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A Face Illumined, a novel by Edward Payson Roe |
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Chapter 12. Miss Mayhew Is Puzzled |
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_ Chapter XII. Miss Mayhew is Puzzled "Miss Burton," said Van Berg, as soon as they were alone, "I wish I could have saved you from this disagreeable experience. I tried to do so, but was not quick enough. I much blame my slow wits that I was not more prompt." "I wish it might have been prevented," she replied, "for their sakes as well as my own." "I have no compunctions on their account whatever," said Van Berg, "and feel that you let them off much too kindly. I think, however, that they and all others here will understand you much better hereafter. I cannot express too strongly to you how thoroughly our brief acquaintance has taught me to respect you, and if you will permit me to give an earnest meaning to Mr. Burleigh's jesting offer to share with me the responsibility of your care, I will esteem it an honor." "I sincerely thank you, Mr. Van Berg, and should I ever need the services of a gentleman,"--she laid a slight emphasis upon the term--"I shall, without any hesitancy, turn to you. But I have long since learned to be my own protectress, as, after all, one must be, situated as I am." "You seem to have the ability, not only to take care of yourself, but of others, Miss Burton. Nevertheless I shall, with your permission, establish a sort of protectorate over you which shall be exceedingly unobtrusive and undemonstrative, and not in the least like that which some powers make the excuse for exactions, until the protected party is ready to cry out in desperation to be delivered from its friends. I hesitated too long this evening from the fear of being forward; and yet I did not know what was coming, and had learned only accidentally but a few moments before that anything was coming." "Well," replied Miss Burton with a slight laugh, "it's a comfortable thought that there's a fort near, to which one can run should an enemy appear; and a pleasanter thought still, that the fort is strong and staunch. but, to change the figure, I have a great fancy for paddling my own light canoe, and such small craft will often float, you know, where a ship of the line would strike." "I will admit, Miss Burton, that ships of the line are often unwieldy and clumsily deep in the water; but if you ever do need a gunboat with a howitzer or two on deck, may I hope to be summoned?" "I could ask for no better champion. I fairly tremble at the broadside that would follow." "Are you thinking of the discharge or the recoil?" "Both might involve danger," said Miss Burton, laughing; "but I have concluded to keep on your side through such wars as may rage at the Lake House during my sojourn. I cannot help thinking of poor Mr. and Mrs. Chints. I feel almost as sorry for such people as I do for the blind and deaf. They seem to lack a certain sense which, if possessed, would teach them to avoid such scenes." "I detest such people and like to snub them unmercifully," said Van Berg, heartily. "That may be in accordance with a gunboat character; but is it knightly?" "Why not? What does snobbishness and rich vulgarity deserve at any man's hands?" "Nothing but sturdy blows. But what do weak, imperfect, half-educated men and women, who have never had a tithe of your advantages, NEED at your hands? Can we not condemn faults, and at the same time pity and help the faulty? The gunboat sends its shot crashing too much at random. It seems to me that true knighthood would spare weakness of any kind." "I'm glad you have not spared mine. You have demolished me as a gunboat, but I would fain be your knight." "It is Mrs. Chints who needs a knight at present, and not I. It troubles me to think of her worriment over this foolish little episode, and with your permission I will go and try to banish the cloud." As she turned she was intercepted by Stanton, who said: "Miss Burton, let my present to you my cousin, Miss Mayhew." A ray from a parlor lamp fell upon Ida's face, and Van Berg saw at once that it was clouded and unamiable in its expression. Stanton had evidently been reproaching her severely. Miss Burton held out her hand cordially and said; "I wish to thank you for maintaining the credit of our sex this morning. These superior men are so fond of portraying us as hysterical, clinging creatures whose only instinct in peril is to throw themselves on man's protection, that I always feel a little exultation when one of the 'weaker and gentler sex,' as we are termed, show the courage and presence of mind which they coolly appropriate as masculine qualities." "Are you an advocate of woman's rights, Miss Burton?" asked Miss Mayhew, stung by the unconscious sarcasm of the lady's words, to reply in almost as resentful a manner as if a wound had been intended. "Not of woman's, particularly," was the quiet answer; "I would be glad if every one had their rights." "You philanthropy is very wide, certainly." "And therefore very thin, perhaps you think, since it covers so much ground. I agree with you, Miss Mayhew, that general good-will is as cold and thin as moonshine. One ray of sunlight that warms some particular thing into life is worth it all." "Indeed! I think I prefer moonlight." "There are certain absorbing avocations in life to which moonshine is better adapted then sunlight, is probably the thought in my cousin's mind," said Stanton, satirically. "And what are they?" asked Miss Burton. "Flirtation, for instance." "My cousin is speaking for himself," said Ida, acidly; "and knows better what is in his own mind than in mine." "If some ladies themselves never know their own minds, how can another know?" Stanton retorted. "Well," said Miss Burton, with a laugh, "if we accept a practical philosophy much in vogue--that of taking the world as we find it--flirting is one of the commonest pursuits of mankind." "I'm quite sure, Miss Burton," said Van Berg, "that your philosophy of life is the reverse of taking the world as we find it." "Indeed, you are mistaken, sir; I am exceedingly prosaic in my views, and cherish no Utopian dreams and theories. I do indeed take the old matter-of-fact world as I find it, and try to make the best of it." "Ah, your last is a very saving clause. Too many are seemingly trying to make the worst of it, and unfortunately they succeed." Ida here shot a quick and vengeful glance at the speaker. "Please do not present me as a general reformer, Mr. Van Berg," protested Miss Burton, with a light laugh; "I have my hands full in mending my own ways." "And so might we all, no doubt," said Stanton; "only most of us leave our ways unmended. but I am curious to know, Miss Burton, how you would make the best of a flirtation; since this is emphatically a part of the world as we find it, especially at a summer hotel." "The best that we can do with many things that exist," she replied, "is to leave them alone. Italy is pre-eminently the land of garlic and art; but fortunately we shall not find it necessary to indulge in both and in equal proportions when we are so happy as to go abroad." "A great many people prefer the garlic," said Stanton. "Oh, certainly," she answered; "it's a matter of taste." "So then garlic and flirtation are corresponding terms in your vocabulary?" "I cannot say which term outranks the other, but it seems to me that if a woman regards her love as a sacred thing, she cannot permit an indefinite number of commonplace people even to attempt to stain it with their soiling touch." "I think gentlemen show just as much of a disposition to flirt as ladies," said Ida, with resentment in her tone. "I will not dispute that statement," replied Miss Burton, with a laugh; "indeed, I'm inclined to think they are very human." "Humane, you mean," interposed Stanton. "Yes, I often wonder at our patient endurance." "Which shall be taxed no longer to-night by me. Good-evening, Miss Mayhew. Good-evening, patient martyrs." "Humane, indeed!" said Stanton. "Are you that way inclined, Van?" "I have no occasion to be otherwise." "Well, I feel savage enough to scalp some one." "So I should judge," remarked Ida. "Perhaps then, as my mood contrasts somewhat favorably with your cousin's, you will venture to walk with me for awhile?" said Van Berg. "Indeed, sir," she replied, taking his arm, "there are times when any change is a relief." "I cannot be very greatly elated over that view of the case, certainly," remarked Van Berg, with a laugh. She did not reply at once, but after a moment said: "I suppose you regard me as a hopeless case at best." "what suggests that thought to you, Miss Mayhew?" "You are not so dull as to need to ask that question, and you only ask it to draw me out. For one thing, you probably think that I instigated Mr. and Mrs. Chints to act as they did. This is not true." "I'm very glad to hear it." "I'm no more to blame than Mr. Burleigh was. He knew about it as well as I did, but Mrs. Chints was bound to carry out her project." "Will you permit a suggestion?" "I suppose you wish to insinuate that I acted like a heathen, instead of saying that I am one plainly, as does Cousin Ik?" "I think you acted a little thoughtlessly. If Miss Burton had been in your place, she would have tried to prevent the disagreeable scene." "Oh, certainly! she is perfect." "No; she is kind." "Would it be possible to speak upon some agreeable subject, Mr. Van Berg? I have had enough mortifications for one day." He was puzzled. What topic could he introduce that would interest this spoiled and petulant beauty. He touched on art, but she was only artful in her small way, and could not follow him. He tried literature, and here they had even less in common. He would not and indeed could not read the thin society novels which reflected modes of life as trivial as her own, and his books might have been written in another language, so slight was her acquaintance with them. The various political, social, or scientific questions of the day had never puzzled her brain. Van Berg cautiously felt his way towards his companion's knowledge of two or three of the most popular of them. Her answers, however, were so superficial and irrelevant, and also so evidently embarrassed, that he saw his only resources to be society chit-chat, gossip about mutual acquaintances, the latest modes, the attractions of pleasure resorts in the city, and of summer resorts in the country. But he gave his mind to these unwonted themes, and labored hard to be entertaining; for now that he had gained the vantage-ground he sought, he was determined to discover whether there was a sleeping mind or a vacuum behind Miss Mayhew's shapely forehead. Granting that there was a womanly intelligence there, as yet unquickened, he was not so irrational as to imagine he could jostle it into illumining activity in one short hour, or day, or week. But it seemed to him that if any mind existed worth the name, it would give such encouraging signs of life before many days passed as would promise success of his experiment. He felt that his first aim must be to establish an intimacy that would permit as full and frank an exchange of thought as was possible between people so dissimilar. While he tried to bring himself down to the littleness of her daily life, he determined to show his disapproval of every phrase of its meanness as far as he could without offending her. He had made her feel that he condemned her course towards Miss Burton that evening, and he had meant to do so. She resented this disapproval, and at the same time respected him for it. Indeed he puzzled her. He evidently sought and wished for her society; and yet as they walked back and forth, even though she did not look at him when the light gave her the opportunity to do so, she felt intuitively that he did not enjoy her company. She saw that he was laboring hard to make himself agreeable; but his small talk had not the familiar flippancy and fluency of one speaking in his native tongue; nor was his manner that of one who, infatuated with her beauty, had thrown aside all other considerations. She felt that the man at her side measured her, and understood her littleness thoroughly. And she herself had a growing consciousness of insignificance that was as painful as it was novel. Adding to all the humiliations of this day here was a man, not so very much older than herself, trying to come down to her level, as he would accommodate his language to a child. No labored argument could have revealed her ignorance to her so clearly, as her conscious inability to follow him into his ordinary range of thought. Unwittingly he had demonstrated his superiority in a way that she could not deny, however much she might be inclined to resent it. And yet he treated her with a sort of respect, and occasionally she saw that he bent his eyes upon her face as if in search of something. After a transient effort to ignore everything and talk in her usual superficial manner, she became more and more silent and oppressed, and, at last said, somewhat abruptly: "Mr. Van Berg, I am weary, and I imagine you are too. I think I will say good-night." "I scarcely wonder that you are fatigued. You have had a trying day." "It has been a horrid day," she said, emphatically. "It might have ended much worse, nevertheless." "Possibly," she admitted with a shrug. "You have more reason to congratulate yourself than you imagine, Miss Mayhew. Even that disagreeable souvenir of our morning peril, your lameness, has disappeared, and you might have been maimed for life." "My lameness, like my courage, was chiefly a fraud to begin with, and soon disappeared; but I have other souvenirs of that occasion that I cannot get rid of so easily." "If I am one of them, you are right, Miss Mayhew; I shall hold you to our agreement this morning. You put me on my good behavior--have I not behaved well?" "Yes, better than I have. I was not referring to you personally, but to certain memories." "We agreed to let by-gones be by-gones." "But others are not parties to this agreement, and every reference to the affair is odious to me." "I shall make no further reference to it, and you must be fair enough not to punish me for the acts of others." "You also despise me in your heart of my course towards Miss Burton this evening." "If I despised you would I have sought your society this evening?" "I do not know. I don't understand you, if you will permit my bluntness." "Possibly you don't understand yourself, Miss Mayhew." "I understand that I have had a miserable day, and I hope I may never see another like it. Good-night, sir." _ |
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