stated a fact, and it occurred to Biscuits, who was somewhat
susceptible to personality, that she meant precisely what she said.
Although absence from the reception was just what Biscuits had
previously planned, she did not care to please herself at this price,
and though Evangeline Potts was the last person she would have
selected for her companion, and visions of the pretty little freshman
she had had in mind on filling out her programme flashed before her
with irritating clearness, she smiled encouragement and remonstrated
cheerfully.
"Oh, nonsense! Why, anything will do, I tell you! You don't need
evening dress! One of my friends last year had all her clothes ruined
by a pipe or something that burst in the closet and she went in white
duck. And she was one of the best-dressed girls in the class,
really--"
"Yes, but I'm not," interrupted Evangeline, "and that's different. I'm
just as much obliged to you for asking me, Miss Kitts, but I haven't
any evening dress and I shouldn't go without one."
It was characteristic of Biscuits that she attempted no further
argument. She knew that Evangeline Potts would not go unless she had
an evening dress, and it seemed, somehow, imperative that she should
go. She realized, too, that borrowing was out of the question.
"Why don't you cut one of your dresses out?" she suggested after a
moment. "Suzanne Endicott did that once when she was unexpectedly
asked to a dance and hadn't any low waist with her."
"I can't sew," Evangeline replied, "and I shouldn't know how to cut
it."
In proportion as she seemed convinced of the impossibility of going,
Biscuits waxed more eager to change her determination.
"See here," she said suddenly, "if I get Suzanne over here, will you
let _her_ cut one of your dresses out? I think she would; she's
awfully clever about that sort of thing and she's very obliging,
sometimes."
She was prepared for any answer but the one forthcoming.
"Why, I don't care," said Evangeline, indifferently, "only she'd
better hurry, hadn't she?"
Biscuits was by now so impressed with the vital necessity of getting
Suzanne that she had hardly time to wonder at her haste or her nervous
fear that the young lady might not be at home. She trudged up the two
flights and sighed with relief at the sound of Suzanne's mandolin.
Miss Endicott was not fond of the mandolin and played it solely for
the purpose of annoying the senior next door, who had a nasty habit of
rising early to study, and making her bed violently, driving it into
the wall just opposite Suzanne's pillow. When remonstrated with she
returned with calmness that she had not been accustomed, when herself
a sophomore, to object to the habits of seniors, and that excitable
young people who came to college for heaven knew what, had better
acquaint themselves with habits of study in others, since that was
their only probable source of knowledge of such habits.
Henceforth it became at once Suzanne's duty and pleasure to give what
she modestly called "little recitals from time to time," accompanied
by her mandolin, which instrument maddened her neighbor beyond
endurance. As Biscuits entered she was giving a very dramatic
rendering of the Jewel Song from Faust, and to her guest's opening
remarks she replied only by a melodious burst of laughter and the arch
assurance:
"_Non, non! Ce n'est plus toi!
Ce n'est plus ton visage!_"
Biscuits obeyed an imperative gesture and held her peace till the song
was over, when the performer, with an inimitable grin at the wall,
laid down her mandolin and pointed to a chair.
"_Que voulez-vous, ma plus chère? Vous avez l'air--_"
"Oh, for heaven's sake talk English, Suzanne! I want you to come over
and cut out Evangeline Potts' evening dress. Will you? She's freckled
and big, and she won't go unless you do. She's got to go, too. We
can't leave anybody out. Will you come?"
"_Mais qu'avez-vous donc, ma chère Berthe? Est-ce que j'suis
couturière, moi?_"
"Yes," said Biscuits, obstinately, "you are, and you know it. You
might be able to make her look like something. She's a perfect stick
now."
Suzanne shot one of her elfish glances at her visitor. It was
impossible to know what she would do.
"_Mais certainement vous avez assez de joue, vous!_" she suggested.
Biscuits did not reply, but watched the clock on the desk.
Suzanne shrugged her shoulders.
"_Eh bien!_" she said cheerfully, "_me voilà sage, Petits-pains, sage
et bien aimable! Où demeure-t-elle donc, votre amie?_"
"Bless you, Suzanne, her name's Evangeline Potts! and she--"
"_Mon Dieu!_ Evangeline Potts! _Mais quelle horreur! Est-ce que je
saurais prononcer ce nom affreux?_" babbled Suzanne, while Biscuits
found her golf cape and hustled her out of the door. Those who relied
too long or too securely on Miss Endicott's moods were frequently
disappointed in the end.
She had been born in San Francisco and brought up, alternately, in
Paris and New York, by her brother, a rising young artist, whose views
were as broad as his handling, and whose regret at parting with her
was equalled only by his firm determination to fulfil the promise he
had made their mother, long dead, to educate her properly. Only his
solemn assurance that she should come back every summer if she would
behave, and finally conduct their joint establishment in Paris with
the Angora for chaperon and the silky Skye for butler, kept her from
taking the first steamer back from the seaport nearest the town she
had hated consistently since she left that scene of delicious little
suppers and jolly painter-people and nights at the play and ecstatic
exhibitions when Brother was "on the line."
Now a wealthy young woman from San Francisco who chooses to spend from
two to four years at an Eastern college is a sufficiently complicated
type in herself; when she has grown up in studios and done very much
as she pleases all her life, she affords even more food for thought to
the student of character.
People who disliked Suzanne called her unprincipled and shallow and
lazy; people who admired her called her brilliant and irresponsible
and lazy; people who loved her called her fascinating and spoiled and
lazy. She could dance like a leaf in the wind; she could make herself
the most bewitching garments out of nothing to speak of; she could
create a Japanese tea-room with one parasol and two fans, and make a
Persian interior from a rug, an inlaid table, and a jewelled lantern;
she could learn anything perfectly in half the time it would take
anybody else to get a fair idea of it, and she could, if so minded,
carry insolence to the point of a fine art. She was far from pretty,
but her clever little brown face, with its strange gray eyes,
compelled attention, and her hair had that rare silvery tinge that is
an individuality in itself. She was never without two or three devoted
admirers, but her class disliked her, and it took all their
self-control to bear with her to the extent that was necessary in
order to profit by her special abilities. She was no more to be
depended upon than a kitten, and her periodical bursts of rage
rendered her unendurable to that large majority which objects to
flaming eyes and torrents of assorted abuse, to say nothing of the
occasional destruction of bric-a-brac.
And yet, to the wonder of these righteous critics, Suzanne kept her
warm friends. There was always some amiable Philistine to watch her
erratic movements with delighted awe, to run on her errands, to listen
to her amazing confidences, and to stand up for her through thick and
thin. Though Biscuits and her little circle were, even in their
sophomore year, beginning to draw away from her, vaguely conscious of
a necessary parting of the ways, frankly puzzled at the vagaries of
this girl who was half a spoiled baby, half a woman of the world, at
intervals the fascination of her personality drew them back for a
while, and they wondered that they could have thought her
irresponsible and selfish at heart.
To-day, as Biscuits walked beside her, convulsed by her narration of a
recent tussle with the lady-in-charge--"I was only putting an
accordion-pleated crêpe-paper frieze above the moulding, with thumb
tacks, and if she had kept out of the way--pig! 'What do you think you
came to college for, Suzanne? Certainly not work of this sort!' 'Oh,
no, Mrs. Wylie, of course not. I have long realized that our real
object in coming here was to save the maids trouble!'"--she almost
forgave her that curt refusal to have anything to do with the
reception decorations: "You'd far better save me for the Prom--I'll
manage that, but I won't do both, _vous savez, c'est un peu trop
fort_!" she had remarked royally, and the committee had smothered
their wrath and agreed, and cursed her afterwards in detail, after the
manner of practical young women who are far from the short-sightedness
of allowing their emotions to interfere with their intentions. Also,
they do not enjoy giving needless pain--on the spot. This is one of
the sweetest attributes of woman.
They knocked at Evangeline's door, and omitting preliminary
ceremonies, demanded the dress. Evangeline produced a dark red
cashmere: Suzanne shook her head. A much washed white lawn with what
appeared to be blue palm-leaf fans scattered over it was next offered
for consideration: Suzanne gasped, "_Mon Dieu!_" A gray gingham
decorated with yellow spirals met her demand for "a summer thing," and
caused the artist to sink upon the floor with a tragic groan.
"_Mais, Evangéline, vous me serrez le coeur! C'est horrible! C'est
effrayant!_"
Evangeline smiled politely but offered no further suggestion.
Suzanne looked at her searchingly through half-closed eyes. "Have you
anything black?" she demanded.
"I have a black silk," said Evangeline, and she brought out a heavy,
corded, ribbon-trimmed affair with a pointed vest that would have been
highly suitable for a maiden aunt who had, as Suzanne remarked, seen
misfortune. Biscuits sighed, but Suzanne rose rapidly to her feet and
clutched the scissors she had brought with her.
"_Enfin! Ça y est!_" she cried. "Put it on her, Biscuits!"
She persisted in utterly ignoring Evangeline, or, more exactly, in
treating her as if she had been a doll, talking to her in a pitying
tone that required no answer and commenting upon her deficiencies in a
manner that made Biscuits squirm visibly and glance apologetically at
the object of such impersonal criticism.
"Perhaps Miss Potts doesn't care to have such a--such a nice dress
cut," she suggested, as Suzanne, with what seemed a perfectly careless
gesture, slashed at the sleeves.
"_Quel malheur!_" replied the artist, indifferently, and Evangeline
added, "I'd just as lieve."
With pursed lips Suzanne snipped and pinched, while Biscuits followed
her every motion and Evangeline silently adjusted herself to each new
position as Suzanne pulled and pushed her arms and neck about. At
length with a sudden motion Suzanne stripped off the detached sleeves
as if they had been gloves, and snatched away the top of the scant
middle-aged waist with a quick movement. "_Voilà!_" she said, and
Biscuits gasped: for Evangeline Potts was a transformed creature. Her
arms and neck were ivory white and as soft and smooth as satin; the
lovely curves of her throat and shoulders could never have been
guessed at under the stiff black seams of the waist.
Suzanne patted her arms appreciatively. "I might have known it, with
that hair and those freckles!" she murmured. Then, calmly, to
Evangeline: "The trouble with your kind is, you never have any
eyebrows and your eyelids get red, _n'est-ce pas?_"
She went a few steps back from the motionless figure and stood silent.
"You could twist a black scarf," suggested Biscuits, hastily. Suzanne
waved her hand.
"_Tu me dégoûtes, à la fin!_" she said coldly; "Get your cape on!"
Then, to Evangeline: "Undo your hair!" As the thick coil tumbled over
her shoulders, the directress of ceremonies deliberately selected a
light inner tress and snipped it off.
"Take it down town and match it--in velvet if you can, in silk if you
can't," she commanded. "And get enough, get two, three yards!"
"But will Miss Potts want to spend--" Biscuits looked doubtfully at
the white-armed goddess who contemplated herself quietly in the glass.
It was impossible to know what she was thinking; she was apparently
quite accustomed to strangers who dressed her in low-cut evening
dresses and snipped her hair and spent her money.
Suzanne stamped her foot. "_Va-t-en!_" she cried, and then, with an
irresistible mimicry of Evangeline, "_She'd_ just as lieve!"
When Biscuits returned with a great strip of tawny velvet, it was
taken from her at the door, and she was instructed to get from
Suzanne's room her make-up box and the gold powder that had so
unaccountably disappeared after the play last week.
"They borrowed the eyebrow pencil and that, the night of the dress
rehearsal, and they _swore_ to bring them back--beasts! What have I to
call my own? _Rien!_ Never, never, never will I lend anything again!
_Il faut faire un fin, vraiment!_"
It was a long hunt for Biscuits, and more than once it occurred to her
that she had refused to go on the decorating committee with a view to
escaping just such wearisome trotting about. When she handed the box
to Suzanne and suggested that the result should be extremely pleasing
to justify such toil, the red spot in the artist's either cheek and
her wide-opened eyes indicated the happy absorption to which no effort
seems worthy of mention. Biscuits, not allowed to enter the room, sat
wearily on the stairs, longing to go home but unwilling to abandon
Suzanne. It was very nearly six, and she was not dressed; she had left
the necessary perusal of _The Works of Christopher Marlowe_ till late
in the day, thinking to devote the evening to it; she took little
interest in Evangeline Potts, and she did not care much for dancing.
But for the moment her resentment vanished when Suzanne called her in
and she beheld the object of her labors under the gaslight in a
carefully darkened room. Her milk-white shoulders rose magnificently
from folds of auburn velvet that her wonderful hair repeated in loose
waves about her face and a great mass low on her neck. Her long, round
arms gleamed against the black of her skirt and melted into the glow
of her velvet girdle. In the white light her freckles paled and her
eyes turned wholly brown, and said mysterious things that could never
by any possibility have occurred to her.
"_Tiens! J'ai eu la main heureuse, n'est-ce pas? Vous la trouvez
charmante?_" said Suzanne, turning her about as if she had been a
dummy and indicating her opinion that the back view was, if anything,
more satisfying than the front.
"You're a genius, Suzanne! She's simply stunning! How did you do it?"
Suzanne smiled. "_C'est pas grand' chose_," she said modestly. But she
looked contentedly at Evangeline and loosened her hair a little. "Now
remember, don't put on those hideous rings," she commanded, "and don't
wear anything on your head. Do you dance well?" she added.
Evangeline hesitated. "I dance a little," she replied, "pretty well, I
guess."
Suzanne promptly encircled her waist and whistled a waltz. After a few
turns she stopped.
"You dance very badly," she said encouragingly. "If I were you, I'd
sit out most of them. You can say it bores you--they'll be glad
enough. Besides, you might get red and then you'd not be pretty. Now
don't move about much, and when Miss Kitts brings you the white roses
put them just where I told you.
"Very well," said Evangeline, and as the other two prepared to go she
gave them one of her long, slow smiles. "I'm much obliged to you
both, I'm sure," she said; "you've been very kind."
"_Adieu, mon enfant--à plus tard!_" and Suzanne seized the door knob.
She turned in the door and threw a quick, piercing look at her
handiwork. "If you take my advice, you'll never put on that dreadful
shirt-waist again, _très chère_," she said lightly. "You'll spoil all
this splendor, if you do. Give it away--or, no, don't! you'd corrupt
the taste of the poor--burn it up, and the others with it, and get a
black suit and a black silk waist and wear a big white tie, if you
like. And a white tam--one of those pussy ones. Wear one color--_c'est
plus distingué_--and if you want a big black hat with plumes, I'll
make it for you. _Et maintenant, regarde-toi dans la glace!_"
With this invocation they left her, and Biscuits, learning that
Suzanne had exhausted her energy and proposed to inform her freshman
that she was ill and unable to attend the reception, became possessed
by the idea that she was responsible for this particular illustration
of the artistic temperament, and went without her dinner to hunt up a
substitute. She wasted no time in argument with Suzanne, who lay
luxuriously on her couch pillows with her hands under her head, and
planned costumes for Evangeline Potts all the evening, but tramped
angrily over the campus till quarter of seven to find an unattached
sophomore, forgetting that Evangeline's flowers were yet to be
purchased. Coming up with them in her hand, a little later, she was
forced to stop and explain to the substitute the intricacies of
Suzanne's programme, breaking off abruptly to beat her breast like the
wedding guest, for she heard the loud bassoon and fled to her room,
tearing her evening dress hopelessly and completing her toilette on
the stairs. The substitute suffered from a violent headache as the
result of her unexpected exertions, and the little freshman cried
herself to sleep, for she had dreamed for nights of going with
Suzanne, whom she admired to stupefaction.
But of all this Evangeline Potts knew little, and, it may be, cared
less. She was one of the successes of the evening, and her few remarks
were quoted diligently. She could have danced dozens of extras, had so
many been possible, and Biscuits was considered to have displayed more
than her ordinary cleverness in procuring a creature so picturesque
and distinguished.
This did not surprise her, nor did she particularly resent being
pointed out by more than one freshman as "the sophomore that took that
stunning Miss Potts"; but her amazement was undisguised, the next
morning but one, at the sight of Evangeline walking out from chapel
with a prominent junior, the glamor of the evening gone, it is true,
her face somewhat heavy and undeniably freckled, but nevertheless an
Evangeline transformed. From her fluffy white cap to the hem of her
dignified black skirt she was the realization of Suzanne's parting
suggestions, and the distinct intention of her costume had its full
effect. She was far more impressive than the jolly little
short-skirted junior, whose curly yellow hair paled beside the dark
richness of Evangeline's massive coils, and Biscuits, remembering that
she had called her "a perfect stick," marvelled inwardly.
She went to call on her a little later, but Evangeline was not in; and
feeling that her duty was done, Miss Kitts gave no further thought to
what she considered an essentially uninteresting person, but devoted
herself to a study of the campus house into which she had moved only
that year.
She saw Evangeline very rarely after that, except at the dances and
plays, where her white shoulders framed in auburn velvet appeared very
regularly. Once, happening to sit beside her, she began a
conversation, but she could not remember afterward that Miss Potts
said anything but, "Yes, indeed," or, "Yes, I think so, too." Her
surprise was therefore great when, on hearing the result of the
sophomore elections the next fall, and audibly commenting on the
oddity of Miss Evangeline Potts in the position of sophomore
president, she was indignantly assured by a loyal member of that class
that the vote was almost unanimous and that she was one of the ablest
girls in the class.
Even this she did not consider long, for the sophomore presidency is
the least important of the four; but when among the first five
sophomores to be triumphantly ushered into Phi Kappa Psi she was asked
to consider the name of Evangeline Potts, she remonstrated.
"But she's not clever! She's not half so bright as lots we haven't
got!" she objected. "Why do we want her?"
"She's no prod, of course, but she's a prominent girl and class
president," was the answer, "and she's really very strong, I
think--they say she does fair work, and everybody but you wants her.
Do you really disapprove of her?"
"Oh, no!" said Biscuits, and watched Miss Potts with interest. She
received her congratulations quietly, with a manner that made one
wonder if they had been quite in good taste, and acted altogether as
if she had fully expected to enter the society with Ursula Wyckoff and
Dodo Bent. The senior class president took her out of chapel at the
head of the file, with a bunch of violets as big as her two fists
pinned to her belt, and Biscuits was asked to a supper in her honor in
the campus house she had recently entered.
One of the other guests was the little freshman Biscuits had first
asked to the sophomore reception, herself a sophomore now, and one of
Phi Kappa's first five.
"Was your class surprised at the elections?" asked Biscuits, glancing
half unconsciously at Evangeline. The sophomore smiled gently, with a
hardly perceptible recognition of Biscuits' look.
"Oh, no," she replied; "we expected them--except, perhaps, one or
two." Her polite little blush showed her traditional surprise at her
own success, and the junior gave the equally traditional deprecating
smile.
"Who's the other?" she inquired bluntly. The sophomore was taken off
her guard and glanced again at Evangeline.
"Why, some of us didn't exactly see--we think Alison Greer's terribly
bright--we didn't expect--and yet, I don't know! After all, I think
perhaps we weren't so awfully surprised!"
"Now, I wonder if you really weren't, or if you're lying?" thought
Biscuits, and then, remembering suddenly, "but that's just the way
_we_ all talked last year about Evelyn Lyon!"
That summer Evangeline spent in France with Suzanne, who informed
Biscuits before they sailed that though she couldn't find out anything
about Miss Potts' parents, she had learned of the existence of a
well-to-do uncle in New Hampshire who intended leaving quite a little
money to his uncommunicative niece--he had given her the money to go
abroad.
"She planned it all out, and asked to go with me, and I couldn't well
refuse," said Suzanne, "though Brother will be wild with rage--he
hates women who are not clever: _il est un peu exigéant, mon frère_."
By senior year Biscuits had very nearly lost track of Suzanne, who
left the campus and spent most of her time sketching. Brother had
shown some pen-and-ink portraits of hers to a great critic, who had
declared that Brother had by no means exhausted the family genius, and
Suzanne, heavily bribed, had returned to her last year of durance. The
day of the Junior Prom Biscuits received a very French little note
inviting her to "_une première vue_," and with the full expectation of
a pen-and-ink collection, she confronted Evangeline, glorious in white
satin and gold passementerie, with an amber chain and a great amber
comb in her hair.
"_Vous rappelez-vous cette première fois, hein?_" Suzanne asked, with
a grin. "_Ça date de loin, n'est-ce pas?_" Adding cheerfully,
"_L'oncle est mort et nous avons une jolie dot!_"
Biscuits was not surprised to learn that Ursula Wyckoff had moved
heaven and earth to get her cousin from Columbia for Evangeline's
escort; she had heard how Nan Gillatt actually took her own brother to
the Glee Club concert because Evangeline preferred the youth selected
by Nan for herself, and she remembered how _she_ had hunted from shop
to shop for the velvet that matched that auburn hair. It was not that
Evangeline insisted: she did not beg favors. But her habit of
receiving a proposition in silence filled one with an irresistible
desire to better one's offer, and even the improvement seemed poor in
the calm scrutiny of those red-brown eyes.
"What I can't see is, who pushes her!" mused Biscuits.