Part 56 (2/2)
Van Berg turned hastily away, for he felt that scenes were coming, on which he had no right to look. There was nothing yet to indicate a wish on Ida's part to avoid inartistic a.s.sociations, and deep in his heart he was compelled to admit that she had never appeared so supremely beautiful as when she looked love and welcome into the eyes of the smirched and disheartened man to whom nature gave the best right to claim these gifts.
”Come with me, father,” said Ida, trying to give him a rea.s.suring smile, ”and I will answer your scared and questioning glances in your room,” and he went with her as if walking in a dream.
Tears now gathered in Jennie Burton's eyes, but she smiled again as she thought, ”Better done still, Ida Mayhew, and Mr. Van Berg, who is stalking away so rapidly yonder, is not the man I think him, if you have not now made your best and deepest impression on his heart.”
”Ida,” her father faltered, after they had reached the privacy of his room, ”what does your telegram mean? What is important?”
”YOU are to me. O father, please, please forgive me,” and she put her arms around his neck and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.
The bewildered man began to tremble. ”Can it--can it be that my daughter has a heart?” he muttered.
”Yes, father, but it's broken because of my cruel treatment of you; I now hope better days are coming for us all.”
He held her away from him and looked into her face with a longing intensity that suggested a soul peris.h.i.+ng for the lack of love and hope.
”Father, father, I can't bear that look. Oh, G.o.d forgive me, how I have wronged you!” and she buried her face on his shoulder again.
”Ida,” he said, slowly and pleadingly, ”be very careful--be sure this is not a pa.s.sing impulse, a mere remorseful twinge of conscience.
I've been hoping for years--I would have prayed, if I dared to--for some token that I was not a burden to you and your mother. You seemed to love me some when you were little, but as you grew older you grew away from me. I've tried to forget that I had a heart.
I've tried to become a beast because it was agony to be a man. why I have lived I scarcely know. I thought I had suffered all that I could suffer in this world, but I was mistaken. I left this place last Monday with the fear that my beautiful daughter was giving her love to a man even baser than I am, base and low from choice, base and corrupt in every fibre of his soul and body, and from that hour to this it has seemed as if I were ground between two millstones,” and he shuddered as if smitten with an ague. ”Ida,”
he concluded piteously, ”I'm too weak, I'm too far gone to bear disappointment. This is more than an impulse, is it not? You will not throw yourself away? Oh, Ida, my only child, if you could be in heart what you were in your face as you greeted me to-night, I could die content!”
For a few minutes the poor girl could only sob convulsively on his breast. At last she faltered brokenly:
”Yes, father--it is an impulse--an impulse from heaven; but I shall pray daily that it be not a pa.s.sing one. I--I have lost confidence in myself, but with my Saviour's help, I will try to be a loving daughter to you and make your wishes first in everything.”
”Great G.o.d!” he muttered, ”can this be true?”
”Yes, father, because G.o.d IS great, and very, VERY, kind.”
His bent form became erect and almost steely in its tenseness. He gently but firmly placed her in a chair, and then paced the room rapidly a moment or two, his dark eyes glowing with a strong and kindling excitement. Ida began to regard him with wonder and almost alarm. Suddenly he raised his hand to heaven, and said solemnly:
”This shall be no one-sided affair so help me G.o.d!”
Then opening his valise, he took out a bottle of brandy and thew it, with a crash, into the empty grate.
Ida sprang towards him with a glad cry, exclaiming, ”O father, now I understand you! Thank G.o.d! thank G.o.d!”
He kissed her tearful, upturned face again and again, as if he found there the very elixir of life.
”Ida, my dear little Ida,” he said, huskily, ”you have saved your father from a drunkard's end--from a drunkard's grave. I was in a drunkard's h.e.l.l already.”
Mr. Mayhew requested that supper should be served in his own room, for neither he nor his daughter was in a mood to meet strangers that evening. Ida called her mother, and tried to explain to her why they did not wish to go down, but the poor woman was not able to grasp very much of the truth, and was decidedly mystified by the domestic changes which she had very limited power to appreciate, and in which she had so little part. She was not a coa.r.s.e woman, but matter of fact, superficial, and worldly to the last degree.
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