Mr. Candish nodded approvingly.
"I don"t know," he said, "that a bachelor like myself has any right to discuss marriage, except on general principles; but certainly, even without taking the religious view of it, one can see that the very objections brought against wedlock are reasons in its favor."
"Yes," Edith returned, but she moved uneasily in her chair, and Helen divined that the subject was painful to her.
"The difficulty is," she said, with an air of dismissing the whole subject, "that most people marry for the honeymoon and very few for the whole life."
She fell to thinking in an absorbed mood which was not wholly free from irritation, how constantly this question of marriage met one at every turn, as if the whole fabric of life, social and ethical, depended entirely upon this inst.i.tution. She sighed a little impatiently, looking into the fire with mournful eyes. She thought of the marriages with which her destiny had been most intimately connected, her own ill-starred mating, the union of Herman and Ninitta, that of Fenton and Edith. She had long ago settled in her own mind that wedlock was not only the mainstay of society, but that it was largely a concession to the weakness of her s.e.x; and yet instinctively she protested; that revolt against being a woman which few of her s.e.x have failed at one time or another to experience taking the form of a revolt against matrimony.
"Indeed," she broke out, half humorously and half pathetically, "the most joyful promise for the Christians hereafter is that they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage."
Mr. Candish looked a little shocked; but Edith said softly,--
"That is only possible when they become as the Sons of G.o.d."
Helen spread out her hands in a deprecatory gesture.
"Come, Edith," she said, "that isn"t fair, to take the discussion into regions where I can"t follow you."
Edith smiled, but made no rejoinder in words. Turning to Mr. Candish she remarked, with an abrupt change of subject,--
"When may I tell Melissa Blake about the Knitting School?"
"I see no reason," he answered, "why she shouldn"t know at once. We shall be ready to begin operations in a month at most, and ought to know her decision."
"Isn"t it capital?" Edith explained, turning toward Helen. "The Knitting School is really to be started. Mrs. Bodewin Ranger guarantees the funds for a year, and we have contracts for work to be delivered in the fall that will keep from a dozen to twenty girls busy all summer; while the matron"s salary will put Melissa Blake on her feet very nicely. It"s such a relief to have some of those girls provided for."
"That"s the Melissa Blake, isn"t it," Helen asked, "that Mr. Hubbard spoke of at dinner?"
"Yes," answered Edith, "but it is impossible that he should be right."
Helen replied only by that look of general sympathy which does duty as an answer when one has no possible interest in the subject under discussion, but Mr. Candish, who knew Melissa, shook his head with an air of conviction.
"No," he observed, "Miss Blake has too much principle to be guilty of a breach of confidence. I am sure Mr. Hubbard must be mistaken."
"And yet," commented Helen, "there is such a general feeling that if one keeps the letter of his word he may do as he pleases about the spirit, that she may have contrived to give her lover a hint without actually breaking her promise as she would understand it."
"I don"t know," Edith returned earnestly, "that we have any right to judge other people more harshly than we should ourselves. If one of our friends had betrayed Mr. Hubbard"s plans we should say he was a rascal because we should a.s.sume that he knew what he was doing; and we wouldn"t believe such a charge unless we knew he was really bad."
"But," persisted Helen, with an unconscious irony which Fenton would have keenly appreciated had he but been there to hear, "in our cla.s.s of course it"s different. A nice sense of honor is after all very much a social matter nowadays. That may sound a bit sn.o.bbish, but don"t you think it is true?"
"It is and it isn"t," was Mr. Candish"s reply. "It would undoubtedly be true if religious principle did not come into the matter; but religious principle is stronger in what we call the middle cla.s.ses than among their social superiors."
Mrs. Greyson was not sufficiently interested to continue the discussion, and she let the matter drop, while Edith contented herself with reiterating her conviction in Melissa"s perfect trustworthiness.
They chatted upon indifferent subjects for a little while, and then Mr.
Candish went to keep an appointment at the bedside of a sick parishioner; so that Helen and Edith were left alone.
They sat together a little longer, and then Helen asked casually,--
"By the way, Edith, how long has Arthur been painting Ninitta?"
"Painting Ninitta?" echoed Edith.
She remembered the wrap she had seen in the studio, with the wavering evasion of her husband"s eyes when her glance had sought his in question, and painful forebodings against which she had striven, lest they should become suspicions, were awakened by Helen"s words.
"Yes," the other went on. "Fred Rangely told me at dinner to-night that he couldn"t get into the studio this morning because Arthur was painting Mrs. Herman."
"What did you say to him?" asked Edith.
"I said," her companion returned, looking up in surprise at her tone, "that I fancied the picture must be intended as a surprise for Mr.
Herman and he"d better not speak of it."
"But," Edith objected, "if Arthur told him she was there"--
"He didn"t," interrupted Helen; "a man outside the door said he had seen her go in."
Edith grew pale as ashes. She evidently made a strong effort at self-control; and then, burying her face in her hands, she burst into violent weeping. Helen bent forward and put her arms about her. She drew the quivering form close, resting Edith"s beautiful head upon her bosom. She did not speak, but with soft, caressing touch she smoothed the other"s hair. She remembered vividly the time, six years before, when Edith, who had left her at night in indignation and disapproval, had come to her on the morning after her husband"s death. She could almost have said to this weeping woman, the words with which she remembered the other had then greeted her,--"You must feel so lonely."
She dared not speak now. She feared to ask the cause of this outburst, both lest Edith might be led to say what she would afterward wish unspoken, and because she dreaded to hear unpleasant truths in regard to Arthur.
"Oh, Helen," Edith sobbed. "Life is too hard! Life is too hard!"
Still Helen did not answer, save by the caress of her fingers. The tears were in her own eyes. One woman instinctively appreciates the tragedy of another"s life, and her unspoken sympathy was balm to Edith"s soul.
"Come," she said, patting Edith"s shoulder as one might soothe a weeping child, "you"re all tired out. I can"t take the responsibility of letting you have hysterics; Arthur would never leave you alone with me again."
She spoke with as much lightness of tone as she could command, while her embrace and her caresses conveyed the sympathy she would not put into words.
Presently Mrs. Fenton disengaged herself from her companion"s arms and sat up, wiping away her tears.
"I must be tired," she said, "or I shouldn"t be so foolish."
"You do too much," Helen returned. Then, with the design of giving her friend a chance to retreat from their dangerous nearness to confidences, she added,--
"Now tell me what you"ve done to-day."
"I have done a good deal," the other replied, smiling faintly and showing the recovery of her self-possession by sundry little touches to the crushed roses in her gown. "At nine o"clock I went to the Sat.u.r.day Morning Club, to hear Mr. Jefferson"s paper on "The Over-Soul in Buddhism"; then, at eleven, I went to Mrs. Gore"s to see an example of the way they teach deaf and dumb children to read lip language; then Arthur and I went to luncheon at Christopher Plant"s, and at half past three was the meeting of the committee on the Knitting School; then there was the reception at Uncle Peter"s, and the tea at Mrs. West"s, before I came home to dress for dinner."
Helen leaned back in her chair and laughed musically. She felt, with mingled relief and a faint sense of disappointment, that her effort to avoid a confidence had been successful.
"I should think," she said, "that you Boston women would be worn to shreds, and I don"t wonder that you have a leaning toward hysterics.
Did you carry a clear idea of the Buddhistic over-soul through all the things that came after it in the day?"
She rose as she spoke, with the desire to hasten away. She had little mind to know more than she must of the causes of Edith"s unhappiness.
She was glad to help her friend, but she felt that she could do so no better from knowing anything Edith could tell her; and she was, moreover, sure that Mrs. Fenton"s loyal soul would bitterly regret it if she were by the emotion of the minute betrayed into revelations that involved her husband.
"No," Edith answered, rising in her turn; "I am not even sure whether the Buddhists believe themselves to have an over-soul. But why must you go? Wait, and let Arthur walk home with you."