A BACK-SEASON DÉBUTANTE
Débutantes are a good deal like first novels--advertised and introduced
at a great expenditure of money and effort, and presented to the public
with fear and trembling. But the greatest likeness comes later. The
best-sellers of one spring must be put up on the high shelves to make
room for new merchandise the next. At the end of several years the once
besought and discussed book can be found by the dozens on bargain
counters in department stores, marked down to fifty cents a copy.
The first best-seller I happened to observe in this ignominious position
was a novel that came out the same fall that I did. It was six years old
to the world, and so was I. I stopped a moment at the counter and opened
the book. It had been strikingly popular, with scores of reviews and
press notices, and hundreds of admirers. It had made a pretty little
pile of money for its exploiters. Perhaps, too, it had won a few
friends. But its day of intoxicating popularity had passed. And so had
mine. And so must every débutante's. By the fourth or fifth season,
cards for occasional luncheons and invitations to fill in vacancies at
married people's dinner parties must take the place of those feverish
all-night balls, preceded by brilliantly lighted tables-full of
débutantes, as excited as yourself, with a lot of gay young lords for
partners and all the older people looking on, admiring and taking mental
notes. Such excitement was all over with me by the time I was
twenty-two. I had been a success, too, I suppose. Any girl whom
Breckenridge Sewall had launched couldn't help being a success.
During the two or three years that Breck was in Europe I passed through
the usual routine of back-season débutantes. They always resort to
travel sooner or later; visit boarding-school friends one winter;
California, Bermuda or Europe the next; eagerly patronize winter
resorts; and fill in various spaces acting as bridesmaids. When they
have the chance they take part in pageants and amateur theatricals,
periodically devote themselves to some fashionable charity or other,
read novels, and attend current event courses if very desperate.
I used to think when I was fifteen that I should like to be an author,
more specifically, a poet. I used to write verses that were often read
out loud in my English course at the Hilton High School. And I designed
book plates, too, and modeled a little in clay. The more important
business of establishing ourselves socially interrupted all that sort of
thing, however. But I often wish I might have specialized in some line
of art. Perhaps now when I have so much time on my hands it would prove
my staunchest friend. For a girl who has no established income it might
result in an enjoyable means of support.
I have an established income, you see. Father kindly left me a little
stock in some mines out West, stock or bonds--I'm not very clear on
business terms. Anyhow I have an income of about eight hundred dollars a
year, paid over to me by my brother Tom, who has my affairs in charge.
It isn't sufficient for me to live on at present, of course. What with
the traveling, clothes--one thing and another--Edith has had to help out
with generous Christmas and birthday gifts. This she does lavishly.
She's enormously rich herself, and very generous. My last Christmas
present from her was a set of furs and a luxurious coon-skin motor coat.
Perhaps I wouldn't feel quite so hopeless if my father and mother were
living, and I felt that my idleness in some way was making them happy.
But I haven't such an excuse. I am not necessary to the happiness of any
household. I am what is known as a fifth wheel--a useless piece of
paraphernalia carried along as necessary impedimenta on other people's
journeys.
There are lots of fifth wheels in the world. Some are old and rusty
and out of repair, and down in their inmost hubs they long to roll off
into the gutter and lie there quiet and undisturbed. These are the old
people--silver-haired, self-effacing--who go upstairs to bed early
when guests are invited for dinner. Some are emergency fifth wheels,
such as are carried on automobiles, always ready to take their place
on the road, if one of the regular wheels breaks down and needs to be
sent away for repairs. These are the middle-aged, unmarried aunts and
cousins--staunch, reliable--who are sent for to take care of the
children while mother runs over to Europe for a holiday. And some are
fifth wheels like myself--neither old nor self-effacing, neither
middle-aged nor useful, but simply expensive to keep painted, and very
hungry for the road. It may be only a matter of time, however, when I
shall be middle-aged and useful, and later old and self-effacing; when
I shall stay and take care of the children, and go upstairs early when
the young people are having a party.
A young technical college graduate told me once, to comfort me, I
suppose, that a fifth wheel is considered by a carriage-maker a very
important part of a wagon. He tried to explain to me just what part of a
wagon it was. You can't see it. It's underneath somewhere, and has to be
kept well oiled. I am not very mechanical, but it sounded ignominious to
me. I told that young man that I wanted to be one of the four wheels
that held the coach up and made it speed, not tucked out of sight,
smothered in carriage-grease.
It came as a shock to me when I first realized my superfluous position
in this world. The result of that shock was what led me to abandon my
ideals on love in an attempt to avoid the possibility of going upstairs
early and having dinners off a tray.
When my brother Alec married Edith Campbell, and Edith came over to our
house and remodeled it, I didn't feel supplanted. There was a room built
especially for me with a little bath-room of its own, a big closet, a
window-box filled with flowers in the summer, and cretonne hangings that
I picked out myself. My sister Lucy had a room too--for she wasn't
married then--and the entire attic was finished up as barracks for my
brothers, the twins, who were in college at the time. They were invited
to bring home all the friends they wanted to. Edith was a big-hearted
sister-in-law. To me her coming was like the advent of a fairy
godmother. I had chafed terribly under the economies of my earlier
years. It wasn't until Alec married Edith that fortune began to smile.
One by one the family left the Homestead--Lucy, when she married Dr.
William Maynard and went away to live near the university with which
Will was connected, and Oliver and Malcolm when they graduated from
college and went into business. I alone was left living with Alec and
Edith. I was so busy coming-out and making a social success of myself
that it never occurred to me but that I was as important a member in
that household as Edith herself. I wasn't far from wrong either. When I
was a débutante and admired by Breckenridge Sewall, I was petted and
pampered and kept in sight. When I became a back-season number of some
four or five years' staleness, any old north room would do for me!
I used to dread Hilton in the winter, with nothing more exciting going
on than a few horrible thimble parties with girls who were beginning to
discuss how to keep thin, the importance of custom-made corsets, and
various other topics of advancing years. I soon acquired the habit of
interrupting these long seasons. I was frequently absent two months at a
time, visiting boarding-school friends, running out to California, up to
Alaska, or down to Mexico with some girl friend or other, with her
mother or aunt for a chaperon. Traveling is pleasant enough, but
everybody likes to feel a tie pulling gently at his heartstrings when he
steps up to a hotel register to write down the name of that little haven
that means home. It is like one of those toy return-balls. If the ball
is attached by an elastic string to some little girl's middle finger how
joyfully it springs forth from her hand, how eagerly returns again! When
suddenly on one of its trips the elastic snaps, the ball becomes
lifeless and rolls listlessly away in the gutter. When my home ties
broke, I, too, abandoned myself.
I had been on a visiting-trip made up of two-week stands in various
cities between Massachusetts and the Great Lakes, whither I had set out
to visit my oldest brother, Tom, and his wife, Elise, who live on the
edge of one of the Lakes in Wisconsin. I had been gone about six weeks
and had planned not to return to Hilton until the arrival of Hilton's
real society in May.
When I reached Henrietta Morgan's, just outside New York, on the return
trip, I fully expected to remain with her for two weeks and stop off
another week with the Harts in New Haven. But after about three days at
Henrietta's, I suddenly decided I couldn't stand it any longer. My
clothes all needed pressing--they had a peculiar trunky odor--even the
tissue paper which I used in such abundance in my old-fashioned tray
trunk had lost its life and crispness; I had gotten down to my last
clean pair of long white gloves; everything I owned needed some sort of
attention--I simply must go home!
I woke up possessed with the idea, and after putting on my last really
respectable waist and inquiring of myself in the mirror how in the world
I expected to visit Henrietta Morgan with such a dreary trunkful of
travel-worn articles, anyhow, I went down to the breakfast table with my
mind made up.
Henrietta left me after breakfast for a hurried trip to town. I didn't
go with her. I had waked up with a kind of cottony feeling in my throat,
and as hot coffee and toast didn't seem to help it, I made an
examination with a hand-mirror after breakfast. I discovered three white
spots! I wasn't alarmed. They never mean anything serious with me, and
they offered an excellent excuse for my sudden departure. It didn't come
to my mind that the white spots might have been the cause of my sudden
longing for my own little pink room. I simply knew I wanted to go home;
and wake up in the morning cross and disagreeable; and grumble about
the bacon and coffee at the breakfast table if I wanted to.
While Henrietta and her mother were out in the morning, I clinched my
decision by engaging a section on the night train and telegraphing
Edith. Although I was convinced that my departure wouldn't seriously
upset any of the small informal affairs so far planned for my
entertainment, I was acquainted with Mrs. Morgan's tenacious form of
hospitality. By the time she returned my packing was finished, and I was
lying down underneath a down comforter on the couch. I told Mrs. Morgan
about the white spots and my decision to return home.
She would scarcely hear me through. She announced emphatically that she
wouldn't think of allowing me to travel if I was ill. I was to undress
immediately, crawl in between the sheets, and she would call a doctor. I
wasn't rude to Mrs. Morgan, simply firm--that was all--quite as
persistent in my resolve as she in hers.
When finally she became convinced that nothing under heaven could
dissuade me, she flushed slightly and said icily, "Oh, very well, very
well. If that is the way you feel about it, very well, my dear," and
sailed out of the room, hurt. Even Henrietta, though very solicitous,
shared her mother's indignation, and I longed for the comfort and relief
of the Pullman, the friendly porters, and my own understanding people at
the other end.
So, you see, when in the middle of the afternoon I was summoned to the
telephone to receive a telegram from Hilton, I wasn't prepared for the
slap in the face that Edith's message was to me.
"Sorry," it was repeated. "Can't conveniently have you until next week.
House packed with company. Better stay with the Morgans." Signed,
"Edith."