For a little time after Dennis's angry tread died away, Christine sat almost paralyzed by surprise and deeper emotion. Her mind, though usually clear and rapid in its action, was too confused to realize the truth. Suddenly she sprang up, gathered together her sketching materials, and drawing a thick veil over her face sped through the store, through the streets, to the refuge of her own room. She must be alone.
Hastily throwing aside her wrappings, she began to walk up and down in her excitement. Her listlessness was gone now in very truth, and her eye and cheek glowed as never before. As if it had become the great vivifying principle of her own life, she kept repeating continually in a low, ecstatic tone, "He lives! he lives! he is not dead; his blood is not upon my conscience!"
At last she sat down in her luxurious chair before the window to think it all over--to commune with herself--often the habit of the reserved and solitary. From the disjointed sentences she let fall, from the reflection of her excited face in yonder glass, we gather quite correctly the workings of her mind. Her first words were, "Thank heaven! thank something or other, I have not blotted out that true, strong genius."
Again--"What untold wretchedness I might have saved myself if I had only asked the question, in a casual way, 'How is Mr. Fleet?' Christine Ludolph, with all your pride and imagined superiority, you can be very foolish.
"How he hates and despises me now! little wonder!"
"But if he knew!"
"Knew what? Why could you not ask after him, as after any other sick man? You have had a score or so of offers, and did not trouble yourself as to the fate of the lovelorn swains. Seems to me your conscience has been very tender in this case. And the fact that he misjudges you, thinks you callous, heartless, and is angry, troubles you beyond measure."
"When before were you so sensitive to the opinion of clerks and trades-people, or even the proudest suitors for your hand? But in this case you must cry out, in a tone of sentimental agony, 'Oh, if he only knew I'"
"Knew what?"
Her face in yonder mirror has a strange, introverted expression, as if she were scanning her own soul. Her brow contracts with thought and perplexity.
Gradually a warm, beautiful light steals into her face, transforming it as from the scowl of a winter morning into a dawn of June; her eyes become gentle and tender. A rich color comes out upon her cheeks, spreads up her temples, mantles her brow, and pours a crimson torrent down her snowy neck. Suddenly she drops her burning face into her hands, and hides a vision one would gladly look longer upon. But see, even her little ears have become as red as coral.
The bleakest landscape in the world brightens into something like beauty when the sun shines upon it. So love, the richer, sweeter light of the soul, make the plainest face almost beautiful; but when it changed Christine Ludolph's faultless, yet too cold and classical, features into those of a loving woman's, it suggested a beauty scarcely human.
A moment later there came a faint whisper: "I fear--I almost fear I love him." Then she lifted a startled, frightened face and looked timidly around as if, in truth, walls had ears.
Reassured by the consciousness of solitude, her head dropped on her wrist and her revery went forward. Her eyes became dreamy, and a half-smile played upon her lips as she recalled proof after proof of his affection, for she knew the cruel words of the last interview were the result of misunderstanding.
But suddenly she darted from her seat and began pacing the room in the strongest perturbation.
"Mocked again!" she cried; "the same cruel fate! my old miserable experience in a new aspect! With everything within my reach, save the one thing I want, I possess the means of all kinds of happiness except that which makes me happy. In every possible way I am pledged to a career and future in which he can take no part. Though my heart is full of the strangest, sweetest chaos, and I do not truly understand myself, yet I am satisfied that this is not a school-girl's fancy. But my father would regard it as the old farce repeated. Already he suspects and frowns upon the matter. I should have to break with him utterly and forever. I should have to give up all my ambitious plans and towering hopes of life abroad. A plain Mrs. in this city of shops is a poor substitute for a countess's coronet and a villa on the Rhine."
Her cheek flushed, and her lip curled.
"That indeed would be the very extravagance of romance, and how could I, least of all, who so long have scoffed at such things, explain my action? These mushroom shopkeepers, who were all nobodies the other day, elevate their eyebrows when a merchant's daughter marries her father's clerk. But when would the wonder cease if a German lady of rank followed suit?
"Then again my word, my honor, every sacred pledge I could give, forbids such folly.
"Would to heaven I had never seen him, for this unfortunate fancy of mine must be crushed in its inception; strangled before it comes to master me as it has mastered him."
After a long and weary sigh she continued: "Well, everything is favorable for a complete and final break between us. He believes me heartless and wicked to the last degree. I cannot undeceive him without showing more than he should know. I have only to avoid him, to say nothing, and we drift apart.
"If we could only have been friends he might have helped me so much! but that now is clearly impossible--yes, for both of us.
"Truly one of these American poets was right:
"'For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these--It might have been.'
"But thanks to the immortal gods, as the pious heathen used to say, his blood is not on my hands, and this has taken a mountain off my heart. Thus relieved I can perhaps forget all the miserable business. Fate forbids that I, as it has forbidden that many another high-born woman, should marry where she might have loved."
If Christine's heart was wronged, her pride was highly gratified by this conclusion. Here was a new and strong resemblance between herself and the great. In mind she recalled the titled unfortunates who had "loved where they could not marry," and with the air and feeling of a martyr to ancestral grandeur she pensively added her name to the list.
With her conscience freed from its burden of remorse, with the knowledge, so sweet to every woman, that she might accept this happiness if she would, in spite of her airs of martyrdom, the world had changed greatly for the better, and with the natural buoyancy of youth she reacted into quite a cheerful and hopeful state.
Her father noticed this on his return to dinner in the evening, and sought to learn its cause. He asked, "How did you make out with your sketch?"
"I made a beginning," she answered, with some little color rising to her cheek.
"Perhaps you were interrupted?"
"Why did you not tell me that Mr. Fleet had recovered?" she asked, abruptly.
"Why, did you think he was dead?"
"Yes."
Mr. Ludolph indulged in a hearty laugh (he knew the power of ridicule).
"Well, that is excellent!" he said. "You thought the callow youth had died on account of your hardness of heart; and this explains your rather peculiar moods and tenses of late. Let me assure you that a Yankee never dies from such a cause."
Mr. Ludolph determined if possible to break down her reserve and let in the garish light, which he knew to be most fatal to all romantic fancies, that ever thrive best in the twilight of secrecy. But she was on the alert now, and in relief of mind had regained her poise and the power to mask her feeling. So she said in a tone tinged with cold indifference, "You may be right, but I had good reason to believe to the contrary, and, as I am not altogether without a conscience, you might have saved much pain by merely mentioning the fact of his recovery."
"But you had adjured me with frightful solemnity never to mention his name again," said her father, still laughing.
Christine colored and bit her lip. She had forgotten for the moment this awkward fact.
"I was nervous, sick, and not myself that day, and every one I met could speak of nothing but Mr. Fleet."
"Well, really," he said, "in the long list of the victims that you have wounded if not slain, I never supposed my clerk and quondam man-of-all-work would prove so serious a case."
"A truce to your bantering, father! Mr. Fleet is humble only in station, not in character, not in ability. You know I have never been very tender with the 'victims,' as you designate them, of the Mellen stamp; but Mr. Fleet is a man, in the best sense of the word, and one that I have wronged. Now that the folly is past I may as well explain to you some things that have appeared strange. I think I can truly say that I have given those gentlemen who have honored, or rather annoyed me, by their unwished-for regard, very little encouragement. Therefore, I was not responsible for any follies they might commit. But for artistic reasons I did encourage Mr. Fleet's infatuation. You remember how I failed in making a copy of that picture. In my determination to succeed, I hit upon the rather novel expedient of inspiring and copying the genuine thing. You know my imitative power is better than my imagination, and I thought that by often witnessing the expression of feeling and passion, I might learn to portray it without the disagreeable necessity of passing through any such experiences myself. But the experiment, as you know, did not work well. These living subjects are hard to manage, and, as I have said, I am troubled by a conscience."
Mr. Ludolph's eyes sparkled, and a look of genuine admiration lighted up his features.
"Brava!" he cried; "your plan was worthy of you and of your ancestry. It was a real stroke of genius. You were too tender-hearted, otherwise it would have been perfect. What are the lives of a dozen such young fellows compared with the development and perfection of such a woman as you bid fair to be?"
Christine had displayed in this transaction just the qualities that her father most admired. But even she was shocked at his callousness, and lifted a somewhat startled face to his.
"Your estimate of human life is rather low," she said.
"Not at all. Is not one perfect plant better than a dozen imperfect ones? The gardener often pulls up the crowding and inferior ones to throw them about the roots of the strongest, that in their death and decay they may nourish it to the highest development. The application of this principle is evident. They secure most in this world who have the skill and power to grasp most."
"But how about the rights of others? Conscious men and women are not plants."
"Let them be on their guard then. Every one is for himself in this world. That can be plainly seen through the thin disguises that some try to assume. After all, half the people we meet are little better than summer weeds."
Christine almost shuddered to think that the one bound to her by closest ties cherished such sentiments toward the world, and probably, to a certain extent, toward herself, but she only said, quietly: "I can hardly subscribe to your philosophy as yet, though I fear I act upon it too often. Still it does not apply to Mr. Fleet. He is gifted in no ordinary degree, and doubtless will stand high here in his own land in time. And now, as explanation has been made, with your permission we will drop this subject out of our conversation as before."
"Well," said Mr. Ludolph to himself, between sips of his favorite Rhine wine, "I have gained much light on the subject to-night, and I must confess that, even with my rather wide experience, the whole thing is a decided novelty. If Christine were only less troubled with conscience, over-fastidiousness, or whatever it is--if she were more moderate in her ambition as an artist, and could be satisfied with power and admiration, as other women are--what a star she might become in the fashionable world of Europe! But, for some reason, I never feel sure of her. Her spirit is so wilful and obstinate, and she seems so full of vague longing after an ideal, impossible world, that I live in constant dread that she may be led into some folly fatal to my ambition. This Fleet is a most dangerous fellow. I wish I were well rid of him; still, matters are not so bad as I feared--that is, if she told me the whole truth, which I am inclined to doubt. But I had better keep him in my employ during the few months we still remain in this land, as I can watch over him, and guard against his influence better than if he were beyond my control. But no more promotion or encouragement does he get from me."
Janette, Christine's French maid, passed the open door. The thought struck Mr. Ludolph that he might secure an ally in her.
The unscrupulous creature was summoned, and agreed for no very large sum to become a spy upon Christine, and report anything looking toward friendly relations with Dennis Fleet.
"The game is still in my hands," said the wary man. "I will yet steer my richly-freighted argosy up the Rhine. Here's to Christine, the belle of the German court!" and he filled a slender Venetian glass to the brim, drained it, and then retired.
Christine, on reaching her room, muttered to herself: "He now knows all that I mean he ever shall. We are one in our ambition, if nothing else, and therefore our relations must be to a certain degree confidential and amicable. And now forget you have a conscience, forget you have a heart, and, above all things, forget that you have ever seen or known Dennis Fleet."
Thus the influence of a false education, a proud, selfish, ambitious life, decided her choice. She plunged as resolutely into the whirl of fashionable gayety about her as she had in the dissipations of New York, determined to forget the past, and kill the time that must intervene before she could sail away to her brilliant future in Germany.
But she gradually learned that, if conscience had robbed her of peace before, something else disturbed her now, and rendered her efforts futile. She found that there was a principle at work in her heart stronger even than her resolute will. In spite of her purpose to the contrary, she caught herself continually thinking of Dennis, and indulging in strange, delicious reveries in regard to him.
At last she ceased to shun the store as she had done at first, but with increasing frequency found some necessity for going there.
After the interview in the show-room, Dennis was driven to the bitter conclusion that Christine was utterly heartless, and cared not a jot for him. His impression was confirmed by the fact that she shunned the store, and that he soon heard of her as a belle and leader in the ultra-fashionable world. He, too, bitterly lamented that he had ever seen her, and was struggling with all the power of his will to forget her. He fiercely resolved that, since she wished him dead, she should become dead to him.
Almost immediately after his return he had discovered that the two emblematical pictures had been removed from the loft over the store. He remembered that he had spoken of them to Christine, and from Ernst he gathered that she herself had taken them away. It was possible, he believed, that she had made them the subject of ridicule. At best she must have destroyed them in order to blot out all trace of a disagreeable episode. Whatever may have been their fate, they had, as he thought, failed in their purpose, and were worthless to him, and he was far too proud to make inquiries.
As the weeks passed on, he apparently succeeded better than she. There was nothing in her character, as she then appeared, that appealed to anything gentle or generous. She seemed so proud, so strong and resolute in her choice of evil, so devoid of the true womanly nature, as he had learned to reverence it in his mother, that he could not pity, much less respect her, and even his love could scarcely survive under such circumstances.
When she began coming to the store again, though his heart beat thick and fast at her presence, he turned his back and seemed not to see her, or made some errand to a remote part of the building. At first she thought this might be accident, but she soon found it a resolute purpose to ignore her very existence. By reason of a trait peculiar to Christine, this was only the more stimulating. She craved all the more that which was seemingly denied.
Accustomed to every gratification, to see all yield to her wishes, and especially to find gentlemen almost powerless to resist her beauty, she came to regard this one stern, averted face as infinitely more attractive than all the rest in the world.
"That he so steadily avoids me proves that he is anything but indifferent," she said to herself one day.
She condemned her visits to the store, and often reproached herself with folly in going; but a secret powerful magnetism drew her thither in spite of herself.
Dennis, too, soon noticed that she came often, and the fact awakened a faint hope within him. He learned that his love was not dead, but only chilled and chained by circumstances and his own strong will. True, apart from the fact of her coming, she gave him no encouragement. She was as distant and seemingly oblivious of his existence as he of hers, but love can gather hope from a marvellously little thing.
But one day Christine detected her father watching her movements with the keenest scrutiny, and after that she came more and more rarely. The hope that for a moment had tinged the darkness surrounding Dennis died away like the meteor's transient light.
He went into society very little after his illness, and shunned large companies. He preferred to spend his evenings with his mother and in study. The Winthrops were gone, having removed to their old home in Boston, and he had not formed very intimate acquaintances elsewhere. Moreover, his limited circle, though of the best and most refined, was not one in which Christine often appeared.
But one evening his cheek paled and his heart fluttered as he saw her entering the parlors of a lady by whom he had been invited to meet a few friends. For some little time he studiously avoided her, but at last his hostess, with well-meant zeal, formally presented him.
They bowed very politely and very coldly. The lady surmised that Christine did not care about the acquaintance of her father's clerk, and so brought them no more together. But Christine was pained by Dennis's icy manner, and saw that she was thoroughly misunderstood. When asked to sing, she chose a rather significant ditty:
"Ripple, sparkle, rapid stream, Let your dancing wavelets gleam Quiveringly and bright; Children think the surface glow Reaches to the depth below, Hidden from the light. "Human faces often seem Like the sparkle of the stream, In the social glare; Some assert, in wisdom's guise, (Look they not with children's eyes?) All is surface there."
As she rose from the piano her glance met his with something like meaning in it, he imagined. He started, flushed, and his face became full of eager questioning. But her father was on the watch also, and, placing his daughter's hand within his arm, he led her into the front parlor, and soon after they pleaded another engagement and vanished altogether.
No chance for explanation came, and soon a new and all-absorbing anxiety filled Dennis's heart, and the shadow of the greatest sorrow that he had yet experienced daily drew nearer.