Van Berg's night-key admitted him to a beautiful home, which he
now had wholly to himself, since his parents and sister had sailed
for Europe early in the spring, intending to spend the summer
abroad. The young man had already travelled and studied for years
in the lands naturally attractive to an artist, and it was now his
purpose to familiarize himself more thoroughly with the scenery of
his own country.
On reaching his own apartment he took down a prosy book, that he
might read himself into that condition of drowsiness which would
render sleep possible; but sleep would not come, and the sentences
were like the passers-by in the street, whom we see but do not note,
and for whose coming and going we know not the reasons. Between
himself and the page he saw continually the exquisite features and
the exasperating face of Ida Mayhew. At last he threw aside the
book, lighted a cigar, and gave himself up to the reveries to which
this beautiful, but discordant visage so strongly predisposed him.
Its perfection in one respect, its strongly marked imperfection
in another, both appealed equally to his artistic and thoughtful
mind. At one moment it would appear before him with an ideal
loveliness such as had never blessed the eye of his fancy even;
but while he yet looked the features would distort themselves into
the vivid expression of some contemptible trait, so like what he
had seen in reality, during the evening, that, in uncontrollable
irritation, he would start up and pace the floor.
His uncurbed imagination conjured up all kinds of weird and grotesque
imagery. He found himself commiserating the girl's features as if
they were high-toned captives held in degrading bondage by a spiteful
little monster, that delighted to put them to low and menial uses.
To one of his temperament such beauty as he had just witnessed,
controlled by, and ministering to, some of the meanest and pettiest
of human vices, was like Mary Magdalene when held in thraldom by
seven devils.
A cool and matter-of-fact person could scarcely understand Van
Berg's annoyance and perturbation. If a true artist were compelled
to see before him a portrait that required only a few skillful
touches in order to become a perfect likeness, and yet could not
give those touches, the picture would become a constant vexation;
and the better the picture, the nearer it approached the truth, the
deeper would be the irritation that all should be spoiled through
defects for which there was no necessity.
In the face that persistently haunted him Van Berg saw a beauty
that might fulfil his best ideal; and he also saw just why it did
not and never could, until its defects were remedied. He felt
a sense of personal loss that he should have discovered a gem so
nearly perfect and yet marred by so fatal a flaw.
The next day it was still the same. The face of Ida Mayhew interposed
itself before everything that he sought to do or see. Whether it
were true or not, it appeared to him that in all his wanderings and
observations he had never seen features so capable of fulfilling
his highest conception of beauty did they but express the higher
qualities and emotions of the soul. He also felt that never
before had he seen a face that would seem to him so hideous in its
perversion.
He threw down his brush and palette in despair and again gave himself
up to his fancies. He then sketched in outline the beautiful face
as expressing joy, hope, courage, thought or love, but was provoked
to find that he ever obtained the best likeness when portraying
the vanity, silliness, or petulance which had been the only
characteristics he had seen.
He now grew metaphysical and tried to analyze the girl's mind.
He sought to grope mentally his way back into the recesses of the
soul, which had looked, acted, and spoken the previous evening.
A strange little place he imagined it, and oddly furnished. It
occurred to him that it bore a resemblance to her dressing room,
and was full of queer feminine mysteries and artificial ideas that
had been created by conventional society rather than inspired by
nature.
He asked himself, "Can it be that here is a character in which the
elements of a true and good woman do not exist? Has she no heart,
no mind, no conscience worthy of the name? At her age she cannot
have lost these qualities. Have they never been awakened? Do
they exist to that degree that they can be aroused into controlling
activity? I suppose there can be pretty idiots. As people are
born blind or scrofulous, so I suppose others can be born devoid of
heart or conscience, inheriting from a degenerate ancestry sundry
mean and vile propensities in their places. Human nature is
a scale that runs both up and down, and it is astonishing how far
the extremes can be apart."
"How high is it possible for the same individual to rise in this
scale? I imagine we are all prone to judge of people as if they
were finished pictures, and to think that the defects our first
scrutiny discovers will remain for all time. It is in real life
much as in fiction. From first to last a villain is a villain,
as if he had been created one. The heroine is a moss rose-bud by
equal and unchanging necessity. Is this girl a fool, and will she
remain one by any innate compulsion? By Jove! I would like to see
her again in the searching light of day. I would like to follow
her career sufficiently long, to discover whether nature has been
guilty of the grotesque crime of associating inseparably with that
fine form and those exquisite features, a hideous little mind that
must go on intensifying its dwarfed deformity, until death snuffs
it out. If this be true, the beautiful little monster that is
bothering me so suggests a knotty problem to wiser heads than mine."
Somewhat later his musings led him to indulge in a broad laugh.
"Possibly," he said aloud, "she is a modern and fashionable Undine,
and has never yet received a woman's soul. The good Lord deliver
me from trying to awaken it, as did the knight of old in the story,
by swelling the long list of her victims. I can scarcely imagine
a more pitiable and abject creature than a man (once sane and
sensible) in thraldom to such a tantalizing semblance of a woman.
She would no more appreciate his devotion than the jackdaw the
pearl necklace it pecked at.
"I fear my Undine theory won't answer. Stanton says she has no heart,
and her face and manner confirm his words. But now I think of it,
the original Undine lived a long time ago--in the age of primeval
simplicity, when even cool-blooded water nymphs had hearts. One
is induced to think, in our age, that this organ will eventually
disappear with the other characteristics of ancient and undeveloped
man, and that the brain, or what stands for it, will become all in
all. In the first instance the woman's soul came in through the
heart; but I suppose that in the case of a modern Undine it could
enter most readily through the head. I wonder if there is something
like an unawakened mind, sleeping under that broad low brow that
mocks one with its fair intellectual outline. I wonder if it
would be possible to set her thinking, and so eventually render
her capable of receiving a woman's soul. As it is now she seems
to possess only certain disagreeable feminine propensities. One
might engage in such an experiment as a philosopher rather than a
lover; or, what is more to my purpose, as an artist.
"By Jove! I would half like to make the attempt; it would give zest
to one's summer vacation. Well, what is to hinder? Now I think
of it she remarked that she was to spend the season at the Lake
House, not far from the Hudson, a place well suited to my purposes.
There are the wild highlands on one side, and a soft pastoral country
on the other. I could there find abundant opportunity for varied
studies in scenery, and at the same time beguile my idle hours at
the hotel with this face of marvellous capabilities and possibilities.
The features already exist, and would be beautiful if the girl were
dead, and they could be no longer distorted by the small vices of
the spirit back of them. They might become transcendently beautiful,
could she in very truth receive the soul of a true and thoughtful
woman--a soul such as makes my mother beautiful in her plain old
age.
"I'm inclined to follow this odd fancy. That girl is a 'rara
avis' such as has never flown across my path before. I shall have
a quarrel with nature all my life if I must believe she can fashion
a face capable of meaning so much and yet actually meaning so
little, and that little disgusting."
After a few moments of deep thought, he again started to his feet
and commenced pacing his studio.
"Suppose," he soliloquized, "I attempt a novel bit of artistic work
as my summer recreation. Suppose I take the face of this stranger
instead of a piece of canvas and try to illumine it with thought,
with womanly character and intelligence. If I fail, as I probably
shall, no harm will be done. If her silliness and vanity are
ingrained and essential parts of her nature, she shall learn that
there is at least one man who can see her as she is, and whose
heart is not wax on which to stamp her pretty and senseless image.
If I only partially succeed, if I discern she has a mind, but
so feeble that it can only half reclaim her from her weakness and
folly, still something will be accomplished. Her features are so
beautiful, that should they come to express even the glimmerings
of that which is admirable, the face will be in part redeemed.
But if by some happy miracle, as in the instance of the original
Undine, a mind can be awakened that will gradually prepare a place
for the soul of a true woman, I shall accomplish the best work of
my life, even estimated from an artistic point of view. Possibly,
for my reward, she will permit me to paint her portrait as a souvenir
of our summer's acquaintance."
It did not take Van Berg long to complete his arrangements for
leaving town. He wrote a line to his friend Stanton, saying that
he proposed spending a few weeks in the vicinity of the Highlands
on the Hudson, and that he could not say when he would be at his
rooms or at home again. The afternoon of the following day found
him a passenger on a fleet steamboat, and fully bent upon carrying
out his odd artistic freak.