CHAPTER XVI.
IN MAIDEN MEDITATION.
GRACIE was sitting alone in her own room; she had been reading—the “Faery Queene” the book—but it had slipped from her hand—and now she was thinking. Not of herself, but of others; Arthur, perhaps, principally. For she had given her heart to him; and in a perfect maidenly love there is always some foretaste of the maternal, a fond solicitude as of a mother for her child. Perhaps even Arthur did not know how much she thought of him: and Mrs. Livingstone was too much bound up in Mamie, and Mamie too much in herself, to notice it; Miss Brevier alone had seen it, and had held her peace. Gracie fancied that no one knew it, save Arthur himself; though for her and Arthur it had changed the world. The world itself she did not understand; all things did not look clear to her that winter; the people of her acquaintance puzzled her. It almost seemed as if she would not have their sympathy in all ways; but this could not be proven, for Gracie never made a confidante. Now Mamie Livingstone, on the other hand, confided everything to her; and then, apparently, forgot it all, much as a Parisian lady may be supposed to forget the substance of her last auricular confession; for Gracie noted a certain repugnancy or incoherence in this young woman’s heart history of which the heart’s possessor was unaware entirely.
Mamie was intensely a metropolitan girl; the exquisitely sensitive product of a great social nerve-centre. She did not know her Emerson, and was wholly untroubled with “the whichness of the why:” but she had mastered her own environment at an early age. And she had—except, of course, as against young men, her natural prey—a frank disposition and a warm heart.
The great event of her life, her appearance in society, was to take place in the season following; and all through this winter Mamie was in a state of electric anticipation. She was already laying, in an innocent and girlish way, her wires. What Gracie failed chiefly to understand was these very love confidences, above mentioned: for though Mamie talked most ardently of the qualities of her successive swains, they seemed to bear a much more definite relation to her own self-love than to her heart. But then, it was her self-love that was the source of motive to her; her heart was an amusement only. And Mamie knew the world, as has before been hinted, à priori; she was a girl of transcendental mind, who saw through the copper-plate formulas of her study-books to the realities around her; with innate ideas and tastes as to what was fashionable and really fine. She alternately patronized and petted Gracie, who was three years older than herself; yet Gracie had more influence over her than anyone else. As for the parental authority of her father and mother—the phrase is too grotesquely mediæval to be completed. Mr. Livingstone was an old gentleman with a million and a half of property, whose manners had outlived his mind.
Gracie was looking—if I could describe to you the manner of her look, you would all men be poor Arthur’s rivals, I am sure; the direction of her look was simply to the northward, through the window. The manner of it—perhaps even Arthur never wholly noted it; may be he thought all girls had it; may be he even preferred the scintillating alertness of Pussie Duval’s or Baby Malgam’s—people now called her Baby with a touch of malice—which was more new to him. It was a deep and holy radiance, as if the look’s object were not yet quite found, and a certain questioning withal. Gracie was almost sure to have it when alone; perhaps a certain exquisite if unconscious tact restrained it, with other girls, lest they should call it pose; but no man—that is, no man—ever saw it fairly, but his soul was turned to fire. Medusa’s look it was that turned a man to stone; but there seems to be no metaphor for this opposite one. Perhaps because the Greeks had never met with it; it is found since Hamlet and since Gretchen, and grows mostly in the country, with books, sweet thoughts, and solitude. I have more rarely met with it in crowded colleges; yet it is not absolutely inconsistent with a knowledge of Greek.
“You do look so sweet, cousine,” cried Mamie as she tripped into the room, “but awfully poky. I’ve got such a thing to tell you about Mrs. Lucie Gower. And oh, do you know? Charlie Townley called here to-day. And somebody else too—aha?”
“Who was it?” said Gracie.
“Who was it, Ma’am Soft-airs, indeed. Cousine, do let me try a bit of rouge some time—that blush was so becoming to you. Mr. Haviland, of course; and I peeked through the crack of the door when the servant said you weren’t at home. But tell me, Gracie dear, do you think it would do for me to ask Mr. Townley to dinner next time? You know, I’ve had all the younger men, and he dances like an angel.”
“Why, Mamie, you don’t mean to have a dance?”