Elsie stood for a little while looking heavily out at nothing; then she went slowly up the old, carpeted stairway to her own room, where she did a singular thing. She took a hand mirror from her dressing-table, looked searchingly into the glass for several long and solemn minutes, then dropped down upon her bed and wept. She might have been a beauty discovering the first gray hair.
It was strange that she should look into a mirror and then weep because, if the glass was honest with her, its revelation should have been in every detail encouraging. The reflection showed lamenting gray eyes, but long-lashed and vividly lustrous; it showed a good white brow and a neat nose and a shapely mouth and chin. No one could have asked a mirror to be coloured a pleasanter tan brown than where it reflected Elsie’s rippling hair; and as for the rest of her, she was neither angular nor awkward, neither stout nor misshapen in any way, but the contrary. Yet this was not the first time she had done that strange thing; — she had come too often silently to her room, looked into her mirror, and then fallen to long weeping.
XXII. WALLFLOWER
THE FIRST TIME she had done it she was only twelve; but even then her reason for it was the same. At the end of a children’s party she realized that she had been miserable, and that she was never anything except miserable at parties. She always looked forward to them; always thought for days about what she would wear; always set forth in a tremor of excitement; and then, when she was there, and the party in full swing, she spent the time being wretched and trying to look happy, so that no one would guess what she felt. She had always the same experience: in the games the children played, if two leaders chose “sides,” she was the last to be chosen, except when she was ignored and left out altogether, which sometimes happened. When they danced she usually had no partners except upon the urgency of mothers or hostesses; — the boys rushed to all the other girls and came lagging to Elsie only in duty or in desperation. So at last, being twelve, she realized what had been happening to her — and came home to look secretly into her mirror and then to weep.
As she grew older, and her group with her, nothing changed; she was a wallflower. The other girls were all busy with important little appointments— “dates” they called them — Elsie had none. With the liveliest eagerness the others talked patteringly about things that were meaningless to her; and when she tried to talk that way, too, she failed shamefully. She tried to laugh with them, and as loudly as they did, when she had no idea what they were laughing about; and for a long time she failed to understand that usually they were laughing about nothing. On summer evenings the boys and girls clustered on other verandas, not hers; and, sitting alone, she would hear the distant frolicking and drifts of song. At dances for her sixteen and seventeen-year-old contemporaries, everything was as it had been when she was twelve. Even when her mother, guessing a little of the truth, tried to help her, and, in spite of failing health, worked hard at “entertaining” for Elsie, the entertaining failed of its object; — Elsie was not made “popular.”
“Why not?” she had passionately asked herself a thousand times. “Why do they despise me so?”
Yet she knew that they did not even despise her. At times they did despise one of their group, usually a girl; for it seems to be almost a necessity, in an intimate circle of young people, that from time to time there shall be a member whom the rest may privately denounce, and in gatherings vent their wit upon more or less openly.
During the greater part of her seventeenth year the dashing Mamie Ford had been in this unfortunate position without any obvious cause. The others were constantly busy “talking” about her, finding new faults or absurdities in her; snubbing her and playing derisive practical jokes upon her — for it is true that youth is cruel; self-interest takes up so much room. Elsie envied her, for at least Mamie was in the thick of things; and the centre of the stew. That was better than being a mere left-outer, Elsie thought; and Mamie fought, too, and had her own small faction, whereas a left-outer has nothing to fight except the vacancy in which she dwells — a dreary battling. Mamie’s unpopularity passed, for no better reason than it had arrived; — she was now, at nineteen, the very queen of the roost, and Elsie, wondering why, could only conclude that it was because Mamie made so much noise.
Elsie had long ago perceived that, of the girls she knew, those who made the loudest and most frequent noises signifying excitement and hilarity were the ones about whom the boys and, consequently, the other girls, most busily grouped themselves. Naturally, the simple males went where vivacious sound and gesture promised merriment; and of course, too, a crowd naturally gathers where something seems to be happening. So far as Elsie could see, the whole art of general social intercourse seemed to rest on an ability to make something appear to be happening where nothing really was happening.
What had always most perplexed her was that the proper method of doing this seemed to be the simplest thing in the world, and was, nevertheless, in her own hands an invariable failure. She had watched Mamie Ford at dances and at dinners where Mamie was the life of the party, and she observed that in addition to shouting over every nothing and laughing ecstatically without the necessity of being inspired by any detectable humour, Mamie always offered every possible evidence — flushed face, sparkling eyes, and unending gesticulations — that she was having a genuinely uproarious “good time” herself. Elsie had tried it; she had tried it until her face ached; but she remained only an echo outside the walls. Nobody paid any attention to her.
Therefore she had no resource but to infer what she had inferred to-day, when the merry impromptu party whirled away without a thought of including her, and when Paul Reamer had so carelessly evaded her urgency — her shameless urgency, as she thought, weeping upon her coverlet. This inference of hers could be only that she had some mysterious ugliness, some strange stupidity, and it was this she sought in her mirror, as she had sought it before. It evaded her as it always did; but she knew it must be there.
“What is wrong about me?” she murmured, tasting upon her lips the bitter salt of that inquiry. “They couldn’t always treat me like this unless there’s something wrong about me.”
She was sure that the wrong thing must be with herself. The Hemingways Were one of the “old families”; — they had always taken a creditable part in the life of the town, and the last man of them, her father, owned and edited the principal newspaper of the place. Elsie had no prospect of riches, but she was not poor; and other girls with less than she were “popular.” Therefore the wrong thing about her could be identified in nothing exterior. Moreover, when she pursued her search for the vital defect she could not attribute it to tactlessness; for that has some weight, and she was weightless. She danced well, she dressed as well as any of the girls did, and her father told her that she “talked well,” too; — he said this to her often, during the long evenings she spent with him in his library. Yet he was the only one who would listen to her, and, though she adored him, he was not the audience she most wanted. She “talked well”; but even by pleading she could not get Paul Reamer to spend five minutes with her.
No wonder! Paul was the great beau of the town, and she the girl least of all like a belle. And, remembering his plain consciousness of this contrast, almost ludicrously expressed in his surprise that she should try to detain him with her for even a few minutes, she shivered as she wept. She hated herself for begging of him; she hated herself for having run out of the house to try for the thousandth time to be one of a “crowd” that didn’t want her; she hated herself for “hanging around them,” laughing and pretending that she was one of them, when anybody could see she wasn’t. She hated herself for having something wrong about her, and for not being able to find out what it was; she hated herself, and she hated everything and everybody — except her father.
— . — . At dinner that evening he reproached her for being pale. “I don’t believe you take enough exercise,” he suggested.
“Yes, I do. I took a long walk this afternoon. I walked four
or five miles.”
“Did you?” He smiled under his heavy old-fashioned, gray lambrequin of a moustache, and his eyeglasses showed a glint of humorous light. “That doesn’t sound as if you went with a girl companion, Elsie! Four or five miles, was it?”
“I went alone,” she said, occupied with her plate. His humorous manifestations vanished and he looked somewhat concerned. “Is that so? It might have been jollier the other way, perhaps. I sometimes think I monopolize you too much, young woman. For instance, you oughtn’t to spend all your evenings with me. You ought to keep up your contemporary friendships more than you do, I’m afraid. Why don’t you ask the girls and boys here to play with you sometimes?”
“I don’t want them.”
“Would you like to give a dance — or anything?”
“No, Papa.”
He sighed. “I’m afraid your young friends bore you, Elsie.”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t that exactly. I just—” She left the sentence unfinished.
“You just don’t take much interest in ’em,” he laughed.
“Well — maybe.” Still occupied with the food before her, though her being occupied with it meant no hearty consumption of it, she seemed to admit the charge. “Something like that.”
“It shouldn’t be so,” he said. “From the little I see of ’em I shouldn’t spot any of ’em for a lofty intellect precisely, but young people of that sort in a moderate-sized city like this usually do seem to older people just a pack of incomprehensible gigglers and gabblers. I suppose you never hear much from ’em except personalities and pretty slim jokes, and it may get tiresome for a girl as solid on the Napoleonic Period as you are.” He paused to chuckle. “I don’t suppose you hear much discussion of Madame de Rémusat among ’em, do you?”
“No.”
“What I’m getting at,” he went on; “you oughtn’t to think too much about intellectual fodder or be bored with people your own age because they can’t offer it.”
At that she glanced wanly at him across the table. “I’m not, Papa. They don’t bore me.”
“Then I can’t understand your not seeing more of ’em. It isn’t normal, and you’re missing a lot of the rightful pleasures of youth. It’s natural for youth to seek youth, and not to devote all its time to an old codger like me. I believe you need a change.” He looked at her severely and nodded. “I’m serious.”
“What change?”
“Your aunt Mildred’s written me again about your visiting there,” he said. “Your cousin Cornelia finished her school last year. Now she’s home from eight months abroad and they really want you.”
“Oh, no,” Elsie said, quietly, and looked again at her plate.
“Why not?”
“I don’t care to go, Papa.”
“Why don’t you?”
Her lip quivered a little, but she controlled it, and he saw no sign of emotion. “Because I wouldn’t have a good time.”
“I’d like to know why you wouldn’t,” he returned a little testily. “Your aunt Mildred is the best sister I had. She’s a pretty fine person, Elsie, and she’s always wanted to know you better. She says Cornelia’s turned out to be a lovely young woman, and they both want you to come. She’s sure you’ll like Cornelia.”
“Maybe I would,” Elsie said, moodily. “That isn’t saying Cornelia’d like me.”
“Of all the nonsense!” he cried, and he laughed impatiently. “How could she help liking you? Everybody likes you, of course. Mildred says Cornelia has a mighty nice circle of young people about her; they have such jolly times, it’s fun jus?- watching ’em, Mildred says; and she enjoys entertaining a lot. They have that big house of theirs, and they’re near enough the city to go in for the theatre when they want to and —— —”
“I know,” Elsie interrupted. “They’re great people, and it’s a big, fashionable suburb and everything’s grand! I’m not dreaming of going, Papa.”
“Aren’t you? Well, I’m dreaming of making you,” he retorted. “You haven’t been there since you were a little girl, and your aunt says it’s shameful to treat her as if she lived in China, when it’s really only a night or day’s run on a Pullman. They want you to come, and they expect to give you a real splurge, Elsie.”
“No, no,” she said, quickly; and if he could have seen her downcast eyes he might have perceived that they were terrified. “Let’s don’t talk of it, Papa.”
“Let’s do,” he returned, genially. “I suppose you think that because you’re bored by this little set of young people of yours, here, you’ll be bored by Cornelia’s friends. I don’t know, but I’d at least guess that they might be a little more metropolitan, though of course young people are pretty much the same the world over nowadays.”
“Yes,” Elsie said in a low voice. “I’m sure they would be.”
“More metropolitan, you mean?”
“No,” Elsie said. “I mean they’d be the same as these are here.”
“Well, at least you might give ’em a try. They might prove to be more—”
“No,” Elsie said again. “They’d be just the same.”
This was the cause of the obstinacy that puzzled and even provoked him during a week of intermittent arguing upon the matter. Elsie was sure that one thing he said was only too true: “Young people are pretty much the same the world over nowadays”; and in her imagination she could conjure up no picture of herself occupying among her cousin Cornelia Cromwell’s friends a position different from that she held among her own. They would be polite to her for the first hour or so, she knew, and then they would do to her what had always been done to her. They would treat her as a weightless presence, invisible and inaudible, a left-outer.
Her aunt and Cornelia would expect much of her; and they would be kind in their disappointment; but they would have her on their hands and secretly look forward to the relief of her departure. Elsie could predict it all, and in sorry imaginings foresee the weariness of her aunt and cousin as they would daily renew the task of privately goading reluctant young men and preoccupied girls to appear conscious that she was a human being, not air. The visit would mean only a new failure, a new one on a grander scale than the old failure at home. The old one was enough for her; she was used to it, and the surroundings at least were familiar. The more her father urged her, the more she was terrified by what he urged.
“I’ve made up my mind to compel you,” he told her one evening in the library. “I’m serious, Elsie.”
She did not look up from her book, but responded quietly:— “I’m twenty. Women are of age in this state at eighteen, Papa.”
“Are they? I wrote your aunt yesterday that you’re coming.”
“I wrote her yesterday, too. I told her I couldn’t.”
“No other explanation?”
“Of course I said you needed me to run the house, Papa.”
“I didn’t bring you up to tell untruths,” he said. “You’ve learned, it seems; but this one won’t do you any good. You’re going, Elsie, and if you want some new dresses or hats or things you’d better be ordering ’em. You don’t seem to understand I really mean it.”
She dropped her book in her lap and sighed profoundly. “What for?” she asked. “Why do you make such a point of it?”
“Because I’ve been watching you and thinking about you, and I don’t believe I’m doing my duty by you. Not as” — his voice showed feeling— “not as your mother would have me do it. Sometimes you cheer up and joke with me, but I don’t believe you’re happy.”
“But I am.”
“You’re not,” he returned with conviction. “And the reason is, you lead too monotonous a life. A monotonous life suits elderliness, but it isn’t normal for youth. Really, you’re getting to lead the life of a recluse, and I won’t have it. If these provincial young people here bore you so that you won’t run about and play with them as the other girls do, why then you’ve got to try a different kind of young people.”
“But you s
aid young people were all the same, Papa, the world over; and it’s true.”
“At least,” he insisted, “your cousin Cornelia’s will have different faces, and you’re going to go and look at ’em. Elsie, you’re not having a good time, and one way or another I’ve got to make you. You need a new view of some kind; you’ve got to be shaken out of this hermit habit you’ve fallen into.”
“Papa, please,” she said, appealingly. “I don’t want to go. Don’t make me. Please!”
At this he rose from his chair and came to her and took one of her hands in his. The room was warm, and she sat near the fire; but the slender hand he held was cold. “Elsie, I want you to,” he said. “I don’t want to think your mother might reproach me for not making you do what seems best for you. Let me wire your aunt to-morrow you’ll come next week.”
Her lower lip moved pathetically, and along her eyelids a liquid tremulousness twinkled too brightly. “I couldn’t—” she began.
“Don’t tell me that any more, Elsie.”
“No,” she said, meekly. “I meant I couldn’t get ready until week after next, Papa — or the week after that. I couldn’t go before December. Not before then, please, Papa.”
He patted her hand and laughed; pleased that she would be obedient; touched that she was so reluctant to leave him. “That’s the girl! You’ll have a glorious time, Elsie; see if you don’t!” he said, and, looking down tenderly upon her shining eyes, never suspected the true anguish that was there.
XXIII. THE STRANGE MIRROR
IT WAS STILL there, and all the keener, when Elsie dressed before the French mirror in the big and luxurious bedchamber to which she had been shown on her arrival at her aunt’s house.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 377
