Elinor’s Sophomore Year

Chapter IX

Valentines

February 10.

My Dear Lydia Howard:

Good morning again, and the world goes wagging on, with everything delightful except for that vacant room across the hall. Miss Ewers inquired after you very particularly to-day, and said that she missed your influence in the class-room. The other girls, you know, resent her bluntness; they say that she treats them like chairs: draws them out and then sits on them. Her theory is that they should be taught not to regard criticism of their work as a personal insult. Yesterday when Elinor made a vague recitation based on impressions and opinions instead of facts, Miss Ewers rebuked her method rather sharply and then launched into a general lecture on the worthlessness of surface knowledge. Elinor listened attentively, though she seemed a little pale. She even smiled a bit while we were pressing through the door afterward, but I saw her lip twitch once or twice, and she hurried ahead of us down the corridor. She is too sensitive for this rough world. She must have been the kind of a child that suffers if her mother forgets to smile. Everything used to hurt me, too, but I have been trying for many years now to teach myself not to care. It takes a deal of philosophizing, the main tenet of which would be of no value to Elinor because she has a different aim in life. My aim, you know, is to learn how to give adequate expression to impressions. And so even the impressions that bite most deeply are welcome after the first sting is over. Elinor has no such compensation. Her only recompense for the excess of pain is the corresponding intensity of power to enjoy. Her headaches are always worse than Myra’s; but Myra has far less capacity to win happiness from music, for instance. Myra says she simply loves music when she can have a nice soft pillow behind her head in a corner of a pew in the gallery.

Ruth.

II

February 11.

Holloa, Lydia!

Everything is all right except that we miss you heaps, especially at the table. Ruth sits in your place and does pretty well until an idea strikes her in the middle of serving a dish. Then she drops the spoon, rises, and walks out in dazed and lofty silence, while Elinor or somebody picks it up and goes on ladling out the oysters or ice cream or whatever it happens to be.

I haven’t much time to write now, because Valentine’s Day is coming and the senior who receives the most will be given a prize for popularity. Ruth’s going to write some poetry for me to send. Elinor says it is silly to talk about feelings, but then I don’t believe she ever really admired a person away above her in an upper class — particularly when you aren’t well enough acquainted to do things for her or say you like her except in poems.

Good-bye, Lydia! There’s the bell, and I haven’t looked at my literature yet. Elinor tells me that it takes two hours to read a play of Shakespeare’s. Just watch me scamper through one in the next forty minutes. People make me tired by being afraid of superficiality. I think it is like consistency, which Emerson says is the ‘hobgoblin of little minds,’ you remember. I love Emerson — I have read three of his essays besides that one we analyzed when we were freshmen. The one on Gifts is fine, and quotations from it will be splendid to send with valentine flowers. To return to superficiality, what is the surface of a thing for if it is not to protect the interior? If it had been meant that we should dig and dive below the surface, why were we created with skins? I call it prying. I have also another profound thought: if it had been meant that we should provide for the future, the future would have been revealed to us. But I can’t see ahead into the next hour, can I? Maybe Miss Ewers will lecture instead of asking us to discuss the play.

Myra.

III

February 12.

Dear Lydia:

The size of a hole left by a Person of Public Spirit when she goes into retirement almost persuades me to serve on a committee the next time I am invited. More girls than I can name have been asking after you. Ruth is taking very complete notes in English, and I do the same in history and Latin, so that you will not have much difficulty in making up what you have lost. Myra proposed that we send you a box of candy for a valentine, because once a boy sent her one and she appreciated it Ruth was appalled. “But Lydia is sick! “she cried, “and you weren’t, were you?”

“No,” answered Myra thoughtfully; “that is, not until afterwards.”

I wish that you were able to hear and see the art lectures now being given twice a week, though you will have another chance year after next, I believe. Some day I intend to own copies of several of the pictures that were thrown on the sheet by the lantern, but at present I am in love with sculpture. I want a Victory Tying Her Sandal. You may have noticed the bas-relief on the wall near Niobe in the Art Gallery. Myra jeers at my taste; she says that my favorite Venus has no arms, my adorable Winged Victory has no head, and this last pet has no hands, no head, and only a portion of a foot, — that she has nothing except lines of drapery. But oh, Lydia! Those lines! I could look at them all day. The other thing I want most just now is a large carbon photograph of the head of Hermes. The Greek professor has one in her room, — and, Lydia, I want one like it. It is a comfort to talk to a person who cannot answer back for fear of carrying contagion. See! Aren’t you pleased to catch a glimpse of the silver lining already?

Elinor.

IV

February 13.

Dear Lydia:

It is Ruth’s turn to write, but she has gone to town in a frightful snow-storm, and Elinor is worried cranky, and I have three more poems to compose before to-night. I wonder if there is any other rhyme for sweet besides beat, cheat, cleat, deplete, eat, defeat, meet, feet — Dear, dear! are there twenty-seven letters in the alphabet? Do you think it would be too sentimental to say something about her hair? Ruth showed me verses about ‘curling golden tendrils of her hair,’ and ‘swift laughter’s curved surprise’ and ‘frost-ferns fair,’ and so forth. I told her that she would need to change it, because my senior has smooth black hair, not crinkly like Elinor’s. Maybe Ruth was thinking of Elinor when she composed that valentine. It sounds like that. The storm is worse than ever and makes the room so dark that I must stop writing. A girl has just come in to groan over her disappointment in not going home to-night to attend a tea where she was to have met a famous sculptor. All the trains are hours late, and it won’t be safe for her to start. I wish Ruth would come. Maybe the trolley line is snowed up. Elinor is talking to the girl about marble, and so on. I don’t like cold white things; I like color. My senior has the loveliest rosy cheeks and snapping dark eyes. Elinor is walking up and down and staring out of the window.

Myra.

V

February 14.

Dear Lydia:

Was it you who sent me that lovely, lovely valentine? It must have been you. I don’t know how, but perhaps you had the nurse write to your mother to buy it for me. The package came by express this very day — St. Valentine’s Day. My beautiful, beautiful Victory, forever bending to tie her sandal, before me always! And Hermes the beautiful upon my wall! I hate to leave them, even for an ice-cream dinner. You should see me hurry back after each absence. Lydia, I love you.

Elinor.

VI

February 15. Dear Lydia:

I am sorry Myra worried you about the storm. I was safe enough. You see, I had an errand in New York, and took the earliest train without notifying the girls. They thought I merely went to town. The snow delayed my return, especially as I was late in starting back, as the search for the Victory and Hermes took longer than I had expected. The other day I noticed how intensely Elinor admired the relief and the photograph. For a long time I have been hoping and wondering what I could do to please her. She has always seemed to me so rare and fine and precious that the sight of her and the thought of her are unending delight. I have wanted so much to express it somehow or other. And she is pleased. I never before saw her so happy in anything. She appears to believe that they are valentine gifts from you. Don’t let her find out that I sent them until she thinks of it for herself.

Ruth.

VII

February 16.

Dearest Old Lydia:

The honors are out, and what do you suppose? My senior is on the list! She’s the one to whom I introduced my freshmen at the reception last fall, and she said, “I believe I know these young ladies, but may I ask who you are?” You see, I had assumed that she did not possess a memory for faces and so would take it for granted that she had met me and then forgotten about it. I have liked her ever since, because sincerity is my chosen trait — at least, it is just at present. I admire different qualities at different times, according to circumstances. I sent her eleven valentines to help her get the most in the class, but another senior received five more. I was so provoked, for I might have copied out a dozen sonnets from Ward’s English Poets just as easily as not, and that would have been all right if I added quotation marks. Last Sunday evening I sat beside her in chapel and sang out of the same hymn book. She has the loveliest gruffest voice I ever heard!

Last night there was an informal leap-year dance in the gym. I danced once with her; and toward the end, while I was waiting around near the door, Elinor kept whispering, “Thou beautiful!” whenever I looked at her. One of the valentines was “Thou beautiful, thou carest noc that I bow at thy shrine,” and so forth. Ruth helped me with the rhymes. I warned Elinor that I would twist her nose if she said it again. She put her hand over her face and said it again just as the senior came toward us. Elinor jumped up with, “Oh, horrors! I’m sitting on her things!” She must have heard, for she was smiling at the corners of her mouth. I walked up close to Elinor and twisted her nose, and she said, “Two girls saw you. You have disgraced me!” and then we came home and mended stockings and sewed on buttons and ate fudges.

Elinor thinks a lot of that banged-up slab of plaster and the ancient old party called Hermes. Maybe I would have cared for such art myself if I had taken the classical course. It’s a queer notion of Elinor’s to believe that you caused such an original valentine to be sent to her. I don’t mean that you couldn’t do original things, but you simply wouldn’t think of them, that’s all. And then, besides, you have the scarlet fever. I am positive that Ruth did it, even if she can’t afford it. But Elinor doesn’t want to believe that, and so she won’t.

Myra.

VIII

February 17.

Dear Lydia:

Myra has instructed me to skip feelings and thoughts in letters to our exile and tell about real live facts. She says to omit scenery also, because you can get all you want of that by looking out of the window or picking up a book of poetry. When I ask her what important historical events have taken place since the last bulletin, she replies that Fraulein has the cold of her life and all the girls are delighted over her little cough and shivers and handkerchief flourishes. They say that now she will feel some sympathy when they complain about the icy breezes that she has loved to have swirl through the class-room. Myra adds that another valuable item of news is the fact that she and Elinor went to call on Miss Ewers last night, and it took them exactly twenty-three minutes to screw up courage to knock. I can imagine how they did it, pushing each other toward the door, scurrying away, making bold little runs forward and frightened dashes back to the safety of the main corridor. It seems strange for anybody to be timid about calling on Miss Ewers. She is so sincere that the visitor can always feel the firm ground underfoot, and knows surely whether she is welcome or not. That, to my mind, is far more comfortable and truly courteous than the effusive sweetness that may hide any emotion from genuine pleasure to shrinking disgust at sight of the guest. However, Elinor, I believe, disagrees with me on this point.

Ruth.

IX

February 18.

My Dear Lydia:

Pardon me for that mistake about the Victory and the Hermes. It seems that Ruth was the one who sent them. Miss Ewers told me the other evening. I have not spoken of it to Ruth yet, but I shall do so soon. I am afraid that she could ill spare the money. The doctor tells us that you will be in good shape again after the Easter vacation, and we look forward eagerly to having our Lydia with us once more,

Elinor.

X

February 19.

Dearest Old Trump of a Lydia:

Oh, dear! Why isn’t everybody solid and steady and serene like you? Elinor has been in a regular tantrum, though of course she tried not to show it. She is angry all the way through because Ruth gave her things that cost money when she couldn’t afford it, and Elinor says it puts her under obligations to a girl whom she doesn’t like, and Ruth had no right to do it, and it shows exceedingly poor taste and lack of judgment and positive dishonesty because a student who is going through college on borrowed money, such as a scholarship, is perfectly unjustified in making extravagant gifts. She doesn’t talk like that to Ruth naturally, because Elinor cannot bear to hurt anybody’s feelings. She was lovely to Ruth, and if I hadn’t heard her raging beforehand I might really have supposed she was glad that she had given them to her. Ruth looked so pleased that I felt the tears jump into my eyes and I ran. Elinor shouldn’t be so terribly insincere. When I told her so in private, she asked if I advised her to speak to Ruth with absolute candor, and oh, dear me! I don’t believe I do, do you?

Elinor says that if consistency is a hobgoblin, sincerity is a superstition; and if it had been intended that we should be entirely frank about everything our heads would have been created transparent with the thoughts floating around all labeled and everything. Her arguments sound sophistical and I know she is not acting right, but I am too much bothered to reason it out just now. I wish you would hurry to get well and help. Elinor was awfully anxious when we thought Ruth was lost in the storm. She seems to blame her for that, too, and everything. I never dreamed that she could be so resentful. I wish she wouldn’t.

Myra.