MINGA'S LAWS
Minga arrived in a spasm of long thin legs, short skimpy skirt, a
fluff of bobbed curls, a rather unnatural whiteness of face, lugging a
suitcase, golf sticks and tennis racket with the independent gestures
of an experienced baggagesmasher. It was an effect calculated to
impress a girl's camp or a parcel of immigrants, but as that of the
arrival of a maiden of eighteen summers at a quiet house in the little
center of Willow Roads, it was hardly distinguished.
The meeting of the two girls was a curious clinched clasp done
technically and punctuated by gasps, long, over-emphasized kisses and
such half-shrieked protests as: "Oh, you dear brute, you're squeezing
the life out of me--You silly old darned duck--Oh, Honey, isn't
this great?" Then they fell apart, and with mutual cool glance of
appraisement took each other in. As they turned talking and went up the
long stairs, Sard's look was laughingly interrogative.
"Minga, you've bobbed your hair."
"Yes, you like it? The Mede and Persian don't! I had an awful row with
the Mede, meaning Dad, but he came around, of course."
Sard looked lovingly at the little curly head; she felt of the thick
knot at the back of her own young head and felt somehow old; she
tossed it like an impatient colt.
"It must feel nice."
"It feels like October wind blowing over the pink heather," Minga
laughed; she passed an arm around the older girl. "Let's go up town and
get yours done right away. What do you want with hammocks of long hair?
Why, if Absalom had only had his hair bobbed, the whole Bible would
have been changed."
The voices of the girls had a curious cadence of indolence, also a
rising sense of potential shriek, yet they were not raucous.
This was, however, merely cultivation that was unconscious; other
girls of their age who copied their ways of wearing their sport-hats
and "rolled" stockings had not attained to the cool middle register
of these young tones, the pleasantly insistent quality of the aimless
dialogue. Yet all their movements, restless and ungainly with
curiously athletic emphasis, seemed to correspond to their sentences,
over-stressed yet indifferent, while their young eyes, particularly
Minga's, under long-lashed, artificially penciled brows, had hardness
and clearness under which lay an everlasting watchfulness.
It is with this watchfulness that the youth of to-day betrays itself.
Free from restrictions, from cares and responsibilities, it yet has
within it the potentialities of these things. It unconsciously needs
standards, longs for them and has them not; therefore, it unconsciously
is seeking these standards, if only in the wearing of clothes, in the
foot work of a tennis match, in new swimming strokes, in the use of
new words. Poor little youth of to-day longing for values, saying
with its strange wistful little face: "Does she bob her hair?--then,
I'll bob my hair. Does she drink?--well then, I'll drink; does she
sprawl over and maul her young men friends?--well, then I'll sprawl
and maul."--Poor babies, not one of them strong enough to carve a path
of his or her own, all led by the nose, trotting around after each
other, all with hats, neckties, turned-down stockings, bathing suits,
conventional stencils, voices and ignorance exactly alike. Pathetic,
wistful, funny, hungry little American youth.
At the head of the stairs stood Miss Bogart. "My dear!" she held out
two hands to Minga, who resolutely seized them and with calm effect of
masculinity, gripped them until the lady's mouth twitched with pain.
"This is nice," almost shrieked Miss Reely--she also tried to put
her arms around the young form, but she might as well have tried to
embrace the string of a toy balloon. Minga, wafting along, recited some
sentences, with the rather easy-going cadence which for a better name
might be called "the chewing-gum accent."
"Awfully nice to see you, Miss Bogart; Mother and Father sent love.
Isn't this great, though? You and Sard were ducks to ask me. My faith,
what a jolly room." Minga peered into the adjacent bathroom. "Swell
mirror, _some_ towels; do I use these embroidered ones for cold cream?"
"Did you notice the view, dear, coming over the hill--the river--the
dogwoods?" asked Sard's aunt complacently.
"The--er--view----? Oh, yes, I remember now, Sard said something; was
it where they built that new garage? Say, Sard, did you know that
garage is a big thing, the nippiest thing along the Hudson River--this
shore anyway? A lot of money went into it. I know, because Father
coughed up a few shekels, to help the man out, you know, and he says
they are piling up coin already. He'll realize, all right!"
Miss Reely, rather ignored by the two girls, fussed about the room,
settling a pillow sham, plumping up a cushion. She turned back to
the new arrival, who, tossing her small provocative hat on the bed,
turned with an anxious frown to the mirror. "Girls," announced Minga,
unfastening her wrist-watch, "I'm pale." From a small leather case
in her pocketbook she produced a tiny golden box of color, dabbed a
bit of it on each young cheek and as she stood talking to her hostess
calmly smoothed it in. Minga's eyes, wide open, cool as purple
morning-glories, surveyed them. She stood, a trim, insignificant little
figure of modernity, suggesting nothing, giving promise of nothing,
dreaming of nothing, but curiously capable of anything and everything.
Miss Aurelia, primming her mouth, turned to the door; she paused with
the immemorial formula of the hostess,
"Dinner is announced at a quarter of seven, dear; will you let us know
if you want anything?" Irresolutely she drifted away; they heard the
soft pat of her low-heeled slippers, the swish of her starched skirt,
looked at each other and smiled.
"Exactly the same! What?" Minga giggled. "Does she still think it's
awful to say 'Darn'?" Then, conscious of Sard's restraint, "Well,
she's a sweet old sport. I'd like to take her up in an airplane. Now,"
apologetically, "you know very well I think she's a perfect dearrrrrr,
so sort of picturesque and everything--where do you keep your hairpins?"
It was part of the enigmatic expression of Minga that with bobbed hair
she should demand hairpins with as anguished an intonation as a woman
with long tresses. When Sard produced the box, she deftly pinned a
pretty lock nearer to her cool deep-set eyes. "It's this rotten high
forehead of mine," she explained to her friend now perched in the
window-seat watching her. "I'm determined I won't be high-brow if I
have to cut my head off to avoid it. Don't you dread, somehow, becoming
high-brow? It's so unpopular--the men have always hated it, and now the
women do. Do you remember Sara Findlay at college?"
"Sara Findlay," they breathed the name through gusts of laughter--"Sara
Findlay; do you remember her room, books everywhere, and her awful
spectacles, and the way she haunted the library and the solemn look she
turned on you when you asked her anything? I remember one question we
doped out, 'Sara, how do you define the infinite?'"
"Sara's engaged," said Sard, "married, for all I know; did you hear
about it?"
Minga turned a face of incredulous horror. Marriage as she viewed it
was the device of screen actresses and various feature fans to change
horizons; when things got a little monotonous or there was a chance of
improving finance, one married. "That high-brow wench, not a bit of
pep, not a rag of style--to who?"
"To whom, did you say?" said Sard mischievously. The other girl,
falling heavily upon the divan, now buried her curly head in Sard's lap.
"To _who_," she repeated carelessly--"I won't say it right; why should
I? If the Prince of Wales or Charlie Chaplin said 'to who' for a few
weeks, we'd all follow suit. Who invented grammar, anyway?" Minga
stretched herself, laughing up into her friend's face.
"Ouf! Isn't this like the old times? You, the stuck-up grammarian--me,
the gypsy vagabond. Woof, what an awful thing it must be to be 'the
Judge's daughter' in a little place like 'Willows-on-the-Hudson'."
Sard laughed a little; her face grew grave. "It's lots of troublous
things to be the Judge's daughter, I know that," then swiftly, as if
something occurred to her, "Minga, will you do something for me?"
"Yep," yawned the recumbent Minga; "all right; anything that doesn't
interfere with my present position. Sard, do you think my nails are
nicer this year?" she held up a very delicately tinted row of little
curved shelly fingers. "In spite of golf," said Minga, "I think that's
a sweet attractive little hand, don't you?" The fact that Sard had
asked her to do something seemed to her unimportant, and she went
on--"Notice anything?" She waved a very pretty ring on the slender
finger.
"Minga--you're not," now it was Sard who was really breathless, her
brown eyes shimmered with light.
"Engaged, darrrrrling," drawled Minga. "Yep, to the most idiotic little
Willy you can imagine. A perfect lady, Tawny Troop, you know Troop,
the big moving-picture man? We're all crazy about Tawny, he's such a
fool--and dance--he dances like a bubble on the fountain. Papa Troop is
worth oodles, so they say. Mother, the Persian, doesn't know it--yet;
Father, the Mede--well, I guess we'd better postpone that!"
Something careless and contemptuous in Minga's voice kept Sard from
asking any of the questions that flew to her lips. She caught the
little hand and examined the ring. "Why, it's exquisite," she breathed.
"These are brown diamonds, aren't they, and pearls? Oh!" The fairy
beauty of the thing moved her.
"You see, Ducky, another girl picked it out--my predecessor." Minga
threw out the word with a curiously mature drawl. She yawned, raised
up her head, reached out for a handglass and examined her pretty teeth
in the mirror. Suddenly she rose, her figure, slender and reedy, bent
backward and did a few striding, strutting steps of a modern dance,
humming the while with curious catlike nasal tremolo a popular air.
"Do you know this step--to the Paradise whistle and ukulele and that
new instrument, the Shiverskin, it's just great." Around the room
strode Minga, solemnly expounding the simple steps. "You like my ring,"
hummed Minga, "well, Tawny's first girl picked it out. I saw it on her
aristocratic hand and I had to have it; also, you see, I needed Tawny
to dance with--he goes my gait--she hated to let him go; Sard, that
girl is a Moth, she eats men, eats 'em alive, but I snitched this one,"
Minga giggled. "Tawny's coming out for your first spring dance at the
Club while I'm here, but it's not announced," warned Minga, "so don't
talk bassinets."
It was the old Minga, only, Sard could not keep herself from admitting
this; more so, and well, there really need not have been any more of
the original Minga. Sard, who was exactly a year older than her friend,
felt somehow centuries older. Also she had to confess again as she had
confessed to herself before, there was something in Minga that both
shamed and hurt, while it fascinated. However, with all the hunger
of a lonely girl for a chum, Sard readily overlooked jarring things.
She reached out and drew Minga to her, hanging an arm over the thin
little shoulder. Minga took it all coolly. "Are you letting yourself
get fat, Sard?" she criticised. Then added caressingly, "Poor solemn
Sard, we've got to whoop things up for you now I'm here. What? I mean
it! Can't we run up a few men and some jazz and stuff on the telephone
for to-night? Would Judgie and Aunt Reely care? Who does your jazz this
year? We've got an angel band home, three cornets, a paradise whistle
and a drum, it's divine--well? Wait till I get hold of that old Dunce,"
said Minga, "I'll choke all the news out of him. My hat--there comes
your father's car around the drive, and I haven't got on evening duds!
What do you wear for night-eats? Will Judgie care if I go down as I am?"
This was Sard's chance. She kept her arm around the restless, pacing
little figure. "Minga, will you do something for me? Put on your
prettiest dress, that rose-colored one, talk music to Father, let
him play his new records for you." Minga made a face, but Sard was
insistent. "Get him to tell you about Terence O'Brien--only don't you
start the subject, Minga--and--and--and ask him if he is pleased with
the new man on the place."
Then Sard, at a loss just how to drill her impulsive guest, stared at
Minga thoughtfully, frowning. "No, don't ask him that," she said. "I've
changed my mind, don't ask him that."
Then said Minga, "I'm to ask him about Terence O'Brien without his
knowing it?"
"Yes, his sister works here."
"Terence O'Brien," repeated Minga, "who--oh, yes, that fellow that
killed the old man, ran away with the money, did it all just like a
movie--awfully exciting! My gracious!" Minga was awed.
Sard nodded. "Hush, his sister is our waitress, and she--oh, it's
pretty dreadful to see her. Father thinks he's just a criminal, but
don't you see, Minga, he's only a boy, only eighteen."
Minga looked very cold and decided. The two spots of color stood out
high on her little sobered face.
"But a murderer," said she solemnly. "He must pay the penalty." Minga
pronounced the word "peenulty," but her dignity was superb. She was
very sure about justice as she was very sure about patriotism. If you
did wrong you must not be found out, if you cared for your country
you must say so very loudly with strong dramatic effects; the idea of
caring for one's country to the extent of having a better kind of women
and men live in it had not occurred to Minga. It does not occur to the
men and women Mingas of this world. But they are very sure of their
"patriotism." They have quite a little patriotic strut and they imagine
patriotism to consist in a long hate of some other nation. And that it
is based forever and ever on the machinery of killing.
"Minga," said Sard passionately, "do you and I always do right? Isn't
it our ease and good fortune that keep continually pulling us back from
very wrong things? How about that time on the bacon-bat up at Divens
Lake when we stole the firewood and the corn, did we pay any fines--did
the county follow us up? Just a private letter to the faculty and
old Pressy and the Dean talking to us and that was all--yet," Sard
looked thoughtfully out of the window, "that was crime, stealing and
trespassing, but we are so pampered and petted and taken care of that
we--well, we don't need to murder."
"Oh, don't we need to murder? Well, I can tell you, Sard Bogart, that
I need to murder Marjorie Atboon every time I look at her." Minga's
face was injured. "Her father gave her a new car if she'd stop smoking.
Well, Marjorie has the car." Minga paused and remarked drily, "Her
bedroom smells queerly--she says she likes lots of air, she burns a
good deal of incense, but you ought to see the car, lovely long thing,
eight-cylinder, blue, cooooooooly--oilllly--olly. Oh! how a good
machine turns your dark little world to white velvet!"
Sard giggled. "Minga, you always make me laugh," she protested,
"when I'm most in earnest you're crazy and dreadful, but you're an
everlasting dear."
Minga whirled them both about the pretty cretonned room.
"You know you love it," she chanted, "you know you love it, you've been
having too much Aunt Aurelley." Minga putting her arms akimbo swayed
neatly pumped feet back and forth. "Did you see Auntie stare at my
rouge?" she whispered. "She knows the worst now, doesn't she, Sard? She
knows I know there ain't no Santa Claus." With a burst of laughter,
Minga released her friend. "Wait till I get a bath." She ripped off her
little frilled blouse, her short skirt fell to the floor. Minga stood
a pretty figure in dark knickers and white chemise. "For the tub!" she
chanted, and dove into the bathroom.
Amid the gushing of the faucet, Sard saw the little figure stripped and
dancing in the white porcelain bath.
"Stop in on your way to the dining-car," called Minga.