Effie felt a sudden joy in those words of her mother’s. She was glad she had tried to do something, even if it was only to make a dress. She went back to her room, surveying herself a long time in the mirror. What a difference it made to have a pretty dress instead of the torn skirt and soiled blouse she had been wearing. Some hint of a Bible verse floated through her head—she was not sure at all that there was such a verse—righteousness probably. She wondered if any robe of righteousness could feel better upon anyone than this little gown she had made with her own hands.
And then a new idea came to her. Why not make more dresses?
With Effie, to get an idea was to carry it out, and forthwith she hurried up to the attic to an old trunk, where all the cast-offs of the family were stowed away.
Fifteen minutes later she came down with her arms full of faded, soiled georgette crepe.
To anyone with less determination than Effie, the bundle would have looked utterly hopeless. The color had originally been pink but had faded to a sickly, yellowish saffron. But Effie, while she ripped off yards of crystal beading, was planning how she would buy a ten-cent package of rose dye and make that discouraged-looking material seem like a summer sunset cloud.
Patiently, she ripped and snipped away until at last it was all apart, a seemingly worthless pile of dirty pink. There was one consolation; there was enough of it. For the dress had been made long ago, when dresses were long and wide and full of ruffles and shirring and pleats, and there was material enough to make three dresses of the modern kind, if it had all been in good condition.
When it was all apart, Effie made a suds of soap flakes and put it soaking while she jumped on her bicycle and rode down to the drugstore for a package of pink dyeing soap.
An hour later, she stood surveying her finished work with satisfaction. The georgette was washed clean, and dyed a lovely shell pink, and lay in soft billows of cloud like a sunset sky on the chair in her room, smooth and apparently as good as new. The last length was stretched smoothly on her bed and pinned firmly, inch by inch, along the edges. She had discovered that it took each strip from five to ten minutes to become perfectly dry and smooth, and she was overjoyed with the result. Now she would have a real evening dress. She had always wanted one when Eleanor and the other girls came trooping in with their pretty, bright, fluffy frocks. Of course, she had no place to wear one, but then it would be a joy just to have such a dress hanging in her closet, to know it was there if any occasion ever should come to wear it. She had openly scorned “dolling up” as she called it, but in her secret heart had wished often that she, too, might look pretty and be admired like the other girls. Well, probably nobody would ever see her in this dress, but she meant to have it ready. Perhaps sometime she would put it on and surprise them all and let them see that tomboy Effie could look nice, too. Anyhow, it would be lots of fun to make it and not let a soul, even Mother, know until it was done. Perhaps if it looked nice, Mother would call her little Euphemia. “My little Euphemia.” How that warmed her wild young heart! And Mother’s tone had been so dear when she had said it. Perhaps she could make her say it again.
She studied the fashion books for a long time to select the right style for this dress, for Effie had ideas even if she had never paid much attention to dress. She wanted it to be prettier than any pink dress she had ever seen before.
She hesitated for a long time as to whether she would finish the edge with picot or with binding, but finally decided on binding. In the first place, there was so much of the material there would be plenty for binding. And while picot would be much easier for her, saving more than half the labor, still it would cost something, and she had already spent more than half her little hoard. She experimented with a few small pieces of the georgette and found that, after some awkwardness, she was going to be able to manage the binding, and it somehow appealed to her because it was so exceedingly neat. Picot edges were apt to grow taggy. Eleanor’s did. And she wanted nothing about her to suggest untidiness. Those girls should see she could be as neat and trim as any of them when she tried. She even planned to make a flower for her shoulder out of the pieces of georgette, like the picture in the fashion magazine, and she grew so interested in trying to cut the long slim petals and make them curl up at the edges by drawing them under a pencil-end quickly, that she forgot to go downstairs and set the table for her mother, a duty that was supposed to be hers on the maid’s day out. “Heedless Effie!” the family called, and her cheeks grew red with the truth of the adjective as she hurriedly put aside her materials and rushed downstairs when the dinner bell rang.
She was quite silent at the table, glowering with drawn brows when Eleanor said sarcastic things about how she slipped out of all her duties.
“I suppose you were off with the boys, playing ball or something,” said Eleanor with a sneer. “I declare, Mamma, I should think you’d be ashamed of having her act like a tough boy! She’s getting so big and bony, and she doesn’t care how she looks. The other day I was passing the boys’ ball field late in the afternoon, and here was Effie in that old gray skirt with John’s red sweater on, and her hair all over her eyes, and she had a baseball bat in her hand and was hitting and running with great strides, kicking up her heels like a wild child. I was mortified to death to think I had a sister like that. I thought when vacation came she would stop playing baseball, but it seems she plays every day—”
“That’s a lie!” said Effie, rising with fury in her face. “I haven’t been out this week! Mother knows I haven’t!” And with a glance of reproach at her mother, she dashed from the room and rushed to her refuge upstairs. She was so blinded with her tears that she forgot all about that last breadth of georgette pinned out on her bed and flung herself despairingly right into it, and never knew she had done it until a pin caught her cheek and tore an ugly scratch across its flushed surface.
Downstairs, she had left an uncomfortable scene again. Effie’s father had risen from the table, pale with distress, his lips actually trembling. “Now, now, children, this must stop!” he said. “I can’t have Euphemia treated this way. Eleanor, you are very much to blame. You have no right to talk that way about your sister before everybody. She is getting almost to hate everybody. You are growing hard and sharp as you grow up. I am distressed beyond measure at your attitude toward your sister.”
“Well, do you want me to shut my mouth and let her be made a laughingstock in the town?” retorted Eleanor. “That’s what she is. None of the girls will have anything to do with her. She isn’t like a girl; she’s like a big, tough boy. I thought it was my duty to tell you.”
“You should come then, privately, and tell your mother or me. You should not bring Effie out in a disgraceful way before the family. I insist that this must stop. Your sister was generous enough to come and ask that I allow you to take the car and go on your excursion even though your friends were unwilling to invite her, a daughter of the house as much as you are. It seems to me that you reward your sister in a very hateful way.”
“Well, you’re not around her much, Dad. You don’t know how mortifying she is. Why, nobody wants her around. Nobody!”
Eleanor’s voice floated up through the open window and came straight to poor Effie’s ears, and her tears started afresh. How terrible was life when her own sister could say things like that! Oh, if she could only die! If she could only get out of it. Nobody would care, only perhaps her father, a little, and well—yes—her mother—remembering her voice when she had said, “My little Euphemia!” But after all, if she were gone, it would be a relief to everybody. She was only a duty, never a delight. Now see how it had turned out today, of all days, when she had meant to be so good and help her mother! She hadn’t done a thing to help. Just stayed in her room and worked for herself. And it would probably always be so. She couldn’t be like other girls and think of things. She couldn’t! Oh why should she try! If there was only someone to help her! Some kind friend who would understand and to whom she was not afraid to go f
or advice. Perhaps there was a way.
But there wasn’t. There was no one in the whole wide world who cared or would help. They expected her to be just what they wanted her to be, and they had no patience with her that she was not, and that was the whole of it! There was no use trying. And why should she bother to make herself pretty clothes? No one would like her any better if she had them. Eleanor would likely laugh and ask her if she was going to play ball in the pink georgette, if she did succeed in making it up so it looked like other girls’ things.
So she viciously pulled the pins out of the pretty pink stuff and rolled the whole thing unceremoniously into a box and put it on the top shelf of her closet, resolving never to touch it again. Then she crept into bed and cried herself to sleep.
For what was the use of trying to overcome her name? She had a bad reputation. Everybody expected her to be boisterous and forgetful and rough and uncivil, and they thought she was even when she wasn’t. They would say in that superior tone of theirs, “Oh, you can’t expect anything else of Euphemia!”
Euphemia! Why did she have to have a hateful name like that? It was a piece of all the rest. She was an odd number with an ugly name. Her hair wouldn’t curl, and her face was fat, and her bones were large, and she liked to play ball with the boys better than anything else in life, and that was the truth, so what was the use of trying to please anybody, anyway?
And at last she fell asleep.
She did not know that a few minutes later her mother, coming up with a glass of milk and a plate of nice things, found her asleep with the tears on her cheeks and a sob still in her throat. And she knelt beside her a long time, praying for her dear, wild little girl, that she might be led into the paths of peace and righteousness, and find out the true secret of right living.
Chapter 4
The morning of the picnic dawned bright and clear. It seemed as if it had been made especially for the occasion, and Eleanor came down in a pretty new dress that the dressmaker had finished especially for the occasion.
Effie, too, donned her new sport dress, but not until after breakfast, and until she had watched her sister leave the house, driving the new car cheerfully, for the rendezvous at Maud Bradley’s.
Then she turned, with a long, quivering breath of envy and hopelessness, and went to get her little new frock from the closet.
She had not taken it out since the night she hung it there, when her new resolves had suffered such a rebuff. The georgette still reposed in an unceremonious roll in the box on the closet shelf, and she wondered why she had tried, anyway, to make a sport dress. She couldn’t wear it to play ball with the boys very well. She would feel hampered lest she would soil it. She couldn’t slide to a base with a pleated silk skirt on, and she couldn’t pitch her ball right for fear she would split the shoulders. But anyhow, she had decided she didn’t want to play ball with the boys anymore. Eleanor had taken all the pleasure out of that. Eleanor would presently take the joy out of everything she had ever cared to do.
Nevertheless, she got herself into the little brown frock with its simple, stylish lines and its bright touch of burnt orange. It was only Eleanor’s old cast-off crepe de Chine, but it did somehow have an air. It really was quite attractive. It made a soft rose color bloom out in her healthy cheeks and matched the brown of her eyes and hair. She stared at herself almost in wonder, and somehow her lonely, wounded heart felt a little comforted. For it was nice to look pretty and pleasing, almost like the other girls.
So she put on her little brown hat, taking unusual care with her thick, unruly hair to put it into smooth and attractive order, and was amazed again to see what a difference a little care made in her appearance. Well, perhaps it was worthwhile to look nice anyway, just for her own self, even if no one else noticed it.
She slipped downstairs, taking care that no one saw her as she stole out to the back kitchen where she kept her bicycle, and in a moment more was riding off down the street.
It was no part of her plan to come into contact with the excursion party that day. Hateful things! She wouldn’t have them see her for the world. It never entered her head that they would not have known her if they had seen her now, riding along in this neat and attractive rig, trim tan shoes and stockings, sitting like a lady on her bicycle, her jaws not working rhythmically chewing gum, her whole lithe figure poised gracefully. She did not in the least resemble the girl whom they all despised, who usually tore along on her bicycle with her head down, shoulders humped, jaws working hard, hair hanging over her eyes untidily, a tear in her skirt, a hole in the elbow of her brother’s cast-off sweater, and her old canvas sneakers covered with mud. No, they would not have known her.
Her object was to go as far from the planned route of the party that day as pleasant roads and her own will could take her. And her mother, watching the trim figure out of sight, so entirely one with the bicycle she rode, sighed and wished she might give her a little of the happiness she knew Effie had longed for so much. Then the mother prayed to her heavenly Father to guide this loved one’s footsteps into His ways and turned back to her baby and her crowding household cares. If she had not been a mother who confided in her heavenly Father, she could not have tolerated the burdens of her daily life.
Effie’s main object was to ride fast and cross the old township road before the party, which had planned its route along that highway, should reach there. Then she would be far beyond any sight of them, and could forget them, and speed away into the sweet country, and try to enjoy herself. For the very act of riding, even though she was all alone, brought intense pleasure to this girl. She rode fast and daringly. She sat up straight and dropped the boyish lean that she had pretended of late, and which she instinctively felt was a part of what Ethel Garner had meant when she had depreciated her riding. She put her chin on a self-respecting level, her eyes flashing a little defiance as she remembered those girls. She would show them sometime that she also could ride like a lady.
That cut about her riding had gone deeper than she was willing to acknowledge even to herself, for she was proud of her ability to ride well. She would chew no more gum as she rode, and she would maintain an irreproachable position. Thinking these thoughts, she sped along faster than she realized and soon had crossed the township road and was fairly out into the open country. The thought of the party was hateful to her. She tried to live in a world of fancied friends of her own, where she was admired and her company sought after, and where no one spoke of her but to praise. She turned her head slightly and smiled in an imagined talk with a pleasant friend of her own conjuring. Her brown suit became the finest of imported garments. The modest home behind towered into a stately mansion; her mother sat in it at leisure, arrayed in rich silks and costly jewels. The fretful little brother was a lovely child with a French nurse, and there were no more cares or troubles or disagreeable things in her joyful life. Naturally, surrounded by such an atmosphere, she was sweet and lovely herself. Not that Effie had ever sat down and charged her own faults to her surroundings, but her inference was that one who had everything lovely about one could but be lovely one’s self. At least, she would for one afternoon be that ideal person and have things just as she pleased. She even met the other riding party in fancy and had them look at her with envy and call to her to join them, while she pursued the even tenor of her way, sorry for them that they had to be disappointed, but altogether so engaged with these other and worthier friends of hers, she scarcely remembered that they had passed, five minutes after.
Even the young man, Lawrence Earle, came into the story, as she in imagination gave him a distant nod in response to his eager greeting of open admiration.
Thus drenching her bruised spirit in the healing uplift of her own imaginings, she sailed out into a day that was perfect as any June day could be. The sky was blue without a sign of cloud. The blossoms here and there, all the way from dandelion to wild grape, were filling the air with sweetness, and the birds were fairly crazy with song, pouring it out into the ai
r like living, visible gold. As she rode along her spirit rose to meet the day, and more and more the sorrows of her life dropped away and left her free. She was like a butterfly, skimming the golden sunshine, a bird on the wing, as lithe and happy, so happy she could almost burst into song herself.
She tried it a little in a clear, throaty contralto, humming a song the boys sang at school. She forgot she was ugly and unwanted, forgot there were excursions from which she was excluded, forgot there were obnoxious young snobs from college who laughed at little tomboys with holes in their skirts and sweaters, forgot there was anything in this world but free air and sunshine and happiness. In short, she was just the little careless Effie again, as she had been before she heard those hateful girls down behind the privet hedge in her own side yard.