Betty Wales, Freshman

It was almost dark by the time she reached the landing. A noisy crowd of girls, who had evidently been out with their supper, were just coming in. They exclaimed in astonishment when her canoe shot out from the boat-house.

“It’s awfully hard to see your way,” called one officious damsel.

“I can see in the dark like an owl,” sang back Eleanor, her good-humor restored the instant her paddle touched water,–for boating was her one passion.

Ah, but it was lovely on the river! She glided around the point of an island and was alone at last, with the stars, the soft, grape-scented breezes, and the dark water. She pulled up the stream with long, swift strokes, and then, where the trees hung low over the still water, she dropped the paddle, and slipping into the bottom of the canoe, leaned back against a cushioned seat and drank in the beauty of the darkness and solitude. She had never been out on Paradise River at night. “And I shall never come again except at night,” she resolved, breathing deep of the damp, soft air. Malaria–who cared for that? And when she was cold she could paddle a little and be warm again in a moment.

Suddenly she heard voices and saw two shapes moving slowly along the path on the bank.

“Oh, do hurry, Margaret,” said one. “I told her I’d be there by eight. Besides, it’s awfully dark and creepy here.”

“I tell you I can’t hurry, Lil,” returned the other. “I turned my ankle terribly back there, and I must sit down and rest, creeps or no creeps.”

“Oh, very well,” agreed the other voice grudgingly, and the shapes sank down on a knoll close to the water’s edge.

Eleanor had recognized them instantly; they were her sophomore friend, Lilian Day, and Margaret Payson, a junior whom Eleanor greatly admired. Her first impulse was to call out and offer to take the girls back in her canoe. Then she remembered that the little craft would hold only two with safety, that the girls would perhaps be startled if she spoke to them, and also that she had come down to Paradise largely to escape Lil’s importunate demands that she spend a month of her vacation at the Day camp in the Adirondacks. So, certain that they would never notice her in the darkness and the thick shadows, she lay still in the bottom of her boat and waited for them to go on.

“It’s a pity about her, isn’t it?” said Miss Payson, after she had rubbed her ankle for a while in silence.

“About whom?” inquired Lilian crossly.

“Why, Eleanor Watson; you just spoke of having an engagement with her. She seems to have been a general failure here.”

Eleanor started at the sound of her own name, then lay tense and rigid, waiting for Lilian’s answer. She knew it was not honorable to listen, and she certainly did not care to do so; but if she cried out now, after having kept silent so long, Lilian, who was absurdly nervous in the dark, might be seriously frightened. Perhaps she would disagree and change the subject. But no —

“Yes, a complete failure,” repeated Lilian distinctly. “Isn’t it queer? She’s really very clever, you know, and awfully amusing, besides being so amazingly beautiful. But there is a little footless streak of contrariness in her–we noticed it at boarding-school,–and it seems to have completely spoiled her.”

“It is queer, if she is all that you say. Perhaps next year she’ll be – ”

“Oh, she isn’t coming back next year,” broke in Lilian. “She hates it here, you know, and she sees that she’s made a mess of it, too, though she wouldn’t admit it in a torture chamber. She thinks she has shown that college is beneath her talents, I suppose.”

“Little goose! Is she so talented?”

“Yes, indeed. She sings beautifully and plays the guitar rather well–she’d surely have made one of the musical clubs next year–and she can act, and write clever little stories. Oh, she’d have walked into everything going all right, if she hadn’t been such a goose–muddled her work and been generally offish and horrid.”

“Too bad,” said Miss Payson, rising with a groan. “Who do you think are the bright and shining stars among the freshmen, Lil?”

“Why Marion Lustig for literary ability, of course, and Emily Davis for stunts and Christy Mason for general all-around fineness, and socially–oh, let me think–the B’s, I should say, and–I forget her name–the little girl that Dottie King is so fond of. Here, take my arm, Margaret. You’ve got to get home some way, you know.”

Their voices trailed off into murmurs that grew fainter and fainter until the silence of the river and the wood was again unbroken. Eleanor sat up stiffly and stretched her arms above her head in sheer physical relief after the strain of utter stillness. Then, with a little sobbing cry, she leaned forward, bowing her head in her hands. Paradise–had they named it so because one ate there of the fruit of the tree of knowledge?

“A little footless streak!”

“An utter failure!”

What did it matter? She had known it all before. She had said those very words herself. But she had thought–she had been sure that other people did not understand it that way. Well, perhaps most people did not. No, that was nonsense. Lilian Day had achieved a position of prominence in her class purely through a remarkable alertness to public sentiment. Margaret Payson, a girl of a very different and much finer type, stood for the best of that sentiment. Eleanor had often admired her for her clear-sightedness and good judgment. They had said unhesitatingly that she was a failure; then the college thought so. Well, it was Jean Eastman’s fault then, and Caroline’s, and Betty Wales’s. Nonsense! it was her own. Should she go off in June and leave her name spelling failure behind her? Or should she come back and somehow change the failure to success? Could she?

She had no idea how long she sat there, turning the matter over in her mind, viewing it this way and that, considering what she could do if she came back, veering between a desire to go away and forget it all in the gay bustle of a New York winter, and the fierce revolt of the famous Watson pride, that found any amount of effort preferable to open and acknowledged defeat. But it must have been a long time, for when she pulled herself on to her seat and caught up the paddle, she was shivering with cold and her thin dress was dripping wet with the mist that lay thick over the river. Slowly she felt her way down-stream, pushing through the bank of fog, often running in shore in spite of her caution, and fearful every moment of striking a hidden rock or snag. Soft rustlings in the wood, strange plashings in the stream startled her. Lower down was the bewildering net-work of islands. Surely there were never so many before. Was the boat-house straight across from the last island, or a little down-stream? Which was straight across? And where was the last island? She had missed it somehow in the mist. She was below it, out in the wide mill-pond. Somewhere on the other side was the boat-house, and further down was a dam. Down-stream must be straight to the left. All at once the roar of the descending water sounded in Eleanor’s ears, and to her horror it did not come from the left. But when she tried to tell from which direction it did come, she could not decide; it seemed to reverberate from all sides at once; it was perilously near and it grew louder and more terrible every moment.

Suddenly a fierce, unreasoning fear took possession of Eleanor. She told herself sternly that there was no danger; the current in Paradise River was not so strong but that a good paddler could stem it with ease. In a moment the mist would lift and she could see the outline of one shore or the other. But the mist did not lift; instead it grew denser and more stifling, and although she turned her canoe this way and that and paddled with all her strength, the roar from the dam grew steadily to an ominous thunder. Then she remembered a gruesome legend that hung about the dam and the foaming pool in the shadow of the old mill far below, and dropped her paddle in an agony of fear. She might hurry herself over the dam in striving to escape it!

And still the deafening torrent pounded in her ears. If only she could get away from it–somewhere–anywhere just to be quiet. Would it be quiet in the pool by the mill? Eleanor slipped unsteadily into the bottom of her boat and tried to peer through the darkness at the black water, and to feel about with her hands for the current. As she did so, a bell rang up on the campus. It must be twenty minutes to ten. Eleanor gave a harsh, mirthless laugh. How stupid she had been! She would call, of course. If she could hear their bell, they could hear her voice and come for her. There would be an awkward moment of explanation, but what of that?

“Hallo! Hallo–o-o!” she called. Only the boom of the water answered.

“Hallo! Hallo–o-o!”

Again the boom of the water swallowed her cry and drowned it.

It was no use to call,–only a waste of strength.

Eleanor caught up her paddle and began to back water with all her might. That was what she should have done from the first, of course. She was cold all at once and very tired, but she would not give up yet.

She had quite forgotten that only a little while before it had not seemed to matter much what became of her. “But if I can’t keep at it all night – ” she said to the mist and the river.

CHAPTER XIX

A LAST CHANCE

Helen’s choice of closed windows in preference to invading companies of moths and June-bugs had made the room so insufferably warm that between heat and excitement Betty could not get to sleep. Instead she tossed restlessly about on her narrow couch, listening to the banging of the trolleys at the next corner and wishing she were still sitting on the breezy front seat, as the car dashed down the long hill toward the station. At length she slipped softly out of bed and opened the door. Perhaps the breeze would come in better then. As she stood for a moment testing the result of her experiment, she noticed with surprise that Eleanor’s door was likewise open. This simple fact astonished her, because she remembered that on the hottest nights last fall Eleanor had persisted in shutting and locking her door. She had acquired the habit from living so much in hotels, she said; she could never go to sleep at all so long as her door was unfastened. “Perhaps it’s all right,” thought Betty, “but it looks queer. I believe I’ll just see if she’s in bed.” So she crept softly across the hall and looked into Eleanor’s room. It was empty, and the couch was in its daytime dress, covered with an oriental spread and piled high with pillows. “I suppose she stopped on the campus and got belated,” was Betty’s first idea. “But no, she couldn’t stay down there all night, and it’s long after ten. It must be half past eleven. I’ll–I’d better consult–Katherine.”

She chose Katherine instead of Rachel, because she had heard Eleanor speak about going to Paradise, and so could best help to decide whether it was reasonable to suppose that she was still there. Rachel was steadier and more dependable, but Katherine was resourceful and quick-witted. Besides, she was not a bit afraid of the dark.

She was sound asleep, but Betty managed to wake her and get her into the hall without disturbing any one else.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Katherine, when she heard the news. “You don’t think – ”

“I think she’s lost in Paradise. It must have been pitch dark down there under the trees even before she got started, and you know she hasn’t any sense of direction. Don’t you remember her laughing about getting turned around every time she went to New York?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t seem possible to get lost on that little pond.”

“It’s bigger than it looks,” said Betty, “and there is the mist, too, to confuse her.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Does she know how to manage a boat?”

“Yes, capitally,” said Betty in so frightened a voice that Katherine dropped the subject.

“She’s lost up stream somewhere and afraid to move for fear of hitting a rock,” she said easily. “Or perhaps she’s right out in the pond by the boat-house and doesn’t dare to cross because she might go too far down toward the dam. We can find her all right, I guess.”

“Then you’ll come?” said Betty eagerly.

“Why, of course. You weren’t thinking of going alone, were you?”

“I thought maybe you’d think it was silly for any one to go. I suppose she might be at one of the campus houses.”

“She might, but I doubt it,” said Katherine. “She was painfully intent on solitude when she left here. Now don’t fuss too long about dressing.”

Without a word Betty sped off to her room. She was just pulling a rain-coat over a very meagre toilet when Katherine put her head in at the door. “Bring matches,” she said in a sepulchral whisper. Betty emptied the contents of her match-box into her ulster pocket, threw a cape over her arm for Eleanor, and followed Katherine cat-footed down the stairs. In the lower hall they stopped for a brief consultation.

“Ought we to tell Mrs. Chapin?” asked Betty doubtfully.

“Eleanor will hate us forever if we do,” said Katherine, “and I don’t see any special advantage in it. If we don’t find her, Mrs. Chapin can’t. We might tell Rachel though, in case we were missed.”

“Or we might leave a note where she would find it,” suggested Betty. “Then if we weren’t missed no one need know.”

“All right. You can go more quietly; I’ll wait here.” Katherine sank down on the lowest stair, while Betty flew back to scribble a note which she laid on Rachel’s pillow. Then the relief expedition started.

It was very strange being out so late. Before ten o’clock a girl may go anywhere in Harding, but after ten the streets are deserted and dreadful. Betty shivered and clung close to Katherine, who marched boldly along, declaring that it was much nicer outdoors than in, and that midnight was certainly the top of the evening for a walk.

“And if we find her way up the river we can all camp out for the night,” she suggested jovially.

“But if we don’t find her?”

Katherine, who had noticed Betty’s growing nervousness, refused to entertain the possibility.

“We shall,” she said.

“But if we don’t?” persisted Betty.

“Then I suppose we shall have to tell somebody who–who could–why, hunt for her more thoroughly,” stammered Katherine. “Or possibly we’d better wait till morning and make sure that she didn’t stay all night with Miss Day. But if we don’t find her, there will be plenty of time to discuss that.”

At the campus gateway the girls hesitated.

“Suppose we should meet the night-watchman?” said Betty anxiously. “Would he arrest us?”

Katherine laughed at her fears. “I was only wondering if we hadn’t better take the path through the orchard. If we go down by the dwelling-houses we might meet him, of course, and it would be awkward getting rid of him if he has an ordinary amount of curiosity.”

“But that path is spooky dark,” objected Betty.

“Not so dark as the street behind the campus,” said Katherine decidedly, “and that’s the only alternative. Come on.”

When they had almost reached the back limit of the campus Katherine halted suddenly. Betty clutched her in terror. “Do you see any one?” she whispered. Katherine put an arm around her frightened little comrade. “Not a person,” she said reassuringly, “not even the ghost of my grandmother. I was just wondering, Betty, if you’d care to go ahead down to the landing and call, while I waited up by the road. Eleanor is such a proud thing; she’ll hate dreadfully to be caught in this fix, and I know she’d rather have you come to find her than me or both of us. But perhaps you’d rather not go ahead. It is pretty dark down there.”

Betty lifted her face from Katherine’s shoulder and looked at the black darkness that was the road and the river bank, and below it to the pond that glistened here and there where the starlight fell on its cloak of mist.

“Of course,” said Katherine after a moment’s silence, “we can keep together just as well as not, as far as I am concerned. I only thought that perhaps, since this was your plan and you are so fond of Eleanor–oh well, I just thought you might like to have the fun of rescuing her,” finished Katherine desperately.

“Do you mean for me to go ahead and call, and if Eleanor answers not to say anything to her about your having come?”

“Yes.”

“Then how would you get home?”

“Oh, walk along behind you, just out of sight.”

“Wouldn’t you be afraid?”

“Hardly.”

“But I should be taking the credit for something I hadn’t done.”

“And Eleanor would be the happier thereby and none of the rest of the world would be affected either way.”

Betty looked at the pond again and then gave Katherine a soft little hug. “Katherine Kittredge, you’re an old dear,” she said, “and if you really don’t mind, I’ll go ahead; but if she asks me how I dared to come alone or says anything about how I got here, I shall tell her that you were with me.”

“All right, but I fancy she won’t be thinking about that. The matches are so she can see her way to you. It’s awfully hard to follow a sound across the water, but if you light one match after another she can get to you before the supply gives out, if she’s anywhere near. Don’t light any till she answers. If she doesn’t answer, I’ll come down to you and we’ll walk on up the river a little way and find her there.”

“Yes,” said Betty. “Where shall you stay?”

“Oh, right under this tree, I guess,” answered Katherine carelessly.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

When Betty had fairly gone, doubts began to assail Katherine, as they have a habit of assailing impulsive people, after it is too late to pay heed to them. It occurred to her that she was cooperating in what might easily turn out to be a desperate adventure, and that it would have been the part of wisdom to enlist the services of more competent and better equipped searchers at once, without risking delay on the slender chance of finding Eleanor near the wharf. “Eleanor would have hated the publicity, but if she wants to come up here in the dark and frighten us all into hysteria she must take the consequences. And I’d have let her too, if it hadn’t been for Betty.”

An owl hooted, and Katherine jumped as nervously as Betty would have done. Poor Betty! She must be almost at the landing by this time. At that very moment a little quavering voice rang out over the water.

“Eleanor! Eleanor Watson! Eleanor! Oh, Eleanor, where are you?”

For a long moment there was silence. Then the owl hooted again. That was too much. Katherine jumped up with a bound and started down the bank toward Betty. She did not stop to find the path, and at the second step caught her foot and fell headlong. Apparently Betty did not hear her. She had not yet given up hope, for she was calling again, pausing each time to listen for the answer that did not come.

“Oh, Eleanor, Eleanor, aren’t you there?” she cried and stopped, even the courage of despair gone at last. Katherine, nursing a bruised knee on the hill above, had opened her mouth to call encouragement, when a low “Who is it?” floated across the water.

“Eleanor, is that you? It’s I–Betty Wales!” shrieked Betty.

Katherine nodded her head in silent token of “I told you so,” and slid back among the bushes to recuperate and await developments.

For the end was not yet. Eleanor was evidently far down toward the dam, close to the opposite bank. It was hard for her to hear Betty, and still harder for Betty to hear her. Her voice sounded faint and far off, and she seemed to be paralyzed with fear and quite incapable of further effort. When Betty begged her to paddle right across and began lighting matches in reckless profusion to show her the way, Eleanor simply repeated, “I can’t, I can’t,” in dull, dispirited monotone.

“Shall–I–come–for–you?” shouted Betty.

“You can’t,” returned Eleanor again.

“Non–sense!” shrieked Betty and then stood still on the wharf, apparently weighing Eleanor’s last opinion.

“Go ahead,” called Katherine in muffled tones from above.

Betty did not answer.

“Thinks I’m another owl, I suppose,” muttered Katherine, and limped down the bank to the wharf, frightening the nervous, overwrought Betty almost out of her wits at first, and then vastly relieving her by taking the entire direction of affairs into her own competent hands.

“You go right ahead. It’s the only way, and it’s perfectly easy in a heavy boat. That canoe might possibly go down with the current, but a big boat wouldn’t. Rachel and I tried it last week, when the river was higher. Now cross straight over and feel along the bank until you get to her. Then beach the canoe and come back the same way. Give me some matches. I’ll manage that part of it and then retire,–unless you’d rather be the one to wait here.”

“No, I’ll go,” answered Betty eagerly, vanishing into the boat-house after a pair of oars.

“She must be hanging on to something on shore,” went on Katherine, when Betty reappeared, “and she’s lost her nerve and doesn’t dare to let go. If you can’t get her into your boat, I’ll come; but somebody really ought to stay here. I had no idea the fog was so thick. Hurry now and cross straight over. You’re sure you’re not afraid?”

“Quite sure.” Betty was off, splashing her oars nervously through the still water, wrapped in the mist, whispering over and over Katherine’s last words, “Hurry and go straight. Hurry, hurry, go straight across.”

When she reached the other shore she called again to Eleanor, and the sobbing cry of relief that answered her made all the strain and effort seem as nothing. Cautiously creeping along the bank where the river was comparatively quiet, backing water now and then to test her strength with the current, she finally reached Eleanor, who had happened quite by chance to run near the bank and now sat in the frail canoe hanging by both hands to a branch that swept low over the water, exactly as Katherine had guessed.

“Why didn’t you beach the canoe, and stay on shore?” asked Betty, who had tied her own boat just above and was now up to her knees in the water, pulling Eleanor in.

“I tried to, but I lost my paddle, and so I was afraid to let go the tree again, and the water looked so deep. Oh, Betty, Betty!”

Eleanor sank down on the bank, sobbing as if her heart would break. Betty patted her arm in silence, and in a few moments she stood up, quieted. “You’re going to take me back?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Betty, cheerfully, leading the way to her boat.

“Please wait a minute,” commanded Eleanor.

Betty trembled. “She’s going to say she won’t go back with me,” she thought. “Please let me do it, Eleanor,” she begged.

“Yes,” said Eleanor, quickly, “but first I want to say something. I’ve been a hateful, horrid thing, Betty. I’ve believed unkind stories and done no end of mean things, and I deserve all that I’ve had to-night, except your coming after me. I’ve been ashamed of myself for months, only I wouldn’t say so. I know you can never want me for a friend again, after all my meanness; but Betty, say that you won’t let it hurt you–that you’ll try to forget all about it.”

Betty put a wet arm around Eleanor’s neck and kissed her cheek softly. “You weren’t to blame,” she said. “It was all a mistake and my horrid carelessness. Of course I want you for a friend. I want it more than anything else. And now don’t say another word about it, but just get into the boat and come home.”

They hardly spoke during the return passage; Eleanor was worn out with all she had gone through, and Betty was busy rowing and watching for Katherine’s matches, which made tiny, glimmering dots of light in the gloom. Eleanor did not seem to notice them, nor the shadowy figure that vanished around the boat-house just before they reached the wharf.

From her appointed station under the pine-tree Katherine heard the grinding of the boat on the gravel, the rattle of oars thrown down on the wharf, and then a low murmur of conversation that did not start up the hill toward her, as she had expected.

“Innocents!” sighed Katherine. “They’re actually stopping to talk it out down there in the wet. I’m glad they’ve made it up, and I’d do anything in reason for Betty Wales, but I certainly am sleepy,” and she yawned so loud that a blue jay that was roosting in the tree above her head fluttered up to a higher branch, screaming angrily.

“The note of the nestle,” laughed Katherine, and yawned again.

Down on the wharf Betty and Eleanor were curled up close together in an indiscriminate, happy tangle of rain-coat, golf-cape, and very drabbled muslin, holding a conversation that neither would ever forget. Yet it was perfectly commonplace; Harding girls are not given to the expression of their deeper emotions, though it must not therefore be inferred that they do not have any to express.