Smith College Stories Part 19

"You dance very badly," she said encouragingly. "If I were you, I'd sit out most of them. You can say it bores you--they'll be glad enough. Besides, you might get red and then you'd not be pretty. Now don't move about much, and when Miss Kitts brings you the white roses put them just where I told you.

"Very well," said Evangeline, and as the other two prepared to go she gave them one of her long, slow smiles. "I'm much obliged to you both, I'm sure," she said; "you've been very kind."

"_Adieu, mon enfant--a plus tard!_" and Suzanne seized the door k.n.o.b.

She turned in the door and threw a quick, piercing look at her handiwork. "If you take my advice, you'll never put on that dreadful s.h.i.+rt-waist again, _tres chere_," she said lightly. "You'll spoil all this splendor, if you do. Give it away--or, no, don't! you'd corrupt the taste of the poor--burn it up, and the others with it, and get a black suit and a black silk waist and wear a big white tie, if you like. And a white tam--one of those p.u.s.s.y ones. Wear one color--_c'est plus distingue_--and if you want a big black hat with plumes, I'll make it for you. _Et maintenant, regarde-toi dans la glace!_"

With this invocation they left her, and Biscuits, learning that Suzanne had exhausted her energy and proposed to inform her freshman that she was ill and unable to attend the reception, became possessed by the idea that she was responsible for this particular ill.u.s.tration of the artistic temperament, and went without her dinner to hunt up a subst.i.tute. She wasted no time in argument with Suzanne, who lay luxuriously on her couch pillows with her hands under her head, and planned costumes for Evangeline Potts all the evening, but tramped angrily over the campus till quarter of seven to find an unattached soph.o.m.ore, forgetting that Evangeline's flowers were yet to be purchased. Coming up with them in her hand, a little later, she was forced to stop and explain to the subst.i.tute the intricacies of Suzanne's programme, breaking off abruptly to beat her breast like the wedding guest, for she heard the loud ba.s.soon and fled to her room, tearing her evening dress hopelessly and completing her toilette on the stairs. The subst.i.tute suffered from a violent headache as the result of her unexpected exertions, and the little freshman cried herself to sleep, for she had dreamed for nights of going with Suzanne, whom she admired to stupefaction.

But of all this Evangeline Potts knew little, and, it may be, cared less. She was one of the successes of the evening, and her few remarks were quoted diligently. She could have danced dozens of extras, had so many been possible, and Biscuits was considered to have displayed more than her ordinary cleverness in procuring a creature so picturesque and distinguished.

This did not surprise her, nor did she particularly resent being pointed out by more than one freshman as "the soph.o.m.ore that took that stunning Miss Potts"; but her amazement was undisguised, the next morning but one, at the sight of Evangeline walking out from chapel with a prominent junior, the glamor of the evening gone, it is true, her face somewhat heavy and undeniably freckled, but nevertheless an Evangeline transformed. From her fluffy white cap to the hem of her dignified black skirt she was the realization of Suzanne's parting suggestions, and the distinct intention of her costume had its full effect. She was far more impressive than the jolly little short-skirted junior, whose curly yellow hair paled beside the dark richness of Evangeline's ma.s.sive coils, and Biscuits, remembering that she had called her "a perfect stick," marvelled inwardly.

She went to call on her a little later, but Evangeline was not in; and feeling that her duty was done, Miss Kitts gave no further thought to what she considered an essentially uninteresting person, but devoted herself to a study of the campus house into which she had moved only that year.

She saw Evangeline very rarely after that, except at the dances and plays, where her white shoulders framed in auburn velvet appeared very regularly. Once, happening to sit beside her, she began a conversation, but she could not remember afterward that Miss Potts said anything but, "Yes, indeed," or, "Yes, I think so, too." Her surprise was therefore great when, on hearing the result of the soph.o.m.ore elections the next fall, and audibly commenting on the oddity of Miss Evangeline Potts in the position of soph.o.m.ore president, she was indignantly a.s.sured by a loyal member of that cla.s.s that the vote was almost unanimous and that she was one of the ablest girls in the cla.s.s.

Even this she did not consider long, for the soph.o.m.ore presidency is the least important of the four; but when among the first five soph.o.m.ores to be triumphantly ushered into Phi Kappa Psi she was asked to consider the name of Evangeline Potts, she remonstrated.

"But she's not clever! She's not half so bright as lots we haven't got!" she objected. "Why do we want her?"

"She's no prod, of course, but she's a prominent girl and cla.s.s president," was the answer, "and she's really very strong, I think--they say she does fair work, and everybody but you wants her.

Do you really disapprove of her?"

"Oh, no!" said Biscuits, and watched Miss Potts with interest. She received her congratulations quietly, with a manner that made one wonder if they had been quite in good taste, and acted altogether as if she had fully expected to enter the society with Ursula Wyckoff and Dodo Bent. The senior cla.s.s president took her out of chapel at the head of the file, with a bunch of violets as big as her two fists pinned to her belt, and Biscuits was asked to a supper in her honor in the campus house she had recently entered.

One of the other guests was the little freshman Biscuits had first asked to the soph.o.m.ore reception, herself a soph.o.m.ore now, and one of Phi Kappa's first five.

"Was your cla.s.s surprised at the elections?" asked Biscuits, glancing half unconsciously at Evangeline. The soph.o.m.ore smiled gently, with a hardly perceptible recognition of Biscuits' look.

"Oh, no," she replied; "we expected them--except, perhaps, one or two." Her polite little blush showed her traditional surprise at her own success, and the junior gave the equally traditional deprecating smile.

"Who's the other?" she inquired bluntly. The soph.o.m.ore was taken off her guard and glanced again at Evangeline.

"Why, some of us didn't exactly see--we think Alison Greer's terribly bright--we didn't expect--and yet, I don't know! After all, I think perhaps we weren't so awfully surprised!"

"Now, I wonder if you really weren't, or if you're lying?" thought Biscuits, and then, remembering suddenly, "but that's just the way _we_ all talked last year about Evelyn Lyon!"

That summer Evangeline spent in France with Suzanne, who informed Biscuits before they sailed that though she couldn't find out anything about Miss Potts' parents, she had learned of the existence of a well-to-do uncle in New Hamps.h.i.+re who intended leaving quite a little money to his uncommunicative niece--he had given her the money to go abroad.

"She planned it all out, and asked to go with me, and I couldn't well refuse," said Suzanne, "though Brother will be wild with rage--he hates women who are not clever: _il est un peu exigeant, mon frere_."

By senior year Biscuits had very nearly lost track of Suzanne, who left the campus and spent most of her time sketching. Brother had shown some pen-and-ink portraits of hers to a great critic, who had declared that Brother had by no means exhausted the family genius, and Suzanne, heavily bribed, had returned to her last year of durance. The day of the Junior Prom Biscuits received a very French little note inviting her to "_une premiere vue_," and with the full expectation of a pen-and-ink collection, she confronted Evangeline, glorious in white satin and gold pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie, with an amber chain and a great amber comb in her hair.

"_Vous rappelez-vous cette premiere fois, hein?_" Suzanne asked, with a grin. "_ca date de loin, n'est-ce pas?_" Adding cheerfully, "_L'oncle est mort et nous avons une jolie dot!_"

Biscuits was not surprised to learn that Ursula Wyckoff had moved heaven and earth to get her cousin from Columbia for Evangeline's escort; she had heard how Nan Gillatt actually took her own brother to the Glee Club concert because Evangeline preferred the youth selected by Nan for herself, and she remembered how _she_ had hunted from shop to shop for the velvet that matched that auburn hair. It was not that Evangeline insisted: she did not beg favors. But her habit of receiving a proposition in silence filled one with an irresistible desire to better one's offer, and even the improvement seemed poor in the calm scrutiny of those red-brown eyes.

"What I can't see is, who pushes her!" mused Biscuits.

"Who? who?" repeated Suzanne. "_Par exemple!_ Why, she herself, of course! Who else?"

"But how?" Biscuits persisted. "Now Evelyn made up to everybody so--she earned her way, heaven knows! And Kate Ackley was a sort of legacy--her sister's reputation started her and she was rushed so freshman year that you couldn't blame her for failing to realize what a fool she really is. And the Underhills' coming in with the crowd they did, explains them. But n.o.body rushes Evangeline particularly--"

"_C'est bien dommage!_" Suzanne interrupted with mock sympathy.

"_Seule au monde!_ Don't be an idiot, Biscuits, we _all_ rush her, and we shall--till she begins to see what a bluff she's making! The beauty of Evangeline is, that she fools herself--_mais parfaitement_! She really thinks she's somebody--_voila tout!_"

"I suppose that's it," a.s.sented Biscuits, thoughtfully.

"Ursula," Suzanne remarked oracularly, "is so anxious to please that sometimes she doesn't, and even Susan the Great has her little plans--_mais oui!_ But Mlle. Potts doesn't care a _sou_. It's all one to her, _vous savez_, she agrees with all; and what's the result?

_Tout le monde l'admire! C'est toujours comme ca!_"

For some reason or other her large and shapely figure was the most prominent feature of Biscuits' Commencement. She was a junior usher, of course, and in aisles or under lanterns, at Phi Kappa Farewell or Glee Club promenade, her calm, heavy face and deliberate movements attracted Biscuits' eye.

The mob had not appealed to Miss Kitts as a desirable method of dramatic debut, and she was, consequently, one of the few seniors in the audience on the night of her cla.s.s dramatics. Between the acts she wandered down to the door, and caught a bit of conversation among a group of ushers.

"And all Ursula's friends were in the middle aisle, and she begged Evangeline to change, but she wouldn't. Ursula could have had a seat then, with d.i.c.k Fosd.i.c.k's people, and she was frightfully tired, but Evangeline wouldn't."

"Pooh! did you expect she would?"

"Oh, no! She's terribly selfish, of course, but you'd think, considering how nice Ursula's been to her--"

"Oh, my dear! As if _that_ made any difference to Evange--sh, here she is!--What stunning violets, Evangeline! That's your Prom dress, isn't it? It's terribly sweet!"

Evangeline smiled and sank into the seat a little freshman promptly and adoringly vacated for her, and Biscuits went back to her place.

Suzanne stopped in America that summer, and with the promise of five subsequent years in Paris, prolonged her stay till the following June.

She went so far as to come up to Northampton to her cla.s.s reunion, a.s.suring her friends that she had forgotten a few opprobrious epithets in her final anathema and had returned to deliver them in person.

As they stood in the crowd on Ivy Day, watching the snowy procession, the cameras suddenly snapped rapidly all about them and an excited voice murmured: "There she is! Isn't she grand? My dear, she had eleven invitations for the junior entertainment! Martha Sutton took her--" Evangeline Potts walked slowly by.

"And you ought to have seen her Commencement flowers! She had a bathtub full--literally! She wouldn't take 'em out and the tub couldn't be used--"

"She's president of Phi Kapp, I hear," said Biscuits.

"Oh, yes," replied Suzanne, "and on the dramatics committee, you know.

She has lots of friends."

"I wonder why," said Biscuits, absently.

"_'Sais pas!_ They're clever girls, too. She knows the pick of the cla.s.s--but then, she always did, you know."

"I suppose she'll marry money," mused Biscuits, the student of human nature.

"_Du tout!_" Suzanne returned, "she won't care about that. It's clever people she wants--she always went with the clever ones: _elle aime les gens d'esprit_. She's got money enough; she'll marry some clever man who knows the best people and will make her one of them--_vous l'verrez!_"

And the prophecy was fulfilled, for Evangeline very shortly married Walter Endicott, the well-known artist, whose portrait of her in white and gold attracted so much attention at a very recent _Salon_.