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A Face Illumined, a novel by Edward Payson Roe |
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Chapter 52. An Illumined Face |
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_ Chapter LII. An Illumined Face Ida's expression and manner when she came down to breakfast on Sabbath morning, reminded Miss Burton of the time when the poor girl believed that the man she loved, both despised and misjudged her. And yet there was a vital difference. Then she was icy and defiant; now, with all and more than the old sadness, there was an aspect of humility and gentleness which had never been seen in former times, but the woman who should have been so glad to cheer her and remove all misunderstandings found that she was absolutely unapproachable except by a sort of social violence of which Jennie Burton was not capable. Ida's effort--which was but partially successful--to be brave and even cheerful for her father's sake, caused Mr. Mayhew more than once to go away by himself in order to hide his feelings. Mrs. Mayhew became more and more mystified and uncomfortable. She had enjoyed, in her cold-blooded way, a tranquil, gossipy week during her daughter's and husband's absence, but now she felt as if some kind of a domestic convulsion might occur any moment. "I don't see why people have to make such a fuss over life," she complained. "If they would only do what was stylish, proper and religious they wouldn't have any trouble," and the strong and not wholly repressed feeling of Ida and her father, of which she was uncomfortably conscious, seemed to her absurd and uncalled for. Like the majority of matter-of-fact people, she had no patience or charity for emotion or deep regret. "Do the proper thing under the circumstances and let that end the matter," was one of her favorite sayings. Stanton learned from Mr. Burleigh that Van Berg had gone on a mountain tramp, and, when he told Ida, hope whispered to her, "If he loved Jennie Burton or felt that he could return to her side, he would not do that after his long absence." But when he did not return to supper she began to droop and become pale like a flower growing in too dense a shade. She was glad when the interminable day came to an end and she could shut herself away from every one, for there are wounds which the heart would hide even from the eyes of love and sympathy. It had been arranged during the day that Mr. Mayhew should find another place at which to spend his vacation, and that as early in the week as possible Stanton should take his wife and daughter thither. When at last poor Ida slept she dreamt that she was sailing on a beautiful yacht with silver canvas and crimson flags--that Van Berg stood at her side pointing to a lovely island which they were rapidly approaching. Then a sudden gust of wind swept her overboard and she was sinking, sinking till the waters became so cold and dark that she awoke with a cry of terror. "Oh," she sobbed, "my dream is true! my dream is true!" Mr. Mayhew returned to the city in the morning, leaving his daughter very reluctantly, and Ida, as early as possible, set out again in the low phaeton to visit Mr. Eltinge, for never before had she felt a greater need of his counsel and help. Tears came into her eyes when informed of his absence. "Everything is against me," she murmured; but she decided to spend some time in the garden before she returned. She had almost reached the rustic seat when a turn in the walk revealed that it was occupied. Her first impulse was to retreat hastily, but observing that Van Berg had not heard her light step, she hesitated. Then, his attitude of utter dejection so won her sympathy that she could not leave him without speaking, for she remembered how sorely in need she once had been of a reassuring word. Moreover, her heart said, "Speak to him;" hope cried, "Stay;" and her temptation to win him if possible, right or wrong, sprang up with tenfold power and whispered: "The man whom Jennie Burton welcomed so cordially Saturday evening would not wear this aspect if he had the power to return readily to her side again." Still she hesitated and found it almost as hard to obtain words or courage now as when she saw him pulling apart the worm-eaten rosebud. At last she faltered: "Mr. Van Berg, are you ill?" He started to his feet with a dazed look and passed his hand across his brow--the same gesture she so well remembered seeing him make at the close of the happy evening he had spent at her home. As he realized that the maiden before him was flesh and blood, and not a creation of his morbid fancy, the hot blood rushed swiftly into his face, and his eyes fell before her. "Yes, Miss Mayhew, I am," he said, briefly. "I am very sorry. Can I not do anything for you?" she asked, kindly. He looked up at her in strong surprise, and was still more perplexed by the sympathetic expression of her face, but he only said, "I regret to say you cannot." "Mr. Van Berg," said Ida, in tones full of distress, "your words and appearance pain me exceedingly. You look as if you had been ill a month. What has happened?" His aspect might trouble one less interested in him than herself, for his eyes were blood-shot, and he had become so haggard that she could scarcely realize that he was the man who but four days previous had compared his hearty merriment with the "laughter of the gods." "Miss Mayhew," he said, bitterly and slowly, too, as if he were carefully choosing his words, "you had a presentiment last Saturday that some evil was about to happen. As far as I am concerned the worst has happened. I have lost my self-respect. I have no right to stand here in your presence. I have no right to be in this place even. I once tossed away a little flower that had been sadly marred, through no fault of its own, and as I did so I said in my pride and self-complacency that its imperfection justified my act. You understood me too well, and my accursed Phariseeism wounded your very heart. You afterwards generously forgave my offence and a worse one, but God is just and I am now punished in the severest possible way. I perceive now that you do not understand me, or you could not look and speak so kindly. I thought you had learned me better, for you spoke words on the boat that pierced my very soul, revealing me to myself, and later you passed me without a glance. You were right in both instances. You are wrong now, and i shall not take advantage of your present ignorance, which circumstances will soon remove. I repeat it, Miss Mayhew, I have no right to be here and speaking to you, and yet"--he made a passionate and despairing gesture, and was about to turn hastily away, when Ida said, earnestly, with her eyes fixed on his face, as was her instinctive custom when she sought to learn more from the expression of the speaker than from his words: "Mr. Van Berg, before we part, answer me one question. Have you deliberately and selfishly intended to do wrong, or to wrong any one?" "No," he promptly replied meeting, her searching look unhesitatingly. Then, with an impatient gesture, he added: "But no one will ever believe it." "I believe it," she said with a reassuring smile. "You? You of all others? But you are talking at random, Miss Mayhew. When you learn the truth you will look and speak very differently. And you shall learn it now. You once told me of a wicked and desperate purpose to which you were driven by the wrong of others. Your sin seems to me a deed of light compared with the act I have been led to commit, under the guidance of my proud reason, my superior judgement, my cool, well-balanced nature--infernally cool it was, indeed! Pardon me, but I am beside myself with rage and self-loathing. True, I have not been intentionally false, but there are circumstances in which folly, weakness, and stupid blundering are nearly as bad, and the results quite as bad. What can you say of the man who pays open suit and makes a distinct offer and pledge to a lady, and the retreats from that suit and breaks that pledge, and through no fault whatever in the lady herself? What can you say of that man when the lady is a poor and orphaned girl, whom any one with a spark of honor would shield with his life, but that he is a base, fickle wretch, who deserves the contempt of all good men and women, and that he ought to be--as he shall be--a vagabond on the face of the earth?" Ida had buried her face in her hands as she learned how thoroughly Van Berg had committed himself to Miss Burton, and the artist concluded, abruptly: "One thing is certain, he has no right to be here. I shall not wait and see your look of scorn, or--worse--of pity, for I could not endure it," and he snatched up his sketch-book and was about to hasten from the place, when Ida sprang forward and said passionately: "Wait. This is all wrong. Answer me this--when you discovered the awful crime, which in heart I had already committed, how did you treat me?" "Your purpose was wicked, but not base." "You have not intended to be either base or wicked," she began. "Hush!" he interrupted sternly, "you shall not palliate my weakness by smooth words, and to a man, weakness and stupidity, in some circumstances, are more contemptible than crime. Oh, how I envy Stanton! His course has been straightforward, noble, regal--I have acted like one of the 'canaille.'" "You deeply regret then, that your feelings have so changed towards Miss Burton?" said Ida, with her eyes again fastened upon his face. "I do not think my feelings have changed towards her," he replied; "she is admirable, perfect, and I honor her from the depths of my heart. Don't you see? I mistook my deep respect, sympathy, and admiration for something more, and I smiled complacently in my superior way and flattered myself that it was in this eminently well-bred and rational manner that Harold Van Berg would pay his addresses to a lady, and that Stanton's absorbing passion was only the result of ungoverned, unbalanced nature--accursed prig that I was! While in this very complacent and superior condition of mind I committed myself to a course that I cannot carry out, and yet my failure to do so slays my honor and self-respect. Now, I have been as explicit with you as you were with me, and with what you have seen of yourself, you know the whole miserable truth. By a strange fate we who only met a few months since have come to share a common, very sad knowledge. The memory of your own past, and I suppose, your Christian faith also, have made you very merciful and generous, but I shall tax these qualities no further." "What will you do, Mr. Van Berg?" Ida asked in sudden dread. "I shall never look Miss Burton in the face again, and after I have written to her simply and briefly what I have told you, her regret will be small indeed. Good-by, Miss Mayhew. If I stay any longer I may speak words to you that would be insults, coming from me." "Stay," she said, earnestly, "I have something very important to say to you." He hesitated and looked at her in strong surprise. "Give me a few minutes to think," she pleaded, and he saw, from the quick rise and fall of her bosom and the nervous clasp of her hands, that she was deeply agitated. She turned from him and looked wistfully at the young tree on which she had inscribed her name the day she had promised Mr. Eltinge to receive all heavenly influences and guidance. She soon lifted her eyes above the tree and her lips moved in earnest prayer as ever came from a human heart. She was facing the sorest temptation of her life, for she had only to be silent now, she believed, and the success of her efforts to win him from Jennie Burton would be complete. If left to himself in this wild, distracted mood he would indeed break every tie that bound him to her rival; but after time had blunted his poignant self-condemnation he would inevitably come back to her. The conscience whispered: "Who forgave you here? What did you promise here? What does that tree mean with its branches reaching out towards heaven? What would you think of Jennie Burton were she trying to win him from you?" "O Friend of the weak! be though my strength in this moment of desperate need," she sighed. Van Berg watched her with increasing wonder, and his heart beat thick and fast as she at last turned to him with an expression such as he never had seen before on a human face. Was it the autumn sunlight that illumined her features? He learned eventually that it was the spiritual radiance of the noblest self-sacrifice of which a woman is capable. "Mr. Van Berg," she said, in tones that were quiet and firm, "please take Mr. Eltinge's seat, for I wish to speak to you as a friend." He obeyed mechanically, without removing his eyes from her face. "I once took counsel of passion and despair," she resumed, "and you know what might have resulted, but on this spot God forgave me and I promised to try to do right. With shame I confess I have not fully kept that promise, but I shall try to do so hereafter, be the consequences what they may. Pardon me for speaking so plainly, but you are now taking counsel of passion and turning your back on duty. While almost insane from self-reproach and wounded pride you are taking steps that may blast your own life and the lives of others. To my mind there is an infinite distance between the error you naturally fell into in view of Miss Burton's loveliness of character and any base intent, but even if I should share in your harsh judgement--which I never can--I would still say that you cannot help the past, and you are now bound by all that's sacred to ask only what is right, and to do that at every cost to yourself. You are pledged to Miss Burton, and you must make good your pledge." "What! I go to that snow-white maiden with a lie on my lips!" he exclaimed indignantly. "No! go to her with truth on your lips and in your heart, except as in unselfish loyalty to her and to your word you may hide some truth that would give her pain. Mr. Van Berg, you word is pledged. You have won her love and this is your only honorable course. Thus far you have not done her intentional wrong, but if you rush away from duty now in cowardly flight you will do her a bitter and fatal wrong, for she loves you as only few women can love. She has grown wan and pale in your absence, and it touched me to the heart to see her yesterday, though she made such brave efforts to be cheerful and to encourage father. O God, forgive me that I--Go to her when you have become calm--your true self. Love like hers will take what you can give till you can give more, and surely one so lovely will soon win all. If ever I have seen human idolatry in any face it has been in hers, and she will soon banish all this wild passion from your mind. But be that as it may you must keep your word if you would keep my respect, and I would not lose my respect for you for the world. I know you too well to doubt but that you will take up this sacred duty and seek to perform it with the whole strength of your manhood." Never for a moment had Van Berg removed his eyes from Ida's face, and her words and manner seemed both to awe and control him. As she spoke, his expression became quiet and strong, and when she concluded he came to her side and said earnestly: "Miss Mayhew, since it is still possible, I will keep your respect, for it is absolutely essential to me. God has indeed given you a woman's soul, and he NEVER MADE A NOBLER WOMAN. You are a friend in truth and not in name, and you have saved me from madly destroying my own future, and perhaps the future of others, which is of far more consequence. If I fail in obeying both the letter and spirit of your words it will be because I cannot help myself." Her face, which had been so sweet and luminous with her generous impulse and noble thoughts, was growing very pale now, but she rose and gave him her hand, saying with a faint smile that was like the fading light of evening, "I knew you would not disappoint me; I was sure you were worthy of my trust. Let the honest right be our motto henceforth, and all will be well some day. Good-by." He pressed her hand in both of his as he said fervently, "God bless you, Ida Mayhew!" Then he turned and hastened away, flying from his own weakness and a womanly loveliness which at the moment far excelled any ideal he had ever formed. He had scarcely reached the road before he remembered that he had left his sketch-book, and he went back for it, but as he turned the corner of the shady path he stopped instantly. The strong, clear-eyed maiden who had rallied the forces of his shattered manhood, and given him the vantage-ground again in life's battle, had bowed her head on the arm of the rustic seat and was sobbing convulsively. Indeed, her grief was so uncontrollable and passionate that in his very soul he trembled before it. "Oh, Jennie Burton," she moaned, "it would have been easier for me to die for you than to give him up. God help him--God help me through the dreadful years to come!" His first impulse was to spring to her side, but he hesitated, and then with a gesture and look of infinite regret he turned and stole silently away. _ |
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