University of Virginia Library

14. XIV.
A LADY OF FASHION.

It was nearly twilight, on a cold December evening,
when Grace stepped from the cars, with the feeling
that she was at last in Boston. Her journey had been
a somewhat fatiguing one, as the first part had been
performed by stage. She had been indulging a secret
hope that Warren would come to Glenthorne to bear
her company. Of course she could not propose it,
and there was really no need of such a course, as she
was to travel under the protection of a worthy Glenthorne
merchant, going to the city for his holiday
goods. Warren had said nothing concerning it, but
perhaps he meant to surprise her, and she had not
quite given up the expectation until the very morning
of her departure. She was scarcely aware herself
how much bitterness this disappointment added to
the parting with the fond parents who folded her again
and again in their loving arms.

She had scarcely stepped from the cars, ere a
well-known voice whispered—“My own, own Grace,”
and her hand trembled in the fervent clasp of her betrothed.

“This way, Gracie, my mother is waiting for
you in the carriage, and here, just give me your checks,
and I'll look after your baggage.” Juno's welcome
was very cordial, much tenderer, it seemed to Grace's
excited fancy, than Warren's had been, and she sank
into her seat, with a perverse inclination to cry, which
she bravely tried to conquer. She thought he might
just have kissed her, when they hadn't met for months;
but perhaps it wouldn't have been proper in the crowd,
and she tried to listen to what Mrs. Clifford was saying
about a certain Miss Sommers. “Yes,” cried
Warren, at that moment joining them, “mother insisted
that she and I, to say nothing of father, were
not enough to keep you from dying of the blues, so
she has invited a companion for you, a young lady, to
stay in the house, this Miss Sommers; but come, dear
child, you have told me nothing of Glenthorne.”

Their conversation, during the drive home, was
sadly constrained. It was very kind in Mrs. Clifford
to meet her, and she reproached herself for the ingratitude
of feeling a little grieved that Warren had
not come alone; that she could not have him all to
herself, for the first few moments. But then very
likely Mrs. Clifford would not think that quite proper,
and she had promised her parents to guard her watchfully
as if she were her own; and Grace smiled a little
at thinking how the knowledge of all their lonely
walks, with only the moon and stars for watchers,

would startle these strict notions of propriety. The
carriage stopped, at last, before a stately mansion,
whose door was instantaneously thrown open, and she
felt Warren press her hand reassuringly, as she stepped
out into the full glare of the gaslight. Mr. Clifford
met her with a cordial welcome, and then Juno led her
up stairs to her own room. “There, love,” she said
with another kiss, “I will leave you here now, while
I dress for dinner. Your trunks will be brought up
immediately, and when you want any assistance in
dressing, you must ring.”

Grace managed to preserve her self-command
until her trunks were unstrapped, and she was left
quite alone; then throwing herself down on the low
French bed, she burst into a passion of tears. She
paid no heed to the costly and elegant appointments
of the room assigned her. Lace curtains heavily
wrought draped the windows, a carpet of delicate and
graceful pattern covered the floor, and a bright fire
burning in the grate, flooded the rose-wood furniture
with its genial glow, and bathed the marble madonnas
holding up the chimney piece with a golden haze.
The gaslight poured down its tempered brilliancy
upon her head, and all around her was warmth and
comfort and luxury; and yet she wept, with a sense
of utter loneliness and desolation which had never
before oppressed her.

At length she roused herself and chided back her

tears. It was wrong, she said, it was ungrateful;
every thing had been done for her comfort, and she had
no cause for complaint. She must struggle against
this weakness, or her lover would indeed have cause to
blush for the simple country girl he had chosen. She
rose, and commenced unfastening the loops of her
travelling dress. Then she bathed her eyes, and arranged
her disordered tresses, and threw open her
trunks with a new feeling of anxiety. What should
she put on? Mrs. Clifford was so elegant, and then
there was the stranger too, to criticise the country girl's
simple toilet. One after another she drew her dresses
out upon the carpet. There were two or three very
handsome silks, and the much talked of white tarleton,
a blue crape, and a simple white muslin. She could
not quite make up her mind to appear in any of them.
It would be a great deal worse to be too fine, than to
go to the farthest extreme of plainness. At least
there would be nothing in the white muslin to excite
ridicule. She put it on. She fastened a blue ribbon
around her waist, and arranged her few, simple ornaments,
and then turned to go down stairs. She opened
the door, and Warren's arms enfolded her. “I have
been waiting here for a whole half-hour, just to get a
single kiss. My own little wild-flower, my darling.”
Grace's heart reproached her with the injustice that
had deemed him changed or cold. He drew her forward
into the light and looked at her eagerly. “Just
as I hoped to see you,” he said, exultingly. “My
little white lily, so pure, so sweet. It's a blessed
thing to have you here, among the artificial roses of
this great city. As if any body could compare you
with Miss Sommers.”

“Tell me all about her, Warren.”

“Oh, there isn't much to tell. She has been here
about a week. I believe there was an old thought—
I don't know whether it originated with her father or
mine—that I should marry her, at some future time.
My mother never favored it; and now that she is
grown up, father wouldn't at all wish it; but, somehow
or other, the young lady has got it into her head that
it is to be, and it makes her insufferably stupid. She
used to be a nice little thing enough, merry and
romping, and every one called her `Wild Maggie
Sommers.' She is Miss Margaretta now, or, as the
initiated dub her, Maggie Margaretta. General Sommers
was a widower, an old friend of my father's, and
his bright little girl was coming up pretty much her
own way, when a distant relative was so accommodating
as to give up the ghost, leaving him a large fortune, and
Mag became Miss Margaretta, and was promoted in a
single day into tight corsets and a boarding-school.
She is as insipid and languishing as your most poetical
fancy could possibly imagine. She dresses—but there,
I can't describe it! You are just right to-night, Grace—
such a contrast!” He took a half-opened rosebud from

his buttonhole, and twined it carelessly in her golden
curls, and then, once more folding her to his heart, led
her down stairs. Leaning on his arm, she was composed
and happy, though the first sight of those spacious
parlors was bewildering to her unsophisticated eyes.
Mrs. Clifford was there before her. Her velvet robes
swept over the chair whereon she was seated, and the
diamonds on her gleaming neck and arms seemed fairly
to emit flashes of light. At a little distance, Miss
Maggie Margaretta Sommers was half reclining upon
a lounge. She was tall and slight, with a very slender
waist, very light hair, which couldn't really make up
its mind to curl, but floated poetically over her
shoulders; rather light-blue eyes, of which the lids
drooped languidly, while the short lashes pertinaciously
curled upward. Her quite irregular features would
have been very well, if she had but contented herself
with the piquant, sparkling character nature originally
designed her, but which suited very oddly the languishing,
sentimental demeanor she had deemed it lady-like
to assume. Her azure satin dress was a very
miracle of elegance. It fitted the dainty little waist
to perfection. Jewels sparkled on the thin, tapering
arm, which rose, as Warren was wont to observe, like an
inverted icicle, out of her sleeve of lace and satin; and
jewels flashed on the thin, tapering fingers which supported
her head. Warren gravely led Miss Atherton
forward, and presented her. The young lady seemed to
be in some doubt as to the propriety of rising, but one
dainty satin slipper had protruded a little too far from
under her costly robe. It was a good opportunity for
adjusting it; so she rose, so gracefully as not to disorder
a single fold of her drapery, languidly extended her
hand, and then sank back again, in precisely the same
attitude as before.

The evening passed very wearily to the simple
country girl. The chairs seemed a great deal too nice
to be used, and the very books looked forbidding, in
their bindings of gold and velvet. At home, and
especially before visitors, Juno was very stately; and
Grace Atherton, sitting quietly on her ottoman, could
not imagine how she had ever dared to clasp that
jewelled hand in her own, and press her plebeian
kisses on that haughty face. There was one great
comfort. They did not force her to talk. Even Warren,
though he came and sat by her side occasionally,
and seemed to take pleasure in watching her, was
for the most part occupied in polite attentions to Miss
Sommers' platitudes, and responding to the brilliant
sallies of his fascinating mother. She had never before
been placed in a situation so painfully awkward,
and she had much ado to prevent the tears from
coming to her eyes. It was a great relief when Mr.
Clifford remarked, kindly, that she looked very much
fatigued, and had better go up stairs.

She rose instantly, and Warren came to her side.

“You do look half-tired to death, Gracie, and I'm going
to help you to your room.”

Mrs. Clifford's good-night was very kind and
sweet-toned, but there was a shade of displeasure on
her brow.

“I know it has been terribly tiresome for you this
evening, dearest,” whispered Warren, with his arm
around her waist, as they went up stairs, “but it'll be
so different, when you've been here a few days, if only
that Miss Maggie Margaretta was out of the way.”
They stood for perhaps five minutes at the head of the
stairs, and then the quadroon made her appearance.

“Mrs. Clifford wished me to assist Miss Atherton,”
she remarked, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone.

“Very well, you can go into her room, and she
will come to you in a moment.” Warren detained
Grace's hand while he spoke, and when the quadroon
passed out of sight, he whispered, hurriedly—“Should
you mind getting up very early, Grace? If you
wouldn't, I should like to take you at sunrise for a
walk on the common. Miss Sommers won't be about
then.” He might have added, “nor my mother, either.”

“I should like it very much,” was the reply—“I
will be down stairs in time.”

She went into her room, and patiently submitted
to have her dress taken off, and her hair put back in
bandeaux under her little muslin cap, and then gently
asked if she might be left alone. By a hasty survey

she saw there was no night-lamp in her room, and no
matches; if she dressed by sunrise, according to her
promise, she would have to ring for lights in the
morning. There would be no difficulty about that,
for the bell-pull was directly over the head of her bed,
so she hastily finished undressing. She walked to
the window, and looked out. It was not yet ten
o'clock, and the streets were brilliantly lighted; but
they looked very narrow and confined to those blue
eyes, accustomed to take in the free range of hill, and
field, and lake. She came back, and knelt down by
the bedside. Grace Atherton was thoroughly religious
in heart and life, and kneeling there, her heart grew
happier. She forgot the pride and coldness which had
seemed to rise up like walls about her sensitive nature;
her soul called upward, and the cry was answered.
The young and inexperienced cottage-girl could forget
the high places of earth, and the timid dread which
had shrunk from encountering them, for she was the
heir to a higher heritage, travelling toward the Beautiful
City, whose streets are paved with gold.

The clock was striking six the next morning, when
she unclosed her eyes. She pulled the bell, and in a
moment a smiling face appeared at the door. “If
you please, miss,” said a voice, unmistakably Irish,
“should you like to git up?”

“Is no one else up in the house?” asked Miss
Atherton, smiling.

“Jist the two of us, miss, Mr. Warren and meself.
The young gintleman gits up every morning
to read, miss, and I git up to light his fire for him.
Oh, but he's the raal gintleman.”

“Then, I suppose I can get up now, if I please?”

“Shure, the young gintleman expects you, miss.
He said I was to light your fire, and help you about
dressing; so if you'll jist please to lie still, I'll have
the room warm for you in a moment.”

Grace felt very cheerful. There was something
fresh and piquant in the sparkling, handsome face of
her Hibernian attendant, and there was all the charm
of novelty in lying there, in the lamp-light, watching
the kindling of the coal fire. “Mary,” called a voice
half way up the stairs. The girl sprang to the door.
Coming back, she said, “Shure if you please, miss, he
says the morning is cowld, and ye'll want plenty of
wrapping.”

“Dear, kind Warren, how careful of my comfort,'
thought the young girl, with a blush.

She was quickly dressed. Somehow it was so
much easier to ask assistance from the cheerful, and
good-humored Irish girl, than it had been to receive it
even from Juno Clifford's stately maid, the evening
previous. She went gayly down stairs, almost tempted
to break into a snatch of song.

The walk on the breezy, beautiful common was
very pleasant, and the sunrise was glorious. With

the keen fresh wind in her face, and Warren talking
hopefully about the beautiful future, over whose paths
they were to wander hand in hand, she forgot that there
were in all the world such troublesome, weary visitants
as care and sorrow. But the illusion was not to last.
The breakfast parlor was warm and cheerful, but,
somehow, Grace experienced a sudden sensation of
chill as she entered it, though she had not thought of
the cold during her breezy morning walk. Miss
Sommers curled her lip with a half-defined sneer, and
there was something in the tone and manner of Juno's
—“You're indeed an early riser—we were hardly prepared
for such excellent country habits”—which Grace
felt as a reproof. When the breakfast hour was over,
she hastened to her own room. There, in a tiny vase,
stood the rosebud Warren had twined in her curls,
the evening previous. She pressed it tenderly to her
lips. There was something like a caress in the touch
of those velvet petals. It seemed as if she had grown
old many years, in the last four and twenty hours.
Then she chided herself for the indulgence of these
feelings. She remembered that if she was Warren's
wife, she must pass her whole future life there, and
she gave one glance to the splendor around her, and
tried to think it would be pleasant. There was a
light tap upon her door, and Juno Clifford entered.
Once more the proud woman folded her in her arms,
and swayed her by the irresistible magnetism of her
looks, her caresses, and her low, sweetly modulated
tones. She feared she had made a great mistake, she
said, in inviting Miss Sommers to the house. She
could not feel free before her herself, and she was sure
Grace could not; but then she had got her there, and
she must make the best of it. It was a good thing
Grace had come, for notwithstanding all her foolishness,
poor Margaretta was elegant-looking and had all
the prestige of rank and fashion on her side, and
Warren was getting too much interested in her, “but
never mind, love,” she added with another kiss,
“that's all over now.”

Then very skilfully she managed to lead the conversation
to Warren's early life. “You will keep it
from your father, of course, that we found the poor
child hawking papers; so few know it, it cannot hurt
him now, but it might render your father averse to
the marriage.”

The girl's cheek crimsoned. “Mrs. Clifford,”
she said, firmly, “my father knew that long ago; it
would ill become a village blacksmith for such a
cause to refuse his daughter's hand.”

“A village blacksmith!” A quick gleam of joy
kindled Juno's eyes.

The color deepened on Miss Atherton's face, but
her tone did not in the least falter. “Yes, madam,
my father worked with his own hands at the forge

and anvil, until he was worth enough to buy our pleasant
home, and the few acres of land around it.”

“Warren surely doesn't know of this?”

“I do not know. He may have heard it from
Mr. Hastings. I do not think I ever mentioned it to
him, though I certainly never thought of concealing
it.”

“Well, but you must think of it now. You
could not for an instant think the fact would make
any difference with me, but Warren; Grace, I could
not tell you how strong the pride of birth is in him.
He is English to the core of his heart. If he never
knows it, it can do him no harm, but if he had known
it, he never would have asked you to become his
wife.”

“Then he shall know it instantly.” She rose
from her seat as she spoke, and stood there, her young
head lifted, her slight figure drawn up, her eyes
flashing, and her whole frame quivering with intense
excitement. “He shall know. I am proud of my old
grey-headed father. He has walked with God now to
a serene old age, and there is not an act in his whole
life for which his child has cause to blush. If Warren
Clifford could love me less, because my father's
hands have grown hard with honest toil, it is time. I
will go home, where my voice and my steps are welcome,
and pray Heaven to banish his image from my
heart.”

Tears came into her eyes, which she bowed her
head to conceal, and then Juno folded her to her
heart. “Dear, noble Grace,” she whispered, in her
soft, treacherous tones, “he could not love you less.
He would glory in you as I do. You shall indeed
tell him all, but you are my child now; grant me one
prayer. In two weeks I shall give a large and brilliant
party. I give it to introduce our sweet, new
daughter to my friends, and you must promise me to
wait until after it is over; I have good, true reasons.”

“But how can I? I shall feel every moment till
the whole is told, like a traitor stealing into his heart
under false pretences. I shall expect to lose his love;
it will be standing on the brink of a volcano.”

“Not if I who know, tell you he will but love you
better. My first thought was of his pride, but I know
he prizes unstained truth and fearless honesty more
than all. Fear nothing, only wait for my sake.
Promise me, my sweet, sweet Grace, my daughter!”

The fond words and the caress which accompanied
them triumphed, and half reluctantly the promise was
accorded.