Chapter 48

ANNOUNCEMENTS.

I have never described Mr. Dillwyn; and if I try to do it now, I am aware that words will give to nobody else the image of him. He was not a beauty, like Tom Caruthers; some people declared him not handsome at all, yet they were in a minority. Certainly his features were not according to classical rule, and criticism might find something to say to every one of them; if I except the shape and air of the face and head, the set of the latter, and the rich hair; which, very dark in colour, massed itself thick and high on the top of the head, and clung in close thick locks at the sides. The head sat nobly upon the shoulders, and correspondent therewith was the frank and manly expression of the face. I think irregular features sometimes make a better whole than regular ones. Philip's eyes were not remarkable, unless for their honest and spirited outlook; his nose was neither Roman nor Grecian, and his mouth was rather large; however, it was somewhat concealed by the long soft moustache, which he wore after the fashion of some Continentals (_N. B_., _not_ like the French emperor), carefully dressed and with points turning up; and the mouth itself was both manly and pleasant. Altogether, the people who denied Mr. Dillwyn the praise of beauty, never questioned that he was very fine-looking. His sister was excessively proud of him, and, naturally thought that nothing less than the best of everything--more especially of womankind--was good enough for him. She was thinking this now, as she came down the room, and looking jealously to see signs of what she dreaded, an entanglement that would preclude for ever his having the best. Do not let us judge her hardly. What sister is not critical of her brother's choice of a wife? If, indeed, she be willing that he should have a wife at all. Mrs. Burrage watched for signs, but saw nothing. Philip stood there, calmly smiling at her, not at all flustered by her appearance. Lois saw his coolness too, and envied it; feeling that as a man, and as a man of the world, he had greatly the advantage of her. She was nervous, and felt flushed. However, there is a power of will in some women which can do a great deal, and Lois was determined that Mr. Dillwyn should not be ashamed of her. By the time it was needful for her to rise she did rise, and faced her visitor with a very quiet and perfectly composed manner. Only, if anything, it was a trifle _too_ quiet; but her manner was other wise quite faultless.

"Philip!--" said Mrs. Burrage, advancing--"Good morning--Miss Lothrop. Philip, what are you doing here?"

"I believe you asked me that question once on a former occasion. Then, I think, I had been making toast. Now, I have been telling Miss Lothrop my plans for the summer, since she was so good as to listen."

"Plans?" repeated Mrs. Burrage. "What plans?" She looked doubtfully from one to the other of the faces before her. "Does he tell you his plans, Miss Lothrop?"

"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Burrage?" said Lois. "I am always interested when anybody speaks of Switzerland."

"Switzerland!" cried the lady, sinking into a chair, and her eyes going to her brother again. "You are not talking of _Switzerland_ for next summer?"

"Where can one be better in summer?"

"But you have been there ever so many times!"

"By which I know how good it will be to go again."

"I thought you would spend the summer with me!"

"Where?" he asked, with a smile.

"Philip, I wish you would dress your hair like other people."

"It defies dressing, sister," he said, passing his hand over the thick mass.

"No, no, I mean your moustache. When you smile, it gives you a demoniac expression, which drives me out of all patience. Miss Lothrop, would he not look a great deal better if he would cut off those Hungarian twists, and wear his upper lip like a Christian?"

This was a trial! Lois gave one glance at the moustache in question, a glance compounded of mingled horror and amusement, and flushed all over. Philip saw the glance and commanded his features only by a strong exertion of will, remaining, however, to all seeming as impassive as a judge.

"You don't think so?" said Mrs. Burrage. "Philip, why are you not at that picture sale this minute, with me?"

"Why are you not there, let me ask, this minute without me?"

"Because I wanted you to tell me if I should buy in that Murillo."

"I can tell you as well here as there. What do you want to buy it for?"

"What a question! Why, they say it is a genuine Murillo, and no doubt about it; and I have just one place on the wall in my second drawing-room, where something is wanting; there is one place not filled up, and it looks badly."

"And the Murillo is to fill up the vacant space?"

"Yes. If you say it is worth it."

"Worth what?"

"The money. Five hundred. But I dare say they would take four, and perhaps three. It is a real Murillo, they say. Everybody says."

"Jessie, I think it would be extravagance."

"Extravagance! Five hundred dollars for a Murillo! Why, everybody says it is no price at all."

"Not for the Murillo; but for a wall panel, I think it is. What do you say, Miss Lothrop, to panelling a room at five hundred dollars the panel?"

"Miss Lothrop's experience in panels would hardly qualify her to answer you," Mrs. Burrage said, with a polite covert sneer.

"Miss Lothrop has experience in some other things," Philip returned immoveably. But the appeal put Lois in great embarrassment.

"What is the picture?" she asked, as the best way out of it.

"It's a St. Sebastian," Mrs. Burrage answered shortly.

"Do you know the story?" asked Philip. "He was an officer in the household of the Roman emperor, Diocletian; a Christian; and discovered to be a Christian by his bold and faithful daring in the cause of truth. Diocletian ordered him to be bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows, and that the inscription over his head should state that there was no fault found in him but only that he was a Christian. This picture my sister wants to buy, shows him stripped and bound to the tree, and the executioner's work going on. Arrows are piercing him in various places; and the saint's face is raised to heaven with the look upon it of struggling pain and triumphing faith together. You can see that the struggle is sharp, and that only strength which is not his own enables him to hold out; but you see that he will hold out, and the martyr's palm of victory is even already waving before him."

Lois's eyes eagerly looked into those of the speaker while he went on; then they fell silently. Mrs. Burrage grew impatient.

"You tell it with a certain _gout_," she said. "It's a horrid story!"

"O, it's a beautiful story!" said Lois, suddenly looking up.

"If you like horrors," said the lady, shrugging her shoulders. "But I believe you are one of that kind yourself, are you not?"

"Liking horrors?" said Lois, in astonishment.

"No, no, of course! not that. But I mean, you are one of that saint's spiritual relations. Are you not? You would rather be shot than live easy?"

Philip bit his lip; but Lois answered with the most delicious simplicity,--

"If living easy implied living unfaithful, I hope I would rather be shot." Her eyes looked, as she spoke, straight and quietly into those of her visitor.

"And I hope I would," added Philip.

"_You?_" said his sister, turning sharp upon him. "Everybody knows you would!"

"But everybody does not know yet that I am a fellow-servant of that Sebastian of long ago; and that to me now, faithful and unfaithful mean the same that they meant to him. Not faithfulness to man, but faithfulness to God--or unfaithfulness."

"Philip!--"

"And as faithfulness is a word of large comprehension, it takes in also the use of money," Mr. Dillwyn went on smiling; "and so, Jessie, I think, you see, with my new views of things, that five hundred dollars is too much for a panel."

"Or for a picture, I suppose!" said Mrs. Burrage, with dry concentrated expression.

"Depends. Decidedly too much for a picture not meant to be looked at?"

"Why shouldn't it be looked at?"

"People will not look much at what they cannot understand."

"Why shouldn't they understand it?"

"It is a representation of giving up all for Christ, and of faithfulness unto death. What do the crowds who fill your second drawing-room know about such experience?"

Mrs. Burrage had put the foregoing questions dryly and shortly, examining her brother while he spoke, with intent, searching eyes. She had risen once as if to go, and now sat down again. Lois thought she even turned pale.

"Philip!--I never heard you talk so before. What do you mean?"

"Merely to let you know that I am a Christian. It is time."

"You were always a Christian!"

"In name. Now it is reality."

"You don't mean that you--_you!_--have become one of those fanatics?"

"What fanatics?"

"Those people who give up everything for religion, and are insane upon the subject."

"You could not have described it better, than in the first half of your speech. I have given up everything for religion. That is, I have given myself and all I have to Christ and his service; and whatever I do henceforth, I do only in that character and in that interest. But as to sanity,"--he smiled again,--"I think I was never sane until now."

Mrs. Burrage had risen for the second time, and her brother was now standing opposite to her; and if she had been proud of him a little while before, it was Lois's turn now. The calm, clear frankness and nobleness of his face and bearing made her heart fairly swell with its gladness and admiration; but it filled the other woman's heart with a different feeling.

"And this is you, Philip Dillwyn!" she said bitterly. "And I know you; what you have said you will stand to. Such a man as you! lost to the world!"

"Why lost to the world, Mrs. Burrage?" said Lois gently. She had risen too. The other lady faced her.

"Without more knowledge of what the world is, I could hardly explain to you," she said, with cool rudeness; the sort of insolence that a fine lady can use upon occasion when it suits her. Philip's face flushed, but he would not make the rudeness more palpable by seeming to notice it.

"I hope it is the other way," he said. "I have been an idle man all my life hitherto, and have done nothing except for myself. Nobody could be of less use to the world."

"And what are you going to do now?"

"I cannot tell. I shall find out. I am going to study the question."

"And is Miss Lothrop your teacher?"

The civil sneer was too apparent again, but it did not call up a flush this time. Philip was too angry. It was Lois that answered, and pleasantly,--

"She does not even wish to be that."

"Haven't you taught him already?" asked the lady, with prompt inquisition.

"Yes," said Philip.

Lois did colour now; she could not deny the fact, nor even declare that it had been an unintentional fact; but her colour was very pretty, and so was the sort of deprecating way in which she looked at her future sister-in-law. Not disarmed, Mrs. Burrage went on.

"It is a dangerous office to take, my dear, for we women never can keep it. We may think we stand on an eminence of wisdom one day; and the next we find we have to come down to a very lowly place, and sit at somebody else's feet, and receive our orders. I find it rather hard sometimes. Well, Philip,--will you go on with the lesson I suppose I have interrupted? or will you have the complaisance to go with me to see about the Murillo?"

"I will certainly stay."

"Rather hard upon me, after promising me last night you would go."

"I made no such promise."

"Indeed you did, begging your pardon. Last night, when you came home with the horses, I told you of the sale, and asked you if you would go and see that I did not get cheated."

"I have no recollection of it."

"And you said you would with pleasure."

"_That_ is no longer possible, Jessie. And the sale would be over before we could get to it," he added, looking at his watch.

"Shall I leave you here, then?" said the lady, with a mingling of disagreeable feelings which found indescribable expression.

"If Miss Lothrop will let me be left. You forget, it depends upon her permission."

"Miss Lothrop," said the lady, offering her hand to Lois with formal politeness, "I do not ask you the question, for my brother all his life has never been refused anything he chose to demand. Pardon me my want of attention; he is responsible for it, having upset all my ideas with his strange announcements. Good-bye!"

Lois curtseyed silently. In all this dialogue, the contrast had been striking between the two ladies; for the advantage of manner had been on the side, not of the experienced woman of the world, but of the younger and simpler and country-bred little Shampuashuh woman. It comes to this; that the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians gives one the very soul and essence of what in the world is called good breeding; the kernel and thing itself; while what is for the most part known in society is the empty shell, simulating and counterfeiting it only. Therefore he in whose heart that thirteenth chapter is a living truth, will never be ill-bred; and if he possesses besides a sensitive and refined nature, and is free of self-consciousness, and has some common sense to boot, he has all the make-up of the veriest high-breeding. Nothing could seem more unruffled, because nothing could be more unruffled, than Lois during this whole interview; she was even a little sorry for Mrs. Burrage, knowing that the lady would be very sorry herself afterwards for what she had done; and Lois meant to bury it in perfect oblivion. So her demeanour was free, simple, dignified, most graceful; and Philip was penetrated with delight and shame at once. He went with his sister to put her in her carriage, which was done with scarce any words on either part; and then returned to the room where he had left Lois. She was still standing beside her chair, having in truth her thoughts too busy to remember to sit down. Philip's action was to come straight to her and fold his arms round her. They were arms of caressing and protection at once; Lois felt both the caressing and the protecting clasp, as something her life had never known before; and a thrill went through her of happiness that was almost mingled with awe.

"My darling!"--said Philip--"will you hold me responsible? Will you charge it all upon me?--and let me make it good as best I can?"

"O Philip, there is nothing to charge!" said Lois, lifting her flushed face, "fair as the moon," to meet his anxious eyes. "Do not think of it again. It is perfectly natural, from her point of view. You know, you are very much Somebody; and I--am Nobody."

The remainder of the interview may be left unreported.

It lasted till the two ladies returned from the _matinee_. Mrs. Wishart immediately retained Mr. Dillwyn for luncheon, and the two girls went up-stairs together.

"How long has that man been here?" was Madge's disrespectful inquiry.

"I don't know."

"What did he come for?"

"I suppose--to see me."

"To see _you!_ Did he come to take you sleigh-riding again?"

"He said nothing about sleigh-riding."

"The snow is all slush down in the city. What did he want to see you for, then?" said Madge, turning round upon her sister, while at the same time she was endeavouring to extricate her head from her bonnet, which was caught upon a pin.

"He had something to say to me," Lois answered, trembling with an odd sort of excitement.

"What?--Lois, not _that?_" cried Madge, stopping with her bonnet only half off her head. But Lois nodded; and Madge dropped herself into the nearest chair, making no further effort as regarded the bonnet.

"Lois!--What did you say to him?"

"What could I say to him?"

"Why, two or three things, _I_ should think. If it was I, I should think so."

"There can be but one answer to such a question. It must be yes or no."

"I am sure that's two to choose from. Have you gone and said yes to that man?"

"Don't you like him?" said Lois, with a furtive smile, glancing up at her sister now from under lowered eyelids.

"Like him! I never saw the man yet, that I liked as well as my liberty."

"Liberty!"

"Yes. Have you forgotten already what that means? O Lois! have you said yes to that man? Why, I am always afraid of him, every time I see him."

"_Afraid_ of him?"

"Yes. I get over it after he has been in the room a while; but the next time I see him it comes back. O Lois! are you going to let him have you?"

"Madge, you are talking most dreadful nonsense. You never were afraid of anybody in your life; and of him least of all."

"Fact, though," said Madge, beginning at her bonnet again. "It's the way his head is set on his shoulders, I suppose. If I had known what was happening, while I was listening to Mme. Cisco's screeching!"--

"You couldn't have helped it."

"And now, now, actually you belong to somebody else! Lois, when are you going to be married?"

"I don't know."

"Not for a great while? Not _soon_, at any rate?"

"I don't know. Mr. Dillwyn wishes--"

"And are you going to do everything he wishes?"

"As far as I can," said Lois, with again a rosy smile and glance.

"There's the call to luncheon!" said Madge. "People must eat, if they're ever so happy or ever so unhappy. It is one of the disgusting things about human nature. I just wish he wasn't going to be here. Well--come along!"

Madge went ahead till she reached the drawing-room door; there she suddenly paused, waved herself to one side, and let Lois go in before her. Lois was promptly wrapped in Mrs. Wishart's arms, and had to endure a most warm and heartfelt embracing and congratulating. The lady was delighted. Meanwhile Madge found herself shaking hands with Philip.

"You know all about it?" he said, looking hard at her, and holding her hand fast.

"If you mean what Lois has told me--"

"Are not you going to wish me joy?"

"There is no occasion--for anybody who has got Lois," said Madge. And then she choked, pulled her hand away, and broke down. And when Lois got free from Mrs. Wishart, she saw Madge sitting with her head in her hands, and Mr. Dillwyn bending over her. Lois came swiftly behind and put both arms softly around her sister.

"It's no use!" said Madge, sobbing and yet defiant. "He has got you, and I haven't got you any longer. Let me alone--I am not going to be a fool, but to be asked to wish him joy is too much." And she broke away and ran off.

Lois could have followed her with all her heart; but she had herself habitually under better control than Madge, and knew with fine instinct what was due to others. Her eyes glistened; nevertheless her bearing was quiet and undisturbed; and a second time to-day Mr. Dillwyn was charmed with the grace of her manner. I must add that Madge presently made her appearance again, and was soon as gay as usual; her lucubrations even going so far before the end of luncheon as to wonder _where_ Lois would hold her wedding. Will she fetch all the folks down here? thought Madge. Or will everybody go to Shampuashuh?

With the decision, however, the reader need not be troubled.