Part 7

They had made the round of the conservatory, when suddenly he stopped. "Don't you--want a flower for your gown," he asked. He looked about him reflectively. "Let me see," he said. "You would like it to be white." Elizabeth wondered how he knew that. After a moment's hesitation, he chose a white rose and gave it to her. She fastened it carefully in her gown, where its green leaves formed the only touch of color.

"How does it look?" she asked innocently, and raised her eyes to his, where unexpectedly they encountered an odd gleam, of something that seemed neither wholly interest nor yet amusement, and that made her look down again quickly, while the warm color mantled in her cheeks. It was a moment before he answered her.

"It looks well," he said then, quietly, "and suits your gown." And they sauntered back slowly to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Bobby came hurrying in by the opposite door, fastening as she went the diamond star in her black lace.

"My dear child," she said, kissing Elizabeth, "what must you think of me! It is all Bobby's fault for taking us such a long drive, and I see he is not down yet either, the wretch! But Julian has been entertaining you, so it is all right. I'm afraid though that he has been taking away my character unmercifully, telling you that I am always late, and other pleasing things of the kind."

Gerard's smile again softened his face. "Do me justice, Eleanor," he said. "You know I don't say worse things of my friends behind their backs than I do to their faces."

She laughed. "I should be sorry for them if you did," she returned. "But here," she went on, as voices were heard in the hall, "here, in good time, are the Rector and his wife. What a blessing they didn't arrive sooner!"

The words had hardly left her lips before the Rector and his wife were ushered in, the latter uttering voluble apologies for being late, and laying all the blame on the erratic behavior of the village hackman, who feeling an utter contempt for people who did not keep their own carriages, reserved the privilege of calling for them at what hour he pleased. The theme of his unpunctuality was so engrossing that the Rector's wife would have enlarged on it for some time, had she not caught sight of Elizabeth, and in her surprise subsided into a chair and momentary silence. And then strolled in Bobby Van Antwerp, fair, well-groomed, amiable, and mildly bored at the prospect of entertaining his neighbors; and immediately afterwards followed the Hartingtons, still more bored at the prospect of being entertained; after which they all went in to dinner, and Elizabeth found herself seated between the Rector and Gerard.

"You live here all the year round, don't you?" the latter said to her, somewhere about the third course, when he had given utterance to several other conventional remarks, and she had grown accustomed to the multiplicity of forks at her plate, and had decided that the light of wax candles, beaming softly under rose-colored shades, was eminently becoming to every one. She looked at him now with an odd little challenge in her eyes, called forth, in spite of herself, by the wearied civility of his conversational efforts.

"Yes, I live here all the year round," she said, in her clear, flute-like voice. "I--I'm a country girl, you see."

He smiled. "You are to be congratulated, I think."

"Do you think so?" asked Elizabeth, in genuine surprise.

"Why, yes, I love the country; don't you," he said tranquilly.

She was silent for a moment, her eyes resting absently on the graceful erection of ferns in the centre of the table, which rose, like a fairy island, from a lake of glass. "It's not a conventional thing to say," she answered at last, slowly "but if you want the truth"--

"I always want the truth," said Gerard.

"Well, then, I don't think I do care for the country," she said. "I've had too much of it. I--there are times when I detest it." She spoke with sudden vehemence, and she met his wondering gaze with eyes that were curiously hard.

Gerard's face clouded. "You don't care for the country," he said, slowly, "and yet you live here all the year round?"

"Ah, that's the very reason," she said, lightly. "People always tell you that you don't appreciate your blessings; but how can you reasonably be expected to, when you don't have any voice in choosing them?"

"If you did, you probably wouldn't like them any better," he retorted. "And it would be more annoying to think that you had had a voice in the matter and had chosen wrong."

"Perhaps," said Elizabeth, "but I should like to make the experiment." And she stared again thoughtfully at the feathery forms of the ferns.

"Well, if you had your choice," said Gerard, lazily, "what would you choose as an improvement on the present state of things?"

She turned towards him with a slight start. "What should I choose," she said, slowly "as an improvement on my life just now?"

"Yes, if you had a fairy Godmother," suggested Gerard.

"With unlimited power?" questioned Elizabeth.

He laughed. "Well, not quite that, perhaps," he said, "but--a fairy Godmother who could give you a good deal. A very charming one, too," he added, in a low voice.

Elizabeth knit her brows and pouted out her full lips, in apparently deep reflection. "If I had a fairy Godmother," she said, musingly, "and she were to give me three wishes--three, you know, is the magic number in the fairy tales--why, I should choose first of all, I think, a season in town"--

"Which you might tire of in a month," suggested Gerard.

"Not at all," said Elizabeth, decidedly, "because my second wish would be for the capacity to be always amused."

"And do you really think," said Gerard, "that you would like that--to go through life as if it were a sort of opera bouffe?"

"Why not?" said Elizabeth. "I'm a frivolous person. I confess I like opera bouffe."

"For an evening, perhaps," said Gerard, "but after a time you'd get tired of it--oh, yes, I'm sure you would--and you'd begin to think"--

"Ah, no, I shouldn't," she interrupted him, eagerly "for that's what my third wish should be. I should ask for the power never to think. Thought--thought is horrible." She spoke the last words very low, more to herself than him, and broke off suddenly, as an odd, frightened look crept into her eyes. Gerard watched her in some perplexity.

"This girl," he said to himself "who must be, I suppose, somewhere about twenty, and has seen, according to Eleanor, nothing of the world, talks sometimes like a thoughtless child, and sometimes like a woman of thirty, and an unhappy one at that. I can't quite make her out." Aloud he said, in an odd, dry voice that he had not hitherto used towards her, "Now that you have pretty well in theory at least, reduced yourself to the level of a brainless doll, why not ask, now that you are about it, for the power not to feel? Then you would really be a complete automaton, and nothing on earth could have power to hurt you."

Elizabeth had grown very pale, and her hands were tightly locked together under the table. "Ah," she said, wearily "I've exhausted my three wishes. And, besides, it's too much to ask. No fairy Godmother, I'm afraid, could give one the power not to feel."

"Be thankful for that," he said, quickly. "A woman who has no capacity for suffering is--is--would be unspeakably repellant."

"Would she?" said Elizabeth, dreamily. "I should think, for my part, that she would be rather enviable." She sat staring absently before her, and Gerard did not try to break the silence. In a moment Mrs. Hartington on his other side claimed his attention, and Elizabeth was not sorry. She felt vaguely resentful towards him for having made her think of unpleasant things, which she had resolved not to do that evening. The dinner went on, and she helped herself mechanically to dish after dish which was pressed upon her. The Rector turned to her and made a few labored remarks, adapted as he thought to her youthful intelligence, and she answered them absently. Bobby Van Antwerp told, in a languid way, a funny story for the benefit of the table, and the conversation grew general for awhile. Dinner was nearly over when Gerard said, turning to her with a pleasant smile:

"I'm not a prophet, and yet I am going to venture on a prediction. In a little while, I think, you'll find your fairy Godmother, and have your season in town, though I don't know if the other things will be thrown in; and then some time in the course of it, I'll ask you if you are satisfied, and you'll tell me perhaps, that you are sick of it all, and are pining for the country, the green fields, and--a--the view of the river"--

He stopped as Elizabeth interrupted him flippantly. "Oh, no, never," she cried. "I'd prefer city streets to green fields any day, and as for the river--I've looked at it all my life, and I'm afraid I've exhausted its possibilities." She was quite herself again, her cheeks were pink; she looked up at him with laughing eyes. "Confess that you think me terribly frivolous," she said; "confess that you disapprove of me entirely."

"On the contrary," said Gerard, with rather a cold smile "I think there is a good deal to be said for your point of view--and as for disapproval, that's a priggish sensation that I hope I don't allow myself to feel towards any one. Wait till I see you in town," he went on, more genially "and then perhaps we'll agree better."

"Ah, but you never will see me in town," she said, sadly.

"Never?" he returned, slightly raising his eye-brows. "That's rather a rash prediction. I think I may have the pleasure of meeting you there before very long. You see I believe in fairy Godmothers," he added, lightly, as Mrs. Bobby gave the signal, and, rising, he pushed back Elizabeth's chair.

She paused for a moment, as she gathered up in one hand the soft white folds of her gown. "I wish your faith could perform miracles," she said. And then she followed dreamily in the wake of the well-worn black satin gown, which had been seen, on many another festive occasion, on the broad back of the Rector's wife.

"He does disapprove of me," the girl thought to herself. "He would have liked me better if I were a little bread-and-butter miss, in white muslin and blue ribbons, who babbled of green fields and taught a class in Sunday school. That's the kind of woman he admires. He thinks me hard and flippant, but--I don't care. At least he dropped that weary, society manner. It is something to have inspired him with an emotion of some sort, even if it happens to be disapproval."

_Chapter XIV_

The Rector's wife, after the first surprise, was very glad to see Elizabeth. It made her feel more at home, and she drew her down now eagerly, beside her on the sofa by the fire, whose warmth on that autumn evening modified the somewhat chill atmosphere of the state drawing-room.

"My dear Elizabeth, I never expected to see you here." Increased respect mingled with the surprise in her tone. Elizabeth had certainly gone up several degrees in her estimation. "It's quite an honor to be asked--the Courtenays never are, I know, though don't repeat that I said so. Of course we are asked every year, as is only due, you know, to the Rector's position, my dear; but almost always the children are ill, or something goes wrong, and it's three years now since we've been able to come. It was unfortunate our being late this time. Do you think Mrs. Bobby was much annoyed?" The Rector's wife lowered her voice anxiously, as she for the first time waited for a response.

"Oh, no," Elizabeth was able truthfully to assure her. "I'm sure she wasn't annoyed."

"Well, to be sure, the Hartingtons were later"--in a tone of relief--"but these great swells can do as they please. You look very nice, Elizabeth, very nice indeed. I never saw that dress before. It must be pleasant to have something new occasionally"--and the Rector's wife gave a gentle sigh. "You see I have had the color changed on this dress--red, I think, makes it look quite different, and it is warm and pretty for the autumn. Don't repeat this, Elizabeth, but I wore the same dress here the last time I came to dinner four years ago--only then it was trimmed with pale blue. It was summer, you see, so it looked cool. Do you suppose Mrs. Bobby would remember?"

"Oh, I don't suppose Mrs. Bobby cares"--Elizabeth began absently "much about dress," she added, hastily. She was looking vaguely about her, wondering as the familiar voice meandered on, if she were really at dinner at the Van Antwerps', or prosaically seated as she had so often been before, in the Rectory parlor.

Mrs. Hartington, a large fair woman, very splendidly dressed, had seized upon Mrs. Bobby and was talking to her on a sofa at the other end of the room.

"So you have taken up the Van Vorst girl," she was saying, as she surveyed Elizabeth through her lorgnette. "She is really quite pretty, and--a--not bad form. That gown of hers is effective--it's so simple. I wonder how she learned to dress herself, here in the country."

"Oh, she's learned more than that, Sybil, I imagine," said Mrs. Bobby, in level tones. "I think her very good form, and extremely pretty. Her coloring is very picturesque, and quite natural." This very innocently, without a glance at the conspicuously blonde hair which her friends said had not been bestowed on Sybil Hartington by nature.

"She inherits it from her mother, I suppose--a red-haired bar-maid, wasn't she?" said Mrs. Hartington, again subjecting Elizabeth to a prolonged scrutiny. "After all, she lacks distinction," she announced, dropping her lorgnette and turning to more important subjects.

Mrs. Bobby did not enjoy that half-hour after dinner; neither, perhaps, did Elizabeth, who had heard several times already the account of the attack of measles from which the Rectory children had lately recovered, and was glad when the men appeared in the midst of it. But if she had expected Mr. Gerard to come up to her to resume their conversation, as perhaps she had, in spite of her consciousness of his disapproval, she was destined to be disappointed. Gerard did give her one long look, as she sat in the full glow of the firelight; but he turned almost immediately and spoke to Mrs. Hartington, who had, indeed, the air of confidently expecting him to do so. It was Bobby Van Antwerp who sauntered up to Elizabeth, hospitably intent on making her feel at home.

"It was awfully good of you to come to-night, Miss Van Vorst. These dinner-parties in the country are stupid things, but, after all, it's a way of seeing something of one's neighbors. I think you're too unsociable here, as a rule. It's a bore of course to take one's horses out at night, but if one always thought of that, one would never go anywhere."

"I'm sure," Elizabeth said sincerely, "I was very glad to come. A dinner-party is a great event to me."

"Ah, well, it is dull here for a young girl," said Bobby, kindly. "My wife finds it very dull; but she knows I'm fond of the old place, and she comes to please me. You and she must try to amuse each other. You know, between ourselves"--lowering his voice--"Eleanor doesn't always take to people; it has made some of our neighbors around here feel rather sore--I'm afraid. But she does take to you, and so I hope we shall see a great deal of you."

Elizabeth smiled and murmured her thanks, wondering greatly to find herself thus singled out from the rest of the Neighborhood; and just then Mrs. Bobby came up and took her hand.

"Come," she said, "I want you to play for me. I'm so fond of music, and I've heard that you play beautifully."

"Ah, but I don't," Elizabeth protested; but still she allowed herself to be led to the piano, without undue reluctance. And then that grand piano, with the name of the maker had been tempting her to try it ever since dinner-time.

After all, it is doubtful if Mrs. Bobby cared so very much for music; but it is possible she knew of some one else who did. Elizabeth had a gift which had come to her, Heaven knows how!--a gift in which far greater pianists are sometimes lacking--the power to throw herself into what she played and to infuse into it something of her own personality. Her playing seemed no mere, mechanical repetition of what she had been taught, but the unstudied, spontaneous expression of her own thoughts and feelings. As she passed at Mrs. Bobby's request from one thing to another, mingling more set compositions with fragments from operas and songs of the day, the conversation between Mrs. Hartington and Gerard slackened, and he glanced more and more frequently towards the piano.

"Music is rather a bore--isn't it--after dinner this way," drawled Mrs. Hartington, noticing this fact.

"I don't think I agree with you. I'm fond of music," said Gerard, and after awhile he found an opportunity to saunter over to the piano, where Elizabeth sat playing, a little absently now, bits from Wagner. She started and looked up, blushing slightly, as Gerard asked her if she could play the Fire-music.

"I--it is a long time since I have tried it," she began, impelled by some vague instinct to refuse, and then she stopped, and almost unconsciously her fingers touched the keys, as she caught a look that seemed to compel obedience. He smiled.

"Please play it," he said, and though the tone was caressing, there lurked in it a half perceptible note of command. She felt it, as she began to play, and he stood listening, his grave eyes fixed upon her face. "A severe judge," she thought to herself with a proud little thrill of rebellion. And then, as she played on, she forgot this thought, and the fear of his criticism; forgot the strange room, and the strange people, and the fact that she was dining at the Van Antwerps'; forgot everything but the eyes fixed upon her, and played as she had never played before.

Elizabeth had always put the best of herself into her music, her finest qualities of brain and soul. But now she put into it something of which she before was hardly conscious, a force and depth and fire, which stirred inarticulately within her, and found expression in the throbbing Wagnerian chords. All the magic of the fairy spell thrilled beneath her touch, as it rose and fell and wove itself in and out amidst the clash of conflicting motives, while Brünnhilde sank ever deeper into slumber, and the flames leaped and danced and played about her sleeping form, and there lurked no premonition in her maiden dreams of that fatal, all-engrossing love, which was yet to awaken her from the serenity of oblivion. Then, as the rippling cadence died away, Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, striking furtive harmonies, till she passed at length into the poignant sweetness, the passionate self-surrender of the second act of Tristan, and so on to the Liebestod, with its swan-song of triumphant anguish, of love supreme even in death. With the last sobbing chord, Elizabeth's hands fell from the keys, and she sat staring straight before her, with eyes that were unusually large and dark.

"Upon my word she _can_ play," said Bobby Van Antwerp, and looked, for him, slightly stirred. "She has temperament," Mrs. Hartington coldly responded and again honored Elizabeth with a prolonged stare. "My dear child," exclaimed Elizabeth's hostess, "I had no idea you could play like that." The only person who said nothing was the man for whom she had played. He stood motionless by the piano, and his face was white and set. When the applause of the others had ceased, and Elizabeth, blushing now and smiling, looked up at him in involuntary surprise at his silence as if from a dream, he started and then, recovering himself, he spoke mechanically a few conventional words of thanks, and without comment on her performance, turned abruptly away.

Elizabeth still sat, a trifle dazed, at the piano, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Her cheeks were burning painfully and she bit her lip to keep back the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes. She seemed to have fallen suddenly from the clouds back to earth. After a moment she rose and went over to her hostess to say farewell.

"Don't go," Mrs. Bobby entreated, holding her hand, "I really haven't seen anything of you."

"I must go, thank you," Elizabeth said, quietly. "William,"--this was the gardener, who on state occasions officiated as coachman--"will be furious if he is kept waiting."

She felt a sudden eagerness to be gone, and Mrs. Bobby admitted the force of her excuse and parted with her reluctantly. Both Bobby and Gerard escorted her into the hall, but it was Gerard who placed her in the carriage, and yet, as he did so, said not a word further of seeing her again.

"He probably doesn't wish to," thought Elizabeth, "now that he has done his duty to the last." The reflection was the only unpleasant one that she brought away from an otherwise successful evening.

Gerard sauntered back into the drawing-room, and stood leaning against the mantel-piece, gazing with thoughtful eyes into the fire, while, as it leaped and flickered, and sent out glowing tongues of flame, a woman's face looked up at him framed in her shimmering hair, and the magic of the fire-music still rang in his ear, mingled with the more passionate strains of Tristan, the deeper tragedy of Liebestod.

He had been standing thus a long time when Mrs. Bobby came and stood beside him. The other guests had left and Bobby had gone off to his den.

"Well," she said tentatively, glancing up smiling into his face, "well, Julian, what did you think of her?"

He started and looked at her blankly for a moment. "Think of--whom, Eleanor?" he asked.

"You know whom I mean--Elizabeth Van Vorst."

Gerard's eyes wandered back to the fire, where they rested for a moment absently. "I think," he said at last slowly, and as if weighing his words with more than his wonted deliberation, "I think there's too much red in her hair."

"Too much red in her hair," Mrs. Bobby repeated blankly; then recovering herself: "But there isn't any, Julian, or very little. I call her hair golden, not red."

"Look at it in the fire-light," Gerard insisted imperturbably, "and you will see that it's a deep red."

"Well, and if it is," said Mrs. Bobby--"not that I admit for a moment that you are right--but if it is, red hair is all the fashion nowadays."

"No doubt," said Gerard. "It's a matter of taste. But for myself I never see a red-haired woman"--He stopped, but went on presently with an effort. "I never see a red-haired woman, that I don't instinctively avoid her. Yes, it's a--a superstition, if you will. I feel that she will be dangerous, somehow or another, perhaps to herself, and certainly to others." A note of unwonted feeling thrilled his voice. He broke off suddenly and stared again into the fire.

Mrs. Bobby sat and watched him in silence. "And so," she said to herself, "_that_ woman's hair was red."

"You see," said Gerard, presently, looking at her with a smile, "I've shown the confidence I repose in you by confessing my pet superstition. Miss Van Vorst's hair is not _very_ red, I admit, except in some lights, but still it's--it's red enough to be dangerous; and that fact, and certain other little things I've noticed about her, incline me to--to avoid her. She puzzles me; I can't quite make her out. Still, she is certainly a girl whom a great many men would--would admire. I'm no criterion, I believe."

"I hope not, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bobby, ruefully "for the sake of most of the women I know. My dear Julian, I despair of ever getting you married."

"My dear Eleanor, if you would only stop trying. Your efforts are, if you will excuse my saying so, a little too transparent. Do you suppose that I imagined this evening that your unpunctuality was entirely accidental?"