Before he had been back in Norway a week Kendal felt his
perturbation with regard to Elfrida remarkably quieted
and soothed. It seemed to him, in the long hours while
he fished and painted, that in the progress of the little
drama, from its opening act at Lady Halifax's to its
final scene at the studio, he had arrived at something
solid and tangible as the basis of his relation toward
the girl. It had precipitated in him a power of
comprehending her and of criticising her which he had
possessed before only, as it were, in solution. Whatever
once held him from stating to himself the results of his
study of her had vanished, leaving him no name by which
to call it. He found that he could smile at her
whimsicalities, and reflect upon her odd development,
and regret her devouring egotism, without the vision of
her making dumb his voluble thought; and he no longer
regretted the incident that gave him his freedom. He
realized her as he painted her, and the realization
visited him less often, much less often, than before.
Even the fact that she knew what he thought gradually
became an agreeable one. There would be room for no
hypocrisies between them. He wished that Janet Cardiff
could have some such experience. It was provoking that
she should be still so loyally _avengle_; that he would
not be able to discuss Elfrida with her, when he went
back to London, from an impersonal point of view. He had
a strong desire to say precisely what he thought of her
friend to Janet, in which there was an obscure recognition
of a duty of reparation--obscure because he had no overt
disloyalty to Janet to charge himself with, but none the
less present. He saw the intimacy between the two girls
from a new point of view; he comprehended the change the
months had made, and he had a feeling of some displeasure
that Janet Cardiff should have allowed herself to be so
subdued, so seconded in it.
Kendal came back a day or two before Elfrida's
disappearance, and saw her only once in the meantime.
That was on the evening--which struck him later as one
of purposeless duplicity--before the Peach-Blossom Company
had left for the provinces, when he and Elfrida both
dined at the Cardiffs'. With him that night she had the
air of a chidden child; she was silent and embarrassed,
and now and then he caught a glance which told him in so
many words that she was very sorry, she hadn't meant to,
she would never do it again. He did not for a moment
suspect that it referred to the scene at Lady Halifax's,
and was more than half real. It was not easy to know that
even genuine feeling, with Elfrida, required a cloak of
artifice. He put it down as a pretty pose, and found it
as objectionable as the one he had painted. He was more
curious, perhaps, but less disturbed than either of the
Cardiffs as the days went by and Elfrida made no sign.
He felt, however, that his curiosity was too irreligious
to obtrude upon Janet; besides, his knowledge of her hurt
anxiety kept him within the bounds of the simplest inquiry,
while she, noting his silence, believed him to be eating
his heart out. In the end it was the desire to relieve
and to satisfy Janet that took him to the _Age_ office.
It might be impossible for her to make such inquiries,
he told himself, but no obligation could possibly attach
to him, except--and his heart throbbed affirmatively at
this--the obligation of making Janet happier about it.
He could have laughed, aloud when he heard the scheme
from Rattray's lips--it so perfectly filled out his
picture, his future projection of Elfrida; he almost
assured himself that he had imagined and expected it.
But his desire to relieve Janet was suddenly lost in an
upstarting brood of impulses that took him to the railway
station with the smile still upon his lips. Here was a
fresh development; his interest was keenly awake again,
he would go and verify the facts. When his earlier
intention reoccurred to him in the train, he dismissed
it with the thought that what he had seen would be more
effective, more disillusionizing, than what he had merely
heard. He triumphed in advance over Janet's disillusion,
but he thought more eagerly of the pleasure of proving,
with his own eyes, another step in the working out of
the problem which he believed he had solved in Elfrida.
"Big house to-night, sir. All the stalls taken," said
the young man with the high collar in the box office when
Kendal appeared before the window.
"Pit," replied Kendal, and the young man stared.
"Pit did you say, sir? Well, you'll 'ave to look slippy
or you won't get a seat there either."
Kendal was glad it was a full house. He began to realize
how very much he would prefer that Elfrida should not
see him there. From his point of view it was perfectly
warrantable--he had no sense of any obligation which
would prevent his adding to his critical observation of
her--but from Miss Bell's? He found himself lacking the
assurance that no importance was to be attached to Miss
Bell's point of view, and he turned up his coat collar
and pulled his hat over his eyes, and seated himself as
obscurely as possible, with a satisfactory sense that
nobody could take him for a gentleman, mingled with a
less agreeable suspicion that it was doubtful whether,
under the circumstances, he had a complete right to the
title. The overture strung him up more pleasureably than
usual, however. He wondered if he should recognize her
at once, and what part she would have. He did not know
the piece, but of course it would be a small one. He
wondered--for, so far as he knew, she had had no experience
of the stage--how she could have been got ready in the
time to take even a small one. Inevitably it would be a
part with three words to say and nothing to sing--probably
a maid-servant's. He smiled as he thought how sincerely
Elfrida would detest such a personation. When the curtain
rose at last Mr. John Kendal searched the stage more
eagerly than the presence there of any mistress of her
art had ever induced him to do before. The first act was
full of gaiety, and the music was very tolerable; but
Kendal, scanning one insistent figure and painted face
after another, heard nothing, in effect, of what was said
or sung--he was conscious only of a strong disappointment
when it was over and Elfrida had not appeared.
The curtain went up again to a quick-step, to clinking
steel, and the sound of light marching feet. An instant
after forty young women were rhythmically advancing and
retreating before the footlights, picturesquely habited
in a military costume comprising powdered wigs,
three-cornered hats, gold-embroidered blue coats,
flesh-colored tights, and kid top-boots, which dated
uncertainly from the middle ages. They sang, as they
crossed their varyingly shapely legs, stamped their feet,
and formed into figures no drill-book ever saw, a chorus
of which the refrain was
"Oh, it never matters, matters,
Though his coat be tatters, tatters,
His good sword rust-incrusted and his songs all sung,
The maids will flatter, flatter,
And foes will scatter, scatter,
For a soldier is soldier while his heart is young,"
the last line accompanied by a smiling flirt of their
eyes over their shoulders and a kick to the rear as they
wheeled, which evoked the unstinted appreciation of the
house. The girls had the unvarying pink-and-white surfaces
of their profession, but under it they obviously differed
much, and the age and emaciation and ugliness among them
had its common emphasis in the contrast of their smart
masculine attire with the distressingly feminine outlines
of their figures. "I should have thought it impossible
to make a woman absolutely hideous by a dress that revealed
her form," said Kendal to himself, as the jingling and
the dancing and the music went on in the glare before
him, "but, upon my word--" He paused suddenly. She wasn't
absolutely hideous, that tall girl with the plume and
the sword, who maneuvered always in front of the
company--the lieutenant in charge. Indeed, she was comely
every way, slight and graceful, and there was a singular
strong beauty in her face, which was enhanced by the
rouge and the powder, and culminated in the laugh in her
eyes and upon her lips--a laugh which meant enjoyment,
excitement, exhilaration.
It grew upon Kendal that none of the chorus girls approached
Elfrida in the abandon with which they threw themselves
into the representation--that all the others were more
conscious than she of the wide-hipped incongruity of
their role. To the man who beheld her there in an
absolutely new world of light and color and course jest
it seemed that she was perfectly oblivious of any other,
and that her personality was the most aggressive, the
most ferociously determined to be made the most of, on
the stage. As the chorus ceased a half-grown youth remarked
to his companion in front, "But the orficer's the one,
Dave! Ain't she fly!" and the words coming out distinctly
in the moment of after-silence when the applause was
over, set the pit laughing for two or three yards around.
Whereat Kendal, with an assortment of feelings which he
took small pleasure in analyzing later, got up and went
out. People looked up angrily at him as he stumbled over
their too numerous feet in doing so--he was spoiling a
solo of some pathos by Mr. Golightly Ticke in the character
of a princely refugee, a fur-trimmed mantle, and shoes
with buckles.
Kendal informed himself with some severity that no possible
motive could induce him to make any comment upon Miss
Bell to Janet, and found it necessary to go down into
Devonshire next day, where his responsibilities had begun
to make a direct and persistent attack upon him. It was
the first time he had yielded, and he could not help
being amused by the remembrance, in the train, of Elfrida's
solemn warning about the danger of his growing typical
and going into Parliament. A middle-aged country gentleman
with broad shoulders and a very red neck occupied the
compartment with him, and handled the _Times_ as if the
privilege of reading it were one of the few the democratic
spirit of the age had left to his class. Kendal scanned
him with interest and admiration and pleasure. It was an
excellent thing that England's backbone should be composed
of men like that, he thought and he half wished he were
not so consciously undeserving of national vertebral
honors himself--that Elfrida's warnings had a little more
basis of probability. Not that he wanted to drop his
work, but a man owed something to his country, especially
when he had what they called a stake in it--to establish
a home perhaps, to marry, to have children growing up
about him. A man had to think of his old age. He told
himself that he must be the lightest product of a flippant
time, since these things did not occur to him more
seriously; and he threw himself into all that had to be
done upon "the place," when he arrived at it, with an
energy that disposed its real administrators to believe
that his ultimate salvation as a landlord was still
possible.
He was talking to Janet Cardiff at one of Lady Halifax's
afternoon teas a fortnight later, when their hostess
advanced toward them interrogatively. "While I think of
it, Janet," said she laying a mittened hand on Miss
Cardiff's arm, "what has become of your eccentric little
American friend? I sent her a card a month ago, and we've
neither heard nor seen anything of her."
"Elfrida Bell--oh, she's out of town, Lady Halifax, and
I am rather desolate without her--we see so much of her,
you know. But she will be back soon--I dare say I will
be able to bring her next Thursday. How delicious this
coffee is! I shall have another cup, if it keeps me awake
for a week. Oh, you got my note about the concert, dear
lady?"
Kendal noticed the adroitness of her chatter with amusement.
Before she had half finished Lady Halifax had taken an
initial step toward moving off, and Janet's last words
received only a nod and a smile for reply.
"You know, then?" said he, when that excellent woman was
safely out of earshot.
"Yes, I know," Janet answered, twisting the hanging end
of her long-haired boa about her wrist. "I feel as if
I oughtn't to, but daddy told me. Daddy went, you know,
to try to persuade her to give it up. I _was_ so angry
with him for doing it. He might have known Elfrida
better. And it was such a--Such a criticism!"
"I wish you would tell me-what you really think," said
Kendal audaciously.
Janet sipped her coffee nervously. "I--I have no right
to think," she returned. "I am not in Frida's confidence
in the matter. But of course she is perfectly right,
from, her point of view."
"Ah!" Kendal said, "her point of view."
Janet looked up at him with a sudden perception of the
coldness of his tone. In spite of herself it gave her
keen happiness, until the reflection came that probably
he resented her qualification, and turned her heart to
lead. She searched her soul for words.
"If she wants to do this thing, she has taken, of course,
the only way to do it well. She does not need any
justification--none at all. I wish she were back," Janet
went on desperately, "but only for my own sake--I don't
like being out of it with her; not for any reason connected
with what she is doing."
There was an appreciable pause between them. "Let me
put down your cup," suggested Kendal.
Turning to her again, he said gravely, "I saw Miss Bell
at Cheynemouth, too." Janet's hands trembled as she
fastened the fur at her throat. "And I also wish she
were back. But my reason is not, I am afraid, so simple
as yours."
"Here is daddy," Janet answered, "and I know he wants to
go. I don't think my father is looking quite as well as
he ought to. He doesn't complain, but I suspect him of
concealed neuralgia. Please give him a lecture upon
over-doing--it's the predominant vice of his character!"