Saturday afternoons they had free time. Most of the girls clustered in the common room, talking, shrieking, laughing, playing records. Flip stood by the balcony window thinking that she had been at the school only a few weeks and yet it seemed as though she had been there forever. She felt in her pocket for her father’s latest letter that she had already read several times in the peace of the chapel. When she read his letters, those wonderful, wonderful letters, full of little anecdotes and sketches, she would look at the drawings of forlorn waifs, ragged and starving, and feel ashamed of her own misery which for the moment at any rate seemed completely unjustified. She had had a letter that morning from Mrs. Jackman, too, written on heavy, expensive paper saying that she hoped that Flip had settled down and was happy, and signed, Affectionately, Eunice. Eunice signed all her letters to Flip that way, but Flip felt no affection in them. Eunice had written that she would send Flip a weekly note, since most of the girls would be getting letters from their mothers. “Your father,” Eunice had written, “will have little time for letters, and I don’t want you to have the humiliation of an empty mail box.” Flip read Eunice’s letter, which certainly did not make her feel any better, tore it up, and threw it in the wastepaper basket.
“I love you—u—u—” the phonograph wailed.
“And then he said to me, ‘Your legs are fascinating,’ ” Esmée was saying.
“He was the most divine boy,” she heard Sally saying, “until I heard he had a whole set of false teeth and a toupee.”
“During the holidays,” Gloria screeched, “I smoke at least a pack of cigarettes a day.”
Flip turned away from the window, slipped out of the common room, tiptoed through the big lounge, and slipped out the side door when the teacher on duty was busy talking to someone. The air was crisp and a light wind was blowing. She took deep breaths of it and walked swiftly, exulting in the unaccustomed freedom. She climbed the hill behind the school, knowing that as she got into the pine trees clustered thickly up the mountainside she would be safe from detection. She ran until she was panting and her weak knee ached, but soon the trees got thicker and thicker and she dropped down onto the fragrant rusty carpet of fallen pine needles. As soon as she had regained her breath she walked on a little farther, rubbing her fingers lovingly over the rough, resiny trunks of the pines. She felt free and happy for the first time since she had been at school. The air was full of piney perfume; the needles were soft and gently slippery under her feet; high above her head she could see the blue sky shining in chinks and patches through the trees; and the sun sifted down to her in long golden shafts like the light in a church. She lay down on her back on the pine needles and looked up and up and it seemed that the trees pierced the sky. Oh, trees, oh, sky, oh, sun, something in her sang. Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And she was happy.
After a while she stood up and brushed and shook the pine needles off her uniform and climbed still farther. There was a small clearing where the railroad track cut through on its zigzag way up the mountain. She crossed the track and climbed higher. She did not know where the school bounds ended and forbidden territory began; she had forgotten that there was such a thing as a boundary line, and she kept on pushing up, up the mountain.
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, rushing in her direction with the most hideous baying she had ever heard, bounded a wild beast. Her heart leaped in terror, beating frantically against her chest, then seemed to stop entirely before she realized that the beast was Ariel.
“Ariel!” she cried, “Oh, Ariel!” as the bulldog knocked her down in the ecstasy of his greeting. “Ariel, please!” The dog began bounding around her, barking wildly, and she lay quietly on the fallen pine needles until he stopped and stood at her feet, sniffing her anxiously.
“Where’s Paul?” she asked, and she was amazingly pleased to see the dog’s hideous face with the drooling, under-shot jaw.
Ariel barked.
Flip sat up. Then, as Ariel waited quietly, she stood up and looked around, but she could see no sign of the boy she had met down by the lake on the morning of the day she came to school.
“Paul!” she called, but there was no answer except from Ariel, who barked again, caught hold of her skirt, released it, bounded up the mountain, then came back and took her skirt in his teeth again.
“But I can’t go with you, Ariel,” she said. “I have to go back to school.”
Ariel barked and tried again to lure her up the mountain.
“I have to go, Ariel,” she told him. “I’m sure I’m out of bounds or something, being here. I have to go back to school.” Then she laughed at the serious way in which she had been trying to explain the situation to the bulldog, turned away from him, and started back down the mountain. But Ariel pranced along beside her, always trying to head her back up the mountain, catching hold of her skirt or the hem of her coat, tugging and pulling, gently, but persistently.
“Ariel, you can’t come back to school with me, you just can’t!” Flip tried to push the dog away, but he barked, reached up, and caught hold of the cuff of her sleeve.
“Oh, Ariel!” she cried, half exasperated, half pleased because she knew the dog was going to win. “All right!”
And she turned around and headed back up the mountain.
Ariel bounded ahead of her, running on a few yards, then doubling back to make sure she was following. Soon she saw grey slate rooftops through the trees, and as Ariel led her closer she saw that the rooftops belonged to a château. When the trees cleared and Ariel began to crash through the heavy undergrowth, Flip realized that the château was old and deserted, for the shutters hung crazily by their hinges, some of the windows were boarded up, and at others the boards had come off and the glass was broken and jagged. Grass and weeds grew wild and high and late autumn flowers bloomed in undisciplined profusion. Birds flew in and out of the broken windows and as she pushed through the weeds they began calling to each other, screaming, Someone is coming! Someone is coming!
Her heart beating with excitement, Flip pressed forward, following Ariel, who suddenly leaped ahead of her, bounded across the remaining distance to the château, and disappeared. Flip pushed after him, calling, “Ariel! Ariel! Wait!” but there was no sound, no sign of life about the château except for the birds and the banging of a shutter against the grey stones. She crossed what had once been a flagstone terrace to a row of shuttered French windows. One of the shutters was open and hung by one hinge, and all the glass in the window was gone. It was through this opening that Ariel had disappeared. Flip peered in but could see nothing through the obscurity inside.
“Ariel!” she called, then “Paul! Paul!” There was no answer and her words came faintly echoing back to her. “Ariel! Paul! Paul!”
At last she turned and started back to school.
TWO: THE PAGE AND THE UNICORN
SHE STUDIED FRENCH VERBS in study hall that night, but because of her afternoon’s adventure school seemed different and she seemed different, and even while she was dutifully memorizing a difficult subjunctive she was thinking about the château and about Ariel and Paul. And when she thought about them her heart would lift suddenly and begin to beat rapidly inside her chest so that it seemed like one of the wild, excited birds flying in and out of the broken windows of the château. She sat at her desk and said, “Please, God, let me see Paul again. Please. Please, let me see Paul again.”
That night she and Gloria were already in bed, and she was lying there thinking that the next time she could escape from the school she would go back and look for Ariel and Paul again, when Erna and Jackie came in from the lavatory in their pajamas and bathrobes. Gloria was staring critically at Flip’s cotton underthings folded over her chair at the foot of her bed.
“I can’t stand anything but silk next to my skin,” Gloria said. “Mummy’s always dressed me in silk. She says she’s going to send me some new silk undies from Paris.”
“You and Wagner,” Flip said. Jackie laughed.
&nb
sp; Erna was tapping her foot on the floor impatiently. “Hey, we just remembered,” she broke in. “You’re new girls and we haven’t initiated you yet.”
“Oh, Erna,” Gloria groaned. “Do we have to be initiated?”
Erna pulled off her barrette, pulled her hair back more tightly, and clasped the barrette again, as she always did when she felt important. “Well, you don’t have to be, but it just means we can’t accept you if you aren’t. You want to be accepted, don’t you?”
“Oh, okay,” Gloria said. “I suppose we’ll survive. Go ahead.”
“Do you want to be accepted, Pill?” Erna asked.
Flip answered in a low voice. “Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll continue. Oh, first you’d better get out of bed and sit on your chairs, please.”
Obediently Flip and Gloria sat on the chairs at the foot of their beds. Erna nodded in satisfaction. She stood, hands on hips, looking at them, while Jackie lounged more comfortably on her bed.
“Do you promise to keep our dormitory secrets till the death?” Erna asked.
Flip and Gloria nodded.
“And to do anything we tell you to do during the period of probation?”
Flip and Gloria nodded again.
“Good. Now we want to ask you a couple of questions.”
Jackie took over. She sat up, her feet half in and half out of her woolly crimson slippers, dangling over the foot of the bed, and pointed at Gloria. “Who do you like most in the school?”
“You and Erna,” Gloria answered promptly.
“I told you she’d say that.” Erna nodded at Jackie.
Jackie pointed at Flip. “And you?”
“Madame Perceval.”
“Percy? Well, she’ll do all right.” Jackie kicked one slipper onto the floor and pointed at Gloria. “Where were you born?”
“London.”
“Where?”
“London.”
“Where?” Erna asked.
“London.”
And Jackie asked again, “Where?”
“Oh, Brazil where the nuts come from,” Gloria cried in exasperation.
“Where did you say you were born?” Erna asked.
“I’ve told you three times,” Gloria muttered.
“You seem sort of confused.” Jackie kicked off the other slipper.
Erna tightened her bathrobe belt. Miss Tulip had taken her over to Lausanne that morning and the gold braces on her teeth had been tightened; her teeth hurt and her voice sounded cross. “If you don’t know where you were born we certainly can’t accept you. Where were you born?”
“London,” Gloria mumbled sulkily.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t Brazil?”
“No.”
“Why did you say it was Brazil?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you say things and you don’t know why you say them?”
“No.”
“But that’s what you just said.”
Gloria wailed, “You’re trying to confuse me.”
Erna put her hands in the pockets of her bathrobe and smiled tolerantly. “Why should we try to confuse you? We’re just trying to find out whether or not you’re sure where you were born.”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Where was it?”
“London.”
“All right. We’ll let it go this once. But we can’t have people in our room saying things without knowing why they say them. So be careful.” She turned to Flip. “Okay, Pill. Where were you born?”
“Goshen, Connecticut.” Warned by Gloria, Flip answered firmly while Erna and Jackie asked her seven or eight times.
Jackie slipped over the foot of the bed and pushed her feet back into her slippers. She smiled ravishingly at Flip and Gloria. “Well,” she told them, “I think you’ve passed the preliminary examination.”
Gloria stood up and stretched. “What’s next?”
“You each have to prove yourself.”
“How?”
“By some courageous deed. If it’s good enough, then you can help with the initiation Saturday afternoon.”
“The initiation?” Gloria asked suspiciously.
Erna grinned in anticipation and the light flashed on the gold braces on her teeth. “Oh, the big general initiation. All the old girls in our class are going to initiate the new girls who haven’t done a magnificent enough deed by Saturday lunch. It was my idea.”
Saturday afternoon, Flip thought. That was when I was planning to go look for Paul and Ariel. Well, maybe I can go tomorrow after quiet hour, though it doesn’t give me too much time. I do want to see Paul again. He was nice to me by the lake and I don’t think he disliked me. Going off to see Paul would be quite a deed, only I can’t tell anyone.
Gloria was smiling a secret, pleased smile to herself.
“What’s the joke?” Jackie asked, always eager for something to laugh at.
Gloria twined her arms about her ginger-colored head and tried to look mysterious. “I was thinking of a deed.”
The door opened and Miss Tulip burst in. “Girls! The light bell rang five minutes ago. Just because I wasn’t able to get here sooner is no reason for you to be out of bed. Get in at once. Do you all want deportment marks?”
“We didn’t hear the bell, Miss Tulip,” they chorused, making a mad scramble for their beds.
The matron waited until they were lying down and the covers drawn up, then she switched off the light. “Now I don’t want to hear another sound from this room or I’ll have to report you to Mademoiselle Dragonet. Good night.” And the door clicked shut behind her.
Every morning before classes, all the students gathered in the Assembly Hall and one of the teachers called the roll. On Saturday and Sunday mornings call over was held as usual, although it was not followed by lessons. On Saturdays the girls trooped into the common room for sewing, and on Sundays they remained in formation and marched from the Assembly Hall down to chapel.
The morning after Erna’s and Jackie’s inquisition, Gloria did her courageous deed during call over. Fräulein Hauser, the gym teacher, was calling the roll. She was considered one of the strictest of all the teachers (though not so strict nor so quickly obeyed as Madame Perceval) and when it was her turn to take call over the girls stayed very quietly in their lines, answering smartly as their names were called. It wasn’t long, then, this Sunday morning before Flip and most of the girls in her class, and the classes standing near, noticed that Gloria, with an expression of unconcerned innocence, was chewing something. Chewing gum was strictly forbidden, and although the girls frequently smuggled it in, none of them would have dared chew openly in the presence of a teacher.
“Anne Badeneaux,” Fräulein Hauser was saying, “Moire Beresford, Anastasia Bechman, Hanni Bechman, Lischen Bechman, Jacqueline Bernstein, Esmée Bodet, Ingeborg Brandes, Dorothy Brown, Gloria Browne . . .” As Gloria answered to her name Fräulein Hauser looked at her sharply. “Gloria Browne,” she said.
Gloria, still chewing, answered meekly. “Yes, Fräulein Hauser?”
“You know chewing gum is forbidden?”
“Oh, yes, Fräulein Hauser.”
Fräulein Hauser held out her hand. “Come here.”
Gloria detached herself from the lines of girls and went up to the platform. “Yes, Fräulein Hauser?”
Fräulein Hauser kept her hand outstretched. “Spit,” she said.
Gloria spat, and there in Fräulein Hauser’s upturned palm lay a gold plate attached to which were Gloria’s four front teeth. Gloria turned around and smiled a brilliant, toothless smile at the assembly.
Fräulein Hauser said icily, “Get back into line. You may report to me immediately after chapel.”
“Yef, Fäulein Haufer. May I haf my teef, pleef, Fäulein Haufer?” Gloria lisped. Fräulein Hauser handed her the teeth and Gloria resumed her place in line.
Throughout the entire school shoulders were shaking in ill-su
ppressed laughter. Erna let out one snort and turned almost purple in her effort to keep the rest of her rapture inside. Tears of mirth were streaming down Jackie’s face, and even Flip felt an ache of laughter in her chest. Fräulein Hauser looked at the assembly coldly. She clapped her hands and the sound cut sharply across their laughter. “Silence!” she hissed, and her face was pale with anger. “Silence!” She stared wrathfully at the girls until their amusement was somewhat controlled. Then she went on with the roll. “Cornelli Bruch, Sally Buckman, Elizabeth Campbell, Margaret Campbell, Bianca Colantuono, Gioia Colantuono, Maria Colantuono, Jeanne-Marie Crougier . . .”
After call over they marched down to the chapel where the English chaplain from Territet gave them a sermon, and after chapel Gloria was haled off by Fräulein Hauser and they did not see her until they met in the dining room for Sunday dinner. Gloria stood, looking bloody but unbowed, behind her chair as they waited for Mlle Dragonet to say grace.
Grace ended, Mlle Dragonet pulled out her chair, and then all the other chairs in the big dining room scraped across the floor with a sound of ocean waves. Tables were changed weekly but the girls were seated according to classes and the whole of dormitory 33 this week was together, with Solvei Krogstad and Sally Buckman. Miss Armstrong, the science teacher, was at their table for that week, but she had gone down to Montreux to have lunch with a friend who was passing through.
“Thank goodness Balmy Almy’s not here!” Erna cried joyfully. “What did old Hauser do to you, Gloria?”
And Jackie was squeaking simultaneously, “How did you do it, Gloria? How did you do it? Tell us quick!”
Gloria clicked her tongue around inside her mouth and suddenly she was grinning with the four front teeth outside her lips. It was a macabre and horrible grimace. Another click and they were back in place.
“You stinker, why didn’t you tell us before?” Sally asked, pushing her fingers against her nose.
“I was saving it,” Gloria said. “It’s my deed, so I can help with the initiation. Will it do?”
And Both Were Young Page 5