THE HONOR GIRL

by Grace Livingston Hill

  And indeed, Elsie Hathaway was well content with life as she had found it the last seven years. She had everything that money could buy or heart could wish, at least within reason, and a home and family whose greatest desire seemed to be to please her, and yet they loved her so wholesomely that it had not seemed to spoil her.

  When Elsie’s mother had died, Elsie was a slim little girl of twelve and her aunt and uncle had taken her at once to the city to live with them. There had been a faithful old servant at her father’s home to keep the house running for Mr. Hathaway and Elsie’s two brothers, and there had been no question at all but that Elsie should go to live with her aunt. Her father had accepted passively his sister-in-law’s decision that a girl at Elsie’s age needed a mother’s care. Mr. Hathaway was crushed by the death of his wife and seemed not to be able to plan anything for himself.

  Aunt Esther’s home had been wonderful, and Elsie had been made welcome to share all its comforts and luxuries with her two cousins, Katharine and Bettina, and so the happy school years had passed, finding her at the close of her junior year in high school, and full of honors and happiness. She still made her home with her aunt and uncle for they would hear of nothing else. Indeed, she had so grown into the life of the home in the city that it never occurred to her that she might not always be there, or that there was anything else for her to do. She loved them all and they loved her and wanted her. It was her home, as much as if she had been born there. That was the whole story. She loved them all, she loved the life they led, the friends they had, the concerts and lectures they attended, the beautiful summers at the seashore and mountains. She loved the church in which they had their affiliations, and she rejoiced that her lot had fallen in such pleasant places.

  During those years she had seen very little of her first home, and had gradually grown farther and farther from both father and brothers until they seemed more like distant relatives than her own blood. They seldom came to see her, and her life was so full and so happy that she had little time to go to them or even to think about them.

  The last time she had seen her father he had asked her how she would like to come home and keep house for him, and she shuddered inwardly at the very thought, although she told him gaily how impossible it was. That was three months ago. Her father had sighed and looked old. His breath smelled of liquor, and he was continually smoking an ugly little black pipe. She shrank from him as if he had not been her father. Uncle James was not like that. He was pleasant, and he never drank. She tried to forget her father as much as possible. As for her brothers she scarcely felt they belonged to her, even distantly. And the days had been so full and so happy that it had been easy to forget.

  The sun was shining brightly and the breakfast was very festive. Waffles and honey and strawberries, and all the talk ran upon last night—what this one and that one had said about Elsie. Uncle James even had a word to quote from Professor Bowen.

  “He called you the Honor Girl, Elsie!” he said. “I must say when he got done praising you, I began to feel honored that I belonged to you. Why, according to your principal, you have taken the cake—with all the frosting—away from everyone else in town.”

  There was a merry twinkle in her uncle’s eyes, but she knew that behind all his teasing there was a loving pride in her accomplishments, and her heart swelled with joy. She felt that this was a glorious day, the crown of all the days that had passed before.

  The girls had planned to play tennis at the country club that morning, so after breakfast was over and her uncle had gone down to his office, they went up to their rooms to dress for their game.

  “Elsie,” called Katharine from her room, “did you find that book of poems yet? I simply have to have it for tomorrow. I promised Miss Keith I would bring it to Sunday school. She wants to quote it in an article she’s writing, and she needs to send it off Monday.”

  “No, Katharine,” said Elsie, “I didn’t find it. But I’m afraid I must have left it out at Father’s house”—she always spoke of her former home as “Father’s house” now—“I remember I was learning a poem out of it the last time I went out there, and I’m sure I left it up on my little old bureau. Oh, that’s easy. I’ll run out there right after the game.”

  “But the concert! You’ll be late for the concert I’m afraid. Those trolleys are so slow! What a pity Daddy had to use the car this morning! We could have gone out in no time.”

  “It won’t take me long if I go right in on the bus from the Club House. Don’t worry! I’ll get it for you, kitten,” said Elsie cheerfully. She felt she could do almost anything today, she was so very happy.

  In her pretty little sports dress of white jersey trimmed with jade and a close white felt hat, she started out with her cousins, Katharine in pink and Bettina in pale blue, their rackets under their arms, and happiness on their faces. Elsie also carried a book to read on her long ride out to Morningside where her father’s house was located.

  “We’d go with you,” said Katharine, “only Mamma said we had to finish those things for the bazaar this morning or we couldn’t go to the concert, you know—” said Bettina wistfully as they parted at the corner where the bus line and trolley crossed.

  “Oh, surely!” said Elsie. “I don’t mind. I’ll be home soon. Work hard and have your embroidery all done by the time I get there.”

  And so Elsie was on her way out to her old home to get the book she had left there months before. In her heart she felt a secret shame, for she knew she had chosen this hour for going partly because her father and brothers would not be there.

  She did not wish to encounter her father’s request again; there had been something hungry in his face, which she had not analyzed at the time, that had made her uncomfortable, disturbed the harmony of her life.

  The book she was reading held her interest all the way out to the suburb where her old home was. The climax of her story was reached just as the conductor called out her street and she closed her book with a start and hurried out of the car, not even glancing from the window as she went.

  She had little interest in the old place. She was only anxious to complete her errand and hurry away before anybody should return to detain her, for she had planned to go with Bettina and Katharine to the symphony concert that afternoon, and she wanted to get back before lunch.

  The house was gray stone and shingle, and stood knee-deep in straggling grass and overgrown vines. It presented a startling neglected look in the bright sunlight as the girl walked up the gravel path. She frowned, and wondered why her brothers did not cut the lawn, train the vines, and clean the edges of the walk. It was disgraceful to let things go this way. She felt a thrill of thankfulness that she did not live in such a run-down home. What a contrast to Aunt Esther’s trim, comfortable house in the city!

  She paused at the steps, and took note of several things that displeased her. One of the boards in the lower step was rotted away at one end, and the whole thing gave when her foot touched it. The paint was all off the porch and steps. Three old porch rockers in various stages of dejection stood about in position for the feet of a possible occupant to rest on the weather-beaten railing of the porch. The vines had clambered unchecked over floor and railing alike, adding to the general clutter. Three or four Sunday supplements were scattered about on the floor of the porch and several others matted like a cushion in an old bottomless rocker. Gathering her skirts about her daintily, the daughter of the house made her way disdainfully through the dismal approach and tried the front door. It was locked. She rang the bell several times, with no result. Then she stooped and lifted the old doormat. There was the key in its old place. It seemed to look at her with a pitiful appeal in its worn, rusty way. She picked it quickly from the accumulated dust and fitted it into the lock, a great distaste in her soul for the entrance she was about to make into the home of her childhood. She did not like to think that here had been her beginning of life.

  She wondered as she threw the door open what had become of Rebe
cca? Inside the door she paused in dismay. Everything was dirt and disorder. Desolation came to meet her at the threshold.

  The pleasant square hall that she remembered as a child mocked at her out of its ruin. The door of the hall closet stood open and hooks and floor bulged with their contents. Overcoats, a roll of carpet, two dilapidated raincoats, three old straw hats, and some felt ones, a stringless tennis racket, an old moth-eaten football suit, and a broken umbrella, all in a heterogeneous mass. The big wooden ball from the top of the newel post lolled in a corner amid rolls of dust. The little couch fairly groaned with more coats and hats. It seemed as if several people’s entire wardrobes must be piled upon this single article of furniture. The window seat was piled with books and papers all mixed up together, with burned matches and ends of cigarettes among them. A picture with a broken glass stood behind the hall table, adding desolation to the scene.

  Through the wide doorway the dining table could be seen, covered with a torn, much soiled tablecloth, and piled high with soiled dishes bearing traces of fired eggs, bacon, apple cores, and banana skins. A plate in the middle held a single hard end of a baker’s loaf. The tin pepperbox from the kitchen stood in the middle of the table and a lump of salt lay on the cloth beside it. Neckties and soiled collars appeared on the sideboard, window seats, and chairs.

  In dismay Elsie turned to the living room on her right, but confusion also reigned there. More Sunday supplements littered the floor. A bundle of laundry, half open, lay in a chair. A man’s new gray felt hat hung on the broken shade of the lamp on the center table. The piano—her piano on which she had first picked out her scales, and then with one finger played haltingly “The Star Spangled Banner”—was closed and covered with dust. Half a dozen pieces of ragtime, illumined jazzily, stood on the rack, and an old overcoat had been thrown over the top, upsetting a Dresden shepherdess vase containing ancient hydrangeas, dry and crumbling.

  With an expression of disgust on her face, she turned to flee upstairs, get her book and depart as quickly as possible. To think this was her home! The house where she was born! The place where her father and brothers still lived. To think that her own flesh and blood were satisfied to live like this. It was too dreadful! What if those people last night could have had a glimpse of this, just before her performance? Would they have given her as much praise?

  Then with sudden determination to know the worst, Elsie went through the dining room to the kitchen beyond.

  Confusion and destruction met her gaze. A gaunt cat greeted her with a weak protest from a hunched-up position on the kitchen table beside the debris of a hasty breakfast wherein eggs had played a prominent part. A bottle half filled with thick milk long past the stage of sourness stood on the dresser, menacing the atmosphere with its green and pink coloring. The old sink clogged and half filled with waste water fairly reeked with bits of garbage from the last attempt at dish washing. The cooking utensils on the cold range were filled with sticky messes of varying ages and stages, some burned almost beyond recognition, some sour mashed potatoes, some pasty stewed tomatoes filled with soggy bread, some canned corn burned to the sauce pan, its empty can still on the back of the range.

  Sick at heart, the girl drew back the bolt of the outer kitchen to let in the air. The cat sprang down and hauled from behind the refrigerator a bit of old dried fish with a stench unspeakable and began to gnaw at it starvedly. Outside the back door a company of dogs held high carnival over the forlorn upturned garbage pail.

  Elsie slammed the kitchen door shut again and retreated, wondering frantically whether she could catch the next car back. She hurried upstairs, shutting her eyes to all the sights.

  Her own old room had been at the head of the stairs, opening from the front one belonging to her mother and father. It was the only place in the house where any semblance of order prevailed. Everything was in its place just as she had left it, the bedspread up with an old cover that had once been white. The pictures on the walls, her childish treasures on the bureau, her books in the little bookshelves strung up by cords on the wall, her little rocking chair. Everything was thick with dust, of course; but it seemed to be the only spot in the house where the finger of ruin and despair had not been laid. It was desolate, of course, and utterly unattractive; yet looked like an oasis in the desert compared to the rest of the place.

  Elsie found her book, selected one or two others, and turned to go downstairs; but at the top step something compelled her to go back and look into the other rooms. Her father’s room, with the bedclothes in a heap, his own garments scattered wildly about, a brandy-flask openly standing on the bureau!

  She fled hastily. Something had caught her eye hanging over the headboard close by the pillow. Her mother’s old dressing gown of flowered flannelette, faded and torn. Did her father keep it there because it reminded him of her? They had been very fond of each other. Was he lonely? It was the first time the thought had ever occurred to her. She had always pitied herself, a motherless child. She had never thought of him as one to be pitied.

  Something forced her to go on and see the rooms.

  The bathroom was as desolate as such a spot can become when no one cares for it. Smeared marble black with grime and soap, no towels save two worn soiled ones in a heap on the floor, the oilcloth worn into holes, shoe polish and shaving articles strewn inharmoniously together, the window curtain torn, the door of the medicine-closet hanging by one hinge! Nothing as it ought to be!

  She glanced into her elder brother’s room. Gene had always been particular. Surely he would have things in some order. But no, the prospect was as dreary as elsewhere, only that there had been an attempt to put the bureau in some kind of order for a row of photographs that held the place of honor there. Elsie stopped to look at them. Girls! Many girls! “Tough girls.” Girls with high heels and short skirts, and hair plastered out on their cheeks and forehead after the extreme fashion of the day; showing their teeth, languishing with their eyes, and saucily looking into Gene’s eyes in some groups. The kinds of girls with whom Aunt Esther did not like Katharine, Bettina, and herself to associate. Not bad girls, perhaps, just bold girls, coarse, common girls. With a curl of her lip she went out of the room and shut the door.

  What ever made her mount the third-story stairs she did not know. Possibly a desire to see what had become of Rebecca. She pushed open the door of the back room that had formerly belonged to that servant and found no trace of inhabitant. The cot was there, and the hooks on which Rebecca’s garments had hung were vacant. Rebecca had evidently departed. No wonder. Who would want to stay in such a house? Or had the house gone into this state after the departure of Rebecca? Of course, that was it. Rebecca used to keep things in some sort of order, at least.

  The front room had been Jack’s. He always hated it because he could not stand upright in the corners on account of the sloping roof. He used to protest against the high headboard of his bed that would not allow it to be shoved against the wall. As she passed the little middle storeroom, she caught sight of that headboard and footboard standing back against the wall across the window of the storeroom. Had Jack, then, bought a new bed? She pushed open his door curiously, and her heart sank at the appalling sight.

  On the floor in the middle of the room lay the spring and mattress of the great old bed. A single sheet that was torn down the middle, and seemed to have served for months without changing, was the only semblance of bed linen. From the scanty snarl of bedclothes she recognized her mother’s old plaid shawl, the only article resembling a blanket. An old overcoat and sweater were in the heap, as if they too had been used for covering. The pillow was guiltless of case and much soiled. It dawned upon her that the stock of bedding and table linen had likely never been replenished since her mother’s death.

  Jack’s garments hung or lay about the room in wild confusion, one incongruous mass upon floor and chairs and rickety chest of drawers. One could hardly step without putting a foot on something. Soiled laundry and clean lay side by side.<
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  The chest of drawers was strung across the back with brilliant neckties, and here and there a clean collar mingled with a soiled one. Cigarette stumps and burned matches were literally everywhere. Elsie had never imagined a human being trying to live and sleep in such confusion. She stood stricken in the desolate place, and thought of Jack, with his brave bright eyes and his beautiful crest of wavy golden hair, existing in a room like this. A sudden lump rose in her throat; and she slipped out of the room, and closed the door after her, filled with a kind of shame for her young brother.

  She hurried out of the house, closed the door, and locked it, putting the key scrupulously where she had found it, and went out to wait for the car.

  She tried to forget the impression she had just received in the house. She tried to think that probably men didn’t mind such things; else, why didn’t they get some new things, and fix the house up? They were all working and had good salaries. There was no excuse for a state of things like that. Had that been the reason why her father wanted her to come home? Well, she couldn’t be a slave to three men in an awful household like that, she who had been so long used to better things, she who had already made a reputation for herself in a small way, young though she was. Was she not the honor girl of Professor Bowen’s school?

  The car had almost reached the corner where she stood, and she was just about to step down from the curb and signal it, when a sudden remembrance of that room of Jack’s in the third story blurred her vision and some invisible hand seemed to draw her back, some voice calling to her, some strange influence touching with vibrant hand her heart-strings. It came to her that she could not leave that room in that condition for Jack to come back to at night. She must go up and try to make things a little more habitable. The others might stand it if they would, but Jack was only a boy. It was dangerous for boys to have no spot in the world that was decent.