Читать книгу Behold, this Dreamer - Charlotte Miller - Страница 13

Elise Whitley was in trouble. Again. Not that she was in trouble alone, for she rarely if ever was. Phyllis Ann Bennett, sitting at her side, seeming to try to appear mature and aloof and above the current situation, was in trouble just as deeply as she.

Eva Perry sat behind the wide expanse of her desk in the principal’s office of the girl’s school, considering the two girls over the tops of her eyeglasses. She rubbed her temples, trying to calm the pounding inside her head. She was in a horrid mood, having been awakened in the middle of the night only to be told these two were in trouble again. It had to be at least 11:30 p.m., if not even later, and she knew that she looked a fright. The heavy cotton nightgown she wore had to be her oldest, buttoned to the throat and wrists and covered by her most shapeless wrap; her long hair was twisted up in rag rollers, and there was not a touch of powder or rouge on her face—but at the moment she did not care. Her head hurt—but, then again, her head always seemed to hurt where these two were concerned. They were constantly in trouble: this time they had been brought back to the school by the police long after school curfew had passed, having been involved in a minor automobile accident while out driving with a number of boys from town; the previous week there had been a food fight in the dining hall, started by these two; less than a month before, a nighttime raid on the instructors’ rooms, stealing undergarments and other unmentionables, only to later strew them out over the campus grounds; a few days before that an improper novel had been found in their possession, a novel so shocking the principal herself had seen to its destruction after severely lecturing both girls—always these two.

They were both sixteen now and ought to know better, both from good, old-Georgia families, families that had money and social standing—and both were spoiled, pampered, and petted, and a burden that had been gladly placed on Miss Perry’s narrow shoulders by their long-exasperated families.

She stared at the two girls over the tops of her eyeglasses for a moment before pushing them up to the proper position on the bridge of her nose, then laced her fingers together and placed them on the desktop before her, leaning forward to look first at one girl, and then at the other, her eyes finally coming to rest on the girl to the right.

“Well, Miss Whitley, do you have something to say for yourself this time?” she asked, and watched as the girl glanced quickly over at her friend.

Elise Whitley was dressed in a straight, rather shapelessly-cut coat of the current fashion, over a low-waisted dress of a pale blue shade that was almost the same color as her eyes. Her hair was cut short, curling in at her cheeks below the dark cloche hat she wore, and was a rich, red-gold color that Eva had rarely seen before in her life. Her hands were quiet, folded tightly over the small purse in her lap; her rouge and lipstick a bit too obvious for a girl her age—but, then again, all the girls at the school were wearing it that way these days. She was not really a bad girl, Eva thought as she considered her across the desktop—if she could only manage to keep herself out of trouble for even a few days. If only—

“Well?” Eva prompted again, waiting for a response.

Elise Whitley looked quickly at her friend again, then back to the principal. “Well, we just—”

“Now, Miss Perry—” Phyllis Ann interrupted, a deliberate tone in her voice as if she were addressing a particularly slow child—a device Phyllis Ann employed quite often, and one which Eva heartily detested. “We were only—”

“Be quiet, Miss Bennett!” the principal snapped, feeling a muscle clench tightly in her jaw. She did not like Phyllis Ann Bennett, in fact, could find nothing even remotely likeable within the girl. Phyllis Ann was spoiled, self-serving, selfish, and vain, with a temper that was often unpredictable, and a manner of speech and behavior that constantly grated on Eva’s nerves—“fast,” Eva thought, not for the first time, for there was no other word she could find to describe the girl.

Phyllis Ann sat back in her chair, a look of anger in her dark eyes as they met those of the principal. Her legs were crossed before her at the knees, her kneecaps visible below the hem of her skirt, as well as the tops of the flesh-pink, rolled stockings she wore. She loudly popped the gum in her mouth and bobbed one foot up and down impatiently, but did not speak again—fast, the principal thought again. The girl had been behind almost all the trouble at the school since she had first arrived here months before—she cut classes; smoked cigarettes, both in her dormitory room and in the girls’ lavatory; spread gossip, often outright lies, about the other girls, freely and without conscience; wore her skirts indecently short; and ran around with all sorts of young men. There were even rumors about the campus that she had been seen leaving a speakeasy late one Saturday night, though Eva could hardly believe that, even of Phyllis Ann.

It seemed all the girls were changing these days, shortening their skirts and bobbing their hair, wearing makeup, and wishing more than anything else they were Zelda Fitzgerald or Clara Bow, and many of those changes Eva could see little harm in. But Phyllis Ann Bennett was another matter altogether. Whatever she was involved in, Elise Whitley and many of the other girls at the school soon followed suit. She was a bad influence, trouble as the principal had never thought to have at her school, with her indecently short skirts, her cigarette smoking, and loose ways—fast, Eva thought again. She even doubted the girl was still a virgin, though she would never dare utter such a thought aloud.

“I was addressing Miss Whitley, Miss Bennett. I will get to you in a moment,” the principal said, watching as the girl loudly popped the gum again and then tilted her chin into the air as if she considered herself to have been insulted. “You were about to explain why you were out riding in a motor car with a number of young men, when you were supposed to be in your dormitory here after curfew?” Eva prompted again, looking at Elise.

The girl glanced again quickly to her friend—for all the world, Eva could not understand how the two had ever become friends in the first place, much less how the friendship had endured over all the years she had been told it had existed. For all their pretensions, they were very different, and, although spoiled and often annoying, Elise Whitley could at times be a likeable girl—but she was just that: a girl trying very hard to be a woman, considering herself very mature and grownup and very worldly, but still nothing more than a child, not even yet knowing what it was to be an adult. Eva doubted if Elise had ever faced one hard truth in all her life, reared in the ivory tower of the Whitley name as she had been, and that bobbing her hair and shortening her skirts had probably been the worst act of defiance she could ever dream up—the girl had a lot of growing up to do if she were ever to be the woman she already considered herself to be, Eva thought; painful growing up if she did not end the friendship with Phyllis Ann Bennett, for it was the principal’s considered experience that girls such as Miss Bennett always came to no good ends, and that they often took everyone else they knew down along with them.

“We went for a drive with some boys who just got a new car. I guess we forgot the time—” Elise Whitley said after a moment.

“You forgot the time—that is until these boys you went riding with ran this new car of theirs into an electric pole, and the police brought you back to the school because these boys had been drinking—” Eva looked at her for a long moment. “Do you realize how fortunate you are that those officers did not take you to jail right along with the boys you were with?” she asked, receiving only silence in response to her question, and thus getting the answer she had expected. She sighed and shook her head. “You’re both sixteen now. You should be old enough to realize the dangers a young lady can find herself in when she’s off alone in a motor car with a strange young man—especially if liquor is involved—”

“But we weren’t drinking,” Phyllis Ann interrupted. “And we weren’t alone. There were two of us, and three of them; and they weren’t strangers—”

“That very well might be the case, but we have a curfew here for a reason, Miss Bennett. A young lady just does not go off to all times of the night with—” But she let her words trail off, realizing they were being ignored by both girls. “Your parents have entrusted your well-being to us while you are at this school,” she said more sternly. “For the time you are here, you will obey our rules, whether you see a need for them or not—am I understood?” She looked directly at Phyllis Ann, but Elise was the first to respond.

“Yes, ma’am—”

“Yes, of course,” Phyllis Ann said, but her face spoke more truth than did her words—she would continue to do whatever it pleased her to do, just as she had always done.

Eva leaned forward, considering both girls again as she rested her arms on the desktop before her. “Your parents will be informed of your little misdeed tonight, and they will also be informed of this one fact, that if you are again found in one more infraction of our rules, one more food fight in the dining hall, or being caught out of the dormitory after curfew for any reason, or anything else along that vein, you will be summarily expelled from this institution—am I understood?”

The two girls looked quickly at each other, and then back to the principal—she was understood.

“For the next two weeks you will both remain in your room in the dormitory at all times when you are not in class. You will take your meals there, study there; there will be no recreation, and no radio—”

“You can’t—” Phyllis Ann broke in, leaning forward.

“Young lady, you are in enough trouble as it is. I suggest that you remain silent—”

Phyllis Ann did not respond, but there was clear anger in her eyes as the principal sat back to consider both girls one last time. “I trust this will be the last time I will see either of you in this office again—” she said, dismissing them both—but, even as she watched the door close behind the two girls, she knew it would only be a matter of time before they would be back, and only a matter of time before they would again be a problem on someone else’s hands other than her own. They never seemed to learn.

By the end of the first day, Phyllis Ann was already bored with the restrictions placed on them. By the end of the third, she was slipping out of their room to visit other girls on their floor, and by the end of the week she was leaving the dormitory itself. Elise envied her friend’s daring, but she lacked the nerve to make such forays herself, staying alone in their room, worrying what excuses she could make should anyone check to discover that Phyllis Ann was not there.

But no one checked. The days passed and she was left alone, often for hours at a time, wondering where Phyllis Ann was, and worrying that Miss Perry or one of the instructors might come by to bring the wrath of heaven down on them both.

On the second Saturday of their punishment, Phyllis Ann was gone most all day, leaving Elise’s nerves in a raw state by the time evening came. She had read until she finished the novel she had been reading, but lacked the concentration to begin another, had tried to write home—but her father was angry with her over Miss Perry’s call, and her mother was worried she might get herself hurt or into trouble on such outings, or expelled if she were ever caught again, and her brothers would never write back. Out of sheer boredom she took up her knitting and tried to occupy her mind and not watch the clock on the table below the windows—where was Phyllis Ann? She’d get them both expelled, slipping out like this and asking Elise to cover for her. Elise had no intention of being sent home, expelled from school, only to have to face her father’s anger; and the reception Phyllis Ann would receive at home would be even so much worse—no, thank you very much.

She swore under her breath as she dropped a stitch in the knitting, and then went back to pick it up again—she hated to knit, just as she hated to sew or to do most of the other domestic chores her mother had expected her to learn by the time she had entered her teens. She hated needlepoint and sewing, knitting, crocheting, and was notoriously bad at doing anything that did not strike her fancy, having long ago discovered that to avoid doing anything one did not want to do, one had often only to appear to be very bad at doing it.

She glanced up at the clock, listening for the sound of footsteps in the hall—Phyllis Ann, one of the other girls, the principal, one of the instructors. Phyllis Ann knew what would happen to them if she were caught out of their room—to both of them, for it would be clear that Elise was covering for her—but Phyllis Ann had a tendency to do whatever it was she wanted to do, no matter the consequences to herself or to anyone else. She had tried for half an hour to talk Elise into slipping out with her, and now Elise wished that she had gone—if she were going to be expelled, at least she could have had some fun beforehand.

She dropped another stitch, cursed again, more loudly and profanely this time, then flung the yarn and needles across the room, missing Phyllis Ann by only a bare few inches as she slipped in the door and closed it again quietly behind herself, one arm holding something hidden behind her back.

“Having a tantrum, are we?” Phyllis Ann asked, a vicious smile on her face as she came farther into the room.

“Yes, we are,” Elise snapped, staring at her.

“My, my—it must come from being locked away here all day long, all by yourself—”

“Where have you been?” Elise was in no mood for the game—Phyllis Ann had gotten her into this in the first place; it had been her idea to go out riding with the boys, her idea to stay out as late as they had stayed out. “I’ve been sitting here having seizures every time there was a sound in the hallway, afraid old lady Perry would come by to make sure we were both here. I don’t know what I’d have said if she had checked and found out you were gone—”

“You’d have thought of a convincing lie.”

“Or maybe I’d have told her the truth, that you slipped out because you were bored out of your mind with staring at the four walls?”

“Of course not. You know you’d never squeal on me. You’d have thought up some excuse.”

The conviction in her voice and in her expression irritated Elise all the more. “Well?” she asked after a moment, a little too sharply.

“Well, what?”

“Well, where have you been?”

“Into town. I went shopping—couldn’t find a thing to buy—”

“That’s fortunate, or how would you have explained a new dress in the chiffonier with supposedly no way you could have bought it?”

“We’d have thought of something.” Phyllis Ann smiled.

Elise ignored the remark. “Where else did you go? What is it you’re hiding behind your back?”

The other girl grinned and slowly brought out a small package wrapped in brown paper. “I came through the kitchen on my way in. Brought back the plunder—” she said, peeling back the wrappings to reveal two large pieces of chocolate cake that had recently been covered with a thick, dark icing, icing that now mostly adhered to the brown paper. “I felt sorry for you, sitting here all by yourself all day. I thought you deserved a present—” She sat down on the bed beside Elise, and the two set about enjoying the cake, eating it with their fingers straight off the paper, until the last bite was finished and the last bit of sweet icing licked from sticky fingers.

“Did you go anywhere else?” Elise asked, licking chocolate off her thumb, but receiving only a secretive smile in return.

After a moment Phyllis Ann rose and pulled a small book from a pocket of the coat she still wore, then shrugged the coat off and tossed it carelessly onto the back of a nearby chair.

“I thought you said you didn’t buy anything—”

“I lied.” Spoken easily enough. Phyllis Ann was good at lying.

“Is it—” Elise began, but did not have to finish; she already knew the answer from the look on Phyllis Ann’s face. She accepted the small book, turning it over in her hands, already knowing what it was—a novel, like one of the many that made the rounds of the girls at the school, considered shocking by the instructors on the few occasions when they had been found, but gloried in by the students. Miss Perry had caught them with one a month or so before, and had burned it right before their eyes once she had read several of the passages— “risqué” she had called it, and Phyllis Ann had rushed to look the word up in the dictionary, disappointed to find out that it meant only slightly improper, when the girls considered the books to be so much more.

The novels were the most popular reading material on the campus, above French texts and the fine literature the girls were expected to read. Often they were little more than suggestive, poorly-written tales of young virgins in bustles and pantalettes, girls eager to be deflowered; other times they were the popular novels of the day—Fitzgerald, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Cabell—bestsellers, for it seemed everyone was interested in sex these days; at other times they were nothing less than pornographic, with little else but page after page of the sex act—Elise knew her mother would die of mortification if she even thought her daughter knew such novels could exist, much less that she had read one. But, at the moment, her mother’s opinion did not seem to matter. The books were highly interesting, as well as instructive—besides, all the girls were reading them, and there could be nothing wrong with that.

“We haven’t had it before, have we?” Elise asked, examining the cover and then opening it to skim through several of the pages.

“No, they said it was new—” Where Phyllis Ann got the books Elise did not know or care to ask. Phyllis Ann and several other of the more daring girls easily kept the school supplied, and it did not seem to matter.

Phyllis Ann took the book out of her hands and sat down on the bed beside her, opening the slim volume to a page at random and beginning to read, her lips moving silently with each word. Elise moved closer and read along, having to wait at the bottom of each right-hand page for her friend to turn to the next, for Phyllis Ann read much the slower of the two.

After several pages, Elise sat back, feeling her cheeks color with even the idea of—“I wonder if it’s really like that?” she mused aloud.

“What, little girl—a man, or sex?” Phyllis Ann asked coyly, looking closely at her until Elise felt her cheeks grow even hotter.

“You know what I mean.”

Phyllis Ann closed the book and moved to her own bed to stretch out on her back with her hands crossed beneath her head, staring up at the white-painted ceiling overhead. “It’s all the same anyway, men and sex—and it’s even better—”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know—”

“Oh, wouldn’t I, little girl?” Phyllis Ann looked over at her with clear meaning in her eyes—but Phyllis Ann was good at that.

“I don’t believe you. You haven’t done anything any more than I have—”

“I frankly don’t care what you believe,” Phyllis Ann said, looking at her again, and Elise did not know whether to believe her or not. She could say the most shocking things in the most convincing manner, whether they were true or not, until Elise never knew quite what to believe of her.

She decided now that it was best to change the subject, kicking off her shoes to stretch out on her stomach on her own bed, her arms crossed beneath her chin. She lay quiet for a moment, thinking. “I wonder if married people do it all the time?” she asked, staring at the headboard—somehow she could not imagine her parents “doing it,” though she knew they must have at times in the past; she and her three brothers were evidence enough of that.

“They do it more with everybody else than they do with each other,” Phyllis Ann said, and Elise looked over at her, shocked again. “That’s why I’m never going to get married. I’ll take rich lovers instead—men spend more money on their mistresses than they do on their wives, anyway—”

Elise stared at her for a long time, unsure as to whether to believe her or not. After a moment, she decided to change the subject again, resting her chin back on her crossed arms to stare at the headboard once more. “Oh, I’m going to get married,” she said. “I’m going to have a big wedding, with all the trimmings and tons of flowers, and a beautiful dress—”

“And who shall you marry, little girl?” Phyllis Ann taunted, looking over with a smirk. Elise ignored the tone in her voice.

“Oh, he’ll be tall and handsome, and rich of course. He’ll be a college man, and a poet, and he’ll write long, romantic letters to me if we’re ever apart. He’ll help Daddy in his business, and we’ll build a big house on the hill not far from my parents’ place—”

“And there’ll be a baby every other year, and you’ll get fat and old, and he’ll leave you—”

Elise gave her friend an angry look, which seemed only to delight Phyllis Ann all the more.

“Everyone knows who you’ll marry, anyway; everyone has always known who you’ll marry—”

“And just who is that?” There was annoyance in Elise’s voice—she already knew what was coming.

“Oh, he fits the bill, all right, little one—except for the tall and handsome part—and I doubt he’ll ever write you love letters, for I’ve never heard him put two words together sensibly in the same sentence in all my life. But he’s rich, all right, and he’ll be a college man—”

“If you mean—”

“Everyone knows you’ll marry J.C. Cooper—James Calvin—” Phyllis Ann said, a note of singsong in the last two words. “The County says you’ll marry James Calvin. Your daddy says you’ll marry James Calvin—” there was a sudden change in her tone, as if she were speaking to a very small child, “—and you’re such a good little girl, you always do what your daddy says, don’t you?”

Elise sat up angrily. “I have no intention of marrying J.C., and you know it!” But Phyllis Ann only laughed, and Elise knew that she had gotten the response she had wanted. Phyllis Ann was right anyway—everyone did think she would marry J.C. It had seemed a foregone conclusion in the County from the moment Hiram Cooper and his wife had produced a son, and William and Martha Whitley had produced a daughter. The Whitleys were the biggest cotton growers in the County, and the Coopers owned a half interest in the Goodwin Cotton Mill—it was a match made in heaven, or in the banks, a match that could not be passed up: Elise Whitley was to marry J.C. Cooper; her father said so—and he was determined to make sure that the marriage took place.

William Whitley intended to have the other half interest in the Mill once Hiram Cooper’s partner, old Mr. Bolt, retired or finally died. The Whitleys produced more cotton than any other place in the County, and, once William Whitley owned a half interest in the cotton mill, with his daughter securely wedded to the other half, there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind who was the most powerful man in all of Endicott County—if there was any doubt even now.

Elise knew everyone expected her to marry J.C.—that is, everyone but her and J.C. themselves. She and J.C. had been reared together, had played together as children, and she loved him just as she loved her brothers—they had climbed trees together, had gotten into fist fights, and had even broken the kitchen window once, which J.C. had taken the whipping for, though it had been she who had thrown the rock—dear, gentle J.C.; but she would not marry him. No matter what the County said. No matter what her father said. And no matter what Phyllis Ann Bennett said.

“I think James Calvin will make a perfect husband for you,” Phyllis Ann was saying now, sitting up on the bed and grinning at her—oh, how Phyllis Ann had always loved to torment and bedevil J.C., which he had always tolerated with a characteristic good nature. She had even taken to calling him “James Calvin” of late, telling him he was much too mature now to go by the more-familiar “J.C.” he had grown up with—how delighted he had been, how flattered; and how she had laughed at him behind his back for that delight.

“I have no intention of—”

“Oh, I think you’ll make a perfect couple. He’ll give you a houseful of little four-eyed Coopers—I bet you’re really looking forward to the wedding night—”

“Oh, shut up!” Elise snapped, and Phyllis Ann began to laugh. Elise got up from the bed and started across the room for the door, but stopped short, remembering they were not allowed to leave the room even to go into the remainder of the dormitory. She sat down in a chair near the door instead, turning her eyes to stare at her friend again. Phyllis Ann laughed only all the harder, flinging herself back on the bed with her arms outstretched, and laughing until the mattress shook beneath her.