Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge Part 19

It was Shubert's Fantasia Impromptu this time, and there was absolute silence as it ended.

The little shabby countess gave them a moment for recovery, and then, whirling about on the stool, she said, with only a trace of accent:

"That is my farewell. Tomorrow I leave for the home-land."

There was a chorus of questions at this and that ended the music.

Patricia enjoyed the humorous chatter of the experienced, happy-go-lucky countess, and she laughed over her accounts of her travels and privations while lecturing in the West and writing books at odd times, but she did not want to rub out the "Papillion" and she soon left the Red Salon and took her way to her own room, thinking of a number of things.

"She's had a hard time, too," she thought. "I suppose she'd never have played so if she hadn't known trouble and tragedy, too, perhaps. Oh, dear, it's very comforting when one is rather in low spirits and things have gone wrong, but it doesn't look half so attractive when there's fun ahead."

She shook her head and then laughed her rippling laugh at herself. "I'm getting too deep," she warned herself. "I've got to stay where I can touch bottom. Constance may go far ahead, but I've got to go slow or I'll be getting silly again on the other side."

She kept to this wise decision and whenever she found herself beginning to pose as a being enlightened through suffering she made a face at herself in the quaint mirror and ran away to do something "plain and practical" for someone.

And so the days sped and Judith came back from Rockham full of news and wondering greatly at the change in her dear Miss Pat.

"You're awfully meek now, aren't you?" she asked her suddenly, after Judith's little trunk had been unpacked and the things stowed in the most convenient drawers. "You used to be nice, but you didn't give up to younger persons like you do now."

Patricia started to say that she had learned a great lesson, but she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and she said instead that she was treating Judith as a guest now, and so she had to be polite.

Judith was only half convinced. She had not been studying people's faces and searching for meanings in their expressions all these months for nothing. The tales about Rockham alone would have sharpened her to that extent.

"You're different," she said positively. "And I don't know whether I like you better or not. You seem too good to be true, somehow."

Patricia's derisive laughter only made her more emphatic. "You aren't half so gay as you were, and you practice as though you were doing a lesson instead of because you couldn't help it, like you used to," she declared. "You're nice to that gorgeous Rosamond Merton and you let her wipe her feet on you every time you go in there. I've seen how meek you are. If it wasn't you," she said with a pucker in her brow, "I'd think you were up to something. Why don't you sing like you used to?"

Patricia said that she had been at a song, but it was not to be known, and she made Judith promise not to tell Constance or anyone else at home before she would sit down at the s.h.i.+ning piano Bruce had got a musical friend to select for her, and sang the song through to its end.

Judith still looked puzzled. "It's lovely, of course. Your voice always is," she said loyally. "But somehow it doesn't _ring_. The glad sound has gone out of it. That's it!"

Patricia had been knowing it herself ever since she had realized that Tancredi was only keeping her for friends.h.i.+p's sake, and it had been almost too much to bear alone. Without thinking, she blurted it out.

"I can't really sing, after all, Ju," she told her pa.s.sionately.

"Tancredi is only keeping me on for this quarter and then she'll let me down."

Judith was aghast, but she kept her head. "When did she tell you?" she demanded sharply.

"She hasn't just exactly told me in words," confessed Patricia. "But she's shown me very clearly. And Madame Milano hasn't ever asked to see me again, though I know she's seen Rosamond twice since I went to the 'Hour' at her hotel. If I hadn't been with Bruce and Elinor to hear her in opera every time she sang, I'd never known she was in New York at all."

Judith was very white and still. At last she said with conviction, "I think you're making a mistake, Miss Pat. I don't believe it's true that you aren't going to be a success. You know how you tried and tried to make yourself ready and fit for the music, and I don't believe that all that hard work is going to be wasted."

Patricia smiled with the new knowledge that had so recently come to her.

"Oh, Judy dear, you are too young to understand," she said with serene satisfaction; "but it will not be wasted. One must suffer to grow glad."

Judith opened her eyes. "Now I know you're queer," she declared with a wag of her head that made her uneven mane quiver. "You didn't use to talk such stuff."

Patricia wanted to tell her it wasn't stuff, but somehow she could not find the right words to explain her feelings, and so she left it go, feeling very old and wise indeed beside the crude, inexperienced Judith.

They had a very good time together, nevertheless, and Judith made friends with the girls in a way that pleased and surprised Patricia.

"That kid sister of yours is a wonder," said the slangy ones, and the others declared that Judith was a dear. Altogether, Patricia had never enjoyed Judith's company so much.

"I'm sorry you can't come to the dance," she told her with regret, but Judith did not care in the least, she said. She was going to spend the night with Rita Stanford, with whom she had struck up a close friends.h.i.+p--the first that Patricia had known her to make.

She seemed much absorbed in Rita. She took walks with her while Patricia was at her lesson or otherwise occupied, and she went to afternoon service with her. She was so much with Rita when not with Patricia that it was a surprise to Patricia to see her coming in the afternoon of the dance entirely alone and wearing a rapturous expression. She said she had been doing an errand and Patricia was too much occupied with the finis.h.i.+ng touches to her white net--she was putting the dearest bunches of apple blossoms at odd places on the skirt and waist--to be too inquisitive.

She noticed that Judith hung about her, seeming to be trying to make up her mind to say something, but she did not stop to ask what it was, as she supposed it merely a trifling comment or criticism on her dress.

She sent Judith over to Constance's room to borrow a spool of pink silk and then forgot her in the delightful task of deciding whether the apple blossoms ought to go on the sleeves or not.

Judith came back with the spool and a yellow envelope which she had signed for. "That's what made me so long," she explained, but Patricia had hardly missed her.

The telegram was from Elinor. They were coming back and would be at the dance. "Coming home tonight. Save a dance for Bruce. Love. Elinor."

Patricia was wild with delight. "Oh, Judy, won't it be fine?" she cried with quite her old gay laugh. "I'm so glad they're coming."

But before Judith could add her rejoicings the bright look had died into a quieter expression and Patricia said, "I was forgetting that you weren't going to be there. I wish, oh, I wish you could go."

"Well, I can't and there's an end of it," said Judith calmly. "And I hear Rita beginning to get things ready. We're going to make fudge, so I'll have to be off."

She was at the door before she remembered. "Constance told me she'd stop on her way down for you if you changed your mind about going late," she said briskly. "She wants you to see her dress, anyway, before anything happens to it. She says she's sure to wreck it. She's so used to good tough stuff that she'll walk right through this one."

Patricia nodded brightly and Judith hurried off across the hall, where Rita's welcome reached Patricia's ears. "Dear old Ju," she thought fondly. "She's always doing the right thing. She's such a comfort."

Then she smiled to herself at Constance's message. "It's good of her to come away over here, when the ball-room is so near her," she said gratefully. "I'll be glad to see her dress. She's been so secret about it."

Her face grew wistful as she thought of the dance. "I'll have a good time, I suppose," she said slowly. "Rosamond will sing, and that will make me remember I'm a failure. But Bruce and Elinor and Constance will be there, and I can have the fun of showing Doris to Mr. Long without her knowing it."

This brought the light into her eyes again, and she held up her golden head very bravely.

"I'll have a good time," she said again, with a nod at the mirror. "I may be a failure as a singer, but I needn't be as a human critter, as Hannah Ann calls us."

CHAPTER XVI

THE DOOR OPENS AGAIN

Patricia had got into her apple-blossom dress and had smiled at herself with a good deal of real satisfaction.

"You do look very nice," she said to the girl in the mirror. "If you were only a little bit less addicted to yourself, my child, you'd not be half bad. That's a thing you're going to get over, though, so I won't scold you tonight about it."

She shut off the light and sat down by the window to watch the first arrivals. The night was warm, even for spring, and the window was open.

"It's just like being at the play," she told herself, smiling into the warm darkness. "I'm glad I had to wait for Doris."

The courtyard was light with torches and the entrance was ablaze with torches and the windows across the quadrangle she could see figures moving to and fro, shadows fell on the curtained oblongs and inside the open ones she saw girls who were late in dressing getting frantically ready, others who were putting on their gloves, and still others with their guests even making ready to go down to the ball-room, which was the transformed tea-room not to be seen from Patricia's point of vantage.