A Song Cycle and a Puncture.

“And I learned about women from ’er!”

KIPLING.

Six Madonnas, from their places on the Chapel walls, gazed at the spectacle of a student with long hair and energetic manner drilling a chorus of young men and women from behind the preacher’s desk. There was no visible sign of agitation on the part of the six Madonnas, though an operatic rehearsal in Chapel might be considered reason enough. To be sure, one of them, with her feet upon a crescent moon, kept her eyes fixed religiously on the ceiling, but this had become a habit. The Madonnas were not surprised.

The early years of the University, when there was no assembly hall and the temporary chapel was used for everything that did not demand the superior accommodations of the men’s gymnasium, had prepared them for anything. They had looked calmly down upon student farces and Wednesday evening prayer meetings, professional impersonations and baccalaureate sermons. Once, there had been a German farce under the protection of the Germanic Language department, by a company from town, a boisterous play with a gigantic comedienne in a short skirt. Beside this performance, Lillian Arnold’s singing a love duet with Jack Smith was nothing very shocking.

Connor, the man who was getting up the opera for the benefit of the Junior Annual, waved his baton gracefully and looked pleased. The rehearsal had gone well that afternoon, and now Cap Smith was singing with creditable expression the love song in the last act. The experience of Connor told him that this song would make even the bleachers at the back of the gymnasium keep a respectful silence, which was saying a good deal. Smith had a very pretty tenor, redeeming its lack of volume by a sympathetic quality that was decidedly pleasant. In a song like this, his voice came out well. There was a high note at the end to be taken pianissimo with something else that signified “as though you meant it.” Smith could make it sound so, at any rate. One girl at the back of the chorus always said, “Ah,” under her breath when the song was ended at rehearsal.

Lillian Arnold, who played opposite Smith in the opera, did not conceal from herself the pleasure she took in the part. Long before rehearsals began, she had spent her smiles upon Connor with a view to that very rôle. Miss Arnold was a young person who knew the things she wanted; one of them was Smith. ’Varsity end, champion pole-vaulter, Glee Club tenor and Sophomore president, which means principally leading the cotillion, he was well worth a girl’s trouble. There was the more glory in the winning of this capital prize because he was not very enthusiastic about Roble. There was somebody up in town who took a great deal of his blue fraternity-paper. Lillian Arnold knew about the girl in town, so she accepted gracefully what the gods gave and was outwardly content.

The gift of the gods was Ted Perkins, whose vest was decorated like Cap’s and who had no entanglements. When the approach of the Sophomore cotillion set Roble agog with a pleasant but hardly strong-minded excitement, he “asked her.” Peace of mind comes naturally after such an invitation is given and accepted; on rare occasions this does not last.

The first thing that occurred to ruffle Miss Arnold’s complacency was a chance remark dropped one noon by Perkins as they were strolling home obliquely from the Quad.

“Cap isn’t going to lead with Miss Martin, after all,” said he.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Lillian. For some remote feminine reason the announcement was interesting.

“Her family has gone South suddenly, a death or something. Cap is all broken up about it. He was going to show her off in style that night.”

“I wonder whom he will ask, now,” she said, as though it didn’t matter the least bit in the world.

Down somewhere in a girl’s heart lies the gambler’s instinct. Lillian would have thrown away then and there the certainty of Ned Perkins’ timely invitation for the torturing suspense, the alluring chance, that attended the Sophomore president’s second choice. Perkins, in his simple masculine dullness, never guessed this.

“I don’t believe he knows yet; he wouldn’t tell over at the house if he did. Another plum for unengaged Roble.”

Perkins would have been less at ease over the condition of engaged Roble could he have looked into the little east music-room where Lillian played accompaniments, and Cap Smith, leaning over a wicker chair, went through the music of his part. These cozy rehearsals in the quiet afternoons had resulted in Smith’s asking himself, during a cut home through the Quad, why he had never noticed Lillian Arnold in particular. Connor, the director, had a keener eye, evidently. She was pretty, dashing and real good fun. Perkins was entitled to respect for his selection. Lillian was “all right;” this is a masculine term which may mean anything from mild approval to the rapture of “just one girl.” The mild interpretation, of course, is to be put upon Smith’s use of the term, even after he had been to Roble two evenings. Their talk was about the opera, nothing further, and when he had taken his high note with just the proper emotional slur, they both laughed. To be honest, there had been one chat on the moonlit steps of the Museum, but all of this went down on the blue fraternity-paper among other confidences.

One afternoon, in the middle of a Spring-time walk, Smith gave utterance to a decision concerning which he had already written, dutifully, to an interested party in the South. They had passed the willow-fringed bank of Lagunita, the red boathouse, the double avenue of young pines, and, crossing into the back road, strolled down to the low gate opposite the Farm; this they climbed and came into a little hollow where knowing people find yellow violets. He had just given her a frank compliment.

“You are the best fence-taker I ever saw for a girl.”

“That’s one practical result of an hour’s credit in gym-work,” she laughed. “Sometimes, on lovely days like this, I feel almost as though I could pole-vault the way you do. It must be glorious to go sailing over the bar.”

“And hear it come clattering down after you?”

They sat on the soft, new grass, and Lillian caught, one after another, the shy yellow faces peering at her through the long leaves. She looked so spring-like, so much a part of the fresh, young landscape in its robes of early February, as she half reclined to reach out for a blossom larger and yellower than the rest a pose that she knew was good that the Sophomore president put an end to suspense.

“I had expected to lead the cotillion with Miss Martin,” he began, “but she has gone South, so I’m badly left. I’m afraid you are engaged for it, aren’t you?”

Lillian gazed fixedly at the white cupola on a stockfarm building. Her heart was somewhere deep in hill-grass. She was the most luckless girl in the whole college! The opportunity of her Sophomore year had come too late. It was bitter enough for tears.

“I had promised it to Mr. Perkins,” she said, irresolutely.

“I was afraid so. Of course, it was awfully late to ask you; but I would rather go with you than with any of the others, so I ventured.”

It was a desperate moment for Lillian.

“I would rather go with you, too,” she said, gazing up at him.

“I’m sure I wish you could,” he said, with sincerity. She was at her prettiest that day.

“I will anyway,” she declared.

“But Ted

“I don’t care,” she went on, “it was only that he asked me first. Couldn’t I cut it and go with you? He ought to understand that I have a right to change my mind.”

Smith watched the antics of a gopher for a full minute before he replied. Although Perkins had said nothing to him of his intentions regarding the dance the two had few confidences Cap had held his theories. Still, he deemed he had a chance. Being a Sophomore, he believed that he was thoroughly acquainted with the co-educated sex and all their wiles and guiles; but a feeling of repulsion toward this frank readiness to throw down another man, one of his own, too, drowned his sense of self-satisfaction at finding himself preferred.

“Of course, you and Ted must arrange all that,” he said, and turned the conversation.

Cap’s lack of confidential relations with Perkins did not stand in the way of his mentioning the affair to him that night after dinner.

“I thought you ought to know it, Ted,” he concluded. “Of course, you will do as you please about the matter, only I shall not take her.”

“You don’t think for a moment that I still intend to, do you?” asked Perkins, fiercely.

“I don’t believe I’d blame you exactly if you backed out,” said the complacent Sophomore; “but, of course, it’s none of my funeral now; I’m only sorry I happened to ask her myself, and start the trouble.”

“I think I’ll walk home with her after rehearsal,” said Perkins.

“Well, I shan’t say anything about it one way or the other,” said Smith, and he started toward the Gym with a pleasant sense of having galled somebody a bit.

Meanwhile, Lillian had eaten her dinner with relish. The prospect of trouble with Perkins did not worry her in the least. Perkins had been rather a convenience, and to lead the cotillion with Jack Smith was a delight that entirely divested the other man of all importance. The rehearsal went through with a dash; Lillian was all animation and witchery, and the love-scene was perfectly acted, though Ted Perkins sat glowering in the privileged audience. Cap Smith took his high note with a tenderness of voice and gesture that moved Connor, the leader (he was also stage-manager and chief electrician), to call out, “Good boy, Cap,” and to shake his carefully untrimmed hair in approval.

After rehearsal, the tenor slipped away just as Perkins, with an artificial smile, approached Lillian.

The Sophomore was in bed when Perkins came into his room.

“What did you do about it?” Cap asked, to start things.

“I simply said I wanted to be excused from taking her to the cotillion.”

“What reason did you give?”

“None.”

“But you had to give some explanation.”

“She didn’t ask for any. She guessed it, probably.”

“What did she say? Try to smooth it over?”

“No, nothing, except that she was sorry, and that she would have liked to go with me.”

“Humph,” sniffed Cap. “I’ll bet she was afraid I hadn’t said anything to you about it, and she wouldn’t give herself away as long as you didn’t kick up a row. Now I suppose she expects me to take her.”

“That’s where she was keen, all right; she never breathed a word about you; only made me feel like two-bits in a fog for having turned her down.”

“If I had been you I would have roasted her right there, fired the whole string at her.”

This was the point for which the jilted man had come into Cap’s room.

“No,” said he, “you said you wouldn’t take her either, and I thought that would punish her better than having any scene with me. She’ll know I have had my innings.”

This took Smith where he lived, but he put on a cheerful front, perforce:

“Well, I’ll crawl gracefully out of it, to-morrow,” said he. “I suppose she’ll be hopping when she thinks it over.”

Perkins went up to his room satisfied.

When Cap Smith caught Miss Arnold at the post-office, he began to find that it was easier to plan a graceful crawling out than to execute the movement.

“I shall have to take back what I said yesterday about the cotillion,” he began, cleverly, guiding her toward Roble, “because, you see, it wouldn’t be just square to Ted, would it? He might feel hurt, and I wouldn’t have that. We must have six dances, though, anyway.”

This, assuredly, would show her. Unfortunately, Lillian was either dull or desperate.

“But he released me last night.”

“Did he?” said Jack. He had started all wrong.

“Yes, we settled it all very well; he didn’t seem to care in the least, he is so good-natured.” She looked as serene as the sky above her, although she was beginning to have biting suspicions. “So it’s all right.”

Cap Smith’s feet had become tangled in crawling; he kicked out recklessly.

“No, it’s not all right. I don’t believe in a girl’s treating a fellow like that, and I won’t be a party to it.”

“Why did you ask me, then?” she challenged. “To tempt me because you happened to be president and a girl loves to lead?”

“I’m not so mean as that. How could I know Perkins had asked you. He hadn’t told me.”

“I suppose you told him about it?”

“Yes, I thought that I ought to.”

“After telling me that I might arrange it. It was my business.”

“I knew how you would do it, and I wasn’t willing that Ted should be cut that way.”

“What a lovely friendship!” said Lillian. She was much vexed.

Smith did not reply at once. The beauty of his friendship with Perkins did not strike him very heavily at the moment.

“At any rate, under the circumstances I don’t feel that I can take you to the cotillion.”

“Don’t flatter your ” Lillian was too angry to speak without crying, so she went into the Hall abruptly.

With the approach of Washington’s Birthday, the rage of Miss Arnold grew. Inasmuch as everyone took it for granted that she was going with Perkins, it was not likely that she would be asked again, instead, late beginners, running cards for themselves and other people, asked her for dances, and rather than admit her predicament she let them fill her card.

The afternoon of the cotillion she went to bed and was ill for a day; then she appeared at the final rehearsal with a smiling face and a soul full of wrath. She had very little to say to Smith, but otherwise she showed no resentment, and her acting was as good as ever. One wiser than Cap Smith would have augured ill from her fair seeming, a less confident man would have been on his guard; but he had forgotten all that he had ever read about the fury of women scorned, and he went to his doom unconscious.

The Gym had never held a bigger audience, and the opera, as usual, was proving itself the greatest success in the annals of Stanford theatricals; the show was so inoffensively proper, Connor declared with a sigh, that it was disgusting. No hitch or jar marred the perfect running of the performance, and the conductor, directing the scene-shifting between acts, stopped now and then to shake hands with himself. The borrowed scenery almost fitted; there was no wait of more than half an hour; very few of the chorus got out of tune; the costumes had been expunged by a board of lady managers and declared officially to have no Said Pasha tendencies; the leading ladies were actually keeping their tempers; things moved on as smoothly as though the Fates were deadening suspicion in order to make the coming catastrophe the more overwhelming.

The third act drew on. The low comedian had just finished joshing back and forth with the bleachers, whose chorus work had equalled, in some respects, that on the stage. A soft light began to illumine the painted heavens, and a three-hundred-candle-power Luna, the pride and joy of Connor’s heart, rose in wavering majesty. The house was quiet now, listening to Smith’s solo to Lillian in the moonlit garden. The music swept softly on to the close of the song. As Jack took a deep breath for his tender love-note, the note that was to make men sigh and women quiver, Lillian leaned closer to him, as if drawn by the caressing sweetness in his voice, and one round, white arm stole about his neck in the prettiest gesture imaginable. No one knew that with the other hand she had quickly drawn out the big black pin that held the flowers on her breast. One wicked jab, and the precious high note broke in a wild “ouch” of pain.

The bleachers laughed uproariously.