Bobbie, General Manager. Olive Higgins ProutyЧитать онлайн книгу.
the back of their necks. I simply dreaded unpacking that pitiful little trunk of mine. I wished it could be lost.
My room-mate's name was Gabriella Atherton, but when I entered the room which I was supposed to share with her I wished she had been plain Mary Jane. The bureau was simply loaded with silver things—silver brushes and mirrors and powder-boxes, and at least three silver frames with the stunningest men's pictures in them you ever saw. The walls were covered with college flags, and the window-seat was banked with college sofa-cushions. Why, I didn't know a single man, except high school boys, great awkward creatures like the twins. I hoped Gabriella wouldn't find out that I had never been to a college football game in my life, nor been invited to one either. My one last hope for consolation lay in the possibility that Gabriella was older than I. I thought she must be at least twenty to know so many men. When we were finally alone, getting ready to go to bed I asked her. My heart sank when she announced that she was only sixteen. I know exactly how a mother feels now when another person's baby born a month before hers talks first and shows signs of greater intelligence. I remember I was standing before my chiffonier braiding my hair for the night, pulling it flat back as I always did and fixing it in one tight short little braid, when Gabriella announced she was sixteen. Why, she looked old enough to be married, and I—I gazed at my reflection—I looked like poor Sarah Carew in the garret. No wonder the family wanted to send the old spoon away to be polished. No wonder!
"One of the girls," Gabriella went on to say, "has had a Box from home. She's asked the whole school to a Kimono Spread in her room. Do you want to go?"
A Spread! My heart leaped! And then I got a glimpse of Gabriella in the glass before me. She was a vision in a flowing pink silk kimono with white birds on it. She had her hair fluffed up on top and tied with a wide pink taffeta ribbon—she actually slept in it—and little pink shoes on her feet.
"I guess I won't to-night, thanks," I said, not turning around, for I didn't want her to see what a peeled onion I looked like; "the train made me car-sick." And I snapped the elastic band around the end of my braid.
After Gabriella had gone I turned out the light and crawled into the little brass bed, which Miss Brown had said was mine; but I didn't go to sleep. I just lay there listening to the muffled laughter and chatter at the end of the hall. It was only nine o'clock and lights were not due to be out until ten. I hated lying there wide awake and I kept wondering how I could get dressed in the morning without letting my room-mate see all my plain ugly things. Then I remembered that I had left my common cheap little wooden brush, the shellac all washed off with weekly scrubbings, on top of my chiffonier. I jumped up quickly and hid it in the top drawer; then suddenly I turned on the light, sat down in my horrid red wool wrapper, and wrote something like this to Alec, blubbering and dabbing tears all through it:
"Dear Alec,
I'm here safely, I've met all the girls and they are perfectly lovely. I'm going to love it. My room-mate's name is Gabriella Atherton—isn't that a beautiful name?—and she is a perfect dear! I can't write long for I am due at a spread; so, so-long until I have more time. This place is full of corking girls. They would, however, consider the twins mere babes-in-arms. Tell Aunt Sarah that Father will want his flannel night-shirts as soon as there is a frost. They are in the all-over leather trunk in the storeroom. The girls will be wondering where I am, so good-night.
"Your enthusiastic
"Bobbie."
Then I went back to bed and bawled like a baby, until I heard Gabriella at the door. Another girl was with her and I heard her say, "Good-night, dear," and Gabriella call back exactly as they do in books and as they did once in my dreams. "Good-night, sweetheart." Thereupon I ducked my head down underneath the covers and pretended to be asleep. A half-hour later, when I felt sure that Gabriella was dead to the world, I opened my eyes and lay awake until almost morning.
But no one needs to think that I was homesick. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me home. I was bound to stick it out or die and I tried not to be a little goose and cry my eyes out. That wouldn't help me to make the best girls my friends and I didn't mean to disappoint Alec if I could help it. I was there for business and I meant to accomplish it. Alec had said he admired that quality.
But Miss Brown's-on-the-Hudson was awfully different from the Hilton Classical High School. They played basket-ball as if it were drop-the-handkerchief: there was no regular team. We exercised by walking two by two for an hour every afternoon. There wasn't the slightest chance for me to shine in athletics.
I was robbed also of my hope of being a genius. There was a girl who could write ten times better than I. It was after one of her poems was read out loud in class, that I discovered I wasn't gifted in the least. She was the marvel of the school, and whenever there were guests she was asked to read her poems herself. They were the deepest things I ever listened to—about the soul, and sorrow, and "swift sweet death." She looked like a genius too. She had jet black hair and wore it in long curls tied loosely behind, big dreamy eyes, and pale transparent skin. She wasn't very healthy and always wore black. Her mother was an artist in Florence, and Lucia (think of it, my name, but pronounced so differently) Lucia had always lived in Italy until she came to school. I tell you, as soon as I saw her and listened to her poetry, I was terribly thankful that I had never let any one know that I had ever thought I could write. I got A on my compositions, and A in everything else, but no one imagined that I was a genius. They considered me just a plain everyday shark. But I tried not to be offensively smart. I flunked on purpose once in a while; I passed notes in class whenever I could find any one to pass them to; I got so I could turn off a "darn" as neatly as any of them, and pout and say "The devil!" when I pricked my finger pinning down my belt. For I was determined they shouldn't think me a "goody-goody" or a "teacher's pet." I even crocheted a man's tie and pretended it was for a friend of mine at a fashionable preparatory school in Massachusetts. I went so far in my frantic endeavours, as to cut out from old magazines all the pictures I could find of an actor, whom, by the way, I had never even seen, and stuck them in the corners of the glass over my chiffonier.
Oh, I tried to be like the other girls. I knew they hadn't liked their first impressions of me, but I tried to show them that I wasn't as queer as I looked. I tried to be pleasant and accommodating; I tried to be patient and bide my time; I tried—heaven knows I tried, Alec—but it was no use. From the start it was absolutely no go. I couldn't make even the worst of those girls my friends. I tell you I did my level best, but I hadn't the clothes, nor the silver bureau-sets, nor the frames, nor the men's pictures to put into them, nor the college banners, nor the mother to send me boxes of food from home. Those girls treated me as if I were the mud under their feet. If I was in the room, I might as well have been the bed-post for all the attention they paid to me. If I was told to walk with one of them during "Exercise," that one was pitied by the rest. They looked upon my clothes as if I were a Syrian or Turk in strange costume. I used to get hot all over whenever I had to appear in a dress they had never seen. And, O Juliet—good old loyal Juliet—you were afraid I would be spoiled by admiration! I simply have to chortle with glee when I think of your warning to your old chum. A swelled head! My eyes got swollen instead, old Jule, with tears! And Father—dear Father—there wasn't a single soul for me to be kind to. I was the most miserable one in the whole school, the most unpopular, the most forlorn. And there's the truth in black and white.
After about five weeks of an average of ten insults a day, I got tired. Too long a stretch on the diet of humble-pie doesn't agree with me. There's an end to every one's patience. One day in late November little Japan up and fought; and once started, there was no stopping her. You see the girls had gotten into the habit of asking me to help them with their lessons. At first I was pleased, for I naturally thought that if they would let me see their stupid minds, they would admit me into a few of their intimacies and secret affairs—and oh, I did long to be friends with them! But I discovered they had no such intention.
One night I went into Beatrix Fox's room, by appointment, at quarter of ten. She was waiting and ready for me, but I could see the remains of a spread on the table and desk—crumbs, nutshells, olive-stones, and a half-eaten bunch of Tokays.
"Oh, here you are!" said Beatrix, and with no attempt at concealment, she went on. "I've been