"I agree with you, my dear," responded the artist, with answering emphasis.
"Yes, children," said Miss Burton, her eyes dancing with mischief, "and I want you to appreciate Mr. Van Berg"s genius too. He is the greatest artist that ever lived, and there never were such pictures as he paints."
"Miss Burton, I beg off," interrupted Van Berg, laughing. "You always get the better of one. No, children," he continued in answer to their looks of wonder, "I know less about painting pictures, in comparison, than you do of dressing dolls."
"But Miss Burton always tells us the truth," persisted the child.
"Now you see the result of our folly," said the young lady, shaking her head at him. "We have given this child an example of insincerity. We were jesting, my dear. Mr. Van Berg and I did not mean what we said."
"But I did mean what I said," replied the child, earnestly.
"Since only downright honesty," the artist resumed with a laugh, "is permitted in this little group, so near nature"s heart, I think I must follow this small maiden"s example, and stick to my original statement. For once, Miss Burton, we have won the advantage over you, and have proved that yours are the only insincere words that have been spoken. But I know that if I stay another moment I shall be worsted. So I shall leave the field before victory is exchanged for another reverse."
As he turned laughingly away he saw--what he had not observed before--that Ida Mayhew was sitting near. She was ostensibly reading; but even his brief glance a.s.sured him that her downcast eyes were not following the lines. Her face was so pale, so rigid, so like a sculptured ideal of some kind of suffering he could not understand, that it haunted him.
He had given but little thought to her for the past two days, and indeed had rarely seen her. She had managed to take her meals when he was not present, and on one or two occasions had had them sent to her room, pleading illness as the reason. Indeed her flagging appet.i.te and altered appearance did not make much feigning on her part necessary.
She had evidently heard the conversation just narrated; and she believed that Van Berg had echoed the child"s belief in regard to Miss Burton more in truth than in jest.
The ruling pa.s.sion of the artist was aroused. A plain woman might have looked unutterable things, and he would have pa.s.sed on with a shrug, or but a thought of commiseration. But that oval, downcast face followed him. Its sadness and pain interested him because conveyed to his eye by a perfect contour.
"Was it a trick?" he thought, "or a fortuitous combination of the features themselves, that enabled them to express so much! It must be so, for surely the shallow coquette had not much to express."
"A plague on the perversity of nature," he exclaimed, "to give the girl such features. If Jennie Burton had them, she would be the ideal woman of the world."
The practical result, however, was that he half forgot during dinner that she was "the best woman that ever lived" in his furtive effort to study Ida"s face in its present aspect; and that he also spent most of the afternoon in his room sketching it from memory.
Chapter XXII. A Vain Wish.
As the witch-hazel is believed to have the power of indicating springs of water however far beneath the surface, so Miss Burton, by a subtle affinity, seemed to become speedily conscious of the sorrows and troubles of others, even when sedulously hidden from general observation.
She discovered that something was amiss with Ida almost as soon as did the troubled girl herself; but for once her quick perception of causes failed her. She had explained Ida"s apparent antipathy to Van Berg on the ground of the natural resentment of a frivolous society girl toward the man who had, by his manner and character, asked her to think and be a woman. It appeared to her, from her limited acquaintance, that Ida was developing into the counterpart of her mother; and for such a person as Mrs. Mayhew, Van Berg could never have anything more than polite toleration.
Miss Burton was aware that the artist"s manner toward Ida had indeed been humiliating. During the previous week he had sought her society; but in the emphatic language of his action, he had almost the same as said of late:
"Even for the sake of your beauty I cannot endure your shallowness and moral deformity."
Little wonder that the flattered belle should feel hate or at least spite toward the man who had virtually given her such a stinging rebuke.
But while this fact and the differences of character explained Ida"s manner toward the artist, it did not account for the expression of pain and perplexity that she occasionally detected in the young girl"s face. It did not explain why she should sit for an hour at a time, as she had that morning in the parlor, her eyes fixed on vacancy, and her face full of dread and trouble, as if there were something present to her mind from which she shrank inexpressibly.
She tried several times to make advances toward the unhappy girl, but was in every instance repelled, coldly and decidedly.
"What IS preying upon Miss Mayhew"s mind?" she queried with increasing frequency. Her experience as a teacher of young girls made her quick to detect the presence of those dangerous thoughts which beset the entrance on mature womanhood. With a frown that formed a marked contrast with her customary gentle and genial expression, she surmised: "Can Sibley, or any one else, be seeking to tempt and lead her astray?"
As the most plausible explanation she finally concluded that Ida was brooding over her father"s unhappy tendencies. Mrs. Burleigh had told Miss Burton the whole story; and she had listened, not as to a bit of scandal, but as to another instance of that kind of trouble which ever evoked from her more of sympathy than censure.
Ida might treat her fancied rival, therefore, as coldly as she chose, but the fact of suffering and the shadow resting upon her from her father"s course, would bind Jennie Burton to her as a watchful friend with a tie that only returning happiness could sunder.
Stanton and Van Berg were standing together on Sat.u.r.day evening, when Mrs. Mayhew and her daughter came down to await the arrival of the stage. Ida did not see them at first, and Van Berg was again struck by the pallor and stony apathy of her face. She looked like one wearied by conflict of mind; but the quiet of her face was not that of peace or decision. It was simply the vacancy and languor of one worn out with contending emotions.
"I once said," thought Van Berg, "that she would be beautiful if she were dead, and her frivolous mind could no longer mar the repose of her features with the suggestion of petty thoughts and ign.o.ble vices. By Jove, I never realized how true my words were. As her motionless figure and pallid expression appear in yonder door-way, she would make a good picture of the clay of Eve, before G.o.d breathed life into the perfect form. Oh! that I had such power! I would give years to light up that face there with the expressions of which it is capable."
Then Ida saw him, and she turned hastily away, but not before he caught a glimpse of the blood mounting swiftly to her face. She was beginning to puzzle him, and to suggest that possibly his estimate of her character had been superficial.
"Your cousin has not seemed well for the past few days," he remarked to Stanton.
"Oh! Ida is as full of moods as an April day, only they scarcely have a vernal simplicity," was the satirical answer. From some caprice or other she is affecting the pale and interesting style now.
See! she has dressed herself this evening with severe simplicity; but the minx knows that thin white drapery is more becoming to her marble cheeks and neck than the richest colors. Besides, she remembers that it is a sultry evening, and so gets herself up as cool as a cuc.u.mber. By all the jolly G.o.ds! but she is statuesque, isn"t she? Say what you please Van, the best of you artists couldn"t imagine a much fairer semblance of a woman than you see yonder--but when you come to her mental and moral furniture--the Good Lord deliver us!"
""Tis pity, "tis pity," said Van Berg, in a low, regretful tone.
"An" pity "tis, "tis true," added Stanton, with a shrug.
"I can"t think it is only affection that has made her appear ill the last two or three days," resumed Van Berg, musingly. "Her face suggests trouble and suffering of some kind."
"Touch of dyspepsia, like enough. However, Sibley will be here in a few minutes and he will cheer her up, never fear. I"m disgusted with her that she takes so to that fellow; for although no saint myself, I can"t stomach him."
At the mention of Sibley"s name, Van Berg frowned, turned on his heel and walked away.
"If Stanton is right about that fellow"s power over her," he muttered, "I"ll tear up the sketch I made this afternoon and never give her another thought."
The moment Ida became conscious of Van Berg"s observant eyes her languor pa.s.sed away. She had scarcely glanced at him while at dinner, but she had felt, by some subtle power of perception, that he was furtively watching her, and she also felt there was more of curiosity than kindliness in his regard. With an instinct as strong as that of self-preservation, she sought to hide her secret, and when a few moments later the stage was driven to the door, she was prepared to welcome the man she now detested, in order to conceal her heart from the man she loved.
Van Berg, leaning against a pillar near, saw Mr. Mayhew with his sallow, listless face and lifeless tread mount the steps to greet his wife and daughter; but, before he could take Ida"s hand, Sibley, in snowy linen and a coat from which the stains and dust of earth seemed ever kept miraculously, brushed past him, and seizing the daughter"s hand, exclaimed:
"You see I"ve kept my promise, and am here." And then he whispered in her ear: "By Jupiter, Miss Ida, you look like a houri just from Paradise to-night."
Mr. Mayhew paused a moment and looked from the forward youth to his daughter"s scarlet face, frowned heavily, and then gave her and her mother a very cool greeting before pa.s.sing on to his room.
Ida could not forbear stealing a look at Van Berg, and her face grew pale again as she encountered his scornful glance. Pride was one of her predominant traits, and his manner touched it to the quick. She resolved to return him scorn for scorn, and to show him that in spite of her heart that had turned against her and become his ally, she could still be her old gay self. Therefore she gave Sibley back his badinage in kind; and in repartee that was bright and sharp as well as reckless, she answered the compliments of other gay young fellows who also gathered around her.
"Did I not tell you Sibley would revive her?" Stanton remarked as they went down to supper. "Such humdrum fellows as you and I are not to the taste of one who has been brought up on a diet of cayenne pepper and chocolate cream."
"But what kind of blood does such a diet make?"
"Judge for yourself. It looks well as it comes and goes in a pretty face."
"Look here, Stanton," said Van Berg, pausing at the dining room door; "there is that Sibley at our table."
"Oh, certainly! He claims to be Ida"s friend, and you see that Mrs. Mayhew is very gracious to him. He"s rich, and will inherit his father"s business also; and my sagacious aunt inquires no further."