"Three months more," Elfrida Bell said to herself next
morning, in the act of boiling an egg over a tiny kerosene
stove in the cupboard that served her as a kitchen, "and
I will put it to every test I know. Three unflinching
months! John Kendal will not have gone back to England
by that time. I shall still get his opinion. If he is
only as encouraging as Nadie was last night, dear thing!
I almost forgave her for being so much, much cleverer
than I am. Oh, letters!" as a heavy knock repeated itself
upon the door of the room outside.
There was only one; it was thrust beneath the door,
showing a white triangle to her expectancy as she ran
out to secure it, while the fourth flight creaked under
Madame Vamousin descending. She picked it up with a light
heart--she was young and she had slept. Yesterday's strain
had passed; she was ready to count yesterday's experience
among the things that must be met. Nadie had been so
sensible about it. This was a letter from home, and the
American mail was not due until next day. Inside there
would be news of a little pleasure trip to New York,
which her father and mother had been planning lately
--Elfrida constantly urged upon her parents the necessity
of amusing themselves--and a remittance. The remittance
would be more than usually welcome, for she was a little
in debt--a mere trifle, fifty or sixty francs; but Elfrida
hated being in debt. She tore the end of the envelope
across with absolute satisfaction, which was only half
chilled when she opened out each of the four closely
written sheets of foreign letter-paper in turn and saw
that the usual postal order was not there.
Having ascertained this however, she went back to her
egg; in another ten seconds it would have been hard-boiled,
a thing she detested. There was the, egg, and there was
some apricot-jam--the egg in a slender-stemmed Arabian
silver cup, the jam golden in a little round dish of
wonderful old blue. She set it forth, with the milk-bread
and the butter and the coffee, on a bit of much mended
damask with a pattern of rosebuds and a coronet in one
corner. Her breakfast gave her several sorts of pleasure.
Half an hour after it was over she was still sitting with
the letter in her lap. It is possible to imagine that
she looked ugly. Her dark eyes had a look of persistence
in spite of fear, a line or two shot up from between her
brows, her lips were pursed a little and drawn down at
the corners, her chin thrust forward. Her face and her
attitude helped each other to express the distinctest
possible negative. Her neck had an obstinate bend; she
leaned forward clasping her knees, for the moment a
creature of rigid straight lines. She had hardly moved
since she read the letter.
She was sorry to learn that her father had been unfortunate
in business, that the Illinois Indubitable Insurance
Company had failed. At his age the blow would be severe,
and the prospect, after a life of comparative luxury, of
subsisting even in Sparta on eight hundred dollars a year
could not be an inviting one for either of her parents.
When she thought of their giving up the white brick house
in Columbia Avenue and going to live in Cox Street,
Elfrida was thoroughly grieved. She felt the sincerest
gratitude, however, that the misfortune had not come
sooner, before she had learned the true significance of
living, while yet it might have placed her in a state of
blind irresolution which would probably have lasted
indefinitely. After a year in Paris she was able to make
up her mind, and this she could not congratulate herself
upon sufficiently, since a decision at the moment was of
such vital importance! For one point upon which Mrs.
Leslie's letter insisted, regretfully but strongly, was
that the next remittance, which they hoped to be able to
send in a week or two, would necessarily be the last. It
would be as large as they could make it; at all events
it would amply cover her passage and railway expenses to
Sparta, and of course she would sail as soon as it reached
her. It was an elaborate letter, written in phrases which
Mrs. Leslie thought she evolved, but probably remembered
from a long and comprehensive course of fiction as
appropriate to the occasion, and Elfrida read between
the lines with some impatience how largely their trouble
was softened to her mother by the consideration that it
would inevitably bring her back to them. "We can bear it
well if we bear it together," wrote Mrs. Bell. "You have
always been our brave daughter, and your young courage
will be invaluable to us now. Your talents will be our
flowers by the way-side. We shall take the keenest possible
delight in watching them expand, as, even under the cloud
of financial adversity, we know they will."
"Dear over-confident parent," Elfrida reflected grimly
at this point, "I must yet prove that I have any."
Along with the situation she studied elaborately the
third page of the _Sparta Sentinel_. When it had arrived,
months before, containing the best part of a long letter
describing Paris, which she had written to her mother in
the first freshness of her delighted impressions, she
had glanced over it with half-amused annoyance at the
foolish parental pride that suggested printing it. She
was already too remote from the life of Sparta to care
very much one way or another, but such feeling as she
had was of that sort. And the compliments from the
minister, from various members of the Browning Club, from
the editor himself, that filtered through her mother's
letters during the next two or three weeks, made her
shrug with their absolute irrelevance to the only praise
that could thrill her and the only purpose she held dear.
Even now, when the printed lines contained the significance
of a possible resource, she did not give so much as a
thought to the flattering opinion of Sparta as her mother
had conveyed it to her. She read them over and over,
relying desperately on her own critical sense and her
knowledge of what the Paris correspondent of the _Daily
Dial_ thought of her chances in that direction. He, Frank
Parke, had told her once that if her brush failed she
had only to try her pen, though he made use of no such
commonplace as that. He said it, too, at the end of half
an hour's talk with her, only half an hour. Elfrida,
when she wished to be exact with her vanity, told herself
that it could not have been more than twenty-five minutes.
She wished for particular reasons to be exact with it
now, and she did not fail to give proper weight to the
fact that Frank Parke had never seen her before that day.
The Paris correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ was well
enough known to be of the _monde_, and rich enough to be
as bourgeois as anybody. Therefore some of the people
who knew him thought it odd that at his age this gentleman
should prefer the indelicacies of the Quartier to those
of "tout Paris," and the bad vermouth and cheap cigars
of the Rue Luxembourg to the peculiarly excellent quality
of champagne with which the president's wife made her
social atonement to the Faubourg St. Germain. But it was
so, and its being so rendered Frank Parke's opinion that
Miss Bell could write if she chose to try, not only
supremely valuable to her, but available for the second
time if necessary, which was perhaps more important.
There would be a little more money from Sparta, perhaps
one hundred and fifty dollars. It would come in a week,
and after that there would be none. But a supply of it,
however modest, must be arranged somehow--there were the
"frais" of the atelier, to speak of nothing else. The
necessity was irritatingly absolute. Elfrida wished that
her scruples were not so acute about arranging it by
writing for the press. "If I could think for a moment
that I had any right to it as a means of expression!"
she reflected. "But I haven't. It is an art for others.
And it _is_ an art, as sacred as mine. I have no business
to degrade it to my uses." Her mental position when she
went to see Frank Parke was a cynical compromise with
her artistic conscience, of which she nevertheless
sincerely regretted the necessity.
The correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ had a club for one
side of the river and a cafe for the other. He dined
oftenest at the cafe, and Elfrida's card, with "urgent"
inscribed in pencil on it, was brought to him that evening
as he was finishing his coffee. She had no difficulty
in getting it taken in. Mr. Parke's theory was that a
newspaper man gained more than he lost by accessibility.
He came out immediately, furtively returning a toothpick
to his waistcoat pocket--a bald, stout gentleman of middle
age, dressed in loose gray clothes, with shrewd eyes, a
nose which his benevolence just saved from being hawk-like,
a bristling white mustache, and a pink double chin. It
rather pleased Frank Parke, who was born in Hammersmith,
to be so constantly taken for an American--presumably a
New Yorker.
"Monsieur--" began Elfrida a little formally. She would
not have gone on in French, but it was her way to use
this form with the men she knew in Paris, irrespective
of their nationality, just as she invariably addressed
letters which were to be delivered in Sparta, Illinois,
"a madame Leslie Bell, Avenue Columbia," of that
municipality.
"Miss Elfrida, I am delighted to see you," he interrupted
her, stretching out one hand and looking at his watch
with the other. "I am fortunate in having fifteen whole
minutes to put at your disposal At the end of that time
I have an appointment with a cabinet minister, who would
rather see the devil. So I most be punctual. Shall we
walk a bit along these dear boulevards, or shall I get
a fiacre? No? You're quite right--Paris was made for
eternal walking. Now, what is it, my dear child?"
Mr. Parke had already concluded that it was money, and
had fixed the amount he would lend. It was just half of
what Mademoiselle Knike, of Paolo Rossi's, had succeeded
in extracting from him last week. He liked having a
reputation for amiability among the ateliers, but he must
not let it cost too much.
Elfrida felt none of that benumbing shame which sometimes
seizes those who would try literature confessing to those
who have succeeded in it, and the occasion was too
important for the decorative diffidence that might have
occurred to her if it had been trivial. She had herself
well gathered together, and she would have been concise
and direct even if there had been more than fifteen
minutes.
"One afternoon last September, at Nadie Palicsky's--there
is no chance that you will remember, but I assure you it
is so--you told me that I might, if I tried--write,
monsieur."
The concentration of her purpose in her voice made itself
felt where Frank Parke kept his acuter perceptions, and
put them at her service.
"I remember perfectly," he said.
"_Je m'en felicite_. It is more than I expected. Well,
circumstances have made it so that I must either write
or scrub. Scrubbing spoils one's hands, and besides, it
isn't sufficiently remunerative. So I have come to ask
you whether you seriously thought so, or whether it was
only politeness--_blague_--or what? I know it is horrible
of me to insist like, this, but you see I must." Her big
dark eyed looked at him without a shadow of appeal, rather
as if he were destiny and she were unafraid.
"Oh, I meant it," he returned ponderingly. "You can often
tell by the way people talk that they would write well.
But there are many things to be considered, you know."
"Oh, I know--whether one has any real right to write,
anything to say that makes it worth while. I'm afraid
I can't find that I have. But there must be scullery-maid's
work in literature--in journalism, isn't there? I could
do that, I thought. After all, it's only one's own art
that one need keep sacred." She added the last sentence
a little defiantly.
Bat the correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ was not thinking
of that aspect of the matter. "It's not a thing you can
jump into," he said shortly. "Have you written anything,
anywhere, for the press before?"
"Only one or two things that have appeared in the local
paper at home. They were more or less admired by the
people there, so far as that goes."
"Were you paid for them?"
Elfrida shook her head. "I've often heard the editor say
he paid for nothing but his telegrams," she said.
"There it is, you see."
"I want to write for _Raffini's Chronicle_," Elfrida said
quickly. "You know the editor of _Raffini_, of course,
Mr. Parke. You know everybody. Will you do me the very
great favor to tell him that I will report society
functions for him at one half the price he is accustomed
to pay for such writing, and do it more entertainingly?"
Frank Parke smiled. "You are courageous indeed, Hiss
Elfrida. That is done by a woman who is invited, every
where in her proper person, and knows 'tout Paris' like
her alphabet I believe she holds stock in _Raffini_;
anyway, they would double her pay rather than lose her.
You would have more chance of ousting their leader-writer."
"I should be sorry to oust anybody," Elfrida returned
with dignity.
"How do you propose to help it, if you go in for doing
better or cheaper what somebody else has been doing
before?"
Miss Bell thought for a minute, and demonstrated her
irresponsibility with a little shrug. "Then I'm very
sorry," she said. "But, monsieur, you haven't told me
what to do."
The illuminator of European politics for the _Daily Dial_
wished heartily that it had been a matter of two or three
hundred francs.
"I'm afraid I--well, I don't see how I _can_ give you
any very definite advice. The situation doesn't admit of
it, Miss Bell. But--have you given up Lucien?"
"No. It is only that--that I must earn money to pay him."
"Oh! Home supplies stopped?"
"My people have lost all their money except barely enough
to live on. I cant expect another sou."
"That's hard lines!"
"I'm awfully sorry for them. But it isn't enough, being
sorry, you know. I must do something. I thought I might
write for _Raffini_, for--for practice, you know--the
articles they print are really very bad--and afterward
arrange to send Paris letters to some of the big American
newspapers. I know a woman who does it I assure you she
is quite stupid. And she is paid--but enormously!" Mr.
Parke repressed his inclination to smile.
"I believe that sort of thing over there is very much in
the hands of the syndicates--McClure and those fellows,"
he said, "and they won't look at you unless you're known.
I don't want to discourage you, Miss Bell, but it would
take you at least a year to form a connection. You would
have to learn Paris about five times as well as you fancy
you know it already, and then you would require a special
course of training to find out what to write about. And
then, remember, you would have to compete with people
who know every inch of the ground. Now if I can be of
any assistance to you _en camarade_, you know, in the
matter of your passage home--"
"Thanks," Elfrida interposed quickly, "I'm not going
home. If I can't write I can scrub, as I said. I must
find out." She put out her hand. "I am sure there are
not many of those fifteen minutes left," she said, smiling
and quite undismayed. "I have to thank you very sincerely
for--for sticking to the opinion you expressed when it
was only a matter of theory. As soon as I justify it in
practice I'll let you know."
The correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ hesitated, looked
at his watch and hesitated again. "There's plenty of
time," he fibbed, frowning over the problem of what might
be done.
"Oh no!" Elfrida said. "You are very kind, but there
can't be. You will be very late, and perhaps his Excellency
will have given the audience to the devil instead--or to
Monsieur de Pommitz." Her eyes expressed perfect
indifference. Frank Parke laughed outright. De Pommitz
was his rival for every political development, and shone
dangerously in the telegraphic columns of the London
_World_.
"De Pommitz isn't in it this time," he said. "I'll tell
you what I _might_ do, Miss Elfrida. How long have you
got for this--experiment?"
"Less than a week."
"Well, go home and write me an article--something locally
descriptive. Make it as bright as you can, and take a
familiar subject. Let me have it in three days, and I'll
see if I can get it into _Raffini_ for you. Of course,
you know, I can't promise that they'll look at it."
"You are very good," Elfrida returned hastily, seeing
his real anxiety to be off. "Something locally descriptive.
I've often thought the atelier would make a good subject."
"Capital, capital! Only be very careful about personalities
and so forth. _Raffini_ hates giving offence. Good-bye!
Here you, _cocher!_ Boulevard Haussmann!"