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 shine 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 circumstances."

Ah, then, this might explain to the public the defection of Mabel. Mabel had expected an "establishment." Miss Dudgeon began to see daylight.

"Oh, on the contrary," she said, rising, "we have always looked on Mr. Meredith as being so well off in respect of being able to get married. Didn't you tell me once--but then I have such a stupid memory!"

Miss Meredith recognized where a great slip had taken place. These had been her words before, "Not many young men are in so easy a position for marrying!" And to Miss Dudgeon of all people she had just said the reverse.

There is a pit formed by a bad memory wherein social untruths sometimes tumble in company. There they are inclined to raise a laugh at themselves, and occasionally make more honest people out of their perpetrators.

Miss Meredith knew there was no use in any longer explaining Robin's position, or want of it, to so clear-headed a person as Miss Dudgeon. The best way was to retire as speedily as possible from so difficult a subject.

Mrs. Leighton found the whole affair very trying. She never indulged in any social doctoring where her own opinions were concerned, and it was really painful for her to meet all the innuendoes cast at her by curious people.

"Oh, Mr. Leighton and I always think young people manage these things best themselves. They are so sensitive, you know, and quite apt to make mistakes if dictated to. A critical audience must be very trying. Yes, everybody thought Robin was engaged to Mabel--but he never was."

"Well then," said Aunt Katharine, with her lips pursed up to sticking-point, "if they weren't engaged, they ought to have been. That's all I've got to say."

It was not all she had got to say, as it turned out. She talked for quite a long time about the duties of children to their parents.

Mrs. Leighton at last became really exasperated.

"You know, Katharine," she said, "if you are so down on these young people, I shall one day--I really shall, I shall tell them how you nearly ran away with James Shrimpton."

"My dear," said Aunt Katharine. She was quite shocked. "I was a young unformed thing and father so overbearing----" She was so hurt she could go no further.

"Exactly," said Mrs. Leighton. "And my girls are young unformed things, and their father is not overbearing."

Aunt Katharine grunted.

"Ah well, you keep their confidence. That's true. I don't know a more united family. But this marriage of Isobel's does not say much for your management."

That was it--"management." Mrs. Leighton groaned slightly to herself. She never would be a manager, she felt sure. She offered a passive front to fate, and her influence stopped there. As for manoeuvring fate by holding the reins a trifle and pressing backward or forward, she had not the inclination at any time to interfere in such a way at all. She leaned on what Emerson had said about things "gravitating." She believed that things gravitated in the right direction, so long as one endeavoured to remain pure and noble, in the wrong one so long as one was overbearing and selfish. She had absolutely no fear as to how things would gravitate for Mabel after that night when she talked about Robin and went off to succour Jean.

She placidly returned to her crochet, and to the complainings of Aunt Katharine.

Cuthbert came down that evening, and Isobel, Elma, Betty and he went off to be grown-ups at a children's party at the Turbervilles. The party progressed into rather a "larky" dance, where there were as many grown-ups as children. All the first friends of the Leightons were there, including, of course, the Merediths. Cuthbert took in Isobel in rather a frigid manner. He endeavoured not to consider Meredith a cad, but his feelings in that direction were overweighted for the evening. He danced with the children, and "was no use for anybody else," as May Turberville put it. But then Cuthbert was so "ghastly clever and all that sort of thing," that he could not be put on the level of other people at all.

Cuthbert had got his summer lectureship. He told Elma, and then Mr. and Mrs. Leighton, and then Betty, and Isobel could not imagine what spark of mischief had lit their spirits to the point of revelry as they ambled along in their slow four-wheeler. Elma had only one despair in her mind. Neither Miss Grace nor Miss Annie were well. Miss Annie particularly seemed out of gear, so much so and so definitely, that for the first time for nearly thirty years Miss Grace spoke of having in Dr. Merryweather.

Cuthbert asked lots of questions.

"I don't know," Elma generally answered. "She just lies and sickens. As though she didn't care."

She raised her hand to her head at the time.

"Dr. Smith says it's the spring weather which everybody feels specially trying this year."

Cuthbert grunted.

George Maclean came to Elma for the first dance. He seemed in very good spirits. Elma found herself wondering if it were about Mabel. Well, one would see. Mabel had always been tied in a kind of a way, and now she was free! Mr. Maclean anyhow was the best, above all the best. Even Mr. Symington! When she thought of him, her mind always ran off to wondering what now might happen to Mr. Symington.

She had a long, rollicking waltz with Mr. Maclean. They rollicked, because children were on the floor and steering seemed out of fashion. Yet he carried her round in a gentle way, because Elma, with her desire to be the best of dancers, invariably got knocked out with a robust partner. He carried her round in the most gentle way until the music stopped with the bang, bang of an energetic amateur. Elma found the floor suddenly hit her on the cheek in what seemed to her a most impossible manner.

"Now what could make it do that?" she asked Mr. Maclean. He was bending over her with rather a white face.

Cuthbert came up.

"Why didn't you tell Maclean that you were giddy?" he said. "He would have held you up."

"But I wasn't giddy," said Elma. "I'm not giddy now."

She was standing, but the floor again seemed at a slant.

"Steady," said Cuthbert. "You're as giddy as the giddiest. Don't pretend. Take her off to get cool, Maclean."

"Cool!" Elma's fingers seemed icy. But there was a comforting, light-headed glow in her cheeks which reassured her.

Every one said how well she was looking, and that kept her from wondering whether she was really going to be ill. George Maclean tried to get her to drink tea, but for the first time in her life she found herself possessed of a passion for lemonade.

"You will really think that I am one of the children," she said, "because I am simply devoured with a longing for iced lemonade."

"Well, you shall have iced lemonade, and as much as you want," said George Maclean. "How I could let you fall, I can't think." There was a most ludicrous look of concern on his face.

"I shall grab all my prospective partners for this evening at least," said Elma. "You can't think how treacherous that floor is."

She did not dance nearly so much as she wanted to. George Maclean and Lance and Cuthbert, these three, at least, made her sit out when she wanted to be "skipping."

Isobel looked her up on hearing that she had fallen. Cuthbert said, "She doesn't look well, you know."

"Why, Elma--Elma is never ill," said Isobel. "Look at her colour too!"

Towards the end of the evening, they began to forget about it, and Elma danced almost as usual. Three times she saw the floor rock, but held on. What her partners thought of her when she clung to a strong arm, she did not stop to think. It was "talking to Miss Annie in her stuffy room" that had started it, she remembered.

She was in an exalted frame of mind about other things. The world was turning golden. Cuthbert was coming home, Mabel and Jean would soon be with them, Adelaide Maud was already on the spot. And Isobel would be gone in the summer.

Robin Meredith came to ask her for a dance. He seemed subdued, and had a rather nervous manner of inviting her. So that it seemed easy for her to be sedate and beg him to excuse her because she had turned giddy. Anything! she could stand anything on that evening except dance with Robin Meredith. Her training in many old ways came back to her, however.

"I shall sit out, if you don't mind," she said. "Isn't it silly to have a headache when all this fun is going on?" She found herself being quite friendly and natural with him. The children were having a great romp in front of them.

"Have you a headache?" he asked rather kindly.

Oh yes, she had a headache. Now she knew. It seemed to have been going on for years. She began to talk about May Turberville's embroidery, and how Lance had sewn a pincushion in order to outrival her. When May had run on to sewing daffodils on her gowns, Lance threatened to embroider sunflowers on his waistcoats. Had he seen Lance's pictures? Well, Lance was really awfully clever, particularly in drawing figures. Mr. Leighton wanted him to say he would be an artist, but Lance said he couldn't stand the clothes he would have to wear. Mr. Leighton said that wearing a velveteen coat didn't mean nowadays that one was an artist, and Lance said that it was the only way of drawing the attention of the public. He said that one always required some kind of a showman to call out "Walk up, gentlemen, this way to the priceless treasures," and that a velveteen coat did all that for an artist. Lance said he would rather be on the Stock Exchange, where he could do his own shouting. She said that frankly, with all the knowledge she had of Lance and his manner of giving people away, she should never think of entrusting him with her money to invest. She said it in a very high voice, since she observed just at that minute that Lance stood behind her chair.

"Well, you are a little cat, Elma," he said disdainfully. "Here am I organizing a party in order to let people know that some day I shall be on the Stock Exchange, and here are you influencing the gully public against me."

"I object to the term 'gully,'" said Robin in a laboured but sporting manner.

"Well--gulled if you like it better," said Lance. "Only that effect doesn't come on till I'm done with you. You are to go and dance lancers, Meredith, while I take your place with this slanderer." It was Lance's way of asking for the next dance.

Elma gave a great sigh of relief after Robin had gone.

"He never heard me say so much in his life before," said she. "He must have been awfully surprised."

"How you can say a word to the fellow--but there, nobody understands you Leightons. You ought to have poisoned him. Or perhaps Mabel is only a little flirt."

He wisped a thread of the gauze of her fan.

Elma smiled at him. She was always sure of Lance.

"I say, Elma, what are we to do with Mother Mabel when she comes back? Does she mind this business, or are we allowed to refer to it in a jovial way?"

"Jovial, I think," said Elma. "I believe Mabs is awfully relieved."

She bent over and whispered to Lance.

"I should myself you know if I had just got rid of Robin."

Lance laughed immoderately.

"He's a rum chap," he said, "but he's met a good match in Isobel. Great Scott, look at the stride on her. She could take Robin up and twist him into macaroni if she wanted to. I'm sorry for him."

"What are you going to do for Sarah?" he asked abruptly.

"Sarah?" asked Elma with her eyes wide.

"Yes, you'll have to marry the girl or something. It's hard nuts on her. Why don't you get Symington back and let him make up the quartette?"

"Mr. Symington?"

"Yes. It would be most appropriate, wouldn't it? Robin and Isobel, and Symington and Sarah. It's quite a neat arrangement. You've provided one husband, why not the other." Several demons of mischief danced in Lance's eye.

"Oh, Lance, don't say that," said Elma; "it's so horrid, and--and common."

"Oh, it's common, is it," said Lance, "common. And I'm going to be your stockbroker one day, and you talk to me like this."

"Look here, Lance, I'd trust you with all my worldly wealth on the Stock Exchange, but I won't let you joke about Mr. Symington."

"Whew," said Lance, and he looked gently and amiably into the eyes of Elma.

"When you look good like that, I know you are exceedingly naughty. What is it this time, Lance?"

"Nothing, Elma, except----"

"Except----"

"That I have found out all I wanted to know about Symington, thank you."

"You are just a common, low little gossip, Lance," said Elma with great severity. "Will you please get me a nice cool glass of iced lemonade."