A Face Illumined Part 65

Was it success in his art or praise from her lips that gave her listener such an exquisite thrill of pleasure? He did not stop to consider, for he was not in an a.n.a.lytical mood at that time.

He was on the crest of the spiritual wave that was sweeping him heavenward, or towards some beatific state of which he had not dreamt before. His face glowed with pleasure as he said:

"Since it pleases you, it's no more than justice that you should know that your visit was the cause of my success. Either your laugh or your kind parting words brushed the cobwebs from my mind, and I was able to do better work in a few hours than I might have accomplished in weeks."

She tried to look at the picture more closely, but fast-coming tears blinded her. Then she rose, and averting her face hastily, wiped her eyes, as she said in a low tone: "I can't understand it at all, and the memory of Mr. Eltinge's kindness always overcomes me. Please pardon my weakness. There, I won't waste any more of your time," and she returned to her chair. But her face still wore the uncertainty of an April day.

"Your affection for Mr. Eltinge," he said gently, "is as beautiful as it is natural. No manifestation of it needs any apology, and least of all to me, for I owe to him far more than life. But I am paining you by recalling the past," he said regretfully, as Ida's tears began to gather again. "Let me try to make amends by returning at once to the present and to my work. Before I go on any farther with your portrait I want you to put this rose-bud in your hair,"

and from a hidden nook he brought a little vase containing only one exquisite bud. Ida had barely time to see that it was in color and size precisely like the emblem of herself that he had thrown away, and for a few minutes she utterly lost her self-control. She buried her face in her hands, and her low, stifled sobs filled Van Berg with the keenest distress and perplexity.

"Miss Ida," he said earnestly, "I would rather every tear you are shedding were a drop of my blood," but his words only made them flow faster still.

Suddenly she sprang up, and turning her back upon him, dashed away her tears almost fiercely. "Oh! this is shameful!" she exclaimed, in low, indignant tones. "Mr. Van Berg, what must you think of me? Please turn Mr. Eltinge's face away, for he is looking at me just as he did when my heart was breaking, and--and--I've lost my self-control, and I had better not come here till I can cease being so weak and foolish."

"Is it weak to be grateful?" he asked, gently. "Is it foolish to love one so thoroughly ent.i.tled to your love? I honor you for your deep and tender affection for Mr. Eltinge, and every tear you have shed proves to me that in this perfect flower I am now finding the true emblem of yourself."

"No," she said, almost pa.s.sionately, "I have no right to it. The other one that you threw away is true of me, and always will be.

This but mocks me with its perfection. I would be a hypocrite if I should put it in my hair, and smile complacently while you painted it. My heart clings to the other emblem, and I know I must develop as best I can, as that would have done after its destroyer was taken away. No, Mr. Van Berg. I have seen myself in the strong, sharp light of truth. If you are willing to be my friend, please be an honest one. My faithful old friend in the country would scarcely take my portrait if this perfect flower were introduced with any such meaning as you attach to it, and I certainly would be ashamed to give it to him. Mr. Van berg, we MUST let bygones by bygones, or we never can get on. See how absurdly I have acted both yesterday and to-day, and all through recalling the past.

Indeed, indeed, it will never do for me to come here again, and if you can make such a marvellous likeness of Mr. Eltinge as you have, I scarcely think there will be any need."

"My success with Mr. Eltinge's portrait is the result of a few happy strokes that I might not be able to give again if I tried a year.

Believe me, Miss Mayhew, I not only wish to be an honest friend, but a very considerate one. I promise never to urge you to do anything that will cause you pain. I can understand how the features of your kind friend have touched the tenderest chords of your heart, and I respect your study fidelity to your conscience in refusing to let me paint this bud in your hair; but you must also do me the justice to believe that I meant no hollow compliment when I searched for it among the florists. Must I throw this one away, too?" he asked, with a glance that was very ardent for a friend; "for since I obtained it for you, it must receive its fate at your hands only."

"I'll wear it, simply as your gift, with pleasure," and she fastened it in her breastpin, so that its crimson blush rested against the snowy whiteness of her neck.

He looked her full in the eyes and said, with low, sad emphasis: "I do not deserve such respect." Then the knowledge that she was harboring a purpose which troubled her conscience, but which she could not abandon, became the cause of a trace of her old recklessness of manner. She a.s.sumed a sudden gayety, as if she had stepped out of shadows into too strong a light, as she said:

"Mr. Van Berg, you may well hesitate to bring the appet.i.te you say had last night to our house this evening, and if I stay a moment longer, you will get no dinner at all. I have not been after the crude material--as you call it--yet, and I'm told that there is not a man living so amiable and philosophical, but that a poor dinner provokes martyr-like expression, if nothing worse;" and with a smile and a piquancy of manner that seemed peculiarly brilliant against the background of her deep and repressed feeling, she again left him.

He tried to return to his work, but found himself once more possessed by the demon of unrest and impatience. The spiritual wave that had been lifting him higher and higher was changing its character and becoming a smoothly gliding current. It was so irresistible that he never thought of resisting. "Why should he resist?" he asked himself. Circ.u.mstances had interested him in this rare Undine before she received a woman's soul; circ.u.mstances had entangled his life and hers in what had almost been an awful tragedy; and now circ.u.mstances, or something far beyond, were swiftly developing before his eyes a spiritual loveliness that was the counterpart of her outward beauty, and he a.s.sured himself that it would be the greatest folly of his life to lose a trace of the exquisite process that he might be privileged to see. What artist or poet has not pictured himself the fair face of Eve as G.o.d first breathed into her perfect clay the breath of life, or has not, in imagination, seen the closed eyes opening in surprise and intelligence or kindling with the light of love? And yet the change in Ida Mayhew seemed to Van Berg far more wonderful and interesting; and to his fancy if, instead of lying in the beauty of her breathless, statuesque preparation for life, Eve had been possessed by a legion of distorting imps, she would have been the type of the maiden he first had recognized. But he had seen these evil spirits exorcised, and in their place was coming a n.o.ble, womanly soul--sweet, tender, and strong--and the perfect form and features seemed but a transparent mould, a crystal vase into which heaven was pouring a new and divine life. Why should he not long to escape from the dusty matter-of-fact world and witness this spiritual repet.i.tion of the most beautiful story of the past? Thus his philosophical mind was able once more to reason the whole matter out clearly and prove that his wish to annihilate the intervening hours before he could dare to present himself to Ida Mayhew, was the most natural and proper desire imaginable. He concluded that a walk through Central Park might banish his disquietude, and leave time for a careful toilet, since for some occult reason the occasion seemed to him to require unusual preparation.

He knew he was unfashionably early when he rang Mr. Mayhew's door-bell, but he had found it impossible to curb his impatience to see in what new aspect Ida would present herself that evening.

A hundred times he had queried how she would appear in her own home, how she would preside as hostess, and whether the taste of the florid and fashionable mother would not be so apparent as to annoy him like a bad tone in the picture. yes, that was Mrs. Mayhew's parlor into which he was shown. It did not suggest the maiden who had come to visit, nor the quiet, dignified gentleman Mr. Mayhew was seen to be when at the touch of love's wand a degrading vice fell away from him. But the artist could find no fault with the host who greeted him promptly, and when, a few moments later, there was a breezy rustle on the stairs and he turned to greet his hostess, his face flushed with admiration and pleasure. It became evident that the worshipper of beauty was in the presence of his divinity, and his every glance burned incense to her honor. She had twined a few rose-leaves in her hair, but wore no other ornament save the rose he had given her in the morning, which evidently had been kept carefully for the occasion, for it was unchanged, with the exception that it revealed its heart a little more openly, as did Ida herself. And yet she did her best to insure that her manner should be no more cordial than her character of hostess demanded.

But in spite of all she could do, the light of exultation and intense joy would flash into her eyes and tremble in her tones that evening. A maiden would have been blind indeed had she not been able to read the riddle of Van Berg's ardent friendship now, and Ida had seen that expression too often not to know its meaning well. In the morning she had strongly hoped, now she believed.

She no longer walked by faith but in full vision, and she trod with the grace of a queen who knows her power in the realm that woman loves best. The glow of her eyes, her repressed excitement, that vitalized everything she said or did, mystified while they charmed her guest. "She has become true to nature," he thought, "and like nature is full of mysterious changes, for which we know not the cause. At one time it is a sharp north wind, again the south wind.

This morning there was a sudden shower of tears, and before it was over the sunlight of smiles flashed through them. Now she appears like a June morning, and I pray the weather holds."

"Oh," thought Ida, in the wild, mad glee of her heart, "how can I behave myself and look innocent and unconscious, seeing what I do?

He is my very good friend is he? I wish for only one such friend in the world. It wouldn't be proper to have another. Oh, but isn't it rich to see how unconscious he is of himself! He is pa.s.sing into an exceedingly acute attack of my own complaint, and the poor man doesn't know what is the matter. I don't believe he ever looked at Jennie Burton as he looks at me. Ah, Jennie Burton!" The joyousness suddenly faded out of her face and she sighed deeply.

It seemed to Van Berg for a time that his June morning might become clouded after all, but while his face was turned towards her with the expression it now wore no sad thoughts or misgivings could shadow Ida very long.

Chapter L. Swept Away.

There was no vulgar profusion in the dinner which Ida had ordered, nor were its courses interminable; and as she gracefully and quietly directed everything, the thought would keep insinuating itself in Van Berg's mind, that the home over which she might eventually preside would be a near suburb of Paradise. He heartily seconded Ida's purpose that her father should take part in their conversation, and it was another deep source of her gladness that the one whom she had seen so depressed and despairing, now looked as she would always wish him to appear. "Oh, it's too good to last," she sighed, as her heart fairly ached with its excess of joy.

After dinner Mr. Mayhew asked Van Berg to light a cigar with him in his study, but the artist declined and followed Ida to the parlor.

"Mr. Van Berg," she said, with a great show of surprise, "how is it you don't smoke this evening? It seemed to me that you and Cousin Ik were drawn to a certain corner of Mr. Burleigh's piazza with the certainty of gravitation after dinner, and then you were lost in the clouds."

"On this occasion I have taken my choice of pleasures and have followed you."

"This is a proud moment for me," she said, with a mirthful twinkle in her eyes. "I never expected to rival a gentleman's cigar, and I don't think I ever did before."

"Another proof of my friendship, Miss Ida."

"Yes," she replied demurely, "an act like this goes a good way towards making me believe you are sincere."

"Miss Ida, you are always laughing at me. I wish I could find some way to get even with you, and I will too."

"You do me injustice. I, in turn, will lay an offering on the altar of friendship and will go with you this evening to the concert garden."

"I think you exceedingly, but will leave the offering on the altar, if you will permit me. I would much rather remain in your parlor."

"Why, Mr. Van Berg, you are bent on being a martyr for my sake this evening."

"Yes, wholly bent upon it."

"How amiable gentlemen are after dinner!" she exclaimed. "But where was your appet.i.te this evening? Clearly our cook knows nothing of the preparation of ambrosia nor I of nectar, although I made the coffee myself."

"Did you? That accounts for its divine flavor. Don't you remember I took two cups?"

"I saw that your politeness led you to send me your cup a second time. I suppose you accomplished a vast deal again to-day after you were once finally rid of an embodiment of April weather?"

"I would lose your respect altogether if I should tell you how I have spent the afternoon. You would think me an absurd jumble of moods and tenses. I may as well own up, I suppose. I have done nothing but kill time, and to that end I took a walk through Central Park."

"This hot afternoon! Mr. Van Berg, what possessed you?"

"A demon of impatience. It seemed as if old Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still again."

"You must indeed by a genius, Mr. Van Berg, for I've always heard that the peculiarly gifted were full of unaccountable moods."

"I understand the satire of your expression 'PECULIARLY gifted,'

but my turn will come before the evening is over," and he leaned luxuriously back against the sofa cushion with a look of infinite content with the prospect before him. "Bless me, what is this over which I have half broken my back," he exclaimed, and he dragged out of its partial concealment a huge volume.

"Please let me take that out of your way," said Ida, stepping hastily forward with crimson cheeks.

"Don't trouble yourself, Miss Mayhew; fortune is favoring me once more, and I am on the point of discovering the favorite author you would not mention this morning. An encyclopedia, as I live! from A to B, with a hair-pin inserted sharply at the word Amsterdam.

Really, Miss Ida, I can't account for your absorbing interest in Amsterdam."

"Mr. Van Berg, there is no use in trying to hide anything from you.

You find me out every time and I'm really growing superst.i.tious about it."

"I wish your words were true; but, for the life of me, I can't understand why you should crave encyclopaedias as August reading, nor can I see the remotest connection between the exquisite color of your face and the old Dutch city of Amsterdam."