Part 7 (2/2)
With a slight and piquant motion of her head she replied, ”I was only giving a bit of trite advice. It's asking a great deal to require that one should both preach and practice.”
”I think you are possessed by one wish which swallows up most others,” said Van Berg, a little abruptly.
A visible pallor overspread her face, and she drew back perceptibly as one might shrink from a blow.
”You know how strong first impressions are,” resumed Van Berg hastily, ”and the thought has pa.s.sed through my mind that you might be so preoccupied in wis.h.i.+ng good things for others as to quite forget yourself.”
”If one could be completely occupied in that way,” she said, with a faint smile which suggested rather than revealed a vista of her past experience, ”one might have little occasion to wish for anything for self. But, Mr. Van Berg, only we poor unreasoning women put much faith in first impressions; and you know how often they mislead even us, who are supposed to have safe instincts.”
”Do they often mislead you?”
”Indeed, sir,” she replied, with a merry twinkle in her eye, ”I think you must have learned the questions in the catechism, if not the answers.”
Van Berg bit his lip. Here was a suggestion of a thorn in the sweetbrier he believed he had discovered.
”Now see how far I am astray,” she resumed with a frankness which had in it no trace of familiarity. ”It is my impression you are a lawyer.”
At this Van Berg laughed outright and said: ”You are indeed mistaken. I have no connection with the influential cla.s.s whose business it is to make and evade the laws. I am only one among the humble ma.s.ses who aim to obey them. But perhaps you think your intuition goes deeper than surface facts and that I OUGHT to have been a cross-questioner.”
”I am quite sure my intuition is correct in thinking that you would not be very cross about it.”
”Perhaps not, if disarmed by so smiling a face as yours.”
The others, who had been delayed by a longer ride than usual, now entered and took the vacant chairs around the table. Van Berg felt sufficiently acquainted with them to introduce Miss Burton, for he was curious to observe whether she would make the same impression on them as he had been conscious of himself.
They bowed with the quiet, well-bred manner of society people, but were at first inclined to pay little heed to the plainly dressed and rather plain appearing young stranger. As one and another, however, glanced towards her, something about her seemed to linger in their memories and cause them to look again. The lady next to her offered a commonplace remark, chiefly out of politeness, and received so pleasant a reply in return that she turned her thoughts as well as her eyes to see who it really was that had made it. Then another spoke, and the response led her to speak again and again; and soon the entire party were describing their drive and living over its pleasantest features; and before the meal ended they were all gathered, metaphorically, around the mystical, maple-wood fire that burned on the hearth of a nature that seemed so hospitable and kindly as to have no other mission than to cheer and entertain.
”Who is that little brown thrush of a woman that you were so taken with at dinner?” asked Stanton, as they were enjoying a quiet smoke in their favorite corner of the piazza.
”Good for you, Stanton. I never knew you to be so appreciative before. Your term quite accurately describes her. She is both shy and reserved, but not diffident or awkward in the least. Indeed her manner might strike some as being peculiarly frank. But there is something back of it all; for young as she undoubtedly is, her face suggests to me some deep and unusual experience.”
”Jupiter Ammon! What an abyss of mystery, surmise, and metaphysics you fell into while I was eating my dinner! I used the phrase 'brown thrush,' only in reference to her dress and general homeliness.”
”Oh, I beg your pardon! I take all back about your nice appreciation of character. I now grasp the whole truth--your attention wandered sufficiently from your dinner to observe that she wore a brown dress, and the one fact about the thrush that has impressed you is that it is brown. 'Here be truths' which leave nothing more to be said.”
”You imaginative fellows are often ridiculously astray on the other tack, and see a thousand-fold more than exists. But it's a pity you could not read all there was in this young woman's face, for it was certainly PLAIN enough. At this rate you will be asking our burly landlord to unbosom himself, insisting that he has a 'silent sorrow' tucked away somewhere under his ample waistcoat.”
”His troubles, like yours, are banished by the dinner hour. I recognize your feeble witticism about her plain face, and forgive you because I thought it plain also at first, but when she came to speak and smile it ceased to be plain. I do not say she has had trouble, but she has had some experience in her past history which neither you nor I could understand.”
”Quite likely; the measles, for instance, which I never had to my knowledge. Possibly she has had a lover who was not long in finding a prettier face, and so left her, but not so disconsolate that she could not smile bewilderingly upon you.”
”Come now, Stanton, I'll forewarn and forearm you. I confidently predict that the voice of this brown thrush will lure you out of a life which, to put it mildly, is a trifle matter-of-fact and material. You have glanced at her, but you have not seen her yet.
Mark my words; your appet.i.te will flag before many weeks pa.s.s.”
”I wish I could pin you down to a large wager on this absurdity.”
”I agree to paint you a picture if my prediction fails.”
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