Mary Marston, George MacDonald [book club reads txt] 📗

and Folter entered.

"If you please, ma'am, I wish to leave this day month," she said, quietly.

"Then," answered her mistress, with equal calmness, "oblige me by going at once to Mrs. Perkin, and telling her that I desire her to pay you a month's wages, and let you leave the house to-morrow morning.-You won't mind helping me to dress till I get another maid-will you, Mary?" she added; and Folter left the room, chagrined at her inability to cause annoyance.

"I do not see why you should have another maid so long as I am with you, ma'am," said Mary. "It should not need many days' apprenticeship to make one woman able to dress another."

"Not when she is like you, Mary," said Hesper. "It is well the wretch has done my hair for to-night, though! That will be the main difficulty."

"It will not be a great one," said Mary, "if you will allow me to undo it when you come home."

"I begin almost to believe in a special providence," said Hesper. "What a blessed thing for me that you came to drive away that woman! She has been getting worse and worse."

"If I have driven her away," answered Mary, "I am bound to supply her place."

As they talked, she was giving her final touches of arrangement to the head-dress-with which she found it least easy to satisfy herself. It swept round from behind in a misty cloak, the two colors mingling with and gently obscuring each other; while, between them, the palest memory of light, in the golden cincture, helped to bring out the somber richness, the delicate darkness of the whole.

Searching now again Hesper's jewel-case, Mary found a fine bracelet of the true, the Oriental topaz, the old chrysolite-of that clear yellow of the sunset-sky that looks like the 'scaped spirit of miser-smothered gold: this she clasped upon one arm; and when she had fastened a pair of some ancient Mortimer's garnet buckles in her shoes, which she had insisted should be black, and taken off all the rings that Hesper had just put on, except a certain glorious sapphire, she led her again to the mirror; and, if there Hesper was far more pleased with herself than was reasonable or lovely, my reader needs not therefore fear a sermon from the text, "Beauty is only skin-deep," for that text is out of the devil's Bible. No Baal or Astarte is the maker of beauty, but the same who made the seven stars and Orion, and His works are past finding out. If only the woman herself and her worshipers knew how deep it is! But the woman's share in her own beauty may be infinitely less than skin-deep; and there is but one greater fool than the man who worships that beauty-the woman who prides herself upon it, as if she were the fashioner and not the thing fashioned.

But poor Hesper had much excuse, though no justification. She had had many of the disadvantages and scarce one of the benefits of poverty. She had heard constantly from childhood the most worldly and greedy talk, the commonest expression of abject dependence on the favors of Mammon, and thus had from the first been in preparation for marrying money . She had been taught no other way of doing her part to procure the things of which the Father knows we have need. She had never earned a dinner; had never done or thought of doing a day's work-of offering the world anything for the sake of which the world might offer her a shilling to do it again; she had never dreamed of being of any use, even to herself; she had learned to long for money, but had never been hungry, never been cold: she had sometimes felt shabby. Out of it all she had brought but the knowledge that this matter of beauty, with which, by some blessed chance, she was endowed, was worth much precious money in the world's market- worth all the dresses she could ever desire, worth jewels and horses and servants, adoration and adulation-everything, in fact, the world calls fine, and the devil offers to those who, unscared by his inherent ugliness, will fall down and worship him.


CHAPTER XXX.

A SCOLDING.


The Evening Star found herself a success-that is, much followed by the men and much complimented by the women. Her triumph, however, did not culminate until the next appearance of "The Firefly," containing a song "To the Evening Star," which
everybody knew to stand for Mrs. Redmain. The chaos of the uninitiated, indeed, exoteric and despicable, remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so deep in his first devotion that he jumbled up his lady-love, Hesper, and Aphrodite, in the same poetic bundle-of which he left the string-ends hanging a little loose, while, upon the whole, it remained a not altogether unsightly bit of prentice-work. Tom had not been at the party, but had gathered fire enough from what he heard of Hesper's appearance there to write the verses. Here they are, as nearly as I can recall them. They are in themselves not worth writing out for the printers, but, in their surroundings, they serve to show Tom, and are the last with which I shall trouble the readers of this narrative.

"TO THE EVENING STAR.

"From the buried sunlight springing,
Through flame-darkened, rosy loud,
Native sea-hues with thee bringing,
In the sky thou reignest proud!

"Who is like thee, lordly lady,
Star-choragus of the night!
Color worships, fainting fady,
Night grows darker with delight!

"Dusky-radiant, far, and somber,
In the coolness of thy state,
From my eyelids chasing slumber,
Thou dost smile upon my fate;

"Calmly shinest; not a whisper
Of my songs can reach thine ear;
What is it to thee, O Hesper,
That a heart should long or fear?"

Tom did not care to show Letty this poem-not that there was anything more in his mind than an artistic admiration of Hesper, and a desire to make himself agreeable in her eyes; but, when Letty, having read it, betrayed no shadow of annoyance with its folly, he was a little relieved. The fact was, the simple creature took it as a pardon to herself.

"I am glad you have forgiven me, Tom," she said.

"What do you mean?" asked Tom.

"For working for Mrs. Redmain with your hands," she said, and, breaking into a little laugh, caught his cheeks between those same hands, and reaching up gave him a kiss that made him ashamed of himself-a little, that is, and for the moment, that is: Tom was used to being this or that a little for the moment.

For this same dress, which Tom had thus glorified in song, had been the cause of bitter tears to Letty. He came home too late the day of Mary's visit, but the next morning she told him all about both the first and the second surprise she had had -not, however, with much success in interesting the lordly youth.

"And then," she went on, "what do you think we were doing all the afternoon, Tom?"

"How should I know?" said Tom, indifferently.

"We were working hard at a dress-a dress for a fancy-ball!"

"A fancy-ball, Letty? What do you mean? You going to a fancy- ball!"

"Me!" cried Letty, with merry laugh; "no, not quite me. Who do you think it was for?"

"How should I know?" said Tom again, but not quite so indifferently; he was prepared to be annoyed.

"For Mrs. Redmain!" said Letty, triumphantly, clapping her hands with delight at what she thought the fun of the thing, for was not Mrs. Redmain Tom's friend?-then stooping a little-it was an unconscious, pretty trick she had-and holding them out, palm pressed to palm, with the fingers toward his face.

"Letty," said Tom, frowning-and the frown deepened and deepened; for had he not from the first, if in nothing else, taken trouble to instruct her in what became the wife of Thomas Helmer, Esq.?- "Letty, this won't do!"

Letty was frightened, but tried to think he was only pretending to be displeased.

"Ah! don't frighten me, Tom," she said, with her merry hands now changed to pleading ones, though their position and attitude remained the same.

But he caught them by the wrists in both of his, and held them tight.

"Letty," he said once more, and with increased severity, "this won't do. I tell you, it won't do."

"What won't do, Tom?" she returned, growing white. "There's no harm done."

"Yes, there is," said Tom, with solemnity; "there is harm done, when my wife goes and does like that. What would people say of me, if they were to come to know-God forbid they should!-that your husband was talking all the evening to ladies at whose dresses his wife had been working all the afternoon!-You don't know what you are doing, Letty. What do you suppose the ladies would think if they were to hear of it?"

Poor, foolish Tom, ignorant in his folly, did not know how little those grand ladies would have cared if his wife had been a char- woman: the eyes of such are not discerning of fine social distinctions in women who are not of their set, neither are the family relations of the bohemians they invite of the smallest consequence to them.

"But, Tom," pleaded his wife, "such a grand lady as that! one you go and read your poetry to! What harm can there be in your poor little wife helping to make a dress for a lady like that?"

"I tell you, Letty, I don't choose my wife to do such a thing for the greatest lady in the land! Good Heavens! if it
were to come to the ears of the staff! It would be the ruin of me! I should never hold up my head again!"

By this time Letty's head was hanging low, like a flower half broken from its stem, and two big tears were slowly rolling down her cheeks. But there was a gleam of satisfaction in her heart notwithstanding. Tom thought so much of his little wife that he would not have her work for the greatest lady in the land! She did not see that it was not pride in her, but pride in himself, that made him indignant at the idea. It was not "my wife," but " my wife" with Tom. She looked again up timidly in his face, and said, her voice trembling, and her cheeks wet, for she could not wipe away the tears, because Tom still held her hands as one might those of a naughty child:

"But, Tom! I don't exactly see how you can make so much of it, when you don't think me-when you know I am not fit to go among such people."

To this Tom had no reply at hand: he was not yet far enough down the devil's turnpike to be able to tell his wife that he had spoken the truth-that he did