Not Like Other Girls Part 36

CHAPTER XXV.

MATTIE'S NEW DRESS.

The remainder of the week pa.s.sed harmlessly and without any special event to mark it, and, thanks to Nan's skilful management and Phillis's pride, there were no further _contretemps_ to shock Mrs.

Challoner's sense of propriety. The work progressed with astonishing rapidity: in the mornings the young dressmakers were sufficiently brisk and full of zeal, and in the afternoons, when their energies flagged and their fingers grew weary, Dulce would sing over her task, or Mrs. Challoner would read to them for the hour together; but, notwithstanding the interest of the tale, there was always great alacrity manifested when the tea-bell gave them the excuse for putting away their work.

On one or two evenings they gardened, and Mrs. Challoner sat under the mulberry-tree and watched them; on another occasion they took a long country walk, and lost themselves, and came back merry and tired, and laden with primrose-roots and ferns: they had met no one, except a stray laborer,--had seen glow-worms, picked wild flowers, and declared themselves mightily refreshed. One evening Phillis, who was not to be repressed, contrived a new amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Life is either a mill-pond or a whirlpool," she said, rather sententiously: "we have been stagnant for three days, and I begin to feel flat. Races are tabooed: besides, we cannot always leave mother alone. I propose we go out in the garden and have a game of battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k;" for this had been a winter pastime with them at the cottage.

Nan, who was always rather sober-minded now, demurred to this. She would have preferred gardening a little, or sitting quietly with her mother under the mulberry-tree; but Phillis, who was in a wild mood, overruled all her objections, and by and by the battle began, and the shuttlec.o.c.ks flew through the air.

The week's work was finished, and the three dresses lay in their wrappers, waiting for Dorothy to convey them to their several owners.

Nan who was really an _artiste_ at heart, had called her mother proudly into the room to admire the result of their labors. Mrs.

Challoner was far too accustomed to her daughter's skilfulness to testify any surprise, but she at once p.r.o.nounced Miss Drummond's dress the _chef-d'oeuvre_. Nan's taste was faultless; and the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs she had selected harmonized so well with the soft tints of the silk.

"They are all very nice; and Mrs. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs will be charmed with her blue silk," observed Mrs. Challoner, trying to throw a little interest into her voice, and to suppress a sigh; and then she helped Nan to adjust the wrappers, and to pin the neatly-written bills inside each.

"I am sure that is business-like," said Nan, with a satisfied nod, for she never could do anything by halves; and she was so interested in her work that she would have been heart-broken if she thought one of the dresses would be a misfit; and then it was that Phillis, who had been watching her very closely, brightened up and proposed a game.

It was a very pretty sight, the mother thought, as she followed her girls' movements; the young figures swayed so gracefully as they skimmed hither and thither over the lawn with light b.u.t.terfly movements, the three eager faces upturned in the evening light, their heads held well back.

"Two hundred, two hundred and one, two hundred and two--don't let it drop, Dulce!" panted Phillis, breathlessly.

"Oh, my darlings, don't tire yourselves!" exclaimed Mrs. Challoner, as her eyes followed the white flutter of the shuttlec.o.c.ks.

This was the picture that Mr. Drummond surveyed. Dorothy, who was just starting on her round, and was in no mood for her errand, had admitted him somewhat churlishly.

"Yes, the mistress and the young ladies were in; and would he step into the parlor, as her hands were full?"

"Oh, yes, I know the way," Mr. Drummond had returned, quite undaunted by the old woman's sour looks.

But the parlor was empty, save for Laddie, who had been shut up there not to spoil sport, and who was whining most piteously to be let out.

He saluted Archie with a joyous bark, and commenced licking his boots and wagging his tail with mute pet.i.tion to be released from this durance vile.

Archie patted and fondled him, for he was good to all dumb creatures.

"Poor little fellow! I wonder why they have shut you up here?" he said; and then he took him up in his arms, and stepped to the window to reconnoitre.

And then he stood and looked, perfectly fascinated by the novel sight.

His sisters played battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k in the school-room sometimes, or out in the pa.s.sages on a winter's afternoon. He had once caught Susie and Clara at it, and had laughed at them in no measured terms for indulging in such a babyish game. "I should have thought Dottie might have played at that," he had said, rather contemptuously.

"I suppose you indulge in skipping-ropes sometimes." And the poor girls had paused in their game, feeling ashamed of themselves. Archie would think them such hoydens.

He remembered his reprimand with a strange feeling of compunction, as he stood by the window trying vainly to elude Laddie's caresses. What a shame of him to have spoiled those poor children's game with his sneer, when they had so little fun in their lives! and yet, as he recalled Clara's clumsy gestures and Susie's short-sighted attempts, he was obliged to confess that battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k wore a different aspect now. Could anything surpa.s.s Phillis's swift-handed movements, brisk, graceful, alert, or Nan's att.i.tude, as she sustained the duel? Dulce, who seemed dodging in between them in a most eccentric way, had her hair loose as usual, curling in brown lengths about her shoulders. She held it with one hand, as she poised her battledore with the other. This time Archie thought of Nausicaa and her maidens tossing the ball beside the river, after washing the wedding-garments. Was it in this way the young dressmakers disported themselves during the evenings?

It was Phillis who first discovered the intruder. The shuttlec.o.c.ks had become entangled, and fallen to the ground. As she stooped to pick them up, her quick eyes detected a coat-sleeve at the window; and an indefinable instinct, for she could not see his face, made her call out,--

"Mother, Mr. Drummond is in the parlor. Do go to him, while Dulce puts up her hair." And then she said, severely, "I always tell you not to wear your hair like that, Dulce. Look at Nan and me; we are quite unruffled; but yours is always coming down. If you have pretty hair, you need not call people's attention to it in this way." At which speech Dulce tossed her head and ran away, too much offended to answer.

When Archie saw Mrs. Challoner crossing the lawn with the gait of a queen, he knew he was discovered: so he opened the window, and stepped out in the coolest possible way.

"I seem always spoiling sport," he said, with a mischievous glance at Phillis, which she received with outward coolness and an inward twinge. "Bravo, Atalanta!" sounded in her ears again. "Your maid invited me in; but I did not care to disturb you."

"I am glad you did not open the window before," returned Nan, speaking with that directness and fine simplicity that always put things to rights at once: "it would have startled us before we got to the five hundred, and then Phillis would have been disappointed. Mother, shall we bring out some more chairs instead of going into the parlor? It is so much pleasanter out here." And as Mrs. Challoner a.s.sented, they were soon comfortably established on the tiny lawn; and Archie, very much at his ease, and feeling himself unaccountably happy, proceeded to deliver some trifling message from his sister, that was his ostensible reason for his intrusion.

"Why does she not deliver her messages herself?" thought Phillis; but she kept this remark to herself. Only, that evening she watched the young clergyman a little closely, as though he puzzled her. Phillis was the man of the family; and it was she who always stood upon guard if Nan or Dulce needed a sentinel. She was beginning to think Mr.

Drummond came very often to see them, considering their short acquaintance. If it were Miss Mattie, now, who ran in and out with little offerings of flowers and fruit in a nice neighborly fashion!

But for this very dignified young man to burden himself with these slight feminine messages,--a question about new-laid eggs, which even Nan had forgotten.

Phillis was quite glad when her mother said,--

"You ought to have brought your sister, Mr. Drummond: she must be so dull all alone,"--forgetting all about the dressmaking, poor soul! but Phillis remembered it a moment afterwards, with a rush of bitter feeling.

Perhaps, after all, that was why he came in so often, because he was so sorry for them, and wished to help them, as he said. A clergyman has more privileges than other men: perhaps she was wrong to suspect him. He might not wish his sister to visit them, except in a purely business-like way; but with him it was different. Most likely he had tea with Mrs. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs sometimes, just to show he was not proud; he might even sit and chat with Mrs. Squails, and not feel compromised in the least. Oh, yes! how stupid she was to think he admired Nan, because she had intercepted a certain glance! That was her mania, thinking every one must be after Nan. Things were different now.

Of course he would be their only link with civilized society,--the only cultivated mind with which they could hold converse; and here Phillis ceased to curl her lip, and her gray eyes took a sombre shade, and she sighed so audibly that Archie broke off an interesting discussion on last Commemoration, and looked at her in unfeigned surprise.

"Oh, yes! we were there," returned Nan, innocently, who loved to talk of those dear old times; "and we were at the _fete_ at Oriel, and at the concert at Magdalen also. Ah! do you remember, Dulce?" And then she faltered a little, and flushed,--not because Mr. Drummond was looking at her so intently but at certain thoughts that began to intrude themselves, which entwined themselves with the moonlighted cloisters.

"I was to have been there too, only at the last moment I was prevented," replied Archie; but his tone was inexplicable to the girl, it was at once so regretful and awe-struck. Good heavens! if he had met them, and been introduced to them in proper form! They had mentioned a Mr. Hamilton: well, Hamilton had been a pupil of his; he had coached him during a term. "You know Hamilton?" he had said, staring at her; and then he wondered what Hamilton would say if he came down to stay with him next vacation.

These reflections made him rather absent; and even when he took his leave, which was not until the falling dews and the glimmer of a late dusk drove Mrs. Challoner into the house, these thoughts still pursued him. Nothing else seemed to have taken so strong a hold on him as this.

"Good heavens!" he kept repeating to himself, "to think that the merest chance--just the incidental business of a friend--prevented me from occupying my old rooms during Commemoration! to think I might have met them in company with Hamilton and the other fellows!"

The sudden sense of disappointment, of something lost and irremediable in his life, of wasted opportunities, of denied pleasure, came over the young man's mind. He could not have danced with Nan at the University ball, it is true: clergymen, according to his creed, must not dance. But there was the _fete_ at Oriel, and the Magdalen concert, and the Long Walk in the Christchurch meadows, and doubtless other opportunities.

He never asked himself if these girls would have interested him so much if he had met them first in ordinary society: from the very first moment they had attracted him strangely. Had he only known them a fortnight? Good heavens! it seemed months, years, a lifetime! These revolutions of mind are not to be measured by time. It had come to this that the late fellow of Oriel, so aristocratic in his tastes, so temperate in his likings, had entered certain devious paths, where hidden pitfalls and th.o.r.n.y enclosures warn the unwary traveller of unknown dangers, and in which he was walking, not blindfold, but by strongest will and intent, led by impulse like a mere boy, and not daring to raise his eyes to the future. "And what Grace would have said!" And for the first time in his life Archie felt that in this case he could not ask Grace's advice. He was loath to turn in at his own gate; but Mattie was standing there watching for him. She ran out into the road to meet him, and then he could see there were letters in her hand.

"Oh, dear, Archie, I thought you were never coming home!" she exclaimed. "And I have such news to tell you! There is a letter for you from Grace, and mother has written to me; and there is a note from Isabel inside, and she is engaged--really and truly engaged--to Mr.

Ellis Burton; and the wedding is to be in six weeks, and you and I are to go down to it, and--oh, dear----" Here Mattie broke down, and began to sob with excitement and pleasure and the longing for sympathy.

"Well, well, there is nothing to cry about!" returned Archie, roughly; and then his manner changed and softened in spite of himself; for after all, Isabel was his sister, and this was the first wedding in the family, and he could not hear such a piece of news unmoved. "Let me hear all about it," he said, by and by; and then he took poor hysterical little Mattie into the house, and gave her some wine, and was very kind to her, and listened to his mother's letter and Isabel's gushing effusion without a single sneer. "Poor little Belle; she does seem very happy!" he said, quite affectionately, as he turned up the lamp still more, and began Grace's letter.

Mattie sat and gazed at him in a sort of ecstasy; but she did not venture to ask him to read it to her. How nice he was to-night, and how handsome he looked! there never was such a brother as Archie. But suddenly, as though he was conscious of being watched, he sat down by the table, and shaded his face with his hand.

No, Mattie, was right in her surmise: he would not have cared to show that letter to any one.

The first sheet was all about Isabel. "Dear little Isabel has just left me," wrote Grace. "The child looks so pretty in her new happiness, you would hardly know her. She has just been showing me the magnificent hoop of diamonds Ellis has given her. She says we must all call him Ellis now. 'Chacun a son gout:' Poor Ellis is not very brilliant, certainly: I remember we used to call him clownish and uncultivated. But he has a good heart, and he is really very fond of Isabel; and as she is satisfied, I suppose we need not doubt the wisdom of her choice. Mother is radiant, and makes so much of the little bride-elect that she declares her head is quite turned. The house is quite topsy-turvy with the excitement of this first wedding in the family. Isabel is very young to be married, and I tell mother six weeks is far too short for an engagement; but it seems Ellis will not listen to reason, and he has talked mother over. Perhaps I am rather fastidious, but, if I were Isabel, I should hate to receive my trousseau from my lover; and yet Ellis wants his mother to get everything for his _fiancee_. I believe there is to be a sort of compromise, and Mrs. Burton is to select heaps of pretty things,--dresses and mantles and Paris bonnets. They are rolling in riches. Ellis has taken a large house in Sloane Square, and his father has bought him a landau and a splendid pair of horses; everything--furniture, plate and ornaments--is to be as ma.s.sive and expensive as possible. If I were Isabel I should feel smothered by all these grand things but the little lady takes it all quite coolly.

"When I get a moment to myself I sit down and say, 'In six weeks I shall see Archie!' Oh, my darling! this is almost too good news to be true! Only six weeks, and then I shall really see you! Now do you know, I am longing for a good clearing-up talk? for your letters lately have not satisfied me at all. Perhaps I am growing fanciful, but I cannot help feeling as though something has come between us. The current of sympathy seems turned aside, somehow. No, do not laugh, or put me off with a jest, for I am really in earnest; and but for fear of your scolding me I should own to being just a little unhappy.

Forgive me, Archie, if I vex you; but there is something, I am thoroughly convinced of that. You have some new interest or worry that you are keeping from me. Is this quite in accordance with our old compact, dear? Who are these Challoners Mattie mentions in her letters? She told me a strange rigmarole about them the other day,--that they were young ladies who had turned dressmakers. What an eccentric idea! They must be very odd young ladies, I should think, to emanc.i.p.ate themselves so completely from all conventionalities. I wish they had not established themselves at Hadleigh and so near the vicarage. Mattie says you are so kind to them. Oh, Archie! dear brother! do be careful! I do not half like the idea of these girls; they sound rash and designing, and you are so chivalrous in your notions. Why not let Mattie be kind to them instead of you? In a parish like Hadleigh you need to be careful. Mother is calling me, so I will just close this with my fondest love.

"GRACE."