CHAPTER XXIX

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, blase 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 pa.s.sed a month at a place called Green River in eastern Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sed, 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.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Mrs. Moss, who had loved her brilliant, impulsive little stepdaughter like her own child, had given her up unwillingly. But it had been her husband's wish that Elsie should go to her uncle; the latter could give her advantages her stepmother could not afford; and she supposed it was right and natural for the girl to be with her own people, even though they had been strangers to her up to her sixteenth year.

At first her loneliness found some solace in Elsie's letters. They were short, but seemed br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with happiness. Mrs. Moss didn't get any dear idea of the household at Enderby, but it was apparently all that the girl desired. Then gradually the letters began to fall off, and before Christmas-time she felt a decided change in them. They had become unsatisfactory, perfunctory; the girl seemed to be slipping away from her. She began to wonder if Elsie were not concealing something, and soon after Christmas was forced to the conclusion that she was unhappy and would not acknowledge it.

She endeavored to regain the confidence that had been fully hers; she tried in her own letters to prepare the way, to make confession easy, but she received no response. In such circ.u.mstances letters are at best unsatisfactory, and it was maddening to Mrs. Moss that she was at such a distance that her warm words must grow cold in the five or six days that elapsed between the writing and the reading.

Christmas pa.s.sed, and the winter, and she was unrelieved. She was busy with her teaching, but except when engrossed by that, was haunted by anxiety and apprehension. She had finally decided to go East during the long summer vacation, ill as she could afford to make the journey, to investigate for herself, when one night after school she dropped in to see a friend, and while waiting picked up a New York paper.

Some one in the house had that day returned from a journey East, and the paper was dated five days earlier. It happened to be folded with the page given over to amus.e.m.e.nts uppermost. Glancing carelessly over columns that devoted a paragraph each to an amazing number of cinema theatres, her eye suddenly caught the familiar name, _Elsie Marley_.

With a vision of her stepdaughter as she had sung the old rhyme, she mechanically followed the words until the word "dimples" arrested her attention. Then she read the paragraph with beating heart. She read it twice before she fully comprehended--understood that Elsie Marley had completed her sixth week at the Merry Nickel in her song-dance specialty, "And Do You Ken Elsie Marley, Honey?" Miss Marley was declared to be more popular than ever; managers were clamoring for her and she had engagements a year ahead. The notice added that despite the fact that her voice was so wonderful, her dancing and acting inimitable, some people declared that it was her dimples that wrought the spell--that she might stand dumb and motionless before the footlights if she would only smile.

Mrs. Moss's first clear sensation was indignation toward Mr. Middleton.

She felt she could never forgive him for allowing this situation to come about without warning her. Then she realized that this was the key to the whole situation. She had not heard from the girl for six weeks--just the length of time she must now have been at the theatre.

Excusing herself before her friend appeared, she hastened home in a tumult of emotion.

She did not know which way to turn. She couldn't bear the idea of Elsie being on the stage of a motion-picture theatre; it seemed as if it would break her heart. And still worse was the knowledge that the girl had deceived her; that she had written empty, non-committal notes calculated to make her believe she was staying quietly with her uncle, when she was all the time preparing for this. And she had always been so frank and upright, so easy to appeal to and to persuade! It seemed to Mrs. Moss that she must have come under unfortunate influence.

Her first impulse was to write to Elsie; her second, to Mr. Middleton; but she did neither. The situation was now too critical to be handled from a distance. There were only two weeks more of school. She secured accommodations on the railway for the evening of the last day of the term.

On the sixth day after, she appeared without warning at the parsonage at Enderby. A pleasant-faced woman who might be Mrs. Middleton, though she did not look like an invalid, sat on the veranda entertaining a little girl with a big baby in a perambulator. She asked at the door for Mr. Middleton and was shown into his study.

He came in directly, and the sight of his handsome, refined, strong and serene face, with a vague resemblance to Elsie's, revived her drooping spirits. Suddenly she felt that whatever he sanctioned must be right.

She inquired falteringly for Elsie before she announced her name or her errand.

She learned that the girl was well, and, to her surprise, would be in presently. Then the season was over, she decided, and recollecting herself, gave her name.

He smiled. "I thought as much from the way you spoke her name," he said. "Elsie will be delighted. May I call Mrs. Middleton?"

"Just a moment, please. I felt troubled about Elsie, Mr. Middleton, and came on without writing or sending word. I'm impulsive too, like Elsie, though only her stepmother."

He had never felt that Elsie was impulsive, and as he looked up in some surprise, she wondered if he minded her comparing herself to Elsie, and so to his sister.

"Perhaps I should have sent word," she went on. "But I hesitated. I knew you didn't approve of Elsie's father marrying me."

"Oh, Mrs. Moss, if I had any such feeling, it has long since disappeared," he a.s.sured her earnestly. "From the moment I saw Elsie and realized what you have made of her, I have felt only the grat.i.tude I am sure my sister would have felt for your devotion to her motherless child."

"Thank you," she said. "Now about Elsie----"

But she couldn't go on. A sudden wave of indignation swept over her.

If he had felt kindly toward her, why hadn't he warned her?

He glanced at her with some concern. She seemed so fatigued and overwrought after the long journey that he begged her to let him call Mrs. Middleton that she might have a cup of tea and go to her room before Elsie's return. The latter had gone into town but would be back very soon, for she went into the library at four.

Mrs. Moss stared at him, and he asked if Elsie hadn't told her that she had been a.s.sistant librarian since September.

She shook her head. He wondered, and when she had again refused refreshment or rest, explained. As he did so, it came out that she knew little or nothing of Elsie's activities, and he launched into glowing descriptions. And the further he went, the more she marvelled.

She couldn't understand how Elsie had become the sedate, dutiful girl he portrayed unless some great blow had fallen upon her. Then she recollected what had brought her hither.

"Elsie has been away lately?" she asked.