Almost a Woman Part 3

"Probably not, but I can tell you, for I remember my own youth and know how girls may tempt boys unwittingly. When in college I was a boarder in a family where there were several other students, and two or three pretty High School girls. One of them was very coquettish, and was always 'making goo-goo eyes,' at the boys, as they say now-a-days. She couldn't talk in a straightforward manner, but always with sidewise glances from downcast lids that seemed invitations to a nearer approach.

"Among the students was one who was very retiring and bashful. He rarely spoke to the girls and seemed quite embarra.s.sed if they spoke to him.

This girl seemed to set herself to work to flirt with him. She would glance up at him so appealingly that we boys couldn't help guying him about it. One evening when she was plying her arts--not with evil intent, but she loved to flirt and did not understand what that might mean to a young man--all at once he seized her around the waist and kissed her furiously. She was in a rage in a moment, and said some pretty sharp things about his lack of gentlemanliness.

"He stood his ground without flinching. 'I'm as much of a gentleman as you are a lady,' he said. 'I have let you alone, but you have been tormenting me for weeks. You liked to try how far you could go, and thought yourself virtuous because you felt no temptation. You didn't care how you tempted me, or the other boys. You have tried your powers in public. O, yes, you are too good to be sly! And so I determined to give you a public lesson, and everybody here, I am sure, is thankful to me for it. Now, perhaps, you will let us alone. We want to be good, we want to treat all women with respect; yet, when you pretty pink-and-white creatures smile and smirk and set us on fire, then you say we are bad, we are not gentlemen. Maybe not. But we are men, and we should find in you the true womanhood which is our salvation.'

"I can see him now, as he stood up so proudly, forgetting his bashfulness in his righteous indignation,--and we all applauded him, I am glad to say. The girl was offended with us all, and left the house and sought another boarding place. In her stead came a real, true, womanly girl. Full of fun, a real comrade, ready to join our sports, to help us in every way possible, but always making us feel that we were in honor bound to protect her from even a flirtatious thought. Every man in the house was her friend, some of them, I am sure, her adorers, but none ever ventured to approach her with familiarity. If she should meet any of us to-day, she would not have to blush in the presence of her husband and children at the memory of any happening of those days.

"This is the kind of a woman I want you to be, my daughter dear, a woman realizing a woman's true place and power, as Ruskin says, 'Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, to guard!' Just hand me the book and let me read you a few words from his essay on War. 'Believe me!' he says, 'the whole course and character of your lovers' lives is in your hand. What you would have them be they shall be, if you not only desire but deserve to have them so; for they are but mirrors in which you will see yourselves imaged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also; if you have no understanding of the scope of their duty, they will also forget it; they will listen,--they can listen--to no other interpretation of it than that uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave;--they will be brave for you; bid them be cowards, and how n.o.ble soever they be, they will quail for you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you; mock at their counsels and they will be fools for you, such, and so absolute is your rule over them.' Isn't that a wonderful power that is in woman's hands? And it is true, as he further says, just here: 'Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of the highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world's clamour, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace.'"

Helen sighed. "It is so much to ask," she said. "Has nothing been written to the men, how they must help and protect women?"

Mr. Wayne smiled, as he kissed his little daughter and said, "Whatever has been written for men I will keep to tell my son, and I trust it will help him to reverence all womanhood."

CHAPTER III.

As Mrs. Wayne and her daughter sat at their window they saw a carriage dash by containing a handsomely dressed woman. Shortly after a very pretty girl pa.s.sed the house, talking busily with a boy of her own age.

"How funny some mothers are," said Helen. "That was Mrs. Eversman who rode by just now, and that's Corrinne, her daughter. Mrs. Eversman pays no attention to Corrinne except to buy her pretty clothes, and scold her for carelessness. Corrinne goes where she pleases. She has lots of beaux, and when they call she won't let her mother come into the parlor,--she says she doesn't want her 'snooping' around, and Mrs.

Eversman only laughs. She seems to think it smart. And, mother, Corrinne has such lovely presents from boys and young men. And when she goes to the theatre with a young man, she insists on having a carriage and flowers and a supper afterward. She says no fellow need come around her unless he has 'the spondulics,' she calls money."

"Poor child!" said Mrs. Wayne thoughtfully. "How little she understands the purpose of life!"

"But she says she wants to have a good time," urged Helen.

"Surely," was Mrs. Wayne's reply. "Every girl is ent.i.tled to a good time, but that does not of necessity consist of spending money. I should think she wouldn't like to be under such obligations to young men."

"O, I guess she doesn't think she is under obligations. She thinks they are under obligation to her for condescending to go with them. But, mother, ought a girl let a young man spend money on her?"

"I hope, my dear, when you are old enough to go out with young men that you will care too much for yourself to be willing to take expensive gifts. A certain amount of expenditure is allowable. A few flowers, a book, or a piece of music, but never elegant jewelry or articles of clothing. That is not only bad taste but it is often a direct incentive for young men of small salaries to be dishonest. Corrinne, and girls like her, do not know how much they may be responsible for young men becoming untrue to their business trusts, nor how much they might do to strengthen young men in their purposes to be honest. You remember Aunt Elsie and Uncle Harold. He is a man of means now, but he was once a poor young clerk. He admired Elsie and wanted to show her every attention, but she knew his salary would not permit extravagance; so when he first asked her to go to some public entertainment, he said he would come with a carriage at the appointed time. At once she said decidedly, 'Then I will not go. It is not far. If it is a fine night, we can walk. If it rains, we can go on the street cars. You may send me a few flowers, but we will not have an opera supper nor indulge in needless carriages!' Of course he objected, and urged that he could afford it. 'But I can't,'

was her reply. And years after, when they were married, he confessed that it was a great relief to him to be able to take her about in ways that suited his purse and yet have no fear of being thought mean. Now he can buy her everything her heart can desire; but he acknowledges that he might not have been able to withstand the temptation had she in her younger days desired pleasures beyond his power honorably to provide."

"Mother," said Helen after a pause, as two girls pa.s.sed the house with their arms about each other's waists. "Don't you think it silly for girls to be so 'spooney'?"

"I certainly think it is in bad taste for them to be so publicly demonstrative, and I could wish that girls might be friends with each other more as boys are. Now, there are Paul and Winfield. Surely no girls ever thought more of each other than these two boys, and yet I fancy we would smile to see them embracing each other on all occasions, as Lucy and Nellie do."

"I should say so! I've heard Paul say, 'Old Chap,' or seen Winfield give Paul a slap on the shoulder; but they are never silly and they've been friends for years. But Lucy and Nellie have only been so 'thick' for a few weeks, and they'll fall out pretty soon. Lucy is always having such lover-like friends and then quarreling with them. Now, she and Nellie are going to have a mock wedding next week. They call themselves husband and wife even now,--isn't that silly?"

"It is worse than silly,--I call it wrong," replied Mrs. Wayne. "Such morbid friendships are dangerous, both to health and morals."

"To the health, mother? I don't see how that can be."

"No, I doubt if you can, but I hope that you will believe me when I tell you they are dangerous. When girls are so demonstrative, when they claim to stand to each other as man and woman, you may feel a.s.sured that the relation is unnatural and that the drain upon the nervous system is very great. I once knew a girl who actually destroyed the health of a number of girls in a school by such demonstrative friendships. She always had one devoted friend who could not live without her. I have known a girl to cry day after day and actually go home sick, because her friendship with this girl was threatened. And it is said that another girl took her own life from jealousy of this one.

"Friendship is a grand thing when it is true and worthy, but a morbid, unnatural sentimentality does not deserve the name of friendship and I should be very sorry to see you fall into the toils of a morbid, unnatural relation with another girl. Yet I should be pleased to see you having a sincere, womanly, n.o.ble affection for another girl, one which would not waste itself in sentimentality but be able to rise to heights of grand renunciation."

"I think I understand you, mother, and I promise you I will try to hold the highest ideals of friendship."

Such talks as these brought mother and daughter into such close companionship that Helen was not afraid to bring her mother the deepest problems of her young life.

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and mother and daughter were sitting together sewing. The rain was pouring, so that there was little fear of visitors, and while Mrs. Wayne was discussing with herself how she could begin to talk to her daughter of her approaching womanhood, Helen suddenly said, "Mother, what is the matter with Clara Downs? She is going into consumption, they say, and I heard Sadie Barker say to Cora Lee that it was because Clara did not change into a woman. What did she mean? I thought we just grew into women. Isn't that the way?"

"You didn't ask Sadie what she meant?"

"O, no, the girls acted as if they didn't want me to hear, and then, I'd always rather you'd tell me things, for then I feel sure that I know them right."

This little testimony of her trust in her mother furnished Mrs. Wayne with the desired opportunity, and she said, "In order that you may clearly understand Sadie's remark I shall have to make a long explanation of how girls become women."

"Why, mother, don't we just grow into women?"

"Well, my dear, I shall have to say both yes and no to that question.

Girls do grow and become women, but women are something more than grown-up girls. This house is much bigger than it was two years ago. Did it just grow bigger?"

"Why, no, not exactly. There are no more rooms now than there were before, but some rooms have been finished off and are used now, when before they weren't used at all, and so the house seems bigger. But it can't be that way with our bodies, for we don't have any new organs added or finished off to make us women?"

"That is just what is done, my daughter."

"What! New organs added, mother? What can you mean?"

"I mean, dear, that your bodily dwelling is enlarged, not by the addition of new rooms, but by the completing of rooms that have as yet not been fitted up for use."

"I don't understand you, mother."

"I suppose not, but I hope to be able to make you understand. You have studied your bodily house and know of the rooms in the different stories, the kitchen, laundry, dining-room, picture-gallery and telegraph office,--in fact, all the rooms or organs that keep you alive; but there is one part of the house that you have not studied. There are various rooms or organs which are not needed to keep you alive, and which have, therefore, been closed. As you approach womanhood, these organs will wake up and become active, and their activity is what will make you a woman."

"Why, mother, it sounds like a fairy story, a tale of a wonderful magic palace, doesn't it? And Clara Downs hasn't got these marvelous rooms?"

"Yes, they are there, but they are evidently not being finished off for use. I think, however, the girls made the mistake of confounding cause and effect. They say she is going into consumption because she does not become a woman. I think she does not become a woman because she is going into consumption. Do you know why we did not finish off these rooms in our house sooner?"

"Why, father said he had not the money."

"That is right. He did not say that he did not have the money because he did not finish off the rooms."

"My, no, that would have been absurd; but I don't see how that applies to Clara?"

"It needed money to finish off our house; so it needs vitality to change from girl to woman, and Clara seems not to have the vitality. She is failing in health, hence she has not vital force to spend in completing her physical development."

"But, mother, tell me more about this wonderful change. Where are the new rooms and what is their purpose? I can't really believe that I have some bodily organs that I never heard of. What are they and where are they; when will they be finished off? I am all curiosity. Didn't we study about them in our school physiology?"

"You have given me a good many questions to answer, little girl, and I hardly know where to begin answering them.

"In your school physiology you studied all about the organs that keep you alive. What did you learn about your bodily house? How many stories is it?"

"Three stories high, and then there is a cupola on the top of all. I like to think of the head as a cupola or observatory, resting on the tower of the neck and turning from side to side as we want to look around us."