Chapter X

It was still early the next morning when Joan appeared at her grandmother’s. Mrs. Lennox was again startled. Why the child was almost plain! What had become of the wonderful creature of the previous night? No one, however partial, could now have called her beautiful. “Are you feeling tired, darling?” Mrs. Lennox asked as she kissed her granddaughter tenderly. The long separation that loomed ahead made her feel even more attached than usual.

“Not a bit, thank you, Granny, though I didn’t sleep much.” Joan sat down and stretched out her hands to the log fire. “I am not going to Europe on Friday. I am not going at all.”

“Not going to Europe? But why? How?” The grandmother’s voice was shrill with excitement. “Have the Dupuys given up their tour?”

“Oh no, their plans are not changed. But I am going on the stage instead.”

“What?” Mrs. Lennox almost screamed.

“But surely, Granny, you always knew that I was going on the stage. I only have not talked about it because of the undertaking you gave to Father.”

With an effort Mrs. Lennox rallied her scattered wits. “But, my dear, you cannot refuse to go with the Dupuys at the last minute like this. Your passage is taken.”

“That is only a question of a few hundred dollars.” The girl’s tone reminded her grandmother of John Vandeleur. “And I daresay the company will refund it. Anyway my not going will save Father a lot of money.” She paused and then began again in a more explanatory, and less bomb-shell-like manner. “Don’t you see, Granny dear, it is partly because the trip will cost so much that I feel I can’t take it. It is like the pearl necklace. I can’t let Father spend all this money on me, when I have made up my mind to take a step of which he desperately disapproves.”

“But I am sure your father would sooner spend the money and have you postpone taking the step,” Mrs. Lennox urged. She, on her side, settled herself down to thresh out the subject with her granddaughter. She strongly felt that the girl was too young to make the decision she contemplated, and she pointed this out with all the force at her command. But Joan was unshakeable. If her father had left her at school, she would have waited until she was eighteen, she said. He had forced her hand by this Europe scheme. Anyway she was seventeen and a half; Granny had only been fourteen when she went on the stage.

Here her grandmother interrupted her. That was absolutely different, Mrs. Lennox truly said. She had been obliged to act in order to earn her living. Joan could not pretend that this was her case! Besides, as the poor grandmother pointed out almost with tears, yesterday Joan had surely meant to go to Europe. How had the situation changed since yesterday?

“Do you see these?” The girl pointed, with apparent irrelevance to a little bunch of Parma violets that she was wearing. “My maid brought me in a most beautiful basket of them when she called me this morning. Mr. Grierson had sent them. He had written ‘In anticipation of our meeting in Venice.’ Oh, Granny, I simply daren’t wait a year! If I don’t break off now, I’ll get sucked into that life. Before I know where I am, I’ll be married and compromised.”

Despite Mrs. Lennox’s agitation, she could not help laughing.

“But my dear child, no one can force you to get married if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The trouble is I like Mr. Grierson. I like it all. I feel as though I were in a play. Only this play would never end. No, Granny, no marrying for me--at any rate not for years and years. When I am a star, it will be time enough to think of indulging in luxuries like matrimony!”

“But you may never be a star.” Mrs. Lennox now took up a new line of argument and expatiated on the difficulties of a theatrical life, the hardships, the chances against achieving success. Joan listened, but with a stubborn look on her face that Mrs. Lennox knew only too well. However, she went on valiantly. “So you may find that you have given up your home, and all the luxury and prestige you now enjoy, without any compensation.”

Joan laughed. “You know you are only talking like that, Granny, because you think you ought to. Why, in any case, I should have the work. It’s the work itself that is the thing that matters. But I know that I shall make a success. At school I could make the girls laugh or cry as I liked when I recited. They were in my power. And last night--” She jumped up and looked at herself in the mirror. “You thought me beautiful last night, didn’t you, Granny? Beautiful and brilliant? So did everybody. But I’m not. You see I am quite plain. I was just acting. Last night made me certain.”

It was not surprising that Mrs. Lennox felt bewildered, although she had a certain comprehension of what her granddaughter meant. She turned to another aspect of the question with a recollection in her mind of a look she had surprised on John Vandeleur’s face the previous evening as his eyes rested on his daughter. “Have you considered sufficiently what a terrible blow this will be to your father, my dear? And to your mother too.” The latter was a hasty afterthought.

“Of course, Father and Mother will have nothing more to do with me--but will that make very much difference?” The girl’s voice was hard. The relation of Joan to her parents had been the one subject that the grandmother and granddaughter had never discussed, although Mrs. Lennox had often wondered how the girl felt about it. Now this extreme bitterness took her by surprise. “It isn’t as though either of them cared about me,” Joan went on. “Father looks upon me as part of his property, and Mother actually dislikes me. Look at Mrs. Dupuy and Maude! It makes Mrs. Dupuy happy just to have Maude around. Imagine Mother like that with me! The only happiness Mother has ever got out of me is the feeling that I am not there--and now I am going to give her that permanently. No, you are the only one that has ever cared for me, Granny.” The girl brushed her hand across her eyes. Then she sat down on the arm of her grandmother’s chair and began rubbing her firm young cheek against the faded elderly one. “And you and I, Granny darling, are going to see more of each other than we have ever done before. We’ll be together all the time, whether we go on tour or act here in New York.”

This time Mrs. Lennox had no reply. For an instant she was overwhelmed. “But, my dear child,” she gasped at last, “my dear Joan, you surely are not proposing that I should go on the stage too!”

“But of course.” Joan’s tone was equally surprised. “I wouldn’t be so mean as to leave you out of it. Oh Granny, aren’t you just longing to get back? When you told me once that my being born was what finally made you give up the idea of the stage, I determined then that some day we’d go back together. Why, I owe it to you, Granny darling.”

Mrs. Lennox gazed at her granddaughter in silence. Once, long ago, she would have felt the same enthusiasm. How absolutely miserable she had been when she had had to refuse the lead in that Carolina play! But just because the step had seemed so irrevocable, the numbing effect of time had come all the quicker. There had not been the irritation of hope. And now that she had grown resigned, now that nearly twenty years of luxury had wrapped her round in cushioned ease, making her timid and disinclined for effort, her granddaughter suddenly demanded that she should again take up that old life, that she should go back to the old world with all its efforts, its anxieties----

“I’ve arranged it all beautifully,” Joan’s eager voice broke in. “Father started off for Nevada this morning, so we’ve had our good-byes. I’ve told Mother and Mrs. Dupuy that I am staying here for the next two days. They thought it quite natural that I should want to be with you before I sail. Mrs. Dupuy expects me to meet her at the depot on Friday in time for the noon train to Boston, but, of course, I’ll let her know I’m not coming before then. Anyway it leaves us two days, and the very first thing we must do is to see Mr. Hobson. You remember he told me after the Antigone that if I came to him any time he’d give me a part, and, of course, he’ll be just crazy at the idea of getting you back.”

“Yes, he’ll be that,” Mrs. Lennox murmured ambiguously, but Joan had rushed out of the room. The poor grandmother began to feel as though she were being abducted. A dismal prospect of cheap, uncomfortable hotels, of tiring train journeys, of unending rehearsals in draughty theatres, of badly cooked, hurried, uncertain meals, of noisy street cars with wet, packed humanity, of stockings in holes, of factory boots, of turned skirts--it all floated before her. She looked round her charming, luxurious home----

“Oh Granny, you don’t know Mr. Hobson’s private ’phone number, do you? I might catch him before he goes out.” Joan had burst in again like a whirlwind. “What, he hasn’t got a private number? How extraordinary! Never mind, I’ll ring up the office.” She was dashing off.

“Wait, wait. Joan, my dear child, you forget that I am nearly sixty. I cannot go on the stage. I am too old.”

“Granny!” Joan came in and sat down quite sobered by surprise. “Why, Granny, I thought you would be as glad as I am! Surely you must be! What is sixty? You know the great Sarah, and Ellen Terry, and lots of them are ever so much older--besides you are only fifty-eight. You must be joking. I don’t see how you can want not to go back. Why I think it is just dreadful your having wasted so many years and now you talk of wasting all the rest! It seems to me criminal when a person can do a thing really well not to do it.”

“But I don’t know that I can do it really well--after all these years--with no practice,” Mrs. Lennox deprecated. She was feeling almost overborne by the arrogant assurance of youth.

“Of course you can do it well, Granny--anyhow you can try. And as for practice, I don’t suppose you have had much the last two years, but before that, think of what a lot of plays we studied together. If you had been on the stage, you couldn’t have done more--that was the one thing that reconciled me. Anyway, whatever you decide, I am going to tell Mr. Hobson that I must have a part.”

“My dear, you don’t realize the seriousness of this step.” Mrs. Lennox was growing more and more alarmed. She made a great effort at severity and decision. “The money question alone renders it almost impossible. Your father, as you know, makes me an allowance--a very handsome one--and you, too, are entirely dependent on him. If we act in defiance to his wishes, naturally my income will cease.”

Joan flushed. “Of course, we couldn’t go on taking Father’s money, even if he wanted to give it. I have thought of that, Granny. But we shall be earning--or anyway, I shall. Of course, I mean to live on what I earn, and, in a little while, I shall be able to support you too. If I weren’t sure of that I would not suggest your coming.”

It ended as Mrs. Lennox had all the time apprehensively felt it would. Her granddaughter telephoned to demand an immediate appointment with Mr. Hobson. The only surprise was Mr. Hobson’s giving it. With the passage of years, the great, little manager had swelled into more and more importance and consequent inaccessibility. As Joan had already discovered, he was the one man in New York whose telephone number was not published. There was a legend that the Exchange had been offered large sums by aspiring actresses to divulge the secret, but in vain! Mr. Hobson remained secure behind this modern portcullis. However, even a Napoleon of the stage appeared to be susceptible to the magic of the Vandeleur name. Not that Joan gave it openly on the ’phone. Her identity was concealed from managerial underlings as Miss Frances West’s granddaughter!

Half an hour later Mrs. Lennox and Joan had reached the great man’s offices. There was a comparatively small, outer room in which a scornful young lady was writing at a desk, while people in all sorts of attitudes of patient and impatient waiting sat on stiff chairs all round the walls. Joan looked curiously at this motley dado--actors, actresses, playwrights, agents and stage supernumeraries of all kinds--they were of a type quite unknown to her. Nor did they present an encouraging spectacle, for the careful eye could detect a certain concealed shabbiness in all of them, while they had the unblessed mien of receivers rather than givers. It was probably because no one imagined Joan and her grandmother in their fur coats to be of the same receptive class, that they were taken straight through into an inner room.

This was a long, narrow chamber--so long, that though in actual fact the width was quite considerable, one had the impression of being in a passage. Along each side about half a dozen typewriters were ticking furiously. Here again Mrs. Lennox and Joan experienced little delay. “We have an appointment with Mr. Hobson,” the girl announced in her assured young voice. “Please tell him that Miss Frances West is here.”

The young man to whom she addressed herself disappeared through a door at the farther end. In a minute he was back again. “Come right in, please,” he said with a shade of surprised awe, “Mr. Hobson will see you at once.”

Mrs. Lennox had retained a sufficient sense of stage values to realize the greatness of the condescension. Never in the old days had she penetrated into a well-known manager’s private sanctum. But Joan took it as a matter of course. It did not occur to her that the plain, comfortable room, with its deep leather chairs, could be regarded as a holy of holies, nor that the great manager was anything but a pleasant, extremely stout, little man. Her ignorance was probably an asset, for it prevented any shade of embarrassment in her frank greeting.

Mr. Hobson had been sitting down, but he rose with an effort as the ladies came in, and rolled genially towards them. He was not unlike a globular, india-rubber toy figure. “Well, well, Miss West, I’m delighted to see you. And Miss Vandeleur--so you’re quite a grown up young lady now?”

“Yes, and it is time I started work. You told me after the Antigone that if ever I wanted to go on the stage to come to you. I’ve come.” No one could accuse Joan of lack of directness.

“So I see. And what does Poppa say to it?” Mr. Hobson asked cheerily.

His face fell when he heard that Mr. Vandeleur had not given his consent, and was, indeed, ignorant of the whole prospect. “Why see here, Miss Vandeleur,” he suggested, after a perceptible pause, “wouldn’t it be best for you to talk Poppa round first?”

“My father started for Nevada this morning; that’s why I am here. It wouldn’t be the slightest use discussing it with him.”

Mr. Hobson looked distinctly uneasy. “What do you say to all this, Miss West?” he asked with an obvious desire to share the responsibility.

He got little satisfaction. Mrs. Lennox was even more dubious than he was himself. She corroborated her granddaughter’s statement that it would be useless to consult Mr. Vandeleur. “He won’t have the word theatre mentioned in his presence,” she explained.

“But I do not see why I should be bound by my father’s prejudices,” Joan interpolated. “Of course, I shall not act under my own name. No one must know it; then it won’t affect him.”

The information discouraged Mr. Hobson still further. When he had spoken to Miss Vandeleur of the stage, he had taken it for granted that she would appear under her own name, or, at least, that her relation to the great Vandeleur would be generally known. This, in itself, would be a tremendous draw. But now he found any such advertisement was prohibited and he was asked to defy the copper king into the bargain. John P. Vandeleur was an ugly man to run up against. Besides, that Greek play show was a long time since. The girl might not prove up to sample. Maybe, too, he had exaggerated her performance. Among that crowd of schoolgirls, any little talent would strike one as genius. He wished he had never told her to call. That was the worst of it; if he didn’t keep a hand on himself all the time, his sentiment was always running away with him. After all, it wasn’t as if he had to go round fine-combing Broadway for actresses! The woods were full of ’em. Indeed, his chief trouble in life was to dodge ’em. “My advice, young lady, is that you go right home and wait a few years before setting out on your adventures,” he said judicially. “I guess Mr. Vandeleur is right in thinking you’re too young and attractive to leave lying about.”

“Yes, Joan darling, I am sure it would be wiser for you to wait,” Mrs. Lennox echoed. “Anyway, have the year in Europe first.”

“I shall not wait.” The girl’s voice was vibrant with emotion. The colour rushed to her cheeks and there was a light in her eyes. The plainness, on which she had so frankly commented to her grandmother, suddenly disappeared. Mr. Hobson, who was watching her, felt quite startled. Although he had politely called Miss Vandeleur attractive, he had really felt her rather surprisingly the reverse. It had puzzled him, for his memory of Antigone had been quite different. This fact, though not responsible for his negative decision, had certainly strengthened him in it. Now he felt a need to review the case. “I will not go home,” Joan burst out again with a curious, suppressed force. “I mean to go on the stage. If you do not want me, Mr. Hobson, I will find another manager. I think you have forgotten that I can act.”

The great manager went into a fit of laughter. Had this curious, magic beauty not come to Joan’s aid, he might have been angry instead of amused. Never in his experience had an unknown theatrical aspirant taken up such a tone before. Why the brightest luminaries in his stellar heaven did not address him like this. Well, it would soon get knocked out of the little girl, he thought, almost pityingly, especially if she weren’t going to let it be known that she was ‘old John Van’s’ daughter. He hoped she wouldn’t go to that bully, Morton. However, Miss West would look after her. How rattled the poor old thing looked! The girl was a handful sure, though personally he liked her ginger. And suppose she did make good, and the Schumanns had meantime collared her. He’d feel all kinds at having let her slip. “Well, Miss Vandeleur, if you think I’ve forgotten you can act, suppose you give me a demonstration before we decide anything,” he suggested, still chuckling.

Joan started forthwith. She recited a very simple and touching little piece that had been a great favourite with the girls at school. Her choice must have been due to luck or intuition, for she could not have known that the great manager was one of the most sentimental creatures on earth. He blew his nose at the end. “Hold on a minute,” he told her and took up the telephone. “Ask Mr. Walker to step in, please.” The door opened almost at once, and the young man appeared who had spoken to them in the office. Mr. Hobson signed to him to sit down. “Now, go on,” he told Joan.

The Lady Macbeth scene came next. At the end both men looked distinctly interested. As for Mrs. Lennox she was quite carried away. “And it’s all her own work. I’ve not heard her recite a thing for nearly three years,” she told Mr. Hobson with tremulous triumph.

Another piece was demanded. Joan suggested one of Juliet’s best known speeches. “I don’t set much truck by Shakespeare myself,” Mr. Hobson demurred. “There’s altogether too much fuss over him. Who was Shakespeare, anyway? Just a man like the rest of us. The great p’int to his credit is that he don’t ask for royalties!” The manager gave his hearty chuckle. “Well, no matter, if you know it. Ring up the curtain!”

By the end Mr. Hobson had quite taken the Bard of Avon into favour. “Mighty pretty,” he conceded graciously. Joan and ‘Miss West’ were asked to wait in the outer room for a few minutes.

“Well, Walker, what’s your opinion of her?” the manager observed almost with excitement. Experience had given the great Mr. Hobson some respect for his aide-de-camp’s judgment, although, as a matter of fact, he never followed anyone’s advice but his own.

“I guess she can act circles round most of our Broadway actresses. She’s got what get’s over,” the younger man answered.

“Yes, that’s my opinion too. There’s big talent in that little girl, I’m thinking--personality and so forth. Of course she needs experience--oceans of it. Now where are we going to put her?” A discussion followed as to various proposed tours. Joan and Mrs. West were presently sent for. The girl was definitely promised an engagement, only the date was left uncertain. “We may be sending out another company in ‘The Under Dog’ this season,” Mr. Hobson told her. “That play’s earning all sorts of money. You’ve seen it, I presoom? It’s a sure-enough thriller.”

Joan smiled. Mr. Hobson had forgotten the theatrical ban under which she had lived. “No, I am the one person in the United States who has not seen it, but, of course, I’ve heard of it.” Even her father’s rigidity had not been able to prevent this, for the play was advertised on every hoarding; written about in every newspaper; discussed in every assembly. ‘Under Dog’ hats, ties, dolls, drinks appeared in all the shop windows. The girls at school had caught the infection, until Joan, with a consciousness of her deprivation, had grown quite maddened by the reiterated name. And now, perhaps, she was not only going to see it, but to act in it! “When will your new ‘Under Dog’ Company be floated?” she asked.

“Oh, well, I can’t tell you that.” Mr. Hobson smiled at the Wall Street turn of phrase, that the girl had doubtless picked up from her father. She probably thought it sounded professional! “It’s only an off chance there’ll be one. We’ve got two ‘Under Dog’ road companies out already and the season’s getting on. Why, to-day’s the first of February, ain’t it? No, all I can bind myself to is to find you something for the fall.”

“But that won’t do at all! I must have work at once. How could I get on without earning until the fall? I should starve.”

The great manager chuckled again in a way that Mr. Walker, who was not in the secret, considered surprisingly heartless. It drove him to suggest in a low tone to his chief that the understudy to the lead in one of the touring companies had fallen sick. “Is that so?” Mr. Hobson murmured reflectively. He was revolving all sorts of plans for launching his new discovery. Still, though he’d been immensely struck by the recitations, it certainly would be better, he now felt, to see a little how the girl panned out before committing himself. This idea of Walker’s would enable him to keep a hold on her and yet gain time. Besides it was what she needed, to knock about a bit and get the feel of the stage. “You can understudy Miss Rosamond Bransom in ‘Vivi,’” he said aloud. “The company is at Albany this week, and you’d join them there. But I warn you, you won’t get much of a show with Miss Bransom. She’s never sick herself; it is always her understudy who succumbs. She breaks ’em right up with her good health. The salary is twelve.”

Joan accepted the offer eagerly. She had not the least idea what the mystic number represented, but if another girl had lived on the sum, of course she could. “I suppose it’s twelve dollars a day?” she began; then seeing from Mr. Hobson’s amused expression and Mr. Walker’s amazed one, that she had made an egregious mistake, she hastily corrected herself--“twelve cents, I mean.”

Mr. Hobson shook in a jelly-like fashion, quite overcome with laughter. He had rarely enjoyed an interview so much. “Not quite as bad as that, young lady!” he gasped. “No, in this profession you’ll find the salaries are paid by the week--twelve dollars a week.” Mr. Walker now went off to phone to Miss Bransom’s manager and to make all the necessary arrangements. “I suppose that’s the sort of sum you’ve been used to spending on your gloves?” the manager enquired jocularly.

“Oh, no, you can get quite nice gloves for about three or four dollars, unless you have them made for you, as my mother does. Why, my best evening gloves only cost five dollars.”

Mr. Hobson laughed again. Joan had not the least idea why. The little girl was more fun than a barrow-load of monkeys he was telling himself. Still, he couldn’t give up all his morning to ‘old John Van’s’ daughter. He rolled suddenly to his feet to signify that the interview was over. But Mrs. Lennox, who had grown more and more nervous, now felt it was time to come to an understanding on her own account. “I suppose you could not give me a little part or an understudy in the same production, Mr. Hobson?” she suggested, breaking her long silence.

“Granny, darling, you _are_ coming then!” Joan could hardly forbear a shriek of joy.

Mr. Hobson looked annoyed. It was really rather excessive to be asked for a part for Miss West too. Certainly she had once acted well in one of his productions, but that was nearly twenty years ago--and even then she had been no chicken! Probably now her playing didn’t amount to a row of pins. “I’m afraid I can’t provide engagements for the whole family at a minute’s notice,” he said shortly.

“I only asked because I don’t like the idea of Miss Vandeleur touring alone; she’s so young,” the grandmother deprecated.

“Well, if she goes on the stage, you can’t keep her under glass, Miss West. But there’s nothing on earth to prevent your travelling round with her. You can look after her all the better, if you haven’t to worry about playing yourself.” That there should be any financial difficulty simply did not cross Mr. Hobson’s mind with his comfortable recollection of the Dorset apartment. Nor had he taken seriously Miss Vandeleur’s suggestion of living on her salary. “Good-bye,” he now said definitely, and held out his hand.

“Good-bye, Mr. Hobson; thank you so much.” Joan’s face was radiant.

But the poor grandmother felt desperate. Nothing could now prevent the plunge, she thought despairingly. Indeed she had a vision of being whirled off to Albany by the very next train. What would they do there? How could they live? Even Joan’s miserable twelve dollars a week was precarious. “But Miss Vandeleur must have a contract,” she gasped with a recrudescence of her old professional instinct. Indeed this flimsy little bit of paper floated as a solitary life-belt in the sea of trouble.

“Why, certainly, if you wish it.” The manager’s sense of humour was again tickled. Fancy making out a contract with old Vandeleur’s daughter for twelve dollars a week. The useful Walker was once more summoned and told to produce a contract. These documents were kept ready typed, so filling in the particulars and signing involved a mere momentary delay. “Now, I reckon if I don’t see some of those folks in the other room, there’ll be a riot.” Mr. Hobson motioned to his secretary to see the ladies out.

The day and a half that followed were filled and brimming over with strenuous bustle. Perhaps this was as well for it left Mrs. Lennox little time for thought. Financially at all events, the prospect was dismal in the extreme. Although the quarter was not half way through, Mrs. Lennox figured out that she would have little left of her allowance when all expenses had been met. Certainly there were three hundred dollars on deposit at the bank. It was a sum she had once placed there after an economical summer at the Vandeleurs’ house in the Adirondacks. But what were three hundred dollars? Oh, why had she not saved more during all these years, the poor lady felt distractedly? The truth was that, despite her early struggles, Mrs. Lennox had neither the habit nor the taste for economy. She had always lived up to the theatrical motto, “Never put by for to-morrow what you can spend to-day,” and a larger income had merely given her more to spend. Besides, what need was there of a reserve, she had felt, other than having John P. Vandeleur as a son-in-law? Indeed, far from saving, the temptation had been to exceed her allowance. It was only her son-in-law’s cold fury on the one occasion that she had done so, that had kept her rigorously within her bounds. She had sold her little lot in California to placate him, and the chief reason for putting aside the three hundred dollars had been to prevent the accidental recurrence of such a catastrophe.

But the practical whirl in which the grandmother found herself, swept aside even the pecuniary nightmare. All her clothes and small possessions had to be sorted and packed, and the trunks stored, with the exception of the one that she was taking with her. There was the furniture to be shrouded in wrappings, the glass put away in closets, the silver and linen lists checked, the household bills paid, Bridget informed that her services were no longer needed. The poor woman’s grief at the announcement almost unnerved her mistress, although Mrs. Lennox knew that situations were only too plentiful and the payment she tendered in lieu of notice most liberal. “If it’s me wages that’s throubling you, Ma’am, I’ll come without, I will,” Bridget sobbed wildly, and could only be pacified by a promise of re-instatement should Mrs. Lennox ever again keep house--“but, of course, you mustn’t throw up a good situation to come back to me,” the mistress stipulated.

“And is it a good situation that would be kaping me away?” Bridget’s emotion almost turned the words into a shriek. “The dear knows that if I were in service with the Holy Father himself and the kipper in the pan sizzling for his breakfast, it’s off I would be on the wings of the wind without so much as untying my apron at the breath of a whisper from you, Ma’am.”

One thing Mrs. Lennox found even harder than dismissing poor Bridget; that was writing the explanatory letters to Imogen and John Vandeleur. Indeed, submerged as she was in packing, the task appeared impossible, so she contented herself with adding postscripts to the communications that her granddaughter sat down to write immediately on her return from Mr. Hobson’s. “I am going away with Joan and will take care of her,” Mrs. Lennox stated baldly. These letters, together with the key of the apartment, Bridget was to take round to Mrs. Vandeleur the next evening. By that time, Mrs. Lennox told herself with a tremor, she and Joan would be irrevocably launched, for they were leaving the following afternoon, by the 5.30 Albany express. Bridget was also entrusted with the note to Mrs. Dupuy, and a long and affectionate scrawl to the basely-deserted Maude.

Joan’s preparations for the new life were very much simpler than her grandmother’s; indeed it was their very simplicity that caused the most trouble. Fortunately, before it was too late, Mrs. Lennox discovered that the girl proposed setting off the next day, merely with the little handbag she had brought containing her night things, and the clothes in which she stood. “I can buy the rest out of my salary,” she explained airily.

“Don’t be absurd!” Even the adoring grandmother gave way to a certain irritation. “You’ve got to feed and lodge yourself on twelve dollars a week--while I live on air! What do you suppose will be left over to buy clothes? And providentially your trunks are all ready packed for the trip to Europe. They haven’t been sent off yet, have they?” Mrs. Lennox turned pale at the thought of this possible difficulty.

“Oh, no, they are at home in my room waiting. Of course, I could ’phone now to the express people to collect them, and then tell them later to send them to Albany. But I don’t want to. You see, Granny, my things are all new. It seems like stealing to take them.”

“Nonsense.” Mrs. Lennox was unusually decisive. “What use would your frocks be to your father? Why even a child from the poorhouse has an outfit.--Well, take your old clothes, then, if it makes you any happier,” she compromised as Joan looked stubborn.

“No, that’s what I can’t do. Mrs. Dupuy asked Mother if she might give them all away to some pet charity--anyway, I’d grown out of most of them. So it’s the new ones or nothing--and I think nothing would be more honest,” the girl persisted.

“Well, I think it would be more crazy even than what we are doing. If you won’t have your trunks fetched, I won’t go at all.”

It ended in Joan’s yielding. There was a renewed contest over the girl’s costly fur coat, that was apparently in one of the trunks, but here again she gave way. As her grandmother pointed out, it was almost impossible to extricate it. The chief argument, however, that caused Joan’s acquiescence was her grandmother’s threat that without it she would catch cold on the long journeys, and have no voice when the great day of opportunity came. “But I won’t take my new dressing case, whatever excuses you make,” the girl stipulated stormily. “And all my jewellery is locked up in it, at least everything that father and mother have given me, and that’s nearly all; there’s the big gold bracelet, you know, that was mother’s Christmas present because she didn’t like it herself, and my gold watch set with pearls from father, and the two rings and a few other things. I shall send him the key in my letter.”

At last, after an infinity of thirty-six hours, that had yet been all too short, Mrs. Lennox found herself sitting with her granddaughter in the Albany express. The previous night had been chiefly spent in preparation, and the poor lady was so utterly worn out, that she was glad to sit anywhere and let her dazed being sink into torpor, but Joan had never been more vital or more joyous. It was the first time in her life that she had not travelled in a parlour car, and it had all the zest of novelty. “We must be more economical now,” Mrs. Lennox had explained. The unknown word thrilled the girl. “If it’s economical to have these dear, little, cosy seats for two instead of armchairs, I love economy,” she cried. Pressing closer to her grandmother, she squeezed the faded, elderly hand. “Oh, Granny, it seems like a beautiful dream--too good to be true. At last--at last we’re together and free! We’re free to do our own work, to live our own lives. It’s like a honeymoon we’re starting on. Yes, Granny, darling, you and I have eloped.”