Concerning Belinda Part 20

Amelia sniffed audibly and her eyes filled with tears. She was revelling in the luxury of woe.

"I hope it will be a cloudy day," she said in a choked voice. "A cloudy day always seems so much more poetic and appropriate for a funeral. Oh, but I was going to tell you about the other carriages. Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary and Cousin d.i.c.k--he's my favourite cousin--and you will be in the second carriage; and then the other relatives will be in the other carriages--all except Aunt Ellen. When I was home for Christmas, she told Mamma, right before me, that I was a sentimental chit, and that I ran after Harvey Porter. As if everybody couldn't see that Harvey was crazy over me and that I didn't have to run a step!"

"Don't you think I'd be out of place ahead of so many of the relatives?"

Belinda inquired modestly.

"Oh, no; not a bit. We girls talked it over and we decided we'd all put you in the second carriages. Blanche says she thinks there's a peculiarly intimate tie between a young girl and the teacher who moulds her mind and character, and you're the only one who has moulded us a bit--and then we all simply adore you, anyway."

The Youngest Teacher bowed her head upon her hands as if overcome by emotion at the success of her moulding process or at the prospect of five free rides in second carriages, and her shoulders shook gently.

"We've talked a lot about our funerals, and I've got mine all arranged, even the hymns," continued Amelia, who was always spokesman for her crowd. "I'm going to be buried in the white chiffon dress I wore at the New Year's dance and with that big bunch of pink roses on my breast--the dried bunch in my green hatbox. I met George at that dance and he gave me the roses. I _was_ going to wear my blue silk in my last will. Harvey loved light blue, but, anyway, white's more appropriate and sweet, don't you think so?"

The Youngest Teacher was driven, by a sense of duty, to extinguish her mirth and remonstrate.

"Do you know, girls, I think this is all very foolish and sentimental,"

she said sternly. "There's no probability of your dying within fifty years."

"Well, it won't do any harm to be prepared," interrupted Amelia.

"It's absolutely silly and morbid to sit down and deliberately work yourselves into a green and yellow melancholy by thinking about your deaths and your funerals. I'm disgusted with you."

"But, Miss Carewe"--Laura May's voice was plaintive--"the Bible says you ought to think about dying, and only last Sunday the rector said we were too indifferent and that we ought to realise how uncertain life is and make some preparation, instead of just going to dances, and card parties, and eating, and drinking, and doing things like that."

"I hope you don't call sickly sentimentalising over the stage effects for your funerals preparing for death. If you'd stop thinking about your silly selves altogether and think of other people, you'd come nearer preparing for the hereafter."

Amelia's plump face took on an expression of pained surprise.

"Why, Miss Carewe, you don't suppose I'm thinking about the chiffon dress and the roses and all that on my own account, do you? I'd be so dead I wouldn't know anything about it; but I think it would be perfectly sweet for George. He'd know I had planned it all because I was so devoted to him, and I should think that would be a great comfort to him, shouldn't you, Laura May?"

Laura May agreed, and Belinda shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

Serious argument was always wasted upon this light-headed group of sentimentalists. There had been a time when, urged on by conscience, she had considered it necessary to labor with Amelia about her lightning-change _affaires de coeur_, had talked to her as she would have talked to an ordinary, reasonable girl about the folly and cheapness of such episodes, had tried to open her eyes to the fine ideals of girlhood, had urged upon her the desirability of perfect frankness and confidence in her relations with her mother and father.

Amelia had only opened her big blue eyes wider and listened politely but uncomprehendingly to a language she could not understand. She adored Miss Carewe, but she realised that the adored one had the failings common to aged folk and lacked, entirely, any understanding of love's young dream.

"You'd think Miss Carewe wasn't too old to understand," she said to Laura May later; "but perhaps she's had an unfortunate love affair that has made her bitter and suspicious." And, out of the softness of her heart, she forgave, in one who had "suffered," even a callous lack of sympathy concerning matters of the affections.

Belinda took her failure to Miss Ryder, who smiled as she listened.

"My dear Miss Carewe," she said, when the tale was ended, "you are right in being conscientious, but you mustn't tilt at windmills. There are girls and girls. Fortunately, a majority of them are amenable to reason, simple minded and comparatively sensible. They have had wise mothers and proper home training. But I've seen a great many girls of Amelia's type, too far advanced in foolishness before they come to us to be straightened out here. They pa.s.s silly girlhoods and usually develop into plump, amiable women, devoted to husbands and babies, and given to talking about servants and clothes when they don't talk about the husbands and babies. We must do all we can for such girls, see that they are carefully taught and zealously guarded. No young gentleman calls here on reception night unless I have had a written permission from the parents of the girl upon whom he calls; but because a few of the girls are silly, I will not shut the sensible girls away from social training.

"You can influence the Amelias--but within certain limitations. As for making them see things in the sane way--the thing isn't humanly possible. Do your best with them, but don't take their absurdities too seriously."

In time Belinda had learned that her employer's philosophy was wise, though it did not altogether agree with certain theories set forth in the school prospectus; so the funeral problem did not distress her. It was only one phase of a monumental sentimentality and it would pa.s.s as a host of other phases quite as foolish had pa.s.sed.

The girls gathered up their writing materials as the retiring bell rang, but Amelia lingered for a private word with her teacher.

"Miss Carewe," she said, as the last petticoat whisked down the stairs, "I wish you'd think of something nice to put on my tombstone. You know such a lot about poetry and things of that kind. I've thought and thought, and I went through a whole book of Bible verses, and that Dictionary of Familiar Quotations down in the library, but I couldn't find a single thing that really suited me--and then the ones I did like best seemed sort of conceited for me to pick out. Now, if you'd select something nice and pathetic and complimentary, I could just say, in my will, that you wanted me to have that epitaph and that I had promised you I would."

She checked her eloquence, and waited in the hall until the teacher had turned out the school-room lights and joined her; then the tide of prattle swept on.

"Do you know, Miss Carewe, I'd simply love to be buried in that Protestant cemetery in Rome--the one where Sheets and Kelly are buried."

"Keats and Sh.e.l.ley," corrected the teacher of English literature, with lively horror written on her face.

"Oh, was it that way? Well, anyway, the men who wrote Deserted Village and Childe Harold and the other things. You told us all about the graveyard in literature cla.s.s, and it sounded so perfectly lovely and romantic, with the big Roman wall, and old what's-his-name's pyramid, and daisies and violets and things running all over everything--and that epitaph on Keats' stone was simply splendid--something about his name being made out of water, wasn't it? I don't remember it exactly, but I just loved it. It was so sort of discouraged and blue and mournful. We girls talked about it that night and we all cried like everything over the poor fellow--only Blanche said she did wish his father hadn't been a butcher. You know Blanche is awfully cranky about families, because her mother was a Lee of Virginia and her aunt married a Randolph. It was awfully sad anyway, even if his father was a butcher, and that epitaph was lovely. I do wish I could think of something as good as that for myself. You'll try, won't you, Miss Carewe? Good-night."

"Good-night," replied Belinda in smothered tones, as she closed her bedroom door. There are times when the Youngest Teacher's sense of humour and her dignity meet in mortal combat, and she felt that one of the times was close at hand.

She had rather fancied that talk of hers about Keats, and had been flattered by the sympathetic interest displayed by even the most shallow members of the cla.s.s. She sighed in the midst of her laughter--if only one could make even the Amelias understand world beauty and world pathos!--but the laughter triumphed. "Sheets and Kelly" could not be viewed seriously.

Nothing more was heard of the Funeral a.s.sociation, Limited, until a week later, when Belinda, noticing a light in the third-floor cla.s.sroom, investigated and found Amelia and Laura May bending over one sheet of foolscap.

"More wills?" asked the teacher.

Amelia lifted a flushed and tear-stained face.

"I'm cutting Blanche White out of my will. I've been deceived in her, Miss Carewe. She isn't a true friend, is she, Laura May?"

Laura May shook her head emphatically.

"Perhaps you are mistaken," Belinda suggested, in the interests of peace.

"I _heard_ her!" Amelia's tone was tragic.

"She told Lizzie Folsom that I was a conceited thing and always wanted to run everything and that I thought every boy that looked at me was in love with me, and that she'd heard lots of boys make fun of me. I was in the next room and couldn't help hearing, so I walked right straight out in front of them and told Blanche what I thought of her.

"'You're a false, double-dealing hypocrite,' I said, 'and I'd scorn to have you for a friend,' and then I walked out of the room, and I could hardly wait till after study hour to come up here and change my will.

Just to think that if anything had happened to me last week, that horrid thing would have had my chatelaine and my La Valliere! Sometimes I don't believe anybody's true--except Laura May. I told everything to Blanche, and I suppose she's betrayed every single thing to that freckled Lizzie Folsom. It's just because Lizzie has so much money for matinees and Huylers."

"That doesn't sound well, Amelia." Belinda's tone was reproving. "Lizzie is a very attractive girl, and though Blanche wasn't very loyal, she may have said some things that were true. I'd advise you to think her criticisms over and see if any of them fit. As for her repeating what you've told her, when one doesn't want things known, one would better keep them to herself. You talk too much."

"I could tell Laura May anything."

Laura May looked modest.

"And I'm going to leave my chatelaine and La Valliere to Laura May."

The Only True One's face brightened.

"Besides the pearl ring?" she asked.

"Yes."

Laura May beamed self-righteously. Apparently true friends.h.i.+p was practically remunerative as well as theoretically fine.

The next night Amelia spent with a day pupil who was to have a birthday party; and the following evening she was in the Primary room as soon as she could escape from study hour. There Belinda found her alone, and the girl looked slightly confused as she met the teacher's questioning glance.

"Another quarrel?"