Chapter 26: The House Party

When Mrs. Barlow offered Julia the house at Rockley for a party during the Easter recess, the offer was promptly accepted. “I have ordered the house put in readiness for our return,” wrote Mrs. Barlow from California, “although we shall not reach Boston until the first of May. I am sure that you must have worked very hard this winter, and that the breath of sea air will be just what you need before hot weather sets in. There is room for a dozen girls, and everything will be arranged for your comfort. You must not hesitate to ask for whatever you wish.”

In making the list of the girls to be invited, Julia and Ruth were long in consultation. Clarissa and Pamela, Lois and Polly, were certainties, and there were three or four others about whom there was no doubt.

“There’s Annabel, too,” said Julia. “We must ask her.”

Ruth looked closely at her friend. “But do you care to have her? Are you not asking her chiefly on my account?”

“I thought you might like her, even though you and she are less intimate than you once were. But she is Class President, and she is much more genuine than she was a year or two ago.”

“She tries to seem more genuine,” responded Ruth. “But Annabel can never be absolutely sincere. We must take her as we find her.”

“Oh, we all understand her now,” replied Julia, “and as she certainly is entertaining, it seems to me worth while to invite her.”

Annabel, therefore, was one of the group that sat on the broad piazzas at Rockley or wandered on the beach in the warm April sun. Although it was vacation, each girl had set herself some task to be done before returning to college. Therefore, for three hours in the morning all were allowed to bury themselves in their books. Dante, Schiller, Greek and Latin Classics, Von Holst, Fichte, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Seignobos, and other awe-inspiring books were strewn over the library table, although any girl who touched her books except in the mornings was at once forcibly reprimanded by her classmates. An exception was made in the case of Polly and Clarissa, who both were studying practical Astronomy. So ardent were they in their search for variable stars that the other girls decided that it would be cruelty to force them to give up the opportunities afforded by Rockley. Therefore they spent nearly every evening on a little balcony, muffled in shawls. The wide, unbroken stretch of sky gave them the best of views, and, armed with opera-glasses, they carried on their search with great perseverance. Clarissa, indeed, announced that she had found almost enough material for a thesis, and that star-gazing could be a very profitable performance, “when carried on by a prudent person like myself,” she added sotto voce.

For exercise, wheeling was the favorite diversion of the twelve, and some to whom this part of the country was new were enthusiastic over the pilgrimages to Salem, Marblehead, and other historic places. At Salem, where Amy also was spending her vacation, they had a glimpse of Mrs. Redmond and her studio. Polly, who had money for whatever she wished, bought a pretty little water-color sketch of the beach at Rockley, and Annabel talked about having her miniature done. Fritz Tomkins, Amy’s great friend, came down to call while the Seniors were there. He expressed himself as perfectly delighted to meet a group of Radcliffe girls, explaining that although he had been a whole year at Harvard, they were the first students from the woman’s college whom he had met.

“You ought to have called on Ruth and me,” said Julia, with a mischievous attempt at patronizing Fritz, “and we would have introduced you to some one of your own age. We know several girls in the Freshman class.”

“Thanks,” said Fritz, “but you know that at Harvard we hardly realize that there is such an institution as Radcliffe. It makes so little—”

“Yes, it makes very little disturbance in Cambridge, and we would hardly realize the existence of Harvard had we not the advantage of knowing its Faculty pretty well,” retorted Ruth.

“I understand that you could hardly get on without them,” and thus the good-natured bantering between the two went on for some time longer, and in the end it was hard to tell with whom the advantage lay.

One evening at Rockley Julia announced that she had arranged for a “confession conference.” She would give no satisfaction as to her meaning until the whole dozen had assembled in the library before the open fire.

Then, producing a red-bound book, she declared that its pages were blank, except that one page in every five had in turn the names of each of the girls present.

“I am going,” she said, “to ask each girl to tell me what Radcliffe has meant to her, and then I am going to beg her to tell what her real ambition was in coming to college, or better, what she intends to be when she leaves. Let us take an hour to collect our thoughts and write; then another hour to read and discuss what has been written. Later, with your permission, these confessions will be handed to the Confession Recorder (and she laid her hand on Polly’s shoulder) to be copied into this book. I wish that the whole class would do something of the same kind. But at the end of ten years, how interesting it will be to see how near we twelve have come to our ideals.”