Betty Wales, Senior Part 10

Miss Raymond looked at her keenly. "So you didn't know," she said. "It is a mere coincidence that you are going to print her verses."

"I don't know anything about her," Helen explained. "I heard you read the verses in your theme cla.s.s last week. And at the close of the hour I asked you to let me have them and several other things. I used these first because I had all the prose I needed for this time."

"I see," said Miss Raymond. "Have you told her yet that you want them?"

"No," said Helen, guiltily. "I was going to write her a note as soon as I got home. I didn't suppose she would care."

"I presume you noticed that they are very remarkable."

Helen blushed, thinking how she had hesitated between these and her own production, which she was sure could not be considered at all "remarkable." "I--well, I went mostly by what you said. I don't believe I am a good judge of poetry--of verses, I mean."

"You needn't be afraid to call these verses poetry. But I don't blame you for not fully appreciating them. No girl ought to understand the tragedy of utter defeat, which is their theme."

Miss Raymond paused, and Helen wondered if she ought to go or stay.

"Miss Adams," Miss Raymond went on again presently, "the author of those verses was in my room just before you came. She wanted to return a book that I lent her early in the term, by way of answering some question that she had brought up in my soph.o.m.ore English cla.s.s. She says that the book and the word of appreciation that went with it are the only kindness for which she has to thank Harding college, and that I am the only person to whom she cares to say good-bye. I don't know why she should except me. I had quite forgotten her. I a.s.sociated nothing whatever with the name on those verses until I looked at it again just now. I considered the tragic note in them merely as a literary triumph.

I never thought of the girl behind the tragedy." She waited a moment.

"She's going to leave college," she went on abruptly. "She says that a year and a half of it is a fair trial. I couldn't deny that. She says that she has made no friends, leaves without one regret or one happy memory. Miss Adams, would you be willing, instead of writing her a note, to tell her personally about this?"

"Why, certainly," said Helen, "if you think she'd like it better."

"Yes, I am sure she would. You won't find her at all hard to get on with. She has a dreadful scar on one cheek, from a cut or a burn, that gives her face a queer one-sided look. I suspect that may be at the bottom of her unhappiness."

On the way across the campus Helen had an inspiration, which led her a little out of her way, to the house where Jane Drew, the literary editor of the "Argus" lived.

"I'm so relieved that my department is all made up," she told Jane artfully, "that I feel like celebrating. Won't you meet me at Cuyler's for supper?"

Jane promised, a good deal surprised, for Helen was not in the habit of asking her to supper at Cuyler's; and Helen, after arranging to meet her guest down-town, hurried on to the address that Miss Raymond had given her, one of the most desirable of the off-campus houses.

Miss Carter was in, the maid said, and a moment later she appeared to speak for herself. She flushed with embarra.s.sment when she saw Helen, and her dreadful, disfiguring scar showed all the more plainly on her reddened cheek.

"Oh, I supposed it was the woman with my washing," she said. "I don't have many calls. You must excuse this messy shirt waist. Please sit down."

"Won't you take me up to your room?" asked Helen, trying to think how Betty Wales would have put the other girl at her ease. "We can talk so much better there."

Miss Carter hesitated. "Why, certainly, if you prefer. It's in great confusion. I'm packing, or getting ready to pack, rather," and she led the way up-stairs to a big room that, even in its half-dismantled condition, looked singularly attractive and quite different somehow from the regulation college room.

"I have a dreadful confession to make," said Helen gaily, when they were seated.

"I've taken your verses for the 'Argus.' I've already sent them in to Miss Raymond, and now I've come to ask if you are willing. I do hope you are."

"Why certainly," said Miss Carter quietly. "You are perfectly welcome to them of course. You needn't have taken the trouble to come away up here to ask."

Then she relapsed into silence. Helen could not tell whether she was pleased or not. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she was being dismissed; but she did not go. Never in her life had she worked so hard to make conversation as she did in the next ten minutes. The "Argus,"

the new chapel rules, Miss Raymond and her theme cla.s.ses, the soph.o.m.ore elections,--none of them evoked a responsive chord in the strange girl who sat impa.s.sive, with no thought apparently of her social duties and responsibilities.

"She must think I don't know how to take a hint," reflected Helen, "but I don't care. I'm going to keep on trying."

Presently she noticed that from Miss Carter's window could be seen Mrs.

Chapin's house and the windows of her and Betty's old room.

"That was where I lived when I first came to Harding," she began awkwardly, pointing them out. Then she looked at the girl opposite, read the misery in her big gray eyes, and opened her heart. Betty Wales, who had worked so hard to get at a little of the story of Helen's freshman year would have been amazed at the confidences she poured out so freely to this stranger. Indeed Helen was surprised herself at the ease with which she spoke and the dramatic quality that she managed to put into her brief account of the awkward, misfit, unhappy freshman.

Miss Carter listened at first apathetically, then with growing interest.

"Thank you," she said gravely, when Helen had finished. "I thought I was the only one who felt so."

"Oh, no, you aren't," said Helen brightly. "There are lots of others, I guess."

"No one with a thing like this," said the girl, with a swift, pa.s.sionate gesture toward her scar.

"Don't," said Helen gently. "Please don't think about it. No one else does, I'm sure."

"I got it just before I came here," went on the girl, speaking almost fiercely. "It came in a horrible way, but it's horrible just of itself.

I entered Harding because I thought the college life--the girls and the good times and the work--would help me to forget it--or to get used to being so ugly."

Helen considered a moment in silence. "I guess we're even more alike than I thought," she said at last. "We both expected college to do it all for us, while we--just sat. But I can tell you--do you play basket-ball? Anyhow you've seen it played. Well, you've got to keep your eye on the ball, and then you've got to jump--hard. Have you noticed that?"

Miss Carter laughed happily at Helen's whimsical comparison. "No," she said, "I've never been much interested in basket-ball. I'm afraid I've 'just sat' or jumped the wrong way."

Helen considered again, her small face wrinkled with the intensity of her thought. "You mean you've jumped away from the very things you were trying to get hold of," she said. "You've expected things to come to you. They won't. You've got to do your part. You've got to jump very often, and as if you meant it."

The girl nodded. "I see."

"You can do one thing right away," said Helen briskly, rising and b.u.t.toning her coat. "Do you know Jane Drew? Well, she's an awfully clever senior and an editor. She's going to have dinner with me at Cuyler's, and I'd like you to come too. You see one of the things you have jumped into already is being a star contributor to the 'Argus,' and we always want to meet our star contributors."

Miss Carter hesitated.

"Never mind your waist," Helen urged tactfully. "It looks perfectly fresh to me, but you can keep your coat on if you'd rather."

"All right, I'll come," said Miss Carter bravely.

And having yielded, she kept to the spirit, as well as the letter, of her promise. Jane, who was a very matter-of-fact young person, treated her with the same off-hand cordiality that she would have bestowed on any other chance acquaintance with interesting possibilities. The girls who stopped at the table to speak to Jane or Helen, smiled and nodded affably when they were introduced. Some of them stared a little, at the unusual combination of two prominent seniors and an obscure undercla.s.sman, but Miss Carter did not flinch. After dinner, when Jane had gone to speak to some friends at another table, she leaned forward toward her hostess. "I want to thank you," she said shyly, "for telling me about yourself and for bringing me here. Do you know, I was going to leave college, but I'm not now. I'm going to stay on--and try jumping,"

she ended quickly as Jane reappeared.

So Helen felt that her dinner had been a success, even though she should have to borrow largely from her next month's meagre allowance to pay for it.

On her way through the campus she met Miss Raymond, hurrying to meet an important engagement. But she stopped to inquire about Miss Carter.

"I knew you'd manage it," she said, when she had heard Helen's brief story of her adventures. "You're a person of resources. That's why we wanted you on the 'Argus' board."

Helen fairly danced the rest of the way to the Belden. "Perhaps I shan't be afraid of her next time," she thought. "I'd rather she'd say that than have sixty verses in the 'Argus.' Oh, what a selfish pig I was trying to be! I don't deserve to have it all come out so beautifully.

And--oh, dear, I'm late for the meeting of the house play committee, and Betty said it was awfully important."

She found the committee in riotous and jubilant session in Madeline's room.

"Three cheers for Sara Crewe!" shrieked Polly Eastman, when Helen appeared.