"Did you ever before see a monocle except on the stage, Selina? In
'Lord Dundreary' and that sort of thing? I never have," from Adele.
"And the truly wonderful grimaces he's making getting it to stay! It's
sort of horribly fascinating to see if he's going to succeed. There,
it's done, and what's it in place to gaze on?"
And following the undoubted line of Mr. Doe's vision, as indicated by
Selina, Adele came to Amanthus near the embowered newell post, a dozen
feet away from the library doorway.
Amanthus! Dimpling for three callow youths surrounding her. Amanthus
of the laughing eyes, the laughing cheeks, the laughing lips, Amanthus
of the sunny hair and violet gaze, who laughed, as now, as the flowers
blow, nor knew why more than they! Amanthus, supple and young and
enchanting, in floating clouds of gauzy yellow, a wreath of buds upon
her daffodil hair, and slender slippers of daffodil gold upon her
buoyant feet! Maud stood near her talking to some other callow youth,
handsome enough in her white tarlatan dress with glossy green leaves
and their berries in her red-brown hair, and young and vital, too,
but not for Mr. Cyril Doe. It was upon that vision known to earth as
Amanthus this monocled, British, chinless person was gazing.
"And Mr. Jones, after declining our party, came with you, Selina," from
Adele. "We'll be regarding you as another Amanthus."
Selina arched her pretty throat, then remembered to be modest. It was
hard not to be complacent about it just a bit, the more so that Mr.
Jones having shaken loose from Mrs. Carter, here was seen making his
way through the crowded parlors back to her. But at least if she was
not so really modest as she could wish about it, she could dissemble.
"Adele, look out in the hall again," thus she sought to put the matter
aside. "Mr. Doe has found Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, and she is taking him to
Amanthus."
* * * * *
The next day Maud spoke accusingly to Selina. One rarely deceived Maud.
"Don't be self-deceiving about it. Don't be too scathing of Mrs. Carter
and Mrs. Grosvenor. Look into your own heart first, if you please,
Selina. You were the more elated over taking Mr. Jones than over any
of the rest of it, yourself, and you needn't tell me, for one, you
weren't! The big frog in the home pool means more to the little frogs
than the big fish from strange waters. I suppose I'd have been, too."
The evening of this same day Selina told Culpepper of Maud's
accusation. Papa and Mamma, Uncle Bruce and the guests were gone to
Mrs. Tuttle's dinner party, and Culpepper on request had come round to
spend the evening with her and Auntie. It was a comfort thus to have
him in the family, making it possible to ask such things of him, and to
talk to him about quite personal matters. He and she were in the parlor
before the flickering fire and the burnished brasses, and Auntie in the
next room was playing her evening game of Napoleon solitaire on the
dining-table.
"Maud didn't quite say I was an incipient snob, Culpepper," Selina
commented after telling him the story of the whole evening, the rescue
of Uncle Bruce by Mr. Jones included. "She didn't actually say I was
as despicable as that, but she implied it." Selina flushed and grew
even a little more thoughtful. "And the truth of it is, Culpepper, I
had to admit to Maud her accusation in a sense is true. I was elated
over taking Mr. Jones. But Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor could not
have been made to acknowledge on any less worldly grounds the something
I had come to recognize as necessary to my Wistar self-respect, and
especially if I were to continue going with Adele. I've been thinking
it over and I'm right about this. But there's worse! I flaunted my new
evening cape and was complacent over it. I even felt myself pitying
Mamma and feeling cross toward her about her old scarf. Whereas if I
come down to facts, Cousin Anna's money which I still owe her, went to
replace that used to buy the cape and some other things. It isn't the
actual cape I'm meaning, though, nor the literal episode of taking Mr.
Jones to the Carter's, Culpepper? Of course you know that? What I'm
worrying over is what Maud calls 'the principle back of the thing.' I'm
not one bit pleased with what I see in myself that way. Do we go on
forever climbing three feet out of the well by day, and falling back
two feet by night? Will I ever get anywhere?"
The iliad of her little woes, piteously assailing those walls of
half-knowledge shutting her out from her mede of common-sense and
common understanding! The odyssey of her little wanderings following
half-truths, misled by platitudes, failing ever of the haven of truth
where she would be! Alas for you, Mamma and Auntie, who with all your
yearnings over her, have so pitifully equipped your one ewe lamb for
life!
Culpepper the while Selina talked, thus guileless of her guilelessness,
thus innocent of her innocence, had been gazing at her across the space
of the hearth between them, his eyes upon her, but following thoughts
of his own. He came to himself with a start.
Now that she, this pretty girl here before the fire with him in this
intimate aloofness, was growing up, tall and fair, that crown of pale,
shining hair distinguishing her, it came upon him at times such as
now, with a clutch, a catching of his breath, to have her still so
ingenuously sweet, still so honest, still so utterly and so endearingly
confiding. It disarmed him. It broke down his control. It got into that
blatant blood of his and for moments made him see red and feel afraid
for himself. He wanted to seize her hands there in her lap, and kiss
their helpless palms! No, he wanted to seize _her_ and kiss _her_, kiss
her until she awoke to the facts of life and--understood. And this
achieved, lay down the mandate to her that he was here, and all the
while had been here, for the man-made and Heaven-sanctioned purpose of
taking material and every other sort of care of her, the woman. His
stepmother knew it, his Cousin Robert knew it, ole Miss, he'd take his
oath, more than half suspected it.
True, he had nothing whatever of his own, only a princely allowance
from that big-souled person, his stepmother. But God Almighty, what of
that? He'd have all that he needed having in his own good time. He was
the stripe and make that batters any old thing out of the way of the
going if it be mistaken enough to get there--the sort, in fact, that
succeeds. The baffling thing here was of a different nature, being
Selina herself. You can't crush a bud into its bloom by the mere force
of your longing; you can't kiss a child that knows no passion, with
passion!
Culpepper, twenty-three himself, but no less sophisticated than he
would be when he was thirty-three, pulled himself together, big,
good-looking young giant that he was, the effect of whose bodily
presence here was always to further dwarf the shabby little parlor.
The soft flip of Auntie's cards being dealt out on the table came from
the next room. It was like a restoring touch from her calm personality.
"One thing is cleared up for me by last night's happenings," declared
Culpepper cheerfully.
"What?" from Selina. She had been thinking how comfy and nice it was,
this long chatty evening with him, and the firelight, and the always
restful sense of Auntie's proximity.
"Why, Tuttle, or Tuts, as we of his class at college called him, was in
training for a color-sense those four years, matching suits to socks,
and socks to neckties. But for that nicety for color so faithfully
attained, where would little Mr. Bruce be right now?"
Auntie's voice came in from the next room. "Mr. Jones is a gentleman,
and has proved it, Culpepper. I won't have you decrying him."
"All right, ole Miss; what you say goes. What we at college kicked
about was that he was such a lady."
"Culpepper, not another word," from Auntie.
"Just to ask how much longer the high and mighties, these Britishers,
are with us," pleaded Culpepper, "so I'll know when it's safe for me to
show up around here in the old way?"
"One more day only," Selina reassured him, "Mr. Carter's giving them
a dinner and smoker at the club to-morrow evening. Mrs. Harrison
has arranged for them to stop for a day at Selimcroft, her Uncle's
stock-farm up your way, as they go. She discovered that they want
to see some of our typical horses and stables and training tracks
and such, you'll know just what, better than I do. Mrs. Harrison and
Amanthus are going up for the day with them. Amanthus is so impressed
by Mr. Doe, the secretary, she's overcome. It hasn't often happened to
Amanthus. He told her for some reason or other, that everything that's
good form in England just now wears bangs. And she asked him, you know
how Amanthus does ask such things, if he meant horses?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Selina put on hat and jacket the day after Uncle Bruce's guests left,
and went over to see Juliette. The Caldwell house was of brick with
gables, a bay, a small Gothic porch, pointed windows and clambering,
leafless vines. Juliette's father, as said before, was a rising
business man, and his own and his pretty wife's people were well to do.
There was considerable extravagance and laxity and also waste in the
household, and the children up to a certain point, from Juliette, the
oldest, down through her two younger sisters and the son just toddling,
did pretty much as they pleased.
But of late everyone was worried about Juliette. She was dauncie, as
the darkies say, in other words, listless and indifferent and pale. In
all the years past this same gay little Juliette had stood with her
friends as embodiment of life and vividness and enthusiasm.
Mrs. Caldwell opened the side door to Selina's tap. She had a gingham
apron with a bib over her rather elaborate crimson cashmere wrapper.
Dark like Juliette, and like her also in being aquiline and vivid, and
still a bit frivolous in her tastes, now she looked disheveled and
cross and tired. They were an outspoken as well as a bit haphazard
household, these prosperous Caldwells.
"No cook since Monday, Selina, and neither nurse for the baby or
house-boy to-day. When one of them gets mad, the others always take it
up and follow. What we're coming to I'm sure I can't say. The older
servants such as my mother's been used to dealing with, are dying off,
and the younger ones don't know how to do a thing and won't let you
show them."
It was a familiar plaint, and Selina was so accustomed to it, it slid
nowadays from the consciousness as housekeepers voiced it, like a
too-oft repeated platitude. Cousin Anna had such trouble continually;
Mrs. Williams, while Selina taught there, never seemed to have her full
quota of servants at any one time and never ceased to say so, and the
Addisons and even the Carters were complainers, too. Selina took Mrs.
Caldwell's grievance as a matter of course.
"I've been coming over for a good long visit with Judy ever since I got
home," she replied, "but if you're busy, you'll need her, and won't
want me, Mrs. Caldwell?"
"Juliette? I'm glad you've come hunting her. I'm sure I don't know
what we're going to do with her, Selina. She's never been stubborn or
ugly in her life before. It's been going on now for sometime, this
undercurrent of resentment to her father, and I don't mind speaking
out with you, Selina, we look on you quite as one of ourselves, it's
come to a break, an open rupture between them. Her father can't see it
anyway but that she's been underhand in her defiance, and she won't
allow that she cares in the least what he thinks. Of course, I don't
know how much she may have told you. Go on up to her room. The little
girls are at school, and I'm thankful the baby's asleep. Juliette
and I've just finished in the kitchen and she's upstairs starting to
straighten the bedrooms."
Selina went through the halls to the front stairway. She didn't fancy
the Caldwells' house. Everything was over-elaborate and nothing very
well cared for and there seemed a regrettable mixture. She couldn't
bear the bisque cupid, for instance, which hung from the costly gilt
chandelier. And she and Adele and Maud deplored the portrait of
Juliette at three which hung over the mantelpiece. Cunning Judy as
she really had been, here forever seated on a rose-bank, her curls in
tiers, her cheeks carmine, and a sash of blue bound round her tummy
so precisely that her embroidered skirts flew out beneath as though
released. And Selina disliked the showy pattern in the velvet carpet on
the halls and up the stairs. But she did love Juliette.
She went up the steps. She knew something of the trouble between
Juliette and her father, and could guess what had brought about the
present rupture. About the time she went South, Juliette had dared be
audacious in a way that caused her friends to hold breath, terrified
at thought of what the storm would be when discovery by her father came.
Having reached the hallway above, Selina tapped on a door which was
ajar at the head of the stairs, the door to Juliette's own room. At
the sound, Juliette, in an apron like the one upon her mother, turned,
and seeing Selina in the doorway, sat down suddenly on an ottoman at
hand and resting her black-tressed little head against the edge of the
bureau she was dusting, went into passionate weeping. It was as if the
sight of her friend loosed the pent-up flood of her unhappiness.
Quickly enough words equally as passionate made their way through the
wild sobbing. "It's the stupidity of Papa's position, his utter lack of
reason, that's so maddening, Selina. 'I'll see a daughter of mine going
to college!' is the whole of it. And his unfairness, too, stops any
attempted answering on my part after he's had his say, with 'That'll
do now. I don't care to hear any more on the subject.' And what's his
argument, I'd like to know, Selina? He hasn't any. Simply none. Just
the senseless, stubborn stand he's got from somewhere. 'I'll see a
daughter of mine going to college. Get busy and help your mother with
the younger children and the house, and don't let's hear any further
nonsense on the subject.'"
Selina sat down aghast. Yielding by disposition herself, and product of
a lifelong submission to a loving if sometimes paralyzing authority
against which she had lifted a tentative protest only once or twice,
she gazed at Juliette dismayed. At pretty Judy, facing her from
the ottoman, she herself now on a nearby chair, their young knees
almost a-touch, a miniature, flashing, apparently altogether volatile
creature, suggestive of the ruby-throated hummingbirds that darted
about Auntie's flowers and vines in the backyard in summer!
This little Juliette had been raised under a certain amount of
authority, too, but the authority of a young and complacent father who
overindulged his family so long as his own mood was genial, but who
when his temper was ruffled, as Maud put it, like the heathen raged.
Still a parent and father is parent and father. The foundation tenet
to all known ethics in the family relation as Selina was familiar with
them, that of unquestioning obedience to the man of the household, was
being repudiated, and this by seemingly crushable little Juliette.
"I've talked college ever since our junior year at the high school,"
she here reminded Selina.
She had. Juliette had a northern cousin in Ohio whose letters to her
began to be dated from such an institution that same year. There were
several college-graduate women in their own community, too, figures
upon whom Juliette and the rest of them had gazed, awed. And about whom
they mutually confessed to find, a certain carriage and a definite
assurance, a look and manner more common to busy men, of those having
business to attend to and the will and the ability to do it.
But who had dreamed that seeds so chance as these could have sown
themselves in little Juliette's breast to become the dominant
possession of that wee abode?
Little? Wee? Volatile? Crushable?
It was as if Juliette there on her ottoman vigorously using her
pocket handkerchief to stay the still welling tears, thus read these
oft-repeated and disqualifying diminutives applied to her in Selina's
mind.
"All of you, in the family and out of it, always infuriate me by fixing
the measure of my ability by the size of my body!" The crimson of her
fury rushed to her cheeks afresh. "When I read my graduating essay as
an honor girl, nobody gave me any credit for having got the honor,
whereas everybody clapped and said how cute and that sort of thing."
It was so. It had seemed a joke, little Juliette with her crimson
cheeks and her unfurled essay. "Judy, poor Judy," murmured Selina,
aghast the more at these revelations from this friend she had thought
she knew.
"You went to teaching," Juliette was continuing, "and that made me
think on my part. Then you went South, getting about your business
in life as you saw it, and at that I up and told Papa what I wanted.
He treated it as a huge joke on my part, chucked me under the chin,
I always have loathed his doing that at any time, and said for
perpetrating it he'd give me a box at the minstrels and I could ask my
friends. He actually did say that, Selina. And when I persisted that it
wasn't a joke, that I'd made up my mind I wanted to go to college, and
sooner or later was going, he was incredulous at first, and then flew
into a rage and told me I was a little fool and there'd been enough
of this nonsense, and if I said any more I could go to my room and
stay there until I could be sensible. When I took it up the next time
and insisted he owed it to me to show me why he felt as he did about
a girl going to college, he said he'd show me the only argument he
purposed advancing, and took me by my shoulder and marched me up here
to my room, and going out slammed the door. I wrote him a note then and
sent it to him at the store by mail, saying if he'd show me truly and
convincingly, why, I'd give in. He didn't answer, but told Mamma to
tell me if there was any more of it, he'd stop the allowance I'd asked
for my last birthday."
"And all this by yourself, Judy?" from Selina, deploringly. "And I not
here near you to help you, nor to comfort you!"
"I've never touched my allowance since," hotly, "and I don't mean to.
That's why I didn't come to Adele's. I didn't have the dress to wear
and I wouldn't ask for it. I haven't said another word to him on the
subject of college since and I'm not going to. I just went around to
Professor Maynard's boys' school and asked him if he'd take me and
get me ready for college, and he said he would. I had some money saved
up; you see, both my grandfathers always give us children money at
Christmas and birthdays. This was while you were gone, Selina. Mamma
and baby were away, staying for a couple of weeks at Grandma's on
account of the whooping-cough next door to us, and it made it easier
for me to manage."
"Judy! And you had the courage! You little--well you _are_ a little
thing, and I _have_ to say it. Algy told me something about it, told me
that you were being coached but didn't want anything said about it."
"Algy helped me plan it. His father quarreled with him because he
_wouldn't_ go to college. It's the same sort of principle. He was sent
to Professor Maynard's to be made ready and wouldn't stay. That's how I
came to go there. Algy told me about him."
Algy! The butt of their fond joking and laughter! Truly, as Selina
had said to herself along other lines, you never can tell! "And what
happened next, Judy?"
"When Mamma came back from Grandma's, she began questioning, and I
had to tell her. And of course Papa found out then. And because he's
a stubbornly limited person, Oh, I'm going to say it, I've thought it
long before this especial trouble between us--he thinks, for instance,
that horrible bisque cupid in our parlor is the cutest thing in the
house--Selina, my life and my wants are to be lopped off to his. I'm
not going to stand it. I'm going to college somehow, you hear me now,
Selina. I daresay it's his own stubbornness cropping out in me, but
that doesn't deter me either. I've a right to my own life, and I'm
going if planning can get me there."
But at least she disliked the bisque cupid! There was comfort in
knowing that!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
With Juliette avowedly rebellious, and Adele confessedly the square peg
in the round hole, Selina when she said good-bye at the Caldwell's,
went in the Addison house next door to get some comfort from Maud.
It was the middle of the morning, and Mrs. Addison, a big
wholesome-looking, capable personage, was overseeing the hanging of
fresh lace curtains in the parlors. She sent Selina on up to Maud's
room, after, like Mrs. Caldwell, a plain-spoken word.
"Now that Maud's through with the novelty of refitting her room, though
I saw nothing wrong with it before, she's gone back into complaining
discontent again. What's the matter with you all, Selina?"
"I'm wondering myself, Mrs. Addison," said Selina truthfully.
She went on up. Maud was clearing the litter from a big deal table
that certainly did not add anything to the looks of her room with its
new blue carpet and blue paper and ruffled curtains and its still
a-wee-bit-envied cottage furniture. Maud was going in for china
painting right now and kept her equipment on the deal table. She
exhibited the pitcher of a tea-set of three pieces.
[Illustration: "Maud was going in for china painting."]
"There's nothing to it, Selina; painting pink butterflies on a blue
background doesn't satisfy one bit. In my heart, and you know it and I
know it, too, I don't care a rap for decorated china tea-sets."
It was Maud's third essay into the arts since leaving school eighteen
months ago. She had tried with two successive teachers to manufacture
a voice which was not there, and also had taken a course in Kensington
embroidery. A cover of blue felt cloth, done in drab cat-tails was on
her reading-table now.
"I've just been over with Juliette," Selina explained.
"At least she knows what she does want, and that's a good deal," from
Maud.
"She hates the bisque cupid as much as we do," Selina hastened to
relate, "and hasn't said so. It's taken this last to make her disloyal."
"Maybe she hates herself at three on the rose-bank, too," surmised
Maud. "Tell Adele and it'll cheer her. Algy's so hot over the treatment
of Juliette at home, he goes around every single day to see her."
"And we didn't half take up his row that time when he wouldn't go to
college. I'd almost forgotten till Juliette reminded me. Have you ever
thought what a real dear Algy's always been? We haven't half estimated
him? When persons do and do for you, you come to take it for granted?
Think how we've always called on Algy?"
"I suppose," said Maud to this reflectively, as she stood at the
washstand rinsing her hands of their paint stains, "we're all fools to
some other intelligence. Algy's seemed slower than the rest of us. And
now I want to read you a note from Mr. Welling showing where _he_ puts
_me_. As I just said, meaning myself as well as Algy, we're all fools
to some other intelligence. Of course, Mr. Welling is older and has
had college and has been about, but still it's trying. And I've been
so altogether complacent, imagining he was getting value received in
his visits round here, reading German with me, and all. Maybe he has
been getting it in a sense I hadn't reckoned on," bitterly. "He asked
me the other night, Selina, in that jocular way of his that one ought
always to distrust, if I had read the editorial in the morning paper
on our new democratic president's first message. I hadn't. I didn't
know there was a message, and I knew I wasn't a bit bright as to just
what a president's message is supposed to be. I had to formulate some
sort of position though, and so as I went along, I said no, I never
read the papers much, that Mamma glanced over the deaths and headlines
and reported them while Papa ate his breakfast, and then Papa went off
with the paper in his pocket. And I added that we were on the other
side anyhow, that the Addisons had been Unionists, and were with the
republican interests ever since."
"I know," said Selina hastily, this being the one thing about Maud and
her family always hard to get around, and therefore a matter to refrain
from dwelling on as far as possible.
[Illustration: "'Mr. Welling looked at me in that ... quizzing way of
his.'"]