The Heart of Arethusa Part 13

Miss Let.i.tia breathed a deep sigh of relief. Arethusa echoed the sigh.

They dreaded equally the task of hanging a skirt (when it had not hung right at first) with Miss Eliza's accurate eyes fixed upon the operation.

"That is a very pretty dress. Sister 't.i.tia," remarked Miss Asenath.

She had quite a point of vantage on her couch; all fitting processes were visible in an entirety. "Don't you think so, Arethusa?"

Arethusa agreed with fervency.

"You'd better thank your Aunt 't.i.tia then," from Miss Eliza.

"She did, Sister," interposed Miss Let.i.tia hastily. "She already did!"

"I didn't hear her."

"Well, she gave me a lovely hug, and we both know what that means, don't we, 'Thusa dearie?"

"Hum ... ph!" from Miss Eliza.

Arethusa took the blue silk dress off very carefully and handed it back to Miss Let.i.tia for the finis.h.i.+ng touches.

She stood straight and tall before them for just a moment, and tilted back her head and yawned, stretching her round arms high above her in a glorious relaxation.

Then she looked down at that exceedingly dark, blue silk dress with dissatisfaction. Then she looked at Miss Let.i.tia bending her grey head far over it and putting in innumerable and almost invisible st.i.tches very carefully, just for Arethusa: her round, cherubic little mouth puckering into happy smiles about something known only to herself as she worked.

Arethusa's warm heart smote her.

She swooped down upon Miss Let.i.tia and hugged her with violence to make up for that moment of inward dissatisfaction with Miss Let.i.tia's loving work. Miss Let.i.tia's gla.s.ses were knocked off in the sudden swoop and fell into her lap. She looked most surprised at this unexpected proceeding, though highly gratified, as she retrieved the gla.s.ses. Had she asked Miss Asenath about it, Miss Asenath could probably have told her just what had been pa.s.sing through Arethusa's mind. Miss Asenath had been watching Arethusa. She was never tired of watching her, in every smallest thing the girl did, with loving eyes that took keen delight in her youth and life and vivid coloring.

Arethusa gazed around at the many garments in various stages that were strewn about the room; every single one of them was hers. All the plain white cotton under-things, one or two of them with puffings or a bit of "thread" lace whipped around their edges, as a concession to the unusualness of this occasion; the few simple s.h.i.+rtwaists, trimmed with neat tucking; the "medium lisle" stockings Miss Eliza was marking in pairs after a method of her own invention; the plain dark suit that Miss Let.i.tia had completed only that morning, and which Miss Asenath's frail fingers were even at this moment engaged in further finis.h.i.+ng with a braid-binding all around the skirt to save the hem; the new hat which Arethusa had tried on for them with the finished suit to see how well they went together, and which was lying now on top of the piano; and the silk dress in Miss Let.i.tia's lap: it was all hers. But there was nothing frivolous in the array, nothing at all light in color, save perhaps the underclothes and the s.h.i.+rtwaists; there was not one purely decorative or "frilly" garment such as the heart of girlhood loves. It was a wardrobe, without doubt, entirely of Miss Eliza's choosing.

"Aunt 'Liza," Arethusa knelt down by that lady's chair and put her glowing face very close to her aunt's; her tone was most wheedling.

"Aunt 'Liza, is there any of my money left?"

"There is," declared Miss Eliza, with satisfaction. "There is. I've saved your step-mother quite a tidy bit of what she sent. It's too bad if Ross has married a woman with extravagant tastes just like his own; too bad! But it would seem as if he had. All that money for just one girl! Put your dress on again, child, you oughtn't to sit around that way. Yes, you're going to have quite a sum to take back to your step-mother."

Arethusa wished that Miss Eliza would not say "step-mother" with just such an emphasis. It made her seem so undesirable a relative to have acquired, Miss Eliza's way of saying the name. And Arethusa did not choose to think of Elinor as anything undesirable. She was nothing that was not perfect. She was certainly nothing that deserved to be distinguished by such a term of reproach as that "step-mother."

Practising saying "Mother" very softly to herself, Arethusa had come to regard Elinor that way, without the sign of a "step."

She ignored the injunction to put on her dress and leaned coaxingly nearer to Miss Eliza, whose habitually stern expression softened involuntarily. But how could she help it, with that glowing face wheedling so close to her own? Miss Eliza, after all, was not wood or iron.

"Then please, Aunt 'Liza, let me have another dress?"

"What do you want with another dress, 'Thusa?" Miss Eliza sounded almost indulgent. "This silk one makes three new ones, counting your suit."

"I know," Arethusa said, a trifle apologetically, as if she knew it _was_ a strange request. "I know, but I want a Party Dress. I want,"

and she hurried on with the expression of her want in desperate haste lest she be stopped before she had finished, "I want a Green Dress?"

"A green dress! Mercy on us! With your hair! Why, Arethusa Worthington!" Miss Eliza was plainly horrified.

But Arethusa Worthington nodded, most hopefully.

"Nonsense! A person with hair as red as yours can't wear green! Of all wild ideas!"

"I think she might look lovely in a soft shade of green," put in Miss Asenath's sweet voice. "And so why can't she have a green party dress, Sister? If she wants one and there's plenty of money left?"

Then Arethusa looked still more hopefully at Miss Eliza, for sometimes Miss Asenath's gentle vote prevailed; but this time it was not so to be. Miss Eliza bit off her thread with as much decision as ever Atropos dares use in cutting hers.

"You always did care a lot too much about color, 'Senath," she said, though not in the least unkindly; no one was ever unkind to Miss Asenath, "and Arethusa is just like you. But as for getting her a green dress to wear with that red head of hers, why it would be a waste, and a perfectly sinful waste, of money, because I know her step-mother wouldn't let her wear it. She would think _I_ was crazy besides."

Both Arethusa and Miss Asenath were quite inclined to disagree with her. Miss Asenath was wise enough to know that she could say nothing further to change the decision; and she communicated to Arethusa, with a shake of her head, that she was not to attempt it, either ... for the latter's mouth had plainly opened for speech. Be it said to her everlasting credit, that she struggled hard with this disappointment, and turned away to put on her dress without any other plea.

"Your Aunt 't.i.tia and I," continued Miss Eliza, (she had not seen this bit of by-play) "had about decided to get you a white dress. We thought that if it weren't of too sheer material, you might wear it to entertainments there in the city--because I suppose you'll be invited to some--even if it is cold weather, without having to take off your underwear, which is always dangerous in winter."

"I don't want an old, thick, white dress...." began Arethusa, rebelliously, but a chorus of "Arethusas" interrupted her.

It was very gentle from Miss Asenath; very plaintive from Miss Let.i.tia, who was dreading another tilt; and very, very stern from Miss Eliza, who added, "If your Aunt 't.i.tia is good enough to make you a white dress, you ought to be very grateful, instead of acting as you do! I doubt the wisdom of your having one at all, myself, I must say. A white dress in the winter-time! When I was a girl, I would have thought that a great deal to have!"

But Arethusa failed to be properly impressed. Her dislike of the idea of the white dress showed so plainly in her ever-changing face, that Miss Asenath silently held out her hand and Arethusa flew to that haven, her couch.

"I wouldn't worry, dear, about my dress," whispered Miss Asenath. She sometimes just could not help consoling the girl, even if it was in direct opposition to Miss Eliza, when things seemed to be too thoroughly disappointing. "You know your Aunt 't.i.tia will make it just as pretty as she possibly can. I think green is lovely with red hair, myself, even though Sister 'Liza doesn't seem to, but white is lovely with it also. And your mother may get you some other things, very probably; don't you remember that it said 'immediate needs' in the letter? And if that means what I imagine it does, you may find yourself with two party dresses when you thought you were only going to have one. And," ended Miss Asenath, smiling, "she may feel about colors just as you and I do. I think somehow she will!"

Arethusa smiled back. It was a pleasing prospect held out by Aunt 'Senath, so she took heart and hope immediately.

Miss Eliza bent her gla.s.ses upon the two conspirators on the sofa.

"Don't you be telling Arethusa she would look nice in green, 'Senath, because you know very well she wouldn't. In _my_ day," this severely directed at Arethusa herself, "so much wasn't done for girls that they forgot how to be grateful. Nowadays, they want the whole earth and a ring around it, into the bargain. The more you give 'em, the more they want. A green dress for Arethusa! Who on earth would have thought of such a thing but you! If your hair wasn't quite so red, you wouldn't be so limited in your choice of colors. A green dress! That's Ross Worthington all over again. Wild ideas; nothing like anybody sensible would think of ever having or doing! A green dress with your fiery red hair!"

Arethusa could not help but feel that this apostrophe to her hair was going rather far. Miss Let.i.tia and Miss Asenath had much the same feeling. But Miss Let.i.tia dared only look her sympathy, and Miss Asenath felt it best to express hers by one of her loving little pats.

Then Miss Eliza happened to glance at the tall marble clock. She immediately put her work down. "You may finish these stockings, Arethusa, if you think you can keep your mind on it long enough. But just as I was doing them though; mind! It's time for me to go show Blish about fixing that sore place on the black cow's back. He was to be up at four."

With Miss Eliza's departure harmony reigned supreme, and Arethusa's tongue loosened. Over the marking of her stockings, she chattered happily to Miss Asenath and Miss Let.i.tia. Very often, when Miss Eliza was present, her rather dry reception of her niece's enthusiastic presentation of ideas had a somewhat quenching effect upon the real flow of conversation.

"Did you leave Timothy down at the Branch?" queried Miss Asenath, after awhile.

"Oh, I reckon he went on home," Arethusa answered carelessly.

She could be thus casual in her answers to Miss Asenath, for with her no subject had pursuit unto a bitter end.

Miss Let.i.tia finished the hem of the blue dress and laid the garment carefully over the back of a chair. Then she reached over and took Arethusa's pile of stockings away from her.

"Suppose, dearie," she suggested, "you practise a bit now. You don't play that piece yet as well as you ought, and your father used to be a great lover of music. He will want to hear you play."

Arethusa rose obediently and went to the piano; twirled the squeaking stool to a lower height, and settled herself, elbows properly rigid and head upright. Miss Let.i.tia was her music teacher.

In fact, all of her education, domestic and academic and purely ornamental, as Miss Eliza termed the music, had been gained at home.

Instruction in the "princ.i.p.al branches," again Miss Eliza's name, had been received mostly from Miss Asenath. Geography she had taught her niece with the aid of the same faded globe that had fixed the shape of the world and the location of its hemispheres and continents and princ.i.p.al countries in her own mind. If the boundaries of any of those countries had changed since the globe was made; if new land had been discovered; if any hitherto obscure cities had sprung into size and prominence during the sixty years or more that the globe had stood in the corner of the square hall: it had made no sort of difference in the geography lessons. Arethusa had learned history, from ancient history books with almost obliterated names on the fly-leaves. But it had been rather a biased version of the period connected with the Civil War which she had learned, for Miss Eliza was very bitter about those years of her country's existence. Her only brother, and her twin, had been killed fighting for the Confederacy. Miss Eliza seemed to be unable to believe that he had been killed in battle, however, for she always spoke of him as "murdered" by the Yankees. So Arethusa's ideas of events connected with this time was hardly very favorably inclined towards the Northern side. Miss Asenath was very shaky in arithmetic; therefore, her pupil had not got into higher mathematics. She had paused in her figuring somewhere about the beginning of long division, but even where she had paused she could not be said to be very steadily fixed.

The musical part of this education belonged to just about the same date as the part which Miss Asenath had supervised. For all the pieces Arethusa had learned "by heart," which was the only way to learn music properly so as to be able to give pleasure to others, were pieces which Miss Let.i.tia herself had practised with painstaking care for expression over fifty years ago. Both musicians were quite proficient in mazurkas and polkas and old-fas.h.i.+oned reels and ballads, and let us not forget to mention variations of every conceivable variety, for Miss Let.i.tia possessed a whole book of variations, and it was quite a thick book.