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.
"No," she said, drawing back. "If you know any secrets belonging to this family, I don't want to hear them. You will be obliged to apologize to the Colonel for defacing his wall, and whatever explanation you have to give, will be given to him."
Edmonson watched her with a smile.
"Do you know," he said, "that you have an exaggerated conscience? But you have the faculty of making it seem charming. As you please, then. I will give my explanation to the Colonel as soon as he is ready for it—as soon, and even before. Shall we go into the garden again until somebody comes?"
Elizabeth did not answer immediately. She stopped on the threshold where she had been standing and looked at the speaker with an expression he could not read. She had thought well of this young man. Was it going to be that she could no longer believe in him? She did not care so much for that in itself, but it seemed as if all the world in which she had moved, the ideal world founded on beauty and nobleness, even if, indeed, one cornerstone of it were pain, had fallen to pieces about her. Among so many ruins the ruin of another ideal would not be so very much, but it would give more pain than was due to itself. As she looked up at him Edmonson's face lost its exultation. "Perhaps I am mistaken; I ought to hear before I judge," she thought.
"I would rather stay here," she said at last. "There are footsteps now—it is Master Archdale." She thought as she spoke that the girlish figure walking beside him was Katie's, but when the two came nearer she saw that it was not his cousin to whom Stephen was talking so merrily, but another of his mother's guests. Katie was in the distance with Kenelm Waldo. Bulchester had disappeared for the moment—no, he was with Madam Archdale. As these and others sauntered up to the hall, Edmonson partially closing the opening by pushing the tapestry behind the antlers, retreated, and occupied himself with an examination of these long branches that like a personal weapon had divided the thick underbrush of his way before him. It was not until most of the party were in the hall, not until the Colonel had come in with Madam Pepperell, that he suddenly went forward and drew down the cut tapestry, and at the moment put himself into the same attitude with the man in the picture, and in this attitude stood with his eyes glancing keenly from one to another of the spectators.
There was a murmur, not rising to articulateness, which seemed to be surprise at the sight of the portrait so unexpectedly disclosed. Then followed a breathless hush. It was in the hush that Edmonson's eyes were busiest. But that, too, was short. For, a cry of astonishment rose from nearly every one in the hall. This, though coming from many throats, had but one import.
"What a likeness! Perfect! Wonderful! How came it there? How came he here? What does it mean?"
From Edmonson, standing motionless, the assembly looked toward Stephen, and from him, plainly as much at a loss as themselves, they turned their eyes where his were already fixed, upon the face of his father. But the Colonel, pale and amazed, with a dark shadow fallen upon his face from the door near by him—or perhaps from some door opening in his own breast—seemed no more able than the others to read the riddle. Indeed, he was the first to ask the explanation that all were seeking.
"When and how did you bring that picture here?" he said. "And whose portrait is it?" For he had rejected the first suggestion of its being Edmonson himself. The dress belonged to an earlier period, and the face was that of a man somewhat older; it could not be thought of as the portrait of the young man standing beside it; it was simply a marvellous likeness.
"I found it here," returned Edmonson with a bow. "I have seen the copy of it many times, this is the original painting by Lely. It came here—I mean to the Colonies—by one of those mistakes that one member of a family sometimes, perpetrates upon the others. How it ever got behind this hanging it is out of my province to tell. I yield the field to Colonel Archdale."
"I know nothing of it," said that gentleman. "The house was built when I was a child. It was one of the preparations for my father's second marriage. The tapestry is an heirloom; it is so old that I am always afraid of its tearing, and it is never taken from the wall. My house is at the disposal of my guests, to be sure, but none of them could have destroyed anything else that I should have felt the injury to so keenly."
"It was not willingly done," returned Edmonson, "it was by the impulse of fate. As to the picture, it does not seem strange that we expect Colonel Archdale to know whom his own family portraits represent."
"It may not seem strange, but it is not unprecedented to be ignorant," answered his host. "My father must have known, but in obeying his injunctions as to care of the tapestry I had no idea that I was keeping anything but bare walls from view. Even these antlers are fastened to a great nail in one of the beams. I remember it since I was a child. The hanging was fitted over it, and I was glad when it was put to use in this way."
"Yes, no doubt he could tell us about the portrait if we could only get at him," returned Edmonson coming back to his subject. "But as to who the gentleman is, and why you have flattered me so far as to be able to discover any likeness between us, I owe you all an explanation. And Colonel Archdale, another one besides, which I am most ready to make, for having presumed to search out the painting when I found by accident that there was one behind here. No time is so good as the present. Then, too, I have aroused the curiosity of these ladies and gentlemen, and I am afraid they will owe me a grudge if I don't gratify it by telling the whole story."
"Indeed we shall," cried Katie Archdale.
Bulchester had entered behind the others unseen in the concentration of attention upon the portrait and its exhibitor, and had spent his moment of amazement in silence. He now glided up to Edmonson and said something to him in an undertone too low to be caught by anyone else. The other replied by a look of scorn, and a muttered something that sounded very like, "You always were a fool." Then he stood silent, glancing first at Stephen, and then at the Colonel. The young man faced him in haughty defiance of his manner which made his words almost insulting. The elder stood with his suavity a little disturbed, it is true; but no one except Edmonson found fear in his face, or interpreted what he said as a desire of postponement when he suggested that if there were anything interesting to be heard they should wait until all the stragglers had come up, and then adjourn to the drawing-room where they would be more comfortable.
Edmonson bowed slightly in answer, smiled, thanked him, but observed that it was most flattering to an orator to find his audience increase as he went on, and began:
"I am to tell you who this gentleman of the portrait is, and why I resemble him."
All at once Stephen glanced at Elizabeth. He had found her in the hall with Edmonson. Had she any hand in this unveiling of an ancestral face? He thought of the possibility of shame that might follow—of shame, because he remembered the talk of the two men in the woods and the old butler's look at Edmonson that very morning. If this triumphant fellow had any such thing to tell, did she already know it? Was she upon such terms of intimacy with him as this? She stood apart, still near the doorway where Edmonson had left her. None of the curiosity expressed everywhere else was in her face. She seemed scarcely listening; she looked as if she were far away and the people about her and the words they were saying belonged to a different world. But it was not so, for it was the consciousness that she was in the world about her and bound to it that gave her the expression of struggle. Chains held her when she wanted to be free. She was one too many here. Before her was Archdale's face as he had looked at Katie, and between these two a stupid woman whom she had no patience with, whom she hated—herself. And now there might be coming an added pain that she had brought. She did not care especially for Archdale's pain, except that it was of her bringing.
But Edmonson went on talking, and Stephen, like the others, forgot everything in listening. He saw his father's brows contract, and knew that he was biting his under lip hard, as he did when he was much troubled.
Edmonson still went on with his story. He certainly made it interesting. Stephen's secret uneasiness passed into surprise, distrust, conviction, inward disturbance as he stood with his haughty air unchanged.