II
To Madame Josephine, the modiste who sometimes comes to me with her magic touch, transforming this and that, I confided something of my plans for Calliope, asked her if she would do what she could. Her kindly, emotional nature responded to the situation as to a kind of challenge.
"Bien!" she cried. "We shall see. You say she is slim—petite—with some little grace? Bien!"
So when, next day, Calliope arrived at my house with her parcel brought forth for the first time in sixteen years, she found madame and me both tip-toe with excitement. And from some bewildering plates madame explained how she would cut and suit and "correct" mademoiselle.
"The effect shall be long, slim, excellent. Soft folds from one's waist—so. From one's shoulder—so. A line of velvet here and here and down. Bien! Mademoiselle will look younger than everyone! If mademoiselle would wave ze hair back a ver' little—so?" the French woman delicately advanced.
"Ma'moiselle," returned Calliope recklessly, "will do anything you want her to, short of a pink rose over one ear. My land, I never hed a dress before that I didn't hev to skimp the pattern and make it up less according to my taste than according to my cloth."
That day I sent to the city for a box at the opera. I chose "Faust," and smiled as I planned to sing the Jewel Song for Calliope before we went, and to laugh at her in her surprising rôle of Butterfly. "Ah, je ris de me voir si belle." A lower proscenium box, a modest suite at a comfortable hotel, a little supper, a cab—I planned it all for the pleasure of watching her; and all this would, I knew, be given its significance by the wearing of the anomalous, rosy gown. And I loved Calliope for her weakness as we love the whip-poor-will for his little catching of the breath.
On the day that our tickets came Calliope appeared before me in some anxiety.
"Calliope," I said, without observing this, "our opera box is, so to speak, here."
But instead of the light in her face that I had expected:
"What night?" she abruptly demanded.
"For 'Faust,' on Wednesday," I told her.
And instead of her delight of which I had made sure:
"Will the six-ten express get us in the city too late?" she wanted to know.
And when I had agreed to the six-ten express:
"It's all right then," she said in relief. "They can hev it a little earlier and take the six-ten themselves instead of the accommodation. Hannah and Henry's going to get married a' Wednesday," she explained. "I hev to be here for that."
Then she told me of the simple plan for Hannah Hager's marriage to her good-looking giant. Naturally, Grandma Hawley could not think of "giving Hannah a wedding," so these poor little plans had been for some time wandering about unparented.
"I wanted," Calliope said, "she should be married in the church with Virginia creeper on the pew arms, civilized. But Hannah said that'd be putting on airs and she'd be so scairt she couldn't be solemn. Mis' Postmaster Sykes, she invited her real cordial to be married in her sitting-room, but Hannah spunked up and wouldn't. 'A sitting-room weddin',' s' she to me, private, ''d be like bein' baptized in the pantry. A parlor,' s' she, ''s the only true place for a wedding. And I haven't no parlor, so we'll go to the minister's and stand up in his parlor. Do you think,' s' she to me, real pitiful, 'Henry can respec' me with no place to set m' foot in to be married but jus' the public parsonage?' Poor little thing! Her wedding-dress is nothing but a last year's mull with a sprig in, either. And her traveling-dress to go to the city is her reg'lar brown Sunday suit."
"And they are going to the minister's?" I asked.
"Well, no," Calliope answered apologetically. "I asked them to be married at my house. I never thought about the opera when I done it. I never thought about anything but that poor child. I guess you'll think I'm real flighty. But I always think when two's married in the parsonage and the man pays the minister, it's like the bride is just the groom's guest at the cer'mony. And it ain't real dignified for her, seems though."
I knew well what this meant: That Calliope would have "asked in a few" and "stirred up" this and that delectable, and gone to no end of trouble and an expense which she could ill afford. Unless, as she was wont to say: "When it comes to doing for other people there ain't such a word as 'afford.' You just go ahead and do it and keep some rational yourself, and the afford 'll sort o' bloom out right, same's a rose."
So for Hannah, Calliope had caused things to "bloom right, same's a rose," as one knew by Hannah's happy face. On Tuesday she was helping at my house ("Brides always like extry money," Calliope had advanced when I had questioned the propriety of asking her to iron on the day before her marriage) and, on going unexpectedly to the kitchen I came on Hannah with a patent flat-iron in one hand and a piece of beeswax in the other, and Henry, her good-looking giant, was there also and was frankly holding her in his arms. I liked him for his manly way when he saw me and most of all that he did not wholly release her but, with one arm about her, contrived a kind of bow to me. But it was Hannah who spoke.
"Oh, ma'am," she said shyly, "I hope you'll overlook. We've hed an awful time findin' any place to keep company, only walkin' 'round the high-school yard!"
My heart was still warm within me at the little scene as I went upstairs to see Calliope in her final fitting of the rose-pink gown, the work on which had gone on apace. And I own that, as I saw her standing before my long triple mirrors, I was amazed. The rosy gown suited the little body wonderfully and with her gray hair and delicate brightness of cheeks, she looked like some figure on a fan, exquisitely and picturesquely painted. The gown was, as Calliope had said that a gown should be, "all nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the right places, and little unexpected trimmings like you wouldn't think of having them if you wasn't real up in dress." It was a triumph for skillful madame, who had wrought with her impressionable French heart as well as with her scissors.
Calliope laughed as she looked over-shoulder in the mirrors.
"My soul," she said, "I feel like a sparrow with a new pink tail! I declare, the dress looks more like Lyddy Eider herself than it looks like me. Do you think I look enough like me so's you'd sense it was me?"
"Mademoiselle," said Madame Josephine simply, "has a look of another world."
"I wish't I could see it on somebody," Calliope said wistfully; and since I was far too tall and madame not sufficiently "slendaire," Calliope cried:
"There's Hannah! She's downstairs helping, ain't she? Couldn't Hannah come upstairs a minute and put it on? We're most of a size!"
And indeed they were, as I had noted, cast in the same mold of proportion and prettiness.
So, with madame just leaving for the city, and I obliged to go down to the village, Calliope and Hannah Hager were left alone with the rose-pink silk gown, which fitted them both. Ought I not to have known what would happen?
And yet it came as a shock to me when, an hour later, as I passed Calliope's gate on my way home, she ran out and stood before me in some unusual excitement.
"Do they take back your opera boxes?" she demanded.
"No," I assured her, "they do not. Nor," I added suspiciously, "do folk take back their promises, you know, Calliope!"
"Well," she said miserably, "I expec' I've done wrong by you. The righter you try to do by some folks seems 's though the wronger it comes down on others. Oh," she cried, "I wish't I always knew what was right! But I can't go to the opera and I can't sit in the box. Yes, sir—I guess you'll think I'm real flighty and I dunno but what I am. But I've give my pink silk dress to Hannah Hager for her wedding. And I've lied some. I've said I meant she should hev it all along!"