Miss Billy's Decision Part 33

"How Miss Alice would like that--to catch me going 'slumming' with my maid!" cried Billy, righteous indignation in her voice. "Honestly, Bertram, I think even gentle Mrs. Greggory wouldn't stand for that."

"Then leave Rosa outside in the hall," planned Bertram, promptly; and after a few more arguments, Billy finally agreed to this.

It was with Rosa, therefore, that she set out the next morning for the little room up four flights on the narrow West End street.

Leaving the maid on the top stair of the fourth flight, Billy tapped at Mrs. Greggory's door. To her joy Mrs. Greggory herself answered the knock.

"Oh! Why--why, good morning," murmured the lady, in evident embarra.s.sment. "Won't you--come m?"

"Thank you. May I?--just a minute?" smiled Billy, brightly.

As she entered the room, Billy threw a hasty look about her. There was no one but themselves present. With a sigh of satisfaction, therefore, the girl took the chair Mrs. Greggory offered, and began to speak.

"I was down this way--that is, I came this way this morning," she began a little hastily; "and I wanted just to come up and tell you how sorry I was about--about that teapot the other day. We didn't want it, of course--if you didn't want us to have it."

A swift change crossed Mrs. Greggory's perturbed face.

"Oh, then you didn't come for it again--to-day," she said. "I'm so glad!

I didn't want to refuse--_you_."

"Indeed I didn't come for it--and we sha'n't again. Don't worry about that, please."

Mrs. Greggory sighed.

"I'm afraid you thought me very rude and--and impossible the other day,"

she stammered. "And please let me take this opportunity right now to apologize for my daughter. She was overwrought and excited. She didn't know what she was saying or doing, I'm sure. She was ashamed, I think after you left."

Billy raised a quick hand of protest.

"Don't, please don't, Mrs. Greggory," she begged.

"But it was our fault that you came. We _asked_ you to come--through Mr.

Harlow," rejoined the other, hurriedly. "And Mr. Henshaw--was that his name?--was so kind in every way. I'm glad of this chance to tell you how much we really did appreciate it--and _your_ offer, too, which we could not, of course, accept," she finished, the bright color flooding her delicate face.

Again Billy raised a protesting hand; but the little woman in the opposite chair hurried on. There was still more, evidently, that she wished to say.

"I hope Mr. Henshaw did not feel too disappointed--about the Lowestoft.

We didn't want to let it go if we could help it; and we hope now to keep it."

"Of course," murmured Billy, sympathetically.

"My daughter knew, you see, how much I have always thought of it, and she was determined that I should not give it up. She said I should have that much left, anyway. You see--my daughter is very unreconciled, still, to things as they are; and no wonder, perhaps. They are so different--from what they were!" Her voice broke a little.

"Of course," said Billy again, and this time the words were tinged with impatient indignation. "If only there were something one could do to help!"

"Thank you, my dear, but there isn't--indeed there isn't," rejoined the other, quickly; and Billy, looking into the proudly lifted face, realized suddenly that daughter Alice had perhaps inherited some traits from mother. "We shall get along very well, I am sure. My daughter has still another pupil. She will be home soon to tell you herself, perhaps."

Billy rose with a haste so marked it was almost impolite, as she murmured:

"Will she? I'm afraid, though, that I sha'n't see her, after all, for I must go. And may I leave these, please?" she added, hurriedly unpinning the bunch of white carnations from her coat. "It seems a pity to let them wilt, when you can put them in water right here." Her studiously casual voice gave no hint that those particular pinks had been bought less than half an hour before of a Park Street florist so that Mrs.

Greggory _might_ put them in water--right there.

"Oh, oh, how lovely!" breathed Mrs. Greggory, her face deep in the feathery bed of sweetness. Before she could half say "Thank you,"

however? she found herself alone.

CHAPTER XIX. ALICE GREGGORY

Christmas came and went; and in a flurry of snow and sleet January arrived. The holidays over, matters and things seemed to settle down to the winter routine.

Miss Winthrop had prolonged her visit in Washington until after Christmas, but she had returned to Boston now--and with her she had brought a brand-new idea for her portrait; an idea that caused her to sweep aside with superb disdain all poses and costumes and sketches to date, and announce herself with disarming winsomeness as "all ready now to really begin!"

Bertram Henshaw was vexed, but helpless. Decidedly he wished to paint Miss Marguerite Winthrop's portrait; but to attempt to paint it when all matters were not to the lady's liking were worse than useless, unless he wished to hang this portrait in the gallery of failures along with Anderson's and Fullam's--and that was not the goal he had set for it. As to the sordid money part of the affair--the great J. G. Winthrop himself had come to the artist, and in one terse sentence had doubled the original price and expressed himself as hopeful that Henshaw would put up with "the child's notions." It was the old financier's next sentence, however, that put the zest of real determination into Bertram, for because of it, the artist saw what this portrait was going to mean to the stern old man, and how dear was the original of it to a heart that was commonly reported "on the street" to be made of stone.

Obviously, then, indeed, there was nothing for Bertram Henshaw to do but to begin the new portrait. And he began it--though still, it must be confessed, with inward questionings. Before a week had pa.s.sed, however, every trace of irritation had fled, and he was once again the absorbed artist who sees the vision of his desire taking palpable shape at the end of his brush.

"It's all right," he said to Billy then, one evening. "I'm glad she changed. It's going to be the best, the very best thing I've ever done--I think! by the sketches."

"I'm so glad!" exclaimed Billy. "I'm so glad!" The repet.i.tion was so vehement that it sounded almost as if she were trying to convince herself as well as Bertram of something that was not true.

But it was true--Billy told herself very indignantly that it was; indeed it was! Yet the very fact that she had to tell herself this, caused her to know how perilously near she was to being actually jealous of that portrait of Marguerite Winthrop. And it shamed her.

Very sternly these days Billy reminded herself of what Kate had said about Bertram's belonging first to his Art. She thought with mortification, too, that it _did_ look as if she were not the proper wife for an artist if she were going to feel like this--always. Very resolutely, then, Billy turned to her music. This was all the more easily done, for, not only did she have her usual concerts and the opera to enjoy, but she had become interested in an operetta her club was about to give; also she had taken up the new song again. Christmas being over, Mr. Arkwright had been to the house several times. He had changed some of the words and she had improved the melody. The work on the accompaniment was progressing finely now, and Billy was so glad!--when she was absorbed in her music she forgot sometimes that she was ever so unfit an artist's sweetheart as to be--jealous of a portrait.

It was quite early in the month that the usually expected "January thaw"

came, and it was on a comparatively mild Friday at this time that a matter of business took Billy into the neighborhood of Symphony Hall at about eleven o'clock in the morning. Dismissing John and the car upon her arrival, she said that she would later walk to the home of a friend near by, where she would remain until it was time for the Symphony Concert.

This friend was a girl whom Billy had known at school. She was studying now at the Conservatory of Music; and she had often urged Billy to come and have luncheon with her in her tiny apartment, which she shared with three other girls and a widowed aunt for housekeeper. On this particular Friday it had occurred to Billy that, owing to her business appointment at eleven and the Symphony Concert at half-past two, the intervening time would give her just the opportunity she had been seeking to enable her to accept her friend's invitation. A question asked, and enthusiastically answered in the affirmative, over the telephone that morning, therefore, had speedily completed arrangements, and she had agreed to be at her friend's door by twelve o'clock, or before.

As it happened, business did not take quite so long as she had expected, and half-past eleven found her well on her way to Miss Henderson's home.

In spite of the warm sunshine and the slushy snow in the streets, there was a cold, raw wind, and Billy was beginning to feel thankful that she had not far to go when she rounded a corner and came upon a long line of humanity that curved itself back and forth on the wide expanse of steps before Symphony Hall and then stretched itself far up the Avenue.

"Why, what--" she began under her breath; then suddenly she understood.

It was Friday. A world-famous pianist was to play with the Symphony Orchestra that afternoon. This must be the line of patient waiters for the twenty-five-cent balcony seats that Mr. Arkwright had told about.

With sympathetic, interested eyes, then, Billy stepped one side to watch the line, for a moment.

Almost at once two girls brushed by her, and one was saying:

"What a shame!--and after all our struggles to get here! If only we hadn't lost that other train!"

"We're too late--you no need to hurry!" the other wailed shrilly to a third girl who was hastening toward them. "The line is 'way beyond the Children's Hospital and around the corner now--and the ones there _never_ get in!"

At the look of tragic disappointment that crossed the third girl's face, Billy's heart ached. Her first impulse, of course, was to pull her own symphony ticket from her m.u.f.f and hurry forward with a "Here, take mine!" But that _would_ hardly do, she knew--though she would like to see Aunt Hannah's aghast face if this girl in the red sweater and white tam-o'-shanter should suddenly emerge from among the sumptuous satins and furs and plumes that afternoon and claim the adjacent orchestra chair. But it was out of the question, of course. There was only one seat, and there were three girls, besides all those others. With a sigh, then, Billy turned her eyes back to those others--those many others that made up the long line stretching its weary length up the Avenue.

There were more women than men, yet the men were there: jolly young men who were plainly students; older men whose refined faces and threadbare overcoats hinted at cultured minds and starved bodies; other men who showed no hollows in their cheeks nor near-holes in their garments. It seemed to Billy that women of almost all sorts were there, young, old, and middle-aged; students in tailored suits, widows in c.r.a.pe and veil; girls that were members of a merry party, women that were plainly forlorn and alone.