CLASSES IN MANNERS
Gertrude’s brother paid another visit to his sister at Class Day. At least, he was supposed to be visiting his sister, but it was really Bea who took charge of him during all that radiant June morning while Gertrude, as chairman of the Daisy Chain committee, was busy with her score of workers among the tubs of long-stemmed daisies in a cool basement room. Bea had immediately enrolled the young man as her first assistant in the arduous task of gathering armfuls of the starry flowers in the field beyond the dormitories.
After that labor was finished, and even Lila had deserted her for the sake of an insensate trunk that demanded to be packed, Bea conducted her companion to the lake. There through the golden hour of midday they drifted in the shadow of the overhanging trees along the shore. Once they paddled softly around the little island at the end, and a colony of baby mud-turtles went scrambling madly from a log into the water. When the brother began to fish for one with an oar, Bea protested in a grieved tone.
“But you don’t seem to realize that I am worrying about freckles every minute that we stay out here in the broad sunlight. What are trees for if not to provide shade for girls without hats? And anyhow it is unkind to seek to tear a turtle from his happy home. If you do that, I shall never, never consent to admit you to our highest class in manners.”
“Highest class in manners,” he echoed, “that sounds promising. Is it another story?”
“It certainly is,” replied Bea, “and if you are very good indeed and will keep the boat close to the bank from the first word to the last, I will tell you all about it.”
Berta called it our classes in manners, but Miss Anglin, our sophomore English teacher, said that it was every bit as bad as gossip. When Berta told her that she was the one who had started us on it by advising us to read character in the street-cars, she looked absolutely appalled, and groaned, “What next?”
This was the beginning of it. When Miss Anglin took charge of our essay work the second semester, she explained that we should be required to write a one-page theme every day except Saturday and Sunday. Lila almost fainted away, because she hates writing anything, even letters home. Robbie Belle looked scared, and I opened my mouth so wide that my jaw ached for several minutes afterward. But Berta kept her wits about her. She said, “Miss Anglin, we are all living here together, and we see the same things every day. I’m afraid you’ll be bored when you read about them over and over. Why can’t some of us choose intellectual topics?”
By intellectual topics she meant subjects that you can read up in the encyclopædia. Miss Anglin sort of smiled. “Do you truly think that you all see the same things day after day? How curious! Have you ever played a game called Slander?”
“Yes, Miss Anglin,” said Berta, and went on to tell how the players sit in a circle, and the first one whispers a story to the second; and the second repeats it as accurately as she can remember to the third; and the third tells it to the fourth, and so on till the last one hears it and then relates it aloud. After that the first one gives the story exactly as he started it. It is awfully interesting to notice the difference between the first report and the last one, because somehow each person cannot help adding a little or leaving out a little in passing it on to the next. That is the way slander grows, you know. The gossip may be true at first, or almost true, but it keeps changing and getting worse and worse and more thrilling as it spreads till finally it isn’t hardly true at all. That is how our classes in manners turned out.
Well, to go back to that day in the rhetoric section. Miss Anglin saw that we were discouraged before we had commenced and we didn’t know how to start; and so she began to suggest subjects. For instance, she said, one girl might wake up in the morning——Oh, but I am forgetting her application of the illustration from the game of Slander. She said that if no two persons receive the same impression from a whispered story spoken in definite words, it is probable that no two pairs of eyes see the same thing in the same way, to say nothing of the ideas aroused in the different brains behind the eyes. One girl might wake up in the morning, as I was saying, and when she looks from the window she sees snow everywhere—provided it did snow during the night, you understand. Then she writes her daily theme about the beautiful whiteness, the shadows of bare trees, diamond sparkles everywhere and so forth. Another girl looks out of that very same window at the same time, and she doesn’t think of the beautiful snow merely as snow; she thinks of coasting or going for a sleigh-ride or something like that. And so her theme very likely will prove to be a description of a coasting carnival or tobogganing which she once enjoyed. Another girl looks out and thinks first thing, “Oh, now the skating is spoiled!” Her theme maybe will tell how she learned to skate by pushing a chair ahead of her on the ice.
Berta raised her hand again. “Well, but, Miss Anglin,” she said, “suppose it doesn’t snow?”
Berta is not really stupid, you know, quite the reverse indeed, but she is used to having the girls laugh at what she says. They laughed this time, and Miss Anglin did too, because she knew Berta was just drawing her out, so to speak. She went on to give other examples about the things we see while out walking or shopping or at a concert, and finally she drifted around to character-reading. She said a street-car was a splendid field for that. The next time one of us rode into town, she might try observing her fellow travelers. There might be a working-man in a corner, with a tin-bucket beside him. Maybe he would be wearing an old coat pinned with a safety-pin. By noting his eyes and the expression of his mouth the girl could judge whether he was just shiftless or untidy merely because his wife was too busy with the children to sew on buttons. She told a lot of interesting things about the difference between the man who holds his newspaper in one hand and the man who holds his in both. Some temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary, and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down firmly and decidedly at every step—though of course it needn’t be thumping—while a dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts his head to listen, you can tell if he has executive ability or not.
Before the bell rang at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble over the threshold.
“Oho!” jeered Berta, “you’re careless. That’s as easy as alpha, beta, gamma.”
She meant a, b, c, you understand, but she prefers to say it in Greek, being a sophomore.
“But she isn’t careless,” protested Lila, “she’s the most careful person I ever met. The sole of her shoe is split, and that is the reason she stumbled.”
“Why is it split?” demanded Berta in her most argumentative tone; “would a nobly careful and painstakingly fastidious person insist upon wearing a shoe with a split sole? No, no! Far from it. If she had stumbled because the threshold wasn’t there, or because she had forgotten it was there, the inference would be at fault. I should impute the defect to her mentality instead of to her character, alas! A stumble plus a split sole! Ah, Robbie Belle, I must put you in a daily theme.”
Robbie Belle looked alarmed. “Indeed, Berta, I’d rather not. I was going to trim it off neatly this morning, but I have lent my knife to Mary Winchester.”
“Ha! lent her your knife!” declaimed Berta sternly, “another clue! This must be investigated. Why did she borrow your knife?”
“To sharpen her pencil,” answered Robbie. “I made her take it.”
“Her pencil! Her pencil!” muttered Berta darkly, “why her pencil? Are there not pens? Mayhap, ’tis not her pencil. Alas, alas! Her also I thrust into a daily theme.”
“She’s snippy about returning things,” said Lila, “she acts as if she didn’t care whether you do her a favor or not. I don’t like her.”
“She’s queer,” I said.
Now I had a perfect right to say that because it was true. Mary Winchester was just about the queerest girl in college. Everybody thought so. But I shall say no more at present, as her queerness is the subject of the rest of this story. If I told you immediately just how she was queer and all the rest of it, there wouldn’t be any story left, would there?
Well, as the weeks whirled past, we studied character and wrote daily themes till we were desperate. Robbie Belle grew sadder and sadder until Berta suggested that she might describe the gymnasium, the chapel, the library, the drawing rooms, the kitchen, and so forth, one by one, telling the exact size and position of everything. That filled up quite a number of days. When Miss Anglin put a little note of expostulation, so to speak, on the theme about the corridor—it was, “This is a course in English, not mathematics, if you please,”—Berta started her in on the picture gallery. There were enough paintings there to last till the end of the semester. Of course, such work did not require her to read character. Robbie Belle didn’t want to do that somehow; she said it seemed too much like gossip.
However, at first, it wasn’t gossip. For instance one day Lila and I collected smiles. We scurried around the garden and dived in and out of the hedge in order to meet as many people as possible face to face. Then we took notes on the varieties of greeting and made up themes about them. Miss Anglin marked an excellent on mine that time. For another topic we paid one-minute calls on everybody we knew. When they looked surprised and inquired why we did not sit down, we frankly explained that we were gathering material for an essay on Reading Character from the Way a Person says “Come in!”
After we had been grinding out daily themes for three weeks we began to long for something to break the monotony. My brain was just about wrung dry, and Lila said she simply loathed the sight of a sheet of blank paper. One afternoon while I was struggling over my theme, Berta threw a snowball against my window, flew up the dormitory steps, sped down the corridor, gave a double rat-tat-too on my door, and burst in without waiting for an answer.
“Listen! Quick! I have an idea. It struck me out by the hedge. Why not study manners as well as character? Why not divide——”
“Go away. That snowball plop against the pane spoiled my best sentence. This is due in forty minutes. I’ve written up my family and friends and books and pictures, my summer vacations—a sunset at a time, my little——”
“Why not divide everybody, I say——”
“——dog at home,” I continued placidly. “I’ve composed themes about the orchard, the woods, the table-fare, the climate, the kitten I never owned, the thoughts I never had. To-day I was in despair for a subject till I happened to borrow one of your cookies and——”
“You did! My precious cookies! Burglar!”
“——bite it into scallops. Ha! an idea! I arranged myself on the rug with much care in order that I might stretch out the process to a whole page of narration. Thereupon I nibbled off the corners of the scallops till the cookie was round and smooth again. Next I bit it into scallops and then I nibbled off the corners; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit——”
“——and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled, till there was nothing left but the hole. Now I am writing a scintillating and corruscating theme about it. Go away.”
Berta turned toward the door. “Some day you’ll wish you had listened,” she declared in accents heavy with gloom, “some day when you can’t think of a single thing to write about, and the hand keeps moving around the clock, and the paper lies there blank and horrible before your vacant eyes, and your pen is nibbled so short that your fingers——”
“I didn’t mean go away,” I said, “I meant, go on. Tell me about it.”
“Nay, nay! To lacerate my feelings, spurn my proffered aid, insult my youthful pristine zeal, and then to call me back—in short, to throw a dog a bone! Nay, nay!”
“Oh, Berta, be sweet. Tell me. You know that I think you have the most original ideas in college.” After I had coaxed her quite a lot, she told me her new scheme. It was something like advanced character reading and biology combined. Just as scientists classify trees and plants in botany, Berta proposed that we should divide the students into different classes according to their manners.
“It will be so improving and instructive too,” she pleaded, “we’ll be paragons of politeness before we finish them all. We’ll be so particular about our highest class that we will notice every little thing and thus take warning.” She paused a moment; then, “Did you hear me say thus?” she inquired. When I nodded, she gazed at me sadly. “People who belong to the highest class never gesticulate; they use spoken language exclusively. Furthermore, as to the thus. I wondered if an up-springing sense of courtesy persuaded you to refrain from hooting at such elegant verbiage. That would be a sign of benefit already derived from the classes. By the way, it was Mary Winchester who inspired the idea.”
“Oh, but she has no manners at all!” I exclaimed before I thought.
“That is precisely the point. I met her flying along like a wild creature on her bicycle, eyes staring, hair streaming in the wind. At least, some locks were streaming. She gave the impression of a being utterly lawless. Then I thought——See here, Miss Leigh, are you interested in my thoughts?”
“Yes’m,” I answered meekly.
“Then drop that pen and pay attention. Even the girls who are to belong to the second class in manners know how to do that. Well, I thought that she hardly ever accepts an invitation, and she looks as she didn’t expect anybody to like her, and she minds her own business and does exactly as she pleases generally. My next important thought was that sometimes she cuts me in the hall, and sometimes she doesn’t, just as she happens to feel. That led to the philosophic reflection that politeness is a question of law.”
“Ah, pardon me, Miss Abbott, but I remember from a story which was read by my teacher about forty years ago when I was in the fourth reader that
| “‘Politeness is to do or say The kindest thing in the kindest way.’” |
“That’s what I meant. The law of kindness—that’s what politeness is. Listen to the logic. Mary Winchester is lawless, hence she breaks the law of kindness, hence she has no manners, hence it will be fun to divide everybody here into various classes according to their manners.”
So that is the way our classes began.
It was awfully, awfully interesting. Robbie Belle said she didn’t want to; but Berta and Lila and I talked and talked and talked. We sat in the windows and talked instead of dancing between dinner and chapel. We talked after chapel, and on our way to classes or to meals. And of course we talked while we were skating or walking or doing anything similar that did not demand intellectual application. Lila even talked about the classes in her sleep. We discussed everybody who happened to attract our attention.
Finally we had sifted out all the candidates for the highest class except three. One was the senior president, pink and white and slender and gentle and she never thumped when she walked or laughed with her mouth open or was careless about spots on her clothes or forgot the faces of new girls who had been introduced to her. The second was a professor who was shy and sweet and went off lecturing every week. The third was a teacher who looked like a piece of porcelain and always wore silk-lined skirts and never changed the shape of her sleeves year after year. Not one of the three ever hurt anybody’s feelings.
Miss Anglin was obliged to go into the second class because she had moods. No, I don’t mean because she had them,—for sometimes you cannot help having moods, you know—but because she showed them. She let the moods influence her manner. Some mornings she would come down to breakfast as blue as my dyed brilliantine—(how I hated that frock!)—and would sit through the meal without opening her mouth except to put something into it; though on such occasions we noticed that she rarely put into it very much besides toast and hot water. On other days she made jokes and sparkled and laughed with her head bent down, and was so absolutely and utterly charming that the girls at the other tables wished they sat at ours, I can tell you. We three were exceedingly fond of her, but we agreed at last after arguing for seven days that true courtesy makes a person act cheerfully and considerately, no matter how she may feel inside.
There were about nine in that second class, and fourteen in the third and twenty in the fourth, when we started in on Mary Winchester.
Lila and I were rushing to get ready for the last skating carnival of the season. Some one knocked at the door. It was Mary, but she didn’t turn the knob when I called, “Come.” She just waited outside and gave me the trouble of opening it myself. Then in her offish way she asked if we were through with her lexicon. After I had hunted it up for her, she happened to notice that Lila was wailing over the disappearance of her skates.
“I saw a pair of strange skates in my room,” she said and walked away as indifferent as you please.
Now wouldn’t any one think that was queer?
It made Lila cross, especially when she found that the skates had three new spots of rust on them. March is an irritable month, anyhow, you know. Everybody is tired, and breakfast doesn’t taste very good. She sputtered about the rust till we reached the lake where we found two big bonfires and three musicians to play dance music while we skated. Imagine how lovely with the flames leaping against the background of snowy banks and bare black trees! Berta and Lila and I crossed hands and skated around and around the lake with the crowd. When we stopped in the firelight, Lila looked unusually pretty with her rosy cheeks and her curls frosted by her breath. Berta’s eyes were like stars. Of course Robbie Belle was beautiful, but she did not associate much with us that evening. After one turn up and back again while we discussed Mary Winchester, she said she thought she would invite our little freshman roommate for the next number.
We kept on talking about Mary. Lila was insisting that she ought to be put in the tenth class or worse, while Berta maintained that she wasn’t quite so bad as that. I kept thinking up arguments for both sides.
Lila counted off her crimes, and she didn’t speak so very low either. “Mary Winchester doesn’t deserve a place even in the tenth class. Why, listen now. You admit that she borrows disgracefully and never returns things. At least, she helped herself to my skates. It is almost the same as stealing. She has no friends. She always goes off walking alone, and sits in the gallery by herself at lectures and concerts. Everybody says she is queer.”
“Miss Anglin thinks girls in the mass are funny,” I volunteered, “though maybe they are not any more so than human kind in the bulk. She says that we all imagine we admire originality, but when we see any one who is noticeably different from the rest, we avoid her. We call her queer and are afraid to be seen with her.”
“Mary Winchester’s independence is commendable,” protested Berta. “I envy her strength of character. She ignores foolish conventions——”
“As for instance, the distinction between mine and thine,” interrupted Lila, “you don’t live next to her, and you don’t know. Her disregard for the property rights of others indicates a fatal flaw——”
“Fatal flaw, fatal flaw!” chanted Berta mischievously, “isn’t that a musical phrase! Say it fast now, and see if it tangles your tongue.”
I was afraid Lila would feel wounded, so I remarked hastily that we agreed that Mary was not polite; the question was as to the degree of impoliteness.
“Even Robbie Belle acknowledges that she is not a lady,” chimed in Berta; “she said it when Mary wanted to take that stray kitten to the biological laboratory. She declared it would be happier if dead.”
“And it wasn’t her kitten either,” I contributed. “Robbie found it up a tree. It is necessary to weigh every little point in a scientific study like this.”
“Don’t you see, girls, that Mary Winchester does not come from good stock,” began Lila, “of course she isn’t a lady. Her attitude toward the rights of others is certain proof that her family has a defective moral sense. Perhaps her brother——”
“Oh, let’s follow out the logical deductions,” cried Berta. “That course in logic is the most fascinating in the whole curriculum. See—if a girl lacks moral judgment, she either inherits or acquires the defect. If she inherits it, her father doubtless was dishonest. Maybe he speculated and embezzled or gambled or something. If she acquired it through environment, her brother must have suffered likewise as they were presumably brought up together. So perhaps Mary Winchester’s brother was expelled from college for kleptomania.”
“Then,” said Lila triumphantly, “how can we possibly put her into even the lowest of our classes in manners?”
“Hi, there!” I started to scream before the breath was knocked out of me by colliding with some girls who had been skating in front of us. One of them had caught her skate in a crack, and we were so intent on our conversation that we bumped into them, and all tumbled in a heap. Nobody was hurt. That is, nobody was hurt physically. We picked ourselves up and went on skating as before. It was not until days later that we discovered what had been hurt then. It was Mary Winchester’s reputation. Those girls in front had overheard part of our remarks. And they thought that we were talking about real facts instead of just analyzing character.
It was exactly like a game of slander, only worse. The rumor that Mary Winchester’s father was a gambler and that her brother had been expelled from college for stealing spread and grew like fire. You know, as I said before, she was a queer girl—so queer in countless small ways that she was conspicuous. Even freshmen who did not know her name had wondered about the tall, wild-looking girl who had a habit of tearing alone over the country roads as if trying to get away from herself. Naturally when such a report as this one of ours reached them, they adopted it as a satisfactory explanation. They also, so to speak, promulgated it.
The first we knew of the rumor was from Robbie Belle. It was the afternoon before the Easter vacation, and Lila and I were in Berta’s room to help her pack her trunk. At least Lila held the nails while Berta mended the top tray and I did the heavy looking on. When Berta stopped hammering and put her thumb in her mouth, I remarked that nobody who squealed ouch! in company could belong to our highest class in manners.
Lila’s expression changed from the pained sympathy of friendship to the scientific zeal of character study. “Girls, have you noticed Mary Winchester lately? It is the strangest thing! She seems more alone and alien than ever. The girls avoid her as if she had the plague. In the library and the corridor to-day it was as plain as could be. They stop talking when she comes around. They watch her all the time though they try not to let her know it. Of course, she couldn’t help feeling it. They point her out to each other, and raise their brows and whisper after she has passed. She moves on with her head up and her mouth set tight. Her manners are worse than ever.”
“When I met her this morning, she looked right through me and didn’t see anything there, I reckon,” said I, “and, oh, Lila, you were mistaken about her borrowing your skates without leave. It was Martha who had them that morning. In rushing to class she got mixed up and threw them in at the wrong door, that’s all. Our example is corrupting the infant.”
Berta forgot her aching thumb. “Something is wrong. Mary’s eyes are those of a hunted creature. Driven into a corner. Everybody against her. I wonder——”
Robbie Belle walked slowly into the room, her clothes dripping with water.
“Mary Winchester fell into the lake,” she said, “you did it.”
In the silence I heard Berta draw a long sigh. Then she dropped her hammer.
“She broke through the ice,” added Robbie Belle.
“But the ice is rotten. How did she get on it?” asked my voice.
“She walked,” answered Robbie Belle, “I saw her.” Then she crossed over to Berta, put both arms around her neck, hid her face against her shoulder, and began to shake all over. “I helped pull her out, and she fought me—she fought——”
At that moment little Martha, our freshman roommate, came running in. “That queer girl jumped into the lake. I saw them carrying her to the infirmary. She did it because everybody knows her father is in the penitentiary. They heard about it at the skating carnival. Her brother is an outlaw too——”
Robbie Belle lifted her head. “She hasn’t any brother, but it is true about her father. The doctor knows. She wonders how the story got out. It was a secret. Mary changed her name. She—she fought me.”
I heard Berta sigh again. It sounded loud. Lila sat staring straight in front of her with such a horrified expression on her white face that I shut my eyes quick.
When I opened them again, Miss Anglin stood in the doorway. I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life. But we did not tell her then about our classes in manners. We waited till one day in June when she asked us how we had managed to win Mary out of her shell.
As I look back now I cannot possibly understand how we succeeded. It was the most discouraging, hopeless, hardest work I ever stuck to. Over and over again Berta and I would have given up if it had not been for Lila. She said that she dared not fail. Of course Robbie Belle helped a lot in her steady, beautiful way. Martha did her best too, partly because she was so sorry about her share in the affair of the skates. In fact all the girls were perfectly lovely to Mary after the doctor had persuaded her not to throw everything up and run away to hide. By and by she realized that it was no use to refuse to be friends.
Indeed she is a dear girl when you get to know her real self. Her unfortunate manner—it was unfortunate, you know—had been a sort of armor to shield her sore pride. She had been afraid of letting anybody have a chance to snub her. That was the reason why she had seemed so offish and suspicious and indifferent and lawless and queer.
Do you know, I never heard Robbie Belle say a sharp thing except once. She said it that day when we were telling Miss Anglin about the classes. It was: “Whenever I want to say something mean about anybody, I think I shall call it a scientific analysis of character.”