The Pagans by Arlo Bates

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During her absence Ninitta awakened, and, while seeming more rational,
was less quiet than before. She repulsed her visitor with angry looks
and muttered defiance. Knowing perfectly well the cause of the girl's
agitation, Helen knew, also, that it was best to go directly to the
root of the matter, and she did so unshrinkingly.

"You are wrong," she said in Ninitta's ear. "It is you he loves. You
are to go home with me because he wishes it."

At first the sick girl seemed to gather no meaning from these words,
but as Helen repeated the assurance again and again, in different
phrases and with Herman's name, she became passive, as if she at least
caught the spirit if not the actual significance.

Mrs. Fenton had some difficulty in finding a carriage, and by the time
she returned Ninitta had yielded herself submissively to Helen's
guidance.

Mrs. Greyson saw that her charge was carefully protected against the
cold, a matter which the mildness of the day rendered easy, and,
supported by the two ladies, the model was able to walk down stairs to
the carriage.

During the drive homeward Helen lay back thinking hotly, and flushed
with excitement. Ninitta sank into a doze, and Mrs. Fenton sat looking
at her friend with the air of one who has discovered in an acquaintance
characteristics before wholly unsuspected. She hesitated a little, and
then, mastering her shyness, she bent forward and kissed Helen's hand.

The other submitted in silence. Indeed, the exaltation of her mood
seemed to lift her above her surroundings so that she felt a strange
remoteness from her companion. Yet she was conscious of a vague twinge
of annoyance at Edith's act, although she could neither have excused
nor defined the feeling. Mrs. Fenton not infrequently aroused in her a
curious mingling of attraction and repulsion; and it was under the
influence of the latter that she answered brusquely her friend's next
remark.

"How did you quiet Ninitta?" Edith asked.

"By telling her lies," returned Helen wearily and laconically.

"What!"

"She is in no condition to be dealt with rationally," continued Mrs.
Greyson, in a tone explanatory, but in no way defensive, "so I said
whatever would soothe her."

Edith sat in silent dismay. Apparently the woman before her, by whose
generous self-forgetfulness she had been touched, was perfectly
untroubled by the idea of speaking a falsehood, a state of mind so
utterly beyond Edith's experience as to be incomprehensible to her. She
could not bring herself to remonstrate, but it pained her that such
philanthropy should be stained by what she considered so wrong.

Mrs. Fenton was perhaps equally mistaken in her opinion of Helen's
regard for truth and of her philanthropy. Mrs. Greyson had a deep
repugnance to falsehood, and Arthur Fenton had often good-humoredly
jeered at what he called her Puritanic scrupulousness in this respect.
On an occasion such as at present, however, the use of an untruth would
cause her not even a second thought, her reason so strongly supporting
her course as even to overcome her instincts; a fact which a moralist
might deplore but which still remains a fact.

Her philanthropy, upon the other hand, although seeming to Edith so
disinterested, was largely instigated by a desire to aid Grant Herman.
Just what she wished or expected him to do, she could not have told,
her actions being no more regulated by strict logic than those of most
women; but she felt that it was the office of friendship to see, if
possible, that no harm came to the Italian through the jealousy which
both herself and Herman knew to be but too well founded. She determined
to take Ninitta home and do for her all that was necessary, in order
that the sculptor be spared the remorse which would pursue him if harm
came to his old betrothed. She was not without a secret feeling,
moreover, scarcely acknowledged to herself, that she owed some
reparation to the girl whose lover's heart she had won, no matter how
undesignedly.

Reaching home, she got Ninitta to bed and sent for Dr. Ashton. Then she
dispatched a note to Grant Herman, saying:

"Ninitta is with me; give yourself no uneasiness."

XXV.

THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME.

Measure for Measure; iv.--4.

Ninitta's illness proved after all very slight. So slight, indeed, that
Dr. Ashton, calling in on his way to dine with the Fentons Thursday
evening, found her gone. She had insisted upon returning to her attic,
although Helen had not allowed her to depart without promising not to
abscond a second time.

Ninitta was grateful to Mrs. Greyson with all the ardor of her
passionate southern heart. She did not, it is true, understand the
relations between Herman and Helen, but even her jealousy was lost in
the gratitude she felt for the beautiful woman who had cared for her,
and it is not unlikely saved her from a dangerous illness. It did not
seem possible to the undisciplined Italian, versed only in crude,
simple emotions, that a woman who was her rival could treat her with
tenderness. She accepted Helen's kindness as indisputable proof that
the latter did not love the sculptor, a conclusion which the premises
scarcely warranted. She volunteered to pose again, and Mrs. Greyson,
thinking it well to keep the girl under her influence, and desiring a
return to at least the semblance of the peaceful existence preceding
the stormy episode just ended, eagerly accepted this offer, only
stipulating that the model should undertake nothing until she was
really well able.

"I shall come back to supper," Dr. Ashton said, as he left his wife. "I
have half a mind not to go to Fenton's; only it amuses me to watch the
fellow's degeneration."

"It never amuses me to watch any degradation," she returned gravely.
"How do you know he is degenerating? If you mean by following his wife,
why, they may be right after all, and what we call superstition the
veriest truth."

"Of course," answered he. "I never pretended to administer the
exclusive mysteries of truth; but it is always a degradation to yield
to personal influence at the expense of conviction. Arthur is as much
of a heathen to-day as he ever was, only he is too fond of comfort to
have the courage of his opinions."

Helen sighed.

"Truth to me," she said thoughtfully, "is whatever one sincerely
believes; I cannot conceive of any other standard. One man's truth is
often another's falsehood."

"You are as dull as a preface to-night, Helen; what carking care is
gnawing at your vitals?"

"Nothing in particular. A certain melancholy is befitting a widow, you
know, and that's what I am supposed to be."

"On the contrary there is a certain vivacity about the word widow to my
mind."

"Your experience has been wider than mine. I am aware that I am too
much given to vast moral reflections, but you provoke them."

"I am sorry to provoke you," he said gayly. "Forgive me before supper
time; who knows what rich experiences I may have between now and then.
Good-by."

As he walked toward his appointment, could Dr. Ashton's vision have
reached to the house whither he was going, he would have seen Arthur
Fenton and his wife sitting together before an open fire awaiting their
guest. The artist was showing Edith a portfolio of sketches by foreign
painters, which he had brought from his studio.

"What a strange uncanny thing this is," he remarked, holding one up.
"It is just like Frontier; I never saw any thing more characteristic. I
wonder you got so few of his tricks, Edith, while you studied with
him."

"He always repelled me. I was afraid of him. Where did you get this
sketch?"

"Dr. Ashton gave it to me."

"Dr. Ashton!"

"Yes; when he was in Paris, both he and his wife were intimate with
Frontier. Or at least Will was."

"Oh, Arthur!"

She leaned forward in her chair, her always pale face assuming a new
pallor. Laying her hand upon her husband's, she asked in a quick,
excited manner:

"Do you know how Frontier died?"

"I know he died suddenly; now you speak of it, I have an idea it was a
case of _felo de se_. You know I was in Munich at the time."

"Arthur," Edith said earnestly, "I have never told even you; but I saw
Frontier die. I had a pass-key to his studio, and his private rooms
were just behind it. That night I went in on my way from dinner--Uncle
Peter and I had been dining together, and I left him at the door with
the carriage--after a study I'd forgotten. We were going to Rome the
next morning, and I didn't want to leave it. The picture was at the
further end of the studio, and as I went down the room I heard voices
and saw that Frontier's door was open. He sat at a table with a tiny
wine-glass in his hand. A man who stood back to me said, just as I came
within hearing: 'It is none of my affair, and I shall not interfere;
but you'll allow me to advise you not to be rash.' I could not hear
Frontier's answer, partly because I paid no attention, of course never
suspecting the truth. But as I went towards my easel, Frontier, hearing
the noise, I suppose, and afraid of being interrupted, caught up the
glass and drank what was in it. The other man sprang forward just in
time to catch him as he fell back, and it suddenly came over me that he
was taking poison. I cried out and ran into the room, but it seemed
only an instant before it vas all over. Oh, it was terrible, Arthur,
terrible!"

She covered her agitated face with her hands, as if to shut out the
vision which rose before her. Her husband sat in silent astonishment, a
conviction growing in his mind of whom the other witness of Frontier's
death must have been.

"Arthur," Edith broke out suddenly, "that man was no better than a
murderer. He let Frontier kill himself. When I cried out, 'Oh, why
didn't you stop him!' he said as coolly as if I had asked the most
trivial question, 'Why should I? What right had I to interfere?' It was
terrible! He seemed to me a perfect fiend!"

"It was--who was it?" demanded her husband, a name almost escaping him
in his excitement.

"It was Dr. Ashton; the man who is coming to sit down at your table
to-night. Arthur, I cannot meet him! I knew when he came to our
reception that I had seen him before, but I could not tell where. There
is his ring now. Let me get by you!"

"But where are you going?" Fenton asked in amazement.

"To my room. Any where to get out of his way."

"But what shall I tell him?"

"The truth; that I will not sit down to eat with a murderer."

She vanished from the room, leaving her husband alone. Dr. Ashton's
step was already upon the stair, and however keenly Mrs. Fenton might
feel the wickedness of the Doctor in not preventing Frontier's
self-destruction, the action was too strictly in accord with Arthur's
own views to allow of his condemning it. His friend found him in a
state of confusion which instantly connected itself in the guest's mind
with the non-appearance of Edith, an impression which was strengthened
by the lameness of the excuses tendered for her absence. Dr. Ashton not
unnaturally concluded that he had just escaped stumbling upon a family
quarrel. He accepted whatever his host chose to say, and the two
proceeded rather gloomily to dinner.

In Arthur's mind there sprang an irritation against both his wife and
his friend. His instincts were all protective, that term including
comfort as well as self-preservation. He was intensely annoyed at his
wife's attitude, and began to vent his spleen in cynical speeches,
which since his marriage had been rare with him.

"Christian grace," he declared, "is exactly like milk; excellent and
nourishing while it is fresh, but hard to get pure, and even then sure
to sour."

"Say something more original if you are cross, Arthur," observed his
friend good humoredly. "What is the matter? Is it a new rug or a
Japanese bronze you are dying for?"

"Hang rugs and bronzes," retorted Arthur, with a vicious determination
to be ill-natured. "If I can get the necessities of life, I am lucky."

"Nonsense," was the reply. "It isn't that. The lack of the necessities
of life makes a man sad; it is the lack of luxuries that makes him
cynical."

Dr. Ashton was perfectly right in his inward comment that Fenton was
secretly regretting his marriage. This was the thought that filled
Arthur's mind. It was true he had had no absolute disagreement with his
wife, although it is not impossible that it might have come to this,
had a delay in the guest's arrival allowed time. But it filled the
husband with an unreasoning rage that Edith presumed to establish so
strict a code of morals. He felt that her position as his wife demanded
more conformity to his standards. Why need she trouble herself about
that which did not concern her, and sit in such lofty judgment upon the
morals of her neighbors? Did she propose keeping Dr. Ashton's
conscience as well as her own--and his? Certainly those whom the
husband found worthy his friendship it ill became the wife to
stigmatize and avoid. He sat moodily tearing his fish in pieces instead
of eating; for the moment wholly forgetting his duty as host.

"If you'll pardon my mentioning it," Dr. Ashton said at length, "you
are about as cheerful company as a death's head. You are so melancholy
that I am tempted to fling in your face one of my old epigrams; that
love is a gay young bachelor who can never be persuaded to marry and
settle down."

The other laughed and made an effort to shake off his gloom; but with
so little success that his guest resolved to escape at the earliest
moment possible. Something in Fenton's forced talk, however, attracted
Dr. Ashton's attention.

"My wife was a pupil of Frontier."

The simple phrase, which had escaped Arthur's lips because it had been
in his mind not to allude to this fact, might have gone unnoticed had
not the speaker himself so strongly felt the shock of disclosure as to
show sudden confusion. The whole matter was at once clear to Dr.
Ashton, who having recognized Edith at the reception, had been prepared
for identification in his own turn.

"So that," he observed calmly, "is the reason Mrs. Fenton does not dine
with us to-night. I knew she was sure to recognize me sooner or later;
but as I had no motive for concealing this matter, on the other hand I
had no reason for recalling so unpleasant a circumstance to her mind."

There was a pause of a moment, and then the Doctor continued:

"I think Frontier was rather foolish. I told him so. A charming little
Hungarian girl of whom he was fond, had left him to follow the fortunes
of a Polish Count, or something of the sort. I do not see why a man
should kill himself for so trifling a thing as a woman; but if he chose
to, I am not one of those officious persons who feel justified in
interfering with any private act they don't happen to approve. I
certainly should resent such impertinent intrusion into my own
affairs."

"And I," assented Arthur doggedly; "but my wife----"

"Certainly; I understand. Mrs. Fenton says hard things of me because I
would not rob poor Frontier of what little comfort he could get from
dying. Very well; I will not offend her by my presence. Only she is
setting herself a hard task in attempting to treat people according to
their conservatism. In these days the sheep and goats have come to be
so much alike in appearance, that I scarcely see how a mere mortal is
to distinguish between them. My own case I settle for her by avoiding
her house."

"But this is my house," protested Arthur, intensely chagrined.

"No," his guest replied, still smiling and moving toward the door. "It
is the nest you have built for your love and your--regeneration! Good
night."

XXVI.

THERE BEGINS CONFUSION.
I Henry VI.; iv.--i.

Alone in her own room, Edith relieved her overwrought feelings by a
burst of tears, brief, indeed, but bitter. Like her husband, she felt
that this incident, although not assuming the guise of a quarrel, was
an opening wedge in the unity of their affection. Unlike Arthur,
however, she thought of it with self-reproach and misgiving. She did
not for an instant consider the possibility of having taken a different
position in regard to Dr. Ashton, yet in a womanly, illogical way, she
felt that she should have learned her husband's wishes before so
vehemently declaring her own views.

She heard the artist and his guest go in to dinner, and the thought
flashed upon her that this was the first time her husband had dined
without her since their marriage. She wondered if he remembered it,
and, remembering, regretted. She longed for companionship, for some
friend into whose sympathetic ear she could pour her story, from whom
she might ask advice. She reflected sadly how far she was removed from
her intimate friends. Of her new acquaintances many had been most kind
to her, but towards none of them, not even to her relatives, had she
been so strongly drawn as to wish now to go to them for confidence and
sympathy; unless, came a second thought, it were Mrs. Greyson. She was
a widow, Edith reflected, and had evidently suffered much, while the
strength of her character was evident from her dealing with the Italian
girl. It would be no disloyalty to go to her; there had been no words
spoken between husband and wife which could not be told a friend, and
Edith felt that she needed the advice of a woman more versed in the
intricacies of life than herself.

She dressed herself for walking, and slipped noiselessly out of the
house.

Mrs. Greyson was at dinner, and was naturally surprised at seeing her
caller, but she had both too much tact and too much breeding to ask
explanations.

"I do hope you have not dined," she said. "I am so much alone that it
is a perfect delight to me to have company. My dinner is a little like
a picnic, but if you will only consider how great a favor you are doing
me by sharing it, the consciousness of philanthropy ought to make it
palatable."

Neither lady mentioned Arthur, although his name was uppermost in the
thoughts of both. They sat down together in Helen's tiny dining-room,
and served by her only maid, had a charming meal. The hostess exerted
herself to entertain her guest, wisely judging that what Edith said in
calmness she would be far less likely to regret than words uttered in
the unguarded moments of her excitement. She told Mrs. Fenton stories
of her studio life both in Boston and abroad, she led Edith on to speak
of her own travels and experiences, until the latter almost forgot that
she was dining in one house and her husband in another. It was not
until the coffee was reached, coffee made as only Helen could make it,
that the subject of the visit was really broached.

"How is Mr. Fenton?" Helen asked deliberately, believing the time had
come for such a question.

The face of the other fell. She experienced a pang at the consciousness
of having been gay and happy, forgetful of her husband and her trouble.

"He is well," she answered falteringly.

"Why did you not bring him with you?" continued Mrs. Greyson lightly,
yet with a secret determination to know the cause of her guest's
evident disturbance.

"He did not know I was coming," Edith responded in a low voice. "That
is what I came to talk about. I thought you might understand; but it
involves a third person, and perhaps I ought not to tell you. I am
sure, though," she went on, gaining confidence now that the ice was
broken, "that I can trust you. A friend of Arthur's came to dine
to-night, and just as the door-bell rang, I found him to be the man I
once saw commit murder in Paris."

"Murder!" exclaimed Helen, turning white. "Commit murder?"

"Consent to it," corrected Edith, unconsciously a little pleased to
have produced so great an effect upon her usually self-possessed
friend. "He looked on while Frontier took poison, without trying to
prevent him."

"But that," Mrs. Greyson said slowly, "is hardly the same thing as
murder."

"It is quite as bad," Edith protested earnestly. "It makes me shudder
to think of his dining alone with Arthur at this moment. Who knows what
might happen!"

"Nothing tragic, I think," Helen replied smiling. "He does not go about
with pistols in his belt, I suppose.'

"It is awful to me," Edith continued, with increasing excitement, too
much stirred to notice the sarcasm. "I told Arthur I could not sit down
with a murderer, and just at that moment we heard his step, and I ran
away upstairs; and then I felt dreadfully, and I came to you."

"I thank you for your confidence. But what do you mean to do? What will
Arthur tell him?"

"The truth, I hope."

"He is scarcely likely to say to the guest he has himself invited that
you think him a murderer," answered her friend, smiling again, "and I
am not sure that he would even look at this quite so severely as you
do."

"How else can he look at it?" demanded Edith. "How else can any one
look at it? Isn't it murder to take human life, and if one does not
prevent suicide when he might, isn't it the same as if he did it
himself?"

"We will not get into a discussion," Helen replied gently. "I feel
about it as you do; though I believe very differently. But I see
perfectly well how a man might be strictly honest in thinking that it
was the privilege of any human being to lay aside his life when he is
weary of it; and I do not presume to condemn others for feeling what I
only think I believe."

"Think you believe!" cried the other in horror. "You do not think you
believe that murder is right?"

"Assuredly not; but as there are so many related points upon which we
do not agree, would it not be better to talk of this particular case
than of general belief?"

"But it is impossible for any one to believe as you say," persisted
Edith; "simply impossible. No one can believe that wrong is right."

"But each has his own standard."

Against this Edith protested, but Helen returned no answer. She
regretted being involved in such a debate, and resolved to let the
discussion go no further. They sat in silence a moment, and then Edith
again spoke.

"I do not know what to do," she said. "Of course Arthur cannot know
that man any longer. You were in Paris at the time Frontier died, were
you not? Did you ever know----"

She broke off suddenly, remembering that she had not intended
disclosing the name of her guest.

"Dr. Ashton?" Helen returned, fixing her eyes upon her companion, and
unconsciously speaking with a deliberation which gave especial weight
to her words. "Yes; I know him. We went to Paris together."

"Together! Was he a friend of your husband? How did you know whom I
meant?"

There was no perceptible pause before Helen answered; but meanwhile she
determined to throw aside all concealment. She could no longer stand
before Arthur Fenton's wife with the humiliation of even a tacit
deception between them. She felt a spirit of defiance rising within
her. Who was this woman that she assumed the right to judge them all by
standards for whose narrowness only contempt was possible! At least she
would rise above all conventional prejudices, and no longer tacitly
ask, as by silence she had done, exemption from the harsh judgments of
Mrs. Fenton's creed.

Helen was too womanly not to shrink from this disclosure, and she had
been too thoroughly educated in the faith by which Edith lived not to
understand just how her life would appear seen through the latter's
belief. Disconnected with a question relating to the marriage relation
and by implication casting reflection upon her delicacy and even purity
of life as a woman separated from her lawful husband, Helen could have
met with dispassionate reasoning whatever assault Edith made upon her.
This point was too vital, it touched too closely the core of her
woman's nature, and although she retained perfectly her self-control,
there was a pulse of passion in her voice when she spoke.

"Dr. Ashton," she said unflinchingly, "is my husband."

"What?" cried Edith.

"We have not found it convenient to live together," Helen continued,
with increasing calmness, a faint tinge of contempt creeping into her
voice, "and so since my return from Europe I have taken my mother's
name to avoid gossip. Dr. Ashton and I are very good friends still."

"And did Mr. Fenton know this?" asked the other, very pale.

"Certainly; although you understand that it is not a matter which we
discuss with the world at large. I pass, I believe, as a widow; though
I have never done or said any thing to give color to that idea."

It is doubtful if Helen fully comprehended the effect of these words
upon her guest. Every fiber of Edith's being tingled. All her most
sacred principles seemed outraged. She in some remote way felt,
moreover, as if to hear without protest so lax notions of the
responsibilities of marriage was to stain her womanhood and dim the
luster of her modesty.

"How dared he introduce you to me?" she cried. "You are the wife of a
murderer and you defend his crime; you pretend to be a widow, you
ignore your marriage----"

"Stop," the hostess said with dignity. "We need not go over the ground.
Mr. Fenton made us acquainted, I presume, because he agrees with me in
seeing nothing wrong in my position, however unconventional it may be.
You will see that if I had been ashamed of the fact I could easily have
kept it from your knowledge."

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