The Story Book Girls Part 42

"Do you care very much for him?" he asked.

"Oh, yes." Isobel looked almost helplessly at him. "He isn't the man I dreamed of, but he is mine, you know. It has come to that."

She sank on her knees beside him, her eyes blazing.

"Isn't it an indignity for me, as much as for Mabel, to take what she didn't want? You say she doesn't want him. At first--oh! I only desired to show my power. I always meant to marry a wealthier man. But it's no use. He is a waverer, don't I know it. I see him calculating whether I'm worth the racket. I see that--I! Isn't it deplorable! But I mean to make a man of him. He never has been one before. And I mean to marry him, Uncle."

Mr. Leighton smoked and smoked at his cigar. He was beginning at last to fathom the nature that took what it wanted--with both hands.

"Isobel," he said gently, "let us drop all this question of Mabel. It isn't that which comes upper-most, now. It's the question of what you lose by marrying in this way. Don't you know that this dropping of Miss Meredith, this way of 'paying her out,' you know, well, it may give you Robin intact; but have you an idea what you may lose in the process? I don't admire the girl, but--she is his sister. I have never known"--he threw away his cigar--"I have never yet known of a happy, a really happy marriage, where the happiness of two was built on the discomfiture of others. Won't you reconsider the whole position of being down on Miss Meredith, and paying everybody out who was concerned in Robin's affairs before you knew him? Won't you try to make your wedding a happiness to every one--even to Miss Meredith?"

"Oh," said Isobel, "I don't know that the average bride thinks much of the happiness of relations. She has her trousseaux and the guests to be invited, and all that sort of thing." She turned over a book which was lying near. "I don't think I should have time for Miss Meredith," she said coldly.

Mr. Leighton sat quite quietly.

"Will you be married here?" he asked.

A gleam came to Isobel's eyes.

"That would be nice," she said. There was the feeling of an answer to an invitation in her voice.

"It's at your disposal," he said, "anything we can do for your happiness."

"Is that to show that I do nothing for anybody else's?" Isobel was really grateful.

"Perhaps." He said it rather sadly.

"I might make an endeavour over Sarah," she said.

"You know, from the first, the day you came in the train, you told us you had ignored her, hadn't you? She nursed Robin through a long illness. Saw him grow up and all that kind of thing. Never spared herself in the matter of looking after him!"

"Well?" asked Isobel.

"Well," said Mr. Leighton, "it's rather pathetic, isn't it?"

The day was won in a partial manner; for Isobel promised she would try to "ingratiate Sarah."

"It's the wrong way of putting it, but it may make a beginning," said Mr. Leighton.

He further insisted on seeing Robin. That was a bad half-hour for every one, but for no one so particularly as for Robin. He had evaded so many things with Mr. Leighton, and for once he found that gentler nature adamant.

Nothing went quite so much against this gentler nature as having to arrange matters for Isobel. So Robin discovered. Yet already it made what Isobel called "a man of him." He was a man to be ruled, and Mabel had placed herself under his ruling. Here was the real mischief.

Isobel would take him firmly in hand.

The girls were greatly mystified, Elma horrified. They had orders to take the news of Isobel's engagement as though it might be an expected event, and certainly no sign was given that it was in the nature of a surprise. Jean could not understand Mabel when the news arrived. She laughed and sang and kissed Jean as though the world had suddenly become happy throughout.

"I thought you would have been cut up," said Jean disconsolately.

"Cut up! Why they are made for one another," cried Mabel. "Isobel, calm and firm, Robin, wavering and admiring, nothing could be better.

But oh--oh--I want to see how Sarah takes it."

They had a particular grind just then, for now they were getting into spring, and it would soon be time for making that triumphant pa.s.sage home of which they had so often dreamed. They lived for that now, but none lived for it more devotedly than Elma.

Isobel's engagement cut her further and further away from enjoying anything very much. She had always the feeling of cold critical eyes being on her. She often congratulated herself on having got over the stage where she used long words in quite their wrong sense. Isobel's proximity in these days would have been dreadful.

Miss Grace also seemed downhearted. It had been a trying winter for her, yet no actual evidence of ill-health had a.s.serted itself. She was concerned about Elma too, who seemed to be losing what the others were gaining by being away, that just development which comes from happy experience. Elma plodded and played, but her bright little soul only came out unfledged of fear at Miss Grace's.

At last one day Miss Grace's face lit.

"My dear, your gift is composition."

n.o.body ever had thought of it before. Elma's expression lightened to a transforming radiance.

"Oh, I wonder if I ever could get lessons," she cried.

They discovered a chance, through correspondence. So Elma held the fort, and tried to grapple single-handed with musical composition.

"If only I could compose an anthem before Mabel and Jean get home," she said one day.

"Heavens, Elma, you aren't going to die?" asked Betty.

CHAPTER XXIII

Holding the Fort

Miss Meredith took the news of her brother's engagement in a dumb manner. An explosion of wrath would have helped every one. Robin might have appeared aggrieved, and had something of which to complain, and Isobel's immobility beside some one in a rage was always effective.

Miss Meredith would not rage however. She had met a match for her own resourceful methods, and at bottom she feared the reserve of power which prompted Isobel. Under cover of a fine frown she accepted the situation as Isobel had said she would. What hopes were overthrown by the engagement, what schemes upturned, no one but Miss Meredith herself would ever have an inkling. She began to regret her manner of ejecting Mabel, especially since the London reports told of a Mabel many cuts above Ridgetown. Miss Dudgeon had opened their eyes. She had come back in armour, the old Ridgetown armour, and talked in the stiffest manner of Mabel and Lady Emily, as though all were of a piece. Miss Meredith ventured to say to her later on that she understood that Mabel was quite a success in "Society."

"She always was, wasn't she?" asked Adelaide Maud very simply, as though she imagined society had really existed in Ridgetown.

Miss Meredith was a trifle overcast.

"Oh yes, yes, of course," she said. "But Mabel, of course, Mabel----"

"Mabel would s.h.i.+ne anywhere you mean. That is true. She possesses the gift of being always divinely natural."

Adelaide Maud could play up better than any one. Miss Dudgeon ran on to congratulate Miss Meredith on her brother's engagement.

"Ah yes, such a charming girl," said Miss Meredith. "He is very fortunate. We both are, since it relates us to so delightful a family.

We have always been such friends."

There was a stiff pause. Adelaide Maud could never bring herself to fill in the pauses between social untruthfulnesses.

"She is very courageous, we think," ran on Miss Meredith. "Robin will not be able to give her very much of an establishment, you know. But that does not grieve her. She has a very even and contented disposition. I often tell Robin--quite a girl in a hundred! Not many would have consented so sweetly to an immediate marriage under the circ.u.mstances."