XXI
It was at Bradford Ford’s that night of the wedding that Eades made his proposal of marriage to Elizabeth Ward. It was June, court had adjourned, his work was done, the time seemed to him auspicious; he had thought it all out, arranged the details in his mind. The great country house, open to the summer night, was thronged, the occasion, just as the newspapers had predicted in their hackneyed phrase, was a brilliant one, as befitted the marriage of Ford’s youngest daughter, Hazel, to Mr. Henry Wilmington Dodge, of Philadelphia. Eades moved about, greeting his friends, smiling automatically, but his eyes were discreetly seeking their one object. At last he had a glimpse of her, through smilax and ribbons; it was during the ceremony; she was in white, and her lips were drawn as she repressed the emotions weddings inspire in women. He waited, in what patience he could, until the service was pronounced; then he must take his place in the line that moved through the crowd like a current through the sea; the bestowal of the felicitations took a long time. Then the supper; Elizabeth was at the bride’s table, and still he must wait. He went up-stairs finally, and there he encountered Ford alone in a room where, in some desolate sense of neglect, he had retired to hide the sorrow he felt at this parting with his child, and to combat the annoying feeling the wedding had thrust on him—the feeling that he was growing old. Ford sat by an open window, gazing out into the moonlight that lay on the river by which he had built his colossal house. He was smoking, in the habit which neither age nor sorrow could break.
“Come in, come in,” said Ford. “I’m glad to see you. I want some one to talk to. Have a cigar.”
But Eades declined, and Ford glanced at him in the suspicion which was part of the bereaved and jealous feeling that was poisoning this evening of happiness for him. He knew that Eades smoked, and he wondered why he now refused. “He declines because I’m getting old; he wishes to shun my society; he feels that if he accepts the cigar, he will have to stay long enough to smoke it. It will be that way now. Yes, I’m getting old. I’m out of it.” So ran Ford’s thoughts.
Eades had gone to the window and stood looking out across the dark trees to the river, swimming in the moonlight. Below him were the pretty lights of Japanese lanterns, beyond, at the road, the two lamps on the gate-posts. The odors of the June night came to him and, from below, the laughter of the wedding-guests and the strains of an orchestra.
“What a beautiful place you have here, Mr. Ford!” Eades exclaimed.
“Well, it’ll do for an old—for a man to spend his declining years.”
“Yes, indeed,” mused Eades.
Ford winced at this immediate acquiescence.
“And what a night!” Eades went on, “Ideal for a wedding.”
Ford looked at him a moment, then decided to change the subject.
“Well, I see you struck pay-dirt in the grand jury,” he said.
“Yes,” replied Eades, turning away from night and nature when such subjects were introduced.
“You’re doing a good work there,” said Ford; “a good work for law and order.”
He used the stereotyped phrase in the old belief that “law” and “order” are synonyms, though he was not thinking of law or of order just then; he was thinking of the radiant girl in the drawing-room below.
Eades turned to the window again. The night attracted him. He did not care to talk. He, too, was thinking of a girl in the drawing-room below; thinking how she had looked in that moment during the ceremony when he had had the glimpse of her. He must go at once and find her. He succeeded presently in getting away from Ford, and left in a manner that deepened Ford’s conviction that he was out of it.
He met her at the foot of the staircase, and they went out of doors.
“Oh,” exclaimed Elizabeth, “how delicious it is out here!”
In silence they descended the wide steps from the veranda and went down the walk. The sky was purple, the stars trembled in it, and the moon filled all the heavens with a light that fell to the river, flowing silently below them. They went on to the narrow strip of sward that sloped to the water. On the dim farther shore they could see the light in some farm-house; far down the river was the city, a blur of light.
“What a beautiful place the Fords have here!” said Eades.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “it’s ideal.”
“It’s my ideal of a home,” said Eades, and then after a silence he went on. “I’ve been thinking a good deal of home lately.”
He glanced at the girl; she had become still almost to rigidity.
“I am so glad our people are beginning to appreciate our beautiful river,” she said, and her voice had a peculiar note of haste and fear in it. “I’m so glad. People travel to other lands and rave over scenery, when they have this right at home.” She waved her hand in a little gesture to include the river and its dark shores. She realized that she was speaking unnaturally, as she always did with him. The realization irritated her. “The Country Club is just above us, isn’t it?” she hurriedly continued, consciously struggling to appear unconscious. “Have you—”
He interrupted her. “I’ve been thinking of you a good deal lately,” he said. His voice had mastery in it. “A good deal,” he repeated, “for more than a year now. But I’ve waited until I had something to offer you, some achievement, however small, and now—I begin to feel that I need help and—sympathy in the work that is laid on me. Elizabeth—”
“Don’t,” she said, “please don’t.” She had turned from him now and taken a step backward.
“Just a minute, Elizabeth,” he insisted. “I have waited to tell you—that I love you, to ask you to be my wife. I have loved you a long, long time. Don’t deny me now—don’t decide until you can think—I can wait. Will you think it over? Will you consider it—carefully—will you?”
He tried to look into her face, which she had turned away. Her hands were clasped before her, her fingers interlocked tightly. He heard her sigh. Then with an effort she looked up at him.
“No,” she began, “I can not; I—”
He stopped her.
“Don’t say no,” he said. “You have not considered, I am sure. Won’t you at least think before deciding definitely?”
She had found more than the usual difficulty there is in saying no to anything, or to any one; now she had strength only to shake her head.
“You must not decide hastily,” he insisted.
“We must go in.” She turned back toward the house.
“I can wait to know,” Eades assured her.
They retraced their steps silently. As they went up the walk she said:
“Of course, I am not insensible of the honor, Mr. Eades.”
The phrase instantly seemed inadequate, even silly, to her. Why was it she never could be at ease with him?
“Don’t decide, I beg,” he said, “until you have considered the matter carefully. Promise me.”
“You must leave me now,” she said.
He bowed and stood looking after her as she went up the steps and ran across the veranda in her eagerness to lose herself in the throng within the house. And Eades remained outside, walking under the trees.
Half an hour later Elizabeth stood with Marriott in the drawing-room. Her face was pale; the joy, the spirit that had been in it earlier in the evening had gone from it.
“Ah,” said Marriott suddenly, “there goes John Eades. I hadn’t seen him before.”
Elizabeth glanced hurriedly at Eades and then curiously at Marriott. His face wore the peculiar smile she had seen so often. Now it seemed remote, to belong to other days, days that she had lost.
“He’s making a great name for himself just now,” said Marriott. “He’s bound to win. He’ll go to Congress, or be elected governor or something, sure.”
She longed for his opinion and yet just then she felt it impossible to ask it.
“He’s a—”
“What?” She could not forbear to ask, but she put the question with a little note of challenge that made Marriott turn his head.
“One of those young civilians.”
“One of what young civilians?”
“That Emerson writes about.”
“He’s not so very young, is he?” Elizabeth tried to smile.
“The young civilians are often very old; I have known them to be octogenarians.”
He looked at her and was suddenly struck by her pallor and the drawn expression about her eyes. She had met his gaze, and he realized instantly that he had made some mistake. They were standing there in the drawing-room, the canvas-covered floor was littered with rose-leaves. It was the moment when the guests had begun to feel the first traces of weariness, when the laughter had begun to lose its spirit and the talk its spontaneity, when the older people were beginning to say good night, leaving the younger behind to shower the bride and groom with rice and confetti. Perplexed, excited, self-conscious after Eades’s declaration, feeling a little fear and some secret pride, suddenly Elizabeth saw the old, good-humored, friendly expression fade from Marriott’s eyes, and there came a new look, one she had never seen before, an expression of sudden, illuminative intelligence, followed by a shade of pain and regret, perhaps a little reproach.
“Where does Emerson say—that?” she asked.
“You look it up and see,” he said presently.
She looked at him steadily, though it was with a great effort, tried to smile, and the smile made her utterly sick at heart.
“I—must look up father,” she said, “it’s time—”
She left him abruptly, and he stood there, the smile gone from his face, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. A moment he bit his lips, then he turned and dashed up the stairs.
“I’m a fool,” he said to himself.
Elizabeth had thought of love, she had imagined its coming to her in some poetic way, but this—somehow, this was not poetic. She recalled distinctly every word Eades had spoken, but even more vividly she recalled Marriott’s glance. It meant that he thought she loved Eades! It had all become irrevocable in a moment; she could not, of course, undertake to explain; it was all ridiculous, too ridiculous for anything but tears.
Looking back on her intimacy with Marriott, she realized now that what she would miss most was the good fellowship there had been between them. With him, though without realizing it at the time, she had found expression easy, her thoughts had been clear, she could find words for them which he could understand and appreciate. Whenever she came across anything in a book or in a poem or in a situation there was always the satisfying sense that she could share it with Marriott; he would apprehend instantly. There was no one else who could do this; with her mother, with her father, with Dick, no such thing was possible; with them she spoke a different language, lived in another world. And so it was with her friends; she moved as an alien being in the conventional circle of that existence to which she had been born. One by one, her friends had ceased to be friends, they had begun to shrink away, not consciously, perhaps, but certainly, into the limbo of mere acquaintance. She thought of all this as she rode home that night, and after she had got home; and when it all seemed clear, she shrank from the clarity; she would not, after all, have it too clear; she must not push to any conclusion all these thoughts about Gordon Marriott. She chose to decide that he had been stupid, and his stupidity offended her; it was not pleasant to have him sneer at a man who had just told her he loved her, no matter who the man was, and she felt, with an inconsistency that she clung to out of a sense of self-preservation, that Marriott should have known this; he might have let her enjoy her triumph for a little, and then—but this was dangerous; was he to conclude that she loved him?
What was it, she wondered, that made her weak and impotent in the presence of Eades? She did not like to own a fear of him, yet she felt a fear; would she some day succumb? The fear crept on her and distressed her; she knew very well that he would pursue her, never waver or give up or lose sight of his purpose. In some way he typified for her all that was fixed, impersonal, irrefragable—society on its solid rocks. He had no doubts about anything, his opinions were all made, tested, tried and proved. Any uncertainty, any fluidity, any inconsistency was impossible. And she felt more and more inadequate herself; she felt that she had nothing to oppose to all this.