Ida's expression and manner when she came down to breakfast on
Sabbath morning, reminded Miss Burton of the time when the poor
girl believed that the man she loved, both despised and misjudged
her. And yet there was a vital difference. Then she was icy and
defiant; now, with all and more than the old sadness, there was
an aspect of humility and gentleness which had never been seen in
former times, but the woman who should have been so glad to cheer
her and remove all misunderstandings found that she was absolutely
unapproachable except by a sort of social violence of which Jennie
Burton was not capable. Ida's effort--which was but partially
successful--to be brave and even cheerful for her father's sake,
caused Mr. Mayhew more than once to go away by himself in order
to hide his feelings. Mrs. Mayhew became more and more mystified
and uncomfortable. She had enjoyed, in her cold-blooded way, a
tranquil, gossipy week during her daughter's and husband's absence,
but now she felt as if some kind of a domestic convulsion might
occur any moment.
"I don't see why people have to make such a fuss over life," she
complained. "If they would only do what was stylish, proper and
religious they wouldn't have any trouble," and the strong and not
wholly repressed feeling of Ida and her father, of which she was
uncomfortably conscious, seemed to her absurd and uncalled for.
Like the majority of matter-of-fact people, she had no patience
or charity for emotion or deep regret. "Do the proper thing under
the circumstances and let that end the matter," was one of her
favorite sayings.
Stanton learned from Mr. Burleigh that Van Berg had gone on a
mountain tramp, and, when he told Ida, hope whispered to her, "If
he loved Jennie Burton or felt that he could return to her side,
he would not do that after his long absence."
But when he did not return to supper she began to droop and become
pale like a flower growing in too dense a shade. She was glad
when the interminable day came to an end and she could shut herself
away from every one, for there are wounds which the heart would
hide even from the eyes of love and sympathy. It had been arranged
during the day that Mr. Mayhew should find another place at which
to spend his vacation, and that as early in the week as possible
Stanton should take his wife and daughter thither.
When at last poor Ida slept she dreamt that she was sailing on
a beautiful yacht with silver canvas and crimson flags--that Van
Berg stood at her side pointing to a lovely island which they were
rapidly approaching. Then a sudden gust of wind swept her overboard
and she was sinking, sinking till the waters became so cold and
dark that she awoke with a cry of terror. "Oh," she sobbed, "my
dream is true! my dream is true!"
Mr. Mayhew returned to the city in the morning, leaving his daughter
very reluctantly, and Ida, as early as possible, set out again in
the low phaeton to visit Mr. Eltinge, for never before had she felt
a greater need of his counsel and help. Tears came into her eyes
when informed of his absence. "Everything is against me," she
murmured; but she decided to spend some time in the garden before
she returned. She had almost reached the rustic seat when a turn
in the walk revealed that it was occupied. Her first impulse was
to retreat hastily, but observing that Van Berg had not heard her
light step, she hesitated. Then, his attitude of utter dejection
so won her sympathy that she could not leave him without speaking,
for she remembered how sorely in need she once had been of a
reassuring word. Moreover, her heart said, "Speak to him;" hope
cried, "Stay;" and her temptation to win him if possible, right or
wrong, sprang up with tenfold power and whispered: "The man whom
Jennie Burton welcomed so cordially Saturday evening would not
wear this aspect if he had the power to return readily to her side
again." Still she hesitated and found it almost as hard to obtain
words or courage now as when she saw him pulling apart the worm-eaten
rosebud. At last she faltered:
"Mr. Van Berg, are you ill?"
He started to his feet with a dazed look and passed his hand across
his brow--the same gesture she so well remembered seeing him make
at the close of the happy evening he had spent at her home. As he
realized that the maiden before him was flesh and blood, and not
a creation of his morbid fancy, the hot blood rushed swiftly into
his face, and his eyes fell before her.
"Yes, Miss Mayhew, I am," he said, briefly.
"I am very sorry. Can I not do anything for you?" she asked,
kindly.
He looked up at her in strong surprise, and was still more perplexed
by the sympathetic expression of her face, but he only said, "I
regret to say you cannot."
"Mr. Van Berg," said Ida, in tones full of distress, "your words
and appearance pain me exceedingly. You look as if you had been
ill a month. What has happened?" His aspect might trouble one
less interested in him than herself, for his eyes were blood-shot,
and he had become so haggard that she could scarcely realize that
he was the man who but four days previous had compared his hearty
merriment with the "laughter of the gods."
"Miss Mayhew," he said, bitterly and slowly, too, as if he were
carefully choosing his words, "you had a presentiment last Saturday
that some evil was about to happen. As far as I am concerned the
worst has happened. I have lost my self-respect. I have no right
to stand here in your presence. I have no right to be in this
place even. I once tossed away a little flower that had been sadly
marred, through no fault of its own, and as I did so I said in my
pride and self-complacency that its imperfection justified my act.
You understood me too well, and my accursed Phariseeism wounded
your very heart. You afterwards generously forgave my offence and
a worse one, but God is just and I am now punished in the severest
possible way. I perceive now that you do not understand me, or you
could not look and speak so kindly. I thought you had learned me
better, for you spoke words on the boat that pierced my very soul,
revealing me to myself, and later you passed me without a glance.
You were right in both instances. You are wrong now, and i shall
not take advantage of your present ignorance, which circumstances
will soon remove. I repeat it, Miss Mayhew, I have no right to be here
and speaking to you, and yet"--he made a passionate and despairing
gesture, and was about to turn hastily away, when Ida said,
earnestly, with her eyes fixed on his face, as was her instinctive
custom when she sought to learn more from the expression of the
speaker than from his words:
"Mr. Van Berg, before we part, answer me one question. Have you
deliberately and selfishly intended to do wrong, or to wrong any
one?"
"No," he promptly replied meeting, her searching look unhesitatingly.
Then, with an impatient gesture, he added: "But no one will ever
believe it."
"I believe it," she said with a reassuring smile.
"You? You of all others? But you are talking at random, Miss
Mayhew. When you learn the truth you will look and speak very
differently. And you shall learn it now. You once told me of a
wicked and desperate purpose to which you were driven by the wrong
of others. Your sin seems to me a deed of light compared with
the act I have been led to commit, under the guidance of my proud
reason, my superior judgement, my cool, well-balanced nature--infernally
cool it was, indeed! Pardon me, but I am beside myself with rage
and self-loathing. True, I have not been intentionally false,
but there are circumstances in which folly, weakness, and stupid
blundering are nearly as bad, and the results quite as bad. What
can you say of the man who pays open suit and makes a distinct offer
and pledge to a lady, and the retreats from that suit and breaks
that pledge, and through no fault whatever in the lady herself?
What can you say of that man when the lady is a poor and orphaned
girl, whom any one with a spark of honor would shield with his life,
but that he is a base, fickle wretch, who deserves the contempt of
all good men and women, and that he ought to be--as he shall be--a
vagabond on the face of the earth?"
Ida had buried her face in her hands as she learned how thoroughly
Van Berg had committed himself to Miss Burton, and the artist
concluded, abruptly: "One thing is certain, he has no right to be
here. I shall not wait and see your look of scorn, or--worse--of
pity, for I could not endure it," and he snatched up his sketch-book
and was about to hasten from the place, when Ida sprang forward
and said passionately:
"Wait. This is all wrong. Answer me this--when you discovered
the awful crime, which in heart I had already committed, how did
you treat me?"
"Your purpose was wicked, but not base."
"You have not intended to be either base or wicked," she began.
"Hush!" he interrupted sternly, "you shall not palliate my weakness
by smooth words, and to a man, weakness and stupidity, in some
circumstances, are more contemptible than crime. Oh, how I envy
Stanton! His course has been straightforward, noble, regal--I have
acted like one of the 'canaille.'"
"You deeply regret then, that your feelings have so changed towards
Miss Burton?" said Ida, with her eyes again fastened upon his face.
"I do not think my feelings have changed towards her," he replied;
"she is admirable, perfect, and I honor her from the depths of my
heart. Don't you see? I mistook my deep respect, sympathy, and
admiration for something more, and I smiled complacently in my
superior way and flattered myself that it was in this eminently
well-bred and rational manner that Harold Van Berg would pay his
addresses to a lady, and that Stanton's absorbing passion was only
the result of ungoverned, unbalanced nature--accursed prig that I
was! While in this very complacent and superior condition of mind
I committed myself to a course that I cannot carry out, and yet
my failure to do so slays my honor and self-respect. Now, I have
been as explicit with you as you were with me, and with what you
have seen of yourself, you know the whole miserable truth. By a
strange fate we who only met a few months since have come to share
a common, very sad knowledge. The memory of your own past, and
I suppose, your Christian faith also, have made you very merciful
and generous, but I shall tax these qualities no further."
"What will you do, Mr. Van Berg?" Ida asked in sudden dread.
"I shall never look Miss Burton in the face again, and after I have
written to her simply and briefly what I have told you, her regret
will be small indeed. Good-by, Miss Mayhew. If I stay any longer
I may speak words to you that would be insults, coming from me."
"Stay," she said, earnestly, "I have something very important to
say to you."
He hesitated and looked at her in strong surprise.
"Give me a few minutes to think," she pleaded, and he saw, from the
quick rise and fall of her bosom and the nervous clasp of her hands,
that she was deeply agitated. She turned from him and looked
wistfully at the young tree on which she had inscribed her name the
day she had promised Mr. Eltinge to receive all heavenly influences
and guidance. She soon lifted her eyes above the tree and her lips
moved in earnest prayer as ever came from a human heart. She was
facing the sorest temptation of her life, for she had only to be
silent now, she believed, and the success of her efforts to win
him from Jennie Burton would be complete. If left to himself in
this wild, distracted mood he would indeed break every tie that
bound him to her rival; but after time had blunted his poignant
self-condemnation he would inevitably come back to her. The
conscience whispered: "Who forgave you here? What did you promise
here? What does that tree mean with its branches reaching out
towards heaven? What would you think of Jennie Burton were she
trying to win him from you?"
"O Friend of the weak! be though my strength in this moment of
desperate need," she sighed.
Van Berg watched her with increasing wonder, and his heart beat
thick and fast as she at last turned to him with an expression such
as he never had seen before on a human face. Was it the autumn
sunlight that illumined her features? He learned eventually that
it was the spiritual radiance of the noblest self-sacrifice of
which a woman is capable.
"Mr. Van Berg," she said, in tones that were quiet and firm, "please
take Mr. Eltinge's seat, for I wish to speak to you as a friend."
He obeyed mechanically, without removing his eyes from her face.
"I once took counsel of passion and despair," she resumed, "and you
know what might have resulted, but on this spot God forgave me and
I promised to try to do right. With shame I confess I have not
fully kept that promise, but I shall try to do so hereafter, be
the consequences what they may. Pardon me for speaking so plainly,
but you are now taking counsel of passion and turning your back
on duty. While almost insane from self-reproach and wounded pride
you are taking steps that may blast your own life and the lives
of others. To my mind there is an infinite distance between the
error you naturally fell into in view of Miss Burton's loveliness
of character and any base intent, but even if I should share in
your harsh judgement--which I never can--I would still say that you
cannot help the past, and you are now bound by all that's sacred to
ask only what is right, and to do that at every cost to yourself.
You are pledged to Miss Burton, and you must make good your pledge."
"What! I go to that snow-white maiden with a lie on my lips!" he
exclaimed indignantly.
"No! go to her with truth on your lips and in your heart, except
as in unselfish loyalty to her and to your word you may hide some
truth that would give her pain. Mr. Van Berg, you word is pledged.
You have won her love and this is your only honorable course. Thus
far you have not done her intentional wrong, but if you rush away
from duty now in cowardly flight you will do her a bitter and fatal
wrong, for she loves you as only few women can love. She has grown
wan and pale in your absence, and it touched me to the heart to see
her yesterday, though she made such brave efforts to be cheerful
and to encourage father. O God, forgive me that I--Go to her when
you have become calm--your true self. Love like hers will take
what you can give till you can give more, and surely one so lovely
will soon win all. If ever I have seen human idolatry in any face
it has been in hers, and she will soon banish all this wild passion
from your mind. But be that as it may you must keep your word if
you would keep my respect, and I would not lose my respect for you
for the world. I know you too well to doubt but that you will take
up this sacred duty and seek to perform it with the whole strength
of your manhood."
Never for a moment had Van Berg removed his eyes from Ida's face,
and her words and manner seemed both to awe and control him. As
she spoke, his expression became quiet and strong, and when she
concluded he came to her side and said earnestly:
"Miss Mayhew, since it is still possible, I will keep your respect,
for it is absolutely essential to me. God has indeed given you a
woman's soul, and he NEVER MADE A NOBLER WOMAN. You are a friend
in truth and not in name, and you have saved me from madly destroying
my own future, and perhaps the future of others, which is of far
more consequence. If I fail in obeying both the letter and spirit
of your words it will be because I cannot help myself."
Her face, which had been so sweet and luminous with her generous
impulse and noble thoughts, was growing very pale now, but she
rose and gave him her hand, saying with a faint smile that was like
the fading light of evening, "I knew you would not disappoint me;
I was sure you were worthy of my trust. Let the honest right be
our motto henceforth, and all will be well some day. Good-by."
He pressed her hand in both of his as he said fervently, "God bless
you, Ida Mayhew!" Then he turned and hastened away, flying from
his own weakness and a womanly loveliness which at the moment far
excelled any ideal he had ever formed.
He had scarcely reached the road before he remembered that he had
left his sketch-book, and he went back for it, but as he turned
the corner of the shady path he stopped instantly. The strong,
clear-eyed maiden who had rallied the forces of his shattered
manhood, and given him the vantage-ground again in life's battle,
had bowed her head on the arm of the rustic seat and was sobbing
convulsively. Indeed, her grief was so uncontrollable and passionate
that in his very soul he trembled before it.
"Oh, Jennie Burton," she moaned, "it would have been easier for
me to die for you than to give him up. God help him--God help me
through the dreadful years to come!"
His first impulse was to spring to her side, but he hesitated,
and then with a gesture and look of infinite regret he turned and
stole silently away.