Chapter 5

But to-day Ninitta was a different woman, changed by the agony of a night into which had been compressed the bitterness of years. She had been too sharply wounded at being greeted by a hand-shake in place of the too well remembered kisses, with commonplace kind inquiries instead of an embrace, not to realize at least how entirely the relations between herself and Herman were changed. She did not understand the alteration, it is true. To do that would have required not only a knowledge of facts of which she could have no cognizance, but far keener powers of reason than were centered in Ninitta's shapely head. Only of one thing she was sure; there the instinct of her sex stood her in good stead. She was convinced that some other woman had won the sculptor's love from her. When she came into Helen's studio this morning she watched sharply for some token which should show her the relations in which the two artists stood to each other; but she could detect nothing significant. Mrs. Greyson was intent only upon her work, and whatever the sculptor may have felt at the meeting of Helen and Ninitta, he made no outward sign.

The model showed a quickness of comprehension in taking the pose required, and the shoulder she bared was of so exquisite mold that Helen's keenest artistic powers were aroused. Ninitta understood the art of posing as a painter knows the use of brush and colors; she had for it an inborn capacity impossible except in the child of an art land. Moved by the inspiration of that most beautiful bust, Mrs. Greyson worked enthusiastically, scarcely noticing when her master left the room, an indication of indifference which the model did not fail to note.

XII.

WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED. Hamlet; iv.--7.

It was February, and the night but one before the day fixed for Arthur Fenton's marriage. He was spending the evening with Mrs. Greyson, and it chanced that Grant Herman and Fred Rangely were also there. The sculptor went seldom to the house of his pupil, and when he did visit her, he satisfied some fine, secret delicacy by taking always a friend with him. Helen was sufficiently Bohemian or sufficiently unworldly to care little if people criticised her way of living. She had inherited a small property which made her comfortable and independent; and she declined being hampered by a chaperon.

"My art is my chaperon," she wrote to an elderly relative who wished to come to Boston and matronize her. "A woman who is daring enough to be an artist is regarded as bold enough to take care of herself, I suppose. At least nobody troubles me, and I ask nothing more."

On the present occasion Arthur Fenton asked leave to light his cigar, and although Herman felt this something of a profanation, it was not long before he and Rangely added their wreaths to the smoke garlands which hung upon the air, and had not the hostess become somewhat accustomed to tobacco in foreign _ateliers,_ it is to be doubted if she could have complacently endured the fumes which arose.

All subjects of heaven and earth came drifting into the talk, and at length something evoked from Rangely his opinion of Emerson.

"Emerson was great," he said, "Emerson often recalled Goethe in Goethe's cooler and more intellectual moods; but Emerson lacked the loftiness of vice; he was eternally narrow."

"'The loftiness of vice,'" echoed the hostess. "What does that mean? It sounds vicious enough."

"Emerson," Rangely returned, "knew only half of life. He never had any conception of the passionate longing for vice _per se;_ the thrill, the glow which comes to some men at the splendid caress of sin in her most horrible shape. Do you see what I mean? He couldn't imagine the ecstasy that may lie in mere foulness."

"No," replied Helen, "I'm afraid I don't quite see. Though I am sure I ought to be shocked. Do you mean that he should have been vicious?"

"Certainly not; but it was his limitation not to be tempted; not to be able to project himself into a personality which riots in wickedness far more intensely than a saint follows righteousness."

"If you mean that he could not have been wicked if he tried, that, I own, was in a sense a limitation."

"Yes; and a fatal one. No man can be wholly great who understands only one half of human impulses."

"But what do you mean by wickedness?" demanded Herman, a little combatively.

"Oh," laughed Rangely, "I'm not to be entrapped into giving metaphysical and theological definitions. I mean what we are expected to call wickedness, conventionally speaking. I've an old cad of a parson in my new play and I am trying to decide if it will do to have him advocate a grand scheme for reforming the world by reversing definitions and calling those things men choose to do virtues, and dubbing whatever man detests, vices."

"That is rather more clever than orthodox," Helen laughed. "How is your play getting on, Mr. Rangely?"

"Oh, fairish, thank you. The trouble is that the drama went out of fashion long ago. First they replaced it by dresses and scenery, but now every thing has given way to souvenir programmes; so I've got to write up to a souvenir or I sha'n't make any thing out of the play."

"I hoped you were above such mercenary considerations."

"I am trying to make myself so," he retorted. "I think about three successful plays would be tonic enough to bring my conscience up to proper art levels."

Herman had taken little part in this colloquy, smoking in silence, and regarding his companions. Fenton had thus far been even more quiet, scarcely contributing a word to the conversation; and the sculptor's thoughts turned upon the handsome young fellow, sitting in one of his favorite twisted attitudes in a German chair, his beardless face paler than usual, though a red spot glowed in either cheek, and his dilated pupils betrayed his excitement. He was smoking steadily, but with little apparent knowledge of either his cigar or his surroundings.

"Upon my word," mused Herman. "A cheerful looking man for a bridegroom he is. If he were going to the scaffold he could hardly seem more melancholy. What in the world is the matter with him? I wonder if he has been dragged into a marriage he doesn't like. How Mrs. Greyson watches him."

Helen was indeed watching Fenton closely, although to a less keen observer than Herman her surveillance would hardly have been apparent. She, too, was thinking of Fenton's downcast air, and knowing him more intimately than did the sculptor, she reasoned less doubtfully, although perhaps not more accurately than the latter concerning what was passing in the mind of her silent friend.

"He surely loves Miss Caldwell," she thought, "but he is so foolish. He is thinking now that he will never meet these comrades again as an unhampered man. He feels just now all he is giving up. I should like him better to remember what he is gaining. Are all men inherently selfish, I wonder. It is well for Miss Caldwell's peace of mind that she cannot see him now. Perhaps when he is with her he sees only the other side; I am sure I hope so."

She turned away with a sigh, and saw Herman looking at her. Their eyes met in one of those brief glances of intelligence which serve as fine fibers to knit people together.

The conversation soon turned upon the opinion a certain critic had expressed concerning a picture then on exhibition.

"Bah!" cried Fenton suddenly; "what does he know about art?--he is bow-legged!"

"Hallo!" exclaimed Rangely, "have you waked up? I thought we were safe from you for the whole evening."

"It is never safe to count on his silence," Herman said. "He has probably been meditating some stinging epigram against woman. We shall have something wild directly."

"No; I've nothing to say against women now," Arthur returned, rising, "for I want Mrs. Greyson to sing. I wish you'd stop poisoning the air with those confounded cigarettes, Fred. The use of cigarettes degrades smoking to the level of the small vices, and I object to it on principle."

He opened the piano as he spoke, and without demur Helen allowed him to lead her to the instrument.

"If you do not mind," she said a little diffidently, turning to her guests after she had seated herself, "I should like to have the gas lowered a trifle. It may seem a little sentimental, but I do not like to be looked at too keenly when I sing."

The flames of the gas jets were dimmed, and Helen struck a few soft chords. Herman listened intently. He had heard Fenton praise Mrs. Greyson's singing, but he was entirely unprepared for what was to come, and he never forgot the thrill of that experience.

An unpretending, flowing prelude; then suddenly the tones of the singer.

Helen's voice was a rich, fibrous mezzo-soprano; and the music she sang, half chant, half melody, was evidently an improvisation. The words were the exquisite song which opens Shelley's _Hellas:_

I strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow,-- They were plucked from Orient bowers, By the Indian billow. Be thy sleep Calm and deep, Like theirs who fell; not ours who weep.

Away, unlovely dreams! Away, false shapes of sleep!

Be his, as Heaven seems, Clear and bright and deep! Soft as love and calm as death, Sweet as summer night without a breath.

Sleep! sleep! My song is laden With the soul of slumber; It was sung by a Samian maiden Whose lover was of the number Who now keep That calm sleep Whence none may wake; where none shall weep.

I touch thy temples pale! I breathe my soul on thee! And could my prayers avail, All my joy should be Dead, and I would live to weep, So thou might'st win one hour of quiet sleep!

It is difficult to convey the effect of this song upon its hearers. The strangeness, the unconventionality of the recitative, the wonderful, sad beauty of the poem, the dim light through which Helen's vibrating, passionate voice thrilled, all helped to impress the hearers. There was a personal quality about the chant which made it seem like a direct appeal from the singer to the heart of each listener. It came to each as a spontaneous outflowing of the singer's innermost self; a confidence made in mystic wise, sacred and inviolable, and setting him honored by receiving it forever from the common multitude of men. It was an appeal to some unspoken and unspeakable bond of fealty, which made the pulses throb and great emotions stir in the breast. Before hearing one would be stubbornly incredulous of the possibility of his being so deeply affected; afterward he would remember how he had been moved with wonder and longing.

Especially was Grant Herman much moved. Thoughts came into his mind of the old minstrels chanting to their harps; he seemed to hear Sappho singing again in the gardens of Mytilene; this was the woman he loved, and he felt himself as never before surrounded palpably by her presence. The improvisation was a part of herself as no other music could have been; and in some subtle, sensuous way, the lover seemed for the moment to be one with his beloved. His eyes filled with tears in a sort of ecstasy, and he shrank back into the shadow lest some of his friends should detect the glad, salt drops which no eyes but hers had a right to see.

XIII.

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

A hush followed the conclusion of Mrs. Greyson's song.

No one wished to speak what all felt, and when the silence was broken, it was with talk of the poet rather than of the singer. To the singing they came only by slow degrees, and over it, when at length their admiration found speech, they passed lightly.

One thing which seemed to be effected by the music was the awakening of Fenton from his gloomy reverie. He began to talk in his most extravagant and whimsical style, answering every question instantly, if with no especial care concerning the relevancy of his replies.

"What nonsense it is," he exclaimed, "to talk of any man's originating any thing. Why, when even Adam couldn't be made without material, what are we, his descendants, that we should hope to create? The authors of this old wisdom that we revamp to-day copied somebody further back, and those in turn put down what the masses felt; collected the foam which gathered on the yeasty waves of their age. Every truth comes to the people first if they could only recognize it when it comes. It is evolved by the friction of the masses, just as a fire is set by the rubbing together of tree-boughs in primeval forests, and the dusky redman incontinently roasted in his uncontaminated innocence. The longer I live the less faith I have that a man evolves any thing from his inner consciousness. Fancies are only the lies of the mendacious brain, which perceives one thing and declares to us another."

"Go slow, Fenton," interrupted Herman, "you know our poor wits are apt to be dazzled by too much brilliancy."

"The age," Fenton rattled on, "blooms once into a great man as an aloe into a crown of bloom."

"Right in there," broke in Rangely, who longed for a share in the conversation, "just consider how necessary it is that every art producer shall be in sympathy with the human life about him. That he should take the best wherever it is to be found. There's a miserable sentiment about shutting one's self up in some dark corner, and producing some tremendous thing. Don't you know how many New York and Boston artists have gone to Europe and hermetically sealed themselves up somewhere to ferment into greatness like a jug of cider turning into vinegar in a farmer's cellar?"

"That's what made Hunt such a big fellow," Herman interposed; "because he took the good wherever it offered."

"But that depends upon whether a man goes direct to Nature for inspiration," declared Fenton, "or sets himself to get a living by filching the good things his neighbors have won from her."

"Hunt did go to nature; that is just where he was great."

"I think," said Fred, laughingly, "that you will appreciate the mood in which I once wrote a preface. I planned a great metaphysical and philosophical work--I was a good deal younger than I am now--and the preface was to be, 'As to the originality of these ideas, I have nothing more to say than that I do not remember that they have ever been printed with my name on the title-page.' Of course, after that declaration, I felt at liberty to take any thing I wanted from any where; but, unluckily, my book never got beyond the preface."

"I'm glad you had the sense to stop there," declared Arthur. "I forgive the preface, but I could never have forgiven the book."

Helen rose from her seat at the piano and turned up the gas a little. The effect for which the light had been lowered was secured, and it was better, she recognized, to give to her singing a certain isolation, which must be done before the conversation became so general that the change from gloom to light would not be noticed.

She wore that evening a gray silk with black lace, a slight turning away showing the whiteness of her beautiful throat. Her jewels were cats'-eyes.

"Do you wear your cats'-eyes in honor of the cat-headed deity of the Pagans, Mrs. Greyson?" Rangely asked, as she paused near his chair, watching a burner which seemed disposed to flicker.

"No," returned she, smiling. "I am no follower of your Pasht; a goddess of 'winged-words' attracts me less than a deity whose province is the sacred sphere of silence. My dress is of Mr. Fenton's designing. He is deeply versed in the subject of clothes. I even suspect him of being the true author of _'Sartor Resartus.'_"

"That brings up my pet abomination," Fenton observed, with emphasis. "I do hate Carlyle. I've even lain awake nights to think how I'd like to pound his head. The self-conceited, self-centered, self-adoring old humbug! He was the sham _par excellence_ of the nineteenth century, this century of shams."

"It's something to be at the top of the heap in anything," interpolated Herman, "even in shams."

"The trouble with Carlyle," Fenton continued, "besides his enormous egotism, was that he never got beyond the whim that the truth is something absolute. He could not abide the idea that it is merely a relative thing and must be treated as such. If he'd got above the mass of cloudy vapor he called truth, he might have gained a glimpse of real sunlight; but his aggressive self-conceit clogged his wings. Don't you recognize that a lie is often truer than the truth?" he ran on, sitting up in his chair and speaking more rapidly; "that where the truth will often produce an erroneous impression, a lie will convey a correct one? that to be true to the spirit it is often necessary to violate the letter?"

"Your patron saint should be the god of falsehood," Helen said lightly. "I fear your allegiance to Pasht is not very sincere."

"Ah! but it is," retorted he, quickly. "My allegiance is to the goddess of 'winged words'; to the glorious mother of fictitious speech; to Pasht, the goddess of splendid, golden lying. A lie is only the truth agreeably and effectively told. _Vive la fausseté!_"

"Doubtless each interprets Pasht's attributes according to his own light," Herman observed, a little grimly.

He was only half-pleased with Fenton's badinage. But the latter, apparently, did not feel the thrust.

"Let him alone," Helen said, "he believes in nothing; he is a genuine Pagan."

"You are wrong in your idea," was Fenton's swift reply. "A true Pagan must have a belief in some god to take from his shoulders the burden of personal responsibility, or he cannot be joyous as a Pagan should. However, to-night I make myself believe that I believe something, so it comes to much the same thing."

Helen turned and looked at him, attracted by some subtle quality in his voice.

He was sitting sidewise in his chair, holding an ivory paper-knife in his slender fingers. His cheeks burned, his eyes were bright, his lips red. He had shaken off the depression which oppressed him earlier in the evening. An air of joyous, quivering excitement pervaded him. He threw up his head with a characteristic gesture, and looked about him like one who has conquered in some desperate conflict.

"Come," the hostess said, wondering in what inward struggle he had come off victor; "you promised to assist me with the coffee. I make no boast of my house or my hospitality, gentlemen," she added, with a charming glance around, "but I warn you in advance that not to admire my coffee is to lose my friendship forever."

In answer to her ring, a servant brought in a small mortar and a pretty little bowl of whole coffee, delicately browned, and scarcely cold from its roasting. Arthur, who seemed acquainted with Mrs. Greyson's methods of procedure, began to pound the berries, roasted to perfect crispness, in the ebony mortar, reducing them to an almost impalpable powder, which diffused upon the air the entrancing odor dear to the nostrils of all artists.

The servant meantime had provided tiny cups, a little copper ibrik and an alcohol lamp over which simmered a vessel of boiling water.

"Coffee should be prepared only over coals of perfumed wood," Helen remarked as she measured into the ibrik the small spoonful of coffee dust designed for a single cup. "But alcohol is the next best thing, it burns with such a supernatural flame."

She put into the ibrik a measure of boiling water, rested it an instant over the flame to restore the heat lost in the cooler copper, and then poured the beverage into the egg-shell cup destined for it.

"To my master first," she said, presenting the steaming cup to Herman, who received it much as one might a gift from the skies. "I learned my coffee making," she continued, "from an old Arab at Cairo, who used to say that it was one of the only two things in life worth doing, the other being the duties of religion; and it therefore should be perfectly done."

"It is simply divine," the sculptor said. "I have never really tasted coffee before. Only if it is made like this your Arab might have said there was but one thing in life, for this becomes a religious duty." One by one with equal care were prepared cups for the others, who were neither slow nor perfunctory in their endorsement of the sculptor's praise.

XIV.

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

"'I strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow;'"

Hummed Grant Herman to himself, taking his lonely way down the dim and dingy streets leading to the wharves where he had his abode:

"'I strew these opiate flowers--'

Oh, what a woman she is! She might be Brunhilde, or she might be Burd Helen;

'I strew these--'

I wonder what she had to say to Fenton that she made him stay. Confound that fellow! I'm not more than half sure that I'm fond of him; though I can't bring myself fairly and squarely to dislike him. But I wish he didn't know Mrs. Greyson quite so well; he's going to be married, too. I wonder how he came to know her, any how. It is strange she doesn't wear black if she is a widow. I'd like to learn something more definite about her, but Fenton's the only one who would be likely to know, and I certainly will not ask him. I suppose he is there yet, lounging in some sort of an outlandish shape."

Arthur was indeed still in Helen's parlor, and in as crooked an attitude as a man ever compassed. He had so managed to dispose of himself over three chairs as to give the general effect of having been suddenly arrested in the midst of an acrobatic feat of unusual difficulty, and with a cigar in his long, nervous fingers, was watching Mrs. Greyson, who occupied herself in tidying the room a little.

"We have been too good friends," she said, "to say good-by in public. The old days have been pleasant, and it is hard to give them up."

"You have insisted upon it that they are gone forever," he returned, "until I almost begin to believe you. But it is no matter. _Che sarà sarà_."

"Yes; _che sarà sarà_," she echoed. "But now are you willing to do me a favor? I haven't asked many of you."

"You certainly deserve that I should say yes without a quibble," replied Fenton, "but your air is so serious that I do not dare run the risk; so I will merely answer,--I would like to do you a favor if I may."

She came and sat down near him, a beautiful woman, flushed and tender. It arose perhaps from the delicate sensitiveness of both that they had always instinctively avoided those chance contacts which between lovers become so significant, confining themselves to rare hand-shakes at meeting and parting; and it may be that their very scrupulousness in this matter proves how near they had been to more emotional relations than those of simple friendship. Now when Helen laid her hand upon her friend's arm it marked an earnestness which showed how much she felt what she was about to say.

"I want you to give me something that Will gave you the other day."

Fenton's first feeling was one of annoyance, but this was quickly replaced by a desire to fathom the motives which prompted her request.

"How did you know of it?" he asked.

"By divination," she answered, with a faint smile. "Will you give it to me?"

"Why should I?"

"Because I ask you."

"To go back to that, then, why do you ask me?"

"Because I cannot bear to think of your going to be married with that in your possession. Because it is cruel for you so to wrong Miss Caldwell as to marry her while you find it possible to think it may lead you to--to use that. How can you do it! You know I've no sympathy with those who call it cowardly to take one's life. I think we've a right to do that sometimes, perhaps. But it is cowardly to many a woman with the deliberate idea of escaping her if you are not happy; of deserting her after you have inextricably involved her life in yours. You've no right to do that if you mean to make it a tragedy."