A Face Illumined Part 41

Her gaze seemed to draw his, for he looked up suddenly. On recognizing her his first impulse was to coldly avert his eyes, but in a second her unusual appearance riveted his attention. She saw the impulse, however, and would not look towards him again. She entered as quietly and as unexpectedly as a ghost, and the people seemed as much surprised and perplexed as if she were a ghost.

She took a seat somewhat apart from all others, and apparently commenced reading. She was not so far away but that Van Berg could decipher the t.i.tle, "Misjudged," and having made out the significant word, its letters grew luminous like the diamonds in her hair.

Never before had he been so impressed by her beauty, and yet there was an element in it which made him s.h.i.+ver with a dread he could not explain to himself. He was surprised and shocked to find how pale and wan her face had become, but in every severe marble curve of her features he saw the word, "Misjudged." He could scarcely recognize her as the blooming girl that he had first seen in the concert garden. Suffering, trouble of mind, was evidently the dark magician that was thus transforming her; but why did she suffer so deeply? As she sat there before him, not only his deeper instincts, but his reason refused almost indignantly to a.s.sociate her any longer with Sibley. There was a time when she seemed akin to him; but now she suggested deep trouble, despair, death even, rather than a gross "bon vivant." Was she ill! Yes, evidently, but he doubted if her malady had physical causes.

"What a very strange toilet she has made!" he thought; "simple and plain to the last degree, and yet singularly effective and striking.

Her fingers were once loaded with rings, but she has taken them all off, and now her hands are as perfect as her features. She does not wear a single ornament, save those ominous poniards. Does she mean to signify by these that she is wounded, or that she proposes to inflict wounds? Ye G.o.ds! how strangely, terribly, exasperatingly beautiful she is! I have certainly both misjudged and misunderstood her."

These thoughts pa.s.sed through his mind as he stole an occasional glance at their object, who sat with her profile towards him almost in the line of his vision. At the same time he was apparently listening to a prosy and interminable story from one of the group of which he was a member. They had been telling anecdotes of travel, and the last speaker's experience was, like his journey, long and uninteresting.

Van Berg soon observed that many others besides himself were observing Miss Mayhew. She seemed to fascinate, perplex, and trouble all who looked towards her. The singular beauty and striking toilet might account, in part, for the lingering glances, but not for the perplexity and uneasiness they caused. If Ida had been dead her features could not have been more colorless; and they had a stern, hard, desperate expression that was sadly out of harmony with what should be the appearance of a happy young girl.

Her presence seemed to cause an increasing chill and restraint.

The healthful and normal minds of those about her grew vaguely conscious of another mind that had been deeply moved, shaken to its foundations, and so had become almost abnormal and dangerous in its impulses.

There is a very general tendency both to observe and to shrink from that which is unnatural, and if the departure from what is customary is shown in unexpected and unusual mental action, the stronger become the uneasiness and dread in those who witness it.

All who saw Ida recognized that she was not only unlike herself, but unlike any one in an ordinary state of mind, and people who were intimate looked at each other significantly, as if to ask--"What is the matter with Miss Mayhew? What is the matter with us all?"

Were it not that the maiden occasionally turned a leaf, in order to keep up the illusion that she was reading, she might have been a statue, so motionless was her form, and so pallid her face.

But she felt that she was perplexing and troubling those who had wounded her, and the consciousness gave secret satisfaction. Her past experience taught her to appreciate stage effect, and, since she meditated a tragedy, she proposed that everything should be as tragic and blood-curdling as possible.

There is usually but a short step between high tragedy and painful absurdity, which exasperates us while we laugh at it; but poor Ida's thoughts were so desperately dark and despairing, and her exquisite features, made almost transparent by grief and fasting, so perfectly interpreted her unfeigned wretchedness, that even those who knew her but slightly were touched and troubled in a way that they could not explain even to themselves.

Miss Burton was evidently meditating how she could approach Ida, who seemed encased in a repellant atmosphere. Van Berg saw that Stanton looked anxious and perplexed, and that Mrs. Mayhew was exceedingly worried and annoyed. At last he hastily approached her daughter and whispered,

"For heaven's sake, Ida, what's the matter? You look as if you had gone into mourning."

The young lady glanced coldly up and said stonily:

"You have at least taught me to dress appropriately."

"Nonsense," continued the mother, in a low, irritable tone. "Why can't you cheer up and act like other people? Don't you see you're giving us all the s.h.i.+vers?"

She slowly swept the room with her eyes, and saw that not a few curious glances were directed towards her. Then, with bowed head, she glided from the room without a word.

Miss Burton caught up with her in the hall-way. "You are ill, Miss Mayhew," she said, with gentle solicitude.

"Yes," Ida replied, in the same stony, repellant manner; "but you are not a physician, Miss Burton. Good evening." And she went swiftly up to her own room, as if determined to speak with no one else that evening.

Chapter x.x.xVI. Temptation's Voice

Van Berg had been so near that he could not help overhearing Mrs.

Mayhew's words which had led to the abrupt and silent departure of her daughter from the parlor.

"There is some misunderstanding here," he thought, "whose effects are becoming outrageously cruel. The poor girl was driven away from the supper-table, and now she is driven out of the parlor.

She has been an anomaly from the moment I saw her, and I now mean to fathom the mystery. Her exquisite face indicates that she is almost desperate from some kind of trouble. She is becoming ill--she is wasting under it. Sibley would be a fatal malady to any respectable girl, but I must give up all pretence of skill at diagnosis if he is the cause; for were her heart set on him why the mischief can't she go to him with all her old reckless flippancy?

There is no need of any elopement, as Ik fears. She can easily compel her mother to go to the city, and her father would have no power to prevent the alliance, were she bent upon it. I believe her family misunderstand and are wronging her, and I may have occasion to go down on my knees myself, metaphorically, and ask her pardon for my superior airs."

These and kindred other thoughts pa.s.sed through his mind as he slowly paced up and down a side piazza which he often sought when he wished to be alone. Stanton, having lost Miss Burton for the evening, soon joined him, and threw himself dejectedly into a chair.

"Van," he said, "I used to be rather self-complacent. I thought I had learned to take life so philosophically that I should have a good time as long as my health lasted. But to-night I feel as if life were a horribly heavy burden which I, an overladen jacka.s.s, must carry for many a weary day. How little we know what we are and what is before us! I've been a fool; I am a fool!"

"Well, Ik," replied Van Berg with a shrug, "I imagine there is a pair of us. My reason--all that's decent in me--refuses to regard Sibley as the cause of your cousin's most evident distress. For heaven's sake don't confirm your words of this afternoon, or I shall feel like taking the first train, in order to escape from the most exasperating paradox that ever contradicted a man's senses."

"Van, you are right. I am mortified with myself beyond measure, and I am bitterly ashamed that my aunt, her own mother, should have so grossly misjudged her. Sibley, no doubt, IS the occasion of her trouble in part, for she seems fairly to writhe under the false position in which he has placed her by leading every one to a.s.sociate her name with his; but I now believe that she loathes and detests him more than you or I can. Certainly no woman could speak of a man in harsher or more scathing terms than she spoke of him to-night. Well, to sum up the whole miserable trough, by taking her mother's view for granted, I made such a mess of it that I doubt if she ever speaks civilly to either of us again."

"Why! was my name mentioned?" asked Van Berg, quickly.

"Yes, confound it all! When things are going wrong there is a miserable fatality about them, and the worst always happens. She asked me point-blank if you shared my estimate of her, and I suppose got the impression you did."

"Well really, Stanton," said Van Berg, with some irritation, "I think you must have been unfortunate in your language."

"Worse than unfortunate. The whole blunder is unpardonable.

Still, do me justice. I could not answer her question with a bold lie. And what would have been its use? How could you explain your bearing towards her at the supper table? Your manner would have frozen Jezebel herself."

"I was an infernal fool," groaned Van Berg.

"It is due to us both that I should say I told her you had tried to form a good opinion of her, and very reluctantly received the view her mother suggested. I said, in effect, you wished to think well of her, although she had treated you so badly."

"Treated me badly! I have treated her a thousandfold worse. She, at least, has never insulted me, and I can never forgive myself for the insult I have offered her.

"Well, I hope to find her in the mood to accept an apology in the morning," said Stanton.

"I'm in a confoundedly awkward position to apologize," growled Van Berg. "Any reference to such an affair will be like another insult;" and the friends parted in an unsatisfactory state of mind towards each other, and especially towards themselves.

But that was a sad and memorable night to Ida Mayhew. She felt that it might be her last on earth; for her dark purpose was rapidly taking definite form.

she was pa.s.sing into that unhealthful condition of mental excitement, in which the salutary restraints of the physical nature lose their power. In the place of drowsiness and weariness, she began to experience an unnatural exaltation which would make any reckless folly possible, if it took the guise of sublime and tragic action.

Few realize to what degree the mind can become warped and disordered, even with a brief time, by trouble and the violation of the laws of health; and some, by education and temperament, are peculiarly predisposed to abnormal conditions. Science has taught men how to build s.h.i.+ps with water-tight compartments, so that if disaster crushes in on one side, the other parts may save from sinking.

There are fortunate people who are built on the same safe principle.

They have cultivated minds, and varied resources in artistic and scientific pursuits. Above all else, they may have faith in G.o.d and a better life to come; such possessions are like the compartments of a modern s.h.i.+p. Few disasters can destroy them all, and in the loss of one or more the soul is kept afloat by the others.

But it would seem that poor Ida's character had been constructed with fatal simplicity, and when the cold waves of trouble rushed in there was nothing to prevent her from sinking beneath them like a stone. Her mind was uncultivated, and art, science, literature offered her as yet no resources, no pursuits. She had a woman's heart that might have been filled with sustaining love, but in its place had come a sudden and icy flood of disappointment and despair.

She loved, with all the pa.s.sion and simplicity of a narrow, yet earnest nature, the man who had awakened the woman within her, and he, she believed, would never give her aught in return, save contempt. She naturally thought that she had been degraded in his estimation beyond all ordinary means of redemption; therefore, in her desperation and despair, she was ready to take an extraordinary method of compelling at least his respect.

Moreover, Ida was impatient and impetuous by nature. She had a large capacity for action, but little for endurance. It would be almost impossible for her to reach woman's loftiest heroism, and sit "like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief." It would be her disposition rather to rush forward, and dash herself against an adverse fate, meeting it even more than half way. All the influences of her life had tended to develop imperiousness, willfulness, and now her impulse was to enter a protest against her hard lot that was as pa.s.sionate and reckless as it was impotent.

Apart from her supreme wish to fill Van Berg with regret, and awaken in him something like respect, the thought of dragging on a wretched existence through the indefinite years to come was intolerable. The color had utterly faded out of life, and left it bald and repulsive to the last degree.

Fas.h.i.+onable dissipation promised her nothing. She had often tasted this, to the utmost limit of propriety, and was well aware that the gay whirl had nothing new to offer, unless she plunged into the mad excitement of a life which is as brief as it is vile. It was to her credit that death seemed preferable to this. It was largely due to her defective training and limited experience, that a useful, innocent life, even though it promised to be devoid of happiness, was so utterly repulsive that she was ready to throw it away in impatient disgust.