And Both Were Young (9 page)

“The worst is over,” Jackie promised. “You only have one more ordeal to go through.”

“So, peoples,” Erna said to the other new girls. “You’re all through now. All we have to do is finish Pill up and then we’d better get back to the common room or someone’ll be out to look for us.”

“What do we do to Pill now?” they cried.

“We blindfold her and tie her to the tree,” Jackie said.

“And gag her, too, don’t forget,” Gloria added.

“Come on, Pill, over by the tree.” Erna gave her a boisterous shove.

Flip looked at the tree and it seemed more like a gibbet than ever, sticking up starkly out of the tall grasses. She remembered reading in a book once about the way you used to see gibbets along the desolate highways in England long ago;
and as you drove along you would sometimes see a dead highwayman, black and awful, strung up on one of the gibbets, as a warning to thieves and murderers. She felt that this tree against which she was being forced to stand was like one of those old gallows, and for a shuddering moment her imagination told her it might have been used for that very purpose.

But no, she reassured herself. It’s only a dead tree and there aren’t any lonely highways nearby, only a big school that once used to be a hotel.

“Anything you’d like to say before we gag you?” Erna asked.

Flip shook her head and Sally cried, “Oh, Pill never has anything to say.”

Erna tied one handkerchief over Flip’s mouth, another over her eyes, and with a rope made of a number of brown woolen stockings knotted together secured her to the tree. Gloria and most of the English and American girls danced around the tree singing what to Flip was an appalling and fearful song:

Did you ever think when a hearse goes by

That one of these days you are going to die?

The French girls were singing a dreadful song about a corpse being dissected:
“Dans un amphithéâtre il y avait un macabre . . .”
while Erna and the rest of the girls were for some unexplained reason singing the school song.

When Gloria stopped singing she shouted, “I say, I’m tired of this. Let’s go back to school and play Ping-Pong.”

“How long should we leave Pill?” Jackie asked.

Erna considered. “Well, let’s see.”

“Not too long,” Solvei put in on Flip’s behalf. “She did awfully well during the initiation.”

Behind her blindfold and gag Flip felt a glow of pride because she could hear from Solvei’s voice that this time she really meant what she was saying.

“Well, fifteen minutes then,” Erna said.

“Fifteen minutes! What are you talking about!” Esmée Bodet cried. “An hour at least.”

“Well, half an hour, then,” Jackie compromised.

“You’re getting off easy, Pill,” Gloria told the blind and dumb Flip. “Come on, kiddos. Let’s play Ping and relax. Me first.”

“Second!” “Third!” “Fourth!” came the cries. And, “We can come get Pill in half an hour!” “Race you back to school!”

She heard them tearing off.

She could not move or speak or see. All she could do was hear. Strangely enough, instead of being frightened, she felt an odd sense of peace. By divesting her of any voluntary action they had also divested her of any sense of responsibility. She was free simply to stand there against the tree and think what she chose until they came back. She felt that she had done well during the initiation, far better than she had expected Philippa Hunter to do and far better than they had expected the class pill to do. She was not, as yet, uncomfortable, and at first it seemed as though half an hour would pass quickly. There was very little noise in the air around her, just a faint murmur in the grasses, and occasionally when the wind shifted briefly she could hear a faint faraway burst of voices from the school.

But long before the half hour was over it seemed as though it should have been over. Through her blindfold she
could not see the fog that was beginning to straggle in woolly-looking streamers about the playing fields and the grounds, but she could feel the damp seeping through her blazer and skirt and her body grow numb. Erna had bound her tightly and her muscles began to ache from standing, and the tautened stocking-rope dug into the flesh of her wrists and ankles, and the darkness became oppressive instead of peaceful. She strained against her bonds but could not move them. And now she began to be afraid, to be afraid that they had forgotten her, that no one would remember her, and she would be found there, eventually, when at last someone missed her, frozen to death.

But just as her despair turned almost to panic she heard footsteps. There they come! she thought. But it was not the running steps of a group of girls but a single pair of footsteps walking briskly.

Her heart began to thump and her imagination again thrust her onto an English highway filled with murderers and madmen. Through her gag she panted. At first she thought the footsteps were going to go on by, that whoever it was would pass without seeing her; but then she heard a low exclamation and felt deft fingers untying the blindfold and the gag.

“Well, Philippa,” Madame Perceval said, and set to work unknotting the stockings. Flip stepped away from the tree and her stiff legs buckled under her and she sat down abruptly. Madame helped her up.

“Thank you,” Flip whispered.

Madame looked at her and raised her eyebrows mockingly. “You look as though you’d been beset by highwaymen. What happened?”

“It was just an initiation,” Flip said. “It was fun, you know.”

“Was it fun?” Madame asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“And what was supposed to happen next?”

“Oh, they were supposed to come back and get me in half an hour. But I’m sure I’d been there more than half an hour.”

“What was the initiation about?” Madame asked. “Or is that a secret?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Flip said. “It was just our class initiating the new girls. I was the only one who really had to be initiated because all the other girls did a courageous deed, so they were exempt.”

“Why didn’t you do a courageous deed?”

“I couldn’t think of any. The things I thought would be brave I didn’t think they would, and I couldn’t think of any of the same kind of things the others did.”

“Things like what?”

“Things that were funny too.”

“Like Gloria’s spitting her teeth into Fräulein Hauser’s hand?” Madame Perceval asked with a twinkle.

Flip nodded. “I don’t think about things being funny until they
are
funny. My mother and father always told me my sense of humor was my weak point. It’s awful to be born without a sense of humor. Sort of like being born colorblind.”

“Sometimes you can grow a sense of humor, you know,” Madame Perceval told her. “Now, I have an idea. Why don’t you turn the tables on the girls and not be here when they come for you?”

“That would be wonderful,” Flip said. “Only there’s no place I’m allowed to go except the common room and they’re
all there. We aren’t allowed in our bedrooms, and if I hide in the bathroom Miss Tulip will come and knock on the door.”

“Come along with me to my room,” Madame Perceval said. “You’re allowed to be there if I invite you.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful!” Flip cried. “But—but you were going somewhere.”

“Just for a walk, and it’s colder than I thought it was. Legs unlimbered?”

“Yes, thank you.” Flip grinned and shook out her gangly legs.

“Come along then.” Madame Perceval took her arm in a friendly way and they set out for the school. They walked in silence, Flip desperately trying to think of something to say to the art teacher to show that she was grateful. Every once in a while she stole a look at Madame Perceval’s face, and it was serene and quiet and Flip remembered the way she had looked that evening when she leaned against the tree and looked out over the lake.

“We’ll go in the back way,” Madame Perceval said, “so we’ll be sure not to bump into anyone.” She took Flip’s hand and opened the small back door and together they crept upstairs like two conspirators. Flip felt ecstatically happy.

Madame lived on the top floor of the building near the art studio. She was the only person who slept on the fifth floor except for the cook and the maids, who were in the opposite wing of the building. Most of the teachers had single rooms distributed about the school among the girls so that there was at least one teacher to each corridor. Madame Perceval had two curious rooms in one of the turrets, and a tiny kitchen as well. She led Flip into her sitting room. It was octagonal; four of the walls were filled with books; the other four were covered
with prints. Flip recognized many of her favorites, two Picasso
Harlequins
, Holbein’s
Erasmus
, Lautrec’s
Maybe
, Seurat’s
Study for the Grande Jatte
, a stage design by Inigo Jones, Van Gogh’s
Le Café de Nuit
, Renoir’s
Moulin de la Galette
. Flip looked at them, enthralled.

Madame Perceval smiled. “I like it too,” she said. “It’s a hodgepodge, but I like it. This bit of privacy is the one privilege I ask for being Mademoiselle Dragonet’s niece. Sit down and I’ll brew us a pot of tea.” She moved the screen away from the grate, stirred up the coals, and added some more. Flip sat down on a stool covered with a patch of oriental rug and stared into the fire. Behind her she could hear Madame Perceval moving about in her tiny kitchen, and then she was aware that the art teacher was standing behind her. “A penny for your thoughts, Philippa,” Madame Perceval said lightly.

Flip continued to stare into the fire. “I was thinking how happy I was, right now, this very minute,” she said. “And if I could always be happy the way I am now, I wouldn’t mind school so much.”

“Do you mind school so very much?” Madame Perceval asked.

Flip realized that she had expressed herself far more fully than she had intended. “Oh, no,” she denied quickly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that was so beautiful. And at night I can look down the mountain to the lake and it’s like something out of a fairy tale. And when there’s a fog and sometimes you can see the Dents du Midi and then they disappear and then you can see them again—that’s like a fairy tale too. And the kids say we go to Lausanne and Vevey and Gstaad and places at half term and we’re going to climb the Col de Jaman on Tuesday as the new girls’ welcome and I
expect that’ll be beautiful only I’m not very good at climbing . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Fräulein Hauser says there’s something wrong with one of your legs,” Madame Perceval said abruptly. “What is it?”

“I broke my knee.”

“How?”

“In an automobile accident.”

There was something strained and tense in Flip’s voice and Madame Perceval went quietly into the kitchen and poured water from the now-hissing kettle into a small earthenware teapot. She brought the teapot into her living room and two delicate Limoges cups and saucers and placed them on the low table in front of the fire by a plate of small cakes.

“Tell me about the automobile accident, Philippa,” she said.

Flip took a cup and saucer and stirred her tea very carefully. “It was a year ago. It will be a year”—she buried her face in her hands—“tomorrow.” She took her hands down from her face and dropped them in her lap. Madame Perceval sat looking quietly into the fire, her feet on the low brass hearth rail, and waited. At last Flip said, “Mother and Father and I were driving over to Philadelphia to spend the weekend with some friends, and it began to snow, a very early snow which wasn’t even predicted, and it was mixed in with sleet and rain. The windshield wipers hardly worked. And some crazy driver tried to pass a truck and skidded and there was an accident. The people in the other car weren’t hurt, and it was all their fault. The truck driver was killed.” She paused again. “And my mother was killed.”

Madame Perceval continued to look into the fire, but Flip knew that she was listening.

“Father was cut and bruised,” Flip continued, “and my kneecap was broken. It’s really all right now, though, except it gets sort of stiff sometimes. But I never was any good at running and things anyhow.”

The gong for tea began to ring. It reverberated even back into Madame Perceval’s room as the maid rode up and down in the skeleton of the elevator. Flip put her cup and saucer down on the table and her hand was trembling. “There’s the gong for tea,” she said.

“Do you want to go down?” Madame Perceval asked.

“No.”

Madame Perceval reached for a telephone on one of the bookshelves; Flip had not noticed it before. “One of the advantages of the school’s having been a hotel,” Madame said, “is that all the teachers have telephones connected with the switchboard downstairs. I’ll call Signorina del Rossi—I think she’s in charge today—and tell her to excuse you from tea. We won’t tell anyone and we’ll have all the girls wondering where you are and that ought to be rather fun.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Flip cried. “Oh, Madame, thank you.”

“Hello, Signorina,” Madame said on the telephone. “Madame Perceval.” Then she launched into Italian, which Flip did not understand. There was a good deal of laughter, then Madame hung up and took Flip’s cup. “All right, little one. Let me give you some more tea.”

So Flip sat there and drank tea and ate Madame Perceval’s cakes and felt warmth from far more than the fire seep into her.

Madame passed her the cake plate. “Have another. They come from Zürcher’s in Montreux and they’re quite special. I
allow myself to have them every once in a while. What do you want to be after you leave school, Philippa? An artist?”

Flip bit into a small and succulent cake, crisp layers of something filled with mocha cream. “I think so. But my father says it’s probably just because he paints and he doesn’t want me to do anything just because he does it. Anyhow, he says he’s not at all sure I have enough talent.”

Madame laughed and filled Flip’s teacup for the third time. “I like your father’s work. Especially his illustrations for children’s books.”

“Oh, do you know them?” Flip was excited.

Madame reached up to the bookshelves and pulled down a copy of
Oliver Twist
.