Before retiring, Ida had unfastened her door, so that her mother,
finding her sleeping, might leave her undisturbed as late as possible
the following day; and the sun was almost in mid-heaven before she
began slowly to revive from her lethargy.
But as her stupor departed she became conscious of such acute
physical and mental suffering that she almost wished she had carried
out her purpose the night before. Her headache was equaled only by
her heartache, and her wronged, overtaxed nervous system was jangling
with torturing discord. But with the persistence of a simple and
positive nature she resolved to carry out the tragic programme that
she had already arranged.
She was glad to find herself alone. Her mother, with her usual
sagacity, had concluded that she would sleep off her troubles as
she often had before, and so left her to herself.
The poor, lost child made some pathetic attempts to put her little
house in order. She destroyed all her letters. She arranged her
drawers with many sudden rushes of tears as various articles called
up memories of earlier and happier days. Among other things she
came across a little birthday present that her father had given
her when she was but six years of age, and she vividly recalled
the happy child she was that day.
"Oh, that I had died then!" she sobbed. "What a wretched failure my
life has been! Never was there a fitter emblem than the imperfect
flower he threw away. I wish I could find the poor, withered, trampled
thing, and that he might find it in my hand with his letter."
She wrote a farewell to her father that was inexpressibly sad, in
which she humbly asked his forgiveness, and entreated him, as her
dying wish, to cease destroying himself with liquor.
"But it is of no use," she moaned. "He has lost hope and courage
like myself, and one can't bear trouble for which there is no
remedy. I'm afraid my act will only make him do worse; but I can't
help it."
To her mother she wrote merely, "Good-by. Think of me as well as
you can till I am forgotten."
Her thoughts of her mother were very bitter, for she felt that she
had been neglected as a child, and permitted to grow up so faulty
and superficial that she repelled the man her beauty might have
aided her in winning; and it was chiefly through her mother that
her last bitter and unendurable humiliation had come.
Mrs. Mayhew bustled in from her drive with Stanton, just before
dinner, and commenced volubly:
"Glad to see you up and looking so much better." (Ida knew she
was almost ghastly pale from the effects of the opiate and her
distress, but she recognized her mother's tactics.) "Come now, go
down with me and make a good dinner; then a drive this afternoon,
to which Ik has invited you, and you will look like your old
beautiful self."
"I do not wish to look like my old self," said Ida coldly.
"Who in the world ever looked better?"
"Every one who had a cultivated mind and a clear conscience."
"I declare, Ida, you've changed so since you came to the country
that I can't understand you at all."
"Do not try to any longer, mother, for you never will."
"Won't you go down to dinner?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't wish to, for one thing; and I'm too ill, for another.
Send me up something, if it's not too much trouble."
"I'm going to have a doctor see you this very afternoon," said Mrs.
Mayhew, emphatically, as she left the room.
To do her justice she did send up a very nice dinner to Ida before
eating her own. As far as doctors and dinners were concerned, she
could do her whole duty in an emergency.
"Isn't Ida coming down?" whispered Stanton to his aunt.
"No. I can't make her out at all, and she looks dreadfully. You
must go for a doctor, right after dinner."
Van Berg could not hear their words, but their ominous looks added
greatly to his disquietude. He had been too ill at ease to seek
even Miss Burton's society during the morning, and had spent the
time in making a sketch of Ida as she stood in the doorway before
entering the parlor the previous evening.
But Jennie Burton did not seem to feel or resent his neglect in
the slightest degree. Indeed, her thoughts, like his own, were
apparently engrossed with the one whose chair had been vacant so
often of late, and who, when present, seemed so unlike her former
self.
"I fear you daughter is more seriously indisposed than you think,"
she said anxiously to Mrs. Mayhew.
"I'm going to take Ida in hand," replied the matter-of-fact lady.
"She IS ill--far more so than she'll admit. I'm going to have the
doctor at once and put her under a course of treatment."
"Curse it all!" thought Van Berg, "that is just the trouble. She
has been under a course of treatment that would make any woman ill,
save her mother, and I'm inclined to think that I was the veriest
quack of them all in my treatment."
"I wish she would let me call upon her this afternoon," said Miss
Burton, gently.
"Oh, I think she'll be glad to see you!--at least she ought to be;"
but it was too evident that Mrs. Mayhew was at last beginning to
grow very anxious, and she made a simpler meal than usual. Stanton
in his solicitude, hastened through dinner, and started at once
for the physician who usually attended the guests of the house.
Ida, in the meantime, had forced herself to eat a little of the food
sent to her, and then informing the woman who had charge of their
floor that she was going out for a walk, stole down and out unperceived,
and soon gained a secluded path that led into an extensive tract
of woodland.
Stanton brought the doctor promptly, but no patient could be found.
All that could be learned was that "Miss Mayhew had gone for a
walk."
"Her case cannot be very critical," the physician remarked, smilingly;
"I will call again."
Stanton and his aunt looked at each other in a way that proved the
case was beginning to trouble them seriously.
"She knew the doctor would be here," said Mrs. Mayhew.
"I fear her complaint is one that the doctors can't help, and that
she knows it," replied the young man, gloomily. "But you seem to
know less about her than any one else. I shall try to find her."
But he did not succeed.
"Miss Burton," said Van Berg, after dinner, "I wish you would call
on Miss Mayhew. I think she is greatly in need of a little of your
inimitable tact and skill. 'A wounded spirit who can bear?' And
in such an emergency, you are the best surgeon I know of. I think
some of us wounded her deeply and unpardonably by continuing to
associate her with Sibley, after he revealed what an unmitigated
rascal he was. Strong as appearances were against her, I feel that
I cannot forgive myself that I took anything for granted in a case
like that."
"I am glad," she answered, "that you have come to my own conclusion,
that Miss Mayhew, with all her faults, is too good a girl to be
guilty of a passion for a man like Sibley. If she regards him in
any such way as I do, I do not wonder that it has made her ill to
be so misjudged. I must plead guilty also to having wronged her
in my thoughts. While I try to exercise the broadest charity, my
calling, as a teacher, has brought me in contact with many girls
that--through immaturity and innate foolishness--are guilty of
conduct that taxes one's faith in human nature severely. Goodish
sort of girls are sometimes infatuated with very bad men. I suppose
it is evident to all that Miss Mayhew's early and, indeed, present
influences are sadly against her; but unfortunate as have been
her associations of late, I am coming to the belief that, however
faulty she may be, she is not naturally either silly or weak. But
my acquaintance with her is very slight, and I must confess I do
not understand her very well. For some reason she shuns me and
has evidently disliked me from the first."
"I don't understand her at all," said Van Berg, in a tone that
proved him greatly annoyed with himself. "I have thought that I
had sounded the shallow depths of her character several times, and
then some new and perplexing phase would present itself, and put
me all to sea again. It may seem ludicrous to you that her beauty
should irritate me so greatly because of its incongruous associations."
"Not at all," she replied, with a little nod. "I was not long in
discovering that you were a pagan, and that beauty was your divinity."
"Correct in all respects save the divinity," he answered promptly;
and he would have said more, but she passed into the parlor among
the other guests.
Ida found herself too weak and unnerved to walk far, but she
discovered a secluded nook into which the sunlight streamed with a
grateful warmth; for although the day was warm, she shivered with
cold as if the chill in her heart had diffused itself even to her
hands and feet. Dense shrubbery hid her from the path along which
she saw Stanton pass in his fruitless quest.
For a long time she sat in dreary apathy, almost as motionless as
the mossy rock beneath her, and was conscious only of her throbbing
forehead and aching heart. Gradually, however, nature's vital
touch began to revive her. The sunlight warmed and tranquilized
the exquisite form that had been entering its shuddering protest
against the chill and corruption of the grave. The south wind,
laden with fresh woodland odors, fanned her cheeks, and whispered
that there were flowers blooming that she could not see, and that
the future also might reveal joys now hidden and unknown, if she
would only be patient. Every rustling leaf that fluttered in the
gale, but did not fall, called to her with its tiny voice: "Cling
to your place, as we do, till the frost of age or the blight of
disease brings the end in God's own time and way." A partridge with
her brood rustled by along the edge of the forest, and the poor
girl imagined she saw in the parent bird, as she led forward her
plump little bevy, the pride and complacency of a happy motherhood,
which now would never be hers; and from the depths of her woman's
heart came nature's protest. Then her heavy eyes were attracted
by the sport of two gray squirrels that were racing to the top of
one tree, scrambling down another, falling and catching again, and
tumbling over each other in their mad excitement. She felt that,
at her age, their exuberant life and enjoyment should be a type of
her own, but their wild, innocent fun, in contrast with her despair,
became so unendurable that she sprang up and frightened them away.
But after she was quiet they soon returned, barking vociferously,
and sporting with their old abandon. It was not long since they
had left the next in the old hemlock tree, and they were still like
Ida, before she had learned that there was anything in the world
that could harm her. Other wild creatures flew or scampered by,
some stopping to look at her with their bright quick eyes, as if
wondering why she was so still and sad. the woods seemed full of
joyous midsummer life, and Ida sighed:
"Innocent, happy little things; but if they knew what was in my
heart, they would be so frightened they could scarcely creep away
to hide."
Then with a sudden rush of passionate grief, she cried:
"Oh, why cannot I life and be happy, too?" and she sobbed till she
lay exhausted on the mossy rock.
Whether she had swooned, or from weakness had become unconscious,
she did not know, when, considerably later, she roused herself
from what seemed like a heavy and unrefreshing sleep. Her dress
was damp with dew, the sun had sunk so low as to fill the forest
with a sombre shade; the happy life that had sported around her
was hushed and hidden, and the wind now sighed mournfully through
the trees. Gloom and darkening shadows had taken the place of the
light and joyousness she first had seen. In the face and voices
of nature, as in those of earthly friends, the changes are often
so great that we are tempted to ask in dismay, are they--can they
be the same?
She was stiff and cold as she rose from her rocky couch, but she
wearily turned her face towards the hotel, muttering, as she plodded
heavily along,
"The little people of the woods are happy while they can be, as I
was, but the sportsman's gun, or the hawk, or winter's cold, will
soon bring to them bitter pain, and death. their brief day will
soon be over, as mine is."
"Ah, the sun is sinking behind that cloud," she said, in a low tone,
as she came out into the open fields. "I shall not see it again;
it will not be able to warm me to-morrow;" and with a slight gesture
of farewell, she continued on her way with bowed head.