The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 25

"Yes, I got it; but I could wish you had chosen a warmer meeting-place, my dear." The last months had changed him, and not for the better. His figure had grown stouter, his beauty coa.r.s.er. She shrank away in invincible repugnance from the careless familiarity of his manner.

"It was the best place I could think of," she said, curtly. "At home, we are always interrupted; at your studio--it is impossible. I had to see you--somehow, somewhere." She sat down on a bench near by, and shivering drew her furs about her.

"You do me too much honor," Paul returned, lightly. He took the seat beside her, his eyes resting, in involuntary fascination, on the rounded outlines of her cheek, the soft waves of auburn hair beneath her small black hat. "It's a long time since you have wished to see me of your own accord, my dear," he said, in a tone in which resentment struggled with his old, instinctive admiration of her beauty.

She turned to him, suddenly, her eyes hard, her face very white and set. "You know the reason." "I had to see you, to--to talk things over. You a.s.sume a right to control me, you ask me for money, you try to frighten me with threats. There must be an end of it. I"--she paused for a moment, and drew her breath quickly, while she flushed a dull crimson. "I have promised--Mr. Gerard," she said "to--to marry him next month."

He interrupted her with a scornful laugh. "To marry him--next month,"

he repeated. "And how about that ceremony which we know of--you and I--in the church at Cranston?"

The crimson flush faded and left her white, but still she did not flinch. "I have thought of that," she said, steadily, "and I have decided that it should not--make any difference. I don't believe the marriage would be legal--but that's neither here nor there. I don't want a divorce, I don't want the thing known, I don't consider that we were ever married. I don't think such a marriage as ours, which we both entered into without the slightest thought, which we have repented of"--

"Speak for yourself," he interposed.

"Which I have repented of, then," she went on, "ought to be binding.

The clergyman who married us is dead; the witnesses, so old that they are childish, probably remember nothing about it. There is no one now living who remembers, except you and I. And for me I have determined to think of it as a dream, and I want you to promise me to do the same."

"But--there is the notice in the parish register." He was staring at her blankly, admiring in spite of himself, the calm resolution of her manner, the business-like precision with which she was unfolding her arguments, as if she had rehea.r.s.ed them many times to herself.

"I have thought of that, too," she said, in answer to his last objection, "and I don't think it in the least likely that any one will ever see it. Why should they, without any clue? At all events, this is--the only way out." She faltered as her mind wandered for a moment unwillingly to another way which she had now despaired of--too easy a solution to her difficulties ever to come true. What a fool she had been to think that he would die! People like that never die. As she saw him now, in the full pride of his health and good looks, it seemed impossible to believe that any misfortune could a.s.sail him--least of all death! ...

"There is--no other way," she repeated, with a little, involuntary sob. "The risks are not great--but, at any rate, I must take them.

Now, there is only one other thing"--She paused for a moment and then drew out of her purse a plain gold ring, and showed it to him. It was the ring which she had once worn on her finger for a few minutes, which she had kept carefully hidden ever since. She glanced about her; there was no one in sight except the policeman, who in the distance near the carriage-drive, was pacing up and down at his cold post and beating his hands to keep them warm. Elizabeth rose and went to the edge of the lake. With well-directed aim, she threw the tiny circlet of gold so that it struck the fast-vanishing surface of water and quickly disappeared. She drew a long sigh of relief. "There," she said, "that is over."

Paul watched her curiously. He saw that she attached to this little action a mysterious significance. He sneered harshly. "Very pretty and theatrical," he said. "But do you really think that by a thing like that--throwing away a ring--you can dissolve a marriage?"

She turned to him, her white face still resolute and intensely solemn.

"I don't know," she said, quietly, "but I wanted to throw it away before you, so that you would understand that everything is over between us, and that day at Cranston is as if it never had been.

_Never had been_, you understand," she repeated, with eager emphasis.

"I want you to promise to think of it like that."

He shrugged his shoulders. "How we either of us think of it, I suppose, doesn't make much difference so far as the legality of the thing goes," he said. "But,--have your own way. If you choose to commit a crime, it's not my affair."

"A crime!" She started and stared at him. "Do you call that a crime?"

He smiled. "It's a rough word to use for the actions of a charming young girl," he said "but I'm afraid that the law might look at it in that light."

Elizabeth returned to the bench and sat down. She seemed to be pondering this new view of the matter. "I can't help it," she said at last, in a low voice. "If that's a crime, why--I understand how people are led into them. And I can't ruin his happiness, crime or no crime."

"And my happiness?" he asked her bitterly. "You never think of that?

You professed to love me once. You took me for better, for worse, and how have you kept your word? If my life is ruined, the responsibility is yours. If you had gone with me as I wanted you to, I should have been a different man." There was a curious accent of sincerity in his voice. He really believed for the moment what he said.

The reproach was not without effect. She looked at him more gently, with troubled eyes that seemed to express not only contrition, but a certain involuntary sympathy. "It's true," she said. "I have treated you badly, and broken the most solemn promise any one could make. I don't defend myself; but--I'm willing to make what amends I can. I can't give you myself, but at least I can give you what little money you would have had with me. When I am married to"--she paused and flushed, but concluded her sentence firmly--"to Mr. Gerard, I will give you--all the money I have."

Paul paced up and down, apparently in deep thought. It was evident that her offer tempted him, yet some impulse urged him to refuse it.

He stopped suddenly in front of her. "Princ.i.p.al or interest, do you mean?" he asked, in a tone in which the thirst for gain distinctly predominated.

The doubtful sympathy in Elizabeth's eyes faded, and was replaced by a look of unmistakable disgust. "I suppose I could hardly give you the princ.i.p.al," she said, coldly. "But I will pay over the income every year." She named the sum. "Isn't it enough?"

"That depends," he said, looking at her coolly. "It is enough, of course, for Elizabeth Van Vorst, but for Mrs. Julian Gerard"--

He stopped as an electric shock of anger seemed to thrill Elizabeth from head to foot. "You don't suppose," she cried, "that I would give you _his_ money?"

"Then," said Paul, curtly, "he doesn't know?"

"Certainly not," she said, haughtily.

He began again reflectively to pace up and down. "I don't see," he said, "how you are to pay me over this money without his knowing it."

"Don't trouble yourself about that," said Elizabeth, contemptuously.

"Mr. Gerard will never ask what I do with my money."

"Well he has enough of his own, certainly," said Paul, philosophically. "And yet, poor fellow, I am sorry for him if he ever finds out how you have deceived him."

"He never _shall_ find out," said Elizabeth. She rose and pulled down her veil. "It is so cold," she said shivering, and indeed she looked chilled to the core. "I cannot stay here any longer. This thing is settled, isn't it? You will promise?" There was a tone of piteous entreaty in her voice.

"How am I to know," he asked, still hesitating "that you will keep your word? Once married to Gerard, you might--forget."

"If I do," she returned quietly, "you will always have the power to break yours and ruin my happiness."

"So be it, then. I won't interfere with you. After all, we probably shouldn't have got on well. Come--let us part friends, at least."

He held out his hand, but hers was again securely hidden in her m.u.f.f, and the smile that gleamed on her face was pale and cold as the winter day itself. "Good-bye," she said, and turned away. He fell back, with a muttered oath.

"Upon my word, my lady," he said, "you might be a little more gracious." At that moment Elizabeth came back. There was a softer look on her face.

"I loved you once," she said. "Good-bye." And she held out her hand.

He took it in silence. Thus they parted for the last time.

It had been a successful interview. She had gained all that she dared hope for. Seated in the warm car going home, and shivering as from an ague, she told herself that she had silenced forever all opposition to her wishes. Yet it did not seem a victory. Words which Paul had said lingered in her mind, stinging her with their contempt, the fact that even he could set himself above her. "A crime!" She had never considered it in that light. Surely it was impossible on the face of it that she, Elizabeth Van Vorst, could commit a crime.... And then again--what was it he had said? "Poor fellow, I am sorry for him, if ever he finds out how you have deceived him."

"But he never shall," she said to herself, resolutely as before.

"Crime or no crime, his love is worth it. He never shall find out."

_Chapter XXVIII_

Elizabeth had little time in those days for thought. There was still less time, even, when she was alone with Gerard. The days pa.s.sed in a whirl of gaiety, in which she had been swallowed up since her return to town. It was a state of things which bored Gerard extremely, but secure in the promise he had at last obtained from her that the wedding should be at the end of January he possessed his soul in such patience as he could muster. And when he requested as a special favor, that she would refuse all invitations for the thirty-first of December and see the Old Year out in peace, she consented at once, and the hope of a quiet evening buoyed him up through other weary ones, when he would lean in his old fashion against the wall, and watch her across a ball-room, the center of an admiring court. Yet, even as he did so, the proud consciousness of proprietorship swelled his heart. She was his--his! He had no longer any doubt of her, or jealousy of the men who talked to her.

Why then was the expected evening, when it came, fraught with an intangible sense of gloom, of oppression, which made the time pa.s.s heavily? The old Dutch clock, which the Misses Van Vorst had brought with them from the country seemed to-night to mark the hours with extraordinary slowness, as if the Old Year were in no hurry to be gone, even though the noises in the street, the blowing of horns and of whistles were enough, one might have thought, to hasten his departure.

Elizabeth was pacing restlessly up and down the room. Her hands were clasped carelessly before her, her long house-dress of white cashmere, belted in by a gold girdle, fell about her in graceful folds. There was a flush in her cheeks, a somewhat feverish light in her eyes; she started nervously now and then as some enterprising small boy blew an especially shrill blast on his horn.

"I don't know why it is," she said at last with a petulant little laugh, coming back to her seat by the fire opposite Gerard, and taking up a piece of work, in which she absently set a few st.i.tches, "New Year's Eve always gets on my nerves, I think of all my sins--and that's very unpleasant!" She broke off, pouting childishly, as if in disgust at the intrusion of unwelcome ideas.

He was watching her lazily, with the amused, indulgent smile which certain of her moods had always the power to call forth; the smile of a strong man, who felt himself quite able to cope with them. "With such terrible sins as yours, Elizabeth," he said, "it must be indeed a dreadful thing to think of them."