Part 8

"Imagine what you will, you marvel of astuteness," said Eleanor, composedly. "I certainly did not intend to hurry down while I knew Elizabeth to be in such good hands, as I admit yours to be, in spite of certain faults which I hope marriage will improve. And that's why I don't relax my efforts, as you call them, while there is such a superfluity of nice girls in the world, and such an insufficiency of nice men to deserve them. But I'm disappointed about--about Elizabeth Van Vorst," she went on, musingly. "I thought--I don't know why, Julian--but I thought that you would like her."

Gerard started. "I never said that I--didn't like her," he observed.

"No, but your remarks seemed to point in that direction. Now I like her very much. Indeed, to return your confidence with another, Julian"--she looked up with a smile--"I was thinking, if Bobby approves, of asking her to spend the winter with me.

"I knew that," he returned, calmly, "and I approve of the plan highly. It will be a pleasant change for her, as she doesn't seem exactly satisfied with her surroundings; and for you it will be a--a"--he paused, apparently in search of an appropriate word--"an interesting study," he concluded.

She looked up in surprise. "A--a study," she repeated.

"Yes, a study--to see what a girl like that, with the somewhat odd antecedents that you told me about once, and some contradictory characteristics that I think she has--to see how she develops in the storm and stress of a New York season. I--I think you will find it quite interesting, Eleanor."

"I'm glad you think so," she returned, softly. "But--how about yourself, Julian? Couldn't you--just on general psychological principles--condescend to take an interest in it, too?"

A shadow fell on Gerard's face. "Oh, for myself," he said, carelessly, "I'm not easily interested in things nowadays, and above all not--thank Heaven! not in women." He paused. "All the same," he added, "you have the best wishes--for the success of your protégée." And with this he bade her good-night, and left her.

She sat for a long time without moving, and watched the fire flicker and die away.

"On the whole, I'm rather glad her hair is red--in certain lights at least," she observed at last, apparently to the smouldering embers. "It--it makes the study still more interesting."

_Chapter XV_

When Eleanor Van Antwerp had uttered the words "If Bobby approves," she had given voice to a purely conventional formula; for when, in the eight years of their married life, had Bobby not approved of anything that she might chance to desire? She did not suppose for a moment that he would object to her asking Elizabeth Van Vorst, or any one under the sun, to spend the winter, and when, the next morning, she paid him a visit in his den, where he was supposed to be transacting important business, and proved to be enjoying a novel and a cigar, she was still, as she asked his permission to carry out her new plan, merely paying a graceful concession to the perfunctory and outworn theory of his supremacy. Bobby listened placidly, puffing at his cigar, his clear-cut, clean-shaven profile, outlined against the window-pane seeming absolutely impassive in the gray light of the autumn day. But when she concluded, and was waiting, all aglow with her own enthusiasm, for his answer, he turned his blue eyes towards her with an unusually thoughtful look.

"Well," she said, impatiently, as he still declined to commit himself, "what do you think?"

"What do I think," he repeated, slowly, "of your asking Elizabeth Van Vorst to spend the winter?"

"Why, yes, I don't want to do it, dear, of course, unless you approve."

"Well, then," said Bobby, calmly, "if you ask my candid opinion, I think it would be a mistake. I--I'd rather you didn't Eleanor, really I would."

"Bobby," Eleanor Van Antwerp stared at her husband in incredulous amazement. "Bobby, you don't mean to say that you don't want me to ask her?"

"That's about it." Bobby paused and reflectively knocked the ashes from his cigar. "You see," he went on, argumentatively "this is the way I look at it. The girl is good-looking, and all that, and it's very nice for you to see something of her up here, and I'm only too glad, for it's awfully sweet of you, darling, to come here on my account, and I've always been sorry that there wasn't some woman whom you could be friends with. But to ask a girl to spend the winter, and introduce her to people, is--is a responsibility; and if you want to ask any one--why, I'd rather it were some girl whom I know all about--that's all."

It was not often that Bobby made such a long speech. His wife could hardly hear him to the end of it. "But, my dear Bobby" she exclaimed, breaking in upon his last words, "you know all about Elizabeth Van Vorst!"

"Do I," said Bobby, quietly. "I know that her father was a fool, and that her mother was--worse. Perhaps it would be better if I didn't know quite so much, Eleanor."

"For Heaven's sake, don't harp on what happened centuries ago," cried Mrs. Bobby, who had not been born in the neighborhood. "I've always thought it a shame the way people here snub that poor girl. People can't help what their fathers and mothers were like. If mine were fairly respectable, I'm sure it's no credit to me."

"None at all," Bobby assented, "but still you'd feel rather badly if they were not. It's a natural feeling, Eleanor. I'm not a crank about family, but on general principles, I think a girl whose mother was a lady is more apt to behave herself than one whose mother was--well, quite the reverse."

"And on general principles," said Eleanor, quickly "I agree with you, but I think Elizabeth Van Vorst the exception that proves the rule."

"Then I would rather," said Bobby, tranquilly, "that it were proved under some one else's auspices than yours."

"But that doesn't seem likely, under the circumstances," exclaimed his wife, impatiently. "Really, Bobby, you disappoint me. I never supposed you had such narrow-minded ideas. The girl has been very well brought up by those dear old aunts, and she is perfectly well-bred. And I'm sure there is plenty of good blood in the family as well as bad. The Schuyler Van Vorsts are their cousins, and lots of old Dutch families. I dare say, if we went far enough back, we'd find ourselves related to them, too."

"I dare say," said Bobby, resignedly, "if we went far enough back, we'd find ourselves related to a lot of queer people. But we don't, thank Heaven! have to ask them to visit us."

"Ah, well, I see you are hopelessly opposed to my plan," said Mrs. Bobby, changing her tactics, "and of course, dear, as I told you before, I wouldn't think of asking any one unless you approve."

"Oh, I don't really care," said Bobby, somewhat taken aback by this sudden surrender. "Ask any one you please. You know I never interfere with your plans. Only don't blame me if they turn out badly--that's all."

"Ah, but they never do," cried Mrs. Bobby, "at least this one won't, I'm sure. I really have set my heart on it, Bobby," she went on, pleadingly. "The truth is, though I don't often speak of it, going out has been a weariness, and that big house in town seems horribly empty since--since the baby died." Her lip trembled and she paused for a moment, while Bobby turned and stared fixedly out of the window at the brilliantly-tinted leaves that a chill east wind was whirling inexorably to the ground. "I thought," she went on presently, in a voice that was not quite steady, "that if I had some one with me to make the house seem a little brighter--some young girl whom I could take with me on the same old round that I'm so sick of--why, I could look at life through her eyes, and it would seem more worth while. But of course Bobby," she concluded, earnestly, "I wouldn't for the world do anything to which you really object."

"My dear Eleanor," said Bobby, turning round at this and speaking for him quite solemnly. "You know I don't object to anything in the world that could make you happy."

And so Mrs. Bobby had her own way.

It was on Saturday that this conversation took place; and on Sunday afternoon they all walked over to the Homestead--Mrs. Bobby, her husband and Gerard. Elizabeth had been prepared for their coming, by a whisper from Mrs. Bobby after church; and tea was all ready for them with Miss Joanna's cakes, and a fire that was welcome after the cold out-doors, where the bleak east wind was still robbing the trees of their glory and ushering in prematurely the dull grayness of November. Mrs. Bobby was not satisfied till she could draw Elizabeth to a distant sofa, and deliver the invitation which she felt, in her impetuous fashion, she could not withhold for another day.

But though the first of Elizabeth's wishes was thus fulfilled with a promptness most unusual outside of fairy tales, she did not accept with the enthusiasm that might have been expected. For a moment, indeed, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed with delight. And then of a sudden the color faded, her eyes fell, she shrank back as if frightened at the idea.

"I--I--it's awfully sweet of you, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said, low and hurriedly, "but I--I can't go--I wish I could, but I can't. Don't--don't ask me." It was almost as if she had said, "Don't tempt me." Poor Mrs. Bobby, whose intentions were so good, was exceedingly puzzled and not a little piqued.

"Oh, well, if you don't care to come," she said, coldly, in the great-lady manner which she seldom assumed, "of course I shall not urge you. I shouldn't have mentioned the subject, if I had not thought from what you said the other day, that you were really anxious to come to town."

"So I was, so I am--for some reasons; but for others--Dear Mrs. Van Antwerp," the girl pleaded, "don't think me ungrateful. I should love to come beyond anything, but--but I can't. It doesn't seem right," she added, more firmly.

"Doesn't seem right," repeated Mrs. Bobby, wondering, "You mean on your aunts' account. You think it wouldn't be right to leave them?"

"Yes," Elizabeth assented, as if relieved at being furnished with an excuse of some sort, however feeble, "I don't think it would be right to leave them."

"But that is nonsense," cried Mrs. Bobby. "They will miss you terribly, of course, but it will be no worse than when you were at school, and they would be the first to wish you to go, I'm sure."

Elizabeth was quite sure of it, too. Mrs. Bobby, reading this conviction in her eyes, and all the more anxious for the success of her plan, now that it met with so many unexpected obstacles, went on to expatiate on the delights of a season in town, and all the possibilities that life can offer, to one who has youth, talent and beauty. Elizabeth listened eagerly with dilating eyes, which she only once withdrew from Mrs. Bobby's face, to glance across to the other end of the room, where Mr. Gerard was leaning forward in an attitude of respectful interest, as he talked to Miss Cornelia. For a moment Elizabeth's eyes rested, half absently perhaps, on the strong lines of his face, while the irrelevant thought passed through her mind: "I wonder what he would think." Then, quick as lightning, the answer followed. "I don't care," she said, under her breath, and drew herself up with a little flash of defiance.

She turned towards Mrs. Bobby. "Do you really want me?" she asked, caressingly.

"Should I have asked you, if I didn't," laughed Mrs. Bobby, triumphant, as she saw that victory was hers.

Elizabeth told the news to her aunts as soon as the visitors had left. Their delight was what she had expected. They were eager in approving her decision, and in assuring her that she should have all the pretty gowns that the occasion required, sustained by the conviction, which occurred simultaneously to the minds of both, that their old black silks, which they had foolishly thought of as shabby, would do admirably another winter. It would be the height of extravagance, as Miss Cornelia afterwards observed to replace them.

"It's just what we have always wished for you," she cried, her little curls all a'flutter with joyful excitement, "and so unexpected--quite like a fairy-tale."

"Yes," Elizabeth assented, "quite like a fairy-tale. There's only one difference," she added to herself, as she left the room, "from every well-regulated fairy-tale that I ever heard of. The fairy Godmother, coach and four, are just a little--too late."

_Chapter XVI_

"My dear Elizabeth," said Mrs. Bobby, "I regret to say it, but you really are growing terribly spoiled."

The winter was far advanced when Mrs. Bobby made this remark. With Lent growing every day nearer, the whirl of gaiety grew ever faster and more furious. It was not often that Mrs. Bobby and her guest had an opportunity for private conversation. But to-night, as it happened, they had merely been out to dinner, and having returned at an unusually early hour, Elizabeth came into Mrs. Bobby's boudoir in her long white dressing-gown, and sat brushing out her masses of wavy hair, while she and her hostess discussed the evening's entertainment, and other recent events of interest.

Mrs. Bobby's eyes rested upon Elizabeth with all the satisfaction with which a connoisseur regards some beautiful object of which he has been the discoverer. Elizabeth's beauty, Elizabeth's conquests, formed to Mrs. Bobby just then a theme of which she never tired. Nor did she fail to make them the text for various sermons that she delivered to Bobby about this time, on the subject of her own wisdom, and his utter failure as a prophet.

"Confess, Bobby, that my plans turn out well," she would say, "and that I'm not such a fool as you thought me."

"Why, I never," Bobby would protest, "thought you anything of the kind." But she would go on unheeding:

"It would have been a shame for that girl to be buried in the country, and I do take some credit to myself for having rescued her from such a fate. But after that, all the credit is due to Elizabeth. I did what I could, of course, to launch her successfully, but when all is said and done, a girl has to sink or swim on her own merits. Elizabeth takes to society as a duck does to water; it's her natural element. And talk of heredity! There are not many girls with the most aristocratic mothers who can come into a room with the air that she has, as if she didn't care two straws whether any one spoke to her or not, and then of course every one does. Now explain to me, Bobby, if you can, where the girl gets that air."

"I suppose," said Bobby, "if I believed implicitly in heredity (which I am not at all sure that I do) I'd account for it by your own remark that she has plenty of good blood as well as bad."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bobby, incredulously, "you can always make a theory fit in somehow."

But though Mrs. Bobby exulted in that air of indifference with which Elizabeth accepted, as if it were a mere matter of course, all the devotion offered up at her feet, she was beginning to realize that the most admirable qualities can be carried too far. And thus it was that she upbraided her this evening with being unreasonably spoiled, and not sufficiently appreciating the good things which had fallen to her lot.

"I don't know what you want me to do," Elizabeth said, quietly, when she had listened for some moments to this rather vague accusation. "I'm sure I go everywhere that I'm asked, and that, you must admit, is saying a good deal; I talk to all the men who talk to me, and that again you must admit, means a great deal of conversational effort; and--and I make no distinctions between them whatever, and do my duty on all occasions. I really don't know what more you can expect."

"But that," exclaimed her hostess, "is exactly what I complain of. You go everywhere you are asked--yes, and you never express a preference for any particular place; you talk to the men who talk to you, and you make no distinctions--no, for apparently it's all the same to you, whether it's this man or the other."

"Not quite," said Elizabeth, placidly, "for one man amuses me and another doesn't. But beyond that, I don't--thank Heaven! I don't care." She broke off suddenly, and she drew her comb with unwonted vehemence through her hair.

"I don't know why you should thank Heaven," said Mrs. Bobby, watching her narrowly, "for a fact that is quite abnormal in a girl of your age, who has some of the nicest men in town in love with her. There are times when I think you are quite heartless, and yet--with that hair, and those eyes, and the way you throw yourself into your music, you seem to have abundance of temperament. On the whole, Elizabeth, you are a puzzling combination. What was it Mr. D'Hauteville said of you--that you reminded him of a lake of ice in a circle of fire?"

"Mr. D'Hauteville," said Elizabeth, yawning, "is fond of glittering similes. This one sounds well, but doesn't bear close consideration. The fire, I should think, under the circumstances, would dissolve the ice."

"Perhaps it will," said Mrs. Bobby, "when the right time comes."

"Which will be never," said Elizabeth, with decision. Her hostess smiled as one who has heard such things said before.

"After all," she resumed, after a pause, returning to the grievance which had first started the conversation, "I could forgive you everything else, but this indifference about your picture. One would think that when a great artist asks as a special favor to paint your portrait, you might at least have the decency to go to look at it, when it is on exhibition, and all New York is talking about it."

"That's the very reason," said Elizabeth, "why it strikes me as rather bad taste for me to stand in rapt contemplation before it, while a lot of people are jostling me, and making remarks about my eyes, and hair, and mouth, as if it were I on exhibition, and not Mr. ----'s picture."

"Well, it _is_ you whom they want to see," said Mrs. Bobby. "The New York public doesn't care much for art, but it does take an interest in the people whom it reads about in the papers--a weakness that we needn't quarrel with, since it has made the Portrait Show a success, and given us so many thousands for our hospital."

"Well, at least," said Elizabeth, "I have done my duty in contributing my portrait to the good cause; so don't ask me to be present in actual flesh and blood, and above all not to face such a crowd as there was the other day, when we tried to look at it and my gown was nearly torn off my back in the process."

"You could go early," suggested Mrs. Bobby, "as I did the other day. You have no idea how much better it looks in that light than it did at the studio."

"I am very tired of it, in any light," said Elizabeth. "People have talked to me so much about it. But, if you insist upon it I will go--I will go early. There are some of the other portraits too that I should like to look at, if I can do so in peace." And with this concession, the conversation was allowed to drop for a moment.

It was Elizabeth who resumed it, speaking slowly and tentatively, with many lapses, and eyes carefully turned away from her friend. "You talk," she said, "a great deal of my successes, and I suppose, in a way, I ought to be--satisfied. And of course I am," she added, hastily. "People have been very nice to me. I--I couldn't ask for anything more. And yet--there is one person--I don't know if you have noticed it--one person with whom I am a distinct failure, who I think almost dislikes me, and that is--your friend Mr. Gerard."

"What, Julian," said Mrs. Bobby, in a tone that was absolutely devoid of expression. "You think he--doesn't like you?"

"I am quite sure of it," said Elizabeth.

"But why," questioned Mrs. Bobby, in apparent bewilderment. "What reason have you for thinking so?"

"A great many, but any one of them would be enough. To begin with, he never speaks to me if he can possibly help himself. His avoidance of me is quite pointed--you surely must have noticed it?" She fixed her eyes anxiously upon Mrs. Bobby.

"I"--Mrs. Bobby checked the impulsive words that rose to her lips. "Julian is--is very peculiar," she said in a non-committal tone. "I don't think he cares for women."

"Perhaps not; but still I have seen him talk to them--in a bored sort of way, it is true. But to me he never talks, in any way whatsoever."

"He never has a chance. You are always surrounded."

"He would have the same chance as the others. No, it isn't that. He disapproves of me; I can feel it, as he looks at me through those dark, half-shut eyes of his, and it gives me an uncomfortable sense of wickedness. He thinks me flippant, and vain, and frivolous, and I am when he is there, or I seem so. When he is listening, I say all the horrid, cynical, heartless things I can think of. I have to say them, somehow. It is fate. It began the first night that I met him--it was in the country, do you remember?" She paused and again looked questioningly at Mrs. Bobby.

"Yes," the latter answered softly, "I remember."

"I was rather excited that night--it was the first time I had ever been out to dinner. I talked in a flippant sort of way about hating the country, and longing to go out, and wanting to be always amused. It was very _young_, I suppose." Elizabeth spoke with all the superiority of a girl half-way through her first season towards her more unsophisticated self of a few months before. "He didn't like it. The sort of woman whom he admires knows her catechism, and is satisfied with that situation in life where it has pleased Providence to place her. I shocked him; he has never got over it. He showed me, that very evening, how he disliked me--it was so pointed that it was almost rude. You asked me--do you remember? to play." She stopped.

"I remember," said Mrs. Bobby again softly. "I never heard you play so well."

"I never have--since. I seemed to have, just for the moment, some strange power over the keys--such feelings come to one, you know, sometimes. And then, when I stopped--he had asked me for the Fire-music--I felt, somehow, that he was fond of music--he _is_ fond of it, passionately fond--but when I stopped, he looked at me blankly for a moment, till he suddenly remembered what was expected of him, and thanked me in a cold sort of way and walked off. And--I shouldn't think so much of that; but since then he has never--never once asked me to play, though he has often heard other people ask me."

"I have noticed," said Mrs. Bobby, quietly, "that you will never play when he is in the room."

"I couldn't," said Elizabeth, "it would have such a dampening effect to feel that there was one person in the room who disliked it, who, no matter how well I played, would always preserve his critical attitude.

"You see that I am reduced to the unflattering alternative that it is myself that he objects to or my playing. But it is the same with everything. There is my picture, for instance. He is the only person I know who has said nothing to me about it, has probably not even seen it."

"That must be rather a relief," said Mrs. Bobby, placidly, "since you are so tired of the subject."

"If I am," said Elizabeth, "that is no reason why he shouldn't go through the conventional formula of telling me that he has seen the picture, and adding something civil about it, as the most ordinary acquaintances never fail to do."

"No, of course," Mrs. Bobby agreed softly, "the most ordinary acquaintances never would. But perhaps he doesn't consider himself exactly that."