It was something of a bore, under the circumstances, that she must first of all go to Bassett Mills, but Miss Joanna had intrusted her with numerous commissions, that she could not very well refuse to discharge. That was the reason why she had started so early. There was a brook in a meadow near by; a brook shaded by weeping willow trees, under which nowadays a young artist sat sketching for many hours at a time. Elizabeth's drives, or walks had for the last few weeks led no further. But to-day she had decided to go first to Bassett Mills, and be back in time for the usual engagement, of which her aunts knew nothing.
The affair was not really so clandestine. There was no reason why she should have kept it secret beyond a vague embarrassment, an unwillingness to speak about the one subject that occupied her thoughts. Miss Cornelia and Miss Joanna had, after the one protest, yielded to the inevitable; they had not even discouraged young Halleck's visits to their niece. They had gone so far as to admit, when he had come to tea at the Homestead, and sung and played for them afterwards for hours, that he was an extremely talented young man. It had been a most successful evening, Miss Joanna had not even gone to sleep. And yet, with it all, in both sisters there was some innate distrust, some lingering prejudice perhaps, that prevented them from succumbing entirely to the charm of his handsome face and beautiful voice. They were civil to him—painfully civil; but they did not welcome him as they would have welcomed young Frank Courtenay, who used to stare at Elizabeth in church every Sunday, but had never apparently mustered up courage to come and see her. He was much under the influence of his mother, who considered Elizabeth's hair "conspicuous" and had remarked that it was bad taste for a young girl to be too well dressed—a fault that could not in justice be alleged against her own daughters.
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.