But Rattray declared that he should like it above all things, and looked the sc.r.a.ps gloomily over. One Elfrida had called "A Street Minstrel." Seeing him unresponsive, Golightly read it gracefully aloud.

"One late November afternoon I sudden heard a gentle rune.

"I could not see whence came the song, But, tranced, stopped and listened long;

"And that drear month gave place to May, And all the city slipped away.

"The coal-carts ceased their din,--instead I heard a bluebird overhead;

"The pavements, black with dismal rain, Grew greenly to a country lane.

"Plainly as I see you, my friend, I saw the lilacs sway and bend,

"A blossoming apple-orchard where The chimneys, fret the foggy air,

"And wide mown fields of clover sweet Sent up their fragrance at my feet,

"And once again dear Phyllis sat The thorn beneath, and trimmed her hat.

"Long looked I for my wizard bard-- I found him on the boulevard.

"And now my urban hearth he cheers, Singing all day of sylvan years,

"Right thankful for the warmer spot-- A cricket, by July forgot!"

Ticke looked inquiringly at Rattray when he had finished.

Elfrida turned away her head, and tapped the floor impatiently with her foot.

"Isn't that dainty?" demanded Golightly.

"Dainty enough," Rattray responded, with a bored air.

"But you can't read it to the public, you know. Poetry is out of the question. Poetry takes genius."

Golightly and Elfrida looked at each other sympathetically.

Mr. Ticke's eyes said, "How hideously we are making you suffer," and Elfrida's conveyed a tacit reproach.

"Travels would do better," Rattray went on. "There's no end of a market for anything new in travels. Go on a walking tour through Spain, by yourself, disguised as a nun or something, and write about what you see."

Elfrida flushed with pleasure at the reckless idea. A score of situations rose before her thrilling, dangerous, picturesque, with a beautiful nun in the foreground. "I should like it above all things," she said, "but I have no money."

"I'm afraid it would take a good deal," Rattray returned.

"That's a pity."

"It disposes of the question of travelling, though, for the present," and Elfrida sighed with real regret.

"It's your turn, Ticke. Suggest something," Rattray went on. "It must be unusual and it must be interesting. Miss Bell must do something that no young lady has done before.

That much she must concede to the trade. Granting that, the more artistically she does it the better."

"I should agree to that compromise," said Elfrida eagerly.

"Anything to be left with a free hand."

"The book should be copiously ill.u.s.trated," continued Rattray, "and the ill.u.s.trations should draw their interest from you personally."

"I don't think I should mind that."

Her imagination was busy at a bound with press criticisms, pirated American editions, newspaper paragraphs describing the color of her hair, letters from great magazines asking for contributions. It leaped with a fierce joy at the picture of Janet reading these paragraphs, and knowing, whether she gave or withheld her own approval, that the world had p.r.o.nounced in favor of Elfrida Bell. She wrote the simple note with which she would send a copy to Kendal, and somewhere in the book there would be things which he would feel so exquisitely that--The cover should have a French design and be the palest yellow. There was a moment's silence while she thought of these things, her knee clasped in her hands, her eyes blindly searching the dull red squares of the Lla.s.sa prayer-carpet.

"Rattray," said Golightly, with a suddenness that made both the others look up expectantly, "could Miss Bell do her present work for the _Age_ anywhere?"

"Just now I think it's mostly book reviews--isn't it?--and comments on odds and ends in the papers of interest to ladies. Yes--not quite so well out of London; but I dare say it could be done pretty much anywhere, reasonably near."

"Then," replied Golightly Ticke, with a repressed and guarded air, "I think I've got it."

CHAPTER XXIV.

Three days later a note from Miss Cardiff in Kensington Square to Miss Bell in Ess.e.x Court, Fleet Street, came back unopened. A slanting line in very violet ink along the top read "_Out of town for the pressent. M. Jordan._"

Janet examined the line carefully, but could extract nothing further from it except that it had been written with extreme care, by a person of limited education and a taste for color. It occurred to her, in addition, that the person's name was probably Mary.

Elfrida's actions had come to have a curious importance to Janet; she realized how great an importance with the access of irritated surprise which came to her with, this unopened note. In the beginning she had found Elfrida's pa.s.sionate admiration so novel and so sweet that her heart was half won before they came, together in completer intimacy, and she gave her new original friend a meed of affection which seemed to strengthen as it instinctively felt itself unreturned--at least in kind. Elfrida retracted none of her admiration, and she added to it, when she ceded her sympathy, the freedom of a fortified city; but Janet hungered for more. Inwardly she cried out for the something warm and human that was lacking to Elfrida's feeling for her, and sometimes she asked herself with grieved cynicism how her friend found it worth while to pretend to care so cleverly. More than once she had written to Elfrida with the deliberate purpose of soothing herself by provoking some tenderness in reply, and invariably the key she had struck had been that of homage, more or less whimsically unwilling. "_Don't_ write such delicious things to me, _ma mie_," would come the answer.

"You make me curl up with envy. What shall I do if malice and all uncharitableness follow? I admire you so horribly--there!" Janet told herself sorely that she was sick of Elfrida's admiration--it was not the stuff friendships were made of. And a keener pang supervened when she noticed that whatever savored most of an admiration on her own part had obviously the highest value for her friend. The thought of Kendal only heightened her feeling about Elfrida. She would be so much the stronger, she thought, to resist any--any strain--if she could be quite certain how much Elfrida cared--cared about her personally. Besides, the indictment that she, Janet, had against her seemed to make the girl's affection absolutely indispensable. And now Elfrida had apparently left London without a word. She had dined in Kensington Square the night before, and this was eleven o'clock in the morning.

It looked very much as if she had deliberately intended to leave them in the dark as to her movements. People didn't go out of town indefinitely "for the present," on an hour's notice. The thought brought sudden tears to Janet's eyes, which she winked back angrily. "I am getting to be a perfect old maid!" she reflected. "Why shouldn't Frida go to Kamschatka, if she wants to, without giving us notice? It's only her eccentric way of doing things."

And she frowned upon, her sudden resolution to rush off to Fleet Street in a cab and inquire of Mrs. Jordan. It would be espionage. She would wait, quit calmly and indefinitely, till Frida chose to write, and then she would treat the escapade, whatever it was, with the perfect understanding of good-fellowship. Or perhaps not indefinitely--for two or three days--it was just possible that Frida might have had bad news and started suddenly for America by the early tram to Liverpool, in which case she might easily not have had time to write. But in that case would not Mrs. Jordan have written "Gone to America"?

Her heart stood still with another thought--could she have gone with Kendal? Granting that she had made up her mind to marry him, it would be just Elfrida's strange, sensational way. Janet walked the floor in a restless agony, mechanically tearing the note into little, strips.

She must know--she must find out. She would write and ask him for something--for what? A book, a paper--the _New Monthly_, and she must have some particular reason.

She sat down to write, and pressed her fingers upon her throbbing eyes in the effort to summon a particular reason. It was as far from her as ever when the maid knocked and came in with a note from Kendal asking them to go to see Miss Rehan in "As You Like It" that evening --a note fragrant of tobacco, not an hour old.

"You needn't wait, Jessie," she said. "I'll send an answer later;" and the maid had hardly left the room before Janet was sobbing silently and helplessly with her head on the table. As the day pa.s.sed however, Elfrida's conduct seemed less unforgivable, and by dinner-time she was able to talk of it with simple wonder, which became more tolerant still in the course of the evening, when she discovered that Kendal was as ignorant and as astonished as they themselves.

"She will write," Janet said hopefully; but a week pa.s.sed and Elfrida did not write. A settled disquietude began to make itself felt between the Cardiffs. Accepting each other's silence for the statement that Elfrida had sent no word, they ceased to talk of her--as a topic her departure had become painful to both of them. Janet's anxiety finally conquered her scruples, and she betook herself to Ess.e.x Court to inquire of Mrs. Jordan. That lady was provokingly mysterious, and made the difficulty of ascertaining that she knew nothing whatever about Miss Bell's movements as great as possible. Janet saw an acquaintance with some collateral circ.u.mstance in her eyes, however, and was just turning away irritated by her vain attempts to obtain it, when Mrs. Jordan, decided that the pleasure of the revelation would be, after all, greater than the pleasure of shielding the facts.

"Wether it 'as anything to do with Miss Bell or not, of course I can't say," Mrs. Jordan remarked, with conscientious hypocrisy, "but Mr. Ticke, _he_ left town that same mornin'." She looked disappointed when Miss Cardiff received this important detail indifferently.

"Oh, nothing whatever," Janet replied, with additional annoyance that Elfrida should have subjected herself to such an insinuation. Janet had a thoroughgoing dislike to Golightly Ticke. On her way back in the omnibus she reflected on the coincidence, however, and in the end she did not mention it to her father.

The next day Lawrence Cardiff went to the _Age_ office and had the good fortune to see Mr. Rattray, who was flattered to answer questions regarding Miss Bell's whereabouts, put by any one he knew to be a friend. Mr.

Rattray undertook to apologize for their not hearing of the scheme, it had matured so suddenly. Miss Bell couldn't really have had time to do more than pack and start; in fact, there had been only three days in which to make all the arrangements. And of course the facts were confidential, but there was no reason why Miss Bell's friends should not be in the secret. Then Mr. Rattray imparted the facts, with a certain conscious gratification.

There had been difficulties, but the difficulties had been surmounted, and he had heard from Miss Bell that morning that everything was going perfectly, and she was getting hold of magnificent copy. He was only sorry it wouldn't be quite suitable for serial publication in the _Age_; but, as Professor Cardiff was doubtless aware, the British public were kittle cattle to shoe behind, and he hardly thought the _Age_ could handle it.

"Oh yes," Mr. Cardiff replied absently. "Cheynemouth, I think you said--for the next five days. Thanks.

Successful? I dare say. The idea is certainly a novel one. Good-morning!" and he left the sub-editor of the _Ill.u.s.trated Age_ in a state of some uncertainty as to the wisdom of having disclosed so much. Half an hour later, when Kendal, who knew Rattray fairly well, called and asked him for Miss Bell's present address, he got it with some reluctance and fewer details.

Cardiff drove to his club, and wrote a note to Janet, asking her to send his portmanteau to the 3.45 train at Euston, as he intended to run down to Cheynemouth and might stay over night He fastened up the envelope, then after a moment's hesitation tore it open and added, "Miss Bell is attempting a preposterous thing. I am going to see if it cannot be prevented." He fancied Janet would understand his not caring to go into particulars in the meantime. It was because of his aversion to going into particulars that he sent the note and lunched at the club, instead of driving home as he had abundance of time to do. Janet would have to be content with that; it would be bad enough to have to explain Rattray's intolerable "scheme" to her when it had been frustrated. After luncheon he went into the smoking-room and read through three leading articles with an occasional inkling of their meaning. At the end of the third he became convinced of the absurdity of trying to fix his attention upon anything, and smoked his next Havana with his eyes upon the toe of his boot, in profound meditation. An observant person might have noticed that he pa.s.sed his hand once or twice lightly, mechanically, over the top of his head; but even an observant person would hardly have connected the action with Mr. Cardiff's latent idea that although his hair might be tinged in a damaging way there was still a good deal of it. Three o'clock found him standing at the club window with his hands in his pockets, and the firm-set lips of a man who has made up his mind, looking unseeingly into the street. At a quarter past he was driving to the station in a hansom, smiling at the rosette on the horse's head, which happened to be a white one.