The Pagans by Arlo Bates

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And she loosened her arms from his neck, recognizing that he had put
her appeal aside and waived the whole matter.

XXIX.

A NECESSARY EVIL.
Julius Caesar; ii.--2.

At the St. Filipe Club, somewhere in the small hours of that same
night, half-a-dozen members were lingering. One was at the piano,
recalling snatches from various composers, the air being clouded alike
with music and smoke wreaths.

"I think you fellows are hard on Fenton," the musician protested, in
response to some remark of Ainsworth's. "I don't see what he's done to
make you all so down on him."

"It isn't any thing that he has done," Tom Bently replied, "it is what
he has become. He has developed an entirely new side of his nature, and
a deucedly unpleasant one, too."

"I always had a mental reservation on Fenton," remarked another. "He
was always insisting that his soul was his own, don't you know; and
when a man keeps that up I always conclude that he has his private
doubts on the subject; or if he hasn't, I have."

"That's about the case with all the musical rowing we've been having
for the last year or two; every musician has been in a fever lest he
should be thought to be truckling to somebody."

"What rubbish all this concert business is," remarked Tom. "In Boston a
concert interests a little _clique_ of people, and another bigger
_clique_ pretend to be interested. The nonsense that is talked
about music here is nauseating. The public doesn't really care any
thing about it. In Boston a concert is given in Music Hall; but in
Paris it is given in the whole city. It is an event there, not a
trifling incident."

"What do you know about music?" retorted the player, clashing a furious
discord with his elbow as he turned towards the speaker. "I'll attend
to you presently. Now I want to know about Fenton. What has he done
that you are all blackguarding him?"

"I think he's got a creed," said Ainsworth, scowling and smiling
together, according to his wont. "I hate to charge a man with any thing
so black, but I think Fenton's wife has made him take a creed, and a
pretty damned narrow one at that."

"By Jove!" the musician observed, solemnly. "It's too bad. Fenton is a
mighty bright fellow, and no end obliging."

"If it's only a creed," swore Bently, "what's all this fuss about?
Every body has a creed, hasn't he? A man's temperament is his creed."

"It isn't his having a creed that I object to," remarked Grant Herman;
"it is the question of his sincerity that troubles me. If he has taken
up some collection of dogmas merely to please his wife--who seems a
very sweet, quiet body--that is of course against him; but if he
believes it, I don't see why we should object."

"Believes it!" sniffed Ainsworth, in great contempt. "That is worse
than any thing I've said. I don't think Fenton is quite such an idiot
as that comes to. The idea of his believing in Puritanism! Oh, good
Lord!"

"Puritanism," Bently threw in irrelevantly, and because he liked the
sound of it, "Puritanism is the preliminary rottenness of New England.
If he is struck with that by all means let him go; the further the
better."

"Isn't it his night for the Pagans this month?" somebody inquired.

"Yes," returned Bently, "but I took the liberty of going to him and
asking if he would let me take it this turn. I hope you fellows don't
mind." The talk thus flowed on in a desultory fashion amid ever
thickening clouds of tobacco smoke, and Grant Herman, sitting for the
most part quiet, had a whimsical idea in looking at his
half-extinguished cigar. Certain excellent cigars, his thoughts ran,
have a way of burning sluggishly about the middle, and without actually
going out, yet need to be relighted; and in the same way a man's life
goes on better for the kindling flame of a fresh attachment in middle
life. He fell into reverie, thinking of Helen and of Ninitta. He had
not seen the Italian since her flight, but from Mrs. Greyson he had
learned the story of the finding and recovery of the fugitive; and his
heart kindled with gratitude toward the woman who had prevented
consequences which he should have fruitlessly regretted. He became so
absorbed in his thoughts that only the entrance of Fred Rangely aroused
him.

"Hallo, Rangely," the new comer was greeted, "where do you come from at
this time of night?"

"Oh, from the office of the Daily Day-before-yesterday. I had an
article in, and I wanted to read the proof. I can stand any thing in
the world better than I can endure a compositor's blunders. Do any of
you know Dr. Ashton?"

"I do," somebody answered. "What of him?"

"Rather clever fellow, wasn't he?"

"Why, yes; I think he is. He's rather odd sometimes. What about him?"

"Dead."

"Nonsense! I saw him myself not three hours ago, posting a letter in
the box opposite his office."

"He is dead, though. Heart disease. They just got the news at the
_Advertiser_ office."

"Where was he?"

"In his office. The night porter of the building heard him fall against
the door. They say he must have died without a struggle."

XXX.

HOW CHANCES MOCK.
II Henry IV.; in.--I.

Early on the following forenoon Helen took her way to the studio. She
was in unusually good spirits that day, for no especial reason that she
could have told, although indeed it is possible that the prospect of
meeting Grant Herman may have subtly contributed to the buoyancy of her
mood.

She walked briskly through the bracing morning across the Common, her
mind full of bright fancies. A thin column of smoke arose from the
chimney of the lodge in the deer-park, rising straight in the clear
air, and cheerfully suggestive that some tiny family, not too large for
the building, were at breakfast within. It might even be the deer
themselves; and Helen smiled at her whim, almost laughing outright as a
picture arose of a matronly doe preparing coffee, while a solemn buck
sat in his easy chair before the fire, reading his morning paper and
now and then glancing at his wife over his spectacles.

In this joyous mood she came to the studio. A sudden thought darted
through her mind, with no apparent connection, of the talk of the night
previous, and for an instant her face clouded; but the exhilaration of
the morning and the reaction from the sad, overstrained state in which
her husband had left her, both helped her to throw off all mournful
thoughts. Ninitta had not arrived, and Mrs. Greyson busied herself
about the bas-relief, preparing for work. Suddenly the tap of Grant
Herman sounded upon her door.

"Good morning," he said, entering in response to her invitation. "I
knew by your step that you were in good spirits, and it gave me so much
pleasure to think you were glad to be back, that I had to come up."

"I am in good spirits," she returned. "It is such a glorious morning,
and Ninitta has kept me away from my work long enough for me to be very
glad to return to it."

"What of Ninitta?" he asked, a shadow coming over his fine face. "She
is not still with you?"

"No, but she is coming to pose this morning, though I hardly think she
is strong enough."

The sculptor took in his hands a bit of clay and began nervously to
model it into various shapes.

"Why did you take her home, Mrs. Greyson?" he asked after a moment's
silence.

"Because she needed me," Helen answered. "And besides," she added
hesitatingly, "I thought you would like her to be under my care."

"Did you?" he returned eagerly. "I was more grateful to you than you
would let me tell you! I--"

He broke off abruptly as if determined to keep himself from any
dangerous demonstrativeness.

"Come into my studio a moment," said he, throwing down the clay he
held. "I have something to show you."

Helen followed willingly, glad to avoid the chance of their being
interrupted by the arrival of Ninitta, whose jealousy might easily be
aroused again. The sculptor led the way through a couple of chambers,
bringing her out at the top of the stairs leading down in the corner of
his studio. The morning sun shone in through the window far up in the
side wall, tinged to rich colors by the stained glass which Herman had
set there. The statues and casts looked in the light coming from above
them, as if they had just emerged from garments of shadows which yet
lay fallen about their feet. Helen uttered an exclamation of
admiration.

"How charming the studio is in this light," she said. "It is like
looking down into a ghost world."

"It is a ghost world," was the response. "It has long been haunted, but
I had not supposed that any eyes but my own saw the wraiths which dwell
here."

The vibratory quality in his voice warned her not to answer. She felt
that she stood upon the brink of a significant interview, yet she
lacked the resolution to turn back.

She descended the first flight of steps into the gallery, the sculptor
following closely. She could not have defined to herself what she
wished or intended. Somewhat paradoxically she wished to escape from
Herman, yet had she fled she would have been unhappy had he not
pursued. Nothing is more contradictory than a nascent passion, and,
indeed, the tenderness of any woman for a man is not very profound if
unmixed with some desire to escape from him.

All sorts of artistic rubbish had accumulated in the little gallery;
broken casts, fragments of statues and vases, pieces of time discolored
marble, and the thousand objects which make up the _debris_ of a
sculptor's studio. A bit of warm colored though faded tapestry hung
dustily over the railing of the little balcony, making the
white-plaster goddess appear doubly wan. Against it stood a small
antique altar, around whose base a train of garland-bearing Cupids
danced in immortal glee.

"How lovely," Mrs. Greyson said eagerly. "I never saw this altar
before. Where did you get it, and why is it hidden up here?"

"I picked it up in Rome, years ago," Herman returned, a trifle
shamefacedly. "It came from somewhere in Greece. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Yes; but why is it hidden here?" she repeated.

"The truth is that when I was young and romantic, I bought that altar--
it is a Hymeneal altar, they say--and said I would pour a libation upon
it at my marriage; a sentimental and heathenish notion enough."

He paused a moment, a certain hesitancy showing itself more and more
definitely in his manner. He glanced at his companion, then looked away
into the ghost world below. Her heart was beating quickly. She cast
down her eyes, her hand, the whiter by contrast with the discolored
marble, resting upon the altar.

"When I left Rome," he resumed, "I could not quite make up my mind to
leave it behind; so I had it boxed up and sent home. It has been boxed
up ever since until--until recently."

However determined Helen might be to avoid dangerous topics, she was
yet a woman, and she had in her heart a strong yearning towards the
sculptor which could hardly be repressed. Before she had considered to
what the question might lead, she asked:

"And recently?"

"Recently," re-echoed he, regaining his composure, "I took it out and
meant it to stand down in the corner there to remind me."

He pointed as he spoke, down into the studio below, still dim, since
the screens covered the large windows. Her glance followed his motion
in an abstracted, impersonal way.

"To remind you?" she in turn echoed.

"To remind me," he took up the words again, "that I am like other men,
and that life is at best an aspiration; at worst a despair."

She understood the intimation of his words, but it seemed not to touch
her. She did not flush or start, but regarded abstractedly the jocund
Cupids. Then she raised her eyes to his face.

"But you removed it here."

"Yes," he said. "Our friend Fenton once said that there is in this
world only one good, into which all others resolve themselves--the
amelioration of life. The reminder, with all its suggestiveness, was
too poignant; I ameliorated my life by putting it up here out of
sight."

She did not question him further, but, gathering up her dress, turned
and went down the next flight of stairs, which brought her to a landing
eight or ten feet from the floor of the studio. There she turned again
and looked back at him descending. She almost seemed to herself not to
speak, yet by some inward volition her lips formed the words:

"Hope is only a bubble, yet it rims with rainbows whatever we see
mirrored in it."

"Yes?" he returned, inquiringly.

"I was only thinking," replied she, continuing her descent, "that it is
worth some pains to keep the bubble unbroken as long as possible."

"But facts are such achromatic glasses."

To this she made no answer, and together they moved towards a modeling
stand upon which stood something covered with wet cloths. These the
sculptor carefully removed.

A perfectly nude male figure was disclosed, exquisitely modeled, and
of superb proportions. It lay upon a hillock, about which fragments of
broken weapons and the torn ground indicated a recent battle. The head
and limbs of the figure drooped down the sides of the mound, falling
with the limpness of death. About the noble, lifeless head were bent
and broken stalks of poppies, ridden down by the horses, yet not wholly
destroyed.

Herman and Mrs. Greyson stood in silence looking at the figure, the
pathos of the work so penetrating Helen that the tears gathered in her
eyes.

"What do you call it?" she asked, struggling to regain composure.

Her companion pulled away the cloth, which still lay against the
pedestal, and she saw the words:

"I strew these opiate flowers
Round thy restless pillow."

Again she was silent. Perplexity, regret, and, more keenly than all, a
delicious exultation, overcame her. She stole a half-glance up into the
face of the tall form beside her.

"But he is dead," she murmured at length.

"It seems so," he assented.

She turned and faced him, a sudden paleness making her very lips white.

"I have no right to let you show me this," she cried, in a voice
thrilling with emotion. "My husband is alive. I never pretended to love
him, but I am his wife. You must have seen him with Arthur Fenton--Dr.
Ashton."

"Dr. Ashton!" he echoed, in bewilderment. "Your husband? Dr. Ashton,
Teuton's friend?"

"Yes," replied she, her eyes falling, and her breast beginning to
heave. "I had promised not to tell; but it was not right. I should have
told you, but I could not bear--Oh," she cried, breaking off her
sentence abruptly, "if you despise me it is only my due!"

"Despise you! As if it were possible! But don't you know? Haven't you
been told?"

"Know? Been told?" demanded Helen, in alarm. "What is it?"

"Haven't you seen the morning paper, even?"

"No. What was in it? Has any thing happened to Dr. Ashton?"

"Yes," Herman said slowly, wondering in a baffled way if 'it was
possible to soften the blow. "He is dead."

"Dead!"

Her cry rang out sharply in the dim studio, over that clay figure of a
lifeless warrior.

A cry of horror, of pain, and, too, of remorse. There was in it nothing
of love, only that nameless fear that death brings, and still more
that groundless self-reproach which sensitive natures must feel when
confronted by the irremediable--as if some blame must be taken for the
acts of fate. Imaginative natures never quite shake off the
responsibility of the inevitable, and Helen began instinctively to
question herself. The scene of the previous night came before her.
Ought she to have yielded to the love which had called her, late
aftermath of a blighted wedded life? At least when her husband spoke of
his suffering she might more strongly--A sudden thought pierced her
like a knife.

"How did he die?" she questioned breathlessly.

"Of heart disease."

So then the world would not know the truth, if what she feared were
truth.

"I will go home," she said. "Please tell Ninitta."

When she reached her rooms she found a letter, addressed in Dr.
Ashton's hand, which the penny-post had left for her after she had gone
out in the morning. It contained only an impression in wax which
resembled a large seal. With hot eyes she bent over it, making nothing
of its reversed letters. Then, with a sudden thought, she held it
before the glass, seeing in the mirror the words, which read backwards,
like the life of him whose last act had been their forming:

"DEATH FOILS THE GODS."

XXXI.

HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY.
Love's Labor's Lost; i.--1.

"Edith," Arthur Fenton said, looking up from his paper at breakfast
that morning, "Dr. Ashton is dead."

"Dead!" she exclaimed.

Her husband's indifferent tone shocked her. She was not without an
unphrased feeling that death was so sacred or at least so solemn a
subject that it should be treated with reverence. Any jesting upon it
made her cringe, and the light mention of it seemed to her almost
immoral.

"So the paper says," replied he; and he read aloud the paragraph
containing the announcement of Dr, Ashton's sudden death from heart
disease. "It is too bad," he commented. "He was a mighty smart fellow
and square as a brick. I wonder what made him do it now."

"Made him do what?" she asked. "How strangely you talk. Made him die?"

"Yes; that's what I meant. I knew he had a trouble which would probably
make him do it sooner or later, but I'd no idea it would come so soon."

"Arthur, what do you mean," Edith repeated, the tears coming into her
eyes. "I don't like to hear you speak of death so--so--flippantly."

"Flippantly, my dear?" returned he. "I'm sure I don't know why you
should use that word. If a man takes his life, why shouldn't I speak of
it,--to you, that is; of course I should not in public."

"Takes his life!" she cried. "Do you mean--"

"Of course I know nothing about it," her husband replied as coolly as
ever, and watching sharply the effect of his words; "but I presume Will
took poison, poor old fellow."

She sank back in her chair, white and trembling.

"It is what might have been expected," she said. "It almost seems as if
Providence measured to him the portion of poor Frontier."

"Providence is noted for close observance of the _lex talionis_"
sneered Arthur, "but Dr. Ashton didn't believe in the existence of that
functionary, so it really ought to have passed him by. It would
certainly have been more dignified."

"But, oh!" she cried out, apparently not hearing or not heeding his
last words, "into what sort of a world have you brought me, Arthur? Are
all your friends so desperate that they think only of taking their own
lives? Have they no faith, no hope, no beyond? I feel as if it were all
a dreadful nightmare! It cannot be you alone, for Mrs. Greyson and Dr.
Ashton--Oh, Arthur, where has religion, where has morality gone? Oh, I
cannot understand it! I cannot bear it!"

She laid her bowed head on her arms upon the pretty breakfast table,
and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her husband looked at her with
intense irritation, and an inward curse that he had ever married her.
He sipped his coffee; he noted with admiration the rich, glowing hues
of the dull blue bowl of nasturtiums which adorned the table.

"There, Edith," he said at length, "it is rather idle to cry over the
sins of your neighbors. According to your creed each of us has enough
of his own derelictions to answer for, without going abroad for things
to repent. As for religion, I suppose girls who do Kensington work will
use it for decorative purposes for some time to come, but thinking
people long ago outgrew such folly. In regard to my friends, it is all
a question of standards, as I've said no end of times. From my point of
view they are very sensible people, and you a little bigot. Grant
Herman believes some pious nonsense, though he has too good taste to
obtrude it, and I dare say Bently and Rangely have their superstitions.
There are probably ten thousand people in this good city of Boston--and
for aught I know a hundred thousand--who believe, or, if you like,
disbelieve, as I do."

"It cannot be true," was Edith's reply. "But if it is so, it is too sad
to think of."

"Why, I suspect," Arthur continued lightly, "that the Pagans regard me
as too orthodox lately, though you'd hardly agree with them."

She made no reply, and Arthur continued his breakfast in silence. The
sun shone in at the windows, the soft coal fire sputtered in the grate,
and to all appearance the room was full of cheerfulness. Edith leaned
her head upon her hand and reflected sadly. She resolved that her
husband should be weaned from the Pagans, if that were within her
power. She seemed to herself to relinquish joy in life, and to devote
herself wholly to duty.

The entrance of a servant with the morning letters interrupted further
conversation, until Arthur tossed his wife a letter which Dr. Ashton
had mailed at the same time he posted the missive which Helen received
later in the day.

"There, you see," Fenton remarked. "Of course I show it to you in
confidence."

The room swam before Edith as she read, but she forced herself to be
outwardly calm, as she ran her eye over this note:

DEAR ARTHUR:--

I've a strong presentiment--and although I disbelieve in presentiments,
mine generally come true--that in about half an hour my obituary will
be in order. Certain easily foreseen contingencies have determined me
to give it up. I shall never have a better chance to make my exit
dramatically, and you've often assured me that that is the chief thing
to consider in this connection. I've contemplated such a possibility
long enough to have my affairs in order, and doubtless your wife will
have a mass or two said for the repose of my soul. If you ever have a
chance to do Helen a good turn, you may regard it as a personal favor
to my ghost to do it. I've left you my Diaz as a sort of propitiatory
sop.

Yours, of course, as ever, W. A.

"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" Edith sobbed, breaking down again. "It is awful!
It is just as he always talked. It is as light as if he were going out
to drive."

"Naturally," was the response. "If you fancy Will would cry baby at
death, you knew him far from as well as I did. How strange it is to
think of his being in the past tense, poor fellow. It was clever of him
to leave me his Diaz; I always coveted it."

In the face of this, what was there for Edith to say. She was simply
numbed to silence, and horror at her husband for the time deadened all
sense of the shock of Dr. Ashton's death. It was not until later in the
day that she was able to think of Helen.

"But, Arthur," she said then, "Mrs. Greyson?"

"Well; what of Mrs. Greyson?"

"I am going to see her."

"After your last night's indignation?"

"I may have been wrong," Mrs. Fenton said bravely, "I may have been
hard. I realize every day how little I am able to judge for other
people. Perhaps I am narrow, as you say. At least now her husband is
dead I can show her my sympathy; and since I know more of him, it does
not seem so strange that she left him."

"They left each other," he responded to these contradictory words. "But
what can you say? The consolations of religion will hardly be
available, and Helen never pretended to love Ashton?"

His tone wounded her, but she answered without a change of countenance:

"The death of the man who has been her husband can never be indifferent
to any true woman. I shall not force her to listen to any religion she
does not wish to hear."

XXXII.

A SYMPATHY OF WOE.
Titus Andronicus; iii.--I.

"I am afraid you will think me intrusive," was Edith's hesitating
greeting to Helen, "but I could not help coming. I thought you might
feel lonely."

Helen looked at her for a moment with wistful eyes and trembling lips:
then she crossed swiftly to where her friend stood and kissed her. And
never could these two be so wholly separated or estranged again as to
efface the memory of all the meaning that this caress conveyed. The
word which Edith had used had been most happily chosen. Her woman's
instinct divined the loneliness which overwhelmed the widow, and this
proof of her sympathy was the passport to Mrs. Greyson's heart.
Loneliness was the feeling of which Helen was most of all conscious.
The death of even an indifferent acquaintance often may seem to
desolate the earth from its simple irremediableness, and much more does
the removal of one near to us make the world appear half a void.

Helen had been sitting alone before Edith came, reviewing her past and
drearily speculating of her future. She went over the days of her
wedded life; her innocent, introspective childhood, in which she had
dreamed and read, dwelling in a world apart; alone but for the ideal
creations of her books or her own quick fancy. She had married knowing
as little of life or of love, as when, a lonely child, she had spelled
out the tale of Prince Camaralzaman, and wondered what the divine
passion really was, or if indeed it had existence, outside of fairy
lore.

The torch of death throws its glare backward, and its funeral light
showed many a past long since forgotten, but now revealed with new and
distorting vividness. Helen remembered the baby which had lived but
long enough to open its eyes with a smile that seemed of recognition,
and then faded back into the unknown whence it had come. A throb of
tenderness for the dead father moved the mother's heart as she thought
of her baby, so little time hers, and so long asleep under the
marguerites of a grave over the sea. She had suffered much from the
selfishness, the dominant self-will, the distorted views of life of Dr.
Ashton; and these things she even now could not forget; but, too, she
thought of him as the father of her child, her baby ever dear and
living in memory.

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