The Apple-Tree Girl/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
Up to that moment it is doubtful if Charlotte had ever felt the least misgiving about her personal appearance; but, as you will realize, she had reached the age where such things count, and when she looked at herself in the mirror that night she stared very solemnly indeed.
A healthy young face stared at her—a face lit up by deeply tender eyes, expressive eyebrows and rosy cheeks. And if she had the Marlin nose, which was inclined to be beaky, and the Marlin chin, which was inclined to be sensitive, for my part I think they added character to her face, and, if I had been in Charlotte's place, I wouldn't have minded them one bit.
"I don't see what's the matter," she thought, still staring at herself. "I look the same as I always do."
SHE GAZED UPON HER PROFILE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE GAZED UPON IT IN SILENCE
"It's my nose," she finally told herself in a voice that had a little break in it. "And my chin."
Poor Charlotte! Up till then, you see, she had taken her beauty for granted, the same as she had taken the length of her hair and the brightness of her eyes; and then suddenly to find that her nose was beaky like her father's had been, that her chin was inclined to favor his too, and that a supposedly loving aunt could stare around a room full of relations and whisper "Isn't she homely?"
For a long time she lay amid the ruins of her dreams, staring up into the dark, and with such a heavy feeling in her tender, young breast! As long as she could remember she had lived in a land of romance where all the men were handsome and all the maids were fair; and when she had dreamed of the future, as girls have dreamed since time immemorial, she had always imagined her prince riding along under the old Marlin elms, meeting her and falling in love with her at sight—suddenly stopping, his hand upon his heart—because she was so young and sweet and beautiful!
"And wouldn't it be awful now," she thought, almost sitting up in bed with the horror of it, "if no man ever looked at me because I'm homely, and if I had to live and die—a lonely old maid!"
Next morning Aunt Hepzibah came up to help her pack, for it had been decided that she should go to Penfield with her Aunt Grace.
Charlotte was very quiet for a time. "Oh, Aunt Hepzy," she said at last, "have you ever seen my cousin in Penfield, my cousin Margaret?"
"Twice," nodded Aunt Hepzibah. "Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. Is she pretty?"
"Pretty as paint," said Aunt Hepzibah promptly. "Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. I was wondering; that's all."
"Well, you'll see her soon enough. Prettiest girl in Penfield; everybody says so. Allus reminds me of Little Eva in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'—and as false as a wagonload of monkeys," concluded Aunt Hepzibah, with that impartiality of opinion which is relationship's most radiant star.
"‘False as a wagonload of monkeys'? Why—Aunt—Hepzy!"
"Well, I dunno as I ought to have said that. She may have changed since I saw her last. Anyhow, you'll see her soon enough; and after you've been there a month or two you write and tell me what you think."
As you can imagine from that, when Mr. Briggs' surrey reached Penfield that afternoon and turned down Maple Avenue, Charlotte was all eyes to see, all perceptions to perceive; and when Aunt Grace said "That's our house, next to where the man is raking leaves, and—I declare!—there's Margaret standing on the lawn," Charlotte felt as excited as though she were witnessing her first play. Margaret was a blonde with a complexion like the bloom on an Elberta peach, and features which would have reminded you of those bisque shepherdesses with which our grandmothers used to adorn their mantel shelves. Although both her parents were average folks, Margaret's figure and attitudes and manner were marked with a delicate grace, and her expression, especially when a stranger turned to look at her, had the supernal innocence which is generally associated with that picture of the little choir boy who is singing his Christmas carol in a beam of light. But all her life her parents, helped by the people of Penfield, had unconsciously conspired to spoil her, and as you've probably guessed from what Aunt Hepzibah said, they hadn't labored in vain.
From the first hour of Charlotte's arrival it seemed to be her part to act as a foil for her cousin's prettiness. And how Margaret enjoyed it! If you were to hear all the ingenious little tricks she did to shine at Charlotte's expense it would make it too long a chapter. Besides, you have probably seen the way such things are done, for they seem to be a part of human nature, like criticizing the minister or pretending that one never eats in the kitchen. You will also probably understand that, as time went on, Charlotte found herself thrown more and more upon the resources of her own company. She said little, but she used that old-fashioned head of hers a great deal; and, having such a criterion of beauty with which to compare herself, it didn't take her long to make up her mind on one important question.
"I guess Aunt Harriet was right," she sighed one night, looking at her reflection in the mirror after she had brushed her hair. "I'll never be pretty, or at least I'll never be pretty like Margaret is. Oh, well," and she drew another deep sigh, "if you're not pretty you've got to be smart. So I guess I've just got to be smart!"
And, whether or not it was nature's compensation, her studies seemed to come natural to her. She studied very hard, for one thing, thinking to herself: "I've got to be smart, or I'm nothing." For another thing, her mind wasn't disturbed and distracted by the young male students, because the young male students left Charlotte severely alone—that is, all except one poor boy, and he doesn't count, as you will very soon see.
Perhaps, too, if you reverse these reasons, you will know why Margaret was backward in her studies. Her dominant thought wasn't "How much can I learn?" but "How pretty I am!" And even if she had wished to study, the young men of Penfield would have made it difficult, so strong was the competition to walk home with her, to take her out riding, or to call in the evening and sing ballads of such a sentimental quaver that they quite harrowed the feelings of Charlotte who was studying upstairs—Charlotte was already among the leaders of her class, who had made up her mind to stand at the head or know the reason why.
"Great silly things!" she thought one night. "You'd think they'd have more sense. As if a girl doesn't amount to anything unless she's beautiful!"
A sense of injustice began to rankle in her, that sense of injustice which was ultimately to lead her to her Three Great Sums.
"I guess the books are most to blame," she thought. "They always make their heroines beautiful." Frowning a little she ran over a list of the characters that she could remember. "Dora Spenlow was awfully pretty," she thought, her nose curling a little. "And so was Agnes, and She, and Juliet, and Little Dorrit and Little Nell and Lucy Ashton and Ethel Newcome—yes, and all the others, too."
For a moment she felt a challenge in the situation, and her heart warmed within her, as hearts have warmed since time immemorial at the prospect of leading a forlorn hope against a whole world in arms.
"I don't see why heroines have to be so terribly pretty," she thought. "I don't believe it's anything but a silly custom. Probably the minstrels started it. It's the same as if every gentleman still had to go around in armor, and every old woman was a witch. Why, the way the books have it, Margaret's the only girl in Penfield who could ever be a heroine, and I don't believe there's a girl in town—no, not one!—who wouldn't make a better heroine than she!"
Which was as far as she got just then; but after that, whenever Charlotte read a short story or a book and came to the author's description of his heroine, and read something like this: "I would like to describe the beauty of Lois Mallory, but words fail me," or "Her features were crisply and delicately chiseled, as though by a master sculptor," or "She had only to enter a room to eclipse everybody there"—whenever Charlotte came to a passage like that, her beaky little nose curled in a most refreshing manner and she cried to herself, "Oh, fudge!" As you will understand, "Oh, fudge!" was one of the things which she had learned at high school; and, as time went on, other signs of a growing sense of humor began to manifest themselves in our heroine. But on the whole, Charlotte remained much the same old-fashioned girl who had been born at Marlin Mills and raised, as a body might say, under the shadow of Micah's apple tree. She read a great deal, dreamed a great deal, and studied so hard that if you could have seen her bending over her books she would have reminded you of nothing so much as a young Minerva preparing to take her rightful place with the other elect upon Olympus.
"If people could only go on learning as long as they lived," she thought one day as she closed her algebra, "wouldn't they be able to do some wonderful sums!"
That started her thinking—she wasn't old-fashioned for nothing—and presently she continued: "Nearly everything you do is a sort of sum. If you do it right you get the proper answer, and if you do it wrong you fail. Yes, when you look at it that way, I guess a person's whole life is a sort of sum, but you have to die to know the answer. Oh, if I could only think of a sum that would make me famous all over the world!"
After that, whenever Charlotte made up her mind to do anything difficult, she would say, "I'm going to set myself a sum," and if it was hard to do, such as taking no notice of Margaret's meanness, or memorizing Himmel und Erde in her German reader, she would say to herself: "I can do it—I can do it if I'm smart!" And she always did it, because as she always solemnly told herself: "I've got to be smart, or I'm nothing."
So it isn't surprising that, at the end of her freshman year, she stood at the head of her class, while Margaret hovered perilously near the foot. This situation wasn't at all pleasing to the pretty cousin.
"Mother," she said one afternoon, "what do you suppose is the matter with Charlotte?"
Aunt Grace looked at her niece as though she were ready for anything, and then she turned to her daughter in puzzled surprise. "Nothing that I can see," she said. "Why?"
"That's what I'd like to know," said Margaret, tossing her pretty head. "I don't know whether it's her nose, or whether she's studying too hard, but nobody else in the whole school looks like her. The other girls are beginning to notice it, too, and my friends are speaking to me about it. Perhaps that's why nobody ever walks home with her; I don't know."
An angry answer prickled on Charlotte's tongue, but she bit it back, this being one of the difficult sums which she had set herself to do. "No, sir!" she thought, cocking her beaky little nose. "She can be mean if she wants to, but she isn't going to make me mean!"
Which was partly due to that epic line of Ma'm Bazin's which often came to her memory when she thought of the spots on Micah's apples: "The sin which is buried at the foot of the tree, it shall make itself known in the fruit." So, instead of losing her temper, Charlotte simply gave her cousin a particularly old-fashioned look—and went for a walk to cool off.
That was the afternoon when she ran into the Boy Who Doesn't Count.
Charlotte had often noticed him. He was in his senior year at high school, and though he was the smartest boy in his class he wasn't at all homely, having one of those keen, wistful faces which go so well with curly hair. His name was Neil Kennedy, and perhaps because he had no mother, and perhaps because his father was seldom sober for two weeks together, Neil was a bashful boy who easily blushed, especially if you met him on his paper route, or if he thought you were looking at the patches on his clothes. Charlotte met him that afternoon near the red bridge with a bundle of papers and magazines under his arm—met him so unexpectedly as he was turning out of a gate that she ran right into him and not only sent his papers and magazines flying, but nearly sent him flying after them. Of course, she helped him gather his papers together, and, of course, they couldn't help speaking.
Next day, when she saw him at school, she smiled at him and he not only smiled back, but (not being accustomed to have girls notice him that way) he blushed like a beet.
"Mother," said Margaret that afternoon, throwing her books down as soon as she reached home, "you'll have to 
"WELL, CHARLOTTE'S GONE AND FELL IN LOVE WITH HIM!"
"What's the matter now?" asked her patient mother.
"Matter? Mmh! You know that ragged Neil Kennedy, the boy who delivers papers? Well, Charlotte's gone and fell in love with him!"
Whereupon, Micah's apples or no Micah's apples, Charlotte showed such a bright, sparkling glow of temper that Margaret shrank back and, not knowing what else to do, she burst into tears. At this Charlotte's temper went cool again and she stared at her pretty cousin, her beaky little nose so curly with disgust that it would have done you good to see it. "Yes," she gravely nodded to herself that night, "that's our beautiful heroine!" But she tried her best not to make Neil blush again, although she spoke to him whenever she saw him.
"It's too ridiculous!" she thought. "There I used to think that a rich young man would come riding along to Marlin Mills some day, and we were going to have such a romantic time together. And first I find I'm homely! And then they begin to tease me about Neil Kennedy, who delivers papers and whose father drinks!" Whereat she shook that wise little head of hers, and more in wonder than sorrow she said: "Life's a funny sum!"
Thus the two cousins grew up, one growing more old-fashioned and the other growing prettier every day. By the time they reached their senior year at high school, Margaret had developed into what can only be described as a howling beauty, and Charlotte found herself dreaming more and more often of the day when she would do that sum which she had already decided would startle the world.
"Yes, and I can, too!" she told herself one afternoon. "I feel it in me!"
She had walked out into the country to the top of Flat Rock and was watching the sunset, and as that miracle of color began to unfold itself in the west Charlotte felt in her tender young bosom such a yearning for life and success that, quite involuntarily, she threw out her arms to the distant horizon and tears brimmed to her eyes. "I'll show them!" she whispered. "I'll show them if it's everything to be pretty, and nothing else counts!"
For that, you see, had almost come to be an obsession with her; and as she stood there, watching the sunset, she saw herself, in fancy, a little Miss Moses, leading herself and her sisters into a Promised Land where pretty maids count about the same as pretty men, and the average girl can be a heroine just as well as though she were a modern Hebe.
The sunset over, she went home, thoughtfully intent upon the Great Sum which she was going to set for herself, and as graduation day drew near she spent many an hour with herself, dreaming those grand, misty dreams which are the heritage of youth and ambition, and trying to shape them into tangible form. Many a career she sketched for herself, only to erase it from her mind with an impatient shake of her head. "I ought to think of something better than that," she would say; "and I will, too, if I'm smart!"
To tell the truth, much as she tried to hide it from herself, the element of romance was always present in her dreams. She didn't want a vocation so much as she wished for an adventure—an adventure of youth and love and success; a drama, if you like—something imaginative, something to appeal to the spirit as well as to the mind.
"I'll get it yet," she kept telling herself. "I'll get it yet if I'm smart, and I've got to be smart or I'm nothing."
Well, as a matter of fact, she "got it "the day after graduation, and it came to her (as such things generally do) in a way she had never expected. In their evening exercises some of the members of the graduating class gave a one-act play, and it won't take you long to guess that Margaret was the heroine. It is doubtful if she ever looked prettier in her life than she looked that night; and, because she was the acknowledged belle of Penfield and everyone felt proud of her (none of them knowing her half so well as her cousin Charlotte did), she was enthusiastically applauded. The next day her picture appeared in the "Penfield Journal," a two-column wide cut with a half-column notice, while Charlotte's name only appeared once, in a short sentence stating that she had graduated at the head of her class.
Poor Charlotte! A weaker character might have asked the despairing question: "What's the use of being smart?" After the performance the night before she remembered everyone had crowded around her pretty cousin to congratulate her, while she, who had graduated at the head of her class, had sat neglected in a corner, an old-fashioned little figure, thinking things out. And when the exercises were over, Willis Hayland had taken Margaret home—Willis Hayland, the richest young man in Penfield, while Charlotte had walked home with Aunt Grace, her beaky little nose held proudly to the stars, pretending not to care.
"Willis wanted to kiss me, too, mamma," reported Margaret next day; "and he called me his little girl and asked me if he could come over to-night." She had told her mother this before; she wanted Charlotte to hear it, too.
Charlotte heard it, but said nothing.
"I think it's dreadful, the way they've put my picture in the paper," continued Margaret, looking at the "Journal" again and unconsciously preening herself. "I was never so surprised in my life. And this awful piece about how popular and pretty I am."
But still Charlotte said nothing.
"I wonder why they didn't print your picture?" asked Margaret, turning to her cousin, piqued by her silence.
"How could they," retorted Charlotte, "when I didn't give them one?"
"Oh! Did anybody ask you for one?"
"No! They did not."
Margaret turned and took a long, lazy look at her cousin. "Good reason why," she said.
And then she laughed!
As everyone knows, there are laughs and laughs; and in spite of all she could do, Charlotte found herself divided between anger and tears. She went to her room as soon as she could, feeling as though her cheeks had been stung with nettles; and there she threw herself across her bed and cried in the pillow, as motherless girls have cried since time immemorial. Perhaps those tears were needed to clear the mists from her dreams. After awhile she calmly arose and bathed her face in cold water.
"Now!" she said, with that air of resolution which always fell upon her when she set herself a particularly difficult sum. "She's popular with some of the people, but I'm going to make everybody like me! She had her picture in the 'Penfield Journal,' but I'm going to have my picture in all the papers! She thinks she's going to marry Willis Hayland, but I'm going to marry one of the handsomest and richest young men in the whole United States!"
For a moment even Charlotte's brightly glowing spirit felt awed in the contemplation of those Three Great Sums, but only for a moment. The next second she was looking at herself in the glass with a feeling of exaltation that was close to grandeur, looking at her deeply tender eyes, her expressive eyebrows and her flushed cheeks, looking at her Marlin's nose, which was inclined to be beaky, and her Marlin's chin, which was inclined to be sensitive—shaped, as it was, with that mobility which promises unfathomed tenderness.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" she almost passionately whispered to herself, "as homely as I am!"