Miss Bell arose late the next morning, which was not
unusual. Mrs. Jordan had knocked three times vainly, and
then left the young lady's chop and coffee outside the
door on the landing. If she _would_ 'ave it cold, Mrs.
Jordan reasoned, she would, and more warnin' than knockin'
three times no livin' bean could expect Mrs. Jordan went
downstairs uneasy in her mind, however. The matter of
Miss Bell's breakfast generally left her uneasy in her
mind. It was not in reason, Mrs. Jordan thought, that a
young littery lady should keep that close, for Elfrida's
custom of having her breakfast deposited outside her door
was as invariable as it was perplexing. Miss Bell was as
charming to her land-lady as she was to everybody else,
but Mrs. Jordan found a polite pleasantness that permitted
no opportunity for expansion whatever more stimulating
to the curiosity and irritating to the mind generally
than the worst of bad manners would have been. That was
the reason she knocked three times when she brought up
Miss Bell's breakfast. At Mr. Ticke's door she wrapped
once, and cursorily at that. Mr. Ticke was as conversational
as you please on all occasions, and besides, Mr. Ticke's
door was usually half open. The shroud of mystery in
which Mrs. Jordan wrapped her "third floor front" grew
more impenetrable as the days went by. Her original
theory, which established Elfrida as the heroine of the
latest notorious divorce case, was admirably ingenious,
but collapsed in a fortnight with its own weight. "Besides,"
Mrs. Jordan reasoned, "if it 'ad been that person, ware
is the corrispondent all this time? There's been nothin'
in the shape of a corrispondent hangin' round _this_
house, for I've kep' my eye open for one. I give 'er up,"
said Mrs. Jordan darkly, "that's wot I do, an' I only
'ope I won't find 'er suicided on charcoal some mornin'
like that pore young poetiss in yesterday's paper."
Another knock, half an hour later, found Elfrida finishing
her coffee. Out-of-doors the world was gray, the little
square windows were beaten with rain. Inside the dreariness
was redeemed to the extent of a breath, a suggestion. An
essence came out of the pictures and the trappings, and
blended itself with the lingering fragrance of the
joss-sticks and the roses and the cigarettes in a delightful
manner. The room was almost warm with it. It seemed to
centre in Elfrida; as she sat beside the writing-table,
whose tumultuous papers had been pushed away to make room
for the breakfast dishes, she was instinct with it.
Miss Bell glanced hurriedly around the room. It was
unimpeachable--not so much as a strayed collar interfered
with its character as an apartment where a young lady
might receive. "Come in," she said. She knew the knock.
The door opened slowly to a hesitating push, and disclosed
Mr. Golightly Ticke by degrees. Mr. Ticke was accustomed
to boudoirs less rigid in their exclusiveness, and always
handled Miss Bell's door with a certain amount of
embarrassment. If she wanted a chance to whisk anything
out of the way he would give her that chance. Fully in
view of the lady and the coffee-pot Mr. Ticke made a
stage bow. "Here is my apology," he said, holding out a
letter; "I found it in the box as I came in."
It was another long thick envelope, and in its upper left
hand corner was printed, in early English lettering, _The
St. George's Gazette_. Elfrida took it with the faintest
perceptible change of countenance. It was another
discomfiture, but it did not prevent her from opening
her dark eyes with a remote effect of pathos entirely
disconnected with its reception. "And you climbed all
these flights to give it to me!" she said, with gravely
smiling plaintiveness. "Thank you. Why should you have
been so good? Please, please sit down."
Mr. Ticke looked at her expressively. "I don't know, Miss
Bell, really. I don't usually take much trouble for
people. I say it without shame. Most people are not worth
it. You don't mind my saying that you're an exception,
though. Besides, I'm afraid I had my eye on my reward."
"You're reward!" Elfrida repeated. Her smiling comprehension
insisted that it did not understand.
"The pleasure of saying good-morning to you. But that
is an inanity, Miss Bell, and unworthy of me. I should
have left you to divine it."
"How could I divine an inanity in connection with you?"
she answered, and her eyes underlined her words. When he
returned, "Oh, you always parry!" she felt a little thrill
of pleasure with herself. "How did it go--last night?"
she asked.
"Altogether lovely. Standing room only, and the boxes
taken for a week. I find myself quite adorable in my
little part now. I _feel_ it, you know. I am James Jones,
a solicitor's clerk, to my fingers' ends. My nature
changes, my environment changes, the instant I go on.
But a little thing upsets me. Last night I had to smoke
a cigar--the swell of the piece gives me a cigar--and he
gave me a poor one. It wasn't in tone--the unities
required that he should give me a good cigar. See? I felt
quite confused for the moment."
Elfrida's eyes had strayed to the corner of her letter.
"If you want to read that," continued Mr. Ticke, "I know
you won't mind me."
"Thanks," said Elfrida calmly. "I've read it already.
It's a rejected article."
"My play came back again yesterday for the thirteenth
time. The fellow didn't even look at it. I know, because
I stuck the second and third pages together as if by
accident, and when it came back they were still stuck.
And yet these men pretend to be on the lookout for original
work! It's a thrice beastly world, Miss Bell."
Elfrida widened her eyes again and smiled with a vague
impersonal winningness. "I suppose one ought not to care,"
said she, "but there is the vulgar necessity of living."
"Yes," agreed Mr. Ticke; and then sardonically: "Waterloo
Bridge at ebb tide is such a nasty alternative. I could
never get over the idea of the drainage."
"Oh, I know a better way than that." She chose her words
deliberately. "A much better way. I keep it here," holding
up the bent little finger of her left hand. It had a
clumsy silver ring on it, square and thick in the middle,
bearing deep-cut Sanskrit letters. "It is a dear little
alternative," she went on, "like a bit of brown sugar.
Rather a nice taste, I believe,--and no pain. When I am
quite tired of it all I shall use this, I think. My idea is
that it's weak to wait until you can't help it. Besides, I
could never bear to become--less attractive than I am now."
"Poison!" said Mr. Golightly Ticke, with an involuntarily
horrified face. Elfrida's hand was hanging over the edge
of the table, and he made as if he would examine the ring
without the formality of asking leave.
She drew her fingers away instantly. "In the vernacular,"
she answered coolly. "You may not touch it."
"I beg your pardon. But how awfully chic!"
"It _is_ chic, isn't it? Not so very old, you know."
Elfrida raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips a little.
"It came from Persia. They still do things like that in
those delightful countries. And I've had it tested.
There's enough to--satisfy--three people. When you are
quite sure you want it I don't mind sharing with you. If
you are going out, Mr. Ticke, will you post this for me?
It's a thing about American social ideals, and I'm trying
the _Consul_ with it."
"Delighted. But if I know the editor of the _Consul_, it
won't get two minutes' consideration."
"No?"
"Being the work of a lady, no. Doesn't matter how good
it is. The thing to know about the _Consul_ man is this.
He's very nice to ladies--can't resist ladies; consequence
is, the paper's half full of ladies' copy every week. I
know, because a cousin of mine writes for him, and most
unsympathetic stuff it is. Yet it always goes in, and
she gets her three guineas a week as regularly as the
day comes. But her pull is that she knows him personally,
and she's a damned pretty woman."
Elfrida followed him with interest. "Is she as pretty as
I am?" she asked, purely for information.
"Lord, no!" Mr. Ticke responded warmly. "Besides, you've
got style, and distinction, and ideas. Any editor would
appreciate your points, once you saw him. But you've got
to see him first. My candid advice is _take_ this to the
_Consul_ office."
Elfrida looked at him in a way which baffled him to
understand. "I don't think I can do that," she said
slowly; and then added, "I don't know."
"Well," he said, "I'll enter my protest against the
foolishness of doing it this way by refusing to post the
letter." Mr. Ticke was tremendously in earnest, and threw
it dramatically upon the table. "You may be a George
Eliot or a--an Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but in these
days you want every advantage, Miss Bell, and women who
succeed understand that."
Elfrida's face was still enigmatic, so enigmatic that
Mr. Ticke felt reluctantly constrained to stop. "I must
pursue the even tenor of my way," he said airily, looking
at his watch. "I've an engagement to lunch at one. _Don't_
ask me to post that article, Miss Bell. And by the way,"
as he turned to go, "I haven't a smoke about me. Could
you give me a cigarette?"
"Oh yes," said Elfrida, without looking at him, "as many
as you like," and she pushed an open box toward him; but
she had an absent, considering air that did not imply
any idea of what she was doing.
"Thanks, only one. Or perhaps two--there now, two! How
good these little Hafiz fellows are! Thanks awfully.
Good-bye!"
"Good-bye," said Elfrida, with her eyes on the packet
addressed to the editor of the _Consul_; and Mr. Golightly
Ticke tripped downstairs. She had not looked at him again.
She sat thinking, thinking. She applied herself first to
stimulate the revolt that rose within her against Golightly
Ticke's advice--his intolerably, no, his forgetfully
presumptuous advice. She would be just to him: he talked
so often to women with whom such words would carry weight,
for an instant he might fail to recognize that she was
not one of those. It was absurd to be angry, and not at
all in accordance with any theory of life that operated
in Paris. Instinctively, at the thought of a moral
indignation upon such slender grounds in Paris she gave
herself the benefit of a thoroughly expressive Parisian
shrug. And how they understood, success in Paris! Beasts!
And yet it was all in the game. It was a matter of skill,
of superiority, of puppet-playing. One need not soil
one's hands--in private one could always laugh. She
remembered how Nadie had laughed when three bunches of
roses from three different art critics had come in
together--how inextinguishably Nadie had laughed. It was
in itself a, success of a kind. Nadie had no scruples,
except about her work. She went straight to her end,
believing it to be an end worth arriving at by any means.
And now Nadie would presently be _tres en vue--tres en
vue!_ After all, it was a much finer thing to be scrupulous
about one's work--that was the real morality, the real
life. Elfrida closed her eyes and felt a little shudder
of consciousness of how real it was. When she opened
them again she was putting down her protest with a strong
hand, crushing her rebellious instincts unmercifully.
She did not allow herself a moment's self-deception. She
did not insult her intelligence by the argument that it
was a perfectly harmless and proper thing to offer a
piece of work to an editor in person--that everybody did
it--that she might thereby obtain some idea of what
would suit his paper if her article did not. She was
perfectly straightforward in confronting Golightly Ticke's
idea, and she even disrobed it, to her own consciousness,
of any garment of custom and conventionality it might
have had to his. Another woman might have taken it up
and followed it without an instant's hesitation, as a
matter concerning which there could be no doubt, a matter
of ordinary expediency--of course a man would be nicer
to a woman than to another man; they always were; it was
natural. But Elfrida, with her merciless insight, had to
harden her heart and ply her self-respect with assurances
that it was all in the game, and it was a superb thing
to be playing the game. Deliberately she chose the things
she looked best in, and went out.