Читать книгу Quicksilver Sue - Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe, Laura Richards - Страница 2

Sue Penrose went home that day feeling, as she had said to Mary, that something serious had happened. The advent of a stranger, and that stranger a girl not very far from her own and Mary's age, was indeed a wonderful thing. Hilton was a quiet village, and it happened that she and Mary had few friends of their own age. They had never felt the need of any, being always together from babyhood. Mary would never, it might be, feel the need; but Sue was always a dreamer of dreams, and always longed for something new, something different from every-day pleasures and cares. When the schooners came up the river, in summer, to load with ice from Mr. Hart's great ice-houses, Sue always longed to go with them when they sailed. There were little girls on them sometimes; she had seen them. She had gone so far as to beg Mr. Hart to let her go as stewardess on board the "Rosy Dawn." She felt that a voyage on a vessel with such a name must be joy indeed. But Mr. Hart always laughed at her so, it would have been hard to have patience with him if he were not so dear and good. She longed to go away on the trains, too, or to have the pair of cream-colored horses that were the pride of the livery-stable – to take them and the buckboard, and drive away, quite away, to new places, where people didn't have their dresses made over every year, and where they had new things every day in the shop-windows. Her dreams always took her away from Hilton; for it seemed impossible that anything new or strange should ever come there to the sleepy home village. She and Mary had always made their plays out of books, and so had plenty of excitement in that way; but Hilton itself was asleep, – her mother said so, – and it would never wake up. And now, all in a moment, the scene was changed. Here, into the very village street, had come a stranger – a wonderful girl looking like a princess, with jewels and gold chains and shimmering silk; and this girl was going to lead a kind of fairy life at a marvelous place called a hotel, where the walls were frescoed, and you could make up stories about them all the time you were eating your dinner; and the dinner itself was as different as possible from a plain brown leg of mutton, which Katy would always do over three times in just the same order: first a pie, then a fricassee, then mincemeat. Katy was so tiresome! But this girl with the fair hair and the beautiful name would have surprises three times a day, surprises with silver covers, – at least, they looked like silver, – and have four kinds of pie to choose from. And she came from New York! That was perhaps the most wonderful part of all. Sue sat down on her window-seat, gave a long sigh, and fell into a dream of New York.

They drove curricles there, glittering curricles like those in books. (Sue was very fond of books, provided they were "exciting.")

And the houses – well, she knew something about those, of course; she had heard them described; and of course it was stupid to have them all alike outside, row upon row of brownstone; but, on the other hand, perhaps it made the mystery of the inside all the more amazing. To go in at a plain brown door in a plain brown house, and find – find – oh! what would not one find? There would be curtains of filmy lace – lace was always filmy when it was not rich and creamy; well, on the whole, she would have the curtains rich and creamy, and keep the filmy kind for something else. And the carpets were crimson, of course, and so thick your feet sank quite out of sight in them. ("I don't see how you could run," Sue admitted to herself; "but no matter.") The walls were "hung," not papered – hung with satin and damask, or else with Spanish leather, gilded, like those in the Hans Andersen story. Sue had begged piteously, when her room was done over last year, to have it hung with gilded Spanish leather. She had quoted to her mother the song the old hangings sang after they had been there for ages and ages:

But it made no difference; the room was papered. Sue had chosen the paper, to be sure, and it was certainly pretty; but – she sighed as she looked around and fancied the Spanish leather creaking in the wind; then sank into her dream again.

The rooms, downstairs, at least, were in suites, opening out of each other in long vistas ("vista" was a lovely word! there were no houses in Hilton big enough to have vistas, but probably they would have them at the hotel), with long French windows opening on to velvet lawns – No! Sue shook herself severely. That was the other kind of house – the kind that was embosomed in trees, in Miss Yonge's stories. Of course they wouldn't have French windows in New York; the burglars could get in. An adventure with a burglar would be terribly exciting, though! There might be just one French window. Sue's mind hovered for a moment, tempted to wander into a dream of burglary; but she rejected it, and went on with the house. The furniture would be just perfectly fine – rosewood and satinwood, and one room all ebony and pale yellow satin. You wore a yellow crape dress when you sat there, with – yes; now came in the filmy lace, lots and lots of it round your snowy neck, that rose out of it like a dove, – no, like a swan, or a pillar, or something. Then, upstairs – oh! she hadn't got to upstairs yet, but she must just take a peep and see the silver bedstead, all hung with pale blue velvet. Oh, how lovely! And – why, yes, it might be – in the bed there would be a maiden sleeping, more beautiful than the day. Her long, fair hair was spread out on the pillow (when Sue was grown up she was never, never going to braid her hair at night; she was always going to spread it out), and her nightgown was all lace, every bit, and the sheets were fine as a cambric handkerchief, and her eyelashes were black, and so long that they reached half-way down her nose, like that paper doll Mrs. Hart made. Well, and Sue would go up and look at her. Oh! if she herself were only a fairy prince in green and gold, or could change into one just for a little while! But, anyhow, she would look at the lovely maiden and say:

"Love, if thy tresses be so dark, —

But these tresses were fair! Well, never mind; she could change that:

"Love, if thy tresses be so fair,

How bright those hidden eyes must be!"

That was really almost as good as the real way. It would be just lovely to be a poet, and say that kind of thing all the time! Sue wondered how one began to be a poet; she thought she would try, when she got through with this. And then the maiden would wake up and say: "Hallo!" and Sue would say: "Hallo! what's your name?" and she would say, soft and low, like the wind of the western sea:

"Clarice!" And then they would be friends for life, the dearest friends in the world – except Mary, of course. But then, Mary was different. She was the dearest girl that ever was, but there was nothing romantic about her. Clarice! It was a pity the other name was Packard! It ought to have been Atherton, or Beaudesert. Clarice Beaudesert! That was splendid. But Mr. Packard didn't look as if he belonged to that kind of people. Well, then, when Clarice grew up she would have to marry some one called Beaudesert – or Clifford. Clarice Clifford was beautiful! And he would be a lord, of course, because there was the good Lord Clifford, you know. And – and – well, anyhow, Clarice would get up, and would thrust her tiny feet into blue velvet slippers embroidered with pearls (if there had really been fairies, the very first thing Sue would have asked for would have been small feet, instead of these great things half a yard long), and throw round her (they always threw things round them in books, instead of putting them on) a – let me see – a long robe of pale blue velvet, to match the bed, and lined with ermine all through; and then she would take Sue round and show her the rest of the house. That would be perfectly lovely! And they would tell each other the books they liked best; and perhaps Clarice would ask her to stay to tea, and then they would sit down to a small round ebony table, with a snowy cloth, – no; bare would be finer if it was real ebony, – and glittering with crystal and silver (they always do that), and with rose-colored candle-shades, and – and —

Tinkle, tinkle! went the dinner-bell. "Oh, dear!" said Sue. "Just as I was going to have such a delightful feast! And it's mincemeat day, too. I hate mincemeat day!"

When she was not dreaming, Sue was planning how she could make the much-desired acquaintance of the new-comer. Mary advised waiting a little, and said her father was going to call on Mr. Packard, and the meeting might perhaps come about naturally in that way. But this was altogether too prosaic for Sue. She must find a way that was not just plain being introduced; that was stupid and grown-up. She must find a way of her own, that should belong entirely to her.

Of course, the best thing, the right and proper and story-book thing, would be for Mr. Packard's horse to run away when only Clarice was in the carriage. Then Sue could fling herself in the path of the infuriated animal, and check him in mid-career by the power of her eye – no; it was lions you did that to. But, anyhow, she could catch him by the bridle, and hang on, and stop him that way. It didn't sound so well, but it was more likely. Or if Clarice should fall into the river, Sue could plunge in and rescue her, swimming with one hand and upholding the fainting form of the lovely maiden with the other, till, half-unconscious herself, the youthful heroine reached the bank, and placed her lovely – no; said that before! – her beauteous burden in the arms of her distracted parent. Oh, dear, how exciting that would be! But nobody ever did fall into the river in Hilton, and the horses never ran away, so it was not to be expected. But there must be some way; there should be!

So it came to pass that on the Sunday after the Packards' arrival, Miss Clarice Packard, rustling into her father's pew in all the conscious glory of a flowered organdie muslin and the biggest hat in town, found in the corner of the pew something that made her open her pale blue eyes wider than usual. It was a large heart of red sugar, tied round with a true-lover's knot of white satin ribbon. Looking round, she became aware of a pair of eyes fixed eagerly on her, the brightest eyes she had ever seen. They belonged to a little girl – well, not so very little, either; rather a tall girl, on the whole, but evidently very young – sitting across the aisle. This girl was ridiculously dressed, Miss Packard thought, with no style at all about her; and yet, somehow – well, she was pretty, certainly. It seemed to be one of the best pews in the church. Her mother – that must be her mother – was "real stylish," certainly, though her gown was too plain; and, after all, the girl had style, too, in her way. It would be nice to have some one to speak to in this dreadful, poky little place that "Puppa" would insist on bringing her to. The idea of his not trusting her to stay alone at the boarding-house! Clarice had wept tears of vexation at being "cruelly forced," as she said, to come with her father to Hilton. She had called it a hole, and a desert, and everything else that her rather scanty vocabulary could afford. But now, here was a pretty little girl, who looked as if she were somebody, evidently courting her acquaintance. There was no mistaking the eager, imploring gaze of the clear hazel eyes. Clarice nodded slightly, and smiled. The younger girl flushed all over, and her face seemed to quiver with light in a way different from anything Clarice had ever seen. There might be some fun here, after all, if she had a nice little friend who would adore her, and listen to all her stories, which the other girls were sometimes disagreeable about.

Two people in church, that Sunday, heard little of the excellent sermon. Sue could not even take her usual interest in the great east window, which was generally her mainstay through the parts of the sermon she could not follow. To begin with, there were the figures that made the story; but these were so clear and simple that they really said less, when once one knew the story by heart, than some other features. There were the eight blue scrolls that looked almost exactly like knights' helmets; and when you looked at them the right way, the round blue dots underneath made the knights' eyes; and there you had them, all ready for tournaments or anything. Scruples of conscience obliged Sue to have them always Templars or Knights of Malta, and they only fought against infidels. One of the knights had lost an eye; and the number of ways and places in which he had lost it was amazing: Saladin had run a lance into it at Acre; he had been tilting, just for fun, with Tancred, and Tancred hit him by mistake and put his eye out; and so on and so on. Then, there were the jewels, high up in the window; the small, splendid spots of ruby and violet and gold, which Sue was in the habit of taking out and making into jewels for her own adornment. The tiara of rubies, the long, dangling ear-rings of crystal set in gold, the necklace of sapphires – how often had she worn them to heart's content! And to-day she did, indeed, make use of them, but it was to adorn her new beauty, her new friend. She would bring them all to Clarice! She would put the tiara on her head, and clasp the necklace round her slender neck, and say, "All is yours!" And then she, Sue, would go by dale and would go by down with a single rose in her hair, just like Lady Clare; but Clarice would call her back and say: "Beloved, let us share our jewels and our joys!"

Oh! Sue quivered at the thought, and looked so brightly and earnestly at the minister that the good old man was surprised and pleased, and said to himself that he should hardly have supposed his comments on Ezra would so impress even the young and, comparatively speaking, thoughtless!

When Clarice Packard came out of church, she found her would-be acquaintance dimpling and quivering on the door-step.

"Hallo!" said Clarice, with kind condescension, just exactly as she had done when Sue waked her up, in the dream!

"Hallo!" whispered Sue, in a rapturous whisper. This, she told herself, was the great moment of her life. Till now she had been a child; now she was – she did not stop to explain what, and it might have been difficult.

"Did you put this in my pew?" the new-comer went on, secretly displaying the sugar heart. Sue nodded, but could not trust herself to speak.

"It was just perfectly sweet of you!" said Clarice. "I'm real glad to have somebody to speak to; I was feeling real homesick."

Sue was dimly conscious that it was not good English to say "real" in that way; but perhaps people did say it in New York; and in any case, she could not stop to think of such trifles. She was in a glow of delight; and when Clarice asked her to walk down the street with her, the cup of happiness seemed brimming over. She, Sue Penrose, who had never in her life been out of Hilton, except now and then to go to Chester, the neighboring town – she was the one chosen by this wonderful stranger, this glittering princess from afar, to walk with her.

Sue did not see Mary at first. At length she became aware of her, gazing in wonder, and she gave a little quick, rapturous nod. There was no time to explain. She could only catch Mary's hand, in passing, and give it a squeeze, accompanied by a look of intense, dramatic significance. Mary would see, would understand.

Of course Mary would share her treasure, her new joy, sooner or later; but just now she could not surrender it to any one, not even to Mary. As Clarice passed her arm through hers, Sue straightened her slight figure, and looked as if the world were at her feet. And so they passed down the street; and Mary, left alone for the first time since she could remember, stood in the church porch and looked after them.