The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 7

She looked up reluctantly, fascinated as she had often been before, by the mere physical attraction of his beauty. "I--I don't know," she began slowly, and then stopped frightened at the sound of voices in the shop. A dread flashed over her all at once of a scene in a place like this. The trifling, frivolous consideration turned the scale in Paul's favor. She rose, shook off his grasp, and gave a hasty glance in the gla.s.s.

"No, I won't throw you over," she said. "It's all wrong but--as you say, it's too late now. Take care--some one is coming." She gave a warning look at the door, as Paul pressed her hand.

So the threatened scene was averted and Elizabeth's fate was sealed.

The people who, after buying candy in the shop, came into the little back room for some ice cream, saw a young woman arranging her hair before the gla.s.s, and a young man waiting for her--a not unusual sight.

What followed seemed in after life a dream to Elizabeth. There were times when she tried to think that it had never happened; that the whole thing was a mere figment of the imagination. But on that day she was quite conscious that it was she herself, in very flesh and blood, Elizabeth Van Vorst, who walked by Paul Halleck's side through the glaring, sunny streets of Cranston, went with him into a dimly-lighted church, let him place a ring upon her finger, spoke her share in the marriage service, and wrote her maiden name for what should have been the last time, in the parish register. The clergyman was very old and mumbled over the service; the witnesses, two servants of his, were old and feeble, also, and took but small interest. The church was damp like a tomb after the heat without; Elizabeth found herself s.h.i.+vering as from a chill. It was a relief to come out again into the heat which had been so oppressive before. But on the church steps Elizabeth gave a little cry. A funeral was slowly filing past, its black trappings standing out in incongruous gloom against the noon-day brilliance.

Elizabeth looked at Paul. He had turned very white, and he too was s.h.i.+vering. "It is a bad omen," he said, in a low voice, as if to himself. He said no more, but led the way carefully in the opposite direction from that which the funeral had taken.

They found themselves in a part of Cranston unknown to Elizabeth. The road was bordered on either side by flowering hedges and led apparently into the open country. There were no houses in sight; for the moment, even no people. Halleck suddenly turned and clasped Elizabeth almost roughly in his arms, while he pressed pa.s.sionate kisses upon her brow, her lips, her hair.

"My darling," he cried "I can't--I can't give you up. I was mad to promise it. Let everything go and come with me to New York."

"No, no, I can't," she murmured faintly. "I can't." His vehemence stunned, bewildered her; but instinctively she struggled against it.

"You promised," she cried out indignantly, "you promised that I should be free--till you came back. I've kept my word, you must keep yours."

He let her go and for a moment they eyed each other steadily. This time the victory remained with her. "Did I really make that promise?"

he said at last with a sigh. "Well, if I did, I must keep it, I suppose. But, Elizabeth, you must be made of ice--you can't love me, or you wouldn't hold me to it."

Elizabeth was chiefly conscious of an overpowering sense of relief.

"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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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 fl.u.s.tered 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 blus.h.i.+ng 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."