A Face Illumined Part 23

Stanton looked after him with a lowering brow and muttered: "Is he so sensitive on this subject? By Jove. I'm sorry! I fear we must become rivals, Van. And yet," he added with a despairing gesture, "what chance would I have with him against me?"

"I could not hear distinctly," Sibley had remarked as Ida took his arm and walked away from her post of observation. "Were you disgusted with his pious wail on general principles, or did something in his theology offend you?"

"It's enough that I was not pleased," she replied briefly.

"Little wonder. I'm surprised you stood it so long. Van Berg and Stanton are nice fellows to lead a conventicle. I think I'll take a hand at it myself next Sunday evening, and certainly would with your support. I'll say nothing of the singer, but if you will go with me to the rustic seat in yonder shady walk, I'll sing you a song that I know will be more to your taste than any you have heard this evening."

"Please excuse me, Mr. Sibley; I'm afraid of the night air."

"You are unusually prudent," he said, a little tauntingly.

"Which proves that I possess at least one good quality," she replied.

"Perhaps if Mr. Van Berg asked you to go you would take the risk."

"Perhaps I might," she admitted, half unconsciously and from the mere force of habit, giving the natural answer of a coquette.

"He had better not cross my path," said Sibley, with sudden vindictiveness.

"Come, come!" replied Miss Mayhew, with a careless laugh, "let's have no high tragedy. I'm in no mood for it to-night, and you have no occasion for alarm. If he crosses your path he will step daintily over it at right angles."

At that moment Van Berg came out on the piazza. Although he could not hear her words, her laugh and tones jarred unpleasantly on his ear.

"Yonder is a genuine affinity," he muttered, "which I was a fool to think I could break up;" and with a slight contemptuous gesture he turned on his heel and went to his room.

"I cannot altogether understand you this evening, Miss Mayhew,"

said Sibley, with some resentment in his tone.

"You are not to blame for that, Mr. Sibley, for I do not understand myself. I have not felt well to-day, and so had better say good-night."

But before she could leave him he seized her hand and exclaimed, in his soft, insinuating tones:

"That then is the only trouble between us. Next Sat.u.r.day evening I shall find you your old charming self?"

"Perhaps," was her unsatisfactory answer.

With a step that grew slower and heavier every moment, she went to her room, turned up the light, and looked fixedly at herself in the gla.s.s,

"I wish that outward beauty Were the mirror of the heart,"

she repeated inaudibly, and the her exquisite lip curled in self-contempt.

"Ida, what IS the matter with you?" drawled her mother, looking through the open door-way of her adjacent room. "You act as if you were demented."

"Why did you make me what I am?" she exclaimed, turning upon her mother in a sudden pa.s.sion.

"Good gracious! what are you?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed that matter-of-fact lady.

"I'm as good as you are--as good as our set averages, I suppose,"

she answered in a weary, careless tone. "Good night;" and she closed and locked her door.

"Oh, pshaw!" said Mrs. Mayhew, petulantly; "those hymns have made her out of sorts with herself and everything. They used to stir me up in the same way. Why can't people learn to perform their religious duties properly and then let the matter rest;" and with a yawn she retired at peace with herself and all the world.

Ida threw herself on a lounge and looked straight before her with that fixed, vacant stare which indicates that nothing is seen save by the eye of the mind.

"Father's drunk to-night," she moaned; "I know it as surely as if I saw him. I also know that I'm in part to blame for it. Could outward beauty mask a blacker heart than mine? It does not mask it from him who sang those words," and she buried her face in her hands and sobbed, until, exhausted and disheartened, she sough such poor rest and respite as a few hours of troubled sleep could bring.

Chapter XVIII. Love Put to Work.

On the following day there was the usual bustle of change and departure that is characteristic of a large summer resort on Monday morning. Stanton found Mrs. Mayhew very ready to occupy the seats he had obtained, and all the more so from his statement of the fact that several others had spoken for them.

"Ida, my dear," called her mother; "come here, I've good news for you. Ik has got us out of that odious corner of the dining-room, and secured seats for us at Mr. Van Berg's table."

"I wish no seat there," she said decisively.

"Oh, its all arranged, my dear; and a good many others want the seats, but Ik was too prompt."

"I'll stay where I am," said Ida, sullenly.

"And have every one in the house asking why?" added Stanton, provokingly. "Mr. Van Berg treats you as a gentleman should. Why cannot you act like a lady toward him? If I were you I would not carry my preferences for the Sibley style of fellows so far that I could not be civil to a man like my friend."

"You misjudge me," cried Ida, pa.s.sionately.

"You have a strange way of proving it. All that is asked of you is to sit at the same table with a gentleman who has won the respect and admiration of every one in the hotel, whose society is peculiarly agreeable to your mother and myself, and who has also shown unusual courtesy towards you ever since he learned who you were. What else can I think--what else can others think, than that your taste leans so decidedly to the Sibley style that you cannot even be polite to a man of high culture and genuine worth?"

"You are too severe, Ik," said Mrs. Mayhew. "For some reason that I cannot fathom, Ida does not like this artist; and yet I think myself that she would subject herself to very unpleasant remarks if she made any trouble about sitting at the same table with him."

"Can you not see," retorted Ida, irritably, "that Ik has not considered us at all, but only himself? He wishes to be near Miss Burton, and without giving us any chance to object, has made all the arrangements so that we must either comply or else be the talk of the house. It's just a piece of his selfishness," she concluded with tears of vexation in her eyes.

"Oh, come Ida!" said her mother coaxingly, "I can see only a mole-hill in this matter, and I wouldn't make a mountain out of it. As far as I am concerned, I should enjoy the change very much, and, as you say, the affair has gone too far now to make objection. I do not intend that either you or myself shall be the subject of unpleasant remark."

And so the matter was settled, but Ida's coldness and constraint, when they all met at dinner, very clearly indicated that the change had been made without her consent. Van Berg addressed her affably two or three times, but received brief and discouraging answers.

"Your cousin evidently is not pleased with the new arrangement you have brought about. I cannot see what I have done of late to vex her."

"I'll tell you the trouble. You offend her by not being the counterpart of Mr. Sibley," said Stanton, irritably.

Van Berg's brow darkened. "Do you think," he asked in a meaning tone, "that she understands what kind of a man he is?"

"Oh, she knows that he can dance, flirt, and talk nonsense, and she asks for nothing more and thinks of nothing further. I'm out of patience with her."