IV.

Whether it is ultimately to our good benefit or not, it can be said that the passing of time is the ultimate test for all things--and as the passing days are wound into weeks, and those weeks in turn lead to months, and months become years, Marianne and Luella both continue to blossom into proper young ladies, each in their own right.

Now, it is five years that have passed, and the season is the dead of winter, when the whole town is frosted in a blanket of white snow. Carollers are about, mustering in the mistletoe-laden streets; doing their rounds amid mingling tides of Yuletide shoppers and teetering drunks. Everyone (or at least those with a warm coat and a place to sleep at night) is presumed to be at the very least just slightly more merry around this time of year; but alas, the daily miseries of living in that age are a year-round affair: now only made worse by a looming threat of frostbite.

Indeed, few can claim to be so well-off as Luella Lafferty: having been blessed with a holiday allowance from her stepfather--so gratuitous that it would assuredly cause the average factory worker to weep--she wishes more strongly than most to spread the holiday cheer this season; particularly, with her sear old friend.

The door to Haskell's Boutique opens with a jingle of bells, and laughter, to herald her arrival. 

"Miss Laferty!" Blurts the tiny man at the sales counter, eagerly grinning--like a slobbering lap dog--when he rushes to greet her. "What an incredible honor it is to welcome you to my humble business!"

However, just as these flattering words escape his lips, his gaze is drawn to the black hole looming inconspicuously behind her: a dour, thin and gangly, black-eyed creature, with short-cut hair that is let to haphazardly sprout from her head, like black hay straws; a young woman who wastes her youth: by garbing in an ugly brown blouse, like something a hag would wear, as if going out of her way to appear unattractive. By comparison, it is the far more flamboyant Luella--handsomely garbed in Parisian furs--that always receives first notice between the two; whereas Marianne serves as like an overwrought shadow: one cast by Luella's own radiant beauty, that has seemingly only been further exceeded with maturity: her maintained petiteness now equipped with a pleasantly more robust form; her shoulder-length hair, styled into elaborate ringlets with curled bangs, and tied in places with pretty, flowing pink bow ribbons. 

"I see you have also brought a...friend." Haskell says, his eyebrow raised in perplexity at the abnormal pairing before him-- at this vibrantly glowing sun, and its gloomy orbiting rock: communed together in such bewilderingly close proximity.

 Marianne shifts uncomfortably under his scrutinizing gaze, reading his mystified impression of the odd pair well enough.

Fortunately, Luella is quick to intervene:"Happy Christmas, Mr. Haskell!" She says. "I am glad to see you are well." After which, he opens his mouth to say something, only to be crudely cut off--"Now, if it pleases you, I think my friend and I can manage the shopping by ourselves, but we shall be sure to call on you should your services become useful to us."

"Right." Mr. Haskell says, tactfully beaming to conceal his offense; whereafter, whilst proceeding to turn away from him briskly, Marianne watches as Luella's cordial smile promptly fades. Despite her veneer of politeness, in truth she cannot bid the man farewell near fast enough for her liking; reason being, it is known to Marianne that Mr. Lafferty's factory supplies most of the clothes stores and dressmakers in town, and has thereby long since grown weary of such groveling displays from people vainly wishing to curry his favor.

Retreating from Haskell, Marianne bends to whisper into her ear: "forget a licking--that man would devour the whole boot, if your ladyship were to so sweetly request it."

Luella giggles. "Forsooth: they all would, if not for the thin veil of decency keeping us all from savagery."

What a queer observation, Marianne 

The storefront of the boutique is impeccably tidy: polished-to-sparkling, with well-lit aisles adorned in all the best fashions of the day (outside of Paris).

"Go on." Luella implores Marianne, whom--in her combined measures of reluctance and unfamiliarity with such austere, highbrow settings--hasn't moved at all save to follow her. "Don't just dally at my heel! Pick out something."

Marianne shudders, feigning an appearance of innocence. "Oh, no! Bless your heart, but I really mustn't; your family has already been so good and generous to me, that I couldn't possibly ask for more than I have already been given: in the form of blisters, and headaches, and seating pains, and bitter loneliness, and--"

"Oh, enough of that." Luella huffs. "I shall just have to pick for you."

She continues to rifle through the racks of clothes whilst Marianne performs her own nervous thumbing and shifting about; the former eventually stopping to test the smooth velvet of one slender, deep black dress that catches her eye, before unveiling it to Marianne with a gleeful smile.

Marianne glances over the dress once, with a half-hearted smile.

Luella giggles. "Don't bewitch me with your eyes, so! It's only that I know you would look most peculiar in a wardrobe with all the frills, lace, garish colors and the like." She holds the dress up to her again, as if to mentally equip it on her, then nodding decisively. "It's just that you should wear something better matched to your size; only so that you don't risk looking like an old crone."

"Verily! But why should I not adopt the full Victoria look? 

 Am I judged to be in need of another mourning dress to add to my collection?"

"It is a mature, sensible look."

"What point is there to me dressing up? My very person is ugly--clothing can do nothing to salvage it."

"Tut! Such thoughts will give you wrinkles."

Marianne scoffs. "Would be well enough; not as though I'm attempting to impress anyone."

"It's not about impressing others, my pet."

"Then what the devil is it for, to look nicely?" Marianne snaps. "Prithee tell, for what other purpose does a girl dress all comely: than to warrant a gentleman's ogling? Something for which I possess no desire nor necessity."

"To impress another--"with firmness, she directly shoves the dress into Marianne's chest-- "Gentle-lady?!"

Marianne stares down at the bestowed dress, agape, then at Luella again. "Are you serious about spending so much...on a lost cause, such as I?"

Luella smiles, patting her on the shoulder. 

"Quite--let it be a testament to how well I think that dress will glorify you. And should you attract unwanted eyes: doubtless your wicked sharp tongue can deal with any young animal that is a tad too hasty in his advances."

Marianne looks doubtful. "You flatter me; as only a good friend, or a conniving thief does."

With this she doesn't say more, but privately remains set in the notion that she is but only a young lady in the material sense; that immaterially, she is exceedingly more precocious as to be closer to an old crone in spirit: looking upon her final days on this earth with abject jadedness, but also a sense of bitter calm acceptance.

Nevertheless, she relents enough to accept the dress and wear it; if only to please Luella.

**********

Within an hour, the raging blizzard outside has subsided, and the night has fallen silent: the carollers having stopped their chorusing for a brief respite of eggnog and coffee; the hordes of shoppers having dwindled to but a small trickle; the majority of the roving drunkards having found sanctuary for the night, or else passed out unto the snow-covered streets, putting themselves at the mercies of samaritans.

It is at this time, just when the festivities are dying down, that Marianne and Luella depart from the dress store. 

They trudge a path toward the river that lies north of town, holding hands and clinging closely together for warmth. Luella is humming to the tune of one of the carols they'd heard earlier that night--vocalizing her own crude renditions of some parts of the lyrics--as Marianne finds herself drifting off into the nostalgia of their younger days.

Marianne turns to her sharply.

"Remember that spot we used to sit at by the river, where we'd go to feed the ducks?"

Luella nods, blushing to herself; or just as well from the cold.

 "I remember it for a good deal more than that."

As the two wax on about other good times they'd shared together, Marianne is incurred with a growing sense that something is wrong. To frame it in words of poetry, it was like she could hear the life slowly draining from Luella's voice: increasing with every exchange and passing second; like blood pouring out from a dangled pig, onto the cobblestone streets.

For as long as Marianne has known her, this creature has never been one for subtlety; so, for Luella to carry on so withdrawn, then it most certainly hinted toward something major.

Now, because Marianne has become lost in her worries, and Luella still is holding fast to her secrets, the two continue in a mutually contemplative silence until they eventually reach it: nestled abreast of the roadside, past the shrubline that essentially walls the lower embankment off from the road where, during the daytime, there is plentiful shade to be found among a small clustering of evergreen trees hugging the shore, close to the water's edge; more importantly, there was shelter provided from prying public eyes.

It is just as the girls recall; albeit, there are no ducks on the water at this time of year: with a thin white sheet of ice covering the whole of the river, up to the mouth where it forms a communion with the sea in the town's only harbor. 

Luella sits, beckoning Marianne to join with one hand--an altogether peculiar trance of solemn desperation to the her, personified in her subtly strained eyes and subdued yet not entirely calm composure; a countenance which Marianne finds herself bizarrely likening to a condemned man, maintaining his pride and innocence even into the seconds leading up to his hanging, just before the floor is to give way beneath him.

"Marianne..." She says, with the meek frown and innocently furrowed brow of a polite child caught red-handed in their naughtiness. "I fear I have acted most selfishly this evening."

Marianne laughs. "Selfish? I say, I am the one being spoiled tonight!"

"Oh, but it is true." Luella insists, touching her friend imploringly upon the arm;  her famously lilting, singsong voice seeming to have lost all its spectacular luster and grace, like a sad pearl washed up to shore. "I wanted tonight to be merry, so I hadn't planned to tell you." 

"However, before I am to make the admittance that will clear my conscience--"

She directly cries: "In my weakness, I must be selfish again--one last time!"

Marianne, caught off guard by this confounding talk of guilt tailed by an outburst, is then in the process of formulating some diffusing wisecrack, when suddenly, the significantly shorter Luella cranes herself: lunging her face upwards, to meet the unsuspecting Marianne's carelessly parted lips.

A hungry, unrestrained mingling of the tastes ensues: of both their lips continually pressing and gasping for breath, of warm tongues at first timidly investigating, but quickly becoming more confident; of their chaste chests and thighs grazing, and fingers grasping unrestrictedly at shoulders, waists and arms; all coalescing to communicate far more than what any simple words ever could. 

The nostalgic aromas off Luella's aura of perfumes, at this dizzying degree of closeness, is sufficient to blot out even the all-pervading industrial miasma of the town; and as Marianne closes her eyes she feels as though she can become completely lost--drowning--in that tantalizing realm of passion and pleasure, of sanctuary and spectacular beauty, as the instinctive romantic gestures she responds with are emerged precise, even machine-like in their automation, in contrast to Luella's own far more delicate, practiced maneuvers.

However, such a moment close to perfection matches the nature of a lightning strike, in that their union breaks just as abruptly as it had commenced: leaving both parties to stand, in exhausted breaths, with a chasm of cold air subsisting in between them: gazing, with freshly rekindled longing, into each other's eyes. 

Following a lengthy pause, Marianne smiles--inhaling deeply.

"That was...quite unexpected."

Luella nods, her chest continuing to expand and shrink with lingering thrill. "I could not help it; not after I had remembered...this is also the exact spot upon which we shared our very first kiss."

Marianne laughs, remembering it well.

"Now, there is a funny story behind that day, which I have yet to tell."

"Truth be told, I had received the idea while I was walking home from work one day, when--"she pauses, grinning delightedly in Luella's suspense--"I glimpsed  a couple of vagabonds...trying out each other's lips, in one of the back-alleys."

Luella giggles. "Oh, really now!" Chimes she. "I suppose they were both men, as well!"

"Indeed, they were." Marianne says, continuing unbiasedly. "But of course, it had me curious, and really, I just thought it looked rather fun, such that I--the naive little runt that I was--decided...I would test this new skill out on you one day, when it looked as though you needed some cheering up."

 "Father had been terribly cross with me that morning." Luella notes. "I was confused the first time, more than anything...but I certainly didn't dislike it."

She leans in close to Marianne, her voice falling to a sultry whisper.

"Not to mention...you're far better than any boy I've been with."

Feeling emboldened, Marianne runs a hand through Luella's flowing rings of hair, connecting their gazes. "I've missed you so much, Lu. When you stopped responding to my letters, I reasoned with myself that you were simply too busy; although, I couldn't ever be sure, if maybe...I'd been disposed of, and simply wasn't aware of it yet."

"No, that's--" Luella starts to say, sharply averting her gaze. "The truth of it is, and what I was meaning to tell you…"

She covers her mouth, muffling her sobs--only to be betrayed by tears.

Marianne moves to console her. "What is it? Everything's okay now, is it not? Whatever happened, I promise I'm not bitter at all: I was relieved just to know you were safe, more than anything, when I finally received your invitation."

Luella shakes her head.

"I...want to lie, to spare you, but I mustn't."

"It would only be all the more devastating, if I kept it a secret."

Seemingly upon mustering her courage, she lifts her face out of her palm to look straight into Marianne's eyes.

"The truth is...I am engaged to be married."