Chapter Nineteen.
A Strange Meeting.
Time passes rapidly to the young and light-hearted, and winter fogs had given place to blue skies and flowering trees before—as Jill expressed it—one could say “Jack Robinson.”
Miles was finishing his course of study, and had so distinguished himself above his fellows that there was little doubt that a good opening would be offered to him ere long. Dr Trevor was very proud of his clever son, but the mother’s face took on a wistful expression as she looked round the table at her assembled family, and realised that the time was close at hand for the stirring up of the nest. She was unusually indulgent during those spring months, as if she could not find it in her heart to deny any possible pleasure.
“We shall not long be together. Miles will be going away, and after then—who knows?” she told herself sadly. “Once children begin to grow up and go out into the world, one can never be sure of meeting again as a complete family circle. Let them be happy while they may!”
So those spring months saw an unusual succession of gaieties in the doctor’s shabby house, in the shape of merry, informal gatherings, which went far to cement newly-made friendships. Agatha and Christabel Rendell returned home, only to be succeeded by the remaining three sisters of the family, who proved quite as interesting in their various ways. Dear good Maud was as sweet and placid as her own fat baby, while Elsie was an intense young person, quite different from anyone else whom Betty and Cynthia had ever encountered. Her hair was parted in the middle and brushed smoothly over her ears; she wore quaintly unfashionable garments, and—thrilling item of interest!—was engaged to be married to a sub-editor of a magazine, who was reported to be even more intense than herself. Elsie disdained the ordinary sign of betrothal; a ring, she explained to the astonished girls, was a badge of servitude to which no self-respecting woman should submit, and she wore in its place a gold locket, bearing strange cabalistic signs, the meaning of which the beholders vainly yearned to discover.
With regard to the future, Elsie and her editor announced their intention of living “the higher life”—a high-sounding phrase which was not a little impressive, until one heard the details thereof, which scarcely appealed to the ordinary imagination. They were going to subsist on a diet of bread and nuts, a regime which did away at one fell swoop with the need of such superfluities as cook and kitchen; they would have no curtains nor draperies, as woollens harbour microbes; no wall-papers, as papers exude poisons; no ornaments, since it was a sin to waste the precious hours in dusting what was of no use. What they were going to have, soon became the question in the minds of the anxious hearers, while “Poor old Elsie!” cried Nan Vanburgh, laughing. “I give her a month before I am taken for a day’s hard shopping at Maple’s! She rides her hobbies so violently that they collapse of sheer exhaustion before she has time to put them into practice!”
In the matter of conversation, Elsie swayed between the high-flown and the natural, sometimes chatting away in ordinary commonplace fashion, at other times confounding her hearers by weird and mysterious utterances.
“Have you ever felt the intense meaning in colour?” she demanded one day, at the end of a silence during which she had been gazing into the heart of the fire. Betty stared aghast, but Cynthia, with finer humour, smiled demurely, and replied—