CHAPTER XVPATRICIA DECIDES TO MAKE THE BEST OF IT
"Oh!" said Patricia on the threshold.
"S-s-sh!" warned a number of restrained voices.
They smiled kindly at her as she stood in the doorway, though they plainly would not tolerate an interruption. Patricia had not meant to interrupt. She was only surprised.
The firelight played over the lounging figures of the girls who were grouped about the dim warm-colored room, lighting up a golden head or the gleam of some piece of polished furniture or glass, picking out the faces of some of the intent listeners and flinging a ruddy shadow over others, flickering over the grand piano and the figure seated before it.
Patricia had cried out her "Oh" at the sight of this figure. It was so verydifferent from her idea of what a countess—and a Polish one, at that—should be that it gave her quite a shock, and for the tiniest fraction of a second made her forget even the Grieg music.
The little woman at the piano was small and rather wrinkled, and was wearing an old-fashioned ulster which fitted her small form rather carelessly. The small sealskin cap on her drab hair did not even pretend to be a stylish one. It was rather worn, even in the kindly firelight, and gave an emphasis to the shabbiness of the whole figure.
Patricia sank down beside Rita Stanford and stared under cover of the fire-flicker. How disappointing some countesses were!
But she did not stare long. She soon forgot there was a shabby figure at the big piano, because she was seeing the butterfly soaring up and up in the sunshine, with the jewels glowing on his gorgeous wings, wings that were soon to be broken and trailing. She saw the pulsing of the broken wings, and felt the pity thatwas pulsing through the sunny world at this darkening tragedy. The wings pulsed slower and slower. The butterfly was dead!
Patricia found her eyes wet, and she heard the soft applause in a sort of daze—the music that melted her also always intoxicated her—and she sat without a word till the countess began again.
It was Shubert's Fantasia Impromptu this time, and there was absolute silence as it ended.
The little shabby countess gave them a moment for recovery, and then, whirling about on the stool, she said, with only a trace of accent:
"That is my farewell. Tomorrow I leave for the home-land."
There was a chorus of questions at this and that ended the music. Patricia enjoyed the humorous chatter of the experienced, happy-go-lucky countess, and she laughed over her accounts of her travels and privations while lecturing in the West and writing books at odd times, but she did not want to rub out the "Papillion" and shesoon left the Red Salon and took her way to her own room, thinking of a number of things.
"She's had a hard time, too," she thought. "I suppose she'd never have played so if she hadn't known trouble and tragedy, too, perhaps. Oh, dear, it's very comforting when one is rather in low spirits and things have gone wrong, but it doesn't look half so attractive when there's fun ahead."
She shook her head and then laughed her rippling laugh at herself. "I'm getting too deep," she warned herself. "I've got to stay where I can touch bottom. Constance may go far ahead, but I've got to go slow or I'll be getting silly again on the other side."
She kept to this wise decision and whenever she found herself beginning to pose as a being enlightened through suffering she made a face at herself in the quaint mirror and ran away to do something "plain and practical" for someone.
And so the days sped and Judith came back from Rockham full of news and wonderinggreatly at the change in her dear Miss Pat.
"You're awfully meek now, aren't you?" she asked her suddenly, after Judith's little trunk had been unpacked and the things stowed in the most convenient drawers. "You used to be nice, but you didn't give up to younger persons like you do now."
Patricia started to say that she had learned a great lesson, but she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and she said instead that she was treating Judith as a guest now, and so she had to be polite.
Judith was only half convinced. She had not been studying people's faces and searching for meanings in their expressions all these months for nothing. The tales about Rockham alone would have sharpened her to that extent.
"You're different," she said positively. "And I don't know whether I like you better or not. You seem too good to be true, somehow."
Patricia's derisive laughter only made hermore emphatic. "You aren't half so gay as you were, and you practice as though you were doing a lesson instead of because you couldn't help it, like you used to," she declared. "You're nice to that gorgeous Rosamond Merton and you let her wipe her feet on you every time you go in there. I've seen how meek you are. If it wasn't you," she said with a pucker in her brow, "I'd think you were up to something. Why don't you sing like you used to?"
Patricia said that she had been at a song, but it was not to be known, and she made Judith promise not to tell Constance or anyone else at home before she would sit down at the shining piano Bruce had got a musical friend to select for her, and sang the song through to its end.
Judith still looked puzzled. "It's lovely, of course. Your voice always is," she said loyally. "But somehow it doesn'tring. The glad sound has gone out of it. That's it!"
Patricia had been knowing it herself ever since she had realized that Tancrediwas only keeping her for friendship's sake, and it had been almost too much to bear alone. Without thinking, she blurted it out.
"I can't really sing, after all, Ju," she told her passionately. "Tancredi is only keeping me on for this quarter and then she'll let me down."
Judith was aghast, but she kept her head. "When did she tell you?" she demanded sharply.
"She hasn't just exactly told me in words," confessed Patricia. "But she's shown me very clearly. And Madame Milano hasn't ever asked to see me again, though I know she's seen Rosamond twice since I went to the 'Hour' at her hotel. If I hadn't been with Bruce and Elinor to hear her in opera every time she sang, I'd never known she was in New York at all."
Judith was very white and still. At last she said with conviction, "I think you're making a mistake, Miss Pat. I don't believe it's true that you aren't going to be a success. You know howyou tried and tried to make yourself ready and fit for the music, and I don't believe that all that hard work is going to be wasted."
Patricia smiled with the new knowledge that had so recently come to her. "Oh, Judy dear, you are too young to understand," she said with serene satisfaction; "but it will not be wasted. One must suffer to grow glad."
Judith opened her eyes. "Now I know you're queer," she declared with a wag of her head that made her uneven mane quiver. "You didn't use to talk such stuff."
Patricia wanted to tell her it wasn't stuff, but somehow she could not find the right words to explain her feelings, and so she left it go, feeling very old and wise indeed beside the crude, inexperienced Judith.
They had a very good time together, nevertheless, and Judith made friends with the girls in a way that pleased and surprised Patricia. "That kid sister of yours is a wonder," said the slangy ones, andthe others declared that Judith was a dear. Altogether, Patricia had never enjoyed Judith's company so much.
"I'm sorry you can't come to the dance," she told her with regret, but Judith did not care in the least, she said. She was going to spend the night with Rita Stanford, with whom she had struck up a close friendship—the first that Patricia had known her to make.
She seemed much absorbed in Rita. She took walks with her while Patricia was at her lesson or otherwise occupied, and she went to afternoon service with her. She was so much with Rita when not with Patricia that it was a surprise to Patricia to see her coming in the afternoon of the dance entirely alone and wearing a rapturous expression. She said she had been doing an errand and Patricia was too much occupied with the finishing touches to her white net—she was putting the dearest bunches of apple blossoms at odd places on the skirt and waist—to be too inquisitive.
She noticed that Judith hung about her,seeming to be trying to make up her mind to say something, but she did not stop to ask what it was, as she supposed it merely a trifling comment or criticism on her dress.
She sent Judith over to Constance's room to borrow a spool of pink silk and then forgot her in the delightful task of deciding whether the apple blossoms ought to go on the sleeves or not.
Judith came back with the spool and a yellow envelope which she had signed for. "That's what made me so long," she explained, but Patricia had hardly missed her.
The telegram was from Elinor. They were coming back and would be at the dance. "Coming home tonight. Save a dance for Bruce. Love. Elinor."
Patricia was wild with delight. "Oh, Judy, won't it be fine?" she cried with quite her old gay laugh. "I'm so glad they're coming."
But before Judith could add her rejoicings the bright look had died into a quieter expression and Patricia said, "I was forgettingthat you weren't going to be there. I wish, oh, I wish you could go."
"Well, I can't and there's an end of it," said Judith calmly. "And I hear Rita beginning to get things ready. We're going to make fudge, so I'll have to be off."
She was at the door before she remembered. "Constance told me she'd stop on her way down for you if you changed your mind about going late," she said briskly. "She wants you to see her dress, anyway, before anything happens to it. She says she's sure to wreck it. She's so used to good tough stuff that she'll walk right through this one."
Patricia nodded brightly and Judith hurried off across the hall, where Rita's welcome reached Patricia's ears. "Dear old Ju," she thought fondly. "She's always doing the right thing. She's such a comfort."
Then she smiled to herself at Constance's message. "It's good of her to come away over here, when the ball-room is so near her," she said gratefully. "I'llbe glad to see her dress. She's been so secret about it."
Her face grew wistful as she thought of the dance. "I'll have a good time, I suppose," she said slowly. "Rosamond will sing, and that will make me remember I'm a failure. But Bruce and Elinor and Constance will be there, and I can have the fun of showing Doris to Mr. Long without her knowing it."
This brought the light into her eyes again, and she held up her golden head very bravely.
"I'll have a good time," she said again, with a nod at the mirror. "I may be a failure as a singer, but I needn't be as a human critter, as Hannah Ann calls us."
CHAPTER XVITHE DOOR OPENS AGAIN
Patricia had got into her apple-blossom dress and had smiled at herself with a good deal of real satisfaction.
"You do look very nice," she said to the girl in the mirror. "If you were only a little bit less addicted to yourself, my child, you'd not be half bad. That's a thing you're going to get over, though, so I won't scold you tonight about it."
She shut off the light and sat down by the window to watch the first arrivals. The night was warm, even for spring, and the window was open.
"It's just like being at the play," she told herself, smiling into the warm darkness. "I'm glad I had to wait for Doris."
The courtyard was light with torches and the entrance was ablaze with torches and the windows across the quadrangle shecould see figures moving to and fro, shadows fell on the curtained oblongs and inside the open ones she saw girls who were late in dressing getting frantically ready, others who were putting on their gloves, and still others with their guests even making ready to go down to the ball-room, which was the transformed tea-room not to be seen from Patricia's point of vantage.
Maids came and went across the courtyard. The first guests came in a straggling fashion, and then suddenly everyone seemed to be rushing in at once. Patricia laughed as she recognized the tall, lanky figure of Bob Wetherill, whose attachment to Rosamond Merton was the bane of that young lady's life. Then she gave a little cry. She had recognized Bruce and Elinor.
She flew down to them for a rapturous greeting and though the courtyard was filled with hurrying people she hugged both of them heartily, dropping some tears of real delight on her own apple blossoms.
"I'll be down later," she told them. "I'm waiting for Doris Leighton. Do look after Mr. Long if he comes in beforeI do, and for goodness sake tell him not to breathe a word about what I was talking to him about in the Park the other day."
"Mysteries, and with your late rival in the hen-yard?" cried Bruce with feigned concern. "I'll have to look into this later, Miss Pat, and see what you've been up to behind our backs."
"You'll find out later, I hope," laughed Patricia, giving Elinor another squeeze before she ran off laughing at the thought of her conspiracy with Mr. Long coming under Bruce's notice in this unexpected way.
"I had to tell him," she thought, as she hurried back to her post. "He might have found it out before it came to anything and then I'd have felt so silly."
As she sat down again she thought she heard the door open and she asked, "Is that you, Constance?"
It was Judith with her kimono over her nightdress and her bare feet poked into her slippers. She came over and cuddled down beside Patricia.
"Don't send me back right away, please. I have something to tell you, Miss Pat,"she said earnestly, and Patricia made room for her on the wide seat.
"What is it, Judy-pudy?" she asked kindly. "Bad dreams?"
Judith gave a little sound that seemed to mean satisfaction with the question. "Oh, no, not bad dreams," she answered happily, cuddling closer. "Not bad dreams. Very pleasant ones. About you, Patricia."
Patricia patted her. "Tell me," she said, not because she wanted to hear the dream, but to please Judith.
"I dreamed," began Judith, sitting up to look earnestly in Patricia's face in the dim light reflected from the courtyard. "I dreamed that you were unhappy and it was because you thought that you would never be a real singer."
Patricia interrupted her with a little laugh. "Sounds perilously like wide-awake news to me, Ju," she said lightly, determined to conquer the idea which possessed her small sister that she was unhappy over her discovery of failure. "We've put that on the shelf long ago, you and I."
Judith went on, scanning her face. "Idreamed that you cried about it when no one saw you and that you felt you'd never be happy again. Now don't say 'Stuff,' for it's true. And I couldn't bear it, so I thought and thought and then I went out and walked straight down to Tancredi's and I asked for her, and found her in. She was in the music-room and I went in and said, 'I am Judith Kendall, and I've come to ask about my sister.'"
"Good little Ju," said Patricia as she took breath. "I believe you could really have done it."
It was rather dim to read expressions, but she thought a strange look flitted across the eager face that was staring so hard at her. "You mustn't take it so seriously, Judy," she said, but Judith went on.
"'I've come to see if it's true that she'll never be a great singer and I know you'll tell me,' I said to Madame Tancredi, and she just put her arm about me and kissed me quite hard."
"That's what she would have done. How did you guess it?" cried Patricia.
"And she said very seriously, 'Your sister, my dear, is going to be the greatest singer I have ever taught, if she keeps on as she has begun, or if some stupid silly one doesn't take her from the only right method.'"
Patricia felt a surge of agonizing regret for all the bright hopes that she had lost forever, but she tried to laugh down into Judith's eager face.
"That sounds exactly like Tancredi," she declared. "How strange you should dream it so truly."
"It sounds true, doesn't it?" persisted Judith. "Should you be very cross with me if it weren't all a dream, Miss Pat?"
Patricia's heart stopped beating for a moment and then it leaped to her throat.
"What do you mean, Judith?" she called out, clutching her tightly by the shoulders. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"Ow! you hurt!" returned Judith, wriggling, and then she responded to the agony of appeal in Patricia's big gray eyes. "It isn't a dream. It's true," she said. "I went this afternoon."
Patricia could not take it in for a while. She had to question Judith again and again before she could accept this gift from the dark heavens.
"Are you sure?" she asked over and over until Judith became impatient.
"I may be only fourteen and a half and very small for my age," she said with withering dignity, "but I surely know what happened just this afternoon. I'm going back to bed now, and you can believe me or not just as you please," and in spite of Patricia's protest, she stalked away and slammed the door behind her—a very unusual thing for Judith.
Patricia sat by the window in a trance of delight. The future glowed with all its old alluring colors and new ones were shining out every time she looked ahead. She was to be a singer after all. What did anything else matter?
Suddenly she laughed aloud and jumping up she ran to the mirror and snapped on the light to make a radiant face at the girl in the frame.
"We'll try to put up with being a failureas a martyr, won't we, my dear?" she said breathlessly. "Oh, how hard we'll try not to grow too pleased with ourselves now! Just remind me about it when I'm getting top-lofty, will you, please? I'm afraid I'll forget to be meek."
"What's that you're talking about?" asked Constance's voice, and Patricia turned to see her standing smiling in the doorway.
"Oh, oh, you lovely thing!" she cried in instant approval. "Why, I'd never known you in that heavenly rig."
"Thanks for the tactful way you pay tribute to my frock," replied Constance smoothly. "It is rather nice, so I forgive you on the spot."
"Nice?" exclaimed Patricia with scorn for the word. "Nice! It's splendid, gorgeous,transcendent. Nice, indeed! Turn around and let me drink you in."
Constance turned. The dress was of dull gold-colored net with great flowers about its hem wrought into the net with gold thread and the bodice was one great gold flower with trailing net for sleeves. Gold bands held down Constance's darkhair, and the simplicity of the whole made it suitable.
"I think I shall stay here and look at myself," she said with quaint gravity. "It's been so long since I've had a real whole dress that I fear it has turned my head. I'll be asking everybody what they think of it if I go down."
Patricia pushed her out the door. "They'll tell you without asking," she promised. "I wonder what Rosamond will say when she sees you."
At that Constance came back into the room and closed the door.
"Rosamond won't be here, after all," she said with a little laugh. "She sent word to her father to do the polite thing to Madame Milano when she came to sing in Boston, and her father sent a special car down for Rosamond to take Milano up to the Hub. She's on her way now. That's going some, isn't it?"
She evidently wanted to break the news to Patricia before she learned from others, and she seemed surprised at Patricia's easy acceptance of it.
"You're getting to be a wise child," she said with an approving nod. "You know that it isn't always the highest flier that gets there the soonest. Keep smiling, my dear, and it won't hurt half so much."
Patricia did smile, not so much at the slang as at the friendly spirit which prompted it. "It doesn't hurt at all now," she answered, truthfully, and then she told Constance of Judith's visit.
Constance was delighted. "Plucky Judith!" she cried. "Lucky Miss Pat. You're about the happiest girl in the world just now, aren't you?"
"Just about," Patricia confessed.
"I'm not so wretched either," said Constance with a whirl of her golden draperies. "I've come out of the woods myself. Auntie is so pleased with my altar-piece that she's giving in at last. I'm to go home next week and I can go to night life or anything else I please. She considers me safe since I could paint that picture. Funny, isn't it, that she couldn't have known me for herself?"
Patricia congratulated her with greatsincerity. "I'll miss you terribly, but I'm glad for your sake," she said warmly. "You really need someone to look after you."
Constance pretended to be indignant. "After all the mending I've done in your presence, too!" she cried reproachfully. "I'll not stay to be maligned like that."
She stopped at the door to add joyfully, "Do come down soon. I want you to meet Auntie," and she then turned again to go, but again halted.
"Hello, here's the Lodge beauty in all her loveliness," she said, welcoming Doris Leighton with a cordial handshake. "Come, Doris, let's grab the future prima donna and tote her to the ball-room. I don't believe she'll ever get there by herself."
Doris was lovely, even though her dress was not so radiant as Constance's nor so fresh as Patricia's, and her serene face shone at the news which Constance poured out to her on the way down. She could rejoice in other people's good fortune, Patricia saw and, remembering the DorisLeighton of the Academy days, marveled at her calm unselfishness.
"Do come over and say how-do-you-do to Elinor and Bruce," she begged, catching sight of them across the room. "I want you to meet Mr. Long who is with them, Doris."
Constance chuckled. "Talk about clothes bringing one into the limelight," she commented. "Here I am all done up beautifully and I'm passed over for a mere beauty. I won't come and meet your snippy Mr. Long, Miss Pat. I know him, anyway, and he engaged a couple of dances with me when I met him in the corridor going over to your room. I'll find Auntie, and wait for you, when you're through with your Longs and such."
It was delightful to find herself again in the bright world of her hopes again, and even the dullest place would have seemed radiant to Patricia that night, but the ball-room with its flowers and music, with its pretty girls and agreeable men, remained in her memory as a sort of Olympian festivity, part dream, part reality, longafter she had forgotten the names of the men Bruce brought for her to dance with.
She had introduced Mr. Long to Doris and left her with him and Elinor as she went off to dance with Bruce. "I think he'll like her," she said, with a backward glance, and when Bruce demanded an explanation she told him all about it.
"Do you think it a good plan?" she asked rather anxiously. Bruce's good opinion meant much to her always.
"Fine," he replied with such heartiness that she feared he was joking. A glance at his serious face convinced her of her mistake.
"It'll be the very place for Doris," he said, "Mrs. Jonas will be quite devoted to her in her way, and Danny will love her at sight. Long, of course, will have to put up with her for the sake of the others," he added with a twinkle.
Patricia pretended not to understand, though Rosamond Merton's words about the "next girl" came back to her. "I'm not going to have Doris laughed about," she said warmly. "You know she's the dearest girl we know."
"Outside the family, I believe she does stand pretty high," admitted Bruce, with a smile down into his partner's eyes. "Small Sister Pat, may I tell you how glad I am?" he asked in a lower tone.
Patricia thought he meant about Tancredi's verdict, and she beamed on him. "It's too splendid, isn't it?" she exulted, and then he stared and had to be told.
He carried her back to Elinor and there he scolded her well for ever doubting that they would have allowed her to go on if there had not been definite promise in her.
"Tancredi told me herself when I went to see her about you that she would take no one, however recommended, unless they were going to make good," he said sternly. "You unbelieving little wretch, what right had you to make yourself miserable without telling us about it?"
Elinor drew her closer as she rose to meet Mr. Long, who had left Doris Leighton with Constance's aunt and was coming to claim her for the next dance.
"Never mind, Pat dear," she said with her brightest look of love. "It's all comeout splendidly and you've learned how much you really care for it. That's something, you know."
Mr. Long nodded at Patricia as he addressed Elinor. "I am sorry to be late for my dance," he said, with significant emphasis; "but I was making plans with my new secretary and the time passed quickly."
Elinor did not understand that it was Doris he was speaking of and she smiled her acquiescence and went gracefully out on the floor.
Bruce sat down in her vacant chair next to Patricia. "And now your mind is at rest about your friend's future," he said with his nicest smile, "let's talk about your own."
Patricia laid an eager hand on his arm. "Oh, Bruce dear, we won't have time," she bubbled. "It's going to be so long till I have a future. I have to study for ages and ages, and, you know, something might,mighthappen to me. Don't let's plan too far ahead. I'm just looking forward to finishing up the spring here atArtemis Lodge, studying with Tancredi, and then I'll be ready to go out to dear old Greycroft with the rest of you to see the summer through. What's behind that I'd rather not think about just now. I'm so glad, glad,gladto come back to the dear hopes, after I thought I'd lost them!"
Bruce smiled again at her flushed face. "You've come back with something in your hands, Miss Pat," he said with kindly gravity. "I think I see unselfishness and courage in them now."
And as Patricia's eyes filled with grateful tears, he rose, holding out a hand to her.
"Come and see Constance's aunt," he invited. "We've no right to be gossipping here all night."
Patricia sprang up with her eyes alight. "It's all come out right after all," she whispered to herself. "Oh, how happy I am, and how hard I'll try to study. I won't mind waiting a long, long time for the future. I am so glad, glad,gladthat it's there!"
As she followed Bruce across the room her face was glowing with rosy hope. Shewhispered to herself, "Some day I shall sing in the light, too. And tomorrow I shall sing the little song Milano sang, and Judy shall tell me that the ring has come back to it."