Читать книгу Other People's Business: The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale - Harriet Lummis Smith - Страница 7

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Now that Annabel Sinclair had no immediate use for Persis’ services, Diantha’s wardrobe could receive attention. The girl presented herself at the dressmaker’s late one afternoon, her smooth forehead disfigured by an irritated frown, her mouth resolutely unsmiling. Under one arm she carried a roll of cheap white lawn. Annabel frequently commented on the uselessness of buying expensive materials for a girl who grew as rapidly as Diantha, though the reasonableness of this contention was slightly discounted by her recognized ability to demonstrate that the cream of things was invariably her portion, while an all-wise Providence had obviously designed the skimmed milk for the rest of the world.

Her eyes upon the girl’s averted face, Persis measured off the coarse stuff, using her arm as a yard-stick. “Hm! Even with skirts as skimpy as they are now, this won’t be enough by a yard and a half. Better call it two yards. It’s high time your skirts were coming down where they belong. You can’t stay a little girl forever.”

Some magic had erased the fretful pucker between Diantha’s brows. The grim ungirlish compression of her lips softened into angelic mildness. As she turned upon Persis, she looked an older sister of the Sistine cherubs.

“How long—about how long do you think it had better be, Miss Persis?”

“I should say”—Persis looked her over with an impersonal air, lending weight to the resulting judgment—“I should say about to your shoe-tops.”

Had she guessed the consequences of such an expression of opinion, she might have modified her verdict or at least held it in reserve. A tempest swept the room. Persis was seized, whirled this way and then that, hugged, kissed, forced to join in a delirious two-step. With scarcely breath to protest, powerless in the grip of the storm she had herself evoked, she finally came to anchor between the secretary and the armchair, Diantha still holding her fast.

“Shoe-tops! You did say shoe-tops, didn’t you, darling Miss Persis?”

“Yes, I said shoe-tops, and I’m glad I didn’t say a train. A real long dress would have been the death of me, it’s more’n likely. For all you’re as tall as Jack’s bean-stalk, Diantha Sinclair, you’re not grown up yet.”

Persis freed herself, smiling ruefully as she arranged her disordered hair. The delicious girlishness of the outburst in which she had involuntarily participated had the effect of challenging her own obstinate sense of being on the threshold of things, and making her wonder if perhaps she were not growing old. That the passing shadow on her face failed to attract Diantha’s attention was due less to lack of insight than to youth’s cheerfully selfish absorption in its own problems. “May I pick out the style from the grown-up part of the fashion books?” was the girl’s breathless question.

“It’s got to be simple,” Persis warned her sternly. Then softening: “But good land! Grandmothers nowadays are wearing simple little girlish things with ribbon bows in the back. Pick out what you want. Everything in this month’s book is just about right for sixteen.”

As Diantha gave herself to rapturous study of the fashion-plates, Persis studied her. “She’s in a fair way to make a beauty. Annabel at her best never held a candle to what this girl is likely to turn out. Annabel’s looks are skin deep. Diantha’s have top-roots running to her brain and her heart, too. Only she ought to be happier. ’Most any girl face is pretty to look at if it’s happy enough, same as ’most any flower is pretty if it grows in the sun.”

A harassing reflection troubled Diantha’s bliss. “Miss Persis, I haven’t got a petticoat that comes below my knees.”

“I’ll make you a petticoat the same length as the dress. That’s always the best way. A skirt that’s too long looks as if you wanted to show the lace, and one’s that too short looks as if you were trying to save on cotton cloth, and I don’t know which is worse.” To herself Persis added: “If she went home and asked her mother for a long petticoat, the fat would all be in the fire.”

For a woman at least as conscientious as the average of her sex, Persis was singularly unmindful of the enormity of encouraging a daughter to act in defiance of her mother’s wishes. Had she been called upon to defend herself, she might have explained that she had small respect for the authority of a motherhood which had never progressed beyond the physical relationship. Annabel, a reluctant mother in the beginning, had been consistently selfish ever since, and Persis gave scant recognition to parental rights that were not the out-growth of parental love. Moreover, the project she had in mind was of too complex importance for her to allow it to be side-tracked by petty scruples.

“Like enough she’ll refuse to pay my bill,” thought Persis, with a grim smile, as she watched Diantha turning the gaily colored plates like a butterfly fluttering from blossom to blossom. “I guess she won’t go as far as that though, as long as there ain’t another dressmaker in Clematis she’d trust to make her a kimono. If she says anything, that’ll pave the way for me to give her a good plain talking to, and even if I never get a cent for the dress, I might as well give my missionary money that way as any other.”

The rush of the season—Clematis is sufficiently sophisticated to know in what months propriety demands overworking one’s dressmaker and milliner—was already over, and the little frock made rapid progress. Cheap and plain and simple as it was, its effect upon the wearer, even in its stages of incompleteness, was so striking that Persis sometimes forgot her official duty in the satisfaction of a long admiring stare. And probably in her sixteen years of existence, Diantha had never so nearly approximated all the cardinal virtues as in that idyllic week. She besieged Persis with offers of assistance, pleading for permission to pull basting threads or overcast seams. At home she was gentle, yielding, subdued. Her father, having learned through bitter experience how open to the attack of a million miseries love makes the heart, had resolved that fate should not again trick him. He had steeled himself against the appeal of Diantha’s babyhood and had watched unmoved her precocious development. The mocking politeness which characterized his manner toward his wife was replaced in the case of the daughter by a distant formality. Yet now as Diantha went about the house with dreamy eyes and a half smile on her lips, there were times when the father looked at her almost wistfully and wondered of what she were thinking. With all due respect to the human will, we must acknowledge ourselves creatures of circumstance in no little degree, when two yards of lawn, retailing at twelve and a half cents, can prove so potent a factor in character and destiny.

Diantha’s mother might have prescribed quinine had she noted anything unusual in the girl’s demeanor. But Annabel had reached a crucial stage in her flirtation with Thad West. The boy was developing a gratifying jealousy of the tenor singer in the Unitarian church choir and must be treated with a nice commingling of indulgence and severity to prevent his asserting himself in the crude masculine fashion, and either terminating the intimacy or else permanently getting the upper hand. Annabel was enjoying the crisis of the game and found it impossible to spare from her own absorbing interests a thought for such a minor consideration as Diantha’s moods.

Diantha anticipated the time when she was to call for her finished frock by more than an hour. “I know you’re not ready yet,” she apologized, as Persis looked at the clock. “But I thought I’d like to watch you work, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind, child. Just put those fashion books on the table and take the easy chair.” Persis bent over the finishings of the little frock with a vague satisfaction in the nearness of the motionless figure. She was growing fond of Diantha, a not unnatural result of the adoring attention Diantha had lavished upon her for a week past. But because Persis was a woman with a living to make, and Diantha was a girl with a dream to be dreamed, scarcely a word was spoken till the last stitch was taken.

“There!” Persis removed a basting thread with a jerk, making an unsuccessful pretense that the finishing of this dress was like the completion of any other piece of work. “There! It’s done at last. I suppose you’ll want to try it on.”

“Yes,” said Diantha, “I’ll try it on.” And as the faded blue serge slipped from her shoulders to be replaced by the white lawn, the Diantha who had been, took her departure to that remote country from which the children never come back.

Persis was almost appalled by the result for which she was principally responsible. The tall Diantha in a dress to her shoe-tops was disconcertingly unlike the little girl she had known. She looked older than her years, stately, self-contained and beautiful. It was not till Persis had fortified herself by the reflection that she might as well be hung for an old sheep as for a lamb, that she ventured another revolutionary suggestion.

“Diantha, I s’pose you’ll make some change in the way you do your hair?”

“Yes, indeed.” Diantha, scrutinizing herself in the mirror, frowned at the drooping curls with an air of restrained disgust. “This way is only suitable for children.”

Persis’ negligent gesture called attention to the open door of the bedroom. “There’s a box of hairpins on the dresser. If you like, you can fix yourself up and surprise your mother.”

Diantha vanished swiftly. She had no illusions regarding the nature of the coming surprise. Her mother would be very angry, but the sooner that storm had spent itself, the better. Relentlessly the golden curls were sacrificed to the impressive coiffure of the woman of fashion. For a novice Diantha was remarkably deft, her skill suggesting periods of anticipatory practise with her door locked and no eyes but her own to admire the effect.

During the progress of this rite, Persis in the adjoining room, looked at the clock, glanced at the window and then paced the floor, for once in her well-disciplined life too nervous to utilize the flying moments. Persis was in the dilemma of a stage manager whose curtain is ready to go up, and whose prima donna is about to appear, while the audience has failed to materialize. To such mischances does one subject one’s self in assuming the responsibilities of a deputy-providence.

Then her brow cleared, even while her heart jumped into her throat. The gate clicked, and a lithe figure swung up the path. Persis took her time in answering the peremptory knock.

“Good afternoon, Miss Persis. Mother said that you—”

“Walk in, Thad. Yes, I’ve a little package to send your mother. Sit down while I look for it.”

Would the girl never come! The curtain was rung up, the audience waiting. But the stage was empty. How long a time in Heaven’s name did Diantha expect to spend in combing her hair. “I should think she was waiting for it to grow,” thought the harassed Persis. Very deliberately she opened and closed every drawer in the old-fashioned secretary, though she knew the upper contained only old letters and the second, garden seeds.

Thad was fidgeting. “If you can’t put your hand on it, Miss Persis, don’t bother to hunt. I’ll drop in again in a day or two.”

“Just a minute, Thad. It must be right around here. It can’t—ah!” Persis forgot the ending of the unnecessary sentence. For now Thad West was at liberty to leave whenever he pleased.

A tall slender figure advanced into the room. Diantha’s grace had always made her an anomaly among tall children. Her hair was parted and drawn back simply, after the fashion doubtless designed by earth’s beauties, since it is the despair of plain women. The yellow curls, sacrificing their individual distinction, had magnanimously contributed to the perfection of the exquisite golden coil at the back of her shapely head. No one would have looked twice at the plain little lawn, but it proved superior to some more pretentious gowns in that it set off the charms of the wearer, instead of distracting attention from them. The unlooked-for apparition brought Thad West to his feet, and so Youth and Beauty met as if hitherto they had been strangers.

For a long half minute they stood without speaking. “Oh, good afternoon,” Diantha said at last, and veiled her eyes from his fascinated stare. Formerly she had treated him with the free-and-easy pertness of a precocious child. Now the exquisite shyness of maidenhood enveloped her. Instinct drew her back from the man’s inevitable advance. “I didn’t know it was so late,” she said to Persis, oblivious to Thad’s gasping greeting. “I must hurry.”

Thad’s sense of confusion was like a physical dizziness. This regal young beauty was the daughter of the woman whose hand he had held surreptitiously the previous evening. With an effort he steadied himself, only to make the discovery that in that hazy moment the world had undergone a process of readjustment. He knew as well as he was ever to know it, that Annabel Sinclair belonged to another generation from his own.

“I suppose you want to take this along.” Persis’ gesture indicated the package containing the discarded serge which Diantha would have been glad to contribute to the wardrobe of the youthful Trotters. But with all her daring, her courage was hardly equal to such a step. She put out her hand for the package, but Thad had already pounced upon it.

“I—I’m going your way,” he said, a trace of his recent disorder in his stammering speech. “I’ll carry it for you.”

Silently Diantha accepted the offer. She kissed Persis good-by in a fashion which the critical might have pronounced needlessly provocative, though her dreamy eyes protested that nothing was further from her maiden thoughts than the presence of Thad West. Persis, who was intensely alive to every phase of the dramatic situation, had caught a glimpse of the young fellow’s face during the affectionate leave-taking and was abundantly satisfied.

“Thad’s no fool, though he’s acted like the twin brother to an idiot. He can’t help seeing that the mother of a grown-up girl like Diantha hadn’t ought to be flirting with a boy like him. If he doesn’t see it now he will before he gets her home, or I miss my guess.”

Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Sinclair were seated side by side on their front porch, presenting an agreeable picture of domesticity. The reason for Annabel’s presence was that the tenor singer of the Unitarian choir was accustomed to pass the house at that hour. Sinclair stayed on simply because he suspected that his wife wished him indoors. He read aloud inane items of village news from the weekly paper, and only the veiled mockery of his eyes betrayed the fact that he was not the most devoted and the most complacent of husbands.

As the two young people came into view, Annabel’s air of indifferent listlessness changed to rigid attention. She recognized the gallant figure of the young man considerably before she knew his graceful companion. Her husband’s eyes were quicker. His paper dropped from his hand, and his emotions found vent in an explosive and needlessly profane monosyllable.

The two culprits came up the walk, Thad with a fine color, Diantha extraordinarily self-possessed. The girl’s eyes rested on her mother’s face, then went in swift appeal to her father’s. Their consternation was too obvious to be ignored.

“I wore my new dress home,” she remarked casually. Then with sudden recklessness: “Do you like it?”

“It’s—it’s absurd,” pronounced Annabel almost with a snarl. So a mother tigress might have corrected her offspring. Never had she seemed less prepossessing to her youthful adorer than at that moment. Anger aged her indescribably. The young man looked at her and dropped his eyes ashamed.

“It’s no longer than other girls of sixteen are wearing,” said Diantha, and turned to Thad. “Thank you for carrying my bundle.” She took the package and vanished. Nothing in her outward composure indicated that her heart was thumping, and girlhood’s ready tears burning under her drooping lids.

Persis’ device had been eminently successful, entailing consequences, indeed, she was far from anticipating. For Stanley Sinclair had waked to the fact that he was the father of a beautiful girl on the verge of womanhood, and his sense of parental responsibility, long before drugged, manacled and locked into a dark cell, had roused at last and was clamoring to be free from its prison. Annabel, his wife, had recognized a possible rival in her own household. And lastly, Thad West was the prey of an uneasy suspicion that perhaps, after all, the mother of Diantha Sinclair had been making a fool of him.