LYDIA DECIDES IN PERFECT FREEDOM
The maid had announced to Mrs. Emery, finishing an unusually careful morning toilet, that Miss Burgess, society reporter of the Endbury Chronicle, was below. Before the mistress of the house could finish adjusting her well-matched gray pompadour, a second arrival was heralded, “The gentleman from the greenhouse, to see about Miss Lydia’s party decorations.” And as the handsome matron came down the stairs a third comer was introduced into the hall—Mme. Boyle herself, the best dressmaker in town, who had come in person to see about the refitting of the débutante’s Paris dresses, the débutante having found the change back to the climate of Endbury so trying that her figure had grown quite noticeably thinner.
“It was the one thing necessary to make Maddemwaselle’s tournoor exactly perfect,” Mme. Boyle told Mrs. Emery. Out of a sense of what was due her loyal Endbury customers, Mme. Boyle assumed a guileless coloring of Frenchiness, which was evidently a symbol, and no more intended for a pretense of reality than the honestly false brown front that surmounted her competent, kindly Celtic face.
Mrs. Emery stopped a moment by the newel-post to direct Madame to Lydia’s room and to offer up a devout thanksgiving to the kindly Providence that constantly smoothed the path before her. “Oh, Madame, just think if it had been a season when hips were in style!” As she continued her progress to what she was beginning to contemplate calling her drawing-room, she glowed with a sense of well-being which buoyed her up like wings. In common with many other estimable people, she could not but value more highly what she had had to struggle to retain, and the exciting vicissitudes of the last fortnight had left her with a sweet taste of victory in her mouth.
She greeted Miss Burgess with the careful cordiality due to an ally of many years’ standing, and with a manner perceptibly but indefinably different from that which she would have bestowed on a social equal. Mrs. Emery had labored to acquire exactly that tone in her dealings with the society reporter, and her achievement of it was a fact which brought an equal satisfaction to both women. Miss Burgess’ mother was an Englishwoman, an ex-housekeeper, who had transmitted to her daughter a sense, rare as yet in America, of the beauty and dignity of class distinctions. In her turn Miss Burgess herself, the hard-working, good-natured woman of fifty who for twenty years had reported the doings of those citizens of Endbury whom she considered the “gentry,” had toiled with the utmost disinterestedness to build up a feeling, or, as she called it, a “tone,” which, among other things, should exclude her from equality. When she began she was, perhaps, the only person in town who had an unerring instinct for social differences; but, like a kindly, experienced actor of a minor rôle in theatricals, she had silently given so many professional tips to the amateur principals in the play, and had acted her own part with such unflagging consistency and good-will, that she had often now the satisfaction of seeing one of her pupils move through her rôle with a most edifying effect of having been born to it.
Long ago she had taken the Emerys to her warm heart and she had rejoiced in all their upward progress with the sweet unenvious joy of an ugly woman in a pretty, much-loved sister’s successes. Lydia was to her, as to Mrs. Emery, a bright symbol of what she would fain have been herself. Miss Burgess’ feeling for her somewhat resembled that devout affection which, she had read, was felt by faithful old servants of great English families for the young ladies of the house. The pathetic completeness of her own insignificance of aspect had spared her any uneasy ambitions for personal advancement, and it is probable that the vigor of her character and her pleasure in industry were such that she had been happier in her daily column and weekly five-column Society Notes than if she had been as successful a society matron as Mrs. Emery herself.
She lived the life of a creator, working at an art she had invented, in a workroom of her own contriving, loyally drawing the shutters to shade an unfortunate occurrence in one of the best families, setting forth a partial success with its best profile to the public, and flooding with light real achievements like Mrs. Hollister’s rose party (the Mrs. Hollister—Paul’s aunt, and Madeleine’s). All that she wrote was read by nearly every woman in Endbury. She was a person of importance, and a very busy and happy old maid.
Mrs. Emery had a great taste for Miss Burgess’ conversation, admiring greatly her whole-hearted devotion to Endbury’s social welfare. She had once said of her to Dr. Melton, “There is what I call a public-spirited woman.” He had answered, “I envy Flora Burgess with the fierce embittered envy I feel for a cow”—an ambiguous compliment which Mrs. Emery had resented on behalf of her old ally.
Now, as Mrs. Emery added to her greeting, “You’ll excuse me just a moment, won’t you, I must settle some things with my decorator,” Miss Burgess felt a rich content in her hostess’ choice of words. There were people in Endbury society who would have called him, as had the perplexed maid, “the gentleman from the greenhouse.” Later, asked for advice, she had walked about the lower floor of the house with Mrs. Emery and the florist, saturated with satisfaction in the process of deciding where the palms should be put that were to conceal the “orchestra” of four instruments, and with what flowers the mantels should be “banked.”
After the man had gone, they settled to a consideration of various important matters which was interrupted by an impassioned call of Madame Boyle from the stairs, “Could she bring Maddemwaselle down to show this perfect fit?”—and they glided into a rapt admiration of the unwrinkled surface of peach-colored satin which clad Lydia’s slender and flexibly erect back. When she turned about so that Madame could show them the truly exqueese effect of the trimming at the throat, her face showed pearly shadows instead of its usual flower-like glow. As Madame left the room for a moment, Miss Burgess said, with a kind, respectful facetiousness, “I see that even fairy princesses find the emotions of getting engaged a little trying.”