Chapter XXII
It was mentioned generally, at various sewing-classes and other mild functions during Lent, that Julian Gerard was very attentive, all of a sudden, to Elizabeth Van Vorst. Some people, less accurate or more imaginative than the rest, went so far as to announce the engagement as an actual fact.
"And, if so, it's all Eleanor Van Antwerp's doing," Mrs. Hartington observed in private to her intimate friends. "She was determined to make the match from the beginning. I saw the way she threw the girl at his head at a dinner in the country, but I never for a moment thought she would succeed—with Julian Gerard of all men, who is so desperately afraid of being taken in."
Julian Gerard, by that time, had well-nigh forgotten that such a fear had ever disturbed him, or if he did remember it, it was to regard it, so far as Elizabeth was concerned, as profanation. Since that evening at the opera, his remorseful fancy had placed her on a pinnacle, which she found at times, it must be confessed, a little difficult to maintain. It was his misfortune and hers, that he could never view her in the right perspective, never realize that she was neither a saint nor the reverse, but merely a woman, and painfully human at that.
But since he chose to consider her a saint, she did her best to live up to the character. She kept Lent strictly that year as she had never done before, went to church morning and evening, denied herself bonbons and other luxuries, and worked with unskilled fingers but great diligence at certain oddly-constructed garments which were doled out to her and other young women every week as a Lenten penance, and incidentally for the good of the poor. If in most cases the actual penance fell to the lot of their maids, why, the poor were none the wiser, and certainly much the better clothed. But Elizabeth insisted on putting in all the painful stitches in the hard, coarse stuff herself, and looked very pretty bending over it, as Mr. Gerard thought when he came in one day and found her thus employed.
It pleased him, of course. He did not attach much importance, himself, to these things—this constant church-going, these small penances; yet, manlike, it seemed to him right and fitting that she should regard them differently. And then it was pleasant, after service, to meet her in the vestibule. How many incipient love affairs have been helped along, brought to a climax perhaps, by the convenient afternoon service, and the sauntering walks home in the lingering twilight!
To Elizabeth there was an indefinable charm in those ever-lengthening Lenten days, rung in and out to the music of church bells, and marked, as the season advanced and Easter approached, by the growing green of the grass, and the budding shoots of the trees, and the intangible feeling of spring in the air. That sense of dread, of impending misfortune, which had been for a short time almost unbearable, was lulled to sleep as by an opiate. She did not think of the past or the future, she simply drifted from day to day, and each of these was pleasanter than the last.
For one thing, she had grown hardened, indifferent almost to the constant meeting with Paul Halleck. She had kept her word and obtained for him all the invitations in her power, until he no longer needed her help. He was a great success. Mrs. Van Antwerp's informal little musicale had been only the first of a series of more elaborate ones, at which Halleck was often the chief attraction. Young girls admired him extremely. Elizabeth could hear him talking to them, just as he had once talked to her, about Swinburne and Rossetti and the last word in Art, and she saw that, like herself, they thought him very brilliant. It was an admiration which had tangible results, since it led to an interest in music, and a desire to take singing-lessons from the talented young barytone. Before long, he took a studio in Carnegie, near D'Hauteville's, and furnished it luxuriously, on the strength of his new prosperity. He was very much the fashion and absorbed in his success, and seldom had the time, or perhaps the inclination, to encounter Elizabeth's unflattering indifference. So for the most part he left her alone, to her intense relief.