When alone with his friend after supper,Stanton broke out,"Since Ida can't exist without the sight of that wretch,Sibley,I wish she would follow him to New York.If she dotes on such scum,they had better be married,as far as such people can be,and so relieve her relatives of an incubus that is well-nigh intolerable.""Are you absolutely sure that she does dote on Sibley,and that he is the cause of her evident trouble?"asked Van Berg,with a perplexed frown lowering on his brow.
"I'm not sure of anything concerning her save that she was born to make trouble.I know she was with him all the time he was here,and since he was metaphorically kicked off the premises she has sulked in her room.I suppose,of course,that she is mortified,and hates to meet people.Indeed,from a remark she made,some one must have snubbed her vigorously to-day;but her course makes everything a hundredfold worse.I am besmirched because of my relationship.I can see this in the bearing of more than one,and even Miss Burton,who could not be consciously unkind to any one,keeps me at a distance by barriers,which,although seemingly viewless,are so real I cannot pass them."Van Berg surmised that the evasive tact which Miss Burton exercised towards his friend was not caused by his relationship to Ida,and yet was compelled to admit that her frank and friendly bearing towards himself was scarcely less dispiriting.Her manner,as a rule,was so plainly that of a friend only,that were it not for occasional and furtive glances which he intercepted,he would deem his prospects little better than Stanton's,in spite of all that had passed between them.Even in these stolen,questioning,longing glances,there was an element that trouble and perplexed him,and the strange thought crossed his mind that when she looked most intently she did not see Harold Van Berg,but an intervening vision.
Her mystery,however,rendered her only the more attractive,and she seemed like a good angel that had come from an unknown world concerning which she could not speak,and perhaps he could not understand.
Her society was like a delicate wine,delightfully exhilarating while enjoyed,but whose effect is transient.He was provoked at himself to find how well he endured her absence,and how content he was with the genuine friendship she was evidently forming for him.Sometimes he even longed for more of the absorbing passion which he saw had wholly mastered Stanton;but tried to satisfy himself by reasoning that his love was in accordance with his nature,which was calm and constant,rather than impulsive and passionate.
"All the higher faculties of my soul are her allies,"he thought,complacently."I admire honor,and even reverence her.She could walk through life as my companion,my equal,and in many respects,my superior;"and so with all the delicate and unobtrusive tact of which he was the master he proposed to press his suit.
Since Jennie Burton had plainly intimated that,like King Lear,she had lost her woman's kingdom--her heart--and so was not able to reward such suit and service,how came it she kept poor Stanton at a distance,but welcomed the society of Van Berg?Possibly her intuition recognized the fact that in the case of Stanton she had touched the heart,but had won the mind of the artist.The first seemed disposed to give all and to demand all.Stanton's all did not count for very much thus far in her estimation.She had recognized the character he had brought to the Lake House--that of a pleasure-loving man of the world--and she was far too modest to suppose that she could work any material change in this character.
Self-indulgent by nature,she believed that he had proposed to enjoy a summer flirtation with one whom he would easily forget in the autumn,and,while this impression lasted,she punished him by requiring that he should be the chivalric attendant of every forlorn female in the house.When she believed,however,that such heart as he possessed was truly interested,she became as unapproachable as the afternoon horizon,whose rich glow is seemingly near,but can never be reached.While she recognized the genuineness of his passion,she did not,as before intimated,regard it as a very serious affair.
"Good dinners and fairer faces than mine will comfort him before Christmas,"she thought.
Few know themselves--their own capabilities of joy,suffering,or achievement.As with Ida,Stanton was at a loss to understand the changes in his own character.It was quite possible,therefore,that Miss Burton should misunderstand him.Indeed he had,as yet,but little place in her sad and preoccupied thoughts.
For some reason,however,Van Berg's society had for her a peculiar fascination that she could not resist.She scarcely knew whether she derived from it more of pleasure than of pain.She often asked herself this question:
"Which were better for a traveller in the desert--to see a mirage,or the sands only in all their barren reality?"Her judgment said,the latter;but when the elusive mirage appeared,she looked often with a longing wistfulness that might well suggest a pilgrim that was athirst and famishing.
In spite of her quickness,Van Berg occasionally caught something of this expression,and while he drew encouragement from it,he was too free from vanity and too acute an observer to conclude that all would result as he hoped.The unwelcome thought would come that he was only the occasion and not the cause,of these furtive glances.Was her heart already wedded to a memory,and was she interested in him chiefly because for some reason he gave vividness and reality to that memory?If this were true,what more had he to hope for than Stanton?If this were true,was he not in a certain sense pursuing a shadow?Woud success be success?Would he wish to clasp,as his wife,a woman whose heart had been buried in a sepulchre from which the stone might never be rolled away?