Elizabeth, too, might have welcomed the visits of young Courtenay. There had been times when she had doubted, sadly, if she were really so pretty as the girls at school had seemed to think. But these times were past, and she had not a thought to spare for Frank Courtenay's heavy, commonplace good looks. Paul Halleck had assured her many times that she was beautiful, and had sketched her in every variety of pose, in that impressionistic style which Elizabeth had secretly thought rather ugly, before she learned to regard it as the last word in Art.
Elizabeth had learned many other things in the last few weeks. Halleck undertook her education in all artistic and literary matters, showing her how little she had hitherto known of this or that great light. He quoted Swinburne and Rossetti; he read her extracts from Maeterlinck and Ibsen; he opened for her the treasures of that school which Nordau calls degenerate. He had all the intellectual and artistic jargon of the day at his tongue's end. She sat at his feet and devoutly learned it all.
She knew his history, now. It was very romantic, and it lost nothing in the telling. He had a keen eye for artistic effect, and spared not one sordid detail of his early surroundings which served to throw into more brilliant relief his subsequent career. He told how the possession of a lovely childish soprano had raised him literally from the gutter, and procured him a position as boy soloist in a Chicago church, and how, later on, a patron was found, who sent him abroad to study. He had wandered from one European centre to another; learned to play in Dresden and to paint in Paris, and developed a fine barytone voice, of which great things were prophesied. In fact, he was a universal genius, and could do anything, except apparently earn a living, which indeed has been always hard for genius. And so at last he drifted back to Chicago, where he sang for a while in the same church where he had begun his career; but finally left for some reason or another, and tried his fortune in New York. He was debating now whether to go abroad again to study in earnest for the stage, and meanwhile he was on a walking tour, sketching about the country. He had come to Bassett Mills for the sake of old associations, and had stayed—well, he left it to Elizabeth to imagine why he stayed.
All this was very interesting and romantic; far more so, Elizabeth thought, than any ordinary affair could have been, with some commonplace youth of the neighborhood. She had only one regret; she could not help wishing in her heart that Paul's early surroundings had been, if not more exalted, less familiar. She would have preferred him to have no associations with, no friends at, Bassett Mills. The place seemed to her, as she drove through it that morning, so hopelessly common, so unusually prosaic. The ugly, sordid houses, the people with their faces of dull stolidity, jarred upon the ecstatic tone of her mood. She could not imagine that genius could be born in such surroundings.
The discordant note was still more striking when, having discharged the greater part of her commissions, she entered the dry-goods shop, and found Aunt Rebecca in her most trying humor.
"So that's you, Elizabeth," she said, looking her niece severely up and down, while her thin lips moved at the corners. "It seems to me you're very much dressed up, driving round these dusty roads. The way you wear white is a caution! But I suppose for a millionaire like you it don't matter about the washing."
Elizabeth bit her lip. "I'm not a millionaire, you know Aunt Rebecca," she said, "but I like to wear white, and it's as cheap as anything in the end. Is Amanda in?" she added quickly, anxious to stave off further criticism. "I'll go back and see her if she is."
"She's in the parlor," said Amanda's mother, shortly. "She's got a headache. I guess she don't feel like seeing company," she added hastily, but the words came too late. Elizabeth had already left the shop, and was crossing the narrow, dark little hall that led to the parlor. Her heart beat rapidly as she did so. She felt an odd, utterly irrational desire to feast her eyes on the spot where she had first experienced such new and delightful sensations.
There was no music in the room now, no air of festivity. The atmosphere was close and musty, the sun poured in at the window beside which Amanda sat sewing. She bent closely over her work, her skin was more pasty than ever and her eyes were red and swollen. Elizabeth remembered her aunt's words about the headache; otherwise she might have thought that her cousin had been crying. She went over and kissed her with a friendliness born of her own superabundant joy. The lips she touched were dry and hot. Amanda did not respond to the caress. She stared stupidly at Elizabeth, as if half dazed by her sudden entrance.
"How are you, Amanda?" Elizabeth said. "I'm sorry you have a headache. Perhaps it's the heat. It's a terribly hot day, and the roads are so dusty. Aunt Rebecca implied that my dress showed that very plainly. It was clean this morning—does it really look so badly?" She walked over to the mirror and inspected herself critically, setting her hat straight and adjusting the white ribbon about her throat. It was a long narrow glass, framed in black walnut, and there was a shelf underneath it, which supported a large sea-shell. The whole thing reminded her of a similar arrangement at her dressmaker's in town, and seemed in some way the crowning feature of the prosaic, painfully respectable character of the room. She hated to look at herself there—the glass brought out all one's defects. But to-day, in spite of the trying glare of the sunshine, her own image flashed back at her, so brilliantly fresh, in her white dimity gown, so redolent of health and beauty, that she could not help smiling back at it, as at some delightful apparition. Ah, yes, it was good to be young and pretty, and to have a lover waiting for one near by. Her eyes brightened unconsciously, and she gave a little caressing touch to the shining masses of wavy hair which stood out, like red molten gold, against the broad brim of her shady white hat.
The other girl sat and watched her.
"You like to look at yourself, don't you?" The words rang out harshly, suddenly. Elizabeth started and turned around. It seemed to her for a moment as if some third person had spoken—some one with a strange, mocking voice that she had never heard before. But there was no one else in the room.
"Yes, you like to look at yourself." Amanda went on after a pause, more quietly, "you think yourself a beauty, and a good many people, perhaps, might agree with you. He tells you so, I suppose. I daresay he tells you your hair's picturesque—he used to tell me that about mine. He was going to paint my picture, but it went out of his head when he saw you. Most things did, I guess. He—he hasn't been here since." The girl's voice broke in a quick, convulsive sob, and she stopped for a moment, but went on almost immediately: "If you hadn't come in that day, it would have been all right. We were keeping company; every one in The Mills knew we were. All the girls were jealous of me—as if he'd have looked at them! Some of them work in the factory, there's many of them don't even have a piano and sit in their kitchens. I know what's genteel, even if I can't talk all that rubbish about music and Wagner that you learned at school. And what good will all that do you when you're married? What do you know about mending and sewing and cooking? What sort of a wife would you make him? You'd ruin him in a month with your fine clothes. But men are such fools!" She gave a short mirthless laugh, her eyes glittered strangely. Elizabeth stared at her paralyzed, glued to the spot in helpless fascination. She had never heard Amanda talk so much before. Her words came quickly, fiercely, one upon another, like some overwhelming torrent that had been suddenly let loose.
"Why should you have so much more than me? Why should you have fine clothes, and a carriage, and go to school in New York, and have the swells