A Reversion To Type
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with foreignidioms and historical dates and mathematical formulae in their littleheads. She herself deplored the modern tendency that sent a changingdrift of young teachers through the colleges, to learn at the expenseof the students a soon relinquished profession. But how ridiculousthe position of the women who prided themselves on the steadiness andcontinuity of their service! Surely they must find it an empty successat times. They must regret.
She was passing through the chapel. Two scrubbing-women werestraightening the chairs, their backs turned to her.
"From all I hear," said one, with a chuckle and a sly glance, "we'll beafther gettin' our invitations soon."
"An' to what?" demanded the other quickly.
"Sure, they say it's a weddin'."
"Ah, now, hush yer noise, Mary Nolan; 'tis no such thing. I've hadenough o' husbands. I know when I'm doin' well, an' that's as I am!"
"'Tis strange that the men sh'd think different, now, but they do!"
They laughed heartily and long. The German assistant looked at the broadbacks meditatively. Just now they seemed to her more consistent than anyother women in the great building.
She walked quickly across the greening campus. The close-set brickbuildings seemed to press up against her; every window stood for somecrowded, narrow room, filled with books and tea-cups and clothes andphotographs--hundreds of them, and all alike. In her own room she triedto reason herself out of this intolerable depression, to realizethe advantages of a quiet life in what was surely the same pleasant,cultured atmosphere to which she had so eagerly looked forward threeyears ago. Her room was large, well furnished, perfectly heated; andif the condition of her closet would have appeared nothing short ofappalling to a householder, that condition was owing to the hopelessexigencies of the occasion. With the exception of that whited sepulchre,all was neat, artistic, eminently habitable. She surveyed it critically:the "Mona Lisa," the large "Melrose Abbey," the Burne-Jones draperies,and the "Blessed Damozel" that spread a placid if monotonous culturethrough the rooms of educated single women. A proper appreciation ofpolished wood, the sanitary and aesthetic values of the open fire, acertain scheme in couch-pillows, all linked it to the dozen other roomsthat occupied the same relative ground-floor corners in a dozen otherhouses. Some of them had more books, some ran to handsome photographs,some afforded fads in old furniture; but it was only a question of moreor less. It looked utterly impersonal to-day; its very atmosphere wasartificial, typical, a pretended self-sufficiency.
How many years more should she live in it--three, nine, thirteen? Thetide of girls would ebb and flow with every June and September; eighteento twenty-two would ring their changes through the terms, and she couldtake her choice of the two methods of regarding them: she could insiston a perennial interest in the separate personalities, and endureweariness for the sake of an uncertain influence; or she could mass themfrankly as the student body, and confine the connection to marking theirclass-room efforts and serving their meat in the dining-room. The latterwas at once more honest and more easy; all but the most ambitious or themost conscientious came ta it sooner or later.
The youngest among the assistants, themselves fresh from college,mingled naturally enough with the students; they danced and skated andenjoyed their girlish authority. The older women, seasoned to the life,settled there indefinitely, identified themselves more or less with thetown, amused themselves with their little aristocracy of precedence, andwove and interwove the complicated, slender strands of college gossip.But a woman of barely thirty, too old for friendships with young girls,too young to find her placid recreation in the stereotyped round ofsocial functions, that seemed so perfectly imitative of the normal andyet so curiously unsuccessful at bottom--what was there for her?
Her eyes were fixed on the hill-slope view that made her roomso desirable. It occurred to her that its changelessness was notnecessarily so attractive a characteristic as the local poets practisedthemselves in assuring her.
A light knock at the door recalled to her the utter lack of privacythat put her at the mercy of laundress, sophomore, and expressman. Sheregretted that she had not put up the little sign whose "_Please do notdisturb_" was her only means of defence.
"Come!" she called shortly, and the tall girl in the green dress stoodin the open door. A strange sense of long acquaintance, a vague feelingof familiarity, surprised the older woman. Her expression changed.
"Come in," she said cordially.
"I--am I disturbing you?" asked the girl doubtfully. She had a pile ofbooks on her arm; her trim jacket and hat, and something in the way sheheld her armful, seemed curiously at variance with her tam-o'-shantered,golf-caped friends.
"I couldn't find out whether you had an office hour, and I didn't knowwhether I ought to have sent in my name--it seemed so formal, when it isonly a moment I need to see you--"
"Sit down," said the German assistant pleasantly. "What can I do foryou?"
"I have been talking with Fraeulein Mueller about my German, and shesays if you are willing to give me an outline for advanced work and anexamination later on, I can go into a higher division in a little while.Languages are always easy for me, and I could go on much quicker."
"Oh, certainly. I have thought more than once that you were wastingyour time. The class is too large and too slow. I will make you outan outline and give it to you after class to-morrow," said the Germanassistant promptly. "Meanwhile, won't you stay and make me alittle call? I will light the fire and make some tea, if that is aninducement."
"The invitation is inducement enough, I assure you," smiled the girl,"but I must not stay to-day, I think. If you will let me come again,when I have no work to bother you with, I should love to."
There was something easily decisive in her manner, something verydifferent from the other students, who refused such invitationsawkwardly, eager to be pressed, and when finally assured of a sincerewelcome, prolonged their calls and talked about themselves into theuncounted hours. Evidently she would not stay this time; evidently shewould like to come again.
As the door closed behind her the German assistant dropped her cordialsmile, and sank back listlessly in her chair.
"After all, she's only a girl!" she murmured. For almost an hour she satlooking fixedly at the unlit logs, hardly conscious of the wasted time.Much might have gone into that hour. There was tea for her at one of thecollege houses--the hostess had a "day," and went so far as to aspireto the exclusive serving of a certain kind of tinned fancy biscuit everyFriday--if she wanted to drop in. This hostess invited favored studentsto meet the faculty and townspeople on these occasions, and thetwo latter classes were expected to effect a social fusion with theformer--which linked it, to some minds, a little too obviously withprofessional duties.
She might call on the head of her department, who was suffering fromsome slight indisposition, and receive minute advice as to the conductof her classes, mingled with general criticism of various colleaguesand their methods. She might make a number of calls; but if there is onesituation in which the futility of these social mockeries becomes mostthoroughly obvious, it is the situation presented by an attempt toimitate the conventional society life in a woman's college. And yet--shehad gone over the whole question so often--what a desert of awkwardnessand learned provincialism such a college would be without the attempt!How often she had cordially agreed to the statement that it wasprecisely because of its insistence upon this connection with the formsand relations of normal life that her college was so successfully freefrom the tomboyishness or the priggishness or the gaucherie of some ofthe others! And yet its very success came from begging the question,after all.
She shook her head impatiently. A strong odor of boiling chocolatecrept through the transom. Somebody began to practise a monotonousaccompaniment on the guitar. Over her head a series of startling bumpsand jarring falls suggested a troupe of baby elephants practising fortheir first appearance in public. The German assistant set her teeth.
"Before I die," she announced to her image in the g
lass, "I propose toinquire flatly of Miss Burgess if she _does_ pile her furniture ina heap and slide down it on her toboggan! There is no other logicalexplanation of that horrible disturbance."
The face in the glass caught her attention. It looked sallow, withlines under the eyes. The hair rolled back a little too severely forthe prevailing mode, and she recalled her late visitor's effectivelyadjusted side-combs, her soft, dark waves.
"They have time for it, evidently," she mused, "and after all it iscertainly more important than modal auxiliaries!"
And for half an hour she twisted and looped and coiled, between thechiffonnier and a hand-glass, fairly flushing with pleasure at theresult.
"Now," she said,