Mr.Mayhew was right when he said the Van Bergs were a proud race,and this trait had found its culmination,perhaps,in the hero of this tale.He was justly proud of his old and unstained name;he was proud of those who bore it with him,and he honored his father and mother,not in obedience to a command,but because every one honored them;and if his sister was a little cold and stately,she embodied his ideas of refinement and cultivation;he was proud of his social position,of his talent--for he knew he had that much,at least--and of the recognition he had already won in the republic of art.But chief of all had he been proud of his unstained manhood,of the honor,which he believed had been kept unsullied until this miserable day.But now,as he strode away in the moonlight,he found himself confronting certain facts which he felt he could never explain to any one's satisfaction,not even his own.He had openly professed to love a poor and orphaned girl,and had pledged himself to win her if he could--to be her friend till he could become far more.Even granting that she still looked on him merely as a friend,that did not release him.It was while possessing the distinct knowledge that she cherished no warmer feeling that he had made the pledge,and though she might not be able or willing to-day or to-morrow,or for years to come,to give up a past love for his sake,his promise required that he should patiently woo and wait till she could bury the past with her old lover,and receive,at his hands,the future that he was in honor bound to keep within her reach.Of course,if,after the lapse of years,she assured him she could not and would not accept of his hand in marriage,he would be free,but he had scarcely waited weeks before giving his love to another.For aught he knew,the hope of happier days,which he had urged upon her,might be already stealing into her heart.
It gave him but little comfort now to recognize the fact that he had never loved Jennie Burton--that he had never known what the word meant until swept away by the irresistible tide of a passion,the power of which already appalled him.To say that he did not feel like keeping his promise now,or that his feelings had changed,he knew would be regarded as an excuse beneath contempt,and a week since he himself would have pronounced the most merciless judgment against a man in his present position.
Before the vigil of that night was over,he decided that he could not meet either Ida Mayhew or Jennie Burton again.He believed that Ida Mayhew understood him only too well now,and that she thoroughly despised him.Indeed,from her manner of passing him,he doubted whether she willingly would speak to him again,for her veil had prevented him from seeing the pallor and traces of grief which she was so anxious to hide.In his morbidly sensitive state,it seemed a deliberate but just withdrawal of even her acquaintance.
He felt that the brief dream of Ida Mayhew was over forever,and that she would indeed keep the priceless kingdom of her heart from him above all others.He believed that now,after her conversation with Stanton,she clearly saw that the absurdly ardent friendship he had urged upon her was only the incipient stage of a new passion in a fickle wretch who had dared to trifle with a girl like Jennie Burton--a maiden that,of all others in the world,a man of honor would shield.
As for Miss Burton herself,now that he realized his situation,he felt that he could never look her in the face again.To try to resume his old relations seemed to be impossible.He never had and never could say to her a word that he knew was insincere.Besides,he was sure that such an effort would be futile,for she would detect his hollowness at once,and he feared a glance of scorn from her blue eyes more than the lightning of heaven.He resolved to leave the Lake House on Monday,and from New York write to Miss Burton the unvarnished truth,assuring her that he knew himself to be unworthy even to speak to her again.Then,as soon as he could complete his preparations,he would go abroad and give himself wholly to his art.
Having come to these conclusions,he stole by a side entrance like a guilty shadow to his room and tried to obtain such rest as is possible to those who are in the hell of mental torment.After an early breakfast the following morning,he started for the mountains,and no wild beast that ever roamed them would have torn him more pitilessly than did his own outraged sense of honor and manhood.
He returned late in the evening,weary and faint,and with the furtiveness of an outlaw,again reached his room without meeting those whom he so wished to avoid.After the heavy,unrefreshing sleep of utter exhaustion he once more left the house early,with his sketch-book in hand to disguise his purpose,for it was his intention to visit the old garden before he finally left the scenes to which he had been led by following a mere freak of fancy.He learned from one of Mr.Eltinge's workman that the old gentleman would be absent from home the entire day,and thus feeling secure from interruption,he entered the quite,shady place in which had begun the symphony which was now ending in such harsh discord.
Seeing that he was alone he threw himself into the rustic seat,and burying his face in his hands,soon became unconscious of the lapse of time in his painful revery.