Part 10

"Well, theoretically, yes," said Mrs. Bobby, in rather a doubtful tone, "but, practically, I'm afraid I prefer people whom I know, and who have the conventional amount of hair and lack of brains. Let me confess the truth to you, Elizabeth. I'm not really Bohemian--I only pretend to be so at odd moments, when I want to tease Bobby, or shock the Neighborhood. There isn't at heart, I believe, a more conventional little society wretch than I. However, as you say, that sort of thing is amusing--for one afternoon; and Julian will be there, and protect us from the celebrities and tell us who they all are."

Julian was fortunately on hand when they arrived, but the room was filled for the most part with people who looked very much like any one else, and only a few were sufficiently long-haired and eccentric to justify Mrs. Bobby's prediction of their being celebrities of some sort. The host, who came forward to meet them, was a well-known musician, a man with an intellectual face and dreamy eyes, which lighted up as he welcomed them with eager cordiality; but he could do no more for the present than seat them and give them programmes, for the music was about to begin.

It was a charming studio, well up near the top of Carnegie Hall, and like most studios, it was artistically furnished. The polished floor was strewn with rich rugs, the walls were covered in every nook and cranny, with plaques, and pictures, and rare tapestries, and strange Eastern weapons. A grand piano took up the whole of one corner, and in another a toy staircase seemed to have been placed entirely for ornament, till it was utilized as a seat by some picturesque-looking girls in large hats. From the broad casemented window near which Elizabeth sat, she could see an expanse of roofs and chimneys, far down from the dizzy height, and beyond them the river, and further still the winter sunset, fading in cold blues and greens and violets, on a still colder sky. Her eyes rested there with dreamy satisfaction. She had no wish to look back into the room, to where Gerard was standing close to them, on the other side of Mrs. Bobby. She was still living on the memory of that moment--was it an hour or was it years ago?--that long look of which the reflected light was still glowing on her face, and in her dreamy eyes. She had no wish to renew it; the recollection was sufficient, for awhile at least. Yet she was glad to know that he was there.

Mrs. Bobby meanwhile, having embarked on her trip to Bohemia, was disappointed to find it comparatively tame.

"I don't see any one I know," she said to Gerard, as the piano solo came to an end. "They look, most of them, depressingly commonplace. But they must be extraordinary in some way, or they wouldn't be here. Tell us who they are, Julian, and introduce them to us if you think we would like them."

"Why, there are some musical lights," he answered, rather absently "who, I hope, are going to perform for our benefit, and there are a few ordinary music-lovers like myself, and some literary people--whom I don't know that you would care about."

"You think us too frivolous, I see," said Mrs. Bobby. "But you don't realize how clever I can be if I try, and as for Elizabeth, she knows a lot more than she seems to know."

"Does she?" asked Gerard with a smile, and he glanced across at Elizabeth, who still would not meet his eyes. "She looks very innocent," he said, musingly, after a pause. "I should be sorry to think of her as--concealing anything."

A little pang, a thought sharp like a stone, struck Elizabeth for an instant. It was the first rift in the lute. She put it resolutely away from her.

"You think me too stupid, I see," she said "to have any knowledge to conceal."

He had no time to answer before some woman began to sing. She had a beautiful voice, and Elizabeth listened, yet chiefly conscious, all the while, of the fact that Gerard had managed to shift his position, and was standing directly behind her.

"I never thought you stupid," he said, under cover of the applause, in a low voice that no one but she could hear, "no, nor ignorant; but I have sometimes thought you frivolous, and flippant, and--and a little hard. You seem, I sometimes think, to take pleasure in showing these qualities to me. Why is it, I wonder?"

"I--I don't know," she murmured, in the same low voice, and gazing straight before her. "You--somehow you seem to compel it. You ought to be grateful, I think. At least you know the worst of me."

She spoke these words with an absolute unconsciousness of their falseness; and even as they died away on her lips, she glanced across the room and saw Paul Halleck standing in the door-way.

That old mythological king whom some vague reminiscence of her school-days had conjured up in Elizabeth's mind, he who had every wish fulfilled, till he grew at last to dread his own prosperity--was it, I wonder, in some such moment of foreboding that the final crash came, or was it when his fears were lulled and his senses stilled, by some delicious, over-powering sense of happiness that shut out for the moment all unpleasant thoughts? This, at all events, was the way in which fate overtook Elizabeth.

Paul Halleck stood in the door-way, having apparently just arrived. His blue eyes were wandering about the room. They did not fall, as yet, upon Elizabeth.

She did not faint, or cry out, or make herself in any way conspicuous. She turned deathly white, and her heart, which had been beating faster for Gerard's presence, seemed suddenly to stop entirely, as though a piece of ice had been laid on it. And then, in a moment, her heart began to beat again, though faintly. She drew a long breath. Gerard, who was standing directly behind her, could not see her face beneath the shadow of her large hat, yet he felt instinctively that something was wrong.

"Do you feel faint again?" he asked, anxiously, thinking to himself that she was really far from well. "Can I get you anything?"

"No, thank you," said Elizabeth. "I felt faint for a moment, but it is over." It took all the strength that she possessed to speak these words so clearly and distinctly. In making the effort she was not conscious of any plan of deception. She was merely bearing up, instinctively, to the end.

She never doubted that it _was_ the end. It had fallen at last--that sword of Damocles, which she had learned to dread as the winter wore on, of which she had always been vaguely conscious even in her gayest moments, and had only forgotten, quite forgotten, in that short, delicious hour when she had allowed herself to float off in a dream of happiness never to be realized, from which she was awakened so soon and so rudely. And yet, though it was over, she was not sorry that she had dreamed it. It had been very sweet, worth even, she thought, the bitterness of the awakening.

Meanwhile the musicale progressed. A man with long, floating hair and fingers of steel thundered out a piano solo. Elizabeth shut her eyes and leaned back in her chair. How fortunate that there was so much music to prevent conversation! But at the first pause she opened her eyes and looked up at Gerard.

"I was wrong when I told you that you know the worst of me," she said, faintly. "You'll know it, soon."

"What a terrible prospect!" said Gerard, bending over her and the jesting words had a soft intonation, which thrilled her like a caress. "I really don't think I can stand it--quite."

Had she intended to tell him the truth? The moment was not propitious. The music had stopped, and there was a murmur of conversation all over the room. People began to move about, and in the general shifting of position, Paul Halleck, for the first time, caught sight of Elizabeth.

She had had some vague, childish idea of what would happen when he saw her. She had pictured him in her unreasoning terror, as stepping forward before them all and claiming her as his wife, like a scene in a play. Nothing of the kind took place. She saw at once how absurd her expectations had been. Paul merely started and looked at her, recognition and it seemed, pleasure sparkling in his eyes; but with a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, she turned her own eyes away, as if she did not know him.

"Do you see that man in the door-way?" said Gerard, who, standing as he was behind her could not note the changes in her face,--"that handsome fellow with the light curls? He has a very fine voice, and has just been engaged as soloist at St. Chrysostom's."

"Indeed. Is he to sing this afternoon?" She brought out the question with difficulty.

"I hope so," said Gerard. "I'd like you to hear him. But perhaps you know him," he went on. "He is looking at you as if he expected you to bow."

"No," said Elizabeth. "I don't know him." She told him this, her second lie that afternoon, without deliberate intention, in sheer lack of presence of mind. It was a piteous, involuntary staving-off of the inevitable. The next moment that fascination which leads us to our own undoing made her look in Paul's direction, and this time she could not avoid his eager gaze and bent her head mechanically.

"After all, I believe I must have met him somewhere," she said hastily. Mrs. Bobby, who for the last quarter of an hour, had been determinedly ignoring them both, apparently giving her whole attention to the music and the people, now turned towards them.

"Who is that handsome man who bowed to you, Elizabeth?" she asked. "I never saw him before."

"His name is Halleck. I--I knew him in the country," said Elizabeth, who had no natural talent for deception and entangled herself at once in contradictory statements. Gerard's face darkened, and he glanced across at Halleck, whose eyes were fixed on Elizabeth with a look that seemed, to the jealous, fastidious man by her side, an intolerable presumption; a look that was not only one of admiration, but, or Gerard imagined so, held in it a curious touch of proprietorship. "Confound the fellow," chafed Gerard--he who would fain have kept the woman he loved, as he certainly would have kept her picture, shut out from all profane eyes, even admiring ones. "He looks at her as if he had discovered her and she belonged to him. Where can she have met him, and why did she say she hadn't."

Mrs. Bobby, too, looked across at Paul.

"He is certainly very good-looking," she said. "And do you mean to tell me, my dear, that such an Adonis flourished in our Neighborhood, and I never saw him. Pray, where did you keep him hidden?"

Before Elizabeth could reply, and to her great relief, D'Hauteville came up with the long-haired musician, whom he introduced to them, and who proved to be, at last, one of the celebrities upon whom Mrs. Bobby had counted. In the diversion that ensued Halleck seemed forgotten. But a few minutes later, he sat at the piano and sang songs by Schubert and Franz, which she had heard him sing before, at the time when she had thought his voice the most beautiful voice in the world. Now, as she listened it left her cold. She had changed so much, and he--no, he had not changed. His voice was not so wonderful as she had thought it, but still it was a fine barytone voice. His art no longer seemed to her remarkable, but it had, if anything, improved, and he was as handsome as ever, in his fair, effeminate style. It was not the voice nor the art that was lacking. It was the answering thrill in herself. It was not his beauty which had failed him, it was she who no longer cared for it.

His success with the audience was instantaneous. Even Mrs. Bobby was impressed. "Your friend sings well," she whispered to Elizabeth, "and yet his hair is short. You may introduce him to me if you get a chance."

And this chance immediately presented itself, as Paul, amid the applause that followed his song, walked over to Elizabeth and quietly shook hands with her. It was the moment that she had dreaded all the time that he was singing, yet now that it had come, she met it in apparent unconcern, and smiling, though with white lips.

"I thought at first," Paul said, "that you had quite forgotten me."

"Oh, no," she said, "my memory is not so short." Then she turned and introduced him to Mrs. Bobby, and went on herself quietly talking to Mr. D'Hauteville. Nothing could have been more simple. Not even Julian Gerard, who from a distance watched their meeting, could have imagined any secret understanding between them.

The handsome young singer made a very favorable impression upon Mrs. Bobby, who went so far as to ask him to call, in that impulsive way of hers, which sometimes led to consequences that she regretted. In this case she realized, almost as soon as the words had left her lips, that she had done a rash thing, or what Bobby would consider rash. Still, the invitation was given and eagerly accepted, even though Elizabeth, standing cold and indifferent, said not a word to second it. By this time the music was over. They were about to leave, when some one claimed Mrs. Bobby's attention, and she turned aside for a moment. Paul seized the opportunity, for which he had been anxiously waiting, to whisper in Elizabeth's ear.

"Darling, don't go. I must see you for a moment."

"You can't speak to me here," she said, impatiently, trying to escape from him.

"But I must see you. Can't you see that I must?"

"You have done without it," said Elizabeth, without turning her head, "some time."

"Because I couldn't help myself."

"There is such a thing as writing," she said, in the same low, bitter tone. Yet even as she spoke her conscience misgave her. It was not his neglect that she resented so bitterly, it was his return. But Paul, not understanding this was rather flattered than otherwise by the reproach.

"Darling, I will explain when I see you," he said, hurriedly. "There's no time now. Meet me to-morrow morning--at the Fifty-ninth street entrance to the Park, at eleven o'clock."

"To-morrow! Impossible! I have a hundred things to do."

"Ah, but you must," he pleaded. "I must see you. Darling you look so beautiful--fifty times more beautiful than before."

"Hush," said Elizabeth. "How dare you? Some one will hear you."

"Give me a chance of seeing you, then," he said. "It is necessary. You will meet me--will you not?--to-morrow morning?"

"If you insist upon it--yes."

"At the west entrance of the Park--you understand?"

"Oh, yes," said Elizabeth impatiently, and hastened to rejoin Mrs. Bobby, who was waiting at the door.

Julian Gerard came up gloomily. The whispered conference had not escaped his notice.

"We shall see you to-night at the Lansdownes' ball," said Mrs. Bobby. "It is the night for it, isn't it, Elizabeth? I never can keep track of these things."

Gerard looked reproachfully at Elizabeth. "You promised me," he said, "that you would stay at home for a night or two."

She smiled back at him with the old touch of wilfulness. "Did I really make such a rash promise," she said, lightly. "Ah, I'm afraid I can't keep it--not to-night. I must be amused. A quiet evening would be unendurable." Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittered with feverish gaiety, there was an odd, strained note in her voice. Mrs. Bobby looked at her in some perplexity, then she glanced up deprecatingly at Gerard.

"It is her first season, you see Julian," she said, as if in apology. "You can't expect her to give up things."

"No," he repeated, mechanically. "I can't expect her to--give up things." He fell back silently, in increased gloom. Elizabeth glanced towards him involuntarily as she left the room.

"Now," she said to herself, "I have disappointed him again and he won't come near me this evening. But it is better so--far, far better," she repeated to herself, with a little sob, as she followed her hostess to the carriage.

_Chapter XIX_

The next day was unexpectedly mild. Winter, after reigning supreme, made sudden and treacherous overtures to approaching spring. The air in the Park was almost balmy, and the drives were gay, as though it were much later in the season, with carriages and riders and bicycles galore; yet the warm sunlight falling incongruously on sere, brown grass and bare branches, seemed but to emphasize their dreariness and the fact that winter had not really surrendered, and was only biding his time and the advent of the March winds, to make his power felt all the more strongly. Pedestrians, realizing this, refused to be inveigled out, even by the spring-like air, and there was no one to notice the young man and the young woman who sat on a bench in one of the secluded walks near Eighth avenue; the young woman, simply dressed in a dark tailor-made gown, with a small black hat pushed well over her face, which showed beneath it very pale and set, with hard lines about the mouth; the young man staring at her in bewilderment, a look of distress in his handsome blue eyes.

"And so," he said, "you don't love me any longer?" It had taken him some time to grasp this fact, which still seemed to him incomprehensible.

"No," she said, in a low, determined voice, "I don't love you any longer. I don't know if I--ever did. I was so young, I had never seen any men, I didn't know what I was doing. You flattered me; it was interesting, romantic. But if I had loved you, really loved you"--she stopped for an instant. "If I had really loved you," she repeated "do you think I could have hesitated--that day at Cranston? Do you think I could have let you go--without me? Why, I should have followed you--don't you see that I would?--to the end of the world." The color rushed into her face, there was a ring in her voice that he never heard before--no, not even in those early days, when she had sat at his feet, and worshipped him as a genius. Then, as he looked at her, he realized for the first time that he had lost her. The discovery was, for many reasons, unwelcome.

"Well, if you didn't love me," he said, hoarsely, "you certainly made me believe that you did. Elizabeth, you have treated me abominably. I didn't wish to leave you--do me the justice to admit that--it was your own doing entirely."

"I know it." She bent her head submissively. "I don't blame you for anything; not even for--forgetting me."

"I didn't forget you," he interrupted her, flushing hotly, and repeating assertions which she had heard already, and interpreted by that knowledge of his character, which she had acquired too late to be of value. She put them aside now with a gesture of weariness.

"What's the use," she said, "of going over that again, I have said already, I don't reproach you. We can't either of us--can we?--afford to throw stones. And yet, if you had not stopped writing"--She paused for a moment with knitted brows, as she seemed to weigh one possibility against another, in a sort of inward trial of her own conduct. An instinctive mental honesty, however, carried the day. "I don't know that that would have made any difference," she said. "I was very unhappy because you--had forgotten me, and that made me want to come to town, all the more; but--if I had been happy, and sure that you loved me, I should have come, I think, all the same. And no matter how I had felt, or what I had done, I should have known, sooner or later--oh, I couldn't but realize it--what a--what a terrible mistake we had made." She put out her hands in a sudden, despairing gesture, which hurt his vanity.

"Elizabeth, do you really mean that?"

"Yes," she said, in a low, monotonous voice, and staring straight before her with hard, hopeless eyes. "Yes, I mean it. I have been realizing it, little by little, all these months. And yet I put it away--I wouldn't think of it--till one day it forced itself upon me. I knew, all at once, that I--I dreaded your coming back, I hoped you never would--it was when I was enjoying myself, when I was thinking how delightful life was. And then, after that, the fear of your coming was always there--I could never get rid of it for any length of time, till just for a while--yesterday"--Her voice faltered, and for the first time the softening tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh, I can't help it," she cried out, "if I'm hard. When I think how happy I was--wildly, absurdly happy, just for a little while, and then to think how--how miserable I am now."

She stopped, half strangled with her sobs, and Paul sat staring at her in moody silence. He was clear-sighted enough now to grasp the truth. Such violent grief, he told himself, could have but one explanation. There was, there must be, some other man.

Yet the conviction made him only the more determined not to give her up. True, there had been a time, not long before, when he would have done so only too gladly; when he would have welcomed an opportunity to free himself from an irksome bond, which he regretted quite as much as she did. But now, since his return, when he heard her spoken of everywhere as one of the beauties of the season, when he saw her in D'Hauteville's studio in her velvet and furs, her whole appearance redolent of grace and charm, and that nameless distinction which Gerard had noticed, and which impressed the young musician even more deeply; when he saw her thus a hundred times more desirable, his fickle heart succumbed anew, with a sudden throb of joy, at the thought of the secret tie between them. She was his, this young princess, whom he had chosen when she was a mere Cinderella; he had but to hold out his hand and she would come to him. For he never doubted that she _would_ come. Her first coldness he had looked upon as mere girlish pique at his neglect, a proof of her affection. Now, a sadder and a wiser being, he had learned that the privilege of forgetfulness is not confined to men alone.

Yet the situation, unflattering though it was, had its advantages, which dawned upon him gradually, while Elizabeth still sobbed. He rose and paced up and down in front of her, thinking the matter over. After all, a wife was the last thing that he wanted--just then, when his career was opening out before him in unexpectedly brilliant colors. He realized perfectly the value of his own good looks, and the loss of prestige that marriage would involve. Matrimony is a mistake for an artist--he had told himself this many times in the last few months. And yet, having once made the mistake, having won this beautiful girl for his wife, how could he give her up. There was the chance that she might change her mind again, and return to her first love. Then it was sweet to feel that she was in his power, that he could at any time bring her to terms by threatening to publish the fact that she had concealed all this time. True, the marriage might be dissolved--he had not much doubt himself that it could be; but either this plan did not occur to Elizabeth, or she dreaded the inevitable gossip and publicity. At all events, it was not his place, he thought, to suggest it to her. He held the mastery of the situation, and he was determined to improve it to the uttermost. And having arrived at this conclusion, he suddenly stopped before her and spoke in a tone of unwonted resolution.

"Listen to me, Elizabeth," he said. "I don't know why you are making this scene. In what has the situation changed since--let us say, last week? I don't ask you to acknowledge our marriage at once--indeed it is impossible for me to do so, as I am not--worse luck--in a position just now to support a wife."

Elizabeth, in her surprise, stopped crying and stared up at him blankly. "You don't want the marriage acknowledged?" she repeated, utterly taken aback.

"Not just now," said Paul, calmly. "It would be as inconvenient for me, as it seems to be for you. No, all I ask is for you to see me occasionally, to think of me more kindly, and in time--perhaps in time, dearest, you will care for me again as you used to."