第14章

THE DISASTER

Ariel had worked all the afternoon over her mother's wedding-gown, and two hours were required by her toilet for the dance.She curled her hair frizzily, burning it here and there, with a slate-pencil heated over a lamp chimney, and she placed above one ear three or four large artificial roses, taken from an old hat of her mother's, which she had found in a trunk in the store-room.Possessing no slippers, she carefully blacked and polished her shoes, which had been clumsily resoled, and fastened into the strings of each small rosettes of red ribbon; after which she practised swinging the train of her skirt until she was proud of her manipulation of it.She had no powder, but found in her grandfather's room a lump of magnesia, that he was in the habit of taking for heart-burn, and passed it over and over her brown face and hands.Then a lingering gaze into her small mirror gave her joy at last: she yearned so hard to see herself charming that she did see herself so.Admiration came and she told herself that she was more attractive to look at than she had ever been in her life, and that, perhaps, at last she might begin to be sought for like other girls.The little glass showed a sort of prettiness in her thin, unmatured young face; tripping dance-tunes ran through her head, her feet keeping the time,--ah, she did so hope to dance often that night! Perhaps--perhaps she might be asked for every number.And so, wrapping an old waterproof cloak about her, she took her grandfather's arm and sallied forth, high hopes in her beating heart.

It was in the dressing-room that the change began to come.Alone, at home in her own ugly little room, she had thought herself almost beautiful, but here in the brightly lighted chamber crowded with the other girls it was different.There was a big cheval-glass at one end of the room, and she faced it, when her turn came--for the mirror was popular--with a sinking spirit.There was the contrast, like a picture painted and framed.The other girls all wore their hair after the fashion introduced to Canaan by Mamie Pike the week before, on her return from a visit to Chicago.None of them had "crimped" and none had bedecked their tresses with artificial flowers.Her alterations of the wedding-dress had not been successful; the skirt was too short in front and higher on one side than on the other, showing too plainly the heavy-soled shoes, which had lost most of their polish in the walk through the snow.The ribbon rosettes were fully revealed, and as she glanced at their reflection she heard the words, "LOOK AT THATTRAIN AND THOSE ROSETTES!" whispered behind her, and saw in the mirror two pretty young women turn away with their handkerchiefs over their mouths and retreat hurriedly to an alcove.All the feet in the room except Ariel's were in dainty kid or satin slippers of the color of the dresses from which they glimmered out, and only Ariel wore a train.

She went away from the mirror and pretended to be busy with a hanging thread in her sleeve.

She was singularly an alien in the chattering room, although she had been born and lived all her life in the town.Perhaps her position among the young ladies may be best defined by the remark, generally current among them, that evening, to the effect that it was "very sweet of Mamie to invite her." Ariel was not like the others; she was not of them, and never had been.Indeed, she did not know them very well.Some of them nodded to her and gave her a word of greeting pleasantly; all of them whispered about her with wonder and suppressed amusement; but none talked to her.They were not unkindly, but they were young and eager and excited over their own interests,--which were then in the "gentlemen's dressing-room."Each of the other girls had been escorted by a youth of the place, and, one by one, joining these escorts in the hall outside the door, they descended the stairs, until only Ariel was left.She came down alone after the first dance had begun, and greeted her young hostess's mother timidly.Mrs.

Pike--a small, frightened-looking woman with a prominent ruby necklace--answered her absently, and hurried away to see that the imported waiters did not steal anything.

Ariel sat in one of the chairs against the wall and watched the dancers with a smile of eager and benevolent interest.In Canaan no parents, no guardians nor aunts, were haled forth o' nights to duenna the junketings of youth; Mrs.Pike did not reappear, and Ariel sat conspicuously alone; there was nothing else for her to do.It was not an easy matter.

When the first dance reached an end, Mamie Pike came to her for a moment with a cheery welcome, and was immediately surrounded by a circle of young men and women, flushed with dancing, shouting as was their wont, laughing inexplicably over words and phrases and unintelligible mono-syllables, as if they all belonged to a secret society and these cries were symbols of things exquisitely humorous, which only they understood.Ariel laughed with them more heartily than any other, so that she might seem to be of them and as merry as they were, but almost immediately she found herself outside of the circle, and presently they all whirled away into another dance, and she was left alone again.

So she sat, no one coming near her, through several dances, trying to maintain the smile of delighted interest upon her face, though she felt the muscles of her face beginning to ache with their fixedness, her eyes growing hot and glazed.All the other girls were provided with partners for every dance, with several young men left over, these latter lounging hilariously together in the doorways.