CHAPTER XVIII.ELITHE AND CLARICE.
It was the fashionable hour for bathing. The band, which alternated between Oceanside and the Heights, was to play that morning, and the pavilion was full of people watching the bathers diving, swimming and jumping and filling the air with shouts of laughter. Elithe had wanted her aunt to come with her, but Miss Hansford had excused herself and consigned her to the care of a lady, who promised that she should not stay in the water too long or get beyond her depth. At first Elithe looked round for Paul.He was not to be seen, and, thinking he had probably gone fishing, she took possession of her bath room and arrayed herself in her blue suit, which was rather baggy and conspicuous from its over size. She, however, did not think so, and started gayly with her friend across the platform or bridge leading to the water. At the head of the steps Clarice Percy was standing, clad in a fanciful costume of black, trimmed with scarlet, and exposing so much of her person that Elithe felt ashamed for her, and wondered how she could look so unconcerned with so many masculine eyes upon her. Although Clarice had not called upon Elithe, she had seen her several times and knew she was at the bath house, for they had come down in the same car, she sitting in front and Elithe, who got in later, in the rear. Clarice usually bathed at the Tower on the Oceanside, as it was nearer her mother’s cottage, but this morning she was at the Heights for a purpose of her own. Paul had told her the previous night not to expect him the next day, for, if he did not go fishing, he should be at the Heights, as Elithe was to take her first bath and he had promised to see to her.
Paul had talked too much of Elithe to suit Clarice, who sometimes felt that she hated the girl because of his interest in her. She was, however, too politic to show her real feelings. Smiling very sweetly, she said: “That will suit me perfectly, as I am going there, too. I’m told it is not as stony as at the Tower.”
Thoroughly honest and open in everything he said or did, Paul did not see through the ruse, and was rather glad than otherwise to show off Clarice’s accomplishments as diver and swimmer to the people at the Heights. He could attend to Elithe first and her afterwards, and he hoped the fishing party might be given up, as it was at the last moment,and this made him late at the beach. Glancing at the bathers and seeing neither Clarice nor Elithe among them, he dressed himself leisurely, and, going out, found Clarice waiting for him. She had heard that the fishing was given up and knew Paul would be there. She had seen Elithe when she appeared at the end of the long platform, and watched her as she came across it. Something in the dress first attracted and then startled her so that her look was a stare when Elithe came close to her. For a moment their eyes met, and Elithe’s kindled a little expectantly, then fell under the haughty gaze confronting them.
“That’s Miss Percy, the proudest girl on the island,” Miss Noble said to Elithe, who did not reply.
She was too much absorbed in putting one foot in the water and taking it back again with a shiver to think of Clarice still watching her curiously.
“I can’t be mistaken,” she was saying, when she saw Paul coming from the bath house and went to meet him. “You see I am here,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, “and so is your Western friend. See?”
She pointed towards Elithe, who was now standing up to her waist in the water and resisting Miss Noble’s efforts to get her farther out.
“Yes, I see. She’s afraid. They always are at first. Let’s go to her.”
Elithe saw him coming and smiled pleasantly upon him, and then gave a little cry as a wave came tumbling in and nearly knocked her down.
“Hallo!” Paul cried. “Frightened, arn’t you? That won’t do. Go under as soon as you can. Let’s have a dip.”
Still holding Clarice’s hand, he seized Elithe’s and said to her: “Take hold of Clarice’s. Now, all hands round,” he cried, jumping up and down until both girls were thoroughlysplashed with water and Elithe’s fears had entirely vanished. Clarice was never more angry in her life. To be thus associated with Elithe was too much to bear quietly. Wrenching her hands away without a word, she struck out for the raft at some distance from the shore, and, climbing upon it, sat down while Paul waded farther out, with his arm around Elithe, and then tried to make her swim. She proved an apt pupil, and he complimented her highly upon her skill.
“By the way, where is Clarice?” he asked, looking round until he saw her. “Oh, there she is! Suppose we go to her. It’s not very far,” he suggested.
Something warned Elithe to keep away from the raft while Clarice was there.
“I don’t believe I’ll try it,” she said. “I guess I’ve done enough for one morning. I’m getting tired, and think I’ll go ashore if Miss Noble is ready.”
Miss Noble was quite ready, and Paul went with them to the stairs and then swam back to the raft, where Clarice was still sitting. She had learned from experience that her little spurts of temper were lost on Paul, who either did not or would not notice them, and when he said to her, “You’ll take cold sitting there so long; come into the water,” she obeyed at once, and began swimming toward the shore. As they neared it and she was walking beside him she said: “Didn’t your Western friend come from Samona, and isn’t her father the Rev. Roger Hansford?”
“Yes,” Paul replied, and Clarice continued, in a low tone: “I thought so. Funny, isn’t it? She has on my old bathing suit. I sent it to Samona in a missionary box with a lot more things.”
“That accounts for its being so becoming to her,” Paulreplied, shaking the water from his hair, as he went up the steps.
Clarice gave a shrug of annoyance. Her little shaft had failed to hit the mark, and she was not in a very good humor when she left him and went towards her dressing room, meeting on the way an acquaintance, who, like herself, had just left the water.
Meanwhile Elithe was divesting herself of her wet garments, and had nearly completed her toilet when Clarice and her friend passed her door, one taking the room next her own and the other the adjoining one. They were talking together, and every word they said could be distinctly heard by Elithe.
“Do you often come here?” one asked, and the other replied: “Haven’t been here before this summer, and don’t believe I’ll come again. Not a soul I know but you and Paul.”
Elithe thought she recognized the last speaker’s voice, but was not sure until the first spoke again.
“I say, Clarice, who is the pretty girl Mr. Ralston was teaching to swim?”
Elithe held her breath for the answer, which came promptly and plain.
“That? Oh, that’s a niece of that frumpy Miss Hansford. You’ve heard of her, of course. The girl’s name is Elithe,—rather a pretty name, too. She’s from the wild and woolly West, Miners’ Camp, or something in Montana. Paul has the queerest notions about some things. He has always liked the aunt, and is polite to her niece, just as he is to every one. I believe the old maid asked him to take charge of her to-day. Do you think her pretty? I wish you could have seen her on the boat the day she came. Such a guy, and such baggage,—actually tied with a rope!”
“Not, really?”
“Yes, really. Hope to die if it wasn’t; and she has on an old bathing suit of mine which was sent in a missionary box from our church in Washington to the Rev. Roger Hansford. That’s her father. I can’t be mistaken. The buttons and braid were of a peculiar kind. I never liked it, and only wore it at Long Branch a few times. I knew it in a minute. There was a riding cap of mine in the same box. I wonder if she has that and will appear in it some day? No, I don’t think her very pretty. Perhaps she would be if her clothes were not so back-woodsy. She was at church last Sunday in a made-over changeable silk, with small sleeves, gathered just a little at the top. Not material enough to make them larger, I suppose. Probably that was in some box like my bathing suit. Her aunt sent word for me to call. Think of it!”
“Have you called?” the first speaker asked, and Clarice replied: “I guess not much! Shan’t, either; although Paul wants me to do so. He’s very democratic, you know.”
“Yes, but an awfully nice fellow, and you are to be congratulated.”
“That’s so,” Clarice assented, and, opening the door of her bath room, she walked away, followed by her friend, with no suspicion that Elithe had heard every word.
If she could have gotten out she would, but she was not quite dressed, and could only sit and listen. She did not care so much for what was said of herself as of her belongings,—the silk dress she had thought so fine and her poor old trunk. The latter had been her father’s, carried by him on many a journey in the Western wilds. The silk was her mother’s wedding gown, and every time she wore it she seemed to feel the touch of her mother’s loving hands in its soft folds. The sleeves were small, she knew, for thepattern was scant, but just how small they were she never realized until now, or just how small she was herself, with everything pertaining to her. She heard Paul calling down the passage way, “Clarice, Clarice, are you ready?” and knew he was waiting to escort his fiancée home.
“I hate her!” she said to herself. “To make fun ofmeand she does it to him, too, no doubt.”
This was the bitterest thought of all,—to be made light of and ridiculed to Paul Ralston, and Elithe cried harder than she ever remembered having cried before. That the bathing suit had belonged to Clarice she was sure, for on the lining of the belt were the initials, “C. P.” She could see them now on the floor where the wet garments lay, and she put her foot upon it, spurning it from her.
“I’ll never wear it again!” she said, “nor the cap, either. It was in the same box. It was hers!”
With the thought of the cap came a recollection of Mr. Pennington. He and Paul Ralston belonged to Clarice Percy’s world. They had been very kind to her. They liked her. They did not think her aguyfrom the “wild and woolly” West, and their opinion was worth more than that of Clarice. There was some consolation in this, and, drying her eyes, she wrung the water from the dripping garments on the floor, rolled them in a newspaper and started for home.
Her aunt had told her to ride both ways, as the walk was a long one from the bath houses to the cottage, and the car was ready to start as she came out of the building. In it were Paul and Clarice, the latter very fresh and cool looking in her thin summer muslin, a striking contrast to Elithe’s plain calico and linen collar.
“I’ll not ride with her,” Elithe thought, shaking herhead at the conductor, who was ringing the bell and inviting her to get in.
It was hot and dusty, but she did not mind it as she hurried along, smarting from the indignity she had suffered and anxious to be rid of the detested bundle she carried. What she should do with it she did not know until she reached the cottage. Miss Hansford was ironing with a hotter fire than usual, and had just lifted a cover from the stove, when Elithe burst in like a whirlwind.
Her eyes were flashing, her face was crimson, with perspiration trickling down it in streams, and she looked more like a little fury than the usual mild and placid Elithe.
“What is the matter?” Miss Hansford asked, but Elithe did not reply.
She was dropping the blue suit upon the red-hot coals and watching it as it spluttered and hissed and sent up great smudges of smoke and an odor of burning wool. She did not stop to cover it up, but, darting up to her room, found the velvet riding cap which suited her so well. She detested it now, and, hurrying back to the kitchen, removed the cover her aunt had replaced and dropped the pretty velvet thing into the fire, and with the poker pushed the burning mass into the flame until it was a charred and blackened crisp.
“Are you crazy or what?” Miss Hansford asked, this time rather indignantly, for the room was full of smoke and black flecks, some of which had settled upon the table-cloth she was ironing.
“Never was more sane in my life, and never more angry,” Elithe replied.
Little by little she told her story, while Miss Hansford listened, forgetting her table-cloth drying on the ironing board and her fire dying down from contact with so muchwool and salt water. Never before had Miss Hansford been so indignant. Even Paul came in for a share of her animadversion. He was a fool to care for a girl like Clarice. Everything pertaining to the Percys was brought to light. The bondman was resurrected, with old Roger and the treasury clerks, until there was scarcely a shred of respectability left to the family. And Clarice had insulted Elithe and called her aguyand made fun of her clothes and trunk.
At this point Miss Hansford stopped short, remembering how the trunk had looked when brought to her door, and that she had been glad when it was safely housed from the curious eyes of her neighbors. Itwasbattered and rusty, and as for Elithe’s clothes.——Here she took counsel with herself again. She had thought but little of Elithe’s dress, except that it was neat and plain, as a minister’s daughter’s dress ought to be. Now, however, in the light of Clarice’s criticism she awoke to the fact that it was not exactly like that of other girls whom she saw daily in the street. What the difference was she could not have told, she paid so little attention to the fashions.Shewore her gowns years;hersleeves were tight to her skin. She didn’t know what the fashions were. But she would know, and Elithe should look like other girls, if she ruined herself in doing it. She had cooled down considerably by the time this decision was reached.
“Don’t cry. It’ll make you sick again,” she said to Elithe, whose tears were falling as she recalled the sarcastic criticism which had cut so deep and seemed worse the more she thought of it.
Her head began to ache, and when that afternoon Paul came in to ask how she was feeling after her bath, he was told that she “wasn’t feeling anyhow and had gone to bed.”This information Miss Hansford gave crispily, and her crispiness continued as Paul expressed his regret and surprise, saying: “She seemed to enjoy it so much, and after the first dip took to the water like a duck. She’ll learn to swim in no time. I hope she’ll be all right to-morrow. I want her to go over to the Tower.”
“She won’t go to the Tower, and she won’t go anywhere very soon, let me tell you,” Miss Hansford said, while Paul wondered what had occurred to throw her so far off her equilibrium.
“I’m sorry. I hope nothing disagreeable happened to her,” he said.
For a minute Miss Hansford was tempted to tell him the truth. Then, changing her mind, she asked if he knew the shops in Boston well. “The stores, I mean, and places where folks go to get things up to date,—where your mother trades, for instance, and people like her.”
“Why, yes,” he replied. “There’s Jordan and Marsh, and White’s.”
“I know them places. Ain’t there others?” Miss Hansford interrupted.
“Certainly. There’s Hollander’s, on Boylston Street,—rather more expensive, I expect.”
“I don’t care for expense. I want things that nobody can make fun of,” Miss Hansford interrupted him again, and he continued: “You’ll get them there, and shoes in the same street, and hats. I believe Clarice bought one there, the prettiest she ever had.”
“You don’t remember the number, nor name?” Miss Hansford asked.
“No, I don’t. I can get it, though, of Clarice,” Paul said.
“You needn’t do that. I can inquire. I have a tongue,”Miss Hansford answered, mentally resolving that wherever Clarice had shopped she would shop and so be sure she was right.
“Are you thinking of going to Boston?” Paul asked.
“Yes. Where does Mrs. Percy put up when she’s there?”
“Usually with us, or, if at a hotel, at the Adams House. That’s a good place,” Paul said, while Miss Hansford took mental notes for future use.
Something ailed her. Paul could not guess what, and, after a few unsuccessful attempts to bring her to herself, he left, hoping Elithe would change her mind and go to the Tower on the morrow.
“I shall call for her,” he said, and the next morning he was at the cottage, which he found closed, with no sign of life about it. “She’s gone to Boston, and won’t be back for some days,” a neighbor called to him from her window, and, feeling disappointed that Elithe was not to have her second lesson in swimming, Paul hailed a passing car and joined Clarice at the Tower.