The Heath twins, Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia, rose early that
morning, and the world looked very beautiful to them--one does not buy
a black silk gown every day; at least, Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia
did not. They had waited, indeed, quite forty years to buy this one.
The women of the Heath family had always possessed a black silk gown. It
was a sort of outward symbol of inward respectability--an unfailing
indicator of their proud position as members of one of the old families.
It might be donned at any time after one's twenty-first birthday, and it
should be donned always for funerals, church, and calls after one had
turned thirty. Such had been the code of the Heath family for
generations, as Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia well knew; and it was
this that had made all the harder their own fate--that their
twenty-first birthday was now forty years behind them, and not yet had
either of them attained this _cachet_ of respectability.
To-day, however, there was to come a change. No longer need the
carefully sponged and darned black alpaca gowns flaunt their wearers'
poverty to the world, and no longer would they force these same wearers
to seek dark corners and sunless rooms, lest the full extent of that
poverty become known. It had taken forty years of the most rigid economy
to save the necessary money; but it was saved now, and the dresses were
to be bought. Long ago there had been enough for one, but neither of the
women had so much as thought of the possibility of buying one silk gown.
It was sometimes said in the town that if one of the Heath twins
strained her eyes, the other one was obliged at once to put on glasses;
and it is not to be supposed that two sisters whose sympathies were so
delicately attuned would consent to appear clad one in new silk and the
other in old alpaca.
In spite of their early rising that morning, it was quite ten o'clock
before Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia had brought the house into the
state of speckless nicety that would not shame the lustrous things that
were so soon to be sheltered beneath its roof. Not that either of the
ladies expressed this sentiment in words, or even in their thoughts;
they merely went about their work that morning with the reverent joy
that a devoted priestess might feel in making ready a shrine for its
idol. They had to hurry a little to get themselves ready for the eleven
o'clock stage that passed their door; and they were still a little
breathless when they boarded the train at the home station for the city
twenty miles away--the city where were countless yards of shimmering
silk waiting to be bought.
In the city that night at least six clerks went home with an unusual
weariness in their arms, which came from lifting down and displaying
almost their entire stock of black silk. But with all the weariness,
there was no irritation; there was only in their nostrils a curious
perfume as of lavender and old lace, and in their hearts a strange
exaltation as if they had that day been allowed a glad part in a sacred
rite. As for Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia, they went home awed, yet
triumphant: when one has waited forty years to make a purchase one does
not make that purchase lightly.
"To-morrow we will go over to Mis' Snow's and see about having them made
up," said Miss Priscilla with a sigh of content, as the stage lumbered
through the dusty home streets.
"Yes; we want them rich, but plain," supplemented Miss Amelia,
rapturously. "Dear me, Priscilla, but I am tired!"
In spite of their weariness the sisters did not get to bed very early
that night. They could not decide whether the top drawer of the
spare-room bureau or the long box in the parlor closet would be the
safer refuge for their treasure. And when the matter was decided, and
the sisters had gone to bed, Miss Priscilla, after a prolonged
discussion, got up and moved the silk to the other place, only to slip
out of bed later, after a much longer discussion, and put it back. Even
then they did not sleep well: for the first time in their lives they
knew the responsibility that comes with possessions; they
feared--burglars.
With the morning sun, however, came peace and joy. No moth nor rust nor
thief had appeared, and the lustrous lengths of shimmering silk defied
the sun itself to find spot or blemish.
"It looks even nicer than it did in the store, don't it?" murmured Miss
Priscilla, ecstatically, as she hovered over the glistening folds that
she had draped in riotous luxury across the chair-back.
"Yes,--oh, yes!" breathed Miss Amelia. "Now let's hurry with the work so
we can go right down to Mis' Snow's."
_"Black_ silk-_black_ silk!" ticked the clock to Miss
Priscilla washing dishes at the kitchen sink.
"You've got a black _silk_! You've _got_ a black _silk!"_
chirped the robins to Miss Amelia looking for weeds in the garden.
At ten o'clock the sisters left the house, each with a long brown parcel
carefully borne in her arms. At noon--at noon the sisters were back
again, still carrying the parcels. Their faces wore a look of mingled
triumph and defeat.
"As if we _could_ have that beautiful silk put into a
_plaited_ skirt!" quavered Miss Priscilla, thrusting the key into
the lock with a trembling hand. "Why, Amelia, plaits always crack!"
"Of course they do!" almost sobbed Miss Amelia. "Only think of it,
Priscilla, our silk--_cracked_!"
"We will just wait until the styles change," said Miss Priscilla, with
an air of finality. "They won't always wear plaits!"
"And we know all the time that we've really got the dresses, only they
aren't made up!" finished Miss Amelia, in tearful triumph.
So the silk was laid away in two big rolls, and for another year the old
black alpaca gowns trailed across the town's thresholds and down the
aisle of the church on Sunday. Their owners no longer sought shadowed
corners and sunless rooms, however; it was not as if one were
_obliged_ to wear sponged and darned alpacas!
Plaits were "out" next year, and the Heath sisters were among the first
to read it in the fashion notes. Once more on a bright spring morning
Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia left the house tenderly bearing in their
arms the brown-paper parcels--and once more they returned, the brown
parcels still in their arms. There was an air of indecision about them
this time.
"You see, Amelia, it seemed foolish--almost wicked," Miss Priscilla was
saying, "to put such a lot of that expensive silk into just sleeves."
"I know it," sighed her sister.
"Of course I want the dresses just as much as you do," went on Miss
Priscilla, more confidently; "but when I thought of allowing Mis' Snow
to slash into that beautiful silk and just waste it on those great
balloon sleeves, I--I simply couldn't give my consent!--and 'tisn't as
though we hadn't _got_ the dresses!"
"No, indeed!" agreed Miss Amelia, lifting her chin. And so once more the
rolls of black silk were laid away in the great box that had already
held them a year; and for another twelve months the black alpacas, now
grown shabby indeed, were worn with all the pride of one whose garments
are beyond reproach.
When for the third time Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia returned to their
home with the oblong brown parcels there was no indecision about them;
there was only righteous scorn.
"And do you really think that Mis' Snow _expected_ us to allow that
silk to be cut up into those skimpy little skin-tight bags she called
skirts?" demanded Miss Priscilla, in a shaking voice. "Why, Amelia, we
couldn't ever make them over!"
"Of course we couldn't! And when skirts got bigger, what could we do?"
cried Miss Amelia. "Why, I'd rather never have a black silk dress than
to have one like that--that just couldn't be changed! We'll go on
wearing the gowns we have. It isn't as if everybody didn't know we had
these black silk dresses!"
When the fourth spring came the rolls of silk were not even taken from
their box except to be examined with tender care and replaced in the
enveloping paper. Miss Priscilla was not well. For weeks she had spent
most of her waking hours on the sitting-room couch, growing thiner,
weaker, and more hollow-eyed.
"You see, dear, I--I am not well enough now to wear it," she said
faintly to her sister one day when they had been talking about the black
silk gowns; "but you--" Miss Amelia had stopped her with a shocked
gesture of the hand.
"Priscilla--as if I could!" she sobbed. And there the matter had ended.
* * * * *
The townspeople were grieved, but not surprised, when they learned that
Miss Amelia was fast following her sister into a decline. It was what
they had expected of the Heath twins, they said, and they reminded one
another of the story of the strained eyes and the glasses. Then came the
day when the little dressmaker's rooms were littered from end to end
with black silk scraps.
"It's for Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia,'" said Mrs. Snow, with tears
in her eyes, in answer to the questions that were asked.
"It's their black silk gowns, you know."
"But I thought they were ill--almost dying!" gasped the questioner.
The little dressmaker nodded her head. Then she smiled, even while she
brushed her eyes with her fingers.
"They are--but they're happy. They're even happy in this!" touching the
dress in her lap. "They've been forty years buying it, and four making
it up. Never until now could they decide to use it; never until now
could they be sure they wouldn't want to--to make it--over." The little
dressmaker's voice broke, then went on tremulously: "There are folks
like that, you know--that never enjoy a thing for what it is, lest
sometime they might want it--different. Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia
never took the good that was goin'; they've always saved it for
sometime--later."