The Evolution of the Ugly Duckling

By Estella Webb Thomas

Chapter 4

April 24 — So much to write I don’t know where to start ; but I’m far too wide awake and excited to go to bed, and I want to record all the wonderful happenings before the new wears off.

Our Closing Exercises went off with a bang! Parents invited, children delighted, teachers excited — that is the Primary teacher, who was in a fever from dawn till now.

And with cause! After the morning session was over, reports signed and distributed, books put away for the summer, and all the hundred odds and ends attended to, there was still an afternoon of preparation for the evening entertainment.

Mr. Dixon had pleaded ignorance and total inability to help with this, but promised to do all my despised report making if I would prepare the big “Do” alone. I was to use all the available talent in his room as well as my own. Now, I love that sort of thing, but it was an extremely weary, flushed, disheveled girl that concluded the final rehearsal at four p. m. and sent the children home for their suppers and to make their toilets for the evening.

Mr. Dixon came out of the little office as the children filed out, with all the neatly finished yearly reports in his hands. He looked startled at sight of me and said with more impulsiveness than I have ever heard him speak, “How tired you look!” I was really so tired that his sympathetic tone almost brought tears to my eyes. And when he asked if a little walk wouldn’t refresh me before the evening’s ordeal, I said yes out of gratitude, though I wanted nothing but to go home and have a hot bath and a long quiet hour in my room. But he seemed to read my thought for when we reached the willow grove that fringes the tiny stream that runs past the school house, he asked if I would like to rest there while he told me a story.

If he noticed the amazement in my face at this request, he made no sign but found me a seat on an old log and then sat on the ground below me so that I couldn’t see his face. Then without looking at me he told me the “story.”

It was the usual story of an ambitious country boy seeking life and adventure and finding disillusionment.

He had been so full of wonderful dreams and when he met “her” (the inevitable her), she had seemed the most golden dream of all. It had been unbelievably wonderful to find she loved him (or thought she did), and her love actually seemed to stand the test of poverty with a struggling student for a whole year. Then she had left and he had disappeared too, to give her grounds for the divorce she wanted. (Although he did not say, I thought perhaps he could have found the grounds, but would not).

This had all been over, years ago, and he had long ago ceased to love or even to hate her. But the humiliation of it all was so great, he had never gone back to the old ways again, but was trying to build a new life away from the devastating reminders of the old. He told me all this in the manner of one reciting a lesson, and gave me no chance to comment if I had wanted to. Then after a pause, while I wondered frantically how I could express the sympathy I felt, he went on talking in a changed tone, and I suddenly realized that the man was actually telling me he loved me — and asking if I had the courage to marry him.

He had been so kind — he seemed so steady and sincere — and I knew instinctively that his story was true, and that it was something very deep and fine he must feel for me to make him tell it — that I almost whispered “yes”, in the ear so near my knee, but there was that haunting vision of dark eyes — eyes that spoke though lips were silent, and I couldn’t!

I couldn’t say a word, but just sat miserably wishing, oh, so hard! that I could give him the happiness he had never found. He seemed to read my answer in my silence, and after a long, long look at my down-cast face said quietly, although he was very pale, “Don’t you care! It’s all right, I — I didn’t expect it.” And we came silently home.

He was his old considerate self at the party, and never betrayed by his manner that I had hurt him at all. But every time I caught the look in his eyes I felt as if I had killed something, and longed to comfort him. But in spite of this compunction my heart was singing for joy, and I went through the familiar routine in a sort of trance, for a miracle had just happened to me!

The tri-weekly mail came in just as we were leaving home on our way to the exercises, and tucking my letters into my bag, I took them with me to be read hastily in intervals of leisure — if any. One thin one of an unfamiliar character stirred my curiosity, however, and I opened it at once. I nearly fainted when I pulled cut a check for one hundred-fifty dollars from one of the popular magazines!

A story had been accepted! Actually! No stereotyped rejection slip here, but a warm personal note, commending my story and asking for more of the same sort — and the check!!

I told Mr. Dixon about it behind the curtains, while our combined departments shouted, “Hail To The Spring,” out in front.

“And to think I’m not an Ugly Duckling any more!” I exulted, crazily, just being obliged to slop over to some one, “And have swum right out into the Swan class!”

He repeated slowly, “Ugly Duckling! You an Ugly Duckling! Why, to me — ” but I’m not going to write what he said — I’ve gushed disgustingly, as it is — my face burns to read it over.

And then, after it was all over and the parents had congratulated us, and the children had all come up to say, “Good-by” (strange how it hurt to part with the dear little nuisances!) and Mr. Dixon, too, had said, “Good-by” (for* he was leaving early in the morning) with a look in his eyes I shan’t soon forget, came the most wonderful part of all!

It had been such a day! Such a long, full, exciting day that I simply couldn’t go to bed, and was standing at the gate in the moonlight, in the soft, sweet, spring air, and the poignant fragrance of the flowering apple orchards — just reveling in beauty almost too painfully sweet to bear, and dreaming dreams as vague and tenuous as the misty moonlight — when one of my dreams resolved itself into something more substantial than moonlight and moved toward me down the dusty road, creating a halo of soft dust about itself as it walked.

I had heard, without heeding it, the eerie shriek of the 10:30 train, but had never dreamed that it bore such a cargo for me through the magic moonlight. I could hardly credit my senses when the shadow stopped at the gate, and I found myself staring speechlessly up into the dark eyes of Donovan Douglas. I thought for a moment that over-weariness and excitement had turned my brain and I was “seein’ things at night.”

But figments of the fancy don’t wrench open gates and seize both one’s hands in large warm ones with a grip that suggests they will never let go, and say tenderly, “Were you waiting for me, little Daisy? And how did you know that I couldn’t wait another minute, but came to bring you home as soon as I knew you were free to come?”

Some way, quite naturally, I was in his arms, and he was telling me all about the other Margaret, in answer to my whispered question.

He had gone home after his mother’s death, and when everything was settled had lingered there, trying to settle down in his father’s business, trying to get back the old feeling for Margaret. But she had finally seen “what I had known, ever since I first saw you making smoky cocoa over your mother’s library fire, that she and I weren’t meant for each other,” and had offered him his freedom. He had intended to go through with it, but when the break was broached by Margaret had joyfully accepted her decision, and flown as fast as trains would carry him west again to the Margaret he really loved.

Dreams do come true! And who is an Ugly Duckling, now ?

Two proposals in one day! And an acceptance! For the fact that I have at last “broken into” one of the big magazines looms just as large as the other incredible facts!

And then, all of a sudden, I knew I couldn’t! Not yet! oh, not yet! Just as the Ugly Duckling has found her wings at last! Just found my wings and discovered my kinship to the Swans, and longing to sail with them into those enchanted realms of which I’ve dreamed so long!

What are handsome brown eyes, or hurt gray ones either, to the freedom and joy of stretching new-found wings! Let some one else bind up the broken hearts — the Ugly Duckling has become a Swan and is going to fly!

April 25 — How high and mighty that last entry sounds! But Donovan refused it for an answer, and when I wrote it last night I knew it was my Swan song — though he graciously conceded that I may use my wings all I desire, and sail away as far into the realms of fancy as I choose, if I’ll always come back to him when my flights are over.

So the Ugly Duckling is no more ; and once more I seal up the little volume with the story of her ups-and-downs, and face the new life with a happy heart.

(The End)