"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 pa.s.sed his hand across his brow as if to brush away a mist or film from his mind.
"Oh!" thought Ida, with pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sion, 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.
Chapter LI. From Deep Experience.
With the night dreams began to vanish and the prose of reality gradually to take form and outline in Van Berg"s mind. He was compelled to admit that the plausible theories by which he had hitherto satisfied himself scarcely accounted for his moods and sensations the past few days, and memory quietly informed him that it had never had any consciousness of such a friendship as he now was forming. But like many another man in the process of conviction against his will, he became irritable and angrily blind to a truth that would place him in an intolerable dilemma. He went to his studio, and worded with dogged obstinacy on the picture designed for Ida, giving his time to those details which required only artistic skill, for his perturbed mind was in no mood for any nice creative work.
He had agreed to meet Ida and her father on the afternoon boat; and his impatience, and the early hour he started to keep the appointment, was another straw which he was compelled to see in spite of himself; nor could he fail to note which way the current was bearing him.
"Well," he muttered, with the fatuity common in all strong temptations, "I"ll spend a few more hours with this rare Undine, this genuine woman, who--infinitely more beautiful than Venus--is rising out of the dark waters of sorrow, shame, and despair, and then if I find that it will be wiser and safer to be only a somewhat un.o.btrusive and distant friend, showing my good-will more by deeds than by seeking her society, I can gradually take this course without wounding her feelings or exciting suspicion of the cause. She was right, although she little imagines the reason; we could never have those readings together, and I fear I must manage with far fewer visits to my studio than I had hoped for. What an accursed chaotic old world it is anyway! How grateful she is because I merely treat her father politely! It would be impossible to do anything else, now that he is himself again, and yet, by this simple, easy method, I have won a friendlier regard than I could by any other means.
Like an idiot, I once thought she would have to withdraw from her father to develop her new and beautiful life. If even in faintest suggestion I had revealed that thought to her, I don"t believe she would have spoken to me again; and I foresee that I shall have to be exceedingly polite to Mrs. Mayhew also, for my Undine is developing a conscience that might become a man"s implacable enemy.
But what am I thinking about! If I do not intend to see much of the daughter, I shall not waste any time on the mother. I wonder if Miss Mayhew meant anything by that odd little ballad last evening.
Could she have intended to remind me of blue-eyed Jennie Burton?
No, for she was singing it by herself, when she did not know I was listening. The idiotic brook! If I had given my whole heart to the effort I might have won Jennie Burton by this time. Ida Mayhew was right; no woman that I wish to win will show a lover any favor till he cannot help stopping and staying, too."
A moment later he stopped short in the street. "Great G.o.d!" muttered he, "do I wish to win Jennie Burton? Whither am I drifting? Would to heaven I had not made this appointment this afternoon. Well, I"m in for it now," and he strode along as if he were going to battle, resolving to be guarded to the last degree, lest Ida should suspect his weakness.
He saw her come on the boat with her father at the last moment, her cheeks flushed with the heat and her eyes aglow with the hurry and excitement of the occasion. He saw one and another of her young gentlemen acquaintances step eagerly forward to speak to her and admiring eyes turning towards her on every side. "She won"t lack for friends and companions now, and I soon will be little missed," he thought bitterly. One gentleman, in his impatience for her society, sought to obtain her small travelling-bag, ad was a.s.suring her that he could obtain seats for herself and father on the crowded boat, when, by her timid glance around, she showed that she was expecting some one, and Van Berg hastened forward and said quietly, "I have seats reserved in the pilot-house."
She gave him a glad smile of welcome; but almost instantly her face became grave and questioning in its expression; and she looked at him keenly as he cordially shook hands with her father. As they went away with him, as if by a prearrangement several guests of the Lake House looked at each other and nodded their heads significantly.
While on the way to the pilot-house, and during their conversation after arriving there, Ida often turned a quick, questioning glance towards Van Berg, and her expression reminded him of some children"s faces he had seen as they tried to read the thoughts or intentions of those who had their interests in keeping. He tried his best to be cordial and natural in manner--to be, in brief, the sincere friend that he had professed himself--and Mr. Mayhew did not notice anything amiss; but even at some inflection of his voice, or at a pause in the conversation, Ida would turn towards him this sudden, questioning, child-like look, which touched him deeply while it puzzled him. But she gradually began to grow "distrait" and quiet, and to look less and less often. Van Berg had a deep affection for the n.o.ble river on which they were sailing, and had familiarized himself with its history and legends. By means of these he sought to entertain Ida and her father, and with the latter he succeeded abundantly; but he often doubted whether Ida heard him, for her eyes and thoughts seemed to be wandering beyond the blue Highlands which they now were entering. At last Mr. Mayhew left them for a while, and Van Berg turned and said gently:
"Miss Ida, you are not in good spirits this afternoon."
She did not answer for a moment, but averted her face still further from him. At last she said, in a low tone: "Mr. Van Berg, did you ever have a presentiment of evil?"
"I don"t believe in such things," he replied promptly.
"Of course not; you are a man. But I have such a presentiment this afternoon, and it will come true."
"What do you fear, Miss Ida?"
"What does a woman always fear? Earthquakes, political changes, disturbances in the world at large, of course."
"I have heard that a woman"s kingdom was her heart," Van Berg was indiscreet enough to say.
"It is a pity," Ida replied with one of her reckless laughs, "for it so often happens that she cannot keep it, and those who wrest it from her do not care to keep it, and so it comes to be what the geographies used to call one of the "waste places of the earth."
As the world goes, I think I had better retain my kingdom, small as it is."
He turned very pale, and swift as light he thought: "Has she, by the aid of her woman"s intuition, read my thoughts? Has she seen the beginnings of a regard for her far warmer than my professed friendship, and, remembering my suit to Jennie Burton, is she learning to despise me as fickle, or, worse, as a hypocritical specimen of that meanest type of human vermin--a male flirt?" and his face grew so white that Ida in her turn was not only perplexed, but alarmed.
But after a moment he said quietly: "It is not the size of the kingdom that makes its value, but what it contains. I hope you will keep treasures of yours till you find some one worthy to receive them, and I can scarcely imagine that such an idiot exists that he would not retain them if he could. That is Fort Montgomery yonder,"
and he resolutely continued the story of its defence and capture, until her father returned saying it was time to come down ad prepare to land.