Part 32 (1/2)
THE EVENING STAR.
Notwithstanding her headache, however, Mrs. Redmain was going in the evening to a small fancy-ball, meant for a sort of rehearsal to a great one when the season should arrive. The part and costume she had chosen were the suggestion of her own name: she would represent the Evening Star, clothed in the early twilight; and neither was she unfit for the part, nor was the dress she had designed altogether unsuitable either to herself or to the part. But she had sufficient confidence neither in herself nor her maid to forestall a desire for Mary's opinion. After luncheon, therefore, she sent for Miss Marston to her bedroom.
Mary found her half dressed, Folter in attendance, a great heap of pink lying on the bed.
”Sit down, Mary,” said Hesper, pointing to a chair; ”I want your advice. But I must first explain. Where I am going this evening, n.o.body is to be herself except me. I am not to be Mrs. Redmain, though, but Hesper. You know what Hesper means?”
Mary said she knew, and waited--a little anxious; for sideways in her eyes glowed the pink of the chosen Hesperian clouds, and, if she should not like it, what could be done at that late hour.
”There is my dress,” continued the Evening Star, with a glance of her eyes, for Folter was busied with her hair; ”I want to know your opinion of it.” Folter gave a toss of her head that seemed to say, ”Have not _I_ spoken?” but what it really did mean, how should other mortal know?
for the main obstructions to understanding are profundity and shallowness, and the latter is far the more perplexing of the two.
”I should like to see it on first,” said Mary: she was in doubt whether the color--bright, to suggest the brightest of sunset-clouds--would suit Hesper's complexion. Then, again, she had always a.s.sociated the name _Hesper_ with a later, a solemnly lovely period of twilight, having little in common with the color so voluminous in the background.
Hesper had a good deal of appreciative faculty, and knew therefore when she liked and when she did not like a thing; but she had very little originative faculty--so little that, when anything was wrong, she could do next to nothing to set it right. There was small originality in taking a suggestion for her part from her name, and less in the idea, following by concatenation, of adopting for her costume sunset colors upon a flimsy material, which might more than hint at clouds. She had herself, with the a.s.sistance of Sepia and Folter, made choice of the particular pink; but, although it continued altogether delightful in the eyes of her maid, it had, upon nearer and pro-longed acquaintance, become doubtful in hers; and she now waited, with no little anxiety, the judgment of Mary, who sat silently thinking.
”Have you nothing to say?” she asked, at length, impatiently.
”Please, ma'am,” replied Mary, ”I must think, if I am to be of any use.
I am doing my best, but you must let me be quiet.”
Half annoyed, half pleased, Hesper was silent, and Mary went on thinking. All was still, save for the slight noises Folter made, as, like a machine, she went on heartlessly brus.h.i.+ng her mistress's hair, which kept emitting little crackles, as of dissatisfaction with her handling. Mary would now take a good gaze at the lovely creature, now abstract herself from the visible, and try to call up the vision of her as the real Hesper, not a Hesper dressed up--a process which had in it hope for the lady, but not much for the dress upon the bed. At last Folter had done her part.
”I suppose you _must_ see it on!” said Hesper, and she rose up.
Folter jerked herself to the bed, took the dress, arranged it on her arms, got up on a chair, dropped it over her mistress's head, got down, and, having pulled it this way and that for a while, fastened it here, undone it there, and fastened it again, several times, exclaimed, in a tone whose confidence was meant to forestall the critical impertinence she dreaded:
”There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room, I shall never trust my eyes again.”
Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but added to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed and bubbled and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so that the form of the woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness of the cloud. The whole, if whole it could be called, was a miserable attempt at combining fancy and fas.h.i.+on, and, in result, an ugly nothing.
”I see you don't like it!” said Hesper, with a mingling of displeasure and dismay. ”I wish you had come a few days sooner! It is much too late to do anything now. I might just as well have gone without showing it to you!--Here, Folter!”
With a look almost of disgust, she began to pull off the dress, in which, a few hours later, she would yet make the attempt to enchant an a.s.sembly.
”O ma'am!” cried Mary, ”I wish you had told me yesterday. There would have been time then.--And I don't know,” she added, seeing disgust change to mortification on Hesper's countenance, ”but something might be done yet.”
”Oh, indeed!” dropped from Folter's lips with an indescribable expression.
”What can be done?” said Hesper, angrily. ”There can be no time for anything.”
”If only we had the stuff!” said Mary. ”That shade doesn't suit your complexion. It ought to be much, much darker--in fact, a different color altogether.”
Folter was furious, but restrained herself sufficiently to preserve some calmness of tone, although her face turned almost blue with the effort, as she said:
”Miss Marston is not long from the country, ma'am, and don't know what's suitable to a London drawing-room.”
Her mistress was too dejected to snub her impertinence.
”What color were you thinking of, Miss Marston?” Hesper asked, with a stiffness that would have been more in place had Mary volunteered the opinion she had been asked to give. She was out of temper with Mary from feeling certain she was right, and believing there was no remedy.