Brenda's Cousin at Radcliffe: a Story for Girls
Copyright© 2024 by Helen Leah Reed
Chapter 24: Seniors All
How quickly that summer before their Senior year passed away! Probably hardly a girl in the class failed to regret that they were travelling so quickly toward the end of their college course. During the summer a dozen or more had sent a vacation round-robin about from one to another. Clarissa had written a witty letter describing her experiences in drinking the waters at Manitou, whither her father had been sent in search of health. She also mentioned incidentally that she was practising ball, “for our team is to come out the very top of the heap, but don’t repeat my language,” she had concluded. Julia wrote of a very quiet summer at Rockley, as her aunt’s illness had prevented a proposed European trip. Lois had had three weeks in the White Mountains with Miss Ambrose, where Polly had joined her for a fortnight. Instead of tutoring, Pamela had felt warranted in giving her summer to research work, but she had done this without suffering in health, because she had found a delightful little village on the Maine coast where the board was almost nothing, and where she had just the inspiration she wanted in hearing the surf roll in upon the beach. Elspeth Gray wrote of an encounter that she had had with—well, it is not necessary to go into particulars—but with the graduate of a well-known college for women, who had pitied her very much because her lot had been cast at Radcliffe. “As if I hadn’t chosen this lot for myself with all the colleges of the country spread out before me. She said that we had no college spirit, and that we ought to see that there was a lack of dignity in accepting a degree that was only a kind of imitation of a Harvard degree. But it’s useless to argue with such people, although I did make her admit that Harvard offered more to men than did any other college in the country, and she was amazed to learn that we had precisely the same courses of study, the same instructors, and the same examinations as Harvard men have. Dear me! where have people been brought up to know so little?” Each girl whose name was appended to the round-robin, while expressing her anxiety to see her classmates again, added a note of sorrow that this for the majority would be the last year at Radcliffe. A few intended to return for higher degrees, but it was doubtful if all could carry out their plans.
In the meantime they were getting all they could out of college life. Those girls who came from a distance were especially anxious to make up for lost time by going to lectures, concerts, or by visiting art galleries and historic towns, that they might feel that they had lost none of the special advantages that Cambridge and Boston offer the college student. Clarissa, who had done much sight-seeing in her Freshman year, now thought that her greatest need was for Sever Hall lectures, and she made up a little party consisting of Polly and two or three others of her classmates, who agreed to go with her two evenings a week. She enjoyed whatever lectures came on those evenings, for she said that three years at Radcliffe ought to have fitted her to understand anything. She continued to attend lectures even when her classmates, on one pretext or another, had dropped off, for she was so fortunate as to run across a special student of good standing who had given up her position in a Western High School for the sake of a year’s study at Cambridge. A little later Pamela made one of the party, as it had been her habit the past two years to attend all the lectures or readings given by the Senior professor of Greek. While some Radcliffe Seniors were to be found at all of the Sever Hall lectures, Clarissa in this last year was really the most persistent, and she was the more persistent, perhaps, because some of her friends tried to dissuade her from burning the candle at both ends. They spoke in this way because Clarissa was steadily adding to her reputation as an athlete. She was now captain of the team—a position that many of the undergraduates regarded as more enviable than that of President of the Idler. It was a great grief to Polly that she could not play basket ball, but when she presented herself for the necessary physical examination, a slight weakness of the heart and lungs was discovered, in itself not serious, although sufficient to render her an unfit candidate. In consequence to assuage her disappointment she made herself an amateur coach and spent what time she could watching the practice games. Her observation was keen, and more than one suggestion of hers was put into practical effect.
She was sure not only that the Senior team would vanquish all the others at Radcliffe, but that in its outside contests it would carry all before it. “Oh, if we could only have a chance against Bryn Mawr!” she sighed. “Of course that day is coming, but if it would only come in our day! Was there ever such a captain?” she concluded, with an admiring glance at Clarissa.
“Never, I am sure,” replied Pamela. “I love to look at her. She is the very picture of health.”
“There couldn’t be a better centre, not only because she’s so tall, but because she has such judgment. How she managed it I don’t know, but she contrived to get Julia for one of her forwards and Ruth for the other. Neither intended to play this year. But there they are! They both have cool heads, and there’s little danger of their losing their wits in an exciting match.”
Pamela glanced for a moment toward Julia, who stood ready to make a goal, with the ball held lightly in her finger tips. Even while they were looking, with a little twist she threw it, and it fell into the basket.
“I count it one of my privileges in coming here,” said Pamela in her prim little way, “to have known Julia Bourne. Whatever she does, she does so well, and she always has a thought for others. She is always so encouraging.” Just at this moment Julia glanced toward her friends, and though she did not really bow to them, she smiled pleasantly.
“There’s one lesson we can learn from basket ball,” remarked Pamela.
“Ah, Pamela,” and Polly laughed. “Sermons in stones, books in the running brooks are nothing to your lessons. But there, don’t blush at me, but tell me what you had in mind.”
“Oh, I was only thinking that it’s less what the individual player does than what the team does as a whole. A girl who thinks only of her own ability to make a wonderful throw may make a throw that will gain great applause, but she generally sends the ball into the hands of the enemy.”
“Like Elizabeth Darcy last year. Did you see that match?”
“No,” responded Pamela.
“Well, she brought down the house with two or three brilliant throws, but she really did more to hurt her team than any one on the other side. If I had been Clarissa I should have been afraid to have Annabel on the team for the same reason. She thinks of herself first, and of the general good last.”
“Human nature according to Hobbes.”
“Oh, my dear, I never think of ethics out of the class-room. There—there look!” and both girls turned to see a goal scored for Clarissa’s team—or rather for their own team, since Clarissa was the embodiment of the Senior athletic aspirations.
The match with Wellesley was one of the things of which they were sure, and it was likely to be exciting. Brenda teased Julia when she heard of the coming contest by saying that she was bound to be on the side of Wellesley this year, for Amy had just entered Wellesley, and Brenda was still very fond of her. Since their trip to Nova Scotia they had seen little of each other except in summer, for Amy had been very hard at work preparing for college, and society had absorbed Brenda the past two years. Amy had felt especially tender toward Brenda the past year or two, because the beginning of their acquaintance had seemed to mark the beginning of prosperity for Amy and her mother. The efforts of Mrs. Barlow and Mr. Elton had resulted in a fairly large sale of Mrs. Redmond’s paintings. Indeed, her water-color sketches had become so much the fashion that her income now permitted her to live in Salem. Thus Amy for a year or two had been able to see much more than in former years of her schoolmates out of school, and some of her little sharp corners had been entirely rounded off. The death of Cousin Joan the past winter had made it possible for Amy to enter college without any worry as to ways and means; for although the money left by Cousin Joan from most points of view would have been considered very small indeed, it was enough to carry Amy comfortably through college. It was left to her for this purpose, “in recognition,” as Cousin Joan wrote in a note that was found with the will, “of her patience with a very troublesome old woman.” Amy, wiping away a few tears, as she thought of the invalid whose life had been so narrow, protested that it was her mother and not she who should have the money as a reward for patience. But Mrs. Redmond reminded her daughter that the money was really a gift to her as well as to Amy, since she would now be saved a certain amount of financial care in planning Amy’s college career. Therefore, Amy at Wellesley, and Julia at Radcliffe, at odds only on the subject of some college championship, exchanged visits and compared notes, and each ended invariably by thinking her own college the best.
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