reason or other, which irritated the Alpha girls a little. To do her
justice, she was utterly ignorant of this result of her connection
with Bertha Kitts and Alida Fosdick, nor would it have resulted in the
case of an ordinary girl. But Susan was more prominent than she ever
realized, and her whole connection with the others being official and
logical rather than social and actual, her conduct and opinions were
very sharply criticised from a rather exacting standpoint. Nor was
this wholly unfair, for she was herself an unsparing critic. More than
one of the Faculty smarted under her too successful epigrams; various
aspirants for popularity and power in the Alpha or the class learned
to dread her comments; her few friends themselves were never quite
sure of her attitude toward them. But she was not, for her part, sure
of them: it is hard to make friends in one's junior year. And though
she saw quite a little of Biscuits and Dick and Neal Burt--always her
constant admirer--she never for a moment lost the consciousness that
she was no friend of their friends, that she had no place in those
groups long since formed and shaken into place. They were a little
jealous of her, too, and resented her selection of this girl and that
from among them, though they could not but admit that her judgment was
good.
Her sources of irritation were the same always. Their very
flexibility, the ease with which those she had chosen out slipped from
her to their other friends (they laughed with her at them, even, after
the manner of girls--did they laugh with them at her?), filled her
with a hopeless jealousy. It was not their nice clothes and their good
times she grudged them, though she wanted both: it was their
connections, their environments, their very disciplines. When Biscuits
with loud lamentations elected Philosophy at the decree of her father;
when Neal took up two courses of Economics in order to help her mother
with "some footless syllabi in mother's literary club;" when Betty
Twitchell endured the gibes of her friends every rainy day because
"Papa won't let me wear a short skirt; he hates a woman in one--I
think it's perfectly horrid of him, too! Wait till I get pneumonia! As
if I'd 'get a carriage' to take me from the Hatfield to College Hall!"
Susan would have given every rhyme in her head for one year of their
conventional, irresponsible lives.
It was not money she longed for: Neal Burt was poor enough, and made
no secret of "my cousin's boots, my dear, and my aunt's silk waist,
and Patsy's gloves that don't fit her, that I have on this minute!"
But Neal gave her one of her worst quarter-hours, at the time her
mother came up. She was a pretty little woman with Neal's eyes; her
simple clothes had, like Neal's, a distinct air of taste and selection
about them; her interest in everything was so pleasant, her manner so
cordial and charming, that she made an easy conquest of the girls and
Neal's friends in the Faculty that came to meet her and drink tea in
the quiet house where Neal lived almost alone, much petted by her
landlady, an old family friend. Mrs. Burt was interested in Economics
that year--"the dear thing has a new fad every time I go home!"--and a
prominent professor of Economics from one of the universities
happening to be in town just then, one of Neal's friends among the
Powers invited mother and daughter to meet him. Mrs. Burt was equally
charmed and charming; the distinguished professor begged to be allowed
to send her a copy of his book, in which she had been much interested,
"and she went home proud as Punch!" in the words of her daughter.
Every word the kindly little woman had with Susan--and she had a great
many, for Neal had interested her mother in her friend--brought
closer home to her what had steadily grown to be the consuming trouble
of her life. She tried to imagine _her_ mother drinking tea with a
roomful of strangers; finding the right word for every one, talking
with this girl about her friends, with that about the last book, with
the other about college life in general. She fancied her meeting the
distinguished professor and discussing his book so brightly--and saw
the closet-shelves where Marie Corelli and the Duchess jostled Edna
Lyall: Mrs. Jackson said she liked some real heavy reading now and
then, and Edna Lyall had a good many problems in her books. She had a
sickening consciousness that her mother would inevitably defer to the
girls, particularly to the confident, well-dressed ones; and every
time that Neal patted Mrs. Burt's shoulder or kissed the tip of her
ear, she felt her heart contract with a spasm of that terrible gnawing
envy that is surely reserved, with their equally terrible capacity for
loving, for a certain small proportion of women, and women only. It is
a very sad thing for a girl to be ashamed of her mother.
In her junior year occurred one of her greatest triumphs. The senior
class had petitioned vainly for the privilege of giving _Twelfth
Night_ as their Commencement play: the refusal, based on the obstacle
presented by the part of Sir Toby, and couched in the undying phrases
of the Greatest Authority--"he should be neither drunk, nor half
drunk, nor bibulous, nor rioting"--impressed very deeply those more
susceptible to the humorous. With a commendable intelligence the
dramatics committee decided that under the limitations above quoted
the play would lack in verisimilitude, and cast about for another, but
that was not the end of it; for Susan, in whose hands the Alpha
farewell-meeting had been unreservedly placed, wrote, staged, and
directed the performance of an elaborate parody entitled _First
Night_, from which "the objectionable element in the unfortunate
William's comedy," to quote the preface, was successfully and
unsparingly expurgated.
Not only were the most obvious situations cleverly treated; not only
did Sir Toby, spare and ascetic, in a neat flannel wrapper, call
decorously for "a stoup of thin gruel, Maria!" not only did he and his
self-contained friends walk through a kind of posture dance with
killing solemnity, chanting the while a staid canon in which the
possibilities of "Why, should I drink on _one_ day?" were interpreted
with a novel and gratifying morality; not only did Malvolio utterly
eschew an article of apparel too likely to bring the blush of shame to
the cheek of the Young Person, but painstakingly assume, in the eyes
of the delighted audience, heavy woollen stockings, a constant and
effectual reminder of his hidden traditional garb: but a parody within
a parody ran cunningly through the piece. The trials of the committee,
the squabbles of the principal actors, open hits at the Faculty, sly
comments on the senior class, which had been active in reforms and not
wholly popular innovations--all these were interwoven with the farce;
and this not in the clumsy harmless fashion of most college grinds,
but pointed by a keen wit, a merciless satire, an easy, brilliant
style already well on to its now recognized maturity.
Most of the principal actors in the play finally selected by the
seniors, with more than half of the committee, were that year, as it
happened, from Alpha, and their delight knew no bounds. Susan did not
act herself, but she was a born manager; and the actors that cursed
her unsparing drill and absolute authority during the long rehearsal
season that made it the most finished affair of its kind, blessed her
vociferously on the great night of its production. It was the most
perfect success of her life--though the girls who thought she scorned
her college triumphs would have laughed had she told them so, later.
Every point was eagerly caught and wildly applauded; the stage
setting, the funny, clever costumes, the irresistible caricatures, the
wit and humor of the thing, all acted with a _verve_ and precision
unusual in college dramatics, where criticism is too often forced to
take the will for the deed, all called for a tremendous and
well-earned appreciation. The author was frantically summoned again
and again; the seniors exhausted a congratulatory vocabulary on her.
Her classmates shook her hand many times apiece.
Nor did the triumph end with the night, for the juniors, unable to
contain their pride, gave surreptitious bits of the play to chosen
seniors in Phi Kappa, and it was even rumored that the other society
was going to request a revival of the combination entertainment, now
out of vogue, with a view to having it repeated. This was suppressed
by the Powers, but it got about that one of the few type-written
copies of the piece had fallen into the hands of an Influential
Person--probably through Neal Burt, who admired it in proportion to
her own far from ordinary ability--and that the Person had assembled a
select gathering of her Peers for the sole purpose of reading it, with
unmistakably appreciative comments, to them. Some members of the
Faculty, old Alpha girls themselves, and present on the occasion of
its production, expressed their admiration in unstinted terms, and
altogether the Alpha gained a tremendous prestige.
This and her appointment as editor-in-chief of the _Monthly_ for her
senior year marked the height of Susan's prosperity. She used to
think, afterwards, that the play was the only pure pleasure she had
ever had: it was certainly the only one that her namesake had left to
her unspoiled. Fate ordered it that she should take off the
bulletin-board with her notice of editorial appointment a note hastily
addressed to S. Jackson, '9-. She opened it mechanically.
Dear Old Sue: It's a miserable shame! You ought to have had
it! But it seems that it makes no difference what we want, nor
who would work in best with the girls. _Genius_ isn't
everything, always--but you know what I wanted!
Your disappointed
H. S. K.
The note was not sealed, and she folded it and put it back quietly. A
moment later she received her congratulations, but to every one's "Of
course you're not surprised, Miss Jackson!" she smiled strangely. Sue
used the phrase, fresh from her own congratulations as literary
editor, and the concentrated bitterness of three years flashed out in
the other's curt answer.
"Of course you're not surprised--"
"_Are you?_"
Sue's startled flush was all the proof she needed, and crushing in her
hand the note that had meant the highest college honor to more than
one of the girls who had got its like, she went home to bear alone the
sharpest disappointment she had yet known.
There was no one to tell her that the senior editor whose initials
signed the note for Sue had been one of only two in Sue's favor; that
the board, so far from acting unwillingly under the direction of the
Rhetoric department, as she inferred from the note, had been
practically unanimous for her, particularly as the two opposed held
relatively unimportant positions and were far from popular. She did
not know that the note itself was a gross breach of etiquette, anyway,
and that both officially and socially its writer had risked the
gravest censure; so much so that Sue, far from being pleased, was
heartily ashamed of it and never told a soul about it till long
afterwards. The person who could have explained most effectively to
her how perfectly her election met the favor of everybody, herself
included--for Sue would have been as surprised to find herself placed
above her gifted namesake as to have found herself omitted entirely
from the board--was too chagrined at the abrupt answer to her
congratulations to dream of mentioning the matter further.
So Susan got out her first two numbers of the _Monthly_ with none of
the delighted importance of most editors. It was all spoiled for her.
She knew that she deserved it: it was impossible for her not to
realize that, so far as originality and power went, nobody in the
class, or the college, for that matter, could touch her work. It was
not the position that meant so much to her: she was perfectly
competent to fill it easily and acceptably, and she knew it. But she
wanted them to think so, too, and be glad to give it to her--and she
did not believe they were.
Shortly after her success of _First Night_, she got one of her rare
letters from home. She had little correspondence with them, and had
grown to regard their letters with dread, since each one had brought
unpleasant news, from Doris', to announce her engagement to one of
"the boys," a flashy, half-disreputable fellow, to her mother's,
enclosing a cheque, with gloomy forebodings that it might be the last,
and a disheartening chronicle of family affairs growing daily more
sordid. The sight of her characterless, uncultivated handwriting
always threw the girl into a gloomy, irritable mood, and as she opened
this one the remorse that had begun to prick her more sharply of late
at her inability to help them, if not in the way she would like, at
least in the most obviously necessary manner, crept over her and
saddened her even before she reached the crisis of the letter. It was
very simple: she must come home. There was no more money; there had
been none for some time, but her father was bent on her staying, and
had put it off longer than he should have done. It had been a foolish
expense, and she might have had a position long ago. There was car
fare and a very little over, and it was hoped that she had no bills.
They were going to move into an apartment over the store, and Veronica
was going to keep her father's books. And that was all.
Perhaps her mother felt sorrier than she knew how to say; perhaps it
was only the constraint of years and lack of _savoir faire_ that made
the letter so cold and curt; but there it was, with nothing to break
the shock: no regret for her, to lighten her sense of selfishness; no
appeal to her, even, to help them. They could get along very well; to
give up the house would be a great financial relief, and she would be
more a hindrance than otherwise. She knew that: she knew that her
presence would be a constant irritation, her criticism, impossible to
conceal, a constant source of strife and estrangement. It was only
that they had no more money for her--that was all.
She walked out to the long bridge, and sat down on a stone near the
end of it. For perhaps the first time a complete consciousness of how
bitterly she loved the place came to her. She, of whom many of the
Faculty afterwards wondered that she stayed as long as she did,
credited by all her acquaintances with infinite boredom at its
restrictions and wearisome routine, dreaded to leave it as she herself
could hardly endure to think. For three years she had taken a place,
unchallenged, among people of a class she had never known before.
Unknown, unhelped, she had by sheer personality and natural power
made herself not only respected but respected to an unusual degree.
She had patronized girls who would not have acknowledged her existence
three years before; whether they loved her or not, her class was proud
of her. Her going would be noticed--oh, yes indeed!
She rose to go home, and a little beyond the bridge turned to look
back: something told her that she should not know that view soon
again. Meadow and river and softly circling hills with the beautiful
afternoon haze thick on them, she stamped it on her heart--and with it
a sudden nearing figure. Down the long arch, slim and shapely against
the blue background of the tunnel, Sue flew toward her on her wheel.
Her hands swung by her sides--she had ridden from childhood--her feet
were off the pedals, her perfectly fitting heavy skirt hung out in
graceful fluted folds. Beneath her soft, trim hat her cheeks glowed
rose-color, her eyes shone like stars. The sun caught her smooth,
thick hair and framed her face in a glittering halo. She sat straight
as a dart, her lips parted with the sheer physical delight of the
swooping, effortless sensation--she was tremendously handsome. To the
other girl she was victory incarnate; the essence of ease and triumph
and perfect _bien-être_; her hopeless envy and despair. As she flew by
she spread out her hands in a quick, significant gesture, half
graceful and high-bred--half pert and of the music-hall: it typified
her and her friends perfectly to Susan, who never forgot her as she
saw her then, and whose _Mademoiselle Diana_, much admired by Sue and
her family, is nobody more nor less than Sue herself.
She found a letter waiting for her at home, a letter that the maid
explained had just been brought from the house where the other Miss
Jackson lived--it had been kept there by mistake and neglected for two
or three days. It was hoped it was not important. She opened it in the
hall, read it hastily through, read it again, looked at the date, and
asked for a time-table. The maid, suspecting bad news, was officious
in assistance and eagerly agreed to pack her things and get a man to
box the books when she had gone, which would be in the morning, she
said, with a strange, absent-minded air. She gave the girl her last
fifty cents, and while Maggie folded and packed, she wrote a letter
home.
"It seems foolish for me to come to Troy; I should only have
to go right back to Boston again," _she said in it_. "They want
me to begin to collect the stories right away and do some
reading for them besides--so I must be there. There is a new
magazine they have just bought, too, and I am to do some work
on that. It is a very good position and will lead to a better,
they say, and I am very fortunate to get it. They say very nice
things about my work in the "Monthly"--the college paper that I
was elected editor of--they seem to have read them all. I must
go on immediately. Their letter was delayed, and I shall try to
get there to-morrow. I will let you know when I find a place to
stay. I hope to be able to help you soon.
"Hastily,
"SUSAN."
She wrote a note to the Registrar and one to Neal Burt, whom, in her
letter of resignation, she recommended strongly to the board as her
successor, overlooking the constitution, which provides for the
literary editor's filling the first place when it falls vacant, and
refusing supper, she walked out over the campus. The dining-rooms were
opened to the soft air; the cheerful clatter of plates came out from
every window; she could see the maids hurrying about. She sat for an
hour in one of the hammocks, and then walked about the larger
buildings. The last dance of the season was on in the Gym; the violins
rose above the tramping and the confused uproar inside. White-armed
girls passed the windows and leaned out into the cool.
"How is it?" one called up from below.
"Mortal slow, dearie, but don't say I told you!" the other answered in
a stage whisper from above, and the music dashed into a two-step.
"Be_hold_ El _Cap_-i-_tan_!"
It haunted Susan's dreams for nights, that tune--it seemed impossible
that the dancers' hearts should not ache as hers did. She lingered,
fascinated, while the violins sang it over and over, and over again at
the storm of clapping that followed it.
"Be_hold_ El _Cap_-i-_tan_!"
It was a hideous, cruel tune, light and utterly careless, and yet with
that little sadness in it that some sensitive ears find always in good
dance music--is it because dancing must so obviously end so soon?--and
Susan has loathed it all her life. Indeed, at a recent luncheon given
in her honor by the alumnæ of New York, she requested that the
orchestra stop playing it after the first few bars--these people of
genius are so delightfully eccentric!
She left college as quietly as she had entered it; there is no doubt
that they would have made her Ivy Orator, had she stayed. The mail
that took the notice of her lodging-house to her family crossed one of
Sue's to her Uncle Bradford, of the well-known Boston publishing firm.
Among other things she said:
I'm glad you like her so well--I knew you would. She's really
much better for the place than Con. And I'm sure it was better
to write to her directly--she doesn't like any of us very well,
except Neal and Biscuits, and I have an idea she really almost
dislikes me. I knew that when you saw that essay on the French
and English as short-story writers, you'd want to give her the
chance. And she was the very girl to leave college, too--it
isn't everybody would be so glad to go just before senior year.
Not but what I would, fast enough, if I had her future before
me--Mon dieu! she's the only girl I ever thought I'd rather
be--you should see the poem she left with Neal for the
"Monthly"! She turns them off over night, apparently. It's a
loss to the class, of course, but everybody is very glad for
her--she always seemed so out of place up here, somehow. If
one doesn't care for the little footless stunts, it must be a
terrible bore, I should think. And when she's famous we can pat
each other on the back and say we done it--partly. With a great
deal of love for you and Aunt Julia,
SUE.
THE SEVENTH STORY
_A FEW DIVERSIONS_
VII
A FEW DIVERSIONS
"I wish you _would_ ask her up, Nan," said Mrs. Harte, confidentially.
"I want her to see the place. So far as I can judge, it's the best
thing for her. There isn't any doubt that she's a very bright girl,
but she's getting thoroughly spoiled here. You see, she does just as
she pleases--she's the only young person in the family--and I know we
spoil her terribly. Her mind is made up to come out in the winter,
here in Chicago, and they'll refuse her nothing--her father and
mother."
"They _don't_ seem what you'd call oppressively strict with her,"
remarked Anne, twirling her racquet.
"Now what I want is for her to get somewhere where she isn't the only
clever girl; to see that other girls can read and talk and play the
guitar and wear nice clothes and order silly young men about. And
judging from those of you that I've seen, you can!"
"We do our little best," said Anne, modestly.
"And I wanted her to see you all: that's one reason why I planned the
house-party. I was so disappointed when she came so late. You see, her
cousin Georgiana was--was unfortunate. She went to Yale and Columbia
and goodness knows where, and she had short hair and was such a frump
and she wore such hideous spectacles and talked about Socialism--or
was it Sociology?--all the time. I remember she was always trying to
persuade us to join clubs and protest against something or other--it
was very wearisome. So Madge got to despise the whole thing: she has
always thrown Georgiana at me when I mentioned college. It was
perfectly useless to try to make her understand that every girl
needn't be like Georgiana. She's very obstinate. But she's a nice
girl, too, and if she can only get out of her present atmosphere for
four years--"
"Pity she couldn't have seen Ursula, if she's afraid we're all
frumps," Anne suggested.
"Yes, isn't it? But I think she stayed purposely. Now, you--she says
you're an exception; that there can't be many like you. You see, Madge
has a standard of her own; she says she'd be ashamed to go through
college the way some of the boys do, with just a good time and as low
marks as they can safely get. She says she'd want to be a student if
she pretended to, and yet she must have a good time, and--"
"And she thinks it can't be done? Dear me, what an error! Well, if
she'll come up I'll be very glad to have her, I'm sure. I can trot out
our little pastimes and er--omit the more _sociological_ side," said
Anne, with a grin.
Mrs. Harte leaned forward eagerly. "Yes, that's just what I mean! She
got enough of that from Georgiana. I want her to watch you--"
"Sport about on the lawn? Gambol through the village? 'Make the
picturesque little lake echo with sweet girlish gayety,' as the
newspaper gentlemen say?"
"Yes, that's it," and Mrs. Harte patted Anne's broad shoulder. "That's
what I mean, you silly child. Just let her see that there are a few
diversions!"
Miss Marjory Cunningham, who was just then coming up from the lake,
was a tall, well-grown young woman of seventeen, with a handsome,
assured face and unexceptionable garments. She looked fully twenty,
and was young enough to find satisfaction in this circumstance. She
had been brought up, in the orthodox American fashion, to take a
prominent part in the household, particularly in the entertainment of
her mother's many guests; and this, added to the fact that she
happened to be much cleverer than the young women with whom her
social lot had hitherto been cast, inclined her to regard any one
under thirty with a patronage somewhat offensive, if mild.
She dropped down beside Anne as her aunt left the broad piazza, and
smiled politely.
"Aunt Frank says you're going to-morrow," she remarked, adding a
little curiously, "Shall you be glad to get back?"