a little shriek of surprise; “and does it fit you?”
“It’s just a very, very little bit too short,” said Dora, with pride, “and just a very, very little bit too wide at the waist.”
“Run and bring it, and let me see it,” cried the lady. “I’ve no doubt in the world it fits like a glove. Gilchrist, come in, come in, and see what the bairn’s got. A frock that fits her like a glove.”
“Just a very, very little too short, and a very, very little too wide in the waist,” said Dora, repeating her formula. She had flown upstairs after the first moment’s hesitation, and brought it back in her arms, glad in spite of herself to be thus delivered from silence and the sense of neglect.
“Eh, mem,” cried Gilchrist, “but it must be an awfu’, awfu’ faithful woman that has minded how a lassie like that grows and gets big, and just how big she gets, a’ thae years.”
“There ye are with your moral!” cried the mistress; and to Dora’s infinite surprise tears were on her cheeks. “It’s just the lassie that makes all the difference,” said Miss Bethune. She flung the pretty dress from her, and then she rose up suddenly and gave Dora a hasty kiss. “Put it on and let me see it,” she said; “I will wager you anything it just fits like a glove.”
CHAPTER IV
“That is a very strange business of these Mannerings, Gilchrist,” said Miss Bethune to her maid, when Dora, excited by praise and admiration, and forgetting all her troubles, had retired to her own habitation upstairs, escorted, she and her dress, by Gilchrist, who could not find it in her heart, as she said, to let a young thing like that spoil her bonnie new frock by not putting it properly away. Gilchrist laid the pretty dress lovingly in a roomy drawer, smoothing out all its creases by soft pats of her accustomed hands, and then returned to her mistress to talk over the little incident of the evening.
Miss Bethune’s spirits were improved also by that little exhibition. What a thing it is to be able to draw a woman softly out of her troubles by the sight of a pretty child in a pretty new dress! Contemptible the love of clothes, the love of finery, and so forth, let the philosophers say. To me there is something touching in that natural instinct which relieves for a moment now and then the heaviest pressure. Dora’s new frock had nothing to do with any gratification of Miss Bethune’s vanity; but it brought a little dawning ray of momentary light into her room, and a little distraction from the train of thoughts that were not over bright. No man could feel the same for the most beautiful youth ever introduced in raiment like the day. Let us be thankful among all our disabilities for a little simple pleasure, now and then, that is common to women only. Boy or girl, it scarcely matters which, when they come in dressed in their best, all fresh and new, the sight pleases the oldest, the saddest of us—a little unconsidered angel-gift, amid the dimness and the darkness of the every-day world. Miss Bethune to outward aspect was a little grim, an old maid, as people said, apart from the sympathies of life. But the dull evening and the pressure of many thoughts had been made bright to her by Dora’s new frock.
“What business, mem?” asked Gilchrist.
“If ever there was a living creature slow at the uptake, and that could not see a pikestaff when it is set before your eyes!” cried Miss Bethune. “What’s the meaning of it all, you stupid woman? Who’s that away in the unknown that sends all these bonnie things to that motherless bairn?—and remembers the age she is, and when she’s grown too big for dolls, and when she wants a frock that will set her off, that she could dance in and sing in, and make her little curtesy to the world? No, she’s too young for that; but still the time’s coming, and fancy goes always a little before.”
“Eh, mem,” said Gilchrist, “that is just what I have askit mysel’—that’s just what I was saying. It’s some woman, that’s the wan thing; but what woman could be so thoughtful as that, aye minding just what was wanted?” She made a gesture with her hands as if in utter inability to divine, but her eyes were fixed all the time very wistfully on her mistress’s face.
“You need not look at me like that,” the lady said.
“I was looking at you, mem, not in any particklar way.”
“If you think you can make a fool of me at the present period of our history, you’re far mistaken,” said Miss Bethune. “I know what you were meaning. You were comparing her with me, not knowing either the one or the other of us—though you have been my woman, and more near me than anybody on earth these five-and-twenty long years.”
“And more, mem, and more!” cried Gilchrist, with a flow of tears, which were as natural to her as her spirit. “Eh, I was but a young, young lass, and you a bonnie –”
“Hold your peace!” said Miss Bethune, with an angry raising of her hand; and then her voice wavered and shook a little, and a tremulous laugh came forth. “I was never a bonnie—anything, ye auld fool! and that you know as well as me.”
“But, mem–”
“Hold your peace, Gilchrist! We were never anything to brag of, either you or me. Look in your glass, woman, if you don’t believe me. A couple of plain women, very plain women, mistress and maid.”
This was said with a flash of hazel eyes which gave a half-humorous contradiction at the same moment to the assertion. Gilchrist began to fold hems upon the apron with which she had just dried her tears.
“I never said,” she murmured, with a downcast head, “a word about mysel’,—that’s no’ a woman’s part. If there’s nobody that speaks up for her she has just to keep silence, if she was the bonniest woman in the world.”
“The auld fool! because there was once a silly lad that had nobody else to come courting to! No, Gilchrist, my woman, you were never bonnie. A white skin, I allow, to go with your red hair, and a kind of innocent look in your eyes,—nothing, nothing more! We were both plain women, you and me, not adapted to please the eyes of men.”
“They might have waited long afore we would have tried, either the wan or the other of us,” cried Gilchrist, with a flash of self-assertion. “No’ that I would even mysel’ to you, mem,” she added in an after breath.
“As for that, it’s a metaphysical question,” said Miss Bethune. “I will not attempt to enter into it. But try or no’, it is clear we did not succeed. And what it is that succeeds is just more than I can tell. It’s not beauty, it’s a kind of natural attraction.” She paused a moment in this deep philosophical inquiry, and then said quickly: “All this does not help us to find out what is this story about the Mannerings. Who is the woman? Is it somebody that loves the man, or somebody that loves the girl?”
“If you would take my opinion, mem, I would say that the man—if ye call Mr. Mannering, honest gentleman, the man, that has just every air of being a well-born person, and well-bred, and not a common person at all–”
“You haveral! The king himself, if there was a king, could be no more than a man.”
“I would say, mem, that it was not for him—oh, no’ for him, except maybe in opposition, if you could fancy that. Supposing,” said Gilchrist, raising her arm in natural eloquence, “supposin’ such a thing as that there should be a bonnie bairn like Miss Dora between two folk that had broken with one another—and it was the man, not the woman, that had her. I could just fancy,” said the maid, her brown eyes lighting, her milky yet freckled complexion flushing over,—“I could just fancy that woman pouring out everything at the bairn’s feet—gold and silver and grand presents, and a’ the pomps of this world, partly out of an adoration for her hersel’, partly just to make the man set his teeth at her that was away—maybe, in the desert—unknown!”
Gilchrist stood like a sibyl making this picture flash and gleam before her own inward vision with a heat and passion that seemed quite uncalled for in the circumstances. What was Hecuba to her, or she to Hecuba, that she should be so inspired by the possibilities of a mystery with which she had nothing to do? Her eloquence brought a corresponding glow, yet cloud, over the countenance of her mistress, who sat and listened with her head leaning on her hand, and for some time said nothing. She broke the silence