At once the girl grew wild to take her chance. It meant escape from a life that had already begun to cast long shadows. But her home people saw the thing in a very different light. In their opinion there was a wide gulf between the respectability of Broadwood House and the licentious freedom of Chelsea. Joe and Eliza were at one with Aunt Annie and Aunty Harriet in saying “No” to the proposal.
Mistress Mary, however, was now rising sixteen with a rapidly developing character of her own. Therefore she did not let the strength of opposition daunt her. She set her mind firmly upon Park Street and Madame Lemaire; and very soon, to the intense surprise and chagrin of “her relations,” she had contrived to get the Misses Lippincott on her side.
Very luckily for Mary, those ladies were open-minded and worldly wise. They saw that the career of a highly-trained dancer had prospects far beyond those of a half-educated schoolmistress. Mary was rapidly becoming an asset of Broadwood House, but the ladies, although perhaps a little dubious, allowed themselves to be overpersuaded by Miss Waddington and the girl herself.
There followed a pretty to-do. Aunt Annie was horrified. Such a career, with all deference to the Misses Lippincott, hardly sounded respectable. As for Aunty Harriet, with her usual energy, she made first-hand inquiries in regard to Madame Lemaire. She found that the name of that lady stood high in her profession. But alas! one thing leads to another. Aunty Harriet, who had a shrewd knack of taking long views, had already espied the cloven hoof of the theater. It seemed inevitable that such a girl as Mary should drift towards it. And of that sinister institution Aunty Harriet had a pious horror.
Therefore she opposed Park Street sternly. But the girl fully knew her own mind and meant from the first to have her way. And she played her cards so well that she got it somehow. No doubt it was judicious aid from an influential quarter that finally carried the day. Be that as it may, in spite of all sorts of gloomy prophecies, Mary was able to accept an offer which was to change completely the current of her life.
VIII
The move to Chelsea closed an epoch. At once Mary found herself in a new and fascinating world. Part of the arrangement with Madame Lemaire was that she should “live in” at Park Street, and have freedom to take a fourpenny ’bus on Sundays to Beaconsfield Villas. This was greatly to Mary’s liking. Chelsea, as she soon discovered, had an air more rarefied than Laxton; somehow it had a magic which opened up new vistas. She had been by no means unhappy at Broadwood House, her foster-parents had treated her with every kindness, but she could not help feeling that by comparison with the new life, the old one was rather deadly.
Of course, it would have been black ingratitude to admit anything of the kind. Still, the fact was there. Park Street had a freedom, a gayety, a careless bonhomie far removed from the austerity of Broadwood House. Her life had been enlarged. The hours were long, the work was hard, but her heart was in it, and the novel charm of her surroundings was a perpetual delight.
A month of Park Street brought more knowledge of the world than a lustrum of Broadwood House. Madame Lemaire’s establishment was a famous one, in fact the resort of fashion; to the perceptive Mary the people with whom she had now to rub shoulders had real educational value.
The girl was one of a number of articled pupils, who were taught dancing in order to teach it again. With all of these she got on well. Immensely likeable herself, she had an instinct for liking others. And she was now among a rather picked lot, a little Bohemian perhaps in the general range of their ideas, but friendly, amusing, and at heart “good sorts.” Madame knew her business thoroughly. She seldom erred as to the character and capacity of those whom she chose to help her in return for a valuable training.