CHAPTER XIII
Whatever were Deborah’s qualifications beauty and attractiveness were not among the foremost. From the age of fifteen to twenty she was tormented unceasingly with sties upon her eyes. Now, you will probably be so disgusted when you read this that you will close the book. But there is a little originality somewhere about it, if you care to think, because the heroines of books are not often afflicted that way. These sties, moreover, were by no means of the insignificant kind. They were like big gatherings that disfigured and discoloured whichever side of her face they arose upon. No sooner was one gone than another came, and frequently two would appear together—on the top and bottom lid—closing her eye completely. Once or twice indeed she would have two on the one eye and another on the other, which was the height of discomfort. For besides being very unsightly they were exceedingly painful, and would sometimes throb till she was nearly beside herself. Sometimes, when they hurt more than usual, she would cry from sheer low spirits; but that only aggravated them the more, and made her look so ugly that everybody laughed and then pitied her.
“I don’t see why I should be afflicted like this,” she used to say, looking in the glass. “They come week after week and I’m never rid of them. Besides, I hate teaching with my eyes in this state. I hate to be seen with these red, ugly, swollen lids.”
“It is to teach you patience and sympathy,” said a voice.
“Fiddlesticks!” said Deborah. “How is it I need so much more teaching than anybody else round about? And I’m sure the other week, when I had three sties on my eyes and a gathering on my finger, and a headache which lasted four successive days without a break, I hadn’t spirit enough left to be anything but patient; so where is the virtue in it?”
Naturally there was no reply to this.
One day someone observed, “What a pity your eyes have been so spoilt. You used to have such nice lashes and now they’ve nearly all come off.” But there was absolutely no comfort in that, so she might just as well have left it unsaid.
Now the time was drawing on for Deborah to go to college to be trained as a teacher; in another four months or so the old life in the old school would be over.
“How desperately dull life is,” thought she. “Why doesn’t something happen?” And something did happen—she fell in love.
It happened like this.
There came as an assistant master to the school a young man who was very nice.
Deborah was, as a rule, rather hard to please, but saw took a distinct fancy to him the first time she saw him. He was tall and he was well-built, with a refined and pleasant face.
“I wonder who he is?” she said.
“Oh! don’t you know? It’s the new assistant in the boys’ school,” replied a girl who was with her.
“Oh! how lovely!” And a new interest had come into her life.
And Deborah, weakly, sickly, diminutive and full of infirmities, drew near to this unknown light.
She got an introduction and felt happy; he seemed just as nice to speak to as he was to look at—and that isn’t often the case, you know.
“I like him well enough to try to be nice to him,” she said. “I hope I don’t have any more of these beastly sties for a month or two,” and quite forgot that she had any more infirmities—as who would not?
For a time all the shyness which had accompanied her from her youth upward vanished literally as if by magic.
She would go down into the other school at every opportunity, just to see the young man and speak to him.
It was the happiest and most natural part of her life.
“I wonder if I could make him love me too,” she thought. And she used to watch him in church or wherever else it might be, and keep saying, “Love me, love me, love me,” and in some ways it was very great fun. The greatest fun was to say, “Love me, love me,” when she was talking to him, in a voice but he couldn’t hear.
But there came a day when all this golden love cloud gathered into one of purple.
Deborah fell seriously in love with him, and all the fun and the laughter died out of it.
Still everyone went on laughing just the same as on that first day when she ran into school and told them she had found an ideal man.
And because she had begun by laughing herself she was bound to keep it up, and no one saw the difference.
One day she saw him talking to another girl, and it was the first time she had ever seen him speaking to another woman. The girl was very pretty, with blue eyes and brown curly hair, and she was little too, but she was a pretty figure.
Deborah became madly jealous.
“I hate her, I hate her, and I hate him too,” she said. “What does she want, meddling with him? He will come to like her best.”
And then she went home and looked in the glass. Yes, there was another of those ugly disfigurements puffing up the whole of one cheek.
“Why is she so pretty and I so plain?” she thought. “If I were as pretty as she is I—I—I what? I nothing.”
A prize distribution took place in the town some six weeks or so after. Now, though by this time it was the middle of summer, the wind and the rain on that particular day were extreme, and so Deborah found as she took some dozen girls down to receive prizes. It was a long walk, and by the time they got there none of them looked very presentable.
She never forgot that day, for had the Fates conspired they could not have made her appear more disreputable. Her hair was dishevelled and her fringe out of curl, and her hat, which had blown off in the journey down, kept lurching constantly to one side.
But the first person she set eyes on when she came to the journey’s end was the young man. For the time being she forgot her appearance in the delight of seeing him.
They sat together during the ceremony, and afterwards walked home together, and still she forgot to think of her untidy state.
But when she was inside the house she went upstairs.
The first thing a young woman does, as a rule, when she has just seen the young man she likes, is to look at herself in the glass. That is if she is natural, but of course, as we all know, there are a great many very unnatural women in the world. Deborah, however, belonged to the unnatural sort, evidently; she deliberately refrained from going near the glass, though it was there waiting for her.
“I daren’t look at myself, I look so hideous,” she thought, and that was just about the truth.
In a fortnight’s time they broke up.
It was a very miserable fortnight. For one thing, Jack was going to be married at the end of it, and it meant the entire breaking up of the only thing that had been home; and for another it meant the end of all that short and golden dream.
When the last day came the pain round Deborah’s heart had reached such a pitch that it seemed almost uncontrollable. Along with it came the sense of bitter disappointment; she had quite failed to make the least impression. That was only natural; but it is so difficult to form a just opinion of ourselves. When it came to saying “good-bye,” she felt so aching and miserable inside that she thought it would be best to share the burden.
“I won’t take the least notice of him when I say good-bye. He thinks I can’t live without him. Conceit!”
So when it came to the last adieu she managed it better than she managed most things.
Usually when she shook hands with him she did manage to leave her hand in his just the twentieth part of second, but to-day he was just the twentieth part of a second too late to catch hold of her hand at all. That pleased Deborah, or at least it pleased something within her which she was trying to identify with herself. And always before, no matter what state her eyes had been in, she had always looked at him quite straightforwardly; to-day, however, she didn’t take the trouble to look at him at all, and took no notice of him, but began talking to the next young man; yet all the time it was all she could do to keep from turning round and giving him the biggest scratch he’d ever had in his life.
Then he went away, and she was left all alone, to laugh and be as foolish as usual.
But all the time, down in her heart of hearts, she kept saying, “Why wouldn’t they let me kiss him? I wanted to—I wanted to.”
And something else whispered, with mock sympathy, “Well, never mind. A man’s conceit is equal to a woman’s love any day. By saying ‘good-bye’ to him like that you hurt him just as much as you hurt yourself;” but somehow or other it was very cold comfort—very.
Next Jack got married and the house became very dull. A few weeks later Deborah went to college.