A CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE
BELINDA paused in the doorway of the Primary School room, which adjoined
her bedroom, and stared in amazement at the five scribes.
The girls were absorbed in their writing, but the Youngest Teacher was
reasonably certain that a fine frenzy of studiousness was not the
explanation of the phenomenon. When had Amelia and her "set" ever
devoted recreation hour to voluntary study?
Suddenly Amelia put down her pen, sat back in her chair and spoke.
"I simply will not have Aunt Ellen ride in the third carriage. So there!
She'll think she ought to because she's one of the nearest relatives,
but I can't bear her, and I don't care whether she goes to the funeral
at all. I'd a good deal rather put May Morton in with cousin Jennie, and
cousin Sue, and Uncle Will."
"It'll make an awful fuss in the family," protested Laura May, while all
the girls stopped writing to consider the problem.
"I don't care if it does," said Amelia stoutly.
"Well, I don't know," Blanche White put in, nibbling the end of her pen
reflectively. "Seems as if everything ought to be sort of sweet and
solemn and Christian at a time like that."
"Christian nothing!" Opposition only strengthened Amelia's opinion.
"I'd like to know whose funeral it is anyhow! If you can't have your way
about your own funeral it's a funny thing. I never did like Aunt Ellen.
She's always telling tales on me and saying that Mamma lets me have too
much freedom, and talking about the way girls were brought up when she
was young. Mamma makes me be nice to her because she's papa's sister,
but when I'm dead I can be honest about her--and anyway if there's a
family fuss about it, I'll be out of it. I'm not going to plan any place
at all for Aunt Ellen in the carriages."
"Your father'll put her in with the rest of the family."
"No, he won't--not if I fill every single seat and say that it's my last
solemn wish that people should ride just that way."
"For charity's sake, girls, tell me what it all means," urged Belinda,
seating herself at one of the small desks and eyeing the sheets of paper
covered with schoolgirl hieroglyphics.
"We're writing our wills, Miss Carewe," said Amelia with due solemnity.
"Your wills?"
"Yes; I think everybody ought to do it, don't you? I told the girls we
all had things we'd like to leave to certain people, and of course we
want our funerals arranged to suit us, and there's no telling when
anybody may die. It seems to me it's right to be prepared even if we are
young."
The five looked preternaturally solemn, and Belinda wrestled
triumphantly with her mirth. Much of her success with the girls was due
to the fact that she usually met their vagaries with outward
seriousness, if with inward glee.
"Now, there's my diamond ring," Amelia went on. "I want Laura May to
have it, and I'm perfectly sure they'd give it to Cousin Sue; so I'm
going to say, in my will, that it's for Laura May, and she's going to
will me her turquoise bracelet. She'd like to give me her sapphire and
diamond ring, but she thinks her sister would expect that, and that all
the family would think she ought to have it. Of course she can do as she
likes, but, as for me, I think when you are making your will is the time
to be perfectly independent. I'm leaving Blanche my chatelaine and my La
Vallière, and I don't care what anybody thinks about it."
"Is there anything of mine you'd like to have, Miss Carewe?" Kittie
Dayton asked with a benevolent air.
"I'd just love to leave you something nice, but I've given away most
everything--that is, I've willed it away. Would you care about my
pigskin portfolio? It's awfully swell, and Uncle Jack paid fifteen
dollars for it. I know because I went to the shop the next day and
priced them--but I upset the ink bottle over it twice, so it isn't so
very fresh."
"I'd love to have it," said Belinda.
"I've got you down for my fan with the inlaid pearl sticks," announced
Amelia, with a dubious tilt of her curly head, "but I don't know. It
came from Paris, but one of the sticks is broken. Of course it can be
mended, but I kind of think I'd like to leave you something whole, and I
can give the fan to one of my cousins. I've got a perfect raft of
cousins and they can't all expect to have whole things. There's my gold
bonbonière. I might leave you that. Anyway, I've put you in the second
carriage."
"The second carriage?" Belinda looked puzzled.
"Yes, at the funeral, you know. I want you to be right with the family.
You see there's Papa and Mamma and my brother and George Pettingill in
the first carriage."
The Youngest Teacher gasped.
"George Pettingill?" she echoed weakly.
"Yes; I know everybody'll be surprised. They don't know we're engaged.
It only happened last week. That's one reason why I had to change my
will. You see I was engaged to Harvey Porter before Christmas, and of
course I put him in the first carriage. Mamma and Papa'd have been
surprised about him too; but when it was my last will and testament,
they couldn't have had the heart to object to his riding with them. I
couldn't die happy if I thought George wouldn't ride in the first
carriage. Poor fellow! He'll be perfectly broken-hearted."
Amelia sniffed audibly and her eyes filled with tears. She was revelling
in the luxury of woe.
"I hope it will be a cloudy day," she said in a choked voice. "A cloudy
day always seems so much more poetic and appropriate for a funeral. Oh,
but I was going to tell you about the other carriages. Uncle Joe and
Aunt Mary and Cousin Dick--he's my favourite cousin--and you will be in
the second carriage; and then the other relatives will be in the other
carriages--all except Aunt Ellen. When I was home for Christmas, she
told Mamma, right before me, that I was a sentimental chit, and that I
ran after Harvey Porter. As if everybody couldn't see that Harvey was
crazy over me and that I didn't have to run a step!"
"Don't you think I'd be out of place ahead of so many of the relatives?"
Belinda inquired modestly.
"Oh, no; not a bit. We girls talked it over and we decided we'd all put
you in the second carriages. Blanche says she thinks there's a
peculiarly intimate tie between a young girl and the teacher who moulds
her mind and character, and you're the only one who has moulded us a
bit--and then we all simply adore you, anyway."
The Youngest Teacher bowed her head upon her hands as if overcome by
emotion at the success of her moulding process or at the prospect of
five free rides in second carriages, and her shoulders shook gently.
"We've talked a lot about our funerals, and I've got mine all arranged,
even the hymns," continued Amelia, who was always spokesman for her
crowd. "I'm going to be buried in the white chiffon dress I wore at the
New Year's dance and with that big bunch of pink roses on my breast--the
dried bunch in my green hatbox. I met George at that dance and he gave
me the roses. I _was_ going to wear my blue silk in my last will. Harvey
loved light blue, but, anyway, white's more appropriate and sweet, don't
you think so?"
The Youngest Teacher was driven, by a sense of duty, to extinguish her
mirth and remonstrate.
"Do you know, girls, I think this is all very foolish and sentimental,"
she said sternly. "There's no probability of your dying within fifty
years."
"Well, it won't do any harm to be prepared," interrupted Amelia.
"It's absolutely silly and morbid to sit down and deliberately work
yourselves into a green and yellow melancholy by thinking about your
deaths and your funerals. I'm disgusted with you."
"But, Miss Carewe"--Laura May's voice was plaintive--"the Bible says you
ought to think about dying, and only last Sunday the rector said we were
too indifferent and that we ought to realise how uncertain life is and
make some preparation, instead of just going to dances, and card
parties, and eating, and drinking, and doing things like that."
"I hope you don't call sickly sentimentalising over the stage effects
for your funerals preparing for death. If you'd stop thinking about your
silly selves altogether and think of other people, you'd come nearer
preparing for the hereafter."
Amelia's plump face took on an expression of pained surprise.
"Why, Miss Carewe, you don't suppose I'm thinking about the chiffon
dress and the roses and all that on my own account, do you? I'd be so
dead I wouldn't know anything about it; but I think it would be
perfectly sweet for George. He'd know I had planned it all because I was
so devoted to him, and I should think that would be a great comfort to
him, shouldn't you, Laura May?"
Laura May agreed, and Belinda shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
Serious argument was always wasted upon this light-headed group of
sentimentalists. There had been a time when, urged on by conscience, she
had considered it necessary to labor with Amelia about her
lightning-change _affaires de coeur_, had talked to her as she would
have talked to an ordinary, reasonable girl about the folly and
cheapness of such episodes, had tried to open her eyes to the fine
ideals of girlhood, had urged upon her the desirability of perfect
frankness and confidence in her relations with her mother and father.
Amelia had only opened her big blue eyes wider and listened politely but
uncomprehendingly to a language she could not understand. She adored
Miss Carewe, but she realised that the adored one had the failings
common to aged folk and lacked, entirely, any understanding of love's
young dream.
"You'd think Miss Carewe wasn't too old to understand," she said to
Laura May later; "but perhaps she's had an unfortunate love affair that
has made her bitter and suspicious." And, out of the softness of her
heart, she forgave, in one who had "suffered," even a callous lack of
sympathy concerning matters of the affections.
Belinda took her failure to Miss Ryder, who smiled as she listened.
"My dear Miss Carewe," she said, when the tale was ended, "you are right
in being conscientious, but you mustn't tilt at windmills. There are
girls and girls. Fortunately, a majority of them are amenable to reason,
simple minded and comparatively sensible. They have had wise mothers and
proper home training. But I've seen a great many girls of Amelia's type,
too far advanced in foolishness before they come to us to be
straightened out here. They pass silly girlhoods and usually develop
into plump, amiable women, devoted to husbands and babies, and given to
talking about servants and clothes when they don't talk about the
husbands and babies. We must do all we can for such girls, see that they
are carefully taught and zealously guarded. No young gentleman calls
here on reception night unless I have had a written permission from the
parents of the girl upon whom he calls; but because a few of the girls
are silly, I will not shut the sensible girls away from social training.
"You can influence the Amelias--but within certain limitations. As for
making them see things in the sane way--the thing isn't humanly
possible. Do your best with them, but don't take their absurdities too
seriously."
In time Belinda had learned that her employer's philosophy was wise,
though it did not altogether agree with certain theories set forth in
the school prospectus; so the funeral problem did not distress her. It
was only one phase of a monumental sentimentality and it would pass as a
host of other phases quite as foolish had passed.
The girls gathered up their writing materials as the retiring bell rang,
but Amelia lingered for a private word with her teacher.
"Miss Carewe," she said, as the last petticoat whisked down the stairs,
"I wish you'd think of something nice to put on my tombstone. You know
such a lot about poetry and things of that kind. I've thought and
thought, and I went through a whole book of Bible verses, and that
Dictionary of Familiar Quotations down in the library, but I couldn't
find a single thing that really suited me--and then the ones I did like
best seemed sort of conceited for me to pick out. Now, if you'd select
something nice and pathetic and complimentary, I could just say, in my
will, that you wanted me to have that epitaph and that I had promised
you I would."
She checked her eloquence, and waited in the hall until the teacher had
turned out the school-room lights and joined her; then the tide of
prattle swept on.
"Do you know, Miss Carewe, I'd simply love to be buried in that
Protestant cemetery in Rome--the one where Sheets and Kelly are buried."
"Keats and Shelley," corrected the teacher of English literature, with
lively horror written on her face.
"Oh, was it that way? Well, anyway, the men who wrote Deserted Village
and Childe Harold and the other things. You told us all about the
graveyard in literature class, and it sounded so perfectly lovely and
romantic, with the big Roman wall, and old what's-his-name's pyramid,
and daisies and violets and things running all over everything--and that
epitaph on Keats' stone was simply splendid--something about his name
being made out of water, wasn't it? I don't remember it exactly, but I
just loved it. It was so sort of discouraged and blue and mournful. We
girls talked about it that night and we all cried like everything over
the poor fellow--only Blanche said she did wish his father hadn't been a
butcher. You know Blanche is awfully cranky about families, because her
mother was a Lee of Virginia and her aunt married a Randolph. It was
awfully sad anyway, even if his father was a butcher, and that epitaph
was lovely. I do wish I could think of something as good as that for
myself. You'll try, won't you, Miss Carewe? Good-night."
"Good-night," replied Belinda in smothered tones, as she closed her
bedroom door. There are times when the Youngest Teacher's sense of
humour and her dignity meet in mortal combat, and she felt that one of
the times was close at hand.
She had rather fancied that talk of hers about Keats, and had been
flattered by the sympathetic interest displayed by even the most shallow
members of the class. She sighed in the midst of her laughter--if only
one could make even the Amelias understand world beauty and world
pathos!--but the laughter triumphed. "Sheets and Kelly" could not be
viewed seriously.
Nothing more was heard of the Funeral Association, Limited, until a week
later, when Belinda, noticing a light in the third-floor classroom,
investigated and found Amelia and Laura May bending over one sheet of
foolscap.
"More wills?" asked the teacher.
Amelia lifted a flushed and tear-stained face.
"I'm cutting Blanche White out of my will. I've been deceived in her,
Miss Carewe. She isn't a true friend, is she, Laura May?"
Laura May shook her head emphatically.
"Perhaps you are mistaken," Belinda suggested, in the interests of
peace.
"I _heard_ her!" Amelia's tone was tragic.
"She told Lizzie Folsom that I was a conceited thing and always wanted
to run everything and that I thought every boy that looked at me was in
love with me, and that she'd heard lots of boys make fun of me. I was in
the next room and couldn't help hearing, so I walked right straight out
in front of them and told Blanche what I thought of her.
"'You're a false, double-dealing hypocrite,' I said, 'and I'd scorn to
have you for a friend,' and then I walked out of the room, and I could
hardly wait till after study hour to come up here and change my will.
Just to think that if anything had happened to me last week, that horrid
thing would have had my chatelaine and my La Vallière! Sometimes I don't
believe anybody's true--except Laura May. I told everything to Blanche,
and I suppose she's betrayed every single thing to that freckled Lizzie
Folsom. It's just because Lizzie has so much money for matinées and
Huylers."
"That doesn't sound well, Amelia." Belinda's tone was reproving. "Lizzie
is a very attractive girl, and though Blanche wasn't very loyal, she may
have said some things that were true. I'd advise you to think her
criticisms over and see if any of them fit. As for her repeating what
you've told her, when one doesn't want things known, one would better
keep them to herself. You talk too much."
"I could tell Laura May anything."
Laura May looked modest.
"And I'm going to leave my chatelaine and La Vallière to Laura May."
The Only True One's face brightened.
"Besides the pearl ring?" she asked.
"Yes."
Laura May beamed self-righteously. Apparently true friendship was
practically remunerative as well as theoretically fine.
The next night Amelia spent with a day pupil who was to have a birthday
party; and the following evening she was in the Primary room as soon as
she could escape from study hour. There Belinda found her alone, and the
girl looked slightly confused as she met the teacher's questioning
glance.
"Another quarrel?"
Amelia blushed.
"Oh, no; I was just changing the carriages a little. I had a heavenly
time last night, Miss Carewe."
"Pretty party, was it?"
"Perfectly lovely. Do you know many Columbia men, Miss Carewe?"
"A few."
"Don't you think they're splendid?"
"Well, some of them are pleasant enough."
"I simply adore Columbia men. Their colors are lovely, aren't they?"
"Rather wishy-washy."
"Oh, Miss Carewe, I don't see how you can think that. I think light blue
and white are perfectly sweet together--not a bit crude and loud like
orange and black or red and black or that ugly bright blue."
Belinda wakened to suspicion.
"Why, Amelia, I thought George Pettingill was a Yale man."
Amelia examined carefully a picture on the other side of the room.
"Well, he is, but only a Freshman, and I don't think bright blue's a
nice color. The Yale men are sort of like the color too. Don't you think
they're a little bit loud and conceited, Miss Carewe?"
This was rank heresy. Belinda smiled and waited.
"There was a Columbia man at Daisy's party--a Sophomore. He's the most
elegant dancer. His name's Lawrence--Charlie Lawrence. He says my step
just suits his. We had five two-steps and three waltzes."
For a few moments Amelia lapsed into reminiscent silence, but silence is
not her _métier_.
"He has three brothers, but no sister at all, and he says a fellow needs
a girl's influence to keep him straight. There's such a lot of
wickedness in college life, and by the time you're a Sophomore, you know
the world mighty well."
There was the glibness of quotation about the recital, and Belinda
indulged in a little smiling reminiscence on her own account. She, too,
in earlier days, had been in Arcady--with desperately wicked and blasé
Sophomores who needed a nice girl's gentle influence. Verily, the old
methods wear well.
"He's coming to see me next reception night, if I can get permission
from Mamma before then," said Amelia.
"Miss Carewe!" called a voice in the hall. Belinda turned to go.
"But what was wrong with the carriages?" she asked.
Amelia bent her fair head over the will until her face was hidden, but
the tips of her ears reddened.
"Oh, I was just thinking that it didn't seem very respectful to Mamma
and Papa to put George in the first carriage with them when they haven't
known anything about him, so I thought I'd move him back a little way."
"Oh!" commented Belinda, with comprehension in her voice.
A quarrel between Amelia and Laura May, the Only True One, necessitated
much remodelling of the unstable will during the next week, but the
trouble was finally smoothed over and the pearl ring clause reinstated,
though the chatelaine and La Vallière were lost to Laura May forever.
Friday evening was reception evening, and on Saturday morning Amelia
flew to the Primary room immediately after breakfast.
She lifted a beaming face when Belinda looked in upon her.
"Do you believe in love at first sight, Miss Carewe?" she asked.
"No."
"Oh, don't you? Why, I _know_ it's possible."
Belinda didn't argue the question.
"I'm writing out a whole new will. The other was all mussy and scratched
up from being changed so often. Doesn't that look neat?"
She held up a sheet of paper which bore, in systematic grouping, a plan
for filling the funeral carriages. Belinda glanced at it.
"Why, where's George Pettingill?" she asked, with a twinkle in her eye.
Amelia tossed her head.
"If he goes to my funeral he can take the trolley," she said with
profound indifference. "You see I've only put three people down for the
first carriage. I thought I'd just leave one place vacant, in case----"
"Exactly," said Belinda.
Before the successor to the Columbia Sophomore appeared upon the horizon
to complicate the carriage problem anew, the funeral fad had run its
course and the wills of Amelia and her satellites had gone the way of
all waste paper.