"I am sure you are enjoying it," said Elfrida.
"Yes," Miss Kimpsey returned. "It's a great treat--it's
a _very_ great treat. Everything surpasses my expectations,
everything is older and blacker and more interesting than
I looked for. And I must say we're getting over a great
deal in the time. Yesterday afternoon we did the entire
Tower. It _did_ give one an idea. But of course you know
every stone in it by now!"
"I'm afraid I've not seen it," Elfrida confessed gravely.
"I know it's shocking of me."
"You haven't visited the Tower! Doesn't that show how
benumbing opportunity is to the energies! Now I dare say
that I," Miss Kimpsey went on with gratification, "coming
over with a party of tourists from our State, all bound
to get London and the cathedral towns and the lakes and
Scotland and Paris and Switzerland into the summer
vacation--I presume I may have seen more of the London
sights than you have, Miss Bell." As Miss Kimpsey spoke
she realized that she had had no intention of calling
Elfrida "Miss Bell" when she saw her again, and wondered
why she did it. "But you ought to be fond of sight-seeing,
too," she added, "with your artistic nature."
Elfrida seemed to restrain a smile. "I don't know that
I am," she said. "I'm sorry that you didn't leave my
mother so well as she ought to be. She hasn't mentioned
it in her letters." In the course of time Miss Bell's
correspondence with her parents had duly re-established
itself.
"She _wouldn't_, Elf--Miss Bell. She was afraid of
suggesting the obligation to come home to you. She said
with your artistic conscience you couldn't come, and it
would only be inflicting unnecessary pain upon you. But
her bronchitis was no light matter last February. She
was real sick."
"My mother is always so considerate," Elfrida answered,
reddening, with composed lips. "She is better now, I
think you said."
"Oh yes, she's some better. I heard from her last week,
and she says she doesn't know how to wait to see me back.
That's on your account, of course. Well, I can tell her
you appear comfortable," Miss Kimpsey looked around, "if
I _can't_ tell her exactly when you'll be home."
"That is so doubtful, just now--"
"They're introducing drawing from casts in the High
School," Miss Kimpsey went on, with a note of urgency in
her little twanging voice, "and Mrs. Bell told me I
might just mention it to you. She thinks you could easily
get taken on to teach it. I just dropped round to one or
two of the principal trustees the day before I left, and
they said you had only to apply. It's seven hundred
dollars a year."
Elfrida's eyebrows contracted. "Thanks very much! It was
extremely kind--to go to so much trouble. But I have
decided that I am not meant to be an artist, Miss Kimpsey,"
she said with a self-contained smile. "I think my mother
knows that. I--I don't much like talking about it. Do
you find London confusing? I was dreadfully puzzled at
first."
"I _would_ if I were alone. I'd engage a special
policeman--the policemen _are_ polite, aren't they? But
we keep the party together, you see, to economize time,
so none of us get lost. We all went down Cheapside this
morning and bought umbrellas--two and three apiece. This
is the most reasonable place for umbrellas. But isn't it
ridiculous to pay for apples by the _pound?_ And then
they're not worth eating. This room does smell of tobacco.
I suppose the gentleman in the apartment below smokes a
great deal."
"I think he does. I'm so sorry. Let me open another
window."
"Oh, don't mind _me_! I don't object to tobacco, except
on board, ship. But it must be bad to sleep in."
"Perhaps," said Elfrida sweetly. "And have you no more
news from home for me, Miss Kimpsey?"
"I don't know as I have. You've heard of the Rev. Mr.
Snider's second marriage to Mrs. Abraham Peeley, of
course. There's a great deal of feeling about it in
Sparta--the first Mrs. Snider was so popular, you know
--and it isn't a full year. People say it isn't the
_marriage_ they object to under such circumstances,
it's--all that goes before," said Miss Kimpsey, with
decorous repression, and Elfrida burst into a peal of
laughter. "Really," she sobbed, "it's too delicious. Poor
Mr. and Mrs. Snider! Do you think people woo with improper
warmth--at that age, Miss Kimpsey?"
"I don't know anything about it," Miss Kimpsey declared,
with literal truth. "I suppose such things justify
themselves somehow, especially when it's a clergyman.
And of course you know about your mother's idea of coming
over here to settle?"
"No!" said Elfrida, arrested. "She hasn't mentioned it.
Do they talk of it seriously?"
"I don't know about _seriously_. Mr. Bell doesn't seem
as if he could make up his mind. He's so fond of Sparta
you know. But Mrs. Bell is just wild to come. She thinks,
of course, of having you to live with them again; and
then she says that on their present income--you will
excuse my referring to your parents' reduced circumstances,
Miss Bell?"
"Please go on."
"Your mother considers that Mr. Bell's means would go
further in England than in America. She asked me to make
inquiries; and I must say, judging from the price of
umbrellas and woollen goods, I think they would."
Elfrida was silent for a moment, looking steadfastly at
the possibility Miss Kimpsey had developed. "What a
complication!" she said, half to herself; and then,
observing Miss Kimpsey's look of astonishment: "I had no
idea of that," she repeated; "I wonder that they have
not mentioned it."
"Well then!" said Miss Kimpsey, with sudden compunction,
"I presume they wanted to surprise you. And I've gone
and spoiled it!"
"To surprise me!" Elfrida repeated in her absorption.
"Oh yes; very likely!" Inwardly she saw her garret, the
garret that so exhaled her, where she had tasted success
and knew a happiness that never altogether failed, vanish
into a snug cottage in Hampstead or Surbiton. She saw
the rain of her independence, of her delicious solitariness,
of the life that began and ended in her sense of the
strange, and the beautiful and the grotesque in a world
of curious slaveries, of which it suited her to be an
alien spectator, amused and free. She foresaw long
conflicts and discussions, pryings which she could, not
resent, justifications which would be forced upon her,
obligations which she must not refuse. More intolerable
still, she saw herself in the role of a family idol, the
household happiness hinging on her moods, the question
of her health, her work, her pleasure being eternally
the chief one. Miss Kimpsey talked on about other things
--Windsor Castle, the Abbey, the Queen's stables; and
Elfrida made occasional replies, politely vague. She was
mechanically twisting the little gold hoop on her wrist,
and thinking of the artistic sufferings of a family idol.
Obviously the only thing was to destroy the prospective
shrine.
"We don't find board as cheap as we expected," Miss
Kimpsey was saying.
"Living, that is food, is very expensive," Elfrida replied
quickly; "a good beefsteak, for instance, costs three
Francs--I mean two and fivepence, a pound."
"I _can't_ think in shillings!" Miss Kimpsey interposed
plaintively.
"And about this idea my people have of coming over
here--I've been living in London four months now, and I
can't quite see your grounds for thinking it cheaper than
Sparta, Miss Kimpsey."
"Of course you have had time to judge of it."
"Yes. On the whole I think they would find it more
expensive and much less satisfactory. They would miss
their friends, and their place in the little world over
there. My mother, I know, attaches a good deal of importance
to that. They would have to live very modestly in a
suburb, and all the nice suburbs have their social
relations in town. They wouldn't take the slightest
interest in English institutions; my father is too good
a citizen to make a good subject, and they would find a
great many English ideas very--trying. The only Americans
who are happy in England are the millionaires," Elfrida
answered. "I mean the millionaires who are not too
sensitive."
"Well now, you've got as sensitive a nature as I know,
Miss Bell, and you don't appear to be miserable over
here."
"I!" Elfrida frowned just perceptibly. This little creature
who once corrected the punctuation of her essays, and
gave her bad marks for spelling, was too intolerably
personal. "We won't consider my case, if you please.
Perhaps I'm not a good American."
"Mrs. Bell seems to think she would enjoy the atmosphere
of the past so much in London."
"It's a fatal atmosphere for asthma. Please impress that
upon my people, Miss Kimpsey. There would be no
justification in letting my mother believe she could be
comfortable here. She must come and experience the,
atmosphere of the past, as you are doing, on a visit. As
soon as it can be afforded I hope they will do that."
Since the day of her engagement with the _Illustrated
Age_ Elfrida had been writing long, affectionate, and
prettily worded letters to her mother by every American
mail. They were models of sweet elegance, those letters;
they abounded in dainty bits of description and gay
comment, and they reflected as little of the real life
of the girl who wrote them as it is possible to conceive.
In this way they were quite remarkable, and in their
charming discrimination of topics. It was as if Elfrida
dictated that a certain relation should exist between
herself and her parents. It should acknowledge all the
traditions, but it should not be too intimate. They had
no such claim upon her, no such closeness to her, as
Nadie Palicsky, for instance, had.
When Miss Kimpsey went away that afternoon, trying to
realize the intrinsic reward of virtue--she had been
obliged to give up the National Gallery to make this
visit--Elfrida remembered that the American mail went
out next day, and spent a longer time than usual over
her weekly letter. In its course she mentioned with some
amusement the absurd idea Miss Kimpsey had managed to
absorb of their coming to London to live, and touched in
the lightest possible way upon the considerations that
made such a project impossible. But the greater part of
the letter was taken up with a pleased forecast of the
time--could it possibly be next summer?--when Mr. and
Mrs. Bell would cross the Atlantic on a holiday trip. "I
will be quite an affluent person by then," Elfrida wrote,
"and I will be able to devote the whole of my magnificent
leisure to entertaining you."
She turned from the sealing of this to answer a, note
from Lawrence Cardiff. He wrote to her, on odds and ends
of matters, almost as often as Janet did now. He wrote
as often, indeed, as he could, and always with an amused,
uncertain expectancy of what the consciously directed
little square envelopes which brought back the reply
would contain. It was becoming obvious to him that they
brought something a little different, in expression or
feeling or suggestion, from the notes that came for Janet,
which Janet often read out for their common benefit. He
was unable to define the difference, but he was aware
that it gave him pleasure, especially as he could not
find that it was in any way connected with the respectful
consideration that Elfrida might have thought due to his
forty-seven years. If Mr. Cardiff had gone so far as to
soliloquize upon the subject he would have said to himself,
"In my trade a man gets too much of that." I do not know
that he did, but the subtle gratification this difference
gave him was quite strong enough, at all events, to lead
to the reflection. The perception of it was growing so
vivid that he instinctively read his notes in silence,
paraphrasing them for Janet if she happened to be there.
They had, as it were, a bloom and a freshness, a mere
perfume of personality that would infallibly vanish in
the communicating, but that left him, as often as not,
when he slipped the note back into the envelope with a
half smile on his lips.
Janet was conscious of the smile and of the paraphrasing.
In reprisal--though she would not have admitted it was
that--she kept her own missives from Elfrida to herself
whenever it occurred to her to check the generous impulse
of sharing the pleasure they gave her, which was not
often, after all. It was the seldomer because she could
not help feeling that her father was thoroughly aware of
her action, and fancying that he speculated upon the
reason of it. It was unendurable that daddy should
speculate about the reason of anything she did in connection
with Frida, or with any other young lady. Her conduct
was perfectly simple; there was no reason whatever why
it should not be perfectly simple.
When Miss Kimpsey arrived at Euston Station next day,
with all her company, to take the train For Scotland;
she found Elfrida waiting for her, a picturesque figure
in the hurrying crowd with her hair blown about her face
with the gusts of wind and rain, and her wide dark eyes
looking quietly about her. She had a bunch of azaleas in
her hand, and as Miss Kimpsey was saying with gratification
that Elfrida's coming down to see her off was a thing
she did _not_ expect, Miss Bell offered her these.
"They will be pleasant in the train perhaps," said she.
"And do you think you could find room for this in one of
your boxes? It isn't very bulky--a trifle I should like
so much to send to my mother, Miss Kimpsey. It might go
by post, I know, but the pleasure will be much greater
to her if you could take it."
In due course Mrs. Bell received the packet. It contained
a delicate lace head-dress, which cost Elfrida the full
pay and emoluments of a fortnight. Mrs. Bell wore it at
all social gatherings of any importance in Sparta the
following winter, and often reflected with considerable
pleasure upon the taste and unselfishness that so obviously
accompanied the gift.