A Face Illumined Part 20

"Yes, I am."

"The prospects are, that you and Mrs. Chints and a couple of half-tipsy men will soon have it all to yourselves. I suppose the old adage about 'birds of a feather' swill still hold good. I was in hopes, however, that even if you had no appreciation of what was beautiful, refined, and unselfish in another woman's action, you still had some self-respect, or at least some fear of ridicule, left. Since you won't listen to me, I shall warn your mother.

If Sibley and two or three others drink much more, Burleigh will interfere for the credit of his house."

"You have been drinking as well as Mr. Sibley."

"Well, thanks to Van Berg, I stopped before I lost my head."

"From your maudlin sentiment over Miss Burton, I think you have lost your head and heart both."

"Go; dance with Sibley, then," he said in sudden irritation; "dance with him till you and Mrs. Chints between you have to hold him on his feet. Dance with him till Burleigh sends a couple of colored waiters to take him from your embrace and carry him off to bed."

She made a gesture of rage and disgust, and went straight to her room.

Sibley, in the mean time, paid a lengthened visit to his brandy, and having already pa.s.sed the point of discretion, drank recklessly.

When he descended the stairs again to look for his partner, his step was uncertain and his utterance thick.

Stanton gave Mr. Burleigh a hint that the young man needed looking after, and the adroit host, skilled in managing all kinds of people and in every condition, induced him to return to his room, under the pretence of wis.h.i.+ng to taste his fine old brandy, and then kept him there until the lethargic stage set in as the result of his excess. And so an affair, which might have created much scandal, was smuggled out of sight and knowledge as far as possible. Mrs.

Mayhew had been so occupied with whist that she had not observed that anything was amiss, and merely remarked that "Mr. Sibley's ball had ended earlier than usual."

Chapter XVI. Out Among Shadows.

The expression of Ida Mayhew's face was cold and defiant on the following day. She did not attend church with her mother, but remained all the morning in her room. She not only avoided opportunities of speaking to Van Berg when coming down to dinner and during the afternoon, but she would not even look towards him; and her manner towards her cousin also was decidedly icy.

"I don't know what is the matter with Ida," her mother remarked to Stanton; "she has acted so strangely of late."

"It's the old complaint, I imagine," he replied with a shrug.

"What's that?"

"Caprice."

"Oh, well! she's no worse than other pretty, fas.h.i.+onable girls,"

said Miss Mayhew, carelessly.

Stanton, in his anger on the previous evening, had not spoken of his cousin to Van Berg in a very complimentary way; but the artist remembered that the young man himself was not in a condition to form either a correct or charitable judgment; while the fact that Ida, as a result of his remonstrance, had gone directly to her room, was in her favor. He still resolved to suspend his final opinion and not to give over his project until satisfied that her nature contained too much alloy to permit of its success. He paid no heed therefore to her coldness of manner; and when at last meeting her face to face on the piazza Sunday evening, he lifted his hat as politely as possible.

Sibley did not appear until the arrival of the dinner hour. He was under the impression that he had gone a little too far the night before, and tried to make amends by an immaculate toilet and an urbane yet dignified courtesy towards all whom he knew. Society very readily winks at the indiscretions of wealthy young men.

Moreover, he had been inveigled back to his room before his condition had been observed to any extent. There fore he found himself so well received in the main, that he soon fully recovered his wonted self-a.s.surance.

Mrs. Mayhew was particularly gracious; and Ida, who at first had been somewhat distant towards him as well as all others, concluded that she had not sufficient cause to be ashamed of him, and so it came about that they spent much of the afternoon and evening together. She did not fail to note, however, that when he approached Van Berg he received a cold and curt reception. Was jealousy the cause of this? In her elation and excitement on the previous evening, she had been inclined to think so, but now she feared that it was because the artist despised the man; and in her secret soul she was compelled to admit that he had reason to despise him--yes, to despise them both. She felt, with bitter humiliation, that his superiority was not a.s.sumed but real.

More than once before the day closed, she found herself contrasting the two men. The one had not had a shred of true worth about him.

Stanton, to teaze her and to justify his interference, had told her that Mr. Burleigh had been compelled to take charge of her companion in order to prevent him from disgracing himself and the house.

Although too proud to acknowledge it, she still saw plainly that it was her cousin's interference, and indirectly the intervention of the artist that had kept her from being involved in that disgrace.

Even her perverted mind recognized that one was a gentleman, and the other--well, "a fas.h.i.+onable young man," as she would phrase it. The one, as a friend, would s.h.i.+eld her from every detracting breath; the other, if given a chance, would inevitably tumble into some slough of infamy himself, and drag her after him with reckless selfishness.

Still, with something like self-loathing, she saw that Sibley was her natural ally and companion, and that she had far more in common with him than with the artist. She could easily maintain with him the inane chatter of their frivolous life, but she could not talk with the artist, nor he with her, without an effort that was as humiliating as it was apparent.

What was more, she saw that all others cla.s.sed her with Sibley, and that the people in the house who were akin to the artist in character and high breeding, stood courteously but coolly aloof from both herself and her mother. She also felt that she could not lay all the blame of this upon her poor father. Indeed, since the previous miserable Sunday on which Van Berg had tried to win Mr. Mayhew from his evil habit for one day at least, and she had thwarted his kindly intention, she had begun to feel that she and her mother were the chief causes of his increasing degradation.

Others, she feared, and especially Van Berg, took the same view.

With such thoughts surging up in her mind and clouding her brow, Sibley did not find her altogether the same girl that she had been the evening before. Still, as has been said, he was her natural ally, and she tried to second his efforts to re-establish a good character and to keep up the appearance of fas.h.i.+onable respect.

Stanton was in something of a dilemma. He did not like Sibley, and was ashamed of his recent excess; but having drank with him, and so, in a sense, having accepted his hospitality, felt himself obliged to be rather affable. He managed the matter by keeping out of the way as far as possible, and was glad to remember that the young man would depart in the morning. While scarcely acknowledging the fact to himself, he was on the alert most of the day to find an opportunity of enjoying a conversation with Miss Burton; but she kept herself very much secluded. After attending church at a neighboring village in the morning, she spent most of the afternoon with Mrs. Burleigh, a.s.sisting her in the care of the cross baby.

Van Berg, much to Stanton's envy, found her as genial and cheery as ever when they met at the table. He learned, from her manner more than from anything she said, that the day and its a.s.sociations were sacred to her. She affected no solemnity and seemed under no constraint, only her thought and bearing had a somewhat soberer coloring, like the shading of a picture. To his mind it was but another example of her entire reticence in regard to herself, while her smiling face seemed as open as the light.

But as she came out from supper the children pounced upon her, clamorous for a story. She a.s.sented on condition that Mr. Burleigh would give them the use of one of the private parlors--a stipulation speedily complied with; and soon she had nearly all the small folk in the hotel gathered round her.

"I shall stand without, like the 'Peri at the gate,'" Stanton found a chance to say.

"The resemblance is very striking," was her smiling reply; but for some reason he winced under it and wished he had not spoken.

When she dismissed her little audience there were traces of tears on some of the children's faces, proving that she could tell a pathetic, as well as a jolly story; and Van Berg observed with interest how the power of her magnetism kept them lingering near her even after she entered the parlor and sought a quiet nook near the old gentleman and lady to whom she had been reading the previous evening.

Mrs. Chints, who liked to be prominent on all occasions, very proudly felt that sacred music would be the right thing on Sabbath evening, and, with a few of hew own ilk, was giving a florid and imperfect rendering of that peculiar style of composition that suggests a poor opera while making a rather shocking and irreverent use of words taken from Scriptures.

Van Berg and Stanton, who were out on the piazza, were ready to grate their teeth in anguish, finding the narcotic influence of the strongest cigar no match for Mrs. Chints's voice.

Suddenly that irrepressible lady spied Miss Burton, and she swooped down upon her in a characteristic manner, exclaiming:

"You can't decline; you needn't say you don't; I've heard you. If you sing half as well for us as you did to Mrs. Burleigh's baby this afternoon, we'll be more than satisfied. Now come; one sweet solo--just one."

Stanton craned his neck from where he sat to see the result of this onslaught, but Miss Burton shook her head.

"Well, then, won't you join in with us?" persisted Mrs. Chints.

"Sacred music is so lovely and appropriate on Sunday night."

"You are right in that respect, Mrs. Chints. If it is the wish of those present I think some simple hymns in which we can all join might be generally enjoyed."

"Now, my dear, you have just hit it," said the old lady at her side. "I, for one, would very much like to hear some simple music like that we had when I was young."

The old lady's preference was taken up and echoed on every side.

Indeed the majority were ready for any change from Mrs. Chints's strident tones.

"Well, my dear," said the lady, "it shall be as you say." Then she added, "sotto voce," with a complacent nod, "I suppose the music we were giving is beyond the ma.s.ses, but if you could once hear Madame Skaronni render it in our choir at the Church of the (something that sounded like 'pica-ninny,' as by Mrs. Chints p.r.o.nounced) you would wish for no other. Will you play, my dear?"

"Ah, yes, please do," exclaimed some of the children who had gathered around her.