A Face Illumined Part 25

Chapter XX. A Wretched Secret that Must be Kept.

The interview described in the previous chapter touched Van Berg deeply, but its close puzzled him. Under the influences of his aroused feelings had his face expressed more than mere sympathy?

Had her strong intuition, that was like a second sight, interpreted his heart more clearly than he had been able to understand it himself as yet? Reason and judgement, his privy council, had already begun to advise him to win if possible this unselfish maiden, who with a divine alchemy trans.m.u.ted her shadows into suns.h.i.+ne for others, and often suggested the thought, if she can do this in sorrow, how inexpressibly happy she might make you and your aged father and mother if you could first find out in some way how to make her happy.

Indeed, so clear a case did these counsellors make out, that conscience added her authoritative voice also, and a.s.sured him that he would be false to himself and his future did he not, to the utmost, avail himself and his future did he not, to the utmost, avail himself of the opportunity of winning one whose society from the first had been an inspiration to better thoughts and better living.

Until this evening his heart had remained sluggish. Sweet and potent as her voice had been, it had not penetrated to the "holy of holies" within his soul. But had not her low sad tones echoed there to-night in the half involuntary confidence she had given him?

In his deep sympathy, in the answering feeling evoked by her strong but repressed emotion, he thought his heart had been stirred to its depths, and that henceforth its chief desire would be to banish the sorrowful memories typified to her mind by the black clouds above him. Had his face revealed this impulse of his heart before he had been fully conscious of it himself? Was it an unwelcome discovery, that she so hastily fled from it? Or had she been only startled--her maidenly reserve shrinking from the first fore-shadowing of the supreme request that she should unveil the mysteries of her life to one who but now had been a stranger? He did not know. He felt he scarcely understood her or himself; but he was conscious of a hope that both might meet their happy fate in each other.

He leaned thus for a time absorbed in thought against a pillar where she had left him, then sauntered with bowed head and preoccupied manner to the main entrance, down the steps and out into the darkness.

He did not even notice that he pa.s.sed Ida Mayhew, where she stood among a group of gay chattering young people. Still less did he know that she had been furtively watching his interview with Miss Burton, and that when he pa.s.sed her without a glance her face was as pale as had been that of the object of his thoughts. But he had not strolled very far down a gravelled path before she compelled him to distinguish her reckless laugh and tones above all the others.

With an impatient gesture he muttered, "G.o.d made them both, I suppose; and so there's another mystery."

As Van Berg's interest in Miss Burton had deepened, it had naturally flagged toward the one whose marvelously fair features had first caught his attention and now promised to be links in a chain of causes that might produce effects little antic.i.p.ated. He had virtually abandoned the project of seeking to enn.o.ble and harmonize these features that suggested new possibilities of beauty to almost every glance, for the reason that he not only believed there was no mind to be awakened, but also because he had been led to think the girl so depraved and selfish at heart that the very thought of a larger, purer life was repugnant to her. He believed she disliked and even detested him, not so much on personal grounds as because he represented to her mind a cla.s.s of ideas and a self-restraint that were hateful. Circ.u.mstances had a.s.sociated her in his mind with Sibley, who thus cast a baleful shadow athwart even her beauty and made it repulsive. Indeed the mocking perfection of her features irritated him, and he began to make a conscious and persistent effort not to look toward her. He now regarded his hope to illumine her face from within, by delicate touches of mind, thought, and motive, as vain as an attempt to carve the Venus of Milo out of mottled pumice-stone. Still he did not regret to-night the freak of fancy that had brought him to the Lake House, since it had led to his meeting a woman who was to him a new and beautiful revelation of the rarest excellence and grace.

But there was no such compensating outlook for poor Ida. To her, his coming promised daily to result in increasing wretchedness.

From the miserable Sunday night on which she had sobbed herself to sleep, the consciousness had continually grown clearer that she could never find in her old mode of life any satisfying pleasure.

She had caught a glimpse of something so much better, that her former world looked as tawdry as the mimic scenery of a second-rate theatre. A genuine man, such as she had not seen or at least not recognized before, had stepped out before the gilt and tinsel, and the miserable shams were seen in contrast in their rightful character.

But, in bringing the revelation, it happened he had so deeply wounded her pride, that she had a.s.sured herself, again and again, she would hate his very name as long as she lived. Did she hate him as she saw him absorbed in conversation with Miss Burton whenever he could obtain the opportunity? Did she hate him as she saw that his eyes consciously avoided her and rested approvingly on another woman? Were hate and love so near akin? Could the belief that he despised her make her so wretched if she only hated him?

During the early part of the present week she had struggled almost fiercely to retain her hold on her old life. Uniting herself to a clique of thoughtless young people, who made amus.e.m.e.nt and excitement their only pursuit, she seemed to be the gayest and most reckless of them all, while her heart was sinking like lead. Every glance toward the cold, averted face of the artist, inspired her with more than his own scorn toward what she was and the frivolities of her life. She tried to shut her eyes to the truth, and clung desperately to every impeding trifle; but felt all the time that an irresistible tide of events was carrying her toward the revelation that she loved a man who despised her, and always would despise her.

And on this night, when she saw their dim forms and heard their low tones as Miss Burton and Van Berg talked earnestly on the farther end of the piazza; when she saw that they grasped hands in parting, and noted the rapt look upon his face as he pa.s.sed her by uncaringly and unnotingly--the revelation came. It was as sharply and painfully distinct as if he had stopped and plunged a knife into her heart.

With all her faults and follies, Ida had never been a pale shadowy creature, full of complex psychological moods which neither she nor any one else could untangle. She knew whom and what she liked and disliked, and it was not her nature to do things by halves.

There had always been a kind of simplicity and straightforwardness even in her wickedness; and she usually seemed to people quite as bad, and indeed worse, than she really was.

Why of all others she loved this man, and how it all had come about, was a mystery that puzzled her sorely; but she had no labyrinthine heart in which to play hide and seek with her own consciousness.

And so vividly conscious was she now of this new and absorbing pa.s.sion, that she hastily turned her face from her companions toward the cloudy sky, that looked as dark to her as it had to Jennie Burton, and for a moment sought desperately to recover from a dizzy, reeling sense of pain that was well-nigh overwhelming. Then the womanly instinct to hide her secret a.s.serted itself, and a moment later her laugh jarred discordantly on Van Berg's ears, and he interpreted it as wisely as have thousands of others who fail to recognize the truth that often no cry of pain is so bitter as a reckless laugh.

A little later, however, her companions missed her. Later still her mother sought admission to her room in vain.

When she came down to breakfast the next morning, she was very quiet and self-possessed, but her face was so pale and the traces of suffering were so manifest, that her mother insisted that she was not well.

She coldly admitted the fact.

The voluble lady launched out into an indefinite number of questions and suggestions of remedies.

"Mother," said Ida, with a flash of her eyes and an accent which caused not only that lady but several others to look toward her with a little surprise, "if you have anything further to say to me in regard to my health, please say it in my own room."

Van Berg glanced towards her several times after this, and was compelled to admit that whatever fault he might justly find, the face with which she confronted him that morning was anything but weak and trivial in its expression.

But her icy reserve and coldness did not compare favorably with Miss Burton, who had now fully regained her smiling reticence, acting as usual as if the only law of her being was to utter genial words and to bestow with consummate tact little gifts of attention and kindness on every side, as the summer sun without was scattering its vivifying rays.

Chapter XXI. A Deliberate Wooer.

Miss Burton's bearing toward Van Berg was very friendly, but he failed to detect in her manner the slightest proof that she had ever thought of him otherwise than as a friend. There was no sudden drooping of her eyelashes, or heightening of color when he spoke to her, or permitted his eyes to dwell upon her face with an expression that was rather more than friendly. He could detect no furtive glances, nothing to indicate that she had caught a glimpse of that secret so interesting to every woman that she would look again, though cold as ice toward the man cheris.h.i.+ng it. Nor was there the slightest trace of the constraint and reserve by which all women who are not coquettes seek to check, as with an early frost, the first growth of an unwelcome regard. Her manner was simply what would be natural toward a gentleman she thoroughly respected and liked, with whom her thoughts, for no hidden cause, were especially preoccupied.

Why then had she looked at him so strangely the preceding evening?

Why had she apparently shrunk from the expression of his face, as if she had seen there a revelation so sudden and overwhelming that she trembled at it as a shy, sensitive maiden might in recognizing the fact that a strong, resolute man was seeking entrance to the very citadel of her heart? He felt himself utterly unable to explain her action.

What was more, he was puzzled at himself. The sympathy he felt for Miss Burton the previous evening had not by any means left him, but it was no longer a strong and absorbing emotion. His pulse was as calm and quiet as the breathless summer morning. He was conscious of no premonitory chills and thrills, which, according to his preconceived notions of the "grand pa.s.sion," ought to be felt even in its incipiency. He even found himself criticising her face, and wondering how features so ordinary in themselves could combine in so winning and happy an effect; and then he mentally cursed his cold-bloodedness, and positively envied Stanton in whose manner, in spite of his efforts at concealment, an ardent affection began to manifest itself.

During the day it occurred to him more than once that her course was changing toward Stanton. There was no less return on her part of his light bantering style of conversation. Indeed, she seemed to take great pains to give a humorous twist to everything he said, as if she regarded even the words in which he tried to unfold his deeper thoughts as mere jests. But Van Berg imagined she began to make herself more inaccessible to Stanton. She entrenched herself among other guests in the parlor; she took pains to be so occupied as to make him feel that his approach would be an interruption; and whenever they did meet at the table and elsewhere, it appeared as if she were trying to teach him by a smiling, friendly indifference that he was not in her thoughts at all.

The positive coldness and aversion Ida sought to manifest toward Van Berg would not have been so disheartening as Miss Burton's device of seeming to be so agreeably preoccupied with other people that she could not or would not see the offering Stanton was eager to lay at her feet.

He felt this keenly, and chafed under it; but her woman's tact made her s.h.i.+ning armor invulnerable. She persisted in regarding him as the gay, self-seeking, pleasure-loving man of the world that she had recognized him to be on the fist day of their acquaintance. He imagined that a great and radical change had taken place in his nature, but she gave him no opportunity of telling her so. At first she had, with laughing courtesy, ignored his gallantry, as if it were only a fas.h.i.+on of his towards any woman who for the time happened to take his fancy; but so far from shunning him she had seemed inclined to employ what she regarded as a caprice or a bit of male coquetry, as the means of adding to the enjoyment of as many as possible; and Van Berg had often smiled to see his languid friend of yore seconding Miss Burton's efforts with an apparent zeal that was quite marvellous. To Stanton's infinite relief, Van Berg did not twit him concerning this surprising departure from his old ways. Indeed, Miss Burton had become too delicate and sacred a theme in both of their minds to permit of their old banter. They had been friends and were so still, yet each recognized the fact that events were coming that would sorely test and perhaps destroy their friends.h.i.+p. While they gradually fell aloof, as men will who are learning that their dearest interests are destined to conflict, they each tried nevertheless to maintain an honorable rivalry, and their bearing toward each other, although tinged with a growing reticence and dignity, was genuinely kind and courteous.

As the week drew to a close, however, it gave Van Berg pleasure--though not by any means in the same degree that it caused Stanton pain--to observe that Miss Burton was shunning the latter's society as far as politeness permitted.

At the same time, while she evidently enjoyed his companions.h.i.+p, Van Berg observed that she did not seem to specially crave it; nor in truth did he find himself when away from her "distrait," vacant, and miserable, as was manifestly the case with his friend. He concluded that it was difference of temperament--that it was his nature to be governed by judgment and taste, as it was that of Stanton to be swayed by feeling and pa.s.sion. All the higher faculties of his mind gave their voice for this woman with increasing emphasis.

His heart undoubtedly would slowly and surely gravitate in the same direction.

How to win her therefore was gradually becoming the one interesting and most difficult question he had to solve. Although she was poor and alone in the world, it was evident that mere wealth and position would count but little with her. Stanton was handsome, rich, well-connected, and intelligent; but it seemed clear, as she recognized the sincerity of his suit, she withdrew from it. Some coa.r.s.e, ill-natured people in the house, who at first, with significant nods, had intimated that "the little school-ma'am" was bent on bettering her fortunes, were soon nonplussed by her course.

Thus far Van Berg's name had not been a.s.sociated with hers in any such manner as Stanton's. His cooler head, or heart more correctly, had enabled him to act very prudently. He would enjoy a walk or conversation with her, and there it would end. Neither by lingering glances nor steps did he show that he could not interest himself in other people and things. He did not attend the excursions or rides to which Stanton invited her, and others to please her, because he knew his friend "doted on his absence." He felt too that the occasion was Stanton's private property, and that it would be mean not to leave him the full advantage of the device, which might cause him more effort in a forenoon or an evening than he had been accustomed to put forth in a week.

But poor Stanton soon learned that his labors of love were destined to be very promiscuous. He never could manage to carry her off alone in a light skiff upon the lake; he could never inveigle her into the narrow seat of his buggy, nor could his most wily strategy long separate her from their companions on a picnic that had offered to his ardent fancy a chance for a stroll into some favoring solitude by themselves. Had she been a princess of the blood, surrounded by a guard of watchful duennas, she could not have been more unapproachable to lover-like advances. Yet, with a vexation akin to that of old Tantalus himself, he constantly cursed his stupidity for not making better progress toward securing the smiling affable maiden, who by every law of his pas experience ought to second his efforts to win her.

Van Berg, who remained at the hotel, or went off by himself on rambles and sketching expeditions, would watch his opportunity and quietly and naturally join her on the piazza or in the parlor, as he might approach any other lady. As a result they had long animated conversations, and found they had much in common to talk about.

Stanton would gnaw his lip with envy at these interviews and wonder how Van Berg brought them about so easily, but found he could not secure them, save in the immediate presence of others. Thus it came about that Van Berg practically enjoyed much more of Miss Burton's society than the one who made such untiring efforts to obtain it.

In Stanton's too eager suit, Van Berg thought he saw the danger he must avoid, and he complacently congratulated himself that he possessed a temperament which permitted thoughtful and wary approaches. He would not frighten this shy bird by too hasty advances. Through un.o.btrusive companions.h.i.+p he would first grow familiar to her thoughts; and then, if possible, would make himself inseparable from them.

He reached this conclusion during a ramble on Sat.u.r.day morning, and with elastic tread returned to the hotel to carry out his well digested policy. As he mounted the steps he saw Miss Burton in the parlor, and at once entered through an open window. She was seated in a corner of the room with two or three little girls around her, and was dressing dolls.

"Do you enjoy that?" he asked, incredulously.

"I'm not a star," she replied looking up with a quiet smile, "but only a planet--one of the smaller asteroids--and s.h.i.+ne with borrowed light. These little women enjoy this hugely; and I receive a pale reflection of their pleasure."

"You are certainly happy in your answer, if not in your work," he remarked.

"Mr. Van Berg," said one of the children emphatically, "Miss Burton is the best lady that ever lived."