George Madden Martin

“ The baffling thing here was of a different nature, being Selina herself. You can't crush a bud into its bloom by the mere force of your longing; you can't kiss a child that knows no passion, with passion!
Culpepper, twenty-three himself, but no less sophisticated than he would be when he was thirty-three, pulled himself together, big, good-looking young giant that he was, the effect of whose bodily presence here was always to further dwarf the shabby little parlor. ”

“ Having reached the hallway above, Selina tapped on a door which was ajar at the head of the stairs, the door to Juliette's own room. At the sound, Juliette, in an apron like the one upon her mother, turned, and seeing Selina in the doorway, sat down suddenly on an ottoman at hand and resting her black-tressed little head against the edge of the bureau she was dusting, went into passionate weeping. It was as if the sight of her friend loosed the pent-up flood of her unhappiness.
Quickly enough words equally as passionate made their way through the wild sobbing. ”

“ Everybody in a family ought to know everything."
"I cannot allow such a tone from you, Selina," returned her mother decidedly. "And of whom is it you speak in this disparaging manner? Surely not of your mother? And I will not think you mean your father?"
Her father? Tradition, which meant Selina's own little mother again, told how Mr. Robert Auboussier Wistar at the beginning of things, which was before Selina at all could remember, had made a bold dash and start in life, proprietor of his own inherited iron foundry. It lent solidity and importance to the past, and support to the present. ”

“ Moods have a protean way of changing from roseate hues to grayness. Even the sustaining glory of Cousin Anna's dress seemed threatened, for as the maid removed the striped scarf, it appeared according to the cheval glass, that the radiance of spirit which earlier had appropriated the gown to its wearer, had flickered and expired, leaving the one Cousin Anna's, and the other, Selina Wistar, frightened and ill at ease and unforgivably young. ”

“ You are hard on him right now, Selina, and won't admit you are glad I am going to marry him. And as I don't propose to have you feel so, and as you and I are always going to mean a great deal to each other, I want to show him to you as I see him and always have seen him. It won't hurt you now to begin to see life a little more as it is, my own little girl. We women—I mean you by this, too—have to accept our measure for the part in life we are allowed to fill, through what our fathers are if we remain at home, or through what our husbands are, or come to be, if we marry. ”

“ I don't suppose we ever really deplore the gain through experience, whatever the cost at the time. My love to the little sequestered way-side bloom, Selina. How sweet she was in her sheltered innocence and how touching. Do not forget how we discussed the chances for her, you and I, for a bit more of the world through you, her big cousin?
So? That was it? Miss Boswell with her tender eyes of comprehension was behind this kindness from Marcus? Still one must be thankful even for dictated favors once they are accepted. ”

“ Even in Selina's day a prude was a prude and no girl wanted to be one. On the one side, Mrs. Harrison and Miss 'Hontas Boswell and Aunt Juanita, possibly, too, would have said bluntly, "Look at the facts and try to find out what he means."
On the other hand, Mamma and Auntie, by their profound reticence, conveyed the idea, that once let a young man's attentions to a girl be so marked as to be a fact, and every instinct of maidenliness must erect itself in her mind, making blind alleys of all inquiry, wonder or surmise on her part, as to what such attentions mean. ”

“ And here at the dining-table, all too visible to the front room, sat Miss Emma McRanney, plain, shabby and busy. Her textbooks, open over the table, were shabby as herself, and unlovely. Her hands showed manual work. Selina was ashamed of Miss McRanney, ashamed of teaching Miss McRanney, ashamed of being found thus teaching her by Tuttle Jones. Alas for you, Mamma, once again! You with your strained anxiety, your every effort bent toward that front in life which must be kept up! ”

“ A caressing arm and hand came around Selina's shoulder as she wept on her little mother's bosom, the hand of her father.
"But even so, delightful," said that gentleman comfortingly, "far more delightful, if an onlooker may testify, than you'll ever quite know."
"We sent the borrowed dress home to Anna," said Auntie. "Let's pack the mental furbelows up and send them over to Maud."
"We'll borrow them again," came from Selina in muffled tones of bitterness. "We never learn."
"Or lend her ours, let's be quite honest," from little Juliette. ”

“ If only she could recall!
Miss Dellie Black taught that school, and as Mamma intimated about the stiff collar and the cuffs, her alpaca apron and the gloves upon her hands with their fingers neatly cut off across the knuckles, seemed to be in keeping with her calling. She had a ruler and rapped with it, and a pointer with which she pointed to a primer chart and a blackboard.
But what had she taught? And how had she taught it? Selina shut her mental eyes as it were, as she went along, and concentrated all her forces at recalling. ”

“ And if she fail? If she find no economic salvation for herself through a husband?
Rage, fury, shame, swept through Selina. The symbol of such failure stood piteously before her, Auntie! Auntie with a pittance doled out to her barely sufficient for her church dues and her few garments! Auntie stitching on fine muslin hands with no remuneration from any source for the perfection of those stitches, Auntie with all that magnificent endowment of perfect health and untiring energy that wasted itself so piteously in polishing brasses. ”

“ When Selina returned with him, Uncle Bruce still in his striped underwear, had moved a big armchair under the gas and gotten out some documents from somewhere, and lit an evil-looking and smelling cigar, and dismissed the matter. Aunt Juanita had combed her hair and now was washing her face!
"Wear what you please, sir," said Marcus promptly. "Your dress clothes were sleek with age and misuse, but it was damned impertinent of me to interfere. I beg your pardon, sir, it was none of my business."
"The principle we as a family have always gone on," said Uncle Bruce. ”

“ In his vigor, his strength, his confidence, he was overwhelming. He towered above Selina. To surrender to masterfulness like his? To lose oneself through such dominance? Could she? And be at peace forever in the certainty of his care, and the knowledge the fight was his, not hers? It all were easy then if one could.
Culpepper's blue eyes bold through those black lashes, but softened by solicitude right now, scanned her face, then looked relieved. ”

“ CHAPTER SIX There are Olympians in each group of us, and Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle not only was of the Olympians in Selina's community, but was held by some to be the Olympian. Such is the magic of pre-eminence the name Tuttle sounded chaste and euphonious to the ear.
Selina's aunt and this lady who had gone to school together and were old friends, met down street. If the weakness of Mrs. Tuttle, who was an august but kindly soul, lay in a palpable enjoyment in the overdressing of her large person, her virtues lay in a well-intentioned heart. ”

“ At last Maud broke forth. Judy and Adele flushed as she spoke and Amanthus looked disturbed, but they evidently all stood with her in what she said. "We've been talking about you, Selina. It's as if we still need you and you no longer need us. And watching you, we can see you're different in other ways. You've been giving in, just as you've always given in more than any of us, letting your mother get you the clothes she wants you to have rather than what you want, and pack your trunk when we know how you want to pack it yourself. ”

“ They loved her fair hair drawn in water waves about her brow and temples; they loved her flowing apricot-toned cashmere with its fichu and hand ruffles and its touches of blue; they loved her fine and frankly beautiful face.
They long had known her story, too, from their elders. A rich girl, raised by her uncle, owner of the Selimcroft stock-farm, she had married a man considerably her senior, a person of charm and much social note, who bringing her here to this community, had wasted her property in shocking fashion in his own behalf, and practiced economy almost to scandal upon her. ”

“ Juliette turned indignantly upon Selina as Marcus and Amanthus left. "It's we who're left in the ungenerous attitudes!" hotly. "How did we get there?"
Later, after Marcus in his old hat and shabby cape had returned, and again had departed, with Miss Boswell in his keeping, Selina cast herself upon her mother and burst into tears.
"Are we as impossible, as ridiculous and absurd, as we are to judge we are from what they all imply?" ”

“ At one o'clock, Tuttle Jones, his mother, Mrs. Sampson, his sister, and a bevy of young people were coming by for her in a tally-ho driven by Tuttle. Their destination was the jockey-club, where they would have lunch before the races, the fall trots opening to-day.
Selina had never been to a clubhouse, and for knowledge of races had seen a derby once in company with her father and Culpepper. But she would have given all chances to come of ever seeing the one or the other, if she'd known how to get out of going to-day. Her soul was sick and also her spirit. Papa, haggard and broken! ”

“ My beads, Anna, are going to be coral, the coral of Selina's cheeks right now. The ingenue style of the dress and of Selina, call for coral."
"When a girl is young," said Cousin Maria, "I say have her look young."
"She does, Maria," returned Mrs. Tuttle. "Selina looks altogether young. She's pretty, too, and it's not going to hurt her to know it. It'll do her good instead, and give her spirit. ”

“ Selina's profile as it flashed about on Mamma flushed. Such a young, young profile. Such a young Selina in the plaid dress and the linen collar and the cuffs. Such a child quivering with abhorrence of the act of going to work, and wincing with shame because of the abhorrence. ”

“ This little Juliette had been raised under a certain amount of authority, too, but the authority of a young and complacent father who overindulged his family so long as his own mood was genial, but who when his temper was ruffled, as Maud put it, like the heathen raged. Still a parent and father is parent and father. The foundation tenet to all known ethics in the family relation as Selina was familiar with them, that of unquestioning obedience to the man of the household, was being repudiated, and this by seemingly crushable little Juliette. ”

“ It was wonderful always, floating back those twelve miles downstream by moonlight. And such moonlight as there was to-night! One wondered what Amanthus found to say to Bliss. Culpepper with his orange and black blazer over his boating togs was lolling back in the stern of their barge beside Selina, and she said as much to him.
He answered good-humoredly, "It isn't Amanthus' business in life to say, as she's often told you. She won't try to say."
Tod Bacon, that nice boy, and Sam Rand, had their mandolins. Their clever picking of the strings ting-ling-a-linged over the broad waters. ”

“ In the world of Selina, in the world of her mother and her aunt, in that of the friends of her youth and their mothers and sisters and aunts, the accolading stamp of position, of gentility, of femininity, lay in the monetary dependence of womankind on its men. ”

“ But it was not her lack of ardor for the tea now in her hand which was dampening her spirits, but the realization that she and her companions were but incidents to a foreground adequately filled for these young gentlemen.
A foreground not even shared by Amanthus, but filled altogether by Mrs. Harrison, beautiful, smiling, and serene, too big, too adequate, too honest and too real to put forward one charm, one attribute deliberately to invite such recognition.
Too big, too honest and too real? Selina caught at the words as they passed through her mind. Could the secret lie in these? ”

“ A thing well-nigh synonymous with womanhood as taught to her!
Which is to say the child restored herself with a long, deep breath, laughed with a disarming little throw back to the head, swept her hands across the plaits she had so busily gathered there in the breadths of her dress, as though she swept away with these all but an everyday interpretation of Culpepper's word, and spoke frankly, frankness being a most excellent dissembling weapon. ”

“ Selina had a nice voice, clear and sweet and when she was happy and merry, full of cadences. It rang silvery in its notes now. "I don't suppose. Nobody does when it's Aunt Juanita. Mamma says she's been hunting information of various kinds about women for fifteen years."
It was such a wonderfully pleasing thing to hear that silvery laugh, Tuttle Jones set about awakening it again.
About the time cloaks were being sought, Culpepper came strolling to hunt Selina.
"I'll walk back with you," he said easily.
We're all pitiable and ignoble, which is to say, human creatures. ”

“ The touch of his hand on hers was gone, she was on the snow-wet step, he below, lifting his hat—correct Tuttle!—even in the swirling snow, bidding her hurry in and change her damp garments, saying good night, gone.
And she? Giving herself one moment to stand there, one pulsing, palpitating, trembling moment before she opened the door and went in to shabby, dreary, ordinary things, might not ask herself what this come upon her was? Nor what it meant? Nor what it portended? This warm, stealing, permeating, this vitalizing glow, this rush as of rosiness through her body? ”

“ Somehow girls and women never seem to know for themselves. I wonder why?"
Mrs. Wistar's voice murmuring defensively came in from the next room. "I hardly follow you, Mr. Wistar! I'm sure it was harder on me than on Selina to have her so disappointed. No girl was ever more shielded than she has been from all possible disappointments, and such things, up to now, nor spared where it was possible to spare her!" ”

“ Mamma put her head in at the door. "Ready, Selina? They're here!"
The open carriage at the gate, Selina went out to it. Its upholsterings and its coachman were in plum color. Mrs. Tuttle was in strawberry, the newest [300] shade of the day, with a parasol to match, and Mrs. Sampson a stout, lively and good-humored matron, was in raspberry, the next newest shade. The effect of the whole, equipage and ladies, was, well—resplendent. Selina, with a new rose on her last spring's hat, and new buttons and a new satin collar on her last year's coat, got in amid the elegance of it. ”

“ Juliette with Algy at her side was with the crowd as they left the car, and with baskets, wraps, and what not, went down the steep, rock-paved levee, to the river at its foot, rolling broad and serene, the evening ferryboats just starting on their pilgrimages, [378] and a steamboat here and there laid up at its wharf, the red of the sun at the horizon line, turning their white paint to rosiness. ”