A Daughter of To-Day

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

When Mr. Ticke came in that evening he found upon his dressing-table a thick square envelope addressed to him in Elfrida's suggestive hand. With his fingers and thumb he immediately detected a round hardness in one corner, and he took some pains to open the letter so that nothing should fall out. He postponed the pleasure of reading it until he had carefully extracted the two ten-shilling pieces, divested them of their bits of tissue-paper, and put them in his waistcoat pocket. Then he held the letter nearer to the candle and read: "I have thought about this for a whole hour. You must believe, please, that it is no vulgar impulse. I acknowledge it to be a very serious liberty, and in taking it I rely upon not having misinterpreted the scope of the freedom which exists between us. In Bohemia—our country—one may share one's luck with a friend, n'est ce pas? I will not ask to be forgiven."

"Nice girl," said Mr. Golightly Ticke, taking off his boots. He went to bed rather resentfully conscious of the difference there was in the benefactions of Miss Phyllis Fane.

Shortly after this Mr. Ticke's own luck mended, and on two different occasions Elfrida found a bunch of daffodils outside her door in the morning, that made a mute and graceful acknowledgment of the financial bond Mr. Ticke did not dream of offering to materialize in any other way. He felt his gratitude finely; it suggested to him a number of little directions in which he could make himself useful to Miss Bell, putting aside entirely the question of repayment. One of these resolved itself into an invitation from the Arcadia Club, of which Mr. Ticke was a member in impressive arrears, to their monthly soiree in the Landscapists' rooms in Bond Street. The Arcadia Club had the most liberal scope of any in London, he told Elfrida, and included the most interesting people. Painters belonged to it, and sculptors, actors, novelists, musicians, journalists, perhaps above all, journalists. A great many ladies were members, Elfrida would see, and they were always glad to welcome a new personality. The club recognized how the world had run to types, and how scarce and valuable personalities were in consequence. It was not a particularly conventional club, but he would arrange that, if Elfrida would accept his escort. Mrs. Tommy Morrow should meet her in the dressing-room, as a concession to the prejudices of society.

"Mrs. Tommy is a brilliant woman in her way," Mr. Ticke added; "she edits the Boudoir—I might say she created the Boudoir. They call her the Queen of Arcadia. She has a great deal of manner."

"What does Mr. Tommy Morrow do?" Elfrida asked. But Golightly could not inform her as to Mr. Tommy Morrow's occupation.

The rooms were half full when they arrived, and as the man in livery announced them, "Mrs. Morrow, Miss Bell, and Mr. Golightly Ticke," it seemed to Elfrida that everybody turned simultaneously to look. There was nobody to receive them; the man in livery published them, as it were, to the company, which she felt to be a more effective mode of entering society, when it was the society of the arts. She could not possibly help being aware that a great many people were looking in her direction over Mrs. Tommy Morrow's shoulder. Presently it became obvious that Mrs. Tommy Morrow was also aware of it. The shoulder was a very feminine shoulder, with long lines curving forward into the sulphur-colored gown that met them not too prematurely. Mrs. Tommy Morrow insisted upon her shoulder, and upon her neck, which was short behind but long in front in effect, and curved up to a chin which was somewhat too persistently thrust forward. Mrs. Tommy had a pretty face with an imperious expression. "Just the face," as Golightly murmured to Elfrida, "to run the Boudoir." She seemed to know everybody, bowed right and left with varying degrees of cordiality, and said sharply, "No shop to-night!" to a thin young woman in a high black silk, who came up to her exclaiming, "Oh, Mrs. Morrow, that function at Sandringham has been postponed." Presently Mrs. Morrow's royal progress was interrupted by a gentleman who wished to present Signer Georgiadi, "the star of the evening," Golightly said hurriedly to Elfrida. Mrs. Morrow was very gracious, but the little fat Italian with the long hair and the drooping eyelids was atrociously embarrassed to respond to her compliments in English. He struggled so violently that Mrs. Morrow began to smile with a compassionate patronage which turned him a distressing terra-cotta. Elfrida looked on for a few minutes, and then, as one of the group, she said quietly in French, "And Italian opera in England, how do you find it, Signor?"

The Italian thanked her with every feature of his expressive countenance, and burst with polite enthusiasm into his opinion of the Albert Hall concerts. When he discovered Elfrida to be an American, and therefore not specially susceptible to praise of English classical interpretations, he allowed himself to become critical, and their talk increased in liveliness and amiability.

Mrs. Morrow listened with an appreciative air for a few minutes, playing with her fan; then she turned to Mr. Ticke.

"Golightly," she said acidly, "I am dying of thirst You shall take me to the refreshment table."

So the star of the evening was abandoned to Elfrida, and finding in her a refuge from the dreadful English tongue, he clung to her. She was so occupied with him in this character that almost all the other distinguished people who attended the soiree of the Arcadia Club escaped her. Golightly asked her reproachfully afterward how he could possibly have pointed them out to her, absorbed as she was—and some of them would have been so pleased to be introduced to her! She met a few notwithstanding; they were chiefly rather elderly unmarried ladies, who immediately mentioned to her the paper they were connected with, and one or two of them, learning that she was a newcomer, kindly gave her their cards, and asked her to come and see them any second Tuesday. They had indefinite and primitive ideas of doing their hair, and they were certainly mal tournee; but Elfrida saw that she made an impression on them—that they would remember her and talk of her; and seeing that, other things became less noteworthy. She felt that these ladies were more or less emancipated, on easy terms with the facts of life, free from the prejudices that tied the souls of people she saw shopping at the Stores, for instance. That, and a familiarity with the exigencies of copy at short notice, was discernible in the way they talked and looked about them, and the readiness with which they produced a pencil to write the second Tuesday on their cards. Almost every lady suggested that she might have decorated the staff of her journal an appreciable number of years, if that supposition had not been forbidden by the fact that the feminine element in journalism is of comparatively recent introduction. Elfrida wondered what they occupied themselves with before. It did not detract from her sense of the success of the evening—Golightly Ticke went about telling everybody that she was the new American writer on the Age—to feel herself altogether the youngest person present, and manifestly the most effectively dressed, in her cloudy black net and daffodils. Her spirits rose with a keen instinct that assured her she would win, if it were only a matter of a race with them. She had never had the feeling, in any security, before; it lifted her and carried her on in a wave of exhilaration. Golightly Ticke, taking her in turn to the buffet for lemonade and a sandwich, told her that he knew she would enjoy it—she must be enjoying it, she looked in such capital form. It was the first time she had been near the buffet; so she had not had the opportunity of observing how important a feature the lemonade and sandwiches formed in the entertainment of the evening—how persistently the representatives of the arts, with varying numbers of buttons off their gloves, returned to this light refreshment.