"I hope so." Fräulein Hauser sounded dubious.
Every afternoon Flip went out grimly with the beginners. She was
covered with bruises and every muscle in her body ached, but she was
determined that she was going to learn how to ski, that in this one
thing at any rate she would not fail. When the other beginners laughed
at her tumbles she tried desperately to laugh back, to pretend that she
thought it was funny, too.
At the end of the skiing class on Friday afternoon, Fräulein Hauser
called her back to the ski room as the others left.
"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Philippa, but I think you'd better
drop skiing. You'll enjoy the ice-skating when the hockey field is
flooded, I'm sure, and in the meantime there are walks, and gym work."
"But why, please, Fräulein Hauser?" Flip gasped in dismay.
"You just don't seem able to learn, and I'll have to admit I can't
teach you. I'm afraid you'll hurt yourself in one of your falls and I
think it would be best if you just give it up."
Flip looked at the racks and racks of skis as they suddenly began
blurring together. "I'd rather keep on, please, Fräulein Hauser, if
it's all right."
"I'm afraid it isn't all right," Fräulein Hauser said impatiently. "I
just can't have you in my class. I'll put you on the walk list for
tomorrow."
Flip turned her head and left. She walked blindly down the corridor but
she had managed to control her tears by the time she got to the big
Hall.
3
On Sunday she could not help telling Paul of her defeat. Paul had
immediately seen that something was wrong, asking, "What's the matter?"
"I know I could learn to ski if she'd just let me go on trying," Flip
persisted. "I know I could." Ariel was licking her face in a worried
manner and she put her head down on his back to try to hide the tears
that were threatening.
"Bring your skis over next Sunday and I'll help you," Paul told her.
"Oh, would you really, Paul?"
"I said I would. Do you think it's because of your bad knee you told me
about?"
Flip shook her head. "No. My father asked the doctor when Eunice gave
me her skis and he said skiing was fine for me. So it isn't that."
"Well, bring your skis next time then," Paul told her.
So Flip brought her skis over. Madame Perceval arrived just as they
were about to set off.
"Hello, Philippa, Paul, what's this?" she asked, fending off Ariel's
frantic welcome.
"I'm going to teach Flip to ski," Paul announced.
"Oh?"
"Fräulein Hauser said I had to drop skiing," Flip explained.
"Why, Philippa?"
"She said I just couldn't learn and she couldn't teach me. But Madame,
I'm sure I _can_ learn, I'm sure I can."
"Why don't I go out with you and Paul?" Madame Perceval said, "and
we'll see."
She watched while Flip put on her skis, watched her push off, fall
down, push off and fall down again.
"Where did you get your skis?" she asked.
"A friend of my father's gave them to me. They were hers."
"Take them off for a moment," Madame Perceval said. "Now raise your
arm." She measured the skis against Flip. "Just as I thought. They're
much too long for you. I don't know what your father's friend was
thinking of. She can't know much about skiing."
"Well, she says she's skied a lot," Flip said. "Maybe she was trying to
impress father. He doesn't know anything about skiing. He used to use
snow shoes when he was a boy."
Madame Perceval took the skis away from Flip. "No wonder you couldn't
learn on these. They would be too long for Paul. I don't know why
Fräulein Hauser didn't notice it at once."
"She probably would have on anybody else. People just expect me to be
bad at sports."
Madame Perceval laughed. "You're probably right, Philippa. And Fräulein
Hauser certainly has her hands full with beginners this year. Now,
there's a pair of very good ash skis back at school that would be just
about right for you. One of the girls from last year left them. I think
I'll run along back and get them. You and Paul wait inside for me."
"Oh, thank you, Madame!" Flip cried.
"Thank you Aunt Colette," Paul added.
She and Paul went indoors. Georges Laurens was shut up in his tiny
study, deep in concentration, so they did not speak to him, but went
over to the fire, stripping off jackets and sweaters. For a moment they
were silent and Flip knew that Paul did not want to talk about any of
the things he had told her, or to have her talk about them.
"Papa's been writing all day, except when he went to get you," Paul
said, talking nervously as he stared into the fire. "I was afraid that
he might forget to go for you, but he didn't."
"Thank goodness for that," Flip sighed.
Paul stood up. "I'm hungry. I'll go get us some bread and cheese from
Thérèse." He disappeared in the direction of the kitchen and came back
with a chunk of cheese, half a loaf, and a bone handled carving knife.
Flip lay on the hearth, using Ariel as a pillow.
"Aunt Colette was over here last night," Paul said, "And that Italian
teacher, Signorina what's-her-name."
"Signorina del Rossi."
"That's right," Paul said. "And they were talking about you."
"About me! What did they say?" Flip cried, sitting up.
"Well, I didn't hear all of it because I was reading."
"But what did they say?" Flip asked again.
"Well, Signorina was saying that it was the first time Aunt Colette's
ever taken a special interest in any one girl. And Aunt Colette laughed
and said that you had great talent and then she said that an artist's
life was a hard one but she was afraid you were stuck with it. And then
she said--now, don't get angry with me, Flip--"
"Go on."
"Well, she said you were a nice child when you didn't spoil it by being
sorry for yourself."
"Oh," Flip said. "Oh." And she lay down again rubbing her cheek against
Ariel's fur.
"Here," Paul said. "Have some more bread and cheese.... You aren't
angry at me, are you, Flip?"
"No."
"Are you sorry for yourself?"
"Yes. I think I am sometimes--"
"Why?"
"Oh--because I want my mother. And the girls don't like me. Oh, and
everything. And I want to be with father instead of at school. But I
don't feel that way so much any more, Paul. And if I can learn how to
ski it will be wonderful. And I love coming here every week-end. And
I'm beginning to like school. Truly I am."
"Why do you keep saying that?" Paul asked, holding the loaf against his
chest and cutting off another chunk. "You keep saying you like school
so much and I don't believe you really do at all."
"I _do_," Flip persisted. "I _don't_ hate it the way I used to." And
she realized with a start that her words were true. While she didn't
actually _like_ school, she no longer hated it with the sickening
passion of only a few short weeks ago.
"Aunt Colette said something else," Paul went on. "Do you want to hear?"
"Of course."
"She said you reminded her of Denise."
"Who's Denise?"
"Her daughter."
"What!" Flip yelled. "Her _daughter_!"
"Hush. Here she comes. Have some more bread and cheese, Flip," Paul
said as Madame Perceval came in carrying a pair of skis.
"Here you are, Philippa," Madame Perceval held the skis up. "Let's try
these for size."
Flip scrambled to her feet and Madame Perceval tried them against her.
"How are they?" Flip asked eagerly.
"Perfect. Couldn't be better. Put on your things and we'll go out and
try them."
As Flip snapped the skis onto her boots Madame Perceval said, "Now
don't expect miracles, Philippa. The skis don't make as much difference
as all that. Just go very slowly and do as I say."
Madame Perceval was right. Flip was not able, all of a sudden, to ski
like an angel because of the new skis. But she no longer fell quite so
frequently, or had such a desperate struggle to get to her feet again.
"Better, much better!" Madame Perceval cried as Flip slid down a tiny
incline and stopped without falling. "Now turn around."
Flip raised her leg and the long ski no longer tumbled her
ignominiously onto the snow. She snapped her other leg around and there
she was, all in one piece and erect.
"Bravo!" Madame cried. "Now herring-bone up the little hill and come
down again."
Her tongue sticking out with eagerness, Flip did as Madame Perceval
told her.
"Good," the art teacher said. "Good, Philippa. More spring in your
knees if you can. How about that bad knee? Does it bother you?"
"Not much." Flip shook her head. "Oh, Madame, do you think I can learn?"
"I know you can. Just don't stick your tongue out so far. You might
bite it off in one of your tumbles."
"Do you think Fräulein Hauser will take me back in the skiing class?"
"Wait! Wait!" Paul cried, waving his ski sticks in wild excitement. "I
have a much better idea."
Madame laughed and ducked as one of the sticks went flying. "All right,
Paul. Calm down and tell us this magnificent idea." But Flip could see
that she was pleased because Paul sounded excited and happy, and the
dark look had fled from his face.
"Well, Flip was telling me about this ski meet you have at school and
how everybody can go in for it and there's a prize for form, and a
long race, and a short race, and a prize for the girl who's made most
progress and all sorts of things. And I think it would be wonderful
if we could teach Flip and she could enter the ski meet and win and
surprise everybody."
Madame Perceval started to laugh but then she looked at Flip and Paul
and their eager excited faces, and she said slowly, "It would be
rather a tall order teaching Flip just on week-ends. She needs lots of
practice."
"I could slip out in the morning before Call Over," Flip cried. "If I
make my bed before breakfast and hurry breakfast I'd have almost an
hour and nobody'd see me then."
"And think how surprised that Fräulein Hauser would be," Paul cried.
"And the girls would be so surprised," Flip shouted. "Erna and Jackie
and all of them. Oh, Madame, do you think I _could_ learn? I'd work
terribly hard. I'd practice and practice."
"If you keep on improving the way you've improved this afternoon,"
Madame Perceval told her, "I'm sure you could."
"Come on, Aunt Colette," Paul cajoled.
Madame Perceval looked at them for a moment longer. Then she smiled and
said, "Why not?"
4
Flip finished her still life of a plaster head of Diana, a wine bottle,
a loaf of bread, and a wine glass, early during the next art class.
"That's good, Flip," Madame Perceval said. "Really very good, though
your perspective is wobbly--everything's going up hill at quite an
alarming angle and poor Diana looks as though she were about to fall on
her ear. But the color and texture is excellent. That's really bread,
and the transparency of your glass is a great improvement over your
last still life. That's good work, Flip."
Flip blushed with pleasure, partly at the praise, and partly because
Madame was calling her Flip. Several of the girls looked up at the
name and Gloria actually winked at her.
"You have time to start something else," Madame was saying. "Here's a
clean sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal. Just draw anything you
like. Either from something in the room or from your imagination."
For the past two days Flip had been thinking of three things, Paul,
skiing, and Madame's daughter. She had not had another opportunity to
ask Paul about Denise, how old she was, or whether she was alive or
dead. Somehow Flip felt that she must be dead and that perhaps that
accounted for the sadness in Madame Perceval's eyes. She wondered what
Madame's daughter would look like and, almost without volition, her
hand holding the charcoal moved across the paper and she began to draw
a girl, a girl about her own age sitting on a rock and looking out
across the valley to the mountains.
The likeness was stronger than she could possibly have guessed. She was
trying, more or less, to draw a girl who looked like Madame and who
had short hair like hers. But the girl who appeared on the paper did
not look like Madame and Flip felt discouraged because she knew the
perspective was wrong again and the mountains were too small and far
away and the girl's feet weren't right. She sighed and tried to erase
the mountains and the feet and correct them.
Madame Perceval stood behind her and looked over her shoulder down at
the paper. Flip almost jumped as the art teacher's strong fingers dug
into her arm.
"What are you doing?" Madame Perceval's voice was calm and low, but
Flip felt the strain in it.
"Just--just a girl looking at the mountains," she stammered. "The--the
feet aren't right."
"I'll show you," Madame Perceval said; but instead of explaining what
was wrong, and then telling Flip what to do to correct it, as she
usually did, she took the charcoal and swiftly put the feet in again
herself; and then she took the thumbtacks out of Flip's board and took
the paper and walked over to the cupboard with it and Flip saw that her
hands were trembling.
In a moment she came back with a fresh piece of paper. "Why don't you
try drawing one of the girls in the class?" Madame suggested, and her
voice was natural again. "Erna, you've finished, haven't you? Will you
sit still and let Flip sketch you?"
"Yes, Madame. How do you want me to sit, Pi--Philippa--uh--Flip?"
Madame Perceval smiled as Erna stumbled over Flip's name, and Flip
said, "Oh, the way you are now looking over the back of your chair is
fine, if you're comfortable."
She took up the charcoal and sketched quickly and then she laughed
because the girl on her paper was so out of proportion and
funny-looking and at the same time she _was_ Erna. In trying to get a
likeness Flip had over-accentuated and the braces on Erna's teeth were
ridiculous and her chin jutted out and the barette pulled the hair back
far too tightly from the forehead.
"What are you laughing at?" Erna demanded.
Flip looked at her drawing and thought,--oh, dear, now Erna will be mad.
But Madame Perceval had come over and was laughing, too, and showing
the paper with Erna on it to the class, and everybody was laughing.
"I think you have a flair for caricature, Flip," Madame said.
And Jackie bounced up and down on her chair, crying, "Draw me, Flip,
draw me!"
"Hold still, then, Jackie," Madame said, handing Flip another sheet of
paper.
Flip's hand holding the charcoal made Jackie's curly hair fly wildly
about the paper; the enormous, long lashed black eyes took up half the
page, and the mouth was a tiny bud above the pointed little chin. Erna
had been watching and as Flip laid down the charcoal for a moment she
grabbed the paper and held it up, shouting,
"Look at Jackie! She looks just like a cat!"
"Draw me! Draw me!" All the girls were shouting at Flip until Madame
Perceval stopped them, saying, "Not now, girls. The bell just rang. You
can get Flip to draw you any time. I know she'd like to, wouldn't you,
Flip?"
"Oh, yes, Madame!"
So they besieged Flip in the Common Room with requests for caricatures
to send home, and Flip went to her locker, her face bright with
happiness, to get her sketch book and pencils.
"Don't make my nose _too_ big!" "Should I take my glasses off,
Flip?" "Oh, Pill, don't put in my freckles!" 'Flip' and 'Pill' came
indiscriminately, and somehow quite suddenly and surprisingly Flip knew
that she no longer minded the 'Pill' because it sounded friendly; it
was being said to her, not at her.
--I'm liking school, she thought.--I'm liking it. Now it will sound
better when I tell Paul I like it.
Only Esmée Bodet was discontented with her picture. "I don't look like
that!" she said, and tore the page across, tossing the pieces in the
waste paper basket.
"She looks exactly like that," Erna said in Flip's ear. "Come on up on
the billiard table and let's play jacks." The entire school had a jacks
craze on. Even the seniors were playing though Esmée turned up her nose
and said it was a child's game, and continued to play very bad bridge.
"Oh, jacks! Let me play too!" Gloria cried, clambering up and sitting
cross-legged on the green felt of the billiard table; and Flip realized
that one reason Gloria never lacked for partners, or a place in the
Common Room games, was that she never hesitated to ask.
"Come on, Jackie," Erna called. "Climb up."
Flip was quite good at jacks and Gloria bounced up and down
impatiently. "Come on, Pill, miss can't you? I want a turn." And
she gave Flip's elbow a jog, but Flip caught the ball and laughed
triumphantly.
"Good for you, Flip," Erna cried. "You can't play if you're going to
cheat, Glo."
"It's Erna's turn next, anyhow," Jackie said. "By the way, Pill, I
think it's a dirty shame Hauser made you drop skiing."
"Me too." Erna nodded so violently that her hair came out of the
barette and she had to fasten it again.
Flip thought of the progress she had already made on her skis, and
smiled to herself. Then she shrugged, "Well, if she thinks I'm too
impossible to teach, I guess that's that."
"The old minge, the mangy old minge," Gloria muttered. "I say, Pill.
What're you going to be when you get out of this place, an artist?"
Flip nodded. "I'd like to be. The way my father is. I'd like to paint
portraits and do illustrations for children's books." She reached
wildly for the jacks' ball, which was this time an old golf ball
Gloria's mother had sent, but it bounced off the table and Erna
scrambled after it.
"At last," she said, bringing it back and collecting the jacks. "I'm
going to be a doctor like _my_ father. I think it must be wonderful to
cut people up and put them back together again." Underneath her joking
words Flip could tell that she was serious.
"The trouble is that you can't always put them back together again,"
Jackie said.
"I will." Erna swept up her jacks with a confident gesture. "If people
have their legs and things blown off I'll discover a way to put them
back or give them new ones off dead people."
Flip started to tell Erna that Paul wanted to be a doctor too, but
Gloria, who didn't mind when she herself talked about glass eyes or
false teeth, put her hands over her ears. "Oh, stop! Stop!"
"Well, dead people can give their eyes so blind people can see," Erna
said, "so I don't see why they shouldn't give their legs and things,
too."
Gloria clapped her hand over Erna's mouth. "You go talk about your old
operations somewhere else."
"Who asked you to play jacks anyhow?" Erna mumbled from behind Gloria's
hand. "Let go and let me play. I'm on fivesies, eggs in the basket."
"Foursies."
"Fivesies."
"It's fivesies," Flip corroborated. "Are you going to be a movie
actress, Jackie?"
Jackie laughed and waved her arms. "My father says I'll be an actress
over his dead body. I haven't thought about it much. Maybe I'll just be
a wife like my mother. She says that's a career in itself, only lots of
people forget it."
"Love," Gloria sighed, "that's what I'm cut out for."
"Do you believe in love at first sight?" Flip asked and blushed.
"I believe in love." Gloria placed her hand dramatically over her
heart. "It's love that makes the world go round."
"Have you seen Maggie Campbell's brother?" Jackie asked. "He's the
handsomest man I ever saw. Maggie's going to give me a snapshot of him
for Christmas."
Flip sat with her legs stuck out in front of her on the old hotel
billiard table, because her stiff knee kept her from sitting
cross-legged or on her heels, and watched, and listened, and
occasionally said a word, and she felt so excited that she could feel
the excitement like hunger in the pit of her stomach. She was excited
because for the first time she felt on the inside, and underneath the
new warm sense of being one of them was the glorious secret knowledge
of Paul--and tomorrow she would see him again.
5
The first thing Paul asked Flip the next day was, "Have you been
practicing your skiing?"