Pocahontas, Freshman

________________________________________________
Title:     Pocahontas, Freshman
Author: Charles Kellogg Field [More Titles by Field]

"But when they lookt round for the Ladye Pocahontas, she hadde gone to her Yorke woodes, weepyng they saye."

ROWE'S LIFE OF POCAHONTAS.

I.

To begin with, the college never called her Pocahontas to her face, and no one would have found anything pat in the name until a long-remembered spring afternoon in her Freshman year. After that day, although her instructors still registered her as Hannah Grant Daly, she was generally known as "Pocahontas." Students with visitors would point her out in the Quad. "That's the girl they call Pocahontas." Then they would tell briefly her story. She knew through her room-mate that the college had nicknamed her, and she grieved over it. She did not know that John Smith himself never called her Pocahontas; she had never dared to look at him since the day they had named her.

Early in September the noon train brought her through the oaks and the burdened olive orchards, past the lonely redwood Tree to the University. The brakeman's call: "Next station is Palo A-al-to!" stirred her with fluttering excitement. The crowded carriages and people at the station bewildered her. Eager 'busmen struggled for the hand-baggage of strangers, men with "Student Transfer" on their caps clamored for trunk-checks. Fellows in duck seized some of the men who came down the car steps, carrying away their suit-cases and throwing lusty student arms about their shoulders. The men thus welcomed introduced younger fellows and the whole group piled into a 'bus and shouted "Rho House, Billy," to the driver.

The man who got out just ahead of Pocahontas was greeted by cries of "Come on you Ca-ap!" and "Hello, Smithy, old boy!" He was evidently someone of whom they were very fond. One fat fellow with a comical face hugged him theatrically. Pocahontas watched them drive away, laughing and slapping one another's knees. The man they called Smithy was the nicest looking.

She had given her new valise to a gray-haired 'busman who looked a little like the minister at home. On the way up the long avenue of palms toward the sandstone buildings low in the distance, this 'busman chatted kindly with her, telling her wonderful, almost incredible things about the University, so that she began to feel a little less strange. As she paid her fare in front of the Roble he said:

"Now, whenever you want a 'bus, Miss, just ask for Uncle John. That's what they call me."

"Yes," answered the Freshman, gratefully, "I will,--Uncle John."

She passed up the dormitory steps, running awkwardly the gauntlet of experienced eyes scanning the new arrivals. The Theta Gammas wrote her down as material for a quaint little, quiet little dig,--not of sorority interest. One of them ventured that there was an Oxford teacher's Bible and an embroidered mending-case in the shiny valise. Another prophesied that the newcomer would wear her High School graduation-dress to the Freshman reception. These ladies had been at college for three years and their diagnosis was correct.

So Hannah Grant Daly hopped with no unnecessary flapping of wings upon her perch in the Roble dove-cote. The matron put her into 52 with Lillian Arnold, a Sophomore leader of local society. This was "to make things easier for her." Their wedded life lasted three days. It was long after lights when Miss Arnold returned the first night. Hannah had read her chapter and was lying awake, bravely resisting a homesick cry. Her roommate groped in with an animated tale of a Freshman spread on the top floor at which the chief attraction had been oyster cocktails. Pocahontas shuddered. In imagination she detected a faint odor like that from her mother's medicine-closet.

"I'd have asked you to go along with me," apologized Lillian, scrambling into bed without any conventional delay, "but I thought you wouldn't care for such things."

"I hope I never shall," said the new girl, solemnly, and turned her face to the wall.

The following morning while Pocahontas arranged her share of the bureau, the Sophomore draped a tennis net on their wall and fixed in its meshes the trophies of her first year. She was putting a photograph in place when Hannah spoke:

"Who is that, Miss Arnold?"

"That's Jack Smith," answered Lillian; "stunning, isn't he?"

"He's very interesting, I think. He was on the train yesterday. There were ever so many boys to meet him."

"He's a Beta Rho,--belongs to that fraternity, you know. They have a swell house here. I know most of them very well,--been over there to dinner several times."

"What class is he in?"

"Mine,--Sophomore. He's a splendid athlete,--football and pole-vaulting,--and he sings in the Glee Club. He was the only Freshman to make the team last year,--he's really a perfect hero."

"I knew he was somebody by the way they acted down at the station. I think he has a good face." The new girl had come over from the bureau and was looking up at the picture in the net.

"Everybody thinks he is the handsomest man in college. You wait till you see him in his red sweater. Don't say anything, Hannah, but I'm going to have Jack Smith for my very own this year; you see if I don't manage it," and Lillian, laughing, blew a light kiss to the photograph.

Decidedly Pocahontas disapproved of her room-mate. Later, when she found that a half-dozen girls who had dropped in after dinner were there for the evening, she went out into a music-room to look at her new text-books. Routed from here by more butterflies, with "beaux," she did her reading on a bench in the hallway. Another day and she was rooming with a Junior who was a hard student. Her departure caused Miss Arnold sincere regret. A girl she knew had roomed with a Freshman the year before and the child adored her and did the mending of both. Lillian hated to sew.

Pocahontas had been at college a week and was already learning that it is not necessary to read all your references when her room-mate, coming in from the library one evening, mentioned that there was a rush going on over at the tank.

"A rush?" asked Hannah, "what is that?"

"A relic of barbarism; they ought to have put a stop to it long ago, Professor Grind says."

"Yes," said the Freshman, "but what do they do?"

"Oh, get out and fight somehow,--I don't know just how,--something about tying up. Only another way of wasting time, Hannah," and the Junior plunged back into her Livy.

At breakfast Pocahontas heard Lillian Arnold tell about going over to the baseball diamond to see the Sophomores lying tied up beside the backstop, and what a joke it was on her own class and what a ridiculous figure Jack Smith had made in the coils of a Freshman's trunk-rope, with his face and hair all grimy with perspiration and dust, and that laundry agent, Mason, piled on top of him. Hannah left the table in secret excitement. Between recitations that morning she met Pete Halleck, a classmate from her own high school; bursting with pride, he took her up to the Row to show their very own class numerals shining high on the tank, and she realized vaguely that this was a thing of which she, too, was a part. There grew within her a longing to reach out a little toward the big, full life of the college, to know something of the men and women who lived it. All this was very wrong, she told herself, for she had come here to study hard. She had only two years in which to fit herself to teach. Here was the precious book-knowledge for which she had hungered and pinched so long. It must not be neglected, ever so little; but the enthusiasm of the boy with her was infectious. In her soul she took issue with the views of her room-mate, fortified as they were by the approval of Professor Grind.

In this rebellious mood she read on the Hall bulletin-board a notice of the reception to be given to new students by the Christian Associations. Here was a chance to satisfy that wicked craving without too great concession, for of course there would be no dancing and the auspices were so favorable. She spoke about it to Katherine Graham, a Junior, who was in Lillian Arnold's "set," to be sure, but who had put her arm around the homesick little Freshman one soft evening after dinner when the girls were strolling before the Hall, and had drawn her down the walk toward the Ninety-five Oak. Katherine was a fine, frank girl whose talk about the University and her love for the campus and its life stirred the new girl's pulses. She could listen with unguarded eagerness to this Junior because she knew her to be a student. Pocahontas slipped her arm wistfully 'round her friend's waist. To room with Miss Graham would have been perfect happiness.

"Of course you'll go," declared Katherine, when she had heard the Freshman's confidence regarding the reception. "It's slow, sometimes, but you'll meet the people you want to know."

So out came the plain graduation-dress, folded carefully away since the night she read the valedictory, three months ago; she sewed a rip in the gloves saved from the same occasion, and she took out the fan which her grandmother had given her, a wonderful fan she had considered it until she saw a few of Lillian's.

In the gymnasium where glistening bamboo and red geraniums screened the chest-weights along the walls, and feathery branches of pepper climbed luxuriantly over the inclined ladders, she found the crowd characteristic of this occasion,--the Freshman men at one end, the Freshman girls at the other, and between them a neutral zone of old students chatting gayly, oblivious of the purpose of the affair. Oh, but the reception committee! Save for these indefatigable martyrs, the Freshman sexes might have gazed wistfully at each other across the lines of upper class-men until the lights dipped and never been able to bow on the Quad next day. Important-looking persons with silk badges and worried faces circulated in a grim endeavor to "mix things up." One of these wild-eyed people would dash into the crowd and haul some struggling upper class-man over to the feminine section. With his victim in tow, he would open conversation feverishly:

"Name, please?"

"Miss Newcome."

"Ah, permit me to introduce Mr. Oldman. Miss Newcome, Mr. Oldman. Isn't it warm to-night? Fine talk of the Doctor's, wasn't it? Well, you must excuse me; we're very busy," the last words dying in the distance as he sped away.

Pocahontas contrasted this chill with the warmth of church socials at home. She felt disappointed and dreadfully alone. Her sober-minded room-mate was bobbing like a pigeon before Professor Grind, enthusiastically telling him "how much inspiration she got from his courses;" Katherine Graham was lost in a swirl of upper class-men. The Freshman had half turned toward the dressing-room when out of the press came Jack Smith, big, wholesome-looking, still smiling with some memory of his latest conversation. Why did Hannah stop? It was certainly bold,--doubtless it was half-unconscious,--but stop she did, and a committee-man, wheeling suddenly, caught Smith, dashed through the preliminaries, and the Sophomore had added Hannah Grant Daly to the list of his acquaintances.

Now "Cap" Smith had not come to this reception to meet Freshman girls--at any rate insignificant ones with spectacles and sandy hair; but no one could have told that he had not begged to be presented to this one.

"I'll have to ask you the same question we put to all," he began, smiling pleasantly; "what's your major?"

She would have given much to have answered something clever or interesting, as no doubt other girls did, but she could only stammer:

"Education."

"You've answered so promptly I'll let you off the rest of the text,--there are forty-two questions in all, each more inquisitive than the last."

The Freshman giggled; she did not know just why, unless it was that his face and merry way inspired jollity.

"Have the committee on irrigation attended to you yet?"

"I don't know; I have registered," she faltered.

He laughed, and she blushed uncomfortably.

"Oh, pardon me," he said, "I must go slow with my slang; you've had only a few days to learn it. I'm just joshing the weakness of the lemonade the Associations give us. Let's try some, though; shall we?"

They made their way to the lemonade booth. Such a vain, silly little Freshman she was, to be sweetly conscious that people looked after them as she passed along with this handsome, athletic young hero whom everybody admired. Lillian Arnold was in the booth, dividing her attention between filling glasses and entertaining four men. She gave Pocahontas a cool bow and cast a look at Smith which the Freshman interpreted "What are you doing with her?" At the same moment Lillian thought of a foolish confidence she had made to the dig when they were room-mates. Jack, however, was describing to Hannah the recent rush and the glory of her class, and Lillian's glances were lost upon him. The lemonade finished, he took the Freshman over to Professor Craig's mother, and left her with a pleasant fairy tale about meeting her again.

"Who's your friend?" laughed Perkins, as Smith dived back into his own element.

"Some little Roble dig. Don't ask me her name. I think people like that are really lonesome, Ted. Say, those Phis have trotted Haviland 'round long enough. Let's break up their interference."

Others came up to Mrs. Craig, and Hannah found herself introduced to a variety of men, but she cared little if she met no one else just then. She stood watching Jack as he passed from group to group, chaffing merrily, shaking hands with many people. There was no one else in the room so well worth watching.

That night, while the Junior breathed regularly on her side of the alcove, Pocahontas lay a long time thinking dreamily. She knew he would be like that; somehow he had looked so the first day at the station with all those noisy boys. She should have answered something more than yes and no at the reception. He would think her stupid. They had given her advanced standing in Latin; perhaps he would be in the class when it met on Monday; it would be splendid if he were; lots of the boys walked to Roble with girls at half-past-twelve; she would ask him all about the football; they would not have to talk about the Latin;--she felt so small beside him as they went along the board walk--he looked down at her and laughed--there was a seat under the Ninety-five Oak--all the other people were talking, a long way off--the lemonade bowl under the tree--shall we--

She met him on Monday morning near the Chapel. He came loafing along the arcade one arm flung about "Pellams" Chase. He looked at her good-humoredly a second, then, without recognition, glanced over her head to the girl behind her.

Hannah's heart nearly choked her. His having forgotten her was so plain, that she had not dared to bow, though she had half done so. She hoped no one had noticed her face. She bit her lips. He had not meant to do it; on the bed in her room she told herself this over and over again. Their meeting in the gymnasium had lasted less than ten minutes. It was two days ago. She was not like the other college girls he knew. Why should he remember her, having seen her once? He had been very pleasant to her at the reception. She went resolutely down to luncheon. Cap. Smith was still her hero.

II.

One day when from the fences along the pastures exultant meadow-larks were shouting "April," trilling the "r" ecstatically, and mild-hearted people were out after golden poppies, the Encina Freshmen, dark-browed plotters every villain of them, met in Pete Halleck's room. There was trouble brewing. First, Pete counted them with an air of mystery; then he pulled down the window shades, shut the transoms, and drew from the wash-stand a tangled mass of rope, two cans of paint and a coil of wire. With these beside him on the floor, he harangued the mob.

"We have got to get a rush out of 'em, fellows," he said, keeping his voice discreetly low, "and if they won't scrap, we'll force 'em. How many of you remember how to tie a knot?"

"We've had experience enough," spoke up a roly-poly boy; "it's the Sophs who need a lesson in tying."

"And we'll give it!"

Halleck drew up and looked so melodramatically important that the meeting snickered behind their collective hands. Just then there came a knock at the door. Halleck put his fingers to his lips; the crowd sat as if petrified; the roly-poly conspirator felt his bravado oozing out in youthful perspiration. The knocking came again, more imperatively, then a voice.

"Let me in, you crazy Freshies."

Silence in the room.

"Let me in. I know about you. You're all in there, talking rush. Hang your little pink skins, let me in!"

Still no answer.

"Pete Halleck, unlock your door. It's I--it's Frank Lyman, and I've something to say to you babies. Open up!"

The composite face of the gathering fell. With Lyman against them, who could be for them?--Frank Lyman, oracle of Encina and father-confessor of Freshmen!

Pete threw the paraphernalia into his wardrobe.

"The game's up, fellows."

He opened the door, admitting the Senior, and with him, alas! Sophomore Smith, President of his class. The sight of the enemy stirred Halleck.

"Say, shall we tie up the two of them?" cried he, when he had locked the door.

"Key down, Freshie, key down," said the Senior. "You boys pain me to the limit. Aren't you satisfied with tying up the Sophomores once without scrapping the whole year through?"

"What do you know about our wanting to scrap?"

"I'm on to you, Peter: You have a ton of rope and a barrel of paint somewhere about your den, and you're going out to-morrow to tie up the Sophs at the ball game. Now you fellows have had three rushes this year; when are you going to quit and give us a rest?"

Halleck held the position that delighted his soul,--center stage,--and he was a respecter of neither the Faculty nor his seniors.

"We're going to quit when we get even with you for pulling twenty-five lone Freshmen out of the Hall at night and making them rush against the whole Sophomore class; then's when we're going to quit. Observe?"

Halleck's shamefully fresh manner revived the drooping spirits of his men.

"See here, we'll call it off if you will," put in the Sophomore president.

"Yes, I guess you will," drawled Halleck. The mob howled. Smith's class was notoriously weaker at fighting than their own.

"We've rushed you three times," went on Cap; "you licked us the first time we fought; then you pulled us out in the mud the night after and did it again; but we got you the next week by strategy!"

"By a sneaking trick!"

"That's right!" chimed the Freshmen, "Pete's dead right!"

"Well, say," persisted Smith, "we're willing to quit as it is. The score stands two to one for you fellows, too."

"Two to nothing!" and again the infant class shouted approval while Lyman, the Senior, looked on amused.

"I really have a chap for you children," he said. "Just because rushing happens to be your game, you run it to death. How do you suppose the Faculty are going to look at this thing? If you want rushing choked off entirely next year, just keep on."

Airily ignoring Lyman's speech, Pete Halleck put his chin out at the Sophomore.

"Then you won't rush?"

"No," answered Cap, perfectly calm, "not even if you carry canes."

Halleck's face shone.

"Ai--i, boys, that's what we'll do! We'll get out there with canes to-morrow and we'll make 'em scrap!"

"Yes, you will! I believe it," sneered Smith. "You fellows are just fresh enough to queer yourselves that way."

"We'll queer you!" cried a valiant youngster "if you don't rush to-morrow we'll tie up your baseball team and cart 'em off to Redwood."

"Yes, sir, and we'll show you how a class president looks braided with bailing-rope,--we'll show you the pretty picture in a mirror, Mr. President,--even if we have to haul you out of the arms of twenty Roble dames."

Pete had taken his class-mates by storm and they piped acquiescence in thin Freshman voices. Smith flushed angrily.

Here Lyman interfered.

"All right, make joshes of yourselves if you want to," he said, not so good-natured as at first. "We have given you warning. Just open that door and you may go on with your little conspiracy."

"Come again when you can't stay so long," wittily yelled Pete down the hall. "I'll meet you on the field to-morrow."

"Oh, we'll be there," called back Lyman over his shoulder. "So will the Faculty," and with this covert hint the peacemakers turned the corner.

The sun shown brightly on the red-brown earth of the diamond when the Freshmen, the Sophomores and the Faculty met, according to agreement. The enterprising student-body management had chalked the Quad in conspicuous places:

RUSH of the YEAR,
Sophomore-Freshman Game.
Don't Miss It!

and the college responded. The co-eds were there, radiant in the snowiest of duck shirts, the gayest of shirt-waists. With them were "ladies' men," in variegated golf-stockings and gorgeous hat-bands. The Freshmen, gathered near first base, contrasted disreputably with this display; they wore old clothes, ragged hats, and they carried a miscellaneous collection of canes, borrowed from Juniors or stolen from Sophomores.

These stalwarts of the latest class were loaded with horns and noise-machines. Defiance exhaled from them. It was an impressive object-lesson on the evils of Freshman victories.

A few sensible Juniors went over and tried to quell their disturbance, but the infants were beyond any control of their class fathers; they had at their head the redoubtable Pete Halleck, with his perverted sense of the proprieties, and their uproar moderated not a bit. The Juniors returned to the bleachers, shaking their heads in disgust. Professor Grind, of the Committee on Student Affairs, was observed to write in his note-book. The Sophomores who saw this rejoiced that they were not in rushing clothes. Still the racket went on.

Jack Smith, in spotless tennis flannels, sat on the bleachers. Some girls from San Francisco, and one in particular as far as Cap was concerned, had come down with Tom Ashley's mother that morning, and he brought them over to the game. Pete Halleck picked him out at once and reminded the others of their promise.

Hannah Grant Daly, who did not know him to speak to, also picked him out. To her he looked more goodly than ever this afternoon, contrasted with the uncouthness of Halleck and others of her class. She watched him covertly, laughing and talking with the town girl beside him. He had laughed and talked very much like that to her, once, but he had forgotten it. That was natural; she had forgiven it long ago. Lillian Arnold, in the brightest of Easter hats, watched him, too.

The game was not exciting. The Freshmen were badly outplayed; the Sophomores galloped around the bases, and the babies' insolence grew with their opponents' score. As the last inning dragged its tedious length, the prospect of the Freshmen forcing a rush had become the important thing with the crowd. The fighting class limbered up for action. Now their third man struck out and the catcher's mask was off.

"Ready!" Pete Halleck's voice came out of the silence of the waiting crowd.

"All set!" and the class was up and off on a trot toward the Sophomore players, who were trying not to walk away any faster than was usual. One after another the baseball men were overtaken and went down in clouds of dust and hard language.

Yet the Sophomores would not rush. Frank Lyman had exhorted them simply, while the Freshmen were attacking their nine. One or two of the hot-heads hurried to the Hall for old clothes, but the majority stood looking on, angry but quiet.

"Now for Smith!" yelled Halleck. His men turned toward the co-ed section of the bleachers.

"Shall we get out of this?" Cap asked Ashley.

"Get out nothing! Stay right here with the girls. They wouldn't have the gall."

But the lust of fight was in the Freshman heart as the dust of fight was on the Freshman skin. They lined up, a ragged mass of impertinence, as near the women as they dared, and waited for the leader of the opposition. He chatted on, explaining the college rush to the girl with him, and gave no sign of moving.

"Shall we go in and take him?" asked an excited youngster.

"I'll give him a chance to come easy," said Halleck. He squared himself, adjusted his dusty hat, and went straight up the steps.

"Excuse me, Mr. Smith," said he, "you are forgetting an engagement you made with some of your friends yesterday."

This was the freshest thing in the history of the college. The Sophomore's fingers twitched.

"I think you can wait until later, Halleck," he said slowly. Then he turned to the girl.

From the time Halleck climbed the bleachers and went toward Smith and his guests, the spectators were stiff with astonishment; nobody did anything. They saw Halleck look for one moment into Smith's angry blue eyes, go down the steps, and bring back two big fellows. Before the Sophomore could move away from the girls, the three men had dragged him down the bleachers; one heave of Halleck's broad back and Smith was under them, with his wind gone, and a Freshman was getting a rope ready.

Then just as Ashley tore down the steps in a rage, a slip of a girl darted past him and put her hands on Halleck's shoulders; a small, sandy-haired girl with blazing eyes.

"Untie him, you great brutes!"

The man with the rope stared at her irresolutely, furtively slipping the knot tighter. By this time, Halleck was on his feet again and had recovered from his surprise.

"Excuse me," he began.

The girl looked him in the eye.

"Get that rope off!"

She was just a little thing, but her gaze never wavered. The direct gaze is something that wild beasts and bullies, Freshmen or otherwise, cannot bear. Pete Halleck looked around for moral support, but his men were shame-faced and the bleachers were silent. He bent down and slipped the rope off Smith's feet.

With the rout of their leader the whole fighting class, weighing some ten tons in battle trim, vanished like chaff before the spirit of one Freshie co-ed. By twos and threes they slouched away, trying to look unconcerned.

She turned to the man she had rescued.

"Are you much hurt, Mr. Smith?" she asked, her voice sweet with sympathy.

The Sophomore president stood there, rumpled, winded, flaming with embarrassment. Away up on the bleachers a girl in an Easter hat tittered and a general laugh followed. That laugh brought Smith to himself, but, before he could turn to thank her, Hannah, with a swift, frightened glance at the people, had fled to the Quadrangle. With swelling bosom and eyes stinging with restrained tears she leaned her face against a cool pillar and watched the swallows circle mistily about the red tiling.

People, coming from the ball-ground, passed her, unnoticed in the shadow. A man's voice, ringing with merriment, cried:

"Poor old Captain! I never saw him have such a chap. It's pretty hard on a man to have a girl do the Pocahontas act like that!"

A peal of Roble laughter answered.

"Pocahontas! O--oh, that's a cute name for her!"

[The end]
Charles Kellogg Field's short story: Pocahontas, Freshman

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN