CHAPTER XXVIIThe Home-ComingMr. Leighton departed from his first feelings of hurry where Mabel and Jean were concerned, and delayed their home coming till Elma was in a condition not to be retarded by any extra excitement.They drove away at last from the club early in the morning, so that they had the entire house to see them off. It was very nearly as bad as leaving Ridgetown."I shall not be able to walk past your door for some days," said one red-haired girl. "Oh, don't I know that feeling?"She was compelled to stay in London, with only a fortnight's holiday in summer time."I shall send you forget-me-nots by every post," said Jean. "You'll be in love with the new girl in a week.""I won't," said the red-haired girl.They had gifts from all of the girls stowed away somewhere. What a morning! Even the hall porter showed signs of dejection at their going."It will never be the same without you, miss," he said to Mabel.One's own family were not so complimentary.Mabel and Jean left in a heaped-up four-wheeler."I feel quite sick, you know," said Jean.It was a historic statement, and Mabel had her own qualms. They left a houseful of good little friendly people, a dazzling, hard-working London, and they were going back--to the wedding of Isobel. Mabel had not got over the feeling that drama only exists in a brilliant manner in London, and that life in one's own home, though peaceful, was drab colour. It wouldn't be drab colour, it would be radiant of course, if happy unexpected things happened there. How it would lighten to the colour of rose, oh gorgeous life, if such a thing could ever happen now! But it wouldn't. All that would happen would be that Robin would marry Isobel and that she should keep on playing piano. Ah well, in any case, she could play piano a long way better than she ever did. And Jean could sing with a certain distinction of method. Not nearly ripe, this method, as Jean informed every one, but on the way. Her voice would be worth hearing at twenty-five.Much of the effect they would make on Ridgetown was invested in the boxes piled above them. All their spare time lately had been taken up in spending their allowance in clothes and panning things neatly out to London standards. It gave them an amount of reliance in themselves and in their return which was very exhilarating. Though what did it all matter with Miss Annie gone?"It terrifies me to think of Ridgetown without Miss Annie. What shall we do there?" asked Jean mournfully."Yes, that's it," replied Mabel. "No one dying in London would make that difference. I shall think, as we are driving home, Miss Annie isn't there. Won't you?""And here they would only have a little more time for somebody else," said Jean.They drove through the early morning streets with a tiny relief at their heart. On their next drive they would know everybody they passed."Oh, how deadly I felt when I came here!" said Jean. "Knowing no one, and thinking that if I died in the cab no one near me would care!"They reached Ridgetown in the afternoon. A carriage was drawn up at the station gates. In it were Mrs. Leighton, Miss Grace and Elma.Mabel stood transfixed."Oh, Elma," she said, "Elma!"Elma knew it. She wasn't as fat as a pumpkin after all. And every one had kept on saying that she was fatter than any pumpkin. Mabel was the only one who had told the truth. She leaned over the folded hood of the carriage and hugged her gently."I should like to inform you Mabs, I'm as fat as a pumpkin."But Mabel hung on to the carriage with her head down. No one had told her that Elma had been so ill as this.Elma had the look of having been in a far country--why hadn't some one told her? Miss Grace, who had been away for some weeks with Adelaide Maud and had just got back in fairly good spirits, did some of the conversing which helped Mabel to recover herself.Cuthbert and Betty came hurrying up from the wrong end of the train."Oh, and we missed you," wailed Betty, "and I wanted to be the first."One could hug indiscriminately at Ridgetown Station. Jean was the next person to melt into tears. She had tried to tell Miss Grace how sorry she was.Cuthbert began to restore order."You'd better take two in that carriage, crowded or not," said he. "There are boxes lying on the platform which will require a cab to themselves.""It's our music," said Jean importantly and quite untruthfully."It's my new hat," said Mabel, with a return of her old dash.She had gone round the carriage seeing each occupant separately, and there seemed to be no hurry for anything, merely the pleasure of meeting again.Just then there was a whirl of wheels in the distance. A certain familiarity in the sound made four girls look at each other. Mrs. Leighton, who had no ear for wheels, stared in a surprised way at her daughters."Well," she said, "what are we all waiting for? We must get home sometime.""Yes," asked Cuthbert lustily, "what in the wide world are we waiting for?"A high wagonette and pair of horses drove up, and turned with a fine circle into line behind them. In the wagonette sat Adelaide Maud. Adelaide Maud was dressed in blue."That," said Elma, with a sigh of great contentment.The three girls dashed at Adelaide Maud.Elma laid her hand on Cuthbert's."Go and say how do you do to Adelaide Maud," said she.For a minute or two she was left with Mrs. Leighton and Miss Grace. Then Cuthbert came to her."Get up," said he to Elma. "Get up. You're to go with Adelaide Maud.""Who is this Adelaide Maud who interferes with every plan in connection with my family?" asked Mrs. Leighton. She had a resigned note in her voice. "Shall we ever get home," she kept asking.A voice behind them broke in."I didn't tell him to be impolite, Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud. "I only asked to have Elma in my carriage."Elma looked provokingly at Adelaide Maud."I'm so sorry," said she, "but I'm driving home with Cuthbert.""It's not true," said Cuthbert. "She's doing nothing of the kind.""Then I shall get in here," said Adelaide Maud calmly, and proceeded to step in.Several people tried to stop her."I want to drive home with mummy," said Jean."And I mean to take Elma," said Mabel.Mrs. Leighton leant back in the carriage."I should like to mention," she said, "that this is not a royal procession, and that we only take about two and a half minutes to get home in any case. What does it matter which carriage we go in?""Every second is of value," said Jean."Well, here you are, Jean, get in beside your mother," said Adelaide Maud. "And, Elma and Mabel, you come with me. And, Mr. Leighton, you look after Miss Grace. What could be more admirable?"They did it because it seemed the simplest way out, except Cuthbert, who backed into the station and came up on a cab with the luggage. He looked vindictively at Adelaide Maud as he descended, as though he would say, "This is your doing."The three conveyances were blocking the wide sweep of gravel in front of the White House.Adelaide Maud patted one of the horses' heads in an unnecessary manner."I must congratulate you on your professorship," said she."Thank you," said Cuthbert."So nice for your family too, to have you here all summer.""Excellent," said Cuthbert."I don't see how you can run a lectureship when you say so little." Adelaide Maud spoke very crisply, and in a nice cool manner.Cuthbert looked stolidly at the men carrying in luggage."The students will respect me probably," he said grimly.Adelaide Maud laughed a clear ringing laugh. Then she looked at Cuthbert once "straight in the eye" and ran indoors. Cuthbert began pulling boxes about with unnecessary violence.They had tea in the drawing-room amidst the roses, for the tables were covered with them. Mabel did nothing but wander about and say, "Oh, oh, and isn't it lovely to be home."But Jean sat right down and in a business-like manner began to describe London. Also, she was very sorry for Elma, because now she, Jean, knew what it was to be ill. She began to detail her symptoms to Elma."Oh, Jean, you little monkey," said Mabel. "Don't listen to her, she wasn't ill a bit." It was the only point on which Mabel and Jean really differed.Isobel came sailing in. Nothing could have been nicer than the way she greeted them."Oh, Isobel, aren't you dying to hear me sing?" asked Jean. It never dawned on her but that Isobel, who had been so keen to get her off to a good master, put art first and everything else afterwards.Mrs. Leighton would never forget the way in which Mabel received her. Mabs had developed into a finely balanced woman. There was no sign of her wanting to detract in the slightest from Isobel's happiness."Do let me see your ring. How pretty! And how it fits your hand, just a beautiful ring. Some engagement rings look as though they had only been made for fat Jewesses. Don't they? I love those tiny diamonds set round the big ones. Where are you going for your honeymoon?""I'm going first for my things," said Isobel. "I've got no further than that. Miss Meredith and I are taking a week in London next week."That was her triumph, that she had "squared" Miss Meredith. Miss Meredith had really a lonely little heart beating beneath all her paltry ambitions. Always she had been stretching for what was very difficult of attainment. She had stretched for a wife for Robin, and she had stretched in vain. Then suddenly one day this undesirable Isobel had asked her to go to London to help with her trousseaux. No one perhaps knew what a strange and unlooked-for delight filled her heart, what gates of starchy reserve were opened to this new flood of gratitude rising within her. Robin had always, although influenced by her in an intangible way, treated her as though she were a useful piece of furniture. He so invariably discounted her services; it had made her believe that her only chance of keeping him at all was in imposing on him her hardest, most unlovable traits. That Isobel, of her own accord, should seek her advice, out of the crowd who were willing to confer it, really agitated her. From that moment she was Isobel's willing ally.Isobel saw here the result of incalculable goodness as encouraged by Mr. Leighton. His words had stung her to an exalted notion of what she might do to show him that she could confer as well as receive. She should "ingratiate Sarah" in a thorough manner. The result of it surprised her more than she would confess. There were other ways of receiving benefits than by grabbing with both hands it seemed. Isobel began to think that unselfish people probably remained unselfish because they found it a paying business. Nothing would ever really relieve her mind of its mercenary element.The funniest experience of her life was this new friendship with Sarah. Mr. Leighton noted it, and she saw that he noted it. She went one day to him in almost a contrite mood."I've begun to ingratiate Sarah," said she, "I believe I'm rather liking the experience."Mr. Leighton knew better than to lecture her at all. He thought indeed that signs of relenting would not readily occur between either of them."Goodness is an admirable habit," he said lightly.She thanked him for having fallen into her mood by this much."Well, anyhow, a little exhibition of it on my part has evidently been a welcome tonic to Sarah," she said.Mabel and Jean found her easier than of yore. Only Elma carried the reserve formed by what she had gone through into the present moment of rapture. They made Mabel play and Jean sing, and Adelaide Maud and Jean performed a duet together.Cuthbert pranced about and applauded heavily, and Adelaide Maud swung her crisp skirts and bowed low in a professional manner."If I can't sing," said she, "I can bow. So do you mind if I do it again?" So she bowed again.It was quite different to the old Adelaide Maud, who aired such starchy manners in their drawing-room.Lance came in by an early train."Heard you were home," said he, "and ran in to see if you'd take some Broken Hills, or Grand Trunks, or Consolidated Johnnies, you know."He produced a note-book."Now Mrs. Leighton promised to buy a whole mine of shares the other day, and she hasn't done it. How am I to get on with my admirable firm, if my best clients fail me in this way?"Jean exploded into laughter. Lance as a stockbroker, what next!"You needn't laugh," he said. "I made twenty-five pounds for the mater last week. Not your mater, mine!""Don't listen to Lance's illegal practices," said Elma.Lance struck an attitude in front of Mabel."Oh, mother," he said, "how you've growed. I'm afraid of you. Wait till you see what Maclean will say!""Maclean?""Yes. Now, Elma, don't pretend to look blank about it. It was you who told me."Elma groaned. (If it only were Mr. Maclean!)"I told you nothing," she said. "You are not to be trusted, I've always known that, in Stock Exchange or out of it, I'd never tell you a single thing.""Well, it was Aunt Katharine," said Lance with conviction. She had just appeared in the doorway."Well, well," she said in a fat, breathless way. "Well, you're home, and I am glad. Dear, how tall you both are! And is that the latest?" She looked at Mabel's hat. "Well, well. We've had enough trouble with you away. Elma will be ready for none of that nonsense for a year or two, that's one comfort. Jean, you are quite fat. Living in other people's houses seems to agree with you. Not the life we were accustomed to. Young people had to stay at home in my day.""Now, Aunt Katharine," said Lance, who was a privileged person, "are they your girls, or Mrs. Leighton's, that you lecture them so?""Look here, Lance," said Elma, "Aunt Katharine isn't a Broken Hill, or a con--consolidated Johnnie. You just leave her alone, will you?""Elma's become beastly dictatorial since she was ill," said Lance savagely. "What's that confab in the corner?"Mrs. Leighton was sitting with Adelaide Maud, and in the pause which ensued, everybody heard her say, "When Jean was a baby--no, it was when Elma was a baby, and Cuthbert, you know----" just as the girls were afraid she would five long years ago."Oh," said Cuthbert from the other end of the room, "my dear mother, if you go on with that----""I can't imagine why they never want to know what they did when they were babies," said Mrs. Leighton, in an innocent manner. She disliked being stopped in any of these reminiscences. Adelaide Maud's eyes danced. "They were so much nicer when they were babies," sighed Mrs. Leighton.Then she turned round on them all."You two girls have been home for an hour or more, and you never asked after your dear father."Mabel giggled. Jean looked very serious.Elma said suddenly, "They are hiding something, mummy," and the secret was out.Mr. Leighton had met them pretty nearly half way. He had travelled with them, and in town had seen them into the train for Ridgetown."And he told me," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he had an important meeting which would keep him employed for the better part of the day.""So he had," said Mabel."It's just like John," said Mrs. Leighton to Aunt Katharine. "One might have known he wouldn't stay away from these girls."She smiled largely as she remembered his protestations of the morning."Oh, well," said Aunt Katharine dingily, "it would have been nicer of him to have told you. You never were very firm with John."Robin Meredith came in the evening when they were assembled with Mr. Leighton in the drawing-room and the girls were playing once more. They played and sang with a fine new confidence and abandonment which made up to Mr. Leighton for long weary months of waiting. Mabel, mostly on account of her father's commendation, was quite composed and cheerful as she shook hands with Robin. Robin would not have minded the composure, but the cheerfulness wounded him a trifle. Mr. Leighton considered that his future life had more promise in it now that he saw Robin unnerved. If it were not for the beautiful ease of Mabel's manner, he should have felt uncertain as to the consequences of all that had happened. But Mabel was so serenely right in every way that his last fear melted.Mabel herself began to wonder at her own placidity. She looked with thankfulness on the scene before her, all her family and Elma given back to her, every one loyal, untouched by the influence which she had so feared before, Isobel going to be married to a man from whom she was glad to feel herself freed, her home intact. Yet a bitter mist gathered in her mind and obliterated the joyousness. How wicked of her--to complain with everything here so lovely before her.No, not everything.Mabel, in the darkness that night before falling asleep, held her hand to her eyes. No, everything had not come back to her yet.CHAPTER XXVIIIAdelaide MaudThe Leighton's had been writing off the invitations for the wedding, and Elma was in her room with Adelaide Maud. This had been converted into a sitting-room so long as Elma remained a convalescent.Elma had asked Isobel if she might have just one invitation for a special friend of her own. Now who was this friend, Mrs. Leighton wondered? She was surprised when Elma asked her, without any embarrassment for Mr. Symington's address."And don't tell who it is, please, Mummy, because I have a little plot of my own on hand."She sealed and addressed this important missive quite blandly under her mother's eyes.Mrs. Leighton could not make it out. She was inclined to fall into Aunt Katharine's ways and say, "In my young days, young people were not so blatant."Mr. Leighton shook his head over her having allowed the invitation to go."You can't tell what net she may become entangled in," he said, "and Symington cleared out in a very sudden manner, you know." He could not get that out of his mind.Mrs. Leighton harked back to the old formula. "Elma is only a child," she said, "with too much of a superb imagination. She will have a lot of fancies before she is done."Elma saw her letter posted, with only Mrs. Leighton and Miss Grace in the secret. She felt completely relieved and happy. Nothing had pleased her so much for a long time."Why, Elma, your cheeks are getting pink at last," said Adelaide Maud.She had come in to spend the afternoon with Elma while the others went to the dressmaker for the all-important gowns. Adelaide Maud had said she would come if Elma were to be quite alone. And Elma meant to be quite alone until Cuthbert came down by an early train. Then, after Adelaide Maud was announced, she rather hoped that Cuthbert might appear."Are you sure they are pink," she asked Adelaide Maud, "because I used to be so anxious that I might look pale.""You must have thought yourself very good looking lately then," said Adelaide Maud. "Elma," she asked suddenly, "why don't you girls sometimes call me Helen? I think you might by this time.""I would rather call you Adelaide Maud," said Elma."But I can't be a Story Book for ever.""I shouldn't want to call you Helen when you looked like Miss Dudgeon. Mrs. Dudgeon wouldn't like it, would she?"Ridgetown traditions still hampered their friendship it seemed.Adelaide Maud's head fell low."Do you know, Elma, in five minutes, if I just had one chance, in five minutes I could get my mother to say that it didn't matter whether you called me Helen or not. But I never get the chance.""I did one lovely and glorious thing yesterday," said Elma. "Couldn't I do another to-day?""I don't know what you did yesterday, but you can't do anything for me to-day," said Adelaide Maud stiffly.Cuthbert came strolling in. Adelaide Maud looked seriously annoyed."You told me you would be quite alone," she said to Elma."Oh, you don't mind about Cuthbert, do you?" asked Elma anxiously. "Besides, Cuthbert didn't know you were coming.""I did," said Cuthbert shortly.Adelaide Maud had risen a little, and at this she sat down in a very straight manner, with her head slightly raised. She and Elma were on a couch near a tea-table. Cuthbert took an easy chair opposite. Then Adelaide Maud began to laugh. She laughed with a ringing bright laugh that was very amusing to Elma, but Cuthbert remained quite unmoved.Adelaide Maud looked at him."Oh, please laugh a little," she said humbly.Cuthbert did not take his eyes away from her. He simply looked and said nothing."How are the invitations going on?" he asked Elma as though apparently proving that Adelaide Maud did not exist.Elma clasped her hands."Beautifully. I've been allowed to ask all my 'particulars.'""Am I to be invited?" asked Adelaide Maud simply."Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon," said Elma in a hollow voice. "Do you think Mrs. Dudgeon will come?" she asked in a melancholy manner."Not if Mr. Leighton looks like that," said Adelaide Maud. She turned in a pettish manner away from him and gazed at Elma.Elma burst out laughing."Oh, Cuthbert, I do think you are horrid to Adelaide Maud."Adelaide Maud sat up again looking perfectly delighted."Now there," she said, "I have been waiting for years for some one to say that about Mr. Leighton. Thank you so much, dear. It's so perfectly true. For years I have been amiable and for years he has been--a----""A brute," said Elma placidly."Yes," said Adelaide Maud. "And I've got to go on pretending to be a girl of spirit with a mamma who won't understand the situation, and--and--I get no encouragement at all. It's a horrid world," said Adelaide Maud.Cuthbert rose from the easy chair, with a look in his eyes which Elma had never seen."All I can say is," he pretended to be speaking jocularly, "will the lady who has just spoken undertake to repeat these words, in private--in----""No, she won't," said Adelaide Maud in a whisper.Elma sat shaking in every limb. The one thought that passed through her mind was that if she didn't clear out, Cuthbert might kiss Adelaide Maud, and that would be awful. She crawled out of the room somehow or other. What the others were thinking of her she did not know. She wanted to reach something outside the door, and sank on a chair there. Oh, the selfishness of lovers! Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert were "making it up" while she sat shaking with her face in her hands in the long corridor.Mrs. Leighton found her there some little time afterwards."Sh! mummy. Speak in a whisper, please.""Well, I never. Who is ill now, I should like to know?""Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert."She pulled her mother's head down to her and whispered in her ear."I didn't know it was coming, they were so cross with one another. And then I knew it was. And I just slipped out. And I'm shaking so that I'm afraid to get off this chair. I should never be able to get engaged myself--it's so--en--enervating.""Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton; "well, I never. Turned you out of your own room, my pet. Just like those Dudgeons.""Oh, mummy, it's lovely. I don't mind. It's just being ill that made me shake. Aren't you glad it's Adelaide Maud?""Well--it never was anybody else, was it?" asked Mrs. Leighton blandly."Oh, mummy! You knew!"Elma's whispers became most accusing.Mrs. Leighton might have been as dense as possible in regard to her daughters, but Cuthbert's heart had always lain bare."Know?" asked she. "What do you think made Adelaide Maud run after you the way she did?""Oh, mummy. It wasn't only because of Cuthbert, was it?""Well, I sometimes thought it was," she said with a smile at her lips.She looked at the shut door."But I can't have you stuck on a hall chair in the corridors for the afternoon, all on account of the Dudgeons," said she. "Besides, they'll be bringing up tea."She knocked smartly on the door."Mamma, I never saw anything like your nerve," said Elma.Cuthbert opened the door. He stood with the fine light of a conqueror shining in his eyes, the triumph of attainment in his bearing.Mrs. Leighton's nerve broke down at the sight of him. It was true then."Oh, Cuthbert, what is this you have been doing?" wailed she. Her son was a man and had left her.Without a word he led her into the arms of Adelaide Maud."And remember, please, Mrs. Leighton," said that personage finally, "that I would have been here long before if he had let me, and that I had practically to propose before he would have me. Surely that is humiliating enough for a Dudgeon.""Cuthbert wanted to give you your proper position in life, dear, if possible.""When all I wanted was himself--how silly of him," said Adelaide Maud."Would you mind my telling you that that poor child of mine who has just recovered from typhoid fever is sitting like a hall porter at your door, trembling like an aspen leaf," said Mrs. Leighton. "Won't you get her in?"They laughed, but it really was no joke to Elma. She had known something of the sorrows of life lately, and had borne up under them, even under the great trial of Miss Annie's death; but because two people were in love with one another and had said so, she took to weeping. Cuthbert carried her in and petted her on his knee, and Adelaide Maud stood by and said what a selfish man he was, how thoughtless of others, and how really wicked it was of him to have allowed this to happen to Elma. She stood stroking Elma's hair and looking at Cuthbert, and Cuthbert patted Elma and looked at Adelaide Maud. Then Cuthbert caught Adelaide Maud's hand and she had to sit beside them, and then tea came and Elma was thankful."I know what it will be," she said. "You will never look at any of us again, just at each other."Mrs. Leighton regarded the tea table."It appears," said she, "as if for the first time for years I might be allowed to pour out tea in my own house. You all seem so preoccupied.""Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud, "you are perfectly sweet. You are the only one who doesn't reproach me, and I'm taking away your only son.""May I ask when?" asked Cuthbert sedately, but his eyes were on fire."Don't you tell him, Helen," said Mrs. Leighton. "It's good for them not to be in too great a hurry.""She called me Helen," said Adelaide Maud."Now, Elma! Elma--say Helen, or you'll spoil the happiest day of our lives.""Say Helen, you monkey!" cried Cuthbert, giving her a large piece of cake and several lumps of sugar.Elma took her cup and the cake in a helpless way."You just said that to get accustomed to the name yourself," she declared. "And if you don't mind, I would rather have toast to begin with."Adelaide Maud giggled brightly and her hair shone like gold. Cuthbert stood looking, looking at her till a piece of cake sidled off the plate he was carrying."Mummy dear, do you like having tea with me all alone?" asked Elma.That was what came of it in many ways. Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud had not a word for any one. But then they had been so long separated by social ties and an unfriendly world and "pride," as Helen put it, and various things. Mrs. Dudgeon took the news "carved in stone," and her daughters as something that merely could not be helped. Helen had always been crazy over these Leightons. Mrs. Dudgeon unbent to Mr. Leighton however. He was a man to whom people invariably offered the best, and for his own part he could never quite see where the point of view of other people came in where Mrs. Dudgeon was concerned. Cuthbert was already sufficiently established as rather a brilliant young university man, and a partnership in a large practice in town was being arranged for. Mrs. Dudgeon could unbend with some graciousness therefore, and, after all, Helen was the eldest of four, and none were married yet. "Time is a great leveller," said Adelaide Maud.All the love and enthusiasm which had been saved from the engagement of Isobel were showered on the unheeding Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud."It isn't that I don't appreciate it," said Adelaide Maud. "I know how dreadful it would be to be without it, but oh! somehow there's so little time to attend to every one who is good to me."Isobel, in a certain measure, was annoyed at the interruption to her own arrangements. In a day things seemed to change from her being the centre of interest, to the claims of Adelaide Maud coming uppermost. She looked on the engagement as a complete bore. Robin seemed depressed with the news. She often wondered how far she could influence him, and turned rather a cold side to him for the moment. Then her ordinary wilfulness upheld her serenely. After all, once married to Robin, she would be independent of the domestic enthusiasms of the Leighton crowd. She was tired of the pose where she had to appear as one of them, and longed to assert herself differently as soon as possible.As for the girls themselves--what had London or anything offered equal to this?They could not believe in their luck in having Adelaide Maud as a sister.Elma went in the old way to give the news to Miss Grace."Oh, I'm so pleased, my dear, so pleased," said poor lonely Miss Grace. "It makes up for so much, my dear, when one grows old, to see young people happy. We are so inclined to be extravagant of happiness when we are young. Some one ought always to be on the spot to pick up the little stray pieces we let drop and enable us to regain them again.""Weren't you ever engaged to be married, Miss Grace?" Elma asked quite simply.Miss Grace was not at all embarrassed in the usual way of old maids. She gazed over the white and gold drawing-room, and one saw the spark of flint in her eyes."Not engaged, dear, but all the inclination to be. Ah, yes, I had the inclination. And he invited me, but affairs at that time made it unsuitable.""Oh, Miss Grace, only unsuitable?" Elma's heart went out to her. Beneath everything she knew it must be Miss Annie."Yes, dear. And the others found him different to what I did. Selfish and dictatorial, you know. Nothing he did seemed to fit in to what they expected. He grew annoyed with them. I sometimes hardly wonder at that. It made him appear to be what they really thought him. And in the end I asked him to go.""Oh, Miss Grace!"Elma's voice was a tragedy."It was not fair, it was not fair to him or to you. He didn't want to marry the others. What did it matter what they thought?""If he could have married me then, it wouldn't have mattered," said Miss Grace. "I knew that he was good and true, you see; so that I never doubted him. But he was poor, and they worried me nearly to my grave. I was very weak," said Miss Grace."And I suppose he went and married some one else in a fit of hopelessness," said Elma tragically. "What a nice wife you would have made, Miss Grace!"Miss Grace started a trifle, and looked anxiously at Elma. She did not seem to hear the compliment."Oh, we all have our little stories," she said. "But don't be extravagant of your beautiful youth, my dear.""I don't feel youthful or beautiful in any way," said Elma. "I think it's the fever. I feel as though I had been born a hundred years ago. I wish I could keep from shivering whenever anything either exciting or lovely happens. Now, I never was so happy in my life as I was yesterday over Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud, and I was so shaky that I simply burst into tears. What's the good of being youthful if one feels like that?""Wait till you have a holiday, dear, you will soon get over that."Miss Grace did her best to cheer her up. Elma's thoughts ran back to the story she had heard."Miss Grace," she asked, "this man that you were engaged to, was he----"The door opened and Saunders appeared."Dr. Merryweather," said he.Miss Grace rose in a direct manner. She controlled her voice with a little nervous cough."This is just the person to tell you that you ought to be off for a change," she said as they shook hands with Dr. Merryweather.Miss Grace told him about Elma's shakiness as though it were a real disease. Mrs. Leighton had never looked upon it as anything more than "just a mannerism," as Miss Grace put it. Dr. Merryweather ran his keen eye over Elma's flushed face."You mustn't have too many engagements in your family," he said, "while you remain a convalescent."He had been only then arranging with Mrs. Leighton that she should take Elma off for a trip."Mr. Leighton will go too," he said kindly. "I don't think any of you realize how much your parents have suffered recently.""Oh, but when?" asked Elma in a most disappointed voice. "Not at once, I hope.""Almost at once," said Dr. Merryweather. "Before this first wedding at least."Elma's face fell a trifle."Oh, well, I suppose I must," she said. "But so much depends on my being just on the spot--up to Isobel's wedding, you know.""I said, 'No more engagements,'" said Dr. Merryweather with his eye still on her flushed face."This isn't exactly an engagement," said Elma with a sigh. "I wish it were."There was no explaining to Dr. Merryweather of course. There was even not much chance of enlightening Miss Grace. One could only remain a kind of petted invalid and await developments. Now that Adelaide Maud was really one of them and Cuthbert in such a blissful state, it would seem as though nothing were required to make Elma perfectly happy. But there was this one trouble of Mabel's which only she could share. For of course one couldn't go about telling people that Mabel had set great store by the one man who had run away."If only George Maclean would play up," sighed Elma.But almost every one played up except George Maclean.
CHAPTER XXVII
The Home-Coming
Mr. Leighton departed from his first feelings of hurry where Mabel and Jean were concerned, and delayed their home coming till Elma was in a condition not to be retarded by any extra excitement.
They drove away at last from the club early in the morning, so that they had the entire house to see them off. It was very nearly as bad as leaving Ridgetown.
"I shall not be able to walk past your door for some days," said one red-haired girl. "Oh, don't I know that feeling?"
She was compelled to stay in London, with only a fortnight's holiday in summer time.
"I shall send you forget-me-nots by every post," said Jean. "You'll be in love with the new girl in a week."
"I won't," said the red-haired girl.
They had gifts from all of the girls stowed away somewhere. What a morning! Even the hall porter showed signs of dejection at their going.
"It will never be the same without you, miss," he said to Mabel.
One's own family were not so complimentary.
Mabel and Jean left in a heaped-up four-wheeler.
"I feel quite sick, you know," said Jean.
It was a historic statement, and Mabel had her own qualms. They left a houseful of good little friendly people, a dazzling, hard-working London, and they were going back--to the wedding of Isobel. Mabel had not got over the feeling that drama only exists in a brilliant manner in London, and that life in one's own home, though peaceful, was drab colour. It wouldn't be drab colour, it would be radiant of course, if happy unexpected things happened there. How it would lighten to the colour of rose, oh gorgeous life, if such a thing could ever happen now! But it wouldn't. All that would happen would be that Robin would marry Isobel and that she should keep on playing piano. Ah well, in any case, she could play piano a long way better than she ever did. And Jean could sing with a certain distinction of method. Not nearly ripe, this method, as Jean informed every one, but on the way. Her voice would be worth hearing at twenty-five.
Much of the effect they would make on Ridgetown was invested in the boxes piled above them. All their spare time lately had been taken up in spending their allowance in clothes and panning things neatly out to London standards. It gave them an amount of reliance in themselves and in their return which was very exhilarating. Though what did it all matter with Miss Annie gone?
"It terrifies me to think of Ridgetown without Miss Annie. What shall we do there?" asked Jean mournfully.
"Yes, that's it," replied Mabel. "No one dying in London would make that difference. I shall think, as we are driving home, Miss Annie isn't there. Won't you?"
"And here they would only have a little more time for somebody else," said Jean.
They drove through the early morning streets with a tiny relief at their heart. On their next drive they would know everybody they passed.
"Oh, how deadly I felt when I came here!" said Jean. "Knowing no one, and thinking that if I died in the cab no one near me would care!"
They reached Ridgetown in the afternoon. A carriage was drawn up at the station gates. In it were Mrs. Leighton, Miss Grace and Elma.
Mabel stood transfixed.
"Oh, Elma," she said, "Elma!"
Elma knew it. She wasn't as fat as a pumpkin after all. And every one had kept on saying that she was fatter than any pumpkin. Mabel was the only one who had told the truth. She leaned over the folded hood of the carriage and hugged her gently.
"I should like to inform you Mabs, I'm as fat as a pumpkin."
But Mabel hung on to the carriage with her head down. No one had told her that Elma had been so ill as this.
Elma had the look of having been in a far country--why hadn't some one told her? Miss Grace, who had been away for some weeks with Adelaide Maud and had just got back in fairly good spirits, did some of the conversing which helped Mabel to recover herself.
Cuthbert and Betty came hurrying up from the wrong end of the train.
"Oh, and we missed you," wailed Betty, "and I wanted to be the first."
One could hug indiscriminately at Ridgetown Station. Jean was the next person to melt into tears. She had tried to tell Miss Grace how sorry she was.
Cuthbert began to restore order.
"You'd better take two in that carriage, crowded or not," said he. "There are boxes lying on the platform which will require a cab to themselves."
"It's our music," said Jean importantly and quite untruthfully.
"It's my new hat," said Mabel, with a return of her old dash.
She had gone round the carriage seeing each occupant separately, and there seemed to be no hurry for anything, merely the pleasure of meeting again.
Just then there was a whirl of wheels in the distance. A certain familiarity in the sound made four girls look at each other. Mrs. Leighton, who had no ear for wheels, stared in a surprised way at her daughters.
"Well," she said, "what are we all waiting for? We must get home sometime."
"Yes," asked Cuthbert lustily, "what in the wide world are we waiting for?"
A high wagonette and pair of horses drove up, and turned with a fine circle into line behind them. In the wagonette sat Adelaide Maud. Adelaide Maud was dressed in blue.
"That," said Elma, with a sigh of great contentment.
The three girls dashed at Adelaide Maud.
Elma laid her hand on Cuthbert's.
"Go and say how do you do to Adelaide Maud," said she.
For a minute or two she was left with Mrs. Leighton and Miss Grace. Then Cuthbert came to her.
"Get up," said he to Elma. "Get up. You're to go with Adelaide Maud."
"Who is this Adelaide Maud who interferes with every plan in connection with my family?" asked Mrs. Leighton. She had a resigned note in her voice. "Shall we ever get home," she kept asking.
A voice behind them broke in.
"I didn't tell him to be impolite, Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud. "I only asked to have Elma in my carriage."
Elma looked provokingly at Adelaide Maud.
"I'm so sorry," said she, "but I'm driving home with Cuthbert."
"It's not true," said Cuthbert. "She's doing nothing of the kind."
"Then I shall get in here," said Adelaide Maud calmly, and proceeded to step in.
Several people tried to stop her.
"I want to drive home with mummy," said Jean.
"And I mean to take Elma," said Mabel.
Mrs. Leighton leant back in the carriage.
"I should like to mention," she said, "that this is not a royal procession, and that we only take about two and a half minutes to get home in any case. What does it matter which carriage we go in?"
"Every second is of value," said Jean.
"Well, here you are, Jean, get in beside your mother," said Adelaide Maud. "And, Elma and Mabel, you come with me. And, Mr. Leighton, you look after Miss Grace. What could be more admirable?"
They did it because it seemed the simplest way out, except Cuthbert, who backed into the station and came up on a cab with the luggage. He looked vindictively at Adelaide Maud as he descended, as though he would say, "This is your doing."
The three conveyances were blocking the wide sweep of gravel in front of the White House.
Adelaide Maud patted one of the horses' heads in an unnecessary manner.
"I must congratulate you on your professorship," said she.
"Thank you," said Cuthbert.
"So nice for your family too, to have you here all summer."
"Excellent," said Cuthbert.
"I don't see how you can run a lectureship when you say so little." Adelaide Maud spoke very crisply, and in a nice cool manner.
Cuthbert looked stolidly at the men carrying in luggage.
"The students will respect me probably," he said grimly.
Adelaide Maud laughed a clear ringing laugh. Then she looked at Cuthbert once "straight in the eye" and ran indoors. Cuthbert began pulling boxes about with unnecessary violence.
They had tea in the drawing-room amidst the roses, for the tables were covered with them. Mabel did nothing but wander about and say, "Oh, oh, and isn't it lovely to be home."
But Jean sat right down and in a business-like manner began to describe London. Also, she was very sorry for Elma, because now she, Jean, knew what it was to be ill. She began to detail her symptoms to Elma.
"Oh, Jean, you little monkey," said Mabel. "Don't listen to her, she wasn't ill a bit." It was the only point on which Mabel and Jean really differed.
Isobel came sailing in. Nothing could have been nicer than the way she greeted them.
"Oh, Isobel, aren't you dying to hear me sing?" asked Jean. It never dawned on her but that Isobel, who had been so keen to get her off to a good master, put art first and everything else afterwards.
Mrs. Leighton would never forget the way in which Mabel received her. Mabs had developed into a finely balanced woman. There was no sign of her wanting to detract in the slightest from Isobel's happiness.
"Do let me see your ring. How pretty! And how it fits your hand, just a beautiful ring. Some engagement rings look as though they had only been made for fat Jewesses. Don't they? I love those tiny diamonds set round the big ones. Where are you going for your honeymoon?"
"I'm going first for my things," said Isobel. "I've got no further than that. Miss Meredith and I are taking a week in London next week."
That was her triumph, that she had "squared" Miss Meredith. Miss Meredith had really a lonely little heart beating beneath all her paltry ambitions. Always she had been stretching for what was very difficult of attainment. She had stretched for a wife for Robin, and she had stretched in vain. Then suddenly one day this undesirable Isobel had asked her to go to London to help with her trousseaux. No one perhaps knew what a strange and unlooked-for delight filled her heart, what gates of starchy reserve were opened to this new flood of gratitude rising within her. Robin had always, although influenced by her in an intangible way, treated her as though she were a useful piece of furniture. He so invariably discounted her services; it had made her believe that her only chance of keeping him at all was in imposing on him her hardest, most unlovable traits. That Isobel, of her own accord, should seek her advice, out of the crowd who were willing to confer it, really agitated her. From that moment she was Isobel's willing ally.
Isobel saw here the result of incalculable goodness as encouraged by Mr. Leighton. His words had stung her to an exalted notion of what she might do to show him that she could confer as well as receive. She should "ingratiate Sarah" in a thorough manner. The result of it surprised her more than she would confess. There were other ways of receiving benefits than by grabbing with both hands it seemed. Isobel began to think that unselfish people probably remained unselfish because they found it a paying business. Nothing would ever really relieve her mind of its mercenary element.
The funniest experience of her life was this new friendship with Sarah. Mr. Leighton noted it, and she saw that he noted it. She went one day to him in almost a contrite mood.
"I've begun to ingratiate Sarah," said she, "I believe I'm rather liking the experience."
Mr. Leighton knew better than to lecture her at all. He thought indeed that signs of relenting would not readily occur between either of them.
"Goodness is an admirable habit," he said lightly.
She thanked him for having fallen into her mood by this much.
"Well, anyhow, a little exhibition of it on my part has evidently been a welcome tonic to Sarah," she said.
Mabel and Jean found her easier than of yore. Only Elma carried the reserve formed by what she had gone through into the present moment of rapture. They made Mabel play and Jean sing, and Adelaide Maud and Jean performed a duet together.
Cuthbert pranced about and applauded heavily, and Adelaide Maud swung her crisp skirts and bowed low in a professional manner.
"If I can't sing," said she, "I can bow. So do you mind if I do it again?" So she bowed again.
It was quite different to the old Adelaide Maud, who aired such starchy manners in their drawing-room.
Lance came in by an early train.
"Heard you were home," said he, "and ran in to see if you'd take some Broken Hills, or Grand Trunks, or Consolidated Johnnies, you know."
He produced a note-book.
"Now Mrs. Leighton promised to buy a whole mine of shares the other day, and she hasn't done it. How am I to get on with my admirable firm, if my best clients fail me in this way?"
Jean exploded into laughter. Lance as a stockbroker, what next!
"You needn't laugh," he said. "I made twenty-five pounds for the mater last week. Not your mater, mine!"
"Don't listen to Lance's illegal practices," said Elma.
Lance struck an attitude in front of Mabel.
"Oh, mother," he said, "how you've growed. I'm afraid of you. Wait till you see what Maclean will say!"
"Maclean?"
"Yes. Now, Elma, don't pretend to look blank about it. It was you who told me."
Elma groaned. (If it only were Mr. Maclean!)
"I told you nothing," she said. "You are not to be trusted, I've always known that, in Stock Exchange or out of it, I'd never tell you a single thing."
"Well, it was Aunt Katharine," said Lance with conviction. She had just appeared in the doorway.
"Well, well," she said in a fat, breathless way. "Well, you're home, and I am glad. Dear, how tall you both are! And is that the latest?" She looked at Mabel's hat. "Well, well. We've had enough trouble with you away. Elma will be ready for none of that nonsense for a year or two, that's one comfort. Jean, you are quite fat. Living in other people's houses seems to agree with you. Not the life we were accustomed to. Young people had to stay at home in my day."
"Now, Aunt Katharine," said Lance, who was a privileged person, "are they your girls, or Mrs. Leighton's, that you lecture them so?"
"Look here, Lance," said Elma, "Aunt Katharine isn't a Broken Hill, or a con--consolidated Johnnie. You just leave her alone, will you?"
"Elma's become beastly dictatorial since she was ill," said Lance savagely. "What's that confab in the corner?"
Mrs. Leighton was sitting with Adelaide Maud, and in the pause which ensued, everybody heard her say, "When Jean was a baby--no, it was when Elma was a baby, and Cuthbert, you know----" just as the girls were afraid she would five long years ago.
"Oh," said Cuthbert from the other end of the room, "my dear mother, if you go on with that----"
"I can't imagine why they never want to know what they did when they were babies," said Mrs. Leighton, in an innocent manner. She disliked being stopped in any of these reminiscences. Adelaide Maud's eyes danced. "They were so much nicer when they were babies," sighed Mrs. Leighton.
Then she turned round on them all.
"You two girls have been home for an hour or more, and you never asked after your dear father."
Mabel giggled. Jean looked very serious.
Elma said suddenly, "They are hiding something, mummy," and the secret was out.
Mr. Leighton had met them pretty nearly half way. He had travelled with them, and in town had seen them into the train for Ridgetown.
"And he told me," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he had an important meeting which would keep him employed for the better part of the day."
"So he had," said Mabel.
"It's just like John," said Mrs. Leighton to Aunt Katharine. "One might have known he wouldn't stay away from these girls."
She smiled largely as she remembered his protestations of the morning.
"Oh, well," said Aunt Katharine dingily, "it would have been nicer of him to have told you. You never were very firm with John."
Robin Meredith came in the evening when they were assembled with Mr. Leighton in the drawing-room and the girls were playing once more. They played and sang with a fine new confidence and abandonment which made up to Mr. Leighton for long weary months of waiting. Mabel, mostly on account of her father's commendation, was quite composed and cheerful as she shook hands with Robin. Robin would not have minded the composure, but the cheerfulness wounded him a trifle. Mr. Leighton considered that his future life had more promise in it now that he saw Robin unnerved. If it were not for the beautiful ease of Mabel's manner, he should have felt uncertain as to the consequences of all that had happened. But Mabel was so serenely right in every way that his last fear melted.
Mabel herself began to wonder at her own placidity. She looked with thankfulness on the scene before her, all her family and Elma given back to her, every one loyal, untouched by the influence which she had so feared before, Isobel going to be married to a man from whom she was glad to feel herself freed, her home intact. Yet a bitter mist gathered in her mind and obliterated the joyousness. How wicked of her--to complain with everything here so lovely before her.
No, not everything.
Mabel, in the darkness that night before falling asleep, held her hand to her eyes. No, everything had not come back to her yet.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Adelaide Maud
The Leighton's had been writing off the invitations for the wedding, and Elma was in her room with Adelaide Maud. This had been converted into a sitting-room so long as Elma remained a convalescent.
Elma had asked Isobel if she might have just one invitation for a special friend of her own. Now who was this friend, Mrs. Leighton wondered? She was surprised when Elma asked her, without any embarrassment for Mr. Symington's address.
"And don't tell who it is, please, Mummy, because I have a little plot of my own on hand."
She sealed and addressed this important missive quite blandly under her mother's eyes.
Mrs. Leighton could not make it out. She was inclined to fall into Aunt Katharine's ways and say, "In my young days, young people were not so blatant."
Mr. Leighton shook his head over her having allowed the invitation to go.
"You can't tell what net she may become entangled in," he said, "and Symington cleared out in a very sudden manner, you know." He could not get that out of his mind.
Mrs. Leighton harked back to the old formula. "Elma is only a child," she said, "with too much of a superb imagination. She will have a lot of fancies before she is done."
Elma saw her letter posted, with only Mrs. Leighton and Miss Grace in the secret. She felt completely relieved and happy. Nothing had pleased her so much for a long time.
"Why, Elma, your cheeks are getting pink at last," said Adelaide Maud.
She had come in to spend the afternoon with Elma while the others went to the dressmaker for the all-important gowns. Adelaide Maud had said she would come if Elma were to be quite alone. And Elma meant to be quite alone until Cuthbert came down by an early train. Then, after Adelaide Maud was announced, she rather hoped that Cuthbert might appear.
"Are you sure they are pink," she asked Adelaide Maud, "because I used to be so anxious that I might look pale."
"You must have thought yourself very good looking lately then," said Adelaide Maud. "Elma," she asked suddenly, "why don't you girls sometimes call me Helen? I think you might by this time."
"I would rather call you Adelaide Maud," said Elma.
"But I can't be a Story Book for ever."
"I shouldn't want to call you Helen when you looked like Miss Dudgeon. Mrs. Dudgeon wouldn't like it, would she?"
Ridgetown traditions still hampered their friendship it seemed.
Adelaide Maud's head fell low.
"Do you know, Elma, in five minutes, if I just had one chance, in five minutes I could get my mother to say that it didn't matter whether you called me Helen or not. But I never get the chance."
"I did one lovely and glorious thing yesterday," said Elma. "Couldn't I do another to-day?"
"I don't know what you did yesterday, but you can't do anything for me to-day," said Adelaide Maud stiffly.
Cuthbert came strolling in. Adelaide Maud looked seriously annoyed.
"You told me you would be quite alone," she said to Elma.
"Oh, you don't mind about Cuthbert, do you?" asked Elma anxiously. "Besides, Cuthbert didn't know you were coming."
"I did," said Cuthbert shortly.
Adelaide Maud had risen a little, and at this she sat down in a very straight manner, with her head slightly raised. She and Elma were on a couch near a tea-table. Cuthbert took an easy chair opposite. Then Adelaide Maud began to laugh. She laughed with a ringing bright laugh that was very amusing to Elma, but Cuthbert remained quite unmoved.
Adelaide Maud looked at him.
"Oh, please laugh a little," she said humbly.
Cuthbert did not take his eyes away from her. He simply looked and said nothing.
"How are the invitations going on?" he asked Elma as though apparently proving that Adelaide Maud did not exist.
Elma clasped her hands.
"Beautifully. I've been allowed to ask all my 'particulars.'"
"Am I to be invited?" asked Adelaide Maud simply.
"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon," said Elma in a hollow voice. "Do you think Mrs. Dudgeon will come?" she asked in a melancholy manner.
"Not if Mr. Leighton looks like that," said Adelaide Maud. She turned in a pettish manner away from him and gazed at Elma.
Elma burst out laughing.
"Oh, Cuthbert, I do think you are horrid to Adelaide Maud."
Adelaide Maud sat up again looking perfectly delighted.
"Now there," she said, "I have been waiting for years for some one to say that about Mr. Leighton. Thank you so much, dear. It's so perfectly true. For years I have been amiable and for years he has been--a----"
"A brute," said Elma placidly.
"Yes," said Adelaide Maud. "And I've got to go on pretending to be a girl of spirit with a mamma who won't understand the situation, and--and--I get no encouragement at all. It's a horrid world," said Adelaide Maud.
Cuthbert rose from the easy chair, with a look in his eyes which Elma had never seen.
"All I can say is," he pretended to be speaking jocularly, "will the lady who has just spoken undertake to repeat these words, in private--in----"
"No, she won't," said Adelaide Maud in a whisper.
Elma sat shaking in every limb. The one thought that passed through her mind was that if she didn't clear out, Cuthbert might kiss Adelaide Maud, and that would be awful. She crawled out of the room somehow or other. What the others were thinking of her she did not know. She wanted to reach something outside the door, and sank on a chair there. Oh, the selfishness of lovers! Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert were "making it up" while she sat shaking with her face in her hands in the long corridor.
Mrs. Leighton found her there some little time afterwards.
"Sh! mummy. Speak in a whisper, please."
"Well, I never. Who is ill now, I should like to know?"
"Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert."
She pulled her mother's head down to her and whispered in her ear.
"I didn't know it was coming, they were so cross with one another. And then I knew it was. And I just slipped out. And I'm shaking so that I'm afraid to get off this chair. I should never be able to get engaged myself--it's so--en--enervating."
"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton; "well, I never. Turned you out of your own room, my pet. Just like those Dudgeons."
"Oh, mummy, it's lovely. I don't mind. It's just being ill that made me shake. Aren't you glad it's Adelaide Maud?"
"Well--it never was anybody else, was it?" asked Mrs. Leighton blandly.
"Oh, mummy! You knew!"
Elma's whispers became most accusing.
Mrs. Leighton might have been as dense as possible in regard to her daughters, but Cuthbert's heart had always lain bare.
"Know?" asked she. "What do you think made Adelaide Maud run after you the way she did?"
"Oh, mummy. It wasn't only because of Cuthbert, was it?"
"Well, I sometimes thought it was," she said with a smile at her lips.
She looked at the shut door.
"But I can't have you stuck on a hall chair in the corridors for the afternoon, all on account of the Dudgeons," said she. "Besides, they'll be bringing up tea."
She knocked smartly on the door.
"Mamma, I never saw anything like your nerve," said Elma.
Cuthbert opened the door. He stood with the fine light of a conqueror shining in his eyes, the triumph of attainment in his bearing.
Mrs. Leighton's nerve broke down at the sight of him. It was true then.
"Oh, Cuthbert, what is this you have been doing?" wailed she. Her son was a man and had left her.
Without a word he led her into the arms of Adelaide Maud.
"And remember, please, Mrs. Leighton," said that personage finally, "that I would have been here long before if he had let me, and that I had practically to propose before he would have me. Surely that is humiliating enough for a Dudgeon."
"Cuthbert wanted to give you your proper position in life, dear, if possible."
"When all I wanted was himself--how silly of him," said Adelaide Maud.
"Would you mind my telling you that that poor child of mine who has just recovered from typhoid fever is sitting like a hall porter at your door, trembling like an aspen leaf," said Mrs. Leighton. "Won't you get her in?"
They laughed, but it really was no joke to Elma. She had known something of the sorrows of life lately, and had borne up under them, even under the great trial of Miss Annie's death; but because two people were in love with one another and had said so, she took to weeping. Cuthbert carried her in and petted her on his knee, and Adelaide Maud stood by and said what a selfish man he was, how thoughtless of others, and how really wicked it was of him to have allowed this to happen to Elma. She stood stroking Elma's hair and looking at Cuthbert, and Cuthbert patted Elma and looked at Adelaide Maud. Then Cuthbert caught Adelaide Maud's hand and she had to sit beside them, and then tea came and Elma was thankful.
"I know what it will be," she said. "You will never look at any of us again, just at each other."
Mrs. Leighton regarded the tea table.
"It appears," said she, "as if for the first time for years I might be allowed to pour out tea in my own house. You all seem so preoccupied."
"Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud, "you are perfectly sweet. You are the only one who doesn't reproach me, and I'm taking away your only son."
"May I ask when?" asked Cuthbert sedately, but his eyes were on fire.
"Don't you tell him, Helen," said Mrs. Leighton. "It's good for them not to be in too great a hurry."
"She called me Helen," said Adelaide Maud.
"Now, Elma! Elma--say Helen, or you'll spoil the happiest day of our lives."
"Say Helen, you monkey!" cried Cuthbert, giving her a large piece of cake and several lumps of sugar.
Elma took her cup and the cake in a helpless way.
"You just said that to get accustomed to the name yourself," she declared. "And if you don't mind, I would rather have toast to begin with."
Adelaide Maud giggled brightly and her hair shone like gold. Cuthbert stood looking, looking at her till a piece of cake sidled off the plate he was carrying.
"Mummy dear, do you like having tea with me all alone?" asked Elma.
That was what came of it in many ways. Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud had not a word for any one. But then they had been so long separated by social ties and an unfriendly world and "pride," as Helen put it, and various things. Mrs. Dudgeon took the news "carved in stone," and her daughters as something that merely could not be helped. Helen had always been crazy over these Leightons. Mrs. Dudgeon unbent to Mr. Leighton however. He was a man to whom people invariably offered the best, and for his own part he could never quite see where the point of view of other people came in where Mrs. Dudgeon was concerned. Cuthbert was already sufficiently established as rather a brilliant young university man, and a partnership in a large practice in town was being arranged for. Mrs. Dudgeon could unbend with some graciousness therefore, and, after all, Helen was the eldest of four, and none were married yet. "Time is a great leveller," said Adelaide Maud.
All the love and enthusiasm which had been saved from the engagement of Isobel were showered on the unheeding Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud.
"It isn't that I don't appreciate it," said Adelaide Maud. "I know how dreadful it would be to be without it, but oh! somehow there's so little time to attend to every one who is good to me."
Isobel, in a certain measure, was annoyed at the interruption to her own arrangements. In a day things seemed to change from her being the centre of interest, to the claims of Adelaide Maud coming uppermost. She looked on the engagement as a complete bore. Robin seemed depressed with the news. She often wondered how far she could influence him, and turned rather a cold side to him for the moment. Then her ordinary wilfulness upheld her serenely. After all, once married to Robin, she would be independent of the domestic enthusiasms of the Leighton crowd. She was tired of the pose where she had to appear as one of them, and longed to assert herself differently as soon as possible.
As for the girls themselves--what had London or anything offered equal to this?
They could not believe in their luck in having Adelaide Maud as a sister.
Elma went in the old way to give the news to Miss Grace.
"Oh, I'm so pleased, my dear, so pleased," said poor lonely Miss Grace. "It makes up for so much, my dear, when one grows old, to see young people happy. We are so inclined to be extravagant of happiness when we are young. Some one ought always to be on the spot to pick up the little stray pieces we let drop and enable us to regain them again."
"Weren't you ever engaged to be married, Miss Grace?" Elma asked quite simply.
Miss Grace was not at all embarrassed in the usual way of old maids. She gazed over the white and gold drawing-room, and one saw the spark of flint in her eyes.
"Not engaged, dear, but all the inclination to be. Ah, yes, I had the inclination. And he invited me, but affairs at that time made it unsuitable."
"Oh, Miss Grace, only unsuitable?" Elma's heart went out to her. Beneath everything she knew it must be Miss Annie.
"Yes, dear. And the others found him different to what I did. Selfish and dictatorial, you know. Nothing he did seemed to fit in to what they expected. He grew annoyed with them. I sometimes hardly wonder at that. It made him appear to be what they really thought him. And in the end I asked him to go."
"Oh, Miss Grace!"
Elma's voice was a tragedy.
"It was not fair, it was not fair to him or to you. He didn't want to marry the others. What did it matter what they thought?"
"If he could have married me then, it wouldn't have mattered," said Miss Grace. "I knew that he was good and true, you see; so that I never doubted him. But he was poor, and they worried me nearly to my grave. I was very weak," said Miss Grace.
"And I suppose he went and married some one else in a fit of hopelessness," said Elma tragically. "What a nice wife you would have made, Miss Grace!"
Miss Grace started a trifle, and looked anxiously at Elma. She did not seem to hear the compliment.
"Oh, we all have our little stories," she said. "But don't be extravagant of your beautiful youth, my dear."
"I don't feel youthful or beautiful in any way," said Elma. "I think it's the fever. I feel as though I had been born a hundred years ago. I wish I could keep from shivering whenever anything either exciting or lovely happens. Now, I never was so happy in my life as I was yesterday over Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud, and I was so shaky that I simply burst into tears. What's the good of being youthful if one feels like that?"
"Wait till you have a holiday, dear, you will soon get over that."
Miss Grace did her best to cheer her up. Elma's thoughts ran back to the story she had heard.
"Miss Grace," she asked, "this man that you were engaged to, was he----"
The door opened and Saunders appeared.
"Dr. Merryweather," said he.
Miss Grace rose in a direct manner. She controlled her voice with a little nervous cough.
"This is just the person to tell you that you ought to be off for a change," she said as they shook hands with Dr. Merryweather.
Miss Grace told him about Elma's shakiness as though it were a real disease. Mrs. Leighton had never looked upon it as anything more than "just a mannerism," as Miss Grace put it. Dr. Merryweather ran his keen eye over Elma's flushed face.
"You mustn't have too many engagements in your family," he said, "while you remain a convalescent."
He had been only then arranging with Mrs. Leighton that she should take Elma off for a trip.
"Mr. Leighton will go too," he said kindly. "I don't think any of you realize how much your parents have suffered recently."
"Oh, but when?" asked Elma in a most disappointed voice. "Not at once, I hope."
"Almost at once," said Dr. Merryweather. "Before this first wedding at least."
Elma's face fell a trifle.
"Oh, well, I suppose I must," she said. "But so much depends on my being just on the spot--up to Isobel's wedding, you know."
"I said, 'No more engagements,'" said Dr. Merryweather with his eye still on her flushed face.
"This isn't exactly an engagement," said Elma with a sigh. "I wish it were."
There was no explaining to Dr. Merryweather of course. There was even not much chance of enlightening Miss Grace. One could only remain a kind of petted invalid and await developments. Now that Adelaide Maud was really one of them and Cuthbert in such a blissful state, it would seem as though nothing were required to make Elma perfectly happy. But there was this one trouble of Mabel's which only she could share. For of course one couldn't go about telling people that Mabel had set great store by the one man who had run away.
"If only George Maclean would play up," sighed Elma.
But almost every one played up except George Maclean.