CHAPTER XV.
I took a very small pot of honey for Miss Benette; Millicent had begged it for me of Lydia, who was queen-bee of the store-closet. I ran all the way as usual, and was very glad to get in. The same freshness pervaded the staircase; but when I reached the black door, I heard two voices instead of one. I was rather put out. "Laura is there! I shall not like singing with her; it is very tiresome!" I stood still and listened; it was very lovely. How ineffable music must be to the blind! yet oh, to miss that which may be embraced by sight! I knocked, and they did not hear me; again—they both ceased singing, and Laura ran to the door. Instead of being dressed in her old clothes, she perfectly startled me by the change in her costume,—a glittering change, and one from herself; for through it she appeared unearthly, and if not spiritual, something very near it. Large gauze pantaloons, drawn in at the ankles, looked like globes of air about her feet; her white silk slippers were covered with spangles; so also was her frock, and made of an illusive material like clouds; and her white sash, knotted at her side, was edged with silver fringe. Her amber necklace was no more there, but on her arms she had thick silver rings, with little clinking bells attached. She wore her hair, not in those stray ringlets, but drawn into two broad plaits, unfastened by knot or ribbon; but a silver net covered all her head behind, though it met not her forehead in front, over whose wide, but low expanse, her immense eyes opened themselves like lustrous moons.
"Miss Lemark," cried I, unfeignedly, "what are you going to do in that dress?"
"Come, Master Auchester, do not trouble her; she must be ready for her papa when he calls, so I have dressed her in order that she might practise with us."
"Miss Benette," I answered, "I think it is most extremely pretty, though very queer; and I did not mean to tease her. I wish you would tell me why you put it on, though."
"To dance in," said Laura, composedly. "I am going to dance in 'Scheradez, or the Magic Pumpkin.' It is so pretty! But Miss Benette is so kind to me; she lets me have tea with her the nights I dance."
"But do you live in this house, then?"
"Oh, I wish I did! Oh, Clara, I wish I did live with you!" and she burst into a fit of her tears.
Miss Benette arose and came to her, laying down a piece of muslin she was embroidering. "Do not cry, dear; it will spoil your pretty frock,—besides, Master Auchester has come on purpose to sing, and you detain him."
Laura instantly sat on a chair before the music-stand; her diaphanous skirts stood round her like the petals of a flower, and with the tears yet undried she began to sing, in a clear little voice, as expressionless as her eyes, but as enchanting to the full as her easy, painless movements. It was very pleasurable work now, and Clara corrected us both, she all the while sustaining a pure golden soprano.
"I am tired," suddenly said Laura.
"Then go into the other room and rest a little. Do not ruffle your hair, which I have smoothed so nicely, and be sure not to lie down upon the bed, or you will make those light skirts as flat as pancakes."
"How am I to rest, then?"
"In the great white chair."
"But I don't want to sit still,—I only mean I am tired of singing. I want to dance my pas."
"Then go into the other room all the same; there is no carpet,—it is best."
"I don't like dancing in that room, it is so small."
"It is not smaller than this one. The fact is, you want to dance to Master Auchester."
"Yes, so I do."
"But he came to sing, not to see you."
"I should like to see her dance, though," said I. "Do let her, Miss Benette!"
"If you can stay. But do not begin the whole of that dance, Laura,—only the finale, because there will not be time; and you will besides become too warm, if you dance from the beginning, for the cold air you must meet on your way to the theatre."
Miss Benette's solemn manner had great authority over the child, it was certain. She waited until the elder had put aside the brown table,—"That you may not blow my bits of work about and tread upon them," she remarked. "Shall I sing for you, Laura?"
"Oh, please do, pray do, Miss Benette!" I cried; "it will be so charming."
She began gravely, as in the anthem, but with the same serene and genial perfection, to give the notes of a wild measure, in triple time, though not a waltz.
Laura stood still and gazed upwards until the opening bars had sounded, then she sprang, as it were, into space, and her whole aspect altered. Her cheeks grew flushed as with a fiery impulse; her arms were stretched, as if embracing something more ethereal than her own presence; a suavity, that was almost languor, at the same time took possession of her motions. The figure was full of difficulty, the time rapid, the step absolutely twinkling. I was enraptured; I was lost in this kind of wonder,—"How very strange that any one should call dancing wrong when it is like that! How extraordinary that every one does not think it lovely! How mysterious that no one should talk about her as a very great wonder! She is almost as great a wonder as Miss Benette. I should like to know whether Mr. Davy has seen her dance."
But though I called it dancing, as I supposed I must, it was totally unlike all that I had considered dancing to be. She seemed now suspended in the air, her feet flew out with the spangles like a shower of silver sparks, her arms were flung above her, and the silver bells, as she floated by me without even brushing my coat, clinked with a thrilling monotone against Clara's voice. Again she whirled backwards, and, letting her arms sink down, as if through water or some resisting medium, fell into an attitude that restored the undulating movement to her frame, while her feet again twinkled, and her eyes were raised. "Oh!" I exclaimed, "how lovely you look when you do that!" for the expression struck me suddenly. It was an illumination as from above, beyond the clouds, giving a totally different aspect from any other she had worn. But lost in her maze, she did not, I believe, hear me. She quickened and quickened her footsteps till they merely skimmed the carpet, and, with a slide upon the very air, shook the silver bells as she once more arched her arms and made a deep and spreading reverence. Miss Benette looked up at me and smiled.
"Now you must go; it is your time, and I want to give Laura her tea."
"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 class-night?"
"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 passed away. So completely had the fascination of those steps sufficed that I forgot the voice of Miss Benette, resounding all the time, and only associated 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 class 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 class."
"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 classes."
"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 class, 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.