The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 10

"So you have taken up the Van Vorst girl," she was saying, as she surveyed Elizabeth through her lorgnette. "She is really quite pretty, and--a--not bad form. That gown of hers is effective--it's so simple.

I wonder how she learned to dress herself, here in the country."

"Oh, she's learned more than that, Sybil, I imagine," said Mrs. Bobby, in level tones. "I think her very good form, and extremely pretty. Her coloring is very picturesque, and quite natural." This very innocently, without a glance at the conspicuously blonde hair which her friends said had not been bestowed on Sybil Hartington by nature.

"She inherits it from her mother, I suppose--a red-haired bar-maid, wasn't she?" said Mrs. Hartington, again subjecting Elizabeth to a prolonged scrutiny. "After all, she lacks distinction," she announced, dropping her lorgnette and turning to more important subjects.

Mrs. Bobby did not enjoy that half-hour after dinner; neither, perhaps, did Elizabeth, who had heard several times already the account of the attack of measles from which the Rectory children had lately recovered, and was glad when the men appeared in the midst of it. But if she had expected Mr. Gerard to come up to her to resume their conversation, as perhaps she had, in spite of her consciousness of his disapproval, she was destined to be disappointed. Gerard did give her one long look, as she sat in the full glow of the firelight; but he turned almost immediately and spoke to Mrs. Hartington, who had, indeed, the air of confidently expecting him to do so. It was Bobby Van Antwerp who sauntered up to Elizabeth, hospitably intent on making her feel at home.

"It was awfully good of you to come to-night, Miss Van Vorst. These dinner-parties in the country are stupid things, but, after all, it's a way of seeing something of one's neighbors. I think you're too unsociable here, as a rule. It's a bore of course to take one's horses out at night, but if one always thought of that, one would never go anywhere."

"I'm sure," Elizabeth said sincerely, "I was very glad to come. A dinner-party is a great event to me."

"Ah, well, it is dull here for a young girl," said Bobby, kindly. "My wife finds it very dull; but she knows I'm fond of the old place, and she comes to please me. You and she must try to amuse each other. You know, between ourselves"--lowering his voice--"Eleanor doesn't always take to people; it has made some of our neighbors around here feel rather sore--I'm afraid. But she does take to you, and so I hope we shall see a great deal of you."

Elizabeth smiled and murmured her thanks, wondering greatly to find herself thus singled out from the rest of the Neighborhood; and just then Mrs. Bobby came up and took her hand.

"Come," she said, "I want you to play for me. I'm so fond of music, and I've heard that you play beautifully."

"Ah, but I don't," Elizabeth protested; but still she allowed herself to be led to the piano, without undue reluctance. And then that grand piano, with the name of the maker had been tempting her to try it ever since dinner-time.

After all, it is doubtful if Mrs. Bobby cared so very much for music; but it is possible she knew of some one else who did. Elizabeth had a gift which had come to her, Heaven knows how!--a gift in which far greater pianists are sometimes lacking--the power to throw herself into what she played and to infuse into it something of her own personality. Her playing seemed no mere, mechanical repet.i.tion of what she had been taught, but the unstudied, spontaneous expression of her own thoughts and feelings. As she pa.s.sed at Mrs. Bobby's request from one thing to another, mingling more set compositions with fragments from operas and songs of the day, the conversation between Mrs.

Hartington and Gerard slackened, and he glanced more and more frequently towards the piano.

"Music is rather a bore--isn't it--after dinner this way," drawled Mrs. Hartington, noticing this fact.

"I don't think I agree with you. I'm fond of music," said Gerard, and after awhile he found an opportunity to saunter over to the piano, where Elizabeth sat playing, a little absently now, bits from Wagner.

She started and looked up, blushing slightly, as Gerard asked her if she could play the Fire-music.

"I--it is a long time since I have tried it," she began, impelled by some vague instinct to refuse, and then she stopped, and almost unconsciously her fingers touched the keys, as she caught a look that seemed to compel obedience. He smiled.

"Please play it," he said, and though the tone was caressing, there lurked in it a half perceptible note of command. She felt it, as she began to play, and he stood listening, his grave eyes fixed upon her face. "A severe judge," she thought to herself with a proud little thrill of rebellion. And then, as she played on, she forgot this thought, and the fear of his criticism; forgot the strange room, and the strange people, and the fact that she was dining at the Van Antwerps'; forgot everything but the eyes fixed upon her, and played as she had never played before.

Elizabeth had always put the best of herself into her music, her finest qualities of brain and soul. But now she put into it something of which she before was hardly conscious, a force and depth and fire, which stirred inarticulately within her, and found expression in the throbbing Wagnerian chords. All the magic of the fairy spell thrilled beneath her touch, as it rose and fell and wove itself in and out amidst the clash of conflicting motives, while Brunnhilde sank ever deeper into slumber, and the flames leaped and danced and played about her sleeping form, and there lurked no premonition in her maiden dreams of that fatal, all-engrossing love, which was yet to awaken her from the serenity of oblivion. Then, as the rippling cadence died away, Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, striking furtive harmonies, till she pa.s.sed at length into the poignant sweetness, the pa.s.sionate self-surrender of the second act of Tristan, and so on to the Liebestod, with its swan-song of triumphant anguish, of love supreme even in death. With the last sobbing chord, Elizabeth's hands fell from the keys, and she sat staring straight before her, with eyes that were unusually large and dark.

"Upon my word she _can_ play," said Bobby Van Antwerp, and looked, for him, slightly stirred. "She has temperament," Mrs. Hartington coldly responded and again honored Elizabeth with a prolonged stare. "My dear child," exclaimed Elizabeth's hostess, "I had no idea you could play like that." The only person who said nothing was the man for whom she had played. He stood motionless by the piano, and his face was white and set. When the applause of the others had ceased, and Elizabeth, blushing now and smiling, looked up at him in involuntary surprise at his silence as if from a dream, he started and then, recovering himself, he spoke mechanically a few conventional words of thanks, and without comment on her performance, turned abruptly away.

Elizabeth still sat, a trifle dazed, at the piano, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Her cheeks were burning painfully and she bit her lip to keep back the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes. She seemed to have fallen suddenly from the clouds back to earth. After a moment she rose and went over to her hostess to say farewell.

"Don't go," Mrs. Bobby entreated, holding her hand, "I really haven't seen anything of you."

"I must go, thank you," Elizabeth said, quietly. "William,"--this was the gardener, who on state occasions officiated as coachman--"will be furious if he is kept waiting."

She felt a sudden eagerness to be gone, and Mrs. Bobby admitted the force of her excuse and parted with her reluctantly. Both Bobby and Gerard escorted her into the hall, but it was Gerard who placed her in the carriage, and yet, as he did so, said not a word further of seeing her again.

"He probably doesn't wish to," thought Elizabeth, "now that he has done his duty to the last." The reflection was the only unpleasant one that she brought away from an otherwise successful evening.

Gerard sauntered back into the drawing-room, and stood leaning against the mantel-piece, gazing with thoughtful eyes into the fire, while, as it leaped and flickered, and sent out glowing tongues of flame, a woman's face looked up at him framed in her shimmering hair, and the magic of the fire-music still rang in his ear, mingled with the more pa.s.sionate strains of Tristan, the deeper tragedy of Liebestod.

He had been standing thus a long time when Mrs. Bobby came and stood beside him. The other guests had left and Bobby had gone off to his den.

"Well," she said tentatively, glancing up smiling into his face, "well, Julian, what did you think of her?"

He started and looked at her blankly for a moment. "Think of--whom, Eleanor?" he asked.

"You know whom I mean--Elizabeth Van Vorst."

Gerard's eyes wandered back to the fire, where they rested for a moment absently. "I think," he said at last slowly, and as if weighing his words with more than his wonted deliberation, "I think there's too much red in her hair."

"Too much red in her hair," Mrs. Bobby repeated blankly; then recovering herself: "But there isn't any, Julian, or very little. I call her hair golden, not red."

"Look at it in the fire-light," Gerard insisted imperturbably, "and you will see that it's a deep red."

"Well, and if it is," said Mrs. Bobby--"not that I admit for a moment that you are right--but if it is, red hair is all the fashion nowadays."

"No doubt," said Gerard. "It's a matter of taste. But for myself I never see a red-haired woman"--He stopped, but went on presently with an effort. "I never see a red-haired woman, that I don't instinctively avoid her. Yes, it's a--a superst.i.tion, if you will. I feel that she will be dangerous, somehow or another, perhaps to herself, and certainly to others." A note of unwonted feeling thrilled his voice.

He broke off suddenly and stared again into the fire.

Mrs. Bobby sat and watched him in silence. "And so," she said to herself, "_that_ woman's hair was red."

"You see," said Gerard, presently, looking at her with a smile, "I've shown the confidence I repose in you by confessing my pet superst.i.tion. Miss Van Vorst's hair is not _very_ red, I admit, except in some lights, but still it's--it's red enough to be dangerous; and that fact, and certain other little things I've noticed about her, incline me to--to avoid her. She puzzles me; I can't quite make her out. Still, she is certainly a girl whom a great many men would--would admire. I'm no criterion, I believe."

"I hope not, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bobby, ruefully "for the sake of most of the women I know. My dear Julian, I despair of ever getting you married."

"My dear Eleanor, if you would only stop trying. Your efforts are, if you will excuse my saying so, a little too transparent. Do you suppose that I imagined this evening that your unpunctuality was entirely accidental?"

"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 protegee." 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."