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.
Mabel had announced to a few of her cronies that she would show Evelyn Porter how things were done; and as the Country Club was new, she chose it as the place for her exhibition. Mabel was two years older than Evelyn; they had never been more than casually acquainted, and now that Evelyn's college days were over,—Mabel had "finished" several years before,—and they were to live in the same town, it seemed expedient to the older girl to take the initiative, to the end that their respective positions in the community might be definitely fixed. Evelyn's name carried far more prestige than Mabel's; the Margraves had not been in the Clarkson Blue Book at all, until Mabel came home from school and demonstrated her right to enlistment among the elect.
She dressed herself as sumptuously as she dared for a morning call and drove the highest trap that Clarkson had ever seen up Porter Hill. The man beside her was the only correctly liveried adjunct of any Clarkson stable,—at least this was Mabel's opinion. Whatever people said of Mabel and her ways, they could not deny that her clothes were good, though they were usually a trifle pronounced in color and cut. She wore about her neck a long, thin chain from which dangled a silver heart. Mabel's was the largest that could be found at any Chicago jeweler's. Its purpose in Mabel's case was to convey to the curious the impression that there was a photograph of a young man inside. This was no fraud on Mabel's part, for she carried in this trinket the photograph of a popular actor, whose pictures were purchasable anywhere in the country at twenty-five cents each. While Mabel waited for Evelyn to appear, she threw open her new driving coat, which forced the season a trifle, and studied the furnishings of the Porter parlor, criticising them adversely. She was not clear in her mind whether she should call Evelyn "Miss Porter" or not. Clarkson people usually said "Evelyn Porter" when speaking of her. In Mabel's own case they all said "Mabel."
When Evelyn came into the parlor she seemed very tall to Mabel, and impulse solved the problem of how to address her.
"Good morning, Miss Porter."
She gave her hand to Evelyn, thrusting it out straight before her, yet hanging back from it archly as if in rebuke of her own forwardness. This was decidedly Tyringhamesque, and was only one of the many amiable and useful things she had learned at Miss Alton's school.
Mabel sat up very straight in her chair when she talked, and played with the silver heart.
"I didn't ask for the others, as it's a wretchedly indecent hour to be making a call."
"Oh, the girls are up and about," said Evelyn. "I shall be glad—"
"Oh, please don't trouble to call them! I came on an errand. You know the Country Club has just taken a new lease of life. Have you been out yet? It's a bit crude"—this phrase was taught as a separate course at Tyringham—"but there's the making of a lovely place there."
"Yes, I've barely seen it. I went out the other day to look at the golf course. The golf wave seems to be sweeping the country."
"Do you play?"
"A little; we had a course near the college that we used."
"You college girls are awfully athletic. I'm crazy about golf. I thought it might be good sport to ask a few girls and some of the men to go to the club for supper,—we really couldn't have dinner there, you know. This heavenly weather won't last always. We'll get a drag and Captain Wheelock will see that I don't drive you into trouble. He's a very safe whip, you know, if I'm not; and we'll come back in the moonlight. This includes your guests, of course."
"That will be delightful," said Evelyn. "I'm sure we'll all be glad to go. I'm anxious to have the girls see as much as possible. I want them to be favorably impressed, and this will be an event."
When Mabel had taken herself off, Evelyn returned to the tower where Belle Marshall and Annie Warren awaited her. These young women were lounging in the low window-seat exchanging reminiscences of college days.
"It was Mabel Margrave," explained Evelyn. "She's asked us to go coaching with her to the Country Club and have supper there and I took the liberty of accepting for you."
"What's she like?" asked Annie.
"Tyringham," said Evelyn succinctly.
"Oh! your words affect me strangely, child," drawled Belle, casting up her eyes in a pretended imitation of the Tyringham manner.
"How are her a's?" asked Annie.
"Broader than the Atlantic. I think she wants to patronize me. She's a real Tyringham in that she thinks us college women very slow."
"Well, they do have a style," said Belle, sighing. "You can always tell one of Miss Alton's girls."
"Yes, there's no doubt about that," retorted Annie coolly. She had taken her education seriously and was disposed to look down upon the product of fashionable boarding schools.
"Cheer up! The worst is yet to come," declared Evelyn. "You'd better not encourage the idea here that we are different from young women of any other sort. I've got to live here! I'm going to be pretty lonely too, the first thing you know, after you desert me."
"You'll have plenty of chances to root for the college," suggested Belle. "You won't have anything like the time I'll have. In Virginia we have traditions that I've got to reconcile myself to, in some way; out here, you can start even."
"Yes, and we have the Tyringham type, and a few of the convent sort, and a few of the co-eds to combat."
"Well, there's nothing so radically wrong with the co-eds, is there?" asked Annie, who believed in education for its own sake.
"Only the ones that want to go in for politics and that sort of thing. There's a lady—I said lady—doctor of philosophy here in town who casually invited me to become a candidate for school commissioner a few weeks ago."
"I'm not sure that you oughtn't to have done it," said Annie, "assuming that you declined. It would have been a good stroke for alma mater."
"No; that's what it wouldn't have been," said Evelyn seriously. "If you and I believe that college education is good for women, we'd better suppress this notion that's abroad in the world that college makes a woman different. I hold that we're not necessarily unlike our sisters of the convent, or the Tyringham teach-you-how-to-enter-a-room variety." Evelyn drew herself up with an oratorical gesture and inflection. "I'm here to defend my rights as a human being—"
"You will be hit with a pillow in a minute," remarked Belle, rising and preparing to make her threat good. "Let's talk about what to wear to Lady Tyringham's party.”