AFTER THE PLAY
"Sherlock Holmes" was quite as exciting as Miss Madison had anticipated.
Most college plays, except the elaborate ones given in the gymnasium,
which are carefully learned, costumed and rehearsed, and supervised by a
committee from the faculty--are amusing little farces in one or two
short scenes. "Sherlock Holmes," on the other hand, was a four act,
blood-curdling melodrama, with three different stage settings, an
abundance of pistol shots, a flash-light fire, shrieks and a fainting
fit on the part of the heroine, the raiding of a robbers' den in the
denouement, and "a lot more excitement all through than there is in Mr.
Gillette's play," as Mary modestly informed her caste. It was
necessarily cruder, as it was far more ambitious, than the commoner sort
of amateur play; but the audience, whether little freshmen who had seen
few similar performances, or upper class girls who had seen a great many
and so fully appreciated the novelty of this one, were wildly
enthusiastic. Every actress, down to Helen, who made a very stiff and
stilted "Buttons," and Rachel and Mary Rich who appeared in the robbers'
den scene as Betty's female accomplices, and in the heroine's
drawing-room as her wicked mother and her stupid maid respectively, was
rapturously received; and Dr. Holmes and Sir Archibald, whose hat was
decidedly the hit of the evening, were forced to come before the
curtain. Finally, in response to repeated shouts for "author," Mary
Brooks appeared, flushed and panting from her vigorous exertions as
prompter, stage manager, and assistant dresser, and informed the
audience that owing to the kindness of Mrs. Chapin there was lemon-ice
in the dining-room, and would every one please go out there, so that
this awful mess,--with a comprehensive wave of her hand toward the ruins
of the robbers' den piled on top of the heroine's drawing-room
furniture, which in turn had been a rearrangment of Dr. Holmes's
study,--could be cleared up, and they could dance there later?
At this the audience again applauded, sighed to think that the play was
over, and then joyfully adjourned to the dining-room to eat Mrs.
Chapin's ice and examine the actors at close range. All these speedily
appeared, except Helen, who had crept up-stairs quite unnoticed the
moment her part was finished, and Eleanor, who, hunting up Betty,
explained that she had a dreadful headache and begged Betty to look
after her guests and not for anything to let them come up-stairs to find
her. Betty, who was busily washing off her "fierce frown" at the time,
sputtered a promise through the mixture of soap, water and vaseline she
was using, delivered the message, assured herself that the guests were
enjoying themselves, and forgot all about Eleanor until half-past nine
when every one had gone and she came up to her room to find Helen in bed
and apparently fast asleep, with her face hidden in the pillows.
"How queer," she thought. "She's had the blues for a week, but I thought
she was all right this evening." Then, as her conjectures about Helen
suggested Eleanor's headache, she tiptoed out to see if she could do
anything for the prostrate heroine.
Eleanor's transom was dark and her door evidently locked, for it would
not yield when Betty, anxious at getting no answer to her knocks, tried
to open it. But when she called softly, "Eleanor, are you there? Can I
do anything?" Eleanor answered crossly, "Please go away. I'm better, but
I want to be let alone."
So, murmuring an apology, Betty went back to her own room, and as Helen
seemed to be sound asleep, she saw no reason for making a nuisance of
herself a second time, but considerately undressed in the dark and crept
into bed as softly as possible.
If she had turned on her light, she would have discovered two telltale
bits of evidence, for Helen had left a very moist handkerchief on her
desk and another rolled into a damp, vindictive little wad on the
chiffonier. It was not because she knew she had done her part badly that
she had gone sobbing to bed, while the others ate lemon-ice and danced
merrily down-stairs. Billy was a hard part; Mary Brooks had said so
herself, and she had only taken it because when Roberta positively
refused to act, there was no one else. Helen couldn't act, knew she
couldn't, and didn't much care. But not to have any friends in all this
big, beautiful college--that was a thing to make any one cry. It was bad
enough not to be asked anywhere, but not to have any friends to invite
oneself, that was worse--it was dreadful! If she went right off
up-stairs perhaps no one would notice; they would think at first that
somebody else was looking after her guests while she dressed, and then
they would forget all about her and never know the dreadful truth that
nobody she had asked to the play would come.
When it had first been decided to present "Sherlock Holmes" and the
girls had begun giving out their invitations, Helen, who felt more and
more keenly her isolation in the college, resolved to see just how the
others managed and then do as they did. She heard Rachel say, "I think
Christy Mason is a dear. I don't know her much if any, but I'm going to
ask her all the same, and perhaps we shall get better acquainted after
awhile."
That made Helen, who took the speech more literally than it was meant,
think of Caroline Barnes. One afternoon she and Betty had been down-town
together, and on the way back Miss Barnes overtook them, and came up
with them to see Eleanor, who was an old friend of hers. Betty
introduced her to Helen and she walked between them up the hill and
necessarily included both of them in her conversation. She was a homely
girl, with dull, inexpressive features; but she was tall and
well-proportioned and strikingly well dressed. Betty had taken an
instant dislike to her at the time of their first meeting and greatly to
Eleanor's disgust had resisted all her advances. Eleanor had accused her
frankly of not liking Caroline.
"No," returned Betty with equal frankness, "I don't. I think all your
other friends are lovely, but Miss Barnes rubs me the wrong way."
Helen knew nothing of all this, and Miss Barnes's lively, slangy
conversation and stylish, showy clothes appealed to her unsophisticated
taste.
When the three parted at the head of the stairs, Miss Barnes turned back
to say, "Aren't you coming to see me? You owe me a call, you know."
Helen and Betty were standing close together, and though part of the
remark applied only to Betty, she looked at them both.
Betty said formally, "Thank you, I should like to," and Helen, pleased
and eager, chorused, "So should I."
Later, in their own room, Betty said with apparent carelessness but with
the covert intention of dropping Helen a useful hint, "You aren't going
to see Miss Barnes, are you? I'm not."
And Helen had flushed again, gave some stammering reply and then had had
for the first time an unkind thought about her roommate. Betty wanted to
keep all her nice friends to herself. It must be that. Why shouldn't she
go to see Miss Barnes? She wasn't asked so often that she could afford
to ignore the invitations she did get. And later she added, Why
shouldn't she ask Miss Barnes to the play, since Eleanor wasn't going
to?
So one afternoon Helen, arrayed in her best clothes, went down to call
and deliver her invitation. Miss Barnes was out, but her door was open
and Helen slipped in, and writing a little note on her card, laid it
conspicuously on the shining mahogany desk.
That was one invitation. She had given the other to a quiet, brown-eyed
girl who sat next her in geometry, not from preference, but because her
name came next on the class roll. This girl declined politely, on the
plea of another engagement.
Next day Miss Barnes brushed unseeingly past her in the hall of the
Science Building. The day after that they met at gym. Finally, when
almost a week had gone by without a sign from her, Helen inquired
timidly if she had found the note.
"Oh, are you Miss Adams?" inquired Miss Barnes, staring past her with a
weary air. "Thank you very much I'm sure, but I can't come," and she
walked off.
Any one but Helen Adams would have known that Caroline Barnes and
Eleanor Watson had the reputation of being the worst "snobs" in their
class, and that Miss Ashby, her neighbor in geometry, boarded with her
mother and never went anywhere without her. But Helen knew no college
gossip. She offered her invitation to two girls who had been in the
dancing-class, read hypocrisy into their hearty regrets that they were
going out of town for Sunday, and asked no one else to the play. If she
had been less shy and reserved she would have told Rachel or Betty all
about her ill-luck, have been laughed at and sympathized with, and then
have forgotten all about it. But being Helen Chase Adams, she brooded
over her trouble in secret, asked nobody's advice, and grew shyer and
more sensitive in consequence, but not a whit less determined to make a
place for herself in the college world.
She would have attached less significance to Caroline Barnes's rudeness,
had she known a little about the causes of Eleanor's headache. Eleanor
had gone down to Caroline's on the afternoon of the play, knocked
boldly, in spite of a "Don't disturb" sign posted on the door, and found
the pretty rooms in great confusion and Caroline wearily overseeing the
packing of her books and pictures.
Eleanor waited patiently until the men had gone off with three huge
boxes, and then insisted upon knowing what Caroline was doing.
"Going home," said Caroline sullenly.
"Why?" demanded Eleanor.
"Public reason--trouble with my eyes; real reason--haven't touched my
conditions yet and now I have been warned and told to tutor in three
classes. I can't possibly do it all."
"Why Caroline Barnes, do you mean you are sent home?"
Caroline nodded. "It amounts to that. I was advised to go home now, and
work off the entrance conditions and come again next fall. I thought
maybe you'd be taking the same train," she added with a nervous laugh.
Eleanor turned white. "Nonsense!" she said sharply. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you said you hadn't done anything about your conditions, and
you've cut and flunked and scraped along much as I have, I fancy."
"I'm sorry, Caroline," said Eleanor, ignoring the digression. "I don't
know that you care, though. You've said you were bored to death up
here."
"I--I say a great deal that I don't mean," gulped Caroline. "Good-bye,
Eleanor. Shall I see you in New York at Christmas? And don't
forget--trouble with my eyes. Oh, the family won't mind. They didn't
like my coming up in the first place. I shall go abroad in the spring.
Good-bye."
Eleanor walked swiftly back through the campus. In the main building she
consulted the official bulletin-board with anxious eyes, and fairly tore
off a note addressed to "Miss Eleanor Watson, First Class." It had
come--a "warning" in Latin. Once back in her own room, Eleanor sat down
to consider the situation calmly. But the more she thought about it, the
more frightened and ashamed she grew. Thanksgiving was next week, and
she had been given only until Christmas to work off her entrance
conditions. She had meant to leave them till the last moment, rush
through the work with a tutor, and if she needed it get an extension of
time by some specious excuse. Had the last minute passed? The Latin
warning meant more extra work. There were other things too. She had
"cut" classes recklessly--three on the day of the sophomore reception,
and four on a Monday morning when she had promised to be back from
Boston in time for chapel. Also, she had borrowed Lil Day's last year's
literature paper and copied most of it verbatim. She could make a
sophistical defence of her morals to Betty Wales, but she understood
perfectly what the faculty would think about them. The only question
was, how much did they know?
When the dinner-bell rang, Eleanor pulled herself together and started
down-stairs.
"Did you get your note, Miss Watson?" asked Adelaide Rich from the
dining-room door.
"What note?" demanded Eleanor sharply.
"I'm sure I can't describe it. It was on the hall table," said Adelaide,
turning away wrathfully. Some people were so grateful if you tried to do
them a favor!
It was this incident which led Eleanor to hurry off after dinner, and
again at the end of the play, bound to escape nerve-racking questions
and congratulations. Later, when Betty knocked on her door, her first
impulse was to let her in and ask her advice. But a second thought
suggested that it was safer to confide in nobody. The next morning she
was glad of the second thought, for things looked brighter, and it would
have been humiliating indeed to be discovered making a mountain out of a
mole-hill.
"The trouble with Caroline was that she wasn't willing to work hard,"
she told herself. "Now I care enough to do anything, and I must make
them see it."
She devoted her spare hours on Monday morning to "making them see it,"
with that rare combination of tact and energy that was Eleanor Watson at
her best. By noon her fears of being sent home were almost gone, and she
was alert and exhilarated as she always was when there were difficulties
to be surmounted.
"Now that the play is over, I'm going to work hard," Betty announced at
lunch, and Eleanor, who was still determined not to confide in anybody,
added nonchalantly, "So am I." It was going to be the best of the fun to
take in the Chapin house.
But the Chapin house was not taken in for long.
"What's come over Eleanor Watson?" inquired Katherine, a few days later,
as the girls filed out from dinner.
"She's working," said Mary Brooks with a grin. "And apparently she
thinks work and dessert don't jibe."
"I'm afraid it was time," said Rachel. "She's always cutting classes,
and that puts a girl behind faster than anything else. I wonder if she
could have had a warning in anything."
"I think she could----" began Katherine, and then stopped, laughing. "I
might as well own up to one in math.," she said.
"Well, Miss Watson is going to stay here over Thanksgiving," said Mary
Rich.
Then plans for the two days' vacation were discussed, and Eleanor's
affairs forgotten, much to the relief of Betty Wales, who feared every
moment lest she should in some way betray Eleanor's confidence.
On the Wednesday after Thanksgiving Eleanor burst in on her merrily, as
she was dressing for dinner.
"I just wanted to tell you that some of those conditions that worry you
so are made up," she said. "I almost wore out my tutor, and I surprised
the history department into a compliment, but I'm through. That is, I
have only math., and one other little thing."
"I don't see how you did it," sighed Betty. "I should never dare to get
behind. I have all I want to do with the regular work."
Eleanor leaned luxuriously back among the couch cushions. "Yes," she
said loftily. "I suppose you haven't the faintest idea what real,
downright hard work is, and neither can you appreciate the joys of
downright idleness. I shall try that as soon as I've finished the math."
"Why?" asked Betty. "Do you like making it up later?"
"I shouldn't have to. You know I'm getting a reputation as an earnest,
thorough student. That's what the history department called me. A
reputation is a wonderful thing to lean back upon. I ought to have gone
in for one in September. I was at the Hill School for three years, and I
never studied after the first three months. There's everything in making
people believe in you from the first."
"What's the use in making people believe you're something that you're
not?" demanded Betty.
"What a question! It saves you the trouble of being that something. If
the history department once gets into the habit of thinking me a
thorough, earnest student, it won't condition me because I fail in a
written recitation or two. It will suppose I had an off day."
"But you'd have to do well sometimes."
"Oh, yes, occasionally. That's easy."
"Not for me," said Betty, "so I shall have to do respectable work all
the time. But I shall tell Helen about your idea. She works all the
time, and it makes her dull and cross. She must have secured a
reputation by this time; and I shall insist upon her leaning back on it
for a while and taking more walks."