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W E L L M A N dragged down one flight of stairs from the Reading Room. Saturday afternoon and the June examinations near—Fay House bore its most deserted aspect. A sound of rustling papers in one room, the murmur of voices in another, clamored through the stillness, but they seemed only to point the fact that the machinery of the college year was running down. O n the first landing, she paused midway between the pictures of Charles I. and Henrietta M a r i a to stare out of doors. She wondered for the hundreth time through what cunning of perspective the scrap of lawn, cut into a dozen angles by buildings put down anywhere, managed to seem so spacious, through what miracle of landscape gardening it contrived to seem so sequestered. T h e grassy levels of the Common on one side, the green environs of Brattle Street on the other, appeared to add to its dimensions; but the clang of an electric-car, the rattle of an automobile, less than two rods away, brought Cambridge crowding to the college gate. Y e t after all it was cloistral. Miss Wellman continued to gaze. T h e soft stillness called to her in scores of bird-calls.. The green coolness beckoned to her in a hundred leafy stirrings. She loved it and yet she had never succeeded in making herself feel a part of it. T h e remedy lay in her own hands and yet. . . . T o be offered the class-presidency for the coming year. . . . her senior year. . . . Surely that was an honor to which any junior would leap. But how could she accept i t ? The Chaucer notes, downstairs in her locker, seemed, by a hundred voices audible only to her conscience, to be reminding her of Monday's examination. Idling was impossible for her, she decided. W i t h a sigh, she pegged slowly down a second flight of stairs. Here, doors opening level with green vistas presented further entrances to dalliance. Nothing offered refuge from this temptation. Busts of the Venus and the Hermes, staring with sightless eyes, seemed to dare her to truancy. She peeped into the Dean's room. It was tenantless, too. Titian's Bella mocked her with a pair of liquid Italian eyes that seemed anything but sightless. Miss Wellman examined the letter-board, poked into the silent Auditorium, wandered into the empty Office, came out and, with her foot on the threshold, stopped short. A n old negro was seated in the little receptionhall. H e might have walked off the boards of the vaudeville theatre or slipped out of the pages of the comic weeklies. H e was very old, very black, very bent. H i s profile presented the most striking A f r i c a n malformations of contours. T h e patches of grizzled hair distributed in tufts over his shining black skull and his wrinkled black face had a look of premeditated eccentricity. Even his clothes—they included a huge sagging umbrella, a loose alpaca coat, a black string-tie with long hanging ends—contributed to a pervading effect of a comic make-up. A n d yet something—a kind of inherent dignity in conjunction with a scrupulous neatness—prevented him from seeming ridiculous. A t Miss Wellman's approach he turned the pleading, smoky light of an extraordinary pair of eyes upon her. Moonspectacles magnified their pupils until they seemed to bulge, beetle-like, from filmed yellow whites. In their depths hung a vague look of alarm as of a congenital, racial unease. Miss Wellman retreated in the direction of the Auditorium. She sat down on the sofa that faces the Dean's room, her eyes fixed straight ahead, her eye-lids flittering. She breathed hard. Presently she heard footsteps at the main entrance— heard them stop at the little reception-hall— heard a low-voiced conversation there. After a

By I N E Z H A Y N E S

GILLMORE

every inch of her height. It seemed to stretch to its tensest every curve of her long slimness. Author of "Phoebe and Ernest," "June Jeopardy" "Please go on," Miss Wellman prompted. and ' ' Maida 's Little Shop ' ' Nora's eyes dropped to the toe of her shoe. "I can't go on," she said at last. "You're a Illustrated by Frank Van Sloun. southerner?" she asked inexplicably after anfew moments the footsteps started again. N o r a other pause. " F r o m South Carolina." O'Riley came around the corner with a dash. N o r a sighed. " Y o u see I was going to ask a " O h, Miss Wellman," she said, a definite note favor of you, but I can't. Y o u know Mabel of relief struggling with the pleasure in her tone, "I'm so glad to find you. D o come somewhere Johnson of your class?" Miss Wellman's face changed subtly. It was where we can talk. I've a great favor to ask of as if some darkening of her mood translated ityou." Miss Wellman's whole manner showed her sur- self, subcutaneously, into an actual physical prise. But she leaped irentally as well as phys- blackness. "I don't know her," she replied. ically to accept the invitation. It was a great "Naturally, one doesn't know niggers. But I've honor to have N o r a O'Riley ask a favor. F o r it seen her about the college." N o r a did not answer for a moment ;and again was the dictum of their small, self-centred college world that she was a very wonderful person she studied the toe of her shoe. " W e l l, I'm sorry indeed. Moreover she was popular and influen- to have troubled you and sorrier to have offended tial ; she was president both of the Senior Class you, but for a moment I forgot. Y o u see, Mabel and the Idler Club. Johnson's away on a geological trip. She won't Inside the Auditorium, Miss Wellman turned be back until late to-night. H e r grandfather's a flattered face to her companion. " Y o u know come down here unexpectedly from the country I'd do anything on earth for you, Miss O'Riley, ' to see her. He's very old, and he seems a little she said. A cadence, positively bewitching, rip- dazed and helpless. He's never been in Campled in her voice and that voice, it was conceded, bridge before, and he's been counting for three years on being here with Mabel. The truth of the was the most musical in college. "Have you any engagement for this after- matter is, it's on my conscience to see that he's noon?" Miss O'Riley asked briskly. looked out for. But I've got the Class Day Com"No—not exactly. I'm grinding for Chaucer, mittee on my hands this afternoon, and though but I don't have to do it. The fact is I've been it's conceivable that I may cut Judgment Day, looking about for an hour for an excuse to I can't cut that. I'm looking for somebody who'll engage to take care of him. Y o u hapcut it." pened to be the first girl I saw." Miss Wellman arose. She had the effect, more than ever, of standing at the full of her superb height. F r o m the top of this columnar fairness her face, like a lamp in a lighthouse, seemed to emit swift flashes of rage. N o r a did not move. She bore this emotional bombardment with no perceptible change of expression. Miss Wellman swept haughtily to the door. W i t h her hand on the knob, she paused, wheeled irresolutely. She came back. " M i s s O'Riley," she said. A l l the liquid drawl had gone out of her voice. The curtness of her utterance exploded her words. They came like bullets from a gun. N o r a waited, still silent, still moveless. " M i s s O'Riley, I want you to understand that if any one of my father's servants came up north —a nigger who knew his place, I mean—I'd take him about Cambridge with pleasure. But as for a northern—Miss O'Riley, I wonder if you, as a northern girl, have the remotest idea what I, as a southern girl, have been through in these three years in which I've gone to college with a nigger? I wonder if you have the faintest con"Cambridge sees many strange pictures in ception of what I feel when Ï see her studying with white girls ? W h e n I come across her talkthe month of June." ing to a group of you—I want to tear you all ' ' F i n e ! I ' l l supply you with an excuse. Y o u away from her. I wouldn't speak to her—I know M a b e l — " Miss O'Riley had begun with wouldn't take the same courses with her—. T h e the liveliest air of confidence. But, suddenly, she thought of it makes me boil with rage. D o you stopped flat. A look of intense embarrassment know what she's done for me?" Miss Wellman paused to reflect. Then she deluged her face with a thick crimson. T h e blush died away. Apparently the embarrassment went on with no diminution of intensity. "It will be all right for me to tell you this, went also, for she turned and studied Miss W e l l and it will show you—you who are yourself a man's face with an acute air of scrutiny. It was a face that, by no possibility, could go Senior President—what my feeling is. M a y unnoticed. Y o u would see first, perhaps, the' Glover drops out of our class this year—she's brilliance of the massed red-gold hair, the subtle going to be married in June. The girls have sugmodelling in the Tanagra-like features ; but later gested to me that they would like me to be classthey became merely frame and background to the president. B u t do you think that I would convirile intelligence of her look. Y o u would note sider for a moment becoming president of a class immediately the beauty of her clear gray eyes, that includes a nigger? Yes, she's ruined it all long-lashed and deep-irised ; but afterwards they for me. I've a certain feeling for the college but became a single physical element in the more I have no more feeling for my class—as a class—. salient impression of a splendid mental fearless- I've kept on with it through pride—I would not ness. T h e very carriage of her body deepened be driven away by Mabel Johnson. A n d I didn't believe that she could possibly last more this impression. It seemed to take advantage of 1

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