He thought more and more on this subject, for Marie, her first timidity got over, began to ask him artless questions about his home.
He told her that his family consisted of five members. He had a brother older than himself, who was a lawyer in Boston. He was married, but had no children, and he lived in the old family mansion on Beacon Hill, with his two sisters, Maud and Edith, who were respectively nineteen and seventeen, and had not quit the school-room yet. The fifth person was Mrs. Wilson, their governess.
"Maud is the elder. She is quite talented, and is writing a novel," he said. "Edith is an embryo artist. My brother's wife is very pretty and fashionable. I hope you will like them all."
But a shudder crept over him at the thought of taking home a bride into that refined and cultured circle to place her in the school-room, to begin at the bottom of the ladderof learning. How shocked they would be, how his brother's wife would lift her pale brows in wonder! He dreaded her more than all the rest, for two reasons. One was that she had brought a little money into the once rich, but now impoverished Van Zandt family, and took airs on that account, and the other was that she had a pretty sister with adot, and wanted to make a match between her and her brother-in-law. So Eliot fancied, and with some reason, that she would not take kindly to the new-comer.
The further he got away from New Orleans, the more he was tormented by his dread of his home-folks.
At last he made up his mind to give Marie some sight-seeing in New York, and to write to his brother, and, to some extent, prepare them for the shock they were to receive.
When the letter was written and posted, he felt better. He had explained matters and invoked their good-will for his simple child-wife. However much they were disappointed, they would respect his wishes, they would not be unkind to Marie.
So he gave himself up with a light heart to the pleasure of showing her the wonders of New York City.
Several days were spent there, and then he took her to Niagara Falls for a few days more. He judged by that time that they would have got over the shock in Boston, and be ready, perhaps, to receive Marie with equanimity.
In this hope, he took the train for Boston with his little bride.
Throughout their long journey Van Zandt had adhered to his manly resolve of treating his little bride simply as a dear friend or young sister until she should have awakened from a child into a woman and given her heart unreservedly with a wifely love.
On the steamer she had her separate state-room, at hotels her solitary suite of rooms, on the trains her comfortable Pullman sleeping-car, while the chivalrous younghusband lounged away the long hours in a smoking-car with his favorite cigar. The young bride, in her ignorance and innocence, had not an idea but that this was the usual mode of procedure with husband and wife, and thoroughly enjoyed the long journey and the varied scenery through which she was being whirled. Its newness and the strong contrast to her Southern home made it all the more delightful. Eliot Van Zandt enjoyed her delight, her naïve questions, and even her utter ignorance of everything, although he sometimes caught himself wondering at the fact. But the truth was, that the girl's invariably well-chosen sentences, acquired from companionship with refined and well-bred people, made him often forget that she was totally uneducated, and that years of school-room drudgery yet lay before her ere she could take her place in the cultured world of Boston society.
"There is one comfort. She is exceedingly intelligent, quick, and receptive. She will learn very fast," he told himself.
One evening, at Niagara, when they sat together admiring the glorious falls by moonlight, she said to him, curiously:
"You said once that if you could have chosen my name, it would not have been Marie. Tell me what you would have called me?"
Turning to her with a smile, he replied:
"The name that I always fancied I should like for my wife to bear was the sweet one of Una—no sweeter, I know, than Marie, but I grew to love the name from reading Spenser's 'Faëry Queen.'"
Then he told her the pretty story, as well as he could, of the beautiful Una who personified Truth in the "Faëry Queen." She listened with sparkling eyes and eager interest.
"From this hour I shall be called Una," she exclaimed.
"But you have been baptized Marie," he said.
"It shall be Una Marie, then," she replied, in her pretty, positive fashion, and he was pleased to assent.
"From this hour, then, I shall call you Una, and you shall call me Eliot."
"But, monsieur—" deprecatingly.
"No more monsieurs," he replied, playfully. "They remind me too much of Madame Lorraine."
"It shall be Eliot, then, always," answered the little bride.
Bryant Van Zandt was as much surprised and displeased as his brother had expected on the reception of the letter announcing his marriage.
"Eliot had no right to do it. He promised our mother, before she died, to stay single and care for the girls until they had homes of their own!" he exclaimed, vexedly, to his wife, to whom he imparted the shocking news before breaking it to his sisters.
Mrs. Van Zandt was a blonde of the very palest type.
"Her skin it was milk-white,Her hair it was lint-white,Bright was the blue of her soft rolling eye."
"Her skin it was milk-white,Her hair it was lint-white,Bright was the blue of her soft rolling eye."
She was about twenty-eight, but looked younger through her fairness. She was rather pretty and petite, and, in her tasteful garb of blue and white, looked like an animated bisque doll.
But her color took a warmer tint than usual just now, and frowning darkly, she exclaimed:
"It was a shame for Eliot to go and make such a goose of himself. It would not have been so bad if he had married a girl with money, as you did, but to go and add another burden to the family is outrageous, I declare! What ever will the girls say?"
"They will be very angry, I am sure," said the lawyer; but when it was told to them, they did not make as much ado as their sister-in-law. They looked grave and sorry, indeed, but Maud, the elder, said, sensibly:
"It is very bad, but indeed, Bryant, I do not see how Eliot could have acted otherwise.Noblesse oblige, you know."
It was the motto that had ruled the lives of the Van Zandts for generations, and Bryant could not say one word; but his wife made a littlemoueof disdain.
"Noblesse obligehas nothing to do with it," she said; "or, if it had, it was the other way. He was bound to stay free for your and Edith's sake."
Pretty Edith answered quickly:
"No, no, for we shall not want him to help pay for our dresses much longer. Maud's book and my picture are almost done, and if we sell them, we shall have money of our own."
"Châteaux en Espagne!" Mrs. Van Zandt muttered softly, with a covert sneer.
She had no talent only for looking pretty and dressing well, and envied that of her more gifted sisters-in-law.
They were used to her sneers, and they winced, but seldom retorted. The dreamy, dignified Maud looked out of the window with a little sigh, and the more self-assertive Edith exclaimed:
"There's no use crying over spilled milk, anyhow, and Eliot's married for good and all. He has as much right to bring his bride home as you had, Bryant, so we may as well all make the best of it—there!"
"No one disputes his right, Edith, we only deplore his imprudence," Bryant answered, flushing. "As for me, I married a woman who would be no burden upon me, but Eliot candidly owns that he has made amésalliance."
"Married a pauper and a nobody!" flashed his wife.
"It is no such thing. Let me see his letter. He did not say that!" cried Edith, angrily.
"Not exactly in those words, but it amounts to the same thing," Bryant Van Zandt answered. He threw her the letter, and said impatiently: "Well, you may fight it out among yourselves. I am going down-town."
He put on his hat and went out. Edith and Maud read their brother's letter together. Its deprecatory, almost pleading tone, touched their loyal young hearts.
"Poor Eliot, he could not help it. We must not scold," said Edith. "This old house is big enough for us all, isn't it, Maud?"
"Yes," she answered; but the sweet eyes were grave with trouble as she fixed them on Mrs. Van Zandt. She burst out suddenly:
"Oh, Sylvie, do not look so glum, please. Of course, we do not like it, and neither did Eliot, I fancy; but you must see there was no other way for a Van Zandt, so we must make the best of it."
"Fancy a Van Zandt—one of the Van Zandts, of Boston—bringing home an A B C school-girl as a bride!" was the disdainful answer she received.
Vivacious Edith cried out tartly:
"You need not take on such airs, Sylvie. You are not so learned yourself. New York girls never know anything but dressing and flirting."
"We marry into poor, learned families, and so adjust the difference," Mrs. Van Zandt replied, sarcastically.
Both the sisters flushed hotly at this coarse rejoinder.
Mrs. Van Zandt had been generous with her money, flinging it about her with the lavish hand of a spoiled darling of Fortune; but she was always conscious of its importance, never more so than when twitted with her execrable French, her questionable time in music, and her outrageous flirting, that sometimes drove poor Bryant wild with jealousy.
And so to this household, with its discordant elements, its supercilious mistress, its dreamy student, Maud, its enthusiastic, artistic Edith, came Una with her impassioned soul, her shy sensitiveness, her innocence and ignorance, and her heritage of beauty, yet branded already "pauper and nobody."
When she saw all those fair young faces grouped in the handsome drawing-room to meet her, her heart thrilled with timid delight. She had had so little to do all her life with the young and gay.
All at once, as it were, she was thrown into a house full of young and handsome people, and it was most pleasant. With pretty confidence, quite untouched with self-assertion, she received their greetings, kind on the part of the girls, patronizing on that of Mrs. Van Zandt, and reserved as regarded Bryant.
It was twilight when they arrived, and a cup of tea awaited them before the late dinner. Una sipped hers shyly under the fire of the strange eyes that were steadily taking in hertout ensemble, the simple, tasteful gray dress, the hat with gray feathers that seemed such a Quakerish setting for the lovely unique face, with its somber, dark eyes and slender, dark brows, its perfect chiseling, and its aureole of rich golden hair.
"I shall paint her portrait," Edith whispered, in a stage aside.
Bryant's wife was quite displeased when Eliot came frankly to her to ask that a separate suite of rooms be provided for his girlish bride.
"Do you hate her so much, then?" she queried, arching her pale brows disagreeably.
He started and looked annoyed.
"Who said I hated her? You are very much mistakenin the idea, Sylvie," he said, curtly. "I love Una quite as well, I have no doubt, as Bryant loves you."
"Why, then—" she began, but he interrupted quickly:
"Simply because the love is all on one side yet. My wife is wedded, yet not won. Her heart is that of a child still, and although she bears my name, I will claim no rights save a lover's until I win her woman's love."
Mrs. Bryant had only been acquainted with Una an hour, but she could have told Eliot a different story from that. Her quick eyes had seen the wealth of tenderness in the dark orbs of Una as they rested now and then on her husband's face, but Sylvie was more angry than any one supposed over this unexpected marriage. She was not unselfish enough to open the eyes of the blind young husband.
"Oh, very well, if you choose to make a chivalrous goose of yourself, Eliot," she answered, tartly, "I suppose she can have the best suite of guest-rooms—the ones I have been fixing up for my sister. But I can write a word to Ida not to come."
"Of course you will not. There are other rooms," he said, impatiently.
Sylvie shrugged her shoulders.
"Ida's used only to the best," she said, insolently.
He regarded her for a moment in stern silence. Underneath his usual gentle, nonchalant manner slept a will that was iron when needful. After a moment he said firmly:
"See here, Sylvie, my wife has the same right in my father's old house that Bryant's wife has. You have the best suite of rooms in the house, she must have the next best. If you have put anything from your own purse into the rooms, it can be removed into another room for Ida's use when she comes. Una knows, for I have told her, that the Van Zandts are poor—that we have nothing but this big, old-fashioned house, and such a small income that barely buys our sisters' dresses, and I have to eke outthe rest by hard work. She does not expect anything luxurious, but I shall see that she has the best I can afford."
So the gage was thrown down, and Sylvie picked it up at once. She had the petty meanness to strip Una's rooms of all the pretty things she had placed in them for Ida, and they looked rather bare when she finished her task of despoliation. But Maud and Edith brought the prettiest things from their own rooms to fill up the void, indignant at her petty spite.
"I know what is the matter. She is mad because she can not marry Eliot to Ida now. It's what she's been fishing for all the time," Edith said, indignantly; and the sisters made a generous compact to fight the battles for the new-comer that their clear young eyes already saw were inevitable.
There was one person who took kindly at once to Una, and that was the middle-aged governess, Mrs. Wilson. When she had come first to teach the little Van Zandts, she had been a forlorn young widow, having lately buried her husband and her only child. She had taught Eliot when a little lad, and she had taught his sisters, growing gray in patient service of her well-beloved pupils. Now, in the fair, innocent face and great, dark eyes of Eliot's wife, she fancied a resemblance to the little daughter that had been in Heaven so long.
"I shall love to teach her all that I can," she said, with a dimness in her gentle brown eyes. "I love to look at her beautiful face with those solemn eyes so much like my dead Elsie's eyes."
And loving her first for Elsie's sake, she soon grew to love her for her own. Never was there pupil so eager to learn, so thirsty for knowledge, so untiring in application as was the neglected Little Nobody, as Mrs. Van Zandt still called her contemptuously in her thoughts.
The first few months of Una's stay in her husband's home passed quietly and uneventfully. Fortunately for all concerned, Bryant's wife went off to spend the summer at Long Branch with her mother and sister. In the generosity of her heart, she took Bryant with her, so the household that was left was very quiet and peaceable.
The girls took their summer vacation from study, and Maud worked on her novel, Edith at her picture. In the school-room Mrs. Wilson and Una diligently climbed the ladder of knowledge through the long summer mornings. In the afternoons the four ladies took long country rides, and in the short evenings there were dinner and Eliot. They had music always to enliven them, and very often neighbors and friends dropped in and made the time pass agreeably. Often Eliot, who, as a newspaper man, had tickets to concerts, lectures, readings, and plays, took them out to pleasant entertainments. He managed, too, to buy Una a little brown pony to ride, and she had some charming morning canters by the side of her husband, who made the carriage-horse do service on his own behalf.
Sylvie Van Zandt would have said it was a humdrum life, but Eliot and Una thoroughly enjoyed it. Nay, to her it seemed an elysium, this bright home, with its kind, friendly faces and gentle words, so unlike her life with Mme. Lorraine.
Una had learned to read and write with perfect facility and surprising ease, and passed on to higher studies. Of French she already had some knowledge—indeed, as much as she had of English, having spoken either at will in her New Orleans home—so this language was very easy to acquire now. For music she developed a talent equal to that of her husband, and he was delighted to find that shehad a sweet, low alto voice that blended in perfect harmony with his own.
She began to read poetry and novels now, and their strange sweetness thrilled her very soul. She learned that wonderful word, Love, and some of its subtler meanings. It grew to be the theme of her thoughts and dreams, although in the exquisite shyness that offset her child-like frankness she never even named the word to Eliot.
But, for all that, she began to comprehend its mystic meaning, and to say to herself, with deep tenderness:
"It is what Eliot feels for me and I for him."
Yet this blind young lover-husband said to himself sometimes, discontentedly:
"She is very bright over other lessons, but very slow learning the one I am trying to teach her so patiently every day."
Every day she grew more beautiful and graceful under the clever tuition of Mrs. Wilson, who delighted in her task of forming the unformed girl. They spent happy hours over the piano together, patient ones over books and blackboards.
For several months she never even heard the words "A Little Nobody," under which she had chafed so often at Mme. Lorraine's. Life began to have a new, sweet meaning, whose key-note was love.
She was so sorry when Eliot went away with his friendly hand-clasp in the morning, so glad when he returned in the evening. Sometimes she said to herself that she would not have minded kissing him now, as Maud and Edith did every morning; but, since the day when she promised to marry him, and then rejected his kiss, he had never offered another.
"I should not care for a cold, duty kiss," he thought. "I will wait for her love and her kisses together."
In the meantime, he worked very hard at his literary duties, trying to double the moderate salary he had enjoyedbefore his marriage, that his sisters might not feel the change. The pony had been quite an extravagance, but he had heard her express a timid wish for one, and by some severe self-denial in the matter of coats and cigars, had managed to gratify her wish. But he did not chafe against the silent sacrifices he made for her sake. Each one only made the dark-eyed girl dearer to his heart, and the memory of that last day in madame's prison always made him shudder and long to clasp her passionately to his heart.
On his strong white arm there was a slight scar made by the wound of a pocket-knife. He often looked at it when alone, and said to himself:
"To that little scar my darling owes her life."
But Una, all unconscious of the debt, still sweetly ignorant of his blindness, went on with her studies, and her music, and her poetry reading, making him the hero of all in her silent, adoring fashion.
There was one thing that touched and pleased him.
She had not forgotten one of the many songs with which he had beguiled the dreariness of their imprisonment, and she had insisted on learning each one. The two that she liked best were "The Warrior Bold" and "Two Little Lives." Mrs. Wilson and the girls noticed that she had a fashion of humming over one little verse very often to herself:
"It was a lark that sung in the heaven,While all the world stood still to hear,Many a maiden looked from her knitting,And in her heart there crept a tear.Down came the lark and sung to the daisy,Sung to it only songs of love,Till in the twilight slumbered the daisy,Turning its sweet face to heaven above."
"It was a lark that sung in the heaven,While all the world stood still to hear,Many a maiden looked from her knitting,And in her heart there crept a tear.Down came the lark and sung to the daisy,Sung to it only songs of love,Till in the twilight slumbered the daisy,Turning its sweet face to heaven above."
She never said to her young husband now, as she had said that time in their prison, "You are the lark and Ithe little daisy," but she thought it all the more, and the fanciful thought pleased her well.
Maud and Edith, who had first taken Una's part out of generous loyalty to their brother, now began to like their sister-in-law more for her own sake.
At first they said: "It is not so bad as we feared at first. She is learning very fast, and she is really very good and very pretty. And even although she is of obscure origin, she is a Van Zandt now, and that is enough."
Maud used to read her whole chapters of the wonderful novel, and when Una's color rose and her eyes sparkled with mirth or feeling, the young authoress was delighted. She took it as a tribute to her genius, and was cheered and encouraged in her delightful work. Edith, on her part, appropriated the girl for a model, and made her pose for her benefit every day in the little studio at the top of the house. At last the two girls unanimously voted her a decided acquisition.
"It is very fortunate Eliot had to marry her. She is a darling, and I can see that they are beginning to fall in love with each other," said Edith.
"I am so glad that it will turn out a love-match after all," Maud replied, with enthusiasm.
The days came and went, and brought the early, bleak New England autumn. It was time for Sylvie to come home, but Bryant came alone. His wife had gone to New York with her family to stay for the beginning of the social season. Every one but her husband was secretly pleased when she stayed until after the New-Year festivities. Maud and Edith were quite sure that they had got along more happily without her, although they were too polite to hint such a thing to Bryant.
At last she came in the middle of January. Ida Hayes, her sister, a younger edition of herself, came with her, and straightway the halcyon days of Una came to an end.
Sylvie came to her room that evening, when she was putting on her simple blue silk dress for dinner, with an air of importance and anxiety.
"Have you come to your senses yet—you two?" she demanded, brusquely. "If you have, I shall be glad, for I do so want these rooms for Ida."
Una, with her laces all awry, looked up blankly.
"I—don't—think—I understand," she answered.
"Pshaw! I mean, do you use the same suite of rooms as your husband?"
The pretty, wondering face did not change its color, the dark eyes only looked amazed.
"Of course not," Una said, and Sylvie's red lips curled.
"Of course not!" she mimicked, sneeringly. "Why, you silly child, you talk very strangely. Bryant and I share the same suite of rooms, do we not? All husbands and wives do who love each other."
Una commenced to fasten her laces with strangely trembling fingers.
"Eliot and I love each other!" she said, slowly.
"Oh, indeed?" said Sylvie, with a very incredulous giggle. "You did not when I went away. Have you done your courting since, as you had no time for it before you were married?"
The wonder, the half-dazed comprehension in the girl's pale face ought to have made her less pitiless, but it had been her dream and Bryant's to marry Ida to Eliot. She had said to herself many times that she could never forgive the Little Nobody that had thwarted her plans.
So with an angry heart and pitiless eyes she had thrust the point of a dagger into Una's heart.
But with proud, somber eyes the girl-wife said, gravely:
"You said you wanted these rooms for Miss Hayes.Very well, you can have them. I dare say Maud will give me another room."
"Oh, dear no, I would not turn you out of your room for the world, child!" suavely. She knew that Eliot would not permit it. "I only thought that if you had given them up and gone to Eliot's these would suit Ida. She always had them when she came before, and it does seem foolish, does it not, for man and wife to occupy six rooms when three would be enough? I hoped you and Eliot had become reconciled to your forced marriage ere this."
Driven to bay, Una cried out, angrily:
"Mrs. Van Zandt, you are talking the wildest nonsense. There was no forced marriage."
"Then why did Eliot write such a letter to my husband? Come to my room, I will show it to you since you dispute my word."
She caught Una's cold hand and half dragged her with her to her own room, where behind locked doors she gave the ignorant wife that fatal letter to read—fatal, because in Eliot's haste and worry he had stated only the bare facts of the case, and Una could not read between the lines the love that had filled his heart.
She read it—the lovely, trusting girl—every word. She comprehended it in part. What she could not fathom Sylvie pointed out in clearest language, and when she had made her cruel meaning clear as day, she said, maliciously:
"Noblesse oblige!"
A gasp, and the girl's heavy eyes turned dumbly on her face—dumb with a bitter, humble humiliation. Sylvie said, half deprecatingly:
"He did not love you at first, of course. How could he? When he came he asked me to give you a separate suite. I remonstrated, but he insisted. Of course I thought you would win him while I was away, and he would get over his foolishness."
Una had folded her white arms on the dressing-table, and was looking into her face with dazed, heavy eyes. She muttered, hoarsely:
"Oh, this is too dreadful! What must he, what must you all think of me?"
Sylvie replied, with cruel frankness:
"Of course we all felt angry with you at first. We were disappointed, too, for we had all expected that he would marry sister Ida. There had been no engagement, but it was understood. But there, no one blames you or him, child. As I said before, Eliot could not have acted any other way.Noblesse oblige!"
As if forgetful of her presence, Una murmured, sadly:
"Mon Dieu! what shall I do?"
Sylvie answered, with more sense than she had displayed in making these cruel revelations:
"Do? Why, nothing but make the best of it, as Eliot and the rest of us have done. What has happened can not be altered now, so you must try to make him fond of you, so that he shall no longer regret taking you and losing Ida; and, for one thing, you ought not to be so extravagant. There is that pony he bought you. I know he could not afford it, really, for he is poor. And to-night I saw him bring you hot-house flowers. I am afraid he is running into debt just to pamper your whims. Now, if he had married Ida, it would have been different. She would have brought him a fortune, and could have paid her own bills."
Pale as she would ever be in her coffin, Una stood listening, her heart beating wildly.
"I am in his way. Oh, I wish I could die now!" she was thinking wildly.
Sylvie, who had done all this out of sheer malice, gloated over the sight of her misery.
To herself she said spitefully:
"I am paying her back, the little pauper and nobody, for Ida's disappointment."
Then suddenly she remembered that it was almost dinner-time. She said carelessly:
"You had better go back to your room and finish dressing, Una; and remember, I would not have told you what I have, only that you disputed my word. I hope you will not run to Edith with it. It will only make matters worse. I dare say he will learn to love you in time."
"I shall run to no one with it," Una answered, in a strange voice. She moved to the door as she spoke, and passed out. Sylvie laughed mockingly.
"I have paid Eliot now for his insolence. I know he loves her to madness. I saw it in his eyes when she met him so coolly this evening. Well, this will put a stumbling-block between them that he will not easily pass."
And humming an opera air with heartless indifference, she made some slight addition to her already elaborate toilet, and went down-stairs.
Una's toilet, the light-blue surah silk with square neck and elbow-sleeves, was complete but for the handsome corsage bouquet Eliot had brought her an hour ago. She did not pin it on her breast; she took it in her hand and ran along the hall, then tapped softly at the door of the apartment that she knew had been designed for Miss Hayes's use.
Ida opened it, dazzling Una's eyes with the glitter of her satin and jewels. She frowned slightly at the intruder.
"I have brought you these flowers to wear," Una said, rapidly, thrusting them into Ida's white hand. Then she turned away and went along the hall with slow, lagging footsteps, down the broad, shallow staircase, and so to the drawing-room, her young face pale with emotion, and a strange, excited glitter in her dark eyes.
Eliot was sitting on a lowtête-à-tête. He moved aside slightly to allow her room at his side.
But Una did not seem to see her husband's involuntary movement. She went to the opposite side of the room and sat down by Edith, who, with her brown hair and brown eyes, looked very pretty in garnet velvet and cashmere daintily combined into a graceful dinner-dress. Maud was buried in a book on the other side of her, but she had taken time to honor the new arrivals by putting on her best black silk with a white lace fichu to relieve its somber tone.
Vivacious Edith exclaimed instantly:
"Oh, Una, the pretty flowers that Eliot brought you—you have forgotten to wear them. Shall I run and get them for you?"
"Thank you—but no," as Edith rose. "I don't care for them. I—I have given them away."
Eliot had heard distinctly the question and answer; but there was no time for comment. Ida Hayes sailed in—a bisque doll in Nile-green silk and velvet, with Eliot's roses pinned among the laces of her V-shaped corsage.
"And to think that I went without cigars two days to buy Ida Hayes a corsage bouquet!" he said, ruefully, to himself.
But the loss of the cigars was the least part of his mortification.
He had fancied he was winning his way to his girl-bride's heart. This little incident showed him clearly his mistake.
"She is not learning to love me. Perhaps she never will," he thought, gloomily.
Ida Hayes, with the best grace in the world, sat down on thetête-à-têtebeside him. She was a belle and a beauty—hadbeen for seven years, ever since she left the school-room at eighteen—and she could have been married well long ago, but she had seen no one she fancied until she met Eliot Van Zandt at her sister's wedding three years ago. Since then her heart, as well as Sylvie's, had been set on an alliance with him, and his marriage had been a bitter blow to her self-love.
But she was a society woman. She did not wear her heart on her sleeve, and in the clear, pale-blue eyes upraised to his Eliot Van Zandt read no sign of her disappointed hopes.
"I see you looking at my flowers. That dear little thing, your wife, gave them to me," she said, carelessly.
He answered as carelessly:
"Yes, and they harmonize well with your dress."
But in his heart he longed to tear them from her breast and trample them beneath his feet. They had taught him a bitter lesson—one he would not soon forget.
Dinner was announced, and he took Ida into the dining-room. Bryant gave Sylvie his arm, and Una followed with her sisters-in-law, hiding with a smile her pain at the preference Eliot had shown Miss Hayes.
"How he must hate me, for he can not help thinking that but for me he would not have lost her. It was right to give her the flowers. She had really the best right to them," she said miserably to herself.
The flowers, the lights, the china and silver of the well-appointed table flashed confusedly before her eyes. She could see nothing clearly but the pretty wax-doll face of Miss Hayes as she sat opposite to Eliot and talked to him incessantly.
Glancing up and down the long table at the fair faces of the five ladies, she said, gayly:
"Two gentlemen and five ladies! Only two have cavaliers. There are three of us too many."
Una thought, with keen shame and inexpressible bitterness:
"Only one too many, and that one is poor little me!"
She made a great effort to eat, and swallowed some food, although it half choked her; but as soon as they rose from the table she slipped away and went up to the school-room, where Mrs. Wilson, whose impaired digestion abhorred late dinners, was placidly taking some milk and oatmeal by way of supper.
"Oh, my dear, have you got a fever? Your eyes shine so brightly, and your cheeks are quite flushed!" exclaimed the good governess, anxiously.
"I am not sick; I dare say I am excited. There is company, you know, and I thought I should not be missed if I stole away up here with you," Una answered, with affected carelessness.
Mrs. Wilson smiled on her pupil, and answered, kindly:
"I'm glad you came, dear; but, of course, you will be missed. Your husband would miss you, if there was a room full of company."
Una answered in a strange tone:
"No, not to-night; for Miss Ida Hayes is there."
Mrs. Wilson put down her glass of milk and looked curiously at the speaker. She began to comprehend the cause of her strange looks and words. She said to herself:
"This pretty little girl-bride has grown jealous of some meaningless attention of Eliot to Miss Hayes. She loves her husband, and the boy is somehow too stupid to see it, or, perhaps, he does not care. I would speak to him, but I do not like to meddle in so delicate an affair."
Aloud, she said gently:
"I like to have you up here with me, but your husband and friends will think I am selfish, dear; so you had better go back to the drawing-room. Miss Ida Hayes is not charming enough to make up to Eliot for your absence."
Una turned around suddenly and looked at her gravely.
"Very well, then; I will go, since you don't want me; but I shall go to my own room," she said.
And she did, and there Edith found her, pretending to read, when she came to seek her half an hour later.
"You selfish child! put down your book. We are going to have some music, and we want your alto," she said.
"I can not sing to-night; my head aches," Una answered; and none of Edith's arguments could alter her refusal. She was obliged to go down alone and make excuses for her sister-in-law.
"She has a headache, and can not come down," she said; and Sylvie laughed in her sleeve.
"She is jealous of Ida," she thought, maliciously.
The rest of the family were already assembled at breakfast when Una entered the dining room the next morning, pale and grave-looking, after a wretched, sleepless night. Her place by Eliot was waiting for her, although she had half expected it would be filled by Ida Hayes.
Eliot had been watching for her anxiously, and his glance was very tender, despite the episode of last night.
"I hope your head is better," he said, kindly; and looking at him with a smile of wonderful sweetness, she answered:
"It is well, thank you."
In the long vigil of last night she had formed a noble resolve to win her husband's heart, and to make up to him by her womanly sweetness for all he had sacrificed in marrying her, a nameless girl of obscure birth.
Sylvie's hints had not been lost upon her. She determined that she would not allow Eliot to be so extravagant for her sake again. The brown pony must be sold, the hot-house flowers must not be bought. She would haveno more new dresses. She would not be a burden on him she loved.
"Chocolate, Una?" asked Mrs. Van Zandt, who was presiding at the silver urn with graceful ease. She filled the china cup for the girl, laughing the while in secret at her pale, wistful face.
"It was a hard blow to her pride," she said to herself, exultantly; then she turned her attention again to her husband, who had been reading from the morning paper when Una's entrance interrupted him.
"Our old favorite on the boards again. It will be a treat," said Sylvie. "On what night did you say, Bryant?"
"The sixteenth; that will be three nights off," he answered.
"Exactly. We will all go. We will make up a theater-party. What do you say, girls?"
"Splendid!" said Edith.
"All right!" exclaimed Ida, and Maud added a more sedate affirmative.
"And you, dear?" Eliot said, gently, to the silent girl by his side.
She lifted her dark, mournful eyes to his face with a gentle smile, and said, wistfully, almost humbly:
"Whatever you wish, Eliot."
The sweetness of her smile and voice disarmed his resentment for her slight of last night, and leaning toward her, he said, in a tender whisper:
"We will go, then, and I will bring you another bouquet; but mind, no giving it away this time."
"Did you care?" she murmured back, with sudden radiance.
They were rising from the table just then, and Una slipped her white fingers daringly through his arm, as she murmured the coquettish words. He looked down, sawthe sudden radiance on her face, and a half-light broke upon his mind.
"So you did it to make me jealous, madame?" he said, gayly. "Very well; you attained your desire. But I must be off now. Come to the library one minute. I want you."
Inside the cozy little room, he said, kindly:
"You will want a new dress for the theater-party. How much?"
She drew back from him, scarlet with shame.
"Oh, no; I have plenty of dresses—more than I need."
"Very well, but you shall have a new dress if you wish it."
"But I do not wish it," hurriedly. "And—and—oh, Eliot, I'm afraid I cost you too much money! Sell the brown pony. I do not care for riding any more, and it is a useless expense to keep it."
His fair, handsome face grew suddenly stern.
"Who has been putting such nonsense in your head?" he demanded.
"It is not nonsense," Una said, shyly but firmly. "You are poor. You told me so long ago. So I know you can not afford the expense."
"Nonsense—" he began; but the door opened, and Maud entered, followed by Edith.
"Oh, excuse us, Una. We did not know you were here with Eliot. We just came in to say good-morning to him before we go in the drawing-room with Ida."
He kissed them both, and they went out. He held out his hand to his wife.
"By-by, Una. I suppose I must really tear myself away," he said.
She put her small hand in his, and he felt the fingers curl around his own, gently detaining him.
"Well, dear?" he asked, thinking that she was about to change her mind and say she would have the new dress.
Her face dropped a little to hide the warm flush that rose over it as she stammered in desperate confusion:
"Before you—go—I must make a confession. Last night I—I—told an untruth when I said I had a headache and could not sing. You—you will not call me your little Una, your lady of truth any more now, will you, Eliot?"
She was so close to him, the supple, girlish figure leaned so near that he daringly slipped his arm around the small waist. A thrill of rapture ran through him as he felt her nestle shyly in his clasp.
"So it was not a headache, my little Truth?" he whispered, lovingly. "What was the reason then that made you desert us all so unkindly?"
"It was—was—a fit of ill-temper," Una exclaimed, remorsefully; then she turned round, so quickly, so lightly, he did not realize it until it was over, and slipping her arm around his neck drew his face down to hers, pressed a light, bashful kiss upon his lips, then tore herself from his clasp and fled the room.
Strong man as he was, Eliot Van Zandt reeled backward into a chair, dizzy with delicious rapture at that light, shy but ardent pressure of Una's lips upon his own.
It had come so unexpectedly, that moment of bliss after the bitterness and hopelessness of last night, it was like the dawning of a new day after a night of storm and darkness.
Hope plumed her wings again in his heart.
"She is going to learn to love me," he thought, happily, too blind still to understand the full meaning of thatcaress that had sent such a shock of rapturous delight through his whole being.
He sat still a few blissful moments, going gladly over her looks and words.
"Not a headache—a fit of ill-temper. Ill-temper over what?" he wondered, then suddenly: "Oh, my little love, my darling, you were vexed because Ida Hayes sat down by my side, because I took her in to dinner. Well, I shall bless the coming of Ida if through her coquetry my Una learns she has a heart."
Meanwhile, frightened at her own boldness, her heart beating furiously, Una rushed upstairs, seeking solitude in which to hide herself from all.
"What must he think of me?" she murmured, with crimson blushes. "I did not mean to do it. I do not know how I dared so much. Was he angry, I wonder? I could not look at him. I was so amazed at what I had done!"
Her lips burned with the touch of his, her heart throbbed with pain and pleasure commingled. Walking restlessly up and down the floor, she murmured:
"I love him so dearly that I must—I must win his heart! Then, and not till then, will he forgive me for the loss of Ida and her fortune. How shamed I felt over the proffer of the new dress! He will give me new dresses, but he will not give me his heart. He puts me away from him like a stranger. Shall I resent it? Ah, no, no; since he has sacrificed so much for me, I must sacrifice my pride for him. For his own sake, for his future happiness; I, the Little Nobody, obscure, unloved, penniless, uncultured, must make myself beloved by him until he shall bless the wayward fate that made him mine."
The dark eyes glowed, the cheeks crimsoned with emotion, as Una thought, passionately:
"I would that I could do some brave, noble, heroic deed that would challenge the world's admiration, so thathe would forget my obscure origin and my misfortune that drove him to the sacrifice that saved me from the world's scorn, in sudden pride and love for me!"
There was a light tap at the door. Mrs. Wilson had sent Edith to bring her tardy pupil to the school-room.
"If you are sick, or otherwise engaged, she will readily excuse you," Edith said.
"I do not want to be excused," said Una, as she hurried to the presence of the gentle governess.
But that day she found books and lessons irksome in the extreme. Her heart and mind were full of the strange facts she had heard last night from the lips of Sylvie.
She who had been wedded, yet no wife, for almost a year had only now found out that she was unloved, and the humiliation weighed her almost to the earth, in spite of her brave, sensible resolve to win Eliot yet, and make him forget that once he had sighed for Ida Hayes.
She longed to throw down the irksome books and cry out to the gentle, placid Mrs. Wilson: "Away with books! Teach me the only lesson that interests me now—how to win my husband's heart!"
She beat back the yearning impulse to claim this gentle woman's sympathy with bitter pride.
"Shall I complain of him to her, to any one?" she thought. "Ah, no; it lies between us two and God! The bitter secret shall never pass my lips! Secret, did I say? Alas! it is known to them all, has been known all along. How they must pity me, the unloved wife, the perhaps unwelcome intruder in the home to which they had hoped he would bring Ida Hayes a loved and loving bride!"
It did not look as if she was unwelcome when at the close of study hours Maud and Edith burst into the room.
"Una, we are just dying to get hold of you!" Edith cried. "We want to talk about the theater-party. What are we going to wear, for I'm sure we can not afford new dresses."
"And we want to look as nice as possible, for Ida and Sylvie will do all they can to outshine us," added Maud. "Of course they have lots of new things, so Edith and I have just made up our minds to have some of the pretty things in mamma's trunks upstairs. She gave them to us long before she died. So if you won't be offended, Una, dear, come with us, and we'll find something that we can fix over for the theater-party."
"What is it all about?" queried gentle Mrs. Wilson, and Edith returned:
"A popular actress who left the stage almost sixteen years ago has returned to it again, and they say she is as young, lovely, and spirited as when she retired to marry a rich aristocrat. All paint, of course, but Sylvie is just wild to have us go and see her play on Thursday night."
Una went with the girls to ransack the trunks, but she steadily declined to accept any of the finery they spread out on the bed and chairs.
"Eliot offered to give me a new dress this morning, and I told him I had plenty," she said, "so if I took any of these, he would think I had deceived him."
"You dear little conscientious thing, you are well named Una," cried Edith, gayly. "But Eliot would never know, and, my dear, this rose-colored satin with lace flounces would make up lovely for you, and be so becoming."
"It is too fine for me," Una answered, shrinkingly.
"Not a bit. A gold dress would not be too fine for Eliot's wife," vivaciously. "And you know, dear, at a theater-party one dresses as if for a ball. We shall have private boxes, you know, and every one will want to look nice. Now, you really have nothing fit to wear."
Una flushed sensitively, but she knew that it was true.She had nothing fine but the blue silk dinner-dress, except—and her heart throbbed painfully—the sweet, white dress with its filmy laces that she had worn for her strange marriage that starlit night in New Orleans beneath the green trees in the quaint semi-tropical garden. The dress, with the necklace of pearls, lay folded away in the bottom of her trunk.
"I have the white dress I wore when I was—married," she said, dubiously. "Perhaps it will do."
They went with her to look at it, and they were charmed with the quaint, pretty robe and the moon-white pearls.
"You will look lovely in this. Why did you not show it to us before? And you never told us you had such splendid jewels."
"Are they splendid? I did not know it. Monsieur Carmontelle gave them to me for a wedding-gift. I have more of them in a box given me by the Jockey Club."
They exclaimed with delight when they saw the lovely things in the jewel-casket. There were diamonds, rubies, emeralds, all in the most tasteful and elegant settings. Una gave themcarte blancheto wear what they pleased, and accepting the offer in sisterly sincerity, the girls selected each a set appropriate to the costume selected for the occasion.
"You will wear the pearls with the white dress, Una, I will take the diamonds to suit the rose-colored satin, and Maud can wear the rubies with the gold brocade!" exclaimed Edith, gayly. "Oh, how surprised Sylvie and Ida will be! They will expect us to look like dowdies, knowing we can not afford new dresses. But we will keep all a secret, and burst upon them Thursday evening in a blaze of glory!"
"Agreed!" cried Maud, merrily, and Una's gentle, pensive smile added assent, although to herself she sighed apprehensively:
"Perhaps Eliot will not like for me to appear in mywedding-dress. It will remind him of his sacrifice. But I have nothing else to wear."
And when Eliot asked her that evening what kind of a dress she would wear, so that he might select her flowers in keeping, she answered, in a half-frightened tone.
"White!"
"It will suit you," he answered, kindly, but Una thought, sadly:
"He would not say so if he knew it was my wedding-dress!"
He lingered by her side, thrilled with the memory of the morning's kiss, and waiting to see if she would show him any more kindness.
Una was very glad to keep him near her, but she was full of a blushing consciousness that made her even more shy than usual. Oh, that kiss this morning!—how had she dared to be so bold?—and yet she had a passionate longing to repeat the caress.
Ida Hayes saw him lingering by his wife, and called him away to sing with her.
"That duet we used to sing, you know," she said; and her familiar tone and coquettish smile half maddened Una with pain. She drew back without a word, and let Eliot pass her, and between Sylvie and her sister he had no more chance to speak to her in the drawing-room that evening. When the music was done he was drawn into a game of chess, and as Una was ignorant of the game she was perforce left out. She sat apart and talked to some callers who had dropped in, and when they left she was only too glad to find that the evening was over and the family were separated for the night.
She went upstairs very slowly, and along the carpeted hall to her room, with a bitter sense of loneliness and disappointment, vaguely comprehending the malice of the two women who had so cleverly kept Eliot from her side all the evening.
"They hate me for my unconscious fault," she thought, miserably.
"Good-night, Una," a voice said, suddenly, almost at her side.
It was Eliot who had followed her upstairs. As she turned round her white, startled face, he drew her hand in his arm and walked with her toward her door.
"You forgot to tell me good-night," he said, smiling. "Or—did you deliberately snub me again because of—a fit of ill-temper?"
Too truthful to deny the imputation, she said, bashfully:
"I'm afraid so. I thought Miss Hayes wasn't going to let you off long enough to say good-night, so I came away."
Pressing her little hand very close against his side, he replied, ardently:
"I should like to see the Miss Hayes that could keep me from saying good-night to my darling little wife."
They had reached her door. She paused, trembling with delight, but in the dim light he could not see the gladness in the beautiful dark eyes. He only felt the trembling of the form beside him, and thought that she was nervous and frightened.
"Do not be afraid of me, Una," he said, hurriedly, and with sharp disappointment. Then he drew the little figure close to his heart, and held her there a moment, while he pressed on her warm lips the ardent kiss of a lover. A moment more he turned away and left her to enter her room alone, with some sweet, passionate words ringing in her ears:
"Good-night, my darling, my little wife! Sleep well, and dream of your own Eliot."
"Did he mean it? Is he learning to love me at last?" she whispered to herself, sobbing wildly with hysterical delight, and trembling with bashful pleasure. She unrobed and lay down on her dainty white bed, not to sleep,but to live over and over again, in fancy, his tender looks and words and his warm caress.
But Eliot, in whom a passionate hope and longing had been stirring all day, went to his solitary room vaguely disappointed.
"Poor darling! I frightened her by my vehemence," he said, remorsefully, to himself. "Her beauty and her gentleness tempted me almost beyond my strength. Ah, she little dreamed what a struggle it cost to leave her there and to wait, still wait, although half maddened with love and longing."
For him, too, the drowsy god tarried to-night, and he tossed sleeplessly on his pillow, dreaming of Una just as Una was dreaming of him, with infinite love and yearning.
Weary with the night's restlessness, Una slept too soundly next morning for the breakfast-bell to rouse her from her slumbers. Eliot, who had to be at the office by a certain hour, fidgeted uneasily, and at last sent Edith to see if she was awake.
In a minute she came out on tiptoe.
"She is sleeping so sweetly, I had not the heart to wake her," she said. "But, Eliot, you might just slip in and kiss her good-bye in her sleep."
Her keen young eyes saw the sensitive color mount to his temples.
"Una would not like it," he replied, gravely.
Candid Edith shut the door softly behind her, and gave her brother a playful little shake as she went with him along the hall.
"Eliot, you are a great goose, that's what you are!" she cried. "Una is your wife. You have a right to go in her room and kiss her if you like, and I don't believe she would object, either!"
With a sigh, he replied:
"You must remember how sudden our marriage was, Edith. My little girl had no time to learn to love me, orget used to me. Is it not right that I should leave her in peace until I shall have won her heart as well as her hand?"
Edith stared at him in wonder.
"Eliot Van Zandt, you are as blind as a bat!" she exclaimed, and darted away without another word.
But although she would not say another word to Eliot, she made up her mind to lecture Una.
So the first thing when Una opened her heavy eyes, she saw Edith sitting demurely in the big willow rocker by the bedside.
She burst out unceremoniously:
"You lazy girl, you have slept until breakfast was over, and your husband gone down-town. Poor boy! he waited and waited outside your door for you to wake, but you just dreamed on until he had to go. I told him to slip in and kiss you good-bye in your sleep, but he was afraid you would be angry. I do say, Una Van Zandt, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Una was sitting up in bed very wide awake indeed now, a lovely picture of amazement and distress, with her loose, golden hair falling on her half-bare, white shoulders, her eyes dilated with wonder, her cheeks flushed from sleep.
"Oh, Edith, what have I done now? I don't know what you're talking about," she faltered.
"Don't you, Mistress Van Zandt? Listen, then: I'm talking about what a tyrant you are to my brother. Here you have been married to him almost a year and I don't believe you've ever given the poor boy as much as a kiss or one fond word. Do you think he is a stick or a stone, without any feeling, that you behave so heartlessly? I tell you it made me angry to see him this morning afraid to come inside this room to tell you good-bye. Don't you know he has a right to be in this room with you if he choose, only he is too afraid of you to assert himself? There is no other man on earth half so good and chivalrousas Eliot. Fancy Bryant being afraid to put his foot inside Sylvie's door. Why, they both would tell you it was all nonsense. You treat Eliot—"
Una held out her hands entreatingly.
"Hush, Edith, don't scold me so," she begged, with quivering lips; but she did not utter a word in her own defense. She was too wretched and heart-sick, feeling that Eliot's fault, his persistent avoidance of his wife, need not be held up to his sister's condemnation.
"Far rather would I shield him by letting the blame rest wholly upon myself," she resolved, firmly.