As Ida approached the hotel, Van Berg and Stanton saw her, and the latter hastened down the steps to join her.
"Why, Ida!" he exclaimed, "where have you been? I've searched for you high and low."
"You had no right to do so, sir," she said coldly, as she passed on.
"Wait a moment, Ida, please. I wish to speak with you—to ask your pardon—to apologize in the strongest terms."
She would not break again her ominous silence, but continued on with bowed head, up the steps, and through the hall. Stanton, to save appearances before the guests who were near, walked at her side, but her manner chilled and embarrassed him so greatly, that only as she was about to enter her room did he again address her, and now entreatingly:
"Ida, won't you speak to me?"
"No!" was her stern, brief response; and she locked her door against him.
"Van," said Stanton gloomily, "I'd give a year's income if I had not spoken to my cousin as I did last night. She'll never forgive me. It seems as if my words had turned her into ice, she is so cold and calm; and yet her eyes were red with weeping. I have strange misgivings about the girl."
"Yes, Ik," said the artist, gloomily, "we have both made an unpardonable blunder. If Miss Burton cannot thaw her out, I shall not dare to try."
"With her usual perversity," replied Stanton, "she dislikes MissBurton, and I doubt if she will listen to her."
"I have great faith in her tact and genuine goodwill. It was wonderful how quickly she brought Mr. Mayhew under her genial spells. She has promised to see your cousin this evening."
"I'm sorry," said Stanton, gloomily, "that it should have been at your request rather than mine. But I suppose your wishes are becoming omnipotent with her."
"No, Ik; I regret to say that they weigh with her only as those of a friend," was Van Berg's quiet response.
"Well, well, Van, bear with me, for I'm in a devil of a scrape."
Even Miss Burton's efforts could not brighten the clouded faces that gathered at the supper-table. In truth, her attempts were brief and fitful, for she seemed absorbed in thought herself. She heard Mrs. Mayhew whisper to Stanton,
"If I were a perfect stranger she could not keep me at a greater distance. I can do nothing with her or for her."
To their surprise, Ida quietly walked in and took her place. Her face was very grave and very pale; the traces of her grief were still apparent, and they caused in Van Berg the severest compunction. She was now dressed richly, but plainly and unobtrusively. Her manner was quiet and self-possessed, but there was an expression of desperate trouble in her eyes that soon filled Van Berg with a strong and increasing uneasiness. She returned his bow politely, but distantly. Poor Stanton scarcely dared to look towards her. At supper, on the previous evening, he had taken no pains to conceal his contempt and displeasure; now he was unable to hid his embarrassment and fear. As in the parlor on the previous evening so now again, there was an element in Ida Mayhew's appearance or in herself that caused deep disquietude.
"I'm very glad, Ida, you've changed your mind and come down," beganMrs. Mayhew, volubly.
"I have not changed my mind," she replied, with such sad, stern emphasis that they all involuntarily looked at her for a moment.
Poor Mrs. Mayhew was so quenched and depressed that she did not venture to speak again.
Only Miss Burton was able to maintain her self-possession and tact, and she was intently but unobtrusively studying Miss Mayhew. Her college-life had made her acquainted with so many strange feminine problems that she had the nerve and experience of a veteran, but she could not penetrate the dark mystery in which Ida had now shrouded herself. Resolving, however, that she would not succumb to the chill and restraint that paralyzed the others, she persisted in conversing with her in simple, natural tones.
Ida replied in perfect courtesy and not with unnecessary brevity, but if her words were polished, they were also as cold and hard as ice. Nothing that Miss Burton said could bring the glimmer of a smile athwart her features that were growing so thin and transparent that even an approach to a pleasant thought would have lighted them up with a momentary gleam. Miss Burton found her task a difficult one.
"She affected me as strangely," she afterwards said to Van Berg, "as if a dead maiden were sitting at my side, who had still, by some horrible mystery, the power of speech."
As for Van Berg, he had hitherto supposed that his quiet, well-bred ease would be equal to every social emergency, but he now found himself tongue-tied and embarrassed to the last degree. He could not speak to the woman whom he felt he had so deeply wronged in his thoughts and manner, and who was also well aware of the fact. He felt that he had no right to speak to her until he had first asked and secured her forgiveness. This could not be done in public, and he greatly doubted whether she ever would pardon him. As a chivalric man of honor, he was overwhelmed with a sense of the insult he had unwittingly offered to the maiden opposite him, who now appeared as if mortally wounded. Beyond a few forced remarks to Stanton and Miss Burton, he made a show of eating his supper in silence. But he longed to escape from his present ordeal, and resolved to leave the table as soon as appearances permitted.
One thing in Ida's manner perplexed him greatly. She now looked at him as if he were an object, scrupling not to meet his eye with her strange, unwavering gaze. There was nothing of the haughty indifference which she had manifested the evening before in her occasional glances. She rather looked as one who is trying to fix an object in his memory that he may carry an accurate picture of it away with him.
The thought crossed his mind more than once, "We have wakened our Undine's sleeping mind with a vengeance, but have jostled it so rudely that I fear the frail article is hopelessly shattered."
Miss Burton tried once more to make the conversation general, but her effort ended rather disastrously.
"Mr. Van Berg," she said, "I've been reading an essay this afternoon in which the writer tries to prove that science has done more for humanity than art and religion combined. Now I suppose you would be inclined to take the same ground in regard to art that I ought in respect to religion."
Van Berg was about to reply, when his attention was caught by a vivid gleam in the face of Ida, who looked up as if she wished to speak.
"I think Miss Mayhew has an opinion on this subject," he said, with a bow.
She looked steadily at him as she replied promptly, "I have a decided opinion, though I base it on such poor and narrow grounds as personal experience. I think art is by far the most potent. It has accomplished for me much more than science or religion ever did, or could."
"What has it done for you, Miss Mayhew?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"It has filled me with despair," she replied with a glance and tone which he never afterwards forgot. Then, with the same cold, quiet manner in which she had come, she left the table.
Van Berg turned very pale, for he at once understood her reference to the emblematic rose-bud he had thrown away, and his remark, "Art can tolerate no such imperfection."
Her words and manner hopelessly perplexed the others, but Van Berg believed he had found light on the problem that had hitherto baffled him, but so far from being reassured, he had never been at such bitter odds with himself before.
He also soon after left the table, hoping to find an opportunity to express his regret that he had been so harsh by prejudice; but Miss Mayhew was not to be found.
"Can it be," he thought, as he strode off into the shrubbery, "that I have been blind to the very effects that I hoped to cause? Can it be that she has been made to feel her imperfection so keenly, and in such a way as to create only utter discouragement? She evidently understands the worm-eaten rose-bud I tossed away to be the emblem of herself. Oh, the curse of Phariseeism—the 'holier than thou' business, whatever form it takes. It has made an egregious fool of me."
"But her relations with Sibley, confound it all! I can't understand them. Why did she associate with him so constantly, and then say, 'Congenial society, or none at all'? Seems to me she ought to have seen what he was before he showed his cloven feet so plainly. Well, perhaps the most rational as well as charitable explanation is that her eyes were opened to see him in his true colors, as well as herself. Had Titania's eyes been disenchanted when she was fondling the immortal Weaver, she might have perished with disgust; and it is scarcely strange that Miss Mayhew should be ill on finding that she was infatuated with a man who was both ass and villain. She evidently sees things now as they are, and since her vision has become so good, I am very sorry I do not appear to better advantage. People who stalk along through life with elevated noses, are not pleasing or edifying spectacles."
His disquietude soon caused him to return to the hotel, in hopes of seeing the object of his thoughts.
He had hardly reached the piazza before Ida appeared, dressed in a plain walking suit. She hesitated a moment in the door-way as if undecided in her course. A party of gay young people were just starting on a stroll to a neighboring village. With apparent hesitancy, she said to one of the young girls:
"I have an errand to the village; may I walk with you for company?"
"Oh, certainly," replied the girl, but evidently not welcoming this addition to their party, and Ida went away with them, but not as one of them, isolated more, however, by her own manner than by the bearing of her companions.
The explanation of her action was this: on opening her drawer after returning to her room, she found, with a sense of dismay—as if a misfortune had occurred instead of an incident that gave a chance for better thought—that in taking the opiate the night before, she had replaced the cork in the phial insecurely, and that nearly all its contents had oozed away. Some might have regarded this incident as an omen or a providential interference; but Ida was neither superstitious nor speculative in her nature; she was positive and willful, rather, and the current of her purposes always flowed strongly, though it might be in narrow channels.
"There is nothing left for me to do," she muttered, "but go to the village. I don't know whether Mr. Burleigh has laudanum, and my asking for it might excite suspicion."
It was terrible to see her fair young face grow hard like marble in her stern determination to carry out her awful design, and the impress of this remorseless purpose filled Van Berg with so great foreboding that he could not resist the impulse to follow the desperate girl. If harm should come to her through the harshness of others, and as he now feared, more especially his own, he would never forgive himself.
Mrs. Mayhew and Stanton did not see her departure—they were in anxious consultation in one of the small private parlors, and the artist, to disarm suspicion of his design, entered the hotel, and passed out again by a side door, from which he took a short-cut across the field intending to watch Ida, without being himself observed.
Having found some dense copse-wood by the road-side, and near to the village, he sat down and waited. The gay, chattering party soon passed, Ida walking by herself on the opposite side of the road, with head bowed as if wholly wrapped in her own thoughts. Her unhappy face appealed to his sympathy even more than her graceful carriage to his sense of beauty, and he longed to join her and make such amends as were possible.
He now followed at too great a distance for recognition in the deepening twilight, and saw the young people enter a confectionery shop, but observed, with increased uneasiness, that Miss Mayhew parted from them and went to an adjacent drug-store. She soon joined the party again, however, and they all apparently started homeward.
Van Berg at once determined to go to this drug-store and learn, if possible, if there were anything to confirm the horrible suspicion that crossed his mind. He remembered that despair and desperate deeds often went together, and the daily press had taught him how many people, with warped and ungoverned moral natures, place their troubles beyond remedy by the supreme folly of self-destruction.
By a considerable detour through a side street, he reached the store unperceived, and found the druggist rather disquieted himself.
"Are you staying at Burleigh's?" he asked.
"I am," Van Berg replied.
"Do you know a young lady boarding there with large dark eyes and auburn hair?"
"I do."
"Is there—is there anything wrong about her?"
"Why should there be? Why do you ask?"
"She has just been in here, and she looked sick and strangely, and all she wanted was a large phial of laudanum. Somehow her looks and purchase have made me uneasy. I never saw so white a face in my life, and she seemed weak and very tired. If she's sick, how comes it she's walking to the village? Besides, she seemed to have very little to do with the party she joined after leaving here."
Van Berg controlled himself only by a powerful effort, and was very glad that the brim of his soft hat concealed the pallor of his own face. He managed to say quietly:
"The young lady you describe has not been well, and has probably found the walk longer and more wearisome than she supposed. As for the laudanum, that's used in many ways. Some cigars, if you please—thank you. I'll join the lady and see that she reaches home safely," and he hastily left the store and walked swiftly away.
"He wouldn't go as fast as that if he wasn't a little uneasy, too," muttered the druggist, whose dearth of business gave him abundant leisure to see all that was going on, and to imagine much more.
Van Berg determined to overtake Ida before she reached the hotel, and his strides were as long and swift as mortal dread could make them.
In the meantime, while the artist was making the detour necessary to reach the drug-store without meeting Ida, she and her companions had started homeward. As they approached a church on the outskirts of the village, the bell in the steeple commenced tolling.
"What's that for?" asked a young man of the party of a plain, farmer-like appearing man, who was just about to enter.
"For prayer-meetin'," was the good-natured reply. "It wouldn't hurt you to come to it;" and the speaker passed into the lecture-room.
"I call this frivolous assemblage to order," cried the youth, turning around to his companions. "If any one of our number has ever attended a prayer-meeting, let him hold up his right hand. I use the masculine pronoun, because the man always embraces the woman—when he gets a chance."
No hands were held up.
"Heathen, every mother's son of us," cried the first speaker. "The daughters are angels, of course, and don't need to go to prayer-meetin', as he of the cowhide sandals just termed it. But for the novelty of the thing, and for the want of something better to do, I move that we all go to-night. If it should be borous, why, we can come out."
The proposition pleased the fancy of the party, and with gay words and laughter that scarcely ceased at the vestibule, they entered the place of prayer and lighted down among the sober-visaged, soberly-dressed worshippers like a flock of tropical birds.
Ida reluctantly followed them. At first she half decided to walk home alone, but feared to do so. She who had resolved on facing the "King of Terrors" shrank, with a woman's instinct, from a lonely walk in the starlight.
She sat in dreary preoccupation a little apart from the others and paid no more heed to the opening services than to their ill-concealed merriment.
the minister was away on his August vacation. Prayer-meetings were out of season, and very few were present. The plain farmer was trying to conduct the service as well as he could, but it was evident he would have been much more at ease holding the handle of a plow or the reins of his rattling team, than a hymn-book. Dr. Watts and John Wesley might have lost some of their heavenly serenity could they have heard him read their verses, and certainly only a long-suffering and merciful God could listen to his prayer. And yet rarely on the battle-field is there more moral courage displayed than plain Thomas Smith put forth that night in his conscientious effort to perform an unwonted task; and when at last he sat down and said, "Bruthren, the meetin' is now open," he was more exhausted than he than he would have been from a long day of toil.
"The Lord looketh at the heart" is a truth that chills many with dread, but it was a precious thought to Farmer Smith as he saw that his fellow church members did not look very appreciative, and that the gay young city-people often giggled outright at his uncouth words and manner.
Ida would have been as greatly amused as any of them a few weeks since, but now she scarcely heard the poor man's stumblings, or the wailing of the hymns that were mangled anew by the people. She sat with her eyes fixed on vacancy, thinking how dreary and empty the world had become; and it seemed to her that religion was the most dreary and empty thing in it.
"What good can this wretched little meeting do any one?" she thought, more than once.
She was answered.
Near her was a very old man who had been regarding the ill-behaved party with an expression of mingled displeasure and pity. Now that the meeting was open to all he rose slowly to his feet, steadying himself with his cane.
"He looks like the Ancient Mariner," giggled an exceedingly immature youth, who sat next to Ida.
She turned upon him sharply and said, in a low tone, "If you have the faintest instincts of a gentleman you will respect that venerable man."
The youth was so effectually quenched that he bore the aspect of a turnip-beet during the remainder of the service.
"My young friends," began the old main in tones of gentle dignity, "will you listen patiently and quietly to one that you see will not have the chance to speak many more words. My eyes are a little dim, but you all appear young and happy; and yet I am sorry for you, very sorry for you. You don't realize what you are and what is before you. You remind me of a number of pleasure boats just starting out to sea. I have been across this ocean, and have almost reached the other shore. I know what terrible storms and dangers you will meet. You can't escape these storms, my young friends. No one can, and you don't seem prepared to meet them.
"Your manner has pained me very much, and yet, as my Master said, so I have felt, you 'know not what you do.' There is a Kingly Presence in this place that you have not recognized. Do you not remember who it was that said, 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them'?
"I am very old, but my memory is good. It seems but a short time ago that I was as young thoughtless as any one of you, and yet it was seventy years ago. I have tested the friendship of Jesus Christ for over half a century. Have I not then a right to speak of it? Ought I not to know something about him?
"Do you ask me if my Master has kept me from trouble and suffering all these years? Far from it. Indeed, I think he has caused me a good deal of trouble and pain in addition to that which I brought on myself by my own folly and mistakes; but I now see that he caused it only as the good physician gives pain, in order to make the patient strong and well. But one thing is certainly true. He has stood by me as a faithful friend all these years, and has brought good to me out of all the evil. I have been in sore temptations and deep discouragement. My heart at times has seemed breaking with sorrow. Mine has been the common lot. But when the storm was loudest and most terrible, his hand was on the helm, and now I am entering the quiet harbor. There has been much that was dark and hard to understand; there is much still; but there is plenty to prove that my Heavenly Father is leading me home as a little child.
"It is a precious, blessed truth that I wish to bring you fact to face with to-night, and yet it may become a very sad and terrible truth, if you shut your eyes to it now and remember it only when it is too late. I wish to assure you, on the ground of simple, down-right experience, through all these years, that God's 'unspeakable gift,' his only Son, is just what our poor human nature needs. Jesus Christ 'is able to save them ot the uttermost that come to God by him.' He helps us overcome that awful disease—sin. He brings to our unhappy hearts immortal life and health. I know it as I know that I exist. He has helped me when and where there was no human help. I have often seen his redeeming work in the lives of other faulty, sinful people like myself.
"The question therefore which you must each decide is not whether you will believe this or that doctrine, or do what this or that man teaches. The question is this:—Here is a tender, merciful, Divine Friend. He offers to lead you safely through all the dangers and hard places in this world, as a shepherd leads his flock through the wilderness. Will you follow him, or will you remain in the wilderness and perish when the night comes, as it surely will? If you will follow him as well as you can, he'll bring you to a happy and eternal home. Thanks to his patient kindness which never falters, he has brough me almost there.
"And now, my young friends, beat with an old man, and let me say, in conclusion, that you all need the kind, patient, faithful Friend that I found so long ago. No evil, no misfortune can come into any human life that is beyond his power to remedy and finally banish forever. I you have not found this Friend, this Life-giver, I am younger and happier than you are to-day, although I am eighty-eight years old."
Once before a rash, despairing man lifted his hand against his life, but God's message to him, through his apostle, was, "Do thyself no harm." And now again a faithful servant, speaking for him whose coming was God's supreme expression of good-will towards men, had brought a like merciful message to another poor soul that had taken counsel of despair. Ida Mayhew might learn, as did the jailer of Philippi, that God has a better remedy than death for seemingly irretrievable disasters.
The old gentleman's words came home to her with such a force of personal application that she was deeply moved, and even awed. They seemed like a divine message—nay more, like a restraining hand. "How strange it was," she thought, that she had come to this place!—how strange that a serene old, man, with heaven's peace already on his brow, should have uttered the words best adapted to her desperate need. If he had spoken of duty, obligation, of truth in the abstract, his tones would have been like the sound of a wintry wind. But he had spoken of a Friend, as tender, patient, and helpful as he was powerful. What was far more, he spoke with the strong convincing confidence of personal knowledge. He had tried this Friend through all the vicissitudes of over half a century, and found him true. Could human assurance—could human testimony go farther? Deep in her heart she was conscious that hope was reviving again—that the end had not yet come.
The gay young party, touched and subdued, passed out quietly with the others. But Ida lingered.
"Who is that old gentleman?" she asked of a lady near her.
"That is Mr. Eltinge—Mr. James Eltinge," was the reply.
Ida passed slowly towards the door, looking wistfully back at the old man, who stopped to greet cheerily one and another.
"No one need be afraid to speak to him," she thought. "His every look and tone show him to be kind and sincere. I'll see him before—before"—she shuddered, and scarcely dared to put her dark purpose in thought in the presence of one who had lived patiently at God's will for nearly a century.
She stepped out into the night and watched for his coming. In a moment or two the old gentleman also passed out, and stood waiting for his carriage.
Timidly approaching him, she said, "Mr. Eltinge, may I speak with you?"
He stepped with her a little aside from the others.
"Mr. Eltinge," she continued, in a voice that trembled and was broken by her feeling, "I am one of the young people you spoke to this evening. I'm in trouble—deep trouble. I want such a Friend as you described to-night."
He took her hand and said, in a hearty voice, "God bless you, my child. He wants you more than you want him."
"May I come and see you to-morrow morning?" asked Ida, hurriedly, for his tones of kindness, for which her heart was famishing, were fast breaking down her self-control.
"I'll come and see you," was his prompt and cordial response.
"No," she faltered, "let it be as I wish. Please tell me where to find you."
As he finished directing her, she stooped down and kissed his hand, and then vanished in the darkness.
"Perhaps I'm not yet a cumberer of the ground," murmured the old man, wiping a sudden moisture from his eyes.
Ida found the party, on whose companionship she had in a measure forced herself, waiting and calling for her. The words of the old gentleman had inspired them with kinder and more considerate feeling.
"I'm coming," she answered; "don't wait for me, I'll keep near you."
As they had already observed her evident wish to be left to herself, they complied with her request.
The icy calm of her despair was now broken.
"God bless him for his kindness!" she murmured, and "God bless him for his hearty, hopeful words; they may save me yet," and she followed the others, crying softly to herself like a little child. It would seem as if every warm tear fell on her heart, that had been so hard and desperate before, so rapidly did it melt at the thought of the old man's kindness.
But before she reached the hotel she began to grow excessively weary. She had not only overtaxed her powers of endurance, but had over-estimated them.
At last, as she was about to ask her companions to walk more slowly, lest she should be left alone by the roadside in her weakness, she heard the sound of strong, rapid steps.
"Where is Miss Mayhew?" was the anxious query of a voice that made her heart bound and color come into her face, even at the moment of almost mortal weakness and weariness.
"Here is Miss Mayhew," said one of the half-grown youths. "She prefers to walk by herself, it seems."
"Thank you," replied Van Berg, decisively. "I will see her safely home;" and the part went on, leaving him face to face with the maiden whom he now believed he had very greatly wronged, and who, he feared might yet proved herself capable of a terrible crime.
She stood before him with bowed head. In her weakness and agitation she trembled so violently that even in the starlight he could not help seeing her distress, and it filled him at once with pity and alarm.
"You are ill, Miss Mayhew," he said, anxiously.
"Yes," she answered; then, conscious of her growing need, she said, appealingly, "Mr. Van Berg, with all my faults I am at least a woman. Please help me home. I'm so weak and weary that I'm almost ready to faint."
He seized her hand and faltered hoarsely, "Miss Mayhew, you have not—you have not taken that drug—-"
She was so vividly conscious of her own dark secret, and so impressed by his power to discover all the evil in her nature, that she replied in a low tone,
"Hush. I understand you. Not yet."
"Thank God!" he ejaculated, with such a deep sigh of relief that she looked at him in surprise. The he drew her hand within his arm, and weary as she was, she could not help noting that it trembled as if he had an ague.
For a few moments they walked on without speaking. Then the artist addressed her.
"Miss Mayhew—-"
"Mr. Van Berg," she said, hastily interrupting him. "Spare me to-night. I'm too weary even to think."
Again they walked on in silence, but his agitation was evidently increasing.
"Let me enter by that side door, please," she said as they approached the hotel.
"Miss Mayhew," he began in a low, hurried tone, "I must speak. You said you were a woman. As such I appeal to you. A woman may, at times, have no pity on herself, but it rarely happens that she is pitiless towards others, and it is said that she is often the most generous and merciful towards those who have wronged her. I have wronged you cruelly and unpardonably. I knew it as soon as you entered the parlor last evening. There is no excuse for me—I will never forgive myself, but I do most sincerely apologize and ask your forgiveness. Miss Mayhew, I appeal to your generosity—I appeal to your woman's heart. If you should consummate the awful purpose which I fear has been in your mind, I should go mad with remorse. You would destroy me as surely as yourself. Pardon me for speaking thus, but I fear so greatly—O God! can she have already committed the fatal act?"
Ida's overtaxed powers had given way, and she would have fallen had he not sustained her. His words had overwhelmed her, and, taken in connection with those spoken by old Mr. Eltinge, had given a glimpse of the awful abyss into which she had well nigh plunged, dragging others, perhaps, after her. She recoiled from it all so strongly that she became sick and faint from dread; and Van Berg was compelled to support her to a rustic seat near the path. He was bout to leave her in order to obtain assistance, when she put her hand on his arm and gasped:
"Wait—give me time—I'll soon be better. Do not call any one, I beg."
"Let me quietly bring you a little wine, then, from my own room?"
She bowed her assent.
The stimulant soon revived her. He stood at her side waiting with intense anxiety till she should speak. At last she rose slowly and weakly, saying in a low tone:
"Mr. Van Berg, I suppose I have now reached the lowest depth in your estimation, but I cannot help it. I admit that I was in an awful and desperate mood, and was about to act accordingly. There is no use of trying to hid anything from you. But a good man spoke kindly to me to-night, and the black spell is broken. There is the drug I purchased," and she handed him the phial of laudanum. "You many now dismiss all fears. I will explain further another time if you care to hear. Please let me go in by myself."
"Pardon me for saying, no," he answered, gently. "I think I am best able to-night to judge of what is right. You must go in at the main entrance, and on my arm. Henceforward I shall treat you with respect, and I intend that all others shall also."
With a low sob, she said, impulsively: "Oh, Mr. Van Berg, forgive me! but that was my motive. I meant to compel your respect; and I thought there was no other way. I thought that if I went to my grave, instead of going to the man who attempted your life, you would see that you had misjudged me. Here is a letter which I wrote you. It should go with the poison. It is all that I can offer in excuse or extenuation."
"Good God!" he exclaimed. "I have escaped a worse fate than yours would have been," and she felt his arm again trembling violently beneath her hand.
"I did not think you would care so greatly," she murmured.
"Miss Mayhew," he said, in a deep voice, "promise me, before God, that you will never harbor such a thought again."
"I hope I never may," she replied, despondently, "but I've lost all confidence in myself, Mr. Van Berg."
"Poor child! What a brute I've been," he muttered; but she heard him.
As the mounted the piazza, they met Stanton and Mrs. Mayhew.
"Why, Ida," exclaimed her mother, "I thought you were in your room."
"I walked to the village with a party of young people," was her hasty reply, "and Mr. Van Berg met me on our return. I'm very tired. Good-night," and she went directly to her room.
The artist's manner in parting was polite and respectful, and by this simple act, he did much to reinstate her in the social position she had well nigh lost, through her supposed infatuation with the man who was now a synonym in the house for everything that was vile.
On the following day, through the aid of Miss Burton, he caused the impression to be generally given that Miss Mayhew had been exceedingly mortified that she had ever associated with such a villain as Sibley had shown himself to be, and still more pained to think that she should be imagined capable of any other feeling save contempt for him, after learning of his disgraceful words and actions. These explanations gave an entirely new aspect to the matter, and sufficiently accounted for her increasing indisposition and rather odd behavior. Indeed, people placed it to her credit that she was so deeply affected, and were all the more inclined to make amends for having misjudged her.
Mrs. Mayhew accompanied her daughter to her room, but Ida told her that she was too weary to answer a single question, and that she wished to be alone.
"Van, may I speak with you?" Stanton had asked, anxiously.
When they were sufficiently far from the house to ensure privacy he began again: "Van, what's the matter? You were as white as if you had seen a ghost."
"I'm not afraid of ghosts," said the artist, almost sternly, "but there are things which I mortally fear, and chief among these are blunders—stupid, irrational acts, but involving results that may be beyond remedy. You and I have just made one that might have cost us dear. Of course you will treat your cousin hereafter as you please, but I most decidedly request that you do and say nothing that involves any reference to me. I wish her to form her opinions of my attitude towards her solely from her own observation."
"I think you are a trifle severe, but I suppose I deserve it," saidStanton, stiffly.
"I admit that I am strongly moved. I do not excuse myself in the least; and yet you know I was misled. I must tell you plainly that Ida Mayhew is not a girl to be trifled with. I fear her mother wholly fails in understanding her, and from what you yourself have told me of her father, she has no help there. She has no brother, and you should take the place of one, as far as possible. The only right I have to speak thus is on the ground of the great wrong I have done her, and for which I can never forgive myself. Miss Mayhew and I are comparative strangers and our brief summer sojourn here will soon be over. By mere accident facts have come to my knowledge to-night which prove in the most emphatic manner, that she requires kind, unobtrusive, but vigilant care. I never knew of a girl who needed a brother more than she. She is not bad at heart—far from it, but she is fearfully rash, and she is warped by education, or its lack, and by the vile literature she has read, to such a degree that she cannot see things in their true moral aspects. I'll give you a plain hint, and then you must not ask me anything further, for both you and I must be able to say that the history of my last interview was never given. My hint is this—I do not believe that self-destruction ever appeared to Miss Mayhew as an awful and revolting crime. Her actual life, hitherto, has been a round of frivolity. Only on the stage or in the absurd woes of her stilted heroes and heroines, has she given any attention to the sad and serious side of life. Men and women committing suicide to slow music is the chief stock in trade in some quarters, and when serious trouble came to her this devil's comedy had been robbed of its horror by the clap-trap of stage effect. That is the only way in which I can account for it all or excuse her. But the fact that she recoiled from Sibley so strongly and felt the disgrace of her association so keenly, proves that she possesses a true woman's nature. But, as I said, she needs a brother's care. You are nearest of kin, Stanton, and you must give it. Indeed, Ik, pardon the freedom of an old friend whom circumstances have strangely mixed up in this affair, I think you are honor-bound to give this brother's protection; and you ARE a man of honor if you pass your word."
"Do you—do you think there is still any danger that she will—-"
"No; the danger is passed for this occasion; but you must guard her from deep despondency or strong provocation in the future."
"The task you require is a difficult one. I doubt whether she ever forgives me even."
"I think she will. I have also learned to-night that genuine kindness and sympathy have great weight with her. Pledge me your word that you will do the best you can."
"Well, Van, I suppose I ought—I will. But your words have quite unnerved me."
"Unnerved! I'm worse than that. I feel as if I had passed through a month's illness. Never breathe a whisper of all this to any one. Good-night." And he strode away in the darkness.
Having reached a secluded spot, he ground the phial of laudanum that Ida had given him under his heel with the vindictiveness with which he would stamp out the life of a poisonous reptile.
Then he returned to his room and took out Ida's letter, but his hands trembled so that he could scarcely open it. As he read, they trembled still more, and his face became almost ashen in its hue. He was so appalled at what might have happened that his heart seemed for a second to cease its pulsations.
"Great God!" he said, in a hoarse whisper—"what an escape I've had!"
Hour after hour passed, but he sat motionless, staring at the abyss into which he had almost stumbled.
The song of a bird without reminded him that morning was near. He drew the curtain and saw that the dawn was reddening the sky.
"Thank God," he cried, fervently, "for the escape we both have had!"
Then, in order to throw off the horrible nightmare that had oppressed him, he stole quietly out into the fresh, cool, dewy air.
Van Berg knew that the word "discouragement" was in the dictionary, and he supposed he understood its meaning, but Ida Mayhew's farewell letter proved to him that he was mistaken. There are some things we never learn until taught by the severe logic of events and experience. There had been nothing in his own history or character that enabled him to realize the dreary sinking of heart—the paralyzing despondency of those who believe or fear that they have been defeated and thwarted in life. Through the weaknesses and dangers of early life he had been shielded with loving vigilance. His mind and taste had been fostered with untiring care, and yet every new development praised as unstintedly as if all were of native growth. Fortunately he abounded in virile force and good sense, and so gradually passed from self-complacency and conceit to the self-reliance and courage of a strong man, who, while aware of his ability and vantage-ground, also recognizes the fact that nothing can take the place of skillfully directed industry in well-defined directions. The confidence that had been created by the favorable conditions of his lot had been increased far more by the knowledge that he could go out into the world and hold his own among men on the common ground of hard work and innate strength. He expected esteem, respectful courtesy—and even admiration—as a matter of course. They were in part his birthright and partly the result of his own achievement, and he received them as quietly as his customary income. Their presence was like his excellent health, to which he scarcely gave a thought, but their withdrawal would have affected him keenly, although he had never considered the possibility of such a thing.
What in him was confidence and self-reliance had been in Ida little else than vanity and pride, and these, circumstances had enabled him to wound unto death. He had, from the first, calmly and philosophically recognized the fact that he must break down, in part, the Chinese wall of her self-approval, before any elevating ideas and ennobling impulses could enter, and as much through unforeseen events as by his effort, this had been done to a degree that threatened results that appalled him. He had been taught thoroughly that faulty and ignorant as she undoubtedly was, she was by no means shallow or weak. To his mind the depth of her despondency was the measure of her power to realize her imperfection, for he now supposed her depression was caused immediately by the fact that she had been so harshly misjudged, but in the main because of her resemblance to the flower he had tossed away and which he now remembered, with deep satisfaction, was in his note-book, ready to aid in the reassuring and encouraging work upon which he was eager to enter.
He did not dream that by tactics the reverse of those pursued by her numerous admirers he had won her heart, and that the apparent hopelessness of her passion had outweighed all other burdens.
Her kindest sentiment towards him, he believed, was the cold respect, mingled with fear and dislike, in which a sever but honest critic is sometimes held; and as he recalled his course towards her he now felt that she had little reason for even this degree of regard. He had awakened her sleeping mind not to an atmosphere of kindness and sympathy like that in which the beauty in the fabled castle had revived, but to a biting frost of harsh criticism and unjust suspicion. That there seemed, at the time, good reason for these on his part did not make it any easier for her to bear them; and in the fact that he had so misunderstood and wronged her, his confidence in his own sagacity received the severest shock it had ever experienced. He felt that he could never go forward in life with his old assured tread and manner.
Moreover the kindness and respect which he now proposed to show Ida were caused more by compunction and fear than by any warmer and friendlier motive. He wished to make amends for his injustice, to reassure the girl, to smooth over matters and extricate himself from his fateful office of critic. This experimenting with human souls for artistic purposes was a much more serious matter than he could have imagined. He had entered upon it as a part of his summer recreation, but had found himself playing with forces that had well-nigh destroyed him as well as the subject of his fancied skill. Hereafter he proposed to illumine faces with thought, feeling, and spiritual beauty on canvas only, so that, in case he should become discouraged or disgusted with his efforts and throw the work aside, there might be no such tragic protest as Ida Mayhew had almost offered. While he pitied, and now in a certain sense respected her, she filled him with the uncomfortable dread and nervous apprehension which rash and unbalanced natures always inspire. The charge he had given Stanton revealed his opinion. She was one who must be watched over, not with the tender care and sympathy that he hoped to bestow on Jennie Burton, but with kind, yet firm and wary vigilance, in order to prevent action dangerous both to herself and others; and a heavy, anxious task he believed such care would be.
His aim was not to heal the wounds he had made by a decided manifestation of kindness and respect which should be as sincere as possible in view of his knowledge of her faults; and if her present good impulses were anything more than passing moods, to encourage them, as far as he could, and then retire from the scene as soon as circumstances permitted. He had been too thoroughly frightened to wish to continue in the role of a spiritual reformer, and he had a growing perception that, with his present motive and knowledge, the work was infinitely beyond him. He began to fear that he was like certain physicians, whose skill consists chiefly in their power to aggravate disease rather than to cure it. He had found Ida a vain, silly girl, apparently. He had parted the previous evening from a desperate woman, capable of self-destruction, and her letter inseparably linked him with the marvellous change. Thus he gained the uneasy impression that there was too much nitro-glycerine in human nature in general, and in Ida Mayhew in particular, for him to use such material in working out metaphysical and artistic problems.
At the end of his long morning walk he concluded:
"Poor child! after her eyes were opened she could not help seeing a great deal that was exceedingly depressing. In regard to her parents, she is far worse off than if orphaned. In regard to herself, she finds that her best years are gone, and she has neither culture of mind nor heart—that her beauty is but a mask that cannot long conceal the enduring imperfection and deformity of her character. She associates these discoveries with me because I first disturbed her vanity; but the beauty of Jennie Burton's life, the dastardly behavior of Sibley, and the deep humiliation received through him, with other circumstances, have all combined to bring about the revelation. And yet, confound it all! I did act the stupid Pharisee on several occasions, and I might as well own it both to her and myself. A Pharisee is a fool 'per se.' Well, I'm sorry to say, her outlook for life is dark at best, even if she were not so fearfully rash and unbalanced. As it is I expect to hear some sad story of Ida Mayhew before many years pass. I'll try to brighten a few days for her, however, before I go to town, and then the farther we can drift apart the better. How delightful, in contrast, is the sense of rest and security that Jennie Burton always inspires in spite of her sad mystery."