SELINA
[Illustration: "She'd heard I was fond of reading."]
[Page 20.]
_Selina_
_HER HOPEFUL EFFORTS AND_
_HER LIVELIER FAILURES_
_By_
_GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN_
_Author of EMMY LOU_
_Illustrated by_
_H.D. WILLIAMS_
D APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK · · · · MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
_TO_
_E. A. M._
_FLORENCE, ITALY_
_You have long urged me to an attempted portrayal of the American girl
of the '80's. I take it that you from your viewpoint coming from long
absence from your own country, look upon her and her moment as in some
sense significant._
_As I read this girl and the conditions surrounding her, born late,
Victorian, she came into being when those sincere and fine tenets
upon which the Victorian era founded itself, were become the letter
of the original vital idea, and the moment itself sentimental, trite
and prudish. Outcome and victim of the inefficiencies of an hour so
flabby and platitudinous, this young girl of these Victorian '80's
apparently not only repudiated her condition made up of absurdities,
futilities and inadequacies, but in her maturity has lapsed over into
the post-Victorian era as pioneer, she and her companions of that day,
who blazed the way for the army of women now following. Following
where, you ask? Ah, now, that is another question, and one I am not at
all qualified or prepared to answer._
_In the fact that she did repudiate her day and her condition lies
the significance which you see, as I take it. That I have read her at
the moment of my depicting, piteous rather than pertinent, helpless
more than heroic, and groping rather than grasping, I hope will not
disappoint you. So she appears to me; her gravest need, the lack of
which renders her piteous and helpless, being a sense of proportion;
a lack answerable to the false standards around her, or to her sex, or
both, who among her sex shall say?_
_And that this epic of her days is chronicle of but the small and the
petty happening, you will forgive, because this same day made up of the
small and seemingly petty, is one of the things, she will tell you now,
against which she revolted._
_Nor am I defending her, nor claiming that she needs defense. As I see
her and have tried to set her down. I offer her to you._
_G. M. M._
_August, 1914._
_Anchorage, Kentucky._
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER ONE 1
CHAPTER TWO 19
CHAPTER THREE 33
CHAPTER FOUR 47
CHAPTER FIVE 56
CHAPTER SIX 62
CHAPTER SEVEN 73
CHAPTER EIGHT 81
CHAPTER NINE 87
CHAPTER TEN 101
CHAPTER ELEVEN 111
CHAPTER TWELVE 120
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 136
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 143
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 154
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 162
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 171
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 178
CHAPTER NINETEEN 184
CHAPTER TWENTY 190
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 200
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 210
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 219
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 227
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 235
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 249
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 257
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 268
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 275
CHAPTER THIRTY 286
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 296
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 311
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 325
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 334
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 346
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 352
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN 357
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT 372
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE 385
CHAPTER FORTY 396
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"She referred to the cook, faithful and efficient colored
plodder" 2
"Impeccable yard plots, whitened flaggings and steps" 6
"Each lady was sitting by her standing work-basket of cane" 10
"'His name was Aristides Welkin, and we called him Mr. Arry'" 21
"He held back the gate, too, for her to pass through" 30
"Mamma looked around the castor and spoke briskly" 57
"Before the mirror, trying on the dress from Cousin Anna" 70
"Mr. Tuttle Jones ... sat with her through a pianoforte
number" 78
"Selina hurried out and joined him" 84
"The two groups had ... gone sauntering out the
sycamore-bordered road" 94
"Rooted out his umbrella and tucked Amanthus, pretty thing,
onto his arm" 118
"A covered wooden bridge across the river ... seemed older
than anything else" 126
"Marcus was there when Selina arrived" 137
"She went to her father" 140
"Selina ... sat down to write her note" 144
"She ... stood looking at them grouped below" 159
"Miss 'Hontas came in ... and talked to her about many
things" 168
"Her veil trailed crookedly" 188
"Owner and driver of a hack ... whereby he made a living,
meeting trains" 192
"Endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye" 203
"Maud was going in for china painting" 220
"'Mr. Welling looked at me in that ... quizzing way of his'" 223
"They found Mrs. Harrison ... before the open fire" 230
"He... stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream" 240
"He below, lifting his hat" 254
"'You haven't spoken to Papa about it?'" 258
"Selina ... fell on her knees" 270
"They boarded the street car" 282
"Flowers take patience and faith, and tendance and waiting" 305
"She watched the flying scene from the car window" 321
"Culpepper ... leaned over the back of her chair and spoke
softly to her" 344
"'More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment'" 362
"For a full minute he did not speak" 373
"And whistled real softly under Juliette's window" 382
"Everybody waved and Culpepper was left standing there" 408
SELINA
CHAPTER ONE
"There must be something wrong, Lavinia, with our way of managing,"
said Auntie.
"If you think you can do it better than I, Ann Eliza--" came from
Mamma, with dignity.
Selina, scant seventeen in years and sweet and loving and anxious,
felt that she could not bear it. To sit in consultation thus, with her
mother and her aunt because the family purse was at one of its stages
of being exhausted, was desperate business enough, but to look from
the face of her little mother to the countenance of her auntie under
these circumstances was anguish. Negative character has been turned
to positive by less, inertia forced into action, the defenceless made
defender. And while the endeavors, about to be related, of this young
person to add to the income of her family by her own efforts, may call
to mind one Baron Munchausen lifting himself by his boot-straps, let it
be borne in mind that the boot-straps may be the inconsequential thing,
and that where the emphasis is to be laid is upon the good faith put
into the lifting.
[Illustration: "She referred to the cook, faithful and efficient
colored plodder."]
"It seemed wise to reduce the grocery bill as far as we could," her
mother was saying deprecatingly, "but in doing so, I should have
considered that I was leaving myself nothing to pay Aunt Viney." She
referred to the cook, faithful and efficient colored plodder.
"Last month it was the iceman who was kept waiting because we paid
everything to the butcher," said Selina. "Why is it," a little
desperately, "there's never money enough to go around?"
Her mother disliked such a display of feeling. "If you mean that in
criticism of your father--" she began.
Auntie interrupted. "The Wistar men have seldom been money-makers. My
father in his time was the exception. I'm sure Robert has tried."
Selina feeling she could not bear what she saw in these faces of her
elders, looked about the room where she was sitting with them. In her
time, which was twenty-five years ago, in an inland American city in a
semi-southern state, bedrooms were sitting-rooms during the day.
What she saw was a ponderously ornate bedstead, ponderous walnut
wardrobe, washstand, bureau, fading wall-paper of a pronounced pattern,
framed family photographs, and carpet resolutely tacked the four ways
of the floor. She did not know the day would come when she would learn
that this room with its wool lambrequin above the open grate, its wool
table-cover, its wool footstools, was mid-Victorian. Still less did
this loving and anxious Selina know that these two dear ladies with
whom she sat, were mid-Victorian with their room, and she of the next
generation, a victim to their mild inefficiencies and their gentle
sentimentalities. In looking about the room, she as by instinct of the
hunted, was seeking a clue to escape from her anguish of spirit.
"It isn't as though your father were not giving me the same amount
of money for the house as usual," her mother was saying. Mrs. Wistar
always spoke a trifle precisely. "It is more that having dropped so
behind with the bills, and knowing that he is worried so to give me as
much as he does, I don't like to tell him so."
"The worry'd be no more now than when he does have to know," from
Auntie.
"I suppose not," allowed Mrs. Wistar dubiously.
Selina sighed, and her gaze not finding the relief it sought within
the room, went to the window and looked out between its discreet
draperies. Thus far indeed Selina had gazed on all of life through
discreet draperies. And if as she sat there in the cushioned chair
with her eyes so sweetly anxious, she was incontinently young to look
upon even for scant seventeen, in any real knowledge of life and of
what life had a right to demand from her, she was pitiably younger.
This story undertakes to be the tenderly smiling narrative of Selina's
inefficiencies, the epic of her small aspirings and her, it is to be
hoped, engaging failures.
If she, untrained, unarmed and unaware, is typical in any sense of
the thousands of American girls of her period, shall it be assumed
there are none like her to-day, piously guarded and yet piteously and
absurdly unready for life's demands?
And if the conditions which surrounded her, and the inefficiencies
which marked her, were in any degree usual in her day, may we not
the better understand her generation's dissatisfaction with these
conditions, as shown in those gropings toward something illy defined
no doubt but deeply desired, which now appear to have been the first
general expression of woman's discontent in this country?
Selina's gaze had wandered to the window to find but doubtful comfort
there. For in her mind's eye she saw the relative position her squat,
two-storied brick house with its square of grass and its iron fence
set in stone coping, bore to the other houses on the block in size,
appearance and importance. There were some few smaller and shabbier.
She gave neighborly greeting to the dwellers within these homes when
she met them, but without any knowledge as to why, and through no
volition of her own that she was aware of, her life did not touch
theirs.
[Illustration: "Impeccable yard plots, whitened flaggings and steps."]
Of the other houses along the block, some were three-storied, others
two-storied but double in width, the further characteristics of
these eminently prosperous dwellings being impeccable yard plots,
whitened flaggings and steps, burnished doorsills, burnished
doorbells, doorplates. The dwellers within these altogether creditable
establishments, Selina did know; their lives and hers did touch; they
too were variations in a common inefficiency; they too were products of
the same conditions as herself. Amanthus in the one house, enchanting
and engaging, or so Selina saw her; Juliette in another, eager and
diminutive, cheeks carmine, fiery with the faith of the ardent
follower; Maud in a third, luscious, capable, inquiet, overflowing
with protest, alert with innovation; Adele in a fourth, stickler and
debater, full of a conscience for the pro and con: these four were
Selina's own, these and their households, the friends, she would have
told you, of her youth.
She had gone through measles and through mumps with them; through day
school and dancing school with them; through the baby age, the overly
conscientious age, the giggling age, the conscious age, the arriving
age, when at birthdays and school-closings, she, Selina, and Amanthus,
and Maud, and Juliette and Adele, exchanged clothbound and gilt-topped
volumes, "Lucille," "Aurora Leigh," Tennyson.
But the gaze of Selina right now was out the window of her mother's
bedroom, and in her mind's eye she was seeing, not these adored friends
of her youth, but the macadamized street she lived upon, with its
brick sidewalks and its occasional old sycamore tree, and the homes
of herself and these friends along it. And her home was the squat and
shabby one, her yard the untended one, and she, Selina Auboussier
Wistar, the genteelly poor one of these friends of her youth.
Then her attention came back to matters within the room.
"I try to save Mr. Wistar everything of worry I can," her mother was
saying defensively. "I've been setting a chair over that hole in the
dining-room hearth rug for months."
"I'm never sure it isn't better to be frank," held Auntie.
Selina's concern returned to her own affairs. Selina Auboussier Wistar!
Why Auboussier? Because her father was Robert Auboussier Wistar. Why
the Auboussier in either case was to be dwelt upon so insistingly and
in full, was never very dazzlingly clear, except that Mamma decreed it.
The name had brought her father nothing other in his day than a silver
mug, so far as Selina knew, and it had not even brought her that. But
it did roll off the tongue as though it had claims. In the very nicest
sort of way perhaps this was the explanation.
The affairs of her elders in the room again intruded.
"I paid the bills for all those extras we had not counted on when
Selina graduated in June," Mamma was saying, and defensively again,
"and said nothing about them. It seemed best at the time. And once I
got behind in this way on the other bills I haven't seemed able to
catch up."
"I needn't have had the carriage and the flowers and the rest of it if
I'd known," claimed Selina passionately. "And I'm sure Auntie is right.
Everybody in a family ought to know everything."
"I cannot allow such a tone from you, Selina," returned her mother
decidedly. "And of whom is it you speak in this disparaging manner?
Surely not of your mother? And I will not think you mean your father?"
Her father? Tradition, which meant Selina's own little mother again,
told how Mr. Robert Auboussier Wistar at the beginning of things, which
was before Selina at all could remember, had made a bold dash and start
in life, proprietor of his own inherited iron foundry. It lent solidity
and importance to the past, and support to the present. A structural
iron railroad and foot-bridge across a turbulent creek at the city's
edge, marks the crest of this gentleman's industrial prosperity. It is
an ugly bridge where it might have achieved beauty, Selina is forced to
admit this now, but then when the family walks on Sunday afternoons and
on holidays led to it with something of the spirit which carries the
faithful to Mecca, she obediently thrilled with pride as regularly as
her mother pointed out the structure to her.
The glittering career of Papa and the foundry had been brief, and
Selina had it from her mother and her auntie that this is a sad world
for the honorable and trusting man in business.
[Illustration: "Each lady was sitting by her standing work-basket of
cane."]
Mr. Robert Wistar, dear and very real gentleman as he was, and as his
Selina saw and knew him, for many years now had had a floor space in a
building in an off business street, and bought and sold machinery, new
and old, on the varying and uncertain basis of commission. But at home
in the squat and ugly brick house owned in part by him and in part by
Auntie, who was his older sister, his household of womenkind upheld his
prestige and dominance as their male and their protector.
His household of women! Selina's eyes went from the little person of
her mother, ardent striver to keep up a fairly prosperous front, to the
heavy person of her auntie, darling soul, who did not seem quite to
grasp why a front must be kept up, but assured that it must, submitted.
Big, lovable, personable auntie, could the pity of it be that she was
always submitting? Each lady was sitting by her standing work-basket of
cane, with work however abandoned into her respective dear lap.
Mamma, little person, meant by Heaven to be pretty if she had not in
the stead to be so perturbed, just here seemed disposed and almost
unreasonably, to harbor feeling against Aunt Viney for wanting what was
coming to her. There had been similar feeling on her part toward the
iceman, and, preceding him, toward the butcher.
"If it were anybody but Viney herself, coming upstairs to me right in
my own room and asking for her money, I would feel I could not overlook
it," she was saying. "She should have known that as soon as it was
convenient for her to have it, I would give it to her."
"It is the second time the collector of dues on her funeral insurance
has come around," reminded Auntie, "and I dare say he made her feel she
had to ask for it."
"There's more to it than her merely coming upstairs to me about it,"
said Mamma. "Two dollars and a half to three dollars is all anyone
thought of paying a servant in my day." Her tone would imply that her
day and her authority were decades past and other people in this matter
of Aunt Viney, altogether and unworthily responsible. "Four dollars to
a servant is out of all reason."
And so indeed four dollars at that day and in that place would have
been but for the agreement fixing the wages of this old person at this
sum!
Selina's cheeks flamed red. "Aunt Viney is getting four dollars instead
of three, Mamma," she reminded her mother, "because you dismissed
the washwoman who was getting two dollars, and persuaded Aunt Viney
to undertake it for the extra one." Cooking, washing, ironing,
dining-room, front door, coal, kindling, fires and something of the
rest of it, were the part of Aunt Viney!
Honesty drove Selina to defend her--tentatively and timidly, since
not for worlds in her day would a daughter venture to hurt a parent's
tender feelings. "Four dollars isn't so terribly much more than a
pittance, is it, Mamma? For a week's work? That is," hastily and
apologetically, "if one were the receiver of it?"
Time was to be, and that time soon, when Selina would know more about
the place of four dollars in the scale of recompense.
Auntie at this point moved heavily and uneasily. One always felt
that nature meant Auntie for something more definite. Her ponderous
energy was inexhaustible. To see her expend it on irrelevant and
inconsequential things, was to gather that after some fashion of
reasoning all her own, she drew comfort from such activities even to
convincing herself such efforts were contributory to the general relief.
"I'm sure I wish there were more brasses I could do," sighed the
precious and comely soul.
And while Selina here felt again that anguish which seemed more than
she could bear, still she blessed the brasses in question, fire-irons,
coal-bucket, and fender which adorned their parlor.
And she blessed Cousin Anna Tomlinson who had given the brasses to
the Wistar household. Japanned coal vases with panel decorations in
subjects such as cat-tails, and mantel tiles with swallow flights
across them had recently come in, and Cousin Anna was of those who will
have the latest or nothing. Selina did not know what the energy of
Auntie would do on the occasions of these recurrent money crises, if
she could not put it into the polishing of the brasses.
"I am sure I'm always wishing there were more of them," she was
reiterating now.
And then it was that Selina drew breath, a long and quivering breath.
There had come to be but one thing for her to do and she was about to
give it voice.
Never before had she taken the initiative in her life. The exact
length for the lowering of her dress skirt for graduation, the chosen
fashion for the tying of her white sash on that day, the manner of the
arranging of her hair, her flowers, her fan, each detail was for these
two dear but hitherto decreeing ladies to debate and decide upon.
When their Selina went forth upon her little pleasures and affairs, one
saw her off from the front-door step, the other waved a farewell from
the window above. When she returned one removed her hat and passed a
readjusting hand over her shining fair hair, the other lifted and put
away her cloak.
The initiative was to be Selina's now.
"I told you, Mamma and Auntie dear, of meeting Mrs. William Williams
down street yesterday? And of her stopping me?"
She had. She brought all incidents to her absences home, and the two
relived them with her. They saw Mrs. William Williams now in this
recall, large, impressive, with her benevolently dealt-around interests
and inquiries, as from a being of credentialed and superior parts to a
world of lesser creatures. Though why this arrogance was permitted,
the world of lesser beings could hardly say, but since authority even
when self-arrogated, and authority's running mate, material prosperity,
are ever potent, the world of Mrs. Wistar and Auntie submitted. Mr.
William Williams, a successful dealer in leather and raw hides, had
married Mrs. Williams late in both their lives, and one William
Williams Jr. was the result.
Selina was continuing. "And I told you how she said she does not
approve of the new methods called kindergarten that are beginning to be
used in the schools, and wants William Williams Jr. taught at home, and
did I know of any young person among my friends fitted to do it?"
"William Jr.'s head is too big," said Auntie, decidedly, "it rolls
around on his neck. I've noticed him on the bench at Sunday-school."
Selina passed over the interruption. "I told her yesterday that I did
not know of anyone. To-day I do. I am going to offer to teach him
myself!" But her throat was dry, and her hands were cold as she said it.
Selina knew no women wage-earners except her teachers at the public
school, who stood apart unique personalities in a world entered into
and left behind at intervals, and a scattering of women clerks in the
stores of her Southern city. Yes, on the contrary, she did know one,
Miss Emma McRanney, a regular attendant at the same church as the
Wistars, stolid, settled, and middle-aged, a setter of type at the
State Institute for the Blind. Mamma and Auntie made a point of going
out their ways on Sundays to stop her and shake hands with her kindly.
But she was the exception. In the world of Selina, in the world of her
mother and her aunt, in that of the friends of her youth and their
mothers and sisters and aunts, the accolading stamp of position, of
gentility, of femininity, lay in the monetary dependence of womankind
on its men.
Nor had life, as Selina came up through it, the private school of her
baby days, the public schooling of later days, the friends of her
youth, nor Mother, nor Auntie, nor those gilt-topped volumes, nor
dancing school, nor Sunday-school, nor her tinkling music lessons,
nor traditions, nor precedent, nor standards, nor prides, nor
preoccupations, nor day dreams, prepared Selina for this step. And so
her throat was dry and her hands were cold as she forced herself to say
it.
"I am going to offer to teach him myself."
And then it was that the unexpected happened. The fight on the part
of Mamma and Auntie had been a long one and a gruelling one, as long
almost as Selina's life, and they by nature were clinging creatures.
With the very note of her young utterance, as at the Gideon shout of
the newer generation, their walls fell.
This mother of Selina, behold, all at once a little, tearful,
dependent, child-like person. "Oh, Selina, daughter, _do_ you think
you _could_? The terror of having people come to the door with bills
one can't pay!"
This handsome, solid, impressive auntie, a bewildered, rudderless,
drifting soul. "I might be able to do little things at home to save you
here, Selina. There is the canary's cage. Let me take care of that."
Thus the walls fell about Selina and revealed to her the inward
weakness of that stronghold of dominance and authority she, up to now,
had deemed well-nigh impregnable.
One instinct with the two, however, held true to its function.
"We will not mention the matter to your father, Selina," from her
mother, "unless it seems best. He very likely would worry."
"Robert would worry," from Auntie, decidedly. "It might seem as if it
were in criticism of him if we went to him about it beforehand."
No protests! No objections! They were relieved! They were willing!
Selina stood up, her voice to her ears coming from vast distances away.
"Four dollars is certainly little more than a pittance for Aunt Viney,
I am sure you must see, Mamma." There was pronouncement and finality in
the tone as if for the first time she sat in judgment on her parent.
"As I've made up my mind to see Mrs. Williams, I'll put on my hat and
go now."
But it was all of an hour before she came from her own room ready to go.
"Has she been crying?" Auntie asked Mrs. Wistar anxiously, as Selina
went downstairs. "I thought her face showed traces."
"Selina has not the control I would like to see her have," said little
Mrs. Wistar concisely. "In my day we were not encouraged to indulge
ourselves in tears."
"In what then?" from Auntie as with one suddenly disposed to be
captious.
"In self-repression and the meeting of our duties," said Mrs. Wistar.
"Ann Eliza," severely, "sometimes I almost think you aid and abet
Selina in her expressions of discontent."
Auntie looked non-committal. "Do you, Lavinia?"
CHAPTER TWO
On Selina's return in the late afternoon, she came up to her mother's
room, her step light and springy now, to tell the two about her visit.
She had made up her mind that if she had to do this thing, she would do
it with as good grace as possible. They on the contrary had had time to
grasp the idea of Selina as a teacher in its several significances.
"Don't think I'd let you do a thing I did not think was proper and
right, Selina," her mother hurried to say in greeting. "There's nothing
derogatory, I'm sure, in accepting remuneration. I made a set of
chemises for your Cousin Anna last year, you remember, and was glad to
have her pay me."
"Look at _me_," said Auntie, "and don't you make chemises or anything
else, unless it's an understood thing that somebody _is_ going to pay
you."
A wave of protective feeling rushed over Selina, new to her but warming
and whelming, and she had forgiven them.
"I think, Mamma, that Mrs. Williams meant me when she spoke yesterday.
She said she was glad to see I was sensible about it. Evidently there
are people thinking I ought to go to work. She did."
This was not so rosy as Selina meant it to be for the attentive two;
she must do better.
"I'm sure, too, Mamma, she meant to be complimentary. She said a
whole lot about my being a booky girl, that she'd heard I was fond of
reading, and some more of that sort of thing. And about how she laid a
great deal of stress herself on cultivation, and how she wanted William
Jr. to achieve a taste that way, too. And she said that habits and
associations in the person of a teacher--I remember her words--mean so
much."
"I hope she values 'em accordingly," said Auntie indignantly. "I don't
like any such tone from her to you. She was a McIntosh, we mustn't
forget that. I never thought much of the stock."
"I'm sure all that Selina has told us is most gratifying," Mrs. Wistar
hastened to claim. "It only emphasizes the fact that teaching is a
calling of accomplishments and refinements. I remember the teacher that
I myself recall best." When Mrs. Wistar lost herself in reminiscence,
she was more than apt to lose her point also. "His name was Aristides
Welkin, and we called him Mr. Arry. He took snuff and recited Dryden
and Milton to the class in parsing most beautifully. He was English and
sometimes I think now, looking back upon it, drank. My parents paid
well for the privilege of having my sister Juanita and myself under
him. It was a school of selection and fashion, in the basement under
the First Church."
[Illustration: "His name was Aristides Welkin, and we called him Mr.
Arry."]
Selina kept to her narrative. "She said that of course I was a
beginner. That she realized it would hardly pay me to come way out to
her house for just William, and she thinks she can get three other
pupils in the neighborhood who will come into the class. I'm to go on
with him while she tries."
"If you're valuable as all that sounds," insisted Auntie, holding to
her point tenaciously, "she certainly ought to pay you well."
Selina paused to steady her voice. So far in her world, and in the
world of Mamma and Auntie, money matters were mentioned only when they
had to be, and then with embarrassment and reluctance. Hot to her
finger-tips and wincing to the fiber, she had had to discuss dollars
and cents with Mrs. Williams. Or rather, this lady with her air of
large condescension and kindly patronage had discussed it for her.
Since Mamma and Auntie had brought her up to feel this shrinking from
these things, how could they be so eager now about this part of the
interview?
"Mrs. Williams said she had inquired at the private schools and the
kindergartens, found the charge for a pupil, and would of course fix
the price at that." The blood surged slowly over Selina's face.
"Yes?" from Mamma a little impatiently.
Auntie however had noted the surging signals of distress. "I said that
boy William's head was too large," she declared anticipatorily to
anything of any nature which might follow.
Selina, who abhorred doing an uncouth thing, gulped. It was the painful
coincidence of the thing. The identical sum fixed by Mrs. Williams and
custom for training youth to a knowledge of the rudiments, culture,
good habits and worthy associations, had been in the mouths of Mamma,
Auntie and herself, all too recently. On hearing it from Mrs. Williams,
Selina had winced, and now shrunk from mentioning it herself until she
had to.
"I start in to-morrow. Mrs. Williams said why procrastinate things. No,
I won't take off my hat, thank you, Auntie."
She was winking fast, her eyes swimming behind something suspiciously
like tears. She was swallowing, too, at thought of her own especial
little world, her world including Amanthus and Maudie, Juliette
and Adele, and their prosperous and easy surroundings. And having
reached this point, she sobbed. For what would be the effect of the
announcement of her teaching on her world? And what, too, would
Culpepper Buxton say? The stepson of Cousin Maria Buxton, down here
from up in his part of the state studying law, and her, yes, her very
good friend? What would be the attitude of Culpepper to her move?
She found voice. Moreover, she smiled bravely at Auntie. "No, don't
take my cloak, please. I'm going out to find the girls and tell them
and have it over with. The price, you say, Mamma?" Unexpectedly she
sobbed again. The coincidence was mortifying. "Four dollars."
"I quite begin to follow your meaning, Ann Eliza, when you say Mrs.
Williams was a McIntosh," said Mamma with dignity. "You are right; her
old grandfather, Manuel McIntosh, used to sit outside his doorstep on
the sidewalk in his shirt-sleeves."
"I've always had a big respect for cooking, myself," said Auntie with
unexpected relevancy. "I've never thought we put enough emphasis on it
as a calling. Feeding the body is a worthy thing. It comes first."
"Who said anything about cooking, Ann Eliza?" from Mamma sharply. "How
you wander from the point! If you're going out before dark, Selina,
you'd better go."
The two dear ladies at their respective windows, beside their
respective work-baskets, watching for Selina to go out, saw her run
right into her four friends at the gate. The inference was they were
coming by on some of their common affairs. There was the weekly dancing
club, the last volume from the circulating library always passed
around, the new pattern-book, what-not, constantly bringing them
together.
The group opened to Selina as she came through the gate, each
individual of it talking as it did so, and closed about her in its
midst. Selina was popular with her friends.
Maud Addison was the dashing one with the red-brown hair and the
splendidly red and white skin. Maud's father was a solidly prosperous
wholesale merchant and a Presbyterian elder, as Auntie was wont to say,
as if the two things were bracketed, and Mrs. Addison, her mother,
capable and authoritative, was a noted housekeeper. There were four
children younger than Maud.
"I must say," commented Mrs. Wistar from her window to her
sister-in-law at hers, "Maud's rushing the season for October. And
Indian summer hardly begun. That's the new sealskin jacket her father
and mother promised her at graduation in June. I'd like it better if it
did not fit in like a basque."
"If only Selina might have suitable clothes," grieved Auntie, "she
would wear clothes well with her nice carriage and her pretty skin, and
her color that comes and goes. She would justify pretty things. She
gets her features from you, Lavinia, and her hair and her skin from
Robert."
"Thank you, Ann Eliza. I must allow I was considered pretty in my day."
The dark and vivid little creature of the group, the little flitting,
flashing creature at this moment embracing Selina, was Juliette
Caldwell. Juliette's mother was pretty and young to have two daughters
younger than Juliette and a son in arms. Her father, young, too, was
given to bantering, banging on the piano and making money.
"That crimson at the throat of Juliette's coat, and the crimson feather
in her hat, become her," went on Mrs. Wistar.
Auntie agreed. "And Adele Carter is pretty after her own fashion, after
all, Selina always insists she is."
"If you like that colorless skin and those big reflective dark eyes,"
said Mrs. Wistar.
"Adele's mother and her grandmother peck at her too much," claimed
Auntie.
"They're worldly as a lot, the whole family. In their efforts to make
Adele into what she'll never successfully be, a fashionable daughter,
they're only making her awkward. See how she shows she's got elbows."
But of the group of young people down there at the gate Amanthus
Harrison was the lovely one. With her cascading, scintillant,
positively effulgent hair, amazing skin, laughing eyes, laughing
cheeks, laughing lips, she was a radiant creature.
"Amanthus laughs like my flowers in the backyard blow," said Auntie,
"she hasn't an idea why she laughs."
"She doesn't need to have," said Mrs. Wistar promptly and astutely.
"You ask any man and he'd tell you that an idea would spoil her."
"She's popular," reflected Auntie.
"That's what I'm saying," impatiently. "And her mother is pretty and
popular before her."
"And enjoys it," from Auntie. "I've often wondered she hasn't married
again. I wish Selina wouldn't think it so much the proper thing to be
bookish, Lavinia," a little anxiously, "and to strew magazines around
the house so. It isn't as if she actually reads them."
"Selina is quite as popular as she needs to be," said her mother
quickly. "She doesn't lack for masculine friends."
"You don't have to take that tone to me, Lavinia," said Auntie sharply.
"Nobody has to defend Selina from me."
Here the four friends of Selina down there at the gate embraced her
with a sudden rush and ardor.
"She has told them," said Mamma.
"Yes," from Auntie.
And then both were silent, reading alike in the impetuosity of this
ardor on the part of these young persons, commiseration, and more,
amaze; amaze that she, Selina, their Selina Auboussier Wistar, pretty
Selina Wistar, was to go out to be a teacher, the teacher of William
Williams Jr.!
A moment later as the group departed silently and as if stunned, and as
Selina turned to re-enter her gate, the two ladies at their windows saw
Culpepper Buxton appear.
"To be sure, it is Tuesday," from Mrs. Wistar, "and we did tell him we
should look for him regularly at dinner on Tuesday evenings. I'm sure
I hope there's enough to eat. Viney is still resentful over having to
give in to Selina's fad, and have dinner instead of supper at any such
hour as six, because the Carters do."
"They got it from England, I daresay," from Auntie. "Mr. Carter went
over there last year, you know."
"They got it from Chicago," said Mrs. Wistar tartly. "They visit
soap-and-lard friends over there. I hope the roast, warmed over, is big
enough to go around. I quite overlooked the fact Culpepper'd be here,"
vexedly.
"We promised Maria, his mother, you and I both did, Lavinia, when she
was down, that we'd look after Culpepper. It isn't every stepmother
that would see her dead husband's son through as Maria is doing."
"Maria has means," said Mrs. Wistar. "We'd most of us do wonderful
things if we had means. There, look down at them. From Selina's manner
and Culpepper's, I believe she has told him, too."
"He's fine looking," from Auntie admiringly. "He's a third as tall
again as she is, and Selina is tall enough for a girl herself. He's
built on the lines of his country doctor father. He's listening to her
in that same close way his father had, too, as though he heard through
his gaze. I must say Culpepper is a great favorite of mine. But he's
looking at her, rather shocked and pityingly, Lavinia. Is it a very
terrible thing we're letting her do?"
Now the dialogue down there at the gate, where this Culpepper towered
above the slight young person of Selina, was this:
From him: "Expecting me to dinner? This thing mustn't come to be a
nuisance."
"Yes. Why, of course. Auntie would never get over it if you didn't
come. It's a serious matter to her, this compact with Cousin Maria.
Culpepper?"
"Yes?"
His eyes were a bold blue, his lashes and heavy brows and his hair
black. He looked even blatantly ready for the fight with life.
"How--or when did it come to you that you'd have to go to work? Did it
just dawn on you sometime? Or did somebody, Cousin Maria for instance,
tell you?"
"I haven't gone yet; don't give me undue credit." Culpepper gave that
almost insolently contented laugh of his. "I'm making ready. I didn't
do so badly at college and now I'm making law school. There wasn't any
coming to know about it. I just knew. Every boy knows. He's getting
ready from the start."
"I went to-day and asked for a position to teach and got it. I start
to-morrow!"
"The devil you--Selina, it slipped out, forgive it. So that's why you
wanted to know? I see. Felt you had to?"
She nodded. If a lump requiring to be swallowed was perceptible, she
was more willing for Culpepper to suspect than most people. She knew
him better, and, too, he was the sort, for all his matter-of-factness,
that understands. Or she thought so then.
[Illustration: "He held back the gate, too, for her to pass through."]
He gave a slow ejaculation as they went in together, a sort of
prolonged h'm-m between his teeth. He held back the gate, too, for her
to pass through, with that manner of his, highly indifferent to the
act, the manner of one who opens gates for people not because it is the
accepted thing to do, but because it pleases him, in this case or that
case, to do it.
"Cousin Robert, now, Selina, what does he say to it?"
She was quick in her father's defence. "He doesn't know, Culpepper.
Mamma thought it best not to mention it to him just yet."
He shook his head with dire warning. "When you or some other nice
feminine lady marries me, Selina, don't think I'm going to submit to
any such female managing." He glanced at her a bit oddly as he spoke.
Culpepper was extremely fond of Selina. He had known her since she was
a child, and came up to his stepmother's farm for visits in the summers
with her aunt. He teased her and indulged her both by manner and by
act. He was not the sort to bother with people at all if he was not
fond of them.
Auntie had come down to meet them and here opened the front door. She
adored Culpepper.
"Well, ole Miss?" He kissed her, the only person anyone ever had
seen Culpepper kiss, not excepting his stepmother to whom he owed
everything. "Safe through another seven days in the wicked city! For
another week I've kept my hands from picking and stealing, and my
tongue from lying and slandering. Gimme a clean slate."
"You're mightily sure of yourself, being young," retorted Auntie.
"I'll write Maria you're behaving. Selina, your mother says come right
upstairs and get yourself ready for supper."
"Dinner, Auntie," from Selina quickly and reproachfully. Selina was
scant seventeen.
"Dinner," Auntie corrected herself obediently.
"Dinner," mocked Culpepper with an alarmed air, "how're we plain folk
ever going to live up to her, I put it to you, ole miss, If she goes on
insisting on these things?"
CHAPTER THREE
When Selina came down to breakfast the next morning Papa was gone but
Mamma and Auntie were lingering over their coffee and waffles, waiting
for her.
She explained her tardiness. "I'm late because I didn't know just
what to put on to teach in. I got out my cloth dress, but that seemed
reckless when it's my best, so I put on the old plaid and this linen
collar and cuffs."
"Which are tasty and yet severe," said Mamma approvingly, "and somehow
in keeping."
The implication proved unfortunate. Selina's profile as it flashed
about on Mamma flushed. Such a young, young profile. Such a young
Selina in the plaid dress and the linen collar and the cuffs. Such
a child quivering with abhorrence of the act of going to work, and
wincing with shame because of the abhorrence. In her pitiful state she
was inclined to take umbrage at anything. And what did her mother mean?
"Linen collar and cuffs are in keeping with what, Mamma?" she asked in
reply, even sharply.
Mamma hastened to conciliate and again was unfortunate. "In keeping
with the very worthy calling you are entering on. The pettifogic
calling as we spoke of it under Mr. Aristides Welkin. He had a proper
respect for his occupation as a teacher and saw to it that his pupils
had."
"If he meant pedagogic, Mamma, he probably said so. And can't you
understand if there's one thing _I wouldn't_ want it to be, it's a
calling? Mamma, _please_ don't let's discuss the teaching any more.
Yes, I've had all I want to eat. I _did_ eat my egg, and I don't _want_
any waffles."
"Selina, come here and kiss Auntie before you go," from that dear
person. "I learned my a-b, abs, and my parlez-vous's, before the day
of Mr. Welkin. In my time we all went to old Madame Noël de Jourde de
Vaux, wife of a guillotined French nobleman, as I've often told you. In
a little four-roomed cottage it was, not far from the market-house. I
tasted my first olive there and sipped orange-flower water and sugar.
She was a tiny old personage with twinkling eyes and manners that
had served her well at court. She called it her A B C school for the
babies."
Darling Auntie! Selina threw grateful, passionate arms around her and
kissed her. One could see Madame de Vaux and her babies in the cottage
near the market-house through a glamour, but one hated Mr. Aristides
Welkin in his calling. Why? Selina couldn't have said. Then in a rush
of self-reproach, she swept about and kissed Mamma.
"It's a quarter past eight and I said I'd be there at nine. I'll have
to hurry."
* * * * *
She walked the ten blocks out to the opener neighborhood of the
Williams'. The early morning of the Indian summer day was tinged with
blue mistiness and underfoot was the pleasant rustle and crackle of
leaves along the pavement. On the way she stopped in a drugstore that
dealt in school supplies. She had told Mrs. Williams to have a primer
and first reader for William and she must have one of each herself.
As the man brought them she recognized them as the same she had used
in _her_ day, the primer with a salmon-pink cover in paper, the first
reader in a blue cover in pasteboards.
She took them in their package and left. In her day? That meant at the
little private school where she went at first and where she learned
to read. What did happen in her day at that school? She had to teach
William, and it might help her to remember?
She had held to Auntie's hand who took her to school that first day,
she remembered that, and cried bitterly because she was frightened. And
then? What had happened then?
Why Amanthus had happened then, the most lovely little girl Selina
seemed ever to have seen, with bronze shoes on with tassels. And
because of Amanthus and the shoes, and more particularly perhaps, the
tassels, she had let go of Auntie's hand and consented to stay.
And then Maudie had happened, a taller little girl with plaits that
were almost red. And after her a little, little girl with black curls
in tiers, whose name turned out to be Juliette, and next a little girl
with straight hair and big eyes named Adele. And following these, some
little boys occurred named Bliss and Brent and Sam and Tommy.
And on this first day did lessons begin? Just as lessons were to begin
this morning with William? If only she could recall!
Miss Dellie Black taught that school, and as Mamma intimated about the
stiff collar and the cuffs, her alpaca apron and the gloves upon her
hands with their fingers neatly cut off across the knuckles, seemed to
be in keeping with her calling. She had a ruler and rapped with it, and
a pointer with which she pointed to a primer chart and a blackboard.
But what had she taught? And how had she taught it? Selina shut her
mental eyes as it were, as she went along, and concentrated all her
forces at recalling.
Absurd! This picture that came to her of that first day! Auntie had
gone, and the class came out and stood in a row before Miss Dellie
because she said stand so. And _she_ stood before the chart with the
pointer and with a tap of the wood on the page beneath a black mark,
said, _"This is A._"
Everybody was polite about it, but even so Miss Dellie tapped again
and harder as though they had disputed it, and said again and louder,
"_This is A._"
Everybody accepted it again, but Miss Dellie seemed to want proof of
this.
"Now say it after me, everybody, '_This is A._'"
Everybody said it after Miss Dellie.
"Now say it again without me," from Miss Dellie.
And after they had said it again without her, the little, little girl
with the black curls, the little girl whose name proved to be Juliette,
looked up into Miss Dellie's face, her own little face and her eyes
full of wondering interest.
"Why's it A?" she asked the lady.
"What? What's that?" from Miss Dellie Black sharply. "Don't you know
I'm talking, little girl? And you must listen!"
Half a dozen volunteers explained what she had said, Maudie with the
red plaits, Tommy, Sam and others.
"She says _why's_ it A?"
"She's a naughty little girl not to know her place in school," said
Miss Dellie? Black firmly, "and if she can't be quiet she can go to her
seat and stay there."
Absurd again! So Selina told herself as before. Much good a recall like
this could do her this morning! She'd try again.
But this time it wasn't a picture of school that came to her at all.
But of herself at home going to Papa full of pride in her achievements
_at school_, and carrying with her to his knee, her primer open at a
picture.
"What's this?" Papa had said, full of flattering concern. "A big, big
ox gazing down on a frog on a lily-pad? What? No? It isn't any ox?
Miss Lizzie gave it to you for your lesson to-morrow, and she said so?
Though it may be a frog? If it isn't an ox, then what is it, Selina?"
She had told him clear and sure, that funny little fair-haired girl.
"'Tain't an ox. Miss Dellie told us what it was when she held up the
picture. It's a fable!"
Absurd again! And ridiculous! How was any of all this going to help
her, the grown Selina, to teach William?
* * * * *
The Williams' house stood in a long, narrow corner lot. Its windows
were tall and narrow; its front door was narrow and high. A white maid,
whose manner as she surveyed you, at once seemed to disqualify you,
opened the door. Selina remembered her from the other day.
It was a very proper house within, very exact, very shining, very
precise. One's heart opened a little way for William doomed to live his
infant days amid it.
Yet it almost would seem Selina had misjudged Mrs. Williams. She
appeared now at the head of the stairs as Selina came in, Amazonian,
handsome, impressive, and called down to her quite as anybody might.
She was so pleasantly excited she forgot to be condescending and
reassuring.
"Come right up, Selina. I'm sure you're going to feel I've done my best
for you. I couldn't feel I quite _could_ let you come way out here for
just _William_."
She actually radiated enthusiasm as Selina reached the head of the
stairs. "I made up my mind some of the mothers in this neighborhood had
to be made to take advantage of this opportunity I was offering them.
Come with me to the sewing-room. I've turned that over to you for the
present. I've put the lap-board across chairs for two to sit at, and
the checker-board on a chair for another. William has his own desk.
I've got you four pupils."
Selina followed Mrs. Williams through the hall toward the sewing-room.