The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (New Directions Bibelot) by Tennessee Williams

Author:Tennessee Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1950-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

THE DRIFT

When Mrs. Stone was a child of ten her parents had separated and the little girl was sent to a boarding-school in Maryland. At that time she had not played much with children, she was very adult and prissy, admired by the teachers for her ladylike deportment, her golden curls and enormous violet eyes. She was more like a picture of a melancholy little princess than an actual child. With her hands in her lap and her ankles daintily crossed, she would appear to be posing for a portrait by a romantic Victorian painter. She held her lips rather tightly together and she looked rapidly about her without turning her head, so that sometimes, in spite of her fairytale beauty, she looked rather cold and sly. The other little girls did not take kindly to her. Several abusive little nicknames were invented for her, such as Miss Priss or The Pet. This hostility did not seem to surprise the little girl. You would have supposed that it was exactly what her past experience, limited as it was, had led her to expect of associates in the world-away-from-home. After a while, as though she had carefully thought the situation out, she pinned up her long golden curls and discarded her ladylike postures and began to look and behave like the other children. But she was always like a little grown-up imitating a child rather than actually being one. And the beauty was ineradicable. Only a great deal of time could modify that.

By midwinter of her first year at school Karen had gone to the other extreme of behavior. She had turned into a tomboy and was outstanding in competitive games and sports. On the lawn of the school there was a very steep terrace which was difficult to scale when it was coated with ice or banked with snow. At those times the rowdier little girls, such as Karen, would often play a game called King On The Mountain. In this game, which was not sanctioned and was later forbidden by the faculty, a single child would take a position on the height of the terrace and hold the title of King On The Mountain as long as she prevented any other from climbing to her level. This was one of those games at which the new character of Karen showed to great advantage. She was the most tenacious holder of the citadel. She was also the most ferocious of the besiegers. The game would often break up in a tumult of torn clothes, bruises and tears, but with Karen triumphantly planted at the summit of the slippery incline.

King On The Mountain was not a game that she had discarded with the passing of childhood. Her adult methods of playing it had naturally undergone a very marked revolution. Scrambling, pushing, kicking and scratching had been replaced by ostensibly civilized tactics. But Mrs. Stone’s arrival at the height of her profession, and the heroic tenacity with which she held that

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