Chapter XIV
All Kinds of Sense
“‘Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense,'” chanted Myra one Sunday morning in October as she pulled papers from drawers and pigeonholes and emptied them in a heap. “‘Fine sense and exalted sense’ —. Heigho, Elinor, what are you squealing about?”
“A centipede, a centipede!” shrieked a voice from Elinor’s bedroom, “come rapidly and stand by me while I throw my shoe at it.”
“Pshaw! Take my shoe. I ‘sackerifice’ it on the altar of friendship because you object to having yours contaminated. Open the window and shoo him out. He never did you any harm. Heigho, heigho!” the papers rustled energetically under her fingers, “‘Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as — ‘ Well, what’s the matter now?”
Elinor had emerged, stepping warily, and stood hugging herself, her delicate face screwed into an expression of shrinking distaste. “See there! A lot of horrid little fat worms curling over the rug. O — oh! take them away!”
“Hm-m, only three — no four. They crawled out of my chestnuts on the plate under the tea-table,” explained Myra, rising with an envelope in one hand and a pencil in the other, “I’ve picked up seven already this morning. Don’t be afraid; they won’t bite.” She stooped to shove each one gently upon the paper and deposit it outside the window.
“Be sure you wash that pencil,” shuddered Elinor, “or throw it away altogether. How can you bear to touch it? Once I knew a girl who allowed her white mice to run up her sleeves. Ugh!”
Myra had returned to her fluttering papers. “‘Fine sense’ — that’s your kind. Miss Offitt — ‘and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense.’ That is a quotation, permit me to enlighten you; I did not make it up myself. Heigho! eight letters to be answered to-day. ‘Fine sense and exalted sense — ‘ Good morning, my lady Lydia, did you get all the plum bread you wanted for breakfast?”
“I never eat plum bread,” replied Lydia with her customary reverence for fact whether familiar or not, “it is not nearly so nutritious as whole wheat. Ah!” she raised the window and inhaled the crisp sweet air, “what a beautiful morning!”
“Honest? Who’d have thought it! Heigho! ‘Fine sense and exalted —’ Listen, Lydia, the common sense belongs to you all right. Where’s Ruth?”
“Gone to Cedar Hill for a walk all alone. She wouldn’t listen when I urged her to wait for company. She knows that Mrs. Vernon forbids us to go far into the country unless in parties of three or more. She flung back her head in that restive fashion she has, and glared at me. It’s another mood. She is queerer than ever this year.”
” — ‘and exalted sense’ — that’s Ruth’s kind. But it isn’t half so useful as common sense. Girls,” she sprang up regardless of scattered sheets, “let’s all go to the Hill this bee-yutiful morning, and maybe I shall find some chestnuts. We have two hours before service.”
“What variety of sense is yours?” inquired Elinor with an air of gloomy interest, and answered herself quickly, “Nonsense! Oho, ho, ho!”
Through the avenue of maples strolled the three girls, with the yellow leaves and the scarlet wafting slowly down in the sunshine to lie glowing underfoot. In the lane beyond the orchard, Myra lingered to knock down a few apples from a tree that leaned invitingly over the stone wall. Farther on she loitered to poke hopefully amid the grass under a chestnut tree. When finally she arrived at the brow of the hill, she found Lydia already seated on a stone, her eyes speculative over the principles of descriptive narrative while they rested on the gorgeous foliage of the woods below. Elinor leaned against a cedar, her gaze following a speck that went zigzaging across a field stacked with golden corn.
“There goes Ruth — and yet I am almost certain that she saw us approaching. She must be on her way to the old ‘deserted mansion’ as the girls call it. It’s two miles distant on the loneliest road!”
“I warned her at breakfast,” said Lydia in a tone of resigned disapproval, “and she paid no heed. We shall have barely time now to return and dress for services.”
“I want to visit the ‘deserted mansion,’ “teased Myra. “Somebody’s told me that it is a thrilling place with a mouldy lake and a barred window and ghosts very likely. Ruth has been there more than once. Elinor, let’s chase after her. I haven’t used all my cuts yet this semester; so I can skip church. Besides that, I think we really ought to go along to take care of her.”
“It is only October, and the three cuts must last till February. You’d better not,” advised provident Lydia.
Elinor twisted her fingers together. “What makes her do such things? Is every genius so queer and uncomfortable to have around? She exaggerates every interest into a question of life and death. First it was college, then Miss Ewers. Not even she herself knows what next. Come, Myra, we’ve got to watch her. There’s no use going to church when I couldn’t sit still because of worrying.”
Lydia remained statuesque and contemplative on the summit till the two slender figures were half way down the slope. Then rising with abruptness she shook herself chidingly and started after them. Myra heard the click of her low broad heel on the pebbles, and turned to wait.
“That’s right.” she called gaily, “you’re improving steadily, dear mellowing Lydia. Misa Howard playing truant on such a beautiful morning! Look at the trees and the sky. Breathe — breathe down deep. See Ruth throw back her head and stretch out her arms to the wonderful world. Aren’t you glad you came?”
On they roamed across a meadow besprinkled with feathery lavender asters and sturdy spikes of yellow snap-dragon. Into the radiant woods they followed where far ahead among the trunks Ruth’s tall form disappeared and reappeared, swaying in the shadows from sunlight to leaf-light. Along the winding road bordered with vine-covered walls wild grapes reached down purple clusters and thorn-trees jeweled with redhaws flamed in settings of dark evergreens.
A shrubful of nannie-berries at the foot of an ancient vineyard brimmed Myra’s cup to overflowing. “I know I shall never, never, never be so perfectly and absolutely happy again!” she declared rapturously scanning the meagre branches.
“I think I shall write up this walk for a daily theme,” announced Lydia with a keen glance traveling across the road to the “deserted mansion.” “Sweep of neglected lawn, gate on broken hinges, piazza warped, shutters loose. What is the word to convey the impression — the atmosphere? Abandoned — ruined — deserted — ah, forsaken! It is a forsaken old place.”
“I fail to spy a barred window.” said Myra rubbing her cheek against Lydia’s shoulder in excess of bliss.
“There’s Ruth,” whispered Elinor intent upon glimpses between the ragged spruces of a gloomy little lake, rock-encircled. The slight figure flitting along the shore glided into a tumble-down boathouse. Then something cracked, and a splash in scum-thick bubbles brought the girls flying.
They discovered Ruth sitting rather breathless on a rotten railing, one foot pressed against a waterlogged rowboat.
“Nothing but a snake,” she said, “it startled me at first and a board snapped. Let’s explore.” She was lawless from excitement. “It’s a haunted house.
; “‘Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.'”
“You should not have run away alone,” rebuked Lydia surveying the prospect with professional interest in her daily theme.
“I have taken care of myself so far — years and years. See! I dare, I dare, I dare!” At the edge of the water she went leaping like a witch from slippery rock to rock, even poising for a heart’s beat on a rotten boat — its planks slowly settling beneath her weight — before bounding on again.
“Ruth, stop, stop!” shrieked Myra hopping up and down in an agony of apprehension, ” come back to land, you horrid, horrid girl! I want to shake you — shake you — shake you!”
Ruth mocking her whirled farther and farther, more and more recklessly, till a glance backward showed her that Elinor had sunk down suddenly at the foot of a tree and with closed eyes was resting her head against the trunk. Ruth sped to her, the wild gleams quenched from the elfin features, the eyes sober and steady again.
“Oh, my dear!” she cried softly, “oh, my dear! my dear! I did not know you cared. I will be good. See, I will not do it any more. Look up, Elinor! Look, dear! I’m all right”
Elinor’s eyes flashed open and then shut swiftly again to hide the dismay in their depths. Ruth thought she cared enough to faint at sight of the danger. Why, oh, why had she yielded to that contemptible weak quivering of the knees? Ruth thought she cared, but she didn’t, she didn’t, she didn’t!
Then Elinor sat up and smiled a dim sweet smile at the repentant genius. “Never mind, Ruth,” she said, “only the water is so unpleasant and scummy that it would surely have ruined your clothes.”
“It is full of algae,” contributed Lydia, “doubt less it also contains vorticellse and paramsecia and all sorts of fascinating creatures. Girls, yon don’t realize how much you have missed by not electing biology. For instance, the earthworm — oh, the beautiful interior of the earthworm!”
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Elinor,” persisted Ruth, “it was an experience. That is my business; I’ve got to do things and feel things and then try to express them. In my story for the prize contest I think I may use this haunted lake. I should like to put you into a story sometime, Elinor, as a heroine.”
“Me?” she exclaimed in quick alarm, “in a story? Oh, don’t. I’m not worth it. It’s lovely of you to flatter me so, but you couldn’t make me into a heroine. I’m a regular coward about being hurt. Lydia is the prima donna for you, or Myra either. She would keep the story lively. Why, where has she vanished?”
“She is poking about in the rubbish around that shattered conservatory,” answered Lydia as she rose from her resting place on a comfortable stump, “she disappeared half a minute ago beyond that comer at the back. By the way, Ruth, in your story you must start with the plot, not with the scenery. Don’t you remember how Miss Ewers told us in our freshmen year that the plot is the main thing, with the characters next, and conversation and scenery last? An incident is something which happens and something that comes out of that happening.”
“Nothing ever happens at college,” said Elinor springing hastily to her feet in time to avoid Ruth’s outstretched hand, “you’ll be obliged to make it all up out of your head, Ruth. Put a lot of thrill in it — adventures and fights and blizzards and tornadoes and shipwrecks and earthquakes and volcanoes and people that live and move and do things. Don’t let them maunder over psychology and moulder over books, as we do. Oh, if I were a man and could get out into the world where there is action, the rush and whirl of events, air to breathe —”
“The air is very good here, Elinor,” said Lydia, “come away from that malarial pool. What an absolutely perfect day it is with the crystal sunshine lying on the quiet fields and that deserted old house! Nothing moves; even the grasses are still.”
“The very windows seem asleep,” murmured Ruth softly, “behind those dull panes who knows what dead eyes —”
“Help, help, help!” Myra sprang into sight and darted toward them, panting, stumbling, leaping across the tangled lawn, while behind her a ragged old woman with a savage face and straggling black hair plunged awkwardly in pursuit, brandishing her fists. Something long and bright gleamed in her hand.
“Run!” Ruth seized Elinor’s shoulders and started her with a push toward the road. “Run!” She dashed to Myra, sent her with a shove after Elinor, and began to jump up and down, waving her arms. “Go back! Go back! Go back!”
Lydia — sensible Lydia — glanced around swiftly in search of a weapon, saw a stout stick and a slender twig lying side by side, snatched at the twig and advanced to the rescue.
The old woman stopped short about ten paces in front of the two heroines — one hopping to and fro and shooing her back as if she were a chicken, the other standing firm and impressive with a small switch upraised threateningly.
“Waal, I never!” she screamed hoarsely, “Git off my land, and stay off, I tell ye! I’ll hev ye took up fer trespass. Git! I won’t hev no more gals prying ’round my kitchen, college or not. Now git, will ye?” The metal-backed comb glittered in her grasp.
Ruth and Lydia turned and mildly “got.” The four girls climbed silently over the stone wall and walked away down the winding road whence they had come.
After they had safely passed the second curve, Myra recovered her power of speech. “I was exploring and peeked through the window and there she was combing her hair. Then she chased me.”
“How did she know you were from the college?” inquired Lydia, who had regained her scientific curiosity in the interval since the ignominous retreat.
“I — I guess I hollered it when she started to run for me,” confessed the craven, “people excuse a good deal to college girls, you know, because we are having the fun of our lives, and it adds three years to our youth. A crowd of girls were out here last week and carried back a pile of apples.”
“Ah, that explains her attitude. She is doubtless only the care-taker. I wish we had been slightly more dignified.” And Lydia sighed.
“You see, I wasn’t a heroine, Ruth,” said Elinor, “I ran.”
“I ran too,” chuckled Myra, “crackie! I thought she was going to scalp me. Didn’t she look like a raving crazy maniac! And there we were all alone two miles from everybody, with not a house on the road or a buggy in sight. Two miles! Eheu! we’re two miles from our Sunday dinner.”
“I can’t help it.” Elinor dropped upon a convenient log. “Go on, if you want to. This is where I stop for at least five minutes. I feel as limp as a rag, and the trees keep dancing, and every little while the path jumps over the stonewall. I’m sorry.”
Ruth flew to her side. “It’s been too much for you. Lean on me.”
Lydia regarded her keenly. “You are pale. Try to brace up, Elinor. It wouldn’t do for you to go to pieces away out here.”
“Let’s make a stretcher. Wouldn’t that be fun! Oh, no, of course I don’t mean that exactly, dear sweet Elinor. You just sit there as long as you feel like it, and then we’ll start and peg ahead so slowly that you won’t know you’re moving hardly. ‘Put one foot before the other, and then put t’other before the one.’ It’s easy. While you’re waiting, I’m going over to gather that clematis in the woods there. Maybe we’ll be in time for dinner after all.”
“I think I shall go too, if you don’t need me, Elinor,” said Lydia, “it will be a good chance to collect some foliage so that I can describe it accurately in my theme. If I deal with the subject in an impressionistic manner, blocking; out masses of crude colors — red, yellow, russet, crimson, and so on — without entering into details of streaks and veins, and shadings, I’m afraid I shan’t have enough material to fill the two pages. I shan’t be gone long.”
Elinor watched the energetic figure cross the grassy lane with rapid steps, pick its deliberate way through a strip of meadow, and move from tree to tree for a business-like examination of the leaves. She turned to Ruth with an involuntary little half smile.
“Yes,” said Ruth in answer to the unspoken appeal for comprehension, “Lydia is amusing — all the more so because she has absolutely no sense of humor.”
Elinor’s eyes darkened with swift displeasure and she bent her head aside to conceal the resentful frown between her brows. Ruth had no right to criticize her friend in words. It was impertinent. It was assuming that the tie between Ruth and Elinor was closer than that between Lydia and Elinor. Ruth was an outsider really; she did not belong to the exclusive inner circle where Myra and Lydia had a place. Such frankness in her was an offense all the more distasteful because it had been unconsciously invited by that little half smile.
“Lovely weather, isn’t it?” said Elinor.
Ruth glanced up absently. “I thought at first that the old woman was actually a maniac,” she began, with restless fingers prying up fragments of bark from the lightning-blasted tree on which they were sitting ; “do you know that it is easier to defend yourself against a wild beast than against a violently crazy person? You cannot terrify some madmen because they haven’t sense enough to be afraid. A beast has the power of reason and can run from harm. But for pure recklessness take a maniac in a frenzy.”
Elinor shivered nervously. “I’d rather not think of it just now, Ruth,” she said.
“My mother is in an asylum,” continued Ruth softly, “it was caused by overwork before I was born. I have never spoken of it to anyone else, Elinor, but I know that you will understand. When I think of her pacing to and fro, to and fro, in that long gloomy corridor, while I am here — her daughter — in this wonderful place, with such wonderful friends! Oh, Elinor!”
Impulsively Elinor stretched out her hand. Ruth took it and held it against her cheek for a moment. “Dear Elinor!” she whispered.
Elinor moved a few inches away, drawing back her hand as she did so with a smile that seemed to glow with caressing sympathy. Ruth saw only the smile, and responded to it with such an expression in her eyes that Elinor wanted to scream: “Don’t, oh, don’t! You mustn’t like me so much!” Instead of that she smiled again before gazing anxiously around in search of Myra to the rescue.
Through the rest of the day the consciousness of this new claim rankled in Elinor’s mind. She felt as if she were being helplessly wound about in the meshes of an unwelcome friendship. Ruth was presuming and intrusive and selfishly egotistical to impose upon her the burden of such an intimate secret. What difference did it make to her — Elinor Offitt — whether an ill fate or a fair fortune had befallen Ruth Allee’s ancestors? Ruth Allee was merely a temporary acquaintance thrust upon her by the exigencies of college life. The final snapping of the factitious bond would be one of the anticipated joys of Commencement day. How could she endure the bother almost two years longer? Hour by hour after the strain of the morning’s experience Elinor felt herself sliding nearer and nearer to the edge of her self-control.
Toward the end of that Sunday afternoon one of Myra’s friends climbed the stairs to invite the four girls down to meet a guest in the senior parlor. With their privacy defended by an engaged sign, they were variously occupied — Lydia reading, Elinor lying down, Ruth revising proof, Myra writing letters. The visitor took the sign down and then knocked.
“I simply had to see you,” she announced, and as my principles do not permit me to rap over engaged signs, I removed it first.”
This surprisingly easy solution of a difficulty often recurring in Myra’s sociable career was assimilated with a wicked sparkle behind demure lashes. Certainly they would be delighted to spend the half hour before dinner in the senior parlor. The frosty lamplighted dusk found them there in the pretty drawing-room. Myra and Elinor sat in one big chair; Ruth perched on the piano-bench; Lydia was gracious to the guest and her hostesses on the narrow divan. Around the claw-footed table other seniors were reading quietly.
“Now, Socrates,” began the mistress of ceremonies, addressing Myra, “say something. What is justice?”
“Don’t you know that even?” exclaimed Miss Ready-Tongue, lifting herself erect and proceeding to reel off her nonsense more gaily than usual because of the exhilarating morning out-of-doors. Every time she paused in fleeting diffidence at sight of the watching faces one of the others interpolated, “By my soul, Socrates, I do not know what I do think.”
Before the gong struck for supper nearly everybody in the room had joined the hilarious circle to listen to a dissertation on Emerson as a corrupter of youth because he had said, “Trust thyself,” whereas Solomon, the wisest man, had declared that “in the multitude of counsellors “a thing is established.
In the corridor Elinor drifted beside Myra on their way to the dining-room. “Did you notice how she introduced you?” It was as ‘Miss Dickinson, one of the most entertaining of our college freaks.’ A freak!” she repeated tauntingly.
“Did she really?” ejaculated Myra in a gratified tone, “does she truly consider me original? Why, I just go ahead and say the first thing that comes into my mind.”
“I’ve frequently wondered how you did it,” laughed Elinor, “however you appear impervious to the implication that you are peculiar, queer, unique, abnormal, eccentric, a museum exhibit, in short a freak!”
“Just like Ruth,” sighed Myra blissfully, “only she is a genuine genius and has ideas all the time. The difference is that I shall get over it while she won’t. You remember that Walpole was not certain whether a young man owed his brilliancy to ‘parts’ or to mere youthful spirits. With Ruth it is indisputably ‘parts.’ “
“I dare say,” said Elinor listlessly, “we won’t quarrel over her ability. Let’s talk about something more interesting.”
“The seniors admire her too,” went on Myra musingly, “Two minutes ago just before you caught up to me I heard one of them say, ‘Miss Allee has a fascinating face. Did you observe her while Myra Dickinson was jabbering?'”
“Gibbering,” corrected Elinor softly.
“And the other one answered, ‘I caught a glimpse of her while she was gazing at Miss Offitt in an adoring way. Miss Offitt is a sweet and charming girl, but this was worship. It is mighty foolish, especially in a genius who ought to live for her work and not care too much about ordinary people.'”
Elinor was breathing quickly. “Myra! Did they say that about me? Do they talk of Ruth and me together — together?”
“Oh, I guess so,” she nodded, “what are you fussing about? Everybody knows that Ruth admires you next to Miss Ewers, and now she’s gone. Ruth isn’t ashamed of showing she likes her friends. She has written sonnets to you and maybe she will put you in her prize story. Anybody else would be flattered.”
“Flattered!” groaned Elinor, “flattered to be held up as a laughing-stock before the whole college! To be made ridiculous by such idiotic exaggeration, silly sheep’s eyes, heart on her sleep for daws to peck at! Flattered! Her mother is crazy, crazy, do you hear? She herself is next door to it. Her wild moods, that insane leaping around the lake, her — her lack of taste. She is worrying me wild. Keep her away from me. Don’t let her touch me or speak to me. Sit between her and me at the table to-night. Please, please, don’t let her come near me or I shall scream. Always — always sit between her and me! Don’t let her look at me! I am afraid of her. I don’t like her. Her mother is crazy already, and she is a genius. I hate, hate, hate — “
Ruth who for the past minute had been sauntering unobserved behind the two girls stood quietly where she had stopped until the clutch of pain in her left side was loosened. Then slipping into a side stairway she climbed up to her solitary room, stumbled blindly in, and locked the door.
