Chapter 23

Of all the multitudinous ways in which Dan Cupid, Unlimited, does business, none is more nefarious than his course by correspondence. Once he has induced two guileless clients to plunge into the traffic of love letters, the rest is easy. Wild speculation in love stock, false valuations, hysterical desire to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, invariably follow. Before the end of the month Harold Phipps and Eleanor Bartlett were gambling in the love market with a recklessness that would have staggered the most hardened old speculator.

Harold, instead of being handicapped by his absence at the most critical point in his love affair, took advantage of it to exhibit one of his most brilliant accomplishments. He sent Eleanor a handsome tooled-leather portfolio to hold his letters, which he wrote on loose-leaf sheets and mailed unfolded. They were letters that deserved preservation, prose poems composed with infinite pains and copied with meticulous care. If the potpourri was at times redolent of the dried flowers of other men's loves, Eleanor was blissfully unaware of it. When he wrote of the lonesome October of his most immemorial year, or spoke of her pilgrim soul coming to him at midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, she thrilled with admiration for his genius.

Such literary masterpieces deserved adequate answers, and she found herself trying to make up in quantity what she lacked in quality. His letters always began, "Dearest Héloïse," or "Mélisande," or "Baucis," or "Isolde"; and, rather than acknowledge her ignorance of these classic allusions, she looked them up and sent her answers to "Dear Abélard," or "Pelléas," or "Philemon," or "Tristan," as the case demanded. She indited her missives with a dainty gold pen engraved with an orchid, which Harold had requested her never to profane by secular use.

The correspondence, while throbbing with emotion, was not by any means devoid of practical details. Harold lost no opportunity of urging Eleanor to remain firm in her resolve to go to New York. It would be sheer folly, he pointed out, to give up the chance of a professional début, a chance that might not come again in years. He pointed out that her grandfather had changed all his plans on the strength of her coming, and would be utterly heartbroken if she failed to keep her promise. He delicately intimated that her failure to take the part he had so laboriously written for her might seal the fate of "Phantom Love" and prove the downfall of both its creators.

His conclusion to all these specious arguments was that the only way out of the tangle was for her to consent to a nominal engagement to him that would bind her to nothing, and yet would give him the right to send her to New York if Madam Bartlett refused to do so. In answer to Eleanor's doubts and misgivings, he assured her in polyphonic prose that he knew her far better than she knew herself, and that he would be "content to wait at the feet of little Galatea, asking nothing, giving all, until the happy day when she should wake to life and love and the consciousness that she was wholly and happily his."

And Galatea read his letters with increasing ardor and slept with them under her pillow. It was all so secret and romantic, this glorious adventure rushing to fulfilment, under the prosy surface of everyday life. Of course she did not want to be married--not for ages and ages; but to be engaged, to be indefinitely adored by a consummate lover like Harold Phipps, who so beautifully shared her ambition, was an exciting and tempting proposition. Like most girls of her type, when her personal concerns became too complex for reason, she abandoned herself to impulse. She merely shut her eyes and allowed herself to drift toward a destination that was not of her choosing. Like a peripatetic Sleeping Beauty, she moved through the days in a sort of trance, waiting liberation from her thraldom, but fearing to put her fate to the test by laying the matter squarely and finally before her grandmother.

It was easy enough to drop out of her old round of festivities. She had been away all summer, and new groups had formed with which she took no trouble to ally herself. Her friends seemed inordinately young and foolish. She wondered how she had ever endured the trivial chatter of Kitty Mason and the school-boy antics of Pink Bailey and Johnnie Rawlings. After declining half a dozen invitations she was left in peace, free to devote all her time to composing her letters, to poring over plays and books about the theater, or to sitting listless absorbed in day-dreams.

The one old friend who refused to be disposed of was Quinby Graham. On one pretext or another he managed to come to the house almost every day, and he seldom left it without managing to see her. Sometimes when she was in the most arduous throes of composition, the maid would come to her door and say: "Mr. Quin's downstairs, and he says can you come to the steps a minute--he's got something to show you?" Or Miss Isobel would pause on the threshold to say: "Quinby is looking for you, Eleanor. I think it is something about a new tire for your automobile."

And Eleanor would impatiently thrust her letter into a desk drawer and go downstairs, where she would invariably get so interested in what Quin had to say to her or to show her that she would forget to come up again.

Sometimes they went out to Valley Mead together for week-ends. On those days Eleanor not only failed to write to Harold, but also failed to think about him. The excitement of seeing what new wonders had been wrought since the last visit, of scouring the woods for nuts and berries, of going on all-day picnics to a neighboring hill-top, made her quite forget her castles in the air. She descended from the clouds of art and under Quin's tutelage learned to fry chops and bacon and cook eggs in the open. She got her face and hands smudged and her hair tumbled, and she forgot all about enunciating clearly and holding her poses. So abandoned was she to what Harold called her "bourgeois mood" that she was conscious of nothing but the sheer joy of living.

Often when she and Quin were alone together, she longed to take him into her confidence. She was desperately in need of counsel, and his level head and clear judgments had solved more than one problem for her. But she realized that, in spite of the heroic effort he was making to keep within bounds, he was nevertheless liable to overflow into sentiment with the slightest encouragement. Confession of her proposed flight, moreover, involved an explanation of her relation to Harold Phipps, and upon that point Quin could not be counted to sympathize.

With the first of November came a letter that brought matters to a crisis. Claude Martel wrote that he must know immediately the date of her arrival in New York, since the place he had bespoken for her at the Kendall School of Expression could no longer be held open; he must also give a definite answer about the apartment.

Eleanor received the letter one Saturday as she was starting to a tea. All afternoon she listened to the local chatter about her as a lark poised for flight might listen to the twittering of house sparrows. Her mind was in a ferment of elation and doubt, of trepidation and joyful anticipation. The moment she had longed for and yet dreaded was at hand.

Returning across Central Park in the dusk, she rehearsed what she was going to say to her grandmother. The moment for approaching her had never seemed more propitious. Ever since she had accepted Quin's advice and "cottoned up" to the old lady, relations between them had been amazingly amicable. Her willingness to stay at home in the evening and take Miss Enid's place as official reader and amanuensis had placed her in high favor, and Madam, not to be outdone in magnanimity, had allowed her many privileges.

Now that there seemed some ground for the hope that she might gain her grandmother's consent to the New York proposition, Eleanor realized how ardently she wanted it. It was not the money alone, it was her moral support and approval--hers and Aunt Isobel's. Aunt Enid would understand, had understood in a way; so would Uncle Ranny and Aunt Flo. As for Quin Graham----

She heard a cough near by, and turning saw a couple sitting on a bench half hidden in the heavy shrubbery. Their backs were toward her, and she noticed that the girl's hand rested on the man's shoulder and that their heads were bent in intimate conversation. The next instant she recognized Rose Mattel's hat and the dim outline of Quin's troubled profile.

Turning sharply to the right, she hurried up through the pergola and out into the avenue. She wondered why she was so unaccountably angry. Rose and Quin had a perfect right to sit in the square at twilight and talk as much as they liked. It was not her business, anyhow, she told herself; she ought to be glad for poor Rose to have any diversion she could get after being in that hideous store all day. She didn't blame Rose one bit. But if Quin thought as much of somebody else as he pretended to, she couldn't see what he would have to say to another girl out here in the park at twilight, especially a girl that he saw three times a day at home! Could there be anything between them? She had scorned the idea when it was once tentatively suggested to her by Harold Phipps. Of _course_ there couldn't. And yet----

So preoccupied was she with these disturbing reflections that she almost forgot the real business in hand until she stood on her own doorstep waiting to be admitted.

"Old Miss says for you to come up to her room the minute you git in," Hannah said, with an ominous note in her voice.

"What's the matter, Hannah? Uncle Ranny?"

"Lord, no, honey! Mr. Ranny's behavin' himself like a angel. Hit was somethin' that come in the mail. Miss Isobel she don't know, and I don't know; but Old Miss certainly has got it in fer somebody."

Eleanor's new-found confidence promptly deserted her, and she hastily took stock of her own shortcomings. Of course she was writing daily to Harold, but the matter of her private correspondence had been threshed out during the summer and she had emerged battered but victorious. Aside from that, she could think of no probable cause she had given for offense.

In the hall she met Miss Isobel.

"Mother has been asking for you, dear," she said in a voice heavy with premonition. "She's very much upset about something."

Eleanor anxiously mounted the stairs. It was evidently not a propitious moment to present her case; and yet, Papa Claude must have an answer within twenty-four hours. At the door of Madam's room she hesitated. Then she took the small remnant of her courage in both hands and entered.

Madam was sitting at her desk under the crystal chandelier, with a severity of expression that suggested nothing less than a court martial. Without speaking she waved Eleanor to a seat, and began searching through her papers. The light fell full on her high white pompadour and threw the deep lines about her grim mouth into heavy relief.

"Do you remember," she began ponderously, "a check I gave you the day of Enid's wedding?"

"Yes, grandmother."

"Well, where is the bag you bought with it?"

Evasion had so often been Eleanor's sole weapon of defense that she seized it now.

"I--I haven't bought it yet," she faltered; then she added weakly: "I haven't seen any I particularly cared about."

"You still have the money?"

"Well--I've spent some of it."

"How much?"

"I don't know that I remember exactly."

Madam's lip curled.

"Perhaps I can stimulate your memory," she said, running her fingers through a bunch of canceled checks. "Here is the check I gave you, indorsed to Rose Martel."

Eleanor flushed crimson. The imputation of untruthfulness was one to which she was particularly sensitive. Her fear of her grandmother had taught her early in life to take refuge in subterfuge, a shelter that she heartily despised but which she still clung to. In her desire to meet Rose's imperative need, she had passed her gift on to her, with the intention of saving enough from her own allowance to get the mesh bag later. The fact that the canceled check would be returned to her grandmother had never occurred to her.

"So _that's_ where my money has been going!" cried Madam. "They've succeeded in working me through you, have they? Just as they succeeded in working Ranny through Quinby Graham."

"No--no, grandmother! Please listen! They have never asked me for a penny. But when I found out the terrible time they'd been having, the children sick all summer and Cass down with typhoid--why, if it hadn't been for Quin----"

"So they sponged on him too, did they? He's a bigger fool than I gave him credit for being."

"But they _didn't_ sponge. He is Cass's best friend, and he was glad to help. He and Rose did all the nursing themselves."

"Yes, I heard about it. In the house alone for six weeks. That doesn't speak very well for her reputation."

"Grandmother! You've no right to say that! Rose may talk recklessly and do foolish things, but she wouldn't do anything wrong for the world."

"Well, if she did, she wouldn't be the first member of her family to compromise a man so that he had to marry her."

"What do you mean?" demanded Eleanor, quivering with indignation.

"That's neither here nor there," said Madam. "There's enough rottenness in the present without raking up the past. But one thing is certain: if they ask you for money again----"

"I tell you, they didn't ask me!"

"Not in so many words, perhaps, but they worked on your sympathies. I know them! As for Claude Martel, he would want nothing better than have you traveling around in some Punch and Judy show. But I scotched that nonsense once and for all. As for their bleeding you for money,"--she rose and crushed the check in her hand,--"I guess I know a way to stop that."

Eleanor rose too, and faced her. She was very pale now, her anger having reached a white heat.

"My mother's people may be poor," she said deliberately, "but they aren't beggars, and at least they've come by what they have honestly."

It was Madam's turn to flinch. A certain famous law-suit in the history of Bartlett & Bangs had brought out some startling testimony, and the subject was one to which reference was never allowed in Madam's presence. At Eleanor's words the whirlwind of her wrath let loose. Her words hurtled like flying missiles in a cyclone. She lashed herself into a fury, coming back to Eleanor again and again as the cause of all her trouble.

"I tried giving you your head," she raged in conclusion; "I let you work through that crazy stage fever; I gave in about that man Phipps coming up to Maine, in the hope that you'd find out what a fool he is. That wasn't enough! You had to write to him. Very well, said I; go ahead and write to him. I flattered myself that you might develop a little sense. But I was mistaken. You haven't got the judgment of a ten-year-old child. Therefore I intend to treat you like a child. From this time on you are not to write to him at all. And you'll get no allowance. I'll buy you what you need, and you'll account for all the pin-money you spend, down to every postage stamp. Do you understand?"

Eleanor was by this time at the door, standing with her hand on the knob, straight, pale, and defiant, but quivering in every limb. She felt as beaten, bruised, and humiliated as if the violence directed against her had been physical. A sick longing surged over her for Aunt Enid, into whose arms she could rush for comfort. But there was no Aunt Enid to turn to, and it was no use seeking Aunt Isobel, whose sole advice in such a crisis was to apologize and propitiate.

Catching her breath in a long, sobbing sigh, Eleanor rushed down the gloomy hall and shut herself in her room. For ten minutes she sat at her desk, staring grimly at the wall, with her hands gripped in her lap. She was like a frenzied prisoner, determined to escape but with no destination in view. Suddenly her eyes fell on an unopened letter on her blotting-pad. She tore off the envelop and read it twice. For another five minutes she stared at the wall. Then she seized her pen and dashed off a note. It took but a few minutes after that to change her light gown for a dark one and to fling some things into a suit-case. Just as dinner was being announced, she slipped down the back stairs and out of the side door into the somber dusk of the November evening.