I should think that the girls wandering about must be rather decorative,
if they wear their caps and gowns."
"Thank you," murmured the marshal.
"I feel like a trespasser," continued Timothy. "The place just suits
your costumes. We have no business here. Why did you let us in?"
"I don't know what object there would have been in getting it up, if we
didn't let you in," said the marshal, striving not to be bored.
Timothy was still in the clouds as they pushed their way into the inner
circle of the crowd, just in time for the finish of a bout at
quarter-staff between Robin Hood and Little John. Then Robin Hood ran to
the top of the hill, and blew a shrill blast upon his horn. A shout
answered him, and his band of merry men, all clad in Lincoln green, came
pouring over the brow of the hill. Long ago, when Timothy was a child,
Robin Hood had been his hero. He had procured a bow and arrow, and was
wont to strut about the back-yard, pretending to shoot the dun deer.
Here he was face to face with the famous outlaw, and the old glamour
gathered about him. After the familiar scene of Little John's
christening, the drinking-horns were filled, and the band threw
themselves down upon the soft grass, covered with violets. All listened
while the minstrel touched his harp, and the beautiful voice of
Allan-a-Dale sang the plaintive old ballad _Islington_.
Timothy was still hearing the echoes of the song when his guide said to
him, "It is all over. That is the last of the day."
"I should like to see it over again," sighed Timothy.
The girl laughed impatiently. "If you are going back to town to-night, I
am afraid you will have to go at once. The train leaves in about ten
minutes. Good-night," and she held out her hand to him.
"Good-night," said Timothy. "Do you know," he said, "I have to thank you
for one of the pleasantest days of my life."
"I am very glad," said the marshal, not knowing what else to say.
"I am going home to write a love-story," declared Timothy, "all about
Old England and May-day, and you shall be the heroine!"
"Thank you very much," said the marshal. "It is getting very late, Sir
Knight. I must really say good-bye."
"Good-bye, good-bye, Sir Marshal--till next May-day," cried Timothy. He
stood still, looking after her tall, erect figure, as she made her way
through the dwindling crowd.
Darkness had fallen quickly, and the space about him was almost
deserted. The great grey buildings loomed up dimly in the twilight. A
group of girls strolled past him, singing _Islington_, and the wind
brought back the sweet, plaintive notes. Timothy still saw beside him
the quaint figure of the marshal, the curls flying out from beneath her
rounded cap, her eyes looking up at him as she explained the May-day
sights and sounds. It seemed hardly possible that she was not a reality,
that he could stretch out his hand and not touch her. But he would see
her again; Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr were not far apart. The distant
train whistled, and gave a few warning puffs, which rapidly increased in
number as it drew out of the station. Timothy leaned against a tree and
indulged in dreams.
Two foresters were standing near by, talking eagerly. But it was some
time before Timothy realized the purport of their words.
"It was the funniest thing you ever heard of," one of them was saying.
"Poor Eleanor! I saw her with him some time ago, and now she has just
told me what happened. You see I asked her to take care of Jack for me,
and keep him from finding me--why, yes, of course I had my reasons--and
somehow she got hold of the wrong man. She has kept this creature with
her all the afternoon, _all the afternoon_, my dear, thinking he was
_Jack_! And she says he is the most awful stick, and has bored her to
death, poor dear! Isn't it a joke on her? It is a good joke on me, too,
because I was so sure that Jack would come. I wonder why he didn't!"
Lights were beginning to twinkle in the windows. The chorus of
_Islington_ still came back on the breeze, but it sounded quite
different to Timothy. Somehow everything had suddenly become
commonplace.
"I think," he said, with a deep breath, "it was a pretty good joke on
me."
Then he pulled down his hat, buttoned his coat, and set off towards the
station, with all possible speed.
_Anne Maynard Kidder, 1903._
_WITHIN FOUR YEARS_
In the dry, warm darkness of a May evening two girls lay on the grass
near the tennis-courts north of Taylor. It was in the days when the
present athletic field was only a roadway and a damp hollow where
dog-tooth violets grew. Radnor and Merion loomed across the campus,
their few lighted windows betraying how little the spirit of study
possessed the hour. All the light and brilliancy of the college seemed
concentrated in Denbigh dining-room, whence, through wide open windows,
came the laughter and songs of the supper the juniors were giving the
seniors.
There were sound and movement, too, in the obscurity under the windows.
Now and then a hand and arm, or a head, rose from the shuffling,
murmuring mass, and for a brief moment came into relief against the
bright oblong of the window, the hand in its withdrawal seeming always
to carry with it something very like a cup or a plate, which was
received below with shrieks or even some boldly distinct remarks.
One of the girls on the grass sat up suddenly, a stiffness of
disapproval apparent in her attitude, even in the dim light from the
library windows.
"That is all a disappointment to me." She supplemented her remark by a
quick movement of one arm in the direction of Denbigh.
"Why?" The other girl turned, resting her head on her curved arm.
"To think that college girls can be so frivolous, so silly. It isn't at
all what I expected before I came."
"You didn't suppose we talked in Greek all the time, did you, Lilian?"
"Of course I didn't think absurdities, Clara. But I did think college
girls would be dignified and serious, and wouldn't act like a rabble of
street boys. And _that_, I think is immoral." She rose with her back to
Clara, as from Denbigh came, full and strong, reënforced by the voices
of the freshmen under the windows, the chorus:
"Then here's to Bryn Mawr College,
Drink her down, drink her down----"
Clara West clasped her arms around her knees and rested her cheek on
them, murmuring in a sort of ecstasy, "I love it all."
Clara West was a quiet girl with odd impulses. One of these had been to
ask Lilian Coles to sit with her for a while on the campus, as they
happened to leave the library together. The oddity in this case was not
that Clara was a sophomore and Lilian a freshman--class lines were then
very loosely drawn. But Lilian was not the sort of girl every one would
choose to sit on the grass with under the stars and listen to college
songs. Lilian had accepted only because she was waiting for a reference
book she wanted. It was this she now went in quest of, after bidding
Clara a rather impatient good-night.
As she stopped by the half-open door of one of the first floor studies
in Merion, a tall girl with smooth, red-brown hair parted in a straight
white line, swung herself around from her desk and smiled.
"Oh, Miss Coles! You have come for the 'Augustan Poets'? I have just
finished."
She wore a pretty organdie gown, for she was as scrupulous in
maintaining the tradition of dressing for dinner as in every other
detail of her well-ordered existence. The study seemed rather bare, but
there were a few rich rugs on the floor and on the flat couch, and large
photographs of Greek sculptures on the walls. A tea table by the hearth
was loaded with cups and saucers, cakes and sandwiches; and thin steam
was beginning to come from a kettle hanging on an iron tripod.
"Won't you stay and have some tea?" Edith Dareham asked, as Lilian
turned away with the book. "Some of the girls are coming in to talk over
our play for the freshmen next fall."
"No, thank you, I don't drink tea, and--I don't believe in plays." With
this bomb-like deliverance Lilian disappeared. Edith looked bewildered
and rather pained.
"The people evidently don't want your 'panis et circenses,'" mocked a
voice close at hand, and a pretty head thrust itself beyond one of the
bedroom portières.
"Oh, Blanche dear, are you there? Won't you come out and help me make
the tea?"
Lilian hurried out of Merion, meeting groups of freshmen and sophomores.
A few of them nodded indifferently to her, but the majority seemed not
to heed her. As she crunched over the gravel toward Radnor, where more
lights were appearing, she had a sharp feeling of discomfort, unrelieved
by any sense of heroism. She was well constituted for martyrdom, but
just now the performance of duty seemed a very ungracious task.
Lilian was a victim of a world-old opposition, taking form in her in a
conflict between a habit of thought imposed by training, and certain
essential, though still latent, qualities of her nature. She was in a
stage of intense admiration for Edith Dareham, unconsciously influenced
by much in Edith that appealed to the undeveloped side of her character,
though attributing her admiration wholly to the obvious traits revealed
in Edith's fine conscientious work. Yet she felt an antagonism toward
the fact that Edith gave encouragement, or at least tolerance, to
certain features of college life that seemed very reprehensible to
Lilian, according to the peculiar tenets of the religion in which she
had been trained.
Her father was a member of a small religious sect, most numerous in the
West, whose creed would seem, to the uninitiated, to be wholly negative,
in its exclusion of all that makes for the brightness of life. The sect,
though small, was vigorous in proselytism, and Lilian's father had been
sent out as a missionary, first to Germany, then to Switzerland. Here
had been for Lilian a vast increase in the chances for education; and
with a natural aptitude and a child's facility she acquired a good
knowledge of French and German. The leaders of this sect had established
a small so-called college--really a school for the study of the Bible,
with their doctrinal interpretations--because, in the anticipation of
an imminent ending of the world, they deemed time too short to be spent
on any other line of study.
At about the time of Lilian's return to America, the school had been
placed in charge of a man of good academic training, but of a difficult
temper that had driven him from place to place till he had accepted this
position as almost a last resort. When Lilian was placed in the school
he quickly discovered the possibilities of her mind, and for three years
gave her a rigorous training. He then advised her father to send her to
college. Mr. Coles was not blind to some of the advantages shrewdly
presented by the little instructor. He laid the matter before a
committee of elders of the society, and consent was finally given.
Before her departure, Lilian was called into the presence of the elders,
and her opportunities for witnessing to the "light" in a new field, her
duty of non-compliance, were solemnly, almost threateningly impressed
upon her. The college was chosen by the instructor. The question of
money presented difficulties at first, but was finally arranged, and
Lilian went on for the examinations with a confidence born of her
teacher's encouragement, and justified by her success.
To-night, as she went through Radnor, she could hear laughter, singing,
rustling and skurrying,--all the relaxations of a Friday night, with
festivity in progress. There was something almost greedy in the haste
with which she lighted her lamp, closed her door, and drew down the
window shade. Her unworded thought was that others might so waste their
time if they chose; she could not afford to. Something of Lilian's
reaction to her present environment might have been divined from her
face. The forehead was of good shape, but too full for the thin, refined
lower features. At her temples the veins were very distinct.
She studied until after the seniors and juniors returned from their
supper. Her thoroughness in work was largely temperamental. She still
looked upon her opportunities in college simply as means to greater
efficiency in the missionary work she had been chosen to do--work that
was in fact the propagation of certain peculiar theories. To her simple
thinking, it was a sacrifice of herself to make the world better. Her
anxiety over the approaching examinations was great.
The next morning she would gladly have gone to the library immediately
after breakfast, but it was characteristic of her that she went instead
for a two mile walk which she did not in the least enjoy. The Gulph
road, behind the college, was a green cathedral aisle, starred with the
white flowers of the dogwood. She did not know it. The rhododendrons
were in brilliant bloom on the well-kept lawn of a country-place near
the pond. She did not see them. But when she came in she was sure that
she could not fail on Grimm's law.
Lilian's marks at the mid-year examinations had been good, but not high
enough to be striking, and as she left college as soon as the May
examinations were finished and thus escaped the inevitable comparing of
marks, no one knew how high were the grades she received. The excellence
of her work, however, unperceived during her first year, save by very
few, could not fail of notice as her sophomore year went on, and after
the result of the February examination was known, aroused a dim
uneasiness among some very devoted friends of Edith Dareham's. The
general rough grading of the members of the class during the first year
is apt to be accurate, and, with a little shifting, is accepted as
permanent in the second year. Edith Dareham was now the recognized
European Fellow of the class of '9--.
"You don't suppose there is any danger, do you?" was the query put to a
group in a cozy Denbigh study one February afternoon before dinner. It
was growing dark with a gathering storm, and the wind was whirling
clouds of snow across the campus. In the room the gas was lighted, a
coal fire was glowing in the grate, and two alcohol lamps were steadily
burning. The querist was Katherine Leonard, "a junior by courtesy," she
frankly qualified herself. Indeed a degree for her did seem at least
problematical, not so much through neglect of hard work as through a
perverse inclination to interest herself ardently in courses of reading
quite foreign to her majors. She was absorbed in literature and
philosophy while painfully struggling with mathematics and physics, and
as these latter subjects scarcely permit a divided allegiance even to
minds most gifted in that direction, the issue threatened to be
disastrous for Katherine. But when urged to change her majors she simply
shook her head. She needed the discipline, she said.
"Danger of what?" demanded Blanche Merrill, Edith Dareham's roommate,
with an abrupt turn to Katherine.
"That Lilian Coles may take the fellowship from Edith."
"Of course not! How absurd!" replied Blanche superbly.
"Don't be too sure, Blanchette, dear," interposed a tall girl who was
writing at a table under the gas. She was copying a lecture from her
hostess's notebook into her own, and kept on while she was talking.
"Don't use that absurd name, Clothilde, any one would think I was a
Trouville donkey. You might as well say 'Papillon.'"
"Thank you, I will. But _revenons_--the fellowships are very uncertain
certainties, and who can say what will happen with a girl who gets high
credit in the gym."
"Then Edith may as well give up." Katherine's small form yielded to a
spasm of laughter at the recollection of Edith's doing two hours a day
in the gymnasium in order to avoid a condition.
"Yes," commented Blanche, "when Edith went to the gym before breakfast,
Katherine would go and hold Thucydides up before her, so that Edith
could put a last polish on her translation while she was doing chest
weights and quarter circle."
"That isn't really true, you know," Katherine coolly joined in the
laughter of the others. "That is, it's true only to the spirit, not to
the fact. I would have done it if it had been necessary. But really it
would be unjust to the college to give the fellowship to a girl who
won't go to a tea."
"Is Miss Leonard here?" In response to a low rap some one had opened the
door to Lilian Coles who stood a little bewildered at the contrast
between the still unlighted hall and the bright room. Katherine freed
herself from the group on the floor.
"Oh, you have brought that book. I wish you hadn't. I'll have to read it
now. Come up, and I will give you the other. I haven't read it. I have
been skating all the afternoon. Mabel, please hand me my skates."
"Won't you come in and have a cup of cocoa? It is so cold outside,"
Lilian was temptingly urged by the fair-haired girl who was nominally
mistress of the study, though both she and her roommate were usually
obliged to work in the library, so thoroughly did a reputation for
hospitality characterize their room. Lilian wanted to go in, but without
hesitation declined and started away with Katherine.
"Wait a moment," Katherine touched Lilian's arm and turned back to the
open door. Two girls had begun to sing, in response to the guitar of a
third,
"Drink to me only with thine eyes."
While Katherine listened to the song, Lilian's eyes rested curiously
first on the sensitive face, then on the black sweater, short corduroy
skirt and heavy boots that made up Katherine's skating costume.
"I am glad I am not so conscientious as Helen Arnold," Katherine said,
at the close of the song. "When her aunt wanted to take her to Bayreuth
last summer, she wouldn't go, because, not having an intellectual
appreciation of music, she couldn't, forsooth, permit herself so much
emotional enjoyment." Lilian looked puzzled yet stern. She could not but
approve the action, though the motive seemed to her unnecessarily
refined.
Katherine's rooms were on the second floor. When the two girls entered,
the study was in the shadowy dimness of grey twilight cheered by a warm
fire. Katherine lighted an old Venetian lantern and some red-shaded
candles, then drew the sash curtains which were of dark red silk with
arabesques of fine gold lines. Above the mantel hung two carbon
photographs of Fra Angelico angels in vellum frames; and at one end
stood a bronze of the Flying Mercury, at the other a cast of the
Olympian Hermes. On the walls were photographs of Matthew Arnold,
Christina Rossetti, and Cardinal Newman; also some prints that Katherine
fondly believed to be original Dürers. These objects had not the
interpretative value for Lilian that they might have had for another;
but the whole suggested luxury to her, and her eyes turned away
disapprovingly to fall with a sort of startled horror on the recess left
between two bookcases, where, against a dark background, hung an
exquisite ivory crucifix. Lilian's attitude toward Catholicism was of
the original Puritan inflexibility, strengthened by the exaggerated
hatred of the class of people among whom she had lived. And she knew
nothing of any concessions due to the opinions of others. The crucifix
represented merely a sympathy, not a tendency on Katherine's part. But
this fact, even if it had been known to Lilian, would have served none
the less to intensify in her a feeling of radical difference between
Katherine's governing ideals and her own.
When she entered Radnor on her return, two girls were coming slowly down
the stairs, absorbed in confidential chat. They smiled at Lilian as she
passed, but she knew that she had no share in the friendship expressed
even by the touch of Clara's hand on Ethel's shoulder. She drew herself
up sharply, remembering her longing to enter Florence Baker's bright,
gay study.
Her way to her room took her past the single suites. The door of one was
open, and within were trunks and signs of packing.
"Are you going away?" she paused to ask. Gertrude Elbridge, a pretty
little freshman, came forward and drooped against the door.
"Yes, you know I have been ill since the examinations, and papa has sent
for me."
"I am sorry." This was true, as Lilian had a mild fondness for the
child, despite the fact that, through evenings of loud and prolonged
hilarity, Gertrude and her friends had made life a burden to Lilian, and
with direct consequence, to the members of the Executive Board of
Self-Government. Lilian went on to her room, indignation possessing her.
She knew why Gertrude was going away. Before each examination Gertrude
had studied all night, her head bound in a wet towel. The towel really
bothered her, but she knew that was what her brother did. She had kept
awake on strong tea and coffee supplied by sympathizing friends. But
evidently even these frantic efforts had not proved redemptive.
"Why," Lilian asked herself, "did not the stronger girls of the college
bring a pressure of sentiment to bear against these follies, instead of
encouraging them by their own customs?" Was it not her duty to make some
protest? An unavailing one it would doubtless be, but surely it is only
a lukewarm reformer that considers results rather than principles.
She had returned to college in the fall with a strengthened antagonism
to what her father called the worldliness of college life. His influence
was still dominant with her. His vision was crude, and he denounced,
with a solemnity appealing to the girl's native earnestness, all the
joyous innocent froth of amusement that danced over the current of the
real, serious life of the college.
In truth, Lilian had departed further from her father's beliefs than she
realized. She had already gained an historical perspective and a certain
habit of cool unbiased judgment that were forcing her to see in what
ignorance and narrowness of mind those beliefs were conceived and
accepted. At the same time the studies that had modified her views,
tended to increase her sense of the preciousness of time, of the
seriousness of life. Her loyalty to her father's teachings was stirred
by an unanalyzed appreciation of the change in herself. And now, in the
failure of Gertrude Elbridge she seemed to find a justification of the
rigidly prohibitive lines her father would throw around all conduct. She
could not see, yet, that the weak have their hard lessons to learn in
the opportunities of the strong.
Unfortunately opportunity was not lacking Lilian Coles for that word of
protest she felt bound to utter. She always attended the Sunday evening
meetings, though little in sympathy with their spirit. The next Sunday
she went early. Into the dimly lighted gymnasium came the girls, eyes
sparkling and cheeks red from the clear cold air without. Nearly all
were wrapped in shawls, but one girl wore a hat and coat and carried a
bag. There was a big bunch of violets on the lapel of her coat, and she
smiled rather consciously at some comments of the girls she joined. In
the first row of chairs were some dignified seniors whom Lilian rather
feared, and a junior who at once attracted and repelled her. She was, in
spite of herself, fascinated by a cleverness that manifested itself in
every department of the college, that would be a force in literature
some day, so every one said; and at the same time she had a feeling that
there was nothing the girl would not sacrifice to ambition.
At last Helen Arnold, who was to lead the meeting, came in accompanied
by Edith Dareham. Helen was the girl who had refused to go to Bayreuth.
She busied herself with great care in arranging the books and lamp on a
little table. Her friends knew that she was embarrassed. She was a
frail-looking girl, one who set a high value on things that were still
unapprehended by Lilian, in their real nature.
She began with a short quotation and took, as a point of departure, the
lines:
"That thread of the all-sustaining beauty
Which runs through all and doth all unite."
With well-chosen words she modestly brought out her thought of the duty
of each one to seek for this thread of beauty in all things. Then she
spoke, with a little more insistence, of the beautiful in art and in
nature, which, she believed, demanded for its true appreciation the
highest cultivation not only of mind and age, but of soul as well.