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Daughter of Today

<h2 id="id01001" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXX.</h2> "Janet," said Lawrence Cardiff a week later at breakfast, "the Halifaxes have decided upon their American tour. I saw Lady Halifax last night and she tells me they sail on the twenty-first. They want you to go with them. Do you feel disposed to do it?" Mr. Cardiff looked at his daughter with eyes from which the hardness that entered them weeks before in the Temple Courts had never quite disappeared. His face was worn and thin, its delicacy had sharpened, and he carried about with him an habitual abstraction. Janet, regarding him day after day in the light of her secret knowledge, gave herself up to an inward storm of anger and grief and anxiety. Elfrida's name had been tacitly dropped between them, but to Janet's sensitiveness she was constantly and painfully to be reckoned with in their common life. Lawrence Cardiff's moods were accountable to his daughter obviously by Elfrida's influence. She noted bitterly that his old evenness of temper, the gay placidity that made so delightful a basis for their joint happiness, had absolutely disappeared. Instead, she found her father either irritable or despondent, or inspired by a gaiety which she had no hand in producing, and which took no account of her. That was the real pain. Janet was keenly distressed at the little drama of suffering that unfolded itself daily before her, but her disapproval of its cause very much blunted her sense of its seriousness. She had, besides, a grown-up daughter's repulsion and impatience for a parental love-affair, and it is doubtful whether she would have brought her father's to a happy conclusion without a very severe struggle if she had possessed the power to do it. But this exclusion gave her a keener pang; she had shared so much with him before, had been so important to him always. And now he could propose, with perfect equanimity that she should go to America with the Halifaxes. "But you could not get away by the twenty-first," she returned, trying to take it for granted that the idea included him. "Oh, I don't propose going," Mr. Cardiff returned from behind his newspaper. "But, daddy, they intend to be away for a year." "About that. Lady Halifax has arranged a capital itinerary. They mean to come back by India." "And pray what would become of you all by yourself for a year, sir?" asked Janet brightly. "Besides, we were always going to do that trip together." She had a stubborn inward determination not to recognize this difference that had sprung up between them. It was only a phase, she told herself, of her father's miserable feeling just now; it would last another week, another fortnight, and then things would be as they had been before. She would not let herself believe in it, hurt as it might. Mr. Cardiff lowered his paper. "Don't think of that," he said over the top of it. "There is really no occasion. I shall get on very well. There is always the club, you know. And this is an opportunity you ought not to miss." Janet said nothing, and Lawrence Cardiff went back to his newspaper. She tried to go on with her breakfast, but scalding tears stood in her eyes, and she could not swallow. She was unable to command herself far enough to ask to be excused, and she rose abruptly and left the room with her face turned carefully away. Cardiff followed her with his eyes and gave an uncomprehending shrug. He looked at his watch; there was still half an hour before he need leave the house. It brought him an uncomfortable thought that he might go and comfort Janet—it was evident that something he had said had hurt her—she was growing absurdly hypersensitive. He dismissed the idea—Heaven only knew into what complications it might lead them. He spent the time instead in a restless walk up and down the room, revolving whether Elfrida Bell would or would not be brought to reconsider her refusal to let him take her to "Faust" that night—he never could depend upon her. Janet had not seen John Kendal since the afternoon he came to her radiant with his intention of putting all of Elfrida's elusive charm upon canvas, full of its intrinsic difficulties, eager for her sympathy, depending on her enthusiastic interest. She had disappointed him—she did her best, but the sympathy and enthusiasm and interest would not come. She could not tell him why—her broken friendship was still sacred to her for what it had been. Besides, explanations were impossible. So she listened and approved with a strained smile, and led him, with a persistence he did not understand, to talk of other things. He went away chilled and baffled, and he had not come again. She knew that he was painting with every nerve tense and eager, in oblivion to all but his work and the face that inspired it. Elfrida, he told her, was to give him three sittings a week, of an hour each, and he complained of the scantiness of the dole. She could conjure up those hours, all too short for his delight in his model and his work. Surely it would not be long now! Elfrida cared, by her own confession—Janet felt, dully, there could now be no doubt of that—and since Elfrida cared, what could be more certain than the natural issue? She fought with herself to accept it; she spent hours in seeking for the indifference that might come of accustoming herself to the fact. And when she thought of her father she hoped that it might be soon. There came a day when Lawrence Cardiff gave, his daughter the happiness of being almost his other self again. He had come downstairs with a headache and a touch of fever, and all day long he let her take care of him submissively, with the old pleasant gratitude that seemed to re-establish their comradeship. She had a joyful secret wonder at the change, it was so sadden and so complete; but their sympathetic relation reasserted itself naturally and at once, and she would not let herself question it. In the evening he sent her to her room for a book of his, and when she brought it to him where he lay upon the lounge in the library he detained her a moment. "You mustn't attempt to read without a lamp now, daddy," she said, touching his forehead lightly with her lips. "You will damage your poor old eyes." "Don't be impertinent about my poor old eyes, miss," he returned, smiling. "Janet, there is something I think you ought to know." "Yes, daddy." The girl felt herself turning rigid. "I want you to make friends with Elfrida again. I have every reason to believe—at all events some reason to believe—that she will become my wife." Her knowing already made it simpler to say. "Has—has she promised, daddy?" "Not exactly. But I think she will, Janet." His tone was very confident. "And of course you must forgive each other any little heart-burnings there may have been between you." Any little heart-burnings! Janet had a quivering moment of indecision. "Oh, daddy! she won't! she won't!" she cried tumultuously, and hurried out of the room. Cardiff lay still, smiling pityingly. What odd ideas women managed to get into their heads about one another! Janet thought Elfrida would refuse her overtures if she made them. How little she knew Elfrida—his just, candid, generous Elfrida! Janet flung herself upon her bed and faced the situation, dry-eyed, with burning cheeks. She could always face a situation when it admitted the possibility of anything being done, when there was a chance for resolution and action. Practical difficulties nerved her; it was only before the blankness of a problem of pure abstractness that she quailed—such a problem as the complication of her relation to John Kendal and to Elfrida Bell. She had shrunk from that for months, had put it away habitually in the furthest corner of her consciousness, and had done her best to make it stay there. She discovered how sore its fret had been only with the relief she felt when she simplified it at a stroke that afternoon on which everything came to an end between her and Elfrida. Since the burden of obligation their relation imposed had been removed Janet had analyzed her friendship, and had found it wanting in many ways to which she had been wilfully blind before. The criticism she had always silenced came forward and spoke boldly; and she recognized the impossibility of a whole-hearted intimacy where a need for enforced dumbness existed. All the girl's charm she acknowledged with a heart wrung by the thought that it was no longer for her. She dwelt separately and long upon Elfrida's keen sense of justice, her impulsive generosity, her refined consideration for other people, the delicacy of some of her personal instincts, her absolute sincerity toward herself and the world, her passionate exaltation of what was to her the ideal in art. Janet exacted from herself the last jot of justice toward Elfrida in all these things; and then she listened, as she had not done before, to the voice that spoke to her from the very depths of her being, it seemed, and said, "Nevertheless, no!" She only half comprehended, and the words brought her a sadness that would be long, she knew, in leaving her; but she listened and agreed. And now it seemed to her that she must ignore it again, that the wise, the necessary, the expedient thing to do was to go to Elfrida and re-establish, if she could, the old relation, cost what it might. She must take up her burden of obligation again in order that it might be mutual. Then she would have the right to beg Elfrida to stop playing fast and loose with her father, to act decisively. If Elfrida only knew, only realized, the difference it made, and how little right she had to control, at her whim, the happiness of any human being —and Janet brought a strong hand to bear upon her indignation, for she had resolved to go; and to go that night. Lawrence-Cardiff bade his daughter an early, good-night after their unusually pleasant dinner. "Do you think you can do it?" he asked her before he went Janet started at the question, for they had not mentioned Elfrida again, even remotely. "I think I can, daddy," she answered him gravely, and they separated. She looked at her watch; by half-past nine she could be in Essex Court. Yes, Miss Bell was in, Miss Cardiff could go straight up, Mrs. Jordan informed her, and she mounted the last flight of stairs with a beating heart. Her mission was important—oh, so important! She had compromised with her conscience in planning it, and now if it should fail! Her hand trembled as she knocked. In answer to Elfrida's "Come in!" she pushed the door slowly open. "It is I, Janet," she said; "may I?" "But of course!" Elfrida rose from a confusion of sheets of manuscript upon the table and came forward, holding out her hand with an odd gleam in her eyes, and an amused, slightly excited smile about her lips. "How do you, do?" she said, with rather ostentatiously suppressed wonder. "Please sit down, but not in that chair. It is not quite reliable. This one, I think is better. How are—how are you?" The slight emphasis she placed on the last word was airy and regardless. Janet would have preferred to have been met by one of the old affectations; she would have felt herself taken more seriously. "It's very late to come, and I interrupt you," she said awkwardly, glancing at the manuscript. "Not at all. I am very happy—" "But of course I had a special reason for coming. It is serious enough, I think, to justify me." "What can it be!" "Don't, Elfrida," Janet cried passionately. "Listen to me. I have come to try to make things right again between us—to ask you to forgive me for speaking as I—as I did about your writing that day. I am sorry—I am, indeed." "I don't quite understand. You ask me to forgive you—but what question is there of forgiveness? You had a perfect right to your opinion, and I was glad to have it at last from you, frankly." "But it offended you, Elfrida. It is what is accountable for the—the rupture between us." "Perhaps. But not because it hurt my feelings," Elfrida returned scornfully, "in the ordinary sense. It offended me truly; but in quite another way. In what you said you put me on a different plane from yourself in the matter of artistic execution. Very well. I am content to stay there—in your opinion. But why this talk of forgiveness? Neither of us can alter anything. Only," Elfrida breathed quickly, "be sure that I will not be accepted by you upon those terms." "That, wasn't what I meant in the least." "What else could you have meant? And more than that," Elfrida went on rapidly—her phrases had the patness of formed conclusions—"what you said betrayed a totally different conception of art, as it expresses itself in the nudity of things, from the one I supposed you to hold. And, if you will pardon me for saying so, a much lower one. It seems to me that we cannot hold together there—that our aims and creeds are different, and that we have been comrades under false pretences. Perhaps we are both to blame for that; but we cannot change it, or the fact that we have found it out." Janet bit her lip. The "nudity of things" brought her an instant's impulse toward hysteria—it was so characteristic a touch of candid exaggeration. But her need for reflection helped her to control it. Elfrida had taken a different ground from the one she expected—it was less simple, and a mere apology, however sincere, would not meet it. But there was one thing more which she could say, and with an effort she said it. "Elfrida, suppose that, even as an expression of opinion—putting it aside as an expression of feeling toward you—what I said that day was not quite sincere. Suppose that I was not quite mistress of myself—I would rather not tell you why—" "Is that true?" asked Elfrida directly. "Yes, it is true. For the moment I wanted more than anything else in the world to break with you. I took the surest means." The other girl regarded Janet steadfastly. "But if it is only a question of the degree of your sincerity," she persisted, "I cannot see that the situation alters much." "I was not altogether responsible, believe me, Elfrida. I don't remember now what I said, but—but I am afraid it must have taken all its color from my feeling." "Of course." Elfrida hesitated, and her tone showed her touched. "I can understand that what I told you about —about Mr. Cardiff must have been a shock. For the moment I became an animal, and turned upon you—upon you who had been to me the very soul of kindness. I have hated myself for it—you may be sure of that." Janet Cardiff had a moment's inward struggle, and yielded. She would let Elfrida believe it had been that. After all it was partly true, and her lips refused absolutely to say the rest. "Yes, it must have hurt you—more, perhaps, than I can guess." Elfrida's eyes grew wet and her voice shook. "But I can't understand your retaliating that way, if you didn't believe what you said. And if you believed it, what more is there to say?" Janet felt herself possessed by an intense sensation of playing for stakes, unusual, exciting, and of some personal importance. She did not pause to regard her attitude from any other point of view; she succumbed at once, not without enjoyment, to the necessity for diplomacy. Under its rush of suggestions her conscience was only vaguely restive. To-morrow it would assert itself; unconsciously she put off paying attention to it until then. Elfrida must come back to her. For the moment the need was to choose her plea. "It seems to me," she said slowly, "that there is something between us which is indestructible, Frida. We didn't make it, and we can't unmake it. For my part, I think it is worth our preserving, but I don't believe we could lose it if we tried. You may put me away from you for any reason that seems good to you, as far as you like, but so long as we both live there will be that something, recognized or unrecognized. All we can do arbitrarily is to make it a joy or a pain of it. Haven't you felt that?" The other girl looked at her uncertainly. "I have felt it sometimes," she said, "but now it seems to me that I can never be sure that there is not some qualification in it—some hidden flaw." "Don't you think it's worth making the best of? Can't we make up our minds to have a little charity for the flaws?" Elfrida shook her head. "I don't think I'm capable of a friendship that demands charity," she said. "And yet, whether we close each other's lips or not, we will always have things to say, the one to the other, in this world. Is it to be dumbness between us?" There was a moment's silence in the room—a crucial moment, it seemed to both of them. Elfrida sat against the table with her elbows among its litter of paged manuscript, her face hidden in her hands. Janet rose and took a step or two toward her. Then she paused, and looked at the little bronze image on the table instead. Elfrida was suddenly shaken by deep, indrawn, silent sobs. "It is finished, then," Janet said softly; "we are to separate for always, Buddha, she and I. She will not know any more of me nor I of her—it will be, so far as we can make it, like the grave. You must belong to a strange world, Buddha, always to smile!" She spoke evenly quietly, with, restraint, and still she did not look at the convulsively silent figure in the chair. "But I am glad you will always keep that face for her, Buddha. I hope the world will, too, our world that is sometimes more bitter than you can understand. And I say good-by to you, for to her I cannot say it." And she turned to go. Elfrida stumbled to her feet and hurried to the door. "No!" she said, holding it fast. "No! You must not go that way—I owe you too much, after all. We will—we will make the best of it." "Not on that ground," Janet answered gravely. "Neither your friendship nor mine is purchasable, I hope." "No, no! That was bad. On any ground you like. Only stay a little—let us find ourselves again!" Elfrida forced a smile into what she said, and Janet let herself be drawn back to a chair. It was nearly midnight when she found herself again in her cab, driving through the empty lamplit Strand toward Kensington. She had prevailed, and now she had to scrutinize her methods. That necessity urged itself beyond her power to turn away from it, and left her sick at heart. She had prevailed—Elfrida, she believed, was hers again. They had talked as candidly as might be of her father. Elfrida had promised nothing, but she would, bring matters to an end, Janet knew she would, in a day or two, when she had had time to think how intolerable the situation would be if she didn't. Janet remembered with wonder, however, how little Elfrida seemed to realize that it need make any difference between them compared with other things, and what a trivial concession she thought it beside the restoration of the privileges of her friendship. The girl asked herself drearily how it would be possible that she should ever forget the frank cynical surprise with which Elfrida had received her entreaty, based on the fact of her father's unrest and the wretchedness of his false hopes—"You have your success; does it really matter—so very much?" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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