Stanford Stories Part 4

Early in September the noon train brought her through the oaks and the burdened olive orchards, past the lonely redwood Tree to the University.

The brakeman's call: "Next station is Palo A-al-to!" stirred her with fluttering excitement. The crowded carriages and people at the station bewildered her. Eager 'busmen struggled for the hand-baggage of strangers, men with "Student Transfer" on their caps clamored for trunk-checks. Fellows in duck seized some of the men who came down the car steps, carrying away their suit-cases and throwing l.u.s.ty student arms about their shoulders. The men thus welcomed introduced younger fellows and the whole group piled into a 'bus and shouted "Rho House, Billy," to the driver.

The man who got out just ahead of Pocahontas was greeted by cries of "Come on you Ca-ap!" and "h.e.l.lo, Smithy, old boy!" He was evidently someone of whom they were very fond. One fat fellow with a comical face hugged him theatrically. Pocahontas watched them drive away, laughing and slapping one another's knees. The man they called Smithy was the nicest looking.

She had given her new valise to a gray-haired 'busman who looked a little like the minister at home. On the way up the long avenue of palms toward the sandstone buildings low in the distance, this 'busman chatted kindly with her, telling her wonderful, almost incredible things about the University, so that she began to feel a little less strange. As she paid her fare in front of the Roble he said:

"Now, whenever you want a 'bus, Miss, just ask for Uncle John. That's what they call me."

"Yes," answered the Freshman, gratefully, "I will,--Uncle John."

She pa.s.sed up the dormitory steps, running awkwardly the gauntlet of experienced eyes scanning the new arrivals. The Theta Gammas wrote her down as material for a quaint little, quiet little dig,--not of sorority interest. One of them ventured that there was an Oxford teacher's Bible and an embroidered mending-case in the shiny valise. Another prophesied that the newcomer would wear her High School graduation-dress to the Freshman reception. These ladies had been at college for three years and their diagnosis was correct.

So Hannah Grant Daly hopped with no unnecessary flapping of wings upon her perch in the Roble dove-cote. The matron put her into 52 with Lillian Arnold, a Soph.o.m.ore leader of local society. This was "to make things easier for her." Their wedded life lasted three days. It was long after lights when Miss Arnold returned the first night. Hannah had read her chapter and was lying awake, bravely resisting a homesick cry. Her roommate groped in with an animated tale of a Freshman spread on the top floor at which the chief attraction had been oyster c.o.c.ktails.

Pocahontas shuddered. In imagination she detected a faint odor like that from her mother's medicine-closet.

"I'd have asked you to go along with me," apologized Lillian, scrambling into bed without any conventional delay, "but I thought you wouldn't care for such things."

"I hope I never shall," said the new girl, solemnly, and turned her face to the wall.

The following morning while Pocahontas arranged her share of the bureau, the Soph.o.m.ore draped a tennis net on their wall and fixed in its meshes the trophies of her first year. She was putting a photograph in place when Hannah spoke:

"Who is that, Miss Arnold?"

"That's Jack Smith," answered Lillian; "stunning, isn't he?"

"He's very interesting, I think. He was on the train yesterday. There were ever so many boys to meet him."

"He's a Beta Rho,--belongs to that fraternity, you know. They have a swell house here. I know most of them very well,--been over there to dinner several times."

"What cla.s.s is he in?"

"Mine,--Soph.o.m.ore. He's a splendid athlete,--football and pole-vaulting,--and he sings in the Glee Club. He was the only Freshman to make the team last year,--he's really a perfect hero."

"I knew he was somebody by the way they acted down at the station. I think he has a good face." The new girl had come over from the bureau and was looking up at the picture in the net.

"Everybody thinks he is the handsomest man in college. You wait till you see him in his red sweater. Don't say anything, Hannah, but I'm going to have Jack Smith for my very own this year; you see if I don't manage it," and Lillian, laughing, blew a light kiss to the photograph.

Decidedly Pocahontas disapproved of her room-mate. Later, when she found that a half-dozen girls who had dropped in after dinner were there for the evening, she went out into a music-room to look at her new text-books. Routed from here by more b.u.t.terflies, with "beaux," she did her reading on a bench in the hallway. Another day and she was rooming with a Junior who was a hard student. Her departure caused Miss Arnold sincere regret. A girl she knew had roomed with a Freshman the year before and the child adored her and did the mending of both. Lillian hated to sew.

Pocahontas had been at college a week and was already learning that it is not necessary to read all your references when her room-mate, coming in from the library one evening, mentioned that there was a rush going on over at the tank.

"A rush?" asked Hannah, "what is that?"

"A relic of barbarism; they ought to have put a stop to it long ago, Professor Grind says."

"Yes," said the Freshman, "but what do they do?"

"Oh, get out and fight somehow,--I don't know just how,--something about tying up. Only another way of wasting time, Hannah," and the Junior plunged back into her Livy.

At breakfast Pocahontas heard Lillian Arnold tell about going over to the baseball diamond to see the Soph.o.m.ores lying tied up beside the backstop, and what a joke it was on her own cla.s.s and what a ridiculous figure Jack Smith had made in the coils of a Freshman's trunk-rope, with his face and hair all grimy with perspiration and dust, and that laundry agent, Mason, piled on top of him. Hannah left the table in secret excitement. Between recitations that morning she met Pete Halleck, a cla.s.smate from her own high school; bursting with pride, he took her up to the Row to show their very own cla.s.s numerals shining high on the tank, and she realized vaguely that this was a thing of which she, too, was a part. There grew within her a longing to reach out a little toward the big, full life of the college, to know something of the men and women who lived it. All this was very wrong, she told herself, for she had come here to study hard. She had only two years in which to fit herself to teach. Here was the precious book-knowledge for which she had hungered and pinched so long. It must not be neglected, ever so little; but the enthusiasm of the boy with her was infectious. In her soul she took issue with the views of her room-mate, fortified as they were by the approval of Professor Grind.

In this rebellious mood she read on the Hall bulletin-board a notice of the reception to be given to new students by the Christian a.s.sociations.

Here was a chance to satisfy that wicked craving without too great concession, for of course there would be no dancing and the auspices were so favorable. She spoke about it to Katherine Graham, a Junior, who was in Lillian Arnold's "set," to be sure, but who had put her arm around the homesick little Freshman one soft evening after dinner when the girls were strolling before the Hall, and had drawn her down the walk toward the Ninety-five Oak. Katherine was a fine, frank girl whose talk about the University and her love for the campus and its life stirred the new girl's pulses. She could listen with unguarded eagerness to this Junior because she knew her to be a student. Pocahontas slipped her arm wistfully 'round her friend's waist. To room with Miss Graham would have been perfect happiness.

"Of course you'll go," declared Katherine, when she had heard the Freshman's confidence regarding the reception. "It's slow, sometimes, but you'll meet the people you want to know."

So out came the plain graduation-dress, folded carefully away since the night she read the valedictory, three months ago; she sewed a rip in the gloves saved from the same occasion, and she took out the fan which her grandmother had given her, a wonderful fan she had considered it until she saw a few of Lillian's.

In the gymnasium where glistening bamboo and red geraniums screened the chest-weights along the walls, and feathery branches of pepper climbed luxuriantly over the inclined ladders, she found the crowd characteristic of this occasion,--the Freshman men at one end, the Freshman girls at the other, and between them a neutral zone of old students chatting gayly, oblivious of the purpose of the affair. Oh, but the reception committee! Save for these indefatigable martyrs, the Freshman s.e.xes might have gazed wistfully at each other across the lines of upper cla.s.s-men until the lights dipped and never been able to bow on the Quad next day. Important-looking persons with silk badges and worried faces circulated in a grim endeavor to "mix things up." One of these wild-eyed people would dash into the crowd and haul some struggling upper cla.s.s-man over to the feminine section. With his victim in tow, he would open conversation feverishly:

"Name, please?"

"Miss Newcome."

"Ah, permit me to introduce Mr. Oldman. Miss Newcome, Mr. Oldman. Isn't it warm to-night? Fine talk of the Doctor's, wasn't it? Well, you must excuse me; we're very busy," the last words dying in the distance as he sped away.

Pocahontas contrasted this chill with the warmth of church socials at home. She felt disappointed and dreadfully alone. Her sober-minded room-mate was bobbing like a pigeon before Professor Grind, enthusiastically telling him "how much inspiration she got from his courses;" Katherine Graham was lost in a swirl of upper cla.s.s-men. The Freshman had half turned toward the dressing-room when out of the press came Jack Smith, big, wholesome-looking, still smiling with some memory of his latest conversation. Why did Hannah stop? It was certainly bold,--doubtless it was half-unconscious,--but stop she did, and a committee-man, wheeling suddenly, caught Smith, dashed through the preliminaries, and the Soph.o.m.ore had added Hannah Grant Daly to the list of his acquaintances.

Now "Cap" Smith had not come to this reception to meet Freshman girls--at any rate insignificant ones with spectacles and sandy hair; but no one could have told that he had not begged to be presented to this one.

"I'll have to ask you the same question we put to all," he began, smiling pleasantly; "what's your major?"

She would have given much to have answered something clever or interesting, as no doubt other girls did, but she could only stammer:

"Education."

"You've answered so promptly I'll let you off the rest of the text,--there are forty-two questions in all, each more inquisitive than the last."

The Freshman giggled; she did not know just why, unless it was that his face and merry way inspired jollity.

"Have the committee on irrigation attended to you yet?"

"I don't know; I have registered," she faltered.

He laughed, and she blushed uncomfortably.

"Oh, pardon me," he said, "I must go slow with my slang; you've had only a few days to learn it. I'm just joshing the weakness of the lemonade the a.s.sociations give us. Let's try some, though; shall we?"

They made their way to the lemonade booth. Such a vain, silly little Freshman she was, to be sweetly conscious that people looked after them as she pa.s.sed along with this handsome, athletic young hero whom everybody admired. Lillian Arnold was in the booth, dividing her attention between filling gla.s.ses and entertaining four men. She gave Pocahontas a cool bow and cast a look at Smith which the Freshman interpreted "What are you doing with _her_?" At the same moment Lillian thought of a foolish confidence she had made to the dig when they were room-mates. Jack, however, was describing to Hannah the recent rush and the glory of her cla.s.s, and Lillian's glances were lost upon him. The lemonade finished, he took the Freshman over to Professor Craig's mother, and left her with a pleasant fairy tale about meeting her again.

"Who's your friend?" laughed Perkins, as Smith dived back into his own element.

"Some little Roble dig. Don't ask me her name. I think people like that are really lonesome, Ted. Say, those Phis have trotted Haviland 'round long enough. Let's break up their interference."

Others came up to Mrs. Craig, and Hannah found herself introduced to a variety of men, but she cared little if she met no one else just then.

She stood watching Jack as he pa.s.sed from group to group, chaffing merrily, shaking hands with many people. There was no one else in the room so well worth watching.

That night, while the Junior breathed regularly on her side of the alcove, Pocahontas lay a long time thinking dreamily. She knew he would be like that; somehow he had looked so the first day at the station with all those noisy boys. She should have answered something more than yes and no at the reception. He would think her stupid. They had given her advanced standing in Latin; perhaps he would be in the cla.s.s when it met on Monday; it would be splendid if he were; lots of the boys walked to Roble with girls at half-past-twelve; she would ask him all about the football; they would not have to talk about the Latin;--she felt so small beside him as they went along the board walk--he looked down at her and laughed--there was a seat under the Ninety-five Oak--all the other people were talking, a long way off--the lemonade bowl under the tree--shall we--