CHAPTER X

IN THE MIRROR

If Elsie had thought to tease or bewilder Kate in the garden last night by asserting that fairies actually had something to do with the orchard house she would have been disappointed now if she could read Kate’s mind as she lay awake in the early morning. A sense of something exciting in the day had waked her before dawn. The excitement, of course, was the party frock that Aunt Katherine had promised her, and “The Blue Bird.”

“I can hardly believe that I am going to have such a wonderful day,” she thought. “Is it really happening to me? Will the morning ever come?”

She had no idea what time it was but she could see that the sky was beginning to lighten. She felt that she could never go to sleep again and she felt very hungry. Ah-ha! She remembered the gingerbread man under her pillow. She had put it there simply to hide it and meaning to get rid of it somehow without Elsie or Bertha seeing. She had not thought she would ever want to eat it! It was too childish. But now she pulled it out, and leaning up on her elbow ate every last crumb.

This elbow position brought the orchard into her view, or rather its growing outlines in the approaching dawn. She recalled last night and Elsie’s emphatic assurance that fairies somehow had a hand in the mystery. Perhaps most other girls of fifteen would simply have laughed at Elsie and not for an instant accepted it as a possibility, fairies not entering into their scheme of things. But fairies did enter into Kate’s scheme of things and always had. There she was different. But there was a reason for her difference.

When she was a little girl of seven she had seen what she thought was a fairy; and it had made such an impression on her mind that when she grew older and came to the age of doubt she simply went on knowing. She had seen what she had seen, and that was all there was to it. Moreover, her mother had seen it, too, or something like it. It was hardly likely that both of them could have been utterly deceived.

It happened when she and Katherine had gone for a walk on a June Saturday. They started very early in the morning and walked very far, for a seven-year-old. But it was Saturday and they were both free, Kate from the lessons which her mother set her, and Katherine from teaching. And it was June. So they did not seem to get tired a bit, but walked and walked, and explored. Toward noon they came to a high meadow hilltop. There they lay down, flat on their backs among the Queen Anne’s lace, buttercups, and daisies, their arms across their eyes, their faces turned directly up toward the sun. It was luncheon time, but they did not care. The sunshine soaking into them and the smell of warm grass and earth were better than food.

They lay still for a long time, not even speaking to each other. Perhaps the little Kate slept. And they thought of getting up and starting for home only when the sun in the sky told Katherine that it must be past two o’clock.

Halfway down the hill pasture stood a little beach wood. They took their way through that because it looked so cool and inviting, and because Katherine knew there was a spring there among some rocks where they could get long, satisfying drinks of cold water. It was there they saw the fairy. They saw her just as they came out of the bright sunlight into the green, cool shade of the wood and stood above the water. She was at the other side of the spring facing them. She was looking down at her reflection in the water, not at all aware of their approach.

Kate saw her as a lovely girl in a floating green garment. Her feet and arms were bare and shining and it was their shining that made Kate know, even in that first instant before the fairy had glanced up, that she was unearthly. Kate and Katherine stood as still as the leaves on the trees in that still wood, awed and entranced. Then the little Kate whispered “Mother!” and pointed. At that whisper the fairy lifted her eyes. Kate saw the surprise in her eyes and a dawning—something; was it friendliness, or a smile? There was not time to know; for the fairy flashed backward and up on to a stone behind her across which the sunlight fell. And there she was lost in the sunlight. They simply could not see her any more.

But Kate had never forgotten that instant when they stood looking at the fairy while she was plain to view. And she had never forgotten the expression on her mother’s face after the fairy had vanished. It was such a delighted expression, so startlingly _satisfied_.

But that night, in talking it over, it came out that mother and daughter had not seen exactly the same thing. Katherine was sure that the being who had stood looking down at the spring was taller than human, grander, with a more tranquil, noble face, And her garment, she said, was the colour of sunlight, not green at all. Little Kate protested that. No, she was just a slim girl and her garment was green. Why, Kate remembered exactly how it hung almost to her bare ankles, without fluttering or motion in that still wood. The golden gown Katherine had seen had blown back, she said, as in a strong wind, although she herself felt no breath of air.

The end of their discussion came to this. Katherine said it might be that the sun in the high meadow together with their having had no luncheon had made them see not quite true. When they came suddenly into the cool, green shaded wood out of the glare their eyes played them tricks. What seemed like a person standing above the spring may have been simply an effect of sunlight striking through leaves.

“You remember, don’t you,” Katherine had ended, “how she vanished into sunlight when you said ‘Mother’? Well——”

And Katherine had left it at that. “Well——” But she had warned little Kate not to talk about it.

“People will think I had no business letting you go without luncheon so,” she gave as her reason, laughingly.

But just because she had promised Katherine that she would not talk about having seen a fairy, Kate had thought about it all the more. And she never went into a cool wood out of hot sunlight without hoping to surprise a fairy again. What she had seen she had seen, and that was all there was to it!

So now to Kate the thought that fairies might somehow be connected with the little orchard house did not seem at all an impossibility. Elsie certainly had not acted or looked as though she were lying. And it was perfectly true that from the minute Kate herself had first caught sight of the orchard house she had felt that there was something very special about it—more special than just the fact that it was the house where her mother had been born and grown up and married. When Elsie called out “Fairies, beware! Orchard House, beware!” Kate had been pricked with the feeling of listening ears. She had felt somehow that the warning was truly heard and taken.

She stretched now to her full length between her scented sheets. “I do wish the dawn would hurry up and dawn!” she thought. “The minute it’s a bit light enough I’ll get up, take a cold bath, dress, and get out into the orchard. If fairies are there, dawn ought to be as easy a time to see them as any. I’ll keep my promise about the key. But I’ve a perfect right in the orchard.”

She fell asleep then and dreamed about the orchard house. The King of the Fairies was there, waiting for her on the doorstep. She sat down beside him and at once began to see things different, to see them, as the King of the Fairies said, “whole.” There was a lot to the dream—colour, adventure, and music, and above all, the sight of things “whole.” But Kate, when she woke, had quite lost it. The dream had become just tag ends of brightness left floating in her mind.

* * * * * * * *

To her surprise morning was fully established, birds were singing in high chorus, and water was running loudly into the tub!

Bertha appeared in the bathroom door. “Miss Elsie got ahead of us,” she informed Kate brightly. “She must have been quieter than a mouse to have had her bath and all and not waked you. Now I suppose she’s out in the orchard or somewhere. It’s a beautiful day.”

Oh, well, Kate did not allow herself to be downcast at having missed dawn in the orchard. Not a bit of it. What a day it was to be! The frock, “The Blue Bird,” the whole day in Boston with Elsie, and Aunt Katherine so friendly!

At her place at the little breakfast table under the peach tree she found a letter from her mother. She snatched it up and tore it open, hoping she could get at least the heart out of it before Aunt Katherine and Elsie should appear.

But she had hardly read the first sentence before Miss Frazier came out through the breakfast-room and Elsie floated from the direction of the orchard. Kate was too absorbed to be aware of the approach of either until she heard Elsie exclaim, “Letters! Oh, is there one for me?”

Aunt Katherine’s tone was surprisingly sharp when she answered, “You never get letters, Elsie. You have hardly had one in the last year.”

“That’s unfair,” Kate thought hotly. “Aunt thinks she’s jealous even of my mail. And all the time she’s probably expecting an answer to that special delivery she sent yesterday.”

But in spite of the edge in Miss Frazier’s voice Elsie apparently was not at all dashed. To Kate’s curious eyes she looked just exactly as one might who had been skylarking with fairies in the orchard all early morning. She was ready to laugh, ready to talk, ready to be friendly. Kate was profoundly glad, for this kind of an Elsie argued well for the day they were to have in Boston together.

They went by train because Miss Frazier herself had uses for the car. Bertha was again dressed in her correct gray tailored suit. “Looking like an aunt herself,” Kate thought. Kate wore the blue silk dress she had travelled in and the smart little hat that was really her mother’s. The white linen would have done beautifully if they had not been going to the theatre; but even though they were to sit in the balcony—seats were sold out so far ahead that this was the best Aunt Katherine had been able to do for them—Kate thought the white linen would hardly be appropriate for that, and Bertha had agreed with her. Elsie, when she appeared, quite took Kate’s breath away. She was so lovely, but so much older looking than she had been in her house clothes. She was dressed in a straight little three-piece silk suit of olive green. The rolling collar was tied by a jaunty orange bow, and on the low belt of the dress the same colour was embroidered in a conventional flower pattern. The coat hung loosely and very full, hooked together only at the collar. The hat was a limp dark brown straw with olive-green and orange embroidery all around the crown. Elsie had pinned her curls up over her ears, and her hair was a soft crushed aura under the hat. She looked very much like a city girl but as though the city might have been New York or Paris rather than Boston.

Kate gasped a little, and in her secret heart was very glad she herself had decided on her silk. For a little while she was constrained with Elsie, as though Elsie had in fact become older suddenly just because she looked older.

As they came through the gates at their terminal in Boston Kate noticed a young man in a slouch brown hat, a polka-dotted brown tie, and very shining pointed brown shoes, standing about as though expecting someone to meet him from the train on which they had come in. Perhaps Kate noticed him so particularly because he seemed to be noticing them so particularly, especially Elsie. For the first time that morning she remembered Mr. O’Brien, the detective. Was this one of his men, and was he going to “shadow” them to-day? Kate was sure of it when out of the tail of her eye she saw him wheel and follow at a little distance as they moved toward the taxi stand. He stood prepared to take the next cab that should move into position as theirs moved out. Kate hardly understood her own emotions at that moment. Her cheeks were hot and her knees shook a little. She was resentful for Elsie. Why was she being shadowed by a detective as though she were a criminal? Why had Aunt Katherine let this happen?

Madame Pearl’s establishment was a narrow three-story house on Beacon Street. “Madame Pearl” was engraved on a plate above the bell, nothing more. A daintily capped and aproned maid answered their ring. She knew their names before they had given them.

“It is the Misses Frazier,” she said, speaking with a distinct accent. “You have an engagement, and Madame Pearl is expecting. Please come this way.”

The front door opened directly into a long narrow room, panelled in ivory, decorated with wreathed cupids and flowers. The floor was cool gray and the hangings at the long windows at the end of the room were gray, too, silvery. But under their feet were warm-coloured Persian rugs of the most beautiful shades and designs. There were little tables in the room with magazines and books scattered on them, a few easy chairs, and two long divans. In one corner by the window there was an exquisite little writing desk of Italian workmanship. On this stood a vase of very red roses.

Kate glanced about with surprised eyes. But Elsie, who had been here before with Aunt Katherine, nonchalantly followed the maid who was guiding them. Kate had expected to find herself in a shop. But there was no evidence of things for sale here. And they had an appointment! Whoever heard of having an appointment in a shop?

The maid stood back at the foot of a narrow spiral staircase at the back of the room. The girls and Bertha ascended.

Still no sign of a shop, or dresses for sale. This long upper room was simply a boudoir with chaises-longues, mirrors, and flowers. Madame Pearl swept to meet them. She was a regal little lady in trailing gray chiffon. The gown had long flowing sleeves that just escaped the floor. Miss Frazier had told Kate at breakfast that morning that Madame Pearl was really a Russian princess who had escaped at the time of the Revolution and in just a few years had made a fortune with this shop. Her real name was Olga Schwankovsky. So Kate looked at her with intense curiosity now. But where was the shop?

“Miss Frazier has telephoned,” Madame Pearl said in the sweetest of voices and almost perfect accent. “You young ladies are to have party dresses, your first party dresses. Very simple, very chic, youthful. We must not hurry but give time to it and consideration. If you will be so kind as to come this way——”

“This way” was all down the room to a wider alcove, walled on the street by big plate-glass windows and on the two other sides by huge, perfect mirrors.

There Madame Pearl asked them to be seated. She herself sat comfortably among cushions on a little lounge. She inquired as to their favourite colours. From that the conversation expanded to their other tastes, to books, music. Elsie told about their plan for the afternoon.

“You are to see ‘The Blue Bird’!” Madame Pearl exclaimed. “That will be an experience. I myself saw it when I was about your age—its first production at the Moscow Art Theatre. I had never dreamed anything could be so beautiful. You will think so, too.” Then she added, sighing a little, “But it cannot be quite the same. Stanislavsky produced it as it never could be produced by another. It was superb.”

“You saw it, there, when it was given in Moscow that first time?” Elsie breathed, sitting on the very edge of her chair, her cheeks pink with excitement. “That was wonderful. I know, for my fa——” She stopped, bit her lip, and continued: “Someone showed me photographs of the stage sets and costumes once. I am wondering if it will be anything like that here.”

“I don’t know,” Madame Pearl replied. “But I tell you frankly I am not going to see. For the memory of our Art Theatre production is too vivid for me to want to expose it to any comparison. It was done with a richness, a depth, a true sense of mysticism—— What shall I say? It was so free of sentimentality. I confess I do not care to see it attempted again. It had an effect on me, that play. An effect that is lasting, that runs through—how shall I say?—my life.”

Elsie nodded and looked at Kate. She said, “Yes, we understand. ‘The King of the Fairies’ is like that, too.”

Kate’s heart leapt. At last those two girls had met face to face, comrades on common ground.

“‘The King of the Fairies,’” Madame Pearl murmured, reflectively. “Ah, yes. I have heard of that book. Published last year. Very beautiful, I have heard. And literary people are surprised because it is so popular. They alone, when they discovered it, expected to appreciate it and enjoy. They are a little annoyed that children and simple people and the unliterary love it, too, that it is a ‘best seller.’ I have guessed, though I have not yet read it, that that book must tap some deep wells of truth that all humanity knows, even the simple. I have a theory about art——”

There the beautiful voice ceased abruptly. Madame Pearl rose, smiling enigmatically. “This is not choosing frocks, is it?” she said. “But while we have chattered I have studied your types. I have not been idle. Shall we begin with the one of which I am the least sure? That is Miss Kate. We may have to try several frocks before we are suited for you. But I think we shall begin with an orange crêpe.”

Madame Pearl touched a button in the wall and almost instantly a maid appeared, not the one who had answered the door, but identically dressed. She was young and pretty and very quick in all her motions. Kate found a screen placed around her almost before she knew what was happening. It was a light folding screen made of gray silk and bamboo and embroidered with oriental flowers. Bertha hastened to disrobe her. Then she came forth and stood ready to try on before one of the huge mirrors.

Panels in the wall were slid back and the little maid brought the dresses from their hiding places one by one. Bertha and the little maid slipped them over her head, fastened them, turned her around lightly by the shoulders. Then everyone looked at Madame Pearl. She was sitting on her couch again, her eyes intent. She studied Kate as an artist studies his picture. And to every frock, when it was on and Kate had been turned quite around once or twice, she shook her head decidedly. None of them, not one would do.

Kate herself could not see why. There was not one that was positively unbecoming, and three or four had been quite lovely. She was growing dazed and tired. The sparkle and colour of the frocks heaped about her on chairs and thrown over the screen was almost too much for her eyes. She thought of the Arabian Nights and imagined herself a young princess of Arabia being decked for her wedding. But even as the corners of her mouth lifted with this dream she was startled by an exclamation from Madame Pearl.

“At last! It is perfect!”

Kate turned to herself in the mirror.

But was it Kate Marshall at all? She scarcely knew.

The frock was yellow, of softest satin, the color of a crocus. At the rounded neck it was gathered softly to a narrow border of tiny pearl-white and blue blossoms made in satin. At the low waistline the satin was gathered again at a girdle of the same exquisitely fashioned flowers, four wreaths of them loosely twined. The skirt swung out from this girdle very full and straight, stopping just a little above the ankles, quite the longest skirt Kate had ever had. The border of the skirt was cut in deep, sharp scallops showing an underskirt below of foaming, creamy lace.

“Do you like it?” Madame Pearl asked, interestedly. Kate was looking at herself without speaking.

“I couldn’t help liking it,” Kate replied. “It’s beautiful. But—it doesn’t look exactly as though we belonged—it and I together! It is fluffy! So delicate!”

“That’s the fault of your hair, the short bob,” Madame Pearl assured her. “There must be a cap.” She gave directions to the maid. “The silver cap with the star points. Yes, the one from Riis’s. Deep cream stockings. And the pumps—but I see you know which pumps that frock must have yourself. I think they will fit, too. Fetch them.”

The maid whisked away to return in a minute with silk stockings, satin slippers, and a silver cap.

“Your feet first,” Madame Pearl said, quite excitedly. “The cap we will leave for the finishing touch. Then you shall see.”

Again, almost in a daze, Kate vanished behind the painted screen accompanied by both Bertha and the maid. Each of them dressed a foot, and it was done in a minute. The pumps were an exact fit. They were creamy satin embroidered in deeper creamy-coloured flowers. At the side of each a small diamond-shaped crystal buckle caught the light in many facets. The heels were low.

Kate was troubled. “My aunt is only giving me the frock,” she said. “She didn’t mention slippers and things. I’ve some perfectly good black patent-leather pumps, anyway.”

“Black pumps! With that frock!”

Madame Pearl gazed at her in horror. Bertha hurriedly interposed, “Miss Frazier impressed it on me that the costumes were to be complete.”

Then Madame Pearl arose from the couch and herself set the silver cap on Kate’s head. It was a saucy affair fashioned in crisp silver lace with five star points radiating from its crown. The cap was indeed the finishing touch. It accomplished almost a transformation.

“Why, I’m _pretty_, awfully pretty!” Kate exclaimed to herself, gazing into the mirror. But then more modestly, she added, “Any one would be in that fascinating cap.”

So Kate was ready for the party! Let it come!

And now it was Elsie’s turn. But Madame Pearl had no trouble in fitting Elsie to just the right frock. In fact, she had decided which it must be in the first minutes while they sat discussing “The Blue Bird.” Elsie was not “difficult.” Madame Pearl whispered to the maid, who scurried away. She returned bearing over her arm a cloud of green chiffon. While Kate was being dressed behind her screen Elsie was put into this green creation behind another similar screen. She appeared before Kate was done.

Her frock was simplicity itself, just straight lengths of green chiffon falling straight away from her slim shoulders. As she moved back and forth in front of the mirror her draperies floated about her like filmiest clouds. When she stood still they fell straight and sheer almost to her ankles. Madame Pearl signalled and the maid took the pins from Elsie’s curls and they tumbled, a shower of sunlight.

The effect was perfect. Madame Pearl breathed softly: “I am satisfied. Exquisitely.” She determined that white kid sandals, sandals in the Greek style, were the footwear the frock required. She had them, too, stored somewhere behind those secret panels. The maid hurried off, and Elsie in preparation for her return slipped off the black patent-leather sandals she was wearing, and out of her stockings.

At the same time Madame Pearl moved to the big windows. “The light is glaring,” she murmured, “and it is unreasonably hot.” Untying a cord at the side of the sash she let down green inner blinds. Elsie rose, and stood in her bare feet facing herself meditatively in the mirror. At that instant Kate came from behind her screen.

“Oh!” It was almost a shriek. Kate actually reeled against Bertha who was following her and clutched for support. Bertha led her to the couch. “Water, a glass of cold water quickly,” Madame Pearl commanded the little maid. Elsie ran to Kate and knelt before her, taking her hands. “Kate, Kate,” she called as though Kate were running away from her.

But Kate was not a girl to faint easily. She straightened up now and took a deep breath. “It’s only the way you looked in the glass, Elsie,” she explained, shakily. “The room just went spinning when I saw you.”

“‘The way she looked in the glass!’” Madame Pearl cast a hurried glance toward the big mirror that now reflected only Kate’s array of discarded dresses, a few tables and chairs.

But Kate explained further, looking at Elsie wanly: “You were the fairy—the fairy that Mother and I saw by the pool that day. You were the fairy exactly, even the expression on your face when you looked at me! And the green light——”

Madame Pearl laughed. “The green light is only because I pulled the blind. But you are right, Miss Elsie does look exactly like some fairy, some wood fairy. Perfection.”

“No, not some fairy, _the fairy_. I have remembered perfectly.”

Madame Pearl spoke to Bertha aside, but Kate heard well enough. “It was the heat, and she was tired from trying on. She ought to lie down.” Then she turned her attention to Elsie’s sandals.

But Elsie kept looking back over her shoulder at Kate, resting on the sofa—questioningly. She was speculating: “Had Kate taken her hint of fairies in the orchard house seriously? Was it so much on her mind that she was imagining things? Or had Kate once really seen a fairy, and Elsie in the mirror had reminded her?”

When they left the shop and stood on the step looking about for a taxi Elsie asked Kate eagerly, “Did you really see a fairy once? Where? When?”

“Yes, Mother and I. But we both saw it differently. And now—now, how could it have been a fairy? Why, it was _you_. But I promised Mother not to talk about it.”

At the mention of Kate’s mother the cold look came back to Elsie’s face. She turned away with feigned indifference while Bertha lifted her hand to summon a taxi.