A Daughter of To-Day by Sara Jeannette Duncan (best affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📖

is always pleasant to leave London for a while, I think."

There was a cool masterfulness in the tone of this that arrested Elfrida's feeling of half-penitence, and armed her instantly. Whatever desire she had felt to assert and indulge her individuality at any expense, in her own attitude there had been the consciousness of what they owed one another. She had defied it, perhaps, but it had been there. In this it was ignored; Janet had gone a step further--her tone expressed the blankest indifference. Elfrida drew herself up.

"Thanks, it was delightful. An escape from London always is, as you say. Unfortunately, one is obliged to come back."

Janet laughed lightly. "Oh, I don't know that I go so far as that. I rather like coming back too. And you have missed one or two things, you know, by being away."

"The Lord Mayor's Show?" asked Elfrida, angry that she could not restrain the curl of her lip.

"Oh dear, no! That comes off in November--don't you remember? Things at the theatres chiefly. Oh, Jessie, Jessie!" she went on, shaking her head at the maid who had come in with the tray, "you're a quarter of an hour late with tea! Make it for us now, where you are, and remember that Miss Bell doesn't like cream."

The maid blushed and smiled under the easy reproof, and did as she was told. Janet chatted on pleasantly about the one or two first nights she had seen, and Elfrida felt for a moment that the situation was hopelessly changed. She had an intense, unreasonable indignation. The maid had scarcely left the room when her blind search for means of retaliation succeeded.

"But one is not necessarily wholly Without diversions in the provinces. I had, for instance, the pleasure of a visit from Mr. Cardiff."

"Oh yes, I heard of that," Janet returned, smiling. "My father thought that we were being improperly robbed of your society, and went to try to persuade you to return, didn't he? I told him I thought it a shocking liberty; but you ought to forgive him--on the ground of his disappointment."

The cup Elfrida held shook in its saucer, and she put it down to silence it. Janet did not know, did not suspect, then. Well, she should; her indifference was too maddening.

"Under the circumstances it was not a liberty at all. Mr. Cardiff wanted me to come back to marry him."

There! It was done, and as brutally as possible. Her vanity was avenged--she could have her triumphs too. And instant with its gratification came the cold recoil of herself upon herself, a sense of shame, a longing to undo.

Janet took the announcement with the very slightest lifting of her eyebrows. She bent her head and stirred her teacup meditatively, then looked up gravely at Elfrida.

"Really?" she said. "And may I ask--whether you _have_ come back for that?"

"I--I hardly know," Elfrida faltered. "You know what I think about marriage--there is so much to consider."

"Doubtless," Janet returned. Her head was throbbing with the question why this girl would not go--go--_go!_ How had she the hardihood to stay another instant! At any moment her father might come in, and then how could she support the situation? But all she added was, "I am afraid it is a matter which we cannot very well discuss." Then a bold thought came to her, and without weighing it she put it into words. The answer might put everything definitely--so definitely--at an end.

"Mr. Kendal went to remonstrate with you, too, didn't he? It must have been very troublesome and embarrassing--"

Janet stopped. Elfrida had turned paler, and her eyes greatened with excitement. "_No,_" she said, "I did not see Mr. Kendal. What do you mean? Tell me!"

"Perhaps I have no right. But he told me that he had seen you, at Cheynemouth."

"He must have been in the audience," Elfrida returned, in a voice that was hardly audible.

"Perhaps."

For a moment there was silence between them--a natural silence, and no dumbness. They had forgotten about themselves in the absorption of other thoughts.

"I must go," Elfrida said, with an effort; rising. What had come to her with this thing Janet had told her? Why had she this strange fullness in the beating of her heart, this sense, part of shame, part of fright, part of happiness, that had taken possession of her? What had become of her strained feeling about Janet? For it had gone, gone utterly, and with it all her pride, all her self-control. She was conscious only of a great need of somebody's strength, of somebody's thought and interest --of Janet's. Yet how could she unsay anything? She held out her hand, and Janet took it. "Good-by, then," she said.

"Good-by; I hope you will escape the rain." But at the door Elfrida turned and came back. Janet was mechanically stirring the coals in the grate.

"Listen!" she said. "I want to tell you something about myself."

Janet looked up with an inward impatience. She knew these little repentant self-revealings so well.

"I know I'm a beast--I can't help it. Ever since I heard of your success I've been hating it! You can laugh if you like, but I've been _jealous_--oh, I'm not deceived; very well, we are acquainted, myself and I! It's pure jealousy--I admit it. I despise it, but there it is. You have everything; you succeed in _all_ the things you do--you suffocate me--do you understand? _Always_ the first place, always the attention, the consideration, wherever we go together. And your pretence--your _lie_ --of believing my work as good as yours! I believe it --yes, I do, but you _do not_. Oh, I know you through and through, Janet Cardiff! And altogether," she went on passionately, "it has been too much for me. I have not been able to govern it. I have yielded, _miserable_ that I am. But just now I felt it going away from me, Janet--" She paused, but there was no answer. Janet was looking contemplatively into the fire.

"And I made up my mind to say it straight out. It is better so, don't you think?"

"Oh yes, it is better so."

"I hate you sometimes--when you suffocate me with your cleverness--but I admire you _tremendously_ always. So I suppose we can go on, can't we?"

"Ah!" Elfrida cried, noting Janet's hesitation with a kind of wonder--how should it be exacted of her to be anything more than frank? "I will go a step further to come back to you, my Janet. I will tell you a secret--the first one I ever had. Don't be afraid that I shall become your stepmother and hate me in advance. That is too absurd!" and the girl laughed ringingly. "Because--I believe I am in love with John Kendal!"

For answer Janet turned to her with the look of one pressed to the last extremity. "Is it true that you are going to write your own experiences in the _corps de ballet?_" she asked ironically.

"Quite true. I have done three chapters already. What do you think of it? Isn't it a good idea?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Of course!"

"I think," said Janet slowly, looking into the fire, "that the scheme is a contemptible one, and that you are doing a very poor sort of thing in carrying it out."

"Thanks," Elfrida returned. "We are all pretty much alike, we women, aren't we, after all! Only some of us say so and some of us don't. But I shouldn't have thought you would have objected to my small rivalry _before the fact!_"

Janet sighed wearily, and looked out of the window. "Let me lend you an umbrella," she said; "the rain has come."

"It won't be necessary, thanks," Elfrida returned. "I hear Mr. Cardiff coming upstairs. I shall ask him to take care of me as far as the omnibuses. Good-by!"


CHAPTER XXVIII.

"Oh but--but," cried Elfrida, tragic-eyed, "you don't understand, my friend. And these pretences of mine are unendurable--I won't make another. This is the real reason why I can't go to your house: Janet knows --everything there is to know. I told her--I myself--in a fit of rage ten days ago, and then she said things and I said things, and--and there is nothing now between us any more!"

Lawrence Cardiff looked grave. "I am sorry for that," he said.

A middle-aged gentleman in apparently hopeless love does not confide in his grown-up daughter, and Janet's father had hardly thought of her seriously in connection with this new relation, which was to him so precarious and so sweet. Its realization had never been close enough for practical considerations; it was an image, something in the clouds; and if he still hoped and longed for its materialization there were times when he feared even to regard it too closely lest it should vanish. His first thought at this announcement of Elfrida's was of what it might signify of change, what bearing it had upon her feeling, upon her intention. Then he thought of its immediate results, which seemed to be unfortunate. But in the instant he had for reflection he did not consider Janet at all.

"Ah, yes! It was contemptible--but _contemptible!_ I did it partly to hurt her, and partly, I think, to gratify my vanity. You would not have thought anything so bad of me perhaps?" She looked up at him childishly. They were strolling about the quiet spaces of the Temple Courts. It was a pleasant afternoon in February, the new grass was pushing up. They could be quite occupied with one another--they had the place almost to themselves. Elfrida's well-fitting shabby little jacket hung unbuttoned, and she swung Cardiff's light walking-stick as they sauntered. He, with his eyes on her delicately flushed face and his hands unprofessorially in his pockets, was counting the minutes that were left them.

"You wouldn't have, would you?" she insisted.

"I would think any womanly fault you like of you," he laughed, "but one--the fear to confess it."

Elfrida shut her lips with a little proud smile. "Do you know," she said confidingly, "when you say things like that to me I like you very much--but _very much!_"

"But not enough," he answered her quickly, "never enough, Frida?"

The girl's expression changed. "You are not to call me 'Frida,'" she said, frowning a little. "It has an association that will always be painful to me. When people--disappoint me, I try to forget them in every way I can." She paused, and Cardiff saw that her eyes were full of tears. He had an instant of intense resentment against his daughter. What brutality had she been guilty of toward Elfrida in that moment of unreasonable jealousy that surged up between them? He would fiercely like to know. But Elfrida was smiling again, looking up at him in wilful disregard of her wet eyes.

"Say 'Elfrida' please--all of it."

They had reached the Inner Temple Hall. "Let us go in there and sit down," he suggested. "You must be tired--dear child."

She hesitated and submitted. "Yes, I am," she said. Presently they were sitting on one of the long dark polished wooden benches in the quiet and the rich light the ages have left in this place, keeping a mutual moment of silence. "How splendid it is!" Elfrida said restlessly, looking at the great carved wooden screen they had come through.

"The man who did that had a joy in his life, hadn't he? To-day is very cheap and common, don't you think?"

He had hardly words to answer