CHAPTER XVI.IN MAIDEN MEDITATION.
GRACIE was sitting alone in her own room; she had been reading—the “Faery Queene” the book—but it had slipped from her hand—and now she was thinking. Not of herself, but of others; Arthur, perhaps, principally. For she had given her heart to him; and in a perfect maidenly love there is always some foretaste of the maternal, a fond solicitude as of a mother for her child. Perhaps even Arthur did not know how much she thought of him: and Mrs. Livingstone was too much bound up in Mamie, and Mamie too much in herself, to notice it; Miss Brevier alone had seen it, and had held her peace. Gracie fancied that no one knew it, save Arthur himself; though for her and Arthur it had changed the world. The world itself she did not understand; all things did not look clear to her that winter; the people of her acquaintance puzzled her. It almost seemed as if she would not have their sympathy in all ways; but this could not be proven, for Gracie never made a confidante. Now Mamie Livingstone, on the other hand, confided everything to her; and then, apparently, forgot it all, much as a Parisian lady may be supposed to forget the substance of her last auricular confession; forGracie noted a certain repugnancy or incoherence in this young woman’s heart history of which the heart’s possessor was unaware entirely.
Mamie was intensely a metropolitan girl; the exquisitely sensitive product of a great social nerve-centre. She did not know her Emerson, and was wholly untroubled with “the whichness of the why:” but she had mastered her own environment at an early age. And she had—except, of course, as against young men, her natural prey—a frank disposition and a warm heart.
The great event of her life, her appearance in society, was to take place in the season following; and all through this winter Mamie was in a state of electric anticipation. She was already laying, in an innocent and girlish way, her wires. What Gracie failed chiefly to understand was these very love confidences, above mentioned: for though Mamie talked most ardently of the qualities of her successive swains, they seemed to bear a much more definite relation to her own self-love than to her heart. But then, it was her self-love that was the source of motive to her; her heart was an amusement only. And Mamie knew the world, as has before been hinted,à priori; she was a girl of transcendental mind, who saw through the copper-plate formulas of her study-books to the realities around her; with innate ideas and tastes as to what was fashionable and really fine. She alternately patronized and petted Gracie, who was three years older than herself; yet Gracie had more influence over her than anyone else. As for the parental authority ofher father and mother—the phrase is too grotesquely mediæval to be completed. Mr. Livingstone was an old gentleman with a million and a half of property, whose manners had outlived his mind.
Gracie was looking—if I could describe to you the manner of her look, you would all men be poor Arthur’s rivals, I am sure; the direction of her look was simply to the northward, through the window. The manner of it—perhaps even Arthur never wholly noted it; may be he thought all girls had it; may be he even preferred the scintillating alertness of Pussie Duval’s or Baby Malgam’s—people now called her Baby with a touch of malice—which was more new to him. It was a deep and holy radiance, as if the look’s object were not yet quite found, and a certain questioning withal. Gracie was almost sure to have it when alone; perhaps a certain exquisite if unconscious tact restrained it, with other girls, lest they should call it pose; but no man—that is, noman—ever saw it fairly, but his soul was turned to fire. Medusa’s look it was that turned a man to stone; but there seems to be no metaphor for this opposite one. Perhaps because the Greeks had never met with it; it is found since Hamlet and since Gretchen, and grows mostly in the country, with books, sweet thoughts, and solitude. I have more rarely met with it in crowded colleges; yet it is not absolutely inconsistent with a knowledge of Greek.
“You do look so sweet, cousine,” cried Mamie as she tripped into the room, “but awfully poky. I’ve got such a thing to tell you about Mrs. Lucie Gower.And oh, do you know? Charlie Townley called here to-day. And somebody else too—aha?”
“Who was it?” said Gracie.
“Who was it, Ma’am Soft-airs, indeed. Cousine, do let me try a bit of rouge some time—that blush was so becoming to you. Mr. Haviland, of course; and I peeked through the crack of the door when the servant said you weren’t at home. But tell me, Gracie dear, do you think it would do for me to ask Mr. Townley to dinner next time? You know, I’ve had all the younger men, and he dances like an angel.”
“Why, Mamie, you don’t mean to have a dance?”
“No, no, stupid, but for next winter, I mean. I’m determined to have Charlie lead my german, you know; they say all the young married women are fighting for him. And the only other man is Daisy Blake, and he’s too slow for anything. Besides, I’m dead in love with Townley, you know.”
“Oh,” said Gracie.
“I heard he gave a supper-party last night, and both Mrs. Gower and Mrs. Malgam were there, and the Earl of Birmingham; and afterward they all went in masks to a public ball. Wasn’t it horrid? And just think what fun it would be to get him away from those married women? Why, Marion Roster told me last year that the débutantes had no chance at all. I’ll see about that.” And Mamie stamped her little foot and tossed her pretty head defiantly; and indeed it looked as if the filly might make it hard running for the four-year-olds. And Charlie Townley,had he seen it, might have felt that he had gotten his reward on earth. For I doubt if any poet’s bays or any soldier’s laurel were more highly prized by maid or wife than Mamie, the rich, well-bred, well-born, rated Charlie Townley’s style of excellence.Le style c’est l’homme, says some old, grave writer; what then is style to a giddy young woman? And I doubt if either bays or laurel be so marketable. And Charlie was a man of the world, familiar to its stock-exchanges; who did not mean to marry, but meant to marry well.
Gracie looked at Mamie Livingstone with some faint wonder; and then the young girl laughed loudly, as was usual, and kissed her, and called her a dear old thing; and laughed again, as if she had been jesting. And so the other one supposed it, and smiled back through Mamie’s many kisses.
“Look here,” Mamie began again, with a gesture of triumph; and she pulled a note from her pocket, and waved it triumphantly in Gracie’s face. “I’ve got a note from him already!”
“Oh, Mamie——”
“’Sh, Ma’am Prunes and Prisms—it’s only about a summer fan. I asked him to get a kind which I knew had only been made at one place down-town, and they were all sold out, so he had to write and tell me so. See, isn’t the signature nice? ‘your devoted servant, Charles Townley’—and such a nice manly hand.” And Mamie roguishly made pretence of kissing it, the while her eyes danced with merriment. Gracie looked at her—puzzled; and Mamie onlylaughed the more. “There, there, don’t look so grave, you delightful old darling; it’s not so awfully serious, after all—yet.” And with the final burst of laughter that accompanied her last word, Mamie danced from the room.
Left alone, Gracie’s smile, which had reflected Mamie’s, changed to a deeper look, a look that Mamie’s face could never mirror. Yes, it was a puzzle, in a way; people so rarely seemed to care for the essentials of things. Gracie’s notion of a man was enlightened heroism, of a woman perfect bravery and trust, and the light in the lives of both the light of the world that comes from another, like the sun’s. But to these young ladies and gentlemen, the light of the world was the light of a ball-room.
So she sat there, looking northward over the roofs and steeples, to the bright sky-line; and perhaps, if an eye were at the other end of that ray of light that slanted through space to meet her own, it saw a human soul. But to the telegraph wires and brick chimneys, to Mamie and the men near by on the roofs, it was a girl with a pretty face like another.
Human nature, they tell us; and another says, people are all alike when it comes to the point; and the motives of mankind have ever been the same, says a third. The course of history is thus and so; it is human nature to do this, and take this bundle of hay rather than that; and we are all alike, they repeat again; scholars, men, and books repeat again, until we do become human nature—or drown ourselves in preference.
But it is a lie. Humanity is not all alike; it is as a broad plain of grass or weeds; and this is alike. But among it, here and there, there flames a poppy, and above it, here and there, stands up the glorious lily, like a halo on a flower’s stem; and beneath it breathes the sweet and gentle violet. Hard by grow the weeds, and dock and hardy thistles; on one stem perhaps with these, unconscious of them.
So mankind is a great crowd composed of common units, all alike; but with them walking, mostly alone, there journeys the hero, and there the martyr, and the woman with a soul. And the hero looks straight ahead, sad and strong; the martyr looks up to heaven; and the soul looks about it and breathes its fragrance to its fellows.
But the crowd is so great that these three, though they are many, yet seem few. And they journey as they may, and work, and do, and die; but ah me! they are lonely, for they seldom meet, each one the other; they are fortunate if they see each other’s radiance dimly, through the crowded field.