Kitabı oku: «When Patty Went to College», sayfa 7

XII
The Exigencies of Etiquette

"IF I had been the one to invent etiquette," said Patty, "I should have made party calls payable one year after date, and then should have allowed three days' grace at the end."

"In which case," said Priscilla, "I suppose you would get out of calling on Mrs. Millard altogether."

"Exactly," said Patty.

Mrs. Millard—more familiarly referred to as Mrs. Prexy—annually invited the seniors to dinner in parties of ten. Patty, whose turn had come a short time before, owing to an untoward misfortune, had been in the infirmary at the time; but, though she had missed the fun, she now found it necessary to pay the call.

"Of course," she resumed, "I can see why you should be expected to call if you attend the function and partake of the food; but what I can't understand is why a peaceable citizen who desires only to gang his ain gait should, upon the reception of an entirely unsolicited invitation, suddenly find it incumbent upon him to put on his best dress and his best hat and gloves in order to call upon people he barely knows."

"Your genders," said Priscilla, "are a trifle mixed."

"That," said Patty, "is the fault of the language. The logic, I think, you will find correct. You can see what would happen," she pursued, "if you carry it out to its logical conclusion. Suppose, for instance, that every woman I have ever met in this town should suddenly take it into her head to invite me to a dinner. Here I—perfectly unsuspicious and innocent of any evil, because of a purely arbitrary law which I did not help to make—would not only have to sit down and write a hundred regrets, but would have to pay a hundred calls within the next two weeks. It makes me shudder to think of it!"

"I don't believe you need worry about it, Patty; of course we know you're popular, but you're not as popular as that."

"No," said Patty; "I didn't mean that I thought I really should get that many invitations. It's only that one is open to the constant danger."

During the progress of this conversation Georgie Merriles had been lounging on the couch by the window, reading the "Merchant of Venice" in a critically unimpassioned way that the instructor in Dramatic Theory could not have praised too much. The room finally having become too dark for reading, she threw down the book with something like a yawn. "It would have been a joke on Portia," she remarked, "if Bassanio had chosen the wrong casket"; and she turned her attention to the campus outside. Groups of girls were coming along the path from the lake, and the sound of their voices, mingled with laughter and the jingling of skates, floated up through the gathering dusk. Across the stretches of snow and bare trees lights were beginning to twinkle in the other dormitories, while nearer at hand, and more clearly visible, rose the irregular outline of the president's house.

"Patty," said Georgie, with her nose against the pane, "if you really want to get that call out of the way, now's your chance. Mrs. Millard has just gone out."

Patty dashed into her bedroom and began jerking out bureau drawers. "Priscilla," she called in an agonized tone, "do you remember where I keep my cards?"

"It's ten minutes of six, Patty; you can't go now."

"Yes, I can. It doesn't matter what time it is, so long as she's out. I'll go just as I am."

"Not in a golf-cape!"

Patty hesitated an instant. "Well," she admitted, "I suppose the butler might tell her. I'll put on a hat"—this with the air of one who is making a really great concession. Some more banging of bureau drawers, and she appeared in a black velvet hat trimmed with lace, with the brown jacket of her suit over her red blouse, and a blue golf-skirt and very muddy boots showing below.

"Patty, you're a disgrace to the room!" cried Priscilla. "Do you mean to tell me that you are going to Mrs. Millard's in a short skirt and those awful skating-shoes?"

"The butler won't look at my feet; I'm so beautiful above"; and Patty banged the door behind her.

Georgie and Priscilla flattened themselves against the window to watch the progress of the call.

"Look," gasped Priscilla. "There's Mrs. Millard going in at the back door."

"And there's Patty. My, but she looks funny!"

"Call her back," cried Priscilla, wildly trying to open the window.

"Let her alone," laughed Georgie; "it will be such fun to gloat over her."

The window came up with a jerk. "Patty! Patty!" shrieked Priscilla.

Patty turned and waved her hand airily. "Can't stop now—will be back in a moment"; and she sped on around the corner.

The two stood watching the house for several minutes, vaguely expecting an explosion of some sort to occur. But nothing happened. Patty was swallowed as if by the grave, and the house gave no sign. They accordingly shrugged their shoulders and dressed for dinner with the philosophy which a life fraught with alarms and surprises gives.

Dinner was half over, and the table had finished discussing Patty's demise, when that young lady trailed placidly in, smiled on the expectant faces, and inquired what kind of soup they had had.

"Bean soup; it wasn't any good," said Georgie, impatiently. "What happened? Did you have a nice call?"

"No, Maggie, I don't care for any soup to-night. Just bring me some steak, please."

"Patty!" in a pleading chorus, "what happened?"

"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Patty, sweetly. "Yes, thank you, I had a very pleasant call. May I trouble you for the bread, Lucille?"

"Patty, I think you're obnoxious," said Georgie. "Tell us what happened."

"Well," began Patty, in a leisurely manner, "I said to the butler, 'Is Mrs. Millard in?' and he said to me (without even a smile), 'I am not sure, miss; will you please step into the drawing-room and I'll see.' I was going to tell him that he needn't bother, as I knew she was out; but I thought that perhaps it would look a little better if I waited and let him find out for himself. So I walked in and sat down in a pink-and-white embroidered Louis-Quatorze chair. There was a big mirror in front of me, and I had plenty of time to study the effect, which, I will acknowledge, was a trifle mixed."

"A trifle," Georgie assented.

"I was beginning," pursued Patty, "to feel nervous for fear some of the family might drop in, when the man came back and said, 'Mrs. Millard will be down in a minute.'

"If I had seen you at that moment, Georgie Merriles, there would have been battle, murder, and sudden death. My first thought was of flight; but the man was guarding the door, and Mrs. Prexy had my card. While I was frenziedly trying to think of a valid excuse for my costume the lady came in, and I rose and greeted her graciously, one might almost say gushingly. I talked very fast and tried to hypnotize her, so that she would keep her eyes on my face; but it was no use: I saw them traveling downward, and pretty soon I knew by the amused expression that they had arrived at my shoes.

"Concealment was no longer possible," pursued Patty, warming to her subject. "I threw myself upon her mercy and confessed the whole damning truth. What kind of ice-cream is that?" she demanded, leaning forward and gazing anxiously after a passing maid. "Don't tell me they're giving us raspberry again!"

"No; it's vanilla. Go on, Patty."

"Well, where was I?"

"You'd just told her the truth."

"Oh, yes. She said she'd always wanted to meet the college girls informally and know them just as they are, and she was very glad of this opportunity. And there I sat, looking like a kaleidoscope and feeling like a fool, and she taking it for granted that I was being perfectly natural. Complimentary, wasn't it? At this point dinner was announced, and she invited me to stay—quite insisted, in fact, to make up, she said, for the one I had missed when I was ill in the infirmary." Patty looked around the table with a reminiscent smile.

"What did you say? Did you refuse?" asked Lucille.

"No; I accepted, and am over there at present, eating pâté de foie gras."

"No, really, Patty; what did you say?"

"Well," said Patty, "I told her that this was ice-cream night at the college, and that I sort of hated to miss it; but that to-morrow would be mutton night, which I didn't mind missing in the least; so if she would just as leave transfer her invitation, I would accept for to-morrow with pleasure."

"Patty," exclaimed Lucille, in a horrified tone, "you didn't say that!"

"Just a little local color, Lucille," laughed Priscilla.

"But," objected Lucille, "we'd promised not to play local color any more."

"Have you not learned," said Priscilla, "that Patty can no more live without local color than she can live without food? It's ingrained in her nature."

"Never mind," said Patty, good-naturedly; "you may not believe me now, but to-morrow night, when I'm all dressed up in beautiful clothes, swapping stories with Prexy and eating lobster salad, while you are over here having mutton, then maybe you'll be sorry."

XIII
A Crash Without

"I LOVE the smell of powder," said Patty.

"Gunpowder or baking-powder?"

As Patty at the moment had her nose buried in a box of face-powder she thought it unnecessary to answer.

"It brings back my youth," she pursued. "The best times of my life have been mixed up with powder and rouge—Washington's Birthday nights, and minstrel shows, and masquerades, and plays at boarding-school, and even Mother Goose tableaux when I was a—"

Patty's reminiscences were interrupted by Georgie, who was anxiously pacing up and down the wings. "It's queer some of the cast don't come. I told them to be here early, so we could get them all made up and not have a rush at the end."

"Oh, there's time enough," said Patty, comfortably. "It isn't seven yet, and if they're going to dress in their rooms it won't take any time over here just to make them up and put on their wigs. It's a comparatively small cast, you see. Now, on the night of the Trig. ceremonies, when we had to make up three whole ballets and only had one box of make-up, we were rushed. I thought I'd never live to see the curtain go down. Do you remember the suit of chain-mail we made for Bonnie Connaught out of wire dish-cloths? It took sixty-three, and the ten-cent store was terribly dubious about renting them to us; and then, after working every spare second for three days over the thing, we found, the last minute, that we hadn't left a big enough hole for her to get into, and—"

"Oh, do keep still, Patty," said Georgie, nervously; "I can't remember what I have to do when you talk all the time."

A manager on the eve of producing a new play, with his reputation at stake, may be excused for being a trifle irritable. Patty merely shrugged her shoulders and descended through the stage-door to the half-lighted hall, where she found Cathy Fair strolling up and down the center aisle in an apparently aimless manner.

"Hello, Cathy," said Patty; "what are you doing over here?"

"I'm head usher, and I wanted to see if those foolish sophomores had mixed up the numbers again."

"It strikes me they're a trifle close together," said Patty, sitting down and squeezing in her knees.

"Yes, I know; but you can't get eight hundred people into this hall any other way. When we once get them packed they'll have to sit still, that's all. What are you doing over here yourself?" she continued. "I didn't know you were on the committee. Or are you just helping Georgie?"

"I'm in the cast," said Patty.

"Oh, are you? I saw the program to-day, but I'd forgotten it. I've often wondered why you haven't been in any of the class plays."

"Fortune and the faculty are against it," sighed Patty. "You see, they didn't discover my histrionic ability before examinations freshman year, and after examinations, when I was asked to be in the play, the faculty thought I could spend the time to better advantage studying Greek. At the time of the sophomore play I was on something else and couldn't serve, and this year I had just been deprived of my privileges for coming back late after Christmas."

"But I thought you said you were in it?"

"Oh," said Patty, "it's a minor part, and my name doesn't appear."

"What sort of a part is it?"

"I'm a crash."

"A crash?"

"Yes, 'a crash without.' Lord Bromley says, 'Cynthia, I will brave all for your sake. I will follow you to the ends of the earth.' At this point a crash is heard without. I," said Patty, proudly, "am the crash. I sit behind a moonlit balcony in a space about two feet square, and drop a lamp-chimney into a box. It may not sound like a very important part, but it is the pivot upon which the whole plot turns."

"I hope you won't be taken with stage-fright," laughed Cathy.

"I'll try not," said Patty. "There comes the butler and Lord Bromley and Cynthia. I've got to go and make them up."

"Why are you making people up, if you are not on the committee?"

"Oh, once, during a period of mental weakness, I took china-painting lessons, and I'm supposed to know how. Good-by."

"Good-by. If you get any flowers I'll send them in by an usher."

"Do," said Patty. "I'm sure to get a lot."

Behind the scenes all was joyful confusion. Georgie, in a short skirt, with her shirt-waist sleeves rolled up and a note-book in her hand, was standing in the middle of the stage directing the scene-shifters and distracted committee. Patty, in the "green-room," was presiding over the cast, with a hare's foot in one hand and the other daubed with red and blue grease-paints.

"Oh, Patty," remonstrated Cynthia, with a horrified glance in the mirror, "I look more like a soubrette than a heroine."

"That's the way you ought to look," returned Patty. "Here, hold still till I put another dab on your chin."

Cynthia appealed to the faithful Lord Bromley, who was sitting in the background, politely letting the ladies go first. "Look, Bonnie, don't you think I'm too red? I know it'll all come off when you kiss me."

"If it comes off as easily as that, you'll be more fortunate than most of the people I make up"; and Patty smiled knowingly as she remembered how Priscilla had soaked half the night on the occasion of a previous play, and then had appeared at breakfast the next morning with lowering eyebrows and a hectic flush on each cheek. "You must remember that foot-lights take a lot of color," she explained condescendingly. "You'd look ghastly if I let you go the way you wanted to at first. Next!

"No," said Patty, as the butler presented himself; "you don't come till the second act. I'll take the Irate Parent first." The Irate Parent was dragged from a corner where he had been anxiously mumbling over his lines. "What's the matter?" asked Patty, as she began daubing in wrinkles with a liberal hand; "are you afraid?"

"N-no," said the Parent; "I'm not afraid, only I'm afraid that I will be afraid."

"You'd just better change your mind, then," said Patty, sternly. "We aren't going to allow any stage-fright to-night."

"Patty, you can manage Georgie Merriles; make her let me go on without any wig," cried Cynthia, returning and holding up to view a mass of yellow curls of a shade that was never produced in the course of nature.

Patty looked at the wig critically. "It is, perhaps, a trifle golden for the part."

"Golden!" said Cynthia. "It's positively orange. Wait till you see how it lights up. He calls me his dark-eyed beauty: and I'm sure no one with dark eyes, or any other kind of eyes, would have hair like that. My own looks a great deal better."

"Why don't you wear your own, then? Wrinkle up your forehead, Parent, and let me see which way they run."

"Georgie paid two dollars for renting it, and she's bound to get the money's worth of wear out of it, even if she makes me look like a fright and spoils the play."

"Nonsense," said Patty, pushing away the Parent and giving her undivided attention to the question. "Your own hair does look better. Just mislay the wig and keep out of Georgie's way till the curtain goes up. The audience are beginning to come," she announced to the room in general, "and you've got to keep still back there. You're making an awful racket, and they can hear you all over the house. Here, what are you making such a noise for?" she demanded of Lord Bromley, who came clumping up with footfalls which reverberated through the flies.

"I can't help it," he said crossly. "Look at these boots. They're so big that I can step out of them without unlacing them."

"It's not my fault. I haven't anything to do with the costumes."

"I know it; but what can I do?"

"Never mind," said Patty, soothingly; "they don't look so awfully bad. You'll have to try and walk without raising your feet."

She went out on the stage, where Georgie was giving her last directions to the scene-shifters. "The minute the curtain goes down on the first act change this forest to the drawing-room scene, and don't make any noise hammering. If you have to hammer, do it while the orchestra's playing. How does it look?" she asked anxiously, turning to Patty.

"Beautiful," said Patty. "I'd scarcely recognize it."

The "forest scene" had served in every outdoor capacity for the last four years, and it was usually hailed with a groan on the part of the audience.

"I was just coming in to see if the cast were ready," said Georgie.

"They're all made up, and are sitting in the green-room getting stage-fright. What shall I do now?"

"Let me see," said Georgie, consulting her book. "One of the committee is to prompt, one is to stay with the men and see that they manage the curtain and the lights in the right places, one is to give the cues, and two are to help change costumes. Cynthia has to change from a riding-habit to a ball-gown in four minutes. I think you'd better help her, too."

"Anything you please," said Patty, obligingly. "I'll stand on a stool with the ball-gown in the air ready to drop it over her head the moment she appears, like a harness on a fire-horse. Is everything out here done? What time is it?"

"Yes; everything's done, and it's five minutes of eight. We can begin as soon as the audience is ready."

They peered through the folds of the heavy velvet curtain at the sea of faces in front. Eight hundred girls in light evening-gowns were talking and laughing and singing. Snatches of song would start up in one corner and sweep gaily over the house, and sometimes two would meet and clash in the center, to the horror of those who preferred harmony to volume.

"Here come the old girls!" said Patty, as a procession of some fifty filed into reserved seats near the front. "There are loads of last year's class back. What are the juniors doing? Look; I believe they are going to serenade them."

The juniors rose in a body, and, turning to their departed sister class, sang a song notable for its sentiment rather than its meter.

"I do hope it will be a success," sighed Georgie. "If it doesn't come up to last year's senior play I shall die."

"Oh, it will," said Patty, reassuringly. "Anything would be better than that."

"Now the glee club's going to sing two songs," said Georgie. "Thank heaven, they're new!" she added fervently. "And the orchestra plays an overture, and then the curtain goes up. Run and tell them to come out here, ready for the first act."

Lord Bromley was standing in the wings disgustedly viewing the banquet-table. "See here, Patty," he called as she hurried past. "Look at this stuff Georgie Merriles has palmed off on us for wine. You can't expect me to drink any such dope as that."

Patty paused for an instant. "What's the matter with it?" she inquired, pouring out some in a glass and holding it up to the light.

"Matter? It's made of currant jelly and water, with cold tea mixed in."

"I made it myself," said Patty, with some dignity. "It's a beautiful color."

"But I have to drain my glass at a draught," expostulated the outraged lord.

"I'm sure there's nothing in currant jelly or tea to hurt you. You can be thankful it isn't poisonous." And Patty hurried on.

The glee club sang the two new songs, punctuated with the appreciative applause of a long-suffering audience, and the orchestra commenced the overture.

"Everybody clear the stage," said Georgie, in a low tone, "and you keep your eyes on the book," she added sternly to the prompter; "you lost your place twice at the dress rehearsal."

The overture died down; a bell tinkled, and the curtain parted in the middle, discovering Cynthia sitting on a garden-seat in the castle park (originally the Forest of Arden).

As the curtain fell at the end of the act, and the applause gave way to an excited buzz in the audience, Patty hugged Georgie gleefully. "It's fifty times better than last year!"

"Heaven send Theo Granby is out there!" piously ejaculated Georgie. (Theo Granby had been the chairman of last year's senior play.)

The curtain had risen on the fourth act, and Patty squeezed herself into the somewhat close quarters behind the balcony. There was fortunately—or rather unfortunately—a window in the rear of the building at this point, and Patty opened it and perched herself at one end of the sill, with the lamp-chimney ready for use at the other end. The crash was not due for some time, and Patty, having lately elected astronomy, whiled away the interval by examining the stars.

On the stage matters were approaching a climax. Lord Bromley was making an excellent lover, as was proved by the fact that the audience was taking him seriously instead of laughing through the love scenes as usual.

"Cynthia," he implored, "say that you will be mine, and I will brave all for your sake. I will follow you to the ends of the earth." He gazed tenderly into her eyes, and waited for the crash. A silence as of the tomb prevailed, and he continued to gaze tenderly, while a grin rapidly spread over the audience.

"Hang Patty!" he murmured savagely. "Might have known she'd do something like this.—What was that? Did you hear a noise?" he asked aloud.

"No," said Cynthia, truthfully; "I did not hear anything."

"Pretend you did," he whispered, and they continued to improvise. After some five minutes of hopeless floundering, the prompter got them back on the track again, and the act proceeded, with the audience happily unaware that anything was missing.

Ten minutes later Lord Bromley was declaiming: "Cynthia, let us flee this place. Its dark rooms haunt me; its silence oppresses me—" And the crash came.

For the first moment the audience was too startled to notice that the actors were also taken by surprise. Then Lord Bromley, who was getting used to emergencies, pulled himself together and ejaculated, "Hark! What was that sound?"

"I think it was a crash," said Cynthia.

He grasped her hand and ran back toward the balcony. "Give us our lines," he said to the prompter, as he went past.

The prompter had dropped the book, and couldn't find the place.

"Make them up," came in a piercing whisper from behind the balcony.

A silence ensued while the two dashed back and forth, looking excitedly up and down the stage. Then the despairing Lord Bromley stretched out his arms in a gesture of supplication. "Cynthia," he burst out in tones of realistic longing, "I cannot bear this horrible suspense. Let us flee." And they fled, fully three pages too early, forgetting to leave the letter which should have apprised the Irate Parent of the circumstance.

Georgie was tramping up and down the wings, wringing her hands and lamenting the day that ever Patty had been born.

"Hurry up that Parent before they stop clapping," said Lord Bromley, "and they'll never know the difference."

The poor old man, with his wig over one ear, was unceremoniously hustled on to the stage, where he raved up and down and swore never to forgive his ungrateful daughter in so realistic a manner that the audience forgot to wonder how he found it out. In due time the runaways returned from the notary's, overcame the old man's harshness, received the parental blessing, and the curtain fell on a scene of domestic felicity that delighted the freshmen in the gallery.

Patty crawled out from under the balcony and fell on her knees at Georgie's feet.

Lord Bromley raised her up. "Never mind, Patty. The audience doesn't know the difference; and, anyway, it was all for the best. My mustache wouldn't have stayed on more than two minutes longer."

They could hear some one shouting in the front, "What's the matter with Georgie Merriles?" and a hundred voices replied, "She's all right!"

"Who's all right?"

"G-e-o-r-g-i-e M-e-r-r-i-l-e-s."

"What's the matter with the cast?"

"They're all right!"

The stage-door burst open and a crowd of congratulatory friends burst in and gathered around the disheveled actors and committee. "It's the best senior play since we've been in college." "The freshmen are simply crazy over it." "Lord Bromley, your room will be full of flowers for a month." "Patty," called the head usher, over the heads of the others, "let me congratulate you. I was in the very back of the room, and never heard a thing but your crash. It sounded fine!"

"Patty," demanded Georgie, "what in the world were you doing?"

"I was counting the stars," said the contrite Patty, "and then I remembered too late, and I turned around suddenly, and it fell off. I am terribly sorry."

"Never mind," laughed Georgie; "since it turned out well, I'll forgive you. All the cast and committee," she said, raising her voice, "come up to my room for food. I'm sorry I can't invite you all," she added to the girls crowded in the doorway, "but I live in a single."