Beatrice Leigh at College Part 24

"How do you know she is?" asked Bea.

"A message came."

"Hush!" They slipped into a pew near the rear of the chapel. During the reading of Scripture, Lila sat gazing blankly straight before her over the rows of heads, dark and fair. As if in a dream she rose with the others for the singing of the hymn. Still as though moving in a mist, she sank again into her seat and bowed her forehead upon the pew in front.

While the rustling murmur was subsiding into a hush before the prayer, she stirred and lifting her face turned for one fleeting moment toward the wide doors at the back. Ah! She raised her head higher to watch, motionless, breathless. The doors were noiselessly swinging shut behind a girl with a queer small face atop of an ill-clad little figure. But the face instead of being crumpled in grief was alight with joy; and the little figure advanced with a lilt and a swing, as if just freed from a burden.

The message had been a message of good tidings.

Lila watched the child slip exultantly into a convenient corner. Then with a sudden, swift movement the older girl dropped full upon her knees and covered her eyes with her hands.

CHAPTER XIV

CLa.s.sMATES

Bea reached for Robbie with one arm, grasped Lila with the other, and went skipping after the rest of the seniors over the lawn to their cla.s.s tree. She dragged them under its spreading branches to the centre of the throng that had gathered in the June twilight. Berta was already there, mounted on a small platform that had been built against the trunk in preparation for the morrow's Cla.s.s Day ceremonies.

"She looks pretty decent," whispered Bea to Robbie in order to frustrate the queer sensation in her throat at sight of the eager face laughing above them on this last evening together before the deluge of commencement guests. "I hope the alumnae who are wandering around admire our taste in presidents."

"Maybe," Robbie spoke reflectively, "they're almost as much interested in their cla.s.smates as we are in ours."

"Um-m," said Bea, "why, maybe so they are. I never thought of that before. Robbie, you're my liberal education. Now, then, attention! Berta is raising her hand to mark time for the songs to be rehea.r.s.ed for to-morrow."

But Berta's hand dropped at sound of a shout from across the campus.

"There!" she exclaimed, "the soph.o.m.ores are coming."

They certainly were coming, on a double-quick march, two by two, shouting for the seniors. As they approached the shouting changed to singing. When they reached the tree, they spread out and joining hands went skipping, still viva voce, around the seniors who watched them, silent and smiling.

The air was sweet with the cool, spicy breath of spruces. Lila thought that she could even smell the roses in the garden beyond the evergreens.

She lifted her face toward the soft evening sky, and her mouth grew wistful. Bea caught a glimpse of it, and immediately became voluble if not eloquent.

"This is impromptu," she commented, generous with her least thoughts. "I enjoy impromptus, except speeches--or that last lecture when the man couldn't read his own notes. Now my history which is to astonish the world to-morrow will doubtless glitter with extemporaneous wit which has cost me two weeks of meditation. Likewise this impromptu on the spur of the moment----"

"I think it's beautiful," said Robbie. She was watching Berta's eyes as the last lingering strains died away. Oh, dear! why did they sing that good-bye serenade again? Berta was going to cry. Hark! A robin's twilight call rose melodiously from the heart of a shadowy spruce. In the thrill of it Robbie felt the sting of sudden tears. She turned to Bea.

"Now I know how Berta feels when she listens to music. I'm beginning to understand. But I think a robin is different from a bra.s.s band."

"Is it now? You astonish me." Bea squeezed her understandingly, nevertheless. "I know. Being with Lila has taught me a lot. She is like a windharp--every touch finds a response. Berta's a violin, I guess. It takes skill to play on her. And you--oh, I believe you're a splendid big drum. You've been marking time for the rest of us all the four years. As for me, I'm only an old tin horn. You need to spend all your breath to get any music. Even then it isn't sickeningly sweet, so to speak. Still for an audience in sympathy with the performer----"

"That is what college has given us," put in Lila who had been listening, "it gives us sympathy. Being with different persons, you know, and loving them."

"Oh, yes!" Robbie's sigh of intense a.s.sent left her breathless, "loving them."

"Now, then, girls!" Berta's hand was lifted again to beat time as the clapping for the soph.o.m.ores subsided. Then the seniors sang. They sang the songs that were to be interspersed as ill.u.s.trations in Bea's cla.s.s history. There was the elegant stanza which they had shouted all the way to the mountain lake that first October at college.

"'Rah, 'rah, 'rah! kerchoo, kerchoo!

We are freshmen-- Who are you?"

From that brilliant composition the selections ranged through four years of fun and sentiment with an occasional flight to the poetry of earnest feeling as well as many a joyous swoop into hilarious inanity.

When tired of standing around the tree, the cla.s.s fluttered across the campus to the broad stone steps in front of the recitation hall.

Bea clung to Robbie's arm again and reached for Lila in their flight.

"I'm 'most sure we look like nymphs flying through the glades, with our draperies blowing in the lines of swift motion. I love to run when I feel like it. Robbie Belle, shall we ever dare to run when we get home?"

Robbie did not hear her. From her seat on the steps she gazed at Berta who was standing before the ranks of familiar faces, her eager face alight with the exhilaration of the hour. Once she threw back her head, laughing at some ridiculous verse. Her eyes sought Robbie's for an instant, smiled, then danced away again. Robbie swallowed once, unconsciously, and moved closer to Bea.

In a semicircle sweeping around the group of singers, soph.o.m.ores and stray juniors and many a wandering alumna in a flower-decked hat had gathered to listen. In a pause between the songs. Robbie surveyed them gravely, unrecognizing any of the older guests until presently one face stood out vaguely familiar in the clear twilight. It was a beautiful face, framed by dusky hair beneath the wreath of crimson roses on her hat. The eyes were dusky too and deep-set. They were staring at Robbie with an intensity of grieving affection that contrasted sharply with the stern, almost resentful, expression of her finely cut mouth.

As Robbie gazed back in fascinated perplexity, the face suddenly curved into a smile so tenderly radiant that Robbie felt quite dazzled for a moment. Involuntarily she smiled back, while striving to grasp the dim recollection. Who could it be? She had surely seen her before somewhere.

But where? At college? At home? Where was it? Slowly a vision grew distinct in her groping memory. It was a vision of Elizabeth, her sister, lifting a photograph from a pile of others. "This," she had said, "is my Jessica. She knows all my family from their pictures, and some day she shall come home with me and meet you your own selves. She wishes Robbie Belle were to enter college before we finish. Robbie will be a senior when we go back for our fifth year reunion."

Robbie's chest heaved abruptly under the shock of identifying the face amid the encircling throng. It was Jessica More, Elizabeth's best friend at college. This was the June of her cla.s.s reunion. Robbie Belle was a senior. But Elizabeth was not there, as she had planned. Jessica had been expelled before she graduated, and Elizabeth had died.

Before the singing was over, Jessica had disappeared. Then in the rush of last things Robbie forgot her for a time. Some of the seniors hurried away on hospitable duties bent, for numerous relatives had already arrived. There were to be informal gatherings in different rooms. A few went to the Phi Beta Kappa lecture in the chapel. To tell the truth, however, these were but few indeed, for to the seniors the last evenings were too precious, to be wasted on mere scholarly discourse. Probably Jessica had gone there with the rest of the alumnae, reflected Robbie Belle as she sat beside Berta and the others in the soft sweet darkness.

With arms intertwined they talked low or fell silent, lingering over this farewell to the dear college days.

"I love everybody in the cla.s.s," whispered Lila once.

"In the college," amended Bea promptly.

"Oh, in the whole world!" exclaimed Berta.

Robbie nodded a.s.sent so solemnly that Bea leaned down to peer at her more closely. "A regular Chinese mandarin," she teased, "or are you nodding in your sleep? You approve of Berta's breadth evidently. Why do people always speak about the value of being broadened? I think it is n.o.bler to be deep than broad, I do. I'd rather divide my heart in four pieces than in forty billion."

"There are two hundred in the cla.s.s," said Robbie, "and there were only one hundred in my sister's cla.s.s, but I am quite sure that they did not love each other any more than we do."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE HELD BOTH HANDS, SMILING]

The next morning saw the seniors a.s.semble at the amphitheatre which had been prepared for the Cla.s.s Day exercises. Berta was already on the platform, a.s.sisting the committee in the arrangement of seats for the cla.s.s. Among later comers who were hurrying across the campus Bea caught up with Robbie Belle.

"I am hastening across the sward," she announced in cheerfully inane greeting, "what is a sward anyhow, and why isn't it p.r.o.nounced the same as sword?"

"It's gra.s.s," said Robbie Belle. Bea felt a speaking silence fall and glanced up to catch the direction of her gaze. Between them and the expanse of mingled chairs and girls around the platform against the wall of the nearest dormitory, a stranger was moving rapidly toward them, her eager eyes on Robbie.

"Little Robbie Belle! I knew you last night from your picture." She held both hands, smiling.

Bea considered the two pairs of shoulders on a level. "Little!" she sniffed to herself, "it must be a very old alum."

Robbie turned to introduce her. "This is my friend, Beatrice Leigh, Miss More. Bea, this is my sister's best friend. I remembered you too, last night, Miss More. I remembered--I--I wondered----" Robbie's tongue stumbled in embarra.s.sment at the verge of candor.

Miss More's mouth hardened slightly, though her eyes still smiled. "You wondered how I happen to be here for the reunion of a cla.s.s from which I was expelled. Is that it? Perhaps you are unaware that I have been reinstated. The faculty has at last reconsidered their unjust decision.

They acknowledge that it was based upon a misunderstanding. I have made up the work at home. To-morrow I shall receive two degrees, the Bachelor's with your cla.s.s, the Master's with the post-graduates. I am sure you congratulate me."

"Oh!" gasped Robbie Belle, "oh, yes!"

Bea succeeded in depressing somewhat the round-eyed stare with which she had listened to this extraordinary speech. "I think it is perfectly lovely, Miss More," she said. "Your cla.s.s must be delighted. It is a triumph--a splendid triumph. Oh,--ah!" She turned at the sound of a faint call behind her: "Jessica!"