Chapter II: I

Nora returned to college in the fall of 1914 dressed in a new suit equipped with the latest embarrassment of fashion, a long skirt so tight that the ingenuities of dressmaking had conceived a slit on one side which permitted the wearer to take a mincing step. But over the gash in the front of Nora’s skirt Cordelia had draped a pleated silk curtain which covered Nora’s leg. On the campus, crowds of Petersfield girls, all wearing crippling garments like Nora’s, some with the addition of flounces at the top, which stuck out behind like the bustles of a preceding era, learned for the first time that a war had begun in Europe.

The adult world had been murmuring something about the assassination of a certain European prince no one had ever heard of before, but a college generation had not anticipated all this unnecessary fuss about it. Petersfield in its leafy luxuriance of early September appeared unchanged. But it developed that the war had already touched Petersfield. Professor Steele and other members of the faculty had been held in Europe. Some of the girls on holiday jaunts in France, Italy, and Germany had not returned. When all of them finally trickled back, they brought tales of lost baggage, terrible crossings in steerage quarters resembling the coops built for travelling poultry, and rumors of a stream of French and Belgian refugees already homeless.

Professor Steele at once hung a large violently colored map of Europe in the hall outside of her classroom door, punctured with vari-colored pins, which she moved from day to day. Strange names gradually took on the familiar accents of friends. The Marne—not one of the girls had ever heard of it before—turned out to be a river; Rheims—there was a picture of the cathedral in the library; and of course one had a vague idea of Antwerp.

A popular college sport developed from the crowds gathered around Professor Steele’s map between classes. It was the ambition of the student body to catch her at her daily pin-shifting. One would feel, a jocular senior commented, almost like God, to be making pins jig up and down in this apparently aimless fashion. The English and the French, red and orange in Miss Steele’s scheme, developed a humorous habit of jumping in one direction, then veering off in some mad chase, and finally returning to their original position. It really was a huge joke.

The college, in a body, marched to the village church the first Sunday in October to join in the prayers of Peace Sunday. It really was a terrible bore, planned by Prexy, who thought the student body should try to wake up the village. They marched back very hungry, with unbecoming levity, to their college retirement, quite convinced the village had not appreciated their valiant effort. The starving Belgians then obtruded upon their customary peace. What would it be next?

During the dull November rains which drove the girls to the library, Nora made her great college discovery. History had suddenly become the most fascinating subject in the world. One day she had crept into a seminar room, discovered empty in an idle scouting expedition at certain hours of the day. Left alone with a pile of books, she experienced what was akin to religious conversion. She left the library another person. The war may have helped to lift the scales from her eyes; or it may have been the transformation in Professor Steele, about which both faculty and students were beginning to wonder.

A cold and detached scholar had suddenly caught fire. In the fall of 1914 she taught with a passionate earnestness which crowded her classroom. Her big course for many years had been the political and social study of modern Europe, upon which she had written three solid volumes, highly respected in the world of scholarship. Every summer she had wandered from one European city to another, reading in the libraries of London, Paris, Berlin, tramping their streets, talking to the professors in the international fashion which only the universities seem to have learned. But in her weighing of evidence she had been so fearful of rash judgments, of partiality, of her own conclusions upon subjects never perfectly understood by an outsider, that her lectures had been cautious and uninspiring. No one could tell what had made the change in her. Her opinions about the war she kept to herself, preserving an apparent rigid neutrality that the Executive of her country would have approved. But Nora detected something which had never been there before.

Early and late Nora toiled in the library. The war had become a gigantic spectacle, a new game for an initiate into historical mysteries. She began to search for the source of this terrible hatred which was destroying Europe. The raid of English seacoast towns, the threatened German blockade, the Zeppelin raids on Paris, the sinking of ships carrying American passengers, which a few sentimental professors at Petersfield were using not only to prove the invidious cruelty of German ingenuity, but also to develop an emotional reaction among the student body, had different uses for her.

In Maronac she had lived among German people long enough to suspect claims made for their diabolical supremacy. What surprised her was that they had thought to do all these terrible things before their enemies. Germans were slow-moving in Maronac, sentimental about Christmas trees and their own music, and a little stubborn in holding to an old-world attitude toward women. But they were good neighbors and hard-working citizens.

She had a brief but vivid moment of emotion when she read in Cordelia’s cramped and almost illegible handwriting that Father Stokesbury had sailed for England to offer himself as an army chaplain. What relief! The war had at least offered him escape from that pack of adoring women who had drawn their tight cordons to imprison him in their female world. But he had got back to the real world—the world of men. The soldiers in the back lines—the hospitals—how they would be refreshed by his boyish fun!

The war finally captured Petersfield undergraduates. Emily Moorhead collected money for Belgian babies, and Gwendolen Morris wrote a poem about bleeding France, Lafayette, and sister republics. In the library Nora began slowly building up the impartial historical spirit. The dead in Europe were still very far away.

II

Since the collapse of the Woman Suffrage League, feminism had held Petersfield only fitfully. When a famous Scandinavian woman came to lecture the previous year, the intellectuals learned that the noblest creature among women was the unmarried mother. But where in a place like Petersfield does one find a glorious mate like the one described in the lecture, and when he is found, how does one circumvent college authorities?

‘Remember Hannah Dodsley,’ croaked one of the intellectuals not yet converted to the new idea of having babies without husbands. Hannah, a meek little freshman two years ago, had been sent home because she was going to have a baby.

‘I don’t think many women will want them—that way,’ another suggested delicately.

‘Do all women with husbands want babies?’

‘And if she has three or four already, does she want any more—with a husband or without?’ queried one of seven daughters.

Evidently there were two sides to the question of maternal glory.

In the meantime the intellectuals sighed to make the world better. Since the passing of the Home Rule Bill, Ireland promised to need them no longer. They had always had socialistic dreams, but now for the first time they called themselves the Socialist League. Ellen Standish, their president, the daughter of a cotton manufacturer in New Jersey, planned to take over the management of her father’s mill the following summer. Other members formed equally ambitious programmes.

The new professor in sociology, Mr. Michael Powys, had some close connection with their becoming pacifists. He was a phenomenon in Petersfield, young, handsome, intense. His blue eyes burned with the flames which reform the world.

Mr. Powys had been discovered in Europe early the preceding summer by one of the more adventurous economists, who invited him to Petersfield. Naturally the war held him on his native British shores. He was, therefore, regarded as only another of the war casualties, and his proposed courses of lectures struck from the calendar. But in January he arrived unannounced, and with no explanations concerning his appearance. It was rumored that the bribes and the prayers of a wealthy father had got him out of England, where his views of non-resistance threatened to make trouble. Although some of the faculty declared he was a deserter from duty and a traitor to his country, it was difficult to pack off a person of mature years who had been invited to Petersfield.

Not even for the first day did the new sociology professor show the stealth usually associated with smuggled goods. He proclaimed his philosophy with the compelling brilliance of a Broadway street sign. In dealing with the problem of poverty, the subject of one course of lectures, he offered socialism and the elimination of war as the only salvation for a working population. His world, he explained, was not Britain, but the toilers of every country, to whom he wished to give a decent existence. His brotherhood idea was dazzling to the intellectuals, who had long ago given up a religion which teaches the same gospel. They rallied around Mr. Powys, Nora among them now, to convert Petersfield.

In Nora’s dreams a very charming young man with flowing neckties matching the deep blue of his eyes stood by her side in all her vigorous plans to uplift her fellow men. During the class hour, too, she found her attention wandering from Mr. Powys’s lecture to Mr. Powys himself. His curly locks gleamed like sunshine in the bleak greyness of a winter day. With his climaxes—and Mr. Powys made frequent use of climactic effects—a ruddy glow coursed through his cheeks and made him as radiant as a Greek god.

From Mr. Powys she learned rapidly the superior virtues of the poor, their instinctive wisdom. For his pacifism she had a less immediate reaction. The poor, being closer than fighting Europe, seemed enough to begin on. Her intensive study of poverty and the stern precepts of the twin science, economics, resulted in a chance to live during the month of June in a New York settlement house situated in the most populous section of the lower East Side.

Mr. Powys had made a similar experiment in surveying poverty at close range.

‘While I was at Cambridge, I spent one long vac. in London. Down near the docks, you know. An interesting region. For the depths of misery I know no better place than Shadwell. Possibly Limehouse is a trifle rougher. Of course there are no slums in New York equal to ours in London.’

III

Mary Howe, who believed in a varied human experience, convinced Nora that it was her duty to attend Junior Prom. Mary provided one of her superfluous party dresses and also Mr. Downing.

Importing men for Petersfield dances required elaborate manœuvres. Girls with brothers were suddenly popular. The Prom crowd from the nearer men’s colleges could be counted on annually for reënforcements. Any man with fair skill in dancing, a dress suit, and the price of a railroad ticket, could, if vouched for by a Petersfield girl or any remote social connection of hers, be an acceptable guest.

Nora’s dancing partner was presented to her a few moments before the grand march began. He danced well enough, did not immediately attempt the persiflage that is common exchange at Proms, and had no conspicuous deficiencies. Almost at once, however, he divined that Nora was one of those strong-minded girls. Accordingly his first one-step was enlivened by a running commentary on votes for women.

‘Of course they’ve got to serve in the army when they get the vote.’

‘But there aren’t going to be any more wars when women have the vote.’

Mr. Downing was much amused. ‘No more war. Of course women never have any little wars among themselves. A woman’s tongue—why do we hear so much about it?’

Nora looked stony. ‘You won’t hear any more from mine on this subject.’

Mr. Downing, being a polite youth, shifted the conversation to sport. He let Nora know, without too much directness, that he was a long-distance runner at his college, first stroke on the crew, and a player to be reckoned with in tennis tournaments. Then he inquired about Nora’s athletic prowess.

Nora wasn’t an entire success at the Prom. To men less obliging than Mr. Downing she had little to say. The giggles of the successful girls around her she had no marked ability to imitate. What was there to talk about at a dance? And these college boys—they were like big clumsy babies. Now if she had dared to ask Mr. Powys——Toward the end, the muscles of her face ached in her efforts to keep up a battery of cheerful smiles. She thought longingly of her bed as her feet rebelled against the unaccustomed exercise.

So this was what girls called fun. They marked off the days on the calendar until the supreme event of a college dance. They talked it over for hours, days, weeks afterward.

The tiresome ordeal dragged to its conclusion. Nora gave Mr. Downing a brisk good-night and hurried off to bed.

In the morning she had to hear the last sleepy trickles of reminiscence about the dance. ‘Jack Downing said you were awfully good-looking,’ Mary confided. ‘But I guess you were a little too high-brow for him. He invited Sally Easton to his Prom after his first dance with her. Sally’s an awful fool, but she’s pretty and she dances well. She thinks Jack is just wonderful.’

The library was beautiful peace and security on a Saturday morning. Nora hid herself away in the deserted seminar room and piled books all around her.

Once more the monotonous college routine, as bad as the trench warfare revealed by Professor Steele’s maps. The Eastern Front had become too complicated even for undergraduate jokes.

Then May fête, delicious relief. A masque, reproducing in cheesecloth and gilt paper the magnificence of the entertainments given in honor of Queen Elizabeth, initiated a large proportion of the college into the mysteries of dyeing and design. The fête, postponed for two days on account of rain, finally came off the evening the news of the sinking of the Lusitania reached Petersfield.

Final examinations mercifully obliterated the horror of the tragedy.

IV

The glimpse of New York from the train window was all that Nora had yet seen of the city, which was escape and adventure for Petersfield. The tall apartment houses exposed to a traveller their shabby walls and the dingy washings flapping on the roofs and in dark courts. The bedding was spread out on the fire-escapes. Strange-looking people leaned out of the windows, staring listlessly at the passing train. Children swarmed in the streets, darted in and out of the traffic, as if they were playing a grim game of life and death.

The settlement house, an old red-brick four-storeyed structure indistinguishable from its neighbors, faced a street jammed with pushcarts and the babble of foreign tongues. The children left off their matching of wits with the vendor of chocolate and apples to crowd around Nora and called out, ‘Teacher—Hello, Teacher.’

The residents of the settlement, gathered around the dinner-table, presented strange contradictions to a newcomer. Mrs. Chambers, the stately housekeeper, in a velvet dinner gown which revealed exquisite shoulders and arms, was seated opposite the head resident, Miss Burton, a weary-looking woman with a hard knob of grey hair perched close to her forehead. Miss Saunders, a frivolous pink blonde elaborately dressed, assisting Mr. Schwartz with the boys’ clubs, was an amusing contrast to Miss Graham, in charge of the girls’ clubs, who came in after the soup with her hair bearing the imprint of a hat worn all day.

While the others talked of their activities in a jargon full of terms incomprehensible to Nora, Mrs. Chambers, in the fashion of a practiced hostess, commented on the heat, the noise from the pushcarts, the foreign quality of the East Side.

The street beyond Nora’s window was astir at one and two in the morning, and children were still shrieking at their games. A queer odor like that of old clothes stored in damp trunks filled her room, mixed with smells of new food and seasonings. She longed for a single whiff of Maronac Harbor or a stiff breeze from the Petersfield hills. Strange tongues clattered in her ears. Then at last the neighborhood folded itself away in its crowded dens, and Nora fell asleep.

The night classes, presided over by volunteer workers, met in the schoolhouses of the district. Miss Graham assigned to Nora an animated group of girls who seemed to be equipped with a knowledge of English sufficient to talk about everything but the lesson. Having anticipated the college generation in the generous use of rouge, they had the appearance of buxom vitality, in spite of crowded living and working quarters. Their main interest was to remind their teacher of the exact time for the closing of the lesson, so that they could rush down to the lower floor of the school building at the dramatic minute the boys were being dismissed. An hour of dancing in the basement gymnasium followed the classes. But the boys, in a neighborhood inclined to forensic exercise, prolonged their debates long past the class hour. Often they used the entire dancing period for a little extra oratory, and the girls had to dance by themselves.

At the weekly settlement-house dances Miss Burton marched up and down the two spacious rooms, probably once the drawing-rooms of a prosperous Wall Street merchant, to keep the dancers from amorously remote corners. Her lively interest in the courtship and marriage of the young people made her eager to preserve a rigid system of etiquette which would prevent any irregularity.

Even greater than her sympathy for young love was her enthusiasm about babies. She was always capturing some clever young doctor and bringing him to the clinic in the big bare room on the second floor of the house; and she discovered nurses with the necessary variety of linguistic equipment to pass on the doctor’s advice to the mothers. Miss Burton herself presided over the weighing of the infants, as pleased over the gains of the puniest ones as a juggler with some new feat. Women who had never had children of their own seemed to love babies with the most tender devotion. Cordelia had the same wistful interest as Miss Burton. But the mothers of the numerous settlement progeny, while Miss Burton was busy, displayed an alertness in collecting under their shawls the free samples of babies’ food on display. They pushed and jostled each other during the distribution of garments donated to the settlement, and even grumbled at a huge share of the spoils.

Nora’s letters to Mr. Powys, written late at night, sometimes took on a picturesque flippancy under her agile pen. Then she remembered the ardent hopes which flashed from his beautiful eyes, and tore up what she had written.

But contrary to his theories, Nora was sure that the poor had their snatches of enjoyment. Only the settlement workers appeared to abstain entirely from pleasure. The five older women, who during the summer divided their time between the city house and a camp in the mountains, were so tired that they were unable to respond to Mrs. Chambers’s conventional ideas of dinner conversation. With all this propaganda about the starving in Europe, their chief worry now was the possibility that philanthropists would neglect the settlement. Mrs. Chambers listened with a chilly aloofness.

After a tour of Fifth Avenue on her last day in New York, Nora, in the home-going crowd of workers in the trolley, pondered once more over the whole question of riches and poverty. Some of the poor she had lived among were honorable and attractive. Others were not. It seemed to her it would be easier to be good, if one had money. But here she knew she was in unfamiliar country.

Nora experienced an unexpected pity when she said good-bye to her fellow workers. Their courage in facing the problem of human misery was greater than hers. Miss Burton and Miss Graham looked more exhausted every day. Somehow they reminded her of Cordelia. The same unflagging devotion to duty. The same sphere. She had expected that here in a great city, so close to the beating of titanic forces, one became part of the bigness of the world. But the borders of the settlement stretched no farther than the parish of Saint Margaret’s or the peaceful groves of Petersfield. Where did one find the strong winds of reality, the great principles of a universal structure? One went on eagerly in youth, more slowly in age, to find them, and they were always somewhere else.

Nora was only one of a long succession of college girls who had dreamed of social service as her contribution to the regeneration of the world. A few weeks brought disillusionment, and one had to try something else.