_ CHAPTER XIV
In the morning, Arethusa wrote the letter to Miss Eliza she had been bidden to write as soon as possible after arrival in Lewisburg, giving a sketchy description of her trip and the information that it had been accomplished in safety, without mentioning a single one of the friends made on the train; or that she had almost missed her father; or that she was now minus a purse.
But immediately after this duty was done she wrote another letter; to Miss Asenath this one, and it was overflowing with spirits and exuberant retrospect of all that had happened to her since she left the Farm. Into this effort she put her encounter with the strange man, Mrs. Cherry and Helen Louise and Peter and Mr. Cherry; how nearly she and Ross had missed connection and how terribly she had felt; the loss of her purse, and her fear that the check had been gone also; just how exciting this glorious Visit had already proved.
It was a long letter and a breathless one, with many missing words all down the pages, for Arethusa's mind was working so much faster than she could move her pen that it was quite impossible to get in every syllable. But Miss Asenath would understand.
Arethusa described at length the wonders of this big house where she was a guest, and the superlative Beauty of the room she had been given for her very own. She told of that Anniversary Dinner, and the Artichoke; of all her troubles with the strange food and the bewildering number of knives and forks and spoons. She also told Miss Asenath of Elinor's music.
Elinor made sounds to issue from a piano that Arethusa had never dreamed that instrument was capable of accomplishing. With her slender fingers on those black and ivory keys, the big, black box had sobbed and laughed, and even talked ordinarily at her bidding.
Arethusa left her chair, and crept nearer and nearer to the musician until she was almost on top of the piano bench herself, in her absorbed interest. Her hands clasped over her heart to still the curious little ache the music made her to feel there, with her lips parted slightly and her eyes like big stars; she had scarcely dared breathe. She wished suddenly for Timothy, for Timothy worshipped music. He loved even to hear her, Arethusa, play. And she was sure he had never heard any music such as this.
It was not what Miss Letitia would have called playing "with expression"; it was not as she had tried to teach Arethusa. Elinor's long, white hands just seemed to wander over the keys, as softly aimless as if she had no slightest idea what the next note was to be; they strayed from themes which aroused to an ecstasy into simple melodies that left a haunting sense that they had not been finished. Sometimes the piano scarcely seemed to sound; sometimes it crashed in grand chords, as if the musician's playing had changed with her mood.
And Arethusa had listened, full of vague longings she did not understand, feeling when it ended that it was ended far too soon; and Ross had smoked silently, blowing great, blue wreaths about his head, one after another. There had been no single word from either to break the spell of the music.
Arethusa wrote away, the wrinkles of composition between her brows and her writing becoming more and more ragged as the letter proceeded. Her feet were twined in the rounds of her chair, her arms were spread out all over the top of the big desk with a great display of elbows, and she was ungracefully humped as to back; for when Arethusa wrote, her whole body responded to the effort.
Close beside her lay Boris, Ross's Great Dane, a dignified animal of unusual beauty. Ordinarily, he was so indifferent and sometimes so disagreeable to strangers that he was rarely allowed where they were, yet he had adopted Arethusa at sight when first introduced just after breakfast, and he had not left her side since. Most people were frightened nearly speechless when Boris merely opened his mouth to yawn; but he had not frightened Arethusa. She had voted him the most wonderful dog she had ever seen, and pleased Ross immensely by her lack of fear.
Every now and then when she stopped in her writing to open her cramped fingers for a moment and gaze admiringly around the room, she would stoop and pat Boris. And she would stroke him wherever her hand happened to fall, and he did not seem to resent it in the least, which was something most unusual.
Ross was in the library, sprawled on the big davenport, and watching the girl and the dog with keen delight in the picture they made. He had never known Boris to make friends thus suddenly, in all the six years he had owned him; even Elinor was a bit afraid of the splendid creature.
Elinor had been in the library also most of the morning, talking to Ross while Arethusa performed a Duty; but she had been called out to the telephone. When she came back, her first words were for Arethusa.
"I have an invitation for you."
"For
me!" Arethusa's pen dropped abruptly in the middle of her page to make a large and sprawling splash of ink.
"Yes, for you. That was Mrs. Chestnut on the telephone. I had told her you were coming to visit us, and so she called up to invite you to the dinner-dance she is giving Friday night, if you were here."
"Oh, would that be a Party, a Real Party?" The excited scribe abandoned her letter altogether, and followed Elinor over by the fire-place, nearer to Ross and the davenport, "Isn't that a Party?"
"I should say it was!"
"I've never been to a Party," apologetically explained Arethusa, "and I've wanted to go to one ever since I can remember. Aunt 'Senath said there would be parties in the City, and that I might be invited! But...." some of the glow began to fade, "I don't know Mrs. Chestnut, Mother."
"That doesn't make any difference this time, Arethusa dear, because she's one of my best friends. And all her parties are wonderful, so if you've really never been to any at all, you're starting in in the right way to enjoy them," said Elinor, and Arethusa glowed once more. "I had hardly dared hope she would invite you," she continued, "because I supposed her list was made up long ago. It's for Emily, her daughter. You'll like Emily; she's just about your age, and she's coming out this winter. It's to be at the Boden Hotel, I think she said. But she's going to send an escort for you."
What richness of prospect!
Yet with her joy, Arethusa puzzled for a moment over some of the obscurer items of her mother's speech.
"Why doesn't she have her party at home instead of a hotel," she enquired, "and what is Emily coming out of?"
"Your mother used the wrong words, Arethusa," volunteered Ross from the davenport; "she means to say that Mrs. Chestnut's daughter is on exhibition after some years of careful preparation by her mother for just this event and will be gladly presented to the man offering to take her off her mother's weary hands. Said mother will be fearfully disappointed, if, after all this trouble and expense, no man should offer. And as to her not having the party at her home, she thinks far too much of her furniture and Persian rugs and pale pink walls to allow her daughter's callow young friends to romp around among them for a whole evening."
Arethusa looked at him uncertainly, but his expression was one of perfect seriousness. It was even a trifle sad.
"Is she really like that, Father?"
"Really like that," replied Ross sorrowfully.
"Then," announced Arethusa with decision, and her red mouth pursed disapprovingly, "I don't believe that I want to go to her party!"
Elinor struggled between exasperation and a desire to laugh.
"Mrs. Chestnut is lovely, Arethusa, and so is her daughter. They only have the dance at the hotel because their own house is too small for so many people at once. Everyone has their large parties there nowadays. If you are going to believe everything your father says, you'll be having a very hard time. And if he keeps on talking this way, I'll have to send him out. You mustn't pay so much attention to him."
"Nice, wifely speech, that," observed Ross.
But Arethusa had glimpsed the laughter in his quizzical dark eyes. She realized now he had been teasing, so she turned clear away from him to give all her attention to Elinor, who could be more trusted.
"Do you know how to dance, dear?" asked Elinor.
"Some," replied Arethusa, "Timothy taught me down in the barn. Aunt 'Liza says dancing is very wicked," (Miss Eliza had a truly deep and honest horror of round dances). "But Timothy says it isn't a bit wrong, and I just
love it! She doesn't know," added almost confidentially, "that Timothy ever showed me how."
"'Tis just as well, I suppose," murmured Ross.
Arethusa had proved an apt pupil to Timothy's friendly instructions when he had come home from college and passed on his acquirements in the art terpsichorean. The lessons had taken place in the central, biggest space in the barn, as she had said, with Timothy humming an accompaniment until breathless, and then she taking up the tune in her turn. This little taste of the joys of dancing had made her long for more. She failed to see how anything that made for such pure and unadulterated delight could be so wicked as Miss Eliza insisted that it was.
"I'm glad you know something about it," said Elinor, really relieved. "I was afraid perhaps you didn't, and you would hardly have the time to learn. And, Arethusa dearest," tactfully feeling her way, fearing to spoil the girl's innocent happiness in the garment, "was that white dress you wore last night your very best?"
"Yes, ma'am." The eager face lighted still more. "And it's the lowest necked dress I ever did have, and it has the shortest sleeves! They're nearly up to my elbow. Aunt 'Liza didn't want it made that way, so low, nor so thin, either; because she said I wouldn't be able to wear my underwear with it, and she's afraid it's dangerous for me to take it off. But I rolled it up last night and in at the neck, and it didn't show very much. Did it?"
Elinor and Ross were almost equally affected by this speech.
"Shades of the summer of seventy-six!" was his rather inappropriate exclamation.
And Elinor's expression seemed to Arethusa to be one of incredulity, so she turned back her shirtwaist cuff to prove her statement, and showed the end of a long, knit sleeve.
"I don't like to wear it a single bit," she said, "but Aunt 'Liza makes me. I have to put it on when we have the first heavy frost and I can't take it off until the tenth of May."
"I am becoming more and more convinced that Miss Eliza's peculiar talents are entirely lost in the place she occupies," replied Ross, with sincerity.
But the white dress, low as its proud owner seemed to consider it, and as thin, and in spite of Miss Letitia's loving effort expended on it for just such occasions as parties, would hardly serve for the Chestnuts' dinner-dance, thought Elinor.
And so, ere very much time were sped, Arethusa discovered Miss Asenath to have been a true prophet. She was to have another Party Frock. She and Elinor started off immediately to get It; but they had to get It ready-made, for there was not near enough time before the Party for a dressmaker's services to have accomplished the sort of Frock that Elinor wanted Arethusa to have.
They went in the automobile, to Arethusa's great delight, and the palatial establishment where it stopped, and which Elinor told her had the prettiest dresses in town to offer in just such emergencies as this, was so enormous a place and so filled to overflowing with scurrying people, that Arethusa wondered if every human being in Lewisburg had not come a-buying this morning, and right in this particular shop. She was not used to stores where she bumped into somebody at every other step. She apologized several times from the front door to the elevator, for such collisions; because her delighted eyes would insist in wandering to the bewilderment of riches displayed on every side, instead of finding her a passage through the crowd. She could not understand how Elinor could pass them all so calmly by, looking so straight ahead. Had she not been afraid of losing her, Arethusa would have stopped, more than once, for a little closer view.
They went up in the elevator to the third floor, and the elevator was another new sensation for Arethusa. There were no elevators within miles of the Farm.
The whole third floor was entirely given over to ready-made garments of every description; cloaks and suits and dresses of every conceivable variety of cloth and color, hanging carelessly over tables and chairs, and neatly displayed inside lighted glass cases, and girls were rushing about carrying still more piled in their arms. There were more clothes then Arethusa had imagined could ever have been made, right here on the one floor of this huge shop.
To the floor-walker who stepped up to greet them, Elinor conveyed her desire to buy a dress for Arethusa; "And I should like Miss Rosa, Mr. Wells, if she's not too busy."
Mr. Wells, bowing grandly from the waist, ushered them into a small room hung all around with mirrors, and disappeared. Then he reappeared in a few moments to announce that Miss Rosa would be with them very shortly, if Mrs. Worthington would be so kind as to wait.
Arethusa was simply overcome by the rapidity with which events moved forward, to carry her with them. Speech was an impossibility. She could only follow Elinor silently.
She sat and gazed about her in the little mirrored room. Her quaint figure was repeated again and again on all sides in a very bewildering way; and she noted that the hat of each Arethusa had somehow got crooked far down over one ear. She straightened it immediately. There were many Elinors in the mirrors also, and Arethusa admired the grace of those reflections with unaffected showing of her admiration. She especially admired the soft sweep of Elinor's long stole of moleskin. There was no more envy in her regard of the difference of their appearance in these many unmistakable evidences of it than there had been when they had both been dressed for the Anniversary the night before. Arethusa rejoiced that Elinor was such a Beautiful Creature; and it was Perfect Bliss to be with her and watch her lovely clothes, without worrying about herself in any way.
Miss Rosa did not keep them waiting long, and at Elinor's request when she did come, she flitted away in a business-like manner that spelled a knowledge of what was wanted, to return bearing an armful of color; pale blues and pinks and lavenders and whites and deeper creams, in the softest of satins and silks and chiffons and lace. Among all this loveliness was glimpsed by Arethusa a fleck of green.
"Mother," this whispered to Elinor, as Miss Rosa in her modish and well-fitting black crepe de chine and her air of knowing what she was about, was just a trifle awe-inspiring, "do you suppose that would be a Green Dress?"
But Miss Rosa heard the whisper. She smiled in a friendly way at Arethusa, for Miss Rosa was a kindly soul, and produced from the very bottom of her pile of beautiful things a Green Frock of the identical shade so beloved by Arethusa.
Arethusa drew in her breath with a sharp, little sound. "Oh, that is the One I want! Oh, Mother, may I have...."
But she had had too long a training by Miss Eliza for it to desert her with too great a suddenness. The dress looked neither sensible nor durable when Miss Rosa held it spread out to plainer view; in fact, it had every possible appearance of being neither. And it was so wonderful a mass of chiffon and silk and lace that Arethusa began to remember sundry lessons in economy also; she feared its cost would prove terrific. She had never seen anything nearly so Wonderful in the shape of a Gown before. Then too, those caustic remarks of so positive a nature concerning green with her red hair, which Miss Eliza had spoken so often in her hearing, began to worm themselves into her consciousness.
The happy expression, roused by the first sight of this creation, faded quite noticeably.
"What's the matter?" inquired Elinor. "I think that's the dress of all dresses for you, dear. If you like it. Don't you, Miss Rosa?"
Miss Rosa nodded. "Yes, indeed, Miss Worthington has the very hair and eyes for this, and the skin as well."
Then did Arethusa's spirits soar to touch heaven once more. She turned such an illumined face to Elinor as Elinor had never seen; she was all aquiver in her sudden joy.
"Aunt 'Senath was right! Darling Aunt 'Senath was right! She said not everybody would be like Aunt 'Liza; that some people would be sure to think green was all right with my hair! Aunt 'Liza never has let me have anything but blue, and I've wanted a green dress for a thousand years. But this one looks so...." she paused uncertainly, and reddened. She did not like to mention its cost, since Elinor was making her a gift, but Miss Eliza was a good teacher.
"Expensive?" finished Elinor, laughing. "I don't imagine it is. But I'll do the worrying about that. If you want it, you may have it. It rests with you to say."
Arethusa blushed more deeply, but it was a radiant blush, even if embarrassed, for Elinor's words, if intended as words of correction, were not spoken in the tone Arethusa associated with corrections. She fingered at the Green Dress, almost caressingly. To own this Gorgeous Thing for her very own!
"Suppose we try it on," suggested Miss Rosa, amused at Arethusa's naive joy.
Arethusa's coat was off before the kindly suggestion was quite finished, then she looked at Miss Rosa.
Elinor read the hesitating thought. "It's all right," she said. "Miss Rosa must fit it for you, you know."
So Miss Rosa whisked off Arethusa's shirtwaist for her, and her skirt, and even manipulated that uncompromisingly unbeautiful protection which Miss Eliza insisted was all that kept the healthy Arethusa from dying of pneumonia in the winter season, in such a very capable way that it could not possibly show; and slipped the dainty gown over the girl's ruddy head. And it fitted her as if it had been made especially to her measurement.
Arethusa stared into the mirror directly before her, and into the ones all around her, twisting and turning to see every inch of her back, lost in ecstasy at the contemplation of her glorified self in these Wonderful Reflections. Even the heavy black lace shoes, ugly shoes from a country store, which showed so plainly below her green skirt, had no sort of power to spoil for Arethusa the general effect of loveliness.
It was the most Beautiful Dress in the world, she was sure.
The skirt billowed and flowed around her in soft generous folds of pale green chiffon and lace draped over an underskirt of green silk, and caught to it here and there with bunches of tiny flowers in odd, bright colors. The waist had a high, soft girdle of the green silk, and some of the little flowers were sewed around one side of it against the gathers of the skirt; and a tight little bunch of them was right in the middle of her back at the very top of the girdle, from which hung narrow, flowing sash-ends that were tied into the fulness of the skirt with other wee bunches of the flowers. Some of these flowers were nestled about in the lace on the upper part of the waist as if they had grown there, and some caught up the short lace sleeves.
"How do you like it?" asked Elinor. It was really rather a superfluous question.
"I
love it!" burst from Arethusa. "I think it is Perfectly Beautiful!" Then she turned around. "But I just know, Mother, that Aunt 'Liza won't like it at all."
"Why, what on earth has Miss Eliza to do with it?"
"You see," seriously, "she has always said just what I should wear, and she tells Aunt 'Titia just how to make them."
"I understand, dear, but you're in Lewisburg now; and ... I can't see possibly how Miss Eliza could have a single objection to make."
But Arethusa knew only too well.
"Couldn't I have a guimpe with it?" she suggested hopefully; "if I had a guimpe, it would look different."
It would indeed!
"A guimpe!" echoed both Elinor and Miss Rosa.
Arethusa nodded, and turned once more to the mirror, "It's the sleeves she wouldn't like," she lifted one to show its lack as a sleeve from Miss Eliza's point of view, "and the neck, besides. It's ever so much lower than my white dress, I always used to wear guimpes with dresses like this. I don't mean just like this," added hastily, for a blunder had been committed, "but when it had sleeves as short, and didn't come up any higher."
"I never heard of such a thing," declared Elinor. "And, Arethusa, I can't believe that even Miss Eliza would make you wear a guimpe with an evening dress!"
But then Elinor did not know Miss Eliza.
And, "Anything on earth that you would do to that dress, Mrs. Worthington, would spoil it," said Miss Rosa, warmly. "It's absolutely perfect just as it is. And I'm almost sure, Miss Arethusa, that your aunt would say so herself if she could see it."
But neither did Miss Rosa know Miss Eliza.
And Arethusa did.
She stepped slowly down from the little platform where she had been standing for the better view all around, and her grey eyes filled rapidly with the bitter tears of disappointment. It was Tragedy to give it up! But if there was to be no guimpe....
Her fumbling fingers were reaching under the flowers at the girdle for the hooks which had fastened her into it, when Elinor stopped her.
Elinor had set her heart on Arethusa having that Green Dress from the first moment of seeing her in it. It seemed to Elinor to suit the girl as if, as Miss Rosa had enthusiastically declared, somebody had sat down before her and studied her "style". Her namesake nymph might have worn the gown just as it was without a single change to make it more airy or more like captured sea-foam in its fluttering draperies. It belonged with Arethusa's hair and her greenish eyes. She would never find another frock, if they looked all day, which would be half so becoming. But there was no slightest use in buying it if this bugbear of Miss Eliza's disapproval would continue to rear its serpent head to Arethusa's further unhappiness.
"Arethusa," she demanded, "don't you think I know every bit as much about clothes as Miss Eliza?"
Arethusa could but smile through the tears she was winking back at the utter ridiculousness of this question. She looked at Elinor's wonderfully made suit and her furs and the dark purple velvet hat she wore that was so attractive against her white hair, and then memory showed her Miss Eliza, trotting about in the sensible and comfortably cut garments she affected the year round.
"More," she declared, with honesty and emphasis.
"And do you imagine for a single instant that I would be letting you wear anything that was not at all right for you to wear?"
Arethusa shook her head decidedly. That was not exactly the point. "But if I only had...." she began, uncertainly.
"Miss Rosa," asked Elinor desperately, "have you such a thing as a guimpe?"
Miss Rosa had, she was sure, somewhere about.
"Would you mind bringing it?"
So the guimpe was brought, a lace guimpe with long, lace sleeves, and a high collared neck of lace.
Arethusa could have cried at the way it made her look. It ruined her Wonderful Frock; even she, inexperienced in such frocks, could tell that with ease. It was a real relief to get it off, and view herself once more as she had been at first arrayed, without it.
"Now don't you see?"
Yes, Arethusa saw.
"And do you suppose," pursued Elinor, "that Miss Eliza, as sensible as you say she is, would want to spoil an already beautiful dress that way?"
No, Arethusa could not believe that even Miss Eliza would want to be so unfeeling to beautiful dresses such as this. She could not help but think, she who had seen it and worn it, both ways, that Miss Eliza would be forced to select, as the prettier, the dress without the guimpe. There was really no choice, thought Arethusa, between them.
She smiled at her many reflections once more, and strutted a bit, back and forth, to watch her draperies float about her.
"I'm rather sorry," remarked Elinor, "that you needed so much convincing that I had any idea what was best."
Arethusa stopped short, and turned in alarm. "Why, Mother...."
But Elinor's merry brown eyes were smiling at her, and Arethusa understood. She swooped upon her joyously, with the danger of damage to the Green Gown in her sudden movement, and hugged her mother swiftly.
"It's just," she exclaimed, "it's just that if you knew Aunt 'Liza you would understand!"
Ross had also said something of the kind, only the day before. So Elinor was beginning to feel a rather respectful interest in Miss Eliza.
Then Arethusa and Elinor, the dress carefully removed and folded into a box that they might take it with them, while Arethusa's jealous eyes watched until the last knot was fast in the string which tied that box, departed happily to a lower floor in search of slippers and stockings to match and complete the costume.
These purchased, and deposited with the dress-box in the automobile, Elinor directed Clay to drive to "Parnell's."
"We'll go get a soda water," she said, "after this trying morning."
"But I don't feel the least bit sick," remonstrated Arethusa, with memories of Miss Letitia's packet of soda tucked into the corner of her satchel.
Elinor explained.
Later, she told Arethusa she was very likely to be needing Miss Letitia's sort, when after her second glass of a beverage of a most seductive taste, she expressed a desire for a third drink of this new and altogether charming "soda water." _