Jewel Weed Part 18

"Sall Ay unpack you bag?" said the little maid politely.

"No, thank you. I prefer to do it myself," said Lena desperately. It was more than she could endure to have a strange girl spying out the nakedness of the land. Yet when the little maid said, "Vary well, ma'am," and walked into the next room, Lena wondered if she had made a mistake. She heard Miss Elton's cheerful address of the appalling personage with the puffed up bit of hair and the saucy cap.

"How do you do, Sophie?"

"Good day, mees. As thar anything Ay can do for you?"

"I fancy my dress would be better for a good brus.h.i.+ng after the dusty train, and the gown I want is in the top tray of the little trunk, Sophie."

The door closed and Lena wondered in terror what of her small store of finery she ought to put on, and when she ought to go down stairs. She solved the first question to the best of her ability and sat down on the edge of a very clean beflowered chair in despair about the other, when there came voices in the hall, and Madeline tapped on her door, and called:

"Don't you want to come out and see the baby?"

Now Lena detested babies as sticky and order-destroying vermin, but in relief she said: "A baby? Oh, how lovely!"

"Come," said Mrs. Lenox. "The proper study of womanhood is baby." Lena went out to find a very small person in a very tottering condition, steered up and down the hall by another be-capped maid who was holding tight to his rear petticoats, while Mrs. Lenox trotted by his side, pulling a woolly lamb that baa'd with enchanting precision, and allowing her skirts to be worried by a small puppy, whose business in life was to bite anything hard that lay on the floor or that wiggled. Mrs. Lenox and Miss Elton sat down on the floor to towsle and to be towsled amid laughter and hair-pulling and frantic yelps from the puppy, while Lena looked on and said: "Isn't he cunning?" and wondered whether she ought to sit on the floor or not. She wondered if this were indeed the millionaire Mrs. Lenox of whom she read with awe from the "In the swing"

column as being present at such and such "society functions", thus and thus attired.

Somehow Mrs. Lenox, seated on the floor, with her hair over one eye, disconcerted Lena more than any amount of grandeur would have done. She felt as one might who should catch the Venus of Melos cutting capers.

Then the redoubtable lady jumped up, tucked in a few hair-pins, gave a final shake to her small son and said:

"I dressed little Frank myself this afternoon. Don't you think I did a good job? Dressing a baby combines all the pleasures of the chase with the requirements of the exact sciences, Miss Quincy. Now let's go down and have some tea before big Frank gets home. I think we've time for a little friendly chat."

This time Lena followed with greater sense of security. She knew her dress was pretty and becoming, though inexpensive; and as for conversation, that to Lena's mind meant clothes and society, with which she felt a journalistic familiarity.

"Perhaps you prefer cream in your tea?" said Mrs. Lenox, with hand poised over the little table.

"No, thank you, I like lemon," answered Lena, who had never tasted it before and now thought it very nasty indeed. Then she wondered why she had told such a small useless lie.

But it was comfortable to be in a big lovely room with a pile of logs blazing in a great fireplace, and soft lamps shedding a glow rather than making spots of light. She wished she had, like Madeline, picked out a very easy chair instead of the stiff one she had selected, but she felt too shy to move until Mrs. Lenox suggested it, and then she was embarra.s.sed because she was embarra.s.sed. She wondered if she should ever be able to do things like these women, without thinking of what she was doing.

Madeline was idly turning the pages of a magazine and now she held it up.

"Look at these ill.u.s.trations. Aren't they stunning?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Lenox. "I'm growing tired of that kind of thing. It isn't art; it's a fad. The trouble with most of this modern work is that it is too smart and fas.h.i.+onable. The clothes are more important than the people."

"Quite a contrast to ancient art, where the people were everything and the clothes nothing," Madeline retorted. "After all, I rather like the modern way. The old Greeks were not a bit more real people. They were nothing but types."

"And very decapitated and de-legged types," said Mrs. Lenox with a laugh. "And dirty, too--like the Sleeping Beauty. Do you know, it gives me the s.h.i.+vers to think of the Sleeping Beauty, lying there for ages, with dust and cobwebs acc.u.mulating on her. I'm sure I hope the prince gave her a thorough dusting before he kissed her."

"You are horribly realistic, Vera--a person with no imagination."

"I think I have just shown a truly vivid imagination."

"It is the business of imagination to build up a world of loveliness and order."

"I don't agree with you. I think it is the business of imagination to project things as they really are. I don't want to slip out from under reality and see only beauty. Beware, Madeline, or you will degenerate into a mere optimist."

"Isn't it funny that if your opponent can call you an optimist, he feels that he has delivered a knock-down blow to all your arguments?" Mrs.

Lenox suddenly pulled herself together and turned toward Lena, who sat silently drinking her tea and taking no part in the conversation.

"Did you tell me that your mother is an invalid, Miss Quincy?"

"Not exactly; but she can't go about much. It seems to play her out to walk."

"It must be very hard on her to stay in the house all the time. I wonder if I might take her to drive with me once in a while?" A scarlet flush pa.s.sed over Lena's face at the very idea of her mother's querulous vulgarity being displayed to this woman, and Mrs. Lenox could not help seeing her embarra.s.sment.

A little wave of pity swept over the older woman. It must be a cruel fate to be ashamed of one's surroundings. Mrs. Lenox herself was one of those serious-minded persons who regard their opportunities as responsibilities. She waged constant warfare with the dominion of externals, and believed with all her heart that the life was more than raiment; but a momentary doubt a.s.sailed her as to whether, after all, it might not be easier to conquer things when one owned them, rather than when one had to do without them. It has generally been Dives who is represented as enslaved by the goods of this world. Perhaps Lazarus, if his heart is absorbed in sordid longing for what others have and he has not, stands just as poor a chance of the kingdom of Heaven.

What could she do to make Miss Quincy feel at ease? The girl certainly had brains and character. d.i.c.k had told them of her brave bearing of burdens. This stiff back and this silence were but the tribute of shyness to new surroundings. So ran Mrs. Lenox's swift thoughts and she set herself to make Lena talk about the things with which she was familiar, to link her past to this present.

Evidently the same thought was flitting through Madeline's brain, for before Mrs. Lenox spoke she began:

"Do you know, Miss Quincy, I have felt a little envy of you ever since d.i.c.k first told us about you."

"Envy! Of me?" Lena exclaimed, moved to genuine surprise.

"Yes," Madeline went on, leaning forward, eager to explain herself. "You see, I seem to have had a good deal of training, which looks as though it should prepare me to do something, and then--then I don't do anything. It makes me feel flat and unprofitable. I'd like to feel like you every night--as though I'd really accomplished a thing or two."

"Isn't it like Madeline to try to make the girl feel the dignity of drudgery!" Mrs. Lenox said to herself.

"The stuck-up thing!" thought Lena; "rubbing it into me that she does not have to work for her living."

She was tempted to make a sharp answer, but remembered her diplomacy and held it in.

"Work isn't always so pleasant when you're in it," she said.

"Everything is apt to look rough around the edges until you hold it off and get a view of it as a whole," Mrs. Lenox put in. "Even love--sometimes. But I think that, next to love, work is about the best thing in life."

"Oh, that depends," Madeline cried. "When I read papers at clubs, people talk about my 'work', but n.o.body thinks that it is worth while. I'd like to earn a dollar, just as a guaranty that some one thought the thing I did was worth it."

"Gracious!" Lena exclaimed in genuine surprise. "Do you really feel that way about earning money?"

"Don't you?" Madeline asked in return; and each looked at the other uncomprehendingly.

"No, I don't," Lena burst out sullenly, but forgetting to be shy. "I feel degraded by every dirty five-dollar bill I get by being a slavey.

People make you feel that way. You get it rubbed into you every day."

"No, no," Mrs Lenox cried, remorseful now that their talk had drifted into such intimate personalities. "I am sure, Miss Quincy, n.o.body feels that way about a woman that works, except, perhaps, people whose opinion you can well afford to despise." This was a shaft that struck so near home that Lena could hardly hold back the tears. "I am sure I think a thousand times more of a woman who does her honest share than I do of the helpless ones who lie down on somebody else and whine," Mrs. Lenox went on.

Madeline was inwardly bemoaning her own lack of tact. She really wanted to make a friend of this girl, because d.i.c.k had asked her to, and here, at the very beginning, she had stumbled, and all that was meant to show her regard and sympathy but served to make a gulf between them.

Mrs. Lenox darted a look at her and sprang suddenly to her feet.

"Oh, here's Frank," she exclaimed with an air of relief. "Come in, boy, and have some tea and fire. It was good of you to come so bright and early."

"Earlier than bright, I'm afraid," he said.