Part 9

"Whatever he considers himself," said Elizabeth, with some heat, "he is not exempt from the common rules of civility. But I suppose he doesn't really admire the picture, and is too painfully truthful to pretend to the contrary." And then she stopped and laughed a little at her own vehemence, but without much spirit. "It really is very illogical," she admitted, "I don't care for Mr. Gerard's admiration, it would probably bore me extremely to have it; and yet--it's not pleasant to be so absolutely--ignored."

Mrs. Bobby was watching her with an odd little gleam in the dark eyes that were almost hidden by her long, curling lashes. "I will tell you," she said, "what it is that he doesn't like. It isn't you, or your playing, or your conversation; it's your hair."

"My hair!" Elizabeth took up mechanically one of her long shining locks and passed it through her fingers. "I may have been inordinately vain," she remarked after a pause, "but I never supposed before that there was much the matter with my hair."

"Nor would most people, I imagine. But he has some odd ideas, and among them, it seems, is a prejudice--a superstition, as he calls it--against red hair."

"But mine isn't red," said Elizabeth, quickly.

"Of course not," said Mrs. Bobby. "He is color blind, as I told him. But there's no use in arguing the point with him. He insists that your hair is red enough to--to be dangerous--those are his words, and he avoids you in consequence. He has had some unfortunate experience in the past, I should imagine, which has given him this prejudice. There, my dear, I shouldn't have told you," Mrs. Bobby went on, leaning back in her chair, and still watching Elizabeth narrowly through half-closed lids, "if I didn't know, of course, that it can make no real difference to you what Julian thinks."

"Of course not," Elizabeth made answer mechanically with dry lips, as she still drew her comb absently through the offending hair.

"You have so many admirers," Mrs. Bobby continued serenely, "it can't matter very much that one person should hold aloof. And then I shouldn't care about Julian's opinion, for he never admires any woman. Ever since that unfortunate experience, which happened, I think, when he was very young, he has been a confirmed cynic, avoiding all young girls, and horribly afraid of being married for his money. I really despair now of his ever falling in love; I have talked up almost every girl in town to him, and all in vain. No, even you, Elizabeth, spoiled as you are, couldn't expect to make a conquest of Julian."

"I don't know what I should expect," said Elizabeth, rather coldly, "but I certainly don't wish to. It would hardly be worth while." She rose, with one long look in the glass, and moved wearily towards the door. "I am so very tired, dear," she said. "I think I will say good-night."

"Good-night," said Mrs. Bobby, cheerfully. "Sleep well--you need to--and don't waste another thought on that tiresome creature, Julian."

"Oh, I'm not likely to," Elizabeth responded, with rather a pale smile. "I'm much too tired."

And yet she did think of him more than once, as she stood before her mirror, arranging her hair into two heavy braids, which reached below her waist, and repeating to herself that, as Mrs. Bobby had said, it could matter little about the one dissenting voice in the general chorus of admiration which had attended her triumphant career. In spite of which assurance, her last thoughts as she fell asleep might have been somewhat surprising to those who, having watched that career entirely from the outside, regarded her as the most fortunate being in the world.

Elizabeth's aunts were on the whole, more to be envied than the girl herself that winter. There was no alloy in their happiness, no under-current of dissatisfaction, even though they wore their old black silks, and Miss Joanna's friend, the butcher, was heard to complain somewhat bitterly of her sudden parsimony in regard to joints of meat. What did it matter? They would have dressed cheerfully in sackcloth and lived on bread and water, for the sake of such glowing accounts of Elizabeth's triumphs as Mrs. Bobby constantly transmitted, or of the girl's own brilliant letters which seemed to breathe the radiant satisfaction of a mind without a care.

Elizabeth's aunt at Bassett Mills also watched her career, which was chronicled at that time in the papers. Poor Aunt Rebecca, after a hard day's work, reading her niece's name, and possibly a description of her costume in the list of guests at some smart festivity, would look up, awe-struck, at Amanda. "Only to think," she would say, with the old contradictory note, half pride, half jealousy "to think that it should be Malvina's girl!"

But Amanda, still pale and wasted from the fever with her hair quite long and very soft and wavy, would give an odd, furtive look from her light eyes and say nothing.

_Chapter XVII_

It was early at the Portrait Show. It was so early that what few people were already there had the place practically to themselves. There were only three or four in the large room at the head of the stairs, which at a later hour of the afternoon was invariably crowded, and where was hung that picture which had attracted so much attention, partly from the great fame of the artist, still more, perhaps, from the beauty of the subject.

A young girl in a long, white gown of some soft, clinging stuff, stood against the background of a dark green velvet curtain. There was no relief to the dead whiteness of the gown, and the roses that she held were white; all that brilliancy of color, for which this great artist is famous, he had expended upon the deep red-gold tints of the hair, the vivid scarlet of the lips, the warm creamy tones of the skin, as they were thrown into full relief by the dark background. The painter had lingered, with all the skill at his command, on the rounded, dimpled curves of the neck and arms, nor had he forgotten the haughty little turn of the head, which gave a characteristic touch to the picture. Seen at a glance, it was aglow with life and color, very human, very mundane, the embodiment of health and bloom. A study in flesh-tints, one critic had carelessly pronounced it, and nothing more. It was only when you looked at the eyes that you caught a discordant note, which, if you dwelt upon it, contradicted the joyous effect of the rest; a look, a latent shadow which the great artist had either surprised or imagined, and transferred perhaps unconsciously to his canvas, where, if you saw it at all, it held you with a haunting sense of mystery, the fascination of an unsolved problem. "What does it mean," a man said to himself that afternoon, "and did ---- really put it in, or do I, with my usual superstition, imagine it? Am I the only person who sees it, or do others?"

Two young girls, who jostled up against him just then evidently did not.

"Portrait of Miss Van Vorst," said one, reading from her catalogue, "by ----." She passed the artist's name without recognition, as she delightedly pressed her companion's arm. "Say, Mamie, that's Elizabeth Van Vorst, you know, the beauty. I've seen lots about her in the papers."

"You don't say so?" returned the other, who was apparently less up-to-date. "I thought she must be one of the swells, but I didn't know the name. She's pretty isn't she?--but doesn't her nose turn up too much?--and I don't think much of her dress, it's so kind of simple."

The man who had been standing when they came up in front of the picture, turned frowning aside, and found himself face to face with the original. For an instant each stared at the other in silence, and it might have been noticed by a careful observer that the man was at once the more disconcerted and the less surprised of the two.

"So I see you have achieved fame," he said, recovering himself almost immediately and smiling, as he glanced at the two girls who were still criticizing Elizabeth's features, all unconscious that the subject of their remarks was within hearing.

"Yes, fame," she returned, lightly "of a kind that you despise." She, too, was quite herself again--that flippant, frivolous self, at least, which he had always the power to awaken.

"I suppose I'm a crank," he admitted. "I really don't like to hear my friends talked about, by their first name by people who have read about them in the papers."

"Oh, that," she said, carelessly "is a necessary penalty of fame."

"Which you share with a variety actress," he returned. "I realize more and more that I'm hopelessly behind the age. Look at those two girls," he went on, glancing at them with some animosity.

"They have spent, I should imagine, their little all on the admission fee and the catalogue; they don't care two straws for the portraits as portraits, and they have never spoken to the originals, but they are wildly interested in them because they represent to them the magic word 'society,' and they will go away and talk about them as if they knew them intimately."

Elizabeth laughed softly. "Ah," she said "let them be. They're getting their money's worth; don't grudge it to them. So far as I'm concerned, they may pull my face to pieces as much as they please. I know how it is--I've stood on the outside, too, of a thing, and tried to imagine that I was in it."

"Do you think they'd be happier," asked Gerard, "if they were?"

"Ah, that depends," she returned, oracularly, stroking down the long fur of her muff.

"Tell me how you find it yourself," said Gerard. He looked about the room. "The place is comfortably empty," he said. "Have you been around yet, or would you--a--like to sit down awhile?"

She hesitated. "I have been in several of the rooms," she said. "I came early on purpose. Eleanor is lunching somewhere, but she is to meet me here at three."

"Then suppose you--a--rest till she comes?" he suggested, as he led the way to a sofa which had been placed for the accommodation of weary sight-seers in the centre of the room. "It's a long while since I've had a talk with you. ('And whose fault is that,' thought Elizabeth.) This isn't a bad place to talk in, and if you've been around once, you've had enough of it for the time being."

"I am glad to rest for a few minutes," Elizabeth admitted.

She threw open the revers of her coat, and sank back in her seat as if physically tired. Gerard looked at her. She was exquisitely dressed. Her dark green velvet and furs set off the fairness of her skin, her large feathered hat suited her picturesque style. The subtle atmosphere of fashion, of distinction, lurked in every fold of her gown, in every movement and gesture. Three months had sufficed to endow her with it. They had also sufficed--or was this again the result of his imagination?--to take away the first freshness of her beauty. She looked brilliant, but a trifle worn; her color had faded, there were lines of weariness about the mouth, and deep black rings under the eyes.

"You don't look well," he said, abruptly. She smiled. ("I might have known that he would say that," she said to herself.)

"I know it," she returned, quietly. "The maid woke me up, as she generally does, with strong coffee. I refused at first to be waked. I haven't been to bed at a reasonable hour for weeks, and I'm so countrified that I show the ill effects of it."

"You shouldn't go out so much," said Gerard. "What is Eleanor thinking of that she allows it? You--you will be ill if this keeps up." He spoke almost angrily.

"Yet what difference would it make to him?" thought Elizabeth. "He is very unaccountable. Why should he look at my picture, thinking no doubt all the time how ugly my hair is? I don't want his advice--I won't have it. Oh, it's all in a good cause," she said lightly, aloud. "I complain sometimes, but I wouldn't stay at home, really, for the world. It's all too delightful. I may be tired, but at least I'm not bored."

"It has all come up to your expectations, then?" said Gerard. "You like it better than--a--the river view?"

"Ah, if you had looked at that view as many years as I have, you wouldn't need to ask the question."

"And you are always amused?" he went on. "That was the next wish, wasn't it? You see I'm putting you through the category, as I threatened to do once, and I expect only the truth for an answer. Are you always, every day and all day long, thoroughly amused?"

She met his gaze unflinchingly. "Don't I--seem to be?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I've wondered--sometimes. You certainly ought to be," he declared.

"Then," she said "you may take it for granted that I am."

"And the third wish," he said, musingly, "follows naturally on the other. You never, in this whirl of gaiety--never, I suppose, get a chance to think?"

"Not a moment," she returned, triumphantly. "All my time is occupied, I'm glad to say, in being amused. That's hard work, too, sometimes, but then--the game is worth the candle."

"Well," he said "you are, I admit, a very fortunate young woman, and you have my congratulations. There are not many people whose wishes are fulfilled, as quickly and absolutely as yours have been."

"No," she said, with sudden thoughtfulness "that is very true." She sat for a moment staring straight before her, with the look in her eyes which had puzzled and haunted him in the pictured eyes at which he had looked awhile before. "Do you know," she said at last, speaking very low and hesitatingly, "it's very absurd, but it--sometimes it frightens me a little. Do you remember in Greek history--or was it mythology?--there was a king who had every wish fulfilled, till he grew at last to feel that it--was dangerous; he offered up sacrifices to the gods, he tried to escape but it was all of no use. Everything went well with him, till at last--his fate overtook him. And so I think, sometimes--mine will."

"Your fate?" Gerard repeated, utterly taken aback and puzzled.

"Yes, the penalty," she said, quickly "of having too much. I have an odd idea sometimes that there is--there must be some misfortune in store for me; that I shall pay for all this yet in some terrible way which no one expects. Oh, it's perfectly absurd, I know, but still I--I can't help it." She had turned of a sudden very white, and she stared up at Gerard with a frightened, mute appeal in her eyes, like that of some dumb animal or a child.

To him she seemed all at once very young and helpless, a being to be soothed and protected; very different from the gay, self-possessed young woman of a few minutes before. "My dear child," he said, very gently, yet with a note of authority, and laying his hand ever so lightly on the delicately gloved hand that rested on her muff "you're nervous and over-wrought. You couldn't otherwise have such a morbid idea. This eternal going-out has got on your nerves. I wish you would promise me to stay at home for a day or two. You will, won't you?" he asked, persuasively.

"Yes, I--I will," she said, mechanically, and still looking very white. "I'm over-tired, as you say."

"And now don't talk," he went on, peremptorily. "I'll get you a glass of water, and then I want you to sit quietly here, and not say a word, till you are better."

She shook her head. "I'm quite well, and I don't want anything," she protested, but he brought the glass of water and made her drink it, and then watched her anxiously, while the color slowly came back to her face, and her eyes lost their strained, appealing look. They sat in silence; he would not let her speak, and as time passed, a great calm insensibly stole over her, a feeling of peace, of security, such as she had not known in all those weeks of fevered gaiety. She was conscious vaguely of a wish that she might sit thus always, saying nothing, alone with him--all the more alone as it seemed for the crowd that was beginning to surge into the room, with a murmur that broke faintly upon her ear, like the sound of the sea a long way off.

The wish was, perhaps, the result of fatigue. She was no sooner fully conscious of it than she rose to her feet.

"Shall we walk through the rooms now?" she said. "It's more than time for Eleanor to be here. Oh, I'm all right now, thank you"--she met his question smilingly. "I don't know what was the matter--it was very silly. You see I boasted unwisely about never thinking, since I have such foolish thoughts; but I won't again. Look, there is a picture of Gertrude Trevor. A good likeness, isn't it? But you've seen it before, perhaps?"

"No," said Gerard, absently. "I haven't seen any of them before." They walked on slowly through the rooms, and she did the honors, pointing out the pictures, as it was apparently his first visit. They did not seem to interest him greatly.

"Have you really never been here before?" she asked at length. She could not have explained what induced her to put the question.

He answered it absently. "Why, yes, every day"--and then suddenly stopped and turned his eyes full upon her, while that strange light gleamed in their sombre depths which she had surprised once or twice before and had interpreted many different ways, which now set her heart beating wildly, and made her wish her question unspoken. "Every day," he repeated, quietly, "about this time, or earlier, since--since the thing began."

"Then why--why"--The words died away on her lips. They had reached the head of the great staircase, and the crowd came streaming up, a confused mass, to which she paid no heed. She had again the feeling of being alone, quite alone, in the midst of it all, while involuntarily their eyes met, and his were all aglow with a fire which she had never before seen in them, or imagined; a fire that dazzled and bewildered, and filled her with a strange, unreasoning joy, as it burned away the barriers of doubt and indifference, till for one short, breathless moment, which she could have counted with her heart-beats she read his inmost soul.

"I only looked at one picture," he said.

And then with the words the spell which held her seemed broken, and the crowd closed in about her, with a sound like the roar of the sea very near at hand, and she looked down the great staircase, and saw Mrs. Bobby coming towards them.

_Chapter XVIII_

"My dear," said Mrs. Bobby, "I'm so sorry to be late. Luncheon was interminable. Why, Julian, who would have expected to see you here?" She gave him her hand demurely, with softly shining eyes. Neither her surprise nor her contrition seemed to ring quite true.

Gerard's dark eyes were again half closed beneath their heavy lids. He looked, if a trifle pale, more impassive than usual.

"I don't know why my presence here should cause so much surprise," he said. "Most people come here, don't they, some time or another. It's a--a meeting-place, isn't it?"

"It seems to have been on this occasion," Mrs. Bobby murmured under her breath. A young man had just stopped and spoken to Elizabeth, and the words might have referred to him. Gerard smiled.

"Won't you come and look at some of these pictures?" he asked. "I want to talk to you."

"You awaken my curiosity."

They walked slowly along the gallery which skirted the hall, too deep in conversation to pay much heed to the pictures which hung along their way. Elizabeth's eyes followed them, the while she was repeating mechanically "Yes, the portraits are extremely fine."

"But not one," the young man declared, with blunt gallantry "to compare with yours. It's by all odds the most beautiful picture here."

"Do you really think so?" said Elizabeth, gently. "I'm very glad." She had heard the sentiment, rather differently put, perhaps a hundred times. Yet it seemed now to have all the charm of novelty.

The young man, a very slight acquaintance, charmed to have called up that glow of pleasure to her face, redoubled his efforts to entertain her. He was sorry when Mrs. Bobby returned with Gerard, and bore her off. "She was delighted when I said that about her picture," he thought, "there's nothing like flattering a girl, if you know how to do it delicately."

"We really must be going, Elizabeth," said Mrs. Bobby, consulting her engagement-book. "We have at least a dozen visits, and we promised, you know, to go to Mr. D'Hauteville's musicale."

"That reminds me that I did too," said Gerard. "I'm glad you spoke of it."

"We shall see you there, then," said Mrs. Bobby, as he placed them in the carriage, and they drove off. "I am feeling utterly crushed," she continued, turning to Elizabeth, and looking under the circumstances, very cheerful. "Julian has been giving me a terrible lecture. He thinks me, I see very clearly, quite unfit to have the care of you. He says that you are not as strong as you seem, that I have been dragging you around--entirely for my own pleasure, apparently--from one thing to another till you are quite worn out, and that you will be ill if I don't take care. He has quite frightened me. But there, Elizabeth, you don't look so very tired, after all."

She certainly did not. There was color in her cheeks, a light in her eyes that was at once brilliant and soft. All the lines drawn by sleepless nights had, for the moment at least, disappeared.

"You don't look badly," Mrs. Bobby repeated. "You look, in fact, infinitely better than when I saw you this morning."

"I feel better," Elizabeth admitted. "Just for a moment, at the Portrait Show, I did feel tired and depressed, and he--Mr. Gerard got alarmed about me, but it was nothing. I am quite well now. And the portraits are really very interesting. I am glad you persuaded me to look at them again, Eleanor."

"I thought you might be repaid," said Mrs. Bobby, serenely. "What did you think of your own picture? Doesn't it look better in that light?"

Elizabeth's face was turned away, so that Mrs. Bobby could only see the rounded outline of her cheek and one small, shell-like ear. "Yes, I--I thought it looked better," she said, in a low voice. "Perhaps you were right. It must have been the--the light of the studio that made me feel--disappointed in it, somehow."

"Oh, there is everything in the light in which you look at things," assented Mrs. Bobby, cheerfully. And with this profound remark, the two women sank into silence, while the carriage rolled swiftly up the Avenue, stopping occasionally, as the footman left cards. To Elizabeth, as she sat gazing out of the window, the prosaic brown stone houses, and the more pretentious ones of marble which broke the monotony here and there, and the brilliant shops, which had intruded themselves like parvenus among their quieter and more aristocratic neighbors--all these familiar objects stood out in a softened perspective, which endowed them with lines almost of romance. The wide, commonplace streets had an unwonted charm, the people who walked on them wore an air of curious happiness, merely, no doubt, at finding themselves alive in this beautiful world. Yes, as Mrs. Bobby had so wisely observed, "there is everything in the light in which you look at things."

"I wonder if Mr. D'Hauteville's musicale will be pleasant," Elizabeth observed dreamily, as they neared Carnegie Hall. The remark was purely perfunctory. Pleasant? Of course it would be pleasant--she hadn't a doubt of it.

"There will be a lot of queer people there--musical, literary, and that sort of thing," said Mrs. Bobby, vaguely. "Some men with long hair will play, and the women, no doubt, will wear wonderful æsthetic gowns. If Julian were not to be there, I should not dream of going. My prophetic instinct tells me that we shall not know a soul."

"But won't that be rather amusing," suggested Elizabeth.