Selina: Her Hopeful Efforts and Her Livelier Failures — Themes and Context

e had gone through measles and through mumps with them; through day school and dancing school with them; through the baby age, the overly conscientious age, the giggling age, the conscious age, the arriving age, when at birthdays and school-closings, she, Selina, and Amanthus, and Maud, and Juliette and Adele, exchanged clothbound and gilt-topped volumes, "Lucille," "Aurora Leigh," Tennyson.

But the gaze of Selina right now was out the window of her mother's bedroom, and in her mind's eye she was seeing, not these adored friends of her youth, but the macadamized street she lived upon, with its brick sidewalks and its occasional old sycamore tree, and the homes of herself and these friends along it. And her home was the squat and shabby one, her yard the untended one, and she, Selina Auboussier Wistar, the genteelly poor one of these friends of her youth.

Then her attention came back to matters within the room.

"I try to save Mr. Wistar everything of worry I can," her mother was saying defensively. "I've been setting a chair over that hole in the dining-room hearth rug for months."

"I'm never sure it isn't better to be frank," held Auntie.

Selina's concern returned to her own affairs. Selina Auboussier Wistar! Why Auboussier? Because her father was Robert Auboussier Wistar. Why the Auboussier in either case was to be dwelt upon so insistingly and in full, was never very dazzlingly clear, except that Mamma decreed it. The name had brought her father nothing other in his day than a silver mug, so far as Selina knew, and it had not even brought her that. But it did roll off the tongue as though it had claims. In the very nicest sort of way perhaps this was the explanation.

The affairs of her elders in the room again intruded.

"I paid the bills for all those extras we had not counted on when Selina graduated in June," Mamma was saying, and defensively again, "and said nothing about them. It seemed best at the time. And once I got behind in this way on the other bills I haven't seemed able to catch up."

"I needn't have had the carriage and the flowers and the rest of it if I'd known," claimed Selina passionately. "And I'm sure Auntie is right. Everybody in a family ought to know everything."

"I cannot allow such a tone from you, Selina," returned her mother decidedly. "And of whom is it you speak in this disparaging manner? Surely not of your mother? And I will not think you mean your father?"

Her father? Tradition, which meant Selina's own little mother again, told how Mr. Robert Auboussier Wistar at the beginning of things, which was before Selina at all could remember, had made a bold dash and start in life, proprietor of his own inherited iron foundry. It lent solidity and importance to the past, and support to the present. A structural iron railroad and foot-bridge across a turbulent creek at the city's edge, marks the crest of this gentleman's industrial prosperity. It is an ugly bridge where it might have achieved beauty, Selina is forced to admit this now, but then when the family walks on Sunday afternoons and on holidays led to it with something of the spirit which carries the faithful to Mecca, she obediently thrilled with pride as regularly as her mother pointed out the structure to her.

The glittering career of Papa and the foundry had been brief, and Selina had it from her mother and her auntie that this is a sad world for the honorable and trusting man in business.

Mr. Robert Wistar, dear and very real gentleman as he was, and as his Selina saw and knew him, for many years now had had a floor space in a building in an off business street, and bought and sold machinery, new and old, on the varying and uncertain basis of commission. But at home in the squat and ugly brick house owned in part by him and in part by Auntie, who was his older sister, his household of womenkind upheld his prestige and dominance as their male and their protector.

His household of women! Selina's eyes went from the little person of her mother, ardent striver to keep up a fairly prosperous front, to the heavy person of her auntie, darling soul, who did not seem quite to grasp why a front must be kept up, but assured that it must, submitted. Big, lovable, personable auntie, could the pity of it be that she was always submitting? Each lady was sitting by her standing work-basket of cane, with work however abandoned into her respective dear lap.

Mamma, little person, meant by Heaven to be pretty if she had not in the stead to be so perturbed, just here seemed disposed and almost unreasonably, to harbor feeling against Aunt Viney for wanting what was coming to her. There had been similar feeling on her part toward the iceman, and, preceding him, toward the butcher.

"If it were anybody but Viney herself, coming upstairs to me right in my own room and asking for her money, I would feel I could not overlook it," she was saying. "She should have known that as soon as it was convenient for her to have it, I would give it to her."

"It is the second time the collector of dues on her funeral insurance has come around," reminded Auntie, "and I dare say he made her feel she had to ask for it."

"There's more to it than her merely coming upstairs to me about it," said Mamma. "Two dollars and a half to three dollars is all anyone thought of paying a servant in my day." Her tone would imply that her day and her authority were decades past and other people in this matter of Aunt Viney, altogether and unworthily responsible. "Four dollars to a servant is out of all reason."

And so indeed four dollars at that day and in that place would have been but for the agreement fixing the wages of this old person at this sum!

Selina's cheeks flamed red. "Aunt Viney is getting four dollars instead of three, Mamma," she reminded her mother, "because you dismissed the washwoman who was getting two dollars, and persuaded Aunt Viney to undertake it for the extra one." Cooking, washing, ironing, dining-room, front door, coal, kindling, fires and something of the rest of it, were the part of Aunt Viney!

Honesty drove Selina to defend her--tentatively and timidly, since not for worlds in her day would a daughter venture to hurt a parent's tender feelings. "Four dollars isn't so terribly much more than a pittance, is it, Mamma? For a week's work? That is," hastily and apologetically, "if one were the receiver of it?"

Time was to be, and that time soon, when Selina would know more about the place of four dollars in the scale of recompense.

Auntie at this point moved heavily and uneasily. One always felt that nature meant Auntie for something more definite. Her ponderous energy was inexhaustible. To see her expend it on irrelevant and inconsequential things, was to gather that after some fashion of reasoning all her own, she drew comfort from such activities even to convincing herself such efforts were contributory to the general relief.

"I'm sure I wish there were more brasses I could do," sighed the precious and comely soul.

And while Selina here felt again that anguish which seemed more than she could bear, still she blessed the brasses in question, fire-irons, coal-bucket, and fender which adorned their parlor.

And she blessed Cousin Anna Tomlinson who had given the brasses to the Wistar household. Japanned coal vases with panel decorations in subjects such as cat-tails, and mantel tiles with swallow flights across them had recently come in, and Cousin Anna was of those who will have the latest or nothing. Selina did not know what the energy of Auntie would do on the occasions of these recurrent money crises, if she could not put it into the polishing of the brasses.

"I am sure I'm always wishing there were more of them," she was reiterating now.

And then it was that Selina drew breath, a long and quivering breath. There had come to be but one thing for her to do and she was about to give it voice.

Never before had she taken the initiative in her life. The exact length for the lowering of her dress skirt for graduation, the chosen fashion for the tying of her white sash on that day, the manner of the arranging of her hair, her flowers, her fan, each detail was for these two dear but hitherto decreeing ladies to debate and decide upon.

When their Selina went forth upon her little pleasures and affairs, one saw her off from the front-door step, the other waved a farewell from the window above. When she returned one removed her hat and passed a readjusting hand over her shining fair hair, the other lifted and put away her cloak.

The initiative was to be Selina's now.

"I told you, Mamma and Auntie dear, of meeting Mrs. William Williams down street yesterday? And of her stopping me?"

She had. She brought all incidents to her absences home, and the two relived them with her. They saw Mrs. William Williams now in this recall, large, impressive, with her benevolently dealt-around interests and inquiries, as from a being of credentialed and superior parts to a world of lesser creatures. Though why this arrogance was permitted, the world of lesser beings could hardly say, but since authority even when self-arrogated, and authority's running mate, material prosperity, are ever potent, the world of Mrs. Wistar and Auntie submitted. Mr. William Williams, a successful dealer in leather and raw hides, had married Mrs. Williams late in both their lives, and one William Williams Jr. was the result.

Selina was continuing. "And I told you how she said she does not approve of the new methods called kindergarten that are beginning to be used in the schools, and wants William Williams Jr. taught at home, and did I know of any young person among my friends fitted to do it?"

"William Jr.'s head is too big," said Auntie, decidedly, "it rolls around on his neck. I've noticed him on the bench at Sunday-school."

Selina passed over the interruption. "I told her yesterday that I did not know of anyone. To-day I do. I am going to offer to teach him myself!" But her throat was dry, and her hands were cold as she said it.

Selina knew no women wage-earners except her teachers at the public school, who stood apart unique personalities in a world entered into and left behind at intervals, and a scattering of women clerks in the stores of her Southern city. Yes, on the contrary, she did know one, Miss Emma McRanney, a regular attendant at the same church as the Wistars, stolid, settled, and middle-aged, a setter of type at the State Institute for the Blind. Mamma and Auntie made a point of going out their ways on Sundays to stop her and shake hands with her kindly.

But she was the exception. In the world of Selina, in the world of her mother and her aunt, in that of the friends of her youth and their mothers and sisters and aunts, the accolading stamp of position, of gentility, of femininity, lay in the monetary dependence of womankind on its men.

Nor had life, as Selina came up through it, the private school of her baby days, the public schooling of later days, the friends of her youth, nor Mother, nor Auntie, nor those gilt-topped volumes, nor dancing school, nor Sunday-school, nor her tinkling music lessons, nor traditions, nor precedent, nor standards, nor prides, nor preoccupations, nor day dreams, prepared Selina for this step. And so her throat was dry and her hands were cold as she forced herself to say it.

"I am going to offer to teach him myself."

And then it was that the unexpected happened. The fight on the part of Mamma and Auntie had been a long one and a gruelling one, as long almost as Selina's life, and they by nature were clinging creatures. With the very note of her young utterance, as at the Gideon shout of the newer generation, their walls fell.

This mother of Selina, behold, all at once a little, tearful, dependent, child-like person. "Oh, Selina, daughter, _do_ you think you _could_? The terror of having people come to the door with bills one can't pay!"

This handsome, solid, impressive auntie, a bewildered, rudderless, drifting soul. "I might be able to do little things at home to save you here, Selina. There is the canary's cage. Let me take care of that."

Thus the walls fell about Selina and revealed to her the inward weakness of that stronghold of dominance and authority she, up to now, had deemed well-nigh impregnable.

One instinct with the two, however, held true to its function.

"We will not mention the matter to your father, Selina," from her mother, "unless it seems best. He very likely would worry."

"Robert would worry," from Auntie, decidedly. "It might seem as if it were in criticism of him if we went to him about it beforehand."

No protests! No objections! They were relieved! They were willing! Selina stood up, her voice to her ears coming from vast distances away.

"Four dollars is certainly little more than a pittance for Aunt Viney, I am sure you must see, Mamma." There was pronouncement and finality in the tone as if for the first time she sat in judgment on her parent. "As I've made up my mind to see Mrs. Williams, I'll put on my hat and go now."

But it was all of an hour before she came from her own room ready to go.

"Has she been crying?" Auntie asked Mrs. Wistar anxiously, as Selina went downstairs. "I thought her face showed traces."

"Selina has not the control I would like to see her have," said little Mrs. Wistar concisely. "In my day we were not encouraged to indulge ourselves in tears."

"In what then?" from Auntie as with one suddenly disposed to be captious.

"In self-repression and the meeting of our duties," said Mrs. Wistar. "Ann Eliza," severely, "sometimes I almost think you aid and abet Selina in her expressions of discontent."

Auntie looked non-committal. "Do you, Lavinia?"

On Selina's return in the late afternoon, she came up to her mother's room, her step light and springy now, to tell the two about her visit. She had made up her mind that if she had to do this thing, she would do it with as good grace as possible. They on the contrary had had time to grasp the idea of Selina as a teacher in its several significances.

"Don't think I'd let you do a thing I did not think was proper and right, Selina," her mother hurried to say in greeting. "There's nothing derogatory, I'm sure, in accepting remuneration. I made a set of chemises for your Cousin Anna last year, you remember, and was glad to have her pay me."

"Look at _me_," said Auntie, "and don't you make chemises or anything else, unless it's an understood thing that somebody _is_ going to pay you."

A wave of protective feeling rushed over Selina, new to her but warming and whelming, and she had forgiven them.

"I think, Mamma, that Mrs. Williams meant me when she spoke yesterday. She said she was glad to see I was sensible about it. Evidently there are people thinking I ought to go to work. She did."

This was not so rosy as Selina meant it to be for the attentive two; she must do better.

"I'm sure, too, Mamma, she meant to be complimentary. She said a whole lot about my being a booky girl, that she'd heard I was fond of reading, and some more of that sort of thing. And about how she laid a great deal of stress herself on cultivation, and how she wanted William Jr. to achieve a taste that way, too. And she said that habits and associations in the person of a teacher--I remember her words--mean so much."

"I hope she values 'em accordingly," said Auntie indignantly. "I don't like any such tone from her to you. She was a McIntosh, we mustn't forget that. I never thought much of the stock."

"I'm sure all that Selina has told us is most gratifying," Mrs. Wistar hastened to claim. "It only emphasizes the fact that teaching is a calling of accomplishments and refinements. I remember the teacher that I myself recall best." When Mrs. Wistar lost herself in reminiscence, she was more than apt to lose her point also. "His name was Aristides Welkin, and we called him Mr. Arry. He took snuff and recited Dryden and Milton to the class in parsing most beautifully. He was English and sometimes I think now, looking back upon it, drank. My parents paid well for the privilege of having my sister Juanita and myself under him. It was a school of selection and fashion, in the basement under the First Church."

Selina kept to her narrative. "She said that of course I was a beginner. That she realized it would hardly pay me to come way out to her house for just William, and she thinks she can get three other pupils in the neighborhood who will come into the class. I'm to go on with him while she tries."

"If you're valuable as all that sounds," insisted Auntie, holding to her point tenaciously, "she certainly ought to pay you well."

Selina paused to steady her voice. So far in her world, and in the world of Mamma and Auntie, money matters were mentioned only when they had to be, and then with embarrassment and reluctance. Hot to her finger-tips and wincing to the fiber, she had had to discuss dollars and cents with Mrs. Williams. Or rather, this lady with her air of large condescension and kindly patronage had discussed it for her. Since Mamma and Auntie had brought her up to feel this shrinking from these things, how could they be so eager now about this part of the interview?

"Mrs. Williams said she had inquired at the private schools and the kindergartens, found the charge for a pupil, and would of course fix the price at that." The blood surged slowly over Selina's face.

"Yes?" from Mamma a little impatiently.

Auntie however had noted the surging signals of distress. "I said that boy William's head was too large," she declared anticipatorily to anything of any nature which might follow.

Selina, who abhorred doing an uncouth thing, gulped. It was the painful coincidence of the thing. The identical sum fixed by Mrs. Williams and custom for training youth to a knowledge of the rudiments, culture, good habits and worthy associations, had been in the mouths of Mamma, Auntie and herself, all too recently. On hearing it from Mrs. Williams, Selina had winced, and now shrunk from mentioning it herself until she had to.

"I start in to-morrow. Mrs. Williams said why procrastinate things. No, I won't take off my hat, thank you, Auntie."

She was winking fast, her eyes swimming behind something suspiciously like tears. She was swallowing, too, at thought of her own especial little world, her world including Amanthus and Maudie, Juliette and Adele, and their prosperous and easy surroundings. And having reached this point, she sobbed. For what would be the effect of the announcement of her teaching on her world? And what, too, would Culpepper Buxton say? The stepson of Cousin Maria Buxton, down here from up in his part of the state studying law, and her, yes, her very good friend? What would be the attitude of Culpepper to her move?

She found voice. Moreover, she smiled bravely at Auntie. "No, don't take my cloak, please. I'm going out to find the girls and tell them and have it over with. The price, you say, Mamma?" Unexpectedly she sobbed again. The coincidence was mortifying. "Four dollars."

"I quite begin to follow your meaning, Ann Eliza, when you say Mrs. Williams was a McIntosh," said Mamma with dignity. "You are right; her old grandfather, Manuel McIntosh, used to sit outside his doorstep on the sidewalk in his shirt-sleeves."

"I've always had a big respect for cooking, myself," said Auntie with unexpected relevancy. "I've never thought we put enough emphasis on it as a calling. Feeding the body is a worthy thing. It comes first."

"Who said anything about cooking, Ann Eliza?" from Mamma sharply. "How you wander from the point! If you're going out before dark, Selina, you'd better go."