Chapter 29

As long as a man can see his goal shining, however faint and distant, he will steer his craft with tolerable reason and patience; but let the beacon-light be extinguished, and he promptly abandons reason and rashly trusts to instinct to guide him.

Quin, who had resolutely kept his course as long as he had been sure of his steady progress toward success, lost his head completely at this sudden collapse of his hopes, and took the first train for New York. A sudden mad necessity was upon him to see Eleanor at once. One look of encouragement, one word of hope from her, and he would rush back to port and gladly begin the voyage all over again.

He arrived at the Eighty-second Street apartment about six o'clock in the evening, and, after studying the dingy name-plates, took the five flights of stairs with uncommendable speed, and presented himself at the rear door on the sixth floor.

As he waited for an answer to his ring, he wondered if he had not made a mistake about the name on the door-plate. The narrow dark hall, permeated with a smell of onions and cabbage, was all too familiar to him, but it was not at all the proper setting for Eleanor. His bewilderment increased when the door was opened by a white-aproned figure, who after a moment of blank amazement seized his hand in both of hers and pressed it rapturously.

At least, that was what Quin imagined took place; but when, a moment later, he sat opposite a composed young lady who had removed her impulse with her apron, he knew that he must have been mistaken. She was still his adored Miss Nell, but with a difference that carried her leagues away from him. He knew how to cope with the hot-headed, rebellious Miss Nell; with the teasing, indifferent, provocative Miss Nell; and even with the disconsolate little Miss Nell who had wept against his shoulder coming home from Chicago. But in the presence of this beautiful, grown-up, self-contained young lady he felt thoroughly awkward and ill at ease. Had it not been for the warmth of her smile and the eagerness with which she plied him with questions, his courage would have failed him utterly.

"Now tell me all about everything!" she urged. "You are the first human being I've seen from home for four mortal months. How's everybody at grandmother's? Has Aunt Enid come home? How are Rose and the children?"

"One at a time!" protested Quin. "Tell me first about yourself. What sort of a place is this you are living in?"

"You mustn't criticize our suite!" she said gaily. "This is a combination bedroom, dining-room, and kitchen. I am the cook and housemaid, and Papa Claude is the butler. You ought to see the way I've learned to cook on the chafing-dish!"

Quin was not in the least interested in her culinary accomplishments. It offended his sense of the proprieties to see his divinity reduced to such necessities, and he did not at all approve of her surroundings.

"When are you coming home?" he asked abruptly.

Eleanor's eyes dropped.

"That depends. I may be here all summer. I've had an engagement offered me."

Quin's hands grew cold. "You don't mean that you're going to act for _pay_?"

"Of course. Why not? That's what I've been working for."

"But I thought when you tried it out that you would change your mind--that you wouldn't like it as much as you thought you would."

"But I _do_. I adore it! Nothing on earth can ever make me give it up!"

Quin's heart sank. "But I thought you'd had enough," he said. "I thought you were homesick and lonesome."

"Who wouldn't have been? Look at the way they have treated me at home? Do you know, none of them ever write to me any more?"

Quin tried not to look guilty, but the fact that he had counseled this course of discipline weighed upon him.

"Haven't I written enough for the family?" he asked.

But she was not to be put off.

"They treat me as if I had done something disgraceful!" she said indignantly. "My allowance is just half what it used to be, and yet I have to pay all my own expenses. As for clothes, I never was so shabby in my life. But I can stand that. It's grandmother's silence that I resent. How can she pretend to care for me when she ignores my letters and treats me with perfect indifference?"

Hurt pride quivered through the anger in her voice, and she looked at Quin appealingly. Stung by his silence, she burst out afresh:

"Doesn't she ever ask about me? Has she let me go for good and all?"

"Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"You _know_ it wasn't! I did everything to get her consent. I'd--I'd give anything now if she would look at things differently. Do you think, when she finds out that I am actually on the stage, that she will ever forgive me--that she will ever want me to come home again?"

That was the moment when Quin should have delivered Madam's ultimatum; but, before he had the chance, a key was turned in the lock, and the next instant Claude Martel's effulgent presence filled the room.

For a moment he stood poised lightly, consciously, his cane and gloves in one hand, and his soft felt hat turned gracefully across the other. On his ankles were immaculate white spats, and in his buttonhole blossomed the inevitable rose.

"Quinby Graham!" he cried in accents of rapture. "My Cassius's beloved Quin! _My_ beloved Quin! What happy fortune blew you hither? But no matter. You are here--you are ours. Eleanor and I are going out to a studio party at a dear, dear friend's. You shall accompany us!"

"Oh, no, Papa Claude," protested Eleanor. "Quin doesn't want to go to Miss Linton's messy old party. Neither do I. You go and leave us here. There are a million things I want to ask him."

But Papa Claude would not consider it. "You can ask them to-morrow," he said. "To-night I claim you both. We will introduce Quinby as one of the gallant heroes of the Great War. I shall tell his story--no--he shall tell it! Come, put on your hat, Eleanor; we must start at once."

"But here! Hold on!" protested Quin, laughing and freeing himself from Papa Claude's encircling arm, "I'm not fixed to go to a party, and I haven't got any story to tell. I'll clear out and come back to-morrow."

"No, no!" protested Eleanor and Papa Claude in a breath, and after a brief struggle for supremacy the latter triumphantly continued:

"I promise you shall say nothing, if you prefer it. Modesty is gallantry's crowning grace. But you _must_ accompany us. My heart is set upon it. Eleanor darling, here's your wrap. Come, Quinby, my boy!" And the dynamic little gentleman hooked an arm through each of theirs and, in spite of their protests, bore them triumphantly down the stairs and off to the party.

It was not until they had boarded a crowded downtown car and found themselves wedged in the aisle that Quin and Eleanor managed to have another word alone.

"It's a shame we had to come!" she pouted, looking up at him from under a tilted hat-brim that supported three dangling cherries.

"Where are we going?" he asked, thrilled by the discovery that her lips and the cherries matched.

"To a studio party down in Washington Square. Papa Claude is trying to get Estelle Linton to play the lead in 'Phantom Love.' You always meet all sorts of freaks at her parties."

"I didn't come to New York to meet freaks."

"What did you come for?"

"Shall I tell you?"

"Of course--why not?"

"You want to know? Right now?"

He was looking at her with an expression that was never intended to be worn in a public conveyance, and the thin-faced Polish woman on whose toes they were all but standing looked at them with such lively comprehension that Eleanor felt called upon to assume her most haughty and dignified manner for the rest of the way.

Miss Linton's party was in full swing when they arrived. It was an extremely hilarious party, the interest centering about a fat man in a dress-suit, with a bath towel around his waist, who was attempting to distil a forbidden elixir from an ingenious condenser of his own invention.

The studio, under a grimy skylight, was cluttered with bric-à-brac, animate and inanimate. A Daibutsu in a gilded shrine dominated one corner, and a handsome woman in a Manchu coat and swinging ear-rings of jade held court in another. At sight of the Martel group she laid down the small silver pipe she was smoking, and swam toward them through a cloud of incense and tobacco smoke.

"Dear old C. M.! Bless his heart!" she cried, kissing Papa Claude effusively. Then she nodded good-naturedly to Eleanor, and held out a welcoming hand to Quin.

"Who is this nice boy?" she asked, her languid black eyes sweeping his face.

"Allow me to present ex-Sergeant Quinby Graham," said Papa Claude impressively--"a soldier of whom his friends and his country have every reason to be proud."

Then, to Quin's utter chagrin, he was conscious of the fact that Papa Claude was giving, in an audible aside, an account of his prowess that placed him second only to another sergeant whom the world acclaimed its chief hero.

"For the Lord's sake, head him off!" he whispered in an agony of embarrassment to Eleanor. "I didn't do half those things he's telling about, and besides----"

But it was too late to interfere. Papa Claude, the center of one animated group after another, was kissing his way through the crowd, whispering the news as he went--that the guest of the evening was no other than the distinguished young Graham whom they all doubtless remembered, etc.

Within fifteen minutes Quin found himself the lion of the evening. Even the fat man and his improvised still were eclipsed by the counter-attraction. His very earnestness in disclaiming the honors thrust upon him added enormously to his popularity. The more clumsy and awkward he was, and the more furiously he blushed and protested, the more attention he received.

"So naïf!" "So perfectly natural!" "Nothing but a boy, and yet think what he has done!" were phrases heard on every side.

Papa Claude corralled him in the corner with the Daibutsu and pompously presented each guest in turn. Quin felt smothered by the incense and the flattery. His collar grew tight, perspiration beaded his brow, and he began to cough.

"Effects of mustard-gas," Papa Claude explained in a stage whisper.

For seeming hours the agony endured, until the advent of refreshments caused a momentary diversion, and he made a hasty bolt for Eleanor and freedom.

He found her sitting on the divan, looking rather bored by the attentions of a stout elderly person with small porcine eyes and a drooping black mustache. Without troubling to apologize, Quin interrupted the conversation to say abruptly:

"Miss Nell, I am going."

Eleanor started to rise, but the red-faced one lifted a protesting voice.

"See here, young man," he blustered. "You can't run off with this little girl just when I've got my first chance at her this evening. She's going to stay right here and let me make love to her--isn't she?"

He turned a confident eye upon Eleanor, and even ventured to lay a plump detaining finger on her cool, slim wrist.

Eleanor rose instantly.

"I thought you were never coming!" she said impatiently over the stout man's head, "I've been ready to go for an hour!"