Charles Auchester Volume I Part 11

"I have brought you some honey, Miss Benette. Will you eat it with your bread? It is better than bonbons, Miss Laura."

"I did not care for the bonbons; I only thought you would like them.

They gave them to me at rehearsal."

"Do you go to rehearsal, then, as well as the singers?"

"I go to rehearsal in the ballet; and when there is no ballet I sing in the chorus."

"But you are so little: do you always dance?"

"I am always to dance now; I did not until this season."

Her voice was dreamy and cold, the flush had already faded; she seemed not speaking with the slightest consciousness.

"Do go, Master Auchester!" and Clara looked at me from her azure eyes as kindly as if she smiled. "Do go, or she will have no tea, and will be very tired. I am so much obliged to you for the sweet yellow honey; I shall keep it in my closet, in that pretty blue jar."

I _would_ have the blue jar, though Lydia wanted me to take a white one.

"Oh, pray eat the honey, and give me the jar to fill again! I won't stay, don't be afraid, but good-night. Won't you let me shake hands with you, Miss Lemark?" for she still stood apart, like a reed in a sultry day. She looked at me directly. "Good-night, dear!" I was so inexpressibly touched by the tone, or the manner, or the mysterious something--that haunted her dancing--in _her_, that I added, "Shall I bring you some flowers next cla.s.s-night?"

"If you please."

"Oh, do go, Master Auchester! I prayed you ten minutes ago."

"I am gone." And so I was; and this time I was not too late for my own tea at home.

There must be something startlingly perfect in that which returns upon the soul with a more absolute impression after its abstraction of our faculties has pa.s.sed away. So completely had the fascination of those steps sufficed that I forgot the voice of Miss Benette, resounding all the time, and only a.s.sociated in my recollection the silver monotone of the clinking bells with the lulling undulation, the quivering feet.

All night long, when I dreamed, it was so; and when I awoke in the morning (as usual), I thought the evening before, a dream.

I dared not mention Laura to any one except Millicent, but I could not exist without some species of sympathy; and when I had finished all my tasks, I entreated her to go out with me alone. She had some purchases to make, and readily agreed. It was a great treat to me to walk with her at any time. I cannot recollect how I introduced the subject, but I managed to ask somehow, after some preamble, whether my mother thought it wrong to dance in public.

"Of course not," she replied, directly. "Some people are obliged to do so in order to live. They excel in that art as others excel in other arts, and it is a rare gift to possess the faculty to excel in that, as in all other arts."

"So, Millicent, she would not mind my knowing a dance-artist any more than any other artist?"

"Certainly it is the greatest privilege to know true artists; but there are few in the whole world. How few, then, there must be in our little corner of it!"

"You call Mr. Davy an artist, I suppose?"

"I think he pursues art as a student, who, having learned its first principles for himself, is anxious to place others in possession of them before he himself soars into its higher mysteries. So far I call him philanthropist and aspirant, but scarcely an artist yet."

"Was our conductor an artist?"

"Oh! I should think so, no doubt. Why did you ask me about artists, Charles?"

"Oh, I suppose you would not call a little girl an artist if she were as clever as possible. There is a little girl at the cla.s.s who sits very near me. She is a great favorite of Miss Benette. Such a curious child, Millicent! I could not endure her till yesterday evening. She was there when I went to practise, all ready dressed for the theatre.

She looked a most lovely thing,--not like a person at all, but as if she could fly; and she wore such beautiful clothes!"

Millicent was evidently very much surprised.

"She lives with Miss Benette, then, Charles?"

"Oh, no; for I asked her, and she said she wished she did. I should rather think somebody or other is unkind to her, for Miss Benette seems to pity her so much. Well, I was going to tell you, Millicent, she danced! Oh, it was beyond everything! You never saw anything so exquisite. I could hardly watch her about the room; she quite swam, and turned her eyes upward. She looked quite different from what she was at the cla.s.s."

"I should think so. I have always heard that stage dancing is very fascinating, but I have never seen it, you know; and I do not think mother would like you to see her often, for she considers you too young to go to a theatre at all."

"Why should I be?"

"I don't know all her reasons, but the chief one I should suspect to be, is that it does not close until very late, and that the ballet is the last thing of all in the entertainment."

"Yes, I know the ballet. Laura does dance in the ballet, she told me so. But she danced in the daylight when I saw her, so there could be no harm in it."

"No harm! There is no harm in what is beautiful; but mother likes you to be fresh for everything you do in the daytime, and that cannot be unless you sleep early, no less than well. She asked me the other day whether I did not think you looked very pale the mornings after the cla.s.ses."

"Oh, what did you say?"

"I said, 'He is always pale, dear mother, but he never looks so refreshed by any sleep as when he comes down those mornings, I think.'"

"Dear Millicent! you are so kind, I shall never forget it. Now do come and call upon Miss Benette."

"My dear Charles, I have never been introduced to her."

"How formal, to be sure! She would be so glad if we went; she would love you directly,--everybody does."

"I do not wish they should, Charles. You must know very well I had better keep away. I do not belong to the cla.s.s, and if she lives alone, she of course prefers not to be intruded upon by strangers."

"Of course not, generally. I am sure she ought not to live alone. She must be wanting somebody to speak to sometimes."

"You are determined she shall have you, at all events."

"Oh, no! I am nothing to her, I know; but I can sing, so she likes me to go."

"I suppose she is quite a woman, Charles?"

"Oh, yes! she is fourteen."

"My dear Charles, she cannot live alone. She is but a child, then; I thought her so much older than that."

"Oh! did not Mr. Davy say so the other night?"

"I did not notice; I do not think so."

"Oh! he told me the first time I asked him about her."

Millicent laughed again, as we went on, at the idea of her living alone. I still persisted it was a fact.