I
The October sun was shining brightly down on the Bryn Mawr maples when Jane and her father first walked under the arch of Pembroke Hall, where Agnes was awaiting them. Jane thought Bryn Mawr was very beautiful. Much more beautiful than the pictures. The most beautiful place, indeed, that she had ever seen.
“Let’s look it over, Jane,” said Mr. Ward, “before we go in.” They strolled on, arm in arm, down the gravel walk beyond.
The campus stretched fresh and green before them. On one hand it terminated in a group of grey stone buildings, hung with English ivy. On the other it extended past a row of breeze blown maples to an abrupt decline, where the ground dropped off down a grassy hillside. In that direction you could see the rolling Pennsylvania country for miles and miles. Jane had never lived among hills. She thought the view was very lovely.
They passed some groups of girls, walking in twos and threes on the gravel path. They were laughing and chattering together and they paid no attention whatever to Jane and her father. Other girls were sitting, here and there, under the maples. Four or five ran out of a building, that Jane knew from the pictures must be Merion, and almost bumped into them. They were dressed in bright red gym suits, with red corduroy skirts, and they carried hockey sticks. They cantered across the campus toward the hillside, making a bright patch of colour against the green as they ran.
Pembroke Hall, as they returned to it, looked very big and important. Jane drew a little nearer to her father as they entered the front door. It seemed quite deserted for a moment. Then a coloured maid, in a neat black dress and apron, came out from a little room under the stairs. She said she would tell the warden. “The warden” sounded a bit forbidding, Jane thought. Rather like a prison. But when she appeared she proved to be a nice-looking girl with dark brown hair, not much older than Isabel. She shook hands with Jane’s father and told them how to find Jane’s room. It was on the second story, in the middle of the corridor.
Jane and Jane’s father walked alone up the wooden stairs. In the upper hall they met some more girls, laughing and shouting, hanging about the open doors of bedrooms. Inside the rooms was confusion twice confounded. Open trunks and scattered books and dishes and clothing flung on chairs. An odour of cooking chocolate permeated the air.
Agnes was waiting for them in the three-room suite. It looked very small to Jane, but otherwise just as it had in the catalogue. There was a little study with an open fireplace and a window-seat that commanded the campus, and two tiny bedrooms, opening off it. Agnes’s trunk was already unpacked. Agnes had come yesterday, straight from the steamer. She had already been out, exploring the country. A great vase of Michaelmas daisies was on the study table.
“Well, girls,” said Jane’s father, “this is great.”
It was great, thought Jane. It was much nicer than she had ever imagined. She didn’t feel shy any longer, now she had seen Agnes.
Agnes had taken her advanced standing examination in French that morning. It was easy, she said. Much easier than entrance.
Jane sat down on the window seat and gazed out over the campus. It looked very tranquil and pleasant. Yet exciting, too, with all those different girls, that seemed so much at home, walking about as if they owned the place. No one seemed to be watching them, as in school. No one was telling them what to do. As Jane looked six girls came out from under the arch. They were carrying a picnic basket and a steamer rug and several cushions and they wore green gym suits and corduroy skirts, just like the red ones Jane had seen before. They hung about under a big cherry tree under the window for a minute and they were all singing. Jane could catch the words by leaning out, around the ivy.
“Once there dwelt captiously a stern papa.
Likewise with him sojourned, daughter and ma.
Daughter’s minority tritely was spent,
To a prep boarding school, glumly she went.
One day the crisis came, outcome of years,
Father and mother firm, daughter in tears,
With stern progenitors, hotly she pled,
Lined up her arguments, this is what she said:
‘I don’t want to go to Vassar, I can’t bear to think of Smith.’ ”
They were strolling off across the campus, now, but Jane could still hear the words of the song.
“ ‘I’ve no earthly use for Radcliffe, Wellesley’s charms are merest myth,
Only spooks go to Ann Arbor, Leland Stanford’s much too far.’ ”
Their fresh young voices rose in a final wail in the middle distance.
“ ‘I don’t want to go to col—lege, if—I can’t—go—to—Bryn—Mawr!’ ”
“That’s a nice song,” said Jane excitedly.
“They sing all the time,” said Agnes. “The Seniors sing on the steps of Taylor Hall after dinner.”
“I’m going to love this,” said Jane.
Her father looked very much pleased.
“I hope you do, kid,” he said heartily. “And I’m sure you will. Jane’s had a pretty poor summer, Agnes.”
Agnes knew all about Jane’s summer. Jane had written her about André, just as soon as she could bear to put it down on paper. Agnes had sent her an awfully nice letter. She looked very sympathetic now.
“You must look out for her, Agnes,” said Jane’s father.
“I don’t think she’ll need much looking out for,” said Agnes. “This is Jane’s kind of place.”
Jane was sure it was, even at the long Freshman supper table in Pembroke, which was very terrifying. Jane sat between her father and Agnes. On Agnes’s other side was the warden and beyond her father sat a little dark-eyed Freshman from Gloversville, New York. Her name was Marion Park. She talked very politely to Jane’s father throughout the meal.
“That’s a bright kid,” Jane’s father said, as they left the table. “I bet she’ll amount to something some day.” Jane felt that she and Agnes would like Marion Park.
The Seniors were singing on Taylor steps just as Agnes had prophesied. Jane and her father and Agnes strolled up and down in the gathering twilight and listened to them. There were lots of girls about, more than a hundred, Jane thought, all in light summer dresses, walking up and down under the maple trees, occasionally lining up in a great semicircle before the steps, joining the Seniors in a song. Some of the songs were awfully funny.
“If your cranium—is a vacuum—and you’d like to learn
How an intellect—you can cultivate—from the smallest germ,
On the management—of the universe—if your hopes you stake,
Or a treatise—on the ineffable—you propose to make,
If you contemplate—making politics—your exclusive aim,
And are looking for—some coadjutor—in your little game,
And in short if there—should be anything—that you fail to know,
To the Sophomore—to the Sophomore—go—go—go!”
Jane’s father thought the songs were awfully funny, too.
He laughed quite as much over them as Jane and Agnes did.
“Bright girls,” he said. “Nice bright girls.”
That was just what they were, thought Jane. And her kind. Like Agnes. Not at all like Flora and Muriel, whom she loved of course and who had written to her only last week from Farmington, but who she didn’t feel would fit into Bryn Mawr very well. They were just—different.
Agnes came into her bedroom that night in her cotton crepe kimono, just before she turned out the light. Jane was sitting up in her little wooden bed.
“Open the window, Agnes,” said Jane. “I like this place. I’m going to like it a lot.”
Agnes opened the window in silence. Dear old Agnes—it was fun to be rooming with her! But Jane hadn’t forgotten. She hadn’t forgotten one bit. She sat there in her high-necked, long-sleeved nightgown, with her hair braided tightly in two straight pigtails, looking very like the little Jane that used to run up Pine Street to meet André under the Water Works Tower. She hadn’t forgotten, but she wasn’t the same little Jane, in spite of appearances. She was beginning to learn that the world was wide.
“Since I can’t marry André,” she said solemnly, “I’d rather be here than anywhere else.”