The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3

"It's not pleasant," she answered, "when one has done the best that opened up to be told that it's unaccountable conduct."

"Then it was you? I was sure of it." She looked at him earnestly.

"Why should there be any beating about the bush?" she answered. "I should like it better if you need never have known; but, since you were sure to find it out sooner or later, it might as well come now. What I have done is wise and right, the most satisfactory thing to me, and to others wiser than I. But I wish you would never speak of it."

"Never speak of your coming forward with your whole fortune to make up the loss that this fellow's claim will be to us? Never speak of it!" cried Archdale. "And accept it? From you? You certainly have a flattering opinion of me."

"If it were like any business losses," she said, "it would be different. But this is something nobody could have been prepared for; it needs something outside of the routine to meet it." She waited a moment. "Will you put your case, as you said you were going to do?" she asked. "It will make it clearer, and you will see that there is nothing extraordinary. I think you need not say anything more about—about us, that is all understood. Go on from there."

"A father and a son, then, are nominally in business together," he answered; "the father does the work; the son has a generous share of the profits. Matters are going on swimmingly. Suddenly a claimant turns up who wants a grand slice of the property. He is the only son of the father's elder brother,—a being who was not known to have existed, that is, who was supposed to have died when an infant. The father, my father, was named for him, and my grandfather's will gave the largest share of his fortune to his oldest son, Walter, whom he supposed to be my father, but who was really Gerald Edmonson's father—if the fellow's proofs turn out valid; they are having a thorough overhauling. My uncle does not suffer; it is only we. I am sorry," he added, "that you are liable to be in any way connected with loss, but at the worst it is so remotely that it will never affect you. As for the other matter, the story,"—he stopped with a movement of irritation, perhaps of some deeper feeling,—"that must be borne as best it can, nothing of that falls upon you, certainly. How the matter concerns a young lady at all I can't imagine; so I fail to see what interest you can have in it, or what right to move in it."

"You fail to see?" she said and gave him a smile full of sweetness. It was not a coaxing smile, as if she begged him to reconsider his opinions; it indorsed her own while placidly acquiescing in mutual indifference. "Besides, do you know it was through me that the portrait was found?" And she gave him an account of the discovery. He did not think it necessary to interrupt her by saying that he had heard Edmonson give it with great relish; it seemed a good opportunity to learn whether he had been telling the truth. The story was substantially the same, but the enjoyment of the narrator was absent. "And, then," she added, finishing, "this is not a bad investment."

"It may be now; I can't tell. We were under full sail; we have large ventures, and to give out so much ready money may mean ruin. In a few months, perhaps sooner, you may have the happiness of bearing a bankrupt name."

Elizabeth's eyes were full of pity at the bitter tones in which she heard suffering; she looked away and answered:—

"It is merely justice to me to let me prevent that, if I can."

"Good heavens!" he cried; and, struck with the readiness of her answer, he studied her face. He would have liked to be sure from what motive she was acting. Was it pride, or really pity? The thought of the last made him furious; the other was at least endurable. "And you might not prevent it," he added, watching to catch her eyes as she should turn them back to answer. He was reasonably sure that it was pride.

"Then let me do this for my own sake," she said. "Listen to me calmly for a moment. There is one thing you ought not to forget. Either I am your wife, which God forbid, and I believe he has forbidden it, or I am simply Katie's friend. In case of the first,—if I have destroyed your happiness and Katie's, and my own,—what can money do for me? Life offers me nothing; there are no possibilities before me so far as joy is concerned; there is nothing left for me but to do the best I know how; we must pick up the little things that lie along the way in life, you and I; there will be nothing else for us; I have made you suffer so much, and you deny me this little thing that can never balance any pain, but is all I can dot? Why are you so unwise? Why should we make ourselves more miserable than we need be?"

He sprang up. These very words—that he had often said to himself in regard to his own life, that in effect he had said to her that morning—how harsh they were, how they cut him! He was tender with his wounded vanity. What man would like to hear that a woman has nothing before her but misery if she be bound to himself?

"There is one condition," he cried, harshly, "under which I will accept your money,—when you love me; when it is the gift of love." He laughed bitterly. "I am safe," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Archdale, you are safe," she answered, rising to meet him as he stood before her. "I can use no such weapons. It is beneath you to do it. To say such a thing to me when you know that in any event my great blessing is that I don't care a pin's worth for you, that I am not a sighing woman wasting her affection on you, while you—But I don't suppose you meant your words as an insult."

"Have I ever been rude to you?" he asked, eagerly. "Such a thing would be an infinite disgrace to me."

"Yes," she said, answering his assertion.

"'While you,'" he repeated, "you said 'while you'—What were you going to say about me?"

"While you love Katie with all your heart," she answered, "as it is right you should do." He looked at her, and remembered that for all her courage it might be that he owed her at least the courtesy of all observances of respect and regard before others. He had committed an unpardonable error that day of the dinner at his father's, and he felt a confusion, as if the color were coming to his face now as he thought of it.

"You—mistake," he stammered. "I assure you you do. I think I understand—I"—

She looked up at him. Her face was pale, and there was in it the kind of compassion that one might imagine a spirit to feel for a wayworn mortal.

"You owe me no explanation," she said. "Let us believe in the victory of the right, and put this nightmare away from us. Remember you are speaking only to Katie's friend."

He looked at her, and he could not be sure.

"But you must let me speak," he said, "because I see you mistake. I don't want you to think because—I confess it—her beauty has a great fascination for me that I can forget myself, that I—it was like admiring a beautiful living picture."

She moved nearer, involuntarily.

"Poor fellow!" she said under her breath, "you have been brave; you are brave, very brave. I've seen it." Then, after a pause in which she retreated a little and stood considering deeply, she said, "I will tell you something; it would be too much to be spoken of, only that you don't understand why I did this thing about the business. Think how I am placed. I may be standing between my dear friend and the man who was to have been her husband, and separating them forever. That night when I came home from your father's I realized it more than ever before; it filled me so that I could not bear the thought of life. I happened to have something by me, and I—almost took it. I should have slipped away from between you two, I was so bent upon doing it,—only, the warning saved me from such a sin. It will never be again," she added as she saw his eyes dilate with questioning horror. "That temptation has gone. I have accepted my lot, for it was permitted to come, or even that wicked man could not have brought it. But now, think, think how I must long to do some little thing, not to atone, that's impossible, but to make life not quite so hard to you, and to her. Now, this has come for you. Take it, I entreat you. Some day I may be able to help her in some way; I think it will be so."

He looked into her eyes as she raised them to his.

"But you didn't mean to—do all this, if it is done," he said. "There's no need of talking about atoning, as if you were guilty of anything."

"But, then, I ought to have refused; it was my place. It would have saved everything."

"You wanted to," he said, "and you yielded to oblige Katie."

She looked relieved at his answer. It surprised him; he wondered that he had remembered her hesitation.

"You will do this thing?" she persisted. "You see it is your duty."

"Do you know the reason you are so anxious to have me do it?" he asked, the momentary softening of his face gone. "It's out of no love for Katie, or friendliness to me."

"No," she said to his last statement, and added, "Yes, I know; I've seen it."

"What is it?"

"I suppose," she said, humbly, "that it's my pride.

"Yes," he cried, "that's what it is—your pride. Well, I have my pride, too. I'll take your money, when you love me—when it's the gift of your love, as I said—no sooner; I shall have to do without it this year, I'm afraid."

Her eyes swept him from head to foot in an indignant glance. Then she turned and walked away as if disdaining further speech. He bowed in silence as he opened the door for her, looking at her with a mocking smile, and even as he did so taking in every line of her graceful figure, the pose of her head, and the flush upon her face. In answer to the taunt she did speak one sentence under her breath, but he caught it:—

"You are not the only one," she said.

When he had closed the door after her he walked slowly the length of the room, and, standing by the window, in another moment saw her pass by on her way to the shore where she had learned that the party had gone. If they were already sailing it was no matter; she could wait for them there, or come back; but they might not have started, and to put any part of sea and land between herself and Archdale would be a joy to her.

Archdale watched her until she disappeared.

"And I called myself proud," he muttered. He stood lost in revery, living the scene over again. "What eyes!" he thought; "they're as unconscious as a child's, but such power as they have; they call out a man's best, and I met her with my worst. I never even told her she was generous. She meant to be kind when she humiliated me so." And then he thought that she deserved a better fate than to be bound to him whose heart was with Katie, and realized that Elizabeth was not at all the kind of woman whom he should choose to set his love upon. Yet he smiled scornfully at himself for the eager start with which he had cried out that if she were roused she could be magnificent. A magnificent woman was not in his line, and if it proved that she was his wife, she would go through the world a sleeping princess, he said to himself, unless he should go off to the wars and get shot. Perhaps that would be the best way out of the difficulty, he thought, and would leave her free. At the moment Edmonson's face rose before him, and he frowned as he wondered what feeling there was in that quarter. "No, no," he said to himself. "Not Edmonson. I know he's a villain; I feel it." He interrupted his thoughts by asking, sarcastically, what it could all matter to himself, well out of harm's way, what happened, what Elizabeth or anybody else did? He was very angry with her, and she did not realize the Archdale unforgiveness. If she had, would she have cared? She had not yielded her purpose.

CHAPTER XXI

WAR CLOUDS

"I hate November," cried Mrs. Eveleigh, coming into Elizabeth's room and bringing a whiff of cold air with her. "It's a mean month," she continued. "There's nothing but disagreeable things about it. The leaves are all gone, and the snow hasn't come. You can't even go out riding with any comfort, the ground is so frozen you are jolted to pieces." And with step emphasizing the petulance of her voice, the speaker turned from her companion and went to her own room, to put away her bonnet and the heavy cloak that, if it had not been able to protect her from the roughness of the roads, had kept the cold air from doing more than biting revengefully at her nose and the tips of her fingers, in place of all the mischief it would have been glad to inflict if it had had the chance. The steps grown fainter, went about the next room, and Elizabeth went on with her reading only half attentively, watching for the inevitable coming back. "But then," resumed Mrs. Eveleigh, returning to her subject as soon as she had opened the door wide enough to admit her voice, "one must see a little of the world sometimes. I'm coming in to warm my feet by your fire, shan't I? mine is low. I declare, it's hard that Nancy should be so partial to you. I can get scarcely any attention, though, to be sure, poor thing, it's well to have it from somebody, even if it is from dependents. And you don't get any too much from the quarter where you've a right to it."

Elizabeth, knowing it would be useless to attempt going on with her reading, had laid aside her book on Mrs. Eveleigh's entrance, and now she looked up from the sewing toward which she had reached out her hand, and said:—

"You know as well as I do that it is exactly as I want it. Mr. Archdale considers my wishes, and as to having a right, you know, Cousin Patience, that that is what is being disproved now. Haven't I declared that the ceremony was nothing at all?"

"Oh, certainly you have, but you'll find out how little good that will do. I have not an idea that you'll ever have a chance to say 'Yes' to that splendid Edmonson. You'll find it out soon enough, poor child."

Elizabeth flushed, then turned pale.

"Have you heard anything?" she asked.