A Daughter of To-Day, Sara Jeannette Duncan [bill gates best books txt] 📗

herself about it. With a strong effort she heaped opprobrium and shame upon herself, denounced herself, tried to hate herself. But she felt that it was all a kind of dumb-show, and that under it nothing could change the person she was or the real feeling she had about this--nothing except being first. Ah! then she could be generous and loyal and disinterested; then she could be really a nice person to know, she derided herself. And as her foot touched the little hand-bag on the floor she took a kind of sullen courage, which deserted her when she folded the paper on her lap and was struck again in the face with Lash and Black's advertisement on the outside page announcing Janet's novel in letters that looked half a foot long. Then she resigned herself to her wretchedness till the train sped into the glory of Paddington.

"I hope you're not bad, miss," remarked the small boy's mother as they pushed toward the door together; "them Banburys don't agree with everybody."

The effect upon Elfrida was hysterical. She controlled herself just long enough to answer with decent gravity, and escaped upon the platform to burst into a silent quivering paroxysm of laughter that brought her overcharged feeling delicious relief, and produced an answering smile on the face of a large, good-looking policeman. Her laugh rested her, calmed her, and restored something of her moral tone. She was at least able to resist the temptation of asking the boy at the book-stall where she bought "John Camberwell" whether the volume was selling rapidly or not. Buddha looked on askance while she read it, all night long and well into the morning. She reached the last page and flung down the book in pure physical exhaustion, with the framework of half a dozen reviews in her mind. When she awoke, at two in the afternoon, she decided that she must have another day or two of solitude; she would not let the Cardiffs know she had returned quite yet.

Three days afterward the _Illustrated Age_ published a review of "John Camberwell" which brought an agreeable perplexity to Messrs. Lash and Black. It was too good to compress, and their usual advertising space would not contain it all. It was almost passionately appreciative; here and there the effect of criticism was obviously marred by the desire of the writer to let no point of beauty or of value escape divination. Quotations from the book were culled like flowers, with a delicate hand; and there was conspicuous care in the avoidance of any phrase that was hackneyed, any line of criticism that custom had impoverished. It seemed that the writer fashioned a tribute, and strove to make it perfect in every way. And so perfect it was, so cunningly devised and gracefully expressed, with such a self-conscious beauty of word and thought, that its extravagance went unsuspected, and the interest it provoked was its own.

Janet read the review in glow of remorseful affection. She was appealed to less by the exquisite manipulation with which the phrases strove to say the most and the best, than by the loyal haste to praise she saw behind, them, and she forgave their lack of blame in the happy belief that Elfrida had not the heart for it. She was not in the least angry that her friend should have done her the injustice of what would have been, less adroitly managed, indiscriminate praise; in fact, she hardly thought of the value of the critique at all, so absorbed was she in the sweet sense of the impulse that made Elfrida write it. To Janet's quick forgiveness it made up for everything; indeed, she found in it a scourge for her anger, for her resentment. Elfrida might do what she pleased, Janet would never cavil again; she was sure now of some real possession in her friend. But she longed to see Elfrida, to assure herself of the warm verity of this. Besides, she wanted to feel her work in her friend's presence, to extract the censure that was due, to take the essence of praise from her eyes and voice and hand. But she would wait. She had still no right to know that Elfrida had returned, and an odd sensitiveness prevented her from driving instantly to Essex Court to ask.

The next day passed, and the next. Lawrence Cardiff found no reason to share his daughter's scruples, and went twice, to meet Mrs. Jordan on the threshold with the implacable statement that Miss Bell had returned but was not at home. He found it impossible to mention Elfrida to Janet now.

John Kendal had gone back to Devonshire to look after the thinning of a bit of his woodlands--one thing after another claimed his attention there. Janet had a gay note from him now and then, always _en camarade_, in which he deplored himself in the character of an intelligent land-owner, but in which she detected also a growing interest and satisfaction in all that he was finding to do. Janet saw it always with a throb of pleasure; his art was much to her, but the sympathy that bound him to the practical side of his world was more, though she would not have confessed it. She was unconsciously comforted by the sense that it was on the warm, bright, comprehensible side of his interest in life that she touched him--and that Elfrida did not touch him. The idea of the country house in Devonshire excluded Elfrida, and it was an exclusion Janet could be happy in conscientiously, since Elfrida did not care.


CHAPTER XXVII.

Even in view of her popular magazine articles and her literary name Janet's novel was a surprising success. There is no reason why we should follow the example of all the London critics except Elfrida Bell, and go into the detail of its slender story, and its fairly original, broadly human qualities of treatment, to explain this; the fact will, perhaps, be accepted without demonstration. It was a common phrase among the reviewers--though Messrs. Lash and Black carefully cut it out of their selections for advertisement--that the book with all its merits was in no way remarkable; and the publishers were as much astonished as anybody else when the first edition was exhausted in three weeks. Yet the agreeable fact remained that the reviewers gave it the amount of space usually assigned to books allowed to be remarkable, and that the _Athenian_ announced the second edition to be had "at all book-sellers'" on a certain Monday. "When they say it is not remarkable," wrote Kendal to Janet, "they mean that it is not heroic, and that it is published in one volume, at six shillings. To be remarkable--to the trade--it should have dealt with epic passion, in three volumes, at thirty."

To him the book had a charm quite apart from its literary value, in the revelation it made of its author. It was the first piece of work Janet had done from a seriously artistic point of view, into which she had thrown herself without fence or guard, and it was to him as if she had stepped from behind a mask. He wrote to her about it with the confidence of the new relation it established between them; he looked forward with warm pleasure to the closer intimacy which it would bring. To Janet, living in this new sweetness of their better understanding, only one thing was lacking--Elfrida made no sign. If Janet could have known, it was impossible. In her review Elfrida had done all she could. She had forced herself to write it before she touched a line of her own work, and now, persistently remote in her attic, she strove every night over the pile of notes which represented the ambition that sent its roots daily deeper into the fibre of her being. Twice she made up her mind to go to Kensington Square, and found she could not--the last time being the day the _Decade_ said that a new and larger edition of "John Camberwell" was in preparation.

Ten days after her return the maid at Kensington Square, with a curious look, brought up Elfrida's card to Janet. Miss Bell was in the drawing-room, she said. Yes, she had told Miss Bell Miss Cardiff was up in the library, but Miss Bell said she would wait in the drawing-room.

Janet looked at the card in astonishment, debating with herself what it might mean--such a formality was absurd between them. Why had not Elfrida come up at once to this third-story den of theirs she knew so well? What new preposterous caprice was this? She went down gravely, chilled; but before she reached the drawing-room door she resolved to take it another way, as a whim, as matter for scolding. After all, she was glad Elfrida had come back to her on any terms. She went in radiant, with a quick step, holding the card at arm's length.

"To what," she demanded mockingly, "am I to attribute the honor of this visit?" but she seized Elfrida lightly and kissed her on both cheeks before it was possible for her to reply.

The girl disengaged herself gently. "Oh I have come, like the rest, to lay my homage at your feet," she said, with a little smile that put spaces between them. "You did not expect me to deny myself that pleasure?"

"Don't be absurd, Frida. When did you come back to town?"

"When did I come back?" Elfrida repeated slowly, watching for the effect of her words. "On the first, I think it was."

"And this is the tenth!" Janet exclaimed; adding helplessly, "You _are_ an enigma! Why didn't you let me know?"

"How could I suppose that you would care to know anything just now--except what the papers tell you."

Janet regarded her silently, saying nothing. Under her look Elfrida's expression changed a little, grew uncomfortable. The elder girl felt the chill, the seriousness with which she received the card upstairs, return upon her suddenly, and she became aware that she could not, with self-respect, fight it any longer.

"If you thought that," she said gravely, "it was a curious thing to think. But I believe I am indebted to you for one of the pleasantest things the papers have been telling me," she went on, with constraint. "It was very kind--much too kind. Thank you very much."

Elfrida looked up, half frightened at the revulsion of her tone. "But--but your book is delightful. I was no more charmed than everybody must be. And it has made a tremendous hit, hasn't it?"

"Thanks, I believe it is doing a fair amount of credit to its publishers. They are very pushing people."

"How delicious it must feel!" Elfrida said. Her words were more like those of their ordinary relation, but her tone and manner had the aloofness of the merest acquaintance. Janet felt a slow anger grow up in her. It was intolerable, this dictation of their relation. Elfrida desired a change--she should have it, but not at her caprice. Janet's innate dominance rose up and asserted a superior right to make the terms between them, and all the hidden jar, the unacknowledged contempt, the irritation, the hurt and the stress of the year that had passed rushed in from banishment and gained possession of her. She took just an appreciable instant to steady herself, and then her gray eyes regarded Elfrida with a calm remoteness in them which gave the other girl a quick impression of having done more than she meant to do, gone too far to return. Their glances met, and Elfrida's eyes, unquiet and undecided, dropped before Janet's. Already she had a vibrant regret.

"You enjoyed being out of town, of course," Janet said. "It