THE BEGINNING OF GEORGIA AMES
It was a breathless Indian summer day. Every window in number ten Main
Building was open, but there was never a breeze to stir the heavy
air or break the spell of delicious languor that hung over the class
in "English Essayists of the Nineteenth Century." The new associate
professor in English had the course. His name was John Elliot Eaton,
after which he could write several mystic combinations of letters,
indicating his high rank in the world of scholarship. He was lecturing
this hot morning in his rapid, jerky fashion that made note-taking
almost an impossibility. He did not seem to mind the weather in the
least; if anything he talked faster and more eloquently than usual.
Presently he came to a sudden halt, and glancing ominously at the clock
made a dreaded announcement.
"You will write, please, for the remaining ten minutes, on the topic
previously assigned. I will finish what I had to say at the next
recitation."
The class in English Essayists drew a deep sigh and set to work.
Dr. John Elliot Eaton was as brilliant as reports had foretold when
the term opened. He was also young and handsome, and he had charming
manners, though he seldom let his classes know it. Generally he sat
before them as cold, relentless, and impersonal as an icicle; and the
minute the gong sounded the close of the hour he became, if possible,
colder and more impenetrable than before. Even Babbie Hildreth, who
was supposed to be going through college "on her smile," found it
impossible to "jolly" Dr. Eaton. Why he chose to be so unbending, no
one knew. One party declared that he was afraid of girls, and trying to
hide it; another said that he was a woman-hater, and didn't intend to
be bored by the attentions of susceptible damsels. Why, in the latter
case, he was teaching at Harding, was not evident. His riding horse,
his clothes, and his air of athletic, care-free well-being indicated
that he was not dependent on an associate professor's salary.
Altogether he furnished an interesting subject for research. But there
was one drawback; it was impossible to know him at all outside of his
classes, and there he was devoted to ten-minute tests. His pupils hoped
that he would speedily outgrow this taste,--it was quite evident that
he was doing his first teaching. Meanwhile they endured stoically, and
loftily informed their jeering friends, who had not elected English
Essayists, that the really interesting courses were never "snaps";
and besides there was one fine thing about Dr. Eaton. He almost never
called the roll, and he was a perfect gentleman about cuts.
Madeline Ayres lounged comfortably on the back row and watched
her companions struggling to express their opinions on "the topic
previously assigned." It happened to be the characteristics of Matthew
Arnold. Madeline had exhausted the subject in five illegible lines,
written in half as many minutes. She folded and signed her paper, and
leaned forward to see how the girls on the row in front of her were
progressing. Babe was chewing her pencil busily. Helen Adams was on
her second page and--yes, she had actually divided her work into
paragraphs! Madeline shrugged her shoulders, in token of her scorn
for such foolishness, and looked at the clock. Then she glanced at
the platform where Dr. Eaton sat, wearing his cold, slightly bored
expression, and not showing the slightest interest in the spectacle
before him.
Madeline Ayres differed from the majority in finding Dr. Eaton dull.
His blasé air irritated, instead of interesting her, and she longed
to startle him out of it, in spite of himself. Now she would try to
do it. Lazily she reached out a long arm for the sheet of paper which
Helen Adams had been hoarding against a possible emergency, and meeting
Helen's glance of protest with a pathetically beseeching gesture, she
went to work again, as if her life depended upon filling that sheet
before the gong struck.
"I have forgotten the exact wording of the topic," wrote Madeline
slowly, in a painstaking backhand that she resorted to in times of
stress, "but 'Matthew Arnold and the Ten-Minute Test' occurs to me as
an interesting point of departure. How would Matthew Arnold view a
ten-minute exposition of his characteristic qualities by a class of
young ladies (most of them deep-dyed Philistines)? I fancy he would
say----"
Madeline had made her point and turned several neat sentences before
the "remaining ten minutes" was exhausted. She folded her second sheet
as she had her first, paused an instant before writing "Georgia Ames"
on the outside, and giving both the papers to Babe to hand in, went out
by the back door. Half an hour later she had forgotten all about Dr.
Eaton in a heated pursuit of grasshoppers on the back campus. Biology
was Madeline's newest hobby.
She was late for English Essayists the next morning. The class had been
called to order and Professor Eaton was beginning to read something to
them. Madeline dropped into a seat near the door, found the place in
her note-book, and shook her fountain-pen into working-order, before
she realized that he was reading Georgia Ames's remarks upon "Matthew
Arnold and the Ten-Minute Test," with evident liking for Georgia's
ideas. Some of the class got the point of the theme, and more did not.
Madeline smiled inanely for the benefit of her neighbors, and wondered
if the professor would try to pick out Georgia Ames. Apparently he had
not even noticed the signature; for when he came to the end of the
theme, he looked at it curiously, consulted his roll, and added the new
name at the end of the list. Then, with a scathing comment upon the
deadly commonplaceness of the other themes, he opened his portfolio and
continued his unfinished lecture.
Madeline took notes in a leisurely fashion and wondered if it was
her duty to go up at the end of the hour and claim Georgia Ames's
contribution. She had already accomplished her object, by striking a
spark of enthusiasm out of the blasé Dr. Eaton; but she decided that it
would be just as well to wait a little before giving her explanation.
Georgia Ames might prove a valuable ally in some other time of need.
Madeline lost the thread of the lecture as she considered the vast
possibilities of a second self.
She brought the subject up at luncheon, without mentioning Georgia.
"She could do the things you never have time to," she explained, "and
the things you hate, or can't do well."
"I shouldn't care to be your second self," said Mary Brooks. "You'd
make a perfect drudge of her,--keep her mending stockings and doing
errands all her days. You might as well hire a maid."
"That's a good point," admitted Madeline; "but I should take care not
to abuse her. She would be a very fascinating person, I assure you. You
see, not really being anybody she could do just as she pleased, without
caring what people thought of her."
"How lovely!" exclaimed Roberta. "Then she could say all the things you
want to but don't dare, and believe all the things that you want to,
only you are afraid people will think you're crazy."
"I'm afraid that if Madeline's second self would be a drudge, yours
would be a freak, Roberta," said Mary.
"Oh, no," answered Roberta, "she would just be delightfully clever and
original."
"Well," said Betty, who, not being at all imaginative, had listened to
the discussion in wondering silence, "for my part I'm sure one self is
as much as I want to manage. Think of planning a Saturday afternoon for
two people, or making out two schedules of studies!"
"I've thought of all that," said Madeline, passing her plate for more
dessert, "but I should have my second self vanish when she wasn't
needed, or when things were getting too complicated."
"Evidently second selves are going to be Madeline's next fad,"
said Mary with a sigh of tolerance. "Prepare to see her catching
grasshoppers with a ghostly double beside her." She turned to Madeline.
"You do get the funniest notions. What put this idea into your head?"
"Oh, it just blew in," said Madeline lazily. "Then it sprouted, and
now I'm very curious to see how tall it will grow." With which lucid
explanation she sauntered off to the library.
She was really getting very much interested in Georgia Ames, but, as
she was also very much interested in a number of other things, and as
Georgia obviously would keep until she was wanted, Madeline was in no
haste to push her forward.
That day's recitation in English Essayists had been the last of the
week, and it was the third recitation of the following week before the
class had any more written work. Madeline finished hers with her usual
promptness, and then, having nothing else to do, wrote a paper for
Georgia Ames, not because she had anything particular to say, but on
the principle that Georgia, being on the professor's roll, would better
be doing her work.
That night the Belden House gave its annual dance in the gym. It was
still Indian summer weather and the moon was full. Madeline, who did
not share the enthusiasm of most Harding girls for man-less dances,
arranged her program with a view to frequent intervals of moonlight and
solitude on the back campus. She danced the first number with one of
her guests, and then strolled out to enjoy numbers two, three and four,
which were blanks. She found a belated hammock, sole relic of the joys
of springtime, swinging under the yellowing apple-trees, and lay back
in it, listening to the music that floated out, soft and sweet, from
the gaily lighted gym., and enjoying that delicious sense of evaded
responsibility which only the true Bohemian, without even the vestige
of a New England conscience, can experience.
The orchestra had finished number two, which was a martial two-step,
and begun upon three, a rippling, swinging waltz, when Madeline's
attention was attracted by the grotesque antics of a girl who was
sitting, or crouching, on the edge of a circle of light cast by the
electric lamp in front of the Hilton House. Madeline watched her
strange gestures for a moment, until something in the huddled shape
suggested Bob Parker, and assured that all Bob's performances were
interesting, Madeline left her hammock and went over to investigate.
The shape proved to be Bob, but a nearer view gave no more clue to her
strange behavior.
"Bob," demanded Madeline, "what in the world are you doing?"
Bob, who appeared to be absolutely engrossed in her odd pursuit, looked
up as Madeline spoke and surveyed her calmly. "It's quite evident what
you're doing," she said severely. "You're catching your death of cold
in that low dress, and you're cutting your own house dance. Did you
hear Nita Reese inquiring for me?"
"No," said Madeline, sweetly, "but she told me that she was pleased to
death to have one less guest to bother with."
"I know she never said that," retorted Bob, quite unmoved. "Nita's
always so polite. I hope she thought it though, but anyhow I couldn't
go. I went riding this afternoon and the horse ran away."
"Did he spill you off on this spot, and have you been here ever since?"
asked Madeline.
"Have I been here ever since?" repeated Bob indignantly. "He spilled
me four miles from here, my friend, and I walked home and sent an
exploring expedition after the horse, and dressed, and had dinner
down-town and came here afterward. How's that for strenuousness?"
"Well"--Madeline reverted to her original inquiry--"what are you doing
now?"
"Oh, yes," said Bob, cheerfully, "you did ask that. I--wait a minute,
Madeline. There he is again." Bob was off to the opposite end of the
lighted space. "Why, I'm making more 'Merry Hearts,'" she explained,
returning and sitting down again at Madeline's feet. "You know the
Hilton House has a family of tame toads that live under the front
steps. Well, I'm teaching them not to hop across the sidewalks, so they
won't be accidentally stepped on and come to untimely ends. They're
learning fast, too."
"Lovely thought," laughed Madeline. "Couldn't you find any sad hearts
around here but toads?"
"Grasshoppers," said Bob, promptly, "but they're about gone now, poor
things. Next spring I'm going to have a grasshopper class in high
jumping. It's a shame the way they let you zoölogy fiends catch them
for easy victims."
"Bob," said Madeline, admiringly, "you are certainly a genius. I was
thinking to-day that 'The Merry Hearts' needed a boom. We haven't
done anything so far except organize." Madeline swirled suddenly into
the darkness. "At the next meeting I believe I shall propose a new
member--just to liven things up a bit."
Bob shrugged her shoulders, frowning. "If it's Eleanor Watson, I don't
want her," she said. "I know Betty does and Betty's a dear, and what
she says goes with the B's. We're going to be nice to the freaks, but
we don't want Eleanor Watson."
"Don't worry," laughed Madeline. "It's not Eleanor. It's quite a
different person, Bob,--quite one of your sort."
The music from the gym stopped suddenly, and Madeline consulted her
card. "Let me see--two, three, four. Yes, the next is five, and I
have it with an adoring freshman. Good-bye, Bob,--and please don't
black-ball my new member."