"I hate November," cried Mrs. Eveleigh, coming into Elizabeth's room
and bringing a whiff of cold air with her. "It's a mean month," she
continued. "There's nothing but disagreeable things about it. The leaves
are all gone, and the snow hasn't come. You can't even go out riding
with any comfort, the ground is so frozen you are jolted to pieces." And
with step emphasizing the petulance of her voice, the speaker turned
from her companion and went to her own room, to put away her bonnet and
the heavy cloak that, if it had not been able to protect her from the
roughness of the roads, had kept the cold air from doing more than
biting revengefully at her nose and the tips of her fingers, in place of
all the mischief it would have been glad to inflict if it had had the
chance. The steps grown fainter, went about the next room, and Elizabeth
went on with her reading only half attentively, watching for the
inevitable coming back. "But then," resumed Mrs. Eveleigh, returning to
her subject as soon as she had opened the door wide enough to admit her
voice, "one must see a little of the world sometimes. I'm coming in to
warm my feet by your fire, shan't I? mine is low. I declare, it's hard
that Nancy should be so partial to you. I can get scarcely any
attention, though, to be sure, poor thing, it's well to have it from
somebody, even if it is from dependents. And you don't get any too much
from the quarter where you've a right to it."
Elizabeth, knowing it would be useless to attempt going on with her
reading, had laid aside her book on Mrs. Eveleigh's entrance, and now
she looked up from the sewing toward which she had reached out her hand,
and said:--
"You know as well as I do that it is exactly as I want it. Mr. Archdale
considers my wishes, and as to having a right, you know, Cousin
Patience, that that is what is being disproved now. Haven't I declared
that the ceremony was nothing at all?"
"Oh, certainly you have, but you'll find out how little good that will
do. I have not an idea that you'll ever have a chance to say 'Yes' to
that splendid Edmonson. You'll find it out soon enough, poor child."
Elizabeth flushed, then turned pale.
"Have you heard anything?" she asked.
"Not yet; not since that Mr. Harwin turned out a minister, just as I
thought he would, and your case went to the court to be decided. You'll
have the first news, I suppose, but I don't doubt what it will be."
"Neither do I," returned the girl, resolutely.
"We shall see," said Mrs. Eveleigh. "Do you know," she added, "that Mr.
Edmonson came yesterday when you were out?"
"Yes."
Then there fell between the pair as long an interval of silence as Mrs.
Eveleigh ever permitted where she was concerned. She broke it by asking,
energetically:--
"Elizabeth, if you really believed that you were not Mr. Archdale's
wife, why, in the name of wonder, did you go and put your whole fortune
into his business? And why did your father let you?"
"My father had no legal right to interfere," said the girl, ignoring the
first question, "and he did not choose to strain his authority. When was
he ever unkind to me?"
"I think he was then, decidedly." And the speaker nodded her head with
emphasis. "But you have not told me why you did it," she continued.
Elizabeth was silent a moment. "I had been the means of the whole thing
being discovered," she said, "and I had hurt him enough already."
"And he let you risk your whole fortune just because you had happened to
put your finger through a hole in the hall tapestry."
"No," cried Elizabeth, "he did no such thing. He is very angry with me
now because I invested it; he is not willing, even though he knows that
it's for Katie's sake."
"I thought you said just now that it was for Mr. Archdale's." Elizabeth
looked at her, and smiled triumphantly.
"I did," she answered. "It's the same thing; I have always told you so."
"Um!" said Mrs. Eveleigh, and returned to the attack. "If he wouldn't
take the money, how could you give it?" The girl was silent. "It was the
father, I know; they say a penny never comes amiss to him."
"How did you find this out, Cousin Patience?" But Mrs. Eveleigh laughed
instead of answering. "You have not spoken of it?" cried Elizabeth.
"Not a word. Why, I don't want to proclaim any one of my own family a
goose." The only answer was a smile of satisfaction. "You don't mind
being called a goose, I see," pursued the speaker.
"Not at all. I know it's often true. Only it doesn't happen to be true
here."
Though Mrs. Eveleigh had so openly criticised Elizabeth, it would have
gone ill with any one who had dared to follow her example. She was often
annoyed by things in Elizabeth; but she believed in the girl's truth
more than she did in her own. And there she was quite right. Now she
began to talk about the portrait scene, and declared that Mr. Edmonson
looked very handsome standing beside the old picture that he so much
resembled.
"That portrait was Colonel Archdale's grandfather, his mother's father,
Mr. Edmonson," explained Elizabeth, perceiving that her companion's
ideas were somewhat mixed. And then Mrs. Eveleigh confessed that she had
been trying to explain about the portrait and the relationship, and that
though she had talked learnedly about the matter, she had been a little
confused in her own mind.
"This portrait was in the colonel's father's house, lent him to be
copied, and when he fled he took the original with him, and left the
copy. It was a duel that he fought, and there was something irregular
that he did about it. He went to Virginia, you remember, and while there
he changed his name. Then he came here, and the search for him died out.
The matter was hushed up some way, I suppose."
"And pretended that he belonged to a different race of Archdales in
another part of England," asserted Mrs. Eveleigh, contemptuously.
"Perhaps we should, too, if we had been in his place."
"What! in his place, Elizabeth? Can you even imagine how you would feel
if you had murdered anybody, or about the same as that?"
"Yes."
"Nonsense, my dear. You must have a powerful imagination; I shouldn't
think it was healthy. There's no use, any way, in being so odd."
"No."
"First 'yes,' and then 'no,' and neither of them means anything. But if
you haven't anything to say, I wish you would tell me how those people,
the colonel's father and mother, happened to have a son living that they
didn't know anything about."
Elizabeth, full of remembrance of the time when a human life, even if
her own, had seemed light to her, could not help smiling at Mrs.
Eveleigh's literal interpretation of things. "They had to escape at
once," she said, "and the doctor said the child would die if he
undertook a sea-voyage in that state. So she sent him to her father's
home with a nurse who was very fond of him; he was a baby then. And she
went away with her husband with the understanding that when the child
recovered, as the doctor expected him to do, the nurse should bring him
to her in America. And she left open some way of communication. But,
instead of the baby, there came news that he was dead."
"And he wasn't dead?"
"No; his grandfather adopted him, and gave him his name. He hated Mr.
Archdale; he had lost his daughter through him, and he determined to
keep the child. So he bribed the nurse to report his death, and
persuaded her that it was better for the little fellow to stay with him
as his sole heir than follow the fortunes of a haunted man in a
wilderness, as America must have been then."
"And do you really believe they never knew of this son of theirs being
alive?"
"Mr. Archdale's will, if nothing else, proves that. He had three sons
here, you remember; and the colonel, the eldest of these, was named
Walter, after the one supposed to have died in England. And, now, you
see how this trouble all happened. The will left the greater part of the
property to Mr. Archdale's oldest son, Walter, whom he supposed the
colonel. But the real oldest son, Walter, was this Mr. Edmonson's
father. So that the colonel was really left penniless."
"Yes, yes, now I see," cried Mrs. Eveleigh. "You are like your father
when you come to explanations, Elizabeth; a person can always get at
what you mean. Now tell me about the portrait, how it came there, and
how in the world Mr. Edmonson found it."
"I don't know how it came there," she answered, leading away from the
rest of the question by adding, "I have never asked a word about it."
"Elizabeth! you _are_ odd, that's certain. And if Mr. Archdale is
never coming here any more, you will never have a chance now to ask him.
It's a pity to be so diffident."
Elizabeth smiled a little. "What else did you hear this morning?" she
asked.
"Nothing that will interest you, though of course I thought it would
when I heard it. Stephen Archdale has come back from his expedition up
to the Penobscots with Colonel Pepperell. I wonder how they succeeded?"
"I can tell you that. The Indians have sent word that they will not
fight against their brothers of St. John's and New Brunswick. That means
that they'll fight for them. We shall have an Indian war with the French
one. Think of the horrors of it." She shuddered as she spoke.
"Yes," returned Mrs. Eveleigh, with calm acquiescence. "It will be
dreadful for the people that live in the little villages and in the open
country."
This calmness, as if one were gazing from an impregnable fortress upon
the tortures and deaths of others, silenced Elizabeth. She looked the
speaker over slowly and turned away.
"Any more news?" asked Mrs. Eveleigh in a cheerful tone.
"I can tell you nothing more," returned Elizabeth.
This was literally true. It would not have been true if she had said
that she had heard nothing else, for she had been sitting with her
father for an hour, and had learned of a secret scheme,--a scheme so
daring that the very idea of it made her eyes kindle and her breath come
quickly,--a scheme that if it should fail would be hooted at as the
dream of vain-glorious madmen, and if it should succeed, would be
called a stroke of genius--magnificent. It interested her to know that
among the most eager to carry out the scheme was Major Vaughn, the man
whose valor she had asserted to Sir Temple Dacre a few months before. A
small band of men had pledged themselves to put reality into this dream
of grand achievement. "Its failure means," thought Elizabeth, "that
America is to be French and Jesuit; its success that Englishmen, and
liberty of mind and conscience, rule here." She prayed and hoped for
success, and took an eager interest in all the details of the scheme
that had reached her; but these were meagre enough, for, as yet, it
was only outlined; the main thing was that it was resolved upon. The
prisoners captured at Canso had been at last exchanged. They had been
brought to Boston, and had given valuable information about the place of
their captivity, the stronghold of France in America. Governor Shirley
had declared that Louisburg was to be captured, and that Colonel
Pepperell was the man to do it. Elizabeth, as she looked across at Mrs.
Eveleigh, wondered what she would say to the project. But she wondered
in silence, not only because silence had been enjoined, but because this
was not a woman to trust with the making of great events. She had heard
of an Indian war, and her chief thought had been that she would be safe.
The war had been talked about all the autumn. It was a terrible
necessity, but this new direction that it was to take was something
worth pondering over.
Elizabeth naturally, took large views of things, and, as her father's
companion, she had not learned to restrict them. But, also, for the last
months she had perceived dimly that there was a power within her which
might never be called into action. And this power rose, sometimes, with
vehemence against the monotony of her surroundings, in the midst of her
wealth of comforts and of affection.
It was the last of November, only two days after this conversation, that
Stephen Archdale was announced.
"He has come to tell me the decision," said Elizabeth to Mrs. Eveleigh;
"he promised he would come immediately. It's good news."
"Then what makes you so pale? And you're actually trembling."
Elizabeth looked at her companion in surprise, for all her years of
acquaintance with her.
"Don't you understand?" she said. "The strain is to be taken off. The
certainty must be good; and yet there is the possibility that it is not.
This and the thought that the moment has come make me tremble."
As she was speaking she moved away and in another moment was in the
drawing-room with Archdale.
"You have brought me word," she said, as soon as her greeting was over.
"You have good news; I see it in your eyes."
"Yes," he answered. "I suppose you will call it good news. You are free;
you are still Mistress Royal."
She clasped her hands impulsively, and retreated a few steps. It seemed
to him as he watched her that her first emotion was a thankfulness as
deep as a prayer. He saw that she could not speak. Then she came up to
him holding out both her hands.
"Never was any one so welcome to me as you with your words this
morning," she said. "I have not spoiled your life and Katie's."
"And you are free," he said again.
"Yes," she repeated, "I am free." And as she drew away her hands she
made a movement almost imperceptible and instantly checked, as if she
had thrown off some heavy weight. He read it, however, as he stood there
with his eyes upon her face, which was bright with a thankfulness and a
beauty that, although he had seen something of her possibilities of
expression, he had never dreamed of. How glad she was! A pang went
through him. He understood it afterward. It had meant that he was asking
himself if Katie's face, when he told her the news, would look so happy
at having gained him as this girl did at having lost him; and he had not
been sure of it. All the autumn there had been strange fancies in his
head about Katie. He had had no right, under the circumstances, to send
Lord Bulchester away; but it had seemed strange to him that any girl's
love of power should be carried so far if it were mere love of power
that moved her. But no shadow on Elizabeth's face showed him that she
dreamed of change in Katie, and Stephen felt rebuked that friendship
could find its object more perfect than love did.
"Will the wedding be on the anniversary of the other one?" asked
Elizabeth. "I suppose it will," she added; "Katie ought to have it so.
That will come in three weeks. It will be a little time before you sail,
if you go." And she smiled rather sadly, then glanced about her to make
sure that the last remark had not been overheard.
"Ah!" he said, "I see you know all about the scheme on foot. But it is
safe to trust you. You are very much interested," he added, watching
her.
"Very much. My father does trust me a good deal. But I hope I shall not
make him sorry for it."
Archdale kept on looking at her, and smiling.
"You prefer making people glad," he answered.
"But perhaps you will not go--now?" she said.
"Oh, yes. I promised my services to Colonel Pepperell last summer; that
holds me, you see. Besides, I want to do my part."
"I could not imagine you standing idle by while others were striking the
blows for our country," said Elizabeth. "Katie has told me a good deal
about you at one time and another. Dear Katie!" she added in an
undertone, with an exquisite gentleness in her face. Then, looking back
from the window where her eyes had wandered, she turned off her emotion
by some gay speech.
Very soon afterward the young man left her. For he was on his way to
carry the news to Katie who was then in Boston visiting her aunt. But to
go to her he passed Mr. Royal's door, and his wishes, as well as his
promise, made him delay his own happiness for a moment to see Elizabeth
rejoice. He saw her rejoice to his heart's content; and then he took
leave of her for his happy meeting with his betrothed.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
[Footnote 3: Copyright, 1884, by Frances C. Sparhawk.]
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