Bobbie, General Manager/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
IN thinking over my career at boarding-school I always recall three remarks which were made to me in the smoky Hilton Station as I waited for my train. Father and Alec and Juliet who, the dear old trump, had actually cut school to see me off, were at the station.
Alec had said, "Go slowly, Bobbie, and know only the best girls," and I had replied, pop-full of confidence, "Of course, Alec."
"And whatever else you do," exclaimed Juliet, "don't you dare to get a swelled head, Lucy Vars." "I won't," I had assured her.
Father, dear kind Father, his hand on my shoulder, had commanded: "Dear child, discover some one less fortunate than yourself and be kind to her." And I had promised, tussling with the painful lump in my throat, "I will, dear Father."
Father had slipped a paper bag into my hand then—a bag of lemon-drops (Father always buys lemon-drops) and two sticks of colt's-foot. The poor dear man had forgotten that I didn't like colt's-foot, but when I opened the bag in the train and saw those two little brown sticks, somehow I loved dear Father harder than ever. I put them into my travelling bag very tenderly, and have kept them ever since.
I don't know how to explain my impressions of boarding-school. I realise now that in spite of the pain at leaving home I did have buried in the bottom of my heart dreams of the vague, unknown joys of room-mates and spreads. Every young girl has such dreams, I guess. Even as I sped along in the train, trying desperately to dissolve that lump in my throat with Father's lemon-drops, I was wondering about the new bosom friends I should make. Edith Campbell, an awfully popular older girl in our town and a friend of Alec's, had been to a fashionable boarding-school in New York ever since she was a child, and she was forever bringing home girls to visit her, or whisking off herself to ball-games and Proms with "a Room-mate's brother" or "a Best-friend's cousin." I could hardly realise that I, Lucy Vars, was about to step within the same fascinating circle. Fifty girls to eat and sleep and walk with; fifty girls to choose my friends from; fifty girls to bring home with me for over a holiday; fifty girls for me to visit; and fifty girls with brothers or cousins at Harvard and Yale and Princeton. Perhaps that very winter some college man would invite me to a Prom; I would dance till morning, and become such a dazzling belle that by Easter-time I would look upon the twins as mere boys. Probably by summer I would be dashing about to house-parties, and talking to real grown-up men over a cup of tea like Dolly in the "Dolly Dialogues." Perhaps I would be president of my class at school, like Tom at college. Perhaps—perhaps—oh, I am forced to smile at myself now as I look back and see the funny little short-skirted, pig-tailed creature that I was, sitting there in the train, gazing out of the window, building my absurd little air-castles by the score, on the very way to the destruction of every dream I ever had. I didn't make a single friend at boarding-school. I didn't meet a man. Here it is almost summer, and house-parties seem as remote from me as they did ten years ago. I must try to explain why I made such a flat failure of things. It isn't a pleasant story, but here goes:
The first instant that I stepped into that school I knew that I was a curiosity to everybody there. Never shall I forget that first evening when Miss Brown ushered me into the big school dining-room and seated me beside her. It looked like fairy-land to me—red candles on a dozen little round tables and all the girls in soft, light dresses with Dutch necks. When I finally dared look up from my plate and glance round, I thought I had never seen such beautiful creatures. I couldn't find a homely girl among them; and such lovely hair as they had, done soft and full and fluffy with large ribbon-bows tied at the back of their necks. The girls at our table had the whitest hands and the prettiest soft arms, with bracelets jingling on them.
After supper Miss Brown seated herself in a big armchair by a low lamp in the drawing-room and read aloud from "Pride and Prejudice." The girls all gathered about her and did fancy work on big hoops. I didn't have any work and tried to make myself comfortable on a little high silk-brocaded chair. I felt horribly embarrassed. Every time a girl looked up from her work and scrutinised me from top to toe, I felt like saying, "I know I'm a perfect mess. I see it. I know my hands are like sandpaper, and my shoes thick-soled, and my dress a sight. I know my hair is ridiculous braided and bobbed up with a black ribbon like a horse's tail. I know it." I couldn't listen to a word that Miss Brown was reading. I was awfully disturbed thinking about my trunk on its way to me, filled with its queer collection, and wondering what in the name of heaven I could put on the next night. My blue cashmere haunted me like a bad dream. I think that first evening at boarding-school was the first time I really missed having a mother. She would have known the blue cashmere was ugly; she would have known that little bronze slippers with stockings to match were the proper thing; she would have known that girls at boarding-school wore Dutch necks and wide ribbons tied low, at the back of their necks. I simply dreaded unpacking that pitiful little trunk of mine. I wished it could be lost.
My room-mate's name was Gabriella Atherton, but when I entered the room which I was supposed to share with her I wished she had been plain Mary Jane. The bureau was simply loaded with silver things—silver brushes and mirrors and powder-boxes, and at least three silver frames with the stunningest men's pictures in them you ever saw. The walls were covered with college flags, and the window-seat was banked with college sofa-cushions. Why, I didn't know a single man, except high school boys, great awkward creatures like the twins. I hoped Gabriella wouldn't find out that I had never been to a college football game in my life, nor been invited to one either. My one last hope for consolation lay in the possibility that Gabriella was older than I. I thought she must be at least twenty to know so many men. When we were finally alone, getting ready to go to bed I asked her. My heart sank when she announced that she was only sixteen. I know exactly how a mother feels now when another person's baby born a month before hers talks first and shows signs of greater intelligence. I remember I was standing before my chiffonier braiding my hair for the night, pulling it flat back as I always did and fixing it in one tight short little braid, when Gabriella announced she was sixteen. Why, she looked old enough to be married, and I—I gazed at my reflection—I looked like poor Sarah Carew in the garret. No wonder the family wanted to send the old spoon away to be polished. No wonder!
"One of the girls," Gabriella went on to say, "has had a Box from home. She's asked the whole school to a Kimono Spread in her room. Do you want to go?"
A Spread! My heart leaped! And then I got a glimpse of Gabriella in the glass before me. She was a vision in a flowing pink silk kimono with white birds on it. She had her hair fluffed up on top and tied with a wide pink taffeta ribbon—she actually slept in it—and little pink shoes on her feet.
"I guess I won't to-night, thanks," I said, not turning around, for I didn't want her to see what a peeled onion I looked like; "the train made me car-sick." And I snapped the elastic band around the end of my braid.
After Gabriella had gone I turned out the light and crawled into the little brass bed, which Miss Brown had said was mine; but I didn't go to sleep. I just lay there listening to the muffled laughter and chatter at the end of the hall. It was only nine o'clock and lights were not due to be out until ten. I hated lying there wide awake and I kept wondering how I could get dressed in the morning without letting my room-mate see all my plain ugly things. Then I remembered that I had left my common cheap little wooden brush, the shellac all washed off with weekly scrubbings, on top of my chiffonier. I jumped up quickly and hid it in the top drawer; then suddenly I turned on the light, sat down in my horrid red wool wrapper, and wrote something like this to Alec, blubbering and dabbing tears all through it:
"Dear Alec,I'm here safely, I've met all the girls and they are perfectly lovely. I'm going to love it. My room-mate's name is Gabriella Atherton—isn't that a beautiful name?—and she is a perfect dear! I can't write long for I am due at a spread; so, so-long until I have more time. This place is full of corking girls. They would, however, consider the twins mere babes-in-arms. Tell Aunt Sarah that Father will want his flannel night-shirts as soon as there is a frost. They are in the all-over leather trunk in the storeroom. The girls will be wondering where I am, so good-night.
Then I went back to bed and bawled like a baby, until I heard Gabriella at the door. Another girl was with her and I heard her say, "Good-night, dear," and Gabriella call back exactly as they do in books and as they did once in my dreams. "Good-night, sweetheart." Thereupon I ducked my head down underneath the covers and pretended to be asleep. A half-hour later, when I felt sure that Gabriella was dead to the world, I opened my eyes and lay awake until almost morning.
But no one needs to think that I was homesick. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me home. I was bound to stick it out or die and I tried not to be a little goose and cry my eyes out. That wouldn't help me to make the best girls my friends and I didn't mean to disappoint Alec if I could help it. I was there for business and I meant to accomplish it. Alec had said he admired that quality.
But Miss Brown's-on-the-Hudson was awfully different from the Hilton Classical High School. They played basket-ball as if it were drop-the-handkerchief: there was no regular team. We exercised by walking two by two for an hour every afternoon. There wasn't the slightest chance for me to shine in athletics.
I was robbed also of my hope of being a genius. There was a girl who could write ten times better than I. It was after one of her poems was read out loud in class, that I discovered I wasn't gifted in the least. She was the marvel of the school, and whenever there were guests she was asked to read her poems herself. They were the deepest things I ever listened to—about the soul, and sorrow, and "swift sweet death." She looked like a genius too. She had jet black hair and wore it in long curls tied loosely behind, big dreamy eyes, and pale transparent skin. She wasn't very healthy and always wore black. Her mother was an artist in Florence, and Lucia (think of it, my name, but pronounced so differently) Lucia had always lived in Italy until she came to school. I tell you, as soon as I saw her and listened to her poetry, I was terribly thankful that I had never let any one know that I had ever thought I could write. I got A on my compositions, and A in everything else, but no one imagined that I was a genius. They considered me just a plain everyday shark. But I tried not to be offensively smart. I flunked on purpose once in a while; I passed notes in class whenever I could find any one to pass them to; I got so I could turn off a "darn" as neatly as any of them, and pout and say "The devil!" when I pricked my finger pinning down my belt. For I was determined they shouldn't think me a "goody-goody" or a "teacher's pet." I even crocheted a man's tie and pretended it was for a friend of mine at a fashionable preparatory school in Massachusetts. I went so far in my frantic endeavours, as to cut out from old magazines all the pictures I could find of an actor, whom, by the way, I had never even seen, and stuck them in the corners of the glass over my chiffonier.
Oh, I tried to be like the other girls. I knew they hadn't liked their first impressions of me, but I tried to show them that I wasn't as queer as I looked. I tried to be pleasant and accommodating; I tried to be patient and bide my time; I tried—heaven knows I tried, Alec—but it was no use. From the start it was absolutely no go. I couldn't make even the worst of those girls my friends. I tell you I did my level best, but I hadn't the clothes, nor the silver bureau-sets, nor the frames, nor the men's pictures to put into them, nor the college banners, nor the mother to send me boxes of food from home. Those girls treated me as if I were the mud under their feet. If I was in the room, I might as well have been the bed-post for all the attention they paid to me. If I was told to walk with one of them during "Exercise," that one was pitied by the rest. They looked upon my clothes as if I were a Syrian or Turk in strange costume. I used to get hot all over whenever I had to appear in a dress they had never seen. And, O Juliet—good old loyal Juliet—you were afraid I would be spoiled by admiration! I simply have to chortle with glee when I think of your warning to your old chum. A swelled head! My eyes got swollen instead, old Jule, with tears! And Father—dear Father—there wasn't a single soul for me to be kind to. I was the most miserable one in the whole school, the most unpopular, the most forlorn. And there's the truth in black and white.
After about five weeks of an average of ten insults a day, I got tired. Too long a stretch on the diet of humble-pie doesn't agree with me. There's an end to every one's patience. One day in late November little Japan up and fought; and once started, there was no stopping her. You see the girls had gotten into the habit of asking me to help them with their lessons. At first I was pleased, for I naturally thought that if they would let me see their stupid minds, they would admit me into a few of their intimacies and secret affairs—and oh, I did long to be friends with them! But I discovered they had no such intention.
One night I went into Beatrix Fox's room, by appointment, at quarter of ten. She was waiting and ready for me, but I could see the remains of a spread on the table and desk—crumbs, nutshells, olive-stones, and a half-eaten bunch of Tokays.
"Oh, here you are!" said Beatrix, and with no attempt at concealment, she went on. "I've been having half a dozen girls to a spread," she said. "But I told them to leave one piece of cake for you, Lucy. Here it is. Now let's get at the Latin."
I was awfully insulted. Beatrix Fox nor any one else had ever seen the least fire or spunk in Lucy Vars before that night, but I couldn't hold in a minute longer. I took the delicious piece of chocolate layer-cake and went over to the waste-basket. I threw it in. "There's your cake!" Beatrix stared as if I had gone crazy. "There's your old cake, Beatrix Fox!" I repeated, and went out of the room.
After that night I was a changed person. I couldn't be touched with a ten-yard pole. I became a regular bunch of fire-crackers—spurting and going off in everybody's face and eyes at the least spark. And oh, to speak out my mind, and to spit out my feelings at last, was simply glorious! It was like getting the rubber-dam off your tooth after a three hours' sitting at the dentist's. After that experience with Beatrix, there was no more Cicero translated nor French sentences corrected by Lucy Vars for a single one of those stupid-minded, rattle-brained young ladies. I made a notice on pasteboard in black ink and hung it on my door. It read: "A public tutor can be obtained from Miss Brown. Don't apply here! Lucy Chenery Vars." The girls thought the sign was perfectly horrid and I was glad of it. I wanted to be horrid. I revelled in it. I wanted to be horrid to everybody who had been horrid to me.
Once during "Written Exercise," I wrote a whole page of Latin Composition wrong, so that little cheating snobbish Barbara Porter next to me might copy it off on her paper and pass it in. At the bottom of my sheet I wrote, "I've made these mistakes on purpose. You may give me zero." Miss Brown, in a long talk in her private office, told me it was not a kind thing for me to do. But I didn't care. I had let Barbara Porter copy my Latin Comp for five weeks without a murmur, and she had never put herself out to be kind to me. I wasn't going to be anybody's door-mat!
At Thanksgiving all the girls "double up," which means that the ones who live far away spend the holiday with the ones who live near. Of course no one wanted me. Gabriella, who at times tried to be nice to me, felt conscience-stricken, I suppose, for she said to me one day when we were dressing, "It's too bad you're going to be here alone, Lucy. Don't you suppose Miss Brown would let you to come down to East Orange" (Gabriella lived in East Orange, New Jersey) "and eat Thanksgiving dinner with us?"
I replied maliciously, "Why, I'm sure Miss Brown would let me spend the entire three days with you, Gabriella."
Gabriella hedged then, as I knew she would. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm taking Grace and Barbara home with me, and there's a dance I do want to go to—and—if you—"
"O Gabriella," I broke in, "don't be alarmed. I shan't burden you for one little tiny minute. I just wanted to frighten you. I wouldn't give your friends at home such a shock as the sight of me would be, for anything in the world. I shall enjoy, on the other hand, the quiet of this room after my charming room-mate has departed."
That's the way I talked but I wrote home: "Gabriella wants me awfully to spend Thanksgiving with her. There is a dance and all sorts of plans, but in spite of all her urging I've refused. There's quite a bunch of us staying here" (the bunch were teachers) "and jolly spreads and sprees in store."
I didn't want my family to know—kind Alec, the arrogant twins, pretty Ruth, and Father who used to be so proud of me—I didn't want them to know what a poor little Cinderella I was. When I went home I wanted every one to think I had had a glorious time at school, as all girls do. I wanted my family to open their eyes and say, "My, how you're changed!" and every one at church to whisper when I came in a little late, "There's Lucy Vars home! Hasn't she grown up?" I wanted Dr. Maynard to raise his hat to me when he met me on the street, and call me Miss Vars. I wanted Juliet to gaze at me with envy. If there was any real silver underneath the tarnish on me I was bound it should shine when I went home at Christmas. And so it happened that I made up my mind that if I couldn't make friends with my new schoolmates I could at least learn something from them. I used to observe them very carefully and jot down important points in my memory. Even the things that I derided to their faces, I meant to copy when I went home. My brain became a regular copybook of rules.
"My skirts," I recorded, "should be below my shoe-tops, not above.
"The way to keep a waist down, is to fasten it with a safety-pin behind and a long black steel pin in front.
"My nails should be as shining as a dinner-plate.
"A shining face is not supposed to be pretty.
"Powder is used to remove shine, and isn't wicked like rouge.
"Girls of seventeen use hairpins and rats, and keep their hats on with hatpins instead of elastics.
"Mohair and gingham underskirts and Ferris waists are not worn by girls of seventeen.
"Huge taffeta bows underneath the chin, on the hair, or anywhere in fact, is the rubber-stamp for a girl of my age.
"Automobiles, actors, college football, and allowances are popular subjects for conversation.
"Don't break crackers into your soup.
"Don't butter a whole slice of bread.
"Don't cut up all your meat before beginning to eat."
I used to watch Gabriella dress like a hawk. She had lots of clever little tricks, like pinning up her pompadour to the brim of her hat, or rubbing her cheeks with a hair-brush to make them rosy. She used to put a little cologne just back of her ears, which I thought very queer, and she was forever asking me if I could see light through her hair. Every week she gave her face what she called a cold-cream bath. She said her mother always did, after riding in the automobile.
I planned to spend every cent of Alec's one hundred dollars on clothes. I did all my shopping in New York. I adored New York! Saturday afternoons when the other girls went to the matinée, the chaperone allowed me to spend the time in the big department stores. I didn't buy anything—just looked and looked, priced and priced, and when I had a nice clerk, tried things on. Once I had my nails manicured, so I would know how; once I went to a Fifth Avenue hair dresser, who charged me a dollar and a half to make me look like a sight; and one day I bought Father a necktie for fifty cents and Alec a scarf-pin for seventy-five. That is all I spent until just before Christmas when I blew in the whole hundred. For, you understand, it was not to impress the girls at school, but the people at home, that I bought my new outfit. It was not until after I had made a great many estimates and carefully planned it all out on a piece of paper that I asked one of the younger teachers, who I thought had good taste, if she would help me buy a few trifling clothes on the following Saturday.
We started on the early train and reached New York at nine o'clock. I think that Saturday was the happiest day of my life! I bought a suit for thirty-five dollars at Kirby's; a hat marked down to ten dollars at Earl & Kittredge's; a silk dress for twenty-five dollars; a spotted veil for fifty cents; a barette for twenty cents; pumps for four dollars; one pair of silk stockings for one dollar, and so on. I had just seven dollars and sixty-seven cents left after I had bought my last purchase—a lovely red silk waist for travelling. My suit was dark blue, my boots tan with Cuban heels, and my blue velvet hat had two reddish quills in it. I was awfully pleased with my selections, and I confided to Miss Davis, the teacher, that I wasn't going to wear any of the things until the very day I started for home.
"And now," I said, "I'm going to take you to luncheon, Miss Davis, after which I want you to be my guest at a matinée."
It was simply grand to have money! It makes you feel like a queen to fling it around as if it were paper. After I had spent almost a hundred dollars Miss Davis thought I was an heiress in disguise, and to carry out the part I left the whole of fifty cents as a tip for our waiter at luncheon. I told Miss Davis to pick out the most popular play in New York for us to see. We bought the best seats in the house.
Never, never as long as I live shall I forget those two hours and a half of perfect happiness! I'd never seen anything but vaudeville in my life, and I almost cry now when I think of that play. It was perfectly grand. The hero kept looking right straight at me all the time and what do you think? What do you suppose? He was the very actor whose pictures I had cut out and stuck in my mirror! He was Robert K. Dwinnell, and I hadn't known until I was inside the theatre and looked at the program that he was in New York. It seemed to me too strange a coincidence to be true. I don't believe in omens, but Miss Davis told me afterward she hadn't the slightest idea that I had been collecting his pictures. After that play I could hardly speak. The queer grey light of day after the glow of the footlights, didn't seem real. Boarding-school and all the girls seemed trifling. I couldn't think of anything except Robert Dwinnell and that play all the way back in the train. I felt that I was the beautiful heroine instead of Lucy Vars. I felt her joy at meeting her lover instead of my anguish at going back to a lot of unfriendly girls. I lived and breathed in the action of the plot I had just seen. I couldn't get away from it. Before I boarded the train that night I dragged Miss Davis into a small shop which we passed on the way to the station, and with the last fifty cents of Alec's one hundred dollars I bought a real picture of Robert Dwinnell. The picture is here now in this very cupola, in the top drawer of my desk and is the only comfort that I have. Mr. Dwinnell is sitting on the edge of a table swinging one foot, just as he did in the play—I remember the place in the third act—and his eyes are looking right at me.
I wonder, oh, I wonder sometimes, if he and I will ever meet.