IN the morning of one of the hot days in June, Mollie, standing at the
window of Phil's studio, turned suddenly toward the inmates of the room
with an exclamation.
“Phil!” she said, “Toinette! There is a carriage drawing up before the
door.”
“Lady Augusta?” said Toinette, making a dart at Tod.
“Confound Lady Augusta!” ejaculated Phil, devoutly. “That woman has a
genius for presenting herself at inopportune times.”
“But it is n't Lady Augusta,” Mollie objected. “It is n't the Bilberry
carriage at all. Do you think I don't know 'the ark'?”
“You ought to by this time,” returned Phil. “I do, to my own deep
grief.”
“It is the Brabazon Lodge carriage!” cried Mollie, all at once. “Miss
MacDowlas is getting out, and--yes, here is Dolly!”
“And Tod just washed and dressed!” said Mrs. Phil, picking up her
offspring with an air of self-congratulation. “Miracle of miracles! The
Fates begin to smile upon us. Phil, how is my back hair?”
“All right,” returned Phil. “I suppose I shall have to present myself,
too.”
It was necessary that they should all present themselves, they found.
Miss MacDowlas wished to form the acquaintance of the whole family, it
appeared, and apart from this her visit had rather an important object.
“It is a sort of farewell visit,” she explained, “though, of course, the
farewell is only to be a temporary one. We find London too hot for us,
and we are going to try Switzerland. The medical man thinks a change
will be beneficial to your sister.”
They all looked at Dolly then,--at Dolly in her delicate, crisp summer
bravery and her pretty summer hat; but it was neither hat nor dress that
drew their eyes upon her all at once in that new questioning way. But
Dolly only laughed,--a soft, nervous laugh, however,--and played with
her much-frilled parasol.
“Miss MacDowlas,” she said, “is good enough to fancy I am not so well as
I ought to be, Tod,” bending her face low over the pretty little
fellow, who had trotted to her knee. “What do you think of Aunt Dolly's
appearing in the character of invalid? It sounds like the best of jokes,
does n't it, Tod?”
They tried to smile responsively, all of them, but the effort was not a
success. Despite all her pretence of brightness and coquettish attire,
there was not one of them who had not been startled when their first
greeting was over. Under the triumph of a hat, her face showed almost
sharply cut, her skin far too transparently colorless, her eyes much too
large and bright. The elaborately coiled braids of hair seemed almost
too heavy for the slender throat to bear, and no profusion of trimming
could hide that the little figure was worn. The flush and glow and
spirit had died away from her. It was not the Dolly who had been wont
to pride herself upon ruling supreme in Vagabondia, who sat there before
them making them wonder; it was a new creature, who seemed quite a
stranger to them.
They were glad to see how fond of her Miss MacDowlas appeared to be.
They had naturally not had a very excellent opinion of Miss MacDowlas in
the past days; but the fact that Dolly had managed to so win upon her as
to bring out her best side, quite softened their hearts. She was not
so grim, after all. Her antipathy to Grif had evidently been her most
unpleasant peculiarity, and now, seeing her care for this new Dolly, who
needed care so much, they were rather touched.
When the farewells had been said, the carriage had driven away, and they
had returned to the studio, a silence seemed to fall upon them, one and
all. 'Toinette sat in her chair, holding Tod, without speaking; Mollie
stood near her with a wondering, downcast air; Phil went to the window,
and, neglecting his picture wholly for the time being, looked out into
the street, whistling softly.
At length he turned round to Aimée.
“Aimée,” he said, abruptly, “how long has this been going on?”
“You mean this change?” said Aimée, in a low voice.
“Yes.”
“For three months,” she answered. “I did not like to tell you because
I knew _she_ would not like it; but it dates from the time Grif went
away.”
Mrs. Phil burst into an impetuous gush of tears, hiding her handsome,
girlish face on Tod's neck.
“It is a shame!” she cried out. “It is a cruel, burning shame! Who would
ever have thought of Grif's treating her like this?”
“Yes,” said Phil; “and who would ever have thought that Dolly would
have broken down? Dolly! By George! I can't believe it. If I am able to
judge, it seems time that she should try Switzerland or somewhere else.
Aimée, has she heard nothing of him?”
“Nothing.”
The young man flushed hotly.
“Confound it!” he burst forth. “It looks as if the fellow was a
dishonorable scamp. And yet he is the last man I should ever have
fancied would prove a scamp.”
“But he has not proved himself a scamp yet,” said Aimée, in a troubled
tone. “And Dolly would not like to hear you say so. And if you knew the
whole truth you _wouldn't_ say so. He has been tried too far, and he has
been impetuous and rash, but it was his love for Dolly that made him so.
And wherever he may be, Phil, I know he is as wretched and hopeless as
Dolly herself could be at the worst. It has all been misunderstanding
and mischance.”
“He has broken Dolly's heart, nevertheless,” cried Mrs. Phil. “And if
she dies--”
“Dies!” cried out Mollie, opening her great eyes and turning pale all at
once. “Dies! Dolly?”
“Hush!” said Aimée, trembling and losing color herself. “Oh,
hush!--don't say such things. It sounds so dreadful,--it is too dreadful
to think of!”
And so it came about that on another of these hot June days there
appeared at the _table à hôte_ of a certain well-conducted and already
well-filled inn at Lake Geneva two new arrivals,--a tall, thin, elderly
lady of excessively English exterior, and a young person who attracted
some attention,--a girl who wore a long black dress, and had a
picturesque Elizabethan frill about her too slender throat, and who,
in spite of her manner and the clearness of her bright voice, was too
whitely transparent of complexion and too finely cut of face to look as
strong as a girl of one or two and twenty ought to be.
The people who took stock of them, after the manner of all unoccupied
hotel sojourners on the lookout for sensations, noticed this. One or
two of them even observed that, on entering the room after the slight
exertion of descending the staircase, the girl was slightly out of
breath and seemed glad to sit down, and that, her companion evidently
making some remark upon the fact, she half laughed, as if wishing to
make light of it; and they noticed, too, that her naturally small hands
were so very slender that her one simple little ring of amethyst and
pearls slipped loosely up and down her finger.
They were not ordinary tourists, these new arrivals, it was clear. Their
attire told that at once. They had removed their travelling dresses, and
looked as if they had quite made up their minds to enjoy their customary
mode of life as if they had been at home. They had no courier,
the wiseacres had ascertained, and they had brought a neat English
serving-woman, who seemed to know her business marvellously well and be
by no means unaccustomed to travelling.
“Aunt and niece!” commented one gentleman, surveying Dolly over his
soup. “A nice little creature,--the niece.” And he mentally resolved to
cultivate her acquaintance. But it was not such an easy matter. The new
arrivals were unlike ordinary tourists in other respects than in
their settled mode of life. They did not seem to care to form chance
acquaintance with their fellow guests. They lived quietly and, unless
when driving out together or taking short, unfatiguing strolls, remained
much in their own apartments. They appeared at the _table d'hôte_
occasionally; but though they were pleasant in manner they were not
communicative, and so, after a week or so, people tired of asking
questions about them and lapsed into merely exchanging greetings,
and looking on with some interest at any changes they observed in the
pretty, transparent, though always bright face, and the pliant, soft
young figure.
Thus Miss MacDowlas and her companion “tried Switzerland.”
“It will do you good, my dear, and brace you up,” the elder lady had
said; and from the bottom of her heart she had hoped it would.
And did it?
Well, the last time Dolly had “tried Switzerland,” she had tried it in
the capacity of Lady Augusta's governess, and she had held in charge
a host of rampant young Bilberrys, who secretly loathed their daily
duties, and were not remarkable in the matter of filial piety, and were
only reconciled to existence by the presence of their maternal parent's
greatest trial, that highly objectionable Dorothea Crewe. So, taking
Lady Augusta in conjunction with her young charges, the girl had often
felt her lot by no means the easiest in the world; but youth and spirit,
and those oft-arriving letters, had helped her to bear a great deal,
and so there was still something sweet about the memory. Oh, those
old letters--those foolish, passionate, tender letters--written in the
dusty, hot London office, read with such happiness, and answered on such
closely penned sheets of foreign paper! How she had used to watch for
them, and carry them to her small bedroom and read them again and again,
kneeling on the floor by the open window, the fresh, soft summer breezes
from the blue lake far below stirring her hair and kissing her forehead!
How doubly and trebly fair she had been wont to fancy everything looked
on that “letter day” of hers,--that red-letter day,--that golden-letter
day!
The very letters she had written then lay in her trunk now, tied
together in a bundle, just as Grif had brought them and laid them down
upon the table when he gave her up forever. Her “dead letter” lay with
them,--that last, last appeal, which had never reached his heart, and
never would. She had written her last letter to him, and he his last to
her.
And now she had been brought to “try Switzerland” and Lake Geneva as a
Lethe.
But she had determined to be practical and courageous, and bear it as
best she might. It would not have been like her to give way at once
without a struggle. She did not believe in lovelorn damsels, who pined
away and died of broken hearts, and made all their friends uncomfortable
by so doing. She made a struggle, and refused to give up. She grew
shadowy and fair; but it was under protest, and she battled against the
change she felt creeping upon her so slowly but so surely. She showed
a brave face to people, and tried to be as bright and ready-witted
as ever; and if she failed it was not her own fault. She fought hard
against her sleepless nights and weary days; and when she lay awake
hour after hour hearing the clock strike, it was not because she made
no effort to compose herself, it was only because the delicate wheels
of thought _would_ work against her helpless will, and it was worse than
useless to close her eyes when she could see so plainly her lost
lover's desperate, anguished face, and hear so distinctly his strained,
strangely altered voice: “No, it is too late for that now,--that is all
over!” And he had once loved her better than his life!
So it was that, try as she might, she could not make Switzerland a
success. When she went down to the table d'hôte, people saw that instead
of growing stronger she was growing more frail, and the exertion of
coming down the long flight of stairs tried her more than it had seemed
to do that first day. Sometimes she had a soft, lovely, dangerous color
on her cheeks, and her eyes looked almost translucent; and then again
the color was gone, her skin was white and transparent, and her eyes
were shadowy and languid. When the hot July days came in, the ring of
pearls and amethyst would stay on the small worn hand no longer, and so
was taken off and hung with the little bunch of coquettish “charms” upon
her chain. But she was not conquered yet, and the guests and servants
often heard her laughing, and making Miss MacDowlas laugh as they sat
together in their private parlor.
The two were sitting thus together one Saturday early in July,--Dolly in
a loose white wrapper, resting in a low basket chair by the open window,
and fanning herself languidly,--when a visitor was announced, and the
moment after the announcement a tall young lady rushed into the room
and clasped Dolly unceremoniously in her arms, either not observing or
totally ignoring Miss MacDowlas's presence.
“Dolly!” she cried, kneeling down by the basket chair and speaking so
fast that her words tumbled over each other, and her sentences were
curiously mingled. “Oh! if you please, dear, I know it was n't polite,
and I never meant to do it in such an unexpected, awfully rude way; and
what mamma would say, I am sure I cannot tell, unless go into dignified
convulsions, and shudder herself stiff; but how could I help it, when
I came expecting to see you as bright and lovely as ever, and caught a
glimpse of you through the door, as the servant spoke, sitting here so
white and thin and tired-looking! Oh, dear! oh, dear! how ever can it
be!”
“My dear Phemie!” said Dolly, laughing and crying both at once, through
weakness and sympathy,--for of course poor, easily moved Phemie had
burst into a flood of affectionate tears. “My dear child, how excited
you are, and how pleasant it is to see you! How did you manage to come?”
“The professor with the lumpy face--poor, pale darling--I mean you, not
him,” explained the eldest Miss Bilberry, clinging to her ex-governess
as if she was afraid of seeing her float through the open window. “The
professor with the lumpy face, Dolly; which shows he is not so horrid as
I always thought him, and I am very sorry for being so inconsiderate, I
am sure--you know he cannot help his lumps any more than I can help my
dreadful red hands and my dresses not fitting.”
Dolly stopped her here to introduce her to Miss MacDowlas; and that
lady having welcomed her good-naturedly, and received her incoherent
apologies for her impetuous lack of decorum, the explanation proceeded.
“How could the professor send you here?” asked Dolly.
“He did not exactly send me, but he helped me,” replied the luckless
Euphemia, becoming a trifle more coherent. “I saw you at the little
church, though you did not see me, because, of course, we sit in the
most disagreeable part, just where we can't see or be seen at all. And
though I only saw you at a distance, and through your veil, and half
behind a pillar, I knew you, and knew Miss MacDowlas. I think I knew
Miss MacDowlas most because she _wasn't_ behind the pillar. And it
nearly drove me crazy to think you were so near, and I gave one of the
servants some money to find out where you were staying, and she brought
me word that you were staying here, and meant to stay. And then I
asked the lady principal to let me come and see you, and of course
she refused; and I never should have been able to come at all, only it
chanced that was my music-lesson day, and I went in to the professor
with red eyes,--I had cried so,--and when he asked me what I had been
crying for, I remembered that he used to be fond of you, and I told
him. And he was sorry for me, and promised to ask leave for me. He is a
cousin of the lady principal, and a great favorite with her. And the end
of it was that they let me come. And I have almost flown. I had to wait
until to-day, you know, because it was Saturday.”
It was quite touching to see how, when she stopped speaking, she clung
to Dolly's hands, and looked at her with wonder and grief in her face.
“What is it that has changed you so?” she said. “You are not like
yourself at all. Oh, my dear, how ill you are!”
A wistful shadow showed itself in the girl's eyes.
“_Am_ I so much changed?” she asked.
“You do not look like our Dolly at all,” protested Phemie. “You are
thin,--oh, so thin! What _is_ the matter?”
“Thin!” said Dolly. “Am I? Then I must be growing ugly enough. Perhaps
it is to punish me for being so vain about my figure. Don't you remember
what a dread I always had of growing thin? Just to think that _I_ should
grow thin, after all! Do my bones stick out like the Honorable Cecilia
Howland's, Phemie?” And she ended with a little laugh.
Phemie kissed her, in affectionate protest against such an idea.
“Oh, dear, no!” she said. “They could n't, you know. They are not
the kind of bones to do it. Just think of her dreadful elbows and her
fearful shoulder-blades! You couldn't look like her. I don't mean that
sort of thinness at all. But you seem so light and so little. And look
here,” and she held up the painfully small hand, the poor little hand
without the ring. “There are no dimples here now, Dolly,” she said,
sorrowfully.
“No,” answered Dolly, simply; and the next minute, as she drew her hand
away, there fluttered from her lips a sigh.
She managed to change the turn of conversation after this. Miss
MacDowlas had good-naturedly left them alone, and so she began to ask
Phemie questions,--questions about school and lessons and companions,
about the lady principal and the under-teachers and about the professor
with the lumpy face; and, despite appearances being against her, there
was still the old ring in her girl's jests.
“Has madame got a new bonnet yet,” she asked, “or does she still wear
the old one with those aggressive-looking spikes of wheat in it? The
lean ears ought to have eaten up the fat ones by this time.”
“But they have n't,” returned Phemie. “They are there yet, Dolly. Just
the same spikes in the same bonnet, only she has had new saffron-colored
ribbon put on it, just the shade of her skin.”
Dolly shuddered,--Lady Augusta's own semi-tragic shudder, if Phemie had
only recognized it.
“Phemie,” she said, with a touch of pardonable anxiety, “ill as I look,
I am not that color, am I? To lose one's figure and grow thin is bad
enough, but to become like Madame Pillet--dear me!” shaking her head. “I
scarcely think I could reconcile myself to existence.”
Phemie laughed. “You are not changed in one respect, Dolly,” she said.
“When I hear you talk it makes me feel quite--quite safe.”
“Safe!” Dolly echoed. “You mean to say that so long as I preserve my
constitutional vanity, your anxiety won't overpower you. But--but,”
looking at her curiously, “did you think at first that I was not safe,
as you call it?”
“You looked so ill,” faltered Phemie. “And--I was so startled.”
“Were you?” asked Dolly. “Did I shock you?”
“A little--only just a little, dear,” deprecatingly.
Then strangely enough fell upon them a silence. Dolly turned toward the
window, and her eyes seemed to fix themselves upon some far-away point,
as if she was pondering over a new train of thought. And when at last
she spoke, her voice was touched with the tremulous unsteadiness of
tears.
“Do you think,” she said, slowly,--“do you think that _any one_ who had
loved me would be shocked to see me now? Am I so much altered as
that? One scarcely sees these things one's self,--they come to pass so
gradually.”
All poor Phemie's smiles died away.
“Don't let us talk about it,” she pleaded. “I cannot bear to hear you
speak so. Don't, dear--if you please, don't!”
Her pain was so evident that it roused Dolly at once.
“I won't, if it troubles you,” she said, almost in her natural manner.
“It does not matter,--why should it? There is no one here to be shocked.
I was only wondering.”
But the shadow did not quite leave her face, and even when, an hour
later, Euphemia bade her good-by and left her, promising to return again
as soon as possible, it was there still.
She was very, very quiet for a few minutes after she found herself
alone. She clasped her hands behind her head, and lay back in the light
chair, looking out of the window. She was thinking so deeply that she
did not even stir for a while; but in the end she got up, as though
moved by some impulse, and crossed the room.
Against the wall hung a long, narrow mirror, and she went to this mirror
and stood before it, looking at herself from head to foot,--at her
piteously sharpened face, with its large, wondering eyes, eyes that
wondered at themselves,--at the small, light figure so painfully
etherealized, and about which the white wrapper hung so loosely. She
even held up, at last, the slender hand and arm; but when she saw these
uplifted, appealing, as it were, for this sad, new face which did not
seem her own, she broke into a little cry of pain and grief.
“If you could see me now,” she said, “if you should come here by chance
and see me now, my dear, I think you would not wait to ask whether I had
been true or false. I never laid this white cheek on your shoulder, did
I? Oh, what a changed face it is! I know I was never very pretty, though
you thought so and were proud of me in your tender way, but I was not
like this in those dear old days. Grif, Grif, would you know me,--would
you _know_ me?” And, turning to her chair again, she dropped upon her
knees before it, and knelt there sobbing.