A TELEPHONED TELEGRAM

WHEN Miss Eva Hungerford married Stanhope there was one young lady intensely glad of it, although it was whispered that there were also two or three who were quite the contrary. But Mrs. Renford Phillips—once Miss Violet Featherstone—had particular reasons for rejoicing, and she wrote a long letter to Miss Hungerford when she heard of the engagement, and said that she hoped “by-gones would be by-gones now, and that she was sure her friend would be a broader-minded and more perfect woman, if that were possible, now that she was going to have the additional experience of getting married.”

Miss Hungerford wrote her a most cordial reply, and the two girls, for several years slightly estranged, became again the friends they had been during the first three years of their college life.

The blow had fallen very suddenly, and Miss Hungerford had found it hard to forgive what she called, in her heart, her friend’s tacit deceit and culpable silence. But, as she wrote in her reply to Mrs. Phillips’s letter, her opinions had undergone a decided change, and she felt that perhaps she had been a little hard on her friend and had not understood her feelings and the pressure brought to bear upon her, and she acknowledged that circumstances might materially alter one’s views and actions. And Miss Featherstone, who had been the most talked about girl in college during the last semestre of her junior year, and who had suffered acutely under Miss Hungerford’s indifferently concealed displeasure and surprise at her conduct, replied that now she could be truly happy in her husband and her home, and insisted that Mr. and Mrs. Stanhope should visit her in the Berkshire Hills that summer.

This they did, and though, of course, each thought her husband much the handsomer and more distinguished-looking, still they were very affectionate toward each other, and planned to be at Cowes together the next summer for the yachting.

As has been said, their estrangement happened very suddenly and came about by an unfortunate occurrence one morning in the office of the college.

Anyone who has never had the privilege of being in that office on a Monday morning, just after chapel, can have but a faint idea of pandemonium. The whole seven hundred students seem to be revolving about. There are the young women standing around, waiting to take the next train into Boston, not having been able to go on the early express because they had foolishly forgotten to get a leave of absence on the Saturday previous, and who are furtively trying not to see their friends who are not going on at all, so as to keep from having to attend to their commissions; and there is the girl who is telephoning for roses to wear at the concert that night, and those who are booking boats and tennis courts, and others reading bulletins; and when there is an extra commotion and the crowd is forced back a little to let the cords be pulled up around the desk so as to clear a space; and when the carrier comes in and tumbles the big mail-bags into the middle of it with one hand and unlocks them at apparently the same instant with the other; and when about ten young women fall upon the bags and rend their contents from them, and begin to assort and number and tie up the letters, all the time besieged by their excluded friends to give them their mail on the spot as they are going away, the noise and excitement reach a climax.

But it is all very pleasant and enlivening except the telephone bell, which rings constantly and is wearing on the nerves. It rings not only for all telephone messages but for all telegrams, for the college, being a mile or so from the telegraph station, everything is simply telephoned up to save delays, and that a long and continuous procession of small messenger boys may not be forever circulating between the college and the station.

It was this unfortunate custom of telephoning telegrams, unknown of course to the majority of outsiders, that precipitated the affair. On that particular Monday morning, when the confusion in the office was at its worst, the telephone bell suddenly rang unusually loudly and long, and the nervous Freshman on duty jumped toward it with a warning motion to the rest to keep quiet.

“Hush! it’s a telegram,” she said in a moment, and instantly there was silence, for a telegram is always dreaded where there are so many to whom it could bear ill news. She reached for a pad of paper and a pencil to take it down. From the other end came “Important. Repeat slowly as I deliver it.” The nervous Freshman said “All right,” and braced herself against the support to write.

“To Miss Violet Featherstone.” The docile Freshman repeated it and then said “Wait!” and looked around.

“If Miss Featherstone is here,” she remarked, “she can come to the telephone;” but someone volunteered the information that Miss Featherstone had left by the early train for Boston, and the telephoning proceeded.

“My darling—” the Freshman gasped a little and then repeated slowly “My darling.” There was some suppressed commotion for an instant among the crowd around the doors, and the two at the telephone went at it again.

“I have not heard from you for three days.”

“I have not heard from you for three days,” mumbled the Freshman.

“What is the matter? Renford Phillips.”

“What is the matter? Renford Phillips.”

When Miss Featherstone reached the college that afternoon she thought she detected a suppressed excitement about the whole place, though she felt rather too tired to think much about it, but when she got to her room she found a telephone message for her which made her sink weakly into a chair.

An appalling vision of the consequences rose before her. She tried to think connectedly, but the effort was too much. Her only thought was of the effect it would have on her friend Eva Hungerford. She would go to her immediately and find out how much she knew.

As she went along the corridors more than one acquaintance smiled knowingly at her, but she only hurried on. When she reached Miss Hungerford’s rooms, she found that young lady looking dejectedly out of the windows. Her melancholy turned to stony haughtiness, however, when Miss Featherstone approached her tremblingly.

“Yes, the whole college knew of it,” she assured her. “The message had been telephoned up when the office was crowded, and by this time everyone was aware of what her best friend had not known.”

Miss Featherstone rebelled a little under Miss Hungerford’s chilling glance and attempted to explain, but her friend was very sad and firm, and said she did not see how any explanation could do away with the fact that Violet Featherstone had broken the solemn vow they had made together never to marry, but to devote themselves to serious study as a life-work. But when Miss Featherstone quite broke down under her friend’s disapprobation, Miss Hungerford relented a little and asked her if she were really so fond of Renford Phillips, and if she thought life with him in Morristown would compensate her for the loss of Oxford and the Bodleian. Miss Featherstone cried a little at that, and said she thought it would, and that she had started a hundred times to tell her dearest friend about her engagement, but she knew how she thought about such things, and how she would lose her respect for allowing anything to interfere with their plans for mental advancement. And Miss Hungerford only sighed and wrote that night to her mother that another of her illusions had been dispelled, but that she was firmer than ever in her determination to make something of herself.

Miss Featherstone did not return for her degree, but had a pretty church wedding that summer at Stockbridge, and Miss Hungerford sent her a very handsome wedding gift, but refused to be present at the marriage. They did not write to each other much the next year, and Miss Hungerford worked so hard that the Faculty had to interfere, and when she left college with a B. S. degree, smiling sadly and saying that she would be a bachelor as well as an old maid, everybody remarked what a superior girl she was to her friend Violet Featherstone.