CHAPTER XXIX.
LIKE AND UNLIKE.
When she awoke to consciousness she was lying on a bed in an apartment which was a strange compound of sitting- and sleeping-room. The bed stood in a capacious alcove which seemed to have been built on as an afterthought. The three sides were windows, in the outer of which were tastefully arranged numerous flowering plants, some of which had clambered up to the ceiling and hung in graceful festoons above the bed. The window-shades were so arranged as to be worked by cords, which hung within easy reach of one lying there.
The night had not fully come, but a lamp was burning at the side of the bed yet beyond its head-board, so that its rays lit up the windows and the green trailing vines, but did not fall upon the bed. In an invalid"s chair drawn near the bedside, a lady well past the middle age but with a face of singular sweetness and refinement was watching and directing the efforts which were being made for the resuscitation of the fainting girl by two servant women, who were busily engaged in chafing her hands and making warm applications to her chilled limbs.
As she opened her eyes they took in all these things, but she could not at once remember what had happened or where she was, This sweet vision of a home interior was so different from the low, heavy-beamed rooms and little diamond-paned windows of the Ordinary, even after all her attempts to make it cosy, that she seemed to have awakened in fairy land. She wondered dully why she had never trained ivies and Madeira vines over those dark beams, and blushed at the thought that so simple a device had never occurred to her. She lay motionless until she had recalled the incidents of the day. She had recognized Mr. Le Moyne at once, and she knew by instinct that the graceful lady who sat beside her was she who had written her the only word of sympathy or appreciation she had ever received from one of her own s.e.x in the South. She was anxious for a better view and turned toward her.
"Ah, here are you, my dear!" said a soft, low voice, as the light fell upon her opened eyes. "Move me up a little, Maggie," to one of the servants." We are glad to see you coming around again. Don"t move, dear," she continued, as she laid her thin soft hand upon the plump one of the reclining girl." You are among friends. The storm and the ride were too much for you, and you fainted for a little while. That is all. There is no trouble now. You weren"t hurt, were you?" she asked anxiously.
"No," said the other, wonderingly.
"We are glad of that," was the reply. "You are exhausted, of course, but if you do not get cold you will soon be all right. Maggie,"
she continued, to the servant, "tell Mr. Hesden to bring in that hot toddy now. He had better put the juice of a lemon it it, too.
Miss Ainslie may not be accustomed to taking it. I am Mrs. Le Moyne, I forgot to say," she added, turning to her unintended guest, "and Hesden, that is my son, tells me that you are Miss Ainslie, the brave young teacher at Red Wing whom I have long wished to see. I am really glad that chance, or Hesden"s old war horse Satan, brought you here, or I am afraid I should never have had that pleasure.
This is Hesden," she continued, nodding toward him as he entered with a small silver waiter on which was a steaming pitcher and a delicate gla.s.s. "He has been my nurse so long that he thinks no one can prepare a draught for a sick person so well as he, and I a.s.sure you that I quite agree with his notion. You have met before, I believe. Just take a good dose of this toddy and you will be better directly. You got a terrible drenching, and I was afraid you would have a congestive chill when they brought you in here as white as a sheet with your teeth chattering like castanets."
Hesden Le Moyne filled the gla.s.s with the steaming decoction and held the salver toward her. She took it and tried to drink.
"Hand me the waiter, Hesden," said his mother, reprovingly, "and raise her head. Don"t you see that Miss Ainslie cannot drink lying there. I never saw you so stupid, my son. I shall have to grow worse again soon to keep you from getting out of practice entirely."
Thus reproached, Hesden Le Moyne put his arm hesitatingly beneath the pillow, raised the flushed face upon it and supported the young lady while she quaffed the hot drink. Then he laid her easily down, smoothed the pillow with a soft instinctive movement, poured out a gla.s.s of the toddy which he offered to his mother, and then, handing the waiter to the servant, leaned over his mother with a caressing movement and said:
"You must look out, little mother. Too much excitement will not do for you. You must not let Miss Ainslie"s unexpected call disturb you."
"No indeed, Hesden," she said, as she looked up at him gratefully, "I feel really glad of any accident that could bring her under our roof, now that I am satisfied that she is to experience no harm from her stormy ride. She will be all right presently, and we will have supper served here as usual. You may tell Laura that she need be in no haste."
Having thus dismissed her son she turned to her guest and said:
"I have been an invalid so long that our household is all ordered with regard to that fact. I am seldom able to be taken out to dinner, and we have got into the habit of having a late supper here, just Hesden, his little boy, and I, and to-night we will have the table set by the bedside and you will join us."
The sudden faint was over; the toddy had sent the blood tingling through the young girl"s veins. The _role_ of the invalid was an unaccustomed one for her to play, and the thought of supping in bed was peculiarly distasteful to her self-helping Northern training. It was not long before she began to manifest impatience.
"Are you in pain, dear?" asked the good lady, noticing with the keen eye of the habitual invalid her restive movements.
"No, indeed," was the reply. "I am not at all sick. It was only a little faint. Really, Mrs. Le Moyne, I would rather get up than lie here."
"Oh, lie still," said the elder lady, cheerfully. "The room hardly looks natural unless the bed is occupied. Besides," she added with a light laugh, "you will afford me an excellent opportunity to study effects. You seem to me very like what I must have been when I was first compelled to abandon active life. You are very nearly the same size and of much the same complexion and cast of features. You will pardon an old lady for saying it, I am sure. Lest you should not, I shall be compelled to add that I was considered something of a beauty when I was young. Now, you shall give me an idea of how I have looked in all the long years that couch has been my home. I a.s.sure you I shall watch you very critically, for it has been my pride to make my invalid life as pleasant to myself and as little disagreeable to others as I could. Knowing that I could never be anything else, I devised every plan I could to make myself contented and to become at least endurable to my family."
"Everyone knows how well you have succeeded, Mrs, Le Moyne," said the young girl. "It must indeed have been a sad and burdened life, and it seems to me that you have contrived to make your sick room a perfect paradise." "Yes, yes," said the other, sadly, "it is beautiful. Those who loved me have been very indulgent and very considerate, too. Not only every idea of my own has been carried into effect, but they have planned for me, too. That alcove was an idea of my husband"s. I think that the sunlight pouring in at those windows has done more to prolong my life than anything else.
I did not think, when thirty years ago I took to my bed, that I should have survived him so long--so long--almost eight years. He was considerably older than I, but I never looked to outlive him, never.
"That lamp-stand and little book-rack," she continued, with the garrulity of the invalid when discoursing of his own affairs, "were Hesden"s notions, as were many other things in the room. The flowers I had brought in, one by one, to satisfy my hunger for the world without. In the winter I have many more. Hesden makes the room a perfect conservatory, then. They have come to be very dear to me, as you may well suppose. That ivy now, over the foot of the bed, I have watched it from a little slip not a finger high. It is twenty-seven years old."
So she would have run on, no one knows to what length, had not the servant entered to set the table for supper. Under her mistress"
directions she was about to place it beside the bed, when the young girl sprang into a sitting posture and with flaming cheeks cried out:
"Please, Mrs. Le Moyne, I had rather not lie here. I am quite well--just as well as ever, and I wish you would let me get up."
"But how can you, dear?" was the reply. "Your clothes are drying in the kitchen. They were completely drenched."
"Sure enough," answered Miss Ainslie. "I had forgotten that." She laid herself down resignedly as the invalid said:
"If Hesden"s presence would annoy you, he shall not come. I only thought it might be pleasanter for you not to be confined to the conversation of a crippled old woman. Besides, it is his habit, and I hardly know what he would do if he had to eat his supper elsewhere."
"Oh, certainly, I would not wish to disturb your usual arrangement,"
answered Mollie, "but--" she began, and then stoppd with some signs of confusion.
"But what, my dear?" asked the elder lady, briskly. "Do you mean that you are not accustomed as I am to invalidism, and hardly like the notion of supping in bed as an introduction to strangers? Well, I dare say it would be annoying, and if you think you are quite well enough to sit up, I reckon something better may be arranged."
"I a.s.sure you, Mrs. Le Moyne," said the other, "that I am quite well, but pray do not let me make you any trouble."
"Oh, no trouble at all, dear; only you will have to wear one of my gowns now many years old. I thought they were very pretty then, I a.s.sure you. I should be very glad to see them worn again. There are few who could wear them at all; but I think they would both fit and suit you. You are like enough to me to be my daughter. Here, you Maggie!"
She called the servant, and gave some directions which resulted in her bringing in several dresses of an ancient pattern but exquisite texture, and laying them upon the bed.
"You will have to appear in full dress, my dear, for I have no other gowns that would be at all becoming," said Mrs. Le Moyne.
"How very beautiful!" said the girl sitting up in the bed, gazing at the dainty silks and examining their quaint patterns. "But really, Mrs. Le Moyne--"
"Now, please oblige me by making no more objections," interrupted that lady. "Indeed," she added, shaking her finger threateningly at her guest, "I will not listen to any more. The fit has seized me now to have you sit opposite me at the table. It will be like facing. my own youth; for now that I look at you more closely, you seem wonderfully like me. Don"t you think so, Maggie?"
""Deed I do," said the servant, "an" dat"s jes what Laura was a sayin" ter me when we done fotch de young lady in here in a faint.
She sez ter me, sez she, "Maggie, ebber you see anybody look so much like de Mistis made young again?""
"Hush, Maggie," said her mistress, gaily; "don"t you see how the young lady is blushing, while it is the poor, faded woman here in the chair who ought to blush at such a compliment?"
And indeed the bright flushed face with its crown of soft golden hair escaped from its customary bondage, tossing in sunny tendrils about the delicate brow and rippling in waves of light over her shoulders, was a picture which any woman past the middle life might well blush and sigh to recognize as the counterpart of her youth.
The two women looked at each other and both laughed at the admiration each saw in the other"s glance.
"Well," said Mollie, as she sank smilingly on her pillow, "I see I must submit. You will have your own way."
She raised her arm above" her head and toyed with a leaf of the ivy which hung in graceful festoons about the head-board. As she did so the loose-sleeved wrapper which had been flung about her when her own drenched clothing was removed, fell down almost to her shoulder and revealed to the beauty-worshipping watcher by the bedside an arm of faultless outline, slender, pink-tinged, plump and soft. When she had toyed lazily for a moment with the ivy, she dropped her arm listlessly down upon the bed. It fell upon one of the dresses which lay beside her.
"Ah, thank you!" exclaimed Mrs. Le Moyne.
"You have relieved me greatly. I was trying to decide which one I wanted you to wear, when your arm dropped across that pale, straw-colored silk, with the vine border around the corsage and the clambering roses running down the front. That is the one you must wear. I never wore it but once, and the occasion is one I shall always like to recall."
There was a gleeful time in the invalid"s room while the fair girl was being habited in the garments of a by-gone generation, and when Hesden Le Moyne and his boy Hildreth were admitted to the hearty evening meal, two women who seemed like counterparts sat opposite each other at the sparkling board--the one habited in black silk with short waist, a low, square bodice with a ma.s.s of tender lawn showing about the fair slender neck, puffed at the shoulders with straight, close sleeves reaching to the wrists, around which peeped some rows of soft white lace; the white hair combed in puffs beside the brow, cl.u.s.tering above its pinky softness and falling in a silvery cataract upon the neck. The style of the other"s dress was the same, save that the shoulders were uncovered, and except for the narrow puff which seemed but a continuation on either side, of the daintily-edged bodice, the arm hung pink and fair over the amber satin, uncovered and unadorned save at the wrist, where a narrow circlet of gold clung light and close about it. Her hair was dressed in the same manner as the elder lady"s, and differed only in its golden sheen. The customary lamp had been banished, and colored wax-candles, brought from some forgotten receptacle, burned in the quaint old candelabra with which the mantels of the house had long been decorated.
The one-armed veteran of thirty gazed in wonder at this unaccustomed brightness. If he needed to gaze long and earnestly at the fair creature who sat over against his mother, to determine the resemblances which had been noted between the permanent and the temporary invalid, who shall blame him for so doing?
Little Hildreth in his six-year-old wonderment was less judicial, or at least required less time and inquiry to decide, for he cried out even before an introduction could be given,
"Oh, papa, see, I"ve got a new, young grandma."
It was a gay party at that country supper-table, and four happier people could hardly have gone afterward into the parlor where the invalid allowed herself to be wheeled by her son in special honor of their unintended guest.