Chapter 13: Various Ambitions

The summer passed quickly away, as vacations have a fashion of doing, even when one is young, and Julia and Ruth and Polly and Clarissa and Lois and all the other college friends met again in October, well and happy. Polly had been at Atlantic City, Clarissa had joined her family at the White Mountains, Pamela had been on the South Shore with her pupil, Nora had spent the summer in Maine. Lois alone of this group of friends had had practically no change of scene; she had stayed in Newton all summer, and yet she returned to college looking as bright as any of the others. Julia’s summer does not form properly a part of her Radcliffe days, and yet it is only fair to say that Julia’s summer had been somewhat different from what might have been prophesied in June. The first weeks had been spent in attendance on her Aunt Anna, who had fallen ill with a slow fever in the early spring. When she was better the doctor had ordered a complete change of air, with the result that Mr. and Mrs. Barlow and the two girls had made a tour of the British Provinces. Coming back to college from so many points of the compass, the Sophomores all had naturally much to tell. They registered themselves promptly on the first Thursday of the term; they chose their electives and changed their minds as often as the authorities would permit. They studied the notices on the bulletin board and the schedule of recitations, and advised one another in tones much more confident than a year ago. They did their part at the Freshman reception to make the incoming class feel perfectly at home, and they began to develop a class spirit. Now “class spirit” is something which had only just begun to develop at Radcliffe, and indeed at this time some of the upper class girls, absorbed in their work, were disinclined to believe that it had an existence. Different things were contributing to this class feeling. One was the increasing interest in athletics. Each class had its basket ball team and its own athletes, or gymnasts as perhaps we ought to say, in whose triumphs it took a genuine pride. Clarissa had come to the front as one of the best athletes of her class, and the Sophomores with her help expected to lead in the spring meet. Julia, too, found herself suddenly conspicuous from a very simple thing, or at least it seemed simple to her. She had always had some talent for musical composition, and had studied Composition before entering Radcliffe. But the course in Harmony under the distinguished head of the Music Department had been a revelation to her, and she had begun to venture on little flights of her own. One of her songs, a setting of William Watson’s, “Tell me not now,” Polly had picked up as it lay in manuscript on her desk. Now Polly had a sweet, bird-like voice, and she rushed to the piano and trilled off:

“Tell me not now, if love for love

Thou canst return,

Now while around us and above

Day’s flambeaux burn.

Not in clear noon, with speech as clear,

Thy heart avow,

For every gossip wind to hear;

Tell me not now.”

Julia herself, as she listened, found her own music more interesting than she had imagined it. Polly, when she had finished, turned around with an amused expression:

“Well, well, I am perfectly surprised that you are so sentimental, Julia Bourne.”

“Oh, nonsense!” responded Julia, “but you sing it like an angel.”

“Yes,” said Polly, “this time I’ll accept the compliment without protest, for with your leave (or without it) I’m going to sing this at the next Idler. I’ve been asked to sing something, and I’ll take care to let every one know that you are the composer of this sentimental ode. You! the stern person who used to frown on me last spring when I wanted to go to Riverside on canoe expeditions that meant a solitude à deux. Ah, Julia, this song shows that you are human like the rest of us;” and Polly held high above her head the manuscript that Julia tried to seize.

Thus Julia made her first appearance before her fellow-students as a composer, for Polly sang “Tell me not now” with great effect that Friday afternoon; and Julia, who hitherto had had comparatively few acquaintances outside of her special set, now found herself an object of interest to the whole club.

“The next thing,” said Ruth, with genuine pride in Julia’s triumph, “the next thing we’ll have you composing an operetta.”

“Nonsense!” cried Julia. “An operetta! I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not? Three or four operettas have been composed and given by Radcliffe girls with great success. Why, I came out with my mother the year ‘A Copper Complication’ was given, and I never saw anything more entertaining in my life. What one girl can accomplish another can, I mean if she has the same kind of talent. Why, there have been several Radcliffe operettas—’Princess Perfection,’ ‘A Copper Complication.’”