Part 7 (1/2)
Two pretty little white patient hands went on busying themselves plaiting the rich dark-brown hair of a singularly handsome girl, sitting back in a shabby, painted, rush-bottomed chair, in a meanly-furnished chamber, whose bare boards looked the more chilly for the sc.r.a.ps of carpet stretched by bedside, toilet-table, and washstand.
The bed had not long been left, and the two pillows each bore the impress of a head. The bedstead was an attenuated four-post structure, with dreary and scanty slate-coloured hangings, that seemed to have shrunk in their many was.h.i.+ngs, and grown skimpy and faded with time; the rush-bottomed chairs were worn and the seats giving way, and a tall painted wardrobe had been scrubbed until half the paint had gone. Even the looking-gla.s.s upon the paltry old dressing-table seemed to have reflected until it could perform its duties no more, for the silver had come off in patches, and showed the bare brown wood behind.
Wherever the eye rested it was upon traces of cleanly, punctilious poverty, for even the dresses that were hanging from the row of drab-painted wooden pegs nailed against the dreary washed-out wall-paper looked mean and in keeping with the room. There was not one single attractive object of furniture or attire besides, not even a bright spring flower in a vase or gla.s.s; all was drab, dreary, and dull, and yet the room and objects full of life and light.
For the girl seated indolently in the chair before the gla.s.s, draped in a long washed-out dressing-gown that heightened rather than hid the graces of her well-developed form, possessed features which might have been envied by a queen. Her dark, well-arched eyebrows, the long heavy lashes that drooped over her large eyes, her creamy complexion, rather full but well-cut lips and high brow, were all those of a beautiful woman whom you would expect to look imperious and pa.s.sionate if she started into motion, and raised and flashed upon you the eyes that were intent upon a paper-covered French novel, whose leaves she turned over from time to time.
Bending over her, and nimbly arranging the rich hair that hung over the reader's shoulders, was a girl not unlike her in feature, but of a fairer and more English type. Where the hair of the one was rich and dark, that of the other was soft and brown. The contour was much the same, but softer, and the eyes were of that delicious well-marked grey that accords so well with light nut-brown hair. There was no imperious look in her pleasant, girlish countenance, for it was full of care consequent upon her being wanted in two places at once.
For the sharp demand made upon her was uttered by a third occupant of the room--a girl of one or two and twenty, sister, without doubt, of the reader at the dressing-table, and greatly like her, but darker, her eyebrows and hair being nearly black, her complexion of a richer creamy hue, one which seemed to indicate the possibility of other than English blood being mingled in her veins.
She, too, was draped in a long washed-out print dressing-gown, and as she lolled upon a great box whose top was thinly stuffed and covered with chintz to make it do duty for an ottoman, her long dark hair fell in ma.s.ses over her shoulders.
Sisters undoubtedly, and the family resemblance of the fair-complexioned girl suggested the possibility of her occupying the same relations.h.i.+p, though the difference was so marked that cousin seemed more probable.
”Finish your own hair,” cried the girl upon the ottoman, in an angry voice. ”I won't wait any longer; I was up first;” and she banged down the circulating library novel she had been skimming.
”Shan't!”
”Bring my hairbrush, Ruth.”
The girl addressed retained her hold of the ma.s.sive plait that she was forming, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing a well-worn hairbrush from the table, reached out as far as she could from the tether of plait that held her to the girl in the chair, when the brush was s.n.a.t.c.hed from her, and sent whizzing through the air, narrowly missing the reader's head, but putting an end to the reflective troubles of the unfortunate toilet-gla.s.s, which was struck right in the centre, and s.h.i.+vered into fragments.
”Oh!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Ruth.
”Beast!” cried Marie, leaping up, sending her chair backwards, and das.h.i.+ng the French novel at her sister.
”Wretch! devil!” retorted the other, her creamy face flus.h.i.+ng, her dark eyes scintillating with pa.s.sion, and her ruddy lips parting from her regular white teeth, as she retaliated by throwing the book she held, but with a very bad aim.
For a moment it seemed as if blows were to follow, but after a short skirmish with a comb, an empty scent-bottle, and a pin-cus.h.i.+on, the beginner of the fight uttered a cry of triumph, and pounced upon the French novel.
”I wanted that,” she cried.
”Ruth, fetch back that book,” cried Marie.
”Please give me that book back, Clotilde,” said the obedient girl, as, crossing the room, she held out her hand to the angry beauty.
For answer, the maiden upon the box caught her by the wrist with both hands, bent her head rapidly down, and fixed her white teeth in the soft, round arm.
”There, take that, and I wish it was 'Rie's. Now you stop here, and do my hair directly. Hateful little beast! why didn't you come before?”
The blood flushed up in Ruth's face, and little troubled lines made their appearance in her forehead as, after a piteous glance at the other sister, she began to brush the great flowing bands of dark hair waiting their turn.
”I don't care,” said Marie, with all the aggravating petulance of a child. ”Mine was just done.”
”But I've got the book,” retorted the other. ”Be careful, little beast; don't pull it out by the roots.”
She turned her face up sharply to the busy toiler, with the effect that she dragged her own hair, and this time she struck the girl so sharply on the cheek with the open hand that the tears started to her eyes.
”Nasty, spiteful, malicious wretch!” said Marie, giving the finis.h.i.+ng touches to her own hair; ”but you'll have a good lecture for breaking the gla.s.s. Aunties will be angry.”