But it would seem that poor Ida's character had been constructed with fatal simplicity,and when the cold waves of trouble rushed in there was nothing to prevent her from sinking beneath them like a stone.Her mind was uncultivated,and art,science,literature offered her as yet no resources,no pursuits.She had a woman's heart that might have been filled with sustaining love,but in its place had come a sudden and icy flood of disappointment and despair.
She loved,with all the passion and simplicity of a narrow,yet earnest nature,the man who had awakened the woman within her,and he,she believed,would never give her aught in return,save contempt.She naturally thought that she had been degraded in his estimation beyond all ordinary means of redemption;therefore,in her desperation and despair,she was ready to take an extraordinary method of compelling at least his respect.
Moreover,Ida was impatient and impetuous by nature.She had a large capacity for action,but little for endurance.It would be almost impossible for her to reach woman's loftiest heroism,and sit "like Patience on a monument,smiling at grief."It would be her disposition rather to rush forward,and dash herself against an adverse fate,meeting it even more than half way.All the influences of her life had tended to develop imperiousness,willfulness,and now her impulse was to enter a protest against her hard lot that was as passionate and reckless as it was impotent.
Apart from her supreme wish to fill Van Berg with regret,and awaken in him something like respect,the thought of dragging on a wretched existence through the indefinite years to come was intolerable.The color had utterly faded out of life,and left it bald and repulsive to the last degree.
Fashionable dissipation promised her nothing.She had often tasted this,to the utmost limit of propriety,and was well aware that the gay whirl had nothing new to offer,unless she plunged into the mad excitement of a life which is as brief as it is vile.It was to her credit that death seemed preferable to this.It was largely due to her defective training and limited experience,that a useful,innocent life,even though it promised to be devoid of happiness,was so utterly repulsive that she was ready to throw it away in impatient disgust.
As yet she was incapable of Jennie Burton's divine philosophy of "pleasing not"herself.he who "gave his life for others"was but a name at the pronunciation of which,in the Service,she was accustomed to bow profoundly,but to whom,in her heart,she had never bowed or offered a genuine prayer.Religion seemed to her a sort of fashion which differed with the tastes of different people.
She was a practical atheist.
It is a fearful thing to permit a child to grow up ignorant of God,and of the sacred principles of duty which should be inwrought in the conscience,and enforced by the most vital considerations of well-being,both for this world and the world to come.