Part 73 (1/2)
Ida also observed Miss Burton's slight and carefully disguised scrutiny with a fluttering heart. ”I suppose he does the best he can,” she thought; ”but she'll surely find him out; there is no use of trying to hide anything from a woman who loves. Well, well, let her but remain discreetly blind for a little time, and with her powers of fascination she will win him heart and soul.”
Before Jennie slept that night her mind was clear as to her course.
”I think,” she murmured, ”I understand them both now. His manner towards Miss Mayhew is certainly not that of a conventional lover; but as I have seen him look at her twice as if he could say his prayers to her, I think I'll venture on the only match-making I ever attempted. But what to do with Mr. Stanton, I don't know.
Poor man! he might as well love a shadow as me, and yet he seems so simple, honest, and real himself. He is disappointing me daily, and I have wronged him very much. I thought him a selfish man of the world, but he persists in offering me a chivalric, unselfish devotion, for which he asks nothing in return. Alas! I can give him nothing--nothing compared with what he gives.”
”I am going to make my last visit to Mr. Eltinge and the old garden,” said Ida to Van Berg as she pa.s.sed him on the piazza the following morning.
He looked after her so wistfully, and sighed so deeply, that Jennie Burton, unseen herself, smiled as if she had discovered something that gave her deep satisfaction.
”Mr. Van Berg,” she said a few moments later ”can you give me a little of your valuable time to-day?”
”All of it,” he said promptly.
”Thanks. I shall take, then, all I want. Come with me to yonder shady rustic seat, for I long to be out of doors again; and you have learned to hobble so gracefully and deftly that you can manage the journey, I'm sure.”
He accompanied her, wondering a little at her words and manner.
When they had reached the seclusion she sought her manner changed, and she became very grave and earnest, for she felt that it might be the crisis moment of two lives, and she was not one who could self-complacently and confidently seek to shape human destiny.
”Mr. Van Berg,” she said, ”I shall not use any tedious circ.u.mlocution, for your time is precious this morning; more so than you think at this moment. Nor shall I try to entrap you by guile and feminine diplomacy; but you made me a very explicit pledge when I found you last Tuesday morning.”
”Yes, Jennie Burton, I am yours, body and soul.”
”But how about your heart, Mr. Van Berg?”
”My heart overflows with grat.i.tude to you,” he said promptly, but with rising color; ”and as I said when you rescued me, so now I vow again, I dedicate my life to you. I do not ask you to forget the past all at once--I do not ask you to forget it at all--but only to let me aid you in taking the bitterness out of those memories that now are destroying as sweet and beneficent a life as G.o.d ever gave. I have suspected that you had some unselfish guile in that last promise you obtained from me, but I shall be loyal to the promise I intended to make, and which was in my mind; I shall be loyal to the promise I made you at first, to win you if I could, and I shall wait till I can.”
”What, then, will Ida Mayhew do?” she asked looking him full in the face.
He colored still more deeply, but meeting her searching gaze without blenching, he said, firmly and quietly: ”She will always do what is right and n.o.ble, G.o.d bless her!”
Miss Burton appeared a little perplexed and troubled for a moment, and then said, slowly: ”I called you my friend last July, and when I speak in the mood I was in then I mean all that I say. Friends should be very frank when the occasion requires, or else they are but acquaintances. I am going to be very frank with you to-day, and if I err, charge it to friends.h.i.+p only. Ida Mayhew loves you, Mr. Van Berg; she has loved you almost from the first; and now that her life has become so n.o.ble and beautiful, I am greatly mistaken if you do not return her affection. If this be true, what are you offering me?”
”I HAVE given you, Miss Burton, my truth and loyalty for all coming time. You may decline them now--you probably will--but you cannot change my att.i.tude towards you or alter my course. I shall not attempt to hide anything from you. Indeed, to do so would be vain, and I have never been intentionally insincere with you.” Then he told her of the freak of fancy that had led him to follow Ida to the country in the first instance, and much that followed since, making no reference, however, to her dark purpose against herself.
In conclusion he said: ”Of late, for reasons obvious to you, she has had strong fascinations for me, but above and beyond these has been her influence on the side of all that's right, manly, and true. I have never spoken of love to Miss Mayhew. Honor, loyalty, unbounded grat.i.tude, and deep affection bind me to you, and shall through life. Please say no more, Miss Jennie, for if any question was ever settled, this is.”
”Then you propose to sacrifice yourself and Miss Mayhew for the shadowy chance of making me a little happier?”
”I shall not be sacrificed, and Ida Mayhew would justly reject me with scorn were I disloyal to you. I can give you more love, Jennie Burton, than I fear you will ever give me, but I shall wait patiently. When months and years have proved to you the truth of my words, you may feel differently. Let us leave the subject till then.”
”Oh, Mr. Van Berg, I shall have to tell you after all,” she said burying her face in her hands.
”You need not now,” he replied gently. ”You have been ill and are not strong enough for this agitation. You never need to tell me unless it will make your burden lighter.”
”It will make my burden lighter to-day,” she said hurriedly. ”Pardon me if I tell my story in the briefest and most prosaic way. You are the first one that has heard it. It may not seem much to you and others; but to me it is an awful tragedy, and I sometimes fear my life may be an eternal condition of suspense and waiting. You have been very generous in taking me so fully on trust, but now you shall know all. I am the only daughter of a poor, unworldly New England clergyman. My mother died before I can remember, and my father gave to me all the time he could spare from the duties of a small village parish. He and the beautiful region in which we lived were my only teachers. One June morning Harrold Fleetwood came to the parsonage with letters of introduction, saying that his physician had banished him from books and city life, and he asked if he could be taken as a lodger for a few weeks. Poor and unworldly as father was, for my sake he made careful inquiries and learned that the young man was from one of the best and wealthiest families of Boston, and bore an unblemished reputation. Then, since we were so very poor, he yielded to Mr. Fleetwood's wishes, hoping thus to be able to buy some books, he said, on which our minds could live during the coming winter.
”To me, Harrold Fleetwood was a very remarkable character. While he always treated me with kindness and respect, he did not take much notice of me at first; and I think he found me very diffident, to say the least. But, as he had overtaxed his eyes, I began to read to him; and then, as we became better acquainted, he resumed a habit he had, as I soon learned, of speaking in half-soliloquy concerning the subjects that occupied his mind. He said that an invalid sister had indulged him in this habit, and he had tried to think aloud partly to beguile her weariness. But to me it was the revelation of the richest and most versatile mind I have ever known. At last I ventured to show my interest and to ask some questions, and then he gradually became interested in me for some reason.”
”I can understand his reasons,” said Van Berg emphatically.
”He did not know at first how much time father had given me and to what good uses we had put the books we had. Well, I must be brief.