WITH all this extraordinary excitement, it may well be supposed that Helen's work at college was suffering. While the campaign lasted, she threw herself into all its schemes with a distracted wholeheartedness that left no room for anything else; now that the calm had come after the whirlwind she could again think rationally.
Founder's Day had come and gone, and the college year was well into November. On this particular afternoon Professor Howard was giving an organ recital in the chapel, and Helen was for the first time experiencing one of those exquisite delights. She had come from the library with a pack of text-books and notebooks on her arm, and a fountain pen leaking over her fingers, and had climbed the stairs to the gallery in the half light of a late autumn afternoon. There she seated herself in the last row, where she could lean back her head against the wall and listen. There was but one light burning in the chapel -- the electric bulb over the organ desk that shone on Mr. Howard's smile and lighted up his face. Over the dimness and hush of the chapel mounted the voice of the organ -- a voice that spoke thus only to his touch. It scaled the heights of heaven and sang with the angels; it sank into the deeps of hell and joined the despair of the fallen, Joy, rapture; tears and heartbreakings -- every intermediate tone poured from its many throats till one felt herself standing by the side of the Most High, wide-eyed with ecstasy. Even a fall to earth -- when this music was over -- left in one a heart bursting to surmount obstacles, to do, to climb, climb, ever climb.
It was during such a recital that, after being raised to the heights by the glory of the music, Helen suddenly looked down and saw herself. The music made her feel ethereal, but what she saw made her remember, and her heart sank within her. What had she been doing with herself for the last two months; what had she accomplished? What she had accomplished would have been sufficient to show the amount of her energy for work. Upon coming to college, her imagination, fired with past successes, led her wildly along, and now the result was that she had been led into a bramble path. On leaving Erasmus Hall she felt herself complete; but she forgot that there she was really at the summit of her experience, and that at college she must begin again and work herself up from an unknown quantity. Indeed, the pleasures that had come with her college work so tickled her palate that wholesome ambitions were now abandoned, and her appetite was only for the sweets of college. Being naturally bright, she expected to do wonders in her class work, and failed.
However, that was not all that now depressed her. She had made the college choir, but failed to make the Glee Club. Why? Edith Brewster so maneuvered matters that, although Molly Walsh succeeded in getting a place among the sopranos, Helen was turned down without explanation. It galled her to think of it, and it galled her to remember that, except for the solace of Helen Crosby's friendship and Elinor Haskell's, the societies were absolutely ignoring her. She might have been in Jericho.
But the blow that told most on Helen had just fallen. The class basket-ball team had been selected -- awaiting, of course, the permission of the Faculty. Tommy, being one of the star players of the class, naturally took one of the seven places, and those who chose her set much hope upon her skill. Fanny, too, was chosen; for her excellent goal throwing and eel-like movements made her one of the most precious acquisitions. So when the applications were sent to the Faculty there was a great deal of excitement awaiting their decision. The decision had just come through the registrar. All applications had been granted except Helen's -- Tommy was refused because of her poor class standing, the which Miss Borden advised her to mend with celerity and avoid future "conditions."
Strange to say it was not the fact of standing so low in her work that cut Helen most; it was the failure to make the team. She had never expected to do anything but play on it. The turn of events seemed impossible. It was like a dream from which she would awake, and she felt sorry for herself the meanwhile. A lump rose to ber throat and impeded her breathing, and to drag it away took a sob. She shut her eyes and pretended to listen to the pathos of the organ. But a tear squeezed out of the corner of each eye, and she silently wept with the music that grieved with her.
There was an only consolation: the chapel was dim, and nobody saw; the organ attracted all their senses, and nobody heard.
She went out of the chapel with a grim determination to do something that would make the Faculty repent; and yet the perfect justice of the thing was so evident that there was nothing for her to do but to work her way up again or to "flunk" herself out of college.
The latter was impossible. What! She to disgrace herself and go home on the pretense of sickness, forever labeled "Flunk"? Then there was only the other path, covered with obstacles of half-studied lessons and half-learned rules that she had left behind. She had now the double task of relearning the past and keeping abreast of the future.
She resolved to do it. That very night she would begin to give every bit of her mind to her work and try to smooth over the bad places left half finished in the great design of the college curriculum.
Her resolution was well taken. The after-supper crowd missed her in the students' parlor, and Fanny found her, when she came up half an hour later, deep in "De Senectute." She studied all evening with a vim born of new-made resolutions. The twenty-minute bell scarcely disturbed her. A few minutes before ten, Fanny, ready for bed, asked her if she was not going to bed also. Tommy shook her head.
"Not yet; I have too much geom. to do."
"Not yet? Do you expect to do very much more studying? It's almost ten o'clock."
"I know it," was the response. "I am going to take a sit-up to-night."
"But you've taken all your sit-ups already," reminded Fanny.
"Then you'll have to give me one of yours. You've taken only one, and you are not likely to use the others. I've got to sit up!"
Fanny looked at her roommate solemnly.
"Helen," she said, "you know what I have is yours. I wouldn't begrudge you anything. But my sit-ups are my own, and it would be against League rules to give them to you. When the Student League made the rule for four sit-ups, it was for our own good. We work hard enough during the day without using up most of the night also. Each girl has her own share and no more. On the strength of that you cannot use my sit-ups. It would not be fair, any more than it would be for you to borrow a sit-up from every girl in college and then stay up after ten every night in the year."
"What a preacher you are! Your mathematics are quite unassailable. Nevertheless, I must sit up and plug."
"Helen! It would be dishonest." And turning away to her couch, Fanny slipped into bed.
Helen's face hardened with anger and resentment and her teeth gritted together. Ten o'clock was striking, and a moment later the ten-o'clock bell downstairs was jangled. Rebellion and shame fought each other for a brief instant. She heard the proctor approaching, and saw through the transom the lights in the hall put out, one after the other, and only the red fire lights left burning.
Should she lie to the proctor and say that her roommate would sit up?
It may be that she, of herself, might have come to a proper decision; as it was she felt resentment at her roommate's dictation, to say nothing of a great desire to finish her studying. The proctor was coming, and there was no time for an orderly retreat. Helen glanced at her roommate, who lay there with her face to the wall. Then she reached up and turned out the light grimly.
Shortly before the Christmas holidays a Freshman class meeting was called for the purpose of electing class officers. It was not their first meeting, for in October they had met to choose their temporary officers. At that time the handsomest girl in the class, Mildred Brigham, was naturally elected chairman, and under that figurehead they sailed for the next two months.
First after the officers pro tem., they chose a yell. Then a motto, "Rowing, not drifting," though some suggested "Bide a wee an' dinna weary." This, however, was objected to as sounding like a "dog society" or an old ladies' home. They chose yellow for their color, because it would go "dandy" on their black "gym suits." They evidently expected to shine in athletics. After that they made yellow banners and set 1908 on them in black figures. The jonquil became their class flower. Buttercups was their first choice, because they blossomed around at Commencement, when they graduated. How foresightedly! But over night they were illumined by the thought that they were to graduate only once. So they called a special class meeting next day and nullified the buttercup and chose the jonquil -- evidently because it was more expensive and harder to get, and could only be obtained at a greenhouse.
After all this a constitution was made. Such were the few "Freshman" things they did. Young ideas were certainly sprouting, and every measure was discussed as seriously and with as great a variance and tenacity of opinion as though it were a bill before Congress. They made and unmade laws over night; but what matter?
To-day, however, the Freshmen were a little more settled than two months ago. The occasion of their meeting was of vast interest to the college in general, and, on the steps leading up to Assembly Hall, waited anxious friends of those discussed for officers.
After the roll call, Mildred Brigham, the class chairman, appointed four tellers and announced that the first ballot for the nominations for president would be taken.
"Slips will be passed around," she said, " on which please write the name of your choice. There are 187 members present. The four names having the highest number of votes will be balloted on again, and so on until, according to the Constitution, one of them receives a two-thirds vote. She will be the president. Now we are ready to vote. -- Will somebody lend me a pencil?"
There had been a great deal of electioneering among the Freshmen in the past few weeks. All the classes were eagerly awaiting the results; the societies were anxious onlookers in this campaign. The latter, having by this time pretty surely selected their Freshman candidates, were hoping great hopes to see them in the Freshman offices. But they did not enter the field to electioneer. Their Freshman candidates, however, impulsively worked for the girls they knew would be their society sisters. Only one electioneerer there was from any outside class -- Edith Brewster, born politician, who kept on in spite of the adverse opinion of the college and the strong disapproval of her sorority. She could not keep her itching fingers out of it. She had been assiduously rushing Mildred Brigham for the Alpha Sigma, and, having seen her temporary chairman, was for making her class president.
Freshmen are exceedifigly susceptible to beauty when they elect their preliminary officers. But there was by this time among the Freshmen a good common sense which was against having for president a girl merely pretty, and this common sense made them fight for others of their classmates. Among the most prominent stood Fanny Wallace and Helen Thompson -- prominent for two opposite reasons. Tommy had made herself popular by her independence and indiscretion; Fanny, by the hold her character was getting upon the girls. True, Fanny was being rushed by Gail Calder, in her own way, for the Alpha Beta Gamma; but that mattered nothing to them. Edith, however, pushed her candidate against both of these. She fought tooth and nail against Tommy because she was too "fresh" and "generally objectionable"; against Fanny -- though she could not find much to say about her -- because she was only a "grind" and too "churchy." But nothing of all this electioneering for or against ever reached the two roommates. Fanny suspected nothing, because her friends kept their intentions secret. Tommy also heard nothing, because she was of late so headlong in work -- with a grim bitterness of resignation, it is true -- that she had no time for anything else.
"I have become a grind of the grindiest," she said.
In the course of a quarter of an hour the first ballot was cast and counted. The head teller came up to the chairman's desk with a smile, and laid a paper before her.
"The result of the first ballot," announced the chairman, " is: Miss Fanny Wallace, 83; Miss Tom -- Helen Thompson, 47; myself, 29; Miss Elizabeth Thwaite, 13 . . ." and so on down the list. "We will now proceed to vote on the first four names."
The result was what had been expected in most quarters. Only Fanny gave a little start of surprise and blushed and began to decline the honor.
"Why, Madam Chairman," she said, "I don't see why the girls should wish to give me such an honor. I'm sure I appreciate it, but I hardly feel equal --"
Tommy, who had been struck speechless by her own part of the ballot, upon hearing her roommate making such remarks, drew her down to her seat and claimed the floor.
"My roommate is ailing mentally to-day," she said, "to think of declining her duty. I know her better than any of you, and I want to solemnly approve of those 83 votes. But what I want to know is, who these people are who voted for me. Girls, what are you thinking of!" A deep flush covered her face, and she shrank back in abashment, and her eyes were shining with moisture. "It isn't a month since the Faculty turned me down for the basket-ball team, and I've been making all sorts of fool of myself since I came to college. Why, I've been so ashamed of myself, I thought I had no friend left. Girls, you're just too dear for anything, and I feel like hugging you all. But it's no time for a heart-to-heart talk. What I started out to say is this: Don't for a moment think of voting for me when there is such a grand girl as my roommate. No, keep still, Fanny! Why, she's a perfect gem, girls, and I can't hold a candle to her. Now, just everyone that voted for me throw your vote to her, and let's have a rousing good election."
She sat down amid applause badly hushed by the chairman's gavel, and, with little more delay, the balloting recommenced amid talk and flurry. With a smile the chainnan glanced at the result on the paper brought at length to her.
"I am happy to announce that the result of the election tells me I am now relieved of the duty of chairman. It has been, let me say, a delightful duty. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate or grudge to pass over the office to so excellent a president. The result of the balloting is" (breathless suspense) "Miss Wallace 137 votes and elected, and --"
A cheer, such as is heard only from enthusiastic boys, interrupted the announcement. Cries of "Wallace! Wallace! Wallace!" were mingled with calls for "Speech!" In the midst of it all the vote was made unanimous, and Mildred Brigham kissed the newly-made president as she escorted her to the chair, and an armful of yeilow roses was brought in to her from the Junior class.
The rest of the meeting was hurried through under suppressed excitement. Sue Richardson, a strong girl with plenty of go-ahead in her, was made vice president, and so on down the list. They tried to make Tommy accept an office, but she declined, saying that one was enough for one family and that, anyway, it would not be good for her health. She was finally made one of the executive committee -- that committee that has so much hard work and so little glory. In fact, she had been heard to express a desire to be on this committee, for its activeness would give her such a chance to work off her surplus spirits.
The meeting was not officially dismissed; it simply broke up when it could hold together no longer. They adjourned to the campus, where the Freshmen insisted on carrying Fanny on their shoulders around the college houses. They were greeted out of windows by girls dressing for supper, but after one or two houses, Fanny's protesting was heard and she was put down on her own feet, the girls satisfying themselves with escorting her about and yelling:
"Rah-rah-rah!
Rah-rah-rah!
Rah-rah-rah!
Wallace! Wallace! Wallace!"
And they couldn't talk properly for the rest of the evening.
The ringing of supper bells finally thinned out the crowd, and, as they left Fanny on the Porter steps in the arms of the Porter delegation, Tommy waved to them her roommate's bouquet of roses and cried:
"Oh, girls, isn't it grand to have a president for a roommate?"