Chapter XXV: A Strange Meeting

One afternoon soon after the mid-years, Julia was at work in the stack of Gore Hall, the Harvard Library. For the past two years she had been delving deep into American History, and in a certain research course she felt more interest than in almost any other of her studies. She hoped before graduating to have accumulated notes enough for the basis of a monograph. Several such monographs had been published, under the auspices of Radcliffe, on other subjects besides history, and they had been praised for their originality. Julia’s chosen subject dealt with the early history of the country, and at present she was studying the formation of the government. A special card gave her access to the great collection of books in the Harvard Library stack. Her professor suggested the books to be considered each week, and she submitted her notes to him and reported what she had read.

On this particular day, surrounded by the many volumes of “Eaton’s Debates,” she was absorbed in tracing some difficult point. The long windows of the wing where she sat let in so much light that she did not realize that it was growing late. Accordingly as she pushed her way through the doors into the Main Library she was surprised to find it deserted of students and attendants. The silence and gloom were disturbing. There was no doubt but that she was locked in alone in the great building. What the possibilities were for her getting out before morning she did not know. The accessible windows were all too high from the ground to permit her to jump out, even if she had any way of opening them. Figures were passing through the Yard, but she disliked to make a disturbance by knocking on the glass. If some student should come to her rescue, he might thoughtlessly mention her plight, and then what joy for the “Lampoon” and the daily paper, and any other publication that enjoyed a chance to laugh at Radcliffe girls! Julia stood there, looking from the window rather disconsolately. She did not doubt but that before night should set in a watchman or a janitor or some one else would appear on the scene to free her.

But a few hours in the building would be very tiresome, especially as she had no light, and therefore could not pass the time reading. An hour, perhaps, went by, and still Julia saw no way of getting out of the building. She wondered what Ruth would think when she failed to appear for dinner. She moved restlessly around the delivery room, staying as long as possible near the windows. She hoped that some woman might pass this corner of the Yard, who would pay attention to her, if she tapped on the window. But all who approached passed so far from the Library building that she saw little chance of carrying out her plan. Had she been there hours or weeks? The unemotional Julia was actually shedding a tear or two, though she felt ashamed of herself for her weakness. How it would have amused Polly to see her usually calm friend as disturbed as any one else would have been by her misadventure. After another period of hopeless standing by the window, Julia’s heart gave a sudden bound. A strangely familiar figure was coming near. But no! It could not be! Yet it was strange that any one else should walk with that long, quick step, with head bent after a fashion that she had not seen in any one for three years.

This person, to be sure, wore a soft hat, and he looked a little heavier than Philip, but no one else could walk in that way, and Philip had always been devoted to those short sack coats. Yet Philip was two thousand miles away, and Julia began to think that her little period of imprisonment was wearing on her brain. How she ventured to do it she often wondered afterwards. But jumping up on the window sill she unfastened the window, and then jumping down she managed to lift it an inch or two. The slight noise attracted the attention of the young man she had observed, who was now standing directly beneath the window.

“Locked in!” she called to him. “Could you find some one to let me out?”

“Why, yes,” he replied, “at least I’ll try; but couldn’t you—” here he seemed to measure the distance with his eye—“but couldn’t you jump out?”

The sound of the stranger’s voice reassured Julia; he was certainly Philip, but he had not recognized her. He probably thought her one of the Library assistants. But although the distance was not too great for safety it seemed to Julia unwise to jump. She did not like the idea of attracting attention; there were likely to be passers-by at any minute.

“Come,” said the young man, “this would really be the best way. One foot on my shoulder, I’ll give you the word when no one is passing, and you must be quick, too.”

Had Julia not known the identity of her rescuer she probably would not have accepted his offer. But the prospect of noting his amazement was too good to refuse.

“You’ll do it?” he asked a little impatiently.

“Yes.”

She said no more, for she was not yet ready to have him recognize her. Besides, in the dim light she might have made a mistake. Watching his chance until there was absolutely no one in sight of the building, the young man at last gave the word.

Julia’s gymnasium practice was of great service to her now. Opening the window wider, she sat for a minute on the sill. Then as she put her foot on Philip’s shoulder, by an adroit movement she maintained her balance while he knelt low enough to permit her to jump to the ground.

In a second she was on her feet, and no one but Philip had perceived her strange exit from the building.

Her hat had fallen off, receiving the full force of the jar of reaching the ground; and Philip, turning to speak to her, was amazed to find that it was Julia whom he had assisted. He gave ready answers to her questions, wondering that she did not know of his intended return.

“I haven’t heard from Edith lately,” said Julia, “and we have all been so busy with the mid-years that we might have failed to hear an even greater piece of news than your coming, although this really is very important,” she hastened to add, lest Philip should think her altogether ungracious. “It’s nearly three years since you went away,” she continued after a moment’s silence.

“Is it? But tell me, Julia, how did you manage to shut yourself up in the Library? Is it the fashion for Radcliffe girls to do that kind of thing now? In my day you used to be more conventional. But we must hurry to a car, you are hungry.”

“Oh, indeed I am not,” returned Julia. “Please let us walk—that is, if you have time. They must have finished dinner at Mrs. Colton’s half an hour ago, and I’d so much rather know what you have been doing these three years. I have only heard general rumors from Edith and the others.”

So Philip, nothing loath, gave her a glowing account of life on the ranch, of the various people he had met and the things he had learned. “It was harder sometimes than studying,” he said, “the life out there. But it did me good, and now I’m going to work in a different way. I’ve promised my father to work for my degree. What a fool I was to cut those examinations! I’ll have a good half-year’s work to make them up. But I may have time for a little law, too; I’ve promised my father to try for the bar. Even if I do not practise, it will be a good foundation for business. The old gentleman rather wants me to look after things and relieve him.”

Mr. Blair had never been considered an overworked man, and Julia smiled at the thought of Philip’s relieving him. But Philip to-day was evidently very different from the Philip of three years before. He no longer spoke in a drawl and the note of personal vanity was lacking. When they reached Mrs. Colton’s, Philip went indoors with Julia, and Ruth was louder than Julia had been in her expressions of surprise at his return to Cambridge. He told the story of the rescue in a fashion that was amusing, if embarrassing to Julia. Looking at him as he sat by the droplight in Mrs. Colton’s library, she could see that he had grown stouter and browner, and that no one could now accuse him of looking too effeminate.

Ruth and Mrs. Colton congratulated Julia on getting safely out of the building.

“Of course it wasn’t as bad as if you had been in the Agassiz or Peabody Museums, with stuffed animals and bottled fishes or old Indian relics to keep you company.”

“Yes, I’m thankful enough,” responded Julia; “also that I was rescued without being arrested as an escaped burglar.”

“That reminds me,” said Philip, starting up, “that I must return and see that that window is fastened. I must hunt up a janitor or something of the kind.”

So almost before they realized it, Philip went off, promising to call on them soon.

Then Ruth and Mrs. Colton insisted on Julia’s having the dinner that they had saved for her; and Julia, thinking over the happenings of the past two hours, realized that Philip had neither referred to that last Class Day interview, nor had he thanked her for her advice nor apologized for his long silence, and yet she was sure that she and Philip were better friends than they had ever been before.

“Julia,” said Ruth the next morning, as the two sat in the conversation room, preparing and looking over some of the notes of their Shakespeare lesson. “Julia, I do not wonder that Philip and his friends used to laugh at us just a little when we were Freshmen, if we were at all like those two meandering through the hall.”

“But, my dear, we never walked with our arms about each other’s waists, nor scampered through the halls, nor—”

“Nor wore pigtails,” continued Ruth, gazing again at the Freshmen. “One of those girls, by the way, Minnie Crosfut, has been confiding some of her woes and sorrows to me. She thinks that the upper class girls are not sufficiently devoted to prayers. She thinks that attendance should be compulsory, and that it isn’t fair for Freshmen to have more than Seniors.”

“What an idea! Freshmen are no more obliged to go than Seniors. We all know that at ten minutes of nine every morning there will be prayers in the Auditorium, and as ministers of three different denominations officiate in turn, most girls can suit their special theological tastes, but no one _has_ to go. There are apt to be more Freshmen there, but I’m afraid that the whole thing turns largely on the question of convenience. Girls who have a nine o’clock recitation are apt to come down here early enough for prayers. Freshmen from a distance have usually promised their families before leaving home.”

“And Pamela?”

“Oh, Pamela comes because she is a minister’s daughter, and because her conscience is always active. But most of us, I am sure, attend prayers two or three times a week. Tell your Freshman that she should be more observing. And now, to work; I am half sorry that we took this Shakespeare course.”

“Julia! You to express such a sentiment! I am astonished. Why, it seems to me the finest course we have had this year; at least it has meant more to me. Every word now in every play that I read seems to have such depth. I am always looking for the hidden sense. Yet I do wish that sometimes the meaning were a little plainer. What do you make of this, ‘Oh, such a deed as from the body of contraction plucks the very soul’? What is contraction?”

“Why, he gave us the note, ‘Power of making a contract.’”

“Yes, I should have written it on the margin, but my book is so covered with notes that sometimes I trust to memory. I am anxious to finish this this morning, so as to be free to enjoy the party this evening, for this afternoon I am obliged to go to town.”

“Oh, yes, the party, the Sophomores’ farewell to us. I wonder what they have planned? I hear that it is to be something very original. There’s Polly with her camera; perhaps she knows.”

But Polly, although she had more than a mere idea of what the Sophomore party would be, declared she was pledged to secrecy, and she invited Julia and Ruth to go upstairs with her while she took a picture of the “Fair Harvard” room.

This was a recitation room on the second floor, and Polly had been waiting a time when it should have no classes, and when the light should be favorable for a photograph. She meant to have a photograph of every nook and corner of the old building for the album that she was making. The “Fair Harvard” room deserved its name, for the author of the famous college song had married a member of the Fay family, and in a room of the old house he had written the well-known stanzas. His portrait and an autograph of the poem, now hanging between the windows, gave the room more interest than belonged to any other in the whole building.

“You will give me a print?” begged Ruth when she had finished.

“No, indeed, not one.”

“Why, Polly Porson, are you growing mean?”

“No, generous!”

“It doesn’t look like it. I have been expecting a whole set of your photographs. Why do you refuse?”

“Come downstairs and I’ll show you.”

Julia and Ruth followed Polly to the bulletin board in the anteroom, whereon were displayed the cards of girls who were ready to do various things by which they could earn a little money. There was a notice from one girl that she was prepared to paint the Radcliffe seal in water colors, and from another that she would execute the Harvard or the Radcliffe seals in burnt wood. Other girls advertised that they were anxious to do mending or typewriting. One girl offered to frame photographs in passe-partout, and others to make hand-painted picture frames.

“There!” cried Polly, pointing to an excellent photograph of the Fay House library, with a card stating that complete sets of Radcliffe views could be obtained from the girl who had made this print.

“If I should give my photographs away, I should be taking money out of her pocket. You and Julia and almost every girl in the class can easily afford to buy Madge Burlap’s photographs, and I happen to know that she needs the money. She’s one of the girls of whom the college is bound to be proud. Since she’s willing to earn, she must be encouraged in her efforts. That’s why you can’t have my photographs—for love or money.”

“I accept your apology, Polly, and now good-bye until this evening.” Seizing Julia by the arm, Ruth hurried her off to the Shakespeare class.

When evening came, the Seniors were welcomed by the Sophomores at the house of one of their members, whose house in Cambridge was large and attractive. Across one side of the long drawing-room was a table covered with a crimson cloth. When the Sophomores and their guests had all assembled, a double quartette from the former class sang an amusing song of greeting, and then at a given signal the cloth was lifted, and one by one the Seniors were invited to come forward and gaze upon the photographs that had been hidden under the cloth. Each Senior had a book given her in which to record her guess as to the identity of the girls whose photographs were here displayed.

“They’re all Seniors,” said Madge Burlap, “although you mightn’t think it, Seniors at the age of ten or under; and if you don’t recognize yourselves at that age, why we shall think that you are less clever than you profess to be.”

The Sophomores had been at work all winter, collecting the pictures that they now displayed. They had tried to get them, so far as they could, from friends of the Senior rather than from the girl herself, as they wished the class as a whole to be surprised by the collection. Besides photographs, there were a few miniatures and daguerreotypes, while of Pamela and one or two other girls there were only tintypes to show.

“You are not asked,” said the President of the class, “to say whether the homeliest child has grown into the prettiest Senior, or the reverse; we shall give the prize for plain, unvarnished guesses.”

When the books were all in, it was found that Pamela had come the nearest to guessing the whole number, although even she had made two mistakes. The prize was an order on the class photographer for a dozen photographs, and everything considered, perhaps no one could have appreciated this more than the Vermont girl.

As the spring wore on, the entertainments offered the Seniors came, as Polly said, “fast and furious.”

Grateful though the class was for all the attentions lavished on them, they enjoyed these various parties much less than the entertainments given them in their Freshman year. Then four years of college life lay before them. Now it was nearly all behind; and though they appreciated the dignity of being Seniors, wearing the cap and gown, still not a few of them would have given much to be at the beginning rather than at the end.

Polly was one exception to this sentimentality, which toward the spring recess seemed to take possession of her class.

“Four years more of examinations, a whole year of English A, a year of daily themes, unexpected hour examinations in History I, at least two years of superior smiles from girls who know more than we do,—no, thank you! I am very glad to let the dead past bury its dead. But if any of you really long for four years more, I should advise you to return for a season of post-graduate work. Any one who distinguishes herself sufficiently may be the sword to open the Harvard oyster from which to extract the Ph.D.”

“Yes, if we could be Freshmen with Seniors’ experience life would indeed be ideal, although as it is, it is real and terribly earnest, and I wonder that we can take time even in the recess for Julia’s house party.”