Black Edith Ferguson
A Princess in Calico
Chapter III
Fairyland
To the day of her death Pauline never forgot the sense of satisfied delight with which she felt herself made a member of her uncle’s household. Her three cousins – Gwendolyn, Russell, and Belle – had greeted her cordially as soon as the train drew up in a station which, for size and grandeur, surpassed her wildest dreams, and then escorted her between a bewildering panorama of flashing lights, brilliant shop windows, swiftly moving cars, and people in an endless stream to another depot, for her Uncle Robert resided in the suburbs.
They were waiting to welcome her at the entrance of their lovely home, her Uncle Robert and his wife. With one swift, comprehensive glance she took it all in. The handsome house in its brilliant setting of lawns and trees, the wide verandah with its crimson Mount Washington rockers, luxurious hammocks, and low table covered with freshly-cut magazines, the pleasant-faced man who was her nearest of kin, and his graceful wife in a tea-gown of soft summer silk with rich lace about her throat and wrists, her cousins in their dainty muslins, and Russell in his fresh summer suit. Here, at least, were people who knew what it was to live!
‘So we have really got our little country blossom transplanted,’ said her uncle, as he kissed her warmly. ‘I have so often begged your father to let you come to us before, but he always wrote that you could not be spared.’
A hot flush burnt its way up over her cheeks and brow. And he had let her think all this time that they had not cared! Her own father! He might at least have trusted her!
She started, for her uncle was saying: —
‘This is your Aunt Rutha, my dear,’ and turned to be clasped in tender arms, and hear a sweet voice whisper the all-sufficient introduction: —
‘I loved your mother.’
And then she had been taken upstairs by the lively Belle to refresh herself after her journey, and prepare for dinner, which had been delayed until her arrival.
The dinner itself was a revelation. The snowy table with its silver dishes and graceful centre-piece of hot-house blooms, the crystal sparkling in the rosy glow cast by silken-shaded, massively carved lamps, the perfect, noiseless serving, and the bright conversation which flowed freely, little hindered by the different courses of soup and fish, and game and ices – conversation about things that were happening in the world which seemed to be growing larger every minute, apt allusions by Mr Davis, lively sallies by Belle, and quotations by Russell from authors who seemed to be household friends, so highly were they held in reverence.
Afterwards there had been music, Russell at the piano, and Gwendolyn and Belle with their violins, and she had sat upon the sofa by the gracious, new-found friend, who stroked her rough hand gently with her white jewelled fingers, and talked to her softly, in the pauses of the music, of what her mother was like as a girl. Verily, Aunt Rutha had a wonderful way of making one feel at home.
She laughed to herself as the thought came to her. She felt more at home than she had ever done before in her life. She remembered reading somewhere that the children of men were often brought up under alien conditions, like ducklings brooded over by a mother hen, but as soon as a chance was given, they flew to their native element and the former things were as though they had not been. An inborn instinct of refinement made this new life immediately congenial. But – could she ever forget the weary conditions of Sleepy Hollow? She frequently heard in imagination the clatter of the dishes and the rough romping of the children as they noisily trooped to bed. Her nerves quivered as she listened to Mrs Harding shrilly droning the worn-out lullaby to the sleepless Polly, and Lemuel demanding to have Jack the Giant Killer told to him six times in succession. It seemed to her the life, in its bare drudgery, had worn deep seams into her very soul, like country roads in spring-time, whose surface is torn apart in gaping wounds and unsightly ruts by heavy wheels and frost and rain.
She looked at her cousins with a feeling nearly akin to envy. Their lives had no contrasts. Always this beautiful comradeship with father and mother; and Aunt Rutha was so lovely – she stopped abruptly. She would not change mothers. No, no, she would be loyal, even in thought, to the pale, tired woman, whom she could remember kissing her passionately in the twilight, while bitter tears rained on her childish, upturned face. She would not let the demon of discontent spoil her visit. She would put by and forget while she enjoyed this wonderful slice of pleasure that had come to her. There was just as much greed in her wanting happiness wholesale as in Lemuel’s crying for the whole loaf of gingerbread; the only difference was in the measure of their capacity.
‘What is it, dear?’ asked Aunt Rutha, with an amused smile. ‘You have been in the brownest of studies.’
She looked up at her brightly.
‘I believe it was a briar tangle, Aunt Rutha, of the worst kind; but I shall see daylight soon, thank you.’
Mrs Davis laid her hand on her husband’s arm.
‘Your penknife, Robert. Our little girl here is tied up in a Gordian knot, and we must help to set her free.’
Her uncle laughed as he opened the pearl-handled weapon.
‘If good will can take the place of skill, I’ll promise to cut no arteries.’ Then he added more gravely, ‘But you have nothing more to do with knots, my dear, of any kind. You belong to us now.’
They discussed her a little in kindly fashion after she had gone to her room for the night.
‘The child has the air of a princess,’ said Mrs Davis thoughtfully. ‘She holds herself wonderfully, in spite of her rustic training, but I suppose blood always tells’; and she looked over at her husband with a smile.
‘She has wonderful powers of adaptability, too,’ said Gwendolyn. ‘I watched her at dinner, and she never made a single slip, although I imagine there were several things that were new to her beside the finger-glasses.’
‘But she is intense, mamma!’ and Belle heaved a sigh of mock despair. ‘I don’t believe she knows what laziness is, and I’m sure she will end by making me ashamed of myself. When I told her we had a three months’ vacation, she never said, “How delightful!” as most girls would, but calmly inquired what I took up in the holidays, and when I groaned at the very thought of taking up anything, she said so seriously, “But you don’t let your mind lie fallow for three whole months?” And then she sighed a little, and added, half to herself, “Some girls would give all the world for such a chance to read.” I believe she is possessed with a perfect rage for the acquisition of knowledge, and when she goes to college will pass poor me with leaps and bounds, and carry the hearts of all the professors in her train.’
‘And did you see her,’ said Gwendolyn, ‘when I happened to mention that our church was always shut up in the summer because so many people were out of the city? She just turned those splendid eyes of hers on me until I actually felt my moral stature shrivelling, and asked, “What about the people in the city? don’t they have to go on living?”’
‘She is plucky, though,’ said Russell admiringly. ‘Did you notice when you were both screaming because one of our wheels caught in a street car rail, and the carriage nearly upset, how she never said a word, though she must have been frightened, for we were nearly over. I like a girl that has grit enough to hold her tongue.’
‘She is a dear child,’ said Mr Davis, ‘and she has her mother’s eyes.’
Upstairs, in her blue-draped chamber, Pauline spoke her verdict to herself.
‘They are all splendid, and I’m a good deal prouder of my relations than they can be of me. I’m a regular woodpecker among birds of paradise. I wish I hadn’t to be so dreadfully plain. Well, I’ll ring true if I am homely, and character is more than clothes, anyway.’
She undressed slowly, her æsthetic eyes revelling in all the dainty appointments of the room which was to be her very own. Then she knelt by the broad, low window-seat, and said her prayers, looking away to the stars, which glowed red, and green, and yellow, in the soft summer sky, and then, in a great hush of delight, she lay down between the delicately-perfumed sheets, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of the present which God had given her. She would not think of Sleepy Hollow. She had put it by.
Chapter IV
A New World
Belle entered Pauline’s room to find her cousin revelling in the exquisite pathos of Whittier’s Snowbound before dressing for dinner.
The problem of clothes had been solved by Aunt Rutha in her pleasant, tactful way.
‘You are just Belle’s age, my dear,’ she had said the day after Pauline’s arrival, as she lifted a delicately pencilled muslin from a large parcel which had been brought in from White’s, and laid it against her fresh young cheek.
‘That is very becoming, don’t you think so, Gwen? It is such a delight for me to have two daughters to shop for. I have always had a craze to buy doubles of everything, but Gwendolyn was so much older, I could never indulge myself. There is no need to say anything, dearie,’ and she kissed away the remonstrance that was forming on Pauline’s lips. ‘You belong to us now, you know, and your uncle thinks he owes your mother more than he can ever hope to repay.’
Then she led her to the lounge which Gwendolyn was piling high with delicately embroidered and ruffled underwear.
‘I did not know whether you would like your sets to be of different patterns or not, but Belle has such a horror of having any two alike that I ventured to think that your tastes would agree. The girls are going in town to-morrow to order their summer hats, so you can finish the rest of your shopping then, if you like, and get an idea of our city.’
And then had followed a morning such as she had never dreamed of. The excitement of driving to the station in the exhilarating morning air, past houses which, like her uncle’s, seemed the abodes of luxurious ease. Before many of them carriages were waiting, and through the open doors she caught glimpses of white-capped servants and coloured nurses carrying babies in long robes of lawn and lace. A vision of Polly in her pink checked gingham flashed before her. How could life be so different?
The ride in the cars was delightful, past a succession of elegant houses and beautifully laid out grounds, until she began to feel she had reached a new world where care was an unknown quantity.
Then the city, with its delightful whirl of cars and horses and people. She had never imagined there could be so many in any one place before. She marvelled at the condescension of the gentlemen in the handsomely appointed shoe store, and blushed as one of them placed her foot on the rest. She looked in amazement at the elegantly furnished apartments of Madame Louise, and the wonderful structures of feathers and lace and ribbon, which the voluble saleswoman assured them were cheap at thirty dollars, and was lost in a rapturous delight, as, with the calmness of experienced shoppers, her cousins went from one department to another in White’s and Hovey’s, laying in a supply of airy nothings of which she did not even know the use; always being treated by them with the same delicate consideration: there was nothing forced upon her, only, as they were getting things, she might as well be fitted too. Then to Huyler’s for ices and macaroons, then up past St Paul’s and the Common, and then home to a lunch of chicken salad and strawberries and frothed chocolate, in the cool dining-room, with its massive leather-covered chairs and potted plants and roses.
She was growing used now to the new order of things and smiled a welcome to Belle from the velvet lounging chair in which she, Pauline Harding, who had never lounged in her life, was beginning to feel perfectly at home.
‘What an inveterate bookworm you are, Paul,’ and Belle looked at the pile of volumes Pauline had brought from the library to study in the long morning hours which the force of a lifelong habit gave her, before the rest of the family were astir.
‘You forget I am an ignoramus,’ she answered quietly. ‘I must do something to catch up.’
Belle shrugged her shoulders.
‘What’s the use? It is surprising with what an infinitesimal fraction of knowledge one can get through this old world.’
‘Such a speech from a woman in this age is rank heresy!’
‘Oh, of course, if you are going in for equal suffrage and anti-opium, and the rest, but I never aspired to the garment of either Lucy Stone or Frances Willard. I do pine to be an anatomist, and Professor Herschel says I have a decided talent for it too. However, papa is not progressive, at least he does not want his daughters to be, although I tell him I might be a professor in Harvard some day, so there is nothing left for me but to fall into the ranks of the majority and do nothing.’
‘Why so? Is there nothing in the world but suffrage, and opium and – anatomy?’
‘Oh, dear, yes, there’s philanthropy, but Gwen does that for the family. She is on every Society under the sun. Let me count them, if I can. There’s the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and the Society for the Improvement of the Moral Condition of Working Women, and the Society for the Betterment of the Sanitary Conditions of Tenement Houses. She’s a member of the W.C.A., and the W.C.T.U., and the S.P.C.A.; she’s on the Board of Lady Managers of the Newsboys’ Home, and one of the Directors of the Industrial School for Girls. In fact she is fairly torn asunder in her efforts to ameliorate the condition of the “submerged tenth.”’
‘“Submerged tenth,”’ echoed Pauline wonderingly. ‘Is any one submerged in Boston?’
‘You dear stupid, of course! The unseen population in filth, rags and unrighteousness, and the rest of us in lazy self-indulgence, which, perhaps, in God’s sight, is about as bad. I often think if each professing Christian took hold of one poor beggar and tried to elevate him, we should solve the problem a great deal sooner than by starting so many societies to improve them in the aggregate. I can theorize, you see, but the practice is beyond me.’
‘But why don’t you try it?’ cried Pauline, her eyes sparkling. ‘It is a splendid idea.’
‘Bless you, my child, because it would involve work, and that is a thing I abhor.’
‘But Gwendolyn must work on all these societies,’ said Pauline.
Belle danced across the room, and seated herself on the arm of her chair.
‘You dear old thing! You’re as innocent as your own daisies, and it is a shame to take you from your mossy bed. Don’t you know there is work and work? God says, “Go work in My vineyard,” and we good Christians answer, “Yes, Lord, but let some one else go ahead and take out the stumps.” The most of us like to do our spiritual farming on a western scale. It is pleasanter to drive a team of eight horses over cleared land than to grub out dockweed and thistles all alone in one corner.’
She leaned forward and began reading the titles of the books Pauline had selected for her study.
‘Homer’s Iliad and Plato, – I told mamma you were intense – Hallam’s Middle Ages and Macaulay’s History of England. I had no idea you had monarchical tendencies. I must take you to our little chapel, and show you the communion service that belonged to Charles the Second, or perhaps it was one of the Georges, I’m not very clear on that point. My dear Paul, you’re delicious! To think of anybody voluntarily undertaking to scrape acquaintance with all these dry-as-dust worthies, and in summertime!’
‘It is not easy for you to understand how hungry I am,’ said Pauline, with a tremor in her voice. ‘You have been going to school all your life.’
‘Unfortunately, yes!’ sighed Belle. ‘But don’t pine for the experience. You will soon have enough of it. May I inquire when you expect to find time for these exhilarating researches?’
Pauline laughed.
‘Between the hours of five and eight A.M.’
‘Horrible!’
She faced round upon her suddenly.
‘I wonder what you think of us all? You are as demure as a fieldmouse, but I know those big eyes of yours have taken our measures by this time. Come, let us have it, “the whole truth,” you know. Don’t be Ananias and keep back part of the price. “Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oorsels as ithers see us.” I delight in revelations. Show me myself, Paul.’
Pauline hesitated for a moment, then she spoke out bravely.
‘I love you all, dearly. You have been so kind! But, Belle, if I had your opportunities, I would make more of my life.’