It was on the eve of the mid-year examinations, and a gloom had fallen
over the college. The conscientious ones who had worked all the year
were working harder than ever, and the frivolous ones who had played all
the year were working with a desperate frenzy calculated to render their
minds a blank when the crucial hour should have arrived. But Patty was
not working. It was a canon of her college philosophy, gained by three
and a half years' of personal experience, that the day before
examinations is not the time to begin to study. One has impressed the
instructor with one's intelligent interest in the subject, or one has
not, and the result is as sure as if the marks were already down in
black and white in the college archives. And so Patty, who at least
lived up to her lights, was, with the exception of a few points which
she intended to learn for this period only, conscientiously neglecting
the "judicious review" recommended by the faculty.
Her friends, however, who, though perhaps equally philosophic, were less
consistent, were subjecting themselves to what was known as a "regular
freshman cram"; and as no one had any time to talk to Patty, or to make
anything to eat, she found it an unprofitable period. Her own room-mate
even drove her from the study because she laughed out loud over the book
she was reading; and, an exile, she wandered around to the studies of
her friends, and was confronted by an "engaged" on every door. She was
sitting on a window-sill in the corridor, pondering on the general
barrenness of things, when she suddenly remembered her friends the
freshmen in study 321. She had not visited them for some time, and
freshmen are usually interesting at this period. She accordingly turned
down the corridor that led to 321, and found a "POSITIVELY ENGAGED TO
EVERY ONE!!" in letters three inches high, across the door. This
promised a richness of entertainment within, and Patty heaved a
disappointed sigh loud enough to carry through the transom.
The turning of leaves and rustling of paper ceased; evidently they were
listening, but they gave no sign. Patty wrote a note on the door-block
with reverberating punctuation-points, and then retired noisily, and
tiptoed back a moment later, and leaned against the wall. Curiosity
prevailed; the door opened, and a face wearing a hunted look peered out.
"Oh, Patty Wyatt, was that you?" she asked. "We thought it was Frances
Stoddard coming down to have geometry explained, and so we kept still.
Come in."
"Goodness, no; I wouldn't come in over an 'engaged' like that for
anything. I'm afraid you're busy."
The freshman grasped her by the arm. "Patty, if you love us come in and
cheer us up. We're so scared we don't know what to do."
Patty consented to be drawn across the threshold. "I don't want to
interrupt you," she remonstrated, "if you have anything to do." The
study was occupied by three girls. Patty smiled benignly at the two
haggard faces before her. "Where's Lady Clara Vere de Vere?" she asked.
"She surely isn't wasting these precious last moments in anything
frivolous."
"She's in her bedroom, with a geometry in one hand and a Greek grammar
in the other, trying to learn them both at once."
"Tell her to come out here; I want to give her some good advice"; and
Patty sat down on the divan and surveyed the dictionary-bestrewn room
with an appreciative smile.
"Oh, Patty, I'm so glad to see you!" Lady Clara exclaimed, appearing in
the doorway. "The sophomores have been telling us the most _dreadful_
stories about examinations. They aren't true, are they?"
"Mercy, no! Don't believe a word those sophomores tell you. They were
freshmen themselves last year, and if the examinations were as bad as
they say, they wouldn't have passed them, either."
A relieved expression stole over the three faces.
"You're such a comfort, Patty. Upper-classmen take things easily, don't
they?"
"One gets inured to almost anything in time," said Patty. "Examinations
are even entertaining, if you know the right answers."
"But we won't know the right answers!" one of the freshmen wailed, her
terror returning. "We simply don't know _anything_, and Latin comes
to-morrow, and geometry the next day."
"Oh, well, in that case you can't get through anyway, so don't worry.
You must take it philosophically, you know." Patty settled herself among
the cushions and smiled upon her frightened auditors with easy
nonchalance. "As an example of the uselessness of studying at the
eleventh hour when you haven't done anything through the term, I will
tell you my experience with freshman Greek. I was badly prepared when I
came, I didn't study through the term, and, without exaggeration, I
didn't know anything. Three days before examinations I suddenly
comprehended the situation, and I began swallowing that grammar in
chunks. I drank black coffee to keep awake, and worked till two in the
morning, and scarcely stopped cramming irregular verbs for meals. I
simply thought in Greek and dreamed in Greek. And, if you will believe
it, after all that work I flunked in Greek! It shook my faith in
studying for examinations. I've never done it since, and I've never
flunked since. I believe that it's just a matter of fate whether you get
through or not, so I never bother any more."
The freshmen looked at one another disconsolately. "If it's all decided
beforehand, we're lost."
Patty smiled reassuringly.
"A little flunking now and then
Will happen to the best of men."
"But I've heard they send people home, drop them, you know, if they
flunk more than a certain amount. Is that so?" Lady Clara inquired in
hushed tones.
"Oh, yes," said Patty; "they have to. I've known some of the brightest
girls in college to be dropped."
Lady Clara groaned. "I'm awfully shaky in geometry, Patty. Do they flunk
many girls in that?"
"Many!" said Patty. "The mere clerical labor of writing out the notes
occupies the department two days."
"Is the examination terribly hard?"
"I don't remember much about it. It's been such a long time since I was
a freshman, you see. They picked out the hardest theorems, I
know--things you couldn't even draw, let alone demonstrate: the pyramid
that's cut in slices, for one,--I don't remember its name,--and that
sprawling one that looks like a snail crawling out of its shell: the
devil's coffin, I believe it's called technically. And--oh, yes! they
give you originals--_frightful_ originals, like nothing you've ever had
before; and they put a little note at the top of the page telling you to
do them first, and you get so muddled trying to think fast that you
can't think at all. I know a girl who spent all the two hours trying to
think out an original, and just as she got ready to write it down the
bell rang and she had to hand in her paper."
"And what happened?"
"Oh, she flunked. You couldn't really blame the instructor, you know,
for not reading between the lines, for there weren't any lines to read
between; but it was sort of a pity, for the girl really knew an awful
lot--but she couldn't express it."
"That's just like me."
"Ah, it's like a good many people." A silence ensued, and the freshmen
looked at one another dejectedly. "But you can live, even if you should
flunk math," Patty continued reassuringly. "Other people have done it
before you."
"If it were only geometry--but we're scared over Latin."
"Oh, Latin! There's no use studying for that, for you can't possibly
read it all over, and if you just pick out a part, it's sure not to be
the same part _they_ pick out. The best way is to say incantations over
the book, and open it with your eyes blindfolded, and study the page it
opens to; then, in case you don't pass,--and you probably won't,--you
can throw the blame on fate. My freshman year, if I remember right, they
gave us for prose composition one of Emerson's essays to translate into
Latin, and we couldn't even tell what it meant in English."
The three looked at one another again.
"I couldn't do anything like that."
"Nor I."
"Nor I."
"Nor any one else," said Patty.
"We can flunk Latin and math; but if we flunk any more we're gone."
"I believe so," said Patty.
"And I'm awfully shaky in German."
"And I in French."
"And I in Greek."
"I don't know anything about German," said Patty. "Never had it myself.
But I remember hearing Priscilla say that the printed examination papers
didn't come but in time, and Fräulein Scherin, who writes a frightful
hand, wrote the questions on the board in German script, and they
couldn't even read them. In French I believe the first question was to
write out the 'Marseillaise'; there are seven verses, and no one had
learned them, and the 'Marseillaise,' you know, is a thing that you
simply _can't_ make up on the spur of the moment. As for Greek, I told
you my own experience; I am sure nothing could be worse than that."
The freshmen looked at one another hopelessly. "There's only English
and hygiene and Bible history left."
"English is something you can't tell anything about," said Patty.
"They're as likely as not to ask you to write a heroic poem in iambic
pentameters, if you know what they are. You have to depend on
inspiration; you can't study for it."
"I hope," sighed Lady Clara, "to get through hygiene and Bible history,
though, as they only count one hour apiece, I suppose it isn't much."
"You mustn't be too sanguine," said Patty. "It all depends on chance.
The class in hygiene is so big that the professor hasn't time to read
the papers; he just goes down the list and flunks every thirteenth girl.
I'm not sure about Bible history, but I think he does the same, because
I know, freshman year, that I made a mistake and handed in my map of the
Holy Lands done in colored chalk to the hygiene professor, and my chart
of the digestive system to the Bible professor, and neither of them
noticed it. They did look a good deal alike, but not so much but what
you could tell them apart. All I have to say is that I hope none of you
will be number thirteen."
The freshmen stared at one another in speechless horror, and Patty rose.
"Well, good-by, my children, and, above all things, don't worry. I'm
glad if I've been able to cheer you up a little, for so much depends on
not being nervous. Don't believe any of the silly stories the sophomores
tell," she called back over her shoulder; "they're just trying to
frighten you."
X
"Per l'Italia"
College is a more or less selfish place. Everybody is so busy with her
own affairs that she has no time to give to her neighbor, unless her
neighbor has something to give in return. Olivia Copeland apparently had
nothing to give in return. She was quiet and inconspicuous, and it took
a second glance to realize that her face was striking and that there was
a look in her eyes that other freshmen did not have. By an unfelicitous
chance she was placed in the same study with Lady Clara Vere de Vere and
Emily Washburn. They thought her foreign and queer, and she thought them
crude and boisterous, and after the first week or two of politely trying
to get acquainted the effort was dropped on both sides.
The year wore on, and nobody knew, or at least no one paid any attention
to the fact, that Olivia Copeland was homesick and unhappy. Her
room-mates thought that they had done their duty when they occasionally
asked her to play golf or go skating with them (an invitation they were
very safe in giving, as she knew how to do neither). Her instructors
thought that they had done their duty when they called her up to the
desk after class and warned her that her work was not as good as it had
been, and that if she wished to pass she must improve in it.
The English class was the only one in which she was not warned; but she
had no means of knowing that her themes were handed about among the
different instructors and that she was referred to in the department as
"that remarkable Miss Copeland." The department had a theory that if
they let a girl know she was doing good work she would immediately stop
and rest upon her reputation; and Olivia, in consequence, did not
discover that she was remarkable. She merely discovered that she was
miserable and out of place, and she continued to drip tears of
homesickness before a sketch of an Italian villa that hung above her
desk.
It was Patty Wyatt who first discovered her. Patty had dropped into the
freshmen's room one afternoon on some errand or other (probably to
borrow alcohol), and had idly picked up a pile of English themes that
were lying on the study table.
"Whose are these? Do you care if I look at them?" she asked.
"No; you can read them if you want to," said Lady Clara. "They're
Olivia's, but she won't mind."
Patty carelessly turned the pages, and then, as a title caught her eye,
she suddenly looked up with a show of interest. "'The Coral-fishers of
Capri'! What on earth does Olivia Copeland know about the coral-fishers
of Capri?"
"Oh, she lives somewhere near there--at Sorrento," said Lady Clara,
indifferently.
"Olivia Copeland lives at Sorrento!" Patty stared. "Why didn't you tell
me?"
"I supposed you knew it. Her father's an artist or something of the
sort. She's lived in Italy all her life; that's what makes her so
queer."
Patty had once spent a sunshiny week in Sorrento herself, and the very
memory of it was intoxicating. "Where is she?" she asked excitedly. "I
want to talk to her."
"I don't know where she is. Out walking, probably. She goes off walking
all by herself, and never speaks to any one, and then when we ask her to
do something rational, like golf or basket-ball, she pokes in the house
and reads Dante in Italian. Imagine!"
"Why, she must be interesting!" said Patty, in surprise, and she turned
back to the themes.
"I think these are splendid!" she exclaimed.
"Sort of queer, I think," said Lady Clara. "But there's one that's
rather funny. It was read in class--about a peasant that lost his
donkey. I'll find it"; and she rummaged through the pile.
Patty read it soberly, and Lady Clara watched her with a shade of
disappointment.
"Don't you think it's pretty good?" she asked.
"Yes; I think it's one of the best things I ever read."
"You never even smiled!"
"My dear child, it isn't funny."
"Isn't funny! Why, the class simply roared over it."
Patty shrugged. "Your appreciation must have gratified Olivia. And here
it's February, and I've barely spoken to her."
The next afternoon Patty was strolling home from a recitation, when she
spied Olivia Copeland across the campus, headed for Pine Bluff and
evidently out for a solitary walk.
"Olivia Copeland, wait a moment," Patty called. "Are you going for a
walk? May I come too?" she asked, as she panted up behind.
Olivia assented with evident surprise, and Patty fell into step beside
her. "I just found out yesterday that you live in Sorrento, and I wanted
to talk to you. I was there myself once, and I think it's the most
glorious spot on earth."
Olivia's eyes shone. "Really?" she gasped. "Oh, I'm so glad!" And before
she knew it she was telling Patty the story of how she had come to
college to please her father, and how she loved Italy and hated America;
and what she did not tell about her loneliness and homesickness Patty
divined.
She realized that the girl _was_ remarkable, and she determined in the
future to take an interest in her and make her like college. But a
senior's life is busy and taken up with its own affairs, and for the
next week or two Patty saw little of the freshman beyond an occasional
chat in the corridors.
One evening she and Priscilla had returned late from a dinner in town,
to be confronted by a dark room and an empty match-safe.
"Wait a moment and I'll get some matches," said Patty; and she knocked
on a door across the corridor where a freshman lived with whom they had
a borrowing acquaintance. She found within her own freshman friends,
Lady Clara Vere de Vere and Emily Washburn. It was evident by the three
heads close together, and the hush that fell on the group as she
entered, that some momentous piece of gossip had been interrupted. Patty
forgot her room-mate waiting in the dark, and dropped into a chair with
the evident purpose of staying out the evening.
"Tell me all about it, children," she said cordially.
The freshmen looked at one another and hesitated.
"A new president?" Patty suggested, "or just a class mutiny?"
"It's about Olivia Copeland," Lady Clara returned dubiously; "but I
don't know that I ought to say anything."
"Olivia Copeland?" Patty straightened up with a new interest in her
eyes. "What's Olivia Copeland been doing?"
"She's been flunking and--"
"Flunking!" Patty's face was blank. "But I thought she was so bright!"
"Oh, she is bright; only, you know, she hasn't a way of making people
find it out; and, besides," Lady Clara added with meaning emphasis, "she
was scared over examinations."
Patty cast a quick look at her. "What do you mean?" she asked.
Lady Clara was fond of Patty, but she was only human, and she had been
frightened herself. "Well," she explained, "she had heard a lot of
stories from--er--upper-classmen about how hard the examinations are,
and the awful things they do to you if you don't pass, and being a
stranger, she believed them. Of course Emily and I knew better; but she
was just scared to death, and she went all to pieces, and--"
"Nonsense!" said Patty, impatiently. "You can't make me believe that."
"If it had been a sophomore that had tried to frighten us," pursued Lady
Clara, "we shouldn't have minded so much: but a senior!"
"Now, Patty, aren't you sorry that you told us all those things?" asked
Emily.
Patty laughed. "For the matter of that, I never say anything I'm not
sorry for half an hour later. I'm going to get out a book some day
entitled 'Things I Wish I Hadn't Said: A Collection of _Faux Pas_,' by
Patty Wyatt."
"I think it's more than a _faux pas_ when you frighten a girl so she--"
"I suppose you think you're rubbing it in," said Patty, imperturbably;
"but girls don't flunk because they're frightened: they flunk because
they don't know."
"Olivia knew five times as much geometry as I did, and I got through and
she didn't."
Patty examined the carpet in silence.
"She thinks she's going to be dropped, and she's just crying terribly,"
pursued Emily, with a certain relish in the details.
"Crying!" said Patty, sharply. "What's she crying for?"
"Because she feels bad, I suppose. She'd been out walking, and got
caught in the rain, and she didn't get back in time for dinner, and then
found those notes waiting for her. She's up there lying on the bed, and
she's got hysterics or Roman fever or something like that. She told us
to go away and let her alone. She's awfully cross all of a sudden."