ENTER ROBBIE BELLE
Now it happened one evening in the early fall, while Bea and Lila were
learning to live together, that the Students' Association held a meeting
to appoint corridor wardens for the year.
In the throng that came pouring out of chapel afterward, Bea, who had an
eel-like rapidity in gliding through crowds, found herself at the doors
some yards in advance of Lila. Halting to wait in the vestibule, she
overheard a junior instructing a new freshman officer in her duties.
"It is very simple. Oh, no, Miss Sanders, no, indeed! There is nothing
meddlesome about it. You're not expected to spy upon the girls in your
neighborhood. The aim is merely to preserve a certain degree of quiet.
Girls are often thoughtless about being noisy in the corridors. Simply
remind them now and then in flagrant cases that they are disturbing those
who wish to study. Of course you must be tactful, though it is rarely
that a student wilfully disregards the rights of others."
Bea peered around the edge of her particular door in order to catch a
glimpse of this freshman so distinguished. It was the tall, fair-faced
child with the splendid long braid, who lived at the end of Berta's
transverse. Now the sweet mouth was drooping disconsolately, and the big
eyes looked dewy with anxious tears.
"I--I don't think I'd like to," she said.
"Oh, but it is something that must be done, and you have been selected as
the one in that vicinity who strikes us as best fitted for the duties of
the position. It is really, you know, a case of public service. Every one
at some time or other ought to be willing to make sacrifices of personal
desires for the good of the community, don't you think? But forgive me
for preaching. I didn't mean to. By the way, how do you like college,
Miss Sanders?"
"It isn't so much fun as I had expected," said she. Bea's head popped
around the door again. The junior was smiling with an air of amused
superiority.
"Ah, yes, I understand. Probably you used to have a sister or cousin at
college, and from her letters you supposed that the life was composed
chiefly of dancing, fudges and basket-ball with a little work sandwiched
in between. Is it not so? And now----"
"I don't mind the work," here Bea's head popped out a third time to
contemplate this interesting classmate, "but----"
"Beatrice," called Lila at her other ear, "Berta says to hurry or we'll
miss the best of the fun. It's to be a sheet-and-pillow-case party
to-morrow, and a lot of the girls are coming in to learn how to do the
draping. Berta has an idea. Come along quick!"
Robbie Belle Sanders stared after them wistfully. "Those girls live near
me," she said, "they have fun all the time."
The junior's keen glance spied in the open countenance something that
kept her lingering a moment longer. "This is a democratic place," she
said in a more sympathetic tone, "every girl finds her own level sooner
or later. The basis is not money or social rank of the families at home.
It is not brains or clothes or stuff like that. It is simply that the
same kind of girls drift together. They're congenial. It seems to be a
law. A general law, you understand. Of course," she hesitated for an
instant before being spurred on by her sense of scrupulous honesty,
"there are exceptions. Once in a while a girl fails to find her special
niche. Maybe she rooms off the campus and is not thrown in contact with
her own kind. She may be abnormally shy--that hinders her from making
friends. Or perhaps she does something that queers herself first thing."
"Queers herself?" echoed Robbie Belle, "how does a person queer herself?"
"Oh, I don't know." She paused to reflect. "She does outlandish things.
And still it isn't what she does so much as what she is. Her acts express
her character. If her character is queer, she behaves queerly, and the
others fight shy of her. After all, I dare say she does find her own
level, and there is nobody else there. So she goes along solitary through
the four years."
Robbie Belle looked frightened. "I wish I knew what things are queer,"
she said.
"Oh, being different from the other girls, for instance, awfully
different, so different that everybody notices it. Not just original, you
know, but actually queer. Watch the girls, particularly those who always
go around alone, and you'll learn. Good-night, Miss Sanders. I must
congratulate you again on the honor of being appointed freshman warden.
Good-night."
Robbie Belle walked slowly down the corridor to her room. "I wonder if I
am queer," she thought. "I am almost always alone." She halted before a
door that displayed a small square of white paper pinned in the middle of
its upper half. Robbie Belle, her hand on the knob, regarded the sign
hopelessly. "If you have a roommate who never takes down her ENGAGED, and
she doesn't like company and she won't go anywhere with you herself,
maybe you can't help being queer."
Robbie Belle entered softly. It was a large room and seemed quite bare
because of the absence of curtains, rugs, and cushions. The unsociable
roommate was sitting beside the centre table, her elbows propped on its
shiny surface that was innocent of any cover and ignorant of the duster.
A green shade over her eyes connected a blur of nondescript hair with a
rather long nose beneath which a pair of pale lips in the glow of the
drop-light was rapidly gabbling over some lines in Greek scansion.
Without looking up, she waved one hand forbiddingly; and Robbie Belle
obediently shut her mouth over the few words that were ready to be
uttered in greeting. She stood waiting in her tracks, so to speak, until
the final hexameter had wailed out its drawling length, and Miss Cutter
pushed back the green shade.
"Well," she demanded, "what was the important business before the
meeting? I could not spare valuable time for self-government foolishness
to-night."
"They appointed corridor wardens," answered Robbie Belle.
"Oh, indeed! It is certainly time, I must say. In theory it is all very
well to make the rules a matter of honor, but when you happen to live in
a nest of girls who behave as if they were six years old, I insist that
something more forcible than chapel admonitions is required. Who is the
warden for this neighborhood?"
"I am," said Robbie Belle.
"You are!" Miss Cutter pushed the green shade farther up on her high
forehead. "Well, I must say!" She surveyed her roommate with new
interest. "How exceedingly extraordinary!"
Robbie shifted her weight to the other foot. "I didn't want to be," she
said.
"No, of course not, and you nothing but a child yourself. It must be your
height and that grave way you have of staring. With that baby-face,
couldn't they see that your dignity is all on the outside?"
Robbie said nothing, but if Miss Cutter had not been quite so
near-sighted she might have spied deep in the violet eyes a glint of
black remotely resembling anger.
"Think of appealing to a sixteen-year-old infant--really you are
literally in-fans, which is to say, one without the power of speech!
Fancy me applying to you to compel quiet in the halls! Imagine that
boisterous crowd trailing after Miss Abbott and Miss Leigh et al.--Hist!"
She lifted her head like a warhorse sniffing battle near. "There they are
now."
Robbie Belle lifted her head too and listened, although indeed the noise
would have penetrated to the most inattentive ears. A multitude of feet
were marching lock-step past the door to a chorus of giggling, stifled
squeals and groans, while at intervals a voice choking with emotion rose
in shrill accents: "There was an old woman all skin and bones, o-o-oh!"
When it faltered and collapsed on the o-o-oh, the other voices joined in
and dragged out the syllable to lugubrious and harrowing length. Then
some one giggled hysterically and another squealed. The soloist took up
the verse: "She went to the church to pray, o-o-oh!" The chorus wailed
and moaned and croaked and whimpered and groaned in concert. Miss Cutter
regarded Robbie Belle sternly.
Robbie Belle's shoulders rose and fell over a deep breath. She stepped
across to the door and closed the transom softly just as the next weird
line hissed out above the tumult and then sank into its smothering welter
and moan of vowels. Robbie spoke more loudly.
"One of them said that they were going to dress up in sheets and
pillow-cases to-night. They are practicing for the Hallowe'en party. It's
only fun."
Berta's voice--it was Berta who did the solo--here rose in a quavering
shriek that halted not for keys in their holes or transoms in their
sockets: "The worms crawled in and the worms crawled out, o-o-o-oh!"
Miss Cutter rose to her indignant feet. "Roberta Sanders, as you are the
corridor warden for this neighborhood, I appeal to you. I make formal
complaint----"
"They've gone." Robbie Belle smiled in relief and sat down rather
quickly. The lock-step had receded into the muffled distance and the
ear-splitting wail wafted back in tones that grew steadily fainter.
Miss Cutter took off her glasses, rubbed them bright, put them on again,
and contemplated Robbie Belle.
"I do believe that you would rather I suffered than that they became
offended with you. You are afraid to rebuke them."
Robbie's eyes fell and the guilty color rose slowly through the delicate
skin of throat and brow. But Miss Cutter did not see it. She had pulled
down the green shade and propping her elbows in their former position had
returned to her scansion. She had wasted too much time already.
Conscience-smitten Robbie Belle slid silently through the door and stood
at loss for a minute in the deserted corridor. It was Friday night.
Nobody studied on Friday night except girls who were queer or who roomed
with superior special students like Miss Cutter. On her first day at
college Miss Cutter had remarked that there might be a vacant seat of
congenial minds for Robbie at her table. Somehow the grave young freshman
who was hoping for fun failed to find them satisfying. She had not won a
real friend yet, and here it was the end of October.
Robbie Belle was not conceited enough to feel sorry for herself, or else
she might have perceived a certain pathos in that listless journey of a
lonely child from her worse than solitary room to the deadly quiet of the
library. One of the hilarious ghosts who were weaving spells under the
evergreens happened to glance in through a great softly shining window
and recognized the drooping head above a long deserted table between the
shelves of books.
"There's our noble warden," whispered Bea, "studying on Friday night!
Looks like a dig as well as a prig, n'est-ce-pas?"
Berta's eager dark face grew sober under the swathing folds of her
pillow-case. "Maybe it isn't her fault," she said.
But Robbie Belle unaware of this precious drop of sympathy plodded
through an essay on Intellect, wrote out a laborious analysis, and at the
stroke of the nine-thirty gong crept reluctantly back to her room. The
next morning she translated her Latin, committed a geometrical
demonstration to a faithful memory, consumed a silent luncheon amid a
dizzying cross-fire of psychological arguments, walked around the garden,
through the pines and over the orchard hill for a scrupulously full hour
of exercise, read her physiology notes, and composed one page of her
weekly theme before dinner time. After dinner she stood in a corner of
Parlor J and watched the dancing. Then she went to chapel with Miss
Cutter, returned alone in haste to dress in the concealing sheet and
pillow case. It was rather difficult to manage the drapery without aid,
especially in the back and at the sides. The strange junior who had
chosen Robbie's name from the class list and undertaken to escort her to
the party found awaiting her a rumpled young ghost with raiment that
sagged and bagged quite distressingly in unexpected places. But the eyes
that shone from between the crooked bands of white were joyous with
excitement. In this disguise she was sure that no one would recognize
her; and so of course they would not know that she was queer, and perhaps
she would have fun at last.
And at first it really seemed as if she would. Imagine a big gymnasium
with jack-o'-lanterns on the rafters and a blazing wood-fire in the wide
fireplace, and five hundred figures in white circling and mingling among
the shadows, and at least a thousand sticks of candy, and three big
dish-pans full of peanuts, and gallons and gallons of red lemonade. When
her escort proposed that they should go up-stairs to look in upon the
seniors and sophomores who were having a country dance, Robbie Belle
moistened her lips and said, "If you please, don't wait for me. I enjoy
it so much here." Then at the junior's formal, "Oh, certainly, Miss
Sanders!" she remembered that often people did not understand her unless
she used a bothersome number of words. So she added hastily, "I mean that
you must go with your own friends and leave me here, because I am
watching some girls I know, and I want to speak to them. Please don't
trouble any more about me, thank you."
"I do know them," she assured herself as her escort disappeared, "and I
do want to speak to them even if they don't know me. I think"--she
hesitated and turned quite pale at the prospect of such daring, "I think
I shall go and play with them. They will suppose I am one of them. Nobody
will know."
At this point the file of impudent ghosts, headed by Berta, who looked
unusually tall and still angular under her flowing sheet, paraded past
Robbie Belle's corner, their elbows flapping like wings. With a gasp for
courage she took one step forward and found herself prancing along at the
end of the line.
It was such fun! Robbie Belle had shot up to an annoying stature so
comparatively early in life that her romping days seemed to have broken
short off in the middle. She had never had enough of tag and
hide-and-seek and coasting. She hated long skirts. Indeed that was one
reason why she longed to join the enviable circle of freshmen around
Berta: they wore golf skirts all day long, except when hockey called for
the gymnasium costume or bicycling demanded its appropriate array. The
reason why she liked Miss Abbott best of course was because her name was
Roberta, too.
On this Hallowe'en, in joyous faith in her disguise, she forgot her
height and breadth and the dignity imposed thereby. And anyhow Berta
Abbott was just as tall, if not of such stately proportions. So Robbie
Belle with exulting zest in the frolic raced up-stairs and down with the
mischievous band of freshmen. They skipped saucily around members of the
faculty, chased appreciative juniors, frightened the smallest forms into
scuttling flight, and gave their great performance of "There was an old
woman all skin and bones," in the middle of the upper hall, where the
seniors were entertaining the sophomores.
It was fun to howl. It was so long since Robbie Belle had grown up that
she had almost forgotten the joy of using her lungs to their full
capacity. With her spirits dancing in the afterglow of such vocal
exercise, she marched after the others down to the hall below. There in
the vestibule Berta halted her followers for final instructions.
"Now, girls, fall into line according to height. We are going to
astonish----Why!" She fixed two amazed dark eyes upon the tallest, "who
are you?"
Robbie Belle heard; she felt her heart shriveling within her; her
shoulders seemed to shrink together; her head drooped. Then turning away
slowly she moved toward the gymnasium apartment, a loose corner of her
robe trailing at her abashed heels. But she did not escape swiftly enough
to avoid catching the sound of hisses.
"Ha! an interloper!"
"Hist! ye false intruder!"
"Seize him! To the shambles!"
"To the guillotine! Ho, brothers! pursue!"
That made Robbie Belle flee so fast that she was able to take refuge
behind Prexie himself while the vengeful furies withdrew to a respectful
distance. That night when she was shaking her pillow back into its case
Robbie noticed some damp spots amid its creases. A few minutes later she
laid her head down on it and proceeded to create some more. There was
only one comfort in the throng of scorching reflections: this was that it
had not been Berta's voice that had called her an intruder. Perhaps Berta
did not think she had done something so awfully wicked after all.
This faint hope infused more dreadful bitterness into the incident that
happened in mathematics C on Monday. Anybody would have believed that
Berta was offended past forgiveness. She sat next to Robbie. She was not
very well prepared that morning, possibly in consequence of Saturday's
excitement. The instructor was more than usually curt and crisp with an
unsmiling sternness that struck terror to palpitating freshman hearts. In
the middle of the hour Berta became aware that a problem was traveling
rapidly down the row toward her; and she had not been paying attention.
She had not even noticed the statement of it, for it had started at an
apparently safe distance from her seat. Turning with a swift motion of
the lips she asked Robbie Belle to tell her. And Robbie Belle--how she
longed to tell it! It had almost leaped from her lips while conscience
reasoned wildly against it as deceit. It would not be honest. And
yet--and yet--the girls would think she was queer. They would say she was
mean and priggish, for she might have told Berta as easily as not.
There! the third girl from Berta was trying to explain her own ignorance
and failing brilliantly. Now the second was stammering through a
transparent bluff. Berta had settled back, coolly resigned to fate. How
she must suffer, after having stooped to ask for aid! Poor Robbie Belle!
Poor, lonely, disappointed Robbie Belle! For strange to say she flunked
too and the question journeyed on triumphantly to the mathematical
prodigy at the end of the row.
In the corridor outside Berta exerted her nimble self to overtake Miss
Sanders, who was sidling away in a strikingly unprincesslike manner, her
eyes shifting guiltily.
"So you didn't know the answer either? Wasn't that the biggest joke on
me! And really, Miss Sanders, I beg your pardon for asking. It popped out
before I could gather my wits. I am scared to death in that class, though
of course that is no excuse for sponging. I'm glad you didn't know it
enough to tell me after all."
Robbie Belle lifted the lashes from her flushed cheeks. "I--I did know
it," she said with a gulp.
"Oh!" said Berta, and stared, "how--how peculiar!"
Robbie Belle held back the tears till she had reached her room, seized
her hat and snatched her thickest veil. Then she fled to the loneliest
walk among the pines. Her veil was a rarity that rendered her an object
of curiosity to everybody she passed on the way. But she hurried on,
somewhat comforted by the conviction that no one could mark her reddened
eyelids. In truth she had good need of comfort, for Berta Abbott herself
had said that she was peculiar. And peculiar meant queer!
That evening Robbie sat down to study for the Latin test announced for
the next day. Miss Cutter was studying, too, harder than ever. The green
shade was pulled so fiercely forward that a fringe of hair stood up in a
crown where the elastic had rumpled it. Her grammar, lexicon and
text-book occupied most of the table, but Robbie did not complain. She
could manage very well by laying her books, one on the open face of
another, in her lap. For once she was grateful that an ENGAGED sign
shielded them from interruptions, for Latin was her shakiest subject,
especially the rules of indirect discourse. The instructor had warned the
class that this weak spot was to be the point of attack. If Robbie Belle
should not succeed in drumming the rules into her head before the ideas
in it began to spin around and around in their usual dizzy fashion when
she waxed sleepy, she might just as well stay away from the recitation
room. Or better perhaps, for in absence there was a possibility of both
doubt and hope: hope on Robbie Belle's part that she might have been able
to answer the questions if she had been there, on the teacher's part
doubt concerning the exact extent of the pupil's knowledge.
At the end of the corridor just outside their door a narrow stairway led
to the north tower rooms on the floor above. Beatrice Leigh and Lila
Allan and a number of their liveliest friends lived up there on the
fifth, with Berta Abbott at the foot of the stairs near Robbie's place of
abode.
Just as Robbie's usually serene brow was puckering its hardest over the
sequence of tenses, a door banged open in the tower and the stairs
creaked under swift clatter of feet--a dozen at the very least.
Miss Cutter scowled beneath the green shade; Robbie Belle could tell that
from the way the fringe of upright hair vibrated.
"Savages!" she muttered, "they'll tear the building to pieces. No wonder
the newspapers report that the college girl's favorite mode of locomotion
is sliding down the banisters."
"No," said Robbie Belle, "not that. They take hold of the railing and
jump several steps at a time. I've seen them. Miss Leigh says she does it
for exercise."
"And this also is exercise!" Miss Cutter clutched her ears as a tornado
swept past their threshold.
Robbie bent to listen anxiously. "They're going to the ice-cooler," she
said, "pretty soon they will go back again."
"Yes," said Miss Cutter as she rose and moved toward the door, "they will
doubtless go back, and doubtless also they shall go in a different
manner."
Then she went out and remonstrated briefly but to the point. Whereupon
the culprits apologized with noble profusion and tiptoed their way to the
stairs. This would have been an admirable proof of repentance if their
heels had not persisted in coming down on the bare boards in very loud
clicks at very short intervals. And every click was greeted by a
reproving chorus of "Sh-sh-sh!"
The instant they reached the hall above, pandemonium broke loose. To
judge from the sounds, they were playing blindman's buff with scampering
of heavy shoes, scraping of chairs, banging against walls, flopping on
mattresses. Even reluctant Robbie Belle looked upward in fear that the
ceiling might fall. When a deputation of wild eyed sophomores from an
adjacent study arrived to protest against a continuation of the outrage,
the shrinking corridor-warden had no loophole for escape from her duty.
Outwardly calm, inwardly quivering, she mounted the stairs to expostulate
on behalf of the Students' Association for Self-Government.
When the peace officer reached the foot of the flight, the noise sank
abruptly into a silent scurrying--on unadulterated tiptoes this time.
When she appeared at the top, she beheld the tower hall deserted, every
door shut and a suspiciously profound stillness reigning in the dimly
lighted Paradise of fun. Ah! she drew a breath of relief from away down
in her boots. Surely now she had performed her duty. Nobody could expect
her to find fault after the disturbance had ceased. Now the girls below
would be at liberty to study in peace.
Barely had she completed her hurried descent before the strange silence
above was shattered suddenly by the simultaneous banging of seven doors.
Seven full-lunged voices burst forth into a howling song, while twice as
many feet thumped and tapped and pranced and pounded in the mazes of an
extemporaneous jig.
Robbie Belle halted instantly, with a quick lift of her head. Her
nostrils quivered. Her violet eyes snapped black. Her hands clenched.
Turning swiftly she mounted the stairs once more. But this time she was
angry. The uproar was an insult to the authority of the Students'
Association. She forgot for the minute all about shy Robbie Belle.
And the mischievous freshmen above--the flippant fun-loving irresponsible
six-year-old freshmen--they waited ready to meet the warden with an
impudent burst of revelry, and thus to dash her official dignity from its
exasperating estate. When they saw Robbie Belle's face they simply
stared. They listened in silence to the few rapid words that stung and
burned and smarted. They watched her depart, her head still held at its
angle of wrathful justice. Then they looked at one another.
They could not see how, when once safely in the haven of her room, she
broke down utterly and lay trembling and sobbing in Miss Cutter's
astonished arms. Now at last she had surely committed an unpardonable
offense against the only girls for whom she cared in the whole
collegeful--especially Berta. Now Berta would be certain she was queer.
Meanwhile in the tower, Berta drew a long breath and glanced around at
her dismayed and sobered companions.
"The more I see of that girl," she said, "the better I like her. And we
have been awfully silly--that's a fact. The next time I see her I shall
tell her so too. Now suppose we go and do a little studying our own
selves."
Somehow or other before Thanksgiving Day, Robbie Belle Sanders had ceased
to be disappointed in college. With Berta for a dearest friend and Miss
Cutter withdrawn to a more congenial neighborhood, she was finding it
even more fun than she had expected.