Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Lily had formed with the sturdy Ada Corey one of those friendships that sometimes suggest to observers an unworthy but persistent thought upon the profundity of girlish vanity. So often is a beautiful girl’s best girl-friend the precise companion piece to set off most abundantly the charms of the beauty, or, if both girls of a pair be well-favoured, so frequently is one dark and the other fair, and each the best obtainable background for the other, that the spectator is almost forced to suppose many such intimacies to be deliberately founded upon a pictorial basis.

  But this is not to say that these decorative elections to friendship are unaccompanied by genuine fondness; and although Lily Dodge found her background in the more substantial Ada, she found also something to lean upon and cling to and admire. For Lily was one of those girls we call ethereal, because they do not seem intended to remain long in a world their etherealness makes appear gross. They usually do remain as long as other people do, yet their seeming almost poised for a winging departure brings them indulgences and cherishings not shown to that stouter, self-reliant type to which Ada Corey was thought to belong.

  Late on that same gray but rainless November afternoon, Ada, herself, spoke of this elaborate difference between them. “I don’t see why you worry, Lily,” she said. “I believe you could get away with anything! You’re the kind that can.”

  “Oh, not this!” Lily protested in a wailing whisper. No one was near them; but in her trouble she seemed to fear the garrulity of even the old forest trees of the park through which the two were taking an autumnal stroll. “Nobody in the world could get out of such a miserable state of things as I’ve got myself into now, Ada.”

  But this was by no means Miss Corey’s first experience of her friend’s confidences of despair. “I wouldn’t bother about it at all, if I were you, Lily,” she said, cheerfully. “I wouldn’t give it a thought.”

  “You wouldn’t?” Lily cried, feebly, and her incredulity was further expressed by her feet, which refused to bear her onward in so amazed a condition. She halted, facing her companion in a stricken manner. “You wouldn’t give it a thought? When I’ve just told you that this time it’s three!”

  “No,” Ada returned, stoutly. “I wouldn’t. If I were you, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even if it were four!”

  Lily moaned, and in a hopeless appeal for a higher witness to such folly, cast her eyes to heaven — or at least to as much of the dimming sky as roofed over the tattered brown foliage above her. “You wouldn’t give it a thought! Not even if there were four of ’em.” Then, as the woodland spot where they had stopped was somewhat secluded and apart from the main-travelled roads of the park, Lily felt at liberty to lean against a tree and apply a hand to her forehead in an excellent gesture of anguish. “I’m a goner this time, Ada,” she murmured. “I’m a goner!”

  “You aren’t anything of the kind,” Miss Corey assured her. “I tell you it’s not worth bothering about.”

  “Oh!” Lily uttered a sound of indignation, dropped the dramatic little hand, and spoke sharply. “You stand there, Ada Corey, and tell me that if such a thing happened to you, you wouldn’t give it a thought?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You did! You just said—”

  “No; I said if I were you,” Ada explained. “A thing like this wouldn’t happen to me.”

  “Why wouldn’t it? It might happen to anybody,” Lily returned, quickly. “Suppose it did happen to you? Do you mean to tell me that if three separate, individual men all pretty nearly considered themselves practically almost engaged to be married to you at the same time, you wouldn’t give it a thought? You wouldn’t bother about it at all?”

  “I said I wouldn’t if I were you” Ada insisted.

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “For just the reason I told you. Because you’re the kind that can get away with anything.”

  “But I can’t!” Lily cried. “I’m always in some sort of miserable mess or other.”

  “Yes, pretty often,” her friend assented. “But it’s always a new one, and nobody ever does anything about the old one, so why should you care? You’ll write one of these three boys a little weepy note, and you’ll have a little weepy scene with another, and that’ll leave only the one you like the best, and—”

  “But I don’t,” Lily interrupted, piteously. “I don’t absolutely know I like him as much as I thought I did, either.”

  “What!” Ada cried. “Not even him?”

  “How can anybody ever be absolutely certain? I mean certain enough to get married. You know it’s a thing you’ve got to look at pretty seriously, Ada — getting actually married.”

  But for the moment Ada did not seem to be sympathetic; — she was staring wide-eyed at her friend. “So you’re going to wriggle out of it with all three of them.”

  “But maybe I can’t,” Lily moaned. “Suppose they insisted? Suppose they just wouldn’t let me?”

  “Has there ever been anything anybody wouldn’t let you do?”

  Lily moaned again. “You mean I’m spoiled. You mean people let me make ’em miserable. Oh, it’s true, Ada! I do wish I could be more like you.”

  “Like me?” Ada laughed shortly. “You wouldn’t for the world.”

  “Yes, I would.” Lily took her friend’s hand in her own. “I’d give anything in the world to be like you. You don’t know what a trouble I am to my mother and father! They’re always in some kind of stew or other over me, and I can’t help it, because I’m always getting myself into such fearful messes. You never trouble your family; you’re always a comfort to ’em. You aren’t romantic and imaginative and sentimental and fly-off-the-handle, the way I am. You’re steady and reliable, and people always know exactly where to find you.”

  But upon this, Ada looked puzzled. “Is that so?” she asked, gravely. “Is that how I seem to you, Lily?”

  “To me? Good heavens! Don’t you know that’s the way everybody thinks of you? Everybody knows you’re dependable; — you’re what they call ‘so satisfactory,’ Ada. Your family and everybody else know you’ll never do anything reckless or susceptible or dreamy. Nobody on earth knows what I’ll do, because I don’t myself. Just, look at the difference between us!”

  With that, as if the bodily contrast of the two expressed the contrast in character she had in mind, Lily extended her arms sidewise from her in an emotional gesture inviting an inspection of herself foredoomed to be damning; then pointed dramatically at Ada. “Just look at you and then look at me,” she cried. “See what a terrible difference it is!”

  She dropped her arms to her sides, submitting her case to an invisible jury, who might well have returned a verdict that at least the outward difference Was pleasant rather than terrible. In the twilight beneath the trees the fair-haired and ethereal Lily, in her slim gray dress, seemed to be made of a few wisps of mist and a little gold. About her was a plaintive grace, not a quality of her dark-eyed and more substantial companion; yet both girls were comely; both were of the peach-bloom age that follows the awkward years; each had a grace of her own; and neither had cause to be disturbed by anything wherein she was unlike the other. Yet, as it happened, both were so disturbed.

  Ada’s gravity had increased. “You’re all wrong about it, Lily,” she said. “I’d give anything in the world to be like you.”

  “What!” Lily cried. “You wouldn’t! Why?”

  “Because of what I said. You can get away with anything, and people expect it. But if I ever did anything queer it would upset everybody. There’d be no end to it.”

  “But you never will!” Lily almost shouted.

  “Won’t I?” Ada returned, her gravity not relaxing. “What makes you so sure?” —

  “Why, you simply couldn’t! My life is just one long eternal succession of queernesses. I never do anything rational; I don’t seem to know how; but you’re never anything but sensible, Ada. You’ll fall in love sensibly some day — not like me, but with just one man at a time — and he’l
l be exactly the person your family’ll think you ought to be in love with. And you’ll have a nice, comfortable wedding, without any of the ushers misbehaving because you wouldn’t marry him instead; — and then you’ll bring up a large family to go to church every Sunday and take an interest in missionary work and everything. Don’t you see how much I ought to be like that, and how much you really are that? Don’t you, Ada?”

  Ada shook her head slowly. “It doesn’t quite seem so,” she said. Then, beginning to stroll onward, continuing their walk, she looked even more serious than before, and inquired: “What are you going to wear to-morrow night?”

  Lines almost tragic appeared upon Lily’s forehead, and her previously mentioned troubles seemed of light account compared to this one. “Oh, dear!” she wailed. “That’s another thing that’s been on my mind all day. I haven’t the least idea. What would you?”

  She was still hopelessly preoccupied with the problem when she reached home, after parting with Ada at the park gates; and in her own pretty room she went to one of her two clothes’-closets even before she went to a mirror. Frowning, she looked over her party dresses.

  The slim, tender-coloured fabrics, charming even though unoccupied, hung weightlessly upon small, shoulderlike shapes of nickeled wire; and as she restlessly slid the hangers to and fro along the groved central rail that held them, she produced a delicate swish and flutter among the silks and chiffons before her, so that they were like a little pageant of pretty ghosts of the dances to which their young mistress had worn them. Lily approved of none of them, however; and, hearing her mother’s firm step approaching the open door of the room, behind her, she said, desperately, without turning, “I haven’t got a thing, Mamma; I haven’t got a single thing!”

  Mrs. Dodge, that solid matron, so inexplicably unlike her daughter, came into the room breathing audibly after an unusually hurried ascent of the stairs. “Lily,” she said, in the tone of one who still controls an impending emotion, “Lily, you must never do this to me again. I can’t stand it.”

  “Do what to you again?” Lily inquired, absently, not turning from her inspection. “I haven’t got a thing I could wear to-morrow night, Mamma.

  Absolutely, I don’t see how I can go unless—”

  “Lily!” Mrs. Dodge exclaimed in a tone so eloquently vehement as to command a part of her daughter’s attention. “Listen to me!”

  Lily half turned, holding forth for exhibition a dress she had removed from its hanger. “What’s the matter, Mamma? This pale blue chiffon is absolutely the only thing I haven’t worn so often I just couldn’t face anybody in again; but it never was a becoming—”

  “Lily, put down that dress and listen to me!”

  “I’m sure it won’t do,” the daughter said, regretfully; but she obeyed and hung the dress over the back of a chair. Then she turned to her dressing-table mirror and began to remove her small hat. “Are you upset or anything, Mamma?”

  “Upset? No! I’m indignant,” Mrs. Dodge explained, fiercely. “If you ever do such a thing to me again—”

  “What? Why, I haven’t even seen you since lunch time, Mamma. How could I have been doing; anything to you when I wasn’t anywhere around to do it?”

  “You know well enough what you did to me! You broke three separate engagements with three separate—”

  But Lily’s light laughter interrupted. “Oh, did the poor things call up?” she asked, and seemed to be pleasantly surprised. “Well, my not being here might be doing something to them, maybe,” she added, reflectively; “but I don’t see how it was doing anything to you, Mamma.”

  “You don’t? You break three separate engagements without a word, and leave me here to explain it; and then you say that wasn’t doing anything to me!”

  “But I didn’t leave you to do it. I didn’t even know you were going to be home this afternoon. I just thought maybe they’d call up and find I was out, and that’d be the end of it. What in the world did you go to the telephone for, Mamma?”

  “Because two of them asked for me.”

  “Did they? What for?”

  “To ask where you were,” Mrs. Dodge said, explosively. “Each of ’em kept me about fifteen minutes.”

  “That was very inconsiderate,” Lily observed. “Especially as I hadn’t absolutely promised either of ’em I’d go. I only said to call up about three and ‘probably I would. I don’t think they ought to have kept you so—”

  “That isn’t what I’m complaining of,” her mother interrupted, grimly. “It was disagreeable, especially as I was unable to give either of them any information and they both seemed to think I could if they kept at me long enough! It was trying, but it was bearable. What I refuse to have happen again, though, is what has been happening all the rest of the afternoon.”

  Lily proved herself strangely able to divine her mother’s meaning without further explanation. Pink at once became noticeable upon her cheeks. “Oh, goodness!” she said. “Price didn’t come in, did he?”

  “For two and one-half hours,” Mrs. Dodge replied, slowly and harshly. “For that length of time this afternoon I have been favoured with the society and conversation — the continuous conversation, I may say — of Mr. Price Gleason. I am strong enough to bear certain things, but not strong enough to bear certain other things, and I want to tell you that this is something you must never do to me again.”

  Lily sank into a chair, staring widely. “Oh, goodness!” she said. “When did he go?”

  “Not until about five minutes before you came in.”

  “What did he say?”

  “What didn’t he?” Mrs. Dodge returned. “He had time enough!”

  Upon this Lily’s expression, grown grave, became tenderly compassionate. “Was he — was he terribly hurt with me, Mamma?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t say so — no. No, I don’t think he was just what one might call stricken. At first he seemed rather depressed — but not for long. I don’t think that young man will ever be much depressed about anything while he has a listener. All he asks of life is an audience.”

  “He talks beautifully,” Lily said, with the dreamy look her mother knew so well. “Don’t you think he does, Mamma? What did he talk about?”

  “About nothing,” Mrs. Dodge answered cruelly. “I mean, of course, about himself.”

  “Mamma!” Lily cried, quickly, and her sensitive face showed the pain she felt. “That isn’t kind, and it isn’t fair!”

  “Isn’t it? I never in my life listened to such a conceited and unveracious rigmarole as that young man favoured me with this afternoon. I did everything a Christian woman could to show him I wanted him to go, but he never stopped. You can’t interrupt him when he’s wound up like that, and he’s always wound up. He makes an oration of it; he stands up, gestures like an actor, and walks around and up and down when he tells you how he’s done all the great things he almost believes in himself when he’s talking about ’em. I never knew such a story-teller in my life!”

  “Mamma!”

  “I never did,” Mrs. Dodge said. “He told me he’d killed three men in Mexico.”

  “But, Mamma, it’s true! He did! He was prospecting for silver mines and all sorts of things in Mexico.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it, Lily; — it sounded much too much like ‘adventure stories.’ I don’t think he did it; I think he read it. He said he killed those three men because they tried to ‘jump his claim,’ while he was away on a visit to his friend, the President of Mexico, and that afterward the President made him a general in the Mexican Army, and he fought in seven battles and was wounded twelve times. That was five years ago, so he must have been a general when he was about nineteen. In all my life I never heard—”

  “If you please, Mamma!” Lily interrupted. “I’d rather not hear you accuse him of such things. I prefer—”

  “Good gracious!” Mrs. Dodge exclaimed. “I can’t see why you’re so sensitive about him when you deliberately broke an engagement with h in this
very afternoon without a word of explanation.”

  “That’s an entirely different matter,” Lily said, primly. “I had to do that.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because I couldn’t go with one of ’em without hurting both the others terribly.”

  “But why didn’t you make some excuse?”

  “Because I couldn’t think of anything I was sure would be satisfactory, or that they mightn’t find out,” Lily explained, seriously; and she added, “I had to put that off.”

  “Until when?”

  “Until I get time to think it out, Mamma. So you see it didn’t mean I care any less for Price. It only meant I was in a perplexing position.” She rose, facing her mother gravely. “I like him much better than the others, Mamma, and I don’t think it’s considerate of you to speak so unkindly of him.” Here Lily’s lip began to tremble a little. “I think he talks wonderfully, and it’s every word true about Mexico, and I think you and Papa ought to respect my feeling for him.”

  “Your father?” Mrs. Dodge cried. “You know perfectly well what your father thinks of him.”

  But Lily ignored this interpolation, and continued, “It seems to me it was very unkind of you to sit there just coldly criticizing him in your mind all afternoon when he was doing his best to entertain you. He meant nothing except kindness to you, and you were sitting there all the time coldly crit—”

  “Yes, I was,” her mother interrupted. “I was certainly sitting there! But I wasn’t coldly criticizing him in my mind; you’re wrong about that. After two hours of it, my mental criticism was getting pretty warm, Lily. In fact, I think it would have scorched me if I hadn’t finally got rid of him.”