Hazel was asked to the Geoffreys' to dinner.
Before this, she and Diana had both been asked to take tea, and
spend an evening, but this was Hazel's little especial "invite," as
she called it, because she and Ada were writing a dialogue together
for a composition at school.
The Geoffreys dined at the good old-fashioned hour of half past two,
except when they had formal dinner company; and Hazel was to come
right home from school with Ada, and stay and spend the afternoon.
"What intimacy!" Florence Ledwith had exclaimed, when she heard of
it.
"But it isn't at all on the grand style side; people like the
Geoffreys do such things quite apart from their regular connection;
it is a sort of 'behind the scenes;'" said Glossy Megilp, who was
standing at Florence's dressing-glass, touching up the little heap
of "friz" across her forehead.
"Where's my poker?" she asked, suddenly, breaking off from the
Geoffrey subject, and rummaging in a dressing box, intent upon
tutoring some little obstinate loop of hair that would be _too_
frizzy.
"I should think a 'blower' might be a good thing to add to your
tools, Glossy," said Desire. "You have brush, poker, and tongs, now,
to say nothing of coal-hod," she added, glancing at the little open
japanned box that held some kind of black powder which had to do
with the shadow of Glossy's eyelashes upon occasion, and the
emphasis upon the delicate line of her brows.
"No secret," said Glossy, magnanimously. "There it is! It is no
greater sin than violet powder, or false tails, for that matter; and
the little gap in my left eyebrow was never deliberately designed.
It was a 'lapsus naturæ;' I only follow out the hint, and complete
the intention. Something _is_ left to ourselves; as the child said
about the Lord curling her hair for her when she was a baby and
letting her do it herself after she grew big enough. What are our
artistic perceptions given to us for, unless we're to make the best
of ourselves in the first place?"
"But it isn't all eyebrows," said Desire, half aloud.
"Of course not," said Glossy Megilp. "Twice a day I have to do
myself up somehow, and why shouldn't it be as well as I can? Other
things come in their turn, and I do them."
"But, you see, the friz and the fix has to be, anyhow, whether or
no. Everything isn't done, whether or no. I guess it's the 'first
place,' that's the matter."
"I think you have a very theoretical mind, Des, and a slightly
obscure style. You can't be satisfied till everything is all mapped
out, and organized, and justified, and you get into horrible snarls
trying to do it. If I were you, I would take things a little more as
they come."
"I can't," said Desire. "They come hind side before and upside
down."
"Well, if everybody is upside down, there's a view of it that makes
it all right side up, isn't there? It seems to be an established
fact that we must dress and undress, and that the first duty of the
day is to get up and put on our clothes. We aren't ready for much
until we do. And one person's dressing may require one thing, and
another's another. Some people have a cork leg to put on, and some
people have false teeth; and they wouldn't any of them come hobbling
or mumbling out without them, unless there was a fire or an
earthquake, I suppose."
Glossy Megilp's arguments and analogies perplexed Desire, always.
They sometimes silenced her; but they did not always answer her. She
went back to what they had been discussing before.
"To 'lay down the shubbel and the hoe,'--here's your poker, under
the table-flounce, Glossy,--and to 'take up the fiddle and the bow,'
again,--I think it's real nice and beautiful for Hazel--"
"To 'go where the good darkies go'?"
"Yes. It's the _good_ of her that's got her in. And I believe you
and Florence both would give your best boots to be there too, if it
_is_ behind. Behind the fixings and the fashions is where people
_live_; 'dere's vat I za-ay!'" she ended, quoting herself and Rip
Van Winkle.
"Maybe," said Florence, carelessly; "but I'd as lief be _in_ the
fashion, after all. And that's where Hazel Ripwinkley never will
get, with all her taking little novelties."
Meanwhile, Hazel Ripwinkley was deep in the delights of a great
portfolio of rare engravings; prints of glorious frescoes in old
churches, and designs of splendid architecture; and Mrs. Geoffrey,
seeing her real pleasure, was sitting beside her, turning over the
large sheets, and explaining them; telling her, as she gazed into
the wonderful faces of the Saints and the Evangelists in Correggio's
frescoes of the church of San Giovanni at Parma, how the whole dome
was one radiant vision of heavenly glory, with clouds and angel
faces, and adoring apostles, and Christ the Lord high over all; and
that these were but the filling in between the springing curves of
the magnificent arches; describing to her the Abbess's room in San
Paolo, with its strange, beautiful heathen picture over the mantel,
of Diana mounting her stag-drawn car, and its circular walls painted
with trellis-work and medallioned with windows, where the heads of
little laughing children, and graceful, gentle animals peeped in
from among vines and flowers.
Mrs. Geoffrey did not wonder that Hazel lingered with delight over
these or over the groups by Raphael in the Sistine Chapel,--the
quiet pendentives, where the waiting of the world for its salvation
was typified in the dream-like, reclining forms upon the still,
desert sand; or the wonderful scenes from the "Creation,"--the
majestic "Let there be Light!" and the Breathing of the breath of
life into Man. She watched the surprise and awe with which the child
beheld for the first time the daring of inspiration in the
tremendous embodiment of the Almighty, and waited while she could
hardly take her eyes away. But when, afterward, they turned to a
portfolio of Architecture, and she found her eager to examine spires
and arches and capitals, rich reliefs and stately facades and
sculptured gates, and exclaiming with pleasure at the colored
drawings of Florentine ornamentation, she wondered, and questioned
her,--
"Have you ever seen such things before? Do you draw? I should hardly
think you would care so much, at your age."
"I like the prettiness," said Hazel, simply, "and the grandness; but
I don't suppose I should care so much if it wasn't for Dorris and
Mr. Kincaid. Mr. Kincaid draws buildings; he's an architect; only he
hasn't architected much yet, because the people that build things
don't know him. Dorris was so glad to give him a Christmas present
of 'Daguerreotypes de Paris,' with the churches and arches and
bridges and things; she got it at a sale; I wonder what they would
say to all these beauties!"
Then Mrs. Geoffrey found what still more greatly enchanted her, a
volume of engravings, of English Home Architecture; interiors of old
Halls, magnificent staircases, lofty libraries and galleries dim
with space; exteriors, gabled, turreted and towered; long, rambling
piles of manor houses, with mixed styles of many centuries.
"They look as if they were brimfull of stories!" Hazel cried. "O, if
I could only carry it home to show to the Kincaids!"
"You may," said Mrs. Geoffrey, as simply, in her turn, as if she
were lending a copy of "Robinson Crusoe;' never letting the child
guess by a breath of hesitation the value of what she had asked.
"And tell me more about these Kincaids. They are friends of yours?"
"Yes; we've known them all winter. They live right opposite, and sit
in the windows, drawing and writing. Dorris keeps house up there in
two rooms. The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on
the big sofa. Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over. She
cooks with a little gas-stove. I think it is beautiful to keep house
with not very much money. She goes out with a cunning white basket
and buys her things; and she does all her work up in a corner on a
white table, with a piece of oil-cloth on the floor; and then she
comes over into her parlor, she says, and sits by the window. It's a
kind of a play all the time."
"And Mr. Kincaid?"
"Dorris says he might have been rich by this time, if he had gone
into his Uncle James's office in New York. Mr. James Kincaid is a
broker, and buys gold. But Kenneth says gold stands for work, and if
he ever has any he'll buy it with work. He wants to do some real
thing. Don't you think that's nice of him?"
"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Geoffrey. "And Dorris is that bright girl
who wanted thirteen things, and rhymed them into 'Crambo?' Mr.
Geoffrey told me."
"Yes, ma'am; Dorris can do almost anything."
"I should like to see Dorris, sometime. Will you bring her here,
Hazel?"
Hazel's little witch-rod felt the almost impassible something in the
way.
"I don't know as she would be _brought_," she said.
Mrs. Geoffrey laughed.
"You have an instinct for the fine proprieties, without a bit of
respect for any conventional fences," she said. "I'll _ask_ Dorris."
"Then I'm sure she'll come," said Hazel, understanding quite well
and gladly the last three words, and passing over the first phrase
as if it had been a Greek motto, put there to be skipped.
"Ada has stopped practicing," said Mrs. Geoffrey, who had undertaken
the entertainment of her little guest during her daughter's half
hour of music. "She will be waiting for you now."
Hazel instantly jumped up.
But she paused after three steps toward the door, to say gently,
looking back over her shoulder with a shy glance out of her timidly
clear eyes,--
"Perhaps,--I hope I haven't,--stayed too long!"
"Come back, you little hazel-sprite!" cried Mrs. Geoffrey; and when
she got her within reach again, she put her hands one each side of
the little blushing, gleaming face, and kissed it, saying,--
"I don't _think_,--I'm slow, usually, in making up my mind about
people, big or little,--but I don't think you can stay too long,--or
come too often, dear!"
"I've found another for you, Aleck," she said, that night at the
hair-brushing, to her husband.
He always came to sit in her dressing-room, then; and it was at this
quiet time that they gave each other, out of the day they had lived
in their partly separate ways and duties, that which made it for
each like a day lived twice, so that the years of their life counted
up double.
"He is a young architect, who hasn't architected much, because he
doesn't know the people who build things; and he wouldn't be a gold
broker with his uncle in New York, because he believes in doing
money's worth in the world for the world's money. Isn't he one?"
"Sounds like it," said Mr. Geoffrey. "What is his name?"
"Kincaid."
"Nephew of James R. Kincaid?" said Mr. Geoffrey, with an
interrogation that was also an exclamation. "And wouldn't go in with
him! Why, it was just to have picked up dollars!"
"Exactly," replied his wife. "That was what he objected to."
"I should like to see the fellow."
"Don't you remember? You have seen him! The night you went for Ada
to the Aspen Street party, and got into 'Crambo.' He was there; and
it was his sister who wanted thirteen things. I guess they do!"
"Ask them here," said the banker.
"I mean to," Mrs. Geoffrey answered. "That is, after I've seen
Hapsie Craydocke. She knows everything. I'll go there to-morrow
morning."
* * * * *
"'Behind' is a pretty good way to get in--to some places," said
Desire Ledwith, coming into the rose-pink room with news.
"Especially an omnibus. And the Ripwinkleys, and the Kincaids, and
old Miss Craydocke, and for all I know, Mrs. Scarup and Luclarion
Grapp are going to Summit Street to tea to-night. Boston is
topsy-turvey; Holmes was a prophet; and 'Brattle Street and Temple
Place are interchanging cards!' Mother, we ought to get intimate
with the family over the grocer's shop. Who knows what would come of
it? There are fairies about in disguise, I'm sure; or else it's the
millennium. Whichever it is, it's all right for Hazel, though; she's
ready. Don't you feel like foolish virgins, Flo and Nag? I do."
I am afraid it was when Desire felt a little inclination to "nag"
her elder sister, that she called her by that reprehensible name.
Agatha only looked lofty, and vouchsafed no reply; but Florence
said,--
"There's no need of any little triumphs or mortifications. Nobody
crows, and nobody cries. _I_'m glad. Diana's a dear, and Hazel's a
duck, besides being my cousins; why shouldn't I? Only there _is_ a
large hole for the cats, and a little hole for the kittens; and I'd
as lief, myself, go in with the cats."
"The Marchbankses are staying there, and Professor Gregory. I don't
know about cats," said Desire, demurely.
"It's a reason-why party, for all that," said Agatha, carelessly,
recovering her good humor.
"Well, when any nice people ask me, I hope there _will_ be a 'reason
why.' It's the persons of consequence that make the 'reason why.'"
And Desire had the last word.
* * * * *
Hazel Ripwinkley was thinking neither of large holes nor little
ones,--cats nor kittens; she was saying to Luclarion, sitting in her
shady down-stairs room behind the kitchen, that looked out into the
green yard corner, "how nicely things came out, after all!"
"They seemed so hobblety at first, when I went up there and saw all
those beautiful books, and pictures, and people living amongst them
every day, and the poor Kincaids not getting the least bit of a
stretch out of their corner, ever. I'll tell you what I thought,
Luclarion;" and here she almost whispered, "I truly did. I thought
God was making a mistake."
Luclarion put out her lips into a round, deprecating pucker, at
that, and drew in her breath,--
"Oo--sh!"
"Well, I mean it seemed as if there was a mistake somewhere; and
that I'd no business, at any rate, with what they wanted so. I
couldn't get over it until I asked for those pictures; and mother
said it was such a bold thing to do!"
"It was bold," said Luclarion; "but it wasn't forrud. It was gi'n
you, and it hit right. That was looked out for."
"It's a stumpy world," said Luclarion Grapp to Mrs. Ripwinkley,
afterward; "but some folks step right over their stumps athout
scarcely knowin' when!"