Chapter XXI

The Woes of Eminence

“Elinor’s been crying,” thought Ruth with a quick pang of dread over imagination of possible disasters. At the moment she was waiting at the door of the principal’s office for her chance to claim an interview. The corridor there in the center of the building was without windows; and the dozen students also in attendance probably had not noticed the traces of tears as the senior president walked rapidly past them.

Something must have happened — something that had hurt beyond self-control. It was not anger; she could tell that from the shy forward bend of the flowerlike head. Anger would have thrown it upward and back in spontaneous rebound from the humiliation of the injury. Sorrow would have caused a drooping of gentle outlines, a shrinking inward upon herself, a strained fixed gravity instead of the perfunctory half-smile that swept the line of more or less familiar faces. No, this was trouble.

Ruth watched her step swiftly to the railing at the stairway and call to someone below. The words came hurrying while the hands ordinarily in repose gesticulated in eager emphasis. As she stood there the elevator rattled to a pause, and Myra popped out with Lydia following. Elinor turned to them on the instant, grasping Lydia’s arm with nervous vehemence. At her first sentence Myra flung out her hands in dismay, while Lydia’s level brows lifted incredulously. A minute later both new comers had disappeared down the stairs and Elinor hastened back past the benchful of girls to the door of the office. At glimpse of Ruth’s intently wondering gaze, she wavered as if to speak, but evidently changed her mind at the prospect of so many auditors; for after an apologetic nod to the observant row she entered without awaiting her turn. This was an amazing act in diffident Miss Offitt, because although such a precedence was one of their privileges the seniors rarely took advantage of it. Ruth herself had been sitting there for twenty minutes since luncheon.

When Elinor emerged she was accompanied by Miss Padan to whom she was talking earnestly, her voice rapid and pleading, her sensitive face upheld to the clouded eyes of the woman at her side. Ruth stared perplexed after the two figures receding down the long vista of corridor gray in the light from the snow-beaten world without. Elinor had declared that she would never forgive Miss Padan for her plain speaking, and yet there she was from all appearances beseeching forgiveness herself. What could the trouble be?

By the time Ruth reached the study she was thoroughly anxious. Recalling the division of duties in the ethics manual, she applied the same principle to this mysterious trouble: trouble might concern first Elinor herself, second others, third the world. Had there been bad news from home? The vision of a telegram brought a hidden throb of relief under the pity: was that a compensation — the compensation — for her solitary lot? “No pain, no pleasure — is the iron rule.” She had no home to give her joy one day and wring her heart the next. That was the stoic philosophy of it all. If the trouble belonged to Elinor personally, most assuredly she was not the girl to be running around the college with her tale of woe. No, of course, those tears must have been excited by sympathy with another’s suffering. Perhaps some freshman had been condemned to exile for failing in examinations, or some junior was on the verge of expulsion, or somebody else had been deluging the senior president with hysterical grief over general unworthiness. More than once Elinor’s responsive manner had been rewarded by unwelcome confessions from mere acquaintances. Myra regarded it as a great joke. Ah, that was Myra’s step now.

Flinging her snowy cloak over the couch where it left a damp spot on Lydia’s best silk pillow, she kicked off her rubbers and twitched the pin out of her tam-o’shanter.

“Oh, yes!” she burst out explosively, “I am aware that such a display of primitive emotion is not refined or highly civilized, but —” she subsided upon the hardest chair and fiercely folded her arms, “how would you enjoy scuttling from end to end of this institution, apologizing and explaining and soothing and excusing and begging pardon and smoothing down and — and everything?”

“Not a bit,” answered Ruth with agreeable briskness, for her anxiety had been modified at the first glance. She knew that like a hurricane at sea a serious trouble would have beaten flat the waves of vexation and scattered the foam of peevish speech.

“It’s all that old mock faculty meeting we gave last Saturday,” growled Myra, unfolding her arms in order to prop up a doleful chin, “how was I to know that the faculty themselves would be among the spectators? You remember who it was that I represented? She didn’t like it one speck — no, sirree, not one tiny speck!”

“You did go a trifle too far in caricature, Myra,” responded Ruth with manful frankness, “the whole thing was an exaggerated parody.”

“Yes, that’s right — rub it in,” groaned the culprit, “hit a fellow when he’s down — I mean, when he has hunched his shoulders all ready for the blow. Why didn’t you stop it beforehand?”

“For the good reason that I did not attend the rehearsals and therefore was not aware of its character. Elinor was on the committee.”

Myra gulped. “Yes, blame Elinor — that’s the way. The faculty are all pitching into her. After luncheon one of them caught her in the hall and talked dreadfully to her. She cried when she reached the study. And it isn’t her fault anyhow, because, you see, most of the actors did not let themselves go at rehearsals. We saved the finest touches for the meeting itself in public.”

“Finest touches!” echoed Ruth, “Oh, Myra!”

“Oh, Lydia!” wailed Myra at the arrival of this companion in affliction, “why didn’t you catch us in time last Saturday?”

Lydia was provoked; there was no question about it. A criss-cross frown spoiled the symmetry of her face.

“It passes my comprehension,” she said, “the finical distinctions in this small world! My spectacles aren’t strong enough to discriminate between the admirable and the reprehensible in college humor. That was the funniest farce I ever saw, and yet they’re having —”

” — regular fits — ah, spasms — in short, dislocation of the muscles — about it,” filled out Myra with melancholy elegance of diction, “I knew you were feeling horribly over those apologies. Elinor insisted. She said it was for the honor of the class. There she comes.”

Elinor dropped into the chair at her desk by the window. “Miss Padan tries not to show it but it has cut her sharply. She has spent her life for this college, hoping and planning and working. It isn’t so much the personal insult in the caricature as the effect upon the underclasses. They are inclined to borrow their tone from the seniors. She believes that we ought to be all the more careful now while Prexie is away.”

“Hosa semna,” quoted Ruth softly, “whatsoever things are of good report.”

“That’s our class motto,” Myra sat up straight in the enlivenment of having an intellectual idea, “I thought that semna meant noble. And noble refers to character rather than reputation, I am positive. The other day I saw an advertisement by a young man in search of a position. He said, ‘Reputation good, character better.’ That’s how it is with our class.”

“Reputation, however, is the result of character,” argued Lydia.

Elinor was not to be distracted from the difficulty. “Miss Padan says that such an exhibition as that mock trial is on a par with newspaper jokes about college girls sliding down the banisters and chewing gum.”

“Oh, but Prexie won’t let us even accept full page advertisements of gum for the Magazine or the Annual,” protested Myra, “isn’t it provoking! We suffer for what is no fault of our own. He says we must be cautious to afford no pretence for insinuation. Ah, well! Isn’t it interesting! The papers make fun of us and we make fun of the faculty. The difference is that our ridicule is founded on fact. Miss Padan for example, actually does twirl her thumbs and toss back her hair while she lectures. The others do quibble and blush — some of them — and lisp —”

“Myra Dickinson, you ought to have more sense than to speak so much like a narrow-minded gossip!” exclaimed Elinor at the limit of her temper. “You know that the entire affair was a cheap farce and showed disgraceful lack of taste. It was vulgar and insolent and unkind and ungrateful to those men and women who are giving their best years for our benefit. I’m too ashamed to look one of them in the face.”

“Whew!” Myra swallowed hard. “So Miss Padan blamed you again, did she? because you are senior president and a granddaughter.”

“No, she didn’t,” snapped Elinor, “I blame myself.”

Myra shrugged her shoulders. “Come along, Lydia, are you ready to start for gym? What will it matter a hundred years from now? That’s what the doctor told us to ask ourselves when things worry us. A person who never makes mistakes has no need of college — and that’s true.”

Over in the gymnasium Myra hurried methodically through her prescribed exercises till she reached the rowing-machine. She always lingered at this for more than the requisite flexions; because she enjoyed sitting there while she watched the score of blue-suited girls variously busy at the poles and ropes, the rings and bars. She was especially fascinated by any attempt to climb down the rope from the platform aloft, for the reason that in her first trial she had begun the descent before receiving instructions as to the manner of holding on. She had supposed that it would be fun to cup her hands about the rough cable and slide to the floor. Alas! she had been unable to use those same hands for a week afterward.

To-day when Lydia approached with businesslike gait and took possession of the opposite seat, Myra rested for a moment to unburden her mind.

“Elinor’s spunky, isn’t she? I didn’t suspect that she had it in her.”

“Um-m,” answered Lydia, conscientiously swaying backward and forward, her breathing timed with scientific precision.

“She really cares; that’s why,” continued the analytical philosopher, “at first she didn’t care for anything here. Then she began to like us — the girls, you know — me (I am her earliest friend and so I say me first), next you, and then Ruth. Now she is angry and mortified about the class because everybody is criticizing our parody. She cares, you understand?”

“I try to,” replied Lydia modestly from between energetic strokes.

” She’s broadening; that’s what she needed. First she liked her own kind of people, next those she could comprehend — easy characters such as you and I are.”

“Um-m” grunted Lydia again with Indian immobility of countenance.

“Ruth’s different — queer and so forth. It took longer to learn to sympathize with her. Then the class — of course that means all sorts of girls. At last she’ll discover that she cares for the whole college and cares a lot, too. She’s made that way. I do actually suspect that she rather admires the faculty already. Presently she will broaden to take in the world, American charities, small talk, society, and so forth. Some day, I shouldn’t be surprised, she’ll sympathize with her own mother — when she marries and has a little daughter of her own to send to college. She’ll be a great-granddaughter — the dearest little thing with curls and a smile like Elinor’s. She will bring her to this college herself, and the professors will look at them both and — “

“Well, I must say!” ejaculated Lydia, letting the machine handles click sharply into place as she rose from her seat, “you surely have a nimble imagination. Elinor, no doubt, would be delighted.”