From the Relief Society Magazine, 1922 –

Bubbles and Troubles

By Ruth Moench Bell

Chapter 1

Klickity! klackity! klack! klack! went the electric washing machine. The tea-kettle and boiler sang vigorous accompaniments. The baby, baffled in some cherished plan, bawled vociferously! Ralph and Ruth, too near an age to agree, were quarreling in high-pitched voices! Marjory, the eldest, was shouting questions at her mother in an attempt to be heard above the uproar.

And the mother! Nothing jazzed across her nerves like noise, disorder and confusion. And she had all three. Steam-heated within and without, with two distracted lines between her nose and several more across her forehead, she yearned to fly from the whole scene and never glance back.

The postman’s whistle, always with romantic possibilities for most, scarcely stirred the mother who expected nothing different from the hum-drum monotony of her daily life. Marjory answered the door. She came back with eyes dancing:

“Oh, it’s a Christmas parcel from Aunt Ethel!” Marjory exclaimed.

Mrs. Collins’ frown deepened. That meant a suitable return must be made from their scant means.

“Open it. Mamma, open it!” Ralph and Ruth, agreeing for one instant, danced up and down.

“But it is marked ‘to be opened Christmas morning!’” Mrs. Collins protested.

“Open it now!” Marjory suggested. “And then open it again on Christmas! Come on, Mamma, Aunt Ethel will never know.”

Disregarding the solemn admonition: “To be opened Christmas morning,” Mrs. Collins, without enthusiasm, undid the ribbons. She must know the extent her coins must reach in the return gift.

Eager for something beautiful, and forgetting in their childish anticipation that Aunt Ethel’s Christmas presents for several years had been “dark, dreary, drudge aprons,” as Marjory dubbed them, the children in breathless delight crowded around. Then a sudden chorus of Oh’s, and Ah’s of joy broke out, when Mrs. Collins, with puzzled fingers held up an exquisite trifle of Georgette crepe, lace and ribbons, frilly and fragile and daintily perfumed, as fairy-like a boudoir cap as ever graced Milady’s tresses.

“For me?” the mother questioned. The card confirmed it: “To my darling sister, Edith, with love from Ethel.”

From the prosaic realities of a middle-aged present to the rosy dreams of a girlish past, this magic trifle of lace and ribbons, lifted her easily over the wide stretch of years. They had dreamed together, Ethel and Edith, of rose-colored boudoirs, silken negligees, maids and boudoir caps, velvety carpets and delicate ivory; and Ethel’s dreams had come true.

Yet never before in all these years, had she remembered that Edith, too, had dreamed. Lavender, too, so becoming to Edith’s golden tresses.

“Try it on, Mamma! Try it on!”

“Oh, it wouldn’t look well with my hair dressed like this, and this awful sweater on.”

“Oh, yes it will! Yes, it will!”

Mrs. Collins removed her son’s sweater cap and slipped the boudoir cap over her hair.

“Oh, Mamma, you look lovely!” The children exclaimed dancing about her.

Edith Collins stole a pleased glance into the mirror. Her weary expression had lifted, her dull eyes were sparkling. Such was the magic of the frilly thing.

“Put it on tonight when papa comes home,” the children urged.

“But what could I wear with it?”

“Your party dress.”

“Oh, that wouldn’t do.”

“Oh, Mamma, get you something pretty to wear with it and put it on at night when papa comes.”

“How lovely of Aunt Ethel to send it,” Marjory exclaimed. No one could be insensible to its beauty and daintiness, least of all Marjory who was at the age when young girls most dote on beauty.

“But what could she mean?” Mrs. Collins was still puzzled. “She knows I sit up in bed and dress my hair first thing in the morning before I get up.”

“Yes, and without any mirror,” Marjory lamented, “and it is such pretty hair.”

“And I never have time to lounge around; even if I am too ill to sit up. What could she mean? If she had put the money into something I could wear on the street it would have been more sensible.”

Mrs. Collins resumed her washing. While Marjory rambled on over the bluing operation, the mother over the starching process, recalled bits of the past. She could see herself and twin sister, Ethel, planning their futures.

“I shall marry a rich man,” Ethel had always announced, “so I won’t have to work and can have pretty things.”

“I want nice things, too,” Edith had maintained. “But I am willing to work. And I want a real home with a garden and a cow and orchard and chickens and lots of room for the children to play in. I want many children.”

“Just one for me,” Ethel had interposed. “I want a little girl I can dress all fluffy and pretty in laces and ribbons. But I don’t want to stay in one place all the time. I want to spend my winters in California and have rich friends and maids and jewels.”

“I want nice things, too,” Edith always reiterated yet with a resignation as if she had already renounced them as her sister’s rightful prerogative.

Both sister’s dreams had come true. Though one had sunk into sordid drudgery and the other had cradled herself in selfish luxury.

“I suppose Ethel remembers that I, too, longed for little luxuries,” Edith Collins said to herself as she starched the clothes. “It certainly was lovely of her to remember me with something beautiful as she would send one of her wealthiest friends. I must write and thank her at once, even if I do have to confess that I opened the parcel too soon. She has so many rich friends she might have sent it to. I must try to find time to please the children and get a little pleasure and beauty into our lives.”

Mrs. Collins hurried through with the rest of the washing and then wrote a grateful letter, reminiscent of girlhood days, to her sister.

And such consternation as the letter produced in the Leslie household.

“Rhea, come here,” Ethel Leslie called. Her one wished-for daughter came down stairs smiling demurely.

“My mischief hath overtaken me,” she murmured amusedly to herself. “The shadow of Nemesis is on my trail.”

“Coming, Mater,” she called blithely, as if she were blissfully unconscious of the impending storm.

“However did you come to make such a blunder?” the mother chided. “I might have known I couldn’t trust you to get the Christmas presents off without making some dreadful mistake. You couldn’t possibly have made a worse blunder than to have sent Aunt Edith’s hideous kitchen apron to Amelie DuPont and the exquisite boudoir cap I meant for her to your Aunt Edith who couldn’t possibly have any use for it or appreciation, for that matter.”

Rhea turned toward the window. She was hoping her mother would think her attitude one of deep penitence. The truth was she dared not trust her face nor her voice at that moment. The image of the haughty Amelie DuPont taking that “serviceable” kitchen apron from its brown wrappings was too much foor her sense of humor.

“I believe you did it on purpose,” Mrs. Leslie declared. “And I suppose you think it very funny. I shall sit right down and apologize to Amelie for your blunder and tell her to return the parcel unopened. I must write to Edith at once, too, and tell her to get the cap right off to Amelie’s
address.”

Rhea was thereby galvanized into action. “Oh, mother, no. Don’t write to Aunt that way. It would break her heart. Don’t let her know that you value her so far below that horrid divorced French woman, who can’t even pronounce her name plain Amelia, though she was born right here in America. Why mother, Aunt Edith and you were girls together, think what good times you must have had dreaming together. I never had a sister to confide in. That silly French woman and her smart set you have only met at the beach a few times. And she is a perfect cat and I hate her.”

“Then you did do it on purpose. I suspected as much,” the mother answered icily, “I shall write to Edith for its return just to punish you.”

Rhea thought swiftly. There was no doubt that her mother, in that mood, would write to Aunt Edith, explain the mistake and ask her to forward the cap, carefully wrapped, to the “person for whom it was intended.” Rhea could hear the tones of her mother’s voice as she would have said it. And she could see just how cruel it would appear on paper.

Rhea glanced down at her Aunt Edith’s letter, full of the tender memories the cap had evoked. “I am sorry now I did it,” she thought to herself. And then occurred to her a possible way out without hurting Aunt Edith.

“I suppose I ought to write the letters, mother,” Rhea observed contritely. “It was I who made the mistake. They would never understand how you could make such a blunder. Every one expects a rattle-headed girl of seventeen to do almost anything like mixing Christmas presents and other cheap movie tricks.”

“Perhaps it would be better,” Mrs Leslie agreed, glad to escape the unpleasant task. She yielded, however, not without suspicion of her daughter’s motives. Rhea was always a puzzlle to her mother and particularly dangerous when she seemed most demure.

How anyone could feel as Rhea did about the select social functions given at the Leslie home, was surely bewildering. Gotten up like a French doll, Rhea flitted in and out among the guests, bestowing napkins or bearing cakes or hot rolls, the most benign expression on her face. And in her heart the queerest contradictions one could imagine.

“I wanted to shower all the hot rolls into Mrs. Bixby’s pink satin lap,” was her observation after one occasion, “babbling away about. Isn’t she sweet? Isn’t she just too cunning! And she says those things just to flatter you. They all do when they know very well that I have a hook nose, a mole as big as a molasses cookie right near my ‘adorable little mouth.’

“On the way home they say to each other : ‘Such a forward minx as that child is. I don’t see, for the life of me, why Ethel Leslie allows her to be about.’ ‘Yes, isn’t she pert and saucy? And that nose, my dear!’ ‘And that awful mole! I suppose she will take her to a specialist at the beach some day, and see what they can do with her. They could probably operate on her nose and take the mole off with the electric needle, poor child.’ ‘And I’ve heard she is perfectly crazy about the movies !’ “

Mrs. Leslie, remembering such observations, took a second look at Rhea’s composed features. If she could only guess what was going on in the girl’s thinking plant so she might take measures to circumvent her once in a while.

“Let me see both letters before you send them,” she observed.

“All right, Mumsie,” Rhea cried, trying to keep the relief out of her voice.

“Dearest Auntie: (The first note ran.)

“By a silly mistake I sent you that foolish boudoir cap Mumsie meant for a frivolous woman who lolls about all day in such things. Your customary, dandy, big apron I sent to the useless creature who will probably wonder what it is. Please wrap the absurd cap with the most painful pains and address it to the enclosed name and number. Am sending a Christmas card to go along with it.

“Your day-dreaming niece,

“Rhea.”

“P S. How is Mugs?” (which was Rhea’s pet name for Marjory.) “I’m coming up some day for a visit, if you can put
up with me.”

“R. L.”

Rhea presented the letter while her mother was abstractedly powdering her nose : “Is it all right, Mumsie dear?”

“Rather jazzy! But I guess it will be the best way to avoid offending her.”

“All right, Mumsie, I’ll make the one to Mrs. Amelie DuPont as stiff and formal as wedding-cake icing.”

“I’ll have to leave it to you. I’m late for Mrs, Crane’s tea as it is. And Mrs. Leslie presented her cheek for Rhea to ‘peck at,’ as Rhea characterized the kind of kiss she was supposed to inflict. Embraces were taboo. They had been known to disarrange Mamma’s frock.

“Br-r-r! That new rouge tastes awful!” Rhea shuddered as she placed the letter near her papa’s newspaper and skipped out, well knowing what she was doing and what the consequences would be.

Very soon her papa would saunter in for his paper. The letter was temptingly open and affectionately near the paper. Even a casual observer would see the paper first. Rhea’s papa was anything but a casual observer. Witness the wealth he had “casually” observed and accumulated.

Rhea wrote in a firm, bold, boyish hand. Each word easily decipherable at some distance. It was a safe venture that her father would glance at that letter. One glance would surely lead to another. Rhea knew her father. He was a man of action. Soon he would call—! Whew. He had found it already I He was calling her now in sternest accents.

“Rhea, come here!”

Rhea went, hugging herself all the way.

“What does this mean,” her father demanded, exactly as she knew he would.

“Just what it says,” Rhea replied with utmost surprise. “Mother left me to get the presents off and I mixed the two that were meant for Aunt Edith and Mrs. Amelie (Rhea never omitted the accent) DuPont.”

“Your mother is going to insult her twin sister over a fool cap? Burn that thing right away. Send another flummididdle to that DuPont woman if you must and let her send that apron back. But you get something decent off to your Aunt Edith. Send something suitable to each of the children. It would be a darn sight better for this home if your mother would put on a kitchen apron once in a while instead of playing with all these fool gimcracks.”

Rhea had never seen her father so severe before. It was his first open criticism of her mother. His covert disapproval had long been guessed by his daughter.

“Don’t you want to run up there for a few days of sane living before you are packed off to the coast again? Your Aunt Edith always was my ideal, so quiet and contented with her family and her poverty. I haven’t seen her for years. But I’ve always wanted to run up there for a few days and do something for them and get away from all the tumult of this home. Lodging house, I should have said. Get ready and go up before the holidays. A few days in a real home with children and real people ought to give you something fine to contrast with that hot-house atmosphere of divorced women and idle, scheming men, you will have to live in on the beach. Lovely place for a young girl, I should say! I should think she was ‘giving you a chance!’”

Rhea stared at her father, ordinarily so silent. His words filled her with a vague foreboding she could not, dared not define. Disrupted home! Disrupted home! The words sailed into her brain from somewhere and would not flit out.

“I’d like to go,” she said finally. “I haven’t seen Mugs since we were in pinafores. But I don’t want to leave you, daddy. We’ll be going again so soon. And we always stay so long.”

“Never mind me,” he answered shortly. “Your mother and I need to talk things over.”

Rhea dispatched a formal note to Mrs. DuPont. She also mailed, at the same time, a violet negligee with lavender hose and slippers, the very match of the bewitching lavender cap, to her Aunt Edith. The gift she selected for Mrs. DuPont had not taken half the loving thought and care. “I can just see Aunt Edith, so sweet and contented resting beautifully, so adorned that husband and children would adore her.” A note that went with this festal array and the gifts
for the children ran :

“Dearest Aunt Edith : Mother was delighted that you admired the cap. She has always wanted to send you something pretty but was fearful that you might not wish her to do so. Your letter emboldens her to send the violet negligee, slippers and hose that belong with the cap. I’d love to drop in some time and see you all comfy, in a great lounging chair by the fire, while Mugs and I make the piano sing or while we play games or read and pop corn and munch apples.

“Love to Mugs,

“Your Niece,

“Rhea.”

(To be continued)