The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 8

"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, rea.s.serted 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 fas.h.i.+onable! 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-gla.s.s 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 a.s.surance that she was unfas.h.i.+onably 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 t.i.tian 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 fl.u.s.tered. 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-fas.h.i.+oned, 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 a.s.sert 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 a.s.sert 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 impa.s.sive, 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 pa.s.sing gleam of interest or amus.e.m.e.nt 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.

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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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.