In the morning, Arethusa wrote the letter to Miss Eliza she had been
bidden to write as soon as possible after arrival in Lewisburg, giving
a sketchy description of her trip and the information that it had been
accomplished in safety, without mentioning a single one of the friends
made on the train; or that she had almost missed her father; or that
she was now minus a purse.
But immediately after this duty was done she wrote another letter; to
Miss Asenath this one, and it was overflowing with spirits and
exuberant retrospect of all that had happened to her since she left the
Farm. Into this effort she put her encounter with the strange man, Mrs.
Cherry and Helen Louise and Peter and Mr. Cherry; how nearly she and
Ross had missed connection and how terribly she had felt; the loss of
her purse, and her fear that the check had been gone also; just how
exciting this glorious Visit had already proved.
It was a long letter and a breathless one, with many missing words all
down the pages, for Arethusa's mind was working so much faster than she
could move her pen that it was quite impossible to get in every
syllable. But Miss Asenath would understand.
Arethusa described at length the wonders of this big house where she
was a guest, and the superlative Beauty of the room she had been given
for her very own. She told of that Anniversary Dinner, and the
Artichoke; of all her troubles with the strange food and the
bewildering number of knives and forks and spoons. She also told Miss
Asenath of Elinor's music.
Elinor made sounds to issue from a piano that Arethusa had never
dreamed that instrument was capable of accomplishing. With her slender
fingers on those black and ivory keys, the big, black box had sobbed
and laughed, and even talked ordinarily at her bidding.
Arethusa left her chair, and crept nearer and nearer to the musician
until she was almost on top of the piano bench herself, in her absorbed
interest. Her hands clasped over her heart to still the curious little
ache the music made her to feel there, with her lips parted slightly
and her eyes like big stars; she had scarcely dared breathe. She wished
suddenly for Timothy, for Timothy worshipped music. He loved even to
hear her, Arethusa, play. And she was sure he had never heard any music
such as this.
It was not what Miss Letitia would have called playing "with
expression"; it was not as she had tried to teach Arethusa. Elinor's
long, white hands just seemed to wander over the keys, as softly
aimless as if she had no slightest idea what the next note was to be;
they strayed from themes which aroused to an ecstasy into simple
melodies that left a haunting sense that they had not been finished.
Sometimes the piano scarcely seemed to sound; sometimes it crashed in
grand chords, as if the musician's playing had changed with her mood.
And Arethusa had listened, full of vague longings she did not
understand, feeling when it ended that it was ended far too soon; and
Ross had smoked silently, blowing great, blue wreaths about his head,
one after another. There had been no single word from either to break
the spell of the music.
Arethusa wrote away, the wrinkles of composition between her brows and
her writing becoming more and more ragged as the letter proceeded. Her
feet were twined in the rounds of her chair, her arms were spread out
all over the top of the big desk with a great display of elbows, and
she was ungracefully humped as to back; for when Arethusa wrote, her
whole body responded to the effort.
Close beside her lay Boris, Ross's Great Dane, a dignified animal of
unusual beauty. Ordinarily, he was so indifferent and sometimes so
disagreeable to strangers that he was rarely allowed where they were,
yet he had adopted Arethusa at sight when first introduced just after
breakfast, and he had not left her side since. Most people were
frightened nearly speechless when Boris merely opened his mouth to
yawn; but he had not frightened Arethusa. She had voted him the most
wonderful dog she had ever seen, and pleased Ross immensely by her lack
of fear.
Every now and then when she stopped in her writing to open her cramped
fingers for a moment and gaze admiringly around the room, she would
stoop and pat Boris. And she would stroke him wherever her hand
happened to fall, and he did not seem to resent it in the least, which
was something most unusual.
Ross was in the library, sprawled on the big davenport, and watching
the girl and the dog with keen delight in the picture they made. He had
never known Boris to make friends thus suddenly, in all the six years
he had owned him; even Elinor was a bit afraid of the splendid
creature.
Elinor had been in the library also most of the morning, talking to
Ross while Arethusa performed a Duty; but she had been called out to
the telephone. When she came back, her first words were for Arethusa.
"I have an invitation for you."
"For _me_!" Arethusa's pen dropped abruptly in the middle of her page
to make a large and sprawling splash of ink.
"Yes, for you. That was Mrs. Chestnut on the telephone. I had told her
you were coming to visit us, and so she called up to invite you to the
dinner-dance she is giving Friday night, if you were here."
"Oh, would that be a Party, a Real Party?" The excited scribe abandoned
her letter altogether, and followed Elinor over by the fire-place,
nearer to Ross and the davenport, "Isn't that a Party?"
"I should say it was!"
"I've never been to a Party," apologetically explained Arethusa, "and
I've wanted to go to one ever since I can remember. Aunt 'Senath said
there would be parties in the City, and that I might be invited!
But...." some of the glow began to fade, "I don't know Mrs. Chestnut,
Mother."
"That doesn't make any difference this time, Arethusa dear, because
she's one of my best friends. And all her parties are wonderful, so if
you've really never been to any at all, you're starting in in the right
way to enjoy them," said Elinor, and Arethusa glowed once more. "I had
hardly dared hope she would invite you," she continued, "because I
supposed her list was made up long ago. It's for Emily, her daughter.
You'll like Emily; she's just about your age, and she's coming out this
winter. It's to be at the Boden Hotel, I think she said. But she's
going to send an escort for you."
What richness of prospect!
Yet with her joy, Arethusa puzzled for a moment over some of the
obscurer items of her mother's speech.
"Why doesn't she have her party at home instead of a hotel," she
enquired, "and what is Emily coming out of?"
"Your mother used the wrong words, Arethusa," volunteered Ross from the
davenport; "she means to say that Mrs. Chestnut's daughter is on
exhibition after some years of careful preparation by her mother for
just this event and will be gladly presented to the man offering to
take her off her mother's weary hands. Said mother will be fearfully
disappointed, if, after all this trouble and expense, no man should
offer. And as to her not having the party at her home, she thinks far
too much of her furniture and Persian rugs and pale pink walls to allow
her daughter's callow young friends to romp around among them for a
whole evening."
Arethusa looked at him uncertainly, but his expression was one of
perfect seriousness. It was even a trifle sad.
"Is she really like that, Father?"
"Really like that," replied Ross sorrowfully.
"Then," announced Arethusa with decision, and her red mouth pursed
disapprovingly, "I don't believe that I want to go to her party!"
Elinor struggled between exasperation and a desire to laugh.
"Mrs. Chestnut is lovely, Arethusa, and so is her daughter. They only
have the dance at the hotel because their own house is too small for so
many people at once. Everyone has their large parties there nowadays.
If you are going to believe everything your father says, you'll be
having a very hard time. And if he keeps on talking this way, I'll have
to send him out. You mustn't pay so much attention to him."
"Nice, wifely speech, that," observed Ross.
But Arethusa had glimpsed the laughter in his quizzical dark eyes. She
realized now he had been teasing, so she turned clear away from him to
give all her attention to Elinor, who could be more trusted.
"Do you know how to dance, dear?" asked Elinor.
"Some," replied Arethusa, "Timothy taught me down in the barn. Aunt
'Liza says dancing is very wicked," (Miss Eliza had a truly deep and
honest horror of round dances). "But Timothy says it isn't a bit wrong,
and I just _love_ it! She doesn't know," added almost confidentially,
"that Timothy ever showed me how."
"'Tis just as well, I suppose," murmured Ross.
Arethusa had proved an apt pupil to Timothy's friendly instructions
when he had come home from college and passed on his acquirements in
the art terpsichorean. The lessons had taken place in the central,
biggest space in the barn, as she had said, with Timothy humming an
accompaniment until breathless, and then she taking up the tune in her
turn. This little taste of the joys of dancing had made her long for
more. She failed to see how anything that made for such pure and
unadulterated delight could be so wicked as Miss Eliza insisted that it
was.
"I'm glad you know something about it," said Elinor, really relieved.
"I was afraid perhaps you didn't, and you would hardly have the time to
learn. And, Arethusa dearest," tactfully feeling her way, fearing to
spoil the girl's innocent happiness in the garment, "was that white
dress you wore last night your very best?"
"Yes, ma'am." The eager face lighted still more. "And it's the lowest
necked dress I ever did have, and it has the shortest sleeves! They're
nearly up to my elbow. Aunt 'Liza didn't want it made that way, so low,
nor so thin, either; because she said I wouldn't be able to wear my
underwear with it, and she's afraid it's dangerous for me to take it
off. But I rolled it up last night and in at the neck, and it didn't
show very much. Did it?"
Elinor and Ross were almost equally affected by this speech.
"Shades of the summer of seventy-six!" was his rather inappropriate
exclamation.
And Elinor's expression seemed to Arethusa to be one of incredulity, so
she turned back her shirtwaist cuff to prove her statement, and showed
the end of a long, knit sleeve.
"I don't like to wear it a single bit," she said, "but Aunt 'Liza makes
me. I have to put it on when we have the first heavy frost and I can't
take it off until the tenth of May."
"I am becoming more and more convinced that Miss Eliza's peculiar
talents are entirely lost in the place she occupies," replied Ross,
with sincerity.
But the white dress, low as its proud owner seemed to consider it, and
as thin, and in spite of Miss Letitia's loving effort expended on it
for just such occasions as parties, would hardly serve for the
Chestnuts' dinner-dance, thought Elinor.
And so, ere very much time were sped, Arethusa discovered Miss Asenath
to have been a true prophet. She was to have another Party Frock. She
and Elinor started off immediately to get It; but they had to get It
ready-made, for there was not near enough time before the Party for a
dressmaker's services to have accomplished the sort of Frock that
Elinor wanted Arethusa to have.
They went in the automobile, to Arethusa's great delight, and the
palatial establishment where it stopped, and which Elinor told her had
the prettiest dresses in town to offer in just such emergencies as
this, was so enormous a place and so filled to overflowing with
scurrying people, that Arethusa wondered if every human being in
Lewisburg had not come a-buying this morning, and right in this
particular shop. She was not used to stores where she bumped into
somebody at every other step. She apologized several times from the
front door to the elevator, for such collisions; because her delighted
eyes would insist in wandering to the bewilderment of riches displayed
on every side, instead of finding her a passage through the crowd. She
could not understand how Elinor could pass them all so calmly by,
looking so straight ahead. Had she not been afraid of losing her,
Arethusa would have stopped, more than once, for a little closer view.
They went up in the elevator to the third floor, and the elevator was
another new sensation for Arethusa. There were no elevators within
miles of the Farm.
The whole third floor was entirely given over to ready-made garments of
every description; cloaks and suits and dresses of every conceivable
variety of cloth and color, hanging carelessly over tables and chairs,
and neatly displayed inside lighted glass cases, and girls were rushing
about carrying still more piled in their arms. There were more clothes
then Arethusa had imagined could ever have been made, right here on the
one floor of this huge shop.
To the floor-walker who stepped up to greet them, Elinor conveyed her
desire to buy a dress for Arethusa; "And I should like Miss Rosa, Mr.
Wells, if she's not too busy."
Mr. Wells, bowing grandly from the waist, ushered them into a small
room hung all around with mirrors, and disappeared. Then he reappeared
in a few moments to announce that Miss Rosa would be with them very
shortly, if Mrs. Worthington would be so kind as to wait.
Arethusa was simply overcome by the rapidity with which events moved
forward, to carry her with them. Speech was an impossibility. She could
only follow Elinor silently.
She sat and gazed about her in the little mirrored room. Her quaint
figure was repeated again and again on all sides in a very bewildering
way; and she noted that the hat of each Arethusa had somehow got
crooked far down over one ear. She straightened it immediately. There
were many Elinors in the mirrors also, and Arethusa admired the grace
of those reflections with unaffected showing of her admiration. She
especially admired the soft sweep of Elinor's long stole of moleskin.
There was no more envy in her regard of the difference of their
appearance in these many unmistakable evidences of it than there had
been when they had both been dressed for the Anniversary the night
before. Arethusa rejoiced that Elinor was such a Beautiful Creature;
and it was Perfect Bliss to be with her and watch her lovely clothes,
without worrying about herself in any way.
Miss Rosa did not keep them waiting long, and at Elinor's request when
she did come, she flitted away in a business-like manner that spelled a
knowledge of what was wanted, to return bearing an armful of color;
pale blues and pinks and lavenders and whites and deeper creams, in the
softest of satins and silks and chiffons and lace. Among all this
loveliness was glimpsed by Arethusa a fleck of green.
"Mother," this whispered to Elinor, as Miss Rosa in her modish and
well-fitting black crepe de chine and her air of knowing what she was
about, was just a trifle awe-inspiring, "do you suppose that would be a
Green Dress?"
But Miss Rosa heard the whisper. She smiled in a friendly way at
Arethusa, for Miss Rosa was a kindly soul, and produced from the very
bottom of her pile of beautiful things a Green Frock of the identical
shade so beloved by Arethusa.
Arethusa drew in her breath with a sharp, little sound. "Oh, that is
the One I want! Oh, Mother, may I have...."
But she had had too long a training by Miss Eliza for it to desert her
with too great a suddenness. The dress looked neither sensible nor
durable when Miss Rosa held it spread out to plainer view; in fact, it
had every possible appearance of being neither. And it was so wonderful
a mass of chiffon and silk and lace that Arethusa began to remember
sundry lessons in economy also; she feared its cost would prove
terrific. She had never seen anything nearly so Wonderful in the shape
of a Gown before. Then too, those caustic remarks of so positive a
nature concerning green with her red hair, which Miss Eliza had spoken
so often in her hearing, began to worm themselves into her
consciousness.
The happy expression, roused by the first sight of this creation, faded
quite noticeably.
"What's the matter?" inquired Elinor. "I think that's the dress of all
dresses for you, dear. If you like it. Don't you, Miss Rosa?"
Miss Rosa nodded. "Yes, indeed, Miss Worthington has the very hair and
eyes for this, and the skin as well."
Then did Arethusa's spirits soar to touch heaven once more. She turned
such an illumined face to Elinor as Elinor had never seen; she was all
aquiver in her sudden joy.
"Aunt 'Senath was right! Darling Aunt 'Senath was right! She said not
everybody would be like Aunt 'Liza; that some people would be sure to
think green was all right with my hair! Aunt 'Liza never has let me
have anything but blue, and I've wanted a green dress for a thousand
years. But this one looks so...." she paused uncertainly, and reddened.
She did not like to mention its cost, since Elinor was making her a
gift, but Miss Eliza was a good teacher.
"Expensive?" finished Elinor, laughing. "I don't imagine it is. But
I'll do the worrying about that. If you want it, you may have it. It
rests with you to say."
Arethusa blushed more deeply, but it was a radiant blush, even if
embarrassed, for Elinor's words, if intended as words of correction,
were not spoken in the tone Arethusa associated with corrections. She
fingered at the Green Dress, almost caressingly. To own this Gorgeous
Thing for her very own!
"Suppose we try it on," suggested Miss Rosa, amused at Arethusa's naive
joy.
Arethusa's coat was off before the kindly suggestion was quite
finished, then she looked at Miss Rosa.
Elinor read the hesitating thought. "It's all right," she said. "Miss
Rosa must fit it for you, you know."
So Miss Rosa whisked off Arethusa's shirtwaist for her, and her skirt,
and even manipulated that uncompromisingly unbeautiful protection which
Miss Eliza insisted was all that kept the healthy Arethusa from dying
of pneumonia in the winter season, in such a very capable way that it
could not possibly show; and slipped the dainty gown over the girl's
ruddy head. And it fitted her as if it had been made especially to her
measurement.
Arethusa stared into the mirror directly before her, and into the ones
all around her, twisting and turning to see every inch of her back,
lost in ecstasy at the contemplation of her glorified self in these
Wonderful Reflections. Even the heavy black lace shoes, ugly shoes from
a country store, which showed so plainly below her green skirt, had no
sort of power to spoil for Arethusa the general effect of loveliness.
It was the most Beautiful Dress in the world, she was sure.
The skirt billowed and flowed around her in soft generous folds of pale
green chiffon and lace draped over an underskirt of green silk, and
caught to it here and there with bunches of tiny flowers in odd, bright
colors. The waist had a high, soft girdle of the green silk, and some
of the little flowers were sewed around one side of it against the
gathers of the skirt; and a tight little bunch of them was right in the
middle of her back at the very top of the girdle, from which hung
narrow, flowing sash-ends that were tied into the fulness of the skirt
with other wee bunches of the flowers. Some of these flowers were
nestled about in the lace on the upper part of the waist as if they had
grown there, and some caught up the short lace sleeves.
"How do you like it?" asked Elinor. It was really rather a superfluous
question.
"I _love_ it!" burst from Arethusa. "I think it is Perfectly
Beautiful!" Then she turned around. "But I just know, Mother, that
Aunt 'Liza won't like it at all."
"Why, what on earth has Miss Eliza to do with it?"
"You see," seriously, "she has always said just what I should wear,
and she tells Aunt 'Titia just how to make them."
"I understand, dear, but you're in Lewisburg now; and ... I can't
see possibly how Miss Eliza could have a single objection to make."
But Arethusa knew only too well.
"Couldn't I have a guimpe with it?" she suggested hopefully; "if I had
a guimpe, it would look different."
It would indeed!
"A guimpe!" echoed both Elinor and Miss Rosa.
Arethusa nodded, and turned once more to the mirror, "It's the sleeves
she wouldn't like," she lifted one to show its lack as a sleeve from
Miss Eliza's point of view, "and the neck, besides. It's ever so much
lower than my white dress, I always used to wear guimpes with dresses
like this. I don't mean just like this," added hastily, for a blunder
had been committed, "but when it had sleeves as short, and didn't come
up any higher."
"I never heard of such a thing," declared Elinor. "And, Arethusa, I
can't believe that even Miss Eliza would make you wear a guimpe with an
evening dress!"
But then Elinor did not know Miss Eliza.
And, "Anything on earth that you would do to that dress, Mrs.
Worthington, would spoil it," said Miss Rosa, warmly. "It's absolutely
perfect just as it is. And I'm almost sure, Miss Arethusa, that your
aunt would say so herself if she could see it."
But neither did Miss Rosa know Miss Eliza.
And Arethusa did.
She stepped slowly down from the little platform where she had been
standing for the better view all around, and her grey eyes filled
rapidly with the bitter tears of disappointment. It was Tragedy to give
it up! But if there was to be no guimpe....
Her fumbling fingers were reaching under the flowers at the girdle for
the hooks which had fastened her into it, when Elinor stopped her.
Elinor had set her heart on Arethusa having that Green Dress from the
first moment of seeing her in it. It seemed to Elinor to suit the girl
as if, as Miss Rosa had enthusiastically declared, somebody had sat
down before her and studied her "style". Her namesake nymph might have
worn the gown just as it was without a single change to make it more
airy or more like captured sea-foam in its fluttering draperies. It
belonged with Arethusa's hair and her greenish eyes. She would never
find another frock, if they looked all day, which would be half so
becoming. But there was no slightest use in buying it if this bugbear
of Miss Eliza's disapproval would continue to rear its serpent head to
Arethusa's further unhappiness.
"Arethusa," she demanded, "don't you think I know every bit as much
about clothes as Miss Eliza?"
Arethusa could but smile through the tears she was winking back at the
utter ridiculousness of this question. She looked at Elinor's
wonderfully made suit and her furs and the dark purple velvet hat she
wore that was so attractive against her white hair, and then memory
showed her Miss Eliza, trotting about in the sensible and comfortably
cut garments she affected the year round.
"More," she declared, with honesty and emphasis.
"And do you imagine for a single instant that I would be letting you
wear anything that was not at all right for you to wear?"
Arethusa shook her head decidedly. That was not exactly the point. "But
if I only had...." she began, uncertainly.
"Miss Rosa," asked Elinor desperately, "have you such a thing as a
guimpe?"
Miss Rosa had, she was sure, somewhere about.
"Would you mind bringing it?"
So the guimpe was brought, a lace guimpe with long, lace sleeves, and a
high collared neck of lace.
Arethusa could have cried at the way it made her look. It ruined her
Wonderful Frock; even she, inexperienced in such frocks, could tell
that with ease. It was a real relief to get it off, and view herself
once more as she had been at first arrayed, without it.
"Now don't you see?"
Yes, Arethusa saw.
"And do you suppose," pursued Elinor, "that Miss Eliza, as sensible as
you say she is, would want to spoil an already beautiful dress that
way?"
No, Arethusa could not believe that even Miss Eliza would want to be so
unfeeling to beautiful dresses such as this. She could not help but
think, she who had seen it and worn it, both ways, that Miss Eliza
would be forced to select, as the prettier, the dress without the
guimpe. There was really no choice, thought Arethusa, between them.
She smiled at her many reflections once more, and strutted a bit, back
and forth, to watch her draperies float about her.
"I'm rather sorry," remarked Elinor, "that you needed so much
convincing that I had any idea what was best."
Arethusa stopped short, and turned in alarm. "Why, Mother...."
But Elinor's merry brown eyes were smiling at her, and Arethusa
understood. She swooped upon her joyously, with the danger of damage to
the Green Gown in her sudden movement, and hugged her mother swiftly.
"It's just," she exclaimed, "it's just that if you knew Aunt 'Liza you
would understand!"
Ross had also said something of the kind, only the day before. So
Elinor was beginning to feel a rather respectful interest in Miss
Eliza.
Then Arethusa and Elinor, the dress carefully removed and folded into a
box that they might take it with them, while Arethusa's jealous eyes
watched until the last knot was fast in the string which tied that box,
departed happily to a lower floor in search of slippers and stockings
to match and complete the costume.
These purchased, and deposited with the dress-box in the automobile,
Elinor directed Clay to drive to "Parnell's."
"We'll go get a soda water," she said, "after this trying morning."
"But I don't feel the least bit sick," remonstrated Arethusa, with
memories of Miss Letitia's packet of soda tucked into the corner of her
satchel.
Elinor explained.
Later, she told Arethusa she was very likely to be needing Miss
Letitia's sort, when after her second glass of a beverage of a most
seductive taste, she expressed a desire for a third drink of this new
and altogether charming "soda water."