It was with an eager and resolute face that she confronted her father that evening, as they sat down to dinner. He thought she would descant on her experiences of the morning, and he was anxious for a chance to say how truly he appreciated Mr. Van Berg"s cordial manner, but she surprised him by asking abruptly:
"Father, when do we elect another president?"
He told her, and then followed a rapid fire of questions about the general and state government, and the names and characters of the men who held the chief offices. At last Mr. Mayhew laid down his knife and fork in his astonishment, and asked sententiously:
"How long is it since you decided to go into politics?"
Ida"s laugh was very rea.s.suring, and she said, "Poor father! I don"t wonder you think I"ve lost my wits, now that I"m trying to use the few I have. Don"t you see? I don"t know anything that"s worth knowing. I wasted my time at school, for my head was full of beaux, dress, and nonsense. Besides, I don"t think my teachers took much pains to make me understand anything. At any rate, my dancing-master, and perhaps my music-teacher--a little bit--are the only ones that have any reason to be proud of the result. Now I want you to brush up your ideas about everything, so you can answer the endless questions I am going to ask you."
"Why bless you, child, you take away my breath. Rome wasn"t built in a day."
"The way they built Rome will never answer for me. I must grow like one of our Western cities that has a mayor and opera-house almost before the Indians and wolves are driven out of town. Speaking of Rome reminds me how little I know of that city, and it"s a burning shame, too, for I spent a month there."
"Well," said Mr. Mayhew, with kindling interest, "suppose we take up a course of reading about Rome for the winter."
"For the winter! That won"t do at all. Can"t you tell me something of interest about Rome this evening?"
"I"ve already mentioned the interesting fact--that it wasn"t built in a day. I think that"s the most important thing that you need to know about Rome and everything else this evening. Why, Ida, you can"t become wise as an ostrich makes its supper--by swallowing everything that comes in its way. You are not a bit like an ostrich."
"An ostrich is a silly bird that puts its head under the sand and thins its whole great body hidden because it can"t see itself, isn"t it, father?"
"I"ve heard that story told of it," replied Mr. Mayhew, laughing.
"Anything but an ostrich, then. Come, I"ll read the evening paper to you on condition you tell me the leading questions of the day.
What is just now the leading question of the day?"
"Well," said Mr. Mayhew, demurely, but with a sparkle of humor in his eye, "one of the leading questions of this day with me has been whether Mr. Van Berg would not enjoy dining with us to-morrow evening now that he is here alone in the city?"
Ida instantly held the newspaper before her crimson face and said:
"Father, you ought to be ashamed thus to divert my mind from the pursuit of useful knowledge."
Her father came to her side and said very kindly: "Ida, darling, you are a little bit like an ostrich now."
She sprang up, and, hiding her face on his shoulder, trembled like a leaf. "Oh, father," she whispered, "I would not have him know for the world. Is it so very plain?"
"Not to him, my child, but the eyes of a love like mine are very keen. So you needn"t be on your guard before your old father as you must be before him and the world. You shall have only rest and sympathy at home as far as I can give them. Indeed, if you will let me, I"ll become a very un.o.btrusive, but perhaps, useful ally.
At any rate, I"ll try not to make any stupid, ignorant blunders.
I have like Mr. Van Berg from the first hour of our meeting, and I would thank G.o.d from the depths of my heart if this could be."
"Dear, good father, how little I understood you. I"ve been living in poverty over a gold mine. But father, I"m so ignorant and Mr.
Van Berg knows everything."
"Not quite, you"ll find. He"s only a man, Ida. But you can never win him through politics or by discussing with him the questions of the day. These are not in your line nor his."
"What can I do, father. Indeed, it does not seem to me maidenly to do anything."
"It would not be maidenly, Ida, to step one hair"s breadth beyond the line of scrupulous, womanly delicacy, and by any such course you would only defeat and thwart yourself. A woman must always be sought; and as a rule, she loses as she seeks. But I strust to your instincts to guide you here. You have only to be simple and true, as you have been since the happy miracle that transformed you. Unless a man is infatuated as I--but no matter. A man that keeps his sense welcomes truthfulness--a high delicate sense of honor--above all things in a woman, for it gives him a sense of security and rest. By truthfulness I do not mean the indiscreet blurting out of things that good taste would leave unsaid, but clear-eyed integrity that hides no guile. Then, again, unless a man is blinded by pa.s.sion or some kind of infatuation he knows that the chief need of his life is a home lighted and warmed by an unwavering love. With these his happiness and success are secured, as far as they can be in this world, unless he is a brute and a fool, and has no right to exist at all. But I am growing preachy.
Let me suggest some things that I have observed in this artist. He is a high-toned pagan and worships beauty; but with this outward perfection he also demands spiritual loveliness, for with him mind and honor are in the ascendant. He admired you immensely from the first, and since your character has been growing in harmony with your face he has sought your society. So, be simple, true, and modest, and you will win him if the thing is possible. You will never win him by being anything else, and you might lose your own respect and his too."
"I"ll suffer anything rather than that, father. I think you had better not invite him to-morrow evening."
"I"ll be governed by what I see to-morrow," he replied, musingly.
"Both my business and my habit of mind have taught me to observe and study men"s motives and impulses very closely. You could order a suitable dinner after leaving the studio, could you not?"
"Yes, father."
"Well, then, my Princess Ida, I"ll be your grand vizier, and I"ll treat with this foreign power with such a fine diplomacy that he shall appreciate all the privileges he obtains. But we will keep our self-respect hereafter, Ida, and then we can look the world in the face and ask no odds of it."
"Yes, father, let us keep that at all events. And yet I"m only a woman."
"You are the woman that has made me happy, and I think there is another man who will want to be made happy also. And now we will defer all other questions of the day, for I must go out for a time.
Do not think I undervalue your craving for information, and you shall have it as fast as you can take care of it. You have grown pale and thin this summer, but I do not expect you to become plump and rosy again in a day."
"Oh, I"m rosy too often as it is. Why is it that girls must blush so ridiculously when they don"t want to? That"s the question of the day for me. I could flirt desperately in old times, and yet look as demure and cool as if I were an innocent. But now, oh!
I"m fairly enraged with myself at times."
"They say blushes are love"s trail," said Mr. Mayhew with a laugh, "and since he is around I suppose he must leave his tracks. If you wish for a more scientific reason let me add that physiology teaches us that the blood comes from the heart. I can a.s.sure you, however, that there are but few gentlemen who admire ladies that cannot blush, and Mr. Van Berg is not one of them."
Ida spent the evening at her piano instead of over the encyclopaedia, but she sighed again and again.
"Simple and true! I fear Jennie Burton and Mr. Eltinge would say I was neither if they knew what was in my heart. But I can"t help it--I can"t give him up after what has happened since I came to the city, unless I must."
But the music she selected was simple and true. Tossing her brilliant and florid pieces impatiently aside, she played or sang only that which was plaintive, low, and in harmony with her thoughts. It also seemed to have a peculiar attractiveness to a tall gentleman who lingered some moments beneath the windows, and even took one or two steps up towards the door, and then turned and strode away as if conscious that he must either enter or depart at once.
Chapter XLIX. The Blind G.o.d.
The Miss Mayhew that crossed the artist"s threshold the following morning might have been taken as a model of graceful self-possession, but she disguised a maiden with as fluttering a heart and trembling a soul as ever faced one of the supreme moments of destiny. Her father, however, proved a faithful and intelligent ally, and his manner towards Van Berg was a fine blending of courtesy and dignity, suggesting a man as capable of conferring as of receiving favors.
His host would indeed have been blind and stupid if he had tried to patronize Mr. Mayhew that morning.
Although unconscious of the fact, Van Berg was for a time subjected to the closest scrutiny. Love had deep if not dark designs against him, and the glances he bent on Ida might suggest that he was only too ready to become a victim. He had welcomed to his study two conspirators who were committed to their plot by the strongest of motives, and yet they were such novel conspirators that a word, a glance, an expression even of "ennui" or indifference would have so touched their pride that they would have abandoned their wiles at every cost to themselves. Were they trying to ensnare him?
Never were such films and gossamer threads used in like entanglement before. He could have brushed them all away by one cold sweep of his eyes, and the maiden who had not scrupled at death to gain merely his respect, would have left the studio with a colder glance than his, nor would her womanly strength have failed her until she reached a refuge which his eye could not penetrate; but then--G.o.d pity her. The tragedies over which the angels weep are the bloodless wounds of the spirit.
But it would seem that the atmosphere of Van Berg"s studio that summer morning was not at all conducive to tragedy of any kind, nor were there in his face or manner any indications of comedy, which to poor Ida would have been far worse; for an air of careless "bonhomie" on his part when she was so desperately in earnest would have made his smiles and jests like heartless mockery.
And yet, in spite of his manner the previous day, the poor girl had come to the studio fearing far more than she hoped, and burdened also with a troubled conscience. She was almost sure she was not doing right, and yet the temptation was too strong to be resisted.
But when he took her hand in greeting that morning, and said with a smile that seemed to flash out from the depths of his soul, "I won"t hurt you any more if I can help it," all scruples, all hesitancy vanished for a time, like frostwork in the sun. His magnetism was irresistible, and she felt that it would require all her tact and resolution to keep him by some careless, random word or act, from brushing aside the veil behind which shrank her trembling, and as yet, unsought love.
But Van Berg was even a rarer study than the maiden, and his manner towards both Ida and her father might well lead one to think that he was inclined to become the chief conspirator in the design against himself. He had scarcely been conscious of time or place since parting the previous day with the friend he was so bent on securing, and when at last he slept in the small hours of the morning he dreamt that he had been caught by a mighty tidal wave that was bearing him swiftly towards heaven on its silver crest.
When he awoke, the wave, so far from being a bubble, seemed a grand spiritual reality, and he felt as if he had already reached a seventh heaven of vague, undefined exhilaration. Never before had life appeared so rich a possession and so full of glorious possibilities. Never in the past had he felt his profession to be so n.o.ble and worthy of his devotion, and never had the fame he hoped to grasp by means of it seemed so near. Beauty became to him so infinitely beautiful and divine that he felt he could worship it were it only embodied, and then with a strange and exquisite thrill of exultation he exclaimed: "Right or wrong, to my eye it is embodied in Ida Mayhew, and she will fill my studio with light again to-day and many days to come. If ever an artist was fortunate in securing as a friend, as an inspiration, a perfect and budding flower of personal and spiritual loveliness, I am that happy man."
The Van Berg of other days would have called the Van Berg that waited impatiently for his guests that morning a rhapsodical fool, and the greater part of the world would offer no dissent. The world is very p.r.o.ne to call every man who is possessed by a little earnestness or enthusiasm a fool, but it is usually an open question which is the more foolish--the world or the man; and perhaps we shall all learn some day that there was more of sanity in our rhapsodies than in the shrewd calculations that verged towards meanness. Be this as it may in the abstract, Van Berg regarded himself as the most rational man in the city that morning. He did not try to account for his mental state by musty and proverbial wisdom or long-established principles of psychology. The glad, strong consciousness of his own soul satisfied him and made everything appear natural. Since he HAD this strong and growing friendship for this maiden, who was evidently pleased to come again to his studio, though so coy and shy in admitting it, why should he not have it? There was nothing in his creed against such a friendship, and everything for it.