Elinor’s Junior Year

Chapter XVI

Cela M’est Égal

The following morning, which was Saturday, saw Lydia rise in the early darkness, determined to dissuade Ruth from her new resolve. On the foregoing night even Lydia had been infected by the prevailing atmosphere of excitement, and she had accepted the plan with rather awed approval. Reflection, however, evolved cooler views — all the cooler for the depression of spirits in the natural swinging of the pendulum from exaltation. In the clear-sighted hour before dawn she perceived sharply outlined the folly of unreasonable heroics. Up on the instant and away to the tower room, where cautious steps told of packing betimes.

“Listen, Ruth,” she whispered, closing the door and adjusting the transom in mindfulness of sleepers behind thin partitions on all sides, “I’ve been thinking it over, and it won’t do at all. You’re not strong enough for such an occupation. Furthermore your talents lie in a different sphere; that is exceedingly important. Finally even if you should persist that this business of nursing is unmistakably your life work, you ought first to finish the college course without doubt. If you believe in education, you will understand clearly that the better the preparation the better the service.”

Ruth lifted heavy eyes. “I have considered every objection,” she replied, “and I have decided.”

Lydia felt an unaccustomed sensation as if buffeting against a stone wall. She glanced almost pleadingly about the dim room where the light burned low for fear of disturbing neighbors by the reflection on the white ceiling in the hall. Through the window the western sky was blanching to gray above the distant hills.

She sought a foothold for argument. “Tell me again exactly why you have resolved to go.”

Ruth drew a tired breath, for she too was troubled secretly by a reaction of mood. “It is my duty,” she said, “the world is full of sorrow and suffering and nothing is worth while except to try to help. Here I am helping no one. I am even injuring some by my very presence. I irritate and annoy without intending to do so. My departure would mean the removal of a wearisome burden. Another can accomplish more good in my position — make a better editor and find greater joy in the work. Hundreds of applicants are denied admission to this college every year. I can leave my place to be occupied by some girl who has been disappointed about entering. There’s economy for you. The sum of human happiness will be increased on every score.”

“Nonsense!” snapped Lydia brusquely. “It’s fine and unselfish in you to think that, though it is not one bit true. Come, now, Ruth, listen to reason.”

She listened, indeed, passing to and fro engaged in folding, sorting, and arranging. Lydia talked with her habitual fluency till smitten with a sudden exasperating conviction of the uselessness of it all, she departed abruptly to dress for breakfast.

In the study she discovered the two girls moving about with a subdued gravity as if waiting for news from a sick-room. At the report of her ill-success Myra sputtered, but Elinor was silent.

“I’ll speak to her myself,” declared Myra, “do you realize that it will break up our crowd if she goes away? Maybe that has not occurred to her. We four have always stuck together, and — oh, dear me! — we’ll miss her dreadfully. She always understands.”

“Ah!” Lydia paused with the ribbons of her dressing-gown half untied, “I never thought of it in that light before, and yet I see that it is true. Though Ruth is different from us and the rest of the girls, we are fond of her because she understands.”

Myra was delighted at her own hit. “Yes, of course, that is where her genius lies — sympathetic insight united to power of expression. I read that definition somewhere. I understand you; Elinor understands you and me; Ruth understands all three.

I think that I understand Ruth a little, even about this ridiculous scheme of leaving college. Just give me a chance to convince her of her mistake! “

Elinor turned around from her diligent and unnecessary rearrangement of ornaments on the bookcase. “Lydia, did she mention any other pretext for leaving in the middle of the year except the missionary impulse?”

Lydia reflected. “I believe she made a remark about being an annoyance and irritation to people here instead of a help. She is evidently under the impression that her presence is a burden to someone who dislikes her. I told her that such a notion was absolutely morbid and unwholesome as well as egotistical. And it is too.”

“How peculiar!” Elinor noted with a throb of relief that Myra had providentially retired into her bedroom. “Hark! There is the gong beginning to whir for breakfast. Isn’t the clangor worse every day?”

So it really was as she had suspected through the sleepless hours. Ruth was going away because of her. Because of her, Ruth was going away from the happiest life she had ever known. Elinor’s fingers trembled so clumsily among the bric-a-brac that Lydia halted on the threshold at the sight of her best vase half toppling from its place.

“Come to breakfast, Elinor. It isn’t dusting-day. Why, child, you are as pale as Ruth. That fire upset you completely. We shall see if the maid cannot bring you some soft-boiled eggs for a change. That is the only proper kind of a diet in winter. Ruth avoids them, to be sure, but she is entitled to an equipment of idiosyncrasies, mental, moral, and physical. Everybody cannot be a genius. It is a crime for her to make such a mistake as that nursing will be.”

“Ah, I’m not so sure,” answered Elinor airily as she stepped into the hall, “nine persons out of ten believe they have a gift for writing. Hundreds of girls shine in college magazines, and then go blinking and flickering down to ashes after Commencement day. Oh!” Elinor halted suddenly. “There she comes now down the tower stairs. I think I’ll run back to wait till Myra is ready for breakfast.” She retreated so precipitately that the lines about Ruth’s mouth set in an expression of even greater sternness than before.

At the table Elinor clung to Myra as a shield of talkativeness to cover her own stubborn silence toward Ruth. If Ruth wanted to go, let her. If she wanted to go, let her. It was all the same to Elinor. Cela m’est égal. Cela m’est égal. Cela m’est égal. The phrase drummed over and over in her aching head. She remembered Myra’s trick of droning the French in a maddening sing-song with a pronunciation carefully pruned and flattened to, “Slam at a gal. Slam at a gal. Slam at a gal. Which means it’s all the same to me. I don’t care.” No, of course, Elinor did not care a jot whether Ruth went to Jericho or New York or the Philippines or remained at college. It was all the same to her.

The forenoon passed, and still she had uttered no protest. In the afternoon Myra blew into the study, flung herself on the couch, and beat her palms together.

“That stubborn, obstinate, pig-headed girl! Though I’ve coaxed and coaxed, she won’t yield an inch. Only,” here gleamed a spark of fleeting self-congratulation, “she isn’t going to-day. The fact is that she cannot get off so soon because she must first consult Prexie and Mrs. Vernon and have her trunk brought up from the catacombs and resign from the Board of Editors, and several little affairs like that. Isn’t she flighty! Fancy her living by herself in a great city! She will surely fall ill with none of us there to bring her hot milk and toast. I argued that she owed a quantity of duties to the college and to us and to herself and to the Alumnae Society, which lent her the money to come — duties a heap more pressing than that of nursing poor miserable sick folks who are all strangers to her and likely to prove cranky and ungrateful. She says that I fail to understand her attitude and must allow her to judge for herself. Yet all the while she is so nervous that she can’t lie quiet without jerking her hand away from me every minute. I do believe that she will break down with nervous prostration just as soon as possible. Oh, dear! She acts as if I am telling a story when I say we will all miss her terribly.”

“Where is she now?” asked Elinor, rising from her desk and standing motionless while awaiting the answer.

“The last I saw of her she had started for the gym to get her suit from the locker. And she says that it is an ir-ir-irrevocable finality.”

“Of course,” commented Elinor, “it generally is with such temperaments.” And she departed with an air of conspicuous superiority to emotion-ruffled young persons who burrow into kindly silken pillows to hide their teary lashes and quivering lips.

A portion of the lower floor in the gymnasium building was occupied by a swimming-tank; and there in entertaining contrast to the snowstorm outside a dozen students were frolicking. One shrinking figure descended the marble stairs, inch by inch, with apprehensive little cries of, “You won’t touch me now, will you? You won’t pull me in?” Another was teaching a novice to swim by supporting her at the end of a curtain-pole. Whenever the amateur instructor cruelly permitted a ducking, a friendly spectator plashed indignantly to the rescue. Others in play that they were water-sprites danced about with much whirling of white arms and showering of silvery drops.

Elinor perceived Ruth leaning with both elbows on the railing while she watched the sport. After a moment of hesitancy Elinor took two steps in flight toward the nearest door, then stopped herself with a jerk, straightened her shoulders, advanced to Ruth’s side, and laid one hand lightly on her arm.

Ruth turned her head slowly. At her first glimpse of the face near her own, her dreaming eyes widened with utter amazement as if she could not believe in the vision. The expression of amazement gradually changed to radiant joy, glowed for a heart’s beat, and then went out suddenly, leaving the pupils contracted and the iris curiously dull. She turned back to the swimmers without a word.

Elinor cleared her throat. “May I speak to you a minute?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“Speak away.”

“Not here!”

“I prefer it here.”

“Ruth.” Elinor cleared her throat again and glanced appealingly at the averted profile. ” Ruth, have you told anybody else of your plan?”

There was a moment’s pause. “Not yet,” she answered in a tone tinged with sullenness as if resenting the possible suspicion that this delay might hint at a wavering of her decision. “I shall attend to that later. Look! Doesn’t that girl swim well on her back?”

“Ruth, I wanted to tell you — I came to say — That girl certainly does swim well. But they shouldn’t try to dive. The tank is too shallow for diving right there.”

Ruth drooped her eyelids and moved a few steps farther along the railing. Elinor apparently did not notice. She spoke easily.

“I wanted to tell you, Ruth, that I am ever so sorry about the manuscript. Myra and I forgot to take it down town to be typewritten yesterday.”

“I know it,” said Ruth.

“Good-bye for a little. I must run back to finish my Greek. You are positive that it doesn’t make any difference about the story?”

“No, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Outside the door Elinor lifted her hand, unclenched it absently, and stared at it without seeing the reddened marks where her finger-nails had pressed into the flesh.

“Cela m’est égal,” she said.

She said it again to herself that evening when Myra clung to Ruth through dinner and chapel and escorted her to the concert afterward, while Lydia hovered sternly in their vicinity. At the concert Elinor sat by herself in the back pew, though as a rule she would choose to miss an entertainment altogether rather than to make herself, as she supposed, conspicuous by going alone. She was afraid that people might think she was queer and unpopular. On this evening, however, at the sound of the gong at eight o’clock, she dropped the paper which she had been holding before her in the reading-room and joined the leisurely stream of girls in the corridor without a single anxious glance around for some stray acquaintance whom she could invite to accompany her.

The lights were turned low in the chapel except for a single gas-jet over the organ. From her seat in the rearmost corner Elinor could turn the slats of the window-blind beside her and gaze through narrow spaces at the pallid snowy world without where a dim moon was struggling behind a web of clouds. Or, if she liked, she could watch three heads some distance farther forward near the middle aisle. That symmetrical outline with the chin well up and the shoulders erect belonged to Lydia. The contour of the second one was hazier in the dusk because of the blur of looser, wavier hair; and it was drooping in an affectionate nestling way toward the third. The third, though very stiff and still, had a curiously huddled look as if the nerves had relaxed in the darkness. Elinor’s’ restless eyes kept traveling from the window to that ungraceful shadowy figure. “Oh, dear!” she fretted to herself, “Ruth has done her hair at the wrong angle again.”

When the concert was over, Elinor glided out among the earliest departures and escaped to the study, where after some uneasy wandering from book-case to bedroom she decided to mend stockings for awhile. Sitting down just as she was in her filmy white crepe she carefully threaded all her needles, sorted all her stockings, examining each one with fastidious slow scrutiny, rearranged her basket, studied the monogram on her thimble, and then, at the sound of quick steps in the alleyway, began to darn very fast and earnestly.

Myra burst in. “Elinor, Ruth won’t send it in. We forgot to take it down and she says it’s fate and she doesn’t care about it now anyway, because she will give up writing and won’t have time for it, and it’s just as well, and she’s going to burn it up. Hurry! You’ve got to coax her.”

“Yes?” Elinor raised her head inquiringly and murmured the monosyllable with maddening sweetness, her needle arrested politely. “Was there anything I can do for you?”

“Idiot! Ruth’s going away, I say, and she won’t submit her story for the prize. She has the best chance of anybody in this college, and the girls will be disappointed, and she owes it to us, and I can’t make her budge. And oh, Elinor, if you could only see her and talk to her, you would understand. She will get over this nursing fad and then she will be sorry. It is throwing away her best chance. Lydia argued with her. And it’s our fault, because we forgot to take it down to be typewritten. Elinor, go coax her to do it. She always used to like you best.”

Elinor smiled dubiously. “I am so extremely busy this evening, Myra, you see,” she answered gently, “but if you really think it would do any good — “She paused, leaving the conclusion to her sentence artistically vague.

“Yes, yes, run along. It may do good. And the story is fine. Miss Ewers read it and said so in a letter. It’s a shame and a sin. She looked around to find the matchbox, but I hid it in a hurry while she was packing something else. Give me those stockings. I’ll mend them in a jiffy. Run!”

“Of course, there is the gas,” suggested Elinor with mild interest, “and if she honestly intended to do it, you know —”

“Beg pardon, what did you say? Oh, do stop mumbling and run, Elinor, please.”

Elinor moved in quite leisurely fashion until she reached the foot of the tower stairs. Then she picked up her fluffy skirts, ran swiftly and lightly up to the hall above, and rapped on Ruth’s door.

“Come.” The voice sounded weary, and the face that glanced up from a box of papers on the bed at her entrance looked pale and tired. “Ah, it is you, Elinor,” she nodded gravely in greeting. “Will you sit down? If you wait one minute, I will clear the clothes off a chair for you.”

“Oh, the bed will do, thank you.” Elinor fluttered across the little room. “Can’t I help you with the packing?”

“I don’t believe you can,” said Ruth as she slipped elastic bands around one packet of notes after another. She was wearing a long robe of outing-flannel.

Elinor could see the hollows in her throat when she breathed. There were hollows too under her cheekbones, and her eyes had dark half-circles under them. Elinor watched her silently for a minute.

“Oh, Ruth!” she burst out at last in a soft little cry of pity. “You are so tired! Let me help, please, do let me help.”

“You always try to be kind, Elinor,” answered Ruth without raising her lashes. “I’m just as much obliged, thank you.”

Elinor shifted her seat a few inches so that she could brace herself against the footboard. Even with this support she found it necessary to open her mouth twice before her will pushed on the words to the point of articulation.

“Ruth, Myra says that you have changed your mind about submitting your story in the prize contest, and — and I am very sorry. I wish you would send it in. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to the college and to — to us. You ought not to sacrifice your talent for such things to a sudden impulse for self-abnegation. You really ought not. I wish you wouldn’t. Please, Ruth, don’t you think that it will be better for you to — to think it over and stay at college and send in the story for the prize. Won’t you, Ruth? I wish you would.”

Ruth finished fitting the various packets neatly into the box. Then she looked up. “Elinor, do you know that the story is about you? I wrote it at a time when I was angry — but it is a picture that will be recognized. Miss Ewers recognized it when she read the manuscript. She says that the story will be likely to win one of the prizes or at least be bought for publication. And she also said that I would not submit it if I cared for you.”

Elinor closed her eyes for an instant; then opened them again.

“Elinor, you may decide for me. You may choose whether I shall remain at college and submit the story, or burn it and go.”

“Ha-ha-ha!” It was such a shrill falsetto laugh that Elinor herself was astonished and caught her breath after it. “The idea! But you don’t care for me, you know. And so of course you will submit it.”

Ruth shoved aside the box on her lap, rose without haste, stepped across to her desk, pulled out the drawer, took from it some written sheets and carried them toward the gas-jet near the bureau. Elinor watched her scan the wall and the floor beneath in search of the matchsafe.

“Myra has hidden it,” she volunteered with an odd little smile, “you’d better not. It may burn your fingers and the ashes will litter the carpet. It is an awfully messy thing to do.”

Ruth thrust one comer of the manuscript into the gas-flame.

Elinor sprang to her feet. “Ruth, stop! I choose for you to stay. Blow it out! Quick! Drop it!”

“Don’t touch me.” With the sheaf of blazing paper in her outstretched hand Ruth stepped across the space to the washstand in order to finish the bonfire in the basin. A match which Myra had dropped snapped under her shoe, caught the fluff at the edge of her outing-flannel, and leaped upward in a swiftly licking flame.

Elinor saw her amazed expression as she stood motionless while the flickering papers began to flutter down from her loosened grasp.

“Unbutton it!” She darted toward Ruth, seized the burning robe, tore it off, crumpled it into a ball to smother the blaze, and then flung herself down with her face pressed close to the floor and her arms shielding her head; for the flimsy stuff of her own gown had taken fire and was flaming lightly around her.

A few minutes later she tried to struggle free from the folds of the blanket which Ruth after emptying the pitcher of water upon her head had crushed over her body.

“I’m all right now. Please let me up.” She rose unsteadily, and Ruth, kneeling beside her, brushed away a spark or two that lingered smouldering in the charred ruffles. “Are you hurt, Ruth? Oh!” she could not stifle the moan of the pain as Ruth’s lips pressed her fingers, “oh, don’t! They sting so.” She looked down at the other with a brave little smile. “You will stay, Ruth, won’t you? I choose for you to stay.”

Ruth swerved suddenly and hid her face against the bedside.

“Crackie!” Myra stood open-mouthed on the threshold.

Elinor turned toward her uncertainly, her pretty head swaying oddly to and fro above the scorched rags that clothed her shoulders.

“Ruth is going to stay, Myra,” she said; and fainted dead away.