Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
1
When Helen Morrison caught the timid, butterfly-like little creature that Laurel was at thirteen, in her soft deft hands, and cautiously lifted one scooped palm from over the other, as it were, and peered into the dark, domed chamber to see what sort of creature was there, her interest was instantly aroused. She had never seen a little-girl specimen of Laurel's sort—so composed and self-possessed in speech and manner, so at home in smart, up-to-date frocks, so skilled in smart, up-to-date sports, so familiar with smart, up-to-date beauty-shop secrets—but underneath like a child who has lived on an island, alone somewhere, untold and untaught.
"She's like a book I bought in Florence once," Helen Morrison told Stephen one day, after Laurel had been visiting her. "It's a beautifully bound book, in full leather, and hand-tooled, in old blue and gold. But its pages are blank. I bought it to write odd bits of poetry in. Yes, Laurel is a little like that—beautifully finished on the outside, but full of pages as white as snow that never have been written on."
2
On a small table beside Helen Morrison's bed there was a picture of a little girl whose pages also had never been written on. Often Helen Morrison would take the lovely little miniature of her dead child close to the strong light, and gaze at it hard and long, in a hungry attempt to recall how the soft cheek used to feel when she brushed her own against it, how the limp little body used to melt into her arms when she held it close.
It was a beautiful baby's face that smiled back at Helen from out of the ivory, but it was always a baby's face. That was the pity of it. What would she have looked like to-day? (Oh, never to know. Never to know!) What strength and confidence and beauty would that weak little body have attained? What strength and confidence and beauty would that spark of fine intelligence, shining so steadily in her baby's face, have kindled under her constant caring and tending? What had they both lost—this little daughter and herself, in way of rare companionship and human love?
Sometimes as Helen gazed at the picture, it seemed that she caught a wistful expression in the eyes, as if, she sentimentalized, her little girl had become tired of waiting, waiting, waiting, so long to grow up. It hurt, even after years it hurt Helen Morrison, to feel the stab of her uselessness to this child who had so trusted her. Oh, if she could only do something to rescue her from that eternal loveliness of babyhood—give her back the gift of life again, even though it might hurt her sometimes, even as life had hurt her mother.
Helen Morrison had worshiped her gentle, flower-like little daughter. She had been more than just a precious baby to her. She had been a symbol, a manifestation, a gift from heaven. For years and years Helen Morrison had longed for something feminine of her own. She had never had anything feminine of her own. No sister, no mother. Her mother had died when she was born. Her father had never remarried. Helen had been brought up by nurses and governesses, under the strict régime of an elderly and masterful housekeeper.
Helen used to plan by the hour what she would do for a daughter if she ever had one of her own. Even before she thought seriously about marriage, she built air-castles about that little dream-girl of hers. She should have all the joys and delights which her own childhood had lacked. She should be surrounded, day and night, by feminine tenderness and comprehension. She should have a friend always waiting for her at home, to play with her, or to work with her, to walk and talk with her, or to love pretty clothes with her, or pity wounded bugs with her, or to hold hands with her when it "thundered and lightened." Later, when life itself seemed to "thunder and lighten" about her, there would still be somebody holding her hand, reassuring her, making facts lucid and clear, and truth beautiful. Helen had ideas about girls and what made for happiness in their lives. She would have filled the blank pages of her little daughter's book full of inspired and lovely things.
When that little girl was born, Helen Morrison had been married several years. She had already had two boys—fine sturdy specimens—but soldier-material, American business-man stuff. When a little girl, a little feminine creature of her own, was placed in the curve of Helen Morrison's arm, she could not speak for joy. It seemed as if a bit of heaven itself had slipped through the clouds. Her cup was full and brimming over. That precious relationship that she had lost so long ago, the day she was born when her mother died, had been given back to her again!
She spent two radiantly happy years with her daughter (Carol, she named her. It became the sweetest word in the English language to her), and then suddenly, with the arrow-like directness of a bolt of lightning from the skies, disease struck straight down into the holy of holies of her heart and killed her darling. By a mere accident the realization of her lifelong hope was broken into fragments—disintegrated into a thousand poignant little memories. Her little girl became a dream again, an ideal, a picture on ivory. "There were her boys." That is what people said in way of comfort. Yes, yes. Of course. Thank heaven she had her boys! But, oh, her boys must be made stalwart and bold, strong and tough-muscled. The image she would have modeled out of her bit of little-girl clay was to have been as graceful as poetry, as delicate as violin music, as perfect in detail, as fine and exquisite as an etching.
After Carol died, Helen Morrison offered her services to a certain charitable institution for working-girls in New York City. She was living in New York then. She had been living in New York ever since she married. She thought, perhaps, if something of the young and tender ideals she had had for Carol was given to other girls, then everything about her lovely baby would not remain in that state of undevelopment which hurt her so every time she looked at the miniature.
It was soon discovered at the working-girls' home that Mrs. Morrison possessed rare genius with girls. She knew just how to approach them—just how to talk with them. She could hold the attention of a whole roomful of factory hands reading poetry—Browning and Whitman—out loud to them, and telling them what it meant to her. She could interest a dozen lively little errand girls for an hour at a time, gathered around an ant-hill in operation, at the edge of one of her garden-paths at her summer place on Long Island. Frequently she had groups from the Home come out from the city during the summer, and spend a day with her in her garden, among the illuminating bugs and bees and flowers.
Helen Morrison usually talked with her working-girls in groups. She seldom came in contact with the girls individually. That was probably why they failed to satisfy her, why they remained, always, simply a worthy charity dedicated to the memory of the little girl beside her bed. It wasn't until Laurel came to spend a week with Helen Morrison that she felt the same heart-string, which Carol had pulled so hard once long ago, gently touched again. It hurt a little at first—brought back the old pain. But it also brought back a little timid thrill of the old joy and ecstasy.
There was something of the same pristine beauty about Laurel at thirteen as about her own child's crystallized innocence. There were areas in Laurel's soul, big white expanses, untouched by experience, unsullied by life. It was almost as if those parts of Laurel had disappeared into a picture also, when she, too, was just learning to walk alone.
Laurel was nearly the same age as Carol. She was dark like Carol. Graver than gay, like Carol. She wore the same sort of clothes Carol would have worn. She had slept at night, it occurred to Helen with a little twinge, in the same bed where Carol would have slept, sometimes, now her father was gone. Even her name was something like Carol's.
After Helen Morrison said good-bye to Laurel at the end of her first visit, wrapped her own coat about her, tucked her in beside her father in the automobile, and laughingly, playfully kissed her good-bye, she hurried away quickly to her own room and closed the door. Taking the miniature close to the light, she gazed at it till the slow tears ran down her cheeks.