Part 5 (1/2)
”It is not achievement you want, but success. That is why,” said he.
There was silence for a moment, broken by light footsteps on the stair and a knock. ”My good friends,” cried Mademoiselle Palicsky from the doorway, ”have you been quarrelling?” She made a little dramatic gesture to match her words, which brought out every line of a black velvet and white corduroy dress, which would have been a horror upon an Englishwoman. Upon Mademoiselle Palicsky it was simply an admiration-point of the kind never seen out of Paris, and its effect was instantaneous. Kendal acknowledged it with a bow of exaggerated deference.
”_C'est parfait!_” he said with humility, and lifted a pile of studies off the nearest chair for her.
Nadie stood still, pouting. ”Monsieur is amused,” she said. ”Monsieur is always amused. But I have that to tell which monsieur will graciously take _au grand servieux_.”
”What is it, Nadie?” Elfrida asked, with something like dread in her voice. Nadie's air was so important, so rejoiceful.
”_Ecoutez donc!_ I am to send two pictures to the Salon this year. Carolos Duran has already seen my sketch for one, and he says there is not a doubt--_not a doubt_--that it will be considered. Your congratulations, both of you, or your hearts' blood! For on my word of honor I did not expect it this year.”
”A thousand and one!” cried Kendal, trying not to see Elfrida's face. ”But if you did not expect it this year, mademoiselle, you were the only one who had so little knowledge of affairs,” he added gaily.
”And now,” Nadie went on, as if he had interrupted her, ”I am going to drive in the Bois to see what it will be like when the people in the best carriages turn and say, 'That is Mademoiselle Nadie Palicsky, whose picture has just been bought for the Luxembourg.'”
She paused and looked for a curious instant at Elfrida, and then slipped quickly behind her chair. ”_Embra.s.se moi, cherie!_” she said, bringing her face with a bird-like motion close to the other girl's.
Kendal saw an instinctive momentary aversion in the backward start of Elfrida's head, and from the bottom of his heart he was sorry for her. She pushed her friend away almost violently.
”No!” she said. ”No! I am sorry, but it is too childish.
We never kiss each other, you and I. And listen, Nadie: I am delighted for you, but I have a sick headache--_la migraine_, you understand. And you must go away, both of you--both of you!” Her voice raised itself in the last few words to an almost hysterical imperativeness. As they went down the stairs together Mademoiselle Palicsky remarked to Mr. John Kendal, repentant of the good that he had done:
”So she has consulted her oracle and it has barked out the truth. Let us hope she will not throw herself into the Seine!”
”Oh no!” Kendal replied. ”She's horribly hurt but I am glad to believe that she hasn't the capacity for tragedy.
Somebody,” he added gloomily, ”ought to have told her long ago.”
Half an hour later the postman brought Elfrida a letter from Mr. Frank Parke, and a packet containing her ma.n.u.script. It was a long letter, very kind, and appreciative of the article, which Mr. Parke called bright and gossipy, and, if anything, too cleverly unconventional in tone. He did not take the trouble to criticise it seriously, and left Elfrida under the impression that, from his point of view at least, it had no faults. Mr. Parke had offered the article to _Raffini_, but while they might have printed it upon his recommendation, it appeared that even his recommendation could not induce them to promise to pay for it. And it was a theory with him that what was worth printing was invariably worth paying for, so he returned the ma.n.u.script to its author in the sincere hope that it might yet meet its deserts. He had been thinking over the talk they had had together, and he saw more plainly than ever the hopelessness of her getting a journalistic start in Paris, however, and he would distinctly advise her to try London instead. There were a number of ladies' papers published in London--he regretted that he did not know the editors of any of them--and amongst them, with her freshness of style, she would be sure to find an opening. Mr. Parke added the address of a lodging-house off Fleet Street, where Elfrida would be in the thick of it, and the fact that he was leaving Paris for three months or so, and hoped she would write to him when he came back. It was a letter precisely calculated to draw an unsophisticated amateur mind away from any other mortification, to pour balm upon any unrelated wound. Elfrida felt herself armed by it to face a sea of troubles. Not absolutely, but almost, she convinced herself on the spot that her solemn choice of an art had been immature, and to some extent groundless and unwarrantable; and she washed all her brushes with a mechanical and melancholy sense that it was for the last time. It was easier than she would have dreamed for her to decide to take Frank Parke's advice and go to London. The life of the Quartier had already vaguely lost in charm since she knew that she must be irredeemably a failure in the atelier, though she told herself, with a hot tear or two, that no one loved it better, more comprehendingly, than she did. Her impulse was to begin packing at once; but she put that off until the next day, and wrote two or three letters instead.
One was to John Kendal. This is the whole of it:
”Please believe me very grateful for your frankness this afternoon. I have been most curiously blind. But I agree with you that there is something else, and I am going away to find it out and to do it. When I succeed I will let you know, but you shall not tell me that I have failed again.
”ELFRIDA BELL.”
The other was addressed to her mother, and when it reached Mr. and Mrs. Bell in Sparta they said it was certainly sympathetic and very well written. This was to disarm one another's mind of the suspicion that its last page was doubtfully daughterly.
”In view of what are now your very limited resources, I am sure dear mother, you will understand my unwillingness to make any additional drain upon them, as I should do if I followed your wishes and came home. I am convinced of my ability to support myself, and I am not coming home. To avoid giving you the pain of repeating your request, and the possibility of your sending me money which you cannot afford to spare, I have decided not to let you know my whereabouts until I can write to you that I am in an independent position.
I will only say that I am leaving Paris, and that no letters sent to this address will be forwarded. I sincerely hope you will not allow yourself to be in any way anxious about me, for I a.s.sure you that there is not the slightest need. With much love to papa and yourself,
”Always your affectionate daughter,
”ELFRIDA.
”P.S.--I hope your asthma has again succ.u.mbed to Dr. Paley.”
CHAPTER VII.
There was a sc.r.a.ping and a stumbling sound in the second floor front bedroom of Mrs. Jordan's lodgings in a by-way of Fleet Street, at two o'clock in the morning. It came up to Elfrida mixed with the rattle of a departing cab over the paving-stones below, outside where the fog was lifting and showing one street-lamp to another. Elfrida in her attic had been sitting above the fog all night; her single candle had not been obscured by it. The cab had been paid and the andirons were being disturbed by Mr. Golightly Ticke, returned from the Criterion Restaurant, where he had been supping with the leading lady of the Sparkle Company, at the leading, lady's expense. She could afford it better than he could, she told him, and that was extremely true, for Mr. Ticke had his capacities for light comedy still largely to prove, while Mademoiselle Phyllis Fane had almost disestablished herself upon the stage, so long and so prosperously had she pirouetted there. Mr. Golightly Ticke's case excited a degree of the large compa.s.sion which Mademoiselle Phyllis had for incipient genius of the interesting s.e.x, and which served her instead of virtue of the more ordinary sort. He had a doable claim upon it, because, in addition to being tall and fair and misunderstood by most people, with a thin nose that went beautifully with a medieval costume, he was such a gentleman. Phyllis loosened her purse-strings instinctively, with genuine gratification, whenever this young man approached. She believed in him; he had ideas, she said, and she gave him more; in the end he would be sure to ”catch on.” Through the invariable period of obscurity which comes before the appearance of any star, she was in the habit of stating that he would have no truer friend than Filly Fane. She ”spoke to” the manager, she pointed out Mr. Ticke's little parts to the more intimate of her friends of the press. She sent him delicate little presents of expensive cigars, scents, and soaps; she told him often that he would infallibly ”get there.”
The fact of his having paid his own cab-fare from the Criterion on this particular morning gave him, as he found his way upstairs, almost an injured feeling of independence.
As the sounds defined themselves move distinctly, troublous and uncertain, Elfrida laid down her pen and listened.
”What an absurd boy it is!” she said. ”He's trying to go to bed in the fireplace.”