Chapter 13

In art especially the Pagans demanded the most absolute surrender of self to truth; and it should be added that they defined truth exactly as Helen did, "that which one sincerely believes." They had no condemnation too severe or sweeping for the artist who worshipped the golden gods of Philistia by following popular conventions at the expense of his honest art ideals. It is not impossible that they carried this feeling to extremes sometimes, suspecting every thing which was stamped with popular approval, but in the main at least their standard was of the highest and their lives conformed well to it. Measured by the creeds they rejected, they might often enough be found wanting; tried by their own, there had never been an apostate among them until the defection of Fenton.

No one had been more bitter and outspoken in his condemnation of Mr. Calvin and of what he represented than Arthur Fenton. Many a time he had entertained Helen with stories of the presumption and the ignorance of this man whom now he was receiving into his friendship, or, more properly, in whose train of sycophants he had taken his place.

Helen could not forgive him. Leaving dinner untasted, she sat with burning cheeks in the darkness, mourning over the apostacy of the man who had been her warmest friend.

XXXIII.

A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN. Love's Labor's Lost; i.--1.

Dr. Ashton had been in his grave several weeks. Life had gone on much as usual in Boston, with the bickerings of small souls the gaping imitations of the mob, the carping of the self-appointed critics, and the earnest endeavor of the honest and inspired workers, who leaven the lump of modern civilization.

Among the Pagans the nomination of Mr. Calvin to the St. Filipe Club by Arthur Fenton had been received with a bitterness born of a feeling of outraged confidence. They were to-night to meet in Tom Bently's studio, and Fenton, who had no intention of being present, was yet keenly conscious of what the talk there concerning him would be. He was glum and moody at dinner, and Edith, who knew that this was Pagan night, watched him wistfully. She hoped to win him away from friends and acquaintances who seemed to her dangerous. Perfectly honest and ready to lay down her life for her husband, she was yet urging him into paths which he felt it to be degradation to walk, since they led him away from sincerity. She had no means of knowing how his sudden championship of Mr. Calvin was regarded. Her own relations to art had been those of pretty amateurishness. She had been bred to believe in conventionality, and the flavor of Bohemianism alarmed and repelled her.

To-night she had put on her most becoming dress, she had ordered the dinner with especial reference to her husband's tastes, and she exerted herself to be as entertaining and attractive as lay in her power. She even allowed herself the innocent ruse of delaying dinner a little, that it might be later before Arthur could be ready to go out; and when the answer to her timid hope that he was to be at home that evening, was in the affirmative, her foolish, tender heart fluttered with delighted hope that she was influencing him to shake off his irregular associations.

He was rather gloomy and silent all the evening, brooding of the Pagans, from whose meetings he had never before been absent, and of Helen, and what she would think. Edith tried all her arts and wiles to make him forget the pleasure he was losing, and she partly succeeded, since her attentions and endearments chimed in with the train of thought by which he was endeavoring to prove to his own satisfaction that he was the most virtuous of men, and that his swearing allegiance to Philistinism, was a noble example of a transgressor willing to confess and abjure his faults. He accepted his wife's attentions as eminently fitting under the circumstances, and could he have forgotten the Pagans and Helen, he might almost have been comfortable. More than once in the old days he had found it hard to face Mrs. Greyson's clear eyes, which saw so readily through shams, and now while he was able to work himself into a defensive attitude towards all others of his old friends, he felt a horrible humiliation in the consciousness that Helen was sure to know of his course and to understand all its weakness.

It occurred to him, too, that Helen had avoided him of late. Since the death of Dr. Ashton, he had scarcely seen her, although she was often with his wife. He knew from Edith that she was soon to go abroad, and he wondered if the wish to escape him had any share in bringing her to this decision.

He tormented himself with speculations and memories until he could endure it no longer. He must have comfort; his wounded self-sufficiency craved the balm of approval, and although he was contemptuously conscious of his own weakness, he turned to Edith to seek admiration and praise.

"So you are glad that I am not going to the Pagans to-night," he said to her, as they sat before the fire, for the evening was damp and chilly.

"Very glad," she answered, leaving her chair to come and sit upon a low hassock by his knee. "It was so good of you."

She made a beautiful picture as she sat there, her long dress of cardinal and stone gray silk gathered in waves about her, the Elizabethan ruffle setting off her shapely head and slender neck, while the soft, yellow old lace showed how clear was the tone of her skin. Her pure, sweet face, with its appealing dark eyes, was turned upward to her husband's, in an expression at once wistful and full of love. Edith had always a highbred air, and to-night her attitude and expression added the one charm of warmth and softness needed to make her most lovely and moving.

"You doubtless have some excellent reason," remarked Arthur smiling down on her.

"I am afraid of them; they are in arms against every thing that is acknowledged to be good."

"And yet they are the most honest men I ever knew," he returned, half musing, and with a little pleased sense of his magnanimity in saying this at a moment when they were probably abusing him.

"I don't know, Arthur. Perhaps they may be honest, but I am sure it is not good for you to be with them. They are so sure that their false views of life are true."

The little sting in the implication that he was not able to resist the influence which had surrounded him was forgotten in the satisfactory view which his wife took of the real value of the judgments of the Pagans. He knew how little she understood them. With every premise upon which her conclusions were founded he disagreed, yet he said to himself that Edith was right; that the Pagans were quite too infallible about every thing. They would have him grope along poor and unknown, he argued with himself, simply for the sake of standing in the position of chronic rebuke to established authorities; with only now and then a chance to get a hearing upon what they assumed to be the true theory of art. What they believed--ah! there after all was the weakness of the whole. What ground had they for their belief? Did he himself really believe any thing, or had he a right to assert in any matter a positive conviction? And even if they or he asserted never so strongly, what sort of a test of truth was that? After all the Philistines, the Calvins, were as likely to be right as were a set of discontented if not disappointed artists; men whose natures would never allow them to be satisfied with any existing state of things, since it would inevitably differ from their dreamy ideals. And it was certainly true that the weight of authority and of numbers was with the Philistines.

"Perhaps you are right, Edith," he said aloud. "I hope so at least, for they are probably indignant enough with me."

"With you? Why?"

"Oh, they choose to think I went over to Philistia when I proposed Mr. Calvin for the St. Filipe. I'm sure I don't see why I haven't a right to propose whom I please."

"But Mr. Calvin, Arthur," responded Edith, who regarded that gentleman as one of the art gods of Boston. "I should think any body would be proud to propose him. Why, he is one of the most distinguished men in the city."

Her husband did not answer for a moment. He looked into the fire and watched his inner consciousness adapt itself to this view of the case, which than himself no one had condemned more bitterly. Yet it was the theory upon which it was necessary to rest did he expect to arrive at any comfort in the course of supporting Mr. Calvin, which he had already pursued so far that retreat was impossible. Yes, he assured himself, he could even accept this. And why not? Did not common opinion confirm it; and however much common opinion might be sneered at, it was surely the voice of the common sense of the world.

He looked down at his wife, who looked back smiling proudly. He realized how pure, how tender, how true she was. He knew, too, that she was daily and hourly weaving about him bands which held him captive to beliefs which though true to her were the veriest falsehoods to him; and that only his love of ease, his fatal complaisance, prevented his rending these cords as did Samson the new ropes of the Philistines. He realized that he was sacrificing his manhood, that he was bartering his convictions for flattery and ease by allying himself to Calvin and his following. He recalled Helen's remark that what is called being honest with one's self is often the subtlest form of hypocrisy, and he did not spare himself a single pang of self-humiliation and contempt; and then, when he was full to the throat with self-loathing, he let his sensuous, self-loving nature devise excuse and soothe his wounded vanity.

He looked into the fire with a smile of mingled bitterness and complacency, half ashamed, half amused at the view which introspection gave him.

But whenever into his musings came the thought of Helen it rankled like a poisoned barb. For he secretly believed that Helen loved him, and although if a man humiliates himself in the eyes of the woman he loves it is as bitter as death; yet to prove unworthy in the sight of her who hopelessly loves him, contains a more subtly envenomed shaft, which wounds that most sensitive spot in a sensuous man's nature--his vanity.

XXXIV.

HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY. Love's Labor's Lost; i.--I.

That evening Helen too sat at home, alone and full of resistless thoughts.

She had put the finishing touches to the _Flight of the Months_, completing the work with scarcely less success than at first, and in three days she was to sail for Europe. She had not allowed Dr. Ashton's death to interrupt her work, the necessity of avoiding unpleasant gossip which would be provoked by the disclosure of her relations with the dead man, being sufficient reason why she should not change her outward life. She quietly and rapidly completed the preparations for departure, and already the feeling of severance from familiar scenes cast its sadness over her.

Leaving the studio to-day, she had gone down to speak with Herman, whom she wished to take the responsibility of the firing of the bas-relief. When she had finished this errand she turned to a figure in terra-cotta whose freshness showed that it had but recently come from the kiln.

"What is this?" she asked. "I have never seen it."

"It is a Pasht," the sculptor returned. "I modeled it as a wedding present for Arthur Fenton, but luckily I did not get it done in time."

"Why 'luckily?'"

"Because I should be sorry to have given him any thing so closely connected with the Pagans, as things have turned out."

Helen did not need to ask explanations of these words, although she did not know how complete the breach between Fenton and his former friends had become.

"I am glad I am going away," she exclaimed with a sigh.

"Going away?" he echoed, dropping his modeling tools.

"Yes, I sail Saturday."

She spoke with perfect composure, yet her glance was averted. She was painfully conscious of having concealed the fact from him until this moment.

He came towards her, his eyes fixed upon her face.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, almost fiercely. "Why do you go?"

"I mean to study in Rome," she replied faintly. "I always told you that I hoped to go some day."

"But why do you go now? Why have you concealed it from me? Are you afraid of my--of my love? If any one must go it should be I; I have no right to drive you away."

"You are not driving me away; I--it is better that I should go."

"But why go now? Now you are free, and I have a right to claim you."

"No," Helen said in a voice suddenly firm, but which yet showed her inward agitation, "no; there is Ninitta. I have suffered too much myself to be willing to try to come to happiness over any woman's heart. It is better that I should go."

"Ninitta!" Herman burst out. "She has no claim; she will not even care; she--"

"No," interrupted Helen, laying her hand upon his arm. "You cannot say that; you know it is not true. You can see as well as I that Ninitta is pining her life out over your neglect. We are not free to break her heart when you yourself taught her to love."

"I have never been unkind to her," he said, a little defiantly; "except perhaps when she acted like a mad woman and broke your figures."

"In love," returned Helen, smiling faintly, and glad to take refuge in generalities, "sins of commission, as compared with the deadly sin of omission, are mere venial offenses. It is not what you have done, but what you have left undone."

"But what can I do? I cannot force myself to love her?"

"You have made her love you."

"But I outgrew her centuries ago."

"The price of growth is always to outgrow," replied Helen.

She was struggling hard to keep the conversation away from dangerous levels. She felt that she must seem heartless, but none the less she went on bravely.

"And after all what is outgrowing? It is a question of moods, of--"

But her courage failed her. Her voice trembled, she turned away from him and walked down the studio, stopping here and there as if to examine a cast or a figure, invisible through the tears which welled up in her eyes. The sculptor followed close behind her, until she put her hand upon the great Oran rug which hung before the door.

"Then you leave me," he broke out bitterly. "You make Ninitta a pretext for escaping me. You might have told me that you did not care for me. I would not have molested you."

She turned to him suddenly, and he was startled by the whiteness of her face, for she was pale to the very lips.

"Do you think it is easy for me to go," she cried passionately, "to give you up when I love you! You should help me, not make it harder. Isn't it better to part now while we have nothing to regret than to live with a wrong between us?"

"But what wrong will be between us? Surely that boyish mistake need not blight both our lives."

"Can we help it?" she asked sadly.

"We will help it! Are we merely puppets then, to be bandied about helplessly? I told her I loved her; it is no longer true, and why is the pledge that followed binding?"

"It is not simply that you gave her your word," Helen returned, struggling bravely with herself; "it is that you made her love you, and that obligation you can never shake off. Oh, it is because you are too noble to take a woman's love and then trample upon it, that I love you--that you fill my heart."

She poured out the words, her eyes blazing, her splendid form dilated, her arms involuntarily extended towards him. He took her into his embrace; not hastily, not wildly; but with a slow, irresistible movement that had in it something of solemnity. He showered kisses upon her hair, her forehead, her lips; he pressed her to his bosom as if he would absorb her into himself.

"My darling, my darling," he said, in a hoarse, fiery whisper, "I cannot give you up! Think how lonely I am; how I love you!"

She put up her face and kissed him with a long, clinging kiss; then she freed herself from his arms. They stood face to face, her eyes appealing, until his glance fell before hers.

"Yes," he said in a voice so low that she bent forward to listen, "yes; you must be right."

"I am right," she responded sadly, "I have fought against it too much not to be sure of that."

"It is an odd way of proving my love for you to give you up," continued Herman, with a new accent of bitterness in his voice. "Oh, the folly of that boyish passion!"

He strode away from her, as she leaned panting against a modeling stand. The darkness was gathering so rapidly that when he turned back his face came out of the gloom like a surprise.

"My reward," he said, "must be that you love me; but that very reward makes it harder to deserve it. I am sure that we would be wiser and happier if we had no scruples to hamper us."

"But we have," was her response; "to take your own words, we are not mere puppets."

Again he walked away from her, and for a few moments there was no sound but that of his heavy footsteps, which seemed to make the silence more solemn and penetrating.

"I will do whatever you ask," he burst out suddenly. "I will even marry her if you wish."

"I ask nothing. It is not I but your convictions you should follow. I am not even able to advise. Your own instincts are better and nobler than any thing I can say to you." She stopped and choked back a sob. "Oh, Grant, it is so hard!" she cried.

She had never used that name before, and it so thrilled him with joy and pain that he made an impulsive movement as if once more to take her in his arms; but she lifted her hand with a gesture of negation.

"I have been tempted as well as you," she continued, "I have said to myself a thousand times that love justified all, and that these theories were too fine spun. I could not keep the thought of you down even when I first knew I was a widow, and I said over and over to myself that now no one stood between us. I knew it was no use, but I lay awake in the night and tried to prove to myself that Ninitta had no claim,--but, oh! you are too much to me for me to be willing that you should do what we both know is wrong and cruel. I can endure anything better than that you should not always be my ideal; and I should hate myself if I tempted you to wrong."

"What I am," he said brokenly, moved most of all by the tears upon her cheeks, "is nothing. You have beaten this temptation, not I; I would have done any thing if you had encouraged me. I am a very ordinary mortal, Helen, when one really knows my littleness."

She smiled through her tears at him.

"You shall not abuse yourself;" she replied. "I will not have it."

There was not much further said between them. They remained together until the dusk filled the studio, and it looked again like a ghost-world as on the morning they two had come into it to see the dead form modeled in red clay. Perhaps it was upon this remembrance that at length Mrs. Greyson said:

"Will you give me, before I go to Europe, that figure you showed me?"

"I will give you any thing you ask," he answered; "I wish I might add myself. Is it right," he added, with sudden fire, "for me to tie myself to that model girl? Am I worth nothing better than that?"

"You are worth the best woman on earth; but--oh I cannot argue it, but I feel it; I am sure that it cannot be right to deny the claim which you yourself gave her, Grant. I know by myself what it would be to lose you."

"But she is not the woman you are. Her feelings are those of an ignorant peasant; she--"

Helen laid her fingers lightly upon his lips.

"No," she said, "don't go on. We have said it all once. You are trying to out-argue your own convictions. I must go now. It is almost dark already."

She took a step or two towards the door and again laid her hand upon the rug _portiêre_. Then as by a common impulse they turned towards each other, and once more she was locked in his embrace.

And to-night, sitting alone in the dark, with dilated eyes, Helen felt still the ecstasy of that moment, but murmured to herself:

"It must not be again; I will not see him alone."

XXXV.

PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP. Othello; ii.--I.

Tom Bently's studio that night was a sight well worth seeing.

Tom had two rooms in Studio Building, opening into each other by folding doors, which were never known to be shut. The walls were hung with old French tapestry, its rich, soft colors harmonizing exquisitely with some dull-red velvet draperies from Venice. Bits of armor, some of them very splendid, were disposed here and there, while a wealth of _bric-à-brac_ enriched every nook and corner. In the doorway hung an old altar-lamp of silver, with a cup of ruby glass, and from various points depended other lamps of Moresque and antique shapes. A pair of tall brass flambeau-stands, spoil of a Belgian cathedral sacked a couple of centuries ago, upheld the heaviest candles Tom had been able to find, which smoked and flared most picturesquely.

Bently had traveled widely, every where picking up graceful and artistic trifles--stuffs from Algiers; rugs from Persia and Turkey; weapons from Tripoli and India and Tunis; musical instruments from Egypt and Spain; antiques from Greece and Germany and Italy; and pottery from every where. His studio was the envy of all his brother artists, although he himself growled about it profanely, declaring that he had so much rubbish about him that he could not work, yet nevertheless declining to part with a single object.

"I ought to clear the place out," he would say. "My pictures are getting to look like advertisements of an old clo' shop, and if a man doesn't change all his properties every year, the sapient critics say he has become mannered. But I can't let them go; or rather they won't let me go; they hang on like barnacles to an old hulk."

The Pagans were six that night, Fenton's place being unfilled. The delinquency of the absent artist was a good deal commented upon, yet always as if an effort were made to keep the subject out of the conversation. It came up again and again, and that not unnaturally, since it was necessarily in every man's thoughts.

"He's a mellifluous coward, now isn't he?" Bently remarked, with his usual picturesque disregard of the conventional use of words. "The average American couldn't have been more sneaking."

"He was always afraid of the rough grain of life," Rangely responded. "I always told him he was a born coward. He could never serve any cause that wouldn't give him a uniform of broadcloth. But he was born for something better than tagging after Calvin and his tribe, heaven knows."

"Bah!" went on Bently, "the bad taste of it! I could get over every thing else, but the bad taste of proving a sneak, and giving up every thing worth while."

Somebody threw in a quotation from Browning's _Lost Leader_, and then Grant Herman, trying to turn the conversation, took up Bently's remark.

"You're right, Tom," he said, "in your view of taste. Taste is sublimated morality. It is the appreciation of the proportion and fitness of all things in the universe, and of course it is above simple morality, for that is founded upon a partial view. Taste is the universal, where a system of morals is the local."

"Can't you say that of art?" asked Rangely. "I should think art is the universal, where religion is the provincial. A religion expresses the needs and the aspirations of a race or a country, while art embodies the aspirations and attributes of humanity."

"Good!" Bently responded. "That is better than I should have said it, but it's my belief, all the same. There are so few people who have imagination enough even to understand what one means by saying that art is the only thing in the world worth living for. Why, art is the supreme expression of humanity; the apotheosis of all the best there is in the race."