JUST THIS ONCE
Ellen drummed restlessly on the window pane. "I'm 'most sure it would not
matter just this once. We've had the mildest sort of a fever, and I don't
see yet why they keep us shut up so long away off here. I'm crazy to send
a letter home."
Lila's thin shoulders gave an irritable little shrug under the silken
folds of her dressing-gown, and her finely cut features screwed for an
instant into an expression of impatient dislike. It was only for an
instant--then the mask of her conventional courtesy dropped again between
the two convalescents.
"Why not tell the doctor or the nurse what you wish to write? They will
attend to it for you. Infection may be conveyed in a dozen ways, you
know. We are beginning to peel, and that is the worst----"
"Oh, are we?" broke in Ellen excitedly, "are we really peeling?" She
lifted one hand and examined the wrist. "No, I'm not even beginning.
Every morning the moment I wake up I rub and rub, but it won't peel. It
simply won't. And I've got to stay here till I do. Are you peeling?
Really?"
She darted across to her companion and seized her arm without noticing
the quiver of distaste before it lay limp in her eager grasp.
"Oh, oh, it is, it certainly is! You are peeling. You will get through
first and be set free and go back to the girls. I shall be left here
alone. It isn't fair. We both came the same day. Think of almost six
weeks lost from college! My first spring in this beautiful place! It
doesn't mean so much to you, because you're a junior. You don't care."
Lila had withdrawn her hand under the pretext of picking up a case knife
to sharpen her pencil. Now though her lids were lowered as she hacked at
the stubby point, she was perfectly aware of the hopeful curiosity in the
freshman's side glance at her. Lila despised the habit of side glances.
For the past few days she had felt increasing scorn of a childishness
that sought to vary by quarrels the monotony of their imprisonment.
Hadn't the girl learned yet that she--Lila Allan, president of the junior
literary society--was not to be provoked into any undignified dispute by
puerile taunts?
"You don't care," repeated Ellen from her old position at the window. "I
guess you'd rather anyhow have all your time to write poetry instead of
studying." She glanced around just in time to see Lila's lips set in a
grimmer line as the lead in the short pencil snapped beneath a more
impatient jab of the dull knife. She laughed teasingly.
"What's the use of writing all that stuff now? You're wearing out your
pencil fast. Aren't you afraid the paper will carry infection? Or will it
be fumigated? I think it is silly to bother about germs. Oh, dear!" She
began to drum again on the pane. "I'm so tired of this infirmary. There's
nothing to do. I can't make up poetry. My eyes ache if I try to read."
Here she paused, and Lila was aware of another side glance in her
direction.
"My eyes ache if I try to read," repeated Ellen slowly, "and there is an
awfully interesting story over on the table." She stopped her drumming
for a moment to listen to the steady scribble behind her. The little face
with its round features so unlike Lila's delicate outlines took on a
disconsolate expression. "Do your eyes ache when you try to read," for an
instant she hesitated while a mischievous spark of daring danced into her
eyes. Then she added explosively, "Lila?"
She had done it. She had done it at last. Never before through all the
weeks of imprisonment together had she ventured to call Miss Allan by her
first name. A delightful tingle of apprehension crept up to the back of
her neck. She waited. Now surely something would happen.
But nothing happened except the continued scribble of pencil on paper in
the silence. Oh, dear! this was worse than she had expected. It was worse
than a scolding or a freezing or an awful squelching. It was the queerest
thing that they were not even acquainted really after the many weeks.
There was a shell around this junior all the time. It made Ellen feel
meaner and smaller and more insignificant every minute. The freshman
pressed her forehead wearily against the glass.
"Oh, look! There come the girls. They're your friends away down on the
lawn. Miss Abbott, I think, and Miss Leigh, and Miss Sanders. See, see!
The rollicking wind and the racing clouds! Their skirts blow. They hold
on their tams. They are looking up at us. They are waving something.
Maybe it is violets, don't you think? Once I found violets in March.
Can't you smell the air almost? I'm going to open the window. I am, I am!
Who's afraid of getting chilled?"
"I would advise you not to do anything so utterly foolhardy," spoke
Lila's frigid voice. A certain inflection in the tone made Ellen shrink
away instinctively. For an instant she looked full into the serene,
indifferent eyes, and her own seemed to flutter as if struggling against
the contempt she saw there. Then with a defiant lift of her head she
hurried to the writing table and seized the pencil which Lila had dropped
upon rising to approach the window.
A few minutes later when the older girl turned from the greetings and
messages in pantomime with her friends below, she saw Ellen's rough head
bending over a paper. It was a needlessly untidy head. During the weeks
of close confinement and enforced companionship, she had felt her dislike
steadily growing. The girl was on her nerves. She was wholly
disagreeable. Everything about her was displeasing, her careless
enunciation, queer little face, coarse clothes, impulsive, crude ways,
even occasional mistakes in grammar. She told herself that the child had
no breeding, no manners, no sense of the fitness of things. There was no
reason why she should admit her into the circle of her intimates merely
because the two had been thrown together by the exigencies of an attack
of scarlet fever. Such a fortuitous relation would be severed in the
shortest possible time, completely and irremediably severed. Trust Lila
Allan, president of the junior literary society, to manage that.
Meanwhile she intended to leave the girl severely alone. Think of the
impudence of calling her Lila! Lila, indeed! And that hint about reading
aloud! The incredible impertinence of it! And to appropriate her pencil!
Atrocious!
But of course she would keep on being polite. She owed that to herself,
to her position, to her self-respect. Accordingly Miss Allan busied
herself graciously about other matters till Ellen had finished her note,
addressed an envelope, and advanced with it to the window.
She hesitated doubtfully, with one hand on the sash.
"It won't matter just this once," she said as if arguing, "somebody will
pick it up and mail it for me. It concerns something important and
private. People are silly about infection. I'm quite sure it won't matter
just this once." She paused this time with rather an anxious little side
glance toward Lila.
That young lady said nothing. She was engaged in contemplating with a
studiously inexpressive countenance the stub of her precious and only
pencil. It needed sharpening again.
Ellen raised the window half an inch. "The doctor here is so foolish,"
she commented with an injured air, "she's always bothering about
infection or contagion or whatever you call it. It isn't necessary
either. I know a doctor at home and he told a woman to wrap up her little
girl and bring her down to his office, and the little girl was peeling
too. He knew it wouldn't do any harm even if she did go in the street
car. He was sensible."
Lila smothered a sigh of long suffering as she reached for the case knife
again.
"And I am so tired," insisted Ellen with fretful vehemence. "I am bored
to death, and nobody amuses me, and my eyes ache when I try to read, and
my wrist won't peel, and all the other girls are enjoying themselves, and
my letter is awfully important and private, and mother will be so glad to
receive it, and my little sister will snatch it quick from the
postcarrier, and they'll all be glad, and there isn't the least bit of
danger, and I'm going to do it." She flung the sash wide and glanced
around for an instant with a face in which reckless defiance wrestled
with a frightened wish to be dissuaded. "I'm going to do it," she
repeated, "I'm going to do it--Lila!"
Miss Allan raised her head with a politely controlled shiver. "Would you
mind closing the window at your earliest convenience, Miss Bright?"
The younger girl gave her one look, then turned and leaning out over the
sill sent the envelope fluttering downward till it rested square and
white on the concrete walk far below. Lila shrugged her shoulder and
finished sharpening her pencil.
In the course of weary time she was set at liberty. Fair and sweet and
delicate in her fresh array she walked down the corridor in the centre of
an exultant crowd of friends. In listening to the babel of chatter and
laughter, she forgot utterly her companion in imprisonment. Just once she
happened to look back from the entangling arms of Bea and Berta and
Robbie Belle, and caught sight of a forlorn little figure staring after
her from the shadows of the infirmary door. In the glow of her new
freedom and heart-warming affection, Lila nodded to her with such a
radiant smile that Ellen blushed with joy. On her journey to her room she
told herself that Miss Allan liked her after all. It was a solitary
journey, for Ellen had boarded in town till February. After moving into
the dormitory she had barely begun to make acquaintances before the ogre
of fever had swooped down upon her and dragged her away to his den in the
isolation ward.
The vision of that smile must have remained with her through the troubled
weeks that followed; for one April evening in parlor J she ventured to
invite Miss Allan to dance. Beyond distant glimpses in the corridors and
chapel, Lila had seen nothing of her fellow convalescent. To tell the
truth, she had taken pains to avoid any chance association. Once she had
found hardly time to take refuge behind an ENGAGED sign before the
dreaded little freshman came tiptoeing shyly into the alleyway. Another
time when she spied the small face waiting with an expectant wistful half
smile at the foot of the stairs she turned to retrace her steps as if she
had suddenly recalled an errand in another direction.
On this particular evening, Lila had been the guest of honor at a senior
birthday table. The senior whose birthday was being celebrated was chief
editor of the Monthly. She declared that she invited Lila because of the
rhymes that came in so handy to fill up several pages in the last number
of the magazine. As Lila, lovely in pale rose and blue and silver, sat at
the table gay with flowers and shaded candles, she told the story of how
she had written the verses in the infirmary. On her witty tongue the
stubby pencil, the dull knife, and the teasing midget of an impudent
freshman made a delightfully humorous tale. Even the explosive "Lila!"
and its accompanying side glance of terrified joy in the daring developed
into a picture that sent the seniors into tempests of laughter. Somehow
she did not care to mention the letter which Ellen had dropped out of the
window.
After dinner Lila pressed on with the others to the dancing in parlor J.
The applause and admiration surrounding her made her look her prettiest
and talk her wittiest, for Lila's nature was always one that throve best
in an atmosphere of praise. She felt as if whirling through fairyland. In
the midst of the gayety of music, lights, and circling figures, she
lifted her head in gliding past the great mirror and beheld her own
radiant face smiling back at her from the flower-tinted throng. Just at
that moment through a rift in the throng she caught a glimpse of two big
troubled eyes in a queer small face atop of a drooping ill-clad form.
Half a minute later as she leaned breathless and glowing against the
mirror's gilt frame, she became aware of a timid touch on her arm.
Turning quickly she saw Ellen beside her. Her smile faded to an
expression of formally polite and distant questioning as she drew her
skirts a few inches away.
"Will you----" the freshman swallowed once, then pushed out the words
with a desperate rush, "will you dance with me?"
"Oh, Miss Bright," exclaimed Lila in an overwhelmingly effusive manner,
"I am so dreadfully sorry, but I regret to say that I am already engaged
for every number. Good-bye!" She slid her hand about her partner's waist
and propelled her swiftly into the concealing vortex of waltzers.
The partner in question happened to be a certain lively and independent
young person called Bea by her friends. "Lila Allan," she scolded as soon
as she could steer their steps to a sheltered eddy in a corner, "why in
the world did you snub that poor child so unmercifully? After six weeks
together in the infirmary too! I'm downright ashamed of you. You ought to
be above snobbishness. And it isn't a point of snobbishness either. It is
plain cruelty to children. Didn't you see how you hurt her? And the poor
little thing has enough trouble without your adding to the burden."
"Trouble?" echoed Lila uneasily.
"Yes, trouble. Haven't you heard? Her little sister is desperately ill
with scarlet fever. Infection conveyed in a letter, I understand. A
telegram may come for her any hour. And then when she tries to cheer up,
you treat her so abominably! Lila, you are growing more and more spoiled
every day. People praise you too much. You were born with a silver spoon
in your mouth. You've improved a lot since you first began to room with
me, but still----"
Lila had vanished. Winding her swift way between the circling pairs, she
hurried into the corridor where girls were strolling idly as they waited
for the gong to summon them to chapel. Beyond the broad staircase Ellen's
disconsolate little figure stood in the glare of the gas-jet over the
bulletin-board.
Lila hastened toward her. "Miss Bright, oh, Miss Bright, I did not know.
I am exceedingly sorry. You will keep me posted? If there is anything
that I can do, of course--I feel--I feel--so guilty."
Ellen raised her face. Her mouth was trembling at the corners. "I sent
the letter," she said, "I'm waiting." She winked rapidly and her odd
features worked convulsively for a moment. "If--if they telegraph----"
"Miss Bright." It was the voice of a messenger girl who had that instant
emerged from an adjacent apartment. "Will you step into the office at
once, if you please? There is a message----"
Ellen was gone like a flash. Lila walked across to the staircase and very
deliberately seated herself with her head resting against the banisters.
It was there that Bea found her a few minutes later when the stream of
students was beginning to set toward the chapel doors.
Bea was startled. "Lila, what is it? You look like a ghost. Shall I get
some water?"
Lila opened her eyes. "I think that her little sister is dead," she said.
"Oh!" Bea clasped her hands in pity. "How can we help?"
"I think that I killed her," said Lila.
"What!" It was almost a shout. Then noticing that several girls turned to
stare curiously in passing, Bea put out her hand. "Come, Lila, get up.
It's time to go to chapel. You don't realize what you're saying."
She rose obediently in mechanical response to the gesture.
"It was my fault because I was the older and I knew the danger. She was
only a freshman. She wanted me to persuade her not to drop that letter
from the window. I could have kept her from feeling lonely. I made her
reckless. It wasn't her fault. But now her little sister is dead."
"How do you know she is?" asked Bea.
"A message came."
"Hush!" They slipped into a pew near the rear of the chapel. During the
reading of Scripture, Lila sat gazing blankly straight before her over
the rows of heads, dark and fair. As if in a dream she rose with the
others for the singing of the hymn. Still as though moving in a mist, she
sank again into her seat and bowed her forehead upon the pew in front.
While the rustling murmur was subsiding into a hush before the prayer,
she stirred and lifting her face turned for one fleeting moment toward
the wide doors at the back. Ah! She raised her head higher to watch,
motionless, breathless. The doors were noiselessly swinging shut behind a
girl with a queer small face atop of an ill-clad little figure. But the
face instead of being crumpled in grief was alight with joy; and the
little figure advanced with a lilt and a swing, as if just freed from a
burden.
The message had been a message of good tidings.
Lila watched the child slip exultantly into a convenient corner. Then
with a sudden, swift movement the older girl dropped full upon her knees
and covered her eyes with her hands.