The Story Book Girls Part 29

Practically, whatever he had touched all his life had remained his own, sacred and inviolate. It seemed that Mabel ought to have remained his own merely because he had once stretched out his hand in her direction.

Then, he began to find that he reckoned with a family which had been taught unselfishness.

Isobel, to do her justice, always imagined that Mabel from the reserve of her welcome on the occasion of her arrival, resented her presence at the White House. She noticed that of all the girls to welcome her, Mabel kept a constrained silence. This she immediately put down to a personal distaste of herself, and controlled her actions accordingly. From the first moment of greeting her aunt and uncle, and sitting down to table, she upheld a sweetness of character which was una.s.sailable, and which put Mabel's distrait manner into rather wicked relief. Isobel's was a nature, formed and articulate, entirely independent of the feelings and sympathies of others, a nature which could thrive and blossom on any trouble and disappointment, so long as these were not her own. She had learned in the mixed teaching of her rather stranded life, that very little trouble or disappointment came in the way of those who could see what they wanted and grab with both hands accordingly. She determined to grab with both hands every benefit to be derived from being leader in the Leighton family. She had come there with the intention of being leader. Before the meal was over, she had gained the good opinion of all except Mabel, an intentional exclusion on her part. Mabel had received her without effusion. Here was rivalry. In the most methodical and determined manner, she began a long siege of those rights and privileges which Mabel, as head of the Leighton girls, had never had really questioned before. She supplied a link in their musical circle, incomplete before. She could sing. Her methods were purely technical and so highly controlled, that the rather soulful playing of the Leighton girls shrank a little into a background of their own making.

Isobel's voice was like a clear photograph, developed to the last shred of minuteness. One heard her notes working with the precision of a musical box. The tiring nature of her accomplishments was never evident at a first performance. These only appeared to be ripplingly brilliant.

She had the finished air and mechanical mannerisms of the operatic artist, and they became startlingly effective in a room where music only in its natural and most picturesque aspect had been indulged. Mr.

Leighton endeavoured to reconcile himself to a person who was invariably at top notes, and Isobel deceived herself into thinking that she charmed him. She charmed the others however, and Jean especially was at her feet. It struck her that probably she would be able to get more of the fat of life out of Jean than out of any one. She noted that Jean ordered a good deal where others consulted or merely suggested. Ordering was more in her line.

Of Mrs. Leighton she took no account whatever, except that she was invariably sweet in her presence.

It dawned on no one that a very dangerous element had been introduced into the clear heaven of the wise rule of the White House.

Mabel's mind at the start, it is true, was in a subconscious condition of warning. The particular kind of warning she could not recognize, but, long after, attached it to the att.i.tude of Isobel. In a month or two, she found that while her family still remained outwardly at one with her, a subtle disrespect of any opinion of hers, a discontent at some of her mildest plans, seemed to invade the others. It came upon her that her ideas were very young and crude with Isobel there to give finer ones.

Ah! that was it. Isobel was so much better equipped for deciding things than she was. It affected Mabel's playing when she imagined that her family found it at last not good enough. She never could play for Isobel. On the first night of arrival, Mabel was most concerned, however, on how she was to give certain news to her father and mother.

Mr. Leighton had heard from Mr. Symington--only that he had been called away. Mabel took the news in public with a great shrinking Her heart cried out in rebellion, and instead of indulging that wild cry, she had to be interested in the arrival of Isobel. She caught Isobel's keen darkness of gaze on her, and shifted weakly under its influence to apparent unconcern and laughter.

At the worst of it, when they were taking tea in the drawing-room after dinner, Robin and his sister came in. Miss Meredith's _coup_ was worth her fear and distrust in experimenting with it. Robin became genuinely interested in Isobel. This made him almost kind to Mabel.

It concentrated all Mabel's wild rush of feelings to a triumph of pride.

Where she would willingly have gone to her room and had it out with herself, she waited calmly in the drawing-room and heard Isobel's first song.

Miss Meredith's heart glowed feebly. She had won her point. But Mabel's face heralded disaster.

Elma too would not look at her.

Elma trembled with the weight of what she would like to say to Sarah Meredith, and could not. Feebly she determined not to shake hands with her, then found herself as having done it.

Mr. Leighton talked quite unconcernedly about the departure of Mr.

Symington. "Can you tell me why he leaves us so suddenly?" he asked of Miss Meredith.

She had always made a point of liking to be asked about Mr. Symington.

This time she seemed afraid of the subject, certainly of Mr. Leighton's airy manner of handling it. Robin's face flushed hotly in an enraged sort of manner. Mabel's grew cold.

With all their experience of each other, and their knowledge of what had been going on, none in the room knew the nature of the crisis at hand, except the actors in it, and Elma. But, by the intuition of a nature that scented disaster easily and wilfully, Isobel, without a word from one of them, saw some of these hearts laid bare.

Miss Meredith, ill at ease, interested her immensely.

Miss Meredith at last answered that she knew nothing of the reason why Mr. Symington had left so abruptly.

Elma rose shaking in every limb.

"That is not true," she said. Her voice, more that her words carried effect.

She could go no further, she could only say, "That is not true."

Mrs. Leighton looked very surprised, and then helplessly bewildered.

Miss Meredith had a talent for seeing her chance. She saw it here. She turned in a rather foolish way, as though they intended some compliment.

"Indeed," said she, "you all over-rate my influence with Mr. Symington.

It is nothing to me whether he goes or stays."

Mabel pulled Elma into a corner.

"Oh shut up dear, for Heaven's sake shut up!" she whispered, and that incident was closed.

But Isobel began to play with a loud triumphant accompaniment and sang in a manner which might have shown every one the thing which she thought she had just discovered.

Instead, they all declared they had never heard such clear top notes.

CHAPTER XVI

The Thin Edge of the Wedge

It seemed to Mabel that Isobel's proposals, kindly worded and prettily mentioned, were always impossible of acceptance. She did nothing but refuse these overtures to friendship for the next week or so. This was the more awkward since she was particularly anxious to make everything nice for Isobel. But the proposals and the overtures seemed continually to occur in connexion with the Merediths. It was a ridiculous thing of course that Isobel should be proposing anything in connexion with the Merediths.

Jean had now found some one after her own heart, one who did not wait for invitations, but thought immediately on a plan for making one's self known to people. Isobel had already called on the Dudgeons. Her progress was a royal one, and Mabel hated herself for the way she alone, though often with the backing up of Elma's companionship, kept out of things. She ventured to tell Jean why Robin no longer was a friend of hers. Jean seemed then to think him all the more eligible for Isobel.

This hurt more than one dared to believe. But Jean always had been for a direct way of dealing with people, sentiment not being in her nature at all. She considered it stupid of Mabel to bother about a man to whom she had not even been engaged.

Mabel, rather morbidly clung to her pride after this, and refused Elma's repeated pleadings to tell her mother and father. If one's own sister called one a donkey, it wasn't much encouragement to go on to more criticism. Mabel would rather see Isobel married to Robin than say a word more on her own account. Elma worried about it as much as Mabel did, and nothing would induce her to go near the Merediths. Mr. and Mrs. Leighton noted the difference, but had to confess that changes of a sort must come. Above all, Mabel was very young, and they did not want to press anything serious upon her just then. Robin's behaviour remained so gentlemanly that no one could convict him of anything except a sudden partiality for Isobel.

"They are all children of a sort," said Mr. Leighton, "and children settle their own differences best."

Isobel felt the difficulty of the number of girls in the place. It appalled her to think of Elma's creeping up next, and making the string lengthen. She looked with positive disapproval on Elma with her hair up. In a forlorn way, Elma felt the great difference between her seventeenth birthday, and that glorious day when Mabel entered into her kingdom.

Mabel was in trouble, Jean engrossed with her own affairs, and Isobel sweetly disdainful when Elma turned up her hair. She put it down again for three weeks, and n.o.body seemed to be the least pained at the difference.

At every visit to Miss Grace, she wondered whether or not it would be quite loyal to tell her about Mabel. Miss Annie and she were, however, so uncomprehending about anything having gone wrong, so interested in the new cousin, that invariably Elma's confidences were checked by such a remark as, "How very sweet Isobel looked in that pink gown to-day,"

and so on. Then one had to run on and be complimentary about Isobel. It seemed to Elma that her heart would break if Miss Grace, along with every one else, went over to Isobel.

She was not to know that Adelaide Maud had been there before her.

"I can't quite explain," said Adelaide Maud to Miss Grace one day, "I can't explain why I feel it, but this new cousin isn't on the same plane with the Leightons. There's something more--more developed, it's true, but there's also something missing."

"Something that has to do with being a lady?" asked Miss Grace in her timid way.

"Exactly. I know my London types, and this isn't one I should fasten on to admire, although she makes rather a dashing brilliant appearance in her present surroundings."

"I'm a little concerned about that," said Miss Grace.

In spite of her uniform courtesy where Isobel was concerned she had quite a talk with Adelaide Maud regarding her.

"I should fancy it's this," said Miss Grace finally, "that while she stays with the Leightons she has all the more income on which to look beautiful. I can't help seeing an ulterior motive, you observe. I sometimes wonder, however, what she will do to my little girls before she is done with them."

The first thing Isobel did was to inflame Jean with a desire to sing.

There was no use trying to inflame Mabel about anything. After Jean had discovered that she might have a voice there was nothing for it but that she should go to London. She begged and implored her father and mother to let her go to London. She was the only member of the family who had ever had the pluck to suggest such a thing. They had a familiar disease of home-sickness which prevented any daring in such a direction. Mabel had twice come home a wreck before she was expected home at all, and invariably vowing never to leave again.