Isabelle saw the futility of trying to explain what she meant to her mother, and yet the old lady in her next irrelevant remark touched the very heart of the matter.
"Children have so much attention these days,—what they eat and do is watched over every minute. Why, we had a cat and a dog, and a doll or two, the kitchen and the barn to run about in—and that was all. Parents were too busy to fuss about their children. Boys and girls had to fit into the home the best they could."
There was a home to fit into! A cat and a dog, a few dolls, and the kitchen and the barn to run about in,—that was more than Molly Lane with all her opportunities had ever had.
"There weren't any governesses or nurses; but we saw more of our father and mother, naturally," the old lady continued. "Only very rich people had nurses in those times."
The governess was a modern luxury, provided to ease the conscience of lazy or incompetent mothers, who had "too much to do" to be with their children. Isabelle knew all the arguments in their favor. She remembered Bessie Falkner's glib defence of the governess method, when she had wanted to stretch Rob's income another notch for this convenience,—"If a mother is always with her children, she can't give her best self either to them or to her husband!" Isabelle had lived enough since then to realize that this vague "best self" of mothers was rarely given to anything but distraction.
Isabelle had been most conscientious as a mother, spared no thought or pains for her child from her birth. The trained nurse during the first two years, the succession of carefully selected governesses since, the lessons, the food, the dentist, the doctors, the clothes, the amusements,—all had been scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the best modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child bored her,—was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten itself on the young organism, and yet thus far the product was tasteless. Perhaps Molly was merely a commonplace little girl, and she was realizing it for the first time. Isabelle's maternal pride refused to accept such a depressing answer, and moreover she did not believe that any young thing, any kitten or puppy, could be as colorless, as little vital as the exquisite Miss Lane. She must find the real cause, study her child, live with her awhile. The next generation, apparently, was as inscrutable a manuscript to read as hers had been to the Colonel and her mother. Her parents had never understood all the longings and aspirations that had filled her fermenting years, and now she could not comprehend the dumbness of her child. Those fermenting years had gone for nothing so far as teaching her to understand the soul of her child. The new ferment was of a different composition, it seemed….
* * * * *
Isabelle was to find that her daughter had developed certain tastes besides a love for clothes and a delight in riding in motor-cars…. Molly was in the library after luncheon, absorbed in an illustrated story of a popular magazine, which Isabelle glanced over while Miss Joyce made ready her charge to accompany her mother to the Johnstons'. The story was "innocent," "clean reading" enough,—thin pages of smart dialogue between prettily dressed young men and athletic girls, the puppy loves of the young rich,—mere stock fiction-padding of the day. But the picture of life—the suggestion to the child's soft brain? Isabelle tossed the magazine into the waste basket, and yawned. Molly had left it with a sigh.
On the way to the Bryn Mawr house Isabelle tried to explain to Molly what had happened to the Johnstons through the loss of the father, telling her what a good man Steve was, the sorrow the family had to bear. Molly listened politely.
"Yes, mother!" And she asked, "Are they very poor?" An innocent remark that irritated Isabelle unreasonably.