REAL AND IDEAL.
he little seamstress had never been out of Glasgow in her life. Even the Fair holidays, signal for an almost universal exodus 'doon the water,' brought no emancipation for her. It may be imagined that such a sudden and unexpected invitation to the country filled her with the liveliest anticipation. By eight o'clock that night she had finished her pile of work, and immediately made haste with it to the warehouse which employed her. When she had received her meagre payment, and had another bundle rather contemptuously pushed towards her by the hard-visaged forewoman, she experienced quite a little thrill of pride in refusing it.
'No, thank you, Mrs. Galbraith; I dinna need ony mair the day,' she said, and her face flushed under the forewoman's strong, steady stare.
'Oh, what's up?'
'I'm gaun into the country to visit a lady,' said Teen proudly.
'Oh, all right; there's a hundred waiting on the job, but don't expect to be taken on the moment you like to show your face. We can afford to be as independent as you.'
'I don't expect to need it,' said Teen promptly, though in truth her heart sank a little as she heard these words of doom.
If Gladys failed her, she knew of no other place in that great and evil city where she could earn her bread. She even felt a trifle despondent as she retraced her steps to her garret, but, trying to throw it off, she set herself immediately on entering the house to inspect her wardrobe. This was a most interesting occupation, and, after much deliberation, she took her best black skirt to pieces, and proceeded to hang it as nearly as possible in the latest fashion. Then she had her hat to retrim, and a piece of clean lace to sew on her neckband. At four o'clock her last candle expired in its socket, and she had to go to bed. At the grey dawn she was astir again, and long before the brougham had left Bellairs Crescent with Gladys, Teen was waiting, tin box in hand, on the platform of St. Enoch's Station.
Mrs. Fordyce accompanied Gladys to the station, and when Teen saw them she felt a wild desire to run away. Gladys Graham sitting on a chair in the little attic, talking familiarly of the Hepburns, and Gladys Graham outside, were two very different beings. Gladys glanced sharply round, and, espying her, smiled reassuringly, and advanced with frank outstretched hand.
'Ah, there you are! I am glad to see you. Mrs. Fordyce, this is Teen—Christina Balfour. I must begin to call you Christina; I think it is much prettier. Isn't this a pleasant day? The country will be looking lovely.'
Mrs. Fordyce smiled and bowed graciously to the seamstress, but did not offer her hand. Her manner was kind, but distant; her very smile measured the gulf between them. Teen felt it just as plainly as if she had spoken it in words, and felt also intuitively that her presence there was not quite approved of by the lawyer's wife. That, indeed, was true. There had been a long and rather warm discussion over the little seamstress that morning in Bellairs Crescent, and Mrs. Fordyce had discovered that, with all her gentleness and simplicity, Gladys was not a person to abandon a project on which she had set her heart.
'My dear Gladys,' she took the opportunity of whispering when Teen was out of hearing, 'I am more than ever perplexed. She is not even interesting—nothing could be more hopelessly vulgar and commonplace.'
Gladys never spoke.
'Do tell me what you mean to do with her,' she pursued, with distinct anxiety in her manner.
'Don't let us speak about it, Mrs. Fordyce,' said Gladys rather coldly. 'It is impossible you can understand. I have been like her; I know what her life is. You must let me alone.'
'I am afraid you are going to be eccentric, my dear,' said Mrs. Fordyce. 'I cannot help regretting that Madame Bonnemain was prevented coming to Bourhill. She would have set her foot down on this.'
'Then she would have been mistress of Bourhill,' answered Gladys, with a faint smile, 'and we should certainly have disagreed.'
Mrs. Fordyce looked at her curiously.
'There is a great deal of character about you, Gladys. I am afraid you are rather an imposition. To look at you, one would think you as gentle as a lamb.'
'Dear Mrs. Fordyce, don't make me out such a terrible person,' said Gladys quickly. 'Is it so odd that I should wish to brighten life a little for those whom I know have had so very little brightness?'
'No; it is not your aim, only your method, I object to, my dear. It will never do to fill Bourhill with such people. But I will say no more. Experience will teach you expediency and discretion.'
'We shall see,' replied Gladys, with a laugh, and for the first time she experienced a sense of relief at parting with her kind friend.
Mrs. Fordyce was a kind-hearted woman, and did a great many good deeds, though on strictly conventional lines. She was the clever organiser of Church charities, the capable head of the Ladies' Provident and Dorcas Society, to which she grudged neither time nor money; but she did not believe in personal contact with the very poor, nor in the power or efficacy of individual sympathy and effort. She thought a great deal about Gladys that day, pondering and puzzling over her action—a trifle nettled, if it must be told, at the calm, quiet manner in which her disapproval had been ignored. Gladys was indeed proving herself a very capable and independent mistress of Bourhill.
Meanwhile the two girls, whom fortune had so differently favoured, journeyed together into Ayrshire. A strange shyness seemed to have taken possession of Teen; she sat bolt upright in the corner of the carriage, clutching her tin box, and looking half-scared, half-defiant; even the red feather in her hat seemed to wear an aggressive air. In her soul she fervently rued the step she had taken, and thought with longing of her own little room, and with affectionate regret of the bundle she had so proudly returned to Mrs. Galbraith.
'What are you thinking of, Teen? You don't look at all happy,' said Gladys, growing a trifle embarrassed by the continued silence.
'I'm no'; I wish I hadna come,' was the flat reply, which made the sensitive colour rise in the fair cheek of Gladys.
'Oh no, you don't; you are only shy. Wait till you have seen Bourhill; you will think it the loveliest place in the world,' she said cheerfully.
'Maybe,' answered Teen doubtfully. 'I feel gey queer the noo, onyhoo.'
This was not encouraging. Gladys became silent also, and both felt relieved when the train stopped at Mauchline Station.
The girl, whose only idea of the country was her acquaintance with the straight, conventional arrangement of city parks and gardens, looked about her with genuine wonder.
'My,' she said, as they crossed over the little footbridge at the station, 'sic a room folk have here! Are there nae hooses ava?'
'Oh, lots,' replied Gladys quite gaily, relieved to see even a faint interest exhibited by her guest. 'We shall drive through Mauchline presently; it is such a pretty, quaint little town.'
A very dainty little phaeton, in charge of an exceedingly smart young groom, waited at the station gate for Miss Graham. Teen regarded it and her with open-mouthed amazement. Again it seemed impossible that this gracious, self-possessed lady, giving her orders so calmly, and according so well in every respect with her changed fortunes, could be the same girl who accompanied Liz and herself to the Ariel Music Hall not much more than a year ago.
'My,' she said again, when Gladys took the reins and the pony started off, 'it's grand, but queer.'
'It is all very nice, I think,' said Gladys whimsically. 'Did I tell you that Mrs. Macintyre, who used to live in the Wynd, is at the lodge at Bourhill? But perhaps you did not know Mrs. Macintyre?'
'I have heard o' her frae Liz,' Teen replied; 'but I didna ken that she was here.'
'She only came a month ago. She is a great treasure to me. I wonder if you have thought why I wished you to come here?'
'I've wondered. Ye can tell me, if ye like,' said Teen.
'Well, you see, I have always been sorry about you, somehow, ever since that day I saw you in the Hepburns' house; I really never forgot your pale face. I want you here for your own sake, first, to try and make you look brighter and healthier, and I want your advice and help about something I am more interested in than anything.'
'My advice an' help!' repeated Teen almost blankly, yet secretly flattered and pleased. The idea that her advice and help should be desired by any one was something so entirely new that she may be excused being almost overcome by it.
'Yes,' answered Gladys, with a nod. 'It's about the girls—the girls you and I know about in Glasgow, who have such a poor time, and are surrounded with so much temptation. Do you remember that night long ago when Lizzie Hepburn and you took me to the Ariel Music Hall?'
'Yes, I mind it fine. I was thinkin' o't no' a meenit syne.'
'Well, don't you think that the girls we saw there might have some place a little pleasanter and safer for them to be in than a music hall?'
'Yes,' answered Teen, with unwonted seriousness. 'It's no' a guid place. I've kent twa-three that gaed to the bad, an' they met their bad company there. But what can lassies dae? Tak' Liz, for instance, or me. Had we onything to keep us at hame? The streets, or the music hall, or the dancin', ony o' them was better than sittin' in the hoose.'
'Oh, I know. Have I not thought of it all?' cried Gladys, with a great mournfulness. 'But don't you think if they had some pleasant place of their own, where they could meet together of an evening, and read or work or amuse themselves, they would be happier?'
'There are some places. I ken some lassies that belang to Christian Associations. Liz an' me gaed twice or thrice wi' some o' the members, but'—
'But what?' asked Gladys, bending forward with keen interest.
'We didna like it. There was ower muckle preachin', and some of the ladies looked at us as if we were dirt,' responded Teen candidly. 'Ye should hae heard Liz when we cam' oot. It was as guid as a play to hear her imitatin' them.'
Gladys looked thoughtful, and a trifle distressed. Curiously, at the moment she could not help thinking of the many societies and associations with which Mrs. Fordyce was connected, and of her demeanour that day at St. Enoch's Station—an exact exemplification of Teen's plain-spoken objection.
'Liz said she was as guid as them, an' she wadna be patronised; an' that's what prevents plenty mair frae gaun. A lot gang just to serve themselves, because they get a lot frae the ladies. My, ye can get onything oot o' them if ye ken hoo to work them.'
This was a very gross view of the case, which could not but jar upon Gladys, though she was conscious that there was a good deal of truth in it. Somehow, in the light of Teen Balfour's unvarnished estimate of philanthropic endeavour, her dreams seemed to become all at once impossible of fulfilment.
'I do not think they mean, the ladies, to patronise. Do you not think the girls imagine, or at least exaggerate?'
'Maybe; but Susan Greenlees—a lassie I ken, that works in a print-mill—telt me one o' them reproved her for haein' a long white ostrich feather in her hat, and Susan, she just says, "Naebody askit you to pay for it," an' left.'
Gladys relapsed into silence; and Teen, all unconscious of the cold water she had thrown so copiously on a bright enthusiasm, sat back leisurely, and looked about her interestedly.
'Here we are,' said Gladys, at length rousing herself up, though with an evident effort; 'and there is Mrs. Macintyre at the gate. You have never seen her, you say? Hasn't she a nice kind face?'
Gladys drew rein when they had passed through the gate, and introduced the two. Mrs. Macintyre, who looked like a different being in her warm grey tweed gown, neat cap, and black apron, gave the pale city girl a hearty hand-shake, and prophesied that Bourhill air would soon bring a rose into her cheek. Gladys nodded, and said she hoped so, then drove on to the house. And when they went up the long flight of steps and into the wide, warm, beautiful hall, Teen's shyness returned to her, and if it had been possible she would have turned and fled.
