"Aunt Francesca," asked Isabel, "is Colonel Kent rich?"
"Very," responded Madame. She had a fine damask napkin stretched upon embroidery hoops and was darning it with the most exquisite of stitches.
"Then why don't they live in a better house and have more servants? That place is old and musty."
"Perhaps they like to live there, and, again, perhaps they haven't enough money to change. Besides, that has been Colonel Kent's home ever since he was married. Allison was born there."
Isabel fidgeted in her chair. "If they're very rich, I should think they'd have enough money to enable them to move into a better house."
"Oh," replied Madame, carefully cutting her thread on the underside, "I wasn't thinking of money when I spoke. I don't know anything about their private affairs. But Colonel Kent has courage, sincerity, an old- fashioned standard of honour, many friends, and a son who is a great artist."
The girl was silent, for intangible riches did not appeal to her strongly.
"Allison is like him in many ways," Madame was saying. "He is like his mother, too."
"In September or October, I suppose—the beginning of the season."
"Is he going to play everywhere?"
"Everywhere of any importance."
"Perhaps," mused Isabel, "he will make a great deal of money himself."
"Perhaps," Madame responded, absently. "I do hope he will be successful." She had almost maternal pride in her foster son.
"Going where? What do you mean, dear?"
"Why, nothing. Only I heard him ask her if she would go with him on his concert tour and play his accompaniments, providing you or the Colonel went along for chaperone, and Cousin Rose laughed and said she didn't need a chaperone—that she was old enough to make it quite respectable."
"Allison laughed, too, and said: 'Nonsense!'"
"If they are going," said Madame, half to herself, "and decide to take me along, I hope they'll give me sufficient time to pack things decently."
"Would the Colonel go, if you went?"
"I hardly think so. It wouldn't be quite so proper."
"I don't understand," remarked Isabel, wrinkling her pretty brows.
"I don't either," Madame replied, confidentially. "However, I've lived long enough to learn that the conventions of society are all in the interests of morality. If you're conventional, you'll be good, in a negative sense, of course."
"How do you mean, Aunt Francesca?"
"Perfect manners are diametrically opposed to crime. For instance, it is very bad form for a man to shoot a lady, or even to write another man's name on a check and cash it. It saves trouble to be conventional, for you're not always explaining things. Most of the startling items we read in the newspapers are serious lapses from conventionality and good manners."
"The Crosbys aren't very conventional," Isabel suggested.
"No," smiled Madame, "they're not, but their manners proceed from the most kindly and friendly instincts, consequently they're seldom in error, essentially."
"They have lots of money, haven't they?"
"I have sometimes thought that the Crosbys had more than their age and social training fitted them to use wisely, but I've never known them to go far astray. They've done foolish things, but I've never known either to do a wrong or selfish thing. Money is a terrible test of character, but I think the twins will survive it."
"I suppose they've done lots of funny things with it."
Madame's eyes danced and little smiles wrinkled the corners of her mouth. "On the Fourth of July, last year, they presented every orphan in the Orphans' Home with two dollars' worth of fireworks, carefully chosen. Of course the inevitable happened and the orphans managed to set fire to the home, but, after two hours of hard work, the place was saved. Some of the children were slightly injured during the celebration, but that didn't matter, because as Juliet said, they'd had a good time, anyway, and it would give them something to talk about in years to come."
"It would have been better to spend the money on shoes, wouldn't it?"
"I don't know, my dear. The finest gift in the world is pleasure.
Sometimes I think it's better to feed the soul and let the body fast.
There is a time in life when one brief sky-rocket can produce more joy
than ten pairs of shoes."
Isabel smiled and glanced at Madame Bernard's lavender satin slipper.
The old lady laughed and the soft colour came into her pretty face.
"I frankly admit that I've passed it," she said. "Better one pair of shoes than ten sky-rockets, if the shoes are the sort I like."
"Do they come often?" queried Isabel, reverting to the subject of the twins.
"Not as often as I'd like to have them, but it doesn't do to urge them. I can only keep my windows open and let the wind from the clover field blow in as it will."
"Do they live near a clover field?" inquired Isabel, perplexed.
"No, but they remind me of it—they're so breezy and wholesome, so free and untrammelled, and, at heart, so sweet."
"I hope they'll come again soon."
"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 emancipate 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 passion 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."
"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."
"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 platitudes, 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."
"The Bloodless Revolution, or the Gradual Emancipation of Woman," she repeated, parrot-like.
"Her work must keep her away from home a great deal," he ventured, after a pause.
She turned her dark eyes to his. "I live in a hotel," she said.
In the simple answer, Allison saw an unmeasured loneliness, coupled with a certain loyalty to her mother. He changed the subject.
"You like it here, don't you?"
"Yes, indeed. Aunt Francesca is lovely and so is Cousin Rose. I wish," she went on, with a little sigh as she glanced about the comfortable room, "that I could always stay here." The child-like appeal in her tone set Allison's heart to beating a little faster.
"I wish you could," he said. Remorsefully, he remembered the long hours he had spent with Rose at the piano, happily oblivious of Isabel.
"Are you fond of music?" he asked.
"Yes, indeed! I always sit outside and listen when you and Cousin Rose play."
"Come in whenever you want to," he responded, warmly.
"Won't I be in the way? Won't I be a bother?"
"I should say not. How could you be?"
"Then," Isabel smiled, "I'll come sometimes, if I may. It's the only pleasure I have."
"That's too bad. Sometime we'll go into town to the theatre, just you and I. Would you like to go?"
"I'd love to," she answered, eagerly.
The clock ticked industriously, the fire crackled merrily upon the hearth, and the wind howled outside. In the quiet room, Allison sat and studied Isabel, with the firelight shining upon her face and her white gown. She seemed much younger than her years.
"You're only a child," he said, aloud; "a little, helpless child."
"How long do you think it will be before I'm grown up?"
"I don't want you to grow up. I can remember now just how you looked the day I told you about the scent bottles. You had on a pink dress, with a sash to match, pink stockings, little white shoes with black buttons, and the most fetching white sunbonnet. Your hair was falling in curls all round your face and it was such a warm day that the curls clung to your neck and annoyed you. You toddled over to me and said: 'Allison, please fix my's turls.' Don't you remember?"
She smiled and said she had forgotten. "But," she added, truthfully,
"I've often wondered how I looked when I was dressed up."
"Then," he continued, "I told you how the scent bottles grew on the roots of the rose bushes, and, after I went home, you went and pulled up as many as you could. Aunt Francesca was very angry with me."
"Yes, I remember that. I felt as though you were being punished for my sins. It was years afterward that I saw I'd been sufficiently punished myself. Look!"
She leaned toward him and showed him a narrow white line on the soft flesh between her forefinger and her thumb, extending back over her hand.
"A thorn," she said. "I shall carry the scar to my dying day."
With a little catch in his throat, Allison caught the little hand and pressed it to his lips. "Forgive me!" he said.