The next morning the girls noticed that Miss Christine's crimps were not entirely "out." When she brushed her hair that morning, her first impulse had been to straighten out the pretty waves with a dash of cold water; then she thought, to please Marion, she would leave it as it was. I wonder if it occurred to her that the only lesson for the day was French?
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOLIDAYS.
The days and weeks at Miss Stiefbach's school quickly succeeded each other, all passing very much as those I have already described, and the Christmas holidays were close at hand.
Shortly after Thanksgiving there had been another musicale, at which Marion played without dropping her music, or making any mistakes, and won universal admiration for the delicacy of her touch, and above all for the depth and beauty of her expression. Not that so-called expression which has lately become the fashion, which seems to consist in playing half the piece in pp., rushing from that to ff., with a rapidity which certainly astonishes the hearer, if it does nothing more; but carefully noting the crescendos and diminuendos, which are to music what the lights and shadows are to painting, and rendering the whole in a manner that appealed to the heart rather than the senses.
Marion was gradually, and without any noticeable effort on her part, obtaining a different footing in the school. The girls who had admired but feared her might now be said to only admire; for the cutting sarcasms, the withering scorn, which had formerly led them to fear her, were now very rarely observable in either her conversation or her manners.
Once or twice some of the scholars had spoken of the difference in Marion's behavior, and, as one of them expressed it, "wondered what had come over the spirit of her dreams;" but the answer to the query was generally accepted as a fact, "that it was only one of her odd freaks, and very likely would not last long."
But it was not one of her freaks; far from it. A change was coming over her whole character; slowly but surely it was approaching; manifesting itself at present in certain ways, or perhaps not so much in certain ways as in the absence of certain other ways, which had before been the dark spots in a nature which God had intended to make broad, intense, and noble. God had intended?—no, not that; for what could God intend and not perform? The nature was there, heart and soul bearing the impress of the Maker's hand; but like a beautiful garden having within its borders flowers of surpassing beauty and luxurious growth, but twined and intertwined with rank weeds and choking briers, which the gardener must clear away,—not tearing them apart with rough and ruthless hands, and by so doing killing the tender plant; but delicately, carefully, as a mother would tend her babe; untwining tendril after tendril, leaf after leaf, propping and sustaining the flowers as he works, until at last the weeds lay withered and broken, but a few moments trailing their useless branches on the ground, ere the gardener with a firm grasp wrenches them from the soil. His hands may be scratched and bleeding from contact with the briers; but what of that? If the plants are rescued; if they raise up their drooping heads, and gladden his eyes with the sight of their buds and blossoms, do you suppose he will murmur or complain for any wounds he may have received? Not he! The weeds and briers are gone, the blooming plants are saved,—that is enough.
Such a garden was Marion's heart, and she had already commenced the work of the gardener; but so slowly did she proceed that sometimes she was almost willing to let the work go, so hopeless did it seem to her; only a few tendrils untwined, only a few leaves saved from the briers whose roots as yet remained untouched. But such moments of discouragement did not come to her often, or if they did, she tried not to yield to them. The great trouble with her was the determination with which she held to her resolution in regard to Rachel; she still treated her with the same coldness, the same formal politeness, which she had shown her on her first arrival; she had not succeeded in quieting the still, small voice, which persisted in whispering in her ear; but though she could not help hearing it, she resolutely forbore to heed it.