“Land sakes! And if I didn’t I should have to watch Sarah every minute to see she didn’t put something hot on it or scratch the mahogany top. I can’t afford to have everything I’ve got spoiled. No knowin’ when I’ll git anything more—dependent as I am on other people.”
“I’ll bring you a pretty table-cover then.”
“I’d like a red one. But I didn’t suppose you’d think of gittin’ one.”
“Oh, mother, red wouldn’t look well in this room.”
“Now, I just think a bit of real bright red would hearten it up. If you don’t git red, you needn’t git any, Lena Quincy, for I won’t use it. Are you goin’ now? Seems to me you got precious little time for your old mother since you put on all your fine lady airs.”
And Lena? Have you ever watched a cecropia moth when it crawls out of its dull gray prison of chrysalis? It is a moist, frail, tottering creature with tiny wings folded against its quivering body, but as the spring sunshine brings to play its magic and infuses its “subtle heats,” there come shivers of growth. Great waves seem to pulsate from the body into the wings, and with each wave goes color and strength. In quick throbs they come at last until they look like a continuous current, and before your eyes is a glorious bird-like creature, with damask wings outspread, and flecked with peacock spots, hiding the slender body within. It feels its strength, spreads and preens itself, and is away to the forest to meet its fate.
Such was Lena in the first months of her marriage. The world’s warmth welcomed her, partly in curiosity, and partly because she was in truth Richard Percival’s wife, and the protégée of Mrs. Lenox, who took every pains to shield her and help her. The ways of that little sphere that calls itself society she found it not difficult to acquire, when to beauty she added the paraphernalia of luxury. A little trick of holding oneself, a turn of speech, a familiarity with a certain set of people and their doings, and the thing is accomplished. Was there ever yet an American girl, whose supreme characteristic is adaptability, who could not learn it in a few months, if she set her mind to it?
As she experienced the true pleasure of being inside, which is the knowledge that there are outsiders raging to make entrance, she spread her wings, did Madame Cecropia, and the only wonder was that she was ever packed away in the dull gray chrysalis. And now every one forgot that ugly thing, when Lena changed her sky but not her heart.
Dick and she lived in a whirl; and if he would have liked, after strenuous days spent in spreading political feelers, to have found at home quiet evenings and old slippers, he was rapidly learning that the position of husband to a young beauty is no sinecure. And he admired and loved her too much to fling even a rose leaf of opposition in her path. The very hardship of her past made him tender to every whim of the present. Dick’s chivalry was deep-grained, as it is in men who have lived among pure and simple women. In everything that wore petticoats he saw something of his mother, fragile, noble, ambitious for those she loved and forgetful of self. When Lena began to show him things that he could not admire, he laid the blame of them, not to her, but to the world that had played the brute to her. And if he tried to change her it was with apology in his heart for daring to criticize. But as Lena came to take for granted the ease and comfort of her new life, she more and more laid aside the pose with which she had at first edified her lord, and spoke her real mind. She had fully acquired the manner and the garments of a lady. She could not see that more was needed.
One gray wintry day, as they walked homeward together from a midday musicale, they passed a grimy little girl who whimpered as she clutched her small person.