A Face Illumined Part 47

"Do you--do you think there is still any danger that she will---"

"No; the danger is pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d!" he said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper--"what an escape I've had!"

Hour after hour pa.s.sed, 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 G.o.d," 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.

Chapter XL. Van Berg's Conclusions.

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 s.h.i.+elded 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 pa.s.sed 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, circ.u.mstances 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 enn.o.bling 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 rea.s.suring 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sured 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 rea.s.sure 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 pa.s.sing moods, to encourage them, as far as he could, and then retire from the scene as soon as circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sociates 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.s. 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."

Chapter XLI. The Protestant Confessional.

Ida's sleep was almost as deep and quiet, and when her mother stole in to look at her from time to time the following morning, her face was as colorless, as if she had taken the drug which Van Berg's heel had ground into the earth; but Mrs. Mayhew observed with satisfaction that her respiration was as regular and natural as that of a little child. Wronged nature will, to a certain extent, forgive the young and restore to them the priceless treasures of health and strength they throw away. Ida had been a sad spendthrift of both lately, but now that the evil spell was broken, the poor worn body and mind sank into a long and merciful oblivion, during which a new life began to flow back from the, as yet, unexhausted fountain of youth.

She awoke late in the morning, and it was some moments before she could recall all that had happened. Then, as she remembered her dreadful purpose, there came a strong rush of grateful feeling that she HAD awakened--that life and its opportunities were still hers.

For a moment she portrayed to herself what she had supposed would have happened that day--she imagined herself lying white and still--the people coming and going on tiptoe and speaking in hushed tones, as if death were but a troubled and easily broken sleep; while they looked at her with faces in which curiosity and horror were equally blended; she saw her father staring at her in utter despair, and her mother trying, in a pitifully helpless way, to think how appearances might still be kept up and a little shred of respectability retained. She saw the artist looking at her with stern, white face, and heard him mutter: "What were you to me that you should commit this awful deed and lay it at my door, thus blighting a life full of the richest promise with your horrible shadow?"

"Thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "It's all like a dreadful dream and never happened."

"Why, Ida, what IS the matter?" said Mrs. Mayhew, coming in hastily.

"I had a bad dream," said Ida, with something like a low sob.

"Ida, I want you to see the doctor, to-day. You haven't acted like yourself for over two weeks."

"Mother, what time is it?"

"Ten o'clock and after."

"Please draw the curtain. I want to see the sunlight."

"The sun is very hot to-day."

"Is it?" Then under her breath she murmured: "Thank G.o.d, so it is."

She arose and began making her toilet slowly, for the languor of her long sleep and excessive fatigue was on her still. But thought was very busy. The subject uppermost in her mind was the promised visit to old Mr. Eltinge, and she resolved to go at once, if it were a possible thing. Mrs. Mayhew having again referred to her purpose of sending for a physician, Ida turned to her and said, decisively:

"Mother, do you not realize that I am not a child? What is the use of sending for a doctor when I will not see him? I ask--I insist that you and Mr. Stanton interfere with me no longer."

"My goodness, Ida, shall not I, your own mother, take any care of you?"

"It is too late in the day now to commence taking care of me. You have permitted me to grow up so wanting in mental and moral culture that you naturally suspect me of the vilest action. Henceforth I take care of myself, and act for myself;" and she abruptly left the room and went to Mr. Burleigh's office, requesting that the light phaeton and a safe horse, such as she could drive, should be sent around to he door at once.