Dreadful Sorry (17 page)

When the seniors were in their places of honor on the stage, Miss Kent signaled everyone to stand for a prayer led by the Reverend Beasley. Then the minister began his speech about the responsibilities of adulthood, his booming voice carrying as it did in church over the fidgets and chattering of the assembled children and the
shushing
of their parents.

The boys were men now, he said, and would soon be marrying. They would need to work hard out at sea to provide for their wives and children and to support the economy of the village. There was no more time for tomfoolery or boyish pranks. The girls were young women now, and ready for marriage. They would need to be steadfast keepers of the home, bearing children and guiding them through childhood, with God's grace. There would be no time now for flirting and games.

Clementine thought he made it all sound rather awful. She resolved that
she
would never marry and bear child after child like Aunt Ethel. There were other things to do in life. Other fish to fry. She smiled at her own wit, then listened with interest to Miss Kent's speech about how the graduates would take forth to use in life the wisdom and knowledge they had gained in the village school. And then Miss Reddy presented each graduate with a book. Clementine's was a leather-bound copy of
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens. Clementine stroked the soft cover and thanked Miss Reddy, sighing to herself at the aptness of the title. These
were
hard times. But they would be better soon.

The younger pupils came forth at the end amid the tumultuous applause of parents, bearing gifts for the new graduates: wildflower bouquets and homemade pen wipers and sweets from the general store. Abner pushed through the crowd to hug Clementine, and Alice and Anne gave her a small box wrapped in shiny pink paper.

"This is from all of us," Anne said. "Father gave us the money, and Janie took us to the general store. I wanted to order something really fine from Bangor, but this was the best we could do."

"It smells lovely anyway!" added Amity. Clementine pulled off the wrapping paper and opened the box to reveal three sachets of lavender and rose, tied with ribbon.

"You can put them in your wardrobe to scent your clothes, or even pin one inside your dress," Anne said.

"
Mmmmm,
" sniffed Abner. "It smells as sweet as you, Clemmy!"

"My sentiments exactly," said a deeper voice appreciatively, and Clementine glanced over her shoulder to find Hob Wilkins grinning at her.

She tossed her head and looked away. She'd known Hob for years and liked him well enough. When they were younger, before she'd put her hair up, he'd pestered her the way all the boys pestered the girls—dipping the ends of her braids into inkwells, chasing her at lunchtime, hiding spiders and frogs in her desk. She ignored him the way she ignored her small cousins when they bothered her. Clementine had come in for more teasing than the other girls. Jilly Peters said that was because she was from the big house on the hill and the boys wanted to make sure she didn't act too fancy.

Although Clementine didn't look down on the villagers because of their lack of wealth and social position, she nonetheless felt set apart. They didn't share the same goals; they didn't know what was important in life. She felt alternately amused and depressed by their collective lack of ambition. The girls all wanted to get married. The boys all wanted to be fishermen. Hob Wilkins's goal in life was to be exactly like his father, to spend his days out in the cove trailing lobster traps through the water. How could she take his attempts to court her seriously?

At Christmas he presented her with a tiny wooden boat he'd whittled himself. In February a silly homemade Valentine, unsigned and still oozing glue around the paper lace doily stuck onto red paper, lay on her desk when she arrived at school. The card, its message cut from newspaper words and pasted onto the doily, vowed eternal love. Hob had given himself away just before lessons began by asking permission to go out to the pump to wash his sticky fingers. And this past spring, on her seventeenth birthday, he had presented her with a bouquet of wildflowers picked from the hillside as she started home from school.

She thought later she should never have accepted the first gift (she'd given it to Abner one day as a bribe to make him stop pestering her) because Hob seemed to think something had been decided between them. He acted now as if he had the
right
to her attention. He offered time and again to walk home with her after school and carry her books—"So many books!" he laughed. "What a silly, studious girl!"—but she always turned him down.

She knew Aunt Ethel and Uncle Wallace would frown on her association with a boy from the village, but that wasn't the reason she ignored Hob Wilkins. She just wasn't interested in flirting with empty-headed boys. Hob looked confused when she told him her plan of going on to college. He'd asked how she could even
think
of ever leaving Hibben for somewhere else.

She'd wanted to ask how he could even
think
of staying but had held her tongue. Now, spying Miss Kent across the yard, she hugged her little cousins and thanked them again for their gift, then headed over to talk to the teacher. Miss Kent was the most educated woman in the village, and she was Clementine's one oasis in an intellectual desert.

The teacher stood at the plank table, cutting the big cake into pieces for everyone. "May I talk to you a moment?" Clementine inquired in a low voice. "In private?"

Miss Kent wiped the knife on a napkin and set it down carefully out of reach of the little children. "Why, yes, dear. I think we can find a minute now." They walked over to the low wall that separated the schoolyard from the graveyard behind the church.

Clementine explained about her longing to attend college and how her uncle and aunt forbade it. She explained how they insisted she work as their unpaid governess-cum-household drudge. "They should pay me, at the very least," she declared. "Or let me leave here and earn money for college by being someone
else's
governess. But my uncle and aunt won't hear of it. They say I shall stay home with them until I marry. But I don't want to work for them—and I'm never going to marry!"

Miss Kent wrinkled her forehead and put her hand on Clementine's arm. "But, Clementine, dear, of course you shall marry! Even girls who go on to college marry eventually—unless they want to become dried-up old maids like me."

"You aren't dried up at all," said Clementine, shocked. "You're educated and independent. I intend to be the same."

Miss Kent shook her head slowly. "My dear, I know how you have loved your studies. I don't think I've ever had a more eager or more brilliant student in all my time teaching. But family duty must come first—before all else. I cannot help you go against your family's wishes. Didn't you listen to the Reverend Beasley's speech? It's important for a girl to help out at home, where she belongs."

Clementine felt tears welling in her eyes. How could Miss Kent say these things? How could she—a teacher!—believe that staying home with a passel of little cousins could be as important as getting an education? Clementine simply stared at Miss Kent until the teacher patted her hand and walked over to chat with some parents. Then Clementine stood there, cheeks blazing, and stared blankly at the grass. The tears in her eyes made her unable to focus. When she blinked them away, she found she was looking at Hob Wilkins and Sam Sawyer wrestling companionably without a care in the world. When he saw her watching, Hob grinned.

"Care to join us, Clementine?" he called. "Let's see how strong you are!"

Behind her she heard Jilly Peters's sassy voice: "You know he's sweet on you, Clementine. He just wants to get his arms around you. I bet you two are married within the year!"

Clementine stalked away, bitter, but not before she'd heard Hob's laugh. "I hope you win that bet, Jilly. There's nothing I'd like better than to wed Clementine Horn. And the sooner the better."

Clementine sat on the low wall and ate a piece of Miss Kent's cake. She barely tasted it. She watched the schoolchildren cavorting in the yard and noticed most of her own cousins hung back, too shy and unfamiliar with other children to join in. Only Abner and little Alice seemed comfortable. Alice examined a village child's rag doll, while Abner kicked a ball around with some of the little boys.

Abby Chandler's crashing chords on the piano signaled that the dance was to begin. The village doctor, Dr. Scopes, jumped up onto the platform with his fiddle. The villagers cheered. The running children were rounded up and the schoolyard cleared for dancing. Abby and Dr. Scopes played popular tunes that set everyone's toes to tapping. The Reverend Beasley asked Miss Kent for the first dance, and everyone clapped when they moved into the circle. Then Sam Sawyer asked Jilly Peters to dance, and „ Earl Wallings asked his sister. Clementine watched from the wall. She was too sunk in misery to want to join in. These people were so ... so provincial! This sort of entertainment was all they cared about. An orphan girl plunking out tunes and a second-rate fiddler trying to keep time! She looked on dispassionately.

Miss Reddy relieved Abby Chandler at the piano, and the music changed from popular tunes to waltzes. Gilbert Hanks and Hob Wilkins both crossed the yard, and Clementine could see the desire in Hob's eyes as he neared her. Jumping off the wall, she walked straight over to little Abner. "Let's dance," she said, and turned pointedly away from Hob. As she spun off with the child in her arms, she saw Hob, his face crimson, ask Abby Chandler to dance instead.

Soon the schoolyard was full of couples moving across the grass. Even the Holloway children joined in enthusiastically. Little Abner danced with his sister, Alice. Amity danced with Aaron, then with Anne. Andrew bowed and asked Janie to dance. Laughing, she accepted.

Clementine danced with Gilbert Hanks, then Sam Sawyer, then Earl Wallings, taking no joy in it. She danced with Andrew and Aaron and little Abner again, who clung to her white dress. "You look so pretty today, Clemmy. Will you marry me?" He gazed up at her with his usual expression of adoration. She hugged him automatically, her thoughts elsewhere.

"Sure I will. You're my own sweet little man."

Clementine smoothed her skirt as the Reverend Beasley approached. But just as he was about to speak, Hob Wilkins cut in. "Pardon me, Reverend, but Clementine has promised this one to me!" And he grabbed her arms and pulled her against his chest.

"Hob Wilkins! Let go of me!" She struggled against him.

"This is our graduation, Clementine," he said, releasing her enough that she could stand back to look up at him. "You can't mean to end your school career without a single dance with the man who loves you best!" His tone was teasing, but she saw in his blue eyes how seriously he meant the words.
Oh Well,
she thought.
One dance.
And she stopped struggling and let him lead her around the schoolyard. As they circled, his arm tightened around her waist. She heard him sigh.

"Oh, Clementine, you know I'd do anything for you, don't you? I'm not kidding. You're so special to me." His voice murmured in her ear. She could see his own ears were bright pink. As the glimmer of an idea began to form, she felt a thrill of power. She deliberately relaxed her body against his. He lowered his head to press his cheek against her soft dark hair. When the song ended, he kept his arms tightly around her and continued dancing, singing the song he had often hummed in the past to tease her: "
Oh my darlin', Oh my darlin', Oh my darlin', Clementine...
"

Over his shoulder she could see Janie and Alice beckoning her to come. They were ready to leave. Smiling at Hob, she excused herself. She was ready to leave, too. She needed time to think about her budding idea. "Thanks for the dance, Hob."

"
Oh my darlin'
—may I have this next dance, too?"

"No, I have to leave. But I'll see you soon."

He brightened. "You promise?"

Clementine nodded, then hurried over to her cousins and Janie. On their way out of the schoolyard she stopped to say polite good-byes to the Reverend Beasley, Miss Reddy, and Miss Kent. When Clementine held out her hand to Miss Kent, the teacher hugged her instead, quite hard. "Be sure to come back down and visit the school," she murmured into Clementine's ear. "I am going to miss you."

Hope leapt up in Clementine's heart again. "Oh, Miss Kent," she whispered. "Do you suppose I could come and help you with the children? I could teach math to the little ones and geography—it would be no trouble at all. I could save the money you pay me toward college!"

Miss Kent pulled abruptly away. "Oh, Clementine," she said sadly, "please don't go on this way. Your job is to tend to your uncle's children. You must do as he says. That is your duty."

Clementine turned and walked after Janie without a backward glance. There would be no help at all from Miss Kent. How she had overestimated the teacher! Hob Wilkins waved, watching her leave with longing in his eyes. On any other day she would have turned her back on him. But now she waved and smiled.

 

That evening she sat numbly through a celebratory dinner in her honor, with Uncle Wallace presiding in fine humor. The older children were permitted to eat in the dining room for the occasion, and Clementine was allowed a half glass of wine. Aunt Ethel even made the trip down the long flight of stairs and sat for the first time in months with her family, although she merely pushed the food around on her plate.

"You need to eat more, my dear," reproved Uncle Wallace from the other end of the table. "Remember that you're eating for two. You need to keep your strength up."

"Yes, Wallace," said Aunt Ethel softly. "I do try, you know."

The new baby was due around Christmas, Janie had whispered to all the children. But they must wait patiently and not tire their mother with questions about it. Little Augustus was not yet a year old, and he needed their attention, since their mother was too weak to take any interest in the poor lad.