Part 4

Through all her complex feelings ran a sharp sense of anger against Amanda, mingled strangely with an involuntary pity, almost with an understanding of her point of view. It was not based on justice, but on fellow feeling. Amanda had resented her superiority; she, Elizabeth, knew what that was. She had felt the same herself, when smarting impotently under the patronizing friendliness of the other girls in the Neighborhood, and then had turned, with unconscious snobbery, to play the same part towards Amanda. The incongruous, grotesque humor of the situation struck her suddenly, and she laughed out loud in bitter irony. She had envied the other girls of the Neighborhood, Amanda had envied her, the girls at Bassett Mills had envied Amanda. Strange net-work of classes in a democratic country, of distinctions the more galling for their intangibility. Of one thing Elizabeth was convinced, that she could never herself "put on airs" as Amanda had said, again; there was not a girl in the whole countryside, blessed with a good mother, who could not look down on her, if she pleased.

Her tears were falling now so fast and blinding that she could not see the road; she was not even conscious that they had reached the spot where the white pony stopped now of his own accord. And even as he did so, a young man stepped forward and grasped the reins which had fallen from Elizabeth's nerveless hand; a tall, fair young man who had been standing for the last half hour, scanning anxiously, with his bright blue eyes, the glaring dusty road.

"Elizabeth," said Halleck (he had called her that for five happy days) "Elizabeth, why are you so late? And, for Heaven's sake, what's the matter?"

Elizabeth looked up and with great effort, stopped crying; but otherwise she made no sign of pleasure in his presence or even of recognition. She put up one hand, indeed, and straightened her hat, but this was a purely mechanical concession to the force of habit. She knew that her face was flushed and tear-stained, her eyes red and swollen; she was sure that she looked an absolute fright, and she did not care. She was past caring, at least for the moment.

"Elizabeth," Halleck repeated, more and more bewildered, "what is the matter? I've been waiting for you an hour. You've been crying," he added, stating unnecessarily an obvious fact. "Won't you tell me what it is?"

"Nothing--nothing," Elizabeth answered at last, in a voice that was still thick and choked with sobs. "I haven't been crying or," struck by the futility of denial, she added hastily "if I have it--it's no matter. Will you please let me pass?" She tried to take the reins from his hands, but he grasped them firmly, and laid the other hand on the bar of the wagon.

"Won't you let me pass?" she repeated stubbornly.

"Not till you tell me what's the matter."

He eyed her coolly, determinedly, all the habit of power depicted on the lines of his handsome face. She stared back at him defiantly, with her tear-swollen eyes. Her whole attitude breathed the spirit of rebellion; a spirit new in their intercourse. Halleck saw it, at the same time that he noted the disfiguring marks of tears on her face. Oddly enough, he had never admired her so much.

Nevertheless, he was determined to remain master of the situation. He glanced up and down the road; there were never many people passing, but it was not safe to rely on this fact.

"We can't talk here," he said. "Come into the field."

"I don't wish to," she said, stubbornly. "I'm going home."

He fixed his eyes upon her. "You shall not go home," he said quietly, "till you have told me all about it." She sat immovable, her pouting under lip thrust out in a way that she had sometimes, in moments of obstinacy and displeasure. She did not meet his eyes. "Don't be childish," Paul said, pleasantly, after a moment. "You know you must tell me what it is."

She looked up reluctantly, and met his steady gaze, under which she turned first white, then red, and slowly, as if fascinated, rose from her seat. Yet still her words were unyielding. "We may as well have it out at once," she said, coldly.

Halleck could not repress a thrill of triumph. It was sweet to test his power over this beautiful, high-spirited girl, to feel her will, her intellect, like wax in his hands. But he tried not to show this consciousness in his face. She was in a strange mood; he did not understand her. Gravely and respectfully he helped her to scale the stone wall, which separated the meadow from the road. Her hand barely rested on his, and her eyes were averted carefully, but he paid no heed. He fastened the white pony to a tree, then slowly and thoughtfully followed Elizabeth across the field.

The noon-day sun beat down upon them in all its scorching brilliancy; it was pleasant to gain the shade of their usual trysting-place. Here the little brook, which had rippled and sparkled over stones and moss all the way from the mill-stream, formed itself into a quiet pool, over which weeping willows spread out long branches, and seemed to admire their own reflection in the cool green mirror beneath. Elizabeth took her usual seat on a fallen moss-covered log, drawing, as she did so, her white skirts about her, with what seemed an involuntary gesture of repulsion, and Halleck, who was about to place himself beside her, flushed and bit his lip. After a moment's hesitation, he threw himself down sullenly on the grass a little way off.

"Tell me," he said, in a tone that was the more determined for this little episode "tell me now what the matter is."

Elizabeth's eyes were fixed upon the cool, green water at her feet. "I don't know why you think," she said, slowly "that it has anything to do with you."

"Not when you are a full hour late for our appointment? Not when you treat me like an outcast? Oh, Elizabeth,"--the young man's voice softened suddenly, skillfully--"how can you trifle with me so, when I love you?"

He caught, or thought he did, a quiver in her face, although her eyes were still resolutely bent upon the pool. "Yes, I love you," he repeated. "I've loved you, I believe, ever since the day you came into that horrid, stuffy little room, looking like an angel--with that hair and that skin--so different from Amanda."--

He stopped as an indignant wave of color flamed in Elizabeth's cheeks. "How can you speak of Amanda--like that?" she broke out passionately, "when you loved her too, or told her so at least, when you said the same things no doubt to her that you are saying now to me?"

A light broke in upon Paul. In his relief he laughed out loud. "Amanda," he said. "Amanda! So she has been talking to you? And you believed all the nonsense she told you? And that is why you acted so strangely. I thought it was something serious!" And he laughed again in sheer light-heartedness. So all this had been only jealous pique, after all.

The gloom on Elizabeth's face did not lighten. "You seem to find the idea amusing," she said, coldly. "I do not."

"Because you don't understand how absurd it is. I never made love to Amanda--if she made love to me"--Paul stopped, warned by a curious stiffening in Elizabeth's attitude that he was on dangerous ground. She was not like other girls whom he had known--he had noticed this before; she required special treatment. "My dear child," he said, in a calm, argumentative tone "really you are a little hard on me. A man can't measure every word he says to a girl. I may have paid Amanda a few compliments, flirted with her a little, if you insist upon it, but--that's not a crime, is it? And I never gave her a thought, I hardly remembered her existence, after I had once--seen you." There was unmistakable sincerity in his voice. "Look at me, Elizabeth," he went on anxiously, "look at me, and tell me that you believe me."

Elizabeth raised her troubled eyes to his. "I--I don't know," she said, slowly. She did believe him--to some extent, at least. But what he told her did not alter the fact that it was she who had taken him away from Amanda, that, but for her, he might have been her cousin's admirer still. And that, after all, had been the substance of Amanda's accusation.

"Tell me the truth," she said, suddenly "if I had not come in that day--if you had never seen me, would you--would you have married Amanda?" She fixed her eager eyes upon his face, and waited breathless for his answer. He gave it with a light laugh.

"Marry Amanda!" he declared, "well, hardly! Such an idea never entered my head."

"Then," said Elizabeth, slowly "you deceived her."

He shrugged his shoulders. "She deceived herself, I think," he said. "It's not my fault if she--imagined things. Why should I marry a girl like that? She's not pretty, she's stupid, ignorant. Bah, don't talk to me of Amanda." He disposed of the matter with a wave of the hand and another light laugh. Elizabeth felt a sudden conviction of the absurdity of her own behavior. The painful, scorching flush in her cheeks was beginning to cool; the burning, angry shame in her heart was dying away. The remembrance of Amanda's words grew fainter; Paul's handsome face, his air of triumphant health and life, were again in the ascendent.

He saw the yielding in her eyes and brought out his most effective argument. He took boldly the seat beside her on the log and though she shrank away, it was not, he thought, entirely with aversion. "My darling," he said, "don't let trifles come between us. I love you, you love me; isn't that enough? Elizabeth, you are the most beautiful woman in the world. Elizabeth, dearest" ... He put out his arm and drew her towards him. She still shrank away, fascinated yet trembling, frightened at this new delight, this thrill of pleasure in his touch.

"Don't," she gasped out, "Amanda"--He stopped her protest with a kiss.

And it was not till later, when she reached home, that she thought again of Amanda's words: "Remember, he kissed me _first_."

_Chapter VIII_

Miss Cornelia and Miss Joanna sat at the breakfast-table and looked aghast at Elizabeth, who had just informed them of her engagement. The old Dutch clock on the mantel-piece ticked loudly, the sunlight fell in shining bars upon the snowy table-cloth, the old Dutch china, the glistening silver. Miss Cornelia was reminded forcibly, painfully, of a morning in that same room many years ago, when Peter had announced his marriage. Now the shock was not so great, was not unexpected, perhaps; but it brought with it, if less horror, an even greater disappointment.

"Well," Elizabeth said, after a moment, when her important announcement had produced no response, and she looked proudly, yet half wistfully, from one to the other. "Well," she repeated, "have you nothing to say? Can't you--congratulate me?" Her voice faltered over the last words.

"My dear," Miss Cornelia tried bravely to respond to the appeal in the girl's tone. "Of course, we--we wish you every happiness," she stammered out. She stopped, for tears choked her voice. She looked despairingly at her sister. Was this the moment that they had so often talked of together, planning with delicious thrills of pleasure all they would say and do? "This china must be Elizabeth's when--when she marries, you know." "We must lay by a little for--for Elizabeth's trousseau." This in demure whispers to each other, for they would not for the world have suggested such a possibility to the girl herself. Nice girls, of course, must not think of getting married till the time came, but--with Elizabeth's beauty, that time could not be long delayed, not even in the Neighborhood. The fairy prince would appear some day; though he had never come to them, they believed devoutly that he would come to Elizabeth. And now--and now--the fairy prince had come, or Elizabeth thought so; but they were only conscious of an overwhelming sense of doubt.

"You know so little about him, my dear," Miss Cornelia could not help at last protesting.

Elizabeth opened her eyes wide in genuine surprise. "So little of him," she repeated. "Why, I--I know everything, Aunt Cornelia." And she smiled to herself in silent amusement. Had she not seen him, every day and twice a day, for a matter of four weeks. How long did they think, these older women, that it took to know a man? "I know that he loves me," she said, after a moment, descending to further particulars "and I love him, and that's enough."

"But you can't live on love," urged Miss Joanna, practically. "You must have some money, you know, and I shouldn't think he, poor young man, had anything--at least, judging by his clothes. Those artists never have, they say. And meat, and everything indeed, never was so dear as it is now."

"I didn't know you were so worldly, Aunt Joanna," said Elizabeth, loftily. "Do you want me to marry for money?" Miss Joanna was crushed. But as she reflected in her own justification, one had to have something to eat, let lovers say what they would.

"My dear," said Miss Cornelia, coming to the rescue with the little air of dignity that she could sometimes assume "we certainly wouldn't want you--not for the world--to marry for money. But one has to be--to be prudent. We have brought you up in a way--perhaps it was unwise--poor Mother would have thought so. But at any rate you know nothing about economy, and--and you have only a little money, my dear, and he, I suppose, has nothing."

"He--he expects to make a great deal of money soon," faltered Elizabeth, coming down a little from her heights of romance. All this prudence was like a dash of cold water in the face. She felt disconcerted, indignant, and yet conscious, through it all of some reason in her aunts' objections. Yes, it was true--she had not been brought up to economy, she was fond of luxury and pretty things. In all her wishes for change, she had never thought that it would be amusing to miss any of these.

Miss Cornelia saw that she had produced some effect. "I think," she went on, still speaking with unusual decision, "that the most important thing is to find out something about him. You can't marry a man whom we know nothing about, except that--that he was born at The Mills. We must investigate his character." Miss Cornelia felt, as she brought out this last sentence, that it sounded eminently practical, and it received from Miss Joanna, indeed, its full meed of respectful admiration. Elizabeth only smiled superior.

"You can investigate as much as you like, Aunt Cornelia," she said. "I know all about him." And so the matter rested.

But how could two elderly and innocent spinsters, who had never in their lives stirred two hundred miles from home, investigate the character of a young man who had lived in Chicago and Paris and Vienna and all the four quarters of the world apparently? They had no idea how to set about it. In this perplexity Miss Cornelia again rose to the occasion, and suggested that the Rector might be a fit substitute for that invaluable possession "a man in the family," who is always supposed to accomplish so much. And the Rector, when consulted, proved unexpectedly resourceful. He had made Paul's acquaintance, and learned the name of the church in Chicago where he had sung for so many years. He had discovered, too, that the Rector of this church was an old college friend of his, and he wrote to him at once, requesting full and confidential information as to the young man's character, antecedents, and prospects.

The answer seemed to the poor ladies a long time in coming; as a matter of fact, it arrived very promptly. The Rector of St. Anne's at Chicago regretted to inform his old friend and colleague the Rector of St. Mary's, at Bassett Mills, that he had no good account to give of Paul Halleck, who had not long ago been dismissed from the choir of his church, and had left behind him in Chicago many debts and a bad reputation. The young man was believed to have, as the Rector added, genuine musical talent; but like many artists and musicians, he was morally irresponsible, dissipated and reckless.

The Rector of St. Mary's repeated the verdict, as gently as he could, to the older ladies at the Homestead. They bore it better than he expected. There were compensations indeed in the very extent of its severity. Had Halleck been less evidently and irredeemably a black sheep, there might have been some doubts as to their own duty; but, as it was, they felt that they must break off the dreadful match at once, and at any cost.

Yet the heart of each sister misgave her as they sat in a solemn conclave, and summoned Elizabeth before it. She came, rosy, bright-eyed, fresh from talks with her lover and happy dreams of a brilliant future, which they were to share together. She stood listening in apparent indifference, while Miss Cornelia faltered out the painful result of their inquiries. And when the worst was told, she had turned perhaps a trifle pale, but otherwise she seemed unmoved.

"I don't know why you tell me all this, auntie," she said, slowly. "I--I am sorry to hear it, but it can make no difference."

"No difference!" Miss Cornelia repeated, stupefied. "No difference, Elizabeth?"

"No, it can't change my love for him," she said, defiantly. "He told me that he has enemies at Chicago, and that you would probably unearth a lot of old scandals; and I promised that it should make no difference. Perhaps some of them are true; I don't care. Auntie, I can't--I can't give him up," she went on with a sudden change of tone and clasping her hands appealingly. "I tried to once before, and--I couldn't. If he were to go away now and leave me, I--I should die. I couldn't bear to go on living without him." The girl's face was flushed, her voice tremulous with feeling; it was evident that she fully meant--or thought that she meant--what she said. Her aunts looked at her in helpless perplexity.

"My darling," Miss Cornelia faltered at last, "think how much better it is to give him up now than to--to marry him and be unhappy. You don't know--men are very bad;--one reads such things in the newspapers. If he were to ill-treat you, desert you."

"Ah, but he won't," said Elizabeth, smiling incredulously. "You needn't worry, Aunt Cornelia; we shall be very happy. But even if we were not," she concluded, with a sudden burst of defiance. "If I thought that he would beat me, treat me like a dog--I don't care; I should marry him to-morrow."

And she thrust out her full under lip, and stood facing them, with a look of obstinacy on her fair, girlish face, that for the moment bore a strong resemblance to her father.

To Miss Cornelia's mind there rose again, with startling vividness, the events of twenty years before. The recollection seemed to endow her with an unwonted and unnatural strength. She went over to where Elizabeth stood and took both the girl's hot hands in hers.

"Elizabeth," she said, desperately, "you don't know what you're saying. You will be miserable if you marry that man. You don't know what it is to live with a person who is beneath you, who--who drags you down. We know, my darling, we have seen it. Be warned by us, and give him up."

Miss Cornelia had never in all her gentle life spoken with so much vehemence. Elizabeth, in her astonishment, stood for a moment absolutely passive. She stole a glance at Miss Joanna; she was weeping quietly. Elizabeth's own face worked, her lip quivered. "I know whom you mean," she broke out, suddenly, in a quick hard voice. "You're thinking of my mother." And then, in the dismayed pause that followed, she dragged her hands away from Miss Cornelia's grasp and fled from the room.

The two older women looked at one another in silence.

"I didn't know," Miss Joanna said at last in a low, awe-struck tone "that the child knew anything about--about poor Malvina."

_Chapter IX_

"And so you let all this nonsense influence you?" Halleck asked this bitterly, staring up with moody eyes into Elizabeth's face. They were sitting under a wide-spreading tree, in a field not far from the Homestead. It was late afternoon and the shadows were long and peaceful. A ray from the sinking sun shot through the foliage overhead lighting up the red tints of Elizabeth's hair. Halleck's artistic eye rested upon them fascinated. He had never, as he told himself, been so much in love before.

"You give me up because of a little opposition?" he went on bitterly, roused to increased irritation by the thought of losing her.

"Why, what can I do?" The girl's voice was weary, and she threw out her hands with a helpless gesture. "They will give in to me, I suppose, if I insist; but it makes them too unhappy. I believe it would kill them. If they were unkind, I shouldn't care; but they only cry, and are so wretched, and I can't stand it. It makes me feel so ungrateful."

"And yet," said Halleck, anxiously, "you think they will give in in the end?"

"Oh, yes, they'll give in," said Elizabeth, wearily. "They'll give in, if I insist; and that's the very reason why I--what makes it so hard, you see."

"No, I don't see," said Paul, bluntly. "If you think they will give in, why are you so unhappy? But I understand how it is" he went on, harshly, "you don't love me. I'm too far beneath you--a Bohemian and an outcast. You are glad of an excuse to throw me over."

"Paul!" The indignant color flushed into Elizabeth's face. "How can you say such things," she asked reproachfully. "You know they are not true. I told my aunts that I would never give you up; I told them that--that I would marry you to-morrow, if I could."

"You told them that?" Paul exclaimed exultantly. He put his arm around her and drew her towards him. "Then keep your word, darling," he said. "Marry me to-morrow."

Elizabeth shrank away, startled. "Marry you," she repeated. "To-morrow, how could I?"

"Why not," said Paul, quietly. "Come up to Cranston and we will be married. Then let them say what they please."

Elizabeth was very pale. "I couldn't do that," she said in a low voice. "I don't want to be married so soon; and besides--it would kill my aunts."

He laughed. "Nonsense! People soon resign themselves to what they can't help. And then they needn't know--yet awhile. Listen, darling, this is my plan. You know that I want to go abroad--well, I have had a letter offering me a position in an opera company in Munich. If I accept it I start this week."

He stopped as Elizabeth gave a little cry and stared up at him with reproachful eyes. "This week," she said. "You go away this week?"

"Why, I can't stay here forever, you know," Paul said. "I've idled away my time unconscionably already--but that is your fault, Elizabeth. Now it is time I went to work. And that is why I say--marry me before I go. Then, while I am away, nothing can separate us."

Elizabeth, pale and thoughtful, seemed to ponder the suggestion. "Marry you," she repeated, slowly. "Marry you--now at once?"

"Yes, to-morrow," said Paul, boldly.

"And--and keep it _secret_?" she went on, with a troubled look.

"Yes, for a little while," said Paul, "for a few months, till I come back. I shall have made my name and my fortune, darling, I hope, by that time, and your aunts will be quite reconciled to me."

"Then wouldn't it be better," said Elizabeth, with much reason, "to wait till then?"

"Are you willing to wait--in uncertainty all this time?" he asked, reproachfully. "Ah, Elizabeth, it is evident that you don't love me as I love you. Such an absence would be unbearable to me, if I felt that some lover was likely to come along at any time and take you from me."

Elizabeth could not help reflecting that the danger of such a catastrophe did not seem imminent, in the present condition of the Neighborhood; but she did not put the thought into words. She only said, with some dignity: "I don't think that I am the sort of girl to change so easily."