Vagabondia Part 10

"I heard about the maroon dress," he added, when he had given it to her, "and my choice of your flowers was guided accordingly. White camellias, worn with maroon sik, are artistic, Mollie, your brother will tell you."

"They are very pretty," said Mollie, looking down at them in grateful confusion; "and I am much obliged. Thank you, Mr. Gowan."

"A great many good wishes go with them," he said, good-naturedly. "If I were an enchanter, you should never grow any older from this day forward." And his speech was something more than an idle compliment.

There was something touching to him, too, in the fact of the child's leaving her childhood behind her, and confronting so ignorantly the unconscious dawn of a womanhood which might hold so much of the bitterness of knowledge.

But, of course, Mollie did not understand this.

"Why?" she asked him, forgetting her camellias, in her wonder at his fancy.

"Why?" said he. "Because seventeen is such a charming age, Mollie; and it would be well for so many of us if we did not outlive its faith and freshness."

He crossed over to Dolly then, and made his well-turned speech of friendly greeting to her also, but his most ordinary speech to her had its own subtle warmth. He was growing very fond of Dolly Crewe. But Dolly was a trifle preoccupied; she was looking almost anxiously at Mollie and the camellias.

"He has been paying her a compliment or she would not look so fluttered and happy," she was saying to herself. "I wish he wouldn't. It may please him, but it is dangerous work for Mollie."

And when she raised her eyes to meet Ralph Gowan's, he saw that there was the ghost of a regretful shadow in them.

She had too much to do, however, to be troubled long. Phil's friends began to drop in, one by one, and the business of the evening occupied her attention. There was coffee to be handed round, and she stood at a side-table and poured it out herself into quaint cups of old china, which were a relic of former grandeur; and as she moved to and fro, bringing one of these cups to one, or a plate of fantastic little cakes to another, and flavoring the whole repast with her running fire of spicy speeches, Gowan found himself following her with his eyes and rather extravagantly comparing her to ambrosia-bearing Hebe, at the same time thinking that in Vagabondia these tilings were better done than elsewhere.

The most _outre_ of Phil's hirsute and carelessly garbed fellow-Bohemians somehow or other seemed neither vulgar nor ill at ease.

They evidently felt at home, and admired faithfully and with complete unison the feminine members of their friend's family; and their readiness to catch at the bright or grotesque side of any situation evinced itself in a manner worthy of imitation. Then, too, there was Tod, taking excursionary rambles about the carpet, and, far from being in the way, rendering himself an innocent centre of attraction. Brown cracked jokes with him, Jones bribed him with cake to the performance of before-unheard-of. feats, and one muscular, fiercely mus-tached and bearded young man, whose artistic forte yas battle-pieces of the most sanguinary description, appropriated him bodily and set him on his shoulder, greatly to the detriment of his paper collar.

"The spirit of Vagabondia is strong in Tod," said Dolly, who at the time was standing near Gowan upon the hearth-rug, with her own coffee-cup in hand; "its manifestation being his readiness to accommodate himself to circ.u.mstances."

Through the whole of the evening Mollie and the camellias shone forth with resplendence. Those of Phil's masculine friends who had known her since her babyhood felt instinctively that to-night the Rubicon had been pa.s.sed. Unconscious as she was of herself, she was imposing in the maroon silk, and these free-and-easy, good-natured fellows were the very men to be keenly alive to any subtle power of womanhood. So when they addressed her their manner was a trifle subdued, and their deportment toward her had a faint savor of delicate reverence.

Dolly was in her element. Her songs, her little supper, and her plans of entertainment were a perfect success. Such jokes as she made and such laughter as she managed to elicit through the medium of the smallest of them, and such aptness and tact as she displayed in keeping up the general fusillade of _bon-mots_ and repartee. It would have been impossible for a witticism to fall short of its mark under her active superintendence, even if witticisms had been p.r.o.ne to fall short in Vagabondia, which they decidedly were not. She kept Griffith busy, too, from first to last, perhaps because she felt it to be the safest plan; at any rate, she held him near her, and managed to keep him in the best of spirits all the evening, and more than once Gowan, catching a glimpse of her as she addressed some simple remark to the favored one, recognized a certain bright softness in her face which told its own story. But there would have been little use in openly displaying his discomfiture; so, after feeling irritated for a moment or so, Ralph Gowan allowed himself to drift into attendance on Mollie, and, being almost gratefully received by that young lady, he did not find that the time pa.s.sed slowly.

"I am so glad you came here." she said to him, plaintively, when he first crossed the room to her side. "I do so hate Brown."

"Brown!" he echoed. "Who _is_ Brown, Mollie? and what has Brown been doing to incur your resentment?"

Mollie gave her shoulders a petulant shrug.

"Brown is that little man in the big coat," she said, "the one who went away when you came. I wish he would stay away. I can't bear him," with delightful candor.

"But why?" persisted Gowan, casting a glance at the side of the room where Dolly stood talking to her lover. "Is it because his coat is so big, or because he is so little, that he is so objectionable? To be at once moral and instructive, Mollie, a man is not to be judged by his coat."

"I know that," returned Mollie, her unconscious innocence a.s.serting itself; "it is n't that. _You_ couldn't be as disagreeable as he is if you were dressed in rags."

Gowan turned quickly to look at her, forgetting even Dolly for the instant,--but she was quite in earnest, and met his questioning eyes with the most pathetic ignorance of having said anything extraordinary.

Indeed, her faith in what she had said was so patent that he found it impossible to answer her with a light or jesting speech.

"It is n't that," she went on, pulling at a glossy green leaf on her bouquet. "If he did n't--if he would n't--if he didn't keep saying things--"

"What sort of things?" asked Gowan, to help her out of her dilemma.

"I--don't know," was the shy reply. "Stupid things."

"Stupid things!" he repeated. "Poor Brown!" and his eyes wandered to Dolly again.

But it would not have been natural if he had not been attracted by Mollie, after all, and in the course of time in a measure consoled by her. She was so glad to be protected from the advances of the much despised Brown, that he found it rather pleasant than otherwise to const.i.tute himself her body-guard,--to talk to her as they sat, and to be her partner in the stray dances which accidentally enlivened the evening entertainment. She danced well, too, he discovered, and with such evident enjoyment of her own smooth, swaying movements as was quite magnetic, and made him half reluctant to release her when their first waltz was ended, and she stopped all aflush with new bloom.

"I am _so_ fond of dancing," she said, catching her breath in a little sigh of ecstasy. "We all are. It is one of the things we _can_ do without spending any money, you know."

It was shortly after this, just as they were standing in twos and threes, chatting and refres.h.i.+ng themselves with Dolly's confections and iced lemonade, that an entirely unexpected advent occurred. There suddenly fell upon the general ear a sound as of rolling wheels, and a carriage stopped before the door.

Dolly, standing in the midst of a small circle of her own, paused in her remarks to listen.

"It is a carriage, that is certain," she said,--"and somebody is getting out. I don't know "--and then a light breaking over her face in a flash of horror and delight in the situation commingled. "Phil," she exclaimed, "the Philistines be upon us,--it is Lady Augusta!"

And it was. In two minutes that majestic lady was ushered in by the excited Belinda, and announced in the following rather remarkable manner,--

"If yer please, Miss Dolly, here's your aunt, Mr. Phil."

For a second her ladys.h.i.+p was speechless, even though Dolly advanced to meet her at once. The festive gathering was too much for her, and the sight of Ralph Gowan leaning over Mollie in all her bravery, holding her flowers for her, and appearing so evidently at home, overpowered her completely. But she recovered herself at length.

"I was not aware," she said to Dolly, "that you were having a"--pause for a word sufficiently significant--"that you were holding a reception,"--a scathing glance at the pensive Brown, who was at once annihilated. "You will possibly excuse my involuntary intrusion. I thought, of _course_" (emphasis), "that I should find you alone, and as I had something to say to you concerning Euphemia, I decided to call tonight on my way from the conversazione at Dr. Bugby's,--perhaps, Dorothea, your friends" (emphasis again) "will excuse you for a moment, and you will take me into another room,"--this last as if she had suddenly found herself in a fever hospital and was rather afraid of contagion.

But apart from Mollie, who pouted and flushed, and was extremely uncomfortable, n.o.body seemed to be either chilled or overwhelmed. Phil's greeting was so cordial and unmoved that her ladys.h.i.+p could only proffer him the tips of her fingers in imposing silence, and Dolly's air of placid good-humor was so perfect that it was as good as a modest theatrical entertainment.

She led her visitor out of the room with a most untroubled countenance, after her ladys.h.i.+p had honored Gowan with a word or so, kindly signifying her intense surprise at meeting him in the house, and rather intimating, delicately, that she could not comprehend his extraordinary conduct, and hoped he would not live to regret it.

The interview was not a long one, however. In about ten minutes the carriage rolled away, and Dolly came back to the parlor with a touch of new color on her cheek, and a dying-out spark of fire in her eye; and though her spirits did not seem to have failed her, she was certainly a trifle moved by something.

"Let us have another waltz." she said, rather as if she wished to dismiss Lady Augusta from the carpet "I will play this time. Phil, find a partner."

She sat down to the piano at once, and swept off into one of Phil's own compositions, and from that time till the end of the evening she scarcely gave them a moment's pause, and was herself so full of sparkle and resources that she quite enraptured Gowan, and made the shabby room and the queer life seem more novel and entrancing than ever.

But when the guests were gone, and only Griffith, who was always last, remained with Phil and the girls, grouped about the fire, the light died out of her mood, and she looked just a trifle anxious and tired.

"Girls," she said, "I have some bad news to tell you,--at least some news that isn't exactly good. Lady Augusta has given me what Belinda would call 'a warning.' I visit the select precincts of Bilberry House as governess no more."

There is no denying it was a blow to them all. Her salary had been a very necessary part of the family income, and if they had been straitened with it, certainly there would be a struggle without it.

"Oh!" cried Mollie, remorsefully. "And you have just spent nearly all you had on my dress. And you do so want things yourself, Dolly. What shall you do?"

"Begin to take in the daily papers and peruse the advertising column,"

she answered, courageously. "Never mind, it will all come right before long, and we can keep up our spirits until then."

But, despite her a.s.sumed good spirits, when she went to see Griffith out of the front door, she held to his arm with a significantly clinging touch, and was so silent for a moment that he stooped in the dark to kiss her, and found her cheek wet with tears.

It quite upset him, too, poor fellow! Dolly crying and daunted was a state of affairs fraught with anguish to him.

"Why, Dolly!" he exclaimed, tremulously. "Dolly, you are crying!"

And then she did give way, and for a minute or so quite needed the shelter and rest of his arms. She cared for no other shelter or rest; he was quite enough for her in her brightest or darkest day,--just this impecunious young man, whose prospects were so limited, but whose affection for her was so wholly without limit. She might be daunted, but she could not remain long uncomforted while her love and trust were still unchanged. Ah! there was a vast amount of magic in the simple, silent pressure of the arm within that shabby coat-sleeve.