This trait of Janie’s was an incredible one to me. I, who so diligently hid all trace of any sentiment in my life, could never comprehend a temperament that would not only share all its secrets with its friends, but who also invented them; and it was only when Janie had repeatedly emphasized George Landry’s attentions to her at moments when I had been reading poetry with him that I realized this. I listened with the gravest feeling of superiority to Janie’s artless prattle. If George Landry walked up the street with her, it was an event. I think if she had refused to have him accompany her to a Sunday-School picnic she would have recounted it to us as the refusal of a proposal of marriage.
In some obscure way Janie’s interest in George Landry quickened my own feeling and gave me emotions of vast superiority which were very bad for me. All this is brought vividly back to me by this page of Ellen’s journal which recounts the final dénouement:—
“We have been having an awful time this afternoon, and I don’t think that any of us will feel the same ever again. Roberta has been crying in my arms and says she feels soiled, but she has acted so nobly that it will be a comfort to her, because being noble is always a comfort to Roberta—and to almost anybody else. George Landry has been a friend of Roberta’s for some time, and when the other girls have joked her about it she has been very stern, and I’ve believed everything Roberta has said because I think it is horrid to do anything else. But Janie has been talking about George, too, in the way she goes on about anybody that notices her, only who could tell that Janie would talk about those who don’t notice her in the least? This afternoon we were all talking together, and she began: ‘Last night George Landry came past my house and I pretended not to notice him, and he stopped and said, “Can I come in?” And I said, “No, it was too late.”’ ‘What time was it?’ asked Mildred Dilloway. ‘Oh, it was about eight o’clock, and he stayed and talked and talked and leaned clear over the gate, and I kept backing away, and if mother hadn’t called me from the house,—’ Here Mildred broke in and said: ‘Janie Acres! I don’t see how you can tell things like that! George Landry was at my house all yesterday evening.’ ‘Well, it was the evening before that,’ said Janie. ‘Well, it wasn’t the evening before that,’ said Mildred, ‘because he was at my house all the evening before, too.’ ‘I thought your mother was so particular,’ began Janie; but Mildred wouldn’t let her change the subject the way Janie knows how to do, and she said: ‘The way you have gone on about George Landry has almost made trouble between George and myself. It has made me feel quite suspicious at times. But now I have caught you at it.’ Janie blushed very hard and said: ‘You are very spiteful, Mildred, about it. George Landry does like me and I haven’t told you anything that wasn’t so. Perhaps it wasn’t so late when he leaned over my gate.’ ‘He wasn’t anywhere near your old gate,’ said Mildred, ‘and I might just as well tell you—’ And here Mildred, who is very soft when she loses her temper, and begins to cry, did all these and made us all very much embarrassed. ‘And I might as well tell you—and you can see how much you have hurt me—he kissed me good-night. So you can see whether it’s nice of you to pretend that George Landry is interested in you or not.’ We were all perfectly quiet for a minute, and then it was that Roberta made her great sacrifice. Mildred was still crying from excitement and Janie was at a loss for something to say for once, and looking very frowning-browed and jealous. ‘Girls,’ Roberta said, ‘I have something to tell you. And you, Mildred,—whether George has been attentive to Janie I don’t know, but—’ ‘He walked home with me yesterday afternoon,’ said Janie. ‘He did not,’ replied Roberta firmly; ‘he did not. He was at my house all yesterday afternoon, and we were reading poetry and he held my hand.’ If Roberta had been the least like Mildred, she would have cried, too, but she stood there straight and held her head up as beautiful as an avenging fate. What she said stopped Mildred’s tears, and she sprang to her feet and stamped her foot, and said: ‘Well, if he did that and then came to my house and did what he did in the evening, he’s a pig!’ And she stamped her foot again. ‘I said the truth anyway’; and she glared at Janie who now said, ‘I was just trying to tease both of you.’ But Mildred snapped, ‘You were trying to lie to both of us.’ And Janie stuck her head on one side in the most provoking way and said, ‘I don’t want your horrid beau anyway.’ It was all very painful, especially to Roberta. She said: ‘We must never any of us speak to him again. He is unworthy of our notice. Except to spare you more pain, Mildred, I would not have told you about this at all, and I am very much ashamed of myself, and it serves me right. I shall never let any one hold my hand again as long as I live.’ None of us knew that any boy could be so double-faced, and we all have agreed, and Janie Acres, too, that we shall act as though he did not exist at all, which will save our dignity and we hope will teach him something.”
When other people write our lives, they tell the dates of our births, marriages, and deaths; they note the year we went to college and when we left, and all the other irrelevant things; no one says that it was at such and such a moment that his soul was born, or that the baptism of fire that turned away the selfishness of this woman came at such a time. We keep these great and obscure birthdays and many minor ones to ourselves, and this droll little episode was the definite ending for us of little-girlhood. In our town we dawdled along in what the Germans call the “back fish” age until some such thing has happened, for we had no custom of girls coming out all of a sudden full-blown young ladies; we had to win our spurs in a way.
We thought of ourselves as grown up, to be sure. Mildred Dilloway had had a very melodramatic love-affair with one of the lads in the seminary who had gotten into some sort of a scrape and was expelled from school. He had urged Mildred to fly with him. Alas! that women should be so practical. Even young as she was, she asked, “Where?” and when he had no special place to propose beyond his parents’ house, to which he was then repairing, she had laughed at him, but in spite of all our experiments in sentiment we had remained immature in spirit. Now, suddenly, through the actions of this soft youth, George Landry, we found ourselves in an absurd position. The grown woman in us came to life; we wanted to vindicate ourselves in our own eyes; and it was during the next few months that we found ourselves suddenly grown up and the world’s attitude toward us suddenly changed. From being the little girls who accepted the casual kindnesses of older men in a panic of gratitude, suddenly our position was of those who are sought out.
CHAPTER X
Ellen’s formal renouncing of goodness helped us find our place in the grown-up world. Her gayety had always made her overstep the bounds of perfect decorum demanded of young women in my generation, and she set about carrying out her resolution which she told me about. I remember well the shocked sort of quiver with which I recognized myself, even staid Roberta, in her question:—
“Roberta, when you’re in company, don’t you ever want to do foolish things? When you see a lot of solemn people saying good-bye downstairs, don’t you want to slide down the banister into their midst? When Edward Graham used to lecture me, again and again I’ve wanted to take his hand and skip down the street singing, ‘Hippity Hop to the Barber Shop,’ and see what he’d do. I’ve always wanted to do all the foolish things I’ve thought of when I was in company, and now, Roberta, I’m going to!”
I had had these erring impulses. Who has not? In each of us there is a hinterland where thoughts as fantastic as anything that happens in dreams gambol around with the irresponsibility of monkeys. Ellen translated a certain amount of these into action—and see what happened.