“Yes, m’m.”
Sheila rose with a great swelling in her throat. All her courage had ebbed away. She had reflected how pained her husband would be if she did not please this old lady; and she was now prepared to do anything she was told, to receive meekly any remarks that might be made to her, to be quite obedient and gentle and submissive. But what was this tall and terrible woman going to do to her? Did she really mean to cut away those great masses of hair to which Mrs. Lavender had objected! Sheila would have let her hair be cut willingly for her husband’s sake; but as she went to the door some wild and despairing notions came into her head of what her husband might think of her when once she was shorn of this beautiful personal feature. Would he look at her with surprise—perhaps even with disappointment?
“Mind you don’t keep luncheon late,” he said to her as she passed him.
She but indistinctly heard him, so great was the trembling within her. Her father would scarcely know his altered Sheila when she went back to Borva; and what would Mairi say—Mairi who had many a time helped her to arrange those long tresses, and who was as proud of them as if they were her own? She followed Mrs. Lavender’s tall maid up-stairs. She entered a small dressing-room and glanced nervously around. Then she suddenly turned, looked for a moment at the woman, and said, with tears rushing up into her eyes: “Does Mrs. Lavender wish me to cut my hair?”
The woman regarded her with astonishment. “Cut, miss?—ma’am. I beg your pardon. No, ma’am, not at all. I suppose it is only some difference in the arrangement, ma’am. Mrs. Lavender is very particular about the hair, and she has asked me to show several ladies how to dress the hair in the way she likes. But perhaps you would prefer letting it remain as it is, ma’am?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” said Sheila. “I should like to have it just as Mrs. Lavender wishes—in every way just as she wishes. Only it will not be necessary to cut any?”
“Oh, no, miss—ma’am; and it would be a great pity, if I may say so, to cut your hair.”
Sheila was pleased to hear that. Here was a woman who had a large experience in such matters among those very ladies of her husband’s social circle whom she had been a little afraid to meet. Mrs. Paterson seemed to admire her hair as much as the simple Mairi had done; and Sheila soon began to have less fear of the terrible tiring woman, who forthwith proceeded with her task.
The young wife went down stairs with a tower upon her head. She was very uncomfortable. She had seen, it is true, that this method of dressing the hair really became her—or rather would become her in certain circumstances. It was grand, imposing, statuesque, but then she did not feel statuesque just at this moment. She could have dressed herself to suit this style of hair; she could have worn it with confidence if she had got it up herself; but here she was the victim of an experiment. She felt like a school girl about, for the first time, to appear in public in a long dress, and she was terribly afraid her husband would laugh at her. If he had any such inclination he courteously suppressed it. He said the massive simplicity of this dressing of the hair suited her admirably. Mrs. Lavender said that Paterson was an invaluable woman; and then they went down to the dining-room on the ground floor, where luncheon had been laid.
The man who had opened the door waited on the two strangers; the invaluable Paterson acted as a sort of hench-woman to her mistress, standing by her chair and supplying her wants. She also had the management of a small pair of silver scales, in which pretty nearly everything that Mrs. Lavender took in the way of solid food was carefully and accurately weighed. The conversation was chiefly alimentary, and Sheila listened with a growing wonder to the description of the devices by which the ladies of Mrs. Lavender’s acquaintances were wont to cheat fatigue or win an appetite or preserve their color. When by accident the girl herself was appealed to, she had to confess to an astonishing ignorance of all such resources. She knew nothing of the relative strengths and effects of wines, though she was frankly ready to make any experiment her husband recommended. She knew what camphor was, but had never heard of bismuth. On cross-examination she had to admit that eau-de-cologne did not seem to her likely to be a pleasant liquor before going to a ball. Did she not know the effect on brown hair of washing it in soda-water every night? She was equably confessing her ignorance on all such points when she was startled by a sudden question from Mrs. Lavender. Did she know what she was doing?