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 theAmerica," 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 saidMr. 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'snaivete.
"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 forAmerica. 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 hewished 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 flowersRound 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 eachother and we have made that love simply a means of torture. My God!Helen, the besotted idiots that fling themselves under the wheels ofJuggernaut 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.
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 odiousDr. 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 theFenton'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.
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 ofFatimawas 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."
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 defendPuritanism 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 theAmerica?" 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 choseStanton 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 fromMiss 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'sproteges."
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 theAmerica, 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.