Little Nobody
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"You said you wanted these rooms for Miss Hayes. Very well, you can have them. I dare say Maud will give me another room."
"Oh, dear no, I would not turn you out of your room for the world, child!" suavely. She knew that Eliot would not permit it. "I only thought that if you had given them up and gone to Eliot's these would suit Ida. She always had them when she came before, and it does seem foolish, does it not, for man and wife to occupy six rooms when three would be enough? I hoped you and Eliot had become reconciled to your forced marriage ere this."
Driven to bay, Una cried out, angrily:
"Mrs. Van Zandt, you are talking the wildest nonsense. There was no forced marriage."
"Then why did Eliot write such a letter to my husband? Come to my room, I will show it to you since you dispute my word."
She caught Una's cold hand and half dragged her with her to her own room, where behind locked doors she gave the ignorant wife that fatal letter to read—fatal, because in Eliot's haste and worry he had stated only the bare facts of the case, and Una could not read between the lines the love that had filled his heart.
She read it—the lovely, trusting girl—every word. She comprehended it in part. What she could not fathom Sylvie pointed out in clearest language, and when she had made her cruel meaning clear as day, she said, maliciously:
"Noblesse oblige!"
A gasp, and the girl's heavy eyes turned dumbly on her face—dumb with a bitter, humble humiliation. Sylvie said, half deprecatingly:
"He did not love you at first, of course. How could he? When he came he asked me to give you a separate suite. I remonstrated, but he insisted. Of course I thought you would win him while I was away, and he would get over his foolishness."
Una had folded her white arms on the dressing-table, and was looking into her face with dazed, heavy eyes. She muttered, hoarsely:
"Oh, this is too dreadful! What must he, what must you all think of me?"
Sylvie replied, with cruel frankness:
"Of course we all felt angry with you at first. We were disappointed, too, for we had all expected that he would marry sister Ida. There had been no engagement, but it was understood. But there, no one blames you or him, child. As I said before, Eliot could not have acted any other way. Noblesse oblige!"
As if forgetful of her presence, Una murmured, sadly:
"Mon Dieu! what shall I do?"
Sylvie answered, with more sense than she had displayed in making these cruel revelations:
"Do? Why, nothing but make the best of it, as Eliot and the rest of us have done. What has happened can not be altered now, so you must try to make him fond of you, so that he shall no longer regret taking you and losing Ida; and, for one thing, you ought not to be so extravagant. There is that pony he bought you. I know he could not afford it, really, for he is poor. And to-night I saw him bring you hot-house flowers. I am afraid he is running into debt just to pamper your whims. Now, if he had married Ida, it would have been different. She would have brought him a fortune, and could have paid her own bills."
Pale as she would ever be in her coffin, Una stood listening, her heart beating wildly.
"I am in his way. Oh, I wish I could die now!" she was thinking wildly.
Sylvie, who had done all this out of sheer malice, gloated over the sight of her misery.
To herself she said spitefully:
"I am paying her back, the little pauper and nobody, for Ida's disappointment."
Then suddenly she remembered that it was almost dinner-time. She said carelessly:
"You had better go back to your room and finish dressing, Una; and remember, I would not have told you what I have, only that you disputed my word. I hope you will not run to Edith with it. It will only make matters worse. I dare say he will learn to love you in time."
"I shall run to no one with it," Una answered, in a strange voice. She moved to the door as she spoke, and passed out. Sylvie laughed mockingly.
"I have paid Eliot now for his insolence. I know he loves her to madness. I saw it in his eyes when she met him so coolly this evening. Well, this will put a stumbling-block between them that he will not easily pass."
And humming an opera air with heartless indifference, she made some slight addition to her already elaborate toilet, and went down-stairs.
Una's toilet, the light-blue surah silk with square neck and elbow-sleeves, was complete but for the handsome corsage bouquet Eliot had brought her an hour ago. She did not pin it on her breast; she took it in her hand and ran along the hall, then tapped softly at the door of the apartment that she knew had been designed for Miss Hayes's use.
Ida opened it, dazzling Una's eyes with the glitter of her satin and jewels. She frowned slightly at the intruder.
"I have brought you these flowers to wear," Una said, rapidly, thrusting them into Ida's white hand. Then she turned away and went along the hall with slow, lagging footsteps, down the broad, shallow staircase, and so to the drawing-room, her young face pale with emotion, and a strange, excited glitter in her dark eyes.
CHAPTER XXXI
Eliot was sitting on a low tête-à-tête. He moved aside slightly to allow her room at his side.
But Una did not seem to see her husband's involuntary movement. She went to the opposite side of the room and sat down by Edith, who, with her brown hair and brown eyes, looked very pretty in garnet velvet and cashmere daintily combined into a graceful dinner-dress. Maud was buried in a book on the other side of her, but she had taken time to honor the new arrivals by putting on her best black silk with a white lace fichu to relieve its somber tone.
Vivacious Edith exclaimed instantly:
"Oh, Una, the pretty flowers that Eliot brought you—you have forgotten to wear them. Shall I run and get them for you?"
"Thank you—but no," as Edith rose. "I don't care for them. I—I have given them away."
Eliot had heard distinctly the question and answer; but there was no time for comment. Ida Hayes sailed in—a bisque doll in Nile-green silk and velvet, with Eliot's roses pinned among the laces of her V-shaped corsage.
"And to think that I went without cigars two days to buy Ida Hayes a corsage bouquet!" he said, ruefully, to himself.
But the loss of the cigars was the least part of his mortification.
He had fancied he was winning his way to his girl-bride's heart. This little incident showed him clearly his mistake.
"She is not learning to love me. Perhaps she never will," he thought, gloomily.
Ida Hayes, with the best grace in the world, sat down on the tête-à-tête beside him. She was a belle and a beauty—had been for seven years, ever since she left the school-room at eighteen—and she could have been married well long ago, but she had seen no one she fancied until she met Eliot Van Zandt at her sister's wedding three years ago. Since then her heart, as well as Sylvie's, had been set on an alliance with him, and his marriage had been a bitter blow to her self-love.
But she was a society woman. She did not wear her heart on her sleeve, and in the clear, pale-blue eyes upraised to his Eliot Van Zandt read no sign of her disappointed hopes.
"I see you looking at my flowers. That dear little thing, your wife, gave them to me," she said, carelessly.
He answered as carelessly:
"Yes, and they harmonize well with your dress."
But in his heart he longed to tear them from her breast and trample them beneath his feet. They had taught him a bitter lesson—one he would not soon forget.
Dinner was announced, and he took Ida into the dining-room. Bryant gave Sylvie his arm, and Una followed with her sisters-in-law, hiding with a smile her pain at the preference Eliot had shown Miss Hayes.
"How he must hate me, for he can not help thinking that but for me he would not have lost her. It was right to give her the flowers. She had really the best right to them," she said miserably to herself.
The flowers, the lights, the china and silver of the well-appointed table flashed confusedly before her eyes. She could see nothing clearly but the pretty wax-doll face of Miss Hayes as she sat opposite to Eliot and talked to him incessantly.
Glancing up and down the long table at the fair faces of the five ladies, she said, gayly:
"Two gentlemen and five ladies! Only two have cavaliers. There are three of us too many."
Una thought, with keen shame and inexpressible bitterness:
"Only one too many, and that one is poor little me!"
She made a great effort to eat, and swallowed some food, although it half choked her; but as soon as they rose from the table she slipped away and went up to the school-room, where Mrs. Wilson, whose impaired digestion abhorred late dinners, was placidly taking some milk and oatmeal by way of supper.
"Oh, my dear, have you got a fever? Your eyes shine so brightly, and your cheeks are quite flushed!" exclaimed the good governess, anxiously.
"I am not sick; I dare say I am excited. There is company, you know, and I thought I should not be missed if I stole away up here with you," Una answered, with affected carelessness.
Mrs. Wilson smiled on her pupil, and answered, kindly:
"I'm glad you came, dear; but, of course, you will be missed. Your husband would miss you, if there was a room full of company."
Una answered in a strange tone:
"No, not to-night; for Miss Ida Hayes is there."
Mrs. Wilson put down her glass of milk and looked curiously at the speaker. She began to comprehend the cause of her strange looks and words. She said to herself:
"This pretty little girl-bride has grown jealous of some meaningless attention of Eliot to Miss Hayes. She loves her husband, and the boy is somehow too stupid to see it, or, perhaps, he does not care. I would speak to him, but I do not like to meddle in so delicate an affair."
Aloud, she said gently:
"I like to have you up here with me, but your husband and friends will think I am selfish, dear; so you had better go back to the drawing-room. Miss Ida Hayes is not charming enough to make up to Eliot for your absence."
Una turned around suddenly and looked at her gravely.
"Very well, then; I will go, since you don't want me; but I shall go to my own room," she said.
And she did, and there Edith found her, pretending to read, when she came to seek her half an hour later.
"You selfish child! put down your book. We are going to have some music, and we want your alto," she said.
"I can not sing to-night; my head aches," Una answered; and none of Edith's arguments could alter her refusal. She was obliged to go down alone and make excuses for her sister-in-law.
"She has a headache, and can not come down," she said; and Sylvie laughed in her sleeve.
"She is jealous of Ida," she thought, maliciously.
CHAPTER XXXII
The rest of the family were already assembled at breakfast when Una entered the dining room the next morning, pale and grave-looking, after a wretched, sleepless night. Her place by Eliot was waiting for her, although she had half expected it would be filled by Ida Hayes.
Eliot had been watching for her anxiously, and his glance was very tender, despite the episode of last night.
"I hope your head is better," he said, kindly; and looking at him with a smile of wonderful sweetness, she answered:
"It is well, thank you."
In the long vigil of last night she had formed a noble resolve to win her husband's heart, and to make up to him by her womanly sweetness for all he had sacrificed in marrying her, a nameless girl of obscure birth.
Sylvie's hints had not been lost upon her. She determined that she would not allow Eliot to be so extravagant for her sake again. The brown pony must be sold, the hot-house flowers must not be bought. She would have no more new dresses. She would not be a burden on him she loved.
"Chocolate, Una?" asked Mrs. Van Zandt, who was presiding at the silver urn with graceful ease. She filled the china cup for the girl, laughing the while in secret at her pale, wistful face.
"It was a hard blow to her pride," she said to herself, exultantly; then she turned her attention again to her husband, who had been reading from the morning paper when Una's entrance interrupted him.
"Our old favorite on the boards again. It will be a treat," said Sylvie. "On what night did you say, Bryant?"
"The sixteenth; that will be three nights off," he answered.
"Exactly. We will all go. We will make up a theater-party. What do you say, girls?"
"Splendid!" said Edith.
"All right!" exclaimed Ida, and Maud added a more sedate affirmative.
"And you, dear?" Eliot said, gently, to the silent girl by his side.
She lifted her dark, mournful eyes to his face with a gentle smile, and said, wistfully, almost humbly:
"Whatever you wish, Eliot."
The sweetness of her smile and voice disarmed his resentment for her slight of last night, and leaning toward her, he said, in a tender whisper:
"We will go, then, and I will bring you another bouquet; but mind, no giving it away this time."
"Did you care?" she murmured back, with sudden radiance.
They were rising from the table just then, and Una slipped her white fingers daringly through his arm, as she murmured the coquettish words. He looked down, saw the sudden radiance on her face, and a half-light broke upon his mind.
"So you did it to make me jealous, madame?" he said, gayly. "Very well; you attained your desire. But I must be off now. Come to the library one minute. I want you."
Inside the cozy little room, he said, kindly:
"You will want a new dress for the theater-party. How much?"
She drew back from him, scarlet with shame.
"Oh, no; I have plenty of dresses—more than I need."
"Very well, but you shall have a new dress if you wish it."
"But I do not wish it," hurriedly. "And—and—oh, Eliot, I'm afraid I cost you too much money! Sell the brown pony. I do not care for riding any more, and it is a useless expense to keep it."
His fair, handsome face grew suddenly stern.
"Who has been putting such nonsense in your head?" he demanded.
"It is not nonsense," Una said, shyly but firmly. "You are poor. You told me so long ago. So I know you can not afford the expense."
"Nonsense—" he began; but the door opened, and Maud entered, followed by Edith.
"Oh, excuse us, Una. We did not know you were here with Eliot. We just came in to say good-morning to him before we go in the drawing-room with Ida."
He kissed them both, and they went out. He held out his hand to his wife.
"By-by, Una. I suppose I must really tear myself away," he said.
CHAPTER XXXIII
She put her small hand in his, and he felt the fingers curl around his own, gently detaining him.
"Well, dear?" he asked, thinking that she was about to change her mind and say she would have the new dress.
Her face dropped a little to hide the warm flush that rose over it as she stammered in desperate confusion:
"Before you—go—I must make a confession. Last night I—I—told an untruth when I said I had a headache and could not sing. You—you will not call me your little Una, your lady of truth any more now, will you, Eliot?"
She was so close to him, the supple, girlish figure leaned so near that he daringly slipped his arm around the small waist. A thrill of rapture ran through him as he felt her nestle shyly in his clasp.
"So it was not a headache, my little Truth?" he whispered, lovingly. "What was the reason then that made you desert us all so unkindly?"
"It was—was—a fit of ill-temper," Una exclaimed, remorsefully; then she turned round, so quickly, so lightly, he did not realize it until it was over, and slipping her arm around his neck drew his face down to hers, pressed a light, bashful kiss upon his lips, then tore herself from his clasp and fled the room.
Strong man as he was, Eliot Van Zandt reeled backward into a chair, dizzy with delicious rapture at that light, shy but ardent pressure of Una's lips upon his own.
It had come so unexpectedly, that moment of bliss after the bitterness and hopelessness of last night, it was like the dawning of a new day after a night of storm and darkness.
Hope plumed her wings again in his heart.
"She is going to learn to love me," he thought, happily, too blind still to understand the full meaning of that caress that had sent such a shock of rapturous delight through his whole being.
He sat still a few blissful moments, going gladly over her looks and words.
"Not a headache—a fit of ill-temper. Ill-temper over what?" he wondered, then suddenly: "Oh, my little love, my darling, you were vexed because Ida Hayes sat down by my side, because I took her in to dinner. Well, I shall bless the coming of Ida if through her coquetry my Una learns she has a heart."
Meanwhile, frightened at her own boldness, her heart beating furiously, Una rushed upstairs, seeking solitude in which to hide herself from all.
"What must he think of me?" she murmured, with crimson blushes. "I did not mean to do it. I do not know how I dared so much. Was he angry, I wonder? I could not look at him. I was so amazed at what I had done!"
Her lips burned with the touch of his, her heart throbbed with pain and pleasure commingled. Walking restlessly up and down the floor, she murmured:
"I love him so dearly that I must—I must win his heart! Then, and not till then, will he forgive me for the loss of Ida and her fortune. How shamed I felt over the proffer of the new dress! He will give me new dresses, but he will not give me his heart. He puts me away from him like a stranger. Shall I resent it? Ah, no, no; since he has sacrificed so much for me, I must sacrifice my pride for him. For his own sake, for his future happiness; I, the Little Nobody, obscure, unloved, penniless, uncultured, must make myself beloved by him until he shall bless the wayward fate that made him mine."
The dark eyes glowed, the cheeks crimsoned with emotion, as Una thought, passionately:
"I would that I could do some brave, noble, heroic deed that would challenge the world's admiration, so that he would forget my obscure origin and my misfortune that drove him to the sacrifice that saved me from the world's scorn, in sudden pride and love for me!"
There was a light tap at the door. Mrs. Wilson had sent Edith to bring her tardy pupil to the school-room.
"If you are sick, or otherwise engaged, she will readily excuse you," Edith said.
"I do not want to be excused," said Una, as she hurried to the presence of the gentle governess.
But that day she found books and lessons irksome in the extreme. Her heart and mind were full of the strange facts she had heard last night from the lips of Sylvie.
She who had been wedded, yet no wife, for almost a year had only now found out that she was unloved, and the humiliation weighed her almost to the earth, in spite of her brave, sensible resolve to win Eliot yet, and make him forget that once he had sighed for Ida Hayes.
She longed to throw down the irksome books and cry out to the gentle, placid Mrs. Wilson: "Away with books! Teach me the only lesson that interests me now—how to win my husband's heart!"
She beat back the yearning impulse to claim this gentle woman's sympathy with bitter pride.
"Shall I complain of him to her, to any one?" she thought. "Ah, no; it lies between us two and God! The bitter secret shall never pass my lips! Secret, did I say? Alas! it is known to them all, has been known all along. How they must pity me, the unloved wife, the perhaps unwelcome intruder in the home to which they had hoped he would bring Ida Hayes a loved and loving bride!"
It did not look as if she was unwelcome when at the close of study hours Maud and Edith burst into the room.
"Una, we are just dying to get hold of you!" Edith cried. "We want to talk about the theater-party. What are we going to wear, for I'm sure we can not afford new dresses."
"And we want to look as nice as possible, for Ida and Sylvie will do all they can to outshine us," added Maud. "Of course they have lots of new things, so Edith and I have just made up our minds to have some of the pretty things in mamma's trunks upstairs. She gave them to us long before she died. So if you won't be offended, Una, dear, come with us, and we'll find something that we can fix over for the theater-party."
"What is it all about?" queried gentle Mrs. Wilson, and Edith returned:
"A popular actress who left the stage almost sixteen years ago has returned to it again, and they say she is as young, lovely, and spirited as when she retired to marry a rich aristocrat. All paint, of course, but Sylvie is just wild to have us go and see her play on Thursday night."
CHAPTER XXXIV
Una went with the girls to ransack the trunks, but she steadily declined to accept any of the finery they spread out on the bed and chairs.
"Eliot offered to give me a new dress this morning, and I told him I had plenty," she said, "so if I took any of these, he would think I had deceived him."
"You dear little conscientious thing, you are well named Una," cried Edith, gayly. "But Eliot would never know, and, my dear, this rose-colored satin with lace flounces would make up lovely for you, and be so becoming."
"It is too fine for me," Una answered, shrinkingly.
"Not a bit. A gold dress would not be too fine for Eliot's wife," vivaciously. "And you know, dear, at a theater-party one dresses as if for a ball. We shall have private boxes, you know, and every one will want to look nice. Now, you really have nothing fit to wear."
Una flushed sensitively, but she knew that it was true. She had nothing fine but the blue silk dinner-dress, except—and her heart throbbed painfully—the sweet, white dress with its filmy laces that she had worn for her strange marriage that starlit night in New Orleans beneath the green trees in the quaint semi-tropical garden. The dress, with the necklace of pearls, lay folded away in the bottom of her trunk.
"I have the white dress I wore when I was—married," she said, dubiously. "Perhaps it will do."
They went with her to look at it, and they were charmed with the quaint, pretty robe and the moon-white pearls.
"You will look lovely in this. Why did you not show it to us before? And you never told us you had such splendid jewels."
"Are they splendid? I did not know it. Monsieur Carmontelle gave them to me for a wedding-gift. I have more of them in a box given me by the Jockey Club."
They exclaimed with delight when they saw the lovely things in the jewel-casket. There were diamonds, rubies, emeralds, all in the most tasteful and elegant settings. Una gave them carte blanche to wear what they pleased, and accepting the offer in sisterly sincerity, the girls selected each a set appropriate to the costume selected for the occasion.
"You will wear the pearls with the white dress, Una, I will take the diamonds to suit the rose-colored satin, and Maud can wear the rubies with the gold brocade!" exclaimed Edith, gayly. "Oh, how surprised Sylvie and Ida will be! They will expect us to look like dowdies, knowing we can not afford new dresses. But we will keep all a secret, and burst upon them Thursday evening in a blaze of glory!"
"Agreed!" cried Maud, merrily, and Una's gentle, pensive smile added assent, although to herself she sighed apprehensively:
"Perhaps Eliot will not like for me to appear in my wedding-dress. It will remind him of his sacrifice. But I have nothing else to wear."
And when Eliot asked her that evening what kind of a dress she would wear, so that he might select her flowers in keeping, she answered, in a half-frightened tone.
"White!"
"It will suit you," he answered, kindly, but Una thought, sadly:
"He would not say so if he knew it was my wedding-dress!"
He lingered by her side, thrilled with the memory of the morning's kiss, and waiting to see if she would show him any more kindness.
Una was very glad to keep him near her, but she was full of a blushing consciousness that made her even more shy than usual. Oh, that kiss this morning!—how had she dared to be so bold?—and yet she had a passionate longing to repeat the caress.