FORCED HOSPITALITY.
While Mellen stood on the veranda in front of the house, Mr. Rhodes came
up the avenue. There was no hope of escape for him; he had not perceived
the visitor until it was too late to retreat, and a voice called out:
"Oh, there you are, old fellow; I'm in luck after all. You see I walked
over to my farm on the back road," he explained, "intending to take the
half-past three train to New York, but I missed it. So I said to myself,
'I'll cut across the fields, down the hill, and stop at Mellen's, beg a
dinner, and get him to send me over in time for the five o'clock
train'--wasn't a bad idea, eh?"
"A very good idea on the contrary," Mellen answered, with a desperate
attempt at hospitality, while the visitor wrung his hand again and burst
into shouts of laughter, as if some wonderfully good joke lay in the
affair. "And how is your good lady?" he asked. "And the pretty little
sister--quite well, eh?"
"Tolerably so," Mellen answered; "complains of headache and that sort of
thing."
He conducted his guest into the library, and meeting Dolf in the hall,
directed him to inform his mistress of the arrival.
Mellen made an effort to be civil though the man was tiresome in the
extreme; perhaps it was better to endure his society than to meet his
wife that day without the restraint of a stranger's presence.
Indeed, without some of those social restraints to which all men are
more or less slaves, it is doubtful if Mellen could have appeared so
perfectly calm. As it was, the fire that consumed him raged unseen. Dolf
carried his message upstairs, where it was received with a little shriek
from Elsie, and blank dismay on the part of Elizabeth.
"I can't go down," she said; "Elsie, you must take my place at the
table. Say that I am ill, fainting, anything."
"Indeed, I'll do nothing of the sort," returned Elsie; "if you don't go
down I shall stay with you. I am nervous as I can be, and if you are not
at the table I shall break down completely."
The girl was full of selfishness to the very last--not willing to yield
her comfort in the slightest particular, but Elizabeth only sighed as
she observed it, and said, quietly:
"After all, it is just as well--change your dress, Elsie."
These two women commenced the duties of a dinner toilet with heavy
hearts, scarcely heeding what they put on.
But when the dinner hour approached, they entered the drawing-room
together and almost smiling, Elsie looking exquisitely pretty in her
dark blue silk, with those bright ringlets floating about her shoulders;
her volatile spirits were already rising at the idea of an escape from
that shadowy chamber where she had dragged through the day.
Elizabeth was calm and self-possessed as ever. To a casual observer she
looked pale, but her heavy black dress might account for that, and the
delicate contrast it gave to her complexion made amends for any lack of
bloom.
Mellen sat watching her while she greeted Mr. Rhodes, and listened
patiently to his labored compliments.
"Is she stone--ice?" he thought. "Is there no touch of nature about her
that she can be so calm?"
If the man could have read her mind, he might have pitied her even in
the midst of his anger and fearful doubts. What she suffered in putting
that terrible restraint upon herself was almost beyond the power of
belief; but woman-like, having formed her resolution, not all the
tortures of the rack could have driven her from it.
Elsie had seated herself on a low stool at her brother's feet; he sat
absently playing with her curls, and looking moodily into the fire, but
he had no words even for her, though she tempted him with rather
mournful smiles. But he had been so silent and sullen by times during
the past week, that there was not change enough in his manner to be at
all perceptible.
Sometimes Elizabeth glanced over at the pair, and then some sharp pain
contracted her brows, but there was no other appearance of emotion; she
would control even that instantly, and bending her head once more,
listen patiently to her persecutor's verbiage.
Dolf announced dinner, and the party passed into the dining-room, Mr.
Rhodes honoring the hostess with his arm. As Mellen and his sister
followed, Elizabeth heard Elsie whisper in a low voice:
"Grant, dear, you are not cross with me?"
In the midst of Mr. Rhodes's uproarious laugh at one of his own jokes,
she caught Mellen's answer:
"Never, darling, never! You are my one comfort--my only blessing."
With her head more proudly erect, a faint crimson beginning to burn on
her cheeks, Elizabeth Mellen walked on and took her seat at the table,
appearing so completely engrossed in Mr. Rhodes's conversation that she
did not once meet her husband's eye.
To all but the guest, that dinner seemed interminable, but Mr. Rhodes
was so busy with the delicacies Clorinda's skillful hands had prepared,
and so full of himself, that he was in a perfect glow of content.
The lights danced before Elizabeth's eyes, every morsel she ate was
swallowed with a pang, the wine was like a bitter drug on her lips, yet
there she sat in patient endurance.
Occasionally Mellen glanced towards her, and her composure sent such a
thrill of rage through his soul, that it was with difficulty he could
keep from springing up and overwhelming her with the discovery he had
made, on the spot.
The dinner was over at last, but tedious as it had seemed to Elizabeth,
she would gladly have prolonged it: anything to lengthen the hours; to
keep afar off the stillness of the night, when she must undertake that
to which she had doomed herself.
But she would not think of that; she dared not; madness lay so near the
dismal reflection that it must be swept from her mind.
They dragged through the evening; Elizabeth played cribbage with Mr.
Rhodes, and Elsie gave snatches of desultory music at the piano; every
time her fresh young voice rang out in joyous song Elizabeth started, as
if an unseen dagger had struck her to the heart.
"You will all come and pass a day with us before long, I hope," Mr.
Rhodes said, with exuberant hospitality, when the time came at last to
order the carriage for his departure.
Elizabeth only answered with a wan smile. She could hardly stand. Mellen
accompanied his visitor through the hall, and the instant they
disappeared Elizabeth started for the door.
"Where are you going?" asked Elsie.
"To my room; I can't bear this."
"I'll go--"
"No, no, not yet; stay awhile, for heaven's sake let me rest alone one
moment." She staggered through the dining-room and was gone; when Mellen
entered the library again, Elsie sat alone by the fire, teasing the cat,
looking cheerfully pretty and childlike.