Beatrice Leigh at College Part 23

She darted across to her companion and seized her arm without noticing the quiver of distaste before it lay limp in her eager grasp.

"Oh, oh, it is, it certainly is! You are peeling. You will get through first and be set free and go back to the girls. I shall be left here alone. It isn't fair. We both came the same day. Think of almost six weeks lost from college! My first spring in this beautiful place! It doesn't mean so much to you, because you're a junior. You don't care."

Lila had withdrawn her hand under the pretext of picking up a case knife to sharpen her pencil. Now though her lids were lowered as she hacked at the stubby point, she was perfectly aware of the hopeful curiosity in the freshman's side glance at her. Lila despised the habit of side glances.

For the past few days she had felt increasing scorn of a childishness that sought to vary by quarrels the monotony of their imprisonment.

Hadn't the girl learned yet that she--Lila Allan, president of the junior literary society--was not to be provoked into any undignified dispute by puerile taunts?

"You don't care," repeated Ellen from her old position at the window. "I guess you'd rather anyhow have all your time to write poetry instead of studying." She glanced around just in time to see Lila's lips set in a grimmer line as the lead in the short pencil snapped beneath a more impatient jab of the dull knife. She laughed teasingly.

"What's the use of writing all that stuff now? You're wearing out your pencil fast. Aren't you afraid the paper will carry infection? Or will it be fumigated? I think it is silly to bother about germs. Oh, dear!" She began to drum again on the pane. "I'm so tired of this infirmary. There's nothing to do. I can't make up poetry. My eyes ache if I try to read."

Here she paused, and Lila was aware of another side glance in her direction.

"My eyes ache if I try to read," repeated Ellen slowly, "and there is an awfully interesting story over on the table." She stopped her drumming for a moment to listen to the steady scribble behind her. The little face with its round features so unlike Lila's delicate outlines took on a disconsolate expression. "Do your eyes ache when you try to read," for an instant she hesitated while a mischievous spark of daring danced into her eyes. Then she added explosively, "Lila?"

She had done it. She had done it at last. Never before through all the weeks of imprisonment together had she ventured to call Miss Allan by her first name. A delightful tingle of apprehension crept up to the back of her neck. She waited. Now surely something would happen.

But nothing happened except the continued scribble of pencil on paper in the silence. Oh, dear! this was worse than she had expected. It was worse than a scolding or a freezing or an awful squelching. It was the queerest thing that they were not even acquainted really after the many weeks.

There was a sh.e.l.l around this junior all the time. It made Ellen feel meaner and smaller and more insignificant every minute. The freshman pressed her forehead wearily against the gla.s.s.

"Oh, look! There come the girls. They're your friends away down on the lawn. Miss Abbott, I think, and Miss Leigh, and Miss Sanders. See, see!

The rollicking wind and the racing clouds! Their skirts blow. They hold on their tams. They are looking up at us. They are waving something.

Maybe it is violets, don't you think? Once I found violets in March.

Can't you smell the air almost? I'm going to open the window. I am, I am!

Who's afraid of getting chilled?"

"I would advise you not to do anything so utterly foolhardy," spoke Lila's frigid voice. A certain inflection in the tone made Ellen shrink away instinctively. For an instant she looked full into the serene, indifferent eyes, and her own seemed to flutter as if struggling against the contempt she saw there. Then with a defiant lift of her head she hurried to the writing table and seized the pencil which Lila had dropped upon rising to approach the window.

A few minutes later when the older girl turned from the greetings and messages in pantomime with her friends below, she saw Ellen's rough head bending over a paper. It was a needlessly untidy head. During the weeks of close confinement and enforced companionship, she had felt her dislike steadily growing. The girl was on her nerves. She was wholly disagreeable. Everything about her was displeasing, her careless enunciation, queer little face, coa.r.s.e clothes, impulsive, crude ways, even occasional mistakes in grammar. She told herself that the child had no breeding, no manners, no sense of the fitness of things. There was no reason why she should admit her into the circle of her intimates merely because the two had been thrown together by the exigencies of an attack of scarlet fever. Such a fortuitous relation would be severed in the shortest possible time, completely and irremediably severed. Trust Lila Allan, president of the junior literary society, to manage that.

Meanwhile she intended to leave the girl severely alone. Think of the impudence of calling her Lila! Lila, indeed! And that hint about reading aloud! The incredible impertinence of it! And to appropriate her pencil!

Atrocious!

But of course she would keep on being polite. She owed that to herself, to her position, to her self-respect. Accordingly Miss Allan busied herself graciously about other matters till Ellen had finished her note, addressed an envelope, and advanced with it to the window.

She hesitated doubtfully, with one hand on the sash.

"It won't matter just this once," she said as if arguing, "somebody will pick it up and mail it for me. It concerns something important and private. People are silly about infection. I'm quite sure it won't matter just this once." She paused this time with rather an anxious little side glance toward Lila.

That young lady said nothing. She was engaged in contemplating with a studiously inexpressive countenance the stub of her precious and only pencil. It needed sharpening again.

Ellen raised the window half an inch. "The doctor here is so foolish,"

she commented with an injured air, "she's always bothering about infection or contagion or whatever you call it. It isn't necessary either. I know a doctor at home and he told a woman to wrap up her little girl and bring her down to his office, and the little girl was peeling too. He knew it wouldn't do any harm even if she did go in the street car. He was sensible."

Lila smothered a sigh of long suffering as she reached for the case knife again.

"And I am so tired," insisted Ellen with fretful vehemence. "I am bored to death, and n.o.body amuses me, and my eyes ache when I try to read, and my wrist won't peel, and all the other girls are enjoying themselves, and my letter is awfully important and private, and mother will be so glad to receive it, and my little sister will s.n.a.t.c.h it quick from the postcarrier, and they'll all be glad, and there isn't the least bit of danger, and I'm going to do it." She flung the sash wide and glanced around for an instant with a face in which reckless defiance wrestled with a frightened wish to be dissuaded. "I'm going to do it," she repeated, "I'm going to do it--Lila!"

Miss Allan raised her head with a politely controlled shiver. "Would you mind closing the window at your earliest convenience, Miss Bright?"

The younger girl gave her one look, then turned and leaning out over the sill sent the envelope fluttering downward till it rested square and white on the concrete walk far below. Lila shrugged her shoulder and finished sharpening her pencil.

In the course of weary time she was set at liberty. Fair and sweet and delicate in her fresh array she walked down the corridor in the centre of an exultant crowd of friends. In listening to the babel of chatter and laughter, she forgot utterly her companion in imprisonment. Just once she happened to look back from the entangling arms of Bea and Berta and Robbie Belle, and caught sight of a forlorn little figure staring after her from the shadows of the infirmary door. In the glow of her new freedom and heart-warming affection, Lila nodded to her with such a radiant smile that Ellen blushed with joy. On her journey to her room she told herself that Miss Allan liked her after all. It was a solitary journey, for Ellen had boarded in town till February. After moving into the dormitory she had barely begun to make acquaintances before the ogre of fever had swooped down upon her and dragged her away to his den in the isolation ward.

The vision of that smile must have remained with her through the troubled weeks that followed; for one April evening in parlor J she ventured to invite Miss Allan to dance. Beyond distant glimpses in the corridors and chapel, Lila had seen nothing of her fellow convalescent. To tell the truth, she had taken pains to avoid any chance a.s.sociation. Once she had found hardly time to take refuge behind an ENGAGED sign before the dreaded little freshman came tiptoeing shyly into the alleyway. Another time when she spied the small face waiting with an expectant wistful half smile at the foot of the stairs she turned to retrace her steps as if she had suddenly recalled an errand in another direction.

On this particular evening, Lila had been the guest of honor at a senior birthday table. The senior whose birthday was being celebrated was chief editor of the Monthly. She declared that she invited Lila because of the rhymes that came in so handy to fill up several pages in the last number of the magazine. As Lila, lovely in pale rose and blue and silver, sat at the table gay with flowers and shaded candles, she told the story of how she had written the verses in the infirmary. On her witty tongue the stubby pencil, the dull knife, and the teasing midget of an impudent freshman made a delightfully humorous tale. Even the explosive "Lila!"

and its accompanying side glance of terrified joy in the daring developed into a picture that sent the seniors into tempests of laughter. Somehow she did not care to mention the letter which Ellen had dropped out of the window.

After dinner Lila pressed on with the others to the dancing in parlor J.

The applause and admiration surrounding her made her look her prettiest and talk her wittiest, for Lila's nature was always one that throve best in an atmosphere of praise. She felt as if whirling through fairyland. In the midst of the gayety of music, lights, and circling figures, she lifted her head in gliding past the great mirror and beheld her own radiant face smiling back at her from the flower-tinted throng. Just at that moment through a rift in the throng she caught a glimpse of two big troubled eyes in a queer small face atop of a drooping ill-clad form.

Half a minute later as she leaned breathless and glowing against the mirror's gilt frame, she became aware of a timid touch on her arm.

Turning quickly she saw Ellen beside her. Her smile faded to an expression of formally polite and distant questioning as she drew her skirts a few inches away.

"Will you----" the freshman swallowed once, then pushed out the words with a desperate rush, "will you dance with me?"

"Oh, Miss Bright," exclaimed Lila in an overwhelmingly effusive manner, "I am so dreadfully sorry, but I regret to say that I am already engaged for every number. Good-bye!" She slid her hand about her partner's waist and propelled her swiftly into the concealing vortex of waltzers.

The partner in question happened to be a certain lively and independent young person called Bea by her friends. "Lila Allan," she scolded as soon as she could steer their steps to a sheltered eddy in a corner, "why in the world did you snub that poor child so unmercifully? After six weeks together in the infirmary too! I'm downright ashamed of you. You ought to be above sn.o.bbishness. And it isn't a point of sn.o.bbishness either. It is plain cruelty to children. Didn't you see how you hurt her? And the poor little thing has enough trouble without your adding to the burden."

"Trouble?" echoed Lila uneasily.

"Yes, trouble. Haven't you heard? Her little sister is desperately ill with scarlet fever. Infection conveyed in a letter, I understand. A telegram may come for her any hour. And then when she tries to cheer up, you treat her so abominably! Lila, you are growing more and more spoiled every day. People praise you too much. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You've improved a lot since you first began to room with me, but still----"

Lila had vanished. Winding her swift way between the circling pairs, she hurried into the corridor where girls were strolling idly as they waited for the gong to summon them to chapel. Beyond the broad staircase Ellen's disconsolate little figure stood in the glare of the gas-jet over the bulletin-board.

Lila hastened toward her. "Miss Bright, oh, Miss Bright, I did not know.

I am exceedingly sorry. You will keep me posted? If there is anything that I can do, of course--I feel--I feel--so guilty."

Ellen raised her face. Her mouth was trembling at the corners. "I sent the letter," she said, "I'm waiting." She winked rapidly and her odd features worked convulsively for a moment. "If--if they telegraph----"

"Miss Bright." It was the voice of a messenger girl who had that instant emerged from an adjacent apartment. "Will you step into the office at once, if you please? There is a message----"

Ellen was gone like a flash. Lila walked across to the staircase and very deliberately seated herself with her head resting against the banisters.

It was there that Bea found her a few minutes later when the stream of students was beginning to set toward the chapel doors.

Bea was startled. "Lila, what is it? You look like a ghost. Shall I get some water?"

Lila opened her eyes. "I think that her little sister is dead," she said.

"Oh!" Bea clasped her hands in pity. "How can we help?"

"I think that I killed her," said Lila.

"What!" It was almost a shout. Then noticing that several girls turned to stare curiously in pa.s.sing, Bea put out her hand. "Come, Lila, get up.

It's time to go to chapel. You don't realize what you're saying."

She rose obediently in mechanical response to the gesture.

"It was my fault because I was the older and I knew the danger. She was only a freshman. She wanted me to persuade her not to drop that letter from the window. I could have kept her from feeling lonely. I made her reckless. It wasn't her fault. But now her little sister is dead."