The letter in which Elsie Moss returned the money was written on the very day when the girl had planned to write the letter announcing her disappearance. It was only a short note, however, and contained nothing of that nature. Her next letter, in which she reluctantly agreed to accept half of the Christmas-birthday gift, was long and surprising, but delightfully so rather than mysteriously or painfully.
Her Christmas had been quite as happy as that of the other Elsie. Indeed, her greater capacity for blissful and ecstatic joy would have rendered it even happier but for the valedictory character all its details held secretly for her. Her youth and temperament, however, which had carried her through the days following her momentous decision, upheld her spirits even when she approached the brink of the crisis. Her determination to right the wrong she had done at what she believed the first possible moment had cleared her conscience so completely that in the interim she had been able to enjoy the fruits of that wrong-doing as never before since the very first.
She had herself made her gift for Cousin Julia and little things for Miss Peacock and nearly everybody in the house. On Christmas Eve she sang in the parlor for Miss Peacock, the servants, and those remaining in the boarding-house over the holidays. First she went through the carols. Then she sang the favorite song or songs of every one present, including several of Miss Pritchard's. And though the programme was haphazard it wasn't motley—only simple and old-fashioned and full of sweetness and melody. The girl must have been dull indeed not to have guessed something of the exquisite and genuine pleasure she gave.
In truth she lay long awake, thrilled by the remembrance. It had been her swan-song, she told herself, half-tremulously, half-buoyed by the excitement of it all. For she was passing out of their lives, in very truth—even out of Cousin Julia's, and—forever. And Cousin Julia, who, Elsie knew had basked in the enjoyment of the others, would have it for a happy memory, when——
But she mustn't go further now. It was hardly safe. To-morrow was Christmas Day. Until the day after, she wasn't going to think ahead. Only on the 26th of December would she begin to make definite, final preparations. She wouldn't spoil tomorrow by looking beyond it.
Christmas was a wonderful day. Elsie did not realize how delirious her enjoyment was nor how painfully she was keyed up because of her underlying apprehension of coming agony. Neither did she understand it when she waked suddenly from sleep the following morning, feeling so exhausted as to be almost ill, and with a terrible sinking at heart which settled into depression the like of which she had never experienced before.
It might have seemed that she was in no condition to complete the proposed plans. But as a matter of fact, there was little to do. Though the girl hadn't deliberately or consciously looked ahead, the matter had been in her mind; and now when she came to consider the question as to where she should go, she found it practically settled. When she brought up the idea of going to California and trying to get a chance as a moving-picture actress, she was ready with the objection that the films were most likely to reach New York and that her dimples would give her away at once. Her wisest move would be to take refuge in some place equally distant from her stepmother in San Francisco and from New York. Which, of course, was no other than Chicago. She had enough money to take her thither and take care of her until she should get a start—in some vaudeville house as she hoped. And then she would be truly lost—forever, in all probability, and perhaps in more senses than one.
Miss Pritchard was struck by the change in Elsie that morning at the breakfast-table. The child looked almost ill. She said nothing to her, however, feeling that it was the reaction from the excitement of Christmas, and believing she would be better for the distraction of the school. But she couldn't dismiss the matter from her mind all day, and the more she thought of it the more serious it seemed. She realized that Elsie hadn't looked merely tired or even exhausted. It was worse than that. For the first time since she had come East, Miss Pritchard thought she saw in the child indication of genuine, positive suffering.
She decided that she herself had been gravely remiss. The strain of giving herself so generously and whole-heartedly had worn upon the girl disastrously, and—she had had warning and hadn't heeded. Until recently, it is true, Elsie's blithe buoyancy had seemed always the normal, unconscious, almost effortless efflorescence of a lovely nature, as natural as playful grace to a kitten, as simple as breathing. But once or twice back in the fall, Miss Pritchard had been startled into wondering if the sweet instrument wasn't in danger of being strained through constant playing upon it, and to be fearful that Elsie might truly be rarely sensitive in a personal, as she seemed to be in an artistic, way.
The first time when this had presented itself to her mind had been a matter of a month or six weeks previous. At that time she had seemed to discover a shadow in the sparkling eyes and a transient pensive droop of the lips. Then on the night of Charley Graham's visit, she had been frightened by the worn look upon the beloved little face, and had feared some definite trouble.
It was not long after the affair of the five hundred dollars, and Miss Pritchard had wondered if the difficulty might not be somehow connected with that. She had just reached the decision to question the girl when suddenly the weariness, the sadness, the pensiveness, the shadow, vanished utterly, leaving Elsie not only herself again, but even more glowingly and infectiously happy and buoyant than before. And from that moment until this morning at the breakfast-table she had remained so.
It was natural that now Miss Pritchard's mind should hark back to those former suspicions. All day she vacillated between the fear that Elsie was beset by some secret trouble or by the solicitations of some unscrupulous person, and the apprehension that she was on the verge of nervous exhaustion. Her face was anxious indeed as she left the office that night.
She opened the door of her sitting-room with strange sinking of heart. Then she almost gasped. Her breath was almost taken away by sheer amazement. Elsie was waiting for her—yet another Elsie. For, radiant and sparkling as the girl had been, she had never before been like this. She was fairly dazzling. If Miss Pritchard hadn't been almost stunned, she would have made some feeble remark about getting out her smoked glasses.
"My dear child, what has happened?" Miss Pritchard cried as Elsie relieved her of her wraps and bag, and she dropped weakly into a chair. "I believe your dimples have actually doubled in size since morning. It's positively uncanny, you know, anything like that. Suppose it should go further?"
"Like the Cheshire cat's grin? Well—we should worry, Cousin Julia, dearest. But—what do you think has happened, truly?"
"Your friend from Enderby hasn't appeared?"
"No, this is another sort of bliss. This is—well, dearest darling, it's just that Mr. Coates has started me on something that—that I could go on the stage with!"
Miss Pritchard's face fell. "Oh, Elsie, child, what do you mean?" she asked anxiously. The dimples disappeared but though Elsie spoke quietly, still there was that wonderful lilt in her voice.
"Just this. He called me into his office this morning and spoke to me about—my specialty, you know, 'Elsie Marley, Honey.' One day back in the fall I was showing off with that to some of the girls that were eating their luncheon together, and he happened by and made me repeat it. To-day he said he had had it in mind ever since, and had found that he could adapt it and change the music and make it into a regular vaudeville feature. He thinks it's a real crackerjack. He's going to begin right away to give me training in it."
For a moment Miss Pritchard couldn't speak. Then she had to stifle what started to be a groan. "Oh, my dear child!" she exclaimed.
"It seemed such a lovely ending to a lovely Christmas," said Elsie wistfully. The girl was absolutely carried away by the excitement of it. It didn't even occur to her—until she was in bed that night—what the "ending" of the lovely Christmas was to have been—the ending that alone was to justify her enjoyment of the holiday and of the days since she had weighed her action in the balance and found it wanting.
"Oh, Cousin Julia, really when you understand, it's simply wonderful," she went on eagerly. "I'm the only one picked out thus far, and you know most of the others are related to the profession, too. And even if that thing is so old, I can't help liking it. Most of the thingsarerather awful, I must confess."
"But the first year—the first six months! I never dreamed of such a thing!" Miss Pritchard cried.
"Neither did I, darling dear; that's what makes me so wild with joy," said the girl softly.
Touched and almost remorseful, Miss Pritchard kissed her fondly. But she couldn't restrain a sigh.
"Surely it doesn't mean—going on the stage?" she inquired.
"Oh, no indeed, Cousin Julia, at least not right off. Only—well, just being ready if anything should happen, you know."
Then suddenly at the thought of that wonderful eventuality, the girl's dimples came out and her eyes so shone that Miss Pritchard felt as if she should burst into tears. It seemed as if she couldn't bear it! Again she lamented inwardly. Why should the child have had that crazy desire for the stage? Why shouldn't it have been a passion for music—for opera, indeed? Nearly every one who had heard Elsie sing on Christmas Eve had spoken to Miss Pritchard of the girl's wonderful voice, and the question of her cultivating that instead of working for the stage; and Miss Pritchard had yesterday decided to make a fresh plea to Elsie to that effect. What joy would it not be to share the child's enthusiasm, had it been a matter of music!
However, it would be worse than futile to drag in any such thing at this moment, she saw clearly. Carried away by her delight, Elsie would have no ears and no heart for anything else. Miss Pritchard told herself she must wait for the infatuation to cool—and when that might be, she couldn't in the least foresee. Would it ever happen in truth?
As she couldn't possibly force herself to rejoice with Elsie, and couldn't bear not to share in her joy, as they had come to share everything, she suddenly proposed attending a concert that evening to be given by a visiting orchestra from the Middle West. Elsie entered into the plan with spirit, and they went off gayly together. Miss Pritchard knew that Elsie was dreaming dreams to the strains of Bach and Schumann, and wished with all her heart they were another sort of vision; still, it was a happy evening for both where it had threatened to be uncomfortable. But on the night when Elsie Moss had expected to lie awake in agony because of the imminence of her parting with all she loved most, she had only a brief moment of compunction, which she dismissed easily, falling asleep in the midst of radiant and enchanting visions of life on the stage. It was Miss Pritchard whose rest was troubled.
The answer of the real Elsie Marley to the letter in which her friend enthusiastically related her advance toward the stage might have indicated how far she had gone since the day on the train when she had opined that the girl who thinks of becoming an actress has to undergo much that isn't nice. It so sympathized and rejoiced with the other in her happiness that it was solace and inspiration at once to Elsie Moss, who was living at a high and unhealthy pitch of excitement, and welcomed, indeed craved greedily, anything in the way of approval or sympathy. For the girl feared that if ever she should stop to consider, she should find her heart a black well of wickedness. But that she wouldn't do. Shewould notstop to consider. She had her chance now, the chance she had waited for all her life, and she wasn't going to hazard it. She was going to make the most of it, let her conscience go hang!
For her part, the real Elsie Marley was led at this time to consider, and the more seriously. To her inexperience, it looked as if Elsie Moss were very near the stage, as if another year might find her a fixed star in that firmament. And what then? She would be independent of Cousin Julia and the boarding-house, and might she not want to resume her own name and make herself known to her own relations? Or would she, out of her abounding affection for Cousin Julia, suffer the present state of affairs to continue?
The girl pondered long and rather sadly over the dilemma, but always inclined to the belief that the latter was really the only possible sequel. It wasn't that the question of what would become of her in the former instance was all-important; it wasn't that Elsie Moss would probably not think of any other course of action. It was the fact that some one very much like herself was needed here at Enderby. Mr. Middleton depended upon her. Mrs. Middleton would hardly know how to get along without her. Katy counted strongly upon her sympathy and co-operation. And even Mattie Howe and Dick Clinton would miss her.
And, after all, didn't the fact of Elsie Moss's securing her heart's desire almost immediately, together with the working out of her own presence at Enderby to the satisfaction of a few very dear people, quite justify the exchange they had made? Hadn't it really proved a beneficent idea?
Arrived at this point, the girl was reassured. The only difficulty was that the question didn't stay settled. It came up again and yet again and the whole argument had to be redebated. And finally she came to the conclusion that her wisest plan was to ward it off. Like the other Elsie, she decided to avoid meditation and plunge into action. And though the sort and amount of action to which she was limited wouldn't have seemed action at all to the other girl, it answered her purpose, nevertheless. Elsie Marley threw herself into the performance of the various duties she had assumed with more fervor than ever, and presently had recovered a good measure of her former serenity.
But it seemed only to have been regained to be threatened.
One night early in February, when Miss Stewart relieved her and she left the library, she found Dick Clinton waiting outside. He often did this, for he and Elsie had become good friends since the day he had first appeared at the library and asked for help. She had seen him at all the parties of the high-school pupils which she had attended, and had gone coasting on his double-runner with other girls a number of times. And no Sunday passed that he didn't seek her after service and walk home with her.
He was strangely silent to-night. His first shyness having worn off, he had since always had plenty to say. Elsie was always quiet, and not a word was spoken until they were next door to the parsonage.
"Oh, Miss Moss, would you just as lief walk back a little way?" he asked suddenly. "I had something I wanted to say to you, and there's the parsonage and I haven't begun. I won't make you late for your supper—or dinner, whatever it is."
Rather surprised, Elsie complied willingly, and they had no sooner turned than he began.
"It's something I've done," he blurted out. "I feel sort of—like thirty cents, you know. I should sort of like to know—what you think of it."
"Whatever it is, I don't believe you need to feel that way about it, Dick," she said gently.
"I do, just the same, though I'm not sure I should have before I knew you, Miss Moss, you're so awfully sort of square, you see," he owned. "I'm glad anyhow it ain't so bad but what I can tell you. This is what it is: one of the other fellows that's about my height and build wanted to go to the motor-show in Boston last week and his dad wouldn't let him. He's simply wild over aeroplanes, and there was a model there, and when the last night came, he got me to help him out. He pretended to go to bed about a quarter of nine. Instead, he sneaked me up the back-stairs and left me in his room, and he caught the nine o'clock for Boston. I went to bed and put out the light. After a while his mother put her head in the door and asked if I was asleep, and then came in and kissed me. About two o'clock he came back, climbed in the window, and I vamoosed. It seemed all right, and I couldn't have refused him, and yet I felt queer."
"I should think you were innocent enough. It seems to me the other boy had all the responsibility of it," Elsie observed.
"That's just what I thought. And I'm dead sure it would only have seemed fun last winter. And I'd have to do it again if he asked me. But—you know that little Howe kid that's trying to stretch himself out to get big enough to be a boy scout?"
"Yes, indeed, Charles Augustus Howe."
"Well, he's always asking me things, and taking my answers so solemnly, and yesterday he wanted to know if I thought it was wrong to tell a lie to yourself in the dark. I tried to reason out the thing with him and—great snakes, but it made me feel queer all over! Talking to that kid about truth and honor and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, I sort of hypnotized myself; but afterward it made me feel cheap. And—and there you are!"
"But you didn't get anything out of it for yourself, Dick," said Elsie.
"Nothing but feeling cheap before that kid."
"Then I don't believe it's wrong for you—only for the other boy," she averred.
They turned. Nothing more was said until they reached the parsonage.
"Much obliged, Miss Moss," the boy said quietly. "And that's good to remember—not getting anything out of it for yourself. Good night."
She heard him whistling cheerily as he went on his way. But her own heart was heavy. Not to get anything out of it for oneself! Oh, what would Dick Clinton think, what would every one think, to know that she wasn't Elsie Moss at all! He had been sadly troubled because he had played the part of another one night—a silent part that required no spoken words. What would he think to learn that she was an interloper at the parsonage? It was in part, it is true, for the sake of another. But it was also in part—in large part, now—for her own sake.
One evening in the early spring, during the interval between the films in a motion-picture theatre on lower Broadway, a thrill of excitement went through the audience, which was of the sort that desires to live on thrills.
Perhaps to-night, however, there was reasonable excuse for genuine anticipation. For the song-dance specialty that was about to take place was of a different order from anything that had been known in that theatre heretofore. There was real grace and beauty in the dancing, genuine melody in the voice of the singer, and something sweet and wholesome about the whole performance.
The act was entitled "And Do You Ken Elsie Marley, Honey?" And one whispered to another that the best of it was, that that was her real name—honestly it was—at least it had always been her stage name, so that probably the song had been written especially for her—and she that young—and it wasn't real ragtime either. And her dimples were real too; possibly they were enlarged and deepened by the make-up, but she had them off the stage.
Heavy applause greeted the entrance of the actress.
She was only a slip of a girl—a mere child she looked, partly, they said, because of her hair—the "Castle bob," you know. She tripped lightly before the footlights, smiled charmingly as she put the question of the first line, and sang the song through with dancing between the stanzas and dramatic rendering of the lines. She smiled and sparkled and dimpled; but though she was so pretty and piquant and coquettish, so graceful and vivacious, so completely the actress, there was a look of youth and innocence about her that pleased the blasé audience, and touched one alien member of it to tears.
Once and again was Elsie Marley recalled to repeat the act. The young actress had other things prepared, but though they might be well received, they were followed by clamor for "Elsie Marley, Honey," until only the forcible resumption of the pictures availed to quiet it.
And on Saturday night at the end of the second week, even that did not avail. The last appearance of that bill having been announced, the audience could not let Elsie Marley go. Finally, the manager came out and announced that Miss Marley had been engaged for another week. And again, while there was intense satisfaction elsewhere, to one person the statement was like a blow.
In truth, on the day when Elsie had announced the opportunity that had been offered her of appearing in a "specialty" on the stage of a second-class cinema theatre, Miss Pritchard had been aghast. The chance had come through the school in the person of Mr. Coates, who had first seen possibilities in the song the girl had known since childhood, and who had developed it to its limit, and trained her in a more artificial though still charming rendering, the music having been adapted more nearly to music-hall ragtime. When he had announced to her what he had known from the first—that she was to go upon the stage with it—Elsie had been so elated that Miss Pritchard had been powerless before her. She couldn't be a wet blanket; neither, however, could she force herself to express any gratification.
And when first she had seen this last member of her family before the footlights of the cheap little theatre, with the bad air, the mixed audience, and the poor pictures, she felt she couldn't endure it. The image of the stately, aristocratic Aunt Ellen Pritchard rose before her vision, overwhelmingly severe and reproachful. It would actually have killed her to witness once what Julia Pritchard had to witness every night for two weeks—or so she thought at first.
On this Saturday night when the engagement was extended, they were later than usual in getting to their carriage. Elsie was wrapped snugly in the rose-colored opera-cloak. Her eyes were very bright, her cheeks flushed. She had not really required any make-up, but they had insisted upon deepening the color of her lips and darkening the lower eye-lids. Miss Pritchard, too depressed to force any semblance of cheerfulness, saw her dimples appear and disappear in happy reverie. She sighed. Through it all, the child was absolutely enchanting to her.
Elsie, catching the sigh, snuggled up to her.
"Oh, Cousin Julia, I'm so happy, so happy I'm afraid I'll just burst like a circus balloon. Oh, dear darling, you're so good to me. And I suppose you're sick to death of the same old thing, and dread the thought of another week of it."
As a matter of fact, Miss Pritchard was as captivated by the song specialty as any of the audience. She confessed that it wore well. "But, oh, Elsie," she couldn't forbear adding, "I do wish you weren't going to have another week in that cheap place."
"Oh, but Cousin Julia, one can't begin at the top," remonstrated the girl. "Why, I'm the luckiest guy ever was. How much do you suppose I'm going to get for this next week?"
Miss Pritchard had no heart for guessing. The sum the girl mentioned was indeed surprising, but it only seemed to remove her further from her and from the family they both represented.
"I should be only too glad to do it for the experience alone," Elsie rattled on, "and of course what I get is only what is over and above what they pay the school. And I shall get other chances, Mr. Coates says, and—oh, Cousin Julia, I don't dare tell you—you don't"—there was a catch in her voice—"you don't sympathize. You were so different! And now you're just like—well, almost as bad as the others."
Miss Pritchard drew the little rose-colored figure close.
"Yes, I do sympathize, dear little cousin," she said, "only——"
She could not go on. And they went the rest of the way in silence. It was the first time that anything, recognized by both of them, had come between them. As the excitement that had buoyed her up for the evening began to die away, Elsie's heart was like a stone. Later it would ache. She wondered rather drearily how it would be after she was in bed. Even now she recognized something that would have been absurd if it weren't so terribly serious. To think of her demanding sympathy from Cousin Julia—of appearing almost aggrieved not to receive it—she who should be cowering beneath her scorn! How was it that she should so forget, should feel and act as if everything were true—and square?
It was being on the stage, she supposed, a real actress at last. At last! Why, it was almostat first. Who had ever been so fortunate as she! To be on the stage in New York well within a year of her first entering the city! And only to think that this might have been the last night of her engagement! How terrible that seemed now! How would she ever live without the evening to look forward to? How blissful to have another week before her—six more appearances before that vast, applauding throng! How happily would she go to sleep tonight to the music of the lullaby of the thought: "Another week at the Merry Nickel, another week at the Merry Nickel! Bliss! Bliss! Bliss!"
And yet it wasn't at all a blissful face which Miss Pritchard bore in memory to her own room that night after she had kissed Elsie, put out the light, and opened the windows. Since the girl had been at the theatre, Miss Pritchard had dropped into the habit of going in to her the last thing every night and tucking her in as if she had been a child. For somehow she had seemed, since striking out into professional life, only the more a child, more innocent, more appealingly youthful, more than ever to be sheltered and guarded. She had tried her wings, it is true; she believed she had proved them (and perchance she had!); but more than ever was she a precious and tender nestling.
As she sat by her window in the darkness, Miss Pritchard shook her head sadly. She said to herself this couldn't go on—this state of things couldn't continue. Despite Elsie's elation over the fact that she was booked for another week at the theatre, she looked more mournful and wistful and worn than ever. Some strain was wearing the child out. It wasn't the work, nor yet the excitement, for she lived on them, and not altogether unhealthily. There was no other possible explanation: it was nothing less than the strain of combating her own disapproval, tacit or expressed. Elsie was too warm-hearted to enjoy her legitimate happiness alone, too sensitive not to suffer from want of sympathy.
The change in the girl had begun to be apparent directly after Christmas. Elsie hadn't been herself since that time, which proved beyond peradventure that Miss Pritchard's suspicion was correct. The joyous, sparkling little creature whom she had found in her room on the day after Christmas, bubbling over with excitement, eager to share her good news, had become thin and wan. Her charmingly brilliant little face was not only peaked, but in repose was generally wistful or plaintive. Many a time one could have looked on it without suspecting the existence of dimples. Only in the evening did she resemble her real self. From dinner until the moment she lay in her bed, she was the Elsie Marley she had been (with negligible interruptions) since the night when she had walked straight into Miss Pritchard's heart before she had known who she was. At other times she was a pale shadow, the little ghost of the girl she had been or should be.
Miss Pritchard sighed deeply. If it were for want of sympathy—approving sympathy—the child drooped and pined, must she not have it, willy-nilly? But again she sighed, and yet more deeply. Whatever her effort, was such a thing possible?
As for Elsie herself, the lullaby didn't prove a lullaby at all, and, as usual these days, the girl cried herself to sleep. Every night, of late, the reaction came. Every morning she awoke with a sense of a heavy burden weighing her down. All day her heart ached, though dully and vaguely for the most part; for if the pain threatened to become acute, she could still drug it with anticipation of the excitement of the evening.
In the weeks that had passed, Elsie hadn't once faced her conscience. She had never squarely confronted the situation which was now so much further complicated. When the unexpected and thrilling opportunity had come to her the day after Christmas—the very day that was to consummate her renunciation—the girl had been completely carried away by it. She hadn't repudiated the decision she had come to so painfully, she had simply disregarded it—ignored it utterly as if there had been no such thing. And she had gone on ignoring it. In the very first of it, the excitement of working directly for the stage had rendered her oblivious of everything else. Then when certain faint murmurings of conscience began to be audible, came the actual prospect of the Merry Nickel to stifle them, and then there was the stage itself and the actual footlights. Nevertheless, avoid the issue as she would, more and more had her daylight hours come to be haunted with misgivings, and now her heart was never light except in the evenings. And combat any such direct thought as she might, she felt dimly that in giving over her purpose to square her conduct with the right, she had doubled and trebled the original wrong. Unvowing a vow must be equivalent to signing a covenant with the powers of darkness. Now and again lines from the poem Cousin Julia had repeated to her so impressively that she could never forget it, came to her suddenly in uncanny fashion. At such times, if questioned, Elsie would have acknowledged that her Palladium had indeed fallen, with all the awful consequences.
Lines from another and more familiar poem came to the girl the next day as she sat in the afternoon with Miss Pritchard in their sitting-room, the snow falling outside as if it were December. As she gazed at the steadily falling, restful, soothing curtain of flakes which deadened all sound and veiled all save its own beauty, unconsciously she was repeating verses of a poem she had learned as a child. But as she came to the words, "I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn," she recollected herself. And somehow her mind turned instinctively to Miss Pritchard's lover. It was because he, too, was dead, she supposed, and this snow was rounding above his grave. But before she made the natural application or drew the familiar comparison between his failure and her own, Elsie clapped the lid down on her thoughts with a thud. Turning resolutely to Miss Pritchard, she asked her, with strange intonation, if she thought the snow would continue all night.
"I rather hope so," Miss Pritchard returned in a quiet voice that was like a part of the silent storm, "for it's so late that we can't expect another snowfall, and it seems really a privilege to have it now—like plucking violets at Thanksgiving."
For a little, her gaze, too, lost itself outside. Then she turned and looked at Elsie with a kindness in which there was something wistful.
"I know what you have been thinking, dear," she said. "You're thinking that I'm not consistent nor fair—and you're right. I am neither. I agree with you absolutely. Having in the first place consented to your studying for the stage, I should have looked ahead and faced just this. As you say, one can't begin at the tip-top—nor yet at the top. One must make use of humble stepping-stones."
But it seemed that the struggle she had been through to bring herself to this attitude had been in vain. On a sudden she lost all that she had gained. Her heart sank as Elsie's face brightened eagerly—became transformed, indeed.
"The trouble is," she went on sadly, "that the stepping-stones—oh, Elsie, I'm so afraid the stepping-stones will only lead on and on and on—never higher. They'll be and remain on a dead level, and you will step from one to another, one to another, year after year, over the same dreary waste. I hate awfully to say all this, dear, but when those people refuse to allow you to do anything but the Elsie-Honey business over and over, it comes to me what a fate it would be to be doomed forever to that one stunt."
"Oh, Cousin Julia!" Elsie cried deprecatingly.
"Yes, dear, that's what I am exactly, an old killjoy; but truly I cannot help it, though I have tried. I have struggled hard against my prejudice. Elsie, last night you stopped yourself as you were about to tell me something, but I fear I can guess what it was like. Some one suggested your going on the road, as they say, with that one thing as your repertoire—making a tour of the cheap moving-picture houses of a certain section?"
Elsie grew very pale; her lips trembled. One interested wholly in her dramatic career, seeing her at that moment, might have concluded that the girl had it in her to develop a capacity for tragedy as well as comedy.
"Cousin Julia," she said with tremulous dignity, "I don't want you to come with me this week. I can go back and forth in a carriage by myself. I've got to go through it, for I promised and they will have made arrangements, but—please don't come with me any more."
She gazed at Miss Pritchard through reproachful tears, but when she saw tears streaming down Miss Pritchard's plain, staunch face, she ran to her arms.
"My dear, it's only because I love you so, because you are the very apple of my eye, that I talk so," the latter declared, and the warm words went straight to the girl's sore heart. "I know I'm not just, but dear, we won't let anything come between us—ever. I'll do my best to see your side of it, and you must be patient with me. It's hard, I know, for youth to bear with age, for inexperience to hear the ugly words of experience; but now we'll just go through the week together and await what comes."
What came demanded further patience on her part and increased Elsie's infatuation. Before the end of the week the young actress had an offer from a rival establishment which would take her to the edge of summer at a salary that fairly made her gasp. The second theatre was perhaps a shade better, but not sufficiently so to reconcile Miss Pritchard to it. But she held her peace. Whereupon the first manager increased the sum offered by his rival, and, Miss Pritchard still tolerant, Elsie agreed to remain there until June.
Miss Pritchard acknowledged to herself that Elsie Marley had the right stuff in her. She did not grow careless, never let herself down. The audience was uncritical and wildly demonstrative, but the girl did her level best at every performance. Up to a certain point, she even improved. The possibility of so doing in this case was limited, but having reached that point she held it. Further, her wonderfully sweet voice seemed to grow sweeter every day.
Therein lay Miss Pritchard's one hope. Presently, she sought out an old friend who had been a musician of note and later a teacher and musical critic on an evening paper, and confided her difficulty to him. Hearing her story, he was interested and very sympathetic. He advised her to drop the concert idea and dwell wholly upon the possibility of opera as a lure: only the dramatic form and setting could compete successfully in a case of stage-fever like that. And where Miss Pritchard had hoped only to be allowed to bring Elsie to him, he being an old man, he agreed to go to the theatre and hear the girl when she would be off her guard.
"I'll go any night you say, Miss Pritchard," he proposed.
"Don't makemechoose, Mr. Francis," she begged. "There's so much at stake that if I knew when you were to be there, I should be so nervous I couldn't sit still."
"Younervous, Miss Pritchard!" he exclaimed incredulously.
"Alas, yes, Mr. Francis," she acknowledged, laughing. "These young people with their careers are too stimulating for spinster cousins who have never had anything more exciting than night-work on a city paper. Well, I dare say I have only my come-uppings. You see, I was afraid Elsie wouldn't be lively enough! I had visions of an extremely proper, blasé young person moping about, and rather dreaded her. Getting Elsie was like finding a changeling."
"Rather too much of a good thing? Well, we're all that way, Miss Pritchard. If we're looking for a quiet person, we want a peculiar sort of quietude; and the lively ones must be just so lively and no more. Do you remember in one of the old novels, where a sister enumerates in a letter to her brother the charms of the young lady she wishes him to marry? At the end of the list she adds that the lady has 'just as much religion as my William likes.' Now isn't that human nature and you and I all over?"
As she left the house, a suggestion came to Miss Pritchard in regard to a lesser matter she had had in mind. Elsie having agreed to drop everything for July and August and go into the country with her, she had been studying prospectuses and consulting friends as to the whither. Seeing Mr. Francis, suddenly recalled a summer twenty years before when he and his sister had passed a month at a place called Green River in eastern Massachusetts, and she had driven over a number of times from a neighboring town to dine with them. It came to her suddenly that Green River was exactly the place she had been looking for, and she believed it must be near Enderby, where Elsie's friend lived. And now she couldn't understand why she hadn't thought before of going where the friends might meet.
Making inquiries, she discovered that the name Green River had been changed to Enderby, and that Enderby Inn was considered quite as good a hostelry as the Green River Hotel had been. She wrote at once to the proprietor to see if she could engage rooms, saying nothing to Elsie lest the plan miscarry.
So eager was she, that when she found a telegram on her plate next morning (almost before her letter had left New York) she opened it anxiously, uncertain whether such promptness meant success or failure for her. But it was from Mr. Francis, asking her to lunch with him. She got through the morning in almost a fever of suspense.
He had gone to hear Elsie that very night of Miss Pritchard's call, and told her without preface that the girl had a marvellous voice.
"Now, Miss Pritchard, can't you shut down at once on that vaudeville business and set her to studying under a first-rate teacher?" he demanded. "She ought not to lose a minute. Of course she is rather small—too bad she isn't taller—but for all that I believe such a voice will carry her anywhere. I shouldn't wonder if she should turn out a star of the first magnitude."
He named a teacher with a studio in Boston who could take her as far as she could go in this country. He usually went to Naples in the late spring with a pupil or two, but would be at his home near Boston all summer this year.
Of course the fact that Enderby was within easy reach of Boston added to Miss Pritchard's excitement. That night she received word that she could have accommodations at the inn, and a letter following next day offered her a choice of rooms. She engaged a suite of three with a bath, though aware that the single rooms would be satisfactory. And she smiled at herself for assuming airs already, as guardian of an operatic star, engaging royal apartments for her.
Filled with enthusiasm, she announced to Elsie that night that she had secured quarters for them at Enderby for the two months. At the first breath the girl was quite as surprised and delighted as she was expected to be. The delight was, it is true, but momentary, though it sufficed to irradiate her face and fill Miss Pritchard's heart with generous joy—also, to hide from the latter the fact that it was succeeded by profound dismay.
Those dimples! Those awful dimples! As she thought of them, Elsie Moss was overwhelmed by consternation. Of course she couldn't go to Enderby. She couldn't let Uncle John get even a second glimpse of her face. She fled from the room in a panic which Miss Pritchard believed to be excited eagerness to impart the good news to her friend at once.
Though, as the days had passed, Elsie had persisted in her refusal to face her conscience or look into the future, she had been vaguely aware of a day of reckoning ahead. She had dimly taken it for granted that when she stopped she would have to consider—there would be nothing else to do. When she should be out from under the influence of this powerful stimulant, she foresaw herself meeting perforce the questions she had evaded. But also she had foreseen herself with two clear months before her and with Cousin Julia beside her.
Now, on a sudden, all was changed. She seemed to have no choice. She had no control over her future. She had delayed so long that the choice was no longer hers. Her path was sharply defined. There was nothing she could do except to disappear on the eve of Miss Pritchard's departure for Enderby. And at that time there would be nothing to sustain her, no moral or redeeming force about an act that was compulsory. It was like being shown a precipice and realizing that at an appointed time one must walk straight over its verge.
Mrs. Moss, who had loved her brilliant, impulsive little stepdaughter like her own child, had given her up unwillingly. But it had been her husband's wish that Elsie should go to her uncle; the latter could give her advantages her stepmother could not afford; and she supposed it was right and natural for the girl to be with her own people, even though they had been strangers to her up to her sixteenth year.
At first her loneliness found some solace in Elsie's letters. They were short, but seemed brimming over with happiness. Mrs. Moss didn't get any dear idea of the household at Enderby, but it was apparently all that the girl desired. Then gradually the letters began to fall off, and before Christmas-time she felt a decided change in them. They had become unsatisfactory, perfunctory; the girl seemed to be slipping away from her. She began to wonder if Elsie were not concealing something, and soon after Christmas was forced to the conclusion that she was unhappy and would not acknowledge it.
She endeavored to regain the confidence that had been fully hers; she tried in her own letters to prepare the way, to make confession easy, but she received no response. In such circumstances letters are at best unsatisfactory, and it was maddening to Mrs. Moss that she was at such a distance that her warm words must grow cold in the five or six days that elapsed between the writing and the reading.
Christmas passed, and the winter, and she was unrelieved. She was busy with her teaching, but except when engrossed by that, was haunted by anxiety and apprehension. She had finally decided to go East during the long summer vacation, ill as she could afford to make the journey, to investigate for herself, when one night after school she dropped in to see a friend, and while waiting picked up a New York paper.
Some one in the house had that day returned from a journey East, and the paper was dated five days earlier. It happened to be folded with the page given over to amusements uppermost. Glancing carelessly over columns that devoted a paragraph each to an amazing number of cinema theatres, her eye suddenly caught the familiar name,Elsie Marley.
With a vision of her stepdaughter as she had sung the old rhyme, she mechanically followed the words until the word "dimples" arrested her attention. Then she read the paragraph with beating heart. She read it twice before she fully comprehended—understood that Elsie Marley had completed her sixth week at the Merry Nickel in her song-dance specialty, "And Do You Ken Elsie Marley, Honey?" Miss Marley was declared to be more popular than ever; managers were clamoring for her and she had engagements a year ahead. The notice added that despite the fact that her voice was so wonderful, her dancing and acting inimitable, some people declared that it was her dimples that wrought the spell—that she might stand dumb and motionless before the footlights if she would only smile.
Mrs. Moss's first clear sensation was indignation toward Mr. Middleton. She felt she could never forgive him for allowing this situation to come about without warning her. Then she realized that this was the key to the whole situation. She had not heard from the girl for six weeks—just the length of time she must now have been at the theatre. Excusing herself before her friend appeared, she hastened home in a tumult of emotion.
She did not know which way to turn. She couldn't bear the idea of Elsie being on the stage of a motion-picture theatre; it seemed as if it would break her heart. And still worse was the knowledge that the girl had deceived her; that she had written empty, non-committal notes calculated to make her believe she was staying quietly with her uncle, when she was all the time preparing for this. And she had always been so frank and upright, so easy to appeal to and to persuade! It seemed to Mrs. Moss that she must have come under unfortunate influence.
Her first impulse was to write to Elsie; her second, to Mr. Middleton; but she did neither. The situation was now too critical to be handled from a distance. There were only two weeks more of school. She secured accommodations on the railway for the evening of the last day of the term.
On the sixth day after, she appeared without warning at the parsonage at Enderby. A pleasant-faced woman who might be Mrs. Middleton, though she did not look like an invalid, sat on the veranda entertaining a little girl with a big baby in a perambulator. She asked at the door for Mr. Middleton and was shown into his study.
He came in directly, and the sight of his handsome, refined, strong and serene face, with a vague resemblance to Elsie's, revived her drooping spirits. Suddenly she felt that whatever he sanctioned must be right. She inquired falteringly for Elsie before she announced her name or her errand.
She learned that the girl was well, and, to her surprise, would be in presently. Then the season was over, she decided, and recollecting herself, gave her name.
He smiled. "I thought as much from the way you spoke her name," he said. "Elsie will be delighted. May I call Mrs. Middleton?"
"Just a moment, please. I felt troubled about Elsie, Mr. Middleton, and came on without writing or sending word. I'm impulsive too, like Elsie, though only her stepmother."
He had never felt that Elsie was impulsive, and as he looked up in some surprise, she wondered if he minded her comparing herself to Elsie, and so to his sister.
"Perhaps I should have sent word," she went on. "But I hesitated. I knew you didn't approve of Elsie's father marrying me."
"Oh, Mrs. Moss, if I had any such feeling, it has long since disappeared," he assured her earnestly. "From the moment I saw Elsie and realized what you have made of her, I have felt only the gratitude I am sure my sister would have felt for your devotion to her motherless child."
"Thank you," she said. "Now about Elsie——"
But she couldn't go on. A sudden wave of indignation swept over her. If he had felt kindly toward her, why hadn't he warned her?
He glanced at her with some concern. She seemed so fatigued and overwrought after the long journey that he begged her to let him call Mrs. Middleton that she might have a cup of tea and go to her room before Elsie's return. The latter had gone into town but would be back very soon, for she went into the library at four.
Mrs. Moss stared at him, and he asked if Elsie hadn't told her that she had been assistant librarian since September.
She shook her head. He wondered, and when she had again refused refreshment or rest, explained. As he did so, it came out that she knew little or nothing of Elsie's activities, and he launched into glowing descriptions. And the further he went, the more she marvelled. She couldn't understand how Elsie had become the sedate, dutiful girl he portrayed unless some great blow had fallen upon her. Then she recollected what had brought her hither.
"Elsie has been away lately?" she asked.
"Oh, no, Mrs. Moss, she only went into Boston to do some shopping."
"But she was in New York in May?"
"Why, no," he returned with some surprise. "I'm sorry to say she hasn't been away overnight since she came. But we have made up our minds she shall have a change this summer, and now that you are here, we shall surely be able to put it through. Perhaps you will go to the shore with her? Of course you will spend the summer with us? Mrs. Middleton will insist."
Mrs. Moss was too dazed to reply. Indeed, the only statement she had taken in was that Elsie had not been away since she came. For an instant she wondered if she could have mistaken. But that could not be. Surely there were no two girls in the country who would have selected that particular song and have had peculiar dimples into the bargain. On the other hand, Elsie couldn't have been in two places at once. Neither could she have been away without his knowledge. It wasn't conceivable that he——
It struck her coldly that he was not in his right mind—that this handsome, courteous gentleman was mildly insane. In spite of his fine manner and bearing, his every word had been irrational. She hazarded one last question.
"Has Elsie said anything—shown any interest in the stage?"
As she spoke, there was a curious expression on her face—it seemed to him so watchful as to be almost furtive. He began to suspect that something was wrong. She was certainly overwrought and almost hysterical—beyond anything the journey would bring about. Possibly that was the explanation of the mystery. Elsie had rarely spoken of her stepmother. Perhaps her husband's death had unbalanced her mind?
Whereupon he murmured something soothingly and courteously evasive that confirmed Mrs. Moss in her suspicion with regard to him, his mind was wandering now; he had illusions, without doubt. Quite likely Elsie was now in New York, and he constantly believed her to be in Boston for the day, coming back in time for the library. And Mrs. Moss wondered how she could get the ear of the lady on the porch.
She could see her through the window. Now she saw that she had a mass of wool, red, white, and blue, in her lap and was knitting a curious-looking article, and it came to her that perhaps she, too, was out of her mind? Perhaps this was a mental sanitarium? True, she had inquired for theparsonage. Could it be that in the cultured East that was a new euphemism for insane asylum?
But that idea was too ludicrous, and suddenly struck by the absurdity, she laughed out. Her laugh was so merry and infectious as to lay his suspicion at once, and he couldn't help joining her. And then, somehow, each understood the misapprehension of the other, and they laughed the harder.
Even as they laughed, there was a light step on the veranda outside, and some one criedElsiein a tone of warm welcome.
Mr. Middleton had risen. "Shall I tell her who it is, or just send her in, saying that it's an old friend?" he asked in a low voice.
Her heart was beating violently. "Don't tell her who it is," she begged weakly and shrank back as he opened the door.
He closed it behind him and she waited breathlessly. She forgot everything except that she was to see Elsie. At the first sound she sprang to her feet, and as the door opened—not with Elsie's characteristic fling—she held out her arms.
"Elsie!" she cried, then started violently.
A total stranger stood before her, a pretty girl with a sweet face and long light-brown curls hanging from her neck.
"And who are you?" she cried wildly. "Am I mad or is this a lunatic asylum?"
For a moment the girl stared at her with sweet perplexed face. Was she another patient, then? thought the distressed woman.
"I am Mrs. Moss," she said in a sort of desperation. "Pray tell me who you are and where I am?"
All the pretty color left the girl's face. She stepped back and leaned against the door.
"This is the parsonage," she faltered. "I am Elsie Pritchard Marley. Your Elsie is in New York with my cousin. We exchanged."