ROOM-MATES
Up in her orderly room, on opening day, Mary listened to the bustle of
arrivals, and the stir of unpacking going on all over the house. The
cordial greetings called back and forth from the various rooms and the
laughter in the halls made her long to have a part in the general
sociability. She wished that it were necessary for her to borrow a
hammer or to ask information about the trunk-room and the porter, as the
other new girls were doing. That would give her an excuse for going into
some of the rooms and making acquaintance with their occupants. But
everything was in absolute order, and she was already familiar with the
place and its rules. There was nothing for her to do but take out her
bead-work and occupy herself with that as best she could until the
arrival of her room-mate.
She set her door invitingly open, ready to meet more than half way any
advances her neighbours might choose to make. While she sorted her beads
she amused herself by fitting together the scraps of conversation which
floated her way, and making guesses as to the personality of the
speakers. Twice her open door brought the reward of a transient visitor.
Once a jolly Sophomore glanced in to say "I just wanted to see who has
the American Beauty room. That's what we called it last term when Kitty
Walton and Lloyd Sherman had it."
Soon after, a girl across the hall whom Mary had already identified as
one Dora Irene Derwent, called Dorene for short, darted in
unceremoniously with an agonized plea for a bit of court-plaster.
"I cut my finger on a piece of glass in a picture frame that got broken
in my trunk," she explained, unwinding her handkerchief to see if the
bleeding had stopped. "I can't find my emergency case, and Cornie Dean
never was known to keep anything of the sort. All the other rooms are so
upset I knew it was of no use to apply to them."
Happy that such an opportunity had come at last and that she could
supply the demand, Mary examined the injured finger and began to trim a
strip of plaster the required size. At the moment of cutting herself
Dorene had dropped the broken glass, but for some unaccountable reason
had thrust the frame under her arm, and was holding it hugged tight to
her side by her elbow. Now as she put out her hand for Mary's
inspection, she sat down on the edge of the bed, and let the frame slip
from her grasp to the counterpane. The photograph side lay uppermost,
and Mary, glancing at it casually, gave an exclamation of surprise.
"Why, it's _Betty_! Betty Lewis! Do _you_ know her?"
"Well, rather!" was the emphatic answer. "She was my crush all my
Freshman year. I suppose you know what that means if you've ever had a
case yourself. I simply adored her, and could hardly bear to come back
the next year because she was graduated and gone. I haven't seen her
since, but you can imagine my delight when I found her name in this
year's catalogue, as one of the teachers. We never imagined she'd teach,
for she has such a wonderful gift for writing; but it will be simply
delightful to have her back again. She's such a dear. But where did
_you_ happen to know her?" she added as an afterthought. "Are you from
Lloydsboro Valley, too?"
"No, but I visited there once at Lloyd Sherman's home where Betty lives.
Lloyd's mother is Betty's god-mother, you know, and Betty's mother was
my sister Joyce's god-mother. We're all mixed up that way on account of
our mothers being old school friends, as if we were related. Of course,
I shall call her Miss Lewis before the other girls. Mamma says it
wouldn't be showing proper respect not to. But it's such a comfort to be
able to call her Betty behind the scenes. She came yesterday. Last night
she was up in my room for more than an hour with me, talking about the
places and people we both know in the valley. It made me so happy I
could hardly go to sleep. Elise Walton came with her, Kitty's sister,
you know."
"Oh, is she as bright and funny as Kitty?" demanded Dorene. "If she is
we certainly shall lay siege to you two for our sorority. We ought to
have first claim, for all the other Lloydsboro Valley girls belong to
us. Come over and see Cornie."
Conscious that as a friend of the Valley girls she had gone up many
degrees in Dorene's estimation, Mary put away her scissors and
plaster-case, and followed her newfound acquaintance across the hall.
Her cordial reception gave her what she had been longing for all
morning, the sense of being in intimate touch with things in the inner
circle of school life. Because she knew Lloyd and Betty so well, they
took her in as one of themselves, gave her a seat on a suit-case, the
chairs all being full, and climbed over her and around her as they went
on with their unpacking. Mary was in her element, and blossomed out into
such an interesting visitor, that Dorene was glad that she had
discovered her. This was the beginning of the fourth year that she and
Cornie had roomed together, and to Mary their companionship seemed
ideal.
"I hope my room-mate will prove as congenial as you two," she said,
after listening half an hour to their laughing repartee and their
ridiculous discussions as to the arrangement of their pictures and
bric-a-brac. "I've been looking forward all morning to her coming. Every
time I think of her I have the same excited, creepy feeling that I used
to have when I opened a prize pop-corn box. My little brother and I used
to save all our pennies for them when we were little tots back in
Kansas. We didn't eat the pop-corn, that is _I_ didn't. It was the
flutter and thrill I wanted, that comes when you've almost reached the
bottom of the box, and know the next grab will bring the prize into your
fingers. I was always hoping I might find one of those little rings with
a red setting that I could pretend was a real garnet. No matter if it
did always turn out to be nothing but a toy soldier or a tin whistle,
there was always some kind of a surprise, and that delicious uncertain
creepy feeling first."
"Well, you don't always draw a prize in your pop-corn when you're
drawing room-mates, I can tell you _that_!" announced Cornie
emphatically.
"I was at a school the year before I came here, where I had to room with
a girl who almost drove me to distraction. She was a mild, modest little
thing, who, as Cowper says:
"'Would not with a peremptory tone
Assert the nose upon her face her own.'
Yet she'd do things that would provoke me beyond endurance. Sometimes I
could hardly keep from choking her."
"What kind of things for instance?" asked Mary.
"Well, for one thing, and it does seem a little one when you tell it, we
had about a thousand photographs, more or less, perched around on the
mantel and walls. Essie was so painfully modest that she couldn't bear
to undress with them looking at her, so she'd turn their faces to the
wall, and then next morning she'd be so slow about getting down to
breakfast that there wouldn't be time to turn them back. There my poor
family and friends would have to stay with their faces to the wall all
day as if they were in disgrace, unless I went around and turned them
all back myself.
"Then she was such a queer little mouse; didn't really come out of her
hole and get sociable until after dark. As soon as the lights were out
and we were in bed, she'd want to talk. No matter how sleepy I was, that
was the time to tell all her troubles. She was so humble and respectful
in asking my advice that I couldn't throw a pillow at her and shut her
up, so there she'd lie and talk in a stage whisper till after midnight.
Then it was like pulling teeth to get her up in the morning. She took to
setting an alarm clock for awhile, to rouse her early and give her half
an hour to wake up in. It never made the slightest difference to her,
but always wakened me. Finally I unscrewed the alarm key and hid it. She
was so sensitive that I couldn't scold and fuss about things. Now with
Dorene here, I simply gag her when she talks too much, shut her in the
closet when she gets in my way, and scalp her when she doesn't do as she
is bid."
Without any reason for forming such a mental picture of her prospective
room-mate, Mary had imagined her to be a blue-eyed, golden-haired little
creature, with a sort of wax-doll prettiness: a girl made to be petted
and considered and shielded like a delicate flower. The type appealed to
her. Independent and capable herself, she was prepared to be almost
motherly in her care for Ethelinda's comfort. With this preconceived
notion it was somewhat of a shock when she went back to her room and
found the real Ethelinda being ushered into it.
She was not blue-eyed and appealing. She was large, she was
self-assured, and she took possession of the room in an expansive
all-pervading sort of way that made Mary feel very small and
insignificant. The room itself that heretofore had been so spacious
suddenly seemed to shrink, and when a huge trunk was brought in, it was
fairly crowded.
Mary drew her chair into the narrow space between the bed and the
window, but even there she felt in the way. "I don't see why I should,"
she thought with vague resentment. "It's as much my room as hers."
It was one of the requirements of the school that all trunks must be
emptied and sent to the store-room on arrival, and presently, as
Ethelinda seemed ignorant of the rule, Mary told her and offered to help
her unpack. The answer was excessively polite, so polite that it left
Mary at greater arm's length than before. Fanchon was to do the
unpacking. She had come on purpose for that. In a few moments Fanchon
came in, a middle-aged woman who had accompanied her from home, and who
was to return as soon as her charge was properly settled. The two
conversed in French, as Ethelinda, with her hands clasped behind her
head, tipped back in a rocking chair and lazily watched proceedings. She
was utterly regardless of Mary's presence.
"I might as well be the door-knob for all the notice she takes of me,"
thought Mary resentfully, "Well, she may prove to be as much as a tin
whistle, but she certainly isn't the prize I had hoped to find."
She cast another furtive glance at her over her lead-stringing, slowly
making up her estimate of her.
"She's what Joyce would call a drab blonde--washed out complexion and
sallow hair. She looks drab all the way through to me, but she may be
the kind that improves on acquaintance. She certainly has a good figure,
and looks as stylish as one of those fashion ladies in _Vogue_."
From time to time Mary proffered bits of information as occasion
offered, as to which of the drawers were empty and how to pull the
wardrobe door a certain way when it stuck, but her friendly advances
were so coldly received, that presently she slipped out of the room and
went over to the East wing to see what Elise Walton was doing.
Elise had already made friends with her room-mate, a little dumpling of
a girl by the name of Agnes Olive Miggs, and was calling her A.O. as
every one else did. In five minutes Mary was calling her A.O. too, and
wishing a little enviously that either one of these bright friendly
girls could have fallen to her lot instead of the polite iceberg she had
run away from.
"But I won't complain of her to them," she thought loyally. "Maybe
she'll improve on acquaintance and be so nice that I'd be sorry some day
that I said anything against her."
Several other girls came in while she sat there, and a box of candy was
passed around. Finding herself in the company of congenial young spirits
was a new experience for Mary.
"Now I know what it means to be 'in the swim,'" she thought exultantly.
"I feel like a duck who has found a whole lake to swim in, when it has
never had anything bigger than a puddle before."
The sensation was so exhilarating that it prompted her to exert herself
to keep on saying funny things and send her audience off into gales of
laughter. And all the time the consciousness deepened that they really
liked her, that she was really entertaining them.
After lunch the day went by in a rush. Each teacher met her classes,
programmes were arranged and lessons assigned. By night Mary had made
the acquaintance of every girl in the Freshman class and many of the
others. She started to her room all aglow with the new experiences,
thinking that if she could only find Ethelinda responsive it would put
the finishing touch to a perfect day. Betty was in the upper hall
surrounded by an admiring circle, for all the old girls who remembered
her as the star of her class, and all the new ones who had been
attracted to her from the moment they saw her were crowding around her
as if she were holding some kind of court. It was a moment of triumph
for Mary when Betty laughingly excused herself from them all and drew
her aside.
"Come into my room a few minutes," she said. "I've something to show
you," While she was looking through her desk to find it she asked,
"Well, how goes it, little girl? Is school all you dreamed it would be?"
"Betty, she won't thaw out a bit."
"Who, dear?"
"That Miss Ethelinda Hurst. When I went up stairs to dress for dinner I
tried my best to be sociable, and brought up every subject that I
thought would interest her. She barely answered till she found that I
had come out to Warwick Hall from the city alone. That horrified her, to
think I'd taken a step without a chaperon, and she said it in such a way
that I couldn't help saying that I thought one must feel like a poodle
tied to a string--always fastened to a chaperon. As for me give me
liberty or give me death. And she answered, 'Oh, aren't you _queer_!'
Then after awhile I tried again, but she wouldn't draw out worth a cent.
Said she had never roomed with any one before, but supposed it was one
of the disagreeable things one had to put up with when one went away to
school. Imagine! Pleasant for me, wasn't it!"
"Try letting her alone for awhile," advised Betty. "Beat her at her own
game. Play dumb for--say a week."
"But that is so much good time wasted, when we might be chums from the
start. When you're going to bed is the cream of the day. You see you
always had Lloyd, so you don't know what it is like to room with an
oyster."
"Here it is," announced Betty, unwrapping the package she had just
found, and passing it to Mary. "Lloyd's latest photograph, the best she
has ever had taken, in my opinion. It's so lifelike you almost wait to
hear her speak. And I like it because it's so simple and girlish. I
suppose the next one will be taken in evening gown after she makes her
debut."
"Oh, is it for me?" was the happy cry.
"Yes, frame, picture, nail to hang it on and all. Lloyd sent it with her
love. The day the photographs came home, she found that funny slip of
paper with all the questions on it Jack was to ask. And you wanted so
especially to know just how the Princess looked and how she was wearing
her hair and all that, that she said, 'I believe I'll send one of these
to Mary. She'll admire it whether any one else does or not.'"
"Tell me about her," begged Mary, propping the frame up in front of her
that she might watch the beloved face while she listened.
Nothing loath, Betty sat down and began to talk of the gay summer just
gone, of the picnics and the barn parties, the moonlight drives, the
rainy days at the Log Cabin, the many knights who came a-riding by to
pay court to the fair daughter of the house. Then she told of her own
good times and the disappointment when her manuscript had been returned,
and the reason for her coming to Warwick Hall to teach.
"I have come to serve my apprenticeship," she explained. "The old
Colonel advised me to. He said I must live awhile--have some experiences
that go deeper than the carefree existence I have been living, before I
can write anything worth while. I am sure he is right."
When Mary had heard all that Betty could remember to tell, she took her
departure, carrying the picture and the nail on which to hang it. She
wanted to show it to Ethelinda, she was so proud of it, but heroically
refrained. Early as it was Ethelinda was undressing.
Mary had intended to do many things before bed-time, write in her
journal, mend the rip in her skirt, start a letter to Jack, and maybe
make some break in the wall of reserve which Ethelinda still kept
persistently between them. But when she saw the preparations for
retiring she hesitated, perplexed.
"She's tired from her long journey," she thought, "so maybe I ought not
to sit up and keep the light burning. Maybe she'll appreciate it if I go
to bed, too. I can lie and think even if I'm not sleepy."
The rip in the skirt had to be mended, however, or she would not be
presentable in the morning. It was a small one, and she did not sit down
to the task, but in order that she might work faster stood up and took
short hurried stitches. Next, taking off her shoe to use the heel as a
hammer, she drove the nail in the wall over the side of her bed, and
hung the picture where she could see it the last thing at night and the
first in the morning. Then, retiring behind her screen, she made her
preparations for the night. They were completed long before Ethelinda's,
and climbing into bed she lay looking at the new picture, glad for this
opportunity to gaze at it to her heart's content.
It made her think of so many things that she loved to recall--little
incidents of her visit to The Locusts; and the smiling lips seemed to be
saying, "Don't you remember" in such a friendly companionable way that
she whispered to herself, "Oh, you dear! If you were only here this
year, what an angel of a chum you would make!"
Then she looked across at Ethelinda, who had arranged the windows to her
satisfaction and was now stretching the electric light cord from her
dressing table to her bed, so that the bulb would hang directly over it.
In another moment she had propped herself comfortably against the
pillows, and settled down with a book.
Mary sat up astonished. She had sacrificed her own plans and come to bed
for Ethelinda's sake, and now here was the electric light blazing full
in her eyes, utterly regardless of _her_ comfort. She was about to
sputter an indignant protest when she looked up at the picture. It
seemed to smile back at her as if it were a real person with whom she
might exchange amused glances. "Did you ever see such colossal
unconcern?" she whispered, as if the pictured Lloyd could hear.
For a moment she thought she would get up and do the things she had
intended doing when she came up stairs, but it required too much of an
effort to dress again, and she was more tired than she had realized
after her exciting day. So she lay still. She began to get drowsy
presently, but she could not go to sleep with that irritating light in
her eyes. She threw a counterpane over the foot-board, but it was too
low to shield her. Finally in desperation she slipped out of bed and got
her umbrella. Then opening it over her she thrust its handle under the
pillow to hold it in place, and lay back under its sheltering canopy
with a suppressed giggle.
[Illustration: "LAY BACK UNDER ITS SHELTERING CANOPY WITH A SUPPRESSED
GIGGLE."]
Again she looked up at Lloyd's picture, thinking, "I'd have been awfully
mad if you hadn't been here to smile with me over it."
The bulb began to sway, throwing shadows across the wall. Ethelinda had
struck the cord in reaching up to pull her pillows higher. The
flickering shadows made Mary think of something--a verse that Lloyd had
written in her autograph album once, because it was the motto of the
Seminary Shadow Club.
"This learned I from the shadow on a tree
That to and fro did sway upon the wall,
Our shadowy selves--our influence, may fall
Where we can never be."
She repeated it drowsily, peering out from under her umbrella at the
swaying shadows, till something the lines suggested made her sit up,
wide awake.
"Why, I can take _you_ for my chum, of course," she thought. "Your
_shadow-self_. Then it won't make any difference whether Miss
Haughtiness Hurst talks to me or not, _You'll_ understand and sympathize
with me."
All her life when Mary's world did not measure up to her expectations,
she had been in the habit of making a world of her own; a beautiful
make-believe place that held all her heart's desires. It had given her
gilded coaches and Cinderella ball-attire in her nursery days, and
enchanted orchards whose trees bore all manner of confections. It had
bestowed beauty and fortune and accomplishments on her, and sent dashing
cavaliers to seek her hand when she came to the romance-reading age.
Friends and social pleasures were hers at will when the lonely desert
life grew irksome. Whatever was dull the Midas touch of her imagination
made golden, so now it was easy to close her eyes and conjure up a
make-believe chum that for the time was as good as a real one.
Absorbed in her book, Ethelinda read on until the signal sounded for
lights out. Never before accustomed to such restrictions, she looked up
impatiently. She had forgotten where she was for the moment in the
interest of her book. When her glance fell on the umbrella, spread over
Mary's bed like a tent, she raised herself on her elbow with a look of
astonishment. It took her some time to understand why it had been put
there.
Never having roomed with any one before, and never having had to
consider any one's convenience besides her own, it had not occurred to
her that she might be making Mary uncomfortable. The mute umbrella
called attention to the fact more eloquently than any protest could have
done. Ethelinda had endured having a room-mate as she endured all the
other disagreeable requirements of the school. Now for the first time it
dawned upon her that there might be two sides to this story, also that
this strange girl who seemed so eager to intrude herself on her notice
might be worth knowing after all. If Mary could have seen her bewildered
stare and then the amused expression which twitched her mouth for an
instant, she would have had hopes that the thawing out process had
begun.