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Daughter of Today

<h2 id="id00178" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER VI</h2> If Lucien had examined Miss Bell's work during the week of her experiment with Anglo-Parisian journalism, he would have observed that it grew gradually worse as the days went on. The devotion of the small hours to composition does not steady one's hand for the reproduction of the human muscles, or inform one's eye as to the correct manipulation of flesh tints. Besides, the model suffered from Elfrida an unconscious diminution of enthusiasm. She was finding her first serious attempt at writing more absorbing than she would have believed possible, and she felt that she was doing it better than she expected. She was hardly aware of the moments that slipped by while she dabbled aimlessly in unconsidered color meditating a phrase, or leaned back and let nothing interfere with her apprehension of the atelier with the other reproductive instinct. She did not recognize the deterioration in her work, either; and at the very moment when Nadie Palicsky, observing Lucien's neglect of her, inwardly called him a brute, Elfrida was to leave the atelier an hour earlier for the sake of the more urgent thing which she had to do. She finished it in five days, and addressed it to Frank Parke with a new and uplifting sense of accomplishment. The ever fresh miracle happened to her, too, in that the working out of one article begot the possibilities of half a dozen more, and the next day saw her well into another. In posting the first she had a premonition of success. She saw it as it would infallibly appear in a conspicuous place in Raffini's Chronicle, and heard the people of the American Colony wondering who in the world could have written it. She conceived that it would fill about two columns and a half. On Saturday afternoon, when Kendal joined her crossing the courtyard of the atelier, she was preoccupied with the form of her rebuff to any inquiries that might be made as to whether she had written it. They walked on together, talking casually of casual things. Kendal, glancing every now and then at the wet study Elfrida was carrying home, felt himself distinctly thankful that she did not ask his opinion of it, as she had, to his embarrassment once or twice before; though it was so very bad that he was half disposed to abuse it without permission. Miss Bell seemed persistently interested in other things, however—the theatres, the ecclesiastical bill before the Chamber of Deputies, the new ambassador, even the recent improvement of the police system. Kendal found her almost tiresome. His half-interested replies interpreted themselves to her after a while, and she turned their talk upon trivialities, with a gay exhilaration which was not her frequent mood. She asked him to come up when they arrived, with a frank cordiality which he probably thought of as the American way. He went up, at all events, and for the twentieth time admired the dainty chic of the little apartment, telling himself, also for the twentieth time, that it was extraordinary how agreeable it was to be there —agreeable with a distinctly local agreeableness whether its owner happened to be also there or not. In this he was altogether sincere, and only properly discriminating. He spent fifteen minutes wondering at her whimsical interest, and when she suddenly asked him if he really thought the race had outgrown its physical conditions, he got up to go, declaring it was too bad, she must have been working up back numbers of the Nineteenth Century. At which she consented to turn their talk into its usual personal channel, and he sat down again content. "Doesn't the Princess Bobaloff write a charming hand!" Elfrida said presently, tossing him a square white envelope. "It isn't hers if it's an invitation. She has a wretched relation of a Frenchwoman living with her who does all that. May I light a cigarette?" "You know you may. It is an invitation, but I didn't accept." "Her soiree last night? If I'd known you had been asked I should have missed you." "I ought to tell you," Elfrida went on, coloring a little, "that I was invited through Leila Van Camp—that ridiculously rich girl, you know, they say Lucien is in love with. The Van Camp has been affecting me a good deal lately. She says my manners are so pleasing, and besides, Lucien once told her she painted better than I did. The princess is a great friend of hers." "Why didn't you go?" Kendal asked, without any appreciable show of curiosity. If he had been looking closely enough he would have seen that she was waiting for his question. "Oh, it lies somehow, that sort of thing, outside my idea of life. I have nothing to say to it, and it has nothing to say to me." Kendal smiled introspectively. He saw why he had been shown the letter. "And yet," he said, "I venture to hope that if we had met there we might have had some little conversation." Elfrida leaned back in her chair and threw up her head, locking her slender fingers over her knee. "Of coarse," she said indifferently. "I understand why you should go. You must. You have arrived at a point where the public claims a share of your personality. That's different." Kendal's face straightened out. He was too much of an Englishman to understand that a personally agreeable truth might not be flattery, and Elfrida never knew how far he resented her candor when it took the liberty of being gracious. "I went in the humble hope of getting a good supper and seeing some interesting people," he told her. "Loti was there, and Madame Rives-Chanler, and Sargent." "And the supper?" Miss Bell inquired, with a touch of sarcasm. "Disappointing," he returned seriously. "I should say bad—as bad as possible." She gave him an impatient glance. "But those people—Loti and the rest—it is only a serio-comic game to them to go the Princess Bobaloffs. They wouldn't if they could help it They don't live their real lives in such places—among such people!" Kendal took the cigarette from his mouth and laughed. "Your Bohemianism is quite Arcadian in its quality —deliriously fresh," he declared. "I think they do. Genius clings to respectability after a time. A most worthy and amiable lady, the Princess." Elfrida raised the arch of her eyebrows. "Much too worthy and amiable," she ventured, and talked of something else, leaving Kendal rasped, as she sometimes did, without being in any degree aware of it. "How preposterous it is," he said, moved by his irritation to find something preposterous, "that girls like Miss Van Camp should come here to work." "They can't help being rich. It shows at least the germ of a desire to work out their own salvation. I think I like it." "It shows the germ of an affectation in rather an advanced stage of development. I give her three months more to tire of snubbing Lucien and distributing caramels to the less fortunate young ladies of the studio. Then she will pack up those pitiful attempts of hers and take them home to New York, and spend a whole season in glorious apology for them." Elfrida looked at him steadily for an instant. Then she laughed lightly. "Thanks," she said. "I see you had not forgotten my telling you that Lucien said she painted better than I did." Kendal wondered whether he had really meant to go so far. "I am sorry," he said, "but I am afraid I had not forgotten it." "Well, you would not say it out of ill-nature. You must have wanted me to know—what you thought." "I think," he said seriously, "that I did—at least that I do—want you to know. It seems a pity that you should work on here—mistakenly—when there are other things that you could do well." "'Other things' have been mentioned to me before," she returned, with a strain in her voice that she tried to banish. "May I ask what particular thing occurs to you?" He was already remorseful. After all, what business of his was it to interfere, especially when he knew that she attached such absurd importance to his opinion? "I hardly know," he said, "but there must be something; I am convinced that there is something." Elfrida put her elbows on a tittle table, and shadowed her face with her hands. "I wish I could understand," she said, "why I should be so willing to—to go on at any sacrifice, if there is no hope in the end." Kendal's mood of grim frankness overcame him again. "I believe I know," he said, watching her. Her hands dropped from her face, and she turned it toward him mutely. "It is not achievement you want, but success. That is why," said he. There was silence for a moment, broken by light footsteps on the stair and a knock. "My good friends," cried Mademoiselle Palicsky from the doorway, "have you been quarrelling?" She made a little dramatic gesture to match her words, which brought out every line of a black velvet and white corduroy dress, which would have been a horror upon an Englishwoman. Upon Mademoiselle Palicsky it was simply an admiration-point of the kind never seen out of Paris, and its effect was instantaneous. Kendal acknowledged it with a bow of exaggerated deference. "C'est parfait!" he said with humility, and lifted a pile of studies off the nearest chair for her. Nadie stood still, pouting. "Monsieur is amused," she said. "Monsieur is always amused. But I have that to tell which monsieur will graciously take au grand servieux." "What is it, Nadie?" Elfrida asked, with something like dread in her voice. Nadie's air was so important, so rejoiceful. "Ecoutez donc! I am to send two pictures to the Salon this year. Carolos Duran has already seen my sketch for one, and he says there is not a doubt—not a doubt—that it will be considered. Your congratulations, both of you, or your hearts' blood! For on my word of honor I did not expect it this year." "A thousand and one!" cried Kendal, trying not to see Elfrida's face. "But if you did not expect it this year, mademoiselle, you were the only one who had so little knowledge of affairs," he added gaily. "And now," Nadie went on, as if he had interrupted her, "I am going to drive in the Bois to see what it will be like when the people in the best carriages turn and say, 'That is Mademoiselle Nadie Palicsky, whose picture has just been bought for the Luxembourg.'" She paused and looked for a curious instant at Elfrida, and then slipped quickly behind her chair. "Embrasse moi, cherie!" she said, bringing her face with a bird-like motion close to the other girl's. Kendal saw an instinctive momentary aversion in the backward start of Elfrida's head, and from the bottom of his heart he was sorry for her. She pushed her friend away almost violently. "No!" she said. "No! I am sorry, but it is too childish. We never kiss each other, you and I. And listen, Nadie: I am delighted for you, but I have a sick headache—la migraine, you understand. And you must go away, both of you—both of you!" Her voice raised itself in the last few words to an almost hysterical imperativeness. As they went down the stairs together Mademoiselle Palicsky remarked to Mr. John Kendal, repentant of the good that he had done: "So she has consulted her oracle and it has barked out the truth. Let us hope she will not throw herself into the Seine!" "Oh no!" Kendal replied. "She's horribly hurt but I am glad to believe that she hasn't the capacity for tragedy. Somebody," he added gloomily, "ought to have told her long ago." Half an hour later the postman brought Elfrida a letter from Mr. Frank Parke, and a packet containing her manuscript. It was a long letter, very kind, and appreciative of the article, which Mr. Parke called bright and gossipy, and, if anything, too cleverly unconventional in tone. He did not take the trouble to criticise it seriously, and left Elfrida under the impression that, from his point of view at least, it had no faults. Mr. Parke had offered the article to Raffini, but while they might have printed it upon his recommendation, it appeared that even his recommendation could not induce them to promise to pay for it. And it was a theory with him that what was worth printing was invariably worth paying for, so he returned the manuscript to its author in the sincere hope that it might yet meet its deserts. He had been thinking over the talk they had had together, and he saw more plainly than ever the hopelessness of her getting a journalistic start in Paris, however, and he would distinctly advise her to try London instead. There were a number of ladies' papers published in London—he regretted that he did not know the editors of any of them—and amongst them, with her freshness of style, she would be sure to find an opening. Mr. Parke added the address of a lodging-house off Fleet Street, where Elfrida would be in the thick of it, and the fact that he was leaving Paris for three months or so, and hoped she would write to him when he came back. It was a letter precisely calculated to draw an unsophisticated amateur mind away from any other mortification, to pour balm upon any unrelated wound. Elfrida felt herself armed by it to face a sea of troubles. Not absolutely, but almost, she convinced herself on the spot that her solemn choice of an art had been immature, and to some extent groundless and unwarrantable; and she washed all her brushes with a mechanical and melancholy sense that it was for the last time. It was easier than she would have dreamed for her to decide to take Frank Parke's advice and go to London. The life of the Quartier had already vaguely lost in charm since she knew that she must be irredeemably a failure in the atelier, though she told herself, with a hot tear or two, that no one loved it better, more comprehendingly, than she did. Her impulse was to begin packing at once; but she put that off until the next day, and wrote two or three letters instead. One was to John Kendal. This is the whole of it: "Please believe me very grateful for your frankness this afternoon. I have been most curiously blind. But I agree with you that there is something else, and I am going away to find it out and to do it. When I succeed I will let you know, but you shall not tell me that I have failed again. <h5 id="id00224"> "ELFRIDA BELL."</h5> The other was addressed to her mother, and when it reached Mr. and Mrs. Bell in Sparta they said it was certainly sympathetic and very well written. This was to disarm one another's mind of the suspicion that its last page was doubtfully daughterly. "In view of what are now your very limited resources, I am sure dear mother, you will understand my unwillingness to make any additional drain upon them, as I should do if I followed your wishes and came home. I am convinced of my ability to support myself, and I am not coming home. To avoid giving you the pain of repeating your request, and the possibility of your sending me money which you cannot afford to spare, I have decided not to let you know my whereabouts until I can write to you that I am in an independent position. I will only say that I am leaving Paris, and that no letters sent to this address will be forwarded. I sincerely hope you will not allow yourself to be in any way anxious about me, for I assure you that there is not the slightest need. With much love to papa and yourself, "Always your affectionate daughter, <h5 id="id00228"> "ELFRIDA.</h5> "P.S.—I hope your asthma has again succumbed to Dr. Paley." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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