He touched on art,but she was only artful in her small way,and could not follow him.He tried literature,and here they had even less in common.He would not and indeed could not read the thin society novels which reflected modes of life as trivial as her own,and his books might have been written in another language,so slight was her acquaintance with them.The various political,social,or scientific questions of the day had never puzzled her brain.Van Berg cautiously felt his way towards his companion's knowledge of two or three of the most popular of them.Her answers,however,were so superficial and irrelevant,and also so evidently embarrassed,that he saw his only resources to be society chit-chat,gossip about mutual acquaintances,the latest modes,the attractions of pleasure resorts in the city,and of summer resorts in the country.
But he gave his mind to these unwonted themes,and labored hard to be entertaining;for now that he had gained the vantage-ground he sought,he was determined to discover whether there was a sleeping mind or a vacuum behind Miss Mayhew's shapely forehead.Granting that there was a womanly intelligence there,as yet unquickened,he was not so irrational as to imagine he could jostle it into illumining activity in one short hour,or day,or week.But it seemed to him that if any mind existed worth the name,it would give such encouraging signs of life before many days passed as would promise success of his experiment.He felt that his first aim must be to establish an intimacy that would permit as full and frank an exchange of thought as was possible between people so dissimilar.
While he tried to bring himself down to the littleness of her daily life,he determined to show his disapproval of every phrase of its meanness as far as he could without offending her.He had made her feel that he condemned her course towards Miss Burton that evening,and he had meant to do so.
She resented this disapproval,and at the same time respected him for it.Indeed he puzzled her.He evidently sought and wished for her society;and yet as they walked back and forth,even though she did not look at him when the light gave her the opportunity to do so,she felt intuitively that he did not enjoy her company.
She saw that he was laboring hard to make himself agreeable;but his small talk had not the familiar flippancy and fluency of one speaking in his native tongue;nor was his manner that of one who,infatuated with her beauty,had thrown aside all other considerations.
She felt that the man at her side measured her,and understood her littleness thoroughly.
And she herself had a growing consciousness of insignificance that was as painful as it was novel.Adding to all the humiliations of this day here was a man,not so very much older than herself,trying to come down to her level,as he would accommodate his language to a child.No labored argument could have revealed her ignorance to her so clearly,as her conscious inability to follow him into his ordinary range of thought.Unwittingly he had demonstrated his superiority in a way that she could not deny,however much she might be inclined to resent it.And yet he treated her with a sort of respect,and occasionally she saw that he bent his eyes upon her face as if in search of something.
After a transient effort to ignore everything and talk in her usual superficial manner,she became more and more silent and oppressed,and,at last said,somewhat abruptly:
"Mr.Van Berg,I am weary,and I imagine you are too.I think Iwill say good-night."
"I scarcely wonder that you are fatigued.You have had a trying day.""It has been a horrid day,"she said,emphatically.
"It might have ended much worse,nevertheless.""Possibly,"she admitted with a shrug.
"You have more reason to congratulate yourself than you imagine,Miss Mayhew.Even that disagreeable souvenir of our morning peril,your lameness,has disappeared,and you might have been maimed for life.""My lameness,like my courage,was chiefly a fraud to begin with,and soon disappeared;but I have other souvenirs of that occasion that I cannot get rid of so easily.""If I am one of them,you are right,Miss Mayhew;I shall hold you to our agreement this morning.You put me on my good behavior--have I not behaved well?""Yes,better than I have.I was not referring to you personally,but to certain memories.""We agreed to let by-gones be by-gones."
"But others are not parties to this agreement,and every reference to the affair is odious to me.""I shall make no further reference to it,and you must be fair enough not to punish me for the acts of others.""You also despise me in your heart of my course towards Miss Burton this evening.""If I despised you would I have sought your society this evening?""I do not know.I don't understand you,if you will permit my bluntness.""Possibly you don't understand yourself,Miss Mayhew.""I understand that I have had a miserable day,and I hope I may never see another like it.Good-night,sir."