Does Rosalind behave herself?
Cecelia: Not particularly well. Oh, she’s average—smokes sometimes, drinks punch, frequently kissed—Oh, yes—common knowledge—one of the effects of the war, you know.
(Emerges Mrs. Connage.)
Mrs. Connage: Rosalind’s almost finished so I can go down and meet your friend.
(Alec and his mother go out.)
Rosalind: (Outside) Oh, mother——
Cecelia: Mother’s gone down.
(And now Rosalind enters. Rosalind is—just Rosalind. She is one of those girls who need never make the slightest effort to have men fall in love with them. Two types of men seldom do: dull men are usually afraid of her cleverness and intellectual men are usually afraid of her beauty. All others are hers by natural prerogative.
If Rosalind could be spoiled the process would have been complete by this time, and as a matter of fact, her disposition is not all it should be; she wants what she wants when she wants it and she is prone to make every one around her pretty miserable when she doesn’t get it—but in the true sense she is not spoiled. Her fresh enthusiasm, her will to grow and learn, her endless faith in the inexhaustibility of romance, her courage and fundamental honesty—these things are not spoiled.
There are long periods when she cordially loathes her whole family. She is quite unprincipled; her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others. She loves shocking stories: she has that coarse streak that usually goes with natures that are both fine and big. She wants people to like her, but if they do not it never worries her or changes her.
She is by no means a model character.
The education of all beautiful women is the knowledge of men. Rosalind had been disappointed in man after man as individuals, but she had great faith in man as a sex. Women she detested. They represented qualities that she felt and despised in herself—incipient meanness, conceit, cowardice, and petty dishonesty. She once told a roomful of her mother’s friends that the only excuse for women was the necessity for a disturbing element among men. She danced exceptionally well, drew cleverly but hastily, and had a startling facility with words, which she used only in love-letters.
But all criticism of Rosalind ends in her beauty. There was that shade of glorious yellow hair, the desire to imitate which supports the dye industry. There was the eternal kissable mouth, small, slightly sensual, and utterly disturbing. There were gray eyes and an impeachable skin with two spots of vanishing color. She was slender and athletic, without underdevelopment, and it was a delight to watch her move about a room, walk along a street, swing a golf club, or turn a “cartwheel.”
A last qualification—her vivid, instant personality escaped that conscious, theatrical quality that Amory had found in Isabelle. Monsignor Darcy would have been quite up a tree whether to call her a personality or a personage. She was perhaps the delicious, inexpressible, once-in-a-century blend.
On the night of her début she is, for all her strange, stray wisdom, quite like a happy little girl. Her mother’s maid has just done her hair, but she has decided impatiently that she can do a better job herself. She is too nervous just now to stay in one place. To that we owe her presence in this littered room. She is going to speak. Isabelle’s alto tones had been like a violin, but if you could hear Rosalind, you would say her voice was musical as a waterfall.
Rosalind: Honestly, there are only two costumes in the world that I really enjoy being in—(Combing her hair at the dressing-table.) One’s a hoop skirt with pantaloons; the other’s a one-piece bathing-suit. I’m quite charming in both of them.
Cecelia: Glad you’re coming out?
Rosalind: Yes; aren’t you?
Cecelia: (Cynically) You’re glad so you can get married and live on Long Island with the fast younger married set. You want life to be a chain of flirtation with a man for every link.
Rosalind: Want it to be one! You mean I’ve found it one.
Cecelia: Ha!
Rosalind: Cecelia, darling, you don’t know what a trial it is to be—like me. I’ve got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep men from winking at me. If I laugh hard from a front row in the theatre, the comedian plays to me for the rest of the evening. If I drop my voice, my eyes, my handkerchief at a dance, my partner calls me up on the ’phone every day for a week.
Cecelia: It must be an awful strain.
Rosalind: The unfortunate part is that the only men who interest me at all are the totally ineligible ones. Now—if I were poor I’d go on the stage.
Cecelia: Yes, you might as well get paid for the amount of acting you do.
Rosalind: Sometimes when I’ve felt particularly radiant I’ve thought, why should this be wasted on one man?
Cecelia: Often when you’re particularly sulky, I’ve wondered why it should all be wasted on just one family. (Getting up) I think I’ll go down and meet Mr. Amory Blaine. I like temperamental men.
Rosalind: There aren’t any. Men don’t know how to be really angry or really happy—and the ones that do, go to pieces.
Cecelia: Well, I’m glad I don’t have all your worries. I’m engaged.
Rosalind: (With a scornful smile) Engaged? Why, you little lunatic! If mother heard you talking like that she’d send you off to boarding-school, where you belong.
Cecelia: You won’t tell her, though, because I know things I could tell—and you’re too selfish!
Rosalind: (A little annoyed) Run along, little girl! Who are you engaged to, the iceman? the man that keeps the candy-store?
Cecelia: Cheap wit—good-by, darling, I’ll see you later.
Rosalind: Oh, be sure and do that—you’re such a help.
(Exit Cecelia. Rosalind finished her hair and rises, humming. She goes up to the mirror and starts to dance in front of it on the soft carpet. She watches not her feet, but her eyes—never casually but always intently, even when she smiles. The door suddenly opens and then slams behind Amory, very cool and handsome as usual. He melts into instant confusion.)
He: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought——
She: (Smiling radiantly) Oh, you’re Amory Blaine, aren’t you?
He: (Regarding her closely) And you’re Rosalind?
She: I’m going to call you Amory—oh, come in—it’s all right—mother’ll be right in—(under her breath) unfortunately.
He: (Gazing around)
