Harriet T. Comstock

"Hopes and disappointments, and much need of philosophy."

A week later Joan started for New York, a closely packed suitcase in her hand, a closely packed trunk in the baggage car ahead, and some hurting memories to bear her company on the way.

Memories of Nancy's tears.

How Nancy could cry—once the barriers were down!

And worse than Nancy's tears were Doris's smiles.

Joan understood the psychology of smiles—as she remembered, her proud head was lowered and she was surprised to find that she was shedding tears.

"But it's all part of the price of freedom!" At last Joan dried her eyes. "And I'm willing to pay."

So Joan travelled alone up to town, and it was a wet, slippery night when she raised the knocker on Sylvia Reed's green-painted door and let it fall.

The door opened at once and disclosed the battle-ground of young genius. The old room was dim, for Sylvia had been toasting bacon and bread by the open fire and she needed no more light than the coals gave. Sylvia wore a smock and her hair was down her back. She looked about twelve until she fixed her eyes upon you, then she looked old; too old for a girl of twenty-four.

"Joan! Joan!" was all she said as she drew Joan in. Then, after a struggle, "Do you mind if I—sob?"

"No, I'm going to do it myself." And Joan proceeded to do so and remembered Nancy.

"I'm so—happy!" she gulped. "I was never so happy in my life. I feel as if I'd got hatched, broken through the shell!"

"You have," cried Sylvia, unevenly. "We're going to—to conquer everything! Come in your room, Joan, shed as much as you like. I expected you this morning. I have only bacon and eggs—shall we go out to eat?"

"Go out? Heavens, no! And I adore bacon and eggs. Sylvia, I have edged into glory!"

"You have, Joan—edged in, that's about it."

After the meal before the fire they cleared things away, and then they talked far into the night. Sylvia had already laid emphasis upon her small order.

"And really, Joan, that's great," she explained; "many a girl has to wait longer. Some day I'm going to be hung in the best exhibitions in town, but as a starter a magazine is nothing to be sneered at. I'm modelling, too—I have a duck of an idea for a frieze—only I'm not telling anybody about that—it's too ambitious. What are you going to do, Joan?" This sudden question made Joan stare.

"I—I don't know," she replied, frankly, but with no shade of despondency. "I'll take a look around to-morrow and, then pack my little wares in my basket and peddle them, as you have done. If anybody wants a dancer—here I am! Anybody want funny little songs sung?—here's your girl! I seem to have only samples. I can be adaptable. That's my big asset." They both laughed, but Sylvia soon grew serious. Her short service in reality had already sobered her. It was one thing for the gifted young girl of a fashionable school to watch the impression she made by her wits upon people who were paying high for just such exhibitions, and quite another to convince buyers of goods that they were what you believed them to be.

"The public is a tightwad," was what she muttered presently, "unless you're willing to compromise or—prove it to them."

"I—I don't know what you mean," Joan replied. She was groping after the thing that had made Sylvia's eyes grow old.

"Well, all you need to know, Joan, my lamb, is to prove it to them—never compromise!" Sylvia was herself again. Too well she knew the value of starting out with one's shield bright and shining even if one had to come home on it, all rusted with one's life blood.

Things were not yet very tragic for Sylvia, and her shield was in good condition, but she had an imagination and a keen sense of self-protection.

"We're going to be the happiest pair in town," she whispered to Joan later that night as she bent over the tired girl; "and was there ever such a spot to live in? See, I'm going to raise your shade high, for the night is splendid and—the stars! Go to sleep with the stars watching you, old girl, and you're all right."

Joan slept heavily, dreamlessly, and awoke to—more bacon and eggs with hot rolls and coffee added.

"I'm going to float about a bit to-day," she said, and her feet were fairly dancing. "I've only known New York before holding to Aunt Dorrie's hand or my nurse's. Today I'm going to go back alone and then—catch up with myself."

Suddenly she began to sing her old graduation song:

"I'll sail upon the Dog-star
I'll sail upon the Dog-star;
I'll chase the moon, till it be noon,
But I'll make her leave her horning.
"I'll climb the frosty mountain
And there I'll coin the weather.
I'll tear the rainbow from the sky
And tie both ends together."

Sylvia leaned back, clapping and laughing. This was as it should be. Fun, youth, gaiety. She went to her easel in the north room, humming Joan's old ballad, and never did better work in her life than she did that day.

Joan sallied forth equally happy and her past, thank heaven, had been brief enough and rosy enough to make the tying of the ends nothing but a joyous task. She rode downtown on top of a bus. The crisp air stung and rallied her. She longed to sing from the swaying vehicle—she felt as if she were on top of the world and that it was keeping time to the tune she wanted to sing. She looked so lovely that the conductor grinned delightedly as he remarked:

"Snappy weather, miss!" and Joan nodded in friendly fashion and agreed. She walked to the old home, standing with drawn blinds by the little, close-locked park. It looked stately and reserved as one of the family might have done. It smilingly held its tongue.

"I'd like to see the sunken room and the fountain," Joan thought. "I cannot imagine it with the fountain and the birds still. They will never be still for me!"

She was a bit surprised to feel how far she had travelled from the Joan who was part of Nancy and the sunken room. It was quite shocking to find that she was not missing Nancy. She wondered if she were heartless and selfish? But after all, how could one be missed from a life in which she had never, could never, have part? And full well Joan realized that in this big venture of hers the old, except as a stepping-stone, was separated forever.

"If I become famous"—and Joan, tripping along, felt as if fame were as possible for her as the luncheon she was now feeling the need of—"if I become famous then they will understand, but even then my life and theirs will be different."

This point of view made Joan feel important, tragic, but desolate.

"I'm hungry," she thought, seriously, and made her way to a restaurant, where once she had gone with Doris while on a wonderful shopping expedition. The place was little changed; it had passed into other hands, but the menu proudly proclaimed the same enticing dishes.

Joan ordered what once had seemed the food of the gods, but to her now it was as chaff.

Across the table, made dim by her misty eyes, she seemed to see Doris smiling fondly, faithfully, at her. Doris's power over people was largely due to that faith she had in them.

"And I will be all you want me to be, Aunt Dorrie!" Joan promised that while she choked down the food. "I feel as if I were in the bear's house," she mused, whimsically. "I'm half afraid that I'll be pounced upon."

And so she paid her bill and went back, via the bus, to Sylvia. She ran up the long flights of stairs and burst in upon Sylvia with the announcement that "nothing would count if you didn't have someone to come home and tell it to." And then she forgot her glooms while they prepared an evening meal more conservative than bacon and eggs.

"Yes, my beloved," Sylvia returned as she plunged a wicked-looking little knife into the heart of a grapefruit: "And that accounts for half the marriages in life." Sylvia was refraining, just then, from telling of her own engagement. She wanted and needed Joan for the present—her secret would keep.

"You funny old Syl," Joan flung back over her shoulder as she drew the curtain over the closet that screened the housekeeping skeletons from the wonderful studio. "We won't have to resort to marriage, anyway. We've solved the eternal question!"

"Exactly! And now give those chops a twist. Thank the Lord, we both love them crisp."

The experiment in a few days had Joan by the throat. So utterly had she thrown herself into it, so almost unbelievably had Doris Fletcher permitted her to do so, that it took on all the attributes of reality and demanded nothing less than obedience to its laws, or surrender to defeat.

Doris had given Joan, when she came North, a check for five hundred dollars. Upon reaching Sylvia she had, after paying her expenses, that, and fifty dollars in cash left.

It had seemed boundless wealth for the first few days and continued to seem so until the necessity for bringing the check into action faced the girl.

"I must find something to do!" she vowed as she made her way to the bank where she had deposited the check. "No more fooling around."

Sylvia made no suggestions; never appeared to be anything but satisfied with things as they were. The companionship, the feeling of home that Joan had introduced into her life, were deep joys to the girl who, like many women who know not the art of making a home, are soul-sick for the blessings of one.

"I'd work till my last tube ran dry," she thought to herself, standing at the wide north window, "if I could keep her singing and dancing about and—getting meals!"

Joan did not interfere with Sylvia's profession—she gave it new meaning—but Sylvia realized that Joan was interfering with her own. Still, Sylvia was never one to usurp the rights of a Higher Power, and at twenty-four she was intensely, shamefacedly religious and absolutely lacking in desire to shape the ends of others.

"The thing that's meant for her will slap her in the face soon," Sylvia comforted herself. "And she's such a wonder!"

But if Sylvia refrained from nudging Joan on her course, even to the extent of opening her eyes to sign-posts, others were not so obliging. Into Sylvia's studio youth, in its various forms of expression, floated naturally. Sylvia attracted women more than men, but her girl friends brought their male comrades with them and everybody was welcome to anything that Sylvia had. Fortunately most of the young people were honestly striving to earn their living; they were sweetly, proudly unafraid, but when they relaxed and played they made Joan's eyes widen, until she discovered that they often dressed their ideas, as they did themselves, rather startlingly while adhering, privately, to a respectability that they refused to make public.

They were, on the whole, a joyous lot belonging to that new class which causes older and more conservative folk to hold their breath as people do who watch children walking near a precipice and dare not call out for fear of worse danger.

The women attracted and interested Joan immensely. The men amazed her.

"You see," she confided to Sylvia, "the men seem like a new sex—neither men nor women."

Sylvia stood off regarding her work—she smiled happily and replied:

"They are, dear lamb. The girls will all, eventually, put on; fill up"—Sylvia added a dab of clay to a doubtful curve—"but men, when they chip off from the approved design, look like nothing on earth but daubs!"

"Yes," Joan added, "that's what I mean." Then, with a thoughtful puckering of the brows, "the girls will be women, somehow, but what will become of these—this new sex, Syl?"

Sylvia was tense as she eyed her work. She answered vaguely:

"Some of them will crawl up, and do things and justify themselves, the others will——"

"Will what, Syl?"—for Sylvia was moving like a panther upon her prey—her prey being the small figure on the pedestal.

"Do this—or have it done for them!" and at this the offending clay was dashed to atoms.

"Failure!" breathed Sylvia—"mess!"

Then with characteristic quickness she began a new design. Joan watched her and caught a sudden insight. She realized what it was that marked Sylvia for success. Presently she asked musingly:

"Does any one ever marry these—these men, Syl?"

"Heavens, no! They only play with them; don't get confused on that line, lamb."

"Don't worry about me, Syl. I don't even want to play with them. Syl, I do not think I shall ever marry. I'm like Aunt Dorrie, but if I ever should marry it would be something to help one grip life, not something to—to—well, haul along!"

Sylvia turned and eyed Joan.

"My pet lamb," she remarked, "you are all right! Make sure that no one side-tracks you—give them half, but no more. And, Joan, run along now, child, and get dinner."

A few days later Sylvia broke into Joan's revery by the smouldering fire. It was a gray, cold day and Joan's spirits were at low tide.

She had not been successful in any venture as yet, and so vivid was her imagination, so sincere her determination to play fair, that starvation and early death seemed the most likely objects on her mental horizon. She had eliminated Doris and Nancy as life-preservers—they figured only as blessed memories in a past that was not yet regretted but which was fast fading into a black present.

"Joan, my darling, suppose you come to the rescue. My model has gone back on me—let me see you dance! My model had sand bags on her feet yesterday, anyhow, and my beautiful figure looks as if it had the beginnings of paralysis."

Joan sprang up. Instantly she was aglow and trembling with delight.

"Here, take this balloon," ordered Sylvia, "it is still gassy enough to float—it's a bubble, you know."

Through the room Joan floated after the elusive ball. Sylvia watched her with a light breaking over her own face.

"Great, great!" she cried from her corner, "go it, Joan, you're the real thing!"

Joan was not listening. What her eyes saw were the figures in the fountain of the sunken room. She was one of them again—the story was coming true! It was no longer a golden balloon she was touching, fondling, reaching for, tossing—it was sparkling water, and birds seemed singing in the big north studio.

At last it was over. On Sylvia's canvas the figure appeared to have undergone a marvellous change by a few rapid and bewitched strokes. The sand-bag impression had been removed—the figure was alive!

"Syl, dear, you are wonderful!"

Joan came and stood close. "What have you done to it?"

"Put you in it. Or," here Sylvia tossed her palette aside and caught Joan by the shoulders, "you've put yourself in me. I've a line on your opportunity, Joan, it came to me like a flash of inspiration. I hope you are game."

"I'm game, all right," Joan returned, quietly. She was thinking of her next visit to the bank.

"Dress your prettiest, my lamb. Look success from head to foot and then go to the address I'll give you. I have a friend, Elspeth Gordon, who is opening a tea room. She may not think you necessary to her scheme of things, she's Scotch and terribly thrifty, with a dash of nearness, but you tell her that I say you'll be the making of her."

Joan laughed and darted away to array herself in her best.

"What am I supposed to do there?" she asked. Her brightness and gaiety had returned.

"Oh! any one of your accomplishments. Of course it was merely a matter of making things jibe. Elspeth only telephoned about the tea room this morning."

"You mean I am to wait on tables or cook?" asked Joan, somewhat daunted.

"Lord, child, no! Here, wait. On second thought, I'll go with you. I might have known you couldn't put it over. Watch me!"

Sylvia was worth watching as she pulled her tam o' shanter over her head, her face all aglow.

"I've undervalued your 'samples,' as you call them, my lamb," she chatted on. "Of course you must take lessons and be a legitimate something some day—a singer, I fancy, but in the meantime we must utilize what we have."

On the way through the frosty streets Sylvia grew more mystifying.

"It's putting the punch in these days that counts, Joan. You are to be—the punch. Eats are all right in their way, but folks do not live by bread alone; they flourish—or tea rooms do—on punch."

Joan, running along beside Sylvia, accepted the rambling talk without question. Her acquaintance with tea rooms was limited, but she had caught Sylvia's mood.

"Just imagine," Sylvia was a bit breathless; "a cold, dreary afternoon outside—a warm, bright tea room with enchanting tables drawn close to an open fire, and someone—you, my lamb—singing a ballad, when there is a lull—in the offings! Why, Elspeth is as good as made if she has the wit to grab you—and Elspeth is no fool."

Joan began to see the opening ahead.

"Oh!" she drawled—the word lasted a half block and ended in a mocking laugh.

"Could I dance in costume?" she asked, tossing her head, "or tell fortunes as I used to at school? Do you remember, Syl, how I went to the kitchen door, once, and took the maids all in, and then Miss Tibbetts came down to see what was going on, and I read her palm—and——" but here Joan stopped short physically. "What's the matter, Syl?" she said.

"Why, of course!" Sylvia was regarding Joan impartially. "They might object to having you break in on their silly tea-talk, the police might raid the place if you danced—but palm reading! Oh! my dear, you've struck it in the dark. Hurry!"

And hurry they did, arriving at the Bonny Brier Bush a few minutes later in rather a breathless but radiant state.

The proprietress, Elspeth Gordon, was a tall, slender woman, no longer young, but carrying herself with a dignity that amounted almost to majesty. She was gowned in crisp lavender linen with immaculate white collars and cuffs and was standing in the middle of her Big Experiment, as she termed it, when Joan and Sylvia burst in.

"All ready but the opening of the door—legitimately," she said, smiling on Sylvia and bowing cordially to Joan. "Doesn't it look inviting?" She gave a broad glance to the sweet, orderly room: the small tables, glass covered; the rose-chintz covers and draperies; the clear fire on the broad, old-fashioned hearth, and the blossoming rose bushes on the window sills.

"It certainly does," Sylvia replied with enthusiasm.

"I've put everything I own into this venture," Elspeth went on; "if I fail, I'm done for."

For all her years of discretion and her plain common sense, Elspeth Gordon's mouth and tone betrayed the artistic temperament. Upon that Sylvia was banking.

"I have a splendid cook—a Scotch woman. I'm going to specialize on scones, and oat cakes, and such things, but oh! it is the opening of the door and the awful days of waiting until the public finds out!"

"Exactly!" Sylvia nodded and Joan stared. "You'll have to lure the public, Elspeth, there's no doubt about that. Tea rooms are no novelty these days. You'll have to tease it with a bait, and the rest is easy.

"Now, my dear, here's your bait!" With this, Sylvia turned so sharply upon Joan that Elspeth started nervously and regarded her guest as she might have a tempting worm: something possibly necessary, but which she hesitated to touch.

"She can read—palms!"

"Oh! Syl——" Joan panted, but Sylvia scowled her to silence.

"She can read palms," she repeated, holding Elspeth by her firm tone; "a little more reading up, a bit of experience, and she'll work wonders. She doesn't know it, but she's psychic—of course this is going to be fun; not real. Just a lure. We'll have Joan in a long white robe—a girl I know can design it. We'll have a filmy veil over the lower part of her face—mystery, you know. Look at her eyes, Elspeth, aren't they great? Give that 'into-the-future' stare, Joan!"

Joan rose to the fun of it all. She grasped the possibilities, but Elspeth faltered.

"I don't want to be—ridiculous," she said, slowly. "I'm quite serious, and my food is going to be above question."

"Of course! And if you think Joan will make you ridiculous, you've got another guess coming, Elspeth. Now, when do you open?"

"I have planned to open day after to-morrow." Elspeth spoke hesitatingly, keeping her cool, businesslike glance on Joan.

"All right," Sylvia was tapping her fingers restlessly; "that's Thursday. I'll get a girl I know to work on the costume to-night; we'll buy books on palmistry on our way home. We'll give you just four days to lure your public with scones, and then if you don't call Joan up, she'll start a tea room herself across the way."

This made them all laugh, but there was an earnestness in their eyes.

And on Sunday night Elspeth spoke over the telephone.

"Could you come to-morrow at two, Miss Thornton?"

Joan, sitting close to the telephone, winked at Sylvia. They had all been sitting up nights working, reading, and praying for that question.

"I think so," was the reply in quite an unmoved and businesslike tone.

"And remember, Joan," Sylvia cautioned later, "this is but a means to fit you for a profession!"

"I'll remember," Joan twinkled, "in the meantime, I am going to enjoy myself."