Chapter VI

The Fatal Black Bag

Myra was not expelled, although the narrowness of her escape proved a wholesome tonic to her conscience in future conduct.

“Prexie did not actually mention the charivari and the midyear examinations or noise in the corridors or cutting late or neglecting to ask permission for drives without a chaperon and for dinners in town and visits to New York and incidents like that, but he looked as if he knew all about every thing, and I was scared stiff. Ruthie talked up for me in the noblest way and said I was impulsive and meant well and didn’t stop to think and — and — “

“And what?” asked Elinor who was lying languidly on the couch while Myra dressed for dinner on this April evening. She was recovering from an attack of the “grip” and felt listless in every fibre.

“And — um-m — that — that I was young yet.” Myra brought out the dreadful accusation with explosive force and hurriedly dropped a fresh white petticoat over her head to conceal her blushes. “I shall be seventeen in June,” she added in an injured tone, “and a sophomore. That is, I hope I’ll be a sophomore. The girls say that the June exams aren’t near so unpleasant as the January ones, and sometimes when it is very hot Mrs. Vernon passes around lemonade while they write. I wonder if the weather will be hot this year.”

“Oh, dear! If only I can stick it out till the end! Mother will be so disappointed if I have to give in. Myra, did you ever wake up in the morning and lie there thinking about the bother of dressing till you want to cry, and real tears slide down on the pillow? And all the while you’re listening and listening to hear the horrible whir and clangor of that awful gong. And the other girls — specially Lydia — bustle to and fro, banging windows, slamming doors, thumping thud-thud-thud with such exasperating energy that — that — and Ruth’s shoes squeak — “

“‘Cause they’re cheap,” interrupted Myra, “she’s truly poor, and you know it. She isn’t sure yet if she can return to college next year. When the notice about those students who required aid was posted, she sent in a written application for a scholarship. Prexie summoned her to an interview half an hour ago. If he thinks she isn’t worth helping, she’ll have to go back to teaching. Dear old Ruthie! I wish I had a million dollars!”

“How eccentric of you!” murmured Elinor; “now most people consider eight hundred thousand plenty. Half a thousand would carry Ruth through next year, and when she’s a junior she can tutor and earn money in other ways. It would cost her less if she roomed in a boarding-house instead of a dormitory.”

“Why, Elinor! Didn’t you know that we are all four going to room together again? We’re planning to live in a firewall study next year. Of course we may not get it, but we decided to draw for one, you know we did.”

“I didn’t,” said Elinor; “I never said a word when the rest of you were discussing it. I do not wish to hurt anybody’s feelings, but you may as well know now as any time that I have not the slightest intention of rooming with Ruth Allee another year.”

“But Ruth wants to,” exclaimed Myra; “she said she would if Prexie gives her a scholarship.”

“And I don’t want to,” responded Elinor, tranquilly, “so that makes us even. Anyhow,” she raised herself among the pillows in the energy of this new idea, “I really owe it to my mother to seek conditions that shall be as little of a nervous strain as possible. A genius is a difficult sort of a person — everybody says so. She gets on my nerves. I dare say — I’m almost sure — that’s one reason I broke down like this. How can I do good work if I am continually irritated? In fact, it may be the wisest plan for each of us to draw for a single room.”

“What!” Myra twirled about on her heels so swiftly that she went too far and was obliged to reverse before securing a steady line of vision in the required direction. “Live in singles! You don’t want to room with me?”

Elinor raised a handful of silken fringe and brushed away a smile. Now she had the rattlepate on another track, and they could leave Ruth out of the question. “If just you and I could go into a double, why, of course, I’d love to choose that. But maybe it would be better to draw for singles, and then we could trade for a double later, if we wished; or we might choose rooms in the same neighborhood with the rest of the girls we like. We could hang portières and keep our doors open into the corridor and have chairs out there and tables and flowers, as if it were a private house. We might call it the Sophomore Haven — “

“Oh, goodie!” Myra clapped her hands. “You have the loveliest ideas — “

“Girls,” Lydia came sailing into the study, “the class is to meet in the lecture room after Chapel tonight to draw for rooms. The seniors have taken four of the most desirable firewalls, and Ruth was wondering if — “

“Enter the villain!” announced Ruth, in her gruffest tones, as she flung wide the door and stalked in. Elinor glanced up quickly at the ring of a new note of exultation under the gruffness. An inner flame of joy was shining behind the mobile features. Myra gave one look, and then began to jump up and down, with her long braid hugged to her breast.

“Oh, oh, oh! I know! Prexie says that you deserve a scholarship. You can come back next year. You needn’t go back to teaching right away. We shall all be sophomores together. Tell us this instant what he said about your work.”

Ruth carefully selected a chair and sat down with provoking deliberation. Her suspense since applying for aid had culminated in the strain of the actual interview with the president. His cordial assurance that she was worth much more than four hundred dollars a year to the institution had lifted her from the valley to the mountain-top. The past half-hour of bounding, whirling delight in the shadowy solitude of the pines beyond the garden had exhausted the remnant of her frail strength.

“He said,” she answered, “that my work in `math’ had not been so excel — um-m — I mean, so good as it might be.”

In blissful ignorance of discriminating adjectives, Myra clasped her braid closer. “Just like me!” she sighed; “my work in `math’ has not been so good as it might be, either. I’m so flattered — “

“And we’re so proud,” put in Elinor, hastily, her accent on the adverb somewhat over-emphasized, “but not one bit surprised.”

Ruth sent her a keen glance, opened her mouth as if about to speak, and then apparently changed her mind and smiled instead. Elinor smiled back a little uncertainly, for she never could tell just how transparent she was before this embarrassing person. To be sure, she was proud of Ruth’s success, but that was not the whole truth by any means. If Prexie had refused the scholarship, she and Myra and Lydia could have chosen a parlor for three the next year. Far be it from her to have caused Ruth such a disappointment, in case the decision had rested with her; still, if he had said no, there would have been one or two compensations.

“To-night I shall draw for a choice in firewalls,” began Lydia, briskly, as she put in place the three hairs that had daringly gone astray upon her satiny head, “and if I chance to fail — “

“Elinor wants us all to try for singles,” interrupted Myra, “and have a Sophomore Haven, portières, chairs in the corridor, everything sociable and homelike. She says — “

“Don’t you agree with me, Lydia?” Elinor sat up in her eagerness to snatch the reins of the conversation from Myra’s erratic fingers. “Ever so many intend to draw for firewalls, and we won’t have any choice at all, even if we don’t get a blank first thing. Singles are always in demand. If we win good numbers in them, we can trade later for doubles or a parlor and a single. It will be much preferable, I think.”

“I’d rather take a single,” said Ruth; “Prexie says I ought to make an effort with mathematics, and I can’t concentrate with noise and talk around me, and people running in and out. I’m such an old poke!”

“Why didn’t you say so before,” cried Elinor, impetuously, “and saved the fuss?”

“Fuss?” echoed Ruth; “what fuss? I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking much about anything but getting back. The room doesn’t really matter, you know. Any place will do, provided we manage to come back somehow or other. At the end of the interview with Prexie, he mentioned a room in Music Hall perhaps, if the regular dormitories are crowded.”

“Music Hall!” exclaimed Myra, appalled, “with smells from the laboratory drifting around and pianos drumming away at all hours! A room away off from everywhere and all the fun! I hope you enlightened him.”

“I told him that I didn’t care,” replied Ruth, happily, “and I don’t, you know — that is, comparatively I don’t. It’s pleasanter to be near my friends and the library, of course. I fancy he proposed it simply as a test to learn if I wished to come back for the essentials or the conveniences. Afterward he said that I might take part in the drawing to-night.”

“I guess he’d better!” growled Myra.

“Girls!” Ruth clasped her thin hands in rare exaltation. “I’m coming back to college. Do you understand? One — two — three years more of study! Three years of books and friends and beautiful things! No need to have lingered so wistfully last October for farewell glimpses of golden trees and scarlet vines and the lake lying like a jewel in its radiant setting! No need to lean from my window so often to gaze at the gracious hills and distant purple mountains, hoarding the vision of them for future days in the land of level prairies! No need to stretch out longing arms to hold back the dear days of this precious year that is slipping away so fast!”

“No need at all!” assented Myra, joyously; “you’re coming back to college. And so am I and so is everybody. That’s exactly how I feel about it. There’s the dinner gong now, and it is ice-cream night, and next year ice-cream night will keep on revolving week after week, and pretty soon we’ll be seniors.”

“I have been considering your suggestion, Elinor,” announced Lydia, as she rose from her seat, “and I have decided that it will indeed be wiser to draw for singles to-night, although roommates are said to be excellent discipline and good for the character.”

“But why inflict it upon yourself?” murmured Elinor. “Job didn’t.”

“I think Job lacked executive ability,” spoke up Myra, with unexpected astuteness, “else why did he sit on that ash-heap so long?”

“Because,” laughed Elinor, for somehow it was easier to laugh at this point in the discussion, “he didn’t have the luck to live in America.”

Myra took up the thread again after Chapel, when the freshmen were pressing on across the corridor into the lecture room. “American girls are the luckiest persons on this round earth. Little boys are always getting scolded and sent home from the toy-shops at Christmas time, and men won’t let them hook on behind their sleds, but they let the little girls. And girls are petted and praised and get their own way. And — oh, Elinor — I know I am going to draw a blank! I know it! I know it! And I shall die if I do, I know I shall. It won’t be any wonder if I never pass in trigonometry, with roommates disturbing me every minute. It is such a comfort to believe that I might not have flunked in `math’ if I had lived in a single this year.”

“Is it?” repeated Elinor, absently; “well, I’d cling to that conviction, if I were you. Some species of belief are apt to be slippery.” Then she dodged as nimbly as she could in the crush.

It was not an outwardly tragic scene — that room thronged with eager young faces, some vivid in the white glow of the gas-burners near the front, others softly luminous in shadowy corners or showing as a dim fringe of heads against the pale wall. When the principal’s assistant rose to request those desiring singles to come forward, it seemed to excited Myra as if half the class were on their feet.

“Aiai!” she wailed, under her breath, “aiai, “woe is me! There’ll be about forty blanks, because the seniors took so many singles that fewer than usual were left for the under classes. Maybe we’ll have to go into a firewall after all.”

“Hurry, Myra! Get into line at the platform. Lydia and Ruth are away ahead of us. Now keep cool and don’t snatch when it is your turn to thrust your hand into that fatal black bag. I think she said there are only sixteen blanks.”

“Sixteen!” moaned Myra, “and this is my unlucky year!”

“Ah! Watch! Lydia has drawn a slip. Oh, Myra!”

“What? Quick! Oh! It’s a blank.”

Elinor broke into a nervous bubble of laughter. “Isn’t her expression funny! Astonished and sort of injured, as if she had deserved better of the jealous fates. The girl behind her drew number two, and then the next has what? Did you catch it? Thirty-five. Now for Ruth!”

“It’s another blank. Poor Ruthie! I’ll give her my choice if I get one. Elinor, my knees feel so queer and wobbly. See! that girl drew ten and that one twenty-three. Nobody has first choice yet, has anybody? Behold! Just watch me! I’m a magician. Ho, for number — “

Elinor bent forward in anxiety and grasped her wrist.

” — number nothing! I told you it was my imlucky year. We’ll have to go into a firewall all together.”

Then for one black minute Elinor lost her head. She forgot that even if she too drew a blank, they would still have a chance at the doubles, and she could pair off with Myra. She had eyes only for a vision of another endless year in a firewall study, with Ruth’s ramshackle desk and yellow paper flowers straggling over a glaring chromo, with Ruth herself continually passing and repassing, brushing against her, laying a hand on her sleeve, or staring at her silently from the corners. So Elinor reached into the black bag desperately.

“Hurry! You’re fumbling around in there a mighty long time,” whispered Myra, “wouldn’t it be a joke if you pulled out a blank too?”

The pupils of Elinor’s eyes had contracted and the iris looked curiously veiled as if a film had thickened in front of it. She did not turn toward Myra, but held her slip as far away as possible in the opposite direction. She glanced first at one side, then at the other, before crumpling it in her hand.

“It’s a blank — a — b-b-blank,” she said.

“Crackie!” muttered Myra in an awed voice, “four blanks in our crowd! The fates have got it in for us this time. Clotho, Atropos — who is the other one? It’s a conspiracy. Let me see yours.”

But when she stretched out her arm, Elinor evaded her. “No! Yes, I’11 show it to you after we get out of this crush. Come, sit down.” She dropped rather limply on a bench near by. “I suppose we’ll need to wait till the drawing is finished. There’s Lydia. Call her so that we can — can consult. Call — call Ruth.”

“How queer and wobbly your voice sounds. It’s like my knees. Do give me that slip of yours. I want the four blanks for my memory-bill. What made you crease it all up like that? I can hardly unroll it without tearing. Why!” she gasped, “why, why, lookee here! You drew two slips by mistake!”

“Did I?” murmured Elinor faintly, “d-did I?” She inhaled a tremulous breath and jumped up in gushing dismay. “Did I? How perfectly awful! Two slips, and I thought it was a blank because they were close together, face to face, of course. Won’t the girls be provoked — those that have good numbers this time!”

“Why?” asked Myra mechanically, her fingers clutching the slips.

“Because — oh, because this is an error. It will throw out the whole drawing; There won’t be any paper left for the last girl in the row. So we’ll have to do it all over again. I — I’ve heard of mistakes like that. To think it is my fault!”

“You didn’t mean to do it,” said Myra comfortingly, “never mind. It’s the luckiest mistake for us that ever happened.”

“The slips must have been stuck together,” said Elinor. Her breath was coming fast and short. “They — must have been stuck — stuck together.”

“Tingalingaling!” jangled the bell at the desk.

“Young ladies!” announced the assistant, “I regret to say that there has been some error made in the drawing, as no slip remains for the last applicant. I am forced to ask you to return all numbers to the bag and try again. Did anyone chance to draw two slips by mistake?”

For an instant of panic, Elinor glanced around wildly; then she seized Myra’s elbow and glided forward to acknowledge that she had been to blame — and she was sorry, so awfully, awfully sorry! It was all her fault. Would the girls ever forgive her?

Immediately she was pounced upon and gratefully squeezed by the girls who had won poor numbers or none at all. The possessor of first choice raised a half humorous, half earnest wail for sympathy. Others appeared disappointed or hopeful. The majority indeed were hopeful, because unless a girl has the very best there is always the chance that she may gain a better.

In the second drawing Lydia found an eleven on her slip, and Ruth rejoiced in a five. Myra and Elinor again were rewarded by blanks, and tried for a double together. In this they succeeded in obtain ing a three, and went dancing down the corridor to visit the various rooms on the list of those set apart for the incoming sophomore class.

“Oh, Elinor, dear Elinor!” chanted Myra rapturously, “everything happens just exactly right. Aren’t we happy, happy, happy! Ruth has a single and now she can wrestle with `math’ and write her poems and be editor by-and-bye. Lydia has a single to reign in and have committee meetings and be an example and so forth. It won’t make any difference to her whether we cut late or whistle or forget to dust or leave our beds airing all day, because we’ll be in a sweet little double all by our own selves — you and I, dear lovely charming Elinor. We shall choose a new dormitory and have two bright bedrooms and a study with windows and a lattice maybe. Oh, Elinor, you darling! I love you to distraction, and often when you aren’t near enough to hug, I wish you were twins.”

Elinor stirred uneasily. “Will you always love me, Myra, no matter what I do? Suppose I should do something mean and wicked and — and dishonest? Suppose you should discover some day that I am not near so — so nice as I ought to be? Suppose — suppose you have idealized me, and really inside I’m — horrid?”

“I shan’t suppose any such thing!” exclaimed Myra indignantly, “you never did think enough of yourself. What you need is a little proper self-esteem. You^re the best and sweetest and finest girl in the whole class. And I love you, and Ruth loves you, and everybody loves you. So there! You ought to be ashamed to slander yourself!”

EUnor paused at a window and pressed her forehead against the pane. “See that star hanging above the point of the evergreen over yonder,” she said softly, “nice star, isn’t it? Nice big bright star! Maybe I’ll decide to elect astronomy next year. It’s a snap course.” She reached down one hand and held Myra’s arm closer around her waist ” Myra, you’re a dear.”

“I do wish you were twins,” whispered Myra.

“If I should ever meet another girl just like me,” said Elinor slowly, “with the same thoughts and feelings and — and everything, I should hate her. Mean, selfish, deceitful — a cheat!”

“Hush!” Myra closed her mouth. “You’re tired out and nervous and blue after the excitement. I feel reaction myself at times. I shan’t listen. And I do wish you were twins. So there!”

“I should despise her,” said Elinor.