But now she was quite herself.
Down stairs her father read the paper and her mother sat near the big
table, hem-stitching. For them everything was settled, and settled
satisfactorily. They knew whom they were going to marry, and whether
love was to be a success, and where they were going to live, and what
they were going to do. Henceforth, for them the game meant only
pleasantly plodding onward along paths already marked out. Just a
wholesome common marriage, planted with the seed of love and watered
with small self-sacrifices. How could they possibly remember the
restlessness of youth, to whom all these things are hidden in the mists
of the future, and who is longing for everything and sure of nothing?
Madeline sat down at the piano and her hands fell inevitably into
phrasing the "unfinished symphony." She became aware that her mother
laid down the stitching and Mr. Elton's evening paper ceased to crackle.
As she stopped her father stood behind her. He bent and kissed the
little parting in her hair.
"Your music grows sweeter and richer day by day, little girl," he said.
"I suppose as more comes into your life you have more to give. I'm glad
that you give it out to us old folks at home."
Madeline wheeled about and sprang to her feet.
"Ah," she exclaimed, "if you have finished with your stupid old paper,
I'll give you a real piece of news. It's a 'scoop' too, for no reporter
has got hold of it yet. Dick Percival is engaged to little Miss Quincy."
Both father and mother stared at her in silence. She stood a little
behind the chandelier, where the light shone full on her face, and in
neither mouth nor eyes could they see the trace of shadow. On the
contrary, there was a radiant loveliness about her that astonished those
that loved her best.
Then Mr. Norris was announced.
Now when Miss Elton had her first peep into her soul, and so stirred up
the possibilities in her nature, she also awoke to new insight into what
was going on behind other people's eyes. The day when she could look a
young man squarely in the face and say to him whatever she thought had
passed. The period of unconscious girlhood, much prolonged in her case,
came to an end. Since, in this world, shadow goes with sunshine, so
demons tag after angels; and with the dawn of her sweeter womanhood,
Madeline developed a new spirit of contrariety and coquetry that
astonished no one so much as herself.
When Mr. Norris came in, his apologetic glance told her at once that she
had hardly spoken to him since she had turned up her straight little
high-bred nose and informed him and Dick that she despised their
underhand ways; told her, also, what had not dawned on her before, that
here was an abject creature, and that it was the province of womanhood
to batter and buffet him who is down, perhaps in secret fear of that day
when outraged manhood will rise and claim a tyranny of its own.