A College Girl by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (reading in the dark .TXT) 📖

She laid down the paper, and steadied herself resolutely. All over the room other girls were sitting on hard, uncomfortable chairs before tables like her own, some motionless and stunned-looking like herself, some already setting briskly to work. On the walls, among a number of quotations, “Help one another!” stared her in the face with tragic significance, and again: “How far high failure overleaps the bounds of low successes.” Failure! She lifted the paper again, and decided with a glimmer of hope that she could answer at least one question, set to work, and scribbled for life until the last moment of the prescribed three hours! What exhaustion! What collapse! Positively one’s legs wobbled beneath one as one trailed wearily Newnhamwards. What a comfort to be fussed over and petted, treated as distinguished invalids whom the College was privileged to tend!

The Tripos girls “sat at High” at the head of the room, surrounded by attentive Dons, with the V.C. herself smiling encouragement, and urging them to second helpings of chicken (chicken!!). By the time that it was necessary to start forth for the afternoon’s ordeal they felt mentally and physically braced, and the operation feeling lessened sensibly.

At the afternoon’s ordeal, however, the weariness and depression grew more acute than ever, and on the walk home the comparing of answers had anything but a cheering effect. No girl was satisfied; each was morally convinced that her companions had done better than herself. Where she had failed to answer a question, a reminder of the solution filled her with despair. Of course! It was as simple as ABC. She had known it off by heart. Nothing short of softening of the brain could explain such idiotic forgetfulness.

It was a kindly custom which separated the sufferers on their return to College, each one being carried off by her special second-year adorer to a cheery little tea-party, for which the most congenial spirits and the most delectable fare were provided. Here the tired senior was soothed and fed, and her self-esteem revived by an attitude of reverence on the part of the audience. The second-year girls shuddered over the papers; were convinced that never, no never, could they face the like, and suggested that it would be a saving of time to go down at once.

Later on that first evening, when Marian White appeared to put her invalid to bed, she bore in her hand a letter from Margaret France, which Darsie hailed with a cry of joy.

“Ah! I thought she would write to me. I wondered that I didn’t have a letter this morning, but she was right as usual. She knew I should need it more to-night!”

Margaret’s letter was short and to the point—

“Dearest Darsie,—A year ago you were cheering me! How I wish I could do the same for you in your need, but as I can’t be present in the flesh, here comes a little line to greet you, old dear, and to tell you to be of good cheer. You are very tired, and very discouraged, and very blue. I know! Every one is. It’s part of the game. Do you remember what a stern mentor I had, and how she bullied me, and packed me to bed, and took away my books? Oh, the good old times! The good old times, how happy we were—how I think of them now, and long to be back! But the best part remains, for I have still my friend, and you and I, Darsie, ‘belong’ for our lives.

“Cheer up, old dear! You’ve done a lot better than you think!

“Margaret.”

“What’s the matter now?” asked the second-year girl sharply, spying two big tears course slowly down her patient’s cheeks, and Darsie returned a stammering reply—

“I’ve had such a ch–ch–cheering letter!”

“Have you indeed! The less of that sort of cheering you get this week, the better for you!” snapped Marian once more. She was jealous of Margaret France, as she was jealous of every girl in the College for whom Darsie Garnett showed a preference, and she strongly resented any interference with her own prerogative. “Hurry into your dressing-gown, please, and I’ll brush your hair,” she said now in her most dictatorial tones. “I’m a pro. at brushing hair—a hair-dresser taught me how to do it. You hold the brush at the side to begin with, and work gradually round to the flat. I let a Fresher brush mine one right when I’d a headache, and she began in the middle of my cheek. There’s been a coldness between us ever since. There! isn’t that good? Gets right into the roots, doesn’t it, and tingles them up! Nothing so soothing as a smooth, hard brush.”

Darsie shut her eyes and purred like a sleek, lazy little cat.

“De-lic-ious! Lovely! You do brush well! I could sit here for hours.”

“You won’t get a chance. Ten minutes at most, and then off you go, and not a peep at another book till to-morrow morning.”

“Marian—really—I must! Just for ten minutes, to revive my memory.”

“I’ll tell you a story!” said Marian quietly—“a true story from my own experience. It was when I was at school and going in for the Cambridge Senior, the last week, when we were having the exams. We had slaved all the term, and were at the last gasp. The head girl was one Annie Macdiarmid, a marvel of a creature, the most all-round scholar I’ve ever met. She was invariably first in everything, and I usually came in a bad third. Well, we’d had an arithmetic exam, one day, pretty stiff, but not more so than usual, and on this particular morning at eleven o’clock we were waiting to hear the result. The Mathematic Master was a lamb—so keen, and humorous, and just—a rageur at times, but that was only to be expected. He came into the room, papers in hand, his mouth screwed up, and his eyebrows nearly hidden under his hair. We knew at a glance that something awful had happened. He cleared his throat several times, and began to read aloud the arithmetic results. ‘Total, a hundred. Bessie Smith, eighty-seven.’ There was a rustle of surprise. Not Annie Macdiarmid? Just Bessie—an ordinary sort of creature, who wasn’t going in for the Local at all. ‘Mary Ross, eighty-two. Stella Bruce, seventy-four.’ Where did I come in? I’d never been lower than that. ‘Kate Stevenson, sixty-four.’ Some one else fifty, some one else forty, and thirty and twenty, and still not a mention of Annie Macdiarmid or of me. You should have seen her face! I shall never forget it. Green! and she laced her fingers in and out, and chewed, and chewed. I was too stunned to feel. The world seemed to have come to an end. Down it came—sixteen, fourteen, ten—and then at last—at bitter, long last—‘Miss Marian White, six! Miss Macdiar-mid, Two!’”

Darsie stared beneath the brush, drawing a long breath of dismay.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing! That was where he showed himself so wise. An ordinary master would have raged and stormed, insisted upon our working for extra hours, going over and over the old ground, but he knew better. He just banged all the books together, tucked them under his arm, and called out: ‘No more work! Put on your hats and run off home as fast as you can go, and tell your mothers from me to take you to the Waxworks, or a Wild Beast show. Don’t dare to show yourselves in school again until Monday morning. Read as many stories as you please, but open a school book at your peril!’”

Marian paused dramatically, Darsie peered at her through a mist of hair, and queried weakly, “Well?”

“Well—so we didn’t! We just slacked and lazed, and amused ourselves till the Monday morning, and then, like giants refreshed, we went down to the fray and—”

“And what?”

“I’ve told you before! I got second-class honours, and the Macdiarmid came out first in all England, distinction in a dozen subjects—arithmetic among them. So now, Miss Garnett, kindly take the moral to heart, and let me hear no more nonsense about ‘reviving memories.’ Your memory needs putting to sleep, so that it may wake up refreshed and active after a good night’s rest.”

And Darsie weakly, reluctantly obeyed.