Bobbie, General Manager: A Novel

by Olive Higgins Prouty

That night Will had brought home the long-looked-for good news of a position for Oliver. We discussed it quietly at dinner—the three of us with Madge crying upstairs. A friend of Will's, a civil engineer, had said that if Oliver cared to go down into South America to some God-forsaken spot in the Argentine Republic—no place for a woman, by the way—there was an engineering job down there waiting for somebody. The job would take some five or six months; there might or might not be any future—Will's friend couldn't say.

"I'll go. I'll go right off," said Oliver. "Madge is unhappy and wants to go home anyway. I'm sure it's best. It was all a mistake," he admitted sadly to Will, "my taking her away from Glennings Falls. I might have known it wouldn't work." I stared hard at a saltcellar. Will began carving the steak silently. "You can go ahead now and have your people here for Commencement," observed Oliver; "Madge and I will both be gone in a week. I'm relieved it's settled," he added gravely.

It was during our dessert, after Delia had taken up a tray to Madge, that I was told that Mrs. Vars wanted me in her bedroom. I excused myself and slipped upstairs quietly. Madge was in bed; her hair was parted, braided neatly down her back; her tears were dried; her plain little nightgown buttoned at her throat. I had never seen her look so pretty. Her dinner stood beside her bed untouched.

"You wanted me?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "I'm not going home. I'll do anything you tell me," she said.

And she didn't go home. We packed Oliver off alone for South America, the next week, and as I rode back from the station in the open car with his slip of a wife beside me, on my hands for the next half year, I drew my first long free breath. Oliver, I recognised, had been more of a responsibility on my mind than Madge. My way was clear now. Lessons could begin any day, and no one will ever know what earnestness and determination went into the task that I had undertaken. From the beginning I took it absolutely for granted that since our stormy talk that evening in the guest-room our relations thereafter would be those of scholar and teacher; my authority would be unquestioned.

I overhauled the child's entire wardrobe with the freedom and cruelty of a customs officer. The cheap lace things I sent to the Salvation Army. The rhinestone comb I dropped into the stove before her very eyes. Ear-rings, jingling bracelets, glass beads, enameled brooches, I put in a box in the storeroom. A much-treasured parasol made out of cheap Hamburg embroidery I presented to Delia. Even Madge's toilet accessories were somehow done away with. Her elaborate hand-mirror with decorated porcelain back and hair-brush to match were replaced by a set of plain white celluloid that could be scrubbed with safety every week. The perfumery was poured down the bathroom sink. As soon as I was able, I purchased for Madge a few plain white shirt-waists with tailored collars, and a "three-fifty" stiff sailor hat made of black straw. When the crimp had all been soaked out of her hair, a wire pompadour supporter, three side-combs, eighteen hairpins, a net, a switch that didn't match, two puffs and a velvet bow had been extracted from her coiffure, I parted the little hair that remained and rolled it into a bun about as big as a doughnut in the back of her neck. She looked as shorn as a young sheep that has just been clipped. Her eyes fairly stared out of her head. I discovered that they were large and blue, with long lashes. Her features, unframed by the dreadful halo of hair, were flawless—small and finely cut. After I had gotten all the dreadful veneer off of the child she reminded me of a lovely old piece of mahogany discovered in some old attic or other, after the several coats of common crude paint have been scraped off and the natural grain finally appears perfect and unharmed.

She looked on at her metamorphosis, and at the cruel ravage of her treasures, passive and apparently indifferent. After her surrender to me she had no spirit left. She accepted my rule with a meekness I couldn't understand. After that night in the guest-room she became a different creature. She dropped her little airs and affectations as abruptly as if they were a garment that she could hang up and leave behind her in the closet. She became dumb at our table, and with Will actually shy and frightened. I thought her sudden change was due to ill-temper, and I bullied the poor beaten little creature terribly. I domineered, tyrannised, scorned and mocked. I didn't dare be tender, for I was convinced that success lay only in complete submission. Poor little "alone" thing—I did feel sorry for her at times! Her eyes were often red from crying. She didn't eat very much and her cheeks grew pale before my sight. She used to sit sometimes for an hour at a time without saying a word, until I longed to put comforting arms about her. When she accompanied me to the market several weeks after Oliver had gone away—quiet, silent, subdued, Glennings Falls would never in the world have recognised their gay sparkling little village coquette who had had a word, a nod, and a smile ready for every one who passed.

Oliver had been gone about six weeks when Madge told me her astounding news. I didn't know what to say to her for a moment. I was awfully surprised. She seemed such a baby, and I suppose it always comes with a jolt when you first realise your younger brother is actually a man. I was amazed too that such an apparently weak little thing as Madge had so pluckily kept her big secret to herself for so many weeks. She had known of it before Oliver had gone away, but she hadn't liked to tell him, she confessed. He had left her without as much as a premonition of the truth, and it was because of what was waiting for her in the future that she had been frightened into staying with me. She hadn't known what else to do. I stared at her open-eyed. It was when I saw her under lip tremble like a little child's and two tears fall splash upon her wrist, that I put out my hand and drew her down beside me on the couch. She leaned against me and began to cry in earnest then.