PRISCILLA'S LOOKING-GLASS
"In less than twenty-four hours Elaine will be here."
"You've been saying that for a week," Priscilla commented tartly. The
two girls had the porch to themselves, Priscilla stretched her lazy
length in the hammock, while Peggy had curled herself into the biggest
chair in a position which only a kitten or a school girl could by any
possibility consider comfortable. Life at Dolittle Cottage was not
favorable to _tete-a-tetes_, and Priscilla found ground for a
grievance in the fact that on one of the rare occasions when they were
alone together, Peggy should occupy the time in discussing the
approaching visit of another friend. Though Priscilla had been making a
gallant fight against her besetting weakness, it occasionally took her
off her guard.
"If I've been saying that for a week," observed Peggy with unruffled
good nature, "I've been talking nonsense. For this is the first day it's
been true."
"Don't be silly, Peggy. You know perfectly well what I mean. For a week
you haven't been able to talk of anything but Elaine's coming."
Peggy made no reply. There was a critical note in the accusation which
she found vaguely irritating, and it seemed to her the wisest course to
let the matter drop where it was. But Priscilla was in the unreasonable
mood when even silence is sufficient ground for resentment.
"Dear me, Peggy, I didn't mean to reduce you to absolute dumbness. By
all means talk of Elaine, if that's the only topic of interest."
"See here, Priscilla!" Peggy straightened herself, an unwonted color in
her cheeks. For all her sweetness of disposition, she had a temper of
her own, and was perhaps no less lovable on that account. "I thought
we'd settled this thing long ago. You know I'm fond of Elaine," she went
on steadily, "and after her hard year, I'm delighted that she can have
an outing up here with the rest of us. It isn't anything I'm ashamed of,
and it isn't anything you've a right to call me to account for. I don't
care any the less for you because I care for Elaine, too."
There are few better tests of character than its response to frankness.
A girl of another sort would have found in this straightforward speech
additional cause for umbrage. Priscilla showed that her faults were only
superficial after all, by her immediate surrender.
"Oh, Peggy," she exclaimed, a choke in her voice. "You don't need to
tell me that. I don't know what ails me sometimes. I should think you'd
lose all patience with me."
A tear splashed down upon her cheek, and Peggy, surprised and touched,
leaned forward to pat the heaving shoulder consolingly. "Never mind,
dear. We won't say another word about it."
"Just one more," pleaded Priscilla. "You know, Peggy, that even when I'm
hateful, I love you better than anybody in the world except my father
and mother. But if you weren't the dearest girl on earth--"
The screen door flew open, and slammed shut with an explosive effect
which might have startled listeners unused to such phenomena. But in a
cottage filled with young folks, doors are so likely to slam that this
miniature thunder-clap did not cause either head to turn. It was rather
the singular silence following which led Peggy to lift her eyes, and it
was the expression on Peggy's face which brought Priscilla to the
realization that something out of the ordinary was taking place.
Claire stood by the screen door, her hands clenched, her face scarlet,
her whole demeanor indicating the intensity of her struggle for
self-control. Priscilla looked at her aghast, all sorts of alarming
speculations racing through her mind. "Oh, what is the matter?" she
cried.
"I heard every word."
"You heard--" Priscilla broke off, and turned on Peggy a blank face. "Do
you know what she means? What has she heard?"
"Oh, you needn't try to get out of it," Claire's voice was suddenly
shrill and rasping. "So Miss Peggy Raymond is the dearest girl on earth,
is she, and you love her better than anybody in the world! It won't do
any good for you to deny it."
"I haven't any intention of denying it," Priscilla replied, choosing her
words with care. Instantly she knew that this meant the end of the
friendship, which had by degrees become a burden rather than a joy.
Claire's exactions, her extravagant protests of an affection which in
its expression proved itself to be nothing but self-love, had been the
one discordant note in the summer's harmony. To have the unreal bond
dissolved, even in so drastic a fashion, came as a relief. "I haven't
any wish to deny it," Priscilla repeated, as Claire gasped hysterically.
"Everybody who knows me knows that Peggy's my best friend."
"And what about me?" The tragic tone of Claire's inquiry threw its
absurdity into temporary eclipse. "I'm nobody, I suppose. I can just be
set aside when it suits your pleasure. And you called yourself my
friend."
"Why, Claire," Peggy began, throwing herself into the breach with her
usual irresistible impulse toward peacemaking, but, to the angry girl,
this well-meant interference was additional provocation. "Oh, don't you
say anything," she cried, turning savagely on the would-be pacificator.
"You ought to be satisfied. It's all your fault."
"My fault!" The accusation was too preposterous to be taken seriously.
Peggy could not keep from smiling.
"Oh, yes, I don't wonder that you laugh," exclaimed Claire, finding in
that involuntary twitching of the lips new fuel for her wrath. "It's
what you've been plotting all the time, and now you've done it, so, of
course, you're satisfied."
Peggy's impulse to laughter had passed. She turned rather pale, and sat
silent, not deigning to reply to such a charge, while Claire rushed on
recklessly. "Of course, after this, nothing would induce me to stay in
this house another night."
"I should hope not," remarked Priscilla with deadly coldness. She might
have forgiven Claire's attack on herself, but such treatment of Peggy
was not to be overlooked. The eyes of the two girls met like clashing
swords.
But in spite of Claire's declaration that nothing would induce her to
spend another night at Dolittle Cottage, when it was ascertained that
the first train on which she could take her departure left at ten
o'clock next morning, she did not seek the hospitality of Mrs. Snooks'
roof, nor even suggest sleeping on the lawn. After her first paroxysm of
anger was over, she became abnormally and painfully polite, begged
everybody's pardon for nothing at all, and proffered extravagant thanks
for the simplest service. She declined to come down to supper on the
pretext that she was too busy packing. And when Peggy carried up a
well-laden tray, Claire received her with courteous protests.
"Oh, dear me! You shouldn't have done that. I had no idea of your taking
any trouble on my account. I'm not at all hungry, you know." Claire
would have given much for sufficient strength of will to refuse to taste
another morsel of food in Dolittle Cottage, but being angry is,
unluckily, no safeguard against being hungry.
As a matter of fact, the voice of Claire's appetite was too insistent to
allow her to give herself the satisfaction of haughtily declining to
profit by Peggy's thoughtfulness. "Just set the tray down anywhere," she
continued, packing ostentatiously, "and if I get time and feel like it,
I'll eat a mouthful." And Peggy departed, relieved by her sincere
conviction that no one in the cottage would go to bed without a
satisfactory evening meal.
As Claire was to leave at ten, and Elaine arrived at eleven, it was but
natural that the girls who were to meet the new arrival should accompany
the departing guest on the four-mile drive to the station. Indeed, if
they depended on the stage, it was necessary that they should go
together, as this conveyance made but one trip a day in each direction.
Peggy did not wish to delegate to any of the other girls the
responsibility of meeting Elaine, whom she regarded as her especial
guest, and since Claire had come to the cottage on Priscilla's
invitation, Peggy felt that it devolved on Priscilla to see her off, in
spite of the unfortunate termination of the visit.
"As for seeing her off, I shall be glad enough to do that," declared
Priscilla, who, now that her tongue was loosed, was atoning for many
days of repression. "But, Peggy, I don't see how I can stand a four-mile
drive with that girl."
"I'll be there too, honey, and with the stage driver listening to every
word, we can't talk about anything except the scenery. Please come,
Priscilla. Don't give her any excuse for thinking that you haven't done
everything that could possibly be expected of you."
Accordingly, the stage calling the next morning found three passengers
awaiting its arrival, and the keenly observant driver, who occasionally
turned his head, and proffered an observation, in case the conversation
languished, must have formed an entirely new conception of girls of
seventeen. Had they all been seventy, and the merest acquaintances, they
could not have treated one another with more precise politeness, nor
have conversed with greater decorum. Altogether, Priscilla had some show
of reason for referring later to the drive as "ghastly." Unluckily,
Claire's train was thirty minutes late, and the tension was accordingly
prolonged for that length of time. As Peggy attempted to make
conversation out of such material as the weather and the time Claire
would reach home, Priscilla was reflecting that if she were obliged to
wait much longer she would disgrace herself either by laughing or by
crying, or by indulging in both diversions at one and the same moment.
But the whistle sounded in time to save Priscilla's hardly tried
self-control. The girls shook hands primly. Peggy and Priscilla wished
Claire a pleasant journey. Claire replied by effusive thanks. At length,
to the relief of all three, she handed her suitcase to an obsequious
porter and stepped aboard the Pullman.
"Now be ready," Peggy cried, clutching Priscilla's arm. "Wave your hand
if she looks out." But Claire did not deign so much as a glance at her
late companions, and the train which bore her out of the heart of the
green hills, carried her forever out of the lives of the two who watched
her departure.
The girls seated themselves on one of the station benches to await
Elaine's train. Peggy was a little sober, for unjustified as she knew
Claire's suspicions to be, she could not help asking herself how it was
that she had gained so little of Claire's confidence in a summer's
association. And Priscilla's face, too, was overcast, but for a
different reason.
"Peggy," she exclaimed abruptly, "do you know I feel as if I'd been
looking at myself in the mirror."
"Then you ought to feel more cheerful than you look," returned Peggy
with a sweeping glance, and a smile, designed to express her conviction
that Priscilla was an unusually handsome girl.
But Priscilla was not to be turned aside by the little compliment. "It
isn't any reason to be cheerful. I mean, Peggy, that this affair with
Claire has just helped to show me what I'm like myself."
Peggy broke into excited protests, to which Priscilla listened unmoved.
"It's exactly the same thing. I've been jealous of Elaine in just the
same way she has been jealous of you. And both of us called it love,
when all the time it was just the meanest kind of selfishness. I wonder
why it is that your faults never look very bad till you see them in
somebody else."
"If you imagine that you're like Claire Fendall," interjected Peggy,
seething with indignation, "you're badly mistaken, that's all."
But glad as Priscilla would have been to accept the comforting assurance
she shook her head with decision. "It's exactly the same thing," she
insisted. "But I really hope--Why, Peggy, what's the matter?"
If Peggy's convulsive movement had not been sufficient to account for
the startled question, the expression of her face was abundant ground
for the inquiry. "Why, Peggy," Priscilla repeated in real consternation,
"what is it? What has happened?"
"I never thought of it till this minute. She's spoiled everything."
"Who? Claire? What has she spoiled?"
"Our play," groaned Peggy. "It comes off on Tuesday, and has been
advertised in the last three issues of the _Arena_. We can't
possibly find anybody to take her place. What are we going to do?"
"Dorothea Clarke played it last June. Why not telegraph for her to come
up. We just can't have a fizzle at the last minute."
"Why, Dolly Clarke is in California! Somebody spoke of it in a letter
only last week." Peggy groaned again. "I wonder if Claire didn't think
that her going would spoil everything. Or if she just didn't care."
Priscilla was inclined to favor the latter hypothesis, yet even in her
resentment she realized that any amount of criticism of Claire would not
save the situation. Vainly the girls grappled with the problem, to end
by looking at each other despairingly.
When Elaine stepped off the train at eleven o'clock she was immediately
conscious of missing something in her welcome. It was not that Peggy did
not seem glad to see her, for the steadfast eyes that met her own were
beaming with affection. Priscilla too was unusually cordial. And yet
Elaine missed something, the spontaneous overflowing of light hearts.
"What is it?" she asked, looking from one to the other, as the stage
driver went for her little trunk. "Is anybody ill? Is anything wrong?
Somehow you look--"
Peggy and Priscilla exchanged glances. Peggy laughed.
"We might as well tell her now as later. Perhaps when that's off our
minds, we'll be able to think of something else. You know, I wrote you
about the benefit we got up for Lucy Haines."
"Yes, I know."
"Well, we're going to give the little farce we learned for commencement
week. It happened that we four girls took all the principal parts but
one, and Claire Fendall agreed to take that. You were at one of our
rehearsals last spring, weren't you? Well, this was Adelaide's part."
"Yes, I remember. The girl who was always losing her temper over
things."
"Well, unluckily, Claire lost her temper over something, and went home
just an hour ago. And the play is for Tuesday night. We can't possibly
postpone it, because there is no way of getting word to the people. The
paper only comes out once a week. Did you ever hear of anything so
dreadful?"
Elaine was musing. "If I remember, it isn't such a very long part."
"Why, it isn't as long as Priscilla's or mine, but Adelaide is one of
the leading characters. She couldn't possibly be left out."
"I didn't mean that. I was only going to suggest--" Elaine hesitated,
with a little of her old-time shyness. "I was only going to say that if
you couldn't do any better, I'd take the part."
"Take the part?" Peggy looked at her friend in an amazement which
temporarily obscured her gratitude. "But we give the thing Tuesday
night."
"Yes, I know." Elaine smiled a little at the conflict of hope and
incredulity written on Peggy's expressive face. "But I really have a
very quick memory, Peggy, though I don't retain things as long as lots
of other people. And before I came to Friendly Terrace I took part in
school theatricals quite often. I can't promise to distinguish myself,
but I'm sure I can get through the part and save the day."
And then, to Elaine's secret amazement, it was Priscilla's arm that went
about her waist, and Priscilla's voice that cried, with a thrill of
sincerity there was no mistaking:
"Oh, Peggy, isn't it splendid to have her here?"