Part 34 (2/2)
will you, and bring it over here? And roll up the 'Course of the Rhine,' and set it in the corner. There; now we may put out the gas.
Sylvie, has your mother had her fresh camomile tea?”
The three girls bade each other good-night at the stairs; just where Desire had stood once, and put her arms about Uncle t.i.tus's neck for the first time. She often thought of it now, when they went up after the pleasant evenings, and came down in the bright mornings to their cheery breakfasts. She liked to stop on just that step. n.o.body knew all it meant to her, when she did. There are places in every dwelling that keep such secrets for one heart and memory alone.
Yes, indeed. Sylvie was very happy now. All her pretty pictures, and little brackets, and her mother's stands and vases in the gray parlor, were hung with the lovely, wreathing, fairy stems of star-leaved, blossomy fern; and the sweet, dry scent was a perpetual subtle message. That day in the train from East Keaton was a day to pervade the winter, as this woodland breath pervaded the old city house. Sylvie could wait with what she had, sure that, sometime, more was coming. She could wait better than Rodney. Because,--she knew she was waiting, and satisfied to wait. How did Rodney know that?
It was what he kept asking his Aunt Euphrasia in his frequent, boyish, yet most manly, letters. And she kept answering, ”You need not fear. I think I understand Sylvie. I can see. If there were anything in the way, I would tell you.”
But at last she had to say,--not, ”I think I understand Sylvie,”--but, ”I understand girls, Rodney. I am a woman, remember.
I have been a girl, and I have waited. I have waited all my life.
The right girls can.”
And Rodney said, tossing up the letter with a shout, and catching it with a loving grasp between his hands again,--
”Good for you, you dear, brave, blessed ace of hearts in a world where hearts are trumps! If you ain't one of the right old girls, then they don't make 'em, and never did!”
CHAPTER XXI.
VOICES AND VISIONS.
Madame Bylles herself walked into the great work-room of Mesdames Fillmer & Bylles, one Sat.u.r.day morning.
Madame Bylles was a lady of great girth and presence. If Miss Tonker were sub-aristocratic, Madame Bylles was almost super-aristocratic, so c.u.mulative had been the effect upon her style and manner of constant professional contact with the elite. Carriages had rolled up to her door, until she had got the roll of them into her very voice. Airs and graces had swept in and out of her private audience-room, that had not been able to take all of themselves away again. As the very dust grows golden and precious where certain workmans.h.i.+p is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated became--not the air of shop or business or down-town street--but the air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon Hill or the New Land.
And Madame Bylles breathed it all the time; she dwelt in the courtly contagion. When she came in among her work-people, it was an advent of awe. It was as if all the elegance that had ever been made up there came floating and spreading and s.h.i.+ning in, on one portly and magnificent person.
But when Madame Bylles came in, in one of her majestic hurries!
Then it was as if the globe itself had orders to move on a little faster, and make out the year in two hundred and eighty days or so, and she was appointed to see it done.
She was in one of these grand and grave accelerations this morning.
Miss Pashaw's marriage was fixed for a fortnight earlier than had been intended, business calling Mr. Soldane abroad. There were dresses to be hurried; work for over-hours was to be given out. Miss Tonker was to use every exertion; temporary hands, if reliable, might be employed. All must be ready by Thursday next; Madame Bylles had given her word for it.
The manner in which she loftily transmitted this grand intelligence, warm from the high-born lips that had favored her with the confidence,--the air of intending it for Miss Tonker's secondarily distinguished ear alone, while the carriage-roll in her accents bore it to the farthest corner in the room, where the meekest little woman sat basting,--these things are indescribable. But they are in human nature: you can call them up and scrutinize them for yourself.
Madame Bylles receded like a tidal wave, having heaved up, and changed, and overwhelmed all things.
A great buzz succeeded her departure; Miss Tonker followed her out upon the landing.
”I'll speak for that cashmere peignoir that is just cut out. I'll make it nights, and earn me an ostrich band for my hat,” said Elise Mokey.
One spoke for one thing; one another; they were claimed beforehand, in this fas.h.i.+on, by a kind of work-women's code; as publishers advertise foreign books in press, and keep the first right by courtesy.
Miss Proddle stopped her machine at last, and caught the news in her slow fas.h.i.+on hind side before.
”We might some of us have overwork, I should think; shouldn't you?”
<script>