Miss Pritchard acknowledged to herself that Elsie Marley had the right
stuff in her. She did not grow careless, never let herself down. The
audience was uncritical and wildly demonstrative, but the girl did her
level best at every performance. Up to a certain point, she even
improved. The possibility of so doing in this case was limited, but
having reached that point she held it. Further, her wonderfully sweet
voice seemed to grow sweeter every day.
Therein lay Miss Pritchard's one hope. Presently, she sought out an
old friend who had been a musician of note and later a teacher and
musical critic on an evening paper, and confided her difficulty to him.
Hearing her story, he was interested and very sympathetic. He advised
her to drop the concert idea and dwell wholly upon the possibility of
opera as a lure: only the dramatic form and setting could compete
successfully in a case of stage-fever like that. And where Miss
Pritchard had hoped only to be allowed to bring Elsie to him, he being
an old man, he agreed to go to the theatre and hear the girl when she
would be off her guard.
"I'll go any night you say, Miss Pritchard," he proposed.
"Don't make _me_ choose, Mr. Francis," she begged. "There's so much at
stake that if I knew when you were to be there, I should be so nervous
I couldn't sit still."
"You _nervous_, Miss Pritchard!" he exclaimed incredulously.
"Alas, yes, Mr. Francis," she acknowledged, laughing. "These young
people with their careers are too stimulating for spinster cousins who
have never had anything more exciting than night-work on a city paper.
Well, I dare say I have only my come-uppings. You see, I was afraid
Elsie wouldn't be lively enough! I had visions of an extremely proper,
blasé young person moping about, and rather dreaded her. Getting Elsie
was like finding a changeling."
"Rather too much of a good thing? Well, we're all that way, Miss
Pritchard. If we're looking for a quiet person, we want a peculiar
sort of quietude; and the lively ones must be just so lively and no
more. Do you remember in one of the old novels, where a sister
enumerates in a letter to her brother the charms of the young lady she
wishes him to marry? At the end of the list she adds that the lady has
'just as much religion as my William likes.' Now isn't that human
nature and you and I all over?"
As she left the house, a suggestion came to Miss Pritchard in regard to
a lesser matter she had had in mind. Elsie having agreed to drop
everything for July and August and go into the country with her, she
had been studying prospectuses and consulting friends as to the
whither. Seeing Mr. Francis, suddenly recalled a summer twenty years
before when he and his sister had passed a month at a place called
Green River in eastern Massachusetts, and she had driven over a number
of times from a neighboring town to dine with them. It came to her
suddenly that Green River was exactly the place she had been looking
for, and she believed it must be near Enderby, where Elsie's friend
lived. And now she couldn't understand why she hadn't thought before
of going where the friends might meet.
Making inquiries, she discovered that the name Green River had been
changed to Enderby, and that Enderby Inn was considered quite as good a
hostelry as the Green River Hotel had been. She wrote at once to the
proprietor to see if she could engage rooms, saying nothing to Elsie
lest the plan miscarry.
So eager was she, that when she found a telegram on her plate next
morning (almost before her letter had left New York) she opened it
anxiously, uncertain whether such promptness meant success or failure
for her. But it was from Mr. Francis, asking her to lunch with him.
She got through the morning in almost a fever of suspense.
He had gone to hear Elsie that very night of Miss Pritchard's call, and
told her without preface that the girl had a marvellous voice.
"Now, Miss Pritchard, can't you shut down at once on that vaudeville
business and set her to studying under a first-rate teacher?" he
demanded. "She ought not to lose a minute. Of course she is rather
small--too bad she isn't taller--but for all that I believe such a
voice will carry her anywhere. I shouldn't wonder if she should turn
out a star of the first magnitude."
He named a teacher with a studio in Boston who could take her as far as
she could go in this country. He usually went to Naples in the late
spring with a pupil or two, but would be at his home near Boston all
summer this year.
Of course the fact that Enderby was within easy reach of Boston added
to Miss Pritchard's excitement. That night she received word that she
could have accommodations at the inn, and a letter following next day
offered her a choice of rooms. She engaged a suite of three with a
bath, though aware that the single rooms would be satisfactory. And
she smiled at herself for assuming airs already, as guardian of an
operatic star, engaging royal apartments for her.
Filled with enthusiasm, she announced to Elsie that night that she had
secured quarters for them at Enderby for the two months. At the first
breath the girl was quite as surprised and delighted as she was
expected to be. The delight was, it is true, but momentary, though it
sufficed to irradiate her face and fill Miss Pritchard's heart with
generous joy--also, to hide from the latter the fact that it was
succeeded by profound dismay.
Those dimples! Those awful dimples! As she thought of them, Elsie
Moss was overwhelmed by consternation. Of course she couldn't go to
Enderby. She couldn't let Uncle John get even a second glimpse of her
face. She fled from the room in a panic which Miss Pritchard believed
to be excited eagerness to impart the good news to her friend at once.
Though, as the days had passed, Elsie had persisted in her refusal to
face her conscience or look into the future, she had been vaguely aware
of a day of reckoning ahead. She had dimly taken it for granted that
when she stopped she would have to consider--there would be nothing
else to do. When she should be out from under the influence of this
powerful stimulant, she foresaw herself meeting perforce the questions
she had evaded. But also she had foreseen herself with two clear
months before her and with Cousin Julia beside her.
Now, on a sudden, all was changed. She seemed to have no choice. She
had no control over her future. She had delayed so long that the
choice was no longer hers. Her path was sharply defined. There was
nothing she could do except to disappear on the eve of Miss Pritchard's
departure for Enderby. And at that time there would be nothing to
sustain her, no moral or redeeming force about an act that was
compulsory. It was like being shown a precipice and realizing that at
an appointed time one must walk straight over its verge.