A fall evening, dark, dreary and drizzling.
The amount of work to be prepared for next day seemed heavier and more
difficult than usual and Jane Allen, humanly responsive, felt keenly
the natural reaction of the wild week of honors and excitement.
It was almost time to “call it a day” when a very timid tap at the
door, brought the bronze head up with welcome attention.
“Come!”
It was Helen—teary, and distrait. Helen with tie askew and hair
tousled. Helen with eyes too bright and cheeks too red, and breath too
short for normal.
“Oh, Helen, do come in! What is the matter?”
Jane brushed the papers from the wicker chair, and Helen sank in it.
The red eyes were pressed with a small wet ball, and the unsympathetic
curls from her forehead dug into teary lashes with pure teasing
persistency.
“Child, why do you cry?” asked Jane with a precision of manner suitable
for an occasion such as this. Helen regarded abrupt speech as a mark of
indifference, and Jane surmised this was no time for indifference.
“Oh, my dear friend!” sobbed the crestfallen Helen. “It—is too much, I
cannot to—stand it!”
“What, Helen? What has happened? Tell your own Janey!” and with a
caress, unmistakable in its sincerity, Jane dropped on a stool at the
feet of the sobbing Polish girl.
“I thought not to tell you—it is too much that I should be like a
baby,” went on Helen, endeavoring with poor result, to check her
choking sobs, “but to-night, I feel I must go!”
“Why, child! Go where?”
“That is what is too hard. I cannot know where, but to go—Oh, I must,
Jane darling! I can no longer stand it all!”
“Now, Helen, tell me about it. You know it cannot be so serious that we
shall not find a remedy,” Jane coaxed.
“First, when I came here you know I heard many words—of anger that I,
Helen Podonsky, should be at an American college.” Something like
triumph rang in the voice that now spoke the Polish name. “But I did
not protest, I had the very good friends, and I loved them dearly.” The
brown curly head tossed with unmistakable pride, and Jane was surprised
and charmed at the note evolving in the hitherto docile little Helen.
“Very many times,” continued Helen in even tones, “I would have told
you about that detestable girl—she who goes about at my heels, and
listens at my door, until my dear roommate, Dicky Ripple, told Mrs.
Weatherbee all about it.”
“Dicky told Mrs. Weatherbee about whom?” asked Jane in surprise.
“I hate the name too much to utter it. To-night you must pardon me, my
dear Jane, but I am indignant, and I feel the Podonsky power breaking
in all my veins.” An eloquent gesture, two arms thrust out with power
unmistakable, accompanied this assertion. Surely, Helen was betraying a
new attribute—she was dramatically indignant! Something had aroused her
slumbering pride, something had awakened her dormant lineal glory.
Helen Powderly was not at the moment Helka Podonsky. It was a new
Helka, all Polish, all artist, all self confident, that confronted
Jane.
“Oh, you mean Marian Seaton?” Jane was glad to insert. “I have had so
much trouble from that girl, Helen dear, that I am now immune, that is,
it no longer gives sorrow or worry. I just expect it like bad storms
and other calamities.”
“But when a girl is a sneak, when she makes trouble, so one cannot go
to sleep, when she hisses into other girls’ ears such things as
are—lies—then, what would you do?”
“She has done all of that to me, Helen. My first year here was a
nightmare, in spots,” and Jane tried to inject a little mirth into the
fast-growing seriousness of the conversation. “But I got over it (she
might have said ‘rose above it,’ but Jane was humble). Yes, Helen, I
did suffer just as you have described, and now you see the other girls
are my friends, and she is losing all her companions.”
“For you, yes, that is all good. You are the president of our class,
and much loved, much honored, Jane Allen. But for Helen Powderly, who
has a wrong name, who got to college by tricks, who is perhaps some
spy! Ugh! It is too much!”
That surely was foreign. No American girl could indulge in that sort of
melodrama, and hope to retain her reputation as a well-bred member of
society. It was too impassioned, too effusive, too altogether out of
harmony. Yet Jane was secretly admitting it was sincere! It rang true!
And it was gloriously frank! She admired the spirit, if she did
somewhat discount the tone of voice.
“Now, Helen dear, I am sure you are just a little bit mistaken. Even
the hateful Marian would not do such injustice as to pile all that
dishonor on your pretty head. Don’t you think something has made your
nerves—too tight, and they hurt the way you are stretching them?” Jane
realized this was a weak simile, but it was not easy to give Helen a
clear understanding always, and the intricacies of this conversation
taxed even Jane’s ready flow of speech.
“Nerves! nerves!” repeated Helen with something like a sneer. “We do
not grow nerves in Poland, my dear friend. We must work hard for our
art, and every hardship puts its foot on the squirming nerves. No
artist can grow big, with those nerves biting her power.”
Another revelation! Helen had her own psychology. This “killing of
nerves” for the good of talent, was quite philosophical, if a trifle
vague in the abstract. Jane bethought herself a nerveless career was,
indeed, idealistic.
“But what has happened just now?” pressed Jane. “What has Marian been
doing to so distress you?”
Helen sank again into an attitude of polite concentration. She even
smiled into the gray eyes that compelled her love, and confidence.
“I was out in the far grove, under the trees,” she began. “I go there
to hear the wild wind shriek and wail, so I may make those notes on my
violin. Last night the wind howled like some awful frightened spirit,
and I knew our masters made their wonderful music from such
inspiration. I was sitting in a low branch, the wind rocked me like a
playmate, and up in the trees, those shrieking, wonderful notes, oh—if
I can only catch them!” she paused, and in the interval Jane visioned
Helen up in that tree—as Judith would have said, “she had a life-sized
picture” of the girl and her violin, in the tree, under the shrieking
night winds, strong enough last night to blow girl and violin into
realms of inspiration she so coveted. Presently as Jane nodded:
“It was too lovely to be there, and gently draw from my beloved violin
the echo of that wind music. But the hateful girl! She had followed,
and when I was so happy, with one magic strain, when she laughed out
loud, horrible! She hissed and—made the noise to destroy my
inspiration, to frighten away my beloved notes, and their little
graces.”
“Oh, that was too bad, surely, Helen,” considered the rather bewildered
Jane. She knew very well what effect the “movie” in the tree would
naturally have on a girl like Marian. “But you must understand she
knows nothing of the art or its inspirations,” finished Jane.
“That I know also, and I could forgive the ignorance. But she mocks
me,” declared the unhappy girl, “she says vile things—she says—I
am—mad!”
“Oh!”
That was it! Marian had taunted Helen with being mad! This was really
serious, and Jane showed her apprehension by a complete silence. To
prevent the little foreigner from a precipitous withdrawal from
Wellington was now her problem.