Allardyce felt both aggrieved and bored when he found that his sister
had gone off with a walking-party and was not likely to return for an
hour or two. He had this unwelcome bit of news from the young woman in
cap and gown who had come from the office into the reception-room and
was standing before him, glancing every now and then from his face to
the card she held, with a severely kind look out of her gray eyes.
“I telegraphed her I was in Boston and would be out,” remarked
Allardyce, in an injured tone.
“Yes,” assented the young woman, “Miss Allardyce had left word in the
office that she was expecting her brother, but that as he had not come
by the 2.30 or 3.10 train, she had concluded he was detained in Boston,
and that if he did arrive later he was to wait.” She added that he would
be obliged to do so in any case, as there was no express back to Boston
for two hours, and that if he would like to see the college while he
waited she would send someone to take him over it.
But Allardyce seemed so doubtful as to whether he cared to become better
acquainted with the architecture of the college, and so disappointed
about it all, that the kindly senior felt sorry for him and suggested
sympathetically that he “might amuse himself by strolling through the
grounds.” She could not have been over twenty, but she had all the
seriousness and responsibility of an undergraduate, and Allardyce
suddenly felt very young and foolish in her presence and wondered hotly
how old she thought he was, and why she hadn’t told him to “run out and
play.” He decided that her idea was a good one, however, so he took his
hat and stick and wandered down the south corridor to the piazza.
Standing there he could see the lake and the many private boats lying in
the bend of the shore, each fastened to its little dock, and beyond, the
boat-house with the class practice-barges, slim and long, just visible
in the cool darkness beneath. He thought it all looked very inviting,
and there was a rustic bench under a big tree half-way down the hill
where he could smoke and get a still better view of the water.
So he settled himself quite comfortably, lit a cigarette, and looked
gloomily out over the lake. He assured himself bitterly that after
having been abroad for so many years, and after having inconvenienced
himself by taking a boat to Boston instead of a Cunarder to New
York--his natural destination--in order to see his sister, that she was
extremely unkind not to have waited for him. He was deep in the mental
composition of a most reproachful note to her when he discovered that by
closing his eyes a little and looking intently at the Italian Gardens on
the opposite side of the water, he could easily fancy himself at a
little place he knew on Lake Maggiore. This afforded him amusement for a
while, but it soon palled on him, and he was beginning to wonder moodily
how he was ever to get through two hours of the afternoon, when he saw a
young girl come out of the boat-house with a pair of sculls and make her
way to one of the little boats. She leaned over it, and Allardyce could
see that she was trying to fit a key into the padlock which fastened the
boat to its dock, and that after several attempts to undo it she looked
rather hopelessly at the lock and heavy chain. He went quickly down the
hill and along the shore. He was suddenly extremely glad that he was in
America, where he could be permitted to speak to and help a girl, even
if a total stranger, without having his assistance interpreted as an
insult.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, lifting his hat. “Can I be of any help?”
The girl looked up a little startled, but when she saw the tall,
good-looking youth, she smiled in a relieved sort of way and rose
quickly from her knees.
“Indeed, yes,” she said, without any embarrassment. “I can’t unlock
this; perhaps you can.”
Allardyce took the key, and kneeling down fitted it in its place and
turned it with very little effort. The girl looked rather ruefully at
him as he jumped up.
“Thank you,” she said in a politely distant way. “I don’t see why I
could not have done that. I am very strong in my hands, too.”
Allardyce smiled indulgently. All girls were under the impression that
they were strong. At any rate this one was tremendously pretty, he
decided--much prettier than the stately senior he had encountered up at
the college, and he was glad there were no cap and gown this time. He
was aware, of course, that he ought to lift his hat and move on, and not
stand there staring at her, but his previous solicitude had made him
feel sociable.
“Perhaps you will let me put the oars in for you,” he suggested. He was
rather alarmed after he had spoken, but when he glanced at the girl to
see how she had taken his further self-invited assistance he found her
looking at him in a very friendly way. All at once he felt quite elated
and at his ease. It had been a long while since he had had much to do
with American girls, and he concluded that all that had been said about
their charming freedom and cordiality of manner had not been
exaggerated. But when he had put the sculls in the boat it occurred to
him that it would not do to presume too far on that freedom and
cordiality, and that if he was not to depart immediately--and he felt no
inclination to do so--he must offer some sort of explanation of himself.
“I am waiting for my sister,” he remarked genially.
“Oh! your sister,” echoed the girl.
“Yes--Miss Allardyce. Perhaps you are in the same class,” he hazarded.
She looked at him for a moment in a slightly surprised way, and then out
across the water, and Allardyce saw, as she turned her head away from
him, that she was smiling.
“No,” she said slowly, “but I know her quite well.”
“Ah! I’m glad of that,” said the young man, boldly and cheerfully. “Now
I feel quite as if I had been properly introduced! ‘_Les amis de nos
amis_,’ you know!”
The girl smiled back at him. “I am Miss Brent. By the way, your sister
has the distinction of being the only Allardyce in college. It’s a
rather unusual name.”
“Yes,” assented Allardyce, delightedly. “Scotch, you know.” And then in
a sudden burst of confidence--“My people were Scotch and French. I have
been educated abroad and have come home for the law course at the
University. Awfully glad to be in America again, too, for, after all, I
am an American through and through.” He pulled himself up sharply in
some confusion and amusement at his unusual loquacity.
But the girl before him did not seem to find it strange, and was quite
interested and politely attentive.
“And where is your sister?” she demanded.
“Oh, that’s the essential, and I forgot to mention it,” he replied,
laughing a little and digging his stick into the soft earth. “She’s gone
off walking!” and then he went on insinuatingly and plaintively--“And I
don’t know a soul here--never was here before in my life--and there’s
no train to Boston, and I have to wait two hours for her!”
The young woman smiled sympathetically. “That’s too bad,” she said, and
then she looked doubtfully at Allardyce. He seemed very young and to be
having a rather bad time of it, and there is an unwritten law at the
college which constitutes every member of it the natural protector and
entertainer of lost or bored strangers.
“I am going across the lake for water-lilies,” she went on after a
little hesitation. “If you care to come you may, and pull me about while
I gather them. It is hard work to do it alone.”
“You are very kind,” said Allardyce promptly, “and it is very nice of
you to put it that way. It will be a great favor to me to let me go.”
He rowed her across the water in the direction of the Italian Gardens,
and they found a good deal to say to each other, and she seemed very
unaffected and friendly, although Allardyce fancied once or twice that
when she replied to some of his remarks her voice trembled in an odd way
as if she were secretly amused. But he thought her delightful, and he
was very much obliged to her for taking him off his hands in this way,
though he could not help feeling some surprise at her invitation. Of
course he could not imagine such a thing happening to him on the
Continent. No French or German girl would have the chance or enough
_savoir faire_ to treat him as this girl was treating him. He told her
all this in more veiled terms when they had reached the water-lilies,
and he had turned around in his seat and was carefully balancing the
boat while she pulled the dripping, long-stemmed flowers. Miss Brent
laughed outright at his remarks, and Allardyce laughed good-naturedly
too, although what he had said did not strike him as being at all
amusing. But he was glad that she was so easily diverted. He reflected
that perhaps her invitation had not been entirely disinterested--that
she considered it as stupid to go out rowing alone, as he did to wander
around the college without his sister--and that as she had been kind
enough to save him from a solitary afternoon, it was his part to be as
amusing and entertaining as possible.
“You must not consider us in the light of very young girls,” she
explained. “You know this is a woman’s college.”
“That’s what is so nice,” returned Allardyce confidently. “You are girls
with the brains and attainments of women. That is a very delightful
combination.” He gave her an openly admiring, rather patronizing glance.
He did not mean to be superior or condescending, but he reflected that
in spite of her ease of manner she was yet in college, and so must be
very young. He seemed to himself to be quite old and world-worn in
comparison.
Miss Brent looked over at the college towering up on the other side of
the lake.
“How do you like it?” she asked politely, after a moment’s silence.
“Oh, I didn’t see anything of it,” replied Allardyce easily, leaning his
elbows comfortably on the unshipped oars. “I got my walking papers
promptly from a young woman up there, and so I left. She rather
frightened me, you know,” he ran on. “Awfully severe-looking,
cap and gown, and that sort of thing. I thought if that was
only an undergraduate I didn’t want to encounter any of the
teachers--professors, I believe you call them--and so I fled. You do
have women professors, don’t you?” he inquired with a great deal of awe.
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Well--they must be pretty awful,” he said cheerfully, after a moment’s
pause.
The girl straightened up cautiously, pulling at the rubber-like stem of
an immense lily.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said carelessly. She was bending over the side
of the boat, and Allardyce could not see her face; but he heard the
laugh in her voice again. “There! there’s a _boutonnière_ for you.”
Allardyce caught the lily she swung toward him by the stem, and stuck it
in his coat.
“I suppose that’s about the size of the Russian Giant’s button-hole
flower,” he remarked frivolously. They were quite good friends now.
Allardyce looked over at the college again.
“You must find it pretty slow up there,” he said confidentially. “Can’t
imagine how you girls exist. You ought to go to a Paris boarding-school.
You can have no end of fun there, you know.” He was nodding his head
enthusiastically at her. “I have a cousin at one in the Avenue Marceau.
Went to see her just before I sailed and it was tremendously amusing.
These French girls are awful flirts! When I went away every girl in that
school came to the windows and looked at me. It was rather trying, but I
felt that for once I knew what popularity was!”
Miss Brent buried her face in the biggest lily of the bunch.
“And--and what did you do?” she inquired, in suppressed tones.
“Oh--I? Why I bowed and smiled at the whole lot. Must have looked rather
like an idiot, now I come to think of it; and my cousin wrote me she
got into no end of trouble about it. One of the _maîtresses_ happened to
see me. But it was great fun while it lasted. And after all where is the
harm of a little flirting?” he concluded, judicially.
“Where indeed?” assented the girl, with a laugh.
“That’s right--I am glad to hear you say that,” broke in Allardyce,
approvingly. “There’s something wrong with a woman who doesn’t cry or
flirt--it’s a part of her nature,” he went on, with the air of having
made a profoundly philosophic discovery. “You know you agree with me,”
he urged, insinuatingly.
She shook her head.
“Personally I don’t know,” she said; “you see I am so busy----”
“Oh! I say,” cried Allardyce, “you don’t mean you study as hard as that!
Of course,” he added impartially, “it’s all very well for some girls to
grind--” he stopped in alarm as the girl drew herself up slightly.
“I hope my sister doesn’t study too much,” he hastened to add, lamely.
Miss Brent put her handkerchief suddenly to her lips, which were
trembling with laughter.
“I don’t think you need worry!” she said.
Allardyce was considerably mystified and a little offended.
“But she’s very bright,” added the girl, quickly; “especially in
mathematics, where I see most of her; but I believe she is not a very
hard student.”
“Well,” said Allardyce, jocosely; “I’ll tell you a secret. I am the hard
student of the family, and that’s much better than that my sister should
be, I think. I don’t approve of girls working too hard. It makes them
old--takes away their freshness--especially if they go in for
mathematics. Do you know I have never been able to imagine a girl
mathematician anyway,” he ran on, confidentially. “Always seemed like a
sort of joke. Now there was that English girl--what was her name, who
was worse than a senior wrangler? Her photographs were just everywhere.
I was in Cambridge that summer and they were in all the shop-windows,
and I would stop and look carefully to see if they were not different
from the ones I had seen the day before. For they were quite pretty you
know, and I was always hoping that there was some mistake and that they
had got some other young woman, entirely innocent, mixed up with her.”
There was so much genuine distress in his tone that Miss Brent made an
heroic attempt not to laugh.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “don’t say that--some people think I am good at
mathematics myself.”
Allardyce shook his head at her. “I’m sure it’s a mistake--you are
trying to impose on me,” he said, with mock severity. “At any rate I am
glad my sister is guiltless of any such accusation. We are under the
impression that she goes in for a good time at college--at least one
would suppose so from her letters. I got one from her just before I left
Paris in which she gave me a very amusing account of some blow-out
here--some class function or other, and she seemed dreadfully afraid
that the faculty would get hold of the details. She says you stand
tremendously in awe of your faculty. Wait a minute--I’ve got the letter
here somewhere,” he went on, fumbling in his pockets. “Didn’t think much
of the affair considered in the light of a scrape, but she seemed to
think it exciting and dangerous to the last degree. That’s where you
girls are so funny--you think you are doing something immensely wrong
and it is just nothing at all. I see I haven’t the letter with me; but
perhaps you were in it all and know a great deal more about it than I
do.”
Miss Brent suddenly twisted herself around in the boat, and reached for
an especially big lily.
“No--” she said, “I--I don’t think I was there. Will you pull a little
on the left oar--a little more, please. It’s that lily I want!”
“There’s another thing about girls,” resumed Allardyce meditatively and
kindly, when the boat had straightened back. “You seem to think it a
terrible calamity, a disgrace, to get plucked in an examination. Now a
man takes it philosophically. Of course, it isn’t a thing one especially
cares to have happen one; but it doesn’t destroy a fellow’s interest in
life, nor make him feel particularly ashamed of himself. He just goes to
work with a tutor and hopes for better luck next time. That’s the best
way to take it, don’t you think? But perhaps you don’t know anything
about it. Ever get plucked?--I beg your pardon,” he added hastily.
But the girl did not appear at all offended.
“Oh, you mustn’t ask that,” she said, leaning back and laughing at him;
“at any rate,” she added, with an air of careful consideration, “I don’t
think I ever got ‘plucked’ in--mathematics. And now you must take me
back.”
Allardyce gave a shudder of mock horror. “Oh, mathematics!” he said,
picking up the oars.
When they were half-way across the lake Allardyce saw a young girl
standing on the shore waving at them.
“Why,” he said, looking intently at the figure, “I believe it is my
sister.”
Miss Brent leaned forward.
“Yes, it is your sister,” she said slowly, and she smiled a little.
Miss Allardyce kissed her brother with a great show of affection, and
told him how sorry she was to have missed him. “And I am sure it was
very good of you to have taken care of him,” she went on impressively
and gratefully, turning to Miss Brent. But that young lady disclaimed
any merit.
“We’ve had a delightful afternoon,” she declared, “and your brother has
been very good to pull me about and keep the boat from tipping over,
while I gathered these lilies. I am very glad to have met him. Good
afternoon.”
“Charming girl!” murmured Allardyce, appreciatively, digging his stick
in the earth, and leaning on it as he looked after Miss Brent.
“We had an awfully jolly time together,” he went on, to the girl beside
him; “sort of water-picnic, without the picnic.”
Miss Allardyce looked sharply at her brother. Something in his manner
made her anxious. “How did you meet her?” she demanded.
“Oh! that’s the best part,” said Allardyce joyously. “Wasn’t introduced
at all. I offered to unlock her boat for her, and I liked her looks so
much that I hated to go away, so I asked her if she was in your class,
and she said ‘No,’ but that she knew you, and that I considered was
introduction enough. We just went off together and had a very good time.
Lucky for me that somebody took me up when my own sister went off and
left me,” he added reproachfully.
Miss Allardyce shook her head impatiently. “Never mind about me.” She
looked anxiously at her brother. “What did you say to her?”
“Oh! I don’t remember exactly;” he replied vaguely and cheerfully. “We
talked a good deal--at least _I_ did,” with a sudden realization of how
he had monopolized the conversation. “About French boarding-schools and
women professors and getting plucked in examinations, and I told her
about that scrape you wrote me of. She hasn’t a bit of nonsense about
her,” he went on enthusiastically. “She didn’t say much, but I am sure
she agreed with me that girls are by nature flirts, and not
mathematicians.”
Miss Allardyce gave a little gasp. “Well,” she said, with a sort of
desperate calmness, “you’ve done it now! Do you know who that was you
were talking to? That was the assistant-professor of mathematics. Oh!
yes, I know she looks awfully young, and she is young. I suppose you
think a woman has to be fifty before she knows anything. Why she only
took her degree two years ago, and she was so tremendously clever that
she went off and studied a year in Leipsic and then came back as
instructor in mathematics, and this year when one of the
assistant-professors was called suddenly to Europe, she was made
assistant-professor in her place, and they say she’s been a most
wonderful success. And I know she is pretty; but that doesn’t prevent
her examinations from being terrors, and I didn’t get through the last
one at all, and if you told her about that scrape, and that women ought
not to be mathematicians----” she stopped breathlessly and in utter
despair.
Allardyce whistled softly and then struck his stick sharply against the
side of the little dock. “Well,” he exclaimed indignantly, “she’s most
deceitfully young and pretty,” and then he turned reproachfully upon his
sister. “It’s all your fault,” he said; “what did you go off walking
for?”
“LA BELLE HÉLÈNE”
_Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, Rhinebeck-on-Hudson_
BALTIMORE, October 20th.
My Dearest Alma: As we have been confiding our joys and woes to each
other for the last twenty-five years, it is to you I naturally write
about this new trial which has come into my life. You will probably
think it _peu de chose_, but I assure you, my dear, that if you really
and truly put yourself in my place you will realize that it is an
annoyance. Henry’s child has at last written to me that she “has
finished her studies for the present” (!) and is coming to America to
spend the winter with us. You _must_ see, Alma, that this is slightly
appalling. I have never seen her--not since she was a little thing with
enormous gray eyes and a freckled nose--and I know absolutely nothing
about her except what Henry wrote me from time to time, when he stopped
his eternal wanderings long enough to remember he had a sister. But
judging by the education he gave her--and I consider it simply
deplorable--and the evident taste she had for it, and later for “the
higher education of woman,” I feel distressingly positive that I cannot
approve of the child. I am very sorry now that I did not make an effort
to go to her when her father died in England, five years ago, but she
wrote me that she had friends there who were doing everything for her,
and that she was coming directly to America to enter college according
to her father’s wishes, and that there was really no need to disturb
myself about her. I could see, Alma, the effect of the independent,
strange existence she had led, in that letter. It repelled me. Now,
Eleanor, I am sure, would have been completely prostrated, the dear
child!
So she came directly to Boston, and I, being so busy with my own
preparations for taking Eleanor and Margaret to Paris, simply could not
arrange to go on to Boston to see her. As of course you know, we
remained abroad four years, and last year, when we returned and I
expected to see Helen at last, she wrote me a letter which I got just
before leaving Paris, saying that she had decided to go to Oxford for a
year to take a course in mathematical astronomy at the Lady Margaret
Hall. So we passed each other in mid-ocean.
Fancy, Alma! I knew when I read that letter what kind of a girl she was.
One of your hard students, engrossed in books, without one thought for
dress or social manners! I am afraid she will prove a severe trial. And
just when Eleanor is counting on having such a gay second winter and
Margaret is to début. It is a little hard, is it not, dear? Thank
Heaven, I shall never have to blame myself as Henry would have to do if
he were alive. At least _I_ have seen to it that my daughters have had
the education which will fit them to ornament society, the education
that I still believe in notwithstanding all this talk of colleges for
women and advancement in learning, and college settlements and
extensions, and Heaven knows what besides!
_My_ girls have had first, the best of training at Mrs. Meed’s, and then
four years at _Les Oiseaux_, you know. They speak French perfectly, of
course, and Margaret has even tried Italian and German. They both ride
and drive well, and Eleanor plays and sings very sweetly. But what is
the use of my telling you about them when you know them so well?
I only wish, Alma, you could tell me something about _Helen_! Just
think, I have never even seen a photograph of her! It is one of her
fads not to have them taken, from which I argue that she is very homely,
very opinionated, and very strange. Eleanor has two dozen in different
poses, I am sure. The only information I have at all about Helen’s looks
is from Margaret, who saw her for an hour in Brookline--it was five
years ago--just before we sailed. She had run up to see a Boston friend
for a few days, and of course she was very young and has probably
forgotten, but she insists that Helen was rather pretty. However, I do
not attach the least importance to what Margaret says, because, as you
know, she is so good-natured that she always says the best of everyone;
and then her tastes are sometimes really deplorable--so unlike
Eleanor’s! Besides, her description of Helen does not sound like that of
a pretty girl. She says she wore her hair parted and back from her face,
and was slightly near-sighted. Think of it, Alma! For the hair, _encore
passe_, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Wenzell have made that so much the fashion
lately that one might forgive it; but short-sighted! Eye-glasses!
Spectacles perhaps! Hard study since may have completely ruined her
eyes. I greatly fear she will show up very badly beside Eleanor’s
piquant beauty and Margaret’s freshness.
She writes me that she will be here in a month, so that it is time I was
seriously considering what I am to do with her. Of course, with the
severe education she has had, she probably dislikes society and could
not be induced to go out, knowing well that she could not shine in it;
but as my brother’s child she must be at least introduced properly, and
she can then subside gracefully. Of course, where there are two such
attractive girls in the house as Eleanor and Margaret, she cannot hope
to compete in social honors with them, and will probably much prefer in
any case to continue her studies or go in for charitable work, or
something of that sort.
My dear Alma, I have just read over this letter and am shocked to see
how much I have written about this affair. Forgive me if I have wearied
you and--yes, _do_ give me some good advice.
Are you going to Carlsbad?
The girls are out of town for a few days, or would send love as I do.
Very affectionately yours,
MARIAN MORRISON.
P.S. They say a woman cannot write a letter without a postscript, and I
believe it! Tell me what to do about H. How had I best introduce her to
society? Don’t you think a dinner--where she could sit beside someone
whom I could especially choose as suited to her--and where she would not
be too much _en évidence_? A dance would not do at all--I doubt if she
_can_ dance, poor girl!