登陆注册
15319900000045

第45章 The Maternal Feminine[1919](3)

"...Well, but, my dear, it's the style--the line--you're paying for, not the material.""No, that hat doesn't do a thing for you.""I've got it.I had you in mind when I bought it.Now don't say you can't wear henna.Wait till you see it on."When she stood behind you as you sat, uncrowned and expectant before the mirror, she would poise the hat four inches above your head, holding it in the tips of her fingers, a precious, fragile thing.Your fascinated eyes were held by it, and your breath as well.Then down it descended, slowly, slowly.A quick pressure.

Her fingers firm against your temples.A little sigh of relieved suspense.

"That's wonderful on you!...You don't! Oh, my dear! But that's because you're not used to it.You know how you said, for years, you had to have a brim, and couldn't possibly wear a turban, with your nose, until I proved to you that if the head size was only big...Well, perhaps this needs just a lit-tle lift here.Ju-u-ust a nip.There! That does it."And that did it.Not that Sophy Decker ever tried to sell you a hat against your judgment, taste, or will.She was too wise a psychologist and too shrewd a businesswoman for that.She preferred that you go out of her shop hatless rather than with an unbecoming hat.But whether you bought or not you took with you out of Sophy Decker's shop somethingmore precious than any hatbox ever contained.Just to hear her admonishing a customer, her good-natured face all aglow:

"My dear, always put on your hat before you get into your dress.

I do.You can get your arms above your head, and set it right.I put on my hat and veil as soon's I get my hair combed."In your mind's eye you saw her, a stout, well-stayed figure in tight brassiere and scant slip, bare-armed and bare-bosomed, in smart hat and veil, attired as though for the street from the neck up and for the bedroom from the shoulders down.

The East End set bought Sophy Decker's hats because they were modish and expensive hats.But she managed, miraculously, to gain a large and lucrative following among the paper-mill girls and factory hands as well.You would have thought that any attempt to hold both these opposites would cause her to lose one or the other.Aunt Sophy said, frankly, that of the two, she would have preferred to lose her smart trade.

"The mill girls come in with their money in their hands, you might say.They get good wages and they want to spend them.I wouldn't try to sell them one of those little plain model hats.They wouldn't understand 'em or like them.And if I told them the price they'd think I was trying to cheat them.They want a hat with something good and solid on it.Their fathers wouldn't prefer caviar to pork roast, would they? It's the same idea."Her shopwindows reflected her business acumen.One was chastely, severely elegant, holding a single hat poised on a slender stick.

In the other were a dozen honest arrangements of velvet and satin and plumes.

At the spring opening she always displayed one of those little toques completely covered with violets.That violet-covered toque was a symbol.

"I don't expect 'em to buy it," Sophy Decker explained."But everybody feels there should be a hat like that at a spring opening.It's like a fruit centerpiece at a family dinner.Nobody ever eats it, but it has to be there."The two Baldwin children--Adele and Eugene--found Aunt Sophy'sshop a treasure trove.Adele, during her doll days, possessed such boxes of satin and velvet scraps, and bits of lace and ribbon and jet as to make her the envy of all her playmates.She used to crawl about the floor of the shop workroom and under the table and chairs like a little scavenger.

"What in the world do you do with all that truck, child?" asked Aunt Sophy."You must have barrels of it."Adele stuffed another wisp of tulle into the pocket of her pinafore."I keep it," she said.

When she was ten Adele had said to her mother, "Why do you always say `Poor Sophy'?""Because--Aunt Sophy's had so little in life.She never has married, and has always worked."Adele considered that."If you don't get married do they say you're poor?""Well--yes----"

"Then I'll get married," announced Adele.A small, dark, eerie child, skinny and rather foreign-looking.The boy, Eugene, had the beauty which should have been the girl's.Very tall, very blond, with the straight nose and wistful eyes of the Flora of twenty years ago."If only Adele could have had his looks," his mother used to say."They're wasted on a man.He doesn't need them, but a girl does.Adele will have to be well dressed and interesting.And that's such hard work."Flora said she worshiped her children.And she actually sometimes still coquetted heavily with her husband.At twenty she had been addicted to baby talk when endeavoring to coax something out of someone.Her admirers had found it irresistible.At forty it was awful.Her selfishness was colossal.She affected a semi-invalidism and for fifteen years had spent one day a week in bed.She took no exercise and a great deal of soda bicarbonate and tried to fight her fat with baths.Fifteen or twenty years had worked a startling change in the two sisters, Flora the beautiful and Sophy the plain.It was more than a mere physical change.It was a spiritual thing, though neither knew nor marked it.Each had taken on weight, the one, solidly, comfortably; the other, flabbily, unhealthily.With the encroaching fat, Flora's small, delicate featuresseemed, somehow, to disappear in her face, so that you saw it as a large white surface bearing indentations, ridges, and hollows like one of those enlarged photographs of the moon's surface as seen through a telescope.A self-centered face, and misleadingly placid.Aunt Sophy's large, plain features, plumply padded now, impressed you as indicating strength, courage, and a great human understanding.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 逃脱仇家的爱恋

    逃脱仇家的爱恋

    她,被诅咒便成的又胖又矮的丑妞,但还是被帅到吐血的暖男守护着。他,月魔界唯一长生的殿下,生前是暖男,重生后变得冷酷无情,手段阴狠,为阻止她的苏醒,再一次棋逢对手,与追随她的龙族太子明争暗斗。遭受无尽皮肉之苦后,重唤真身,越界入魔救父,尽请看仇家恋人与前世夫君间的爱恨纠葛。。。。。。
  • 爷爷和叔公的烽火抗战

    爷爷和叔公的烽火抗战

    日寇的铁蹄在中华大地肆意践踏,中华民族到了危亡的紧急关头,所有中华民族的优秀儿女,在中国共产党的领导下奋勇抗击,谱写了浴血奋战、可歌可泣的壮丽篇章。小说以爷爷和叔公的故事,再现了那个烽火硝烟的战争年代。描述了爷爷辈为了祖国浴血奋战,奋勇抵抗日本强盗的侵略,在极其艰苦的条件下,坚定自己的信念,巧妙地与日本鬼子斗智斗勇,情节曲折,让人热血沸腾。
  • 故事还很长,要继续听么

    故事还很长,要继续听么

    我叫鹿晗,是一个幼儿园老师,我有很多故事,也很喜欢讲故事,所以孩子们总会在下课时缠着我给他们讲故事。有一天,校长把一个长得很像我的一个老朋友的男孩交给了我,说给我休假让我这几天都帮他养着那个男孩,可我没想到,就是这个男孩,让我和他的命运再一次有了交集。
  • 仙剑奇侠之天剑

    仙剑奇侠之天剑

    上古天剑碎裂,九大碎片遍布六界,百万年的命运再次开启,只为再续百万年前的六界危机!林俞无意间得到一块神秘碎片,一心求仙的他从中领悟了一些不为人知的东西!从而踏上了一条牵续百万年的道路!是结局还是开始!是毁灭后的重生还是命运的安排!一切自有定数!
  • 鬼君异闻录

    鬼君异闻录

    我叫轩,有人也叫我鬼君。至于地府八君?不好意思他们早就随着仙庭灰飞烟灭了。而我一直徘徊在这世间,与人讲述着你们早就不相信的故事。姑且是故事吧。
  • 大美人的生物钟美颜圣典

    大美人的生物钟美颜圣典

    本书共分四部分,包括神秘的生物钟子午流注生物钟四季美容生物钟变化生物钟,没有最美只有更美。
  • 人神海星空

    人神海星空

    星空最璀璨,人世真妖娆。万变我的爱,繁华是我心。大海不曾变,仙神才是人。唯一方不朽,永恒是王道。两种截然不同的道义,永恒与变换的战争。星空深处的神秘人,高坐云端的天帝,人世欢乐的少年,无边海上飘荡的岛屿,千百年的布局,这一切为了谁?永恒,变化,谁是最终的天道?人,神,星空,谁是最后的王者?
  • 福妻驾到

    福妻驾到

    现代饭店彪悍老板娘魂穿古代。不分是非的极品婆婆?三年未归生死不明的丈夫?心狠手辣的阴毒亲戚?贪婪而好色的地主老财?吃上顿没下顿的贫困宭境?不怕不怕,神仙相助,一技在手,天下我有!且看现代张悦娘,如何身带福气玩转古代,开面馆、收小弟、左纳财富,右傍美男,共绘幸福生活大好蓝图!!!!快本新书《天媒地聘》已经上架开始销售,只要3.99元即可将整本书抱回家,你还等什么哪,赶紧点击下面的直通车,享受乐乐精心为您准备的美食盛宴吧!)
  • 四叶草精灵

    四叶草精灵

    她,是高贵的四叶草精灵,她的降临预示着幸福的开始,他,是平凡的少年,却被诅咒一辈子得不到幸福。当她遇到他时,也许是他厄运的终点,或者,仅仅是另一个厄运的起点。
  • 守护甜心之皇室四公主

    守护甜心之皇室四公主

    一位转学生的到来,让亚梦的生活有了翻天覆地的变化……