Beatrice Leigh at College Part 14

CHAPTER VIII

CLa.s.sES IN MANNERS

Gertrude's brother paid another visit to his sister at Cla.s.s Day. At least, he was supposed to be visiting his sister, but it was really Bea who took charge of him during all that radiant June morning while Gertrude, as chairman of the Daisy Chain committee, was busy with her score of workers among the tubs of long-stemmed daisies in a cool bas.e.m.e.nt room. Bea had immediately enrolled the young man as her first a.s.sistant in the arduous task of gathering armfuls of the starry flowers in the field beyond the dormitories.

After that labor was finished, and even Lila had deserted her for the sake of an insensate trunk that demanded to be packed, Bea conducted her companion to the lake. There through the golden hour of midday they drifted in the shadow of the overhanging trees along the sh.o.r.e. Once they paddled softly around the little island at the end, and a colony of baby mud-turtles went scrambling madly from a log into the water. When the brother began to fish for one with an oar, Bea protested in a grieved tone.

"But you don't seem to realize that I am worrying about freckles every minute that we stay out here in the broad sunlight. What are trees for if not to provide shade for girls without hats? And anyhow it is unkind to seek to tear a turtle from his happy home. If you do that, I shall never, never consent to admit you to our highest cla.s.s in manners."

"Highest cla.s.s in manners," he echoed, "that sounds promising. Is it another story?"

"It certainly is," replied Bea, "and if you are very good indeed and will keep the boat close to the bank from the first word to the last, I will tell you all about it."

Berta called it our cla.s.ses in manners, but Miss Anglin, our soph.o.m.ore English teacher, said that it was every bit as bad as gossip. When Berta told her that she was the one who had started us on it by advising us to read character in the street-cars, she looked absolutely appalled, and groaned, "What next?"

This was the beginning of it. When Miss Anglin took charge of our essay work the second semester, she explained that we should be required to write a one-page theme every day except Sat.u.r.day and Sunday. Lila almost fainted away, because she hates writing anything, even letters home.

Robbie Belle looked scared, and I opened my mouth so wide that my jaw ached for several minutes afterward. But Berta kept her wits about her.

She said, "Miss Anglin, we are all living here together, and we see the same things every day. I'm afraid you'll be bored when you read about them over and over. Why can't some of us choose intellectual topics?"

By intellectual topics she meant subjects that you can read up in the encyclopaedia. Miss Anglin sort of smiled. "Do you truly think that you all see the same things day after day? How curious! Have you ever played a game called Slander?"

"Yes, Miss Anglin," said Berta, and went on to tell how the players sit in a circle, and the first one whispers a story to the second; and the second repeats it as accurately as she can remember to the third; and the third tells it to the fourth, and so on till the last one hears it and then relates it aloud. After that the first one gives the story exactly as he started it. It is awfully interesting to notice the difference between the first report and the last one, because somehow each person cannot help adding a little or leaving out a little in pa.s.sing it on to the next. That is the way slander grows, you know. The gossip may be true at first, or almost true, but it keeps changing and getting worse and worse and more thrilling as it spreads till finally it isn't hardly true at all. That is how our cla.s.ses in manners turned out.

Well, to go back to that day in the rhetoric section. Miss Anglin saw that we were discouraged before we had commenced and we didn't know how to start; and so she began to suggest subjects. For instance, she said, one girl might wake up in the morning----Oh, but I am forgetting her application of the ill.u.s.tration from the game of Slander. She said that if no two persons receive the same impression from a whispered story spoken in definite words, it is probable that no two pairs of eyes see the same thing in the same way, to say nothing of the ideas aroused in the different brains behind the eyes. One girl might wake up in the morning, as I was saying, and when she looks from the window she sees snow everywhere--provided it did snow during the night, you understand.

Then she writes her daily theme about the beautiful whiteness, the shadows of bare trees, diamond sparkles everywhere and so forth. Another girl looks out of that very same window at the same time, and she doesn't think of the beautiful snow merely as snow; she thinks of coasting or going for a sleigh-ride or something like that. And so her theme very likely will prove to be a description of a coasting carnival or tobogganing which she once enjoyed. Another girl looks out and thinks first thing, "Oh, now the skating is spoiled!" Her theme maybe will tell how she learned to skate by pushing a chair ahead of her on the ice.

Berta raised her hand again. "Well, but, Miss Anglin," she said, "suppose it doesn't snow?"

Berta is not really stupid, you know, quite the reverse indeed, but she is used to having the girls laugh at what she says. They laughed this time, and Miss Anglin did too, because she knew Berta was just drawing her out, so to speak. She went on to give other examples about the things we see while out walking or shopping or at a concert, and finally she drifted around to character-reading. She said a street-car was a splendid field for that. The next time one of us rode into town, she might try observing her fellow travelers. There might be a working-man in a corner, with a tin-bucket beside him. Maybe he would be wearing an old coat pinned with a safety-pin. By noting his eyes and the expression of his mouth the girl could judge whether he was just shiftless or untidy merely because his wife was too busy with the children to sew on b.u.t.tons. She told a lot of interesting things about the difference between the man who holds his newspaper in one hand and the man who holds his in both. Some temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary, and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down firmly and decidedly at every step--though of course it needn't be thumping--while a dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts his head to listen, you can tell if he has executive ability or not.

Before the bell rang at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble over the threshold.

"Oho!" jeered Berta, "you're careless. That's as easy as alpha, beta, gamma."

She meant a, b, c, you understand, but she prefers to say it in Greek, being a soph.o.m.ore.

"But she isn't careless," protested Lila, "she's the most careful person I ever met. The sole of her shoe is split, and that is the reason she stumbled."

"Why is it split?" demanded Berta in her most argumentative tone; "would a n.o.bly careful and painstakingly fastidious person insist upon wearing a shoe with a split sole? No, no! Far from it. If she had stumbled because the threshold wasn't there, or because she had forgotten it was there, the inference would be at fault. I should impute the defect to her mentality instead of to her character, alas! A stumble plus a split sole!

Ah, Robbie Belle, I must put you in a daily theme."

Robbie Belle looked alarmed. "Indeed, Berta, I'd rather not. I was going to trim it off neatly this morning, but I have lent my knife to Mary Winchester."

"Ha! lent her your knife!" declaimed Berta sternly, "another clue! This must be investigated. Why did she borrow your knife?"

"To sharpen her pencil," answered Robbie. "I made her take it."

"Her pencil! Her pencil!" muttered Berta darkly, "why her pencil? Are there not pens? Mayhap, 'tis not her pencil. Alas, alas! Her also I thrust into a daily theme."

"She's snippy about returning things," said Lila, "she acts as if she didn't care whether you do her a favor or not. I don't like her."

"She's queer," I said.

Now I had a perfect right to say that because it was true. Mary Winchester was just about the queerest girl in college. Everybody thought so. But I shall say no more at present, as her queerness is the subject of the rest of this story. If I told you immediately just how she was queer and all the rest of it, there wouldn't be any story left, would there?

Well, as the weeks whirled past, we studied character and wrote daily themes till we were desperate. Robbie Belle grew sadder and sadder until Berta suggested that she might describe the gymnasium, the chapel, the library, the drawing rooms, the kitchen, and so forth, one by one, telling the exact size and position of everything. That filled up quite a number of days. When Miss Anglin put a little note of expostulation, so to speak, on the theme about the corridor--it was, "This is a course in English, not mathematics, if you please,"--Berta started her in on the picture gallery. There were enough paintings there to last till the end of the semester. Of course, such work did not require her to read character. Robbie Belle didn't want to do that somehow; she said it seemed too much like gossip.

However, at first, it wasn't gossip. For instance one day Lila and I collected smiles. We scurried around the garden and dived in and out of the hedge in order to meet as many people as possible face to face. Then we took notes on the varieties of greeting and made up themes about them.

Miss Anglin marked an excellent on mine that time. For another topic we paid one-minute calls on everybody we knew. When they looked surprised and inquired why we did not sit down, we frankly explained that we were gathering material for an essay on Reading Character from the Way a Person says "Come in!"

After we had been grinding out daily themes for three weeks we began to long for something to break the monotony. My brain was just about wrung dry, and Lila said she simply loathed the sight of a sheet of blank paper. One afternoon while I was struggling over my theme, Berta threw a s...o...b..ll against my window, flew up the dormitory steps, sped down the corridor, gave a double rat-tat-too on my door, and burst in without waiting for an answer.

"Listen! Quick! I have an idea. It struck me out by the hedge. Why not study manners as well as character? Why not divide----"

"Go away. That s...o...b..ll plop against the pane spoiled my best sentence.

This is due in forty minutes. I've written up my family and friends and books and pictures, my summer vacations--a sunset at a time, my little----"

"Why not divide everybody, I say----"

"----dog at home," I continued placidly. "I've composed themes about the orchard, the woods, the table-fare, the climate, the kitten I never owned, the thoughts I never had. To-day I was in despair for a subject till I happened to borrow one of your cookies and----"

"You did! My precious cookies! Burglar!"

"----bite it into scallops. Ha! an idea! I arranged myself on the rug with much care in order that I might stretch out the process to a whole page of narration. Thereupon I nibbled off the corners of the scallops till the cookie was round and smooth again. Next I bit it into scallops and then I nibbled off the corners; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit----"

"You did! Oh, I wish I----"

"----and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled, till there was nothing left but the hole. Now I am writing a scintillating and corruscating theme about it. Go away."

Berta turned toward the door. "Some day you'll wish you had listened,"

she declared in accents heavy with gloom, "some day when you can't think of a single thing to write about, and the hand keeps moving around the clock, and the paper lies there blank and horrible before your vacant eyes, and your pen is nibbled so short that your fingers----"

"I didn't mean go away," I said, "I meant, go on. Tell me about it."

"Nay, nay! To lacerate my feelings, spurn my proffered aid, insult my youthful pristine zeal, and then to call me back--in short, to throw a dog a bone! Nay, nay!"

"Oh, Berta, be sweet. Tell me. You know that I think you have the most original ideas in college." After I had coaxed her quite a lot, she told me her new scheme. It was something like advanced character reading and biology combined. Just as scientists cla.s.sify trees and plants in botany, Berta proposed that we should divide the students into different cla.s.ses according to their manners.

"It will be so improving and instructive too," she pleaded, "we'll be paragons of politeness before we finish them all. We'll be so particular about our highest cla.s.s that we will notice every little thing and thus take warning." She paused a moment; then, "Did you hear me say thus?" she inquired. When I nodded, she gazed at me sadly. "People who belong to the highest cla.s.s never gesticulate; they use spoken language exclusively.

Furthermore, as to the thus. I wondered if an up-springing sense of courtesy persuaded you to refrain from hooting at such elegant verbiage.

That would be a sign of benefit already derived from the cla.s.ses. By the way, it was Mary Winchester who inspired the idea."

"Oh, but she has no manners at all!" I exclaimed before I thought.

"That is precisely the point. I met her flying along like a wild creature on her bicycle, eyes staring, hair streaming in the wind. At least, some locks were streaming. She gave the impression of a being utterly lawless.

Then I thought----See here, Miss Leigh, are you interested in my thoughts?"