"I think it"s too love-making. And no one up here makes love. The girls will howl at that garden scene. You must get something where they can be funny."
"But, Neal, dear, _you_ can make beautiful love!"
"Certainly I can, but I can"t make it alone, can I? And Margaret Ellis is a stick--a perfect stick. But then, have it! I see you"re bent on it. Only I tell you one thing--it will take more rehearsing than the girls will want to give. And I shan"t do one word of it publicly till I think that we have rehea.r.s.ed enough together. So that"s all I"ve got to say till Wednesday, and I _must_ go!"
The door opened--shut; and before the committee had time for comment or criticism, their chairman had departed.
"Neal"s a trifle cross," suggested Patsy, mildly. "Something"s the matter with her," said Julia Leslie. "She got a note from Miss Henderson this afternoon, and I think she"s going to see her now. Oh, I haven"t the vaguest idea--What? No, I know it"s not about her work.
Neal"s all straight with that department. Well, I think I"ll go over to the Gym and hunt out a suit. Who has the key to the property box now?"
The little group dissolved rapidly and No. 18 resumed its wonted quiet. "There"s nothing like having a society girl for a room-mate, is there, Patsy?" said the resident Sutton twin, opening the door. She and her sister were distinguishable by their room-mates alone, and they had been separated with a view to preventing embarra.s.sing confusion, as they were incredibly alike. "Couldn"t I make the Alpha on the strength of having vacated this hearth and home eighteen times by actual count for its old committees?"
"I"ve put you up five times, Kate, love, but they think your hair"s too straight. Couldn"t you curl it?"
Kate sniffed scornfully. "I"ve always known that the literary societies had some such system of selection," she said to the bureau.
"Now, in an idle moment of relaxation, the secret is out! Patsy, I _scorn_ the Alpha, and the Phi Kappa likewise."
"I scorn the Phi Kappa myself, theoretically," said Patsy.
"Do you think they"ll take in that queer junior, you know, that looks so tall till you get close to her, and then it"s the way she walks?"
"Dear child, your vivid description somehow fails to bring her to my mind."
"Why don"t you want her in Alpha? But be careful you don"t wait too long! You"re both leaving me till late in the year, you know, and then, ten to one, the other one gets me!"
"A little violet beside a mossy stone is a poor comparison, Katharine, but at the moment I think of no other. I am glad you grasp the situation so clearly, though."
"But, truly, I wonder why they don"t take that girl--isn"t her name Hastings?--into Phi Kappa? She writes awfully well, they say, and I guess she recites well enough."
The other Sutton twin sauntered in, and appearing as usual to grasp the entire conversation from the beginning, rolled her sister off the couch, filled her vacant place, and entered the discussion.
"But, my dear child, you know she won"t make either society! She"s too indifferent--she doesn"t care enough. And she"s off the campus, and she doesn"t go out anywhere, and she is always alone, and that speaks for itself--"
"Oh, I"m tired of talking about her! Stop it, Kate, and get some crackers, that"s a dear! Or I"ll get them myself," and Patsy was in the hall.
Kate shook her head wisely at the bureau. "Something"s in the air,"
she said softly. "Patsy is bothered. So is Neal. And there are plenty of crackers on the window-seat!"
Miss Margaret Sewall Pattison sauntered slowly down the stairs. For one whose heart was set on crackers she seemed strangely indifferent to the hungry girls standing about the pantry with fountain pens and lecture books and racquets and hammocks under their arms. She walked by them and out of the door, stood a moment irresolutely on the porch, and then, as she caught sight of Cornelia Burt coming out of the dormitory just beyond, she hurried out to meet her.
"Busy this hour, Neal?" she said.
"No," said Cornelia, briefly. "Where shall we go?"
"We can go to the property box and get some clothes," said Patsy, "and talk it over there."
In the cellar of the gymnasium it was cool and dim. The beams rose high above their heads, and a musty smell of tarlatan and muslin and cheese-cloth filled the air. Patsy sat on an old flower-stand, and pushed Cornelia down on a Greek altar that lay on its side with a faded smilax wreath still clinging to it.
"What did she say to you, Neal?" she asked.
Neal looked at the floor. "She was lovely, but I didn"t half appreciate it. I was so bothered and--vexed. Pat, I didn"t know the Faculty ever did this sort of thing, did you?"
"I don"t believe they often do," said Patsy. "Did she read that thing to you, too?"
"Yes. Patsy, that"s a remarkable thing. Do you know, when I went there I thought she was going to call me down for taking off the Faculty in that last Open Alpha. The girls say she hates that sort of thing. You know she always says just what she thinks. And she said, "I want to read you a little story, Miss Burt, that happened to come into my hands, and that has haunted me since.""
"How do you suppose _she_ got hold of it?" queried Patsy.
"I don"t know, I"m sure. I certainly shouldn"t pick her out to exhibit _my_ themes to!--I never saw them together."
"I think I saw them walking once--well, go on!"
""For the _Monthly_?" said I.
""No," said she. "I think the author would not consent to its publication." And then she read it to me. Pat, if that girl has suffered as much as that, I don"t see how she stays here."
"She"s too proud to do anything else," said Patsy. "Go on."
"Then Miss Henderson said: "I needn"t tell you the value of this thing from a literary point of view, Miss Burt."
""No," said I, "you needn"t."
""Very well," said she; "then I"ll tell you something else. Every word of it is true."
""I"m sorry," said I."
"Oh, Neal! I cried when she read it to me! I blubbered like a baby.
And she was so nice about it. But I hated her, almost, for disturbing me so."
"Precisely. So I said: "And what have you read this to me for, Miss Henderson?" And then she told me that the girl in the story was Winifred Hastings. She has always lived with older people and been a great pet and sort of prodigy, you know, and was expected to do great things here, and found herself lonely, and was proud and didn"t make friends, and got farther away from the college instead of nearer to it, and all that. And I said, "I suppose she"s not the only one, Miss Henderson." And she looked at me so queerly. "Mephistopheles said that," said she."
"Oh! Neal! How could you? I--why are you so cold and--"
"Unsympathetic? I don"t know. We all have the defects of our qualities, I suppose. Miss Henderson was quite still for a moment, looking at me. I felt like a fly on a pin. "Why do you try so hard to be cruel, Miss Burt?" said she, finally. "I think you have an immense capacity for suffering and for sympathy. Is it because you are afraid to give way to it?" And I said, "Exactly so, Miss Henderson. I never go to the door when the tramps come."
""Neither did I, once," said she, "but I found it was a singularly useless plan. You"ve got to, some time, Miss Burt."
""That"s what I"ve always been afraid of, but I"m putting it off as long as I can," said I.
"And then she told me that this was the first time that she had done anything of this kind for a long while. "I don"t believe in helping people to their places, as a rule," she said. "They usually get what they deserve, I fancy. But this is a peculiar case. You suppose she is not the only one, Miss Burt? I hope there are very few like her. I have never known of a girl of her ability to lose everything that she has lost. There are girls who are queer and erratic and somewhat solitary and perhaps discontented, but they get into a prominence of their own and you call it a "divine discontent," and make them geniuses, and they get a good deal out of it, after all. There are girls who are queer and quick-tempered, but good students, and devoted to a few warm friends, and their general unpopularity doesn"t trouble them particularly. There are the social leaders, who don"t particularly suffer if they don"t get into a society, who are popular everywhere, and get the good time they came for. But Winifred Hastings has somehow missed all these. She got started wrong, and she"s gone from bad to worse. She is not solitary by nature, and yet she is more alone than the girls who like solitude, even. She is not naturally reserved, and yet she is considered more so than almost any girl in college. I believe her to have great executive ability. I consider her one of the distinctly literary girls in her cla.s.s,--and if there is anything in essentially "bad luck," I do honestly believe that she is the victim of it. Her characteristics are so balanced and opposed to each other that she can"t help herself, and she does things that make her seem what she is not. Her real self is in this story. You can see the pathos of that!""
Neal drew a long breath. "Did she say that to you?" she concluded.
"No, not exactly. She told me that she was speaking to me as one of the social influences of the college. I felt like a cross between Madame de Stael and Ward McAllister, you know. And then she spoke of the power we have, the girls like me, and how a little help--oh, Neal!
it _does_ mean a good deal, though! I can"t make people take this girl up, all alone! The girls aren"t--"
"They are! They"re the merest sheep! If you do it, they"ll all follow you. That is, if she"s really worth anything. Of course, they aren"t fools."
"She sat on me awfully, though, Neal! I said, "I suppose you think we ought to have her in Alpha, Miss Henderson." She gave me a look that simply withered me. "My dear Miss Pattison," said she, in that twenty-mile-away tone, "I am not in the habit of suggesting candidates for either of the societies: I must have made myself far from clear to you." And I apologized. But it"s what she meant, all the same!"