Chapter XVI

A Day of Events

It was a day crowded with events. The first event was the finishing by Ruth of her prize story in the early dusk of the winter morning. After fastening the sheets together she sat staring at it somberly, her arms folded across her narrow chest. Once she put out her hands and seized the manuscript with a sudden fierce motion as if about to tear it in two. Then the bell rang for breakfast; and with a little reckless shrug of her shoulders she slipped the papers into a drawer of the shabby desk.

The second event was her stopping in at the study on her way down the corridor and waiting for company. She stood at the door for a minute, looking wistfully around at the books and pictures.

“I suppose,” she said as Myra presented herself with both shoes laced and her belt almost buckled, “that the walls in a hospital are generally bare.”

“Maybe so and maybe no,” was the frivolous reply, “what’s the dif? Dear Ruth, are you planning to associate with me on this journey down the corridor?”

“If I am invited,” she answered and shut her lip grimly at sound of Elinor’s voice : “Quick, Ruth! I am asking first. May I have the pleasure of escorting you? There, I beat you that time, Myra Dickinson!”

The end of the squabble was that Ruth entered the dining-room with a rival hanging on either arm. Once she forgot and nearly laughed outright under the cross-fire of raillery. Just then she felt Elinor’s clasp loosen and then press more firmly again with a convulsive force that hurt. Glancing sidewise she observed that the delicate face was very pale and the gray eyes darker than usual were fixed straight ahead. In her wonder over this curious change from the preceding gayety, she did not notice that a group of girls at a table had drawn closer together to whisper and gaze furtively at Ruth herself. But Elinor had noticed.

The third event trod upon the heels of the second. At the ringing of the gong for the earliest recitation Myra burst into the study.

“He was walking down the hall just as fast as anything, and away up at the transverse came the professor hurrying after him. She beckoned to me to stop him, and I said his name out loud, and he turned around and waited for her. It was the German grammar man!”

“He is to lecture this evening,” said Lydia absently picking up a fountain-pen as she moved toward the door.

“I’m going to a concert in town instead and perhaps we’ll take dinner at the restaurant if Myra has any money left,” declared Elinor with vivacity a shade exaggerated. “By the way, Miss Howard, may I request that the next time you desire to embezzle another person’s pen, you will kindly pass out via Miss Dickinson’s desk? She doesn’t care a hang. For why? ‘Cause it’s broken. See?”

Myra swerved lazily from contemplation of the snowy landscape outside to remark that Miss Offitt’s slanginess was ceasing to be even an incident, let alone an event or an episode.

“You two are the rudest creatures to each other I ever saw,” commented Lydia, while Ruth, who — strangely enough! — was again waiting on the threshold, regarded them soberly.

“I like it,” she said. She looked at Elinor who was bending her head over a sheaf of history notes, and then turned to Myra. “If you really intend to go into town for dinner, Myra, will you take a manuscript in to be typewritten for me?”

“Oh, it’s the story!” Myra gave a jubilant little skip. “It’s finished at last. It will be ready in time. And you’ll win. Hip, hip, hurrah! Now we’ll show the girls! Ah, Ruth, wait a minute. Is Elinor in it?”

“Yes,” answered Ruth slowly, ” Elinor — is — in — it.”

Elinor bent her head lower over her notes.

As soon as Ruth had gone, Myra attacked her briskly. “Elinor, why didn’t you say something? She has really put you in the story.”

“Say something?” echoed Elinor almost in a groan, “say something? What could I say? It’s done now. She has written the story. It is her great chance. Do you advise me to interfere now?”

“Interfere?” exclaimed Myra.

Elinor swung around in her chair. “Myra Dickinson! You think it is an honor. You think it is flattering. You think I like it. Like it! You think it is — is — nice. Like it! Oh — my — soul!”

“Oh-o-oh!” Myra was beginning to see. “You don’t know what she has said about you, and you’re afraid people will recognize the portrait. And if she has idealized you, they’ll smile ; and if she has painted your faults — only I don’t believe she knows yet that you have any — they’ll — they’ll talk.”

“Yes,” assented Elinor, ” they’ll undoubtedly talk.”

“Well,” Myra brightened at the new idea, “the solution is simple enough. If you don’t want to be in it, tell her to take you out of it before it is typewritten.”

“Go away!” Elinor turned back to her notes with a jerk.

“Oh, I understand. You’re afraid it may spoil the story, and you wouldn’t ruin her chance for any thing. You’re willing to make a little sacrifice for — “

“Go away!”

” — for her sake because you are sorry and you really do care — “

“Will you go away?”

Myra slid hastily across the rug. “Yes, yes, you old Gorgon, you! Stop glaring like that. Anything to oblige. I’m going, going, gone!”

Elinor dropped back into her chair alone. ” A little sacrifice!” she repeated softly, “a little sacrifice!” The rubber band on one of the packets snapped under her fingers and the papers flew scattering far and wide. “A little sacrifice!” She flung out her arms over the desk and buried her face from the light. “Oh — my — soul!”

The next event of the day was the discovery by Myra of an “Excellent” in red ink on her written topic in history. Overjoyed at this smile of fortune she began immediately to ponder how to treat the next one. After emitting sundry pale flashes of ideas throughout luncheon time, she was impelled to benefit Elinor by sharing the fire of inspiration toward the best endeavor. Her opportunity occurred while they were skating on the lake that afternoon.

“You ought to try harder yourself,” Myra counseled earnestly, “it is a great satisfaction, creates a warm and pleasant sensation within, and also helps to raise the standard of scholarship.”

“Ook-a-rookaroo!” crowed Elinor, impudently jerking her elbows at every syllable, “don’t talk shop in recreation hour. Come on. I’ll race you to that chair.”

At one end of the white-bordered lake a game of hockey was being played by short-skirted girls bent angularly as they went darting after the skipping ball. In a smooth corner others were frisking through a square dance, while a venturesome row “snapped the whip” farther on, and a long line of hilarious seniors skated single-file, each with her hands on the shoulders of the one in front. With an underclass admirer supporting her timid steps, Lydia was taking a first lesson in the art of balancing her stately proportions on narrow blades of steel. Other beginners less fortunate in their ability to attract self-immolating devotion stumbled about by themselves. A chair disconsolately overturned lay at the edge of the ice. Elinor, reaching it first, propped it unsteadily upon its three remaining legs and sat tentatively down for a rest.

Myra swaying to and fro before her counted off on her fingers: “Item: a girl; item: skates on the girl; item iterum: reposing on a broken chair. What’s the inference? Prexie will catch you if you don’t watch out. Result: notice on the bulletin board about destroying college furniture in learning to skate by pushing a chair.”

“Oh, no!” cried Elinor in swift distress, “I wouldn’t have anybody think I did it under any consideration. It isn’t honest.” She sped away to a distance secure from the likelihood of compromising implications.

“Wait, Elinor!” Myra shot in pursuit, calling out while passing a beginner prone to frequent floping, “There is Miss Gay — on skates!”

“How unkind!” sighed the floored one, but Myra was beyond reach.

“Now, Elinor, what I want to know is why you object to being regarded as careless about furniture though you do not mind one bit if people say you are indifferent to your work.”

“The chair isn’t mine, while my work concerns nobody except myself, you see. It’s my own life and my own time and I intend to live it to suit myself. If I estimate other interests of greater importance than digging in the library or dazzling in recitations, whose business is it?”

“Lots of persons’ business. Ever so many girls sort of look up to you and follow your lead because you have a way with you. You’re a granddaughter, too. They get it into their silly heads that it isn’t quite the proper caper — hm-m, jig — ah, posture, I mean — to aim high intellectually. They notice this and they notice that. They put two and two together — “

“Lydia says it isn’t polite to put two and two together,” disputed Elinor, be a lady, a charming, agreeable, superficial lady.”

“Oh, hush, simpleton! Somebody said to me yesterday, ‘Miss Offitt has the reputation of studying less than any other girl in college. I haven’t looked into a book since the fourth hour, have you?’ And I sat on her,” continued Myra emphatically, “I sat on her so hard — “

At this point a cynical twig, underfoot, sent her skates wildly slipping and deposited the censor of public morals in a tangled heap on the ice. Before she could collect her various extremities into their normal compactness, the grudgeful Miss Gay scrambled laboriously by, exclaiming sweetly as she passed, “There is Miss Dickinson — on skates.” She confided afterward to Elinor that nobody could possibly imagine how much it had cost her to get there in time.

“There’s Ruth!” Myra darted away with Elinor, their hands interlocked. ” See! Prexie is stopping to speak to her. Hasn’t he a talent for looking right through a person without seeming to! He is studying her awfully hard; I can tell from the way he smiles. Ah, I beg your pardon, little one. Did I bump into a real live freshman?”

The big fresh-colored child with a red tam-o’shanter above her long braid swung around clumsily in a circle before recovering her imperiled balance. “It’s my fault,” she answered sociably, “I shouldn’t have stood here in the middle of everything — and me taking up so much room anyhow. But I happened to be watching Prexie. That girl he is talking to over there by the road — is she the one they say is going crazy? She writes weird things for the Monthly, and has spells of being out of her head and wanders off by herself and acts queer. She does look wild, don’t you think? All the girls are wondering —”

“Stop!” Elinor thrust Myra to one side. “That is a wicked slander. It is a cruel lie. Ruth Allee is no more crazy than I am. She is sane and strong and sweet and — and all right — every bit all right. And I wish you’d tell everybody so. It is a wicked cruel lie. I — I beg your pardon,” her voice faltered, ” Miss — I don’t know your name, but won’t you please contradict that rumor whenever you hear it? It isn’t true. Please. I shall be ever so much obliged.”

The freshman regained her breath. “Not at all. Why, of course I will do it. It is the most interesting thing; everybody says so. And Prexie must have heard the rumor too, I guess. Maybe that is why he is speaking to her so long. Isn’t he dear! Goodbye.”

Myra dashed after her friend. “Elinor, wait Where are you going?”

“I am going to take off my skates and walk with Ruth, and you are going too. We’ve got to show those gossiping idiots that she has plenty of friends who stick to her and believe in her and — and love her and care for her reputation. The girls are jealous, some of them, because she is a genius, and the others haven’t anything else to talk about. We’ll show them. We’ll sh-show them. We’ll — we’ll — show —”

“Here’s my handkerchief, Elinor,” whispered Myra a few minutes later, “it’s clean and dry.” Then she considerately turned away to watch the beautiful big round moon come sailing up over the evergreens.

That moonrise had the pomp and majesty of an additional event. It was by no means the last, however, that marked this winter day. At dinner the conversation quivered with accounts of mysterious thefts in the different buildings. One teacher had missed forty dollars from her bureau drawer. A senior had lost a new suit and hat worth eighty-five dollars. A man at twilight had sprung from behind a spruce tree and snatched a purse from a junior’s wrist. A tall woman in black, closely veiled, had been seen stealing through the corridor.

At Chapel time two freshmen had been frightened in the lower hall by a masked man who proved afterward to be the watchman with a toothache. The German grammar man found his audience distrait, and the concert in town was startled from its polite enjoyment by the screaming of an hysterical woman.

And that night about one o’clock the laundry at the college burned to the ground.

The maids who slept on the upper floors had all escaped except one. She had climbed to the roof and was shrieking for help while the flames roared below and licked up over the cornice. From windows in the dormitories students leaned out to watch the rapid movements of the firemen with hose and ladders. Elinor was wringing her hands.

After the rescue capable Lydia ordered her two roommates back into the study. “I shall make you some chocolate to soothe your nerves for sleep,” she announced in tones muffled somewhat by the moderate depths of their pantry shelf. “Beat this mixture one minute, Myra, till I fetch Ruth.”

The one minute lengthened to fifteen before she reappeared with her grave face more excited than through the thrilling hour of the fire.

“Girls,” she said, “Ruth has decided to give up this selfish college life and become a trained nurse. She is planning to leave to-morrow. She has been thinking about it for several weeks; and to-night when she saw the heroism of the firemen she knew in a flash that nothing is worth while except self-sacrifice.”

Myra opened her mouth very wide, shut it again, dropped the spoon, covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears.

Elinor tossed aside the pillow which she had been hugging against her lips while she listened. She picked up the spoon and began to stir vigorously.

“Myra Dickinson!” she snapped, “I do wish you would get over being such a baby. If Ruth Allee wishes to leave us, let her go, I say. It’s her own affair. Everybody knows she is crazy.”

“Well, I must say!” ejaculated Lydia, lifting her arms and letting them fall in a gesture of helpless dismay, “Ruth renouncing college, Myra crying, Elinor cross! We certainly need that hot chocolate in a hurry.”