College was very distasteful. Her one aim and object in life was to
live quietly and to be peaceably let alone; but there was never any
quietness here, and much less peace. Privacy was almost a thing unknown.
For all that, the discipline and the life were in many ways excellent,
and the governesses worked so hard that they had a knack of making lazy
students ashamed of themselves.
There were never any slovenly-prepared lessons, and everything was
done with clock-like precision. The great fault was that the hours
of drudgery were too long, and the occasional sound of chimes would
greatly have improved the everlasting tic-tic.
The most comical part of the whole thing, perhaps, was the French
lesson. Deborah used to sit and shake with laughing the whole time it
was in progress, it was so very funny.
But she had one thing to be thankful for whilst there. Her eyes were
very troublesome for the first three months, and at last the attention
of the college doctor was called to them. He just simply said, “Buy
an ounce of boracic acid and put it on them.” So it was bought, and,
wonder of wonders! it acted almost like a miracle.
“I can’t bear this doctor,” many of the girls used to say.
“Well, I shall always feel grateful to him,” she would rejoin. “He
cured my eyes when I was beginning to think they were incurable.”
That was probably the greatest benefit she derived from being there.
When the holidays came round she stayed a week in the town where she
had been brought up, and then went into the country for Christmas.
Whilst waiting in the station for the train she came across that same
young man who had caused her so many heartaches and burnings.
Absence had not in any way altered Deborah’s affection for him, so
when she saw him there in the station she could just have danced for
joy. He had with him the other man to whom she had given such an
affectionate farewell four months since. He was very nice and quiet,
and kind-hearted in an unobtrusive way, and it isn’t often one meets
that kind of a man.
It happened by chance that they were standing on the same platform
from which her train was going, and Deborah was not feeling the least
bit shy that day, so she went to speak to them. However, the young
gentleman kept distinctly aloof; he even made as if he were going to
walk away, but he didn’t.
“I think you knew Mr —— a little,” said the other.
“Oh, yes, I knew him very well,” she answered. But when she went to him
and held out her hand he didn’t make the slightest effort to take it,
except in a very cold and uncertain way.
“I don’t seem to remember you in the very least,” he said, and looked
at her just as if she had been a perfect stranger to whom he had never
before spoken.
“But I remember you perfectly,” said Deborah, and laughed, for she was
much too happy to think of anything but speaking the truth.
They went together to the railway carriage, where Maggie was already
settled, and he stood there till the train went out.
Just before it went he said to Deborah: “I don’t know how I could have
forgotten you, you are just the same as you used to be.” But she knew
she had never been anything very grand, so she only laughed and looked
at him. Truth to tell she could scarcely look at anyone else.
When it came to the last sad minute she was bound to look away.
“If I did dare to look at him then, he would understand too well,” she
thought, and so once more it was a most unsatisfactory farewell. When
they had settled down, and the train was on its way, she hid herself
behind a paper.
“He had forgotten all about me, and it’s scarcely four months ago. I
expect all the times I used to run down to see him he was thinking of
someone else.” She felt a bit broken-hearted; she remembered all the
silly little subterfuges she had been up to, and how she had once worn
aprons for a fortnight because she thought it looked domesticated and
as if she understood something about the management of a house.
“I don’t know what you can see in Mr ——,” said Maggie, from the
opposite seat. “He is so shy.”
But Deborah did not argue—it was not worth it.
After the Christmas holidays she went back to college and the two years
dragged away.
Deborah, when she first went to college, was forever being scolded
about her essays.
“It’s no good your ever thinking you can write,” a hard, contemptuous
voice was continually saying to her. “You had two or three rather
signal failures in that line before coming to college at all, and even
in this mediocre place you fail to make the least impression with your
work.”
On the other hand, a clear, firm voice kept ringing, “Some day, when I
care to write in my own way, they shall listen to me.” It was a very
proud voice—too proud, perhaps.
There was a girl who was noted for being the best essay-writer in the
college. She was a little older than most of those who were there, and
was supposed to have a better conception of life and things as they
really are. But she was not a great favourite, as she rather looked
down on most of the other girls, and understood the art of being rude a
little better than most people. Her name was Jane Shaw.
Towards the end of the first year Deborah’s essays were said to be
improving, and by the end she had managed to make as many marks as
Jane. Not that she ever counted marks; she laughed at and despised
them, which was another piece of pride.
The subjects for essays in the second year were, however, more to
Deborah’s taste; they were not quite so cramped, and gave one a better
range for expression. She began to pass Jane by, not intentionally but
unavoidably, for it was easier on the whole to write well than badly.
Toward the end of the second year the senior students prepared for an
oratorio, which they were going to sing in St Paul’s on Ascension Day,
as it was the year of the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
One day one of the students who had come from the same school as
Deborah came running up to her.
“I say, there’s going to be a general practice, and we’re going to ——
College. We’ll be sure to see Mr ——. He’s there, you know.”
But she didn’t relish this piece of news; she would very much rather
not have gone. She had known all along that he had come back to London
as a master in the college which he had left two years ago; he was
clever.
So the night for the practice came and went.
When they got back again this girl, whose name was Minnie, came flying
up to her.
“I say, did Mr —— speak to you?”
“No.”
“But you saw him?”
“Yes.”
“And he never spoke to you?”
“I never looked at him.”
“You couldn’t help it. You sat just at the other side of the table.”
“I never looked at him. Did he speak to you?”
“Oh, yes. He was quite nice. Much nicer than he used to be. I thought
he would have forgotten me. I never spoke to him half as much as you
did. How strange that he should have forgotten you.”
“I—yes.”
“What’s that?” said another girl who had just come in.
“Oh! we’re only talking about someone Deborah used to run after.”
“What about him?” said the other, and she laughed very loudly.
“Well, it’s like this,” Deborah replied. “Two years ago I fell
desperately in love with a young man, but it was one-sided. Naturally,
the next time I met him he didn’t know me.”
“But the strange part about it is that he should remember me,”
persisted Minnie.
“Well, you see,” laughed Deborah, “I expect all the time I was in love
with him he was in love with you,” and she walked away.
But that night, when the silence bell rang, she hid her face in the
solitary pillow.
“I’d have forgiven him if he’d forgotten her too; but to remember her
after two years, and to forget me after four months, it’s too bad—it’s
too bad,” and she lay awake for a long time, too miserable to cry, too
restless to sleep.
“Besides, he never knew her except the little bit I told him about her,
and that never interested him. He tells lies—so now!”
However, it’s no use dwelling on these things; but Providence was kind
enough to let her see him once more, in just about as tantalising a way.
And something had said, “Go and speak to him;” and something else had
said, “Come away.”
And she went away, feeling more like a wild cat than a woman.
“If—if—” she gasped.
“Life is made up of ifs,” laughed a voice in her ear, and it was all
over.
The older Deborah grew, the more unhappy she grew inwardly. Not that
anybody knew—for in college they never took her to be anything
seriously but sleepy.
For one thing, as she grew older, she was beginning to feel more and
more the want of some religion. Many and many a time she would get out
of bed in the middle of the night and kneel down and try to pray. But
on every occasion a feeling of intensest blackness would surround her,
and she was bound to give it up.
“It’s all very well the clergy telling us to pray,” she would say,
getting back into bed. “But I can’t. Every time I would do it something
stops me. I’ve lost God, and where He’s gone to I can’t tell. And I
suppose everybody would blame me and say how wicked I was, but it’s
because they don’t understand. If I could believe in God and pray
to Him as I did when I was a little girl I’d be a deal happier and
stronger than I am.”
And so it came to the last few weeks of college life—the time for the
awarding of prizes for the year.
Probably all those who have attended schools have experienced that
general dissatisfaction which customarily attends the distribution of
prizes.
“It’s all done by favouritism,” the girls used to assert. “The way the
prizes are given here is a disgrace.”
And one or two rather flagrant examples were given by way of specifying.
“Yes,” said Deborah, who understood things just as well as most people.
“I can’t understand what pleasure there is in receiving prizes under
such circumstances.”
“But you’ll get one yourself,” remarked one of the girls. “You’re bound
to get the composition prize.”
“Well that would only be fair,” cried another girl, and for a wonder
all the others chimed in “Yes.”
“Don’t be too sure,” observed another, and she nodded her head wisely.
“I’ve been watching Jane Shaw lately.”
“But Deborah’s essays are splendid. Jane’s are only very good,” urged a
would-be champion.
“Don’t be too sure,” retorted the same wiseacre, and she went to bed.
The next day Jane came to Deborah.
“You will get the composition prize,” she said somewhat ungraciously.
“I don’t think so,” rejoined Deborah, but she knew she was not speaking
the truth.
“Yes, you will,” she answered sharply. “I have kept count of our marks
for the year.”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve kept count for a year,” said Deborah, in
wonderment.
“Of course I have,” she replied with a little toss of her head. “I
always like to know exactly where I stand.”
After a pause she continued: “Of course I have stood no chance from the
very first. I lost twenty marks right out once because the Principal
differed from some remarks of mine.”
“Indeed.”
“Of course, and I do not consider it fair that I should have lost them.
You, and such as you, write simply according to the college rule.”
Deborah was silent. Probably Jane did not know how rude she was, and
with her parting hit she went away.
Then that pride, the only strong and lasting pride in Deborah’s
composition, asserted itself.
“Why should I enter into the competition with such as Jane?” she
thought. “She may have the prize with pleasure. So long as I know I am
really first I don’t care about the marks or the prize one bit.”
Another girl came running up to her.
“I say, I’ve just been adding up the composition marks and you are
first.”
Deborah began to think seriously.
She did not want the prize and Jane did, and the last fortnight’s
unceasing talk about prizes had sickened her.
“I’ll go to Miss C—— to-night after lessons and tell her I’d rather
not have it, as I don’t care for prizes.”
Having decided in her mind she began to screw her courage up to the
right pitch.
But Jane came to her and began again lamenting her loss of the prize.
“Well,” said Deborah, for somehow or other she felt sorry for her, “you
need not bother. I will not take the prize in any case—I don’t quite
believe in them.”
“Do you mean to say if they offered it to you, you would not take it?”
“Yes.”
Jane went away.
Later in the evening she entered the room and went straight to Deborah.
“_I_ am first on the list, _you_ are only second,” she cried,
and walked off without waiting for any reply.
That night when Deborah went upstairs the dormitory was empty. She
turned the light up and drew her curtain and prepared for bed.
Suddenly there was a great rush of feet down the stone stairs and
Deborah’s curtain was swirled back with a rattle.
“Do you know who’s got the composition prize?” exclaimed half a dozen
voices.
“Jane.”
“Who told you?”
“She did.”
“It’s like her impudence,” remarked one young lady.
“It’s shameful,” observed another. “She never wrote half so well as you
did.”
“No, I know,” said Deborah, and she looked round at the girl who spoke,
and laughed.
“Are you going to make a fuss about it?” asked another.
“Oh, no. I ought to be thankful to her. She has really spared me the
unpleasant position of posing. In any case I would not have taken the
prize.”
No amount of sympathising or expostulating could draw another word out
of her, so at last they went away. But all that night, till the silence
bell rang, other girls came running in with the same cry.
Long after silence and darkness reigned Deborah sat on the side of the
bed, and a fight which was bitter and hot was raging inside her.
“You are too conceited,” urged an even voice in her ear. “You imagine
you write much better than you do. It is no good thinking you are
unjustly treated; the prizes here are given as fairly as possible, and
it is only the disappointed students who raise the hue-and-cry.”
“I know,” said Deborah, and sat silent.
“Besides, you have no gift that way,” the voice went on. “And it’s
time you learnt it. You’ve had five more rejections within the last
eighteen months—not to speak of those before entering college, and it
ought to have taught you to understand your proper place better.”
“I know.”
“You have no talent except what is very mediocre. You are worthy only
of a second prize, and not perhaps of that.”
The sense of injustice came burning hot and strong, and she clenched
her two hands in profitless anger.
“Then why, if I have no talent, have they always said my essays are
different from all the rest? Why have those governesses, who have
nothing to do with the subject, congratulated me on them? Why have they
always been read, and why—”
“Oh, now we are coming to quite a new phase,” replied the voice.
“Formerly you looked down on college opinion, now you are laying store
by it.”
“Well,” said Deborah, dejectedly, “it was the only bit of encouragement
I ever got.”
“You don’t need encouraging, and perhaps one of these days, when you
get properly discouraged, you’ll take to teaching seriously and give up
writing, for you’re no good at anything else.”
Deborah got into bed.
The next day brought the news that she had not even obtained the second
prize, it had been won by another girl.
“Never mind,” whispered an easy voice in her ear. “They put you out of
the race altogether—it was wisest.”
“But you are quite sure I was the best?”
“Oh, perfectly.” And then there came that easy laugh which made
Deborah almost laugh too, but not quite; the loss of the first place
had been more to her than most people may imagine.
During the last year that Deborah was in college her second brother,
who had for some years been a great anxiety, died suddenly of pneumonia
after a three days’ illness. What debts he had contracted, and after
all, considering his life, they were wonderfully few, were paid by the
sisters.
About this time also they were able to pay back the money which had
been wrongly taken by their father.