In our college life the infinite variety of human personality expresses itself surprisingly little. We are slow to admit that this is so; yet the fact remains that most of the people whom we see about us are variations of a few types. Certain sorts of personality which especially would seem to belong in such a place as this are altogether absent. I used to try to imagine a representative of one of these missing types drifting, by some chance, into the college community; I wondered what she would think of us, and we of her. That is why, when I did come upon just such a one, I was particularly attracted to her; and why, now that she has gone, I have decided to share my experience with those members of the college who never knew her.
A white world lay before me as one day I started out from the village for a solitary walk. But it was not of a dead whiteness: it quivered in the sunlight like a breathing thing; the perfect sky above and the distant purple-shadowed hills were inseparably a part of it; and here and there and everywhere strange lights fell upon the whiteness and turned it into flame. I stopped to listen: my ear could catch no sound, and yet the air was filled with silent speech, as if some spirit ached to pierce my dullness. Mysterious the scene was, but not with a mystery dark and impenetrable; it gleamed tantalizingly, and hinted the things which it never told. So, because it was white and at the same time full of color, and because it haunted me by suggestions of things I could not grasp, I said, "It is a landscape of mother-of-pearl."
I turned to find that I was not alone. The girl who stood before me was so marvelously a part of the scene that I almost fancied I had dreamed her into its dreamlike beauty. She was clad in white from head to foot, but hatless, as is the custom of the college. Her hair gleamed softly above her exquisitely moulded face. Motionless, yet expectant, she stood there, the white at her throat rising and falling with her quick breath, her clear, wide eyes searching mine. Such a face I had never seen; it shone as though a lamp were lighted within it, and every line of it spoke with the same silent speech that I had felt in the landscape.
How it came about that we walked on together I hardly know; of what we talked I can say little more, only that it was all of the wonder of life. We held that sort of intercourse which is independent of speech and of the speaker, in which the common thought leaps as if winged from word to word, eager, effortless. So we went on, she tireless, I unconscious of fatigue, while the white miles fled beneath our feet. At last, with the shadows of the western mountains creeping fast across the little hills between, I left her at the door of her college hall. Fully aware now of my weariness I stumbled homeward, but the thought of her stayed with me. I saw the light of wonder that moved upon her face; I heard again the palpitating rush and pause, the rich crescendo and delicate diminuendo in the music of her voice. Always, however, I came back to my first sight of her, framed in the landscape that was mother-of-pearl.
Our talk had been refreshingly free from preliminaries. We began in the middle of things and never afterward found time to speak of ourselves. I was able to glean a little about her from the common talk of the college, but most of that little was not enlightening. She was a queer creature, all agreed; just what constituted the queerness I found it harder to discover. One thing, her neighbors said, was clear: she evidently had money. For how else could she ignore the economical conventionalities of college dress - the indispensable sweater, the convenient sailor suit, the practical rubber coat? And whence otherwise that taint of aristocracy which withheld her from the common herd of freshmen, which somehow denied intimacy even to the most aggressive friendliness? But few puzzled long over the question. "It must be," cried college sentiment, "that she is conceited!" And so her place among us was assigned to her.
"Conceited." I pondered the word with myself for some time, striving to reconcile its meaning what that sensitive sympathy I had seen in her on that first afternoon, and again many times afterward. I could not be content with the result. There was something behind that had to be explained before one could thus lightly label her. Meanwhile my acquaintance with her had progressed by degrees. At times days and even weeks went by without our exchanging one spoken word. But when I came upon her suddenly in some corner of the library, or even in the hubbub of the college post-office, the silent greeting of her eyes never failed me. Then suddenly some magic moment would bring her near, and speech would come so simply and naturally that I wondered whether it might not have been so before. Gradually I realized that when it was not so, the fault was mine. The welcome was always waiting in her eyes; it was I who could not always answer it.
Sometimes I found her in her own room. Such a room I had not seen elsewhere in college, for she had it finished for herself and had set her stamp upon it. It baffled me by its suggestion of colors which always just eluded me. There was much that was dull gold - of that I am certain, for the gold of her hair was repeated in soft gleams from this corner and from that. There was a delicate rose there, too, and sometimes glints of green, or blue, or even crimson would flash out and disappear. What the room may have been without its occupant I do not know, for after she had left it I dared not go to it until, papered by the authorities in a durable brown, it fell to the lot of a classmate of mine with hom I have whiled away there many a pleasant hour. But as I knew it first it was an exquisite frame for her who lived in it and seemed to enthrall the visitor with the spell of her personality. Perhaps that was why we missed there the ease we found together out of doors. I could not quite catch the spirit of the room and its occupant, and the contrast between my failure to do this and their perfection struck a jarring note in our intercourse.
When I was conscious of this I always remembered the quarrel which College Sentiment had with her. She had tacitly set up a standard; our failure to conform to it put us - in spite of ourselves, and perhaps in spite of her - beyond her pale. From certain of the things we said and did she showed an involuntary shrinking that hurt and angered us; toward others she maintained a quiet indifference more irritating still. She was thus indifferent to most of my college girl crudities; only the sensation of distance from her when I let myself fall into them taught me how far removed she was from them. But sometimes things happened that shocked her into hurt surprise. It was so, I saw, when we spoke of our work with that mixture of glib indifference and half-comic dismay which we affect at times. I resented, with the rest, this implied criticism of our words and ways; and still I puzzled over it.
The clew came on one evening in late winter. I had come from one of the rooms in her hall and on my way out stopped at the door of the reception-room, loath to plunge again into the whirl of snow outside. The fire blazing on the hearth gave the room its only light. Before it I found her dreaming. She welcomed me softly, and I lingered for an hour. For the first time she talked of people, - of people whom I had known long but of whom she taught me much, - dealing tenderly with them, revealing them, I thought, with a gracious gleam, just as the firelight revealed her face, letting me see the hidden lights in them, like the lights that kept flashing from her gown. She made me understand (without dreaming, I believe, that I needed to be made to understand) that nothing any one of us said or did was meaningless to her; that whatever we were in all sincerity had for her a human dignity, touched her with an almost reverent awe. When I went away, although still unsure of much, at least I was finally convinced that College Sentiment had mistaken her.
At last there came, one day, that first sweet hint of spring which we await so hungrily as March draws on. It had been raining, but now, in the late afternoon, the wind was chasing clouds across blue sky - and the smell of that wind meant spring. I caught a whiff of it as the heavy door of the library swung to behind me; then I saw her on the walk, waiting for me. Grown used to her surprises though I was, I caught my breath at the sight of her. Beneath the pearly gray of her wrap gleamed a gown of rose and gold. The wind had caught its shimmering folds which fluttered unrestingly about her and took on new lights with every movement. Her hair, loosened by the wind, made a halo around her face. Her eyes, flashing with a wild light, summoned me, and I answered them, excited and at the same time awed. We set out silently for a certain hillside spot which we both knew well. On and up we went, the wind behind us. More striking than ever before was my companion's strange kinship with the beauty about her. The world we looked upon was a wild world, a windy riot of fresh color. And so was she wild and windy, full of tumultuously blended lights and shades. As I watched her I saw more and more clearly signs of struggle; there was a passion in her face; but what it meant I could not tell. We had halted by this time far up on the winding path, where we could look down over the college campus and on across the windswept hills to the western range. Above, the wonder of the sky grew with every instant. First there was a blaze of crimson, but the tireless wind seized and scattered it before our eyes and left only multitudinous waves of paling color with glimpses of blue between. At this moment I turned and saw that my companion's face had changed as the sky had changed. Whatever her strength might have been, it was dying down now. But still from her eyes looked out that baffled questioning; only now, instead of demand I saw appeal in them, - and, as ever, I was powerless to answer it.
Little by little, through the months, I had come to understand something of what this girl might be. But not until late spring did I really see it - see, I mean, as much as I was capable of seeing, for even now there are aspects which I cannot comprehend. This I know assuredly; that the reserve of which we complained in her was not a wilful reserve, she would have given us more of herself if we had let her, only she could not speak our language or we hers.
One Sunday afternoon in early May, I was dreaming alone over a book in the Masters' corner of the library. The touch of the late sun on the page made me look up. The light was pouring in through the western windows, but overhead the angel faces of the carvings smiled out of the dusk. Within all was silent, but through the open windows familiar songs came sweetly, mellowed by distance. I rose and looked out; they made a pretty sight, those groups of singing girls clustered about the steps of the old brick building. Behind me, then, some one stirred. Even before I turned I knew that it was she, and she, too, was looking out. She was all in soft white to-day; only her sun-touched hair showed color.
"It is beautiful," I said. She did not answer; when I turned, great tears stood on her lashes. Silently I stole away from the window. She stood there motionless until the singing stopped and the laughing groups dispersed. Then her voice came clearly through the stillness.
"Yes, but there is no place in it for me."
It was the first time I had ever heard her speak of herself.
Almost before I knew it I had spoken. "Oh, Heart of Beauty," I cried, "don't you know that we need you?"
She faced me then, smiling down wistfully through her tears. "But you will not have me," she said.
I have not seen her since that day. She left the college suddenly, and I never heard from her. Looking back now, I see that she had to go; for I cannot convince myself that we had anything that she needed, and what she offered us we did not know how to take. Nevertheless the surprise of not finding her here keeps hurting me. Incredulously I go back to the places in which I used to see her; she is not there, and they can never be perfect for me without her. Yet sometimes I have fancied that I heard her voice. Sometimes familiar faces have a fleeting resemblance to hers. Then I wonder why it was that we could not make room for her among us, and whether it may not be that some day she will come back to us, and we shall understand her.