by Jean Webster
"Good Lord, Patty! Do you mean to tell me that you've grown up?"
Patty laughed too.
"Well, Uncle Bobby, what do you think about it?"
* * * * *
Dinner was half over that night before the two travelers returned. Patty dropped into her seat and unfolded her napkin, with the weary air of a society woman of many engagements.
"What happened?" the other two clamored. "Tell us about it! Was the circus nice?"
Patty nodded.
"The circus was charming--and so were the elephants--and so was Uncle Bobby. We had tea afterwards; and he gave me a bunch of violets and a box of candy, instead of the fairy book. He said he wouldn't be called 'Uncle Bobby' by anyone as old as me--that I'd got to drop the 'Uncle'--It's funny, you know, but he really seems younger than he did seven years ago."
Patty dimpled and cast a wary eye toward the faculty table across the room.
"He says he has business quite often in this neighborhood."
* * *
VIII
The Society of Associated Sirens
Conny had gone home to recuperate from a severe attack of pink-eye. Priscilla had gone to Porto Rico to spend two weeks with her father and the Atlantic Fleet. Patty, lonely and abandoned, was thrown upon the school for society; and Patty at large, was very likely to get into trouble.
On the Saturday following the double departure, she, with Rosalie Patton and Mae Van Arsdale, made a trip into the city in charge of Miss Wadsworth, to accomplish some spring shopping. Patty and Rosalie each needed new hats--besides such minor matters as gloves and shoes and petticoats--and Mae was to have a fitting for her new tailor suit. These duties performed, the afternoon was to be given over to relaxation; at least to such relaxation as a Shakespearean tragedy affords.
But when they presented themselves at the theater, they were faced by the announcement that the star had met with an automobile accident on his way to the performance, and that he was too damaged to appear; money would be refunded at the box office. The girls still clamored for their matinée, and Miss Wadsworth hurriedly cast about for a fitting substitute for Hamlet.
Miss Wadsworth was middle-aged and vacillating and easily-led and ladylike and shockable. She herself knew that she had no strength of character; and she conscientiously strove to overcome this cardinal defect in a chaperon, by stubbornly opposing whatever her charges elected to do.
To-day they voted for a French farce with John Drew as hero. Miss Wadsworth said "no" with all the firmness she could assume, and herself picked out a drama entitled "The Wizard of the Nile," under the impression that it would assist their knowledge of ancient Egypt.
But the Wizard turned out to be a recent and spurious imitation of the original historical wizard. She was ultra-modern English, with a French flavor. The time was to-morrow, and the scene the terrace of Shepherd's Hotel. She wore long, clinging robes of chiffon and gold cut in the style of Cleopatra along Parisian lines. Her rose-tinted ears were enhanced by drooping earrings, and her eyes were cunningly lengthened at the corners, in a fetching Egyptian slant. She was very beautiful and very merciless; she broke every masculine heart in Cairo. As a climax to her shocking career of wickedness, she smoked cigarettes!
Poor bewildered Miss Wadsworth sat through the four acts, worried, breathless, horrified--fascinated; but the three girls were simply fascinated. They thrilled over the scenery and music and costumes all the way back in the train. Cairo, to their dazzled eyes, opened up realms of adventure, undreamed of in the proper bounds of St. Ursula's. The Mecca of all travel had become Shepherd's Hotel.
That night, long after "Lights-out" had rung, when Patty's mind was becoming an agreeable jumble of sphinxes and pyramids and English officers, she was suddenly startled wide awake by feeling two hands rise from the darkness and clutch her shoulders on the right and left. She sat upright with a very audible gasp, and demanded in unguardedly loud tones, "Who's that?"
The two hands instantly covered her mouth.
"Sh-h! Keep quiet! Haven't you any sense?"
"Mademoiselle's door is wide open, and Lordy's visiting her."
Rosalie perched on the right of the bed, and Mae Mertelle on the left.
"What do you want?" asked Patty, crossly.
"We've got a perfectly splendid idea," whispered Rosalie.
"A secret society," echoed Mae Mertelle.
"Let me alone!" growled Patty. "I want to go to sleep."
She laid down again in the narrow space left by her visitors. They paid no attention to her inhospitality, but drawing their bath robes closer about them, settled down to talk. Patty, being comfortably inside and warm, while they shivered outside, was finally induced to lend a drowsy ear.
"I've thought of a new society," said Mae Mertelle. She did not propose to share the honor of creation with Rosalie. "And it's going to be really secret this time. I'm not going to let in the whole school. Only us three. And this society hasn't just a few silly secrets; it has an aim."
"We're going to call it the Society of Associated Sirens," Rosalie eagerly broke in.
"That what?" demanded Patty.
Rosalie rolled off the sonorous syllables a second time.
"The Sho-shiety of Ash-sho-she-ated Shi-rens," Patty mumbled sleepily. "It's too hard to say."
"Oh, but we won't call it that in public. The name's a secret. We'll call it the S. A. S."
"What's it for?"
"You'll promise not to tell?" Mae asked guardedly.
"No, of course I won't tell."
"Not even Pris and Conny when they get back?"
"We'll make them members," said Patty.
"Well--perhaps--but this is the kind of society that's better small. And we three are the only ones who really ought to be members, because we saw the play. But anyhow; you must promise not to tell unless Rosalie and I give you permission. Do you promise that?"
"Oh, yes! I promise. What's it for?"
"We're going to become sirens," Mae whispered impressively. "We're going to be beautiful and fascinating and ruthless--"
"Like Cleopatra," said Rosalie.
"And avenge ourselves on Man," added Mae.
"Avenge ourselves--what for?" inquired Patty, somewhat dazed.
"Why--for--for breaking our hearts and destroying our faith in--"
"My heart hasn't been broken."
"Not yet," said Mae with a touch of impatience, "because you don't know any men, but you will know them some day, and then your heart will be broken. You ought to have your weapons ready."
"In time of peace prepare for war," quoted Rosalie.
"Do--you think it's quite ladylike to be a siren?" asked Patty dubiously.
"It's perfectly ladylike!" said Mae. "Nobody but a lady could possibly be one. Did you ever hear of a washerwoman who was a siren?"
"N-no," Patty confessed. "I don't believe I have."
"And look at Cleopatra," put in Rosalie. "I'm sure she was a lady."
"All right!" Patty agreed. "What are we going to do?"
"We're going to become beautiful and fascinating, with a fatal charm that ensnares every man who approaches."
"Do you think we can?" There was some doubt in Patty's tone.
"Mae's got a book," put in Rosalie eagerly, "about 'Beauty and Grace.' You soak your face in oatmeal and almond-oil and honey, and let your hair hang in the sun, and whiten your nose with lemon juice, and wear gloves at night, and--"
"You really ought to have a bath of asses' milk," interrupted Mae. "Cleopatra had; but I'm afraid it will be impossible to get."
"And you ought to learn to sing," added Rosalie, "and have some one song like the 'Lorelei!' that you always hum when you're about to ensnare a victim."
The project was foreign to Patty's ordinary train of thought, but it did have an element of novelty and allurement. Neither Mae nor Rosalie were the partners she would naturally have chosen in any enterprise, but circumstances had thrown them together that day, and Patty was an obliging
soul. Also, her natural common sense was wandering; she was still under the spell of the Egyptian sorceress.
They discussed the new society for several minutes more, until they heard the murmur of Miss Lord's voice, bidding Mademoiselle goodnight.
"There's Lordy!" Patty whispered warily. "I think you'd better to go to bed. We can plan the rest in the morning."
"Yes, let's," said Rosalie, with a shiver. "I'm freezing!"
"But we must first take the vow," insisted Mae Mertelle. "We ought really to do it at midnight--but maybe half-past ten will do as well. I've got it all planned. You two say it after me."
They joined hands and whispered in turn:
"I most solemnly promise to keep secret the name and object of this society; and if I break this oath, may I become freckled and bald and squint-eyed and pigeon-toed, now and forever more."
The three members of the S. A. S. devoted their leisure during the next few days to a careful study of the work on Beauty; and painstakingly set about putting its precepts into practice. Some of these seemed perplexingly at variance. The hair, for example, was to be exposed to air and sunlight, but the face was not. They cleverly circumvented this difficulty however. The week's allowance went for chamois-skin. During every recreation hour, they retired to an airy knoll in the lower pasture, and sat in a patient row, with hair streaming in the wind, and faces protected by homemade masks.
One afternoon, a little Junior A, wandering far afield in a game of hide-and-seek, came upon them unawares; and returned to the safe confines of the playground with frightened shrieks. Dark rumors began to float about the school as to the aim and scope of the new society. Suggestions ranged all the way from Indian squaws to Druid priestesses.
They almost met with disaster while acquiring the ingredients of the oatmeal poultice. The oatmeal and lemon were comparatively easy; the cook supplied them without much fuss. But she stuck at the honey. There were jars and jars of strained honey in the storeroom; but the windows were barred, and the key was in the bottom of Nora's pocket. Confronted by the immediate necessity of becoming beautiful, they could not placidly sit down for five days, and wait for the weekly shopping trip to the village. Besides, with a teacher in attendance, there would be no possible chance of making the purchase. Honey was a contraband article, in the same class with candy and jam and pickles.
They discussed the feasibility of filing through the iron gratings, or of chloroforming Nora and stealing the key, but in the end Patty accomplished the matter by the use of a little simple blarney. She dropped into the kitchen one afternoon with the plaintive admission that she was hungry. Nora hastened to supply a glass of milk and a piece of bread and butter, while Patty perched on a corner of the carving-table and settled herself for conversation. The girls were not supposed to visit the kitchen, but the law was never rigidly enforced. Nora was a social soul and she welcomed callers. Patty praised the apple dumplings of last night's dessert; progressed from that to a discussion of the engaging young plumber who at the moment claimed all of Nora's thoughts; then, by a natural transition, she passed to honey. Before she left, she had obtained Nora's promise to substitute it for marmalade the next morning at breakfast.
The members of the S. A. S. brought pin-trays to the meal, and unobtrusively transferred a supply from their plates to their laps.
But even so, disaster still threatened. Patty had the misfortune to collide with Evalina Smith in the upper hall, and she dropped her pin-tray, honey-side down, in the middle of the rug. At the same instant, Miss Lord bore down upon her from the end of the corridor. Patty was a young person of resource; the emergency of the moment rarely found her napping. She plumped down on her knees in the midst of the puddle, and with widespread skirts, commenced frantically searching for an imaginary stick-pin.
"Is it necessary for you to block up the entire hall?" was Miss Lord's only comment as she passed.
The rug was happily reversible, and by the simple process of turning it over, Patty satisfactorily cleaned up the mess. The other two girls were generous, and shared their supply: so in the end she obtained her honey.
For three wakeful nights they stuck to the poultice--though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the poultice stuck to them. In spite of many washings in hot water, their faces became noticeably scaly.
Miss Sallie, who represented St. Ursula's board of health, met Patty Wyatt in the hall one morning. She took her by the chin and turned her to the light. Patty squirmed embarrassedly.
"My dear child! What is the matter with your face?"
"I--I don't know--exactly. It seems sort of--of--dandruffy."
"I should think it did! What have you been eating?"
"Only what I get at meals," said Patty, relievedly telling the truth.
"There's something the matter with your blood," diagnosed Miss Sallie. "What you need is a tonic. I shall prescribe boneset tea for you."
"Oh, Miss Sallie!" Patty earnestly remonstrated. "I don't need it, really. I'm sure I'll be all right." She had tried boneset tea before; it was the bitterest brew that was ever concocted.
When Miss Sallie met Mae Van Arsdale suffering from the same complaint, and later still, Rosalie Patton, she commenced to be perturbed. The apple trees under her care at the farm had been afflicted that spring with San José scale, but she had hardly expected the disease to spread to the school girls. That afternoon she superintended an infusion of boneset, of gigantic proportions, and at bedtime a reluctant school formed in line and filed past Miss Sallie, who, ladle in hand, presided over the punch bowl. Each received a flowing cupful and drank it with what grace she might, until Patty's turn came. She disposed of hers in a blue china umbrella holder which stood in the hall behind Miss Sallie's back. The remainder of the line successfully followed her lead.
Miss Sallie watched her little charges closely for the next few days; and sure enough, the scales disappeared. (The Associated Sirens had discarded poultices.) She was more than ever convinced of the efficacy of boneset.
Shortly after the founding of the society, Mae Mertelle returned from a week-end visit to her home. (Her mother was ill and she had been sent for. Someone in Mae's family was conveniently ill a great deal of the time.) She brought with her three bracelets of linked scales representing a serpent swallowing his tail. S. A. S. in tiny letters was engraved between the emerald eyes.
"They are perfectly sweet!" said Patty, with grateful appreciation. "But why a snake?"
"It isn't a snake; it's a serpent," Mae explained. "To represent Cleopatra. She was the Serpent of the Nile. We'll be Serpents of the Hudson."
With the appearance of the bracelets, curiosity in the S. A. S. increased, but unlike the other secret societies which had appeared from time to time, its raison d'être remained a mystery. The school really commenced to believe that the society had a secret. Miss Lord, who had the reputation of being curious, stopped Patty one day as she was leaving the Virgil class, and admired the new bracelet.
"And what may be the meaning of S. A. S.?" she inquired.
"It's a secret society," said Patty.
"Ah, a secret society!" Miss Lord smiled. "Then I suppose the name is a DEEP MYSTERY." She lowered her voice, as she said it, to sepulchral depths.
There was something peculiarly irritating about Miss Lord's manner; it always suggested that she was amused by the vagaries of her little pupils. She did not possess Miss Sallie's happy faculty of meeting them on a level. Miss Lord peered down from above (through lorgnettes).
"Of course the name is a secret," said Patty. "If that got out, it would give the whole thing away."
"And what is the object of this famous society? Or is that too a secret?"
"Why, yes, that is, I mustn't tell you exactly."
Patty smiled up at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that always warned those who knew her best that is was wisest to let her alone.
"It's a sort of branch of the Sunshine Society," she added confidentially. "We're to--well--to smile
on people, you know, and make them like us."
"I see!" said Miss Lord, with an air of friendly understanding. "Then S. A. S. stands for 'Sunshine and Smiles?'"
"Oh, please! You mustn't say it out loud," Patty lowered her voice and threw an anxious glance over her shoulder.
"I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds," Miss Lord promised solemnly.
"Thank you," said Patty. "It would be dreadful if it got out."
"It is a very sweet, womanly society," Miss Lord added approvingly. "But you ought not to keep it all to yourselves. Can't you let me be an honorary member of the S. A. S.?"
"Certainly, Miss Lord!" said Patty sweetly. "If you care to belong, we should love to have you."
"Lordy wants to be a Siren!" she announced to her two fellow members when she met them shortly in the gymnasium. The account of the interview was received with hilarity. Miss Lord was anything but the accepted type of siren.
"I thought a few smiles might relieve the gloom of Latin class," Patty explained. "It amuses Lordy to think she's helping the children in their play; and it doesn't hurt the children."
For a time the S. A. S. flourished with the natural health of youth, but as the novelty wore off, the business of becoming beautiful grew onerous. Mae and Rosalie continued to study the beauty book with dogged perseverance,--the subject lay along the line of their natural ambitions--but Patty felt other matters calling. Spring field sports had commenced, and the nearness of the annual match with Highland-Hall, crowded out her interest in cold cream and almond meal. She and Mae were not naturally simpatica, and in spite of Mae's insistence, Patty became an apathetic siren.
One Saturday just after the spring recess, Patty received permission to lunch in town with "Uncle Bobby." He was an uncle by courtesy only, but Patty had failed to inform the Dowager that the title was not his by natural right. She knew well what the result would be. It is quite proper to have luncheon with an uncle; and quite improper with even the oldest and baldest of family friends.
When the "hearse" returned from the station at dusk with Mademoiselle and the city contingent, Rosalie Patton was waiting the arrival on the porte-cochère. She separated Patty from the group and whispered in her ear.
