CHAPTER II
THE MISUNDERSTOOD 'TEENS
"O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness" where I could write withoutanybody butting in to ask what I'm doing! I suppose it's the penalty Imust pay now for having been such a vain little peacock in thebeginning. Because father praised my first letters when I was learningto write, I passed them over to the family for more praise beforesealing them. Now they've grown to feel that it is their right to readthem, and to expect it as a matter of course.
It is the same way with all my attempts at stories and verses. If Ishould take to turning the key in the door at this late day, they'dthink it queer, and I'm afraid Barby would feel a bit hurt and shut outof 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 scribblea few lines whenever there is an opportunity. Most of this will have tobe written down on the beach where I am now. It's too hot up in thegarret these days. I sit cross-legged in the sand behind an overturnedrowboat, drawn up out of reach of the tide. All that can be seen of mefrom the house is a big garden hat flopping down over the shoulders ofmy pink smock. Smocks and flopping hats are as common as clams in thisold 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 alittle distance. If any one comes along I begin knitting on a brightblue muffler that I'm making for a Belgian orphan. It seems dreadfullydeceitful, but what else can I do?
I haven't any place where I can keep the book between times. Tippy issuch a thorough-going housekeeper that she knows what is in every drawerand closet in this house, from top to bottom. Neither she nor Barbywould dream of reading a diary or even a scrap of writing belonging toany one else but me. But they think of me as a part of themselves, Isuppose, or as still such an infant that if they were to come acrossthis they'd smile indulgently and say, "The dear child. Was anythingever so diverting and clever!" And they'd read it with that pleased,proud expression you see on a family's face when they discover thebaby'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 godown there now oftener than once a week, and I want to make a practiceof filling a few pages every day.
Fishburn Court would be an ideal place in which to write. It's a clusterof little old houses set around the edge of a sand dune, and hidden awayfrom the heart of the town by some tall buildings. A crooked, sandy laneleads into it from one of the back streets. There's an apple-tree inUncle Darcy's yard with thick grass under it, and a two-seated woodenswing where an old yellow-nosed cat sleeps all day. You can look up andsee billowy white clouds floating in the blue overhead, and smell thesalt of the sea, but it's so shut in that although it's only a shortdistance from the beach you barely hear the chug of the motor boats, andthe street cries are so faint, that you feel you're far, far away fromthe world, like a nun in a cloister.
Sitting there, I've sometimes thought I'd like to be that--a nun in acloister, to walk with rapt, saint-like face, my hands folded lily-wiseover my breast. It must be lovely to feel that one is a pure whitesaint, a bride of heaven. Sometimes I think I'd rather be that than aworld-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 asmany lives as a cat. I'd like one life in which to be a nun, another anactress, another in which to shine as a peerless wit and beauty, thesocial leader in a brilliant salon like that great French madame--Ican't think of her name. Then, of course, there's the life I want for myliterary 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 howa girl feels at my age; although I don't see how one who has been onecan ever forget. And there are _some_ things she shall be allowed todecide for herself. R. B. (As long as I was a mere child Barby seemed tounderstand me perfectly. But now that I lack only one paltry inch ofbeing as tall as she is, she doesn't seem able to get my point of viewat 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 havecruel step-parents who mistreat you out of pure meanness, everybodysympathizes with you. But if you have devoted own parents who hurt youthrough a mistaken idea that they're doing it for your own good, nobodysympathizes with you. I'd rather be beaten or locked in my room on breadand water than have Minnie Waite or Daisy Poole tagging after meforevermore.
I wasn't at home the day Mrs. Saxe came around, organizing the "BusyBees" to do Red Cross work for the Belgians. But Barby put my name downand 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 warstarted "over there." I've rolled bandages every Saturday afternoon andtaken 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 lotof 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 ofthan a plague of sand-fleas. I could have cried when Barby told me whatshe had let me in for, and I couldn't help sounding cross when I saidshe might at least have consulted me first. It was too much to have thatmiserable 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 yearsyounger 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 ourintimacy, just because she is so much older and has college men comingto see her now instead of High School boys and all that sort of thing. Ididn'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 thinkBarby hoped that I'd become so interested in the Busy Bees that Iwouldn't have any time for Laura, and she said a great deal about themneeding a leader, and how much good I could do if I went into it as anenthusiastic president instead of a half-hearted one.
Of course, when she put it that way, the privilege and duty of being aninspiration whenever possible, I had to give in as gracefully as Icould. But I'm done now, after yesterday's performance.
I was over at Laura's to lunch. Her midshipman cousin, Mr. Tucker, wasoff on a fishing trip, but he was to be back early in the afternoon andshe wanted me to take him off her hands while she talked to some oneelse. Her most ardent admirer was coming to call.
So she put my hair up for me the way she wears hers, flat over her earsand a sort of soft, fluffy whirl on top, and loaned me a pair of hergreen silk stockings and high-heeled white slippers, instead of my"growing girl" pumps that Father insists upon. I have somewhere readthat "The consciousness of being well dressed imparts a blissfulness tothe 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 mefeel and act perfectly grown up. I knew that Mr. Tucker thought I was asold as I seemed from the way he called me "Miss Huntingdon." And he hadsuch a complimentary way of looking at me, and was so appreciative of myrepartee that I found it easier to talk to him than any one I had evermet before. I found myself discussing the deep questions of life withhim with an ease I couldn't have had, if I had been conscious ofjuvenile curls bobbing over my shoulders.
But right in the middle of our interesting conversation came the mostawful 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 yodelledand catcalled till I went out on the porch. It was the dreadfullestnoise you ever heard, for the donkey balks every other step unless he'sheaded
for home, and the only way they can make him travel is to shake atin can half-full of pebbles behind him.
They asked had I forgotten that the Busy Bees were to have an extrameeting at my house to dress dolls for the Bazaar, and the whole bunchwas over there waiting. They couldn't start till I got there, me beingpresident, and my mother said for me to get straight into the cart andgo back with them.
I knew perfectly well that Barby had never sent any such soundingmessage as that, but I also knew the only way to keep them from makingmatters worse was to get them away as soon as possible. They weretalking at the tops of their voices, and nobody knew what they'd saynext. The quickest way to stop them was to climb into that babyishdonkey-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, thosehorrid children noticed my green stockings, as I'd never worn that colorbefore, and they made remarks about them and my high heels, when Itripped going down the steps, not being used to them. I would havefallen all over myself if Mr. Tucker hadn't caught me. He didn't seem tohear what they were saying, but Laura's little sister Dodo, who washanging over the railing of the upstairs porch, listening like thelong-eared little pitcher that she is, called down in her high, shrillvoice:
"Oh, Georgina! You've forgotten your pumps, and are going off inLaura's. Wait. I'll throw them down to you."
Well, of course the donkey balked just then and wouldn't start till theybegan rattling the tin can full of stones, and in the midst of thepandemonium there was a whack-bang! on the porch steps, and down came myold flat-heeled Mary-Jane pumps, with my white stockings stuffed insideof them. Mr. Tucker picked them up and put them in the cart. He madesome awfully nice, polite speech about Cinderella, but I was somortified and so mad that I turned perfectly plum-colored I am sure. Aswe 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 sucha humiliating experience. It is a pity, for he is the most congenial manI 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 ofthe affair when I cried, and told her how the girls had mortified andembarrassed me. Said it was foolish to take such a trifle to heart sobitterly; 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, andforget them entirely.
But that was cold comfort. I couldn't tell her that I didn't want to belaughed at, and I didn't want to be forgotten by the first and onlyreally congenial man I had ever met. Yet I might have told her all thatif she had approached me differently. I long to confide in her if shewould talk to me as one woman to another.
Instead, she referred to a little Rainbow Club that Richard and Istarted long ago. We pretended that every time we made anyone happy itwas the same as making a rainbow in the world. She asked me if I wastired of being her little prism, and to think how happy I could makethose girls by interesting myself in their affairs, and a whole lot morelike that.
It made me so cross to be soothed in that kind, kindergarten way thatwhile she was talking I burrowed back in my closet as if looking forsomething and said "_Darn!_" in a hollow whisper, between set teeth. Onecan't "be a kitten and cry mew" always.