Francie (2 page)

“Oh, really? I'm sorry, Pop. Or do you like the idea?”

“It's all right,” said Fred Nelson. “I could have turned it down, but I didn't want to. They think things are going to open up in England in an important way … But you're not interested in all that, and why should you be? The point is, it affects you too.”

“How?” asked Francie blankly. Never before had her father taken the trouble to talk very much of his affairs. He was always there in the background, kept away from Jefferson most of the year by his business, which was supremely uninteresting, as all adult businesses were to Francie and her friends. The other fathers would discuss these matters with Fred Nelson on his infrequent visits, but Francie never listened. She had never been expected to show any interest, and she simply accepted the world as she found it. It was an indulgent world, easy to live in. Her father supplied the money for her pretty clothes and all her little expenses; she had her allowance like the other girls, and never stopped to wonder seriously whether her father was well or badly off. She knew that the citizens of Jefferson, and even more important men in Chicago and New York respected his opinions and thought highly of him, but Glenn had given her a new glimpse of her parent tonight when he'd hinted that Fred Nelson contributed to her romantic background. Somehow she had liked to suppose that she was responsible for all the glamour herself, rather than having to give credit to a father who dropped in by plane now and then, to talk learnedly to the local businessmen about petroleum by-products.

“Are you going all over the world to sell petroleum?” she asked.

“I don't sell it, you little goose; I'm an executive. Did you think I carried it around in an oilcan?”

She giggled. “No, but honestly … where are you going, Pop?”

“England at first, maybe the Near East later. We're expanding, following a plan we had under way before the war.”

“Oh. Anything to do with politics? In Industrial History yesterday Miss Whitcombe said I ought to ask you more questions about things.”

“Did she?” Pop looked surprised and pathetically gratified. “That was nice of her,” he said, “but never mind all that just now. The point is, I'll be away from this part of the world for a long time. I don't know how you feel about this arrangement we've had with your Aunt Norah; probably you've never had any particular idea one way or the other. But I'm getting dissatisfied. I've been worrying about it. Among other considerations it appears to me I might as well not have a daughter at all, for all the good we get out of each other. Did you ever think of that?”

Francie reflected that there was something in what he said; she remembered having been jealous, in earlier years, because most of her friends had fathers to take them out on picnics during vacationtime, and she didn't; her father was always away. But she had got used to the situation long since. “It hasn't been so good,” she admitted thoughtfully. “I thought it was the way you wanted it, though.”

“I did want it for a while. There wasn't much else to do while you were a kid, now was there?” He stood up and walked across the room and back. She noticed for the hundredth time what a forceful person he seemed. “Francie, what would you say to leaving Jefferson?” he demanded suddenly.

“Leave Jefferson?” She was aghast. “Why, Pop, I couldn't right now. I just couldn't. I'm almost sure to be Beauty Queen this year. I mean, of course, I will leave when it's time to go to State, but if you mean right now—”

“I do mean right now, Francie.” He looked sorry for her agitation, but determined anyway. “I've gone over and over it in my mind and this is the best way.”

“You mean you want to take me with you to England?” she asked, as the horrid realization swept through her. Little as she knew her father in the everyday sense, she remembered of old how sudden and determined and unexpected he could be. She could recall one time when she'd been a little girl and Pop had made an abrupt decision about a vacation for all of them. It had been a trip her mother had not wanted to make, but once Pop had decided, there'd been no shaking him. He could be mild and indulgent and considerate for months on end, but when he really gripped a decision between his teeth, no one had ever been known to jar him free from it. Francie had a most unpleasant suspicion that this was going to be one of those times.

But it couldn't—it mustn't be!

“Pop, I
couldn't,”
she said wildly. “You don't understand. I'm in my last term at school. The last term is
very important
. I'm going to be Beauty Queen, very likely, if Amy Muller isn't elected—and I don't think she will be. And I've got to go to Prom. And examinations, and college, and—Pop, you don't know what you're saying.” She paused, panting. She could think of nothing but what she was threatened with losing.

“I do know. I know how hard it is, but I've decided it's best.” That was his best bulldog manner. “You can make up your work in some school over there; I've asked the people at the office and they say you'll be way ahead of the others by the time we get back. The thing is, honey, I'll be in England close to a year. Possibly longer. You're growing up. Sooner or later we've got to get together; I want to see something of you before you run off and leave me; you'll be getting married before you know it. And you ought to see something of me, too. I know it's inconvenient—”

“Inconvenient!” In spite of the tears that were choking her, Francie laughed. He was knocking away the props of her whole life, and he called it inconvenient! “Pop, have you thought what I'll do with myself in a new place like England? I'll simply hate it.” As she spoke she was convinced this was true.

“Well of course, if you make up your mind to hate it, that's that.” Fred Nelson looked at her squarely, standing in the middle of the carpet, his hands shoved into his pockets. “But I wouldn't advise it, Francie. You go to bed and sleep on the idea; it's not so terrible as it sounds. Most girls would welcome the new experience, I should think. By the time you've been there a few months you'll be surprised; you'll—”

“I won't. I'll always hate it,” she said, weeping.

“I can hardly blame you for feeling this way at first,” said her father as if to himself. “You're used to a lot of attention, I understand. You queen it over the boys here in town. Well, all the better then to go away. Too much of that can't be good for you; you're an attractive girl if you
are
my daughter, but you need—I'll tell you what it is, Francie; you're spoiled.”

“Don't
you
give me that too,” sniffled Francie into her handkerchief. “I've been listening to that all night.” She scrambled to her feet, the handkerchief held to her nose. “I'm going to bed,” she said. She ran out of the room, and her father watched her go, his face troubled but still determined.

CHAPTER 2

“It does seem a shame.” Francie's best friend, Ruth, spoke absently. The news had given her a good deal to think about. Plans needed rearranging, if the hub of her world was going to leave the scene.

Francie sat in the window seat of Ruth's bedroom, looking down into the front yard. The room was a pretty one, though perhaps a bit overfussy with its organdy bedspread and curtains to match. There were built-in wardrobes and a little ironing board that opened out, and the latest thing in indirect lighting, as Ruth's father was fond of electrical appliances. The girls were drinking chocolate malts which they had just mixed down in the kitchen. For a girl whose life was ruined, Francie was looking very cheerful; after thinking it over she had begun to feel excited at the widening prospect of life.

“I suppose you'll change your mind now about going to State? You'll have to,” said Ruth.

“Pop said nearly a year. Maybe I can wangle it so as to get back home for State in the fall. Of course I may decide all over again not to go to college at all, though Pop blew his top over that last time I suggested it. Remember?”

“Yes, I do. What a row! Still, taking you away like this, he can hardly object if you don't want to come in later. That is, if you miss out on fall and have to come trailing behind the rest of us.

“I've given up Romance Languages, I think,” Ruth went on. “I'm going in for psychology instead. More future to it. As for you, I'm beginning to think maybe you ought to go back to your original plan and be an artist.”

This abrupt change of interest did not startle Francie; it was ordinary enough for the girls to make radical alterations in their life's ambition. They did it, on an average, weekly. Francie merely replied, “Oh well then, I think I'll do Political Science as a minor to Art. Pop says I'll have a good chance to look at practical Socialism; he says England's trying it out.”

“Yes, there's that of course. But Francie, coming down to serious matters, it's terrible about Prom. And Beauty Queen. You were sure to get that. It's just the limit. Have you told Glenn about it?”

“I haven't told anybody, except you,” said Francie. Her face grew doleful. “It is awful about Prom and all the rest. But Pop's got the bit between his teeth and there's not a bit of use making more fuss than I already have.”

“You'll probably end by loving it. I know I'd give anything for the chance of a year abroad.”

“Right now? I don't think you would,” Francie said. “This is the most perfectly terrible time to be snatched out of school. The best years of our lives, or anyway months, and I'm going to miss them all. I'll never get over it … I wonder what English boys are like,” she added.

“Cute, I should think. Listen, Francie, since you're not going to be here, what about Gretta for Glenn? I mean to say, she's really okay, she could be cute if she ever had a chance, and she hasn't got a date for Prom. I know it's tactless, talking like this as soon as you've told me about England, but you don't mind, do you?”

“Oh no, I don't mind.” Francie went on studying the front yard, swinging her foot glumly. “I don't mind really,” she added. “I get a boot out of the idea of adventure, to tell the truth. And there's one bright spot about the whole thing; even if Glenn does take Gretta to Prom and falls for her—”

“I don't mean he's likely to
fall
for her,” interposed Ruth hastily. “It just seemed such a shame to waste him—”

“Even if he does, I don't care. I forgot to tell you, Pop's at least promised to give me a fur coat my next birthday if I get through the year without too much trouble. That's better than Prom, isn't it?”

“You are lucky, Francie. Of course it's better.”

“Well, we'd better get downstairs to the phone and start in,” said Francie with a sigh. “I'll have to call up everybody. Oh dear. And if you don't mind a word of advice, Ruth, I wouldn't go too fast on that Gretta proposition. Let Glenn think he thinks of it himself.”

“You're telling me!” said Ruth. Laughing like young harpies, they went out of the room.

Fred Nelson put down the newspaper he had been trying to read for the last five minutes. He had no idea what was on the page. He said to his sister-in-law, peacefully knitting in her easy chair near the window, “Norah, what do you think about Francie?”

Aunt Norah took off her spectacles and blinked at him mildly. As she grew older she reminded him less and less of Francie's mother. But sometimes the trace of a smile that resembled her sister's crossed her face and he felt again the old pang of longing for someone lovely and gentle and lost. Francie was growing startlingly like her mother in appearance, though in a bolder, more spirited way.

“Think about Francie?” Aunt Norah repeated. “How can I think about her, Fred? She's too close. I try to keep her well-fed and happy, without interfering with her too much. Girls are so strong-willed these days.”

“You must have some opinion. You can tell me at least if she worries you much.” He pounced on her own phrase. “Strong-willed, you say? What do you mean by that? Is she one of these young girls who run away from home and are found a month later in Hollywood? Or is she likely to turn into one of these juvenile delinquents we hear so much about?”

“Dear me, Fred, what lurid notions you do get! Of course she won't do anything of the kind. She simply likes to have her own way, and I must say she usually manages to get it.”

He tried another tack, since he was getting nowhere with his first one. “Tell me, Norah, do all young girls use as much lipstick as Francie? She has a nice mouth underneath all that junk, but you'd never know it.”

“If you'll just look around you, you won't have to ask me,” said Aunt Norah. “I can't make Francie behave any different from the others.”

“And what goes on in her head?” continued Francie's father. “Judging from what I overhear on the telephone—”

“Oh, well,” began Aunt Norah, polishing her spectacles agitatedly, “you can't go by that, completely.”

“Boys, dates, and boys again,” said Mr. Nelson. “Parties and boys, boys and parties. Gossip. Do they ever have a serious thought? She's not quite a child any more, Norah, but she doesn't seem to realize it.”

“She's a good enough girl,” said Aunt Norah. She put on her spectacles and began again to knit. “She's not really grown up, you know. Let her enjoy life while she can.”

“But what about school? Don't these young things ever do any homework?”

“No more than they must,” admitted Francie's aunt, “but the school standards are high, and she keeps up. And she draws and paints a lot. She has her mother's talent for that. You'd be quite surprised if you knew how hard the child does work, sometimes. You wouldn't expect her to talk about
that
all the time to her friends, would you?”

“Well, maybe not.” He was silent for a while, and then blurted, “The real trouble is that I'm worried, I guess. Francie's pretty.”