The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 1

The Ordeal of Elizabeth.

by Elizabeth Von Arnim.

_Chapter I_

The Van Vorst Homestead stands close to the road-side; a dark, low-built, gloomy old place. The horse-shoe on the door, testifies to its age, and the devout superst.i.tion of the Van Vorst who built it.

However effectual against witches, the horse-shoe cannot be said to have brought much luck otherwise. The Van Vorsts who lived there, a junior branch of the old colonial house, did not prosper in worldly matters, but sank more and more as time went on, in general respect and consideration.

There was a break in the deterioration, and apparently a revival of old glories, when Peter Van Vorst married his cousin, a brilliant beauty from town, who had refused, as tradition a.s.serts, half the eligible men of her day, and accepted Peter for what seemed a sudden and mysterious caprice. The marriage was a nine days' wonder; but whatever the reasons that prompted her strange choice--whether love, indifference, or some feeling more complicated and subtle; Elizabeth Van Vorst made no effort to avert its consequences, but settled down in silence to a life of monotonous poverty. She did not even try, as less favored women have done under harder circ.u.mstances, to keep in touch with the world she had given up. She never wrote to her old friends, never recalled herself, by her presence in town, to her former admirers. As for the Homestead, it wore, under the inert indifference of her rule, the same neglected look which had prevailed for years. The foliage grew in rank profusion about the house till it shut out not only the sunlight, but all view of the river. Perhaps Madam Van Vorst, as people called her, disliked the idea of change; or perhaps she grudged the cost of a day's labor to cut the trees; or it might be that she liked the gloom and the feeling of confinement, and had no desire to feast her eyes on the river, after the fas.h.i.+on of the Neighborhood. It reminded her too much, perhaps, of the outside world.

She was a stately, handsome old lady, and made an imposing appearance when she came into church on Sunday, in the black silk gown which rustled with an old-time dignity, and her puffs of snow-white hair standing out against the rim of her widow's bonnet. Her daughters, following timidly behind her, seemed to belong to a different sphere; dull, faded women, in shabby gowns which the village girls would have disdained. If you spoke to them after church, when the whole Neighborhood exchanges greetings and discusses the news of the week, they would answer you shyly, in embarra.s.sed monosyllables. Still, in some intangible way, you felt the innate breeding, which lurked behind all the uncouthness of voice and manner.

Their life, under their mother's training, had been one long lesson in self-effacement; they never even drove to the village without consulting her, or bought a spool of cotton without her permission.

The stress of poverty, as time went on, grew less stringent at the Homestead; but with Madam Van Vorst the penury which had been first the result of necessity, had grown to be second nature. She let the money acc.u.mulate and made no change in their manner of life. Her daughters had no books, no teachers; no occupation but house-work; no interest beyond the petty gossip of the country-side.

With Peter, the son, the downward process was more evident and had taken deeper root. His voice was more uncouth than that of his sisters and his manner less refined; it was hard to distinguish him if you saw him in church, from any farmer, ill at ease in his Sunday clothes. He spent his days at work on the farm, and his evenings, more often than his mother dreamed of, at the bar in the village. Like his sisters, he bowed beneath her iron rod and lived in mortal fear of her displeasure. Yet he had his plans, well defined, and frequently boasted (at least at the village bar) of what he should do when he became his own master.

With the sisters a certain inborn delicacy of feeling prevented them from formulating, even to themselves, those hopes and aspirations which, nevertheless, lay dormant, needing only a sudden shock to call them into life. When that shock came, and it was known all over the Neighborhood that Madam Van Vorst was dead, the news brought a mild sense of loss, the feeling of a landmark removed; and people hastened at once to the Homestead with sincere condolences and offers of a.s.sistance to the daughters. Cornelia and Joanna were stunned, but not entirely with sorrow; rather with the sort of feeling that a prisoner might experience, who finds himself by a sudden blow, released from a chain which habit has rendered bearable, and almost second nature, yet none the less a chain.

It was not till the evening after the funeral that this stifled feeling found expression. The day had been fraught with a ghastly excitement that seemed to give for the moment to these poor crushed beings a fict.i.tious importance. All the Neighborhood had come to the funeral; some grand relations even had journeyed up from town to do honor to the woman whom they had ignored in her lifetime; these last lingered for a solemn meal at the Homestead. The whole affair seemed to bring the Van Vorst women more in contact with the outside world than any event since their father's death, many years before. Sitting that evening, talking it all over, it might have been some festivity that they were discussing, were it not for their c.r.a.pe-laden gowns, and the tears they were still shedding half mechanically, though with no conscious insincerity.

"It was kind of the Schuyler Van Vorsts to come up," said Cornelia, wistfully. "I thought they had quite forgotten us--they are such fine people, you know--but they were really very kind, quite as if they took an interest."

"I'm glad the cake was so good," said the practical Joanna. "I took special pains with it, for I thought some of them might stay."

"It went off very nicely," said Cornelia, tearfully, "very nicely indeed. Mrs. Schuyler Van Vorst spoke of the cream being so good."

"She ate a good deal of it, I noticed."

"One thing I was sorry for," said Cornelia, reluctantly. "I saw her looking at the furniture. You know poor Mamma never would have anything done to it."

The sisters looked mechanically about the familiar room whose deficiencies had never been so glaringly apparent. The Homestead drawing-room had been re-furnished, with strict regard to economy many years ago, after a fas.h.i.+on too antiquated to be beautiful, and too modern to be interesting. The chairs and sofa were covered with horse-hair, and decorated, at intervals, with crochet anti-maca.s.sars.

In the centre of the room stood a marble-topped table, upon which were ranged, at stiff angles, the Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and several books of sermons. There were no other books and no pretty knick-knacks; but some perennially blooming wax flowers, religiously preserved beneath a gla.s.s case, contrasted with the chill marble of the mantel-piece. Above them hung one of the few relics of the past--a hideous sampler worked by a colonial ancestress. The room was much the worse for wear, the wall-paper was dingy, the carpet faded to an indefinite hue, some of the chairs were notoriously unsafe, and the sofa had lacked one foot for years.

"I think," said Cornelia, with sudden energy, as if roused at last to the truth of a self-evident proposition, "I think it is about time that the room was done over."

Joanna attempted no denial; but after a moment she remarked tentatively, as if balancing the claims of beauty against those of economy; "Some pretty sateen, I suppose, for a covering would not cost much."

Cornelia shook her head with melancholy decision. "It would be quite useless to do anything with the furniture," she declared, "if we didn't first change the carpet and the wall-paper."

Joanna was silent in apparent acquiescence; and Cornelia, after a moment's hesitation, brought out a still bolder proposition. "I've been thinking," she said "that we ought to have a piano. Of course I can't--we can't either of us play," she went on in hurried deprecation of Joanna's astonished looks, "poor Mamma would never let us take lessons; but people have them whether they play or not, and--it would give such a nice, musical look to the room."

Joanna sat lost for a moment in awe over this radical suggestion. "It would be very expensive," she said, practically "and--there are a great many things we need more."

But the more imaginative Cornelia refused to be daunted. "What if it is expensive!" she said boldly "and if we don't actually need it, that's all the more reason why it would be nice to have it. We've never spent money on a single thing in all our lives except for just what was necessary. Couldn't we for once have something that isn't necessary, that would be only--pleasant?"

Thus Cornelia struck the key-note of resistance to that doctrine of utility which had enslaved their lives, and Joanna, after the first shock of surprise, followed willingly in her lead. It was decided that the piano should be bought at once, and in discussing this and other changes, time pa.s.sed rapidly, and they went to bed in a state of duly suppressed, but undoubted cheerfulness. It was altogether quite the pleasantest evening that they had spent for many years, though they would not have admitted this for the world, and sincerely believed themselves in great affliction. There was another being in the house who rejoiced in his freedom and meant to make the most of it.

The next morning at breakfast the sisters might have perceived had they been less engrossed in their own thoughts, that Peter was meditating some communication, which he found it hard to express. His words, when he spoke at last, chimed in oddly with his sisters'

wishes. "I never," he said, speaking very deliberately and looking about him in great disgust, "I never saw a place that needed doing over so badly as this does."

There was a moment's pause of astonishment; and then Cornelia looked up in glad surprise. "Why, Peter," she said, "I had no idea that you would care"--

"Care!" said Peter, importantly. "Of course I care. I've always meant to have the place fixed up when--well, she couldn't live for ever, you know" he broke off half apologetically, as he caught the look of mute protest on his sisters' faces. "It did all very well for her and for you," he went on, coolly, "but it's not the sort of place I can bring my wife to." The last words came out with an air of indifference, that might have befitted the most commonplace announcement.

Upon Peter's hearers, however, they fell like a thunderbolt. It was several minutes before Cornelia repeated, in a very low voice:

"Your--your _wife_, Peter?"

"Yes, my wife." Peter rose and faced his sisters squarely, his hands in his pockets. He thrust out his under lip, and his florid Dutch face wore an expression of mingled defiance, exultation and embarra.s.sment.

"Why, I've been married some time," he said. "You didn't suppose I was going to stay single all my life, did you?"

"But who--who"--Cornelia's mind, moving with unusual rapidity, had already pa.s.sed in review and rejected as improbable all the eligible young women of the Neighborhood, with none of whom she had ever seen Peter exchange two words. "Who can it be, Peter?" she concluded, lamely.

"Is it--any one we know?" chimed in Joanna, hopefully.

Peter looked them full in the face; he had always held his sisters in some contempt. "You know her well enough," he said, deliberately "or if you don't--you ought to. She's a young lady who lives near here, and her name is Malvina Jones."

There was a dead silence. The old Dutch clock on the mantel-piece, which had kept its place undisturbed through the trials and changes of several generations, seemed to beat in the stillness loudly and fiercely, almost as if it shared the consternation of Peter's sisters, who stared at him aghast. Cornelia was the first to speak. "Malvina Jones!" she repeated, slowly. "You don't mean the--the girl whose father keeps the bar?"

Peter flushed angrily. "There's only one Malvina Jones that I know of"

he declared, "and she's my wife and will be the mistress of this house. And so, if you don't like it, you can leave--that's all I have to say."

With this conclusive remark Peter betook himself to his usual avocations, and his sisters were left to resign themselves to the situation as best they might.

"Malvina Jones!" Joanna repeated, still lost in astonishment.

"One of the village girls!" said Cornelia, bitterly, "a--a bar-keeper's daughter."

Joanna seemed to hesitate. "That isn't the worst of it," she said at last. "There are some very nice girls in the village, you know, but Malvina Jones is not--I'm afraid she really is _not_ a very nice girl."

Cornelia was silent. She knew enough of the petty gossip of the village to be aware that Joanna was stating the case mildly. Before her mental vision there rose a picture of Malvina as she had often seen her on Sunday, with her glaring red hair, her smart attire and her look of bold a.s.surance, undisturbed by the disapproving eyes of the congregation. Then she thought of her mother, the stately old dame whom they had been so proud of, even while they feared her. She looked at the breakfast-table, at the quaint, old-fas.h.i.+oned shapes of the glistening silver and the Dutch willow-ware which had been in the family since time immemorial; she thought with affection even of the old horsehair furniture, which must surely be preferable to such improvements as Malvina might suggest, and she pictured the bar-keeper's daughter entertaining her friends in the room where Madam Van Vorst had received with old-world stateliness the visits of the Neighborhood. To poor Cornelia the family dignity--what little there was left of it--seemed to be crumbling to ashes.

"I don't think we need to bother now about--about the piano," she said, and the words died away in a sob.

_Chapter II_

It was a June morning twenty years later, and Elizabeth's hands were full of June roses.

"Look," she said, holding them out "how beautiful!" She placed them in a flat china dish and proceeded to arrange them, humming, as she did so, a gay little tune from some favorite opera of the day. The Misses Van Vorst, her aunts, who had been talking rather seriously before the girl entered, broke off in their conversation and brightened as they watched her.

There had been times in Elizabeth's childhood when the heart of each sister had been contracted by a secret fear, which they concealed even from one another, when they had offered up in seclusion fervent prayers that certain hereditary characteristics might not be revived in this treasure which fortune had unexpectedly bestowed upon them.