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Precipice, The

<h2>VIII</h2> Kate had not seen Lena Vroom for a long time, and she had indefinitely missed her without realizing it until one afternoon, as she was searching for something in her trunk, she came across a package of Lena's letters written to her while she was at Silvertree. That night at the table she asked if any one had seen Lena recently. "Seen her?" echoed David Fulham. "I've seen the shadow of her blowing across the campus. She's working for her doctor's degree, like a lot of other silly women. She's living by herself somewhere, on crackers and cheese, no doubt." "Would she really be so foolish?" cried Kate. "I know she's devoted to her work, but surely she has some sense of moderation." "Not a bit of it," protested the scientist. "A person of mediocre attainments who gets the Ph.D. bee in her bonnet has no sense of any sort. I see them daily, men and women,--but women particularly,--stalking about the grounds and in and out of classes, like grotesque ghosts. They're staggering under a mental load too heavy for them, and actually it might be a physical load from its effects. They get lop-sided, I swear they do, and they acquire all sorts of miserable little personal habits that make them both pitiable and ridiculous. For my part, I believe the day will come when no woman will be permitted to try for the higher degrees till her brain has been scientifically tested and found to be adequate for the work." "But as for Lena," said Kate, "I thought she was quite a wonder at her lessons." "Up to a certain point," admitted Fulham, "I've no doubt she does very well. But she hasn't the capacity for higher work, and she'll be the last one to realize it. My advice to you, Miss Barrington, is to look up your friend and see what she is doing with herself. You haven't any of you an idea of the tragedies of the classroom, and I'll not tell them to you. But they're serious enough, take my word for it." "Yes, do look her up, Kate," urged Honora. "It's hard to manage anything extra during the day," said Kate. "I must go some evening." "Perhaps Cousin Mary could go with you," suggested Honora. Honora threw a glance of affectionate admiration at her young cousin, who had blossomed out in a bewitching little frock of baby blue, and whose eyes reflected the color. She was, indeed, an entrancing thing, was "Blue-eyed Mary." The tenderness of her lips, the softness of her complexion, the glamour of her glance increased day by day, and without apparent reason. She seemed to be more eloquent, with the sheer eloquence of womanly emotion. Everything that made her winning was intensified, as if Love, the Master, had touched to vividness what hitherto had been no more than a mere promise. What was the secret of this exotic florescence? She went out only to University affairs with Honora or Kate, or to the city with Marna Cartan. Her interests appeared to be few; and she was neither a writer nor a receiver of letters. Altogether, the sources of that hidden joy which threw its enchantment over her were not to be guessed. But what did it all matter? She was an exhilarating companion--and what a contrast to poor Lena! That night, lying in bed, Kate reproached herself for her neglect of her once so faithful friend. Lena might be going through some severe experience, alone and unaided. Kate determined to find out the truth, and as she had a half-holiday on Saturday, she started on her quest. Lena, it transpired, had moved twice during the term and had neglected to register her latest address. So she was found only after much searching, and twilight was already gathering when Kate reached the dingy apartment in which Lena had secreted herself. It was a rear room up three flights of stairs, approached by a long, narrow corridor which the economical proprietor had left in darkness. Kate rapped softly at first; then, as no one answered, most sharply. She was on the point of going away when the door was opened a bare crack and the white, pinched face of Lena Vroom peered out. "It's only Kate, Lena!" Then, as there was no response: "Aren't you going to let me in?" Still Lena did not fling wide the door. "Oh, Kate!" she said vaguely, in a voice that seemed to drift from a Maeterlinckian mist. "How are you?" "Pretty sulky, thank you. Why don't you open the door, girl?" At that Lena drew back; but she was obviously annoyed. Kate stepped into the bare, unkempt room. Remnants of a miserable makeshift meal were to be seen on a rickety cutting-table; the bed was unmade; and on the desk, in the center of the room, a drop-lamp with a leaking tube polluted the air. There was a formidable litter of papers on a great table, and before it stood a swivel chair where Lena Vroom had been sitting preparing for her degree. Kate deliberately took this all in and then turned her gaze on her friend. "What's the use, girl?" she demanded with more than her usual abruptness. "What are you doing it all for?" Lena threw a haggard glance at her. "We won't talk about that," she said in that remote, sunken voice. "I haven't the strength to discuss it. To be perfectly frank, Kate, you mustn't visit me now. You see, I'm studying night and day for the inquisition." "The--" "Yes, inquisition. You see, it isn't enough that my thesis should be finished. I can't get my degree without a last, terrible ordeal. Oh, Kate, you can't imagine what it is like! Girls who have been through it have told me. You are asked into a room where the most important members of the faculty are gathered. They sit about you in a semicircle and for hours they hurl questions at you, not necessarily questions relating to anything you have studied, but inquiries to test your general intelligence. It's a fearful experience." She sank on her unmade cot, drawing a ragged sweater about her shoulders, and looked up at Kate with an almost furtive gaze. She always had been a small, meagre creature, but now she seemed positively shriveled. The pride and plenitude of womanhood were as far from her realization as they could be from a daughter of Eve. Sexless, stranded, broken before an undertaking too great for her, she sat there in the throes of a sudden, nervous chill. Then, after a moment or two, she began to weep and was rent and torn with long, shuddering sobs. "I'm so afraid," she moaned. "Oh, Kate, I'm so terribly, terribly afraid! I know I'll fail." Kate strangled down, "The best thing that could happen to you"; and said instead, "You aren't going about the thing in the best way to succeed." "I've done all I could," moaned her friend. "I've only allowed myself four hours a night for sleep; and have hardly taken out time for meals. I've concentrated as it seems to me no one ever concentrated before." "Oh, Lena, Lena!" Kate cried compassionately. "Can it really be that you have so little sense, after all? Oh, you poor little drowned rat, you." She bent over her, pulled the worn slippers from her feet, and thrust her beneath the covers. "No, no!" protested Lena. "You mustn't, Kate! I've got to get at my books." "Say another word and I'll throw them out of the window," cried Kate, really aroused. "Lie down there." Lena began again to sob, but this time with helpless anger, for Kate looked like a grenadier as she towered there in the small room and it was easy to see that she meant to be obeyed. She explored Lena's cupboard for supplies, and found, after some searching, a can of soup and the inevitable crackers. She heated the soup, toasted the crackers, and forced Lena to eat. Then she extinguished the lamp, with its poisonous odor, and, wrapping herself in her cloak threw open the window and sat in the gloom, softly chatting about this and that. Lena made no coherent answers. She lay in sullen torment, casting tearful glances at her benevolent oppressor. But Kate had set her will to conquer that of her friend and Lena's hysteric opposition was no match for it. Little by little the tense form beneath the blankets relaxed. Her stormily drawn breath became more even. At last she slept, which gave Kate an opportunity to slip out to buy a new tube for the lamp and adjust it properly. She felt quite safe in lighting it, for Lena lay in complete exhaustion, and she took the liberty of looking over the clothes which were bundled into an improvised closet on the back of the door. Everything was in wretched condition. Buttons and hooks were lacking; a heap of darning lay untouched; Lena's veil, with which she attempted to hide the ruin of her hat, was crumpled into the semblance of a rain-soaked cobweb; and her shoes had gone long without the reassurance of a good blacking. Kate put some irons over the stove which served Lena as a cooking-range, and proceeded on a campaign of reconstruction. It was midnight when she finished, and she was weary and heartsick. The little, strained face on the pillow seemed to belong to one whom the furies were pursuing. Yet nothing was pursuing her save her own fanatical desire for a thing which, once obtained, would avail her nothing. She had not personality enough to meet life on terms which would allow her one iota of leadership. She was discountenanced by her inherent drabness: beaten by the limits of her capacity. When Kate had ordered the room,--scrupulously refraining from touching any of Lena's papers,--she opened the window and, putting the catch on the door, closed it softly behind her. <hr style="width: 25%;"> Kate's frequent visits to Lena, though brief, were none too welcome. Even the food she brought with her might better, in Lena's estimation, be dispensed with than that the all-absorbing reading and research should be interrupted. Finally Kate called one night to find Lena gone. She had taken her trunk and oil-stove and the overworked gas-lamp and had stolen away. To ferret her out would have been inexcusable. "It shows how changed she is," Kate said to Honora. "Fancy the old-time Lena hiding from me!" "You must think of her as having a run of fever, Kate. Whatever she does must be regarded as simply symptomatic," said Honora, understandingly. "She's really half-mad. David says the graduates are often like that--the feminine ones." Kate tried to look at it in a philosophic way, but her heart yearned and ached over the poor, infatuated fugitive. The February convocation was drawing near, and with it Lena's dreaded day of examination. The night before its occurrence, the conversation at the Caravansary turned to the candidates for the honors. "There are some who meet the quiz gallantly enough," David Fulham remarked. "But the majority certainly come like galley slaves scourged to their dungeon. Some of them would move a heart of stone with their sufferings. Honora, why don't you and Miss Barrington look up your friend Miss Vroom once more? She's probably needing you pretty badly." "I don't mind being a special officer, Mr. Fulham," said Kate, "and it's my pride and pleasure to make child-beaters tremble and to arrest brawny fathers,--I make rather a specialty of six-foot ones,--but really I'm timid about going to Lena's again. She has given me to understand that she doesn't want me around, and I'm not enough of a pachyderm to get in the way of her arrows again." But David Fulham couldn't take that view of it. "She's not sane," he declared. "Couldn't be after such a course as she's been putting herself through. She needs help." However, neither Kate nor Honora ventured to offer it. They spent the evening together in Honora's drawing-room. The hours passed more rapidly than they realized, and at midnight David came stamping in. His face was white. "You haven't been to the laboratory, David?" reproached his wife. "Really, you mustn't. I thought it was agreed between us that we'd act like civilized householders in the evening." She was regarding him with an expression of affectionate reproof. "I've been doing laboratory work," he said shortly, "but it wasn't in the chemical laboratory. Wickersham and I hunted up your friend--and we found her in a state of collapse." "No!" cried Kate, starting to her feet. "I told you, didn't I?" returned David. "Don't I know them, the geese? We had to break in her door, and there she was sitting at her study-table, staring at her books and seeing nothing. She couldn't talk to us--had a temporary attack of severe aphasia, I suppose. Wickersham said he'd been anxious about her for weeks--she's been specializing with him, you know." "What did you do with her?" demanded Honora. "Bundled her up in her outside garments and dragged her out of doors between us and made her walk. She could hardly stand at first. We had to hold her up. But we kept right on hustling her along, and after a time when the fresh air and exercise had got in their work, she could find the right word when she tried to speak to us. Then we took her to a restaurant and ordered a beefsteak and some other things. She wanted to go back to her room--said she had more studying to do; but we made it clear to her at last that it wasn't any use,--that she'd have to stand or fall on what she had. She promised us she wouldn't look at a book, but would go to bed and sleep, and anybody who has the hardihood to wish that she wins her degree may pray for a good night for her." Honora was looking at her husband with a wide, shining gaze. "How did you come to go to her, David?" she asked admiringly. "She wasn't in any of your classes." "Now, don't try to make out that I'm benevolent, Honora," Fulham said petulantly. "I went because I happened to meet Wickersham on the Midway. She's been hiding, but he had searched her out and appealed to me to go with him. What I did was at his request." "But she'll be refreshed in the morning," said Honora. "She'll come out all right, won't she?" "How do I know?" demanded Fulham. "I suppose she'll feel like a man going to execution when she enters that council-room. Maybe she'll stand up to it and maybe she'll not. She'll spend as much nervous energy on the experience as would carry her through months of sane, reasonable living in the place she ought to be in--that is to say, in a millinery store or some plain man's kitchen." "Oh, David!" said Honora with gentle wifely reproach. But Fulham was making no apologies. "If we men ill-treated women as they ill-treat themselves," he said, "we'd be called brutes of the worst sort." "Of course!" cried Kate. "A person may have some right to ill-treat himself, but he never has any right to ill-treat another." "If we hitched her up to a plough," went on Fulham, not heeding, "we shouldn't be overtaxing her physical strength any more than she overtaxes her mental strength when she tries--the ordinary woman, I mean, like Miss Vroom--to keep up to the pace set by men of first-rate caliber." He went up to bed on this, still disturbed, and Honora and Kate, much depressed, talked the matter over. But they reached no conclusion. They wanted to go around the next morning and help Lena,--get her breakfast and see that she was properly dressed,--but they knew they would be unwelcome. Later they heard that she had come through the ordeal after a fashion. She had given indications of tremendous research. But her eyes, Wickersham told Kate privately, looked like diseased oysters, and it was easy to see that she was on the point of collapse. Kate saw nothing of her until the day of convocation, though she tried several times to get into communication with her. There must have been quite two hundred figures in the line that wound before the President and the other dignitaries to receive their diplomas; and the great hall was thronged with interested spectators. Kate could have thrilled with pride of her alma mater had not her heart been torn with sympathy for her friend whose emaciated figure looked more pathetic than ever before. Now and then a spasmodic movement shook her, causing her head to quiver like one with the palsy and her hands to make futile gestures. And although she was the most touching and the least joyous of those who went forward to victory, she was not, after all, so very exceptional. Kate could not help noticing how jaded and how spent were many of the candidates for the higher degrees. They seemed to move in a tense dream, their eyes turning neither to right nor left, and the whole of them bent on the one idea of their dear achievement. Although there were some stirring figures among them,--men and women who seemed to have come into the noble heritage which had been awaiting them,--there were more who looked depleted and unfit. It grew on Kate, how superfluous scholarship was when superimposed on a feeble personality. The colleges could not make a man, try as they might. They could add to the capacity of an endowed and adventurous individual, but for the inept, the diffident, their learning availed nothing. They could cram bewildered heads with facts and theories, but they could not hold the mediocre back from their inevitable anticlimax. "A learned derelict is no better than any other kind," mused Kate compassionately. She resolved that now, at last, she would command Lena's obedience. She would compel her to take a vacation,--would find out what kind of a future she had planned. She would surround her with small, friendly offices; would help her to fit herself out in new garments, and would talk over ways and means with her. She went the next day to the room where Lena's compassionate professors had found her that night of dread and terror before her examination. But she had disappeared again, and the landlady could give no information concerning her. <hr style="width: 35%;"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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