Part 12 (1/2)
The photograph won the hearts of all the female friends of the family, who saw it in confidence, and increased their desire to see the original. But Mr. Ponsonby was not able, as had been expected, to come over in the summer. Violent rains and consequent floods in the Australian sheep-runs inflicted so much damage upon his stock that the marriage was again postponed, at least for a year, in which time he hoped to get things on a better basis. Lily kept up her spirits bravely.
She did not go to Mount Desert with her mother and sisters, but stayed at home, wrote her letters, hemst.i.tched her linen, declaring that she was glad of the time to get up a proper outfit, and went to bed early, keeping a pleasant home for her father and the boys as they went and came, to their huge satisfaction, and gaining in bloom and freshness; so that she was in fine condition in the fall to nurse her mother through a low fever caught at a Bar Harbor hotel, also to wait upon Susan, nervous and worn down with late hours and perpetual racket, and Eleanor, laid up with a sprained ankle from an overturn in a buckboard.
Eleanor, though not yet eighteen, was to come out next winter, Lily declaring that she should give up b.a.l.l.s--what was the use when one was engaged? She stayed at home and saw that her sisters were kept in ball-gowns and gloves, no light task, taking the part of Cinderella _con amore_. She certainly looked younger than Susan at least, who since she had taken up the Harvard Annex course, besides going out, began to grow worn and thin.
One February morning Eleanor's voice rose above the usual babble at the Carey breakfast-table.
”Can't I go, mamma?”
”Where, dear?”
”Why, to the Racket Club german at Eliot Hall, next Tuesday. It's going to be so nice, you know, only fifty couples, and we ought to answer directly; and I have just had notes from Harry Foster and Julian Jervis asking me for it.”
”And which shall you dance with?” asked Lily.
”Why, Harry, of course.”
”I would not have any _of course_ about it,” said Lily, rather sharply.
Harry Foster was now repeating Jack Allston's late role in the Carey family, with Eleanor for his ostensible object. ”My advice is, dance with Julian; and I suppose I must see that your pink net is in order, if Miss Macalister cannot be induced to hurry up your new lilac.”
”Shall we not go, mamma?”
”Why, mamma, how can we?” broke in Susan, who had her own game in another quarter. ”It's the 'Old Men of Menottomy' night, and we missed the last, you know.”
”Those old Cambridge parties are the dullest affairs going,” said Eleanor; ”I'd rather stay at home than go to them.”
”That is very ungrateful of you,” said Lily, laughing, ”when I gave up my place in the 'Misses Carey' to you, for of course I don't go to either.”
”Can't I go to Eliot Hall with Roland, mamma? He is asked, and Mrs.
Thorne is a patroness; she will chaperon me after I get there.”
”Roland will want to go right back to Cambridge, I know--the middle of the week and everything! He'll be late enough without coming here.”
”Then can't I take Margaret, and depend on Mrs. Thorne?” went on Eleanor, with the persistence of the youngest pet. ”Half the girls go with their maids that way.”
”Oh, I don't know, my dear,” said poor Mrs. Carey, looking helplessly from Eleanor, flushed and eager, to Susan, silent, but with a tightly shut look on her pretty mouth, that betokened no sign of yielding. ”I never liked it--in a hired carriage--and you can't expect _me_ to go over the Cambridge bridges without James. And I hate asking Mrs. Thorne anything, she always makes such a favour of it, and the less trouble it is the more fuss she gets up about it. Do you and Susan settle it somehow between you, and let me know when it is decided.”
”Let me go with Eleanor, mamma,” said Lily. ”Mrs. Freeman will probably go with Emmeline and Bessie, and she will let me sit with her. I will wear my old black silk and look the chaperon all over--as good a one, I will wager, as any there. It will be good fun to act the part, and I have been engaged so long that I should think I might really begin to appear in it.”
Mr. Carey was heard to growl, as he pushed back his chair and threw his pile of newspapers on to the floor, that he wished Lily would stop that nonsensical talk about her engagement once for all; but the girls did not pause in their chatter, and Mrs. Carey was too much relieved to argue the point.
”Only tell me what to do and I will do it,” was this poor lady's favourite form of speech. She set off with a clear conscience on Tuesday evening with Susan for the a.s.sembly at Cambridge, where a promisingly learned post-graduate of good fortune and family was wont to unbend himself by sitting out the dances and explaining the theory of evolution to Miss Susan Carey, who was as mildly scientific as was considered proper for a young lady of her position. Lily accompanied Eleanor to more frivolous spheres, where chaperonage was an easier if less exciting task; for once having touched up her sister's dress in the ante-room, and handed her over to Julian Jervis, she bade her farewell for the evening, and herself took the arm of Harry Foster, who, gloomily cynical at the sight of Eleanor, radiant in her new lilac, with another partner, had hardly a word to say as he settled her on a bench on the raised platform where the chaperons congregated, except to ask her sulkily if she would not ”take a turn,” which she declined without mincing matters, and took the only seat left, next to Mrs. Jack Allston, who was matronising a cousin.
”What, Lily! you here?” asked Mrs. Thorne.
”Oh, yes; mamma has gone to Cambridge with Susan, and said I might come over with Eleanor, and she was sure Mrs. Freeman,”--with a smile at that lady--”would look after us if we needed it.”
”With the greatest pleasure,” said Miss Morgan, who sat by her sister.
”Here have Elizabeth and I both come to take care of our girls, as half-a-dozen elders sometimes hang on to one child at a circus. We both of us had set our hearts on seeing _this_ german and would not give up, so you see there is an extra chaperon at your service.”