Mabel and Jean had been successfully deceived up to a certain point in regard to Elma's illness. They were told the facts when the danger was past. It was made clear to them then that the fewer people at home in an illness of that sort the better, while skilled nurses were so conveniently to be had. Mabel pined a little over not having been there to nurse Elma, as though she had landed her sensitive little sister into an illness by leaving too much on her shoulders. The independent vitality of Jean constantly reassured her however.
"She would just have been worse with that scared face of yours at her bedside," Jean would declare. "Every time you think of Elma you get as white as though you were just about to perform in the Queen's Hall. You'll have angina pectoris if you don't look out."
Jean had made a great friend of a nurse who never talked of common things like heart disease or toothache. "Angina pectoris" and "periostitis" were used instead. When Jean wrote home in an airy manner in the midst of Elma's illness to say that she was suffering from an attack of "periostitis," Mrs. Leighton immediately wired, "Get a nurse for Jean if required."
"What in the wide world have you been telling mother?" asked Mabel with that alarming communication in her hand.
Jean was trying to learn fencing from an enthusiast in the corridor.
"Oh, well." Her face fell a trifle at the consideration of the telegram. "I did have toothache," said Jean.
Mabel stared at the telegram. "Mummy can't be losing her reason over Elma's being ill," she said. "She couldn't possibly suppose you would want a nurse for toothache. That's going a little too far, isn't it?"
Mabel was really quite anxious about her mother.
"Oh, well," said Jean lamely, "Nurse Shaw said it was periostitis."
"And you--"--Mabel's eyes grew round and indignant--"you really wrote and told poor mummy that you had perios--os----"
"Titis," said Jean. "Of course, I did--why not?"
She was a trifle ashamed of herself, but the dancing eyes of the fencing enthusiast held her to the point.
"That's the worst of early Victorian parents," said this girl with a bright cheerful giggle. "One can't even talk the vernacular nowadays."
She made an unexpected lunge at Jean.
"Oh," cried Jean, "I must answer that telegram. Say I'm an idiot, Mabel, and that I've only had toothache."
Mabel for once performed the duties of an elder sister in a grim manner.
"Am an idiot," she wrote, "only had toothache an hour. Fencing match on, forgive hurry. Jean."
She read it out to the fencers.
"Oh, I say," said Jean with visible chagrin, "you are a little beggar, Mabel."
"Send it," cried the fencing girl. "One must be laughed at now and again--it's good for one. Besides, you can't be both a semi-neurotic invalid and a good fencer. Better give up the neurotic habit."
Jean stepped back in derision.
"I'm not neurotic," she affirmed.
"You wouldn't have sent that message about your perio--piérrot--what's the gentleman's name? if you hadn't been neurotic."
Mabel had scribbled off another message.
"Well," said Jean gratefully, "my own family don't talk to me like that."
"Oh, no," said the fencing girl coolly, "they run round you with hot bottles, and mustard blisters. All families do. They make you think about your toothache until you aren't pleased when you haven't got it. That's the benefit of being here. Here it's a bore to be ill."
She went suddenly on guard.
"Oh," said Jean, in willing imitation of that attitude, "if you only teach me to fence, you may say what you like."
It was more the importance of Jean's estimate of herself than any real leanings towards being an invalid which made her look on an hour's depression as a serious thing, and an attack of toothache as an item of news which ought immediately to be communicated to her family. She criticized life entirely through her own feelings and experiences. Mabel and Elma had enough of the sympathetic understanding of the nature of others, to tune their own characters accordingly. But Jean, unless terrified, or hurt, or joyous herself never allowed these feelings to be transmitted from any one, or because of any one, she happened to love. It kept her from maturing as Mabel and even Elma had done. She would always be more or less of the self-centred person. It was a useful trait in connexion with singing for instance, and it seemed also as though it might make her a good fencer. But the flippant merry fencing enthusiast in front of her was right when she saw the pitfall ready for the Jean who should one day dedicate herself to her ailments. In the case of Mabel this very lack of sympathy in Jean helped her in a lonely manner to regain some of her lost confidence in herself. It never dawned once on Jean that Mabel was fighting down a trouble of her own. Mabel had bad nights and ghostly dreams, and a headache occasionally, which seemed as though it would put an end to any enthusiasm she might ever have had for such an occupation as piano playing. But in the morning one got up, and there were always the interests, the joys or troubles, or the quaint little oddities of other girls, to knock this introspection and worry into the background, and make Mabel her companionable self once more. It was better, after all, than the scrutiny of one's own family, even a kind one. Jean was merely conscious of change in any one when they refused a match or a drive or a walk with her. The world was of a piece when that happened--"stodgy"--and the interests of Jean were being neglected--a great crime.
Mabel despatched the telegram, and the fencing was resumed with vigour. The corridor at this end of the house contained a bay window, seated and cushioned, and more comfortable as a tea-room than many of the little bedrooms. They had arranged tea-cups, and were preparing that fascinating and delightful meal when a girl advanced from the far end of the corridor, in a lithe swinging manner. The fencing girl drew back her foil abruptly. "Who is that?" she asked, staring. The girls were conscious of a most refreshing and invigorating surprise. Elsie Clutterbuck stood there, with the wild sweetness of the open air in her bearing, her hair ruffled gently, her eyes shining in a pale setting.
"You beautiful wild anemone!" breathed the fencing girl in a whisper.
Mabel and Jean heard the soft words with surprise. It was a new light through which to look on Elsie. They had never quite dropped the pose of the benignant girls who had taken Elsie "out of herself." To them she was rather a protégé than a friend; much as Mabel at least would have despised herself for that attitude had she detected it in herself. She acknowledged an immediate drop in her calculations, when the fencing girl did not ask as most people did, "Who is that queer little thing?" It was difficult in one sudden moment to adjust oneself to introducing Elsie as "You beautiful wild anemone!"
Jean, however, merely summed up the fencing girl as rather ignorant. "Why," she said frankly, "I declare it's Elsie!" and in a whisper declared, "There's nothing beautiful about Elsie."
They welcomed her heartily, curiously, and wondered if Lance's latest news of the family was true.
"Mother Buttercluck," he had written, "has come in for a little legacy. It's she who clucks now (grammar or no grammar) and the Professor chimes in as the butter portion merely. May heard about it. Can you imagine Mrs. C. saying, 'I'd love to have some one to lean on,' and the Buttercluck, who would have declared before--'On whom to lean. Pray do be more careful of your English,' not having a cluck left! Though I do think Elsie had knocked a little of the cluck out before the legacy arrived."
Elsie did not seem to be bursting with news. She sat in rather a grown-up, reliable way, opening her furry coat at their orders, and drawing off her gloves. Her hair was up in loose, heavy coils on her neck, and it parted in front with that restless rippling appearance which made one think of the open air. The tip-tilted nose, which had seemed the principal fault in the face which had always been termed plain in childhood, seemed now to lend a piquancy to her features. These were delicately irregular, and her eyebrows were too high, if one might rely on the analysis of Jean.
The fencing girl sat and stared at her with her foil balanced on a crossed knee. If one wanted to do the fencing girl a real kindness, to make her radiantly happy, then one introduced her to some one in whom she might be interested. Life was a garden to her, and the friends she made the flowers. She was not particular about plucking them either. "Oh, no indeed," she would say, "I've seen some one in the park to-day who is more sweet and lovely than any one human ought to be. I should love to know her, of course, but she was just as great a joy to look at. Why should you want to have everything that's beautiful? It's merely a form of selfishness."
Mabel and Jean imagined that it was more a pose on the part of the fencing girl than any talent of Elsie's which immediately impressed her on this afternoon. They were later to discover that a thrill of expectancy, of interest, was Elsie's first gift to strangers.
"Oh, no," breathed the fencing girl to herself, "you are not beautiful, really; you are a personality--that's it."
Elsie sat pulling her gloves through her white hands.
"Lance says Mrs. Clutterbuck has a legacy," said Jean bluntly. "I suppose it's true, but we are never sure of Lance, you know."
She passed a cup and some buttered toast.
"Oh, yes, it's true," said Elsie. "I do so envy mamma."
"Why? Doesn't she--haven't you the benefit of it too?" asked Mabel in surprise.
"Oh, yes. It isn't that, you know." Elsie swept forward, with a little furry cape falling up to her ears as she recovered a dropped glove. "It's giving papa a holiday. I've thought all my life how I should love to grow up and become an heiress, and give my papa a holiday."
"You thought that," asked Jean accusingly. "Come now--when you were climbing lamp-posts and skimming down rain-pipes----"
"Yes, and breaking into other people's houses," said Elsie slowly.
"Did you do that too?" asked Jean.
"Once," said Elsie dreamily, "only once. I was a dreadful trial to my parents," she explained to the fencing girl.
"You weren't spanked enough," said Mabel, shaking her head at her.
"My papa was too busy, and mamma too concerned about him to attend to me," smiled Elsie. "Poor mamma! She knew if I told my father what I did, it would disturb his thoughts, and if his thoughts were disturbed he couldn't work, and if he couldn't work the rent wouldn't be paid."
"Oh," said Mabel with memories heaping on her, "had you really to worry about the rent?"
The fencing girl began to talk at last.
"It makes me tired," said she vigorously, "the way in which you people, brought up in provincial and suburban places, talk. Because you can't afford to be there unless your fathers have enough money to take you there, you think there's no struggle in the world. You ought to live a bit in towns where people are obliged to show the working side as well as the retired and affluent side. You poor thing, stuck in suburbia, among those Philistines, and thinking about the rent! I suppose they only thought you were bad tempered."
The fencing girl had landed them into a conversation more intimate than any they had attempted together.
"Oh," said Elsie, and she looked shyly at Mabel and Jean. "I was a tiny little thing when I got my first lesson. A lady and her daughter called on mamma the second week we were in Ridgetown. I came on them in the garden afterwards. They were going out at the gate, and they didn't see me coming in. This lady said to her daughter, quite amiably: 'It's no use, my dear; I suppose you observed they have only one maid.' They never called again."
The fencing girl bit her lip with an interrupted laugh.
"Isn't that suburbia?" she asked. "Now, isn't it?"
"It made me a little wild cat," said Elsie. "Everybody in Ridgetown had at least two maids, except ourselves."
"Do you know," said Jean, "I know the time when we would have wept at that if it had ever happened to us. It isn't a joke," she told the fencing girl.
Elsie gave a long, quiet laugh. "If I ever have children," she said, "I hope I may keep them from being silly about a trifle of that sort."
"That's one of the jokes of life though. You won't have children who need any support in that way.
"Won't I?" asked Elsie with round eyes.
"No, they'll all be quite different. They'll be giving you points on the simple life, and advising you to dispense with maids altogether," said the fencing girl. "I'm not joking. It's a fact, you know, that children are awfully unlike their parents. Are you like your mother?" she asked Elsie.
"Not a bit," said Elsie laughing.
"Don't study yourself merely in order to know about children. You may just have been a selfish little prig, you know," said the fencing girl cheerily. "Study them by the dozen, be public-spirited about it. Then some day you may be able to understand the soul of a child when you get it all to yourself. You won't just sit and say in a blank way, 'In my day children were different.'"
"Oh," cried Jean. "Now don't. If there's anything I hate, it's when Evelyn begins to preach about children."
"Oh, well," said the fencing girl with a shrug, "if Mrs.----, whatever your mother's name is, had known as much about their little ways as I do, she would never have let you worry about that one maid. We are all wrong with domestic life at present. The one lot stays in too much and loses touch with the world, and the other lot are too busy touching the world to stay in enough. We are putting it right, however," she said amiably. "We are----" She spread her hands in the direction of the company collected. "We are getting up our world at present. After that we may be of some use in it."
Elsie looked at her rather admiringly.
"My father would love to hear you talk," she said amiably.
"Talk," said the fencing girl in a fallen voice, "and I hate the talkers so!"
"Nevertheless," said Mabel, "given a friend of ours in for tea--who does the talking?"
"Evelyn," said Jean, "and invariably her own subjects too."
It seems that this girl was not always fencing.
She controlled the collecting of rents and practically managed the domestic matters in three streets of tenements of new buildings recently erected in a working part of London. She was also engaged to be married.
"Doesn't this sort of independent life unsettle you for a quiet one?" she was often asked by her friends.
"And it's quite different," she would explain. "Knowing the stress and the difficulties of this side of it make me long for that little haven of a home we are getting ready at Richmond. I would bury myself there for ever, from a selfish point of view that is, and probably vegetate like the others. But I've made a pledge never to forget--never to forget what I've seen in London, and never to stop working for it somewhere or somehow."
"What about your poor husband?" asked Jean.
"He isn't poor," said the fencing girl with a grin. "He is getting quite rich. He fell in love with me at the tenements. He built them. I should think he would divorce me if I turned narrow-minded."
She gazed in a searching way at Elsie.
"You have the makings of a somebody," she said gravely, "more than these two, though they are perfectly charming."
"I want to go to the Balkans," said Elsie. She turned to Mabel. "Cousin Arthur declared he really would take me."
"Is Mr. Symington there now?" asked Jean. Mabel thanked her from the bottom of a heart that couldn't prompt a single word at that supreme moment.
"No, but he said he was going some day," said Elsie. That was all. Mabel had seen a blaze of sunshine and then blackness again.
"Oh," said the robust, unheeding Jean, "what do your people say to that?"
"Papa says he won't have me butchered," said Elsie with a radiant smile.
"Look here," said the fencing girl, with her eyes still searching that "wild flower of a face" of Elsie's. "Will your father come and see my tenements?"
The answer of Elsie became historic in the girls' club.
"I think he will," said she. "He was up the Ferris wheel last night."