Chapter XVIII: A Partial Eclipse

THE wedding day was set for the second of July, and after that decision had been reached, Peggy professed a complete loss of interest in the subject. When Graham consulted her on details more or less important, she gave him a reluctant attention.

"I tell you, Graham, I don't want to think about it. I never did enjoy mixed flavors. I shall have years and years of being Mrs. Graham Wylie, fifty or sixty probably, and there's only a few months left of my college life."

"If you feel so keenly on the subject," teased Graham, "we'd better postpone our wedding, and let you take a post-graduate course of ten years or so."

"That won't be necessary. I know I shall love my wedding clothes, and my wedding day, and being married to you, and everything. But if I let myself think of that, I'll spoil this, don't you see? It would be like eating ice-cream with soup."

"I suppose I shall be allowed to call occasionally."

"Don't be silly! Of course I should be wretched if I didn't see you every day. But unless you have to settle something very important about South America, don't ask my opinion. Up to the twelfth of June, I'm a college senior, first, last and all the time."

Peggy was as good as her word. As far as her conversation revealed, she never looked beyond Commencement Day. And if it was inevitable that her thoughts should be more unruly than her tongue, her mental excursions into the future were surprisingly few. Peggy had never been a girl to discount to-day in favor of to-morrow, and this life-long habit aided her in her determination to extract the full flavor from the present.

While Peggy had thoroughly enjoyed her college life, college associations had naturally never meant to her what they mean to a girl who leaves home to complete her education. Although she was popular in her class, her closest friends were the girls who had been her intimates long before her high-school days, even, and she enjoyed her home so thoroughly that it never occurred to her to regret having missed the associations of dormitory life. But now she gave herself so unreservedly to her college interests that no on-looker would have dreamed that any event of special importance had been scheduled for early July.

As a matter of fact, Peggy could hardly have done justice to her varied duties in connection with Commencement, had she brought to them a divided attention. Her knack at rhyming had resulted in her election as class poet, and the same gift, doubtless, had caused her to be chosen one of the editorial staff of the Annual, gotten out each spring by the senior class. Moreover she had a part, though a small one, in the class play that was to be given out-of-doors and promised to be one of the most interesting features of commencement week. Since even for seniors there were lessons to be learned, and examinations to be passed, it is no wonder that Peggy found herself quite occupied without giving thought to the great changes on ahead.

While she struggled with her poem, which she was determined as all class laureates, to make a masterpiece, and scribbled off jokes for the Annual and practised for the play, and studied in her odd minutes, the days had a most disconcerting fashion of shooting by without regard to speed regulations. Every Saturday night awoke in Peggy's mind the same incredulity. Another week was gone--only it couldn't be, for it was no time at all since last Sunday morning. She had an unreasonable impulse to clutch at the flying hours and hold them fast.

But the last spring of her college life was not to be altogether a season of flowers. One afternoon at the close of recitations, Peggy hunted up Ruth who had agreed to go with her for a call on Mary Donaldson.

"Ruth, I'm sorry, but Priscilla and I are going to be busy until after dinner time, probably. It's the Annual again."

"That old Annual takes so much time," scolded Ruth, objecting on principle to anything that separated her from Peggy for these few precious weeks. Poor Ruth was trying to imitate Peggy's example and not look ahead, but there were times when the coming desolation settled over her spirits like a chilling fog. With Peggy and Graham in South America, and Nelson in Oklahoma, Ruth felt that existence would be flat and flavorless.

"Yes, I know it takes time." Peggy resolutely ignored the undertone of tragedy in Ruth's voice. "But somebody has to do it, and anyway, it's fun."

It was due to her lingering to cheer the despondent Ruth that Peggy was the last of the Annual staff to reach the class room, which for that particular evening had been promoted to the dignity of an editorial sanctum. Peggy made her entry on a somewhat hilarious scene. Everybody was laughing, or so Peggy thought. Had she been more observant she would have noticed that Priscilla's face wore no smile, but a look of anxiety, bordering on distress.

"What's the joke?" inquired Peggy, as she took her seat. Though the gathering was made up of college seniors and was therefore a dignified, deliberative assembly, its proceedings were sometimes as informal as if they had been merely a group of high-school girls.

By way of answer, a sheet of card-board that evidently had made the rounds was put in her hand. Peggy looked at it curiously. At the top, under the heading, "The Misfit," was a clever caricature representing a small man attired in garments much too large for him. His broad-brimmed hat came down over his ears, his overcoat trailed on the ground, while the umbrella he carried was more than double his height. But the artist had avoided giving the impression that he was a masquerading child by bringing into prominence a somewhat scraggly mustache.

Peggy smiled appreciatively at the undoubted humor of the drawing and gave her attention to the verses below. But though they showed quite as much ability as the illustration, the effect of reading them was to erase the smile from her lips, leaving her gravely attentive. The laughter had quieted. She was aware that the girls were all watching her, and though she did not raise her eyes, she knew instinctively that Priscilla's face wore a look of apprehension.

The previous spring, one of the most popular men in the English department had resigned to devote himself to literary work, and his place had been nominally filled by a young man with good credentials but no experience. He had proved a great disappointment, for whatever his attainments, he lacked the ability to impart; while in contrast to the enthusiasm which Professor Baer's lectures had aroused, his classes seemed veritable refrigerating plants. Peggy knew that the seniors who had taken his courses were complaining bitterly that they had been "stung," and had congratulated herself that her own work in English had been continued with another member of the faculty.

In the verses before her, all the resentment of the students toward an incompetent teacher, following an able and popular one, was expressed with diabolical cleverness. The fact that the present incumbent was named Fox, and that he followed Professor Baer, had already been the theme of innumerable jokes, and the author of the verses had used it as the motive of her lines, so that there was no chance that even the outsider would remain ignorant of the instructor satirized.

Peggy read the verses over more than once in order to gain time. She was sorely tempted to say nothing. Peggy was under no illusions regarding the path of the reformer. It was vastly easier, vastly pleasanter, to let things go. It was not that she had any cowardly shrinking from hard knocks, but now, almost at the close of her college life, she was not in the mood to antagonize any one. She loved everything about the college, its gray stone buildings draped in ivy, its campus dotted with stately trees, the class-rooms and the laboratories, the dignified president, the professors and the girls--oh, most of all, the girls. She loved to believe in their affection, their admiration. Never in her life had popularity meant as much to her as now. And yet in spite of her distaste, she knew she had no choice. She must disagree, antagonize, anger.

When she lifted her eyes, the room was very quiet, almost as if every one knew what she was going to say. "Awfully clever, aren't they?" Peggy spoke very deliberately. "What are they for?"

A dark-eyed girl across the room took it on herself to answer, and as soon as her lips parted, Peggy knew her for the author.

"I'd intended it for the _Atlantic Monthly_," she smiled with frank sarcasm. "But I think perhaps it's better suited to the Annual. What do you say?"

"I'm afraid I don't think it's at all suited to the Annual."

There was a little chorus of protests. "You never were in his classes, Peggy," cried some one from the rear seat. "If you'd endured what we have at the hands of that man, you'd love every line."

A burst of approving laughter showed how completely the sympathies of this group of girls were with the speaker. Half-whispered comments were being exchanged. "The stupidest lectures!" "The greatest waste of time!" Peggy was perfectly able to understand this point of view. She struggled to make the girls see hers.

"Of course that's not right. If I had been in his class I'd have been perfectly ready to go to President Eaton, and tell him how unsatisfactory everything was. But to take this way of doing it--" she looked down at the mocking lines and said with a visible effort, "Don't you think it seems a little bit cowardly--and cruel, too?"

Priscilla came to her friend's assistance. "If the faculty knew about those verses, I'm sure we'd never be allowed to put them in the Annual."

"How's the faculty to know?" demanded the criticized author, Ida Craig, with much asperity.

"Don't you think," suggested Peggy with all the diplomacy she could muster, "that since they leave it all to us, we're put on our honor to see that nothing gets in that they could object to?"

Ida smiled disagreeably. "After all," she said, "you're not the editor-in-chief, you know."

The rudeness gave Peggy the courage that she needed. "No, of course. I haven't any more voice than any of the rest of you. But if the poem goes in, I shall ask you to accept my resignation."

"In other words," exclaimed Ida, "If you can't have your own way, you'll take your dolls and go home."

"No indeed," Peggy was trying to speak calmly, but her voice shook, "But if my name appears among the editors of the Annual, it'll be taken for granted that I approve of all that is in it. I'm not willing to stand for anything like this."

"Nor I," said Priscilla. "I agree with Peggy."

Ida Craig leaned toward the girl nearest her. "Miss Combs is nothing if not original," she said in an echoing stage-whisper audible to every one in the room. But the editor-in-chief, dismayed at the prospect of losing two of her most reliable aides, hastily interposed.

"Now we mustn't get personal, girls," she said. "You know how the newspapers are always trying to make out that the members of women's organizations do nothing but quarrel. I think college graduates ought to disprove that sort of thing." She looked at Peggy rather appealingly. "I suppose you're willing to abide by the will of the majority," she said.

"If the majority vote to include 'The Misfit,'" returned Peggy, "Of course that settles it." And then as the face of the editor-in-chief brightened, she added, "But I shall have to resign, because the vote of the majority can't decide a question of right and wrong for me."

"Oh," said the editor-in-chief rather blankly, and then she quickly rallied. "We'll decide that question when we come to it," she said. "Will the meeting please come to order."

The mooted question was not put to vote till the end of the hour. "All in favor of including 'The Misfit' in the Annual," said the editor-in-chief, after the motion had been duly made, "please signify it by saying 'aye.'"

"Aye," chimed two defiant voices, that of the author and her dearest friend in the class.

"Those opposed, 'No.'"

There was a murmur of 'noes,' indicating that Peggy had won her fight, but she had none of the elation of the victor. She realized that several had not voted, and that those who had espoused her side had acted from motives of policy rather than conviction. Ida Craig was plainly offended, and as for the rest, Peggy suspected that they failed to make the fine distinction between standing up for one's principles and being determined to have one's way.

Those closing weeks of college life were not all she had hoped. Peggy fancied a reserve in the friendliness of her friends. She became unnaturally sensitive, imagining slights where none existed. She was troubled by the thought that Priscilla shared in her partial eclipse of popularity, and inclined to regard her uncompromising conscience as a decided inconvenience, if nothing worse.

But Peggy's stand was to have a tragic justification. Three weeks before Commencement the Annual came from the binders, looking very attractive in its cover of blue and white, the college colors. The editorial force had been called together to make the necessary arrangements for placing it on sale. Peggy and Priscilla had an early class Wednesday morning, and as they entered the hall on their way to the cloak-room, they encountered Phyllis Riordan, the Annual's editor-in-chief. Phyllis' greeting was more than cordial, but Peggy hardly noticed that, in her concern for the girl herself.

"Why, Phyllis," she cried. "What's the matter? You're as white as a sheet."

Phyllis looked from one to the other. "You haven't heard about Mrs. Fox?"

"What about her?" The question came simultaneously from two pairs of lips.

"She died last night."

Peggy and Priscilla uttered a shocked exclamation. They were both but slightly acquainted with the girlish wife of the unpopular professor of English, but intimacy was not needed to point the tragedy of the news. Her voice curiously tense, Phyllis continued.

"It seemed she had serious heart trouble, and the doctor thought she ought to live in a milder climate. Professor Fox has resigned, and they were to locate in southern California. And Oh, Peggy Raymond--"

She turned suddenly toward Peggy, and caught both of her hands. "Since I heard the news last evening, I haven't been able to think of anything else. Peggy, do you realize what it would have meant if we had let that poem of Ida's go in? We'd have had to destroy the whole edition of the Annual. We couldn't have done anything else."

Peggy changed color slightly, but did not speak.

"You've saved our lives," declared Phyllis, her eyes bright with tears. "If it hadn't been for you, we'd have been in the worst box of any class since the college was founded. And when I think how brave you were, standing out against us all--"

"Why, Phyllis," Peggy interposed, "I wasn't brave at all. This--this dreadful thing that has happened doesn't make me a bit more right than I was in the beginning. And I knew it, too, and yet I wasn't satisfied. I've been ready to wish I hadn't done it a hundred times. And when you call me brave, you make me desperately ashamed, for nobody knows as well as I do what a coward I've been."

"If you're cowardly, Peggy," cried Priscilla, up in arms at once, "I'm sorry for the rest of us."

"Heavens, I should say so," agreed Phyllis. And then as the signal bell sounded, the girls rushed for the cloak room. Blended with Peggy's sorrow and her sense of humility, was a gratifying certainty that the last three weeks of her college life would be all she had dreamed.