Four Girls at Chautauqua

Eurie Mitchell shut the door with a bang and ran up the stairs two steps at a time. She nearly always banged doors, and was always in a hurry. She tapped firmly at the door just at the head of the stairs; then she pushed it open and entered.

"Are you going?" she said, and her face was all in a glow of excitement and pleasure.

The young lady to whom she spoke measured the velvet to see if it was long enough for the hat she was binding, raised her eyes for just an instant to the eager face before her, and said "Good-morning."

"Ruth Erskine! what are you trimming your hat for? Didn't it suit? Say, are you going? Why in the world don't you tell me? I have been half wild all the morning."

Ruth Erskine smiled. "Which question shall I answer first? What a perfect interrogation point you are, Eurie. My hats never suit, you know; this one was worse than usual. This velvet is a pretty shade, isn't it? Am I going to Chautauqua, do you mean? I am sure I don't know. I haven't thought much about it. Do you really suppose it will be worth while?"

Eurie stamped her foot impatiently. "How provoking you are! Haven't thought of it, and here I have been talking and coaxing all the morning. Father thinks it is a wild scheme, of course, and sees no sense in spending so much money; but I'm going for all that. I don't have a frolic once in an age, and I have set my heart on this. Just think of living in the woods for two whole weeks! camping out, and doing all sorts of wild things. I'm just delighted."

Miss Erskine sewed thoughtfully for some seconds, then she said:

"Why, there is nothing in the world to hinder my going if I want to. As to the money, I suppose one could hardly spend as much there as at Long Branch or Saratoga, and of course I should go somewhere. But the point is, what do I want to go for?"

"Why, just to be together, and be in the woods, and live in a tent, and do nothing civilized for a fortnight. It is the nicest idea that ever was."

"And should we go to the meetings?" Miss Erskine asked, still speaking thoughtfully, and as if she were undecided.

"Why, yes, of course, now and then. Though for that matter I suppose father is right enough when he says that precious few people go for the sake of the meetings. He says it is a grand jollification, with a bit of religion for the background. But for that matter the less religion they have the better, and so I told him."

At this point there was a faint little knock at the door, and Eurie sprang to open it, saying as she went: "That is Flossy, I know; she always gives just such little pussy knocks as that." The little lady who entered fitted her name perfectly. She was small and fair, blue-eyed, flossy yellow curls lying on her shoulders, her voice was small and sweet, almost too sweet or too soft, that sort of voice that could change when slight occasion offered into a whine or positive tearfulness. She was greeted with great glee by Eurie, and in her more quiet way by Miss Erskine.

"I'm going," she said, with a soft little laugh, and she sank down among the cushions of the sofa, while her white morning dress floated around her like a cloud. "Charlie thinks it is silly, and Kit thinks it is sillier, and mamma thinks it is the very silliest thing I ever did yet; but for all that I am going-that is, if the rest of you are." Which, by the way, was always this little Flossy's manner of speech. She was going to do or not to do, speak or keep silent, approve or condemn, exactly as the mind which was for the time being nearest to her chose to sway her.

"Good!" said Eurie, softly clapping her hands. "I didn't think it of you, Flossy; I thought you were too much of a mouse. Now, Ruth, you will go, won't you? As for Marion, there is no knowing whether she will go or not. I don't see now she can afford it myself any more than I can; but, of course, that is her own concern. We can go anyway, whether she does or not-only I don't want to, I want her along. Suppose we all go down and see her; it is Saturday, she will be at home, and then we can begin to make our preparations. It is really quite time we were sure of what we are going to do."

By dint of much coaxing and argument Ruth was prevailed upon to leave her fascinating brown hat with its brown velvet trimmings, and in the course of the next half hour the trio were on their way down Park Street, intent on a call on Miss Marion Wilbur. Park Street was a simple, quiet, unpretending street, narrow and short; the houses were two-storied and severely plain. In one of the plainest of these, wearing an unmistakable boarding-house look, in a back room on the second floor, the object of their search, in a dark calico dress, with her sleeves rolled above her elbows, had her hands immersed in a wash-bowl of suds, and was doing up linen collars. She was one of those miserable creatures in this weary world, a teacher in a graded school, and her one day of rest was filled with all sorts of washing, ironing and mending work, until she had fairly come to groan over the prospect of Saturday because of the burden of work which it brought. She welcomed her callers without taking her hands from the suds; she was as quiet in her way as Ruth Erskine was in hers.

This time it was Flossy who asked the important question: "Are you going?"

Marion answered as promptly as though the question had been decided for a week.

"Yes, certainly I am going. I thought I told you that when we talked it over before. I am washing out my collars to have them ready. Ruth, are you going to take a trunk?"

Ruth roused herself from the contemplation of her brown gloves to say with a little start:

"How you girls do rush things. Why, I haven't decided yet that I am going."

"Oh, you'll go," Marion Wilbur said. "The question is, are we to take trunks-or, rather, are you to? because I know I shall not. I'm going to wear my black suit. Put it on on Tuesday morning, or Monday is it that we start? and wear it until we return. I may take it off, to be sure, while I sleep, but even that is uncertain, as we may not get a place to sleep in; but for once in my life I am not going to be bored with baggage."

"I shall take mine," Ruth Erskine said with determination. "I don't intend to be bored by being without baggage. It is horrid, I think, to go away with only one dress, and feel obliged to wear it whether it is suited to the weather or not, or whatever happens to it. Eurie, what are you laughing at?"

"I am interested in the phenomena of Marion Wilbur being the first to introduce the dress question. I venture to say not one of us has thought of that phase of the matter up to this present moment."

While the talk went on the collars and cuffs were carefully washed and rinsed, and presently Marion, with her hands only a trifle pinker for the operation, was ready to lean against a chair and discuss ways and means. Her long apprenticeship in school-rooms had given her the habit of standing instead of sitting, even when there was no occasion for the former.

If these four young ladies had been creatures of the brain, gotten up expressly for the purpose of illustrating extremes of character, instead of being flesh and blood creations, I doubt whether they could have better illustrated the different types of young ladyhood. There was Ruth Erskine, dwelling in solitary grandeur in her royal home, as American royalty goes, the sole daughter, the sole child indeed of the house, a girl who had no idea of life except as a place in which to have a serenely good time, and teach everybody to do as she desired them to. Money was a commonplace matter-of-course article, neither to be particularly prized nor despised; it was convenient, of course, and must be an annoyance when one had to do without it; but of that, by practical experience, she knew nothing. Yet Ruth was by no means a "pink-and-white" girl without character; on the contrary, she had plenty of character, but hitherto it had been frittered away on nothings, until it looked as much like nothing as it could. She was the sort of person whom education and circumstances of the right sort would have developed into splendor, but the development had not taken place. Now you are not to suppose that she was uneducated; that would be a libel on Madame La Fonte and her fashionable seminary. She had graduated with honor; taken the first prizes in everything. She knew all about seminaries; so do I; and if you do, you are ready to admit that the development had not come. There is constantly occurring something to take back. While I write I have in mind an institution where the earnest desire sought after and prayed for is the higher development, not alone of the intellect, but of the heart: where the wonderful woman who is at its head said to me a few years ago:

"If a lady has spent three years under my care, and graduated, and gone out from me not a Christian, I feel like going down on my knees in bitterness of soul, and crying, 'Lord, I have failed in the trust thou didst give me." But the very fact that the word "wonderful" fits that woman's name is proof enough that such institutions as hers are rare, and it was not at that seminary that Ruth Erskine graduated. She was spending her life in elegant pursuits that meant nothing, those of them which did not mean worse than nothing, and the only difference between her and a hundred others around her was that she knew perfectly well that they all amounted to nothing, and didn't hesitate to say so, therefore she earned the title of "queer." At the same time she did not hesitate to lead the whirl around this continuous nothing, therefore she occupied that perilous position of being liked and admired and envied, all in one. Very few people loved her, and queerly enough she knew that too, and instead of resenting it realized that she could not see why they should. She was, moreover, remarkably careful as to her leading after all, and those who followed were sure of being led in an eminently respectable and fashionable way. Her most intimate friend was Eurie Mitchell, which was not strange when one considered what remarkable opposites in character they were. Eureka J. Mitchell was the respectable sounding name that the young lady bore, but the full name would have sounded utterly strange to her ears, the wild little word "Eurie" seeming to have been made on purpose for her. She was the eldest daughter of a large, good-natured, hard-working, much-bewildered family. They never knew just where they belonged. They went to the First Church, which for itself should have settled their position, since it was the opinion of most of its members that it was organized especially that the "first families" might have a church-home. But they occupied a very front seat, by reason of their inability to pay for a middle one, which was bad for "position," as First Church gentility went. What was surprising to them was how they ever happened to have the money to pay for that seat; but, let me record it to their honor, they always happened to have it. They were honest. They ought to have been called "the happen family," by reason of their inability to tell how much or how little they might happen to have to live on, whether they could afford three new dresses apiece or none at all. The fact being that it depended on the amount of sickness there was in Dr. Mitchell's beat whether there were to be luxuries or simple bare necessities, with some wonderment as to how even those were to be paid.

Eurie was the most light-hearted and indifferent of this free-and-easy family, who always had roast turkey when it was to be had, and who could laugh and chat merrily over warmed-up meat and johnny-cake, or even no meat at all, when such days came. How she ever came to think that she could go to Chautauqua was a matter of surprise to herself; but it happened to have been a sickly summer among the wealthy people, and large bills had come in-the next thing was to spend them. Chautauqua was a silly place to do it in, to be sure; that was Dr. Mitchell's idea, and the family laughed together over Eurie's last wild notion; but for all that they good-naturedly prepared to let her carry it out. Just how full of fun and mischief and actual wildness Eurie was, a two-weeks sojourn at Chautauqua will be likely to develop; for before that conversation at Marion's was concluded they decided that they were really going. Why Marion went, puzzled the girls very much, puzzled herself somewhat. She was her own mistress, had neither father to direct nor sister to consult. She had an uncle and aunt who lived where she called "home," and with whom she spent her vacations, but they were the poorest of hard-working country people, who stood in awe of Marion and her education, and by no means ventured to interfere with her plans. Marion was as independent in her way as Ruth was in hers, but they were very different ways. Ruth, for instance, indulged her independence in the matter of dress, by spending a small fortune in looking elegantly unlike everybody else, and straightway created a frantic desire in her set to look as nearly like her as possible. But no one cared to look like Marion, in her severely plain black or brown suits, with almost and sometimes quite no trimmings at all on them. It was agreed that she looked remarkably well, but so unlike any one else they didn't see how she could bring herself to dressing so. She laughed when this was hinted to her, and got what comfort she could out of the fact that she was considered "odd." In a certain way she ruled them all, Ruth Erskine included, though that young lady never suspected it. The queerest one of this company was little Flossy Shipley-queer to be found in just such company, I mean. She was the petted darling of a wealthy home, a younger daughter, a baby in their eyes, to be loved and cherished, and allowed to have her own sweet and precious way even when it included such a strange proceeding as a two weeks in the woods, all because that strange girl in the ward school that Flossy had taken such an unaccountable fancy for was going. This family were First Church people, too, and capable of buying a seat very near the centre, in fact but a few removes from the Erskine pew, which was, of course, the wealthy one of the church. The Shipley pew was rarely honored by all the members of the family, and indeed the pastor had no special cause for alarm if several Sundays went by without an appearance from one of them. A variety of trifles might happen to cause such a state of things, from which you will infer that they were not a church-going family. Another strange representative for Chautauqua!

Now how did those four girls come to be friends? Oh, dreadful! You don't expect me to be able to account for human friendships I hope, especially for school-girl friendships? There is no known rule that will apply to such idiosyncracies. They had been in school together, even Marion Wilbur, with the indomitable energy which characterized her, had managed one term of Madame La Fonte's enormous bills, and with the close of the term found herself strangely enough drawn into this strange medley of character that moved in such different circles, and yet called themselves friends. You are to understand that though the same church received these girls on Sunday, yet the actual circle in which their lives whirled was as unlike as possible. The Erskines were the cream, cultured, traveled, wealthy, aristocratic as to blood and as to manners, literary in the sense that they bought rare books, and knew why they were rare. The Mitchells had a calling acquaintance with their family because Dr. Mitchell was their chosen physician, but that came to pass through an accident, and not many of the doctor's patrons were of just the same stamp. This family never went to the Erskine entertainments, never were invited to go to the other entertainments starting from the same circle, yet they had their friends and many of them. The Shipleys were free-and-easy, cordial, social, friendly people, who bought many books and pictures, and were prominent in fairs and festivals, and were popular everywhere, but were not, after all, of the Erskine stamp. Finally came Marion, alone, no position any where, save as she ruled in the most difficult room in the most difficult ward in the city. A worker, known to be such; a manager, recognized as one who could make incongruous elements meet and marshal into working order. In that capacity she found her place even in the First Church, for they had fairs and festivals, and oyster suppers, and other trials even in the First Church; and there was much work to be done, and Marion Wilbur could work.

And these four girls were going to Chautauqua-were to start on Monday morning, August 2, 1875.