"Elsie, I rather want to hear that Elsie-Marley-Honey-thing again,"
remarked Miss Pritchard. "Would you mind doing it now?"
The two sat alone on the veranda of the hotel at an hour when other
guests were resting after the midday meal. Before them, beyond a
stretch of mosslike lawn and a broad sandy beach, rolled the sea,
brilliantly blue, with the waves curling dazzlingly white. Miss
Pritchard, comfortably dressed in a plain pongee-silk suit with a long
jacket, was ensconced on a willow settee with some recent English
reviews. Elsie, perched on the railing, her back against a pillar,
gazed at the far-away sky-line. She wore a pale-pink linen frock. Her
small face with its dark eyes and big dimples, her bobbed hair, and her
exceeding slenderness of form gave her such an appearance of
youthfulness that she seemed a very tall child, rather than the small
girl she was.
"I like your manner of speaking of my specialty, Cousin Julia," she
remarked. "Pray tell me why you want to hear it again, if you have
such scant respect for it?"
Miss Pritchard smiled. "If you must know, child, I want to listen more
critically this time. I'm quite sure I must have praised it far above
its deserts. And now that I understand the situation I ought to be a
better judge."
Despite her lightness of tone, Miss Pritchard was really desirous of
applying the test. Less than a fortnight after the girl's arrival, she
had learned of Elsie's desire to be an actress. The knowledge came
like a blow, it must be confessed. Broad as she was, she couldn't help
regretting that the girl's desires--and apparently her talent--seemed
to lie in the direction of the stage. Though she had declared she had
no patience with Pritchard notions and pretensions, she couldn't help
feeling that it was hardly decorous for the last of the Pritchards to
become an actress. Moreover, she feared that Elsie's capability did
not point to what is called the legitimate drama; it looked from the
first as if she would make straight for vaudeville and, perhaps, never
go further. After her training she might fill a soubrette's part
acceptably for a few years, but Miss Pritchard sighed when she tried to
look beyond that. To her it seemed like a limited outlook with a
closed door blocking the way at a point long before the age when one's
career should have reached the apex.
But Elsie's heart was set on it, and Miss Pritchard, despite her
misgivings, was full of sympathy and entered cordially into plans and
ways and means. Her newspaper work had given her friends among
critics, managers, and various theatrical people, and she helped Elsie
select a school wherein to begin her studies. That accomplished, Elsie
reluctantly agreed to accompany Miss Pritchard to the shore to spend
her six weeks' vacation.
"What I cannot understand," said Miss Pritchard at this time, repeating
very much what she had said before, "is, how you ever did it--how you
could possibly get any such idea into your head with your bringing-up.
For the life of me, I can't imagine your family countenancing any such
thing!"
"They didn't take to the idea with any enthusiasm," Elsie replied truly.
"You certainly are the strangest Pritchard ever. You're less Pritchard
than I, and that's saying a great deal," said Miss Pritchard with a
sigh. "Dear me, when I was at Aunt Ellen's when you were a baby, they
were so worried for fear you should have any Marley traits whatever, so
anxious for you to be all Pritchard!"
"Are you siding with them now?" the girl asked soberly. "Are you
disappointed in me, Cousin Julia?"
"Bless your heart, dear, I'm so satisfied that I'm frightened, and I
think I'll throw my precious ruby ring into the sea. I wish I could
say that I'd like you to be just so far Pritchard as not to have any
desire for the stage; but I somehow don't dare even say that. You see,
I couldn't risk losing any particle of Marley other than the
stage-madness."
Elsie came to her side and kissed her warmly.
"Then suppose we chuck the Pritchards for good," she proposed.
Miss Pritchard fairly gasped. Such temerity took her breath. But she
didn't give expression to her amazement. Already she had come to the
conclusion that Elsie had not been happy at home; she who was so frank
in all else was so brief and guarded in all her references to the
family or her home life. Now it seemed as if she must have been
exceedingly unhappy, to be ready to renounce the Pritchards in that
wholesale way. And yet, how could any girl whose life had not been
happy--nay, brimming with sunshine--be so gay and blithe and girlish
and care-free as she? Could the reaction from strict repression
possibly have that effect? Could the opportunity to realize her
ambition work such a miracle? Miss Pritchard shook her head. It was
beyond her, she confessed.
"Now you're down, you may as well do your stunt and have it over,
Elsie," she remarked. And Elsie, standing back a little, repeated the
performance in a manner that was only the more captivating.
Then, resuming her seat on the railing, she looked eagerly toward Miss
Pritchard. The face of the latter was a study. With every line, every
word, indeed, of the simple song, the actress in the girl had come out
strongly. Admiration of the grace and skill and charm of it all, and
wonder at the extraordinary sweetness of the girl's voice, mingled with
regret at the significance of it.
"Do you know what you look like, Cousin Julia?" Elsie asked.
"No, my saucy Marley, I do not."
"Like 'Heaven only knows'"--the girl heaved a tremendous
sigh--"'whatever will become of the naughty Brier-Rose.'"
"My dear, if you exhibit that sort of keenness," said Miss Pritchard,
laughing, "I'll make a newspaper reporter of you, willy-nilly. Then
you'll be sorry for poking fun at your elderly relative."
"It's only that I'm so used to discouragement from my elders and
betters that I'm familiar with the signs," returned Elsie. "Like as
not, if any one were to say, 'Hooray! Bully for you! Go in and win!'
I shouldn't understand. I should think they were kidding me."
"Poor child!" laughed Miss Pritchard, but she was really secretly
touched.
At this moment an artist Miss Pritchard had known for years, who always
spent his summers at this hotel, appeared before them. A man between
fifty and sixty, it was said of him that he had never succeeded;
younger, struggling artists said it was because of his handicap of a
fortune.
"Oh, Miss Marley, I wish I could persuade you to sing that again," he
said. "I caught a bit and a glimpse at a distance--just enough to
tantalize me."
Elsie, who admired Mr. Graham immensely, was seized with sudden
diffidence. He was a connoisseur in all matters of art. Suppose he
should say right before Miss Pritchard, that she was only a silly
tomboy, or whatever such a gentleman would say to express that idea?
She glanced irresolutely at Miss Pritchard.
"Go ahead, dear," said Miss Pritchard cheerfully, and turning to her
friend: "My little cousin thought I was scolding her, Mr. Graham. The
truth is, I'm the one who should be scolded. I chose the work I cared
for at about Elsie's age and went in for it; and yet when she chooses
hers, which happens to be the stage, I act the hen-with-the-duckling."
"Oh, Cousin Julia, you're the only one that has ever let me even speak
of it!" cried Elsie. Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and smiling
through them, she stepped back and began the song. And this time she
put in all the _frills_, as she expressed it. She danced and acted and
sang, and, as always, she was quite irresistible. The artist was
charmed.
"It's good enough for the vaudeville stage just as it is," he declared.
"There's only one fault."
"Oh, what is that?" the girl cried eagerly, with the artist's desire
for criticism, even though destructive.
"Your voice is too good--altogether too good. You could do it as well
and perhaps better with a voice far inferior to yours in range,
sweetness, and tone."
The girl gazed at him reproachfully. She had always had that to
contend with. People had always tried to "buy her off," as she
expressed it, by proposing that she become a singer instead of an
actress. Now, as always, she rebelled at the idea, and again her
vision of a public singer came to her--a very stout blonde lady in a
very low-cut gown with a very small waist (the picture had not adapted
itself to more modern fashions), placing a fat, squat hand on her
capacious bosom, and uttering meaningless syllables that rose to
shrieks. Anything but that, she said to herself!
Mr. Graham had fallen into a reverie. His hand shaded his brow. He
frowned as he endeavored to recollect something.
"Just where did you get hold of that song?" he inquired.
"My mother used to sing it," replied Elsie, and Miss Pritchard
wondered. So far as she had known, none of the Pritchards had sung,
and it was difficult to fancy Elsie's mother warbling a ditty of that
sort. The birth of her child must have altered Augusta greatly.
"It's an old nursery rhyme, I believe," the artist went on, still half
in his perplexity. "Isn't it singular about the name--or perhaps you
were named for it?"
"I was named _after_ it," responded Elsie demurely.
He smiled, but he was only half attending. He was reaching for
something in the depths of his mind which he did not find, and
presently he sauntered on with bent head. Miss Pritchard took up the
_Spectator_, and Elsie produced the "First Violin," and presently was
lost in that.