The night of Margaret’s meeting with the anarchists was an eventful one for the three members of the Murchison family. Elsie, tired of waiting for Gilbert’s appearance, and strenuous in her desire to spend her nights at home, had been again compelled to ask William’s escort, a fact which raised the spirits of the mercurial young Irishman to a point of emphatic self-gratulation. He felt sure, to use his own phraseology, that “Elsie was getting soft on him,” and while preparing himself for the walk he resolved to put into definite shape his growing fondness for her. It so happened that when he and Elsie left the area door, Herbert Lynn, violin case in hand, walked down the front steps of the Mason mansion and leisurely followed them up the street. As William possessed the native wit of his race, together with an abundant fund of good-humor, Elsie’s laugh was frequent at the droll remarks and anecdotes he poured into her ear. This only increased the self-elation with which he viewed his prospects, but lacking the finesse of language wherewith to proclaim his passion, he allowed the precious moments to slip by, until, having reached the dimly-lighted entrance to Elsie’s home, he felt that decisive action alone could serve his purpose.
“Good-night, and thank you,” said Elsie as they stepped within the narrow hall.
“Not so fast,” he cried, clutching at Elsie’s dress and detaining her. “I must be better paid.”
“To be sure,” answered Elsie, reaching into the depths of a woman’s long pocket and bringing her purse to view. “How careless I am.”
“No, you don’t! Put that pocketbook up. Sure an’ this is what I mean,” and grasping Elsie round the waist he strove to imprint a kiss upon her lips.
“Let me go! Let me go!” cried frightened and struggling Elsie.
“Sure an’ I’ll not, then! I’ll jest have a kiss and maybe more from the swate girl of my heart,” and his strong arms were just about to bring the flushed and frightened face within range of his lips, when a firm hand clutched his coat collar and sent him spinning into the street. Glancing up he met the indignant eyes of Herbert Lynn.
“It isn’t a very safe thing, young man, for you to insult ladies in this manner, and you may congratulate yourself on getting off with scant justice. The best thing you can do is to go home and reform some of your free-and-easy habits.”
William shuffled off maddened and revengeful. “Ah, but I’ll fix him and the girl too. Sure and the high hand isn’t always for the mighty millionaire. And it’s him, is it, that’s stealing my girl’s heart away? Well, then, an’ I’ll ’umble ’em, sure. I’m after thinking the mistress with her fine airs will not be as swate as the summer when she finds her brother is comin’ it asy over the purty cook.”
Elsie, released from William’s grasp, darted up the stairs, but half-way up the first flight she sank down in fright and exhaustion. Springing up two steps at a time, Herbert followed and bent over her. “Elsie! Elsie!” he cried, “what is it? Are you faint? Here, let me steady you,” and with the same audacity which he had indignantly rebuked in William, he slipped an arm round Elsie’s waist and endeavored to lift her up.
“I don’t need any help,” she said, struggling to her feet and making frantic efforts to free herself from the detaining arm. “I can go alone a good deal better. Please take your arm away.”
“No, thank you; it is quite too comfortable,” replied Herbert composedly.
“And succeeds in making me very uncomfortable. I entreat you to release me.” Elsie glanced up into a pair of blue eyes, in whose depths lay a light so warm and tender, that she staggered dizzily against the wall when Herbert’s encircling arm was removed.
“There, I knew you couldn’t go alone. Now I insist upon being permitted to help you up the stairs. I therefore offer you, in the most decorous manner possible, the despised and rejected arm.”
Herbert stood before her with crooked elbow and attitude so ludicrously stiff, that in the laugh which rose to her lips the constraint of the situation passed away, and she not only accepted the arm, but made no remonstrance when, before the third flight had been reached, the despised member, by some legerdermain best known to lovers perhaps, had been restored to its original offensive position. It still lay supine and satisfied around the slender waist when the two reached Margaret’s door and found it locked.
“Here’s a go!” exclaimed Herbert slangily.
“No,” said Elsie, attempting to remove his arm, “it seems to be a stay!”
Herbert caught at the word instantly, even while his laugh echoed along the corridor. “A stay!” he echoed, tightening his grasp. “Elsie, darling——”
No one will know quite just how it happened, but drawn by an overmastering impulse, he drew the dark head to his breast and pressed a fervent kiss upon, I grieve to state, a pair of unresisting lips.
“For shame!” cried Elsie when she found breath. “A second William. Young man, go and reform some of your free-and-easy habits! You’re infinitely more cruel than he, because you know better. I am ashamed, indignant, heart-broken,” and Elsie burst into tears.
“My darling,” cried Herbert for the second time, as he prepared to do penance by repeating the crime of which he was accused, “you may be just as indignant as you choose so that indignation does not take you away from me. Here, take your kiss back again! I am perfectly willing to return the jewel I stole,” and grasping the flushed face in both hands, he held it in a vise-like grip while he bestowed upon the ripe lips the principal with usurious interest. There was no time for protest or further explanation. There was some one coming up the stairs, and it was a hurried assumption of composure that greeted Margaret and Gilbert as they reached their door.
“We have been waiting for you,” cried Herbert, adding audaciously, “It seemed to Miss Elsie, I’ve no doubt, as if you never would come.”
“Margaret, dear,” exclaimed Elsie, “how pale you are! What has happened?”
“Come in and I will tell you,” wearily answered Margaret as she unlocked the door.
“As it is late,” said Herbert hesitatingly, “with your permission I will leave my violin here and come for our music to-morrow evening. Good-night.”
Elsie could not raise her eyes to his, such a tumult of wounded feeling, love, shame, and regret surged through her breast, and Herbert was obliged to depart without the glance he coveted. Elsie listened to his merry whistle as he ran down the stairs, and cowered, shamefaced and despairing, in the shadow of the window curtain. How weak she had been! She had struggled so hard not to notice him, not to think of him, and all the time the victim of a relentless fate, had at last yielded to his kiss and let him see she had given her love unasked! What a state of moral degradation she had reached! How Margaret would despise her if she knew it! How everybody with any fine moral sense would be contaminated with her presence if it was known how really bad she was!
Sleep did not visit the perturbed brain that night. In dry-eyed misery she lay through the long hours of darkness by Margaret’s side, and when at the first break of dawn she returned to her work, she carried a pale, conscience-stricken face. The other servants eyed her curiously, giving her already crushed spirit unmistakable evidence that William had heralded the evening’s adventure. It was with lagging footsteps and a colorless face that she dragged through her morning’s duties, and finally mounted the stairs to her usual conference with her mistress.
Mrs. Mason was alone when Elsie entered the morning-room, but she did not look up. She was apparently busied over a small account-book, in which, with the gold pencil attached to it, she now and then jotted down figures or memoranda. The coals in the grate glowed warmly; the mocking-bird in his gilded cage chirped cheerily; the flowers and potted plants in the windows seemed to smile a welcome to the disheartened girl, but the fair mistress had no greeting for her. Elsie waited some moments, and then, seeing that Mrs. Mason was purposely silent, she asked, but with a note of despondency in her voice that was only too apparent, “What orders, Mrs. Mason, have you for me this morning?”
“Only one,” replied the lady, for the first time turning a darkened face upon Elsie. “Take this envelope, containing your week’s wages, and leave my house at once. I have no further need of your services.”
The room grew so dark to Elsie that she reeled and clutched at the door-post. Mrs. Mason watched her, secretly glad to see the shaft strike home.
“Will you tell me why you dismiss me?” asked Elsie faintly.
“Why? How innocent you are! You know very well why I will not keep such a dissembler in my house. Attempting to deceive me with your assumption of flawless honor, and then using all your arts and graces to ensnare the fancy of my brother, who——”
“Stop!” cried Elsie, all her strength returning under the sting of Mrs. Mason’s words, and with indignation firing voice and attitude. “You make unjust accusations. I never have deceived you in any particular. I never sought to ensnare the fancy of your brother. Instead, I have begged him to let me alone. I told him I did not want his acquaintance, and I repeat it to you, his proud and aristocratic sister. I have my own life to live irrespective of your creeds and caste, and I have endeavored to keep both of you at arm’s-length.”
“You are as brazen as the generality of your class. It is useless to attempt any justification. The fact remains that you have accepted the attentions of a man infinitely above you in station, good-breeding, blood——”
“I deny it! Neither in blood nor breeding are you any better than the girl you despise. In station—you but emphasize the arrogance of your nature and standing when you attempt to heap unmerited abuse upon one whom you know to be defenceless; a thing which ‘Elsie the cook’ would scorn to do.”
“You insolent thing! Leave the room at once, and if you ever dare to speak to my brother again, I’ll publish you from one end of the city to the other, and then we’ll see whether ‘Elsie the cook’ will continue to flaunt her good breeding in the face of her betters.”
The hot blood-surged to Elsie’s face until the purple veins threatened to burst. “Have no fear!” she cried. “I despise——”
At that moment the door opened and Herbert entered the room. He glanced at the flushed faces and turned to his sister for explanation. Elsie, trembling in every limb, rushed through the open door, heedless of Herbert’s earnest entreaty to remain. How she gained the street and flew up the long flights of stairs and buried her head in Margaret’s lap, she never realized until long after. What a tumult of anger, shame, and wounded love raged in the girl’s breast. How black her sky seemed, and how pitiful the story was when, by snatches of incoherent words and bursts of passionate tears, Margaret finally became possessed of it. She could only bend over the writhing form and press kisses upon the disordered hair, while endeavoring to soothe by touch and voice the violent storm of sobs and tears. Calmness had not yet come back to them and reason could only dimly see its way through the darkness, when there came an imperative rap at the door, followed almost instantly by Herbert’s appearance.
“Elsie,” he cried, tossing his hat into a chair and coming up to her as she lay with her head buried in Margaret’s lap, “I have come to make reparation for all that you have suffered this morning. I have learned the whole disgraceful story, and I have come to offer the hand with the heart that has been yours for months. Look up, Elsie, and answer me. Margaret knows that I have loved you long.”
“Oh, go away and leave me,” moaned Elsie. “I cannot bear any more.”
“Come!” exclaimed Herbert, bending over her and attempting to lift her from Margaret’s lap. “I am impatient. I want a decisive answer.”
“You shall have it,” said Elsie, pulling herself away from him and raising a tear-stained and mutinous face to his. “It is a most unqualified No.”
Herbert staggered back a few steps and gazed with evident surprise at Elsie’s resolute face. “You cannot surely mean it,” he cried. “I thought you loved me, or would love me.”
“Over-confidence is sometimes disastrous, even to young men who fancy the world is ‘mine oyster.’”
“Dear child, you are hurt, unstrung by the distressing events of the morning. I wish I could make you see how pained I am that you should have been made to suffer so. I wish you would let me make reparation.”
“I do not need any,” said Elsie proudly. “I find myself able to survive even your sister’s insults.”
“Do not refer to them. Helen has a great many false ideas, but you ought not to punish me for them. I have never willingly harmed you.”
“Yes, you have!” Elsie broke out impetuously. “Did not I beg of you to let me alone, to keep to your own devices and let ‘Elsie the cook’ go her own way?”
A pained look overspread Herbert’s face as he answered: “If I have wronged you, Elsie, I offer you as honorable a reparation as any man can offer a woman.”
“And do you think because, to please your own fancies, you have despoiled me of a chance to earn my bread, I can accept so great a condescension? I had rather starve than be made the recipient of any man’s tardy sense of honor.”
Stung, but not baffled, Herbert answered: “I loved you almost from the first time I saw you. I sought to win your regard with a scrupulous sense of honor, and if this offer of my hand is tardy, it is only because you have so persistently kept me at bay. Elsie, I beg you to forget my sister’s taunts and let me prove how devotedly I can make amends for the suffering I have caused you. Margaret, help me to prove how true my statements are.”
Herbert turned, only to find that Margaret had slipped away. “Elsie, darling,” he added, going up to her and attempting to take her in his arms, “I cannot believe, after last night, that you do not, at least cannot, love me. I was the happiest man last night that ever sat in the glow of the fire-light and drew pictures of the future. If we had not been interrupted I should have told you then all that I tell you now. Elsie! Elsie! trust me to make you happy.”
But Elsie drew herself away from the outstretched arms and sheltered herself behind an intervening rocker. “I cannot,” she said resolutely, although the pleading tones no less than the supplicating eyes had well-nigh broken her composure. “Even could I so compose my heart as to contemplate the possibility which you picture, there is an insurmountable obstacle in the way.”
“And that is?”
“Your sister! Never will I enter a family, were it ten times mightier than the one you represent, where I could be the object of such undeserved scorn as was heaped upon me this morning.”
“My poor child! I will put the globe between us.”
“And let me be the means of separating an only brother and sister? No! Go back to your sister, and marry some one who represents her idea of respectability—Miss Houghton, for instance—and be sure that family approval and society will bless you forever after.”
“Thank you for the suggestion,” said Herbert dryly. “I am, however, neither marrying my sister nor her ideas.”
“No, I don’t think you’re marrying anybody at present.”
“And am not likely to, you doubtless mean to suggest? Elsie, what makes you punish me so?”
“I am only paying you what I owe you.”
“That is honest; now give me back the heart you’ve stolen.”
“I have no heart to give.”
“Elsie Murchison!” exclaimed Herbert with a new sternness, “I have one question more to ask you, and I demand a straightforward answer. Tell me by all the truth in your nature—do you love me?”
Driven to bay, Elsie stood alternately flushing and paling, and with her frame in such a quiver of excitement that the hand which rested on the rocker shook perceptibly. “I decline to answer,” she finally faltered. “You have no right to question a foregone conclusion. I have told you I will not marry you.”
“Is that decision final?” asked Herbert as he picked up his hat. “Can no pleading, no proof of devotion change it?”
White to the very lips, Elsie answered: “It is final and absolute.”
“Then God pity us both!” cried Herbert as, with a face as white as Elsie’s own, he left the room.
Elsie threw herself on the floor and writhed in the agony of mental torture.
“Love him? Love him?” asked the tumultuous heart. Did she not rather idolize him. And now she had signed her own death-warrant. “God keep him wherever he went—how could she live without him?” A tempest of tears answered this question as she saw days stretch into months and months into years without one glimpse of the sunny blue eyes, one sound of the melodious voice, or touch of the kindly hands that had been so glad to anticipate any need or desire of hers. “How can I live, how can I live without him?” she sobbed aloud, writhing in absolute physical pain. “Oh, I shall die! I shall die! It will be too dreadful to live now!”
A second later a pair of strong arms gathered her within their embrace, and Herbert’s lips were raining kisses upon brow, cheek, and lips. “I knew it, Elsie,” he whispered. “I couldn’t give it up so easily. You do love me, I know you do. You dare not deny it.”
With sudden impetuosity a pair of lithe arms crept around his neck, and hiding her face in his bosom Elsie sobbed: “I don’t want to deny it now, for it has almost killed me. But truly I’ll never marry you.”
Herbert laughed. “Tell me the reason.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be right, and not even my love for you will make me do what is not fair and just.”
“That’s right, my little girl,” answered Herbert between kisses. “We’ll try to remove the wrong. Now that I know I’m held fast in the stronghold of your heart, I can conquer the world.”
“Can you?” asked Elsie, the old mischief coming quickly back. “Can you make your sister, Mrs. Mason, get down on her knees and beg me to marry you to save you from a decline?”
“I’ll try,” said Herbert with a grimace, “although I beg to be delivered from the decline.”