CHAPTER XITHE REWARD OF THE FAITHFUL
"I think Miss Pat is simply foolish over Miss Merton," said Judith, with an uneasy note in her calm voice. "We haven't seen anything of her for a week, and now she's trying to back out of coming Sunday night, just because her Rosamond is going to sing at Mrs. Filmore's and they've asked Miss Pat to come and worship."
Elinor had just come in. Her cheeks were tinted with the crisp air and her eyes were dancing with the brisk walk home through the Park. She tossed her muff on the divan and made a laughing face at her disturbed small sister.
"Never mind, Judy, you still have us," she said brightly. "Constance is coming and Doris Leighton too, and we'll have to give Miss Pat up to such a fine opportunity. Rosamond has not been singing'publicly,' as she calls it, so it will be a great treat, no doubt."
"Yes, but she will simply have to miss it," declared Judith firmly. "Tell her, will you, Elinor, when she comes in that she must come tomorrow?"
Elinor hesitated, and Judith burst out, "Well, then, if I have to tell! Mrs. Shelly told me that Mrs. Nat was coming in to surprise us, and of course Miss Pat must be here."
"What's that about me?" asked Patricia, appearing in the doorway from the bedroom, where she had been sewing a button on her glove while she waited for Elinor to come home. "Who's requesting the pleasure of my society?"
"Judith was telling me some very good reasons why you should come to the Sunday spread," answered Elinor quietly. She scanned her sister's face while they talked and her own was none the brighter for what she saw there.
Patricia tossed her head impatiently, as though to evade Judith's persistent attacks.
"You know I can't come," she saidwith that petulance which had grown upon her recently. "I have to go with Rosamond. I've been fixing my dress, and everything's ready. Besides," she added, "I promised Madame Milano I would only come home once a week, and as I've been here today, I couldn't very well come tomorrow again."
"Been here today?" echoed Judith, shaken out of herself by this unexpected reasoning. "You've barely stopped five minutes, and you haven't taken off your hat!"
Patricia looked as nearly sulky as she could ever manage to be. "I can't help it; I simply won't come," she said without concealment. "I'm going to Filmore's and that's an end of it."
Judith fired her last gun. "Mrs. Nat is coming as a surprise and we've asked Doris and Constance, too," she said reproachfully.
Patricia faltered and then recovered her firm stand. "I'm sorry, but I have accepted," she replied.
"But Mrs. Filmore doesn't care a snapwhether you come or not," persisted Judith with flaming cheeks. She was making a fight for her old-time sunny Miss Pat against this careless devotee of Rosamond Merton's, but she had not counted on the days of intimate companionship with the alluring Rosamond which had been Miss Pat's in the past fortnight of illness and convalescence.
Patricia was silent.
"They didn't even ask you to come with your Rosamond," rushed on Judith. "You're only invited with the outsiders, after the dinner is over."
Elinor's scrutiny told her it was time to interfere. Patricia was not the forbearing joyful Miss Pat of yore. Since the spell of Rosamond Merton had fallen so strongly upon her, she was growing—of all things for merry Miss Pat—strangely self-centered. The life at Artemis Lodge, with its gay comradeship of restaurant and tea-room, of dim library and cosy salons, seemed to have passed her by, and Rosamond Merton filled her heart and mind. Swiftly, while she was speaking,Elinor determined that some change must be made, yet all she said was in her gentlest tone and with an arm about Patricia's shoulder.
"We'll have to give her up this time, Judy dear, though we'll all miss her more than we can say; but we won't let her off next time, I promise you that."
Patricia was touched by the fondness in the sweet voice, though she was immensely relieved, too, for she knew that if Elinor vetoed her plan she must give it up.
"I might come over after I'm dressed," she suggested gratefully, with a smile at the discomfited Judith. "I wanted to ask if Bruce would walk over with me—it's in one of those old houses across the Square—but Ju was so fierce I was afraid to open my lips."
Elinor promised for Bruce and after a little chat Patricia left, feeling that she was making quite a concession to the family tie.
"As Rosamond says, I can't give up everything to other people, or I'd lose mypersonality," she mused as she went briskly along the frosty streets toward the Lodge. "And personality means so much to a singer."
She felt rather proud of herself now. It had been difficult for her to come to this point of view and Rosamond had rambled on in her amiable fashion many a time on the subject before she had brought her impressionable room-mate to see it as she did.
"If I merely went to the studio and nowhere else, I'd grow one-sided," thought Patricia, cheerfully ignoring the fact that she spent most of her time nowadays between her lessons and practicing either at home with Rosamond or doing errands for that luxuriant young lady.
In the weeks she had been in Artemis Lodge she had been absorbing Rosamond, living, breathing and sleeping Rosamond, until she was merely a variation of the older girl's charming self. She did not see that Rosamond was more self-centered than anyone she knew. She forgot how eager she had once been, and how proud,to mingle with the people who were always dropping in to see Bruce and Elinor. In a word, she was, for the time, like the man who points his telescope at the flower by his side and cries out that the world is made of pink petals and yellow stamen. She was no longer Patricia—she was Rosamond Merton's version of Patricia.
And the most remarkable part was that she had come to this state of mind through her best impulses and by the way of her generous admirations. The manner of her coming had been so whole-souled and liberal, too, that she deserved to have arrived at more than this.
She went to the studio on Sunday evening and showed her pretty simple evening frock, decorated with a wide band of glittering trimming from Rosamond's ample store, and she had the one real quarrel of her life with Elinor because that tender sister made her rip it off before she would consent to her either appearing at the studio spread or going to the musical.
Patricia never forgot that evening.
The supper, with its merry chat, wasgall and wormwood to her. Mrs. Nat's kind eyes seemed probing for something Patricia could not show her. Doris Leighton's quiet pleasantries and Constance's gay quips were dust and ashes in her mouth, and when finally she had walked across the Square to the big brick house and the door had closed on Bruce and the outside world, she was actually ready for tears.
"I'll never go anywhere again, if this is the way they are going to fuss about it," she said to herself, as she went slowly upstairs to the dressing-room. "I don't see how they can be so mean."
The brilliance of the house and the guests, together with Rosamond's gracious greeting as she met her and led her to be introduced to the hostess, soon worked a cure for her low spirits and she began to enjoy herself at once.
"This is real life," she thought joyfully.
"Milano was asking me about you," said Rosamond as they threaded their way through the crowded rooms.
Patricia nodded. "I know," she returnedbrightly. "At her tea-party the other day. You told me about it."
She was so taken up with the delightful agitation of finding herself in such a large and imposing assembly that she scarcely thought of her words.
Rosamond laughed her slow laugh. "No, tonight," she corrected. "She is here, you know. Mrs. Filmore is giving the dinner in her honor."
Patricia had room for swift surprise. "Why, you never told me!" she exclaimed impetuously. "How strange!"
"I imagine it slipped your mind," suggested Rosamond carelessly. "I am sure I told you. Come, let us speak to her before she sings. Mrs. Filmore has persuaded her to give just one song, and I don't know when she will choose."
Patricia demurred, feeling suddenly rather small and insignificant in her girlish white net frock among all the glittering costumes about her. It is sad to confess that her anger at Elinor returned hotly as she thought of the forbidden trimming. That Rosamond had tactfully ignored to speakof its absence made her more angry at Elinor.
"I'd rather sit down here and look about for a while," she said, dropping into a tiny divan in a half-deserted corner with such a determined air of gayety that Rosamond, after a rather weak protest, went off by herself to make one of the group about the prima donna.
Patricia watched her moving across the crowded room with all the assurance of long experience of such scenes, and admired her more than ever. Her perfect gown and the graceful way she carried her dark head with its jeweled band convinced the impressionable Patricia that this sumptuous creature was far too high above her for criticism, and her cheeks flushed at Judith's presumption.
It was delightful to her to see how agreeable everyone was to Rosamond. She was stopped a dozen times in her passage of the wide apartment, and she joined the group about Madam Milano with three attractive men in her wake. Patricia found it very exciting. She thought of thedances at the Tennis Club with something like scorn, and even the parties at the studio last winter seemed to pale before this splendid entertainment.
After an hour she began to change her mind, however, and she looked about for any sign of Rosamond in vain. There was no one in the rooms she knew. She could not even see her hostess, whose peculiar head-dress and angular shoulders she was sure she could recognize at any distance. Madame Milano had not sung and there seemed, from the lively hum of conversation that rose above the music of the famous orchestra, little hope of it.
She felt suddenly very lonely. These strangers with their indifferent stares made her more uncomfortable than she had ever been in her life. She longed to be able to speak one word to some friendly creature. And then, just as she was actually about to rise and flee to the shelter of the dressing-room, there was a stir, and the soft undertone of the orchestra stopped in the middle of a Hungarian Czarda.
Patricia leaned forward. Rosamond was going to sing!
Her loneliness dropped from her and her face shone. She drank in the trills and flourishes of the selection which her friend had chosen as though the notes were golden ambrosia. After Rosamond had ended her song and gracefully yet firmly declined an encore Patricia was still glowing.
She came to herself, though, when a woman near her, without lowering her voice, said with an amused look, "I'm glad that nice child in the corner is looking happier. It's positively cruel to allow so young a girl to mope about like that."
Patricia retained enough of her spirit to look the amused lady calmly in the eyes, while her pretty tipped-up nose assumed a more sprightly angle. That made her feel much better, and after Madame Milano had poured out the liquid jewels of her faultless voice, she felt better still.
She waited then in expectancy that now Rosamond would appear to take her to Madame Milano, but no one came, and ina shorter time than it seemed to her she rose, spurred by the amused lady's eyes, and made her way among the chatting throngs straight to the dressing-room, where she ordered her wraps and made her way downstairs with the calm of hope destroyed.
She passed the footmen at the door, quite aware of their stares and equally undaunted by them. Through the lane of canvas she gained the pavement and so was out in the night streets—alone for the first time in her sheltered life.
Artemis Lodge was only a few squares distant and she almost ran the short blocks, arriving at the green entrance door out of breath and suddenly realizing that the custodian left at eleven o'clock and Rosamond had the night key which Miss Ardsley allowed only to privileged ones.
As she hesitated, a couple of figures came toward her, and she was overjoyed to recognize Mary Scull, one of the oldest residents, and little Rita Stanford, whom she had been chaperoning to a concert given by the blind. They were so fullof the wonderful work done by these afflicted musicians that they scarcely listened to her limping explanation of her dilemma.
They took her in with them and left her at the foot of her own stair, and she could hear them as they went across the courtyard in the quiet starlight, discussing the difficulties of song-reading by the blind.
She rushed upstairs and undressed hastily, flinging off her clothes and dropping into bed without brushing her hair, so afraid was she that Rosamond might come in before her light was out.
She cried softly in the dark because she could not say her prayers. The tumult in her heart was too loud.
CHAPTER XIIPATRICIA MOVES
She received Rosamond's careless chiding for her unconventional behavior with an uneasy feeling. Her divinity was showing the first flaw.
"I don't think I was entirely to blame, even though I did feel shy at first," she defended herself with some hesitation. "Couldn't you have sent for me, even if you didn't want to come yourself? The footmen were going about constantly with those cute little ices."
Her sense of justice was not appeased by her friend's evading this very reasonable statement, and Rosamond's laughing indifference to her disappointment in not meeting Madame Milano again stung her to the quick.
She was too proud to show her feelings openly, however, and she went to her lesson very miserable indeed, feeling thatshe had lost both the splendid Rosamond's interest and her dear Elinor's sympathy.
That was one of the worst mornings Patricia ever knew. She sang so unevenly that Tancredi scolded her and put her back in her first exercises for punishment. She was longing to ask about Madame Milano, but her lips were sealed by her own fault. She would not trespass on her teacher's indulgence and she left the house so wretched that she hated even the dear music she had so longed for and lived in.
"I'll never be a real singer," she thought dolefully, as she walked slowly towards Artemis Lodge. "Tancredi doesn't care a rap about my voice and I don't believe she'd have bothered with me if it hadn't been to please Madame Milano, and Madame Milano only told me to go on because she wanted to please Elinor and Bruce because they are friends of the Van Kelts, who are such chums with her Dutch friend."
If she had not been so woebegone she would have laughed at this string of dishearteningreasons for her being so falsely encouraged to compete with gifted creatures like Rosamond Merton, but her gloom was too deep and too real to see the funny side of anything just then.
The clock in the tower was pointing to twelve as she passed along on the other side of the Square, and she looked wistfully up at the big window of the studio, where she knew that Elinor or Bruce would be just dismissing a model and making ready to clean their brushes and tidy up for the one o'clock luncheon which they always had sent in to them.
"I wonder if they'd care if they never saw me again," she thought with what she instantly knew to be shallow sentimentality. "I suppose they would care," she acknowledged, and her sense of justice saved her from any more silly speeches like that. "They think I'm an awful goose, though," she amended, and she knew she was rather safe in this.
As she turned the corner toward her own street, she saw a couple of figures come out of the rather imposing entrance of thestudio building, and her dejection deepened. She could easily recognize Elinor's blue coat and Doris Leighton's black suit with the white fur collar. They were coming briskly toward her and she hastily turned on a sudden impulse and crossed the Square in the opposite direction.
"I simply can't see anyone just now," she told herself miserably.
She walked with her head up, though the tears were in her eyes, and she went along very briskly, not caring at all where she went, so that it was away from Artemis Lodge and her troubles.
She walked for more than an hour, and found that her troubles would not leave her so readily, so she turned toward the down-town section again and went resolutely back to them.
It was one of those days when spring seems to leap suddenly into the sunshine, and Patricia, though very miserable indeed, could not help responding a little to the waking season.
"Perhaps I was a bit hard to manage last night," she thought, as she reachedthe green door, and the fact that the caretaker smiled at her added to her conviction that she had been hasty.
She ran up the stairs and with a light tap came into the room where she expected to find Rosamond, but the words of contrition died on her lips, for the room was filled with a litter of lovely gowns, hats and slippers, in the midst of which sat Rosamond criticising and selecting, while a deferential young woman in correct black made notes on a little pad. The name of an exclusive outfitter was on the box-lids and wrappers.
Rosamond looked up smiling at Patricia. She seemed to have forgotten that there had been any coolness between them.
"Come and help me select some of these things, Miss Pat," she said amiably.
And Patricia was instantly ashamed of her resentment.
Rosamond, it seemed, had received an unusually large remittance from home, and was employing it in enlarging her wardrobe, which she declared was scandalously shabby. She bought recklessly, while Patriciasighed over the beautiful things and felt that she must have been childish and unreasonable indeed to accuse this friendly, chatting girl of wilful neglect or unkindness.
They were pleasantly engaged in this delightful fashion when the knocker tapped and Constance Fellows' bright face appeared in the doorway.
"Ods-bodikins! What have we here?" she asked with a twinkle in her clear hazel eyes. "Going to be married, Fair Rosamond, or is it merely preparation for the dance next week?"
Rosamond disclaimed either. "I'm just getting a few things to freshen up my old clothes," she said with a tinge of ostentation, which was not lost on Constance.
"My word, but you need a lot of freshening," she said gayly, glancing at the array on chairs and divan. "One quarter of this would make me absolutely over. That's what it is to be ambitious."
Patricia thought Rosamond seemed vexed at this free speech, but Constance gave her no time for reply.
"Your sister is in Miss Ardsley's rooms and they would like to speak to you," she said to Patricia. "They were coming up here, but they saw the dray-load of hats being taken in, and they concluded there would be more breathing room downstairs."
Patricia had a sudden misgiving that something might be wrong at the studio—Judith or Bruce ill. Constance saw the thought in her face and shook her hand.
"Everything's O.K." she assured her. "Miss Ardsley's got a room for you at last, that's all. They want you to come down and deliver sentence."
To Patricia this seemed a veritable finger of destiny.
"Shall I bother you if I move out?" she asked Rosamond rather wistfully.
If she had hoped for comfort, she got very little. "Why should you go at all?" asked Rosamond, while she held a hat up for inspection, viewing it first on one side and then on the other. "I thought you were very well as you are."
"But," faltered Patricia. "I was only to stay till I could get a room."
She hoped Rosamond would lay down the hat and look at her with friendly eyes. Rosamond kept on with her scrutiny.
"Stay as long as you will. I'm sure we've got on beautifully together," she said with her air of amiable indifference.
After that Patricia felt she had no choice.
She followed Constance into Miss Ardsley's rooms without knowing how she got there, and even Elinor's gentle words of greeting sounded stiff and formal to her quivering, over-wrought humor. Miss Ardsley's genteel accents grated horribly on her. She was anxious to have the interview over and she readily agreed to take the room at once, without evincing any interest in it or anything else. All that she wanted just then was to get away by herself, so afraid was she that the tears so near her eyelids might pop out at any moment.
Elinor very properly put her changed manner down to the incident of the nightbefore, and she did not insist on going up with her to talk it over with Miss Merton, as she would have done if all had been as usual between Patricia and herself.
She sighed a little as she kissed her good-bye in the corridor, and wondered sadly at the stony face her dear Miss Pat turned to her at parting.
"You'll want me to come over and help you move?" she asked, with a world of tender concern in her tones.
Patricia heard only the mere words. She was wild to get away before she disgraced herself before the others. "I'll move in tomorrow. Constance will help me if you're busy," she said, hardly knowing how her words sounded.
Elinor went home too hurt to reply and too generous to insist on intruding, while Patricia ran upstairs and shut herself in her room, where she could hear the murmur of Rosamond and the saleswoman going on monotonously.
"I won't wait another moment; I'll go straight down and get the key," she said,springing up after a bad quarter of an hour, wherein all her idols had tottered from their pedestals. "I can't stand being cooped up forever like a mummy!"
Miss Ardsley gave her the key most willingly, even going so far as the courtyard to point out the windows of the room, which was on the opposite side of the quadrangle, recommending her to call on Martha or Christine if there were anything she needed.
Patricia found the room and opened the door with a sense of relief at finding a shelter for her wounded feelings. She liked the queer shape of it, with the two odd windows giving toward the sunset, and the angle where her cosy corner seemed already to have appropriated.
"It's perfectly dear, and I'll love it!" she said passionately. "I'll move in this very instant, no matter what Rosamond may say."
Rosamond had very little to say, though that little was regretful and apparently sincere. Patricia suspected her now of insincerity, but that was not one of RosamondMerton's faults. Had she feigned more, Patricia would never have left her. She was sorry for Miss Pat to go, but since she seemed so eager for it, there was nothing else to be done.
"We'll see just as much of one another," she said, still absently intent on her purchases. "You'll practice here, of course."
Patricia had forgotten the piano, but she was not given to retreat.
"There's plenty of room for one of my own over there," she said with a forced smile. "I'll miss hearing you sing, though." She was afraid she was going to break down, but she didn't. "I'll get my things out now, so that you can have the little room for cold storage," and she motioned to the jumble which lay gloriously about.
Rosamond made the best of it. "It will be hard to get anyone to help now," she said, rising. "It's just tea-hour and the maids will be busy. I'll see that you have someone at once."
Patricia wanted to protest, but the words stuck in her throat and she wasforced to accept the sturdy charwoman whom Rosamond's telephone secured.
The moving was over sooner than she had thought possible. She was settled in her room, and Rosamond had come over to declare it the cosiest spot in the world, while Constance Fellows and Doris Leighton had been in a couple of times on visits of congratulation before the clock across the housetops spelled out her usual bed hour on its illuminated face.
Patricia felt very strange as she put out the light and got into the narrow bed with its transplanted canopy and frills, yet there was a feeling of independence that was perhaps all the sweeter because she would not acknowledge it.
"I'm more lonely than I ever was in my life," she told herself as her head sank against her pillow.
But she forgot that she had said her prayers very thoroughly tonight, which showed that she had passed the darkest spot of her loneliness, for no one is quite desolate who can talk to God.
The next morning she awoke with astart, thinking she heard Rosamond calling her, but all she saw was the bright spring sunshine flooding into her pleasant, queer room, and all she heard was the trilling of the girl across the hall, little Rita Stanford, whose mother had died since Patricia had come to Artemis Lodge.
"Poor little brave thing," she thought with a warm rush of feeling, "I'll ask her over to practice as soon as I get my piano."
All about her she heard sounds of life that the private stair had shut her away from. Someone was unlocking her door and going whistling down the corridor, and in the room next to her the girl was rushing about in great haste, banging doors and slamming down the windows.
Rosamond would have sighed over such intimate contact with the rank and file of student life. It charmed Patricia. She loved democracy, although she had been shunning it ever since she had come to room with Rosamond Merton, and she jumped out of bed with a lighter heart than she could have dreamed possible the night before.
Unconsciously she had begun to fulfill Madame Milano's purpose in sending her to Artemis Lodge.
CHAPTER XIIITHE TURNING POINT
It was very hard for Patricia to go over to Rosamond's room after breakfast for her hour at the piano, but she did it so bravely that the self-centered Rosamond never guessed how much it cost her.
That was her first unconscious victory over herself.
Next she found that the other girls, from whose comradeship Rosamond's constant presence had barred her, now made room for her in the jolly, hail-fellow style which went straight to her bruised heart and soothed her wounded feelings sooner than she knew.
She kept her place at the little table in the café with Rosamond, of course, but after the first day she did not go into her room at tea-time, going instead into the big room downstairs where thegirls and their guests came every afternoon to consume thin bread and butter, and innumerable cups of tea and packs of petite-beurres. Rosamond had thought her own dainty service with an exclusive friend all that could be desired, but Patricia rejoiced in the atmosphere of the club room with its great grand piano and the groups of interested girls, with a sprinkling of equally interested and clever guests. The steaming, gleaming samovar with Doris Leighton's friendly face behind it brought a warmth to her heart the first afternoon that Constance had insisted on her cutting the hour with Rosamond and going with her to the tea-room below.
She found the easy chat and gay banter of the friendly groups the more to her taste, because she had come from a rather trying quarter of an hour in Rosamond's room, where Mary Browne—with aneas she always explained carefully—was being shown the purchases which had seemingly consoled Rosamond for her withdrawal.
Mary Browne, a slim, dark-eyed, good-lookinggirl with a bored manner, was lounging in a chair, looking with reverent yearning at the articles as they were exhibited—Rosamond trying each on and enlarging on its points of excellence.
Mary Browne, though of the purest blood, was, as she put it, "rather strapped," and wore her shapely garments longer than even Patricia did. Her soul was in the matter, as anyone could see by the way in which she looked at each article, murmuring tensely through her aristocratic teeth, "It's a stair. It's astar."
Patricia had just come from a flying visit to little Rita Stanford, whom she had suspected, from certain little sounds coming over her open transom, to be crying, and the contrast to that heroic little person putting aside her fresh grief to try to be entertaining to the newcomer in her hall made Patricia suddenly rather contemptuous of this worshipful attitude toward the mere accessories of life.
She had sprung up with relief when Constance's knock gave her the chance to escape, and in spite of Rosamond'srather absent protests, she had gone downstairs with Constance.
The tea-room was very full that afternoon and Doris had little time for talk, but she asked Patricia to stay for a chat after the samovar was taken away, and Patricia very willingly promised. The guests left at the proper time, but the girls seemed loath to leave. They lingered, talking about all sorts of glorious futures they were planning and discussing the eager present with great animation.
"Tancredi says that Rosamond Merton is going into opera as soon as she is done with her," a girl whose name Patricia did not know leaned across a space to tell her. She knew that Patricia was Rosamond's closest associate and she was following the social impulse to please.
Her friendly action brought the color to Patricia's cheeks and her eyes shone.
"How splendid!" she said ardently. "How did you hear it? Do you know Tancredi?"
The girl shook her head. "My sister knows her," she replied, "and she told herthat Carneri, the director of the Cosmopolitan Company, told her she should have a place whenever she was pronounced fit by Tancredi. Pretty great for the Fair Rosamond, isn't it? They say she met him at a luncheon she gave to Milano and her teacher at the Ritz last week. It pays to be rich as well as talented, you see."
"Is she really very rich?" asked Patricia, and then was sorry she had spoken. It seemed as though she were prying into Rosamond's private affairs.
"Of course. She's old Cedar-tank Merton's only thing," replied the girl rather flippantly, Patricia thought. "She's hordes and gobs of coin, as well as being gifted with a voice and a family tree that makes the California redwoods look like mere bushes. You're with Tancredi, too, aren't you?"
Patricia nodded.
"I suppose she has a name, though I haven't heard it," the girl said to Constance, who was chatting with someone at an opposite table.
Constance did not hear her, but Patricia readily supplied the deficiency.
"I'm Patricia Kendall," she said, feeling rather apologetic for herself, though she did not know quite why.
"I'm Louise Woods," replied the other. "I'll look you up some time after I've spotted you and tell you what Tancredi says aboutyou."
"Oh, it couldn't be much," cried Patricia in dismay. "I've just begun to study and Tancredi only bothers with me because a friend of hers asked her to."
The girl seemed not much impressed. "You've got something up your sleeve, I think," she smiled as she rose. "Tancredi doesn't cast her pearls before swine that way."
Patricia watched her making her sociable way out of the room, and she decided that she liked her.
"I wonder why I never met her before?" she thought, and then realized how completely Rosamond had blocked her view of all the other girls. "I guess I'll not behalf so lonely as I thought. They all seem so kind."
She felt still better content when, as the twilight gathered and Doris came to make one of their group, one of the girls went to the big piano and illustrated her idea of the Swan Song in Lohengrin, striking passionate chords with her finger-tips and throwing her full-toned contralto into the dimness with an effect that was thrilling to Patricia.
Then another girl pushed her from the seat and, interrupting herself from time to time with explanations of the method, sang part of the scene where Louise leaves her home.
The magic of the dim hour was on them and they gave themselves to the music entire. The great winged Victory above the bookshelf showed back of the singer's dark head. The real everyday world dropped away and a more real and vital world took its place. One after another, the music students took their place eagerly on the seat, and sang or played the melody that was surging within them, towhich the magic moment had given utterance.
Patricia never knew how it ended or if it were herself that was back in the everyday world of the café, eating dinner with Rosamond as usual, or whether she was still in that twilit world of melody listening to the voices, until Rosamond said rather sharply for her:
"Are you ill, Miss Pat, that you look so strange?"
Then Patricia drew herself together and managed to appear as normal as she could, but her one desire was to get away by herself to gloat over the riches that had been flung in her lap.
"I'd never, never known how splendid it was if I hadn't left Rosamond," she marveled. "Oh, how much I've been missing all this time!"
She was so taken out of herself by the beautiful experience that she hurried to her room and sat down to write a note to Elinor, begging her to forgive her silly conduct and her rank ingratitude for all their care. She made it as strong as that,and when she had sealed it she went down and put it in the mail-box herself, so eager was she that it should speed on its way.
She went to her room with a lighter heart and the day ended triumphantly with her. She counted the good things that had come to her on her fingers. First, she had cheered Rita Stanford—that she was sure of. Next, she had not shown any ill feeling towards Rosamond—her visits in morning and afternoon proved that. And third, she had been received into the fellowship of the musical set in a way that set her dreaming of the hour when she, too, might take her place on the seat of the grand piano in the twilight and sing out what was in her heart. Then, she had conquered her reluctance to make the first overtures to Elinor, and she had discovered that the girls in the next room were going to be worth while.
That finished off one hand and she paused as she began on the other. What was it the Woods girl had said about Rosamond entertaining Madame Milano at luncheon last week? Patricia wouldhave thought it a mistake a week ago, but now she believed Rosamond capable of forgetting to tell her such a momentous fact.
"She doesn't care for me at all any more," she thought, with a sort of slow contempt rising through the sadness that the memory had brought back to her.
"I don't believe she ever did care for me," she said, a few minutes later. "I think she only tolerated me because she thought that I must be going to have a wonderful voice since Milano recommended, but when she found that I was only a stupid beginner, and not worth bothering with, she forgot I was in existence except when I was in sight."
She had so loved and admired the sumptuous Rosamond and in spite of the break had felt so little resentment that her feelings were now a surprise to her.
"I'm getting dreadfully cross-grained, I suppose," she said sadly, as she sat down again to write to Mrs. Spicer. "I quarreled with Elinor—of all people—and I've broken off with Rosamond. I must be growing horrid."
This dismal idea took full possession of her and she sat staring at the papers strewn on her table, seeing a tragic picture of herself grown desolate and lone in the long years wherein she lost, one by one, the friends who had once loved her. Mrs. Nat's puzzled face rose vividly before her as it had looked across the studio table, and she shook her head dolefully.
It was not often that Patricia had given way to such a mood, and if there had been anyone within reach to talk to, she would have shaken it off before it took full possession of her. But she was alone for the evening and it had free access. She actually believed that she was grown unlovable, and the conviction that her voice was not worth considering haunted her morbidly.
She had, without knowing it, a touch of grippe. Not enough to make her feel really ill, but merely sufficient to emphasize her dismal sensations into actual mental misery, and she lay awake half the night wondering mournfully why she had been allowed to leave the country and thrust herself among the talented and fortunate.She was really quite thorough in her distrust of herself.
In the morning she found a messenger with two notes, one from Elinor and one in Bruce's strong hand, waiting her as she went down to her late breakfast. Elinor's was very loving, ignoring the disagreeable Sunday night and telling her that they were suddenly called away on business of Bruce's, and that Judith, after spending a few days at Rockham with Mrs. Shelly, was to come to share her room at Artemis for the rest of the time. All had been arranged with Miss Ardsley by telephone while Patricia was yet in bed.
Patricia was so excited by this surprising news that she hurried off to Miss Ardsley's rooms with Bruce's unopened letter still in her hand.
Miss Ardsley explained that Elinor had called up about eight o'clock and as the Directress had been positive she had seen Patricia cross the courtyard on her way out just before that hour, she had told Elinor that her sister was not in.
Patricia had to go away without expressingher indignation at the mistake, and after she had read Bruce's short note in her own room, she was glad to remember that she had not sinned again.
"Small Sister Pat," the note ran. "I know it isn't time for the puncture you requested, but would it bother you if I asked when our own Miss Pat is coming back? We're mighty lonesome for her. Elinor is dropping some big tears while she thinks I am not looking, and I know it is because she misses her old chum. Judy is divided between the desire to go to her Mama Shelly's and her wish to find her jolly sister Pat. Do you think you could look her up and tell her we're all sure that she wants to see us as much as we want to see her?"
Patricia sat for a long time with the note in her hand, and then she put her golden head down on it and cried heartily.
Then she sat up, and her face showed that the mists were beginning to clear from that doleful future which had haunted her since last night.
"What a goose I've been, and what aperfect duck Bruce is," she said heartily and then laughed out loud at her zoological titles. "Oh, how I wish I'd had a chance to talk to Elinor. She couldn't have my letter by the time she left, and she must still think me horrid."
She rose and stood looking out of the window at the blue expanse above the housetops, with part of the smile still lingering on her pink lips. She knew that she had come back, as Bruce called it, and a delightful sense of relief stole over her.
"I'm so glad, glad," she whispered, clasping her hands tight against her breast. "I'll have a chance to show them that I'm really sorry for my silliness. I'll do something, I'll have something ready for them when they come back that will prove I'm done with sentimental nonsense now and for always."
She could not think what it should be, but she knew she could find out and she turned from the window with the old sunny expression on her face.
"I'll try to be unselfish, even thoughI am a failure," she said determinedly. "Bruce never guessed that it might be quite as hard for a failure to be unselfish as for a successful person. He's always been successful, thanks to Aunt Louise and his own splendid self."
The memory of her unknown aunt's secret disappointment came to her now with a throb of understanding love. The dark, brave face over the desk in the library at Greycroft rose vividly before her, and, as at other moments of need, courage and determination flowed from the serene eyes into Patricia's wistful ones.
"I'll bear my troubles, too," she whispered, smiling back at the vision. "I'll remember that I am your namesake."
CHAPTER XIVCONSTANCE'S OTHER SIDE
Whatever Patricia did, she did thoroughly.
She had almost a week before Elinor's return, and she set about finding something to do that should prove her return to herself, and more even than that, for she wanted tremendously to be better and stronger than she had ever been.
The haunting sense of failure was with her, but she would not stop to listen to it. She practiced her exercises with the greatest care, she went to the concerts for which she had cards, and, remembering Madame Milano's song at the Filmore evening, she bought the music and learned the thing by heart. She was afraid this might not be strictly honorable, since Tancredi had forbidden her to sing songs, but she had such a strong conviction that she was already a failure that she hopedshe might be pardoned this solace to herself.
"You're looking a lot gayer since you got settled," said Constance Fellows one afternoon as she sat in Patricia's room, mending the russet frock. It looked odd to see Constance with a needle, but she was deft with it.
"I guess I'm more used to being by myself," replied Patricia, not wishing to go into details. "I'd never been alone, you know, and it was strange at first."
Constance nodded, but her clear eyes showed she understood. As she went on with her sewing she said cheerfully:
"Itisbetter to rub up against all sorts of people. You don't come to realize what living means till you've seen what the rest of them are up to. Cotton-wool isn't the environment to bring out beauty, after all."
Patricia smiled absently. "But all the pretty things are put in nice pink cotton-wool," she said, thinking of the jeweler's boxes in Rosamond's case.
"Ah, but that's when the pretty thingsare finished and done," cried Constance, dropping her work and leaning forward with fire in her eyes. "How about when they are being shaped? There are hammers there then, and fires, too, and they are battered into their beautiful shapes with cruel blows. My word, Patricia Kendall, can't you see it? It takes plenty of hammering and burning before it gets to the cotton-wool stage."
Patricia caught her earnestness. "The trees and flowers and skies aren't hammered into shape," she argued, with half a vision of what Constance meant.
"They are the result of hammering, perhaps," returned Constance quickly, "but that doesn't matter so much. They're the works of God, and that sort of thing can just grow, like a lovely disposition, but the things of earth have to be made into shape with rough hands. Look at the people you know. How many of the selfish, pampered ones amount to a row of pins? Can you honestly say that you know anyone who hasn't been the better for a little hammering?"
Patricia thought swiftly of Doris Leighton, of Mrs. Nat, and she shook her head.
"That's all that's the matter with the Fair Rosamond," Constance explained. "She's been in cotton-wool all her life, and it's going to rob her of her chance to give something to the world——"
She broke off abruptly, seeming to be much moved, and, rising with a disturbed air, walked up and down for a few minutes while Patricia tried to go on with her own darning as though nothing unusual had happened.
Constance dropped into her chair with a low laugh. "Don't mind my preaching, Miss Pat," she said without any suggestion of apology in her candid tone. "I always get so excited when I'm proclaiming human rights."
Patricia looked puzzled and she answered quickly: "Human rights—my rights to the bit of hammering that belongs to me. Auntie, you know, advocates cotton-wool so strongly that I suppose I'm a bit daft on my end of the argument."
Patricia had been silent, but she spokeslowly and with a light breaking on her face. "I believe it's true, Constance," she said earnestly. "I can see now that it's the only way. I was getting terribly spoiled in cotton-wool, and——" She stopped because she did not want to seem to complain of Rosamond. "I'm glad Miss Ardsley got this dear room for me," she ended brightly, "I've had such fun since I've been here."
She saw that Constance was not too much deceived, and to turn the talk she seized the first thing that came into her mind.
"Does your aunt still object to your living here?" she asked, and then was annoyed with herself for her own lack of tact, for she recalled that it was not Constance but Rosamond who had told her of the aunt's objections to Artemis Lodge.
Constance laughed easily. "She's coming around," she replied as though she were used to discussing her private affairs with Patricia. "She is so pleased with my altar-piece in All Saints that she'sready to forgive me anything. Auntie is really awfully good."
Patricia was alight at once. "Your altar-piece, Constance?" she cried. "Oh, how splendid! When did you do it? Why didn't you tell me about it sooner? Where is it now?"
Constance laughed, yet she was deeply gratified, for she had been more drawn to Patricia than to any of the others. "It's in All Saints, of course, where it should be. You didn't think it was in the Bandbox or the Comique, did you?" she bantered. "Auntie paid for it, and so she's privileged to criticise, you know."
"Do let me see it," begged Patricia. "I haven't a thing to do this afternoon. Let's go and see it."
Constance demurred at first and then gave in. "The air will do us good, anyway," she said, "We've been cooped up here for an hour or more."
Patricia found the altar-piece a revelation of another side of Constance—a side she had not dreamed of, and she gave it the tribute of silence for a long five minutes.
Then she spoke very softly: "I know now why you believe in bearing the everyday toil and trouble of the world. It's because you've been painting that. Why, Constance, it's—it's—triumphant."
Constance was looking at the painting and she forgot she was not speaking to herself alone.
"And why not?" she said in a deep breath. "He didn't fear that poverty and pain would keep anyone out of the kingdom of gladness. It was what He was telling them all the time—those exclusive, rich men who wanted to get the secret of His serene life. It wasn't that He liked pain and poverty, but He wanted everyone to know that it was the fear of them that shut people out of the kingdom of gladness. Why shouldn't He look triumphant when He'd opened the door so wide?"
Patricia was too much stirred by this revelation of the depths of Constance's nature to speak, and they soon went out of the dim church into the sunlight of the avenue, with its roar of hungry life and surging energies.
"I think I'll run over to Auntie's now that we're so near," said Constance at the next corner. "You don't mind, do you?"
Patricia didn't in the least mind. She wanted to go for a walk in the Park and try to catch and put in order the whirling thoughts that pulsed through her. "I'll see you tonight after dinner," she promised.
The Park was full of people. The spring was in the air. Patricia felt strange sensations, stirring thoughts which Constance's picture had called into life.
"The Kingdom of Gladness," she repeated over and over again, making it a rhythmic march to keep step with. "The Kingdom of Gladness. And I thought Constance Fellows just a nice, clever, funny girl!"
She looked at the people on the walks and in the vehicles with a new eye. She wondered if they were putting in their probation for that kingdom and when she saw a pinched face or a shabby coat, she felt like crying out to them, "Oh, don't mind it very much, for it's the best way into the kingdom."
She was very much agitated and excited, and she felt she could not go back to the Lodge, where she had given a half promise to spend the five o'clock hour with Rosamond. She walked about for a long time and sat down on benches when her mood ebbed, starting up again with a shining face as her emotions got the better of her again.
She was sitting on a bench when she saw Mr. Long coming briskly along the bridle path on a beautiful bay horse. He did not see her, and she jumped up and ran over to the side of the path, holding up an eager hand to attract his attention.
He was off his horse in one moment and shaking hands with her the next.
"This is very jolly," he said heartily. "I didn't know you were in town or I'd have tried to look you up. Miss Merton told me when we were at the theater with the Filmores last night that your family had left town for a while."
Patricia explained, and Mr Long in his turn told her that he was only in for abrief stay. He needed a secretary, a sort of caretaker for his chicken books, he said, laughing, and it must be a female person, since he had determined to bring Danny home from school for good and all, and he felt that a woman-body was a crying necessity.
Patricia understood at once. "He wouldn't get on with Mrs. Jonas," she admitted with a smile. "Have you anyone yet?"
Mr. Long had not. He had seen dozens of them, but they were all either too young or too old or too stupid or too clever.
"It's going to be mighty hard to fit Danny and the hen accounts, too," he confessed. "He's so dead set on pretty people, and most of the pretty ones are stupid or conceited."
Patricia had a sudden thought that made her dimple. "Must she be very old?" she asked eagerly.
"Mrs. Jonas will chaperone the place as ever," replied Mr. Long. "She's needed mainly for Danny, if the truth must be told. I've got to try the mother act onhim now. Poor kid, he's never had anything to look up to in that line."
"I know someone," said Patricia guardedly. "I can't tell you about her now, but if you'll come to the dance on Friday I'll show her to you and you can do the rest."
Mr. Long thought Friday was too far off, but Patricia was firm, and he ended by saying he'd come. They parted at the next entrance and Patricia hurried off to Artemis Lodge feeling much elated.
"I'll ask Doris about it in a roundabout way, so she'll say just what she thinks," she planned, and she was so eager to seek out Doris that she hurried through her dinner before Rosamond had begun on her first mouthful, excusing herself by saying that she had some business on hand that would not wait.
She found Doris in her room, trying to make up her accounts, and the process was evidently not very agreeable work, for she flung down the pen at Patricia's knock and slammed the covers of the book with unusual vigor.
"I never can bear to face that horrid book," she confessed with a little laugh. "I'm always spending more than I should and it makes me so ashamed of myself, when Mother needs so many things."
Patricia was finding it very easy. She had not much trouble in learning that Doris was in search of a more paying position. Her domestic science was only half a day's work and she needed more. Patricia thought it safe to hint at something that might be in sight if she came to the dance on Friday.
Doris had not intended going to the dance, since her gowns were rather shabby and she could not think of anything new, but on Patricia's insisting, she said she would go if she could be late. She had a lesson in French at the Settlement House—Patricia almost shook her head at the thought of Doris taking free lessons in anything until she recollected the Kingdom of Gladness—and she could not afford to miss it.
"I'll wait for you," Patricia promised. "I haven't any guests—or only someonewho won't mind. Come over to my room for me, and we'll go down together."
Constance met her on her way to the Red Salon, where the girls often gathered after dinner for chat, the Blue Salon across the way being reserved for reception of visitors.
"The dance is going to be quite wonderfully fine," she told her with as eager interest as ever a girl showed in a party. "Auntie's coming and I'm going to have a splendid, gorgeous new dress. I've planned it all out since I made up my mind. I'll get the stuff tomorrow and have it made in a jiffy."
Patricia looked at her in some wonder, until she remembered that the kingdom Constance was trying to enter was one of gladness.
"Of course you want to have a good time," she said aloud. "What color is it to be?" meaning the dress.
"Yellow—goldy yellow," replied Constance deliciously. "And I'm going the whole length, gold slippers and all!"
Patricia beamed. "You'll look perfectlystunning," she said, and then she caught her breath. "Who's playing?" she asked, with a look toward the open door.
Constance listened. "That must be the little Polish countess," she replied. "No one else does it that way."
Patricia had a vision of a fascinating, elegant creature with sorrowful eyes and plenty of furs, and she gave a little cry of expectation.
"Come along. She's beginning the 'Papillion'," she cried. "And I simply can't miss it."