By and by, the dinner bell rang and she went sulkily down, took her place, and ate in silence until Eleanor, full of her afternoon, put another sting in the already very sad heart of her sister. It appeared that she had gone to the committee meeting at the Garner’s, probably after her sister had left the hedge.
“Mamma,” she said, with the haughtiness of her lately acquired young ladyhood, “I do wish you would reprove Effie. She is forever making herself obnoxious. I found out that she had been poking around trying to get in with our crowd. She’s nothing but a child!”
“It’s an awful pity you and Eff have to live in the same town with each other, Nell, she gives you so much trouble,” put in Johnnie, the outspoken younger brother.
“Johnnie, you’re very saucy, and that isn’t smart at all,” responded Eleanor, flattening her eyelids down in a way she had that she fancied was very reproving to her brother.
“Mamma, I wish you would tell Effie that you won’t allow her, under any circumstances, to go with us next week on our ride. She is getting very troublesome. I—”
But Eleanor was interrupted by Effie, whose black eyes flashed fire and tears as she rose from the table, her dinner only half finished.
“It isn’t in the least necessary for you to ask Mamma to do any such thing. I wouldn’t go if you dragged me! I know exactly every word those precious girls of yours have said about me this afternoon, and they are a mean, selfish lot, who care nothing about anything but clothes! I only hope you’ll enjoy the company of those who speak that way about your sister. I should not, not even if they had been talking about you. But you may rest easy about me; I won’t trouble you anymore. I’ve been made to understand most thoroughly that nobody in this world wants me. I’m sure I can’t tell what I was made for, anyway.” And with a voice that trembled with her utter humiliation and defeat, she stalked from the room, her lifted chin and haughty manner barely lasting till the dining-room door shut her from the family gaze, when she burst into uncontrolled tears and rushed upstairs for the third time that day to her own little room.
“Why, what does she mean, Eleanor?” asked the pained voice of the father, laying down the evening paper, behind which he had been somewhat shielded from the avalanche of talk around him. “What have you done to the child? Why hasn’t she as much right to go riding as the rest of you? I thought that was why we bought the seven-passenger car, so there would be plenty of room for anybody that wanted to go?”
“You don’t understand,” said Eleanor with reddening cheeks, and she attempted to explain to her father the fine distinctions of age and class in the society in which she moved. But somehow her father could not be made to understand, and the end of it was that Eleanor was told that if her sister was not welcomed on the ride, then she could not go. Rebellious and angrier than ever at Effie, she declared she would stay at home then. So it came about that the Martin household was not in a happy frame of mind that evening at the close of their evening meal. And the two sisters lay down to rest with hard thoughts of each other.
Effie, as she turned her light out, knelt a moment beside her window to look at the stars and murmur the form of prayer that had been so much a part of her bringing up that she scarcely realized what it all meant. “Help me to be good,” was one of the oft-repeated sentences, and Effie no longer felt it necessary for her thoughts to stay by to see that these words were spoken to the One above who was supposed to be her guard and guide. She fancied herself, on the whole, rather good as goodness in girls went. Now, tonight, as she finished her petition, which was rather a repetition, she looked up to the stars she loved and thought of a scrap of poetry she had picked up in her reading, which she was not well-enough taught to know was wonderful. It ran thus:
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
Poor little, lonely, disagreeable Effie wished as she looked out into the night that she could be like that star and be able to dartle red and blue for someone, so that others might hear of it and want to see her and know her. How nice that would be! That star language evidently meant people, and it meant there was someone, somewhere who could see beauties in some star that everybody could not see. She wondered if ever anybody would think they saw anything good like dartles of red and blue in her, and would feel that they didn’t care after that whether other people’s worlds were great or not, so long as they had her red and blue dartles.
But how silly such thoughts were. If those hateful girls who had talked about her that afternoon had known she had thoughts like this, how they would have screeched with laughter! Her cheeks burned hotly in the darkness at the very thought, and she arose and slammed the window down, warm night though it was, and went to bed feeling utterly miserable. How was it possible for her ever to be different? She could not. She had tried that afternoon and failed most miserably, and she was not one who was likely to try again in the same direction.
Was there anywhere else to turn? Oh, if she but had some wise and good helper who would tell what was the matter, and if she must go on being hated all her life as she had begun.
Then the thought of what the girls had said about her clothes came and drowned all other thoughts, and she drifted off to sleep, planning how she would fix up an old dress that should be the envy of all the town.
Poor child, she was only a little girl yet at heart and was just waking up to the fact that she was growing up and a great deal more would be expected of her.
Perhaps her guardian angel standing by, remembering that she was dear to her heavenly Father, and knowing for a surety there was light coming to her darkened pathway, brushed the tears in pity from her young face, for she dreamed that a soft hand touched her forehead and cooled and comforted her.
But downstairs, Effie’s father and mother were having a serious conference about her.
“I’m sure I don’t know what to do with her,” her anxious mother was saying. “She grows more heartless and careless every day. Today she nearly killed the baby with her impetuosity, and when I tried to stop her before she hit his head against the chandelier, she simply ignored my commands. I wonder if it would do any good to send her away to school. I never believed much in finishing schools, but Effie really needs something to tone her down. She goes rushing through life, without any idea of manners or any thought of others. I’m sure I don’t see how we came to have a child like that!”
“I am afraid nobody understands her,” said her father, with troubled brows. “She seems to me so much like my own little sister Euphemia for whom she is named, and she was a wild little loving thing like Effie, but she would fly up into flinders if people were unjust to her—”
“Nobody has been unjust to Effie,” said her mother coldly. “Everybody would love her if she would be less selfish and rude. I have tried to tell her but she doesn’t even seem to hear me. And Sam, she isn’t in the least like your sister Euphemia. She was mild and gentle and lovely, as I remember her. We should have named Effie Joan of Arc or some outlandish masculine name, for she never will be anything but a disgrace to your sister’s name, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, don’t say that Hester,” said the father in a pained voice. “I’m sure our little Euphemia will grow up some day and understand. If you would just try to talk with her a little about—”
“Talk to her!” said her mother wearily. “I’ve talked and talked and it rolls right off from her. She goes tearing in one door and out the other on her own affairs, and never minds whether I have a h
eadache or whether the baby is asleep or whether there are dishes to be washed on the maid’s day out! She seems a hopeless cause!”
“Now, now, Mother. You mustn’t talk that way about our little girl. I sometimes think perhaps the other children put upon her. Eleanor, now, is a bit overbearing since she has grown up, and she wants to have the whole right to the car. That really isn’t just to Euphemia. The child has as good a right to go on that ride as she.”
“Not if the other girls don’t want her,” said the mother. “They feel themselves older, you know—”
“But they’re not much older, are they? Eleanor is only two years older than Euphemia. That ought not to be such a great difference. And those Garner girls, why the youngest one was born two days later than Euphemia, for I remember congratulating her father on her birth. There is something wrong somewhere. Why don’t they want Euphemia? Aren’t her clothes right?”
“Why, yes—” said her mother hesitantly, a new trouble gathering in her eyes. “She is as well dressed for her age as need be. She has never complained. She doesn’t care much for dress. She always preferred getting out and away to play ball or hockey or skate, no matter what she had on.”
“Well, perhaps that’s it,” said the pitying father. “Perhaps she needs something a little more fancy, Mother. We haven’t realized that she was growing up, too, and needed things. She ought to be dressed right, of course. I know you’ve been trying to economize so we could get the car, but things are beginning to look up at the office a little, and I think pretty soon we’ll have things a little easier. You get Euphemia what she wants, Mother. I can’t bear to have her look the way she did tonight. It isn’t right for a child.”
“But she really has never expressed a desire for new clothes,” said her mother thoughtfully. “All she wants is to get off on that bicycle of hers. I’m afraid she’ll never grow up.”
“There are worse faults than that, Mother, worse faults. I believe it might be worse to grow up too soon.”
“Yes,” sighed the mother. “I’m afraid Eleanor has done that. She seems really hard on her sister sometimes, although I think it’s just because she’s so sensitive about what the other girls think. Eleanor is a good girl.”
“Well she is all wrong in this matter. She really has no right to cut her sister out of going on a ride.”
“Now Father, I’m not so sure,” said the mother. “You know Eleanor didn’t get it up. The girls invited her, and they didn’t ask Effie.”
“Well they should have! They asked for the car, didn’t they?”
“Well, but that didn’t make it necessary for them to ask all of the children, and Effie has never been in that crowd.”
“Well, if she wants to go now I think she has a right!” declared the father.
“No, not unless she has made herself welcome. I’m afraid it is Effie’s own fault that she is not invited.”
“Well, Mother, you look into the matter and see if there can’t be something done for Euphemia. I can’t have my sister’s namesake turning out a failure in life, and that’s what she’ll be if something isn’t done for her. I’m afraid I will never forget her face when she said she didn’t know what she was born for anyway, and that she had found out there wasn’t any place in the world where she was wanted. That’s a pretty serious thing for a girl to get into her head, I think.”
“It isn’t likely that she really meant all that,” said her mother. “She was just angry. She’ll likely have forgotten it all by tomorrow. I never heard her say anything like that before. She usually doesn’t care in the least what people think about her. She is utterly independent and goes her own way, no matter what anybody says. She is more like a boy than a girl.”
“I can’t think that, Mother,” said Effie’s father, shaking his head. “There was a real depth to her tones. You look into it and see if you can’t get at the inwardness of this thing. Somebody must have done something pretty ugly to her to make her look as she did at the dinner table tonight.”
But the next morning Effie came swinging downstairs, whistling in loud piercing tones and waking the baby, who had had a bad night with two teeth he was cutting and had just dropped off to sleep. Both Father and Mother looked at her with stern eyes and sharp reproofs. Indeed, to the newly awakened Effie their words were so unjust and cutting that she slammed out of the back door without her breakfast and, jumping on her bicycle, rode off into the country and spent a furious two hours pedaling away and thinking hard thoughts of her parents, her sisters, all the girls in town, and her world in general, finally working off the surplus fury and coasting back down the hills toward home another way around, whistling to keep up her courage. No one should know how hard she was hit and how much she cared that no one loved her. Let them all be hateful to her if they would. She could stand it, and she would see if she could not beat them all in spite of everything. Maybe if she got her dress fixed up they would think more of her. Now that she thought about it, everybody was always loving and nice to Nell when she had a new dress on. Nell could get anything out of her father when she was dressed up. Dress must make a great difference in this world. She had always scorned it as among the necessary bothers of living. Now she began to see that it might be a desirable accessory. At least she would try it.
She rode into the yard with grim determination upon her face, skirted the driveway, and entered by way of the kitchen. She secured a few crackers, an orange, and some cake and stole up the back stairs to her room, where she set herself to examine her wardrobe and see what could be done with it.
Chapter 3
It was like Effie not to take anyone into her confidence, but to embark on her new enterprise alone. She even took some of her own hoarded money that she had been saving to buy a new tennis racket and went and bought some fashion magazines instead of going down and asking Mother for hers. She had a feeling that if she worked this thing out, it had to be done wholly on her own initiative. Nobody else must know. In fact, she felt if anybody did find out that she was trying to be different, she would certainly have to stop trying.
All the spare time that Effie had outside of the duties actually required of her, she spent in her room, with an occasional intermission when she would mount her bicycle and ride afar furiously, returning to a new attack upon her self-imposed task. She meant to get that new dress done by the day of the ride! Not for any special hope or reason that she entertained, not for the possibility of being seen by any of the party, for she scorned such praise, but just for her own satisfaction, she wanted to get that dress done before the day of the ride.
If anyone had been in the habit of noticing Effie’s movements, she certainly would have excited the family curiosity now, for it was unheard of that she should remain in the house while the great out-of-doors called her. If they thought anything about it or noticed that she did not go out so much, or was absent from the public tennis courts or the baseball field where she had been wont to hover, they merely thought she was off in the hammock somewhere reading. Nobody paid much heed to Effie, from morning to night, except to blame or complain of her. Only the mother, with her reawakened anxiety, watched her, listened at the hall door for her step, hovered near her locked door, anxious lest some new phase of this ugly duckling’s development was in the process of being evolved, relieved that no apparent catastrophe seemed to result from her long sessions in her room.
For Effie had decided, in the course of her meditations, that the very first thing needed in the building of a noteworthy character was a neat, stylish sport suit she could wear on her bicycle or for tennis or golf, if she ever got a chance to play. And while that is perhaps not the usual way for a young person to set about living a different life, nevertheless, her mother and her guardian angel were pleased.
Effie was not fond of sewing, neither was she adept in the art, for she loved her books and her outdoor life too dearly. But she was ever one who, if her will and desire were great enough, could do almost anything she tried to. So it was not su
rprising, as the days went by, that she really was accomplishing marvels in the way of making quite a pretty sport dress out of her sister’s old school dress, having actually thought so far as carefully to rip, clean, and press it before beginning to make it up.
Effie had also surprised her father and sister when she found out what commands her father had laid upon Eleanor concerning the ride. She had gone to him and asked him to allow Eleanor to go, telling him she honestly did not wish to go and would not feel at all happy to have Eleanor kept at home. This she did, not because she had attained any great degree of self-sacrifice in her spirit, but being of a practical turn of mind, she saw no sort of use in keeping her sister away from a pleasure, which she knew by personal yearnings, she would enjoy so much, just because she, Effie, was debarred from it. Furthermore, she knew Eleanor would be sure to tell the girls why she could not go, and they would probably feel obliged to ask her for Eleanor’s sake, and she wanted to have nothing more to do with that ride. Her cheeks burned with the thought of it. Ugly ride! And ugly day when she had lain and listened to a description of herself as others saw her. She felt as if she had grown years older since then. Now and then when pride and pleasure in her new dress would lift her up beyond her gloomy thoughts, there would come to her with a sudden pang the thought, What is the use of making it when I’m not wanted anywhere to wear it? But she kept steadily on, and through her mother’s help, given unsuspected here and there, for the mother had more sympathy with her untamed little girl than the child knew, she actually had it in a wearable condition a few days before the day of the picnic.
And now there was a revelation for the mother, for she found that Effie, her third daughter, the girl who was always a tomboy and tore her clothes as soon as they were on, or soiled them, or put them on awry, and who had come into the family after so many others that she had been obliged by the force of circumstances and the state of the family purse to wear other people’s cast-offs so much, now stood arrayed in a dress that fitted her lithe, strong young form, and was neat, trim, and stylish. She was actually pretty. Never had anyone called Effie pretty since she was a little baby and the aunt for whom she was named had come to see her and said she was a pretty baby, but it wouldn’t last, she could see that with half an eye. Pretty babies always made ugly grown folks, and everybody had repeated that until it came to be a settled fact that Effie was not pretty. She had long ago understood it so herself and accepted the fact firmly, if a little bitterly. Eleanor, everybody agreed, had beautiful eyes, and with rich complexion and ready wit was not only handsome but very bright. But now the mother saw in this other daughter a pretty vision where she had not expected it, and suddenly put her arms around her child’s neck, folded her close, and called her “My little Euphemia,” as she had called her when she was a wee baby and her mother had had time to sit for three whole weeks and just love her and cuddle her and see all her baby charms.