Chapter XX
Elinor Takes Her Medicine
Not until weeks later did Elinor tell any one of the interview with courageous Miss Padan. To those who observed only the changes of seasons or the tumult of cataclysms, the autumn days glided on serenely. Neither floods nor fires disturbed the lovely outline of the woods and hills and valleys. Neither the plagues of tyranny nor the perils of rebellion distracted the pleasant round of college life. Myra played in the tennis tournament as usual, and as usual lost the championship through her reckless waste of energy in the preliminary games. It seemed as if she positively could not learn to stand still when the opportunity offered, instead of chasing frantically after balls that were plainly going out of bounds. Her opponent was a calm creature who never even raised her racquette unless for some useful purpose.
Lydia moved on her placid and majestic way, interrupted only by a cold that huddled her into a sunny nook of the building, and endowed her with an injured air and a plaintive note in her replies to solicitous inquiries. Ruth as editor struggled beneath bondage to the calendar, and as mail-carrier writhed under the dictatorship of the clock. Elinor presided gracefully at the formal opening of the senior parlor in November, and for the December Reception she could have filled her program several times over with the names of men guests. This year on senior corridor the four friends found themselves more popular than ever. Girls were running in and out of the study all day long. Ruth fled to the library for quiet, and Myra complained piteously over the expense of buying a new block-pad for the door every week.
One evening after Lydia and Myra had departed to attend a reception given by the German department in honor of a visiting celebrity, Elinor hung an engaged sign outside and sat down to wrestle over a list of committees for the new year. Ruth in clearing out her desk unearthed a collection of block-leaves and began to quote extracts.
“Listen to these notes, Elinor. It sounds as if we do nothing but eat. Here’s one : ‘Dear M.— I’m going to get Milk, Butter, Eggs (2), Oil, Bread, Sugar. Do we need anything else? If so, will you buy it, and then I’ll see you later?’
“Again: ‘I leave the things here. You see, I got chops, marshmallows, and roses. I couldn’t find any pansies, and these were the best I could do in roses.’
“That’s more aspiring, isn’t it? Most of them, however, omit thee aesthetics. Vide: ‘Come to my house to-night for products at 8:30. Everybody’s coming.’
“Vide iterum: Will you all come to see what a good cook I am? Whenever you get ready, but the sooner the better.’
“No wonder that Prexie’s final admonition included a hint about the self-indulgence of eating in our rooms and sleeping till church time on Sunday!”
Elinor leaned over her shoulder. “Some are funny, aren’t they? There! ‘Bring back those matches quick. You’ve stolen too much of me already. Oh, I forgot! Good night and sweet dreams.’
“Look at this one: ‘Borrowed your curtains, portieres, and rugs for the Play. Bring me your $.20 class dues this morning, else I cannot recommend you for a degree.'”
“Ah!” remarked Ruth in some surprise, “here is Miss Padan’s name. I did not know that she had ever called.”
And then Elinor told her.
“Just at first,” she continued, “when once I had caught my breath again, I was so angry that I stamped. I ran out to the pines — the loneliest spot — and fairly raved. I even banged my fist against the fence — though not so very hard,” she added scrupulously, “because I was afraid it might hurt.” (Ruth smiled half mournfully at the contrast of her own lawless moods. “She had no business to pitch into me like that when I don’t know her at all intimately. The day when she left her name on the block was much later. Doubtless she wished to observe how the convalescent was thriving on the medicine.”
“So you decided to swallow it?”
“Haven’t you noticed?” cried Elinor half triumphant, half disappointed, “Well, it is wisest to reform by degrees so that nothing will be conspicuous. You don’t realize how furious I was at first. I intended to be worse than ever and not study a particle more. I thought that since I was to have the reputation for flippancy merely because I lift my head to smile at a girl in the choir during prayer, I might as well have the fun of it, and write letters at the Bible lecture, and ridicule the hymns while they are being sung, and cross my knees and argue about agnosticism and so forth. I was going to be simply awful!”
“What altered your plans?”
Elinor fidgeted, tilting her head with an obstinate little pout before plunging further into confession. “I’m not noble one bit, or magnanimous like some of the girls. I hate Miss Padan for saying such things to me, but still they’re true enough. I can’t forgive her, you understand; yet I couldn’t forgive myself if I tried to be so silly as I wanted to at first. Why, Ruth Allee you know yourself that it would have been absolutely senseless, footless, unreasonable, foolish, idiotic!”
“Yes,” said Ruth, “it would.”
Here two high young voices floated in from the vicinity of the water-cooler in the corridor.
“Well, Jessie, if you would put yourself in my place! Suppose you had not seen a man for seven years —”
“Yes, that’s just it You always consider an affair from your own side and think of yourself first and —”
“Oh, you mean to imply that I am selfish and regard my own pleasure exclusively. I never was told that before. In fact, quite the reverse.”
“Why did you make him sit out with you during my dance, then? I didn’t have a chance all the evening —”
With a spiteful clink of the mugs against the metal, the dialogue trailed away in the distance.
“I had hoped that the girls here were above such bickering,” sighed Ruth.
“They’re only freshmen. Everybody excuses and make allowances for them, but —”
“— we’re seniors, and that’s the difference.”
“People expect you to be reasonable after living here three years,” fretted Elinor, “that’s one of the great botherations about this place. I hate to be reasonable.”
Outside in the alleyway a confused rustling of skirts and tapping of heels approached the door, and a medley of pointed remarks drifted over the transom.
“An engaged sign on Friday evening.”
“Shocking!”
“She must be plotting to work for an honor.”
“She’s nothing but a dig after all.”
“Let’s sit on her anyhow.”
Then Myra’s voice called gaily, “Heigho, girls! Won’t they let you in? What? Oh, it’s that debate which you want Elinor to explain. Walk right in of course!” She flung the door open and waved onward half-a-dozen seniors who straightway surrounded Elinor.
“You appointed us on this debate. Now tell us what it means. We can’t agree. Resolved: that egoism and not altruism has been the most important factor in the world’s progress. Whoever heard —”
“If you mean survival of the fittest and so on, why naturally the individual strives for his own selfish good and that’s —”
“But if the martyr chooses to die because sacrificing himself gives him greater pleasure than renouncing his principles, there you see that is egoism. Then I should like to inquire what altruism is.”
“My character has been steadily deteriorating ever since I commenced to hunt up arguments for the affirmative. If every act can be reduced to terms of lowest self-love —”
“But if the world is growing better all the time, as our economics man says, and the most advanced sign of the times is charity in human selection, kindness to animals, and so on, I object to the question.”
Elinor put her fingers in her ears while Lydia who had entered with the disputants took the floor and defined the issue in terms of shining clearness. Whenever Miss Howard opened her finely cut mouth in the ethics class some foggy problem was sure to be decisively settled.
“What do you believe after all?” queried Myra when the visitors had withdrawn, still grumbling over their fate, “I am completely mixed up myself.”
“I believe exactly what I said,” answered Lydia.
“What beatitude!” laughed Elinor, “now if only I dared believe what I say, or say what I believe — it doesn’t matter which —”
“It strikes me,” interrupted Lydia sagaciously, “that you are inclined to slander yourself. You aren’t nearly so unconscionable as you have claimed to be ever since entering college. Don’t you comprehend that the world will take you at your own valuation? It is quite as criminal to bear false witness against yourself —”
Ruth who had been sitting silent, her head cocked in birdlike fashion, a half-quizzical smile of comical contentment on her face, woke suddenly to the necessity for diverting the stream of eloquence. “Elinor’s all right Don’t you bother her. It isn’t time for the Sunday sermon yet. Tell us about the reception.”
“It was fairly interesting,” answered Myra from her place beside Elinor on the couch, “coffee and sandwiches and the dearest little old herr professor. When he said that he had never before seen so many happy, happy faces, Lydia responded, ‘That is because you are here, Professor.'” He was her radiant admirer all the rest of the evening — and only six other men to be divided among the few hundred others of us.”
“I’m afraid that we will become blasé from a surfeit of receptions this year,” said Elinor, “it is horrible to get stranded in a corner with someone who won’t talk. When Myra is not near to rescue me, I almost die. I know that nobody will be interested in anything I may happen to say.”
“The idea!” rebuked Lydia, “such an attitude would prove the death of small talk.”
Myra dribbled cheerfully on. “A friend of your mother’s was there. Used to be college chums. She asked after you. Said she expected to hear great things of your mother’s daughter. I told her you were class president. She said, ‘Nothing but a society butterfly!’ And I squelched her.”
“Myra!”
“It wasn’t much of a squelch. Just the way Elinor closes a conversation when people ask questions that are none of their business. Only when I try it, the girls think I have a stiff neck. A society butterfly indeed!”
“Ask her to come around on Class Day, and then she will see the ‘great things.’ Miss Offitt in the center of the stage!”
“Don’t talk about it!” Elinor brushed the subject out of the air. “It’s months away, and I hate to be reminded of Commencement.”
So she too wanted this dear last year to keep on without end. Ruth stared at her wistfully.
“Anyhow,” complained Elinor, “I shall be scared to death and disgrace the class. I wish I dared resign the office. I hate responsibility.”
“Come, come, now, be reasonable,” exclaimed Lydia chidingly; and Elinor groaned.
