THE DELIGHTS OF BEING A FRESHER
The college was quite shut away in its own grounds, and only from the
upper windows did the girls get a peep of the old university town of
Kingsdene. From these, however, particularly in the winter, they could
see the gabled colleges, the chapels with their rich glory of
architecture and the smooth lawns of the college gardens as they sloped
gently down to the river.
St. Benet’s, the college for women, was approached by a private road,
and high entrance gates obstructed the gaze of the curious. Inside
there were cheerful halls and pleasant gardens and gay, fresh,
unrestrained life. But the passer-by got no peep of these things unless
the high gates happened to be open.
This was the first evening of term, and most of the girls were back.
There was nothing very particular going on, and they were walking about
the gardens, and greeting old friends, and telling each other their
experiences, and more or less picking up the threads which had been
broken or loosened in the long vacation.
The evenings were drawing in, but the pleasant twilight which was soon
to be rendered brilliant by the full moon seemed to the girls even
nicer than broad daylight to linger about in. They did not want to go
into the houses; they flitted about in groups here and there, chatting
and laughing merrily.
St. Benet’s had three halls, each with its own vice-principal, and a
certain number of resident students. Each hall stood in its own grounds
and was more or less a complete home in itself. There were resident
lecturers and demonstrators for the whole college and one lady
principal, who took the lead and was virtually head of the college.
Miss Vincent was the name of the present principal. She was an old lady
and had a vice-principal under her at Vincent Hall, the largest and
newest of these spacious homes, where young women received the
advantages of university instruction to prepare them for the battle of
life.
Priscilla was to live at Heath Hall— a slightly smaller house, which
stood at a little distance away— its grounds being divided from the
grounds of Vincent Hall by means of a rustic paling. Miss Heath was the
very popular vice-principal of this hall, and Prissie was considered a
fortunate girl to obtain a home in her house. She sat now a forlorn and
rather scared young person, huddled up in one corner of the fly which
turned in at the wide gates, and finally deposited her and her luggage
at the back entrance of Heath Hall.
Priscilla looked out in the darkness of the autumn night with
frightened eyes. She hated herself for feeling nervous. She had told
Aunt Raby that, of course, she would have no silly tremors, yet here
she was trembling and scarcely able to pay the cabman his fare.
She heard a girl’s laugh in the distance, and it caused her to start so
violently that she dropped one of her few treasured sixpences, which
went rolling about aimlessly almost under the horse’s hoofs.
“Stop a minute, I’ll find it for you,” said a voice. A tall girl with
big, brown eyes suddenly darted into view, picked up the sixpence as if
by magic, popped it into Priscilla’s hand and then vanished. Priscilla
knew that this was the girl who had laughed; she heard her laughing
again as she turned to join some one who was standing beside a laurel
hedge. The two linked their arms together and walked off in the
darkness.
“Such a frightened poor fresher!” said the girl who had picked up the
sixpence to her companion.
“Maggie,” said the other in a warning voice, “I know you, I know what
you mean to do.”
“My dear, good Nancy, it is more than I know myself. What awful
indiscretion does your prophetic soul see me perpetrating?”
“Oh, Maggie, as if anything could change your nature! You know you’ll
take up that miserable fresher for about a fortnight, and make her
imagine that you are going to be excellent friends for the rest of your
life, and then— p—— f! you’ll snuff her out as if she had never
existed; I know you, Maggie, and I call it cruel.”
“Is not that Miss Banister I hear talking?” said a voice quite close to
the two girls.
They both turned, and immediately with heightened color rushed up
eagerly to shake hands with the vice-principal of their college.
“How do you do, my dears?” she said in a hearty voice. “Are you quite
well, Maggie, and you, Nancy? Had you a pleasant holiday? And did you
two great chums spend it together?”
The girls began answering eagerly; some other girls came up and joined
the group, all anxious to shake hands with Miss Heath and to get a word
of greeting from her.
At this moment the dressing-gong for dinner sounded, and the little
group moved slowly toward the house.
In the entrance hall numbers of girls who had recently arrived were
standing about; all had a nod, or a smile, or a kiss for Maggie
Oliphant.
“How do you do, Miss Oliphant? Come and see me to-night in my room,
won’t you, dear?” issued from many throats.
Maggie promised in her good-natured, affectionate, wholesale way.
Nancy Banister was also greeted by several friends. She, too, was gay
and bright, but quieter than Maggie. Her face was more reliable in its
expression, but not nearly so beautiful.
“If you accept all these invitations, Maggie,” she said as the two
girls walked down the corridor which led to their rooms, “you know you
will have to sit up until morning. Why will you say ‘yes’ to every one?
You know it only causes disappointment and jealousy.”
Maggie laughed.
“My dear, good creature, don’t worry your righteous soul,” she
answered. “I’ll call on all the girls I can, and the others must grin
and bear it. Now we have barely time to change our dresses for dinner.
Surely, though, Nance, there’s a light under Annabel Lee’s door. Who
have they dared to put into her room? It must be one of those wretched
freshers. I don’t think I can bear it. I shall have to go away into
another corridor.”
“Maggie, dear— you are far too sensitive. Could the college afford to
keep a room empty because poor, dear Annie Lee occupied it?”
“They could, they ought,” burst from Maggie. She stamped her foot with
anger. “That room is a shrine to me. It will always be a shrine. I
shall hate the person who lives in it.” Tears filled her bright brown
eyes. Her arched, proud lips trembled. She opened her door, and going
into her room, shut it with a bang, almost in Nancy Banister’s face.
Nancy stood still for a moment. A quick sigh came from her lips.
“Maggie is the dearest girl in the college,” she said to herself; “the
dearest, the sweetest, the prettiest, yet also the most tantalizing,
the most provoking, the most inconsequent. It is the greatest wonder
she has kept so long out of some serious scrape. She will never leave
here without doing something outrageous, and yet there isn’t a girl in
the place to be named with her. I wish—” here Nancy sighed again and
put her hand to her brow as if to chase away some perplexity.
Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she went up to the door of the room
next to Maggie’s and knocked.
There was a moment’s silence, then a constrained voice said:
“Come in.”
Nancy entered at once.
Priscilla Peel was standing in the center of the room. The electric
light was turned on, revealing the bareness and absence of all ornament
of the apartment; a fire was laid in the grate but not lit, and
Priscilla’s ugly square trunk, its canvas covering removed, stood in a
prominent position, half on the hearthrug, half on the square of carpet
which covered the center of the floor. Priscilla had taken off her
jacket and hat. She had washed her hands, and removed her muddy boots,
and smoothed out her straight, light brown hair. She looked what she
felt— a very stiff and unformed specimen of girlhood. There was a great
lump in her throat, brought there by mingled nervousness and
home-sickness, but that very fact only made her manner icy and
repellent.
“Forgive me,” said Nancy, blushing all over her rosy face. “I thought
perhaps you might like to know one or two things as you are quite
strange here. My name is Banister. I have a room in the same corridor,
but quite at the other end. You must come and visit me presently. Oh,
has no one lit your fire? Wouldn’t you like one? The evenings are
turning so chilly now, and a fire in one’s room gives one a home-like
feeling, doesn’t it? Shall I light it for you?”
“No, no, thank you,” said Priscilla stiffly. She longed to rush at
Nancy and smother her with kisses, but she could only stand in the
middle of her room, helpless and awkward, held in a terrible bondage of
shyness.
Nancy drew back a step, chilled in spite of herself.
“I see there are matches on the chimney-piece,” she said, “so you can
light the fire yourself whenever you like. The gong that will sound in
a minute will be for dinner, and Miss Heath always likes us to be
punctual for that meal. It does not matter about any other. Do you
think you can find your way to the dining-hall or shall I come and
fetch you?”
“No— thank you. I— I can manage.”
“But I’ll come with pleasure if you like me to.”
“No, I’d rather you didn’t trouble, please.”
“Very well; if you’re sure you know the way. You go down the broad
stairs, then turn to the right, then to the left. Good-by. I must rush
off, or I shall be late.”
Nancy shut the door behind her. She did it gently, although she did not
feel gentle, for she had a distinct sensation of being irritated.
Meanwhile Priscilla, clasping her hands together behind the closed
door, looked yearningly in the direction where the bright face and
trim, neat girlish figure had stood. She was trembling slightly and her
eyes slowly filled with tears.
“I feel sick and lonely and horrid,” she said under her breath. “Talk
of nerves; oh, if Aunt Raby could see me now! Why, I’m positively
shaking, I can scarcely speak, I can scarcely think properly. What
would the children say if they saw their Prissie now? And I’m the girl
who is to fight the world, and kill the dragon, and make a home for the
nestlings. Don’t I feel like it! Don’t I look like it! Don’t I just
loathe myself! How hideously I do my hair, and what a frightful dress I
have on. Oh, I wish I weren’t shaking so much. I know I shall get red
all over at dinner. I wish I weren’t going to dinner. I wish, oh, I
wish I were at home again.”
Crash! bang! pealed the great gong through the house. Doors were opened
all along the corridor; light steps passed Priscilla’s room. She heard
the rustle of silk and the sweet, high tinkle of girlish laughter.
She stayed in her room till the last footsteps had died away, then in
desperation made a rush for it, flew down the wide stairs in a bashful
agony, and, as a matter of course, entered the spacious dining-hall by
the door devoted to the dons.
A girl’s life at one of the women’s colleges is supposed to be more or
less an unfettered sort of existence. The broad rules guiding conduct
are few and little more than those which must be exercised in any
well-organized family. But there is the unspoken etiquette made chiefly
by the students themselves, which fills the place like an atmosphere,
and which can only be transgressed at the risk of surly glances and
muttered comments and even words of derision.
No student was expected to enter the hall by the dons’ entrance, and
for this enormity to be perpetrated by a fresher immediately made her
the cynosure of all eyes. Poor Priscilla was unconscious of any
offense. She grew scarlet under the gaze of the merciless young eyes
and further added to her sins by sitting down at one of the tables at
the top of the hall.
No one reproved her in words or requested her to take a lower seat, but
some rude giggles were not inaudible; and Priscilla, who would
thankfully have taken her dinner in the scullery, heard hints about a
certain young person’s presumption, and about the cheek of those
wretched freshers, which must instantly be put down with a high hand.
Priscilla had choked over her soup, and was making poor way with the
fish that followed, when suddenly a sweet, low voice addressed her.
“This is your first evening at St. Benet’s,” said the voice. “I hope
you will be happy. I know you will, after a little.”
Priscilla turned and met the full gaze of lovely eyes, brown like a
nut, soft and deep as the thick pile of velvet, and yet with a latent
flash and glow in them which gave them a red, half-wild gleam now and
then. The lips that belonged to this face were slightly parted in a
smile; the smile and the expression in the eyes stole straight down
with a glow of delicious comfort into Priscilla’s heart.
“Thank you,” she said in her stiff, wooden tone; but her eyes did not
look stiff, and the girl began to talk again.
“I believe my room is next to yours. My name is Oliphant— Margaret
Oliphant, but every one calls me Maggie. That is, of course, I mean my
friends do. Would you like to come into my room and let me tell you
some of the rules?”
“Thank you,” said Priscilla again. She longed to add, “I should love
beyond words to come into your room”; but instead she remarked icily,
“I think Miss Heath has given me printed rules.”
“Oh, you have seen our dear Dorothea— I mean Miss Heath. Isn’t she
lovely?”
“I don’t know,” answered Priscilla. “I think she’s rather a plain
person.”
“My dear Miss”— I have not caught your name— “you really are too
deliciously prosaic. Stay here for a month, and then tell me if you
think Dorothea— I mean Miss Heath— plain. No, I won’t say any more. You
must find out for yourself. But now, about the rules. I don’t mean the
_printed_ rules. We have, I assure you, at St. Benet’s all kinds of
little etiquettes which we expect each other to observe. We are
supposed to be democratic and inclined to go in for all that is
advanced in womanhood. But, oh dear, oh dear! let any student dare to
break one of our own little pet proprieties, and you will see how
conservative we can be.”
“Have I broken any of them?” asked Priscilla in alarm. “I did notice
that every one stared at me when I came into the hall, but I thought it
was because my face was fresh, and I hoped people would get accustomed
to me by and by.”
“You poor, dear child, there are lots of fresh faces here besides
yours. You should have come down under the shelter of my wing, then it
would have been all right.”
“But what have I done? Do tell me. I’d much rather know.”
“Well, dear, you have _only_ come into the hall by the dons’ entrance,
and you have _only_ seated yourself at the top of the table, where the
learned students who are going in for a tripos take their august meals.
That is pretty good for a fresher. Forgive me, we call the new girls
freshers for a week or two. Oh, you have done nothing wrong. Of course
not, how could you know any better? Only I think it would be nice to
put you up to our little rules, would it not?”
“I should be very much obliged,” said Priscilla. “And please tell me
now where I ought to sit at dinner.”
Miss Oliphant’s merry eyes twinkled.
“Look down this long hall,” she said. “Observe that door at the further
end— that is the students’ door; through that door you ought to have
entered.”
“Yes— well, well?”
“What an impatient ‘well, well.’ I shall make you quite an enthusiastic
Benetite before dinner is over.”
Priscilla blushed.
“I am sorry I spoke too eagerly,” she said.
“Oh, no, not a bit too eagerly.”
“But please tell me where I ought to have seated myself.”
“There is a table near that lower entrance, Miss——”
“Peel,” interposed Priscilla. “My name is Priscilla Peel.”
“How quaint and great-grandmotherly. Quite delicious! Well, Miss Peel,
by that entrance door is a table, a table rather in a draught, and
consecrated to the freshers— there the freshers humbly partake of
nourishment.”
“I see. Then I am as far from the right place as I can be.”
“About as far as you can be.”
“And that is why all the girls have stared so at me.”
“Yes, of course; but let them stare. Who minds such a trifle?”
Priscilla sat silent for a few moments. One of the neat waiting-maids
removed her plate; her almost untasted dinner lay upon it. Miss
Oliphant turned to attack some roast mutton with truly British vigor.
By and by Priscilla’s voice, stiff but with a break in it, fell upon
her ear.
“I think the students at St. Benet’s must be very cruel.”
“My dear Miss Peel, the honor of the most fascinating college in
England is imperiled. Unsay those words.”
Maggie Oliphant was joking. Her voice was gay with badinage, her eyes
brimful of laughter. But Priscilla, unaccustomed to light repartee or
chaff in any form, replied to her with heavy and pained seriousness.
“I think the students here are cruel,” she repeated. “How can a
stranger know which is the dons’ entrance and which is the right seat
to take at table? If nobody shows her, how can a stranger know? I do
think the students are cruel, and I am sorry— very sorry I came.”