Chapter XX
"My dear Julian," wrote Mrs. Bobby Van Antwerp to Mr. Gerard a week later, "you are, I think, neglecting us shamefully. What has become of you? If you are inclined to perform a charitable action, do come in to tea to-morrow afternoon. You don't generally, I know, patronize such mild functions, but we are to have a little music"—
"A little music?" mused Gerard, knitting his brows and thrusting out his under lip, as the note dropped from his hand. "That means, of course, that young Halleck. It's something new for Eleanor to go in for music. But it's her doing, of course. I suppose she really cares for the fellow. And yet what a pity—what a pity that she should throw herself away like that!" He sat gazing absently before him, his pen in his hand, while the work upon which he had been engaged when Mrs. Bobby's note arrived—an article for a scientific magazine—remained without the finishing touches he had intended to bestow.
He had not seen Elizabeth since that morning in the Park.
He had carefully refrained from going where he might see her. He had denied himself, once for all, that unprofitable and mysterious pleasure of watching her across the ball-room, while he leaned inertly against the wall, or talked, in his weary way, to some woman to whom he felt himself indebted. No, thank Heaven, he had been warned in time; there was no danger of his being made a fool of a second time.
His mind wandered back across the gulf of years, to that other woman whom he had loved so desperately once, whose shadow still stood between him and the happiness which seemed, now and again, within his grasp. He thought of the mad infatuation, the bitter disillusion, the restless travelling to and fro, the final settling down into cynical indifference.... and then long afterwards, when the indifference had grown into a habit, and he dreaded nothing more than to have it disturbed, he had met this girl who had exercised upon him from the first a curious effect, half repellant, half attractive, and wholly baffling and alarming, whose hair he had objected to because it was "too red" and who played the piano with a force and fire and passion, which stirred his heart as he had resolved it should never be stirred again.
Gerard had always intended to marry, but he proposed, in spite of the efforts of Eleanor Van Antwerp and other anxious friends, to take his time about it. He had his ideal of the sort of wife he wanted—a being as different as possible from his first love, and almost as tiresome a compound of all the domestic virtues as that mythical personage whom Hannah More's hero had once gone in search of. But, unlike that estimable individual, he had fallen in love with a woman far removed from his ideal, of doubtful antecedents which he liked no better than Bobby Van Antwerp, of qualities the reverse of domestic, and the type of hair and coloring which he had long illogically, but none the less strongly, associated with a certain lack of moral sense.
Yet though Gerard could not help his feelings, he could certainly control his actions, and he was determined to keep away from Elizabeth Van Vorst—more especially now since there seemed to be some unaccountable understanding between her and that young Halleck.