Chapter 6

"She is involved in my life already," he returned gravely; "and it is a tragedy. But I am not so wholly selfish as you assume. Honestly, Helen, it is for her sake as much, at least, as my own that I wanted that vial. It is all like a scene in _The City of Dreadful Night_. I cannot be sure that I may not have to kill myself for her happiness. Heaven knows I have not found myself so good company as to have very strong reasons to suppose that any body else will."

"No," Helen said. "That is sophistry. I am a woman and I have been a wife. I know what I say. You have no right to marry any woman and allow the existence of such a possibility. It may not be logic, but it is true."

"But she will not know."

"She may not know, but she will feel. You are too finely strung not to discover to a delicate ear any discord, no matter how hard you try to conceal it; and the ear of a woman who loves is sensitive to the slightest changes. No, Arthur, if you have any love for her, any friendship for me, any respect for yourself, give me that vial."

He made no answer to her appeal for a moment, although she clasped his arm more tightly and looked beseechingly into his face. It was one of those moments when he gave way to his best impulses; when he indulged in the pleasure of letting his higher nature vibrate in response to appeals addressed to it, and for the instant tasted the intoxicating pleasure of conscious virtue. He turned to scrutinize her more closely.

"But what would you do with it, Helen?"

She started a little. She had not been without a half-formed thought that she should be glad to have the deadly gift with its power of swift oblivion in her possession, although until now she had scarcely been conscious of it. But she saw that some suspicion of this was present in Arthur's mind, and must be allayed before she could hope to accomplish her purpose.

"You are wrong," she said quickly. "It is for your own sake that I want you to give it up. I will do whatever you like with it. I pledge you my word that I will never use it myself."

He still made no movement to surrender the vial, but she held out her hand.

"Come," she pleaded. "I appeal to your best self. For the sake of your mother, Arthur,--you have told me you could refuse her nothing she asked, and she would surely ask this if she were alive and knew. Give it to me."

He slowly drew from some inner pocket the little morocco case and held it in both hands looking at it.

"It is a comfort to me," he said. "It means an end of every thing. It means annihilation; it means getting rid of this nightmare of existence. I can remember when I dreaded the idea of annihilation, but I have come to feel that it is the only good to be desired. To be done with every thing and to forget every thing! Don't you see, Helen; I should never be satisfied with any thing short of omnipotence and omniscience, and annihilation is the only refuge for a nature like that. I want to be everything; to feel the joy of the conqueror and yet not miss the keen, fine pang of the conquered--Lowell says it somewhere; to be

'Both maiden and lover'--

I forget it--'bee and clover, you know; to be the 'red slayer' and 'the slain' both. Do you wonder I want to keep this?"

A feeling of helplessness and hopelessness came over Helen. Only half consciously she spoke a thought aloud:

"You are half mad from introspection."

He turned upon her a quizzical smile.

"I dare say," said he. "It isn't a comfortable process either. If a man has lived twenty-five years, Helen, and has not so entangled his life in a web of circumstances that no power will ever be able to extricate it, he may consider his first quarter century of existence a success."

He spoke with a bitter good humor not uncommon with him, and he believed himself sincere. He even mentally applauded himself for the justness of the sentiment, and was not untouched with pity for a being in whom such sadness was possible. It may have been this secret complacency that Helen detected in his face and fancied it a sign of relenting. She put out her hand and took hold of the morocco case. Arthur did not release his hold, yet neither did his grasp tighten, and she drew the dangerous gift out of his fingers.

She sprang up and locked it away in a cabinet.

"There!" she exclaimed, standing before him in a sudden revulsion of feeling, her face flushed and her eyes shining. "Now I will tell you what I think of you. I think you mean to be good to others, but--"

"You always think better of me than I deserve," he interrupted; "at least you treat me better."

"That does not necessarily indicate any leniency of judgment," retorted Helen. "I think you are self-centered, and morbid; and if marriage doesn't reform you, I give you up, for nothing will. Suffering is only an effect, the cause is sensibility; and you keep yourself abnormally sensitive by having yourself always upon the vivisection table."

She turned and walked away from him. Her emotion was getting beyond her control. Her friendships were keen with the intensity of her passionate nature; she had not passed through this struggle lightly, and perhaps the victory unnerved her more than defeat would have done. On his part he endeavored to turn every thing off as usual with a jest.

"Have I told you Bently's latest?" he began. "He--"

"It is of no use," she said, returning to him, tears overflowing her eyes. "You cannot help my making a spectacle of myself; and you had better go. Oh, Arthur, I hope so much for you; I do so hope for happiness coming to you out of this marriage; but I shall be so lonely."

Her voice broke despite her effort. She came nearer, she hesitated an instant; then she bent over and kissed his forehead. A hot tear splashed upon his hand.

"There," she said. "Good night, and good-by. When you come back you will see what a fine steady old lady I have become."

He got on to his feet, confused, troubled, pitying her profoundly and commiserating himself upon the awkwardness of the situation. He tried to frame some sentence which might bridge the distance that seemed suddenly to have opened between them. Like a farewell, a renunciation or a dedication, that kiss impressed upon him a certain remoteness new and oppressive.

"Bah!" he broke off. "I can say nothing, Helen. I have thus far served in an already sufficiently unhappy world only to make people more miserable still. I'm not worth a faintest regret. Good-night. If I can ever serve you--Good-by!"

XV.

'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL. Othello; i--3.

Helen's first conscious sensation next morning was a feeling of loss, which resolved itself into a deep sadness when she was fairly awake and realized that Arthur had gone. She had not Considered how much his companionship and friendliness had been to her until now, when she felt them lost. A woman so lonely yet so affectionate as Helen could not spare from her life a friend so dear as Fenton had been without being much moved. So strong had been her attachment, and so intimate had been the acquaintance between herself and Arthur, that Dr. Ashton had believed his wife to love the artist; but Helen, closely questioning her heart, was able to assure herself that warm as had been her regard for Fenton, he had never awakened in her bosom a single thrill of love. She was sad this morning with the sorrow of a broken friendship, not of a blighted passion.

She sighed deeply, the sigh of one but too well accustomed to life's disappointments, and arose the determination to lose herself in her work, and to shake off if possible the sadness which seemed to paralyze her energies and enervate her whole being.

The gown which she had worn upon the previous evening lay over a chair, giving out, as she lifted it, an odor of tobacco smoke. Some remark made by Grant Herman about the fumes which had filled the little parlor came into her mind, giving a new current to her thoughts. She unconsciously fell to thinking of the sculptor, and, by a natural connection of ideas, of Ninitta, who was still nominally posing for her.

Partly from interest in the girl herself and partly from the perception that it pleased her master to have the Italian remain with her, she had retained Ninitta, although the bas-relief was so far advanced that the model was hardly needed. She had even set herself, by those unobtrusive ways at the command of gracious women, to win the girl's confidence, not so much for the sake of hearing her story as to give the waif so strangely cast in her path the feeling that the friendship she so sorely needed was within her reach. It had resulted, however, in her hearing Ninitta's history. Many women have no idea of returning kindness save by unreserved confidence, and although Ninitta was perhaps scarcely to be reckoned among these extremists, she yet found so much comfort in pouring out her sorrows to one who could both sympathize and appreciate, that little by little the whole pathetic tale was told.

"I did not understand," Ninitta said once in her broken English, "when he left Rome. It was as if somebody had taken my life away somehow. I couldn't make it seem that I was really alive all the same, though I knew it could not be his fault. He would not have done it if he had known. You do not believe he would have left me if he had known the truth?"

"No," Helen answered. "He could not have left you if he had known. It was because he was hurt so much, and that could only be because he loved you so much."

"He loved me so much," poor Ninitta repeated murmuringly, "he loved me so much."

And all that day she followed Helen with wistful eyes, as if she longed to hear her say again those precious words.

"I cannot tell you what it was like in Paris," she said at another time. "In Rome they all knew me. They knew I was betrothed, and no one ever troubled me. But in Paris it was different. Oh, I hate Paris! And it was so cruel that he was not there. It was so dreadful that he should be on the other side of that horrible sea!"

The girl was so self-forgetful in these revelations, she spoke always with such an unshaken faith in Herman and was so free from any thought of blaming him, that Helen could not but be touched. She soothed poor Ninitta as well as she was able, having power to promise nothing, seeing no way out of the entanglement, yet at least showing to the lonely Italian that her woman's heart bled for her sorrow if she might not alleviate it. Sometimes she felt like going to the sculptor and entreating him to take pity upon the girl who so adoringly loved him. Once when the model had told her how just as she had saved by long, painful economy, nearly money enough to pay the passage to America it was stolen and she was forced to begin the slow process over again, Helen impulsively left her studio and found herself on the very threshold of Herman's door before she realized what she had been about to do. By what authority was she to interfere in a matter like this? If Ninitta loved the sculptor who had long ago ceased to return her affection, could matters be helped by an unloving marriage? It was not for her, moreover, to give unasked her advice to such a man as she knew Grant Herman to be. If he consulted her, she reflected, she might present the pathetic, touching story which Ninitta had told her, but she had plainly no pretext for forcing her feelings upon her master unsought.

She turned and went slowly up the stairs toward her little room; but suddenly she paused. She had all at once become conscious that she desired eagerly to know the nature of the sculptor's feelings toward his old love. Why, she asked herself, was she so interested in what after all did not personally concern her. A quick emotion, almost too vague to be called a thought, made her cheek flame.

"No, no," she said half aloud. "It is only that I am touched by Ninitta's sadness. It is nothing more."

But her breath came more quickly, and it was with difficulty that upon re-entering her studio she assumed a quiet mien, lest her model should guess at her unfulfilled errand.

On the morning following the meeting of the Pagans at her rooms, Helen was alone in her studio. She had told Ninitta she should be late and the latter was therefore tardy in arriving. Mrs. Greyson uncovered her bas-relief, now rapidly nearing completion, and stood before it, examining critically its merits and defects. A familiar step in the passage, a tap at the door, and Grant Herman joined her.

"You look as fresh as ever this morning," he said. "I feared that the entertaining of such a company of Bohemians would have tired you out."

"No, indeed," she returned. "I am of far too much endurance to be worn out by any thing of that sort. I have a drop of Bohemian blood in my veins myself, I think, and I like to meet men as men--when they are simply good fellows together, I mean. A woman usually sees men in an attitude of either deference or defense, and there is something inspiriting to her in being occasionally received as a comrade."

"There are few women who can be received so," returned Herman. "I suppose it requires both an especial temperament and especial experiences to render a woman capable of being a comrade to men."

The talk drifted away to general and indifferent subjects, broken here and there by allusions and criticisms relating to the Flight of the Months, and not infrequently dropping into brief silences. One of these Herman broke by saying abruptly:

"You do not know how your song has haunted me all night. I have been saying over and over to myself

'I strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow.'

And, indeed, I longed for some such soporific myself before morning. Your coffee or your song, or--yourself,"--he hesitated over the last word--kept me very effectually awake."

"It must have been the coffee; there was little potency in either of the other causes."

"There is much," he returned resolutely, advancing a step nearer. "Mrs. Greyson, I have not wasted the night. I have thought out a great many things; the first and chief being in regard to yourself."

His tone, the piercing glow of his eyes, warned Helen what was coming. She thought of Ninitta, and retreated a step.

"It is true," the sculptor continued, as if answering the doubt implied by her movement, "that I--"

The door opened softly and Ninitta came in.

His outstretched hand dropped; the words died upon his lips. He turned from one woman to the other an appealing look of hopeless sadness and left the studio in silence.

It was characteristic of Helen's generosity that her first thought should be of the pain which Ninitta must feel. One glance at the model was sufficient to show that the Italian had comprehended enough of the interrupted scene to be made wretched; but it did not then occur to Mrs. Greyson that to Ninitta's jealous soul, unsuspicious of Herman, the only explanation of a fondness between the sculptor and his pupil lay in an effort on the part of the latter to win from the model her rightful and long betrothed lover.

XVI.

CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH. As You Like It; i.--2.

Grant Herman sat in his studio in the gathering twilight thinking gloomily. However little Mrs. Greyson suspected the tumult which would be aroused in Ninitta's breast by the misadventure of the morning, the sculptor was too well aware of the Italian's passionate nature not to dread the consequences of the jealousy she was sure to feel. He knew, moreover, that Ninitta's rage would vent itself not upon him but upon Helen, and he wondered how best to avert the danger that threatened.

He debated with himself, too, how much he owed to the girl who gave her life up so unreservedly to him. His old love--"call it rather mere boyish passion," he-thought scornfully--was long since dead beyond hope; yet the devotion which it had awakened in Ninitta burned on as steadily as ever. Had he now a right to repulse the love he had himself called into being; to throw aside the fondness he had himself fostered and which he had once prized above measure.

"No," he thought, "a thousand times no. A man must be a villain who would not marry a girl under such circumstances. I am hers; the fact that I have changed is my misfortune, not her fault. If I have any manliness about me, I won't let things go on in this way any longer. I'll marry Ninitta. It is the smallest reparation I can make for the long years of pain I have caused her. There is no other course for me.

"But I do not love her, and a woman, they say, always instinctively feels it when a man's heart is not hers. Nonsense! That is only a cowardly excuse. At least Ninitta would never be troubled. She has not known so much love that she can draw very sharp comparisons. No; she will be satisfied; and I--well, if a man is such a devilish fool as I have been, it remains for him to pay the penalty. Oh, if youth only knew!"

He sighed deeply and began to walk up and down the studio, in which the dusk was gathering thickly. A last faint gleam from a window high in the riverward wall fell upon one of the mutilated goddesses in the gallery. Herman looked up, contemplating the phantom-like head gloomily. Something in its pose, or perhaps more truly something in his own mind, suggested a faint likeness to Helen, as if it were her ghost looking down from some far height upon the conflict of his soul.

"Ah!" he cried hotly to himself. "And she? How can I give up the hope of winning her? What was a boy's foolish fancy to the passion of a man--and for such a woman! She is half goddess. No, no; I cannot do it. I cannot marry this Italian peasant, this model that has who knows what history! I will not; I owe something to myself, to my art. What is the simple happiness of Ninitta to my art? I should be a fool to ignore how much more to the world my own well-being is worth than is hers; and what could I not do with the inspiration of the other! Oh, my God!"

The darkness grew. The phantom faded imperceptibly away. He was left alone in the darkness to fight out his battle. He marched with great strides, avoiding obstacles by a certain sixth sense born of constant familiarity with the place. He fought manfully, persuading himself that his scruples were as idle as air, remnants of the long since outgrown superstitions of his childhood. He defiantly claimed the right to be true to his powers, to his genius, rather than to an empirical standard erected by narrow moralists. He should be thankful that he had escaped entangling his life by that absurd marriage in Rome seven years ago, and that he was now free to win a wife worthy Of himself and of his art.

Yet he cut through all the meshes of logic he had himself been weaving, by striking his strong hands together there in the dark, and crying aloud, his voice startling him in the stillness:

"My God! What a poltroon I have become! Shall I cast on others the burden of my own mistakes?"

And seizing hat and cloak he left the studio, taking his way towards the narrow street where Ninitta lodged, hastening to ask her to marry him before his resolution faltered.

XVII.

THIS "WOULD" CHANGES. Hamlet; iv.--7.

Herman found Ninitta alone in the attic which served her for a home in this bleak northern city, so far and so different from her own sunny Capri.

Bare and half furnished as was the room, the girl had contrived to impart to it a certain air which removed it from the common-place. A bit of flimsy drapery, begged from some studio, hung over one of the windows; a rude print of the Madonna was pinned to the wall, and under it, on the wooden table, was a bunch of withered flowers. They were roses which Helen had given Ninitta, and the Italian, returning home that day, had in her jealous rage thrown them to the floor and trampled upon them. Then remembering that they had been offered to the Madonna, she had been seized with a superstitious fear, and carefully restoring the battered flowers, had eagerly vowed a fresh bunch to the Holy Mother if she might be forgiven this sacrilege.

But the most beautiful article in the room was a cast of a woman's shoulder. It had been modeled by Herman in the earliest days of his acquaintance with Ninitta, when she had been still only his model and not his betrothed. He was touched as he looked at it now. Yellow with time and soiled by its various journeyings, it still preserved unmarred its lovely shape, exquisite curve melting into exquisite curve as softly and sweetly as in those glowing days when he had molded it under the sky of Italy.

He looked from the cast to Ninitta. He had only seen her at the studio, and he experienced a faint feeling of surprise at detecting a subtle difference in her here at home. It was nothing so tangible that he could have told by what means he received the impression, yet it was sufficiently definite to make him lose something of the freedom with which he had always addressed her. She was no longer simply the model, she was an Italian woman in her own home.

The years during which they had been separated had formed and strengthened Ninitta's character. If Herman had not before noted the alteration, it was due in part to his pre-occupation and in part to the force of old habit which made her manner toward him much the same as formerly. To-night he began to appreciate the change in her, and he felt the awkwardness which always results from the discovery that we must adapt ourselves to a modified condition in a friend.

On her side Ninitta was naturally surprised at seeing the sculptor. She had come to regard as hopeless all speculations upon his intentions, and she had waited patiently until he should choose to show her favor, tacitly acknowledging his right to do whatever should be his good pleasure. Had he come at any time and said, "Ninitta, I am here to marry you," she would gladly but quietly have made ready to follow where he chose to lead, even to the world's end. Equally, had he said, "Ninitta, I have come to say good-by; you will never see me again," she would have acquiesced without a murmur, and then, perhaps, have taken her own life. As long as it was his simple wish, uninfluenced by the will of another, she would never have questioned.

Now, however, all passive acquiescence was at an end. Since the scene in Helen's studio, Ninitta had an object upon which to expend all her energies, and she even almost forgot to love Herman in the intensity of her sudden jealous hatred of Mrs. Greyson. Yesterday Grant Herman would have found a woman not unlike the Ninitta of old times, tender, loving, pathetically submissive; today he was confronted by a fury, only restrained by the respect for his presence born of long habit.

"Good evening!" he said gently, as he entered, his mood softened by the struggle through which he had passed in his studio.

"Good evening!" she answered defiantly, in Italian. "So you are not with her!"

"What!" he exclaimed.

He had been wholly unprepared for this outburst, and for the instant was too surprised to at all understand it.

A sudden rage seemed to seize Ninitta, which swept away all barriers of restraint.

"_Si_, _si_, _si_," she cried, "I am not blind! What if you are my betrothed, when this woman comes to entrap you, to bewitch you with an evil eye, to steal your soul! Yes, yes; you are not with her to-night as you were last night. Did I not see you myself come out of her house?"

"Stop!" he said in his most commanding tone, but without anger.

The calmness and decision of the manner arrested her. She sank back into a chair, regarding him with defiant eyes.

"So you have followed me," continued Herman, speaking with painful slowness, so that every word seemed to poor Ninitta to fall upon her like a curse; "so you have played the spy upon me. Ah!"

As he looked at her she began to cower. She shrank back in her seat, putting up her hands to shield her face from his gaze.