After the Pagans had separated that night Fred Rangely lingered in Herman"s studio.
The sculptor somehow found it possible to be more frank with Rangely than with any other of his companions, and although there was a difference of some half a dozen in the count of their years, and perhaps more in their ages as measured by experiences, Herman"s strong but naturally stormy nature found much pleasure in the calm philosophy of his friend.
Scarcely were the two men alone, when Rangely turned to his host and demanded abruptly:
"Now, I want to know, Grant, what in the devil is the matter with you to-night? What set you out to pitch into Fenton so?"
Herman poured out a gla.s.s of wine and swallowed it before replying.
"Because I am a d.a.m.ned idiot!" he retorted savagely. "I"m all shaken up, Fred; and the worst of it is that I don"t see any way out of the snare I"m in."
"It isn"t real trouble, I hope."
"Isn"t it! By Jove!" cried the sculptor, "the more honest a man is in this world the worse off he is. If I hadn"t had a conscience when I was a young fellow, I should be all right now. Who is it--Fenton?--that is always saying that he asks forgiveness for his virtues and thanks the G.o.ds for every vice he can cultivate?"
"Well," Rangely remarked, filling a pipe, and curiously surveying his companion, who was raging up and down the studio, "you don"t seem to be in an especially cheerful and enlivening frame of mind; that"s a fact.
If a fellow can be of any help, call on; if not, at least try to take it a little more gently for the sake of your friends."
"Do any thing?" retorted the other. "No; there"s nothing to be done.
I"m a fool."
"Even that disease has been remedied before now," Rangely said coolly; "though usually experience and time are necessary to the cure."
"I"ll tell you the whole story," Herman exclaimed, flinging himself into a chair. "It is all simple enough. It is always simple enough to tangle things up so that Lucifer himself cannot unsnarl them. When I was in Rome I was in love--crazily, gushingly in love, you understand, like a big schoolboy--with a girl I found in Capri. She was a good little thing, with a figure like Helen"s; that"s what did the business for me. I coaxed her to Rome to be my model, and then that infernal conscience of mine made me ask her to marry me. I could have done any thing I liked with her; I knew that; she had n.o.body to look after her but a half sister who paid about as much attention to her as if she had been a gra.s.shopper. But the infernal New England Puritanism in my blood wouldn"t let me hurt her."
"And somebody else wasn"t so scrupulous?" asked the listener as his friend paused in his story.
"You think so?" returned Herman eagerly. "Then I wasn"t so unutterably a scoundrel for thinking so, too, was I? I did doubt her; I had reason to. She posed for a friend of mine, a painter; you know, of course--Hang it! What"s the use of going into all the details. I was poor as a church mouse or she shouldn"t have done it at all, even for him. The gist of the story is that I was jealous and flew out at both of them, and left Rome in a rage!"
The two men sat in silence for some moments. Rangely puffed vigorously at his pipe, while his companion stared savagely into the shadows in the further end of the studio. Neither looked at the other; the hearer appreciated too well the shame-facedness by which these unusual confidences must be accompanied. From some distant steeple a clock was faintly heard striking two.
"And to-day," Herman at length began again in an altered voice, "to-day she came here. She has followed me all these years, going through heaven knows what experiences and hardships, to bring me the proof that I was a madman blinded by groundless jealousy, and that instead of being wronged I cursedly abused both her and poor dead old Hoffmeir."
Again there came an interval of silence. A lamp flickered and went out with a m.u.f.fled sound. The thoughts of both men were of that formless character scarcely to be distinguished from emotions; on the one hand sad and remorseful, on the other sympathetic and pitiful.
"Well?" Rangely ventured after a time.
"But what shall I do?" demanded Herman. "I cannot marry her."
"No, of course not. She cannot expect it after banging about the world."
"Oh, it isn"t that," the other said hastily. "She is as good and as pure as when I left her; at least I believe so. And she does expect it."
"She does expect it!" echoed his friend. "Ah!"
The reception of a confidence is a most delicate ordeal through which few people come unscathed. Rare individuals are born with the ready sympathies, quick apprehension, and exquisite tact needful; but the vast majority are sure to wound their friends if the latter ever venture to approach with their armor of reticence laid wholly aside.
Although perhaps not the ideal confidant, Rangely was sympathetic and possessed of at least sufficient discretion to avoid comment until he knew the whole situation and was sure that his opinion was desired. He was still unable fully to understand his friend"s agitation, the task of disposing of an old sweetheart in so inferior a position not appearing to his easy-going nature a matter sufficiently difficult to warrant so deep disquiet.
Precisely the clew that he needed the sculptor had not given, but he was endeavoring to overcome his repugnance to disclosing his most secret feelings. Every word cost him an effort, but he went on with a savage sense of doing penance by the self-inflicted torture.
"Yes," he repeated, "she expects it. Why shouldn"t she, poor thing? She has not changed, and she does not understand that I may have altered."
"And you have?"
Grant Herman looked up and down the great studio, now growing dusky from the burning out of candles here and there. An antique lamp which was lighted only on special occasions stood where the breeze came to it from the high window, and the flame, wind-swept, smoked and flared.
Through the silence the listener"s ear could detect a faint sound of the tide washing against the piles of the wharf outside.
The sculptor started up suddenly and stood firmly, throwing back his splendid head and shoulders, and looking straight into the eyes of his friend.
"Yes," he said in a clear, low voice. "I have changed. I---There is some one else."
"Life," remarked Rangely, with seeming irrelevancy, "life is a fallacy."
"I"d like to be honorable," Herman continued, "but how can I? It is impossible to be honest to both her and myself. If I hadn"t had any scruples, then---Bah! What a beast I am! Poor Ninitta."
Still Rangely smoked in silence, and the sculptor went on again.
"It has always been my creed that when a man has allowed a woman to love him--much more, made her love him, as I did--he is a black-hearted knave to let a change in himself wreck her happiness. Now I am put to the test."
"And the other one?" asked Rangely. "Does she know that you care for her?"
"I have never said so to her. Heaven only knows how much she feels by intuition. A man always fancies that the woman he loves can tell."
"That may depend something on how often you see her." "I see her nearly every day. She is my pupil."
"Mrs. Greyson?"
"Yes," Herman said, a little defiantly, as if now the secret was told he challenged the right of another man to share it.
"Is she a widow?"
"Yes," the other answered, with no perceptible pause, and yet between the question and his reply had come to him the swift remembrance that he really knew nothing of his pupil"s life or history, and had simply taken it for granted that her husband was not living. "Arthur Fenton brought her here," he added, rather thinking aloud than answering any point of Rangely"s query. "He was an old friend of her husband."
"But what will you do with the other?"
Instead of replying Herman got up from the seat into which he had flung himself, and went about the studio putting out the lights.
"Go home," he said with a whimsical smile. "I"m sure I don"t know what we are talking about at this time of the morning. As for what I shall do--Well, time will show; I am as ignorant as yourself on the subject."
IX.
VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE.
Comedy of Errors; ii.--i.