Chance of a Lifetime (10 page)

“Oh, Mother, you mustn’t put such ideas into Sherrill’s head. It will be hard enough for her anyway, if she goes—”

“If she goes!” snorted Grandmother Sherrill. “You don’t mean to say, Mary Sherrill, that you mean to let her go? Let her be a target for that selfish, pig-eyed woman to shoot at, let her be a background for that precious little flapper of a barelegged Carol! You know what Rebecca Harlow said when she got back from the shore last week. She said she didn’t wear a stocking, just sandals, all around the streets, and her bathing suit was scandalous.”

“Mother! Don’t! I haven’t said Sherrill was to go, have I? Sherrill is the one to decide. She is the one who received the invitation, and she is old enough to settle it herself. She certainly wouldn’t have to go without stockings because her younger cousin does. I’m not sure at all what Sherrill ought to do. I somehow feel that perhaps her father would have wanted her to go. After all, Weston is her uncle, and she does owe something to her father’s family.”

“And you would let her go and wear cast-off clothes and be on charity?”

“Certainly not!” said Mrs. Washburn, rising and going toward the sewing machine. “If Sherrill goes, she will be able somehow to get the right clothes to wear. We have always been decently clothed.”

“Humph!” the grandmother sneered with elderly wisdom. “I guess you’ll find out Eloise Washburn won’t care for the clothes you make. She says as much in that letter. She doesn’t want you to bring anything! She says you wouldn’t know what was suitable.”

That was the beginning of the week’s discussion.

When Keith Washburn came home and was told the news, and read the two letters, he said with a sensible, elderly brother’s farsightedness, “Well, I think she ought to go. If for nothing else than to show her aunt and cousin—yes, and uncle, too—that New York isn’t the last word in decency and culture and education. My sister can hold her own anywhere, if she wants to, and I’d like Uncle West to know it. As for Aunt Eloise and Carol, why bother about them? They’re only human beings, and can’t really do much. Sherrill needn’t have much to do with them if she finds them unpleasant. She’ll make her own place in the household, and she can surely get on with anybody for six months. I’d like her to be in New York and hear some good concerts and lectures and meet some nice people, and see the sights. It’s an education, a visit like that, even if your relatives aren’t all that you wish they were. Uncle Weston seems to be asking in good faith, why not accept in the same way, and try it out, at least? If things aren’t pleasant, you can always come home, but it is foolish to turn it down flat; and besides, I don’t think Dad would have liked it. He always thought a lot of his brother and wanted us to overlook Aunt Eloise’s snubbing for his sake. Really, Sherry, I’m glad you got this invitation. I’ve been hoping to get on my feet before long so that I might send you somewhere to get a little glimpse into another kind of life. But it doesn’t look as if I’d be able to do it for two or three more years yet, so I hope you see your way clear to take this, now that it has come, and get what you can out of it till I can do better for you.”

Sherrill gave her brother a warm look of gratitude. “You’re not to plan to do things like that for me, pard,” she said, with a caress in her voice. “I’m not a baby, and I don’t need advantages. I’d rather have home and Mother and all of you, than go to a thousand New Yorks.”

So day after tomorrow the discussion went on, the mother and brother always urging Sherrill to accept the invitation; Sherrill hesitant and wistful, but still holding back; and the little frail grandmother openly against it.

At last, it became necessary to make some definite reply to the invitation, for they could not let it go any longer unnoticed.

In desperation, Sherrill rushed to her room one day and came down with a neatly written note, which she handed to her mother to read—

“Oh, Sherrill,” her mother said disappointedly, “that won’t do at all. That sounds almost rude, that about wanting to make your own way. And after all, he is your uncle—”

They were interrupted at that moment by a ring of the doorbell followed by the entrance, without further ceremony, of Mrs. Harriet Masters, an old school friend of Mary Washburn’s, who often spent part of her summers in Rockland but who had been traveling abroad for the past two years and had, therefore, not seen them for some time.

After the greetings were over and Harriet Masters had exclaimed over how Sherrill had grown and how beautiful she was and how much better looking she was than a lot of the girls she had seen on the Continent, she asked suddenly, “What was the discussion when I came in, Mary? You were all looking so serious I’m sure it must have been of great importance. Do tell me all about it, and let me get back into touch with family affairs as soon as possible, for I’m terribly jealous of all that has happened since I went away.”

Sherrill’s face clouded over, and she half turned away with a sigh. Now it would have to be all gone over again, and she had thought it was settled! Deep down in her heart, she began to wonder whether, after all, she didn’t want to go to New York in spite of all the drawbacks. Was her hesitation born of a desire for the new experience?

“Why, it was just that Sherrill has been invited to go to New York for the winter to visit her uncle’s family,” began Sherrill’s mother. “She has just decided to decline the invitation. I feel worried lest she will be sorry someday that she did not take this chance for change and seeing the world.”

“Why don’t you want to go, Sherrill?” asked the visitor, searching the girl’s face keenly, with the privileged eyes of a friend of long years’ standing.

“Well,” said Sherrill, lifting honest eyes, “I don’t like my aunt and I don’t like my cousin, and I don’t like what I know about her. Also, I’m not sure but she is right when she says that I wouldn’t know what clothes to get if I should try to get them.
Of course,
I wouldn’t wear her things, nor let them get me anything. I could make my own if I was sure I could make them right. The things I would need in the life they live, of course, are not what I would need in Rockland. Oh I guess, Aunt Harry, it’s just pride.”

“I see,” said the older woman. “Well, Sherry, you’re too fine a girl to let that stand in the way of a real visit that would surely have advantages, even though it had some unpleasantness about it. Let’s see if we can’t do something about those things that stand in your way. You don’t like your aunt, but perhaps you would like her better if you knew her better. At least give her the chance to try, and take it all in good faith. Your cousin is only a kid, isn’t she? You ought to be able to help her, and not be bothered by her. Be fine enough yourself so that nothing unpleasant they can do will touch you. You know that I have heard of a little white flower that grows down on the edge of coal mines, and it is so white and fine, like velvet, that it stands out in terrible contrast to the sooty blackness all about it. You’d think it would get soiled by the soot, but they say it is protected by some substance that will not hold the soil. The dirt rolls off and does not stick. And you, little girl, have always seemed to me to be somehow surrounded by your mother’s religion and your mother’s love in just such a way. What harm can any snobbishness do you, if you live above it?”

“Yes, I know,” said Sherrill. “I’ve tried to think that way—but—that doesn’t solve the clothes problem.”

“Oh, well,” said the guest, “I can help you solve that. I’ve a whole trunk full of clothes that I just bought in Paris, and you’re welcome to copy every one of them with variations suitable to your age. Come over tomorrow morning with your tape measure and your thimble, and let’s begin. It will give me a new interest in life. And by the way, I brought you a present of an evening dress. I wasn’t sure whether you would have much use for it in this quiet little place, but it just looked like what I thought you would be by this time, and I had to buy it. Don’t look troubled, Mary, it isn’t extreme in its style; it’s modest and simple and will just suit Sherrill. It’s quite conservative and has little puffs of sleeves even, the very latest thing in evening gowns, and the back is not low cut either, but not even an unliked aunt could disapprove of it for I bought it at one of the great exclusive places in Paris noted for its lovely lines and styles, and there is a little duck of an evening wrap that goes with it. Wait till you see it. Now, that’s settled, what next?”

Grandmother Sherrill gave a sigh of satisfaction. Nobody had ever suspected her of caring for grand clothes, but in her heart she had greatly coveted something really fine and lovely for the treasure of her heart, her jewel of a grandchild. Yes, and if she had one besetting sin it was pride of family, and she had cherished a secret desire for long years, that in some way the Sherrill side of the house might be able to outshine, unquestionably, the unpleasant aunt, daughter of a corner grocery man, who had married into the Washburn side of the house and alienated the delightful uncle from the entire family.

“Where’s a pencil and paper?” said the energetic visitor, fumbling in her handbag and bringing out a mite of a gold pencil and a little writing pad done up in blue leather. “We’d better get to work. You’ll need, let me see”—and she began to scribble down items—”Sports things, evening things, informal afternoon—”

“Oh, Aunt Harry!” said Sherrill looking over her shoulder. “Don’t write down all that! It’s perfectly appalling! I couldn’t get all those things! It’s silly anyway! Why, if I stayed here in Rockland I’d wear the same dress all day, and maybe have an extra slip one to slip on evenings if there was company or a church social, or the Home and School, if I had to play—! Why should I go to spend winter in a place where you have to pay so much attention to clothes?”

“Nonsense!” said Harriet Masters. “Clothes will never do you any harm if you don’t lose your proper sense of values. Everybody should be decently and sweetly and properly clothed. Beautifully, too. No, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean expensively; I insist that people can look lovely in very cheap raiment if it is properly chosen, properly made, and a reasonable amount of attention given to putting it to its best advantage. Of course, some occasions demand more careful dressing than others. I should say this was one of them. Your own quiet life would need only simple little frocks and perhaps a silk for best, but your aunt’s standards are different, and if you are to be a guest in her house you must conform to some extent to her standards. Please notice, I only said ‘to some extent.’ There is no reason why you should go to extremes even to please an unliked aunt who may be disagreeable about it. I certainly would not have you lower any of your standards for her. For instance, bare backs! I couldn’t think of you, Sherrill, in one of those abominable, ugly modern backs!”

“Oh, I’m so glad you still feel that way, Harriet,” said Sherrill’s mother, giving her old friend an adoring glance. “I was so afraid that two years in Europe might have changed your standards.”

“Well, I like that, Mary! Is that all the faith you had in my principles?”

“Oh, Harriet, you don’t know how upside down the world is getting even around here.

Why Mrs. Rutherford Barnes gave a party the other day and passed cigarettes, and they say that even Alvira Edgars smoked. Everybody smoked except Nettie Halloway, and she got up quickly and asked to be excused because her baby wasn’t well!”

“H’m! I always knew Nettie Halloway hadn’t enough backbone, didn’t you?”

They were all laughing now; Sherrill crinkled her nose and laughed with the rest then sobered quickly as her problem settled down upon her heavily again, filling her with a strange new excitement, mingled with a kind of moral alarm.

“Take that somber look out of your eyes, Sherrill,” demanded the guest. “You look as if you were going to the stake instead of New York. Haven’t I solved all your problems for you?”

Sherrill smiled with a troubled wistfulness.

“You’ve helped a lot, Aunt Harry! It was wonderful of you to bring me a real evening dress and wrap from Paris! I can’t believe they are going to be mine! I don’t believe I had sense enough to thank you.”

“Well, wait till you see them. You may not like them. In which case I suppose I’ll have to give them to Maria Hodgkins.”

Maria Hodgkins was a fat and faithful servitor of most uncertain age, in the boardinghouse where Harriet Masters always stayed, and the vision of Maria in an evening dress brought peals of laughter from them all, even Grandma joining in.

The guest did not stay long. She had only just arrived and her trunk had not yet been sent up, so there had been no opportunity to unpack and settle.

“Well, I must run along back,” she said, rising suddenly. “Old Ephraim promised to have the trunks up inside of an hour, and I’ll have all I can do to get settled by night. But Sherrill, you run over first thing in the morning and we’ll go through my things and pick out some models for you to copy.”

Y
es, but what am I going to copy them in?” said Sherrill in a puzzled tone as she turned away from watching the guest down the sidewalk. “It costs money, Mother, to buy materials, and I don’t intend to have you and Grandmother and Keith going without things while I loaf off to the city and play millionaire.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that!” said Mrs. Washburn happily. “We’ll manage somehow to get what you need without scrimping anybody. We always have. Now take that cloud away from your brow, Sherrill, and sing a little. I’ve missed your voice for a whole week, ever since your uncle’s letter came. That’s no way to start a vacation. Don’t you want to go? Don’t you really
want
to go, child?”