"Oh, come now, Fenton," Mr. Staggchase said confusedly, "don"t go off that way. Of course"--
He hesitated, not knowing how to continue, and another member took up the word.
"All that is nonsense, of course. If the servant was mistaken, why can"t you say so, and put yourself right with the committee?"
"Because," Fenton answered, throwing up his head, "I prefer retaining my self-respect even to putting myself right with this or any other committee. Good morning."
He went out quickly. He felt that this was a good point for an exit, and he wished to get away lest he should be unable to keep up to the level of the scene as he had played it. So thoroughly was his whole att.i.tude consciously theatrical, that he smiled to himself outside the door as the whimsical reflection crossed his mind that he really deserved a call before the curtain. Then he remembered how awkward he should find it to be called back; and with a smile he ran down stairs to get his hat and coat, and hurried out of the house into the darkening spring afternoon.
When Fenton had gone, the members of the committee sat looking at each other in that condition of bewilderment which could easily turn to either indignation or contrition as the direction might be determined by the first impulse. Unfortunately for Fenton, it was his enemy the Secretary who spoke first.
"Heroics are all very well," he sneered, "but they don"t change facts.
He"s evidently played poker enough to know how to bluff in good shape."
There was a rustle of impatience in the room. The men seemed to be reminded that a very high tone had been taken with them, and that they had all come in for a share of the rebuke which Fenton had administered. They were irritated by the mingling of a secret concurrence with the artist"s position that a member of the club should not be impeached on the testimony of a servant, and the conviction that Fenton was really guilty of the charge brought against him, so that it was contrary to both justice and common sense to allow him to escape on a mere technicality.
"Fenton is so hot-headed," Mr. Staggchase began; and then he added: "I can"t say that I blame him so very much, though. I don"t fancy I should be very amiable myself if I were brought up on the word of one of the servants."
"But it was the duty of the servant to inform me," the Secretary returned doggedly, "and why shouldn"t the committee take action on information which comes to it that way as well as any other. We didn"t set the servant to spy on the members, and I can"t for the life of me follow anything so fine spun as Fenton"s theory. He only set it up, in my opinion, to get himself out of a bad box."
"He might at least have had the grace to deny it, if he could," another man said. "It leaves us in a devilish awkward fix as it is. We can"t drop the matter, and if he shouldn"t be guilty"--
"Oh, he"s guilty, fast enough," the Secretary interrupted, his little green eyes shining under their fat lids. "He"s one of the set that have been playing poker in the club until it"s begun to be talked about outside, and I saw him go out with Snaffle that night myself."
There was some deliberation, some doubting, and some hesitation in regard to the proper course in such a case. The committee felt that their own dignity had suffered, that their authority should be a.s.serted, and their majesty avenged. Mr. Staggchase was the most lenient in his views of the situation, and even he admitted that whether Fenton were innocent of the offence with which he was charged or not, he had at least treated the committee most cavalierly, and against the ground taken by most of the members, that if Fenton had been able to deny the charge he would have done so, he could only reply,--
"I don"t think that at all follows. In the first place he wasn"t asked.
He is just the man to feel that a summons before this committee is in itself a pretty severe reprimand, as plenty of men would. He"s high spirited and sensitive as the devil, and there was nothing in what he said to-day that wasn"t compatible to my mind with his being perfectly innocent. Indeed, I don"t believe he has cheek enough to carry it off so, if he were not sure of his position."
"Oh, as to cheek," retorted the Secretary, venomously, "Arthur Fenton has enough of that for anything. And, as for that matter, almost any man will fight when he is cornered."
In the end the Secretary prevailed, and the committee, albeit somewhat doubtingly, pa.s.sed a vote of censure upon Fenton. The Secretary was directed to communicate this fact to the artist, and he took it upon himself also to include the information in the printed notices of the monthly meeting which were sent out a few days later, an innovation which stirred the club to its very depths and became town talk within twenty-four hours.
XXII
HIS PURE HEART"S TRUTH.
Two Gentlemen of Verona; iv.--2.
Helen Greyson was at work in her studio modelling the hand of a statue.
The pretty hand of Melissa Blake lay before her, so near that Milly"s face came close to her own as she sat beside the modelling stand. It was one of those anomalies of which nature is fond the world over, and in which she displays nowhere more whimsical wilfulness than in New England, that Melissa, born of a race of plain country farmers, should have the hand of a princess. It was slender and beautiful, with exquisite taper fingers which had not as yet been spoiled by hard work, although were the present generation of New England maidens called upon to labor as vigorously as did their grandmothers the girl"s hands would hardly have retained their comeliness so long.
Helen was working silently, absorbed in thought, and going on with her modelling mechanically. She was pondering the old question, whether she had done well in coming back to America, or whether she should have still kept the ocean between herself and Grant Herman. While she was in Europe, the longing to see him, to feel that he was near, to breathe the same air, had become ever more strenuous, until at last it could not be resisted. The sense of safety she had while so far away prevented her from appreciating that she was returning to the same danger from which she had fled. She told herself that time had so softened and changed her feelings, that Herman with wife and son was so different from the lonely man who had sought her love, and whom she had bravely renounced from a stern sense of duty, whether wise or not, that there could be no danger. She was a woman, and she had kept temptation at a distance until the nerve of resistance was worn out; then she had come home.
Now she asked herself what she had gained. She had renounced the pa.s.sive acquiescence which she had won by years of hard struggle, and she had in exchange only a fierce unrest which was well-nigh unendurable. To be near Herman and yet to be as far removed from him as if the universe were between was a torture such as she had not dreamed of. All the old love awoke, and something of the old conviction which had made renunciation possible had failed her with time.
Nothing is more common than for the conscience half unconsciously to a.s.sume that a heroic self-sacrifice has been of so great efficacy that even the conditions which made it right are thereby altered. Without realizing it, Helen"s mental att.i.tude was that in giving up Herman"s love and bringing about his marriage to Ninitta that his honor might be unstained, she had accomplished a self-denial so tremendous that even the need of making it was thereby destroyed. The idea was paradoxical, but that a proposition is paradoxical is no obstacle to its being held firmly by the feminine mind.
But by coming home Helen had also been put in a position where she could not avoid seeing something of Herman"s married life, and it was at once impossible for her to help perceiving that it was a failure, or to evade the conclusion that if it were a failure she was to blame for the part she had taken in bringing it about. It is always dangerous to judge of actions by their results, since by so doing one refers them to the code of expediency rather than to that of ethics. Helen was not prepared to p.r.o.nounce her old decision wrong; but the feeling that her renunciation had been vain forced itself more and more strongly upon her.
She was losing sight of her conviction that the need of doing what one felt to be right was in itself so imperative that no course of action could be wrong which was based upon this principle. The truth is that all mortals, and perhaps women especially, feel that a virtuous resolution, a n.o.ble self-denial, must bring with it a spiritual uplifting which will render it possible to hold to it. The hour of self-conquest is one of inner exaltation which is so vivid that it is impossible to realize that it can be otherwise than perpetual; a life of self-conquest is a continuous struggle against the double doubt which is the ghost of the short-lived exaltation that promised to be immortal.
From her reverie, Helen was aroused by a question of Melissa which almost seemed as if suggested by thought transference.
"Do you know," Melissa asked, "why the commission was not given to Mr.
Herman?"
"The commission?" Helen repeated, so startled by the mention of the name which had been in her mind that for the moment she did not comprehend the question.
"Why, for the _America_," returned Melissa. "I thought you knew Mr.
Herman, and Orin said that you had withdrawn."
Helen looked at her with a puzzled air.
"I did withdraw," she said, "but I did not know the matter had been decided. Who is Orin? Orin Stanton?"
"Yes, he is to make the statue."
"Did he tell you so?"
"Yes, he thinks I helped him by speaking to Mrs. Fenton; but she said Mr. Calvin already wanted Orin, so it made no difference."
"How long has it been decided?" asked Helen.
"He showed me the letter from Mr. Calvin day before yesterday. The committee hadn"t met, but Mr. Irons had promised his vote, and he and Mr. Calvin make a majority. Orin had been afraid Mr. Irons would vote for Mr. Herman, and I did not know but what you could tell. We are all so much interested in the statue."
Helen laid down her tools with an air of sudden determination.
"Why are you?" she asked, rather absently. "When Mrs. Fenton told me she had asked you to let me model your hands, she didn"t mention your being interested in my art."
"Oh, I don"t know anything about it," returned the other, with the utmost frankness, "only that Orin"s a sculptor."
Helen smiled at the girl"s _naivete_.
"And am I to congratulate you on Orin"s success?"
Melissa blushed.
"Of course I am pleased," she answered, "especially for John"s sake."
"And John?" Helen pursued, finishing her preparations for leaving her work.
"John is Orin"s half-brother," Milly replied, in a voice and with a manner which made it unnecessary for Mrs. Greyson to question farther.
"I shall not work any more this morning," she said. "I have to go out."
She dressed herself for the street, and, for the first time in six years, took the well-remembered way toward Herman"s studio down among the warehouses and wharves. She was indignant at the action of the committee, of which she felt that Herman should be told. As, however, she neared the place, old a.s.sociations and feelings made her heart beat quickly. When she put aside the great Oran rug and entered the studio, she felt a choking sensation in her throat, and the tears sprang to her eyes. She remembered so vividly the day when she had stood in this very spot and parted from her lover, that it almost seemed to her for the moment as if she had come to enact that scene again.