Mr. Mayhew had always had peculiar attractions for Miss Burton, and they at once entered into conversation. But as she recognized the marvellous change in him, the pleased wonder of her face grew so apparent, that he replied to it in low tones:
“I now believe in your ‘remedies,’ Miss Burton; but a great deal depends on who administers them. My little girl and I have been discovering how nearly related we are.”
Her eyes grew moist with her sympathy and gladness. “Mr. Mayhew,” she said, “I’m inclined to think that heaven is always within a step or two of us, if we could only take the right steps.”
“To me it has seemed beyond the farthest star,” he replied, very gravely. “To some, however, the word is as indefinite as the place, and a cessation of pain appears heaven. I could be content to ask nothing better than this Sabbath morning has brought me. I have found what I thought lost forever.”
Jennie Burton became very pale, as deep from her heart rose the query, “Shall I ever find what I have lost?” Then with a strong instinct to maintain her self-control and shun a perilous nearness to her hidden sorrow, she changed the subject.
It was touching to see how often Mr. Mayhew’s eyes turned towards his daughter, as if to reassure himself that the change in her manner towards him was not a dream, and the expression of her face as she met his scrutiny seemed to brighten and cheer him like a coming dawn.
“What heavenly magic is transforming Miss Mayhew?” Jennie Burton asked of Van Berg, as they sauntered out on the piazza.
“With your wonted felicity, you express it exactly,” he replied. “It is a heavenly magic which I don’t understand in the least, but must believe in, since cause and effect are directly under my eyes. It has been my good fortune to witness as beautiful a scene as ever mortal saw. Since she refers naturally and openly to the friends whom she has visited during the past week, I may tell you about Mr. Eltinge’s influence and teaching without violating any confidence,” and in harmony with the frank and friendly relations which he now sustained to Miss Burton, he related his experience of the previous day, remaining scrupulously reticent on every point, however, that he even imagined Ida would wish veiled from the knowledge of others. “I cannot tell you,” he concluded, “how deeply the scene affected me. It not only awoke all the artist in me, but the man also. In one brief hour I learned to revere that noble old gentleman, and if you could have seen him leaning against the emblematic tree, as I did, I think he would have realized your ideal of age, wholly devoid of weakness and bleakness. And then Miss Mayhew’s face, as she read and listened to him, seemed indeed, in its contrast with what we have seen during the past summer, the result of ‘heavenly magic.’ It will be no heavy task to fulfil the conditions on which I was permitted to enter the enchanted garden. They expect more pencil sketches, but I shall eventually give them as truthful a picture as I am capable of painting, for it is rare good fortune to find themes so inspiring.”
Guarded as Van Berg was in his narrative, Miss Burton was able to read more “between the lines” than in his words. He did not understand her motive when she said, as if it were her first obvious thought:
“The picture which you have presented, even to the eye of my fancy, is uniquely beautiful, and I think it must redeem Miss Mayhew in your mind, from all her disagreeable associations. But in my estimation she appeared to even better advantage in the greeting she gave her father last evening. Was there ever a more delicious surprise on earth, than that poor man had when he returned and found a true and loving daughter awaiting him? With her filial hands she has already lifted him out of the mire of his degradation, and to-day he is a gentleman whom you involuntarily respect. O Mr. Van Berg, I cannot tell ou how inexpressibly beautiful and reassuring such things are to me! You look at the changes we are witnessing from the standpoint of an artist, I from that of poor wounded humanity; and what I have seen in Ida Mayhew and her father, is proof to me that there is a good God above all the chaos around me, which I cannot understand and which at times disheartens me. Their happier and ennobled faces are a prophecy and an earnest of that time when the sway of evil shall be broken, when famishing souls and empty hearts shall be filled, when broken, thwarted lives are made perfect, and what was missed and lost regained.”
She looked away from him into the summer sky, which the sun was flooding with cloudless light. There were no tears in her eyes, but an expression of intense and sorrowful longing that was far beyond such simple and natural expression.
“Jennie Burton,” said Van Berg, in a low, earnest voice, “there are times when I could suffer all things to make you happy.”
She started as if she had almost forgotten his presence, and answered quietly: “You could not make me happy by suffering. Only as I can banish a little pain and gloom here and there do I find solace. But I can do so very, very little. It reassures me to see God doing this work in his grand, large way. And yet it seems to me that he might brighten the world as the sun fills this sky with light. As it is, the rays that illumine hearts and faces glint only here and there between the threatening clouds of evil. Mr. Van Berg, you do not know–you never realized how shadowed humanity is. Within a mile of your studio, that is full of light and beauty, there are thousands who are perishing in a slow, remorseless pain. It is this awful mystery of evil–this continuous groan and cry of anguish that has gone up to heaven through all the ages–that appalls my heart and staggers my faith. But there–after what I have seen to-day I have no right to such gloomy thoughts. I suppose my religion seems to you no more than a clinging faith in a far-away, incomprehensible God, and so is not very attractive? I wish I could suggest to you something more satisfactory, but since I cannot I’ll leave you to find better influences.”
“It does seem to me that rash, faulty Ida Mayhew has a better faith than this,” he thought; “she believes she has found a near and helpful Friend, while my sad-eyed saint has only a God, and is always in pathetic doubt whether her prayer can bridge the infinite distance between them. Who is right? Is either right? I used to be impressed with how much I knew; I’m glad the opposite impression is becoming so strong, for, as Miss Burton says, the hopeless fools are those who never find themselves out.
“She was right. Ida Mayhew will ever appear to better advantage in aiding her poor father to regain his manhood, than by the most artistic combination of circumstances that I could imagine. All the man in me recognizes the sacredness of the duty and the beauty of its performance. And yet but yesterday I was stupid enough to believe that her best chance for development was to escape from her father and live a separate life. It has taken only a few hours to prove how superficial was my philosophy of life. Guided simply by the instinct of love and duty, this faulty girl has accomplished more than I had supposed possible. But her mother will continue a thorn in her side,” and Van Berg was not far astray.
Chapter XLVI. A Resolute Philosopher.
Mr. Mayhew attended church with his family that morning–a thing that he had not done for years–and in the afternoon Ida took him to see her spiritual birthplace, and to call on her spiritual father. The welcome that old Mr. Eltinge gave, and the words he spoke, did much towards establishing in the man who had been so disheartened, hope that a new and better future was opening before him.
When about to part he put his left arm around his daughter, and giving his hand to Mr. Eltinge, said, with a voice broken by his feelings:
“I am bewildered yet. I can’t understand my happiness. Yesterday I was perishing in a boundless desert. To-day the desert has vanished, and I’m in this sweet old garden. There are no flowers or fruits in it, however, that can compare with the love and truth I now see in this child’s face. I won’t speak of the service you have rendered us both. It’s beyond all words.”
It was indeed greater than he knew, for Id had concluded never to speak again of her terrible secret. God had forgiven her, and nothing was to be gained by any reference to a subject that had become inexpressibly painful. “Remember,” said the staunch and faithful old man as they were about to drive away, “nothing good lasts unless built up from the Author of all good. Unless you act on this truth you’ll find yourself in the desert again, and all you are now enjoying will seem like a mirage.”
Poor Mr. Mayhew could not endure to lose a moment of his daughter’s society, for the long thirst of years was to be slaked. They took a round-about way home, and the summer evening deepened into twilight and dusk before they approached the hotel.
“See, father, there is the new moon, and it hangs over your right shoulder,” cried Ida, gleefully.
“It’s over your right shoulder, too, and that thought pleases me better still. I wish I could make you very happy. Tell me what I can do for you.”
“Take me to New York with you to-morrow,” said Ida, promptly.
“Now you are trying to make a martyr of yourself for me. You forget how hot and dusty the city is in August.”
“I’m going with you,” she said decisively, “unless you say no.”
“I’m going to spend part of the time with you until your vacation begins next month, and then we’ll explore every nook and corner of this region.”
“There Ida, say no more to-day. My cup is overflowing now, and the fear is already growing that such happiness won’t last–can’t last in a world like ours.”
“Father,” said Ida, gently, “I’ve found a Friend that has promised me more than present happiness. He has promised me eternal life. He is pledged to make all seemingly evil result in my final good. How it can be I don’t see at all, but I’m trying to take him at his word. You must not worry if I’m not always in good spirits. I suppose every one in the world has a burden to carry, but I don’t think it can crush us if our Saviour helps us carry it. My faith is very simple, you see; I feel I’m like one of those little children he took in his arms and blessed, and I’m sure his blessing is not an empty form. It has made me love and trust him, and that’s all the religion I have or know anything about. You must not expect great things of me; you must not watch me too closely. Just let me take my own quiet way in life, for I want my life henceforth to be as quiet and unobtrusive as the little brook that runs through Mr. Eltinge’s garden, that is often in the shade, you know, as well as in the light, but Mr. Eltinge lets it flow after its own fashion; so you must let me. I’ll always try to make a little low, sweet music for you, if not for the world. So please do not commence puzzling your poor tired brain how to make me happy or gay, or want to take me here and there. Just leave me to myself; let me have my own way for awhile at least; and if you can do anything for me I promise to tell you.”
Ever since her drive with Van Berg the previous day, there had been a deep undercurrent of thought in Ida’s mind, and she had at last concluded that she could scarcely keep her secret with any certainty while under his eyes, and especially those of Miss Burton. She was too direct and positive in her nature, and her love was too strong and absorbing for the cool and indifferent bearing she was trying to maintain. Her eyes, her cheeks, her tones, and even words, might prove traitors at any time and betray her. She longed to be alone, and teh large empty city house seemed the quiet refuge that she needed. At the same time it would give her deep satisfaction to be with her father after hs return from business, and make amends for years of neglect.
He looked at her wistfully, feeling, in a vague way, that he did not understand her yet. There was a minor chord in her voice, and there had been a sadness in her eyes at times which began to suggest to him that he had not learned all the causes that were so marvellously transforming her form her old self. Her mother would question and question. He, on the contrary, would wait patiently till the confidence was given, and so he merely said gently,
“All right, little girl; I’ll try to make you happy in your own way.”
Van Berg, going out for a walk after tea, again heard the girlish voice singing the quaint hymn tune that had awakened the memories of his childhood the previous day. He instantly concealed himself by the roadside, and in a moment or two Ida and her father drove by. He was able in the dusk to note only that her head rested on her father’s shoulder, and her voice was sweet and plaintive as she sang words that he could not hear distinctly, but which were as follows, as far as he could catch them:
I know not the way he is leading me
But I know he is leading me home;
Though lonely the path and dark to me, It is safe and it wends to my home.
Home of the blest,
Home that is rest
To the weary pilgrim’s feet, to the weary pilgrim’s heart.
and then her words were lost in the distance.
With an impulse he did not think of resisting he followed them back to the hotel and waited patiently till she and her father came out from supper.
“Miss Mayhew,” he said, a little discontentedly, “I have scarcely had a chance to say a word to you to-day, and it seems to me that I have a great deal to say.”
She looked at him with some surprise as she replied, “Well, I think I might at least become a good listener.”
“Do you mean a patient one?”
“I never had any patience,” she answered, with something like a smile.
“And I was never so possessed by the demon of impatience as I have been this afternoon. There hasn’t been a soul around that I cared to talk with, and if you knew how out of conceit I am with my own company, you would feel some commiseration. How I envied you your visit to the garden this afternoon, for I felt sure you took your father thither. May I not go with you again to-morrow, or soon? I wish to make my sketch more accurate before beginning your picture.”
She hesitated a moment, and he little know how he was tempting her. Then she replied, so quietly and decisively as to seem almost cold, “Mr. Eltinge, I’m sure, will be very glad to see you, but I shall go to the city with my father in the morning and remain in town all the week.” She was puzzled at his unmistakable expression of regret and disappointment, and added, hastily, “Mr. Van Berg, you are taking far too much trouble. I would be more satisfied–I would be delighted with such a sketch as you made to-day, with the omission of myself.”
“But if, instead of being trouble, it gave me great pleasure to make the picture with the utmost care?”
“I suppose,” she replied, “that you have a high artistic sense that must be satisfied, and that you see imperfections that I cannot.”
“You are too severe upon me, Miss Mayhew, but since you have such good reason, I cannot complain. Still, in justice to myself, I must say that satisfying my artistic sense was not my motive.”
“I did not mean to be severe–I do not mean what you think,” Ida began, very eagerly. Then she checked herself and added, after a moment, with a slight tinge of sadness in her tone, “I fear we are fated to misunderstand each other. Good-night, Mr. Van Berg,” and she turned decisively away and joined her father who was talking with Stanton.
The artist was both hurt and perplexed, and he abruptly left the hall and started again on the walk which had been so unexpectedly interrupted. He strode away through the starlight with a swiftness that was scarcely in harmony with the warm, still summer night. Before he was aware of it he was a mile away. Stopping suddenly he muttered:
“I won’t be so baffled and puzzled. I will learn to understand this Ida Mayhew before this summer is over. It’s ridiculous that I should be so dull and stupid. She says she fears we are ‘fated to misunderstand each other.’ I defy such a blind stupid fate. I used to have some brains and tact before I came to this place, and I scarcely think I’ve become an idiot. I am determined to win that girl’s friendship, and I intend to follow her career and watch the rare and beautiful development of her character. That one hour in the garden yesterday taught me what an inspiration her exquisite beauty can be in my profession, and surely with the vantage-ground I already possess I ought to have skill enough to win a place among her friends,” and he walked back almost as quickly as he had stalked away.
Ida had seen his departure and recognized the fact that she had hurt his feelings. It was strange that so little a thing could depress her so greatly, for she felt that the first real Sabbath she had ever spent and which had been in truth a SUN-day to her thus far, was now ending in shadows darker than the night. “How weak I am,” she thought; “I must go away as soon as possible, or else I shall be sorry. The companionship that he can give so easily and frankly when Miss Burton is not at hand to occupy him is impossible for me, and would only end in the betrayal of a secret that I would hide even more anxiously than the crime I could not conceal from him. My duty and my father must be everything hereafter,” and she turned resolutely to him, saying:
“Father, take a seat in the parlor while I go and find mother. I want these people to see that you have a family who at least show that they appreciate all the luxuries and comforts you are providing for them.”
Mr. Mayhew was more deeply gratified by her words than she could understand, for any recognition of his manhood and rightful position which was quiet and unobtrusive, was balm and healing to his wounded self-respect. Hitherto he had believed correctly that his family wished to keep him out of sight, and at no time before had he realized the change that had taken place in Ida more keenly than when she made this simple and natural proposition. His grateful smile as he complied with her request did her good, but she soon discovered that in her mother she had a very difficult subject to manage. She found that lady in her room wearing a gloomy and injured expression.
“You have condescended at last to come and see whether I was alive, I see,” she said, as Ida entered the room.
Her daughter went directly to her and kissing her replied, “We haven’t intended to leave you so long or to neglect you in the least, and I’ll explain.”
“Oh, no need of explaining. Excuses always make matters worse. Here is the fact–I’ve been left all the afternoon to myself.”
“Have you noticed no other fact to-day, mother?” asked Ida, gravely.
“Yes, I’ve noticed that you and your father have been so wrapped up in each other that I’m nobody, and might as well be Mrs. John Smith as Mrs. Mayhew.”
“Pardon me, mother, you are exaggerating,” said Ida, firmly. “Father was very polite to you at breakfast and dinner, and he went to church with you this morning, and I can scarcely remember when he has done this before. I am chiefly to blame for keeping him away so long this afternoon, for I wanted him to see and talk with my friend Mr. Eltinge, who has done me so much good. I thought he might help father too, and I truly believe he has. I repeat to you again, in all sincerity and love, that we have not intended to neglect you, and father now wishes you to come down and join him in the parlor, so that we can, as a family, at last appear as we ought before the world. In the name of all that is sacred, encourage dear father now that he is trying to be what we have so often wished.”
But Mrs. Mayhew’s pets were like spells of bad weather and would run their course. She only looked more gloomy and injured than ever as she replied:
“It’s all very well to talk. Mr. Mayhew must be encouraged and coaxed to do what any man ought to do. I might have enjoyed a ride this evening as well as your father.”
“You said it was too warm to go out after dinner.”
“Well, you might have waited till it wasn’t too warm.”
A sudden scarlet burned in Ida’s cheeks, and there came an ominous sparkle in her eyes. “Mother,” she said so abruptly and sternly that the lady looked up wonderingly, and encountered an expression in her daughter’s face that awakened an undefined fear. In tones that were low, indignant, and authoritative Ida continued:
“I request–I demand that you cease this nonsense at once. As a Christian woman you ought to be on your knees thanking God that your husband is not lying intoxicated on that sofa, as he was last Sunday at this time. You ought to be thanking God that he is becoming his former self, and winning respect by acting like a true gentleman. It was our unutterable folly that was destroying him, and I say this folly must and shall cease. I will not permit my father’s sensitive nature to be wounded as it has been. You shall not spoil this first bright day he has had after so many years. If you care for him why don’t you try to win his affection? and whoever heard of a heart being won by whining and fault-finding? But of this be sure, you shall not spoil this day. I charge you as a wife and a lady to cease this childish petulance, and come down at once.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Mayhew, rising mechanically, “if you are going to make a scene—“
“I am going to prevent scenes,” said Ida, with all her old time imperiousness. “I insist that we appear in the future like a quiet, well-bred family, and I warn you that I will permit my father to be trifled with no longer. He SHALL have a chance. Wait, let me help you make a more becoming toilet for Sunday evening.”
Ida was very strongly aroused, and the superior nature mastered the weaker. Mrs. Mayhew became as wax in her hands, although she made many natural and irritable protests against her daughter speaking to her as she had done. Ida paid no heed to her mother’s words, and after giving a few finishing touches to her dress relieved her sternness by a judicious compliment, “I wish you to take the seat father is reserving for you,” she said, “and appear the charming lady that you know how to be so well;” and without further parley they went down together.
Once in the social eye it would be Mrs. Mayhew’s strongest impulse to make a good impression, and she behaved beautifully. Something in Ida’s manner puzzled her father, but she smiled so reassuringly that he gave himself up to the quiet enjoyment of the situation that was so natural and yet so novel. He listened with a pleased expression to the music, and noted, with deep satisfaction, the friendly and respectful bearing of those near, towards both his wife and himself; but he exulted in the evident admiration that his daughter excited. The people at the Lake House had already discovered that there was a decided change for the better in the Mayhew family, and they greeted the improvement with a kindly but well-bred and unobtrusive welcome that was creditable to human nature. Of course there was a great deal of whispered surmise, but nothing offensive to the eye.
Stanton came and asked Ida to join in the singing at the piano, but she shook her head decidedly.
“Who has been hurting your feelings?” he asked, in a low tone.
By a scarcely perceptible gesture, she put her finger on her lips and said quietly, “They are waiting for you, Cousin Ik.” Then she added, with a smile, “Somewhere I’ve heard a proverb expressing surprise that Saul should be among the prophets. I hardly think it will be in good taste for me to appear among them just yet.”
“And I once believed her to be a fool,” thought Stanton as he returned to his place.
Again, on this Sunday evening, keen eyes were watching her from the dusky piazza, but so far from being wolfish and ravenous, they were full of sympathy and admiration.
As Van Berg approached the parlor windows after his return, he saw Stanton standing by the piano at Jennie Burton’s side, and she was looking up to him and speaking in a very friendly manner. He was not conscious of any appropriate pangs of jealousy, and indeed did not miss their absence, but he looked eagerly around for the problem his philosophical mind was so bent on solving.
At first the favorable impression made by the reunited family caught his attention, and he muttered, “There is some more of her magic. But what is the matter with Miss Mayhew herself. Her eyes are burning with a fire that is anything but tender and sacred, and there are moments when her face is almost stern, and again it is full of trouble.”
Some one discovered him on the piazza, and there was a general wish expressed that he should sing with Miss Burton a duet that had become a favorite. After this and one or two other pieces, he again sought his place of observation. The color and fire had now wholly faded from Miss Mayhew’s face, and she looked pale and sad. Her father turned to her, and said:
“Ida, I fear you don’t feel well.”
“I’m very tired, and think I had better go to my room.”
He rose instantly, and gave her his arm, but on the way she reassured him: “A night’s sleep, and the rest I shall have with you in the city are just what I need; so don’t worry, for I shall be ready to take the train with you in the morning;” and Mr. Mayhew rejoined his wife, and completed a happier day than he ever expected to see again.
But poor Ida, when left alone, buried her face in her hands and sobbed, “I’ve wounded HIS feelings, I’ve given way to my old passionate anger, I’ve spoken to mother as a daughter never should. What will ever become of faulty Ida Mayhew? The worm-eaten emblem is true of me still.”
Then, as if whispered to her by some good angel, the words Mr. Eltinge had spoken recurred to her. “Your Saviour will be as tender and patient with you as a mother with her baby that is learning to walk.”
“Oh,” she cried, in a low, passionate tone, “that is the kind of a God I need!”
She also remembered the reassuring words that Mr. Eltinge had quoted–“As one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you,” and the promise was made good to her.
“Stanton,” said Van Berg, a little abruptly, before they parted that evening, “I fear, from your cousin’s appearance, she was ill when she left the parlor.”
“I’ve given up trying to understand Ida. When she came down with her mother, she looked like an incensed goddess, and when she returned she reminded me of the fading white lily she wore in her hair. I give it up,” concluded Stanton, whose language had become a trifle figurative and poetic of late.
“I don’t,” muttered the artist, after smoking the third consecutive cigar in solitude.
Chapter XLVII. The Concert Garden Again.
Van Berg had scarcely ever known a day to pass more slowly and heavily than Monday. He had taken pains to be present at Ida’s departure with her father, and it had depressed him unaccountably that she had been so quiet as to seem even a little cold in her farewell. She would not look towards him, nor could he catch her eye or obtain one friendly expression. He did not know that the poor girl dared not smile or speak lest she should be too friendly, and that she avoided him with the instinct of self-preservation. His conclusion was: “She finds, after thinking it all over, that she has far more to forgive than she thought, and my presence reminds her of everything she would be glad to forget.”
He tried once or twice to find Jennie Burton, but did not succeed. She made no apparent effort to avoid him, and was so cordial in her manner when they met that he had severe compunctions that he did not seek her society resolutely and press his suit. “The summer is drawing to a close,” he muttered, “and nothing is settled. Confound it all! I’m the least settled of anything. The best chance I shall ever have is passing swiftly. Ever faculty I possess assures me that she is the one woman of all the world. I honor her, I reverence her, I admire her and everything she does and says. I trust her implicitly, even though she is so shrouded in mystery. What the mischief is the matter with my old water-logged heart that it should be so heavy and dumpish?”
But so it was. Jennie Burton smiled on him and others as brightly as ever, and yet he knew her heart was breaking, for she was growing slighter and more spirit-like daily. His desire to comfort her, however, by a life-long effort ebbed away, till he was cursing himself for a fickle, cold-blooded wretch. “I had better shut myself up in my studio,” he said to himself. “I may make a painter, but I never will anything else;” and early on Tuesday he went doggedly to work on Mr. Eltinge’s picture.
His perplexed and jarring thoughts gradually ceased their discord as he became absorbed in his loved and familiar tasks. Sweet and low at first, and in the faint, broken suggestion of his kindling fancy, the symphonic poem he had heard in the garden began again, but at last his imagination made it almost real. He listened once more to Ida’s girlish, plaintive voice blending with the murmur of the brook, the sighing wind and rustling leaves, and the occasional trill of a bird. He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes became full of deep and dreamy pleasure. Gradually a heavy frown contracted his brow, and his face grew white and stern as he repeated words that she once had spoken to him: “I meant to compel your respect, and I thought there was no other way.”
“Pharisee, fool that I was! If I had been kind and trustful at the time her family wronged her, she would not now shrink from me as if I summed up in my person the whole of that wretched experience. Even Stanton appreciated my unutterable folly, for he said: “You looked at her in a way that would have frozen even Jezebel herself,” and now whenever I glance towards her she is reminded of that accursed stare. Would it be possible, in painting her likeness for Mr. Eltinge, to make her face so noble, womanly, and pure, that she would recognize my present estimate of her character, and so forgive me in very truth?”
The care and earnestness with which he filled in the outlines of his sketch proved how zealously he would make the effort. In the afternoon he drove over to the garden again, and made a careful drawing of the tree and of Mr. Eltinge sitting beneath it, for Ida, and he determined to go to the city the following day the he might avail himself of the resources of his studio, and by the aid of this hasty sketch make as fine a crayon picture as would be possible, before her return on Saturday.
The old gentleman’s heart was naturally warm towards his protege, whom they both missed greatly, and he spoke of her often. He could not help noticing that the artist was ever an excellent listener at such times and would even suspend his work for a moment that he might not lose a word. “It seems to me he takes a wonderful deal of interest in her for a man who is seeking to engage himself to another lady,” mused Mr. Eltinge. “I think the other lady had better be looking after him.”
As Van Berg approached the hotel, he saw Miss Burton mounting the steps with a quantity of ferns in her hands. She evidently was returning from a long ramble, and when she came down to supper he saw that she had not been able to remove wholly all traces of grief. His conscience smote him sorely. He hesitated in his purpose of going to the city, and determined to speak of it frankly, and abandon it, if she showed, even by the expression of her face, that she would prefer he would remain, but he found himself both surprised and relieved that, so far from manifesting the least reluctance to have him go, she encouraged the plan.
“You have a noble theme,” she said cordially, “and you can’t do it justice in the room of a summer hotel. Besides I do think you owe it to Miss Mayhew to make all the amends in your power, and a fine picture of that emblematic tree, and her kind old friend beneath it, may be of very great help to her in her new life. I hope you will take me to see Mr. Eltinge on your return.”
“I’ll wait over a day and take you there to-morrow,” he said promptly.
“No,” she replied decisively; “you have not enough time as it is, before Saturday, to do justice to your work, and I want you to make Miss Mayhew’s friend look as if he were speaking to her.”
“Miss Jennie,” said the artist rather impulsively, “you haven’t a drop of selfish blood in your little body.”
“I am under the impression that Mr. Van Berg’s estimates of his lady acquaintances are not always correct. Not that I was any wiser, but then such positive assertions seem hardly the thing from people who have shown themselves so fallible.”
“I’m right for once,” Van Berg insisted. “Do you know that Miss Mayhew and I nearly had a falling out. Indeed she has been rather cool towards me ever since, and you were the cause. I believed with absolute certainty that the new Ida Mayhew that I had learned to know in Mr. Eltinge’s garden would gravitate towards you as surely as two drops of dew run together when brought sufficiently near, and I began to speak quite enthusiastically of what friends you would surely become, when Miss Mayhew’s manner taught me I had better change the subject. Oddly enough, she has never liked you, and yet, in justice to her, I must add that she acted conscientiously, and I have never heard one lady speak of another more favorably and sincerely, than she spoke of you, though it seemingly cost her an effort.”
A sudden moisture came into Jennie Burton’s eyes, and she said under her breath: “Poor child! that was noble and generous of her to speak so of me. Oh, how blind he is!” But with mock gravity she answered him:
“Your rather sentimental figure of speech, Mr. Van Berg, shows where your error lies. Miss Mayhew and myself are not pellucid drops of dew that you look through at a glance. We are women: and the one thing in this world which men never will learn to understand is a woman. I’m going to puzzle you still further. I am learning to have a very thorough respect for Miss Mayhew. I am beginning to admire her exceedingly, and to think that she is growing exquisitely beautiful; and yet were she here this week you would find that I would not seek her society. Give your mind to your art, and never hope to untangle the snarl of a woman’s mind. Men, in attempting such folly, have become hopelessly entangled. Take a woman’s word for it–what you see you can’t reason out. I’ve no doubt but that Miss Mayhew has excellent reasons for disliking me, and the fact that you can’t understand them is nothing against them.”
“Miss Jennie,” said Van Berg resolutely, “for once I cannot take your word for it. You two ladies have puzzled me all summer, and I’ll never be content till I solve the mysteries which so baffle me. My interest is not curiosity, but friendship, to say the least, that I hope will last through life. You will tell me some day all your trouble, and you will feel the better for telling me.”
She became very pale at these words, and said gravely: “I cannot promise that–I doubt it. You may have to trust me blindly till you forget me.”
“I do not trust you blindly; I never will forget you,” he began, impetuously.
“Good-night, Mr. Van Berg,” she said, and in a moment he was alone on the piazza.
“She is an angel of light, he muttered, “and not a woman. I could worship her, but I’m too earthy in my nature to lover her as I ought.”
He took the earliest train to New York, and so had a long afternoon in his studio. He was surprised to find how absorbed he soon became in his work. “Miss Jennie is right,” he thought; “I’m an artist, and not a reformer or a metaphysician, and I had better spend my time here than in trying to solve feminine enigmas;” and he worked like a beaver until the fading light compelled him to desist. “There,” he said, “that is a fair beginning. Two or three more days of work like this will secure me, I think, a friendlier glance than Miss Ida gave me last.” From which words it might be gathered that he was thinking of other rewards than mere success in his art.
In the evening the wand of Theodore Thomas had a spell which he never thought of resisting, and it must be admitted that there lurked in his mind the hope that Ida and her father might be drawn to the concert garden also. If so, he was sure he would pursue his investigations.
He was rewarded, for Mr. Mayhew and his daughter soon entered and took seats in the main lobby, where he and Stanton had sat nearly three months before. Van Berg congratulated himself that he was outside in the promenade, and so had not been observed; and he sought a dusky seat from which he might seek some further knowledge of a character that had won and retained a deepening interest from the time of their first meeting, which now seemed an age ago. Events mark time more truthfully than the course of the sun.
At first she seemed only solicitous about her father, who lighted a cigar and said something to her that must have been very reassuring and pleasant, for a glad smile broke over her pale face. But it vanished quickly, and the artist saw that her habitual expression was sad, and even dejected. She did not look around with the breezy alertness natural to a young girl in such a place. The curiously diverse people around her excited no interest, and she appeared inclined to lapse into deep reveries, even when the music was light and gay, as was the character of the earlier part of the entertainment. At times she would start perceptibly when her father spoke to her, and hesitate in her answer, as if she had to recall her thoughts from far-off wanderings. It would seem that Mr. Mayhew was troubled by her sad face and absent manner. He justly felt that the brilliant music ought to enliven her like sunlight; and that it did not proved the presence of some intervening cloud.
Van Berg’s sympathies and interest at last became so strong that he determined to speak to her at once, but before he could take a step towards her the orchestra began playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the very music she ignored for the sake of Mr. Minty’s compliments when first she had so exasperated him by her marvellously perfect features, but disagreeable face. He had not looked at the programme, and that this symphony should now be repeated seemed such a fortunate coincidence that he could not resist the temptation of contrasting the woman before him with the silly and undeveloped girl he first had seen. Moreover, he knew that the music must remind her of him, and he might gain a hint of her present feelings toward him. Either the beauty or something familiar in the exquisite strains soon caught her attention, and she took up her programme, which hitherto had lain neglected on her lap. She crimsoned instantly, and her brow contracted into a frown; a moment later an expression of intense disgust passed over her face.
“Now I know what she thinks of me,” he thought with a sinking heart. “I doubt whether I had better speak to her this evening, and at this place.”
“What’s the matter, Ida?” asked her father. “Don’t you like the music?”
“I have disagreeable associations connected with it. The fault is wholly in me, and not the music.”
“Ida, darling, you are making me so happy that I wish I could do as much for you.”
“Don’t worry, father,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m happier than I deserve. Listen!”
As the last exquisite cadences died away, Van Berg saw that there were tears in her eyes. What did they mean? “Stanton repeated my harsh words and she recalls them,” was the best explanation he could think of. “By the fates!” he exclaimed, “if there isn’t Sibley with a toilet as spotless as he is himself smirched and blackened. Curse him! he actually has the impudence to speak to Miss Mayhew,” and the artist started up threateningly, but before discovering himself, he remembered that Ida’s natural protector was at her side. And yet he fairly trembled with rage and protest, that this fellow should be so near her again. He also saw that Mr. Mayhew rose and looked very menacing. But Ida was equal to the emergency, and extricated herself with womanly dignity, for while she blushed scarlet with shame, she was quiet and self-possessed, and paid no heed to his eagerly proffered hand.
“I was not myself that hateful day, Miss Ida,” he said hastily.
“I fear you were, sir,” she coldly replied. “At any rate, I am not my old self, and until you win and maintain the character of a gentleman, we must be strangers. Good evening, sir;” and she turned her back upon him.
His face became fairly livid with rage, but on encountering the stern and threatening eyes of Mr. Mayhew he slunk away and left the building.
“That’s my peerless, noble Ida,” whispered her father. “Oh thank God! thank God! I could not have survived if you had realized the fears I once had about that low scoundrel.”
Ida’s lip quivered as she said, “Father, please take me home. I don’t enjoy myself here.” They had taken but a few steps toward the door when the artist confronted them with eyes aglow with admiration and sympathy.
Poor Ida had no time to mask her feelings or check her impulses, and she took his extended hand as if she were sinking, while the color and light of welcome flashed brightly into her face. Then her beautiful confusion suggested that she felt her greeting had been too cordial, and she sought with indifferent success to regain her dignity.
“Please don’t go just yet,” said Van Berg eagerly. “The concert is but half over, and there are some pretty things still to come.”
Ida hesitated and looked doubtfully at her father.
“I shall be very glad to stay,” he said with a smile, “if you feel able to. My daughter is not very well, I fear,” he added in explanation to the artist.
“Perhaps it has been a little close here in the lobby,” suggested Van Berg, “and a walk in the open air will be agreeable. If you will trust your daughter to me, sir, I promise to bring her back before she is tired. I have much to tell her about her old friend, Mr. Eltinge, whom I visited yesterday, and the pictures. Perhaps you will go with us, for I know what I have to say will interest you also.”
“I think I’ll light another cigar and wait for you here,” Mr. Mayhew answered quietly. “Old people like to sit still after their day’s work, and if Ida feels strong enough I would enjoy hearing the rest of the concert.”
“It would be hard to resist the temptation to hear anything about dear old Mr. Eltinge,” said Ida, taking the artist’s arm, and feeling as if she were being swept away on a shining tide.
“You WERE glad to see me, Miss Mayhew, and you can’t deny it,” Van Berg began exultantly.
“You almost crushed my hand, and it aches still,” was her demure reply.
“Well, that was surely the wound of a friend.”
“You are very good to speak to me at all, after all that’s happened,” she said in a low tone and with downcast face.
“What a strange coincidence! That is exactly what I was thinking of you. I almost feared you would treat me as you did Sibley. How much good it did me to see him slinking away like a whipped cur! I never realized before how perfectly helpless even brazen villainy is in the presence of womanly dignity.”
“Why, were you present then?” she asked, with a quick blush.
“Not exactly present, but I saw your face and his, and a stronger contrast I scarcely expect to see again.”
“You artists look at everything and everybody as pictures.”
“Now, Miss Mayhew, you are growing severe again. I don’t carry the shop quite as far as that, and I have not been looking at you as a picture at all this evening. I shall make known the whole enormity of my offence, and the if I must follow Sibley, I must, but I shall carry with me a little shred of your respect for telling the truth. I had a faint hope that you and your father would come to-night, and I was looking for you, and when you came I watched you. I could not resist the temptation of comparing the Miss Mayhew I now so highly esteem and respect, with the lady I first met at this place.”
“Oh, Mr. Van Berg,” said Ida, in a low, hurt tone, “I don’t think that was fair to me, or right.”
“I am confessing and not excusing myself, Miss Mayhew. I once very justly appeared to you like a prig, and now I fear I shall seem a spy; but after our visit to that old garden together, and your frankness to me, I feel under bonds to tell the whole truth. You said we were fated to misunderstand each other. I think not, for if you ever permit me to be your friend I shall be the frankest one you ever had;” at these words he felt her hand trembling on his arm, and she would not look up nor make any reply.
“Well,” said he, desperately, “I expect Sibley’s fate will soon be mine. I suppose it was a mean thing to watch you, but it would seem a meaner thing to me not to tell you. I was about to speak to you, Miss Mayhew, when by another odd coincidence the orchestra commenced playing music that I knew would remind you of me. I was gaining the impression before you left the country that as you came to think the past all over, you had found that there was more against me than you could forgive, or else that I was so inseparably associated with that which was painful that you would be glad to forget the one with the other. I must admit that this impression was greatly strengthened by the expression of your face, and I almost decided to leave the place without speaking to you. But I found I could not, and–well, you know I did not. You see I’m at your mercy again.”
Ida was greatly relieved, for she now learned that he had discovered nothing in his favor, and that she was still mistress of the situation.
“I do not think you are very penitent; I fear you would do the same thing over again,” she said.
“Indeed, Miss Mayhew, when I first met you here I thought I would always do the right and proper thing, and I fear I thought some things right because I did them. I’ve lived a hundred years since that time, and am beginning to find myself out. Didn’t you think me the veriest prig that ever smiled in a superior way at the world?”
“I don’t think I shall give you my opinion,” she replied, averting her face to hide a blush and a laugh.
“No need. I saw your opinion in your face when you looked down at your programme half an hour since.”
“You are mistaken; I was thinking of myself at that moment, for I could not help remembering what a fool I must have appeared to you on that occasion.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Miss Burton was right,” he ejaculated, “I never shall understand you.”
“Was she talking about me?” asked Ida, in a low tone.
“Yes, and she spoke of you in the most complimentary way, as you did of her. Why the mischief you two ladies do not become the warmest friends is beyond me. Sit down here a little while, Miss Mayhew, for you are growing tired;” and she was very glad to comply.
As she made no effort to continue the conversation he resumed, “You haven’t told me what my punishment is to be.”
“Are you so anxious to be punished?” she asked, looking up shyly at him.
“Well, my conscience troubles me greatly, and I feel I ought to do something for you in the way of expiation.”
“And so I gather that anything done for me would be such severe penance that your conscience would be appeased.”
“Now, Miss Mayhew,” he replied, looking earnestly into her face, “tell me truly, do you gather any such impression from my words and manner?”
But she kept her eyes resolutely on the ground, and said demurely, “Such was the obvious meaning of your words.”
“Do you know why I am in the city?” he asked after a moment.
“I have not presumed to think why.”
“Perhaps I can make a little inroad in your indifference when I tell you that I have spent several hours in my studio working on your picture, and that I intend to work the remainder of the week so as to have it ready for you Saturday evening.”
She looked up now with a face radiant with surprise and pleasure, “O Mr. Van Berg, I did not dream of your taking so much trouble for me.”
“That’s a small payment on an old debt. What can I do for you while I am in the city, to atone for my rudeness?”
She looked at him hesitatingly and wistfully a moment.
“I know you wish something, but fear to ask it,” he said, gently, “and I’m sorry to remember I’ve done so little to inspire your confidence.”
“Mr. Van Berg,” she said in a low tone, looking earnestly at him while she spoke, so as to learn from his expression how he received her request. “Your kindness does tempt me to ask a favor. Please remember I’m acting from an impulse caused by this unexpected talk we are having, and pardon me if I overstep the bounds of reserve or suggest a task that you might very naturally shrink from as disagreeable.”
“I pledge you my word at once to do what you wish.”
“No, don’t do that. Wait till you hear all. If when it comes easily and naturally in your way you will do a little towards helping me keep father the man he can be, my gratitude will be deeper than you can understand. I am studying him very carefully and I find that any encouraging recognition from those who have known his past, has great weight with him. At the same time it must be very unobtrusive and come as a matter of course as it were. You gave him your society one Sunday morning last June in a way that did him a great deal of good, and if I had only seconded your efforts then, everything might have been different. I can never remember that day without a blush of shame. I can’t help the past, but my whole soul is now bent on making amends to father. I fear, however, my deep solicitude has led me to ask more than good taste can sanction.”
“Miss Mayhew,” said the artist, eagerly, “this is one of the best moments of my life. You could not have made such a request unless you trusted me, unless you had fully forgiven me all the wrong I have done you. I doubted if I could ever win your friendship, but I think I can claim a friend’s place already in your esteem, since you are willing to let me share in so sacred a duty. I renew my pledge with double emphasis.”
He never forgot the smile with which she rewarded him, as she said, in a low tone, “That’s better than I thought. You are very kind to me. But I’m staying too long from father.”
“We’ll understand each other eventually,” he said gently. “Now I know why tears were in your eyes before the symphony was over.”
“No you don’t,” she whispered to herself.
As they took their seats by Mr. Mayhew he remarked with a smile, “Mr. Van Berg must have had a long budget of news frm your good old friend.”
Ida looked at the artist in dismay, and was still more embarrassed as she saw a sudden flash of mirth and exultation in his eyes. But he turned to Mr. Mayhew and replied, promptly, “Two pictures are growing out of my visits to Mr. Eltinge and his garden. The one that is for Mr. Eltinge contains a portrait of Miss Mayhew as I saw her reading to him. I wish you and your daughter would visit my studio to-morrow and see the sketches, and if Miss Mayhew would give me one or two sittings, I could make a much better picture for Mr. Eltinge than now is possible, and I’m anxious to do the very best I can for him.”
“I would be very glad to come,” said Mr. Mayhew, and his pleased expression confirmed his words. “Will a visit before I go down town be too early?”
“Not at all. I am always at work early.”
“Well, Ida, does Mr. Eltinge miss your visits very much? It’s selfish in me to let you stay in the city.”
“He does indeed, sir,” said the artist answering for her. “He talked to me continually about her yesterday, although I can’t say I tried to change the subject.”
“Father, Mr. Van Berg shall not shield my short-comings,” said Ida, with crimson cheeks. “I forgot to ask about Mr. Eltinge. To tell the truth, we were talking of old times. I met Mr. Van Berg here last June and I made a very bad impression on him.”
“And I at the same time made a worse impression on Miss Mayhew,” added the artist.
“Well,” said her father, with a doubtful smile and a puzzled glace from one to the other, “one almost might be tempted to believe that you had been revising your impressions.”
“Mine has not been revised, but changed altogether,” said Van Berg, decisively.
“Come, father, let us go at once lest Mr. Van Berg’s impressions change again,” and her mirthful glance as she gave him her hand in parting revealed a new element in her character. She was not developing the cloying sweetness of honey.
Chapter XLVIII. Ida’s Temptation.
If Van Berg had given thought to himself that evening as he did to Ida Mayhew he might have discovered some rather odd phenomena in his varying mental states. Earlier in the summer he had been a very deliberate and conscientious wooer. He had leisurely taken counsel of his reason, judgment, and good taste; he mentally consulted his parents, and satisfied himself that Miss Burton would have peculiar charms for them, and so it had come to seem almost a duty as well as a privilege to seek that young lady’s hand. The sagacity and nice appreciation of character on which he had so greatly prided himself led to the belief that fortune in giving him a chance to win such a maiden had been very kind. That his pulse was so even and his heart had so little to say in the matter was only a proof that he did not possess an unbalanced head-long nature like that of Stanton, who had soon become wholly mastered by his passion. He had at one time reasoned it all out to his satisfaction, and believed he was paying his suit to the woman he would make his wife in an eminently proper way. but now that he was merely trying to obtain a young girl’s friendship, the cool and masterful poise which he had then been able to maintain, was apparently deserting him. He might have asked himself if he ever remembered being such an enthusiastic friend before. He might have considered how often he had kept awake and counted the hours till he should meet a friend from whom he had just parted. That these obvious thoughts and contrasts did not occur to him only proved that he was smitten already by that blindness which a certain spiritual malady usually occasions in its earlier stages.
As for poor Ida, she still felt that her little boat was being carried forward by a shining tide–whither she dared not think. She had come to the city to escape from the artist, and as a result she might spend long hours alone with him in his studio and see far more of him than if she had remained in the country. She had not sought it–she had not even dared to hope or dream of such a thing; but now that this exquisite cup of pleasure had been pressed to her very lips by other hands she could not refuse it.
Her father had watched her keenly but furtively since she had been his companion, and until the artist had accosted her the evening before had not been able to understand the depression which she could not disguise wholly from him; but the light and welcome that flashed into her face when greeting Van Berg had suggested her secret, and all that followed confirmed his surmise. The truth was plainer still when she came down to their early breakfast the next morning with color in her cheeks and a fitful light of excitement in her eyes.
As he realized the truth he fairly trembled with apprehension and longing. “Oh, if Ida could only marry that man I would be almost beside myself with joy,” he thought; “but I fear it is rash even to hope for such a thing. Indeed, I myself am the obstacle that would probably prevent it all. The Van Bergs are a proud race, and this young man’s father knows me too well. O God! I could be annihilated if thereby my child could be happy.”
“Ida,” he said, hesitatingly, “perhaps I had better not go with you this morning. I imagine Mr. Van Berg asked me out of politeness rather than from any wish to see me and–and–I think I had better not go.”
She looked up at him swiftly, and the rich color mantled her face, for she read his thoughts in part. But she only said quietly:
“Then I will not go.”
“That would not be right or courteous, Ida,” but I think you young people will get on better without me.”
“You are mistaken, Father; I never intend to get on without you, and any friend of mine who does not welcome you becomes a stranger from that hour. But I think you are doing Mr. Van Berg an injustice. At any rate we will give him a chance to show a better spirit.”
“Ida, my child, if you only knew how gladly I would sacrifice myself to make you happy!”
She came to him and put her arms around his neck and looking up into his face said, with the earnestness and solemnity of a vow, “I will take no happiness which I cannot receive as your loving daughter. As long as you are the man you have been since Sunday I will stand proudly at your side. If you should ever be weak again you will drag me down with you.”
He held her from him and looked at her as a miser might gloat over his treasure.
“Ida, my good angel,” he murmured.
“Nonsense!” she exclaimed, trying to hide her feelings by a little brusqueness, “I’m as human a girl as there is in this city, and will try your patience a hundred times before the year is out. Come, let us go and visit this proud artist. He had better beware, or he may find an expression on my face that he won’t like if I should decide to give him a sitting.”
But the artist did like the expression of Ida’s face as he glanced up from his work with great frequency and with an admiring glow in his eyes that was anything but cool and business-like. Even her jealous love had not detected a tone or act in his reception of her father that was not all she could ask, and she had never seen the poor man look so pleased and hopeful as when he left the studio for his office. There had not been a particle of patronage in Van Berg’s manner, but only the cordial and respectful courtesy of a younger gentleman towards an elderly one. Mr. Mayhew had been made at home at once, and before he left, the artist had obtained his promise to come again with his daughter on the following morning.
“His bearing towards father was the perfection of good breeding,” thought Ida, and it would seem that some of the gratitude with which her heart overflowed found its way into her tones and eyes.
“You look so pleasantly and kindly, that you must be thinking of Mr. Eltinge,” said Van Berg.
“You are not to paint my thoughts,” said Ida, with a quick flush.
“I wish I could.”
“I’m glad you can’t.”
“You do puzzle one, Miss Mayhew. On the day of our visit to the old garden your thoughts seemed as clear to me as the water of the little brook, and I supposed I saw all that was in your mind. But before the day was over I felt that I did not understand you at all.”
“Mr. Van Berg, I’m astonished you are an artist.”
“Because of the character of my work?”
“No, indeed. But such a wonderful taste for solving problems suggests a metaphysician. I think you would become discouraged with such tasks. Just think how many ladies there are in the world, and I’m sure any one of them is a more abstruse problem than I am.”
The artist looked up at her in surprise and bit his lip with a faint trace of embarrassment, but he said, after a moment, “But it does not follow that they are interesting problems.”
“You don’t know,” she replied.
“And never shall,” he added. “I do know, however, that you are a very interesting one.”
“I didn’t agree to come here to be solved as a problem,” she said demurely, but with a mirthful twinkle in her eyes; “I only promised you a sitting for the sake of Mr. Eltinge.”
“Two sittings, Miss Mayhew.”
“Well, yes, if two are needful.”
“By all the nine muses! you do not expect me to make a good picture from only two sittings?”
“You know how slight is my acquaintance with any of those superior divinities, and in this sacred haunt of theirs I feel that I should express all my opinions with bated breath; but truly, Mr. Van Berg, I thought you could make a picture from the sketch you made in the garden.”
“Yes, I could make A picture, but every sitting you will give enables me to make a better picture, and you know how much we both owe to Mr. Eltinge.”
“I’m learning every day how much, how very much, I owe to him,” she said, earnestly.
“Then for his sake you will promise to come as often as I wish you to,” was his eager response, and it was so eager that she looked up at him in surprise.
“Really, Mr. Van Berg, I am becoming bewildered as to what that little sketch I asked you to make may involve.”
“Will it be so wearisome for you to come here?” he asked, with a look of disappointment that surprised her still more.
“I didn’t say that,” was her quick reply; “and I promise to come to-morrow. Perhaps you will find that sufficient.”
“I know it won’t be sufficient.”
“Cousin Ik has told me that you are very painstaking and conscientious in your work.”
“Thanks to Cousin Ik. When I get a chance to paint such a picture as this I do, indeed, wish to make the most of it.”
“But how long must Mr. Eltinge wait for it?”
“I think we can send it to him as a Christmas present.”
“We? You, rather, will send it.”
“No, WE; or rather, in giving me the sittings you give Mr. Eltinge all that makes the picture valuable to him.”
Ida’s cheeks began to burn, for the artist’s words suggested a powerful temptation that; in accordance with her impetuous nature, came in the form of an impulse rather than an insidious and lurking thought. The impulse was to accept of the opportunities he pressed upon her, and, if possible, win him away from Jennie Burton. At first it seemed a mean and dishonorable thing to do, and her face grew crimson with shame at the very thought. Van Berg looked at her with surprise. Conscious himself that while he meant that Mr. Eltinge should profit richly from her visits, it was not by any means for the sake of the old gentleman only that he had been requesting her to come so often, his own color began to rise.
“She begins to see that my motives are a little mixed, and that is what is embarrassing her,” he thought as he bent over his work to hide his own confusion.
“Mr. Van Berg, I’m getting tired of sitting still,” Ida exclaimed. “It’s contrary to my restless disposition. May I not make an exploring tour around your studio? You have no idea what a constraint I’ve been putting on my feminine curiosity.”
“I give you a ‘carte-blanche’ to do as you please. Have you much curiosity?”
“I’m a daughter of Eve.”
“Well, I’m coming to the conclusion that there is a good deal of ‘old Adam’ in me,” and he felt that as she then appeared she could tempt him to almost anything.
Now that her back was towards him she felt safer, and her mellow laugh trilled out as she said, “We may have to dub this place a confessional rather than a studio of you talk in that way.”
“If I confessed all my sins against you, Miss Mayhew, it would, indeed, be a confessional.” He spoke so earnestly that she gave him a quick glance of surprise.
“There is no need,” she said, hesitatingly, “since I have given you full absolution,” and she suddenly became interested in something in the farthest corner of the apartment. After a moment she added, “If I am to come here I must say to you again, as I did on the day I so disgusted you by my behavior in the stage–you must let by-gones be by-gones.”
It was now the artist’s turn to laugh, and his merriment was so hearty and prolonged that she turned a vexed and crimson face towards him and said, “I think it’s too bad in you to laugh at me so.”
“Miss Mayhew, I assure you I’m not laughing at you at all. But your words suggest a good omen. Didn’t that stage teach you that fate means us to be good friends in spite of all you can do? Before we met in that car of fortune I had been trying for a week or more to make your acquaintance, and made a martyr of myself in the effort. I played the agreeable to nearly every lady in the hotel, and perspired on picnics and boating parties that I did not enjoy. I played croquet and other games till I was half bored to death, and all in the effort to produce such a genial atmosphere of enjoyment and good-feeling that you would thaw a little towards me; but you wouldn’t speak to me, nor even look at me. At last I gave up in despair and went off among the hills with my sketch-book, and when returning that blessed old stage overtook me. Wasn’t I pleased when I found you were a fellow-passenger! and let me now express my thanks that you looked so resolutely away from me, for it gave me a chance to contrast a profile in which I could detect no fault with the broad, sultry visage of the stout woman opposite me. And then, thank heaven, the horses ran away. Whoever heard of stage horses running away before? It was a smile of fortune–a miracle. Submit to destiny, Miss Mayhew, for it’s decreed that we should be good friends,” and he laughed again in huge enjoyment of the whole scene.
In spite of herself Ida found his humor contagious and irresistible, and she laughed also till the tears came into her eyes.
“Mr. Van Berg,” she exclaimed, “I ought to be indignant, or I ought to be ashamed to look you in the face. I don’t know what I ought to do, only I’m sure it isn’t the proper thing at all for me to be laughing in this way. I think I’ll go home at once, for I’m only wasting your time.
His answer was not very relevant, for he said impetuously, “Oh, Miss Ida, I would give five years of my life to be able to paint your portrait as you now appear, for the picture would cure old melancholy himself and fill a prison-cell with light.”
“I won’t come here any more if you laugh at me so,” she said, putting on her hat.
“See,” he said, “I’m as grave as a judge. I will never laugh AT you, but I hope to laugh WITH you many a time, for to tell you the truth the experience has reminded me of the ‘inextinguishable laughter of the Gods.’ Please don’t go yet.”
“If I must come so often my visits must be brief.”
“Then you will come?”
“I haven’t promised anything except for to-morrow. Good-morning.”
“Let me walk home with you.”
“No, positively. You have wasted too much time already.”
“You will at least shake hands in token of peace and amity before we part?”
“Oh, certainly, if you think it worth the while when we are to meet so soon again. Oh! you hurt me. You did that once before.”
His face suddenly became grave and even tender in its expression, as he said, in a low, deep voice, “More than once, Miss Ida. Don’t think I forget or forgive myself because you treat me so generously.”
She would not look up and meet his eyes, but replied, in tones that trembled with repressed feeling, “I could forgive anything after your manner towards father this morning. Never think I can forget such favors,” and then she snatched away her hand and went swiftly out. Her tears fell fast as she sought her home by quiet streets with bowed head and vail drawn tightly down, and she murmured:
“I cannot give him up–I cannot, indeed, I cannot. If I lose him it must be because there is no help for it.”
Then conscience uttered its low, faint protest and her tears fell faster still.
When reaching her room she threw herself on the sofa and sobbed, “Would it be so very, very wrong to win him if I could? she can’t love him as much as I do. Why, I was ready to die even to win his respect, and now in these visits he gives me a chance to win his love. Is he pledged to Miss Burton yet? If he is, I do not know it. He does seem to care for me–there is often something in his face and tone that whispers hope. If he loves her as I love him he could not be here in New York all this week. But it’s her love that troubles me–I’ve seen it in her eyes when he was not observing, and I fear she just worships him. Alas, he gave her reason. His manner has been that of a lover, and no one–he least of all–would think of flirting with Jennie Burton. But does he lover her so deeply that I could not win him if I had a chance? Would it be very wicked if I did? Must I give up my happiness for her happiness? I came to New York to get away from danger and temptation and here I am right in the midst of it. What shall I do! Oh, my Saviour, I’m half afraid to speak to thee about this.”
“If I could only see Mr. Eltinge,” she murmured, after an hour of distracted thought and indecision. “There is no time to write–indeed, I could not write on such a subject, and–and–I’m afraid he’d advise me against it. He can’t understand a woman’s feelings in a case like this, at least he could not understand a passionate, faulty girl like me. I’ve no patience–no fortitude. I could die for my love–I think, I hope, I could for my faith,–but I feel no power within me to endure patiently year after year. I would be like the poor, weak women they shut up in the Inquisition and who suffered on to the end only through remorseless compulsion, because the walls were too thick for escape, and the tormentor’s hands and the rack were irresistible. My soul would succumb as well as my body. This would seem wild, wicked talk to Mr. Eltinge; it would seem weak and irrational to any man. But I’m only Ida Mayhew, and such is my nature. I’ve been made all the more incapable of patient self-sacrifice by self-indulgence from my childhood up. Oh, will it be very, very wrong to win him if I can?” and the passionate tears and sobs that followed these words would seem to indicate that she understood her nature only too well.
At last she concluded, in weariness and exhaustion, “I’m too weak and distracted to think any more. I hardly know whether it’s right or wrong. I hope it isn’t very wrong. I won’t decide now. Let matters take their own course as they have done and I may see clearer by and by.”
But deep in her heart she felt that this was about the same as yielding to the temptation.
She bathed her eyes, tried to think how she could spend the intervening hours before they would meet again. Then with a sense of dismay she began to consider, “If we are to meet so often what are we to talk about? He once tried to converse with me and found me so ignorant he couldn’t. It seemed to me I didn’t know anything that evening, and he’ll soon grow disgusted with me again as he sees my poor little pack of knowledge is like a tramp’s bundle that he carries around with him. I must read–I must study every moment, or I haven’t the remotest chance of success. Success! Oh, merciful heaven! it’s the same as if I were setting about it all deliberately and there’s no use of deceiving myself. I hope it isn’t very, very wrong.”
She went to her father’s library with flushed cheeks and hesitating steps, as if it were the tree from which she might pluck the fruit of forbidden knowledge. The long rows of ponderous and neglected books appalled her; she took down two or three and they seemed like unopened mines, deep and rocky. She felt instinctively that there was not time for her to transmute their ores into graceful and natural mental adornments.
“Methuselah himself couldn’t read them all,” she exclaimed. “By the powers! if here isn’t more books than I can carry, on one subject. I suppose cartloads have been written about art. I’ve no doubt he’s read them all, but I never can; I fear my attempt to read up is like trying to get strong by eating a whole ox at once. Oh, why did I waste my school-days, and indeed all my life as I have!” and she stamped her foot in her impatience and irritation.
“Well,” she sighed at last, with a grim sort of humor; “I must do the best I can. It’s the same as if I were on a desert island. I must tie together some sort of a raft in order to cross the gulf that separates us, for I never can stand it to stay here alone. Since I have not time to spare I may as well commence with that encyclopaedia, and learn a little about as many things as possible; then if he introduces a subject he shall at least see that I know what he is talking about.” And during the afternoon the poor girl plodded through sever articles, often recalling her wandering thoughts by impatient little gestures, and by the time her father returned she was conscious of knowing a very little indeed about a number of things. “No matter,” she thought, compressing her lips, “I won’t give up till I must. It’s my one chance for happiness in this world, and I’ll cling to it while there is a shred of hope left.”
It was with an eager and resolute face that she confronted her father that evening, as they sat down to dinner. He thought she would descant on her experiences of the morning, and he was anxious for a chance to say how truly he appreciated Mr. Van Berg’s cordial manner, but she surprised him by asking abruptly:
“Father, when do we elect another president?”
He told her, and then followed a rapid fire of questions about the general and state government, and the names and characters of the men who held the chief offices. At last Mr. Mayhew laid down his knife and fork in his astonishment, and asked sententiously:
“How long is it since you decided to go into politics?”
Ida’s laugh was very reassuring, and she said, “Poor father! I don’t wonder you think I’ve lost my wits, now that I’m trying to use the few I have. Don’t you see? I don’t know anything that’s worth knowing. I wasted my time at school, for my head was full of beaux, dress, and nonsense. Besides, I don’t think my teachers took much pains to make me understand anything. At any rate, my dancing-master, and perhaps my music-teacher–a little bit–are the only ones that have any reason to be proud of the result. Now I want you to brush up your ideas about everything, so you can answer the endless questions I am going to ask you.”
“Why bless you, child, you take away my breath. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“The way they built Rome will never answer for me. I must grow like one of our Western cities that has a mayor and opera-house almost before the Indians and wolves are driven out of town. Speaking of Rome reminds me how little I know of that city, and it’s a burning shame, too, for I spent a month there.”
“Well,” said Mr. Mayhew, with kindling interest, “suppose we take up a course of reading about Rome for the winter.”
“For the winter! That won’t do at all. Can’t you tell me something of interest about Rome this evening?”
“I’ve already mentioned the interesting fact–that it wasn’t built in a day. I think that’s the most important thing that you need to know about Rome and everything else this evening. Why, Ida, you can’t become wise as an ostrich makes its supper–by swallowing everything that comes in its way. You are not a bit like an ostrich.”
“An ostrich is a silly bird that puts its head under the sand and thins its whole great body hidden because it can’t see itself, isn’t it, father?”
“I’ve heard that story told of it,” replied Mr. Mayhew, laughing.
“Anything but an ostrich, then. Come, I’ll read the evening paper to you on condition you tell me the leading questions of the day. What is just now the leading question of the day?”
“Well,” said Mr. Mayhew, demurely, but with a sparkle of humor in his eye, “one of the leading questions of this day with me has been whether Mr. Van Berg would not enjoy dining with us to-morrow evening now that he is here alone in the city?”
Ida instantly held the newspaper before her crimson face and said:
“Father, you ought to be ashamed thus to divert my mind from the pursuit of useful knowledge.”
Her father came to her side and said very kindly: “Ida, darling, you are a little bit like an ostrich now.”
She sprang up, and, hiding her face on his shoulder, trembled like a leaf. “Oh, father,” she whispered, “I would not have him know for the world. Is it so very plain?”
“Not to him, my child, but the eyes of a love like mine are very keen. So you needn’t be on your guard before your old father as you must be before him and the world. You shall have only rest and sympathy at home as far as I can give them. Indeed, if you will let me, I’ll become a very unobtrusive, but perhaps, useful ally. At any rate, I’ll try not to make any stupid, ignorant blunders. I have like Mr. Van Berg from the first hour of our meeting, and I would thank God from the depths of my heart if this could be.”
“Dear, good father, how little I understood you. I’ve been living in poverty over a gold mine. But father, I’m so ignorant and Mr. Van Berg knows everything.”
“Not quite, you’ll find. He’s only a man, Ida. But you can never win him through politics or by discussing with him the questions of the day. These are not in your line nor his.”
“What can I do, father. Indeed, it does not seem to me maidenly to do anything.”
“It would not be maidenly, Ida, to step one hair’s breadth beyond the line of scrupulous, womanly delicacy, and by any such course you would only defeat and thwart yourself. A woman must always be sought; and as a rule, she loses as she seeks. But I strust to your instincts to guide you here. You have only to be simple and true, as you have been since the happy miracle that transformed you. Unless a man is infatuated as I–but no matter. A man that keeps his sense welcomes truthfulness–a high delicate sense of honor–above all things in a woman, for it gives him a sense of security and rest. By truthfulness I do not mean the indiscreet blurting out of things that good taste would leave unsaid, but clear-eyed integrity that hides no guile. Then, again, unless a man is blinded by passion or some kind of infatuation he knows that the chief need of his life is a home lighted and warmed by an unwavering love. With these his happiness and success are secured, as far as they can be in this world, unless he is a brute and a fool, and has no right to exist at all. But I am growing preachy. Let me suggest some things that I have observed in this artist. He is a high-toned pagan and worships beauty; but with this outward perfection he also demands spiritual loveliness, for with him mind and honor are in the ascendant. He admired you immensely from the first, and since your character has been growing in harmony with your face he has sought your society. So, be simple, true, and modest, and you will win him if the thing is possible. You will never win him by being anything else, and you might lose your own respect and his too.”
“I’ll suffer anything rather than that, father. I think you had better not invite him to-morrow evening.”
“I’ll be governed by what I see to-morrow,” he replied, musingly. “Both my business and my habit of mind have taught me to observe and study men’s motives and impulses very closely. You could order a suitable dinner after leaving the studio, could you not?”
“Yes, father.”
“Well, then, my Princess Ida, I’ll be your grand vizier, and I’ll treat with this foreign power with such a fine diplomacy that he shall appreciate all the privileges he obtains. But we will keep our self-respect hereafter, Ida, and then we can look the world in the face and ask no odds of it.”
“Yes, father, let us keep that at all events. And yet I’m only a woman.”
“You are the woman that has made me happy, and I think there is another man who will want to be made happy also. And now we will defer all other questions of the day, for I must go out for a time. Do not think I undervalue your craving for information, and you shall have it as fast as you can take care of it. You have grown pale and thin this summer, but I do not expect you to become plump and rosy again in a day.”
“Oh, I’m rosy too often as it is. Why is it that girls must blush so ridiculously when they don’t want to? That’s the question of the day for me. I could flirt desperately in old times, and yet look as demure and cool as if I were an innocent. But now, oh! I’m fairly enraged with myself at times.”
“They say blushes are love’s trail,” said Mr. Mayhew with a laugh, “and since he is around I suppose he must leave his tracks. If you wish for a more scientific reason let me add that physiology teaches us that the blood comes from the heart. I can assure you, however, that there are but few gentlemen who admire ladies that cannot blush, and Mr. Van Berg is not one of them.”
Ida spent the evening at her piano instead of over the encyclopaedia, but she sighed again and again.
“Simple and true! I fear Jennie Burton and Mr. Eltinge would say I was neither if they knew what was in my heart. But I can’t help it–I can’t give him up after what has happened since I came to the city, unless I must.”
But the music she selected was simple and true. Tossing her brilliant and florid pieces impatiently aside, she played or sang only that which was plaintive, low, and in harmony with her thoughts. It also seemed to have a peculiar attractiveness to a tall gentleman who lingered some moments beneath the windows, and even took one or two steps up towards the door, and then turned and strode away as if conscious that he must either enter or depart at once.
Chapter XLIX. The Blind God.
The Miss Mayhew that crossed the artist’s threshold the following morning might have been taken as a model of graceful self-possession, but she disguised a maiden with as fluttering a heart and trembling a soul as ever faced one of the supreme moments of destiny. Her father, however, proved a faithful and intelligent ally, and his manner towards Van Berg was a fine blending of courtesy and dignity, suggesting a man as capable of conferring as of receiving favors. His host would indeed have been blind and stupid if he had tried to patronize Mr. Mayhew that morning.
Although unconscious of the fact, Van Berg was for a time subjected to the closest scrutiny. Love had deep if not dark designs against him, and the glances he bent on Ida might suggest that he was only too ready to become a victim. He had welcomed to his study two conspirators who were committed to their plot by the strongest of motives, and yet they were such novel conspirators that a word, a glance, an expression even of “ennui” or indifference would have so touched their pride that they would have abandoned their wiles at every cost to themselves. Were they trying to ensnare him? Never were such films and gossamer threads used in like entanglement before. He could have brushed them all away by one cold sweep of his eyes, and the maiden who had not scrupled at death to gain merely his respect, would have left the studio with a colder glance than his, nor would her womanly strength have failed her until she reached a refuge which his eye could not penetrate; but then–God pity her. The tragedies over which the angels weep are the bloodless wounds of the spirit.
But it would seem that the atmosphere of Van Berg’s studio that summer morning was not at all conducive to tragedy of any kind, nor were there in his face or manner any indications of comedy, which to poor Ida would have been far worse; for an air of careless “bonhomie” on his part when she was so desperately in earnest would have made his smiles and jests like heartless mockery.
And yet, in spite of his manner the previous day, the poor girl had come to the studio fearing far more than she hoped, and burdened also with a troubled conscience. She was almost sure she was not doing right, and yet the temptation was too strong to be resisted. But when he took her hand in greeting that morning, and said with a smile that seemed to flash out from the depths of his soul, “I won’t hurt you any more if I can help it,” all scruples, all hesitancy vanished for a time, like frostwork in the sun. His magnetism was irresistible, and she felt that it would require all her tact and resolution to keep him by some careless, random word or act, from brushing aside the veil behind which shrank her trembling, and as yet, unsought love.
But Van Berg was even a rarer study than the maiden, and his manner towards both Ida and her father might well lead one to think that he was inclined to become the chief conspirator in the design against himself. He had scarcely been conscious of time or place since parting the previous day with the friend he was so bent on securing, and when at last he slept in the small hours of the morning he dreamt that he had been caught by a mighty tidal wave that was bearing him swiftly towards heaven on its silver crest. When he awoke, the wave, so far from being a bubble, seemed a grand spiritual reality, and he felt as if he had already reached a seventh heaven of vague, undefined exhilaration. Never before had life appeared so rich a possession and so full of glorious possibilities. Never in the past had he felt his profession to be so noble and worthy of his devotion, and never had the fame he hoped to grasp by means of it seemed so near. Beauty became to him so infinitely beautiful and divine that he felt he could worship it were it only embodied, and then with a strange and exquisite thrill of exultation he exclaimed: “Right or wrong, to my eye it is embodied in Ida Mayhew, and she will fill my studio with light again to-day and many days to come. If ever an artist was fortunate in securing as a friend, as an inspiration, a perfect and budding flower of personal and spiritual loveliness, I am that happy man.”
The Van Berg of other days would have called the Van Berg that waited impatiently for his guests that morning a rhapsodical fool, and the greater part of the world would offer no dissent. The world is very prone to call every man who is possessed by a little earnestness or enthusiasm a fool, but it is usually an open question which is the more foolish–the world or the man; and perhaps we shall all learn some day that there was more of sanity in our rhapsodies than in the shrewd calculations that verged towards meanness. Be this as it may in the abstract, Van Berg regarded himself as the most rational man in the city that morning. He did not try to account for his mental state by musty and proverbial wisdom or long-established principles of psychology. The glad, strong consciousness of his own soul satisfied him and made everything appear natural. Since he HAD this strong and growing friendship for this maiden, who was evidently pleased to come again to his studio, though so coy and shy in admitting it, why should he not have it? There was nothing in his creed against such a friendship, and everything for it. Men of talent, not to mention genius, had ever sought inspiration from those most capable of imparting it, and this girl’s beauty and character were kindling his mind to that extent that he began to hope he could now do some of the finest work of his life. The fact that he felt towards her the strongest friendly regard was in itself enough, and Van Berg was too good a modern thinker to dispute with facts, especially agreeable ones.
The practical outcome of the friendship which he lost no chance of manifesting that morning, was that Mr. Mayhew, in an easy, informal manner, extended his invitation, and the artist accepted in a way that proved he was constrained by something more than courtesy or a sense of duty, and Conspirator Number Two walked down Broadway muttering (as do all conspirators): “Those young people are liable to stumble into paradise at any moment.”
“How did you manage to get through a hot August day in town after you were released from durance here?” asked Van Berg.
“I do not know that it required any special management,” replied Ida demurely. “I suppose YOU took a nap after your severe labors of the morning.”
“Now you are satirical. My labor was all in the afternoon, for I worked from the time you left me till dusk.”
“Didn’t you stop for lunch or dinner?” exclaimed Ida, with surprise.
“Not a moment.”
“Why, Mr. Van Berg, what was the matter with you? It will never do for me to come here and waste your forenoons if you try to make up so unmercifully after I’m gone.”
“You were indeed altogether to blame. Some things, like fine music or a great painting or–it happened to be yourself yesterday–often cause what I call my working moods, when I feel able to do the best things of which I’m capable. Not that they are wonderful or ever will be–they are simply my best efforts–and I assure you I’m not foolish enough to waste such moments in the prosaic task of eating.”
“I’m only a matter-of-fact person. Plain food at regular intervals is very essential to me.”
He looked up at her quickly and said: “Now you are mentally laughing at me again. I assure you I ate like an ostrich after my work was over. I even upset the dignity of an urbane Delmonico waiter.”
Ida bit her lip as she recalled certain resemblances on her own part to that suggestive bird, but she said sympathetically: “It must be rather stupid to dine alone at a restaurant.”
“I found it insufferably stupid, and I’m more grateful to your father for his invitation than you would believe.”
Ida could scarcely disguise her pleasure, and with mirthful eyes she said:
“Really, Mr. Van Berg, you place me in quite a dilemma. I find that in one mood you do not wish to eat at all, and again you say you have the rather peculiar appetite of the bird you named. Now I’m housekeeper at present, and scarcely know how to provide. What kind of viands are best adapted to artists and poets, and—“
“And idiots in general, you might conclude,” said Van Berg, laughing. “After sitting so near me at the table all summer you must have noticed that nothing but ambrosia and nectar will serve my purpose.”
Ida’s laughing eyes suddenly became deep and dreamy as she said: “That time seems ages ago. I cannot realize that we are the same people that met so often in Mr. Burleigh’s dining-room, and in circumstances that to me were often so very dismal.”
“Please remember that I am not the same person. I will esteem it a great favor if you will leave the man you saw at that time in the limbo of the past–the farther off the better.”
“You were rather distant then,” Ida remarked with a piquant smile.
“But am I now? Answer me that,” he said so eagerly that she was again mentally enraged at her tell-tale color, and she said hastily: “But where am I to find the ambrosia and nectar that you will expect this evening?”
“Any market can furnish the crude materials. It is the touch of the hostess that transmutes them.”
“Alas,” said Ida, “I never learned how to cook. If I should prepare your dinner, you would have an awful mood to-morrow, and probably send for the doctor.”
“I would need a nurse more than a doctor.”
“I know of an ancient woman–a perfect Mrs. Harris,” said Ida, gleefully.
“Wouldn’t you come and see me if I were very ill?”
“I might call at the door and ask how you were,” she replied, hesitatingly.
“Now, Miss Ida, the undertaker would do as much as that.”
“Our motives might differ just a little,” she said, dropping her eyes.
“Well,” said the artist, laughing, “if you will prepare the dinner, I’ll risk undertaker, ancient woman, and all, rather than spend such another long stupid evening as I did last night. I expected to meet you at the concert garden again.”
“That’s strange,” she said.
“I should say rather that I hoped to meet you and your father there. Would you have gone if I had asked you?”
“I might.”
“I’ll set that down as one of the lost opportunities of life.”
“Why didn’t you listen to the music?”
“Well, I didn’t. I thought I’d inflict my stupidity on you for awhile, and came as far as your doorsteps before I remembered that I had not been invited; so you see what a narrow escape you had.”
In spite of herself Ida could not help appearing disappointed as she said, a little reproachfully, “Would a friend have waited for a formal invitation?”
“A friend did,” replied Van Berg regretfully; “but he won’t again.”
“I’m not so sure about that; my music must have frightened you away.”
“I listened until I feared the police might think I had designs against the house. I didn’t know you were a musician. Miss Mayhew, I’m always finding out something new about you, and I’m going to ask you this evening to sing again for me a ballad the melody of which reminded me of a running brook. It took hold on my fancy and has been running in my head ever since.”
“Oh, you won’t like that; it’s a silly, sentimental little thing. I don’t wonder you paused and retreated.”
“Spare me, Miss Ida; I already feel that it was a faint-hearted retreat, in which I suffered serious loss. I have accounted for myself since we parted; how did YOU spend the time? Of course you yawned over your morning’s fatigue, and took a long nap.”
“Indeed I did not sleep a wink. Why should I be any more indolent than yourself? I read most of the afternoon, and drummed on the piano in the evening.”
“I know that I like your drumming, but am not yet sure about your author; but he must be an exceedingly interesting one, to hold your attention a long hot afternoon.”
Ida colored in sudden embarrassment, but said, after a moment: “I shall not gratify your curiosity any further, for you would laugh at me again if I told you.”
“Now, indeed, you have piqued my curiosity.”
“Since you, a man, admit having so much of this feminine weakness, I who am only a woman may be pardoned for showing just a little. What work was it that so absorbed you yesterday afternoon that you ceased to be human in your needs?”
“Miss Mayhew, you have been laughing at me in your sleeve ever since you came this morning. I shall take my revenge on you at once by heaping coals of fire on your head,” and he turned towards her a large picture, all of which was yet in outline, save Mr. Eltinge’s bust and face.
Ida sprang down on her knees before it, exclaiming: “O! my dear, kind old friend! He’s just speaking to me. Mr. Van Berg, I’ll now maintain you are a genius against all the world. You have put kindness, love, fatherhood into his face. You have made it a strong and noble, and yet tender and gentle as the man himself. I never knew it was possible for a portrait to express so much,” and tears of strong, grateful feeling filled her eyes.
Was it success in his art or praise from her lips that gave her listener such an exquisite thrill of pleasure? He did not stop to consider, for he was not in an analytical mood at that time. He was on the crest of the spiritual wave that was sweeping him heavenward, or towards some beatific state of which he had not dreamt before. His face glowed with pleasure as he said:
“Since it pleases you, it’s no more than justice that you should know that your visit was the cause of my success. Either your laugh or your kind parting words brushed the cobwebs from my mind, and I was able to do better work in a few hours than I might have accomplished in weeks.”
She tried to look at the picture more closely, but fast-coming tears blinded her. Then she rose, and averting her face hastily, wiped her eyes, as she said in a low tone: “I can’t understand it at all, and the memory of Mr. Eltinge’s kindness always overcomes me. Please pardon my weakness. There, I won’t waste any more of your time,” and she returned to her chair. But her face still wore the uncertainty of an April day.
“Your affection for Mr. Eltinge,” he said gently, “is as beautiful as it is natural. No manifestation of it needs any apology, and least of all to me, for I owe to him far more than life. But I am paining you by recalling the past,” he said regretfully, as Ida’s tears began to gather again. “Let me try to make amends by returning at once to the present and to my work. Before I go on any farther with your portrait I want you to put this rose-bud in your hair,” and from a hidden nook he brought a little vase containing only one exquisite bud. Ida had barely time to see that it was in color and size precisely like the emblem of herself that he had thrown