WORTH.
She presented herself at the bed-room door with a timid knock the next
morning before breakfast, evidently expecting to be taken charge of.
Miss Ferrol felt sure she would appear, and had, indeed, dressed
herself in momentary expectation of hearing the knock.
When she heard it she opened the door at once.
"I am glad to see you," she said. "I thought you might come."
A slight expression of surprise showed itself in the girl's eyes. It
had never occurred to her that she might not come.
"Oh, yes," she replied. "I never could go down alone when there was
any one who would go with me."
There was something on her mind, Miss Ferrol fancied, and presently it
burst forth in a confidential inquiry.
"Is this dress very short-waisted?" she asked, with great earnestness.
Merciful delicacy stood in the way of Miss Ferrol's telling her how
short-waisted it was, and how it maltreated her beautiful young body.
"It is rather short-waisted, it is true."
"Perhaps," the girl went on, with a touch of guileless melancholy, "I
am naturally this shape."
Here, it must be confessed, Miss Ferrol forgot herself for the moment,
and expressed her indignation with undue fervor.
"Perish the thought!" she exclaimed. "Why, child! your figure is a
hundred times better than mine."
Louisiana wore for a moment a look of absolute fright.
"Oh, no!" she cried. "Oh, no. Your figure is magnificent."
"Magnificent!" echoed Miss Ferrol, giving way to her enthusiasm, and
indulging in figures of speech. "Don't you see that I am
thin--absolutely thin. But my things fit me, and my dressmaker
understands me. If you were dressed as I am,"--pausing to look her
over from head to foot--"Ah!" she exclaimed, pathetically, "how I
should like to see you in some of my clothes!"
A tender chord was touched. A gentle sadness, aroused by this instance
of wasted opportunities, rested upon her. But instantaneously she
brightened, seemingly without any particular cause. A brilliant idea
had occurred to her. But she did not reveal it.
"I will wait," she thought, "until she is more at her ease with me."
She really was more at her ease already. Just this one little scrap of
conversation had done that. She became almost affectionate in a shy
way before they reached the dining-room.
"I want to ask you something," she said, as they neared the door.
"What is it?"
She held Miss Ferrol back with a light clasp on her arm. Her air was
quite tragic in a small way.
"Please say 'Louise,' when you speak to me," she said. "Never say
'Miss Louisiana'--never--never!"
"No, I shall never say 'Miss Louisiana,'" her companion answered. "How
would you like 'Miss Rogers?'"
"I would rather have 'Louise,'" she said, disappointedly.
"Well," returned Miss Ferrol, "'Louise' let it be."
And "Louise" it was thenceforward. If she had not been so pretty, so
innocent, and so affectionate and humble a young creature, she might
have been troublesome at times (it occurred to Olivia Ferrol), she
clung so pertinaciously to their chance acquaintanceship; she was so
helpless and desolate if left to herself, and so inordinately glad to
be taken in hand again. She made no new friends,--which was perhaps
natural enough, after all. She had nothing in common with the young
women who played ten-pins and croquet and rode out in parties with
their cavaliers. She was not of them, and understood them as little as
they understood her. She knew very well that they regarded her with
scornful tolerance when they were of the ill-natured class, and with
ill-subdued wonder when they were amiable. She could not play ten-pins
or croquet, nor could she dance.
"What are the men kneeling down for, and why do they keep stopping to
put on those queer little caps and things?" she whispered to Miss
Ferrol one night.
"They are trying to dance a German," replied Miss Ferrol, "and the man
who is leading them only knows one figure."
As for the riding, she had been used to riding all her life; but no one
asked her to join them, and if they had done so she would have been too
wise,--unsophisticated as she was,--to accept the invitation. So where
Miss Ferrol was seen she was seen also, and she was never so happy as
when she was invited into her protector's room and allowed to spend the
morning or evening there. She would have been content to sit there
forever and listen to Miss Ferrol's graphic description of life in the
great world: The names of celebrated personages made small impression
upon her. It was revealed gradually to Miss Ferrol that she had
private doubts as to the actual existence of some of them, and the rest
she had never heard of before.
"You never read 'The Scarlet Letter?'" asked her instructress upon one
occasion.
She flushed guiltily.
"No," she answered. "Nor--nor any of the others."
Miss Ferrol gazed at her silently for a few moments. Then she asked
her a question in a low voice, specially mellowed, so that it might not
alarm her.
"Do you know who John Stuart Mill is?" she said.
"No," she replied from the dust of humiliation.
"Have you never heard--just _heard_--of Ruskin?"
"No."
"Nor of Michael Angelo?"
"N-no--ye-es, I think so--perhaps, but I don't know what he did."
"Do you," she continued, very slowly,
"do--you--know--anything--about--Worth?"
"No, nothing."
Her questioner clasped her hands with repressed emotion.
"Oh," she cried, "how--how you have been neglected!"
She was really depressed, but her _protegee_ was so much more deeply so
that she felt it her duty to contain herself and return to cheerfulness.
"Never mind," she said. "I will tell you all I know about them,
and,"--after a pause for speculative thought upon the
subject,--"by-the-by, it isn't much, and I will lend you some books to
read, and give you a list of some you must persuade your father to buy
for you, and you will be all right. It is rather dreadful not to know
the names of people and things; but, after all, I think there are very
few people who--ahem!"
She was checked here by rigid conscientious scruples. If she was to
train this young mind in the path of learning and literature, she must
place before her a higher standard of merit than the somewhat shady and
slipshod one her eagerness had almost betrayed her into upholding. She
had heard people talk of "standards" and "ideals," and when she was
kept to the point and in regulation working order, she could be very
eloquent upon these subjects herself.
"You will have to work very seriously," she remarked, rather
incongruously and with a rapid change of position. "If you wish to--to
acquire anything, you must read conscientiously and--and with a
purpose." She was rather proud of that last clause.
"Must I?" inquired Louise, humbly. "I should like to--if I knew where
to begin. Who was Worth? Was he a poet?"
Miss Ferrol acquired a fine, high color very suddenly.
"Oh," she answered, with some uneasiness, "you--you have no need to
begin with Worth. He doesn't matter so much--really."
"I thought," Miss Rogers said meekly, "that you were more troubled
about my not having read what he wrote, than about my not knowing any
of the others."
"Oh, no. You see--the fact is, he--he never wrote anything."
"What did he do?" she asked, anxious for information.
"He--it isn't 'did,' it is 'does.' He--makes dresses."
"Dresses!"
This single word, but no exclamation point could express its tone of
wild amazement.
"Yes."
"A man!"
"Yes."
There was a dead silence. It was embarrassing at first. Then the
amazement of the unsophisticated one began to calm itself; it gradually
died down, and became another emotion, merging itself into interest.
"Does"--guilelessly she inquired--"he make nice ones?"
"Nice!" echoed Miss Ferrol. "They are works of art! I have got three
in my trunk."
"O-o h!" sighed Louisiana. "Oh, dear!"
Miss Ferrol rose from her chair.
"I will show them to you," she said. "I--I should like you to try them
on."
"To try them on!" ejaculated the child in an awe-stricken tone. "Me?"
"Yes," said Miss Ferrol, unlocking the trunk and throwing back the lid.
"I have been wanting to see you in them since the first day you came."
She took them out and laid them upon the bed on their trays. Louise
got up from the floor and approaching, reverently stood near them.
There was a cream-colored evening-dress of soft, thick, close-clinging
silk of some antique-modern sort; it had golden fringe, and golden
flowers embroidered upon it.
"Look at that," said Miss Ferrol, softly--even religiously.
She made a mysterious, majestic gesture.
"Come here," she said. "You must put it on."
Louise shrank back a pace.
"I--oh! I daren't," she cried. "It is too beautiful!"
"Come here," repeated Miss Ferrol.
She obeyed timorously, and gave herself into the hands of her
controller. She was so timid and excited that she trembled all the
time her toilette was being performed for her. Miss Ferrol went
through this service with the manner of a priestess officiating at an
altar. She laced up the back of the dress with the slender, golden
cords; she arranged the antique drapery which wound itself around in
close swathing folds. There was not the shadow of a wrinkle from
shoulder to hem: the lovely young figure was revealed in all its beauty
of outline. There were no sleeves at all, there was not very much
bodice, but there was a great deal of effect, and this, it is to be
supposed, was the object.
"Walk across the floor," commanded Miss Ferrol.
Louisiana obeyed her.
"Do it again," said Miss Ferrol.
Having been obeyed for the second time, her hands fell together. Her
attitude and expression could be said to be significant only of rapture.
"I said so!" she cried. "I said so! You might have been born in New
York!"
It was a grand climax. Louisiana felt it to the depths of her reverent
young heart. But she could not believe it. She was sure that it was
too sublime to be true. She shook her head in deprecation.
"It is no exaggeration," said Miss Ferrol, with renewed fervor.
"Laurence himself, if he were not told that you had lived here, would
never guess it. I should like to try you on him."
"Who--is he?" inquired Louisiana. "Is he a writer, too?"
"Well, yes,--but not exactly like the others. He is my brother."
It was two hours before this episode ended. Only at the sounding of
the second bell did Louisiana escape to her room to prepare for dinner.
Miss Ferrol began to replace the dresses in her trunk. She performed
her task in an abstracted mood. When she had completed it she stood
upright and paused a moment, with quite a startled air.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "I--actually forgot about Ruskin!"