Eleanor did not leave for New York the following day. Neither did she see
Harold Phipps when he arrived on the morning train. His anxious inquiries
over the telephone were met by Rose's cool assurance that Miss Bartlett
was spending the week-end with her, and that she would write and explain
her silly telegram. His demand for an immediate interview was parried
with the excuse that Miss Bartlett was confined to her bed with a severe
headache and could not see any one. Without saying so directly, Rose
managed to convey the impression that Miss Bartlett was quite indifferent
to his presence in the city and not at all sure that she would be able to
see him at all.
This was an interpretation of the situation decidedly more liberal than
the facts warranted. Even after Eleanor had been served with the
unpalatable truth, generously garnished with unpleasant gossip, she still
clung to her belief in Harold and the conviction that he would be able to
explain everything when she saw him. Quin's report of Madam's offer to
send her to New York was received in noncommittal silence. She would
agree to nothing, she declared, until she saw Harold, her only concession
being that she would stay in bed until the afternoon and not see him
before evening.
About noon a messenger-boy brought her a box of flowers and a bulky
letter. The latter had evidently been written immediately after Harold's
talk with Rose, and he made the fatal mistake of concluding, from her
remarks, that Eleanor had changed her mind after sending the telegram and
had not come to Chicago. He therefore gave free rein to his imagination,
describing in burning rhetoric how he had received her message Saturday
night just as he was retiring, how he tossed impatiently on his bed all
night, and rose at dawn to be at the station when the train came in. He
pictured vividly his ecstasy of expectation, his futile search, his
bitter disappointment. He had dropped everything, he declared, to take
the next train to Kentucky to find out what had changed her plans, and to
persuade her to be married at once and return with him to Chicago. The
epistle ended with a love rhapsody that deserved a better fate than to be
torn into shreds and consigned to the waste-basket.
"Tell the boy not to wait!" was Eleanor's furious instruction. "Tell him
there's no answer now or ever!"
Then she pitched the flowers after the note, locked her door, and refused
to admit any one for the rest of the day.
After that her one desire was to get away. She felt utterly humiliated,
disillusioned, disgraced, and her sole hope for peace lay in the further
humiliation of accepting Madam's offer and trying to go on with her work.
But even here she met an obstacle. A letter arrived from Papa Claude,
saying that he would not be able to get possession of the little
apartment until December first, a delay that necessitated Eleanor's
remaining with the Martels for another month.
The situation was a delicate and a difficult one. Eleanor was more than
willing to forgo the luxuries to which she had been accustomed and was
even willing to share Rose's untidy bedroom; but the knowledge that she
was adding another weight to Cass's already heavy burden was intolerable
to her. To make things worse, she was besieged with notes and visits and
telephone calls from various emissaries sent out by her grandmother.
"I'll go perfectly crazy if they don't leave me alone!" she declared one
night to Quin. "They act as if studying for the stage were the wickedest
thing in the world. Aunt Isobel was here all morning, harping on my
immortal soul until I almost hoped I didn't have one. This afternoon Aunt
Flo came and warned me against getting professional notions in my head,
and talked about my social position, and what a blow it would be to the
family. Then, to cap the climax, Uncle Ranny had the nerve to telephone
and urge me against taking any step that would break my grandmother's
heart. Uncle Ranny! Can you beat that?"
"I'd chuck the whole bunch for a while," was Quin's advice. "Why don't
you let their standards go to gallagher and live up to your own?"
"That's what I want to do, Quin," she said earnestly. "My standards are
just as good as theirs, every bit. I've got terrifically high ideals.
Nobody knows how serious I feel about the whole thing. It isn't just a
silly whim, as grandmother thinks; it's the one thing in the world I care
about--now."
Quin started to speak, reconsidered it, and whistled softly instead. He
had formed a Spartan resolve to put aside his own claims for the present,
and be in word and deed that "best friend" to whom he had urged Eleanor
to come in time of trouble. With heroic self-control, he set himself to
meet her problems, even going so far as to encourage her spirit of
independence and to help her build air-castles that at present were her
only refuge from despair.
"Just think of all the wonderful things I can do if I succeed," she said.
"Papa Claude need never take another pupil, and Myrna can go to college,
and Cass and Fan Loomis can get married."
"And don't forget Rose," suggested Quin, to keep up the interest. "You
must do something handsome for her. She's a great girl, Rose is!"
Eleanor looked at him curiously, and the smallest of puckers appeared
between her perfectly arched brows. Quin saw it at once, and decided that
Rose's recent handling of Mr. Phipps had met with disfavor, and he sighed
as he thought of the hold the older man still had on Eleanor.
During the next difficult weeks Quin devoted all his spare time to the
grateful occupation of diverting the Martels' woe-begone little guest.
Hardly a day passed that he did not suggest some excursion that would
divert her without bringing her into contact with her own social world,
from which she shrank with aversion. On Sundays and half-holidays he took
her on long trolley rides to queer out-of-the-way places where she had
never been before: to Zachary Taylor's grave, and George Rogers Clark's
birthplace, to the venerable tree in Iroquois Park that bore the carved
inscription, "D. Boone, 1735." One Sunday morning they went to Shawnee
Park and rented a rowboat, in which they followed the windings of the
Ohio River below the falls, and had innumerable adventures that kept them
out until sundown.
Eleanor had never before had so much liberty. She came and went as she
pleased; and if she missed a meal the explanation that she was out with
Quin was sufficient. Sometimes when the weather was good she would walk
over to Central Park and meet him when he came home in the evening. They
would sit under the bare trees and talk, or look over the books he had
brought her from the library.
At first she had found his selections a tame substitute for her recent
highly spiced literary diet; but before long she began to take a languid
interest in them. They invariably had to do with outdoor things--stars
and flowers, birds and beasts, and adventures in foreign lands.
"Here's a jim-dandy!" Quin would say enthusiastically. "It's all about
bees. I can't pronounce the guy that wrote it, but, take it from me, he's
got the dope all right."
It was in the long hours of the day, when Eleanor was in the house alone,
that she faced her darkest problems. She had been burnt so badly in her
recent affair that she wanted nothing more to do with fire; yet she was
chilled and forlorn without it. With all her courage she tried to banish
the unworthy image of Harold Phipps, but his melancholy eyes still
exercised their old potent charm, and the memory of his low, insistent
tones still echoed in her ears. She came to the tragic conclusion that
she was the victim of a hopeless infatuation that would follow her to her
grave.
So obsessed was she by the thought of her shattered love affair that she
failed to see that a troubled conscience was equally responsible for her
restlessness. Her life-long training in acquiescence and obedience was at
grips with her desire to live her own life in her own way. She had not
realized until she made the break how much she cared for the family
approval, how dependent she was on the family advice and assistance, how
hideous it was to make people unhappy. Now that she was about to obtain
her freedom, she was afraid of it. Suppose she did not make good? Suppose
she had no talent, after all? Suppose Papa Claude was as visionary about
her career as he was about everything else? At such times a word of
discouragement would have broken her spirit and sent her back to bondage.
"Would you go on with it?" she asked Quin, time and again.
"Sure," said Quin stoutly; "you'll never be satisfied until you try it
out."
"But suppose I'm a failure?"
"Well, then you've got it out of your system, and won't have to go
through life thinking about the big success you'd have been if you'd just
had your chance."
She was not satisfied with his answer, but it had to suffice. While he
never discouraged her, she felt that he shared the opinion of the family
that her ambition was a caprice to be indulged and got rid of, the sooner
the better.
The first day of December brought word from Claude Martel that the
apartment was ready. Eleanor left on twenty-four hours' notice, and it
required the combined efforts of both families to get her off. She had
refused up to the last to see her grandmother, but had yielded to united
pressure and written a stiff good-by note in which she thanked her for
advancing the money, and added--not without a touch of bitterness--that
it would all be spent for the purpose intended.
Randolph Bartlett took her to the station in his car, and Miss Isobel met
them there with a suit-case full of articles that she feared Eleanor had
failed to provide.
"I put in some overshoes," she said, fluttering about like a distracted
hen whose adopted duckling unexpectedly takes to water. "I also fixed up
a medicine-case and a sewing basket. I knew you would never think of
them. And, dear, I know how you hate heavy underwear, but pneumonia is so
prevalent. You must promise me not to take cold if you can possibly avoid
it."
Eleanor promised. Somehow, Aunt Isobel, with her anxious face and her
reddened eyelids, had never seemed so pathetic before.
"I'll write to you, auntie," she said reassuringly; "and you mustn't
worry."
"Don't write to me," whispered Miss Isobel tremulously. "Write to mother.
Just a line now and then to let her know you think of her. She's quite
feeble, Nellie, and she talks about you from morning until night."
Eleanor's face hardened. She evidently did not enjoy imagining the nature
of Madam's discourse. However, she squeezed Aunt Isobel's hand and said
she would write.
Then Quin arrived with the ticket and the baggage-checks, the train was
called, and Eleanor was duly embraced and wept over.
"We won't go through the gates," said Mr. Ranny, with consideration for
Miss Isobel's tearful condition. "Quin will get you aboard all right.
Good-by, kiddie!"
Eleanor stumbled after Quin with many a backward glance. Both Aunt Isobel
and Uncle Ranny seemed to have acquired haloes of kindness and affection,
and she felt like a selfish ingrate. She looked at the lunch-box in her
hand, and thought of Rose rising at dawn to fix it before she went to
work. She remembered the little gifts Cass and Myrna and Edwin had
slipped in her bag. How good they had all been to her, and how she was
going to miss them! Now that she was actually embarked on her great
adventure, a terrible misgiving seized her.
"Train starts in two minutes, boss!" warned the porter, as Quin helped
Eleanor aboard and piloted her to her seat.
"You couldn't hold it up for half an hour, could you?" asked Quin. Then,
as he glanced down and met Eleanor's eyes brimming with all those recent
tendernesses, his carefully practised stoicism received a frightful jolt.
As the "All aboard!" sounded, she clutched his sleeve in sudden panic.
"Oh, Quin, I know I'm going to be horribly lonesome and homesick. I--I
wish you were going too!"
"All right! I'll go! Why not?"
"But you can't! I was fooling. You must get off this instant!"
"May I come on later? Say in the spring?"
"Yes, yes! But get off now! Quick, we are moving!"
She had almost to push him down the aisle and off the steps. Then, as the
train gained speed, instead of looking forward to the wide fields of
freedom stretching before her, she looked wistfully back to the
disconsolate figure on the platform, and, with a sigh that was half for
him and half for herself, she lifted her fingers to her lips and rashly
blew him a good-by kiss.