Daddy Long-Legs - Джин Уэбстер 3 стр.

Here is your portrait:

But the problem is, shall I add some hair?

Would you like to know what color your eyes are? They re gray, and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they re called in novels) and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency to turn down at the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You re a snappy old thing with a temper.

(Chapel bell.)

I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read just plain booksI have to, you know, because there are eighteen blank years behind me. You would nt believe, Daddy, what an abyss of ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself. The things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of. For example:

I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I did nt know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I did nt know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth. I did nt know that R.L.S. stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a picture of the Mona Lisa and (it s true but you wont believe it) I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes.

Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it s fun! I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an engaged on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book is nt enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they re Tennysons poems and Vanity Fair and Kiplings Plain Tales anddont laughLittle Women. I find that I am the only girl in college who was nt brought up on Little Women. I have nt told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last months allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I ll know what she is talking about!

(Ten oclock bell. This is a very interrupted letter.)

Sir,

I have the honor to report fresh explorations in the field of geometry. On Friday last we abandoned our former works in parallelopipeds and proceeded to truncated prisms. We are finding the road rough and very uphill.

The Christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up. The corridors are so cluttered that you can hardly get through, and everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is getting left out. I m going to have a beautiful time in vacation; there s another Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind, and we are planning to take long walks andif there s any icelearn to skate. Then there is still the whole library to be readand three empty weeks to do it in!

Good-by, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as I am.

P. S. Dont forget to answer my question. If you dont want the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph. He can just say:

Mr. Smith is quite bald,

or

Mr. Smith is not bald,

or

Mr. Smith has white hair.

And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.

Good-by till Januaryand a merry Christmas!

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corn. It s late afternoonthe sun is just setting (a cold yellow color) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.

Your five gold pieces were a surprise! I m not used to receiving Christmas presents. You have already given me such lots of thingseverything I have, you knowthat I dont quite feel that I deserve extras. But I like them just the same. Do you want to know what I bought with my money?

I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to recitations on time.

II. Matthew Arnolds poems.

III. A hot water bottle.

IV. A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)

V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I m going to commence being an author pretty soon.)

VI. A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the authors vocabulary.)

VII. (I dont much like to confess this last item, but I will.) A pair of silk stockings.

And now, Daddy, never say I dont tell all!

It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk stockings. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. But just waitas soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I ambut at least I m honest; and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I was nt perfect, did nt you?

To recapitulate (that s the way the English instructor begins every other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents. I m pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family in California. The watch is from father, the rug from mother, the hot water bottle from grandmotherwho is always worrying for fear I shall catch cold in this climateand the yellow paper from my little brother Harry. My sister Isobel gave me the silk stockings, and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; Uncle Harry (little Harry is named for him) gave me the dictionary. He wanted to send chocolates, but I insisted on synonyms.

You dont object do you, to playing the part of a composite family?

And now, shall I tell you about my vacation, or are you only interested in my education as such? I hope you appreciate the delicate shade of meaning in as such. It is the latest addition to my vocabulary.

The girl from Texas is named Leonora Fenton. (Almost as funny as Jerusha, is nt it?) I like her, but not so much as Sallie McBride; I shall never like any one so much as Sallieexcept you. I must always like you the best of all, because you re my whole family rolled into one. Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked cross country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighborhood, dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shinny sticks to whack things with. Once we walked into townfour milesand stopped at a restaurant where the college girls go for dinner. Broiled lobster (35 cents) and for dessert, buckwheat cakes and maple syrup (15 cents). Nourishing and cheap.

It was such a lark! Especially for me, because it was so awfully different from the asylumI feel like an escaped convict every time I leave the campus. Before I thought, I started to tell the others what an experience I was having. The cat was almost out of the bag when I grabbed it by its tail and pulled it back. It s awfully hard for me not to tell everything I know. I m a very confiding soul by nature; if I did nt have you to tell things to, I d burst.

We had a molasses candy pull last Friday evening, given by the house matron of Fergussen to the left-behinds in the other halls. There were twenty-two of us altogether, Freshmen and Sophomores and Juniors and Seniors all united in amicable accord. The kitchen is huge, with copper pots and kettles hanging in rows on the stone wallthe littlest casserole among them about the size of a wash boiler. Four hundred girls live in Fergussen. The chef, in a white cap and apron, fetched out twenty-two other white caps and apronsI cant imagine where he got so manyand we all turned ourselves into cooks.

It was great fun, though I have seen better candy. When it was finally finished, and ourselves and the kitchen and the door-knobs all thoroughly sticky, we organized a procession and still in our caps and aprons, each carrying a big fork or spoon or frying pan, we marched through the empty corridors to the officers parlor where half-a-dozen professors and instructors were passing a tranquil evening. We serenaded them with college songs and offered refreshments. They accepted politely but dubiously. We left them sucking chunks of molasses candy, sticky and speechless.

So you see, Daddy, my education progresses!

Dont you really think that I ought to be an artist instead of an author?

Vacation will be over in two days and I shall be glad to see the girls again. My tower is just a trifle lonely; when nine people occupy a house that was built for four hundred, they do rattle around a bit.

Eleven pagespoor Daddy, you must be tired! I meant this to be just a short little thank-you notebut when I get started I seem to have a ready pen.

Good-by, and thank you for thinking of meI should be perfectly happy except for one little threatening cloud on the horizon. Examinations come in February.

P. S. Maybe it is nt proper to send love? If it is nt, please excuse. But I must love somebody and there s only you and Mrs. Lippett to choose between, so you seeyou ll have to put up with it, Daddy dear, because I cant love her.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

You should see the way this college is studying! We ve forgotten we ever had a vacation. Fifty-seven irregular verbs have I introduced to my brain in the past four daysI m only hoping they ll stay till after examinations.

Some of the girls sell their text-books when they re through with them, but I intend to keep mine. Then after I ve graduated I shall have my whole education in a row in the bookcase, and when I need to use any detail, I can turn to it without the slightest hesitation. So much easier and more accurate than trying to keep it in your head.

Julia Pendleton dropped in this evening to pay a social call, and stayed a solid hour. She got started on the subject of family, and I could nt switch her off. She wanted to know what my mothers maiden name wasdid you ever hear such an impertinent question to ask of a person from a foundling asylum? I did nt have the courage to say I did nt know, so I just miserably plumped on the first name I could think of, and that was Montgomery. Then she wanted to know whether I belonged to the Massachusetts Montgomerys or the Virginia Montgomerys.

Her mother was a Rutherford. The family came over in the ark, and were connected by marriage with Henry the VIII. On her fathers side they date back further than Adam. On the topmost branches of her family tree there s a superior breed of monkeys, with very fine silky hair and extra long tails.

I meant to write you a nice, cheerful, entertaining letter to-night, but I m too sleepyand scared. The Freshmans lot is not a happy one.

Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,

I have some awful, awful, awful news to tell you, but I wont begin with it; I ll try to get you in a good humor first.

Jerusha Abbott has commenced to be an author. A poem entitled, From my Tower, appears in the February Monthlyon the first page, which is a very great honor for a Freshman. My English instructor stopped me on the way out from chapel last night, and said it was a charming piece of work except for the sixth line, which had too many feet. I will send you a copy in case you care to read it.

Let me see if I cant think of something else pleasantOh, yes! I m learning to skate, and can glide about quite respectably all by myself. Also I ve learned how to slide down a rope from the roof of the gymnasium, and I can vault a bar three feet and six inches highI hope shortly to pull up to four feet.

We had a very inspiring sermon this morning preached by the Bishop of Alabama. His text was: Judge not that ye be not judged. It was about the necessity of overlooking mistakes in others, and not discouraging people by harsh judgments. I wish you might have heard it.

This is the sunniest, most blinding winter afternoon, with icicles dripping from the fir trees and all the world bending under a weight of snowexcept me, and I m bending under a weight of sorrow.

Now for the newscourage, Judy!you must tell.

Are you surely in a good humor? I flunked mathematics and Latin prose. I am tutoring in them, and will take another examination next month. I m sorry if you re disappointed, but otherwise I dont care a bit because I ve learned such a lot of things not mentioned in the catalogue. I ve read seventeen novels and bushels of poetryreally necessary novels like Vanity Fair and Richard Feverel and Alice in Wonderland. Also Emersons Essays and Lockharts Life of Scott and the first volume of Gibbons Roman Empire and half of Benvenuto Cellinis Lifewas nt he entertaining? He used to saunter out and casually kill a man before breakfast.

So you see, Daddy, I m much more intelligent than if I d just stuck to Latin. Will you forgive me this once if I promise never to flunk again?

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I m sort of lonely to-night. It s awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I cant go to sleep.

I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fentonand sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she d had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.

I might, very usefully, put some time on Latin to-nightbut, there s no doubt about it, I m a very languid Latin scholar. We ve finished Livy and De Senectute and are now engaged with De Amicitia (pronounced Damn Icitia).

Should you mind, just for a little while, pretending you are my grandmother? Sallie has one and Julia and Leonora each two, and they were all comparing them to-night. I cant think of anything I d rather have; it s such a respectable relationship. So, if you really dont objectWhen I went into town yesterday, I saw the sweetest cap of Cluny lace trimmed with lavender ribbon. I am going to make you a present of it on your eighty-third birthday.