Compensations
Miss Grace brought home a delicate silver purse and a silver chain set
with torquoise matrix from Buxton for Elma.
Mr. Leighton shook his head over the pretty gift.
"Bribery and corruption," said he.
But by that time Elma's soul had soared far above the heights or depths
of triumph or pettiness in connection with the sojourn of Miss Grace.
Life had been moving swiftly and wonderfully. Jean indeed came home
from hotel life, full of stories of its inimitable attractions; and
nobody, although longing to be, had really been much impressed. Jean
served to mark the milestone of their own development, that was all.
She had left at one stage and come back at another. Where she had
imagined their standing quite still, they had been travelling new roads,
looking back on their childish selves with interest.
Mabel and Elma had been thrown much together, and Mabel had grown to
depend on the silent loyalty with which Elma invariably supported her in
the trying time now experienced in connection with Mr. Meredith. Where
Jean, bolt outright, complained that already Mabel had known him for a
month or two, and yet no hint of an engagement could be discovered, Elma
sympathized with Mabel's horror of any engagement whatever.
"It would be lovely to have a ring, and all that kind of thing," Mabel
had confided. "But fancy having to talk to papa and mamma about it!"
It did not impede her friendship with Mr. Meredith however. He had
found a flower which he intended to pluck, and he guarded it to all
intents and purposes as one from which he would warn off intruders. But
the reserve which made Mabel sensitive in regard to anything definite,
her extreme youth, above all the constant espionage of her parents and
sisters, led him to a tacit understanding of his privileges, a situation
appalling to the business-like Jean.
"If I had had my hair up, I should have had two proposals at Buxton,"
said she, and the remark became historic.
Cuthbert put it in his notebook. Whenever he wanted to overcome the
authority of Jean he produced and read it. She found her family a
trifle trying on her arrival. She wanted to be able to inform them how
they should dress, and had a score of other things ready to retail to
them. Yet most of them fell quite flat, just as though she had had no
special advantages in being at Buxton.
Mr. and Mrs. Leighton talked this over together.
"It makes me think," said Mrs. Leighton, "that you are not altogether
wrong in crowding them up at home here. Jean got variety, but she seems
to have lost a little in balance."
"Still, that is just where experience teaches its lesson," said Mr.
Leighton. "To get balance, one must have the experience. Yet Mabel, in
an unaccountable manner, seems to be perfectly balanced before she has
received any experience at all."
"Ah! I expect she will still have her experiences," said Mrs. Leighton
in her pessimistic way. "No girl gets along without some unpleasant
surprise. Betty is longing for one. Betty complains that in story
books something tragic or something wonderful happens to girls whenever
they begin to grow up, but that nothing happens in this place. Nobody
loses money--if you please--and nobody gets thrown out on the world in a
pathetic manner to work for a living, for instance."
"Do they want to work for their living?"
"They do want to be sensational," said Mrs. Leighton with a sigh, "and
as Elma says, 'We are neither rich enough nor poor enough for that.'"
"Thank providence," said Mr. Leighton.
His girls were much more of a problem to him than the direct Cuthbert,
who had shown a capacity for going his own way rather magnificently from
the moment he had left school. Mr. Leighton was determined to give his
girls an object in life, besides the ordinary one of getting married.
"There is great solace in the arts," he had often affirmed, making it
seem impossible that a girl should look on the arts as ends in
themselves, as a man would. "A girl must be trained to interruptions,"
he used to declare. He made rather a drudge of their music in
consequence of these theories in connection with a career, but the hard
taskmaster in that direction opened a willing indulgence in almost any
other. It alarmed him when Mr. Meredith appeared so conspicuously on
the scene, when Mr. Meredith's sister called and invited Mabel to dine,
when invitations crossed, until the Merediths and themselves became very
very intimate. Elma had the wonderful pleasure of being allowed to
accompany Mabel. In the absence of Jean, she fulfilled that sisterly
position in a loyal way, loving the exaltation of going out with Mabel,
becoming very fond of the Merediths in the process. They had only
recently come from town to live near the Gardiners, and the whole place
did its duty in calling on them. There were only Mr. Meredith and his
sister, and both were of the intensely interesting order rather than of
the frank and lively nature of the like of the Leightons. Mr. Meredith
sang, and Miss Meredith's first words to Mabel were to the effect that
he no longer wanted his sister to play for him after having had the
experience of Mabel as an accompanist.
"Aren't you glad papa made us musical?" asked Betty of Mabel after that
compliment.
Mabel was glad in more ways than one. But it seemed a little hard that
just then Mr. Leighton should insist on her going in for a trying
examination in the spring.
"When she ought to be getting the 'bottom drawer' ready," complained
poor Jean.
Nothing moved for Jean in the family just as she expected. She began to
wonder whether she shouldn't go out as a governess. _Jane Eyre_ had
always enthralled her. It was one way of seeing life, to be very
down-trodden, and then marry the magnificent over-bearing hero.
As a companion to Miss Grace, she had been a great success. Indeed,
even Adelaide Maud was bound to confess that Jean had been just the
person to go with Miss Grace. Jean, in spite of her Jane Eyre theories,
was so down on self-effacement. Her frank direct ways were the best
tonic for a lady who had never at any time been courageous. Miss Grace
wrote continually to Elma, "Jean has been very good in doing this--or
that," until Elma, swallowing hard lumps of mortification, had at last
to believe that she never could have done these determined, cool-hearted
things for Miss Grace in the same capable manner. She often wondered
besides whether, even to have had the delight of being at Buxton, she
could have dropped the glamour of finding a new sister in Mabel, and of
being the daily companion of Adelaide Maud. For the time had now come,
when, on being shown into Miss Annie's drawing-room, her duke,
clean-shaven and of modern manners, had ceased to be really diverting,
and in fact often forgot to attend to her in the pause when she awaited
the coming of Adelaide Maud.
Adelaide Maud kept her word. She reigned as vice-queen over Miss
Annie's household, indulging that lady in all her little whims, for Miss
Grace's sake, and never omitted a single day for calling and seeing that
Miss Annie was comfortable. Adelaide Maud had theories of her own. She
said that every one in Ridgetown attended to the poor, but that she
believed in attending to the rich.
"Now who would ever have looked after Miss Grace if we hadn't?" she
asked Elma.
Mrs. Dudgeon imagined she had other reasons for being so devoted to Miss
Annie, and considered that Helen wasted her time in applying so much of
it to a bedridden invalid.
"Whom do you see there?" she asked stonily.
"Principally Saunders," said Helen, whose good temper was unassailable.
"Saunders is a duck."
The "duck," however, was a trifle worried with these changes, "not
having been accustomed to sich for nigh on twenty-five years, mum," as
he explained to Mrs. Leighton.
But the great boon lay in the restored health of Miss Grace. She came
home shyly as ever, but with a fresh bloom on her face. What withered
hopes that trip recalled to life, what memories of sacrificial days gone
by, what fears laid past--who knows! She was very gentle with Miss
Annie, and boasted of none of her late advantages as Jean did. Indeed,
one might have thought that the events of the world had as usual taken
place in Miss Annie's bedroom. But, with a courage born of new health
and better spirits. Miss Grace called one day on Dr. Merryweather. In
a graceful manner, as though the event had only occurred, she apologized
to him for the slight offered by Miss Annie.
"I hope you know that you still have our supreme confidence," she said.
"It was your kind interest which persuaded me to go to Buxton."
Dr. Merryweather seemed much affected. He shook her hand several times,
but his voice remained gruff as she had always remembered and slightly
feared it.
"You must be exceedingly careful of yourself, Miss Grace," he said
bluntly, "Miss Annie has had too much of you."
Too much of her. Ah, well, she could never reproach herself for having
spared an inch of her patience, an atom of her slender strength.
"Remember," said Dr. Merryweather, "courage does not all lie in
self-sacrifice, though"--and he looked long at the kind beautiful eyes
of Miss Grace--"a great deal of it is invested there."
He held her hand warmly for a second again, and that was the end of it.
Miss Grace went home fortified to a second edition of her life with Miss
Annie.
Adelaide Maud gave up her semi-suzerainty over the masterful Saunders
with some real regret. It was fun for her to be engaged in anything
which did not entail mere social engagements. Miss Annie liked her
thoroughly, liked the swirl of her tweed skirts, the daintiness of her
silk blouses, the gleam of her golden hair. Adelaide Maud had straight
fine features, pretty mauve eyes ("They are mauve, my dear, no other
word describes them," she declared), very clearly arched eyebrows, and
"far too determined a chin." "Where did you get your chin?" asked Miss
Annie continually.
"My father had the face of an angel. It wasn't from him," said Adelaide
Maud. "I have my mother to thank for my chin."
"Well, Heaven help the man who tries to cross you, my dear," said Miss
Annie, who had a very capable chin of her own, as it happened. The
tired petulant look of the invalid only showed at the droop to the
corners of her mouth.
Elma could no longer interest Adelaide Maud in Cuthbert. It seemed as
though he had no further existence. Until one day when she told her
that Cuthbert had an appointment which would last throughout the summer,
and keep him tied to town. Then the chin of Adelaide Maud seemed to
resolve itself into less chilly lines.
"Oh, won't you miss him?" she suddenly asked.
Adelaide Maud was the most comprehending person. She pulled Elma to her
and kissed her when Elma said that it wasn't "missing," it simply wasn't
"living" without Cuthbert.
"I'm so sorry you quarrelled with him," she said to Adelaide Maud.
Adelaide Maud grew stonily angry.
"Quarrel with him?" she asked.
It reminded Elma of the Dudgeon's first call
"Oh, please don't," she cried in alarm.
"Then I won't," said Adelaide Maud, "but will you kindly inform me when
I quarrelled with your brother Cuthbert."
It was exactly in the tone of one who would never think of quarrelling
with the Leighton set. Elma grew quite pale, then her courage rose.
"He thinks such a lot of you, and you don't think anything of him. Just
as though we weren't good enough!"
"Oh, Elma," said Adelaide Maud.
"And he likes you, and keeps things you drop, and you won't even speak
to him."
"Keeps things I drop!"
The murder was out.
"Oh, I promised not to tell, how awful."
Adelaide Maud grew very dignified.
"What did I drop? Oh! I think I remember--my handkerchief!"
Mrs. Dudgeon had reflected openly on the fact that it had never been
returned to Helen.
"I wanted to keep it till we saw you again, but he said he would give it
to you when you were nice to him, or something like that."
"Till I was nice to him!" The chin dimpled a trifle.
"Somehow, I would rather he kept it," said Adelaide Maud dreamily.
"Shall I tell him that?" asked Elma anxiously.
"Tell him--what nonsense! You mustn't tell him a syllable. You mustn't
say you've told me. It would be so ignominious for him to hear that I
knew he had been thieving! Thieving is the word," said Adelaide Maud.
Although she talked in a very accusing manner, her voice seemed kind.
"Mayn't I tell him you didn't mean to quarrel?" asked Elma anxiously.
"You don't know what you are to all of us."
Here she sighed deeply.
"No," said Adelaide Maud, "you mustn't tell him anything. I think he
must just wait as he suggested, until I am nice to him."
"Until you deserved it, he said," cried Elma, triumphantly, remembering
properly at last. "I knew it was something like that."
"Then he may wait until he is a hundred," said Adelaide Maud with her
face in a flame.
It was difficult after this ever to talk to Adelaide Maud about Cuthbert
with any kind of freedom or pleasure.
Elma went home that evening in the bewilderment of an early sunset.
Bright rays turned the earth golden, the leaves on the trees laid
themselves flat in heavy blobs of green in yellow sunlight, the sky
faded to a glimmering blue in the furthermost east. A shower of rain
fell from a drifting cloud and the drops hit in large splotches, first
on Elma's hat, on her hand, and then in an indefinite manner stopped.
As she turned into her own garden, the White House seemed flooded in a
golden glow of colour.
Then at last they heard thunder in the distance.
Elma never forgot that shining picture, nor the thunder in the distance.
It seemed the picture of what life might be, beautiful and safe in one's
own home, thunder only in the distance. The threatening did not alarm
her, but the remembrance of it always remained with her. When thunder
really began to peal for the Leighton family, she tried to be thankful
for the picture of gold.