The dress that Lydia habitually1 wore was one which her aunt Maria studied from the costume of a summer boarder, who had spent a preceding summer at the sea-shore, and who found her yachting-dress perfectly2 adapted to tramping over the South Bradfield hills. Thus reverting3 to its original use on shipboard, the costume looked far prettier on Lydia than it had on the summer boarder from whose unconscious person it had been plagiarized4. It was of the darkest blue flannel5, and was fitly set off with those bright ribbons at the throat which women know how to dispose there according to their complexions7. One day the bow was scarlet8, and another crimson9; Staniford did not know which was better, and disputed the point in vain with Dunham. They all grew to have a taste in such matters. Captain Jenness praised her dress outright10, and said that he should tell his girls about it. Lydia, who had always supposed it was a walking costume, remained discreetly11 silent when the young men recognized its nautical12 character. She enjoyed its success; she made some little changes in the hat she wore with it, which met the approval of the cabin family; and she tranquilly13 kept her black silk in reserve for Sunday. She came out to breakfast in it, and it swept the narrow spaces, as she emerged from her state-room, with so rich and deep a murmur14 that every one looked up. She sustained their united glance with something tenderly deprecatory and appealingly conscious in her manner, much as a very sensitive girl in some new finery meets the eyes of her brothers when she does not know whether to cry or laugh at what they will say. Thomas almost dropped a plate. “Goodness!” he said, helplessly expressing the public sentiment in regard to a garment of which he alone had been in the secret. No doubt it passed his fondest dreams of its splendor15; it fitted her as the sheath of the flower fits the flower.
Captain Jenness looked hard at her, but waited a decent season after saying grace before offering his compliment, which he did in drawing the carving-knife slowly across the steel. “Well, Miss Blood, that's right!” Lydia blushed richly, and the young men made their obeisances16 across the table.
The flushes and pallors chased each other over her face, and the sight of her pleasure in being beautiful charmed Staniford. “If she were used to worship she would have taken our adoration17 more arrogantly,” he said to his friend when they went on deck after breakfast. “I can place her; but one's circumstance doesn't always account for one in America, and I can't make out yet whether she's ever been praised for being pretty. Some of our hill-country people would have felt like hushing up her beauty, as almost sinful, and some would have gone down before it like Greeks. I can't tell whether she knows it all or not; but if you suppose her unconscious till now, it's pathetic. And black silks must be too rare in her life not to be celebrated18 by a high tumult19 of inner satisfaction. I'm glad we bowed down to the new dress.”
“Yes,” assented20 Dunham, with an uneasy absence; “but—Staniford, I should like to propose to Captain Jenness our having service this morning. It is the eleventh Sunday after—”
“Ah, yes!” said Staniford. “It is Sunday, isn't it? I thought we had breakfast rather later than usual. All over the Christian22 world, on land and sea, there is this abstruse23 relation between a late breakfast and religious observances.”
Dunham looked troubled. “I wish you wouldn't talk that way, Staniford, and I hope you won't say anything—”
“To interfere24 with your proposition? My dear fellow, I am at least a gentleman.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Dunham, gratefully.
Staniford even went himself to the captain with Dunham's wish; it is true the latter assumed the more disagreeable part of proposing the matter to Hicks, who gave a humorous assent21, as one might to a joke of doubtful feasibility.
Dunham gratified both his love for social management and his zeal26 for his church in this organization of worship; and when all hands were called aft, and stood round in decorous silence, he read the lesson for the day, and conducted the service with a gravity astonishing to the sailors, who had taken him for a mere27 dandy. Staniford bore his part in the responses from the same prayer-book with Captain Jenness, who kept up a devout28, inarticulate under-growl, and came out strong on particular words when he got his bearings through his spectacles. Hicks and the first officer silently shared another prayer-book, and Lydia offered half hers to Mr. Mason.
When the hymn29 was given out, she waited while an experimental search for the tune30 took place among the rest. They were about to abandon the attempt, when she lifted her voice and began to sing. She sang as she did in the meeting-house at South Bradfield, and her voice seemed to fill all the hollow height and distance; it rang far off like a mermaid's singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense31 of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter32, hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the sea-voices lent their powerful discord33, while the girl's contralto thrilled through all.
“Well, Miss Blood,” said the captain, when the service had ended in that subordination of the spiritual to the artistic34 interest which marks the process and the close of so much public worship in our day, “you've given us a surprise. I guess we shall keep you pretty busy with our calls for music, after this.”
“She is a genius!” observed Staniford at his first opportunity with Dunham. “I knew there must be something the matter. Of course she's going out to school her voice; and she hasn't strained it in idle babble35 about her own affairs! I must say that Lu—Miss Blood's power of holding her tongue commands my homage36. Was it her little coup37 to wait till we got into that hopeless hobble before she struck in?”
“Coup? For shame, Staniford! Coup at such a time!”
“Well, well! I don't say so. But for the theatre one can't begin practicing these effects too soon. Really, that voice puts a new complexion6 on Miss Blood. I have a theory to reconstruct. I have been philosophizing her as a simple country girl. I must begin on an operatic novice38. I liked the other better. It gave value to the black silk; as a singer she'll wear silk as habitually as a cocoon39. She will have to take some stage name; translate Blood into Italian. We shall know her hereafter as La Sanguinelli; and when she comes to Boston we shall make our modest brags40 about going out to Europe with her. I don............