Part 60 (1/2)
”Please don't go just yet,” said Van Berg eagerly. ”The concert is but half over, and there are some pretty things still to come.”
Ida hesitated and looked doubtfully at her father.
”I shall be very glad to stay,” he said with a smile, ”if you feel able to. My daughter is not very well, I fear,” he added in explanation to the artist.
”Perhaps it has been a little close here in the lobby,” suggested Van Berg, ”and a walk in the open air will be agreeable. If you will trust your daughter to me, sir, I promise to bring her back before she is tired. I have much to tell her about her old friend, Mr. Eltinge, whom I visited yesterday, and the pictures. Perhaps you will go with us, for I know what I have to say will interest you also.”
”I think I'll light another cigar and wait for you here,” Mr. Mayhew answered quietly. ”Old people like to sit still after their day's work, and if Ida feels strong enough I would enjoy hearing the rest of the concert.”
”It would be hard to resist the temptation to hear anything about dear old Mr. Eltinge,” said Ida, taking the artist's arm, and feeling as if she were being swept away on a s.h.i.+ning tide.
”You WERE glad to see me, Miss Mayhew, and you can't deny it,” Van Berg began exultantly.
”You almost crushed my hand, and it aches still,” was her demure reply.
”Well, that was surely the wound of a friend.”
”You are very good to speak to me at all, after all that's happened,”
she said in a low tone and with downcast face.
”What a strange coincidence! That is exactly what I was thinking of you. I almost feared you would treat me as you did Sibley. How much good it did me to see him slinking away like a whipped cur! I never realized before how perfectly helpless even brazen villainy is in the presence of womanly dignity.”
”Why, were you present then?” she asked, with a quick blush.
”Not exactly present, but I saw your face and his, and a stronger contrast I scarcely expect to see again.”
”You artists look at everything and everybody as pictures.”
”Now, Miss Mayhew, you are growing severe again. I don't carry the shop quite as far as that, and I have not been looking at you as a picture at all this evening. I shall make known the whole enormity of my offence, and the if I must follow Sibley, I must, but I shall carry with me a little shred of your respect for telling the truth. I had a faint hope that you and your father would come to-night, and I was looking for you, and when you came I watched you. I could not resist the temptation of comparing the Miss Mayhew I now so highly esteem and respect, with the lady I first met at this place.”
”Oh, Mr. Van Berg,” said Ida, in a low, hurt tone, ”I don't think that was fair to me, or right.”
”I am confessing and not excusing myself, Miss Mayhew. I once very justly appeared to you like a prig, and now I fear I shall seem a spy; but after our visit to that old garden together, and your frankness to me, I feel under bonds to tell the whole truth. You said we were fated to misunderstand each other. I think not, for if you ever permit me to be your friend I shall be the frankest one you ever had;” at these words he felt her hand trembling on his arm, and she would not look up nor make any reply.
”Well,” said he, desperately, ”I expect Sibley's fate will soon be mine. I suppose it was a mean thing to watch you, but it would seem a meaner thing to me not to tell you. I was about to speak to you, Miss Mayhew, when by another odd coincidence the orchestra commenced playing music that I knew would remind you of me. I was gaining the impression before you left the country that as you came to think the past all over, you had found that there was more against me than you could forgive, or else that I was so inseparably a.s.sociated with that which was painful that you would be glad to forget the one with the other. I must admit that this impression was greatly strengthened by the expression of your face, and I almost decided to leave the place without speaking to you. But I found I could not, and--well, you know I did not. You see I'm at your mercy again.”
Ida was greatly relieved, for she now learned that he had discovered nothing in his favor, and that she was still mistress of the situation.
”I do not think you are very penitent; I fear you would do the same thing over again,” she said.
”Indeed, Miss Mayhew, when I first met you here I thought I would always do the right and proper thing, and I fear I thought some things right because I did them. I've lived a hundred years since that time, and am beginning to find myself out. Didn't you think me the veriest prig that ever smiled in a superior way at the world?”
”I don't think I shall give you my opinion,” she replied, averting her face to hide a blush and a laugh.
”No need. I saw your opinion in your face when you looked down at your programme half an hour since.”
”You are mistaken; I was thinking of myself at that moment, for I could not help remembering what a fool I must have appeared to you on that occasion.”
He looked at her in surprise. ”Miss Burton was right,” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, ”I never shall understand you.”