第54章 Love Put to Work.(1)

On the following day there was the usual bustle of change and departure that is characteristic of a large summer resort on Monday morning.Stanton found Mrs.Mayhew very ready to occupy the seats he had obtained,and all the more so from his statement of the fact that several others had spoken for them.

"Ida,my dear,"called her mother;"come here,I've good news for you.Ik has got us out of that odious corner of the dining-room,and secured seats for us at Mr.Van Berg's table.""I wish no seat there,"she said decisively.

"Oh,its all arranged,my dear;and a good many others want the seats,but Ik was too prompt.""I'll stay where I am,"said Ida,sullenly.

"And have every one in the house asking why?"added Stanton,provokingly."Mr.Van Berg treats you as a gentleman should.Why cannot you act like a lady toward him?If I were you I would not carry my preferences for the Sibley style of fellows so far that I could not be civil to a man like my friend.""You misjudge me,"cried Ida,passionately.

"You have a strange way of proving it.All that is asked of you is to sit at the same table with a gentleman who has won the respect and admiration of every one in the hotel,whose society is peculiarly agreeable to your mother and myself,and who has also shown unusual courtesy towards you ever since he learned who you were.What else can I think--what else can others think,than that your taste leans so decidedly to the Sibley style that you cannot even be polite to a man of high culture and genuine worth?""You are too severe,Ik,"said Mrs.Mayhew."For some reason that I cannot fathom,Ida does not like this artist;and yet I think myself that she would subject herself to very unpleasant remarks if she made any trouble about sitting at the same table with him.""Can you not see,"retorted Ida,irritably,"that Ik has not considered us at all,but only himself?He wishes to be near Miss Burton,and without giving us any chance to object,has made all the arrangements so that we must either comply or else be the talk of the house.It's just a piece of his selfishness,"she concluded with tears of vexation in her eyes.

"Oh,come Ida!"said her mother coaxingly,"I can see only a mole-hill in this matter,and I wouldn't make a mountain out of it.As far as I am concerned,I should enjoy the change very much,and,as you say,the affair has gone too far now to make objection.I do not intend that either you or myself shall be the subject of unpleasant remark."And so the matter was settled,but Ida's coldness and constraint,when they all met at dinner,very clearly indicated that the change had been made without her consent.Van Berg addressed her affably two or three times,but received brief and discouraging answers.

"Your cousin evidently is not pleased with the new arrangement you have brought about.I cannot see what I have done of late to vex her.""I'll tell you the trouble.You offend her by not being the counterpart of Mr.Sibley,"said Stanton,irritably.

Van Berg's brow darkened."Do you think,"he asked in a meaning tone,"that she understands what kind of a man he is?""Oh,she knows that he can dance,flirt,and talk nonsense,and she asks for nothing more and thinks of nothing further.I'm out of patience with her."Stanton's words contained the most plausible explanation of Ida's conduct that occurred to Van Berg.The episode in the stage had made them acquainted,and her preconceived prejudice and hostility had been so far removed as to permit a certain degree of social companionship,whose result would now seem only increased dislike and distaste.As he supposed she would express herself,"he was not of her style."Had she not spent the greater part of Sunday afternoon and evening with Sibley?What other conclusion was there save that he was "of her style,"congenial both in thought and character!And yet he still refused to entertain the belief that she recognized in him more than a fashionable man of the world.

If only as the result of the pique originating on the evening of the concert,Ida Mayhew had stood aloof from him,he could hope to remove this early prejudice by better acquaintance.But if fuller acquaintance increased her aversion,then he must believe that the defects in her character were radical,inwrought through the whole web and woof of her nature.He could not assume the "Sibley style"if he would,and would not if he could,were her beauty a hundred-fold greater,were that possible.

He was fast coming to the conclusion,therefore,that he must abandon the project which had so fascinated him,and whose success had so strongly kindled his imagination.And yet he did so reluctantly,very regretfully,chafing as only the strong-willed do,when confronted and thwarted by that which is only apparently impossible,and which they still feel might and ought to be accomplished.

"I feel as the old alchemists must have done,"he often thought.

"Here is a base metal.Why can I not transmute it into gold?"But as the conviction of his impotence grew upon him he felt something like resentment toward the one who had thwarted his purpose;and so it naturally happened that when they met again at the supper-table,his cool and indifferent manner corresponded with that of Miss Mayhew to a degree that gave her a deeper pain than she could understand.

"Why should she care?"she asked herself a hundred times that evening.But the unpleasant truth hourly grew more plain to her that she did care.

Stanton and her mother quietly ignored her "foolish pique,"as they termed it.In truth the former was so preoccupied with Miss Burton,and with jealousy of his friend,that he had few thoughts for anything else.

He admitted to himself that he had never before been so thoroughly fascinated and awakened;and it was in accordance with his pleasure-loving,self-indulgent nature to drift on this shining tide withersoever it might carry him.