Laughing Last by Jane Abbott (the rosie project .TXT) đź“•
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Trude had only one beau and Sidney had never seen him because Trude had had him when she was visiting Aunt Edith White. Trude and Isolde had whispered a great deal about him and Trude had let Isolde read his letters. Then a letter had come that had made Trude look all queer and white and Isolde, after she had read it, had gone to Trude and put her arms around her neck and Isolde only did a thing like that when something dreadful happened. Sidney had hoped that she might find the letter lying around somewhere so carelessly that she could be pardoned for reading it, but though she had looked everywhere she had never found it. She had had to piece together Trude’s romance from the fabric of her agile imagination.
Sidney had often tried to make herself hate the old house. Though it was a jolly, rambly place it was so very down-at-the heels and the light that poured in through the windows made things look even barer and shabbier. Nancy Stevens lived in one of the new bungalows near the school and it was beautiful with shiny furniture and rugs that felt like woolly bed slippers under one’s tread and two pairs of curtains at each window and Nancy’s own room was all pink even to the ruffled stuff hung over her bed like a tent. But Sidney had once heard Mrs. Milliken say to Isolde: “I hope, dear girl, that you will not be tempted to change this fine old house in any way—to leave it just as your father lived in it is the greatest tribute we can pay to his memory.” After that Sidney knew there was no use hinting for even one pair of curtains. But her sisters had seemed quite contented.
There had been a disturbing ring of finality to Isolde’s, “You can’t get away from it,” that seemed almost to slap Sidney in the face. Would they always—at least she and Isolde and Trude, Vick would manage to escape someway—be bound down there in the “quaint” bare house with the Trustees sending their skimpy allowances and long letters of advice and the ladies of the League of Poets coming and going and owning them body and soul? What was to prevent such a fate? They didn’t have money enough to just say—“Dear ladies, take the old house and the desk and the pens and pencils and the old coat—they’re yours—” and run away and do what they pleased; probably a whole dozen of Eggs would not get them anywhere!
“What are you doing mooning there in the window?” cried Vick from the open door. Her arms were filled with a litter of boxes and old portfolios. “Where’s Isolde? I want her to know I dusted things in the study.”
“Isolde’s writing letters. Then she’s going to dye something.”
“On Saturday!”
“Yes. I’m going to receive the League visitors today.”
“You!” Victoria went off into such a peal of laughter that she had to lean against the door frame. “Oh—how funny! What’s ever in the air today.”
“I don’t know why it’s so funny. I’m—”
“Fifteen. So you are. But bless me, child, the Leaguers will never accept you in a middy blouse and pigtails. What’s Isolde thinking of? And you look much too plump! Now—” But Sidney stalked haughtily past her tormenter into the hall.
Vick’s bantering, however, had stung her. The old clock on the stair landing chiming out the approaching hour of the League visitors warned Sidney that there was not time to change her middy with its faded collar; nor to wind the despised pigtails, around her head in the fashion Mrs. Milliken called “So beautifully quaint.” Anyway, if there were all the time in the world she would not do it. She’d begin right now being her own self and not something the League wanted her to be because she was a poet’s daughter! Isolde and Trude might yield weakly to their fate but she would be strong. Perhaps, some day, she would rescue them—even Vicky!
But as an unmistakable wave of chattering from without struck her ear her fine defiance deserted her. She ran to the door and peeped through one of the narrow windows that framed the door on either side.
At the gate stood Mrs. Milliken and a strange woman. Behind them, in twos, stretched a long queue of girls—girls of about her own age. They wore trim serge dresses with white collars, all alike. They carried notebooks in their hands. They leaned toward one another, whispering, giggling.
Sidney’s heart gave a tremendous bound. It was most certainly a boarding school! It was the nearest she had ever been to one! She forgot her middy and the hated pigtails, and the dread of the League. She threw open the door. Mrs. Milliken’s voice came to her: “He died on April tenth, Nineteen eighteen. He had just written that sonnet to the West Wind. You know it I am sure. He bought this house when he came to Middletown but he made it his as though he’d lived in it all his life—we have left it exactly as it was when he was with us—our committee——”
They came walking slowly toward the house, Mrs. Milliken and the strange woman with reverent mien, the wriggling queue still whispering and giggling.
POLA LIFTS A CURTAIN
“Where is Isolde?” Mrs. Milliken whispered between her “Note the gracious proportions of this hall” and “Joseph Romley would never allow himself to be crowded with possessions.”
“She’s—she’s—” Sidney had a sudden instinct to protect Isolde. “She has—a headache.”
“I am so sorry that I cannot introduce you to Isolde Romley—the poet’s oldest daughter,” Mrs. Milliken pitched her voice so that it might reach even to the girls crowding into the front door. “She is a most interesting and delightful and unusual young lady. She was always closely associated with her gifted father and we feel that she is growing to be very like him. This—” smiling affectionately at Sidney and allowing a suggestion of apology to creep into her tone, “This is just our little Sidney, the poet’s baby-girl. Sidney, lamb, this is Miss Byers of Grace Hall, a boarding school for young ladies and these are her precious charges. They are making a pilgrimage to our beloved shrine—” Sidney, too familiar with Mrs. Milliken’s flowery phrases to be embarrassed by them, faced a little frightenedly the eyes that stared curiously at her from above the spotless collars.
“We will go right into the study,” Mrs. Milliken advised Miss Byers. “We can take the girls in in little groups. As poor Isolde is not here I will tell them some of the precious and personal anecdotes of the great poet. You know we, in Middletown—especially of the League—feel very privileged to have lived so close to him—”
Miss Byers briskly marshalled the first eight girls into the small study. The others broke file and crowded into the front room and on to the stairs, some even spilled over into the dining room. They paid not the slightest attention to anything about them. Assured that Miss Byers was out of hearing they burst into excited chatter and laughter. Except for one or two who smiled shyly at her they did not even notice Sidney.
Sidney, relieved that Mrs. Milliken did not expect her to recite the “precious and personal anecdotes,” drew back into a corner from where she could enjoy to its fullest measure the delight of such close propinquity to real boarding-school girls. Their talk, broken by smothered shrieks of laughter, rang like sweetest music to her. They seemed so jolly. Their blue serges and white collars were so stylish. She wondered where they all came from and whether they had “scrapes” at Grace Hall.
The first eight girls filed back into the hall from the study and Miss Byers motioned eight more to enter. There was a general stirring, then the chatter swelled again. Presently a girl slipped into Sidney’s corner and dropped down upon a chair.
“Isn’t this the stupidest bore!” she groaned. Then looking at Sidney, she gasped and laughed. “Say—I beg your pardon. I thought you were one of the girls. And you’re—you’re—the poet’s daughter, aren’t you?” The slanting dove-gray eyes above the white collar actually softened with sympathy.
Sidney thought this young creature the very prettiest girl—next to Vicky—she had ever seen. She did not mind her pity. The stranger had taken her for “one of the girls” and Sidney would have forgiven her anything for that!
“I suppose it is a bore. Isn’t it fun, though, just going places?”
The boarding school girl stared. “Oh, we go so much. There isn’t a big gun anywhere within a radius of five hundred miles that we don’t have to visit. We get autographs and listen to speeches and make notes about graves and look at pictures. Most of the girls get a kick out of it slipping in some gore behind Byers’ back—but I don’t. I travel so much with my family that nothing seems awfully exciting now.”
Sidney wished she’d say that over again—it sounded so unbelievable. And the girl couldn’t be any older than she was. She was conscious that the slanting eyes were regarding her closely.
“Do you like living here and having a lot of people tramp all over your house and stare at you and say things about you and poke at your father’s things?”
It was plain magic the way this stranger put her finger directly upon the sore spot.
“No, I don’t!” vehemently.
“I’d hate it, too. And I suppose you always have to act like a poet’s daughter, don’t you? Do you have to write poetry yourself?”
“No, I loathe poetry!”
“But I’ll bet you don’t dare say so when that Dame in there can hear you! I have to be careful talking about candy. My father makes the Betty Sweets. Don’t you know them? They’re sold all over the world. We have an immense factory. And there isn’t any other kind of candy that I don’t like better. But I don’t dare tell anybody that. Funny, I’m telling you! Our spirits must be drawn together by some invisible bond.”
Sidney’s ears fairly ached with the beauty of the other’s words. She stiffened her slender little body to control its trembling. She tried to say something but found her throat choked. The other girl rattled on:
“I didn’t take any notes. I’ll copy my roommate’s. You see we have to write a theme about our visit. Miss Byers prides herself on the girls of Grace being so well-informed. I know. I’ll put you into it. That’ll be fun. Only you’ll have to tell me something about yourself. How old are you? Do you go to a regular school and play with other girls like any ordinary girl?”
Sidney flushed at the other’s manner and found her tongue in an instinctive desire to defend her lot.
“Of course I go to school. It’s sort of a boarding school, only all the girls go home nights. And I do everything the others do. And I am fifteen.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you. I thought perhaps a poet’s daughter was different. If you don’t mind in my theme I’ll make you different—pale and thin, with curly hair in a cloud, and faraway eyes—”
“That’s like Isolde, my oldest sister, the one who
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