CHAPTER XVThe ArrivalThe 4.50 train hammered and pounded in a jerkily driven manner to Ridgetown. It was hot, and most of the windows lay open in the endeavour to catch any air that had escaped being stifled in smoke and the dust of iron. Miss Meredith occupied a first-class carriage together with two people. One, an old gentleman who travelled daily and who did not count, the other a dark-eyed girl of pale complexion. She wore irreproachably fitting tweeds, and as though to contradict the severity of their trim appearance, a very flamboyant red hat. It was tip-tilted in a smart way over her nose, and had an air of seeming to make every other hat within eyeshot scream dejectedly, "I come from the country."The red hat came from the town, London presumably. The dark girl seemed in a petulant mood, as though the atmosphere of the carriage stifled her in more ways than by its being uncontrollably hot. It was out of gear with the smooth, madonna-like appearance of her features, that she should be petulant at all. There was an indescribable placidity about her carriage and expression which contradicted her movements at this moment of nearing Ridgetown. She caught Miss Meredith's eye on her, and seemed annoyed at the interest it displayed. Miss Meredith was much impressed by her appearance. As a rule, she confined her ideas of people in Ridgetown either to their being "refined" or "rather vulgar." This girl had not the air of being either of those two. She was a type which had never been dissected in Ridgetown. It was as evident that one would neither say of her that she was the complete lady, nor yet that she was un-ladylike. One could say that she was good-looking, adorably good-looking. Calm, lucid eyes, containing a calculating challenge in their expression, milky complexion framing their mysterious depths of darkness, red lips parting occasionally with her breathing over startlingly white teeth, this was all very different to the rosebud complexions, the rather shy demeanour of Ridgetown.Miss Meredith could act as a very capable little policeman when she became interested in any one. She determined to act the policeman now that she was aware this must be a visitor to Ridgetown. They had passed the last slow stopping-place, and were nearing what must be her destination. Each station without the name of Ridgetown had evidently annoyed the dark girl."The next station is Ridgetown," said Miss Meredith pleasantly.The dark girl stared."Oh, ah, is it?" she asked negligently.An old gentleman rose from the corner and began collecting his belongings."May I help you?" he asked, and lifted down her dressing case.She became radiant."Thank you so much," she said very gracefully.Miss Meredith felt in an annoyed manner that her own overtures had been unrecognized in favour of these. She could be an abject person, however, wherever she intended to make an impression, and decided not to be non-plussed too soon. Doubtless the dark girl was about to visit some friend of her own. She rose at her end of the carriage to get a parasol from the rack. It allowed the new arrival to swing out on the platform even before the train was stopped.Miss Meredith saw Isobel being received by the Leightons.This was enough to allow of Miss Meredith's slipping away unnoticed before a porter came to find the neglected dressing bag. But she went unwillingly, and in a new riot of opinion. The truth came forcibly that the new cousin would be a great sensation in Ridgetown. It was strange that she had never dreamed that the dark girl might be the Leightons' cousin. No occasion would be complete without her. A few weeks ago, and she might have had her first reception at the Merediths', where they should have had the distinction of introducing her. Now, owing to late events, relations might be rather strained between themselves and the Leightons.Miss Meredith had grown more ambitious each year with regard to her brother. She was the ladder by which he had climbed into social prominence in Ridgetown. Her diligence overcame all obstacles. At first, she had deemed it delightful that he should be attached to Mabel, now it seemed much more appropriate that he should make the most of the Dudgeons. Through the Leightons they had formed a slight acquaintance there, which had lately shown signs of development. It became necessary to sow seeds of disaffection in the mind of Robin where the Leightons were concerned. He had become too much of their world. He was a man not easily influenced, and he had had a great affection for Mabel. But the constant wearing of the stone had invariably been the treatment for Robin, and lately a good deal of wearing had been necessary on account of Mr. Symington.She began to recall just how much she had said to Mr. Symington. Her face burned with the recollection that he had shown how much he thought of Mabel. She had put the matter from Mabel's point of view. While Mr. Symington was there, Mabel's happiness with Robin was interfered with. Miss Meredith had intended to infer that it was his constant attendance at the White House which was being called in question. Whereas, he had already, unknown to her, settled on it as meaning Ridgetown. He had interrupted her abruptly, with stern lips, "Pardon me, but will you let me know distinctly,--is Miss Leighton engaged to your brother?" Miss Meredith saw her chance and took it at a run. "Yes," she said. It was hardly a lie, considering how Robin and Mabel had been linked for so many years in a tacit sort of manner."That--I had not understood," said Mr. Symington. Whereupon he immediately wrote his letter to Mabel.Miss Meredith had always had her own ideas of Mr. Symington. He was not the companion for these very young girls. He was not old, on the other hand, but he possessed a temperament which put him on another plane than that of the rather boisterous Leighton family. On the Meredith plane, if one would have the words spoken."Robin," she said that evening, after the arrival of Isobel, "let us go down to the Leightons' as though nothing had happened."Robin turned a reserved mask of a countenance in her direction."You women can do anything," he said.The weariness of being without these kaleidoscopic friends of theirs had already beset him. They were still in time to find the old level again. It would certainly be a freezing world without the Leightons. Everybody knew that one might get social advantages with the Dudgeons, but one had always a ripping time with the Leightons.Miss Meredith, on her part, began to wonder, now that Mr. Symington was warned and would keep Robin from feeling the desirability of the girl whom two men were after, whether Robin himself might be more gently weaned than by thus being borne away on an open rupture. Robin was in the position of a man who had been brought up by mother and sister. Practically, whatever he had touched all his life had remained his own, sacred and inviolate. It seemed that Mabel ought to have remained his own merely because he had once stretched out his hand in her direction. Then, he began to find that he reckoned with a family which had been taught unselfishness.Isobel, to do her justice, always imagined that Mabel from the reserve of her welcome on the occasion of her arrival, resented her presence at the White House. She noticed that of all the girls to welcome her, Mabel kept a constrained silence. This she immediately put down to a personal distaste of herself, and controlled her actions accordingly. From the first moment of greeting her aunt and uncle, and sitting down to table, she upheld a sweetness of character which was unassailable, and which put Mabel's distrait manner into rather wicked relief. Isobel's was a nature, formed and articulate, entirely independent of the feelings and sympathies of others, a nature which could thrive and blossom on any trouble and disappointment, so long as these were not her own. She had learned in the mixed teaching of her rather stranded life, that very little trouble or disappointment came in the way of those who could see what they wanted and grab with both hands accordingly. She determined to grab with both hands every benefit to be derived from being leader in the Leighton family. She had come there with the intention of being leader. Before the meal was over, she had gained the good opinion of all except Mabel, an intentional exclusion on her part. Mabel had received her without effusion. Here was rivalry. In the most methodical and determined manner, she began a long siege of those rights and privileges which Mabel, as head of the Leighton girls, had never had really questioned before. She supplied a link in their musical circle, incomplete before. She could sing. Her methods were purely technical and so highly controlled, that the rather soulful playing of the Leighton girls shrank a little into a background of their own making. Isobel's voice was like a clear photograph, developed to the last shred of minuteness. One heard her notes working with the precision of a musical box. The tiring nature of her accomplishments was never evident at a first performance. These only appeared to be ripplingly brilliant. She had the finished air and mechanical mannerisms of the operatic artist, and they became startlingly effective in a room where music only in its natural and most picturesque aspect had been indulged. Mr. Leighton endeavoured to reconcile himself to a person who was invariably at top notes, and Isobel deceived herself into thinking that she charmed him. She charmed the others however, and Jean especially was at her feet. It struck her that probably she would be able to get more of the fat of life out of Jean than out of any one. She noted that Jean ordered a good deal where others consulted or merely suggested. Ordering was more in her line.Of Mrs. Leighton she took no account whatever, except that she was invariably sweet in her presence.It dawned on no one that a very dangerous element had been introduced into the clear heaven of the wise rule of the White House.Mabel's mind at the start, it is true, was in a subconscious condition of warning. The particular kind of warning she could not recognize, but, long after, attached it to the attitude of Isobel. In a month or two, she found that while her family still remained outwardly at one with her, a subtle disrespect of any opinion of hers, a discontent at some of her mildest plans, seemed to invade the others. It came upon her that her ideas were very young and crude with Isobel there to give finer ones.Ah! that was it. Isobel was so much better equipped for deciding things than she was. It affected Mabel's playing when she imagined that her family found it at last not good enough. She never could play for Isobel. On the first night of arrival, Mabel was most concerned, however, on how she was to give certain news to her father and mother. Mr. Leighton had heard from Mr. Symington--only that he had been called away. Mabel took the news in public with a great shrinking Her heart cried out in rebellion, and instead of indulging that wild cry, she had to be interested in the arrival of Isobel. She caught Isobel's keen darkness of gaze on her, and shifted weakly under its influence to apparent unconcern and laughter.At the worst of it, when they were taking tea in the drawing-room after dinner, Robin and his sister came in. Miss Meredith'scoupwas worth her fear and distrust in experimenting with it. Robin became genuinely interested in Isobel. This made him almost kind to Mabel.It concentrated all Mabel's wild rush of feelings to a triumph of pride. Where she would willingly have gone to her room and had it out with herself, she waited calmly in the drawing-room and heard Isobel's first song.Miss Meredith's heart glowed feebly. She had won her point. But Mabel's face heralded disaster.Elma too would not look at her.Elma trembled with the weight of what she would like to say to Sarah Meredith, and could not. Feebly she determined not to shake hands with her, then found herself as having done it.Mr. Leighton talked quite unconcernedly about the departure of Mr. Symington. "Can you tell me why he leaves us so suddenly?" he asked of Miss Meredith.She had always made a point of liking to be asked about Mr. Symington. This time she seemed afraid of the subject, certainly of Mr. Leighton's airy manner of handling it. Robin's face flushed hotly in an enraged sort of manner. Mabel's grew cold.With all their experience of each other, and their knowledge of what had been going on, none in the room knew the nature of the crisis at hand, except the actors in it, and Elma. But, by the intuition of a nature that scented disaster easily and wilfully, Isobel, without a word from one of them, saw some of these hearts laid bare.Miss Meredith, ill at ease, interested her immensely.Miss Meredith at last answered that she knew nothing of the reason why Mr. Symington had left so abruptly.Elma rose shaking in every limb."That is not true," she said. Her voice, more that her words carried effect.She could go no further, she could only say, "That is not true."Mrs. Leighton looked very surprised, and then helplessly bewildered. Miss Meredith had a talent for seeing her chance. She saw it here. She turned in a rather foolish way, as though they intended some compliment."Indeed," said she, "you all over-rate my influence with Mr. Symington. It is nothing to me whether he goes or stays."Mabel pulled Elma into a corner."Oh shut up dear, for Heaven's sake shut up!" she whispered, and that incident was closed.But Isobel began to play with a loud triumphant accompaniment and sang in a manner which might have shown every one the thing which she thought she had just discovered.Instead, they all declared they had never heard such clear top notes.CHAPTER XVIThe Thin Edge of the WedgeIt seemed to Mabel that Isobel's proposals, kindly worded and prettily mentioned, were always impossible of acceptance. She did nothing but refuse these overtures to friendship for the next week or so. This was the more awkward since she was particularly anxious to make everything nice for Isobel. But the proposals and the overtures seemed continually to occur in connexion with the Merediths. It was a ridiculous thing of course that Isobel should be proposing anything in connexion with the Merediths.Jean had now found some one after her own heart, one who did not wait for invitations, but thought immediately on a plan for making one's self known to people. Isobel had already called on the Dudgeons. Her progress was a royal one, and Mabel hated herself for the way she alone, though often with the backing up of Elma's companionship, kept out of things. She ventured to tell Jean why Robin no longer was a friend of hers. Jean seemed then to think him all the more eligible for Isobel. This hurt more than one dared to believe. But Jean always had been for a direct way of dealing with people, sentiment not being in her nature at all. She considered it stupid of Mabel to bother about a man to whom she had not even been engaged.Mabel, rather morbidly clung to her pride after this, and refused Elma's repeated pleadings to tell her mother and father. If one's own sister called one a donkey, it wasn't much encouragement to go on to more criticism. Mabel would rather see Isobel married to Robin than say a word more on her own account. Elma worried about it as much as Mabel did, and nothing would induce her to go near the Merediths. Mr. and Mrs. Leighton noted the difference, but had to confess that changes of a sort must come. Above all, Mabel was very young, and they did not want to press anything serious upon her just then. Robin's behaviour remained so gentlemanly that no one could convict him of anything except a sudden partiality for Isobel."They are all children of a sort," said Mr. Leighton, "and children settle their own differences best."Isobel felt the difficulty of the number of girls in the place. It appalled her to think of Elma's creeping up next, and making the string lengthen. She looked with positive disapproval on Elma with her hair up. In a forlorn way, Elma felt the great difference between her seventeenth birthday, and that glorious day when Mabel entered into her kingdom.Mabel was in trouble, Jean engrossed with her own affairs, and Isobel sweetly disdainful when Elma turned up her hair. She put it down again for three weeks, and nobody seemed to be the least pained at the difference.At every visit to Miss Grace, she wondered whether or not it would be quite loyal to tell her about Mabel. Miss Annie and she were, however, so uncomprehending about anything having gone wrong, so interested in the new cousin, that invariably Elma's confidences were checked by such a remark as, "How very sweet Isobel looked in that pink gown to-day," and so on. Then one had to run on and be complimentary about Isobel. It seemed to Elma that her heart would break if Miss Grace, along with every one else, went over to Isobel.She was not to know that Adelaide Maud had been there before her."I can't quite explain," said Adelaide Maud to Miss Grace one day, "I can't explain why I feel it, but this new cousin isn't on the same plane with the Leightons. There's something more--more developed, it's true, but there's also something missing.""Something that has to do with being a lady?" asked Miss Grace in her timid way."Exactly. I know my London types, and this isn't one I should fasten on to admire, although she makes rather a dashing brilliant appearance in her present surroundings.""I'm a little concerned about that," said Miss Grace.In spite of her uniform courtesy where Isobel was concerned she had quite a talk with Adelaide Maud regarding her."I should fancy it's this," said Miss Grace finally, "that while she stays with the Leightons she has all the more income on which to look beautiful. I can't help seeing an ulterior motive, you observe. I sometimes wonder, however, what she will do to my little girls before she is done with them."The first thing Isobel did was to inflame Jean with a desire to sing. There was no use trying to inflame Mabel about anything. After Jean had discovered that she might have a voice there was nothing for it but that she should go to London. She begged and implored her father and mother to let her go to London. She was the only member of the family who had ever had the pluck to suggest such a thing. They had a familiar disease of home-sickness which prevented any daring in such a direction. Mabel had twice come home a wreck before she was expected home at all, and invariably vowing never to leave again.And now Jean, the valiant, asked to be allowed to go alone to London in order to study."It's Isobel who has done it," wailed Betty. "She's so equipped. We seem such duffers. And it will be the first break."Mr. Leighton groaned."Why can't you be happy at home," he asked Jean."Oh, it will be so lovely to come back," said Jean, "with it all--what to do and how to do it--at one's fingers' ends.""You don't keep your voice at your fingers' ends, do you?" asked Mrs. Leighton.It seemed superb nonsense to her that Jean should not take lessons at home. Isobel marvelled to find that the real difficulty in the way of Jean's getting was this mild obstinacy of Mrs. Leighton's."I can tell Jean of such a nice place to live--with girls," said Isobel. "And I know the master she ought to have.""And we can't all vegetate here for ever," said poor Jean.Nothing ever cost Mr. Leighton the wrench that this cost him, but he prepared to let Jean go.Mabel and Elma would rather anything than that had happened just then. It had the effect of making Isobel more particular in being with Mabel rather than with Jean. Had she sounded the fact that with all Jean's protestations, Mabel was the much desired--that people were more keen on having the Leighton's when Mabel was of the party! Elma began to speculate on this until she was ashamed of herself.They played up for Jean at this juncture as though she were going away for ever. One would have thought there was nothing to be had in London from the manner in which they provided for her. Even Lance appeared with a kettle and spirit lamp for making tea."You meet in each other's rooms and talk politics and mend your stockings," said he, "and you take turns to make tea. I know all about it."Maud Hartley gave her a traveller's pincushion, and May Turberville a neat hold-all for jewellery.Jean stuck in her two brooches, one bangle, a pendant and a finger ring.Then she sighed in a longing manner."If I use your case, I shall have no jewellery to wear," she said to May.At that moment a package was handed to her. It was small, and of the exciting nature of the package that is first sealed, and then discloses a white box with a rubber strap round it."Oh, and it's from Bulstrode's," cried Jean in great excitement. "The loveliest place in town," she explained to Isobel. "What can it be?"It was a charming little watch on a brooch clasp, and it was accompanied by a card, "With love to dear Jean, to keep time for her when she is far away. From Miss Annie and Miss Grace.""Well," said Jean, with her eyes filling, "aren't they ducks! And I've so often laughed at Miss Grace.""They are just like fairy godmothers," said Elma. "Jean! It's lovely."She turned and turned the "little love" in her hand.Where so many were being kind to Jean, it appeared necessary to Aunt Katharine that she also must make her little gift. She gave Jean a linen bag for her boots, with "My boots and shoes" sewn in red across it."I don't approve of your trip at all," she said to Jean, "but then I never do approve of what your mother lets you do. In my young days we were making jam at your age, and learning how to cure hams. The stores are upsetting everything.""I want to sing," said Jean, "and your bag is lovely, Aunt Kathie. Didn't you want very badly to learn the right way to sing when you were my age?"Aunt Katharine sang one Scotch song about Prince Charlie, and it was worth hearing for the accompaniment alone, if not for the wonderful energy with which Aunt Katharine declaimed the words. Dr. Merryweather, in an abstracted moment, once thanked her for her recitation, and this had had the unfortunate result of preventing her from performing so often as she used to."No, my dear," she said in answer to Jean's remark, "I had no desire to find out how they sang at one end of the country, when my friends considered that I performed so well at the other end. The best masters of singing are not all removed from one's home. Nature and talent may do wonders."Then she sighed heavily."The claims of home ought to come first in any case. Your mother and father have given you a comfortable one. It is your duty to stay in it.""Well, papa has inflamed us with a desire to excel in music. It isn't our fault," said Jean. "And one can't get short cuts to technique in Ridgetown.""I quite see that your father places many things first which ought to come last," said Aunt Katharine dismally. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, for four girls, even including Jean with her boot bag, had risen at her, "I forgot that I am not allowed free expression in regard to my own brother-in-law."Aunt Katharine could always be expected to give in at this point, but up to it, one was anxious.Cuthbert came down to bid farewell to Jean."You are a queer old thing," he said to her. "Living in rooms is a mucky business, you know.""Oh, I shall be with twenty other girls," said Jean; "a kind of club, you know. Isobel says it's lovely. And then we get sostuckhere!"Cuthbert admitted that it wasn't the thing for them all to be cooped up in Ridgetown."Couldn't stand it myself, without work," said he. "And then, it's ripping, of course."It was lovely to have Cuthbert back, and he made a new acquaintance in Isobel. She had been a queer little half-grown thing when he had last seen her.In an indefinite way he did not approve of her, but finding her on terms of such intimacy with every one, he only gave signs of pleasure at meeting her.Elma was in dismay because there were heaps and heaps of things for which she wanted Cuthbert, and he only stayed two days. An idea that he could put a number of crooked things straight, if he remained, made her plead with him to come again.Cuthbert promised in an abstracted manner."Give me one more year, Elma, and then you may have to kick me out of Ridgetown," he said. "Who knows? At least, I shall make such a try for it, that you may have to kick me out."Everybody nice seemed to be leaving, and Adelaide Maud was away.It was rather trying to Elma that Isobel should about this period insist on visiting at Miss Annie's. Isobel seemed to be with them on every occasion, from the moment that Jean arranged to go to London.Jean got everything ready to start. With Isobel's help she engaged her room from particulars sent to her. It was the tiniest in a large house of small rooms, but Jean, rather horrified at a detached sum of money being singled out by her father from the family funds, was determined to make that sum as small as possible. Mr. Leighton saw these preparations being made and was helpful but dismal about them. Mrs. Leighton presented her with a travelling trunk which would cover up and be made a window-seat, no doubt, in that room where the tea parties were to occur. Everything was ready the night before her departure, and exactly at 7.15, when the second dressing bell rang for dinner, as Betty explained afterwards, Jean broke down.This was an extraordinary exhibition to Isobel, who had travelled, and packed, and always moved to a new place with avidity. She said now that she would give anything she was worth at that moment to be flying off to London like Jean."Oh," said Jean, "it's like a knife that has cut to-day away from to-morrow, and all of you from that crowd I'm going to. Do you know," she said, as though it were quite an interesting thing for them to hear about, "I feel quite queer--and sick. Do you think that perhaps there is something wrong with me?" She even mentioned appendicitis as a possible ailment."You are getting home-sick," said Mabel, who knew the signs.Jean was much annoyed."You don't understand," she said. "I'm not silly in that way. I don't feel as though I could shed a tear at going away. I'm just over-joyed at the prospect. But I'm so wobbly in other ways. I'm really terrified that I'm going to be ill."Poor Jean ate no dinner. Jean didn't sleep. Jean perambulated the corridors, and thought of the night when Cuthbert got hurt. She wished that she were enough of a baby to go and knock at her mother's door, as they had done then, and get her to come and comfort her. She hoped her father wasn't vexed that she had asked to go, and hadn't minded leaving him. Then she remembered how she intended coming home--a full-blown prima donna sort of person--one of whom he should really be proud. This ought to have set her up for the night, but the thought of it failed in its usual exhilarating effect.The sick feeling returned, with innumerable horrors of imaginary pain, and a real headache.Jean saw the dawn come in and sincerely prayed that already she had not appendicitis.CHAPTER XVIIA ReprieveThe first two letters from Jean were so long, that one imagined she must have sat up most of the night to get them off."I don't mind telling you that I felt very miserable when I got to my rooms," she said among other things. "I drove here all right, and the door was opened by a servant who didn't seem to know who I was. Then she produced a secretary who looked at me very closely as though to see whether I was respectable or not. She took me up to my room, and it's like a little state-room, without the fun of a bunk. There's one little slippy window which looks out on the gardens, and across the gardens there are high houses, with occasionally people at the windows. One girl with a pink bow in her hair sits at a window all day long. Sometimes she leans out with her elbows on the sill, and looks down, and then she draws them in again and sits looking straight over at me. She's quite pretty. But what a life! It must be dreadful only having one room and nothing to do in it. My piano hasn't come, and until it arrives, it's like being the girl with the pink bow. At home it's different, we can always pull flowers, or fix our blouses or do something of that sort. The girls here don't seem to mind whether one is alive or dead. I think they are cross at new arrivals. I sat last night at dinner at a little table all by myself, on a slippery linoleum floor, and thought it horrid. Then it would have been fun to go to the drawing-room ('to play to papa,' how nice that sounds), but the girls melted off by themselves. I looked into the drawing-room and thought it awful, so I ran up to my room and stayed there. The girl with the pink bow was at her window again, and I really could have slain her, I don't know why."Then "I'm to have my first lesson to-morrow. I'm so glad. Because I can't practise, even although my piano has come. A girl who writes made the others stop playing last night in the drawing-room because it gave her a headache. It makes me think that no one will want to hear me sing. I suppose they think I'm very countrified."I think the real reason why I can't practise is because I'm not very well. London food doesn't seem so nice as ours, and I still have that funny feeling that I had when I started. I suppose you are all having jolly times. You would know that girls lived in this house. It's all wicker furniture, and little green curtains, and vases of flowers. I've only gone out to see about my lesson, except to the post and quite near here. I don't like going out much yet. Isobel's directions were a great help."This letter stopped rather abruptly. So much so that Mr. Leighton was far from happy about Jean. He bothered unceasingly as to whether he should have allowed her to go. Mrs. Leighton enlarged his anxiety by her own fears. Jean's growing so much faster and taller than any one else had been a point in her favour with her mother a few years before, and Mrs. Leighton had never got over the certainty that Jean must be delicate in consequence."I hope she won't have appendicitis," said she mournfully."Oh, mummy," said Mabel, "Jean is only home-sick."Jean wrote another desponding letter."Home-sick or not home-sick, if Jean is ill, she has got to be nursed," said Mrs. Leighton."Jean has never been ill in her life," Mabel pointed out. "She hasn't even felt very home-sick. It will pass off, mummy dear."But it didn't.Jean sat, in dismal solitude, in the room looking over to the girl with the pink bow, and she thought she should die. She did not like the words of encouragement which came from home. Every one was trying to "buck her up" as though she were a kid. No one seemed to understand that she was ill.At the fifth day of taking no food to speak of and not sleeping properly, and with the most lamentable distaste of everything and every one around possessing her, she detected at last an acute little pain which she thought must be appendicitis.She went out, wired home "I am in bed," and came back to get into it.Once the girls in the house heard that she was ill, they crowded into her room with the kindest expressions of help and sympathy. They brought her flowers and fruit, and one provided her with books. Then they came in, as Lance had promised, and made tea for her. Jean took the tea and a good many slices of bread and butter, and felt some of the weight lifted. It might not be appendicitis after all.And she never dreamed of the havoc which her telegram might create. Towards the evening, she got one of her effusive visitors to send off another telegram. "Feeling better," this one declared.She did not know that just before this point, Mr. Leighton had determined to fetch her home from London. The whole household was in despair. Mrs. Leighton wanted to start with him in the morning. Mr. Leighton was not only anxious, he was in a passion with himself for ever having let Jean go."Madness," he said, "madness. I cannot stand this any longer."Isobel hated to see people display feeling, and this excitement about a girl with a headache annoyed her infinitely. She was invited out to dinner with Mabel, and Mabel would not go."Papa is in such a state," Mabel said, "I could not possibly go out and leave him like this. Let us telephone that we cannot come."Isobel checked the protest that rose to her calm lips. She was ready in a filmy black chiffon gown, and her clear complexion looked startlingly radiant in that framing. She had quite determined to go to the dinner party."Let me telephone for you, Mabel," she said with rather a nice concern in her voice. "Then it won't take you away from your father."Mabel abstractedly thanked her."Say Jean is ill please, and that papa is in fits about her. The Gardiners will understand."Isobel telephoned.She came back to Mabel with her skirts trailing in little flaunting waves of delicate black."They beg me to come. It's so disorganizing for a dinner party. What shall I do?" she asked in an interrogative manner.Mrs. Leighton said, "Oh, do go, Isobel," politely. "Why should anybody stay at home just because we were so foolish as to let Jean go off to London alone?""Oh, well," said Isobel lightly, "when you put it like that, I must."She went to telephone her decision.It was nearly four weeks afterwards when, in quite an unexpected manner, Betty discovered that she never telephoned that second time at all. Isobel had arranged her going from the start, adequately.Mabel was left alone with the anxious parents when Jean's second telegram came in. It opened Mabel's eyes to the fact that perhaps for once Jean was really homesick. It was so much like the way she herself would have liked to have acted on some occasions and dared not. Jean had never been ill or been affected by nerves before, and had therefore no confidence in recoveries. No doubt her interest in the new experience had made her imagination run away with her. She disliked London and wanted to get out of it--that was clear enough. But after just six days of it--with everybody laughing at her giving in! The thing was not to be thought of.It seemed to Mabel that her own difficult experiences lately, all the hard things she had had to bear, culminated in this sudden act of duty which lay before her. She must clear out--go to Jean and help her through."Oh, papa," she said, "please let me go."Mr. Leighton jumped as though she had exploded a bomb."What, another," asked he; "isn't one enough! No, indeed! I've had quite enough of the independence of girls by this time. There's to be no more of it. Jean is coming home, and you will all stay at home--for ever."He never spoke with more decision. Mrs. Leighton had reached the point where she could only stare.Mabel sat down to her task of convincing them. She looked very dainty--almost fragile in the delicate gown of the particular colour of heliotrope which she had at last dared to assume. A slight pallor which Mrs. Leighton had noticed once or twice of late in Mabel had erased the bright colour which was usual with her. She spoke with a certain kind of maturity which her mother found a little pathetic."You see, papa, it's like this. If you go to Jean now, in all probability whenever she sees you she will be as right as the mail, just as the rest of us are when we've been home-sick. Then she will be awfully disgusted that she made so much of it when she finds out what it is, and it won't be coming home like a triumphant prima donna for her to come now, will it? She will fall awfully flat, don't you think? And Cuthbert and Lance and you, papa, will go on saying that girls are no good for anything. You will take all the spirit out of us at last.""She mustn't go on being ill in London," said Mrs. Leighton. "We can't stand the anxiety.""Let me go up for a week or two, and see her started," pleaded Mabel. "I've been there, you know, and know a little about it, and she would have time to feel at home. If I find her really ill, I could send for you. Jean wouldn't feel an idiot about it if I went up just to see her started."Then Mabel fired her last shot."It would be good for me, mummy. I've been so stuck lately. Won't you let me go?"Something in Mabel's voice touched her mother very much."Won't Robin miss you?" she asked in a teasing, but anxious way. "You don't tell us, Mabel, whether you want Robin to miss you or not. And that's one of the main things, isn't it?"Mabel started, and her eyes grew wide with a fear of what they might say next."It's all right, Mabs! Don't you worry if you don't want to talk about it," said her father cheerily. There was a reserve in all of them except Jean which kept them from expressing easily what they were not always willing to hide."Oh," said Mabel, "I think I did want to, but n-never could. I don't think I want to be c-coupled with Robin any more. It was fun when I was rather s-silly and young, but it's different now."She looked at her father quite sedately and quietly."I think Robin thinks a good deal more of Isobel and I'm glad," she said quite determinedly. "The fact is, I was sure I would be glad if something like that happened. I was sure before Isobel came."Mr. Leighton patted her shoulder."Thank you, my dear, for telling us. You're just to do as you like about these things. Difficult to talk about, aren't they? Remember, I don't think much of Robin now, or that sister of his. They could have arranged it better, I think. Never mind. I shall be glad to have you find worthier friends." He patted her shoulder again, and looked over at Mrs. Leighton. She was surreptitiously wiping her eyes. Mabel sat strong and straight and rather radiant as though a weight were lifted."I don't think," said Mr. Leighton to his wife in a clear voice, "I don't think that either you or I would be of greater service to Jean than Mabel could be! Now, do you, my dear, seriously, do you?" He kept an eye on her to claim the answer for which he hoped."I don't think so, John," said Mrs. Leighton."Then could you get ready for the 8.50 to-morrow morning?" asked Mr. Leighton of Mabel.Mabel hugged him radiantly for answer."I don't know how I can live without two of you, even for a week," he said. "But then, I won't be selfish. Make the most of it and a success of it, and I shall always be glad afterwards that you went."It was no joke to have to prepare in one evening for a visit to London. Elma's heart stopped beating when she heard of the arrangement."Oh, Mabs, and I shall be left with that--bounder!"The word was out.Never had Elma felt so horrified. Years she had spent in listening to refinements in language, only to come to this. Of her own cousin too!"Oh, Mabs, it's shameful of me. And it will be so jolly for Jean. And you too! Oh, Mabs, shall I ever go to London, do you think?""You go and ask that duck of a father of ours--now--at present--this instant, and he will promise you anything in the world. No, don't, dear. On second thoughts he needs every bit of you here. Elma! Play up now. Play up like the little brick you are. You and Betty play up, and I'll bless you for ever. Don't you know I'm skipping all that racketing crowd. I'm skipping Robin. I'm skipping Sarah! Think of skipping the delectable Sarah!" She shook her fist in the direction of the Merediths' house. "And what is more, dear Elma, I am skipping Isobel."She said that in a whisper.They had all the feeling that Isobel was a presence, not always a mere physical reality.Elma had not seen Mabel in such a joyous mood for weeks."And it's also because I feel I can soon square up Jean, and make her fit," said Mabel; "so that I'm of some use, you see, in going. I'm quite sure Jean is only home-sick after all."She trilled and sang as she packed."Won't you be home-sick yourself, Mabel?" asked Elma anxiously."I have to get over that sooner or later. I shall begin now," said Mabel."Won't it be beastly in that girls' club?" wailed Betty."Oh, I'm sure it will," quivered Mabel. She sank in a heap on the floor."Whatever possessed Jean to go off on that wild chase, I can't think," cried Betty."I know," said Elma."What?""Isobel."The gate clicked outside and there were voices. Betty crept to the window-sill and looked over. Mabel and Elma stood silent in the room. Crunching footsteps and then Isobel's voice, then Robin's, then "Good-night."Mabel, with a smothered little laugh, flung a blouse into her trunk."Isn't it ripping, I'm going to London," said she.
CHAPTER XV
The Arrival
The 4.50 train hammered and pounded in a jerkily driven manner to Ridgetown. It was hot, and most of the windows lay open in the endeavour to catch any air that had escaped being stifled in smoke and the dust of iron. Miss Meredith occupied a first-class carriage together with two people. One, an old gentleman who travelled daily and who did not count, the other a dark-eyed girl of pale complexion. She wore irreproachably fitting tweeds, and as though to contradict the severity of their trim appearance, a very flamboyant red hat. It was tip-tilted in a smart way over her nose, and had an air of seeming to make every other hat within eyeshot scream dejectedly, "I come from the country."
The red hat came from the town, London presumably. The dark girl seemed in a petulant mood, as though the atmosphere of the carriage stifled her in more ways than by its being uncontrollably hot. It was out of gear with the smooth, madonna-like appearance of her features, that she should be petulant at all. There was an indescribable placidity about her carriage and expression which contradicted her movements at this moment of nearing Ridgetown. She caught Miss Meredith's eye on her, and seemed annoyed at the interest it displayed. Miss Meredith was much impressed by her appearance. As a rule, she confined her ideas of people in Ridgetown either to their being "refined" or "rather vulgar." This girl had not the air of being either of those two. She was a type which had never been dissected in Ridgetown. It was as evident that one would neither say of her that she was the complete lady, nor yet that she was un-ladylike. One could say that she was good-looking, adorably good-looking. Calm, lucid eyes, containing a calculating challenge in their expression, milky complexion framing their mysterious depths of darkness, red lips parting occasionally with her breathing over startlingly white teeth, this was all very different to the rosebud complexions, the rather shy demeanour of Ridgetown.
Miss Meredith could act as a very capable little policeman when she became interested in any one. She determined to act the policeman now that she was aware this must be a visitor to Ridgetown. They had passed the last slow stopping-place, and were nearing what must be her destination. Each station without the name of Ridgetown had evidently annoyed the dark girl.
"The next station is Ridgetown," said Miss Meredith pleasantly.
The dark girl stared.
"Oh, ah, is it?" she asked negligently.
An old gentleman rose from the corner and began collecting his belongings.
"May I help you?" he asked, and lifted down her dressing case.
She became radiant.
"Thank you so much," she said very gracefully.
Miss Meredith felt in an annoyed manner that her own overtures had been unrecognized in favour of these. She could be an abject person, however, wherever she intended to make an impression, and decided not to be non-plussed too soon. Doubtless the dark girl was about to visit some friend of her own. She rose at her end of the carriage to get a parasol from the rack. It allowed the new arrival to swing out on the platform even before the train was stopped.
Miss Meredith saw Isobel being received by the Leightons.
This was enough to allow of Miss Meredith's slipping away unnoticed before a porter came to find the neglected dressing bag. But she went unwillingly, and in a new riot of opinion. The truth came forcibly that the new cousin would be a great sensation in Ridgetown. It was strange that she had never dreamed that the dark girl might be the Leightons' cousin. No occasion would be complete without her. A few weeks ago, and she might have had her first reception at the Merediths', where they should have had the distinction of introducing her. Now, owing to late events, relations might be rather strained between themselves and the Leightons.
Miss Meredith had grown more ambitious each year with regard to her brother. She was the ladder by which he had climbed into social prominence in Ridgetown. Her diligence overcame all obstacles. At first, she had deemed it delightful that he should be attached to Mabel, now it seemed much more appropriate that he should make the most of the Dudgeons. Through the Leightons they had formed a slight acquaintance there, which had lately shown signs of development. It became necessary to sow seeds of disaffection in the mind of Robin where the Leightons were concerned. He had become too much of their world. He was a man not easily influenced, and he had had a great affection for Mabel. But the constant wearing of the stone had invariably been the treatment for Robin, and lately a good deal of wearing had been necessary on account of Mr. Symington.
She began to recall just how much she had said to Mr. Symington. Her face burned with the recollection that he had shown how much he thought of Mabel. She had put the matter from Mabel's point of view. While Mr. Symington was there, Mabel's happiness with Robin was interfered with. Miss Meredith had intended to infer that it was his constant attendance at the White House which was being called in question. Whereas, he had already, unknown to her, settled on it as meaning Ridgetown. He had interrupted her abruptly, with stern lips, "Pardon me, but will you let me know distinctly,--is Miss Leighton engaged to your brother?" Miss Meredith saw her chance and took it at a run. "Yes," she said. It was hardly a lie, considering how Robin and Mabel had been linked for so many years in a tacit sort of manner.
"That--I had not understood," said Mr. Symington. Whereupon he immediately wrote his letter to Mabel.
Miss Meredith had always had her own ideas of Mr. Symington. He was not the companion for these very young girls. He was not old, on the other hand, but he possessed a temperament which put him on another plane than that of the rather boisterous Leighton family. On the Meredith plane, if one would have the words spoken.
"Robin," she said that evening, after the arrival of Isobel, "let us go down to the Leightons' as though nothing had happened."
Robin turned a reserved mask of a countenance in her direction.
"You women can do anything," he said.
The weariness of being without these kaleidoscopic friends of theirs had already beset him. They were still in time to find the old level again. It would certainly be a freezing world without the Leightons. Everybody knew that one might get social advantages with the Dudgeons, but one had always a ripping time with the Leightons.
Miss Meredith, on her part, began to wonder, now that Mr. Symington was warned and would keep Robin from feeling the desirability of the girl whom two men were after, whether Robin himself might be more gently weaned than by thus being borne away on an open rupture. Robin was in the position of a man who had been brought up by mother and sister. Practically, whatever he had touched all his life had remained his own, sacred and inviolate. It seemed that Mabel ought to have remained his own merely because he had once stretched out his hand in her direction. Then, he began to find that he reckoned with a family which had been taught unselfishness.
Isobel, to do her justice, always imagined that Mabel from the reserve of her welcome on the occasion of her arrival, resented her presence at the White House. She noticed that of all the girls to welcome her, Mabel kept a constrained silence. This she immediately put down to a personal distaste of herself, and controlled her actions accordingly. From the first moment of greeting her aunt and uncle, and sitting down to table, she upheld a sweetness of character which was unassailable, and which put Mabel's distrait manner into rather wicked relief. Isobel's was a nature, formed and articulate, entirely independent of the feelings and sympathies of others, a nature which could thrive and blossom on any trouble and disappointment, so long as these were not her own. She had learned in the mixed teaching of her rather stranded life, that very little trouble or disappointment came in the way of those who could see what they wanted and grab with both hands accordingly. She determined to grab with both hands every benefit to be derived from being leader in the Leighton family. She had come there with the intention of being leader. Before the meal was over, she had gained the good opinion of all except Mabel, an intentional exclusion on her part. Mabel had received her without effusion. Here was rivalry. In the most methodical and determined manner, she began a long siege of those rights and privileges which Mabel, as head of the Leighton girls, had never had really questioned before. She supplied a link in their musical circle, incomplete before. She could sing. Her methods were purely technical and so highly controlled, that the rather soulful playing of the Leighton girls shrank a little into a background of their own making. Isobel's voice was like a clear photograph, developed to the last shred of minuteness. One heard her notes working with the precision of a musical box. The tiring nature of her accomplishments was never evident at a first performance. These only appeared to be ripplingly brilliant. She had the finished air and mechanical mannerisms of the operatic artist, and they became startlingly effective in a room where music only in its natural and most picturesque aspect had been indulged. Mr. Leighton endeavoured to reconcile himself to a person who was invariably at top notes, and Isobel deceived herself into thinking that she charmed him. She charmed the others however, and Jean especially was at her feet. It struck her that probably she would be able to get more of the fat of life out of Jean than out of any one. She noted that Jean ordered a good deal where others consulted or merely suggested. Ordering was more in her line.
Of Mrs. Leighton she took no account whatever, except that she was invariably sweet in her presence.
It dawned on no one that a very dangerous element had been introduced into the clear heaven of the wise rule of the White House.
Mabel's mind at the start, it is true, was in a subconscious condition of warning. The particular kind of warning she could not recognize, but, long after, attached it to the attitude of Isobel. In a month or two, she found that while her family still remained outwardly at one with her, a subtle disrespect of any opinion of hers, a discontent at some of her mildest plans, seemed to invade the others. It came upon her that her ideas were very young and crude with Isobel there to give finer ones.
Ah! that was it. Isobel was so much better equipped for deciding things than she was. It affected Mabel's playing when she imagined that her family found it at last not good enough. She never could play for Isobel. On the first night of arrival, Mabel was most concerned, however, on how she was to give certain news to her father and mother. Mr. Leighton had heard from Mr. Symington--only that he had been called away. Mabel took the news in public with a great shrinking Her heart cried out in rebellion, and instead of indulging that wild cry, she had to be interested in the arrival of Isobel. She caught Isobel's keen darkness of gaze on her, and shifted weakly under its influence to apparent unconcern and laughter.
At the worst of it, when they were taking tea in the drawing-room after dinner, Robin and his sister came in. Miss Meredith'scoupwas worth her fear and distrust in experimenting with it. Robin became genuinely interested in Isobel. This made him almost kind to Mabel.
It concentrated all Mabel's wild rush of feelings to a triumph of pride. Where she would willingly have gone to her room and had it out with herself, she waited calmly in the drawing-room and heard Isobel's first song.
Miss Meredith's heart glowed feebly. She had won her point. But Mabel's face heralded disaster.
Elma too would not look at her.
Elma trembled with the weight of what she would like to say to Sarah Meredith, and could not. Feebly she determined not to shake hands with her, then found herself as having done it.
Mr. Leighton talked quite unconcernedly about the departure of Mr. Symington. "Can you tell me why he leaves us so suddenly?" he asked of Miss Meredith.
She had always made a point of liking to be asked about Mr. Symington. This time she seemed afraid of the subject, certainly of Mr. Leighton's airy manner of handling it. Robin's face flushed hotly in an enraged sort of manner. Mabel's grew cold.
With all their experience of each other, and their knowledge of what had been going on, none in the room knew the nature of the crisis at hand, except the actors in it, and Elma. But, by the intuition of a nature that scented disaster easily and wilfully, Isobel, without a word from one of them, saw some of these hearts laid bare.
Miss Meredith, ill at ease, interested her immensely.
Miss Meredith at last answered that she knew nothing of the reason why Mr. Symington had left so abruptly.
Elma rose shaking in every limb.
"That is not true," she said. Her voice, more that her words carried effect.
She could go no further, she could only say, "That is not true."
Mrs. Leighton looked very surprised, and then helplessly bewildered. Miss Meredith had a talent for seeing her chance. She saw it here. She turned in a rather foolish way, as though they intended some compliment.
"Indeed," said she, "you all over-rate my influence with Mr. Symington. It is nothing to me whether he goes or stays."
Mabel pulled Elma into a corner.
"Oh shut up dear, for Heaven's sake shut up!" she whispered, and that incident was closed.
But Isobel began to play with a loud triumphant accompaniment and sang in a manner which might have shown every one the thing which she thought she had just discovered.
Instead, they all declared they had never heard such clear top notes.
CHAPTER XVI
The Thin Edge of the Wedge
It seemed to Mabel that Isobel's proposals, kindly worded and prettily mentioned, were always impossible of acceptance. She did nothing but refuse these overtures to friendship for the next week or so. This was the more awkward since she was particularly anxious to make everything nice for Isobel. But the proposals and the overtures seemed continually to occur in connexion with the Merediths. It was a ridiculous thing of course that Isobel should be proposing anything in connexion with the Merediths.
Jean had now found some one after her own heart, one who did not wait for invitations, but thought immediately on a plan for making one's self known to people. Isobel had already called on the Dudgeons. Her progress was a royal one, and Mabel hated herself for the way she alone, though often with the backing up of Elma's companionship, kept out of things. She ventured to tell Jean why Robin no longer was a friend of hers. Jean seemed then to think him all the more eligible for Isobel. This hurt more than one dared to believe. But Jean always had been for a direct way of dealing with people, sentiment not being in her nature at all. She considered it stupid of Mabel to bother about a man to whom she had not even been engaged.
Mabel, rather morbidly clung to her pride after this, and refused Elma's repeated pleadings to tell her mother and father. If one's own sister called one a donkey, it wasn't much encouragement to go on to more criticism. Mabel would rather see Isobel married to Robin than say a word more on her own account. Elma worried about it as much as Mabel did, and nothing would induce her to go near the Merediths. Mr. and Mrs. Leighton noted the difference, but had to confess that changes of a sort must come. Above all, Mabel was very young, and they did not want to press anything serious upon her just then. Robin's behaviour remained so gentlemanly that no one could convict him of anything except a sudden partiality for Isobel.
"They are all children of a sort," said Mr. Leighton, "and children settle their own differences best."
Isobel felt the difficulty of the number of girls in the place. It appalled her to think of Elma's creeping up next, and making the string lengthen. She looked with positive disapproval on Elma with her hair up. In a forlorn way, Elma felt the great difference between her seventeenth birthday, and that glorious day when Mabel entered into her kingdom.
Mabel was in trouble, Jean engrossed with her own affairs, and Isobel sweetly disdainful when Elma turned up her hair. She put it down again for three weeks, and nobody seemed to be the least pained at the difference.
At every visit to Miss Grace, she wondered whether or not it would be quite loyal to tell her about Mabel. Miss Annie and she were, however, so uncomprehending about anything having gone wrong, so interested in the new cousin, that invariably Elma's confidences were checked by such a remark as, "How very sweet Isobel looked in that pink gown to-day," and so on. Then one had to run on and be complimentary about Isobel. It seemed to Elma that her heart would break if Miss Grace, along with every one else, went over to Isobel.
She was not to know that Adelaide Maud had been there before her.
"I can't quite explain," said Adelaide Maud to Miss Grace one day, "I can't explain why I feel it, but this new cousin isn't on the same plane with the Leightons. There's something more--more developed, it's true, but there's also something missing."
"Something that has to do with being a lady?" asked Miss Grace in her timid way.
"Exactly. I know my London types, and this isn't one I should fasten on to admire, although she makes rather a dashing brilliant appearance in her present surroundings."
"I'm a little concerned about that," said Miss Grace.
In spite of her uniform courtesy where Isobel was concerned she had quite a talk with Adelaide Maud regarding her.
"I should fancy it's this," said Miss Grace finally, "that while she stays with the Leightons she has all the more income on which to look beautiful. I can't help seeing an ulterior motive, you observe. I sometimes wonder, however, what she will do to my little girls before she is done with them."
The first thing Isobel did was to inflame Jean with a desire to sing. There was no use trying to inflame Mabel about anything. After Jean had discovered that she might have a voice there was nothing for it but that she should go to London. She begged and implored her father and mother to let her go to London. She was the only member of the family who had ever had the pluck to suggest such a thing. They had a familiar disease of home-sickness which prevented any daring in such a direction. Mabel had twice come home a wreck before she was expected home at all, and invariably vowing never to leave again.
And now Jean, the valiant, asked to be allowed to go alone to London in order to study.
"It's Isobel who has done it," wailed Betty. "She's so equipped. We seem such duffers. And it will be the first break."
Mr. Leighton groaned.
"Why can't you be happy at home," he asked Jean.
"Oh, it will be so lovely to come back," said Jean, "with it all--what to do and how to do it--at one's fingers' ends."
"You don't keep your voice at your fingers' ends, do you?" asked Mrs. Leighton.
It seemed superb nonsense to her that Jean should not take lessons at home. Isobel marvelled to find that the real difficulty in the way of Jean's getting was this mild obstinacy of Mrs. Leighton's.
"I can tell Jean of such a nice place to live--with girls," said Isobel. "And I know the master she ought to have."
"And we can't all vegetate here for ever," said poor Jean.
Nothing ever cost Mr. Leighton the wrench that this cost him, but he prepared to let Jean go.
Mabel and Elma would rather anything than that had happened just then. It had the effect of making Isobel more particular in being with Mabel rather than with Jean. Had she sounded the fact that with all Jean's protestations, Mabel was the much desired--that people were more keen on having the Leighton's when Mabel was of the party! Elma began to speculate on this until she was ashamed of herself.
They played up for Jean at this juncture as though she were going away for ever. One would have thought there was nothing to be had in London from the manner in which they provided for her. Even Lance appeared with a kettle and spirit lamp for making tea.
"You meet in each other's rooms and talk politics and mend your stockings," said he, "and you take turns to make tea. I know all about it."
Maud Hartley gave her a traveller's pincushion, and May Turberville a neat hold-all for jewellery.
Jean stuck in her two brooches, one bangle, a pendant and a finger ring.
Then she sighed in a longing manner.
"If I use your case, I shall have no jewellery to wear," she said to May.
At that moment a package was handed to her. It was small, and of the exciting nature of the package that is first sealed, and then discloses a white box with a rubber strap round it.
"Oh, and it's from Bulstrode's," cried Jean in great excitement. "The loveliest place in town," she explained to Isobel. "What can it be?"
It was a charming little watch on a brooch clasp, and it was accompanied by a card, "With love to dear Jean, to keep time for her when she is far away. From Miss Annie and Miss Grace."
"Well," said Jean, with her eyes filling, "aren't they ducks! And I've so often laughed at Miss Grace."
"They are just like fairy godmothers," said Elma. "Jean! It's lovely."
She turned and turned the "little love" in her hand.
Where so many were being kind to Jean, it appeared necessary to Aunt Katharine that she also must make her little gift. She gave Jean a linen bag for her boots, with "My boots and shoes" sewn in red across it.
"I don't approve of your trip at all," she said to Jean, "but then I never do approve of what your mother lets you do. In my young days we were making jam at your age, and learning how to cure hams. The stores are upsetting everything."
"I want to sing," said Jean, "and your bag is lovely, Aunt Kathie. Didn't you want very badly to learn the right way to sing when you were my age?"
Aunt Katharine sang one Scotch song about Prince Charlie, and it was worth hearing for the accompaniment alone, if not for the wonderful energy with which Aunt Katharine declaimed the words. Dr. Merryweather, in an abstracted moment, once thanked her for her recitation, and this had had the unfortunate result of preventing her from performing so often as she used to.
"No, my dear," she said in answer to Jean's remark, "I had no desire to find out how they sang at one end of the country, when my friends considered that I performed so well at the other end. The best masters of singing are not all removed from one's home. Nature and talent may do wonders."
Then she sighed heavily.
"The claims of home ought to come first in any case. Your mother and father have given you a comfortable one. It is your duty to stay in it."
"Well, papa has inflamed us with a desire to excel in music. It isn't our fault," said Jean. "And one can't get short cuts to technique in Ridgetown."
"I quite see that your father places many things first which ought to come last," said Aunt Katharine dismally. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, for four girls, even including Jean with her boot bag, had risen at her, "I forgot that I am not allowed free expression in regard to my own brother-in-law."
Aunt Katharine could always be expected to give in at this point, but up to it, one was anxious.
Cuthbert came down to bid farewell to Jean.
"You are a queer old thing," he said to her. "Living in rooms is a mucky business, you know."
"Oh, I shall be with twenty other girls," said Jean; "a kind of club, you know. Isobel says it's lovely. And then we get sostuckhere!"
Cuthbert admitted that it wasn't the thing for them all to be cooped up in Ridgetown.
"Couldn't stand it myself, without work," said he. "And then, it's ripping, of course."
It was lovely to have Cuthbert back, and he made a new acquaintance in Isobel. She had been a queer little half-grown thing when he had last seen her.
In an indefinite way he did not approve of her, but finding her on terms of such intimacy with every one, he only gave signs of pleasure at meeting her.
Elma was in dismay because there were heaps and heaps of things for which she wanted Cuthbert, and he only stayed two days. An idea that he could put a number of crooked things straight, if he remained, made her plead with him to come again.
Cuthbert promised in an abstracted manner.
"Give me one more year, Elma, and then you may have to kick me out of Ridgetown," he said. "Who knows? At least, I shall make such a try for it, that you may have to kick me out."
Everybody nice seemed to be leaving, and Adelaide Maud was away.
It was rather trying to Elma that Isobel should about this period insist on visiting at Miss Annie's. Isobel seemed to be with them on every occasion, from the moment that Jean arranged to go to London.
Jean got everything ready to start. With Isobel's help she engaged her room from particulars sent to her. It was the tiniest in a large house of small rooms, but Jean, rather horrified at a detached sum of money being singled out by her father from the family funds, was determined to make that sum as small as possible. Mr. Leighton saw these preparations being made and was helpful but dismal about them. Mrs. Leighton presented her with a travelling trunk which would cover up and be made a window-seat, no doubt, in that room where the tea parties were to occur. Everything was ready the night before her departure, and exactly at 7.15, when the second dressing bell rang for dinner, as Betty explained afterwards, Jean broke down.
This was an extraordinary exhibition to Isobel, who had travelled, and packed, and always moved to a new place with avidity. She said now that she would give anything she was worth at that moment to be flying off to London like Jean.
"Oh," said Jean, "it's like a knife that has cut to-day away from to-morrow, and all of you from that crowd I'm going to. Do you know," she said, as though it were quite an interesting thing for them to hear about, "I feel quite queer--and sick. Do you think that perhaps there is something wrong with me?" She even mentioned appendicitis as a possible ailment.
"You are getting home-sick," said Mabel, who knew the signs.
Jean was much annoyed.
"You don't understand," she said. "I'm not silly in that way. I don't feel as though I could shed a tear at going away. I'm just over-joyed at the prospect. But I'm so wobbly in other ways. I'm really terrified that I'm going to be ill."
Poor Jean ate no dinner. Jean didn't sleep. Jean perambulated the corridors, and thought of the night when Cuthbert got hurt. She wished that she were enough of a baby to go and knock at her mother's door, as they had done then, and get her to come and comfort her. She hoped her father wasn't vexed that she had asked to go, and hadn't minded leaving him. Then she remembered how she intended coming home--a full-blown prima donna sort of person--one of whom he should really be proud. This ought to have set her up for the night, but the thought of it failed in its usual exhilarating effect.
The sick feeling returned, with innumerable horrors of imaginary pain, and a real headache.
Jean saw the dawn come in and sincerely prayed that already she had not appendicitis.
CHAPTER XVII
A Reprieve
The first two letters from Jean were so long, that one imagined she must have sat up most of the night to get them off.
"I don't mind telling you that I felt very miserable when I got to my rooms," she said among other things. "I drove here all right, and the door was opened by a servant who didn't seem to know who I was. Then she produced a secretary who looked at me very closely as though to see whether I was respectable or not. She took me up to my room, and it's like a little state-room, without the fun of a bunk. There's one little slippy window which looks out on the gardens, and across the gardens there are high houses, with occasionally people at the windows. One girl with a pink bow in her hair sits at a window all day long. Sometimes she leans out with her elbows on the sill, and looks down, and then she draws them in again and sits looking straight over at me. She's quite pretty. But what a life! It must be dreadful only having one room and nothing to do in it. My piano hasn't come, and until it arrives, it's like being the girl with the pink bow. At home it's different, we can always pull flowers, or fix our blouses or do something of that sort. The girls here don't seem to mind whether one is alive or dead. I think they are cross at new arrivals. I sat last night at dinner at a little table all by myself, on a slippery linoleum floor, and thought it horrid. Then it would have been fun to go to the drawing-room ('to play to papa,' how nice that sounds), but the girls melted off by themselves. I looked into the drawing-room and thought it awful, so I ran up to my room and stayed there. The girl with the pink bow was at her window again, and I really could have slain her, I don't know why."
Then "I'm to have my first lesson to-morrow. I'm so glad. Because I can't practise, even although my piano has come. A girl who writes made the others stop playing last night in the drawing-room because it gave her a headache. It makes me think that no one will want to hear me sing. I suppose they think I'm very countrified.
"I think the real reason why I can't practise is because I'm not very well. London food doesn't seem so nice as ours, and I still have that funny feeling that I had when I started. I suppose you are all having jolly times. You would know that girls lived in this house. It's all wicker furniture, and little green curtains, and vases of flowers. I've only gone out to see about my lesson, except to the post and quite near here. I don't like going out much yet. Isobel's directions were a great help."
This letter stopped rather abruptly. So much so that Mr. Leighton was far from happy about Jean. He bothered unceasingly as to whether he should have allowed her to go. Mrs. Leighton enlarged his anxiety by her own fears. Jean's growing so much faster and taller than any one else had been a point in her favour with her mother a few years before, and Mrs. Leighton had never got over the certainty that Jean must be delicate in consequence.
"I hope she won't have appendicitis," said she mournfully.
"Oh, mummy," said Mabel, "Jean is only home-sick."
Jean wrote another desponding letter.
"Home-sick or not home-sick, if Jean is ill, she has got to be nursed," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Jean has never been ill in her life," Mabel pointed out. "She hasn't even felt very home-sick. It will pass off, mummy dear."
But it didn't.
Jean sat, in dismal solitude, in the room looking over to the girl with the pink bow, and she thought she should die. She did not like the words of encouragement which came from home. Every one was trying to "buck her up" as though she were a kid. No one seemed to understand that she was ill.
At the fifth day of taking no food to speak of and not sleeping properly, and with the most lamentable distaste of everything and every one around possessing her, she detected at last an acute little pain which she thought must be appendicitis.
She went out, wired home "I am in bed," and came back to get into it.
Once the girls in the house heard that she was ill, they crowded into her room with the kindest expressions of help and sympathy. They brought her flowers and fruit, and one provided her with books. Then they came in, as Lance had promised, and made tea for her. Jean took the tea and a good many slices of bread and butter, and felt some of the weight lifted. It might not be appendicitis after all.
And she never dreamed of the havoc which her telegram might create. Towards the evening, she got one of her effusive visitors to send off another telegram. "Feeling better," this one declared.
She did not know that just before this point, Mr. Leighton had determined to fetch her home from London. The whole household was in despair. Mrs. Leighton wanted to start with him in the morning. Mr. Leighton was not only anxious, he was in a passion with himself for ever having let Jean go.
"Madness," he said, "madness. I cannot stand this any longer."
Isobel hated to see people display feeling, and this excitement about a girl with a headache annoyed her infinitely. She was invited out to dinner with Mabel, and Mabel would not go.
"Papa is in such a state," Mabel said, "I could not possibly go out and leave him like this. Let us telephone that we cannot come."
Isobel checked the protest that rose to her calm lips. She was ready in a filmy black chiffon gown, and her clear complexion looked startlingly radiant in that framing. She had quite determined to go to the dinner party.
"Let me telephone for you, Mabel," she said with rather a nice concern in her voice. "Then it won't take you away from your father."
Mabel abstractedly thanked her.
"Say Jean is ill please, and that papa is in fits about her. The Gardiners will understand."
Isobel telephoned.
She came back to Mabel with her skirts trailing in little flaunting waves of delicate black.
"They beg me to come. It's so disorganizing for a dinner party. What shall I do?" she asked in an interrogative manner.
Mrs. Leighton said, "Oh, do go, Isobel," politely. "Why should anybody stay at home just because we were so foolish as to let Jean go off to London alone?"
"Oh, well," said Isobel lightly, "when you put it like that, I must."
She went to telephone her decision.
It was nearly four weeks afterwards when, in quite an unexpected manner, Betty discovered that she never telephoned that second time at all. Isobel had arranged her going from the start, adequately.
Mabel was left alone with the anxious parents when Jean's second telegram came in. It opened Mabel's eyes to the fact that perhaps for once Jean was really homesick. It was so much like the way she herself would have liked to have acted on some occasions and dared not. Jean had never been ill or been affected by nerves before, and had therefore no confidence in recoveries. No doubt her interest in the new experience had made her imagination run away with her. She disliked London and wanted to get out of it--that was clear enough. But after just six days of it--with everybody laughing at her giving in! The thing was not to be thought of.
It seemed to Mabel that her own difficult experiences lately, all the hard things she had had to bear, culminated in this sudden act of duty which lay before her. She must clear out--go to Jean and help her through.
"Oh, papa," she said, "please let me go."
Mr. Leighton jumped as though she had exploded a bomb.
"What, another," asked he; "isn't one enough! No, indeed! I've had quite enough of the independence of girls by this time. There's to be no more of it. Jean is coming home, and you will all stay at home--for ever."
He never spoke with more decision. Mrs. Leighton had reached the point where she could only stare.
Mabel sat down to her task of convincing them. She looked very dainty--almost fragile in the delicate gown of the particular colour of heliotrope which she had at last dared to assume. A slight pallor which Mrs. Leighton had noticed once or twice of late in Mabel had erased the bright colour which was usual with her. She spoke with a certain kind of maturity which her mother found a little pathetic.
"You see, papa, it's like this. If you go to Jean now, in all probability whenever she sees you she will be as right as the mail, just as the rest of us are when we've been home-sick. Then she will be awfully disgusted that she made so much of it when she finds out what it is, and it won't be coming home like a triumphant prima donna for her to come now, will it? She will fall awfully flat, don't you think? And Cuthbert and Lance and you, papa, will go on saying that girls are no good for anything. You will take all the spirit out of us at last."
"She mustn't go on being ill in London," said Mrs. Leighton. "We can't stand the anxiety."
"Let me go up for a week or two, and see her started," pleaded Mabel. "I've been there, you know, and know a little about it, and she would have time to feel at home. If I find her really ill, I could send for you. Jean wouldn't feel an idiot about it if I went up just to see her started."
Then Mabel fired her last shot.
"It would be good for me, mummy. I've been so stuck lately. Won't you let me go?"
Something in Mabel's voice touched her mother very much.
"Won't Robin miss you?" she asked in a teasing, but anxious way. "You don't tell us, Mabel, whether you want Robin to miss you or not. And that's one of the main things, isn't it?"
Mabel started, and her eyes grew wide with a fear of what they might say next.
"It's all right, Mabs! Don't you worry if you don't want to talk about it," said her father cheerily. There was a reserve in all of them except Jean which kept them from expressing easily what they were not always willing to hide.
"Oh," said Mabel, "I think I did want to, but n-never could. I don't think I want to be c-coupled with Robin any more. It was fun when I was rather s-silly and young, but it's different now."
She looked at her father quite sedately and quietly.
"I think Robin thinks a good deal more of Isobel and I'm glad," she said quite determinedly. "The fact is, I was sure I would be glad if something like that happened. I was sure before Isobel came."
Mr. Leighton patted her shoulder.
"Thank you, my dear, for telling us. You're just to do as you like about these things. Difficult to talk about, aren't they? Remember, I don't think much of Robin now, or that sister of his. They could have arranged it better, I think. Never mind. I shall be glad to have you find worthier friends." He patted her shoulder again, and looked over at Mrs. Leighton. She was surreptitiously wiping her eyes. Mabel sat strong and straight and rather radiant as though a weight were lifted.
"I don't think," said Mr. Leighton to his wife in a clear voice, "I don't think that either you or I would be of greater service to Jean than Mabel could be! Now, do you, my dear, seriously, do you?" He kept an eye on her to claim the answer for which he hoped.
"I don't think so, John," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Then could you get ready for the 8.50 to-morrow morning?" asked Mr. Leighton of Mabel.
Mabel hugged him radiantly for answer.
"I don't know how I can live without two of you, even for a week," he said. "But then, I won't be selfish. Make the most of it and a success of it, and I shall always be glad afterwards that you went."
It was no joke to have to prepare in one evening for a visit to London. Elma's heart stopped beating when she heard of the arrangement.
"Oh, Mabs, and I shall be left with that--bounder!"
The word was out.
Never had Elma felt so horrified. Years she had spent in listening to refinements in language, only to come to this. Of her own cousin too!
"Oh, Mabs, it's shameful of me. And it will be so jolly for Jean. And you too! Oh, Mabs, shall I ever go to London, do you think?"
"You go and ask that duck of a father of ours--now--at present--this instant, and he will promise you anything in the world. No, don't, dear. On second thoughts he needs every bit of you here. Elma! Play up now. Play up like the little brick you are. You and Betty play up, and I'll bless you for ever. Don't you know I'm skipping all that racketing crowd. I'm skipping Robin. I'm skipping Sarah! Think of skipping the delectable Sarah!" She shook her fist in the direction of the Merediths' house. "And what is more, dear Elma, I am skipping Isobel."
She said that in a whisper.
They had all the feeling that Isobel was a presence, not always a mere physical reality.
Elma had not seen Mabel in such a joyous mood for weeks.
"And it's also because I feel I can soon square up Jean, and make her fit," said Mabel; "so that I'm of some use, you see, in going. I'm quite sure Jean is only home-sick after all."
She trilled and sang as she packed.
"Won't you be home-sick yourself, Mabel?" asked Elma anxiously.
"I have to get over that sooner or later. I shall begin now," said Mabel.
"Won't it be beastly in that girls' club?" wailed Betty.
"Oh, I'm sure it will," quivered Mabel. She sank in a heap on the floor.
"Whatever possessed Jean to go off on that wild chase, I can't think," cried Betty.
"I know," said Elma.
"What?"
"Isobel."
The gate clicked outside and there were voices. Betty crept to the window-sill and looked over. Mabel and Elma stood silent in the room. Crunching footsteps and then Isobel's voice, then Robin's, then "Good-night."
Mabel, with a smothered little laugh, flung a blouse into her trunk.
"Isn't it ripping, I'm going to London," said she.