Deb did not realize the truism that even as every woman’s life holds material for one novel, so that generic novel may generically and with perfect application bear the title: “Cross-roads.”
She had been on the look out for the hero to her heroine, and he had failed in the appointment. Now she was in search for the villain to her adventuress, and it seemed at first as though he would prove equally elusive. A series of minor experiments left her seriously convinced that in choice of a villain, a young girl cannot be too careful.... “He must make it worth while——” Perhaps after all she was still on the same old quest translated into different terms.
Meanwhile, the winter passed; and early spring woke her slightly bilious soul to fretfulness. Her habits had slackened to harmony with her environment of cosmopolitan bohemianism; but whereas a bed erected in the Venetian drawing-room and covered by day with a priceless piece of embroidery, seemed to La llorraine all that was necessary in the way of a tiring-room—“My dee-urr, you can use Manon’s mirror as your own—it goes without saying——” yet Deb was not quite happy at the general sloppiness of tea-gowns and mysterious foreigners and rich meals at all hours—or at no hours—Carmen for breakfast, Tosca for supper, and out-of-season dishes in between—music-hall managers strolling in to slap “my good llorraine” familiarly between the shoulders, and look avariciously at Manon, who, however, a child of mummers and motley, was interrogated with a strictness which Deb, daughter of strictest Israel, would never for a moment have suffered. But La llorraine knew more of her world and was wiser in education than Ferdinand Marcus; La llorraine, who sometimes put on enormous horn spectacles and sat knitting by the fire; and sometimes rose up like a prophetess and tossed a pair of desperate arms to Heaven, in denunciation of that war which prevented return to a beloved continent which knew something of good music; La llorraine was equally genuine and lovable in either mood; and Deb grew to be sincerely fond of her. But Manon was another matter; Manon, at eighteen, held to her pose of exiled princess, a slender figure in the vast loneliness of the drawing-room—a lonely little heart mysteriously unsoiled by contact with aforesaid mummers and motley. She listened charmingly when Deb scattered ethics of rebellion; she appeared slightly shocked when decorum demanded that she should be shocked—and yet—and yet—for all the demureness of reproving eyelash and “Oh, but, Deb——” in the pretty lisping accent, Deb could not be rid of an impression that when it came to it, Manon would go further and fare a great deal better than herself. Manon had hitched her wagon to a fixed star, whereas it looked as though Deb had hitched hers to a travelling circus.
“We’ve had enough of this,” exclaimed Antonia, an unexpected visitor after a tour in the car which had lasted the whole of February—“Not dressed yet? and it’s nearly twelve o’clock; sluggish appetite?—no wonder, if you smoke scented cigarettes with your coffee and eggs. Even as I prophesied!”
“Don’t be hard on me,” Deb pleaded; “I’m not entirely dead to better things—really, Antonia. I feel the call of Spring urging me out and out.... Let’s go to a cinema, shall we?”
“On the contrary, we shall gird up our loins and do war-work, my child,” grimly. “We shall speak to our mothers and ask them what particular niche is vacant for one willing but ignorant daughter of pleasure, and we shall send word of the result by this evening latest. And meanwhile, we will withdraw our plaits that writhe like blue-black serpents among the exquisite but macabre foliage of last year’s tablecloth, and put away the dregs of green chartreuse, and sit up and comb ourselves out, and try to be a credit to a nation at war.”
Deb laughed and said she was quite willing to do war-work, and had meant to enrol herself since some time, but had thought it too late....
“Oh, I think the war may be trusted to last another month or two.”
“I meant,” in fractious explanation, “that it always seems to me too late to do something afterwards which one hasn’t done before.”
“Lazy little Oriental.... You will visit my mother at 6 p.m. precisely this evening and receive your instructions,” with which Antonia departed.