She crumpled the letter with a sudden, spasmodic clenching of her hand. A lump rose chokingly in her throat. She stabbed at the light switch and threw herself on the bed, sobbing her heart's cry in the dusky quiet. And she could not have told why, except that she had been overcome by a miserably forlorn feeling; all the mental props she relied upon were knocked out from under her. Somehow those few scrawled words had flung swiftly before her, like a picture on a screen, a vision of her baby toddling uncertainly across the porch of the white bungalow. And she could not bear to think of that!
When the elm before her window broke into leaf, and the sodden winter skies were transformed into a warm spring vista of blue, Stella was singing a special engagement in a local vaudeville house that boasted a "big time" bill. She had stepped up. The silvery richness of her voice had carried her name already beyond local boundaries, as the singing master under whom she studied prophesied it would. In proof thereof she received during April a feminine committee of two from Vancouver bearing an offer of three hundred dollars for her appearance in a series of three concerts under the auspices of the Woman's Musical Club, to be given in the ballroom of Vancouver's new million-dollar hostelry, the Granada. The date was mid-July. She took the offer under advisement, promising a decision in ten days.
The money tempted her; that was her greatest need now,—not for her daily bread, but for an accumulated fund that would enable her to reach New York and ultimately Europe, if that seemed the most direct route to her goal. She had no doubts about reaching it now. Confidence came to abide with her. She throve on work; and with increasing salary, her fund grew. Coming from any other source, she would have accepted this further augmentation of it without hesitation, since for a comparative beginner, it was a liberal offer.
But Vancouver was Fyfe's home town; it had been hers. Many people knew her; the local papers would feature her. She did not know how Fyfe would take it; she did not even know if there had been any open talk of their separation. Money, she felt, was a small thing beside opening old sores. For herself, she was tolerably indifferent to Vancouver's social estimate of her or her acts. Nevertheless, so long as she bore Fyfe's name, she did not feel free to make herself a public figure there without his sanction. So she wrote to him in some detail concerning the offer and asked point-blank if it mattered to him.
His answer came with uncanny promptness, as if every mail connection had been made on the minute.
"If it is to your advantage to sing here," he wrote, "by all means
accept. Why should it matter to me? I would even be glad to come and
hear you sing if I could do so without stirring up vain longings and
useless regrets. As for the other considerations you mention, they
are of no weight at all. I never wanted to keep you in a glass case.
Even if all were well between us, I wouldn't have any feeling about
your singing in public other than pride in your ability to command
public favor with your voice. It's a wonderful voice, too big and
fine a thing to remain obscure.
"JACK."
He added, evidently as an afterthought, a somewhat lengthy postscript:
"I wish you would do something next month, not as a favor to me
particularly, but to ease things along for Charlie and Linda. They
are genuinely in love with each other. I can see you turning up your
little nose at that. I know you've held a rather biased opinion of
your brother and his works since that unfortunate winter. But it
doesn't do to be too self-righteous. Charlie, then, was very little
different from any rather headlong, self-centered, red-blooded
youngster. I'm afraid I'm expressing myself badly. What I mean is
that while he was drifting then into a piggy muddle, he had the
sense to take a brace before his lapses became vices. Partly
because—I've flattered myself—I talked to him like a Dutch uncle,
and partly because he's cast too much in the same clean-cut mold
that you are, to let his natural passions run clean away with him.
He'll always be more or less a profound egotist. But he'll be a good
deal more of a man than you, perhaps, think.
"I never used to think much of these matters. I suppose my own
failure at a thing in which I was cocksure of success had made me a
bit dubious about anybody I care for starting so serious an
undertaking as marriage under any sort of handicap. I do like
Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey. They are marrying in the face of her
people's earnest attempt to break it up. The Abbeys are hopelessly
conservative. Anything in the nature of our troubles aired in public
would make it pretty tough sledding for Linda. As it stands, they
are consenting very ungracefully, but as a matter of family pride,
intend to give Linda a big wedding.
"Now, no one outside of you and me and—well you and me—knows that
there is a rift in our lute. I haven't been quizzed—naturally. It
got about that you'd taken up voice culture with an eye to opera as
a counteracting influence to the grief of losing your baby. I
fostered that rumor—simply to keep gossip down until things shaped
themselves positively. Once these two are married, they have
started—Abbey père and mère will then be unable to frown on
Linda's contemplated alliance with a family that's produced a
divorce case.
"I do not suppose you will take any legal steps until after those
concerts. Until then, please keep up the fiction that the house of
Fyfe still stands on a solid foundation—a myth that you've taken no
measures to dispel since you left. When it does come, it will be a
sort of explosion, and I'd rather have it that way—one amazed yelp
from our friends and the newspapers, and it's over.
"Meantime, you will receive an invitation to the wedding. I hope
you'll accept. You needn't have any compunctions about playing the
game. You will not encounter me, as I have my hands full here, and
I'm notorious in Vancouver for backing out of functions, anyway. It
is not imperative that you should do this. It's merely a safeguard
against a bomb from the Abbey fortress.
"Linda is troubled by a belief that upon small pretext they would be
very nasty, and she naturally doesn't want any friction with her
folks. They have certain vague but highly material ambitions for her
matrimonially, which she, a very sensible girl, doesn't subscribe
to. She's a very shrewd and practical young person, for all her
whole-hearted passion for your brother. I rather think she pretty
clearly guesses the breach in our rampart—not the original mistake
in our over-hasty plunge—but the wedge that divided us for good. If
she does, and I'm quite sure she does, she is certainly good stuff,
because she is most loyally your champion. I say that because
Charlie had a tendency this spring to carp at your desertion of
Roaring Lake. Things aren't going any too good with us, one way and
another, and of course he, not knowing the real reason of your
absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to squelch
him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the
point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute
generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've
got it all off my chest now, or pretty near.
"J.H.F."
Stella sat thoughtfully gazing at the letter for a long time.