Chapter 7. Another Feminine Problem

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_ Chapter VII. Another Feminine Problem

Early on Monday morning, Mr. Mayhew hastened from the breakfast-table to the stage. His wife and daughter were not down to see him off, and he seemed desirous of shunning all recognition. With the exception that that his eyes were heavy and bloodshot from his debauch, his face had the same dreary, apathetic expression which Van Berg had noted on his arrival. And so he went back to his city office, where, fortunately for him, mechanical routine brought golden rewards, since he was in no state for business enterprise.

From his appearance, Van Berg could not help surmising what had been his condition the previous day. Indeed Stanton, with a contemptuous shrug, had the same as said on Sabbath evening, that his uncle had "dropped into the old slough." Although neither of the young men knew how great an impetus Ida had given her father towards such degradation, they both felt that if his wife and daughter had had the tact to detect and appreciate his better mood, produced by the morning ramble, they might have sustained him, and given him at least one day that he could remember without shame and discouragement.

Van Berg found something pathetic in Mr. Mayhew's weary and disheartened manner. It was like that of a soldier who has suffered defeat, but who goes on with his routine in a mechanical, spiritless manner, because there is nothing else to do. He seemed to have no hope, nor even a thought of retrieving the past and of reasserting his own manhood. Accustomed as the young artist had ever been to a household in which affection, allied to high-bred courtesy and mutual respect, made even homely daily life noble and beautiful, he could not look on the discordant Mayhew family with the charity, or the indifference, of those who have seen more of the wrong side of life. Had there been only poor, besmirched Mr. Mayhew, and stout, dressy, voluble Mrs. Mayhew, he would never have glanced towards them the second time; but his artist's eyes had fallen on the contradictory being that linked them together. Morally and mentally she seemed one with her parent stock; but her beauty, in some of its aspects, was so marvellous, that the desire to redeem it from its hateful and grotesque associations grew stronger every hour.

Instead, therefore, of going off upon solitary rambles, as he had done hitherto, he mingled more frequently in the amusements of the guests of the house, with the hope he would thus be brought so often in contact with the subject of his experiment, that her pique would wear away sufficiently to permit them to meet on something like friendly terms.

As far as the other guests were concerned, he had not trouble. They welcomed him to croquet, to walking and boating excursions, and to their evening games and promenades. Such of the ladies as danced were pleased to secure him as a partner. Indeed, from the dearth of gentlemen during the week, he soon found himself more in demand than he cared to be, and saw that even the landlord was beginning to rely upon him to keep up a state of pleasurable effervescence among his patrons. His languid friend, Stanton, was not a little surprised, and at last remarked:

"Why, Van, what has come over you? I never saw you in the role of a society fellow before!"

But his unwonted courtesies seemed wholly in vain. He propitiated and won all save one, and that one was the sole object of his effort. While all others smiled, her face remained cold and averted. Indeed she took such pains to ignore and avoid him, that it was generally recognized that there was a difference between them, and of course there was an endless amount of gossiping surmise. As the hostility seemed wholly on the lady's side, Van Berg appeared to the better advantage, and Ida was all the more provoked as she recognized the fact.

She now began to wish that she had taken a different course. As Van Berg pursued his present tactics, her feminine intuition was not so dull but that she was led to believe he wished to make her acquaintance. Of course there was, to her mind, but one explanation of this fact--he was becoming fascinated, like so many others.

"If I were only on speaking and flirting terms," she thought (the two relations were about synonymous in her estimation), "I might draw him on to a point which would give me a chance of punishing him far more than is now possible by sullenly keeping aloof. As it is, it looks to these people here as if he had jilted me instead of I him, and that I am sulking over it."

But she had entangled herself in the snarl of her own previous words and manner. She had charged her mother and cousin to permit no overtures of peace; and once or twice, when mine host, in his good-natured, off-hand manner, had sought to introduce them, she had been so blind and deaf to his purpose as to appear positively rude. Her repugnance to the artist had become a generally recognized fact; and she had built up such a barrier that she could not break it down without asking for more help than was agreeable to her pride. But she chafed inwardly at her false position, and at the increasing popularity of the object of her spite.

Even her mother at last formed his acquaintance; and, as the artist listened to the garrulous lady for half an hour with scarcely an interruption, she pronounced him one of the most entertaining of men.

As Mrs. Mayhew was chanting his praises that evening, Ida broke out petulantly:

"Was there ever such a gad-fly as this artist! He pesters me from morning till night."

"Pesters you! I never saw a lady so severely let alone as you are by him. Whatever is the cause of your spite it seems to harm only yourself, and I should judge from your remark that it disturbs you much more than you would have it appear--certainly far more than it does him."

There was no soothing balm in these words, as may well be supposed; and yet the impression grew upon Ida that the artist would be friendly if he could; and the belief strengthened with him also that she took far too much pains to manifest what she would have others think to be mere indifference and dislike, and he intercepted besides, with increasing frequency, furtive glances towards himself. So much ice had accumulated between them, however that neither knew how it was to be broken.

One day, about the middle of the week, Van Berg found a stranger seated opposite to him at the dinner table. His first impression was, that the lady was not very young and that her features were quite plain; but before the meal was over he concluded that her face was decidedly interesting, and that the suggestion of age had been made by maturity of character and the impress which some real and deep experience gives to the countenance, rather than by the trace of years.

While yet a stranger, the expression of her blue eyes, as she glanced around, was so kindly that she at once won the good-will of all who encountered them. This genial, friendly light in her eyes seemed a marked characteristic. It was so different from the obtrusive, forward manner with which some seek to make acquaintances, that it would not have suggested a departure from modest reserve, even to the most cynical. It rather indicated a heart aglow with gentle feeling and genial good-will, like a maple-wood fire on a hospitality hearth, that warms all who come within the sphere of its influence.

Van Berg was naturally reserved, and slow to make new acquaintances. But before he had stolen many glances of the face opposite him he began to wish for the privilege of speaking to her--a wish that was increased by the fact that they were alone at the table, the other guests who usually occupied the chairs not having returned from their morning drive. she did not look at him in particular, nor appear to be in the least struck by his "distingue" air, as Ida had been before she was blinded by prejudice; but she looked out upon the world at large with such a friendly aspect that he was sure she had something pleasant to say. He was therefore well pleased when at last the landlord bustled up in his brusque way and said:

"Mr. Van Berg, permit me to make you acquainted with Miss Burton. She has had the faith to put herself under my charge for a few weeks, and I shall reward her by sharing the responsibility with you, who seem blessed with the benevolent desire of giving us all a good time," and then he bustled off to look after some other matter which required his attention during the critical hour of dinner.

Miss Burton acknowledged the young man's bow without a trace of affectation or reserve.

"I shall try not to prove a burden to either of you," she said, with a smile.

"I have already discovered that you will not be," said Van Berg, "and was wishing for an introduction."

"I hope your wishes may always find so ready a fulfillment."

"That's a kindly wish, Miss Burton, but a vain one."

"Were we misanthropical people, Mr. Van Berg, we might sigh, 'and such are human wishes generally.'"

"One is often tempted to do that anyway, even when not especially prone to look askance at fortune."

"There is an easy way of escaping that temptation."

"How?"

"Do not form many wishes."

"Have you very few wishes?"

With a slight and piquant motion of her head she replied, "I was only giving a bit of trite advice. It's asking a great deal to require that one should both preach and practice."

"I think you are possessed by one wish which swallows up most others," said Van Berg, a little abruptly.

A visible pallor overspread her face, and she drew back perceptibly as one might shrink from a blow.

"You know how strong first impressions are," resumed Van Berg hastily, "and the thought has passed through my mind that you might be so preoccupied in wishing good things for others as to quite forget yourself."

"If one could be completely occupied in that way," she said, with a faint smile which suggested rather than revealed a vista of her past experience, "one might have little occasion to wish for anything for self. But, Mr. Van Berg, only we poor unreasoning women put much faith in first impressions; and you know how often they mislead even us, who are supposed to have safe instincts."

"Do they often mislead you?"

"Indeed, sir," she replied, with a merry twinkle in her eye, "I think you must have learned the questions in the catechism, if not the answers."

Van Berg bit his lip. Here was a suggestion of a thorn in the sweetbrier he believed he had discovered.

"Now see how far I am astray," she resumed with a frankness which had in it no trace of familiarity. "It is my impression you are a lawyer."

At this Van Berg laughed outright and said: "You are indeed mistaken. I have no connection with the influential class whose business it is to make and evade the laws. I am only one among the humble masses who aim to obey them. But perhaps you think your intuition goes deeper than surface facts and that I OUGHT to have been a cross-questioner."

"I am quite sure my intuition is correct in thinking that you would not be very cross about it."

"Perhaps not, if disarmed by so smiling a face as yours."

The others, who had been delayed by a longer ride than usual, now entered and took the vacant chairs around the table. Van Berg felt sufficiently acquainted with them to introduce Miss Burton, for he was curious to observe whether she would make the same impression on them as he had been conscious of himself.

They bowed with the quiet, well-bred manner of society people, but were at first inclined to pay little heed to the plainly dressed and rather plain appearing young stranger. As one and another, however, glanced towards her, something about her seemed to linger in their memories and cause them to look again. The lady next to her offered a commonplace remark, chiefly out of politeness, and received so pleasant a reply in return that she turned her thoughts as well as her eyes to see who it really was that had made it. Then another spoke, and the response led her to speak again and again; and soon the entire party were describing their drive and living over its pleasantest features; and before the meal ended they were all gathered, metaphorically, around the mystical, maple-wood fire that burned on the hearth of a nature that seemed so hospitable and kindly as to have no other mission than to cheer and entertain.

"Who is that little brown thrush of a woman that you were so taken with at dinner?" asked Stanton, as they were enjoying a quiet smoke in their favorite corner of the piazza.

"Good for you, Stanton. I never knew you to be so appreciative before. Your term quite accurately describes her. She is both shy and reserved, but not diffident or awkward in the least. Indeed her manner might strike some as being peculiarly frank. But there is something back of it all; for young as she undoubtedly is, her face suggests to me some deep and unusual experience."

"Jupiter Ammon! What an abyss of mystery, surmise, and metaphysics you fell into while I was eating my dinner! I used the phrase 'brown thrush,' only in reference to her dress and general homeliness."

"Oh, I beg your pardon! I take all back about your nice appreciation of character. I now grasp the whole truth--your attention wandered sufficiently from your dinner to observe that she wore a brown dress, and the one fact about the thrush that has impressed you is that it is brown. 'Here be truths' which leave nothing more to be said."

"You imaginative fellows are often ridiculously astray on the other tack, and see a thousand-fold more than exists. But it's a pity you could not read all there was in this young woman's face, for it was certainly PLAIN enough. At this rate you will be asking our burly landlord to unbosom himself, insisting that he has a 'silent sorrow' tucked away somewhere under his ample waistcoat."

"His troubles, like yours, are banished by the dinner hour. I recognize your feeble witticism about her plain face, and forgive you because I thought it plain also at first, but when she came to speak and smile it ceased to be plain. I do not say she has had trouble, but she has had some experience in her past history which neither you nor I could understand."

"Quite likely; the measles, for instance, which I never had to my knowledge. Possibly she has had a lover who was not long in finding a prettier face, and so left her, but not so disconsolate that she could not smile bewilderingly upon you."

"Come now, Stanton, I'll forewarn and forearm you. I confidently predict that the voice of this brown thrush will lure you out of a life which, to put it mildly, is a trifle matter-of-fact and material. You have glanced at her, but you have not seen her yet. Mark my words; your appetite will flag before many weeks pass."

"I wish I could pin you down to a large wager on this absurdity."

"I agree to paint you a picture if my prediction fails."

"And to finish it within a natural lifetime?" said Stanton, with much animation.

"To finish as promptly as good work can be done."

"Pardon me, Van. You had too much wine for dinner; I don't want to take advantage of you."

"I did not have any."

"In order to carry out this transaction honestly, am I expected to make conscious and patient effort to come under the influence of this maiden in brown, who has had some mysterious complaint in the past, about which 'neither you, nor I, nor anybody knows,' as the poet saith: or, like the ancient mariner, will she 'hold me with her glittering eye?'"

"You have only to jog on in your old ways until she wakes you up and makes a man of you."

"I surely am dreaming; for never did the level-headed Van Berg talk such arrant nonsense before. If she seems to you such a marvel, why don't you open your own mouth and let the ripe cherry drop into it."

"One reason will answer, were there no others--she wouldn't drop. If you ever win her, my boy, you will have to bestir yourself."

"I'd rather win the picture. Let me see--I know the very place in my room where I shall hang it."

"You are a little premature. That chicken is not yet hatched, and you may feel like hanging yourself in the place of the picture before the summer is over."

"Let me wrap your head in ice-water, Van. There's mine host--O, Mr. Burleigh!" he cried to the landlord, who at that moment happened to cross the piazza; "please step here. My friend Mr. Van Berg has been strangely fascinated by the stranger in brown whom you, with some deep and malicious design, placed opposite to him at the table. What are her antecedents, and who are her uncles? I take a friendly interest in this young man. Indeed, I'm sort of a guardian angel to him, having saved his life many a time."

"Saved his life!" ejaculated the landlord. "How?"

"By quenching his consuming genius with good dinners. But come--solve for me this riddle in brown. My friend usually gives but little heed to the feminine conundrums that smilingly ask to be answered, but for some occult reason he is in a state of sleepless interest over this one, and I know that his waistcoat is selling with gratitude to me for having the courage to ask these questions."

"He is speaking several words for himself to one for me," said Van Berg; "and yet I admit that her face and manner struck me very pleasantly."

"Well, she has a pleasant little phiz, now hasn't she, Mr. Van Berg? I don't wonder Mr. Stanton was taken by her, for I was myself. It's but little I can tell you, save that she is a teacher in one of the New England female colleges, and that she brings letters to me from the most respectable parties, who introduce her as a lady in the best sense of the word. Further than that nothing was written, nor do I know anything concerning her. But any one who can't see that she's a perfect lady is no judge of the article."

"I will stake any amount on that, basing my belief only on the first impression of one interview," added Van Berg, decidedly.

"You now see how deeply my friend is impressed," said Stanton, with a satirical smile. "Thanks, Mr. Burleigh; we will not detain you any longer."

When alone again, he resumed, with an expression of disgust:

"A 'New England FEMALE college!' How aptly he words it. If there's any region on the face of the earth that I detest, it's New England; and if there is one type of women that I'd shun as I would 'ever angry bears,' it's a New England school-ma'am."

"'But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea' of a restless, all-absorbing passion, 'Thou'dst meet the bear I' the mouth,' as you will try to in this case. You will be ready to barter your ears for a kiss before very long."

"It will be after they have grown prodigiously long and hairy in some transformation scene like that in which the immortal Bottom was the victim."

"Your illustration tells against you, for it was only after his appropriate transformation that Bottom saw the fairy queen; but in your case the desire to 'munch' will be banned."

"Come, Van, we have had enough chaff on this topic, already worn threadbare. I now know all about the mysterious complaint, the impress of which on the face of the school-ma'am has so dazed you. It's a New England female college--a place where they give a razor-like edge to the wits of Yankee women, already too sharp, and develop in attenuated maidens the hatchet faces of their sires. You may as well set about that picture at once, whenever you feel in the mood for work."

"I admit that I have been speaking nonsense, and yet you may find many grains of truth in my chaff, nevertheless."

"But is my picture to end in chaff?"

"I will stand by my promise. If I lose, perhaps I'll paint you the school-ma'am's portrait."

"Then we would both lose, for I would have no earthly use for that."

"Well, I will paint what you wish, within reason."

"I'm content, and with good reason, for never did I have such absurd good luck before."

"Ha! look yonder--quick!"

Both the young men started to their feet, but before they could spring forward, the event, which had so suddenly aroused them, was an accomplished fact.

Both drew a long breath of relief as they looked at each other, and Van Berg remarked, with some emphasis:

"Act first, scene first, and it does not open like a comedy either." _

Read next: Chapter 8. Glimpses Of Tragedy

Read previous: Chapter 6. Reckless Words And Deeds

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