To Mr. Candish was given the care of Miss Penwick, since with her Edith knew that his sensitive awkwardness would be as comfortable as was possible with any one; and the guests were so arranged that the clergyman sat upon his hostess"s left hand, being thus in a manner intrenched between her and Miss Penwick against the raillery which Mrs.
Fenton knew her husband would press as far as his position as host would allow. Edith always made it a point to do all that she could for Mr. Candish"s comfort, and it was largely on his account that she had included Miss Penwick in the list of guests. She had a certain tenderness for the forlorn old lady, but it might not have found active expression had not the rector"s pleasure come into the question. Arthur had laughed when the proposed arrangement was submitted to him.
"Does your care for your pastor"s spiritual welfare go so far," he asked jocosely, "that you don"t dare trust him with a young woman?
Really, it looks as if you were jealous of the red-haired angel."
"Mr. Candish is not a young woman"s man," had been Edith"s answer; whereat her husband laughed again.
The talk at dinner was less animated than was usual at Fenton"s table.
The host was preoccupied, despite his efforts not to appear so, and the company was somehow not fully in touch. No conversation could be wholly dull, however, which Arthur led; and while the "lady"s finger" in his cheek told his wife and Helen that he was laboring under some intense excitement, he held himself pluckily in hand.
The conversation at first was between neighbors, but soon the host, according to his fashion, began to answer any remark that his quick ears caught, no matter from whose lips.
"You talk about marriage like a Pagan," he heard Helen say to Rangely.
"Oh, no," Fenton broke in, "he doesn"t go half far enough for a Pagan.
The Pagan position is that matrimony is a matter of temperament and convenience; it is essentially Philistine to consider that a marriage ceremony imposes eternal obligations."
"There, Mr. Fenton," Mrs. Hubbard rejoined, "I haven"t heard you say anything so heathenish for half a dozen years. I hoped your wife had reformed you."
"Or that he had come to years of discretion," suggested Mr. Hubbard, with his charming smile.
"Oh, but I find years of indiscretion so much more interesting," Fenton retorted.
A moment later Helen said something about the truth, and Rangely retorted,--
"Truth is generally what one wishes to believe."
"Except in Puritanism," broke in Arthur, "there it was whatever one didn"t wish to believe."
"Don"t you think," questioned Mr. Hubbard, "that you are always a little hard on the Puritans? You must admire their conviction and their bravery."
"Oh, yes," was Fenton"s reply; "there is something superb in the earnestness of the Puritans, and their absorption in one idea; but that idea has left its birthmark of gloom on all their descendants, and one cannot forget that Puritanism was the soil from which sprang the unbelief of today."
"Bless us!" cried Rangely, "is Saul also among the prophets? Are you also condemning unbelief?"
"Not at all," said Fenton, coolly, "I only want those who defend Puritanism to accept its legitimate results."
"It seems to me," protested Mr. Candish, who had become very red according to his unfortunate wont; "that if you argue in that way, you must always condemn good, because evil may come after it."
"Oh, I do," retorted Fenton, airily.
Everybody except the clergyman laughed at the unexpectedness of this reply; but Mr. Candish was wounded by the most faint suspicion of anything like trifling with sacred things.
"My husband is utterly abandoned, as you see, Mr. Candish," said Edith, coming to the rescue, as she always did when Arthur showed signs of baiting the rector. "Is the decision made in regard to the _America_?"
she continued, turning to Mr. Hubbard, by way of changing the subject.
"Yes," he answered, "the commission is to be given to Orin Stanton."
"Orin Stanton?" asked Kent. "Who is he?"
"Oh, he," returned Fenton, "is a man that had the misfortune to be born with a wooden toothpick in his mouth instead of a silver spoon."
"Is he Irish?"
"No, but he ought to be to have won favor in the sight of a committee appointed by the Boston City Government."
"Come," said Helen; "that is rather severe when Mr. Hubbard is on the committee."
"Oh, I don"t mind," returned Hubbard. "I know Fenton wouldn"t lose a chance of having his fling at the Irish."
"Well," Fenton explained, defensively, "I am always irritated at the pity of the United States having expended so much blood and treasure to free itself from the dominion of the whole of Great Britain simply to sink into dependence upon so insignificant a part of that kingdom as Ireland."
"Mercy!" exclaimed Miss Penwick. "What extreme sentiments!"
They smiled at the old lady"s words, and then Edith went back to the statue.
"I fancy young Stanton hasn"t been above some wire-pulling," she remarked. "He sent his prospective sister-in-law, Melissa Blake, to ask me to use my influence with Uncle Peter in his behalf."
"He needn"t have troubled," Mr. Hubbard returned. "Mr. Calvin supported him from the first."
"Oh, yes," Ethel said; "Mrs. Frostwinch and Mrs. Bodewin Ranger chose Stanton long ago and persuaded Mr. Calvin to help them."
"I can"t fancy Mr. Calvin as anybody"s tool," commented Kent, who would have regarded his companion"s words as a trifle too frank to be spoken at the table of Mr. Calvin"s niece, had his mind been in a condition to take exception to anything that she said.
"Isn"t that Melissa Blake," asked Mr. Hubbard of Edith, "the one you recommended to me as a copyist?"
"Yes, I hope you found her satisfactory."
Mr. Hubbard smiled somewhat grimly.
"Indeed he did not," broke in Mrs. Hubbard speaking for him. "She broke confidence."
"Broke confidence!" echoed Edith, in astonishment. "Melissa Blake?"
"Yes," Hubbard returned. "I really didn"t mean to tell you, but my wife, you see, has all the indignation of a woman against a woman."
"But how did she break confidence?" demanded Edith. "I would trust her as implicitly as I would myself."
"The papers she copied," was the reply, "were the plans for a syndicate to put up mills at Fentonville. We kept the scheme quiet until the route of the new railroad should be decided, and when we came before the Committee of the House, the whole thing had been given away, and the Wachusett men had even secured the chairman, Tom Greenfield. He lives in Fentonville himself, and we had counted him at least as sure."
"That must have been the thing," placidly observed Miss Penwick to Rangely, "that Mr. Irons was talking to Mrs. Sampson about, the night we dined there to meet Miss Merrivale."
Rangely glanced up in vexation, to see if Miss Mott were listening, and caught a gleam of mischievous intelligence from her eyes.
"I don"t remember it," he answered ambiguously.
"But how do you know," persisted Edith, "that the information came from Miss Blake?"
"Because Mr. Staggchase found out at Fentonville afterward that she came from there, and that a young man she is engaged to had just forfeited on a mortgage some of the meadows our company was to buy."