“Come, Dora! I shall never be ready, if you don’t make haste. They will be here in ten minutes, and my hair is not half so nice as it ought to be, thanks to your carelessness.”
“You are very good to ignore my own claims to attention so utterly. I have been helping you this half-hour and have barely time enough left to change my frock. To make my own hair presentable is impossible now.”
“Why, what does it matter how your hair is dressed, or what sort of a gown you put on? You may just as well spare your pains, for unfortunately nothing that you can do seems to mitigate your ugliness. I’m sure I cannot think where you get it. You are—”
But, somehow, I did not feel inclined to wait for the end of Belle’s encouraging lecture. Perhaps it was because I was so often treated to my beautiful elder sister’s homilies that they had lost the spark of novelty and had acquired a chestnuty flavor. Perhaps I failed to recognize any generosity in her persistent efforts to nip such latent buds of vanity as from time to time tried to thrust their poor little heads above the chill crust of ridicule and contumely. Perhaps I was really as bad-tempered as I was said to be. Anyhow, my behavior could not claim to be either quiet or elegant as I stormily quitted Belle’s room, slamming the door behind me with such violence as to elicit from my more well-bred sister a little shriek of affected dismay. So far from feeling sorry that I had given Belle’s nerves a shock, I wished viciously that her fingers had been jammed in the doorway, or that something equally disastrous had occurred to take off the edge of her conceit and self-satisfaction. In the corridor I met my brother Jerry, of whom I was devotedly fond. But, although he had evidently some interesting remark to make, I did not stop to speak to him, but hurried noisily to my own room, where I locked myself in, and threw myself on the bed, to give way to a storm of sobs and tears.
“And all for what?” it may be asked. “Surely a spiteful remark from one sister to another is hardly worth all this display of feeling.” Ah, well, perhaps one such remark now and then might be treated with the cool contempt which spiteful utterances deserve. But does the reader know what it is to be perpetually and persistently snubbed from one year’s end to the other? Does he realize how hard it must be for a sensitive and love-craving girl to be reminded that she is ugly and unattractive? Not reminded once in a way either, but pretty nearly every day of her life. Or does any one doubt how the heart must needs ache to see all the love and flattery of friends and relations alike showered upon a being whom you know to be empty-headed and frivolous, while everybody seems to regard your plain exterior as sufficient reason why you should be snubbed and neglected?
If the reader has ever had any of these experiences, he will the more readily understand my inability to restrain my tears on the especial occasion just mentioned. For it really was a very especial occasion, and I had been more anxious to look well at this particular moment than I ever remembered to have been in my life. I had hoped that Belle, just for once in a way, would take a little interest in my personal appearance, and that she would help me to create as good an impression as possible upon the newcomer whose advent I had both dreaded and longed for.
But Belle was too self-engrossed, and too firmly convinced of my hopeless unpresentability, to give the slightest thought either to me or to my feelings. Nay, she had even claimed so much of my time in the task of enhancing her own beauty, that, as we have seen, I had only a few minutes left for myself, and even this morsel of time was not utilized by me, as things turned out.
The fact is, I was anxious and overwrought, and Belle’s unkind speeches had multiplied all day until they had utterly broken my composure. “Can it really be true,” I wondered in abject misery, “that nothing I can either do or wear will help to mitigate the first feeling of repulsion which my new mother must necessarily experience at the sight of my ugliness?”
The question was of very vital import to me, for I longed for the advent of at least one sympathetic woman in the house; and when I heard that my father, now three years a widower, was about to marry again, I hoped, with a fervor that was nearly akin to agony, that his second wife would be the friend I so sorely needed. True, she would be my stepmother, and she would naturally assume the direction of the household affairs, at once placing the daughters of the house in a subordinate position. This being the case, I believe it would have been more orthodox to have railed against the new invasion, and to have followed the prevailing social custom of resolving to make life miserable for the woman who had presumed to step into my mother’s place. But I always was terribly unorthodox in many things, and, considerably to my father’s surprise, I expressed my enthusiastic delight at the prospect of having a stepmother to reign over me.
He need not have been surprised, if he had ever taken the trouble to understand me. But he was wrapped up in Belle’s charms, and never looked at me without regretting either my ugliness or my temper, which all in the house, except dear little Jerry, pronounced unbearable. And yet I can truthfully say, that if I had experienced anything approaching to just treatment, I should have been infinitely sweeter-tempered than my much-bepraised sister, than whom none could have been more unfeeling to the motherless girl whose heart ached for a little love. I generally did Belle’s bidding, for she always contrived to make things unpleasant for me if I rebelled against her authority. But to Lady Elizabeth Courtney I felt ready to yield the most devoted service and obedience, if only she would love me just a little in return; and I had anxiously revolved every means of creating a favorable impression upon her. I meant to have taken considerable pains with my toilet, and to have welcomed the home-coming bride with radiant smiles.