Joslyn Gray

“ How would she ever live without the evening to look forward to? How blissful to have another week before her—six more appearances before that vast, applauding throng! How happily would she go to sleep tonight to the music of the lullaby of the thought: "Another week at the Merry Nickel, another week at the Merry Nickel! Bliss! Bliss! Bliss!"
And yet it wasn't at all a blissful face which Miss Pritchard bore in memory to her own room that night after she had kissed Elsie, put out the light, and opened the windows. ”

“ Indeed, she agreed to the proposal more readily and unquestioningly than a girl of more imagination or experience could have done. For her part, Elsie Moss foresaw certain complications, though in truth only the most obvious ones. They discussed these gravely, yet with much confidence. Indeed, an older person must have been both amused and amazed at the youthfulness, the inexperience, and the ignorance of life the girls exhibited, at their utter unconsciousness that they were not qualified to act as responsible human beings and shuffle blood relationships about like pawns on a chess-board. ”

“ For her part, the eager, warm-hearted girl adored Miss Pritchard almost at sight. The strength and sincerity of the woman, her utter unselfishness, her wisdom, her humor, and her keen intelligence combined to make her the most impressive personality the sensitive young girl had ever encountered. Quite untroubled by the ethical aspect of the situation, she gave herself up to it wholly, only troubled lest she had gotten the better part of the exchange she had made with the real Elsie Marley; lest she be cheating the other out of companionship with this wonderful Cousin Julia. ”

“ Miss Pritchard owned, "and Elsie herself confesses that people have always advised her to study singing rather than acting."
"Only because they thought it was more respectable," protested Elsie, pouting.
"But, foolish child, wouldn't you far and away rather be a singer—a famous singer?" demanded madame. "You'd get into grand opera, you know. You'd be lovely as Juliet or Butterfly even now."
"I'd rather be an actress," pleaded the girl so sweetly deprecating that Madame Valentini hardly wondered that Julia Pritchard should give her her way. ”

“ Quite unaware of any remissness on her part, Elsie settled herself comfortably—Mrs. Bennet had disposed of her luggage—folded her hands in her lap, and gazed idly out the window opposite.
A pale, colorless girl, the simplicity of her dress was in almost too great contrast with its elegance—a contrived simplicity that left no room for any trace of careless youth or girlishness. Slender and rather delicate-looking, she had brown eyes, regular features, and soft, light-brown hair waving loosely about her face and hanging in two long, demure curls from a shell clasp at her neck. ”

“ It was Sunday afternoon, nearly a week later. Elsie sat alone by the window with a writing-tablet in her lap, gazing out at the row of houses across the street. But though the new-fallen snow on roof, cornice, and iron grating transformed the familiar scene, and though snow in such profusion and splendor was a new and wonderful experience to her, the girl wasn't really seeing the landscape any more than she was writing a letter. ”

“ And yet, how could any girl whose life had not been happy—nay, brimming with sunshine—be so gay and blithe and girlish and care-free as she? Could the reaction from strict repression possibly have that effect? Could the opportunity to realize her ambition work such a miracle? Miss Pritchard shook her head. It was beyond her, she confessed.
"Now you're down, you may as well do your stunt and have it over, Elsie," she remarked. And Elsie, standing back a little, repeated the performance in a manner that was only the more captivating. ”

“ He hung over her bed and haunted her room, watching and praying for the return of consciousness and life. Not, perhaps, his peer in the first place, Mildred Middleton had not grown, had not kept pace with her husband, and she had truly of late fallen into deplorable habits for the head of a household. Nevertheless, he believed in her; loved her for her real warmth of heart, which her veil of sentimentality did not in any degree alter for him, for her optimism, her absolutely unfailing good nature, and for an intuitive womanliness he believed to be eminently her gift. ”

“ After making the beginning, there was no hope, any more than there was of stopping a ball when one starts it to rolling down a steep, smooth hill. And besides, it was of the very nature of that which had hurt Cousin Julia so cruelly in the case of her lover of twenty-odd years ago. For it was for Elsie's own advantage that she had entered upon the course of deceit, and it was she that was profiting by it, daily and hourly. She had imposed herself upon one whom she had no claim whatever upon for the sake of making things easier and pleasanter for herself—of gaining her own way. ”

“ It so sympathized and rejoiced with the other in her happiness that it was solace and inspiration at once to Elsie Moss, who was living at a high and unhealthy pitch of excitement, and welcomed, indeed craved greedily, anything in the way of approval or sympathy. For the girl feared that if ever she should stop to consider, she should find her heart a black well of wickedness. ”

“ Elsie smiled. Indeed she almost laughed, partly because she was herself struck by the humor of it, partly because it would so amuse Elsie Moss when she wrote her about it.
"Oh, no," she repeated. "Oh, no, Uncle John"—resolutely—"she was just—well—she was acting, I suppose. She wants very much to go on the stage."
"And doesn't lose any opportunity for practice?" He smiled, but rather ruefully. "Poor child! Somehow, of all ambitions, there seems to be more tragedy, more pitifulness, underlying that than any other. Where one succeeds, so many fail—go down into darkness and obscurity. ”

“ This was not the fact, even though Elsie had been truly his niece. His sister had worn her hair in curls, but they had been many and riotous, and caught at the top of her head with a ribbon; while Elsie's two were fastened at her neck by a neat clasp, and hung as demurely as a braid would have done.
"Of course," assented Mrs. Middleton. "Elsie's the picture of her mother, I suppose?"
"She reminds me of her mother more and more every day," he said, "but she doesn't look like her at all. You remember I told you that Elizabeth had enormous dimples? ”

“ In all her life she had never been deeply or warmly affected by another personality. Perhaps now she realized this dimly, and some instinct warned her subtly to avoid any departure from old habitude, even when avoidance meant the first real struggle she had ever made against definite inclination.
It seemed long before the other occupants of the car began to stroll in. Then the engine whistled sharp warning, the laggards trooped back, and the train started briskly. Elsie Moss entered by the rear door, as Elsie Marley knew, though she did not turn around. ”

“ The artist was charmed.
"It's good enough for the vaudeville stage just as it is," he declared. "There's only one fault."
"Oh, what is that?" the girl cried eagerly, with the artist's desire for criticism, even though destructive.
"Your voice is too good—altogether too good. You could do it as well and perhaps better with a voice far inferior to yours in range, sweetness, and tone."
The girl gazed at him reproachfully. She had always had that to contend with. People had always tried to "buy her off," as she expressed it, by proposing that she become a singer instead of an actress. ”

“ The other girl did not resent her want of sympathy, however.
"But he'll never, never consent," she went on mournfully, "because he's an orthodox minister and I want to be an actress. Of course he couldn't approve, and I ought not to blame him. And yet, if I wait until I'm of age, I'll be too old. I'd like to run away right now, but for the row it would make and for frightening auntie. Really, you know, I'd rather join the circus than go to Enderby."
"But I have always understood that to be an actress one must go through much that—isn't nice," remarked Elsie Marley in her colorless voice. ”

“ It was so good to see the girl that the plans she had laid as she came on from Massachusetts escaped her. She spoke at random, and might have imparted the same impression of mental irresponsibility that she had given Mr. Middleton.
"She hasn't any grandmother. She never had one. And she isn't——"
"Oh, Moss, I have it!" exclaimed Miss Pritchard. "You're the mother of Elsie's friend at Enderby—though I believed her to be an orphan all this time."
"I am Elsie's stepmother, and she isn't your cousin at all," declared Mrs. Moss sadly. "She's only a very naughty girl playing a trick on you." ”

“ Graham's arrival and Cousin Julia's return—three-quarters of an hour at the longest, she supposed—she would keep him from bringing up any matter of resemblances, of big dimples, of madonnas, or sticky babies. She would monopolize the conversation, so far as she could, and direct it all the time. At the risk of utterly losing the good opinion of one of Cousin Julia's most valued friends, of appearing forward, conceited, tiresome, she would rattle on like the empty-headed society girl in certain modern plays. ”

“ The heart of a woman of fifty cannot but rejoice in anticipation of the company of a young girl with the ideals, the vigor, and buoyancy of sixteen. And since we are both alone in the world, you representing all my kith and kin as I believe myself to represent all yours, it is only fitting that we should be together instead of being separated by the breadth of our great American continent. ”

“ If she could have talked things over with Elsie Marley it would have made it easier. Simply to unburden her heart would mean much. Ever since she had been in New York she had longed to see Elsie again; and with this added reason, and a desire to learn more of her life in Enderby than she could gather from her stiff and rather non-committal letters, she began to feel, about the time that she forwarded a letter to Elsie's lawyer in San Francisco, that she must induce her to come to New York for a visit. ”

“ Her longing to be an actress remained the same. Her distaste for the idea of life at the parsonage in Enderby had been increased almost to horror by the glimpses she had had through her friend's letters of what seemed to her its dreary and complacent domesticity. Nevertheless, at this moment she felt that she would give up the former and accept the latter without a murmur if she could thereby measure up to Cousin Julia's standard, and yet, in the process, hurt neither her nor Elsie Marley. ”

“ At the very least, there's a sort of suppleness of mind indicated."
She stood that evening in the station watching the throng emerging from the coaches of the train her cousin had given as hers. A tall, straight woman, large without being stout, her plain face, with large, irregular features, framed in plainly parted iron-grey hair, was singularly strong and fine, and her grey eyes betokened experience bravely met. As she scanned the face of every young girl in the procession, there was something so staunch and true in her appearance as to make it almost striking. ”

“ But Elsie's father, who had died while she was an infant, had had a warm heart and a keen sense of humor, and it might well be that his daughter had inherited something of this that had lain dormant all the while. For truly, the wholesome, hardy qualities brought out in others through simple human association had had little chance to germinate in her hothouse existence in the Pritchard household.
Despite the rumble of the train, four children in the rear of the car caught the sound of the singing and came trooping up begging for more. A pretty nursemaid followed with a fat, smiling infant. ”

“ It was a bright, amusing letter, as informal as her own had been stiff. Elsie Moss found Cousin Julia no end jolly, a perfect brick. The boarding-house was the most interesting place she had ever known, and the people just right; and though New York was stifling she loved it, and wasn't the least in a hurry to get to the shore. She expected very soon to confide her ambition to Miss Pritchard—honestly, she was so dear and splendid, that it was the greatest wonder that she hadn't told her she wanted to be an actress before they left the Grand Central Station.... ”

“ Elsie had rather taken it for granted that she should marry when the proper time came, as girls did in books, as her grandmother and mother had done, and as Aunt Ellen would have done had she not been so frail. Once it had even occurred to her that it would be rather appropriate if she should marry some one named Pritchard, though she realized that to be only a remote possibility. In any event, she didn't know why going to New York should necessarily make any essential difference in her future, and she was thankful that she hadn't to consider it for some years yet. ”

“ The shelves were piled high with blankets, comfortables, old hats, a pair of snow-shoes, pasteboard boxes, and bottles without number; while on the floor were boots, shoes, and slippers in all stages of wear, overshoes, a broken umbrella, a walking-stick, a folding-table, and more boxes. And everywhere the dust lay thick.
Shutting the door hastily, Elsie flung herself upon the couch, covering her face and pressing her fingers upon her closed eyes. What a—heathenish place! She really didn't possess the sort of vocabulary to express the enormity of it. How should she get away? ”

“ Kate returned exultantly, feeling that she had scored. "I'll go by the same train. I've got some money in my stocking. I couldn't face the music with her in a dead faint, and himself like as not havin' a shock."
Elsie stopped short. "Katy, why will you say such dreadful things?" she cried. "Honestly, it's only a question of a day or two. I've got to go away, and why can't you let me do it quietly now instead of waiting and having it still harder."
"You don't mind the easiest way for you bein' the hardest for them?" ”