“After a holiday comes a rest day.” The astuteness of this proverb
continually proved itself in Vagabondia, and this was more particularly
the case when the holiday had been Dolly's, inasmuch as Dolly was
invariably called upon to “fight her battles o'er again,” and recount
her experiences the day following a visit, for the delectation of the
household. Had there appeared in the camps a Philistine of notoriety,
then that Philistine must play his or her part again through the medium
of Dolly's own inimitable powers of description or representation;
had any little scene occurred possessing a spice of flavoring, or
illustrating any Philistine peculiarity, then Dolly was quite equal to
the task of putting it upon the family stage, and re-enacting it with
iniquitous seasonings and additions of her own. And yet the fun was
never of an ill-natured sort. When Dolly gave them a correct embodiment
of Lady Augusta in reception of her guests, with an accurate description
of the “great Copper-Boiler costume,” the bursts of applause meant
nothing more than that Dolly's imitative gifts were in good condition,
and that the “great Copper-Boiler costume” was a success. Then, the
feminine mind being keenly alive to an interest in earthly vanities, an
enlargement on Philistine adornments was considered necessary, and Dolly
always rendered herself popular by a minute description of the reigning
fashions, as displayed by the Bilberry element. She found herself quite
repaid for the trouble of going into detail, by the unsophisticated
pleasure in Mollie's eyes alone, for to Mollie outward furnishings
seemed more than worthy of description and discussion.
Accordingly, the morning after Lady Augusta's _conversazione_, Dolly
gave herself up to the task of enlivening the household. It was Saturday
morning, fortunately, and on Saturday her visits to the Bilberry mansion
were dispensed with, so she was quite at liberty to seat herself by
the fire, with Tod in her arms, and recount the events of the evening.
Somehow or other, she had almost regarded him as a special charge
from the first. She had always been a favorite with him, as she was a
favorite with most children. She was just as natural and thoroughly at
home with Tod in her arms, or clambering over her feet, or clutching at
the trimmings of her dress, as she was under any other circumstances;
and when on this occasion Griffith came in at noon to hear the news, and
found her kneeling upon the carpet with outstretched hands teaching the
pretty little tottering fellow to walk, he felt her simply irresistible.
“Come to Aunt Dolly,” she was saying. “Tod, come to Aunt Dolly.” And
then she looked up laughing. “Look at him, Griffith,” she said. “He has
walked all the way from that arm-chair.” And then she made a rush at
the child, and caught him in her arms with a little whirl, and jumped
up with such a light-hearted enjoyment of the whole affair that it was
positively exciting to look at her.
It was quite natural--indeed, it would have been quite unnatural if she
had not found her usual abiding-place in her lover's encircling arm
at once, even with Tod conveniently established on one of her own,
and evidently regarding his own proximity upon such an occasion as
remarkable if nothing else. That arm of Griffith's usually _did_ slip
around her waist even at the most ordinary times, and long use had
so accustomed Dolly to the habit that she would have experienced some
slight feeling of astonishment if the familiarity had been omitted.
It was rather a surprise to the young man to find that Miss MacDowlas
had appeared upon the scene, and that she had partaken of coffee and
conversation in the flesh the evening before.
“But it's just like her,” he said. “She is the sort of relative who
always _does_ turn up unexpectedly, Dolly. How does she look?”
“Juvenescent,” said Dolly; “depressingly so to persons who rely upon her
for the realizing of expectations. A very few minutes satisfied me that
I should never become Mrs. Griffith Donne upon _her_ money. It is a
very fortunate thing for us that we are of Vagabondian antecedents,
Griffith,--just see how we might trouble ourselves, and wear our
patience out over Miss MacDowlas, if we troubled ourselves about
anything. This being utterly free from the care of worldly possessions
makes one touchingly disinterested. Since we have nothing to expect, we
are perfectly willing to wait until we get it.”
She had thought so little about Ralph Gowan,--once losing sight of
him, as he stood watching her on the pavement, that in discussing other
subjects she had forgotten to mention him, and it was only Mollie's
entrance into the room that brought him upon the carpet.
Coming in, with her hair bunched up in a lovely, disorderly knot, and
the dimple on her left cheek artistically accentuated by a small patch
of black, the youngest Miss Crewe yet appeared to advantage, when, after
appropriating Tod, she slipped down into a sitting posture with him on
the carpet, in the midst of the amplitude of folds of Lady Augusta's
once gorgeous wrapper.
“Have you told him about the great Copper-Boiler costume, Dolly?” she
said, bending down so that one brown tress hung swaying before Tod's
eyes. “Has she, Griffith?”
“Yes,” answered Griffith, looking at her with a vague sense of
admiration. He shared all Dolly's enthusiasm on the subject of Mollie's
prettiness.
“Was n't it good? I wish I was as cool as Dolly is. And poor Phemie--and
the gentleman who made love to you all the evening, Dolly. What was his
name? Was n't it Gowan?”
Griffith's eyes turned toward Dolly that instant.
“Gowan!” he exclaimed. “You didn't say anything about him. You didn't
even say he was there.”
“Did n't she?” said Mollie, looking up with innocently wide-open eyes.
“Why, he made love to her all--”
“I wish you would n't talk such rubbish, Mollie,” Dolly interrupted
her--a trifle sharply because she understood the cloud on her lover's
face so well. “Who said Mr. Gowan made love to me? Not I, you may be
sure. I told you he talked to me, and that was all.”
“You did not tell _me_ that much,” said Griffith, dryly.
It would scarcely have been human nature for Dolly not to have fired a
little then, in spite of herself. She was constitutionally good-natured,
but she was not seraphic, and her lover's rather excusable jealousy
was specially hard to bear, when, as upon this occasion, it had no real
foundation.
“I did not think it necessary,” she said; “and, besides, I forgot;
but if you wish to know the particulars,” with a stiff little air
of dignity, “I can give them you. Mr. Gowan was there, and found the
evening stupid, as every one else did. There was no one else to talk to,
so he talked to me, and when I came home he put me into the cab. And,
the fact is, he is a good-natured Philistine enough. That is all, I
believe, unless you would like me to try to record all he said.”
“No, thank you,” answered Griffith, and instantly began to torture
himself with imagining what he really had said, making the very natural
mistake of imagining what he would have said himself, and then giving
Ralph Gowan credit for having perpetrated like tender gallantries. He
never could divest himself of the idea that every living man found
Dolly as entrancing as he found her himself. It could only be one man's
bitter-sweet portion to be as desperately and inconsolably in love with
her as he was himself, and no other than himself, or a man who might be
his exact prototype, could have cherished a love at once so strong and
so weak. There had been other men who had loved Dolly Crewe,---adored
her for a while, in fact, and imagined themselves wretches because they
had been unsuccessful; but they had generally outlived their despair,
and their adoration, cooling for want of sustenance, had usually settled
down into a comfortable admiring liking for the cause of their
misery, but it would never have been so with Griffith. This ordinary,
hard-working, ill-paid young man had passionate impulse and hidden power
of suffering enough in his restive nature to make a broken hope a
broken life to him. His long-cherished love for the shabbily attired,
often-snubbed, dauntless young person yclept Dorothea Crewe was the
mainspring of his existence. He would have done daring deeds of valor
for her sake, if circumstances had called upon him to comport himself
in such tragic manner; had he been a knight of olden time, he would just
have been the chivalrous, hotheaded, but affectionate young man to have
entered the lists in his love's behalf, and tilted against tremendous
odds, and died unvanquished; but living in the nineteenth century, his
impetuosity, being necessarily restrained, became concentrated upon one
point, and chafed him terribly at times. Without Dolly, he would have
been without an object in life; with Dolly, he was willing to face
any amount of discouragement and misfortune; and at this stage of his
affection--after years of belief in that far-off blissful future--to
lose her would have brought him wreck and ruin.
So when Dolly, in the full consciousness of present freedom from
iniquity, withdrew herself from his encircling arm and turned her
attention to Tod and Mollie, he was far more wretched than he had any
right to be, and stood watching them, and gnawing his slender mustache,
gloomy and distrustful.
But this could not last long, of course. They might quarrel, but they
always made friends; and when in a short time Mollie, doubtless feeling
herself a trifle in the way, left the room with the child, Dolly's
impulsive warm-heartedness got the better of her upon this occasion as
upon all others.
She came back to her lover's side and laid her hand on his arm.
“Don't let us quarrel about Ralph Gowan, Griffith,” she said. “It was my
fault; I ought to have told you.”
He fairly crushed her in his remorseful embrace almost before she had
finished her appeal. His distrust of her was as easily overcome as it
was roused; one touch of her hand, one suspicion of a tremor in her
voice, always conquered him and reduced him to penitent submission.
“You are an angel,” he said, “and I am an unfeeling clod. No other woman
would bear with me as you do. God bless you, Dolly.”
She nestled within his arms and took his caresses almost gratefully.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to have shown him how deep a sting his
want of faith gave her sometimes, but she was always so glad when their
misunderstandings were at an end, that she would not have so revenged
herself upon him for the world. The cool, audacious self she exhibited
in the camps of the Philistines was never shown to Griffith; in her
intercourse with him she was only a slightly intensified edition of the
child he had fallen in love with years before,--a bright, quick-witted
child, with a deep nature and an immense faculty for loving and clinging
to people. Dolly at twenty-two was pretty much what she had been at
fifteen, when they had quarrelled and made up again, loved each other
and romanced over the future brilliancy of prospect which now seemed
just as far off as ever.
In five minutes after the clearing away of the temporary cloud, they
were in a seventh heaven of bliss, as usual. In some of his wanderings
about town, Griffith had met with a modest house, which would have been
the very thing for them if they had possessed about double the income of
which they were at present in receipt. He often met with houses of this
kind; they seemed, in fact, to present themselves to his longing vision
every week of his life; and I think it rather to his credit to mention
that he never failed to describe them to Dolly, and enlarge upon their
merits with much eloquence. Furniture warehouses also were a source of
some simple pleasure to them. _If_ they possessed the income (not that
they had the remotest prospect of possessing it), and rented the house,
naturally they would require furniture, and it was encouraging to
know that the necessary articles might be bought _if_ the money was
forthcoming. Consequently a low-priced table or a cheap sofa was a
consolation, if not a source of rejoicing, and their happiest hours were
spent in counting the cost of parlor carpets never to be purchased,
and window curtains of thin air. They even economized sternly in minor
matters, and debated the expenditure of an extra shilling as closely as
if it had been a matter entailing the deepest anxiety; and on the whole,
perhaps, practical persons might have condemned their affectionate,
hopeful weakness as childish and nonsensical, but they were happy in the
indulgence of it, at all events, and surely they might have been engaged
in a less tender and more worldly pastime. There were other people,
perhaps, weak and imprudent themselves it may be, who would have seen a
touch of simple pathos in this unconsciously shown faith in Fortune and
her not too kindly moods.
“Old Flynn ought to raise my salary, you know, Dolly,” said Griffith. “I
work hard enough for him, confound him!” somewhat irrelevantly, but with
laudable and not unamiable vigor. He meant no harm to “Old Flynn;” he
would have done a good-natured thing for him at any moment, the mild
expletive was simply the result of adopted custom. “There is n't a
fellow in the place who does as much as I do. I worked from seven in
the morning till midnight every day last week, and I wrote half his
editorials for him, and nobody knows he does n't get them up himself. If
he would only give me two hundred instead of one, just see how we could
live.”
“We could live on a hundred and fifty,” put in Dolly, with an air of
practical speculation which did her credit, “if we were economical.”
“Well, say a hundred and fifty, then,” returned Griffith, quite as
seriously, “for we should be economical. Say a hundred and fifty. It
would be nothing to him,--confound him!--but it would be everything in
the world to us. That house in the suburbs was only thirty pounds,
taxes and all, and it was just the very thing we should want if we were
married.”
“How many rooms?” asked Dolly.
“Six, and kitchen and cupboards and all that sort of contrivances. I
asked particularly--went to see the landlord to inquire and see what
repairing he would do if we wanted the place. There is a garden of a
few yards in the front, too, and one or two rose-bushes. I don't know
whether they ever bloom, but if they do, you could wear them in your
hair. I thought of that the minute I saw them. The first time I saw you,
Dolly, you had a rose in your hair, and I remember thinking I had never
seen a flower worn in the same way. Other girls do n't wear things as
you wear them somehow or other.”
Dolly acknowledged the compliment with a laugh and a coaxing,
patronizing little squeeze of his arm.
“You think they don't,” she said, “you affectionate old fellow, that is
it. Well, and what did the landlord say? Would he beautify?”
“Well, yes, I think he would if the matter was pressed,” said Griffith,
returning to the subject with a vigor of enjoyment inspiriting to
behold. “And, by the way, Dolly, I saw a small sofa at a place in town
which was just the right size to fit into a sort of alcove there is in
the front parlor.”
“Did you inquire the price?” said Dolly.
“Well--no,” cheerfully; “but I can, if you would like to know it. You
see, I had n't any money, and did n't know when I should have any, and
I felt rather discouraged at the time, and I had an idea the price would
make me feel worse, so I did not go in. But it was a comfortable, plump
little affair, covered with green,--the sort of thing I should like to
have in our house, when we have one. It would be so comfortable to throw
one's self down on to after a hard day's work, particularly if one had a
headache.”
“Yes,” said Dolly; and then, half unconsciously and quite in spite of
herself, the ghost of a sigh escaped her. She could not help wishing
things were a trifle more real sometimes, bright and whimsically
unworldly as she was.
“What did that mean?” Griffith asked her.
She wakened up, as it were, and looked as happy as ever in an instant,
creeping a trifle closer to him in her loving anxiety to blind him to
the presence of the little pain in her heart.
“Nothing,” she said, briskly. And then--“We don't want much, do we,
Griffith?”
“No,” said Griffith, a certain grim sense of humor getting the better of
him. “And we have n't got it.”
She laughed outright at the joke quite enjoyably. Even the grimmest of
jocosities wins its measure of respect in Vagabondia, and besides,
her laugh removed the impression her sigh might have created. She was
herself again at once.
“Never mind,” she said. (It was always “never mind.”) “Never mind, it
will all come right in the end. Humble merit _must_ be rewarded, and if
humble merit isn't, we can only console ourselves with the reasonable
reflection that there must be something radically wrong with the state
of society. Who knows whether you may not 'get into something,' as Phil
says, which may be twenty times better than anything Old Flynn can give
you!” with characteristic Vagabondian hopefulness.
Just at this juncture Phil himself entered, or, rather, half entered,
for he only put his head--a comely, curled head surmounted by a
disreputable velvet cap--half into the room.
“Oh, you are here, are you?” he said. “You are the fellow I want. I am
just touching up something I want to show you. Come into the studio for
a minute or so, Grif.”
“It is that picture Mollie sat for,” he explained, as they followed him
into the big, barren room, dignified by the name of studio. “I have just
finished it.”
Mollie was standing before the picture herself when they went in to look
at it, but she did not turn round on hearing them. She had Tod in her
arms yet, but she seemed to have forgotten his very existence in her
preoccupation. And it was scarcely to be wondered at. The picture was
only a head,--Mollie's own fresh, drowsy-eyed face standing out in
contrast under some folds of dark drapery thrown over the brown hair
like a monk's cowl, two or three autumn-tinted oak leaves clinging to
a straying tress,--but it was effective and novel enough to be a
trifle startling. And Mollie was looking at it with a growing shadow of
pleasure in her expression. She was slowly awakening to a sense of its
beauty, and she was by no means dissatisfied.
“It is lovely!” Dolly cried out, enthusiastically.
“So it is,” said Griffith. “And as like her as art can make it. It's a
success, Phil.”
Phil stepped back with a critical air to give it a new inspection.
“Yes, it is a success,” he said. “Just give me a chance to get it hung
well, and it will draw a crowd next season. You shall have a new dress
if it does, Mollie, and you shall choose it yourself.”
Mollie roused herself for a moment, and lighted up.
“Shall I?” she said; and then all at once she blushed in a way that
made Dolly stare at her in some wonder. It seemed queer to think that
Mollie--careless child Mollie--was woman enough to blush over anything.
And then Aimée and 'Toinette came in, and looked on and admired just as
openly and heartily as the rest, only Aimée was rather the more reticent
of the two, and cast furtive glances at Mollie now and then. But Mollie
was in a new mood, and had very little to say; and half an hour after,
when her elder sister went into the family sitting-room, she found her
curled up in an easy-chair by the fire, looking reflective. Dolly went
to the hearth and stood near her.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
Mollie stirred uneasily, and half blushed again.
“I don't know,” she answered.
“Yes, you do,” contradicted Dolly, good-naturedly. “Are you thinking
that it is a pleasant sort of a thing to be handsome enough to be made a
picture of, Mollie?”
The brown eyes met hers with an innocent sort of deprecating
consciousness. “I--I never thought about myself in that way before,”
admitted Mollie, naively.
“Why,” returned Dolly, quite sincerely, “you must have looked in the
glass.”
“Ye-es,” with a slow shake of the head; “but it did n't look the same
way in the glass,--it did n't look as nice.”
Dolly regarded her with a surprise which was not unmingled with
affectionate pity. She was not as unsophisticated as Mollie, and never
had been. As the feminine head of the family, she had acquired a certain
shrewdness early in life, and had taken a place in the household the
rest were hardly equal to. There had been no such awakening as this for
her. At fourteen, she had been fully and complacently conscious of the
exact status of her charms and abilities, physical and mental. She had
neither under-nor over-rated them. She had smiled back at her reflection
in her mirror, showing two rows of little milk-white teeth, and being
well enough satisfied with being a charming young person with a secure
complexion and enviable self-poise. She understood herself, and
attained perfection in the art of understanding others. Her rather
sharp experience had not allowed _her_ to look in the glass in guileless
ignorance of what she saw there, and perhaps this made her all the
fonder of Mollie.
“What kind of a dress are you going to choose if Phil buys you one?” she
asked.
“Maroon,” answered Mollie. “Oh!” with a little shuddering breath of
desperate delight, “how I wish I could have a maroon silk!”
Dolly shook her head doubtfully.
“It wouldn't be serviceable, because you could only have the one, and
you could n't wear it on wet days,” she said.
“I should n't care about its being serviceable,” burst forth innocent
Vagabondia, rebelling against the trammels of prudence. “I want
something pretty. I do so detest serviceable things. I would stay in the
house all the wet days if I might have a maroon silk to wear when it was
fine.”
“She is beginning to long for purple and fine linen,” sighed Dolly, as
she ran up to her bedroom afterward. “The saints forefend! It is a bad
sign. She will fall in love the next thing. Poor, indiscreet little
damsel!”
But, despite her sage lamentations, there was even at that moment a plan
maturing in her mind which was an inconsistent mixture of Vagabondia's
goodnature and whim. Mollie's fancy for the maroon silk had struck her
as being artistic, and there was not a Crewe among them who had not
a weakness for the artistic in effect. Tod himself was imaginatively
supposed to share it and exhibit preternatural intelligence upon the
subject. In Dolly it amounted to a passion which she found it impossible
to resist. By it she was prompted to divers small extravagances at
times, and by it she was assisted in the arranging of all her personal
adornments. It was impossible to slight the mental picture of Mollie
with maroon drapery falling about her feet, with her cheeks tinted with
excited color, and with that marvel of delight in her eyes. She could
not help thinking about it.
“She would be simply incomparable,” she found herself soliloquizing.
“Just give her that dress, put a white flower in her hair and set her
down in a ballroom, or in the dress circle of a theatre, and she would
set the whole place astir. Oh, she must have it.”
It was very foolish and extravagant of course; even the people who are
weakly tolerant enough to rather lean toward Dorothea Crewe, will
admit this. The money that would purchase the maroon garment would have
purchased a dozen minor articles far more necessary to the dilapidated
household; but while straining at such domestic gnats as these articles
were, she was quite willing and even a trifle anxious to swallow
Mollie's gorgeous camel. Such impulsive inconsistency was
characteristic, however, and she betook herself to her bedroom with the
intention of working out the problem of accommodating supply to demand.
She took out her purse and emptied its contents on to her
dressing-table. Two or three crushed bills, a scrap or so of
poetry presented by Griffith upon various tender occasions, and a
discouragingly small banknote, the sole remains of her last quarter's
salary The supply was not equal to the demand, it was evident. But she
was by no means overpowered. She was dashed, but not despairing. Of
course, she had not expected to launch into such a reckless piece of
expenditure all at once, she had only thought she might attain her
modest ambition in the due course of time, and she thought so yet. She
crammed bills and bank-note back into the purse with serene cheerfulness
and shut it with a little snap of the clasp.
“I will begin to save up,” she said, “and I will persuade Phil to help
me. We can surely do it between us, and then we will take her somewhere
and let her have her first experience of modern society. What a
sensation she would create in the camps of the Philistines!”
She descended into the kitchen after this, appearing in those lower
regions in the full glory of apron and rolled-up sleeves, greatly to the
delight of the youthful maid-of-all-work, who, being feeble of intellect
and fond of society, regarded the prospect of spending the afternoon
with her as a source of absolute rejoicing. The “Sepoy,” as she was
familiarly designated by the family, was strongly attached to Dolly, as,
indeed, she was to every other member of the household. The truth was,
that the usefulness of the Sepoy (whose baptismal name was Belinda) was
rather an agreeable fiction than a well-established fact. She had been
adopted as a matter of charity, and it was charity rather than any
recognized brilliance of parts which caused her to be retained. Phil had
picked her up on the streets one night in time gone by, and had brought
her home principally because her rags were soaked and she had asserted
that she had nowhere to go for shelter, and partly, it must be
confessed, because she was a curiosity. Having taken her in, nobody was
stern enough to turn her out to face her fate again, and so she stayed.
Nobody taught her anything in particular about household economy,
because nobody knew anything particular to teach her. It was understood
that she was to do what she could, and that what she could not do
should be shared among them. She could fetch and carry, execute small
commissions, manage the drudgery and answer the door-bell, when she was
presentable, which was not often; indeed, this last duty had ceased
to devolve upon her, after she had once confronted Lady Augusta with
personal adornments so remarkable as to strike that august lady dumb
and rigid with indignation upon the threshold, and cause her, when she
recovered herself, to stonily, but irately demand an explanation of the
gratuitous insult she considered had been offered her. Belinda's
place was in the kitchen, after this, and to these regions she usually
confined herself, happily vigorous in the discharge of her daily duties.
She was very fond of Dolly, and hailed the approach of her days of
freedom with secret demonstrations of joy. She hoarded the simple
presents of finery given her by that young person with care, and
regarded them in the light of sacred talismans. A subtle something in
her dwarfed, feeble, starved-out nature was stirred, it may be, by the
sight of the girl's life and brightness; and, apart from this, it
would not have been like Dolly Crewe if she had not sympathized, half
unconsciously, half because she was constitutionally sympathetic, with
even this poor stray. If she had been of a more practical turn of mind,
in all probability she would have taken Belinda in hand and attacked the
work of training her with laudable persistence; but, as it was, private
misgivings as to the strength of her own domestic accomplishments caused
her to confine herself to more modest achievements. She could encourage
her, at least, and encourage her she did with divers good-natured
speeches and a leniency of demeanor which took the admiring Sepoy by
storm.
Saturday became a white day in the eyes of Belinda, because, being a
holiday, it left Dolly at liberty to descend into the kitchen and apply
herself to the study of cookery as a science, with much agreeable bustle
and a pleasant display of high spirit and enjoyment of the novelty of
her position. She had her own innocent reasons for wishing to become a
proficient in the art, and if her efforts were not always crowned with
success, the appearance of her handiwork upon the table on the
occasion of the Sunday's dinner never disturbed the family equilibrium,
principally, perhaps, because the family digestion was unimpaired. They
might be jocose, they had been ironical, but they were never severe,
and they always addressed themselves to the occasionally arduous task
of disposing of the viands with an indifference to consequences which
nothing could disturb.
“One cannot possibly be married without knowing something of cookery,”
Dolly had announced oracularly; “and one cannot gain a knowledge of
it without practising, so I am going to practise. None of you are
dyspeptic, thank goodness, so you can stand it. The only risk we run is
that Tod might get hold of a piece of the pastry and be cut off in the
bloom of his youth; but we must keep a strict watch upon him.”
And she purchased a cookery book and commenced operations, and held
to her resolve with Spartan firmness, encouraged by private but
enthusiastic bursts of commendation from Griffith, who, finding her out,
read the tender meaning of the fanciful seeming whim, and was so touched
thereby that the mere sight of her in her nonsensical little affectation
of working paraphernalia raised him to a seventh heaven of bliss.
When she made her entrance into the kitchen on this occasion, and began
to bustle about in search for her apron, Belinda, who was on her knees
polishing the grate, amidst a formidable display of rags and brushes,
paused to take breath and look at her admiringly.
“Are yer goin' to make yer pies 'n things, Miss Dolly?” she asked.
“Which, if ye are, yer apern 's in the left 'and dror.”
“So it is,” said Dolly. “Thank you. Now where is the cookery book?”
“Left 'and dror agin,” announced Belinda, with a faint grin. “I allus
puts it there.”
Whereupon Dolly, making industrious search for it, found it, and applied
herself to a deep study of it, resting her white elbows on the dresser,
and looking as if she had been suddenly called upon to master its
contents or be led to the stake. She could not help being intense and in
earnest even over this every-day problem of pies and puddings.
“Fricassee?” she murmured. “Fricassee was a failure, so was mock-turtle
soup; it looked discouraging, and the fat _would_ swim about in a way
that attracted attention. Croquettes were not so bad, though they were
a little stringy; but beef _à la mode_ was positively unpleasant. Jugged
hare did very well, but oyster _pâtés_ were dubious. Veal pie Griffith
liked.”
“There's somebody a-ringin' at the door-bell,” said Belinda, breaking
in upon her. “He's rung twict, which I can go, mum, if I ain't got no
smuts.”
Dolly looked up from her book.
“Some one is going now, I think,” she said. “I hope it is n't a
visitor,” listening attentively.
But it was a visitor, unfortunately. In a few minutes Mollie came in,
studiously perusing a card she held in her hand.
“Ralph,” she proclaimed, coming forward slowly. “Ralph Gowan. It's Lady
Augusta's gentleman, Dolly, and he wants to see you.”
Dolly took the card and looked at it, giving her shoulders a tiny shrug
of surprise.
“He has not waited long,” she said; “and it is rather inconvenient, but
it can't be helped. I suppose I shall have to run up-stairs and present
him to Phil.”
She untied her apron, drew down her sleeves, settled the bit of ribbon
at her throat, and in three minutes opened the parlor door and greeted
her visitor, looking quite as much in the right place as she had done
the night before in the white merino.
“I am very glad to see you,” she said, shaking hands with him, “and I
am sure Phil will be, too. He is always glad to see people, and just now
you will be doubly welcome, because he has a new picture to talk about.
Will you come into the studio, or shall I bring him here? I think it had
better be the studio at once, because you will be sure to drift there in
the end,--visitors always do.”
“The studio let it be, if you please,” answered Gowan, wondering, just
as he had done the night before, at the indescribable something in
her manner which was so novel because it was so utterly free from any
suggestion of affectation. It would have been a difficult matter to tell
her that he had not come for any other reason than to see herself again,
and yet this really was the case.
But his rather fanciful taste found Phil a novelty also when she led him
into the studio, and presented him to that young man, who was lying upon
a couch with a cigar in his mouth.
Phil had something of the same cool friendliness of deportment, and,
being used to the unexpected advent of guests at all hours, was quite
ready to welcome him. He had the same faculty for making noticeable
speeches, too, and was amiable, though languid and _débonnaire_, and by
no means prone to ceremony. In ten minutes after he had entered the room
Ralph Gowan understood, as by magic, that, little as the world was to
these people, they had, in their Bohemian fashion, learned through sheer
tact to comprehend and tolerate its weaknesses. He examined the pictures
on the walls and in the folios, and now and then found himself roused
into something more than ordinary admiration. But he was disappointed in
one thing. He failed in accomplishing the object of his visit.
After she had seen that Phil and the paintings occupied his attention to
some extent, Dolly left them.
“I was beginning to think about pies and puddings when you came,” she
said, “and I must go back to them. Saturday is the only day Lady Augusta
leaves me, in which to improve in branches of domestic usefulness,” with
an iniquitous imitation of her ladyship's manner.
After which she went down to the kitchen again and plunged into culinary
detail with renewed vigor, thinking of the six-roomed house in the
suburbs, and the green sofa which was to fit into the alcove in the
front parlor, growing quite happy over the mental picture, in blissful
unconsciousness of the fact that a train had been that day laid, and
that a spark would be applied that very night through the medium of a
simple observation made by Phil to her lover.
“Gowan was here this morning, Grif, and Dolly brought him into the
studio. He's not a bad sort of fellow for a Philistine, and he seems
to know something about pictures. I should n't be surprised if he came
again.”