The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 12

But though Mrs. Bobby exulted in that air of indifference with which Elizabeth accepted, as if it were a mere matter of course, all the devotion offered up at her feet, she was beginning to realize that the most admirable qualities can be carried too far. And thus it was that she upbraided her this evening with being unreasonably spoiled, and not sufficiently appreciating the good things which had fallen to her lot.

"I don't know what you want me to do," Elizabeth said, quietly, when she had listened for some moments to this rather vague accusation.

"I'm sure I go everywhere that I'm asked, and that, you must admit, is saying a good deal; I talk to all the men who talk to me, and that again you must admit, means a great deal of conversational effort; and--and I make no distinctions between them whatever, and do my duty on all occasions. I really don't know what more you can expect."

"But that," exclaimed her hostess, "is exactly what I complain of. You go everywhere you are asked--yes, and you never express a preference for any particular place; you talk to the men who talk to you, and you make no distinctions--no, for apparently it's all the same to you, whether it's this man or the other."

"Not quite," said Elizabeth, placidly, "for one man amuses me and another doesn't. But beyond that, I don't--thank Heaven! I don't care." She broke off suddenly, and she drew her comb with unwonted vehemence through her hair.

"I don't know why you should thank Heaven," said Mrs. Bobby, watching her narrowly, "for a fact that is quite abnormal in a girl of your age, who has some of the nicest men in town in love with her. There are times when I think you are quite heartless, and yet--with that hair, and those eyes, and the way you throw yourself into your music, you seem to have abundance of temperament. On the whole, Elizabeth, you are a puzzling combination. What was it Mr. D'Hauteville said of you--that you reminded him of a lake of ice in a circle of fire?"

"Mr. D'Hauteville," said Elizabeth, yawning, "is fond of glittering similes. This one sounds well, but doesn't bear close consideration.

The fire, I should think, under the circ.u.mstances, would dissolve the ice."

"Perhaps it will," said Mrs. Bobby, "when the right time comes."

"Which will be never," said Elizabeth, with decision. Her hostess smiled as one who has heard such things said before.

"After all," she resumed, after a pause, returning to the grievance which had first started the conversation, "I could forgive you everything else, but this indifference about your picture. One would think that when a great artist asks as a special favor to paint your portrait, you might at least have the decency to go to look at it, when it is on exhibition, and all New York is talking about it."

"That's the very reason," said Elizabeth, "why it strikes me as rather bad taste for me to stand in rapt contemplation before it, while a lot of people are jostling me, and making remarks about my eyes, and hair, and mouth, as if it were I on exhibition, and not Mr. ----'s picture."

"Well, it _is_ you whom they want to see," said Mrs. Bobby. "The New York public doesn't care much for art, but it does take an interest in the people whom it reads about in the papers--a weakness that we needn't quarrel with, since it has made the Portrait Show a success, and given us so many thousands for our hospital."

"Well, at least," said Elizabeth, "I have done my duty in contributing my portrait to the good cause; so don't ask me to be present in actual flesh and blood, and above all not to face such a crowd as there was the other day, when we tried to look at it and my gown was nearly torn off my back in the process."

"You could go early," suggested Mrs. Bobby, "as I did the other day.

You have no idea how much better it looks in that light than it did at the studio."

"I am very tired of it, in any light," said Elizabeth. "People have talked to me so much about it. But, if you insist upon it I will go--I will go early. There are some of the other portraits too that I should like to look at, if I can do so in peace." And with this concession, the conversation was allowed to drop for a moment.

It was Elizabeth who resumed it, speaking slowly and tentatively, with many lapses, and eyes carefully turned away from her friend. "You talk," she said, "a great deal of my successes, and I suppose, in a way, I ought to be--satisfied. And of course I am," she added, hastily. "People have been very nice to me. I--I couldn't ask for anything more. And yet--there is one person--I don't know if you have noticed it--one person with whom I am a distinct failure, who I think almost dislikes me, and that is--your friend Mr. Gerard."

"What, Julian," said Mrs. Bobby, in a tone that was absolutely devoid of expression. "You think he--doesn't like you?"

"I am quite sure of it," said Elizabeth.

"But why," questioned Mrs. Bobby, in apparent bewilderment. "What reason have you for thinking so?"

"A great many, but any one of them would be enough. To begin with, he never speaks to me if he can possibly help himself. His avoidance of me is quite pointed--you surely must have noticed it?" She fixed her eyes anxiously upon Mrs. Bobby.

"I"--Mrs. Bobby checked the impulsive words that rose to her lips.

"Julian is--is very peculiar," she said in a non-committal tone. "I don't think he cares for women."

"Perhaps not; but still I have seen him talk to them--in a bored sort of way, it is true. But to me he never talks, in any way whatsoever."

"He never has a chance. You are always surrounded."

"He would have the same chance as the others. No, it isn't that. He disapproves of me; I can feel it, as he looks at me through those dark, half-shut eyes of his, and it gives me an uncomfortable sense of wickedness. He thinks me flippant, and vain, and frivolous, and I am when he is there, or I seem so. When he is listening, I say all the horrid, cynical, heartless things I can think of. I have to say them, somehow. It is fate. It began the first night that I met him--it was in the country, do you remember?" She paused and again looked questioningly at Mrs. Bobby.

"Yes," the latter answered softly, "I remember."

"I was rather excited that night--it was the first time I had ever been out to dinner. I talked in a flippant sort of way about hating the country, and longing to go out, and wanting to be always amused.

It was very _young_, I suppose." Elizabeth spoke with all the superiority of a girl half-way through her first season towards her more unsophisticated self of a few months before. "He didn't like it.

The sort of woman whom he admires knows her catechism, and is satisfied with that situation in life where it has pleased Providence to place her. I shocked him; he has never got over it. He showed me, that very evening, how he disliked me--it was so pointed that it was almost rude. You asked me--do you remember? to play." She stopped.

"I remember," said Mrs. Bobby again softly. "I never heard you play so well."

"I never have--since. I seemed to have, just for the moment, some strange power over the keys--such feelings come to one, you know, sometimes. And then, when I stopped--he had asked me for the Fire-music--I felt, somehow, that he was fond of music--he _is_ fond of it, pa.s.sionately fond--but when I stopped, he looked at me blankly for a moment, till he suddenly remembered what was expected of him, and thanked me in a cold sort of way and walked off. And--I shouldn't think so much of that; but since then he has never--never once asked me to play, though he has often heard other people ask me."

"I have noticed," said Mrs. Bobby, quietly, "that you will never play when he is in the room."

"I couldn't," said Elizabeth, "it would have such a dampening effect to feel that there was one person in the room who disliked it, who, no matter how well I played, would always preserve his critical att.i.tude.

"You see that I am reduced to the unflattering alternative that it is myself that he objects to or my playing. But it is the same with everything. There is my picture, for instance. He is the only person I know who has said nothing to me about it, has probably not even seen it."

"That must be rather a relief," said Mrs. Bobby, placidly, "since you are so tired of the subject."

"If I am," said Elizabeth, "that is no reason why he shouldn't go through the conventional formula of telling me that he has seen the picture, and adding something civil about it, as the most ordinary acquaintances never fail to do."

"No, of course," Mrs. Bobby agreed softly, "the most ordinary acquaintances never would. But perhaps he doesn't consider himself exactly that."

"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 pa.s.sed 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 superst.i.tion, 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 gla.s.s, 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 a.s.surance, 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.