THE ROAD TO SUCCESS
Patty adhered to her resolution not to go to the theatre on Monday night,
but when she saw Mrs. Van Reypen and Philip start off she secretly
regretted her decision.
She loved fun and gaiety, and it suddenly seemed to her that she had been
foolishly sensitive about Mrs. Van Reypen's attitude toward her.
However, it couldn't be helped now, so she prepared to spend the evening
reading in the library.
She would have liked to hold a long telephone conversation with Nan and
her father, but she thought she had better not, for there were so many
house servants on duty that a maid or a footman would be likely to
overhear her.
She played the piano and sang a little, then she wandered about the large
and lonely rooms. Patty was a sociable creature, and had never before
spent an evening entirely alone, unless when engaged in some important
and engrossing work.
But after a while the telephone rang, and when the parlour-maid told her
the call was for her she flew to the instrument with glad anticipation.
"Hello!" she cried, and "Hello!" returned a familiar voice.
"Oh, Ken! of all people. How _did_ you know I was here?"
"Oh, I found it out! How are you? May I come to see you?"
"No, indeed! I'm a companion. I'm not expected to have callers. But I'm
glad to talk to you this way. I'm alone in the house, except for the
servants."
"Alone! Then let me come up for a few minutes, and chat."
"No; Mrs. Van Reypen wouldn't like it, I'm sure. But, oh, Ken, I'm making
good this time! On Thursday the week will be up, and I'll get my fifteen
dollars. Isn't that gay?"
"You're a plucky girl, Patty, and I congratulate you. Is it very horrid?"
"No, it isn't exactly horrid, but I'm fearfully homesick. But it's only
three more days now, and won't I be glad to get home!"
"And we'll be glad to have you. The goldfish are dull and moping, and we
all want our Patty back again."
"That's nice of you. But, Ken, how did you know where to find me? I made
Nan and father promise not to tell."
"Well, I may as well confess: I basely worried it out of Miller. I asked
him where he took you to last Thursday afternoon."
"Oh! I meant to tell him not to tell, but I forgot it. Well, it doesn't
matter much, as you chanced to strike a time when I'm alone. But don't
call me up again. I'm not supposed to have any social acquaintances."
"Good for you, Patty! If you play the game, play it well. I expect you're
a prim, demure companion as ever was."
"Of course I am. And if the lady didn't have such a fishy nephew I'd get
along beautifully."
"Oho! A nephew, eh? And he's smitten with your charms, as they always are
in novels."
"Yes," said Patty, in a simpering tone.
"Oh, yes! I can't see you, but I know you have your finger in your mouth
and your eyes shyly cast down."
"You're _so_ clever!" murmured Patty, giggling. "But now you may go, Ken,
for I don't want to talk to you any more. Come round Thursday night,
can't you, and welcome me home?"
"Pooh, you're late with your invitation. Mrs. Fairfield has already
invited me to dinner that very evening."
"Good! Well, good-by for now. I have reasons for wishing to discontinue
this conversation."
"And I have reasons for wishing to keep on. If you're tired talking, sing
to me."
"'Thou art so near and yet so far,'" hummed Patty, in her clear, sweet
voice.
"No, don't sing. Central will think you're a concert. Well, good-by till
Thursday."
"Good-by," said Patty, and hung up the receiver.
But she felt much more cheerful at having talked with Kenneth, and the
coming days seemed easier to bear.
They proved, however, to be quite hard enough.
The very next day, when Patty went down to the breakfast room, determined
to do her best to please Mrs. Van Reypen, she found that lady suffering
from an attack of neuralgia.
Though not a serious one, it seriously affected her temper, and she was
cross and irritable to a degree that Patty had never seen equalled.
She snapped at the servants; she was short of speech to Patty; she found
fault with everything, from the coffee to the cat.
After breakfast they went to the sunny, pleasant morning room, and Patty
made up her mind to a hard day.
Then she had an inspiration. She remembered how susceptible Mrs. Van
Reypen was to flattery, and she determined to see if large doses of it
wouldn't cure her ill temper.
"How lovely your hair is," said Patty, apropos of nothing. "I do so
admire white hair, and yours is so abundant and of such fine texture."
As she had hoped, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled in a pleased way.
"Ah, Miss Fairfield, you should have seen it when I was a girl. It was
phenomenal. But of late years it has come out sadly."
"You still have quantities," said Patty, and very truthfully, too, "and
its silvery whiteness is so becoming to your complexion."
"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Van Reypen, smiling most amiably. "I think
it's much wiser not to colour one's hair, for now-a-days so many people
turn gray quite young."
"Yes, they do. I've several friends with gray hair who are very young
women indeed."
"Yes," agreed the other, comfortably, "white hair no longer indicates
that a woman is advanced in years. You speak very sensibly, Miss
Fairfield."
Patty smiled to herself at the success of her little ruse, "And, after
all," she thought, "I'm telling her only the truth. Her hair is lovely,
and she may as well know I appreciate it."
"Have you ever tried," she went on, "wearing it in a coronet braid?"
"No; I've thought I should like to, but I've worn puffs so long I don't
know how to change."
"Let me do it for you," said Patty. "I'm sure I could dress it to please
you. At any rate, it would do no harm to try."
So up they went to Mrs. Van Reypen's dressing room, and Patty spent most
of the morning trying and discussing different modes of hair-dressing.
Mrs. Van Reypen's maid was present, and she admired Patty's cleverness
and deftness at the work.
"You have a touch," declared Mrs. Van Reypen, as she surveyed herself by
the aid of a hand-mirror. "You're positively Frenchy in your touch. Where
did you learn it? Have you ever been a lady's-maid?"
"No," said Patty, suppressing her smiles, "I never have. But I've spent a
winter in Paris, and I picked up some French notions, I suppose."
"You certainly did. You are clever with your fingers, I can see that. Can
you trim hats?"
"Yes, I can," said Patty, smiling to herself at the recollection of her
experiences with Mme. Villard.
"Humph! You seem pretty sure of yourself. I wish you'd trim one for me,
then; but I don't want you to spoil the materials."
"I'll do my best," said Patty, meekly, and Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her
maid to bring out some boxes.
"This," she said, taking up a finished hat, "is one my milliner has just
sent home, and I think it a fright. Now here's a last year's hat, but the
plumes are lovely. If you could untrim this first one, and transfer these
plumes, and then add these roses--what do you think?"
Secretly Patty thought the new hat was lovely just as it was, but her
plan that morning was to humour the testy old lady and, if possible, make
her forget her neuralgic pains.
So she took the hats, and sat down to rip and retrim them.
Meantime, Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her maid to practise dressing her
hair in the fashion Patty had done it.
But the maid was not very deft in the art, and soon Patty heard Mrs. Van
Reypen shrilly exclaiming:
"Stupid! Not that way! You have neither taste nor brains! Place the braid
higher. No, not so high as that! Oh, you _are_ an idiot!"
Deeming it best not to interfere, Patty went on with her work.
Also, Mrs. Van Reypen went on with her scolding, which so upset the
long-suffering maid that she fell to weeping and thereby roused her
mistress to still greater ire.
"Crying, are you!" she exclaimed. "If you had such a painful neck and
shoulder as I have you well might cry. But to cry about nothing! Bah!
Leave me, and do not return until you can be pleasant. Miss Fairfield,
will you please finish putting up my hair?"
Patty laid down her work, and did as she was requested. She was sorry for
the maid and incensed at Mrs. Van Reypen's injustice and disagreeableness,
but she felt intuitively that it was the best plan to be, herself, kind
and affable.
"Oh, yes, I'll do it!" she said, pleasantly. "Your hat is almost
finished, and we can try it on with your hair done this way. I'm sure the
effect will be charming."
Mollified at this, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled benignly on her companion, and
also smiled admiringly at her own mirrored reflection.
"Now," said Patty, as, a little later, she brought the completed hat for
inspection, "I will try this on and see how it looks."
Mrs. Van Reypen seated herself again in front of her dressing mirror, and
with gestures worthy of Madame Villard herself, Patty placed the hat on
her head.
"It's most becoming," began Patty, when Mrs. Van Reypen interrupted her.
"Becoming?" she cried. "It is dreadful! It is _fearful_. It makes me look
like an old woman!"
With an angry jerk she snatched the offending hat from her head and threw
it across the room.
Patty was about to give a horrified exclamation when the funny side of it
struck her, and she burst into laughter. Mrs. Van Reypen was really an
elderly lady, and her angry surprise at being made to look like one
seemed very funny to Patty.
But in a moment she understood the case.
She had thought the hat in question of too youthful a type for Mrs. Van
Reypen, and in retrimming it had made it more subdued and of a quieter,
more elderly fashion.
But she now realised that she had been expected to make it of even gayer
effect than it had shown at first. This was an easy matter, and picking
up the hat she straightened it out, and hastily catching up a bunch of
pink roses and a glittering buckle, she said:
"Oh, it isn't finished yet; these other trimmings I want to put in place
while the hat is on your head."
"Oh," said Mrs. Van Reypen, only half-convinced.
But she sat down again, and Patty replaced the hat, and then adjusted the
roses and the buckle, giving the whole a dainty, pretty effect, which
though over-youthful, perhaps, was really very becoming to the
fine-looking old lady.
"Charming!" she exclaimed, letting her recent display of bad temper go
without apology. "I felt sure you could do it. This afternoon we will go
out to the shops and buy some materials, and you shall make me another
hat."
They did so, and, though it meant an afternoon of rather strenuous
shopping, Patty didn't mind it much, for Mrs. Van Reypen couldn't fly
into a rage in the presence of the salespeople.
And so the days dragged by. Patty had hard work to keep her own temper
when her employer was unreasonably cross and snappish, but she stuck to
her plan of flattering her, and it worked well more often than not.
Nor was she insincere. There were so many admirable qualities and traits
of Mrs. Van Reypen that she really admired, it was easy enough to tell
her so, and invariably the lady was pleased.
But she often broke out into foolish, unjustifiable rages, and then Patty
had to wait meekly until they passed over.
But when, at last, Wednesday evening had gone by, and she went to her
room, knowing it was the last night she should spend under that roof, she
was glad indeed.
"Another week of this would give me nervous prostration!" she said to
herself. "But to-morrow my week is up, and that means Success! I have
really and truly succeeded in earning my own living for a week, and I'm
glad and proud of it. I knew I should succeed, but I confess I didn't
think I'd score so many failures first. But perhaps that makes my success
all the sweeter. Anyway, I'm jolly glad I'm going home to-morrow. Wow!
but I'm homesick."
Then she tumbled into bed, and soon forgot her homesickness in a sound,
dreamless sleep.
Patty had been uncertain whether to tell Mrs. Van Reypen the true story
of her week of companionship or not; but on Thursday morning she decided
she would do so.
And, as it chanced, after breakfast Mrs. Van Reypen herself opened the
way for Patty's confidences.
"Miss Fairfield," she said, as they sat down in the library, "you know
our trial week is up to-day."
"Yes, Mrs. Van Reypen, and you remember that either of us has the
privilege of terminating our engagement to-day."
"I do remember, and, though I fear you will be greatly disappointed, I
must tell you that I have decided that I cannot keep you as my
companion."
As Patty afterward told Nan, she was "struck all of a heap."
She had been wondering how she should persuade Mrs. Van Reypen to let her
go, and now the lady was voluntarily dismissing her! It was so sudden and
so unexpected that Patty showed her surprise by her look of blank
amazement.
"I knew you'd feel dreadful about it," went on Mrs. Van Reypen, with real
regret in her tone, "but I cannot help it. You are not, by nature, fitted
for the position. You are--I don't exactly know how to express it, but
you are not of a subservient disposition."
"No," said Patty, "I'm not. But I have tried to do as you wanted me to."
"Yes, I could see that. But you are too high-strung to be successful in a
position of this kind. You should be more deferential in spirit as well
as in manner. Do I make myself clear?"
"You do, Mrs. Van Reypen," said Patty, smiling; "so clear that I am going
to tell you the truth about this whole business. I'm not really obliged
to earn my own living. I have a happy home and loving parents. My father,
though not a millionaire, is wealthy and generous enough to supply all my
wants, and the reason I took this position with you is a special and
peculiar one, which I will tell you about if you care to hear."
"You sly puss!" cried Mrs. Van Reypen, with a smile that indicated relief
rather than dismay at Patty's revelation. "Then you've been only
masquerading as a companion?"
"Yes," said Patty, smiling back at her, "that's about the size of it."