The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 23

She was silent for a moment, struggling with the tears that threatened to break forth, and Elizabeth began to breathe more freely. All this bl.u.s.ter, after all, these vague threats, seemed to resolve themselves into the old, unreasoning, powerless jealousy--nothing more. And with the relief came again the sense of pity, of a certain justice in Amanda's point of view.

"It isn't fair," she said, softly. "I don't deserve it, but"----

"Well, fair or not, I guess it don't make much difference," Amanda interrupted her, drearily, rising to her feet. "You've always had the best of me, and probably, you always will. But, if ever you don't"----She broke off suddenly and moved towards the door. "I guess I'd better be going," she said. "You'll be late for your dinner. Only, before you go"--she paused with her hand on the k.n.o.b of the door, that hard, mocking glitter in her eyes--"before you go, just put on some of your jewelry, won't you? Seems to me you look sort of bare without it."

"My--my jewelry?" Elizabeth's heart, which had been beating more quietly, suddenly stood still. "I--I don't wear jewelry, Amanda," she said, in a dull, toneless voice.

"What, not your pearls?" Amanda's hard, mocking eyes seemed to read her through and through. "Your pearls you were so proud of in the country, that you said you'd always wear. Seems to me you need them--with that fine dress!"

She stood hovering by the door, a weird figure in the exaggerated smartness of her attire, with her white face framed in the deep red hair, and that strange, uncanny smile gleaming across it, lighting it up into an elf-like suggestion of mysterious power. Elizabeth stared at her helplessly, fascinated; then, with a great effort, she roused herself and hurried towards her.

"Amanda!" she cried, desperately. "Amanda, for Heaven's sake, stop these insinuations! Tell me plainly what you mean?" She gripped her fiercely by the arm, her face was white and set. For a moment Amanda's eyes met hers. Then, as if in spite of herself, they fell, she freed herself sullenly from Elizabeth's grasp.

"Well, I guess I didn't mean much," she said, awkwardly, "or if I did, it don't matter. I wouldn't tell tales against--my first cousin"--She turned the k.n.o.b of the door, but again she paused, that weird smile still flickering in her eyes. "Good-night," she said, "I hope you'll enjoy your dinner. Too bad you haven't got your pearls." She gave one last jarring laugh, opened the door and went out.

Elizabeth, white and trembling, sank into the nearest chair.

"How she frightened me!" she gasped out. "These constant shocks will kill me. Does she know anything definite? Probably not. But what can I do, how can I find out?--Ah, Celeste!"--as the maid appeared with an anxious expression in the door-way. "The carriage is waiting? Very well." She hurried to the dressing-table, caught up her gloves and gave one hasty glance at her white face. "How ugly I am growing," she thought, turning away with a shudder; "quite like Amanda! I see the resemblance. It is this awful life. I wish--oh, how I wish I were home!" The thought swept over her, thrilling her with an intense, pa.s.sionate longing for her aunts' presence, for the country quiet, for rest and peace.

"Yes, I will go home," she thought, as Celeste adjusted the cloak about her shoulders and she hastened down to the carriage. "I will go home," she repeated to herself at intervals during the evening, while she talked and laughed with a restless light in her eyes and a feverish flush on her cheeks. "The country will be so peaceful. I shall be quite safe there, away from all this agitation, this trying to keep up appearances. It is the best way out. How fortunate that he is away! I won't see him again before I go."

It was, she felt, an heroic resolution. Yes, she would go at once. And she resolutely crushed back the thought: "He will follow."

_Chapter XXV_

"The Van Antwerps have come up for the summer," said Miss Joanna, who had made the same announcement, if you remember, not quite a year before. "The butcher says they came last night. They never got here so early before."

Elizabeth, who was arranging flowers, looked up suddenly. "Yes, I know," she said, quietly, "Eleanor wrote me." She left her roses half arranged, and wandered restlessly over to the long French window.

Before her stretched the well-kept lawn, with its flower-beds and rose-bushes and beyond, field and wooded upland, all clothed in their newest, most vivid dress of green; further still the river, with the white sails on its surface--that river from which, more than half a century before, another Elizabeth Van Vorst had resolutely turned away her eyes, refusing to be reminded of the life that she had given up.

But that woman of an older generation was made of sterner stuff, perhaps, than her grand-daughter. And then there was not much travel in those days, no daily mails, no guests coming up to neighboring house-parties over Sunday.... "It will be nice for you, Elizabeth, to have Mrs. Bobby," said Aunt Joanna, in her comfortable monotone, her knitting-needles clicking peacefully. "You have found it a little dull, you know, dear, since you came back."

A little dull! Elizabeth could have laughed out loud at the words. A little dull--with such exciting subjects to discuss as the new Easter anthem, and the latest illness of the Rectory children; with such diversions as a drive to Ba.s.sett Mills, a tea-party at the Courtenays!

"If I am dull," she said, turning round presently with the ghost of a smile "It certainly isn't the fault of the Neighborhood. I didn't tell you that Mrs. Courtenay has asked me to tea--a third time. She says 'Frank will see me home--no need to send the carriage.'" She laughed a little, not without a shade of bitterness. "Fancy Mrs. Courtenay suggesting that--last summer!"

"Well, dear, she means well, I suppose," said Miss Joanna, puzzled but kindly. Miss Cornelia raised her head with a little, involuntary touch of pride.

"The Courtenays are--are really quite pushing, I think," she said, a most unwonted tone of asperity in her voice. "I told Mrs. Courtenay, Elizabeth, that you had been so _very gay_"--with emphasis--"you really needed a complete rest."

Elizabeth laughed. "And of course," she said "that only made her--dear good woman!--all the more anxious to provide me with a little more amus.e.m.e.nt. I never realized before how fond the girls have always been of me. But then that's the case, apparently with the whole Neighborhood. They always concealed their affection for me very successfully--until this spring!"

She paused, her aunts made no reply. She went over to the piano and began absently turning over sheets of music.

"Do you remember, auntie," she said, abruptly--Miss Joanna had left the room in response to a summons from the maid, and Elizabeth and Miss Cornelia were alone--"do you remember that I told you once that I felt myself a sort of nondescript--neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring? But now I seem to be considered a very fine fowl indeed--the ugly duckling, probably, that turned into a swan."

"You never were an _ugly_ duckling, my dear," Miss Cornelia could not help protesting, in spite of her principles. "It certainly wasn't that."

"Perhaps not," said Elizabeth, "at all events, I'm no better-looking than I was--let us say, last year. I heard a woman at The Mills say the other day that I had "gone off terrible," in my looks. But that doesn't prevent Frank Courtenay from coming here day after day, boring me to death, since he has discovered as his mother tells me, that I am "just the style that he admires"--it doesn't prevent the Johnston girls from going into raptures over my beautiful hair, and asking if I mind their copying my lovely gowns. They _have_ copied my new spring hat, if you notice. Oh, it would be amusing, if it wasn't--so very petty!" She put out her hand with a weary, contemptuous gesture. "And then the funny part of it all is that I am not really so nice, if they only knew it, as I was last year, when they all treated me as if I had committed some sort of crime, merely in existing."

"My dear," remonstrated Miss Cornelia, "how can you talk like that?

I'm sure you're not a bit spoiled--every one says so."

"Ah, they think so," said Elizabeth, quickly, "they think me nice, because I've acquired a society manner, and say the correct thing, but if they knew--everything"--she stopped suddenly and stood for a moment staring steadily before her, with knit brows. "Do you know, Aunt Cornelia," she said abruptly "what I think I am?--a sort of moral nondescript, neither good nor bad. I see the right way--oh, I see it so very plainly, and I want to take it; and then I choose the wrong--always and inevitably I choose the wrong, and shall all my life, until the end. It's not my fault, really--I can't do right, no matter how hard I try."

"My dear!" Miss Cornelia looked at her, puzzled and shocked. "There's no one," she said, putting into trite words her own simple conviction "there's no one, Elizabeth, who can't do right, if they try hard enough."

"Do you think so, auntie?" said Elizabeth, very gently. "Then probably I don't try--hard enough." She went over to Miss Cornelia and kissed her on the cheek. "If I were like you," she said, "I should." Then without further words, she sat down at the piano and began to play, as she did every day for hours at a time. Such restless, pa.s.sionate, brilliant playing! A vague uneasiness mingled in Miss Cornelia's mind with her pride in the girl's talent, as she listened to it. Something was troubling Elizabeth, evidently; something which had brought her home so unexpectedly, which had changed her in looks and manner beyond what could be accounted for by excitement and late hours. Yet innate delicacy and timidity prevented Miss Cornelia from forcing in any way the confidence which seemed to tremble, now and again, upon the girl's lips. She had a vague idea that the difficulty, whatever it was, would soon be decided one way or another, that the Van Antwerps' arrival, which Elizabeth seemed at once to dread and look forward to, would bring matters to a crisis, and the whole thing would be explained.

Elizabeth was still playing when Mrs. Bobby interrupted her. That she had not allowed a day to elapse before hastening to the Homestead was a fact noted with jealous care by the Misses Courtenay, who met her at the gate.

"He is desperate." Mrs. Bobby's visit had not lasted many minutes before she murmured this, holding Elizabeth's hand, and scanning eagerly her averted face. At Mrs. Bobby's words it quivered, the color flushed into her cheek; but otherwise she made no sign.

"When you first went away," Mrs. Bobby continued, as no answer came, "he was all for coming up here at once. He thought it a caprice, a morbid, unaccountable whim; he was sure that if he could see you, remonstrate with you--And then there was your letter, forbidding him to come. He was beside himself! It was all I could do to keep him from taking the first train up here. I said--Wait--it doesn't do, always, to force a woman's will; give her a little time. At least she has paid you the compliment, which she has paid to no one else of--running away from your attentions."

She paused, her eyes still eagerly fixed upon Elizabeth's face. The color in the girl's cheek was now brilliant, her lips were parted; but still she did not speak.

"Day after day," said Mrs. Bobby, "we have talked it over--he walking up and down, restless, wild; I trying to soothe him, urging him to be patient--Sometimes he thinks that you are revenging yourself in this way for his former neglect, that it is a little scheme to pay him back--the idea drives him frantic, makes him furious with himself, yet he is always encouraged when he thinks of it. And then again--he thinks that you don't care for him, that you never will, that there is some one else.... Ah, my dear, if you really do care, you are cruel, unpardonably cruel, to torment him like this."

Again she paused. Elizabeth, with a quick, impatient movement, dragged her hand away from her grasp, and began to pace up and down, gasping as if for breath. "Cruel," she cried out, "cruel! And you think it gives me pleasure--to torment him!"

"If it doesn't," said Mrs. Bobby, following her with her eyes and speaking with some coldness, "I confess I am at a loss to account for your behavior."

Elizabeth stopped suddenly and bending down, almost buried her face in the roses, whose fragrance she inhaled.

"There never was a man," said Mrs. Bobby, "who loved a woman more than he loves you, Elizabeth. And there isn't a man, who, I believe, deserves a woman better."

"Deserves her!" murmured Elizabeth, "deserves _me_! Oh, good Heavens!"

The exclamation was barely audible, and apparently addressed only to the roses.

"I said to him yesterday," said Mrs. Bobby, "'You'll come up Sat.u.r.day, of course?' But--he's proud now and hurt, Elizabeth--he said: 'I won't come, I won't force myself upon her without--her knowledge and consent. If she knows, if she's willing, why, then, I'll come--not otherwise.'"

There was a pause. Elizabeth turned presently a face which seemed to reflect the glowing color of the roses over which she had bent. "What do you--want me to do, Eleanor?" she asked, softly.

"Tell me what I shall say," said Mrs. Bobby "in the letter which I must write when I get home." She went over to Elizabeth and put her hand on her arm. "Shall he come, or shall he not? It rests with you."

Elizabeth's eyes were again averted. "It isn't for me, Eleanor," she murmured, "to drive your guests away, if--if they really want to come."

And so Mrs. Bobby, when she got home, wrote her letter. It consisted of only one word.

The Sat.u.r.day following was extremely warm. The Rector and his wife came to take tea at the Homestead, and they all sat afterwards in the dimly-lighted drawing-room. Elizabeth wandered to the long French window, and stood looking out upon the moon-lit lawn. "It's so warm that I think I shall go for a walk," she said, half aloud, but no one heard her. The Rector was telling Miss Cornelia about the death of an old clergyman in Cranston, who had lived alone with two old servants.

Elizabeth stood and listened for a moment to the deep, impressive tones which mingled strangely with the comfortable monotone which the Rector's wife was addressing to Miss Joanna.

"And so," she was saying "you see I have had blue put on it again, being more summery"--