"So do I, for I don"t want you to be lonely, Isabel. It was good of your mother to let you come."
"Mamma doesn"t care what I do," observed Isabel, placidly. "She"s always busy."
Madame Bernard checked the sharp retort that rose to her lips. What Isabel had said was quite true. Mrs. Ross was so interested in what she called "The New Thought" and "The Higher World Service" that she had neither time nor inclination for the old thought and simple service that make--and keep--a home.
From the time she could dress herself and put up her own hair, Isabel had been left much to herself. Her mother supplied her liberally with money for clothes and considered that her duty to her daughter ended there. They lived in an apartment hotel and had their coffee served in their rooms in the morning. After that, Isabel was left to her own devices, for committees and directors" meetings without number claimed her mother.
More often than not, Isabel dined alone in the big dining-room downstairs, and spent a lonely evening with a novel and a box of chocolates. On pleasant days, she amused herself by going through the shops and to the matinee. She did not make friends easily and the splendid isolation common to hotels and desert islands left her stranded, socially. She had been very glad to accept Aunt Francesca"s invitation, and the mother, looking back through her years of "world service" to the quiet old house and dream-haunted garden, had thought it would be a good place for Isabel for a time, and had hoped she might not find it too dull to endure.
Madame Bernard had no patience with Mrs. Ross. When she had come for a brief holiday, fifteen years before, bringing her child with her, she had just begun to be influenced by the modern feminine unrest. Later she had definitely allied herself with those whose mission it is to emanc.i.p.ate Woman--with a capital W--from her chains, forgetting that these are of her own forging, and anchor her to the eternal verities of earth and heaven.
A single swift stroke had freed Mrs. Ross from her own "bondage."
Isabel"s father had died, while her mother was out upon a lecturing tour--in a hotel, which is the most miserable place in the world to die in. The housekeeper and chambermaids had befriended Isabel until the tour came to its triumphant conclusion. Mrs. Ross had seemed to consider the whole affair a kindly and appropriate recognition of her abilities, on the part of Providence. She attempted to fit Isabel for the duties of a private secretary, but failed miserably, and, greatly to Isabel"s relief, gave up the idea.
Madame Bernard had looked forward to Isabel"s visit with a certain apprehension, remembering Mrs. Ross"s unbecoming gowns and careless coiffures. But the girl"s pa.s.sion for clothes, amounting almost to a complete "reversion to type," had at once relieved and alarmed her. "If I can strike a balance for her," she had said to herself in a certain midnight musing, "I shall do very well."
As yet, however, Isabel had failed to "balance." She dressed for morning and luncheon and afternoon, and again for dinner, changing to street gowns when necessary and doing her hair in a different way for each gown. Still, as Rose had said, she "suited herself," for she was always immaculate, beautifully clad, and a joy to behold.
Madame Bernard greatly approved of the lovely white wool house gown Isabel was wearing. She had no fault to find with the girl"s taste, but she wished to subordinate, as it were, the thing to the spirit; the temple to the purpose for which it was made.
Isabel smiled at her sweetly as she folded up her work--a little uncomprehending smile. "Are you going away now for your "forty winks,"
Aunt Francesca?"
"Yes, my dear. Can you amuse yourself for an hour or so without playing upon the piano?"
"Certainly. I didn"t know that you and Cousin Rose were asleep yesterday, or I wouldn"t have played."
"Of course not." Madame leaned over her and stroked the dark hair, waved and coiled in quite the latest fashion. "There are plenty of books and magazines in the library."
Madame went upstairs, followed at a respectful distance by Mr. Boffin, waving his plumed tail. He, too, took his afternoon nap, curled up cosily upon the silken quilt at the foot of his mistress"s couch. In the room adjoining, Rose rested for an hour also, though she usually spent the time with a book.
Left to herself, Isabel walked back and forth idly, greatly allured by the forbidden piano. She looked over, carelessly, the pile of violin music Allison had left there. Some of the sheets were torn and had been pasted together, all were marked in pencil with hieroglyphics, and most of them were stamped, in purple, "Allison Kent," with a Berlin or Paris address written in below.
Isabel had met very few men, in the course of her twenty years. For this reason, possibly, she remembered every detail of the two weeks she had spent at Aunt Francesca"s and the hours with Allison, on the veranda, when he chose to amuse himself with the pretty, credulous child. It seemed odd to have him coming to the house again, though, unless he came to dinner, he usually spent the time playing, to Rose"s accompaniment.
She had not seen him alone.
She surveyed herself in the long, gilt-framed mirror, and was well pleased with the image of youth and beauty the mirror gave back. The bell rang and she pinned up a stray lock carefully. It was probably someone to see Aunt Francesca, but there was a pleasing doubt. It might be the twins, though she had not returned their call.
Presently Allison came in, his cheeks glowing from his long walk in the cold. "Silver Girl," he smiled, "where are the spangles, and are you alone?"
"The spangles are upstairs waiting for candlelight," answered Isabel, as he took her small, cool hand, "and I"m very much alone--or was."
"Where are the others?"
"Taking naps."
"I hope I haven"t tired Rose out," said Allison, offering Isabel a chair. He had unconsciously dropped the prefix of "Cousin." "We"ve been working hard lately."
"Is she going with you on your tour?"
"I don"t know. I wish she could go, but I haven"t the heart to drag father or Aunt Francesca along with us, and otherwise, it would be-- well, unconventional, you know. The conventions make me dead tired," he added, with evident sincerity.
"And yet," said Isabel, looking into the fire, "they are all in the interests of morality. If you"re conventional, you"ll be good, negatively. It isn"t good manners for a man to shoot a lady or to sign a check with another man"s name and get it cashed. If you"re conventional, you"re not always explaining things."
"Very true," laughed Allison, "but sometimes "the greatest good for the greatest number" bears heavily upon the few."
"Of course," Isabel agreed, after a moment"s pause. "Your friends, the Crosby twins, have called," she continued.
"Really?" Allison asked, with interest. "How do you like them?"
"I wish they"d come often," she smiled. "They remind me of a field of red clover, they"re so breezy and so wholesome."
"I must hunt "em up," he returned, absently. "They used to be regular little devils. It"s a shame for them to have all that money."
"Why?"
"Because they"ll waste it. They don"t know how to use it."
"Perhaps they do, in a way. One Fourth of July they gave every orphan in the Orphans" Home two dollars" worth of fireworks. Anybody else would have wasted the money on shoes, or hats."
"I see you haven"t grown up. Would you rather have fireworks than clothes?"
"There is a time in life when one sky-rocket can give more pleasure than a pair of shoes, and the gift of pleasure is the finest gift in the world."
Allison was agreeably surprised, for hitherto Isabel"s conversation had consisted mainly of monosyllables and plat.i.tudes, or the hesitating echo of someone"s else opinion. Now he perceived that it was shyness; that Isabel had a mind of her own, and an unusual mind, at that. He looked at her quickly and the colour bloomed upon her pale, cold face.
"Tell me, little playmate, what have the years done for you since you went out and pulled up the rose bushes to find the scent bottles?"
"Nothing," she answered, not knowing what else to say.
"Still looking for the unattainable?"
"Yes, if you like to put it that way."
"Where"s your mother?"
"Out lecturing."
"What about?"
"The Bloodless Revolution, or the Gradual Emanc.i.p.ation of Woman," she repeated, parrot-like.
"Her work must keep her away from home a great deal," he ventured, after a pause.
"Yes. I seldom see her."
"You must be lonely."