The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 13

Elizabeth's aunt at Ba.s.sett Mills also watched her career, which was chronicled at that time in the papers. Poor Aunt Rebecca, after a hard day's work, reading her niece's name, and possibly a description of her costume in the list of guests at some smart festivity, would look up, awe-struck, at Amanda. "Only to think," she would say, with the old contradictory note, half pride, half jealousy "to think that it should be Malvina's girl!"

But Amanda, still pale and wasted from the fever with her hair quite long and very soft and wavy, would give an odd, furtive look from her light eyes and say nothing.

_Chapter XVII_

It was early at the Portrait Show. It was so early that what few people were already there had the place practically to themselves.

There were only three or four in the large room at the head of the stairs, which at a later hour of the afternoon was invariably crowded, and where was hung that picture which had attracted so much attention, partly from the great fame of the artist, still more, perhaps, from the beauty of the subject.

A young girl in a long, white gown of some soft, clinging stuff, stood against the background of a dark green velvet curtain. There was no relief to the dead whiteness of the gown, and the roses that she held were white; all that brilliancy of color, for which this great artist is famous, he had expended upon the deep red-gold tints of the hair, the vivid scarlet of the lips, the warm creamy tones of the skin, as they were thrown into full relief by the dark background. The painter had lingered, with all the skill at his command, on the rounded, dimpled curves of the neck and arms, nor had he forgotten the haughty little turn of the head, which gave a characteristic touch to the picture. Seen at a glance, it was aglow with life and color, very human, very mundane, the embodiment of health and bloom. A study in flesh-tints, one critic had carelessly p.r.o.nounced it, and nothing more. It was only when you looked at the eyes that you caught a discordant note, which, if you dwelt upon it, contradicted the joyous effect of the rest; a look, a latent shadow which the great artist had either surprised or imagined, and transferred perhaps unconsciously to his canvas, where, if you saw it at all, it held you with a haunting sense of mystery, the fascination of an unsolved problem. "What does it mean," a man said to himself that afternoon, "and did ---- really put it in, or do I, with my usual superst.i.tion, imagine it? Am I the only person who sees it, or do others?"

Two young girls, who jostled up against him just then evidently did not.

"Portrait of Miss Van Vorst," said one, reading from her catalogue, "by ----." She pa.s.sed the artist's name without recognition, as she delightedly pressed her companion's arm. "Say, Mamie, that's Elizabeth Van Vorst, you know, the beauty. I've seen lots about her in the papers."

"You don't say so?" returned the other, who was apparently less up-to-date. "I thought she must be one of the swells, but I didn't know the name. She's pretty isn't she?--but doesn't her nose turn up too much?--and I don't think much of her dress, it's so kind of simple."

The man who had been standing when they came up in front of the picture, turned frowning aside, and found himself face to face with the original. For an instant each stared at the other in silence, and it might have been noticed by a careful observer that the man was at once the more disconcerted and the less surprised of the two.

"So I see you have achieved fame," he said, recovering himself almost immediately and smiling, as he glanced at the two girls who were still criticizing Elizabeth's features, all unconscious that the subject of their remarks was within hearing.

"Yes, fame," she returned, lightly "of a kind that you despise." She, too, was quite herself again--that flippant, frivolous self, at least, which he had always the power to awaken.

"I suppose I'm a crank," he admitted. "I really don't like to hear my friends talked about, by their first name by people who have read about them in the papers."

"Oh, that," she said, carelessly "is a necessary penalty of fame."

"Which you share with a variety actress," he returned. "I realize more and more that I'm hopelessly behind the age. Look at those two girls,"

he went on, glancing at them with some animosity.

"They have spent, I should imagine, their little all on the admission fee and the catalogue; they don't care two straws for the portraits as portraits, and they have never spoken to the originals, but they are wildly interested in them because they represent to them the magic word 'society,' and they will go away and talk about them as if they knew them intimately."

Elizabeth laughed softly. "Ah," she said "let them be. They're getting their money's worth; don't grudge it to them. So far as I'm concerned, they may pull my face to pieces as much as they please. I know how it is--I've stood on the outside, too, of a thing, and tried to imagine that I was in it."

"Do you think they'd be happier," asked Gerard, "if they were?"

"Ah, that depends," she returned, oracularly, stroking down the long fur of her m.u.f.f.

"Tell me how you find it yourself," said Gerard. He looked about the room. "The place is comfortably empty," he said. "Have you been around yet, or would you--a--like to sit down awhile?"

She hesitated. "I have been in several of the rooms," she said. "I came early on purpose. Eleanor is lunching somewhere, but she is to meet me here at three."

"Then suppose you--a--rest till she comes?" he suggested, as he led the way to a sofa which had been placed for the accommodation of weary sight-seers in the centre of the room. "It's a long while since I've had a talk with you. ('And whose fault is that,' thought Elizabeth.) This isn't a bad place to talk in, and if you've been around once, you've had enough of it for the time being."

"I am glad to rest for a few minutes," Elizabeth admitted.

She threw open the revers of her coat, and sank back in her seat as if physically tired. Gerard looked at her. She was exquisitely dressed.

Her dark green velvet and furs set off the fairness of her skin, her large feathered hat suited her picturesque style. The subtle atmosphere of fas.h.i.+on, of distinction, lurked in every fold of her gown, in every movement and gesture. Three months had sufficed to endow her with it. They had also sufficed--or was this again the result of his imagination?--to take away the first freshness of her beauty. She looked brilliant, but a trifle worn; her color had faded, there were lines of weariness about the mouth, and deep black rings under the eyes.

"You don't look well," he said, abruptly. She smiled. ("I might have known that he would say that," she said to herself.)

"I know it," she returned, quietly. "The maid woke me up, as she generally does, with strong coffee. I refused at first to be waked. I haven't been to bed at a reasonable hour for weeks, and I'm so countrified that I show the ill effects of it."

"You shouldn't go out so much," said Gerard. "What is Eleanor thinking of that she allows it? You--you will be ill if this keeps up." He spoke almost angrily.

"Yet what difference would it make to him?" thought Elizabeth. "He is very unaccountable. Why should he look at my picture, thinking no doubt all the time how ugly my hair is? I don't want his advice--I won't have it. Oh, it's all in a good cause," she said lightly, aloud.

"I complain sometimes, but I wouldn't stay at home, really, for the world. It's all too delightful. I may be tired, but at least I'm not bored."

"It has all come up to your expectations, then?" said Gerard. "You like it better than--a--the river view?"

"Ah, if you had looked at that view as many years as I have, you wouldn't need to ask the question."

"And you are always amused?" he went on. "That was the next wish, wasn't it? You see I'm putting you through the category, as I threatened to do once, and I expect only the truth for an answer. Are you always, every day and all day long, thoroughly amused?"

She met his gaze unflinchingly. "Don't I--seem to be?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I've wondered--sometimes. You certainly ought to be," he declared.

"Then," she said "you may take it for granted that I am."

"And the third wish," he said, musingly, "follows naturally on the other. You never, in this whirl of gaiety--never, I suppose, get a chance to think?"

"Not a moment," she returned, triumphantly. "All my time is occupied, I'm glad to say, in being amused. That's hard work, too, sometimes, but then--the game is worth the candle."

"Well," he said "you are, I admit, a very fortunate young woman, and you have my congratulations. There are not many people whose wishes are fulfilled, as quickly and absolutely as yours have been."

"No," she said, with sudden thoughtfulness "that is very true." She sat for a moment staring straight before her, with the look in her eyes which had puzzled and haunted him in the pictured eyes at which he had looked awhile before. "Do you know," she said at last, speaking very low and hesitatingly, "it's very absurd, but it--sometimes it frightens me a little. Do you remember in Greek history--or was it mythology?--there was a king who had every wish fulfilled, till he grew at last to feel that it--was dangerous; he offered up sacrifices to the G.o.ds, he tried to escape but it was all of no use. Everything went well with him, till at last--his fate overtook him. And so I think, sometimes--mine will."

"Your fate?" Gerard repeated, utterly taken aback and puzzled.

"Yes, the penalty," she said, quickly "of having too much. I have an odd idea sometimes that there is--there must be some misfortune in store for me; that I shall pay for all this yet in some terrible way which no one expects. Oh, it's perfectly absurd, I know, but still I--I can't help it." She had turned of a sudden very white, and she stared up at Gerard with a frightened, mute appeal in her eyes, like that of some dumb animal or a child.

To him she seemed all at once very young and helpless, a being to be soothed and protected; very different from the gay, self-possessed young woman of a few minutes before. "My dear child," he said, very gently, yet with a note of authority, and laying his hand ever so lightly on the delicately gloved hand that rested on her m.u.f.f "you're nervous and over-wrought. You couldn't otherwise have such a morbid idea. This eternal going-out has got on your nerves. I wish you would promise me to stay at home for a day or two. You will, won't you?" he asked, persuasively.

"Yes, I--I will," she said, mechanically, and still looking very white. "I'm over-tired, as you say."

"And now don't talk," he went on, peremptorily. "I'll get you a gla.s.s of water, and then I want you to sit quietly here, and not say a word, till you are better."

She shook her head. "I'm quite well, and I don't want anything," she protested, but he brought the gla.s.s of water and made her drink it, and then watched her anxiously, while the color slowly came back to her face, and her eyes lost their strained, appealing look. They sat in silence; he would not let her speak, and as time pa.s.sed, a great calm insensibly stole over her, a feeling of peace, of security, such as she had not known in all those weeks of fevered gaiety. She was conscious vaguely of a wish that she might sit thus always, saying nothing, alone with him--all the more alone as it seemed for the crowd that was beginning to surge into the room, with a murmur that broke faintly upon her ear, like the sound of the sea a long way off.

The wish was, perhaps, the result of fatigue. She was no sooner fully conscious of it than she rose to her feet.

"Shall we walk through the rooms now?" she said. "It's more than time for Eleanor to be here. Oh, I'm all right now, thank you"--she met his question smilingly. "I don't know what was the matter--it was very silly. You see I boasted unwisely about never thinking, since I have such foolish thoughts; but I won't again. Look, there is a picture of Gertrude Trevor. A good likeness, isn't it? But you've seen it before, perhaps?"

"No," said Gerard, absently. "I haven't seen any of them before." They walked on slowly through the rooms, and she did the honors, pointing out the pictures, as it was apparently his first visit. They did not seem to interest him greatly.