A CHANCE TO HELP
Eleanor Watson had gotten neither class spirit nor personal ambition
from 19--'s "glorious old defeat," as Katherine called it. The Saturday
afternoon of the game she had spent, greatly to the disgust of her
friends, on the way to New York, whither she went for a Sunday with
Caroline Barnes. Caroline's mother had been very ill, and the European
trip was indefinitely postponed, but the family were going for a shorter
jaunt to Bermuda. Caroline begged Eleanor to join them. "You can come as
well as not," she urged. "You know your father would let you--he always
does. And we sail the very first day of your vacation too."
"But you stay three weeks," objected Eleanor, "and the vacation is only
two."
"What's the difference? Say you were ill and had to stay over,"
suggested Caroline promptly.
Eleanor's eyes flashed. "Once for all, Cara, please understand that's
not my way of doing business nowadays. I should like to go, though, and
I imagine my father wouldn't object. I'll write you if I can arrange
it."
She had quite forgotten her idle promise when, on the following Monday
morning, she stood in the registrar's office, waiting to get a record
card for chapel attendance in place of one she had lost. The registrar
was busy. Eleanor waited while she discussed the pedagogical value of
chemistry with a sophomore who had elected it, and now, after a semester
and a half of gradually deteriorating work, wished to drop it because
the smells made her ill.
"Does the fact that we sent you a warning last week make the smells more
unendurable?" asked the registrar suggestively, and the sophomore
retreated in blushing confusion.
Next in line was a nervous little girl who inquired breathlessly if she
might go home right away--four days early. Some friends who were
traveling south in their private car had telegraphed her to meet them in
Albany and go with them to her home in Charleston.
"My dear, I'm sorry," began the registrar sympathetically, "but I can't
let you go. We're going to be very strict about this vacation. A great
many girls went home early at Christmas, and it's no exaggeration to say
that a quarter of the college came back late on various trivial excuses.
This time we're not going to have that sort of thing. The girls who come
back at all must come on time; the only valid excuse at either end of
the vacation will be serious illness. I'm sorry."
"So am I," said the little girl, with a pathetic quiver in her voice. "I
never rode in a private car. But--it's no matter. Thank you, Miss
Stuart."
Eleanor had listened to the conversation with a curl of her lip for the
stupid child who proffered her request in so unconvincing a manner, and
an angry resentment against the authorities who should presume to
dictate times and seasons. "They ought to have a system of cuts," she
thought. "That's the only fair way. Then you can take them when you
please, and if you cut over you know it and you do it at your peril.
Here everything is in the air; you are never sure where you stand----"
"What can I do for you, Miss Watson?" asked the registrar pleasantly.
Eleanor got her chapel card and hurried home to telegraph her father for
permission to go to Bermuda, and, as she knew exactly what his answer
would be, to write Caroline that she might expect her. "You know I
always take a dare," she wrote. "My cuts last semester amounted to twice
as much as this trip will use up, and if they make a fuss I shall just
call their attention to what they let pass last time. Please buy me a
steamer-rug, a blue and green plaid one, and meet me at the Forty-second
Street station at two on Friday."
Betty knew nothing about Eleanor's plans, beyond what she had been able
to gather from chance remarks of the other girls; and that was not much,
for every time the subject came up she hastened to change it, lest some
one should discover that Eleanor had told her nothing, and had scarcely
spoken to her indeed for weeks. When Eleanor finally went off, without a
sign or a word of good-bye, Betty discovered that she was dreadfully
disappointed. She had never thought of the estrangement between them as
anything but a temporary affair, that would blow over when Eleanor's
mortification over the debate was forgotten. She had felt sure that long
before the term ended there would come a chance for a reconciliation,
and she had meant to take the chance at any sacrifice of her pride. She
was still fond of Eleanor in spite of everything, and she was sorry for
her too, for her quick eyes detected signs of growing unhappiness under
Eleanor's ready smiles. Besides, she hated "schoolgirl fusses." She
wanted to be on good terms with every girl in 19--. She wanted to come
back to a spring term unclouded by the necessity for any of the evasions
and subterfuges that concealment of the quarrel with Eleanor and Jean
Eastman's strange behavior had brought upon her. And now Eleanor was
gone; the last chance until after vacation had slipped through her
fingers.
At home she told Nan all about her troubles, first exacting a solemn
pledge of secrecy. "Hateful thing!" said Nan promptly. "Drop her. Don't
think about her another minute."
"Then you don't think I was to blame?" asked Betty anxiously.
"To blame? No, certainly not. To be sure," Nan added truthfully, "you
were a little tactless. You knew she didn't know that you were in the
secret of her having to resign, and you didn't intend to tell her, so it
would have been better for you to let some one else help Miss Eastman
out."
"But I thought I was helping Eleanor out."
"In a way you were. But you see it wouldn't seem so to her. It would
look as though you disapproved of her appointment."
"But Nan, she knows now that I knew."
"Then I suppose she concludes that you took advantage of knowing. You
say that it made you quite prominent for a while. You see, dear, when a
person isn't quite on the square herself----"
But Betty had burst into a storm of tears. "I am to blame," she sobbed.
"I am to blame! I knew it, only I couldn't quite see how. Oh, what shall
I do? What shall I do?"
"Don't cry, dear," said Nan in distress, at the unprecedented sight of
Betty in tears. "I tell you, you were not to blame. You were a little
unwise perhaps at first, but Miss Watson has refused your apologies and
explanations and only laughs at you when you try to talk to her about
it. I should drop her at once and forever; but, if you are bound to
bring her around, the only way I can think of is to look out for some
chance to serve her and so prove your real friendship--though what sort
of friend she can be I can't imagine."
"Nan, she's just like the girl in the rhyme," said Betty seriously.
"'When she was good she was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.'
"Eleanor is a perfect dear most of the time. And Nan, there's something
queer about her mother. She never speaks of her, and she's been at
boarding school for eight years now, though she's not seventeen till
May. Think of that!"
"It certainly makes her excusable for a good deal," said Nan. "How is my
friend Helen Chase Adams coming on?"
"Why Nan, she's quite blossomed out. She's really lots of fun now. But I
had an awful time with her for a while," and she related the story of
Helen's winter of discontent. "I suppose that was my fault too," she
finished. "I seem to be a regular blunderer."
"You're a dear little sister, all the same," declared Nan.
"I say girls, come and play ping-pong," called Will from the hall below,
and the interview ended summarily.
But the memory of Eleanor Watson seemed fated to pursue Betty through
her vacation. A few days later an old friend of Mrs. Wales, who had gone
to Denver to live some years before and was east on a round of visits,
came in to call. The moment she heard that Betty was at Harding, she
inquired for Eleanor. "I'm so glad you know her," she said. "She's quite
a protege of mine and she needs nice friends like you if ever a girl
did. Don't mention it about college, Betty, but she's had a very sad
life. Her mother was a strange woman--but there's no use going into
that. She died when Eleanor was a tiny girl, and Eleanor and her brother
Jim have been at boarding schools ever since. In the summers, though,
they were always with their father in Denver. They worshiped him,
particularly Eleanor, and he has always promised her that when she was
through school he would open the old Watson mansion and she should keep
house for him and Jim. Then last year a pretty little society girl, only
four or five years older than Eleanor, set her cap for the judge and
married him. Jim liked her, but Eleanor was heart-broken, and the judge,
seeing storms ahead, I suppose, and hoping that Eleanor would get
interested and want to finish the course, made her promise to go to
Harding for a year. Now don't betray my confidence, Betty, and do make
allowances for Eleanor. I hope she'll be willing to stay on at college.
It's just what she needs. Besides, she'd be very unhappy at home, and
her aunt in New York isn't at all the sort of person for her to live
with."
So it came about that Betty returned to college more than ever
determined to get back upon the old footing with Eleanor, and behold,
Eleanor was not there! The Chapin house was much excited over her
absence, for tales of the registrar's unprecedented hardness of heart
had gone abroad, and almost nobody else had dared to risk the mysterious
but awful possibilities that a late return promised. As Betty was still
supposed by most of the house to be in Eleanor's confidence, she had to
parry question after question as to her whereabouts. To, "Did she tell
you that she was coming back late?" she could truthfully answer "No."
But the girls only laughed when she insisted that Eleanor must be ill.
"She boasts that she's never been ill in her life," said Mary Brooks.
And Adelaide Rich always added with great positiveness, "It's exactly
like her to stay away on purpose, just to see what will happen."
Unfortunately Betty could not deny this, and she was glad enough to drop
the argument. She had too many pleasant things to do to care to waste
time in profitless discussion. For it was spring term. Nobody but a
Harding girl knows exactly what that means. The freshman is very likely
to consider the much heralded event only a pretty myth, until having
started from home on a cold, bleak day that is springtime only by the
calendar, she arrives at Harding to find herself confronted by the
genuine article. The sheltered situation of the town undoubtedly has
something to do with its early springs, but the attitude of the Harding
girl has far more. She knows that spring term is the beautiful crown of
the college year, and she is bound that it shall be as long as possible.
So she throws caution and her furs to the winds and dons a muslin gown,
plans drives and picnics despite April showers, and takes twilight
strolls regardless of lurking germs of pneumonia. The grass grows green
perforce and the buds swell to meet her wishes, while the sun, finding a
creature after his brave, warm heart, does his gallant best for her.
"Do what little studying you intend to right away," Mary Brooks advised
her freshmen. "Before you know it, it will be too warm to work."
"But at present it's too lovely," objected Roberta.
"Then join the Athletic Association and trust to luck, but above all
join the Athletic Association. I'm on the membership committee."
"Can I get into the golf club section this time?" asked Betty, who had
been kept on the waiting list all through the fall.
"Yes, you just squeeze in, and Christy Mason wants you to play round the
course with her to-morrow."
"I'm for tennis," said Katherine. "Miss Lawrence and I are going to play
as soon as the courts are marked out. By the way, when do the
forget-me-nots blossom?"
"Has Laurie roped you into that?" asked Mary Brooks scornfully.
"Don't jump at conclusions," retorted Katherine.
"I didn't have to jump. The wild ones blossom about the middle of May.
You'll have to think of something else if you want to make an immediate
conquest of your angel. And speaking of angels," added Mary, who was
sitting by a window, "Eleanor Watson is coming up the walk."
The girls trooped out into the hall to greet Eleanor, who met them all
with the carefully restrained cordiality that she had used toward them
ever since the break with Betty. Yes, Bermuda had been charming, such
skies and seas. Yes, she was just a week late--exactly. No, she had not
seen the registrar yet, but she had heard last term that excuses weren't
being given away by the dozen.
"I met a friend of yours during vacation," began Betty timidly in the
first pause.
Eleanor turned to her unsmilingly. "Oh yes, Mrs. Payne," she said. "I
believe she mentioned it. I saw her last night in New York." Then she
picked up her bag and walked toward her room with the remark that late
comers mustn't waste time.
The next day at luncheon some one inquired again about her excuse.
Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, that's all right; you needn't be at
all anxious. The interview wasn't even amusing. The week is to be
counted as unexcused absence--which as far as I can see means nothing
whatever."
"You may find out differently in June," suggested Mary, nettled by
Eleanor's superior air.
"Oh, June!" said Eleanor with another shrug. "I'm leaving in June, thank
the fates!"
"Perhaps you'll change your mind after spring term. Everybody says it's
so much nicer," chirped Helen.
"Possibly," said Eleanor curtly, "but I really can't give you much
encouragement, Miss Adams." Whereat poor Helen subsided meekly, scarcely
raising her eyes from her plate through the rest of the meal.
"Better caution your friend Eleanor not to air those sentiments of hers
about unexcused absences too widely, or she'll get into trouble," said
Mary Brooks to Betty on the way up-stairs; but Betty, intent on
persuading Roberta to come down-town for an ice, paid no particular
attention to the remark, and it was three weeks before she thought of it
again.
She found Eleanor more unapproachable than ever this term, but
remembering Nan's suggestion she resolved to bide her time. Meanwhile
there was no reason for not enjoying life to the utmost. Golf, boating,
walking, tennis--there were ten ways to spend every spare minute. But
golf usually triumphed. Betty played very well, and having made an
excellent record in her first game with Christy, she immediately found
herself reckoned among the enthusiasts and expected to get into trim for
the June tournament. Some three weeks after the beginning of the term
she went up to the club house in the late afternoon, intending to
practice putting, which was her weak point and come home with Christy
and Nita Reese, another golf fiend, who had spent the whole afternoon on
the course.
But on the club house piazza she found Dorothy King. Dorothy played golf
exceedingly well, as she did everything else; but as she explained to
Betty, "By junior year all this athletic business gets pretty much
crowded out." She still kept her membership in the club, however, and
played occasionally, "just to keep her hand in for the summer." She had
done six holes this afternoon, all alone, and now she was resting a few
moments before going home. She greeted Betty warmly. "I looked for you
out on the course," she said, "but your little pals thought you weren't
coming up to-day. How's your game?"
"Better, thank you," said Betty, "except my putting, and I'm going to
practice on that now. Did you know that Christy had asked me to play
with her in the inter-class foursomes?"
"That's good," said Dorothy cordially. "Do you see much of Eleanor
Watson these days?" she added irrelevantly.
"Why--no-t much," stammered Betty, blushing in spite of herself. "I see
her at meals of course."
"I thought you told me once that you were very fond of her."
"Yes, I did--I am," said Betty quickly, wondering what in the world
Dorothy was driving at.
"She was down at the house last night," Dorothy went on, "blustering
around about having come back late, saying that she'd shown what a bluff
the whole excuse business is, and that now, after she has proved that
it's perfectly easy to cut over at the end of a vacation, perhaps some
of us timid little creatures will dare to follow her lead. But perhaps
you've heard her talking about it."
"I heard her say a little about it," admitted Betty, suddenly
remembering Mary Brooks's remark. Had the "trouble" that Mary had
foreseen anything to do with Dorothy's questions?
"She's said a great deal about it in the last two weeks," went on
Dorothy. "Last night after she left, her senior friend, Annette Cramer,
and I had a long talk about it. We both agreed that somebody ought to
speak to her, but I hardly know her, and Annette says that she's tried
to talk to her about other things and finds she hasn't a particle of
influence with her." Dorothy paused as if expecting some sort of comment
or reply, but Betty was silent. "We both thought," said Dorothy at last,
"that perhaps if you'd tell her she was acting very silly and doing
herself no end of harm she might believe you and stop."
"Oh, Miss King, I couldn't," said Betty in consternation. "She wouldn't
let me--indeed she wouldn't!"
"She told Annette once that she admired you more than any girl in
college," urged Dorothy quietly, "so your opinion ought to have some
weight with her."
"She said that!" gasped Betty in pleased amazement. Then her face fell.
"I'm sorry, Miss King, but I'm quite sure she's changed her mind. I
couldn't speak to her; but would you tell me please just why any one
should--why you care?"
"Why, of course, it's not exactly my business," said Dorothy, "except
that I'm on the Students' Commission, and so anything that is going
wrong is my business. Miss Watson is certainly having a bad influence on
the girls she knows in college, and besides, if that sort of talk gets
to the ears of the authorities, as it's perfectly certain to do if she
keeps on, she will be very severely reprimanded, and possibly asked to
leave, as an insubordinate and revolutionary character. The Students'
Commission aims to avoid all that sort of thing, when a quiet hint will
do it. But Miss Watson seems to be unusually difficult to approach; I'm
afraid if you can't help us out, Betty, we shall have to let the matter
rest." She gathered up her caddy-bag. "I must get the next car. Don't do
it unless you think best. Or if you like ask some one else. Annette and
I couldn't think of any one, but you know better who her friends are."
She was off across the green meadow.
Betty half rose to follow, then sank back into her chair. Dorothy had
not asked for an answer; she had dropped the matter, had left it in her
hands to manage as she thought fit, appealing to her as a friend of
Eleanor's, a girl whom Eleanor admired. "Whom she used to admire,"
amended Betty with a sigh. But what could she do? A personal appeal was
out of the question; it would effect nothing but a widening of the
breach between them. Could Kate Denise help? She never came to see
Eleanor now. Neither did Jean Eastman--why almost nobody did; all her
really intimate friends seemed to have dropped away from her. And yet
she must think of some one, for was not this the opportunity she had so
coveted? It might be the very last one too, thought Betty. "If anything
happened to hurt Eleanor's feelings again, she wouldn't wait till June.
She'd go now." She considered girl after girl, but rejected them all for
various reasons. "She wouldn't take it from any girl," she decided, and
with that decision came an inspiration. Why not ask Ethel Hale? Ethel
had tried to help Eleanor before, was interested in her, and understood
something of her moody, many-sided temperament. She had put Eleanor in
her debt too; she could urge her suggestion on the ground of a return
favor.
In an instant Betty's mind was made up. She looked ruefully at her dusty
shoes and mussed shirt-waist. "I can't go to see Ethel in these," she
decided, "but if I hurry home now I can dress and go right up there
after dinner, before she gets off anywhere." The putting must wait. With
one regretful glance out over the green, breezy course Betty started
resolutely off toward the dusty highway and the noisy trolleys.