Chapter 14

"I don't see that," objected another. "Isn't religion the expression of the longings of the soul, or whatever there is in us we call soul? I can't say it well, but it seems to me you talk of religions, not religion."

"People seldom take the trouble to make that distinction. He who attacks any of the religions is generally set down as striking at religion itself."

"Religion," returned Bently, "is the expression of fear, and nothing else, if you sift it to the bottom. Knowledge kills so-called religion as surely as it does those lower forms of belief which it is nowadays the fashion to dub superstition. It is precisely the same feeling that builds churches and that rhymes the country hag's charms. Fairies and saints are double and twisted cousins, after all."

"But religion," persisted the German, "is more than the expression of fear; it is the embodiment of the aspirations of mankind; of the instinct and desire for worship."

"For worshipping something," amended Tom. "That is the same thing differently phrased."

"No, it isn't, either. To yearn for the higher is not to show that we fear it, but that we long to grow like it. It is a confession of incompleteness, of weakness, I grant you; but a thousand times no to your calling it fear."

"I confess to having been hasty, and modify my words so far as to say; an expression of fear or weakness."

"Is there then any shame in acknowledging weakness?" demanded the German, pushing him as hard as he was able. "It certainly is honest."

"Is there any shame to formulating fear?" retorted the other, deftly evading him.

"Then see how religion always appeals to art to help out its ultimate expression," observed Rangely.

"And how it has failed," added Bently, "when it has not had art to help it. Puritanism tried to get on without art, and where is Puritanism? You couldn't find a trace of it, if it hadn't come down on its marrow-bones and begged art to build its churches, compose its music, and regulate its rituals."

"It is no more fair to say that," objected another Pagan, doggedly, "than to say that art has gone to religion for help. Their accounts are pretty evenly balanced."

"Nonsense!" Rangely returned. "Art has never gained by being religious, but by being art; but religion owes its hold largely to the help art has given it."

"And it has paid its debts by blackguarding art from every pulpit it has builded for it."

"As Fenton used to say," Ainsworth remarked, "art has been used as the sugar-coating to the bitter pill of religion."

"Oh, Fenton again," Bently exclaimed impatiently. "What did you bring him up for? Who the devil would have thought Fenton would have turned out so?"

"I can tell you a piece of news," said Rangely. "The Election Committee blackballed Calvin this afternoon."

"Good!" cried they all; and some body added: "But Fenton said he'd resign if Calvin wasn't elected."

"Resign," echoed Rangely, "I guess he'll have to. He's been sent to Coventry by half the Club now for that Graves affair."

"The Graves affair?" some one queried. "What's that? What else has he been doing? If a man starts to go to the devil, it does seem as if he never could get ahead fast enough."

"Miss Graves was going to buy one of Flackerman's pictures, and heaven knows he needs the money; and Fenton, who has always pretended to be Flack's friend, talked her into taking one of his instead; or rather he got Calvin to go to her and do it. It was a stunning Flackerman, too; and we were all rejoicing over his luck."

"I would not be too ready to believe that story," Grant Herman said. "I don't think Fenton's gone utterly to the bad all at once. He's living expensively, they say, and possibly he let Calvin go to Miss Graves; but I don't believe Arthur ever originated that sneaking scheme, and I shouldn't be surprised if he never knew the rights of the case."

"He's done what so many artists have been bullied into doing before," Ainsworth observed. "If he has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, that is precisely what the patrons of art in this country demand that every man shall do who comes here. I could tell you of a dozen good fellows who've been spoiled in that way. I am far enough outside to look on in an unbiased way; but they treat us architects in the same fashion. Lots of the most rubbishy and conventional men we have, started out to be fair and work from conviction; and they simply had the choice between subservience and starvation, and cases of the choice of death from starvation haven't been over plenty."

"Oh, a man is known by the tailor he keeps," threw in Rangely; "especially if he doesn't pay him."

"It's all a game of cut-throat," Bently remarked philosophically; "art and business alike."

"I should hate to have my throat cut," observed the German Pagan in a matter of fact tone; "it must let a dreadful draught into the system."

"Oh, if you were beheaded," cried Rangely, "you'd turn into a capital beer fountain, so your friends would find some consolation, even in your loss."

A diversion was caused here by the production of a splendid Japanese punch-bowl, supported upon a teakwood stand. In it the host proceeded to brew a potent and steaming mixture, whose fragrance must have delighted the jocund gods of jollity and laughter. Tom was notorious for being chronically in pecuniary difficulties, but he was always adding to his collection of _bibelots_, and he never was known to lack the means of concocting a glorious punch.

"Ye gods!" exclaimed Ainsworth, "how good that smells. It almost overcomes the general mustiness of Tom's den here, which usually has all the odors of the Ghetto from which his things are dragged."

"Casper is intoxicated already with the mere fumes," retorted Bently good humoredly. "He's bound to fill a drunkard's grave sooner or later."

"No; I never shall," chuckled the other. "I'm altogether too good natured to crowd the drunkard out."

This sally was received with applause, and the glasses being filled, the usual toasts to the goddess Pasht and to art were drank.

"And to our seven," went on Herman, holding up his glass, and going on with the formula they had, half unconsciously, fallen into the habit of using, although they made no pretense of having a ritual.

But he set his glass down untasted, suddenly remembering that their ranks were broken, and the others followed his example.

"The difference between religion and art," broke out Rangely, hurriedly, to cover the awkward silence which followed, "is that religion is a matter of tradition, of convention; it rests upon authority, while art springs from inner conviction."

"Sophistry," retorted the German, picking up the gauntlet; "there have been a good many things said here to-night which sound well but won't stand fire. It is precisely for following conventions in art that we blame Fenton."

"And that proves my point."

"No, it doesn't; there's as much art that depends upon tradition as there is religion."

"No," replied Rangely. "In so far as art gets its inspiration from fossil tradition it is lifeless and indeed ceases to be art. Religion presupposes something exterior; while art is the outgrowth of the individual's own mind, the best expression of his inner strength."

"Religion," Herman threw in, "demands the existence of the unknown; art only the existence of the inexpressible."

"Yet art devotes itself to expression."

"Yes, but more to suggesting. It phrases the possible so as to suggest that which is above and beyond expression, yet toward which it helps the emotions and the imagination. I think a man's soul a matter of very little moment as compared to his imagination, and it is because art ministers to the latter that I place it above religion."

The talk was diverted here by some laughing remark which led on to a train of gay badinage. The German tried to bring the conversation back to serious levels, but in vain.

"Oh, what fustian we've given ourselves up to to-night," laughed Rangely.

"It amuses me to hear you fellows discuss religion," Tom Bently observed. "You wander round the subject as aimlessly as the young women in the first half hour of a Harvard symphony concert."

"Never you mind, Bently," rejoined Ainsworth. "You are sure of coming out all right; the gods are bound to protect humbug, for on it depends their own existence."

They drifted in little groups to different parts of the studio, admiring this or that bit of grace or beauty. Then the German, who was a professional musician, tuned an old mandolin with which a Venetian lover some star-lit night centuries ago, may have serenaded his loved one from his gondola; and to its trembling accompaniment sang a quaint chansonette, his Teutonic accent making havoc among its liquid Italian syllables. Then Rangely possessed himself of a strange African instrument, a crooked gourd, hollowed and strung with twisted tree fibers, and joined to the notes of the mandolin, its weird, cicada-like harshness. The duet moved Bently to clear a miscellaneous collection of articles from the lid of a spinnet of the time of Louis XIV., upon which be-powdered and be-patched dames, long forgotten, had strummed pretty little tinkling tunes, while all about them other marionette-like ladies and gallants played at little tinkling loves, as pretty and as empty.

The three instruments, so strangely matched, went off together in a variety of music, imparting to every thing an uncanny, ghostly flavor, as if these airs came in wild echoes from the shores of some dead past.

"Oh, stop that," Herman cried, at last. "It's too melancholy. Your instruments are all dead; and it's no use trying to get live music out of them."

For reply the German led off in a drearisome minor folk-tune, Rangely and Bently improvising their parts with some skill, albeit not always with perfect harmony.

"Ye Gods!" cried Ainsworth, seizing the mandolin out of the player's grasp. "Is this a Hottentot funeral? Here, Fred, give me that diabolical gourd; it is haunted by the soul of a Caffre medicine man."

"I say, fellows," spoke Rangely, as the din subsided, "I move we make this a funeral, by breaking up the Pagans. Of course there is nothing to hinder our meeting round at each other's places whenever we want to; but we've either got to turn Fenton out or break up. I, for one, am coward enough to prefer to break up."

"So say I," said Herman. "When once a circle like this is broken, there is an end of it. It can't be patched together."

They looked at each other in silence a moment. To disband seemed like an acknowledgment of defeat. Many another band of ardent souls has known the feeling, with its dreary ache, although it oftener happens that a circle of this kind disappears by the gradual dropping away of its numbers one by one rather than that its members are brought face to face with the necessity of owning that its existence had resulted in failure. Whatever their faults and extravagances, whatever their errors and intolerance, they were sincere, self sacrificing and ardent beyond the men who made up the world about them; a group of eager lovers of truth and art who had been drawn together by mutual aims and enthusiasms. Their fierceness had been in defense of honesty and sincerity, their disinterestedness was attested by the fact that any one of them might have made his peace with Philistia and been rewarded for his complaisance had he so chosen. Doubtless they had their faults and foibles, yet their comradeship, in its essential purport had been true and noble.

They in no wise abandoned their aims in agreeing with the proposition to disband, but about their fellowship had been a certain un-phrased tenderness, at which, if put in word, any one of them might have scoffed, yet which nevertheless they all felt strongly in their secret hearts, and all were conscious that after this defection of Fenton, the circle could never be perfect again. They did not discuss the matter now, but in the interval of silence each acknowledged to himself that to disband was best; and briefly each gave his assent; all soberly, some almost gruffly.

And so it came about that the goddess Pasht lost her last band of followers, and the Pagans assembled no more forever.

XXXVI.

AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND. Merchant of Venice; v.--2.

"Very likely you cannot see it," Arthur Fenton said, striking in the background of a portrait with vicious roughness. "Women and brutes differ from men in lacking reason; if you were logical you'd see."

"See that you are right in selling your convictions for patronage," Helen returned gravely, ignoring the insult. "Then I am glad I am not logical."

"If you choose to put it that way," he retorted doggedly, "I must still say yes."

It was Friday morning, and Helen was to sail the next day. She had come to Fenton's studio to bid him good-by, knowing that they should have that to say which could not be freely spoken before Edith, and yet not choosing to have him come to her own house without his wife.

"Poverty," he went on aggressively, "is nature's protest against civilization, and still more against art. I am bound to fight nature on her own ground, am I not?"

"If I were a little more orthodox," she replied, "I might quote Scripture upon life's being some thing more than meat. Oh, Arthur, what is the use of all this fencing? All that is asked of you is to be honest; and to be honest the life of an artist in America to-day must be a protest against dominant Philistinism; nobody has ever acknowledged that oftener or more emphatically than you have."

"But the artists," returned he, not meeting her eyes, "are too self-centered. Look at the Pagans; what efforts have they ever made to win society? Society is ready enough to take them in."

"Arthur! Is it you who say that? To quote yourself against yourself, 'every work of art is an effort to conquer Philistinism.' Patronage seems already to have sucked the life out of you."

"You may say what you like," Fenton remarked defensively; "you cannot make me angry."

"That may be your misfortune," rejoined she sadly, "but I fear it is your fault."

"The sin of a thing," he said, putting down his brushes impatiently, "oftener consists in regarding it as a sin than in the thing itself."

He went to the round window, for his studio was high up in the building, and removed the Japanese umbrella which served as its screen. He threw himself upon a pile of cushions, regarding darkly the tops of the trees in the Old Granary burying-ground opposite.

"_Que voulez-vous_?" he demanded coolly, after a moment's silence. "You are unreasonable; you always are. I must live. I don't know why you have a right to object to that. I have married a wife who is well connected, and I always meant to make her connections help me, Philistines or not. Even the godly Israelites made a virtue of spoiling the Egyptians."

"But that was in departing from their country."

"We won't argue," the artist declared sulkily. "Argument is only disputing about definitions, and we should never agree. I don't expect you to think I'm right. As a matter of fact I have my doubts myself. You might at least allow me the satisfaction of humbugging myself if I am able."

She regarded him sadly. The chance remarks about Edith's relatives seemed to throw a new and sinister light upon the reasons of his marriage. She wondered if she had not been mistaken in following her impulse to come here, and whether words could effect any thing.

"But Edith?" she said at length, and as if half to herself; "does not her honesty rebuke you? Don't you feel unworthy of her?"

"Well, and if her severe virtue does repel me?" he asked, a hard look coming into his face, "am I to blame for that also?"

"You are speaking of your wife!"

"_C'est vrai_" with a shrug, "but the one lie I never tell to or of any woman is that my passion for her will be eternal, and I am long ago tired of Edith. Her innocence bores me. She urges me, too, to do precisely the things you condemn. And after all what is my crime? Simply that I am following the intelligence of the majority instead of being governed by the growls of the discontented minority, any one of whom would be glad of the chance to follow my example."

"It is not with whom you side," Helen answered. "It is the simple question of having the courage of your convictions. The dry rot of hypocrisy is ruining you. I can see Peter Calvin's smirk in every brush mark of your canvas there!"

For reply he threw a brush at the picture upon the easel. Then he sat upright in his cushions and faced her.

"Well," he ejaculated, half-angrily, half bitterly, "you are right. You cannot scorn me half as much as I scorn myself, and have ever since I asked Edith Caldwell to marry me. I meant then to make my peace with the Philistines!"

He sprang to his feet impetuously and shook himself as if to shake off some disgusting touch.

"I like a comfortable home at the West End," he continued impetuously, "far better than I do dreary bachelor lodgings, now here, now there. I prefer faring sumptuously every day, to dining in an attic. Whatever else may be said of that terrible Calvin--my God! Helen, how I would like to choke him!--he certainly has plenty of money, and he patronizes me beautifully."

He walked up to the easel and regarded the half-finished portrait contemptuously.

"Honesty," he began again with cool irony, "is doubtless a charming thing for digestive purposes, but it is a luxury too expensive for me. The gods in this country bid for shams, and shams I purpose giving them. I am not sure I shall not go into chromos eventually. I don't enjoy this especially, but after all that is a mere matter of standards, and I have resolved to change mine, so that I shall end by enjoying or even honoring my eminently respectable self. As for art, she is a jade that can't give her lovers even a fire to sit by while they woo her. I'm sorry for her, but I don't see clearly how I can help her by sitting down to starve in her company; so I've made friends with the mammon of unrighteousness--you see my orthodox education was not wholly lost upon me! _Voila tout!_ Honesty, I say, is for the most part cant, and at any rate only a relative term. I prefer substantial good. If you despise me, _tant pis pour_--one of us; whichever you choose."

He spoke defiantly, but faltered a little at the last words. She rose as he finished.

"Good-by," she said. "You have taught me forever to distrust my own judgments, for I had mistaken you for a man! I am sorry that I have ever known you. You lower my respect for all the race."

"But I acknowledge my faults."

"Acknowledge!" she retorted in disdain. "What of that? Acknowledgment is not reparation, though many try to make it so."

She walked towards the door, but he reached it first and laid his hand upon the latch.

"You are going away," he said. "Who knows when we shall ever meet again. At least remember that I condemn myself as sharply as you can."

"That is the degradation of it," was her retort, her eyes blazing at him. "If you could plead ignorance, I could pity you."

"Edith is a saint," he went on, not heeding, "but her good is my evil. I do not plead it as an excuse; I have and I want no excuse: but it is true that temptation could come to me in no shape so insidious as through her sincerity."

"Then you will be honest!" pleaded Helen.

"I do not say that. I think I shall go on as I am; but I have changed my idea of my epitaph. It shall be only the word 'Pardon.'"

"Your old one was better," she retorted stingingly, "and better than either would be a blank! Let me pass!"

XXXVII.

FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL AND EVER. Richard II.; ii.--2.

The outward bound steamer was almost ready to sail, and all the bustle attendant upon departure of an ocean craft eddied about three people who stood in a half-sheltered nook upon the wharf. They were saying little. Both Grant Herman and Ninitta kept their eyes fixed upon Helen, while her glance was cast to the ground, save when she raised her head in speaking.

The Italian from time to time took Helen's hand in hers and kissed it fondly.

"I pray the Madonna for you every night," she whispered in her native tongue, "that she will give you a safe voyage."

The sculptor watched all that went on about them, waiting with some inward impatience for the moment when the duty of escorting Mrs. Greyson on board would give him an opportunity of being a moment alone with her.

"We shall miss you much," he said, feeling that any thing would be better than the silence which hedged them in amid the noisy bustle of the throng. "We shall not soon fill your place, shall we, Ninitta?"

He did not listen to the eager answer; his eyes were fixed upon Helen's face, and for her alone he had ears.

"Yes," he said again with nervous platitude, when once more they had lapsed into the silence he found it so hard to bear; "neither my wife nor myself has any friend to take your place."

Some faint accent in the tone in which he referred to his three hours' bride made the widow look up suddenly. To the question in her eyes his glance gave no answer, and for the moment a feeling of despair overcame her. Had she given him up only to the end that his life should be miserable; had she forced him into a marriage whose bonds would gall and chafe him with more deadly and festering wounds as time went on?

But all these questionings Helen had answered with stern bravery during the sad wakeful nights and lonely days just past. She had first convinced herself that it was right that Herman should redeem his old-time pledge to Ninitta, and after that she forced herself to the bitterer task of realizing that when time had obliterated somewhat the clearness of her own image in the sculptor's heart, something of his old affection for the Italian might be rekindled in his generous, warm nature, always tenderly chivalrous towards woman, and sure to prove doubly so to one dependent upon him. It was hard, but Helen unflinchingly analyzed the nature of her lover, and while she could not believe that he would ever feel for his wife the grand passion which she had herself inspired in his breast, she saw for him a tranquil future in which his wife's devotion would be met with enduring, even with increasing affection, which if not love, would be so like it that Ninitta, at least, would never distinguish; and in which her husband would find comfort and warmth, if not fire and aspiration.

She had a harder struggle when the thought came to her, "Have I not led him into the one thing he most dreads and despises, an act of insincerity? Can a loveless marriage be honest?" But she answered her doubting heart; "No; he has told Ninitta that he does not love her as of old, and he is not deceiving her. It is my own selfishness that puts this thought into my mind." It may be that Helen was wrong, for the influence of her Puritan training had left a strong impress upon her moral sense in a regard for the sanctity of a pledge, especially to its spirit rather than its letter, so deep as to be almost morbid; yet at least she was self sacrificing and never more truly consistent than in the seeming inconsistency of urging this marriage.

"Come," was Herman's word, almost a command, when the crowd upon the steamer's deck began definitely to separate into those who were to go and those who remained. "You must go aboard. Ninitta, stand just where you are until I come back. I will be gone only an instant."

Helen turned and kissed Ninitta, a sharp pang stabbing her very soul, as the thought came to her: "He will love her; she is his wife, and he will learn to love her!" Then she put her arm upon Herman's in silence.