"The result is all the same," she replied, with sudden change of manner. "It is tossed contemptuously away to be trodden under foot. Dull and ignorant as you discovered me to be, Mr. Van Berg, I am not so stupid but that I can understand you this evening.
Imperfect as I am I could pity that unfortunate flower whose fragrance rose to you like a low appeal for a little consideration, at least. Would it not have bloomed as perfectly as the others if the worm had let it alone? But, I suppose, with artist, if roses or human lives are imperfect, that is the end of them. Misfortune counts for nothing."
Van Berg listened in surprise to these words, and his haughty complacency was decidedly disturbed. He was about to reply that "Evil chosen and cherished was not a misfortune but a fault," when she turned from him with more than her former coldness and entered the house.
An impulse that he would have found difficult to a.n.a.lyze led him to descend the steps and pick up the symbolic bud, now torn and withering fast, and to place it between the leaves of his note-book.
If she had only seen this act it would have made a great difference; but, ever present to her thought, it lay where he had tossed it, the emblem of herself.
Chapter x.x.xII. The Dangers of Despair.
Discouragement and despair are dangerous and often destructive to character. This would be especially true of one like Ida Mayhew; for even in her imperfection she possessed a simplicity and unity which made it impossible for a part of such moral nature as she possessed to stand, if another part were undermined or broken down.
The whole fabric would stand or fall together.
She had been a wayward child, more neglected than petted, and had naturally developed a pa.s.sion for having her own will, right or wrong. As she grew older, her extraordinary dower of beauty threatened to be a fatal one. It brought her attention continuous admiration and flattery from those who cared nothing for her personally. She had received in childhood but little of the praise which love prompts, the tender, indulgent idolatry which, although dangerous indeed to one"s best development, sometimes softens and humanizes, instead of rendering selfish and arrogant.
Mrs. Mayhew petted and scolded her child according to her mood, but was quite consistent in her general neglect. Mr. Mayhew was a tired, busy man, who visited at his own home rather than lived there. Thus the growing girl was left chiefly to her own impulses, and average human nature ensured that the habit of thinking of herself first and of pleasing herself at all times should be early formed. Then, as she saw and became capable of understanding the homage that waits on mere beauty, the world over, pride and vanity grew in overshadowing rankness. The attention she received, however, was chiefly made up of the bold stare of strangers, and the open flattery of those who admired her beauty as they would that of a picture, unconsciously but correctly leaving the impression that they cared for her only because of her beauty. That the girl"s nature should grow hard and callous under such influences was what might have been expected.
Neglect and a miserable sham of an education had dwarfed her mind.
She had been "finished" by an ultra fashionable school before she understood the meaning of the studies which she pa.s.sed over in a dainty quickstep, scarcely touching the surface.
Her heart and moral nature were almost equally undeveloped. Hitherto she had known but little experience tending to evoke gentle feeling or generous action. She had confounded the few genuine admirers, who, infatuated with her beauty, endowed her with all heavenly graces, awaiting only the awakening hand of their love, with the heartless or brainless fellows who were not particular about heavenly graces, provided a girl had a fine figure and a fair face.
When the artist first met her at the concert garden, she was in truth a modern Undine. She had feminine qualities and vices, but not a woman"s soul. She was not capable of any strong, womanly action or feeling. Her scheme of life was simple indeed, although she was learning to be very artful in carrying it out. It was to have "a good time," as she would phrase it, and at any and every cost to others. After wearying of the life of a belle, she proposed to marry the best establishment that came her way, and became a leader of fashion.
It would seem that not a few fine ladies carry out this simple scheme of life, and never receive a woman"s soul. There are Undines at sixty as well as at sixteen.
The artist had been attracted by her beauty, like so many others, but unlike others he had not (as was the case with not a few sensible men) given an admiring glance at the face, and then, recognizing the fact that there was not a woman back of it, pa.s.sed on indifferently; nor had he bestowed upon her imaginary virtues; and much less had he been satisfied with more flesh and blood.
His manner had been exploring, questioning. He was looking for her woman"s soul, even though he might find it unawakened, like the fabled beauty in the mythical castle.
His keen eyes had disturbed her equanimity from the first. As he pursued his quest, her undefined fears and misgivings increased.
At last she was compelled to follow his questioning glances, and look past outward beauty to her real self within. From that hour the rank and evil weeds of pride and vanity began to wither. Honest self-scrutiny was like a knife at their roots.
But these traits give a transient support like a false stimulant.
As they failed there was nothing to take their place--no faith in G.o.d, no self-respect or self-reliance. She could not turn to her own family for sustaining sympathy, such as many fin din their homes, and which is all the more grateful because not inquisitive nor expressed in formal terms. In her selfish pleasure-seeking life she found that she had made an endless number of acquaintances, but no friends. She had not even the resources of a cultivated mind that could exist upon its own stores through this sudden famine which had impoverished her world, nor could she think of a single innocent, attractive, pursuit by which she could fill the weary days. She was like a child that had dwelt in a tropical oasis, the flowers and fruits of which had seemed as limitless as its extent.
She had supposed that the whole world would be like this oasis, and the only necessity ever imposed on her would be that of choice from its rich profusion. But ere she was aware she had lost herself in a desert; the oasis had vanished like a mirage, and she had no choice at all. That which her heart craved with an intensity which fairly made it ache, seemed as hopeless as a sudden bloom and fruitage from arid sands.
Instead of going down to supper she returned to the solitude of her own room, but the apathy of the earlier part of the day had vanished utterly. Indeed, body ad soul seemed to quiver with pain like a wounded nerve. Anger, which had given a brief support, faded out, and left only shame and despair as in memory she saw the emblem, representing herself, tossed contemptuously into the carriage-way by the man she loved.
"I remember reading," she groaned, "when at school, how conquerors put their feet on the necks of their captives. He has put his spurning foot on my heart. Oh, hateful riddle! Why should I love the man that despises me?"
Her mother, and then Stanton, called at her door and asked her to come down to supper.
"No," she said, briefly to each.
"If you knew what people were saying and surmising you would not continue to make a spectacle of yourself," said her cousin, through the closed door.
"That is one reason why I do not come down," she replied. "I"m not in the mood to make a spectacle of myself. I have been shown how one perfect member of society regards me, and I am not equal to meeting any more faultless people to-night."
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Stanton, irritably. "You must come down."
"Break in the door then, and carry me down," was the sharp reply.
With a muttered oath he descended to the supper-room, and his moody and absent manner revealed to Mrs. Mayhew and Van Berg that his interview with his cousin had been anything but satisfactory.
For a time the artist seemed rather "distrait" also, as if a memory were troubling him. He often looked around when any one entered, and his eyes at times rested on Ida"s vacant chair. But he soon pa.s.sed under the spell of Jennie Burton"s genial talk, which seemingly glowed with the sunshine that had enveloped her during her quest of the roses, and the poor girl, who was fairly quivering with pain because of his significant act and words on the piazza, was forgotten.
She knew she was forgotten. The hum of voices, the cheerful clatter from the lighted supper-room, came up to her darkening apartment, and only increased her sense of loneliness and isolation. Her quick ear caught Van Berg"s mellow laugh, evoked by one of Miss Burton"s sallies.
It is a dreary sensation to find one"s self wholly forgotten by mere acquaintances; but to find that we have no place in the thoughts of those we love, seems in a certain sense like being annihilated.
But for poor Ida was reserved a deeper suffering still, since she believed that the man she loved did not dismiss her from his mind indifferently, but rather with aversion and disgust.
She felt her isolation terribly. To whom could she turn in her trouble? The thought of her father was both a reproach and a humiliation. He was drifting hopelessly, and almost unresistingly, towards final wreck, and, so far from seeking to restrain, she had added to the evil impetus. She shrank from the very idea of confiding in her garrulous, superficial mother. She felt that her cousin detested as well as despised her. The flattered girl, who a little before thought the world was at her feet, now felt friendless and alone, scarcely tolerated by her own family, and scorned by others.
Of course she exaggerated the evil of her lot. The young an inexperienced are ever p.r.o.ne to look, for the time, on the earlier misfortunes of their lives as irretrievable. In after years they may smile at their causeless despair; but the world is full of tragedies that to the wise and sober minded had slight cause.
Ida"s troubles, however, were scarcely slight, and she, above all others, was the least fitted to bear trouble and thwarting. To be refused anything would be a new and disagreeable experience, but to be denied that which her heart craved supremely, tended to call out all the pa.s.sionate recklessness of her ungoverned, undisciplined nature. The child from whom something is taken, will often cast away in anger all that is offered in its place; and in like hasty folly many a man and woman, to their eternal regret, have thrown away life itself. Suicide is often the product of pa.s.sion as well as of despair; the irritable, headlong protest against evils that might have been and should have been remedied.
As Ida sat alone in her desolation and shame, the thought of self-destruction had surged up in the lava of other tumultuous thoughts occasioned by the artist"s scorn, and at first she had shrunk from it with natural and instinctive dread. But the awful thought began to fascinate her like a dizzy height from which it seems so easy to fall and end everything.
In her morbid condition and to her poisoned imagination the act did not appear so revolting after all. She had been made familiar with it in her favorite novels. She had often seen it simulated with applause on the stage, with all the melodramatic accessories with which it is produce mere effect. Indeed, from her education, she might also think self-destruction was the only dignified and high-spirited thing to do.
For a time her thoughts took the coloring of high tragedy. She would teach this proud artist a lessen, even though at supreme cost to herself. If he would never love her, she would make it certain that he could not longer despise her. She would write him a letter that would harrow his very soul, informing him that she had taken his hint and followed his suggestion. Since he had thrown away the emblem of herself as a worthless and unsightly thing, she had thrown herself away, so that faultless taste and faultless people might be no more offended by the presence of so much imperfection.
For a moment her eyes glowed with exultation over his imagined dismay as he read this message from one to whom no reparation could be made; and then better and more wholesome feelings resumed their sway. Perverted, misguided, and uncounselled as she was, she was too young, too near the mother heart of nature, not to react from the false and the evil towards the simple and the true.
She threw herself upon her couch. "Oh, that I might live and be happy!" she sobbed. "If in the place of the bitter frost of his words and manner he would give me but one ray of kindness, I would try to bloom, even though but a poor worm-eaten bud."
Frowns blight far more flowers than October nights.
Chapter x.x.xIII. "Hope dies Hard."
When alone with his friend after supper, Stanton broke out, "Since Ida can"t exist without the sight of that wretch, Sibley, I wish she would follow him to New York. If she dotes on such sc.u.m, they had better be married, as far as such people can be, and so relieve her relatives of an incubus that is well-nigh intolerable."
"Are you absolutely sure that she does dote on Sibley, and that he is the cause of her evident trouble?" asked Van Berg, with a perplexed frown lowering on his brow.