University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
VERY COLD.

When Dennis entered Mr. Ludolph's store, Christine
was absent on a visit to New York. and on her return, resumed
her old routine. At this time she and her father
were occupying a suite of rooms at a fashionable hotel.
Her school-days were over, Mr. Ludolph preferring to
complete her education himself, in accordance with his
peculiar views and tastes. She was just passing into her
nineteenth year, and looked out upon the world from the
vantage points of health, beauty, wealth, accomplishments
of the highest order, and the best social standing. Assurance
of a long and brilliant career possessed her mind,
while pride and beauty were like a coronet upon her brow.
She was the world's ideal of a queen.

And yet she was not truly happy. There was ever a
vague sense of unrest and dissatisfaction at heart. She
saw that her father was proud and ambitious in regard to
her, but instinctively felt that he neither loved nor trusted
her to any great extent. She seemed living in a palace of
ice and at times felt that she was turning into ice herself;
but her very humanity and womanhood, deadened and
warped though they were, cried out against the cold of a life
without God or love. In the depths of her soul she felt

that something was wrong, but what, she could not understand.
It seemed that she had everything that heart could
wish, and that she ought to be satisfied.

She at last concluded that her restlessness was the
prompting of a lofty ambition, and if she chose she could
win world-wide celebrity as an artist. This, with the whole
force of her strong nature, she had determined to do, and
for over two years had worked with an energy akin to enthusiasm.
She had resolved that painting should be the
solid structure of her success, and music its ornament.

Nor were her dreams altogether chimerical, for she had
remarkable talent in her chosen field of effort, and had been
taught to use the brush and pencil from a child. She could
imitate with skill and taste, and express with great accuracy
the musical thought of the composer. But she could not
invent and create new effects, and this had already begun
to trouble her. Bnt she worked hard and patiently, determined
to succeed. So great had been her application,
that her father saw the need of rest and change, and therefore
her visit to New York.

She had now returned strengthened, and eager for her
former studies, and resumed them with tenfold zest.

The plan of re-arranging the store on artistic principles,
daily grew in favor with her. It was just the exercise of
taste she delighted in, and she hoped some day to indulge
it on palace walls that would be her own. Her father's
pride caused him to hesitate for some time, but she said—

“Why, Chicago is not our home; we shall soon be
thousands of miles away. You know how little we really
care for the opinions of people here: it is only our own
pride and opinion that we need consult. I see nothing
lowering or unfeminine in the work. I shall scarcely touch
a thing myself, merely direct; for surely among all in your
employ there must be one or two pairs of hands not so utterly
awkward but that they can follow plain instructions.

My taste shall do it all. We are both early risers, and the
whole change can be made before the store is opened.
Moreover,” she added (with an expression indicating that
she would have little difficulty in ruling her future German
castle, and its lord also), “this is an affair of our own.
Those you employ ought to understand by this time that it
is neither wise nor safe to talk our business outside.”

After a moment's thought she concluded—

“I really think that the proper arrangement of everything
in the store as to light, display, and effect, so that
people of taste will be pleased when they enter, would add
thousands of dollars to your sales, and this rigid system
of old Schwartz's, which annoys us both beyond endurance,
will be broken up.

Won over by arguments that accorded with his inclinations,
Mr. Ludolph gave his daughter permission to
carry out the plan in her own way.

She usually accompanied her father to the store in the
morning. He, after a brief glance around, would go to
his private office and attend to correspondence. She would
do whatever her mood prompted. Sometimes she would
sit down for a half hour before one picture; again she
would examine most critically a statue, or a statuette.
Whenever new music was received, she looked it over and
carried off such pieces as pleased her fancy.

She evidently was a privileged character, and no one
save her father exercised the slightest control over her
movements. She treated all the clerks, save old Schwartz,
as if they were animated machines; and by a quiet order,
as if she had touched a spring, would set them in motion
to do her bidding. The young men in the store were all
of German descent, and rather heavy and undemonstrative.
Mr. Schwartz's system of order and repression had
pretty thoroughly quenched them. They were educated to
the niches they filled, and seemed to have no thought

beyond; therefore they were all unruffled at Miss Ludolph's
air of absolute sovereignty. Mr. Schwartz was as
obsequious as the rest, but as second to her father in
power, was permitted some slight familiarity. In fact this
heavy, stolid prime minister both amused and annoyed
her, and she treated him much as a child might an elephant—at
times giving him the sugar plum of a compliment,
and oftener pricking him with the pin of some
caustic remark. To him she was the perfection of
womankind—her reserved, dispassionate manner, her
steady, unwearied prosecution of a purpose, being just
the qualities that he most honored; and he worshipped
her reverently at a distance as an old astrologer might
some particularly bright fixed star. No whisking comets
or changing satellites for old Schwartz.

As for Dennis, she treated him as she probably had
Pat Murphy, and for several days had no occasion to notice
him at all. In fact he kept out of her way, choosing
at first to observe rather than be observed. She became
an artistic study to him, for her every movement was
grace itself with one exception; there was no softness
or gentleness in her manner. Her face fascinated him
by its beauty, though its expression troubled him. It
was so unlike his mother's, so unlike what he felt a woman's
ought to be. But her eager interest in that which
was becoming so dear to him—art, would have covered a
multitude of sins in his eyes, and with a heart abounding
in faith and hope, not yet diminished by hard experience,
he believed that the undeveloped angel existed within her.
But he remembered her frown when she first noticed him
looking at her; the shrewd Yankee youth saw that her
pride would not brook even a curious glance. But while
he kept at a most respectful distance he felt that there
was no such a wide gulf between them as she imagined.
By birth and education he was as truly entitled to her acquaintance

as the young men who sometimes came into
the store with her and whom she met in society. Position
and wealth were alone wanting, and in spite of his hard
experience and lowly work he felt that there must be some
way for him, as for others, to win these.

He longed for the society of ladies, as every right-feeling
young man does, and to one of his nature the
grace and beauty of woman was peculiarly attractive. If
before she came, the lovely faces of the pictures had filled
the place with a sort of witchery, and created about him
an atmosphere in which his artist-soul was awakening into
life and growth, how much more would it be true of this
living vision of beauty that glided in and out every day.

“She does not notice me,” he at first said to himself,
any more than do these lovely shadows upon the
canvas. But what need I care? I can study both them
and her, and thus educate my eye, and I hope my hand,
to imitate and perhaps surpass their perfections, in time.”

But this cool philosophic mood did not last very long.
It might answer very well in regard to the pictures on the
walls, but there was a magnetism about this living breathing
woman that soon caused him to long for the privilege
of being near her and speaking to her of that subject
that interested them both so deeply. Though he had
never seen any of her paintings to know them, he soon
saw that she was no novice in art, and looked at everything
with the eye of a connoisseur. In reverie he had
many a spirited conversation with her, and trusted that
some day his dreams would become real. He had the
romantic hope that if she should discover his taste and
strong love of art she might at first bestow upon him a
patronizing interest which would gradually grow into
respect and acknowledgeed equality.