Chapter IV

A Mysterious Disappearance

Through the open transom floated the trill of a birdlike voice preluding a wonderful song, shrill and sweet, to an accompaniment of energetic tripping to and fro, rustling of starched garments, and sundry creaking of window sashes and shades.

"They told her not to worry,
Nor sit up to cram,
Nor feel a sense of hurry
In taking her exam.

And so she did not worry,
Nor study hard, nor cram,
Nor feel a sense of hurry —
And she failed in her exam!"

Ruth approaching in the corridor smiled whimsically to herself at the sound of fluttering pages. She could imagine a book springing perversely shut as Elinor’s fingers went traveling toward her ears. It was Elinor’s voice with a peevish note in it that complained : “Do please hush! You’ve driven Ruth to the library and Lydia to shredded wheat biscuit already. I’ve simply got to finish this reviewing before to-morrow. I don’t dare to fail in this examination. You’d better do a little studying yourself. What did that strong-minded tutor of yours say last time?”

“‘They told her not to worry,'” rang out perseveringly, “‘Nor sit up late to cram.’ That’s only poetry, you understand. She really told me that I should have begun my worrying long before Thanksgiving. That’s prose. She asked eight weeks ago if I wished to pass the midyears. When I acknowledged my willingness, she said I couldn’t possibly do it unless I studied hard all the rest of the time, gave up my two trips to New York, my visit to West Point, and my three guests for the December reception. I reflected — “

“Oh, yes, you reflected, and then assured her that you would omit one trip to the city, invite only one guest to the reception, and follow her advice in all other respects except that you could not under any consideration surrender the visit to West Point. You wondered why that strong-minded junior laughed.”

“She has no sympathy whatever, that person. Fancy her suggesting that I should study during the Holidays, when I went to a dance every night except Sunday. All my friends were home from college, and we had larks, I can tell you. Heigho, Ruthie! How’s literature to-day?”

“Thriving, thank you. The editor-in-chief of the Monthly has accepted my valentine verses for the February number. She has explained how I can qualify in order to be eligible for election on the editorial board next year. If I have a certain minimum number of lines printed before the date of the annual meeting, I shall stand a fair chance.”

“A fair chance I Don’t talk to me I You — a fair chance! You know very well it will be a regular walk-over. What is the valentine?”

“It’s a rondel, ‘Sincerely lift that sweet girl face — ‘”

“What? Why, the one dedicated to — ” Here she caught a warning gesture from Elinor and swallowed back the name from the tip of her tongue. “Of course, it — it isn’t addressed to any real person, is it? That might be embarrassing in print.”

“The title is ‘To Charis.’ That is the Greek word for charm, you know. The editor is afraid the publisher has no Greek type. It looks different in English — charis — charm, loveliness, grace.”

Elinor took care not to catch Myra’s mischievous eye. “It’s perfectly splendid for you to have a chance to be editor, Ruth. It’s a big honor and you deserve it. Myra and I will come clamoring for recognition at your door some day.”

Ruth’s strange light eyes dwelt wonderingly upon her. ” You’re different from anybody else I ever met, Elinor, You’re always saying things you don’t mean, and yet somehow it seems all right. It’s mighty sweet of you anyway. As for the editorship, I’ll win if I possibly can. I’ve wanted it ever since I first saw the college monthly. I’d far rather be editor than on the honor list.”

“Aiai!” shrieked Myra suddenly with a wild sweep of her feather duster across the bookcase, “that’s a Latin wail of woe, as you doubtless probably know. Aiai! Eheu! That’s also Latin, from Horace’s odes — ahem. Oimoi, oimoi! The last expletive is Greek. Aiai! examinations are coming. If I flunk, I can never be on the honor list, me myself. Eheu, oimoi, aiai, alas, woe, woe is me, woe is me!

‘They told her not to worry. Nor sit up late to cram, Nor feel a sense of hurry — ‘”

Ruth fled in one direction and Elinor in another.

The following day was the Sunday before examination week. After supper Myra and Elinor, with arms intertwined, were strolling up and down the corridor while awaiting the hour for Bible lecture. In passing a large bare room, where on other evenings the girls spent this half hour before seven o’clock in dancing, they spied a group of freshmen besieging a sophomore with questions.

“Do they give originals?”

“Do they ask principal parts?”

“Are you really sent home if you flunk?”

“How do we know we’ve been studying right or if we shan’t forget everything we ever learned the minute we see the questions?”

“Oh, you can laugh!”

“I beg your pardon, girls, but it does sound funny, especially when I remember that we worried like this last year; and it wasn’t so bad after all. By the way, I hear that somebody in your class went to the lady principal last Friday to ask permission to attend a recital in town. When Mrs. Vernon said, ‘Before I answer definitely, I must inquire about your record of work,’ the freshman promptly vanished with a terrified, ‘Please don’t trouble yourself about it.'”

Myra tried to look unconscious, while Elinor straightened her mouth from its delighted twitch over this not unfamiliar episode to murmur :

“‘They told her not to worry — ‘”

Myra tweaked her elbow. “‘And she failed in her exam.’ Now, hush! Suppose she did! We’re young yet.”

“I intend to go through this college if it takes till I’m thirty,” declared some one.

A plump young woman on the piano stool began to bemoan her miseries in a thin voice that sounded ludicrously out of kinship with her generous curves. If she were sent home, no, indeed, she would not go back where everybody knew her and would inquire why she had left in the middle of the year. She would go to her aunt out West and stay, or else she would take a position somewhere as a waitress or something. But she would never, never, never go home to her family in disgrace!

“Where’s the disgrace?” demanded Myra pugnaciously, “boys don’t mind if the faculty happen to ask them questions they can’t answer. Girls are too goody-goody. I don’t care a rap whether I flunk or not.”

The sophomore’s quizzical glance caught a snap from the hazel eyes. The strong-minded tutor happened to be a friend of hers. That Miss Offitt — as exquisite as a windflower, wasn’t she? though she had dark shadows under her lashes to-night — ought to persuade Myra Dickinson to study at least half the time. Perhaps that set of girls in the fourth south firewall had not yet heard the traditional rhyme:

Four little freshmen happy as could be! One flunked in mathematics — then there were three.

Monday dawned peacefully with snow powdering the dark evergreens and resting soft and deep upon the ledges. Freshmen filled their fountain pens, and quaking inwardly walked to the hall in which the examinations were to be held. When the slips of printed questions were distributed, Ruth seized one almost roughly and bent to work. Lydia, whose training in a fashionable school had not been eminently severe, glanced rapidly over the paper before proceeding with her customary self-confidence. Elinor secure in her thorough preparation had carried the first semester’s lessons with ease, and now set about her answers with practised calm. And Myra? Myra scribbled swiftly in blissful ignorance that silence is golden — particularly in those painful situations where the silver speech happens to have no pertinent value.

Myra was one of the first to hand in her paper, and although in comparing memories of her replies she was assailed by a few stray misgivings, she suffered no inconvenient alarm. The next day, however, in accordance with a hint from Elinor, she spent greater care upon her answers. The following evening she even studied a little in anticipation of mathematics. On the night before the final day of trial, Lydia awoke at two o’clock to find a light in Myra’s room. At sound of her protest, Myra let go of her hair long enough to explain nonchalantly that she was merely glancing over the rules of indirect discourse. Lydia magnanimously forbore to comment on the difference between reviewing and cramming, which was learning something never known before.

Nobody was surprised that Saturday morning’s mail brought two little unstamped notes to Miss Myra Dickinson. Elinor gazed carefully in another direction when Myra came tripping in and spied the square bits of white conspicuous on her desk. Ruth burying her near-sighted attention farther in her book pretended to be oblivious of the sudden pause of footsteps.

“Only two!” cried Myra’s voice after a queer catch of the breath. She snatched them up and waving them aloft ran into the corridor.

“Ho, everybody! I got two — look at here! How many did you get?”

There was a frou-frou of skirts and tapping of heels and one or two astonished giggles and puzzled half-admiring oh’s, as a background for a highpitched, “Girls, it isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Boys never care. I am going to keep them for my memory-bill.”

While Elinor and Ruth were still listening in dismay, Lydia came sweeping into the disturbed neighborhood and in scandalized haste hustled Myra back to the seclusion of the study.

“But it isn’t anything to be ashamed of,” she persisted defiantly, her cheeks very red, her eyes unnaturally shining, her fingers tearing the envelopes into strips. “It’s a good joke.” She swallowed this time unmistakably. “Some of the brightest girls in the class flunked in ‘math.'”

“The brightest girls — some of them — are the very ones who think they can get along without studying,” said Lydia as she opened her notebook to jot down an item concerning the manual labor of written examinations. “Your standing out in the alleyway like that, and calling to the passers-by, will give a poor reputation to our firewall. Apparently you have derived your ideals of life here from decidedly young gentlemen who are sent to college simply because their fathers have been there before them.”

“My case exactly,” broke in Elinor, “now don’t you jump on Myra any more. Girls as a general thing do worry too much and care unreasonably about insignificant points. Marks don’t matter. The most talented senior in the class failed in trigonometry three times running. The other day when I happened to say that the girls looked tired, that hardworking Miss Ray drawled out, ‘Aren’t they always tired?’ Indeed I do believe they are inclined to be over-conscientious in this place. Don’t you agree with me, Ruth?”

A laugh twinkled in the depths of Ruth’s gaze. “I wish I could, Elinor,” she said, “especially about ‘math.’ I expect to fail in ‘trig’ six times running. But marks do count. They aren’t arbitrary symbols here, you know. They are indications of how faithfully we work. Oh, Elinor, just think of the hundreds and hundreds of girls who are longing for college, hungering and thirsting for the chances some of us are throwing away. It is treacherous, it is wicked — “

Elinor sprang to her feet, with one imperious hand uplifted, before she remembered her manners and walked quickly toward her own room. Ruth had not seen the gesture for at the moment she was turning toward Myra in response to an amazed little cry : “Why, Ruthie, I thought you liked me!”

“I do, I do!” She jumped up in distress and reached out to give her an impulsive hug of contrition. “I love you dearly, Myra, but I’ve got to tell the truth when I’m asked. It isn’t honest to slight our work. You know it yourself. If we will not work, we have no right to stay here. It is better — far better — to go.”

Myra opened her mouth once and closed it, then opened it again: ” Cr-crackie, Ruth! Do you want to get rid of me as much as all that? Well, I tell you what: we’ll all four go to the gym for a game of tennis this morning, because there are no lessons till Monday. See how it rains! The ice is flooded and the trees writhe beautifully. Hurry along. Maybe this is your last chance to play with me, Ruthie.”

For the rest of the day Myra seemed possessed of the spirit of the storm. She danced through the rain, skipping and whirling, and romped through a mad game of tennis. At luncheon she kept the table in a gale with a stream of utterly ridiculous remarks. After a restless afternoon occupied by an aimless tossing about of clothes in her wardrobe, she sat rather pale and quiet through dinner. The evening was spent in a neighboring study, where a box of good things to eat had arrived that morning. All the students were weary after the strain of the week. Ten o’clock found lights out behind the dark transoms and squares of pallid windows that stared out upon the deserted corridors.

At midnight Elinor, who slept lightly, fancied that she heard a muffled footfall in the study and a queer choking sound that startled her upright, wide awake. She listened. There was no sound except the faint tapping of a branch of wistaria blown against her windowpane. A few hours later she awoke again, insistently troubled by a feeling that something had happened to Myra.

She lay for a minute, straining her ears to catch the soft gnawing of a mouse in their pantry under the window-seat in the study. Suddenly the gnawing ceased and four tiny paws scurried across a bare space beside the rug. There was a thud of someone jumping with bare feet upon the floor. Quick steps passed from room to room; then silence; then the spurt of a match, a flare of gas, and Ruth like a tall wild-haired ghost in the doorway.

“Myra’s gone.”

Elinor stared at her in dazed silence for five seconds, before bounding out of bed, throwing her bathrobe around her, sliding into her slippers, and darting into the other inside room. Myra was gone. The coverings looked as if tossed hastily over the footboard. A little silk nightcap lay on the dented pillow. Empty stockings dangled over the back of a chair where her shirtwaist was hanging neatly, as Elinor had taught her. Her shoes lay disconsolately upset underneath. Her bathrobe swung motionless from its proper hook.

“It is exceedingly foolish to worry,” said Lydia as she dressed in distinctly uncharacteristic haste. “Perhaps she woke up hungry and has gone to hunt up something to eat from the other girls. Does either of you know if there is insanity in her family? Three years ago on the night of the great blizzard a freshman who was threatened with expulsion for certain acts of disobedience left in a hurry like this and was almost frozen to death. Another student who failed in the midyears tried to take poison. I heard reports of a kleptomaniac who turned on the gas because she feared detection. Does it smell queer in there?”

Elinor laughed hysterically. “Nothing but violets — we each received a cluster at the spread — and just a sniff of cheese. Don’t you smell it? She saved part of her slice for to-day. Oh, oh, oh! where has she gone without her clothes or anything?”

Then the search began. Before dawn the entire institution was roused to excitement. Every building was being explored more or less thoroughly. Telephone messages to town brought information that no student had left on any train during the night.

Girls gathered whispering in alcoves and recesses. Highly colored rumors of Myra’s conduct over her flunk notes were mingled wonderfully with reports of her fun-loving speeches and hints of her connection with the ill-starred green gowns. One morbid special put on her bathing suit and dragged the swimming-tank in the twilight of the winter morning.

There was tender steak, as usual, for Sunday breakfast, and Saratoga chips hot and crisp, and bread speckled with raisins. Somehow every mouthful choked Elinor, and the cocoa seemed to scorch her throat. After a few minutes of making a pretense to eat, she returned to the study. Ruth overtook her in the alleyway.

“Elinor, you mustn’t look like that. It breaks my heart. She will be brought back safe and well. Nothing dreadful could possibly have happened and left no trace. A detective is expected at once. The idea of a kidnapping is ridiculous. The fault — “

“The fault is yours!” Elinor flung back her head, her hands clenched at her sides. “You made her desperate. You said she was treacherous and wicked, and it was better for her to go. Now she is gone — lost — in the storm. Hear the sleet beat against the window. You are to blame — you — you!”

“There’s Miss Offitt!” A group of girls fluttered into the alleyway. “Any news yet? Isn’t it the strangest circumstance!”

“She was the cutest, brightest girl in the class. We all loved her dearly, and of course she’ll be found ultimately. When I lived in Denver a little boy next door was lost, and they discovered him in the river. Oh, I want to bite my tongue out.”

“Of course she’ll turn up safe and sound. Trust Myra Dickinson to fall on her feet every time,” broke in another hastily to cover the disastrous anecdote, as Elinor twisted the knob of the study door.

“It’s the most mysterious disappearance!” exclaimed a third, ” to vanish — “

Then Myra opened the door from the inside.

“What’s the row?” she inquired, involuntarily taking a step backward before the volley of oh’s and ah’s and where’s and how’s and oh-my-goodness-me’s.

When the full horror of the affair dawned upon her, the round face froze into an expression of absolutely blank dismay for the space of half a minute. Then abruptly with an odd stifled moan of ecstasy, she sank to the floor, buried her head in her arms, and shook.

“Oh, girls, what a joke! I only overslept. I fell asleep away back in a corner of my wardrobe and never heard the rising bell or anything. Oh, girls, isn’t it the biggest joke that ever happened! Prexie and the Doctor and everybody hunting for me, you say? And a detective? A detective! Oh, girls, I shall die! Make me stop laughing, somebody, quick I I am breaking in two. Oh, girls!”

And though probably more than one freshman suspected the truth, nobody except Elinor was ever told how Myra had crept into the wardrobe to smother her sobbing over the two little flunk notes.