Elfrida spent five weeks with the Peach Blossom Company
on their provincial tour, and in the end the manager was
sorry to lose her. He was under the impression that she
had joined them as an aspiring novice, presumably able
to gratify that or any other whim. He had guessed that
she was clever, and could see that she was extremely
good-looking. Before the month was out he was congratulating
himself upon his perception much as Rattray had a habit
of doing, and was quite ready to give Elfrida every
encouragement she wanted to embrace the burlesque stage
seriously--it was a thundering pity she hadn't voice
enough for comic opera. He had nothing to complain of;
the arrangement had been for a few weeks only, and had
cost him the merest trifle of travelling expenses; but
the day Elfrida went back to town he was inclined to
parley with her, to discuss the situation, and to make
suggestions for her future plan of action. His attitude
of visible regret added another thrill to the joy the
girl had in the thought of her undertaking; it marked a
point of her success, she thought, at least so far as
preliminaries went. Already, as she shrank fastidiously
into the corner of a third-class travelling-carriage,
her project seemed to have reached its original and
notable materialization. Chapters passed before her eyes
as they do sometimes in dreams, full of charm and beauty;
the book went through every phase of comedy and pathos,
always ringing true. Little half-formed sentences of
admirable art rose before her mind, and she hastily barred
them out, feeling that she was not ready yet, and it
would be mad misery to want them and to have forgotten
them. The thought of what she meant to do possessed her
wholly, though, and she resigned herself to dreams of
the most effective arrangement of her material, the
selection of her publisher, the long midnight hours alone
with Buddha, in which she should give herself up to the
enthralment of speaking with that voice which she could
summon, that elusive voice which she lived only, only to
be the medium for--that precious voice which would be
heard one day, yes, and listened-to.
She was so freshly impressed with the new life-lights,
curious, tawdry, fascinating, revolting, above all sharp
and undisguised, of the world she had left, that she saw
them already projected with a verisimilitude which, if
she had possessed the art of it, would have made her
indeed famous. Her own power of realization, assured her
on this point--nobody could see, not divine but _see_,
as she did, without being able to reproduce; the one
implied the other. She fingered feverishly the strap of
the little hand-bag in her lap, and satisfied herself by
unlocking it with a key that hung on a String inside her
jacket. It had two or three photographs of the women she
knew among the company, another of herself in her stage
uniform, a bill of the play, her powder-puff and rouge-box,
a scrap of gold lace, a young Jew's letter full of blots
and devotion, a rather vulgar sapphire bracelet, some
artificial flowers, and a quantity of slips of paper of
all sizes covered with her own enigmatically rounded
handwriting. She put her hand in carefully and
searched--everything was there; and up from the bag came
a scent that made her shut her eyes and laugh with its
power to bring her experiences back to her. She locked
it; carefully again with a quivering sigh--after all she
would not have many hours to wait. Presently an idea came
to her that she thought worth keeping, and she thrust
her hand into her pocket for paper and pencil. She drew
out a crumpled oblong scrap and wrote on the back of it,
then unlocked the little bag again and put it carefully
in. Before it had been only the check of the _Illustrated
Age_ for a fortnight's work; now it was the record of
something valuable.
The train rolled into a black and echoing station as the
light in the carriage began to turn from the uncertain
grayness that came in at the window to the uncertain
yellowness that descended from the roof. Boys ran up and
down the length of the platform in the foggy gaslit
darkness shouting Banbury cakes and newspapers. Elfrida
hated Banbury cakes, but she had a consuming hunger and
bought some. She also hated English newspapers, but lately
some queer new notable Australian things had been appearing
in the _St. George's Gazette_--Cardiff had sent them to
her--and she selected this journal from the damp lot that
hung, over the newsboy's arm, on the chance of a fresh
one. The doors were locked and the train hurried on.
Elfrida ate two of her Banbury cakes with the malediction
that only this British confection can inspire, and bestowed
the rest upon a small boy who eyed her enviously over
the back of an adjoining seat She and the small boy and
his mother had the carriage to themselves.
There was nothing from the unusual Australian contributor
in this number of the _St. George's_, and Elfrida turned
its pages with the bored feeling of knowing what else
she might expect. "Parliamentary Debates," of course,
and the news of London, five lines from America announcing
the burning of a New York hotel with hideous loss of
life, an article on the situation in Persia, and one on
the cultivation of artichokes, "Money," "The Seer of
Hawarden," the foreign markets--book reviews. Elfrida
thought also that she knew what she might expect here,
and that it would be nothing very absorbing. Still, with
a sense of tasting criticism in advance, she let her eye
travel over the column or two the paper devoted to three
or four books of the week. A moment later Janet Cardiff's
name in the second paragraph had sprung at her throat,
it seemed to Elfrida, and choked her.
She could not see--she could not see! The print was so
bad, the light was infernal, the carriage jolted so. She
got up and held the paper nearer to the lamp in the roof,
staying herself against the end of a seat. As she read
she grew paler, and the paper shook in her hand. "One of
the valuable books of the year," "showing grasp of
character and keen dramatic instinct," "a distinctly
original vein," "too slender a plot for perfect symmetry,
but a treatment of situation at once nervous and strong,"
were some of the commonplaces that said themselves over
and again in her mind as she sank back into her place by
the window with the paper lying across her lap.
Her heart beat furiously, her head was in a whirl; she
stared hard, for calmness, into the swift-passing night
outside. Presently she recognized herself to be angry
with an intense still jealous anger that seemed to rise
and consume her in every part of her being. A success--of
course it would be a success if Janet wrote it--she was
not artistic enough to fail. Ah, should Janet's friend
go so far as to say that? She didn't know--she would
think afterward; but Janet was of those who succeed, and
there were more ways than one of deserving success. Janet
was a compromise; she belonged really to the British
public and the class of Academy studies from the nude
which were always draped, just a little. Elfrida found
a bitter satisfaction in this simile, and elaborated it.
The book would be one to be commended for _jeunes filles_,
and her lips turned down mockingly in the shadow. She
fancied some well-meaning critic saying, "It should be
on every drawing-room table," and she almost laughed
outright. She thought of a number of other little things
that might be said, of the same nature and equally amusing.
Her anger flamed up again at the thought of how Janet
had concealed this ambition from her, had made her, in
a way, the victim of it. It was not fair--not fair! She
could have prepared herself against it; she might have
got _her_ book ready sooner, and its triumphant editions
might at least have come out side by side with Janet's.
She was just beginning to feel that they were neck and
neck, in a way, and now Janet had shot so far ahead, in
a night, in a paragraph. She could never, never catch
up! And from under her closed eyelids two hot tears
started and ran over her cold cheeks. It came upon her
suddenly that she was sick with jealousy, not envy, but
pure anger at being distanced, and she tried to attack
herself about it. With a strong effort she heaped opprobrium
and shame upon herself, denounced herself, tried to hate
herself. But she felt that it was all a kind of dumb-show,
and that under it nothing could change the person she
was or the real feeling she had about this--nothing except
being first. Ah! then she could be generous and loyal
and disinterested; then she could be really a nice person
to know, she derided herself. And as her foot touched
the little hand-bag on the floor she took a kind of sullen
courage, which deserted her when she folded the paper on
her lap and was struck again in the face with Lash and
Black's advertisement on the outside page announcing
Janet's novel in letters that looked half a foot long.
Then she resigned herself to her wretchedness till the
train sped into the glory of Paddington.
"I hope you're not bad, miss," remarked the small boy's
mother as they pushed toward the door together; "them
Banburys don't agree with everybody."
The effect upon Elfrida was hysterical. She controlled
herself just long enough to answer with decent gravity,
and escaped upon the platform to burst into a silent
quivering paroxysm of laughter that brought her overcharged
feeling delicious relief, and produced an answering smile
on the face of a large, good-looking policeman. Her laugh
rested her, calmed her, and restored something of her
moral tone. She was at least able to resist the temptation
of asking the boy at the book-stall where she bought
"John Camberwell" whether the volume was selling rapidly
or not. Buddha looked on askance while she read it, all
night long and well into the morning. She reached the
last page and flung down the book in pure physical
exhaustion, with the framework of half a dozen reviews
in her mind. When she awoke, at two in the afternoon,
she decided that she must have another day or two of
solitude; she would not let the Cardiffs know she had
returned quite yet.
Three days afterward the _Illustrated Age_ published a
review of "John Camberwell" which brought an agreeable
perplexity to Messrs. Lash and Black. It was too good to
compress, and their usual advertising space would not
contain it all. It was almost passionately appreciative;
here and there the effect of criticism was obviously
marred by the desire of the writer to let no point of
beauty or of value escape divination. Quotations from
the book were culled like flowers, with a delicate hand;
and there was conspicuous care in the avoidance of any
phrase that was hackneyed, any line of criticism that
custom had impoverished. It seemed that the writer
fashioned a tribute, and strove to make it perfect in
every way. And so perfect it was, so cunningly devised
and gracefully expressed, with such a self-conscious
beauty of word and thought, that its extravagance went
unsuspected, and the interest it provoked was its own.
Janet read the review in glow of remorseful affection.
She was appealed to less by the exquisite manipulation
with which the phrases strove to say the most and the
best, than by the loyal haste to praise she saw behind,
them, and she forgave their lack of blame in the happy
belief that Elfrida had not the heart for it. She was
not in the least angry that her friend should have done
her the injustice of what would have been, less adroitly
managed, indiscriminate praise; in fact, she hardly
thought of the value of the critique at all, so absorbed
was she in the sweet sense of the impulse that made
Elfrida write it. To Janet's quick forgiveness it made
up for everything; indeed, she found in it a scourge for
her anger, for her resentment. Elfrida might do what she
pleased, Janet would never cavil again; she was sure now
of some real possession in her friend. But she longed to
see Elfrida, to assure herself of the warm verity of
this. Besides, she wanted to feel her work in her friend's
presence, to extract the censure that was due, to take
the essence of praise from her eyes and voice and hand.
But she would wait. She had still no right to know that
Elfrida had returned, and an odd sensitiveness prevented
her from driving instantly to Essex Court to ask.
The next day passed, and the next. Lawrence Cardiff found
no reason to share his daughter's scruples, and went
twice, to meet Mrs. Jordan on the threshold with the
implacable statement that Miss Bell had returned but was
not at home. He found it impossible to mention Elfrida
to Janet now.
John Kendal had gone back to Devonshire to look after
the thinning of a bit of his woodlands--one thing after
another claimed his attention there. Janet had a gay
note from him now and then, always _en camarade_, in
which he deplored himself in the character of an intelligent
land-owner, but in which she detected also a growing
interest and satisfaction in all that he was finding to
do. Janet saw it always with a throb of pleasure; his
art was much to her, but the sympathy that bound him to
the practical side of his world was more, though she
would not have confessed it. She was unconsciously
comforted by the sense that it was on the warm, bright,
comprehensible side of his interest in life that she
touched him--and that Elfrida did not touch him. The idea
of the country house in Devonshire excluded Elfrida, and
it was an exclusion Janet could be happy in conscientiously,
since Elfrida did not care.