Quin returned to the Martels' breathing easily for the first time in twenty-four hours. As he pa.s.sed Rose's room on the way to his own, he saw a light over the transom, and heard the girls' voices rising in heated argument. He knew that the subject under discussion was Harold Phipps, and that Rose's arraignment was meeting with indignant denial and protest. But the fact that Rose could offer specific evidence that would shake the staunchest confidence gave him grim satisfaction.

He stumbled into his own small room, and lay across the bed looking up at the shadows made by the street lamp on the ceiling. Would Miss Nell believe what she heard? Would it go very hard with her? Would she give Phipps up? Would she accept Madam's offer? And, if she did, would she ever be willing to come home again?

Then his thoughts swerved away from all those perplexing questions and went racing back over the events of the day. For nine blissful hours he had had Eleanor all to himself. They had taken a day-coach to avoid meeting any one she knew, and he had managed to secure a rear seat, out of the range of curious eyes. Here she had poured out all her troubles, allowing the acc.u.mulated bitterness of years to find vent in a torrent of unrestrained confidence.

She recalled the days of her unhappy childhood, when she had been fought over and litigated about and contended for, until the whole world seemed a place of hideous discord and petty jealousies. She pictured her circ.u.mscribed life at the Bartletts', shut in, watched over, smothered with care and affection, but never allowed an hour of freedom. She dwelt on the increasing tyranny of her grandmother, the objection to her friends, the ruthless handling of several prospective lovers. And she ended by telling him all about her affair with Harold Phipps, and declaring that nothing they could say or do would make her give him up!

And then, quite worn out, she had fallen asleep and her head had drooped against his shoulder.

Quin could feel now the delicious weight of her limp body as she leaned against him. He had sat so still, in his fear of waking her, that his arm had been numb for an hour. Then, later on, when she did wake up, he had got her some cold water to bathe her face, and persuaded her to eat a sandwich and drink a gla.s.s of milk. After that she had felt much better, and even cheered up enough to laugh at the way he looked in the queer cap the obliging stranger had given him.

"I could make her happy! I know I could make her happy!" he whispered pa.s.sionately to the shadows on the ceiling. "She don't love me now; but maybe when she gets over this----"

His thoughts leaped to the future. He must be ready if the time ever came. He must forge ahead in the next six months, and be in a position by the time Eleanor had tried out her experiment to put his fate to the test. He must make up to old Bangs, and stop criticizing his methods and saying things that annoyed him. He must sacrifice everything now to the one great object of pleasing him. Pleasing him meant advancement; advancement meant success; success might mean Eleanor!

He got up restlessly and tiptoed to the door. The light over Rose's transom was gone and the house was silent.

CHAPTER 27

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 a.s.surance 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Ca.s.s'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.

n.o.body 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 Ca.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 subst.i.tute 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 a.s.sistance, 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 rea.s.suringly; "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 Ca.s.s 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.