"Christine Ludolph is anything but weak and frivolous," said he. "Her character is strong, and I think most decided in its present bent. But as you say, if the Divine Alchemist wills it, He can change even the dross to gold, and turn unbelief to faith."
Hope, Christine! There is light coming, though as yet you cannot see it. There are angels of mercy flying toward you, though you cannot hear the rustle of their wings. The dark curtain of death and despair can never shut down upon a life linked to heaven by such true, strong prayer. And yet the logical results of wrong-doing will work themselves out, sin must be punished and faith sorely tried.
Dennis heard incidentally that Christine was absent on a visit to New York, but he knew nothing of the time of her return.
He now bent himself steadily and resolutely to the mastering of his business, and under Mr. Bruder"s direction resumed his art studies, though now in such moderation as Dr. Arten would commend.
He also entered on an artistic effort that would tax his powers and genius to the very utmost, of which more anon.
By the time Christine returned, he was quite himself again, though much paler and thinner than when he first entered the store.
After Christine had been at home nearly a week, her father, to rouse her out of her listlessness, said one morning: "We have recently received quite a remarkable painting from Europe. You will find it in the upper show-room, and had better come down to-day to see it, for it may be sold soon. I think you would like to copy one or two figures in it."
The la.s.situde from her New York dissipation was pa.s.sing away, and her active nature beginning to a.s.sert itself again. She started up and said, "Wait five minutes and I will get sketching materials and go down with you."
By reason of her interdict, made at West Point, so earnestly, and indeed fiercely, and confirmed by her manner, her father had never mentioned the name of Dennis Fleet. The very fact that no one had spoken of him since that dreadful day when tidings came in on every side that he could not live was confirmation in her mind that he was dead.
She dreaded going to the store, especially for the first time, for everything would irresistibly remind her of him whom she could not think of now without a pang. But as the ordeal must come, why, the sooner it was over the better. So a few moments later her hand was on her father"s arm, and they were on their way to the Art Building as in happier days.
Mr. Ludolph went to his office, and Christine, looking neither to the right nor to the left, ascended to the upper show-room, and at once sought to engage every faculty in making the sketch her father had suggested. Since Dennis was not, as she believed, either on the earth or elsewhere, she tried to take up life again as it had been before he came, and to act as if he had never been.
Hopeless task! In that familiar place, where they had begun the rearrangement of the store, everything spoke of him. She saw his glowing cheeks; again his dark, eager eyes followed her every movement and interpreted her wishes even before she could speak. Some of the pictures on the walls his hands had handled, and in her strong fancy his lithe form seemed moving the ladder to take them down again, while she, with heart and mind at rest, looked with growing curiosity and interest on her humble helper.
What changes had occurred within a short half-year! She shuddered at the thought that one who was then so instinct with life and happiness could now be dust and nothingness, and she the cause.
a.s.sociation and conscience were again too powerful. She was becoming nervous and full of a strange unrest, so she concluded to finish her sketch at another time. As she was gathering up her materials she heard some one enter the room.
She was in such a morbid, unstrung state that the least thing startled her. But imagine if you can her wonder and terror as she saw Dennis Fleet--the dead and buried, as she fully believed--enter, carrying a picture as of old, and looking as of old, save that he was paler and thinner. Was it an apparition? or, as she had read, had she dwelt so long on this trouble that her mind and imagination were becoming disordered and able to place their wild creations before her as realities?
Her sketching materials fell clattering to the floor, and after one sharp exclamation of alarm she stood as if transfixed, with parted lips and dilated eyes, panting like a frightened bird.
If a sculptor had wished to portray the form and att.i.tude of one startled by the supernatural, never could he have found a more fitting model than Christine at this moment.
As she had been seated a little on one side Dennis had not seen her at first; but, on recognizing her so unexpectedly, he was scarcely less startled than she, and the valuable picture he was carrying nearly met sudden destruction. But he had no such reason as Christine for the continuance of his surprise, and, at once recovering himself, he set the picture against the wall.
This made the illusion still more strange and terrible to Christine.
There was the dead before her, doing just as she had been imagining--just what he had done at her bidding months before.
Dennis was greatly puzzled by her look of alarm and distress. Then he thought that perhaps she feared he would break out in bitter and angry invectives again, and he advanced toward her to a.s.sure her of the contrary.
Slowly and instinctively she retreated and put up her hands with a deprecatory gesture.
"She cannot endure the sight of me," thought he, but at once he said, with dignified courtesy: "Miss Ludolph, you have nothing to fear from me, that you should regard me in that manner. You need not shrink as if from contagion. We can treat each other as courteous strangers, at least."
"I--I--I--thought you were dead!" she gasped, in a loud whisper.
Dennis"s cheek grew paler than it had been in all his sickness, and then as suddenly became dark with anger. His eyes were terrible in their indignation as he advanced a few paces almost fiercely. She trembled violently and shrunk further away.
"You thought I was dead?" he asked, sternly.
"Ye-e-s," in the same unnatural whisper.
"What!" he exclaimed, in short and bitter emphasis, "do you mean to say that you never cared even to ask whether I lived or died in my long, weary illness?--that you were so supremely indifferent to my fate that you could not articulate one sentence of inquiry? Surely this is the very sublimity of heartlessness; this is to be callous beyond one"s power of imagination. It seems to me that I would feel as much interest as that in any human being I had once known. If even a dog had licked my hand in good-will, and afterward I had seen it, wounded or sick, creep off into covert, the next time I pa.s.sed that way I would step aside to see whether the poor creature had lived or died. But after all the wealth of affection that I lavished upon you, after toiling and almost dying in my vain effort to touch your marble heart, you have not even the humanity to ask if I am above ground!"
The illusion had now pa.s.sed from Christine"s mind, and with it her alarm. The true state of the case was rapidly dawning upon her, and she was about to speak eagerly; but in his strong indignation he continued, impetuously: "You thought I was dead! The wish probably was father to the thought. My presumption deserved no better fate. But permit me to tell you, though all unbidden, I did not die. With G.o.d"s blessing I expect to live to a good old age, and intend that but few years shall pa.s.s before my name is as well known and honored as the ancient one of Ludolph;" and he turned on his heel and strode from the room.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
IF HE KNEW!
For a little time after Dennis"s angry tread died away, Christine sat almost paralyzed by surprise and deeper emotion. Her mind, though usually clear and rapid in its action, was too confused to realize the truth. Suddenly she sprang up, gathered together her sketching materials, and drawing a thick veil over her face sped through the store, through the streets, to the refuge of her own room. She must be alone.
Hastily throwing aside her wrappings, she began to walk up and down in her excitement. Her listlessness was gone now in very truth, and her eye and cheek glowed as never before. As if it had become the great vivifying principle of her own life, she kept repeating continually in a low, ecstatic tone, "He lives! he lives! he is not dead; his blood is not upon my conscience!"
At last she sat down in her luxurious chair before the window to think it all over--to commune with herself--often the habit of the reserved and solitary. From the disjointed sentences she let fall, from the reflection of her excited face in yonder gla.s.s, we gather quite correctly the workings of her mind. Her first words were, "Thank heaven!
thank something or other, I have not blotted out that true, strong genius."
Again--"What untold wretchedness I might have saved myself if I had only asked the question, in a casual way, "How is Mr. Fleet?" Christine Ludolph, with all your pride and imagined superiority, you can be very foolish.
"How he hates and despises me now! little wonder!"
"But if he knew!"
"Knew what? Why could you not ask after him, as after any other sick man? You have had a score or so of offers, and did not trouble yourself as to the fate of the lovelorn swains. Seems to me your conscience has been very tender in this case. And the fact that he misjudges you, thinks you callous, heartless, and is angry, troubles you beyond measure."
"When before were you so sensitive to the opinion of clerks and trades-people, or even the proudest suitors for your hand? But in this case you must cry out, in a tone of sentimental agony, "Oh, if he only knew it!"
"Knew what?"
Her face in yonder mirror has a strange, introverted expression, as if she were scanning her own soul. Her brow contracts with thought and perplexity.
Gradually a warm, beautiful light steals into her face, transforming it as from the scowl of a winter morning into a dawn of June; her eyes become gentle and tender. A rich color comes out upon her cheeks, spreads up her temples, mantles her brow, and pours a crimson torrent down her snowy neck. Suddenly she drops her burning face into her hands, and hides a vision one would gladly look longer upon. But see, even her little ears have become as red as coral.
The bleakest landscape in the world brightens into something like beauty when the sun shines upon it. So love, the richer, sweeter light of the soul, make the plainest face almost beautiful; but when it changed Christine Ludolph"s faultless, yet too cold and cla.s.sical, features into those of a loving woman"s, it suggested a beauty scarcely human.
A moment later there came a faint whisper: "I fear--I almost fear I love him." Then she lifted a startled, frightened face and looked timidly around as if, in truth, walls had ears.
Rea.s.sured by the consciousness of solitude, her head dropped on her wrist and her revery went forward. Her eyes became dreamy, and a half-smile played upon her lips as she recalled proof after proof of his affection, for she knew the cruel words of the last interview were the result of misunderstanding.
But suddenly she darted from her seat and began pacing the room in the strongest perturbation.
"Mocked again!" she cried; "the same cruel fate! my old miserable experience in a new aspect! With everything within my reach, save the one thing I want, I possess the means of all kinds of happiness except that which makes me happy. In every possible way I am pledged to a career and future in which he can take no part. Though my heart is full of the strangest, sweetest chaos, and I do not truly understand myself, yet I am satisfied that this is not a school-girl"s fancy. But my father would regard it as the old farce repeated. Already he suspects and frowns upon the matter. I should have to break with him utterly and forever. I should have to give up all my ambitious plans and towering hopes of life abroad. A plain Mrs. in this city of shops is a poor subst.i.tute for a countess"s coronet and a villa on the Rhine."
Her cheek flushed, and her lip curled.