Elinor’s Freshman Year

Chapter II

Red Ink

Red Ink

One October morning, a few weeks after college had opened, when the genius sauntered down the long dining-room and dropped indolently into her seat, fifteen minutes late as usual, she found the others in the midst of a livelier discussion than was customary at such an anxious meal as a freshman breakfast.

“What’s the joke?” she inquired, scanning the table gloomily for any sign of her favorite crescent rolls. “Did Myra get here first and devour everything?”

“No, she didn’t,” chuckled that young lady, “we are merely analyzing a pathetic incident. You see, it takes so long to lace my boots that one morning I fix the right and the next morning the left, before breakfast. I hate to be partial. To-day I didn’t have time for either. Of course one foot had to go and step on the other’s lacing, and I tripped and bumped into a professor, and she said, `Why, good morning!'” Myra choked.

The genius lifted solemn eyes that shone with green lights like sea-water in the sunshine. “I see,” she commented sadly, “and now will someone kindly tell me who annexed my little pitcher of cream for her wheat?”

“No, you don’t see, because I haven’t reached the point yet. When the professor looked around, Lydia was there and I wasn’t. She said good morning to Lydia. She thought it was she who had bumped into her. Oho, ho, ho!” giggled Myra with her fists doubled under her chin in one of her bewitching small-child attitudes.

“It was decidedly a freshmanlike performance,” declared Lydia, who sat at the head of the table assigned to their group of ten students. Even if she had not been the leader in selecting and inviting the six other freshmen to join the four roommates, nobody would have thought of disputing her right to that position of duty and privilege. The chief duty was to distribute portions from the main dish before her. The chief privilege was to bow in acknowledgment of a formal “Excuse me,” when any one wished to leave the table before the head gave the signal by rising from her seat.

“She did not bump into the professor intentionally,” protested Elinor, half in indignation at the criticism, half in perversity.

“She vanished intentionally” argued Lydia, who was unaccustomed to acting as scapegoat for anybody, “I was certainly annoyed. That small piece of impudence behaves as if life were a serial joke. I fail to comprehend why she came to college.”

“I came for fun,” announced Myra, unabashed, because she had already learned that Miss Howard’s bark was considerably worse than her bite; and anyhow there was a twinkle behind that make-believe frown. “I really did, and I’m not ashamed to say so. All the boys I know have gone to college, and some of the girls. And I don’t intend to be left out of anything.”

“You won’t be,” said the genius dryly, as she fished from her cocoa a stray bit of crust that had been sent leaping by Myra’s emphatic thump on her plate.

Myra cocked her head on one side. “Why did you come, Ruth, if you don’t mind telling? You hate mathematics so awfully and you’re always late to everything. You’re different from all the other girls. Elinor says — “

“Ruth came to work,” broke in Elinor hastily to prevent indiscreet quotations from her confidential speeches. Her first glimpse of Ruth’s vivid face, strange intense eyes, and cheap clothes had offended her taste. She had decided at once that she did not like this girl and never would. To have such a queer, disagreeable roommate thrust upon her was the crowning misfortune of that dreadful day. Though she had tried not to show her antagonism, still she distinctly recalled having said things to Myra.

“I should hope that we all came to work,” spoke up Lydia with a rebuking air, “that is taken for granted. Work is the theme of our college course; still different girls have different points of view. There are various tints and shadings —

“Oh, I remember that!” exclaimed Myra; ” Miss Ewers said it in the English class. Crackie! how I labored over that essay. It was seventeen minutes past midnight before I had filled the last line of the second sheet. The papers will be handed back to us to-day. The sophomores say that she tacks the essays on the wall and flings her bottle of red ink at each one. Along the margin she marks, `Punc., punc., punc.’ Short for punctuation, you understand.”

“Isn’t she wonderful!” Ruth’s irregular features borrowed a glow of momentary beauty fromn her enthusiasm. “I never dreamed that there were such teachers living. She illuminates, transfigures. Even rhetoric — when she talks I feel as if I could swing the world on my shoulders. It is inspiration.”

“Hm,” Lydia regarded her studiously, “that’s because you are most interested in literature and writing. Now what I find most fascinating is hygiene. The plan of house sanitation which we had last week is exquisite. I intend to do it in colored chalks and send it to father for our summer cottage at the shore. I think, Ruth, that you ought to pay more attention to the disciplinary studies for the sake of your all-round development. Yery few geniuses nowadays are self-made.”

“Ruth’s blushing,” bubbled Myra heartlessly. “She didn’t know we call her a genius. Everybody says so. Just wait till your essay is given back today. Maybe not a speck of red ink except for the excellent underlined a few dozen times. Oh, we know you can write. Elinor says that queer — “

“Myra, quick! I’ve spilled my milk.” Elinor mopped it with such zeal that Myra forgot to complete her sentence. Lydia pushed back her chair.

“By the way, Elinor,” she said, “why did you come to college? “

“Because my mother wanted me to,” was the prompt reply. “It isn’t my fault that I’m here. I myself wished to travel and study abroad.”

“The reason I determined to come,” proclaimed Miss Howard with an accent on the pronoun, “in addition to the work motive, of course, was for the sake of the atmosphere. Nowhere else can you secure such an unconventional and democratic spirit. Nowhere else can you obtain the broad and thorough training so essential to one who hopes to take an effective part in supporting the social fabric and acting as an influence in the community.”

“Yes, ma’am,” whispered Myra meekly, “I wish I could express myself so well as you do. I want to be an influence in the community, too.”

Here Elinor glanced up quickly, caught Myra’s eye, raised her glass to her lips, choked suddenly, and clutched for her handkerchief. Then rising without a word she fled down the long apartment, hurried across the corridor to the empty reception rooms, and dropped upon a sofa. A minute later somebody bounced down beside her and a head sank limply on her shoulder.

“Aren’t we silly?” gasped Elinor in the first calm pause. “Do you think it hurt her feelings? “

“Oh, my, no! She believes that we are hopelessly foolish anyhow. And I guess we are,” answered Myra, sitting up with a long-drawn groan: “The girls stared — hundreds of them — and just as I passed the faculty table as fast as I could trot, I — I — I — sn-snorted right out loud.”

Elinor collapsed again in a weak heap. “M-MMyra! with your face screwed up as it is now?”

“Worse!” The mourner yielded to a smothered giggle- “Disgraced for life!”

Elinor gathered herself together. “Madam, permit me to mention first hour `math,’ and our beds not made yet. Eheu, such an abnormal life! Nothing but books, books, books!”

“And girls,” added Myra, “nice books, nicer girls ; I’m blessed aplenty, thank you. It’s in recitation when I’m there and the book isn’t near that I suffer.”

Elinor chanted :

“A visitor to college viewed

Life’s cool and calm design; He saw girls bending over books — Careers before them shine — If woman were mere intellect' he said,It would be fine.’

“Eight hundred girls with one accord Looked up, removed their specs. Then raised their hands in horror at The menace to their sex. If woman were mere intellect,' they cried,How could we ex?'”

Myra clapped her hands. “Ruth wrote that. Isn’t she bright! And that’s so awfully deep, too. Even if we were mere intellect we could have mental gymnastics — mathematics and so on. But she means more than that — she refers to the eternal conflict between the claims of head and heart. She means shall a woman sacrifice the perfection of personality to the perpetuation of the race.”

“My — stars!” Elinor seized Myra’s elbow and shook her so that she lost a step in her skipping progress down the corridor. “Does that crazy girl talk like that to you, you infant? Think of her stirring up your woolly little brain so outrageously! She’s the queerest person with the least common sense I ever saw.”

“No,” said Myra, ” she doesn’t discuss the subject with me, though if she did I should certainly feel flattered. But I heard Lydia arguing about her essay. Have you noticed how fond Lydia is of long words. She calls them Latin derivatives. Oh, Elinor!” the rattlepate smitten by sudden realization of the flight of time burst into the firewall study and flew over to her desk, “I haven’t finished my translation yet, and Latin comes right after `math.'”

Myra managed to slip through the hour of mathematics without being called upon to recite. She was so elated by this piece of good fortune that she neglected to make herself as inconspicuous as was desirable during the next recitation. When this ordeal was over, she hurried upstairs and found that Elinor had arrived from Greek a few minutes earlier.

“Oh, Elinor!” she wailed, casting herself upon the couch, “I’ve had the most terrible time! You know I had translated only half the lesson, and so naturally I wasn’t very anxious to recite. Whenever the instructor glanced in my direction, I coughed or took out my handkerchief or grasped my forehead at the temples or something like that. But she couldn’t act on a hint. She actually called on me to read. I started out awfully fast and decisively in order to show her that I was not afraid to reach the foot of the page.”

“But you were afraid,” complained Elinor in a contrary mood. “You were trying to deceive her.”

“Oh, well, the girls call it bluffing. Anyhow it didn’t work. When I stopped, instead of saying, That will do,' she said,Go on.’ Then I had to explain how she had warned us the other day not to allow our work to master us, driving us on like packhorses beneath the rod of an inflexible quota. I told her that I had not found it convenient to translate beyond the foot of the page.”

“Did you describe the circumstances which rendered it inconvenient?” inquired Elinor; “did you mention a wafiBe-supper or something akin?”

“No, she didn’t ask me to — to — to expatiate. She looked at me in a funny way and said, `In your case, Miss Dickinson, I prefer to receive a report from you before class every day concerning the exact extent of your researches.’ She meant that I must tell her how far I have translated. The girls declare that they all enjoy my recitations. They say I manage to get the most original translations!”

“Indeed you do!” laughed Elinor; “you seem to regard a Latin sentence as if it were a collection of anagrams. The girls envy you your superb indifference to gender, number, and case. It’s a great talent. I wish I had your ability.” She drummed impatiently on the lid of her desk. “I flunked in Greek and the professor said, `With your equipment, Miss Offitt, we have anticipated much from you.’ I don’t care. I have my own life to live, and I’m not fond of study and I shan’t work any harder over books than I have to, so there!”

“Dear Elinor!” cried Myra with a swoop of joy, “I knew you weren’t meant to be a grind or a dig. Leave that to the slow-pokes who come here simply to work. You and I will take all the fun we can get. Let’s give Buth a lot, too, because she’s never had very much and she’s older than we are. She admires you heaps.”

“I wish she wouldn’t,” Elinor shrugged her shoulders petulantly as if throwing off a weight.” It’s horrid. I want to be like everybody else and not be fussed over. These teachers here talk about my splendid preparation and exceptional advantages till I feel exactly like that old Pharisee who went up to the Temple to pray and offer thanks because he was not as other men are.”

Myra looked guilty. “I have always liked that old Pharisee,” she confessed, “because he was honest and told the truth. Nearly everybody is thankful because he is not like somebody in some respect. Lydia’s glad because she is not so thin as Ruth, for in that case of course she would need to have her clothes made over. Ruth is glad because she is not so lazy as you are. Here, help, help! I’m sorry. Stop pinching this instant. You are glad because you are not so easily satisfied as I am.”

“Hm-m, yes, my noble discontent! I decline to share it with anybody. Others may grumble — “

“Oh, they do, even if they aren’t granddaughters. They say that college is not so much fun as they had expected. Just count it up yourself: three recitations a day with two hours study for each — ostensibly, you know ; add time for meals and exercise and sleep, and pray, how many hours are left for fun?”

“Give it up,” said Elinor obligingly, appalled at the result.

“Well, as I was saying, I am glad because I am not so — ahem — regal as Lydia, for if I were I should never dare to hippity-hop like this in sight of such a critical person as you are. Ouch! I’ve bumped into Ruth’s portfolio and scattered her precious papers every which way. Help me pick them up quick I I’ve got to do all my English this period. Oh, look! Here is your name — a poem To Elinor.' It's a rondel :Sincerely lift that sweet girl face — ‘”

“Let me see!” Elinor stretched out her hand and as quickly drew it back. “No, it isn’t nice to read it. Fold it up again, Myra. She hasn’t any right to think of me like that.”

“Why, Elinor Offitt! Her thoughts are her own, I guess ; and she’s a genius and she didn’t show this poem to you, anyway. It’s awfully mean to be so finical. Ruth is just as sensitive as you are.”

Elinor lifted her chin rebelliously. She had perhaps more than her share of the natural perversity that inclines one to choose the opposite side in an argument. This tendency had helped to emphasize her critical attitude toward college in contrast with her mother’s enthusiastic loyalty. “Mere thoughts can intrude upon another’s personality,” sbe began; “I don’t like her, and she — “

“Girls,” Lydia came sweeping down the alleyway which led to the study, “we’ve enjoyed the most fascinating lesson in English! Miss Ewers advised us to buy notebooks for jotting down our ideas as they occur. She says that in future years we shall find such a record of mental development exceedingly entertaining. I have purchased a new fountain pen also.”

“I want to develop, too,” said Myra; ” let’s buy notebooks ourselves.”

“Indeed I shan’t,” spoke up the granddaughter defiantly, ” I’ve been developed from the kindergarten up, and I’m tired of it. I never have any ideas to write down anyhow, and I don’t care to think about myself so much as all that. Ruth is the kind of a girl that keeps diaries. There is always something queer about persons who are crazy to write. Where is she?”

“Somewhere in the corridor. Our essays were handed back to us, you know, and hers seemed to have quantity of red ink on it. Mine has hardly a mark except suggestions for punctuation.”

“Hurry, Myra. It’s our turn this hour. That last bell will ring in two minutes. We’ll have to run for it.”

An hour later, when the two freshmen fluttered into the room, Myra still chuckling over the array of sarcastic question-marks on the margin of her essay, Lydia greeted them with upraised hand.

“Hush!” she said in a generous whisper, “Ruth’s lying down. She says that she does not want any luncheon, though I warned her that it is utterly foolish to skip a meal for no reason whatever except an unimportant little word in red ink on her essay.”

“What word?”

“Nothing but rewrite scrawled across the top of the first page. She came in stumbling, with her eyes wide open, looking as if she had gone blind. I told her that wisdom consists in the right perception of values, and literature is not all of life. She didn’t seem to hear me. Such lack of common sense!”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Myra, her lip quivering in swift sympathy. Before she had taken three steps toward Ruth’s portière, she was stopped by Lydia’s hasty call. “No, no, Myra, she asked me to see that she was not disturbed, and I promised.”

Myra hesitated, then turned back slowly and went to luncheon with the other two. However she managed to leave the table early and run back to the study in plenty of time to carry out her impulse for comforting this friend in distress. Ten minutes later she almost toppled Elinor over in her rush down the stairs.

“Elinor, don’t hold me. I’ll be back in a jiffy. I’ve got to catch Miss Ewers before she hides behind an engaged sign. Is she in the dining-room yet?

Ruth’s horribly discouraged. She says there isn’t any use in her staying at college if her writing is so hopelessly bad as that She worked like a dog — only dogs don’t work, do they? She did her very best on that essay and then to be ordered to rewrite it I She’s desperate. Why, even I don’t have to do mine over, you know. She says it isn’t worth while for her to try any longer. That’s all she wanted of college: to learn to write. She says she will go back to teaching at once. She was lying face downward on the bed, with the essay crumpled up in her hand. I’m going to ask Miss Ewers about it. Oh, dear! and we all thought Ruth was a genius!”

Elinor drew a long breath and walked on, the quick flash of relief in her eyes brightening steadily. So Ruth would go away and leave her in peace, and she could invite some congenial girl to take the vacant room ; and then perhaps college wouldn’t be so unbearable in spite of everything else. Of course she would never be unkind or impolite to anybody; but no one, not even a saint, could truthfully say that it was pleasant to live with a person who was so irritatingly queer and erratic as Ruth. Why, just the way she ate sugar on her potatoes was enough to make an angel nervous. Her whimsical drawl and her indolent movements and her embarrassing fashion of staring intently at a person and her wild moods of gayety or depression and her unconventional remarks! And she was always forgetting to return what she borrowed and she never kept her engagements and her things were so cheap and shabby that they were actually painful. Ugliness that was merely a blot to less sensitive vision was exquisite discomfort to highly-strung Elinor. Every impression from the rarest joy to an impatient glance or the prick of a pin bit far more keenly into her consciousness than into that of a normally thick-skinned person.

As she entered the study this afternoon she looked around with a curious little smile of exultant dismissal upon the ramshackle second-hand desk which Ruth had bought and installed between Lydia’s carved mahogany and her own bird’s eye maple. Those atrocious paper flowers which draped a vividly colored chromo would be out of sight to-morrow; and Elinor would be at liberty to lift her lashes without risk of a shudder. That row of worn books with their torn backs and dingy lettering would no longer be shrieking daily for a friendly twitch of the curtain to cover their hideousness. Ruth’s misshapen shoes and cottony skirt and faded waists, though neat enough, to be sure, were not pleasing objects to have continually within range of a fastidious eye. That odd brown face, too, that was always changing and yet always the same in the intentness of its observation wherever Elinor might happen to be — that was the most exasperating discomfort of all to a diffident and self-conscious young person like charming Miss Offitt.

But to-morrow she would be free from this burden of annoyance. Ruth would be gone and the rest of them could be comparatively happy together. Ruth would be gone, gone, gone! Ruth would be gone! Never to bother her again, never again! Oh, wouldn’t it be bliss, bliss, bliss, perfect bliss! Elinor’s heart — or possibly it was only some hard green, unripe little organ in the place where her heart should have been — was singing a rollicking song as her fingers scribbled busily at the required mid-week letter home. All her life her mother had been requiring things of her. In ungrateful weary moods she had been aware that she envied Topsy who simply grew. To-day the letter was a pleasure as well as a duty, for she had delightful news to tell : she was going to be happier to-morrow.

“Ruth, Ruth, Ruth!” Myra blew into the study like a joyous tornado, and seizing Elinor waltzed her into the darkened bedroom where Ruth still lay motionless with her arms flung across the pillow in which her face was buried. “Ruth, Ruth, Ruth! Get up, quick! Write your essay over rapidly. Miss Ewers says it is far and away above the average. It has more promise than any other handed in. She criticized it as if it were the work of a mature hand. It’s different from the others. She doesn’t waste her red ink on the hopeless ones. She marks the spelling and punctuation in them, but yours is worth severe examination. She wanted you to rewrite it for your own sake. She says it has remarkable promise. Do you hear? It has promise and maybe you can do something some day. That’s exactly what she said, and it means heaps from her, because she can write herself. She has published books, and she knows. She wants to interview you the sixth hour this afternoon. She says she sees where she can help you. Oh, Elinor, aren’t you glad, glad, glad I Now Ruth won’t go home.”

Elinor closed her eyes for an instant of sharp disappointment. Then she drew a deep breath. ” It’s perfectly lovely, Ruth,” she said.

“Ow!” squealed Myra, wriggling free from her embrace, “those were my fingers you gripped that time.”