Smith College Stories Part 18

She was prepared for any answer but the one forthcoming.

"Why, I don't care," said Evangeline, indifferently, "only she'd better hurry, hadn't she?"

Biscuits was by now so impressed with the vital necessity of getting Suzanne that she had hardly time to wonder at her haste or her nervous fear that the young lady might not be at home. She trudged up the two flights and sighed with relief at the sound of Suzanne's mandolin.

Miss Endicott was not fond of the mandolin and played it solely for the purpose of annoying the senior next door, who had a nasty habit of rising early to study, and making her bed violently, driving it into the wall just opposite Suzanne's pillow. When remonstrated with she returned with calmness that she had not been accustomed, when herself a soph.o.m.ore, to object to the habits of seniors, and that excitable young people who came to college for heaven knew what, had better acquaint themselves with habits of study in others, since that was their only probable source of knowledge of such habits.

Henceforth it became at once Suzanne's duty and pleasure to give what she modestly called "little recitals from time to time," accompanied by her mandolin, which instrument maddened her neighbor beyond endurance. As Biscuits entered she was giving a very dramatic rendering of the Jewel Song from Faust, and to her guest's opening remarks she replied only by a melodious burst of laughter and the arch a.s.surance:

"_Non, non! Ce n'est plus toi!

Ce n'est plus ton visage!_"

Biscuits obeyed an imperative gesture and held her peace till the song was over, when the performer, with an inimitable grin at the wall, laid down her mandolin and pointed to a chair.

"_Que voulez-vous, ma plus chere? Vous avez l'air--_"

"Oh, for heaven's sake talk English, Suzanne! I want you to come over and cut out Evangeline Potts' evening dress. Will you? She's freckled and big, and she won't go unless you do. She's got to go, too. We can't leave anybody out. Will you come?"

"_Mais qu'avez-vous donc, ma chere Berthe? Est-ce que j'suis couturiere, moi?_"

"Yes," said Biscuits, obstinately, "you are, and you know it. You might be able to make her look like something. She's a perfect stick now."

Suzanne shot one of her elfish glances at her visitor. It was impossible to know what she would do.

"_Mais certainement vous avez a.s.sez de joue, vous!_" she suggested.

Biscuits did not reply, but watched the clock on the desk.

Suzanne shrugged her shoulders.

"_Eh bien!_" she said cheerfully, "_me voila sage, Pet.i.ts-pains, sage et bien aimable! Ou demeure-t-elle donc, votre amie?_"

"Bless you, Suzanne, her name's Evangeline Potts! and she--"

"_Mon Dieu!_ Evangeline Potts! _Mais quelle horreur! Est-ce que je saurais p.r.o.noncer ce nom affreux?_" babbled Suzanne, while Biscuits found her golf cape and hustled her out of the door. Those who relied too long or too securely on Miss Endicott's moods were frequently disappointed in the end.

She had been born in San Francisco and brought up, alternately, in Paris and New York, by her brother, a rising young artist, whose views were as broad as his handling, and whose regret at parting with her was equalled only by his firm determination to fulfil the promise he had made their mother, long dead, to educate her properly. Only his solemn a.s.surance that she should come back every summer if she would behave, and finally conduct their joint establishment in Paris with the Angora for chaperon and the silky Skye for butler, kept her from taking the first steamer back from the seaport nearest the town she had hated consistently since she left that scene of delicious little suppers and jolly painter-people and nights at the play and ecstatic exhibitions when Brother was "on the line."

Now a wealthy young woman from San Francisco who chooses to spend from two to four years at an Eastern college is a sufficiently complicated type in herself; when she has grown up in studios and done very much as she pleases all her life, she affords even more food for thought to the student of character.

People who disliked Suzanne called her unprincipled and shallow and lazy; people who admired her called her brilliant and irresponsible and lazy; people who loved her called her fascinating and spoiled and lazy. She could dance like a leaf in the wind; she could make herself the most bewitching garments out of nothing to speak of; she could create a j.a.panese tea-room with one parasol and two fans, and make a Persian interior from a rug, an inlaid table, and a jewelled lantern; she could learn anything perfectly in half the time it would take anybody else to get a fair idea of it, and she could, if so minded, carry insolence to the point of a fine art. She was far from pretty, but her clever little brown face, with its strange gray eyes, compelled attention, and her hair had that rare silvery tinge that is an individuality in itself. She was never without two or three devoted admirers, but her cla.s.s disliked her, and it took all their self-control to bear with her to the extent that was necessary in order to profit by her special abilities. She was no more to be depended upon than a kitten, and her periodical bursts of rage rendered her unendurable to that large majority which objects to flaming eyes and torrents of a.s.sorted abuse, to say nothing of the occasional destruction of bric-a-brac.

And yet, to the wonder of these righteous critics, Suzanne kept her warm friends. There was always some amiable Philistine to watch her erratic movements with delighted awe, to run on her errands, to listen to her amazing confidences, and to stand up for her through thick and thin. Though Biscuits and her little circle were, even in their soph.o.m.ore year, beginning to draw away from her, vaguely conscious of a necessary parting of the ways, frankly puzzled at the vagaries of this girl who was half a spoiled baby, half a woman of the world, at intervals the fascination of her personality drew them back for a while, and they wondered that they could have thought her irresponsible and selfish at heart.

To-day, as Biscuits walked beside her, convulsed by her narration of a recent tussle with the lady-in-charge--"I was only putting an accordion-pleated crepe-paper frieze above the moulding, with thumb tacks, and if she had kept out of the way--pig! 'What do you think you came to college for, Suzanne? Certainly not work of this sort!' 'Oh, no, Mrs. Wylie, of course not. I have long realized that our real object in coming here was to save the maids trouble!'"--she almost forgave her that curt refusal to have anything to do with the reception decorations: "You'd far better save me for the Prom--I'll manage that, but I won't do both, _vous savez, c'est un peu trop fort_!" she had remarked royally, and the committee had smothered their wrath and agreed, and cursed her afterwards in detail, after the manner of practical young women who are far from the short-sightedness of allowing their emotions to interfere with their intentions. Also, they do not enjoy giving needless pain--on the spot. This is one of the sweetest attributes of woman.

They knocked at Evangeline's door, and omitting preliminary ceremonies, demanded the dress. Evangeline produced a dark red cashmere: Suzanne shook her head. A much washed white lawn with what appeared to be blue palm-leaf fans scattered over it was next offered for consideration: Suzanne gasped, "_Mon Dieu!_" A gray gingham decorated with yellow spirals met her demand for "a summer thing," and caused the artist to sink upon the floor with a tragic groan.

"_Mais, Evangeline, vous me serrez le coeur! C'est horrible! C'est effrayant!_"

Evangeline smiled politely but offered no further suggestion.

Suzanne looked at her searchingly through half-closed eyes. "Have you anything black?" she demanded.

"I have a black silk," said Evangeline, and she brought out a heavy, corded, ribbon-trimmed affair with a pointed vest that would have been highly suitable for a maiden aunt who had, as Suzanne remarked, seen misfortune. Biscuits sighed, but Suzanne rose rapidly to her feet and clutched the scissors she had brought with her.

"_Enfin! ca y est!_" she cried. "Put it on her, Biscuits!"

She persisted in utterly ignoring Evangeline, or, more exactly, in treating her as if she had been a doll, talking to her in a pitying tone that required no answer and commenting upon her deficiencies in a manner that made Biscuits squirm visibly and glance apologetically at the object of such impersonal criticism.

"Perhaps Miss Potts doesn't care to have such a--such a nice dress cut," she suggested, as Suzanne, with what seemed a perfectly careless gesture, slashed at the sleeves.

"_Quel malheur!_" replied the artist, indifferently, and Evangeline added, "I'd just as lieve."

With pursed lips Suzanne snipped and pinched, while Biscuits followed her every motion and Evangeline silently adjusted herself to each new position as Suzanne pulled and pushed her arms and neck about. At length with a sudden motion Suzanne stripped off the detached sleeves as if they had been gloves, and s.n.a.t.c.hed away the top of the scant middle-aged waist with a quick movement. "_Voila!_" she said, and Biscuits gasped: for Evangeline Potts was a transformed creature. Her arms and neck were ivory white and as soft and smooth as satin; the lovely curves of her throat and shoulders could never have been guessed at under the stiff black seams of the waist.

Suzanne patted her arms appreciatively. "I might have known it, with that hair and those freckles!" she murmured. Then, calmly, to Evangeline: "The trouble with your kind is, you never have any eyebrows and your eyelids get red, _n'est-ce pas?_"

She went a few steps back from the motionless figure and stood silent.

"You could twist a black scarf," suggested Biscuits, hastily. Suzanne waved her hand.

"_Tu me degoutes, a la fin!_" she said coldly; "Get your cape on!"

Then, to Evangeline: "Undo your hair!" As the thick coil tumbled over her shoulders, the directress of ceremonies deliberately selected a light inner tress and snipped it off.

"Take it down town and match it--in velvet if you can, in silk if you can't," she commanded. "And get enough, get two, three yards!"

"But will Miss Potts want to spend--" Biscuits looked doubtfully at the white-armed G.o.ddess who contemplated herself quietly in the gla.s.s.

It was impossible to know what she was thinking; she was apparently quite accustomed to strangers who dressed her in low-cut evening dresses and snipped her hair and spent her money.

Suzanne stamped her foot. "_Va-t-en!_" she cried, and then, with an irresistible mimicry of Evangeline, "_She'd_ just as lieve!"

When Biscuits returned with a great strip of tawny velvet, it was taken from her at the door, and she was instructed to get from Suzanne's room her make-up box and the gold powder that had so unaccountably disappeared after the play last week.

"They borrowed the eyebrow pencil and that, the night of the dress rehearsal, and they _swore_ to bring them back--beasts! What have I to call my own? _Rien!_ Never, never, never will I lend anything again!

_Il faut faire un fin, vraiment!_"

It was a long hunt for Biscuits, and more than once it occurred to her that she had refused to go on the decorating committee with a view to escaping just such wearisome trotting about. When she handed the box to Suzanne and suggested that the result should be extremely pleasing to justify such toil, the red spot in the artist's either cheek and her wide-opened eyes indicated the happy absorption to which no effort seems worthy of mention. Biscuits, not allowed to enter the room, sat wearily on the stairs, longing to go home but unwilling to abandon Suzanne. It was very nearly six, and she was not dressed; she had left the necessary perusal of _The Works of Christopher Marlowe_ till late in the day, thinking to devote the evening to it; she took little interest in Evangeline Potts, and she did not care much for dancing.

But for the moment her resentment vanished when Suzanne called her in and she beheld the object of her labors under the gaslight in a carefully darkened room. Her milk-white shoulders rose magnificently from folds of auburn velvet that her wonderful hair repeated in loose waves about her face and a great ma.s.s low on her neck. Her long, round arms gleamed against the black of her skirt and melted into the glow of her velvet girdle. In the white light her freckles paled and her eyes turned wholly brown, and said mysterious things that could never by any possibility have occurred to her.

"_Tiens! J'ai eu la main heureuse, n'est-ce pas? Vous la trouvez charmante?_" said Suzanne, turning her about as if she had been a dummy and indicating her opinion that the back view was, if anything, more satisfying than the front.

"You're a genius, Suzanne! She's simply stunning! How did you do it?"

Suzanne smiled. "_C'est pas grand' chose_," she said modestly. But she looked contentedly at Evangeline and loosened her hair a little. "Now remember, don't put on those hideous rings," she commanded, "and don't wear anything on your head. Do you dance well?" she added.

Evangeline hesitated. "I dance a little," she replied, "pretty well, I guess."

Suzanne promptly encircled her waist and whistled a waltz. After a few turns she stopped.