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.
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 theFatimaand 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 hisFatima, yet reflected that on the whole the value he had chosen better brought out the quality of the flesh-tones. What a splendid picture theFatimawas. 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 thebambino."
"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 thebambino.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 inPhedre.
"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.
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.
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.