Chapter 24

Three days later a note from Miss Cardiff in Kensington Square to Miss Bell in Essex Court, Fleet Street, came back unopened. A slanting line in very violet ink along the top read "Out of town for the pressent. M. Jordan." Janet examined the line carefully, but could extract nothing further from it except that it had been written with extreme care, by a person of limited education and a taste for color. It occurred to her, in addition, that the person's name was probably Mary.

Elfrida's actions had come to have a curious importance to Janet; she realized how great an importance with the access of irritated surprise which came to her with, this unopened note. In the beginning she had found Elfrida's passionate admiration so novel and so sweet that her heart was half won before they came, together in completer intimacy, and she gave her new original friend a meed of affection which seemed to strengthen as it instinctively felt itself unreturned—at least in kind. Elfrida retracted none of her admiration, and she added to it, when she ceded her sympathy, the freedom of a fortified city; but Janet hungered for more. Inwardly she cried out for the something warm and human that was lacking to Elfrida's feeling for her, and sometimes she asked herself with grieved cynicism how her friend found it worth while to pretend to care so cleverly. More than once she had written to Elfrida with the deliberate purpose of soothing herself by provoking some tenderness in reply, and invariably the key she had struck had been that of homage, more or less whimsically unwilling. "Don't write such delicious things to me, ma mie," would come the answer. "You make me curl up with envy. What shall I do if malice and all uncharitableness follow? I admire you so horribly—there!" Janet told herself sorely that she was sick of Elfrida's admiration—it was not the stuff friendships were made of. And a keener pang supervened when she noticed that whatever savored most of an admiration on her own part had obviously the highest value for her friend. The thought of Kendal only heightened her feeling about Elfrida. She would be so much the stronger, she thought, to resist any—any strain—if she could be quite certain how much Elfrida cared—cared about her personally. Besides, the indictment that she, Janet, had against her seemed to make the girl's affection absolutely indispensable. And now Elfrida had apparently left London without a word. She had dined in Kensington Square the night before, and this was eleven o'clock in the morning. It looked very much as if she had deliberately intended to leave them in the dark as to her movements. People didn't go out of town indefinitely "for the present," on an hour's notice. The thought brought sudden tears to Janet's eyes, which she winked back angrily. "I am getting to be a perfect old maid!" she reflected. "Why shouldn't Frida go to Kamschatka, if she wants to, without giving us notice? It's only her eccentric way of doing things." And she frowned upon, her sudden resolution to rush off to Fleet Street in a cab and inquire of Mrs. Jordan. It would be espionage. She would wait, quit calmly and indefinitely, till Frida chose to write, and then she would treat the escapade, whatever it was, with the perfect understanding of good-fellowship. Or perhaps not indefinitely—for two or three days—it was just possible that Frida might have had bad news and started suddenly for America by the early tram to Liverpool, in which case she might easily not have had time to write. But in that case would not Mrs. Jordan have written "Gone to America"? Her heart stood still with another thought—could she have gone with Kendal? Granting that she had made up her mind to marry him, it would be just Elfrida's strange, sensational way. Janet walked the floor in a restless agony, mechanically tearing the note into little, strips. She must know—she must find out. She would write and ask him for something—for what? A book, a paper—the New Monthly, and she must have some particular reason. She sat down to write, and pressed her fingers upon her throbbing eyes in the effort to summon a particular reason. It was as far from her as ever when the maid knocked and came in with a note from Kendal asking them to go to see Miss Rehan in "As You Like It" that evening —a note fragrant of tobacco, not an hour old.

"You needn't wait, Jessie," she said. "I'll send an answer later;" and the maid had hardly left the room before Janet was sobbing silently and helplessly with her head on the table. As the day passed however, Elfrida's conduct seemed less unforgivable, and by dinner-time she was able to talk of it with simple wonder, which became more tolerant still in the course of the evening, when she discovered that Kendal was as ignorant and as astonished as they themselves.

"She will write," Janet said hopefully; but a week passed and Elfrida did not write. A settled disquietude began to make itself felt between the Cardiffs. Accepting each other's silence for the statement that Elfrida had sent no word, they ceased to talk of her—as a topic her departure had become painful to both of them. Janet's anxiety finally conquered her scruples, and she betook herself to Essex Court to inquire of Mrs. Jordan. That lady was provokingly mysterious, and made the difficulty of ascertaining that she knew nothing whatever about Miss Bell's movements as great as possible. Janet saw an acquaintance with some collateral circumstance in her eyes, however, and was just turning away irritated by her vain attempts to obtain it, when Mrs. Jordan, decided that the pleasure of the revelation would be, after all, greater than the pleasure of shielding the facts.

"Wether it 'as anything to do with Miss Bell or not, of course I can't say," Mrs. Jordan remarked, with conscientious hypocrisy, "but Mr. Ticke, he left town that same mornin'." She looked disappointed when Miss Cardiff received this important detail indifferently.

"Oh, nothing whatever," Janet replied, with additional annoyance that Elfrida should have subjected herself to such an insinuation. Janet had a thoroughgoing dislike to Golightly Ticke. On her way back in the omnibus she reflected on the coincidence, however, and in the end she did not mention it to her father.

The next day Lawrence Cardiff went to the Age office and had the good fortune to see Mr. Rattray, who was flattered to answer questions regarding Miss Bell's whereabouts, put by any one he knew to be a friend. Mr. Rattray undertook to apologize for their not hearing of the scheme, it had matured so suddenly. Miss Bell couldn't really have had time to do more than pack and start; in fact, there had been only three days in which to make all the arrangements. And of course the facts were confidential, but there was no reason why Miss Bell's friends should not be in the secret. Then Mr. Rattray imparted the facts, with a certain conscious gratification. There had been difficulties, but the difficulties had been surmounted, and he had heard from Miss Bell that morning that everything was going perfectly, and she was getting hold of magnificent copy. He was only sorry it wouldn't be quite suitable for serial publication in the Age; but, as Professor Cardiff was doubtless aware, the British public were kittle cattle to shoe behind, and he hardly thought the Age could handle it.

"Oh yes," Mr. Cardiff replied absently. "Cheynemouth, I think you said—for the next five days. Thanks. Successful? I dare say. The idea is certainly a novel one. Good-morning!" and he left the sub-editor of the Illustrated Age in a state of some uncertainty as to the wisdom of having disclosed so much. Half an hour later, when Kendal, who knew Rattray fairly well, called and asked him for Miss Bell's present address, he got it with some reluctance and fewer details.

Cardiff drove to his club, and wrote a note to Janet, asking her to send his portmanteau to the 3.45 train at Euston, as he intended to run down to Cheynemouth and might stay over night He fastened up the envelope, then after a moment's hesitation tore it open and added, "Miss Bell is attempting a preposterous thing. I am going to see if it cannot be prevented." He fancied Janet would understand his not caring to go into particulars in the meantime. It was because of his aversion to going into particulars that he sent the note and lunched at the club, instead of driving home as he had abundance of time to do. Janet would have to be content with that; it would be bad enough to have to explain Rattray's intolerable "scheme" to her when it had been frustrated. After luncheon he went into the smoking-room and read through three leading articles with an occasional inkling of their meaning. At the end of the third he became convinced of the absurdity of trying to fix his attention upon anything, and smoked his next Havana with his eyes upon the toe of his boot, in profound meditation. An observant person might have noticed that he passed his hand once or twice lightly, mechanically, over the top of his head; but even an observant person would hardly have connected the action with Mr. Cardiff's latent idea that although his hair might be tinged in a damaging way there was still a good deal of it. Three o'clock found him standing at the club window with his hands in his pockets, and the firm-set lips of a man who has made up his mind, looking unseeingly into the street. At a quarter past he was driving to the station in a hansom, smiling at the rosette on the horse's head, which happened to be a white one.

"There's Cardiff," said a man who saw him taking his ticket. "More than ever the joli garcon!"

An hour and a half later one of the somewhat unprepossessing set of domestics attached to the Mansion Hotel, Cheynemouth, undertook to deliver Mr. Lawrence Cardiff's card to Miss Bell. She didn't remember no such name among the young ladies of the Peach Blossom Company, but she would h'inquire. They was a ladies' drawin'-room upstairs, if he would like to sit down. She conducted him to the ladies' drawing-room, which boasted two pairs of torn lace curtains, a set of dirty furniture with plush trimmings, several lithographs of mellow Oriental scenes somewhat undecidedly poised upon the wall, and a marble-topped centre-table around which were disposed at careful intervals three or four copies of last year's illustrated papers. "You can w'yt'ere, sir," she said, installing him as it were. "I'll let you know directly."

At the end of the corridor the girl met Elfrida herself, who took the card with that quickening of her pulse, that sudden commotion which had come to represent to her, in connection with any critical personal situation, one of the keenest possible sensations of pleasure. "You may tell the gentleman," she said quietly, "that I will come in a moment." Then she went back into her own room, closed the door, and sat down on the side of the bed with a pale face and eyes that comprehended, laughed, and were withal a little frightened. That was what she must get rid of, that feeling of fear, that scent of adverse criticism. She would sit still 'till she was perfectly calm, perfectly accustomed to the idea that Lawrence Cardiff had come to remonstrate with her, and had come because—because what she had been gradually becoming convinced of all these months was true. He was so clever, so distinguished, he had his eyes and his voice and his whole self so perfectly under control, that she never could be quite, quite sure—but now! And in spite of herself her heart beat faster at the anticipation of what he might be waiting to say to her not twenty steps away. She hid her face in the pillow to laugh at the thought of how deliciously the interference of an elderly lover would lend itself to the piece of work, which she saw in fascinating development under her hand, and she had an instantaneous flash of regret that she couldn't use it—no, she couldn't possibly. With fingers that trembled a little she twisted her hair into a knot that became her better, and gave an adjusting pat to the fluffy ends around her forehead. "Nous en ferons une comedie adorable!" she nodded at the girl in the glass; and then, with the face and manner of a child detected in some mischief who yet expects to be forgiven, she went into the drawing-room.