the three turned towards the door, Pauline said savagely, "Here come all
my dearest friends!"
But it was Shirley Nairn who pushed the door open, and at sight of
Charlotte stopped doubtfully on the threshold. Over her shoulder, they
saw the frightened face of Katharine Holland. Shirley was looking at
Pauline.
"I have something rather important to say," she said; "it concerns us
both, and"--she hesitated for a barely appreciable second--"and no one
else. Except Miss Holland," frigidly, with a glance over her shoulder.
"Oh, come in, come in!" cried Pauline, "and if it is about this wretched
election, let us have it out. Charlotte and Peggy know the worst, I
think. Come in."
Shirley advanced, and Katharine shrinkingly followed her; the uneasy air
of the latter, and her apprehensive looks, made Charlotte sit up with an
expression of interest.
"The plot thickens," she soliloquized to her teacup; and Pauline,
hearing her, knit her brows impatiently.
"Well?" she said rather shortly to Shirley. Her tone brought a flush to
the other's cheek; she hesitated for another moment, and then said
coldly,
"Miss Holland will explain."
Upon being brought thus abruptly into prominence, Katharine Holland
silently besought them all for mercy with her shamed eyes; then, urged
by a monitory look from Shirley, who leaned beside the table in frozen
silence, she brought out a foolish and pitiable tale. It was simply an
account of various silly slanders, some directed against Shirley, and
others against Pauline, with which she confessed she had regaled a
company of upper classmen, apparently only to amuse them; and she
interrupted her confession with weak excuses, like a guilty child. In
her humiliation she made an uncomfortable spectacle, but Shirley said
sternly, "Finish."
"Oh, let her be!" cried Pauline, impatient of the scene; "who cares to
hear all this? We know it already."
"There is one thing yet," said Shirley, "but I will tell it myself; I
made her tell all the rest, so that you might know whether you ought to
take her word against me. She has accused me of going about to ask for
votes." The speaker's tone was stout enough, but she leaned heavily on
the table, "so I brought her here to retract it."
Stung by a generous indignation, Pauline sprang to her feet. "Would you
have believed that of me?" she cried. "She need not trouble to retract
it." Then, turning to Katharine, "That is quite enough, Miss Holland,"
she said, and the penitent stumbled to the door.
As the door closed upon her, Charlotte, who had finished her tea in
silence, put down her cup with an air of decision, and turning to
Shirley, said suddenly,
"Wasn't it a little hard on her, Miss Nairn?"
"To punish her for telling a campaign lie?" demanded Shirley.
"Please leave the campaign out of the question for a moment. She doesn't
seem particularly venomous; don't you think she deserved a little
mercy?"
"She is a poor creature," said Shirley setting her lips, "and deserves
nothing."
"She is a poor creature," Charlotte assented in her easy drawl, "whom
you have made poorer by the loss of her self-respect. Why?"
"Because she lied about us," retorted Pauline, rushing in to defend
their joint position.
"Would you even have given her lies a thought," asked her cousin with a
little more animation, "if they hadn't interfered with your precious
campaign? You have just made her pay for your own mistake in attempting
the impossible; you began by trying impersonality in politics, and you
have ended by humiliating a classmate for indulging in a few exaggerated
personalities at your expense. Is it very consistent?"
Struck dumb by surprise at this attack, Pauline did not answer, but
Shirley broke in, with hot cheeks,
"It was a case of self-defence, Miss Meredith."
Charlotte, as she rose to go, smiled complete comprehension into the
younger girl's troubled eyes; it was easy to see that the rivals already
valued each other's good opinion beyond the votes of the class, and she
scented fresh developments. "They won't be a bad team," she decided on
her way home.
Her departure left the other three somewhat at a loss for words, but
Shirley, with an evident effort, broke the uncomfortable silence.
"We've made a mistake somewhere," she said hopelessly, "and everything
has gone miserably wrong; but I hope you will believe that I meant well,
even in bringing Katharine Holland here." And she turned towards the
door.
"Don't go," said Pauline; "sit down, and have some tea." Then seeing
that the other hesitated, "You know that I don't care a rap about those
tales, and I know that you don't either," she said, stoutly. "I am glad
that you came. Won't you please stay?"
Peggy, who had been absorbed in circumventing the treacherous tendencies
of her jam-sandwich, emerged victorious from the struggle to say
soothingly,
"Nobody ever believes campaign lies, anyway."
"Except the voters," was Shirley's dry response, as she dropped into a
chair.
During the next half-hour, both Pauline and Shirley announced their
unalterable intention of withdrawing from the race; each declared that,
for the good of the class, the other ought to be president, but neither
would consent to her rival's retiring, so that, as Peggy said, the only
way out was for both to stay in. The debate ended in a decision to abide
the issue, and ignore the slanderous tongues, whereupon they parted much
uplifted in spirit, and were very solemn at dinner that night, as
befitted noble-hearted victims who suffered for their efforts to elevate
their kind.
On the evening before the election, Charlotte Meredith caught Shirley in
the act of waylaying an Airlie freshman in the hall. Her victim, in
gymnasium dress, with her mask and foil, was evidently overdue at a
fencing-lesson, and anxious to be off, but Shirley was pitiless, and
pinned her to the spot, while she discoursed at length.
"The impersonal campaign is still on, I see," murmured Charlotte, as she
passed.
Shirley's face blazed. "I was telling her the truth as to some lies
about Pauline," she flashed out, and then looked as if she could have
bitten her tongue for speaking.
The freshman, grateful for an interruption, escaped.
"You needn't have told me that you were canvassing for Pauline, any more
than Pauline needed to tell me this morning, when I met her coming out
of a Briony girl's room, that she was canvassing for you. A fine
consistent pair you are! But it won't make any difference," she added,
darkly, with a return to her usual whimsical manner.
The evening of the election buried the reform fathoms deep; for Peggy
was elected president. When the little band of reformers entered the
students' parlour, where the class was already assembled, they received
the impression of a huddled flock of sheep, with lowered heads at bay.
The evening's proceedings deepened this impression. The class of '9--
was worried and bewildered and disgusted; it had travailed in the throes
of indecision until it sickened of both alternatives, and fell, like
many another, upon the middle course. That course was the choice of
Peggy, astonished Peggy, by an overwhelming majority in the good old
follow-my-leader fashion; while Pauline and Shirley watched their airy
fabric of reform topple to ruin, and then talked of other things during
the counting of the votes.
Charlotte Meredith laughed over the result with the rest of the
on-lookers, but, rather surprisingly, took the part of the would-be
reformers, after a subtle fashion of her own. "After all," she remarked,
with an air of elaborate deference to a loudly critical sophomore, "even
you and I, Miss West, were freshmen once." And Miss West turned a slow
red, and refrained from speech.
It was Charlotte's custom to have her freshman cousin at most of her
small teas, so Pauline found nothing remarkable in the appearance, about
this time, of a small card on her table, reading, "Tea at five. C. M.";
but it was embarrassingly unusual to find in her cousin's study, not the
expected circle of graduates, with a senior or two, but only Charlotte
herself and Shirley Nairn. The two guests were duly regaled with tea and
bonbons by Miss Meredith, who, ignoring late events, tried to put them
at their ease. In her whimsical way, she liked them both. There was,
however, a spark of covert amusement in her eyes as she passed the
teacups; and Pauline, writhing inwardly under this satirical
observation, finally came out with:
"I suppose you were pleased with the result of our campaign."
"Naturally," said Charlotte blandly. "One likes to have a guess
confirmed--and I was sure of the result; in that way I was pleased. And
you?"
Pauline, playing with her teacup, remarked that people weren't usually
pleased with having made fools of themselves. Her tone asked for a
contradiction, but it did not come, and the three sat silent, listening
to the singing of the kettle over the spirit-flame, until Shirley said
abruptly:
"Miss Meredith, you were right about the political animals."
Charlotte raised her eyebrows enquiringly, but was perhaps not surprised
by what she heard; she may have already reflected that defeat, always
hard to bear, comes in its most unbearable form when it makes its
victims ridiculous. Shirley and Pauline, having been baulked by very
small means in a project of mighty import, had a galling sense of the
absurdity of their position, and were bitterly ready to turn on their
ungrateful classmates. Therefore Charlotte had the satisfaction of
seeing them come over to her point of view with exaggerated enthusiasm.
They could not put too strongly the impossibility of any attempt to
educate women politically; they thought that a few--a very few, they
sadly added--might be trusted for public-spirited and disinterested
action; but the mass of women were not large-minded enough to rise
above personal considerations.
"What other considerations did the poor things have, in your case?"
asked their hostess. "A class president's duties are not so weighty that
she needs any distinguished qualifications, and the choice is simply a
matter of personal liking. You insisted on a week's analysis of personal
likes and dislikes, and the natural result was exaggeration and
slander."
The freshmen sat in crestfallen silence. They had acknowledged their
defeat; must they now acknowledge that it was deserved? Putting down her
plate and leaning a little forward in her chair, Charlotte regarded them
earnestly.
"Let me tell you something," she said; "I have not lived in college six
years for nothing; I have learned a great deal in that time; but it did
not take me six years to learn not to waste my energy on trifles. In
this campaign of yours, you have used up an amount of force which would
have accomplished wonders in a serious cause. Has it paid?"
"I'm afraid not," they said.
"It is an odd thing, too," said Charlotte, in a casual tone, "to notice
that in nine cases out of ten the popular instinct is a safer guide than
the popular reason. Your class reasoned itself into a frenzy, and then,
by instinct, did the right thing."
At this unexpected tribute to their conqueror, the two vanquished
leaders looked a bit blank; perhaps they had nursed a faint egotistical
hope of some day seeing the class brought to a realizing sense of its
mistake in electing Peggy, and Charlotte's view was a blow. She saw the
effect of her words.
"They did the right thing," she repeated, "in choosing a girl who will
be an excellent figurehead for--a coalition--" Charlotte smiled, a
little self-complacently; she rather prided herself on the sensitiveness
of her feeling for things that were in the air--"a public-spirited,
disinterested----"
"Oh, don't!" pleaded Shirley; "I am sick of it. We have been talking
awful cant, haven't we?"
"Suppose we talk about that," said Charlotte.
And they did. They talked about it until the late sunlight faded, and
twilight came down on the little study; and then, in the gathering
gloom, they talked about it still, and all the more freely. The older
girl, who had tilted with windmills in her time, opened her heart to
these young Quixotes, fresh from their first fall, on the difference
between cant and college spirit; and the two freshmen, sitting in the
twilight with tingling cheeks, pledged themselves silently to the larger
vision.
As they wended their way homeward across the dusky campus, they were
very silent; when Pauline spoke once, it was only to say, "I am sorry I
called her the Cynic."
And Charlotte, watching their dark receding forms as she leaned from her
open window, hoped that she hadn't been preaching. It was the old, old
antithesis between enthusiasm and experience; and after all there was
much to be said for enthusiasm. Those two youngsters had brought
something out of their mischance, if it was only their liking for each
other. "I wish I were a freshman again," sighed Charlotte to the stars.
_Cora Armistead Hardy, '99._
_A REMINISCENCE_
We had met, after two years or so out in the "wide, wide world" of which
we had sung so dolefully, the last weeks of senior year. I discovered
that Evelyn had substituted soft "fluffs" for the stiff collars she had
clung to tenaciously through four years of college, and she admitted
that after the first shock she quite liked the new way I did my hair.
Later she also admitted that she made a practice of carrying a parasol,
or even of wearing a hat, when it was excessively sunny. Emboldened by
the confession, I ventured to produce some embroidery and went to work
as if such femininity had always been my pose. Then we talked, and
exchanged various bits of news about the members of the class who had
wandered so far since our separation.
"Wasn't it sad about Janet?" I asked at last. And then as Evelyn kept
silent, I went on, "you knew, didn't you?--She died last November just a
little while after her engagement was announced. It was typhoid fever.
I thought you knew, of course."
"Yes, I knew," said Evelyn, and went on examining the bookcase.
"I think I'll tell you about it," she exclaimed at last. "It won't do
any good. But I think I'd like to tell you. You know Janey and I were
awfully good friends while she was at college. We even thought of
rooming together, but we were both so well satisfied with our single
suites that we decided not to. We were almost like roommates, though.
Janet always saw that I was registered when I went home and I always
stole rolls for her when she was locked out from breakfast. We wore each
other's clothes indiscriminately. I have one of her handkerchiefs yet.
You know how it was. We were just awfully good friends."
"I know--Janet would do anything under the sun for any one she liked--go
on."
"Well, then she left college. She didn't like it--one bit. She was
perfectly frank and said she wanted to come out before she was twenty.
Do you know how it is in those western towns? They think a girl is
antique when she's twenty-one. She came out and was a great success, I
believe. You know how she stopped writing to first one, then another of
us, and we were all rather hurt about it."
"Well, she _was_ a disappointment. I had always thought her so superbly
loyal, and we heard that she said college was 'such a bore.'"
"Yes, I believed that too, but not until I had written several letters
after she had stopped. Finally I gave up and thought I'd never hear from
her again. I felt pretty bitter about it. At last she wrote me and told
me of her engagement. Just the real old Janey, it was--called me by some
absurd nickname she'd invented, confessed that she'd been horrid about
not writing, and then said that although the engagement wasn't to be
announced immediately, she wanted me to be one of the first to know, and
would I congratulate her?"
"When was this?" I asked, after a pause. Evelyn had seized my scissors
and seemed to be too much interested in snipping ends of embroidery silk
to remember Janet or me, or any one else. She dropped the scissors and
took up a book of college kodaks. I repeated my question, just to remind
her that I was still there.
She turned her back and went on. "That was some time in May. It came to
me at a most unpropitious time. Some member of the family had been ill
and I was tired and cross and feeling unjustifiably righteous. So I sat
down then and there and told poor old happy Janet how nice and
high-minded I had been about writing and how unfriendly she had been. I
said of course I hoped she would be happy and all that but of course
after this long hiatus we could never be friends in the same old way.
Oh, it was an icy letter, just as politely nasty as I could make it! I
sent it off and afterwards I felt just exactly the way I used to when I
was a small child and had been naughty and wanted to make up. But I
didn't. I tried to forget it. I was very busy and had a lot of people
visiting me, last summer. So the thought of Janet didn't come into my
head very often and when it did I mentally changed the subject. Of
course I never heard from her again.
"One day, after we came back to town I was reading, not thinking of
anything but the book--Janey least of all. Nothing in that book could
have reminded me of her. I read it over afterwards to see. I looked up
all of a sudden, thinking of Janet--thinking of her as if I had been
with her an hour before. I dropped the book and felt as if I had just
seen her, standing at the door in a familiar kimono, and heard her
addressing me for the first time by that ridiculous nickname that she
had just invented. I had heard through some people from her town that
she was going to be married soon. My pride simply vanished. I dashed up
and wrote her in the good old friendly way, told her what a nice lady
she was and how often I thought of her, what I had been doing, and all
sorts of natural old things, as if I had been writing to her regularly
for years. I sent that letter off wondering if she would answer. Two
days later I heard somehow that she had typhoid fever, but I thought
that if she got my letter she would surely answer somehow, though she
had been ill for days then."
Evelyn turned and showed me a photograph of herself and Janet laughing
and entwined in an attitude of exaggerated affection.
"The next thing I heard of Janey," she continued, "was the news of her
death and I shall never know whether she received my letter."
_Clara Warren Vail, '97._
_CATHERINE'S CAREER_
"Now, Jack, please don't be sentimental. You know how I hate it. Besides
you have interrupted me just when I was convincing you that education
will solve the race problem, and that is annoying." Poor Jack! Catherine
little imagined what courage that interruption had taken. Nor did she
realize how unheeding he had been as she rolled forth her arguments.
(She had just been reading an article in _The North American Review_.)
"But, you know, I have been wanting to speak for..."
"I thought you knew better, too," Catherine continued a little
sorrowfully, "a person of my ambitious aspirations" (Catherine lived for
ambitious aspirations), "isn't going to be happy settling down into a
general entertainer and housekeeper for mankind, always sweet and pretty
and dainty, standing every evening on the little porch all tumbling over
with honeysuckle, dressed in white with a red rose tucked in my belt
(that's your ideal, isn't it?) and a hand stretched forth in undulating
curves to welcome you. This way." Catherine stood up, balanced herself
and nearly fell down. "No, I can't even do it. And then I'm not 'sweet
and lovely.' I hate 'sweet and lovely' girls. Why, every girl who hasn't
any looks, or any brains, or anything else, is considered 'sweet and
lovely.'"
"I never said you were 'sweet and lovely.'"
"Oh! then you consider me horrid and disagreeable, do you? Well, that's
flattering. No, I can't marry you. Such a catastrophe has never once
entered my head." Catherine grew pensive. "I can't imagine anything more
frightful than playing the piano, arranging flowers, and being charming,
to eternity." Jack had jumped up from his seat by the piano and stalked
over to the window where he stood biting his lips and beating the floor
with one foot, gazing out into the black night with an impatiently
reflective air. When Catherine finished, he spoke half to himself and
half to the night.
"Just what Charlie Dickenson warned me would happen. 'See here, old
chap,' he said, 'if you don't want to be the laughing stock of the whole
club you'd better steer clear of Catherine Neville. Those college girls
are chock full of notions. I suppose she does like you in a way,
because you listen to her theories. But it is a ticklish business.
Remember poor Harry Cockran, the trouble he had!' ... I thought she
liked me. But I see now that one can't expect anything sensible from
them." Catherine did not appear to listen. She was playing a series of
changing chords on the piano. But the chords grew louder and louder and
gradually passed into the minor key, until at the last word she spun
round on the stool.
"Sensible?" she exclaimed. "That depends upon the point of view. I think
we are extremely sensible. For we can be reached only through our minds,
not through our emotions. Any girl can fall in love. But few have the
strength of mind to see that they are needed for loftier careers. We
have ideals, aims, purposes."
"Exactly. You long to be strong-minded, to take to platforms, stand up
for poor oppressed womankind, and generally make a lot of trouble. Why
all the men say that nothing would induce them to marry college girls.
They think it's ruination of a nice, pretty, sensible girl to send her
to college, and let her head get filled with all sorts of ideas. I tell
you it ruins them with the men. But I had rather hoped you were an
exception, or at least above the average."
"You men are too exasperating. You inherit from your grandfathers poor,
foolish, worn-out ideas that stick in your stubborn, narrow-minded
little brains. No amount of eloquence on my part could convince you of
anything else. I might talk myself blue in the face, and there you would
sit, placid and serene in the error of your judgment. Nothing could
change you, except, perhaps, a change of grandfathers. I suppose you
consider it woman's place to--bask in your radiance. Well, I sha'n't
argue with you. What's the use? I hate a quarrel. Why don't you go?
Don't you see that I have had enough of you? Don't you see that I am
annoyed with it all?" Catherine was walking impatiently up and down the
room, tearing the roses at her belt--his roses--and flinging the petals
on the floor. "I hope I shall never see you again." Then, in a lower
tone, "(No, I can never love him. I am thoroughly convinced of that.)
What are you waiting for? No, I shan't say good-bye. I shouldn't feel
it. I am thoroughly miserable. I thought you were such a good friend of
mine, too. I can't be polite. I'm tired of being polite when I feel
rude. I am tired of hearing all this twaddle about marrying college
girls. I think you might have had more tact." Catherine rushed from the
room and upstairs.
Jack Livingston heard the door at the top of the stairs shut, not quite
gently.