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.