Chapter XI: Efforts to Help

Julia, one spring afternoon, waiting in Edith’s library for Edith to return from down town, was in the midst of a conversation with Philip. His woe-begone face might have made her laugh had she not fortunately realized that one cannot long retain her influence over the person she has laughed at.

“If she hadn’t written me herself,” Philip was saying, “I couldn’t have believed it. It seems he’s a member of Parliament, too. Well, I may be something myself sometime. She might have waited. I can’t fix my mind on anything now, and I fancy mother and Edith will be disappointed when I can’t get my degree.”

“What have they to do with it?” cried Julia. “I’m sure that they have always encouraged you.”

“Why, if they hadn’t disapproved of Adelaide Cain, she might not have been so heartless, and then I should be in better spirits now.”

“You can’t imagine,” said Julia, “that Adelaide Cain threw you over just because your mother disapproved of her? She hasn’t the reputation of being so conscientious.”

“How hard girls are to one another!” exclaimed Philip in his most cynical tone.

“Nonsense! nonsense!” and Julia laughed. “I’m positive that in three months you will rejoice that Miss Cain preferred some one else. But did you mean what you just said about your degree?”

“Well, my degree is certainly awfully shaky. There was a scrape I was in in my Freshman year. They kept me on probation, and they do not seem to think that I have lived it down. Then I have two exams. to make up, one I lost when I was sick and another I failed on, and some of my work this year is a little uncertain. I’ve a good mind to cut it all now and quit.”

“What! leave everything, without taking your degree? No, indeed, Philip, you mustn’t do it!”

“Well, I’ve only a few weeks, and—and—well, I suppose that I might as well make a full confession. I have a lot of debt hanging over me, and I cannot tell my father.”

“Oh, Philip!” Julia threw a great deal of feeling into her tone. This last trouble seemed much more serious than either of the other things of which Philip had spoken. She felt that it was to his advantage that Miss Cain had set him aside, and she knew that if he applied himself he could make up his deficiencies in his studies. But a matter of money—she hardly knew how to advise him.

“It’s three thousand dollars.”

“Three thousand dollars! An enormous sum for an undergraduate to owe.” Although Philip had lately come of age, Julia knew that he had no money of his own. She knew, too, that although Mr. Blair was liberal to his children he had a strong dislike for debt. She wondered if he would come forward and pay this for Philip.

“It’s an old debt,” said Philip. “It was made last year. Part of it is money I really owe, but the greater part is on notes I endorsed for Farlong.”

Julia had heard of Farlong. He was a law student from a distance, who had made a great display for a year or two. Then the failure of his father—a rather notorious stockbroker—had brought his college career to a close.

“Yes,” continued Philip, “I was so foolish as to let Farlong invest a little money for me. Of course I lost it, and more, too, than I put in. Then Farlong lent me some money, and when the crash came I was considerably in his debt. I’ve been able to renew the notes, but now they have to be paid, and with interest the whole sum is three thousand dollars. So you can see that I have enough on my mind just at present.”

As he talked Julia realized that she could not help him.

“The very best thing,” she said, “is for you to go at once to your father. It’s a large sum, but for a year or two you can economize, and it will be worth a great deal to get this load off your mind.”

“I don’t know,” and Philip sighed heavily, at the same time closing with a snap the watch-case in which he carried the picture of Adelaide Cain.

Except for the danger of offending Philip, Julia would have liked to laugh at his feeling for Adelaide Cain. Adelaide was a distant cousin of his, several years his senior, who had been engaged several times. She was fond of attention; and as her latest engagement had been broken off the past summer, she had let Philip dance attendance upon her while she was travelling with Mrs. Blair’s party in Europe. Philip had imagined that she really cared for him, and had written her many letters after his return. At last Miss Cain had announced her engagement to another. Philip felt greatly aggrieved by this news. His self-love had been injured. Yet, if he had been willing to admit it, his present discomfort was caused by his money loss rather than by the loss of the friendship of Adelaide Cain. But it relieved his feelings a little to complain of the unkindness of this fickle young lady.

“Now make a clean breast of it to your father,” cried Julia in parting. But Philip merely shrugged his shoulders.

June came in as a hot month, making harder the final examinations of the year. There was hardly a Radcliffe girl who did not go about with a wilted air, as if life had lost all its charm. The cool corners of Fay House were occupied by students, and the beauty of the tree-shaded streets and the flower-laden gardens was wasted on them.

Julia, Ruth, and even the discreet Pamela herself were no better than their fellows in this matter of examinations. Pamela, indeed, was especially nervous in her dread of falling below “A” in something. With the hope of a scholarship before her, she felt that she could afford nothing less than perfection. Julia and Ruth, coaching each other in Latin and English, studied throughout long, fragrant evenings, when they would infinitely have preferred sitting idly on Mrs. Colton’s little piazza.

On her way from town one day as she stepped on the open car, Julia saw Philip upon the running-board. He carried his dress-suit case, and in a hurried glance Julia saw that he looked worn and tired.

“Why, what is it?” she asked, as he took a seat beside her.

“What is what?”

“Why, you have a very melancholy air.”

“I thought I told you that I had several things to worry me.”

“And I advised you to tell your father.”

“Well, I’ve told him. I’m going in town to tell him something else now, and also to bid my mother and Edith good-bye. They sail for Europe to-morrow.”

“To sail to-morrow? Why, how strange! They will miss your Class Day.”

“_My_ Class Day!” Philip laughed sharply. “_My_ Class Day! Why, I haven’t any Class Day. I haven’t any Class, for that matter.”

Julia was almost overcome by what he had said. In the first place, she found it almost impossible to realize that Edith was starting for Europe without letting her know her plans—without bidding her good-bye. At least at the first moment it had been very hard to understand this; if Philip’s second statement should prove true, that he was to have no Class Day, it threw some light on Edith’s departure. The car thundered over Harvard Bridge; a fresh breeze blew from the river, and life seemed a little better worth living than it had a half-hour before. Julia looked down the river toward the city. Her eyes fixed themselves on the tower of the old gaol, and on the streets that ran up the hill, until at last they rested on the golden dome of the State House. The golden dome seemed to burn itself into her brain, and whenever again she thought of this interview with Philip it seemed to dance before her eyes.

“What do you mean, Philip, about your Class Day?”

“Why, just what I said. I’m going to throw it all up. I told you that if I couldn’t straighten things out I wouldn’t stay. Well, I’ve slipped up entirely on one of my examinations, and that has settled the question of my degree. My father is beside himself, he is so disappointed. He’s making a great fuss about that money, too. I suppose that he’ll pay it, but I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t pay any Class Day bills, too. So that even if I could stay for my degree, I couldn’t have much fun Class Day. I’m going to cut it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I’m going to cut it all—Cambridge, College, everything.”

“But the Law School—you are coming back to the Law School?”

“No, indeed, I’ve had enough of study.”

Had Philip looked closely at Julia he might have noticed an involuntary smile. It did not seem to Julia as if in the past few months Philip had been overworked.

“Yes,” he continued, “I’m going on a ranch, or something of that kind. Jim Devereux is out in Dakota, and he has always been asking me to come out. I’ll go for the summer and see what chance there is for a fellow out there.”

“But I can’t help thinking how disappointed your mother and Edith will be. I know that Edith has set her heart on your Class Day. Why, her dress is all ready. She wrote me about it the other day.”

“Well, she could wear it just the same if she weren’t going away. There are others in the Class, and she has had invitations. But my mother won’t stay. They’re going straight to London. Anyway, Edith isn’t really out yet, and next year will be time enough for her Class Day.”

Philip’s tone made Julia think of the boy who whistled to keep his courage up. They were near the Square.

“I hope I’ll see you soon,” she said, as Philip began to gather up his belongings preparatory to leaving the car.

Philip paused for a moment, bending down to shake hands with her before jumping off. “I am not quite sure,” he said hesitatingly. “I should like to have a talk with you, but I am really going away at once.” Before she could ask him when, he had swung himself down and was hastening toward the Yard. He had murmured an explanation about an engagement, and Julia had taken this as an apology for his leaving her so abruptly. As she recalled the interview word by word, she wished that she might have had a good talk with Edith. The next day was so hot that Julia went down to Rockley for Sunday, and there, naturally enough, she found them all talking of Philip’s failure to get his degree. “It all comes,” said Mr. Barlow, “from letting a boy have his own way in everything. I suppose that Philip has never had an ungratified wish. When his father was in college students had to study. I know how it was, for we were in the same class. But now—why, study is merely incidental. They elect this or they elect that, and it is all a matter of whim.”

“So students were altogether perfect in your day, Uncle Robert,” said Julia a little mischievously. “Then it wasn’t you who told me of a whole class that was at least half expelled?”

“Rusticated, my dear, or suspended; not expelled,” responded Mr. Barlow with a smile. “Oh, I dare say that we were not exactly perfect, but then, you know boys will be boys.”

“Yes, but as I understand it, Philip hasn’t even been rusticated, and still less expelled. It’s only that he can’t get his degree this year.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Barlow, “it seems to me that that is bad enough.”

“Oh,” interposed Brenda, “I shouldn’t wonder if he’d get it next year. Philip always could get anything he wanted if he’d take the trouble.”

“It’s a pity that he hadn’t taken the trouble this year. Really, I sympathize with his father. He has spent much money on Philip, and here he sees him leave Cambridge with a kind of stigma, for that is what it amounts to. I doubt that that ever happened to a Blair before. They may never have been brilliant, but they’ve always had a respectable standing in college. I don’t wonder that Mr. Blair is annoyed.”

“But Edith,” cried Brenda, “just think of Edith! She told me when she came home last autumn that she was very tired of Europe, and here she is dragged off again at a few days’ notice, and she wanted so much to have a jolly Class Day. Even if Philip isn’t there she might manage to have a good time. She has as many invitations as I have, and there are Tom Hearst and Will Hardon and all the others whom she knows so well.”

“Remember, Brenda,” cried Mrs. Barlow warningly, “that you are going this year only by special favor. You are a year younger than you ought to be on your first Class Day.”

“I know it, I know it, mamma, but I shall enjoy it just as well as if I were a year older. Besides, I shall go next year, too,” and Brenda pirouetted several times around the piazza.

Later in the evening, as Julia sat on the piazza looking out at sea, at the lamps revolving in the distant lighthouse and the moon rising from the water, her thoughts still lingered with Philip. The moon, at first a large crimson disk near the horizon, had been transformed into a smaller golden sphere nearer the zenith, and still Julia sat there wondering if Philip had left Cambridge, wondering if he would become a ranchman, wondering if he would think it worth while ever to come back for his degree.

Fay House, when Julia returned to it, had begun to take on its summer expression. The finals were over, and the entrance examinations had not begun. Very few girls were visible in the house, although there was a double set on the tennis ground and a group watching the game. But within there was an almost deathly stillness. The conversation room no longer re-echoed to undergraduate quips and jokes, and the little brass figures, appliquéed to the black wooden pillars of the mantle-piece as Polly had described them, gazed on deserted chairs. The magazines and periodicals were strewn untidily on the tables. Into this room Julia wandered this Monday afternoon. She fingered some of the magazines idly and then she turned toward the window. As she did so she gave a start, for there in a chair with her handkerchief over her face was a girl. Evidently she was asleep, for she did not stir as Julia drew near. The sight of the Vermont girl there—for it was Pamela—seemed to Julia like an echo of something that had happened. She remembered that it was in this very corner of this very room she had found Pamela looking so forlorn on the day of the first Idler reception. As she gazed at her now, Julia realized that in her absorption of the past few weeks, with a kind of unintentional selfishness, she had really hardly seen Pamela. Indeed, she had scarcely thought of her. Julia’s approach wakened Pamela, and as she pulled the handkerchief from her face, Julia noticed that she looked worn and thinner than usual.

“How cool you look!” Pamela exclaimed, as Julia took her hand. Pamela herself wore a stiffly starched shirt waist of rather clumsy cut, a high linen collar, and a heavy woollen skirt. Julia, in an écru muslin finished with a ruffle at the wrist and a soft ribbon at the neck, appeared in contrast the picture of comfort.

“What are you going to do this summer, Pamela?” asked Julia suddenly. She wondered if Pamela might not be worrying about the future. As the latter seemed to hesitate over her reply, she added, “Why couldn’t you come home with me to dinner, and then ride somewhere with me on the electric cars, to Newton, or to Arlington, if that would suit you better?”

“Oh, I wish that I could!” cried Pamela. “But you know I am busy still at Miss Batson’s. Couldn’t you call for me after tea?”

“Yes, indeed. Will seven o’clock be too early?”

“Oh, I can be ready then, easily.”

Julia was prompt at the appointed hour, and before Pamela could interpose she was warmly greeted by Miss Batson and introduced to three of the boarders who were seated on the steps.

As they reached the car, Julia, with her arm in Pamela’s, said rather brusquely, “You haven’t failed in your finals, have you?”

“Why, no! But why do you ask?” Pamela’s tone was one of extreme surprise.

“Oh, I wished to startle you into telling me what troubles you.”

“Perhaps I am foolish,” responded Pamela, “but I’ve been wondering whether it’s really worth while to go on. Perhaps I oughtn’t to come back next year.”

“I suppose you haven’t had a mark below ‘B.’”

“I’ve had only one ‘B.’”

“And everything else was an ‘A’?”

“Yes,” she replied, “but I am afraid that you think me very conceited to tell you.”

“Not when I asked you. Well, if the trouble isn’t marks, it must be money. I should think that you might tell me just _what_ it is. You do not look as well as you did when you entered, and you were not exactly robust then.”

“I suppose it’s partly the hot weather,” responded Pamela, sighing. “Then, besides, I’m pretty tired of Miss Batson and her household. I’m glad that she is going to close her house this summer. Otherwise I might be tempted to stay on—to save expense. She’s going to take the first vacation she has had in years, and visit some relations in the West, and she has been able to rent her house for three months.”

“Then I suppose that you will go up to Vermont for the summer?”

Pamela received this question in silence, and Julia saw that it had been ill-advised. Thus for several minutes they rode on without speaking. The cool air was refreshing; the electric lights here and there at the side of the road threw strange shadows from the trees. There was a certain pleasant weirdness in the scene.

Pamela was the first to speak. “I do not really wish to go up to Vermont. They think that I ought to teach. They think that it is foolish for me to continue at college when I might be earning. Besides, my aunt’s house is crowded now, and there isn’t a room that I could have. If I knew what I ought to do next year, I could tell better about this summer.”

“Do next year?” repeated Julia. “Why, you wouldn’t think of doing anything but come back to college—with _your_ record.”

If Julia had noticed Pamela’s smile, she would have known that its wanness was not entirely the result of the flickering electric light. Her voice, however, betrayed her.

“It may not be wholly a matter of choice.”

“But you’ve applied for a scholarship?” Julia realized now that the question was a question of money.

“Yes, but I can’t know about it until the autumn. There are so few scholarships and so many applicants.”

“I suppose that we ought to turn our faces homeward. It’s getting late,” said Julia.

Then as they waited by the side of the road for the car bound Cambridge-ward, Julia saw what she ought to do. During the ride she had been pondering, and had it been any one but Pamela she would have made an offer of direct help for the next college year. This would have meant so little to her, and so much to the Vermont girl. But there was something in Pamela—an independence of spirit in spite of her shrinking demeanor—that prevented her doing this. Yet now as from a clear sky she seemed to hear the echo of a speech that had actually fallen unheeded on her ears a week or two before. It was the lamentation of a friend of Mrs. Barlow’s who bewailed her young son’s deficiencies in Greek.

“It’s disgraceful that Teddy is so unwilling to study, and his father is determined to have him enter with Greek. If I had my way he’d give it up. Now I suppose that we shall have to have a tutor. It will be a nuisance to have an extra man in the house, but I suppose it can’t be helped. If it were anything but Greek I suppose that we might have a woman, but as it is, I suppose that we must make the best of it.”

As this conversation came back to her, Julia wondered that at the time she had not thought of Pamela. Possibly it was because the words had not been addressed to her directly that they had made so little impression. That very night she would write to Mrs. Hadwin, and if it was not too late, she would do her best to get the position for Pamela.

“Pamela,” she whispered, after they had taken their seats in the returning car, “Pamela, I feel almost certain that I can find something for you to do this summer. If it isn’t the thing that I have in mind this minute it will be something similar. I can’t say more at present, but I wish that you would trust me and believe me entirely your friend.”

“Thank you, of course I trust you. You have been so kind ever since the very first day. You remember my fountain pen?”

Both girls laughed at the remembrance.

“Because I’ve been so despondent this evening you mustn’t think that I am always forlorn,” said Pamela, “only it is very hard sometimes for a girl to work out things all alone, and I really have no one to advise me.”

“Sometimes I feel very lonely, too,” said Julia; and as Pamela’s hand touched hers in a mute response, she felt that they were now really going to understand each other.

That very evening Julia wrote to Mrs. Hadwin, and so strong did she make her case that before the end of the week all the arrangements had been made, and Pamela was the engaged tutor for Teddy. Her term was to last three months from the last week in June, and Pamela was to accompany the family to the seashore. The change of air was in itself likely to be good for Pamela, and Julia congratulated herself on the sudden thought that had brought this piece of good luck to her friend.

“Yet if Pamela had not been able to show such a fine record for her work in the classics, any effort of mine might have been perfectly useless.”