It was a sort of farewell party, and the young woman who was going away
and who was the object of so much solicitude and tender concern was
sitting, enshrined as it were, on a divan covered with a Navahoe Indian
blanket and surrounded by innumerable cushions, while the rest hung
about her or took up precarious attitudes on the table in dangerous
proximity to the student lamps, or settled themselves in steamer-chairs,
or sat upon the tiger-skin on the floor. That is, the American girls
did; Kan Ato, the pretty Japanese who had come arrayed in a gorgeous new
kimono--dull blue embroidered splendidly in silver--sat upright and very
stiffly in the window-seat with the dark red of the curtains showing off
her jet black hair and her gown wonderfully well; while the tall Scotch
girl, a cousin of the guest of honor, had trusted her generous
proportions to the only large, comfortable American chair in the room.
There was a great deal of noise and confusion and questioning, and Miss
Lavington, as she leaned back against her cushions, half wished that
after all the doctor had not let her come. She had been very ill--a
short, sharp attack of typhoid--and although she had enjoyed
tremendously the wine jelly, and the violets, and the hushed, anxious
tones of her friends as they inquired after her at the infirmary, and
the many remarks about her good qualities and how clever she was in
Conic Sections--“just as if she were really dead,” as she said--still
she felt rather too weak properly to appreciate her friends’
enthusiastic sympathy at such close range. And then the thought of going
away--and so far away--had made her feel blue and dispirited.
She was a very pretty English girl, whose father--a colonel in an Indian
regiment--had sent her to America in the care of a sister of his who had
moved to “the States;” and so it had come about that, instead of being a
Girton or Newnham girl, she had matriculated at this American college.
And now her father had written decisively for her to come out and join
him in India, and her college friendships and ties were all to be
broken. He had been writing about it for some time, and her illness had
finally precipitated the affair. She had only waited until she grew
strong enough to start, and the following day had been decided upon.
The long sea-voyage would be the very thing for her, the doctor had
thought.
She was trying to explain to the interested young women just what route
she would take, and was rapidly filling their souls with envy at the
familiar mention of Brindisi and Cairo and Aden, when there was a knock
and a quick opening of the door and a girl came into the room. She was a
very beautiful young woman, and when she sat down on the divan beside
Miss Lavington she seemed suddenly to absorb all the attention and
interest, and to become in some magical way the guest of honor and
centre of attraction. She met with a very enthusiastic reception, for
she had that afternoon gained the tennis championship for her class--she
was a senior--and had not yet changed her white flannel suit with
scarlet sumach leaves worked on it, and as she dragged off her soft cap,
one could see that her hair still lay in damp curls upon her forehead.
After she had entered the room one would have realized that they had
really been waiting for her. Her mere presence seemed to make a
difference. It was this magnetic quality which rendered her so
irresistible and all adverse criticism of her so absurd. People might
differ as to her beauty--there were some indeed, who said that she was
too large, or that her eyes were not very expressive, or that her mouth
was too small, but they all fell under her influence in some remarkable
way, and were very much flattered when she asked them to drive with her,
and never failed to point her out to their friends as “the College
Beauty, you know;” and even those who honestly wondered how she ever got
through her examinations were forced to admit that she had a great deal
of natural talent, which she did not always care to exercise. She was a
fine tennis player too, using either hand equally well, and when the
Tennis Association got itself into debt and she saved the situation by
beguiling, in some inexplicable way, the famous musical organization of
a certain university into giving a concert for its benefit, her
popularity reached its climax. To the less sought-after girls, her
composure and ease of manner while surrounded by an admiring circle of
college men was nothing short of marvellous, and the recklessly generous
disposal which she made of these youths to her less attractive friends
seemed to betoken a social prodigality little short of madness.
Miss Lavington looked at her imploringly.
“Make them keep quiet, won’t you?” she said. The Beauty looked around
her--“Are you trying to make her ill again, so she can’t go?” she
asked.
Her words had the desired effect, and the girl who had been twanging
abstractedly at a banjeurine put it down.
“She oughtn’t to leave!” she declared, plaintively. “It’s a shame! Here
we are, just beginning the semestre, and she’s only half through her
college course anyway, and just because her father wants her she has to
give up everything and go.”
“Yes, and you know she’ll be sure to have jungle-fever or get bitten by
a cobra or something, and die,” suggested someone cheerfully, if a
trifle vaguely.
The girl lying on the tiger-skin looked up.
“I know why her father wants her,” she began calmly. “There is an
officer--young, handsome, well born, a fine place in Surrey or Devon or
Kent, been in the family for generations, old uncle, no children--just
the thing for her. Her father will take her up to some place in the
Himalayas to spend the summer, and he will arrange for the handsome,
young, etc., officer to be there, and next fall we will receive the
cards. It sounds just like one of Kipling’s stories, doesn’t it?”
They were all laughing by the time she had finished, but The Beauty,
looking at the girl beside her, suddenly stopped smiling. There was a
conscious flush on Miss Lavington’s face which set her to thinking, and
then she glanced over to the big Scotch girl and waited an instant.
“Tell us all about it,” she said finally to Miss Lavington. The girl
looked up quickly and then dropped her eyes again.
“There isn’t much to tell,” she began. The others were listening now.
Even Kan Ato, smiling in her pensive, oriental way, leaned far forward
so as not to lose a word.
“He isn’t rich and he hasn’t any place in Surrey--or anywhere else that
I know of, except perhaps in India,” she went on. “But he is young and
handsome. We used to know each other when we were children--he is a sort
of cousin--but I haven’t seen him for years. We used to be very much in
love with each other.” She smiled. “My father writes me that he says he
is still in love with me, and so--perhaps we are to be married.”
“I knew it,” sighed the girl on the tiger-rug, in a satisfied sort of
way.
The Beauty looked at the English girl curiously. “And you haven’t seen
him for years? and yet you think of marrying him! How do you know you
will love him now?--you are both changed--you may be two totally
different people from the children who fell in love.” She had spoken
vehemently and quickly, and Miss Lavington gazed at her with languid
surprise.
“You are not in love with him yourself?” she said, smilingly.
The girl made a quick, impatient gesture.
“I am speaking seriously,” she said. “You are several years younger than
I am, and you don’t know what you are doing. Don’t let your
father--don’t let anyone--persuade you to bind yourself to a man you
don’t know, whose life has been so vitally different from your own as to
render the possibility of sympathy between you very slight.”
Miss Lavington looked at her rather coldly.
“You are interesting yourself unnecessarily,” she said; “I loved him not
so many years ago--it cannot be possible that so short a time would
change us completely.”
The Beauty leaned her head back with sudden wearied look on her face. “A
few years at our time of life makes all the difference in the world,”
she said, earnestly. “What pleased and interested and fascinated us at
eighteen might very possibly disappoint and disgust us at twenty or
twenty-two. I do not mean to preach,” she said, smiling deprecatingly
and turning to the rest, “but you know as well as I what an influence
this college life has on us, and how hard it is to go back to former
conditions. If we get stronger here we also get less adaptable. We are
all affected by the earnestness and the culture and advancement of the
life we lead here for four years, whether we will or no, and it is very
hard to go back!”
They were all looking at her in amazement. The Beauty was not much given
to that sort of thing. She stopped abruptly as if herself aware of the
sensation she was creating, and laughed rather constrainedly.
“Don’t marry your handsome officer unless you are in love with him!” she
said insistingly still to the girl beside her. “Don’t mistake the
childish affection you felt for him for something deeper. You have your
whole life before you--don’t spoil it by precipitation or a false
generosity or a reckless passion!” There was an anxious, troubled look
in her eyes.
The girl still stretched out on the tiger-skin glanced up again at The
Beauty. “I seem to have started a subject in which you are deeply
interested,” she said gayly to her. “And one in which you have had
enormous experience too. Do you know you have an almost uncanny way of
fascinating every man who comes near you. It’s a sure thing. None of the
rest of us have a chance. I believe you could marry half a dozen or so
at any time that you would take the trouble to say ‘yes’!”
The girl addressed looked openly amused--“Please take a few off your
list,” she said. But the other refused to notice her remark and ran on
in her light way.
“And they are all so nice too--it is really hard to choose, but I think
on the whole I prefer a certain young man who shall be nameless. Now,
would you call his devotion to yourself ‘mad precipitation or a false
generosity or a reckless passion?’” She moved herself lazily over the
yellow skin until her head rested against the girl’s knee.
“And he is such a nice, eligible youth too. I hope you are not going to
spoil his life by refusing him. Only think how lovely it would be to
have one’s father-in-law representing the majesty of these United States
at an Emperor’s court,” she went on, turning gayly to the others. “And
he is so handsome and clever! He will be representing Uncle Sam himself
some day, and she will be reading up the rules of court etiquette and
receiving invitations from the Lord Chamberlain to dine with the Queen,
and fuming because the Grand Duchess of something or other has the
right to walk in to dinner before her.” She was not noticing the girl’s
significant silence. “Of course he is just the man for you--you wouldn’t
make any but a brilliant match, you know, with your beauty and society
manner. But just for the present--well, next winter you will début, and
you will be much talked about, and the youth will not be with his father
at the European capital, but will be very much _en évidence_ here, and
then--after Easter we shall get _your_ cards!”
She twisted her head around, smiling, so as to get a look at the girl’s
face above her. It wore so grave and hopeless an expression that she
gave a little cry.
“Forgive me,” she said, confusedly, “but you do love him, don’t you?”
The Beauty turned her eyes away and shook herself slightly, as if
awakening from a dream.
“As confession seems to be the order of the hour,” she said in a dull
tone, and smiling peculiarly, “I don’t mind owning that I do love him
very much.”
She got up abruptly and moved toward the door amid a chorus of protests,
but she would not stay. At the threshold she turned to Miss Lavington.
“Send your things down by the coach,” she said. “If you will let me I
will be glad to drive you to the station myself to-morrow.”
* * * * *
When she got to her own study she found a letter thrust under the door
with the familiar number of her room scrawled upon it in pencil. She
picked it up, and as she looked at the address an expression of profound
dislike and weariness came into her face. She opened the door slowly and
put the letter down upon her desk, looking at it thoughtfully for a few
moments. The handwriting was irresolute and boyish. She shivered
slightly as she took the letter up with sudden resolution and tore it
open. As she sat there and read it a look of hatred and disgust and
utter hopelessness, strangely at variance with her usual brilliant
expression, settled harshly upon her lovely, young face.
“MY DEAREST WIFE,” it ran, “Forgive me! but this is about the only
luxury I indulge in!--calling you in my letters what I dare not call you
as yet before the world.
“I am in a retrospective mood to-night, and feel like writing all sorts
of things which I am afraid you won’t much like. Do you know I think
that college is doing you harm! Don’t get angry at this, but sometimes
I’m afraid you have repented of our boy and girl runaway match; but God
knows I haven’t, and I’m glad I didn’t go to college but came out West
and went to work for us both. I haven’t succeeded very brilliantly and
may be the life has roughened me a bit, but I guess you can have the
best there is out here, and I am still as devoted to you as in those old
days of the summer before you went to that confounded (excuse me!)
college, when you were just eighteen and I barely twenty-one. How
interminably long four years seemed to wait then! But it was a case of
getting married secretly and of waiting, or of not getting you at all.
Sometimes I can hardly stand it, and I’d come back now and take you
away, if I wasn’t so afraid of that blessed old father of yours--but I’m
just as big a coward as I was three years ago, when I couldn’t screw up
courage enough to go to him and tell him that he’d have to relinquish
his pet scheme of sending his daughter to college, for she belonged to
me. Whew! what a scene we’d have had! It was best to wait, I suppose.
“After all, only a year and then I can claim you! Have you changed any?
I’m afraid you’re way ahead of me now. I always had an uncomfortable
suspicion that you were very much my superior, and I have half fancied
that perhaps you only loved me because I was so madly--so passionately
in love with you. Did I over-persuade you? have you ceased to love me?
Sometimes I get half sick with fear. You are all I have! But after all I
feel safe enough--I know you too well not to know that you will never
break your promise--even one you hate. But you know I’ll never hold you
to that marriage--though it was all valid enough--if you don’t want to
be held. I can simply blow my good-for-nothing brains out.
“I won’t write any more to-night. There is so much swearing and noise
down in the street that I can hardly think; besides I don’t feel just
like it, and lately your letters have only irritated me. But I won’t
complain, for I know how generously you have acted and what brilliant
prospects you have given up for my precious self!
“Devotedly yours and only yours,
“G. G. B.”