Adelaide Maud
The Leighton's had been writing off the invitations for the wedding, and
Elma was in her room with Adelaide Maud. This had been converted into a
sitting-room so long as Elma remained a convalescent.
Elma had asked Isobel if she might have just one invitation for a
special friend of her own. Now who was this friend, Mrs. Leighton
wondered? She was surprised when Elma asked her, without any
embarrassment for Mr. Symington's address.
"And don't tell who it is, please, Mummy, because I have a little plot
of my own on hand."
She sealed and addressed this important missive quite blandly under her
mother's eyes.
Mrs. Leighton could not make it out. She was inclined to fall into Aunt
Katharine's ways and say, "In my young days, young people were not so
blatant."
Mr. Leighton shook his head over her having allowed the invitation to
go.
"You can't tell what net she may become entangled in," he said, "and
Symington cleared out in a very sudden manner, you know." He could not
get that out of his mind.
Mrs. Leighton harked back to the old formula. "Elma is only a child,"
she said, "with too much of a superb imagination. She will have a lot
of fancies before she is done."
Elma saw her letter posted, with only Mrs. Leighton and Miss Grace in
the secret. She felt completely relieved and happy. Nothing had
pleased her so much for a long time.
"Why, Elma, your cheeks are getting pink at last," said Adelaide Maud.
She had come in to spend the afternoon with Elma while the others went
to the dressmaker for the all-important gowns. Adelaide Maud had said
she would come if Elma were to be quite alone. And Elma meant to be
quite alone until Cuthbert came down by an early train. Then, after
Adelaide Maud was announced, she rather hoped that Cuthbert might
appear.
"Are you sure they are pink," she asked Adelaide Maud, "because I used
to be so anxious that I might look pale."
"You must have thought yourself very good looking lately then," said
Adelaide Maud. "Elma," she asked suddenly, "why don't you girls
sometimes call me Helen? I think you might by this time."
"I would rather call you Adelaide Maud," said Elma.
"But I can't be a Story Book for ever."
"I shouldn't want to call you Helen when you looked like Miss Dudgeon.
Mrs. Dudgeon wouldn't like it, would she?"
Ridgetown traditions still hampered their friendship it seemed.
Adelaide Maud's head fell low.
"Do you know, Elma, in five minutes, if I just had one chance, in five
minutes I could get my mother to say that it didn't matter whether you
called me Helen or not. But I never get the chance."
"I did one lovely and glorious thing yesterday," said Elma. "Couldn't I
do another to-day?"
"I don't know what you did yesterday, but you can't do anything for me
to-day," said Adelaide Maud stiffly.
Cuthbert came strolling in. Adelaide Maud looked seriously annoyed.
"You told me you would be quite alone," she said to Elma.
"Oh, you don't mind about Cuthbert, do you?" asked Elma anxiously.
"Besides, Cuthbert didn't know you were coming."
"I did," said Cuthbert shortly.
Adelaide Maud had risen a little, and at this she sat down in a very
straight manner, with her head slightly raised. She and Elma were on a
couch near a tea-table. Cuthbert took an easy chair opposite. Then
Adelaide Maud began to laugh. She laughed with a ringing bright laugh
that was very amusing to Elma, but Cuthbert remained quite unmoved.
Adelaide Maud looked at him.
"Oh, please laugh a little," she said humbly.
Cuthbert did not take his eyes away from her. He simply looked and said
nothing.
"How are the invitations going on?" he asked Elma as though apparently
proving that Adelaide Maud did not exist.
Elma clasped her hands.
"Beautifully. I've been allowed to ask all my 'particulars.'"
"Am I to be invited?" asked Adelaide Maud simply.
"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon," said Elma in a hollow voice. "Do you think
Mrs. Dudgeon will come?" she asked in a melancholy manner.
"Not if Mr. Leighton looks like that," said Adelaide Maud. She turned
in a pettish manner away from him and gazed at Elma.
Elma burst out laughing.
"Oh, Cuthbert, I do think you are horrid to Adelaide Maud."
Adelaide Maud sat up again looking perfectly delighted.
"Now there," she said, "I have been waiting for years for some one to
say that about Mr. Leighton. Thank you so much, dear. It's so perfectly
true. For years I have been amiable and for years he has been--a----"
"A brute," said Elma placidly.
"Yes," said Adelaide Maud. "And I've got to go on pretending to be a
girl of spirit with a mamma who won't understand the situation,
and--and--I get no encouragement at all. It's a horrid world," said
Adelaide Maud.
Cuthbert rose from the easy chair, with a look in his eyes which Elma
had never seen.
"All I can say is," he pretended to be speaking jocularly, "will the
lady who has just spoken undertake to repeat these words, in
private--in----"
"No, she won't," said Adelaide Maud in a whisper.
Elma sat shaking in every limb. The one thought that passed through her
mind was that if she didn't clear out, Cuthbert might kiss Adelaide
Maud, and that would be awful. She crawled out of the room somehow or
other. What the others were thinking of her she did not know. She
wanted to reach something outside the door, and sank on a chair there.
Oh, the selfishness of lovers! Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert were "making
it up" while she sat shaking with her face in her hands in the long
corridor.
Mrs. Leighton found her there some little time afterwards.
"Sh! mummy. Speak in a whisper, please."
"Well, I never. Who is ill now, I should like to know?"
"Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert."
She pulled her mother's head down to her and whispered in her ear.
"I didn't know it was coming, they were so cross with one another. And
then I knew it was. And I just slipped out. And I'm shaking so that
I'm afraid to get off this chair. I should never be able to get engaged
myself--it's so--en--enervating."
"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton; "well, I never. Turned you out of
your own room, my pet. Just like those Dudgeons."
"Oh, mummy, it's lovely. I don't mind. It's just being ill that made
me shake. Aren't you glad it's Adelaide Maud?"
"Well--it never was anybody else, was it?" asked Mrs. Leighton blandly.
"Oh, mummy! You knew!"
Elma's whispers became most accusing.
Mrs. Leighton might have been as dense as possible in regard to her
daughters, but Cuthbert's heart had always lain bare.
"Know?" asked she. "What do you think made Adelaide Maud run after you
the way she did?"
"Oh, mummy. It wasn't only because of Cuthbert, was it?"
"Well, I sometimes thought it was," she said with a smile at her lips.
She looked at the shut door.
"But I can't have you stuck on a hall chair in the corridors for the
afternoon, all on account of the Dudgeons," said she. "Besides, they'll
be bringing up tea."
She knocked smartly on the door.
"Mamma, I never saw anything like your nerve," said Elma.
Cuthbert opened the door. He stood with the fine light of a conqueror
shining in his eyes, the triumph of attainment in his bearing.
Mrs. Leighton's nerve broke down at the sight of him. It was true then.
"Oh, Cuthbert, what is this you have been doing?" wailed she. Her son
was a man and had left her.
Without a word he led her into the arms of Adelaide Maud.
"And remember, please, Mrs. Leighton," said that personage finally,
"that I would have been here long before if he had let me, and that I
had practically to propose before he would have me. Surely that is
humiliating enough for a Dudgeon."
"Cuthbert wanted to give you your proper position in life, dear, if
possible."
"When all I wanted was himself--how silly of him," said Adelaide Maud.
"Would you mind my telling you that that poor child of mine who has just
recovered from typhoid fever is sitting like a hall porter at your door,
trembling like an aspen leaf," said Mrs. Leighton. "Won't you get her
in?"
They laughed, but it really was no joke to Elma. She had known something
of the sorrows of life lately, and had borne up under them, even under
the great trial of Miss Annie's death; but because two people were in
love with one another and had said so, she took to weeping. Cuthbert
carried her in and petted her on his knee, and Adelaide Maud stood by
and said what a selfish man he was, how thoughtless of others, and how
really wicked it was of him to have allowed this to happen to Elma. She
stood stroking Elma's hair and looking at Cuthbert, and Cuthbert patted
Elma and looked at Adelaide Maud. Then Cuthbert caught Adelaide Maud's
hand and she had to sit beside them, and then tea came and Elma was
thankful.
"I know what it will be," she said. "You will never look at any of us
again, just at each other."
Mrs. Leighton regarded the tea table.
"It appears," said she, "as if for the first time for years I might be
allowed to pour out tea in my own house. You all seem so preoccupied."
"Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud, "you are perfectly sweet. You are
the only one who doesn't reproach me, and I'm taking away your only
son."
"May I ask when?" asked Cuthbert sedately, but his eyes were on fire.
"Don't you tell him, Helen," said Mrs. Leighton. "It's good for them not
to be in too great a hurry."
"She called me Helen," said Adelaide Maud.
"Now, Elma! Elma--say Helen, or you'll spoil the happiest day of our
lives."
"Say Helen, you monkey!" cried Cuthbert, giving her a large piece of
cake and several lumps of sugar.
Elma took her cup and the cake in a helpless way.
"You just said that to get accustomed to the name yourself," she
declared. "And if you don't mind, I would rather have toast to begin
with."
Adelaide Maud giggled brightly and her hair shone like gold. Cuthbert
stood looking, looking at her till a piece of cake sidled off the plate
he was carrying.
"Mummy dear, do you like having tea with me all alone?" asked Elma.
That was what came of it in many ways. Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud had
not a word for any one. But then they had been so long separated by
social ties and an unfriendly world and "pride," as Helen put it, and
various things. Mrs. Dudgeon took the news "carved in stone," and her
daughters as something that merely could not be helped. Helen had
always been crazy over these Leightons. Mrs. Dudgeon unbent to Mr.
Leighton however. He was a man to whom people invariably offered the
best, and for his own part he could never quite see where the point of
view of other people came in where Mrs. Dudgeon was concerned. Cuthbert
was already sufficiently established as rather a brilliant young
university man, and a partnership in a large practice in town was being
arranged for. Mrs. Dudgeon could unbend with some graciousness
therefore, and, after all, Helen was the eldest of four, and none were
married yet. "Time is a great leveller," said Adelaide Maud.
All the love and enthusiasm which had been saved from the engagement of
Isobel were showered on the unheeding Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud.
"It isn't that I don't appreciate it," said Adelaide Maud. "I know how
dreadful it would be to be without it, but oh! somehow there's so little
time to attend to every one who is good to me."
Isobel, in a certain measure, was annoyed at the interruption to her own
arrangements. In a day things seemed to change from her being the
centre of interest, to the claims of Adelaide Maud coming uppermost.
She looked on the engagement as a complete bore. Robin seemed depressed
with the news. She often wondered how far she could influence him, and
turned rather a cold side to him for the moment. Then her ordinary
wilfulness upheld her serenely. After all, once married to Robin, she
would be independent of the domestic enthusiasms of the Leighton crowd.
She was tired of the pose where she had to appear as one of them, and
longed to assert herself differently as soon as possible.
As for the girls themselves--what had London or anything offered equal
to this?
They could not believe in their luck in having Adelaide Maud as a
sister.
Elma went in the old way to give the news to Miss Grace.
"Oh, I'm so pleased, my dear, so pleased," said poor lonely Miss Grace.
"It makes up for so much, my dear, when one grows old, to see young
people happy. We are so inclined to be extravagant of happiness when we
are young. Some one ought always to be on the spot to pick up the
little stray pieces we let drop and enable us to regain them again."
"Weren't you ever engaged to be married, Miss Grace?" Elma asked quite
simply.
Miss Grace was not at all embarrassed in the usual way of old maids.
She gazed over the white and gold drawing-room, and one saw the spark of
flint in her eyes.
"Not engaged, dear, but all the inclination to be. Ah, yes, I had the
inclination. And he invited me, but affairs at that time made it
unsuitable."
"Oh, Miss Grace, only unsuitable?" Elma's heart went out to her.
Beneath everything she knew it must be Miss Annie.
"Yes, dear. And the others found him different to what I did. Selfish
and dictatorial, you know. Nothing he did seemed to fit in to what they
expected. He grew annoyed with them. I sometimes hardly wonder at that.
It made him appear to be what they really thought him. And in the end I
asked him to go."
"Oh, Miss Grace!"
Elma's voice was a tragedy.
"It was not fair, it was not fair to him or to you. He didn't want to
marry the others. What did it matter what they thought?"
"If he could have married me then, it wouldn't have mattered," said Miss
Grace. "I knew that he was good and true, you see; so that I never
doubted him. But he was poor, and they worried me nearly to my grave.
I was very weak," said Miss Grace.
"And I suppose he went and married some one else in a fit of
hopelessness," said Elma tragically. "What a nice wife you would have
made, Miss Grace!"
Miss Grace started a trifle, and looked anxiously at Elma. She did not
seem to hear the compliment.
"Oh, we all have our little stories," she said. "But don't be
extravagant of your beautiful youth, my dear."
"I don't feel youthful or beautiful in any way," said Elma. "I think
it's the fever. I feel as though I had been born a hundred years ago.
I wish I could keep from shivering whenever anything either exciting or
lovely happens. Now, I never was so happy in my life as I was yesterday
over Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud, and I was so shaky that I simply burst
into tears. What's the good of being youthful if one feels like that?"
"Wait till you have a holiday, dear, you will soon get over that."
Miss Grace did her best to cheer her up. Elma's thoughts ran back to
the story she had heard.
"Miss Grace," she asked, "this man that you were engaged to, was he----"
The door opened and Saunders appeared.
"Dr. Merryweather," said he.
Miss Grace rose in a direct manner. She controlled her voice with a
little nervous cough.
"This is just the person to tell you that you ought to be off for a
change," she said as they shook hands with Dr. Merryweather.
Miss Grace told him about Elma's shakiness as though it were a real
disease. Mrs. Leighton had never looked upon it as anything more than
"just a mannerism," as Miss Grace put it. Dr. Merryweather ran his keen
eye over Elma's flushed face.
"You mustn't have too many engagements in your family," he said, "while
you remain a convalescent."
He had been only then arranging with Mrs. Leighton that she should take
Elma off for a trip.
"Mr. Leighton will go too," he said kindly. "I don't think any of you
realize how much your parents have suffered recently."
"Oh, but when?" asked Elma in a most disappointed voice. "Not at once,
I hope."
"Almost at once," said Dr. Merryweather. "Before this first wedding at
least."
Elma's face fell a trifle.
"Oh, well, I suppose I must," she said. "But so much depends on my
being just on the spot--up to Isobel's wedding, you know."
"I said, 'No more engagements,'" said Dr. Merryweather with his eye
still on her flushed face.
"This isn't exactly an engagement," said Elma with a sigh. "I wish it
were."
There was no explaining to Dr. Merryweather of course. There was even
not much chance of enlightening Miss Grace. One could only remain a
kind of petted invalid and await developments. Now that Adelaide Maud
was really one of them and Cuthbert in such a blissful state, it would
seem as though nothing were required to make Elma perfectly happy. But
there was this one trouble of Mabel's which only she could share. For
of course one couldn't go about telling people that Mabel had set great
store by the one man who had run away.
"If only George Maclean would play up," sighed Elma.
But almost every one played up except George Maclean.