Chapter 50. Swept Away

________________________________________________
_ Chapter L. Swept Away

There was no vulgar profusion in the dinner which Ida had ordered, nor were its courses interminable; and as she gracefully and quietly directed everything, the thought would keep insinuating itself in Van Berg's mind, that the home over which she might eventually preside would be a near suburb of Paradise. He heartily seconded Ida's purpose that her father should take part in their conversation, and it was another deep source of her gladness that the one whom she had seen so depressed and despairing, now looked as she would always wish him to appear. "Oh, it's too good to last," she sighed, as her heart fairly ached with its excess of joy.

After dinner Mr. Mayhew asked Van Berg to light a cigar with him in his study, but the artist declined and followed Ida to the parlor.

"Mr. Van Berg," she said, with a great show of surprise, "how is it you don't smoke this evening? It seemed to me that you and Cousin Ik were drawn to a certain corner of Mr. Burleigh's piazza with the certainty of gravitation after dinner, and then you were lost in the clouds."

"On this occasion I have taken my choice of pleasures and have followed you."

"This is a proud moment for me," she said, with a mirthful twinkle in her eyes. "I never expected to rival a gentleman's cigar, and I don't think I ever did before."

"Another proof of my friendship, Miss Ida."

"Yes," she replied demurely, "an act like this goes a good way towards making me believe you are sincere."

"Miss Ida, you are always laughing at me. I wish I could find some way to get even with you, and I will too."

"You do me injustice. I, in turn, will lay an offering on the altar of friendship and will go with you this evening to the concert garden."

"I think you exceedingly, but will leave the offering on the altar, if you will permit me. I would much rather remain in your parlor."

"Why, Mr. Van Berg, you are bent on being a martyr for my sake this evening."

"Yes, wholly bent upon it."

"How amiable gentlemen are after dinner!" she exclaimed. "But where was your appetite this evening? Clearly our cook knows nothing of the preparation of ambrosia nor I of nectar, although I made the coffee myself."

"Did you? That accounts for its divine flavor. Don't you remember I took two cups?"

"I saw that your politeness led you to send me your cup a second time. I suppose you accomplished a vast deal again to-day after you were once finally rid of an embodiment of April weather?"

"I would lose your respect altogether if I should tell you how I have spent the afternoon. You would think me an absurd jumble of moods and tenses. I may as well own up, I suppose. I have done nothing but kill time, and to that end I took a walk through Central Park."

"This hot afternoon! Mr. Van Berg, what possessed you?"

"A demon of impatience. It seemed as if old Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still again."

"You must indeed by a genius, Mr. Van Berg, for I've always heard that the peculiarly gifted were full of unaccountable moods."

"I understand the satire of your expression 'PECULIARLY gifted,' but my turn will come before the evening is over," and he leaned luxuriously back against the sofa cushion with a look of infinite content with the prospect before him. "Bless me, what is this over which I have half broken my back," he exclaimed, and he dragged out of its partial concealment a huge volume.

"Please let me take that out of your way," said Ida, stepping hastily forward with crimson cheeks.

"Don't trouble yourself, Miss Mayhew; fortune is favoring me once more, and I am on the point of discovering the favorite author you would not mention this morning. An encyclopedia, as I live! from A to B, with a hair-pin inserted sharply at the word Amsterdam. Really, Miss Ida, I can't account for your absorbing interest in Amsterdam."

"Mr. Van Berg, there is no use in trying to hide anything from you. You find me out every time and I'm really growing superstitious about it."

"I wish your words were true; but, for the life of me, I can't understand why you should crave encyclopaedias as August reading, nor can I see the remotest connection between the exquisite color of your face and the old Dutch city of Amsterdam."

"Well, the Fates are against me once more. Why I left that book there I don't know, for I'm not usually so careless. Mr. Van Berg, I scarcely need to remind you of a fact that you discovered long ago--I don't know anything. Do you not remember how you tried to talk with me one evening? You touched on almost as many subjects as that huge volume contains, and my face remained as vacant through them all as the blank pages in that book before the printed matter begins."

"But now, Miss Ida, your face is to me like this book after the printed matter begins, only I read there that which interests me far more than anything which this bulky tome contains, even under the word Amsterdam."

"You imagine far more than you see. I think artists are like poets, and are given to great flights. Besides, you are becoming versed in my small talk. When you tried it on the evening I referred to, you were just a trifle ponderous."

"Yes, I can now see myself performing like a lame elephant. Did you propose to read this encyclopaedia entirely through?"

"I might have skipped art as a subject far too deep for me."

"When you come to that let me take the place of the encyclopaedia. I will sit just here where you keep your book and give you a series of familiar lectures."

"I never enjoyed being lectured, sir!"

"Then I'll teach you after the Socratic method, and ask you questions."

"I fear some of them might be too personal. You have such a mania for solving everything."

"And did you fear that at some of the many sittings I shall need this fall I might again broach every subject under the sun, and so you were led to read an encyclopaedia to be prepared?"

"Is that what you mean by the Socratic method? I decline any lessons concerning art or anything else on that plan, for you would find out everything."

"I shall, anyway. How long ago it seems since we took that stupid walk together on Mr. Burleigh's piazza! We are nearer together now, Miss Ida, than we were then."

"Oh! no, indeed," she replied quickly; "I had your arm on that occasion."

"But you have my sincere friendship and respect now. I can't tell you how pleased I was when I saw how you had honored the little emblematic flower I gave you this morning. That you wear it to-night as your only ornament gives me hope that you do value my respect and regard."

"I think I had better let the rose-bud answer you, and I confess I like to think how perfect it is when I remember the meaning you gave to it, though how you can respect me at all I cannot understand. Still, I am like father--next to God's favor the respect of those I esteem does most to sustain and reassure me. But, oh! Mr. Van Berg, you can't know what an honest sense of ill-desert I have. It is so hard just to do right, no matter what the consequences may be."

"The trouble with me is that I am not trying as you are. But I know, with absolute certainty, that the strongest impulse of true friendship, or at least of mine, in this instance, is to render some service to my friend. You will make me very happy if you will tell me something I can do for you."

"You are helping me very much in your manner towards father, and I do thank you from the very depths of my heart. In no way could you have won from me a deeper gratitude. And--well--your kindness almost tempts me to ask for another favor, Mr. Van Berg."

He sprang to her side and took her hand.

Quickly withdrawing it, she said with a little decisive node: "You must sit down and sit still, for I have along, tiresome story to tell, and a very prosaic favor to ask;" for she had resolved, "he shall go forward now with his eyes open, and he shall never say I won him by seeming what I was not. If I can't deal right by Jennie Burton, I will by him."

"I shall find no service prosaic; see, I'm all attention," and he did look very eager indeed.

"That encyclopaedia suggests my story, and I may have to refer incidentally to myself."

"Leave the book out; I'll listen for ages."

"I should be out of breath before that. Mr. Van Berg, I'm in earnest; I don't know anything worth knowing. My life has been worse than wasted, and the only two things I understand well are dancing and flirting. Now I know you are disgusted, but its the truth. My old, fashionable life seems to me like the tawdry scenes of a second-rate theatre, where everything is for effect and nothing is real. I have hosts of acquaintances, but I haven't any friends except Mr. Eltinge."

"And Harold Van Berg," put in the artist, promptly.

"It's good of you to say that after such confessions," she continued, with a shy glance. "I hope it wasn't out of politeness. Well, I've waked up at last. I think you first startled me out of my insufferable stupidity and silliness at the concert garden, and I'm very much obliged to you for the remark you made to Cousin Ik on that occasion."

"Yes, I remember," Van Berg groaned. "I waked you up as if I were trying to put your shoulder out of joint. Well, I'm waking up also."

"You have no idea what a perfect sham of a life I led," and she told him frankly of her wasted school days and of her trip abroad, for which she had no preparation of mind or character. "A butterfly might have flown over the same ground and come back just as wise," she said. "But I have suddenly entered a new world of truth and duty, and I am bewildered; I am anxious to fit myself for the society of sensible, cultivated people, and I am discouraged by the task before me. I went to father's library yesterday and was perfectly appalled by the number of books and subjects that I know nothing about. The fact that I stumbled into that encyclopaedia, which gave you the laugh against me, shows how helpless I am. Indeed, I'm like a little child trying to find its way through a wilderness of knowledge. I blundered on as far as Amsterdam, and there I stopped in despair. I didn't know what was before me, and I was getting everything I had been over confused and mixed up in my mind. And now, Mr. Van Berg, with your thorough education and wide experience you can tell me what to read and how to read."

Van Berg's face was fairly alive with interest, and he said eagerly: "The favor you ask suggests a far greater one on my part. Let me go with you through this wilderness of knowledge. We can take up courses of reading together."

At this moment Mr. Mayhew entered, and the artist hesitated to go on with his far-reaching offers, and, indeed, he suddenly began to realize, with some embarrassment, how much they did involve.

But Ida maintained her presence of mind, and said, simply: "That would be impossible, though no doubt exceedingly helpful to me. Here, as in the instance of the pictures, your good-nature and kindness carry you far beyond what I ever dreamed of asking. I merely thought that in some of your moments of leisure you could jot down some books and subjects that would be the same as if you had pointed out smooth and shady paths. You see, in my ignorance, I've tried to push my way through the wilderness straight across everything. Last evening I pestered my father with so many questions about politics and the topics of the day, that he thought I had lost my wits."

Mr. Mayhew leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily, as he mentally ejaculated: "Well done, little girl!"

"I will brush up my literary ideas, and do the best I can, very gladly," said Van Berg. "But you greatly underrate yourself and overrate my ability. I am still but on the edge of this wilderness of knowledge myself, and in crossing a wilderness one likes company."

"Oh, I could never keep up with your manly strides," said Ida, with a sudden trill of laughter. "Having secured my wish, I shall now reward you with some very poor music, which will suggest my need of lessons in that direction also."

Van Berg was not long in discovering that she would never become a great musician, no matter how many lessons she had. But she played with taste and a graceful rhythm, which proved that music in its simplest forms might become a language by which she could express her thought and feeling.

"Ida," said Mr. Mayhew, a little abruptly, "I wish to see a friend at the club. I'll be back before the evening is over."

"Please don't stay long," Ida answered, looking wistfully after him.

Then they found some ballad-music that they could sing together, and Van Berg expressed great pleasure in finding how well their voices blended.

"You have modestly kept quite all summer, and I am just finding out that you play and sing," he said.

"I would not have the confidence to do either at a hotel. I shall never be able to do any more than furnish a little simple home music to friends, not critics."

"I'm content with that arrangement, for I have finally dropped my character of critic."

"But true friends never flatter," she said. "If you won't help me overcome my faults I shall have to find another friend."

"As you recommended an ancient woman as nurse, so I will recommend the venerable friend you have already found, and ask you to let him do all the fault-finding."

She turned to him and said earnestly: "Mr. Van Berg, are you not a sufficiently sincere friend to tell me my faults?"

"Yes, Miss Ida, if you ask me to."

"Only as you do so can you keep my respect."

"You are very much in earnest. I never saw greater fidelity to conscience before; and I should be very sorry if, for any cause, your conscience were arrayed against me."

She suddenly buried her face in her hands and trembled. Then turning from him to her piano again she faltered: "I disregarded conscience once and I suffered deeply," and in the depths of her soul she added, "and I fear I shall again."

"Miss Ida," he said impetuously, "I cannot tell you what a fascination your new, beautiful life has for me as seen against the dark background of memories which neither you nor I can ever wholly banish. But I am causing you pain now," for she became very pale, as was ever the case when there was the faintest allusion to the awful crime which she had contemplated. "Forgive me," he added earnestly, "and sing, please, that little meadow brook song, of which I caught a few bars last evening. That, I think, must contain an antidote against all morbid thoughts."

"You are mistaken," she said. "It's very silly and sentimental; you won't like it."

"Nevertheless please sing it, for if not to my taste, you will prevent it from running in my head any longer, as it has ever since I heard it."

"You will never ask for it again," she said, and she sang the following words to a low-gliding melody designed to suggest the murmur of a small stream:

'Twas down in a meadow, close by a brook,
A violet bloomed in a shadowy nook.
She gazed at the rill with a wistful eye---
"He cares not for me, he's hastening by,"
She sighed.
In sunshine and shade the brook sped along,
Nor ceased for a moment his gurgling song.
"'Twould sing all the same were I withered and dead"---
And the blue-eyed violet bowed her head
And died.

But the rill and the song went on the same
Till the pitiless frost of winter came,
When the song was hushed in an icy chill,
And the gay little brook at last stood still
And thought---
"Oh, could I now see the violet blue
that looked at me once with eyes of dew,
I'd spring to her feet and lingering stay
Till sure I was bearing her love away,
Well sought."

 

The song seemed to disturb the artist somewhat. "The stupid brook!" he exclaimed. "It was so stupid as to be almost human."

"I knew you wouldn't like it," she said, looking up at him in surprise.

"I like your singing and the music, but that brook provokes me, the little idiot! Why didn't it stop before?"

"I take the brook's part," said Ida. "Because the violet gazed at it in a lackadaisical way was no reason for its stopping unless it wanted to. Indeed, if I were the violet I should want the brook to go on, unless it couldn't help stopping."

"It did stop when it couldn't help itself, and then it was too late," said Van Berg, with a frown.

Ida trilled out one of her sudden laughs, as she said, "Don't take the matter so to heart, Mr. Van Berg. When spring came the brook went on as merrily as ever, and was well contented to have other violets look at it."

"Miss Ida, you are a witch," said the artist, and with an odd, involuntary gesture he passed his hand across his brow as if to brush away a mist or film from his mind.

"Oh!" thought Ida, with passionate longing, "may my spells hold, or else I may feel like following the example of the silly little violet." But she pirouetted up to her father, who was just entering, and said: "It's time you came, father. Mr. Van berg has begun calling me names."

"I shall follow his example by calling you my good fairy. Mr. Van Berg, I have been in paradise all the week."

"I shall not join this mutual admiration society, and I insist that you two gentlemen talk in a sensible way."

But Van Berg seemed to find it difficult to come down to a matter-of-fact conversation with Mr. Mayhew, and soon after took his leave. Before going he tried to induce Ida to come to the studio again, but she declined, saying:

"Mother has entrusted to me several commissions, and I must attend to them to-morrow morning. As it is, my conscience troubles me very much that I have left her alone all the week, and I shall try to make all the amends I can by getting what she wishes."

"Oh! your terrible conscience!" he said.

"Yes, it has been scolding me all day for wasting so much of your time. Now don't burden yours with any denials. Good-night."

He turned eagerly to protest against her words, but she was retreating rapidly; she gave him a smile over her shoulder, however, that was at once full of mirth and something more--something that he could not explain or grasp any more than he could the soft, silvery light of the moon that filled the sky, and was as real as it was intangible. He walked away as if in a dream; he continued his aimless wanderings for hours, but swift as were his strides a swifter current of passion, deep and strong, was sweeping him away from Jennie Burton and the power to make good his open pledge to win her if he could. He still was dreaming, he still was lost in the luminous mists of his own imagination. But the hour of waking and clear vision was drawing near, and Harold Van Berg would learn anew that the cool, well-balanced reason on which he had once so prided himself was scarcely equal to all the questions which complex human life presents. _

Read next: Chapter 51. From Deep Experience

Read previous: Chapter 49. The Blind God

Table of content of Face Illumined


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book