Smith College Stories Part 14

she was far and away the most brilliant girl in the college!" they said. But she never heard them.

The house she had moved into with an unacknowledged hope of getting more in touch with them was the last house she should have chosen. It was filled from cellar to roof with freshmen, and not only are they notoriously clannish under such conditions, but there were at least eight or ten of them from the same prominent preparatory school, and among them was their cla.s.s president. It was not possible for Susan to join herself to this little circle of satellites, and they controlled the entire house in a very short time. So she took to visiting the head of the house, a faded, placid soul with a nominal authority and a gentleness that moved even her worst freshmen--and a bad freshman combines the brutality of a boy with the finesse of a woman of the world--to a little shamed consideration during their periodic fits of social reform. Sitting by her fire in the dusk, with the smell of hot cooked chocolate drifting in from the hall, and the din of the a.s.sembled tribes in the president's room overhead, Susan pa.s.sed long, bored, miserable hours. Half listening to the older woman's talk, half sunk in her thoughts, she alternately chafed with rage at the idea of her college life drifting out in solitary walks and tired women's confidences, or took a sad kind of comfort in one fire where she was always welcome, one friend that loved to talk to her.

For Mrs. Hudson grew very fond of her, and something in the girl's own baffled, unsatisfied soul must have helped her to understand the stress and pathos of the tired little woman's life. Few of the girls who afterwards read _Barbara: A Study in Discipline_, would have believed that the high-hearted, wonderful heroine was based on Miss Jackson's study of their freshman landlady. But most of Susan's knowledge was gained from such unscheduled courses.

In her junior year she let her work go, to a great extent, and spent much time in the town libraries, reading omnivorously. As a matter of fact, her cla.s.s work deteriorated not a little, as much by reason of dangerously extended cuts as anything else. But it all failed to interest her, somehow: the detailed campaigns, the actual value of money, the soulless translations, the necessarily primary character of the beginnings of any study of modern language. She felt with growing irritation that she should have learned genders and verbs earlier in life, and she surprised her expectant teachers with poorer and poorer recitations. Mademoiselle had no means of knowing that though Miss Jackson stammered through the subjunctive she was reading dozens of novels and plays with a very fair ease; Fraulein could not tell from her imperfect handling of the modal auxiliaries that she had written a better paper on _Faust_ than many a six years' student of German, and already knew most of Heine by heart.

This year she made a few friends, chiefly in Phi Kappa, for some reason or other, which irritated the Alpha girls a little. To do her justice, she was utterly ignorant of this result of her connection with Bertha Kitts and Alida Fosd.i.c.k, nor would it have resulted in the case of an ordinary girl. But Susan was more prominent than she ever realized, and her whole connection with the others being official and logical rather than social and actual, her conduct and opinions were very sharply criticised from a rather exacting standpoint. Nor was this wholly unfair, for she was herself an unsparing critic. More than one of the Faculty smarted under her too successful epigrams; various aspirants for popularity and power in the Alpha or the cla.s.s learned to dread her comments; her few friends themselves were never quite sure of her att.i.tude toward them. But she was not, for her part, sure of them: it is hard to make friends in one's junior year. And though she saw quite a little of Biscuits and d.i.c.k and Neal Burt--always her constant admirer--she never for a moment lost the consciousness that she was no friend of their friends, that she had no place in those groups long since formed and shaken into place. They were a little jealous of her, too, and resented her selection of this girl and that from among them, though they could not but admit that her judgment was good.

Her sources of irritation were the same always. Their very flexibility, the ease with which those she had chosen out slipped from her to their other friends (they laughed with her at them, even, after the manner of girls--did they laugh with them at her?), filled her with a hopeless jealousy. It was not their nice clothes and their good times she grudged them, though she wanted both: it was their connections, their environments, their very disciplines. When Biscuits with loud lamentations elected Philosophy at the decree of her father; when Neal took up two courses of Economics in order to help her mother with "some footless syllabi in mother's literary club;" when Betty Twitch.e.l.l endured the gibes of her friends every rainy day because "Papa won't let me wear a short skirt; he hates a woman in one--I think it's perfectly horrid of him, too! Wait till I get pneumonia! As if I'd 'get a carriage' to take me from the Hatfield to College Hall!"

Susan would have given every rhyme in her head for one year of their conventional, irresponsible lives.

It was not money she longed for: Neal Burt was poor enough, and made no secret of "my cousin's boots, my dear, and my aunt's silk waist, and Patsy's gloves that don't fit her, that I have on this minute!"

But Neal gave her one of her worst quarter-hours, at the time her mother came up. She was a pretty little woman with Neal's eyes; her simple clothes had, like Neal's, a distinct air of taste and selection about them; her interest in everything was so pleasant, her manner so cordial and charming, that she made an easy conquest of the girls and Neal's friends in the Faculty that came to meet her and drink tea in the quiet house where Neal lived almost alone, much petted by her landlady, an old family friend. Mrs. Burt was interested in Economics that year--"the dear thing has a new fad every time I go home!"--and a prominent professor of Economics from one of the universities happening to be in town just then, one of Neal's friends among the Powers invited mother and daughter to meet him. Mrs. Burt was equally charmed and charming; the distinguished professor begged to be allowed to send her a copy of his book, in which she had been much interested, "and she went home proud as Punch!" in the words of her daughter.

Every word the kindly little woman had with Susan--and she had a great many, for Neal had interested her mother in her friend--brought closer home to her what had steadily grown to be the consuming trouble of her life. She tried to imagine _her_ mother drinking tea with a roomful of strangers; finding the right word for every one, talking with this girl about her friends, with that about the last book, with the other about college life in general. She fancied her meeting the distinguished professor and discussing his book so brightly--and saw the closet-shelves where Marie Corelli and the d.u.c.h.ess jostled Edna Lyall: Mrs. Jackson said she liked some real heavy reading now and then, and Edna Lyall had a good many problems in her books. She had a sickening consciousness that her mother would inevitably defer to the girls, particularly to the confident, well-dressed ones; and every time that Neal patted Mrs. Burt's shoulder or kissed the tip of her ear, she felt her heart contract with a spasm of that terrible gnawing envy that is surely reserved, with their equally terrible capacity for loving, for a certain small proportion of women, and women only. It is a very sad thing for a girl to be ashamed of her mother.

In her junior year occurred one of her greatest triumphs. The senior cla.s.s had pet.i.tioned vainly for the privilege of giving _Twelfth Night_ as their Commencement play: the refusal, based on the obstacle presented by the part of Sir Toby, and couched in the undying phrases of the Greatest Authority--"he should be neither drunk, nor half drunk, nor bibulous, nor rioting"--impressed very deeply those more susceptible to the humorous. With a commendable intelligence the dramatics committee decided that under the limitations above quoted the play would lack in verisimilitude, and cast about for another, but that was not the end of it; for Susan, in whose hands the Alpha farewell-meeting had been unreservedly placed, wrote, staged, and directed the performance of an elaborate parody ent.i.tled _First Night_, from which "the objectionable element in the unfortunate William's comedy," to quote the preface, was successfully and unsparingly expurgated.

Not only were the most obvious situations cleverly treated; not only did Sir Toby, spare and ascetic, in a neat flannel wrapper, call decorously for "a stoup of thin gruel, Maria!" not only did he and his self-contained friends walk through a kind of posture dance with killing solemnity, chanting the while a staid canon in which the possibilities of "Why, should I drink on _one_ day?" were interpreted with a novel and gratifying morality; not only did Malvolio utterly eschew an article of apparel too likely to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of the Young Person, but painstakingly a.s.sume, in the eyes of the delighted audience, heavy woollen stockings, a constant and effectual reminder of his hidden traditional garb: but a parody within a parody ran cunningly through the piece. The trials of the committee, the squabbles of the princ.i.p.al actors, open hits at the Faculty, sly comments on the senior cla.s.s, which had been active in reforms and not wholly popular innovations--all these were interwoven with the farce; and this not in the clumsy harmless fas.h.i.+on of most college grinds, but pointed by a keen wit, a merciless satire, an easy, brilliant style already well on to its now recognized maturity.

Most of the princ.i.p.al actors in the play finally selected by the seniors, with more than half of the committee, were that year, as it happened, from Alpha, and their delight knew no bounds. Susan did not act herself, but she was a born manager; and the actors that cursed her unsparing drill and absolute authority during the long rehearsal season that made it the most finished affair of its kind, blessed her vociferously on the great night of its production. It was the most perfect success of her life--though the girls who thought she scorned her college triumphs would have laughed had she told them so, later.

Every point was eagerly caught and wildly applauded; the stage setting, the funny, clever costumes, the irresistible caricatures, the wit and humor of the thing, all acted with a _verve_ and precision unusual in college dramatics, where criticism is too often forced to take the will for the deed, all called for a tremendous and well-earned appreciation. The author was frantically summoned again and again; the seniors exhausted a congratulatory vocabulary on her.

Her cla.s.smates shook her hand many times apiece.

Nor did the triumph end with the night, for the juniors, unable to contain their pride, gave surrept.i.tious bits of the play to chosen seniors in Phi Kappa, and it was even rumored that the other society was going to request a revival of the combination entertainment, now out of vogue, with a view to having it repeated. This was suppressed by the Powers, but it got about that one of the few type-written copies of the piece had fallen into the hands of an Influential Person--probably through Neal Burt, who admired it in proportion to her own far from ordinary ability--and that the Person had a.s.sembled a select gathering of her Peers for the sole purpose of reading it, with unmistakably appreciative comments, to them. Some members of the Faculty, old Alpha girls themselves, and present on the occasion of its production, expressed their admiration in unstinted terms, and altogether the Alpha gained a tremendous prestige.

This and her appointment as editor-in-chief of the _Monthly_ for her senior year marked the height of Susan's prosperity. She used to think, afterwards, that the play was the only pure pleasure she had ever had: it was certainly the only one that her namesake had left to her unspoiled. Fate ordered it that she should take off the bulletin-board with her notice of editorial appointment a note hastily addressed to S. Jackson, '9-. She opened it mechanically.

Dear Old Sue: It's a miserable shame! You ought to have had it! But it seems that it makes no difference what we want, nor who would work in best with the girls. _Genius_ isn't everything, always--but you know what I wanted!

Your disappointed H. S. K.

The note was not sealed, and she folded it and put it back quietly. A moment later she received her congratulations, but to every one's "Of course you're not surprised, Miss Jackson!" she smiled strangely. Sue used the phrase, fresh from her own congratulations as literary editor, and the concentrated bitterness of three years flashed out in the other's curt answer.

"Of course you're not surprised--"

"_Are you?_"

Sue's startled flush was all the proof she needed, and crus.h.i.+ng in her hand the note that had meant the highest college honor to more than one of the girls who had got its like, she went home to bear alone the sharpest disappointment she had yet known.

There was no one to tell her that the senior editor whose initials signed the note for Sue had been one of only two in Sue's favor; that the board, so far from acting unwillingly under the direction of the Rhetoric department, as she inferred from the note, had been practically unanimous for her, particularly as the two opposed held relatively unimportant positions and were far from popular. She did not know that the note itself was a gross breach of etiquette, anyway, and that both officially and socially its writer had risked the gravest censure; so much so that Sue, far from being pleased, was heartily ashamed of it and never told a soul about it till long afterwards. The person who could have explained most effectively to her how perfectly her election met the favor of everybody, herself included--for Sue would have been as surprised to find herself placed above her gifted namesake as to have found herself omitted entirely from the board--was too chagrined at the abrupt answer to her congratulations to dream of mentioning the matter further.

So Susan got out her first two numbers of the _Monthly_ with none of the delighted importance of most editors. It was all spoiled for her.

She knew that she deserved it: it was impossible for her not to realize that, so far as originality and power went, n.o.body in the cla.s.s, or the college, for that matter, could touch her work. It was not the position that meant so much to her: she was perfectly competent to fill it easily and acceptably, and she knew it. But she wanted them to think so, too, and be glad to give it to her--and she did not believe they were.

Shortly after her success of _First Night_, she got one of her rare letters from home. She had little correspondence with them, and had grown to regard their letters with dread, since each one had brought unpleasant news, from Doris', to announce her engagement to one of "the boys," a flashy, half-disreputable fellow, to her mother's, enclosing a cheque, with gloomy forebodings that it might be the last, and a disheartening chronicle of family affairs growing daily more sordid. The sight of her characterless, uncultivated handwriting always threw the girl into a gloomy, irritable mood, and as she opened this one the remorse that had begun to p.r.i.c.k her more sharply of late at her inability to help them, if not in the way she would like, at least in the most obviously necessary manner, crept over her and saddened her even before she reached the crisis of the letter. It was very simple: she must come home. There was no more money; there had been none for some time, but her father was bent on her staying, and had put it off longer than he should have done. It had been a foolish expense, and she might have had a position long ago. There was car fare and a very little over, and it was hoped that she had no bills.

They were going to move into an apartment over the store, and Veronica was going to keep her father's books. And that was all.

Perhaps her mother felt sorrier than she knew how to say; perhaps it was only the constraint of years and lack of _savoir faire_ that made the letter so cold and curt; but there it was, with nothing to break the shock: no regret for her, to lighten her sense of selfishness; no appeal to her, even, to help them. They could get along very well; to give up the house would be a great financial relief, and she would be more a hindrance than otherwise. She knew that: she knew that her presence would be a constant irritation, her criticism, impossible to conceal, a constant source of strife and estrangement. It was only that they had no more money for her--that was all.

She walked out to the long bridge, and sat down on a stone near the end of it. For perhaps the first time a complete consciousness of how bitterly she loved the place came to her. She, of whom many of the Faculty afterwards wondered that she stayed as long as she did, credited by all her acquaintances with infinite boredom at its restrictions and wearisome routine, dreaded to leave it as she herself could hardly endure to think. For three years she had taken a place, unchallenged, among people of a cla.s.s she had never known before.

Unknown, unhelped, she had by sheer personality and natural power made herself not only respected but respected to an unusual degree.

She had patronized girls who would not have acknowledged her existence three years before; whether they loved her or not, her cla.s.s was proud of her. Her going would be noticed--oh, yes indeed!

She rose to go home, and a little beyond the bridge turned to look back: something told her that she should not know that view soon again. Meadow and river and softly circling hills with the beautiful afternoon haze thick on them, she stamped it on her heart--and with it a sudden nearing figure. Down the long arch, slim and shapely against the blue background of the tunnel, Sue flew toward her on her wheel.

Her hands swung by her sides--she had ridden from childhood--her feet were off the pedals, her perfectly fitting heavy skirt hung out in graceful fluted folds. Beneath her soft, trim hat her cheeks glowed rose-color, her eyes shone like stars. The sun caught her smooth, thick hair and framed her face in a glittering halo. She sat straight as a dart, her lips parted with the sheer physical delight of the swooping, effortless sensation--she was tremendously handsome. To the other girl she was victory incarnate; the essence of ease and triumph and perfect _bien-etre_; her hopeless envy and despair. As she flew by she spread out her hands in a quick, significant gesture, half graceful and high-bred--half pert and of the music-hall: it typified her and her friends perfectly to Susan, who never forgot her as she saw her then, and whose _Mademoiselle Diana_, much admired by Sue and her family, is n.o.body more nor less than Sue herself.

She found a letter waiting for her at home, a letter that the maid explained had just been brought from the house where the other Miss Jackson lived--it had been kept there by mistake and neglected for two or three days. It was hoped it was not important. She opened it in the hall, read it hastily through, read it again, looked at the date, and asked for a time-table. The maid, suspecting bad news, was officious in a.s.sistance and eagerly agreed to pack her things and get a man to box the books when she had gone, which would be in the morning, she said, with a strange, absent-minded air. She gave the girl her last fifty cents, and while Maggie folded and packed, she wrote a letter home.

"It seems foolish for me to come to Troy; I should only have to go right back to Boston again," _she said in it_. "They want me to begin to collect the stories right away and do some reading for them besides--so I must be there. There is a new magazine they have just bought, too, and I am to do some work on that. It is a very good position and will lead to a better, they say, and I am very fortunate to get it. They say very nice things about my work in the "Monthly"--the college paper that I was elected editor of--they seem to have read them all. I must go on immediately. Their letter was delayed, and I shall try to get there to-morrow. I will let you know when I find a place to stay. I hope to be able to help you soon.

"Hastily, "SUSAN."

She wrote a note to the Registrar and one to Neal Burt, whom, in her letter of resignation, she recommended strongly to the board as her successor, overlooking the const.i.tution, which provides for the literary editor's filling the first place when it falls vacant, and refusing supper, she walked out over the campus. The dining-rooms were opened to the soft air; the cheerful clatter of plates came out from every window; she could see the maids hurrying about. She sat for an hour in one of the hammocks, and then walked about the larger buildings. The last dance of the season was on in the Gym; the violins rose above the tramping and the confused uproar inside. White-armed girls pa.s.sed the windows and leaned out into the cool.

"How is it?" one called up from below.

"Mortal slow, dearie, but don't say I told you!" the other answered in a stage whisper from above, and the music dashed into a two-step.

"Be_hold_ El _Cap_-i-_tan_!"

It haunted Susan's dreams for nights, that tune--it seemed impossible that the dancers' hearts should not ache as hers did. She lingered, fascinated, while the violins sang it over and over, and over again at the storm of clapping that followed it.

"Be_hold_ El _Cap_-i-_tan_!"

It was a hideous, cruel tune, light and utterly careless, and yet with that little sadness in it that some sensitive ears find always in good dance music--is it because dancing must so obviously end so soon?--and Susan has loathed it all her life. Indeed, at a recent luncheon given in her honor by the alumnae of New York, she requested that the orchestra stop playing it after the first few bars--these people of genius are so delightfully eccentric!

She left college as quietly as she had entered it; there is no doubt that they would have made her Ivy Orator, had she stayed. The mail that took the notice of her lodging-house to her family crossed one of Sue's to her Uncle Bradford, of the well-known Boston publis.h.i.+ng firm.

Among other things she said:

I'm glad you like her so well--I knew you would. She's really much better for the place than Con. And I'm sure it was better to write to her directly--she doesn't like any of us very well, except Neal and Biscuits, and I have an idea she really almost dislikes me. I knew that when you saw that essay on the French and English as short-story writers, you'd want to give her the chance. And she was the very girl to leave college, too--it isn't everybody would be so glad to go just before senior year.

Not but what I would, fast enough, if I had her future before me--Mon dieu! she's the only girl I ever thought I'd rather be--you should see the poem she left with Neal for the "Monthly"! She turns them off over night, apparently. It's a loss to the cla.s.s, of course, but everybody is very glad for her--she always seemed so out of place up here, somehow. If one doesn't care for the little footless stunts, it must be a terrible bore, I should think. And when she's famous we can pat each other on the back and say we done it--partly. With a great deal of love for you and Aunt Julia,

SUE.

THE SEVENTH STORY

_A FEW DIVERSIONS_

VII

A FEW DIVERSIONS