AN ORIGINAL IN MATH
When Gertrude's brother turned up at college just before the holidays of
their senior year, he boldly asked for Bea in the same breath with his
sister's name. When the message was brought to her, that fancy-free young
person's first thought was a quick dread that Berta would tease her about
the preference. But no. Miss Abbott, chairman of the Annual's editorial
board, clasped her inky hands in relief.
"Bless the boy! He couldn't have chosen better if he had looked through
the walls and discovered Bea the sole student with time to burn--or to
talk, for that matter. Trot along, Beatrice, and tell him that Gertrude
is coming the moment she has dug her way out of this avalanche of
manuscript. I can't possibly spare her for half an hour yet. Go and
distract his mind from his unnatural sister by means of another story."
"Tell him about your little original in math, Bea," called Lila after
her, "that's your best and latest."
Bea retraced her steps to thrust back an injured countenance at the door.
"I guess I am able to converse as well as monologue, can't I?" she
demanded indignantly, "you just listen."
However, when confronted by a young man with a monosyllabic tongue and an
embarrassingly eloquent pair of eyes, she seized a copy of the last
Annual from the table in the senior parlor, and plunged into an account
of her own editorial trials.
Gertrude is on the board for this year's Annual, you know, and Berta
Abbott is chairman. At this very moment they are struggling over a deluge
of manuscripts submitted in their prize poem contest. Of course, I
sympathize, because I have been through something of the same ordeal. The
Monthly offered a prize for a short story last fall, and we had rather a
lively sequel to the decision. Shall I tell you about it from the
beginning? At our special meeting, I read the stories aloud, because I
happen to be chief editor. Nobody said anything at first. Janet, the
business editor, tipped her chair back and stared at the piles of
magazines on the shelves opposite. Laura, who does the locals, pressed
her forehead closer to the pane to watch the girls hurrying past on their
way to the tennis tournament on the campus. Adele and Jo, the literaries,
nibbled their fountain-pens.
I spread out the manuscripts, side by side, in a double row on the big
sanctum desk, picked up my scribbled pad, leaned back till the swivel
screw squeaked protestingly from below, and said, "Well?"
Janet brought her chair down on all four feet with a bump. "Nary one is
worth a ten dollar prize," she declared pugnaciously, "especially now
that Robbie Belle has gone to the infirmary for six weeks and she can't
help me in soliciting advertisements."
Laura turned her head. "Robbie Belle had promised to write up the first
hall play for me. She was going to review two books for Jo and compose a
Christmas poem for Adele's department. I think maybe there are perhaps a
dozen or so girls who might have been more easily spared."
I brushed a hand across my weary brow. It did not feel like cobwebs
exactly,--more like cork, sort of light and dry and full of holes. I had
been up almost all night, studying over those fifteen manuscripts,
applying the principles of criticism, weighing, balancing, measuring,
arguing with myself, and rebelling against fate. If Robbie Belle had been
there she could have recognized the best story by instinct. Ever since I
became chief editor I had depended upon her judgment, because she is a
born critic and always right, and I'm not. And now just when I needed her
most of all and more than anybody else, there she had to go and get
quarantined in the infirmary.
"Girls," I said, "do express an opinion. Say what you think. We simply
must decide this matter now, because the prize story has to go to press
before the first, and this is our only free afternoon. I know what I
think--at least I am almost sure what I think--but I want to hear your
views first. Adele, you're always conscientious."
Adele was only a junior and rather new to the responsibility of being on
the editorial board. She glanced down at her page of notes.
"Every one of the stories has some good points," she began cautiously.
"Most of them start out well and several finish well. Six have good
plots, nine are interesting, five are brightly written. Number seven is,
I believe--yes, I think I consider it the best. The trouble is----"
"Altogether too jerky," interrupted Jo, "a fine plot but no style
whatever. This is a cat. See the cat catch the rat. That's the kind of
English in number seven. Now I vote for number fifteen."
"Oh, but, Jo," I broke in eagerly, for number seven was my own laborious
choice also, and Adele's corroboration strengthened me wonderfully. "Jo,
it is the simplicity of the style that is its greatest recommendation.
You know how Professor Whitcomb has drummed into us the beauty of
Anglo-Saxon diction. It's beautiful--it's charming--it's perfect. Why, a
six-year-old could understand it. Fifteen is far too sensational for good
art. Just listen to this----"
Jo was stubborn. "The use of short words is a mere fad," she said, "it is
like wearing dimity for every occasion. Now listen to this!"
She snatched up one manuscript and read aloud while I declaimed from the
other. Adele listened with a pained frown on her forehead, Janet laughed
and teetered recklessly to and fro on her frisky chair, Laura fidgeted at
the window and filled every pause with a threat to leave us instanter for
the tournament positively had to be written up that day. Finally I put
the question to the vote, for Jo is so decided in her manner that she
makes me feel wobbly unless I am conscious of being backed up by Robbie
Belle. I suppose it is because my own opinions are so shaky from the
inside view that I hate to appear variable from the outside. It would
have been horrid to yield to Jo's arguments and change my ideas right
there before the whole board. The rest of them except Jo had fallen into
a way of deferring to my judgment, for I had seemed to hit it off right
almost always in accepting or rejecting contributions. Nobody knew how
much I had depended on Robbie Belle.
The board awarded the prize to number seven, my choice, you know. Janet
was on my side because the story had a nice lively plot, and that was all
she cared about. Laura put in a blank ballot, saying that her head ached
so that it was not fair to either side for her to cast any weight upon
the scale. Adele of course voted with me. Jo stuck to number fifteen till
the end.
"Well, that's over!" sighed Laura and escaped before any one had put the
motion to adjourn. Janet vanished behind her, and Jo picked up the
manuscript of which she was champion.
"By the way, girls," she said, "I will return this to its writer, if you
don't mind. And I shall tell her to offer it to the Annual. The committee
will jump at the chance. Find out who she is, please."
I slipped the elastic band from the packet of fifteen sealed envelopes
and selected the one marked with the title of the story. The name inside
was that of a sophomore who had already contributed several articles to
the Monthly. Then I opened the envelope belonging to number seven.
"Maria Mitchell Kiewit," I read, "who in the world is she? I've never
heard of her. She must be a freshman."
Jo who was half way out of the room stopped at the word and thrust her
head back around the door. "Did little Maria Kiewit write that? No wonder
it is simple and jerky. She's a mathematical prodigy, she is. Her mother
is an alumna of this college. See! The infant was named after our great
professor of astronomy. She wants to specialize herself in mathematical
astronomy when she gets to be a junior. Her mother was head editor of the
Monthly in her day. Maria rooms somewhere in this corridor, I believe. It
will be a big thing for her to win the prize away from all the upper
class girls. I didn't vote for her. By-bye."
"Oh!" exclaimed Adele, clasping her hands in that intense way of hers,
"won't she be happy when she hears! A little ignorant unknown freshman to
win the prize for the best short story among eight hundred students! Her
mother will be delighted. Her mother will be proud."
"Hist!" Jo's head reappeared. "She's coming down the corridor now. Red
cheeks, bright eyes, ordinary nose, round chin, long braid, white
shirtwaist, tan skirt--nothing but an average freshman. She doesn't look
like a mathematical prodigy, but she is one. And an author, too--dear,
dear! There must be some mistake. Authors never have curly hair."
Adele and I poked our faces through the crack. Jo wickedly flung the door
wide open. "Walk right out, ladies and gentlemen. See the conquering
heroine comes," she sang in a voice outrageously shrill. During the trill
on the hero, she bowed almost double right in the path of the approaching
freshman. Maria Mitchell Kiewit stopped short, her eyes as round as the
buttons on her waist.
Jo fell on her knees, lifting her outspread hands in ridiculous
admiration. "O Maria Mitchell Kiewit," she declaimed, "hearken! I have
the honor--me, myself--I snatch it, seize it--the honor to announce that
thou--thee--you--your own self hast won the ten dollar prize for the best
short story written for the Monthly by an undergraduate. Vale!" She
scrambled upright by means of clutching my skirt and put out a cordial
hand. "Nice girl! Shake!"
"Josephine!" gasped Adele in horrified rebuke. My breath was beginning to
come fast over this insult to our editorial dignity when I caught sight
of the freshman's face. Her cheeks were as red as ever, but she had
turned white about the lips, and her eyes were really terrified.
"Oh, I don't want it!" she cried involuntarily, shrinking away from us,
"I don't want it."
Jo's mouth fell open. "Then why in the world----"
The little freshman fairly ran to the alleyway leading to her room.
Jo turned blankly to us. "Then why in the world did she write the story
and send it in?"
Adele--I told you she was conscientious, didn't I? and inclined to be
mathematical herself--stared at the spot where Maria had disappeared.
"Such an attitude might be explained either by the supposition that she
is diffident--sort of stunned by the surprise, you understand--she never
expected to win. Or maybe she is shy and dreads the notoriety of fame.
Everybody will be looking at her, pointing her out. Or--or possibly----"
Adele hesitated, glanced around uneasily, caught my eye; and we both
dropped our lids quickly. It was horrid of us. I think it is the meanest
thing to be suspicious and ready to believe evil of anybody. But truly we
had just been reading a volume of college stories, and one was about a
girl who plagiarized some poems and passed them off as her own. And this
Maria Mitchell Kiewit had behaved almost exactly like her.
"Or possibly what?" demanded Jo.
Adele stammered. "Or p-p-possibly--oh, nothing! Maybe she is ashamed of
the story or something like that. She lacks self-esteem probably. She
didn't expect it to be published, you know, and--and she is surprised.
That's all. She--I guess she's surprised."
"Come along, Adele," I slipped my arm through hers and dragged her away
from Jo's neighborhood, "you must help me reject these fourteen others.
That's the part I hate worst about this editorial business."
"Don't you want to reconsider the decision?" called Jo, "since she
doesn't wish the prize herself, you'd better choose my girl. This is your
last chance. The committee for the Annual will surely gobble number
fifteen up quick. Berta Abbott knows good literature when she sees it.
Going, going----"
"Let her go. Now, Adele," I said, closing the sanctum door with
inquisitive stubborn Jo safely on the outside, "here are the rest of the
names. You doubtless know some of their owners by sight, and I hope I
know others. This is how we shall manage. Whenever you see one of them
securely away from her room--maybe in the library or recitation or out on
the campus or down town or anywhere--you tell me or else run yourself and
take her manuscript and poke it under her door. I'll write a nice polite
little regretful admiring note to go with each story, and that ought to
take the edge off the blow. But be sure she is not at home. It would be
simply awful to hand anybody a rejected article right to her real face
and see how disappointed she is. I think it is more courteous to give her
a chance to recover alone and unobserved."
"But suppose she has a roommate?" said Adele.
"Oh, dear! Well, in that case we'll have to watch and loiter around till
they are both out of reach. It may take us all the week."
And it actually did. It took a lot of time but it was exciting too in a
way. We felt like detectives or criminals--it doesn't matter which--to
haunt the corridors and grounds till we spied one of those girls headed
away from her room (of course we had to find out first where each one
lived), and then we scurried up-stairs and down and hung around in the
neighborhood and walked past the door, if anybody happened to be near,
and finally shoved the manuscript to its goal. Certainly I understand
that we were not obliged to take all this trouble but I simply could not
bear to send those long envelopes back through the post. Every student
who distributes the mail would have recognized such a parcel as a
rejected manuscript. And of course that would have hurt the author's
feelings.
Naturally I was rushed that week because Thanksgiving Day came on
Thursday, and I had an invitation to go down to the city to hear grand
opera that afternoon. It was necessary to take such an early train that I
missed the dinner. That evening when I returned I found the whole
editorial board and Berta too groaning in Lila's study while Laura acted
as amanuensis for a composite letter to Robbie Belle. You see, they had
eaten too much dinner--three hours at the table and everything too good
to skip. Each one tried to put a different groan into the letter. They
were so much interested in the phraseology and they felt so horrid that
nobody offered to get me crackers or cocoa, though I was actually
famishing.
After poking around in the family cupboard under the window seat, I
routed out a bag of popcorn. I lighted the gas stove and popped about
three quarts, and then boiled some sugar and water to crystallize it.
When you are starving, have you ever eaten popcorn buttered for a first
course and crystallized for a second? It is the most delicious thing! I
had just settled myself in a steamer-chair with the heaped up pan of
fluffy kernels within reach of my right hand, when there came a knock on
the door.
"Enter!" called Janet.
The knob turned diffidently and in marched Maria Mitchell Kiewit.
Lila pushed another pillow behind Jo on the couch, Laura lifted her pen,
Janet exerted herself to rise politely. I carelessly threw a newspaper
over the corn, and then poked it off. After all, editors are only human,
and freshmen might as well learn that first as last.
"I wish to see Miss Leigh," said the visitor in a high, very young voice
that quavered in the middle.
I straightened up into a dignified right angle. "What can I do for you,
Miss Kiewit?"
"I wish to withdraw my story," she announced still at the same strained
pitch, "I have changed my mind. Here is the ten-dollar bill."
"But it went to press three days ago," I exclaimed.
"And the Annual has gobbled up second choice," said Jo triumphantly.
"We jumped at it," corroborated Berta.
"To take out the prize story now would spoil the magazine," cried Adele.
"Impossible!" declared Janet.
"Nonsense!" said Laura under her breath.
The little freshman stared from one to another. Then suddenly her round
face quivered and crumpled. Throwing up one arm over her eyes she turned,
snatched at the door knob and stumbled out into the corridor.
I looked at Adele.
"Yes," she replied to my expression, "you'd better go and find out now.
It's for the honor of the Monthly. It would be awful to print
a--a--mistake," she concluded feebly.
Just as I emerged from the alleyway I caught sight of the small figure
fluttering around the corner of a side staircase half way down the dimly
lighted hall. I had to hurry in order to overtake her before she could
reach her own room. She must have been sobbing to herself, for she did
not notice the sound of my steps on the rubber matting till I was near
enough to touch her elbow. Then how she jumped!
"Pardon me, Miss Kiewit. May I speak to you for one minute?"
She nodded. I am not observant generally but this time I could see that
she said nothing because she dared not trust her voice to speak. She went
in first to light the gas. The pillows on the couch were tossed about in
disorder, and one of yellow silk had a round dent in it and two or three
damp spots as if somebody had been crying with her face against it.
Now I hate to ask direct questions especially in a situation like this
where I wished particularly to be tactful, and of course she would be
thrust into an awkward position in case she should dislike to reply. So I
sat down and looked around and said, "How prettily you have arranged your
room!"
The freshman had seated herself on the edge of her straightest chair. At
my speech she glanced about nervously. "My mother graduated here," she
explained, "and she knew what I ought to bring. Ever since I can
remember, she has been planning about college for me."
"What a fortunate girl you are!" This was my society manner, you
understand, for I was truly embarrassed. I always incline to small talk
when I have nothing to say. She caught me up instantly.
"Fortunate! Oh, me! Fortunate! When I hate it--I hate the college except
for math. My mother teaches in the high school--she works day after day,
spending her life and strength and health, so that I may stay here. I--I
hate it. She wants me to become a writer. And I can't, I can't, I can't!
I want to elect mathematics."
"Oh!" said I.
"When she was a girl, she longed to write, but circumstances prevented.
Then I was born and she thought I would carry out her ambition and grow
to be an author myself. She's been trying years and years. But I can't
write. I'm not like my mother. I have my own life to live. I--I hate it
so. And--and----" The child stopped, swallowed hard, then leaned toward
me, her eyes begging me.
"And if you keep my story for the prize, she will hear about it, and she
won't let me elect mathematics for my sophomore year."
"Oh!" I said, and I was surprised to such a degree that the oh sounded
like a giggle at the end. That made me so ashamed that I sat up a little
more erect and ejaculated vivaciously, "You--you astonish me."
It was the funniest thing--she hung her head like a conscience-smitten
child. "I--I haven't told her about it because it would encourage her and
then later she would--would be all the more disappointed. I can't write,
I tell you."
"The vote was almost unanimous," I remarked stiffly.
She stared at me doubtfully. "Well, maybe that story is good but I know I
couldn't do it again. And anyhow my mother told me the plot."
"Oh," I said. It was really the plot that had won the prize, you
understand, though indeed I had found the style eminently praiseworthy
also according to all the principles of criticism. It almost fulfilled
the rhetorical rules about unity, mass and coherence.
"So you will let me withdraw?" she questioned timidly, "here's the ten
dollars." She held out the crumpled bill which she had been clutching all
the evening.
I thought I might as well be going. "It's allowable to use your own
mother's plot," I assured her, "don't bother about that. Good bye."
Without looking at her I hurried through the alleyway into the corridor,
flew past the sanctum, darted into the staircase, then halted, turned
around, stopped at the water-cooler for a taste of ice water, then walked
slowly back to her room.
I put my head in at the door. "You heard me say, didn't you, that the
story has gone to press?"
She lifted her face from that same yellow silk pillow. "Yes," she said.
"All right." I started away briskly as if I thought I was going, but I
didn't. This time I turned around, went clear into the room and sat down
on the couch.
"And anyway," I said, "you haven't any right to deceive your mother like
that. It is robbing her of a joy that she surely deserves. She has earned
it. You haven't any right not to tell her that your story won the prize.
Whether we let you withdraw it or not, it would be wrong for you to steal
that pleasure from your own mother. You are thinking merely of your own
selfish wishes."
"No, no, no! Don't you see?" She flung herself toward me. "It is like
being a surgeon. I must cut out the ambition. I can never fulfill it.
Never, never, I tell you. The news of this prize will make it grow and
grow like a cancer or something, till it will hurt worse, maim, kill,
when I fail at last. If she would only see that I love mathematics and
can do something in that maybe some day. But in literature. Suppose I
shut myself up for years, struggle, struggle, struggle to wring out
something that isn't in me, while she wears herself out to support me.
The publishers will send it back, one after another. I can't write, I
tell you. I know it. It will be all an awful sacrifice--a useless
sacrifice, with no issue except waste of her life and my life. Don't you
see?"
"Don't you think," said I calmly, "don't you think that you are just a
little foolish and intense?" That is what a professor said to me once and
it had a wonderfully reducing effect. So I tried it on this excited
little freshman. But the result was different. Instead of clearing the
atmosphere with a breeze of half mortified laughter, it created a
stillness like the stillness before a whirlwind. I got up hastily. "I
think I had better be going," I said.
This time I heard the key turn in the lock behind me as I walked rapidly
away. Actually I had to hold myself in to keep from scuttling away like a
whipped puppy. That is how I felt inside. I didn't believe that she would
ever forgive me. There were two compensations for this episode in my
editorial career: one was the realization that the little freshman had
plenty of dignity to fall back on, the other was that she would not be
very likely to ask again for the return of the prize story.
Considering that this was my sincere attitude, you may imagine how amazed
I was to hear my name called by this young person the very next morning.
She came running up to me at the instant my fingers were on the knob of
the sanctum door. Her hands were filled with those little cardboard
rhomboids, polyhedrons, prisms and so forth which the freshmen have to
make for their geometry work.
"I'm going to do it," she began breathlessly, "I'm going to tell my
mother. Perhaps it would please her more if--if you should write me a
note on paper with the name of the Monthly at the top, you know. She used
to be an editor when she was in college. In it say that the board gave me
the prize. I think it will please her."
"I shall be delighted," I exclaimed. Then something in the way she was
gazing down at those geometrical monstrosities (I never could endure
mathematics myself) made me want to comfort her.
"Why, child, it won't be necessary to sacrifice math entirely. You can
elect analytics and calculus to balance the lit and rhetoric. Cheer up."
She raised eyes brimming with tears. "My mother thinks that math has an
adverse tendency. She doesn't want me to take much science either. She
says that science deals with facts, literature with the impression of
facts."
"Oh," I remarked. You notice that I had found occasion to use the
foregoing expletive several times since first meeting Miss Maria Mitchell
Kiewit.
She nodded gloomily in acknowledgment of my sympathetic comprehension.
"Yes, once when I described lights in a fog as 'losing their chromatic
identity' instead of saying they 'blurred into the mist,' she asked me to
drop physics in the high school. She said it was ruinous, it was
destroying the delicacy of my perceptions."
"Doesn't your mother ever----" I hesitated, then decisively, "doesn't she
ever laugh?"
Maria dimpled suddenly. "Oh, yes, yes! She's my dearest, best friend, and
we have fun all the time except when she talks about my becoming a
writer. She said that now at college I could show if there was any hope
in me. She meant that this is my chance to learn to write. I--I----" She
paused and glanced at me dubiously from under her lashes. "I sent in that
story just to show her that I couldn't write. I was going to tell her I
had tried and failed."
"Oh!" Then I chuckled, and the freshman after a moment of half resentful
pouting joined in with a small reluctant laugh.
"It is funny," she said, "I think that maybe from your side of the affair
it is awfully funny. But----"
I turned the knob swiftly. "No but about it. I shall write that note this
minute, and you shall mail it home at once. That is the only right thing
to do."
"Yes." She heaved a deep, long sigh. "I know that. I have worked it all
out as an original in geometry. For instance: Given, an unselfish mother
with a special ambition for her rebellious selfish daughter. Problem: to
decide which one should sacrifice her own wishes. Let the mother's desire
equal this straight line, and the daughter's inclination equal this
straight line at right angles to the other. To prove----"
"See here, little girl," I interrupted her kindly but firmly, "no wonder
your mother dreads the effect of mathematical studies on your tender
brain! I said farewell to geometry exactly two years and four months ago.
I did the examination in final trig three times. Comprehend? Now run into
your own room and get that letter written quick. If you are very
agreeable indeed, I may let you enclose the proof sheets, who knows?"
"Thank you," she exclaimed in impulsive joy, "that will be lovely. Mother
will be so pleased." Then the vision of coming woe in exile from beloved
calculations descended upon her, and she hugged the paper figures so
convulsively that the sharpest, most beautiful angle of the biggest
polyhedron cracked clear across from edge to edge. They were perfectly
splendid clean edges, edges that even I could see had been formed by the
carefully loving hands of a mathematical prodigy.
After that day came a pause in the drama (Adele declared that it was
really a tragedy caused by one life trying to bend another to its will)
until the day when the new issue of the Monthly arrived in the noon mail.
As Robbie Belle was still in the infirmary of course, the rest of the
board took hold of her share of the work. We divided the list of
subscribers between us, and started out to distribute the magazines at
the different rooms in the various dormitories.
[Illustration: SHE WAVED AN OPEN LETTER IN HER HAND]
Part of my route happened to include the neighborhood of the sanctum.
Just as I turned into Maria's alleyway to leave the three copies always
provided for every contributor, she came dashing out of her room in such
a headlong rush that I barely saved my equilibrium by a rapid jump to one
side. As soon as she could control her own impetus she whirled and bore
down upon me once more.
"Mercy, mercy!" I cried, backing into a corner by the hinges and holding
my pile of magazines in front as a rampart, "don't be an automobile any
more."
She waved an open letter in her hand.
"Mother says I may elect all the math I want. She says I can't write a
little bit. She says that this prize story shows I can't. She says it is
awful--all except the plot, and that isn't mine, you know. She says that
the vocabulary, sentence structure, everything proves me mathematical to
the centre of my soul. She says she has always been afraid she was making
a mistake to force a square peg into a round hole. I'm the peg, you
understand. She says I needn't struggle any more, and she'll be just as
proud of a mathematical genius as of a mechanical author. She says she is
grateful for the honor of the prize, but she thinks the board of editors
made a mistake."
I walked feebly into the room, sank on the couch, and propped myself
against that yellow silk pillow.
"It's horrid to be an editor," I said, "especially when Robbie Belle has
to go and get taken to the infirmary just when I need her most."
"My mother knows," chanted the little freshman, "and she says I can't
write a little bit. She says I can elect mathematics. Whoopee!"