Читать книгу Georgina's Service Stars - Johnston Annie Fellows - Страница 3

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness" where I could write without anybody butting in to ask what I'm doing! I suppose it's the penalty I must pay now for having been such a vain little peacock in the beginning. Because father praised my first letters when I was learning to write, I passed them over to the family for more praise before sealing them. Now they've grown to feel that it is their right to read them, and to expect it as a matter of course.

It is the same way with all my attempts at stories and verses. If I should take to turning the key in the door at this late day, they'd think it queer, and I'm afraid Barby would feel a bit hurt and shut out of my life, because we've always shared everything of that sort.

So I just carry the book around with me in my knitting bag, and scribble a few lines whenever there is an opportunity. Most of this will have to be written down on the beach where I am now. It's too hot up in the garret these days. I sit cross-legged in the sand behind an overturned rowboat, drawn up out of reach of the tide. All that can be seen of me from the house is a big garden hat flopping down over the shoulders of my pink smock. Smocks and flopping hats are as common as clams in this old fishing town, full of artists and summer girls, so when I tuck my "wealth of nut-brown curls" up out of sight, nobody recognizes me at a little distance. If any one comes along I begin knitting on a bright blue muffler that I'm making for a Belgian orphan. It seems dreadfully deceitful, but what else can I do?

I haven't any place where I can keep the book between times. Tippy is such a thorough-going housekeeper that she knows what is in every drawer and closet in this house, from top to bottom. Neither she nor Barby would dream of reading a diary or even a scrap of writing belonging to any one else but me. But they think of me as a part of themselves, I suppose, or as still such an infant that if they were to come across this they'd smile indulgently and say, "The dear child. Was anything ever so diverting and clever!" And they'd read it with that pleased, proud expression you see on a family's face when they discover the baby's first tooth or find that it can stand alone.

I'd keep it at Uncle Darcy's, down at Fishburn Court, but I seldom go down there now oftener than once a week, and I want to make a practice of filling a few pages every day.

Fishburn Court would be an ideal place in which to write. It's a cluster of little old houses set around the edge of a sand dune, and hidden away from the heart of the town by some tall buildings. A crooked, sandy lane leads into it from one of the back streets. There's an apple-tree in Uncle Darcy's yard with thick grass under it, and a two-seated wooden swing where an old yellow-nosed cat sleeps all day. You can look up and see billowy white clouds floating in the blue overhead, and smell the salt of the sea, but it's so shut in that although it's only a short distance from the beach you barely hear the chug of the motor boats, and the street cries are so faint, that you feel you're far, far away from the world, like a nun in a cloister.

Sitting there, I've sometimes thought I'd like to be that – a nun in a cloister, to walk with rapt, saint-like face, my hands folded lily-wise over my breast. It must be lovely to feel that one is a pure white saint, a bride of heaven. Sometimes I think I'd rather be that than a world-renowned author.

I often wonder what great part I'm destined to play in the universe. Really the world is so full of things to do and be, that one needs as many lives as a cat. I'd like one life in which to be a nun, another an actress, another in which to shine as a peerless wit and beauty, the social leader in a brilliant salon like that great French madame – I can't think of her name. Then, of course, there's the life I want for my literary career, and one in which to be just a plain wife and mother.

One thing is certain, if I ever have a daughter I'll try to remember how a girl feels at my age; although I don't see how one who has been one can ever forget. And there are some things she shall be allowed to decide for herself. R. B. (As long as I was a mere child Barby seemed to understand me perfectly. But now that I lack only one paltry inch of being as tall as she is, she doesn't seem able to get my point of view at all. She doesn't seem to realize that I've put away childish things, and that when you're in your teens you're done with doll-rags.)

There is nothing so bitter in life as being misunderstood. If you have cruel step-parents who mistreat you out of pure meanness, everybody sympathizes with you. But if you have devoted own parents who hurt you through a mistaken idea that they're doing it for your own good, nobody sympathizes with you. I'd rather be beaten or locked in my room on bread and water than have Minnie Waite or Daisy Poole tagging after me forevermore.

I wasn't at home the day Mrs. Saxe came around, organizing the "Busy Bees" to do Red Cross work for the Belgians. But Barby put my name down and paid the fifty cents dues, and said I'd be glad to do my part. Well, I am glad, but I'd already been trying to do it ever since the war started "over there." I've rolled bandages every Saturday afternoon and taken part in two plays and waited on the table at all the lawn fetes, and I'm knitting my sixth sweater for French and Belgian orphans.

But I draw the line at being a "Busy Bee," and meeting around with a lot of little girls not one of them over thirteen and most of them younger. And Minnie Waite has a crush on me anyhow, and is harder to get rid of than a plague of sand-fleas. I could have cried when Barby told me what she had let me in for, and I couldn't help sounding cross when I said she might at least have consulted me first. It was too much to have that miserable bunch of kids wished on to me.

But Barby only reminded me that I was using slang, and said cheerfully, "Did it ever occur to you, Baby Mine, that you are three whole years younger than Laura Nelson, and yet you want to be with her every moment? Possibly she may feel that you are tagging."

Laura is one of the summer girls, and Barby never has approved of our intimacy, just because she is so much older and has college men coming to see her now instead of High School boys and all that sort of thing. I didn't attempt to explain to Barby that we are as congenial as twins, and that Laura seeks my society quite as much as I do hers. I think Barby hoped that I'd become so interested in the Busy Bees that I wouldn't have any time for Laura, and she said a great deal about them needing a leader, and how much good I could do if I went into it as an enthusiastic president instead of a half-hearted one.

Of course, when she put it that way, the privilege and duty of being an inspiration whenever possible, I had to give in as gracefully as I could. But I'm done now, after yesterday's performance.

I was over at Laura's to lunch. Her midshipman cousin, Mr. Tucker, was off on a fishing trip, but he was to be back early in the afternoon and she wanted me to take him off her hands while she talked to some one else. Her most ardent admirer was coming to call.

So she put my hair up for me the way she wears hers, flat over her ears and a sort of soft, fluffy whirl on top, and loaned me a pair of her green silk stockings and high-heeled white slippers, instead of my "growing girl" pumps that Father insists upon. I have somewhere read that "The consciousness of being well dressed imparts a blissfulness to the human heart that even religion is powerless to give or take away, and its importance can hardly be over-estimated by the feminine mind."

I heartily agree, for just that difference in hair and heels made me feel and act perfectly grown up. I knew that Mr. Tucker thought I was as old as I seemed from the way he called me "Miss Huntingdon." And he had such a complimentary way of looking at me, and was so appreciative of my repartee that I found it easier to talk to him than any one I had ever met before. I found myself discussing the deep questions of life with him with an ease I couldn't have had, if I had been conscious of juvenile curls bobbing over my shoulders.

But right in the middle of our interesting conversation came the most awful racket. A donkey-cart full of girls drove in from the street, past the window where we were sitting. Minnie Waite was standing up, driving, her hair streaming like a wild Amazon. And they all yodelled and catcalled till I went out on the porch. It was the dreadfullest noise you ever heard, for the donkey balks every other step unless he's headed for home, and the only way they can make him travel is to shake a tin can half-full of pebbles behind him.

They asked had I forgotten that the Busy Bees were to have an extra meeting at my house to dress dolls for the Bazaar, and the whole bunch was over there waiting. They couldn't start till I got there, me being president, and my mother said for me to get straight into the cart and go back with them.

I knew perfectly well that Barby had never sent any such sounding message as that, but I also knew the only way to keep them from making matters worse was to get them away as soon as possible. They were talking at the tops of their voices, and nobody knew what they'd say next. The quickest way to stop them was to climb into that babyish donkey-cart and jolt off with them, just like a kid myself.

So I ran back and explained to Laura and made my hurried adieux. Mr. Tucker went down the steps with me to help me in. Of course, those horrid children noticed my green stockings, as I'd never worn that color before, and they made remarks about them and my high heels, when I tripped going down the steps, not being used to them. I would have fallen all over myself if Mr. Tucker hadn't caught me. He didn't seem to hear what they were saying, but Laura's little sister Dodo, who was hanging over the railing of the upstairs porch, listening like the long-eared little pitcher that she is, called down in her high, shrill voice:

"Oh, Georgina! You've forgotten your pumps, and are going off in Laura's. Wait. I'll throw them down to you."

Well, of course the donkey balked just then and wouldn't start till they began rattling the tin can full of stones, and in the midst of the pandemonium there was a whack-bang! on the porch steps, and down came my old flat-heeled Mary-Jane pumps, with my white stockings stuffed inside of them. Mr. Tucker picked them up and put them in the cart. He made some awfully nice, polite speech about Cinderella, but I was so mortified and so mad that I turned perfectly plum-colored I am sure. As we dashed off I wished I could be a real busy bee for about a minute. A vicious one.

Now I feel that I never want to lay eyes on Mr. Tucker again after such a humiliating experience. It is a pity, for he is the most congenial man I ever met. Our views on the deeper things of life are exactly the same.

The worst of it is I can't explain all that to Barby. She made light of the affair when I cried, and told her how the girls had mortified and embarrassed me. Said it was foolish to take such a trifle to heart so bitterly; that probably Mr. Tucker would never give it a second thought, or if he did he would laugh over the incident and the little girl, and forget them entirely.

But that was cold comfort. I couldn't tell her that I didn't want to be laughed at, and I didn't want to be forgotten by the first and only really congenial man I had ever met. Yet I might have told her all that if she had approached me differently. I long to confide in her if she would talk to me as one woman to another.

Instead, she referred to a little Rainbow Club that Richard and I started long ago. We pretended that every time we made anyone happy it was the same as making a rainbow in the world. She asked me if I was tired of being her little prism, and to think how happy I could make those girls by interesting myself in their affairs, and a whole lot more like that.

It made me so cross to be soothed in that kind, kindergarten way that while she was talking I burrowed back in my closet as if looking for something and said "Darn!" in a hollow whisper, between set teeth. One can't "be a kitten and cry mew" always.