"She"d like to, if she has any fun in her--it would be a game with some point to it! And will you ask her, or shall I?"
They were half in joke and half in earnest: it was a real crisis to them. They were only freshmen, and they had invited the seniors and the Faculty. And two of the most prominent seniors! Whom they hadn"t known at all! They had a sense of humor, but they were proud, too, and they had a woman"s horror of an unsuccessful social function. They felt that they were doomed to endless joking at the hands of the whole college, and this apprehension, though probably exaggerated, nerved them to their _coup d"etat_.
Grace walked down the shop. "I will ask her," she said.
Katherine stood with her back turned and tried not to hear. Suppose the girl should be insulted? Suppose she should be afraid? Now that there was a faint hope of success, she realized how frightened and discouraged she had been. For it would be a success, she saw that.
n.o.body would have had Miss Biddle to talk with for more than a few minutes anyhow, they had asked such a crowd. And yet she would have been the centre of the whole affair.
"Katherine," said a voice behind her, "let me introduce Miss Brooks, who has consented to help us!"
Katherine held out her hands to the girl. "Oh, thank you! _thank_ you!" she said.
The girl laughed. "I think it"s queer," she said, "but if you are in such a fix, I"d just as lief help you as not. Only I shall give you away--I shan"t know what to say."
Grace glanced at Katherine. Then she proved her right to all the praise she afterward accepted from her grateful room-mate. "That will be very easy," she said sweetly. "Miss Biddle, whom you will--will represent, speaks very rarely: she"s not at all talkative!"
Katherine gasped. "Oh, no!" she said eagerly, "she"s very statuesque, you know, and keeps very still and straight, and just looks in your eyes and makes you think she"s talking. She says "Really?" and "Fancy, now!" and "I expect you"re very jolly here," and then she smiles. You could do that."
"Yes, I could do that," said the girl.
"Can you come to the hotel right after dinner?" said Grace, competently, "and we"ll cram you for an hour or so on Miss Biddle"s affairs."
The girl laughed. "Why, yes," she said, "I guess I can get off."
So they left her smiling at them from the domestic bread, and at two o"clock they carried Miss Henrietta Biddle"s dress-suit case to the hotel and took Miss Brooks to her room. And they sat her on a sofa and told her what they knew of her alma mater and her relatives and her character generally. And she amazed them by a very comprehensive grasp of the whole affair and an apt.i.tude for mimicry that would have gotten her a star part in the senior dramatics. With a few corrections she spoke very good English, and "as she"d only have to answer questions, anyhow, she needn"t talk long at a time," they told each other.
She put up her heavy hair in a twisted crown on her head, and they put the blue cloth gown on her, and covered the place in the front, where it didn"t fit, with a beautiful fichu that Henrietta had apparently been led of Providence to tuck in the dress-suit case. And she rode up in a carriage with them, very much excited, but with a beautiful color and glowing eyes, and a smile that brought out the dimple that Henrietta never had.
They showed her the room and the sandwiches and the tea, and they got into their clothes, not speaking, except when a great box with three bunches of English violets was left at their door with Grace"s card.
Then Katherine said, "You dear thing!" And Miss Brooks smiled as they pinned hers on and said softly, "Fancy, now!"
And then they weren"t afraid for her any more.
When the pretty Miss Pratt came, a little after four, with Miss Williams, she smiled with pleasure at the room, all flowers and tea and well-dressed girls, with a tall, handsome brunette in a blue gown with a beautiful lace bib smiling gently on a crowd of worshippers, and saying little soft sentences that meant anything that was polite and self-possessed.
Close by her was her friend Miss Sewall, of the freshman cla.s.s, who sweetly answered half the questions about Bryn Mawr that Miss Biddle couldn"t find time to answer, and steered people away who insisted on talking with her too long. Miss Farwell, also of the freshman cla.s.s, a.s.sisted her room-mate in receiving, and pa.s.sed many kinds of pleasant food, laughing a great deal at what everybody said and chatting amicably and unabashed with the two seniors of honor, who openly raved over Miss Biddle of Bryn Mawr.
As soon as Katherine had said, "May I present Miss Hartwell--Miss Ackley?" they took their stand by the stately stranger and talked to her as much as was consistent with propriety.
"Isn"t she perfectly charming!" they said to Miss Parker, and "Yes, indeed," replied that lady, "I should have known Netta anywhere. She is just what I had thought she would be!"
And Miss Williams, far from freezing the pretty hostess, patted her shoulder kindly. "Henrietta is quite worth coming to see," she said with her best and most exquisite manner. "I have heard of the Bryn Mawr style, and now I am convinced. I wish all our girls had such dignity--such a feeling for the right word!"
And they had the grace to blush. They knew who had taught Henrietta Biddle Brooks that right word!
At six o"clock Miss Biddle had to take the Philadelphia express. She had only stopped over for the tea. And so the girls of the house could not admire her over the supper-table. But they probably appreciated her more. For after all, as they decided in talking her over later, it wasn"t so much what she said, as the way she looked when she said it!
But only a dress-suit case marked H. L. B. took the Philadelphia express that night, and a tall, red-cheeked girl in a mussy checked suit left the hotel with a bunch of violets in her hand and a reminiscent smile on her lips.
"We simply can"t thank you; we haven"t any words. You"ve helped us give the nicest party two freshmen ever gave, if it is any pleasure to you to know that," said Katherine. "And now you"re only not to speak of it."
"Oh, no! I shan"t speak of it," said the girl. "You needn"t be afraid.
n.o.body that I"d tell would believe me, very much, anyhow. I"m glad I could help you, and I had a lovely time--lovely!"
She smiled at them: the slow, sweet smile of Henrietta Biddle, late of Bryn Mawr. "You College ladies are certainly queer--but you"re smart!"
said Miss Brooks of the bakery.
THE FOURTH STORY
_BISCUITS EX MACHINA_
IV
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
B. S. Kitts--this was the signature she had affixed in a neat clerical backhand to all her written papers since the beginning of freshman year; and she had of course been called Biscuits as soon as she had found her own particular little set of girls and settled down to that peculiar form of intimacy which living in barracks, however advantageously organized, necessitates. She had a sallow irregular face, fine brown eyes surrounded with tiny wrinkles, a taste for Thackeray, and a keen sense of humor. It was the last which was subsequently responsible for this story about her.
She was quite unnoticed for two or three years, which is a very good thing for a girl. During that time she quietly took soundings and laid in material, presumably, for those satiric characterizations which were the terror of her undergraduate enemies and the concealed discomfort of those in high places. During her junior year she began to be considered terribly clever, and though she was never what is known as a Prominent Senior, she had her little triumphs here and there, and in the matter of written papers she was a source of great comfort to those whom custom compels to demand such tributes.
She was the kind of girl who, though well known in her own cla.s.s, is quite un.o.bserved of the lower cla.s.ses, and this, if it deprived her of the admirations and attentions bestowed on the prominent, saved her the many worries and wearinesses incident to trying to please everybody at once--the business of the over-popular. She had a great deal of time, which may seem absurd, but which is really quite possible if one keeps positively off committees, is neither musical nor athletic, and shuns courses involving laboratory work. It is of great a.s.sistance also in this connection to elect English Literature copiously, when one has read most of the works in question and can send home for the reference books, thus saving an immense amount of fruitless loitering about crowded libraries.
Biscuits employed the time thus gained in a fashion apparently purposeless. She loafed about and observed, with _Vanity Fair_ under one arm and an apple in the other hand. She was never the subject or the object of a violent friendship; she was one of five or six clever girls who hung together consistently after soph.o.m.ore year, bickering amicably and indulging in mutual contumely when together, defending one another promptly when apart. The house president spoke of them bitterly as blase and critical; the lady-in-charge remarked suspiciously the unusual chance which invariably seated them together at the end of the table at the regular drawing for seats; the collector for missions found them sceptical and inclined to ribaldry if pushed too far; but the Phi Kappa banked heavily on their united efforts, and more than usually idiotic cla.s.s meetings meekly bowed to what they themselves scornfully referred to afterward as "their ordinary horse-sense."
One of the members of this little group was Martha Augusta Williams.
Sometimes she retired from it and devoted herself to solitude, barely replying to questions and obscurely intimating that to _ennui_ such as hers the prattle of the immature and inexperienced could hardly be supposed even by themselves to be endurable; sometimes she returned to it with the air of one willing to impart to such a body the mellow cynicism of a tolerant if fatigued _femme du monde_. In the intervals of her retirement she wrote furiously at long-due themes, which took the form of Richard Harding Davis stories--she did them very well--or modern and morbid verses of a nature to disturb the more conservative of those who heard them. At any expression of disturbance Martha would elaborately suppress a three-volume smile and murmur something about "meat for babes;" a performance which delighted her friends--especially Biscuits--beyond measure. Her shelves bristled with yellow French novels, and on her bureau a great ivory skull with a j.a.panese paper snake carelessly twined through it impressed stray freshmen tremendously. She cut cla.s.ses elaborately and let her work drop ostentatiously in the middle of the term, appearing at mid-years with ringed eyes and an air of toleration strained to the breaking point.
She slept till nine and wandered lazily to coffee and toast at Boyden"s an hour later, at least three times a week, with an air that would have done credit to one of Ouida"s n.o.blemen.
And yet, in spite of all this, Martha was not happy. The disapproval of the lady-in-charge, the suspicions of the freshmen, the periodical discussions with members of the Faculty, who "regretted to be obliged to mark," etc., "when they realized perfectly that she was capable,"
etc.,--all these alleviated her trouble a little, but the facts remained that her own particular set would never treat her seriously, and that her name was Martha Augusta Williams. Fancy feeling such feelings, and thinking such thoughts, and bearing the name of Martha Augusta Williams! It is, to say the least, dispiriting. And n.o.body had ever called her anything else. Harriet Williams was called, indifferently, Billie and Willie and Sillie. Martha Underhill took her choice of Mattie, Nancy, and Sister. A girl whose name was Anna Augusta. Something had been hailed as Gustavus Adolphus from her freshman year on; but below _her_ most daring flights of fiction must ever appear those three ordinary, not to say stodgy, names. That alone would have soured a temper not too inclined to regard life with favor.
Martha might have lived down the name, but she was a.s.sured that never while Bertha Kitts remained alive would she be able to appear really wickedly interesting. For Biscuits would tell the Story. Tell it with variations and lights and shades and explanations adapted to the audience. And it never seemed to pall. Yet it was simple--horribly simple.
Martha had invited a select body of soph.o.m.ores to go with her to the palm-reader"s. There were two clever ones, who vastly admired her Richard Harding Davis tales, two curious ones, who openly begged for her opinions and thrilled at her epigrams on Love and Life and Experience, and, in an evil hour, the Sutton twins, whom she admitted into the occasion partly to impress them, and partly so that if anything really fascinating should come to light, Kate Sutton could impart it to her room-mate, Patsy Pattison.
When they were a.s.sembled in the palm-reader"s parlor, Martha gravely motioned the others to go before her, and they took their innocent turns before the little velvet cushion. The Twins were admirably struck off in a few phrases, to the delight of their friends, and the palm-reader"s reputation firmly established. In the case of one of the curious girls, peculiar and private events were hinted at that greatly impressed her, for "how _could_ she have known _that_, girls?" The clever girls were comforted with fame and large "scribbler"s crosses,"
also wealthy marriages and social careers, but they looked enviously at Martha, nevertheless, and she smiled maternally on them, as was right. There remained only the other quiet little girl, and she modestly suggested waiting till another day, "so there"ll be lots of time for yours, Miss Williams;" but Martha smiled kindly and waved her to the seat, suggesting that hers might not be a long session, with an amused glance at the empty, little pink palm.
The palm-reader turned and twisted and patted and asked her age, and finally announced that it was a remarkable hand. The dying interest revived, and even Martha"s eyebrows went up with amazement as the seer spoke darkly of immense influence; tact to the _n_th degree; unusual amount of experience, or at the least, "intuitional discoveries;" two great artistic means of expression; previous affairs of the heart, and an inborn capacity for ruling the destinies of others--marked resemblance to the hands of Cleopatra and Sara Bernhardt. It was hands like that that moved the world, she said. The soph.o.m.ores regarded their friend with interest and awe, noted that she blushed deeply at portions of the revelation, recollected her Sunday afternoon improvisations at the piano and her request for a more advanced course in harmony, and attached a hitherto unfelt importance to her heavy mails.
Martha may have regretted her politeness, but she smothered her surprise, sank, with an abstracted air, upon the chair before the cushion, and with a face from which all emotion had been withdrawn and eyes which defied any wildest revelation to disturb their settled _ennui_, awaited the event. The palm-reader glanced at the back of the slim hand, noted the face, touched the finger tips.