"Janet," said Lawrence Cardiff a week later at breakfast,
"the Halifaxes have decided upon their American tour. I
saw Lady Halifax last night and she tells me they sail
on the twenty-first. They want you to go with them. Do
you feel disposed to do it?"
Mr. Cardiff looked at his daughter with eyes from which
the hardness that entered them weeks before in the Temple
Courts had never quite disappeared. His face was worn
and thin, its delicacy had sharpened, and he carried
about with him an habitual abstraction. Janet, regarding
him day after day in the light of her secret knowledge,
gave herself up to an inward storm of anger and grief
and anxiety. Elfrida's name had been tacitly dropped
between them, but to Janet's sensitiveness she was
constantly and painfully to be reckoned with in their
common life. Lawrence Cardiff's moods were accountable
to his daughter obviously by Elfrida's influence. She
noted bitterly that his old evenness of temper, the gay
placidity that made so delightful a basis for their joint
happiness, had absolutely disappeared. Instead, she found
her father either irritable or despondent, or inspired
by a gaiety which she had no hand in producing, and which
took no account of her. That was the real pain. Janet
was keenly distressed at the little drama of suffering
that unfolded itself daily before her, but her disapproval
of its cause very much blunted her sense of its seriousness.
She had, besides, a grown-up daughter's repulsion and
impatience for a parental love-affair, and it is doubtful
whether she would have brought her father's to a happy
conclusion without a very severe struggle if she had
possessed the power to do it. But this exclusion gave
her a keener pang; she had shared so much with him before,
had been so important to him always. And now he could
propose, with perfect equanimity that she should go to
America with the Halifaxes.
"But you could not get away by the twenty-first," she
returned, trying to take it for granted that the idea
included him.
"Oh, I don't propose going," Mr. Cardiff returned from
behind his newspaper.
"But, daddy, they intend to be away for a year."
"About that. Lady Halifax has arranged a capital itinerary.
They mean to come back by India."
"And pray what would become of you all by yourself for
a year, sir?" asked Janet brightly. "Besides, we were
always going to do that trip together." She had a stubborn
inward determination not to recognize this difference
that had sprung up between them. It was only a phase,
she told herself, of her father's miserable feeling just
now; it would last another week, another fortnight, and
then things would be as they had been before. She would
not let herself believe in it, hurt as it might.
Mr. Cardiff lowered his paper. "Don't think of that," he
said over the top of it. "There is really no occasion.
I shall get on very well. There is always the club, you
know. And this is an opportunity you ought not to miss."
Janet said nothing, and Lawrence Cardiff went back to
his newspaper. She tried to go on with her breakfast,
but scalding tears stood in her eyes, and she could not
swallow. She was unable to command herself far enough to
ask to be excused, and she rose abruptly and left the
room with her face turned carefully away.
Cardiff followed her with his eyes and gave an
uncomprehending shrug. He looked at his watch; there was
still half an hour before he need leave the house. It
brought him an uncomfortable thought that he might go
and comfort Janet--it was evident that something he had
said had hurt her--she was growing absurdly hypersensitive.
He dismissed the idea--Heaven only knew into what
complications it might lead them. He spent the time
instead in a restless walk up and down the room, revolving
whether Elfrida Bell would or would not be brought to
reconsider her refusal to let him take her to "Faust"
that night--he never could depend upon her.
Janet had not seen John Kendal since the afternoon he
came to her radiant with his intention of putting all of
Elfrida's elusive charm upon canvas, full of its intrinsic
difficulties, eager for her sympathy, depending on her
enthusiastic interest. She had disappointed him--she did
her best, but the sympathy and enthusiasm and interest
would not come. She could not tell him why--her broken
friendship was still sacred to her for what it had been.
Besides, explanations were impossible. So she listened
and approved with a strained smile, and led him, with a
persistence he did not understand, to talk of other
things. He went away chilled and baffled, and he had not
come again. She knew that he was painting with every
nerve tense and eager, in oblivion to all but his work
and the face that inspired it. Elfrida, he told her, was
to give him three sittings a week, of an hour each, and
he complained of the scantiness of the dole. She could
conjure up those hours, all too short for his delight in
his model and his work. Surely it would not be long now!
Elfrida cared, by her own confession--Janet felt, dully,
there could now be no doubt of that--and since Elfrida
cared, what could be more certain than the natural issue?
She fought with herself to accept it; she spent hours in
seeking for the indifference that might come of accustoming
herself to the fact. And when she thought of her father
she hoped that it might be soon.
There came a day when Lawrence Cardiff gave, his daughter
the happiness of being almost his other self again. He
had come downstairs with a headache and a touch of fever,
and all day long he let her take care of him submissively,
with the old pleasant gratitude that seemed to re-establish
their comradeship. She had a joyful secret wonder at the
change, it was so sadden and so complete; but their
sympathetic relation reasserted itself naturally and at
once, and she would not let herself question it. In the
evening he sent her to her room for a book of his, and
when she brought it to him where he lay upon the lounge
in the library he detained her a moment.
"You mustn't attempt to read without a lamp now, daddy,"
she said, touching his forehead lightly with her lips.
"You will damage your poor old eyes."
"Don't be impertinent about my poor old eyes, miss," he
returned, smiling. "Janet, there is something I think
you ought to know."
"Yes, daddy." The girl felt herself turning rigid.
"I want you to make friends with Elfrida again. I have
every reason to believe--at all events some reason to
believe--that she will become my wife." Her knowing
already made it simpler to say.
"Has--has she promised, daddy?"
"Not exactly. But I think she will, Janet." His tone was
very confident. "And of course you must forgive each
other any little heart-burnings there may have been
between you."
Any little heart-burnings! Janet had a quivering moment
of indecision. "Oh, daddy! she won't! she won't!" she
cried tumultuously, and hurried out of the room. Cardiff
lay still, smiling pityingly. What odd ideas women managed
to get into their heads about one another! Janet thought
Elfrida would refuse her overtures if she made them.
How little she knew Elfrida--his just, candid, generous
Elfrida!
Janet flung herself upon her bed and faced the situation,
dry-eyed, with burning cheeks. She could always face a
situation when it admitted the possibility of anything
being done, when there was a chance for resolution and
action. Practical difficulties nerved her; it was only
before the blankness of a problem of pure abstractness
that she quailed--such a problem as the complication of
her relation to John Kendal and to Elfrida Bell. She had
shrunk from that for months, had put it away habitually
in the furthest corner of her consciousness, and had done
her best to make it stay there. She discovered how sore
its fret had been only with the relief she felt when she
simplified it at a stroke that afternoon on which everything
came to an end between her and Elfrida. Since the burden
of obligation their relation imposed had been removed
Janet had analyzed her friendship, and had found it
wanting in many ways to which she had been wilfully blind
before. The criticism she had always silenced came forward
and spoke boldly; and she recognized the impossibility
of a whole-hearted intimacy where a need for enforced
dumbness existed. All the girl's charm she acknowledged
with a heart wrung by the thought that it was no longer
for her. She dwelt separately and long upon Elfrida's
keen sense of justice, her impulsive generosity, her
refined consideration for other people, the delicacy of
some of her personal instincts, her absolute sincerity
toward herself and the world, her passionate exaltation
of what was to her the ideal in art. Janet exacted from
herself the last jot of justice toward Elfrida in all
these things; and then she listened, as she had not done
before, to the voice that spoke to her from the very
depths of her being, it seemed, and said, "Nevertheless,
_no!_" She only half comprehended, and the words brought
her a sadness that would be long, she knew, in leaving
her; but she listened and agreed.
And now it seemed to her that she must ignore it again,
that the wise, the necessary, the expedient thing to do
was to go to Elfrida and re-establish, if she could, the
old relation, cost what it might. She must take up her
burden of obligation again in order that it might be
mutual. Then she would have the right to beg Elfrida to
stop playing fast and loose with her father, to act
decisively. If Elfrida only knew, only realized, the
difference it made, and how little right she had to
control, at her whim, the happiness of any human being
--and Janet brought a strong hand to bear upon her
indignation, for she had resolved to go; and to go that
night.
Lawrence-Cardiff bade his daughter an early, good-night
after their unusually pleasant dinner. "Do you think
you can do it?" he asked her before he went Janet started
at the question, for they had not mentioned Elfrida again,
even remotely.
"I think I can, daddy," she answered him gravely, and
they separated. She looked at her watch; by half-past
nine she could be in Essex Court.
Yes, Miss Bell was in, Miss Cardiff could go straight
up, Mrs. Jordan informed her, and she mounted the last
flight of stairs with a beating heart. Her mission was
important--oh, so important! She had compromised with
her conscience in planning it, and now if it should fail!
Her hand trembled as she knocked. In answer to Elfrida's
"Come in!" she pushed the door slowly open. "It is I,
Janet," she said; "may I?"
"But of course!"
Elfrida rose from a confusion of sheets of manuscript
upon the table and came forward, holding out her hand
with an odd gleam in her eyes, and an amused, slightly
excited smile about her lips.
"How do you, do?" she said, with rather ostentatiously
suppressed wonder. "Please sit down, but not in that
chair. It is not quite reliable. This one, I think is
better. How are--how are _you?_"
The slight emphasis she placed on the last word was airy
and regardless. Janet would have preferred to have been
met by one of the old affectations; she would have felt
herself taken more seriously.
"It's very late to come, and I interrupt you," she said
awkwardly, glancing at the manuscript.
"Not at all. I am very happy--"
"But of course I had a special reason for coming. It is
serious enough, I think, to justify me."
"What can it be!"
"_Don't_, Elfrida," Janet cried passionately. "Listen
to me. I have come to try to make things right again
between us--to ask you to forgive me for speaking as
I--as I did about your writing that day. I am sorry--I
am, indeed."
"I don't quite understand. You ask me to _forgive_
you--but what question is there of forgiveness? You had
a perfect right to your opinion, and I was glad to have
it at last from you, frankly."
"But it offended you, Elfrida. It is what is accountable
for the--the rupture between us."
"Perhaps. But not because it hurt my feelings," Elfrida
returned scornfully, "in the ordinary sense. It offended
me truly; but in quite another way. In what you said you
put me on a different plane from yourself in the matter
of artistic execution. Very well. I am content to stay
there--in your opinion. But why this talk of forgiveness?
Neither of us can alter anything. Only," Elfrida breathed
quickly, "be sure that I will not be accepted by you upon
those terms."
"That, wasn't what I meant in the least."
"What else could you have meant? And more than that,"
Elfrida went on rapidly--her phrases had the patness of
formed conclusions--"what you said betrayed a totally
different conception of art, as it expresses itself in
the nudity of things, from the one I supposed you to
hold. And, if you will pardon me for saying so, a much
lower one. It seems to me that we cannot hold together
there--that our aims and creeds are different, and that
we have been comrades under false pretences. Perhaps we
are both to blame for that; but we cannot change it, or
the fact that we have found it out."
Janet bit her lip. The "nudity of things" brought her an
instant's impulse toward hysteria--it was so characteristic
a touch of candid exaggeration. But her need for reflection
helped her to control it. Elfrida had taken a different
ground from the one she expected--it was less simple,
and a mere apology, however sincere, would not meet it.
But there was one thing more which she could say, and
with an effort she said it.
"Elfrida, suppose that, even as an expression of
opinion--putting it aside as an expression of feeling
toward you--what I said that day was not quite sincere.
Suppose that I was not quite mistress of myself--I would
rather not tell you why--"
"Is that true?" asked Elfrida directly.
"Yes, it is true. For the moment I wanted more than
anything else in the world to break with you. I took
the surest means."
The other girl regarded Janet steadfastly. "But if it is
only a question of the _degree_ of your sincerity," she
persisted, "I cannot see that the situation alters much."
"I was not altogether responsible, believe me, Elfrida.
I don't remember now what I said, but--but I am afraid
it must have taken all its color from my feeling."
"Of course." Elfrida hesitated, and her tone showed her
touched. "I can understand that what I told you about
--about Mr. Cardiff must have been a shock. For the moment
I became an animal, and turned upon you--upon you who
had been to me the very soul of kindness. I have hated
myself for it--you may be sure of that."
Janet Cardiff had a moment's inward struggle, and yielded.
She would let Elfrida believe it had been that. After
all it was partly true, and her lips refused absolutely
to say the rest.
"Yes, it must have hurt you--more, perhaps, than I can
guess." Elfrida's eyes grew wet and her voice shook. "But
I can't understand your retaliating that way, if you
didn't believe what you said. And if you believed it,
what more is there to say?"
Janet felt herself possessed by an intense sensation of
playing for stakes, unusual, exciting, and of some personal
importance. She did not pause to regard her attitude from
any other point of view; she succumbed at once, not
without enjoyment, to the necessity for diplomacy. Under
its rush of suggestions her conscience was only vaguely
restive. To-morrow it would assert itself; unconsciously
she put off paying attention to it until then. Elfrida
must come back to her. For the moment the need was to
choose her plea.
"It seems to me," she said slowly, "that there is something
between us which is indestructible, Frida. We didn't
make it, and we can't unmake it. For my part, I think it
is worth our preserving, but I don't believe we could
lose it if we tried. You may put me away from you for
any reason that seems good to you, as far as you like,
but so long as we both live there will be that something,
recognized or unrecognized. All we can do arbitrarily is
to make it a joy or a pain of it. Haven't you felt that?"
The other girl looked at her uncertainly. "I have felt
it sometimes," she said, "but now it seems to me that I
can never be sure that there is not some qualification
in it--some hidden flaw."
"Don't you think it's worth making the best of? Can't we
make up our minds to have a little charity for the flaws?"
Elfrida shook her head. "I don't think I'm capable of a
friendship that demands charity," she said.
"And yet, whether we close each other's lips or not, we
will always have things to say, the one to the other, in
this world. Is it to be dumbness between us?"
There was a moment's silence in the room--a crucial
moment, it seemed to both of them. Elfrida sat against
the table with her elbows among its litter of paged
manuscript, her face hidden in her hands. Janet rose and
took a step or two toward her. Then she paused, and looked
at the little bronze image on the table instead. Elfrida
was suddenly shaken by deep, indrawn, silent sobs.
"It is finished, then," Janet said softly; "we are to
separate for always, Buddha, she and I. She will not know
any more of me nor I of her--it will be, so far as we
can make it, like the grave. You must belong to a strange
world, Buddha, always to smile!" She spoke evenly quietly,
with, restraint, and still she did not look at the
convulsively silent figure in the chair. "But I am glad
you will always keep that face for her, Buddha. I hope
the world will, too, our world that is sometimes more
bitter than you can understand. And I say good-by to you,
for to her I cannot say it." And she turned to go.
Elfrida stumbled to her feet and hurried to the door.
"No!" she said, holding it fast. "No! You must not go
that way--I owe you too much, after all. We will--we will
make the best of it."
"Not on that ground," Janet answered gravely. "Neither
your friendship nor mine is purchasable, I hope."
"No, no! That was bad. On any ground you like. Only stay
a little--let us find ourselves again!"
Elfrida forced a smile into what she said, and Janet let
herself be drawn back to a chair.
It was nearly midnight when she found herself again in
her cab, driving through the empty lamplit Strand toward
Kensington. She had prevailed, and now she had to scrutinize
her methods. That necessity urged itself beyond her power
to turn away from it, and left her sick at heart. She
had prevailed--Elfrida, she believed, was hers again.
They had talked as candidly as might be of her father.
Elfrida had promised nothing, but she would, bring matters
to an end, Janet knew she would, in a day or two, when
she had had time to think how intolerable the situation
would be if she didn't. Janet remembered with wonder,
however, how little Elfrida seemed to realize that it
need make any difference between them compared with other
things, and what a trivial concession she thought it
beside the restoration of the privileges of her friendship.
The girl asked herself drearily how it would be possible
that she should ever forget the frank cynical surprise
with which Elfrida had received her entreaty, based on
the fact of her father's unrest and the wretchedness of
his false hopes--"You have your success; does it really
matter--so very much?"