“It’s your duty not to, Em.”
“But what would happen if I did?” It had the fascination of calamity for her.
“Well—” Mary Lou looked down at her lap and found it hard to talk, hard to do what she cherished as her duty, to hit just the right tone—firm but compassionate. “Then I think—I think you would be happier outside the sorority.”
It took Emmy’s breath away from her for a minute. “You mean you’d jerk my pin?” It was preposterous. “You’d blackball me?”
“Oh, Emmy,” said Mary Lou, and she patted her arm sympathetically. It was hard to do the right thing, but this was indubitably the right thing. “Emmy, don’t say it that way. We wouldn’t blackball you. I think we should just have a sort of agreement. If everything works out, you’ll see Bud again. It just means time to think it over, time to get to know yourself.”
“But you don’t know Bud.” Emmy put her head down in her hands. It might be love, all right, but with Bud she had to keep feeding the flame. She had to be with him every day, reminding him how pretty, how bright and sweet she was, or he would find someone else. It was that simple. That was logic.
She looked up. The three girls were watching her, a jury of friendly executioners, waiting for her answer. She knew they were all of the same mind—Mary Lou’s mind. Even Bobbie, who gave her a squeeze and said, “Emmy, I think it might be a good idea.”
Emily leaned against her and wept for a few minutes. The sorority had her in a corner; there was no help for her. At last she whispered, “All right,” and got up and hurried from the room.
Seventeen
Beth was warmly sympathetic in spite of her misgivings about Bud; she was needled by a sense of guilt and the thought of her own adventures with Charlie. She said over and over, “Emmy, I should have warned you, I should have seen it coming. It’s my fault, Em.”
But Emmy wouldn’t have it that way.
“They’re such damn hypocrites,” Beth fumed. “They know you aren’t the only one who’s made a few concessions. My God, they do it themselves, a lot of them. It’s just that the one who gets caught gets punished. You were just too much in love to be very cautious, I guess. I guess you really are in love, Emmy, aren’t you?”
Emmy’s tears answered her.
“Damn,” Beth muttered. “They really cash in on that prestige of theirs, don’t they? They know there’s no disgrace quite so humiliating as getting blackballed out of the sorority. The whole campus talks about you for months. Suddenly you haven’t any friends. Why? Because you left them all back in the sorority. And you’ve left the sorority for good. And then what happens? You can’t stand it after a while. You’re an outcast, a failure. You’re nowhere socially. You’re ashamed and lonesome. And pretty soon you call it quits and leave school. Maybe you go somewhere else, maybe you don’t. But all over the country, on any campus, that sorority blackball will haunt you every time you try to join a club. They’ll find out about it, and there you’ll be, right back where you started. God, it makes me sick.”
Bud exploded when he found out what had happened. He was furious, frustrated, bitter against the powers that be in universities and sororities. He cut his classes for a week and spent all his time, filled to his ears with beer, in Maxie’s basement. He played till his lip gave out and he complained to anyone who would listen to him. It was his way of handling a problem. Bud could make sweet music and sweet girls; he could be supremely pleasant with anybody, anywhere; but he couldn’t make or follow a plan, and order and progress were hostile to his happiness.
He was artist enough to admire ideals, but he never pursued them. However, they took Emily away from him at just the time when he had decided that she was one of his ideals, and the sudden loss made her more desirable—not less, as Emily had feared.
“I love that girl,” he muttered moodily. “The only girl I ever loved. And what do they do? They take her away from me.”
Charlie swatted him on the back. “Cheer up, boy,” he said. “This won’t last forever. You’ll be seeing her. Beth says they’ll parole her for good behavior.” Charlie had heard the story a dozen times.
“Yeah, sure. When? What the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime? I tell ya, Ayers, I’m going nuts. I can’t stand it. Who the hell do they think they are? Who the hell—”
“Okay, boy, take it easy.”
“Yeah, take it easy. You gotta help me out. What am I gonna do? Help me out, boy.”
Charlie gave him a lot of free advice….
Beth complained to Charlie, too. “It’s a damn dirty trick,” she said. “God, it makes me mad! There’s only one aspect of the whole thing that might do any good, and that’s that Bud was never meant for Emmy—or any girl, for that matter. He couldn’t support a wife or kids. My God, can you imagine Bud Nielsen with kids on his hands? He’d give ’em all slide whistles before they could walk and send ’em out to make their own living.”
Charlie laughed at her.
“No one’s fonder of Emmy than I am,” she added, “but she’ll do anything for a man she thinks she’s in love with. She hasn’t the sense she was born with. She’d never get caught if she’d use her head, but she wants to please Bud. Will she say no to Bud? No, she will not. And do they catch her in bed with him? No, they do not. That’s too easy. Her damn silly costume breaks and all
