Chapter 12

"He is allowed the inestimable boon of taking you to the theatre," finished her husband, "I must say, Dian, that you are, on the whole, the shrewdest woman I know."

"Thank you. I must be just, you know," she returned smiling as brilliantly as if her husband were to be won again.

It was not without reason that Mrs. Staggchase had spoken of herself and her husband as a model couple. Given her theory of married life, nothing could be more satisfactory and consistent than the way in which she lived up to it. Her ideal of matrimony was a sort of mutual _laisser faire_, conducted with the utmost propriety and politeness. She made an especial point of being as attractive to her husband as to any other man; and she had the immense advantage of never having been in love with anybody but herself and of being philosophical enough not to consider the good things of conversation wasted if they were said for his exclusive benefit. She had no children, and had once remarked in answer to the question whether she regretted this, "There must be some pleasure in having sons old enough to flirt with you; but I don't know of anything else I have lost that I have reason to regret."

Her husband, thorough man of the world as he was, and indeed perhaps for that very reason, never outgrew a pleased surprise that he found his wife so perennially entertaining. He was not unwilling that she should exercise her fascinations on others when she chose, since he had no feeling toward her sufficiently warm to engender anything like jealousy; but he appreciated her to the full.

He rose from his seat and walked to the sideboard, where he selected a cigar.

"I must say," he observed, between the puffs as he lighted it, "that you are justice incarnate. You have always kept accounts squared with me most beautifully."

Mrs. Staggchase laughed softly, toying with the tiny spoon of Swiss carved silver with which she had stirred her coffee. Her husband had expressed perfectly her theory of marital relations. She balanced accounts in her mind with the most scrupulous exactness, and was an admirable debtor if a somewhat unrelenting creditor. She had a definite standard by which she measured her obligations to Mr. Staggchase, and she never allowed herself to fall short in the measure she gave him. She was fond of him in a conveniently mild and reasonable fashion, and a marriage founded upon mutual tolerance, if it is likely never to be intensely happy, is also likely to be a pretty comfortable one. Mrs. Staggchase paid to her husband all her tithes of mint and anise and cumin, and she even sometimes presented him with a propitiatory offering in excess of her strict debt; only such a gift was always set down in her mental record as a gift and not as a tribute.

"This Stanton is an awful lout, Fred," she observed. "Perhaps he can make a good statue of _America_, but if he can it will be because he is so thoroughly the embodiment of the vulgar and pushing side of American character."

"Then why in the world are you pushing him?"

"Oh, because Mrs. Ranger and Anna Frostwinch want him pushed. I don't know but they may believe in him. Mrs. Ranger does, of course, but the dear old soul knows no more about art than I do about Choctaw. As to the statues, I don't think it makes much difference, they are always laughed at, and I don't think anybody could make one in this age that wouldn't be found fault with."

"Nobody nowadays knows enough about sculpture to criticise it intelligently," Staggchase remarked, somewhat oracularly, "and the only safe thing left is to find fault."

"That is just about it, and so it may as well be this booby as anybody else that gets the commission. It isn't respectable for the town not to have statues, of course."

Mr. Staggchase moved toward the door.

"Well," he said, "I don't know who's in the fight, but I'll bet on your side. Good night. I hope virtue will be its own reward."

"Oh, it always is," retorted his wife. "I especially make it a point that it shall be."

XIX

HOW CHANCES MOCK. II Henry IV.; iii.--I.

A man often creates his own strongest temptations by dwelling upon possibilities of evil; and it is equally true that nothing else renders a man so likely to break moral laws as the consciousness of having broken them already. The experience of Arthur Fenton was in these days affording a melancholy illustration of both of these propositions. The humiliating inner consciousness of having violated all the principles of honor of his fealty to which he had been secretly proud begot in him an unreasonable and unreasoning impulse still further to transgress. When arraigned by his inner self for his betrayal of Hubbard, it was his instinct to defend himself by showing his superiority to all moral canons whatever. He felt a certain desperate inclination to trample all principles underfoot, as if by so doing he could destroy the standards by which he was being tried.

Fenton was not of a mental fibre sufficiently robust to make this impulse likely to result in any violent outbreak, and, indeed, but for circumstances it would doubtless have vapored itself away in words and vagrant fancies. He had once remarked, embodying a truth in one of his frequent whimsically perverse statements, that the worst thing which could be said of him was that he was incapable of a great crime, and only the constant pressure of an annoyance, such as the threats of Irons in regard to Ninitta, or the presence of an equally constant temptation, such as that to which he was now succumbing in allowing his relations with Mrs. Herman to become more and more intimate, would have brought him to any marked transgression.

In a nature such as that of Fenton there is, with the exception of vanity and the instinct of self-preservation, no trait stronger than curiosity. The artist was devoured by an eager, intellectual greed to know all things, to experience all sensations, to taste all savors of life. He made no distinction between good and bad; his zeal for knowledge was too keen to allow of his being deterred by the line ordinarily drawn between pain and pleasure. His affections, his passions, his morals were all subordinate to this burning curiosity, and only his instinct of self-preservation subtly making itself felt in the guise of expediency, and his vanity prettily disguised as taste, held the thirst for knowledge in check.

It was by far more the desire to learn whether he could bend Ninitta to his will than it was passion which carried Fenton forward in the dangerous path upon which he was now well advanced; and it was perhaps more than either a half-unconscious eagerness to taste a new experience. Even the double wickedness of betraying the wife of a friend and of enticing a woman to her fall had for Fenton, in his present mood, an unholy fascination. He was too self-analytical to deceive himself into a supposition that he was in love with Ninitta, and even his passion was so much under the dominion of his head that he could have blown it out like a rushlight, had he really desired to be done with it. He looked at himself with mingled approbation, amusement, and horror, as he might have regarded a favorite and skilful actor in a vicious _role_; and the man whose mind is to him merely an amphitheatre, where games are played for his amusement, is always dangerous.

As for Ninitta, the processes of her mind were probably quite as complex as those of his, although they appeared more simple, in virtue of their being more remote. She had, in the first place, a curious jealousy of her husband because of his passionate fondness for Nino, and a dull resentment at the secret conviction that the father had the gifts and powers which were sure to win more love than the child would bestow upon her. She could better bear the thought that the boy should die, than that he should live to love anybody more than he loved her.

It was also true that Grant Herman, large-hearted and generous as he was, did not know how to make his wife happy. He was patient and chivalrous and tender; but he was hardly able to go to her level, and as she could not come to his, the pair had little in common. He felt that somehow this must be his fault; he told himself that, as the larger nature, it should be his place to make concessions, to master the situation, and to secure Ninitta's happiness, whatever came to him. He had even come to feel so much tenderness toward the mother of his child, the woman in whose behalf he had made the great sacrifice of his life, that a pale but steadfast glow of affection shone always in his heart for his wife. But his patience, his delicacy, his steadfastness counted for little with Ninitta. She had been separated from him for long years of betrothal, during which he had developed and changed utterly. She had clung to her love and faith, but her love and faith were given to an ardent youth glowing with a passion of which it was hardly possible to rekindle the faint embers in the bosom of the man she married. Even Ninitta, little given to analysis, could not fail to recognize that her husband was a very different being from the lover she had known ten years before. One fervid blaze of the old love would have appealed more strongly to her peasant soul than all the patience and tender forbearance of years.

Indeed, it is doubtful whether Ninitta might not have been better and happier had Herman been less kind. Had he made a slave of her, she would have accepted her lot as uncomplainingly as the women of her race had acquiesced in such a fate for stolid generations. She could have understood that. As it was, she felt always the strain of being tried by standards which she did not and could not comprehend; the misery of being in a place for which she was unfitted and which she could not fill, and the fact that no definite demands were made upon her increased her trouble by the double stress of putting her upon her own responsibility, and of leaving her ignorant in what her failures lay.

There was, too, who knows what trace of heredity in the readiness with which Ninitta tacitly adopted the idea that infidelity to a husband was rather a matter of discretion and secrecy; whereas faithfulness to her lover had been a point of the most rigorous honor. And Ninitta found Arthur Fenton's silken sympathy so insinuating, so soothing; the tempter, merely from his marvellous adaptability and faultless tact, so satisfied her womanly craving, and fostered her vanity; she was so completely made to feel that she was understood; she was tempted with a cunning the more infernal because Fenton kept himself always up to the level of sincerity by never admitting to himself that he intended any evil, that it was small wonder that the time came when her ardent Italian nature was so kindled that she became involuntarily the tempter in her turn.

It was one of the singular features of Fenton's present attitude that even he, with all his clear-sightedness, failed to see the error of supposing that his departure from the paths of rectitude was nothing but a temporary episode. He fully expected to take up again his former attitude toward life when he would have scorned such a contemptible action as the betrayal of Hubbard, or the more trifling, but perhaps even more humiliating act of smuggling Snaffle into the club that he might win his money. He even had a certain vague feeling that if he had any viciousness to get through he must do it at once, lest the resumption of his former respectability should deprive him of the opportunity. He maintained before the world, indeed, a perfect propriety of deportment, partly from the force of habit and partly from the instinctive cunning which always tried to preserve for him the means of retreat; but so complete was his abandonment, for the time being, to the enjoyment of evil, that he was constantly assailed with the temptation to make some public demonstration of his state of feeling. He secretly longed to shock people with blasphemous or imprudent expressions; to outrage all honor by stealing his host's spoons when he dined out; his fancy rioted in whimsical evil of which, of course, he gave no outward sign.

He had a scene with Alfred Irons, one morning, at his studio. Irons came in with a look on his face which secretly enraged the artist, who was almost rude in the coldness of his greeting, although the caller only grinned at this evidence of his host's irritation.

"Well, Fenton," he said, with bluff abruptness, "I suppose it is time for us to square accounts, isn't it?"

"I was not aware that we had any accounts to square," the other returned, with his most icy manner.

Irons laughed, and looked about the studio.

"That's your new picture, I suppose" he observed, settling himself back in his chair, with the determined mien of a man who recognizes the fact that he has a battle to fight, but is perfectly willing to join the fray.

The significance of his air, as he nodded toward the big canvas on the easel, so plainly brought up the unfortunate hold which the _Fatima_ had given Irons over the artist, that Fenton flushed in spite of himself.

"It is a picture," he returned; "and it is unfinished."

Irons chuckled.

"Very well," he said. "We won't fence. I thought you might be interested to know that we've got our railroad business into first-rate shape; and there's no doubt that the Wachusett route will carry the day. I tell you we had a hot time in the Senate yesterday," he went on, warming with the excitement of his subject. "We made a pretty stiff fight in the Railroad Committee to get them to report 'not expedient' on the Feltonville petition. I tell you Staggchase fought like a bull tiger at the hearing, and those fellows must have put in a pot of money. But we beat 'em. Then the fight came to get the report accepted in the Senate. Everybody said that Tom Greenfield would settle the thing with a big broadside in favor of his own town; and I'll own that I was scared blue myself. But we haven't been cooking Tom Greenfield all this time for nothing. I don't mind telling you that your help in the matter was of the greatest value; and when Greenfield got up in the Senate yesterday, and put in his best licks for the Wachusett route, you'd have thought they'd been struck by a cyclone. We got a vote to sustain that report that buries the Feltonville project out of sight; and now there's no doubt that the Railroad Commissioners will give us our certificate without any more trouble."

During this rather long and not wholly coherent speech, Fenton sat with his eyes coldly fixed upon his visitor, without giving the slightest sign of interest.

"I am glad," he said, in a manner as distant as he could make it, "that your business is likely to succeed to your mind."

"Oh, it must succeed. The Commissioners only suspended operations till the Legislature disposed of the question of special legislation. Now they're all ready to give us what we want."

"And all this," Fenton said, "is of what interest to me?"

Irons flushed angrily.

"You were good enough," he returned, drawing his lips down savagely, "to give us a bit of information which we found of value. Very likely we might have hit upon it somewhere else, but that's no matter, as long as we did get it through you. We've no inclination to shirk our debt. Now what's your price?"

Fenton rose from his chair, with an impulsive movement; then he controlled himself and sat down again. He looked at his visitor with eyes of fire.

"I am not aware," he returned, "that I have ever been in the market, so that I have not been obliged to consider that question."

Alfred Irons was silent for a moment. He felt somewhat as if he had received a dash of ice-water in the face. He wrinkled up his narrow eyes and studied the man before him. He could not understand what the other was driving at. He was little likely to be able to follow the subtile changes of Fenton's imaginative mind, and he could at present see no explanation of the way in which his advances were met, except the theory that the artist was fencing to insure a larger reward for his treachery than might be given him if he accepted the first offer in silence.

Fenton, on his part, was so filled with rage that it was with difficulty that he restrained himself. The length to which his intimacy with Ninitta had now gone, however, made it absolutely necessary that he should avoid a quarrel in which her name might be brought up; and he had, moreover, put himself into the hands of Irons, by giving him the information in regard to the plans for Feltonville.

"Oh, well," Irons said at length, rising with the air of one who cannot waste his time puzzling over trifles; "have it your own way. It's only a matter of words."

He took out his pocket-book, and with deliberation turned over the papers it contained. He selected one, read it carefully, and then held it out to Fenton.

"Our manufacturing corporation is practically on its legs now," he said, "and the stock will be issued at once. That entitles you to ten shares. They will be issued at sixty, and ought to go to par by fall. Indeed, in a year's time, we'll make them worth double the buying price, or I am mistaken."

Fenton looked at the paper as if he were reading it, but its letters swam before his eyes. He needed money sorely, and had this gift come in a shape more readily convertible into cash, he might have found it impossible to resist it. As it was, he allowed himself to be fiercely angry. He was furious, but he was consciously so. He raised his eyes, flashing and distended, and fixed them upon the mean, hateful face before him. He paused an instant to let his gaze have its effect.

"And I understand," he said, with a slow, careful enunciation, "that in consideration of the service I have done you, you give me your promise never to mention the fact that you saw a lady in my studio."

"Certainly," Irons returned.

Fenton's look made him uncomfortable. The artist was reasserting the old superiority over him which the visitor had found so irritating, and it was Iron's instinct to meet this by an air of bluster.

"Very well," Arthur said. "We may then consider what you are pleased to call our account as closed."

He walked forward deliberately and laid the paper he held on the heap of glowing coals in the grate. It curled and shrivelled, and before Irons could even compress his thick lips to whistle, nothing remained of the document but a quivering film.

"Well," Irons commented, "you are a damned fool; but then that's your own business."

The artist bowed gravely.

"Naturally," he replied.

He stood waiting as if he expected his caller to go, and, despite himself, Irons felt that he was being bowed out of the studio. He took his leave awkwardly, feeling that he had somehow been beaten with trumps in his hand, and hating Fenton ten times more heartily than ever.

"The confounded snob!" he muttered under his breath, as he went down the stairs of Studio Building. "He puts on damned high-headed airs; but I'm not done with him yet."

And Fenton meanwhile stood looking at that thin fluttering film on the red coals with despair in his heart. He had taken the money which he imperatively needed to pay notes soon due, and invested in Princeton Platinum, with which the obliging Erastus Snaffle had supplied him out of pure generosity, if one could credit the seller's statements; and he had been secretly depending for relief upon this very gift from Irons which he had destroyed. His affairs were every day becoming more inextricably involved, and Fenton, it has already been said, with all his cleverness, had no skill as a financier.

"Well," he commented to himself, shrugging his shoulders, "that is the end of that; but I did make good play."

The satisfaction of having well acted his part, and of having got the better of Irons, did much toward restoring the artist's naturally buoyant spirits. He fell to reckoning his resources, and by dint of introducing into the account several pleasing but most improbable possibilities, he succeeded in building up between himself and ruin a fanciful barrier which for the moment satisfied him; and beyond the moment he refused to look.

XX

VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE. Comedy of Errors; ii.--I.

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson had in the course of a varied, if not always dignified career, learned many things. There are people who seem compelled by circumstances to waste much of their mental energy in attending to the trivial and sordid details of life, and the widow often repined that she was one of these unfortunates. She secretly fretted not a little, for instance, over the fact that she was compelled to be gracious to servants, to butcher and baker and candlestick maker, from unmixed reasons of policy. To be gracious in the _role_ of a _grande dame_ would have pleased her, but she resented the necessity; and she avenged herself upon fate by gloating upon the stupidity of that power in wasting her energies in these petty things, when results so brilliant might have been attained by a more wise utilization of her cleverness.

This morning, for instance, when Mrs. Sampson chatted affably with the carpenter who had come to do an odd job in the china closet of her tiny dining-room, she really enjoyed the talk. She was one of those women who cannot help liking to chat with a man, and John Stanton was both good looking enough and intelligent enough to make her willing to exert herself for his entertainment. This did not, however, prevent her being inwardly indignant that she felt herself compelled to converse with Stanton because experience had taught her that a little amiability properly exhibited was sure to increase the work and lessen the bill at the same time. She did not forego the pleasure of pitying herself because she chanced to find the task imposed upon her an agreeable one. There are few people in this world who are sufficiently just and sufficiently sane to deny themselves the luxury of self pity merely because the occasion does not justify that feeling.

Stanton, with his coat off and his strong arms bare to the elbow, was planing down a shelf to make it fit into its place, and as he paused to shake the long creamy shavings out of his plane, he looked up to say apologetically,--

"I'm making an awful litter, ma'am, but I don't see how I can help it."

Mrs. Sampson laughed.

"Oh, it isn't of the least consequence," she answered. "If I was inclined to complain it would be because after keeping me waiting for six weeks for this work, you come just when I have company staying with me, and gentlemen coming to dine."

She had walked into the room with a not illy simulated air of having come with the intention of going out again immediately, and stood well posed, so that her fine figure came out in relief against a crimson Japanese screen.

"I haven't anything to do with that, ma'am," Stanton replied. "The boss makes out the orders, and we go where we are sent."

"Well," the widow said, smiling brilliantly, and moving across the room to the table where the dishes taken from the closet were piled, "it can't be helped, I suppose; but I hope you will let me get things cleared up in time for dinner."

"Oh, I'll surely get through by eleven or half past."

"And I don't have dinner till half past six."

The carpenter looked up questioningly. Then he went on with his work.

"I never can get used to city ways," he observed. "I don't see how folks can get along without having dinner in the middle of the day when it's dinner time."