St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 1/Little X
Little X.
By Winifred Kirkland.
All this tale happened last year, and I have suddenly taken it into my head to write it up—probably for the reason that I ought to be doing my geometry review at this present moment. To begin at the beginning (Miss Noble says that ’s a very poor beginning, but no matter), it was the first day of October, when the whole school devotes itself to welcoming the new girls, The old girls don’t come till the next day, but Miss Brathwaite always asks a few of the old ones to come early so as to help settle the new little ladies. Among this number my cheerful and reassuring self was selected. There were three or four more of our “crowd,” too, and in the intervals when we were n’t being introduced, or getting room-keys, or discovering trunks, or trotting people to their rooms, we ’d swoop down on Miss Noble in her corner, and all talk at once about our summer, provided Miss Noble was n’t talking to fond parents herself. Miss Noble is our English teacher, and she's a brick. She wears the prettiest shirt-waists, and I don't believe she ’s more than twenty-five.
I was just engaged in describing my thrilling escape from a watery grave in the previous July, when Miss Brathwaite summoned me to my ninth introduction of the morning:
“This is Harriet Smalley, Mr. Prentiss; and this is Natalie Prentiss, Harry. Natalic is to room in 320 with Cassandra Ober. The room is unlocked; will you show them the way?”
I saw a fat, stumpy girl of about sixteen. I decided she was sixteen by the way she could n’t manage her skirt going upstairs. I mentally deposited her in the younger set—most of the girls in our crowd are eighteen. The curious thing about her was her face. She had the most perfectly expressionless face you ever saw, and it rather bothered you, too, because it looked as if it ought to be pretty, and yet it wasn’t. I rather liked the papa. The last one I had met was so pompous I wanted to thump him; but this one was anxious and worried, and he acted as if I were the one being on earth who could cheer him up. Was the room in a good location—plenty of sun? Not too many stairs? We had plenty of time to be oat of doors? We had plenty to eat? He hoped Natalie would be well here. We were well here, were n’t we? And happy? The life was happy, was n’t it? ] was really sorry for him, and I did n’t think he needed to be so fussed up over the health of such a hearty, sunburnt girl as Natalie. I rattled away, telling him all about the jolly times we had, and that Natalie could n’t help enjoying it all just as soon as she got acquainted, and that never took long, But Natalie did n’t exhibit the faintest interest in my remarks. She was looking out of the window.
“Do you walk in those woods?” she asked.
“Some of the girls take their required ex that way. I go in for the games myself. Do you play tennis or golf or hockey?”
“No.”
“Hockey ’s fine sport!” I assured her; but she seemed to prefer to gaze at the woods rather than to talk to my humble self, and so after I ’d looked up her trunk, which was lettered Los Angeles, and told her about luncheon, I ran off and left them. I wondered what Cass would think of Natalie, I should n’t have wished to room with Cass myself, and I’m not fussy.
I suppose it ’s just the same in all boarding-schools the first six or eight weeks of the fall—the same program of behavior, I mean. You come back with the most exalted notions of being good to the new girls, Miss Brathwaite gives a touching little talk on the subject the first chapel night, and you run right out from chapel and pitch in, and are so sweet to the homesick for the first week that it ’s positively sickish, At the end of a week you can’t stand such angelhood another minute, and so you drop it and fall into your old ways with your old cronies, and discover how “awfully fond” of one another you are, and what a grand good
“I declared she was sixteen by the way she could n’t manage her skirt going upstairs.”time you re going to have all the year. You stop being Good Samaritans by the roadside, and climb up into your same old tally-ho,—the same old crowd,—and go bowling off; and, to prolong the metaphorical agony, those of the new girls who have n’t the gumption either to hang on somehow to your tally-ho, or to club together and make a clique or a tally-ho of their own—why, they just have to foot it by themselves, that ’s all—and I suppose it is lonesome.
Well, by Thanksgiving of last year we were all, new girls and old ones, pretty well shaken down into our proper places. Everybody knew what everybody else was like. New girls who had hated one another the first week were now in a state of intimate intertwinement, or the reverse, Girls we ’d thought dull at first turned out to be stars, and vice versa. All the clubs had initiated all their new members. In the evenings and Sunday afternoons everybody had been talked over and labeled.
Judy and I were in the midst of such a discussion one night when we suddenly discovered that there was one girl in school that no one knew, or knew anything about. It was that night we first called Natalie Prentiss “Little X,” and the name took with everybody. Natalie Prentiss was an unknown quantity. We did n’t know anything about her family or her hone or her past. She had n’t a friend in school. She sat by herself in the hall or the drawing-room; she walked by herself, and she ate in silence and oblivion, no matter how much fun was going on at the table. Cassandra treated her as Cass always treats her room-mates. She had five year before last, She hugs them to bits the first three days, goes around telling everybody how perfectly charming they are, gazes at them all through the painful separation at meal-time, and at the end of three days turns right around and hates them with a deadly hatred, and they live unhappily after. The only difference in Natalie’s case was that Cass did not do the hugging, in the first place—you could n’t have hugged Natalie. Cass published about freely what she thought of Little X, but not a
“‘Don ’t you think trees are much better friends than people are?’”
Miss Noble told us that Little X’s English compositions were the best in the class, and that we would do well to cultivate her. After that I made a final dying effort, and invited Little X for a walk. Of course I did all the talking, not in the least knowing what I was saying. In the middle of an eloquent discourse on hockey, she interrupted in a dreamy manner, “Don’t you think trees are much better friends than people are—so much nicer and more satisfying?” Now that kind of remark—the float-away-in-the-clouds-good-by-earth kind—is what I can’t keep up with. I stammered out something to the effect that I preferred people every time,and I never asked Little X to walk again.
‘There was some talk, I remember, of inviting Little X to join the Lit Society, because Miss Noble said she ’d do it credit. We talked the matter over, and then we decided that we simply could n’t stand her. We ’ve always been so jolly and free and easy in the Lit Society, and an iceberg in our midst would have been dampening. When we “’fessed up” to Miss Noble that we ‘d voted against Little X, she remarked absently, “You girls are a puzzle to me.”
‘There was another period of discussion when Christmas vacation came around. It has been a point of honor—but never before proclaimed like this—with some of us that no girl should be left to spend Christmas in the school. I once took home five “waifs” and “strays,” and Judy, who lives in the same town, took three. Well, Judy and I had the worst time deciding about Little X. She ’d have to stay all alone with the Canadian matron if we did n’t take her, for all the other girls from distant parts were provided for. If either Judy or I invited her, we could help each other out; but oh, dear, imagine Little X at a house-party! “She 'd be sure to spoil everything!” wailed Judy. “I just can’t.”
“Neither can I!” I answered, and so Little X and the gentry of British America kept each other company for vacation.
But the climax of my story resulted from that dreadful, dreadful English class, which occurred sometime in January. Miss Noble does n’t often make us read our papers aloud—almost never before she ’s read them herself; but that morning she did. We had written fairy stories in the style of Andersen, and Miss Noble had explained just what she wanted, and showed us just how we could pack in pretty descriptions, or sarcasm, or humor, or pathos. She called for several papers that were n’t much good, and then she asked for Judy’s, which was the prettiest thing! —about a little merbaby,—and then she asked for mine. I had gone in for the humorous myself, and it was rather good, if I do say so—“The Frog Who Would A-wooing Go.” The girls just roared—all but Little X. It was Little X’s own turn next. But when Miss Noble called on her, she tried to beg off. “Please, please don’t ask me, Miss Noble!”
“Yes, Natalie, if you please,” Miss Noble answered in that firm, pleasant manner of hers (as if anybody need ever try to beg off with Miss Noble!).
I shall never forget Little X’s face, or her voice, or how Miss Noble pressed her fingers together, or the stillness of the room, or anything else of that dreadful morning. It seemed to me that I could not sit there and listen, and I shot a look at Miss Noble that meant “Do, do stop her!” Miss Noble did open her lips once as if she would make her stop, and then she closed them again. I knew what that meant—she had decided that it would be a good lesson for us. Perhaps it was n’t so much what Little X read as the tenseness in her voice that went through me so.
This is the composition that she read—no matter how it came into my possession. It was called
“The Princess Who Could Not Speak.”
“It was a beautiful country where the princess lived, but the little princess was very lonely there, because she never had anybody to play with. I cannot begin to tell you how lonely the princess was. She was so lonely that she thought it would make her sick, and when she found it did n’t, she wished it would make her sick. Then she thought it would get better when she was grown up; but it did n’t—it got worse. You see, it was all on account of the enchantment: it was because she could not speak. When she was a little girl she had tried to be friends with the little dukes and duchesses of the court. She wonld hold out her hand and stand and look at them, but they would back away.
‘Why don’t you say something?’ they would say. ‘Why don't you speak?’ ‘No, we do not want you in our game. We do not like people who cannot calk. You are so queer!’
“Then the little princess tried to he friends with the pine-trees. There were beautiful pine-trees in her country, but when the princess pat her arms around their trunks the pines just went on singing, singing to the sun—and that music was sweet to listen to, but it was lonely music, and it hurt. Presently the princess gave up trying to be friends with any one, and took to sitting on the rocks by herself, and wondering why she was enchanted. It never is very clear to anybody why a princess is enchanted, except that it never seems to be the princess’s fault; she ’s just got to stand it, that ’s all, So this little princess knew she had to stand it—that she could n’t speak, not one single word, though she was just bursting with things to say. She wanted to say ‘How beautiful!’ when she looked oat of her casement and saw the moonlight on the waves, and she wanted to say ‘I am sorry’ when people were hurt; but most of all she wanted to say ‘I love you’ to the people who were good and sweet. But she was dumb, and she wondered if things would ever be better; for it all depended on the prince. People did n’t like the princess, because she was dumb and queer and different; but the prince must love her in spite of all this, and he must say so, and then the princess would say, ‘I love you,’ and after that she would be able to speak all the things stored up alll her life in her heart. Those were the terms of the enchantment written out in the great parchment books that the princess had read. But would the prince ever come? The loneliness hurt more every day, but would he ever come?”
Clang-bang It was the gong for change of class, and we filed out into the hall, the quietest class I ever beheld, We looked so queer that the girls from the other class-room came crowding around to know what on earth had happened, and we were in no mood for telling just then. But by evening it was different. It was Friday, and Miss Noble made chocolate for us in her room at nine o’clock—no dress-up oceasion, just a kimono-and-slippers function, where each girl provides her own cup and saucer, and afterward washes the same. Of course the whole conversation was about Little X, and what in the world was to be done about it. And, as if things were n’t bad enough already, Miss Noble told us something that made me feel meaner than an angleworm in a zoölogy tin pan. She said the reason she had n’t told us before was that she thought it would be a great deal better for all concerned if we should be nice to Little X just naturally, and not because we knew all about it; and Miss Noble said that girls are so silly she was afraid we ’d think Little X queer—crazy, I mean—if she told us.
She said that Mr. Prentiss had told Miss Brathwaite all about it. Little X had been a very bright, jolly sort of girl until the summer before, when she had had a dreadful attack of typhoid fever. She was a long time getting well—and even now she is n’t nearly so strong as she looks, and needs some one to keep looking after her. When she did recover she was different. ‘They did n’t discover it at once, and when they did they felt perfectly awful about it—her family, I mean. Little X was just as bright as she had been before, but she was queer and quiet and melancholy, like another person, The doctor advised a complete change, and so her father brought her East to this school where the girls are supposed to be particularly jolly and healthy and happy, and he hoped she ’d get right into the life and come to be her own old self once more.
I don’t ever want to feel again the way I did when Miss Noble finished her remarks, Judy, however, was argumentative, as usual.
“But, Miss Noble, what can we do? She just won't be friendly. We ‘ve tried.”
“It will be hard,” said Miss Noble.
Just then I felt a sudden stiffening inside. I groaned inwardly, but outwardly I said, “I must go up to the nursery before it ’s shut up, to get some medicine for my cold.” Then I pulled myself up and pushed myself out of the door; you see, I knew I was going to be it—that I was going to make Natalie Prentiss talk. I went to the nursery, but that did n’t take long. Cass was safe in Miss Noble's room. I left my medicine in my room, and picked up my red tam-o’-shanter and put it on so that it drooped effectively over on one ear. My flowing robe was of royal red, I tossed one corner of it over my shoulder in a stagey and princely manner, There was n’t a soul in the corridor. I stood myself in front of the door of 320, and knocked in a loud and cheerful tone—though I was shaking in my slippers all the time. There was a small-sized “Come,” and I flung open the door, and scraped the floor with as majestic and sweeping a bow as I could muster,
“I am the prince,” I said.
Would you believe it? She hardly moved, but just looked up and stared at me with that
blank, impersonal gaze of hers, that we all knew so well; and there I stood, like a ninny, with my tam-o’-shanter on one ear and my bath-robe festooned over my shoulder!
“‘I am the Prince’”contrived to melt down upon my neck from above—I was kneeling by her chair.
“Oh, I love you,” she said; “I always have, since the first day. I think you ’re the dearest girl in school, Harry—prince.”
This is the end—abrupt, I know, but that ’s what ends ought to be, Miss Noble says. It is not really the end, because, as I said at first, all this happened last year, and now it ’s the fall of another year. Little X has just suggested, by the way, that I begin to attach myself to my geometry.
That ’s Little X over there in the camp-chair with her feet on the Latin dictionary—looks pretty happy, does n’t she? I tell her that she talks me nearly deaf—that if I were looking around for a princess again, I ’d never take a silent one.
Yes, Little X is my room-mate, and what more would you have?