Part 6 (1/2)
”Oh,” remarked Mrs. Mayhew, indifferently; ”it would have been more to your credit if you had gone to church instead of tramping around the fields.”
”I think the fields have done more for me than church for you.”
”Why so?” was the sharp response.
”They have at least kept me from indulging in one bad habit. I am sober.”
”They do not keep you from making ill-natured remarks,” said Mrs.
Mayhew, sailing out of the room fully bedizened for the solemnity of dinner.
”You say you were 'shown' all this beauty,” remarked Ida, who was giving the finis.h.i.+ng touches to her toilet before a large mirror, and by whom the frequent bickerings of her parents were scarcely noted. ”Who officiated as showman?”
”A man who understands the beauties of a landscape so well that he could make them visible even to my dim eyes, and attractive to my deadened and besotted nature. I'd give all the world if I could be young, strong, and hopeful like him, again. It was good of him--yes, good of him, to try to cheer a stranger with pleasant thoughts and sights. I suppose you are acquainted with Mr. Van Berg, since he is a friend of Ik's?”
”No, I'm not,” was the sharp reply; ”nor do I wish to be.”
”Why not?” asked Mr. Mayhew in some surprise.
”It's sufficient that I don't like him.”
”He's not your style, I suppose you mean to say?”
”Indeed he is not.”
”So much worse for your style, Ida.”
She was sweeping petulantly from the room when her father added with a depth of feeling very unlike his wonted apathy: ”O, Ida, it were better that all three of us had never been born than to live as we do! Your life and your mother's is froth, and mine is mud.
How I hated it all this bright June morning, as Mr. Van Berg gave me a glimpse into another and better world!”
”Do you mean to say that Mr. Van Berg presumed to criticise my mode of life?” Ida asked with a darkening face.
”Oh, no, no! How small and egotistical all your ideas are! He never mentioned you, and probably never thought of you. He only took a little pains that a tired and dispirited man might see and feel the eternal beauty and freshness of nature, as one might give, in pa.s.sing, a cup of water to a traveller.”
”I don't see what reason you have for feeling and appearing so forlornly, thus asking for sympathy from strangers, as it were, and causing it to seem as if we were making a martyr of you. As for this artist, with his superior airs, I detest him. He never loses a chance to annoy and mortify me. I've no doubt he hoped you would come home and tell us, as you have, how much better he was than---”
”There, there, quit that kind of talk or I'll be drunk in half an hour.” said her father, harshly. ”If you had the heart of a woman, let alone that of a daughter, you would thank the man who had unwittingly kept me from making a beast of myself for one day at least. Go down to your dinner, I'm in no mood for eating.”
She went without a word, but with a more severe compunction of conscience than she had ever felt before in her life. Her father's face and words smote her with a keen reproach, piercing the thick armor of her vanity and selfishness. She saw, for a moment, how unnatural and unlovely she must appear to him, in spite of her beauty, and the thought crossed her mind:
”Mr. Van Berg despises me because he sees me in the same light.
How I hate his cold, critical eyes!”
Even at his far remove Van Berg could see that she was ill at ease during the dinner hour. There would be times of forced and unnatural gayety, followed by a sudden cloud upon the brow and an abstracted air, as if her thoughts had naught to do with the chattering group around her. It would also appear that her appet.i.te was flagging unusually, and once or twice he thought she darted an angry look towards him.
As if something were burdening her mind, she at last left the table hastily, before the others were through with their dessert.