IN MAIDEN MEDITATION.
Gracie was sitting alone in her own room; she had been reading--the
“Faery Queene” the book--but it had slipped from her hand--and now
she was thinking. Not of herself, but of others; Arthur, perhaps,
principally. For she had given her heart to him; and in a perfect
maidenly love there is always some foretaste of the maternal, a fond
solicitude as of a mother for her child. Perhaps even Arthur did not
know how much she thought of him: and Mrs. Livingstone was too much
bound up in Mamie, and Mamie too much in herself, to notice it; Miss
Brevier alone had seen it, and had held her peace. Gracie fancied
that no one knew it, save Arthur himself; though for her and Arthur
it had changed the world. The world itself she did not understand;
all things did not look clear to her that winter; the people of her
acquaintance puzzled her. It almost seemed as if she would not have
their sympathy in all ways; but this could not be proven, for Gracie
never made a confidante. Now Mamie Livingstone, on the other hand,
confided everything to her; and then, apparently, forgot it all, much
as a Parisian lady may be supposed to forget the substance of her
last auricular confession; for Gracie noted a certain repugnancy or
incoherence in this young woman’s heart history of which the heart’s
possessor was unaware entirely.
Mamie was intensely a metropolitan girl; the exquisitely sensitive
product of a great social nerve-centre. She did not know her Emerson,
and was wholly untroubled with “the whichness of the why:” but she had
mastered her own environment at an early age. And she had--except, of
course, as against young men, her natural prey--a frank disposition and
a warm heart.
The great event of her life, her appearance in society, was to take
place in the season following; and all through this winter Mamie was
in a state of electric anticipation. She was already laying, in an
innocent and girlish way, her wires. What Gracie failed chiefly to
understand was these very love confidences, above mentioned: for though
Mamie talked most ardently of the qualities of her successive swains,
they seemed to bear a much more definite relation to her own self-love
than to her heart. But then, it was her self-love that was the source
of motive to her; her heart was an amusement only. And Mamie knew
the world, as has before been hinted, _à priori_; she was a girl of
transcendental mind, who saw through the copper-plate formulas of her
study-books to the realities around her; with innate ideas and tastes
as to what was fashionable and really fine. She alternately patronized
and petted Gracie, who was three years older than herself; yet Gracie
had more influence over her than anyone else. As for the parental
authority of her father and mother--the phrase is too grotesquely
mediæval to be completed. Mr. Livingstone was an old gentleman with a
million and a half of property, whose manners had outlived his mind.
Gracie was looking--if I could describe to you the manner of her look,
you would all men be poor Arthur’s rivals, I am sure; the direction
of her look was simply to the northward, through the window. The
manner of it--perhaps even Arthur never wholly noted it; may be he
thought all girls had it; may be he even preferred the scintillating
alertness of Pussie Duval’s or Baby Malgam’s--people now called her
Baby with a touch of malice--which was more new to him. It was a deep
and holy radiance, as if the look’s object were not yet quite found,
and a certain questioning withal. Gracie was almost sure to have it
when alone; perhaps a certain exquisite if unconscious tact restrained
it, with other girls, lest they should call it pose; but no man--that
is, no _man_--ever saw it fairly, but his soul was turned to fire.
Medusa’s look it was that turned a man to stone; but there seems to be
no metaphor for this opposite one. Perhaps because the Greeks had never
met with it; it is found since Hamlet and since Gretchen, and grows
mostly in the country, with books, sweet thoughts, and solitude. I have
more rarely met with it in crowded colleges; yet it is not absolutely
inconsistent with a knowledge of Greek.
“You do look so sweet, cousine,” cried Mamie as she tripped into the
room, “but awfully poky. I’ve got such a thing to tell you about Mrs.
Lucie Gower. And oh, do you know? Charlie Townley called here to-day.
And somebody else too--aha?”
“Who was it?” said Gracie.
“Who was it, Ma’am Soft-airs, indeed. Cousine, do let me try a bit of
rouge some time--that blush was so becoming to you. Mr. Haviland, of
course; and I peeked through the crack of the door when the servant
said you weren’t at home. But tell me, Gracie dear, do you think it
would do for me to ask Mr. Townley to dinner next time? You know, I’ve
had all the younger men, and he dances like an angel.”
“Why, Mamie, you don’t mean to have a dance?”
“No, no, stupid, but for next winter, I mean. I’m determined to have
Charlie lead my german, you know; they say all the young married women
are fighting for him. And the only other man is Daisy Blake, and he’s
too slow for anything. Besides, I’m dead in love with Townley, you
know.”
“Oh,” said Gracie.
“I heard he gave a supper-party last night, and both Mrs. Gower and
Mrs. Malgam were there, and the Earl of Birmingham; and afterward they
all went in masks to a public ball. Wasn’t it horrid? And just think
what fun it would be to get him away from those married women? Why,
Marion Roster told me last year that the débutantes had no chance at
all. I’ll see about that.” And Mamie stamped her little foot and tossed
her pretty head defiantly; and indeed it looked as if the filly might
make it hard running for the four-year-olds. And Charlie Townley, had
he seen it, might have felt that he had gotten his reward on earth. For
I doubt if any poet’s bays or any soldier’s laurel were more highly
prized by maid or wife than Mamie, the rich, well-bred, well-born,
rated Charlie Townley’s style of excellence. _Le style c’est l’homme_,
says some old, grave writer; what then is style to a giddy young woman?
And I doubt if either bays or laurel be so marketable. And Charlie was
a man of the world, familiar to its stock-exchanges; who did not mean
to marry, but meant to marry well.
Gracie looked at Mamie Livingstone with some faint wonder; and then the
young girl laughed loudly, as was usual, and kissed her, and called her
a dear old thing; and laughed again, as if she had been jesting. And so
the other one supposed it, and smiled back through Mamie’s many kisses.
“Look here,” Mamie began again, with a gesture of triumph; and she
pulled a note from her pocket, and waved it triumphantly in Gracie’s
face. “I’ve got a note from him already!”
“Oh, Mamie----”
“’Sh, Ma’am Prunes and Prisms--it’s only about a summer fan. I asked
him to get a kind which I knew had only been made at one place
down-town, and they were all sold out, so he had to write and tell
me so. See, isn’t the signature nice? ‘your devoted servant, Charles
Townley’--and such a nice manly hand.” And Mamie roguishly made
pretence of kissing it, the while her eyes danced with merriment.
Gracie looked at her--puzzled; and Mamie only laughed the more.
“There, there, don’t look so grave, you delightful old darling; it’s
not so awfully serious, after all--yet.” And with the final burst of
laughter that accompanied her last word, Mamie danced from the room.
Left alone, Gracie’s smile, which had reflected Mamie’s, changed to a
deeper look, a look that Mamie’s face could never mirror. Yes, it was
a puzzle, in a way; people so rarely seemed to care for the essentials
of things. Gracie’s notion of a man was enlightened heroism, of a woman
perfect bravery and trust, and the light in the lives of both the light
of the world that comes from another, like the sun’s. But to these
young ladies and gentlemen, the light of the world was the light of a
ball-room.
So she sat there, looking northward over the roofs and steeples, to the
bright sky-line; and perhaps, if an eye were at the other end of that
ray of light that slanted through space to meet her own, it saw a human
soul. But to the telegraph wires and brick chimneys, to Mamie and the
men near by on the roofs, it was a girl with a pretty face like another.
Human nature, they tell us; and another says, people are all alike
when it comes to the point; and the motives of mankind have ever been
the same, says a third. The course of history is thus and so; it is
human nature to do this, and take this bundle of hay rather than that;
and we are all alike, they repeat again; scholars, men, and books
repeat again, until we do become human nature--or drown ourselves in
preference.
But it is a lie. Humanity is not all alike; it is as a broad plain of
grass or weeds; and this is alike. But among it, here and there, there
flames a poppy, and above it, here and there, stands up the glorious
lily, like a halo on a flower’s stem; and beneath it breathes the sweet
and gentle violet. Hard by grow the weeds, and dock and hardy thistles;
on one stem perhaps with these, unconscious of them.
So mankind is a great crowd composed of common units, all alike; but
with them walking, mostly alone, there journeys the hero, and there the
martyr, and the woman with a soul. And the hero looks straight ahead,
sad and strong; the martyr looks up to heaven; and the soul looks about
it and breathes its fragrance to its fellows.
But the crowd is so great that these three, though they are many, yet
seem few. And they journey as they may, and work, and do, and die; but
ah me! they are lonely, for they seldom meet, each one the other; they
are fortunate if they see each other’s radiance dimly, through the
crowded field.