"Mr.Van Berg,"she said,"I've been reading an essay this afternoon in which the writer tries to prove that science has done more for humanity than art and religion combined.Now I suppose you would be inclined to take the same ground in regard to art that I ought in respect to religion."Van Berg was about to reply,when his attention was caught by a vivid gleam in the face of Ida,who looked up as if she wished to speak.
"I think Miss Mayhew has an opinion on this subject,"he said,with a bow.
She looked steadily at him as she replied promptly,"I have a decided opinion,though I base it on such poor and narrow grounds as personal experience.I think art is by far the most potent.
It has accomplished for me much more than science or religion ever did,or could.""What has it done for you,Miss Mayhew?"he asked,dreading the answer.
"It has filled me with despair,"she replied with a glance and tone which he never afterwards forgot.Then,with the same cold,quiet manner in which she had come,she left the table.
Van Berg turned very pale,for he at once understood her reference to the emblematic rose-bud he had thrown away,and his remark,"Art can tolerate no such imperfection."Her words and manner hopelessly perplexed the others,but Van Berg believed he had found light on the problem that had hitherto baffled him,but so far from being reassured,he had never been at such bitter odds with himself before.
He also soon after left the table,hoping to find an opportunity to express his regret that he had been so harsh by prejudice;but Miss Mayhew was not to be found.
"Can it be,"he thought,as he strode off into the shrubbery,"that I have been blind to the very effects that I hoped to cause?Can it be that she has been made to feel her imperfection so keenly,and in such a way as to create only utter discouragement?She evidently understands the worm-eaten rose-bud I tossed away to be the emblem of herself.Oh,the curse of Phariseeism--the 'holier than thou'business,whatever form it takes.It has made an egregious fool of me.""But her relations with Sibley,confound it all!I can't understand them.Why did she associate with him so constantly,and then say,'Congenial society,or none at all'?Seems to me she ought to have seen what he was before he showed his cloven feet so plainly.
Well,perhaps the most rational as well as charitable explanation is that her eyes were opened to see him in his true colors,as well as herself.Had Titania's eyes been disenchanted when she was fondling the immortal Weaver,she might have perished with disgust;and it is scarcely strange that Miss Mayhew should be ill on finding that she was infatuated with a man who was both ass and villain.
She evidently sees things now as they are,and since her vision has become so good,I am very sorry I do not appear to better advantage.
People who stalk along through life with elevated noses,are not pleasing or edifying spectacles."His disquietude soon caused him to return to the hotel,in hopes of seeing the object of his thoughts.
He had hardly reached the piazza before Ida appeared,dressed in a plain walking suit.She hesitated a moment in the door-way as if undecided in her course.A party of gay young people were just starting on a stroll to a neighboring village.With apparent hesitancy,she said to one of the young girls:
"I have an errand to the village;may I walk with you for company?""Oh,certainly,"replied the girl,but evidently not welcoming this addition to their party,and Ida went away with them,but not as one of them,isolated more,however,by her own manner than by the bearing of her companions.
The explanation of her action was this:on opening her drawer after returning to her room,she found,with a sense of dismay--as if a misfortune had occurred instead of an incident that gave a chance for better thought--that in taking the opiate the night before,she had replaced the cork in the phial insecurely,and that nearly all its contents had oozed away.Some might have regarded this incident as an omen or a providential interference;but Ida was neither superstitious nor speculative in her nature;she was positive and willful,rather,and the current of her purposes always flowed strongly,though it might be in narrow channels.
"There is nothing left for me to do,"she muttered,"but go to the village.I don't know whether Mr.Burleigh has laudanum,and my asking for it might excite suspicion."It was terrible to see her fair young face grow hard like marble in her stern determination to carry out her awful design,and the impress of this remorseless purpose filled Van Berg with so great foreboding that he could not resist the impulse to follow the desperate girl.If harm should come to her through the harshness of others,and as he now feared,more especially his own,he would never forgive himself.
Mrs.Mayhew and Stanton did not see her departure--they were in anxious consultation in one of the small private parlors,and the artist,to disarm suspicion of his design,entered the hotel,and passed out again by a side door,from which he took a short-cut across the field intending to watch Ida,without being himself observed.
Having found some dense copse-wood by the road-side,and near to the village,he sat down and waited.The gay,chattering party soon passed,Ida walking by herself on the opposite side of the road,with head bowed as if wholly wrapped in her own thoughts.Her unhappy face appealed to his sympathy even more than her graceful carriage to his sense of beauty,and he longed to join her and make such amends as were possible.
He now followed at too great a distance for recognition in the deepening twilight,and saw the young people enter a confectionery shop,but observed,with increased uneasiness,that Miss Mayhew parted from them and went to an adjacent drug-store.She soon joined the party again,however,and they all apparently started homeward.