The Shield of Silence Part 25

"All ready but the opening of the door--legitimately," she said, smiling on Sylvia and bowing cordially to Joan. "Doesn't it look inviting?" She gave a broad glance to the sweet, orderly room: the small tables, gla.s.s covered; the rose-chintz covers and draperies; the clear fire on the broad, old-fashioned hearth, and the blossoming rose bushes on the window sills.

"It certainly does," Sylvia replied with enthusiasm.

"I've put everything I own into this venture," Elspeth went on; "if I fail, I'm done for."

For all her years of discretion and her plain common sense, Elspeth Gordon's mouth and tone betrayed the artistic temperament. Upon that Sylvia was banking.

"I have a splendid cook--a Scotch woman. I'm going to specialize on scones, and oat cakes, and such things, but oh! it is the opening of the door and the awful days of waiting until the public finds out!"

"Exactly!" Sylvia nodded and Joan stared. "You'll have to lure the public, Elspeth, there's no doubt about that. Tea rooms are no novelty these days. You'll have to tease it with a bait, and the rest is easy.

"Now, my dear, here's your bait!" With this, Sylvia turned so sharply upon Joan that Elspeth started nervously and regarded her guest as she might have a tempting worm: something possibly necessary, but which she hesitated to touch.

"She can read--palms!"

"Oh! Syl----" Joan panted, but Sylvia scowled her to silence.

"She can read palms," she repeated, holding Elspeth by her firm tone; "a little more reading up, a bit of experience, and she'll work wonders.

She doesn't know it, but she's psychic--of course this is going to be fun; not real. Just a lure. We'll have Joan in a long white robe--a girl I know can design it. We'll have a filmy veil over the lower part of her face--mystery, you know. Look at her eyes, Elspeth, aren't they great?

Give that 'into-the-future' stare, Joan!"

Joan rose to the fun of it all. She grasped the possibilities, but Elspeth faltered.

"I don't want to be--ridiculous," she said, slowly. "I'm quite serious, and my food is going to be above question."

"Of course! And if you think Joan will make you ridiculous, you've got another guess coming, Elspeth. Now, when do you open?"

"I have planned to open day after to-morrow." Elspeth spoke hesitatingly, keeping her cool, businesslike glance on Joan.

"All right," Sylvia was tapping her fingers restlessly; "that's Thursday. I'll get a girl I know to work on the costume to-night; we'll buy books on palmistry on our way home. We'll give you just four days to lure your public with scones, and then if you don't call Joan up, she'll start a tea room herself across the way."

This made them all laugh, but there was an earnestness in their eyes.

And on Sunday night Elspeth spoke over the telephone.

"Could you come to-morrow at two, Miss Thornton?"

Joan, sitting close to the telephone, winked at Sylvia. They had all been sitting up nights working, reading, and praying for that question.

"I think so," was the reply in quite an unmoved and businesslike tone.

"And remember, Joan," Sylvia cautioned later, "this is but a means to fit you for a profession!"

"I'll remember," Joan twinkled, "in the meantime, I am going to enjoy myself."

CHAPTER XI

"_Let us live happily, free from care among the busy._"

There was one of Sylvia's friends who, from the first, caught and held Joan's imagination. That was Patricia Leigh.

Patricia rarely got further than the imagination--after that she was idealized or suspected according to the person dealing with her.

Joan idealized Patricia--"Pat," she was always called.

The girl was fair and delicately frail, but never ill. She wrote verse, when moved to do so, and did it excellently, and she never thought of it as poetry.

When she was not moved to verse--and she had a good market for it--she designed the most astonishing garments for her friends. She could, at any time, have secured a fine position in this line and was frequently turning away offers. When the designing palled upon Pat she fell back upon her personal charm and enjoyed herself!

Patricia had, outwardly, a blood-curdling philosophy which she frankly avowed she believed in, absolutely, though Sylvia warned Joan that it was "bunk!"

What really was the case was this: Patricia was an adept at playing with fire. Lightly she tossed the flame from hand to hand; gaily she laughed, but at the critical moment Patricia ran!

She revelled in portraying the fire danger, but she covered her retreats by masterful silence.

"My code is this," she would proclaim: "In pa.s.sing, s.n.a.t.c.h! You can discard at leisure."

There was no doubt but that Patricia did more than her share of s.n.a.t.c.hing. When she played, she played wildly, but she was a coward when pay time came.

But who was there to show Patricia in her true light? Her good qualities, and they were many, pleaded for her. She was too little and sweet to be held to brutal exactions, and she was such a gay, blithesome creature, at her maddest, that when she ran one felt more like commending her speed than hurling epithets of scorn at her.

"If she wasn't a thousand times better than she makes herself out to be," Sylvia confided to Joan, "I'd never let her into my studio; but Pat is golden at heart, and she ought to be spanked for acting as she does."

"Hasn't she any family?" asked Joan. "No one whom she may--hurt?"

"That's it, my lamb, she hasn't. Mother died when she was four years old; father, an actor, but devoted to her, and insisted upon trotting her around with him. She was confided to the care of cheap boarding-house women; she ran away from school once and travelled miles alone to get to her father, and when he died--Pat was eighteen then--she began her career, as she calls it. s.n.a.t.c.h and skip!"

"Poor, dear, little Pat!" said Joan, and her eyes filled.

"There, now!" Sylvia exclaimed, "she's caught your imagination."

That was true, and by the magic Joan began to see life as Patricia said _she_ saw it: a place of detached opportunities and no obligations.

"I believe," Patricia would say, looking her divinest, "that in developing ourselves we most serve others. We relieve others of our responsibilities; we express ourselves and have no gnawing ambitions to sour us. Self-sacrifice is folly--it makes others mean and selfish, others who may not hold a candle to us for usefulness. Now"--and here Patricia, smoking her cigarette, would look impishly at Sylvia, quite forgetting Joan--"take, for instance, Teddy Burke!"

"Pat!" Sylvia was in arms, "I will not hear of your actions with Mr.

Burke. They're disgraceful. You should be ashamed of them."

"On the other hand," Patricia always looked like a young saint, rather a wild one, to be sure, when she spoke of Burke, "I'm proud of my defiance of stupid limitations and fogyish ideals. Here is a man, a corker, Joan, with a wife who, acting upon tribal instinct, never dreams that she may be set aside. She travels the world over, foot loose, but with her little paw dug deep in her husband's purse. Here are two ducks of kiddies living with governesses and nurses over on a Jersey estate and pining for the higher female touch. Here am I with a batch of verses going quite innocently into Mr. Burke's office--he's an editor, you know--and he buys my stuff and howls for more. I grow white and thin providing more, and in weak moments show my beautiful inner soul to him.

He, being a gentleman and an understanding one, asks me out to Jersey, and those children just cram into the hungry corners of my life. They play with me; they--they"--here a subtle touch of truth struck through Patricia's ironic tones--"they _teach_ me to play. Haven't I a right to s.n.a.t.c.h--what was s.n.a.t.c.hed from me?"

Sylvia cried out: "Rot!" But Joan made no reply.

Often would Sylvia, deeply serious, urge Patricia to turn her talents to designing.