CHAPTER XX.
"WANTED."
The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements, into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's sake.
She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire. Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be unbricked?
"I don't think you'll mind, with cannel coal," said Sylvie. "That is so cheerful; and there won't be any smoke, for Miss Ledwith says the draught is excellent."
"But it stands out, and takes up room; and people never keep the carpet clean behind it!" said Mrs. Argenter.
"I'll take care of that," said Sylvie. "It is my business. We couldn't have these rooms, you see, except just as I have agreed for them; and you know I like making things nice myself in the morning."
Desire had delicately withdrawn by this time; and presently coming back with a cup of tea upon a little tray, which refreshment she was sure Mrs. Argenter would need at once after her journey, she found the lady sitting quite serenely in the low cushioned chair before the obnoxious grate, in which Sylvie had kindled the lump of cannel that lay all ready for the match, in a folded newspaper, with three little pitch-pine sticks.
There was something so dainty and compact about it, and the bright blaze answered so speedily to the communicating touch, the black layers falling away from each other in rich, bituminous flakiness, and letting the fire-tongues through, that she looked on in the happy complacence with which idle or disabled persons always enjoy something that does itself, yet can be followed in the doing with a certain passive sense of participancy.
In the same manner she watched Sylvie putting away wraps, unlocking trunks, laying forth dressing-gowns and night-clothes, and setting out toilet cases upon table and stand.
For the gray parlor contained now, for Mrs. Argenter's use, a pretty, low, curtained French bed, and the other appliances of a sleeping-room. A bedroom adjoining, which had been Mrs. Froke's, was to be Sylvie's; and this had a further communication directly with the kitchen, which would be just the thing for Sylvie's quiet flittings to and fro in the fulfillment of her gladly undertaken duties. All Mrs. Argenter knew about it was that she should be able to have her hot water promptly in the mornings, without being intruded upon.
Sylvie had insisted upon Desire's receiving the seven dollars a week which she was still able to pay for her mother's board. Nobody had told her of Miss Ledwith's very large wealth, and it would have made no difference if she had known it, except the exciting in her of a quick question why they had been taken in at all, and whether she were not indeed being in her turn benevolently practised upon, as she with much compunction practised upon her mother.
"I know very well that I could not earn, beyond my own board, more than the difference between that and the ten dollars she would have to pay anywhere else," she said, simply. And Miss Kirkbright as simply told Desire, privately, to let it be so.
"If you don't need the pay, she needs the payment," she said.
Desire quietly put it all aside, as she received it. "Sometime or other I shall be able to tell her all about it, and make her take it back," she said. "When she has come to understand, she will know that it is no more mine than hers; and if I do not keep it I can see very well it will all go after the rest, for whatever whims she can possibly gratify her mother in."
There began to be happy times for Sylvie now, in Frendely's kitchen, in Desire's library; all over the house, wherever there was any little care to take, any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,—work for Neighbor Street it was, mostly,—into the gray parlor, and "sewed for two," on the principle of the fire-watching, that something busy might be going on in the room, and Mrs. Argenter might have the content of seeing it.
On the Wednesday evenings recurred the delightful "Read-and-Talk," when the Ingrahams came, and Bel Bree, and a dozen or so more of the "other girls"; when on the big table treasures of picture, map, stereoscope and story were brought forth; when they traversed far countries, studied in art-galleries and frescoed churches, traced back old historic associations; did not hurry or rush, but stayed in place after place, at point after point, looking it all thoroughly up, enjoying it like people who could take the world in the leisure of years. And as they did not have the actual miles to go over, the standing about to do, and the fatigues to sleep between, they could "work in the ground fast," like Hamlet, or any other spirit. Their hours stood for months; their two months had given them already winters and summers of enchantment.
Hazel Ripwinkley, and very often Ada Geoffrey, was here at these travelling parties. Ada had all her mother's resources of books, engravings, models, specimens, at her command; she would come with a carriage-full. Sometimes the library was Rome for an evening, with its Sistine Raphaels, its curious relics and ornaments, its Coliseum and St. Peter's in alabaster, its views of tombs, and baths, and temples. Sometimes it was Venice; again it was transformed into a dream of Switzerland, and again, there were the pyramids, the obelisks, the sphinxes, the giant walls and gateways of Egypt, with a Nile boat, and lotus flowers, and papyrus reeds, in reality or fac-simile,—even a mummied finger and a scarabœus ring.
They were not restricted, even, to a regular route, when their subject took them out of it. They could have a glimpse of Memphis, or Babylon, or Alexandria, or Athens, by way of following out an allusion or synchronism.
Hazel and Ada almost came to the conclusion that this was the perfection of travelling, and the supersedure of all literal and laborious sightseeing; and Sylvie Argenter ventured the Nipperism that "tea and coffee and spices might or might not be a little different right off the bush, but if shiploads were coming in to you all the time, you might combine things with as much comfort on the whole, perhaps, as you would have in sailing round for every separate pinch to Ceylon, and Java, and Canton."
The leaf had got turned between Leicester Place and Pilgrim Street. I suppose you knew it would as well as I.
Bel Bree had met Dorothy first in silk-and-button errands for her Aunt Blin's "finishings," at the thread-store where Dot tended. (Such machine-sewing as they could obtain, Ray had done at home, since they came into the city; and Dot had taken this place at Brade and Matchett's.) Then they came across each other in their waitings at the Public Library, and so found out their near neighborhood. At last, growing intimate, Dorothy had introduced Bel to the Chapel Bible class, and thence brought her into Desire's especial little club at her own house.
After the travel-talk was over,—and they began with it early, so that all might reach home at a safe hour in the evening,—very often some one or two would linger a few moments for some little talk of confidence or advice with Desire. These girls brought their plans to her; their disappointments, their difficulties, their suggestions; not one would make a change, or take any new action, without telling her. They knew she cared for them. It was the beginning of all religion that she taught them in this faith, this friendliness. Every soul wants some one to come to; it is easy to pass from the experience of human sympathy to the thought of the Divine; without it the Divine has never been revealed.
One bright night in this October, Dot Ingraham waited, letting her sister walk on with Frank Sunderline, who had called for them, and asking Bel Bree to stop a minute and go with her. "We'll take the car, presently," she said to Ray. "We shall be at home almost as soon as you will."
"It is about the shop work," she said to Desire, who stepped back into the library with her.
"I do not think I can do it much longer. I am pretty strong for some things, but this terrible standing! I could walk all day; but cramped up behind those counters, and then reaching up and down the boxes and things,—I feel sometimes when I get through at night, as if my bones had all been racked. I haven't told them at home, for fear they would worry about me; they think now I've lost flesh, and I suppose I have; and I don't have much appetite; it seems dragged out of me. And then,—I can't say it before the others, for they're in shops, some of 'em, and places may be different; but it's such a window and counter parade, besides; and they do look out for it. People stare in at the store as they go by; Margaret Shoey has the glove counter at that end, and she knows Mr. Matchett keeps her there on purpose to attract; she sets herself up and takes airs upon it; and Sarah Cilley does everything she sees her do, and comes in for the second-hand attention. Mr. Matchett asked me the other day if I couldn't wear a panier, and do up my hair a little more stylish! I can't stay there; it isn't fit for girls!"
Dot's cheeks flamed, and there were tears in her eyes. Desire Ledwith stood with a thoughtful, troubled expression in her own.
"There ought to be other ways," she said. "There ought to be more sheltered work for girls!"
"There is," said little Bel Bree from the doorway "in houses. If I hadn't Aunt Blin, I'd go right into a family as seamstress or anything. I don't believe in out-doors and shops. I've only lived in the city a little while, but I've seen it. And just think of the streets and streets of nice houses, where people live, and girls have to live with 'em, to do real woman's home work! And it's all given up to foreign servants, and our girls go adrift, and live anyhow. 'Tain't right!"
"There is a good deal that isn't right about it," said Desire, gravely; knowing better than Bel the difficulties in the way of new domestic ideas. "And a part of it is that the houses aren't built, or the ways of living planned, for 'our girls,' exactly. Our girls aren't happy in underground kitchens and sky bedrooms."
"I don't know. They might as well be underground as in some of those close, crowded shops. And their bedrooms can't be much to compare, certain. I'm afraid they like the crowds best. If they wanted to, and would work in, and try, they might contrive. Things fix themselves accordingly, after a while. Somebody's got to begin. I can't help thinking about it."
Desire smiled.
"Your thinking may be a first sign of good times, little Bel," she said. "Think on. That is the way everything begins; with a restlessness in some one or two heads about it. Perhaps that is just what you have come down from New Hampshire for."
"I don't know," said Bel again. She began a good many of her reflective, suggestive little speeches with that hesitating feeler into the fog of social perplexity she essayed. "They're just as bad up there, now. They all get away to the towns, and the trades, and the stores They won't go into the houses; and they might have such good places!"
"You came yourself, you see?"
"Yes. I wasn't contented. And things were particular with me. And I had Aunt Blin. I don't want to go back, either. But I can see how it is."
"Things are particular with each one, in some sort or another. That is what settles it, I suppose, and ought to. The only thing is to be sure that it is a right particular that does it; that we don't let in any wrong particular, anywhere. For you, Dorothy, I don't believe shop-life is the thing. You have found it out. Why not change at once? There is the machine at home, and Ray is going to be busy in Neighbor Street. Won't her work naturally come to you?"
"There isn't much of it, and it is so uncertain. The shops take up all the bulk of work nowadays; everything is wholesale; and I don't want to go into the rooms, if I can help it. I don't like days' work, either. The fact is, I want a quiet place, and the same things. I like my own machine. I would go with it into a family, if I could have my own room, and be nice, and not have to eat with careless, common servants in a dirty kitchen. Mother would spare me,—to a real good situation; and I would come home Sundays."
"I see. What you want is somewhere, of course. Wouldn't you advertise?"
"Would you?"
"Yes, I think I would. Say exactly what you want, wages and all. And put it into some family Sunday paper,—the 'Christian Register,' for instance. Those things get read over and over; and the same paper lies about a week. In the dailies, one thing crowds out another; a new list every night and morning. See here, I'll write one now. Perhaps it wouldn't be too late for this week. Would you go out of town?"
"Wouldn't I? I think sometimes that's just what ails me; wanting to see soft roads and green grass and door-yards and sun between the houses! But I couldn't go far, of course."
Desire's pencil was flying over the paper.
"'Wanted; a permanent situation in a pleasant family, as seamstress, by a young girl used to all kinds of sewing, who will bring her own machine. Would like a room to herself, and to have her meals orderly and comfortable, whether with the family or otherwise. Wages'—What?"
"By the day, I could get a dollar and a quarter, at least; but for a real good home-place, I'd go for four dollars a week."
"'Wages, $4.00 per week. A little way out of town preferred.' There! There are such places, and why shouldn't one come to you? Take that down to the 'Register' office to-morrow morning, and have it put in twice, unless stopped."
"Thank you. It's all easy enough, Miss Ledwith. Why didn't I work it out myself?"
"It isn't quite worked out, yet. But things always look clearer, somehow, through two pairs of eyes. Good-night. Let me know what you hear about it."
"She'll surprise some family with such a seamstress as they read about," said Bel Bree, on the door-step. "I should like to astonish people, sometime, with a heavenly kind of general housework."
"That was a good idea of yours about the Sunday paper," said Sylvie, as she and Hazel and Desire went back into the library to put away the books. "But what when the common sort pick up the dodge, and the weeklies get full of 'Wanteds'? Nothing holds out fresh, very long."
"There ought to be," said Desire, "some filtered process for these things; some way of sifting and certifying. A bureau of mutual understanding between the 'real folks,'—employers and employed. I believe it might be. There ought to be for this, and for many things, a fellowship organized, between women of different outward degree. And something will happen, sooner or later, to bring it about. A money crisis, perhaps, to throw these girls out of shop-employment, and to make heads of households look into ways of more careful managing. A mutual need,—or the seeing of it. The need is now; these girls—half of them—want homes, more than anything; and the homes are suffering for the help of just such girls."
"Why don't you edit a paper, Desire? The 'Fellowship Register,' or the 'Domestic Intelligencer,' or something! And keep lists of all the nice, real housekeepers, and the nice, real, willing girls?"
"That isn't a bad notion, Hazie. Your notions never are. May be that is what is waiting for you. Just cover up that 'raised Switzerland,' will you, and bring it over here? And roll up the 'Course of the Rhine,' and set it in the corner. There; now we may put out the gas. Sylvie, has your mother had her fresh camomile tea?"
The three girls bade each other good-night at the stairs; just where Desire had stood once, and put her arms about Uncle Titus's neck for the first time. She often thought of it now, when they went up after the pleasant evenings, and came down in the bright mornings to their cheery breakfasts. She liked to stop on just that step. Nobody knew all it meant to her, when she did. There are places in every dwelling that keep such secrets for one heart and memory alone.
Yes, indeed. Sylvie was very happy now. All her pretty pictures, and little brackets, and her mother's stands and vases in the gray parlor, were hung with the lovely, wreathing, fairy stems of star-leaved, blossomy fern; and the sweet, dry scent was a perpetual subtle message. That day in the train from East Keaton was a day to pervade the winter, as this woodland breath pervaded the old city house. Sylvie could wait with what she had, sure that, sometime, more was coming. She could wait better than Rodney. Because,—she knew she was waiting, and satisfied to wait. How did Rodney know that?
It was what he kept asking his Aunt Euphrasia in his frequent, boyish, yet most manly, letters. And she kept answering, "You need not fear. I think I understand Sylvie. I can see. If there were anything in the way, I would tell you."
But at last she had to say,—not, "I think I understand Sylvie,"—but, "I understand girls, Rodney. I am a woman, remember. I have been a girl, and I have waited. I have waited all my life. The right girls can."
And Rodney said, tossing up the letter with a shout, and catching it with a loving grasp between his hands again,—
"Good for you, you dear, brave, blessed ace of hearts in a world where hearts are trumps! If you ain't one of the right old girls, then they don't make 'em, and never did!"
CHAPTER XXI.
VOICES AND VISIONS.
Madame Bylles herself walked into the great work-room of Mesdames Fillmer & Bylles, one Saturday morning.
Madame Bylles was a lady of great girth and presence. If Miss Tonker were sub-aristocratic, Madame Bylles was almost super-aristocratic, so cumulative had been the effect upon her style and manner of constant professional contact with the élite. Carriages had rolled up to her door, until she had got the roll of them into her very voice. Airs and graces had swept in and out of her private audience-room, that had not been able to take all of themselves away again. As the very dust grows golden and precious where certain workmanship is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated became—not the air of shop or business or down-town street—but the air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon Hill or the New Land.
And Madame Bylles breathed it all the time; she dwelt in the courtly contagion. When she came in among her work-people, it was an advent of awe. It was as if all the elegance that had ever been made up there came floating and spreading and shining in, on one portly and magnificent person.
But when Madame Bylles came in, in one of her majestic hurries! Then it was as if the globe itself had orders to move on a little faster, and make out the year in two hundred and eighty days or so, and she was appointed to see it done.
She was in one of these grand and grave accelerations this morning. Miss Pashaw's marriage was fixed for a fortnight earlier than had been intended, business calling Mr. Soldane abroad. There were dresses to be hurried; work for over-hours was to be given out. Miss Tonker was to use every exertion; temporary hands, if reliable, might be employed. All must be ready by Thursday next; Madame Bylles had given her word for it.
The manner in which she loftily transmitted this grand intelligence, warm from the high-born lips that had favored her with the confidence,—the air of intending it for Miss Tonker's secondarily distinguished ear alone, while the carriage-roll in her accents bore it to the farthest corner in the room, where the meekest little woman sat basting,—these things are indescribable. But they are in human nature: you can call them up and scrutinize them for yourself.
Madame Bylles receded like a tidal wave, having heaved up, and changed, and overwhelmed all things.
A great buzz succeeded her departure; Miss Tonker followed her out upon the landing.
"I'll speak for that cashmere peignoir that is just cut out. I'll make it nights, and earn me an ostrich band for my hat," said Elise Mokey.
One spoke for one thing; one another; they were claimed beforehand, in this fashion, by a kind of work-women's code; as publishers advertise foreign books in press, and keep the first right by courtesy.
Miss Proddle stopped her machine at last, and caught the news in her slow fashion hind side before.
"We might some of us have overwork, I should think; shouldn't you?" she asked, blandly, of Miss Bree.
Aunt Blin smiled. "They've been squabbling over it these five minutes," she replied.
Aunt Blin was sure of some particular finishing, that none could do like her precise old self.
Kate Sencerbox jumped up impatiently, reaching over for some fringe.
"I shall have to give it up," she whispered emphatically into Bel Bree's ear. "It's no use your asking me to go to Chapel any more. I ain't sanctified a grain. I did begin to think there was a kind of work of grace begun in me,—but I can't stand Miss Proddle! What are people made to strike ten for, always, when it's eleven?"
"I think we are all striking twelve" said Bel Bree. "One's too fast, and another's too slow, but the sun goes round exactly the same."
Miss Tonker came back, and the talk hushed.
"Clock struck one, and down they run, hickory, dickory, dock," said Miss Proddle, deliberately, so that her voice brought up the subsiding rear of sound and was heard alone.
"What under the sun?" exclaimed Miss Tonker, with a gaze of mingled amazement, mystification, and contempt, at the poor old maiden making such unwonted noise.
"Yes'm," said Kate Sencerbox. "It is 'under the sun,' that we're talking about; the way things turn round, and clocks strike; some too fast, and some too slow; and—whether there's anything new under the sun. I think there is; Miss Proddle made a bright speech, that's all."
Miss Tonker, utterly bewildered, took refuge in solemn and supercilious disregard; as if she saw the joke, and considered it quite beneath remark.
"You will please resume your work, and remember the rules," she said, and sailed down upon the cutters' table.
There was a certain silk evening dress, of singular and indescribably lovely tint,—a tea-rose pink; just the color of the blush and creaminess that mingle themselves into such delicious anonymousness in the exquisite flower. It was all puffed and fluted till it looked as if it had really blossomed with uncounted curving petals, that showed in their tender convolutions each possible deepening and brightening of its wonderful hue.
It looked fragrant. It conveyed a subtle sense of flavor. It fed and provoked every perceptive sense.
It was not a dress to be hurried with; every quill and gather of its trimming must be "set just so;" and there was still one flounce to be made, and these others were only basted, as also the corsage.
After the hours were up that afternoon, Miss Tonker called Aunt Blin aside. She uncovered the large white box in which it lay, unfinished.
"You have a nice room, Miss Bree. Can you take this home and finish it,—by Wednesday? In over-hours, I mean; I shall want you here daytimes, as usual. It has been tried on; all but for the hanging of the skirt; you can take the measures from the white one. That I shall finish myself."
Aunt Blin's voice trembled with humble ecstasy as she answered. She thanked Miss Tonker in a tone timid with an apprehension of some possible unacceptableness which should disturb or change the favoring grace.
"Certainly, ma'am. I'll spread a sheet on the floor, and put a white cloth on the table. Thank you, ma'am. Yes; I have a nice room, and nothing gets meddled with. It'll be quite safe there. I'm sure I'm no less than happy to be allowed. You're very kind, ma'am."
Miss Tonker said nothing at all to the meekly nervous outpouring. She did not snub her, however; that was something.
Miss Bree and her niece, between them, carried home the large box.
On the way, a dream ran through the head of Bel. She could not help it.
To have this beautiful dress in the house,—perhaps to have to stand up and be tried to, for the fall of its delicate, rosy trail; with the white cloth on the floor, and the bright light all through the room,—why it would be almost like a minute of a ball; and what if the door should be open, and somebody should happen to go by, up-stairs? If she could be so, and be seen so, just one minute, in that blush-colored silk! She should like to look like that, just once, to somebody!
Ah, little Bel! behind all her cosy, practical living—all her busy work and contentedness—all her bright notions of what might be possible, for the better, in things that concerned her class,—she had her little, vague, bewildering flashes of vision, in which she saw impossible things; things that might happen in a book, things that must be so beautiful if they ever did really happen!
A step went up and down the stairs and along the passage by her aunt's room, day by day, that she had learned to notice every time it came. A face had glanced in upon her now and then, when the door stood open for coolness in the warm September weather, when they had been obliged to have a fire to make the tea, or to heat an iron to press out seams in work that they were doing. One or two days of each week, they had taken work home. On those days, they did, perhaps, their own little washing or ironing, besides; sewing between whiles, and taking turns, and continuing at their needles far on into the night. Once Mr. Hewland had come in, to help Aunt Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other. After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them. He had opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back, courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass.
Aunt Blin,—dear old simple, kindly-hearted Aunt Blin, who believed cats and birds,—her cat and bird, at least,—might be thrown trustfully into each other's company, if only she impressed it sufficiently upon the quadruped's mind from the beginning, that the bird was "very, very precious,"—thought Mr. Hewland was "such a nice young man."
And so he was. A nice, genial, well-meaning, well-bred gentleman; above anything ignoble, or consciously culpable, or common. His danger lay in his higher tendencies. He had artistic tastes; he was a lover of all grace and natural sweetness; no line of beauty could escape him. More than that, he drew toward all that was most genuine; he cared nothing for the elegant artificialities among which his social position placed him. He had been singularly attracted by this little New Hampshire girl, fresh and pretty as a wild rose, and full of bright, quaint ways and speech, of which he had caught glimpses and fragments in their near neighborhood. Now and then, from her open window up to his had come her gay, sweet laugh; or her raised, gleeful tone, as she said some funny, quick, shrewd thing in her original fashion to her aunt.
Through the month of August, while work was slack, and the Hewland family was away travelling, and other lodgers' rooms were vacated, the Brees had been more at home, and Morris Hewland had been more in his rooms above, than had been usual at most times. The music mistress had taken a vacation, and gone into the country; only old Mr. Sparrow, lame with one weak ankle, hopped up and down; and the spare, odd-faced landlady glided about the passages with her prim profile always in the same pose, reminding one of a badly-made rag-doll, of which the nose, chin, and chest are in one invincible flat line, interrupted feebly by an unsuccessful hint of drawing in at the throat.
Mr. Hewland liked June for his travels; and July and August, when everybody was out of the way, for his quiet summer work.
The Hewlands called him odd, and let him go; he stayed at home sometimes, and he happened in and out, they knew where to find him, and there was "no harm in Morris but his artistic peculiarities."
He had secured in these out-of-the way-lodgings in Leicester Place, one of the best north lights that could be had in the city; he would not take a room among a lot of others in a Studio Building. So he worked up his studies, painted his pictures, let nobody come near him except as he chose to bring them, and when he wanted anything of the world, went out into the world and got it.
Now, something had come right in here close to him, which brought him a certain sense of such a world as he could not go out into at will, to get what he wanted. A world of simplicities, of blessed contents, of unworn, joyous impulses, of little new, unceasing spontaneities; a world that he looked into, as we used to do at Sattler's Cosmoramas, through the merest peepholes, and comprehended by the merest hints; but which the presence of this girl under the roof with himself as surely revealed to him as the wind-flower reveals the spring.
On her part, Bel Bree got a glimpse, she knew not how, of a world above and beyond her own; a world of beauty, of power, of reach and elevation, in which people like Morris Hewland dwelt. His step, his voice, his words now and then to the friend or two whom he had the habit of bringing in with him,—the mere knowledge that he "made pictures," such pictures as she looked at in the windows and in art-dealers' rooms, where any shop-girl, as freely as the most elegant connoisseur, can go in and delight her eyes, and inform her perceptions,—these, without the face even, which had turned its magnetism straight upon hers only once or twice, and whose revelation was that of a life related to things wide and full and manifold,—gave her the stimulating sense of a something to which she had not come, but to which she felt a strange belonging.
Beside,—alongside—in each mind, was the undeveloped mystery; the spell under which a man receives such intuitions through a woman's presence,—a woman through a man's. Yet these two individuals were not, therefore, going to be necessary to each other, in the plan of God. Other things might show that they were not meant, in rightness, for each other; they represented mutually, something that each life missed; but the something was in no special companionship; it was a great deal wider and higher than that. They might have to learn that it was so, nevertheless, by some briefly painful process of experience. If in this process they should fall into mistake and wrong,—ah, there would come the experience beyond the experience, the depth they were not meant to sound, yet which, if they let their game of life run that way, they could not get back from but through the uttermost. They must play it out; the move could not be taken back,—yet awhile. The possible better combinations are in God's knowledge; how He may ever reset the pieces and give his good chances again, remains the hidden hope, resting upon the Christ that is in the heart of Him.
One morning Morris Hewland had come up the stairs with a handful of tuberoses; he was living at home, then, through the pleasant September, at his father's country place, whence the household would soon remove to the city for the winter.
Miss Bree's door was open. She was just replacing her door-mat, which she had been shaking out of the entry window. She had an old green veil tied down over her head to keep the dust off; nobody could suspect any harm of a wish or a willingness to have a word with her; Morris Hewland could not have suspected it of himself, if he had indeed got so far as to investigate his passing impulses. There was something pitiful in the contrast, perhaps, of the pure, fresh, exquisite blossoms, and the breath of sweet air he and they brought with them in their swift transit from the places where it blessed all things to the places where so much languished in the need of it, not knowing, even, the privation. The old, trodden, half-cleansed door-mat in her hands,—the just-created beauty in his. He stopped, and divided his handful.
"Here, Miss Bree,—you would like a piece of the country, I imagine, this morning! I couldn't have come in without it."
The voice rang blithe and bright into the room where Bel sat, basting machine work; the eyes went after the voice.
The light from the east window was full upon the shining hair, the young, unworn outlines, the fresh, pure color of the skin. Few city beauties could bear such morning light as that. Nothing but the morning in the face can meet it.
Morris Hewland lifted his hat, and bowed toward the young girl, silently. Then he passed on, up to his room. Bel heard his step, back and forth, overhead.
The tuberoses were put into a clear, plain tumbler. Bel would not have them in the broken vase; she would not have them in a blue vase, at all. She laid a white napkin over the red of the tablecloth, and set them on it. The perfume rose from them and spread all through the room.
"I am so glad we have work at home to-day," said Bel.
There had been nothing but little things like these; out into Bel's head, as she and Aunt Blin carried home the tea-blush silk, and laid it by with care in its white box upon the sofa-end, came that little wish, with a spring and a heart-beat,—"If she might have it on for a minute, and if in that minute he might happen to come by!"
She did not think she was planning for it; but when on the Tuesday evening the step went down the stairs at eight o'clock, while they sat busily working, each at a sleeve, by the drop-light over the white-covered table, a little involuntary calculation ran through her thoughts.
"He always comes back by eleven. We shall have two hours' work—or more,—on this, if we don't hurry; and it's miserable to hurry!"
They stitched on, comfortably enough; yet the sleeves were finished sooner than she expected. Before nine o'clock, Aunt Blin was sewing them in. Then Bel wanted a drink of water; then they could not both get at the waist together; there was no need.
"I'll do it," said Bel, out of her conscience, with a jump of fright as she said it, lest Aunt Blin should take her at her word, and begin gauging and plaiting the skirt.
"No, you rest. I shall want you by and by, for a figure."
"May I have it all on?" says Bel eagerly. "Do, Auntie! I should just like to be in such a dress once—a minute!"
"I don't see any reason why not. You couldn't do any hurt to it, if 'twas made for a queen," responded Aunt Blin.
"I'll do up my hair on the top of my head," said Bel.
And forthwith, at the far end of the room, away from the delicate robe and its scattered material, she got out her combs and brushes, and let down her gleaming brown hair.
It took different shades, from umber to almost golden, this "funny hair" of hers, as she called it. She thought it was because she had faded it, playing out in the sun when she was a child; but it was more like having got the shine into it. It did not curl, or wave; but it grew in lovely arches, with roots even set, around her temple and in the curves of her neck; and now, as she combed it up in a long, beautiful mass, over her grasping hand, raising it with each sweep higher toward the crown of her pretty head, all this vigorous, beautiful growth showed itself, and marked with its shadowy outline the dainty shapings. One twist at the top for the comb to go in, and then she parted it in two, and coiled it like a golden-bronze cable; and laid it round and round till the foremost turn rested like a wreath midway about her head. She pulled three fresh geranium leaves and a pink-white umbel of blossom from the plant in the window, and tucked the cluster among the soft front locks against the coil above the temple.
Then she took off the loose wrapping-sack she had thrown over her shoulders, washed her fingers at the basin, and came back to her seat under the lamp.
Aunt Blin looked up at her and smiled. It was like having it all herself,—this youth and beauty,—to have it belonging to her, and showing its charming ways and phases, in little Bel. Why shouldn't the child, with her fair, sweet freshness, and the deep-green, velvety leaves making her look already like a rose against which they leaned themselves, have on this delicate rose dress? If things stayed, or came, where they belonged, to whom should it more fittingly fall to wear it than to her?
Bel watched the clock and Aunt Blin's fingers.
It was ten when the plaits and gathers were laid, and the skirt basted to its band for the trying. Bel was dilatory one minute, and in a hurry the next.
"It would be done too soon; but he might come in early; and, O dear, they hadn't thought,—there was that puffing to put round the corsage, bertha-wise, with the blonde edging. 'It was all ready; give it to her.'"
"Now!"
The wonderful, glistening, aurora-like robe goes over her head; she stands in the midst, with the tender glowing color sweeping out from her upon the white sheet pinned down above the carpet.
Was that anybody coming?
Aunt Blin left her for an instant to put up the window-top that had been open to cool the lighted and heated room. Bel might catch cold, standing like this.
"O, it is so warm, Auntie! We can't have everything shut up!" And with this swift excuse instantly suggesting itself and making justification to her deceitful little heart that lay in wait for it, Bel sprang to the opposite corner where the doorway opened full toward her, diagonally commanding the room. She set it hastily just a hand's length ajar. "There is no wind in the entry, and nobody will come," she said.
When she was only excitedly afraid there wouldn't! I cannot justify little Bel. I do not try to.
"Now, see! isn't it beautiful?"
"It sags just a crumb, here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You shouldn't have sprung so, child."
The bare neck and the dimpled arms showed from among the cream-pink tints like the high white lights upon the rose. Bel had not looked in the glass yet: Aunt Blin was busy, and she really had not thought of it; she was happy just in being in that beautiful raiment—in the heart of its color and shine; feeling its softly rustling length float away from her, and reach out radiantly behind. What is there about that sweeping and trailing that all women like, and that becomes them so? That even the little child pins a shawl about her waist and walks to and fro, looking over her shoulder, to get a sensation of?
The door did shut, below. A step did come up the stairs, with a few light springs.
Suddenly Bel was ashamed!
She did not want it, now that it had come! She had set a dreadful trap for herself!
"O, Aunt Blin, let me go! Put something over me!" she whispered.
But Aunt Blin was down on the floor, far behind her, drawing out and arranging the slope of the train, measuring from hem to band with her professional eye.
The footstep suddenly checked; then, as if with an as swift bethinking, it went by. But through that door ajar, in that bright light that revealed the room, Morris Hewland had been smitten with the vision; had seen little Bel Bree in all the possible flush of fair array, and marvelous blossom of consummate, adorned loveliness.
Somehow, it broke down the safeguard he had had.
In what was Bel Bree different, really, from women who wore such robes as that, with whom he had danced and chatted in drawing-rooms? Only in being a thousand times fresher and prettier.
After that, he began to make reasons for speaking to them. He brought Aunt Blin a lot of illustrated papers; he lent them a stereoscope, with Alpine and Italian views; he brought down a picture of his own, one day, to show them; before October was out, he had spent an evening in Aunt Blin's room, reading aloud to them "Mirèio."
Among the strange metaphysical doublings which human nature discovers in itself, there is such a fact, not seldom experienced, as the dreaming of a dream.
It is one thing to dream utterly, so that one believes one is awake; it is another to sleep in one's dream, and in a vision give way to vision. It is done in sleep, it is done also in life.
This was what Bel Bree—and it is with her side of the experience that I have business—was in danger now of doing.
It is done in life, as to many forms of living—as to religion, as to art. People are religious, not infrequently because they are in love with the idea of being so, not because they are simply and directly devoted to God. They are æsthetic, because "The Beautiful" is so beautiful, to see and to talk of, and they choose to affect artistic having and doing; but they have not come even into that sheepfold by the door, by the honest, inevitable pathway that their nature took because it must,—by the entrance that it found through a force of celestial urging and guidance that was behind them all the while, though they but half knew it or understood.
Women fall in love that way, so often! It is a lovely thing to be loved; there is new living, which seems to them rare and grand, into which it offers to lift them up. They fall into a dream about a dream; they do not lay them down to sleep and give the Lord their souls to keep, till He shall touch their trustful rest with a divine fire, and waken them into his apocalypse.
It was this atmosphere in which Morris Hewland lived, and which he brought about him to transfuse the heavier air of her lowly living, that bewildered Bel. And she knew that she was bewildered. She knew that it was the poetic side of her nature that was stirred, excited; not the real deep, woman's heart of her that found, suddenly, its satisfying. If women will look, they can see this.
She knew—she had found out—that she was a fair picture in the artist's eyes; that the perception keen to discover and test and analyze all harmonies of form and tint,—holding a hallowed, mysterious kinship in this power to the Power that had made and spoken by them,—turned its search upon her, and found her lovely in the study. It was as if a daisy bearing the pure message and meaning of the heavenly, could thrill with the consciousness of its transmission; could feel the exaltation of fulfilling to a human soul, grand in its far up mystery and waiting upon God,—one of his dear ideas.
There was something holy in the spirit with which she thus realized her possession of maidenly beauty; her gift of mental charm and fitness even; it was the countersign by which she entered into this realm of which Morris Hewland had the freedom; it belonged to her also,—she to it; she had received her first recognition. It was a look back into Paradise for this Eve's daughter, born to labor, but with a reminiscence in her nature out of which she had built all her sweetest notions of being, doing, abiding; from which came the-home-picture, so simple in its outlines, but so rich and gentle in all its significance, that she had drawn to herself as "her wish"; the thing she would give most, and do most, to have come true.
But all this was not necessarily love, even in its beginning,—though she might come for a while to fancy it so,—for this one man. It was a thing between her own life and the Maker of it; an unfolding of herself toward that which waited for her in Him, and which she should surely come to, whatever she might grasp at mistakenly and miss upon the way.
Morris Hewland—young, honest-hearted, but full of a young man's fire and impulse, of an artist's susceptibility to outward beauty, of the ready delight of educated taste in fresh, natural, responsive cleverness—was treading dangerous ground.
He, too, knew that he was bewildered; and that if he opened his eyes he should see no way out of it. Therefore he shut his eyes and drifted on.
Aunt Blin, with her simplicity,—her incapacity of believing, though there might be wrong and mischief in the world, that anybody she knew could ever do it, sat there between them, the most bewildered, the most inwardly and utterly befooled of the three.