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THE PHILISTINES

BY

ARLO BATES







    The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
                                 _All's Well that Ends Well_; iv.--3




DEDICATION.


 To my three friends who, by generously acting as amanuenses,
 have made it possible that the book should be finished, I take
 pleasure in gratefully dedicating




 "This is no square temple to the gate of which thou canst
 arrive precipitately; this is no mosque to which thou canst come
 with tumult but without knowledge."
                                     _Persian Religious Hymn_.




               CONTENTS.
CHAPTER

      I. IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING
     II. SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE
    III. IN WAY OF TASTE
     IV. NOW HE IS FOR THE NUMBERS
      V. 'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL
     VI. THE INLY TOUCH OF LOVE
    VII. THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME
   VIII. A NECESSARY EVIL
     IX. THIS IS NOT A BOON
      X. THE BITTER PAST
     XI. THE GREAT ASSAY OF ART
    XII. WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED
   XIII. THIS "WOULD" CHANGES
    XIV. THE SHOT OF ACCIDENT
     XV. LIKE COVERED FIRE
    XVI. WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE
   XVII. THE HEAVY MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
  XVIII. HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY
    XIX. HOW CHANCES MOCK
     XX. VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE
    XXI. A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN
   XXII. HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH
  XXIII. AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND
   XXIV. THERE BEGINS CONFUSION
    XXV. AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT
   XXVI. O, WICKED WIT AND GIFT
  XXVII. UPON A CHURCH BENCH
 XXVIII. BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE
   XXIX. CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH
    XXX. THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED
   XXXI. PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP
  XXXII. HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY
 XXXIII. A BOND OF AIR
  XXXIV. WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED
   XXXV. HEARTSICK WITH THOUGHT
  XXXVI. FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL AND EVER
 XXXVII. A SYMPATHY OF WOE




THE PHILISTINES


I


                     IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING.
                                            I Henry IV.; v.--I.

When Arthur Fenton, the most outspoken of all that band of protesting
spirits who had been so well known in artistic Boston as the Pagans,
married Edith Caldwell, there had been in his mind a purpose, secret
but well defined, to turn to his own account his wife's connection with
the Philistine art patrons of the town. Miss Caldwell was a niece of
Peter Calvin, a wealthy and well-meaning man against whom but two grave
charges could be made,--that he supposed the growth of art in this
country to depend largely upon his patronage, and that he could never
be persuaded not to take himself seriously. Mr. Calvin was regarded by
Philistine circles in Boston as a sort of re-incarnation of Apollo,
clothed upon with modern enlightenment, and properly arrayed in
respectable raiment. Had it been pointed out that to make this theory
probable it was necessary to conceive of the god as having undergone
mentally much the same metamorphosis as that which had transformed his
flowing vestments into trousers, his admirers would have received the
remark as highly complimentary to Mr. Peter Calvin. To assume identity
between their idol and Apollo would be immensely flattering to the son
of Latona.

Fenton understood perfectly the weight and extent of Calvin's
influence, yet, in determining to profit by it, he did not in the least
deceive himself as to the nature of his own course.

"Honesty," he afterward confessed to his friend Helen Greyson, who
scorned him for the admission, "is doubtless a charming thing for
digestive purposes, but it is a luxury too expensive for me. The gods
in this country bid for shams, and shams I purpose giving them."

So well did he carry out his intention, that in a few years he came to
be the fashionable portrait-painter of the town; the artist to whom
people went who rated the worth of a picture by the amount they were
required to pay for it, and the reputation of the painter in
conventional circles; the man to whom a Boston society woman inevitably
turned when she wished the likeness of her charms preserved on canvas,
and when no foreigner was for the moment in vogue and on hand.

The steps by which Fenton attained to this proud eminence were obvious
enough. In the first place, he persuaded Mr. Calvin to sit to him. Mr.
Calvin always sat to the portrait painters whom he endorsed. This was a
sort of official recognition, and the results, as seen in the
needlessly numerous likenesses of the gentleman which adorned his
Beacon Hill mansion, would have afforded a cynic some amusement, and
not a little food for reflection. Once launched under distinguished
patronage, Fenton was clever enough to make his way. He really was able
to paint well when he chose, a fact which was, on the whole, of less
importance in his artistic career than were the adroitness of his
address, and his ready and persuasive sympathy. The qualifications of a
fashionable doctor, a fashionable clergyman, and a fashionable
portrait-painter are much the same; it is only in the man-milliner that
skill is demanded in addition to the art of pleasing.

As usually happens in such a case, Fenton's old friends avoided him, or
found themselves left in the distance by his rapid strides toward fame
and fortune. Then such of them as still came in contact with him made
his acquaintance in a new character, and learned to accept him as a
wholly different man from the one they had supposed themselves to know
in the days when he was never weary of pouring forth tirades against
the Philistinism he had now embraced. They admired the skill with which
he painted stuffs and gowns, but among themselves they agreed that the
old-time vigor and sincerity were painfully lacking in his work; and if
they grumbled sometimes at the prices he got, it is only just to
believe that it was seldom with any real willingness to pay, in the
sacrifice of convictions and ideals, the equivalent which he had given
for his popularity.

Fenton was one morning painting, in his luxuriously appointed studio,
the portrait of a man who was in the prime of life, and over whom
vulgar prosperity had, in forming him, left everywhere her finger marks
plainly to be seen. He was tall and robust, with light eyes and blonde
whiskers, and a general air of insisting upon his immense superiority
to all the world. That he secretly felt some doubts of the perfection
of his social knowledge, there were indications in his manner, but on
the whole the complacency of a portly bank account overcame all
misgivings of this sort. His character might have been easily inferred
from the manner in which he now set his broad shoulders expansively
back in the armchair in which he was posing, and regarded the artist
with a patronizing air of condescending to be wonderfully entertained
by his conversation.

"You are the frankest fellow I ever saw," he said, smiling broadly.

"Oh, frank," Fenton responded; "I am too frank. It will be the ruin of
me sooner or later. It all comes of being born with a habit of being
too honest with myself."

"Honesty with yourself is generally held up as a cardinal virtue."

"Nonsense. A man is a fool who is too frank with himself; he is always
sure to end by being too frank with everybody else, just from mere
habit."

Mr. Irons smiled more broadly still. He by no means followed all
Fenton's vagaries of thought, but they tickled his mental cuticle
agreeably. The artist had the name of being a clever talker, and with
such a listener this was more than half the battle. The men who can
distinguish the real quality of talk are few and far to seek; most
people receive what is said as wit and wisdom, or the reverse, simply
because they are assured it is the one or the other; and Alfred Irons
was of the majority in this.

Fenton painted in silence a moment, inwardly possessed of a desire to
caricature, or even to paint in all its ugliness, the vulgar mouth upon
which he was working. The desire, however, was not sufficiently strong
to restrain him from the judicious flattery of cleverly softening and
refining the coarse lips, and he was conscious of a faint amusement at
the incongruity between his thought and his action.

"And there is the added disadvantage," he continued the conversation as
he glanced up and saw that his sitter's face was quickly, in the
silence, falling into a heavy repose, "that frankness begets frankness.
My sitters are always telling me things which I do not want to know,
just because I am so beastly outspoken and sympathetic."

"You must have an excellent chance to get pointers," responded the
sitter, his pale eyes kindling with animation. "You've painted two or
three men this winter that could have put you up to a good thing."

"That isn't the sort of line chat takes in a studio," Fenton returned,
with a slight shrug. "It isn't business that men talk in a studio. That
would be too incongruous."

Irons sneered and laughed, with an air of consequence and superiority.

"I don't suppose many of you artist fellows would make much of a fist
at business," he observed.

"Modern business," laughed the other, amused by his own epigram, "is
chiefly the art of transposing one's debts. The thing to learn is how
to pass the burden of your obligations from one man's shoulders to
those of another often enough so that nobody who has them gets tired
out, and drops them with a crash."

His sitter grinned appreciatively.

"And they don't tell you how to do this?"

"Oh, no. The things my sitters tell me about are of a very different
sort. They make to me confidences they want to get rid of; things you'd
rather not hear. Heavens! I have all I can do to keep some men from
treating me like a priest and confessing all their sins to me."

Mr. Irons regarded the artist closely, with a curious narrowing of the
eyes.

"That must give you a hold over a good many of them," he said. "I shall
be careful what I say."

Fenton laughed, with a delightful sense of superiority. It amused him
that his sitter should be betraying his nature at the very moment when
he fancied himself particularly on his guard.

"You certainly have no crimes on your conscience that interfere with
your digestion," was his reply; "but in any case, you may make yourself
easy; I am not a blackmailer by profession."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," Mr. Irons answered, easily; "only of course
you are a man who has his living to make. Every painter has to depend
on his wits, and when you come in contact with men of another class
professionally it would be natural enough to suppose you would take
advantage of it."

The "lady's finger" in Fenton's cheek stood out white amid the sudden
red, and his eyes flashed.

"Of course a sitter," he said in an even voice, which had somehow lost
all its smooth sweetness, "is in a manner my guest, and the fact that
his class was not up to mine, or that he wasn't a gentleman even,
wouldn't excuse my taking advantage of him."

The other flushed in his turn. He felt the keenness of the retort, but
he was not dexterous enough to parry it, and he took refuge in coarse
bullying.

"Come, now, Fenton," he cried with a short, explosive laugh, "you talk
like a gentleman."

But the artist, knowing himself to have the better of the other, and
not unmindful, moreover, of the fact that to offend Alfred Irons might
mean a serious loss to his own pocket, declined to take offence.

"Of course," he answered lightly, and with the air of one who
appreciates an intended jest so subtile that only cleverness would have
comprehended it, "that is one of the advantages I have always found in
being one. I think I needn't keep you tied down to that chair any
longer to-day. Come here and see how you think we are getting on."

And the sitter forgot quickly that he had been on the very verge of a
quarrel.




II

                         SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE.
                                     Measure for Measure; v.--I.

When dinner was announced that night, Mrs. Arthur Fenton had not
appeared, but presently she came into the room with that guilty and
anxious look which marks the consciousness of social misdemeanors. She
was dressed in a gown of warm primrose plush, softened by draperies of
silver-gray net. It was a costume which her husband had designed for
her, and which set off beautifully her brown hair and creamy white skin.

"I hope I have not kept you waiting long," she said, "but I wanted to
dress for Mrs. Frostwinch's before dinner, and I was late about getting
home."

There was a certain wistfulness in her manner which betrayed her
anxiety lest he should be vexed at the trifling delay. Arthur Fenton
was too well bred to be often openly unkind to anybody, but none the
less was his wife afraid of his displeasure. He was one of those men
who have the power of making their disapproval felt from the simple
fact that they feel it so strongly themselves. The most oppressive of
domestic tyrants are by no means those who vent their ill-nature in
open words. The man who strenuously insists to himself upon his will,
and cherishes in silence his dislike of whatever is contrary to it, is
oftener a harder man to live with than one who is violently outspoken.
Fenton was hardly conscious of the absolute despotism with which he
ruled his home, but his wife was too susceptible to his moods not to
feel keenly the unspoken protest with which he met any infringement
upon his wishes or his pleasure. Tonight he was in good humor, and his
sense of beauty was touched by the loveliness of her appearance.

"Oh, it is no matter," he answered lightly. "How stunning you look.
That topaz," he continued, walking toward her, and laying his finger
upon the single jewel she wore fastened at the edge of the square-cut
corsage of her gown, "is exactly right. It is so deep in color that it
gives the one touch you need. It was uncommonly nice of your Uncle
Peter to give it to you."

"And of you to design a dress to set it off," returned she, smiling
with pleasure. "I am glad you like me in it."

"You are stunning," her husband repeated, kissing her with a faint
shade of patronage in his manner. "Now come on before the dinner is as
cold as a stone. A cold dinner is like a warmed-over love affair; you
accept it from a sense of duty, but there is no enjoyment in it."

Mrs. Fenton smiled, more from pleasure at his evident good nature than
from any especial amusement, and they went together into the pretty
dining-room.

Fenton acknowledged himself fond of the refinements of life, and his
sensitive, sensuous nature lost none of the delights of a
well-appointed home. He lived in a quiet and elegant luxury which would
have been beyond the attainment of most artists, and which indeed not
infrequently taxed his resources to the utmost.

The table at which the pair sat down was laid with exquisite damask and
china, the dinner admirable and well served. The dishes came in hot,
the maid was deft and comely in appearance, and the master of the
house, who always kept watch, in a sort of involuntary
self-consciousness, of all that went on about him, was pleasantly aware
that the most fastidious of his friends could have found nothing amiss
in the appointment or the service of his table. How much the perfect
arrangement of domestic affairs demanded from his wife, Fenton found it
more easy and comfortable not to inquire, but he at least appreciated
the results of her management. He never came to accept the smallest
trifles of life without emotion. His pleasure or annoyance depended
upon minute details, and things which people in general passed without
notice were to him the most important facts of daily life. The
responsibility for the comfort of so highly organized a creature, Edith
had found to be anything but a light burden. Only a wife could have
appreciated the pleasure she had in having the most delicate shades in
her domestic management noted and enjoyed; or the discomfort which
arose from the same source. It was delightful to have her husband
pleased by the smallest pains she took for his comfort; to know that
his eye never failed to discover the little refinements of dress or
cookery or household adornment; but wearing was the burden of
understanding, too, that no flaw was too small to escape his sight.
Mrs. Fenton's friends rallied her upon being a slave to her
housekeeping; few of them were astute enough to understand that, kind
as was always his manner toward her, she was instead the slave of her
husband.

The room in which they were dining was one in which the artist took
especial pleasure. He had panelled it with stamped leather, which he
had picked up somewhere in Spain; while the ceiling was covered with a
novel and artistic arrangement of gilded matting. Among Edith's wedding
gifts had been some exquisite jars of Moorish pottery, and these, with
a few pieces of Algerian armor, were the only ornaments which the
artist had admitted to the room. The simplicity and richness of the
whole made an admirable setting for the dinner table, and as the host
when he entertained was willing to take the trouble of overlooking his
wife's arrangements, the Fentons' dinner parties were among the most
picturesquely effective in Boston.

"I have two big pieces of news for you," Mrs. Fenton said, when the
soup had been removed. "I have been to call on Mrs. Stewart Hubbard
this afternoon, and Mr. Hubbard is going to have you paint him. Isn't
that good?"

Her husband looked up in evident pleasure.

"That isn't so bad," was his reply. "He'll make a stunning picture, and
the Hubbards are precisely the sort of people one likes to have
dealings with. Is he going at it soon?"

"He is coming to see you to-morrow, Mrs. Hubbard said. The picture is
to be her birthday present. I told her you were so busy I didn't know
when you could begin."

"I would stretch a point to please Mr. Hubbard. I am almost done with
Irons, vulgar old cad. I wish I dared paint him as bad as he really
looks."

"But your artistic conscience won't let you?" she queried, smiling. "He
is a dreadful old creature; but he means well."

"People who mean well are always worse than those who don't mean
anything; but I can make it up with Hubbard. He looks like Rubens' St.
Simeon. I wish he wore the same sort of clothes."

"You might persuade him to, for the picture. But my second piece of
news is almost as good. Helen is coming home."

"Helen Greyson?"

"Helen Greyson. I had a letter from her today, written in Paris. She
had already got so far, and she ought to be here very soon."

"How long has she been in Rome?" Fenton asked.

He had suddenly become graver. He had been intimate with Mrs. Greyson,
a sculptor of no mean talent, in the days when he had been a fervid
opponent of people and of principles with whom he had later joined
alliance, and the idea of her return brought up vividly his parting
from her, when she had scornfully upbraided him for his apostasy from
convictions which he had again and again declared to be dearer to him
than life.

"It is six years," Mrs. Fenton answered. "Caldwell was born the March
after she went, and he will be six in three weeks. Time goes fast. We
are getting to be old people."

Fenton stared at his plate absently, his thoughts busy with the past.

"Has Grant Herman been married six years?" he asked, after a moment.

"Grant Herman? Yes; he was married just before she sailed; but what of
it?"

Fenton laid down the fork with which he had been poking the bits of
fish about on his plate. He folded his arms on the edge of the table,
and regarded his wife.

"It is astonishing, Edith," he observed, "how well one may know a woman
and yet be mistaken in her. For six years I have supposed you to be
religiously avoiding any allusion to Helen's love for Grant Herman, and
it seems you never knew it at all."

It was Mrs. Fenton's turn to look up in surprise.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Her husband laughed lightly, yet not very joyously.

"Nothing, if you will. Nobody ever told me they were in love with each
other, but I am as sure that Helen made Herman marry Ninitta as if I
had been on hand to see the operation."

"Made him marry her? Why should he marry her if he didn't want to?"

"Oh, well, I don't know anything about it. I know Ninitta followed
Herman to America, for she told me so; and I am sure he had no idea of
marrying her when she got here. Anybody can put two and two together, I
suppose, especially if you know what infernally Puritanical notions
Helen had."

"Puritanical?"

The artist leaned back in his chair and smiled at his wife in his
superior and tantalizing fashion.

"She thought she'd outgrown Puritanism," he returned, "but really she
was, in her way, as much of a Puritan as you are. The country is full
of people who don't understand that the essence of Puritanism is a
slavish adherence to what they call principle, and who think because
they have got rid of a certain set of dogmas they are free from their
theologic heritage. There never was greater rubbish than such an idea."

Mrs. Fenton was silent. She had long ago learned the futility of
attempting any argument in ethics with Arthur, and she received in
silence whatever flings at her beliefs he chose to indulge in. She had
even come hardly to heed words which in the early days of her married
life would have wounded her to the quick. She had readjusted her
conception of her husband's character, and if she still cherished
illusions in regard to him, she no longer believed in the possibility
of changing his opinions by opposing them.

Her thoughts were now, moreover, occupied with the personal problem
which would in any case have appealed more strongly to the feminine
mind than abstract theories, and she was considering what he had told
her of Mrs. Greyson and Grant Herman, a sculptor for whom she had a
warm admiration, and a no less strong liking.

However we busy ourselves with high aims, with learning, or art, or
wisdom, or ethics, personal human interests appeal to us more strongly
than anything else. Human emotions respond instinctively and quickly to
any hint of the emotional life of others. Nothing more strikingly shows
the essential unity of the race than the readiness with which all minds
lay aside all concerns and ideas which they are accustomed to consider
higher, to give attention to the trifling details of the intimate
history of their fellows. Quite unconsciously, Edith had gathered up
many facts, insignificant in themselves, concerning the relations of
Mrs. Greyson and Herman, and she now found herself suddenly called upon
to reconsider whatever conclusions they had led her to in the light of
this new development. The sculptor's marriage with an ex-model had
always been a mystery to her, and she now endeavored to decide in her
mind whether it were possible that her husband could be right in
putting the responsibility upon Helen Greyson. The form of his remark
seemed to her to hint that the Italian's claim upon Herman had been of
so grave a nature as to imply serious complications in their former
relations; but she strenuously rejected any suspicion of evil in the
sculptor's conduct.

"I am sure, Arthur," she said, hesitatingly, "there can have been
nothing wrong between Mr. Herman and Ninitta. I have too much faith in
him."

"To put faith in man," was his answer, "is only less foolish than to
believe in woman. I didn't, however, mean to imply anything very
dreadful. The facts are enough, without speculating on what is nobody's
business but theirs. I wonder how he and Helen will get on together,
now she is coming home? Mrs. Herman is a jealous little thing, and
could easily be roused up to do mischief."

"I do not believe Helen had anything to do with their marriage," Edith
said, with conviction. "It was a mistake from the outset."

"Granted. That is what makes it so probable that Helen did it. Grant
isn't the man to make a fool of himself without outside pressure, and
in the end a sacrifice to principle is always some ridiculous
tomfoolery that can't be come at in any other way. However, we shall
see what we shall see. What time are you going to Mrs. Frostwinch's?"

"I am going to the Browning Club at Mrs. Gore's first. Will you come?"

"Thank you, no. I have too much respect for Browning to assist at his
dismemberment. I'll meet you at Mrs. Frostwinch's about ten."




III

                             IN WAY OF TASTE.
                                     Troilus and Cressida; iii.--3.

One of the most curious of modern whims in Boston has been the study of
the poems of Robert Browning. All at once there sprang up on every hand
strange societies called Browning Clubs, and the libraries were
ransacked for Browning's works, and for the books of whoever has had
the conceit or the hardihood to write about the great poet. Lovely
girls at afternoon receptions propounded to each other abstruse
conundrums concerning what they were pleased to regard as obscure
passages, while little coteries gathered, with airs of supernatural
gravity, to read and discuss whatever bore his signature.

A genuine, serious Boston Browning Club is as deliciously droll as any
form of entertainment ever devised, provided one's sense of the
ludicrous be strong enough to overcome the natural indignation aroused
by seeing genuine poetry, the high gift of the gods, thus abused. The
clubs meet in richly furnished parlors, of which the chief fault is
usually an over-abundance of bric-a-brac. The house of Mrs. Gore, for
instance, where Edith was going this evening, was all that money could
make it; and in passing it may be noted that Boston clubs are seldom of
constitutions sufficiently vigorous to endure unpleasant surroundings.
The fair sex predominates at all these gatherings, and over them hangs
an air of expectant solemnity, as if the celebration of some sacred
mystery were forward. Conversation is carried on in subdued tones; even
the laughter is softened, and when the reader takes his seat, there
falls upon the little company a hush so deep as to render distinctly
audible the frou-frou of silken folds, and the tinkle of jet fringes,
stirred by the swelling of ardent and aspiring bosoms.

The reading is not infrequently a little dull, especially to the
uninitiated, and there have not been wanting certain sinister
suggestions that now and then, during the monotonous delivery of some
of the longer poems, elderly and corpulent devotees listen only with
the spiritual ear, the physical sense being obscured by an abstraction
not to be distinguished by an ordinary observer from slumber. The
reader, however, is bound to assume that all are listening, and if some
sleep and others consider their worldly concerns or speculate upon the
affairs of their neighbors, it interrupts not at all the steady flow of
the reading.

Once this is finished, there is an end also of inattention, for the
discussion begins. The central and vital principle of all these clubs
is that a poem by Robert Browning is a sort of prize enigma, of which
the solution is to be reached rather by wild and daring guessing than
by any commonplace process of reasoning. Although to an ordinary and
uninspired intellect it may appear perfectly obvious that a lyric means
simply and clearly what it says, the true Browningite is better
informed. He is deeply aware that if the poet seems to say one thing,
this is proof indisputable that another is intended. To take a work in
straightforward fashion would at once rob the Browning Club of all
excuse for existence, and while parlor chairs are easy, the air warm
and perfumed, and it is the fashion for idle minds to concern
themselves with that rococo humbug Philistines call culture, societies
of this sort must continue.

Once it is agreed that a poem means something not apparent, it is easy
to make it mean anything and everything, especially if the discussion,
as is usually the case, be interspersed with discursions of which the
chief use is to give some clever person or other a chance to say smart
things. When all else fails, moreover, the club can always fall back
upon allegory. Commentators on the poets have always found much field
for ingenious quibbling and sounding speculation in the line of
allegory. Let a poem be but considered an allegory, and there is no
limit to the changes which may be rung upon it, not even Mrs.
Malaprop's banks of the Nile restraining the creature's headstrong
ranging. Only a failure of the fancy of the interpreter can afford a
check, and as everybody reads fiction nowadays, few people are without
a goodly supply of fancies, either original or acquired.

Although Fenton had declined to go to Mrs. Gore's with his wife, he had
finished his cigar when the carriage was announced, and decided to
accompany her, after all. The parlors were filling when they arrived,
and Arthur, who knew how to select good company, managed to secure a
seat between Miss Elsie Dimmont, a young and rather gay society girl,
and Mrs. Frederick Staggchase, a descendant of an old Boston family,
who was called one of the cleverest women of her set.

"Is Mr. Fenwick going to read?" he asked of the latter, glancing about
to see who was present.

"Yes," Mrs. Staggchase answered, turning toward him with her
distinguished motion of the head and high-bred smile. "Don't you like
him?"

"I never had the misfortune to hear him. I know he detests me, but then
I fear, that like olives and caviare, I have to be an acquired taste."

"Acquired tastes," she responded, with that air of being amused by
herself which always entertained Fenton, "are always the strongest."

"And generally least to a man's credit," he retorted quickly. "What is
he going to inflict upon us?"

"Really, I don't know. I seldom come to this sort of thing. I don't
think it pays."

"Oh, nothing pays, of course," was Fenton's reply, "but it is more or
less amusing to see people make fools of themselves."

The president of the club, at this moment, called the assembly to
order, and announced that Mr. Fenwick had kindly consented--"Readers
always kindly consent," muttered Fenton aside to Mrs. Staggchase--to
read, _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, to which they would now listen.
There was a rustle of people settling back into their chairs; the
reader brushed a lank black lock from his sallow brow, and with a tone
of sepulchral earnestness began:

  "'No more wine? then we'll push back chairs, and talk.'"

For something over an hour, the monotonous voice of the reader went
dully on. Fenton drew out his tablets and amused himself and Miss
Dimmont by drawing caricatures of the company, ending with a sketch of
a handsome old dowager, who went so soundly to sleep that her jaw fell.
Over this his companion laughed so heartily that Mrs. Staggchase leaned
forward smilingly, and took his tablets away from him; whereat he
produced an envelope from his pocket and was about to begin another
sketch, when suddenly, and apparently somewhat to the surprise of the
reader, the poem came to an end.

There was a joyful stir. The dowager awoke, and there was a perfunctory
clapping of hands when Mr. Fenwick laid down his volume, and people
were assured that there was no mistake about his being really quite
through. A few murmurs of admiration were heard, and then there was an
awful pause, while the president, as usual, waited in the
never-fulfilled hope that the discussion would start itself without
help on his part.

"How cleverly you do sketch," Miss Dimmont said, under her breath; "but
it was horrid of you to make me laugh."

"You are grateful," Fenton returned, in the same tone. "You know I kept
you from being bored to death."

"I have a cousin, Miss Wainwright," pursued Miss Dimmont, "whose
picture we want you to paint."

"If she is as good a subject as _her_ cousin," Fenton answered, "I
shall be delighted to do it."

The president had, meantime, got somewhat ponderously upon his feet,
half a century of good living not having tended to increase his natural
agility, and remarked that the company were, he was sure, extremely
grateful to Mr. Fenwick, for his very intelligent interpretation of the
poem read.

"Did he interpret it?" Fenton whispered to Mrs. Staggchase. "Why wasn't
I told?" "Hush!" she answered, "I will never let you sit by me again if
you do not behave better."

"Sitting isn't my _metier_, you know," he retorted.

The president went on to say that the lines of thought opened by the
poem were so various and so wide that they could scarcely hope to
explore them all in one evening, but that he was sure there must be
many who had thoughts or questions they wished to express, and to start
the discussion he would call upon a gentleman whom he had observed
taking notes during the reading, Mr. Fenton.

"The old scaramouch!" Fenton muttered, under his breath. "I'll paint
his portrait and send it to _Punch_."

Then with perfect coolness he got upon his feet and looked about the
parlor.

"I am so seldom able to come to these meetings," he said, "that I am
not at all familiar with your methods, and I certainly had no idea of
saying anything; I was merely jotting down a few things to think over
at home, and not making notes for a speech, as you would see if you
examined the paper."

At this point Miss Dimmont gave a cough which had a sound strangely
like a laugh strangled at its birth.

"The poem is one so subtile," Fenton continued, unmoved; "it is so
clever in its knowledge of human nature, that I always have to take a
certain time after reading it to get myself out of the mood of merely
admiring its technique, before I can think of it critically at all. Of
course the bit about 'an artist whose religion is his art' touches me
keenly, for I have long held to the heresy that art is the highest
thing in the world, and, as a matter of fact, the only thing one can
depend upon. The clever sophistry of Bishop Blougram shows well enough
how one can juggle with theology; and, after all, theology is chiefly
some one man's insistence that everybody else shall make the same
mistakes that he does."

Fenton felt that he was not taking the right direction in his talk, and
that in his anxiety to extricate himself from a slight awkwardness he
was rapidly getting himself into a worse one. It was one of those odd
whimsicalities which always came as a surprise when committed by a man
who usually displayed so much mental dexterity, that now, instead of
endeavoring to get upon the right track, he simply broke off abruptly
and sat down.

His words had, however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest
from the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the
Church of the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization with
which Mrs. Fenton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man, with
abundant auburn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and hands,
and eyes of eager enthusiasm, which showed how the result of New
England Puritanism had been to implant in his soul the true martyr
spirit. Fenton was never weary of jeering at Mr. Candish's uncouthness,
his jests serving as an outlet, not only for the irritation physical
ugliness always begot in him, but for his feeling of opposition to his
wife's orthodoxy, in which he regarded the clergyman as upholding her.
The rector's self-sacrificing devotion to truth, moreover, awakened in
the artist a certain inner discomfort. To the keenly sensitive mind
there is no rebuke more galling than the unconscious reproof of a
character which holds steadfastly to ideals which it has basely
forsaken. Arthur said to himself that he hated Candish for his ungainly
person. "He is so out of drawing," he once told his wife, "that I
always have a strong inclination to rub him out and make him over
again." In that inmost chamber of his consciousness where he allowed
himself the luxury of absolute frankness, however, the artist confessed
that his animosity to the young rector had other causes.

As Fenton sank into his seat, Mrs. Staggchase leaned over to quote from
the poem,--

     "'For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.'"

The artist turned upon her a glance of comprehension and amusement, but
before he could reply, the rough, rather loud voice of Mr. Candish
arrested his attention.

"If the poem teaches anything," Mr. Candish said, speaking according to
his custom, somewhat too warmly, "it seems to me it is the sophistry of
the sort of talk which puts art above religion. The thing that offends
an honest man in Bishop Blougram is the fact that he looks at religion
as if it were an art, and not a vital and eternal necessity,--a living
truth that cannot be trifled with."

"Ah," Fenton's smooth and beautiful voice rejoined, "that is to
confound art with the artificial, which is an obvious error. Art is a
passion, an utter devotion to an ideal, an absolute lifting of man out
of himself into that essential truth which is the only lasting bond by
which mankind is united."

Fenton's coolness always had a confusing and irritating effect upon Mr.
Candish, who was too thoroughly honest and earnest to quibble, and far
from possessing the dexterity needed to fence with the artist. He began
confusedly to speak, but with the first word became aware that Mrs.
Fenton had come to the rescue. Edith never saw a contest between her
husband and the clergyman without interfering if she could, and now she
instinctively spoke, without stopping to consider where she was.

"It is precisely for that reason," she said, "that art seems to me to
fall below religion. Art can make man contented with life only by
keeping his attention fixed upon an ideal, while religion reconciles us
to life as it really is."

A murmur of assent showed Arthur how much against the feeling of those
around him were the views he was advancing.

"Oh, well," he said, in a droll _sotto voce_, "if it is coming down to
a family difference we will continue it in private."

And he abandoned the discussion.

"It seems to me," pursued Mr. Candish, only half conscious that Mrs.
Fenton had come to his aid, "that Bishop Blougram represents the most
dangerous spirit of the age. His paltering with truth is a form of
casuistry of which we see altogether too much nowadays."

"Do you think," asked a timid feminine voice, "that Blougram was
_quite_ serious? That he really meant all he said, I mean?"

The president looked at the speaker with despair in his glance; but she
was adorably pretty and of excellent social position, so that snubbing
was not to be thought of. Moreover, he was thoroughly well trained in
keeping his temper under the severest provocation, so he expressed his
feelings merely by a deprecatory smile.

"We have the poet's authority," he responded, in a softly patient
voice, "for saying that he believed only half."

There was a little rustle of leaves, as if people were looking over
their books, in order to find the passage to which he alluded. Then a
young girl in the front row of chairs, a pretty creature, just on the
edge of womanhood, looked up earnestly, her finger at a line on the
page before her.

"I can't make out what this means," she announced, knitting her girlish
brow,--

     "'Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks
       That used to puzzle people wholesomely.'"

"Of course he can't mean that the Madonna winks; that would be too
irreverent."

There were little murmurs of satisfaction that the question had been
asked, confusing explanations which evidently puzzled some who had not
thought of being confused before; and then another girl, ignoring the
fact that the first difficulty had not been disposed of, propounded
another.

"Isn't the phrase rather bold," she asked, "where he speaks of 'blessed
evil?'"

"Where is that?" some one asked.

"On page 106, in my edition," was the reply; and a couple of moments
were given to finding the place in the various books.

"Oh, I see the line," said an old lady, at last. "It's
one--two--three--five lines from the bottom of the page:"

      "'And that's what all the blessed evil's for.'"

"You don't think," queried the first speaker, appealing personally to
the president, "that Mr. Browning can really have meant that evil is
blessed, do you?"

The president regarded her with an affectionate and fatherly smile.

"I think," he said, with an air of settling everything, "that the
explanation of his meaning is to be found in the line which follows,--

           "'It's use in Time is to environ us.'"

"Heavens!" whispered Fenton to Mrs. Staggchase; "fancy that incarnate
respectability environed by 'blessed evil!'"

"For my part," she returned, in the same tone, "I feel as if I were
visiting a lunatic asylum." "Yes, that line does make it beautifully
clear," observed the voice of Miss Catherine Penwick; "and I think
that's so beautiful about the exposed brain, and lidless eyes, and
disemprisoned heart. The image is so exquisite when he speaks of their
withering up at once."

Fenton made a droll grimace for the benefit of his neighbor, and then
observed with great apparent seriousness,--

"The poem is most remarkable for the intimate knowledge it shows of
human nature. Take a line like:"

       'Men have outgrown the shame of being fools;'

"We can see such striking instances of its truth all about us."

"How can you?" exclaimed Elsie Dimmont, under her breath.

Fenton had not been able wholly to keep out of his tone the mockery
which he intended, and several people looked at him askance.
Fortunately for him, a nice old gentleman who, being rather hard of
hearing, had not caught what was said, now broke in with the inevitable
question, which, sooner or later, was sure to come into every
discussion of the club:

"Isn't this poem to be most satisfactorily understood when it is
regarded as an allegory?"

The members, however, did not take kindly to this suggestion in the
present instance. The question passed unnoticed, while a severe-faced
woman inquired, with an air of vast superiority,--

"I have understood that Bishop Blougram is intended as a portrait of
Cardinal Wiseman; can any one tell me if Gigadibs is also a portrait?"

"Oh, Lord!" muttered Fenton, half audibly. "I can't stand any more of
this."

And at that moment a servant came to tell him that his carriage was
waiting.




IV

                        NOW HE IS FOR THE NUMBERS.
                                       Romeo and Juliet; ii.----4.

When Mr. and Mrs. Fenton were in the carriage, driving from Mrs. Gore's
to Mrs. Frostwinch's, Arthur broke into a pleasant little laugh, as if
a sudden thought had amused him.

"Why in the world, Edith," he asked, "couldn't you let that moon-calf
Candish fight his own battle to-night? He would have tied himself all
up in two moments, with a little judicious help I should have been glad
to give him."

"I knew it," was her answer, "and that is precisely why I wanted to
stop things. What possible amusement it can be to you to get the better
of a man who is so little a match for you in argument, I don't
understand."

"I never begin," Fenton responded. "Of course if he starts it I have to
defend myself."

The stopping of the carriage prevented further discussion, and the pair
were soon involved in the crowd of people struggling toward the hostess
across Mrs. Denton Frostwinch's handsome drawing-room. Mrs. Frostwinch
belonged, beyond the possibility of any cavilling doubt, to the most
exclusive circle of fashionable Boston society. Boston society is a
complex and enigmatical thing, full of anomalies, bounded by wavering
and uncertain lines, governed by no fixed standards, whether of wealth,
birth, or culture, but at times apparently leaning a little toward each
of these three great factors of American social standing.

It is seldom wise to be sure that at any given Boston house whatever,
one will not find a more or less strong dash of democratic flavor in
general company, and there are those who discover in this fact
evidences of an agreeable and lofty republicanism. At Mrs. Frostwinch's
one was less likely than in most houses to encounter socially doubtful
characters, a fact which Arthur Fenton, who was secretly flattered to
be invited here, had once remarked to his wife was an explanation of
the dulness of these entertainments.

For Mrs. Frostwinch's parties were apt to be anything but lively. One
was morally elevated by being able to look on the comely and high-bred
face of Mrs. Bodewin Ranger, but that fine old lady had a sort of
religious scruple against saying anything in particular in company, a
relic of the days of her girlhood, when cleverness was not the fashion
in her sex and when she had been obliged to suppress herself lest she
outshine the high-minded and courtly but dreadfully dull gentleman she
married.

One had here the pleasure of shaking one of the white fingers of Mr.
Plant, the most exquisite _gourmet_ in Boston, whose only daughter had
made herself ridiculous by a romantic marriage with a country farmer.
The Stewart Hubbards, who were the finest and fiercest aristocrats in
town, and whose ancestors had been possessed not only of influence but
of wealth ever since early colonial days, were old and dear friends of
Mrs. Frostwinch and always decorated her parlors on gala nights with
their benign presence. Mr. Peter Calvin, the leader of art fashions,
high priest of Boston conservatism, and author of numerous laboriously
worthless books, seldom failed to diffuse the aroma of his patronizing
personality through the handsome parlors of this hospitable mansion
when there was any reasonable chance of his securing an audience to
admire him; and in general terms the company was what the newspapers
call select and distinguished.

For Mrs. Frostwinch was entitled to a leading place in society upon
whichever of the three great principles it was based. She was descended
from one of the best of American families, while her good-tempered if
somewhat shadowy husband was of lineage quite as unexceptional as her
own. She was possessed of abundant wealth, while in cleverness and
culture she was the peer of any of the brilliant people who frequented
her house. She was moderately pretty, dressed beautifully, was sweet
tempered, and possessed all good gifts and graces except repose and
simplicity. She perhaps worked too hard to keep abreast of the times in
too many currents, and her mental weariness instead of showing itself
by an irritable temper found a less disagreeable outlet in a certain
nervous manner apt to seem artificial to those who did not know her
well. She was a clever, even a brilliant woman, who assembled clever
and brilliant people about her, although as has been intimated, the
result was by no means what might have been expected from such material
and such opportunities. The truth is that there seems to be a fatal
connection between exclusiveness and dulness. The people who assembled
in Mrs. Frostwinch's handsome parlors usually seemed to be
unconsciously laboring under the burden of their own respectability.
They apparently felt that they had fulfilled their whole duty by simply
being there; and while the list of people present at one of Mrs.
Frostwinch's evenings made those who were not there sigh with envy at
thought of the delights they had missed, the reality was far from being
as charming as their fancy.

"I wish somebody would bring Amanda Welsh Sampson here," murmured
Arthur in his wife's ear, as the Fentons made their way toward their
hostess. "It would be too delicious to see how she'd stir things up,
and how shocked the old tabby dowagers would be."

But there were some social topics which were too serious to Edith to be
jested upon.

"Mrs. Sampson!" she returned, with an expression of being really
shocked. "That dreadful creature!"

The rooms were well filled; the clatter of innumerable tongues speaking
English with that resonant dryness which reminds one of nothing else so
much as of the clack of a negro minstrel's clappers indefinitely
reduplicated, rang in the ears with confusing steadiness. An hour was
spent in fragmentary conversations, which somehow were always
interrupted at the instant the interesting point was reached. The men
bestirred themselves with more or less alacrity, making their way about
the room with a conscientious determination to speak to everybody whom
duty called upon them to address, or more selfishly devoting themselves
to finding out and chatting with the pretty girls. Fenton found time
for the latter method while being far too politic to neglect the
former. He was chatting in a corner with Ethel Mott, when Fred Rangely,
whose successful novel had made him vastly the fashion that winter,
joined them.

"When wit and beauty get into a corner together," was Rangely's
salutation, "there is sure to be mischief brewing."

"It isn't at all kind," Miss Mott retorted, "for you to emphasize the
fact that Mr. Fenton has all the wit and I not any."

"It is as kind," Fenton said, "as his touching upon the plainness of my
personal appearance."

"Your mutual modesty in appropriating wit and beauty," Rangely
returned, "goes well toward balancing the account."

"One has to be modest when you appear, Mr. Rangely," Miss Mott
declared, saucily, "simply to keep up the average."

"Come," Fenton said, "this will serve as an excellent beginning for a
quarrel. I will leave you to carry it on by yourselves. I have got too
old for that sort of amusement."

Rangely looked after the artist as the latter took himself off to join
Mrs. Staggchase, who was holding court not far away.

"You may follow if you want to," Ethel said, intercepting the glance.

Rangely laughed, a trifle uneasily.

"I don't want to," he replied, "if you will be good natured."

"Good natured? I like that! I am always good natured. You had better go
than to stay and abuse me. But then, as you have been at Mrs.
Staggchase's all the afternoon, you ought to be pretty well talked out."

The young man turned toward her with an air of mingled surprise and
impatience.

"Who said I had been there?" he demanded.

"It was in the evening papers," she returned, teasingly. "All your
movements are chronicled now you have become a great man."

"Humph! I am glad you were interested in my whereabouts."

"But I wasn't in the least."

"Are you sparring as usual, Miss Mott?" asked Mr. Stewart Hubbard,
joining them. "Good evening, Mr. Rangely."

"Oh, Mr. Hubbard," Miss Mott said, ignoring the question, "I want to
know who is to make the statue of _America_. It is going to stand
opposite our house, so that it will be the first thing I shall see when
I look out of the window in the morning, and naturally I am interested."

"Mr. Herman is making a study, and Mr. Irons has been put up to asking
this new woman for a model. What is her name? The one whose _Galatea_
made a stir last year."

"Mrs. Greyson," Rangely answered. "I used to know her before she went
to Rome."

"Is she clever?" demanded Miss Mott, with a sort of girlish
imperiousness which became her very well. "I can't have a statue put up
unless it is very good indeed."

"She might take Miss Mott as a model," Mr. Hubbard suggested, smiling.

"For America? Oh, I am too little, and altogether too civilized. I'd do
better for a model of Monaco, thank you."

"There is always a good deal of chance about you," Rangely said in her
ear, as Mr. Staggchase spoke to Mr. Hubbard and drew his attention away.

Mr. Staggchase was a thin, wintry man, looking, as Fenton once said,
like the typical Yankee spoiled by civilization. He had always in a
scene of this sort the air of being somewhat out of place, but of
having brought his business with him, so that he was neither idle nor
bored. It was upon business that he now spoke to Hubbard.

"Did you see Lincoln to-day?" he asked. "He has got an ultimatum from
those parties. They will sell all their rights for $70,000."

"For $70,000," repeated Mr. Hubbard, thoughtfully. "We can afford to
give that if we are sure about the road; but I don't know that we are.
If Irons gets hold of any hint of what we are doing he can upset the
whole thing."

"But he won't. There is no fear of that."

A movement in the crowd brought Edith Fenton at this moment to the side
of Mr. Hubbard. She was radiant to-night in her primrose gown, and the
gentleman, with whom she was always a favorite, turned toward her with
evident pleasure.

"Isn't it a jam," she said. "I have ceased to have any control over my
movements."

"That is unkind, when I fancied you allowed yourself to give me the
pleasure of seeing you," returned he with elaborate courtesy. "Let me
take you in to the supper-room."

"Thank you," Edith replied, taking his arm. "I do not object to an ice,
and I want to ask a favor. Haven't you some copying you can give a
_protegee_ of mine? She's a lovely girl, and she really writes very
nicely. I assure you she needs the work, or I wouldn't bother you."

They made their way into the hall before he answered. Then he asked,
with some seriousness,--

"Are you sure she is absolutely to be trusted?"

"Trusted? Why, of course. I'd trust her as absolutely as I would
myself."

"I asked because I do happen to have some copying I want done; but it
is of the most serious importance that it be kept secret. It is the
prospectus of a big business scheme, and if a hint of it got on the air
it would all be ruined."

Edith looked up into his face and smiled.

"Her name," she said, "is Melissa Blake, and you will find her--Or,
wait; what time shall I send her to your office to-morrow?"

Her companion smiled in turn. They had reached the door of the
supper-room, where the clatter of dishes, the popping of champagne
corks, and the rattle of silver were added to the babble of
conversation which filled the whole house. About the tables was going
on a struggle which, however well-bred, was at least sufficiently
vigorous.

"You take a good deal for granted," he said. "However, it will do no
harm for me to see the young woman. She may come at eleven. What shall
I bring you?"




V

                          'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL.
                                            Othello; i.--3.

"Dear John, I will give it up any day you say, and go back to
Feltonville and live on the farm; but you know"--

Melissa Blake broke off and left her chair to take a seat on the corner
of that on which her betrothed, John Stanton, was sitting, a proceeding
which made it necessary for him to put his arm about her trig waist to
support her.

"Don't think I don't understand, dear," she said, nestling up to him,
"how hard it is, and what a long drag it has been, but we should
neither of us ever feel quite satisfied to give it up. We can hold on,
can't we, as long as we are together."

He kissed her fondly, but with a certain air of distraction which
showed how full was his mind of the matter which troubled him. Two
years before, he had come to Boston, and obtained work as a carpenter,
determined to pay the debts left by his dead father, before he would
marry and settle down on the small farm which belonged to his
betrothed, and which, while it might be made to yield a living, could
by no means be looked to for more. For the sake of being near him,
Melissa had given up the school teaching of which she was fond, and
come to the city also, and although she had found the difficulty of
earning the means of support far greater than she had anticipated, she
had still clung to the fortunes of her lover, to whom her steadfastness
and unfailing cheer were of a value such as men realize only when it is
lost.

"I got a letter to-day," John went on, while Melissa stroked his
fingers fondly, "about the meadows. The time for redeeming them is up
this month, and if I try to do it I can't pay anything on the debts
this winter. The truth is "--

Melissa sat up suddenly.

"John!" she exclaimed.

"Why, what--what is the matter?"

She looked at him with wide open eyes, drawing in her under lip beneath
her white teeth, with the air of profound meditation. Then she freed
herself abruptly from his arms and went hastily to the table upon which
were her writing materials. She had been at work copying when her lover
came in, and her papers lay still open, with ink scarcely dry, where
she had stopped to welcome him. She took one sheet up and studied it
eagerly, and then turned toward him with shining eyes, her whole face
aglow.

"Oh, John!" she exclaimed.

He regarded her in puzzled silence. Then in an instant the glad light
faded from her eyes, and her lips lost their smile. An expression of
pain and almost of terror replaced the look of joy. There had suddenly
come to Melissa a sense of what she was doing. In the paper she held
was written the plan of the formation of a syndicate to purchase the
very range of meadows along the river in Feltonville of which those
mentioned by John formed a part. At Mrs. Fenton's direction, Melissa
had gone to see Mr. Hubbard, and had by him been employed to copy these
papers for use at a meeting of the proposed stockholders, which was to
take place in a few days.

"Mrs. Fenton tells me," he had said, "that you are to be trusted. It is
absolutely essential that you do not mention these plans to any living
being. Perfect secrecy is expected from you, and it is only because
Mrs. Fenton is your guarantee that I run the risk of putting them into
your hands."

"I think you can trust me," she had answered; "even if," she had added,
with the ghost of a smile, "there were anybody that I know who would be
at all likely to be interested."

And now the temptation had come to her in a way of which she had never
dreamed. She had gone on with her copying, smiling to herself at the
coincidence which put into the hands of a Feltonville girl this plan
for the metamorphosis of the sleepy old village into a bustling
manufacturing town, but she had not considered that this scheme might
have important bearing upon the fortunes of her lover. She knew that
Stanton's father had owned meadows along the river where the new
factories were to lie, and she knew also that when old Mr. Stanton died
these had been sold with a condition of redemption, but until this
moment she had not connected the facts. She did not understand
business, and had been puzzling her brain as she wrote, to understand
what was meant by the statement that a certain company would sell a
"six months' option at seventy thousand dollars" on a water-power for
two thousand dollars. She did understand now, however, that were John
in possession of the secret of the syndicate's plans, he could redeem
his father's meadows with the money he had saved toward the payment of
the debts which had forced the old man into the bankruptcy that broke
his heart, and once he owned these lands lying in the midst of the
desirable tract, John could command his own price for them. She held in
her hand the secret which would free her lover from the heavy burden of
years, and bring quickly the wedding-day for which they had both waited
and longed so patiently.

The blood bounded so hotly in Melissa's veins as she realized all this,
that she could scarcely breathe; but like a lightning flash a thought
followed which sent the tide surging back to her heart, and left her
cold and faint. She remembered that this knowledge was a trust. That
she had given her word not to betray it. With instant recoil, she
leaped to the thought that advising her lover to redeem these meadows
was not betraying the secret. Like a swift shuttle flew her mind
between argument and defence, between temptation and resistance,
between love and duty.

"Why, what is it, Milly?" John demanded, starting up and coming to her.
"What in the world makes you act so funny? Are you sick? Why don't you
speak?"

It is not easy to express the force of the struggle which went on in
poor Milly's mind. It seemed to her at that moment as if all the hopes
of her life were set against her honesty. The material issues in any
conflict between principle and inclination are of less importance than
the desire which they represent. The few thousand dollars involved in
the redemption of the Stanton meadows was little when compared to the
magnificent scheme of which this would be a mere trifling accident, but
the sum represented all the desires of Milly Blake's life, while over
against it stood all her faith, her honesty, and her religion.

For an instant she wavered, standing as if by some spell suddenly
arrested, with arms half extended. Then she flung down the paper and
threw herself upon her lover's breast with a burst of tears.

"Why, Milly," he said, soothingly. "Milly, Milly."

He was unused to feminine vagaries. His betrothed was of the outwardly
quiet order of women, and an outburst like this was incomprehensible to
him. He could only hold the weeping girl in his strong embrace,
soothing her in helpless masculine fashion, awkward, but exactly what
she needed.

"There, John," she cried at last, giving him a tumultuous hug, and
looking up into his face through her tears, "I always told you you were
engaged to a fool, and this is a new proof of it."

"But what in the world," Stanton asked, looking down into her eyes with
mingled fondness and bewilderment, "is it all about? What is the
matter?"

"It is nothing but my foolishness," she answered, leading him back to
the chair from which he had risen. "I was going to show you something
in a paper I am copying, and just in time I remembered that I had
particularly promised not to show it to anybody."

He regarded her curiously.

"But why," he asked, with a certain deliberateness which somehow made
her uneasy, "did you want to show it to me."

"Because--because--"

She could not equivocate, and her innocent soul had had little training
in the arts of evasion.

"Because what?"

Stanton leaned back in his chair, holding her by the shoulders as she
sat upon his knee, and searching her face with his strong brown eyes.
Milly's glance drooped.

"Don't ask me, John," she responded, putting her hand against his
cheek, wistfully. "Don't you see I couldn't tell you without letting
you know what is in the paper, and that is precisely the thing I
promised not to do."

There are few men in whom a woman's open refusal to yield a point, no
matter how trifling, does not arouse a tyrannous masculine impulse to
compel obedience. Stanton had really no great curiosity about the
secret, whatever it might be, but he instinctively felt that it was
right to demand the telling because his betrothed refused to speak. His
face grew more grave. The hands upon Milly's shoulders unconsciously
tightened their hold. The girl intuitively felt that a struggle was
coming, although even yet the signs were hardly tangible. She grew a
little paler, putting her hand beneath her lover's bearded chin, and
holding his face up so that she could look straight into his fearless,
honest eyes.

"Dear John," she said, wistfully, "you know I never have a secret of my
own that I keep from you in all the world."

"But why," demanded he, "can it do any harm for you to give me some
reason why you ever thought of telling me this; and just at a time,
too, when we were talking of business."

"Because," she answered, thoughtlessly, "it was about business."

A new light came into Stanton's face. His lips subtly changed their
expression.

"It must have been a chance to make some money," he said.

She grew deadly pale, but she did not answer him. He searched her face
an instant, and then he lifted her in his strong arms, rising from the
chair, and seating her in his place. He took a step forward, and
stretched out his hand to take the paper she had thrown upon the table.
With a cry of terror she sprang up and caught his arm.

"John!" she exclaimed. "Oh, for pity's sake, don't look at it."

He turned and regarded her with a more unkind glance than she had ever
seen upon his face.

"Will you tell me?" he asked.

"I can't, I can't!" she answered, half sobbing.

He looked at the paper, and then at his sweetheart. Then with a rough
motion he shook off her fingers from his arm, and without a word went
abruptly from the room.

Milly looked toward the door which had closed after him as if she could
not believe that he had really gone; then she sank down to the floor,
and, leaning her head upon a chair, she sobbed as if her heart were
broken.




VI

                          THE INLY TOUCH OF LOVE.
                                  Two Gentlemen of Verona; ii.--7.

Grant Herman looked across the breakfast table at his Italian wife
thoughtfully a moment, considering, as he often did, what was likely to
be the effect of something he was about to say. In six years of married
life he had not learned how to adapt himself to the narrower mind and
more personal views of his wife. He perhaps fell into the error, so
common to strong natures, of being unable to comprehend that by far the
larger part of the principles which influence broad minds do not for
narrow ones exist at all. He continually tried to discover what process
of reasoning led Ninitta to given results, but he was never able to
appreciate the fact that often it was by no chain of logic whatever
that certain conclusions had been arrived at. A mental habit of
catching up opinions at haphazard, of acting simply from emotions,
however transient, instead of from convictions, was wholly outside his
mental experience, and equally unrealized in his comprehension.

He regarded Ninitta, whose foreign face and beautiful figure looked as
much out of place behind the coffee urn as would the faun of Praxiteles
at an afternoon reception, and a smothered sigh rose to his lips with
the thought how utterly he was at a loss to comprehend her. It happened
in the present case, as it often did, that his failure to understand
arose chiefly from the fact that there was nothing in particular to
understand, and, when he spoke, Ninitta received his remark quite
simply.

"Mrs. Greyson is at home again," he said.

"Mrs. Greyson," she echoed, her dark eyes lighting up with genuine
pleasure. "Oh, that is indeed good. Where is she? Have you seen her?"

There shot through Herman's mind the reflection that since his wife
could not know that he married her out of love not for herself but for
Helen Greyson, it was absurd to have fancied that Ninitta would be
jealously displeased at Helen's return; and the inevitable twinge of
conscience at his wife's trusting ignorance followed.

"I haven't seen her," he answered; "she only arrived yesterday. Mrs.
Fenton told me when I met her at the Paint and Clay Exhibition last
night."

Ninitta folded her hands on the edge of the table, with a gesture of
childish pleasure.

"I wonder what she will say to Nino," she said musingly, her voice
taking a new softness.

A sudden spasm contracted the sculptor's throat. His whole being was
shaken by the return of the woman to whom all the passionate devotion
of his manhood was given, and he never heard that soft, maternal note
with which his wife spoke of his boy without emotion.

"She may say that the young rascal ought to be out of his bed in time
for breakfast," he retorted with affected brusqueness. "He has all the
Italian laziness in him."

He pushed back his chair as he spoke, and rose from the table. He
hesitated a moment, as if some sudden thought absorbed him, then he
went to his wife and kissed her forehead.

"Good-by," he said. "I sha'n't come up for lunch. Don't coddle the boy
too much."

"But when," his wife persisted, as he turned away, "shall I see Mrs.
Greyson? I want to show her the _bambino_."

She always spoke in Italian to her husband and her child, and indeed
her English had never been of the most fluent.

"The _bambino_" the father repeated, smiling. "He will be a _bambino_
to you when he is as big as I am, I suppose. I do not know about Mrs.
Greyson, but I will find out, if I can."

He left the room and went to the chamber where his swarthy boy of five
lay still luxuriously in his crib, although he was fully awake. Nino
gave a soft cry of joy at the sight of his father, and greeted him
rapturously.

"Papa," he asked in Italian, "does the kitty know how much she hurts
when she scratches? she made a long place on my arm, and it hurt like
fire."

"Do you know how much you hurt her to make her do it?" his father
returned, smiling fondly.

"Oh, but she is so soft and so little, of course I don't hurt her,"
Nino answered, with boyish logic. "Anyway, she ought not to hurt me. I
don't like to be hurt."

The foolish, childish words came back to Herman's mind a couple of
hours later, as he waited in the boarding-house parlor for Helen
Greyson. He smiled with bitterness to think how perfectly they
represented his own state of mind. He said to himself that he was tired
of being hurt, and rose at the moment to take in both his hands the
hands of a beautiful woman, to his eyes no older and no less fair than
when he had said good-by to her on his wedding morning, six years
before. He tried to speak, but tears came instead of words; choked and
blinded, he turned away abruptly, struggling to regain his composure.

The meeting after long years of those who have loved and been
separated, may, for the moment, carry them back to the time of their
parting so completely that all that lies between seems annihilated. The
old emotion reasserts itself so strongly, the past lives again so
vividly, that there seems to have been no break in feeling, and they
stand in relation to one another as if the parting were yet to come.
When they had been together a little, the time which lay between them
would once more become a reality; but at the first touch of their hands
those bitter days of loneliness ceased to exist, and they seemed to
stand together again, as when they were saying good-by six years before.

With her old time self-control, it was Helen who spoke first, and her
words recalled him from the past and its passion, to the present and
its duty.

"Tell me how Ninitta is," she said, "and the boy. I do so want to see
that wonderful boy."

The sculptor commanded his voice by a powerful effort.

"They are both well," he answered. "The boy is a wonderful little
fellow, although perhaps I am not an unprejudiced judge. Ninitta is
crazy to show him to you. She has pretty nearly effaced herself since
he came, and only lives for his benefit."

"She is a happy woman," Helen said, assuming that air of cheerfulness
which is one of the first accomplishments that women are forced by life
to learn. "I should know she would be devoted to her children."

There were a few moments of silence. Both cast down their eyes, and
then each raised them to study whatever changes time might have made in
the years that lay between them. Helen's heart was beating painfully,
but she was determined not to lose her self-control. She knew of old
how completely she could rule the mood of her companion, and she felt
that upon her calmness depended his. She had been schooling herself for
this interview from the moment she began to consider whether she might
return to America, and she was therefore less unprepared than was
Herman for the trying situation in which she now found herself; yet it
required all her strength of mind and of will not to give way to the
tide of love and emotion which surged within her breast.

Herman fixed his eyes resolutely on an ungainly group in pinkish clay
which represented an American commercial sculptor's idea of Romeo and
Juliet at the moment when the Nurse separates them with a message from
Lady Capulet. With artistic instinct he noted the stupidity of the
composition, the vulgarity of the lines, the cheap ugliness of the
group. In that singular abstraction which comes so frequently in
moments of high emotion, he let his glance wander to the pictures on
the wall, the enormities in embroidery which adorned the chair backs,
the garish hues of the rug lying before the open grate. Then it
occurred to him, with a vague sense of amusement, how great was the
incongruity between such a setting as this vulgar boarding-house
reception-room, and the woman before him. The idea brought to his mind
the contrast between the life to which Helen had come, and the life at
Rome, artistic, rich, and full of possibilities, which she had left.

The thought of Rome recalled instantly the old days there, almost a
score of years ago, when he had first known Ninitta. So vivid were the
memories which awakened, that he seemed to see again the Roman studio,
the fat old aunt, voluble and sharp eyed, who always accompanied her
niece when the girl posed; and most clearly of all did his inner vision
perceive the fresh, silent maiden whose exquisite figure was at once
the admiration and the despair of all the young artists in Rome. He
remembered how Hoffmeir had discovered the girl drawing water from an
old broken fountain he had gone out to sketch; and the difficulties
that had to be overcome before she could be persuaded to pose. The
Capri maidens are brought up to be averse to posing, and Ninitta had
not long enough breathed the air of Rome to have overcome the
prejudices of her youth. He reflected, with a bitterness rendered vague
by a certain strange impersonality of his mood, how different would
have been his life had Hoffmeir been unable to overcome the girl's
scruples. He wondered whether the fat old aunt, and the greasy,
good-natured little priest with whom she had taken counsel, would have
urged Ninitta to take up the life of a model, could they have foreseen
all the results to which this course was to lead in the end.

Then, with a sudden stinging consciousness, the thought came of all
that her decision had meant to his life. The old question whether he
had done right in marrying Ninitta forced itself upon him as if it were
some enemy springing up from ambush. He raised his eyes, and his glance
met that of Mrs. Greyson.

"It is no use, Helen," he broke out, impulsively, "we must talk
frankly. It is idle to suppose that we can go on in an artificial
pretence that we have nothing to say."

She put up her hand appealingly.

"Only do not drive me away again," she pleaded. "Don't say things that
I have no right to hear!"

A dark red stained Herman's cheek, and the tears came into his eyes.

"No," he returned. "If any one is to be driven away it shall not be
you."

"But why need we trouble the things that are past," she went on, with
wistful eagerness. "Why cannot we accept it all in silence, and be
friends."

He looked at her with a passionate, penetrating glance. She felt a wild
and foolish longing to fling herself upon the floor and embrace his
feet; but the old Puritan training, the resistant fibre inherited from
sturdy ancestors, still did not fail her.

"You have your wife," she hurried on, "your home, your boy. That is
enough. That"--

"That is not enough," he interrupted, with an emphasis, which seemed
stern. "Helen, I shall not talk love to you. I am another woman's
husband. I made a ghastly mistake when I married Ninitta, but it is
done. She loves me; she is happy, and I love"--his voice faltered into
a wonderful softness more eloquent than words,--"I love Nino."

She would not let him go on. She sprang up and ran to him, taking his
hands in hers with a touch that made his blood rush tingling through
his veins.

"Yes," she cried, "you love Nino! Think of that! Think most of all that
whatever you are, good or bad, you are for your son, for Nino! Come!
There is safety for us in that. We will go and talk with Nino between
us. Then we shall say nothing of which we can be ashamed or regret."

There came to Herman a vision of his boy clasped in Helen's arms which
made him feel as if suffocating with the excess of his emotion. He rose
blindly, only half conscious of what he was doing; and without giving
time for objections Helen hastened to dress herself for the street, and
in a few moments they were walking together toward the sculptor's house.

To Herman's surprise, his wife was absent when he reached home. The
maid did not know where she had gone. She often went out in the morning
without saying where she was going, and of course the servant did not
ask.

"That is odd," Herman said; "but she has probably gone shopping or
something of the sort. It is too bad, she had so set her heart on
showing you the _bambino_, as she calls him, herself."

But it proved that Nino also was out, having been taken for a walk; and
so Helen, who returned home at once, saw neither of them.




VII

                          THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME.
                                     Measure for Measure; iv.--4.

Ninitta had not gone shopping. She was posing for Arthur Fenton, at his
studio. Even the presence of her boy could not wholly make up to the
Italian for the loss of all the old interest and excitement of her life
as a model. The boy was with his nurse or at the kindergarten for long
hours during which Ninitta, who had few of the resources with which an
educated woman would have filled her time, mingled longings for her old
life with blissful gloatings over Nino's beauty and cleverness. Her
husband was always kind, but since his marriage delicacy of sentiment
had made him shrink from having his wife pose even for himself, while
naturally no thought of her doing so for another would have been
entertained for a moment.

Ninitta had been so long in the life, to pose had been so large a part
of her very existence, that she hardly knew how to do without the
old-time flavor. Mrs. Fenton had perceived something of this without at
all appreciating the strength of the feeling of the sculptor's wife,
and she had at one time tried to interest Ninitta in what might perhaps
be called missionary work among the models of Boston, a class of whose
calling Edith held views which her husband was not wholly wrong in
calling absurdly narrow. She was met at once by the difficulty that it
was impossible to make Ninitta see that missionary work was needed
among the models, and the effort resulted in nothing except to convince
Mrs. Fenton that she could do little with the Italian.

Just how Arthur Fenton had persuaded her to pose without her husband's
knowledge, Ninitta could not have told; and the artist himself would
have assured any investigator, even that speculative spirit which held
the place left vacant by the dismissal of his conscience, that he had
never deliberately tried to entice her. He had talked to her of the
picture he was painting for a national competitive exhibition, it is
true, and dwelt upon the difficulty of procuring a proper model; he had
met her on the street one day and taken her into his studio to see it;
he had regretted that it was impossible to ask her; and of a hundred
apparently blameless and trivial things, the result was that this
morning, while Helen and Herman were walking across the Common to find
her, Ninitta was lying amid a heap of gorgeous stuffs and cushions in
Fenton's studio, while he painted and talked after his fashion.

It is as impossible to trace the beginnings of any chain of events as
it is to find the mystery of the growth of a seed. Whatever Arthur
Fenton's faults, he certainly believed himself to be one who could not
betray a friend. The ideal which he vaguely called honor, and which
served him as that ultimate ethical standard which in one shape or
another is necessary to every human being, forbade his taking advantage
of any one whose friendship he admitted. His instinct of
self-indulgence had, however, made him so expert a casuist that he was
able to silence all inner misgivings by arguing that the demands of art
were above all other laws. He reasoned that Ninitta's posing could do
no possible harm to Grant Herman, while the success of his _Fatima_
depended upon it; and since art was his religion, he came at last to
feel as if he were nobly sacrificing his prejudices to his highest
convictions in violating for the sake of art his principle which
forbade his deceiving her husband.

Least of all, in asking the Italian to pose, had Fenton been actuated
by any intention of tempting her to evil. He needed a model for the
_Fatima_ as he needed his canvas and brushes; and his satisfaction at
having induced Ninitta to serve his purpose was in kind much the same
as his pleasure that his brushes and canvas were exactly what he wanted.

But it is always difficult to tell to what an action may lead; and most
of all is it hard to foresee the consequences which will follow from
the violation of principle. Perhaps the air of secrecy with which
Ninitta found it necessary to invest her coming, had an intoxicating
effect upon the artist; perhaps it was simply that his persistent
egotism moved him to test his power. Men often feel the keenest
curiosity in regard to the extent of their ability to commit crimes
into which they have yet not the remotest intention of being betrayed;
and especially is this true in their relations to women. Men of a
certain vanity are always eager to discover how great an influence for
evil they could exercise over women, even when they have not the nerve
or the wickedness to exert it. A man must be morally great to be above
finding pleasure in the belief that he could be a Don Juan if he chose;
and moral grandeur was not for Arthur Fenton.

From whatever cause, the fact was, that as he painted this morning and
reflected, with a complacency of which he was too keen an analyst not
to know he should have been ashamed, how he had secured the model he
desired despite her husband, the speculation came into his mind how far
he could push his influence over Ninitta. At first a mere impersonal
idea, the thought was instantly, by his habit of mental definiteness,
realized so clearly that his cheek flushed, partly, it is to be said to
his credit, with genuine shame. He looked at the beautiful model, and
turned away his eyes. Then, hardly conscious of what he was doing, he
laid down his palette, and took a step forward.

At that instant the studio bell rang sharply. He started with so
terrible a sense of being discovered in a crime, that his jaw trembled
and his knees almost failed under him.

Then instantly he recovered his self-possession, although his heart was
beating painfully, and looked up at the clock.

"Heavens!" he exclaimed. "I had no idea how late it was! It is that
beastly Irons for his last sitting. I'd forgotten all about him."

Ninitta rose from her position and hurried toward the screen behind
which she dressed.

"Don't let him in," she said. "He knows me."

The bell rang again, as they stood looking at each other.

"I will try to send him off," Arthur said. "Dress as quickly as you
can."

She retreated behind the screen while he went to the door and unlocked
it. Instantly Irons stepped inside.

"You must excuse me," the artist said. "I'll be ready for you in
fifteen minutes. I have a model here, and got to painting so busily
that I forgot the time. Come back in a quarter of an hour."

"Oh, I don't mind," Irons said, advancing into the studio. "I'll look
round until you are ready."

"But I never admit sitters when I have a model," Fenton protested,
standing before him. "I shall have to ask you to go."

The other stopped and looked at the artist with suspicion in his eyes.

"What a fuss you make," he commented coarsely. "No intrigue, I suppose?"

A hot flush sprang into Fenton's face. He tried to assume a haughty
air, but the consciousness of being entrapped in a misdemeanor had not
left him. The need of getting Mrs. Herman out of the studio unseen
would have been awkward at any time; when to this was added the sense
of guilt and shame which was begotten of the base impulse to which he
had almost yielded, the situation became for him painfully embarrassing.

"I am not in the habit of carrying on intrigues with my models," he
replied, haughtily. "Or," he added, regaining self-possession, "of
discussing my affairs with others."

Mr. Irons laughed in a significant way which made Arthur long to kill
him on the spot, and, stepping past Fenton, he walked further into the
studio.

"Don't put on airs with me," he said. "Your looks give you away. You've
been up to some mischief."

He paused an instant before the unfinished picture on the easel, then
when the artist coolly took the canvas and placed it with its face to
the wall, he turned with deliberate rudeness and craned his neck so
that he could look behind the screen. A leering smile came over his
coarse features. Without a word he went over to the most distant corner
of the studio, where he apparently became absorbed in studying a sketch
hanging on the wall.

There was a dead silence of some moments. Fenton was literally
speechless with rage, yet, too, his quick wit was busy devising some
way of escape from the unpleasant predicament in which he found
himself. He did not speak, nor did Mr. Irons turn until Ninitta had
completed her toilet and slipped hastily out. As the door closed after
her, Irons wheeled about and confronted the indignant artist with a
smile of triumphant glee.

"Sly dog!" he said.

Fenton advanced a step toward his tormentor with his clenched hand half
raised as if he would strike.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Do you call yourself a gentleman?"

"Oh, come, now," the other responded, with an easy wave of the hand,
"no heroics, if you please. They won't go down with me. She's a
devilish fine woman, and I don't blame you."

"I tell you," began Fenton, "you"--

"Oh, of course, of course. I know all that. But sit down while I say
something to you."

As if under the constraining influence of a nightmare, Fenton obeyed
when Mr. Irons, having seated himself in an easy chair, waved him into
another with a commanding gesture. The artist felt himself to have lost
his place as the stronger of the two, of which he had hitherto been
proudly conscious, and he sat angrily gnawing his lip while his
tormentor regarded him with smiling malice.

"Do you remember telling me one day," Irons asked, fixing his narrow
eyes on the other's disturbed face, "that you could make your sitters
tell you things?"

Fenton stared at his questioner in angry silence, but did not answer.

"Now, if," continued Irons; "I say if, you observe,--if Stewart Hubbard
should chance to tell you where the new syndicate mean to locate their
mills, it might be a mighty good thing for you."

Still Fenton said nothing, but his regard became each moment more
wrathful.

"Of course," the sitter continued, with an assumption of airy lightness
which grated on every nerve of the hearer, "you are not in a position
to turn such knowledge to advantage; but I am, and I am always inclined
to help a bright fellow like you when there is a good chance. So if you
should come to me and say that the mills are to be so and so, I'd do
all I could to make things pleasant for you. I happen to belong to a
syndicate myself that has bought a mill privilege at Wachusett, and it
is important to us to have the new railroad go our way, and we'd like
to know how far the other fellows' plans are dangerous to our
interests, don't you see."

Still Fenton did not speak. He had grown very pale, and his lips were
set firmly together. His hands clasped the arms of his chair so
strongly that the blood had settled under the middle of the nails. Mr.
Irons looked at him with narrow, piercing eyes. He paused a moment and
then went on.

"You are perfectly capable of keeping a secret," he said in a hard,
deliberate tone, "so I don't in the least mind telling you what we
should do. Your sitters always tell you things, you know; and you are
to be trusted. The case is here; our syndicate stand in with the
railroad corporation and ask the Railroad Commissioners for a
certificate of exigency, to authorize laying the new branch out through
Wachusett. Now we have information that Staggchase and Stewart Hubbard
and that set, are planning to spring a petition asking for special
legislation locating the road somewhere else. Of course, they'll have
to get it in under a suspension of the rules, but they can work that
easily enough. The Commissioners will have to hold on, then, until the
Legislature finishes with that petition."

He paused again, with an air which convinced the artist that he was
going on with this elaborate explanation to cover his awkwardness.
Fenton did not speak, and his visitor continued,--

"The Commissioners might settle the matter now, but they won't, and
we've got to have the fight, I suppose; so, of course, you can see how
it is for our interest to know just what we are fighting."

He rose as he spoke, and with an air of deliberation, buttoned his
overcoat, which he had not removed.

"I don't think you feel like painting this morning," he observed, "and
I'll come in again. I'll leave you to think over what I have said."

Fenton rose also, regarding him with fierce, level eyes.

"And suppose," he said, "that I call you a damned scoundrel, and forbid
you ever to set foot in my studio again?"

The other laughed, with the easy assurance of a bully who feels himself
secure.

"Oh, you won't," he replied. "If you did,--well, I am on the committee
for the new statue, and have to see Herman now and then you know, and I
should, perhaps, ask him why his wife poses for you. Good morning."

And with a chuckling laugh, he took himself out.




VIII

                             A NECESSARY EVIL.
                                      Julius Caesar; ii.--2.

"Oh, I assure you that my temper has been such for a week that my
family have threatened to have me sent to a nervine asylum," Ethel Mott
observed to Fred Rangely, who was calling on her, ostensibly to inquire
after her health, some trifling indisposition having kept her housed
for a few days. "What with my cold and my vexation at losing things I
wanted to go to, I have been positively unendurable."

"That's your way of looking at it," he responded; "but I hardly fancy
that anybody else found it out. But what has there been to lose, except
the Throgmorton ball?"

"Well, first there was the concert Saturday night."

"Do you care so much about the Symphonies, then? I thought you were the
one girl in Boston who doesn't pretend to care for music."

"Oh, but we have lovely seats this year, and the nicest people all
about us, you know. Thayer Kent and his mother are directly behind us."

"Where he can lean forward and talk to you," interrupted Rangely,
jealously.

"Yes," she said, nodding with a gleam of mischievous laughter in her
dark eyes. "And I do have a nice time at the Symphonies. Besides, I
don't in the least object to the music, you know."

Fred fixed his gaze on a large old-fashioned oil painting on the
opposite wall, a copy from some of the innumerable pastorals which have
been made in imitation of Nicholas Poussin. It was of no particular
value, but it was surrounded by a beautiful carved Venetian frame, and
was one of those things which confer an air of distinction upon a
Boston parlor, because they are plainly the art purchases of a bygone
generation.

"But you have, of course, had no end of girls running in to see you,"
he observed.

"Yes; but, then, that didn't make up for the Throgmorton ball. You ask
what else there was to lose; I should think that was enough. Why, Janet
Graham says she never had such a lovely time in her life."

"Is Miss Graham engaged to Fred Gore?" Rangely asked.

Ethel's gesture of dissent showed how little she would have approved of
such a consummation.

"No, indeed," she returned. "Fred Gore only wants Janet's money,
anyway; and she can't abide him, any more than I can."

"Then, you have the correct horror of a marriage for money."

"I think a girl is a fool to let a man marry her for her money. She'd
much better give him her fortune and keep herself back. Then she'd at
least save something. I don't approve of people's marrying for money
anyway; although, of course," she added, with a twinkle in her eye, "I
think it is wicked to marry without it."

There shot through Rangely's mind the reflection that Thayer Kent had
not an over-abundance of this world's goods; and to this followed the
less pleasant thought that he was himself in the same predicament.

"But Jack Gerrish hasn't anything," he said, aloud.

"But Janet has enough, so she can marry anybody she wants to," was the
reply; "and Jack Gerrish is too perfectly lovely for anything."

The visitor laughed, but he was evidently not at his ease. He was
always uncomfortably conscious that Ethel had not the slightest
possible scruple against laughing at him, and he was not a little
afraid of her well-known propensity to tease. Ethel regarded him with
secret amusement. A woman is seldom displeased at seeing a man
disconcerted by her presence, even when she pities him and would fain
put him at his ease. It is a tribute to her powers too genuine to be
disputed, and while she may labor to overcome the man's feeling, her
vanity cannot but be gratified that he has it.

"Did you ever know anything like the way Elsie Dimmont is going on with
Dr. Wilson?" Ethel said, presently, by way of continuing the
conversation. "I can't see what she finds to like in him. He's as
coarse as Fred Gore, only, of course, he's cleverer, and he isn't
dissipated."

"Wilson isn't a half bad fellow," Rangely replied, rather
patronizingly. "Though, of course, I can understand that you wouldn't
care for that kind of a man."

"Am I so particular, then?"

"Yes, I think you are."

"Thank you for nothing."

"Oh, I meant to be complimentary, I assure you. Isn't it a compliment
to be thought particular in your tastes?"

"That depends upon how you are told. Your manner was not at all
calculated to flatter me. It said too plainly that you thought me
captious."

"But I don't."

"Of course you wouldn't own it," Ethel retorted, playing with a
tortoise-shell paper-cutter she had picked up from the table by which
she sat; "but your manner was not to be mistaken. It betrayed you in
spite of yourself."

Rangely knew how foolish he was to be affected by light banter like
this, but for his life he could not have helped it. The fact that Ethel
knew how easily she could tease him lent a tantalizing sparkle to her
eyes. She smiled mockingly as he vainly tried to keep the flush from
rising in his cheeks.

"You are singularly fond of teasing," he observed, in a manner he
endeavored to make cool and philosophical.

"Now you are calling me singular as well as captious."

"The girl who is singular," returned he, in an endeavor to turn the
talk by means of an epigram which only made matters worse for him, "the
girl who is singular runs great risk of never becoming plural."

Ethel laughed merrily, her glee arising chiefly from a sense of the
chance he was giving her to work up one of those playful mock quarrels
which amused her and so thoroughly teased her admirer.

"Upon my word, Mr. Rangely," she said, assuming an air of indignant
surprise, "is it your idea of making yourself agreeable to tell an
unfortunate girl that she is destined to be an old maid? I could stand
being one well enough, but to be told that I've got to be is by no
means pleasant."

He knew she was playing with him, but he could not on that account meet
her on her own ground. He endeavored to protest.

"You are trying to make me quarrel."

"Make you quarrel?" she echoed. "I like that! Of course, though, to be
so full of faults that you can't help abusing me is one way of making
you quarrel."

"How you do twist things around!" exclaimed he, beginning to be
thoroughly vexed.

She pursed up her lips and regarded him with an expression more
aggravating than words could have been. She had been for several days
deprived of the pleasure of teasing anybody, and her delight in vexing
Rangely made his presence a temptation which she was seldom able to
resist. She was unrestrained by any regard for the young author which
should make her especially concerned how seriously she offended him;
and when she now changed the conversation abruptly, it was with a
forbearing air which was anything but soothing to his nerves.

"Don't you think," she asked, "that Mr. Berry was absurd in the way he
acted about playing at Mrs. West's?"

"No, I can't say that I do," the caller retorted savagely. "Mrs. West
gives out that she is going to give the neglected native musicians at
last a chance to be heard, and then she invites them to play their
compositions in her parlor. Westbrooke Berry isn't the man to be
patronized in any such way. Just think of her having the cheek to give
to a man whose work has been brought out in Berlin an invitation which
is equivalent to saying that he can't get a public hearing, but she'll
help him out by asking her guests to listen to him. Heavens! Mrs. West
is a perfectly incredible woman."

Ethel smiled sweetly. In her secret heart she agreed with him; but it
did not suit her mood to show that she did so.

"You seem bound to take the opposite view of everything to-day," she
said, in tones as sweet as her smile; "or perhaps it is only that my
temper has been ruined by my cold. I told you it had been bad."

He rose abruptly.

"If everything is to put us more at odds," he said, rather stiffly,
"the sooner I withdraw, the better. I am sorry I have fallen under your
displeasure; it is generally my ill luck to annoy you."

And in a few moments he was going down the street in a frame of mind
not unusual to him after a call upon Miss Mott, from whose house he was
apt to come away so ruffled and irritated that nothing short of a
counteracting feminine influence could restore his self-complacency.

This office of comforter usually fell to the lot of Mrs. Frederick
Staggchase. Indeed, his fondness for this lady was so marked as to give
rise to some question among his intimates whether he were not more
attached to her than to the avowed object of his affection.

An hour after he had made his precipitate retreat from Ethel's, he
found himself sitting in the library at Mrs. Staggchase's, with his
hostess comfortably enthroned in a great chair of carved oak on the
opposite side of the fire. The conversation had somehow turned upon
marriage. There is always a certain fascination, a piquant if faint
sense of being upon the borderland of the forbidden, which makes such a
discussion attractive to a man and woman who are playing at making love
when marriage stands between them.

"But, of course," Rangely had said, "two married people can't live at
peace when one of them is in love with somebody else."

Mrs. Staggchase clasped with her slender hand the ball at the end of
the carved arm of the chair in which she was sitting, looking absently
at the rings which adorned her fingers. She possessed to perfection the
art of being serious, and the air with which she now spoke was
admirably calculated to imply a deep interest in the subject under
discussion. "I do not understand," she observed, thoughtfully, "why a
man and woman need quarrel because they happen to be married to each
other, when they had rather be married to somebody else. It wouldn't be
considered good business policy to pull against a partner because one
might do better with some other arrangement; and it does seem as if
people might be as sensible about their marriage relations as in their
business."

Her companion glanced at her, and then quickly resumed his intent
regard of the fire beside which he sat.

"But people are so unreasonable," he remarked.

Mrs. Staggchase assented, with a characteristic bend of the head, and a
movement of her flexible neck. She looked up with a smile.

"I think Fred and I are a model couple," she said. "Fred came into my
room this noon, just as I had finished my morning letters.
'Good-morning,' he said, 'I hope you weren't
frightened.'--'Frightened?' I said, 'what at?'--'Do you mean to say you
didn't know I was out all night?'--'I hadn't an idea of it,' said I.
He'd been playing cards at the club all night, and had just come in. He
says that the next time, he shan't take the trouble to expose himself."

Rangely laughed in a somewhat perfunctory way.

"But if that is a model fashion of living, what becomes of the old
notions of kindred souls, and all that sort of thing?" he asked. "I
shouldn't want my wife"--

He paused, rather awkwardly, and Mrs. Staggchase took up the sentence
with a smile of amusement, in which there was no trace of annoyance.
She was too well aware how completely she was mistress of the
situation, in dealing with Rangely, to be either vexed or embarrassed
in talking with him.

"To be as frank with another man as I am with you?" she finished for
him. "Oh, very likely not. You have all the masculine jealousy which is
aroused in an instant by the idea that a woman should be at liberty to
like more than one man. You are half a century behind us. Marriage as
you conceive it is the old-fashioned article, for the use of families
in narrow circumstances intellectually as well as pecuniarily. Love in
a cottage is necessary, because people under those conditions can't
live unless they are extravagantly devoted to each other. Marriage with
us is just what it ought to be, an arrangement of mutual convenience.
Fred and I suit each other perfectly, and are sufficiently fond of each
other; but there are sides of his nature to which I do not answer, and
of mine that he does not touch. He finds somebody who does; I find
somebody on my part. You, for instance."

Rangely leaned back in his chair, and clasped his plump white fingers,
regarding Mrs. Staggchase with a smile of amusement and admiration.

"You are so awfully clever," was his response, "that you could really
never be uncommonly fond of anybody. You'd analyze the whole business
too closely."

She laughed slightly, and went on with what she was saying, without
heeding his interruption.

"Fred and I make good backgrounds for each other, and, after all, that
is what is required. You answer to my need of companionship in another
direction, and since that side of my nature is unintelligible to my
husband, he is not defrauded, while I should be if I starved my desire
for such friendship, to please an idea like yours, that a wife should
find her all in her husband. Fortunately, Mr. Staggchase is a broader
man than you are."

"Thank you," Rangely retorted, with a faint tinge of annoyance visible,
despite his air of jocularity. "Arthur Fenton says a broad man is one
who can appreciate his own wife. If Mr. Staggchase does that"--

"Come," interrupted Mrs. Staggchase, smiling with the air of one who
has had quite enough of the topic, "don't you think the subject is
getting to be unfortunately personal? I have a favor to ask of you."

Rangely was too well aware of the uselessness of trying to direct the
conversation to make any attempt to continue the talk, which, moreover,
had taken a turn not at all to his liking. He settled himself in his
chair, in an attitude of easy attention.

"I am always delighted to do you a favor," he said. "It isn't often I
get a chance."

The relations between these two were not easy to understand, unless one
accepted the simplest possible theory of their friendship. It was, on
the part of Mrs. Staggchase, only one of a succession of platonic
intimacies with which her married life had been enriched. She found it
necessary to her enjoyment that some man should be her devoted admirer,
always quite outside the bounds of any possible love-making, albeit
often enough she permitted matters to go to the exciting verge of a
flirtation which might merit a name somewhat warmer than friendship.
She was a brilliant and clever woman who allowed herself the luxury of
gratifying her vanity by encouraging the ardent attentions of some man,
which, if they ever became too pressing, she knew how to check, or, if
necessary, to stop altogether. She was fond of talking, and she frankly
avowed her conviction that women were not worth talking to. She liked
an appreciative masculine listener with whom she could converse, now in
a strain of bewildering frankness, now in a purely impersonal and
intellectual vein, and who, however he might at times delude himself by
misconstruing her confidences into expressions of personal regard, was
clever enough to comprehend the little corrective hints by which, when
necessary, she chose to undeceive him.

Analyzed to its last elements, her feeling, it must be confessed, was
pretty nearly pure selfishness; but she was able, without effort, and
by half-unconscious art, to throw over it the air of being
disinterested friendship. Such a nature is essentially false, but
chiefly in that it gives to a passing mood the appearance of a
permanent sentiment, and, while seeking only self-gratification, seems
actuated by genuine desire to give pleasure to another.

The attitude of Rangely toward Mrs. Staggchase was, perhaps, no more
unselfish, and was certainly no more noble, but his sentiment was at
least more genuine. He was flattered by her preference, and he was
bewildered by her cleverness. He liked to believe himself capable of
interesting her, and without in the most remote degree desiring or
anticipating an intrigue, he was ready to go as far as she would allow
in his devotion. He was constantly tormented by a vague phantom of
conquest, which danced with will-o'-the-wisp fantasy before him, and
from day to day he endeavored to discover how deeply in love she was
willing he should fall. He was really fond of her, a fact that did not
prevent his entertaining a half-hearted passion for Ethel Mott, the
result of this mixture of emotion being that he was the slave, albeit
with a difference, of either lady with whom he chanced to be. That he
was the plaything of Mrs. Staggchase's fancy he was far from realizing,
although from the nature of things he naturally regarded his fondness
for Miss Mott as the permanent factor in the case. He even felt a
certain compunction for the regret he supposed Mrs. Staggchase would
feel when he should decide formally to transfer his allegiance to her
rival; a misgiving he might have spared himself had he been wise enough
to appreciate the situation in all its bearings. The lady understood
perfectly how matters stood, but Rangely was her junior, and, besides,
no man in such a case ever comprehends that he is being played with.

"It is in regard to the statue of _America_ that I want you to be
useful," Mrs. Staggchase said, replying to her visitor's proffer of
service with a smile. "Do you know what the chances are in regard to
the choice of a sculptor?"

"Why, I suppose Grant Herman will have the commission."

"But I think not."

"You think not? Who will then?"

"That is just it. Mr. Hubbard has been backing Mr. Herman; and Mr.
Irons, who never will agree to anything that Mr. Hubbard wants, is
putting up the claims of this new woman, just to be contrary."

"What new woman? Mrs. Greyson?"

"Yes. Mrs. Frostwinch told me all about it yesterday. Now there is a
young man that we are interested in"--

"Who is 'we'?" interrupted Rangely.

"Oh, Mrs. Frostwinch, and Mrs. Bodewin Ranger, and a number of us."

"But whom have you got on the committee?"

"Mr. Calvin; and don't you see that Mr. Calvin's name in a matter of
art is worth a dozen of the other two."

"Yes," Rangely assented, rather doubtfully, "in the matter of giving
commissions it certainly is."

Mrs. Staggchase smiled indulgently, playing with the ring in which
blazed a splendid ruby, and which she was putting on and off her finger.

"If you think," she said, "that you are going to entrap me into a
discussion of the merits of art and Philistinism, you are mistaken. I
told you long ago that I was a Philistine of the Philistines,
deliberately and avowedly. The true artistic soul which you delight to
call Pagan is only the servant of Philistinism, and I own that I prefer
to stand with the ruling party. As, indeed," she added, with a
mischievous gleam in her eye, "do many who will not confess it."

Rangely flushed. The thrust too closely resembled reproaches which in
his more sensitive moments he received at the hand of his own inner
consciousness, so to speak, not to make him wince. He felt himself,
besides, becoming involved in a painful position. He had long been the
intimate friend of Grant Herman, and felt that the sculptor had a right
to expect whatever aid he could give him in a matter like this.

"But who," he asked, "is your _protege?_"

"His name," Mrs. Staggchase replied, "is Orin Stanton. He is a fellow
of the greatest talent, and he has worked his way"--

Rangely put up his hand in a gesture of impatience.

"I know the fellow," he said. "He made a thing he called _Hop Scotch_,
of which Fenton said the title was far too modest, since he'd not only
scotched the subject but killed it."

"One never knew Mr. Fenton to waste the chance of saying a good thing
simply for the sake of justice," Mrs. Staggchase observed, with
unabated good humor. "But you are to help us in the _Daily Observer_,
and there is to be no discussion about it. Since you know you are too
good-natured not to oblige me in the end, why should you not do it
gracefully and get the credit of being willing."

And then, being a wise woman, she disregarded Rangely's muttered
remonstrance and turned the conversation into a new channel.




IX

                            THIS IS NOT A BOON.
                                         Othello; iii.--3.

If the old-time opinion that a woman whose name is a jest with men has
lost her claims to respect, Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson might be supposed
to have little ground for the inner anger she felt at the scantness of
the courtesy with which she was treated by Mr. Irons. That gentleman
was calling upon her in her tiny suite of rooms at the top of one of
those apartment hotels which stand upon the debatable ground between
the select regions of Back Bay and the scorned precincts of the South
End, and he was apparently as much at home as if the sofa upon which he
lounged were in his own dwelling.

The apartment of Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson gave to the experienced eye
evidences of a pathetic struggle to make scanty resources furnish at
least an appearance of luxury. The walls were adorned with amateur
china painting in the shape of dreadful placques and plates in livid
hues; there was abundance of embroidery that should have been
impossible, in garish tints and uneven stitches; much shift had been
made to produce an imposing appearance by means of cheap Japanese fans
and the inexpensive wares of which the potteries at Kioto, corrupted by
foreign influence, turn out such vast quantities for the foreign
market. Against the wall stood an upright piano--if a piano could be
called upright which habitually destroyed the peace of the entire
neighborhood--and over it was placed a scarf upon which apparently some
boarding-school miss had taken her first lesson in painting wild
flowers.

The room was small, and so well filled with furniture that there seemed
little space for the long limbs of Alfred Irons, who, however, had
contrived to make himself comfortable by the aid of various cushions
covered with bright-colored sateens. He had lighted a cigar without
thinking it necessary to ask leave, and had even made himself more easy
by putting one leg across a low chair.

Mrs. Sampson was fully aware that in her struggles with life she had
sometimes provoked laughter, often disapproval, and now and then given
rise to positive scandal, yet she was still accustomed to at least a
fair semblance of respect from the men who came to see her; women, it
is to be noted, being not often seen within her walls, since those who
were willing to come she did not care to receive, and those whom she
invited seldom set her name down on their calling lists. Among
themselves, at the clubs or elsewhere, the men speculated more or less
coarsely and unfeelingly upon the foundations of the numerous scandals
which had from time to time blossomed like brilliant and life-sapping
parasites upon the tree of Mrs. Sampson's reputation. Her name, either
spoken boldly or too broadly hinted at to be misunderstood, adorned
many a racy tale told in smoking-rooms after good dinners, or when the
hours had grown small in more senses than one; and her career was made
to point more than one moral drawn for the benefit of the sisters and
daughters of the men who joked and sneered concerning her.

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson was born of a good old Boston family, to
which she clung with a desperate clutch which her relatives ignored so
far as with dignity they were able. Her father had been a lawyer of
reputation, and his portrait was still displayed prominently in the
daughter's parlor, a circumstance which had given Chauncy Wilson
opportunity for a jest rather clever than elegant concerning Judge
Welsh's well-known fondness in life for watching the progress of
criminal cases. Of her husband, the late Mr. Sampson, there was very
little said, and not much was known beyond the fact that having run
away from school to marry him, Amanda had shared a shady and it was
whispered rather disreputable existence for three years, at the end of
which she was fortunately relieved from the matrimonial net by his
timely decease; an event of which she sometimes spoke to her more
intimate male friends with undisguised satisfaction.

It might not have been easy to tell how far Mrs. Sampson's subsequent
career was forced upon her by circumstances, and how far it was the
result of her own choice. She always represented herself as the victim
of a hard fate: but her relatives, one of whom was Mr. Staggchase,
declared that Amanda had no capabilities of respectability in her
composition. Mrs. Staggchase, upon whom marriage had conferred the
privilege of expressing her mind with the freedom of one of the family,
while it happily spared her from the responsibility of an actual
relative, declared that everything had been done to keep Mrs. Sampson
within the bounds of propriety, but all in vain. The income from the
estate of the late Judge Welsh was not large, and as Mrs. Sampson's
tastes, especially in dress, were somewhat expensive, it followed that
she was often reduced to devices for increasing her bank account which
were generally adroit and curious, but often not of a character to be
openly boasted of. She had had some business transactions already with
Irons, who was at this moment laying out the plan of work in a fresh
operation where she might make herself useful.

"Of course," he said, "all the men from Wachusett way are on our side,
and the men from the other part of the county will be against us."

"What other part of the county?" Mrs. Sampson inquired.

She had laid down her sewing and was listening intently, with a look of
keen intelligence, the tips of her long and rather large fingers
pressed closely together. She hated Irons devoutly, but his scheme
meant financial profit to her, and various bills were troublesomely
overdue.

"That's what we have to discover. When we find out, I'll let you know.
The other syndicate have been deucedly close-mouthed about their plans,
but of course they can't keep dark a great while longer; and in any
case I am on the track of the information."

"And what," Mrs. Sampson asked, with an air of innocence too obviously
artificial, "am I expected to do?"

Irons glanced at her with a wink, taking in her plain, vivacious face
with its sparkling eyes, her fine figure, and stylish, if somewhat too
pronounced, presence.

"The old game," he said. "Show a tender and sisterly interest in a few
of the country members. There are one or two men from the western part
of the state that we want to capture at once before the thing is
started. Do you know anybody in that region?"

"My father, Judge Welsh," she answered with an amusing touch amid her
frankness of the air with which she always mentioned her ancestors in
society, "had numerous connections there."

"Ah, that is good," the visitor responded, with evident satisfaction.

He knocked the ashes from his cigar into a tiny bronze which Mrs.
Sampson had put within his reach when he showed signs of throwing them
upon the carpet, and then plunged into a discussion of the members of
the State Legislature with whom it was possible for Mrs. Sampson to
establish an acquaintance, and whom she was likely to be able to
influence. He drew from his pocket a list of men, and with quite as
business-like an air his hostess produced a similar document from her
desk; the pair being soon deep in consultation over the schedules.

Lobbying in Massachusetts is not by the public recognized as a
well-organized business, and yet any one who desires to secure personal
influence to aid or to hinder legislation is seldom at a loss to find
people well experienced in such work. The lobby to the eyes of the
public, moreover, consists entirely of men, if one excepts the group of
foolish intriguers in favor of the vagaries of proposed law-making by
which it is supposed the distinctions of sex may be abolished. There
are in the city, however, women who by no means lack experience in
manipulating the votes of country members, and who are but too willing
to sell their services to whoever can make it to their pecuniary
interest to favor a bill.

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson was extremely adroit and careful in
concealing her connection with the law-making of the State. She was in
evidence in most public places; at the theatres, the concert halls, the
County Club races, and at every fashionable entertainment to which her
cleverness could procure her admission, her conspicuous figure, made
more prominent by a certain indefinable loudness of style, a marked
dash of manner, and gowns in a taste rather daring than refined, was
too conspicuous to be overlooked. Yet it is doubtful if she had ever
been up the steps leading to the gilded-domed capitol in her life. She
went about much; and the unchaperoned life which in virtue of her
widowhood and her love of freedom she chose to lead, the width of the
circle over which her acquaintance extended, allowed her to carry on
her work unobserved; so that while a great variety of stories of one
sort of queerness or another were told of Mrs. Sampson, this particular
side of her career was almost unknown.

"There is Mr. Greenfield," Mrs. Sampson observed, tapping her teeth
with her pencil. "His wife was a cousin of my husband. I don't know
them at all, but I could easily ask him to come and see me. It would be
only proper to offer him the hospitality of the town, you know."

"Good!" cried Mr. Irons, slapping his open palm down on his knee.
"Greenfield's the hardest nut we've got to crack in the whole business.
He's the sort of man you can't talk to on a square business basis.
You've got to mince things damned fine with him, and he's chairman of
the Railroad Committee, you know. He'd have a tremendous amount of
influence, anyway."

"He's a little tin god at Fentonville, I've heard," Mrs. Sampson
responded, laughing in the mechanical way which was her habit. "When
he's at home they say the sun doesn't rise there till he's given his
permission."

Irons in his excitement took his leg down from its supporting chair and
sat up straight, dropping his list of members to the floor and clasping
his knees with his heavy hands.

"Now look here, old lady," he said, "here's a chance to show your
mettle. If you'll manage Greenfield, I'll run the rest of the hayseed
crowd, and I'll make it something handsomer than you ever had in your
life."

The woman smiled a smile of greed and cunning.

"I'll take care of him," she said. "And he shall never know he has been
taken care of either."

Irons laughed with coarse jocoseness.

"A man has very little chance that falls into your clutches," he
observed, "but in this particular case you've got a heavy contract on
hand. Greenfield's got his price, of course, like everybody else, but
I'm hanged if I know what it is. If you offered him tin he'd simply fly
out on the whole thing and nobody could hold him. There isn't any
particular pull in politics on him. This new-fashioned independence has
knocked all that to pieces; and Greenfield is an Independent from the
word go. I don't know what you're to bait your hook with, unless it's
your lovely self."

Mrs. Sampson began a laugh, and then recovering herself, she frowned.

"Don't be personal," she said. "I won't stand it."

She began to feel that the circumstances were such as to make her
important to her caller's schemes, and her air by insensible degrees
became more assured and less subservient. She knew her man, and she was
prepared for his becoming proportionately more respectful. He dusted a
little heap of ashes from the small table beside him and scattered them
with his foot, in a well-meant attempt to cover the traces of his
previous untidiness. She watched him with a covert sneer.

"Even so difficult a problem as that," she said, with a slight toss of
the head, a bit of antique coquetry which impressed him with a new
sense of her thorough self-possession, and imposed itself upon his
untrained mind as the air of a true woman of the world; "I fancy I can
solve. Leave him to me. I'll find out what can be done with him."

"If he can be got hold of," Irons remarked, reflectively, "he will
carry the whole thing through. They'd believe him up at Feltonville if
he told them it was right to walk backward and vote to give their
incomes to the temperance cranks."

He rose to go as he spoke, unconsciously assuming with the overcoat he
put on that air of stiffness and immaculate propriety which he wore
always in public. He seldom allowed himself the undignified freedom
which marked his intercourse with Mrs. Sampson, and he liked the rest
he found in being for a time his vulgar, ill-bred self with no
restraints of artificial manner.

"Well, good afternoon," he said, extending his large hand, into which
she laid hers with a certain faint air of condescension. "I've got to
go to a meeting of the committee on the new statue. They've got a new
fellow they are trying to push in, a young unlicked cub that Peter
Calvin's running. I'll let you know anything that's for our advantage."

When he was gone, Mrs. Sampson produced a brush and a dustpan from
behind the books on a whatnot and carefully collected the scattered
ashes of his cigar.

"Vulgar old brute!" she muttered. "To think of my having to clean up
after him; his mother was my grandmother's laundress."

Then she smiled contemptuously, and added by way of self-consolation,--

"But it will all count in the bill, Al Irons."




X

                             THE BITTER PAST.
                                  All's Well That Ends Well; v.--3.

"Do you see much of Mrs. Herman?" Helen Greyson asked of Edith Fenton,
as they sat at luncheon together in the latter's pretty dining-room.

"Why, no," was the somewhat hesitating answer. "I really see very
little of her. The fact is we have so little common ground to meet on.
--You know Arthur says I am dreadfully narrow, and I am sometimes
afraid he is right. I have tried to know her, but of course I couldn't
take her into society. She wouldn't enjoy it, and she wouldn't feel at
home, even if she'd go with me."

Helen smiled with mingled amusement and wistfulness.

"No," she responded. "I can't exactly fancy Ninitta in society. She'd
be quite out of her element. My master in Rome, Flammenti, had a way of
saying a thing was like the pope at a dancing-party, and I fancy
Ninitta at an afternoon tea would be hardly less out of place."

"But she must be very lonely," Edith said, stirring her coffee
meditatively. "She used to have a few Italians come to see her; people
she met that time she ran away, you remember, and we brought her home,
but they don't come now."

"Why not?"

Edith smiled and raised her eyebrows.

"A question of caste, I believe."

"Of caste?" echoed Helen. "What do you mean?"

"When her son was born," Edith responded, "she told them that the
_bambino_ was born a gentleman, and couldn't associate with them."

Helen laughed lightly; then her face clouded, and she sighed.

"Poor Ninitta!" she said. "There is something infinitely pitiful in her
devotion and faithfulness to her youthful love."

Edith's face assumed an expression of mingled perplexity and disquiet.
With eyes downcast she seemed for a moment to be seeking a phrase in
which properly to express some thought which troubled her. Then she
looked up quickly.

"I don't know that I ought to say it," she remarked, "but I can't help
feeling that Ninitta is not so fond of her husband as she used to be.
Of course I may be mistaken, but either I overestimated her devotion
before they were married, or she cares less for him now."

An expression of pain contracted Helen's brow.

"Isn't it possible," she suggested, "that her being more demonstrative
in her love for the boy makes her seem cold toward her husband?"

"No," returned Edith, shaking her head, "it is more than that. I fancy
sometimes that she unconsciously expected to be somehow transformed
into his equal by marrying him; and that the disappointment of being no
more on a level with him when she became his wife than before, has made
her somehow give him up, as if she concluded that she could never
really belong to his life. Of course I don't mean," she added, "that
Ninitta would reason this out, and very likely I am all wrong, anyway,
but certainly something of this kind has happened."

"Poor Ninitta," repeated Helen, "fate hasn't been kind to her."

"But Mr. Herman?" Edith returned. "What do you say of him? I think his
case is far harder. What a mistake his marriage was. I cannot conceive
how he was ever betrayed into such a _mesalliance_. She cannot be a
companion to him; she does not understand him: she is only a child who
has to be borne with, and who tries his patience and his endurance."

Edith had forgotten her husband's suggestion that her companion was
responsible for Grant Herman's marriage; but Helen, who for six years
had been questioning with herself whether she had done well in urging
the sculptor to marry his model, heard this outburst with beating heart
and flushing cheek. Had Helen allowed Herman to break his early pledge
to Ninitta, and marry his later love, it is probable that all her life
would have been shadowed by a consciousness of guilt. The conscience
bequeathed to her, as Fenton rightly said, by Puritan ancestors, would
ever have reproached her with having come to happiness over the ruins
of another woman's heart and hopes. Having in the supreme hour of
temptation, however, overcome herself and given him up, it was not
perhaps strange that Helen unconsciously fell somewhat into the
attitude of assuming that this sacrifice gave her not only the right to
sit in judgment upon Ninitta, but also that of having done somewhat
more than might justly have been demanded of her. She had often found
herself wondering whether she had been wise; whether her devotion to an
ideal had not been overstrained; and if she ought not to have
considered rather the happiness of the man she loved than devotion to
an abstract principle.

It was also undoubtedly true, although Helen had not herself reflected
upon this phase of the matter, that her half a dozen years' residence
in Europe had softened and broadened her views. In the present age of
the world there is no method possible by which one can resist the whole
tendency of modern thought and prevent himself from moving forward with
it, unless it be active and violent controversy. No man can be a
fanatic without opposition, either real or vividly fancied, upon which
to stay his resolution, and it is equally difficult to maintain a stand
at any given point of faith unless one has steadily to fight with vigor
for the right to possess it.

It is probable that to-day Helen might have found it more difficult
than six years before to urge Herman to marry Ninitta, since besides
the self-sacrifice then involved would now be a doubtfulness of
purpose. She sat silent some moments, reflecting deeply, while her
hostess watched her with a loving admiration which was growing very
strongly upon her.

"But what is to be done now," Helen asked slowly. "You would not have
him cast her off?"

"Oh, no," returned Edith, in genuine consternation. "Now, it is six
years too late."

"I am afraid I do not wholly agree with your point of view," answered
Mrs. Greyson, roused by the doubt in her own mind to a need to combat
the assumption that the marriage was a mistake. "I certainly do not
feel that the mere ceremony is the great point. See!" she continued,
becoming more animated, and half involuntarily saying aloud what she
had so often said in her own mind; "a man makes a woman love him. As
time goes on, he outgrows her. It is no fault of hers. Why should the
fact that he has or has not come into the marriage relations affect her
claims on him? Isn't he in honor bound to marry her?"

"But suppose," Edith returned, "that he has not only outgrown her but
made some other woman love him too?"

It was merely a chance shot of argument, but it smote Helen so that she
trembled as she sat.

"Is not that woman to be considered?" Edith continued. "Is the good of
the man to count for nothing? Mr. Herman is sacrificed to an old
mistake. Perhaps it is right that he should pay the price of his error;
and that in the end it will be overruled for his good, we may hope. But
it is hard to have patience now with the state of things."

Helen tapped her teaspoon nervously against her cup.

"But what can be done?"

"Nothing," Mrs. Fenton said, without the slightest hesitation. "You and
I may think these things, but it would be a crime for Mr. Herman to
think them."

"It might be cowardice to yield to them," responded Helen; "but how
crime? And how can one help the thoughts from turning whithersoever
they will?"

Edith pushed back her plate, leaned forward with folded arms resting
upon the edge of the table. She flushed a little, as she did sometimes
when she felt it her duty to say something to her husband which it was
hard to utter.

"I do not think you and I agree in this," she said, in a voice which
her earnestness made somewhat lower than before. "Marriage is to me a
sacrament, and this very fact gives it a nature different from ordinary
promises. We promise to love until death do us part. To me that is as
imperative as any vow I can make to God and man."

"But love," Helen urged, with a somewhat perplexed air, "is not a thing
to be coerced."

"It must be," Edith returned, inflexibly. "Even if my husband ceased to
love me, that does not absolve me. I must fulfil my promise and my
duty."

"But," Helen responded, doubtfully and slowly, "it seems to me a
sacrilege to live with a man after one has ceased to love him."

"But I would love him," Edith broke in almost fiercely. "That is just
the point. One must refuse to cease to love him."

"But if he ceased to love her?"

A flush came into Edith's clear cheek, and her eyes shone. Half
unconsciously to herself, she was fighting with the doubts which would
now and then rise in her own mind of her husband's affection.

"Then," she said, in a low voice, "one must still be worthy of his
love; one must do one's duty. Besides," she added, looking up with a
gleam of hope, "when one has made a solemn vow, as a wife vows to love
her husband until death part them, I firmly believe that strength to
keep that vow will not be withheld."

Helen was silent a moment. She by no means agreed to the position Edith
took. She had no belief in those promises in virtue of which the
sacraments of the church took on a peculiar sanctity; she did not at
all trust to any special help bestowed by higher powers. She did not,
however, care to argue upon these points, and she said more lightly,--

"You task womanhood pretty heavily."

"A little woman who is a _protegee_ of mine," Edith returned, in the
same manner, "said rather quaintly the other day, that women were made
so there should be somebody to be patient with men. She's having
trouble with her lover, I suspect, and takes it hardly."

"But," Helen persisted more gravely, "it seems to me that you set
before the unloved wife a task to which humanity is absolutely unequal."

"You remember St. Theresa and her two sous," Edith replied, her eyes
shining with deep inner feeling; "how she said, 'St. Theresa and two
sous are nothing, but St. Theresa and two sous and God are everything.'
I can't argue, but for myself, I could not live if I should give up my
ideal of duty."

As often it had happened before, Helen found herself so deeply moved by
the fervor and the genuineness of Edith's faith, that she felt it
impossible to go on with an argument which could convince only at the
expense of weakening this rare trust. She brought the conversation back
to its starting point.

"But about Ninitta," she said. "I saw her yesterday, and she acted as
if she had something on her mind. She somehow seemed to be trying to
tell me something. I told her that the _bambino_, as she calls Nino,
must keep her occupied most of the time, and she said the nurse stole
him away half of the day; she has the peasant instinct to take entire
charge of her own child."

"If that is a peasant instinct," Edith rejoined laughing, "I am afraid
I am a peasant."

"Oh, but you are reasonable about it, and know that it is better for
the boy to have change and so on. She acts as if she felt it to be a
conspiracy between the nurse and her husband to steal the child's
affections from her. Really, I felt as if she was coming to love Nino
so fiercely that she had fits of almost hating her husband."

The ringing of the door bell and the entrance of the servant with a
card interrupted the conversation, and Helen had only time to say,--

"Of course on general principles you know I do not agree with you.
Indeed, I should find it hard to justify what I consider the most
meritorious acts of my life if I did. But I do want to say that, given
your creed, your view of marriage seems to me the noble--indeed, the
only one."

As Helen walked home in the gray afternoon, sombre with a winter mist,
she thought over the conversation and measured her life by its
principles.

"If one accepts Edith's standard," she reflected, "it is impossible not
to accept her conclusions. She is a St. Theresa, with her strict
adherence to forms and her loyalty to her convictions. But surely one's
own self has some claims. My first duty to whatever the highest power
is,--the All, perhaps,--must be to do the best I can with myself. It
could not be my duty to go on living with Will"--

She stopped, with a faint shudder, raising her eyes and looking about
upon the wet and dreary landscape with an almost furtive glance, as if
she were oppressed by the fear that the eyes of the husband with whom
she had found it impossible to live, and who for six years had been
under the sod, dead by his own hand, might be watching her unawares. It
was one of those moments when a bygone emotion is so vividly revived,
as if some long hidden landscape were revealed by a sudden lightning
flash. The years had brought her immunity from the poignancy of the
pain of old sorrows, but for one brief and bitter instant she cowed
with the old fear, she trembled with the old-time agony.

Then she smiled at the unreasonableness of her feeling, and dropping
her eyes, walked on with slightly quickened steps.

"It cannot be a woman's duty to go on living with a man who is dragging
her down, or even who prevents her from realizing her best; and yet,
there is the influence. That is a trick of my old Puritan training, of
course, but after all it is right to consider. One must count influence
as a factor if one believes in civilization, and I do believe in
civilization; certainly, I would not go back to barbarism. But is a
woman to be tied down--oh! how a woman is always tied down! Limitation
--limitation--limitation; that is the whole story of a woman's life;
and the harder she struggles to get away from her bonds the more she
proves to herself by the pain of the wrist cut by the fetters how
impossible it is to break them. Women contrive to deceive men sometimes
into believing that they have overcome the limitations of their sex;
and they even deceive themselves; but they never deceive each other. A
woman may believe that she herself has accomplished the impossible, but
she knows no one of her sisters has."

She smiled sadly and yet humorously, pausing a moment on the curbstone
before crossing the wet and icy street. Then as she went on and a
coachman pulled up his horses almost upon their haunches to let her
pass, she took up the thread of her reflections once more,--

"Yet surely women must not rebel against civilization. Civilization is
after all quite as largely as anything else a determined ignoring and
combatting on the part of mankind of the cruel disadvantages under
which nature has put women. No; we must look at it in the large; we
must hold to the conventional even, rather than fight against
civilization, however wrong and illogical and heartless civilization
may be. It is the best we have and we go to the wall without it."

She had reached her boarding-house and fitted her latch-key into the
lock. As she opened the door she looked back into the gathering dusk of
the misty afternoon, and her thought was almost as if it were a last
word flung to some presence to be left behind and shut out, a
personality with whom she had argued, and who had logically defeated
but not convinced her.

"And yet," she said inwardly, with a sudden swelling of defiance and
conviction, "not for all the universe could I have done it. I could not
go on living with Will,--though," she added, a sudden compunction
seizing her, "I was fond of him in a way, poor fellow."

And the door closed.




XI

                         THE GREAT ASSAY OF ART.
                                             Macbeth; iv.--3.

The inner history of the effigies which in Boston do duty as statues
would be most interesting reading, amusing or depressing as one felt
obliged to take it. To know what causes led to the production and then
to the erection of these monstrosities could hardly fail to be
instructive, although the knowledge might be rather dreary.

The subject has been too much discussed to make it easy to touch it,
but all this examination has by no means resulted in general
enlightenment, as was sufficiently evident at the meeting of the
committee in charge of the new statue of _America_ about to be erected
in a properly select Back Bay location. The committee consisted of
Stewart Hubbard, Alfred Irons, and Peter Calvin, three names which were
seldom long absent from the columns of the leading Boston daily
newspapers. Mr. Irons had been strongly objected to by both his
associates, neither of whom felt quite disposed to assume even such
equality as might seem to follow from joint membership of the
committee. That gentleman had, however, sufficient influence at City
Hall to secure appointment, a whim which had seized him to pose as a
patron of art being his obvious motive; and neither Mr. Hubbard nor Mr.
Calvin was prepared to go quite to the length of declining to serve
with the obnoxious parvenu.

Stewart Hubbard was a most admirable example of the best type of an
American gentleman. Arthur Fenton once described him as "a genuine old
Beacon street, purple window-glass swell;" a description expressive, if
not especially elegant. Tall and well-built, with the patrician written
in every line of his handsome face, his finely shaped head covered with
short hair, snowy white although he had hardly passed middle age, his
clear dark eyes straightforward and frank in their glances, he was a
striking and pleasing figure in any company. He had graduated, like his
ancestors for three or four generations, at Harvard; and if he knew
less about art than his place on the committee made desirable, he at
least had a pretty fair idea of what authorities could be trusted.

Peter Calvin's place in Boston art matters has already been spoken of.
He took himself very seriously, moving through life with a sunny-faced
self-complacency so inoffensive and sincere as to be positively
delightful. He was too good-natured and in all respects of character
too little virile to meet Irons with anything but kindness, but as he
was a trifle less sure of his social standing than Hubbard, he was
naturally more annoyed at the choice of the third member of the
committee. He made not a few protests to his friends, and gently
represented himself as a martyr to his devotion to the cause of art
from having accepted the place he held.

When one considered, however, the way in which committees upon art
matters are made up at City Hall, it becomes evident that the wonder
was not that the present body was no better, but that it should be so
good. The truth was that the choice of Hubbard and Calvin had been
considered a great concession to the unreasonable prejudices of the
self-appointed arbitrators of art affairs in town. A short time before,
a committee consisting of a butcher, a furniture dealer and a North End
ward politician, had been sent to New York on a matter connected with a
public monument, and their action had been so egregiously absurd as to
bring down upon their heads and upon the heads of those who appointed
them such a torrent of ridicule that even the tough hide of City Hall
could not withstand it. It was felt that the public was more alive on
art matters than had been suspected; and when a South Boston
liquor-dealer manifested a singular but unmistakable desire to be
appointed on the _America_ committee, he had been promptly suppressed
with the information that this was to be "a regular bang-up, silver-top
committee," and was forced to soothe his disappointed ambition with
such consolation as lay in the promise that next time he should be
counted in.

When the committee had been named, a hint was dropped in one or two
newspaper offices that the powers which work darkly at City Hall
expected due credit for the self-sacrifice involved in putting on two
men at least from whom no reward was to be expected. The journals
improved the opportunity, and praised highly the choice of all three of
the members. When this called out a protest from the artists, because
no artist had been appointed, City Hall had no words adequate to the
expression of its disgust.

"That's what comes of trying to satisfy them fellows," one City Father
observed, in an indignant and unstilted speech to his colleagues. "They
want the earth, and nothing else will satisfy them. What if they ain't
got no artist on the committee; everybody knows that Peter Calvin's a
man who's published a lot of books about art, and it stands to reason
he's a bigger gun than a feller that just paints."

The committee paid no attention to the discussion concerning their
fitness, of which indeed they did not know a great deal, but came
together in a matter-of-fact way, precisely as they would have
assembled to transact any other business.

"I don't know what you think," Mr. Irons observed, as the three
gentlemen settled themselves in the easy-chairs of Mr. Hubbard's
private office and lighted their cigars, "but it seems to me we had
better try to come to some reasonably definite idea of what we want
this monument to be before we go any farther. It will be time enough to
talk about who's to get the order when we've made up our minds what the
order is to be."

Both the words and the manner rasped the nerves of Mr. Calvin almost
beyond endurance. He was accustomed to phrasing his views with
elegance, and although in truth his ideas in the matter on hand were
not widely different from those of Mr. Irons, the latter had stated the
proposition with a boldness which made it impossible for him to agree
with it. By birth, by instinct, and by lifelong training a faithful
servant of the god Dagon, he yet seldom professed his allegiance
frankly. He sheltered his slavish adherence to conventions under a
decent show of following convictions; so that the pure and
straightforward Philistinism which Mr. Irons professed from simple lack
of a knowledge of the secrets of what might perhaps be called the
priestly cult of Philistia, appeared to Peter Calvin shockingly crude
and offensive.

"Perhaps," he said, with a smile which was hardly less sweet than
usual, so well trained were the muscles of his face in producing it,
"it can hardly be said that we can decide. The artist after all cannot
be expected to accept too many limitations if he is to produce a work
of art. His genius must have full play."

Secretly, Irons had a most profound respect for the other's art
knowledge, and he was too anxious to appear well in his capacity as a
member of the statue committee to be willing to run any risks by
attempting to controvert any aesthetic proposition laid down by Mr.
Calvin. He was by no means fond of the man, however, and to his dislike
his envy of Calvin's reputation, socially and aesthetically, added
venom. He hastened now, with quite unnecessary vigor, to defend himself
from the mildly implied attack.

"I suppose we have got to give an order--or a commission, if the word
suits you better--of some sort; and whatever it is to be it needs to be
defined."

His manner was so evidently belligerent that Mr. Hubbard hastened to
interpose.

"That is pretty well defined for us, isn't it?" he said. "We were
directed to give a commission for a single figure representing America,
to be executed in bronze and not to exceed a fixed sum in cost. That
does not leave much latitude, so far as I can see, beyond the right of
selecting or rejecting models shown us. For my own part, I may as well
say at once, I am in favor of giving Mr. Herman whatever terms he wants
to make a model, and trusting everything to him. Of course we should
still have the right to veto the arrangement if the figure he made
should not prove satisfactory."

Mr. Hubbard spoke with a certain elegant deliberation and precision
which Irons supposed himself to regard as affected, while secretly he
thoroughly envied it.

"Oh, we all know what Herman would do," Irons retorted. "He'd make one
of those things that nobody could understand, and then say it was
artistic. We want something to please folks."

Irons was more concerned about his popularity than even in regard to
the reputation as an art patron he was laboriously striving to build
up. He was an inordinately vain man, but he was an exceedingly shrewd
one. His self-esteem was gratified by seeing his name among those of
men influential in art matters; he bought pictures largely for the
pleasure of being talked of as a man who patronized the proper
painters, and he was looked upon as likely at no distant day to become
president of a club which Fenton dubbed the Discourager of Art; but he
realized that for a man who still had some political aspirations there
was a substantial value in popular favor not to be found in any
reputation for culture, however delightful the latter might be. He
distinctly intended to please the public by his action in regard to the
statue, a resolution which was rendered the more firm by the fact that
he vastly over-estimated the interest which the public was likely to
take in the matter. He trimmed the ashes from his cigar as he spoke,
with an air which was intended to convey the idea that he would stand
no nonsense.

"Won't Mr. Herman enter a competitive trial?" Calvin asked. "We might
ask two or three others and then select the best model."

"He won't go into a competition. He says it's beneath an artist's
dignity."

"Damned nonsense!" blustered Irons, sitting up in his chair in
excitement over such an extraordinary proposition. "Don't we all go
into competitions whenever we send in sealed proposals? Beneath his
dignity! Great Scott! The cockiness of artists is enough to take away a
man's breath."

Mr. Hubbard, who was a lawyer chiefly occupied, as far as business
went, in managing his own large property and certain trust funds, and
Mr. Calvin, who had never in his life soiled his aristocratic hands
with any business whatever, smiled in the mutual consciousness that
"sealed proposals" were as much outside their experience as
competitions were foreign to that of Grant Herman. The thought, passing
and trivial as it was, moved their sympathy a little toward the
sculptor's view of the matter, although since secretly Mr. Calvin was
determined that the commission should be given to Orin Stanton, the
fact made little difference.

"You evidently don't want to undergo the general condemnation that has
fallen on whoever has had a share in the Boston statues thus far," Mr.
Calvin observed, glancing at Irons with a genial smile. "If you are
going to set yourself to hit the popular taste and keep yourself clear
of the claws of the critics at the same time, I fear you've a heavy
task laid out."

"The critics always pitch into everything," Irons responded with a
growl. "It's the taste of the people I want to please. I believe in art
as a popular educator, and people can't be educated by things they
won't look at."

"Oh, as to that," Stewart Hubbard rejoined, with a twinkle in his eye,
"conventionality is after all the consensus of the taste of mankind."

Peter Calvin was at a loss to tell whether his friend was in earnest or
was only quizzing Irons, so he contented himself with an appreciative
look, and a smile of dazzling warmth. Irons, on the other hand, looked
toward the speaker with suspicion.

"I haven't much sympathy with a good deal of the stuff artists talk,"
he continued, following his own train of thought. "It doesn't square
very well with common sense and ain't much more than pure gassing, I
think. The truth is, genius is mostly moonshine. The man I call a
genius is the one that makes things work practically."

"In other words," said Calvin, spurred to emulate Hubbard's epigram,
and involuntarily glancing toward the latter for approval, "you think a
genius is a man who is able to harness Pegasus to the plough, and make
him work without kicking things to pieces."

"That's about it," Irons assented; "and I think Herman is too
toploftical and full of cranky theories. They say Mrs. Greyson has hit
the nail exactly on the head in that statue she showed in Paris last
year. That pleased the critics and the public both, and that's exactly
what we are after. I think we ought to ask her to make a design."

Mr. Calvin saw and seized the opportunity easily to introduce his own
especial candidate.

"If each of you have a sculptor," he said, lightly, "I can hardly do
less than to have one, too. There's an exceedingly clever fellow just
home from Rome, that I want to see given a chance. He's done some very
promising work, and I look upon him as the coming man."

The two men regarded him with some interest, as one who has introduced
a new element into a game. Mr. Hubbard leaned back in his chair, and
sent a puff of cigar smoke floating upward, before he answered.

"I can't enter my man for the triangular contest," said he. "He won't
go into a competition unless he's paid for making the design. He says,
in so many words, that he doesn't want the commission to make the
statue unless he can do it in his own way. He will be unhindered, or he
will let the whole thing alone."

"For my part," Mr. Irons responded, settling himself in his chair, with
a certain air of determination, "I don't take a great deal of stock in
this letting an artist have his own way. He might put up a naked woman,
or any rubbish he happened to think of. The amount of the matter is
that it isn't such a devilish smart thing to make a figure as they try
to make out. Any man can do it that has learned the trade, and I
haven't any great amount of patience with the fuss these fellows make
over their statues."

Neither of his companions felt inclined to enter into a general
discussion of the principles underlying art work, and, although neither
agreed with this broad statement, there was no direct response offered.
Calvin and Hubbard looked at each other, and the latter asked,--

"Have you any notion what Mrs. Greyson would do?"

"No, I have never talked with her."

"Very likely she'd give us another figure like those that are stuck all
over Boston, like pins in a pincushion," Hubbard objected. "Some
carpet-knight, with a face spread over with a grin as inane as that of
Henry Clay on a cigar-box cover."

Irons laughed contemptuously, and rose, throwing away his cigar stub.

"Well, I must go," he announced. "We don't seem to be getting ahead
very fast. I'll try and find out if she'll go into a competition, and
you two had better do the same with your folks. Then we shall at least
have something to go upon. The _Daily Observer_ has already begun to
ask why something isn't done, and I'd like to get the thing finished
up, myself."

The two others rose also, and it was thereby manifest that this
unproductive sitting of the committee was at an end.




XII

                       WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED.
                                        Comedy of Errors; i.--1.

Never was a man more utterly wretched than was Arthur Fenton, after the
luckless day when Mr. Irons had lighted upon the presence of Mrs.
Herman at the studio. He raged against himself, against chance, most of
all against the unmannerly and coarse-minded fellow who had forced
himself into the studio, and then persisted in imagining evil which had
never existed. He experienced all the acute anguish of finding himself
in the toils, and of the added sting from wounded vanity, since he felt
that he had been wanting in adroitness and presence of mind. It is to
be doubted if he did not suffer more than would have been the case had
the injurious suspicions of Irons been correct. To a vain man, it is
often harder to be entrapped through stupidity or awkwardness than
through crime.

Fenton realized well enough how impossible it was now to correct the
evil that had been done. He might have explained away the fact that
Ninitta had been his model, but his own bearing under the accusation
had produced an impression not to be eradicated. The wavering before
his eyes, for a single instant, of the will-o'-the-wisp fire of sudden
temptation had blinded him, so that he had been guilty of a cursed
piece of folly, which had put him at once in the power of Irons. He
knew enough of the latter to be pretty sure that he was capable of
keeping his threat to enlighten Herman concerning his wife's visit to
the studio, and disgrace in the eyes of Herman meant more than Arthur
dared to think. Sensitive to the last fibre of his being, the artist
grew faint with exquisite pain at the thought of what he must endure
from a scandal spread among his friends. An accusation without
foundation would have been almost more than he could bear, but one
supported by such circumstantial evidence as lay behind the story Irons
would tell if he set himself to make trouble,--the bare idea drove
Fenton wild.

Fenton had always prided himself upon his superiority to public
opinion, but without public respect he could not but be supremely
miserable. It is true that he valued his own good opinion above that of
the world. It was his theory that the ultimate appeal in matters of
conduct was always to the man's inner consciousness, and in this
highest court only the man himself could be present, all the world
being shut out. It followed that a person's own opinion of his acts was
of infinitely more weight than that of any or all other people
whosoever.

"All standards are arbitrary," he was accustomed to say, "and all terms
are relative. Every man must make his own ethical code, and nobody but
the man himself can tell how far he lives up to it. Why should I care
whether people who do not even know what my rules of conduct are,
consider my course correct or not? Very likely the things they condemn
are the things it has cost me most struggle and self-denial to achieve.
We have outgrown old ethical systems, because the world has become
enlightened enough to perceive that every mind must make its own code;
to realize that what a man is must be his religion."

This course of reasoning was one shared by many of Fenton's friends,
and indeed by a goodly company of nineteenth century thinkers. Fenton
was in reality only going with the majority of liberalists in regarding
sincerity to personal conviction as the highest of ethical laws; and he
was generally pretty logical in choosing the approval of his inward
knowledge to that of the world outside. Yet his vanity was keenly
sensitive to disapprobation, and when the censure of the world
coincided with the condemnation of his own reason he suffered. To
self-contempt was added a baffled sense of having been discovered; and
as his imagination now ran forward to picture the effects of Irons's
disclosure, the suffering he endured was really pitiful.

"Nobody will understand," he said to himself one day, half in bitter
self-contempt and half in self-defence, "that I couldn't help doing as
I did; no cruelty surpasses that of holding weak and sensitive natures
accountable for shortcomings they are born incapable of avoiding."

And having accomplished an epigram at his own expense, he felt as if he
had to some degree atoned for his fault, just as a flagellant looks
upon his self-scourging as expiatory.

How to act in the position in which he had been placed by Irons's
insulting proposal was a question which he found more difficult to
answer than according to his theories, it should have been. When a man
becomes his own highest law he is constantly exposed to the danger of
finding his theories of conduct utterly confounded by a change in
self-interest; and Fenton began to have a most painful sense of being
ethically wholly at sea. He had not yielded to temptation, however. He
had given Stewart Hubbard a couple of sittings, and so great had been
his fear lest he should inadvertently gather from his sitter some hint
of the knowledge he had been urged to obtain, that he had half
unconsciously been reserved and silent. The picture was going badly,
and the sitter wondered what had come over the witty and vivacious
artist.

Besides these vexations the artist had, moreover, other causes for
uneasiness at this time. His financial affairs were by no means in
satisfactory condition. He had been filling a good many orders and
getting excellent prices for his work, yet somehow he had been all the
year running behindhand. He lived beyond his means, priding himself
upon being the one Boston artist who had been born, bred, and educated
a gentleman, as he chose to put it to himself, and who was able to live
as a man of the world should. His summer had been passed at Newport, a
place which Edith by no means liked, and where her ideas of propriety
and religion were constantly offended, especially in regard to the
sanctity of marriage. He entertained sumptuously, spent money freely at
the clubs, and, in a word, tried to be no less a man of fashion than an
artist.

The result was beginning to be disastrous. Living pretty closely up to
his income, a few losses and a speculation or two which turned out
unlucky, were sufficient to embarrass him seriously. It was the old
trite and dreary story of extravagance and its inevitable consequence;
and as Fenton had no talent for finance, his struggles rather made
matters worse than bettered them, as the efforts of a fly to escape
from the web, even although they may damage the net, are apt to end
also in binding the victim more securely.

The truth was that the painter, like many another man endowed with
imaginative gifts, had little practical knowledge of affairs beyond a
talent for spending money; and it is amazing how stupid a clever man
can contrive to be when he is taken out of his sphere. For such men
there is no safety save in keeping out of debt, and once the balance
was on the wrong side of his account, Fenton, self-poised as he was,
lost his head. It troubled and worried him to be in debt even when he
could see his way clear to paying everything, and now that matters
began to get too complicated to be settled by plain and obvious
arithmetic, he was miserable.

In the midst of these unhappy complications, he was one morning working
upon the portrait of Miss Damaris Wainwright, whose cousin and aunts,
the Dimmonts, had induced her to have it painted, although she was in
deep mourning. He was interested in the lovely, melancholy girl, and he
felt that he was doing some of the best work of his life in her
portrait. He sometimes was proud of his skill, and at others he was
unreasonably vexed that this picture should be so much better than that
of Mr. Hubbard promised to be.

He had been talking this morning half-absently, and merely for the sake
of keeping his sitter interested. He had not noticed that her whole
being was keyed up to a pitch of intense feeling, and he had almost
unconsciously accomplished the really difficult task of putting his
sitter at her ease and making her ready to talk.

Suddenly, after a brief silence, she said,--"You provoke confidences."

Some note in her voice and the closeness of connection between her
words and the thought in his own mind that he certainly must be able to
do what Irons asked, arrested Fenton's attention.

"Yes," he returned, his air of sincerely meaning what he said being by
no means wholly unreal; "that is because I am unworthy of them."

Miss Wainwright smiled. The self-detraction seemed delicate, and the
unexpectedness of the reply amused her.

"That is perhaps a modest thing to say, Mr. Fenton," she responded,
"but the truth must be--if you'll pardon my saying anything so
personal--that you are very sympathetic."

The artist moved backward a step from his easel, regarding his work
with that half-shutting of the eyes and turning of the head which seems
to be an essential of professional inspection.

"Even so," persisted he, "a sympathetic person is one whose emotions
are fickle enough to give place to whatever others any sudden accident
brings up; and if one's feelings are so transient, how can he be worthy
of confidence?"

"I can't argue with you," Damaris replied, smiling and shaking her
head, "but all the same I don't agree with what you say."

"Oh, I hoped you wouldn't when I said it," Fenton threw back lightly.

He went on with his work, outwardly tranquil, as if he had no thought
beyond the perfect shading of the cheek he was painting; but his mind
was in a tumult. He thought how easy it is to deceive; how constantly,
indeed, we do deceive whether we will or no; how foolish it is to rule
our lives by standards which rest so largely on mere seeming; how--Bah!
Why should he pretend to himself? He was not really concerned with
generalities or great moral principles. He was trying to decide whether
he should worm a secret out of Hubbard to throw as a sop to that vile
cursed cad, Irons, to keep his foul mouth shut about Ninitta. Heavens!
What a tangle he had got into simply because he wanted a decent model
for his picture! The abominable prudery and hypocrisy of the time lay
behind the whole matter. But this would never do. He must work now; not
think of these exciting things. It was hardly a brief moment before to
his last words he added aloud,--

"Did what you said mean that I was to be favored with a confidence?"

A painful, deep problem was weighing upon her heart, wearing away her
reason and her life alike. She had almost been ready to ask advice of
the artist, although she by no means knew him well enough to render so
intimate a conversation other than strange.

"Not necessarily," was her reply to Fenton's question.

She found it after all impossible to utter anything definite upon the
subject which lay so near her heart. She even felt a dim wonder whether
she had really ever seriously contemplated speaking of it, even never
so remotely.

"I was thinking," she continued, "of the point the conversation had
reached this morning when I left my friend at the door downstairs."

"It was some great moral problem, I think you said," Fenton responded,
trying to recall accurately what she had told him earlier in the
sitting of a talk she had had with a friend on her way to the studio.
"The object of life, or something of that sort. Well, the object of
life is to endure life, I suppose, just as the object of time is to
kill time."

"We had got so far in our talk as to decide," Miss Wainwright went on,
too much absorbed in recalling the interview she was relating to notice
the painter's words, "he decided, that is, not I--that the only thing
to do is to enjoy the present and to let the future go; but I object
that one cannot help dreading what might come."

She spoke, of course, solely with reference to her own inner
experiences, but Fenton, with the egotism which is universal to
humanity, received the words in their application to his own case. If
he could but determine what would come, he might decide how to act in
this hard present. Yet, whatever that future might be, he must at any
cost extricate himself from this coil which pressed so cruelly upon him.

"Even so he would be right," he answered her words. "Happiness in this
world consists, at best, in a choice of evils, and at least one may
make of the present a sauce _piquante_ to cover the flavor of the dread
of the future."

"You take a more desperate view of the matter than my friend," Miss
Wainwright said, sighing bitterly. "His only fear is that I shall lose
everything by not making sure of whatever present happiness is
possible."

Fenton glanced at her curiously, aware no less from her tone and manner
than from her words that the conversation was touching her as well as
himself through some keen personal experience. A feeling of sharp and
irritating remorse stung him from the thought that he, whose whole
sensuous nature strove for selfish joyousness in life, was discussing
this question from his own standpoint, while the pale, lovely girl
before him was regarding the whole problem from the high plane of duty.
Instinctively he set himself to justify his position against hers; to
demonstrate that his Pagan, selfish philosophy was the true guide.

"Oh," he cried out with sudden vehemence, waving his palette with a
gesture of supreme impatience, "I do take a desperate view! Life is
desperate, and the most absurd of all the multitudinous ways of making
it worse is to waste the present in dreading the future. I've no
patience with the notion that seems to be so many people's creed, that
we can do nothing nobler than to be as miserable as possible. It is a
dreadful remainder of that awful malady of Puritanism. Besides, where
is the logic of supposing we shall be better prepared for any
misfortune that may come if we can only contrive to dread it enough
beforehand. Good heavens! We all need whatever strength we can get from
happiness whenever it comes, as much as a plant needs the sunshine
while it lasts. You wouldn't prepare a delicate plant for cloudy days
by keeping it in the shadow; and I think one is simply an idiot who
keeps in the shade to accustom himself to-day after to-morrow's storm."

His excitement increased as he went on. He was arguing against the
coward sense that he had deserved the troubles which had come upon him.
He was saying in as plain language as the conditions of the
conversation would allow, that he had been right in gratifying his
desires; in living as he wished without too closely considering the
consequences which were likely to follow. He spoke with a bitter
earnestness born of the intense strain under which he was laboring; and
he did not consider how his words might or might not affect his hearer.
The thought came into his mind how he had deliberately sacrificed his
convictions in marrying Edith Caldwell and going over to Philistinism;
and he reflected that this decision had shaped his life. Already his
course was determined; it was idle to ignore the fact.

Why should he hesitate from squeamish scruples to do what Irons asked
when to meet the consequences of the latter's anger would not only be
supremely disagreeable but contrary to his whole theory of life?

It was one of Fenton's peculiarities that he never knowingly shrank
from telling himself the truth about his thoughts and actions with the
most brutal frankness. Indeed, it might not be too much to say that
this self-honesty was a sort of fetish to which he made expiatory
sacrifices in the shape of the most cruelly disagreeable admissions
before his inner consciousness. He constantly settled his moral
accounts by setting down on the credit side "Self-contempt to balance,"
a method of mental bookkeeping by no means rare, albeit seldom carried
on in connection with such clear powers of moral discrimination as
Fenton possessed when he chose to exercise them.

"If you chance on ill-luck," he ran on, arguing aloud with himself
concerning the possible consequences of betraying Mr. Hubbard's trust,
"you'll be glad you were happy while it was possible; and if the fates
make you the one person in a million, by letting you get through life
decently, you surely can't think it would be better to spend it moping
until you are incapable of enjoying anything."

The form of his speech was still that of one talking simply from the
point of view of his hearer. It did not for a moment occur to Damaris
Wainwright that in all he had said there had been anything but a
perfectly disinterested discussion of the principles involved in her
own questions and in her own perplexities. Yet, as a matter of fact,
his words were but the surface indications of the conflict going on in
his own mind. He was arguing down his disinclination to accept the
obvious and dishonorable means of escaping from an unpleasant position;
he was fighting against the better instincts of his nature, and trying
to convince himself that the easy course was the one to be chosen, the
one logically following from the conclusions forced upon him by his
study of life.

"But duty!" she interposed, rather timidly, as he paused.

She was confused by his persistent ignoring of all the standards by
which she was accustomed to judge, and she threw out the question as
one in desperation brings forward a last argument, half foreseeing that
it will be useless.

"Duty!" he echoed, fiercely. "Life is an outrage, and what duty can
take precedence of righting it as far as we can. That old fool of a
Ruskin--I beg your pardon, Miss Wainwright, if you're fond of him--did
manage to say a sensible thing when he told a boarding-school full of
girls that their first duty was to want to dance. To allow that there
is any duty above making the best of life is a species of moral
suicide."

She looked at him with an expression of profoundest feeling. She was
too little used to arguments of this sort to discern that the whole
matter was involved in the definition one gave to the phrase "The best
of life," and that to assume that this meant mere selfish or sensuous
enjoyment, was to beg the whole question. She was carried away by the
dramatic fashion in which he ended, dashing down his palette and
throwing himself into a chair.

"There!" he exclaimed, with an air of whimsical impatience. "Now I've
got so excited that I can't paint! That's what comes of having
convictions." The struggle was over. He brushed all doubts and
questions aside. There was but one thing to do, and, disagreeable as it
might be, he must accept the situation. The mention of the word "duty"
reminded him that he had long ago settled in his own mind the folly of
being bound down by superstitions masquerading under grand names as
ethical principles. The duty of self-preservation was above all others.
He must defend himself, no matter if he did violate the principles by
which fools allowed their lives to be narrowed and hampered. He would
set himself to work upon Hubbard to-morrow, and get this unpleasant
thing over.

His sitter came down from the dais upon which she had been sitting, and
held out her hand.

"You have decided my life for me," she said, in a low voice, "and I
thank you."

Those who knew her perplexities had argued with her in vain; and this
stranger, talking to his own inner self, had said the final word which
had moved her to a conclusion they had not been able to force upon her.

He looked up with a smile, as he pressed her hand, but he said nothing;
refraining from adding, as he might have done truthfully,--

"And I have decided my own."




XIII

                          THIS "WOULD" CHANGES.
                                             Hamlet; iv.--7.

Melissa Blake was growing paler in these days, worn with the ache of a
hurt love. Since the night on which he had parted from her in anger,
John had been to see her only on brief errands which he could not well
avoid, and while he had made no allusion to the difference which
separated them, it was evident that he still brooded over his fancied
grievance.

This phase of John's character, its least amiable characteristic, which
marred it amid many excellent qualities, was not wholly unknown to
Melissa. She was by far the more clear-headed of the two, and she
understood her lover with much greater acuteness than he was able to
bring to the task of comprehending her. It was from intelligent
perception and not merely from the feminine instinct for making
excuses, that she said to herself that John was worn out with the
strain of burdens long and uncomplainingly borne; and she was, it might
be added, near enough to the primitive savagery of the rustic New
Englanders of the last generation, to find it perfectly a matter of
course that a man should make of his womenfolk a sort of scapegoat upon
whom to visit his wrath against the sins alike of fate and of his
fellows.

She waited for John to relent from his unjust anger, but she did not
protest, and when he chose once more to be gracious unto his handmaiden
he would be met only with faithful affection and with no reproaches.
From the abstract standpoint, nothing could be farther astray than the
fulness and freedom of Milly's forgivenesses; practically, this
illogical feminine weakness made life easier and happier, not alone for
everybody about her, but for herself as well. Doubtless such a yielding
disposition tempted her lover to injustices he would never have
ventured with a more spirited woman, but after all her forgiveness was
so divine as almost to turn the transgression into a virtue for causing
it.

When the account of Milly's life was made up, there must be put into
the record long, wordless stretches of uncomplaining and prayerful
patience, hidden from the eyes of all mankind. The capabilities of
women of this sort for quiet suffering are as infinitely pathetic as
they are measureless; and, although she was silent, the dark rings
under her eyes and the lagging step told how her sorrow was wearing
upon her. She went on faithfully with her work; she held still to the
faith that somehow help was sure to come; and as only such women can
be, she was patient with the patience of a god.

Milly was surprised one afternoon by a visit from Orin Stanton, the
half brother of John. The sculptor had never before come to see her,
and, although Milly was little given to censoriousness, she could not
avoid the too-obvious reflection that, in one known to be so
consistently self-seeking as was Orin, the probability was that some
selfish motive lay behind the call. Orin had never been especially fond
of Milly, and since his return from Europe, where he had been
maintained by the liberality of an old lady, who, in a summer visit to
Feltonville, had been attracted by his talent for modelling in clay, he
had avoided as far as possible all intercourse with his townspeople.
The old lady, who took much innocent pleasure in imagining herself the
patroness of a future Phidias, died suddenly one day, leaving the will
by which provision was made for young Stanton's future unhappily
without signature; a fact which ever after furnished him with definite
grounds upon which to found his accusations against society and fate.

It was largely in virtue of this interesting and pathetic story that
Mrs. Frostwinch and Mrs. Bodewin Ranger had taken it upon themselves to
better the fortunes of Stanton. Large-hearted ladies in Boston, as
elsewhere in the world, find no difficulty in discovering signs of
genius in a work of art where they deliberately look for it; and being
moved by the sculptor's history,--in which, to say sooth, there was
nothing remarkable, and, save the disappointment in regard to the will,
little that was even striking--his patronesses were not slow in coming
to regard his productions with admiration curiously resembling
momentary veneration. They in a mild way instituted a Stanton cult, as
a minor interest in lives already richly full, and when more weighty
matters did not interfere, Mrs. Frostwinch, in varying degrees of
enthusiasm, could be charming in her praises of the sculptor, whom she
designated as "adorably ursine," and of his work, which in turn, she
termed "irresistibly insistent," whatever that might mean.

Bearish, Orin Stanton certainly was, whether one did or did not find
the quality adorable. He was heavy in mould, with a face marked by none
of the delicacy one expects in an artist and to which his small eyes
and thick lips lent a sensual cast. Milly had always found his
countenance repulsive, strongly as she strove not to be affected by
mere outward appearances. He wore his hair long, its coarse, reddish
masses showing conspicuously in a crowd, when he got to going about
among such people as hunt lions in Boston.

Mrs. Bodewin Ranger patronized him from afar, and could not be brought
to invite him to her house.

"Really, my dear," the beautiful old lady said to her husband; "it
seems to me that people are not wise in asking Mr. Stanton about so
much. It only unsettles him, and he should be left to associate with
persons in his own class."

"I quite agree with you," her husband replied, as he had replied to
every proposition she had advanced for the half century of their
married life.

Mrs. Frostwinch was less rigid. It is somewhat the fashion of the more
exclusive of the younger circles of Boston to make a more or less
marked display of a democracy which is far more apparent than real.
Partly from the genuine and affected respect for culture and talent
which is so characteristic of the town, and partly from some remnants
of the foolish superstition that the persons who produce interesting
works of art must themselves be interesting, the social leaders of the
town are, as a rule, not unwilling to receive into a sort of
lay-brotherhood those who are gifted with talent or genius. No fashion
of place or hour, however, can change the essential facts of life; and
it is perhaps quite as much the incompatibility of aim, of purpose in
life, as any instinctive arrogance on either side, that makes any
intimate union impossible. It is inevitable that members of any
exclusive circle shall regard others concerning whose admission there
has been question with some shade of more or less conscious patronage,
and sensitive men of genius are very likely as conscious of "the pale
spectrum of the salt" as was Mrs. Browning's poet Bertram, invited into
company where he did not belong, because it was socially too high and
intellectually and humanely too low. The members of what is awkwardly
called fashionable society are too thoroughly trained in the knowledge
of the principles of birth, wealth, and mutual recognition upon which
their order is founded, to be likely to lose sight of the fact that
artists and authors and actors, not possessing, however great their
cleverness in other directions, these especial qualifications, can only
be received into the charmed ring on sufferance; and nothing could be
more absurd or illogical than to blame them for recognizing this fact.

Mrs. Frostwinch, at least, was in no danger of forgetting where she
stood in relation to such lions as she invited to her house. She
understood accurately how to be gracious and yet to keep them in their
place. Indeed, she did this instinctively, so thoroughly was she imbued
with the spirit of her class. She did not open her doors to many people
on the score of their talent, and least of all did she encourage lions
of appearance so coarse and uncouth as Orin Stanton. She found the role
of lady patroness amusing, however, and, although she would not have
put the sculptor's name on the lists of guests for a dinner or an
evening reception, she did invite him to a Friday afternoon, when she
knew Stewart Hubbard was likely to be present; and a glowing knowledge
of this honor was in Orin's mind when he went to call on Melissa.

"I've no doubt you're surprised to see me," Orin said, brusquely, as he
seated himself, still in his overcoat. "The truth is, I don't run round
a great deal, and if I do, it's where it will do me some good."

Milly smiled to herself. She was not without a sense of humor.

"Naturally, I don't expect you to waste your time on me," she answered.
"You must be very busy, and I suppose you have lots of engagements."

"Oh, of course," he returned, with an obvious thrill of
self-satisfaction. "The Boston women are always interested in art, and
I could keep going all the time, if I had a mind to. I'm going to Mrs.
Frostwinch's to-morrow. She wants to introduce me to Mr. Hubbard, one
of the committee on the new statue."

To Orin's disappointment this fact seemed to make little impression
upon Milly, who was far too ignorant of Boston's social distinctions to
realize that an invitation to one of Mrs. Frostwinch's Fridays was an
honor greatly to be coveted.

"I am glad if people are interesting themselves in your work, Orin,"
she said, with a manner she tried not to make formal.

She had never been able to like Orin, and since the time when he had
not only utterly refused to share with John the burden of their
father's debts but had scoffed at what he called his brother's "idiocy"
in paying them, Milly had found comfort in having a definite and
legitimate excuse for disliking him. She regarded him as greatly
gifted; in the eyes of Feltonville people, Orin's talents, since they
had received the sanction of substantial patronage, had loomed into
greatness somewhat absurdly disproportionate to their actual value. She
was not insensible of the honor of being connected, as the betrothed of
John, with so distinguished a man as she felt Orin to be; but she
neither liked nor trusted him.

"Oh, there are some people in Boston who know a good thing when they
see it," the young man responded, intuitively understanding that here
he need not take the trouble to affect any artificial modesty. "It's
about that that I came to talk to you."

"About--I don't think I understand."

"I want your help."

"My help? How can I help you?"

The sculptor tossed his hat into a chair, and leaned forward, tapping
on one broad, thick palm with the fingers of the other hand.

"They tell me," he said, "that you know Mrs. Fenton pretty well; Arthur
Fenton's wife,--he's an awful snob, I hate him."

"Mrs. Fenton has been very kind to me," Milly responded, involuntarily
shrinking a little, and speaking guardedly.

"Well, put it any way you like. If she's interested in you, that's all
I want," Stanton went on, in his rough way. "You'll have a pull on her
through the church racket, I suppose."

Melissa looked at him with pain and disgust in her eyes. She always
shrank from Orin's rough coarseness; and she always felt helpless
before him. She made no reply, but played nervously with the pen she
had laid down upon his entrance. He regarded her curiously.

"You see," he said, with a clumsy attempt at easy familiarity, "Mrs.
Fenton's a niece of Mr. Calvin, who is on the statue committee. Mrs.
Frostwinch says Mr. Calvin's the man who has most influence in the
committee, and it occurred to me that it would be a good thing if you'd
put Mrs. Fenton up to taking my part with Calvin. You see," he
continued, in an offhand manner, "artists don't get any show nowadays
unless they keep their eyes open, and I mean to be wide awake. I'm
ready to do a good turn, too, for anybody that helps me. John told me
the other day that you and he had had a row, and if you can do me a
good turn in this, I may be able to pay you by smoothing John down."

Milly flushed painfully. Her delicacy was outraged, but, too, her
combative instinct was roused to defend her lover.

"John and I haven't quarrelled," she said, in a voice a little raised;
"he is worried about the debts and that makes him out of sorts,
sometimes, that is all."

A look of shrewd cunning came into Orin's narrow eyes. He suspected the
allusion to John's determination to clear his father's memory from
dishonor to be a clever device to win a concession from him. He looked
upon the remark as a statement from Milly of the price of her aid.

"If I get this commission," he said, watching the effect of his words,
"I shall be in a position to help John pay off those debts, and I shall
tell him he has you to thank for my helping him out in his
foolishness,--for it is foolishness to waste money on dead debts."

A glad light sprang into Milly's face. She was too childlike to suspect
the thought which led Orin to make this proffer, and the hope of having
John aided at once and of being able to contribute to the bringing
about of this result, made her heart beat joyfully. "You know how glad
I shall be if I can help you," she said quickly. "I will speak to Mrs.
Fenton when I see her to-morrow; though I do not see what good I can do
you," her honesty forced her to add, with sudden self-distrust.

"Oh, you just put in and do your level best," Orin responded, with the
smile which Mrs. Frostwinch had once called his "deplorably Satanic
grin," "and it is sure to come out all right. There are other wires
being pulled."




XIV

                          THE SHOT OF ACCIDENT.
                                            Othello; iv.--I.

It was not often that Arthur Fenton permitted himself to be
ill-tempered at home. He had too keen an appreciation of good taste to
allow his dark humors to vent themselves upon the heads of those with
whom he lived.

"A man is to be excused for being cross abroad," he was wont to
observe, "but only a brute is peevish at home."

On the morning following his conversation with Damaris Wainwright,
however, he was decidedly out of sorts, and proved but ill company for
his wife at the breakfast table. She ventured some simple remark in
relation to a plan which Mr. Candish had for the re-decoration of the
Church of the Nativity, and her husband retorted with an open sneer.

"Oh, don't talk about Mr. Candish to me," he said. "He is that obsolete
thing, a clergyman."

"I supposed," Edith responded good-naturedly, "that a question of
artistic decoration would interest you, even if it was connected with a
church."

"I hate anything connected with a religion," Fenton observed savagely.
"A religion is simply an artificial scheme of life, to be followed at
the expense of all harmony with nature."

It was evident to Edith that her husband was nervous and irritable, and
with wifely protective instinct she attributed his condition to
overwork. She did not take up the challenge which he in a manner flung
down. She seldom argued with him now; she cast about in her mind for a
safe topic of conversation, and, by ill-luck, hit upon the one least
calculated to restore Arthur to good humor and a sane temper.

"Helen was in last evening," she said. "She is troubled about Ninitta;
but I think it is because she isn't used to her ways."

Fenton started guiltily.

"What about Ninitta?" he demanded.

"Helen says she acts strangely, as if she had something on her mind;
and that she complains bitterly that her husband doesn't care for her."

Arthur shrugged his shoulders. He was on his guard now, and perfectly
self-possessed.

"No?" he said, inquiringly. "Why should he?"

"Why should he?" echoed his wife indignantly. Then she recovered
herself, and let the question pass, saying simply: "That would lead us
into one of our old discussions about right and wrong."

"Those struggles and quibbles between right and wrong," Fenton retorted
contemptuously, "have ceased to amuse me. They were interesting when I
was young enough for them to have novelty, but now I find grand
passions and a strong will more entertaining than that form of
amusement."

Edith raised her clear eyes to his with a calmness which she had
learned by years of patient struggle.

"And yet," she answered, "the people whom I have found most true, most
helpful, and even most comfortable, have been those who believed these
questions of right and wrong the most vital things in the universe."

"Oh, certainly," was the reply. "A superstition is an admirable thing
in its place."

He rose from the table as he spoke, and stood an instant with his hand
upon the back of his chair, looking at her in apparent indecision. She
saw that he was troubled, and she longed to help him, but she had
learned that his will was definite and unmanageable, and she secretly
feared that her inquiry would be fruitless when she asked,--

"What is it that troubles you this morning, Arthur? Has anything gone
wrong?"

"Things are always wrong," replied he. Then, with seeming irrelevance,
he added: "People are so illogical! They so insist that a man shall
think in the beaten rut. They are angry because I don't like the taste
of life. Good Heavens! Why haven't I the same right to dislike life
that I have to hate sweet champagne? If other people want to live and
to drink Perrier Jouet, I am perfectly willing that they should, but,
for my own part, I don't want one any more than the other."

What he said sounded to Edith like one of the detached generalities he
was fond of uttering, and if she had learned that beneath his seemingly
irrelevant words always lay a connecting thread of thought, she had
learned also that she could seldom hope to discover what this cord
might be. To understand his words, now, it would have been necessary
for her to be aware of the net spread for him by Irons, the struggle in
his mind as he talked with Miss Wainwright, and the effort he was now
making to bring himself up to the firmness needed for the important
interview with Mr. Hubbard which lay before him. In the sleepless hours
of the night, Fenton had gone over the ground again and again; he had
painted to himself the baseness of the thing he meant to do, and all
his instincts of loyalty, of taste, of good-breeding, rose against it;
but none the less did he cling doggedly to his determination. His
purpose never wavered. His decision had been made, and this summing up
of the cost did not shake him; it only made him miserable by the keen
appreciation it brought him of the bitter humiliation fate--for so he
viewed it--was heaping upon his head.

The strength and weakness which are often mingled in one character,
like the iron and clay in the image of the prophet's vision, make the
most surprising of the many strange paradoxes of human life. Fenton was
sensuous, selfish, yielding, yet he possessed a tenacity of purpose, a
might of will, which nothing could shake. He looked across the table
now, at his sweet-faced, clear-eyed wife, with a dreadful sense of her
purity, her honor, her remoteness; it cut him to the quick to think
that the breach of trust he had in view would fill her mind with
loathing; yet the possibility of therefore abandoning his purpose did
not occur to him. Indeed, such was his nature, that it might be said
that the possibility of abandoning his deliberately formed intention,
on this or on any other grounds, did not for him exist.

It was one of the peculiarities which he shared with many sensitive and
sensuous natures, that his first thought in any unpleasant situation
was always a reflection upon the bitterness of existence. He always
thought of the laying down of life as the easiest method of escape from
any disagreeable dilemma. He was infected with the distaste of life,
that disease which is seldom fatal, yet which in time destroys all save
life alone. He thought now how he hated living, and the inevitable
reflection came after, how easy it were to get out of the coil of
humanity. A faint smile of bitterness curled his lips as he recalled a
remark which Helen Greyson had once quoted to him as having been made
of him by her dead husband. "He'll want to kill himself, but he won't.
He's too soft-hearted, and he'd never forget other people and their
opinions." He had acknowledged to himself that this was true, and he
wondered whether Mrs. Greyson appreciated its justice.

The thought of Helen brought up the old days when he had been so
frankly her friend that he had told her everything that was in his
heart except those things which vanity bade him conceal lest he fall in
her estimation.

It was so long since he had known a friend on those intimate terms
under which it makes no especial difference what is said, since even in
silence the understanding is perfect, and the pleasure of talking
depends chiefly on the exchange of the signs of complete mutual
comprehension, that the old days appealed to him with wonderful power.
There is an immeasurable and soothing restfulness in such intercourse,
especially to a man like Fenton, in whom exists an inner necessity
always to say something when he talks; and as he recalled them now,
something almost a sob rose in Arthur's throat. Many men suppose
themselves to be cultivating their intellect when they are only, by the
gratification of their tastes, quickening their susceptibilities; and
Fenton's whole self-indulged existence had resulted chiefly in
rendering him more sensitive to the discomforts of a universe in the
making of which other things had been considered besides his pleasure.

He looked across the breakfast table at his wife. He noted with
appreciation the beautiful line of her cheek outlined against the dark
leather of the wall behind her. He felt a twinge of remorse for coming
so far short of her ideal of him. He knew how resolutely she refused to
see his worst side, and he reflected with philosophy half bitter and
half contemptuous, that no woman ever lived who could wholly outgrow
the feeling that to believe or to disbelieve a thing must in some
occult way affect its truth. At least she had fulfilled all the
unspoken promises, so much more important than vows put into words
could be, with which she had married him. A remorseful feeling came
over his mind, and instantly followed the instinctive self-excuse that
she could never suffer as keenly as he suffered, no matter how greatly
he disappointed her.

"People are to be envied or pitied," he said aloud, "not for their
circumstances, but for their temperaments."

Edith looked up inquiringly. He went round to where she was sitting,
smiling to think how far she must be from divining his thought.

"I stayed at the club too late last night," he said, stooping to kiss
her smooth white forehead in an unenthusiastic, habitual way which
always stung her. "Some of the fellows insisted upon my playing poker,
and I got so excited that I didn't sleep when I did get to bed."

Edith sighed, but she made no useless remonstrances.

Walking down to his studio, carefully dressed, faultlessly booted and
gloved, and, as Tom Bently was accustomed to say, "too confoundedly
well groomed for an artist," Fenton tried in vain to determine how he
should manage the important conversation with Mr. Hubbard. He had
racked his brains in the night in vain attempts to solve this problem,
but in the end he was forced to leave everything for chance or
circumstances to decide.

When Stewart Hubbard sat before him, Fenton was conscious of a tingling
excitement in every vein, but outwardly he was only the more calm. A
close observer might have noticed a nervous quickness in his movements,
and a certain shrillness in his voice, but the sitter gave no heed to
these tokens, which he would have regarded as of no importance had he
seen them. The talk was at first rather rambling, and was not kept up
with much briskness on either side. Fenton, indeed, was so absorbed in
the task which lay before him that he hardly followed the other's
remarks, and he suddenly became aware that he had lost the thread of
conversation altogether, so that he could not possibly imagine what the
connection was when Hubbard observed,--

"Yes, it is certainly the hardest thing in the world for one being to
comprehend another."

Fenton rallied his wits quickly, and retorted with no apparent
hesitation,--

"It is so. Probably a cat couldn't possibly understand how a human
mother can properly bring up a child when she has no tail for her
offspring to play with."

"That wasn't exactly what I meant," the other returned, laughing; "but
what a fellow you are to give an unexpected turn to things."

"Do you think so?" the artist said. Then, with a painful feeling of
tightness about the throat, and a soberness of tone which he could not
prevent, he added,--"That is a reason why I have always felt that I was
one of those comparatively rare persons whom wealth would adorn, if
somebody would only show me an investment to get rich on."

"You are one of those still rarer persons who would adorn wealth," Mr.
Hubbard retorted, ignoring the latter part of the artist's remark.
"Only that you are so astonishingly outspoken, that you might cause a
revolution if you had Vanderbilt's millions to add weight to your
words. It doesn't do to be too honest."

The sigh which left Fenton's lips was almost one of relief, although he
felt that this first attempt to turn the talk into financial channels
had failed.

"No," he replied. "Civilized honesty consists largely in making the
truth convey a false impression, so that one is saved a lie in words
while telling one in effect."

"It is strange how we cling to that old idea that as long as the letter
of what we say is true it is no matter if the spirit be false," was Mr.
Hubbard's response. "I thought of it yesterday at the meeting of the
committee on the statue, when we were all sitting there trying to get
the better of each other by telling true falsehoods."

"How does the statue business come on?" Fenton asked.

"Not very fast. I am sure I wish I was out of it. America always was a
trouble, and this time is no exception to the rule."

"I hope," Arthur said, speaking with more seriousness, "that Grant
Herman will be given the commission. He's all and away the best man."

He had secretly a feeling that he was putting an item on the credit
side of his account with the sculptor in urging his fitness for this
work.

"It is hard to do anything with Calvin and Irons. I've always been for
Herman, but I don't mind telling you in confidence that I stand alone
on the committee."

"Isn't there any way of helping things on? Wouldn't a petition from the
artists do some good?"

"It might. But if you get up one don't let me know. I'd rather be able
to say that I had no knowledge of it if it came before us."

Fenton smiled and continued his painting. With a thrill half of
triumph, half of rage, he became aware that he was this morning
succeeding admirably in getting just the likeness he wanted in the
sitter's portrait. He had feared lest his excitement should render him
unfit for work, but it had, on the contrary, spurred him up to unusual
effectiveness. The thought came into his mind of the price at which he
was buying this skill, and it was characteristic that the reflection
which followed was that at least, if he caused Hubbard to lose money by
betraying the secret he hoped to get from him, he was, to a degree,
repaying him by painting a portrait which could under no other
circumstances be so good.

It was no less characteristic of Fenton's mental habits that he looked
upon himself as having committed the crime against his sitter which had
yet to be carried out. In his logic, the legitimate, however distorted,
legacy from Puritan ancestors, the sin lay in the determination; and he
would have held himself almost as guilty had circumstances at this
moment freed him from the disagreeable necessity of going on with his
attempt. Doubtless in this fact lay in part the explanation of the
firmness of his purpose. He would still have suffered in self-respect,
since abandonment of his plan, even if voluntary, would not alter the
fact that he had in intention been guilty. He would have said that
theoretically there was no difference between intention and commission,
and however casuists might reason, he took a curious delight in being
scrupulously exacting with himself in his moral requirements, the fact
that he held himself in his actions practically above such
considerations naturally making this less difficult than it otherwise
would have been. Every man has his private ethical methods, and this
was the way in which Arthur Fenton's mind held itself in regard to that
right of which he often denied the existence.

"I suppose," he remarked at length, with deliberate intent of
entrapping Hubbard into some inadvertent betrayal of his secret, "that
you business men have no sort of an idea how ignorant a man of my
profession can be in regard to business. I had a note this morning from
a broker whom I've been having help me a little in a sort of infantile
attempt at stock gambling, and he advises me to find a financial
kindergarten and attend it."

"I dare say he is right," the other returned, smiling. "You had better
beware of stock gambling, if you are not desirous of ending your days
in a poorhouse."

"But what can one do? It is only the men of large experience and so
much capital that they do not need it who have a chance at safe
investments."

He felt that he was bungling horribly, but he knew no other way of
getting on in his attempt. He was terrified by the openness of his
tactics. It seemed to him that any man must be able to perceive what he
was driving at, but he desperately assured himself that after all
Hubbard could not possibly have any reason to suspect him of a design
of pumping him.

"Oh, there are plenty of safe investments," the sitter said, as if the
matter were one of no great moment. Then, looking at his watch, he
added, "I must go in fifteen minutes. I have an engagement."

Fenton dared not risk another direct trial, but he skirted about the
subject on which his thoughts were fixed. His attempts, however, though
ingenious, were fruitless; and he saw Hubbard step down from the dais
where he posed, with a baffled sense of having failed utterly.

"The country is really beginning to look quite spring-like," he said,
as he stood by while his sitter put on his overcoat.

He spoke in utter carelessness, simply to avoid a silence which would
perhaps seem a little awkward; but the shot of accident hit the mark at
which his careful aim had been vain.

"Yes, it is," the other responded. "I was out of town with Staggchase
yesterday, looking at some meadows we talk of buying for a factory
site, and I was surprised to see how forward things are."

Yesterday Mrs. Staggchase had casually mentioned to Fred Rangely that
her husband had gone to Feltonville; and at the St. Filipe Club in the
evening, as they were playing poker, Rangely had excused the absence of
Mr. Staggchase, who was to be of the party, by telling this fact.

After Hubbard was gone, Fenton stood half dizzy with mingled exultation
and shame. He exulted in his victory, but he felt as if he had
committed murder.

And that evening Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson received a note from Mr.
Irons, in which Feltonville was mentioned.




XV

                            LIKE COVERED FIRE.
                                   Much Ado about Nothing; iii.--2.

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson was playing a somewhat difficult game, and
she was playing it well. She was entertaining Mr. Greenfield, the
Feltonville member, and she had also as a casual guest for the evening,
Mr. Erastus Snaffle, and successfully to work the one off against the
other was a task from which the cleverest of society women might be
excused for shrinking, even had it been presented to her in terms of
her own circle.

Greenfield was an honest, straightforward countryman; big, and rather
burly, with a clear eye and a curling chestnut beard. He was a man at
once of great force of character, and of singular simplicity. He
exerted a vast influence in his country neighborhood in virtue of the
respect inspired by his invincible integrity, a certain shrewdness
which was the more effective at short range from the fact that it was
really narrow in its spread, and perhaps most of all of his bluff,
demonstrative kindliness. Tom Greenfield's hearty laugh and cordial
handshake had won him more votes than many a more able man has been
able to secure by the most thorough acquaintance with the questions and
interests with which election would make it the duty of a man to be
concerned; but it must be added that no man ever used his influence
more disinterestedly and honestly, or more conscientiously fulfilled
the duties of his position, as he understood them.

Such a man was peculiarly likely to become the victim of a woman like
Mrs. Sampson. The plea of relationship on which she had sought his
acquaintance disarmed suspicion at the outset. His country manners were
familiar with family ties as a genuine bond, and he had no reason
whatever to suppose that any ulterior motive was possible to this woman
who affected to be so ignorant of politics and public business.

In the weeks which had elapsed since her interview with Alfred Irons,
Mrs. Sampson had been making the most of the fraction of the season
which remained to her. She had offered excuses which Greenfield's
simple soul found satisfactory why she had not sought her cousin's
acquaintance early in the winter, and the very irksomeness of the
enforced absence from his country home which seized him as spring came
on, made him the more susceptible to the blandishments of the mature
siren who, with cunning art, was meshing her nets about him.

He had quite fallen into the habit of passing his unoccupied evenings
with the widow, and she in turn had denied herself to some of her
familiar friends on occasions when she had reason to expect him. Had
she known he was likely to come this evening, she would have taken care
to guard against his meeting with Snaffle; but as that gentleman was
first in the field, she had her choice between sending Greenfield away
and seeing them together. Like the clever woman she was, she chose the
latter alternative, and found, too, her account in so doing.

Erastus Snaffle was more familiarly than favorably known in financial
circles of Boston, as the man who had put afloat more wild-cat stocks
than any other speculator on the street. It might be supposed that his
connection with any scheme would be enough to wreck its prospects, yet
whatever he took hold of floated for a time. There was always a feeling
among his victims that at length he had come to the place where he must
connect himself with a respectable scheme for the sake of
re-establishing his reputation; but this hope was never realized.
Perhaps whatever he touched ceased from that moment to be either
reliable or respectable. However, since Snaffle was possessed of so
inexhaustible a fund of plausibility that he never failed to find
investors who placed confidence in his wildest statements, it after all
made very little difference to him what his reputation or his financial
standing might be.

By one of those singular compensations in which nature seems now and
then to make a struggle to adjust the average of human characteristics
with something approaching fairness, Snaffle was hardly less gullible
than he was skilful in ensnaring others. He was continually making a
fortune by launching some bogus stock or other, but it seemed always to
be fated that he should lose it again in some equally wild scheme
started by a brother sharper. Perhaps between his professional strokes
he was obliged to practise at raising credulity in himself merely to
keep his hand in; perhaps it was simply that the habit of believing
financial absurdities had become a sort of second nature in him; or yet
again is it possible that he felt obliged to assume credulity in regard
to the falsehoods of his fellow sharpers, as a sort of equivalent for
the faith he so often demanded of them; but, whatever may have been the
reason, it was at least a fact that his money went in much the same way
it came.

In person, Erastus Snaffle was not especially prepossessing. His face
would have been more attractive had the first edition of his chin been
larger and the succeeding ones smaller, while the days when he could
still boast of a waist were so far in the irrevocable past that the
imagination refused so long a flight as would be required to reach it.
His eyes were small and heavy-lidded, but in them smouldered a dull
gleam of cunning that at times kindled into a pointed flame. His dress
was in keeping with his person, and his manner quite as vulgar as
either.

He was sitting to-night in one corner of the sofa, his corpulent person
heaped up in an unshapely mass, talking with a fluency that now and
then died away entirely, while he paused to speculate what sort of a
game his hostess might be playing with Mr. Greenfield.

"The fact is," Mrs. Sampson was saying, as Snaffle recalled his
attention from one of these fits of abstraction, "that I don't know
what I shall do this summer; and I don't like to believe that summer is
so near that I must decide soon."

"You were at Ashmont last year, weren't you?" Snaffle asked. "Why don't
you go there again."

Mrs. Sampson shot him a quick glance which Snaffle understood at once
to mean that he was to second her in something she was attempting. He
did not yet get his clew clearly enough to understand just how, but the
look put him on the alert, as the hostess answered,--

"Oh, it is all spoiled. The railroad has been put through and all the
summer visitors are giving it up. I'm sure I don't know what will
become of all the poverty-stricken widows that made their living out of
taking boarders. That railroad has been an expensive job for Ashmont in
every way."

Greenfield smiled, his big, genial smile which had so much warmth in it.

"That isn't usually the way people look at the effect of a railroad on
a town."

This time the look which Mrs. Sampson gave Snaffle told him so plainly
what she wanted him to do that he spoke at once, her almost
imperceptible nod showing him that he was on the right track.

"Oh, a railroad is always the ruin of a small town," he said, "unless
it is its terminus. It sucks all the life out of the villages along the
way. You go along any of the lines in Massachusetts, and you will find
that while the towns have been helped by the road, the small villages
have been knocked into a cocked hat. All the young people have left
them; all the folks in the neighborhood go to some city to do their
trading, and the stuffing is knocked out of things generally."

Mrs. Sampson looked at Snaffle with a thoroughly gratified expression.

"I don't know much about the business part of the question, of course,"
she said, "but I do know that a railroad takes all the young men out of
a village. A woman I boarded with at Ashmont last year wrote to me the
other day in the greatest distress because her only son had left her.
She said it was all the railroad, and her letter was really pathetic."

"Oh, that's a woman's way of looking at it," rejoined Greenfield, the
greatest struggle of whose life, as Mrs. Sampson was perfectly well
aware, was to keep at home his only child, a youth just coming to
manhood. "It is easy enough for boys to get away nowadays, and just
having a railroad at the door wouldn't make any great difference."

"It does, though, make a mighty sight of difference," Snaffle said,
rolling his head and putting his plump white hands together. "Somehow
or other, the having that train scooting by day in and day out
unsettles the young fellows. The whistle stirs them up, and keeps
reminding them how easy it is to go out West or somewhere or other.
I've seen it time and again."

"Well," Greenfield returned, a shadow over his genial face, "I have a
youngster that's got the Western fever pretty bad without any railroads
coming to Feltonville. But what you say is only one side of the
question. When a railroad comes it always brings business in one way or
another. The increase of transportation facilities is sure to build
things up."

"Oh, yes, it builds them up," Snaffle chuckled, as if the idea afforded
him infinite amusement, "but how does it work. There are two or three
men in the town who start market gardens and make something out of it.
They sell their produce in the city and they do their trading there;
they hire Irish laborers from outside the village; and how much better
off is the town, except that it can tax them a trifle more if it can
get hold of the valuation of their property." "Which it generally
can't," interpolated Greenfield grimly, with an inward reminder of
certain experiences as assessor.

"Or somebody starts a factory," Snaffle went on, "and then the town is
made, ain't it? Outside capital is invested, outside operatives brought
in to turn the place upside down and to bring in all the deviltries
that have been invented, and all the town has to show in the long run
is a little advance in real estate over the limited area where they
want to build houses for the mill-hands. There's no end of rot talked
about improving towns by putting up factories, but I can't see it
myself."

Snaffle sometimes said that he believed in nothing but making money,
and there was never any reason to suppose he held an opinion because he
expressed it. He said what he felt to be politic, and a long and
complicated experience enabled him to defend any view with more or less
plausibility upon a moment's notice. He was clever enough to see that
for some reason the widow wished him to pursue the line of talk he had
taken, and he was ready enough to oblige her. He never took the trouble
to inquire of himself what his opinions were, because that question was
of so secondary importance; he merely exerted himself to make the most
of any points that presented themselves to his mind in favor of the
side it was for his advantage to support.

"'Pon my word," Greenfield said, with a laugh, "you talk like an old
fogy of the first water. I wouldn't have suspected you of looking at
things that way."

"Mr. Snaffle is always surprising," Mrs. Sampson said, with her most
dazzling smile, "but he is generally right."

"Thank you. I can't help at any rate seeing that there are two sides to
this thing, and I am too old a bird to be caught with the common chaff
that people talk."

Mr. Greenfield settled himself comfortably in his chair and laughed
softly. The discussion was so purely theoretical that he could be
amused without looking upon it seriously.

"For my part," he remarked, his big hand playing with a paper-knife on
one of the little tables, which, to a practised eye, suggested cards,
"I am of the progressive party, thank you. I believe in opening up the
country and putting railroads where they will do the most good. A few
people get their old prejudices run against, but on the whole it is for
the interest of a town to have a railroad, and it is nonsense to talk
any other way."

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson leaned forward to lay her fingers upon the
speaker's arm.

"That is just it, Cousin Tom," she said, with a languishing glance.
"You always look at things in so large a way. You never let the matter
of personal interest decide, but think of the public good,"

The flattery was somewhat gross, but men will swallow a good deal in
the way of praise from women. They are generally slow to suspect the
fair sex of sarcasm, and allow themselves the luxury of enjoying the
pleasure of indulging their vanity untroubled by unpleasant doubts
concerning the sincerity of compliments which from masculine lips would
offend them. Greenfield laughed with a perceptible shade of
awkwardness, but he was evidently not ill pleased.

"Oh, well," he returned, "that is because thus far it has happened that
my personal interests and my convictions have worked together so well.
You might see a difference if they didn't pull in the same line."

Mrs. Sampson considered a moment, and then rose, bringing out a
decanter of sherry with a supply of glasses and of biscuit from a
convenient closet in the bottom of a secretary.

"That's business," Snaffle said, joyously. "Sherry ain't much for a man
of my size, but it's better than nothing."

"It is a hint though," the hostess said, filling his glass.

"A hint!" he repeated.

"Yes; a hint that it is getting late, and that I am tired, and you must
go home."

"Oh, ho!" he laughed uproariously; "now I won't let you in for that
good thing on the Princeton Platinum stock. You'll wish you hadn't
turned me out of the house when you see that stock quoted at fifty per
cent above par."

"Ah, I know all about Princeton Platinum," she responded, showing her
white teeth rather more than was absolutely demanded by the occasion;
"besides, I've no money to put into anything."

"What about Princeton Platinum?" Greenfield asked, turning toward the
other a shrewd glance. "I've heard a good deal of talk about it lately,
but I didn't pay much attention to it."

"Princeton Platinum," the hostess put in before Snaffle could speak,
"is Mr. Snaffle's latest fairy story. It is a dream that people buy
pieces of for good hard samoleons, and"--

"Good _what?_" interrupted the country member.

"Shekels, dollars, for cash under whatever name you choose to give it;
and then some fine morning they all wake up."

"Well?" demanded Snaffle, to whom the jest seemed not in the least
distasteful. "And what then?"

"Oh, what is usually left of dreams when one wakes up in the morning?"

The fat person of the speculator shook with appreciation of the wit of
this sally, which did not seem to Greenfield so funny as from the
laughter of the others he supposed it must really be. The latter rose
when Snaffle did and prepared to say good-night, but Mrs. Sampson
detained him. "I want to speak with you a moment," she said.
"Good-night, Mr. Snaffle. Bear us in mind when Princeton Platinum has
made your fortune, and don't look down on us."

"No fear," he returned. "When that happens, I shall come to you for
advice how to spend it."

There was too much covetousness in her voice as she answered jocosely
that she could tell him. The struggle of life made even a jesting
supposition of wealth excite her cupidity. She sighed as she turned
back into the parlor and motioned Greenfield to a seat. Placing herself
in a low, velvet-covered chair, she stretched out her feet before her,
displaying the black silk stocking upon a neat instep as she crossed
them upon a low stool.

"I am sure I don't know how to say what I want to," she began, knitting
her brows in a perplexity that was only part assumed. "Something has
come to me in the strangest way, and I think I ought to tell you,
although I haven't any interest in it, and it certainly isn't any of my
business."

Her companion was too blunt to be likely to help her much. He simply
asked, in the most straightforward manner,--

"What is it?"

"It's about public business," she said. "Why!" she added, as if a
sudden light had broken upon her. "I really believe I was going to be a
lobbyist. Fancy me lobbying! What does a lobbyist do?"

"Nothing that you'd be likely to have any hand in," returned
Greenfield, smiling at the absurdity of the proposition. "What is all
this about?"

"I suppose I should not have thought of it but for the turn the talk
took to-night," she returned with feminine indirectness. "It was odd,
wasn't it, that we should get to talking of the harm railroads do, when
it was about a railroad that I was going to talk."

"There's only one railroad scheme on foot this spring that I know
anything about, and that's for a branch of the Massachusetts Outside
Railroad through Wachusett. That isn't in the Legislature either."

"That's the one. It's going to be in the Legislature. There's going to
be an attempt to change the route."

"Change the route?"

"Yes, so it will go through--but will you promise not to tell this to a
living mortal?"

"Of course."

"I suppose," she said, regarding her slipper intently, "that I really
ought not to tell you; but I can't help it somehow. Your name is to be
used."

"My name?"

"Yes, the men who are planning the thing say that it will be so evident
that you'd want the road to go this new way, that if you vote with the
Wachusett interest they'll swear you are bought."

"Swear I'm bought? Pooh! Tom Greenfield is too well known for that sort
of talk to hold water."

"But through your own town"--

Mrs. Sampson regarded her companion closely as she slowly pronounced
these words. They roused him like an electric shock.

"Through Feltonville?"

She nodded, compressing her lips, but saying nothing.

"Phew! This is a tough nut to crack. But are you sure that is to be
tried?"

"Yes; there is a scheme for a few monopolists to buy up mill privileges
and run factories at Feltonville; and they mean to make the road serve
them, instead of its being put where the public need it."

"So that's what Lincoln's been raking up in Boston," Greenfield said to
himself. "I knew he was up to some deviltry. Wants to sell off those
meadows he's been gathering in on mortgages."

"Of course you'll want to help your town," Mrs. Sampson said,
regretfully. "The men that voted for you'll expect you to do it; but
it's helping on a sly scheme at the expense of the state. I'm sorry
you've got to be on that side."

"Got to be on that side?" he retorted, starting up. "Who says I've got
to be on that side? we'll see about that before we get through. The men
that voted for me expect me to do what is right, and I don't think
they'll be disappointed just yet."

And all things considered, Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson thought she had
done a good evening's work.




XVI

                       WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE.
                                             Hamlet; i.--2.

"Oh, this is completely captivating," Mrs. Frostwinch said, as she sat
down to luncheon in Edith Fenton's pretty dining-room, and looked at
the large mound-like bouquet of richly tinted spring leaves which
adorned the centre of the table. "That is the advantage of having
brains. One always finds some delightful surprise or other at your
house."

"Thank you," Edith returned, gayly; "but at your house one always has a
delightful surprise in the hostess, so you are not forced to resort to
makeshifts."

Helen Greyson, the third member of the party, smiled and shook her head.

"Really," she said, "is one expected to keep up to the level of
elaborate compliment like that? I fear I can only sit by in admiring
silence while you two go on."

"Oh, no," the hostess responded. "Mrs. Frostwinch is to talk to you.
That is what you people are here for. I am only to listen."

Edith had invited Helen and Mrs. Frostwinch to take luncheon with her,
and she had really done it to bring these two more closely together.
She was fond of them both, and the effect of her life in the world into
which her marriage had introduced her had been to render her capable of
judging both these women broadly. She admired them both, and while her
feeling of affection had by circumstances been more closely cemented
with Helen, she felt that a strong friendship was possible between
herself and Mrs. Frostwinch should the lines of their lives ever fall
much together.

The modern woman, particularly if she be at all in society, has
generally to accept the possibilities of friendship in place of that
gracious boon itself. The busy round of life to-day gives ample
opportunity for judging of character, so that it is well nigh
impossible not to feel that some are worthy of friendship, some
especially gifted by nature with the power of inspiring it, while, on
the other hand, there are those who repel or with whom the bond would
be impossible. But friendship, however much it be the result of eternal
fitness and the inevitable consequence of the meeting of two harmonious
natures, is a plant of slow growth, and few things which require time
and tranquillity for their nourishment flourish greatly in this age of
restlessness and intense mental activity. The radical and unfettered
Bohemian, or such descendants of that famous race as may be supposed
still to survive, attempts to leap over all obstacles, to create what
must grow, and to turn comradeship into friendship simply because one
naturally grows out of the other; the more conservative and logical
Philistine recognizes the futility of this attitude, and in his too
careful consistency sometimes needlessly brings about the very same
failure by pursuing the opposite course.

Edith was not of the women who naturally analyze their own feelings
toward others over keenly, but one cannot live in a world without
sharing its mental peculiarities. The times are too introspective to
allow any educated person to escape self-examination. The century which
produced that most appalling instance of spiritual exposure, the
"_Journal Intime_" which it is impossible to read without blushing that
one thus looks upon the author's soul in its nakedness, leaves small
chance for self-unconsciousness. Edith could not help examining her
mental attitude toward her companions, and it was perhaps a proof of
the sweetness of her nature that she found in her thought nothing of
that shortcoming in them, or reason for lack of fervor in friendship
other than such as must come from lack of intercourse.

Perhaps some train of thought not far removed from the foregoing made
her say, as the luncheon progressed,--

"Really, it seems to me as if life proceeded at a pace so rapid
nowadays that one had not time even to be fond of anybody."

"It goes too fast for one to have much chance to show it," Helen
responded; "but one may surely be fond of one's friends, even without
seeing them."

"If you will swear not to tell the disgraceful fact," Mrs. Frostwinch
said, "I'll confess that I abhor Walt Whitman; but that one dreadful,
disreputably slangy phrase of his, 'I loaf and invite my soul,' echoes
through my brain like an invitation to Paradise."

Edith smiled.

"If Arthur were here," she returned, "he would probably say that you
think you mean that, but that really you don't."

"My dear," Mrs. Frostwinch answered, with her beautiful smile and a
characteristic undulation of the neck, "your husband, although he is
clever to an extent which I consider positively immoral, is only a man,
and he does not understand. Men do what they like; women, what they
can. There may be moral free will for women, although I've ceased to be
sure of that even; but socially no such thing exists. Do we wear the
dreadful clothes we are tied up in because we want to? Do we order
society, or our lives, or our manners, or our morals? Do we"--

"There, there," interrupted Helen, laughing and putting up her hand. "I
can't hear all this without a protest. If it is true I won't own it. I
had rather concede that all women are fools"--

"As indeed they are," interpolated Mrs. Frost-winch.

"Than that they are helpless manikins," continued Helen. "In any other
sense, that is," she added, "than men are."

"My dear Mrs. Greyson," the other said, leaning toward her, "you take
the single question of the relation of the sexes, and where are we? I
wouldn't own it to a man for the world, but the truth is that men are
governed by their will, and women are governed by men; and, what is
more, if it could all be changed to-morrow, we should be perfectly
miserable until we got the old way back again; and that's the most
horribly humiliating part of it."

"It is easy to see that you are not a woman suffragist," commented
Edith.

"Woman suffrage," echoed the other, her voice never for an instant
varied from its even and highbred pitch; "woman suffrage must remain a
practical impossibility until the idea can be eradicated from society
that the initiative in passion is the province of man."

"Brava!" cried the hostess. "Mr. Herman ought to hear that epigram. He
asked me last night if he ought to put an inscription in favor of woman
suffrage on the hem of the _America _he is modelling."

Helen turned toward her quickly.

"Is Mr. Herman making a model of the _America_?" she asked. "Has he the
commission?"

"He hasn't the commission, because nobody has it, but he has been asked
by the committee to prepare a model."

"That is"--began Helen. "Strange," she was going to say, but
fortunately caught herself in time and substituted "capital. It is good
to think that Boston will have one really fine statue."

"Aren't you in that, Mrs. Greyson?" Mrs. Frostwinch asked.

"No," Helen answered. "I am really doing little since I came home. I am
waiting until the time serves, I suppose."

She spoke without especial thought of what she was saying, desiring
merely to cover any indications which might show the feeling aroused by
what she had just heard and the decision she had just taken to have
nothing to do with the contest for the statue of _America_, although
she had begun a study for the figure.

"I admire you for being able to make time serve you instead of serving
time like the rest of us," Mrs. Frostwinch said.

"I shouldn't hear another call you a time server without taking up the
cudgels to defend you," responded Edith.

Mrs. Frostwinch smiled in reply to this. Then she turned again to Helen.

"To tell the truth, Mrs. Greyson," she observed, "I am glad you are not
concerned in this statue, for I am myself one of a band of conspirators
who are pushing the claims of a new man."

"Is there a new sculptor?" Helen asked, smiling. "That is wonderful
news."

"Yes; we think he is the coming man. His name is Stanton; Orin Stanton."

"Oh," responded Helen, with involuntary frankness in her accent.

Mrs. Frostwinch laughed with perfect good nature.

"You don't admire him?" she commented. "Well, many don't. To say the
truth, I do not think anybody alive, if you will pardon me, Mrs.
Greyson, knows the truth about sculpture. Perhaps the Greeks did, but
we don't, even when we are told. I know the Soldiers' Monument on the
Common is hideous beyond words, because everybody says so; but they
didn't when it was put up. Only a few artists objected then."

"And the fact that a few artists have brought everybody to their
opinion," Edith asked, "doesn't make you feel that they must be right;
must have the truth behind them?"

"No; frankly, I can't say that it does," Mrs. Frostwinch responded.

She leaned back in her chair, a soft flush on her thin, high-bred face.
Her figure, in a beautiful gown of beryl plush embroidered with gold,
seemed artistically designed for the carved, high-backed chair in which
she sat, and both her companions were too appreciative to lose the
grace of the picture she made.

"I cannot see that it is bad," she went on. "Mr. Fenton has proved it
to me, and even Mr. Herman, who seems, so far as I have seen him, the
most charitable of men, when I asked him how he liked it, spoke with
positive loathing of it. I can't manage to make myself unhappy over it,
that's all. And I believe I am as appreciative as the average."

To Helen there was something at once fascinating and repellent in this
talk. She was attracted by Mrs. Frostwinch. The perfect breeding, the
grace, the polish of the woman, won upon her strongly, while yet the
subtile air of taking life conventionally, of lacking vital
earnestness, was utterly at variance with the sculptor's temperament
and methods of thought. She no sooner recognized this feeling than she
rebuked herself for shallowness and a want of charity, yet even so the
impression remained. To the artistic temperament, enthusiasm is the
only excuse for existence.

"I think Mrs. Fenton is right," she said. "The few form the correct
judgment, and the many adopt it in the end because it is based on
truth. It seems to me," she continued, thoughtfully, "that the prime
condition of effectiveness is constancy, and only that opinion can be
constant that has truth for a foundation, because no other basis would
remain to hold it up."

"That may be true," was the reply, "if you take matters in a
sufficiently long range, but you seem to me to be viewing things from
the standpoint of eternity."

The smile with which she said these last words was so charming that
Helen warmed toward her, and she smiled also in replying,--

"Isn't that, after all, the only safe way to look at things?"

"What deep waters we are getting into," Edith commented. "And yet they
say women are always frivolous."

"The Boston luncheon," returned Mrs. Frost-winch, "is a solemn assembly
for the discussion of mighty themes. Yesterday, at Mrs. Bodewin
Ranger's, we disposed of all the knotty problems relating to the lower
classes."

"I didn't know but it might be something about my house. The last time
Mrs. Greyson lunched here we solemnly debated what a wife should do
whose husband did not appreciate her."

She spoke brightly, but there was in her tone, an undercurrent of
feeling which touched Helen, and betrayed the fact that this return to
the old theme was not wholly without a cause. Mrs. Greyson divined that
Edith was not happy, and with the keenness of womanly instinct she
divined also that there was not perfect harmony between Mrs. Fenton and
her husband. She looked up quickly, with an instinctive desire to turn
the conversation, but found no words ready.

Edith had at the moment yielded to a woman's craving for sympathy. An
incident which had happened that forenoon troubled and bewildered her.
She had been down town, and remembering a matter of importance about
which she had neglected to consult her husband in the morning, she had
turned aside to visit his studio, a thing she seldom did in his working
hours. She found him painting from a model, and she was kept waiting a
moment while the latter retired from sight. She thought nothing of
this, but as she stood talking with Arthur, her glance fell upon a wrap
which she recognized as belonging to Mrs. Herman, and which had been
carelessly left upon the back of a chair in sight. Even this might not
have troubled her, had it not been that when she looked questioningly
from the garment to her husband, she caught a look of consternation in
his eyes. His glance met hers and turned aside with that almost
imperceptible wavering which shows the avoidance to be intentional; and
a pang of formless terror pierced her.

All the way home she was tormented by the wonder how that wrap could
have come in her husband's studio, and what reason he could have for
being disturbed by her seeing it there. She was not a woman given to
petty or vulgar jealousy, and she had from the first left the artist
perfectly free in his professional relations to be governed by the
necessities or the conveniences of his profession. She could not
to-day, however, rid herself of the feeling that some mystery lay
behind the incident of the morning. She began to frame excuses. She
speculated whether it were possible that Arthur were secretly painting
the portrait of his friend's wife, to produce it as a surprise to them
all. She said to herself that Ninitta naturally knew models, and might
easily have enough of a feeling of comradeship remaining from the time
when she had been a model herself, to lend or give them articles of
dress. Unfortunately, she knew how Ninitta kept herself aloof from her
old associates since the birth of her child, and the explanation did
not satisfy her.

No faintest suspicion of positive evil entered Edith's mind. She was
only vaguely troubled, the incident forming one more of the trifles
which of late had made her very uneasy in regard to her husband. She
told herself that she had confidence in Arthur; but the woman who is
forced to reflect that she has confidence in her husband has already
begun, however unconsciously, to doubt him.

"The question is profound enough," Mrs. Frostwinch answered Edith's
words in her even tones, which somehow seemed to reduce everything to a
well-bred abstraction. "Of course the thing for a Woman to do is to
remain determinedly ignorant until it would be too palpably absurd to
pretend any longer; and then she must get away from him as quietly as
possible. The evil in these things is, after all, the stir and the
talk, and all the unpleasant and vulgar gossip which inevitably attends
them."

Poor Edith cringed as if she had received a blow, and to cover her
emotion she gave the signal for rising from the table. But as she did
so, her eyes met those of Helen, and the truth leaped from one to the
other in one of those glances in which the heart, taken unaware,
reveals its joy or its woe with irresistible frankness. Whatever words
Edith and Helen might or might not exchange thereafter, the story of
Mrs. Fenton's married life and of the anguish of her soul was told in
that look; and her friend understood it fully.




XVII

                     THE HEAVY MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.
                                   Measure for Measure; iv.--10.

The temper of clubs, like that of individuals, changes from time to
time, however constant remains its temperament. Those who reflected
upon such matters noticed that at the St. Filipe Club, where a few
years back there had been much talk of art and literature, and abstract
principles, there had come to be a more worldly, perhaps a Philistine
would say a more mature, flavor to the conversation. There were a good
many stories told about its wide fireplaces, and there was much running
comment on current topics, political and otherwise. There was, perhaps,
a more cosmopolitan air to the talk.

That the old-time flavor could sometimes reappear, however, was evident
from the talk going on about nine o'clock on the evening of the day of
Edith's luncheon. The approach of the time set for an exhibition of
paintings in the gallery of the club turned the conversation toward
art, and as several of the quondam Pagans were present, the old habits
of speech reasserted themselves somewhat.

"I understand Fenton's going to let us see his new picture," somebody
said.

"He is if he gets it done," Tom Bently answered. "He's painting so many
portraits nowadays that he didn't get it finished for the New York
exhibition."

"He must be making a lot of money," Fred Rangely observed.

"He needs to to keep his poker playing up," commented Ainsworth.

"He's lucky if he makes money in these days when it's the swell thing
to have some foreign duffer paint all the portraits," Bently said. "It
makes me sick to see the way Englishmen rake in the dollars over here."

"How would you feel," asked Rangely, "if you tried to get a living by
writing novels, and found the market glutted with pirated English
reprints?"

"Oh, novels," retorted Tom, "they are of no account any way. Modern
novels are like modern investments; they are all principle and no
interest."

"I like that," put in Ainsworth, "when most of them haven't any
principle at all."

"Neither have investments in the end," Bently returned. "At least I
know mine haven't."

"If you were a writer you'd be spared that pain," was Rangely's reply,
"for want of anything to start an investment with."

"I've about come to the conclusion," another member said, "that a man
may be excused for making literature his practice, but that he is a
fool to make it his profession. It does very well as an amusement, but
it's no good as a business."

"The idea is correct," Rangely replied, ringing the bell and ordering
from the servant who responded, "although it does not strike me as
being either very fresh or very original."

There was a digression for a moment or two while they waited for their
drinks and imbibed them. And then Fred, with the air of one who utters
a profound truth, and answers questions both spoken and unspoken,
observed as he set down his glass,--

"There's one thing of which I am sure; American literature will never
advance much until women are prevented from writing book reviews."

"Meaning," said Arthur Fenton, entering and with his usual quickness
seizing the thread of conversation at once, "that some woman critic or
other hit the weak spot in Fred's last book."

"Hallo, Fenton," called Bently, in his usual explosive fashion. "I
haven't seen you this long time. I did not know whether you were dead
or alive."

"Oh, as usual, occupying a middle ground between the two. Are you
coming upstairs, Fred?"

A smile ran around the circle.

"At it again, Fenton?" Ainsworth asked. "You'll have to go West and be
made a senator if you keep on playing poker every night."

"If I don't have better luck than I've been having lately," Fenton
rejoined, as he and Rangely left the room, "I should have to have a
subscription taken up to pay my travelling expenses."

The card-rooms were upstairs, and Fenton and Rangely went to them
without speaking. The artist was speculating whether a ruse he had just
executed would be successful; his companion was thinking of the news he
had just had from New York, that a girl with whom he had flirted at the
mountains last summer was about to visit Boston.

Around a baize-covered table in the card-room sat three or four men, in
one of whom Rangely recognized the corpulent and vulgar person of Mr.
Erastus Snaffle. He nodded to him with an air of qualifying his
recognition with certain mental reservations, while Fenton said as he
took his place beside Chauncy Wilson, who moved to make room for him,--

"Good evening, Mr. Snaffle. Have you come up to clean the club out
again?"

Mr. Snaffle looked up as if he did not fully comprehend, but he
chuckled as he answered,--

"I should think it was time. I was never inside this club that I didn't
get bled."

The men laughed in a somewhat perfunctory way, and the cards having
been dealt, the game went on. They were all members of the club except
Snaffle, and they all knew that this rather doubtful individual had no
business there at all. There had of late been a good deal of feeling in
the club because the rule that forbade the bringing of strangers into
the house had been so often violated. The St. Filipe was engaged in the
perfectly fruitless endeavor to enforce the regulation that visitors
might be admitted provided the same person was not brought into the
rooms twice within a fixed period. Some of the members violated the
rule unconsciously, since it was awkward to invite a friend into the
club and to qualify the courtesy with the condition that he had not
been asked by anybody else within the prescribed period, and it was
easy to forget this ungracious preliminary. Some few of the
members--since in every club there will be men who are gentlemen but by
brevet,--deliberately took advantage of the uncertainty which always
arises from so anomalous a regulation, and the result of deliberate and
of involuntary breaches of the rule had been that the club house was
made free with by outsiders to a most unpleasant extent.

Not yet ready to do away with the by-law, since many members found--it
convenient and pleasant to take their friends into the club-house, the
managers of the affairs of the St. Filipe were making a desperate
effort to discover all offenders who were intentionally guilty of
violating the regulation. They had their eye on several outsiders who
made free with the house, and it was understood that certain men were
in danger of being requested not to continue their visits to a place
where they had no right. Snaffle, who had been first brought to the
club by Dr. Wilson to play poker, was one of these, and the men who sat
playing with him to-night were secretly curious to know how he happened
to be there on this particular occasion. He had come into the card-room
alone, with the easy air of familiarity which usually distinguished
him, and appearances seemed to point to his having taken the liberty of
walking into the house in the same way. The men liked well enough to
have him in the game, because he played recklessly and always left
money at the table, but not one of them, even Dr. Wilson, who was more
recklessly democratic in his habits and instincts than any of the rest,
would have cared to be seen walking with Erastus Snaffle on the streets
by daylight.

When Snaffle entered the club house, the servant whose duty it was to
wait at the outer door, had gone for a moment to the coat-room
adjoining the hall. Here Snaffle met him and offered him his coat and
hat. The servant extended his hand mechanically, but he looked at the
new-comer so pointedly that the latter muttered, by way of
credentials,--

"I came with Mr. Fenton."

The servant made no comment, but as Mr. Snaffle went upstairs, he
reported to the steward that the intruder was again in the house and
had been introduced by Mr. Fenton. The steward in turn reported this to
the Secretary, and before Arthur himself came in, a rod was already
preparing for him in the shape of a complaint to be made before the
Executive Committee.

It was thus that precisely the thing happened which Fenton had with his
usual cleverness endeavored to guard against. Impudent as Mr. Snaffle
was capable of being, he would never have ventured uninvited into the
precincts of the St. Filipe Club, where even when introduced he found
himself somewhat overpowered by the social standing and the lofty
manners of those around him. This feeling of awe showed itself in two
ways, had any one been clever enough to appreciate the fact. It
rendered him unusually silent, and it induced him to play high, as if
he felt under obligations to pay for his admission into company where
he did not belong.

It was to this last fact that he owed his invitation to be present on
this particular evening. Arthur Fenton was going to the club to play
poker, urged partly by the love of excitement and perhaps even more by
the hope of raising a part or the whole of the fifty dollars of which
he had pressing need, when he encountered Snaffle standing on a street
corner. Fenton's acquaintance with the man had been confined to their
meetings in the card-room of the St. Filipe, but he had once or twice
carried home in his pocket very substantial tokens of Snaffle's
reckless play. Almost without being conscious of what he did, Fenton
stopped and extended his hand.

"Good evening," he said. "What is up? Are you ready for your revenge?"

"Oh, I'm always ready for a good game," Snaffle answered. "I was going
to see my best girl, but I don't mind taking a hand instead."

Fenton smiled as the other turned and walked with him toward the club,
but inwardly he loathed the fat, vulgar man at his side. His sense of
the fitness of things was outraged by his being obliged to associate
with such a creature, and that the obligation arose entirely from his
own will, only showed to his mind how helpless he was in the hands of
fate. He was outwardly gracious enough, but inwardly he nourished a
bitter hatred against Erastus Snaffle for constraining him to go
through this humiliation before he could win his money.

As they neared the club, Fenton recalled the fact that there had been
some talk about visitors, and that the presence of this very man had
been especially objected to, and reflected that in any case he had no
desire to be seen going in with him. As they entered the vestibule the
door was not opened for them, and Fenton's quick wit appreciated the
fact that the servant who should be sitting just inside, was not in his
place. With an inward ejaculation of satisfaction at this good fortune,
he put his hand to his breast pocket.

"Oh, pshaw!" he exclaimed. "There are those confounded letters I
promised to post. You go in, Mr. Snaffle, and I'll go back to the
letter box on the corner. You know the way, and you'll find the fellows
in the first card-room."

He opened the door as he spoke, and as Snaffle entered and closed it
after him, Fenton ran down the steps and walked to the next corner. He
had no letters to mail, but it was characteristic of his dramatic way
of doing things that he walked to the letter-box, raised the drop and
went through the motion of slipping in an envelope. He was accustomed
to say that when one played a part it could not be done too carefully,
and it amused him to reflect that if he were watched his action would
appear consistent with his words, while if he were timed he would be
found to have been gone from the club house exactly long enough. Not
that he supposed anybody was likely to take the trouble to do either of
these things, but Fenton was an imaginative man and he found a humorous
pleasure in finishing even his trickery in an artistic manner.

It was Saturday night, and just before midnight a servant opened the
card-room door. The room was full of smoke, empty glasses stood beside
the players, and piles of red and blue and white "chips" were heaped in
uneven distribution along the edges of the table.

"It is ten minutes of twelve, gentlemen," the servant said, and retired.

"Jack-pots round," said Rangely, dealing rapidly. "Look lively now."

He and Fenton had been winning, the pile of blue counters beside the
latter representing nearly thirty dollars, with enough red and white
ones to cover his original investments. The first jackpot and the
second were played, Dr. Wilson wining one and Snaffle the other on the
first hand. On the third, Fenton bet for awhile, holding three aces
against a full hand held by the fifth man.

"It's all right," Fenton remarked, as Rangely chaffed him. "I am
waiting for the 'kittie-pot.' See what a pile there is to go into that.
I always expect to gather in the 'kittie.'"

The fourth pot was quickly passed, and then Wilson, who had been
managing the "kittie," put upon the table the surplus, which to-night
chanced to be unusually large. The cards were dealt and dealt three
times again before the pot could be opened, and then Rangely started
it. Arthur looked at his hand in disgust. He held the nine of hearts,
the five, six, eight, and nine of spades, and as he said to himself he
never had luck in drawing to either straight or flush. Still the stake
was good, and he came in, discarding his heart. He drew the seven of
spades. Rangely was betting on three aces, and Wilson on a full hand,
so that the betting ran rather high.

"Twelve o'clock, gentlemen," the servant said at the door.

And when Fenton began his Sunday by winning the pot on his straight
flush, he found himself more than sixty dollars to the good on his
evening's work.

"You've regularly bled me, Fenton," Snaffle observed with much
jocularity, as the players came out of the club house. "I've hardly got
a car fare left to take me home. I'm afraid the St. Filipe is a den of
thieves."

"I don't mind lending you a car fare, Mr. Snaffle," the artist
returned, endeavoring to speak as pleasantly as if he did not object to
the familiarity of the other's address. "But don't abuse the club."

"I think I'll go to church," Dr. Wilson said with a yawn. "It must be
most time."

"Church-going," Fenton returned, sententiously, "is small beer for
small souls."

"There, Fenton," retorted Rangely, as at this minute they came to the
corner where they separated, "don't feel obliged to try to be clever.
You can't do it at this time of night."

Snaffle continued his walk with the artist almost to Fenton's door,
although the latter suspected that it was out of his companion's way.
Arthur was willing, however, to give the loser the compensation of his
society as a return for the greenbacks in his pocket, and his natural
acuteness was so far from being as active as usual that when he found
Mr. Snaffle speaking of Princeton Platinum stock he did not suspect
that he was being angled for in turn, and that the gambling for the
evening was not yet completed. He listened at first without much
attention, but the man to whom he listened was wily and clever, and
after he was in bed that night the artist's brain was busy planning how
to raise money to invest in Princeton Platinum.

"I never saw such luck as yours," Snaffle observed admiringly. "The way
you filled that spade flush on that last hand was a miracle. It is just
that sort of luck that runs State street and Wall street."

Fenton smiled to himself in the darkness, the proposition was so
manifestly absurd, but he was already bitten by the mania for
speculation, and when once this madness infects a man's brain the most
improbable causes will increase the disease. Snaffle, of course, was
too shrewd to ask his companion to buy Princeton Platinum stock, and
indeed declared that although he had charge of putting it upon the
market, he was reluctant to part with a single share of it. He added
with magnanimous frankness, that all mining stock was dangerous,
especially for one who did not thoroughly understand it.

But his negatives, as he intended, were more effective than
affirmatives would have been, and the bait had been safely swallowed by
the unlucky fish for whom the astute speculator angled. Fenton had
invited him to the club to be eaten, but the wily visitor secretly
regarded the money he lost at the poker table as a paying investment,
believing that in the end it was not the bones of plump Erastus Snaffle
which were destined to be picked.




XVIII

                      HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY.
                                     Love's Labor's Lost; i.--I.

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson sat in her bower, enveloped in an
unaccustomed air of respectability, and in a frame of mind exceedingly
self-satisfied and serene. She had secured a visit from a New York
relative, a distant cousin whose acquaintance she had made in the
mountains the summer before, and she hoped from this circumstance to
secure much social advantage. For at home Miss Frances Merrivale moved
in circles such as her present hostess could only gaze at from afar
with burning envy. In her own city, Miss Merrivale would certainly
never have consented to know Mrs. Sampson, relationship or no
relationship; but she chanced to wish to get away from home for a week
or two, she thought somewhat wistfully of the devotion of Fred Rangely
at the mountains last summer, and she was not without a hope that if
she once appeared in Boston, the Staggchases, who should have invited
her to visit them long ago, she being as nearly related to Mr.
Staggchase as to Mrs. Sampson, might be moved to ask her to come to
stay with them.

It cannot be said that Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson, dashing, vulgar
social adventurer that she was, had much in common with her guest. Miss
Merrivale, it is true, had the incurable disease of social ambition as
thoroughly as her hostess; but the girl had, at least, a recognized and
very comfortable footing under her feet, while the unfortunate widow
kept herself above the surface only by nimble but most tiresome leaps
from one precarious floating bit to another. In these matters,
moreover, a few degrees make really an immense difference. There is all
the inequality which exists between the soldier who wields his sword in
a disastrous hollow, and one who strikes triumphant blows from the
hillock above. The elevation is to be measured in inches, perhaps, but
that range reaches from failure to success. Whether social ambition is
proper pride or vulgar presumption depends not upon the feeling itself
so much as upon the grade from which it is exercised, and Miss
Merrivale very quickly understood that while she was placed upon one
side of the dividing line between the two, her hostess was unhappily to
be found upon the other.

Indeed Miss Frances had hardly recognized what Mrs. Sampson's
surroundings were until she found herself established in the little
apartment as a guest of that lady. Her newly found cousin had at the
mountains spoken of her father, the late judge, and of her own
acquaintances among the great and well known of Boston, with an air
which carried conviction to one who had not known her too long. She
spoke with playful pathos of her poverty, it is true, but when a
woman's gowns will pass muster, talk of poverty is not likely to be
taken too seriously. Miss Merrivale knew, moreover, that the widow,
like herself, could boast a connection with the Staggchase family.

Now she found herself at the top of an apartment house in a street of
Nottingham lace curtains carefully draped back to show the Rogers'
groups on neat marble stands behind their precise folds. The awful gulf
which yawned between this South End location and the region where abode
those whom she counted her own kind socially, was apparent to her the
moment she arrived and looked about her. Fred Rangely had called, but
Mrs. Sampson had regaled her guest with such tales of his devotion to
Mrs. Staggchase that Miss Merrivale received him with much coldness,
and his call was not a success. Now she was impatiently waiting for the
appearance of Mrs. Staggchase, who, it did not occur to her to doubt,
would of course call. She was curious to see her relative, and her
fondness for Rangely, such as it was, was marvellously quickened by the
presence of a rival in the field. Instead of the appearance of Mrs.
Staggchase, however, came a note asking Miss Merrivale to dine, whereat
that young woman was angry, and her hostess, although she was too
clever to show it, was secretly furious.

This invitation was the result of a conversation between Mr. and Mrs.
Richard Staggchase, which had begun by that gentleman's asking his wife
at dinner when she was going to call upon Miss Merrivale.

"Not at all, my dear," Mrs. Staggchase answered, "as long as she is
visiting that dreadful Mrs. Sampson, I'm not sure, Fred, but that if I
had known that creature could claim a cousinship to you, I should have
refused to marry you."

"She is a dose," Mr. Staggchase admitted. "I wonder where she lives
now. Didn't Frances Merrivale send her address?"

"She lives on Catawba Street, at the top of a speaking tube in one of
those dreadful apartment houses where you shout up the tube and they
open the door for you by electricity. I wonder how soon it will be,
Fred, before you'll drop in a nickel at the door of an apartment house
and the person you want to see will be slid out to you on a platform."

"Gad! That wouldn't be a bad scheme," her husband returned, with an
appreciative grin. "But, really now, what are you going to do about
this girl. She's a sort of cousin, you know, and she's a great friend
of the Livingstons."

"We might ask her to come here after she gets through with that woman.
I'll write her if you like."

"Without calling?" Mr. Staggchase asked, lifting his eyebrows a little.

"My dear," his wife responded, "I try to do my duty in that estate in
life to which I have been appointed, and I am willing to made all
possible exceptions to all known rules in favor of your family; but
Mrs. Sampson is an impossible exception. I will do nothing that shows
her that I am conscious of her existence."

"But it will be awfully rude not to call."

"One can't be rude to such creatures as Mrs. Sampson," returned Mrs.
Staggchase, with unmoved decision. "She is one of those dreadful women
who watch for a recognition as a cat watches for a mouse. I've seen her
at the theatre. She'd pick out one person and run him down with her
great bold eyes until he had to bow to her, and then she'd stalk
another in the same way. Call or her, indeed! Why, Fred, she'd invite
you to a dinner _tete-a-tete_ to-day, if she thought you'd go."

Mr. Staggchase laughed rather significantly.

"Gad! that might be amusing. She is of the kittle cattle, my dear, but
you must own that she's a well-built craft."

"Oh, certainly," replied his better half, who was too canny by far to
show annoyance, if indeed she felt any, when her husband praised
another woman. "If everybody isn't aware of her good points, it isn't
that she is averse to advertising them. She has taken up with young
Stanton, the sculptor, just because some of us have been interested in
him."

"Is he going to make the _America_ statue?"

"That is still uncertain, but for my part I half hope he won't, if that
Sampson woman is his kind."

Mr. Staggchase dipped his long fingers into his finger bowl, wiped them
with great deliberation and then pushed his chair back from the table.
It was very seldom that his wife denied a request he made her, but when
she did he knew better than to contend in the matter.

"Very well," he said, "you may do whatever you please. Whether you
women are so devilish hard on each other because you know your own sex
is more than I should undertake to say."

"Are you going out?"

"Yes," he answered, "I have got to go to a meeting of the Executive
Committee of the St. Filipe. There is some sort of a row; I don't know
what. How are you going to amuse yourself."

"By doing my duty."

"Do you find duty amusing then; I shouldn't have suspected it."

"Oh, duty's only another name for necessity. I'm going to the theatre
with Fred Rangely. He wrote an article for the _Observer_ in favor of
that great booby Stanton's having the statue. It was a very lukewarm
plea, but I asked him to do it, and as a reward"--

"He is allowed the inestimable boon of taking you to the theatre,"
finished her husband, "I must say, Dian, that you are, on the whole,
the shrewdest woman I know."

"Thank you. I must be just, you know," she returned smiling as
brilliantly as if her husband were to be won again.

It was not without reason that Mrs. Staggchase had spoken of herself
and her husband as a model couple. Given her theory of married life,
nothing could be more satisfactory and consistent than the way in which
she lived up to it. Her ideal of matrimony was a sort of mutual
_laisser faire_, conducted with the utmost propriety and politeness.
She made an especial point of being as attractive to her husband as to
any other man; and she had the immense advantage of never having been
in love with anybody but herself and of being philosophical enough not
to consider the good things of conversation wasted if they were said
for his exclusive benefit. She had no children, and had once remarked
in answer to the question whether she regretted this, "There must be
some pleasure in having sons old enough to flirt with you; but I don't
know of anything else I have lost that I have reason to regret."

Her husband, thorough man of the world as he was, and indeed perhaps
for that very reason, never outgrew a pleased surprise that he found
his wife so perennially entertaining. He was not unwilling that she
should exercise her fascinations on others when she chose, since he had
no feeling toward her sufficiently warm to engender anything like
jealousy; but he appreciated her to the full.

He rose from his seat and walked to the sideboard, where he selected a
cigar.

"I must say," he observed, between the puffs as he lighted it, "that
you are justice incarnate. You have always kept accounts squared with
me most beautifully."

Mrs. Staggchase laughed softly, toying with the tiny spoon of Swiss
carved silver with which she had stirred her coffee. Her husband had
expressed perfectly her theory of marital relations. She balanced
accounts in her mind with the most scrupulous exactness, and was an
admirable debtor if a somewhat unrelenting creditor. She had a definite
standard by which she measured her obligations to Mr. Staggchase, and
she never allowed herself to fall short in the measure she gave him.
She was fond of him in a conveniently mild and reasonable fashion, and
a marriage founded upon mutual tolerance, if it is likely never to be
intensely happy, is also likely to be a pretty comfortable one. Mrs.
Staggchase paid to her husband all her tithes of mint and anise and
cumin, and she even sometimes presented him with a propitiatory
offering in excess of her strict debt; only such a gift was always set
down in her mental record as a gift and not as a tribute.

"This Stanton is an awful lout, Fred," she observed. "Perhaps he can
make a good statue of _America_, but if he can it will be because he is
so thoroughly the embodiment of the vulgar and pushing side of American
character."

"Then why in the world are you pushing him?"

"Oh, because Mrs. Ranger and Anna Frostwinch want him pushed. I don't
know but they may believe in him. Mrs. Ranger does, of course, but the
dear old soul knows no more about art than I do about Choctaw. As to
the statues, I don't think it makes much difference, they are always
laughed at, and I don't think anybody could make one in this age that
wouldn't be found fault with."

"Nobody nowadays knows enough about sculpture to criticise it
intelligently," Staggchase remarked, somewhat oracularly, "and the only
safe thing left is to find fault."

"That is just about it, and so it may as well be this booby as anybody
else that gets the commission. It isn't respectable for the town not to
have statues, of course."

Mr. Staggchase moved toward the door.

"Well," he said, "I don't know who's in the fight, but I'll bet on your
side. Good night. I hope virtue will be its own reward."

"Oh, it always is," retorted his wife. "I especially make it a point
that it shall be."




XIX

                            HOW CHANCES MOCK.
                                        II Henry IV.; iii.--I.

A man often creates his own strongest temptations by dwelling upon
possibilities of evil; and it is equally true that nothing else renders
a man so likely to break moral laws as the consciousness of having
broken them already. The experience of Arthur Fenton was in these days
affording a melancholy illustration of both of these propositions. The
humiliating inner consciousness of having violated all the principles
of honor of his fealty to which he had been secretly proud begot in him
an unreasonable and unreasoning impulse still further to transgress.
When arraigned by his inner self for his betrayal of Hubbard, it was
his instinct to defend himself by showing his superiority to all moral
canons whatever. He felt a certain desperate inclination to trample all
principles underfoot, as if by so doing he could destroy the standards
by which he was being tried.

Fenton was not of a mental fibre sufficiently robust to make this
impulse likely to result in any violent outbreak, and, indeed, but for
circumstances it would doubtless have vapored itself away in words and
vagrant fancies. He had once remarked, embodying a truth in one of his
frequent whimsically perverse statements, that the worst thing which
could be said of him was that he was incapable of a great crime, and
only the constant pressure of an annoyance, such as the threats of
Irons in regard to Ninitta, or the presence of an equally constant
temptation, such as that to which he was now succumbing in allowing his
relations with Mrs. Herman to become more and more intimate, would have
brought him to any marked transgression.

In a nature such as that of Fenton there is, with the exception of
vanity and the instinct of self-preservation, no trait stronger than
curiosity. The artist was devoured by an eager, intellectual greed to
know all things, to experience all sensations, to taste all savors of
life. He made no distinction between good and bad; his zeal for
knowledge was too keen to allow of his being deterred by the line
ordinarily drawn between pain and pleasure. His affections, his
passions, his morals were all subordinate to this burning curiosity,
and only his instinct of self-preservation subtly making itself felt in
the guise of expediency, and his vanity prettily disguised as taste,
held the thirst for knowledge in check.

It was by far more the desire to learn whether he could bend Ninitta to
his will than it was passion which carried Fenton forward in the
dangerous path upon which he was now well advanced; and it was perhaps
more than either a half-unconscious eagerness to taste a new
experience. Even the double wickedness of betraying the wife of a
friend and of enticing a woman to her fall had for Fenton, in his
present mood, an unholy fascination. He was too self-analytical to
deceive himself into a supposition that he was in love with Ninitta,
and even his passion was so much under the dominion of his head that he
could have blown it out like a rushlight, had he really desired to be
done with it. He looked at himself with mingled approbation, amusement,
and horror, as he might have regarded a favorite and skilful actor in a
vicious _role_; and the man whose mind is to him merely an
amphitheatre, where games are played for his amusement, is always
dangerous.

As for Ninitta, the processes of her mind were probably quite as
complex as those of his, although they appeared more simple, in virtue
of their being more remote. She had, in the first place, a curious
jealousy of her husband because of his passionate fondness for Nino,
and a dull resentment at the secret conviction that the father had the
gifts and powers which were sure to win more love than the child would
bestow upon her. She could better bear the thought that the boy should
die, than that he should live to love anybody more than he loved her.

It was also true that Grant Herman, large-hearted and generous as he
was, did not know how to make his wife happy. He was patient and
chivalrous and tender; but he was hardly able to go to her level, and
as she could not come to his, the pair had little in common. He felt
that somehow this must be his fault; he told himself that, as the
larger nature, it should be his place to make concessions, to master
the situation, and to secure Ninitta's happiness, whatever came to him.
He had even come to feel so much tenderness toward the mother of his
child, the woman in whose behalf he had made the great sacrifice of his
life, that a pale but steadfast glow of affection shone always in his
heart for his wife. But his patience, his delicacy, his steadfastness
counted for little with Ninitta. She had been separated from him for
long years of betrothal, during which he had developed and changed
utterly. She had clung to her love and faith, but her love and faith
were given to an ardent youth glowing with a passion of which it was
hardly possible to rekindle the faint embers in the bosom of the man
she married. Even Ninitta, little given to analysis, could not fail to
recognize that her husband was a very different being from the lover
she had known ten years before. One fervid blaze of the old love would
have appealed more strongly to her peasant soul than all the patience
and tender forbearance of years.

Indeed, it is doubtful whether Ninitta might not have been better and
happier had Herman been less kind. Had he made a slave of her, she
would have accepted her lot as uncomplainingly as the women of her race
had acquiesced in such a fate for stolid generations. She could have
understood that. As it was, she felt always the strain of being tried
by standards which she did not and could not comprehend; the misery of
being in a place for which she was unfitted and which she could not
fill, and the fact that no definite demands were made upon her
increased her trouble by the double stress of putting her upon her own
responsibility, and of leaving her ignorant in what her failures lay.

There was, too, who knows what trace of heredity in the readiness with
which Ninitta tacitly adopted the idea that infidelity to a husband was
rather a matter of discretion and secrecy; whereas faithfulness to her
lover had been a point of the most rigorous honor. And Ninitta found
Arthur Fenton's silken sympathy so insinuating, so soothing; the
tempter, merely from his marvellous adaptability and faultless tact, so
satisfied her womanly craving, and fostered her vanity; she was so
completely made to feel that she was understood; she was tempted with a
cunning the more infernal because Fenton kept himself always up to the
level of sincerity by never admitting to himself that he intended any
evil, that it was small wonder that the time came when her ardent
Italian nature was so kindled that she became involuntarily the tempter
in her turn.

It was one of the singular features of Fenton's present attitude that
even he, with all his clear-sightedness, failed to see the error of
supposing that his departure from the paths of rectitude was nothing
but a temporary episode. He fully expected to take up again his former
attitude toward life when he would have scorned such a contemptible
action as the betrayal of Hubbard, or the more trifling, but perhaps
even more humiliating act of smuggling Snaffle into the club that he
might win his money. He even had a certain vague feeling that if he had
any viciousness to get through he must do it at once, lest the
resumption of his former respectability should deprive him of the
opportunity. He maintained before the world, indeed, a perfect
propriety of deportment, partly from the force of habit and partly from
the instinctive cunning which always tried to preserve for him the
means of retreat; but so complete was his abandonment, for the time
being, to the enjoyment of evil, that he was constantly assailed with
the temptation to make some public demonstration of his state of
feeling. He secretly longed to shock people with blasphemous or
imprudent expressions; to outrage all honor by stealing his host's
spoons when he dined out; his fancy rioted in whimsical evil of which,
of course, he gave no outward sign.

He had a scene with Alfred Irons, one morning, at his studio. Irons
came in with a look on his face which secretly enraged the artist, who
was almost rude in the coldness of his greeting, although the caller
only grinned at this evidence of his host's irritation.

"Well, Fenton," he said, with bluff abruptness, "I suppose it is time
for us to square accounts, isn't it?"

"I was not aware that we had any accounts to square," the other
returned, with his most icy manner.

Irons laughed, and looked about the studio.

"That's your new picture, I suppose" he observed, settling himself back
in his chair, with the determined mien of a man who recognizes the fact
that he has a battle to fight, but is perfectly willing to join the
fray.

The significance of his air, as he nodded toward the big canvas on the
easel, so plainly brought up the unfortunate hold which the _Fatima_
had given Irons over the artist, that Fenton flushed in spite of
himself.

"It is a picture," he returned; "and it is unfinished."

Irons chuckled.

"Very well," he said. "We won't fence. I thought you might be
interested to know that we've got our railroad business into first-rate
shape; and there's no doubt that the Wachusett route will carry the
day. I tell you we had a hot time in the Senate yesterday," he went on,
warming with the excitement of his subject. "We made a pretty stiff
fight in the Railroad Committee to get them to report 'not expedient'
on the Feltonville petition. I tell you Staggchase fought like a bull
tiger at the hearing, and those fellows must have put in a pot of
money. But we beat 'em. Then the fight came to get the report accepted
in the Senate. Everybody said that Tom Greenfield would settle the
thing with a big broadside in favor of his own town; and I'll own that
I was scared blue myself. But we haven't been cooking Tom Greenfield
all this time for nothing. I don't mind telling you that your help in
the matter was of the greatest value; and when Greenfield got up in the
Senate yesterday, and put in his best licks for the Wachusett route,
you'd have thought they'd been struck by a cyclone. We got a vote to
sustain that report that buries the Feltonville project out of sight;
and now there's no doubt that the Railroad Commissioners will give us
our certificate without any more trouble."

During this rather long and not wholly coherent speech, Fenton sat with
his eyes coldly fixed upon his visitor, without giving the slightest
sign of interest.

"I am glad," he said, in a manner as distant as he could make it, "that
your business is likely to succeed to your mind."

"Oh, it must succeed. The Commissioners only suspended operations till
the Legislature disposed of the question of special legislation. Now
they're all ready to give us what we want."

"And all this," Fenton said, "is of what interest to me?"

Irons flushed angrily.

"You were good enough," he returned, drawing his lips down savagely,
"to give us a bit of information which we found of value. Very likely
we might have hit upon it somewhere else, but that's no matter, as long
as we did get it through you. We've no inclination to shirk our debt.
Now what's your price?"

Fenton rose from his chair, with an impulsive movement; then he
controlled himself and sat down again. He looked at his visitor with
eyes of fire.

"I am not aware," he returned, "that I have ever been in the market, so
that I have not been obliged to consider that question."

Alfred Irons was silent for a moment. He felt somewhat as if he had
received a dash of ice-water in the face. He wrinkled up his narrow
eyes and studied the man before him. He could not understand what the
other was driving at. He was little likely to be able to follow the
subtile changes of Fenton's imaginative mind, and he could at present
see no explanation of the way in which his advances were met, except
the theory that the artist was fencing to insure a larger reward for
his treachery than might be given him if he accepted the first offer in
silence.

Fenton, on his part, was so filled with rage that it was with
difficulty that he restrained himself. The length to which his intimacy
with Ninitta had now gone, however, made it absolutely necessary that
he should avoid a quarrel in which her name might be brought up; and he
had, moreover, put himself into the hands of Irons, by giving him the
information in regard to the plans for Feltonville.

"Oh, well," Irons said at length, rising with the air of one who cannot
waste his time puzzling over trifles; "have it your own way. It's only
a matter of words."

He took out his pocket-book, and with deliberation turned over the
papers it contained. He selected one, read it carefully, and then held
it out to Fenton.

"Our manufacturing corporation is practically on its legs now," he
said, "and the stock will be issued at once. That entitles you to ten
shares. They will be issued at sixty, and ought to go to par by fall.
Indeed, in a year's time, we'll make them worth double the buying
price, or I am mistaken."

Fenton looked at the paper as if he were reading it, but its letters
swam before his eyes. He needed money sorely, and had this gift come in
a shape more readily convertible into cash, he might have found it
impossible to resist it. As it was, he allowed himself to be fiercely
angry. He was furious, but he was consciously so. He raised his eyes,
flashing and distended, and fixed them upon the mean, hateful face
before him. He paused an instant to let his gaze have its effect.

"And I understand," he said, with a slow, careful enunciation, "that in
consideration of the service I have done you, you give me your promise
never to mention the fact that you saw a lady in my studio."

"Certainly," Irons returned.

Fenton's look made him uncomfortable. The artist was reasserting the
old superiority over him which the visitor had found so irritating, and
it was Iron's instinct to meet this by an air of bluster.

"Very well," Arthur said. "We may then consider what you are pleased to
call our account as closed."

He walked forward deliberately and laid the paper he held on the heap
of glowing coals in the grate. It curled and shrivelled, and before
Irons could even compress his thick lips to whistle, nothing remained
of the document but a quivering film.

"Well," Irons commented, "you are a damned fool; but then that's your
own business."

The artist bowed gravely.

"Naturally," he replied.

He stood waiting as if he expected his caller to go, and, despite
himself, Irons felt that he was being bowed out of the studio. He took
his leave awkwardly, feeling that he had somehow been beaten with
trumps in his hand, and hating Fenton ten times more heartily than ever.

"The confounded snob!" he muttered under his breath, as he went down
the stairs of Studio Building. "He puts on damned high-headed airs; but
I'm not done with him yet."

And Fenton meanwhile stood looking at that thin fluttering film on the
red coals with despair in his heart. He had taken the money which he
imperatively needed to pay notes soon due, and invested in Princeton
Platinum, with which the obliging Erastus Snaffle had supplied him out
of pure generosity, if one could credit the seller's statements; and he
had been secretly depending for relief upon this very gift from Irons
which he had destroyed. His affairs were every day becoming more
inextricably involved, and Fenton, it has already been said, with all
his cleverness, had no skill as a financier.

"Well," he commented to himself, shrugging his shoulders, "that is the
end of that; but I did make good play."

The satisfaction of having well acted his part, and of having got the
better of Irons, did much toward restoring the artist's naturally
buoyant spirits. He fell to reckoning his resources, and by dint of
introducing into the account several pleasing but most improbable
possibilities, he succeeded in building up between himself and ruin a
fanciful barrier which for the moment satisfied him; and beyond the
moment he refused to look.




XX

                       VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE.
                                       Comedy of Errors; ii.--I.

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson had in the course of a varied, if not always
dignified career, learned many things. There are people who seem
compelled by circumstances to waste much of their mental energy in
attending to the trivial and sordid details of life, and the widow
often repined that she was one of these unfortunates. She secretly
fretted not a little, for instance, over the fact that she was
compelled to be gracious to servants, to butcher and baker and
candlestick maker, from unmixed reasons of policy. To be gracious in
the _role_ of a _grande dame_ would have pleased her, but she resented
the necessity; and she avenged herself upon fate by gloating upon the
stupidity of that power in wasting her energies in these petty things,
when results so brilliant might have been attained by a more wise
utilization of her cleverness.

This morning, for instance, when Mrs. Sampson chatted affably with the
carpenter who had come to do an odd job in the china closet of her tiny
dining-room, she really enjoyed the talk. She was one of those women
who cannot help liking to chat with a man, and John Stanton was both
good looking enough and intelligent enough to make her willing to exert
herself for his entertainment. This did not, however, prevent her being
inwardly indignant that she felt herself compelled to converse with
Stanton because experience had taught her that a little amiability
properly exhibited was sure to increase the work and lessen the bill at
the same time. She did not forego the pleasure of pitying herself
because she chanced to find the task imposed upon her an agreeable one.
There are few people in this world who are sufficiently just and
sufficiently sane to deny themselves the luxury of self pity merely
because the occasion does not justify that feeling.

Stanton, with his coat off and his strong arms bare to the elbow, was
planing down a shelf to make it fit into its place, and as he paused to
shake the long creamy shavings out of his plane, he looked up to say
apologetically,--

"I'm making an awful litter, ma'am, but I don't see how I can help it."

Mrs. Sampson laughed.

"Oh, it isn't of the least consequence," she answered. "If I was
inclined to complain it would be because after keeping me waiting for
six weeks for this work, you come just when I have company staying with
me, and gentlemen coming to dine."

She had walked into the room with a not illy simulated air of having
come with the intention of going out again immediately, and stood well
posed, so that her fine figure came out in relief against a crimson
Japanese screen.

"I haven't anything to do with that, ma'am," Stanton replied. "The boss
makes out the orders, and we go where we are sent."

"Well," the widow said, smiling brilliantly, and moving across the room
to the table where the dishes taken from the closet were piled, "it
can't be helped, I suppose; but I hope you will let me get things
cleared up in time for dinner."

"Oh, I'll surely get through by eleven or half past."

"And I don't have dinner till half past six."

The carpenter looked up questioningly. Then he went on with his work.

"I never can get used to city ways," he observed. "I don't see how
folks can get along without having dinner in the middle of the day when
it's dinner time."

Mrs. Sampson busied herself with the plates, arranging things on the
sideboard ready for evening. Her guest, Miss Merrivale, was out driving
with Fred Rangely, and the widow's resources in the way of servants
were so limited that it was necessary that the hands of the mistress
should attend to many of the details of the housekeeping. She enjoyed
talking to this stalwart, vigorous fellow. She was alive to the last
fibre of her being to the influence of masculine perfections, and
Stanton was a splendidly built type of manhood. She utilized the
moments and secured an excuse for lingering by going on with her work
while the carpenter continued his, carrying out her theory of getting
the most out of a laborer by personal supervision, and withal
gratifying her intense and instinctive fondness for the presence of a
magnificent man.

"You are not city bred, perhaps," she answered his last remark, for the
sake of saying something.

"Oh, no, ma'am," John answered. "I was raised at Feltonville."

The widow became alert at once.

"Feltonville?" she repeated. "Why, I have a cousin living there, the
Hon. Thomas Greenfield."

"Oh, Tom Greenfield. Everybody knows Tom Greenfield," John said, his
face lighting up. "We call him 'Honest Tom' up our way. He's here in
the Legislature now."

"Yes, I know he is. He's coming here to dinner to-night."

"Is he? He's an awful smart man, and he's a good one, too, as ever
walked. He's awful interested in Orin's getting the job to make the new
statue of _America_. Orin," he added in explanation, "Orin Stanton,
he's the sculptor and he's my brother; my half-brother, that is. You've
heard of him?"

"Oh, of course," she answered, warmly.

Mrs. Sampson knew little of Orin Stanton, but she did know that Alfred
Irons was on the committee having in charge the commission for the new
statue, and the fact that Mr. Greenfield had an interest, however
indirect, in the same matter, was a hint too valuable not to be acted
upon.

Despite the confidence with which he had spoken to Fenton, the railroad
business was by no means settled. The Staggchase syndicate had rallied
to raise objections to prevent the Railroad Commissioners from
authorizing the other route. A hearing had been granted, and for it
elaborate preparations were being made. The Irons syndicate were
extremely anxious that Greenfield should speak at this hearing, but
there had been so much feeling aroused at Feltonville by his action in
the Senate that he was not inclined to do so; and Mrs. Sampson, who had
already proved so successful in influencing her relative, had been
requested to continue her efforts.

The widow had pondered deeply upon the tactics she should use, and it
is to be noted that she set down the amount of the obligation incurred
by Irons as the greater because she had really become in a way fond of
Greenfield, and she was too clever not to understand the fact, to which
the senator with singular perversity remained obstinately blind, that
he could not but injure his political prestige by the course he was
taking. She had aroused his combativeness by telling him that if his
convictions forced him to vote against the Feltonville interest, people
would say he was bought. She knew that now this was said, and that
openly;--indeed, despite all her shrewdness and knowledge of human
nature, she had moments when she wondered whether the charge might not
be true, so incomprehensible did it seem that a man should throw away
his own advantage. She had no sentiment strong enough to make her
hesitate about going on to sacrifice Greenfield to her own interests,
but she distinctly disliked the fact that Irons should also profit by
the senator's loss.

All day the widow pondered deeply on the situation, and the result of
the chance disclosure of John Stanton was that when her guests arrived
she made an opportunity to take Irons aside for a moment's confidential
talk.

The widow's dinner-party was a somewhat singular one to give in
compliment to a young girl, there being no one of the guests near Miss
Merrivale's own age except Fred Rangely. The widow's acquaintance among
women whom she could ask to meet the New Yorker was limited, and having
decided upon inviting Greenfield, Irons, and Rangely to dinner, the
hostess sat gnawing her stylographic pen in despair a good half hour
before she could decide upon a fourth guest. A woman she must have, and
few women whom she wished to ask would come to her house even to call.
When she now and then gathered at an afternoon tea a handful of people
whose names she was proud to have reported in the society papers, she
did it by securing a lion of literary or of theatrical fame, whose
unwary feet she entangled in her cunningly laid snares before he knew
anything about social conditions in Boston. There were many people,
moreover, who would go to see a celebrity at a house like that of Mrs.
Sampson much as they would have gone to the theatre, when they would
have received neither the guest of honor nor the hostess, the latter of
whom, to their thinking, stood for the time being much in the position
of stage manager.

Mrs. Sampson never set herself to a problem like this without a feeling
of bitterness. To consider what woman of any standing could be induced
to eat her salt brought her true social position before her with
painful vividness. She could not, in face of the facts which then
forced themselves upon her, shut her eyes to the truth that her painful
struggles for position had been pretty nearly fruitless. She did now
and then get an invitation to a crush in a desirable house, some
over-sensitive woman who had been to stare at one of Mrs. Sampson's
captures thus discharging her debt, and at the same time virtually
wiping her hands of all intercourse with the dashing widow. As for
asking her to their tables or going to hers, everybody understood that
that was not to be thought of.

With the cleverness born of desperation, Mrs. Sampson solved her
difficulty by asking Miss Catherine Penwick to fill the vacant place.
Miss Catherine Penwick was the last forlorn and fluttering leaf on the
bare branches of a lofty but expiring family tree. The Penwicks had
come over in the Mayflower, or at a period yet more remote, and the
acme of the prosperity and social distinction of the name was
coincident with the second administration of President Washington.
Since that time its decadence had been steady; at first slow, but later
with the accelerating motion common to falling bodies, until nothing
remained of the family revenues, little but a tradition of the family
greatness, and none of the race but this frostbitten old lady, poor and
forsaken in her desolate old age.

Miss Penwick was one of the learned ladies of her generation, a fact
which counted for less in the erudite day into which it was her
misfortune to linger than in those of her far-away youth. She struggled
against the tide with pathetic bravery, endeavoring to eke out some
sort of a livelihood by giving feeble lectures on Greek art, which no
living being wished to hear, or could possibly be supposed to be any
better for hearing, but to which the charitably disposed subscribed
with spasmodic benevolence. The poor creature, with her antique curls
quivering about her face, yellow and wrinkled now, its high-bred
expression sadly marred by the look of anxious eagerness which comes of
watching, like the prophet, for the ravens to bring one's dinner, was
but too glad to be invited to sit at any table where she could get a
comfortable meal and be allowed to play for the moment at being the
grand lady her ancestresses had been in reality.

"I hope you don't mind my asking Miss Penwick as the only lady," Mrs.
Sampson said to her guest; "but she is such a dear old creature, and
our family and hers have been intimate for centuries. She is getting
old, poor dear, and she hasn't any money any more, just as I haven't.
But you know she is wiser than Minerva's owl, and quite the fashion in
Boston. One really is nobody who doesn't know Miss Penwick; and she is
_so_ well bred."

Miss Penwick, dear old soul, had a feeling that Mrs. Amanda Welsh
Sampson was somehow too hopelessly modern for one of her generation
ever to be really in sympathy with the widow; but Mrs. Sampson had been
born a Welsh, and Miss Catherine was too unworldly to be aware of all
the gossip and even scandal which had made the name of the dashing
adventuress of so evil savor in the nostrils of people like Mrs.
Frederick Staggchase.

And it must be confessed also, that to such petty economies was the
last of the Penwicks reduced by poverty that a dinner was an object to
her. She could not afford to lose an opportunity of dining at the price
of two horse-car tickets, and so promptly at the moment she presented
herself in the dainty elegance of bits of real old lace, with family
miniatures and locks of hair from the illustrious heads of
great-great-grandmothers and grandfathers decorously framed in split
pearls, the lustre of the jewels, like that of their wearer, tarnished
by time.

Miss Merrivale did feel that the company assembled was an odd one,
although she lived too far away to appreciate the fact that none of the
guests, with the possible exception of Rangely, were exactly what she
would have been asked to dine with at home. A country member, a
self-made vulgarian, an antiquated spinster, and a literateur who,
after all, was received rather upon sufferance into such exclusive
houses as he entered at all, made up a group of which Miss Merrivale,
with feminine instinct, felt the inferiority, despite the fact that she
had no means of placing the guests. Miss Penwick appreciated the social
standing of her fellow-diners, but she had by a long course of social
humiliations come to accept unpleasant conditions where getting a
dinner was concerned; and she was, moreover, somewhat relieved that at
Mrs. Sampson's she was not obliged to meet anybody worse. Her instincts
were keen enough, after all her melancholy experiences, to enable her
to recognize the fact that Tom Greenfield was the most truly a
gentleman of the three men, and she was pleased that he should take her
in to dinner.

Mrs. Sampson, as she went in on the arm of Irons, contrived to let him
know what she had heard that morning from young Stanton of Greenfield's
interest in the young sculptor; adding a hint or two of the use to be
made of this information. Rangely, just behind her, was chatting with
Miss Frances in that half amorous badinage which some girls always
provoke, perhaps because they expect and keenly relish it.

"Oh, no," he observed, just as Mrs. Sampson was able to give an ear to
what was being said by the young people. "I am not fickle. I am
constancy itself, but when you are in New York and I am in Boston, you
really can't expect me to sigh loud enough to be heard all that
distance."

"I know you too well to suppose you will sigh at all," she returned,
with a coquettish air. "Especially with the consolations I am given to
understand that you have near at hand."

"What consolations?" he asked, visibly disconcerted.

"What has that confounded widow been telling her?" he wondered
inwardly. "Is it Mrs. Staggchase or Ethel Mott she's aiming at?"

Miss Merrivale tossed her head, as they paused in the doorway of the
tiny dining-room a moment to give Mr. Irons opportunity to convey his
ungainly length into its proper niche. Her shot had been purely a
random one and, unless one believes in telepathy, so was the question
by which she abruptly changed the subject.

"Do you know my cousin, Mrs. Frederick Staggchase?"

He held himself in hand wonderfully.

"Oh, yes," was his reply. "I know Mrs. Staggchase very well, but I
didn't know she was your cousin. All the good gifts of life seem to
fall to her lot."

"Thanks for nothing. She has not been to see me. She invited me to dine
and I declined, and then she wrote and asked me to visit there when I
finished my stay here."

"Shall you do it?"

The thought with which Rangely asked this question was one oddly
mingled of regret and of hope. He had flirted too seriously with Miss
Merrivale to wish to meet her at Mrs. Staggchase's, although he had
never seriously cared for her; and he reflected with a humorous sense
of relief that if the pretty New Yorker should really visit her cousin,
he was likely to be put in a position to give his undivided attention
to wooing Miss Mott, a consummation for which he wished without having
the strength of mind to bring it about. As she let his question pass in
silence, he smiled to himself at the ignominious manner in which he
must retreat from his attitude as the devoted admirer of Mrs.
Staggchase and of Miss Merrivale, feeling that to set about the earnest
attempt to win Ethel would be quite consolation enough to enable him to
reconcile himself to even this. The comfort of having circumstances
make for him a decision which he should make for himself, is often to a
self-indulgent man of far more importance than the decision itself.

As the dinner progressed, Miss Penwick, warming with the good
cheer--for Mrs. Sampson was too thoroughly a man's woman not to
appreciate the value of palatable viands--become decidedly loquacious;
and at last, by a happy coincidence for which her hostess could have
hugged her on the spot, she introduced the name of Orin Stanton.

"I hear you are on the _America_ committee, Mr. Irons," she said. "We
ladies are so much interested in that just now. I called on Mrs.
Bodewin Ranger yesterday, and she is really enthusiastic over this
young Stanton that's going to make it. He is going to make it, isn't
he?"

Irons laughed his vulgar laugh, which Fenton once said was the laugh of
a swineherd counting his pigs.

"It has not been decided," he answered. "Stanton seems to have a good
many friends."

"Oh, he has, indeed," responded Miss Penwick eagerly. "He is a young
man of extraordinary genius. I saw a beautiful notice of him in the
_Daily Observer_ the other morning, Mr. Rangely," she continued,
turning to Fred, "and Mrs. Frostwinch said she thought you wrote it. It
was very appreciative."

"Yes, I wrote it," he responded, not very warmly. "Mr. Stanton is
endorsed by Mr. Calvin, you know, Mr. Irons; and Mr. Calvin is our
highest authority, I suppose."

Of those present no one except the hostess was surprised at this
admission, which marked the great change in Rangely's position since
the days when, like Arthur Fenton, he was a pronounced Pagan and
denounced Peter Calvin as the incarnation of Philistinism in art. On
one occasion Rangely had boldly reproached his friend with having gone
over to the camp of the Philistines; and he had been met with the
retort,--

"We have found it pleasant in the camp of Philistia, have we not?"

"We?" Rangely had echoed, with an accent of indignation.

"Yes," Arthur had replied, with cool scorn. "You Pagans pitched into me
because I made my way over; but I am not so stupid as not to see that
there has been considerable sneaking after me."

"But at least," Fred had urged, "we fellows preserved the decency of a
respect for the principles we had professed."

"Ah, bah! The principles we had professed Were the impossible dreams of
extreme youth. Honesty is a weakness that is outgrown by any man who
has brains enough to do his own thinking. You still profess the
principles, and betray them, while I boldly disavow them at the start."

"At least," Rangely had said, driven to his last defences, "if we have
fallen off, we have done it unconsciously, and you"--

"I," Fenton had flamed out in interruption, "have, at least, made it a
point to be honest with myself, whether I was with anybody else or not.
I find it easier to be mistaken than to be vague, and I had far rather
be."

The thought of Fenton floated through Fred's mind as he endorsed Peter
Calvin, and with no especial thought of what he was saying, he
observed--

"Arthur Fenton wants Grant Herman to have the commission, and I must
say Herman would be sure to do it well."

"If Fenton wants Herman," Irons returned, with an attempt at lightness
which only served to emphasize the genuine bitterness which underlaid
his words, "that settles my voting for him."

"Don't you and Mr. Fenton agree?" the hostess asked. "I supposed you
were one of his admirers or you wouldn't have had him paint your
portrait."

"I admire his works more than I do him," Irons answered, adding with
clumsy jocularity "I am waiting for offers from the friends of
candidates."

"I am interested in young Stanton," Mr. Greenfield said; "I might make
you an offer."

"Oh, to oblige you," the other responded, "I will consent to support
him without money and without price."

The talk meant little to any one save the hostess and Irons, but they
both felt that this move in their game, slight as it seemed, was both
well made and important. Later in the evening Irons took occasion to
assure Greenfield that he would really support Stanton in the
committee, adding that with the vote of Calvin this would settle the
matter. When a few days later Irons asked the decision of Greenfield in
regard to the railroad matter, he found that the attitude of the
chairman of the committee was satisfactory. And honest Tom Greenfield
had the satisfaction of believing that he had been instrumental in
furthering the interests of Orin Stanton, in whose success he felt the
pride common to people in a country district when a genius has appeared
among them and secured recognition from the outside world sufficient to
assure them that they are not mistaken in their admiration. Nor was the
mind of the country member disturbed by any suspicion that he had been
managed and deceived, and that he had really played into the hands of
that most unscrupulous corporation, the Wachusett Syndicate.




XXI

                     A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN.
                                      Love's Labor's Lost; i.--I.

It was a peculiarity which the St. Filipe shared with most other clubs
the world over, that the doings of its committees in private session
were always known within twenty-four hours and discussed by the knot of
habitues of the house who kept close watch upon its affairs. It did not
long remain a secret therefore, that the Executive Committee had taken
a firm stand in regard to the troublesome matter of introducing
strangers illegally, and that Fenton had been summoned to appear before
them to answer to the charge of introducing Snaffle.

The excitement was intense. Fenton was a man whose affairs always
provoked comment, and while there was much discussion in regard to what
would be done, there was quite as much as to how he would take it. The
men who had been in the card-room on the night in question chanced not
to be on hand to say that Snaffle had appeared alone, and the word of
the servant was accepted as conclusive.

"Fenton's a queer fellow anyway," one man observed reflectively. "He's
a damned arrogant cuss."

"He has not only the courage of his convictions," Ainsworth responded,
"but he has also the courage of his dislikes."

"He will never give up the assumption that he is above all rules," the
first speaker continued. "He feels that he is being bullied if he is
ever asked to submit to a law of any kind."

"The committee are bound to put things through this time. They've been
waiting for a chance to jump on somebody for a long time, and Fenton
put a rod in pickle for himself when he tried to run Rangely in for
secretary last election."

"One thing is certain," Ainsworth said, rising and buttoning his coat;
"Fenton isn't an easy man to tackle, and if we don't have some music
out of this before we are done, I shall be surprised."

There was a general feeling that something unusual would come of this
action on the part of the Executive Committee. Fenton was a man of so
much audacity, so fertile in resource, and so persistent in his
efforts, that while nobody knew what he would do, it was generally
supposed that he would make a fight; and expectation was alive to see
it.

As to Fenton, he was at first completely overwhelmed by the summons
from the committee. Disgrace, reproof,--even examination was a horrible
and unspeakable humiliation, which it seemed to him impossible to bear.
He hated life and was so thoroughly wretched as to be physically almost
prostrated, although his strong will kept him upon his feet still.

As he reflected, however, the hopeful side of the situation presented
itself to his mind. He had been confident that his tracks were so well
hidden that his share in introducing Snaffle into the Club would not be
suspected, unless the guest had himself mentioned it. He made the
Princeton Platinum stock a pretext for calling upon the speculator, and
endeavored to discover whether the latter had spoken, but he learned
nothing. He was not quite ready to ask frankly whether Snaffle had
betrayed him, and short of doing so he could not discover. Still Fenton
told himself that the only thing he had to fear was some hearsay that
might have reached the ears of the Executive Committee, and he trusted
to his cleverness to answer this.

He presented himself at the meeting of the committee with a bold front
and an air of restrained indignation, which became him very well. All
his histrionic instincts were aroused by such an occasion as this. He
delighted to act a part, and the fact that real issues were the stake
of his success, added a zest which he could not have found on the
boards. He spoke to the gentlemen present or replied to their greeting
with a manner of dignity which was effective because it was not in the
least overdone, and then sat down very quietly to await what might be
said.

He had not long to wait. The Secretary of the St. Filipe heartily
disliked Fenton, chiefly because Fenton openly disliked him. He was a
man who was petty enough to take advantage of his office to gratify his
personal spite, and shallow enough not to perceive that he had done so.
His whole fat person quivered with indignant gratification as he saw
Fenton in the _role_ of a culprit, and he bent his look upon the notes
spread out before him because he was aware that his eyes showed more
satisfaction than was by any means decorous.

The meeting partook of that awkward unofficial nature which makes
matters of discipline so hard in a social club. The men present were
Fenton's companions and associates, and the dignity with which their
position invested them was hardly sufficient to put them at their ease.
They heartily wished to be done with the disagreeable business, and
were not without a feeling of personal vexation against the culprit for
forcing upon them anything so unpleasant as sitting in judgment upon
him.

The chairman, Mr. Staggchase, opened the case by saying in an offhand
manner, that they were all very sorry for the turn things had taken,
but that the evil of having strangers introduced into the club had
grown to proportions which made it impossible longer to overlook it,
and that this was especially true of the bringing into the house men
who not only were there in violation of the rules, but who were of a
character which made it more than a violation of good taste to
introduce them into the club at all. He added that he was convinced
that the present case was the result of a misunderstanding, and he
hoped the gentleman who had been asked to meet the committee would
comprehend that he was there rather to assist the government of the
club in maintaining discipline, than for any other reason.

He looked at Fenton and smiled as he concluded, and the artist bowed to
him with a glance of answering friendliness. Thus far all had been
pleasant, so pleasant indeed that the corpulent Secretary had ceased
smiling. The remarks of Mr. Staggchase had been conciliatory and
gracious, and showed so distinct a leaning toward the accused, that the
Secretary felt himself to be personally attacked in this slighting way
of holding charges which he had given. He drew his thin lips together
and cleared his throat in a preparatory cough, rustling his papers as
if to call attention to them.

"If the Secretary is ready," Mr. Staggchase said, "he may read the
memorandum of the matter about which we wished to consult Mr. Fenton."

"The charge against Mr. Fenton," the Secretary responded, with
deliberate insolence, "is that on the evening of March 13th he brought
Mr. Erastus Snaffle into the club house, knowing that that individual
had already been several times in the club within the time specified by
the by-laws, and knowing him to be a man unfit to be introduced into a
gentleman's club at any time."

"I have the honor of Mr. Erastus Snaffle's acquaintance," Fenton
interpolated, in a perfectly cool, self-controlled voice, "in virtue of
having had him presented to me by the Secretary of this club in the
pool-room upstairs."

The members of the committee smiled, but the Secretary flushed with
anger. The statement was literally true, and he could not at the moment
go into the rather lengthy explanation which would have made it evident
that his thus standing sponsor for Mr. Snaffle was entirely the result
of a provoking accident rather than of his choice. He hurried on to
cover the awkward interruption.

"Mr. Fenton further broke a rule of the club in neglecting, or I should
say omitting to register his guest, and his share in the matter might
not have been known had not Mr. Snaffle told the servant at the door
that he came at Mr. Fenton's invitation."

Arthur had settled himself in an attitude of placid attention, secretly
enjoying the clever thrust he had given his adversary. At these last
words he sat upright.

"Mr. Staggchase," he said, turning toward the chairman, and speaking
with sudden gravity, "do I understand that I have been summoned before
this committee in consequence of the report of a servant."

"I think such is the fact, Mr. Fenton," was the reply, "but of course
your simple word will be received as ample exoneration."

"Exoneration!" echoed Fenton, starting to his feet, his face pale with
excitement which easily passed for virtuous indignation. "Do you fancy
I would stoop to exonerate myself from such a charge? Since when has
the testimony of servants been received in a club of gentlemen?"

He had his cue, and he felt perfectly safe in letting himself go. He
was frightened at the possible consequences of the coil in which he had
become involved, since he foresaw easily enough that while his only
course was to carry things through with a high hand, his words had
already bitterly incensed the Secretary and might in the end set the
committee also against him. He experienced a wild delight, however, in
giving vent to his excitement in any form, and this simulation of
burning indignation served to relieve his pent-up nervousness. He did
believe the principle upon which with so much quickness he had hit as
his best defence, and could with all his force sustain it. He looked
about the room in silence a moment, but nobody was quick enough to pin
him down to facts and insist upon his denying or allowing the charge
brought against him. The indisputable correctness of his position that
a servant's testimony could not be taken against a member in a club of
gentlemen confounded them, and before any one thought of the right
thing to say, Fenton continued, with growing indignation,--

"Why I personally should be chosen for insult by this committee I will
not attempt to decide, although the source of the malice is to be
guessed from the manner in which the evidence was brought to their
notice. When the Secretary has a charge to bring against me that a
gentleman would bring, I shall be ready to answer it. A charge like
this it is an insult to expect me to notice."

He walked toward the door, as he finished, and turned to bow as he put
his hand on the latch.

"Oh, come now, Fenton," Mr. Staggchase said confusedly, "don't go off
that way. Of course"--

He hesitated, not knowing how to continue, and another member took up
the word.

"All that is nonsense, of course. If the servant was mistaken, why
can't you say so, and put yourself right with the committee?"

"Because," Fenton answered, throwing up his head, "I prefer retaining
my self-respect even to putting myself right with this or any other
committee. Good morning."

He went out quickly. He felt that this was a good point for an exit,
and he wished to get away lest he should be unable to keep up to the
level of the scene as he had played it. So thoroughly was his whole
attitude consciously theatrical, that he smiled to himself outside the
door as the whimsical reflection crossed his mind that he really
deserved a call before the curtain. Then he remembered how awkward he
should find it to be called back; and with a smile he ran down stairs
to get his hat and coat, and hurried out of the house into the
darkening spring afternoon.

When Fenton had gone, the members of the committee sat looking at each
other in that condition of bewilderment which could easily turn to
either indignation or contrition as the direction might be determined
by the first impulse. Unfortunately for Fenton, it was his enemy the
Secretary who spoke first.

"Heroics are all very well," he sneered, "but they don't change facts.
He's evidently played poker enough to know how to bluff in good shape."

There was a rustle of impatience in the room. The men seemed to be
reminded that a very high tone had been taken with them, and that they
had all come in for a share of the rebuke which Fenton had
administered. They were irritated by the mingling of a secret
concurrence with the artist's position that a member of the club should
not be impeached on the testimony of a servant, and the conviction that
Fenton was really guilty of the charge brought against him, so that it
was contrary to both justice and common sense to allow him to escape on
a mere technicality.

"Fenton is so hot-headed," Mr. Staggchase began; and then he added: "I
can't say that I blame him so very much, though. I don't fancy I should
be very amiable myself if I were brought up on the word of one of the
servants."

"But it was the duty of the servant to inform me," the Secretary
returned doggedly, "and why shouldn't the committee take action on
information which comes to it that way as well as any other. We didn't
set the servant to spy on the members, and I can't for the life of me
follow anything so fine spun as Fenton's theory. He only set it up, in
my opinion, to get himself out of a bad box."

"He might at least have had the grace to deny it, if he could," another
man said. "It leaves us in a devilish awkward fix as it is. We can't
drop the matter, and if he shouldn't be guilty"--

"Oh, he's guilty, fast enough," the Secretary interrupted, his little
green eyes shining under their fat lids. "He's one of the set that have
been playing poker in the club until it's begun to be talked about
outside, and I saw him go out with Snaffle that night myself."

There was some deliberation, some doubting, and some hesitation in
regard to the proper course in such a case. The committee felt that
their own dignity had suffered, that their authority should be
asserted, and their majesty avenged. Mr. Staggchase was the most
lenient in his views of the situation, and even he admitted that
whether Fenton were innocent of the offence with which he was charged
or not, he had at least treated the committee most cavalierly, and
against the ground taken by most of the members, that if Fenton had
been able to deny the charge he would have done so, he could only
reply,--

"I don't think that at all follows. In the first place he wasn't asked.
He is just the man to feel that a summons before this committee is in
itself a pretty severe reprimand, as plenty of men would. He's high
spirited and sensitive as the devil, and there was nothing in what he
said to-day that wasn't compatible to my mind with his being perfectly
innocent. Indeed, I don't believe he has cheek enough to carry it off
so, if he were not sure of his position."

"Oh, as to cheek," retorted the Secretary, venomously, "Arthur Fenton
has enough of that for anything. And, as for that matter, almost any
man will fight when he is cornered."

In the end the Secretary prevailed, and the committee, albeit somewhat
doubtingly, passed a vote of censure upon Fenton. The Secretary was
directed to communicate this fact to the artist, and he took it upon
himself also to include the information in the printed notices of the
monthly meeting which were sent out a few days later, an innovation
which stirred the club to its very depths and became town talk within
twenty-four hours.




XXII

                         HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH.
                                  Two Gentlemen of Verona; iv.--2.

Helen Greyson was at work in her studio modelling the hand of a statue.
The pretty hand of Melissa Blake lay before her, so near that Milly's
face came close to her own as she sat beside the modelling stand. It
was one of those anomalies of which nature is fond the world over, and
in which she displays nowhere more whimsical wilfulness than in New
England, that Melissa, born of a race of plain country farmers, should
have the hand of a princess. It was slender and beautiful, with
exquisite taper fingers which had not as yet been spoiled by hard work,
although were the present generation of New England maidens called upon
to labor as vigorously as did their grandmothers the girl's hands would
hardly have retained their comeliness so long.

Helen was working silently, absorbed in thought, and going on with her
modelling mechanically. She was pondering the old question, whether she
had done well in coming back to America, or whether she should have
still kept the ocean between herself and Grant Herman. While she was in
Europe, the longing to see him, to feel that he was near, to breathe
the same air, had become ever more strenuous, until at last it could
not be resisted. The sense of safety she had while so far away
prevented her from appreciating that she was returning to the same
danger from which she had fled. She told herself that time had so
softened and changed her feelings, that Herman with wife and son was so
different from the lonely man who had sought her love, and whom she had
bravely renounced from a stern sense of duty, whether wise or not, that
there could be no danger. She was a woman, and she had kept temptation
at a distance until the nerve of resistance was worn out; then she had
come home.

Now she asked herself what she had gained. She had renounced the
passive acquiescence which she had won by years of hard struggle, and
she had in exchange only a fierce unrest which was well-nigh
unendurable. To be near Herman and yet to be as far removed from him as
if the universe were between was a torture such as she had not dreamed
of. All the old love awoke, and something of the old conviction which
had made renunciation possible had failed her with time.

Nothing is more common than for the conscience half unconsciously to
assume that a heroic self-sacrifice has been of so great efficacy that
even the conditions which made it right are thereby altered. Without
realizing it, Helen's mental attitude was that in giving up Herman's
love and bringing about his marriage to Ninitta that his honor might be
unstained, she had accomplished a self-denial so tremendous that even
the need of making it was thereby destroyed. The idea was paradoxical,
but that a proposition is paradoxical is no obstacle to its being held
firmly by the feminine mind.

But by coming home Helen had also been put in a position where she
could not avoid seeing something of Herman's married life, and it was
at once impossible for her to help perceiving that it was a failure, or
to evade the conclusion that if it were a failure she was to blame for
the part she had taken in bringing it about. It is always dangerous to
judge of actions by their results, since by so doing one refers them to
the code of expediency rather than to that of ethics. Helen was not
prepared to pronounce her old decision wrong; but the feeling that her
renunciation had been vain forced itself more and more strongly upon
her.

She was losing sight of her conviction that the need of doing what one
felt to be right was in itself so imperative that no course of action
could be wrong which was based upon this principle. The truth is that
all mortals, and perhaps women especially, feel that a virtuous
resolution, a noble self-denial, must bring with it a spiritual
uplifting which will render it possible to hold to it. The hour of
self-conquest is one of inner exaltation which is so vivid that it is
impossible to realize that it can be otherwise than perpetual; a life
of self-conquest is a continuous struggle against the double doubt
which is the ghost of the short-lived exaltation that promised to be
immortal.

From her reverie, Helen was aroused by a question of Melissa which
almost seemed as if suggested by thought transference.

"Do you know," Melissa asked, "why the commission was not given to Mr.
Herman?"

"The commission?" Helen repeated, so startled by the mention of the
name which had been in her mind that for the moment she did not
comprehend the question.

"Why, for the _America_," returned Melissa. "I thought you knew Mr.
Herman, and Orin said that you had withdrawn."

Helen looked at her with a puzzled air.

"I did withdraw," she said, "but I did not know the matter had been
decided. Who is Orin? Orin Stanton?"

"Yes, he is to make the statue."

"Did he tell you so?"

"Yes, he thinks I helped him by speaking to Mrs. Fenton; but she said
Mr. Calvin already wanted Orin, so it made no difference."

"How long has it been decided?" asked Helen.

"He showed me the letter from Mr. Calvin day before yesterday. The
committee hadn't met, but Mr. Irons had promised his vote, and he and
Mr. Calvin make a majority. Orin had been afraid Mr. Irons would vote
for Mr. Herman, and I did not know but what you could tell. We are all
so much interested in the statue."

Helen laid down her tools with an air of sudden determination.

"Why are you?" she asked, rather absently. "When Mrs. Fenton told me
she had asked you to let me model your hands, she didn't mention your
being interested in my art."

"Oh, I don't know anything about it," returned the other, with the
utmost frankness, "only that Orin's a sculptor."

Helen smiled at the girl's _naivete_.

"And am I to congratulate you on Orin's success?"

Melissa blushed.

"Of course I am pleased," she answered, "especially for John's sake."

"And John?" Helen pursued, finishing her preparations for leaving her
work.

"John is Orin's half-brother," Milly replied, in a voice and with a
manner which made it unnecessary for Mrs. Greyson to question farther.

"I shall not work any more this morning," she said. "I have to go out."

She dressed herself for the street, and, for the first time in six
years, took the well-remembered way toward Herman's studio down among
the warehouses and wharves. She was indignant at the action of the
committee, of which she felt that Herman should be told. As, however,
she neared the place, old associations and feelings made her heart beat
quickly. When she put aside the great Oran rug and entered the studio,
she felt a choking sensation in her throat, and the tears sprang to her
eyes. She remembered so vividly the day when she had stood in this very
spot and parted from her lover, that it almost seemed to her for the
moment as if she had come to enact that scene again.

The place was more bare than of old. The pictures from the walls and
many of the ornaments had been removed to the house which Herman had
fitted up on his marriage with Ninitta; but in his usual place stood
the sculptor, at work by his modelling stand, and over the rail of the
gallery above, toward which her eyes instinctively turned as the old
memories wakened, she saw the sculptured edge of a marble Grecian
altar. The recollections were too poignant, and she started forward
quickly, as if to escape an actual presence.

The studio was so large that Herman had fallen into the way of saving
himself the trouble of answering the bell by putting up the sign "Come
in" upon the door, and he was not aware of Helen's presence until he
saw her standing with her hand upon the portiere, as he had seen her
six years before when she had renounced him, placing his honor before
their love. With an exclamation that was almost a cry, he dropped his
modelling tool and started forward to meet her.

"Helen!" he cried, and the intensity of his feelings made it impossible
for him to say more.

Yet, however strong the emotions which were aroused by this
meeting,--and for both of them the moment was one of keenest
feeling,--they were schooled to self-control, and after that first
exclamation the sculptor was outwardly calm as he went to greet his
visitor. Even for those who are not guided by principle, self-restraint
comes as the result of habit, and none of us in this age of the world
assert the right of emotion to vent itself in utterance. The
Philoctetes of Sophocles might shriek to high heaven, and Mars vent the
anguish of his wounds in cries and sobs, but we have changed all that.
Even the muse of tragedy is self-possessed in modern days; good
breeding has conquered even the fierce impulse of passion to find
outlet in words.

Both Herman and Helen were alive to the danger of the situation, and
their meeting was one of perfect outward calm.

"Good morning," she said, "it seemed so natural to walk in, that I
should almost have done it if your card hadn't been on the door."

She held out her hand as she spoke.

"I cannot shake hands," he said, "I am at work, you see."

She answered by a little conventional laugh which might mean anything.
Both of them hesitated a moment, their real feeling being too deep for
it to be easy quickly to call to mind conventionalities of talk. Then
the sculptor turned to lead the way up the studio, waving his hand as
he did so toward the place where he had been working.

"You couldn't have come more opportunely," remarked he. "You are just
in time to criticise my model for _America_. I was just looking it over
for the last touches."

"It was that I came to talk about," Helen returned, moving forward
toward the modelling stand on which was a figure in clay. "I have just
learned that the commission has already been awarded; and I thought you
ought to know how the committee is acting."

"I do know," he answered. "Mr. Hubbard came and told me, although the
committee meant to keep the decision quiet until after the models were
in."

"But you are finishing yours."

"Yes, I declined to enter a competition and was hired to make a model.
Of course I finish that, whatever the decision of the committee. Mr.
Hubbard told me because he had before assured me of his support, and he
wished to avoid even the suspicion of double dealing."

"The action of the committee is outrageous!" Helen protested,
indignantly. "They might as well put up a tobacconist's sign as the
thing Orin Stanton will make. It shows that you are right in refusing
to enter a competition, since they have decided without even seeing the
models they asked for."

"Yes," was Herman's reply. He paused a moment, and added, "Was that the
reason you withdrew?"

Helen flushed slightly, and turned her face aside.

"It hardly seemed worth while," she began; but he interrupted her.

"I would not have gone in," he said, "even as I did, if I had known
there was a chance of your competing."

She turned toward him, and her eyes unconsciously said what she had
been careful not to put into words.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, with sudden comprehension. "You knew I was in it
and that is why you withdrew."

"Well," she said, trying to laugh lightly, "it would not have been
modest for me to compete against my master."

She moved away as she spoke. She had a tingling sense of his nearness,
a passionate yearning to turn toward him and to break down all barriers
which made her afraid. She felt that she had been rash in coming to the
studio, and had overestimated her own strength. She glanced around
quickly, as if in search of something which would help to bring the
conversation to conventional levels; but her eye fell upon a
terra-cotta figure which sent the blood surging into her head so
fiercely that a rushing sound seemed to fill her ears. It was the nude
figure of a soldier lying dead upon a trampled mound, with broken
poppies about him, while across the pedestal ran the inscription,--

            "I strew these opiate flowers
             Round thy restless pillow."

It was the figure beside the clay model of which, yet wet from his
hand, the sculptor had told her, that day long ago, of her husband's
death. In the years since, she had believed herself to have worn her
love into friendship, to have beaten her passion into affection; but
every woman, even the most clear-headed, deceives herself in matters of
the heart, and now Helen knew what pitiful self-deception her belief
had been.

Over and over and over again has it been noted how great a part in
human life and action is played by trifles, and despite this constant
reiteration the fact remains both true and unappreciated. And yet it
is, after all, more exact to consider that the thing is simply our
habit of noticing the obvious trifles rather than the underlying
causes, as it is the straws on the surface of the current that catch
our eye rather than the black flood which sweeps them along. It was the
chance sight of the figure of the dead soldier which now broke down
Helen's self-control, but the true explanation of her outburst lay in
long pent up and well-nigh resistless emotions.

She turned toward her companion with a passionate gesture.

"It is no use," she broke forth, "I did wrong to come home. I should
have kept the ocean between us. I must go back."

Herman grasped the edge of the modelling stand strongly.

"Helen," he said, in a voice of intensest feeling; "We may as well face
the truth. We were wrong six years ago."

"Stop!" she interrupted piteously, putting up her hand. "You must not
say it. Don't tell me that all this misery has been for nothing, and
that we have sacrificed our lives to an error. And, besides," she went
on, as he regarded her without speaking, "however it was then, surely
now Ninitta has claims on you which cannot be gainsaid."

"Yes," he said bitterly, "and of whose making?"

She looked at him, pale as death, and with all the anguish of years of
passionate sorrow in her eyes. He faltered before the reproach of her
glance, but he would not yield. The disappointment of his married life,
his sorrow in the years of separation, the selfish masculine instinct
which makes all suffering seem injustice, asserted themselves now. The
effect of the fact that he was forbidden to love this woman was to make
him half consciously feel as if he had now the right to consider only
himself. He almost seemed absolved from any claims for pity which she
might once have had upon him. Even the noblest of men, except the two
or three in the history of the race who have shown themselves to be
possessed of a certain divine effeminacy, instinctively feel that a
disappointment in passion is an absolution from moral obligation.

"See," he said, with a force that was almost brutal; "we loved each
other and we have made that love simply a means of torture. My God!
Helen, the besotted idiots that fling themselves under the wheels of
Juggernaut are no more mad than we were."

She hurried to him and clasped both her hands upon his arm.

"Stop!" she begged, her voice broken with sobs, "for pity's sake, stop!
It is all true. I have said it to myself a hundred times; but I will
not believe it. Don't you see," she went on, the tears on her cheek,
"that to say this is to give up everything, that if there is no truth
and no right, there is nothing for which we can respect each other, and
our love has no dignity, no quality we should be willing to name."

He looked at her with fierce, unrelenting eyes.

"Ah," he retorted cruelly, "my love is too strong for me to argue about
it."

She loosed her hold upon his arm and stepped backward a little,
regarding him despairingly. She did not mind the taunt, but the moral
fibre of her nature always responded to opposition. She broke out
excitedly into irrelevant inconsistency.

"It is right," she cried. "We were right six years ago, and you shall
not break my ideal now. I must respect you, Grant. Out of the wreck of
my life I will save that, that I can honor where I love."

She stopped to choke back the sobs which shook her voice, and to wipe
away the tears which blinded her. The sculptor stood immovable; but his
face was softened and full of yearning.

"And, oh," Helen said, the memory of sorrowful years surging upon her,
"you would not try to shake my conviction if you realized how
absolutely it has been my only support. It is so bitter to doubt
whether the thing that wrings the heart is really right after all."

Herman made a sudden movement as if he would start forward, then he
restrained himself.

"Forgive me," he said, in a strangely softened voice. "You have
forgiven me for being cruel before. To have done a thing because you
believe it is right is of more consequence than anything else can be.
The truth is in the heart, not the thing."

She tried to smile. She felt as if she were acting again an old scene,
the trick of taking refuge from too dangerous personal feeling in the
expression of general truths carrying her back to the time when the
expedient had served them both before.

"But people who have faith," she said, "who believe creeds and
doctrines, can have little conception how much harder it is for us than
for them to do what we think is the right."

He did not answer her, and a moment they stood in silence with downcast
looks. Then she moved slowly down the great studio toward the door, and
he followed by her side.

As she put her hand upon the Oran rug to lift it, she raised her eyes
and met his glance. The blood rushed into their faces. They remembered
their parting embrace and the burning kisses of long ago.

"Good-by," she said, and even before he could answer her she had gone
out swiftly.




XXIII

                      AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND.
                                      Merchant of Venice; v.--2.

The fact that her mother was a Beauchester Mrs. Staggchase never
forgot, although she seldom spoke of it. It formed what she would have
called a background to her life, and gave her the liberty of doing many
things which would have been unallowable to persons of less
distinguished ancestry. It was, perhaps, in virtue of her Beauchester
blood, for instance, that she made the somewhat singular selection of
guests brought together at a luncheon which she gave in honor of Miss
Frances Merrivale when that young lady came to pay her a visit, at the
conclusion of her stay with Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson.

Miss Merrivale had been in doubt whether she could properly accept this
invitation, in view of the fact that her cousin's wife had neglected to
call upon her since her arrival in Boston. The reflection, however,
that this visit to the Staggchase's was the chief object of her
becoming Mrs. Sampson's guest at all had decided the young lady upon
overlooking considerations of etiquette, and from the flat of the widow
she had removed to the more aristocratic region of Back Bay.

Miss Frances had been shrewd enough to forestall all possible
objections by accepting the invitation before mentioning it to Mrs.
Sampson; and however deep the chagrin of that enterprising individual,
she was too astute to protest against the inevitable. Mrs. Sampson
even, in her secret heart, considered the advisability of calling upon
her late guest in her new quarters, but reluctantly abandoned the idea
as being likely, on the whole, to be productive of no good results
socially. That Miss Merrivale would probably forget her as quickly as
possible she was but too well assured, and it pretty exactly indicates
the position of the widow toward society that this prospective
ingratitude moved her to no indignation. It was so exactly the course
which in similar circumstances she herself would have pursued, that no
question of its propriety presented itself to her mind. Even the faint
air of conscious guilt with which the girl announced her intention did
not arouse in Mrs. Sampson any feeling of surprise or bitterness.
Society to her mind was a ladder, and being so, to climb it was but to
follow the use for which it was designed.

Miss Merrivale was of better stuff, and if not well bred enough to live
up to the obligations she had assumed by becoming Mrs. Sampson's guest,
she was at least conscious of them; and she said good-by with an air of
apologetic cordiality, quieting her conscience by the secret
determination some time to repay the widow's kindness in one way or
another, although she should be obliged to repudiate her socially. Had
she known Mrs. Staggchase better, and been aware how much she fell in
that lady's estimation by throwing Mrs. Sampson overboard, her decision
might have been different.

"She is coming, my dear," Mrs. Staggchase had said to her husband, on
receiving Miss Merrivale's acceptance of her invitation. "I shouldn't
have expected it of one of your family."

"You know we can't all be born Beauchesters," he had returned, with
good-natured sarcasm.

Once at Mrs. Staggchase's, Miss Merrivale began to see Boston society
under very different auspices. She had been at a luncheon at Ethel
Mott's, given in compliment to herself, where she had sat nearly
speechless for an hour and a half while half a dozen young ladies had
discussed the origin of evil with great volubility, and what seemed to
her, however it might have impressed metaphysicians, astounding
erudition and profundity. She had assisted at that sacred rite of
musical devotees, the Saturday night Symphony concert, where a handful
of people gathered to hear the music, and all the rest of the world
crowded for the sake of having been there. She had been taken by Miss
Mott to a select sewing-circle--that peculiar institution by means of
which exclusive Boston society keeps tally of the standing of all its
young women. She was somewhat bewildered, but enjoyed what might be
called a hallowed consciousness that she was doing exactly the right
thing; and it was, perhaps, only a delicate consciousness of the
fitness of things that made her answer all questions as to the time of
her arrival in Boston with the date of her coming to Mrs. Staggchase,
ignoring her previous visit to a woman of whose existence it was only
proper to assume her new acquaintances to be entirely unaware.

Fred Rangely was shrewdly and humorously appreciative of her attitude,
being the more keenly conscious of the exact situation because he
himself made a point of ignoring his acquaintance with Mrs. Sampson. He
had debated in his mind what change in his conduct was advisable now
that Miss Merrivale was visiting Mrs. Staggchase. He had astutely
decided that the latter, at least, would make no remarks about him to
her guest; and, in view of the fact that it was scarcely possible to
conceal his flirtation with the New Yorker from the penetration of her
hostess, he decided to content himself with hiding from the stranger
his devotion to his older friend. He still assured himself that his
serious intentions were directed toward Miss Mott, and he secretly
smiled to himself with the foolish over-confidence of a vain man, when,
from time to time, he heard allusions to the devotion of Thayer Kent to
Ethel. Kent had been in the field before Rangely presented himself as a
rival candidate for the damsel's good graces; and the novelist might
have been less confident had not personal interest blinded him to a
state of things which he would have apprehended easily enough where
another was concerned. The easy familiarity, born of long friendship
and perfect understanding, which Ethel showed toward Kent, Fred mistook
for indifference. His own sudden popularity had somewhat turned his
head, so that he failed to distinguish between the attentions shown to
the author and those bestowed upon the man, and constantly felt himself
to be making personal conquests when he was simply being lionized.

Mrs. Staggchase invited the guests for her luncheon before she spoke of
them to Miss Merrivale.

"I have asked Mrs. Bodewin Ranger," she explained, "although she is old
enough to be your grandmother, because she is the nicest old lady in
Boston, and it is a liberal education to meet her."

The other guests were Mrs. Frostwinch, Ethel Mott, and Elsie Dimmont.

"Elsie Dimmont," Mrs. Staggchase observed, "needs to be looked after.
She is either going to make a fool of herself by marrying that odious
Dr. Wilson or she is allowing herself to be made a fool of by him,
which is quite as bad."

Secretly Mrs. Staggchase, for all her Beauchester blood, had a good
deal of sympathy for the girl who was defying her family in receiving
the attentions of a man of no antecedents, although, having done the
same thing herself, she was the more strongly bound outwardly to
discountenance any such insubordination.

Guests may be selected on the principle of harmony of taste and
feeling, or simply with an eye to variety; in the present instance it
was distinctly the latter method which had obtained; and it was perhaps
to be regarded as no mean triumph of social civilization that a harmony
apparently so perfect resulted from the strange combination which the
hostess had brought about. Whether from a secret intention of rebuking
Miss Dimmont for her associations with one socially so impossible as
Chauncy Wilson, or with the less amiable design of disciplining Miss
Merrivale for her friendship with Mrs. Sampson, the hostess adroitly
and deliberately turned the conversation to social themes, and thence
on to what perhaps were best described as the proprieties of caste.

She was too clever a woman to do this crudely, and indeed would have
seemed to any but the most acute observer to follow the conversation
rather than to lead it. Ethel and Elsie chatted briskly of the current
gossip of the day, and it was Mrs. Bodewin Ranger who was skilfully led
on to strike the keynote of the talk by saying,--

"Doesn't it seem to you that the modern fashion of admitting artists
into society is mixing up things terribly? Nowadays one is always
meeting queer people everywhere, and being told that they are writers
or painters."

The fine old lady smiled so genially that one seeing her benign
countenance framed in its beautiful snowy curls, must know her well to
realize that in truth she meant exactly what she said. Mrs.
Frostwinch's answering smile was not without a tinge of sarcasm,--

"It is worse than that," she said. "You even meet actors in quite
respectable houses."

"Oh, actors!" threw in Ethel Mott, briskly; "nowadays they even go
below the level of humanity and invite those things called
elocutionists."

"But of course," ventured Miss Merrivale, wishing to put herself on
record and striking a false note, as usually happens in such cases,
"one doesn't really know these people. They are only brought in to
amuse."

"One never knows undesirable people, my dear," Mrs. Staggchase
responded, without the faintest shadow of the sarcastic intent which
her guest yet secretly felt in her words.

"Bless me!" broke in Elsie Dimmont, with characteristic explosiveness.
"What an abandoned creature I must be! I am actually going to the
Fenton's to dine to-night."

"Mr. Fenton," Mrs. Bodewin Ranger responded, in her soft voice, "is a
gentleman by birth, and his wife was a Caldwell; her mother was a
Calvin, you know."

Ethel Mott laughed.

"And so he passes," she said, "in spite of his being an artist. How
pleased he would be if he knew it."

"It would be worth while to tell him," Mrs. Frostwinch interpolated,
"just to hear his comments."

"We owe Arthur Fenton more scores than we can ever settle," observed
the hostess, "for the things he says about women. He said to me the
other day that the society of lovely woman is always a delight except
when a man was in earnest about something."

"I said to him, one night," added Elsie Dimmont, "that Kate West wasn't
in her first youth. 'Oh, no!' he said, 'her third or fourth at least.'"

The others smiled, except Mrs. Ranger.

"Poor Kate!" she said; "all you girls seem to dislike her somehow. Mrs.
West was a somebody from Washington," she added, reflectively, as if
she unconsciously sought in the girl's pedigree some explanation of her
unpopularity.

"Is it so dreadful to come from Washington?" asked Miss Merrivale; and
then wondered if she ought to have said it.

"It is not the coming from Washington," was Mrs. Frostwinch's reply,
delivered in the same faintly satirical manner which she had maintained
throughout the discussion; "it is the being merely a somebody instead
of having a definite family name behind her."

"It is all very well for you to make fun of my old-fashioned notions,
Anna," Mrs. Ranger returned, good-naturedly. "You think just as I do."

"I should be sorry not to think as you do about everything," was the
answer. "And, to be perfectly honest, I can't help being a little
ashamed that a cousin of mine has gone on to the stage. She was always
dreadfully headstrong."

"Has she talent?" asked Mrs. Staggchase.

"Yes, she has talent; but is anything short of genius an excuse for
taking to the boards?"

"I wish I could act," put in Miss Dimmont, emphatically. "I'd go on to
the stage in a minute."

Mrs. Ranger looked shocked and grieved as well.

"My dear," she said, "you can't realize what you are saying. The stage
has always been a hotbed of immorality from the very beginning of
theatrical art, and nothing can reform it."

"Reform it," echoed Mrs. Staggchase, suavely; "we don't want to reform
it. Nothing would so surely ruin the actor's art as the reformation of
his morals."

"Oh, my dear!" remonstrated Mrs. Ranger.

"Really, Diana," Mrs. Frostwinch said, good-naturedly, "your sentiments
are too shocking for belief."

"But she doesn't mean them," added Mrs. Ranger.

"I am sorry to shock anybody," the hostess responded, "but I really do
mean what I say. Not that I can see," she added, "that society can
afford to be too squeamish on the question of morals."

A look of genuine distress began to shadow

Mrs. Ranger's face, and it deepened as Miss Merrivale said,
flippantly,--

"Is Boston such an abandoned place?"

"Really, Diana," the old gentlewoman remarked, with a manner in which
playfulness and earnestness were pretty equally mingled, "I don't think
you ought to talk so before these girls. When I was your age, half a
century ago, it wouldn't have been considered at all proper."

Mrs. Staggchase laughed softly.

"But, nowadays," she returned, "the girls are so sophisticated that
what we say makes no difference."

There was a moment of silence while the servant changed the plates, and
then Miss Dimmont broke out, saying, with unnecessary force,--

"I don't care who people are if they only amuse me, and I'll know
anybody I like, whether they had any grandfathers or not."

"Since when?" Ethel whispered significantly into her ear.

Elsie crimsoned, but she gave no other sign that she had heard or
understood the thrust.

"Then there is Fred Rangely," Mrs. Staggchase remarked, in a tone so
even that it showed she meant mischief. "He comes here to see Frances,
and you can't think, Mrs. Ranger, that it's my duty to be rude to him
just because he writes for the newspapers."

"It is impossible to imagine Mrs. Staggchase being rude to anybody,"
quickly interpolated Ethel, with smiling malice; "and I supposed Mr.
Rangely had won at least a brevet right to be considered in the swim
from his long intimacy with social leaders."

The hostess was too old a hand not to be pleased with a clever stroke,
even at her own expense, and she took refuge in an irrelevant
generality which might mean anything or nothing.

"One learns so much in life," she said, "and of it appreciates so
little."

And Frances Merrivale looked from Miss Mott to Mrs. Staggchase with an
uncomfortable wonder what allusions to Fred Rangely lay behind this
talk, which she could not understand.




XXIV

                         THERE BEGINS CONFUSION.
                                          I Henry VI.; iv.--1.

Fred Rangely began to find himself in the condition of being controlled
by circumstances, instead of himself controlling them. Nor with all his
astuteness could he decide how far he was being managed by Mrs.
Staggchase, or led on by Miss Merrivale. He went about in a state of
continual astonishment at the extent to which he had committed himself
with the latter, and fell into that dangerous mental condition where
one seems passively to regard his own actions rather than to direct
them. Rangely had been so long settled in the conviction that he was to
marry Ethel Mott, even the not infrequent rebuffs of that lady
producing in his mind only temporary misgiving, that his present doubts
bewildered him. He was less of a coxcomb than might seem to follow from
this statement, albeit there was no timidity and little burning passion
in his feeling toward her. His was simply the cool masculine assurance
of a man selfish enough to regard even love in a cold-blooded manner.
He approved of his own choice socially, financially, and aesthetically;
and since he loved himself rather more for having selected Ethel, he
fell into the not unnatural error of supposing himself to be in love
with her.

His entanglement with Miss Merrivale, on the other hand, was largely a
matter of vanity. What had begun as an idle flirtation, designed to
kill the leisure of summer days in the mountains, was continued from a
half-conscious fear that he should appear at a disadvantage by breaking
it off. It so keenly wounded Rangely's self-love to be thought ill of
by a woman, that he was often forced to play at devotion which he not
only did not feel but of which the simulation was almost wearisome to
him. Nevertheless he was not, in this instance, without a shrewd
appreciation of all the possibilities of the situation. He said to
himself philosophically, that if worst came to worst and the fates had
really decided to marry him to Miss Merrivale, she had money, good
looks, and a fair position, and might on the whole prove more
manageable as a wife than one so clever and so high spirited as Ethel.

Miss Merrivale, on her part, was foolishly and fondly in love with the
broad-shouldered egotist. She had made up her mind from a variety of
causes that she should, on the whole, prefer to marry in Boston,
although in reality this meant simply that she wanted to marry Fred
Rangely. She pored over his books in secret, talked to him of them with
a want of comprehension only made tolerable by the fervor of her
admiration, and took pains to show him that she regarded him as the
literary hope of his generation of novelists. In vulgar parlance, she
flung herself at his head; and in such a case a girl's success may be
said to depend almost wholly on opportunity and the extent of her
lover's vanity.

Rangely had vanity enough and Mrs. Staggchase supplied the opportunity.
If a feminine mind could ever properly be called spherical, that
epithet should be applied to Mrs. Staggchase's inner consciousness. She
was so sufficient unto herself, she so absolutely scored success or
failure simply as a matter of her own sensations that her self-poise
was perfect. She had even the quality, rare in a woman, of being almost
indifferent whether others shared her opinions or not. She was content
with the knowledge that she had succeeded in doing what she wished,
while often the results and effects were so subtile and remote as to be
imperceptible to others. Life was to her a toy with which she amused
herself, and she found her chief enjoyment in trying experiments upon
it of which the results were intangible to all but herself.

In the present case it amused Mrs. Staggchase and gave her some
feminine satisfaction as well, to think that Rangely should marry
Frances Merrivale. By promoting this marriage into which she was aware
that he had no intention of being drawn, she avenged herself upon him
for having presumed to show attentions to another while she honored him
with her intimate friendship. It was not so much the nature of the
punishment which pleased her as the fact that she was able to constrain
him to her will. She found an ungenerous satisfaction in proving to
herself that it lay within her power to do with him what she would; and
if this conclusion did not inevitably follow from the premises, her
logic was at least satisfactory to herself, and that was sufficient to
determine her course of action. She found some pleasure, too, in
feeling that she was taking away a lover from Ethel Mott, for whom she
had a dislike which in another woman would have been petty but which in
Mrs. Staggchase was merely intellectual, since she was not a woman
without understanding that one of her sex must feel the loss of even an
admirer for whom she has no love. She did not share Rangely's mistake
of supposing that Ethel would marry him, yet it was distinctly her
intention that Miss Mott should not have the satisfaction of
undeceiving him, but that Fred should carry through life the regretful
and tantalizing conviction that he had thrown away this chance. It
required only a little cleverness in bringing together the young man
and Miss Merrivale, with a little skill in dropping now and then a word
assuming his devotion to her guest, and Mrs. Staggchase's plan was
evidently in a fair way of accomplishment.

On the morning of the day of her luncheon, for instance, she had
managed that Rangely should take Frances to some of the studios. The
girl had little acquaintance with artistic life, but it attracted her
by that romantic flavor which it is so apt to have for the uninitiated.

"I should think," she observed, as they walked along in the bright
sunny morning, "that you would want to go to the studios all the time,
if you know so many artists. I'm sure I should."

"Oh, it very soon gets to be an old story," was his answer. "One studio
is very like another."

"But their work? That must be awfully interesting."

"Yes, to a novice, but that soon gets to be an old story too. An artist
is only a man who puts paint or charcoal on cardboard or canvas with
more or less cleverness, just as an author is a man who has more or
less skill in getting ink on to paper."

Miss Merrivale laughed, with more glee than comprehension.

"You are always so witty," she said. "I don't wonder your books sell. I
think that girl who couldn't tell which man she liked best was just too
funny for anything. I can't for the life of me see how you think of
such things, anyway."

"The trouble isn't to think what to say, but to tell what not to say."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Now of course an artist just sees
things, and all he has to do is to make pictures of them; but you have
to make up things."

"But we see things too," the novelist responded, smiling upon her, and
reflecting that she was looking uncommonly pretty that morning.

"Oh, but that's different. Now you never knew a girl who was hesitating
which of two lovers to choose, and she wouldn't tell you how she felt
if you did; but there it is all in your book so natural that every girl
says to herself that's just the way she should feel."

The flattery was too evidently sincere not to be pleasing. So long as
praise is genuine, few men are so exacting as to insist that it be also
intelligent.

"Thank you," he said; "you at least understand the art of saying nice
things. Though that," he added, with his warmest smile, "is perhaps
only natural in one who must have had so many nice things said to her."

She laughed, her ready, girlish laugh, which always seemed to him so
young; and they climbed the crooked stairs of Studio Building, their
breath hardly being any longer sufficient for much speech.

"I'm going to take you to Arthur Fenton's first," Rangely observed, as
they paused to rest on one of the landings. "These stairs are awful. I
wonder how he gets his elderly sitters up here."

Miss Merrivale seated herself upon a bench benevolently placed on the
landing.

"They sit down here, of course," she responded.

"This is a sort of life-saving station," he remarked, seating himself
beside her.

"Oh, Mr. Rangely, how awfully funny you are."

"It's my trade; I have to be to earn my living. Now you and I are the
only survivors from a wreck."

"Alone on a desert island?"

"Life-saving stations are not generally on desert islands; but I hope
you wouldn't mind so very much if it were."

She looked at him with bright eyes, and then let her glance fall.

"That would depend," she responded demurely.

"Upon what? How I behaved?"

"Oh, of course you'd behave well."

"Of course; but how would I have to behave to make you contented on a
desert island?"

She shot him a keen quick glance from beneath her bent brows.

"I never said I should be contented."

"But you implied it."

She whirled her muff over and over upon her two hands like the wheel of
a squirrel cage, regarding it intently with her pretty head on one side.

"No, I didn't imply it either. I don't believe I could be contented."

"Not even with me?"

She flushed, but evidently not with displeasure.

"Why with you more than anybody else?" she softly inquired, with great
apparent artlessness.

"Because," he began, "I should"--He was going to add, "be so fond of
you," but reflected that this was perhaps going a little too fast and
too far, and concluded instead--"take such good care of you."

Perhaps it was because approaching footsteps sounded on the stairs
below them; perhaps it was because her subtile feminine sense
appreciated the fact that he was on his guard; but for some reason or
for no reason she tossed her head and rose to her feet.

"I am fortunately not obliged to go so far as a desert island to get
taken care of," she said.

Her companion was not unwilling that the talk should be broken in upon.
He smiled to himself as he followed her lead, and in a moment more he
was knocking at the door of Fenton's studio, which was well up toward
the roof. There was no response, and, as Fred rapped the second time, a
carpenter who was at work on the casing of a door near by looked up,
and said,--

"Mr. Fenton has a sitter, sir."

"He is in then?" said Rangely.

"Yes," answered John Stanton, straightening himself up, with his plane
in his hand, "but since Mrs. Herman went in half an hour ago, he hasn't
opened the door to anybody."

"Mrs. Herman?" echoed Rangely, in astonishment.

"Yes, sir."

It was a capricious fate which brought John Stanton to tangle the web
of Fenton's life. His brother Orin's relations with artists had given
John a sort of acquaintanceship with them at second-hand, a kind of
vicarious proprietorship in the privileges of art circles. He had long
known Fenton by sight, while that he recognized Mrs. Herman also was
the result of accident. He had been standing with Orin a few days
before on a street corner, when the sculptor had lifted his hat to Mrs.
Herman and named her in answer to John's question. There had not been
in his honest mind the faintest tinge of suspicion when he saw her
enter the studio, and he never had any intimation of the mischief he
had clone in mentioning her name to Rangely.

Fred and Miss Merrivale went on to Tom Bentley's curio-crowded rooms,
while the sound of their knock still lingered in the double ears of the
two people who sat confronting each other within the studio, with looks
on the one hand sullen; on the other, pleading. Fenton's picture of
_Fatima_ was finished, yet Ninitta continued to come to the studio. His
brief passion, which had been more than half mere intellectual
curiosity how far his power over the Italian could go, had ended with
that curiosity. In its place was a gradually increasing hatred for this
woman, who seemed to assert a claim upon him, this model whom he never
had loved, and whom he could now scarcely tolerate, since he had ceased
to respect her. He cursed himself vehemently after the fashion of such
offenders, when eager, vibrating passion has given place to a sense of
irksome obligations, but more vigorously still did he upbraid fate, to
whose score he set down all annoyance.

As for Ninitta, she, perhaps, no more truly loved Fenton than he had
cared for her, but she clung to him as a frightened child might clutch
the arm of one with whom it has wandered into the darkness of some
vault beset with pitfalls. Ninitta's moral sense was of the most
rudimentary character. She was, perhaps, incapable of appreciating an
ethical principle, and her spiritual life never soared beyond the
crudest emotions and the simplest questions of personal feeling. She
had come to live without the guidance of a priest, and this fact, in
itself, had left her without moral support. She had now no particular
consciousness of having done wrong, although she was moved by the fear
of the consequences of the discovery of her transgression.

It has been said that Ninitta's affection for her husband might have
been more enduring had he been less gentle with her. She came of a race
of peasants whose women understood masculine superiority in the old
brutal, physical sense, and whenever Herman bore patiently with his
wife's caprices he lessened a respect which he could have retained only
at the expense of a blow. With all Arthur Fenton's soft and caressing
ways toward Ninitta, there was always an instinctive masterfulness in
his attitude toward any woman and especially since he had tired of her
did he keep Mrs. Herman figuratively at his feet. The more strongly her
appealing attitude seemed to press upon him claims which he could not
satisfy and had no mind to acknowledge, the more harsh he became, and
the more she bent before him. The language of brutality was one which
she Understood by inherited instinct.

"But why," Fenton was saying impatiently, when Rangely's knock startled
them, "do you come here, when I haven't sent for you? There's somebody
at the door, now, and we haven't even the shadow of an excuse, since
the picture is done."

"I wanted to see you," Ninitta answered humbly, her plain face working
with her effort to keep back the tears. "It is so lonely at home, and
they take even Nino away from me."

The artist started up impatiently, and took his wet palette from the
stand beside him.

"Well!" he said, answering as she had spoken, in Italian, "you must be
anxious that your husband shall know of your coming here, or you would
not take such pains to have him find it out."

He began painting sullenly, putting in the last touches upon the
background of the portrait of a beautiful girl. The lovely face of
Damaris Wainwright, so pathetic, so pure, and so noble, looking at him
from the canvas stung him inwardly into an impotent fury. His fine
sense of the fitness of things was outraged by the presence of Ninitta
beside the spiritual personality which shone upon him from the
portrait. He could even feel the incongruity between himself and his
work, though this appealed to his sense of humor as the other aroused
his anger.

Ninitta watched in silence a moment; then she rose from her seat, her
wrap falling away from her shoulders. Her tears were done, and a white
look of intense feeling showed the despair that she felt. All the
isolation which tortured her, that pain which souls like hers, blind,
groping, and helpless, are least able to bear, had left its stamp upon
her. Perhaps even her sin had been a desperate and only half-conscious
attempt once more to draw in sympathy really near a human heart. She
had learned little from the changed conditions into which the fates of
her life had brought her, but she had been separated, in mind no less
than in body, from her own kind without being fitted for other
companionship. She was utterly and fatally alone, and a terrible sense
of her remoteness from all human fellowship smote her now at Arthur's
cruelty. She hesitated an instant, supporting herself by the arms of
the big carved chair in which she had been sitting; then, with an
impulsive gesture, she threw her arms above her head, wringing her
hands together.

"Oh, my God!" she cried, "what shall I do?"

Fenton turned quickly toward her.

"Oh, _mon Dieu!_" was his inward comment; "what a divine pose! What a
glorious figure! But ah, how tiresome she is!" Then, aloud, he said:
"Come, come, don't be foolish, Ninitta! You know as well as I do that
there is no danger, if you are only careful."

And putting aside his palette again, he soothed her with soft words
until she was calm enough to be sent home.

When she was gone, he shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his hands
with a deprecatory gesture.

"After all," he soliloquized aloud, "it is difficult for civilization
to get on without the sultan's sack and bowstring."




 XXV

                         AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT.
                                           Henry VIII.; i.--3.

The announcement by the Secretary of the St. Filipe Club that a vote of
censure had been passed upon Fenton had not only caused a tempest of
excitement, but had brought about the unexpected result of eliciting
testimony to prove that the charge against him was without foundation.
Men came forward to testify that Snaffle entered the club alone on the
evening when Fenton was said to have brought him there, while Tom
Bently, Ainsworth, and others had seen the artist come in afterward,
and had spoken with him before he went upstairs with Fred Rangely to
the card-room. The Executive Committee found itself in a most awkward
predicament, and its members took what comfort they could in pitching
upon the Secretary, who had, without authorization, announced the vote
of censure on the call for the monthly meeting. He was now directed to
write to Mr. Fenton a letter of apology, which he did with such small
grace as he could command, taking the precaution to mark the note
"confidential."

The artist experienced more than a feeling of conscious virtue at being
thus exonerated from a fault which he had committed; and it was with
mingled glee and a certain dare-devil desperation that he resolved upon
his own course of action.

The monthly meeting of the St. Filipe came on the evening of the day
when Mrs. Staggchase gave her luncheon. By a misunderstanding of
Fenton's wishes, his wife had invited friends to dine that night. He
meant to excuse himself after dinner and go to the club for a short
time, returning to his guests after he had said a few words upon which
he had determined.

The guests were Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Hubbard, Helen Greyson, Ethel
Mott, Miss Catherine Penwick, Thayer Kent, the Rev. De Lancy Candish,
and Fred Rangely. It was wholly by chance, and without malicious intent
that Edith assigned Ethel to Mr. Kent, while Rangely took Mrs. Greyson
in to dinner. Mrs. Fenton, of course, knew that gossip had sometimes
connected the names of Ethel and Rangely in a speculative way, but she
partly suspected and partly knew by feminine intuition that Fred was
practically out of the running, and that Ethel's heart was given to
Thayer Kent. It was hardly to be expected that Rangely should be
pleased at the sight of his rival's advantage; but having passed the
morning in squiring Miss Merrivale, his conscience was hardly
case-hardened enough to have made him at his ease had he been able to
exchange places with Kent.

To Mr. Candish was given the care of Miss Penwick, since with her Edith
knew that his sensitive awkwardness would be as comfortable as was
possible with any one; and the guests were so arranged that the
clergyman sat upon his hostess's left hand, being thus in a manner
intrenched between her and Miss Penwick against the raillery which Mrs.
Fenton knew her husband would press as far as his position as host
would allow. Edith always made it a point to do all that she could for
Mr. Candish's comfort, and it was largely on his account that she had
included Miss Penwick in the list of guests. She had a certain
tenderness for the forlorn old lady, but it might not have found active
expression had not the rector's pleasure come into the question. Arthur
had laughed when the proposed arrangement was submitted to him.

"Does your care for your pastor's spiritual welfare go so far," he
asked jocosely, "that you don't dare trust him with a young woman?
Really, it looks as if you were jealous of the red-haired angel."

"Mr. Candish is not a young woman's man," had been Edith's answer;
whereat her husband laughed again.

The talk at dinner was less animated than was usual at Fenton's table.
The host was preoccupied, despite his efforts not to appear so, and the
company was somehow not fully in touch. No conversation could be wholly
dull, however, which Arthur led; and while the "lady's finger" in his
cheek told his wife and Helen that he was laboring under some intense
excitement, he held himself pluckily in hand.

The conversation at first was between neighbors, but soon the host,
according to his fashion, began to answer any remark that his quick
ears caught, no matter from whose lips.

"You talk about marriage like a Pagan," he heard Helen say to Rangely.

"Oh, no," Fenton broke in, "he doesn't go half far enough for a Pagan.
The Pagan position is that matrimony is a matter of temperament and
convenience; it is essentially Philistine to consider that a marriage
ceremony imposes eternal obligations."

"There, Mr. Fenton," Mrs. Hubbard rejoined, "I haven't heard you say
anything so heathenish for half a dozen years. I hoped your wife had
reformed you."

"Or that he had come to years of discretion," suggested Mr. Hubbard,
with his charming smile.

"Oh, but I find years of indiscretion so much more interesting," Fenton
retorted.

A moment later Helen said something about the truth, and Rangely
retorted,--

"Truth is generally what one wishes to believe."

"Except in Puritanism," broke in Arthur, "there it was whatever one
didn't wish to believe."

"Don't you think," questioned Mr. Hubbard, "that you are always a
little hard on the Puritans? You must admire their conviction and their
bravery."

"Oh, yes," was Fenton's reply; "there is something superb in the
earnestness of the Puritans, and their absorption in one idea; but that
idea has left its birthmark of gloom on all their descendants, and one
cannot forget that Puritanism was the soil from which sprang the
unbelief of today."

"Bless us!" cried Rangely, "is Saul also among the prophets? Are you
also condemning unbelief?"

"Not at all," said Fenton, coolly, "I only want those who defend
Puritanism to accept its legitimate results."

"It seems to me," protested Mr. Candish, who had become very red
according to his unfortunate wont; "that if you argue in that way, you
must always condemn good, because evil may come after it."

"Oh, I do," retorted Fenton, airily.

Everybody except the clergyman laughed at the unexpectedness of this
reply; but Mr. Candish was wounded by the most faint suspicion of
anything like trifling with sacred things.

"My husband is utterly abandoned, as you see, Mr. Candish," said Edith,
coming to the rescue, as she always did when Arthur showed signs of
baiting the rector. "Is the decision made in regard to the _America_?"
she continued, turning to Mr. Hubbard, by way of changing the subject.

"Yes," he answered, "the commission is to be given to Orin Stanton."

"Orin Stanton?" asked Kent. "Who is he?"

"Oh, he," returned Fenton, "is a man that had the misfortune to be born
with a wooden toothpick in his mouth instead of a silver spoon."

"Is he Irish?"

"No, but he ought to be to have won favor in the sight of a committee
appointed by the Boston City Government."

"Come," said Helen; "that is rather severe when Mr. Hubbard is on the
committee."

"Oh, I don't mind," returned Hubbard. "I know Fenton wouldn't lose a
chance of having his fling at the Irish."

"Well," Fenton explained, defensively, "I am always irritated at the
pity of the United States having expended so much blood and treasure to
free itself from the dominion of the whole of Great Britain simply to
sink into dependence upon so insignificant a part of that kingdom as
Ireland."

"Mercy!" exclaimed Miss Penwick. "What extreme sentiments!"

They smiled at the old lady's words, and then Edith went back to the
statue.

"I fancy young Stanton hasn't been above some wire-pulling," she
remarked. "He sent his prospective sister-in-law, Melissa Blake, to ask
me to use my influence with Uncle Peter in his behalf."

"He needn't have troubled," Mr. Hubbard returned. "Mr. Calvin supported
him from the first."

"Oh, yes," Ethel said; "Mrs. Frostwinch and Mrs. Bodewin Ranger chose
Stanton long ago and persuaded Mr. Calvin to help them."

"I can't fancy Mr. Calvin as anybody's tool," commented Kent, who would
have regarded his companion's words as a trifle too frank to be spoken
at the table of Mr. Calvin's niece, had his mind been in a condition to
take exception to anything that she said.

"Isn't that Melissa Blake," asked Mr. Hubbard of Edith, "the one you
recommended to me as a copyist?"

"Yes, I hope you found her satisfactory."

Mr. Hubbard smiled somewhat grimly.

"Indeed he did not," broke in Mrs. Hubbard speaking for him. "She broke
confidence."

"Broke confidence!" echoed Edith, in astonishment. "Melissa Blake?"

"Yes," Hubbard returned. "I really didn't mean to tell you, but my
wife, you see, has all the indignation of a woman against a woman."

"But how did she break confidence?" demanded Edith. "I would trust her
as implicitly as I would myself."

"The papers she copied," was the reply, "were the plans for a syndicate
to put up mills at Fentonville. We kept the scheme quiet until the
route of the new railroad should be decided, and when we came before
the Committee of the House, the whole thing had been given away, and
the Wachusett men had even secured the chairman, Tom Greenfield. He
lives in Fentonville himself, and we had counted him at least as sure."

"That must have been the thing," placidly observed Miss Penwick to
Rangely, "that Mr. Irons was talking to Mrs. Sampson about, the night
we dined there to meet Miss Merrivale."

Rangely glanced up in vexation, to see if Miss Mott were listening, and
caught a gleam of mischievous intelligence from her eyes.

"I don't remember it," he answered ambiguously.

"But how do you know," persisted Edith, "that the information came from
Miss Blake?"

"Because Mr. Staggchase found out at Fentonville afterward that she
came from there, and that a young man she is engaged to had just
forfeited on a mortgage some of the meadows our company was to buy."

"The evidence doesn't seem to me conclusive," remarked Fenton, "and
simply as a matter of family unity I am bound to believe in my wife's
_proteges_."

Even the faint sense of humor which he felt at the situation could not
prevent him from experiencing the sting of self-shame. Had it been an
equal who was unjustly accused of a fault he had committed he would
have felt less humiliated. To the degradation of having betrayed
Hubbard, the addition of this last touch of having also unconsciously
injured an inferior came to him like the exquisite irony of fate. He
wondered in an abstract and dispassionate way whether the ghost of all
his misdeeds were continually to rise before him. "Really," he said to
himself with a smile that curled his lips "in that case I shall become
a perfect Macbeth." And at that instant the ghost most dreadful of all
rose at the feast like that of Banquo as Rangely said,--

"I knocked at your studio this morning but couldn't get in."

There flashed through Fenton's mind all the possibilities of discovery
and disaster that might lie behind this remark, and his one strong
feeling was that it would be unsafe to venture on a definite statement;
he took refuge in the vaguest of general remarks.

"I am sorry not to have seen you," he said.

He tried to reflect, while Edith said something further in defence of
Melissa. He joked with Ethel about the probable appearance of the
statue young Stanton would make, which was to be set up directly
opposite her father's house. He noticed that Helen was very silent, and
he even reflected how handsome a man was Thayer Kent; but through it
all he seemed to hear the echo of that knock upon his studio door and a
foreboding which he could not shake off made him reflect gloomily how
utterly defenceless he should be in case of discovery.

A brief silence suddenly recalled him to his duties as host, and he
caught quickly at the first topic which presented itself to his mind,
going back to the question of the _America_, which had been much
discussed because the funds to pay for it had been bequeathed to the
city by a woman of prominent social position.

"I suppose," he observed, turning to Hubbard, "that with two such
lights of the art world as Peter Calvin and Alfred Irons on the
committee, the new statue will be regarded as the flower of Boston
culture. Of all droll things," he added, "nothing could be funnier than
coupling those two men. It is more striking than the lion and the lamb
of Scriptural prophecy."

"Who is the lion and who the lamb?" asked Candish.

"It is your place to apply Scripture, not mine," retorted Fenton.

"I represent the minority of the committee," was Hubbard's reply to his
host's question. "There is no other position so safe in matters of art
as that of an objector."

"That is because art appeals to the most sensitive of human
characteristics," Arthur retorted smiling,--"human vanity."

"Vanity?" echoed Mrs. Hubbard.

"That from you?" exclaimed Miss Mott.

"Really, Mr. Fenton," protested Miss Penwick, in accents of real
concern, "you shouldn't say such a thing; there are so many people who
would suppose you meant it."

The simple old creature knew no more of the real meaning of art than
she did of that of the hieroglyphics on an Egyptian obelisk, but she
had lectured on it, and she felt for it the deep reverence common to
those who label their superstition with the name "culture."

"But I do mean it," returned Fenton, becoming more animated from the
pleasure of defending an extravagant position. "What is the object of
art but to perpetuate and idealize the emotions of the race; and how
does it touch men, except by flattering their vanity with the
assumption that they individually share the grand passions of mankind."

A chorus of protests arose; but Arthur went on, laughingly over-riding
it.

"Really," he said, "we all care for the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus
of Milo because it tickles our vanity to view the physical perfection
of the race to which we belong; it is our own possibilities of anguish
that we pity in the Laocoon and the Niobe; it is"--

"Oh, come, Fenton," interrupted Rangely; "we all know that you can be
more deliciously wrongheaded than any other live man, but you can't
expect us to sit quietly by while you abuse art."

"That is more absolute Philistinism," put in Hubbard, "than anything I
have heard from Mr. Irons even."

"Oh; Philistinism," was Fenton's rejoinder, "is not nearly so bad as
the inanities that are talked about it."

"That sounds like a personal thrust at Mr. Hubbard," Kent observed; and
as Arthur disclaimed any intention of making it so, Mrs. Fenton gave
the signal for rising.




XXVI

                         O, WICKED WIT AND GIFT.
                                               Hamlet; i.--5.

It was fortunate for Fenton's plans that most of his guests had early
engagements that evening, and by nine o'clock he was able to leave the
house with Rangely to take his way to the meeting of the Club. As they
came out of the house, Thayer Kent was just saying good-by to Miss Mott
after putting her into her carriage. Fenton's fear lest he should be
too late for the business meeting had made him follow rather closely in
the steps of his departing guests, and he and Rangely were just in time
to hear Ethel say,--

"But I am going that way and I will drop you at the club."

Kent hesitated an instant, and then followed her into the carriage.
Fenton laughed as they drove away.

"With Ethel Mott," he said, "that is equivalent to announcing an
engagement."

"Nonsense!" protested Fred, incredulously.

Fenton laughed again, a little maliciously.

"Oh, I've been looking for it all winter," he said. "Ever since you
devoted yourself to Mrs. Staggchase, and gave Thayer his innings. Well,
since you didn't want her, I don't know that she could have done
better."

Fenton pretty well understood the truth of the matter in regard to
Rangely's relations to Ethel, and this little thrust was simply an
instalment toward the paying of sundry old scores. He had never
forgiven Fred for having taunted him, long ago, with going over to
Philistinism; especially, as he inwardly assured himself, that the
difference between their cases was that he had had the frankness openly
to renounce Paganism, while his companion would not acknowledge his
apostasy even to himself. In Fenton's creed, self-deception was put
down as the greatest of crimes, and he had fallen into the way of half
unconsciously regarding his inner frankness as a sort of expiation for
whatever faults he might commit.

He chuckled inwardly at the discomfort which he knew his remark brought
to Fred, humorously acknowledging himself to be a brute for thus taking
advantage of circumstances with a man who had just eaten his salt. The
excitement of the thing he was about to do had mounted into his head
like wine, and he hastened toward the club with a feeling of buoyancy
and exhilaration such as he had not known for months. He laughed and
joked, ignoring Rangely's unresponsiveness; and when he entered the
club parlors his cheeks were flushed and his eyes shone as in the old
Pagan days.

He was just in season. The monthly business meeting was about being
completed, and Fenton had scarcely time to recover his breath before
the President said,--

"If there is no other business to come before this meeting we will now
adjourn."

Then Fenton stepped forward.

"Mr. President," he said, in his smooth, clear voice, only a trifle
heightened in pitch by excitement.

The President put up his eyeglasses and recognized him.

"Mr. Fenton."

There was an instant hush in the room. Every member of the club knew of
the vote of censure, which had excited much talk, and of which the
propriety had been violently discussed. A few were aware that the
censure had been withdrawn, and all were sufficiently well acquainted
with Fenton's high-spirited temperament to feel that something exciting
was coming.

Fenton was too keenly alive to what he would have called the stage
effect to fail of appreciating to the utmost the striking situation. He
threw up his head with a delicious sense of excitement, the pleasing
consciousness of a vain man who is producing a strong and satisfactory
impression, and who feels in himself the ability to carry through the
thing he has undertaken. With a sort of tingling double consciousness
he felt at once the enthusiasm of injured virtue at last triumphant,
and the mocking scorn of a Mephistopheles who bejuggles dupes too dull
to withstand him. He looked around the meeting, and in a swift instant
noted who of friends or foes were present; and even tried to calculate
in that brief instant what would be the effect upon one and another of
what he was going to say.

"Mr. President," he began, deliberately, "if I may be pardoned a word
of personal explanation, I wish to say that the motion I am about to
make is not presented from personal motives. I might make this motion
as one who has the right, having suffered; but I do make it as one who
believes in justice so strongly that I should still speak had my own
case been that of my worst enemy. I move you, sir, that the St. Filipe
Club pass a vote of unqualified censure upon its Executive Committee
for admitting in the investigation of an alleged violation of its rules
the testimony of a servant, thereby assuming that the word of a
gentleman could not be taken in answer to any question the committee
had a right to ask."

He had grown pale with excitement as he went on, and his voice gained
in force until the last words were clear and ringing to the farthest
corners of the room.

A universal stir succeeded the silence with which he had been heard.
Half a dozen men were on their feet at once amid a babble of comment,
protestation, and approval. The Secretary managed to get the floor.

"Mr. President," he said, his round face flushed with anger, and his
fat hands so shaking with excitement that the papers on the table
before him rustled audibly, "since it must be evident that the
gentleman's remarks are instigated by anger at the committee's
treatment of himself, it is only justice to the committee to state what
many of the members may not know, that a letter of ample apology has
been sent by them to Mr. Fenton."

The men who had been eager to speak paused at this, and everybody
looked at the artist.

"Mr. President," he said, with a delightful sense of having himself
perfectly in hand, and of being in an unassailable position, "I have
been insulted by the committee under cover of a charge which they now
acknowledge to be false; and, contrary to the usage of the club, a
printed notice of this has been sent to every member. I have received a
note of apology from the Secretary."

He paused just long enough to let those who were taking sides against
him emphasize their satisfaction at this acknowledgment by
half-suppressed exclamations; then, in a voice of cutting smoothness,
he continued,--

"At the head of that note was the word 'confidential,' which forbade
me, as a gentleman, to show it. This was evidently the committee's idea
of reparation for the outrage of that printed circular."

He paused again, and the impression that he was making was evident from
the fact that nobody attempted to deprive him of the floor; then he
went on again,--

"I have already said that my motion was not a personal matter; if my
case serves as an illustration, so much the better, as long as the
principle is enforced."

"The motion," interposed the President, gathering his wits together,
"has not been seconded, and is therefore not debatable."

"I second it," roared Tom Bently in his big voice, adding _sotto voce_:
"We won't let the fun be spoiled for a little thing like that."

The half laugh that followed this sally seemed to recall men from the
state of astonishment into which they had been thrown by the audacity
of Fenton's attack. There were plenty of men to speak now;--men who
thought Fenton's position absurd;--men who believed in upholding the
dignity of the Executive Committee;--men, more revolutionary, who were
always pleased to see the existing order of things attacked;--men who
wanted explanations, and men who offered them;--men who rose to points
of order, and men who proposed amendments; with the inevitable men who
are always in a state of oratorical effervescence and who speak upon
every occasion, quite without reference to having anything to say.

Fenton was keenly alive to everything that was said, and in his
excitement fell into the mood not uncommon with people of his
temperament of regarding the whole debate from an almost impersonal
standpoint. His sense of humor was constantly appealed to, and he
laughed softly to himself with a feeling of amusement scarcely tinged
by concern for the result of the contest when Mr. Ranger, stately and
ponderous, got upon his feet. He could have told with reasonable
precision the inconsequent remarks which were to come; and the
interruption which they made appealed to his sense of the ludicrous as
strongly as it irritated many impatient members.

"I am confident," began Mr. Ranger with dignified deliberation, "that
all the excitement which seems to be manifest in many of the remarks
that have been made is wholly uncalled for. I am sure no member of this
club can suppose for an instant that its Executive Committee can have
intentionally been guilty of any discourtesy, and far less of any wrong
to a member. And we all have too much confidence in their ability to
suppose that they could fall into error in so important a thing as a
matter of discipline. And I need not add," he went on, not even the
real respect in which he was held being able wholly to suppress the
movement of impatience with which he was heard, "that we all must hold
Mr. Fenton not only as blameless but as painfully aggrieved."

"Mr. Facing-both-ways," said Fenton to himself as the speaker paused,
apparently to consider what could be added to his lucid exposition of
the situation.

One or two men had the hardihood to rise, but the President had too
much respect for Mr. Ranger's hoary locks to deprive him of the floor.

"It seems to me," the speaker continued, placidly, "that this is a
matter which is better adjusted in private. The discipline of the club
must be maintained, and individual feeling should be respected; but
where we all have the welfare of the club at heart, it seems to me that
members would find no difficulty in amicably adjusting their
differences with the club officials in private conference."

He gazed earnestly at the opposite wall a moment, as if seeking for
further inspiration. Then as no handwriting appeared thereon, he
resumed his seat with the same deliberate dignity that had marked his
rising.

Mr. Staggchase, alert and business-like as usual, next obtained the
floor.

"As chairman of the Executive Committee," he said, "perhaps I am too
much in the position of a prisoner at the bar for it to be in good
taste for me to speak on this motion. Naturally I do know something,
however, about the circumstances of this case, and I am willing to say
frankly that I cannot blame Mr. Fenton for feeling aggrieved at the
painful position in which he has been placed entirely without fault on
his part. It is only just to the committee, however, to state that the
charge as presented to them in the first place was supported by
evidence which appeared to them convincing; that Mr. Fenton never
denied it; and that I and, I presume, every member of the committee
supposed until this evening that the letter of apology sent him had
been ample and satisfactory. That it was marked 'confidential' was
certainly not the fault of the committee, who now learn this fact for
the first time."

This statement evidently produced a strong impression. Fenton felt that
it told against him, yet he was more irritated at what he considered
the stupidity of the members in not seeing that Mr. Staggchase had not
touched upon the point at issue at all, than he was by the injury done
to his cause. In the midst of the excitement raging about him he sat,
outwardly perfectly calm and collected. He refused to admit to himself
that after all there was little probability of his motion's being
carried; although in truth at the outset he had intended nothing more
than to take this striking method of stating his grievance against the
committee. He was amused and delighted at the commotion he had caused.
He likened himself to the man who had sown the dragon's teeth, and
while listening keenly to what was being said, he rummaged about in his
memory for the name of that doughty classic hero.

It was with a shock that it came upon him all at once that the tide was
turning against him. There had been warm expressions of sympathy with
himself and of disapprobation at the course of the committee; and Grant
Herman had announced his intention of offering another motion, when
this should have been disposed of, to the effect that a printed notice
of the removal of the vote of censure be sent to each member of the
club; but it was evident that there was a general feeling that Fenton's
attitude was too extreme. The club was evidently willing to exonerate
him and to offer such reparation as lay in its power, but it was not
prepared formally to rebuke its committee. The debate had continued
nearly an hour, and speakers were beginning to say the same things over
and over. At the farther end of the room some men began to call
"question." The word brought Fenton to his feet like the lash of a
whip; he put his hands upon his chest as if he were panting for breath,
his eyes were fairly blazing with excitement, and when he spoke his
voice shook with the intensity of his emotion.

"Mr. President," he began, "it seems to me that the honor of this club
is in question. It had not occurred to me to regard this so much a
personal affront as an insult to the club which has elected me to its
membership. It is forced upon me by the remarks that have been made to
look at the personal side of the matter. Gentlemen have been insisting
that I am seeking reparation for an insult which they acknowledge has
been offered me; which they acknowledge has been gratuitous, and to
which all the publicity has been given which lay within the power of
the officers of this club. Very well, then, far as it was from my
original intention, I present my personal grievance and I claim
redress. The vote of censure which the committee has passed upon me I
regard as merely a stupid and offensive blunder; the implication
conveyed by listening to a servant in relation to a charge against a
member is an insult to him as a gentleman, which, to me personally,
seems too intolerable to be endured. I came into this club as to a body
of gentlemen, and I have a right to claim at your hands that I shall be
treated as such by its officers."

Fenton had many enemies in the St. Filipe, but the splendid dash and
audacity of his manner, even more than his words, produced a tremendous
effect. There was an instant's hush as he ended, and then the voice of
Tom Bently, big and vibrating, rang through the room in defiance of all
rules of order and of all the proprieties as well.

"By God! He is right!" said Tom, and a burst of applause answered him.

The day was won, and although there were a few protests, they were
silenced by cries of "Question! Question!" and the motion was carried
by a majority which, if not overwhelming, was large enough to be
without question.

"The motion is carried," announced the president.

Fenton rose to his feet again.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I cannot resist the temptation personally to
thank you. Mr. President, I have now the honor to tender you my
resignation from the St. Filipe Club."

He bowed and turned to walk from the room. He was full of a wild
exultation over his success, and he reasoned quickly with himself that
even if his resignation were accepted, he retired in good order. He
had, too, a half-defined feeling that in thus tempting fate still
further, he made a sort of expiatory offering for his actual guilt. He
said to himself, with that lightning-like quickness which thought
possesses in a crisis, that since the principle for which he contended
stood above the question of his individual transgression, it was but
just that the motion should have been carried, and that now he was
ready to take his punishment by losing his membership in the St. Filipe.

But before he had gone half a dozen steps, two or three men had called
out impulsively,--

"Mr. President! I move this resignation be not accepted."

There were plenty of men there who would gladly have seen Fenton leave
the club; the members of the Executive Committee were smarting under
the rebuke he had brought upon them; but the excitement of the moment,
the admiration which courage and dash always excite, carried all before
them. The motion was voted with noise enough to make it at least seem
hearty, and with no outspoken negatives to prevent its appearing
unanimous. His friends dragged him back and insisted upon drinking with
him, the formalities of adjournment being swallowed up in the uproar.
His triumph could not have been more complete, and its celebration,
with much discussion, much congratulation and not a little wine, lasted
until midnight.

And all the while, as he talked and jested and argued and laughed and
drank, his brain was playing with the question of right and wrong as a
child with a shuttlecock. Without a hearty conviction of the absolute
justice of the principle for which he contended, it is doubtful if
Fenton could have acted the lie of assumed innocence. He had entangled
the question of his guilt with that of the propriety of the action of
the committee so inextricably that one could scarcely be taken up
without the other. He admired himself as an actor, he approved of
himself as a logician, and he despised himself--without any
heart-burning bitterness--as a liar. He was too clear-headed to be able
to bejuggle himself with the reasoning that he had not been guilty of
falsehood because he had never specifically and in word denied the
charge of the committee. Yet with all his pride in his
self-comprehension, he really deceived himself. He supposed himself to
have been animated by the desire to establish a principle in which he
really believed, to conquer and humiliate the Secretary, and to please
himself by acting an amusing _role_; while in truth he had been
instigated by his dominant selfish instinct of self-preservation. But
he thoroughly enjoyed his triumph, and by the time he left the house he
seemed to have established himself on quite a new footing of friendship
with even the members of the Executive Committee.

As he went down the steps of the club, starting for home, Chauncy
Wilson said to him, with his usual rough jocularity,--

"I'll bet you a quarter, Fenton, you did bring Snaffle in that night,
after all. By the way, did you know that Princeton Platinum had gone
all to flinders?"




XXVII

                          UPON A CHURCH BENCH.
                                  Much Ado about Nothing; iii.--3.

When Fenton went to the club that night he left Helen Greyson and Mr.
Candish, both of whom were sufficiently familiar to excuse the
informality. The combination of the clergyman and the sculptor might
seem likely to be incongruous, but the two had much more in common than
at first sight appeared. Fenton had been right in declaring that Helen
was by instinct a Puritan. It was true that she had shaken herself free
from all the fetters of old creeds and that her religious beliefs were
of the most liberal. The essence of Puritanism, however, was not its
dogmas, but its strenuous earnestness, its exaltation of self-denial,
and its distrust of the guidance of the senses.

The original Puritans made their religion satisfy their aesthetic
sense, even while they were insisting upon the virtue of starving that
part of their nature. To believe literally and with a realizing sense
of its meaning the creed of Calvin, would have been impossible without
madness to any nature short of the incarnate inhumanity of a Jonathan
Edwards. The aesthetic sense of humanity demands that the imagination
shall be nourished; and the imagination is fed by receiving things as
only ideally true. The Puritans were right in declaring that art was
hostile to religion as they conceived it; but they failed to perceive
that this hostility arose from the fact that the acceptance of their
theology was only possible in virtue of the very faculties to which art
appealed. They were obliged to deprive the imagination of its natural
food, in order that it should be forced to feed upon that the
assimilation of which they conceived to be a moral obligation. It may,
at first sight, seem a bold assertion that our Puritan ancestors
believed their creed, however unconsciously, simply in the sense in
which we believe in the bravery of the heroes of Homer or in the loves
and sorrows of the heroines of Shakespeare. It is to be reflected,
however, that those unhappy creatures who attempted to receive
Calvinism literally and absolutely paid for their mistake with madness;
and that it did not enter into the minds of generations of Puritans,
who lived and died in the error that they believed with their
understanding what they really received only with the imagination, to
take this view, in no way affects its truth.

Helen's position differed from that of her Puritan grandmothers from
the fact of her having turned her imagination back to art; but she
shared with them the temperament which made Puritanism possible. The
aesthetic sense, which is as universal in mankind as the passions,
clung in her case to sensuous beauty, while that of Mr. Candish clung
to what he considered beauty moral and spiritual; but the controlling
force in the life of both was the stinging inspiration of a fixed idea
of duty. They were thus able, although rather as a matter of
unconscious sympathy than of deliberate understanding, to comprehend
each other; and if Helen had the broader sight, Mr. Candish possessed
the greater power of ignoring self.

Edith stood on a middle ground between the two. At the time of her
marriage she had been much nearer to the position occupied by the
clergyman; and she would have been startled and shocked had she
realized how much her views had been modified during the six years of
her life with Fenton. She had certainly been led into no toleration of
moral laxity, and indeed the effect of her husband's cynical Paganism
had been to make her dread more acutely any infringement upon moral
laws. She had been constantly learning, however, the enjoyment and
appreciation of beauty, not merely in a conventional and Philistine
sense, but as a pure Pagan aestheticism. The change showed itself
chiefly in her increased tolerance of views less rigid than her own,
which made possible the perfecting of the intimacy with Helen, which
had begun simply from her sense of pity for the sadness of the other's
life.

"Isn't it charming," Edith said to-night, as the three sat before the
fire after Arthur had gone out, "to see Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard together.
It's not only that they are so fond of each other, but they are so
perfectly in accord. It seems to me an ideal marriage."

Helen looked at her with an inward sigh.

"It is much the fashion, nowadays," she said, "to insist that the ideal
marriage is no marriage at all."

Mr. Candish looked at her inquiringly.

"Or, in other words," she explained, with a passing thought of his want
of quickness of apprehension, "that no marriage can be ideal."

"Or anything else, for that matter," put in Edith quickly. "The
iconoclasts of this generation will spare absolutely nothing."

"These objectors don't take into account," observed Mr. Candish, "that
if we once begin to give up things because their possibilities are not
realized, we shall soon end by having nothing left. Plenty of people do
not live up to the possibilities of marriage, but the fact is that the
trouble is with themselves. The blame that they lay on the institution
really belongs on their own shoulders."

"Yes," agreed Edith; "like everything else it comes back to a question
of egotism." "And egotism," added Helen, smiling, yet wistfully, "is
the supreme evil."

Mr. Candish nodded approvingly.

"I don't know," he said, "that a bachelor like myself has any right to
discuss marriage, except on general principles; but certainly, even
without taking the religious view of it, one can see that the very
objections brought against wedlock are reasons in its favor."

"Yes," Edith returned, but she moved uneasily in her chair, and Helen
divined that the subject was painful to her.

"The difficulty is," she said, with an air of dismissing the whole
subject, "that most people marry for the honeymoon and very few for the
whole life."

She fell to thinking in an absorbed mood which was not wholly free from
irritation, how constantly this question of marriage met one at every
turn, as if the whole fabric of life, social and ethical, depended
entirely upon this institution. She sighed a little impatiently,
looking into the fire with mournful eyes. She thought of the marriages
with which her destiny had been most intimately connected, her own
ill-starred mating, the union of Herman and Ninitta, that of Fenton and
Edith. She had long ago settled in her own mind that wedlock was not
only the mainstay of society, but that it was largely a concession to
the weakness of her sex; and yet instinctively she protested; that
revolt against being a woman which few of her sex have failed at one
time or another to experience taking the form of a revolt against
matrimony.

"Indeed," she broke out, half humorously and half pathetically, "the
most joyful promise for the Christians hereafter is that they shall
neither marry nor be given in marriage."

Mr. Candish looked a little shocked; but Edith said softly,--

"That is only possible when they become as the Sons of God."

Helen spread out her hands in a deprecatory gesture.

"Come, Edith," she said, "that isn't fair, to take the discussion into
regions where I can't follow you."

Edith smiled, but made no rejoinder in words. Turning to Mr. Candish
she remarked, with an abrupt change of subject,--

"When may I tell Melissa Blake about the Knitting School?"

"I see no reason," he answered, "why she shouldn't know at once. We
shall be ready to begin operations in a month at most, and ought to
know her decision."

"Isn't it capital?" Edith explained, turning toward Helen. "The
Knitting School is really to be started. Mrs. Bodewin Ranger guarantees
the funds for a year, and we have contracts for work to be delivered in
the fall that will keep from a dozen to twenty girls busy all summer;
while the matron's salary will put Melissa Blake on her feet very
nicely. It's such a relief to have some of those girls provided for."

"That's the Melissa Blake, isn't it," Helen asked, "that Mr. Hubbard
spoke of at dinner?"

"Yes," answered Edith, "but it is impossible that he should be right."

Helen replied only by that look of general sympathy which does duty as
an answer when one has no possible interest in the subject under
discussion, but Mr. Candish, who knew Melissa, shook his head with an
air of conviction.

"No," he observed, "Miss Blake has too much principle to be guilty of a
breach of confidence. I am sure Mr. Hubbard must be mistaken."

"And yet," commented Helen, "there is such a general feeling that if
one keeps the letter of his word he may do as he pleases about the
spirit, that she may have contrived to give her lover a hint without
actually breaking her promise as she would understand it."

"I don't know," Edith returned earnestly, "that we have any right to
judge other people more harshly than we should ourselves. If one of our
friends had betrayed Mr. Hubbard's plans we should say he was a rascal
because we should assume that he knew what he was doing; and we
wouldn't believe such a charge unless we knew he was really bad."

"But," persisted Helen, with an unconscious irony which Fenton would
have keenly appreciated had he but been there to hear, "in our class of
course it's different. A nice sense of honor is after all very much a
social matter nowadays. That may sound a bit snobbish, but don't you
think it is true?"

"It is and it isn't," was Mr. Candish's reply. "It would undoubtedly be
true if religious principle did not come into the matter; but religious
principle is stronger in what we call the middle classes than among
their social superiors."

Mrs. Greyson was not sufficiently interested to continue the
discussion, and she let the matter drop, while Edith contented herself
with reiterating her conviction in Melissa's perfect trustworthiness.

They chatted upon indifferent subjects for a little while, and then Mr.
Candish went to keep an appointment at the bedside of a sick
parishioner; so that Helen and Edith were left alone.

They sat together a little longer, and then Helen asked casually,--

"By the way, Edith, how long has Arthur been painting Ninitta?"

"Painting Ninitta?" echoed Edith.

She remembered the wrap she had seen in the studio, with the wavering
evasion of her husband's eyes when her glance had sought his in
question, and painful forebodings against which she had striven, lest
they should become suspicions, were awakened by Helen's words.

"Yes," the other went on. "Fred Rangely told me at dinner to-night that
he couldn't get into the studio this morning because Arthur was
painting Mrs. Herman."

"What did you say to him?" asked Edith.

"I said," her companion returned, looking up in surprise at her tone,
"that I fancied the picture must be intended as a surprise for Mr.
Herman and he'd better not speak of it."

"But," Edith objected, "if Arthur told him she was there"--

"He didn't," interrupted Helen; "a man outside the door said he had
seen her go in."

Edith grew pale as ashes. She evidently made a strong effort at
self-control; and then, burying her face in her hands, she burst into
violent weeping. Helen bent forward and put her arms about her. She
drew the quivering form close, resting Edith's beautiful head upon her
bosom. She did not speak, but with soft, caressing touch she smoothed
the other's hair. She remembered vividly the time, six years before,
when Edith, who had left her at night in indignation and disapproval,
had come to her on the morning after her husband's death. She could
almost have said to this weeping woman, the words with which she
remembered the other had then greeted her,--"You must feel so lonely."

She dared not speak now. She feared to ask the cause of this outburst,
both lest Edith might be led to say what she would afterward wish
unspoken, and because she dreaded to hear unpleasant truths in regard
to Arthur.

"Oh, Helen," Edith sobbed. "Life is too hard! Life is too hard!"

Still Helen did not answer, save by the caress of her fingers. The
tears were in her own eyes. One woman instinctively appreciates the
tragedy of another's life, and her unspoken sympathy was balm to
Edith's soul.

"Come," she said, patting Edith's shoulder as one might soothe a
weeping child, "you're all tired out. I can't take the responsibility
of letting you have hysterics; Arthur would never leave you alone with
me again."

She spoke with as much lightness of tone as she could command, while
her embrace and her caresses conveyed the sympathy she would not put
into words.

Presently Mrs. Fenton disengaged herself from her companion's arms and
sat up, wiping away her tears.

"I must be tired," she said, "or I shouldn't be so foolish."

"You do too much," Helen returned. Then, with the design of giving her
friend a chance to retreat from their dangerous nearness to
confidences, she added,--

"Now tell me what you've done to-day."

"I have done a good deal," the other replied, smiling faintly and
showing the recovery of her self-possession by sundry little touches to
the crushed roses in her gown. "At nine o'clock I went to the Saturday
Morning Club, to hear Mr. Jefferson's paper on 'The Over-Soul in
Buddhism'; then, at eleven, I went to Mrs. Gore's to see an example of
the way they teach deaf and dumb children to read lip language; then
Arthur and I went to luncheon at Christopher Plant's, and at half past
three was the meeting of the committee on the Knitting School; then
there was the reception at Uncle Peter's, and the tea at Mrs. West's,
before I came home to dress for dinner."

Helen leaned back in her chair and laughed musically. She felt, with
mingled relief and a faint sense of disappointment, that her effort to
avoid a confidence had been successful.

"I should think," she said, "that you Boston women would be worn to
shreds, and I don't wonder that you have a leaning toward hysterics.
Did you carry a clear idea of the Buddhistic over-soul through all the
things that came after it in the day?"

She rose as she spoke, with the desire to hasten away. She had little
mind to know more than she must of the causes of Edith's unhappiness.
She was glad to help her friend, but she felt that she could do so no
better from knowing anything Edith could tell her; and she was,
moreover, sure that Mrs. Fenton's loyal soul would bitterly regret it
if she were by the emotion of the minute betrayed into revelations that
involved her husband.

"No," Edith answered, rising in her turn; "I am not even sure whether
the Buddhists believe themselves to have an over-soul. But why must you
go? Wait, and let Arthur walk home with you."

"Oh, I shall take a car," Helen said. "I don't in the least mind going
alone; and it's time both of us were in bed. Good-night, dear; do try
and get rested."




XXVIII

                      BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE.
                                      Love's Labor's Lost; ii.--1.

Edith Fenton did not, however, follow Helen's advice and go to bed. She
went to her room and exchanged her dinner gown for a wrapper, and then
sat down before the wood fire in her chamber to wait for Arthur's
return.

It is a dismal vigil when a wife watches for her husband and questions
herself of the love between them. It was Edith's conviction that it is
a wife's duty to love her husband till death; not alone to fulfil her
wifely obligations, to preserve an outward semblance of affection, but
to love him in her heart according to the vows she has taken at the
altar. Had one told her that the limit of human power lay at
self-deception, and that, while it was possible to cheat one's self
into the belief of loving, affection could not be constrained, she
would with perfect honesty have replied as she had answered Helen in
her allusion to St. Theresa. She said to herself to-night, with
unshaken conviction and the concentration of all her will, that she
would not cease to love Arthur; but she could not wholly ignore the
difference between the unquestioning affection she had once given him
and this love whose force lay in her will.

A picture of Caldwell, painted a year ago just before his long hair had
been sacrificed at his boyish entreaties, hung over her mantel. She
looked up at it while her lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears.
The keenly sensitive soul instead of becoming hardened to suffering
feels it more and more sharply. The powers of endurance become worn
out, and to the pain is added a sense of injustice. Since it suffered
yesterday the heart claims the right to be happy to-day, and feels
wronged that this is denied it. With all her endurance, and with all
her faith, Edith could scarcely repress the feeling of passionate
protest which rose in her bosom. She said to herself that she had done
all, and been all, that lay in her power; that there was no sacrifice
in life she was not ready to make to preserve her husband's love; and
the most cruel pang of all she felt in thinking of her boy. For
herself, it seemed to her, she could have borne anything; but that the
atmosphere of the home in which her son was reared should fall short in
anything of the utmost ideal possibilities caused her intolerable
anguish. It seemed to her a cruel wrong to Caldwell that the love and
confidence between his parents should not be perfect. It is probable
that more of her personal pain was covered by this pity for her son
than she was aware; but as she looked up at his picture she felt almost
as if he were half-orphaned by this estrangement between herself and
Arthur, which it were vain for her to attempt to ignore.

It was after midnight when she heard the street door open and close;
and a moment later came her husband's tap.

"I saw the light in your room, as I came down street," he said. "What
on earth kept you up so late?"

"I was waiting," Edith replied, "to talk with you."

He came across the chamber, and regarded her a moment curiously; then
he turned away with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

"You will perhaps excuse me," he said, "if I make myself comfortable. I
am pretty tired."

He went to his dressing-room, coming back a moment later in smoking
jacket and slippers, cutting a cigar as he walked. The reaction from
the excitement of the evening already showed itself in the darkened
circles beneath his eyes, and the pallor of his lips.

"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked, carelessly. "We've been having the
deuce of a time at the club, and my nerves have all gone to pieces. I
tell you, Edith," he went on, a sudden spark of excitement showing in
his eyes, "I've had a tremendous row, but I've beaten. I made them pass
a vote of censure on the Executive Committee, and then Herman got them
to instruct the Secretary to send out a printed notice taking back that
vote of theirs; and then I offered my resignation, and they voted
unanimously not to accept it."

"I am so glad!" Edith responded warmly. "That censure was so
outrageous. Tell me all about it."

She was so pleased to find herself talking cordially and intimately
with her husband that she forgot for the moment what she had meant to
say to him. She listened with eager interest while he gave her a
picturesque version of the exciting scene at the club. Edith hardly
realized how little of the old familiarity there was now between
herself and Arthur. It was his nature to be communicative. He enjoyed
talking, partly from his pleasure in words and the delight he found in
effective and picturesque phrasing, and partly because it pleased his
vanity to excite attention and to produce striking effects. He had an
inveterate habit of telling his most intimate and inner experiences in
some sort of fantastic disguise. The very vain man is apt to be either
extremely reticent or very communicative. The only secrets which Fenton
kept well were those which his vanity guarded. As desire for admiration
and attention provoked him to continual revelations, so the fear that
the disclosure of a secret would react to his disadvantage could cause
him to be silent.

From the feeling that his wife disapproved of much that he told her had
grown up in Fenton's mind, at first, an irritated desire to shock and
startle her as much as possible. As there came into his life, however,
things which he knew she would view not only with disapproval but with
abhorrence, and especially since his entanglement with Ninitta, he had
grown constantly more guarded in his speech. Edith felt keenly the loss
of the old familiar talks, though, womanlike, she invented a thousand
excuses to prevent herself from believing in the growing estrangement
of her husband. To-night she yielded herself to the pleasure of the
moment, and she had almost forgotten both the sad thoughts of her vigil
and the fear that troubled her, as she listened to Arthur's animated
words. It was not until he rose as if to say good-night, that her mind
came back suddenly to the matter of which she wished to speak.

It was in a very different mood, however, from that in which she would
have spoken half an hour before, that she now brought up the thing that
had been troubling her. She hesitated a little how to question her
husband without seeming to jar upon the friendly tone in which they had
been talking. He was watching her keenly, wondering why she had waited
for his coming, and speculating whether it were possible that she might
altogether have forgotten what she meant to say. He thought she was
about to speak, and anticipated her by saying,--

"Really, Edith, it would be hard to find, even in Boston, a more
incongruous company than we gathered together at dinner to-night."

"There was a good deal of variety," she returned; adding defensively,
"but then they fitted together pretty well."

"What a funny old party Miss Penwick is," Arthur went on, inwardly
gathering himself up for a rapid retreat. "Almost as soon as she had
said, 'how do you do' she asked me what I thought the object of life
was."

"How very like her; what did you tell her?"

"Oh, I said I supposed the object of life is to transform the crude
animal and vegetable substances of our food into passions and petty
sentiments."

Edith laughed absently, her thoughts elsewhere.

"And she looked dreadfully puzzled," Fenton continued, "as to whether
she ought to be shocked or not. But bless me, how late it is!
Good-night, my dear."

He stretched up his arms in a yawn. Edith turned quickly toward him.

"Arthur," she said abruptly, but with the kindness of her softened
mood, "are you painting Ninitta?"

He gave her a startled glance and sat down again in his chair. There
ran through his mind a sudden pang of fear, but he said to himself
instantly that Edith was not one to suspect evil, and she could not
possibly know the truth.

"Painting Ninitta?" he returned. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because Fred Rangely told Helen at dinner to-night that you were."

"Where did he get his information?" asked Fenton, with a feeling of
tightness in his throat as he remembered how Rangely had knocked at his
door that morning.

"He said," was Edith's answer, "that a carpenter told him Mrs. Herman
was in the studio to-day; and I remembered seeing her wrap there last
week."

Fenton felt the insecurity of a man about whom all things totter in the
shock of an earthquake, but he refused to yield to fear. He wondered
how much was to be inferred from the fact that an unknown mechanic was
aware of Mrs. Herman's visits. He had an overwhelming sense of being
trapped, and he inwardly gnashed his teeth with rage against Ninitta
and against fate.

But he felt the supreme importance of self-control, and he was
outwardly collected as he asked,--

"What did Helen say to him?"

"She said," answered Edith, with an exquisite note of sadness in her
voice, "that you must be making a portrait for a surprise to her
husband."

The artist's heart gave a bound and he caught eagerly at this
suggestion, which afforded him a means of escape.

"Helen is too shrewd by half," he said, with a smile. "It is for
Grant's birthday and nobody was to know. As a matter of fact," he
added, his invention quickly leaping to the refinements of details in
his falsehood, "I fancy Ninitta really wants it for the _bambino_, as
she calls him."

He smiled with relief as he went on, and rose again to his feet.

"Deception," he observed, with his natural lightness of manner, "is the
bane of married life, but marital felicity is impossible without
discreet reserves. It wasn't my secret, you see, so I didn't feel at
liberty to tell you."

"You were perfectly right," she answered. "The truth is," she
continued, hesitatingly, "I was afraid you had persuaded Ninitta to sit
for the _Fatima_, you know you said once that she was the only model in
Boston who was what you wanted."

"Did I say that? What a dreadful memory you have. I should expect Grant
to make a burnt sacrifice of me if I had beguiled her into such an
indiscretion. He won't even have her sit to himself since she was
married."

"Of course not," rejoined Edith, emphatically. "Poor Grant! He can't be
very happy with Ninitta. She never can get the taint of Bohemia out of
her blood."

Arthur laughed and flung his cigar end into the fire.

"You speak," he said, "as if that were a hopeless poison."

He stood smiling to himself an instant. He had pushed off one slipper
and was endeavoring to pick it up, using his foot like a hand. He was
in that state of high excitement when he would have found relief in the
wildest and most boisterous actions; and it pleased him to be able
still to retain the appearance of his ordinary calm.

"Modern civilization," he observed, "consists largely in learning to
live without the use of either truth or the toes. Good-night, my dear.
I want to get a nap before the church bells begin to ring."

He stooped and kissed her, and went to his chamber. He closed the door
and began to recite with exaggerated gestures a fragment from
_Macbeth_. The varied emotions of the evening had set every nerve
quivering. He was so excited that he was not even despondent over the
collapse of Princeton Platinum stock, although this meant to him
desperate financial straits. He knew that he was in no condition to
consider anything calmly; but half the remainder of the night he tossed
upon a sleepless bed, reacting the scene at the club, reflecting upon
his narrow escape from the discovery of his relations with Ninitta,
resolving to begin her portrait at once, and thinking a thousand
confused things which made his brain seem to him filled with whirling
masses of fiery thought-clouds.

It was really only just before the church bells began to ring that he
fell asleep at last, to dreams hardly less vivid than his waking
reflections.




XXIX

                   CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH.
                                         As You Like It; i.--2.

Orin Stanton had been tolerably sure of getting the commission for the
_America_, and had been busily at work preparing his model for the
figure. By the time the decision of the committee was reached, his
study was practically complete, and only a day or two after he had been
officially notified that the choice had fallen upon him the public were
invited to his studio to view the statue.

Whatever else Orin might or might not be, he was undeniably energetic.
He missed no opportunities through neglect, and he never left undone
anything which was likely to tell for his own advantage. He had once
before called upon the world to admire his work on the completion of
his masterpiece, a figure called _Hop Scotch_, representing according
to Bently "a tenement-house girl having a fit on the sidewalk." He
therefore understood well enough the usual methods of managing these
affairs, and as the ladies who had taken him up felt bound to make a
point of patronizing the exhibition, the affair succeeded capitally.

Stanton had no regular studio in Boston, and had for this work secured
a room on the ground floor of a business building. The light, to be
sure, was not all that might have been desired, but it was abundant,
window screens were cheap and the sculptor not over sensitive to
subtile gradations of values. He made no attempt to decorate the room
for his exhibition, partly from a certain indifference to its bareness,
and partly from a native shrewdness which enabled him to feel both the
difficulty of doing this adequately, and the fact that the statue
appeared better as things were. There were a few benches, scantily
cushioned, two or three chairs, not all in perfect repair, with the
paraphernalia essential to his work. A few sketches in crayon and
pencil were pinned to the wall, and among them the artist had had the
fatuity to pin up a photograph of that most beautiful figure, the
_Winged Victory_ of Paionios.

The study for _America_, which was of colossal size, represented a
woman seated, leaning her left hand upon a rock. The right hand held
slightly uplifted a bunch of maize and tobacco plant; her head wore a
crown in which the architectural embattlements not uncommon in classic
headdresses had been curiously and wonderfully transformed into the
likeness of the domed capitol at Washington. The figure was completely
draped, only the head, the left hand and the right arm to the elbow
emerging from the voluminous folds in which it was wrapped, save that
the tip of one sandalled foot was visible, resting upon a ballot box.
Half covered by the hem of the robe were seen a tomahawk, an axe, a
printer's stick, a calumet, and various other emblems of American life,
civilized and barbarous.

A secret which Stanton did not impart to the public and which, with a
boldness allied to impudence, he trusted to their never discovering,
was the fact that his figure had been stolen bodily from an antique.
There exists in the museum of the Vatican a statuette representing a
work by Eutychides of Sikyon. Bas-reliefs of the same figure exist also
on certain coins of Antioch still extant. The figure represented the
city goddess _Tyche_ resting her foot upon the shoulder of the river
god _Orontes_, who seems to swim from beneath the rock upon which she
is seated. Stanton had a sketch of the statuette which he had made in
Rome, and from this he had modelled his _America_, replacing the god
_Orontes_ by a ballot-box, changing the accessories and adding as many
symbolical articles as he could crowd around the feet. He was not
wholly untroubled by an inward dread lest the source of his inspiration
should be discovered; but when he had been complimented by Peter Calvin
upon the marked originality of the design, he threw his fear to the
winds and delivered himself up to the enjoyment of receiving the
praises of his visitors.

There was a strange mixture of people present. Stanton had invited the
artists, members of the press, and all the people that he knew, whether
they knew him or not. Mrs. Frostwinch was there, Mrs. Staggchase, Elsie
Dimmont, and Ethel Mott; and although Mrs. Bodewin Ranger was not
actually present, she in a manner lent her countenance by sending her
carriage to the door to call for one of her friends. Fred Rangely was
present, talking in a satirical undertone to Miss Merrivale and viewing
the statue with a wicked look in his eye which boded little good to the
sculptor. Melissa Blake was there, rather overpowered by the crowd and
clinging tightly to the arm of her companion, a girl whose acquaintance
she had made in her boarding-house, and who was much given to an
affectation of profound culture as represented by attendance upon
stereopticon lectures and the exhibitions of the local art clubs.

"Oh, I should think," this young lady said to Melissa, in a simpering
rapture, "you'd be just too proud for anything, to know Mr. Stanton. It
must be too lovely to know a real sculptor."

"I don't know him so very well," returned the conscientious Melissa.

"But you really know him," persisted the other, "and he's been to call
on you. Isn't it funny how some men can make things just out of their
heads without anything to go by?"

Rangely, who was standing close by, caught the remark and secretly made
a grimace for the benefit of Miss Merrivale.

"That," said he in her ear, "is genuine Boston culture."

She laughed softly, not in the least knowing what to say. The statue
meant nothing whatever to her, and had the original of Eutychides been
placed by its side she would have been unable to understand that in
copying it Stanton had transformed its dignity into clumsiness, its
grace into vulgarity. Had she been at home in New York, she would have
said frankly that she neither knew nor cared anything about the
_America_; being in Boston, she had a superstitious feeling that such
frankness would be ill-judged, and she therefore contented herself with
non-committal laughter.

"How do you do, Miss Merrivale?" at this moment said a cheery voice
close by her.

She looked up to see the merry eyes and corn-colored beard of Chauncy
Wilson.

"I say, Fred," went on the doctor, confidentially, "don't you think
this thing is beastly rubbish? It looks like an old grandmother wrapped
up in her bedclothes. And what has she got that toy village on her head
for?"

"Oh, Doctor Wilson!" exclaimed Miss Merrivale, in a manner that might
mean reproval or amusement.

Miss Frances was having a very good time. Although Mrs. Staggchase had
been throwing her guest and Rangely together for motives of her own,
the result to Miss Merrivale had been as pleasing as if her hostess had
been purely disinterested. It is true, the time for her return to New
York drew near, but visions of the pleasure of imparting to her family
and friends the news of her engagement to the brilliant young novelist
did much to alleviate her regret at departing from Boston. She had a
pleasant consciousness that afternoon, of sharing in the attention
which Rangely received in public nowadays, especially since his novel
had been violently attacked in the _London Spectator_ and defended in
the _Saturday Review_. She noted the glances that were cast at him,
receiving their homage with a certain secret feeling of having a share
in it.

But bliss in this world is always transient, and at her happiest moment
Miss Merrivale looked up to perceive Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson bearing
down upon her. Mrs. Sampson was accompanied by the Hon. Tom Greenfield,
who both felt and looked utterly out of place; and who was dragged
along in the wake of his companion quite as much by his unwillingness
to be left to his own devices in a crowd of strangers, as by any
particular desire to follow her.

"My dear Frances," the widow said effusively, kissing Miss Merrivale on
both cheeks. "I am _so_ glad to see you. Really it is perfectly cruel
that you haven't been to see me. But then, I know," she ran on without
giving the other time to speak, "how busy you've been. I've seen your
name in the _Gossip_, and you've been everywhere."

"Yes, I have," returned Miss Merrivale, catching rather awkwardly at
the excuse supplied to her.

Chauncy Wilson laughed significantly. He never felt it necessary to
treat the widow with any especial respect.

"Mrs. Sampson passes the whole of Sunday forenoon committing the
society columns of the _Gossip_ to memory, and wishing her name was
there," he chuckled, with a jocoseness which seemed to that lady
extremely ill-timed.

But she kept her temper beautifully, long years of social struggle
having taught her at least this art of self-restraint.

"Dr. Wilson is nothing if not satirical," she returned, with a
conventional smile.

It would not have been displeasing to Miss Merrivale had the floor at
that particular instant opened and engulfed her former hostess. It
needs unusual breadth of mind to forgive those toward whom we have been
discourteous. On the other side of the statue, Frances saw Mrs.
Staggchase watching the encounter with a sort of quiet amusement. It
flashed across her mind that if she were to become Mrs. Rangely, and
live in Boston, it would be necessary to drop Mrs. Sampson from her
calling list, and the reflection instantly followed that the sooner the
process of breaking the acquaintance were begun the better. Her face
insensibly, hardened a little.

"Of course," she said, "one can't help being put into the _Gossip_, but
I should never think of reading it."

Mrs. Sampson understood that this was a snub, and her cheek flushed.
Wilson laughed maliciously.

"Oh, everybody reads the _Gossip_," Rangely interposed, good-naturedly
coming to the rescue; "although it's to the credit of humanity that
everybody has the grace to be ashamed of it."

There was a bustle and stir in the crowd as Tom Bently pushed his way
up to the group.

"By Jove, Rangely," he said, "have you got on to that statue? Do you
know what it's cribbed from?"

"No," returned Fred; "is it from anything in particular? I supposed it
was just a general steal from the antique, and Stanton appropriates
only to destroy."

"I don't know what it is," was Bently's reply, "but I know there's a
cut of it in a book I've got at the studio."

Rangely's eyes flashed.

"Good," said he, "I'll come round to-night and we'll look it up. I'm
going to do a notice of the _America_ for the _Observer_."

The two exchanged significant glances, laughing inwardly at the
discomfiture of the unfortunate sculptor.

"But don't you admire the figure?" asked Mrs. Sampson, eagerly seizing
an opportunity to get into the conversation.

"It's the kind of thing I should have liked when I was young," Bently
returned. "I was taught to like that sort of thing; but all the
preliminary rubbish that was plastered on to me when I was a youngster,
I have shed as a snake sheds its skin."

The movement in the crowd gave Miss Merrivale an excuse for changing
her position; and she improved the opportunity to turn away from the
widow until the latter could see little except her back. Mrs. Sampson
flushed angrily, but she covered her discomfiture, as well as she was
able, by turning her attention to the statue, and descanting upon its
beauties to Greenfield.

"How exquisitely dignified the drapery is," she remarked, "and so
beautifully modest."

"Big thing, ain't it," said the strident voice of Irons, close to her
ear. "I think we've hit something good this time. I'm really obliged to
you, Greenfield, for putting me up to vote for Stanton. I like a statue
with some meaning to it. Now just look at the significance of all those
emblems of American progress."

"Yes, it is very fine," admitted Greenfield, with a helpless air. "I'll
work it into a speech, sometime," he added, his face brightening with
the relief of having an idea; "there's the ballot-box at the bottom as
a foundation, and you work up through all the industries till you get
to the capitol, the centre of government, at the top."

"Hear! hear!" exclaimed the widow, clapping her hands very softly and
prettily; "really you must speak at the unveiling of the statue."

"Capital idea," exclaimed Irons, to whose gratitude for Greenfield's
aid in the railroad matter was added the politic forecast that he might
some time need his help again; "there's Hubbard over there now; I'll go
and ask him whether our committee chooses the orator."

He started to make his way through the crowd, followed by the admiring
looks of various young women who had been frankly listening to the
conversation, although they were strangers.

"Oh, isn't the statue just too lovely for anything," gushingly remarked
one of them, with startling originality; "it's so noble and--. And,
oh," she broke off suddenly, the light of a new discovery shining in
her face, "just see, girls, that's corn in her hand."

"Oh, yes, and cotton," responded her companion. "See, it really is
cotton, and something else."

"Yes, that must be maize," returned the other, oracularly; "it's all so
beautifully American."

The crowd moved and swayed and changed, until Ethel Mott stood close to
the _America_, with her back turned squarely upon the figure. She
evidently found more pleasure in looking at her companion than in
studying the work of the sculptor, which she had nominally come to see.

"I think it will be too cold, Thayer, to go out in the dog-cart," she
said, with one of those glances whose meaning not even a poet could put
into words.

"Oh, no," Kent answered. "I have a tremendously heavy rug, and you can
wrap up."

"Well," was her answer, "if it's pleasant, and the sun shines, and I
don't change my mind, and I feel like it, perhaps I'll go. At any rate
you may come round about ten o'clock."

Rangely was too far away to catch, amid the babble of the crowd, a
single word of this conversation, but he noted the looks which the pair
exchanged.

"Oh, do come along," a corpulent lady in the crowd observed to her
companion. "We've seen everybody here that we know, and I want to go
down to Winter Street and get some buttons for my grey dress. Miranda
wanted me to have them covered with the cloth, but I think steel ones
would be prettier."

"Yes, they say steel's going to be awfully fashionable this spring. Are
they going to put that statue up just as it is?"

"Oh, they bake it or paint it or something," was the lucid answer, as
the corpulent lady threw herself against Mr. Hubbard, nearly
annihilating him in her effort to clear a path through the crowd.

"I think, my dear," Hubbard observed to his wife, "unless you've
designs on my life insurance, you'd better take me out of this crowd."

"But we haven't seen the statue," she returned.

"I have," he retorted grimly, "and I assure you you haven't lost
anything. You'll see it enough when it's set up, and you'll go about
perjuring your soul by denying that I was ever on the committee."

"Hush," she said, "do be quiet; people will think you're cross because
you were overruled."

On the other side of the statue the sculptor had been receiving
congratulations all the afternoon, and now Mr. Calvin and Mrs.
Frostwinch chanced to approach him at the same time to take their leave.

"I am so glad to have seen the statue," was the latter's form of adieu,
"it is distinctly inspiring. Thank you so much."

He bowed awkwardly enough, stammering some unintelligible reply, and
the lady moved away with Mr. Calvin, who observed as the pair emerged
into the open air:

"It is such a relief to me that this statue has turned out so well.
There has really been a good deal of feeling and wire-pulling, and some
New York friends of mine will never forgive me that the commission was
not given to one of their men. I really feel as if the thing had been
made almost a personal matter."

"It must be a great satisfaction to you," his companion returned, "that
he has succeeded."

"It is," was Calvin's reply. "I meant to see Mr. Rangley and ask him to
say a good word in the _Observer,_ but everybody is so much pleased
that I think he may be trusted to be."

"Oh, he must be," she answered.

And as she spoke Tom Bently passed by, quietly smiling to himself.




XXX

                      THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED.
                                     Merchant of Venice; iii.--2.

On the evening following his reception, Orin Stanton presented himself
at the rooms of Melissa. He was fairly beaming with self-complacency
and gratification. He had been awarded the commission, the exhibition
of his model had been attended, as he assured Melissa, "by no end of
swells," and five thousand dollars had been paid over to him as an
advance upon which to begin his work. He felt as if the world were
under his feet and he spoke to Melissa with an air of lofty
condescension which should have amused her, but which she received with
the utmost humility.

"Well," he said, "what do you think of that for a crowd? Wasn't that a
swell mob? Didn't you notice what a lot of bang-up people there were at
the studio this afternoon?"

"Of course I didn't know many of them," Melissa returned humbly; "but I
could see that there were a lot of people that everybody seemed to
know. I'm glad that you were pleased."

Orin pulled out a big cigar and bit the end off it excitedly.

"Pleased!" he echoed. "I was more than pleased--I was delighted. All
the committee were there, of course, and half the fashionable women of
Boston."

"I heard a lady telling another who the artists were," Milly observed,
glad to find a subject upon which she could talk to Orin easily.

"O yes, there were a lot of artists there, but they don't count for
much in getting a fellow commissions."

Stanton had evidently no intention of being satirical, but spoke with
straightforward plainness what he would have regarded, had he given the
matter any thought at all, as being a truth too obvious to need any
disguises. His Philistinism was of the perfectly ingrained, inborn
sort, which never having appreciated that it is naked has never felt
the need of being ashamed; and he let it be seen on any occasion with a
frankness which arose from the fact that it had never occurred to him
that there was any reason why he should conceal it. He was one of those
artists who never would be able wholly to separate his idea of the muse
from that of a serving-maid; and he viewed art from the strictly
utilitarian standpoint which considers it a means toward the payment of
butcher and baker and candlestick maker. He was not indifferent to the
opinion of his fellow sculptors; but the criticism of Alfred Irons,
which he knew to be backed by a substantial bank account, would have
outweighed in his mind the judgment of Michael Angelo or Phidias.

Milly, of course, had no ideas about art beyond a faint sentimental
tendency to regard it as a mysterious and glorious thing which one
could not wholly escape in Boston; while her thrifty New England
nurture enabled her to appreciate perfectly the force of the
considerations Orin brought forward.

"I am glad you are getting commissions," she said, "but it must be nice
to have the artists like your work, for after all, don't you think rich
people depend a good deal upon what the artists say?"

"Oh yes, they do, some," admitted the sculptor.

He puffed his cigar, and with the aid of a penknife performed upon his
nails certain operations of the toilet which are more usually attended
to in private. Milly sat nervously trying to think of something to say,
and wondering what had brought the sculptor to visit her. She was too
kindly to suspect that possibly he had come because in her company he
could enjoy the pleasure of giving free rein to his self-conceit. The
words of her companion of the afternoon had given her a new sense of
the honor of a visit from her prospective brother-in-law, although this
increased her diffidence rather than her pleasure.

"Was Mr. Fenton there this afternoon?" she asked, at length, simply for
the sake of saying something.

The face of her companion darkened.

"Damn Fenton!" he returned, with coarse brutality. "He's a cad and a
snob; he says Herman ought to have made the _America_, and he abuses my
model without ever having seen it."

The remark of Fenton's which had given offence to Stanton had been made
at the club in comment upon a photograph of the model which somebody
was showing.

"The only capitol thing about it," Fenton had said, "is the headgear."

The remark was severe rather than witty, and it was its severity which
had given it wings to bear it to the sculptor's ears.

"I don't like Mr. Fenton very well," Milly admitted, "but Mrs. Fenton
is perfectly lovely; she's been awfully good to me."

By way of reply the sculptor, with a somewhat ponderous air, unbuttoned
his coat and produced a red leather pocket-book. This he opened, took
out a handful of bills, and proceeded to count them with great
deliberation. Melissa watched while he counted out a sum which seemed
to have been fixed in his mind. He smoothed the package of bills in his
hand, then he glanced up at her furtively as if to ascertain whether
she knew how much he had laid out. She involuntarily averted her
glance. Instantly Orin gathered up several of the bills quickly,
conveying them out of sight with a guilty air as if he were purloining
them. Then he held the remainder toward his companion.

"There," he said, "I should have kept my promise if you hadn't hinted
by speaking of Fenton. Of course you understand that I can't give you
anything very tremendous, but there's a hundred and fifty dollars."

Melissa flushed and drew back.

"I had no idea of hinting," was her reply. "Of course I thank you very
much, but you ought to give the money to John, not to me."

"No," Orin insisted, "you helped me with Mrs. Fenton, and John might as
well know that I wouldn't put this money into a hole just to please
him. I know John. He'll set more by you if the money comes through you."

"But I don't believe," protested she, "that what I said to Mrs. Fenton
really made any difference."

But in Orin's abounding good nature her disclaimer passed unheeded. He
pressed the money upon her, and went away full of the consciousness of
having exercised a noble philanthropy.

It is possible that had he waited to read Fred Rangely's criticism upon
his _America_ which appeared in the _Daily Observer_ next morning he
might never have made this contribution toward paying his father's
debts. With Bently's help Rangely had discovered the original of the
statue, and had then written a careful comparison between the work of
Eutychides and that of Stanton. It hardly need be added that the result
was not at all flattering to the latter. Rangely possessed a very
pretty gift of sarcasm, and it was his humor to consider that in
attacking the sculptor he was to a certain degree settling scores with
Mrs. Staggchase for her change in attitude toward him after Miss
Merrivale came. He served up the unlucky statue and its more unlucky
maker with a piquancy and a zest which made his article town talk for a
month. The sculptor sheltered himself, so far as he could, by keeping
out of sight, while Peter Calvin, unable to endure the jibes and
laughter which everywhere met him, abandoned the cause of his _protege_
and the town together, by starting two months earlier than he had
intended on a trip to Europe.

Rangely was angry with himself for having been persuaded by Mrs.
Staggchase to write an article sustaining Stanton's claims in the first
place, and not having signed it, he endeavored to give to this
criticism a tone which should indicate, without its being specifically
stated, that he had not written the former paper. He understood
perfectly well that Mrs. Staggchase would regard his position as a
declaration of independence, and indeed when the lady read the
_Observer_ that morning she smiled with an air of comprehension.

"That's an end to that," she said to herself. "When you've known a man
as long as I have Fred Rangely, he's like a book that's been read;
you've got all the good there is in him. There are other men in the
world."

When Orin had gone, Milly stood turning over and over in her hand the
roll of bills he had given her. Then she spread them out upon the
table, counting them and gloating over them, with a delight which arose
quite as largely from her foretaste of John's pleasure and the joy of
having helped to cause it, as it did from mere love of money. She had
just taken the precious roll to put it away, when her lover himself
appeared.

John Stanton was really of more kindly disposition than might have been
inferred from his misunderstanding with his betrothed. He had been half
a dozen weeks coming to his right mind, but whatever he did he did
thoroughly, and in the end he had reached a point where he was willing
to acknowledge himself wrong, and to make whatever amends lay in his
power. He came in to-night with the determined air of one who has made
up his mind to get through a disagreeable duty as speedily as possible.

Milly opened the door for him, and stood back to let him pass; she had
learned in these weeks of their estrangement to restrain the
manifestation of her joy at his coming. It was with so great a rush of
blissful surprise that she now found herself suddenly caught up into
his arms, that she clung closely to his neck for one joyful instant,
and then burst into a passion of weeping.

"There, there," her lover said, caressing her; "don't cry, Milly. I've
been a brute, and I know it; but if you'll forgive me this time I'll
see that you never need to again."

He moved toward a chair as he spoke, half carrying her in his arms. In
her excitement she loosened her hold upon the roll of money, which was
still in her hand, and the bills were scattered on the floor behind him
as he walked. He sat down and took her in his lap, stroking her hair
and soothing her as well as he was able. By a strong effort she
controlled herself, dried her tears, and sat up, half laughing.

"I'm getting to be dreadful teary," she said. "I"--

"What in the world," he interrupted her in amazement, "is that on the
floor?"

She turned and saw the money, and burst into a peal of laughter.
Springing down from his knee, she ran and gathered up the bills in her
two hands; then, dancing up to him, half wild with delight, her cheeks
flushed, her eyes shining, she scattered the precious bits of green
paper fantastically over his head and shoulders.

         "'Take, oh take, the rosy, rosy crown!'"

She sang, in the very abandonment of gayety.

"Are you gone crazy?" he demanded, clutching the floating bills, and
then catching her about the waist. "You act like a witch! Where did all
this money come from? The savings-bank?"

"No," she returned, becoming quiet, and nestling close to him. "The
Lord sent it by the hand of your brother Orin."

It was some time before John could be made to understand the whole
story; and when it had been told, he instantly leaped to the conclusion
that the whole credit of Orin's getting the commission belonged of
right to Milly, a conviction in which he remained steadfast despite all
her disclaimers.

At last she gave up protesting, and shut his mouth with a kiss. Since
John, as well as Orin, thought so, she felt that her part must have
been more important than she had realized; but she was too modest to
bear so much praise.

"John," she said at length, "I have something awful to confess. I've
been keeping a secret from you."

"I'm afraid I've been too much of a bear for it to have been safe to
tell me," returned her lover, smiling.

His own heart was filled with the double joy of reconciliation, and of
having brought it about himself by a manly confession of his fault.

"It wasn't that at all," she protested. "It was because I wasn't sure
about it; and then I wanted to surprise you if I got it."

"Got what? You speak as if it was the smallpox. Is it anything
catching?"

"Oh, no," answered Milly, laughing gleefully at his sally, which to her
present mood seemed the most exquisite wit. "You needn't be afraid;
it's only the matronship of the new Knitting School, thank you, with a
salary of five hundred dollars a year."

"Really, Milly?"

"Really, John; and don't you think"--

"Think what?"

She had made up her mind to say it even before this blessed agreement
had come about, but now that the moment came, the habits and trammels
of generations held her back.

"Why," she stammered, blushing and hesitating, "don't you
think,--wouldn't it seem more appropriate if a matron was"--Her voice
failed utterly. She flung her arms convulsively about her lover's neck,
and drew his ear close to her lips. "Surely, now, John, dear," she
whispered, "we could afford to"--

She finished with a kiss.

"If you can put up with me, darling," he answered her, with a mighty
hug; "we'll be married in a week, or, better still, in a day."

"I think in a month will do," responded Mistress Milly, demurely,
sitting up to blush with decorum.




XXXI

                          PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP.
                                              Othello; ii.--1.

The news of the collapse of Princeton Platinum stock, which Dr. Wilson
had given Arthur on Saturday night, proved to be somewhat premature. On
Sunday it was decided at the club, where the matter was discussed in a
cold-blooded and leisurely fashion, that the whole scheme had gone to
pieces; and of course this decision was accompanied by the statement,
in various forms, that everybody knew that there was nothing
substantial behind the certificates. On Monday, however, the stock took
an unexpected rise, and for two or three days held its own with a
firmness which greatly encouraged its holders.

Fenton had bought the bulk of his shares at two and seven-eights, and
still held them, notwithstanding the rumors of disaster in the air.
With a folly that would be incredible were it not one of the most
common things in amateur stock transactions, the artist had by this
time put the bulk of his little fortune into this wild-cat stock, which
he now held with a desperate determination not to sell below the figure
at which he had purchased. He could so little afford the least loss,
that, with the genuine instinct of the gambler, he trusted to luck, and
ran the risk of utter ruin for the sake of the chance of making a
brilliant stroke, or at least of coming out even. Having made up his
mind to hold on, he clung to the position with his customary obstinacy,
even dismissing the matter, as far as was possible, from his thoughts.

He was very busy preparing an exhibition of pictures at the St. Filipe
club. The matter had been left in his hands by the other members of the
Art Committee, of which he was chairman; but his attitude toward the
club had prevented his taking any steps until after the meeting on
Saturday night. Now, he was particularly anxious to make the exhibition
a brilliant success, to give a signal instance of the value of his
services.

He had gone to his studio on Sunday afternoon and sketched in a head of
Ninitta, and upon this he worked, now and then, with a desperate energy
born of the feeling that it substantiated his story to Edith. He had
been seized with grave doubts as to the advisability of exhibiting the
_Fatima_ just now; but he did not see his way clear to spare so large
and important a picture from the collection, and he comforted himself
with the thought that the face was different, and that if the model
were recognized he would be supposed to have worked up old sketches
taken when Ninitta had posed for him before her marriage.

He worked with all his marvellous energy, collecting pictures,
directing their hanging, soothing artists whose canvases were not
placed to their liking, making out the catalogue, and arranging all the
details which in such a connection are fatiguing and well-nigh
innumerable.

The exhibition was opened on Wednesday evening with a reception to
ladies, and by nine o'clock the gallery began to fill. Fenton had
decorated the rooms a little, chiefly with live pampas grass and palms
and India-rubber trees. It is difficult to see how mankind in the
nineteenth century could exist without the India-rubber tree. If that
plant were destroyed, civilization would be left gasping, helpless and
crippled; and of late years, not content with making it serviceable in
every department of practical life, men have brought the shrub into the
domain of aesthetics by using it for decorative purposes.

The collection of paintings was an interesting one, made up of the work
of the best artists in town. Fenton had spared no pains either in
procuring what he wanted, or in arranging the gallery. The _Fatima_
hung in a position of honor opposite the main entrance. The selection
of so prominent a place for his own work offended Fenton's taste, and
annoyed him with an uncomfortable sense of how strongly the picture was
in evidence. The exigencies of hanging, and the fact that the canvas
was the most important one in the room forced him to place it as he
did; and Bently, whom he called to his assistance, laughed at his
scruples. None of the artists had seen the picture, and Bently was
quite carried away by his admiration of it.

"By Jove! Fenton," he said, "I didn't know you had it in you. It's
perfectly stunning. But it's beastly wicked," he added. "Perhaps that's
the reason it's so good."

"Come," Fenton said with a laugh, "that sounds quite like the old Pagan
days."

"But how in the dickens," Tom went on, "did you get Mrs. Herman to pose
for you?"

"Great Heavens!" ejaculated Fenton, "don't say that to anybody else. I
had no end of studies of her, made long ago; but I didn't suppose I had
followed them closely enough for it to be recognized."

"You don't mean," Tom returned, "that that side and arm are done from
old studies!"

Fenton had a delicate dislike to literal falsehood. It was not a
question of morality directly, but one of taste. Albeit, since taste is
simply morality remote from the springs of action, it perhaps came to
much the same thing in the end. He felt now, however, that the time for
the selfish indulgence of his individual whims was past, and that he
owed to Ninitta the grace of a downright and hearty falsehood.

"Why, of course," he said, "I had one or two models to help me out; but
the inspiration came from the old studies."

"And she didn't pose for you?" Tom persisted incredulously.

"Pose for me?" echoed Fenton, impatiently. "Why, man alive, think what
you're saying! Of course, she didn't pose for me. She never has posed
for anybody since she was married."

"And a devilish shame it is, too," responded Tom.

This conversation, which took place Wednesday afternoon, made Fenton
extremely uneasy. Fate seemed to have worked against him. He had
painted the picture to go to the New York Exhibition, where he hoped it
would be sold without ever coming under the eye of Herman at all. He
reflected now that Ninitta had posed for Helen and for several of his
brother painters, while it was scarcely credible that the likeness
which Bently had perceived at a glance should escape the trained
artist's eye of her husband; and it seemed to him now, little less than
madness to have brought the picture here at all.

Upon second thought, however, he reflected that even were the picture
recognized, no great harm would probably come of it. No one would be
likely to speak on the subject to Herman, and, least of all, was there
a probability that the latter would confess that he was aware of what
his wife had done. Herman's condemnation, Fenton said to himself with a
shrug, he must, if worst came to worst, endure; this was to be set down
with other unpleasantnesses which belong to the unpleasant conditions
of life as they exist in these days. As long as there was no open
scandal, he could ignore whatever lay beneath the surface, and he
assured himself that in any event it were wisest, as he had long ago
learned, to carry things off with a high hand.

It was about half past nine when Fenton brought Edith into the gallery.
The crowd had by this time become pretty dense, and just inside the
door they halted, exchanging greeting with the acquaintances who
appeared on every side. The St. Filipe was an old club, and for more
than a quarter of a century had maintained the reputation of leading in
matters of art and literature. Its influence had, on the whole, been
remarkably even and intelligent; but of late it began to be felt, among
those who were radical in their views, that the club was coming under
Philistine influence. Half a dozen years before, when Fenton had
proposed Peter Calvin for membership, even the social influence of the
candidate did not save him from a rejection so marked that Arthur had
threatened to resign his own membership. Now, however, Peter Calvin was
not only a member of the St. Filipe, but he was on the Election
Committee. The club was held in favor in the circles over which his
influence extended, and although workers in all branches of art were
still included among the members, they were pretty closely pushed by
the more fashionable element of the town. Fenton was not far from right
in asserting, as he did one day to Mrs. Greyson, after her return from
Europe, that the change in his own attitude toward art was pretty
exactly paralleled by the alteration which had taken place in that of
Boston.

The character of the membership of the club was indicated to-night by
the brilliancy of the company present. It was one of those occasions
when everybody is there, and the scene, as the new-comers looked over
the gallery, was most bright and animated. Although the ladies had
evidently labored under the usual uncertainty in regard to the proper
dress which seems inseparable from an art exhibition in Boston, and
were in all varieties of costume from street attire to full evening
toilette, there were enough handsome gowns to supply the necessary
color. There was also abundance of pretty and of striking faces, and
the crowd had that pleasant look of familiarity which one gets from
recognizing acquaintances all through it.

One of the first persons the Fentons saw was Ethel Mott, who, under the
chaperonage of Mrs. Frostwinch, was making the tour of the gallery with
Kent, and paying far more attention to her companion than to the
pictures.

"Oh, Arthur," Edith whispered, "I saw Mrs. Staggchase in the
dressing-room, and she told me that Ethel's engagement is out to-day."

Arthur smiled, remembering his perspicacity when Ethel had driven away
from his dinner with Kent in her carriage.

"Isn't the crowd dreadful?" the voice of Mrs. Bodewin Ranger said, at
Edith's elbow. "I'm really getting too old to trust myself in such a
crush."

While Edith chatted with her, the steward called Fenton away, in
connection with some question about the catalogues, and when Mrs.
Ranger moved on, Edith found herself for an instant alone. The mention
of her husband's name behind her caught her ear and her attention.

"Fenton's cheeky enough for anything!" said an unknown voice. "But he
makes a point of his good taste, and I think it's beastly poor form for
him to show that picture here."

"Bently says," returned another voice, also strange to Edith, "that
Fenton says she didn't pose for him, but that he worked it up from old
studies."

"I don't care if he did," was the response. "All the fellows know it,
and Herman must feel like the deuce."

"But you can't suppress every picture that has a study of her in it."

"Hush," said the other voice, "there comes Herman himself."

It seemed to Edith that this brief dialogue had been shouted out so
that it could not be inaudible to any one in the room. She looked about
for her husband. Her ears rang with the meaningless babble of voices,
the jargon of human sounds conveying far less impression of
intelligence than the noise of water on the shore, or the sound of the
wind in the tree-tops. All about her were faces wreathed in
conventional smiles, the inevitable laughter, the usual absence of
earnestness, and in the midst of all, with a shock hardly less painful
than that of the discovery she had just made, she heard the voice of
Herman bidding her good evening.

She held out her hand to him with a hasty, excited gesture. She was
painfully conscious that he had but to lift his eyes to see the
_Fatima_ hanging on the opposite wall of the gallery, and she
instinctively felt that she must draw his attention away.

"How do you do, Mr. Herman," she said, with eager warmth. "Is Mrs.
Herman with you?"

She moved half around him as she spoke, as if compelled by the shifting
of the crowd to change her position; and while she shook hands managed
to bring herself almost face to the picture, so that his back was
toward it.

"No," he answered, "she never comes to these things if she can possibly
help it. I hear your husband has outdone himself on this exhibition."

Edith looked about despairingly for Arthur. She felt herself unequal to
the emergency, and longed for his clever wits to contrive some means of
escape from the cruel dilemma in which his act had placed her and his
friend. Indignation, shame, and sorrow filled her heart. She recognized
that Arthur had not told her the truth in regard to Ninitta. The dread
and the suspicion which she had felt on the night of the dinner
returned to her with tenfold force. But the greatest triumph of modern
civilization is the power it has bestowed upon women of concealing
their feelings. The pressing need of the moment was to show to Herman a
smiling and untroubled face, and to avoid arousing his suspicion that
anything was wrong.

"The truth is," she returned, "that I haven't seen the exhibition. It's
impossible to see pictures in such a crowd, don't you think? I know
Arthur has worked very hard. I've hardly seen him this week."

"He has a most tremendous power of accomplishing what he undertakes,"
Herman said heartily. "But tell me about yourself. You're looking
tired."

"It is the time of year to look tired. I believe I am feeling a little
anxious that spring should arrive."

She was struggling in her thoughts for a means of preventing the
discovery, which it seemed to her must be inevitable the moment she
ceased to engage Herman in conversation and he turned away. Over his
shoulder she could see the beautiful, sensuous _Fatima_ lying with long
sleek limbs amid bright-hued cushions. Now that she knew the truth, she
could see Ninitta in every line, and her whole soul rose in indignant
protest. It was her friend, the wife of this man she honored, who was
delivered up on the wall yonder to the curious eyes of all these
people. The stinging blush of shame burned in Edith's cheeks, and, as
at this instant she turned to find her husband beside her, the glance
which darted from her eyes to his was one of righteous scorn and
indignation.

His wife's burning look showed Arthur that she knew; and, reflecting
quickly, he decided that Herman did not. It was characteristic of him
that he instantly chose the boldest policy.

"Come," he said to Herman as soon as they had greeted each other, "I
know you haven't seen my _Fatima_. The boys say its the best thing I've
done, but I couldn't get a decent model, and had to depend so much on
old studies, that, for the life of me, I can't tell whether it's good
or not."

Like two blows at once came to Edith a sense of shame that she could
even involuntarily have wished for her husband's aid, and an
overwhelming consciousness of the readiness and boldness of his
falsity. She saw the face of Grant Herman, nobly instinct with truth in
every line, and, as he turned at her husband's word, everything blurred
before her vision. She believed she was going to faint, and she rallied
all her self-command to hold herself steady. The lights danced, and the
sound of voices faded as into the distance. Then, with a supreme effort
of will, she rallied, and the voices rolled back upon her ear with a
noise like the roar of an incoming wave.

A sphere of silence seemed to envelop Herman and Arthur and herself in
the very midst of the crowd, as for an instant which seemed to her
cruelly long she stood waiting for what the sculptor should say.

"Your friends are right, Fenton," Herman said, at length, in a voice so
changed from its previous cordiality that it was idle to suppose the
likeness had escaped him. "You have never painted anything better."

"Thank you," Fenton responded, brightly. "I am awfully glad you like
it. I fancy," he added, with a laugh, "that the tabby-cats will be
shocked."

His companion made no reply, and the approach of Rangely afforded
Arthur a chance to change the conversation.

"I say, Fred," he demanded, "have you congratulated Thayer Kent yet?"

"Congratulated him?" echoed Rangely.

"Yes. Didn't you know his engagement is out?"

Rangely might have been said to take a page out of Fenton's own book,
as he answered,--

"But what's the etiquette of precedence?" "Of precedence?" echoed
Arthur, in his turn.

"Yes," Rangely returned. "Which of us should congratulate the other
first? Only," he added, hitting to his own delight upon a position
which might save him from some awkwardness in the future, "of course my
engagement can't be announced until Miss Merrivale gets home to her
mother."

"Well," Arthur said, "marriage is that ceremony by which man lays aside
the pleasures of life and takes up its duties. I congratulate you on
your determination to do anything so virtuous."

"Sardonic, as usual," retorted Fred, laughing; and then he went to find
Miss Merrivale, convinced that under the circumstances the sooner he
proposed to her the better.




XXXII

                       HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY.
                                       Love's Labor's Lost; i.--1.

All the world feels the pathos of helplessness hurt and wounded; but
only some recognize how this applies to a great and noble nature
attacked by unscrupulousness. In an encounter with dishonesty, nobility
of soul may be, in its effect for the moment, utter weakness. Assailed
by deceit or treachery the great heart has often no resource but
endurance; and while endurance may save, it cannot defend.

The moment Grant Herman's eyes fell upon the _Fatima_, he understood
fully why Fenton had so volubly remarked that he had painted the
picture from old studies. He tried to fight with his conviction that
what the artist said was false, although even as he did so he could not
crush down the feeling of having been wounded by the hand of a friend.
It seemed to him incredible that Fenton, even though the painter's
defection from the Pagans had caused something of a breach between
them, could have been guilty of this outrage. He choked with an
intolerable sense of shame for himself, for the artist, and for
Ninitta. A terrible anguish wrung his heart as he looked across the
crowded gallery gay with lights, with the rich dresses, with laughter,
and with the beauty of women, to where hung the picture of the mother
of his boy, an image of sensuous enticement. The fact that Fenton had
substituted another face for that of Ninitta did not, for the moment,
console him. To his sculptor's eye, form was the important thing, and
the fact that he recognized the model bore down all else. He remembered
how marked had been Ninitta's unwillingness to accompany him to the
exhibition, and the possible connection between this and the picture
forced itself upon his mind.

With all the instinctive generosity of his soul, however, Herman strove
to believe that the _Fatima_ had been painted, as Fenton said, from old
studies, and that his wife had not been guilty of the painful indecorum
of posing. He compelled himself to answer the artist calmly, although
he could not make his manner cordial. And as he spoke, his eye,
searching the picture for confirmation of his hope or of his fear,
recognized among the draperies a Turkish shawl he had himself given his
wife after their marriage.

He made his way out of the gallery and out of the club house. He felt
that he must get away from the innumerable eyes by which he was
surrounded. He started toward home, but before he had gone a block, he
stopped, hesitated a moment, and struck off into a side street. He was
not ready to go home. He had said to himself too often, reiterating it
in his mind constantly for six years, that in dealing with his wife his
must be the wisdom, the patience, and the forbearance of both. He
remembered a night long ago, when he had gone to Ninitta's room, in a
mood of contrition, to renew the troth of his youth, and had fallen
instead into a fit of bitter anger. With no evident reason, came back
to him to-night the beautiful weeping figure of the Italian as she had
cast herself at his feet and implored his forgiveness. He would not go
to her now until he was calmer, and until he had considered carefully
all the points of the situation.

In that whirl which comes in desperate circumstances before the
startled and bewildered thoughts can be reduced to order, Herman
wandered on, not thinking where he was going, until he found himself
leaning against a railing and looking over the waters of the Charles
River. It was a beautiful starlight night with a wavering wind that
came in uncertain gusts only to die away again. The water was like a
flood of ink, across which streamed thin tremulous lines of brightness,
and over which were strewn the flickering reflections of the stars. The
gas jets of the city across the flood, the rows of lamps which marked
the bridges, the distant horse cars which rumbled between Cambridge and
Boston with their colored lights, the green and red lanterns that
glowed from the railroad tracks farther down the river, all suggested
the busy life of men with its passions, its greed, and its
heartlessness; but the darkness held all remote, as if the world of men
were a dream. And overhead the immovable stars, like the unpitying
gods, hung above the city and were reflected in the water, and wounded
the soul of the lonely man with the terrible sense of power inimitably
removed, of passionless strength which served to humanity but as a
measure of its own weakness and triviality. The misfortunes of life
might be endured; its disappointments, its anguish, even its inviolable
loneliness might be supported, but a sense of the awful futility of
existence crushes man to the depths of impotent despair.

A review of the past is usually a protest against fate, and manly as
Herman was it was inevitable that into his reverie should come a sense
that the wrong and suffering of his life had been thrust upon him
undeserved. He could not be blind to the fact that it had been through
his virtues that he had been wounded. A sense of injustice comes with
the consciousness of having suffered through merit. Many a man is too
noble basely to avoid the consequences of his acts, but few can wholly
rid themselves of the feeling that the uncomplaining acceptance of
painful results should serve as expiation for the deeds which caused
them. The nobility of his nature, the purity of his intentions had made
of a boyish folly the curse of a lifetime. With whatever tenderness the
sculptor regarded Ninitta as the mother of his son, it was vain for him
to attempt to deceive himself in regard to his love for her. A man with
whom cordiality was instinctive, who was born for the most frank and
intimate domestic relations, he found in his wife small sympathy and
less comprehension. He had married her, believing that she had a right
to claim happiness at his hands because he had taught her to love him.
He had long since been obliged to own to himself that he had done this
at the expense of his own peace, and he now questioned whether the
experiment had succeeded better in her case than in his. If she had not
been able to comprehend his aims and to enter into his scheme of life,
it was equally true that she must have found in him little response to
the calls of her own nature. The bitterness of the sigh which wrung his
bosom, as he stood with his hand upon the railing and looked over the
water with the lights reflected on its blackness, was as much for her
as for himself.

Yet he would not have been human had he not felt thrills of anger when
he thought of the _Fatima._ No faintest suspicion crossed his mind of
any darker shame which might lie behind the fact that his wife had
posed for Fenton. This he could not doubt that she had done. This
explained her frequent absences from home in the morning, to which he
had before given no thought. He remembered, too, that for weeks a
furtive restlessness, poorly concealed, had been evident in Ninitta's
manner. He had attributed it to her intense opposition to Nino's being
sent to school; but now he read it differently. He could not but be
angry, yet his pity was greater than his wrath; and he resolved not
only to be forbearing with his wife, but hereafter to use greater
endeavors to enrich her colorless life. He was too thoroughly an artist
himself not to feel and appreciate how much the old love of posing, the
longing for the air of a studio, and the art instinct might have had to
do with Ninitta's fault.

But in regard to Fenton his heart burned with that rage which is
largely grief. It was like the anger, which is half astonishment, of a
child who is unexpectedly struck by its playmate. The fact that he was
incapable of comprehending how it was possible to betray a friend made
him confused in thinking of the artist's share in the transaction; and
the fact that he could vent upon Fenton his righteous indignation
enabled him to free his feelings toward Ninitta of almost all
animosity. When at last he turned to go home, it was with a profound
pity that he thought of his wife.

It was a little after eleven when he reached his house. The gas was
burning in his chamber and Ninitta lay apparently sleeping. The
wretched woman feigned a slumber which she had in vain courted. She was
convinced that her husband could not see the _Fatima_ without
discovering her secret, and the guilty knowledge in her heart filled
her with growing fears as the moments went on.

When at last she heard Herman's step, she had started up in bed like a
wild creature, her heart fluttering, her ears strained as if to catch
from the sound some clue to his mood. But instantly she had lain down
again, and, with an instinct like that of the timorous animals whose
nature it is to feign death when they cannot flee, had composed herself
into the appearance of slumber.

Herman paused a moment, just inside the chamber door, and looked at his
wife. Something in her pose suggested to him so vividly the _Fatima_
that, despite his self-conquest on the bridge, a flood of anger swelled
within him. The masculine instinct, nourished through a thousand
generations, that no palliation gives the wife a right to claim
forgiveness from her husband for the shame she has put upon him by a
violation of modesty, surged up within him. He drew in a deep
inspiration and started forward with an inarticulate sound as if he
could throw himself upon this woman and tighten his fingers on her
throat.

Ninitta raised herself in bed with an exclamation of fear. Her black
hair streamed loose, and her dark eyes shone. Her swarthy passionate
face was an image of terror. She was not far enough away from her
peasant ancestors not to be moved by the size and strength of her
husband's large and vigorous frame. Many generations and much subtlety
of refinement must lie between herself and savagery before a woman can
learn instinctively to fear the soul of a man rather than his muscles
in a crisis like this. Husband and wife confronted each other as he
walked quickly across the chamber. Her cowering attitude, the fear
which was written in every line of her face, fed his anger, until, in
his blind rage, all pity and self-restraint seemed to be swept away.

But just as he neared the bed, when in his burning look Ninitta seemed
already to feel his hands clutching her with cruel force, his foot
struck against something which lay on the floor. It was one of Nino's
wooden soldiers. The father stopped, and his look changed. He
remembered how Nino had come in from the nursery while he was dressing
that night, bringing his arms full of more or less shattered figures
which he had appealed to his father to put to rights for a grand battle
which was to be fought in the morning. Herman looked down at the toy
and forgot his anger. He looked up at his wife and she saw with wonder
the change in his face. It had been full of indignation against the
wife who had deceived him; on it now was written reproachful anguish,
and pity for the mother of his son.

"Ninitta," he said. "How could you do it?"

She cowered down in the bed, burying her face in her hands. She could
not answer, and there came over him a painful sense of the uselessness
of words.

"Everybody must recognize Fenton's picture," he said. "If you did not
remember me, Ninitta, how could you forget Nino? How will he feel when
he is old enough to realize what you have done?"

The frightened woman burst into convulsive sobs mixed with moans like
those of a hurt animal. In the last hours she had been thinking no less
than her husband; but where he had considered her, she had thought
chiefly of her boy. Mingled with the fear of her husband's anger had
been the nobler feeling, that she was no longer worthy to be with her
son. The very passion of the love she bore him moved her now with the
determination to leave him. It was always Ninitta's instinct to run
away in trouble, and now, added to the impulse to escape from her
husband was the determination forming itself with awful stress of
anguish in her soul, to go away from Nino; to take away from her son
whom she loved better than life itself, this woman who had no right in
his pure presence. She did not look upon it as an expiation of her
fault; it was only that maternal love gathered up whatever was noble in
her nature, in this supreme sacrifice for her son.

To Herman, looking down upon the cowering figure of his wife, with a
heartbreaking sense of the impossibility of effecting anything by
words, she was simply a cowardly woman who took refuge in tears from
the reproaches which her conduct deserved. Could he have known what was
passing in her heart, it would have moved him to a deeper respect and a
keener pity than he had ever felt for her. No more than a dumb animal
had she any language in which she could have made him understand her
feelings had she tried; and at last he turned away with a choking in
his throat.




XXXIII

                              A BOND OF AIR.
                                      Troilus and Cressida; i.--3.

The stock of the Princeton Platinum Company was issued in ten-dollar
shares, it being the conviction of Erastus Snaffle, deduced from a more
or less extensive experience, that the gullible portion of the public
is more likely to buy stock of a low par value. On the morning after
the exhibition at the St. Filipe Club, the shares were quoted at two
dollars and an eighth.

Arthur Fenton read the stock reports at breakfast. He laid the paper
down calmly, drank his coffee in silence, and absently played with his
fork, while his wife attended to Caldwell's breakfast and her own. He
said nothing until the boy, whose mind was intent upon some new toy or
other, having hastily finished his meal, asked to be excused.

"Don't be in a hurry, Caldwell," his mother said, gently. "I want you
to learn to wait for older people."

"Let him go, Edith," his father interposed. "I want to talk to you."

The boy jumped down quickly and ran to give his father a hasty kiss. He
had learned to look to Fenton to help him in evading his mother's
attempts at discipline, and Edith noted with pain, as she had too often
noticed before, the knowing smile which came into the child's face at
her husband's words. Caldwell evidently regarded his father's remark
merely as a convenient excuse, and it hurt Edith to see how in subtile
ways her son was learning to distrust the honesty of his father.

On this occasion, however, Arthur had meant what he said. When the door
had closed behind the little fellow, he looked up to observe in the
most matter-of-fact tone,--

"I suppose it is only fair, Edith, that I should tell you that we are
ruined."

She looked at him with a puzzled face.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"I mean," he returned, "that I have been getting into no end of a mess,
and that some stock I bought to help myself out of it, has gone down
and made things ten times worse."

She folded her hands in her lap and regarded him wistfully. She had
been so often repressed when she had tried to gain his confidence in
regard to business matters that she hesitated to speak now.

"Should I understand if you told me about it?" she asked.

"Oh, very likely not," he returned, coolly; "but I don't in the least
mind telling you, if it's any satisfaction to you. It isn't any great
matter, only that I live so near the ragged edge that a dollar or two
either way makes all the difference between poverty and independence."
Edith breathed more freely. Her husband's self-possessed manner, and
the fact that she knew him to be so given to exaggeration, made her
feel that things were not so hopeless as his words had at first implied.

"I have three thousand shares of Princeton Platinum stock," Fenton went
on, with the condescending air of one who elaborately explains details
which he knows will not be understood. "I bought at two and
seven-eighths, with money that should go to pay notes due on Saturday.
The stock was worth two and an eighth last night and very likely by
to-night won't be worth anything."

"Then why didn't you sell yesterday?" Edith asked.

Arthur smiled at the feminine turn of her words.

"Because, my shrewd financier, I don't want to sell at a loss, and Mr.
Irons assures me that there will be a rise before the final collapse."

He did not add, as he might have done, the substance of the talk
between himself and Irons. That wily financier had said to him one
day,--

"Fenton, you were almighty toploftical about those railroad shares, and
I'll give you another chance. I've had four thousand shares of
Princeton Platinum turned over to me on an assignment. It cost me two,
and you may have it at that figure, though it's worth two and a half in
the market to-day."

"You are too generous, by half," Fenton had answered.

"Well, the fact is," Irons had responded, "I hate infernally to be
under obligations. Princeton Platinum is wild-cat fast enough, but it
will touch four before they let the bottom drop out. That I happen to
know. This will give you a chance to make a neat thing out of it, and
it will square off the obligation our syndicate's under to you."

"Thank you," was Fenton's answer; "but the obligation, such as it is, I
prefer to have stand, and I haven't any money to put into stock of any
kind now."

"Well, think it over. Don't let your sentiments interfere too much with
business. I'll hold the stock for you for three days. If you're fool
enough to miss your opportunity after that I'm not responsible."

Naturally, this portion of the conversation Fenton did not impart to
his wife.

Edith's look became more perplexed as her talk with her husband
continued; and the matter-of-fact way in which he spoke of approaching
disaster was to her unintelligible.

"What is going to collapse?" she asked at length. "The stock?"

"Certainly, my dear. There isn't anything behind it. I doubt if there
ever was any Princeton Platinum mine, but I did think the men who were
managing it were clever enough to get it to four or four and a half
before they let go."

"But how could they get it to four or four and a half, if there isn't
any mine?"

"By gulling fools like me, my dear; that's the way these things are
always done."

A troubled look came over Mrs. Fenton's face, and her lips closed a
little more tightly.

"Well," demanded her husband impatiently, "what is it? Moral scruples?"

"It doesn't seem to me to be very honest stock to be dealing in," Edith
replied, timidly.

"To discuss the morality of stock speculation," he replied, with coolly
elaborate courtesy, "is much like eating a fig. You may be biting the
seeds all day without being sure you've finished them."

She was silenced, and cast down her eyes waiting for what he might
choose to say next.

"The situation," he continued, after a pause, "is merely this. I
haven't the cleverness properly to manage being in debt. I don't know
how those notes are to be paid Saturday, and have been given to
understand that there are reasons, doubtless judicious, but extremely
inconvenient, why they will not be renewed."

His manner was as calm as ever, but there was a growing hardness in his
tone and a cruel tightening of his lips. His restraint had much of the
calmness of despair. His was a nature which always outran actualities
with imagined possibilities, and thus found in even the fullest joy a
sense of loss and failure; while in misfortune, it magnified all evils
until it was overwhelmed with the burden of their weight. He suffered
the more acutely because he endured not only the sting of the present
evil, but of all those which he foresaw might follow in its wake. He
felt at this moment a growing necessity to find some one against whom
he might logically turn his anger; and while he was firmly determined
not to vent his displeasure upon his wife, his attitude toward her
became constantly more stern.

"If Uncle Peter were at home," Edith began, after a pause, "he might"--

"He might not," interrupted Arthur, roughly. "In any case he has taken
the light of his countenance abroad, so he's out of the question."

"But some of your friends, Arthur, might lend you the money you want."

"My dear Edith, do you fancy that within the past month I have failed
to go over the list of my friends, backward and forward? Don't say
those tiresome, obvious things. I'll fail and have an auction, and give
up the house, and lose caste, and have a pleasant tea-party generally.
That's the only thing there is to do."

Edith rose from her seat, and went around to where he was sitting.
Standing behind his chair she laid her hands on his shoulders, and,
bending forward, kissed his cheek.

"I dare say, Arthur," she said, "that we should be quite as happy if we
gave up trying to live in a way that we can't afford; but meanwhile
there is godmamma."

"Mrs. Glendower?"

"Yes. You know she has left me five thousand dollars in her will; and
she told me once that if the time came that I needed the money
desperately I should have it for the asking."

"That is kind of her," was her husband's comment, "but it would be
kinder to let you get it at once in the natural way. The comfort about
a bequest is that you don't have to feel grateful to any live man for
it."

His words were brutal enough, but there was a new lightness in his
tone. He caught instantly at this hope of relief, and he showed his
appreciation of his wife's cleverness in devising this scheme by
caressing the hand which lay upon his shoulder.

"You can go to New York to-night," remarked Edith thoughtfully,
ignoring his words, "and be back by Saturday morning. If you didn't so
much dislike going to New York in the day time, you might get there in
time to see godmamma to-night."

"To-morrow will be time enough," he answered. "You are a brick, Edith,
to help me out of this scrape, and the magnitude of the moral reforms
I'll institute in honor of my deliverance will astonish you."

He sprang up as light-heartedly as a boy. The means of escaping the
annoyance of the present moment had been found, and his buoyant spirits
lifted him above the doubts and troubles of the future.

They discussed together the details of his coming interview with Mrs.
Glendower, and the terms of the letter which Edith should write to her.
There was something most touching in the tender eagerness with which
Edith prolonged the talk and clung to the occasion which had brought
her and her husband, for the moment, together. She even forgot to
deplore the misfortune which had given rise to this confidence, and, in
her desire to be helpful to Arthur, she did not even remember that once
her pride would have risen in rebellion at the bare suggestion of
taking advantage of Mrs. Glendower's offer. All day long she went about
with a happier smile on her lips than had been there for many a long
day. The danger of impending ruin seemed to have brought her
consolation instead of grief; and in the prayers which she murmured in
her heart as she stood with her arms clasped about Caldwell, when
Fenton drove away that night, there was not a little thanksgiving
mingled with her supplications.




XXXIV

                          WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED.
                                              Hamlet; iv.--7.

The stock report which caused Fenton such unpleasant sensations was
read that same morning by Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson with keen
satisfaction of a sort seldom known to the truly virtuous. Mrs. Sampson
was engaged in financial transactions of which the very magnitude
caused her naive satisfaction, while the possible results made her
bosom glow with unwonted emotion. Mrs. Sampson's affection for Alfred
Irons was neither deep nor tender in its nature, and in settling the
bill for services rendered in the railroad case there was no sentiment
likely to restrain her from making the best possible bargain. The
bargain she made was of a nature to send her about her flat singing
songs of triumph such as Deborah sang over the slaughter of the
unfortunate Sisera.

The wily but impressible Erastus Snaffle, cheered by the widow's wine,
warmed by her smile, and smitten by her amiable conversation, had
bestowed upon her, merely as a tribute which mammon might pay to the
ever-womanly, three thousand shares of Princeton Platinum stock. He had
done this at a time when it seemed doubtful whether even his adroitness
could make the scheme a success; and it somewhat mars the lustre of his
generosity to record that he afterward regretted his impulsive
open-handedness. He had been able to prevent Mrs. Sampson from
realizing on her stock, very reasonably feeling that he was making
philanthropic endeavors to benefit an ungrateful world rather against
its will, and he did not mean that she should make a stumbling-block
for him of his own generosity by putting this gift on the market when
he wished to supply all buyers himself.

When it was quoted at three, the high-water mark so far, he had
beguiled the widow with a cock-and-bull story about the formalities of
transferrence on the books of the company of stocks which had been
given away; and by the time Mrs. Sampson had cleared her mind from the
entanglements of this ingenious fiction the bottom had dropped out of
the market.

In the midst of her disappointment in seeing what to her would have
been almost a fortune melting into thin air, the fertile brain of Mrs.
Sampson had given birth to what was nothing less than an inspiration,
She had gone to see Alfred Irons, and delicately but firmly insinuated
that it was high time she received substantial tokens of the gratitude
of the Wachusett Syndicate, for her efforts in their behalf with the
Hon. Thomas Greenfield. Mr. Irons had answered, as she had expected him
to, that she had presented no bill. To this her reply was ready. She
was prepared to state what would satisfy her. She explained that she
felt the delicacy of her position, since, if any consideration passed
to her directly from the corporation, it was sure to be known, and
unpleasant comment made. She had in her possession, she continued,
certain stock, of which the market value was somewhere between two and
two and a half, which, it struck her, might serve admirably to veil the
generosity which had been promised her. Her proposition, in brief, was
that Irons should take her three thousand shares of stock at four
dollars, the difference between this and the market value, of course,
being refunded to him by the company.

"By Gad! you're a cheeky one!" had been Iron's comment, more expressive
than elegant, when the widow had laid her scheme wholly before him.

The railroad matter had, however, been settled to the satisfaction of
the syndicate. Mr. Greenfield's support of the Wachusett scheme at the
hearing had been of the utmost importance, especially as Mrs. Sampson
had been able to persuade "Honest Tom" that a perfectly fair
proposition made to him by Mr. Staggchase was in the nature of a
high-handed bribe. This proposition had been presented in a somewhat
scandalous light, and in the face of it Hubbard had induced his
associates to throw up the whole Feltonville scheme. The Railroad
Commissioners had issued the coveted certificate for the Wachusett
route, and the rest was easy. Irons was therefore grateful to the
widow, and he at length agreed to consult his associates, and he did
not deny Mrs. Sampson's observation that it was as much for the benefit
of the corporation as of herself that money passing between them should
be covered by some such disguise as that of this stock operation.

The widow had returned home not over sanguine, and her astonishment was
scarcely less than her pleasure when, on Wednesday afternoon, she
received a note from Irons, assenting to her proposition with the
modification that the purchasing figure should be three dollars instead
of four. It was a fact as far beyond the limits of the widow's
knowledge as it was beyond that of his colleagues, that Irons meant to
make this transaction the means of increasing a revenge which he
already had in train. That gentleman had never forgiven Fenton for
burning the order for railroad bonds, and when accident threw the
Princeton Platinum stock into his hands he determined to make it the
means of the artist's discomfiture. It was only the day after he had
offered Fenton his four thousand shares that Mrs. Sampson appeared with
her offer of three thousand more. He had no doubt of his ability to
entrap Fenton into buying, the one weak spot in his plan being the
fact, of which he was in complete ignorance, that Fenton already held
stock and had nothing whatever with which to buy more. He was willing
to let the widow's bribe pass to her under so plausible a disguise, and
he said to himself with a chuckle that he had far rather sell Fenton
the seven thousand shares than four.

If he were unable to sell to Fenton it appeared to Irons as on the
whole highly probable that he could dispose of the stock for the
corporation at a price which would materially lessen the amount of
their bonus to the widow; or if the market should chance to look
promising, he might find it worth while to buy it from his colleagues
with a view to realizing something on it himself.

Perhaps it was because he was doing business with a woman, perhaps it
was the consciousness of the bribe which the bargain covered and a
desire to leave as little record of it as possible, perhaps it was only
the carelessness of extreme haste, that caused Irons to send to the
widow so ambiguous and dangerous a note as the following,--

"DEAR MRS. SAMPSON,--I am suddenly called to New York, and leave
to-night. I will take all your Princeton Platinum stock at three
dollars. Please deliver it at my office to-morrow with this note as a
voucher." Yours truly,
"ALFRED IRONS."

It was the misfortune of Alfred Irons that Mrs. Sampson took an extra
cup of coffee that evening and could not sleep; and in the watches of
the night, either the devil or her own soul--the inspirations of the
two being too similar for one rashly to venture to discriminate between
them--said to her, "Amanda! Now is your chance." Thereafter, no fumes
of coffee were necessary to keep the widow awake for the remainder of
the night; and on Thursday morning before she presented herself at
Irons's office she had an interesting interview with no less a
personage than Mr. Erastus Snaffle himself.

Mrs. Sampson began by declaring that she wished to purchase a certain
amount of Princeton Platinum stock, but before long the need she felt
of having her feminine guile supported by masculine intelligence had
led her to make a clean breast of the situation. She showed Mr. Snaffle
Mr. Irons's note, calling his attention particularly to the ill-chosen
word "all" which seemed to her to afford the means of unloading
indefinitely at the expense of the absent financier. Her enthusiasm
received a cruel shock when Snaffle retorted with a burst of ill-bred
laughter,--

"Oh Lord! You must think Irons is a dog-goned fool!"

"But," the widow persisted, "it says 'all' the stock, doesn't it?"

"Do you think you could make his firm buy up all the Princeton on that
flimsy dodge?" retorted Snaffle contemptuously.

"We'll see," Amanda declared, nodding her head determinedly. "The
question is how much do you think they will stand? A man ought to know
that better than a woman."

A new look of cunning came into the fat face of the speculator, and his
numerous superfluous chins began to be agitated as if with excitement.

"Well," he said, "if you can stick them for any I don't see why you
can't for a lot. I've just four thousand shares left, and you might as
well run them all in on the old man."

The widow laughed with malicious glee.

"I don't know," she replied, "how this will turn out, but if I wasn't
going to get a cent from it, I'd try it just for the sake of getting
even with Al Irons."

"Oh, its your opportunity," he said, with agile change of base, "and as
for getting ahead of him, I'm blessed if I wouldn't bet on you every
time. Seven thousand shares isn't much for a house like theirs. We put
the stock at ten dollars on purpose so folks could handle a lot of it
and talk big without having much money in. Come, you just clear out the
whole thing for me, and I'll let you have it at two and a half, just
for your good looks."

"Thank you for nothing," was the reply of the redoubtable widow. "I
took the trouble to find out the market price on my way down here and
anybody can buy plenty of it for two and an eighth, without being good
looking at all."

Erastus chuckled, rubbing his fat hands together in delighted
appreciation of his companion's wit.

"Come," he pleaded, "when you get to making eyes at that clerk, he'll
buy anything you offer, no matter what Irons told him. I wouldn't give
much for the man that would let a little memorandum stand in the way of
obliging a lady."

Amanda did not have good blood in her veins without appreciating the
coarse vulgarity of Snaffle; but neither had she associated for years
with his kind without having the edge of her distaste worn away. She
was, besides, a woman and a vain one, and the undisguised admiration
with which he regarded her put her in excellent humor. It confirmed the
verdict of her mirror that the care with which she had arrayed herself
for this expedition had not been wasted. She smiled as she answered
him, tapping her chin with her well-gloved forefinger.

"But, of course," she observed, dispassionately, "if I bought of you at
all I should buy conditionally. I'll give you two for the stock, and
take it if I can sell it to Irons."

"Oh, don't rob yourself," Snaffle returned, with good-natured sarcasm.
"What's to hinder my selling it for two and an eighth myself?"

"Two and an eighth asked and no buyers is what they told me!" retorted
the widow imperturbably. "I don't know much about stocks, but I know
that if you could have sold for almost any price you'd have done it
long ago."

"Right you are," admitted Snaffle, good-naturedly, "if I'd nobody to
consider but myself; but just the same, I sha'n't kick the bottom out
of the market before it falls out of itself."

"Then I understand," said the widow, with an air, gathering herself
together as if to depart, "that you won't take my offer."

"Oh, come now," protested Snaffle, "why don't you ask me to give it to
you as I did the other?"

"So delicate of him," murmured the widow, confidentially to the
universe at large, "to fling that at me."

"I ain't flinging it at you," Snaffle returned, unabashed. "But, come
now, let's talk business. If I give you an option on this, so long as
you are going to sell it at three dollars, of course you ought to pay
me more than the market price. I'll be d'ed if I let you have it less
than two and a half."

"One doesn't know which to admire most, Mr. Snaffle, your politeness to
ladies or your generosity."

"Oh, don't mention it," was the speculator's grinning reply. "Come,
now, don't be a pig. Twenty per cent profit ought to satisfy anybody."

"I'll give you two," said Mrs. Sampson, with feminine persistency.

Snaffle turned on his heel with a word seldom spoken in the presence of
ladies.

"Well, you might as well get out of this, then," he remarked,
brusquely. "You're a beauty, but you don't know anything about
business."

Amanda regarded him with an inscrutable glance for an instant,
evidently making up her mind that he meant what he said.

"Well," she observed; "if you want to rob me, I'm only a woman with
nobody to take my part, and I shall have to give you what you ask."

"Gad!" he ejaculated. "If one man in ten was as well able to take his
own part as you are, things 'd be some different from what they are
now."

And the smile of Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson indicated that even so
high-flavored a compliment as this was not wholly displeasing to her.
The certificates of stock were produced and duly endorsed, and, tucking
them into her handbag, the widow went on her way attended by wishes for
her success which were probably the more genuine because the
transaction was only conditional.

"Well," Snaffle communed with himself after she had departed; "there
ain't no flies on the widow, and I guess she'll manage that clerk.
She's a clever one, but if she'd been a little cleverer, so as to
appreciate that I couldn't put that amount of stock on the market
without sending the price down to bed rock, she might have had the lot
at her own figure. I'd have been glad to take one fifty for it."

Meanwhile the widow had pursued her scheming way toward State Street.
The moral support of Snaffle's testimony to her ability and his
admiration for her personal appearance probably upheld her during her
interview with Mr. Iron's clerk. That young man, an exquisite creature,
who had the appearance of giving his mind largely to his collars, was
overwhelmed by the amount of stock which Mrs. Sampson produced. He
explained with some confusion that in the hurry incident upon Mr.
Iron's unexpected departure, he had neglected to make a memorandum, but
that he understood that he was to receive three thousand shares of
Princeton Platinum with Mr. Iron's letter as a voucher.

"I may have been mistaken," he observed, apologetically. "Mr. Irons was
called away in a great hurry, and I did get some of his directions
confused. It's singular that he didn't name the amount in the letter."

"I'm very sorry he didn't," returned the widow, with an engaging air of
appealing to the other's generosity. "It puts me in a very awkward
position, just as if I were trying to impose on you. Mr. Irons knew
just what I had and said he'd take it all."

"Oh, I didn't mean for an instant," the clerk protested, blushing with
confusion, "that you were trying to impose on us."

The clerk was young and susceptible, the widow was mature and adroit;
he was confused and uncertain, she was definite and determined. Mr.
Irons had, moreover, given the young man to understand that the
transaction was a confidential and personal one, which involved more
than appeared on the surface. Confronted by the phraseology of Mr.
Iron's note, backed by Mrs. Sampson's insinuating manner and unblushing
statements, the clerk laid aside his discretion, and in the end allowed
himself to fall a victim to the wiles of the astute widow, who walked
away considerably richer than she came, besides being able to bring joy
to the heart of Erastus Snaffle by a neat sum of ready cash, which she
delivered after another prolonged discussion over the price she should
pay him for the stock.

And on the following morning when she read in the stock reports that
Princeton Platinum had fallen to one and a half, she remembered her
stroke of yesterday with a conscience which if not wholly clear was
thoroughly satisfied.




XXXV

                         HEARTSICK WITH THOUGHT.
                                   Two Gentlemen of Verona; i.--1.

Fenton's forenoon at his studio was broken by a visit from Ninitta. His
mind full of his trip to New York, and of speculations concerning his
interview with Mrs. Glendower, he had let the whole question of the
_Fatima_ and his entanglement with its model slip from his mind, and
when he opened the door to find Mrs. Herman standing there, the shock
of his surprise was a most painful one. Ninitta's eyes were swollen
with weeping, and the sleepless night had made her plain face haggard
and ugly. With a quick, irritated gesture, the artist put his hand upon
her arm and drew her impatiently into the studio. Closing the door, he
stood confronting her a moment, studying her expression, as if to
discover the cause of her disturbance.

"Well," at length he said, harshly, "have you betrayed me?"

Ninitta answered his look with one of helpless and confused despair.
The anguish of the long hours during which she had been making up her
mind what to do in the emergency that had arisen, had stupefied her so
that she could not think clearly. She still suffered, and Fenton's
brutal manner brought tears to her eyes, but she was benumbed and
dazed, and could neither think nor feel clearly.

"Grant found out himself," she said, "that I posed."

"Well?" Fenton demanded, with an intensity that made his smooth voice
hoarse.

"That's all," Ninitta responded dully. "I'm going away."

"Going away?" echoed Fenton, the words arousing again his fears that
the worst might have been discovered. "Then Herman does know?"

"He only knows that I posed," repeated Ninitta; "but he says Nino would
be ashamed, and I am going away."

"But where are you going?"

"Home; to Capri."

The artist looked at her with an impatient feeling that it was idle to
reason with her, and that she had somehow passed beyond his control. He
moved away a few steps, and sat down in an old carved monkish chair,
while his visitor leaned, as if for support, against the casing of the
door. He looked at her curiously, wondering what her mental processes
were like, and saying to himself, with mingled chagrin and philosophy,
that it was impossible to deal with a creature so irrational, but that
fortunately he was not responsible for her movements His glance
wandered about the studio, noting with artistic appreciation the
pleasant coloring of a heap of cushions thrown carelessly on the divan.
He wondered if it would have been better had he arranged that blue one
in a fuller light, as a background for the beautiful shoulder of his
_Fatima_, yet reflected that on the whole the value he had chosen
better brought out the quality of the flesh-tones. What a splendid
picture the _Fatima_ was. It was worth some inconvenience to have
achieved such a success, and, after all, he would not be so foolish as
to begrudge the price he must pay for his triumph.

And yet, and yet--He turned back with a movement of impatience toward
that sad, silent figure standing just inside his door. A wave of anger
rose within him. He felt that he had a right to consider himself
aggrieved by her persistent presence. Why must his will, his happiness,
his artistic powers be hampered and thwarted by this woman who was only
fit to serve his art and be laid aside, like his mahl-stick and palette.

"It seems to me," he burst out, more harshly than ever, "that you might
have had the sense to keep away from here, at least until Herman gets
over his anger."

"But I am going away," she said, "and I came to you for some money."

He stared at her in fresh amazement an instant; then he burst into
derisive laughter.

"Well," he said, "I like that. Why, I'm going to New York myself
to-night, to try to beg enough to keep me out of the poor-house."

"But I can't ask Mr. Herman," Ninitta said, beseechingly.

"In Heaven's name, Ninitta," exclaimed Fenton, "don't be an idiot.
There's no sense in running away. Besides, what are you afraid of?"

"But it might hurt Nino if I stayed," returned poor Ninitta.

Through the bitter watches of the night, she had been saying that over
and over to herself. With all her weakness and her sin, her mother-love
stood the supreme test. As she had been able to give up her Italian
friends when the boy was born, because, as she said, Nino was born a
gentleman and must not associate with them; now, when she was convinced
that he would be better without her, she was able to give him up,
although with a breaking heart. Many times she had been forced to
confess to herself that Nino's mother was not a lady like Mrs. Fenton
or Helen Greyson, or others of her husband's friends; and although she
had always comforted herself with the reflection that at least no boy
had a mother who loved him more than she did her son, the thought that
her child might be better without her had more than once forced itself
upon her mind. It was idle for Fenton to argue; Ninitta's decision had
passed beyond argument, and perhaps her understanding was, for the time
being, too benumbed by suffering clearly to follow her companion's
reasoning.

"At least," she said at last, utterly ignoring his earnest endeavor to
shake her resolution, "if you cannot let me have any money, you will
write a note for me to tell Mr. Herman that I am gone, and to say
good-by to the _bambino._"

"Good God, Ninitta! Are you mad?" Fenton cried, jumping up and coming
to confront her. "Why should you mix me up in this business? He knows
my writing, and think what he might suspect if I wrote such a note."

His voice insensibly softened as he spoke. He could not but be touched
by the utter helplessness, the anguish, the baffled weakness so evident
in her face and manner. He was cruel only from selfishness and the
instinct of self-defence, and his pity was sharply aroused by Ninitta's
suffering and her miserable condition.

"Come," he said gently, laying his hand on her arm, "you are tired and
frightened. There is no need for you to go away and, besides, you could
not live without the _bambino._ Think, you would have no letters; you
would never even hear from him."

A spasm of pain contracted Ninitta's features. She pressed her hands
upon her bosom with interlaced fingers working convulsively.

"Oh, Mother of God!" she moaned, in a voice of intensest agony, which
thrilled Fenton with a keen pang that yet did not prevent his
remembering how like was the cry to that of a great tragic actress as
he had heard it in _Phedre_.

"Don't, Ninitta," he pleaded, unlocking her hands and taking them in
his. "I"--

"You will write me?" she interrupted eagerly. "You will tell me about
Nino? I shall find somebody to read it to me. Oh, you are good. That is
the best kindness you could do me."

She pressed his hands eagerly, a divine yearning, a gleam of passionate
hope shone in her dark eyes. Fenton tried to smile, but despite himself
his lip trembled. He had hard work to control himself, but he reflected
that with him lay the responsibility of dissuading Ninitta from her mad
project.

"But it will be better still," he urged, "to be with him. What can a
boy do without his mother?"

She bent her head forward, gazing into his eyes as if she were trying
to read his very soul; then she threw it backward with a sharp moan,
shaking his hands from hers with a tragic gesture.

"He would be ashamed," she said. "Now he is too young to know that he
is better without his mother."

She looked around the familiar studio with a sweeping, panting glance;
then she turned again to Fenton, clasping both his hands with one of
hers.

"Think of what I have done for you," she said; "and write me about him.
I shall die if you do not."

And there shot through Fenton's mind a sense of the terrible tragedy
which lay in such an appeal for such an end.

When she was gone, Fenton consoled himself with the reflection that the
lack of money would prevent Ninitta from carrying out her wild whim.
He, of course, could not know that soon after Nino's birth Herman had
started a fund for him in a savings bank, and to the mother's intense
gratification had the deposits made in her name as trustee. He had
taught Ninitta to sign her name; and great had been her pleasure in
watching the little fund grow. It indicated the desperateness of her
resolve, that now she broke into this cherished fund, drawing barely
enough money to take her back to Capri. She was going away for Nino's
sake she argued with herself, and that justified even this.

All through the day she busied herself with preparations for departure.
She would take nothing but the barest necessities; only that the
hand-satchel into which she compressed her few belongings held Nino's
first baby socks, a lock of his hair, his picture, a broken toy, and
other dear trifles, each of which she packed wet with tears and covered
with kisses.

Late in the afternoon she took Nino into her chamber alone to bid him
good-by. Her limbs failed her as the door closed and he stood looking
at her in innocent wonder. She sank into a chair, faint and trembling,
soul and body rent with an intolerable anguish so great that for a
moment she wondered if she were not dying.

"What is the matter, mamma?" Nino cried out in his musical Italian,
running across the room to stand by her knee.

He took one of her hands in his, stroking it softly and looking up into
her face with pity and wonder.

"I am going away, Nino," she said, speaking with a mighty effort. "You
must be a good boy and always mind and love papa. And, oh!" she cried,
her self-control breaking down, "love me too, Nino; love me, love me."

She clasped her arms convulsively about his neck, but she choked the
first sob that rose in her throat. She did not dare give way. She
instinctively knew that she needed all her strength to carry her
through what she had undertaken. She kissed the startled child with
burning fervor. She drew him into her lap and held him close to her.
Her very lips were white.

"Nino," she said, "can you remember something to say to papa?"

"Oh, yes," he answered. "I am quite old enough for that. Don't you
remember how I repeated",--

    _"'Questo domanda del pan;
       Questo dise, no ghe n'e;
       Questo dise come faremo;
       Quell' altro dise; rubaremo;
       Il mignolo dise; chi ruba 'mpicca, 'mpicca!_'"


It was a folk rhyme she had taught him to say, telling off his chubby
fingers one by one; and she remembered how proud the boy had been when
he had repeated it to his father. Her mouth twitched convulsively, but
she went on steadily.

"You remembered it beautifully, Nino," she said, "and you are to say to
papa, 'Mamma has gone away to Italy for my sake, and she leaves you her
love.' Say it over, Nino."

"'Mamma has gone away to Italy for my sake,'" repeated the child. "But,
mamma," he broke in, "I don't want you to go."

She embraced him as if in her death struggle the waters of the sea were
closing over her.

"Say it, Nino," she repeated. "Say it all."

The child did as she bade him. She knew she could not prolong this
interview, and still have strength to carry out her resolution. She
embraced and kissed her child so frantically that he became frightened
and began to cry. Then she soothed him and led him to the chamber door.
She put her hand on the latch. She looked at him, her Nino, her baby.
She tottered as she stood. But the force of character which had given
her strength to fight her way for ten years and across half the world
to seek Nino's father gave her power now. She opened the door and put
the boy out gently. She could not trust herself to kiss him again, or
even again to say good-by.

But when the door was closed, she rolled upon the floor in agony,
stifling her moans lest they should be heard outside, beating her
breast and biting her arms like a mad creature.

When Herman came home to dinner that night his wife was gone, and Nino
gave him her message.




XXXVI

              FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL AND EVER.
                                           Richard II.; ii.--2.

Fenton's reflections as he sat in the train that evening, bound for New
York, were varied rather than pleasing. There are crises in a man's
life when it is perhaps quite as wise that he should not attempt to
reason; he cannot do better than to keep his attention occupied with
indifferent subjects, trusting to that instinct or higher self, or
whatever it may be within us which works independently of our outer
consciousness, to settle all perplexities. Some idea of this sort was
in Arthur's mind as he sped along towards the Sound steamer. He could
not prevent himself from thinking more or less of the situation of his
affairs, but he made no attempt to consider them reasonably or in order.

"It would have saved me an awkward interview," he reflected, "if Mrs.
Glendower could have taken herself opportunely out of the world. If we
may trust the usual form of mortuary resolutions, Divine Providence is
habitually pleased with the removal of mortals from this sublunary
sphere; and in this case I should share the sentiment."

His musings took on a darker tone as time went on. He thought with
bitterness of the failure of his past, and he loathed himself for what
he was. The hateful mystery of life tormented him with its poisonous
uncertainty. He groaned inwardly at the curse that one day should still
follow another. Then the phrasing of his thought pleased him, and with
veering fancy he went on stringing epigrams in his brain.

"After all," he thought, "what we call a fool in this world is a man
who has his own way at the expense of the wise. There's Candish, now; I
call him a fool and he goes ahead and is damned virtuous and stupid and
exasperating, and gets through life beautifully; while I, who wouldn't
be such an idiot for any money, am always in some confounded scrape or
other. I wonder, by the way, what's the connection between sanctity and
a waistcoat put on hind side before. Candish and Edith wouldn't make a
bad pair. She wouldn't mind his ugly mug in the least, and his idiocies
of temperament would be rather pleasing to her. Heaven knows it was an
ill day for her when she fell into my clutches. I can't say that it
seems to have been any great advantage to any woman to be fond of me.
Helen was awfully cut up when I went back on the Pagans, and as for
Ninitta, I've played the very dickens with her. Upon my word I have my
doubts if I could be really respectable without cutting my own
acquaintance."

Fenton retired to his stateroom almost as soon as he went on board the
steamer. He was tired with the strain of the last weeks, he hated the
vulgar crowd one met in travelling, so that to sleep and avoid his
companions seemed the only course desirable under the circumstances.

He was dimly conscious of the progress of the boat, the bustle in the
saloon, which gradually subsided as the evening wore on; and then his
slumber grew deeper. Even the frequent whistling which the
ever-increasing fog made necessary only caused him, now and then, to
turn uneasily in his berth. His stateroom was well aft, and in his
drowsy, half-waking moments, he was conscious that the sea was running
heavily. He remembered that the wind had been east all day, and that he
had seen the danger-signal floating that afternoon.

Toward morning he grew more wakeful. The whistling of the fog-signal,
which had now become almost constant, vanquished at length his
inclination toward slumber. He found his watch, but it was too dark to
tell the time. He raised himself up in his berth, and, pulling open the
window blind, was able with difficulty to make out that it was almost
four o'clock. Outside, he saw a bank of fog, as impenetrable to the eye
as a wall. He pulled the blind to, with an impatient sigh.

"This confounded fog," he thought, "will make us late, and I sha'n't
have time to see those pictures at the Academy."

He lay back in his berth, broad awake, with an objurgation at the
whistle, which was shrieking furiously, and which, he suddenly became
aware, was being answered by the dull bellow of a fog horn blown near
at hand. At that moment the engines of the boat stopped, with that
cessation of the quivering jar which is so terrifying. Fenton could
feel the steamer losing its headway, and being more heavily tossed
about by the waves as it did so. He sat up in his berth with a startled
consciousness of danger, and at the same instant something struck the
steamer with a terrific crash which seemed powerful enough to rend
every timber apart. A tumult of sound broke forth, amid which a
piercing human shriek rang out with awful sharpness. Fenton was thrown
from his berth by the shock, and landed on the floor, bruised and
half-stunned, but otherwise unhurt. His valise was dashed against him,
but after the first concussion there was no further violent movement,
and, as soon as he was able to recover himself, he had no difficulty in
getting to his feet. The terrible cries which continued, reinforced by
a babel of screams and confused noises, seemed to him to come from some
stateroom near at hand. It was evident that some one had been seriously
hurt in the collision which must have occurred. The trampling of feet,
the voices of men and women and children, the sound of the wind and of
the water, and those formless noises which are the more terrifying
because it is impossible to tell whence they arise, filled the air on
every side, and told Fenton that some serious calamity had befallen the
steamer.

He felt about in the darkness for his clothing, then pulled open the
shutter hastily, and dressed himself in the dim light as well as he was
able. He was excited but not panic-stricken, yet the time seemed long,
although in reality it was but a few moments before he was ready to
open his door into the saloon. As he came out he had a startled
impression of finding himself in an unexpected place, and then he
realized that the side of the boat had been broken in clean through the
range of staterooms, and that he was looking out into the heavy wall of
fog through a hole made by the collision. He could see dimly the shape
of a ship's prow, and the broken end of a bowsprit was not yet wholly
disentangled from the rent in the side of the steamer. The two vessels,
locked together like a pair of sea-monsters that had perished in the
death grapple of a desperate encounter, tossed up and down on the long
swell, swayed by the wind which seemed to be increasing in fury every
moment.

On the floor of the saloon just before him, Fenton saw a wounded man,
ghastly with blood, and moaning terribly. Half-dressed people hovered
about him in utter bewilderment, while others continually hurried up
simply to hasten away again in frantic confusion. The wounded man was
in his night clothes, and a half-dressed old woman, her gray hair
straggling about her face, seemed to be attempting to stanch the blood
which was flowing freely. She was evidently a stranger, since from time
to time she appealed to those around to take her place, and let her go
and look after her own folk, but the kindly old creature plainly could
not bring herself, even in that hour of peril, to desert one hurt and
helpless.

On every side were the evidences of panic. Stateroom doors were open,
people in all stages of disarray were hurrying wildly along, or
clinging frantically to each other. The hysterical sobs of women,
piercing cries from the thin voices of children, deep-toned curses and
wild ejaculations from men sounded on every hand. People were donning
life-preservers, some putting on two or three in their eagerness and
fear; and here and there fighting for the possession of an extra one in
a mad fury. The whole saloon was filled with a wild and terrifying
tumult. It was a frenzied scene of fear and awful bewilderment.

However great his mental pluck, Fenton was physically a coward, and he
knew it. The New England climate and life have given to most of her
children, of any degree of cultivation, a nervous organization too
acutely sensitive to pain for them to be physically brave; but to this
disposition the New England training, the inherited manliness of sturdy
ancestors, has added a splendid moral energy to overcome this weakness.

In the first terrible shock of fear which followed his discovery that
the steamer had been run down, Fenton's body trembled with terror. He
felt a wild and dizzy impulse to rush somewhere madly; but in a moment
his will reasserted itself. He was intensely frightened, but he beat
down his fear with the lash of self-scorn, as he would have whipped a
hound that refused to do his bidding. He steadied himself for a moment
against the doorway with tense muscles, setting his teeth together. He
drew a deep breath, turned back into his stateroom, and put on a cork
jacket. He was cool enough. Before he buckled it he transferred his
wallet and papers from the pocket of his coat to that on the inside of
his waistcoat. Then he hurried out through the saloon on to the
afterdeck. The place was crowded, and the confusion was indescribable.
Fenton's first impulse was to put his hands over his ears, to shut out
the horrible din. The officers were shouting orders and getting the
boats manned, for even in this short time the steamer was settling. The
hissing swash of the waves beating into the breach, the prayers, the
imprecations, the hysterical sobs, the agonized cries of the struggling
passengers, the darkness, the terror, the yawning abyss of death
beneath them,--combined to sweep away all human feelings save the
instinct of self-preservation. The brute side of human nature revealed
itself with a hideousness more horrible than the terror of the night
and the sea. Unprotected women were crushed and trampled, and as the
boats were lowered a fierce hand-to-hand conflict ensued, men fighting
like wild cats to force their way into them. The officers beat them
back, and made way for the women as well as they could, struggling at
the same time with the difficult task of maintaining discipline among
the crew.

Shrill amid the uproar, a child's cry smote Fenton's ear as he came out
upon the deck. Directly before him a man was trying to pull a
life-preserver off from a boy, while a woman fought with him in a
desperate endeavor to shield her child. The lad was about the size of
Caldwell and in the confused light not wholly unlike him. With a sob
and a curse, Fenton struck the man full in the face with all his force,
sending the brute reeling backward into the crowd which was too dense
to allow of his falling. The mother hurriedly pulled the child into the
dense stream of people crowding toward the boats, and Fenton saw the
pair disappear over the side of the steamer, helped by one of the
officers.

There ran through his mind a momentary speculation of their chances of
escape, and the thought brought him back to the consideration of his
own situation. A sudden unreasonable disgust of the conditions which
made his salvation so improbable seized upon him. He reflected that he
might still baffle fate by taking his own life, and for an instant the
idea of thus escaping from all the vexations which surrounded him
presented itself to his mind in alluring colors. The idea of
self-destruction was one with which he had played so often that he
entertained it without a shock; and he realized now, almost with a
conviction that the fact forced him to suicide for the sake of
consistency, that his death under these circumstances would surely be
attributed to accident. He even began to fumble with the buckles of his
life-preserver; then with a smile of bitter scorn he looked down at his
hands, of which the fingers were trembling with nervous fear.

"Bah," he said to himself, "why should I pose to myself? Fate is too
much for me; if a gentle and beneficent Providence intends to make away
with me, so be it. I haven't the nerve to anticipate it."

He started toward the boats, and at that instant he caught sight of the
face of Ninitta. She was standing perfectly quiet, with her arm around
one of the small pillars supporting the covering to the deck. She was
fully dressed, though her head was uncovered and the rings of hair
clung about her face. Fenton forgot everything else at sight of her. In
a moment of supreme egotism there flashed through his mind the
consequences of Ninitta's being here. The consciousness of all that lay
between them made him keenly alive to the evil construction which might
be placed upon her having fled from home on the same boat which carried
him. He realized, with a profound feeling of impotence, that if they
were lost together he should be forever unable to explain or to dispel
the suspicion to which her presence might give rise; he felt with keen
bitterness how useless would be all his cleverness, and his heart
swelled with rage at the thought that his adroitness would be wasted
for lack of opportunity.

He forgot the danger, the terror of the wreck, the shrieking of the
women, the brutality of the men, and, for the moment, felt with the
keen desperation of enormous vanity the danger to his reputation. He
forced his way madly across the deck and confronted her in the ghastly
light of the swinging lantern and the gray foregleams of the coming
dawn.

"You followed me!" he cried with bitter harshness.

She looked at him in a calm, stunned way, as if she were past suffering
and almost past feeling. The recognition in her eyes came slowly, as if
she were dazed or as if some powerful mental stress held her attention.

"Now," he began, "your boy"--He was going to add, "will grow up to
believe you ran away with me;" but his manliness asserted itself and he
could not continue. It was like striking a woman, and the brutal words
died on his lip.

At the mention of her boy a sudden passion flamed in her eyes. She
loosed her hold upon the pillar and a sudden lurch of the sinking ship
threw her into Fenton's arms. She clung to him frantically.

"My boy!" she moaned. "My boy!"

Like quickly shifting pictures, there ran through Fenton's mind the
images of Nino, of the boy whose life-preserver he had saved, and of
his own son, asleep in safety in his nursery at home. With a quick
revulsion of feeling came the desire to save Ninitta, and with
instinctive quickness he hit upon a possible means of escape. As he
came through the saloon he had seen a man, a dim shape in the fog,
clambering through the shattered staterooms to climb over the broken
bowsprit into the vessel that had run them down. Hastily drawing
Ninitta along, he forced his way back into the saloon. The body of the
man who had been hurt in the collision lay dead and deserted on the
floor. He lifted his companion over it and made his way to the side of
the steamer. Others had discovered this road to safety and he had to
fight for his foothold amid the waves that now washed over his feet.
The men on the stranger vessel were sawing off the broken spar which
was entangled under the steamer's upper deck, lest their craft should
be dragged down by the sinking boat. He urged Ninitta forward, swinging
her by main force up into the tangled rigging.

"No, no," she cried, endeavoring to throw herself back. "I do not want
to go. It will be better for Nino."

The sublimity of her self-sacrifice smote him like a lash. He could not
stop to argue, but he forced her forward, and one of the men above,
feeling himself in safety, caught her by the arm to drag her up. But at
that instant the spar, cut nearly through, broke with a sharp crack
like the sound of a gun. The end fell, and with it the wretched woman
was carried down. She shrieked as she went, the water cutting short her
cry of mortal anguish. Fenton saw her face an instant, and then in the
fog and the darkness the lapping water closed over her.

An awful sickening shudder ran through him, a fear too great to be
resisted. There rose from his heart a despairing prayer; and the
unbeliever has sounded the depth of agony when he calls upon God.

At that instant a beam loosened from the upper deck, dragged downward
by the ropes of the falling bowsprit, fell with a crash, dashing him
downward into the gulf below. He felt the awful stinging pain of the
blow, like the thrust of a spear; a mighty wave seemed to mount upward
to meet and to engulf him. Then he lost all perception of what he was
doing or of what happened to him; and it might to his consciousness
have been either moments or hours before he found himself struggling in
the icy water. He swam instinctively, and he even remembered to try to
increase his distance from the steamer, that he might not be caught in
the eddy when it went down. He heard still the cries and shrieks, but
the noise of the sea at his ears was like a mighty uproar confusing
all. He could not tell in which direction lay the vessel; a mighty
pressure crushed his chest, and innumerable lights twinkling against a
background of intensest black seemed to shine before his eyes. He was
past thinking clearly. His memory was like a broken mirror whose
shattered fragments reflected a thousand bits from his past life,
confused, detached, and meaningless.

 Then with a last supreme effort his strong will asserted itself in a
command upon his consciousness. For one intense instant, briefer than
the flash of the tiniest spark, he realized everything, save that the
blow or the nearness of death seemed to have dulled all sense of fear.
The most vivid thought of all was the reflection that he might have
been saved but for his efforts to help Ninitta. The grim humor of the
situation tickled his fancy, and in the very flood of death he faintly
smiled at the irony of fate which thus balanced accounts. And this
flash of cynical amusement was the last gleam of his earthly
consciousness.




XXXVII

                            A SYMPATHY OF WOE.
                                        Titus Andronicus; iii.--1.

Fortunately Ninitta had made no secret of her departure except to
conceal it from her husband. She had been to see some Italian friends
of former days to ask about people she had known in Italy, and from
them her husband learned pretty nearly what her plans had been. Fenton
might have spared himself his fears lest she be suspected of going with
him. Such a thought did not for an instant enter into Herman's mind.
The sculptor found himself appreciating better than ever before the
strength of his wife's character. The knowledge of Ninitta's faults
died with her, and her memory was transmitted to her son enriched with
the halo of a martyr who has died in the path of supreme
self-sacrifice. Nine's father understood fairly well the train of
reasoning which had led his wife to the tragic resolve to leave their
boy. Ignorant of her fault, he blamed himself for the reproach by which
he feared he had forced her to believe that it were better for her son
to be freed from her presence.

His generous nature forgot, too, all anger against Fenton. To the noble
soul, death, by a reasoning which is above logic, seems to settle all
accounts. He remembered the artist's brightness, his quick sympathy,
his keen imagination, and his ready adaptability. The flippancy that
had often shocked him, the treachery to principles which he held sacred
that had wounded him, his kind memory put out of sight, as one wipes
the stains from a crystal; and in the mind of the man he had wronged,
the remembrance of Arthur Fenton remained fair and gracious, and nobler
than the nature whose monument it was.

He went to see Mrs. Fenton, but when he met her he at first could say
nothing. He stammered brokenly, tears choking his voice, holding her
hand in his, and vainly striving to put into words the sympathy he
felt. Then he stooped suddenly and kissed her hand.

"Our boys,"--he said, with awkward phrasing, but with an instinct which
reached to the ground of their deepest sympathy. "It might comfort them
a little to play together."

The widow clung with both her small hands to the large strong one which
had clasped hers; and bending down over it she burst into convulsive
sobs. He stood silent a moment, his lip trembling then with grave
kindness, he said,--

"I know how hard it is; but you have the comfort of being able to tell
the boy that his father was a genius and a noble man. Do you know that
a woman who was rescued says that your husband saved her boy, a little
lad like Caldwell. Arthur knocked down the man that was trying to rob
him of his life-preserver. The Captain told her afterward who it was."

He was perfectly sincere in what he said. It was difficult for him to
think evil of the living; of the dead it was impossible.

After he had gone, Edith took Caldwell on her knee and told him the
story. It was the brightest ray of comfort in all that sad time to be
able thus to glorify his father in the eyes of her son. The incident
dwelt in her mind, and her loving fancy added to it a hundred details
and drew from it numberless deductions with which to enrich the memory
of her dead. It came in time to be the most prominent thing in her
remembrance of her husband. It was the fact which she could recall with
the most unmixed satisfaction, which needed no evasions, no mental
reservations, no warpings of belief, to appear wholly noble. In the
light of this deed, the impulse of a moment, Fenton stood in her memory
as a hero; and in viewing him thus, she was able to lose sight of
everything which she must forgive, of everything which she wished to
forget.

Edith was happily spared the harassing complications of financial
difficulty which it had seemed must inevitably result from the
condition in which her husband's affairs were left.

On Mr. Irons's return from New York, he had been astounded and enraged
to find that he had been outwitted by the combined cleverness of Mrs.
Sampson and the stupidity of his clerk, and that he was in possession
of eleven thousand shares of Princeton Platinum stock. For seven
thousand shares he had paid at the rate of three dollars, and the stock
was now quoted at one and three eighths asked, with no particular
reason for supposing that the putting of even half his shares on the
market would not reduce it to zero. Irons blasphemed prodigiously and
emphatically, discharged his clerk, and went to call on Mrs. Sampson,
whom he threatened with all sorts of condign punishments if she did not
disgorge her ill-gotten gains. The widow received him affably, and
laughed in his face at this proposal, a course of action which won his
respect more fully than any other which she could have chosen. There
was evidently nothing left but to do what he could with the market, and
by methods best known to himself he succeeded in bulling the stock so
that he was able to unload at three dollars and a half.

The brokers in whose hands Fenton had left his stock had been watching
their opportunity, and closed it out at the top of the market, a
consummation for which Fenton had so devoutly longed that it seemed
cruel he could not have lived to see it. The returns from this and from
her husband's life insurance secured to Edith and her son a small
income, which was considerably increased by the sale of Fenton's
pictures which was soon after organized by the artists of the St.
Filipe Club.

It was about a month after Ninitta's death that Grant Herman went to
visit Helen. He had chosen to see her at her studio rather than at her
home. Poignant memories of the past were less likely to be aroused by
the unfamiliar appearance of this room which he had never before
entered. It was late in the afternoon, and Helen was standing by the
figure of a child upon which she had been working. She gave him her
hand impulsively, forgetting that the fingers were stained with clay.

"I beg your pardon," she said.

"It is no matter," he returned, and the commonplace phrases bridged the
awkwardness which belongs to the meeting of two people whose minds are
full of intense feeling which they are not prepared to speak. Helen led
him toward another modelling stand.

"I want you to see this bust," she remarked. "It's quite in the manner
which you used to say was my best."

He stood watching her with a swelling heart as she removed the damp
wrappings which kept the clay moist. Keen in the minds of both was the
knowledge that now there were no barriers between them; that the time
had come at last when they were free to love each other and to unite
their lives. The closeness of Ninitta's death kept this wholly from
their words, but it could not banish the exultation, so sharp as to be
almost pain, which would arise from the mere fact of their being
together. Both understood that however great the sorrow at her death
which he was too noble-hearted not to feel, he must rejoice in the
right to follow the dictates of his love at last.

He forced himself to examine the bust critically, and to speak of it
calmly; but he soon turned away from it, and stood looking at her a
moment, as if trying to find speech in which to phrase what he had come
to say. She waited for him to speak, meeting his glance frankly. Her
head was thrown backward a little, and he noted with pitying eagerness
that she was paler than of old, and that there were dark circles
beneath her eyes. He thought of the years in which their lives had been
separated, and sorrow for her suffering made his heart swell.

"Helen," he said, "I have come to ask a favor. I want you to look after
Nino a little. He has been given up to servants too much, and I am
perfectly helpless when it comes to managing his nurse. Is there any
way in which you can do anything for him?"

"Of course there is," she answered. "I will come in and see him every
day and find out how things go with him; then, if anything is wrong, I
can let you know."

"Thank you," he returned simply. "I was sure you would help me. But do
you think," he added, hesitating, "that it will be in any way awkward
for you?"

She smiled on him and she could not keep out of her eyes the joy she
felt at being able to serve him.

"Do you think," was her reply, "that I am likely to let that
consideration stand in my way? It is rather late in life for me to
begin to let conventionality interfere with what I think it right to
do. Besides," she continued, dropping her eyes, though without a shade
of self-consciousness, "I shall go when you are at the studio."

"And it will not be too much trouble?"

"I shall love to do what I can for Nino."

"I thank you," he said again.

Then without more words he held out his hand.

"Good-night," he said.

"Good-night," she repeated.