Part 6

"I do love you," she said, soothingly, "but indeed it is better--much better to let things be as we arranged them. I can't go to New York in this dress"--she gave a little tremulous laugh, as she glanced at her fluffy muslin skirts. "Only a man could suggest such a thing. And then my aunts!--they would be distracted. No, no, I must go home at once. You will be back in six months," she went on, trying to console him. "They will pass very quickly."

"Six months," he sighed. "It is an endless time." He was the picture of gloom as they turned and walked steadily back to the busy part of Cranston. And she, too, had her regrets. The compromise was satisfactory to neither.

At the corner of the High Street they parted. There was no opportunity for more than a hand-clasp, a few hurried words of farewell. Then he went his way to the railroad station, and she hurried to the trolley. The country woman with the many parcels was there before her, and told where she got the stockings, and how much she paid for them.

Back again went the trolley, along the asphalted road past the Queen Anne villas with their terraced gardens, past bicycles, carriages, wagons, and always clouds of dust; out into the open country, with rolling meadow and upland on either side, simmering in the heat of the summer afternoon, to which the morning heat was as nothing; Elizabeth sitting upright, shading her eyes from the glare, with aching head and burning eyes, and throbbing brain that refused to take in the reality of what she had done. This was her wedding journey.

An hour later the white pony brought her home.

"Did you--did you match your ribbon, dear?" Miss Joanna inquired anxiously. Elizabeth stared blankly for a moment.

"I--I never thought of the ribbon," she cried at last, and burst into hysterical laughter.

_Chapter XII_

It was that time of year when the Neighborhood, and the whole riverside, are in their glory. Day after day dawned clear and frosty, to warm at noon-day into a mellow brilliance. On every side stretched wooded meadow and upland all aglow, resplendent in varied tints of crimson and russet, magenta and scarlet, blending in a glorious scheme of color, till they melted at last into the soft gray haze, which rested, like a touch of regretful melancholy, on the tops of the distant hills. Over the fields the golden-rod was still scattered profusely, amidst the sober browns and purples of the bay, and the pale lavender of the Michaelmas daisies. Red berries glistened on the bushes, the ground was covered, every day deeper, with a carpeting of fallen leaves and chestnut burrs.

On one of these autumn days, when the light was fading into dusk, Mrs. "Bobby" Van Antwerp came to call at the Homestead, and found no one at home but Elizabeth, who was kneeling on the hearth-rug, staring into the fire.

Elizabeth's thoughts were not pleasant ones. She had refused to go to Cranston with her aunts that afternoon, for she had never been near the place since that hot July day, nearly three months before, when she had forgotten to match her ribbon. What construction her aunts placed upon the episode she never knew. They did not allude to it in words, but treated her with added care and solicitude, as if she were recovering from some illness. In pursuance of this theory, they took her to a highly recommended and very dull seaside place, where she was extremely bored. She returned in better health, though hardly better spirits. She had now a new trouble, which increased as the autumn advanced. Paul's letters, at first many and ardent, grew fewer and colder, till they ceased altogether. Elizabeth's last letter remained unanswered, and she was too proud to write again. No doubt, she told herself, his thoughts were occupied by some new attraction. With a sudden flash of intuition, she realized that for Paul there would always be an attraction of some kind, and generally a new one.

This unpleasant perception had one good result, at least; it lightened her sense of remorse towards Amanda. She had long ago got over the ordeal of seeing her cousin again, and the strange scene between them had been relegated to a curious phase of unreality, covered up and almost obliterated, as such scenes not infrequently are among relations and intimate friends, by the thousand commonplace incidents of every-day life. And yet some sort of apology had been proffered by Amanda, as she sat up in her white wrapper, very pale and hollow-eyed, with her red hair cut short, and just beginning to come in in soft waves like Elizabeth's--a thing she had always desired.

"You know," she said, in her weak voice "I was real sick that last time you saw me. I was just coming down with the fever."

"I know you were," Elizabeth said gently, conquering the thrill of anger which swept over her at the recollection.

"I guess I said some queer things," Amanda ventured next, and gave an odd, furtive look from her light eyes.

"You certainly did," said Elizabeth, coldly. Not all the pity she felt for Amanda's weakness could avail to make her speak in any other way.

"Well, I guess," Amanda said, after a moment and closing her eyes as if wearied out, "people aren't accountable for what they say when they're sick."

"No," said Elizabeth, "I suppose not." And with this tacit apology and its acceptance, this episode between the cousins might be considered closed. Certainly, on Elizabeth's side, it was not only closed, but forgotten, in the pressure of far more serious troubles.

As she knelt that afternoon looking into the fire, a vision of her future life--colorless, empty, without joy or love--seemed to stare back at her from its glowing depths. The years stretched out before her, a dreary waste--without Paul. She was sure that he would never come back; the bond between them seemed the merest shadow. He had forgotten her in three short months, while she was more in love than ever, since she had never fully realized, at the time, the void that he would leave behind him. For a short time her life had bloomed like the summer; and now nothing was left to her but the fast-approaching gray monotony of the November days, and the bleak cold of the winter.

Upon these cheerful reflections entered Mrs. Bobby Van Antwerp, in a short skirt somewhat the worse for wear, with dark eyes that shone brilliantly beneath her battered hat, and her small piquante face glowing with health and exercise.

"Don't get up," she said. "What a beautiful blaze!" She sat down to it at once and held out her small, gloveless hands to its pleasant warmth. "I walked all the way," she announced, triumphantly, "and I thought I would just drop in, and perhaps you'd give me a cup of tea."

One must have lived in the Neighborhood to appreciate the informality of all this. People paid calls in their carriages, with their card-cases and their best Sunday gowns--it was not good form to come on foot, even had the distances permitted. But the young woman always spoken of as "Mrs. Bobby" though her claims to a more formal designation had long since been established, was a law unto herself and cared little what the Neighborhood's laws might be. Elizabeth had already noticed that this great lady, the greatest lady in the Neighborhood, treated her with more friendliness than other people of less assured position with whom she was, theoretically, on more intimate terms. This curious fact, and the cause of it, occupied her thoughts while she rang the bell and ordered tea, a little flustered inwardly, but outwardly calm, and comfortably conscious of the becoming neatness of her serge skirt and velveteen blouse. Whatever her troubles might be, she had not yet reached so great a pitch of desperation as to neglect her appearance.

"Aren't these autumn days beautiful!" said Mrs. Bobby, making herself at home by unfastening her coat and tossing aside her hat, whereby she disclosed to view a somewhat tousled halo of curly dark hair. "I tell Bobby that just these few days in the autumn make up to us for the bother of keeping the place, though in summer it is fearfully hot, and unspeakably dull all the year round. It must be very dull for you," said Mrs. Bobby, coming to a sudden pause.

"Oh, yes, it's dull," Elizabeth admitted, with a little sigh.

Mrs. Bobby laughed.

"Why don't you say 'oh, but I am so fond of the place,' or 'but I'm not at all dependent on society,' as the other girls in the Neighborhood do?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, reflectively. "I don't think, for one thing, that I am so awfully fond of the place; and as for society--I have never had any, so naturally I get on without it."

"But you would enjoy it, if you had it?"

A curious brightness shone for an instant in Elizabeth's eyes. "Ah, yes, I should enjoy it," she said, quickly. "I'm sure I should."

"I'm sure you would, too," said Mrs. Bobby. She seemed to reflect a moment. "Don't you go away in August?" she asked at last.

"Yes, this year we did," said Elizabeth. "We went to Borehaven. It--it wasn't very amusing." She stopped short blushing as if the last words had been wrung from her unawares; but Mrs. Bobby's smile seemed to invite confidence.

"Tell me all about it," she said. "Was it very terrible?"

"Yes, very," said Elizabeth, frankly. "There were a good many girls who used to promenade up and down, and a number of old ladies who sat in rows on the piazza and criticized the people and grumbled about the table; and they one and all treated us as if we had committed some crime. We were quite distressed till we found out that it was nothing personal--only the way they always treat new arrivals."

"Ah, I know the type of place," said Mrs. Bobby "and the people. Were there any men?"

"A few who were called men--about sixteen, I should think--most of them--but they didn't interest me particularly." And Elizabeth blushed, as she remembered the reason which had made her indifferent, at least to such men as Borehaven could boast of. Mrs. Bobby noticed the blush.

"What!" she said to herself "another attraction in this wilderness? Not that stupid Frank Courtenay--I hope not. Yet there isn't and never has been another man in the place that I ever heard of." While she pondered this problem the tea-things were brought in, and Elizabeth seated herself at the small table, behind the old silver urn, in the full glow of the firelight, which played on her hair and brought out the warm creamy tones of her skin. Mrs. Bobby watched her silently with her bright dark eyes, her small, pointed chin supported on her hand.

"You ought to go to town for the winter," she announced at last abruptly. This seemed to be the upshot of her reflections. Elizabeth looked up with a little start, and a momentary brightening of the eyes, which faded, however, instantly.

"Oh, my aunts could never bear to leave here," she said. "They have so taken root in this place. Besides," she went on, constrained to greater frankness by the consciousness of that quality in Mrs. Bobby herself "what would be the use if we did go? We know so few people. It would be horrid to be in New York and not know any one or go anywhere."

"Yes, that wouldn't be pleasant," admitted Mrs. Bobby, to whom indeed such a state of things was inconceivable. "But you would know people," she went on, after a moment "every one does somehow. There are your cousins, the Schuyler Van Vorsts, for instance."

"Who would probably never notice us," said Elizabeth "or if they did, would ask us to a family dinner."

"Well, that certainly would be worse than nothing," Mrs. Bobby admitted. "But--how about your old school friends? You must have known some nice girls at Madame Veuillet's. You would see, no doubt, a great deal of them."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I doubt it," she said. "They spoke--some of them--of asking me to stop with them, but they have none of them done so. They don't even write to me any more. It doesn't take long for people to forget one, Mrs. Van Antwerp," said poor Elizabeth, putting into words the melancholy philosophy which experience had lately taught her.

"My dear child," cried Mrs. Van Antwerp, "you're too young to realize that--yet." She put out her hand in her warm, impulsive way, and touched Elizabeth's. "I can promise you one thing," she said. "If you come to New York, I'll do what I can to make it pleasant for you."

Elizabeth looked up with glistening eyes. "You're--you're awfully kind," she began, stammering. In another moment she would have burst into tears, and perhaps, in the sudden expansion, confided everything to this new friend--in which case her life's history would have been different. But just then she heard the sound of wheels, and immediately she stiffened and the habit of reserve, which had been growing upon her during the last three months, reasserted itself. When her aunts entered, in a little glow of excitement after their day at Cranston, Elizabeth was sitting quite cool and placid behind the tea-things, absorbed in the problems of milk and sugar.

The rest of Mrs. Bobby's visit seemed to her rather dull. They sat around the fire, and Mrs. Bobby drank her tea and ate a great many of the little round cakes which accompanied it, and which she praised warmly, to the gratification of Miss Joanna, who had made them. She told them all about her domestic affairs, and Bobby's affairs, and the family affairs generally, and was altogether very charming and as the Misses Van Vorst expressed it, "neighborly;" but still she said not a word further of their going to town, or of that pleasant if rather vague promise she had made in a moment of impulse, which perhaps she already regretted. It was not till she held Elizabeth's hand at parting that she invited her, as if by a sudden thought, to dinner on the following Friday.

"It will be dull, I'm afraid," she said. "Only the Rector and his wife, and the Hartingtons, and Julian Gerard, who is coming up over Sunday. You will be the only young girl, and I want you to amuse Julian. We dine at eight. Do come early, so we can have a talk beforehand."

Elizabeth, entirely taken by surprise, had only time to murmur an acceptance, when Mrs. Bobby hurried off, being hastened by the arrival of her husband, who had called for her and was waiting outside in the dog-cart. "Friday, remember," she called out from the yawning darkness beyond the door, "and come early." Then Bobby Van Antwerp's restless horse bore her off.

The Misses Van Vorst returned to the drawing-room, in a state of considerable excitement.

"Think of my dining at the Van Antwerps!" Elizabeth exclaimed, still rosy from the unexpected honor. "I was so taken aback that I could hardly answer properly. But how on earth am I to amuse Julian--whoever he may be, and what have I got to wear?"

"It's a--a very nice attention," said Miss Cornelia, complacently. "She's never asked the Courtenay girls, I know, from what their mother told me. She said they thought it a pity she was so unsociable. I think, sister, when we see them we might mention that we don't find her unsociable--just casually, you know. As for what you can wear, my dear--either your white crepe or white organdie is quite pretty enough, and much nicer than anything the Courtenay girls would have."

"To think of dinner at eight o'clock!" said Miss Joanna, who was only just recovering her powers of speech. "So very fashionable! I wish, dear, if you can, you would notice what they have. Mrs. Bobby says her cook is very good at croquettes. I wish you could tell me, dear, if they are better than ours."

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to think of croquettes," said Elizabeth, "what with the burden of being on my best behavior and entertaining Mr. Gerard. I think by the way, that he must be that dark man I have seen sometimes in their pew on Sundays. Which would he like me best in, do you suppose--the white crepe or the organdie? I must get them both out, and decide which to wear."

Elizabeth's spirits were as easily exhilarated as they were depressed. She ran up-stairs, humming a gay little tune which had not come into her head for many a day. This dinner at the Van Antwerps', with the prospect of meeting a few of her neighbors and apparently, one unmarried man, might have seemed to many people a commonplace affair enough; but to Elizabeth it was a great occasion, and for the rest of the evening, bright visions of future pleasure danced before her eyes. That night, for the first time in many weeks, she did not cry herself to sleep, thinking of Paul.

_Chapter XIII_

"And you really think I look nicely?" Elizabeth asked this question in tremulous excitement, as she stood before the long pier-glass in her room on the night of her first dinner-party. The maid was on her knees behind her arranging the folds of her train, Miss Joanna stood ready with her cloak, and Miss Cornelia hovered a little way off, admiring the scene. Elizabeth held her head high, there was a brilliant color in her cheeks, her eyes shone like stars. You would hardly have known her for the same girl who had struggled with sad thoughts and disappointed hopes in the twilight only a few days before. This seemed some young princess, to whom the good things of life came naturally, unsought, by the royal prerogative of beauty.

"You--you look lovely," faltered Miss Cornelia, forgetting her principles in the excitement of the occasion "and your dress is sweet."

"It is fortunate I had it cut low, isn't it," said Elizabeth, as she clasped a string of pearls, which had once belonged to her grandmother, about her round white throat. "There, do I look all right? You're _sure_ my skirt hangs well? I wanted a white rose, but we have no pretty ones left." A slight cloud of discontent crossed her face, but vanished instantly; since really, as she said to herself, she looked very nice even without flowers.

"Don't be late," entreated Miss Joanna. "Just think if the dinner should be spoiled!"

"Yes, it would be very bad manners," added Miss Cornelia "not to be punctual."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, doubtfully. "It's rather countrified to be too early." But still she drew on her gloves and put on her cloak, and started a good half-hour before the appointed time, in deference to Miss Joanna's fears for the dinner and Miss Cornelia's sense of the value of punctuality.

The clock was striking eight as she entered the wide hall of the Van Antwerps's house, and read, or fancied that she did, in the solemn butler's immobile countenance, an assurance that she was unfashionably prompt. The demure little maid who followed him and took Elizabeth's cloak, regretted to inform her that Mrs. Van Antwerp was not quite ready, but would be down directly, and hoped that Miss Van Vorst would excuse her unpunctuality. Elizabeth's heart sank, but the maid was ushering her into the drawing-room, and there was no retreat. Yet she shrank back involuntarily, as the long room yawned before her, empty, except for one person whom she did not know; and thus she stood for a moment hesitating, her warm Titian coloring framed against the dark plush of the portiere, and her white gown falling about her in graceful folds, of a statuesque simplicity almost severe, but from which her youth and rounded curves emerged all the more triumphant. Her heart beat fast and there was a deep burning color in her cheeks, but she held herself erect, with the proud little turn of the head that seemed to come to her by nature.

The tall dark man who was turning over the leaves of a magazine at the end of the room, looked up as she entered and gazed at her for a moment in silence. Their eyes met; for an instant he seemed to hesitate. Then he rose and walked slowly towards her.

"You must let me introduce myself, Miss Van Vorst," he said, and his voice was like his movements, very deliberate, yet it was clear-cut and pleasant in tone. "My name is Gerard. Mrs. Van Antwerp told me I should have the pleasure of taking you in to dinner."

He spoke so quietly and naturally, and seemed to accept the situation with such absolute indifference, that whatever awkwardness it might have contained for a young girl nervous over her first dinner, was instantly removed. Elizabeth felt grateful, and yet perversely a little piqued that this grave, dark man should place her at a disadvantage, that he should be perfectly at home and know exactly what to do, when she was nervous and flustered. But that kind Providence which had endowed Elizabeth with so many good gifts had given her among others a power to cover inward perturbation with a brave show of self-possession.

"I'm terribly early," she was able to say now, quite lightly and easily, though still with that uncomfortable beating of the heart. "My aunts are very old-fashioned, and insist on punctuality as one of the cardinal virtues."

"In which they are quite right, I think," said Mr. Gerard, smiling. "But when you know Mrs. Van Antwerp well, you will have learned that it is the one virtue in which she is utterly lacking."

"I--I don't know her very well," Elizabeth admitted, regretting somewhat that she could not assert the contrary. "I have never even been here before," she added, glancing about the room, whose stateliness was a little overpowering.

"Really! Then wouldn't you--a--like to come into the conservatory and look at the flowers?" suggested Mr. Gerard, who seemed to have charged himself with the duties of host. "Oh, you needn't wait for Mrs. Van Antwerp," he added, smiling, as Elizabeth hesitated. "I know the time when she went to dress, and can assert with confidence that she won't be down for another half-hour."

So Elizabeth found herself led, somewhat against her will, into the famous conservatory, of whose beauties she had often heard; but with which, it must be confessed, she was less occupied than with the man by her side, at whom she cast furtive glances from beneath her long lashes. He was tall--decidedly taller than herself, though she was a tall woman, and rather broadly built than otherwise. His dark, smooth-shaven face, which had lighted up pleasantly when he smiled, was in repose rather heavy and impassive, with an ugly, square chin, that seemed to indicate an indomitable will, of a kind to pursue tenaciously whatever he might desire. In contradiction to this, his eyes, except when a passing gleam of interest or amusement brightened their sombre depths, had a weary indifferent look, as if there were nothing in the world, on the whole, worth desiring.

"And this is the man," thought Elizabeth, "whom I am expected to amuse. He doesn't look as if it would be an easy task. But no doubt Mrs. Bobby has given him the same charge about me, and he is trying, conscientiously, to obey. That's why he's taken me in here to show me the sights, the way they do to the country visitors." Her heart leaped rebelliously at the thought, even while she was saying aloud mechanically: "'What a fine azalea!' I wonder if I look like a countrified production. My gown isn't, at least; but then--he wouldn't appreciate that fact. It probably would be the same to him, if it came out of the Ark; he isn't the sort of man to notice, one way or the other. I don't believe he cares for women--no, nor they for him. He's not at all good-looking, and he must be--thirty-five"--she ventured another glance. "Oh, that, at least. His hair is quite gray on the temples. 'Yes, those orchids are beautiful. I never saw anything like them.' I must do my duty and admire properly; he thinks me very unsophisticated, no doubt. I don't think I like him. Did Mrs. Bobby think it would amuse me to--amuse him? But perhaps he is thinking the same thing about me." And she stole another glance at his face, but could not read, in his half-closed eyes and unmoved expression, any indication of his real feelings.