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.