The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858

All night poor Madeline's slumber was broken by incoherent mutterings, convulsive starts, and, more than once, a fearful cry; and when the day dawned, she suddenly sat erect, stared wildly about her, and raved. A fierce, though brief, fever had seized her; she was delirious, and knew not where she was. When Miss Wimple would have soothed her, tenderly caressing, and promising her a sister's kindness and protection,—a home safely guarded from intrusion,– Madeline assailed her savagely, bidding her be off, with her smooth treachery, her pretty lies.

"'Sister!'—devil! Do I not know what a hell your 'home' is?—and as for 'safety,' shall I seek that among snakes? Oh, I am sick of all of you!—have I not told you so a hundred times?—sick with the contempt I feel for you, and weary of your stupid tricks."

"Madeline," said Miss Wimple, "look at me! Here,—touch my face, my dress! Do you not know me now? Do you not see that I am not your mother, nor Josephine, nor Adelaide, but only Sally Wimple, little Miss Wimple, of the bookstore? What harm could I do you?—how could I offend or hurt you? Look me in the eyes, I say, and know me, and be calm. See! this is my chamber,—this is my bed; below is the little shop,—the Athenæum, you remember. We are alone in the house; there is no one to hear or see. You came to me,—did you not?—over the long, weary road, through the darkness and the bitter cold, for warmth and food, for rest and safety; and I have hidden you away, and watched by you. Look around you,—look through that window; do you not know those trees, the mulberries by the Athenæum?—they are bare now; but you have seen them so before, a dozen winters. Look at this face,—look at this dress,—look at this dress!—Ah! now you know all about it,—'little Miss Wimple,' of course; and this shall be your home, and you are safe here."

When Miss Wimple began to speak, she stood somewhat off from the bed; for Madeline, with a gesture full of hate, and close-set lips that looked dangerous, had thrust her back. But as she proceeded with her calm and clear appeal, Madeline was arrested, in the very movement of springing from the bed, in an attitude "worth a painter's eye," half-sitting, half-reclining, supported by her right arm, which, rigidly extended, was planted pillar-like in the bed,—with her left hand tossing aside the bed-clothes,—her knees drawn up, as for the instant of stepping out upon the floor,—her right shoulder, bare, round, and white, thrust from the night-dress, which in the restlessness of her distraction had burst its chaste fastenings, bestowing a chance glimpse of a most proud and beauteous bosom,—a glimpse but dimly caught through the thick brown meshes of her dishevelled hair. So, now, with impatient eyes and eager lips, she rested and listened. And when Miss Wimple said,—"I have hidden you away and watched by you," the fierce look was softened to one of pitiful reflection and recollection; and at the words, "Look at this dress! Ah! now you know all about it,—'little Miss Wimple,' of course!" she sat up and stretched forth her arms beseechingly, and in a moment was sobbing helplessly on Sally's neck.

A little while Miss Wimple, still and thoughtful, held her so, that her soul's bitterness might pour itself out in wholesome tears; then she gently stroked the tangled brown hair, and said,—"Sit close beside me now, and lean upon my bosom, and tell me all,—where you have been, and how you have fared, and what you would have me do."

With a brave effort, Madeline controlled herself, and replied, firmly, though with averted face,

"You remember, dear Miss Wimple, our last interview. I insulted you then."

Miss Wimple made no sign. Madeline blushed,—brow, neck, and bosom, —crimson.

"And then I told you that I believed in you as I believed in little else, in this world or the next; and I said, that, if in my hour of shame and outcasting, I could implore the help of any human being, I would come to you before all others. I have come. You thought me raving then, and pitied me, because you did not understand. Presently you will understand, and you will still pity me,—but with a difference.

"I fled away that very night, you recollect,—fled from my self-contempt, from the sickening scorn I felt for them,—for him."

There was agony in the effort with which she uttered that last word. She named no names, but, with a sort of desperation, raised her head and looked Miss Wimple in the face; in the quick, sensitive glances they interchanged at that moment the omission was supplied.

"Though my flight was premeditated, I took with me no clothes save those I wore; but I had concealed on my person every jewel and trinket I possessed. With these,—for I readily converted them into money,—I purchased a safe asylum in an obscure but decent family, whose poverty did not afford them the indulgence of a scrupulous fastidiousness or impertinent curiosity; it was enough for their straitened conscience that I had the manners and the purse of a lady, —they asked no questions which might cost them a profitable boarder, the only one they could accommodate in their poor way. I had no fear that any hue-and-cry would be raised for me; I had left behind me two who would prevent that,—in that, my worst foes were my best friends. If I had any relatives who cared for me enough to pursue me, I rejoiced in at least one sister on whose cunning, if not good sense, I could rely, to convince them of the futility of such efforts,—one friend whose fears would be ingenious and busy to put the best-laid chase at fault.

"So I lay concealed and safe till the time came when I had to purchase pity, help, and precious secrecy. My discreet hosts could furnish those extras; but they were poor, and such luxuries are expensive in New York;—it was not long before my last dollar was gone. I had been ill,—ill, Miss Wimple,—and every way crippled; I could not, if the work had offered itself to me, have earned more then. My last trinket was gone; I had pawned whatever I could spare from the hard exigencies of living; for I am no coward,—I did not wish to die,—I had challenged my fate, and would meet it. I had even changed with the women of the house the silk dress I wore, and my fine linen, for the mean rags you cleansed me of last night, —that they might pay themselves so; and when all was expended, and the last trick tried that pride, honor, and modesty could wink at, I came away in the night, leaving no unsettled scores behind me. But I saw my own resources sinking fast; I knew I must presently be debtor to some one for protection, aid, and counsel. I remembered you,—and that I had said I could beg of none but you; therefore I am here.

"And now, Miss Wimple,"—and as she spoke, Madeline arose, and, standing before her companion, said her say slowly, proudly, with head erect and unflinching eyes,—"I told you I believed in you, as I believed in nothing then, on earth or in heaven,—as I believe only in God's mercy now. I will prove that that was no merely pretty phrase, meant cunningly to cheat you of your forgiveness for a coarse insult. Since I saw you last, I have been—a mother; I have brought forth a child in shame and sin and blasphemous defiance, —and God has been merciful to it and to me, and has taken it unto Himself. I think you also will be merciful; you will help me to save myself from the pit that yawns just now at my feet; you will help me to prove it false, that a woman who has strayed off so far in her wilful way may not, if she be strong and truly proud, retrace her steps, to fall in at last—though last of all the stragglers—with the happy procession of honored women,—of women who have done the best they could, and borne their burden bravely."

Miss Wimple sat on the side of the bed, her chin resting on her clasped hands, her gaze fixed vacantly on the floor,—"Poor baby! Dead,—thank God!" was all she said.

"Miss Wimple," said Madeline, "I have addressed myself to your heart, rather than to your understanding, your education. I had no right to do so. If my presence is, in your opinion, an outrage to your house, I am ready to go now. I can face the street, the town; no one will dare to stop me, if any were inclined."

"Be seated, Miss Splurge,—you are very welcome here. My appreciation of the difference between your education and mine is as kind as you could wish. This is a question of hearts,—and our hearts have been always right, I hope; we are as woman to woman, and the womanly part of either of us may still be trusted. Be seated,—I have a word to say for myself"; and, as she spoke, Miss Wimple went to her little bureau, and, unlocking a drawer, drew from it a miniature rosewood cabinet; unlocking that, again, she took something out, which, as she returned to resume her seat beside Madeline, was hidden in her hand.

"Miss Splurge," said Miss Wimple, "the night on which you disappeared so strangely from this place, I had been visiting a sick friend on the other side of the river, and returned home at a late hour,—that is, about nine o'clock, perhaps. As I entered the covered bridge, I heard the voices of a lady and a gentleman in excited conversation."

Madeline became deadly pale; but she did not speak, uttered no exclamation,—only a slight movement of her eyebrows expressed eagerness, as she turned more attentively to Miss Wimple, who proceeded as though unconscious of any trace of emotion in her companion.

"The voice of the gentleman was familiar to me; the lady's I did not, at first, recognize,—something had changed its quality. Supposing themselves alone,—for it was plain they had not heard me approach and enter the bridge,—they were incautious; their words reached me distinctly. I might have retraced my steps and waited till they had gone; but the moon was shining brightly, and the night was very still, —in a pause of their conversation they might have heard or seen me; I chose to spare them that. So I fell back into a corner, where the shadows were deepest, and remained quite quiet until they went away. I have told you that I heard their words; but I did not understand them then;—now, I do."

Madeline bowed her head. Miss Wimple seemed not to observe that, but continued in the same quiet, even tone:—

"When they had gone, I found, lying in the moonlight near the bridge—this."

Miss Wimple held out the little pocket-book. Madeline started, made a quick movement, as though to snatch the book, but checked herself with an effort, and said, with stern composure,—

"Well?"

"Well," said Miss Wimple, "there it is, and it is yours. It contains a card, for the safety of which you were once concerned. It has remained as safe, from that hour to this,—not only from my curiosity, but that of all others, be they friends or foes of yours,—as though you had kept it hidden in your bosom, and defended it with your teeth and nails; on my honor!"

In these last words, and only then, Miss Wimple showed that she could remember an insult, and avenge it—in her own way. She dropped the pocket-book into the lap of Madeline, who, without a word, placed it in her bosom.

"And now, my poor Madeline," said Miss Wimple, "we will speak no more of these things. I beg you to understand me clearly,"—and Miss Wimple suddenly altered her tone,—"we must not recur to this subject. You will remain with me until we shall have decided what is best for us to do. You are quite safe in this house; that you were ever here need not be known hereafter, unless your honor or your happiness should require that we divulge it. I must go now and open the shop; and when I return to you, we will speak, if you please, of other things."

"But Miss Wimple's Hoop,—will you never come to that? Or is it your intention to 'omit the part of Hamlet by particular request?'"

Slowly and fairly,—we come to it now.

CHAPTER IV

When the neat and modest little mistress of the Hendrik Athenæum and Circulating Library descended to open the shop and take down the bars, all her sense of delicacy was shocked, and she was brought to shame; for her meek skirts, missing the generous support of the quilted silk petticoat, clung about her mortified extremities in thin and limp dejection. It was plain to Miss Wimple that she looked poverty-stricken,—an aspect most dreadful to the poor, and upon which the brothers and sisters of penury who by hook or by crook contrive to keep up appearances for the nonce have no mercy. "Today," she thought, "callers will delight me not, nor customers neither." But Miss Wimple was in a peculiarly provoking predicament, and for such there is ever a malignant star;—callers and customers dropped in, one after another, all day, as they had rarely come before,—as though, indeed, her most spiteful enemy had got wind of the petticoat affair, and sent them to plague her.

That day, Miss Wimple had recourse to as much painfully ingenious dodging behind the low counters as though she had a cloven foot to hide. When evening came, she could have sat down—if she had been any other plagued woman in the world but Sally Wimple—and had a good cry. It was bitter weather, and she had shivered much;—she did not mind that; but to look poverty-stricken! No, she did not cry outside, but it was a narrow escape. In her trouble, her eyes wandered around the shop beseechingly; and lo! she beheld in the window a timely hooped skirt,—a daring speculation wherein she had lately invested, in consideration of the growing importance of her millinery department; and straightway Miss Wimple went and took the hoop, and offered it up for a pride-offering in the stead of her delicacy, that was so dear to her. It was a thing of touching artlessness to do; only so cunning-simple a soul as Sally Wimple could ever have thought of it. She sat up late that night, engaged in compromising with her prejudices, by drawing out the whalebones, one by one, from the "Alboni," shaving them down with a piece of glass, very thin, and tucking them,—until all their loud defiance was subdued, and for Miss Wimple's Hoop it might be tenderly deprecated that it was nothing to speak of, "such a leetle one."

The sacrifice was made, and, let us hope, not merely figuratively accepted by Him to whom prejudices may arise today an offering not less honored than was the blood of rams in the hour when Abraham laid his first-born on an altar in the thicket of Jehovah-jireh.

If any challenge the probabilities of this incident, and cavil at the chance that Miss Wimple's necessity could, under any circumstances, bring forth such an invention, I hope I have only to remind them that that brave angel had become straitened to a point whereat she had neither material from which to erect another quilted petticoat, nor the means of procuring it, even if she could spare the time necessary to the making of one,—which she could not, being now closely occupied between the engagements of her hired needle and the newly-found cares that Charity had imposed upon her.

But, however the probabilities may appear, Miss Wimple's Hoop was a shaved-whalebone fact; and the quilted petticoat would never have been missed, but for the officious scrutiny of the eyes, and the provoking prating of the tongues, of a sophisticated few who marvelled greatly at the pliancy and the "perfect set" of Miss Wimple's Alboni,—"and that demure little prig, too! who'd have thought it?"

As for Simon Blount, he was quick to perceive the new experience to which the skimped delaine had been introduced, and at first it disturbed and embarrassed him; but his light, elastic temper soon recovered its careless buoyancy, with a sly smile at what he considered an oddity, newly discovered, in the character of his prim sweetheart. "Oh! it's all right, of course," he thought; "Sally knows what she's about; but it's very funny!"

And so, if this strange disturbing of the established order of "things" in the kingdom of Wimple had rested with the exaltation of the Hoop, that body politic would presently have been reduced to tranquillity, no doubt, and the all-agogness of Hendrik would have come quietly to nought, like any other popular flutter following upon a new thing under the sun. But in a romantic cause the conscientiousness of Miss Wimple, for all her seeming matter-of-fact, took on a quality of chivalry; and she displayed a Quixotism most tiltfully disposed toward any windmill of conventional proprieties that might plant itself in the way by which her beauteous and distressed damsel was to escape. So, before all the decencies of Hendrik had recovered from the shock of the Hoop, she threw them into a new and worse "conniption" by an even more daring innovation upon their good, easy notions of her; for the next thing she did was—a basque and flounces. Thus it happened:—

Madeline had become quite another Madeline,—say a Magdalen, rather, —under the gentle discipline of her admirable angel. Her wonted distraction had subsided into a pensive sadness, which manifested itself in many a grateful, graceful tenderness toward that glorifier of the skimped delaine. She had observed the Hoop at once, and greeted it with a solitary smile, accepting it for a happy sign and a token; for she had recognized Simon Blount when she turned into the shop, that night, out of the darkness and the cold, and, with the alert intelligence of a woman, even so self-absorbed as she was then, had construed his gallant "good-night." She thought she understood Miss Wimple's Hoop, because she had not discovered the poetry in Miss Wimple's quilted petticoat. They had not spoken of those things again. Delicacy was the law for those two; and to do their best, and thankfully, bravely, accept the first deliverance Heaven might send them, was their religion. Like two Micawbers of Faith, Hope, and Charity, they waited for something to "turn up."

Miss Wimple invested a daily three-cent piece in a New York paper, and diligently conned the "Wants" before the Marriages and Deaths, —extraordinary woman! An "opening" had but to show itself, and Miss Wimple was ready to fling her character into the breach for the benefit of her Magdalen. Strong-minded woman!

At last it came. A gentleman who had recently lost his wife wanted a house-keeper and governess for his two little girls,—the offices to be united in the person of "a lady by birth, education, and associations"; to such a liberal salary would be given; and in case she should be in straitened circumstances, a reasonable advance would be made, "to enable the lady to assume at once the position of a respected member of his family." The very place!

Now what did that dashing Miss Wimple-Quixote—of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!—but sit down and pour her enormous little heart out in a letter to a person she had never seen or heard of,—telling him everything but names and localities, and appealing, with an inspiration, to his divine spark. There is no doubt that, "for that occasion only," Providence sent an advertiser to the "Tribune" to justify the large faith of Pity in skimped delaine; for the word of Hope and Love that Miss Wimple let fall, unstudied, from the heart, fell upon a genial mind, and lo!—

"It raised a sister from the dust,
It saved a soul from death!"

The gentleman—the nobleman!—thanked his unknown correspondent, whose hand he would esteem it an honor to touch, for the opportunity she had afforded him to do good in a graceful way. Mrs. Morris (Miss Wimple had written: "Let us know this poor lady as 'Mrs. Morris,' a childless widow") should be most welcome to his house; she need never be aware that the sad passages of her history had come to his knowledge, and by all over whom he exercised authority or influence her sorrows should be reverenced. He took the liberty to inclose a check, which Mrs. Morris would have the goodness to regard as a small advance on her salary; she would make whatever preparation she might deem necessary, at her perfect leisure; he would be happy to see her as soon as it should be quite agreeable to her to come. Once more, with all his heart, he thanked the admirable lady who had in so remarkable a manner distinguished him by her noble impulse of confidence. It would be his dearest duty hereafter to deserve it. And he gave his address: "Lawrence Osgood, Fourteenth St., New York."

It was evident that the "necessary preparations" for Madeline's appearance in this new rôle could not be made in Hendrik. Miss Wimple was distressingly sensitive for the safety of her protégée from scandalous discovery. Even she herself could not expend any considerable portion of Mr. Osgood's advance without arousing surmise and provoking dangerous prying. Besides, how should she get the money for the check?—to whom dare she confess herself in possession of it? Of course, there was a conclusive impossibility. Nevertheless, something must be done at once to put Madeline at least in travelling trim; for the things of which—to use her own sensitive expression—Miss Wimple had "cleansed" her when she came were out of the question. It was as true of this poor young lady in her trunkless plight, as of any dishevelled Marius in crinoline, who sits down and weeps among the brand-new ruins of a Carthage of satin, lawns, and laces, that she had Nothing to Wear. So Miss Wimple, encouraged by the happy success of the Hoop stratagem, forthwith began to cast about her; and for the present Mr. Osgood's letter and the check were hushed up in her bosom.

Now Miss Wimple and Madeline Splurge were examples of how much our views of a person's character have to do with our notions of his or her stature or carriage. All Hendrik spoke of the demure heroine of the skimped delaine as "Little Miss Wimple"; and Madeline, though the youngest of the sisters, was universally known as "Miss Splurge," —as it were, awfully. Yet Miss Wimple and Madeline were almost exactly "of a size," by any measurement, and Miss Wimple's clothes were a sweet fit for Madeline; the petticoat experiment had discovered that. So the skimped delaine, Miss Wimple thought, must be promoted to the proud person of the handsome Madeline, and something must be found to take its place.

Now, among store of respectable family-rubbish, scrupulously saved by half a graveyard-full of female relations,—for the women-folk of the Wimples had been ever noted for their thrift,—a certain quaint garment had come down to Sally from her great-grandmother. It was a black "silken wonder," wherewith, no doubt, that traditionally dear, delightful creature was wont to astonish the streets, in the days of her vanity and frivolous vexation of spirit.

A generous expanse of cape pertained to it, and it was cut much shorter behind than before, in order to display to advantage the pert red heels whereon that antique Wimple aforetime exalted herself. "With some trifling alterations," said Miss Wimple to herself, "this will do nicely for me; and my delaine—which is not so very bad, after all—a little cleaning will do wonders for it—will look sweetly appropriate on the Widow Morris, while her outfit is making in New York."

So Miss Wimple let down the dress behind, by piecing it in the back just below the waist; and from the generous cape she made a basque to hide the alteration; and some stains, like iron-mould, on the skirt, she covered with three flounces, made of some fine crape that was left from her mother's funeral.

"But, by your leave, where was this 'silken wonder' when your unhandy heroine was casting about her for a substitute for the quilted petticoat?"