted, and I knew that if I changed my mind about going on, I could
pop into one of them and be safe. But when I passed the last one and
found myself after a while among back streets choked with drifts, and
could n't see my way, and fell down twice, and got snow up my sleeves,
and my face and hands and feet pained so with cold that I could n't help
crying (actually), and I realized at last that I did n't in the least
know where I was, I began to be panic-stricken. I 'm not the huskiest
person in the world, and all at once the wind blew me smash against an
iron railing and almost into a basement of some kind. I think I should
have hunted for a door-bell and tried to get into a house if I hadn't a
moment later collided with a policeman (fell down again), who helped me
up and led me to a sheltered place behind a wall, where I managed to
collect myself and tell him what I was looking for. He too was on his
way to Bowdoin Square; so after that I just hung on to his coat most of
the time, and tried to keep my legs in motion without really knowing
much where he was leading me or whether we were making any progress.
Once there was a rip-tearing crash over our heads. The policeman jumped
aside, and then stopped to exclaim, "Well, I never seen the likes o'
that." I think a sign had blown off a building through a plate-glass
window. Farther on a dangling wire romped in the wind. It spat
dazzling blue and purple at us until we retreated and went around
another way, muttering strange Hibernian mutters. When I opened my eyes
again, we were in front of the hotel in Bowdoin Square and the policeman
was advising me through his frozen mustache not to go to Cambridge. He
said the cars had stopped long ago. So I said good-by to him and was
just stumbling into the cafe, when who should come out but Berri and a
cabman? They had gone in to get warm before starting across the bridge.
"I 'm not sure that we can make it," Berri said, "but the man says he's
willing to try. I 'll tell you why I don't want to stay at the hotel
when we get inside. Look out--look out!" he cried to me, as I opened
the cab door and was about to jump in. I drew back, expecting at least
to be decapitated or electrocuted, and then Berri explained that he was
afraid I might "sit on the pigeons." He entered the cab first, and
removed some indistinguishable objects from the back seat to the narrow
seat that lifts up in front. "That's why I can't very well stay at the
hotel," he went on. "As soon as these poor exhausted little darlings
begin to thaw, they 'll fly around and make a dreadful fuss. I 'd
rather have them in my own room." He had picked up four half frozen
pigeons in the street on his way to the Square, and had carried
them--two in his pockets and two in the bosom of his overcoat--until he
came across the cab. After we got started, he lighted matches every now
and then to see how they were getting along, and we took turns at
blowing on their pink feet, all shrivelled with cold. One of them, to
Berri's grief, was dead, but by the time the cab stopped suddenly and
for the last time in the middle of the bridge (it had been going slower
and slower and tipping more perilously over mounds of snow as we
proceeded), the other three looked scared and intelligent and began to
feel warm under their wings.
The driver opened the door and said he could n't go on, as a fallen wire
was sagging across the street in front of the horse's nose. We jumped
out, and Berri was just about to seize the thing and try to lift it over
the horse's head, when I remembered the murderous ecstasy of the other
one and jerked him back. Ahead of us there was a drift almost as high
as the cab itself, and the man said that even without the wire we never
could drive over or through it. So, after a short consultation, he
decided to blanket his nag and spend the rest of the night in the cab;
the horse was "dead beat," he said, and he very much doubted if it could
pull back to town against the wind even after turning around, which was
a more or less impossible undertaking in itself. Berri and I packed up
the pigeons--the dead one included, as Berri remembered having read in
the paper that morning of a case of "suspended animation" somewhere in
Texas--and pushed on to the waiting-station at the other end of the
bridge.
That was a queer night. I was simply played out when I got inside the
waiting-room, and I had n't been there more than a few minutes when I
discovered that my ear was frozen. A kind, officious woman all but
broke it off rubbing snow on it; but though it pained excruciatingly
during the night and is still sensitive and has a tendency to stick out
at right angles from my head, I think it will recover. There must have
been fifteen or twenty people cooped up in the waiting-room and the
cigar-stand (with hot soda-water and candy facilities) next door. Some
of them were cross and unhappy, and some of them were facetious. One of
them had a small dog. Berri's pigeons created a sensation. The
cigar-man gave us a box to put them under, and Berri bought them popcorn
for fear they might be hungry during the night. The warmth of the room
revived them completely, all but the dead one.
We talked for a while; but as Berri remembered, now that the excitement
was over, to be formal and impersonal once more, it was rather dreary.
We could have slept, I think,--in fact we were asleep, when one of the
facetious refugees woke us up to ask if we did n't want to join him "and
some other gentlemen in a game of euchre." Disappointed at his
unsuccessful efforts to interest people in this diversion, he chased the
little dog about the room, declaring that he intended to tie a glass of
chocolate around its neck and send it out in the storm to look for
travellers who had lost their way. It was impossible after that to get
to sleep again.
We had been sitting with our heads against the wall for almost an hour,
waiting for daylight, when Berri, who hadn't said anything for ever so
long, suddenly came out with,--
"Oh, Granny, I 'm so sorry I did it!" I knew what he meant at once,
although the thesis had n't been in my mind at all, and I was just about
to advise him to have a talk with Fleetwood and tell him everything,
when he added that he would have to stand by himself now, as it was too
late to draw back.
The worst of the storm was over, the cabman had come in to get warm and
tell us that his horse had frozen to death, and the windows of the
waiting-room had begun to look pale instead of black, by the time I
convinced Berri that it wasn't too late, and that as soon as we got to
Cambridge he ought to go to The Holly Tree and wait until Fleetwood came
in for his breakfast. When he finally made up his mind to do this, I
never saw any one in such a state of impatience. He could n't sit
still, and kept running to the door every other minute to see if the
snow-plough was coming over the bridge. Once he suggested that we
should walk; but although the morning was clear and beautiful, I had had
enough of struggling through mountains of snow the night before, and
refused. The plough appeared at last, preceded by a whirling cloud and
followed by a car. We set the pigeons free (Berri told them all to
return with olive branches as quickly as possible) and watched them fly
to the nearest telegraph-pole and proceed to make their toilets for the
day.
It must have been about half an hour after I parted with Berri (he went
on to The Holly Tree and I came to my room) that he bounded up the
stairs, pale with excitement. He had met Fleetwood, and after a few
preliminary remarks about the blizzard (the whole place was submerged)
he had blurted out,--
"Mr. Fleetwood, I want to tell you something about my thesis; I did n't
write it." To which the instructor replied almost indifferently,--
"Yes, I noticed that. What was the trouble?" Berri just looked at him
in amazement.
"I said I did n't write it," he faltered.
"Well, I know that," Fleetwood replied a trifle sharply. He was
inclined to be "peevish," Berri said, because the morning papers had n't
been delivered.
"But I want to tell you how sorry I am," Berri added; the situation was
much worse, Berri says, than it would have been if Fleetwood had seemed
more impressed by his dishonesty. As a matter of fact, Fleetwood merely
smiled.
"Oh, I never had the vaguest idea that you _would_ write it," he
remarked airily. "But if you don't care, I don't. It's much easier for
me to give you an E for having failed to hand it in, than it is to read
fifty or sixty pages of your impossible writing."
At this Berri said he almost reeled from his chair.
"Did n't I hand it in?" he asked, while his heart thumped painfully.
Fleetwood glanced up from his oatmeal only long enough to say,--
"I wish you would go some place else to eat; you bother me." But Berri
insisted.
"Dear Mr. Fleetwood," he pleaded eagerly, "please answer me just that
one thing. Did n't you find my thesis pushed through your door?" At
this Fleetwood put his hands to his head, as he always does when he 's
pretending that we 're trying to drive him mad, and moaned,--
"First you tell me you have n't written your thesis and then you ask me
if I 've picked it up on my floor. Oh, go away, go away! I shall never
be able to finish my breakfast and get back through all that ghastly
snow to my ten-o'clock lecture." Then Berri dashed out, forgetting to
pay for his breakfast, and came to find me.
Fleetwood must think that Berri isn't quite right; for he followed the
instructor around all day more or less, waiting for him at the doors of
lecture halls, intercepting him in front of the Colonial Club at
lunch-time, running after him in the Square, and calling on him twice at
his room, to ask if the thesis had turned up yet. But of course it
never had. At that time neither of us could account for its
disappearance, and Berri can't yet. He is existing in a state of
nervous dread for fear it "may have fallen behind something" in the dark
vestibule and will eventually turn up. Well, it will turn up, but not
in Fleetwood's room.
Berri spent most of the time in which he wasn't dogging Fleetwood's
footsteps discussing the thing with me. But I could n't help him much
beyond hoping that the thesis--like the love-letter or the lost will in
dramas at the Bowdoin Square Theatre--wouldn't be found until the fifth
act, after an elapse of twenty years.
I had to leave him alone part of the afternoon. Duncan Duncan sent me
word that he was sick and that the Advocate was in dire need. So I
floundered through the alley to the printing-office, and learned from
the proof-reader that they had to have six inches of poetry immediately
or the paper would be very much delayed. I did n't know what to do, as
we had n't any poems of that length in stock, so to speak. While I was
sitting there in despair, one of the printers gave me a piece of paper
and a pencil, and said,--
"Here, hurry up and write a couple of sticks of po'try; I want to go
home." He was quite serious; so I got to work, and in about fifteen
minutes had written twenty lines about the pigeons in the blizzard; only
I referred to them, for various technical reasons, as doves. There was
a heavenly smell of printer's ink in the place which made it easier to
write somehow.
No letters came that day from any direction on account of the storm.
The next afternoon I met the postman on the steps. He stopped to chat,
and I thought I should grab the letters from his hand before he
finished, as I caught sight of one in Duggie's handwriting addressed to
me. I thought of course that he had postponed his trip and had written
to tell me why. The postman talked on and on, but he told me one tale
that interested me in spite of myself.
One Sunday morning old Professor Pallas (my ally in the hieroglyphics
course) went over to the post-office for his letters. He must have been
thinking very deeply about recent discoveries or cuneiform inscriptions
or some such thing, because when he went up to the window he could n't
remember whose letters he had come for. So he said to the clerk,--
"Young man, do you know who I am?"
The clerk unfortunately was a new one, and had to confess, with regret,
that he did n't. So Professor Pallas, after a moment or two of
reflection, looked up and murmured through the window,--
"I ask you this because I am equally at a loss myself; but perhaps if I
take a little walk it may come to me." Then he strolled away, and in
about ten minutes returned, very much pleased, with a slip of paper in
his hand.
"I remembered it all by myself," he exclaimed, "and wrote it down."
I got Duggie's letter at last, and ran upstairs to read it. This is
what it said:--
DEAR GRANNY,--We are steaming slowly out of the harbor, and I am sitting
in a sheltered corner of the deck writing you this note for the pilot to
take back with him. My fingers are stiff with cold, but as the air down
below is thick with what Mrs. Chester calls "floral tributes." I 'd
rather stay here and say good-by to you and the Goddess of Liberty at
the same time.
What I wish particularly to do, however, is to thank you for letting me
read your diary last night (I have some things to say about it--the
parts where I come in, I mean--but that can wait) and to make a
confession. When I got to the last page, where the ink was scarcely
dry, I dashed over to Fleetwood's room, although I had lingered so long
in your room I did n't have any too much time in which to catch my
train. Fortunately there was a light in Fleetwood's window. While I was
talking to him I saw out of the corner of my eye the great pile of--is
the plural "theses" or "thesises"?--on his desk, and when he went into
his bedroom for a minute to get a book for me to read going over, I
sniped Berri's performance from the top of the pile and stuck it in my
pocket. I did it on the impulse of the moment, and I may have been all
wrong--I don't know; the whole thing worries me. But don't say anything
to Berri about it. I should n't care to get you and the diary into
trouble. When I reach Southampton I 'll send the thing back to him with
a letter. Good-by, Granny. Take care of yourself and write often.