Chapter XI

The Mellowing of Lydia

As soon as Lydia was out of quarantine, she was spirited away to recuperate at home during the spring vacation. She returned after Easter to such an enthusiastic welcome that for once she was at a loss and could only beam speechlessly at the circle of affectionate faces. However, as Myra expressed it, nobody else could beam quite so satisfactorily as Lydia, words or no words. Such overwhelming attentions were embarrassing, she smiled, when the following afternoon Myra and Elinor hurried away to the woods to bring her the longest-stemmed violets from a certain shady nook. An April storm sent them wading homeward, while branches snapped and crashed around them, and level sheets of rain drove under their single umbrella.

When warm and dry in their woolly bathrobes, Myra spoke up musingly. “Elinor, she never said one syllable about the foolishness of risking a drenching and tramping two miles to find flowers exactly like those that grow right here in the swamp beyond the orchard. She is changed.”

“I saw her open her mouth once and then shut it again,” said Elinor; “even if she is not changed herself, such indecision shows that she is able to change her mind. If Lydia vacillates —”

“Girls,” Ruth slipped in from the corridor, “Lydia wants to know if you won’t please take a few drops of camphor to counteract the chill.”

“If we won’t please take it?” echoed Myra, “why, of course we will if she isn’t any stronger than that. It doesn’t sound like Lydia in the least. The last time she gave me sugar pills, another girl noticed the name on the bottle and warned me that belladonna dwarfs the brain. Lydia was so sarcastic! She said that because some people with naturally diminutive brains ate belladonna to make their eyes bright, that was no reason for slandering the drug. Hasn’t she corrected you yet for a solitary fault, Ruth?”

“No,” replied Ruth as she tidily emptied the water out of Myra’s shoes and set them near Elinor’s beside the register, “she has not informed me even once that my hair was on the point of falling down. You know how rebellious it is without being compensatingly curly,” she added with a wistful glance at the two graceful heads bending close together over the bowl of violets.

“I’m pretty fond of Lydia myself,” murmured Myra, lifting her eyes and fixing them mournfully upon a discarded tin box under the tea-table. “Do you suppose that she brought any wafers or cake or salted almonds from home this time? I’m starving.”

Elinor fidgeted uneasily, disturbed by the impression that somebody ought to say something flattering in response to Ruth’s remark. Any self-depreciation always seemed to her shyly instinctive reserve as if it were an invitation for a consolatory compliment. She looked up with a smile.

“You have an artistic head, shape and all, inside and out. I wouldn’t object to trading.”

Myra’s surprised glance traveled from one to the other, and then, to Elinor’s unutterable relief, for Myra’s capability of candor was a thing to shudder at, she began to jeer: “Ho! trade the inside of your head for the inside of Ruth’s! That would be a bargain for one of you. As for the outside, I heard a junior say that you had the best head for doing up hair on in the whole college. Listen! The — best — head — for — doing — up — hair — on.”

Then the avenger descended upon her.

The instant Ruth had gone, Myra turned upon her companion. “Elinor Offitt, what earthly excuse did you have for telling such a whopper?”

“Well, it is artistic,” protested Elinor defensively. “Haven’t you seen pictures of peasants and all sorts of queer heads by the old masters? It doesn’t have to be beautiful.”

“You said you wouldn’t object to trading. And you know very well it would kill you to have such a high forehead and extraordinary features, not pretty at all except when sometimes her expression is almost beautiful. Why did you say it?”

“Because,” she hesitated; then desperately, “oh, because it pleases her so!”

“My — my soul and conscience — specially conscience!” ejaculated Myra, and was silent for the pace of seven seconds before an illuminating conjecture smote words from her shocked tongue. “You’re afraid she’ll find out.”

“Yes,” said Elinor soberly, “I am afraid she will find out. I can’t help disliking her, but it would hurt her to know it; and she has suffered so much already.” Her slender fingers were absently drawing from the bowl one violet after another and laying them with even stems along the edge of the table. “Though she never speaks about her childhood, anybody can see that it was unhappy. She was the sensitive kind — I know. When I was only three I sobbed all night long because mother slapped my hands for being naughty. It was such an awful feeling of being alone because she did not understand or love me any more. I am worried about mother this spring because she is not very well. I wonder where Ruth’s mother —” Elinor paused and changed the subject abruptly. “It is none of our business anyhow, and she would tell us if she wished us to know. Myra, smell of these woodsy delicious things. They’re so different from summer flowers — daisies, for instance. By the way, have you heard from admiring friends that you may be a candidate to help carry the daisy chain on Class Day?”

“You may be another,” said Myra in prompt retort, “and the class will elect all six in a week or so. There are plenty of girls who wouldn’t mind marching at the head of the procession with that big fluffy rope of flowers looped over their shoulders. Our mothers will be glad. Maybe Lydia will be sophomore marshal because she can walk with an air. Do you notice how fine and white her skin is? I wish I could peel too. I wonder if scarlet fever is improving to the character as well as the complexion.”

The next morning brought signs that the disease was indeed of ethical value also. While strolling nonchalantly down the hall, Myra met Lydia, who had been roused from her early dusting by the noise of thumping and pounding in the direction of the double.

“They’re locked in,” Myra explained carelessly. “When I was trying to make my bed Elinor kept bothering and Ruth shook my pillow out of its case, and things like that. At present they are meditating over their sins — that’s what causes the racket Here’s the key if you really want it. It doesn’t signify to me one way or the other.”

The moment the catch was freed, the door flew open and a pillow hurtled smotheringly into Lydia’s astonished face.

“Oh, pardon me!” gasped Elinor, ” we thought it was Myra” and she darted down the corridor in pursuit of that mocking young person at the staircase.

“Why, Lydia’s actually laughing without a single word concerning silly tricks!” exclaimed Myra after escaping demurely from the expostulations of a nervous housekeeper; “it frightens me.”

“Last year I wondered at times if she were not too far above this little college world ever to catch the human spirit of it. Dear me! Listen! What is the pretext for this swelling tumult?”

A freshman had come scampering up the stairs and flown into another’s arms with a joyous shriek of, “No math to-day! No math!” A third appeared with, “What’s all this uproar about? You’re disturbing your neighbors.” “No algebra to-day! No algebra!” Jaws fell in surprise and hands shot up in delight. They ran on screaming, “No math! No math!” Girls popped out on every side and besieged the messenger with ecstatically incredulous questions. One student threw her book out of the window and immediately rushed down to rescue it after thus fittingly venting her emotion. Another freshman murmured that she was sorry and then precipitately retired before the avalanche of wrath.

Myra and Elinor squeezed each other unobtrusively. “Ah, don’t we remember! It’s the lesson on the nth power of exponents. Poor things!” sighed Elinor.

Myra clutched her elbow. “Look! Gaze! Behold! Lydia is smiling in sympathy. Smiling — in — sympathy — with — those — riotous — children! And her laundry-bag is hanging on her door-knob! See! Stare! Ogle! In short, contemplate it! Her laundry has been returned for once. That means she counted it wrong or neglected to mark some article. Mine has come back five or six times. She told me I was inexcusably heedless. She told me that last year. To-day is this year. She has made a mistake in her laundry. She is human. She isn’t perfect. Elinor Offitt, my dear young and giddy friend, I guess she’ll live.”

“Oh, I hope so,” responded Elinor abstractedly. “Myra, do you realize that we are seventeen years old?”

“Going on eighteen,” she grieved; ” isn’t it terrible! I don’t feel old one bit.”

“Ruth tries to join in. But she doesn’t quite know how. Maybe she was always solitary and never learned to play with other children.”

“She says that we behave as if we were about six and ten respectively.”

“Does she indeed?” Elinor drew herself up slightly. Always peculiarly susceptible to criticism, she was growing especially quick to resent the slightest hint of it from this particular quarter. She felt half unconsciously that her graciousness toward Ruth cost her enough effort to deserve unqualified admiration in return. “But then I dare say that she really is not to blame for taking college with such intense seriousness. The light touch, the delicate tasting of life, depends upon heredity and early circumstances — “

“Elinor,” broke in Myra unexpectedly, “at first I thought Lydia was a snob because she seemed so superior and condescending, but it was only her way. She is truly unselfish and democratic and not conceited in her heart. It is you who are snobbish. Yes, you are in spite of that charmingly diffident manner of yours. Only a genuine born snob could look down on anybody as you look down on Ruth. Is it her fault that she is different from the other girls? Such an unpardonable crime! Is it her fault that she has not been so carefully reared as you? Is it her fault — “

“Nothing is anybody’s fault,” interrupted Elinor. “There’s always some excuse for everything — heredity and environment, disposition and temperament and will. Often I sit down and wish hard for somebody whom I can blame up and down, inside and out. I do get so tired of making allowances. Lydia isn’t entirely responsible for her lack of humor. You mustn’t blame me because I was too much of a coward to let the doctor prick my finger for a drop of blood in physiology. My mother never could bear to be hurt either. You, yourself, even if you do carp so blindly at your humble friend, you are not to be condemned therefore. The atmosphere of this hyper-critical place contaminates your simple mind. And anyhow I do not look down on Ruth. I admire her ability immensely.”

“How noble of you! Oh, come, Elinor, I’m tired of scolding you. And anyhow it isn’t as if Ruth didn’t have Miss Ewers to care for most. Let’s talk about what we shall wear if we are elected to carry the daisy chain.”

As affairs turned out the two girls were indeed among the six sophomores chosen for this distinction. The class-meeting was held on the morning of the day appointed for their Tree Ceremonies. Elinor was on the committee which had selected the tree to be adopted that evening. She was too busy with arrangements for the exercises to notice that Myra seemed to be sharing with Ruth a mysterious secret which kept her preoccupied and alert every minute of the afternoon that she did not spend in trotting to and from the telephone office in the main building.

In the sweet-scented May dusk the sophomores fell into line at one of the rear doors. Half of them were men in shirtwaists, “galluses,” and big straw hats. Half were women wearing calico aprons and the same kind of hats tied in pokes and adorned with roses and ribbons. Lydia marched at the head, brandishing a long curtain-pole to the rhythm of their step, as they tramped two by two past the windows banked with faces to the tree out upon the lawn, where a lantern cast a dim circle of light from a limb.

First the class president rose to make a speech. Then Ruth, who had been chosen orator of the occasion mounted a crackerbox-rostrum and delivered a nonsensical harangue, every sentence of which was snatched away in a round of cheering, clapping, groaning, and howling.

Myra yelled with zeal and vehemence till she observed that the girl immediately in front of her glanced around smiling at each wild free burst of appreciation. Then she remained silent for a few minutes and presently discovered to her own amazement that her throat was commencing to rasp huskily. During the applause at the end she managed to writhe her way back through the crowd to Elinor, who was standing farther in the shadows. Just as she was explaining in dramatic pantomime her loss of the power of speech, she caught a whisper from a group passing on to join the procession again.

“Isn’t it silly! Some of the daisy-chain girls telegraphed home as soon as they were elected.”

“Vanitas vanitatum. Chosen for their good looks and because they can walk well. Toot, toot! Maybe they’ll have their names put in the papers exactly as the seniors do every year when the honor-list is announced. Why not? Brains and beauty —”

Myra hastily dragged Elinor beyond hearing. “Mean old things! She wanted to be appointed herself and hinted around. Oh, well, Ruth says — Why, heigho! Hulloa, Elinor, listen! My voice has come back. It was indignation did it. Hurry! There the procession starts for the gym. We’ll get left if we hang around this tree any longer. And it is all right to telegraph the news home. Don’t you forget that. Run!”

In the gymnasium Lydia still wad mistress of ceremonies, and conducted the dancing. Even Ruth could take part in the figures which seemed to consist mainly of balancing your partner and skipping around in a circle. When they frisked through an intricate composition entitled on the spur of the moment “The girl I left behind me,” Myra saved up enough breath to exclaim that she was the girl; for she invariably started in by slipping down and sliding in an easy curve after her strong-wristed partner.

After that, they skipped in polka step around the room, taking off their big hats every time they passed the popular principal who had entered late for a glimpse of the frolic. At last with rousing cheers from hoarse throats, the provident ones stuffed their overall pockets full of surplus peanuts and stick-candy before departing. Wonderful to relate! Miss Howard did not utter one contemptuous word about administrative tyranny, although the clock marked only half-past nine when the ball was over.

Myra and Elinor were met by freshmen friends who had watched the gymnasium’s lighted windows from the quiet dormitory. They came trooping out to examine the costumes and were generously supplied with the embezzled provisions.

“I should feel frightfully selfish if I ate it all,” Myra assured them, while Elinor taunted her, “Oho! so you’re not made of iron either, are you? Was it but one short year ago that you inquired so earnestly why I stopped before the stuff was gone? It isn’t always only darting pains, is it? Oh, no!”

“Oh, wise one!” declaimed the rakish young person in blue denim, her hat flopping over one curl-hidden ear, ” also magnanimous one! I forgive thee. Restrain thy gratitude. Furthermore, let’s run back to the gym to get a pitcherful of that red lemonade for these poor famishing children.”

They were barely in time to empty the last of the precious beverage from the tallest can before the janitor extinguished the gas. Skipping back across the moon-lighted lawn, they scampered past Lydia in the lower corridor and tore by Ruth, who was slowly mounting the stairs.

At the head of the flight they almost bumped into the messenger girl, who was hastening springily down the corridor, a yellow envelope in her hand.

“Oh, Miss Offitt,” she called, halting at sight of them, “this is for you.”

All the color dropped from Elinor’s face, leaving it like marble. She put one hand behind her, feeling blindly for the support of the banisters. She reached out the other for the envelope.

“Thank you,” she said and stood looking at it.

Myra, who had beckoned to the freshmen in mischievous joy, suddenly saw the expression in her eyes.

“Elinor!” she cried sharply, “Elinor, don’t! It’s all right! It’s from your —”

“Mother — isn’t — well. She — isn’t strong.” Elinor’s chest was beginning to heave.

“Silly! Tear it open! Read it quick! It’s nothing but a reply to our telegram. Ruth and I sent her word about the daisy-chain. We knew she would be glad. It’s congratulations.”

“Oh!” said Elinor, and read the telegram. She could feel the faces turned toward her. She caught her lip between her teeth; then with a quick effort she glanced up brightly. “Yes, it is from mother. She is delighted. Aren’t mothers perfectly lovely about such things! Isn’t it funny of them, and dear, to care!”

Ten minutes later Myra clutched her on the threshold of her bedroom. “You are angry with us. I saw it. You were frightened. It was our fault. We meant to please you.”

“No,” said Elinor wearily, “you are mistaken. I am not angry with you or with Ruth. But I am ashamed. I am so ashamed!”

“Ashamed?”

“Yes. Didn’t you hear what those girls were saying out under the tree? We were chosen because we look well enough to walk at the head of the Class Day procession. Mother telephoned to the paper and it published the news on the front page. Everybody will think that I was so puffed up at the glorious award that I sent the telegram.”

Myra drew back and stared at her soberly. “Well,” she said at last, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s proper pride and all that, or else diffidence and such nice scruples, but I think myself it’s mean to be ashamed.”