Barriers Burned Away Part 46

"That indeed would be the very extravagance of romance, and how could I, least of all, who so long have scoffed at such things, explain my action? These mushroom shopkeepers, who were all n.o.bodies the other day, elevate their eyebrows when a merchant's daughter marries her father's clerk. But when would the wonder cease if a German lady of rank followed suit?

"Then again my word, my honor, every sacred pledge I could give, forbids such folly.

"Would to heaven I had never seen him, for this unfortunate fancy of mine must be crushed in its inception; strangled before it comes to master me as it has mastered him."

After a long and weary sigh she continued: "Well, everything is favorable for a complete and final break between us. He believes me heartless and wicked to the last degree. I cannot undeceive him without showing more than he should know. I have only to avoid him, to say nothing, and we drift apart.

"If we could only have been friends he might have helped me so much!

but that now is clearly impossible--yes, for both of us.

"Truly one of these American poets was right:

"'For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these--It might have been.'

"But thanks to the immortal G.o.ds, as the pious heathen used to say, his blood is not on my hands, and this has taken a mountain off my heart. Thus relieved I can perhaps forget all the miserable business.

Fate forbids that I, as it has forbidden that many another high-born woman, should marry where she might have loved."

If Christine's heart was wronged, her pride was highly gratified by this conclusion. Here was a new and strong resemblance between herself and the great. In mind she recalled the t.i.tled unfortunates who had "loved where they could not marry," and with the air and feeling of a martyr to ancestral grandeur she pensively added her name to the list.

With her conscience freed from its burden of remorse, with the knowledge, so sweet to every woman, that she might accept this happiness if she would, in spite of her airs of martyrdom, the world had changed greatly for the better, and with the natural buoyancy of youth she reacted into quite a cheerful and hopeful state.

Her father noticed this on his return to dinner in the evening, and sought to learn its cause. He asked, "How did you make out with your sketch?"

"I made a beginning," she answered, with some little color rising to her cheek.

"Perhaps you were interrupted?"

"Why did you not tell me that Mr. Fleet had recovered?" she asked, abruptly.

"Why, did you think he was dead?"

"Yes."

Mr. Ludolph indulged in a hearty laugh (he knew the power of ridicule).

"Well, that is excellent!" he said. "You thought the callow youth had died on account of your hardness of heart; and this explains your rather peculiar moods and tenses of late. Let me a.s.sure you that a Yankee never dies from such a cause."

Mr. Ludolph determined if possible to break down her reserve and let in the garish light, which he knew to be most fatal to all romantic fancies, that ever thrive best in the twilight of secrecy. But she was on the alert now, and in relief of mind had regained her poise and the power to mask her feeling. So she said in a tone tinged with cold indifference, "You may be right, but I had good reason to believe to the contrary, and, as I am not altogether without a conscience, you might have saved much pain by merely mentioning the fact of his recovery."

"But you had adjured me with frightful solemnity never to mention his name again," said her father, still laughing.

Christine colored and bit her lip. She had forgotten for the moment this awkward fact.

"I was nervous, sick, and not myself that day, and every one I met could speak of nothing but Mr. Fleet."

"Well, really," he said, "in the long list of the victims that you have wounded if not slain, I never supposed my clerk and quondam man-of-all-work would prove so serious a case."

"A truce to your bantering, father! Mr. Fleet is humble only in station, not in character, not in ability. You know I have never been very tender with the 'victims,' as you designate them, of the Mellen stamp; but Mr. Fleet is a man, in the best sense of the word, and one that I have wronged. Now that the folly is past I may as well explain to you some things that have appeared strange. I think I can truly say that I have given those gentlemen who have honored, or rather annoyed me, by their unwished-for regard, very little encouragement. Therefore, I was not responsible for any follies they might commit. But for artistic reasons I did encourage Mr. Fleet's infatuation. You remember how I failed in making a copy of that picture. In my determination to succeed, I hit upon the rather novel expedient of inspiring and copying the genuine thing. You know my imitative power is better than my imagination, and I thought that by often witnessing the expression of feeling and pa.s.sion, I might learn to portray it without the disagreeable necessity of pa.s.sing through any such experiences myself.

But the experiment, as you know, did not work well. These living subjects are hard to manage, and, as I have said, I am troubled by a conscience."

Mr. Ludolph's eyes sparkled, and a look of genuine admiration lighted up his features.

"Brava!" he cried; "your plan was worthy of you and of your ancestry.

It was a real stroke of genius. You were too tender-hearted, otherwise it would have been perfect. What are the lives of a dozen such young fellows compared with the development and perfection of such a woman as you bid fair to be?"

Christine had displayed in this transaction just the qualities that her father most admired. But even she was shocked at his callousness, and lifted a somewhat startled face to his.

"Your estimate of human life is rather low," she said.

"Not at all. Is not one perfect plant better than a dozen imperfect ones? The gardener often pulls up the crowding and inferior ones to throw them about the roots of the strongest, that in their death and decay they may nourish it to the highest development. The application of this principle is evident. They secure most in this world who have the skill and power to grasp most."

"But how about the rights of others? Conscious men and women are not plants."

"Let them be on their guard then. Every one is for himself in this world. That can be plainly seen through the thin disguises that some try to a.s.sume. After all, half the people we meet are little better than summer weeds."

Christine almost shuddered to think that the one bound to her by closest ties cherished such sentiments toward the world, and probably, to a certain extent, toward herself, but she only said, quietly: "I can hardly subscribe to your philosophy as yet, though I fear I act upon it too often. Still it does not apply to Mr. Fleet. He is gifted in no ordinary degree, and doubtless will stand high here in his own land in time. And now, as explanation has been made, with your permission we will drop this subject out of our conversation as before."

"Well," said Mr. Ludolph to himself, between sips of his favorite Rhine wine, "I have gained much light on the subject to-night, and I must confess that, even with my rather wide experience, the whole thing is a decided novelty. If Christine were only less troubled with conscience, over-fastidiousness, or whatever it is--if she were more moderate in her ambition as an artist, and could be satisfied with power and admiration, as other women are--what a star she might become in the fashionable world of Europe! But, for some reason, I never feel sure of her. Her spirit is so wilful and obstinate, and she seems so full of vague longing after an ideal, impossible world, that I live in constant dread that she may be led into some folly fatal to my ambition.

This Fleet is a most dangerous fellow. I wish I were well rid of him; still, matters are not so bad as I feared--that is, if she told me the whole truth, which I am inclined to doubt. But I had better keep him in my employ during the few months we still remain in this land, as I can watch over him, and guard against his influence better than if he were beyond my control. But no more promotion or encouragement does he get from me."

Janette, Christine's French maid, pa.s.sed the open door. The thought struck Mr. Ludolph that he might secure an ally in her.

The unscrupulous creature was summoned, and agreed for no very large sum to become a spy upon Christine, and report anything looking toward friendly relations with Dennis Fleet.

"The game is still in my hands," said the wary man. "I will yet steer my richly-freighted argosy up the Rhine. Here's to Christine, the belle of the German court!" and he filled a slender Venetian gla.s.s to the brim, drained it, and then retired.

Christine, on reaching her room, muttered to herself: "He now knows all that I mean he ever shall. We are one in our ambition, if nothing else, and therefore our relations must be to a certain degree confidential and amicable. And now forget you have a conscience, forget you have a heart, and, above all things, forget that you have ever seen or known Dennis Fleet."

Thus the influence of a false education, a proud, selfish, ambitious life, decided her choice. She plunged as resolutely into the whirl of fashionable gayety about her as she had in the dissipations of New York, determined to forget the past, and kill the time that must intervene before she could sail away to her brilliant future in Germany.

But she gradually learned that, if conscience had robbed her of peace before, something else disturbed her now, and rendered her efforts futile. She found that there was a principle at work in her heart stronger even than her resolute will. In spite of her purpose to the contrary, she caught herself continually thinking of Dennis, and indulging in strange, delicious reveries in regard to him.

At last she ceased to shun the store as she had done at first, but with increasing frequency found some necessity for going there.

After the interview in the show-room, Dennis was driven to the bitter conclusion that Christine was utterly heartless, and cared not a jot for him. His impression was confirmed by the fact that she shunned the store, and that he soon heard of her as a belle and leader in the ultra-fashionable world. He, too, bitterly lamented that he had ever seen her, and was struggling with all the power of his will to forget her. He fiercely resolved that, since she wished him dead, she should become dead to him.

Almost immediately after his return he had discovered that the two emblematical pictures had been removed from the loft over the store.

He remembered that he had spoken of them to Christine, and from Ernst he gathered that she herself had taken them away. It was possible, he believed, that she had made them the subject of ridicule. At best she must have destroyed them in order to blot out all trace of a disagreeable episode. Whatever may have been their fate, they had, as he thought, failed in their purpose, and were worthless to him, and he was far too proud to make inquiries.

As the weeks pa.s.sed on, he apparently succeeded better than she. There was nothing in her character, as she then appeared, that appealed to anything gentle or generous. She seemed so proud, so strong and resolute in her choice of evil, so devoid of the true womanly nature, as he had learned to reverence it in his mother, that he could not pity, much less respect her, and even his love could scarcely survive under such circ.u.mstances.

When she began coming to the store again, though his heart beat thick and fast at her presence, he turned his back and seemed not to see her, or made some errand to a remote part of the building. At first she thought this might be accident, but she soon found it a resolute purpose to ignore her very existence. By reason of a trait peculiar to Christine, this was only the more stimulating. She craved all the more that which was seemingly denied.

Accustomed to every gratification, to see all yield to her wishes, and especially to find gentlemen almost powerless to resist her beauty, she came to regard this one stern, averted face as infinitely more attractive than all the rest in the world.

"That he so steadily avoids me proves that he is anything but indifferent," she said to herself one day.

She condemned her visits to the store, and often reproached herself with folly in going; but a secret powerful magnetism drew her thither in spite of herself.