"But what shall I tell him?"
"The truth; that I will not sit down to eat with a murderer."
She vanished from the room, leaving her husband alone. Dr. Ashton"s step was already upon the stair, and however keenly Mrs. Fenton might feel the wickedness of the Doctor in not preventing Frontier"s self-destruction, the action was too strictly in accord with Arthur"s own views to allow of his condemning it. His friend found him in a state of confusion which instantly connected itself in the guest"s mind with the non-appearance of Edith, an impression which was strengthened by the lameness of the excuses tendered for her absence. Dr. Ashton not unnaturally concluded that he had just escaped stumbling upon a family quarrel. He accepted whatever his host chose to say, and the two proceeded rather gloomily to dinner.
In Arthur"s mind there sprang an irritation against both his wife and his friend. His instincts were all protective, that term including comfort as well as self-preservation. He was intensely annoyed at his wife"s att.i.tude, and began to vent his spleen in cynical speeches, which since his marriage had been rare with him.
"Christian grace," he declared, "is exactly like milk; excellent and nourishing while it is fresh, but hard to get pure, and even then sure to sour."
"Say something more original if you are cross, Arthur," observed his friend good humoredly. "What is the matter? Is it a new rug or a j.a.panese bronze you are dying for?"
"Hang rugs and bronzes," retorted Arthur, with a vicious determination to be ill-natured. "If I can get the necessities of life, I am lucky."
"Nonsense," was the reply. "It isn"t that. The lack of the necessities of life makes a man sad; it is the lack of luxuries that makes him cynical."
Dr. Ashton was perfectly right in his inward comment that Fenton was secretly regretting his marriage. This was the thought that filled Arthur"s mind. It was true he had had no absolute disagreement with his wife, although it is not impossible that it might have come to this, had a delay in the guest"s arrival allowed time. But it filled the husband with an unreasoning rage that Edith presumed to establish so strict a code of morals. He felt that her position as his wife demanded more conformity to his standards. Why need she trouble herself about that which did not concern her, and sit in such lofty judgment upon the morals of her neighbors? Did she propose keeping Dr. Ashton"s conscience as well as her own--and his? Certainly those whom the husband found worthy his friendship it ill became the wife to stigmatize and avoid. He sat moodily tearing his fish in pieces instead of eating; for the moment wholly forgetting his duty as host.
"If you"ll pardon my mentioning it," Dr. Ashton said at length, "you are about as cheerful company as a death"s head. You are so melancholy that I am tempted to fling in your face one of my old epigrams; that love is a gay young bachelor who can never be persuaded to marry and settle down."
The other laughed and made an effort to shake off his gloom; but with so little success that his guest resolved to escape at the earliest moment possible. Something in Fenton"s forced talk, however, attracted Dr. Ashton"s attention.
"My wife was a pupil of Frontier."
The simple phrase, which had escaped Arthur"s lips because it had been in his mind not to allude to this fact, might have gone unnoticed had not the speaker himself so strongly felt the shock of disclosure as to show sudden confusion. The whole matter was at once clear to Dr.
Ashton, who having recognized Edith at the reception, had been prepared for identification in his own turn.
"So that," he observed calmly, "is the reason Mrs. Fenton does not dine with us to-night. I knew she was sure to recognize me sooner or later; but as I had no motive for concealing this matter, on the other hand I had no reason for recalling so unpleasant a circ.u.mstance to her mind."
There was a pause of a moment, and then the Doctor continued:
"I think Frontier was rather foolish. I told him so. A charming little Hungarian girl of whom he was fond, had left him to follow the fortunes of a Polish Count, or something of the sort. I do not see why a man should kill himself for so trifling a thing as a woman; but if he chose to, I am not one of those officious persons who feel justified in interfering with any private act they don"t happen to approve. I certainly should resent such impertinent intrusion into my own affairs."
"And I," a.s.sented Arthur doggedly; "but my wife----"
"Certainly; I understand. Mrs. Fenton says hard things of me because I would not rob poor Frontier of what little comfort he could get from dying. Very well; I will not offend her by my presence. Only she is setting herself a hard task in attempting to treat people according to their conservatism. In these days the sheep and goats have come to be so much alike in appearance, that I scarcely see how a mere mortal is to distinguish between them. My own case I settle for her by avoiding her house."
"But this is my house," protested Arthur, intensely chagrined.
"No," his guest replied, still smiling and moving toward the door. "It is the nest you have built for your love and your--regeneration! Good night."
XXVI.
THERE BEGINS CONFUSION.
I Henry VI.; iv.--i.
Alone in her own room, Edith relieved her overwrought feelings by a burst of tears, brief, indeed, but bitter. Like her husband, she felt that this incident, although not a.s.suming the guise of a quarrel, was an opening wedge in the unity of their affection. Unlike Arthur, however, she thought of it with self-reproach and misgiving. She did not for an instant consider the possibility of having taken a different position in regard to Dr. Ashton, yet in a womanly, illogical way, she felt that she should have learned her husband"s wishes before so vehemently declaring her own views.
She heard the artist and his guest go in to dinner, and the thought flashed upon her that this was the first time her husband had dined without her since their marriage. She wondered if he remembered it, and, remembering, regretted. She longed for companionship, for some friend into whose sympathetic ear she could pour her story, from whom she might ask advice. She reflected sadly how far she was removed from her intimate friends. Of her new acquaintances many had been most kind to her, but towards none of them, not even to her relatives, had she been so strongly drawn as to wish now to go to them for confidence and sympathy; unless, came a second thought, it were Mrs. Greyson. She was a widow, Edith reflected, and had evidently suffered much, while the strength of her character was evident from her dealing with the Italian girl. It would be no disloyalty to go to her; there had been no words spoken between husband and wife which could not be told a friend, and Edith felt that she needed the advice of a woman more versed in the intricacies of life than herself.
She dressed herself for walking, and slipped noiselessly out of the house.
Mrs. Greyson was at dinner, and was naturally surprised at seeing her caller, but she had both too much tact and too much breeding to ask explanations.
"I do hope you have not dined," she said. "I am so much alone that it is a perfect delight to me to have company. My dinner is a little like a picnic, but if you will only consider how great a favor you are doing me by sharing it, the consciousness of philanthropy ought to make it palatable."
Neither lady mentioned Arthur, although his name was uppermost in the thoughts of both. They sat down together in Helen"s tiny dining-room, and served by her only maid, had a charming meal. The hostess exerted herself to entertain her guest, wisely judging that what Edith said in calmness she would be far less likely to regret than words uttered in the unguarded moments of her excitement. She told Mrs. Fenton stories of her studio life both in Boston and abroad, she led Edith on to speak of her own travels and experiences, until the latter almost forgot that she was dining in one house and her husband in another. It was not until the coffee was reached, coffee made as only Helen could make it, that the subject of the visit was really broached.
"How is Mr. Fenton?" Helen asked deliberately, believing the time had come for such a question.
The face of the other fell. She experienced a pang at the consciousness of having been gay and happy, forgetful of her husband and her trouble.
"He is well," she answered falteringly.
"Why did you not bring him with you?" continued Mrs. Greyson lightly, yet with a secret determination to know the cause of her guest"s evident disturbance.
"He did not know I was coming," Edith responded in a low voice. "That is what I came to talk about. I thought you might understand; but it involves a third person, and perhaps I ought not to tell you. I am sure, though," she went on, gaining confidence now that the ice was broken, "that I can trust you. A friend of Arthur"s came to dine to-night, and just as the door-bell rang, I found him to be the man I once saw commit murder in Paris."
"Murder!" exclaimed Helen, turning white. "Commit murder?"
"Consent to it," corrected Edith, unconsciously a little pleased to have produced so great an effect upon her usually self-possessed friend. "He looked on while Frontier took poison, without trying to prevent him."
"But that," Mrs. Greyson said slowly, "is hardly the same thing as murder."
"It is quite as bad," Edith protested earnestly. "It makes me shudder to think of his dining alone with Arthur at this moment. Who knows what might happen!"
"Nothing tragic, I think," Helen replied smiling. "He does not go about with pistols in his belt, I suppose."
"It is awful to me," Edith continued, with increasing excitement, too much stirred to notice the sarcasm. "I told Arthur I could not sit down with a murderer, and just at that moment we heard his step, and I ran away upstairs; and then I felt dreadfully, and I came to you."
"I thank you for your confidence. But what do you mean to do? What will Arthur tell him?"
"The truth, I hope."
"He is scarcely likely to say to the guest he has himself invited that you think him a murderer," answered her friend, smiling again, "and I am not sure that he would even look at this quite so severely as you do."
"How else can he look at it?" demanded Edith. "How else can any one look at it? Isn"t it murder to take human life, and if one does not prevent suicide when he might, isn"t it the same as if he did it himself?"
"We will not get into a discussion," Helen replied gently. "I feel about it as you do; though I believe very differently. But I see perfectly well how a man might be strictly honest in thinking that it was the privilege of any human being to lay aside his life when he is weary of it; and I do not presume to condemn others for feeling what I only think I believe."
"Think you believe!" cried the other in horror. "You do not think you believe that murder is right?"
"a.s.suredly not; but as there are so many related points upon which we do not agree, would it not be better to talk of this particular case than of general belief?"
"But it is impossible for any one to believe as you say," persisted Edith; "simply impossible. No one can believe that wrong is right."