HELEN'S DAY--AND ELEANOR'S
It was a week after the "prom.;" all the men had gone home, and all
the violets had faded, before anything else of particular interest
took place. Mary Brooks, to be sure, had been going about wearing her
preoccupied, important air and had declined various invitations on the
plea that she was busy; but nobody thought anything of that, because
Mary was always having periods of strenuous and conscientious effort,
surrounded on all sides, as Katherine Kittredge put it, by periods of
the exact opposite.
Nearly all the "literary" juniors, together with a good many like
Betty Wales who were not in the least literary, took Miss Raymond's
theme course. The bulletin boards were just outside the door of her
recitation room, so that part of the hall was always noisy and crowded
between classes; and at the close of the hour on this particular
Wednesday morning there seemed to be even more confusion there than
usual. But the class paid very little heed to what was going on
outside. Miss Raymond had a way of bringing up interesting points
that the recitation period was much too short to dispose of, and they
sauntered out in this usual leisurely fashion, arguing about the merits
of the theme that had just been read--a spirited essay of Eleanor
Watson's. Helen Adams happened to be the last one in the line, and at
Miss Raymond's desk she stopped to ask a question.
"Miss Raymond, could you tell me----" she began timidly. Just then a
tumult of cries and a burst of gay applause came through the half-open
door.
"Aren't they noisy this morning?" laughed Helen. "And it's not Monday,
so it can't be about a society election."
Miss Raymond was gathering up her books and papers. "Go out and see
what it's about," she said, smiling down at Helen's eager little face.
"Yes, but I just wanted to ask----" began Helen again.
Miss Raymond gave her a little push in the direction of the door.
"Never mind that now," she said. "You belong out there."
And Helen went out, wondering at Miss Raymond's insistence, into the
tightly packed, swaying mob of laughing, excited girls, who all seemed
to know what the noise and the merriment were about. As Helen pushed
through the door, a girl whom she did not know stretched out a hand to
her.
"Congratulations, Miss Adams," she said.
Helen looked her bewilderment, and the girl laughed.
"Your note is on the bulletin board," she said. "Didn't Miss Raymond
tell you?"
Just then a movement of the crowd tossed Christy Mason forward toward
Helen. Evidently Christy had something to do with the excitement.
People were shaking hands with her, and her face was radiant.
"Who else got one?" Helen heard her ask the girls around her.
"Marion Lustig," somebody told her, "and Emily Davis. I don't know who
else. One of the notes is still up there on the bulletin board."
"Oh, Miss Mason," cried Helen, "what is it that you are, please?"
"Why I seem to be an editor of the 'Argus,'" laughed Christy. "Business
manager, I think the note says. Isn't it splendid--only I don't see how
it ever came to me."
Helen's face flushed red, and then she got white and faint and entirely
forgot to congratulate Christy, who was much too happy to notice the
omission. Could it be that she was an editor? Was that what the girl
near the door had meant? Oh, she must have been mistaken! Helen looked
despairingly at the bulletin board with the surging crowd of girls
between it and her. It seemed as if she couldn't wait--as if she must
know at once whether or not there was anything there for her.
Just then a voice cried, "Pass this to Miss Adams. She's standing by
the door there, and she can't get through the jam." In a moment another
girl whom Helen didn't know, but who seemed to know her perfectly,
slipped something into her hand.
"I hope you'll enjoy the work as much as I have," the stranger said,
shaking hands vigorously, "and I know you'll do it much better."
Then Helen found herself suddenly a vortex about which the crowd
eddied and swarmed as it had swarmed about Christy, shaking hands,
congratulating, complimenting.
"But of course, it's no surprise to you," one girl said. "We were sure
you'd get it."
Helen only stared at her in blank amazement.
"Why, I never dreamed of such a thing," she told Betty a little later
when the hall had cleared and only the editors who did not have a class
the next hour and a few of their best friends were left. "Why, Betty
Wales, just think! I'm--I'm an editor of the 'Argus.'"
"Exactly," laughed Betty. "What does the note say, Helen?"
"Why, I don't know," said Helen. "I haven't had time to open it." She
looked at it doubtfully. "Betty, suppose there should be some mistake.
Suppose the note is about something else."
"It isn't," Betty assured her. "I heard Mary Brooks say you were an
editor, and of course she knows."
Thus encouraged Helen opened her note and read through its glorious
contents. "Betty," she said solemnly, passing it to her to read, "I
don't believe anybody was ever quite so happy as I am."
"Except the other editors," suggested Betty teasingly.
Helen shook her head. "I don't believe one of them cares as much as I
do. Who are the others, Betty?"
"Marion Lustig and Emily Davis and Christy and Jane Drew and--let me
see----"
"And Eleanor of course," put in Helen.
Betty shook her head. "No," she said, "Eleanor wasn't one."
Helen looked perplexed. "I don't see why. She writes better than any
one in the class except Marion Lustig. Why hasn't the 'Argus' printed
any of her things this year, Betty?"
"She didn't want them printed, I think, for one reason," said Betty.
"And doesn't an editor have to do other things besides write? Perhaps
Eleanor isn't fitted for it in other ways."
With that she escaped to the library. She had caught just a glimpse
of Eleanor in the crowd and seen the hunted look that came to her face
when somebody of Helen's opinion said, "Of course you're on the board,
Miss Watson."
"I wanted to choke her," Betty reflected, "but I suppose she wasn't to
blame for not having listened to unpleasant gossip. Poor Eleanor! It's
going to be a hard day for her!"
Meanwhile little Helen Adams went blissfully home to the Belden.
Several times on the way she pinched herself to make sure she was
awake. Up in her own room in the quiet of the big empty house she sat
down to think it all over. She had been very lonely during her freshman
year--but that didn't matter now. And the basket-ball song and the
verses and the quaint little essay on apple-trees that the "Argus" had
printed had meant long hours of hard work and discouraged waiting for
the right words to come. But the struggles and discouragements didn't
matter now either, in the face of this glorious, wholly unlooked-for
success.
Helen would have been amazed indeed if she could have heard Jean
Eastman's view of her position.
"Yes, I'm sorry for her," Jean informed the Westcott House lunch table.
"I think she'd have been happier without this. She won't fit in with
the others. They've all been prominent girls ever since freshman year,
and she--oh, of course, she has some nice friends, but only the ones
she was thrown with at Mrs. Chapin's and some freshmen she met through
her roommate. She isn't in Dramatic Club or Clio, and she's never had
any office in the class. She'll feel the difference now, and realize
how she's been left out from everything else."
"Do you think so? Now I can't imagine anything more exciting than to be
a 'dark horse,'" volunteered a bright-eyed little sophomore at the end
of the table. "Why, everybody is talking about her to-day. 'Who's Helen
Adams?' That's what they all want to know. It must be splendid to take
people by surprise and just make them find out about you."
"That sounds well," persisted Jean, "but in actual fact it's a
different matter. You get the place that everybody thought belonged to
some one else"--here Jean had the grace to look a little uncomfortable,
for her friends had frequently assured her that she stood as good a
chance as anybody for a minor position on the editorial staff--"but you
miss the fun of it. You don't get the flowers and the spreads and all
that sort of thing that the popular girls will have."
"Well, anyway Miss Adams isn't going to miss the spread," said the
bright-eyed sophomore.
"Who's going to give it for her?" demanded Jean.
"Miss Watson."
Jean laughed disagreeably. "Indeed! One of Eleanor's quixotic
philanthropies, I suppose." She lowered her voice so that only the
little crowd of juniors near her could hear. "Wouldn't you think that
to-day of all days she'd have preferred to keep in the background? But
I suppose she thought that she might as well be 'in it' one way if she
couldn't the other."
At first Eleanor's impulse had been just what Jean had suggested. She
wanted to get into the background, away from the noisy demonstrations
and the curious or idle inquiries about her omission from the "Argus"
board. Ever since she entered college, fully informed by her upper
class friends about all the ways of putting oneself forward and all
the offices and honors that a clever girl might aspire to, Eleanor
had looked forward to the day of the "Argus" elections as her hour of
greatest triumph. Now Emily Davis had the place that might have been
hers, and she was slinking home by a back path, hoping to avoid meeting
any one. She looked across the greening campus and saw little Helen
Adams also hurrying home. Her lips curled scornfully as she watched
Helen's joyous progress, for to her as to Jean this late hard-won
recognition would have had in it more humiliation than triumph. Then
all at once her face softened as the idea of the supper came to her.
"I don't believe any one else, except possibly Betty, will think of
it," she decided swiftly, "and perhaps it would please Helen more if I
should do it. Coming from some one outside her special friends, it will
seem like a more general recognition."
At the door of Helen's room she hesitated and drew back to consider.
All the editors would be at Cuyler's that evening with parties of their
friends. Everybody who saw her would either remember why she was not an
editor or wonder what the mysterious reason could be.
[Illustration: AT THE DOOR OF HELEN'S ROOM SHE HESITATED]
"I might wait until to-morrow," she thought. "There would be fewer
people then, and I shouldn't be so conspicuous."
But no; to-night was the proper night for an editorial spread, and
Helen should have the fun of being in the midst of things for once.
So she knocked and explained her errand. Helen's ecstasy of delight was
almost pathetic.
"A supper at Cuyler's for me!" she cried. "Oh, how lovely! How
perfectly lovely! Betty has ordered some flowers for me, and now you
do this! I haven't anything left to wish for. I'm sure I shall enjoy
my one big day as much as girls like you and Betty enjoy all yours put
together."
"I hope you will," said Eleanor, thinking bitterly of the "big day,"
when her story came out in the "Argus."
"And I think it is particularly nice of you," went on Helen, earnestly,
"when we all thought----" The look on Eleanor's face warned her not to
go on, and instead of finishing her sentence she put her arms around
Eleanor and stood on tiptoe to kiss her soft cheek.
Some of "The Merry Hearts" had already accepted invitations to
other spreads, but two of the B's were free and received Eleanor's
timidly proffered invitation with a heartiness that surprised her and
encouraged her beyond measure to go on in the difficult rôle she had
chosen. Katherine could come, and Roberta. Betty excused herself to
Nita, who was entertaining in honor of Christy, on the plea that Helen
would feel hurt if her freshman roommate could not come to her spread,
and Lucile declared that she was almost as "set up" by being invited to
a junior party as Helen was by being elected editor. So every one was
in the best of spirits and the "dark horse spread," as Jean called it,
was the gayest of all the editorial celebrations.
All the parties broke up at about the same time, and went up the hill
to the campus in a long, straggling line. Without any particular
manœuvering "The Merry Hearts" found themselves together in the rear,
with no outsiders in their midst but Eleanor. At the campus gate Bob
stopped the tail of the procession.
"Just wait a minute, girls," she said. "Mary, I want to call a meeting
of 'The Merry Hearts.'"
"All right," said Mary, taking her place under the gate lantern. "It's
called. What is the business?"
Eleanor had drawn off to one side, uncertain whether it would be more
tactful to go or stay.
"Just to elect Eleanor Watson a member," announced Bob, calmly. "Don't
go, Eleanor. I've sounded them all, and they all want you. This is only
a formality."
The formality was quickly disposed of after the very informal fashion
of the society, and Eleanor found herself wearing Babe's cherished
pin and having the objects and rules of the society explained to her
by Babbie Hildreth and Nita Reese, who had been her most implacable
critics.
"Yes, we changed our minds," Bob was meanwhile explaining to Madeline,
whom she had pulled back to a safe distance for confidences. "We felt
pretty mean the night of the prom., and to-day I told Babe that anybody
who was generous enough, after everything, to give Helen Chase Adams a
spread, and brave enough to face it out down there at Cuyler's,--well,
that for all that she deserved something in place of what she didn't
get. I hope she was pleased."
Alone in her room a little later Eleanor caught sight of her happy face
in a mirror, and laughed at herself for being so absurdly pleased about
such a little thing. "But after all it isn't such a very little thing,"
she reflected. "It means that they're beginning to trust me again, and
that's at the bottom of everything."
But the happiest person in Harding College that night was Betty Wales.
"Everything is getting fixed," she told the green lizard joyously.
"Eleanor is a 'Merry Heart' and Helen is an editor. It does seem as
if there was nothing more left to bother about." The ten o'clock gong
sounded ominously through the halls and Betty jumped for her light.
"There is always the ten o'clock rule," she sighed, and then she
laughed. "I wouldn't bother about things for anything," she said as she
tumbled wearily into bed.