Chapter XVII
Three Dummy Idiots
Field Day that spring was rainy. In the garden yellow lilies lifted fragrant cups to the gentle drizzle. The lilacs swayed low with their burden of glistening drops, and the pansies watched tearfully outside the archway in the hedge around the Circle. Umbrellas filed past them, some bobbing along sedately, others jerking and rolling at an agitated canter, while here and there a waterproof trotted by unsheltered, its owner defiantly hopeful of seeing blue sky any minute.
Myra in her gym suit, her hair braided in the old freshman fashion, had entered the lists for the hurdle race, the two-hundred yard dash, and the running broad jump. She won in the first, and fell into Elinor’s arms amid a chorus of ecstatic yelling from that section of the benches where the juniors huddled under umbrellas. In the dash she was tired at the start, and found herself dropping farther and farther in the rear. Still she pegged along, elbows crooked, breath coming hard. When she staggered up twenty feet behind the winner at the goal, she was received again by Elinor, all compassion this time, while from the spectators rose sympathetic murmurs of, “She’s half dead,” “Poor Myra!” and, “She did well anyhow.”
During the competition in jumping the rain began to beat down more persistently. One contestant after another landed with both feet and sitting suddenly down slid merrily onward in the mud. Myra jumped so far that she was invited to try a second and third time in hopes of breaking the record. At her fourth effort the space showed less, for she was reaching the limit of her strength. When she heard the shouts of, “Try again, Myra! Try again, Myra!” and an encouraging, “Dickinson forever! Hurrah, girls, hurrah!” she muttered, “I think you’re all horrid!” Nevertheless the acclaim spurred her on to further endeavor. Being rewarded only by a longer, muddier slide she was rescued by indignant Lydia and marched away for dry clothes.
The interclass games in basketball had been scheduled for the afternoon. In the gray dusk of the lower hall after luncheon, it was a melancholy Field Day Committee that assembled on a truck while waiting to expostulate, as they termed it, with the doctor and the principal. It was not raining so awfully hard after all, and the sky was liable to clear at any moment. This was the sole Saturday remaining that could be taken for the important — unspeakably important — tournament. There was the new and beautiful championship pennon patiently draping the gymnasium wall, and nobody to win it if the authorities turned coward before a trifle of dampness.
The said authorities hard-pressed at length granted reluctant permission for the games to begin the minute that the pools in the road showed no dimpling trace of new droppings. Myra, who was sufficiently restored from the morning’s exertions to take her usual place on the team, watched the brown spattered water unremittingly till so tantalized that she threatened to hold an umbrella over it while the players escaped with smooth consciences from the clutches of the gymnasium director.
“Nothing but a boarding-school, isn’t it, Myra?” laughed Ruth as she halted at the window on her way to a Board meeting. Ruth’s angles seemed to have softened somehow since February, and a contented twinkle gleamed oftener in her eyes. It was pleasant to care for her “contemporaries,” and to have them care for her. The knowledge that she had won affection was giving her greater self-confidence socially. She brushed a streak of mud from the athlete’s sleeve with an affectionate pat. “Take courage, youngster. Wasn’t it glory enough for you this forenoon? You’ll make your mark some day. This decorative spot looks very much like a beginning.”
Myra twisted around. “Oh, Ruth, that’s exactly what I heard somebody say about you. The Hall of Fame — well, it isn’t much, you know — not one of the girls in it yet! There’s your chance. Ah, hulloa, Elinor! What’s the news?”
Even in a gym suit Elinor appeared graceful and girlish in comparison with Myra’s boyish litheness. She was twirling an open letter between her fingers.
“It’s from mother,” she said slowly, “and if I choose I may go abroad next year.”
“And not come back here to graduate?” gasped Myra.
Elinor’s head dipped assentingly.
“How utterly ridiculous! Doesn’t she know that you have been elected vice-president of the class for our senior year?”
Another speechless nod replied.
“Don’t go,” said Ruth.
Elinor fumbled with her letter. “I never wished to enter college in the first place. It is such a narrow life —”
“Heigho, Dickinson and Offitt!” a shout came ringing down the corridor, “hurry up there! Rain’s over and the team’s ready to start. Trot along and be sure to bring all the lemons you can steal. ‘Rah, ‘rah, ‘rah for the juniors!”
After the Board meeting when Ruth hastened out to the Circle, the sun’s level rays had slipped low enough to shine from under a curtain of cloud. Grass and trees glowed a wonderfully vivid green under the purple sky. Where the shadow of the hedge stretched far across the campus she beheld a confused mob of girls. They were mostly in one another’s arms, whirling, dancing, and shrieking triumphant proclamation of victory. Around the outskirts of the courts members of the vanquished teams departed with dejected step amid sympathizing friends.
Presently Lydia separated herself from the tumultuous mass and insisted upon extricating Myra and Elinor.
“What a looking object!”
“She went head first over a bench,” laughed Elinor, “and you should have seen the hats sent flying. She was blind to everything except that big leather ball bounding into space. The space happened to be a scattering crowd of innocent victims; she didn’t notice. By the way, Lydia, are you definitely positive that my face is clean at last?”
“Fairly so,” replied my cautious lady, “that is, it looks so from the outside. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, thank you!” she turned to address Ruth, “You see, I am only a sub, and I spent my time sitting around on a rug and watching the game. Between the innings every girl with a wet sponge — Lydia among them — urged me to have my face bathed, and they refused to be argued out of their duty. I flatter myself that I needn’t scrub it again for a week.”
“Elinor,” broke out Myra with unimpaired energy, “why don’t you go in for athletics in earnest?
You are quick and cool and strong for your build. You could do anything well if you only resolved to make the effort.”
“Am I not an honorable and not inglorious sub? Don’t I sit around gracefully and cheer my famous companions? Do I not practice faithfully and seize the ball quite frequently even when somebody else wants it? Don’t I say, ‘Beg pardon’ in every scrimmage?”
“Yes, you do. It sounds so funny. You ought to get over that habit and also cultivate strategic ability.”
“Strategic ability!” echoed Elinor stopping to laugh at the edge of a shadow where the sunbeams caught the gold in her hair. “So that’s why you put your finger to your lips and hop up and down like a dismayed robin whenever the ball bounces in your direction. Then a swoop — and it was hurtling over the heads of your foes. Strategic!”
“I was only thinking,” explained Myra abnormally oblivious to the joke, “that if you were on the regular team your mother would understand how atrocious it is for her to suggest your going abroad next year.”
“What’s that?” inquired Lydia aroused from her habitual incurious serenity.
During Myra’s annotated report Elinor slipped ahead of the others and pressed into the crowded elevator just before the door was shut. When the three reached the study a few minutes later, they met her emerging in her dressing-gown. Myra with a whoop raced her down the corridor to the bathroom. Elinor being unaware of a certain hasty consultation near the staircase wondered why nobody alluded further to the prospect of her release from the necessity of completing the college course.
Their silence was, to say the least, perplexing. At dinner the conversation fluttered perseveringly over the day’s contests. After Chapel there was a grand fudge party in one of the smaller dormitories; and the four friends did not escape till ten. The following day brought scarcely a moment’s peace to the study. The girls from the next suite sauntered sleepily in to secure the bread and milk which Lydia had engaged to bring up from the breakfast room. Then after a run around the garden — a run varied by happy little skips between steps and by pauses for blissful sniffing at this blossom and that — they all dressed for services. Till dinner time half a dozen callers dropped in to discuss the sermon. Throughout the afternoon others kept wandering in to chat and to nibble the peanuts and maple sugar which had been smuggled from the dinner table. A Sunday supper of chocolate, scrambled eggs, and rarebit cooked over their own gas-stove busied the party till time for the Bible lecture. Finally after a few short calls given and received, they wandered into their alleyway on the journey to bed.
Ruth lingered at the door. ” Qood night, girls.”
“I wish you and Lydia belonged to the teams, so that you both might go to the waffle-supper to-morrow evening. Strawberries, waffles, salad, chocolate cake!” Myra’s eyes rolled blissfully.
“Just two weeks till examinations and then ho, for vacation!” Elinor’s voice subsided in a mild quaver. “Maybe a long vacation for me.”
Astonished by the silence that greeted this bid for vehement pleading she glanced at the others. Myra was doubled up on a low ottoman, her knees almost touching her chin, her fists pinched into her cheeks. Lydia was twisting the lower part of the droplight as if intent upon creating a brighter glare. Ruth leaning against the door jamb was staring absorbedly at her own shoes.
Elinor surveyed them with a puzzled frown. She was accustomed to being treated as a young person of importance. “Girls, if I choose, I can go abroad this summer to stay two years.”
Nobody said anything.
“I have always wished to travel in Europe instead of vegetating in college. It is so much more broadening.”
Myra dug her fists a quarter-inch farther into her round cheeks. “Yes!” she said, hurling out the unadorned syllable chopped off clean with its consonant. Under ordinary circumstances she was apt to pronounce the word yep.
“Certainly it is,” agreed Lydia with even more than her usual distinctness.
“We shall be sorry to miss you,” added Ruth politely.
Elinor looked at them out of the corner of her eye. “I needn’t return here if I do not desire to do so,” she repeated as if musing over the problem for her own benefit, “and I have never cared for this life.”
“No!” Myra shot out again like a pea from a pop-gun, “you have always hated it.”
Lydia gave a vigorous screw of the lamp-cock that sent the flame blazing outside the mantel. “It will doubtless be an excellent advantage for any individual,” she commented smoothly.
Ruth shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “In case you determine to accept this offer, we shall not be bothered about endeavoring to secure that suite for four on the senior corridor. I have heard rumors of two or three other groups aiming for it.”
Rubbing one hand across her forehead in a dazed way, Elinor walked over to a window and began to fumble with the curtain-cord.
“We shall live in Paris — my brother and I. We shall do exactly as we please and have the most beautiful time! It maddens me to reflect that I have already wasted three years in this little monotonous hole of an institution.”
Myra opened her mouth with a snap; then at a warning gesture from Lydia shut it again by means of a frantic clutch at her jaw.
“That will be extremely charming, I am sure,” responded Lydia in her most beaming manner, while the flame went flickering down into the tube under her earnest manipulation.
“We shall be delighted to hear from you occasionally,” was Ruth’s contribution with suspicious over-emphasis on the adjective.
Elinor gave the cord such a vicious jerk that the shade flew up with a whir, and then tumbled crashing down to the floor.
“You are all just too horrid for anything!” she burst out on the verge of exasperated tears, and actually kicking the poor curtain from her path, “here I am trying my very best to decide about next fall while you three dummy idiots stand around and shove all the responsibility upon me all alone. It would serve you right if I should simply pick up and go and never come back to finish the senior year.”
Someone shuffled softly by in the corridor outside.
“So,” began Myra with diabolical gravity, “you seem to imply that you may possibly condescend —”
And Elinor, I am ashamed to say, threw a book at her. But it was a limp-covered book.
