Hills of the Shatemuc Part 73

Elizabeth sat silent and looked at him. He looked at nothing but what was on his plate.

"How would you like to have Rose take your place?"

"My place?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes," said Mr. Haye laconically.

"No place that I fill, _could_ be filled by Rose," said Elizabeth, with the slightest perceptible lifting of her head and raising of her brow.

"We will try that," said Mr. Haye bitterly; "for I will put her over your head, and we will see."

"Put her _where?_" said Elizabeth.

"Over this house -- over my establishment -- at this table -- in your place as the head of this family."

"You will take _her_ for your daughter, and discard me?" said Elizabeth.

"No -- I will not, --" said Mr. Haye, cutting a piece of beefsteak in a way that shewed him indifferent to its fate. "I will not! -- I will make her my wife! --"

Elizabeth had risen from the table and now she stood on the rug before the fire, with her arms behind her, looking down at the breakfast-table and her father. Literally, looking down _upon_ them. Her cheeks were very pale, but fires that were not heaven-lit were burning somewhere within her, shining out at her eye and now and then colouring her face with a sudden flare. There was a pause. Mr. Haye tried what he could do with his beefsteak; and his daughter's countenance shewed the cloud and the flame of the volcano by turns. For awhile the father and daughter held off from each other. But Mr. Haye's breakfast gave symptoms of coming to an end.

"Father," said Elizabeth, bringing her hands in front of her and clasping them, -- "say you did not mean that!"

"Ha! --" said Mr. Haye without looking at her, and brushing the crumbs from his pantaloons.

Elizabeth waited.

"What did you mean?"

"I spoke plain enough," said he.

"Do you mean to say that you _meant_ that?" said Elizabeth, the volcanic fires leaping up bright.

"Meant it?" said Mr. Haye, looking at her. "Yes, I meant it."

"Father, you did not! --"

Mr. Haye looked again at her hands and her face, and answered coolly.

"Ask Rose whether I meant it, --"

And left the room.

Elizabeth neither saw nor heard, for some minutes; they might have been many or few. Then she became aware that the servant was asking her if he should leave the breakfast-table still for Miss Cadwallader; and her answer, "No -- take it away!" -- was given with startling decision. The man had known his young mistress before to speak with lips that were supreme in their expression. He only obeyed, without even wondering. Elizabeth in a whirl of feeling that like the smoke of the volcano hid everything but itself, went and stood in the window; present to nothing but herself; seeing neither the street without nor the house within. Wrapped in that smoke, she did not know when the servant went out, nor whether anybody else came in. She stood there pale, with lips set, her hands folded against her waist, and pressing there with a force the muscles never relaxed. How long she did not know. Something aroused her, and she discerned, through the smoke, another figure in the room and coming towards her. Elizabeth stepped out from the window, without altering anything but her place, and stood opposite to Winthrop Landholm. If it had been Queen Elizabeth of old and one of her courtiers, it would have been all one; the young man's respectful greeting could not have been met with more superb regality of head and brow.

"I have a letter for Mr. Haye," said Winthrop, "which my brother left in my charge. That brought me here this morning, and I ventured to make business an excuse for pleasure."

"It may lie on the table till he comes," said Elizabeth with the slightest bend of her stately little head. She might have meant the letter or the pleasure or the business, or all three.

"You are well, Miss Haye?" said Winthrop doubtfully.

"No -- I am well enough," said Elizabeth. A revulsion of feeling had very nearly brought down her head in a flood of tears; but she kept that back carefully and perfectly; and the next instant she started with another change, for Rose came in. _She_ gave Winthrop a very smiling and bright salutation; which he acknowledged silently, gravely, and even distantly.

"Aren't you well, Mr. Landholm?" was Rose's next instant question, most sweetly given.

"Very well," he said with another bow.

"What have you been talking about, to get so melancholy?

Lizzie --"

But Rose caught sight of the gathered blackness of that face, and stopped short. Elizabeth bestowed one glance upon her; and as she then turned to the other person of the party the revulsion came over her again, so strong that it was overcoming. For a minute her hands went to her face, and it was with extreme difficulty that the rising heart was kept down. Will had the mastery, however, and her face looked up again more dark than ever.

"We have talked of nothing at all," she said. "Mr. Landholm only came to bring a letter."

Mr. Landholm could not stay after that, for anything. He bowed himself out; and left Elizabeth standing in the middle of the floor, looking as if the crust of the earth had given way under her and 'chaos was come again.' She stood there as she had stood in the window, still and cold; and Rose afar off by the chimney corner stood watching her, as one would a wild beast or a venomous creature in the room, not a little fear mingled with a shadow of something else in her face.

Elizabeth's first movement was to walk a few steps up and down, swinging one clenched hand, but half the breadth of the room was all she went. She sunk down there beside a chair and hid her face, exclaiming or rather groaning out, one after the other, -- "Oh! -- oh!" -- in such tones as are dragged from very far down in the heart; careless of Rose's hearing her.

"What is the matter, Lizzie?" -- her companion ventured timidly. But Elizabeth gave no answer; and neither of them stirred for many minutes, an occasional uneasy flutter of Rose's being the exception. The question at last was asked over again, and responded to.

"That my father has disgraced himself, and that you are the cause!"

"There's no disgrace," said Rose.

"Don't say he has not!" said Elizabeth, looking up with an eye that glared upon her adversary. "And before he had done it, I wish you had never been born, -- or I."

"It's no harm, --" said Rose confusedly.

"Harm! -- harm, --" repeated Elizabeth; then putting her face down again; "Oh! -- what's the use of living, in such a world!"

"I don't see what harm it does to you," said Rose, muttering her words.

"Harm?" repeated Elizabeth. "If it was right to wish it, -- which I believe it isn't, -- I could wish that I was dead. It almost seems to me I wish I were!"

"You're not sure about it," said Rose.

"No, I am not," said Elizabeth looking up at her again with eyes of fire and a face from which pain and pa.s.sion had driven all but livid colour, -- but looking at her steadily, -- "because there is something after death; and I am not sure that I am ready for it. I _dare_ not say I wish I was dead, Rose Cadwallader, or you would drive me to it!"

"I'm sure, I've done nothing," -- said Rose whimpering.

"Done nothing!" said Elizabeth with a concentrated power of expression. "Oh I wish you had done anything, before my father had lowered himself in my eyes and you had been the cause! --"

"I'm not the cause of anything," said Rose.

Elizabeth did not answer; she was crouching by the side of the chair in an uneasy position that said how far from ease the spirit was.

"And he hasn't lowered himself," Rose went on pouting.

"It is done!" -- said Elizabeth, getting up from the floor and standing, not unlike a lightning-struck tree. -- "I wonder what will become of me! --"