I think the character you are now enacting is more becoming than any of those would be, however."
"What is that?" he asked quickly.
"Well," she said hesitatingly, "I hardly know how to describe it, but it suggests a little the kindness which, they say, makes all the world kin. Good-night, Mr. Van Berg."
"Miss Jennie," he said, later in the evening, "you have an insight into character which we grosser mortals do not possess. Do you think that there is a marked change taking place in Miss Mayhew?"
"And so you expect me to read Miss Mayhew"s secrets and gossip about them with you?" she answered with one of her piquant smiles.
"What a sweetbrier you are! Now tell me in your own happy way how you would describe this change which you see and understand far more clearly than I."
"I"ll give you one thought that has occurred to me and then leave you to solve the problem for yourself. Have you ever seen a person who had been delirious or deranged become sand and quiet, simple and natural? Although Miss Mayhew"s expression and manner are so different from what we have seen hitherto, she looks and acts to-night just as one instinctively feels she ought always to appear in order to be her true self. Before there was discord; now there is harmony."
"If I had your eyes I"d never read books. You suggest the effect perfectly, but what is the cause?"
"Was a man ever satisfied?"
"One certainly never is where you are concerned, but will always echo Oliver Twist"s plaintive appeal for "more.""
"O constant moon! register that vow," said Miss Burton, laughing.
"Mr. Van Berg, one of the first rules that I teach my young ladies is to say good-evening to a gentleman when he grows sentimental,"
and she smiling vanished through a window that opened on the piazza.
"Jennie Burton," he muttered, "you are a wraith, an exquisite ghost that will haunt me all my days, but on which I can never lay my hands."
The next morning the artist, in his kindling interest, was guilty of a stratagem. He took an early breakfast by himself, under the pretence that he was going on a sketching expedition; but he went straight to the brow of a little hill that overlooked the road which Ida must take should she visit her new-found friends again.
He soon became very busy with his sketch-book, but instead of outlines of the landscape before him taking shape on the paper, you might have seen the form of a young girl on a stairway with her head bowed on her right arm that rested on the bal.u.s.ter rail, which she timidly held out her left hand in the pace of words she could not speak.
It was with a foreboding sigh that Ida realized how much she missed him at breakfast.
Before the meal was over a letter was handed to Mrs. Mayhew. It contained only these words from her husband: "In memory of my last visit I conclude it will be mutually agreeable to us all that I spend Sunday elsewhere. You need not dread my coming."
She handed the letter to her daughter with a frown and the remark: "It"s just like him."
But Ida seemed much pained by its contents, and after a moment sprang up, saying: "Cousin Ik, may I speak with you?"
When they were alone she continued: "See what father has written. He must come to-night or I"ll go to him. Can"t I send him a telegram?"
"Yes, Coz, and I"ll take it over to the depot at once."
"Ah, Ik, you are doing me a greater kindness than you know. But it"s a long drive."
"The longer the better. Will you go with me?"
"I would had I not promised my old friends I visited yesterday I"d come again to-day. They are doing me good. I"ll tell you about it some time," and she wrote the following telegram to her father:
"Come to Lake House to-day. Very important."
"I wish Miss Burton would go with you," she said looking up as the thought occurred to her. "Shall I ask her?"
Stanton"s wistful face proved how greatly he would enjoy such an arrangement, but after a moment he said decisively: "No. It would pain her to decline, but she would."
"You are very considerate of her."
"She is sorry for me, Ida. I can see that. She has never exulted a moment in her power over me. My love is only another burden to her sad life. I can"t help it, but I can make it as light as possible."
Tears came into Ida"s eyes and she faltered: "Ik, I understand you."
A little later they both drove off their different ways.
In spite of everything, Ida found that her heart would grow light and gland as she pursued her way along the quiet country road, now in the shade where the trees crowded up on the eastern side, and again in the sunlight between wide stubble fields in which the quails were whistling mellowly to each other.
Van Berg watched her coming with a heart that beat a little quickly for so cool and philosophical an investigator, and was glad that her quiet old horse resumed a slow walk at the first suggestion of the hill on which he had posted himself.
Ida leaned back in the phaeton with the abandon of those who think themselves alone, and sang a s.n.a.t.c.h from an old English hymn that Van Berg remembered as one his mother had crooned over him when a child. This melody, doubly sacred to him from its a.s.sociations, would have grated harshly on his ear if it had been sung by Ida Mayhew a week before; but, strange to say, the girlish voice that floated up to him was all the sweeter for thus blending itself with some of his dearest memories.
When the ascent was half made the artist sprang down from his rocky perch, and horse and maiden were so startled that they both stopped instantly.
"Do not be alarmed," said Van Berg, laughing; "I"m not a very vicious tramp, and am armed with nothing worse than a sketch-book.
If I could only induce you to be an hour in coming up this hill I"d put you and the phaeton in it. I wish it were possible to put the song in, too. Why, Miss Mayhew! Am I an ogre, that I frighten you so?"
"I was not expecting to see you," she faltered, deeply vexed that her cheeks would crimson and her hand that held the reins tremble so plainly. "You naturally think I have a very guilty conscience to be so frightened," she added after a second, and regaining a little self-control.
"That quaint old hymn tune did not suggest a guilty conscience,"
he said kindly.
"I think I must have heard it at church," she replied. "It"s been running in my head all the morning." (He now remembered with sudden pity that no memories of sacred words and song could follow her from her home and childhood.) "But I suppose you think it is strange I can sing at all, Mr. Van Berg," she continued gravely.
"You must think me very superficial that I do not appear to realize more a crime that makes it exceedingly kind of you even to speak to me, since you know about it. But I have realized the wickedness of that act more bitterly than you can ever know."
"Miss Mayhew, I admit that I can"t understand you at all. You have become a greater mystery to me than ever. You see, I imitate your truthfulness."
"There is no necessity of solving the problem," she said in a low tone, and averting her face.
"Do you mean," he asked, flushing slightly, "that my interest is obtrusive and not agreeable to you?"
"If inspired by curiosity--yes," and she looked him steadily in the face.
"But if inspired by a genuine and earnest wish to be your friend and to atone for the unpardonable injustice which came about from my not understanding you?"
"If I believed that," she said, with something like a smile, "I"d take you with me this morning and reveal all the mystery there is about my poor little self in one brief hour."
"How can I prove it?" he asked eagerly.
"Say it," she answered simply.
"I do say it"s true, on my honor," he replied, giving her his hand.
"You may come, then, on one other condition. I would like you to draw for me a young pear-tree, and an old gentleman sitting under it."