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THE EVENING STAR.
Notwithstanding her headache, however, Mrs. Redmain was going in
the evening to a small fancy-ball, meant for a sort of rehearsal
to a great one when the season should arrive. The part and
costume she had chosen were the suggestion of her own name: she
would represent the Evening Star, clothed in the early twilight;
and neither was she unfit for the part, nor was the dress she had
designed altogether unsuitable either to herself or to the part.
But she had sufficient confidence neither in herself nor her maid
to forestall a desire for Mary's opinion. After luncheon,
therefore, she sent for Miss Marston to her bedroom.
Mary found her half dressed, Folter in attendance, a great heap
of pink lying on the bed.
"Sit down, Mary," said Hesper, pointing to a chair; "I want your
advice. But I must first explain. Where I am going this evening,
nobody is to be herself except me. I am not to be Mrs. Redmain,
though, but Hesper. You know what Hesper means?"
Mary said she knew, and waited--a little anxious; for sideways in
her eyes glowed the pink of the chosen Hesperian clouds, and, if
she should not like it, what could be done at that late hour.
"There is my dress," continued the Evening Star, with a glance of
her eyes, for Folter was busied with her hair; "I want to know
your opinion of it." Folter gave a toss of her head that seemed
to say, "Have not I spoken?" but what it really did mean,
how should other mortal know? for the main obstructions to
understanding are profundity and shallowness, and the latter is
far the more perplexing of the two.
"I should like to see it on first," said Mary: she was in doubt
whether the color--bright, to suggest the brightest of sunset-
clouds--would suit Hesper's complexion. Then, again, she had
always associated the name Hesper with a later, a solemnly
lovely period of twilight, having little in common with the color
so voluminous in the background.
Hesper had a good deal of appreciative faculty, and knew
therefore when she liked and when she did not like a thing; but
she had very little originative faculty--so little that, when
anything was wrong, she could do next to nothing to set it right.
There was small originality in taking a suggestion for her part
from her name, and less in the idea, following by concatenation,
of adopting for her costume sunset colors upon a flimsy material,
which might more than hint at clouds. She had herself, with the
assistance of Sepia and Folter, made choice of the particular
pink; but, although it continued altogether delightful in the
eyes of her maid, it had, upon nearer and pro-longed
acquaintance, become doubtful in hers; and she now waited, with
no little anxiety, the judgment of Mary, who sat silently
thinking.
"Have you nothing to say?" she asked, at length, impatiently.
"Please, ma'am," replied Mary, "I must think, if I am to be of
any use. I am doing my best, but you must let me be quiet."
Half annoyed, half pleased, Hesper was silent, and Mary went on
thinking. All was still, save for the slight noises Folter made,
as, like a machine, she went on heartlessly brushing her
mistress's hair, which kept emitting little crackles, as of
dissatisfaction with her handling. Mary would now take a good
gaze at the lovely creature, now abstract herself from the
visible, and try to call up the vision of her as the real Hesper,
not a Hesper dressed up--a process which had in it hope for the
lady, but not much for the dress upon the bed. At last Folter had
done her part.
"I suppose you must see it on!" said Hesper, and she rose
up.
Folter jerked herself to the bed, took the dress, arranged it on
her arms, got up on a chair, dropped it over her mistress's head,
got down, and, having pulled it this way and that for a while,
fastened it here, undone it there, and fastened it again, several
times, exclaimed, in a tone whose confidence was meant to
forestall the critical impertinence she dreaded:
"There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room,
I shall never trust my eyes again."
Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but
added to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed
and bubbled and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so
that the form of the woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness
of the cloud. The whole, if whole it could be called, was a
miserable attempt at combining fancy and fashion, and, in result,
an ugly nothing.
"I see you don't like it!" said Hesper, with a mingling of
displeasure and dismay. "I wish you had come a few days sooner!
It is much too late to do anything now. I might just as well have
gone without showing it to you!--Here, Folter!"
With a look almost of disgust, she began to pull off the dress,
in which, a few hours later, she would yet make the attempt to
enchant an assembly.
"O ma'am!" cried Mary, "I wish you had told me yesterday. There
would have been time then.--And I don't know," she added, seeing
disgust change to mortification on Hesper's countenance, "but
something might be done yet."
"Oh, indeed!" dropped from Folter's lips with an indescribable
expression.
"What can be done?" said Hesper, angrily. "There can be no time
for anything."
"If only we had the stuff!" said Mary. "That shade doesn't suit
your complexion. It ought to be much, much darker--in fact, a
different color altogether."
Folter was furious, but restrained herself sufficiently to
preserve some calmness of tone, although her face turned almost
blue with the effort, as she said:
"Miss Marston is not long from the country, ma'am, and don't know
what's suitable to a London drawing-room."
Her mistress was too dejected to snub her impertinence.
"What color were you thinking of, Miss Marston?" Hesper asked,
with a stiffness that would have been more in place had Mary
volunteered the opinion she had been asked to give. She was out
of temper with Mary from feeling certain she was right, and
believing there was no remedy.
"I could not describe it," answered Mary. "And, indeed, the color
I have in my mind may not be to be had. I have seen it somewhere,
but, whether in a stuff or only in nature, I can not at this
moment be certain."
"Where's the good of talking like that--excuse me, ma'am--it's
more than I can bear--when the ball comes off in a few hours?"
cried Folter, ending with eyes of murder on Mary.
"If you would allow me, ma'am," said Mary, "I should like much to
try whether I could not find something that would suit you and
your idea too. However well you might look in that, you would owe
it no thanks. The worst is, I know nothing of the London shops."
"I should think not!" remarked Folter, with emphasis.
"I would send you in the brougham, if I thought it was of any
use," said Hesper. "Folter could take you to the proper places."
"Folter would be of no use to me," said Mary. "If your coachman
knows the best shops, that will be enough."
"But there's no time to make up anything," objected Hesper,
despondingly, not the less with a glimmer of hope in her heart.
"Not like that," answered Mary; "but there is much there as
unnecessary as it is ugly. If Folter is good at her needle--"
"I won't take up a single stitch. It would be mere waste of
labor," cried Folter.
"Then, please, ma'am," said Mary, "let Folter have that dress
ready, and, if I don't succeed, you have something to wear."
"I hate it. I won't go if you don't find me another."
"Some people may like it, though I don't," said Mary.
"Not a doubt of that!" said Folter.
"Ring the bell," said her mistress.
The woman obeyed, and the moment afterward repented she had not
given warning on the spot, instead. The brougham was ordered
immediately, and in a few minutes Mary was standing at a counter
in a large shop, looking at various stuffs, of which the young
man waiting on her soon perceived she knew the qualities and
capabilities better than he.
She had set her heart on carrying out Hesper's idea, but in
better fashion; and after great pains taken, and no little
trouble given, left the shop well satisfied with her success. And
now for the greater difficulty!
She drove straight to Letty's lodging, and, there dismissing the
brougham, presented herself, with a great parcel in her arms, for
the second time that day, at the door of her room, as unexpected
as the first, and even more to the joy of her solitary friend.
She knew that Letty was good at her needle. And Letty was,
indeed, even now, by fits, fond of using it; and on several
occasions, when her supply of novels had for a day run short, had
asked a dressmaker who lived above to let her help her for an
hour or two: before Mary had finished her story, she was untying
the parcel, and preparing to receive her instructions. Nor had
they been at work many minutes, when Letty bethought her of
calling in the help of the said dressmaker; so that presently
there were three of them busy as bees--one with genius, one with
experience, and all with facility. The notions of the first were
quickly taken up by the other two, and, the design of the dress
being simplicity itself, Mary got all done she wanted in shorter
time than she had thought possible. The landlady sent for a cab,
and Mary was home with the improbability in more than time for
Mrs. Redmain's toilet. It was with some triumph, tempered with
some trepidation, that she carried it to her room.
There Folter was in the act of persuading her mistress of the
necessity of beginning to dress: Miss Marston, she said, knew
nothing of what she had undertaken; and, even if she arrived in
time, it would be with something too ridiculous for any lady to
appear in--when Mary entered, and was received with a cry of
delight from Hesper; in proportion to whose increasing disgust
for the pink robe, was her pleasure when she caught sight of
Mary's colors, as she undid the parcel: when she lifted the dress
on her arm for a first effect, she was enraptured with it--aerial
in texture, of the hue of a smoky rose, deep, and cloudy with
overlying folds, yet diaphanous, a darkness dilute with red.
Silent as a torture-maiden, and as grim, Folter approached to try
the filmy thing, scornfully confident that the first sight of it
on would prove it unwearable. But Mary judged her scarcely in a
mood to be trusted with anything so ethereal; and begged
therefore that, as the dress had, of necessity, been in many
places little more than run together, and she knew its weak
points, she might, for that evening, be allowed the privilege of
dressing Mrs. Redmain. Hesper gladly consented; Folter left the
room; Mary, now at her ease, took her place; and presently, more
to Hesper's pleasure than Mary's surprise, for she had made and
fixed in her mind the results of minute observation before she
went, it was found that the dress fitted quite sufficiently well,
and, having confined it round the waist with a cincture of thin
pale gold, she advanced to her chief anxiety--the head-dress.
For this she had chosen such a doubtful green as the sky appears
through yellowish smoke--a sad, lovely color--the fair past
clouded with the present--youth not forgotten, but filmed with
age. They were all colors of the evening, as it strives to keep
its hold of the heavens, with the night pressing upon it from
behind. In front, above the lunar forehead, among the coronal
masses, darkly fair, she fixed a diamond star, and over it wound
the smoky green like a turbaned vapor, wind-ruffled, through
which the diamonds gleamed faintly by fits. Not once would she,
while at her work, allow Hesper to look, and the self-willed lady
had been submissive in her hands as a child of the chosen; but
the moment she had succeeded--for her expectations were more than
realized--she led her to the cheval-glass. Hesper gazed for an
instant, then, turning, threw her arms about Mary, and kissed
her.
"I don't believe you're a human creature at all!" she cried. "You
are a fairy godmother, come to look after your poor Cinderella,
the sport of stupid lady's-maids and dressmakers!"
The door opened, and Folter entered.
"If you please, ma'am, I wish to leave this day month," she said,
quietly.
"Then," answered her mistress, with equal calmness, "oblige me by
going at once to Mrs. Perkin, and telling her that I desire her
to pay you a month's wages, and let you leave the house to-morrow
morning.--You won't mind helping me to dress till I get another
maid--will you, Mary?" she added; and Folter left the room,
chagrined at her inability to cause annoyance.
"I do not see why you should have another maid so long as I am
with you, ma'am," said Mary. "It should not need many days'
apprenticeship to make one woman able to dress another."
"Not when she is like you, Mary," said Hesper. "It is well the
wretch has done my hair for to-night, though! That will be the
main difficulty."
"It will not be a great one," said Mary, "if you will allow me to
undo it when you come home."
"I begin almost to believe in a special providence," said Hesper.
"What a blessed thing for me that you came to drive away that
woman! She has been getting worse and worse."
"If I have driven her away," answered Mary, "I am bound to supply
her place."
As they talked, she was giving her final touches of arrangement
to the head-dress--with which she found it least easy to satisfy
herself. It swept round from behind in a misty cloak, the two
colors mingling with and gently obscuring each other; while,
between them, the palest memory of light, in the golden cincture,
helped to bring out the somber richness, the delicate darkness of
the whole.
Searching now again Hesper's jewel-case, Mary found a fine
bracelet of the true, the Oriental topaz, the old chrysolite--of
that clear yellow of the sunset-sky that looks like the 'scaped
spirit of miser-smothered gold: this she clasped upon one arm;
and when she had fastened a pair of some ancient Mortimer's
garnet buckles in her shoes, which she had insisted should be
black, and taken off all the rings that Hesper had just put on,
except a certain glorious sapphire, she led her again to the
mirror; and, if there Hesper was far more pleased with herself
than was reasonable or lovely, my reader needs not therefore fear
a sermon from the text, "Beauty is only skin-deep," for that text
is out of the devil's Bible. No Baal or Astarte is the maker of
beauty, but the same who made the seven stars and Orion, and His
works are past finding out. If only the woman herself and her
worshipers knew how deep it is! But the woman's share in her own
beauty may be infinitely less than skin-deep; and there is but
one greater fool than the man who worships that beauty--the woman
who prides herself upon it, as if she were the fashioner and not
the thing fashioned.
But poor Hesper had much excuse, though no justification. She had
had many of the disadvantages and scarce one of the benefits of
poverty. She had heard constantly from childhood the most worldly
and greedy talk, the commonest expression of abject dependence on
the favors of Mammon, and thus had from the first been in
preparation for marrying money. She had been taught no
other way of doing her part to procure the things of which the
Father knows we have need. She had never earned a dinner; had
never done or thought of doing a day's work--of offering the
world anything for the sake of which the world might offer her a
shilling to do it again; she had never dreamed of being of any
use, even to herself; she had learned to long for money, but had
never been hungry, never been cold: she had sometimes felt
shabby. Out of it all she had brought but the knowledge that this
matter of beauty, with which, by some blessed chance, she was
endowed, was worth much precious money in the world's market--
worth all the dresses she could ever desire, worth jewels and
horses and servants, adoration and adulation--everything, in
fact, the world calls fine, and the devil offers to those who,
unscared by his inherent ugliness, will fall down and worship
him.
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