Van Berg had been so near that he could not help overhearing Mrs.
Mayhew's words which had led to the abrupt and silent departure of
her daughter from the parlor.
"There is some misunderstanding here," he thought, "whose effects
are becoming outrageously cruel. The poor girl was driven away
from the supper-table, and now she is driven out of the parlor.
She has been an anomaly from the moment I saw her, and I now mean
to fathom the mystery. Her exquisite face indicates that she
is almost desperate from some kind of trouble. She is becoming
ill--she is wasting under it. Sibley would be a fatal malady to
any respectable girl, but I must give up all pretence of skill at
diagnosis if he is the cause; for were her heart set on him why the
mischief can't she go to him with all her old reckless flippancy?
There is no need of any elopement, as Ik fears. She can easily
compel her mother to go to the city, and her father would have no
power to prevent the alliance, were she bent upon it. I believe her
family misunderstand and are wronging her, and I may have occasion
to go down on my knees myself, metaphorically, and ask her pardon
for my superior airs."
These and kindred other thoughts passed through his mind as he
slowly paced up and down a side piazza which he often sought when
he wished to be alone. Stanton, having lost Miss Burton for the
evening, soon joined him, and threw himself dejectedly into a chair.
"Van," he said, "I used to be rather self-complacent. I thought
I had learned to take life so philosophically that I should have a
good time as long as my health lasted. But to-night I feel as if
life were a horribly heavy burden which I, an overladen jackass,
must carry for many a weary day. How little we know what we are
and what is before us! I've been a fool; I am a fool!"
"Well, Ik," replied Van Berg with a shrug, "I imagine there is a
pair of us. My reason--all that's decent in me--refuses to regard
Sibley as the cause of your cousin's most evident distress. For
heaven's sake don't confirm your words of this afternoon, or I shall
feel like taking the first train, in order to escape from the most
exasperating paradox that ever contradicted a man's senses."
"Van, you are right. I am mortified with myself beyond measure,
and I am bitterly ashamed that my aunt, her own mother, should
have so grossly misjudged her. Sibley, no doubt, IS the occasion
of her trouble in part, for she seems fairly to writhe under the
false position in which he has placed her by leading every one to
associate her name with his; but I now believe that she loathes
and detests him more than you or I can. Certainly no woman could
speak of a man in harsher or more scathing terms than she spoke
of him to-night. Well, to sum up the whole miserable trough, by
taking her mother's view for granted, I made such a mess of it that
I doubt if she ever speaks civilly to either of us again."
"Why! was my name mentioned?" asked Van Berg, quickly.
"Yes, confound it all! When things are going wrong there is a
miserable fatality about them, and the worst always happens. She
asked me point-blank if you shared my estimate of her, and I suppose
got the impression you did."
"Well really, Stanton," said Van Berg, with some irritation, "I
think you must have been unfortunate in your language."
"Worse than unfortunate. The whole blunder is unpardonable.
Still, do me justice. I could not answer her question with a bold
lie. And what would have been its use? How could you explain your
bearing towards her at the supper table? Your manner would have
frozen Jezebel herself."
"I was an infernal fool," groaned Van Berg.
"It is due to us both that I should say I told her you had tried
to form a good opinion of her, and very reluctantly received the
view her mother suggested. I said, in effect, you wished to think
well of her, although she had treated you so badly."
"Treated me badly! I have treated her a thousandfold worse. She,
at least, has never insulted me, and I can never forgive myself
for the insult I have offered her.
"Well, I hope to find her in the mood to accept an apology in the
morning," said Stanton.
"I'm in a confoundedly awkward position to apologize," growled
Van Berg. "Any reference to such an affair will be like another
insult;" and the friends parted in an unsatisfactory state of mind
towards each other, and especially towards themselves.
But that was a sad and memorable night to Ida Mayhew. She felt
that it might be her last on earth; for her dark purpose was rapidly
taking definite form.
she was passing into that unhealthful condition of mental excitement,
in which the salutary restraints of the physical nature lose their
power. In the place of drowsiness and weariness, she began to
experience an unnatural exaltation which would make any reckless
folly possible, if it took the guise of sublime and tragic action.
Few realize to what degree the mind can become warped and disordered,
even with a brief time, by trouble and the violation of the laws
of health; and some, by education and temperament, are peculiarly
predisposed to abnormal conditions. Science has taught men how
to build ships with water-tight compartments, so that if disaster
crushes in on one side, the other parts may save from sinking.
There are fortunate people who are built on the same safe principle.
They have cultivated minds, and varied resources in artistic and
scientific pursuits. Above all else, they may have faith in God and
a better life to come; such possessions are like the compartments
of a modern ship. Few disasters can destroy them all, and in the
loss of one or more the soul is kept afloat by the others.
But it would seem that poor Ida's character had been constructed
with fatal simplicity, and when the cold waves of trouble rushed
in there was nothing to prevent her from sinking beneath them like
a stone. Her mind was uncultivated, and art, science, literature
offered her as yet no resources, no pursuits. She had a woman's
heart that might have been filled with sustaining love, but in its
place had come a sudden and icy flood of disappointment and despair.
She loved, with all the passion and simplicity of a narrow, yet
earnest nature, the man who had awakened the woman within her,
and he, she believed, would never give her aught in return, save
contempt. She naturally thought that she had been degraded in his
estimation beyond all ordinary means of redemption; therefore, in
her desperation and despair, she was ready to take an extraordinary
method of compelling at least his respect.
Moreover, Ida was impatient and impetuous by nature. She had a
large capacity for action, but little for endurance. It would be
almost impossible for her to reach woman's loftiest heroism, and
sit "like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief." It would be
her disposition rather to rush forward, and dash herself against an
adverse fate, meeting it even more than half way. All the influences
of her life had tended to develop imperiousness, willfulness, and
now her impulse was to enter a protest against her hard lot that
was as passionate and reckless as it was impotent.
Apart from her supreme wish to fill Van Berg with regret, and awaken
in him something like respect, the thought of dragging on a wretched
existence through the indefinite years to come was intolerable. The
color had utterly faded out of life, and left it bald and repulsive
to the last degree.
Fashionable dissipation promised her nothing. She had often tasted
this, to the utmost limit of propriety, and was well aware that
the gay whirl had nothing new to offer, unless she plunged into
the mad excitement of a life which is as brief as it is vile. It
was to her credit that death seemed preferable to this. It was
largely due to her defective training and limited experience, that
a useful, innocent life, even though it promised to be devoid of
happiness, was so utterly repulsive that she was ready to throw it
away in impatient disgust.
As yet she was incapable of Jennie Burton's divine philosophy
of "pleasing not" herself. he who "gave his life for others" was
but a name at the pronunciation of which, in the Service, she was
accustomed to bow profoundly, but to whom, in her heart, she had
never bowed or offered a genuine prayer. Religion seemed to her a
sort of fashion which differed with the tastes of different people.
She was a practical atheist.
It is a fearful thing to permit a child to grow up ignorant of God,
and of the sacred principles of duty which should be inwrought in
the conscience, and enforced by the most vital considerations of
well-being, both for this world and the world to come.
But Ida Mayhew thought not of God or duty, but only of her thwarted,
unhappy life, from which she shrank weakly and selfishly, assuring
herself that she could not and would not endure it. In her father
she saw only increasing humiliation; in her mother, one for whom
she had but little affection and less respect, and who would of
necessity irritate the wounds that time might slowly heal, could she
live in an atmosphere of delicate, unspoken sympathy; in herself,
one whom she now believed to be so ignorant and faulty that the man
she loved had turned away in disgust on finding her out. If all
this were not bad enough, unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances,
even more than her own folly, had brought about a humiliation from
which she felt she could never recover. In her blind, desperate
effort to hide her passion from the man she loved, she had made it
appear that she was infatuated with the man she loathed, and who
had shown himself such a contemptible villain that her association
with him was the scandal of the house. If her own mother and
cousin could believe that she was ready to throw herself away for
the sake of such a wretch, what must the people of the hotel think?
What kind of a story would go abroad among her acquaintances in
the city? She fairly cringed and writhed at the thought of it all.
It seemed to the tortured and morbidly excited girl that there was
but one way out of her troubles, and dark and dreadful as was that
path, she thought it could lead to nothing so painful as that from
which she would escape.
But after all, her chief incentive to the fatal act was the hope
of securing Van Berg's respect, and of implanting herself in his
heart as an undying memory, even though a sad and terrible one.
With her ideas of the fitness of things this would be a strong
temptation at best; but the present conditions of her life, as we
have seen, so far from restraining, added greatly to the temptation.
And, as has been said, while the act seemed a stern and dreadful
alternative to worse evils, it was not revolting to her. She had
seen so many of her favorite heroines in fiction and actresses on
the stage "shuffle off the mortal coil" with the most appropriate
expressions and in the most becoming toilets and attitudes, that
her perverted and melodramatic taste led her to believe that Van
Berg would regard her crime as a sublime vindication of her honor.
Her only task now, therefore, was to frame a letter that would
best accomplish this end, and at the same time wring his soul with
unavailing regret.
But she was too sincere and sad to write diffusely and vaguely.
After a few moments' thought she rapidly traced the following lines:
"Mr. Van Berg:
"You first saw me at a concert, and your judgement of me was correct,
though severe. Your eyes have since been very cold and critical.
I have followed your exploring glances, and have found that I am,
indeed, ignorant and imperfect--that I was like the worm-eaten rose
bud that you tossed contemptuously down where it would be trampled
under foot. Seldom is that unfortunate little emblem of myself
out of my thoughts. If I dared to appeal to God I would say that
he knows that I would have tried to bloom into a better life, even
though imperfectly, if some one had only thought it worth while to
show me how. It is too late now. Like my counterpart, that you
threw away, I shall soon be forgotten in the dust.
"Although your estimate has been so harsh, I will not dispute it.
Circumstances have been against me from the first, and my own folly
has added whatever was wanting to confirm your unfavorable opinion.
But to-day your thoughts wronged me cruelly. You have slain all
hope and self-respect. I do not feel that I can live after seeing
an honorable man look at me as you looked this evening. You believed
me capable of flying to he man who attempted your life--who insulted
and orphan girl. You looked at me, not as a lady, but an object
beneath contempt. This is a humiliation that I cannot and will
not survive. When you know that i have sought death rather than
the villain with whom you are associating me, you may think of me
more favorably. Possibly the memory of Ida Mayhew may lead you,
when again you see a worm-eaten bud, to kill the destroyer and help
the flower to bloom as well as it can. But now, like my emblem,
I have lost my one chance.
The night was now far spent. Her mother, having been refused
admittance, had fumed and fretted herself to sleep. The house was
very still. She opened her window and looked out. Clouds obscured
the stars, and it was exceedingly dark.
"The long night to which I'm going will be darker still," sighed
the unhappy girl. "Well, I will live one more day. To-morrow I
will go out and sit in the sunlight once more. I wish I could go
now, for already I seem to feel the chill of death. Oh, how cold
I shall be by this time to-morrow night!"
She shuddered as she closed the window.
After pacing her room a few moments, she exclaimed, recklessly,
"I must sleep--I must get through with the time until I bring time
to an end," and she dropped a powerful opiate into a glass.
Holding it up for a moment with a smile on her fair young face that
was terrible beyond words, she said slowly,
"After all it's only taking a little more, and then--no waking."