CHAPTER XXV
The Wild Anemone
Mabel and Jean had been successfully deceived up to a certain point inregard to Elma's illness. They were told the facts when the danger waspast. It was made clear to them then that the fewer people at home inan illness of that sort the better, while skilled nurses were soconveniently to be had. Mabel pined a little over not having been thereto nurse Elma, as though she had landed her sensitive little sister intoan illness by leaving too much on her shoulders. The independentvitality of Jean constantly reassured her however.
"She would just have been worse with that scared face of yours at herbedside," Jean would declare. "Every time you think of Elma you get aswhite 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 commonthings like heart disease or toothache. "Angina pectoris" and"periostitis" were used instead. When Jean wrote home in an airy mannerin the midst of Elma's illness to say that she was suffering from anattack of "periostitis," Mrs. Leighton immediately wired, "Get a nursefor Jean if required."
"What in the wide world have you been telling mother?" asked Mabel withthat 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 thetelegram. "I did have toothache," said Jean.
Mabel stared at the telegram. "Mummy can't be losing her reason overElma's being ill," she said. "She couldn't possibly suppose you wouldwant 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 wroteand 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 fencingenthusiast held her to the point.
"That's the worst of early Victorian parents," said this girl with abright 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 matchon, 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 andagain--it's good for one. Besides, you can't be both a semi-neuroticinvalid 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--pierrot--what'sthe 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 likethat."
"Oh, no," said the fencing girl coolly, "they run round you with hotbottles, and mustard blisters. All families do. They make you thinkabout 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 onlyteach me to fence, you may say what you like."
It was more the importance of Jean's estimate of herself than any realleanings towards being an invalid which made her look on an hour'sdepression as a serious thing, and an attack of toothache as an item ofnews which ought immediately to be communicated to her family. Shecriticized life entirely through her own feelings and experiences.Mabel and Elma had enough of the sympathetic understanding of the natureof others, to tune their own characters accordingly. But Jean, unlessterrified, or hurt, or joyous herself never allowed these feelings to betransmitted 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 wouldalways be more or less of the self-centred person. It was a usefultrait in connexion with singing for instance, and it seemed also asthough it might make her a good fencer. But the flippant merry fencingenthusiast in front of her was right when she saw the pitfall ready forthe Jean who should one day dedicate herself to her ailments. In thecase of Mabel this very lack of sympathy in Jean helped her in a lonelymanner to regain some of her lost confidence in herself. It neverdawned 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 mightever have had for such an occupation as piano playing. But in themorning one got up, and there were always the interests, the joys ortroubles, or the quaint little oddities of other girls, to knock thisintrospection and worry into the background, and make Mabel hercompanionable self once more. It was better, after all, than thescrutiny of one's own family, even a kind one. Jean was merelyconscious of change in any one when they refused a match or a drive or awalk with her. The world was of a piece when thathappened--"stodgy"--and the interests of Jean were being neglected--agreat 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 andcushioned, and more comfortable as a tea-room than many of the littlebedrooms. They had arranged tea-cups, and were preparing thatfascinating and delightful meal when a girl advanced from the far end ofthe corridor, in a lithe swinging manner. The fencing girl drew backher foil abruptly. "Who is that?" she asked, staring. The girls wereconscious of a most refreshing and invigorating surprise. ElsieClutterbuck stood there, with the wild sweetness of the open air in herbearing, 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 lightthrough which to look on Elsie. They had never quite dropped the pose ofthe benignant girls who had taken Elsie "out of herself." To them shewas rather a protege than a friend; much as Mabel at least would havedespised herself for that attitude had she detected it in herself. Sheacknowledged an immediate drop in her calculations, when the fencinggirl did not ask as most people did, "Who is that queer little thing?"It was difficult in one sudden moment to adjust oneself to introducingElsie 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 whisperdeclared, "There's nothing beautiful about Elsie."
They welcomed her heartily, curiously, and wondered if Lance's latestnews 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 chimesin as the butter portion merely. May heard about it. Can you imagineMrs. C. saying, 'I'd love to have some one to lean on,' and theButtercluck, who would have declared before--'On whom to lean. Pray dobe more careful of your English,' not having a cluck left! Though I dothink Elsie had knocked a little of the cluck out before the legacyarrived."
Elsie did not seem to be bursting with news. She sat in rather agrown-up, reliable way, opening her furry coat at their orders, anddrawing off her gloves. Her hair was up in loose, heavy coils on herneck, and it parted in front with that restless rippling appearancewhich made one think of the open air. The tip-tilted nose, which hadseemed the principal fault in the face which had always been termedplain in childhood, seemed now to lend a piquancy to her features.These were delicately irregular, and her eyebrows were too high, if onemight rel
y on the analysis of Jean.
The fencing girl sat and stared at her with her foil balanced on acrossed knee. If one wanted to do the fencing girl a real kindness, tomake her radiantly happy, then one introduced her to some one in whomshe might be interested. Life was a garden to her, and the friends shemade 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-daywho is more sweet and lovely than any one human ought to be. I shouldlove 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 aform of selfishness."
Mabel and Jean imagined that it was more a pose on the part of thefencing girl than any talent of Elsie's which immediately impressed heron this afternoon. They were later to discover that a thrill ofexpectancy, 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. "Isuppose 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 insurprise.
"Oh, yes. It isn't that, you know." Elsie swept forward, with a littlefurry 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 loveto grow up and become an heiress, and give my papa a holiday."
"You thought that," asked Jean accusingly. "Come now--when you wereclimbing 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 myparents," 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 tome," smiled Elsie. "Poor mamma! She knew if I told my father what Idid, it would disturb his thoughts, and if his thoughts were disturbedhe 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 worryabout 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'tafford to be there unless your fathers have enough money to take youthere, you think there's no struggle in the world. You ought to live abit in towns where people are obliged to show the working side as wellas the retired and affluent side. You poor thing, stuck in suburbia,among those Philistines, and thinking about the rent! I suppose theyonly thought you were bad tempered."
The fencing girl had landed them into a conversation more intimate thanany they had attempted together.
"Oh," said Elsie, and she looked shyly at Mabel and Jean. "I was a tinylittle thing when I got my first lesson. A lady and her daughter calledon mamma the second week we were in Ridgetown. I came on them in thegarden afterwards. They were going out at the gate, and they didn't seeme coming in. This lady said to her daughter, quite amiably: 'It's nouse, my dear; I suppose you observed they have only one maid.' Theynever 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 hadat least two maids, except ourselves."
"Do you know," said Jean, "I know the time when we would have wept atthat if it had ever happened to us. It isn't a joke," she told thefencing girl.
Elsie gave a long, quiet laugh. "If I ever have children," she said, "Ihope 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 whoneed 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 onthe simple life, and advising you to dispense with maids altogether,"said the fencing girl. "I'm not joking. It's a fact, you know, thatchildren 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 mayjust have been a selfish little prig, you know," said the fencing girlcheerily. "Study them by the dozen, be public-spirited about it. Thensome day you may be able to understand the soul of a child when you getit all to yourself. You won't just sit and say in a blank way, 'In myday children were different.'"
"Oh," cried Jean. "Now don't. If there's anything I hate, it's whenEvelyn begins to preach about children."
"Oh, well," said the fencing girl with a shrug, "if Mrs.----, whateveryour mother's name is, had known as much about their little ways as Ido, she would never have let you worry about that one maid. We are allwrong with domestic life at present. The one lot stays in too much andloses touch with the world, and the other lot are too busy touching theworld to stay in enough. We are putting it right, however," she saidamiably. "We are----" She spread her hands in the direction of thecompany collected. "We are getting up our world at present. After thatwe 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 talkersso!"
"Nevertheless," said Mabel, "given a friend of ours in for tea--who doesthe 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 thedomestic matters in three streets of tenements of new buildings recentlyerected in a working part of London. She was also engaged to bemarried.
"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 andthe difficulties of this side of it make me long for that little havenof a home we are getting ready at Richmond. I would bury myself therefor ever, from a selfish point of view that is, and probably vegetatelike the others. But I've made a pledge never to forget--never toforget what I've seen in London, and never to stop working for itsomewhere or somehow."
"What about your poor husband?" asked Jean.
"He isn't poor," said the fencing girl with a grin. "He is getting quiterich. He fell in love with me at the tenements. He built them. Ishould 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 thesetwo, 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 thebottom of a heart that couldn't prompt a single word at that suprememoment.
"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 tothat?"
"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 mytenements?"
The answer of Elsie became historic in the girls' club.
"I think he will," said she. "He was up the Ferris wheel last night."