taking in this pleasing picture of establishment, descended Miss Marcia
Boswell, tall and quietly distinguished, Miss Pocahontas, charming and
smiling, and Selina in the jaunty new skirt and jacket of blue and the
back-flung veil, flushed and altogether lovely, her young eyes dewy
with something of joy and more of big and eager wonder.
Miss Diana's countenance as they came up the steps to her, however,
was by no means so comfortable in its aspect as her comely person. It
looked absorbed and anxious, nor did she mince matters nor hesitate in
confiding them. Such was not her way.
"My dears," she announced, "it is ghastly. Not an application, not an
entry but those two original Ealings. Everything in readiness for an
ideal winter school for delicate girls, but the pupils. I thought best
to break it to you at once!"
* * * * *
Following an early supper, Miss Diana, the Boswells and Selina gathered
on the wide gallery along the south side of the charming old clap-board
hotel. The immediate point to decide was, what was to be done? Selina
swallowed hard, and then regained herself. She was a little lady, Mamma
and Auntie's care had made her that, to give them their dues, and her
private troubles now were her private troubles and must be regarded by
her as such. She was the favored young friend of the Boswells, and Miss
Talbot's guest, but not their first nor their chief consideration even
under the circumstances, nor must she expect to be. Miss Pocahontas as
though divining something of the nature of Selina's thoughts, leaned
across from her chair at this point and took the pretty hand. It
threatened to unnerve again, but once more Selina regained herself, and
this time to steady herself further, looked about her from her place on
the broad and lovely gallery.
Close at hand the giant live-oaks that overtopped the roof above,
trailed their ghost-beard mosses palely, the fruit on an ancient orange
tree crowding the gallery rail, gleamed russet-golden and the water
of the shimmering and irregularly wandering blue lake, a hitherto
undreamed-of turquoise, quivered silver under the rising moon, and
rippled rose beneath the flush from sunset lingering high in the sky.
Beyond the lake's farther, darkly verdued shore, a feathered palm tree
stood acheek the evening star, and a huge, stork-like bird, its long
legs dangling, its white body rose-tinged with the sunset flush like
the lake, rose heavily from somewhere and flapped across the scene! And
again, this afternoon on a brisk walk into town to the post-office,
Miss Pocahontas with Selina at her side, had bowed smilingly to half a
dozen delightful looking acquaintances in high traps and buckboards,
the men in pith helmets, the women with veils twisted about straw
sailors! It was Florida!
Florida, the pale-yellow lady-finger on the geography page! The breeze
which kissed Selina's pretty cheek was from the Atlantic to the east,
that Atlantic which she was to see at Miss 'Hontas' first opportunity.
The Gulf of Mexico which she was to see at Christmas, was to the west.
And, she, Selina, with Papa and Mamma and Auntie far away and maybe
thinking of her, was on the narrow strip of map between. The quiver
that ran through her at the realization that it was she, Selina Wistar,
who was here, closed her soft hands convulsively. And the quiver at
sudden recall of what she was about to hear of her prospects for
remaining here, opened and closed them again more convulsively.
Miss Diana, as has been said, had gathered them out here on the gallery
to give them her whole dismaying confidence. "I've got the lease and
little more," she now was stating, "I've spent my money getting ready.
What am I to do with the Ealings when they get here to-morrow night?
And what am I to do about this dear child, Selina? I couldn't say the
school wasn't going to materialize until it didn't."
Was Miss Talbot but an elderly, sanguine, impractical child herself?
Miss Boswell, the elder, on her part was a gently sensible lady.
"Propose to Mr. Ealing that he let Selina tutor his daughters; and
they, she, Pocahontas and myself, and anyone else you can get, board
with you until you can dispose of the lease."
It cheered them all. Selina breathed in fresh courage at the respite.
"Make yourself look as dear as you can when they arrive to-morrow,
Selina, so Papa Ealing will not be able to withstand you," said Miss
Pocahontas, "and we'll have our winter together here in Florida after
all."
When the time came Selina did her best, then from the upstairs gallery
where she had been told to wait, saw the Ealings arrive. The father,
a prosperous stock-breeder and horseman, so she had been told, led
the way from the 'bus, big and florid in person, the daughters
following as it were in his shadow. The resolute tones of Miss Diana
who awaited them at the head of the steps, breaking the news with her
characteristic promptness, came up to Selina.
"And I should feel even more responsible about hoping to the last
moment and thus unwittingly allowing you to start before I wired you,"
she ended, "if I could not offer a substitute plan with Miss Wistar of
my proposed faculty for a tutor!"
The Ealings coming upstairs with Miss Talbot a few minutes later, by
an entire miscalculation on Miss Wistar's part, met this person coming
down. Miss Diana at once presented her.
"Miss Wistar, Mr. Ealing and the Misses Ealing, the member of my
faculty about whom I was speaking."
The Misses Ealing crowding upon their father's heels, as everybody
paused on the landing, were large and heavy girls with pallid skins and
peevish countenances. Miss Wistar on the contrary, in Cousin Maria's
limp mull, with ankle-strap slippers below and corals above, looked
dear--appallingly, ruthlessly dear!
"Good God!" said the florid Mr. Ealing, more startled than offensive,
poor man, he was having considerable to bother him just at the moment,
too. "Mine are fillies, but this one's a sucking colt."
Selina in her own room later, her vaunted self-control altogether gone
now, wept piteously against the shoulder of Miss Pocahontas.
"You are to stay and visit Aunt Marcia and me, since the stupid Ealings
will not have you," Miss Pocahontas comforted her confidently. "Oh, yes
you are. It's all decided. And didn't I get you down here? Listen a bit
before you shake your head so vigorously. Why should you not, Selina,
for all your nice independence, my dear, when I tell you I shall
probably marry your Cousin Marcus some day?"
"She shall stay so long as I have a boarder to keep the roof over me,"
said Miss Diana coming in on the heels of this. "I hold myself justly
responsible for this child."
Selina shook her head again, lifting it from the dear shoulder of Miss
Pocahontas to do so. Truly she _was_ a little lady, Mamma and Auntie
again must have their dues. "I came to earn my way. I'm sure they would
say so at home. I've just written."
That night Miss 'Hontas came in to Selina, already in bed, slim,
pretty, flaxen-crowned child that she was, in one of her new nighties,
fruit of Auntie's skill, tucks hand-run, ruffles about the soft, young
throat, rolled and whipped and lace-edged, and sat beside her, and
smoothed her hand and talked to her about many things. About character
and sweetness and bravery and courage and even some other things, which
she said she found in her little friend to love and admire, and--about
Marcus!
[Illustration: "Miss 'Hontas came in ... and talked to her about many
things."]
"You are hard on him right now, Selina, and won't admit you are glad I
am going to marry him. And as I don't propose to have you feel so, and
as you and I are always going to mean a great deal to each other, I
want to show him to you as I see him and always have seen him. It won't
hurt you now to begin to see life a little more as it is, my own little
girl. We women--I mean you by this, too--have to accept our measure for
the part in life we are allowed to fill, through what our fathers are
if we remain at home, or through what our husbands are, or come to be,
if we marry. Fix that in your consciousness right now. I doubt if this
is fair, or if it is going to content us as a sex much longer, witness
my indictment of it for one. But it's the best that is done for us at
present. Our grandfathers and their fathers were merchants and lawyers
and farmers; one of mine sold rope, the other raised tobacco. But if we
believe tradition here in the South, and the homes they left us seem to
prove it, they were something of scholars and thinkers and travelers as
well, citizens more or less of the world and public servants, too. And
here's my point I've been getting to, Selina. Patience a bit longer, my
dear! The men of my class that I have happened to know best in my home
town and my state, are merchants and lawyers and stock-raisers, too,
like their forefathers, but nothing more. Am I insufferable? I've kept
it buried in my bosom so far. I know it's the necessities of the South
since the war have made it so, but still I'd come to be murderous,
or drive my unfortunate yoke-mate to be so, if I were to find myself
inevitably confined within the round and horizon of any one of these
men I have in mind. I'm quite horrid, and your mother would never lend
you to me again if she heard me. But can't you gather now, something of
why Marcus always has appealed to me, and will? Kiss me, Selina, and
consider well whether you won't stay and be my guest as I do so want
you. No? You are sure that at home they wouldn't agree to it?"
* * * * *
Some two weeks later, on a cold, drizzling morning, Papa and Culpepper
received their Selina from the steps of a sleeper.
"She's the only Selina we've got, such as she is, and we're glad to get
her back," said Culpepper cheerfully.
"Mamma sent this old last year's heavy cloak, my precious," said Papa.
"You're to be sure to put it on."
"Papa," said Selina, "let me tell you and I'll feel easier. It's what's
worried me most. I had to use Cousin Anna's money to get here."
When Selina and her father reached home, Mamma was standing out on
the unsheltered doorstep of the small squat house awaiting them,
despite the drizzling rain. Selina had forgotten quite how tiny and
worried-looking her mother was, and how shabby the house! In the
background of the open doorway, close beyond Mamma, was Auntie,
darling, comely Auntie.
"We've got her back," cried Mamma exultantly. "I never approved of her
going, not for one moment, in the least!"
"She's tried her wings; I see it in her face," said Auntie presciently
and sadly. "Lavinia, mark me, she's going to find the old nest too
small!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When Selina, after the manner of her Ponce de Leon, returned fruitless
from her quest, not of the golden fountain of youth, but of the golden
fleece of independence, the cotillion long planned by Mrs. Harrison for
Amanthus was just over, but the reception by the Carters to introduce
Adele to their friends was yet to be. Maud had accused Selina of being
absorbed by her own affairs and her own altered point of view. As
chance or purpose, as the case may be, was to have it, Selina was to
become absorbed for a time in the respective points of view of her four
friends.
"I have accepted the Carter invitations for your aunt and your father
and myself," said her mother the morning after Selina's return, as
pleased as could be about it. "Your aunt's black velvet is always
distinguished and elegant; no one would imagine it was bought for
your father's and my wedding. At that time I said--you remember that
I did, Ann Eliza--'why do you get velvet and black at that? You're
still a handsome girl.' And your reply was, Ann Eliza--do you remember
it?--'I'll live up to it, never fear, Lavinia, I won't be a girl
forever!'"
Mamma went on happily: "I've looked over my mauve grenadine, and by
cutting the tails off the basque and buying new gloves, it will do. And
speaking of buying reminds me, you must have underwear with some wool
in it, coming up this way from almost the tropics."
"And maybe a little wool in her stockings, Lavinia, don't you think?"
added Auntie anxiously, "though we're having wonderfully mild and
protracted autumn weather for the first day of November, to be sure."
"Now that I think about it," amended Mrs. Wistar, "we can't put heavy
underwear on her until after this Carter affair. You will recall my
regrets for you at once, of course, Selina. I'm glad we made you that
one unqualified evening dress."
"And cape," from Auntie.
By a seemingly tacit consent everyone was very nice about Selina's
humiliating return.
"I don't want you to think about that fifty dollars now," said Cousin
Anna, "and I don't want you to ask Robert to return it for you. Pay it
when you can."
The girls came over promptly and in a bunch. They were tactful and
considerate. Only Maud made any direct allusion to her friend's unhappy
failure. "We all have our regrettable moments," she said largely,
embracing Selina and kissing her tenderly, as Juliette and Amanthus
and Adele in turn released her, "our humiliating moments, I may say,
in regard to myself. The other day I told the most distinguished man,
come to preach at our church and staying with us, that I always know
everything written by him for _The Christian Herald_, by its academic
touch, and then went and looked up academic in the dictionary."
Generous Maud! It was her way of comforting!
"Mamma sends her love," said Amanthus, "so much love!"
"We can't be sorry we've got you back, and we hope you won't require
it of us," said Judy, dear little Judy. But she looked listless and
she said it without her usual animation. Did the others look at her a
little anxiously, a little solicitously, perhaps, or did Selina imagine
it?
"I'm such a disappointment to Mamma and Grandmamma, Selina," said
Adele, "thus far in what they're pleased to call my social start. I'm
the square peg in the round hole, as I see it myself. If it isn't my
physical elbows that stick out, it's my mental elbows, and they get on
the nerves of my family even worse. I need you at home, and badly, to
be sorry for me."
Several days after this Adele came over alone. "Come go back with me
for dinner, Selina," she begged. "I haven't really seen you yet, and
I've so missed having you to talk to. As I told you the other day, I'm
such a disappointment to Mamma and Grandmamma. Why can't they let me
alone? Why can't I be myself in my own way? Neither of my brothers
was any older than I am now, when they were allowed to choose and
follow their ways, Roswell to Tech, and Jim out West with our uncle in
business."
As Selina, consenting, went to change her dress, she was thinking that
even with no interference, it wasn't the simple matter to be one's
self that Adele seemed to imply. For her own part she seemed to be the
victim of interchangeable selves right now that arranged the matter of
possession between them, with no respect at all for her wishes, the
result being a sort of see-saw in her personality, up or down, buoyant
or depressed, confident or deprecatory, according to the self in
predominance at the moment.
The buoyant self right now since her return home, seemed born of a
knowledge she felt almost guilty about admitting; she was prettier. She
was the last person who ought to recognize it Mamma and Auntie would
tell her if they suspected her of doing so, and she therefore would
keep any show that she was conscious of it hidden. But the fact was
there. She saw it in the eyes of her mother and aunt themselves; in
the puzzled gazes of Maud and Juliette and Amanthus; in an unwilling
admission from the eyes of Culpepper, who was bluntly opposed always
to anybody or anything flattering her; in quick comprehension and
acknowledgment in the glances of Adele.
Was Marcus right? Had her brief glimpse into life, her short temporary
dependence upon herself, done it?
The knowledge of it, whatever the explanation, gave her new confidence
and sudden brave carriage. Her color deepened and despite her cruel
disappointment, which yet stung sharply, her eyes laughed and her
step was tripping and light. The second day that she was home, she
met a former acquaintance down street, Mr. Tuttle Jones, that paragon
of correctness, and he stopped at her bow, a thing he never had done
before, and with his eyes upon her face, shook hands and passed some of
the gratifying nothings of pleasant interchange with her.
And here last night, the fourth since her return, he came to call. Papa
opened the door to him, and in consequence his card had to go hastily
into his pocket; but after all if you're poor, and she, Selina, and
Papa and Mamma and Auntie were incontestably poor, the thing is to be
frankly what you are and undisturbed about it! She was glad that she
had arrived at this point. It made for self-respect!
And she could feel that on this occasion she had been pleasingly and
successfully undisturbed. It was Sunday evening and nine o'clock when
Mr. Jones came. She heard afterward from Amanthus and Adele, that as
to day and hour, this was quite the thing of the moment to do, the _en
règle_ thing, as Maudie put it. Algy Biggs was already there, calling,
too, and apparently wanting to talk about Juliette; and why Juliette?
But not being so given to the thing of the moment, he had come earlier.
"Papa is an admirable Crichton when it comes to opening doors," Selina
said as she shook hands with Mr. Jones, and as she could feel, with
complete success; "but I am an admirable Miss Crichton when it comes
to other matters." And she took him and Algy, to whom the matter just
had been proposed, on out to the pantry which was shabby but big and
orderly, trust Auntie for that. And here from cold turkey and other
choice bits left from Sunday dinner, they concocted a feast with
hilarity and satisfaction.
But there was a second and disparaging self which alternated with this
more confident and successful one. At the mere call to mind of certain
people, Adele's mother and grandmother, for example, or of occasions
connected with such people, the Carter reception about to be, as an
instance, or of attitudes characteristic of such people, the Carter
stress laid upon prominence and prosperity as a further example, at
such recall Selina's second self came into its deplorable own, and the
self of happier, buoyant mood went down.
And presto! assurance was gone, and she was Selina Wistar, unenviable
person, limited and obscure, living in the small shabby house of
the block, with a father always harrassed and poor; Selina Wistar
unworthily ashamed of first one thing and another, as, at this
particular moment, not so much Auntie's antiquated velvet as of her
veneration for it, nor Mamma's grenadine with the tails cut off, as
at her respect for it; and thus ashamed, the more ashamed that she was
ashamed, she on whose account Papa and Mamma right now were the poorer,
she who was in debt to Cousin Anna!
And in this fashion as she finished the changing of her older plaid
dress for her newer cashmere and went into her mother's room to rejoin
Adele, she found herself at the lowest bump of the see-saw of her
personality upon the ground of self-abasement.
"The dress looks very well, Selina," said her mother. "I was always
sorry we didn't see you in it before you went. It's a nice shade
of blue, not too deep and not too washed out, and a good piece of
cashmere. It was a bargain though I must say I'm always doubtful of
bargains myself. The lace goes with it nicely. I was afraid it was too
much of a bargain, too."
"I'm glad we left the waist a little open at the throat," said Auntie.
"Lavinia, I do believe it's a trifle too long in the skirt. Still
we did very well with it; it hasn't that impressed, homemade look I
deplore, one bit."
A moment later and Selina and Adele were crossing the street through
the dusk, with a wave of their hands back to Mamma and Auntie at their
windows.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Carter house was a broad, double brick in a terraced, well-kept
yard. Herndon, the negro man, opened the door to Adele's ring. Within,
the house was sedate with inherited Carter furniture, Carter portraits,
the emphasis being laid on the Carter side and not the Grosvenor; one
could not but notice, handsomely cased books and, so it seemed, every
nature of paper and periodical.
"Though really," Maudie always said, "unless Mr. Carter chances to stay
home long enough from the club, or from boards of directors, or the
toast master's chair at banquets, no one but Adele ever reads them."
It was an ordeal to go through a meal at the Carters. A meal at Maud's
home was substantial and well served, with Mrs. Addison, her capable,
dominant mother at one end of the table and her pillar-of-the-church
father at the other end, her younger brothers and sisters and herself
along the sides, and most always, some divine or layman of church note,
strange in the city. A meal at Juliette's house, was abundant and the
family manners natural. Her mother was so pretty one overlooked poor
management and poor servants, and Mr. Caldwell, her father, made up for
his rather tiresome teasing by lavish tips and royal boxes of candy as
recompense to hurt feelings.
At Amanthus' home only women prevailed, and a meal there was like Mrs.
Harrison and Amanthus themselves, easy and pretty and charming.
But here at the Carters as now, the occasion was an ordeal. Being six
o'clock dinner, and copied from the Grosvenor soap-and-lard Chicago
kin, it truly was dinner, in a sense Mamma and Aunt Viney had no
comprehension of, soup to finish.
Adele and Selina came downstairs together at the summons, Adele in an
overmodish dress in coral pink, in which Amanthus would have looked
enchanting, and in which she looked unhappy, and after Selina had been
greeted, took their places with the family about the table.
Mrs. Carter who was blonde, and whose hair was elaborately dressed,
was in blue like Selina; Mrs. Grosvenor, her mother, whose hair was
gray and even more elaborately dressed, was in black net with a deal of
cascading lace and many rings; and Mr. Carter, a person of parts, with
moustaches and an imperial, was in a hurry as always, and too disposed
to hasten the meal to its close, to be sociable. Again as Maudie said,
his reputation for wit and conversation and charm must have been gained
away from home.
"Adele tells me you have reconsidered your regrets, Selina, and will
be with us at our reception," said Mrs. Carter just a shade languidly.
"I'm sure we're very glad."
"Selina was in Florida, Mamma, when her mother declined for her," put
in Adele quickly. "Naturally she will come. Selina's popular; she may
teach me how to be."
"If you wouldn't decry yourself in this way, Adele," began her mother.
"I tell her so all the time," said Mrs. Grosvenor.
"But you both, Mamma and Grandmamma, have decried me for so many years
yourselves, trying to improve me, I can't see myself otherwise,"
pleaded Adele.
"For your own good, as you allow," from Mrs. Carter.
"A girl has to be formed," from her grandmother.
"I was a perfect failure at my first big party thus far, Selina," said
Adele, laughing a little desperately, "and with Mamma and Grandmamma
there to see. I----"
"Can't we let this fish go and have the roast, Adelia?" from Mr. Carter
to his wife.
"If Adele would not talk so laboredly to men," said Mrs. Grosvenor,
to no one in particular that Selina could discover. "Her mother and
I overheard her speaking to young Tuttle Jones at this same dancing
party. And on my word for it, Adele, I heard you ask that poor man, I
put your actual speech to mind that I might confront you with it--if he
thought Christianity was a revolt of Hebraism against Hellenism? These
were your very words! I told them to your mother and asked her to help
me to remember them. It's perfectly understandable why Mr. Jones has
declined your affair. Men hate such things."
"I had to talk about something," said Adele wretchedly. "I'd been
reading about it in Papa's _Quarterly_."
"Adele would go to the public schools with the rest of you," Mrs.
Carter addressed this to Selina, "and her father permitted it because
she cried every time mother and I took it up. Now the little cliques
and sets among the young people of my friends are made up when she goes
among them, and she feels out of it."