Alice did not feel the utter loneliness of her situation, until, as she
walked along, square after square, she encountered so many hundreds of
abstracted or curious or impudent faces, and reflected that it was upon
such people that her future support and comfort would depend. She tried
to discover in some countenance the impress of kindly benevolence;--not
that she proposed to risk so much as a question; but it was her first
experience with the busy world, and she wished to observe its ways,
when neither relationship nor personal interest was involved. Small
encouragement she would have felt to approach any that she met. Men of
middle-age walked by as in dreams, cold, unobservant, listless; the
younger ones, fuller of life, strode on with high heads, and flinging
glances that were harder to bear than stony indifference, even. Ladies
clothed in costly furs scanned the pretty face under the mourning bonnet
with prying eyes, or tossed her a hasty, scornful look. Shop-girls
giggled and stared. Boys rushed by, rudely jostling every passenger.
Old women in scanty petticoats that were fringed by no dressmaker, with
pinched faces and watery eyes, looked imploringly and hobbled along,
wrapping parcels of broken victual under their faded shawls.--A sorry
world Alice thought it. In the country, she had been used to receive a
kindly bow or a civil "Good-morning!" from every person she met; and the
isolation of the individual in the city was to her something unnatural,
even appalling.
She had cut out some boarding-house advertisements from the daily
papers, and her first care was to find a home suited to her slender
means. Reaching the door of the first on her list, she rang and was
shown into a small drawing-room, shabby-genteel in its furniture and
ornaments. Two seamstresses sat chattering around the centre-table;
while a ruddy young man, with greenish brown moustaches and sandy hair,
rested his clumsy boots on the fender, holding an open music-book in his
lap and a flute in his ill-kept and gaudily-ringed hands. The kitchen,
apparently, was not ventilated; and a mingled odor, beyond the analysis
of chemistry, came up into the entry and pervaded the hot and confined
atmosphere of the room. The landlady, a stout and resolute woman,
entered with a studied smile, which changed gradually to a cold
civility. Her eyes, unlike Banquo's, had a deal of speculation in them.
One might read the price-current in the busy wrinkles. Around her
pursed-up mouth lurked the knowledge of the number of available slices
in a sirloin,--the judgment of the lump of butter that should leave no
margin for prodigality. Warfare with market-men, shrewish watchfulness
over servants, economy scarcely removed from meanness at the table, all
were clearly indicated in her flushed and hard-featured face.
Alice was not familiar with such people; but she shrank from her by
instinct, as the first chicken fled from the first hawk. The landlady,
on her part, was equally suspicious, and, finding that Alice had no
relatives to depend upon, and that she expected to earn her own living,
was not at all solicitous to increase the number of her boarders.
"It's pootty hard to tell who's who, now-a-days," she said. "I have to
pay cash for all I set on the table, and I can't trust to fair promises.
Perhaps, though, you've got some _cousin_ that looks arter your bills?"
The flute-player exchanged knowing glances with the seamstresses.
All-unconscious of the taunt, Alice simply replied,--
"No, I have told you that I have no one to depend upon."
The landlady's mouth was primly set, and she merely exclaimed,--
"Oh! indeed!"
"I think I'll look further," said Alice. "Good-morning."
"Good-morning."
Half-suppressed chuckles followed her, as she left the room. Sorely
grieved and indignant, she took her way to another house. Fortune this
time favored her. The landlady, a kind-hearted woman, was in mourning
for her only daughter, and with the first words she heard she felt
her heart drawn to the lovely and soft-voiced stranger. Without any
offensive inquiries, Alice was at once received, and an upper room
assigned to her. After sending for her trunk, she dressed for dinner.
The table presented specimens of all the familiar characters of
boarding-house life. There was the lawyer, sharp, observant, talkative,
ready for a joke or an argument. There was the solemn man of business,
who ate from a sense of duty, and scowled at the lawyer's bad puns. Near
him, with an absurdly youthful wig and opaque goggles, sat the Unknown;
his name, occupation, resources, and tastes alike a profound mystery.
Several dapper clerks, whose right ears drooped from having been used as
pen-racks, wearing stunning cravats, _outré_ brooches and shirt-studs,
learned in the lore of "two-forty" driving, were ranged opposite. Then
there was the jolly widow, who was the admiration of men of her own age,
but who cruelly gave all her smiles to the boys with newly-sprouting
chins. Near her sat the fastidious man, whose nostrils curled ominously
when any stain appeared on his napkin, or when anything sullied the
virgin purity of his own exclusive fork. His spectacles seemed to serve
as microscopes, made for the sole purpose of detecting some fatal speck
invisible to other eyes. There was the singer, with a neck like
a swan's, bowing with the gracious air that is acquired in the
acknowledgment of bouquets and _bravas_. The artist was her _vis-à-vis_,
powerful like Samson in his bushy locks, negligent with fore-thought,
wearing a massive seal-ring, and fragrant with the perfume of countless
pipes. The nice old maid near him turns away in disgust when she sees
his moustaches draggle in the soup.
Down the long row of faces Alice looked timidly, and at length fastened
her eyes upon a lady in mourning like herself. There is no physiognomist
like the frank, affectionate young man or woman who looks to find
appreciation and sympathy. It is not necessary, for such a purpose, to
speculate upon Grecian or Roman noses, thin or protruding lips, blue,
gray, or brown eyes; each soul knows its own sphere and the people that
belong in it; and a sure instinct or prescience guides us in our choice
of friends. Alice at a glance became conscious of an affinity, and
quietly waited till circumstances should bring her into associations
with the woman whom she hoped to make a friend.
It was not long before the occasion came. Not to make any mystery, it
was our old acquaintance, Mrs. Sandford, who attracted the gaze of
Alice, and who soon became her kindly adviser. Never was there a more
_motherly_ woman; and, as she was now almost a stranger in the house,
she attached herself to Alice with a warmth and an unobtrusive
solicitude that quite won the girl's heart. Alice lost no time in
procuring such work from a tailor as she felt competent to do, and
applied herself diligently to her task; but a very short trial convinced
her, that, at the "starvation prices" then paid for needlework, she
should not be able to earn even her board. Then came in the thoughtful
friend, who, after gently drawing out the facts of the case, furnished
her with sewing on which she could display her taste and skill. Day
after day new employment came through the same kind hands, until Alice
wondered how one wearer could want such a quantity of the various
nameless, tasteful articles in which all women feel so much pride.
It was not until long after, that she learned how the work had been
procured by her friend's active, but noiseless agency.
Not many days after their intimacy commenced, as Mrs. Sandford sat
watching Alice at her work, it occurred to her that there was a look of
tender sorrow, an unexplained melancholy, which her recent bereavement
did not wholly account for. Not that the girl was given to romantic
sighs or tragic starts, or that she carried a miniature for lachrymose
exercises; but it was evident that she had what we term "a history." She
was frank and cheerful, although there was palpably something kept
back, and her cheerfulness was like the mournful beauty of flowers that
blossom over graves. No sympathetic nature could refuse confidence to
Mrs. Sandford, and it was not long before she discovered that Alice had
passed through the golden gate to which all footsteps tend, and from
which no one comes back except with a change that colors all the after
life.
"And so you are in love, poor child!" said Mrs. Sandford,
compassionately.
"I have been" (with a gentle emphasis).
"Ah, you think you are past it now, I suppose?"
"I sha'n't _forget_ soon,--I could not, if I would; but love is
over,--gone like yesterday's sunshine."
"But the sun shines again to-day."
"Well, if you prefer another comparison," said Alice, smiling
faintly,--"gone out like yesterday's fire."
"Fire lurks a long time in the ashes unseen, my dear."
Alice dropped her needle and looked steadily at her companion.
"I am young," she said; "yet I have outgrown the school-girl period.
The current of my life has flowed in a deep channel: the shallow little
brook may fancy its first spring-freshet to be a Niagara; but my
feelings have swelled with no transient overflow. I gave my utmost love
and devotion to a man I thought worthy. He treated me with neglect, and
at last falsified his word in offering his hand to another, I do not
hate him. I have none of that alchemy which changes despised love to
gall. But I could never forgive him, nor trust him again. And if he,
who seemed always so frank, so earnest, so tender, so single in his
aims,--if he could not be trusted, I do not know where I could rest my
heart and say,--'Here I am safe, whatever betide!'"
It was a strange thing for Alice to speak in such an exalted strain, and
she trembled as she tried to resume her sewing. The thread slipped and
knotted; the needle broke and pricked her finger; and then, feeling her
cheeks begin to glow, she laid down her work and turned to the window.
"Don't lose _all_ faith, Alice; there are true hearts in the world.
Perhaps this lover of yours, now, has repented and is striving to find
you. Or you may have been misinformed as to the extent of his treachery.
To take your own simile, you don't accuse the brook of fickleness merely
because it eddies around under some flowery bank; after it has made the
circle, it keeps on its steady course."
Alice only shook her head, still keeping her face averted to conceal the
tremor of her lips.
"But you haven't told me who this man is. How odd it would be, if I knew
him!"
"I would rather not have you know. The secret isn't a fatal one, to be
sure; but I prefer to keep it."
Suddenly she stepped back from the window, ashy pale, and gasping
hysterically. Mrs. Sandford rose hastily to assist her, and, as she
did so, noticed her old acquaintance, Mr. Greenleaf, on the opposite
sidewalk. She helped Alice to her seat and brought her a glass of
water, and, as she did so, in an instant the long track of the past was
illumined as by a flash of lightning. She saw the reason for Greenleaf's
conduct towards her sister-in-law, Marcia. She remembered his early
fascination, his long, vacillating resistance, his brief engagement, and
the stormy scene when it was broken. She had seen the thread of Fate
spun for each, without knowing that invisible strands connected them.
She had begun to read a tale of sorrow, but the page was torn, and now
she had finished it upon the chance-found fragment; the irregular and
jagged edges fitted together like mosaic-work.
What a mystery is Truth! A Lie may simulate its form or hue, and, taken
by itself, may deceive the most acute observer. But in the affairs of
the world, every fact is related; it meets and is joined by other facts
on every side,--the whole forming an harmonious figure in all its angles
and curves as well as in its gradations of color. Each truth slips
easily into its predestined place; a lie, however trivial, has no place;
its angles are belligerent, its colors false; it makes confusion, and is
thrown out as soon as the eye of the Master falls upon it.
Alice revived.
"Did I speak?" she asked.
"No,--you said nothing."
"I am glad. I feared I had been foolish. It was a mere passing
faintness."
Mrs. Sandford thought it was the _cause_ of the faintness that was
passing, but she prudently kept her discovery to herself.