CHAPTER XIV THE GIRL THAT TRIES HARD
The Girl That Tries Hard was giving a dance at the Country Club. The Girl That Tries Hard was otherwise Mabel Margrave, wherein lay the only point of difference between herself and other Girls That Try Hard. There was hardly room in Clarkson for cliques; and yet one often heard the expression "Mabel Margrave and her set" and this indicated that Mabel Margrave had a following and that to some extent she was a leader. She prided herself on doing things differently, which is what The Girl That Tries Hard is forever doing everywhere. She was the only girl in the town that gave dinners at the Clarkson Club; and while these functions were not necessarily a shock to the Clarkson moral sense, yet the first of these entertainments, at which Mabel Margrave danced a skirt dance at the end of the dinner, caused talk in conservative circles. It might be assumed that Mabel's father and mother could have checked her exuberance, but the fact was that Mabel's parents wielded little influence in their own household. Timothy Margrave was busy with his railroad and his wife was a timid, shrinking person, who viewed her daughter's social performances with wonder and admiration. It would have been much better for Mabel if she had not tried so hard, but this was something that she did not understand, and there was no one to teach her. She derived an immense pleasure from her father's private car, in which she had been over most of the United States, and had gone even to Mexico. In the Margrave household it was always spoken of as "the car." Its cook and porter were kept on the pay-roll of the company, but when they were not on active service in the car, one of them drove the Margrave carriage, and the other opened the Margrave front door.
The Margrave house was one of the handsomest in Clarkson. Margrave had not coursed in the orbits of luminaries greater than himself without acquiring wisdom. When he built a house he turned the whole matter over to a Boston architect with instructions to go ahead just as if a gentleman had employed him; he did not want a house which his neighbors could say was exactly what any one would expect of the Margraves. Clarkson was proud of the Margrave house, which was better than the Porter house, though it lacked the setting of the Porter grounds. The architect had done everything; Margrave kept his own hands off and sent his wife and Mabel abroad to stay until it was ready for occupancy. When the house was nearly completed Margrave took Warry Raridan up to see it and displayed with pride a large and handsomely furnished library whose ample shelves were devoid of books.
"Now, Warry," he said, "I want books for this house and I want 'em right. I never read any books, and I never expect to, and I guess the rest of the family ain't very literary, either. I want you to fill these shelves, and I don't want trash. Are you on?"
The situation appealed to Warry and he had given his best attention to Margrave's request. He took his time and bought a representative library in good bindings. As Mrs. Margrave was a Roman Catholic, Warry thought it well that theological literature should be represented. Mrs. Margrave's parish priest, dining early at the new home, contemplated the "libery," as its owner called it, with amazement.
"Ain't they all there, Father Donovan?" asked Margrave. "I hope you like my selection."
"Couldn't be better," declared the priest, "if I'd picked them myself." He had taken down a volume of a rare edition of Cornelius a Lapide and passed his hand over the Latin title page with a scholar's satisfaction.
Mabel had declined to go to the convent which her mother selected for her; convents were not fashionable; and she herself selected Tyringham because she had once met a Tyringham graduate who was the most "stylish" girl she had ever seen. Since her return from school she had found it convenient to abandon, as far as possible, the church of her baptism. There had been no other Roman Catholics at her school; the Episcopal church was the official spiritual channel of Tyringham; and she brought home a pretty Anglican prayer book, and attended early masses with her mother only to the end that she might go later to the services of St. Paul's, to the scandal of Father Donovan, and somewhat to the sneaking delight of her father. Margrave held that religion of whatever kind was a matter for women, and that they were entitled to their whim about it.
Tyringham is, it is well known, a place where girls of the proper instinct and spirit acquire a manner that is everywhere unmistakable. Mabel had given new grace and impressiveness to Tyringham itself; she touched nothing that she did not improve, and she came home with an ambition to give tone to Clarkson society. A great phrase with Mabel was The Men; this did not mean the genus homo in any philosophical abstraction, but certain young gentlemen that followed much in her train. There were a few young women who were much in Mabel's company and who conscientiously imitated Mabel's ways. All the devices and desires of Mabel's heart tended toward one consummation, and that was the destruction of monotony.