The Shield of Silence Part 23

And worse than Nancy's tears were Doris's smiles.

Joan understood the psychology of smiles--as she remembered, her proud head was lowered and she was surprised to find that _she_ was shedding tears.

"But it's all part of the price of freedom!" At last Joan dried her eyes. "And I'm willing to pay."

So Joan travelled alone up to town, and it was a wet, slippery night when she raised the knocker on Sylvia Reed's green-painted door and let it fall.

The door opened at once and disclosed the battle-ground of young genius.

The old room was dim, for Sylvia had been toasting bacon and bread by the open fire and she needed no more light than the coals gave. Sylvia wore a smock and her hair was down her back. She looked about twelve until she fixed her eyes upon you, then she looked old; too old for a girl of twenty-four.

"Joan! Joan!" was all she said as she drew Joan in. Then, after a struggle, "Do you mind if I--sob?"

"No, I'm going to do it myself." And Joan proceeded to do so and remembered Nancy.

"I'm so--happy!" she gulped. "I was never so happy in my life. I feel as if I'd got hatched, broken through the sh.e.l.l!"

"You have," cried Sylvia, unevenly. "We're going to--to conquer everything! Come in your room, Joan, shed as much as you like. I expected you this morning. I have only bacon and eggs--shall we go out to eat?"

"Go out? Heavens, no! And I adore bacon and eggs. Sylvia, I have edged into glory!"

"You have, Joan--edged in, that's about it."

After the meal before the fire they cleared things away, and then they talked far into the night. Sylvia had already laid emphasis upon her small order.

"And really, Joan, that's great," she explained; "many a girl has to wait longer. Some day I'm going to be hung in the best exhibitions in town, but as a starter a magazine is nothing to be sneered at. I'm modelling, too--I have a duck of an idea for a frieze--only I'm not telling anybody about that--it's too ambitious. What are you going to do, Joan?" This sudden question made Joan stare.

"I--I don't know," she replied, frankly, but with no shade of despondency. "I'll take a look around to-morrow and, then pack my little wares in my basket and peddle them, as you have done. If anybody wants a dancer--here I am! Anybody want funny little songs sung?--here's your girl! I seem to have only samples. I can be adaptable. That's my big a.s.set." They both laughed, but Sylvia soon grew serious. Her short service in reality had already sobered her. It was one thing for the gifted young girl of a fas.h.i.+onable school to watch the impression she made by her wits upon people who were paying high for just such exhibitions, and quite another to convince buyers of goods that they were what you believed them to be.

"The public is a tightwad," was what she muttered presently, "unless you're willing to compromise or--prove it to them."

"I--I don't know what you mean," Joan replied. She was groping after the thing that had made Sylvia's eyes grow old.

"Well, all you need to know, Joan, my lamb, is to prove it to them--never compromise!" Sylvia was herself again. Too well she knew the value of starting out with one's s.h.i.+eld bright and s.h.i.+ning even if one had to come home _on_ it, all rusted with one's life blood.

Things were not yet very tragic for Sylvia, and her s.h.i.+eld was in good condition, but she had an imagination and a keen sense of self-protection.

"We're going to be the happiest pair in town," she whispered to Joan later that night as she bent over the tired girl; "and was there ever such a spot to live in? See, I'm going to raise your shade high, for the night is splendid and--the stars! Go to sleep with the stars watching you, old girl, and you're all right."

Joan slept heavily, dreamlessly, and awoke to--more bacon and eggs with hot rolls and coffee added.

"I'm going to float about a bit to-day," she said, and her feet were fairly dancing. "I've only known New York before holding to Aunt Dorrie's hand or my nurse's. Today I'm going to go back alone and then--catch up with myself."

Suddenly she began to sing her old graduation song:

"I'll sail upon the Dog-star I'll sail upon the Dog-star; I'll chase the moon, till it be noon, But I'll make her leave her horning.

"I'll climb the frosty mountain And there I'll coin the weather.

I'll tear the rainbow from the sky And tie both ends together."

Sylvia leaned back, clapping and laughing. This was as it should be.

Fun, youth, gaiety. She went to her easel in the north room, humming Joan's old ballad, and never did better work in her life than she did that day.

Joan sallied forth equally happy and her past, thank heaven, had been brief enough and rosy enough to make the tying of the ends nothing but a joyous task. She rode downtown on top of a bus. The crisp air stung and rallied her. She longed to sing from the swaying vehicle--she felt as if she were on top of the world and that it was keeping time to the tune she wanted to sing. She looked so lovely that the conductor grinned delightedly as he remarked:

"Snappy weather, miss!" and Joan nodded in friendly fas.h.i.+on and agreed.

She walked to the old home, standing with drawn blinds by the little, close-locked park. It looked stately and reserved as one of the family might have done. It smilingly held its tongue.

"I'd like to see the sunken room and the fountain," Joan thought. "I cannot imagine it with the fountain and the birds still. They will never be still for me!"

She was a bit surprised to feel how far she had travelled from the Joan who was part of Nancy and the sunken room. It was quite shocking to find that she was not missing Nancy. She wondered if she were heartless and selfish? But after all, how could one be missed from a life in which she had never, could never, have part? And full well Joan realized that in this big venture of hers the old, except as a stepping-stone, was separated forever.

"If I become famous"--and Joan, tripping along, felt as if fame were as possible for her as the luncheon she was now feeling the need of--"if I become famous then they will understand, but even then my life and theirs will be different."

This point of view made Joan feel important, tragic, but desolate.

"I'm hungry," she thought, seriously, and made her way to a restaurant, where once she had gone with Doris while on a wonderful shopping expedition. The place was little changed; it had pa.s.sed into other hands, but the menu proudly proclaimed the same enticing dishes.

Joan ordered what once had seemed the food of the G.o.ds, but to her now it was as chaff.

Across the table, made dim by her misty eyes, she seemed to see Doris smiling fondly, faithfully, at her. Doris's power over people was largely due to that faith she had in them.

"And I will be all you want me to be, Aunt Dorrie!" Joan promised that while she choked down the food. "I feel as if I were in the bear's house," she mused, whimsically. "I'm half afraid that I'll be pounced upon."

And so she paid her bill and went back, via the bus, to Sylvia. She ran up the long flights of stairs and burst in upon Sylvia with the announcement that "nothing would count if you didn't have someone to come home and tell it to." And then she forgot her glooms while they prepared an evening meal more conservative than bacon and eggs.

"Yes, my beloved," Sylvia returned as she plunged a wicked-looking little knife into the heart of a grapefruit: "And that accounts for half the marriages in life." Sylvia was refraining, just then, from telling of her own engagement. She wanted and needed Joan for the present--her secret would keep.

"You funny old Syl," Joan flung back over her shoulder as she drew the curtain over the closet that screened the housekeeping skeletons from the wonderful studio. "We won't have to resort to marriage, anyway.

We've solved the eternal question!"

"Exactly! And now give those chops a twist. Thank the Lord, we both love them crisp."

The experiment in a few days had Joan by the throat. So utterly had she thrown herself into it, so almost unbelievably had Doris Fletcher permitted her to do so, that it took on all the attributes of reality and demanded nothing less than obedience to its laws, or surrender to defeat.

Doris had given Joan, when she came North, a check for five hundred dollars. Upon reaching Sylvia she had, after paying her expenses, that, and fifty dollars in cash left.

It had seemed boundless wealth for the first few days and continued to seem so until the necessity for bringing the check into action faced the girl.

"I must find something to do!" she vowed as she made her way to the bank where she had deposited the check. "No more fooling around."

Sylvia made no suggestions; never appeared to be anything but satisfied with things as they were. The companions.h.i.+p, the feeling of _home_ that Joan had introduced into her life, were deep joys to the girl who, like many women who know not the art of making a home, are soul-sick for the blessings of one.

"I'd work till my last tube ran dry," she thought to herself, standing at the wide north window, "if I could keep her singing and dancing about and--getting meals!"

Joan did not interfere with Sylvia's profession--she gave it new meaning--but Sylvia realized that Joan was interfering with her own.

Still, Sylvia was never one to usurp the rights of a Higher Power, and at twenty-four she was intensely, shamefacedly religious and absolutely lacking in desire to shape the ends of others.

"The thing that's meant for her will slap her in the face soon," Sylvia comforted herself. "And she's such a wonder!"