A Face Illumined Part 15

"I suppose you wish to insinuate that I acted like a heathen, instead of saying that I am one plainly, as does Cousin Ik?"

"I think you acted a little thoughtlessly. If Miss Burton had been in your place, she would have tried to prevent the disagreeable scene."

"Oh, certainly! she is perfect."

"No; she is kind."

"Would it be possible to speak upon some agreeable subject, Mr.

Van Berg? I have had enough mortifications for one day."

He was puzzled. What topic could he introduce that would interest this spoiled and petulant beauty.

He touched on art, but she was only artful in her small way, and could not follow him. He tried literature, and here they had even less in common. He would not and indeed could not read the thin society novels which reflected modes of life as trivial as her own, and his books might have been written in another language, so slight was her acquaintance with them. The various political, social, or scientific questions of the day had never puzzled her brain. Van Berg cautiously felt his way towards his companion's knowledge of two or three of the most popular of them. Her answers, however, were so superficial and irrelevant, and also so evidently embarra.s.sed, that he saw his only resources to be society chit-chat, gossip about mutual acquaintances, the latest modes, the attractions of pleasure resorts in the city, and of summer resorts in the country.

But he gave his mind to these unwonted themes, and labored hard to be entertaining; for now that he had gained the vantage-ground he sought, he was determined to discover whether there was a sleeping mind or a vacuum behind Miss Mayhew's shapely forehead. Granting that there was a womanly intelligence there, as yet unquickened, he was not so irrational as to imagine he could jostle it into illumining activity in one short hour, or day, or week. But it seemed to him that if any mind existed worth the name, it would give such encouraging signs of life before many days pa.s.sed as would promise success of his experiment. He felt that his first aim must be to establish an intimacy that would permit as full and frank an exchange of thought as was possible between people so dissimilar.

While he tried to bring himself down to the littleness of her daily life, he determined to show his disapproval of every phrase of its meanness as far as he could without offending her. He had made her feel that he condemned her course towards Miss Burton that evening, and he had meant to do so.

She resented this disapproval, and at the same time respected him for it. Indeed he puzzled her. He evidently sought and wished for her society; and yet as they walked back and forth, even though she did not look at him when the light gave her the opportunity to do so, she felt intuitively that he did not enjoy her company.

She saw that he was laboring hard to make himself agreeable; but his small talk had not the familiar flippancy and fluency of one speaking in his native tongue; nor was his manner that of one who, infatuated with her beauty, had thrown aside all other considerations.

She felt that the man at her side measured her, and understood her littleness thoroughly.

And she herself had a growing consciousness of insignificance that was as painful as it was novel. Adding to all the humiliations of this day here was a man, not so very much older than herself, trying to come down to her level, as he would accommodate his language to a child. No labored argument could have revealed her ignorance to her so clearly, as her conscious inability to follow him into his ordinary range of thought. Unwittingly he had demonstrated his superiority in a way that she could not deny, however much she might be inclined to resent it. And yet he treated her with a sort of respect, and occasionally she saw that he bent his eyes upon her face as if in search of something.

After a transient effort to ignore everything and talk in her usual superficial manner, she became more and more silent and oppressed, and, at last said, somewhat abruptly:

"Mr. Van Berg, I am weary, and I imagine you are too. I think I will say good-night."

"I scarcely wonder that you are fatigued. You have had a trying day."

"It has been a horrid day," she said, emphatically.

"It might have ended much worse, nevertheless."

"Possibly," she admitted with a shrug.

"You have more reason to congratulate yourself than you imagine, Miss Mayhew. Even that disagreeable souvenir of our morning peril, your lameness, has disappeared, and you might have been maimed for life."

"My lameness, like my courage, was chiefly a fraud to begin with, and soon disappeared; but I have other souvenirs of that occasion that I cannot get rid of so easily."

"If I am one of them, you are right, Miss Mayhew; I shall hold you to our agreement this morning. You put me on my good behavior--have I not behaved well?"

"Yes, better than I have. I was not referring to you personally, but to certain memories."

"We agreed to let by-gones be by-gones."

"But others are not parties to this agreement, and every reference to the affair is odious to me."

"I shall make no further reference to it, and you must be fair enough not to punish me for the acts of others."

"You also despise me in your heart of my course towards Miss Burton this evening."

"If I despised you would I have sought your society this evening?"

"I do not know. I don't understand you, if you will permit my bluntness."

"Possibly you don't understand yourself, Miss Mayhew."

"I understand that I have had a miserable day, and I hope I may never see another like it. Good-night, sir."

Chapter XIII. Nature's Broken Promise.

Van Berg had been left to himself but a little time before Stanton and Mr. Burleigh came out upon the piazza, and the three gentlemen sat down for a quiet chat.

"Well," remarked mine host, with a sigh of relief such as a pilot might heave after taking his ship round a perilous point; "well, thanks to Miss Burton's good sense, the affair has ended without any trouble. In a house like this, 'Satan is finding mischief still'

whenever my back is turned, and sometimes he threatens to get up a row right under my nose, as in this instance. I was a 'blarsted fool,' as our English friends have it, not to know that Mrs.

Chint's drama, although beginning in comedy, might end in tragedy of my losing some good paying boarders. Still further did I demonstrate the length of my ears by even imagining it possible that Miss Burton would take five hundred, or five hundred thousand dollars in any such circ.u.mstances. But the whole thing was done in a jiffy, and Mrs. Chints was possessed to have her 'tableau vivant.' Lively picture wasn't it? Still, if Miss Mayhew, when appealed to by Mrs. Chints, had confirmed my doubts, I would have tried to stop the nonsense at any cost."

"Did Miss Mayhew advise the step?" asked Stanton.

"Oh, no! She was non-committal. She acted as if it were none of her affair, save as it might afford her a little amus.e.m.e.nt. But these rows are no light matters to us poor publicans, who must please every one and keep the whole menagerie in order. Mr. Chints was swearing up and down his room that he had been made a fool of.

Mrs. Chints was for leaving to-morrow morning, declaring that she would not endure such airs from a school-teacher. They are rich and have a number of friends who are coming soon, and so my mind was full of 'strange oaths' also, at my prospective loss, when this blessed little woman appears, taps at their door, enters like the angel into the lion's den, and shuts their mouths by some magic all her own. And now they're going to stay; Mr. Chints will give the five hundred to the Children's Aid Society, all is serene and I'm happy, so much so that I'll smoke another of your good cigars, Mr. Stanton."

"Certainly, half-a-dozen if you wish. How do you imagine she quieted the unruly beasts?"

"Oh, I suppose she got around them through the child--somewhat as she won over my wife this afternoon by means of our cross baby.

It's teething, you know--and yet how should you young chaps know anything about babies! No matter, your time will come. This promenading the piazza with lovely creatures who have been half the afternoon at their toilets is all very nice; but wait till you have weathered innumerable squalls in the dead of night--then you'll learn that teething-time in a household is like going around Cape Horn. Well, to return from your future to my present. When so good-natured a man as I am gets into a sympathetic mood with old King Herod, you can imagine what a state the mother's nerves must be in who has to stand it night and day. But as Miss Burton had been commended to my care, I felt that I was in duty bound to introduce her to my wife and show her some attention. So I said to my wife, this afternoon, 'I'm going to bring a young lady in to see you.'

'Do you think I'm in a condition to entertain company?' she asked, with a faint suggestion of hard cider in her tone. 'Well, my dear,' I expostulated, 'it was just the same yesterday, and will be a little more so to-morrow, and I feel that I shall be remiss if I delay any longer.' 'Oh, very well,' she said, as if it were a tooth that must come out sooner or later, 'since the matter must be attended to, let us have it over at once.' But bless you, it wasn't over till supper-time. As I brought the young lady in, the baby waked out of a five-minutes' nap that had cost about an hour's rocking, and I thought the roof would come off. My wife looked cross and worried--well, it was prose, gentlemen, prose--not the poetry of life; and I said to myself, 'I suppose I have about made it certain that this young woman will live and die an old maid by giving her this glimpse behind the scenes. I thought the ladies could get on better without me than with me, so I bowed myself out, glad to escape the din; and I supposed Miss Burton would say a few pleasant things in the direction of Mrs. Burleigh, which she, poor woman, might not be able to hear, and then she would bow herself out, also glad to escape. An hour and a half later I went back to see if I could not coax my wife away for a drive, and what do you suppose I saw?"

"The baby in convulsions," said Stanton.

"Give it up," added Van Berg.

"Sweet transformation scene; deep hush; my wife asleep in her rocking-chair, the baby asleep in the arms of Miss Burton, who held up a warning finger at me to be quiet. But the mischief was done; my wife started up and was mortified beyond measure that she had treated her guest so rudely. The good fairy, however, was so genuinely delighted that she had quieted the baby and given the tired mother a little rest, that we had to come to the conclusion that she found pleasure in ways that are a trifle uncommon. By some miracle or other she kept the baby asleep, and then my wife and I tried to entertain her a little, but we were the ones that were entertained. Before we knew it, the supper-bell rang, and then I'm blessed if the little chap didn't wake up and grin at us all. To think then that I should reward her by letting Mr. Chints slap her face with a five-hundred-dollar check! I guess we'll all know better next time."

"Did she tell you anything further about her history or her connections?" asked Stanton.

Mr. Burleigh stroked his beard and looked rather blank for a moment.

"Now I think of it," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "I be hanged if she said a word about herself. And now I think further of it, she somehow or other got Mrs. Burleigh and myself a-talking, and seemed so interested in us and what we said, that I be hanged again if we didn't tell her all we know about ourselves."

"She impresses every one as being remarkably frank, and yet I think it will be found that she is peculiarly reticent in regard to herself," remarked Van Berg musingly. "Well, it's not often I take people on trust, but I have given this lady my entire respect and confidence."