According to the Pattern (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill
spot. Mrs. Winthrop visited noted decorators, and wandered with attentive eye through the model rooms in house-furnishing establishments until she was well versed in the effects aimed at by the highest artists in that line. She had faithfully followed the advice of her magazine to study her rooms from different points of view and make them express something beautiful from every one, and the effect was really lovely, although to her it spoke of but one thing—her great sorrow. There was nothing gaudy or imposing about the pleasant little house. All was in keeping with its surroundings, but there was not a spot that did not suggest restfulness, brightness, a cheery place in which to chat, an inviting nook to read a book. She certainly had succeeded beyond her highest hopes in making her home an attractive one to the guests she proposed to bring there, but the wonder was that she had succeeded when the real feelings in her heart had been anything but restfulness and peace and joy, the elements of a true home.
And then came the question of the guests. Ah, those guests. Who were they to be? It had seemed easy to get into society by the purchase of a few gowns and the arrangement of her house, with the sending out of the mysterious bits of white pasteboard which meant so much in society. But first, who was society, the society into which she must get to win her point? And how was she to find out? Her husband could tell her. Of course he knew all about it, but it would not do to ask him. If she had done as he wished when they were first married and gone hither and yon and entertained, all might have been different. Perhaps she would have held her own with him if she had done so. Doubtless their money would have been inadequate for such a life, but then too, doubtless many things would have been different. It was too late to think of what might have been. It was too late to go to her husband for help to undo her past. She must accomplish her task alone.
Then she sat down with determined mien to surmount this new difficulty in her path. She thought over the list of her acquaintances. There was just one person, and she could scarce be called an acquaintance, upon whose presence she was determined, if it was possible to compass it, and that person was Mrs. Sylvester. What sort of a woman she was, how she would accept society— such society as Mrs. Claude Winthrop could offer her— and how society--the kind of society that was Mrs. Winthrop’s ideal—would accept Mrs. Sylvester, were questions that forced themselves upon her thoughts continually and which she compelled herself to put away. She could not answer them. It was better for her that they were not answered, for have Mrs. Sylvester she would, and after all, when danger and chance of mistake were on every hand in this unknown way, what mattered a few little questions like that? She had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Therefore Mrs. Sylvester’s name and address, carefully remembered, headed the list when she set herself to make it out.
Then there were her neighbors. She thought them carefully over. Not one of them was what she would call a society woman, for theirs was not a fashionable street. There was the woman across the way who slapped her baby and the woman on her right who wore such a horrible bonnet and the one on her left who borrowed butter and sugar and eggs over the back fence and talked bad English and called her husband always “He.” The would-be hostess shivered and let her mind travel rapidly up the street and down again on the other side, and decided that there was only one eligible neighbor on it and she a quiet, sweet-faced, elderly woman, who dressed plainly and lived alone with a niece, a pretty girl who tasteful fingers allowed her always to be dressed well. With a defiant thought toward Mrs. Sylvester and a remembrance that her husband hid once said they were the only really intellectual people on the street, she wrote down the name of the Winslows.
Then she bit her pencil and thought again. There were the ladies of the church who had called upon her when she first moved to that place several years ago, and who had continued to call at long intervals apparently from a sense of duty. They were not society people, but were wealthy and dressed well and would do her no discredit. She certainly owed them a social debt if she owed it to anyone in the whole city. One after another she wrote their names hesitatingly, her face troubled meanwhile. These were not the kind of people who could help her much in what she had to do. There were others in the church where they had gone, regularly at first and then more seldom, till now they scarcely went at all. It was a large church and fashionable. Yes, and there were society people in it. Religion was fashionable sometimes. She had met a few, but would she dare invite such people on so slight acquaintance? Mrs. Sylvester was different. She was to be invited anyway. But these others. There were the Lymans and the Whartons and the Bidwells and a dozen other families. Stay, did not her magazine help her there? It suggested that she attend some of the charities of her church. Perhaps there she would become better acquainted. But what were they and how was she to find out? She must go to church and discover.
She leaned wearily back in her chair and drew her hands nervously across her eyes. It was Saturday evening, and she had been feeling thankful that it was a disgrace to sew on the Sabbath and she could have a little time to rest, but here came another duty looming up for that day also. There was no help for it, however. She saw that she must go and begin to get acquainted.
Back flew her pencil to her paper and down went the names of the best families in her church, with an inward resolve to come home from the service the next day with an introduction to some of them, if it were a possible thing, and a list of all the meetings of the church at which she would be likely to meet them. Poor little woman. She did not know how few, how pitifully few, of these best families attended the different meetings of the church. Well for her that she did not, for she counted much on those “charities” that she was to take up for bringing her friends, and one more straw that night might have broken her down, she was so near to discouragement.
There came a memory now of men her husband called great, men he had met and some he wished. to meet. She wrote their names all down, wondering gravely if there was any way in which she could get to know them well enough to invite them to her home.
One in particular, a man well known in political circles and whose speeches in the United States House of Representatives had become famous. She suddenly remembered a much neglected cousin of her mother’s living in another part of the city who had an intimate acquaintance with this great man, being an old schoolmate of his sister. Perhaps she could help. At any rate she must be invited. Her cheek crimsoned at the thought that she had been forgotten, and she drew her breath quickly as she wondered what Aunt Katharine would think of Mrs. Sylvester.
Then there were a few literary people well known to Aunt Katharine. Down went their names and up came Aunt Katharine in her niece’s estimation as her heart began to lighten. Counting up, she saw she had a goodly list if—that great if—if they all came.
The little cuckoo clock that had been a cherished wedding gift came out and sang twelve times in the hallway, and Mrs. Winthrop, remembering with a sigh the hour of church and that morning was already upon her, put the list in her desk and went to bed, wondering as she closed her aching eyes if the days would ever be over when all this horror would be a thing of the past and she could lie down in quietness and peace and truly rest.
Chapter 5: An Unexpected Service
Mrs. Winthrop had hurried to church late and seated herself a little flurried over a new gown she wore, which seemed to her not to fit just right. She was anxious to put on her bravest front before the world in this her first approach for its favor. She bowed her head in reverent attitude, but her mind was still intent upon the problem which had occupied it on the way to church—whether she could achieve the making of a certain gown described in her last fashion magazine without any more help than the picture and her own wits. She raised her head and sat back in her seat as the text was announced:
“See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.”
The words startled her. They could not have sounded to her soul more loudly if they had been, “See that thou make all things according to the patterns showed to thee in the fashion magazine.”
Indeed, when the sentence first reached her ear, her overstrained imagination fancied the preacher was speaking to her, had read her thought, and was about to administer a reproof. Her color rose and she