Читать книгу: «The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2», страница 5

ELIZABETH.²

A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS

By Frances C. Sparhawk, Author of "A Lazy Man's Work."

CHAPTER XVII

DESSERT

At dinner Elizabeth was between Sir Temple Dacre and Major Vaughan. The former devoted himself especially to her. Opposite sat Katie, Lord Bulchester on one hand, while on the other was placed the guest last arrived, the one whose coming had been doubtful because it had not been certain that he would reach the city in time to accept his invitation. Lord Bulchester so far forgot his manners as to pay very little attention to the pretty young lady who had been assigned to him; his thoughts were all for Katie Archdale, his ears were for her, and his eyes, except for the defiant glances which shot past her at Kenelm Waldo, this last arrival, to whom had fallen the place on her other hand. Katie's air of pensiveness as she took her seat seemed to her aunt suitable and very becoming. But it was impossible to the girl's nature not to enjoy the situation, and the smile that often lurked slyly in the depths of her dimples and brought a light beneath the grave droop of her eyelids made her only the handsomer. Her dress of white India muslin was simple and beautiful; it heightened the effect of her gravity of demeanor, and by making her seem even more youthful than she was, softened any expression of enjoyment that flashed across her pensiveness. Elizabeth in her brocade thought how little the girl needed ornament. Edmonson, watching the high-bred air of the latter, her attentiveness and tact where she used to be dreamy, her face full of indications of strength and refinement, felt that in ten years, when Katie's attractions had waned, Elizabeth would have an added charm of presence, and an added power. He admired intellect, although he so readily adapted himself to people with tastes, and pursuits differing from intellectual, and secretly he had his ambitions. When he should marry well, as he intended to do, the wealth thus gained would give him the place to which his birth entitled him, and then he looked forward to political eminence. Supposing, only supposing, that one day he should be premier he mused, studying Elizabeth,—stranger things had happened—what a help a wife like this would be to him; her pride, her self-control, her graciousness, her wit would then come into play excellently. She belonged to him by right, and–. Again there came that ominous flash in his eyes as they turned furtively in another direction, and the shadow that lurked in his heart leaped forward again and clutched at its victim. Then Edmonson turned with a smile to Colonel Pepperell beside him, and asked some further particulars about the hostility of the Indian tribes.

Archdale, glancing at Elizabeth, saw that she looked extremely well. He was grateful for her courage and her helpfulness, and he understood better than she dreamed of his doing the distress that the present state of affairs caused her. He liked her in a spirit of comradeship. She seemed to him sensitive, yet he felt that in an emergency she would prove as strong to act as to endure. In no case, he told himself, could he ever be in love with her; she was too cold, too intellectual, she had not enough softness or sweetness to charm him even if his fair cousin had never existed. But when there was need of a woman with pride and resolution enough to deny strenuously the force of a marriage ceremony that had never been intended, nobody could answer the need better than Mistress Royal. And it really was not necessary for that purpose that she should feel him such an ogre as he believed she did. However, that was of no consequence. He brought himself back forcibly from a gloomy study of possibilities. There was enough for a man to do in this new world if love were denied him. He began to talk to those next him about the war already going on at the North.

"Young Archdale has caught the infection," said Pepperell, soon after to his listener. "He will be in harness before we know it." Edmonson smiled musingly.

"The very thing," he answered, "the very thing, Colonel Pepperell, for a young man to do. If he go, I have no doubt I shall catch the fever, too, being in the same house with him; Lord Bulchester may also, who knows? there are three soldiers for you."

"For me, indeed!" echoed the Colonel with a laugh. "I should not refuse you, though; I should be proud to pass you over to our commander, whoever he may be."

Lord Bulchester at the moment looked as if his struggles for the coming months were more likely to be personal than political. Katie had turned to him with the kindest attention; her eyes looked into his with a shy interest in the devotion that she found there. She was answering some remark of his, more at length, it may be, than she need have done, but with a most graceful amendment of an opinion doubtfully expressed, when Waldo broke in with some question to her, and she finished in haste and turned to him. Bulchester turned to him also, and in the eyes of the two men as they met was war. Waldo had come back with the determination that while there was life there should be hope. He had until this time regarded Bulchester's marked attentions with the amusement that the nobleman's unattractive exterior was likely to meet with in a rival. Added to that was Waldo's conceit, which made him look through the large end of the telescope in viewing others. But now he had heard Katie's dallying—why hadn't she finished the fellow up quickly?—he had read the determination in Bulchester's face, and had remembered his title. Katie, meanwhile, with admirable unconsciousness, talked, now with one, now with the other, giving most attention to Waldo, and yet making Bulchester feel that if she had been assigned to him at dinner the greater share would without effort from her have been his.

The dinner went on. Sir Temple Dacre's comments were so kind that they could not be offensive. Most of them were made to Elizabeth. He admired Madam Archdale, and thought that her son resembled her; he thought that Colonel Pepperell had the air of a leader of men. "One born so," he said. "He seems always to know what he means, that's it, and he doesn't always tell you. On the whole, perhaps, the last is as great a point, because men don't take ideas readily; they never half look at them; they have too many crotchets of their own; or if not that, too much thick-headedness. The only way to do is to send out the result of one's conclusions in the form of an order, and say nothing about how it was come at."

"You are speaking only of military matters?" she asked.

"Well, no, of things in general."

"Then it wouldn't do in our part of the Colonies," she said. "I once heard of a little boy who was called 'Whatfor Winship' because he was perpetually asking the reasons of things. That is like us. We think a great deal of an aristocracy, provided we can all be aristocrats. Everybody is sure that he can decide any matter that comes up, and then from a sense of fairness we put it to vote. That's the way we manage here."

"Yes," answered Sir Temple, "we across the water know that you people are deuced fond of managing—Beg pardon.—But let me tell you what Walpole, our former minister, said one day when I dined with him. 'Going to America, I understand?' he asked. I said I was. 'Well, I hope over there they'll let you travel in the way it pleases you, it's more than they did to our orders; there is such an ado if those people are not handled with velvet gloves, and the thickest velvet we have, too. I would like you to tell me if you can make out what it all means,' he said."

"And so you're taking notes to see what sort of a set we are? One thing, Sir Temple, you'll find us loyal to our mother, though she does domineer sometimes. And tell Sir Robert that children old enough to contribute to the support of the family, as we do, ought to be allowed to put in a word now and then as to its management."

Sir Temple looked at her, not having an answer ready and little dreaming that a generation later this truth that the beautiful lips had uttered so simply, yet with a proud curve through their merriment, would be forced upon the English ministry at the point of the bayonet. But he lived to see it. Then he thought more than once of this day, of Elizabeth, with her dignity and her brightness, who had seen into the heart of one of the world's great struggles and had spoken the thought that later the cannon of a nation thundered through the earth. Now, however, he looked at her without a full idea of her meaning, thinking her only clever, and ready, and a trifle wanting in respect toward the powers that be, and that this lack came from her youth and should be treated with indulgence. It was a woman's way of looking at things, he said to himself, for he recognized sometimes the same spirit in Lady Dacre.

"Florence seems well entertained," he said aloud, looking at his wife, who was laughing at one of Edmonson's sallies. "That's a brilliant fellow, Mistress Royal; he will make his mark in the world; it's a pity, though, he hasn't a fortune to help him forward; he ought to be in Parliament."

"So he thinks, perhaps," she answered, remembering something that he had said to her one day on his first visit to the country, and understanding more clearly than ever the use that she might have been in the world.

"Very possibly he does. He appreciates himself, that is certain. It's half the battle to know one's own power; sometimes I think it's three-quarters of it. Because, you see, when a man knows his strong points he's always meeting others at his best, and as for his worst,—why, I imagine Edmonson would rather keep those dark." Elizabeth looked up inquiringly, but she said nothing, and Sir Temple added, "In fact, most of us would; we don't expect that charity from men which we find from Heaven." She did not answer, and he talked on, for theorizing was a favorite amusement, but his wife always snubbed him when he attempted it, and most men either showed weariness or had theories of their own which they were in such haste to air that his had only half a chance. Now, here was a young lady ready to listen, and, since it was not because she was unable to talk well herself, her listening was a compliment that he felt.

At first Elizabeth did listen. But her companion fairly launched, went on excellently by himself, and involuntarily her eyes turned upon Edmonson. He was very handsome; she wondered if it was his conversation with Lady Dacre that gave him so much animation. Since circumstances had roused Elizabeth from the dreamy state in which she used to indulge, she had lost something of her belief in his intellectual superiority, for the things that had once seemed so difficult as to be almost impossible to her had suddenly become simple enough; now that, they being required of her, she found herself doing them. That was the way with Elizabeth; whatever she could do she thought easy; it was the things that she believed lay beyond her for which she had the reverence. She was not much used to praise; the little that occasionally fell to her surprised and embarrassed her, so that she seemed to receive it coldly, or else the thing itself appeared to her so trivial that doing it well was a matter of course. She learned with remarkable quickness, for her mind was in good working order and grasped strongly whatever it laid hold of. A few months ago Edmonson's social accomplishments had seemed a marvel to her. Already she was beginning to see that, after all, they did not require a very high order of mind, though she was far from undervaluing them or thinking it possible that she could ever have such power of being agreeable. She was wondering that day as she watched him how much better ambitions he had, and what life would bring him. She could not understand him.

But in a few moments she was watching another face that had now a stronger fascination for her than ever—Katie's. How lovely she looked. Her demureness was giving way under the assaults that fate was making upon it, and she was becoming more and more like her old self—with a difference, however, toward Elizabeth, if toward no one else. It was true, she had greeted her with effusive warmth, but even then Elizabeth had felt the change and drawn back humbly in response to it. But if more proof had been needed, it had been given. For, as they stood together a moment before dinner, Katie said, "How much pleasure it must have given you to meet these guests of Stephen's; no wonder they seem agreeable to you; it may be that you owe so much to them." Elizabeth looked at her in amazement. "You know," continued Katie, "that these are the people whose romantic story Master Harwin related to us one memorable evening?" "No, indeed, I never dreamed of it, Katie," she added, her voice trembling. "Why are you like this? You know how it all came about; you know that—" "Mistress Archdale," Waldo's voice broke in, and the young man came forward to be welcomed by a touch of Katie's hand and a smile that gave him some excuse for lingering at her side. Elizabeth, after responding briefly to his greeting, turned away. Her heart was heavy. It made very little difference about the Dacres, but she had lost Katie, that was a great deal. Last night she had thought that she might find the girl's resentment gone and her sense of justice, if not her affection, ruling her. At least there was this comfort, thought the watcher, she had not broken Katie's heart, it had only been her own—that was better, after all, than breaking anyone's else. Yet a sudden choking came into her throat, she found her eyes grown dim, steadied her vision, heard a few words of what Sir Temple was saying about English rule, assented by a monosyllable, and went back to watching Katie, who seemed above sad fortunes as she sat so unmistakably enjoying herself. She talked a little with Bulchester, and smiled upon him until he beamed with delight; then leaving him full of a secret conviction that she found him more congenial than the neighbor on her other hand, she devoted herself to Waldo, whose fierce suspicions had died out so that he was tranquilly enjoying his dinner, or exchanging remarks with some other guest, secretly delighted with the skill which Katie showed in making herself agreeable to bores. Her bright brown hair would have gleamed in the sunlight without the gold-dust it was powdered with. Her complexion, one of Titian's warm blondes, was at its perfection; her eyes were grave enough for steady expression, and at times for a touch of pathos; it was at the sudden curving of her lips they filled with light, which was gone again directly, making the beholder feel that the sunshine had flashed over her face. As Elizabeth looked at her, and admired her, and felt her heart still going out toward her and tried to find excuse for her cruelty, the wish not to meet Katie's glance made her turn her eyes away for a moment. They fell upon Archdale, who sat motionless, looking at Katie. At that moment his mind, stung by jealousy, made one of those maddened leaps against the slowness of the age that prophesied the railroad and the telegraph by showing the necessity for them. The second man who had been sent off to England the day that Archdale had told Elizabeth of the misadventure of the first was clear in head and as quick in movement as means of locomotion at that time permitted, but it seemed to Archdale at that instant that the very sun had stood still in the heavens to make the summer days run longer, and that the most welcome certainty with such a messenger as had been chosen would come too late. When he should be free, let rivals do their best; but now–. He seemed to have lost himself and to be living in a dream of the girl, as if her presence and her beauty and a sudden sense of distance from her filled him with agony. Suddenly he stirred and his eyes met Elizabeth's and fell. He turned away quickly and began to talk.

For the moment she had no power at all. She was pierced by a sharper sense of her situation than had ever come to her before, and that had been enough. She was one too many in the world. She must give place, and she must not be long about it. A ringing was in her ears; a darkness was around her. But she called back her forces with an effort; she must not think until she should be alone. She turned back to Sir Temple, caught his last words, and answered him in haste, beginning at random and going on with a fluency which even he had not expected.

Colonel Pepperell, who was able to do more things at once than carry on his dinner and a conversation with his neighbor, looked down hard at his plate a moment and muttered under his breath, "Poor thing! Poor thing!"

CHAPTER XVIII

LANDMARKS

When the ladies had left the table and gone into the garden Elizabeth moved restlessly from one to another. Before very long the gentlemen joined them, when Edmonson, after a little engineering, a few moments of detention here and there, came up to her as she was sauntering with several others on the bank of the little river. He contrived to separate her from the rest and walked with her a few steps behind them. His vivacity had not deserted him, and she felt that it would be no effort to talk to him, and that in listening she should be enough interested not to forget herself.

"How beautiful it is here," she began.

"Yes, but I don't care much for landscape when I can get anything better, and a woman who knows life and understands how to make herself entertaining is a great deal better. Therefore, at present I have no eyes for scenery."

"Well, what is it?" cried Elizabeth, with a smile that was a flash, possibly of annoyance, rather than a gleam of pleasure. "As the saying goes, what axe have you to grind, Master Edmonson? All this flattery must be for some object. Can I do anything for you? If only I had influence with the Grand Mogul, or any other high official, I would speak to him for you with pleasure. You see your cause is already won, so don't waste any more powder." And she turned to him with a little laugh that was both bitter and defiant. It was a bad time to tell Elizabeth Royal that she had powers of fascination. It was possible that Edmonson understood her, for his observations, though not openly expressed like Sir Temple Dacre's, were more pertinent. But this seemed to him an opportunity not to be lost. "The voice that soothes the wounds of vanity is always welcome," he mused. "I only meant that it pleased me to talk with you," he answered. "I had no intention of gilding refined gold. As you so frankly conclude I have an axe to grind, there is no reason why I should hide the fact. But you can not grind it, else I should come to you. I am equal to that. And he looked at her, first with a cool audacity in his eyes, which he knew she would meet; and then as he held her gaze with a sudden softening from which she turned away.

"Then, if I can not, why don't you ask some one who can, Colonel Archdale, for instance? He likes to be obliging—that is, I take it for granted he does."

"Perhaps I shall." They had left the water now and were following the path up toward the house. There was a pause. "The air of this place does not agree with you," he began abruptly, "You are much paler than when you came."

"I am happy to say it is quite the contrary with you," she answered. "Our sea breezes have given you the hue of health."

"Yes, that—and other things. You turn away from any reference to your self, but you can never prevent my caring more for your welfare than for anything else in the world." He was speaking softly in tones that were deep with earnestness. There was no doubt that in some way she did fascinate him.

She came to a halt and looked him full in the face without a blush, an added pallor, or any sign of emotion. At that moment she felt herself Archdale's wife, and felt, too, that Edmonson considered her so.

"You can't have any great objects in your life, then, if you fritter away your interest on an idle acquaintance whom you will forget as soon as you are out of her sight, and, if you'll pardon me, who will forget you, except when something calls up your name, or a reminiscence of you." Even Edmonson as he stood staring at her drew his breath like one recovering from a shock. Then as he looked her face changed and he saw tears on her lashes. She reached out her hand toward him and raised her eyes to his with a pathetic appeal. "I know it's the habit of gentlemen to make gallant speeches," she said, "probably more in your own country than here; we are more simple, and as for me, I'm ignorant, I know that very well. I am not as quick as other people, I suppose, but I don't like this sort of thing, I never shall. Somehow, it hurts me, it seems as if one despised me. Well, never mind, it's not that, of course; you are in the habit of doing it, because it's the fashion. But why won't you talk to me naturally, just as other people do?"

Edmonson looked at her with absorbed attention. He was convinced. The thing was incredible, but it was true. She was not feigning, she did not understand him. Her blindness came from one of two causes, either she was incapable of passion, or her heart was not yet aroused. For he argued that if she had loved any one she must have read him.

"I will do as you ask me," he said simply, taking the only course that was open to him unless he had wished to banish himself entirely. But as he walked slowly on beside her again the evil look came into his downcast eyes, and the shadow darted out in his thoughts terrible and triumphant.

When they were near the house, and she was about to turn back again toward the others, still enjoying the summer air, he said. "Will you come with me into the hall? I want to ask you about something I noticed there." This was only so far true that he had found the antlers which he remembered hung there an excuse to stand face to face with her a few moments longer, and to talk with her, and have her answers even about these trivial things all to himself before the others came. It was of no use to pretend to himself now that disappointed ambition was the cause of his chagrin at losing Elizabeth; his feeling was not chagrin, it was something like fury. He had never denied himself anything, he would not deny himself now. As to this woman who the higher he found, and the more he admired her, the more she eluded him, and with every unconscious movement drew tighter the chain that bound him; he had a purpose concerning her. He was not capable of deep or continued devotion, but when he had an object in view nothing mattered to him but that. If he gained it, doubtless something else would absorb him; if he lost—blackness filled this blank, but here he had resolved not to lose.

As he stood in the hall with Elizabeth beside the open door and watched her delicate face and perceived the readiness with which she answered his questions in full, as if glad of so simple a subject, he said to himself, "That fancy of hers for me was lighter than I thought. She has not yet quaffed the nectar of love—not yet—not yet." He gave little attention to her story of the shooting of the stag, Stephen's feat when a boy of fourteen; she did not of course know as much of the history of the Archdales as did the petted young beauty to whom he had been talking before dinner, and she in the midst of her fluent account wondered in her own mind where she had heard it all, and remembered that it had been one of Katie's stories when they were at school together.

"You see how large a creature it must have been," she finished, "the forehead hangs quite low, but I can't touch the tip of the under branch of this antler." She made the effort as she spoke, and reaching up on tiptoe, caught at the antler to steady herself. It swung a little on one side, and she stood looking at the hole torn in the tapestry by Stephen's gun on that day, when he had gone into the woods in desperate mood. It had been covered, and no one had noticed it, unless, possibly, the servants in dusting, but, if so, they had not told of the accident, not wishing to run the risk of being blamed for it.

"Did I do that?" asked Elizabeth. It seemed to her as if to have injured an Archdale to the value of a pin would be intolerable.

"No indeed," said Edmonson. "I saw it just as you moved. The antler is smooth here, see." And he made her pass her hand over the polished surface above the tear. "Perhaps there is some roughness in the wall," he added, "it may be a nail under the tapestry that somebody found out before we came."

She reached up eagerly.

"No," she said, "something must have struck against it and caught it, for so far from being rough here, it's hollow. I can put my finger into it; it is one of the openings between the beams." They went on talking while Elizabeth's finger was unconsciously tapping the wall through the torn hanging. All at once she broke off in the midst of what she was saying to cry, "Why, there certainly is something very strange here; it is like the canvas of a picture. Touch it, and see if it does not feel so to you."

Edmonson reached up his hand as she withdrew hers. His eyes seemed to scintillate as he felt the surface of the canvas under his finger; his face flushed deeply; it was with effort that he restrained a jubilant cry, and his tones betrayed a triumph that he could not hide, while excitement broke through his barriers of measured words.

"Really, we must look into this," he said. "This may be El Dorado to—some of us. Let us wager, Mistress Royal, whom it most concerns, you, or me."

"I suppose it's some old family portrait and belongs to the Colonel," she answered.

"Yes, I suppose so," he said, waiving the question of the wager as she had done. "Don't you propose to ask him?"

Elizabeth looked amazed, then flushed deeply as she realized her imprudence in having spoken of the canvas.

"Certainly not," she answered. "I don't see how what Colonel Archdale has on his walls concerns me."

"I should think a possible daughter-in-law would feel somewhat differently." She winced, then answered coolly; "She ought not."

"Well, at least, I am curious. I own it. I must see what we have unearthed here. Won't you ask the Colonel to show us his private portrait gallery? He will do anything for you, I notice."

"Certainly not," she answered.

"Certainly he won't do everything for you, or certainly you will not ask him—which?" insisted Edmonson.

"Both. I shall never test him, and I shall make no comments on what I may find on his walls. Nor will you, Master Edmonson, for no gentleman would."

"Do you object to my seeing it?" She looked at him wonderingly.

"Why should I, if it were open? But I will tell you what I do object to, to my coming here and seeming to pry upon—the family. I wish it had been somebody else instead of me who had found it, or that it had never been found at all. I beg you will spare me, Master Edmonson," And she looked at him with the rare entreaty of a proud nature.

"Perhaps it's not a picture after all," he said. "You may be mistaken. Don't you think so?"

"No," she answered. "I am not mistaken, but—."

"Don't fear that I shall speak one word," he cried as she hesitated. "I would sooner lose my life than annoy you, to say nothing of losing my amusement. If I can't see what is behind the hanging without doing that, why, I'll not see it at all."

"Thank you," she said gratefully, dwelling only upon the first part of his speech. "I was sure you would feel so."

"Yes, words and questions would be a clumsy way. I'll show you a better." And while she looked at him wondering what he meant, he turned from her and in an instant, bringing up a chair, had stepped upon it and made with his penknife a line across what he judged would be the top of the picture. Feeling along the length of this with his finger he cut a perpendicular line from each end of it, so that the tapestry fell down like the end of a broad ribbon, and showed that Elizabeth had not been at fault in her supposition. He had stepped down from the chair, replaced it, and returned to her side while she still stood in dumb consternation. He was smiling. "There!" he said. The thing had been done in a flash; he had scarcely glanced at the painting, until, as he spoke, he fell back a step. Then he caught her arm.

"Look!" he cried hoarsely, "Look!"

But he need not have told her to look, she was doing it with eyes wide open and lips parted and motionless. "I was right, you see. I had a right to do this," he said.

She drew away from the grasp that he still laid on her arm in his absorption. "Yes, I was right," he repeated. "Do you see?"

"No," she answered, "I understand nothing. Explain yourself. Or wait. It is time now to call Colonel Archdale. You will explain to him this liberty, and the meaning of this—this strange coincidence."

"Ah, ha!" he cried. "You see it? Everybody will see it; isn't it so? Tell me," he insisted.

"I suppose so," she faltered, looking at his triumphant face and feeling a presentiment that some evil was to fall upon the Archdale family. If so she would have helped to bring it.

"Let us send for him," repeated Edmonson. "Or, no. Let us surprise them all, give them an entertainment not planned by mine admirable host. Come, let us go out into the garden, and when we return, here will be a new face to greet us. That will be more as you wish it? I want it to be as you wish."

"You have not considered me at all."

"The day will come when you will not say that," he answered, looking at her fixedly, then turning away with abruptness. "We must name our new friend," he added. "Suppose we call him Banquo's ghost? Banquo's ghost, you remember, existed to only one person. Did you ever see him on the stage? You must, some day in London. He rises up in solemn majesty from a secret trap door, and overwhelms Mac—Well! here's the trap door." And he touched the slashed tapestry with his finger. "Shall I tell you why I call him so?" he went on, coming close to her as if about to whisper some secret.