Beatrice Leigh at College.

by Julia Augusta Schwartz.

CHAPTER I

BEA'S ROOMMATE

Lila Allan went to college in the hope of finding an intimate friend at last. Her mother at home waited anxiously for her earliest letters, and devoured them in eager haste to discover some hint of success in the search; for being a wise woman she knew her own daughter, and understood the difficulty as well as the necessity of the case.

The first letter was written on the day of arrival. It contained a frantic appeal for enough money to buy her ticket home immediately, because she had a lonesome room away up in the north tower, and n.o.body had spoken to her all the afternoon, and her trunk had not come yet, and she did not know where the dining-room was, and the corridors were full of packing-boxes with lids scattered around, and girls were hurrying to and fro with step-ladders and kissing each other and running to hug each other, and everything.

The second letter, written the following day, said that a freshman named Beatrice Leigh had come up to help her unpack. Beatrice had a long braid too, and her hair was the loveliest auburn and curled around her face, and she laughed a good deal. Lila had noticed her the very first evening.

She was sitting at one of the tables in the middle of the big dining-room. When Lila saw her, she was giggling with her head bent down and her napkin over her eyes, while the other girls at that table smiled amused smiles. Lila knew instantly that this poor freshman had done something dreadful, and she was sorry for her. Later that same evening in Miss Merriam's room she told how she had marched in to dinner alone and plumped down at that table among all those seniors. She seemed to consider it a joke, but Lila was sure she had been almost mortified to death when she learned of her mistake, and that was why she had laughed so hard. Several other freshmen were at Miss Merriam's. Two of them were named Roberta, and one was named Gertrude something. But Lila liked Beatrice best. Miss Merriam called her Bea. Miss Merriam was a junior who had invited in all the students at that end of the corridor to drink chocolate. Lila did not care for her much, because she had a loud voice and tipped back in her chair and said yep for yes.

The third missive was only a postal card bearing a properly telegraphic communication to the effect that it was Sat.u.r.day morning, and Bea was waiting to escort her to the chapel to hear read the lists of freshman names a.s.signed to each recitation section. Mrs. Allan scanned the message with a quick throb of pleasure; then sighed as she laid it down. The indications were hopeful enough if only Lila would be careful not to drive away this friend as she had the others.

Meanwhile on that Sat.u.r.day morning Bea and Lila, silent and shy, had crowded with their two hundred cla.s.smates into chapel. The two friends sat side by side. Lila was in terror of making some horrible blunder that might overwhelm her with a vast indefinite disgrace. She leaned forward in the pew, the pencil trembling between her fingers, the blood pounding in her ears, while from the platform in front a cool voice read on evenly through page after page of names. And then at last the tragic despair of finding that she had jotted down herself for two sections in English and none in Latin! When she managed to gasp out the awful situation in Bea's ear, that young person looked worried for full half a minute. It was a very serious thing to be a freshman. Then her cheery common sense came to the rescue.

"Never mind. We'll go up and look the lists over after she has finished them all."

"Oh, can we? Will you truly go with me?" Lila drew a quick breath of relief and grat.i.tude. This was one of the precious privileges of having found a friend. She gazed at Bea with such an adorable half-wistful, half-joyful smile on her delicate face that Bea never quite forgot the sensation of realizing that it was meant wholly for her. The memory of it returned again and again in later days when Lila's exacting ways seemed beyond endurance. For Lila's nature was one of those that give all and demand all and suffer in a myriad mysterious ways.

On the afternoon of that Sat.u.r.day when Bea skipped up the narrow tower stairs to invite Lila to go to the orchard to gather a sc.r.a.pbasket full of apples, she discovered the door locked. In answer to her lively rat-tattoo and gay call over the transom, she heard the key turn.

Bea started to dash in; then after one glance stopped and fumbled uneasily with the k.n.o.b. In her happy-go-lucky childhood with many brothers and sisters at home, tears had always an embarra.s.sing effect.

"Let's--let's go to the orchard," she stammered. "It's lovely, and the fresh air will help your--your headache." She had a boyish notion that anybody would prefer to excuse heavy eyes by calling it headache rather than tears.

Lila pointed to the bed which was half made up.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded in agonized reproach. "I thought the maids attended to the beds here. I left the mattress turned over the foot all day long, and the door was wide open. Everybody in the neighborhood must have looked in and then decided that I was lazy and shiftless. They believe that I have been brought up to let things go undone like that. They do, they do! Miss Merriam just the same as said so. She poked in her head a minute ago and said, 'Heigho, little one, time to make up your bed. It has aired long enough and the maid is not expected to do it.' She said that to me! Oh, I hate her!" Lila caught her breath hard.

Bea opened her candid eyes wider in astonished curiosity. "But didn't you want to know about the maid?"

"She mortified me. Do you know how it feels to be mortified? The--the awfulness--" Lila stopped and swallowed once or twice as if something stuck in her throat. "She might have told me in a different manner so as not to wound me so heartlessly. She isn't a lady."

"Please." Bea twirled the door-k.n.o.b in worried protest. "Don't talk that way. She is my friend. We live in the same town. She's nice, really.

You've only seen the outside. Please!"

"Oh, well!" Lila raised her shoulders slightly. "She isn't worth noticing, I dare say. Such people never are. I can't help wishing that you were not acquainted with her. I want you all to myself. I'm glad she belongs to another cla.s.s anyhow."

Into Bea's puzzled face crept a troubled expression. "You're a funny girl, Lila," she said; "let's go to the orchard."

On their way across the campus, they pa.s.sed countless girls hurrying from building to building. Every doorway seemed to blossom with a chattering group, a loitering pair, or an energetic single lady on pressing business bent. Bea met every glance with a look of bright friendliness in her eager eyes and lips ready to smile, no matter whether she had ever been introduced or not. But Lila's wild-flower face, in spite of its lovely tints and outlines, seemed almost icy in its expression of haughty criticism. No wonder, then, that this miniature world of college reflected a different countenance to each.

"Aren't they the dearest, sweetest girls you ever saw!" exclaimed Bea as the two freshmen turned from the curving concrete walk into the road that led to the orchard.

"I saw only one who was truly beautiful," commented her companion. "I expected to find them prettier."

"Oh, but they are so interesting," protested Bea in quick loyalty.

"Nearly everybody appears prettier after you get acquainted. I've noticed that myself. It is better to dawn than to dazzle, don't you think? Sue Merriam, for instance, improves and grows nicer and nicer after you know her. You will learn to love her dearly."

"Never!"

At the tone Bea gave an involuntary whistle; then checked herself at sight of Lila's quivering lips. "Oh, well, don't bother. Let's go on to the orchard. Look! There comes Roberta Abbott with about a bushel of russets. She is a funny girl too. To judge from her appearance, you would say she was sad and dignified. She has the most tragic dark eyes and mouth. But just wait till you hear her talk. Didn't you meet her last night at Sue's?"

"Yes." Lila turned away to hide the flicker of jealousy, for she had learned long since how transparently every emotion showed in her features. "I think we ought not to waste any time now. And anyway I'd rather get acquainted with you all alone this afternoon."

Bea stared. "You're the funniest girl!" She walked on after waving a sociable hand at Roberta. "It is interesting to have friends that are different, don't you think?"

"To have one friend who is different," corrected Lila.

"All right," laughed Bea. "Oh, see what a gorgeous glorious place this is, with the trees and scarlet woodbine and the lake sparkling away over there, and girls, girls, girls! But I don't believe that there is a single other one exactly like you."

During the next week this thought recurred to her more than once. By means of some diplomatic maneuvering, the two friends managed to have their single rooms exchanged for a double. After moving in, Lila seized a moment of solitude to plan a beautiful cozy corner for Bea. She dragged her own desk into a dusky recess and set Bea's at an artistic angle at the left side of the sunniest window. Just as she was hanging her favorite picture above it, Bea came rushing in with her arms full of new books.

"Oh, no, no, no!" she exclaimed impulsively, "that won't do at all. You must put it at the right so that the light will fall over the left shoulder. Otherwise the shadow of your hand will go scrambling over the paper ahead of your pen. Here, let me show you."

By the time she had hauled the desk across to its new position, Lila had vanished. Bea found her huddled in a woe-begone heap behind the wardrobe door in her bedroom, and flew to her in dismay.

"Oh, Lila, dearie, did you smash your finger or drop something on your foot? There, don't cry. I'll get the witch-hazel and arnica and court-plaster. What is it? Where? Why-ee!" she gasped bewildered, "why, Lila!" for her weeping roommate had pushed her gently away and turned her face to the wall.

"I was doing it for you," she sobbed. "I was trying to please you, and then you were so cr-cr-cruel! You were cruel."

"Cruel?" echoed Bea, "why, how? I haven't done a thing except buy the books I ordered last week. Yours were down in the office, too, but I didn't have enough money for all, because Sue Merriam borrowed four dollars. She asked after you and said----" Bea hesitated, smitten with novel doubt that she ought to begin to think three times before speaking once where such a sensitive person was concerned.

Lila sat up in swift attention and winked away her tears. "Said what?"

"Oh, nothing much." Bea wriggled. "Just talking."

"I insist."

"Oh, well, it doesn't signify. I was only thinking----" Bea paused again before blurting out. "She said that roommates are good for the character."

At this Lila rose with such an air of patient endurance that poor Bea felt clumsy, remorseful, injured and perplexed simultaneously. A cloud of resentful silence hovered over them both through the weary hours of the afternoon. Not until the ten o'clock gong sent the echoes booming through the deserted corridors, did Lila break down in a storm of weeping that terrified Bea. She found herself begging pardon, apologizing, caressing, explaining and repenting wholesale of rudeness about the desk, of selfish neglect in the case of the books, of disloyalty in giving ear to Miss Merriam's gratuitous comments. This gale blew over, leaving one girl with darker circles under her eyes and a more pathetic droop at the corners of her mouth, leaving the other with a fellow feeling for any unfortunate bull who happens to get into a china shop, intentionally or otherwise.

Life at college promised to be like walking over exceedingly thin ice every day and all day long.

And yet, after she had learned to make allowances for the oversensitiveness, Bea found Lila more lovable and winning week by week.

She was philosopher enough to recognize the fact that every one has the "defects of his qualities." The very quality that sent Lila hurrying up-stairs in an agony of mortification because a senior had forgotten to bow to her, was the one that inclined her to enter into Bea's varying moods with exquisite responsiveness. It was delightful to have a friend who was ever ready to answer gayety with gayety and sober thoughts with sympathy. Indeed, when Lila was not wrapped up in her own suffering, she could not be surpa.s.sed in the priceless gift of sympathy. For the sake of that, much might be forgiven.

Much but not everything. Just before the midyear examinations came a crisis in the growth of their friendship. One afternoon Lila reached the head of the stairs barely in time to make a sudden swerve out of Miss Merriam's breezy path.

"Heigho, Eliza Allan," she called in careless teasing, "why don't you spell your name the way it is in the catalogue? More dignified, I think.

By the way, I've been into your room and left some burned cork for your chapter play. We had more than we needed last night. By-bye."

Lila walked on in frosty silence. By-bye, indeed! And to address her as Eliza, too, on this very afternoon when she had as much as she could bear anyhow. To hear her essay read aloud and criticised before the cla.s.s, and then to have it handed to her across the desk, so that anybody could see the awful REWRITE in red ink scrawled on the outside! To be sure, all the essays had been distributed at the same time, and n.o.body knew for sure that hers had been the one read aloud. Still they might have seen the name on it or noticed how red and pale she turned, or something. And worse still, the examinations were coming soon, and she was sure she would fail. If it were not for leaving Bea, she would go home that night.

She certainly would!