SCHOOL.
I had another time the next day between Mrs Sandford and the
mantua-maker. The mantua-maker came to take orders about
making my school dress.
"How will you have it trimmed?" she asked. "This sort of stuff
will make no sort of an appearance unless it is well trimmed.
It wants that. You might have a border of dark green leaves
dark green, like the colour of this stripe going round the
skirt; that would have a good effect; the leaves set in and
edged with a very small red cord, or green if you like it
better. We trimmed a dress so last week, and it made a very
good appearance."
"What do you say, Daisy?"
"How much will it cost?" I asked.
"Oh, the cost is not very much," said the milliner. "I suppose
we would do it for you, Mrs. Sandford, for twenty-five
dollars."
"That is too much," I said.
"You wouldn't say so, if you knew the work it is to set those
leaves round," said the mantua-maker. "It takes hours and
hours; and the cording and all. And the silk, you know, Mrs.
Sandford, _that_ costs now-a-days. It takes a full yard of the
silk, and no washy lining silk, but good stiff dress silk.
Some has 'em made of velvet, but to be sure that would not be
suitable for a common stuff like this. It will be very common,
Mrs. Sandford, without you have it handsomely trimmed."
"Couldn't you put some other sort of trimming?"
"Well, there's no other way that looks _distingué_ on this sort
of stuff; that's the most stylish. We could put a band of rows
of black velvet an inch wide, or half an inch; if you have
it narrower you must put more of them; and then the sleeves
and body to match; but I don't think you would like it so well
as the green leaves. A great many people has 'em trimmed so;
you like it a little out of the common, Mrs. Sandford. Or, you
could have a green ribband."
"How much would _that_ be?" said Mrs. Sandford.
"Oh, really I don't just know," the woman answered; "depends
on the ribband; it don't make much difference to you, Mrs.
Sandford; it would be let me see, Oh, I suppose we could
do it with velvet for you for fifteen or twenty dollars. You
see, there must be buttons or rosettes at the joinings of the
velvets; and those come very expensive."
"How much would it be, to make the dress plain?" I asked.
"_That_ would be plain," the mantua-maker answered quickly. "The
style is, to trim everything very much. Oh, that would be
quite plain, with the velvet."
"But without any trimming at all?" I asked. "How much would
that be?" I felt an odd sort of shame at pressing the
question; yet I knew I must.
"Without trimming!" said the woman. "Oh, you could not have it
_without trimming;_ there is nothing made without trimming; it
would have no appearance at all. People would think you had
come out of the country. No young ladies have their dresses
made without trimming this winter."
"Mrs. Sandford," said I, "I should like to know what the dress
would be without trimming."
"What would it be, Melinda?" The woman was only a forewoman of
her establishment.
"Oh, well, Mrs. Sandford, the naked dress I have no doubt
could be made for you for five dollars."
"You would not have it _so_, Daisy, my dear?" said Mrs.
Sandford.
But I said I would have it so. It cost me a little difficulty,
and a little shrinking, I remember, to choose this and to hold
to it in the face of the other two. It was the last battle of
that campaign. I had my way; but I wondered privately to
myself whether I was going to look very unlike the children of
other ladies in my mother's position; and whether such
severity over myself was really needed. I turned the question
over again in my own room, and tried to find out why it
troubled me. I could not quite tell. Yet I thought, as I was
doing what I knew to be duty, I had no right to feel this
trouble about it. The trouble wore off before a little thought
of my poor friends at Magnolia. But the question came up again
at dinner.
"Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "did you ever have anything to do
with the Methodists?"
"No, ma'am," I said, wondering. "What are the Methodists?"
"I don't know, I am sure," she said, laughing; "only they are
people who sing hymns a great deal, and teach that nobody
ought to wear gay dresses."
"Why?" I asked.
"I can't say. I believe they hold that the Bible forbids
ornamenting ourselves."
I wondered if it did; and determined I would look, And I
thought the Methodists must be nice people.
"What is on the carpet now?" said the doctor. "Singing or
dressing? You are attacking Daisy, I see, on some score."
"She won't have her dress trimmed," said Mrs. Sandford.
The doctor turned round to me, with a wonderful genial
pleasant expression of his fine face; and his blue eye, that I
always liked to meet full, going through me with a sort of
soft power. He was not smiling, yet his look made me smile.
"Daisy," said he, "are you going to make yourself unlike other
people?"
"Only my dress, Dr. Sandford," I said.
"L'habit, c'est l'homme! " he answered gravely, shaking his
head.
I remembered his question and words many times in the course
of the next six months.
In a day or two more my dress was done, and Dr. Sandford went
with me to introduce me at the school. He had already made the
necessary arrangements. It was a large establishment, reckoned
the most fashionable, and at the same time one of the most
thorough, in the city; the house, or houses, standing in one
of the broad clear Avenues, where the streams of human life
that went up and down were all of the sort that wore trimmed
dresses and rolled about in handsome carriages. Just in the
centre and height of the thoroughfare Mme. Ricard's
establishment looked over it. We went in at a stately doorway,
and were shown into a very elegant parlour; where at a grand
piano a young lady was taking a music lesson. The noise was
very disagreeable; but that was the only disagreeable thing in
the place. Pictures were on the walls, a soft carpet on the
floor; the colours of carpet and furniture were dark and rich;
books and trinkets and engravings in profusion gave the look
of cultivated life and the ease of plenty. It was not what I
had expected; nor was Mme. Ricard, who came in noiselessly and
stood before us while I was considering the wonderful
moustache of the music teacher. I saw a rather short, grave
person, very plainly dressed, but indeed I never thought of
the dress she wore. The quiet composure of the figure, was
what attracted me, and the peculiar expression of the face. It
was sad, almost severe; so I thought it at first; till a smile
once for an instant broke upon the lips, like a flitting
sunbeam out of a cloudy sky; then I saw that kindliness was
quite at home there, and sympathy and a sense of merriment
were not wanting; but the clouds closed again, and the look of
care, or sorrow, I could not quite tell what it was, only that
it was unrest, retook its place on brow and lip. The eye I
think never lost it. Yet it was a searching and commanding
eye; I was sure it knew how to rule.
The introduction was soon made, and Dr. Sandford bid me good
bye. I felt as if my best friend was leaving me; the only one
I had trusted in since my father and mother had gone away. I
said nothing, but perhaps my face showed my thought, for he
stooped and kissed me.
"Good bye, Daisy. Remember, I shall expect a letter every
fortnight."
He had ordered me before to write him as often as that, and
give him a minute account of myself; how many studies I was
pursuing, how many hours I gave to them each day, what
exercise I took, and what amusement; and how I throve withal.
Mme. Ricard had offered to show me my room, and we were
mounting the long stairs while I thought this over.
"Is Dr. Sandford your cousin, Miss Randolph?" was the question
which came in upon my thoughts.
"No, ma'am," I answered in extreme surprise.
"Is he any relation to you?"
"He is my guardian."
"I think Dr. Sandford told me that your father and mother are
abroad?"
"Yes, ma'am; and Dr. Sandford is my guardian."
We had climbed two flights of stairs, and I was panting. As we
went up, I had noticed a little unusual murmur of noises which
told me I was in a new world. Little indistinguishable noises,
the stir and hum of the busy hive into which I had entered.
Now and then a door had opened, and a head or a figure came
out; but as instantly went back again on seeing Madame, and
the door was softly closed. We reached the third floor. There
a young lady appeared at the further end of the gallery, and
curtseyed to my conductress.
"Miss Bentley," said Madame, "this is your new companion, Miss
Randolph. Will you be so good as to show Miss Randolph her
room?"
Madame turned and left us, and the young lady led me into the
room she had just quitted. A large room, light and bright, and
pleasantly furnished; but the one thing that struck my
unaccustomed eyes was the evidence of fulness of occupation.
One bed stood opposite the fireplace; another across the head
of that, between it and one of the windows; a third was
between the doors on the inner side of the room. Moreover, the
first and the last of these were furnished with two pillows
each. I did not in the moment use my arithmetic; but the
feeling which instantly pressed upon me was that of want of
breath.
"This is the bed prepared for you, I believe," said my
companion civilly, pointing to the third one before the
window. "There isn't room for anybody to turn, round here
now."
I began mechanically to take off my cap and gloves, looking
hard at the little bed, and wondering what other rights of
possession were to be given me in this place. I saw a
washstand in one window and a large mahogany wardrobe on one
side of the fireplace; a dressing table or chest of drawers
between the windows. Everything was handsome and nice;
everything was in the neatest order; but where were my
clothes to go? Before I had made up my mind to ask, there came
a rush into the room; I supposed, of the other inmates. One
was a very large, fat, dull-faced girl; I should have thought
her a young woman, only that she was here in a school.
Another, bright and pretty and very good-humoured if there was
any truth ill her smiling black eyes, was much slighter and
somewhat younger; a year or two in advance of myself. The
third was a girl about my own age, shorter and smaller than I,
with also a pretty face, but an eye that I was not so sure of.
She was the last one to come in, and she immediately stopped
and looked at me; I thought, with no pleasure.
"This is Miss Randolph, girls," said Miss Bentley. "Miss
Randolph, Miss Macy."
I curtseyed to the fat girl, who gave me a little nod.
"I am glad she isn't as big as I am," was her comment on the
introduction. I was glad, too.
"Miss Lansing "
This was bright-eyes, who bowed and smiled she always smiled
and said, "How do you do?" Then rushed off to a drawer in
search of something.
"Miss St. Clair, will you come and be introduced to Miss
Randolph?"
The St. Clair walked up demurely and took my hand. Her words
were in abrupt contrast. "Where are her things going, Miss
Bentley?" I wondered that pretty lips could be so ungracious.
It was not temper which appeared on them, but cool rudeness.
"Madame said we must make some room for her," Miss Bentley
answered.
"I don't know where," remarked Miss Macy. "_I_ have not two
inches."
"She can't have a peg nor a drawer of mine," said the St.
Clair. "Don't you put her there, Bentley." And the young lady
left us with that.
"We must manage it somehow," said Miss Bentley. "Lansing, look
here, can't you take your things out of this drawer? Miss
Randolph has no place to lay anything. She must have a little
place, you know."
Lansing looked up with a perplexed face, and Miss Macy
remarked that nobody had a bit of room to lay anything.
"I am very sorry " I said.
"It is no use being sorry, child," said Miss Macy, "we have
got to fix it, somehow. I know who _ought_ to be sorry. Here I
can take this pile of things out of this drawer; that is all I
can do. Can't she manage with this half?"
But Miss Lansing came and made her arrangements, and then it
was found that the smallest of the four drawers was cleared
and ready for my occupation.
"But if we give you a whole drawer," said Miss Macy, "you must
be content with one peg in the wardrobe will you?"
"Oh, and she can have one or two hooks in the closet," said
bright-eyes. "Come here, Miss Randolph I will show you "
And there in the closet I found was another place for washing,
with cocks for hot and cold water; and a press and plenty of
iron hooks; with also plenty of dresses and hats hanging on
them. Miss Lansing moved and changed several of these, till
she had cleared a space for me.
"There " she said, "now you'll do, won't you? I don't believe
you can get a scrap of a corner in the wardrobe; Macy and
Bentley and St. Clair take it up so. _I_ haven't but one dress
hanging there, but you've got a whole drawer in the bureau."
I was not very awkward and clumsy in my belongings, but an
elephant could scarcely have been more bewildered if he had
been requested to lay his proboscis up in a glove box. "I
cannot put a dress in the drawer," I remarked.
"Oh, you can hang one up, here, under your cap; and that is
all any of us do. Our things, all except our everyday things,
go down stairs in our trunks. Have you many trunks?"
I told her no, only one. I did not know why it was a little
disagreeable to me to say that. The feeling came and passed. I
hung up my coat and cap, and brushed my hair; my new companion
looking on. Without any remark, however, she presently rushed
off, and I was left alone. I began to appreciate that. I sat
down on the side of my little bed, to my fancy the very
chairs were appropriated, and looked at my new place in the
world.
Five of us in that room! I had always had the comfort of great
space and ample conveniences about me; was it a luxury I had
enjoyed? It had seemed nothing more than a necessity. And now,
must I dress and undress myself before so many spectators?
could I not lock up anything that belonged to me? were all my
nice and particular habits to be crushed into one drawer and
smothered on one or two clothes pins? Must everything I did be
seen? And above all, where could I pray? I looked round in a
sort of fright. There was but one closet in the room, and that
was a washing closet, and held besides a great quantity of
other people's belongings. I could not, even for a moment,
shut it against them. In a kind of terror, I looked to make
sure that I was alone, and fell on my knees. It seemed to me
that all I could do was to pray every minute that I should
have to myself. They would surely be none too many. Then
hearing a footstep somewhere, I rose again and took from my
bag my dear little book. It was so small I could carry it
where I had not room for my Bible. I looked for the page of
the day, I remember now, with my eyes full of tears.
"Be watchful" were the first words that met me. Ay, I was
sure I would need it; but how was a watch to be kept up, if I
could never be alone to take counsel with myself? I did not
see it; this was another matter from Miss Pinshon's unlocked
door. After all, that door had not greatly troubled me; my
room had not been of late often invaded. Now I had no room.
What more would my dear little book say to me?
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a
roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."
Was the battle to go so hard against me? and what should I do
without that old and well-tried weapon of "all-prayer"?
Nothing; I should be conquered. I must have and keep that, I
resolved; if I lay awake and got up at night to use it. Dr.
Sandford would not like such a proceeding; but there were
worse dangers than the danger of lessened health. I _would_
pray; but what next?
"Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently." "What
I say unto you I say unto all, Watch."
I stood by the side of my bed, dashing the tears from my eyes.
Then I heard, as I thought, some one coming, and in haste
looked to see what else might be on the page; what further
message or warning. And something like a sunbeam of healing
flashed into my heart with the next words.
"Fear thou not: for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am
thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I
will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness."
"I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand."
I was healed. I put up my little book in my bag again, feeling
whole and sound. It did not matter that I was crowded and
hindered and watched; for it was written also, "He preserveth
the way of his saints;" and I was safe.
I sat a little while longer alone. Then came a rush and rustle
of many feet upon the stairs, many dresses moving, many voices
blending in a little soft roar; as ominous as the roar of the
sea which one hears in a shell. My four room-mates poured into
the room, accompanied by one or two others; very busy and
eager about their affairs that they were discussing. Meanwhile
they all began to put themselves in order.
"The bell will ring for tea directly," said Miss Macy,
addressing herself to me, "are you ready?"
"Tisn't much trouble to fix _her_ hair " said my friend with
the black eyes.
Six pair of eyes for a moment were turned upon me.
"You are too old to have your hair so," remarked Miss Bentley.
"You ought to let it grow."
"Why don't you?" said Miss Lansing.
"She is a Roundhead," said the St. Clair, brushing her own
curls; which were beautiful and crinkled all over her head,
while my hair was straight. "I don't suppose she ever saw a
Cavalier before."
"St. Clair, you are too bad!" said Miss Mary. "Miss Randolph
is a stranger."
St. Clair made no answer, but finished her hair and ran off;
and presently the others filed off after her; and a loud
clanging bell giving the signal, I thought best to go too.
Every room was pouring forth its inmates; the halls and
passages were all alive and astir. In the train of the moving
crowd, I had no difficulty to find my way to the place of
gathering.
This was the school parlour; not the one where I had seen Mme.
Ricard. Parlours, rather; there was a suite of them, three
deep; for this part of the house had a building added in the
rear. The rooms were large and handsome; not like school
rooms, I thought; and yet very different from my home; for
they were bare. Carpets and curtains, sofas and chairs and
tables, were in them to be sure; and even pictures; yet they
were bare; for books and matters of art and little social
luxuries were wanting, such as I had all my life been
accustomed to, and such as filled Mme. Ricard's own rooms.
However, this first evening I could hardly see how the rooms
looked, for the lining of humanity which ran round all the
walls. There was a shimmer as of every colour in the rainbow;
and a buzz that could only come from a hive full. I, who had
lived all my life where people spoke softly, and where many
never spoke together, was bewildered.
The buzz hushed suddenly, and I saw Mme. Ricard's figure going
slowly down the rooms. She was in the uttermost contrast to
all her household. Ladylike always, and always dignified, her
style was her own, and I am sure that nobody ever felt that
she had not enough. Yet Mme. Ricard had nothing about her that
was conformed to the fashions of the day. Her dress was of a
soft kind of serge, which fell around her or swept across the
rooms in noiseless yielding folds. Hoops were the fashion of
the day; but Mme. Ricard wore no hoops; she went with ease and
silence where others went with a rustle and a warning to clear
the way. The back of her head was covered with a little cap as
plain as a nun's cap; and I never saw an ornament about her.
Yet criticism never touched Mme. Ricard. Not even the
criticism of a set of school-girls; and I had soon to learn
that there is none more relentless.
The tea-table was set in the further room of the three. Mime.
Ricard passed down to that. Presently I heard her low voice
saying, "Miss Randolph". Low as it always was, it was always
heard. I made my way down through the rooms to her presence;
and there I was introduced to the various teachers.
Mademoiselle Genevieve, Miss Babbitt, Mme. Jupon, and Miss
Dumps. I could not examine them just then. I felt I was on
exhibition myself.
"Is Miss Randolph to come to me, Madame?" the first of these
ladies asked. She was young, bright, black-eyed, and full of
energy; I saw so much.
"I fancy she will come to all of you," said Madame. "Except
Miss Babbitt. You can write and read, I dare say, Miss
Randolph?" she went on with a smile. I answered of course.
"What have been your principal studies for the past year?"
I said, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy and history.
"Then she is mine!" exclaimed Mlle. Genevieve.
"She is older than she looks," said Miss Babbitt.
"Her hair is young, but her eyes are not," said the former
speaker; who was a lively lady.
"French have you studied?" Madame went on.
"Not so much," I said.
"Mme. Jupon will want you."
"I am sure she is a good child," said Mme. Jupon, who was a
good-natured, plain-looking Frenchwoman without a particle of
a Frenchwoman's grace or address. "I will be charmed to have
her."
"You may go back to your place, Miss Randolph," said my
mistress. "We will arrange all the rest to-morrow."
"Shall I go back with you?" asked Mlle. Genevieve. "Do you
mind going alone?"
She spoke very kindly, but I was at a loss for her meaning. I
saw the kindness; why it showed itself in such an offer I
could not imagine.
"I am very much obliged to you, ma'am," I began, when a
little burst of laughter stopped me. It came from all the
teachers; even Mme. Ricard was smiling.
"You are out for once, Genevieve," she said.
"La charmante!" said Mme. Jupon. "Voyez l'aplomb!"
"No, you don't want me," said Mlle. Genevieve nodding. "Go
you'll do."
I went back to the upper room, and presently tea was served. I
sat alone; there was nobody near me who knew me; I had nothing
to do while munching my bread and butter but to examine the
new scene. There was a great deal to move my curiosity. In the
first place, I was surprised to see the rooms gay with fine
dresses. I had come from the quiet of Magnolia, and accustomed
to the simplicity of my mother's taste; which if it sometimes
adorned me, did it always in subdued fashion, and never
flaunted either its wealth or beauty. But on every side of me
I beheld startling costumes; dresses that explained my mantua-
maker's eagerness about velvet and green leaves. I saw that
she was right; her trimmings would have been "quiet" here.
Opposite me was a brown merino, bordered with blocks of blue
silk running round the skirt. Near it was a dress of brilliant
red picked out with black cord and heavy with large black
buttons. Then a black dress caught my eye which had an
embattled trimming of black and gold, continued round the
waist and completed with a large gold buckle. Then there was a
grey cashmere with red stars and a bronze-coloured silk with
black velvet a quarter of a yard wide let into the skirt; the
body all of black velvet. I could go on, if my memory would
serve me. The rooms were full of this sort of thing. Yet more
than the dresses the heads surprised me. Just at that time the
style of hair-dressing was one of those styles which are
endurable, and perhaps even very beautiful, in the hands of a
first-rate artist and on the heads of the few women who dress
well; but which are more and more hideous the further you get
from that distant pinnacle of the mode, and the lower down
they spread among the ranks of society. I thought, as I looked
from one to another, I had never seen anything so ill in
taste, so outraged in style, so unspeakable in ugliness as
well as in pretension. I supposed then it was the fashion
principally which was to blame. Since then, I have seen the
same fashion on one of those heads that never wear anything
but in good style. It gathered a great wealth of rich hair
into a mass at the back of the head, yet leaving the top and
front of the hair in soft waves; and the bound up mass behind
was loose and soft and flowed naturally from the head; it had
no hard outline nor regular shape; it was nature's luxuriance
just held in there from bursting down over neck and shoulders;
and hardly that, for some locks were almost escaping. The
whole was to the utmost simple, natural, graceful, rich. But
these caricatures! All that they knew was to mass the hair at
the back of the head; and that fact was attained. But some
looked as if they had a hard round cannon-ball fastened there;
others suggested a stuffed pincushion, ready for pins; others
had a mortar shell in place of a cannon-ball, the size was so
enormous; in nearly all, the hair was strained tight over or
under something; in not one was there an effect which the
originator of the fashion would not have abhorred. Girlish
grace was nowhere to be seen, either in heads or persons;
girlish simplicity had no place. It was a school; but the
company looked fitter for the stiff assemblages of ceremony
that should be twenty years later in their lives.
My heart grew very blank. I felt unspeakably alone; not merely
because there was nobody there whom I knew, but because there
was nobody whom it seemed to me I ever should know. I took my
tea and bits of bread and butter, feeling forlorn. A year in
that place seemed to me longer than I could bear. I had
exchanged my King Log for King Stork.
It was some relief when after tea we were separated into other
rooms and sat down to study. But I dreamed over my book. I
wondered how heads could study that had so much trouble on the
outside. I wandered over the seas to that spot somewhere that
was marked by the ship that carried my father and another.
Only now going out towards China; and low long months might
pass before China would be lone with and the ship be bearing
them back again. The lesson given me that night was not
difficult enough to bind my attention; and my heart grew very
heavy. So heavy, that I felt I must find help somewhere. And
when one's need is so shut in, then it looks in the right
quarter the only one left open.
My little book was up stairs in my bag; but my thoughts flew
to my page of that day and the "Fear thou not, for I am with
thee." Nobody knows, who has not wanted them, how good those
words are. Nobody else can understand how sweet they were to
me. I lost for a little all sight of the study table and the
faces round it. I just remembered who was WITH ME; in the
freedom and joy of that presence both fears and loneliness
seemed to fade away. "I, the Lord, will hold thy right hand."
Yes, and I, a poor little child, put my hand in the hand of my
great Leader, and felt safe and strong.
I found very soon I had enemies to meet that I had not yet
reckoned with. The night passed peacefully enough; and the
next day I was put in the schoolroom and found my place in the
various classes. The schoolrooms were large and pleasant;
large they had need to be, for the number of day scholars who
attended in them was very great. They were many as well as
spacious; different ages being parted off from each other.
Besides the schoolrooms proper, there were rooms for
recitation, where the classes met their teachers; so we had
the change and variety of moving from one part of the house to
another. We met Mlle. Genevieve in one room, for mathematics
and Italian; Mme. Jupon in another, for French. Miss Dumps
seized us in another, for writing and geography, and made the
most of us; she was a severe little person in her teaching and
in her discipline; but she was good. We called her Miss Maria,
in general. Miss Babbitt had the history; and she did nothing
to make it intelligible or interesting. My best historical
times thus far, by much, had been over my clay map and my red-
headed and black-headed pins, studying the changes of England
and her people. But Mlle. Genevieve put a new life into
mathematics. I could never love the study; but she made it a
great deal better than Miss Pinshon made it. Indeed I believe
that to learn anything under Mlle. Genevieve, would have been
pleasant. She had so much fire and energy; she taught with
such a will; her black eyes were so keen both for her pupils
and her subject. One never thought of the discipline in Mlle.
Genevieve's room, but only of the study. I was young to be
there, in the class where she put me; but my training had
fitted me for it. With Mme. Jupon also I had an easy time. She
was good nature itself, and from the first showed a particular
favour and liking for me. And as I had no sort of wish to
break rules, with Miss Maria too I got on well. It was out of
school and out of study hours that my difficulties came upon
me.
For a day or two I did not meet them. I was busy with the
school routine, and beginning already to take pleasure in it.
Knowledge was to be had here; lay waiting to be gathered up;
and that gathering I always enjoyed. Miss Pinshon had kept me
on short allowance. It was the third or fourth day after my
arrival, that going up after dinner to get ready for a walk I
missed my chinchilla cap from its peg. I sought for it in
vain.
"Come, Daisy," said Miss Lansing, make haste. Babbitt will be
after you directly if you aren't ready. Put on your cap."
"I can't find it," I said. "I left it here, in its place, but
I can't find it."
There was a burst of laughter from three of my room-mates, as
Miss St. Clair danced out from the closet with the cap on her
own brows; and then with a caper of agility, taking it off,
flung it up to the chandelier, where it hung on one of the
burners.
"For shame, Faustina, that's too bad. How call she get it?"
said Miss Bentley.
"I don't want her to get it," said the St. Clair coolly.
"Then how can she go to walk?"
"I don't want her to go to walk."
"Faustina, that isn't right. Miss Randolph is a stranger; you
shouldn't play tricks on her."
"Roundheads were always revolutionists," said the girl
recklessly. "_A la lanterne!_ Heads or hats it don't signify
which. That is an example of what our Madame calls
'symbolism.' "
"Hush sh! Madame would call it something else. Now how are
we going to get the cap down?"
For the lamp hung high, having been pushed up out of reach for
the day. The St. Clair ran off, and Miss Macy followed; but
the two others consulted, and Lansing ran down to waylay the
chambermaid and beg a broom. By the help of the broom handle
my cap was at length dislodged from its perch, and restored to
me. But I was angry. I felt the fiery current running through
my veins; and the unspeakable saucy glance of St. Clair's eye,
as I passed her to take my place in the procession, threw fuel
on the fire. I think for years I had not been angry in such a
fashion. The indignation I had at different times felt against
the overseer at Magnolia was a justifiable thing. Now I was
angry and piqued. The feeling was new to me. I had been
without it very long. I swallowed the ground with my feet
during that walk; but before the walk came to an end the
question began to come up in my mind, what was the matter? and
whether I did well? These sprinklings of water on the flame I
think made it leap into new life at first; but as they came
and came again, I had more to think about than St. Clair, when
I got back to the house. Yes, and as we were all taking off
our things together I was conscious that I shunned her; that
the sight of her was disagreeable; and that I would have liked
to visit some gentle punishment upon her careless head. The
bustle of business swallowed up the feeling for the rest of
the time till we went to bed.
But then it rose very fresh, and I began to question myself
about it in the silence and darkness. Finding myself inclined
to justify myself, I bethought me to try this new feeling by
some of the words I had been studying in my little book for a
few days past. "The entrance of Thy words giveth light" was
the leading test for the day that had just gone; now I thought
I would try it in my difficulty. The very nest words on the
page, I remembered were these. "God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all."
It came into my mind as soon, that this feeling of anger and
resentment which troubled me had to do with darkness, not with
the light. In vain I reasoned; to prove the contrary; I _felt_
dark. I could not look up to that clear white light where God
dwells, and feel at all that I was "walking in the light as He
is in the light." Clearly Daisy Randolph was out of the way.
And I went on with bitterness of heart to the next words "Ye
_were_ sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord; walk
as children of light."
And what then? was I to pass by quietly the insolence of St.
Clair? was I to take it quite quietly, and give no sign even
of annoyance? take no means of showing my displeasure, or of
putting a stop to the naughtiness that called it forth? My
mind put these questions impatiently, and still, as it did so,
an answer came from somewhere, "Walk as children of light."
I _knew_ that children of light would reprove darkness only with
light; and a struggle began. Other words came into my head
then, which made the matter only clearer. "If any man smite
thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other." "Love your
enemies." Ah, but how could I? with what should I put out this
fire kindled in my heart, which seemed only to burn the
fiercer whatever I threw upon it? And then, other words still
came sweeping upon me with their sweetness, and I remembered
who had said, "I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee."
I softly got out of bed, wrapped the coverlid round me, and
knelt down to pray. For I had no time to lose. To-morrow I
must meet my little companion, and to-morrow I _must_ be ready
to walk as a child of light, and to-night the fires of
darkness were burning in my heart. I was long on my knees. I
remember, in a kind of despair at last I flung myself on the
word of Jesus, and cried to Him as Peter did when he saw the
wind boisterous. I remember, how the fire died out in my
heart, till the very coals were dead; and how the day and the
sunlight came stealing in, till it was all sunshine. I gave my
thanks, and got into bed, and slept without a break the rest
of the night.