CHAPTER X"Hopes and disappointments, and much need of philosophy."
"Hopes and disappointments, and much need of philosophy."
A week later Joan started for New York, a closely packed suitcase in her hand, a closely packed trunk in the baggage car ahead, and some hurting memories to bear her company on the way.
Memories of Nancy's tears.
How Nancy could cry—once the barriers were down!
And worse than Nancy's tears were Doris's smiles.
Joan understood the psychology of smiles—as she remembered, her proud head was lowered and she was surprised to find thatshewas shedding tears.
"But it's all part of the price of freedom!" At last Joan dried her eyes. "And I'm willing to pay."
So Joan travelled alone up to town, and it was a wet, slippery night when she raised the knocker on Sylvia Reed's green-painted door and let it fall.
The door opened at once and disclosed the battle-ground of young genius. The old room was dim, for Sylvia had been toasting bacon and bread by the open fire and she needed no more light than the coals gave. Sylvia wore a smock and her hair was down her back. She looked about twelve until she fixed her eyes upon you, then she looked old; too old for a girl of twenty-four.
"Joan! Joan!" was all she said as she drew Joan in. Then, after a struggle, "Do you mind if I—sob?"
"No, I'm going to do it myself." And Joan proceeded to do so and remembered Nancy.
"I'm so—happy!" she gulped. "I was never so happy in my life. I feel as if I'd got hatched, broken through the shell!"
"You have," cried Sylvia, unevenly. "We're going to—to conquer everything! Come in your room, Joan, shed as much as you like. I expected you this morning. I have only bacon and eggs—shall we go out to eat?"
"Go out? Heavens, no! And I adore bacon and eggs. Sylvia, I have edged into glory!"
"You have, Joan—edged in, that's about it."
After the meal before the fire they cleared things away, and then they talked far into the night. Sylvia had already laid emphasis upon her small order.
"And really, Joan, that's great," she explained; "many a girl has to wait longer. Some day I'm going to be hung in the best exhibitions in town, but as a starter a magazine is nothing to be sneered at. I'm modelling, too—I have a duck of an idea for a frieze—only I'm not telling anybody about that—it's too ambitious. What are you going to do, Joan?" This sudden question made Joan stare.
"I—I don't know," she replied, frankly, but with no shade of despondency. "I'll take a look around to-morrow and, then pack my little wares in my basket and peddle them, as you have done. If anybody wants a dancer—here I am! Anybody want funny little songs sung?—here's your girl! I seem to have only samples. I can be adaptable. That's my big asset." They both laughed, but Sylvia soon grew serious. Her short service in reality had already sobered her. It was one thing for the gifted young girl of a fashionable school to watch the impression she made by her wits upon people who were paying high for just such exhibitions, and quite another to convince buyers of goods that they were what you believed them to be.
"The public is a tightwad," was what she muttered presently, "unless you're willing to compromise or—prove it to them."
"I—I don't know what you mean," Joan replied. She was groping after the thing that had made Sylvia's eyes grow old.
"Well, all you need to know, Joan, my lamb, is to prove it to them—never compromise!" Sylvia was herself again.Too well she knew the value of starting out with one's shield bright and shining even if one had to come homeonit, all rusted with one's life blood.
Things were not yet very tragic for Sylvia, and her shield was in good condition, but she had an imagination and a keen sense of self-protection.
"We're going to be the happiest pair in town," she whispered to Joan later that night as she bent over the tired girl; "and was there ever such a spot to live in? See, I'm going to raise your shade high, for the night is splendid and—the stars! Go to sleep with the stars watching you, old girl, and you're all right."
Joan slept heavily, dreamlessly, and awoke to—more bacon and eggs with hot rolls and coffee added.
"I'm going to float about a bit to-day," she said, and her feet were fairly dancing. "I've only known New York before holding to Aunt Dorrie's hand or my nurse's. Today I'm going to go back alone and then—catch up with myself."
Suddenly she began to sing her old graduation song:
"I'll sail upon the Dog-starI'll sail upon the Dog-star;I'll chase the moon, till it be noon,But I'll make her leave her horning."I'll climb the frosty mountainAnd there I'll coin the weather.I'll tear the rainbow from the skyAnd tie both ends together."
Sylvia leaned back, clapping and laughing. This was as it should be. Fun, youth, gaiety. She went to her easel in the north room, humming Joan's old ballad, and never did better work in her life than she did that day.
Joan sallied forth equally happy and her past, thank heaven, had been brief enough and rosy enough to make the tying of the ends nothing but a joyous task. She rode downtownon top of a bus. The crisp air stung and rallied her. She longed to sing from the swaying vehicle—she felt as if she were on top of the world and that it was keeping time to the tune she wanted to sing. She looked so lovely that the conductor grinned delightedly as he remarked:
"Snappy weather, miss!" and Joan nodded in friendly fashion and agreed. She walked to the old home, standing with drawn blinds by the little, close-locked park. It looked stately and reserved as one of the family might have done. It smilingly held its tongue.
"I'd like to see the sunken room and the fountain," Joan thought. "I cannot imagine it with the fountain and the birds still. They will never be still for me!"
She was a bit surprised to feel how far she had travelled from the Joan who was part of Nancy and the sunken room. It was quite shocking to find that she was not missing Nancy. She wondered if she were heartless and selfish? But after all, how could one be missed from a life in which she had never, could never, have part? And full well Joan realized that in this big venture of hers the old, except as a stepping-stone, was separated forever.
"If I become famous"—and Joan, tripping along, felt as if fame were as possible for her as the luncheon she was now feeling the need of—"if I become famous then they will understand, but even then my life and theirs will be different."
This point of view made Joan feel important, tragic, but desolate.
"I'm hungry," she thought, seriously, and made her way to a restaurant, where once she had gone with Doris while on a wonderful shopping expedition. The place was little changed; it had passed into other hands, but the menu proudly proclaimed the same enticing dishes.
Joan ordered what once had seemed the food of the gods, but to her now it was as chaff.
Across the table, made dim by her misty eyes, she seemed to see Doris smiling fondly, faithfully, at her. Doris's power over people was largely due to that faith she had in them.
"And I will be all you want me to be, Aunt Dorrie!" Joan promised that while she choked down the food. "I feel as if I were in the bear's house," she mused, whimsically. "I'm half afraid that I'll be pounced upon."
And so she paid her bill and went back, via the bus, to Sylvia. She ran up the long flights of stairs and burst in upon Sylvia with the announcement that "nothing would count if you didn't have someone to come home and tell it to." And then she forgot her glooms while they prepared an evening meal more conservative than bacon and eggs.
"Yes, my beloved," Sylvia returned as she plunged a wicked-looking little knife into the heart of a grapefruit: "And that accounts for half the marriages in life." Sylvia was refraining, just then, from telling of her own engagement. She wanted and needed Joan for the present—her secret would keep.
"You funny old Syl," Joan flung back over her shoulder as she drew the curtain over the closet that screened the housekeeping skeletons from the wonderful studio. "We won't have to resort to marriage, anyway. We've solved the eternal question!"
"Exactly! And now give those chops a twist. Thank the Lord, we both love them crisp."
The experiment in a few days had Joan by the throat. So utterly had she thrown herself into it, so almost unbelievably had Doris Fletcher permitted her to do so, that it took on all the attributes of reality and demanded nothing less than obedience to its laws, or surrender to defeat.
Doris had given Joan, when she came North, a check for five hundred dollars. Upon reaching Sylvia she had, after paying her expenses, that, and fifty dollars in cash left.
It had seemed boundless wealth for the first few days and continued to seem so until the necessity for bringing the check into action faced the girl.
"I must find something to do!" she vowed as she made her way to the bank where she had deposited the check. "No more fooling around."
Sylvia made no suggestions; never appeared to be anythingbut satisfied with things as they were. The companionship, the feeling ofhomethat Joan had introduced into her life, were deep joys to the girl who, like many women who know not the art of making a home, are soul-sick for the blessings of one.
"I'd work till my last tube ran dry," she thought to herself, standing at the wide north window, "if I could keep her singing and dancing about and—getting meals!"
Joan did not interfere with Sylvia's profession—she gave it new meaning—but Sylvia realized that Joan was interfering with her own. Still, Sylvia was never one to usurp the rights of a Higher Power, and at twenty-four she was intensely, shamefacedly religious and absolutely lacking in desire to shape the ends of others.
"The thing that's meant for her will slap her in the face soon," Sylvia comforted herself. "And she's such a wonder!"
But if Sylvia refrained from nudging Joan on her course, even to the extent of opening her eyes to sign-posts, others were not so obliging. Into Sylvia's studio youth, in its various forms of expression, floated naturally. Sylvia attracted women more than men, but her girl friends brought their male comrades with them and everybody was welcome to anything that Sylvia had. Fortunately most of the young people were honestly striving to earn their living; they were sweetly, proudly unafraid, but when they relaxed and played they made Joan's eyes widen, until she discovered that they often dressed their ideas, as they did themselves, rather startlingly while adhering, privately, to a respectability that they refused to make public.
They were, on the whole, a joyous lot belonging to that new class which causes older and more conservative folk to hold their breath as people do who watch children walking near a precipice and dare not call out for fear of worse danger.
The women attracted and interested Joan immensely. The men amazed her.
"You see," she confided to Sylvia, "the men seem like a new sex—neither men nor women."
Sylvia stood off regarding her work—she smiled happily and replied:
"They are, dear lamb. The girls will all, eventually, put on; fill up"—Sylvia added a dab of clay to a doubtful curve—"but men, when they chip off from the approved design, look like nothing on earth but daubs!"
"Yes," Joan added, "that's what I mean." Then, with a thoughtful puckering of the brows, "the girls will be women, somehow, but what will become of these—this new sex, Syl?"
Sylvia was tense as she eyed her work. She answered vaguely:
"Some of them will crawl up, anddothings and justify themselves, the others will——"
"Will what, Syl?"—for Sylvia was moving like a panther upon her prey—her prey being the small figure on the pedestal.
"Do this—or have it done for them!" and at this the offending clay was dashed to atoms.
"Failure!" breathed Sylvia—"mess!"
Then with characteristic quickness she began a new design. Joan watched her and caught a sudden insight. She realized what it was that marked Sylvia for success. Presently she asked musingly:
"Does any one ever marry these—these men, Syl?"
"Heavens, no! They only play with them; don't get confused on that line, lamb."
"Don't worry about me, Syl. I don't even want to play with them. Syl, I do not think I shall ever marry. I'm like Aunt Dorrie, but if I ever should marry it would be something to help one grip life, not something to—to—well, haul along!"
Sylvia turned and eyed Joan.
"My pet lamb," she remarked, "you are all right! Make sure that no one side-tracks you—give them half, but no more. And, Joan, run along now, child, and get dinner."
A few days later Sylvia broke into Joan's revery by the smouldering fire. It was a gray, cold day and Joan's spirits were at low tide.
She had not been successful in any venture as yet, and sovivid was her imagination, so sincere her determination to play fair, that starvation and early death seemed the most likely objects on her mental horizon. She had eliminated Doris and Nancy as life-preservers—they figured only as blessed memories in a past that was not yet regretted but which was fast fading into a black present.
"Joan, my darling, suppose you come to the rescue. My model has gone back on me—let me see you dance! My model had sand bags on her feet yesterday, anyhow, and my beautiful figure looks as if it had the beginnings of paralysis."
Joan sprang up. Instantly she was aglow and trembling with delight.
"Here, take this balloon," ordered Sylvia, "it is still gassy enough to float—it's a bubble, you know."
Through the room Joan floated after the elusive ball. Sylvia watched her with a light breaking over her own face.
"Great, great!" she cried from her corner, "go it, Joan, you're the real thing!"
Joan was not listening. What her eyes saw were the figures in the fountain of the sunken room. She was one of them again—the story was coming true! It was no longer a golden balloon she was touching, fondling, reaching for, tossing—it was sparkling water, and birds seemed singing in the big north studio.
At last it was over. On Sylvia's canvas the figure appeared to have undergone a marvellous change by a few rapid and bewitched strokes. The sand-bag impression had been removed—the figure was alive!
"Syl, dear, you are wonderful!"
Joan came and stood close. "What have you done to it?"
"Put you in it. Or," here Sylvia tossed herpaletteaside and caught Joan by the shoulders, "you've put yourself in me. I've a line on your opportunity, Joan, it came to me like a flash of inspiration. I hope you are game."
"I'm game, all right," Joan returned, quietly. She was thinking of her next visit to the bank.
"Dress your prettiest, my lamb. Look success from head to foot and then go to the address I'll give you. I have afriend, Elspeth Gordon, who is opening a tea room. She may not think you necessary to her scheme of things, she's Scotch and terribly thrifty, with a dash of nearness, but you tell her thatIsay you'll be the making of her."
Joan laughed and darted away to array herself in her best.
"What am I supposed to do there?" she asked. Her brightness and gaiety had returned.
"Oh! any one of your accomplishments. Of course it was merely a matter of making things jibe. Elspeth only telephoned about the tea room this morning."
"You mean I am to wait on tables or cook?" asked Joan, somewhat daunted.
"Lord, child, no! Here, wait. On second thought, I'll go with you. I might have known you couldn't put it over. Watch me!"
Sylvia was worth watching as she pulled her tam o' shanter over her head, her face all aglow.
"I've undervalued your 'samples,' as you call them, my lamb," she chatted on. "Of course you must take lessons and be a legitimate something some day—a singer, I fancy, but in the meantime we must utilize what we have."
On the way through the frosty streets Sylvia grew more mystifying.
"It's putting thepunchin these days that counts, Joan. You are to be—the punch. Eats are all right in their way, but folks do not live by bread alone; they flourish—or tea rooms do—on punch."
Joan, running along beside Sylvia, accepted the rambling talk without question. Her acquaintance with tea rooms was limited, but she had caught Sylvia's mood.
"Just imagine," Sylvia was a bit breathless; "a cold, dreary afternoon outside—a warm, bright tea room with enchanting tables drawn close to an open fire, and someone—you, my lamb—singing a ballad, when there is a lull—in the offings! Why, Elspeth is as good asmadeif she has the wit to grab you—and Elspeth is no fool."
Joan began to see the opening ahead.
"Oh!" she drawled—the word lasted a half block and ended in a mocking laugh.
"Could I dance in costume?" she asked, tossing her head, "or tell fortunes as I used to at school? Do you remember, Syl, how I went to the kitchen door, once, and took the maids all in, and then Miss Tibbetts came down to see what was going on, and I read her palm—and——" but here Joan stopped short physically. "What's the matter, Syl?" she said.
"Why, of course!" Sylvia was regarding Joan impartially. "They might object to having you break in on their silly tea-talk, the police might raid the place if you danced—but palm reading! Oh! my dear, you've struck it in the dark. Hurry!"
And hurry they did, arriving at the Bonny Brier Bush a few minutes later in rather a breathless but radiant state.
The proprietress, Elspeth Gordon, was a tall, slender woman, no longer young, but carrying herself with a dignity that amounted almost to majesty. She was gowned in crisp lavender linen with immaculate white collars and cuffs and was standing in the middle of her Big Experiment, as she termed it, when Joan and Sylvia burst in.
"All ready but the opening of the door—legitimately," she said, smiling on Sylvia and bowing cordially to Joan. "Doesn't it look inviting?" She gave a broad glance to the sweet, orderly room: the small tables, glass covered; the rose-chintz covers and draperies; the clear fire on the broad, old-fashioned hearth, and the blossoming rose bushes on the window sills.
"It certainly does," Sylvia replied with enthusiasm.
"I've put everything I own into this venture," Elspeth went on; "if I fail, I'm done for."
For all her years of discretion and her plain common sense, Elspeth Gordon's mouth and tone betrayed the artistic temperament. Upon that Sylvia was banking.
"I have a splendid cook—a Scotch woman. I'm going to specialize on scones, and oat cakes, and such things, but oh! it is the opening of the door and the awful days of waitinguntil the public finds out!"
"Exactly!" Sylvia nodded and Joan stared. "You'll have to lure the public, Elspeth, there's no doubt about that. Tea rooms are no novelty these days. You'll have to tease it with a bait, and the rest is easy.
"Now, my dear, here's your bait!" With this, Sylvia turned so sharply upon Joan that Elspeth started nervously and regarded her guest as she might have a tempting worm: something possibly necessary, but which she hesitated to touch.
"She can read—palms!"
"Oh! Syl——" Joan panted, but Sylvia scowled her to silence.
"She can read palms," she repeated, holding Elspeth by her firm tone; "a little more reading up, a bit of experience, and she'll work wonders. She doesn't know it, but she's psychic—of course this is going to be fun; not real. Just a lure. We'll have Joan in a long white robe—a girl I know can design it. We'll have a filmy veil over the lower part of her face—mystery, you know. Look at her eyes, Elspeth, aren't they great? Give that 'into-the-future' stare, Joan!"
Joan rose to the fun of it all. She grasped the possibilities, but Elspeth faltered.
"I don't want to be—ridiculous," she said, slowly. "I'm quite serious, and my food is going to be above question."
"Of course! And if you think Joan will make you ridiculous, you've got another guess coming, Elspeth. Now, when do you open?"
"I have planned to open day after to-morrow." Elspeth spoke hesitatingly, keeping her cool, businesslike glance on Joan.
"All right," Sylvia was tapping her fingers restlessly; "that's Thursday. I'll get a girl I know to work on the costume to-night; we'll buy books on palmistry on our way home. We'll give you just four days to lure your public with scones, and then if you don't call Joan up, she'll start a tea room herself across the way."
This made them all laugh, but there was an earnestness in their eyes.
And on Sunday night Elspeth spoke over the telephone.
"Could you come to-morrow at two, Miss Thornton?"
Joan, sitting close to the telephone, winked at Sylvia. They had all been sitting up nights working, reading, and praying for that question.
"I think so," was the reply in quite an unmoved and businesslike tone.
"And remember, Joan," Sylvia cautioned later, "this is but a means to fit you for a profession!"
"I'll remember," Joan twinkled, "in the meantime, I am going to enjoy myself."
CHAPTER XI"Let us live happily, free from care among the busy."
"Let us live happily, free from care among the busy."
There was one of Sylvia's friends who, from the first, caught and held Joan's imagination. That was Patricia Leigh.
Patricia rarely got further than the imagination—after that she was idealized or suspected according to the person dealing with her.
Joan idealized Patricia—"Pat," she was always called.
The girl was fair and delicately frail, but never ill. She wrote verse, when moved to do so, and did it excellently, and she never thought of it as poetry.
When she was not moved to verse—and she had a good market for it—she designed the most astonishing garments for her friends. She could, at any time, have secured a fine position in this line and was frequently turning away offers. When the designing palled upon Pat she fell back upon her personal charm and enjoyed herself!
Patricia had, outwardly, a blood-curdling philosophy which she frankly avowed she believed in, absolutely, though Sylvia warned Joan that it was "bunk!"
What really was the case was this: Patricia was an adept at playing with fire. Lightly she tossed the flame from hand to hand; gaily she laughed, but at the critical moment Patricia ran!
She revelled in portraying the fire danger, but she covered her retreats by masterful silence.
"My code is this," she would proclaim: "In passing, snatch! You can discard at leisure."
There was no doubt but that Patricia did more than hershare of snatching. When she played, she played wildly, but she was a coward when pay time came.
But who was there to show Patricia in her true light? Her good qualities, and they were many, pleaded for her. She was too little and sweet to be held to brutal exactions, and she was such a gay, blithesome creature, at her maddest, that when she ran one felt more like commending her speed than hurling epithets of scorn at her.
"If she wasn't a thousand times better than she makes herself out to be," Sylvia confided to Joan, "I'd never let her into my studio; but Pat is golden at heart, and she ought to be spanked for acting as she does."
"Hasn't she any family?" asked Joan. "No one whom she may—hurt?"
"That's it, my lamb, she hasn't. Mother died when she was four years old; father, an actor, but devoted to her, and insisted upon trotting her around with him. She was confided to the care of cheap boarding-house women; she ran away from school once and travelled miles alone to get to her father, and when he died—Pat was eighteen then—she began her career, as she calls it. Snatch and skip!"
"Poor, dear, little Pat!" said Joan, and her eyes filled.
"There, now!" Sylvia exclaimed, "she's caught your imagination."
That was true, and by the magic Joan began to see life as Patricia saidshesaw it: a place of detached opportunities and no obligations.
"I believe," Patricia would say, looking her divinest, "that in developing ourselves we most serve others. We relieve others of our responsibilities; we express ourselves and have no gnawing ambitions to sour us. Self-sacrifice is folly—it makes others mean and selfish, others who may not hold a candle to us for usefulness. Now"—and here Patricia, smoking her cigarette, would look impishly at Sylvia, quite forgetting Joan—"take, for instance, Teddy Burke!"
"Pat!" Sylvia was in arms, "I will not hear of your actions with Mr. Burke. They're disgraceful. You should be ashamed of them."
"On the other hand," Patricia always looked like a young saint, rather a wild one, to be sure, when she spoke of Burke, "I'm proud of my defiance of stupid limitations and fogyish ideals. Here is a man, a corker, Joan, with a wife who, acting upon tribal instinct, never dreams that she may be set aside. She travels the world over, foot loose, but with her little paw dug deep in her husband's purse. Here are two ducks of kiddies living with governesses and nurses over on a Jersey estate and pining for the higher female touch. Here am I with a batch of verses going quite innocently into Mr. Burke's office—he's an editor, you know—and he buys my stuff and howls for more. I grow white and thin providing more, and in weak moments show my beautiful inner soul to him. He, being a gentleman and an understanding one, asks me out to Jersey, and those children just cram into the hungry corners of my life. They play with me; they—they"—here a subtle touch of truth struck through Patricia's ironic tones—"theyteachme to play. Haven't I a right to snatch—what was snatched from me?"
Sylvia cried out: "Rot!" But Joan made no reply.
Often would Sylvia, deeply serious, urge Patricia to turn her talents to designing.
"Verses only take you near danger, Pat, dear," she would say; "and look at the things you can make for people! Why, dear, you bring out all their good points."
"You would have me stick my precious little soul full of needles and pins? Oh! you black-hearted creature. Not on your life, Syl! Designing is my job—it gets enough for me to fly on—but I mean to fly! And as I fly, I pause to sip and feed, but fly I must."
For Joan, Patricia felt a strange attraction. The child that was so persistent in Joan appealed to Patricia while it irritated her.
"She'll get hurt if she doesn't grow up!" the girl thought, and began at once rather crude forcing measures.
"A professional woman," she imparted to Joan, "is a different breed from the household pet—you must learn to scrimmage for yourself and take what helps your profession.You cannot stop and nurse theyouof you. One's Art is the thing. Now love helps—love the whole world, Joan, it keeps you young. Play with it, but don't make the mistake of letting it take you in. The thing that threatens Sylvia is her—Plain John!"
Joan and Patricia laughed now. Sylvia's love affair was tenderly old-fashioned. Her man was on the Pacific Coast, making ready for her; she was going to keep right on with her work—her John had planned her studio before he had the house!
"'Love and fly!' is my motto," Patricia rambled on; "fly while the flying is good. Get your wings clipped, and where are you? Sylvia will have children and they will mess up her studio and her career—and look at her promise!" It was Patricia that had forced Sylvia's engagement into the open.
In some vague way Patricia felt that she was educating Joan, not weakening her foundations; but gradually Joan succumbed to the philosophy of snatch-and-fly, and the Brier Bush gave ample opportunity for her to practise it.
From the first she was a success. In her loose, flowing robe of white—Patricia had wrought that with inspiration—she was a witching figure. The filmy veil over the lower part of her face did but emphasize the beauty and size of her golden eyes. The lovely bronze hair was coiled gracefully around the little head, and after a week or so the gravity with which she read palms gave the play a real touch of interest.
People dropped in, sipped tea, and paid well to play with the pretty disguised young creature who was "guessing so cleverly." They departed and sent, or brought, others. The Brier Bush became popular and successful; Elspeth Gordon secured for it a most respectable standing.
"Why, Miss Gordon is the granddaughter of a bishop!" it was whispered, "and take my word for it that little priestess there with her is either a professional, finding the game lucrative, or a society girl out on a lark behind a screen."
Most people believed the latter conjecture was true and then the Brier Bush became fashionable.
Joan reaped what seemed to her a harvest, for Elspeth was as just as she was canny.
"After a year," Joan promised Sylvia, "I will begin to study music seriously. Why, I have decided to specialize, Syl—English and Scotch ballads"; and then off she rippled on her "Dog-star"—the song was a favourite in the studio; so was the Bubble Dance.
And about this time Joan's letters to Ridge House made the hearts there lighter.
"A job!" Nancy repeated, reading the announcement of Joan's success.
"I thought only workingmen had jobs. And in a restaurant, too! Aunt Dorrie, I don't think you ought to let Joan do such things."
"Joan is earning her living," Doris said, calmly, though her heart beat quicker. "These fad things are often successes, financially, and I can trust Joan perfectly."
Christmas was a disappointment.
"I cannot leave this year, Aunt Dorrie," Joan wrote; "this is our busy time. Next year I will be free and studying music."
Doctor Martin was to have been back from the West, but was detained, so Nancy and Doris again helped Father Noble with his hill people, and Mary came over to Ridge House and decorated the rooms to surprise them when they came back from the longest trip of all.
Doris had discarded, largely, her couch. With her inward anxiety about Joan to be controlled, she was more at ease in action and it was good for her.
Nancy's devotion was taken for granted, as was her happiness. What more could Nancy want?
It was Mary who resented this.
"'Tain't fair!" she muttered as she went about her self-imposed tasks, "'tain't fair." And scowlingly Mary still bided her time.
Early in the new year David Martin returned from the West bearing about him the impression of battle crowned byvictory. He was jovial and boyishly delighted with Doris's improvement.
"I haven't long to stay," he confided to her, "but I had to see how things were going here before I settled down in New York. Nancy looks fine! She's happy, too." This to Nancy, who was fondling the pups by the fire.
"Well, then, how about Joan?"
Doris, her hands folded in her lap, did not reply.
At this Martin took to striding up and down the long, sunny room. The thought of Nancy rested him; Joan always irritated him.
"When is she coming back?" he asked suddenly.
"She's got——" Nancy hesitated at the word; "she's got a job. She won't come home until she's lost that."
Martin turned on Doris a perplexed and awakened face.
"What's this?" His voice had the ring of the primitive male.
"Well, you know Joan is with Sylvia Reed, David. You remember that girl who painted so beautifully at Dondale? Sylvia has a studio, now, and is regularly launched. She's doing extremely good work. Nan, show Doctor Martin that magazine cover that Sylvia did."
David took the magazine indifferently from the obedient Nancy and dropped it at once.
"Who's looking after them?" he inquired, leaping, in his deadly rigid way, over much debatable ground.
"They're looking after themselves, David." Doris metaphorically got into position for a severe bout.
"You don't mean," Martin came close and glowered over Doris, "you cannot possibly mean that Joan is going in for that loose, smudgy stunt that some girls are doing down in that part of town known as Every Man's Land?"
Nancy ran to the window and bent over her loom. She was always frightened when David Martin looked as if he were going to perform an operation.
"Certainly not," Doris replied; "the girls have a place uptown in a perfectly respectable quarter. Joan shares the expense. This is very real and fine, David. And you are notgoing to blame me for permitting Joan to do this—it was the only thing to be done. The girl has a right to her life and the use of her talents; this was an opening that we could not ignore. Sylvia Reed is older than Joan."
"How much?" David's voice was like steel.
"Four years." In spite of her anxiety, Doris had to laugh.
"Is this a joke, Doris?" Martin was confused.
"Why, no, David, it isn't."
"Were you mad, Doris? Why, don't you know that many girls are simply crooked while they call themselves emancipated? I am amazed at you. How did you dare! Have you thought what an injustice you've done the girl? Keeping her in cotton wool, feeding her on specialized food, and then letting her loose among—among garbage pails?"
Nancy fled from the room. The operation was on!
Doris got up and linked her arm in David's—they paced the floor slowly, getting control of themselves as they went. Presently Doris spoke:
"You see, dear, I have always held certain beliefs—I have always been willing to test them—and pay."
"But dare you let Joan pay?" Martin was calm now.
"Not for mine, but for her own—yes. Aren't you going to let this boy of yours try his own flight, David?"
"That's different."
"It won't be always, David, dear—someone must make the break—our dear young things in the big cities are breasting the waves, David. I glory in them, and even while I tremble, I urge them on. You should have seen Joan when she came to me with her great desire burning and throbbing. Why, it would have been murder to kill in her what I saw in her eyes then. It was herRightdemanding to be free."
"It's the maddest thing I ever heard of!" Martin broke in. "I wonder if you have counted the cost, Doris?"
"Yes, David, through many long days and wakeful nights. I have shuddered and felt that it was different for Joan; thatsheshould have been kept in—in bondage. It would havebeen bondage for her. But, David, the only thing I darednotdo was to keep freedom from the child."
"And suppose"—Martin's face grew grimmer—"suppose she goes under?"
"She will come to me—she promised. I am prepared to go as far as I can with my girls on their way; not mine. That was part of my bargain with God when I took them."
"You're a very strange and risky woman, Doris."
"And you are going to be fair, David, dear. Now tell me about your boy."
Instantly Martin was taken off guard. He smiled broadly and patted Doris's hand, which lay upon his arm.
"Bud's coming out on top!" he said—Clive Cameron was always Bud to Martin. "I've kept closemouthed about the boy," he went on, forgetting Joan; "he's meant a lot to me, but I've always recognized the possibility of failure with him and felt the least I could do, if things came to the worst, was to leave an exit for him to slip out of, unnoticed. He's always kept us guessing—my sister and I. He never knew his father. From a silent, observing child he ran into a stormy, vivid youth that often threatened disaster if not positive annihilation—but he's of the breed that dashes to the edge, grinds his teeth, plants his feet, and looks over!—then, breathing hard, draws back. After a while I got to banking on that balking trick of his. Once I got used to the fact that the boy meant to know life—not abuse it—I knew a few easy years while he plodded or, at times, plunged, through college.
"He couldn't settle, though, on a job, and that upset us at last. He ran the gamut of professions in his mind—but none of them appealed to him. When he was nineteen he suddenly took an interest in his father—we'd never told him much about him. Cameron wasn't a bad chap—he simply hadn't character enough tobebad—he was a floater! When Bud got that into his system, it sobered him more than if he'd been told his father was a scamp. A year later the boy came to me and said: 'Uncle David, if you don't think I'd queer your profession—I'm going to make a try at it.'"
Martin's face beamed and then he went on:
"That was a big day for me, Doris, but even when the chap went into it, I kept quiet. I feared he might balk. But he hasn't! He's big stuff—that boy of mine. He confided everything to me this time. Certain phases of the work almost drove him off—dissecting and, well, the grimmer aspects! Often, he told me, he had to put up a stiff fight with himself before he could enter a dissecting room—but that does one of two things, Doris: makes a doctor human or a brute. It has humanized Bud. He'll be through now, in a year or so, and I'm going to throw him neck and crop into my practice. I'll stand by for awhile, but I have great faith in my boy!"
Doris looked up at the grave, happy face above her own.
For a moment a sensation she had never experienced before touched her—it was like jealousy!
"How he would have adored a son of his own," she thought, "and what a father he would have been!"
She faltered before speaking, then she said quietly:
"If—if I have deprived you of much, David, at least I have not killed the soul of you."
"I'm learning as I go along, my dear," Martin replied.
"We're not all developed in the same way."
"And, David," Doris trembled as she spoke, "as you feel for your boy, so I feel for my Joan. You must trust me."
"That is different," Martin stiffened.
"It is the same."
CHAPTER XII"In all directions gulfs and yawning abysses."
"In all directions gulfs and yawning abysses."
That was what David Martin felt was encompassing Joan. He wanted to take a hand in her affairs, but before he left Ridge House Doris made him promise that unless she changed her mind, he would not even call upon Joan.
"If she knows that you have your eye on her, David, much of what I hope for will be threatened. You have quite a dreadful eye, dear man, and Joan is sensitive. She may look you up—I will write to her about you. If she doesn't, she does not want you to—well, Davey, meddle! And she has a perfect right to her freedom. She is self-supporting now!"
Doris could but show her pride in Joan's cleverness.
"Very well, Doris. I wash my hands of the matter, but I think it sheer madness!"
With that Martin returned to town and waited, hopefully, for a summons from Joan. It did not come!
He did go so far, one evening, as to walk on the block where the studio was, but he got no satisfaction from that except the proof of its respectability.
"I cannot look back just now!" Joan had thought when considering Martin, "and Uncle David would tell me things about Aunt Dorrie and Nancy that would rumple all my calm, and I dare not risk it."
In this she was wise—for there were times when, the novelty and freedom of self-support worn off, the temptation to return to the waiting flesh-pots was very great. At such moments of weakness Patricia rallied her.
"Don't be one of the women who are ready to sell theirbirthrights for a meal ticket," Patricia urged, looking her daintiest and saintliest.
"But whatisone's birthright?" Joan asked.
"The self-expression of—yourself," Patricia smiled serenely.
This always reinstated Joan in her old resolve.
"To come to town and cut capers at the Brier Bush," she confided to Sylvia, once Patricia was off the scene, "is poor proof of anything. Syl, I'm going to get to work seriously soon with my music."
"We'll get a piano," practical Sylvia suggested; "there is no need to grow rusty while you're making money."
And so they secured the piano, and the studio had another charm.
The Brier Bush, in the meantime, was waxing great in popularity and financial success. Elspeth Gordon from her position of assurance gave it a unique touch. No one could take liberties with her tea room. Presently delicious luncheons were added to the scheme, and, while Joan's part was regarded with amused complacency, the excellent food and service commanded respect.
At first women came largely to the pretty, attractive rooms; then, occasionally, men, rather timidly, presented themselves, but finding themselves taken for granted and the food above reproach, they appeared in numbers and enjoyed it.
And then one rather gloomy, early spring day Mrs. Tweksbury came upon the scene.
Joan knew her at once, although the old face was more wrinkled and delicate.
Of course Mrs. Tweksbury had not the slightest inkling concerning Joan's movements, and she looked upon the veiled young creature moving about the tea room with a cool, calm stare of amused disapproval.
"Quite a faddish thing you're making of your venture," she said to Elspeth Gordon, for of course with a bishop for a grandfather Miss Gordon was taken for granted. Elspeth smiled her most dignified smile and replied graciously:
"Just a bit of amusement, Mrs. Tweksbury. It helps digestion and, incidentally, helps business."
"But the—the young woman, Miss Gordon—is she a professional?"
"Have you tested her, Mrs. Tweksbury?"
"Oh! no, my dear Miss Gordon." Mrs. Tweksbury had beautiful old hands and she turned the palms up while she considered them.
"Suppose you judge for yourself, Mrs. Tweksbury." Elspeth was charmingly easy in her manner.
"Who is she?" bluntly asked the old lady.
"Ah!" And here Elspeth recoiled. "My palmist and my best recipes are sacred to me, Mrs. Tweksbury. But may I call my little seer to you?"
Mrs. Tweksbury consented, and when Joan looked at the pink, soft palm a spirit of mischief possessed her.
Skirting as near as she dared to the facts in her possession, she gently, but startlingly, took the owner of the hand at a disadvantage.
At first Mrs. Tweksbury was confirmed in her idea that the girl before her was a society girl—her general knowledge could be explained by that, but suddenly Joan became more daring—she vividly recalled much that she had heard Doris say in defence of the old woman whom Nancy and she feared and often ridiculed.
It took but a twist to change a private incident into a blurred but amazing suggestion.
Mrs. Tweksbury was frankly and angrily impressed.
When passing from the room Miss Gordon spoke to her:
"Do you believe in my Veiled Lady?" she asked.
"Certainly not, Miss Gordon, but I'm—afraid of her! You had better guard her somewhat—or she'll be taken seriously."
"We'll never seeheragain!" prophesied Joan, chuckling over her victory with the old lady; "I've evened up for Nan and me!" she thought, and then the incident passed from her mind.
But not so easily did the matter go from the confused thoughts of Mrs. Tweksbury.
"I dare say," she finally concluded, "that if one could tear the veil from the face of that impudent little minx one would discover the smartest of the objectionable Smart Set. The girl should be curbed—how dare she!"—here Emily Tweksbury flushed a rich mahogany red as she recalled some of the cleverly concealed details of, what seemed to her, the most private affairs.
"Outrageous!" she snorted, and vowed that she deserved all that she had received for supporting the new-fangled nonsense that was spreading like a new social evil in the heart of all she held sacred.
Patricia Leigh had not been so interested in years as she was in Joan's affairs at the Brier Bush. They smacked of high adventure and thrilled the girl.
To Sylvia they were rather grovelling means to a legitimate end. She scowled at Joan's vivid description of her experiences and warned her to trust not too fully to her veil.
"But it's a splendid lark!" Patricia burst in, defensively; "it's Art spelled in capitals. Joan, take my advice and get points about the swells and scare them stiff!"
"Pat, you should be ashamed!" Sylvia scowled darkly.
"Yes?" purred Patricia. Then: "I see the finish of Plain John's romance, my sinister Syl, if you don't limber up your spine. Genius, love, and unbendingvirtuenever pull together."
And then—it was when March was dreariest and drippiest—Kenneth Raymond strode—that was the only word to describe his long-legged advance—into the Brier Bush for luncheon with Mrs. Tweksbury.
He had listened to variations of Mrs. Tweksbury's first visit to the tea room with varying degrees of impatience.
He hated tea rooms; he had little interest in young women, and particularly disapproved of the type bordering on license; but he had consented to go in order to lay the old lady's growing nervousness concerning the details of her first visit.
"My dear," Mrs. Tweksbury had said to Raymond, "the more I think of it the more I am puzzled."
"Exactly," Raymond replied; "the more you think of it the more puzzles you introduce. Undoubtedly the young woman is a girl playing outside her legitimate preserves. She's taking an unfair advantage. They always do. Presuming on sex and social position. Unless the girl is an outlaw, she'll confine her antics to the safe outer edge."
In this mood Raymond strode into the Brier Bush with Mrs. Tweksbury at his heels. They took a table near the fireplace and, rather arrogantly, Raymond looked about.
"No one was going to take him in!" was what his stern young eyes and dominant chin proclaimed.
He was of that type of man that gives the impression of being handsome without any of the damaging features so often included. He was handsome because he was strong, well set up, and completely unconscious of himself.
He was always willing to pay the right price for what he wanted, but he meant to get good value! He was lavish with what was his own, as Mrs. Tweksbury almost tearfully asserted, but about that he never spoke and always frowned down any reference to it.
He expected the usual thing at the Brier Bush, and was just enough to show some appreciation when he did not find it.
The rooms were unique and charming. Elspeth Gordon was impressive as she walked about among her guests. She might permit them to be amused; help, indeed, to give them a cheery hour in the busy day, but not for a moment would she admit what could be questionable in her scheme.
That being proved, Raymond critically attacked the bill of fare. Its promise was like the atmosphere of the place, honest and wholesome.
No man is proof against such dishes as were presently set before him. Raymond was so engrossed by their merit and so surprised by it that he forgot the main thing that had brought him to the Brier Bush until he felt Mrs. Tweksbury's foot firmly and insistently pressing his. He looked up.
Joan was passing their table and very slightly she inclined her head toward it.
Her eyes were what startled Raymond. If eyes in themselves have no expression, then the soul, looking through, has full play.
All Joan's youth and ignorance and unconscious wisdom shone forth. Mrs. Tweksbury amused her, but the man at the table disturbed her. She misinterpreted the calm glance he fixed upon her. It was a disapproving glance, to be sure, and Joan shrank from that, but she felt that he was cruelly misjudging her and was so sure of himself that he dared to do it—without even knowing!
This she resented with a flash of her wonderful eyes.
What Raymond really meant was—doubt. Not of her, but himself.
"Saucy witch!" whispered Mrs. Tweksbury; "Ken, test her, for my sake!" Again the foot under the table steered Raymond's thoughts.
He found himself smiling up at Joan and, rising, offered her the third chair at his table.
She sat down quite indifferently, but graciously, and spread out her pretty hands. Joan's hands were lovely—Raymond was susceptible to hands. To him they indicated fineness or the reverse. Art could do much for hands, but Nature could do more.
Quite as graciously and simply as Joan had done Raymond spread his own hands forth with the remark: "At your mercy, Sibyl."
Now Joan, through much study of books and with a certain intuition that stood her in good stead, had cleverly conquered her tricks. For what they were worth, she offered them charmingly, seriously, and with impressiveness.
Then, too, from much guessing, with astonishing results, she had grown to half believe in what she was doing. Patricia aided her in this. Patricia had a superstitious streak and took to fads as she took to her verse—on her flying trips.
"You are a business man," Joan began, fixing her splendideyes on the frankly upturned hands—she was comparing them with the hands of the Third Sex, those studio-haunting men whose hands, like their linen and morals, were too often off-colour.
"An honest business man!" Joan thought that, but did not voice it.
"You will succeed—if——" This she spoke aloud and then looked up. She was ready now to punish her prey for that look of doubt in his eyes.
"If—what?" Raymond was conscious of the "feel" of the hand which held his—Joan's other hand was lying open beside his on the table.
"If——" and now Joan traced delicately a line in his palm—a faint, wavering line running hither and thither among the more strongly marked ones; "if you strengthen this line," she said. "You are too sure of—of your inherited traits. This line indicates individuality; it will rule in the end, but you are making personality your god now. That is unwise. As a well-trained servant it is wonderful, but as a master it will run you off your best course."
How Patricia would have gloried could she have heard her words mouthed by Joan!
Raymond stared. He felt Mrs. Tweksbury's foot on his and, mentally, clung to it as a familiar and safe landmark.
"Just what difference lies between individuality and personality?" he asked so seriously that Joan's mouth twitched under her life-saving veil. She brought Patricia's philosophy into more active action.
"The difference is the meaning of life. One comes into this consciousness with his individuality—or soul, or whatever one cares to call it—intact. It accepts or repudiates what the personality—that is intellect—learns through the five senses. If it istruth, then it becomes part of the individuality—if it is untruth, it is discarded. Individuality is never in doubt—itknows. It is not bound by foolish laws evolved from the five-sensed personality; it will, in the end, have its way. You will have to listen more to your individuality; be controlled less by your personality. The latter istoo fully developed"—at this broad slash Raymond coloured in spite of himself—"the former has been pitifully ignored."
The pause that followed was made normal only by the pressure on Raymond's foot.
Presently he said, boldly:
"You have the same line in your own hand, Sibyl!"
Joan started and looked down. She had not considered a home thrust possible. Instinctively her long, slim fingers clutched the secret of her palm.
"I am not reading my own lines," she said, quietly; "I am learning from them, however!"
Then she rose with dignity and passed to another table where a broad, flat, commonplace hand lay ready.
"Well?" Mrs. Tweksbury pounced into the arena like a released gladiator. "What do you make of it, Ken?"
Raymond laughed. He saw that Mrs. Tweksbury was more impressed than she cared to acknowledge.
"I don't know what she told you, Aunt Emily," he said, taking up the check beside his plate, "but it was rather cleverly concealed rot, as far as I am concerned. Drivel; faddy drivel, but the girl's a lady, or whatever that word stands for. I half believe the child takes herself seriously—she has wonderful eyes. She should wear blinders—it isn't fair to leave them outside the veil. Comical little beggar!"
"But, Ken," Emily Tweksbury followed her companion from the room, "you are like that—you really are! You just take life by the throat and you are sure of yourself in a way that frightens me."
"Oh, come, Aunt Emily, that girl has caught you by her nonsense. See here, let us do a bit of sleuthing! I bet the sibyl often is at dinners where we go—and I'm not so sure but what I would know those hands of hers anywhere—they were not ordinary hands. Two can play at her little game."
This seemed to offer some inducement to Mrs. Tweksbury and she brightened.
"Her walk, too, Ken. Did you notice that?"
"Yes—I did, by Jove! Longer strides than most girlstake and a swing from the hips like a graceful dance motion. Yes, that walk should be a dead give-away."
"And her eyes, Ken, shehaseyes!"
"Yes," rather musingly, "she has eyes!"
"Ken, we mustn't give further countenance to this silly, faddy place."
This with conviction.
"Why should we, Aunt Emily? I only went at your request, you know."
"Of course. The girl got on my nerves." Mrs. Tweksbury could smile now.
"Well, I'm going to get on hers!" Raymond set his jaw.
Two days later Kenneth Raymond went to the Brier Bush again for luncheon. This time Mrs. Tweksbury did not accompany him.
He took a table at the far end of the room near the windows—he wanted light. He ordered his luncheon, read his paper, and to all intents and purposes gave the impression of a business man who, having discovered a place of good food, repaired to it with confidence. Of course Elspeth Gordon did not remember him—why should she? But Joan did—and why should she? She was reading the palms of a hilarious group near the table at which Raymond sat reading the stock reports; she was in a gale of high spirits but, when she was aware of Raymond's glance, she paused and caught her breath.
"Anything bad in my hand?" asked the girl whose palm Joan was scanning.
"Oh, no! Something splendid. You are never to make mistakes, because your caution is stronger than your desire," Joan murmured.
"I thinkthatis stupid," the girl returned; "no fun in that kind of thing."
Joan prolonged each reading at the safe, jolly table; she planned, when she was done, to ignore the man near her and go in the opposite direction, but while she planned she was aware that she would do no such thing. The bird and the snake know this force, so do the moon and the tides.
And at last Joan got up and turned toward Raymond. As she passed his table—he was busy with his soup then—her head was high and her eyes fixed upon Miss Gordon at the other end of the room. She was estimating her chances of reaching Elspeth with the limited self-control at her command. Then she heard words and paused without turning her head.
"I wish you would stop a moment. I have a question to ask you."
Joan had a sudden fear that if she did not stop the question would be shouted.
"Very well," she said, quietly, and sat down opposite Raymond.
She clasped her pretty hands before her and—waited.
It is not easy to laugh away the moments in life that we cannot account for—they often seem the only moments of tremendous import; they are the channels which, once entered, give access to wide experiences. Joan felt her breath coming hard; she was frightened. Raymond pushed his plate aside and, leaning forward a bit over his clasped hands, said casually:
"Just how much of this rot do you believe?"
"None of it."
"Why do you do it?"
"I am earning my bread and butter and—dessert."
"Especially—the dessert?"
"No. Especially bread and butter. It is only a bit of fun, you know—this reading of the palms. Miss Gordon thinks it—it aids digestion," Joan was speaking hardly above a whisper.
"She does, eh?" Raymond had an insane desire to snatch the shielding veil from the face across the table. He wondered what would happen if he did?
"I wish," he said instead, "I wish you'd cut it out, you know."
"What—my bread and butter?"
"No—this tomfoolery. I don't believe you have to earn your living. I'd lay a wager that you are doing it as a stuntto vary the monotony of a dull existence, but there are other and better ways of doing that, you know."
Raymond was deadly earnest and did not stop to consider the absurdity of his words and tones.
"What ways?" asked Joan, and Raymond detected the suggestion of a smile behind the vapoury veil.
"I don't think I need to tell you that," he said.
"Perhaps not—but after consideration I've chosen this way. I like it." Joan was getting control of herself, and in proportion to her gain Raymond lost.
"I suppose you think me an impudent ass," he ventured.
"I'm—thinking of something else," Joan answered.
"What, for instance?"
"That line—in your hand."
"I thought you said this was only fun; that you did not believe in it?" Raymond frowned as he saw his next course advancing toward him.
"There are exceptions," and Joan helped him arrange his dishes.
"Some day, if you are interested, come and I'll tell you more about that line in your hand." She rose with quiet grace and moved away.
"Oh! I say—" Raymond followed her with his eyes—"why not to-day?"
"There are others," Joan tossed back and was gone.
That night she went to Patricia Leigh's. Patricia had had a busy and prosperous day. She had written some verses that she felt were good—they had a tang that always gave Patricia the belief in their quality; she had sold two other small things. She was, therefore, at her flightiest, and greeted Joan with delight.
"I'm so glad Syl is not tagging on, Joan," she said. "Syl is the best they make, but she does somehow get under the skin and make people feel themselves 'seconds'."
Joan sank into a chair.
"Syl is writing reams to her John," she explained. "I doubt if she noticed my leaving. She probably thinks I'm still singing."
And then Joan told Patricia about the man who, for some unknown reason, had made himself permanent in her interest.
"I wish I knew about him," she murmured; "I cannot recall any one in the least like him in Mrs. Tweksbury's life. I don't want to ask Aunt Doris—besides, he may just be a chance acquaintance of Mrs. Tweksbury's. I hardly think that, though—for she looks volumes at him and he sort of appropriates her."
Patricia was frankly interested—she was flying, and at such moments her bird's-eye view was a wide and sympathetic one.
Joan, too, in this mood was bewitching.
"All Joan needs," thought Patricia, "is to discover her sex appeal; get it on a leash and take it out walking. She's like a marionette now—hopping about, doing stunts, but not conscious of her performance."
"Lamb!" Patricia lighted a fresh cigarette, "a week from to-night you breeze in here and what I do not know about your young man, by that time, will not count for or against him."
"But, Pat, do be careful!" Joan was frightened by what she had set in motion.
"Careful, lamb? Why, if carefulness wasn't my keynote, I'd be—well! I wouldn't be here."