A Face Illumined Part 33

"I mean to put you out of my house within the next ten minutes,"

said Mr. Burleigh, emphatically. "You might as well have made an allusion to my wife as to Miss Burton; and let me tell you that if you wag your wanton tongue again, I'll have my colored waiters whip you off the premises."

"But where shall I go?" whined Sibley, now thoroughly cowed.

"Go to the nearest kennel or sty you can find. Either place would be more appropriate for you than my house. Mr. Van Berg and Mr.

Stanton, I think you for your conduct in this affair. You are correct in supposing that I wish to entertain only gentlemen and ladies."

Sibley now began to bl.u.s.ter about law and vengeance.

"Be still, sir," thundered Mr. Burleigh. "One of the carriages will take you to the depot or landing as you choose. After that, trouble me or mine again at your peril. Now, be off. No, I'll not take any of your dirty money; and if these friends of yours wish to go with you, they are welcome to do so."

"We are only acquaintances of Mr. Sibley's," chorused his late companions, "and came in merely to see fair play."

"Well, you haven't seen 'fair play,'" growled Mr. Burleigh. "I've treated the fellow much better than he deserves."

Before Sibley could realize it, a carriage whirled him and his baggage away. His reckless anger having evaporated, the base and cowardly instincts of his nature resumed their sway, and he was glad to slink off to New York, thus escaping further danger and trouble.

Chapter XXIX. Evil Lives Cast Dark Shadows.

Changes in the world without often make sad havoc in our content and happiness. Loss of fortune and friends, removal to new scenes, death and disaster, sometimes so alter the outlook that we have to ask ourselves: Is this the same earth in which we have dwelt hitherto? But the changes that can most blast and blacken, or, on the other hand, glorify the world about us, are those which take place within our souls.

Such a radical change had apparently taken place in Ida Mayhew's world. She was bewildered with her trouble, and could not understand the dreary outlook. She had come to the Lake House but a few weeks before, a vain, light-hearted maiden, looking upon life with laughing and thoughtless glances, and having no more definite purposes than the b.u.t.terfly that flits from flower to flower, caring not which are harmless and which poisonous, so that they yield a momentary sweetness.

But now, for causes utterly unforeseen and half-inexplicable, all flowers had withered, and the old pleasures once so exhilarating were a weariness even in thought. Her world, once a pleasure garden, had been transformed into a path so th.o.r.n.y and flinty that every step brought new bruises and lacerations; and it led away among shadows so cold and dark, that she shivered at the thought of her prospective life.

Her heart had so suddenly and thoroughly betrayed her, that she was overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness and perplexity. The spoiled and flattered girl had always been accustomed to have her own way. Self-gratification had been the rule and habit of her life. If Van Berg had only admired and complimented her, if he had joined the honeyed chorus of flattery that had waited on her sensuous beauty, his voice would probably have been unheeded and lost among many others. But his sharp demand for something more than a face and form had awakened her, and to her dismay she learned that her real and lasting self was as dwarfed and deformed as her transient and outward self was perfect.

The artist seemed to her princely, regal even, in his strong cultivated manhood, his lofty calling and ambition, and his high social rank. As for herself, it now appeared that her beauty, whose spell she had thought no man could resist, had lured him to her side only long enough to discover what she was and who she was, and then he had turned away in disgust.

From their first moment of meeting, she felt that she had been peculiarly unfortunate in the impressions she had made upon him.

Her attendant at the concert-garden had been a fool; and now he was a.s.sociating her with a man whom he more than despised. She believed that he pitied her father as the victim of a wife's heartlessness and a daughter's selfishness and frivolity, and that he felt a repugnance toward her mother which his politeness could not wholly disguise. He was probably learning to characterize them in his mind by her father's horrible words--"froth and mud."

Such miserable thoughts were flocking round her like croaking ravens as she sat rigid and motionless in her room, her form tense from the severity of her mental distress. Suddenly Sibley's loud tones, and her cousin's voice in reply, caught her attention, and she opened the lattice of the blinds. She had scarcely done so before she saw Stanton strike the blow which had felled Sibley to the earth.

With breathless interest she watched the scene till Van Berg stepped forward. Then she sprang to a drawer, and taking out a small field-gla.s.s which she carried on her summer excursions was able to see the expression of the young men's faces, although she could not distinguish their words. The stern, menacing aspect of the artist made her tremble even at her distance, and it was evident that his words were throwing Sibley into a transport of rage; and when in his pa.s.sion he tried to shoot Van Berg, she could not repress the cry that attracted their attention.

Her mother, in the adjoining room, commenced knocking at the door, asking what was the matter, but received no answer until Ida saw that the young men were coming toward the house. Then she threw open the door, and told Mrs. Mayhew that she had seen something that looked like a large spider, and that nothing was the matter.

Without waiting for further questioning she flitted hastily down-stairs and from one concealed post of observation to another until she saw the angry party enter Mr. Burleigh's private office.

A small parlor next to it was empty, and once within it, the loud tones spoken on the other side of the slight part.i.tion were distinctly heard.

As she listened to the words which Van Berg and Mr. Burleigh addressed to the man whom all in the house had regarded as her accepted lover, or at least her congenial friend, her cheeks grew scarlet, and when he was dismissed from the house, she fled to her room; wishing that it were a place in which she might hide forever, so overwhelming was her sense of shame and humiliation.

How could she meet the guests of the Lake House again? Worse than all, how could she meet the scornful eyes of the man who had driven from the place the suitor that she was supposed to favor as he might have scourged away a dog.

She could not now explain that Sibley was and ever had been less than nothing to her--that she had both detested and despised him.

She had permitted herself to touch pitch, and it had of necessity left its stain. To go about now and proclaim her real sentiments toward the man who apparently had been her favorite, would seem to others, she thought, the quintessence of meanness. She felt that she had been caught in the meshes of an evil web, and that it was useless to struggle.

Despairing, hopeless, her cheeks burning with shame as with a fever, she sat hour after hour refusing to see any one. She would not go down to supper. She left the food untasted that was sent to her room. She sat staring at vacancy until her face became a dim pale outline in the deepening twilight, and finally was lost in the shadow of night. But the darkness that gathered around the poor girl's heart was deeper and almost akin to the rayless gloom that positive crime creates, so nearly did she feel that she was a.s.sociated with one from whom her woman's soul, perverted as it was, shrank with inexpressible loathing.

"Ida is in one of her worst tantrums," whispered Mrs. Mayhew to Stanton; "I never knew her to act so badly as she has of late. I wouldn't have thought that such a man as you have found Sibley to be could gain so great a hold upon her feelings. But law! she'll be all over it in a day or two. Nothing lasts with Ida, and least of all, a beau."

"Well," said Stanton, bitterly, "she is disgracing herself and all related to her by her inexcusable folly in this instance. Those who pretended to be Sibley's friends at dinner, are now trying to win a little respectability by turning against him, and the story of his behavior is circulating through the house. All will soon know that he shot at Van Berg, and that he made insulting remarks about Miss Burton. It will appear to every one as if Ida were sulking in her room on Sibley's account; and people are usually thought to be no better than their friends."

"Oh, dear!" half sobbed Mrs. Mayhew, "won't you go up to her room and show her the consequences of her folly?"

"No," said Stanton, irritably; "not to-night. I know her too well. She will take no advice from me or any one else at present.

To-morrow I will have one more plain talk with her; and if she won't listen to reason I wash my hands of her. Where is Uncle?"

"Don't ask me. Was there ever a more unfortunate woman? With such a husband and daughter, how can I keep up appearances?"

Stanton walked away with a gesture of disgust and impatience.

"Curse it all!" he muttered; "and their shadows fall on me too.

What chance have I with the snow-white maiden I'd give my life for when followed by such a.s.sociations?"

Chapter x.x.x. The Deliberate Wooer Speaks First.

Mr. Burleigh was one of those fortunate men who when the weather is rough outside--as was often the case in his calling--can always find smooth water in the domestic haven of a wife's apartment. Thus Mrs. Burleigh soon learned the cause of his perturbation; and as she knew Jennie Burton would hear the story from some one else, could not deny herself the feminine enjoyment of being the first to tell it, and of congratulating her on the knightly defender she had secured; for the quarrel had come before Mr. Burleigh in such a form as to make Van Berg the princ.i.p.al in the affair.

Miss Burton's cheek flushed deeply and resentfully as she heard the circ.u.mstances in which her name had been spoken, and she said with emphasis:

"Mr. Van Berg impressed me as a chivalric man from the first day of our meeting. But I wish he had paid no heed to the words of such a creature as Mr. Sibley. That his life was endangered on my account pains me more than I can tell you;" and she soon grew so white and faint that Mrs. Burleigh made her take a gla.s.s of wine.

"Death seems such a terrible thing to a young, strong man," she added, shudderingly, after a moment, and she pressed her hands against her eyes as if to shut out a vision from which she shrank.

"May he not still be in danger from this ruffian's revenge?" she asked, looking up in sudden alarm.

"I'm afraid that he will be," said Mrs. Burleigh, catching the infection of her fears. "I will have Mr. Burleigh see that he is kept away from this place."

Soon after, as Miss Burton was pa.s.sing through the main hall-way, she met the artist, and stepping into one of the small parlors that was unoccupied, she said:

"Mr. Van Berg, I wish to speak with you. I wish both to thank you, and to ask a favor."

"Please do the latter only," he replied, smiling.