The Pagans Part 30

"Perhaps you are right, Edith," he said aloud. "I hope so at least, for they are probably indignant enough with me."

"With you? Why?"

"Oh, they choose to think I went over to Philistia when I proposed Mr.

Calvin for the St. Filipe. I'm sure I don't see why I haven't a right to propose whom I please."

"But Mr. Calvin, Arthur," responded Edith, who regarded that gentleman as one of the art G.o.ds of Boston. "I should think any body would be proud to propose him. Why, he is one of the most distinguished men in the city."

Her husband did not answer for a moment. He looked into the fire and watched his inner consciousness adapt itself to this view of the case, which than himself no one had condemned more bitterly. Yet it was the theory upon which it was necessary to rest did he expect to arrive at any comfort in the course of supporting Mr. Calvin, which he had already pursued so far that retreat was impossible. Yes, he a.s.sured himself, he could even accept this. And why not? Did not common opinion confirm it; and however much common opinion might be sneered at, it was surely the voice of the common sense of the world.

He looked down at his wife, who looked back smiling proudly. He realized how pure, how tender, how true she was. He knew, too, that she was daily and hourly weaving about him bands which held him captive to beliefs which though true to her were the veriest falsehoods to him; and that only his love of ease, his fatal complaisance, prevented his rending these cords as did Samson the new ropes of the Philistines. He realized that he was sacrificing his manhood, that he was bartering his convictions for flattery and ease by allying himself to Calvin and his following. He recalled Helen's remark that what is called being honest with one's self is often the subtlest form of hypocrisy, and he did not spare himself a single pang of self-humiliation and contempt; and then, when he was full to the throat with self-loathing, he let his sensuous, self-loving nature devise excuse and soothe his wounded vanity.

He looked into the fire with a smile of mingled bitterness and complacency, half ashamed, half amused at the view which introspection gave him.

But whenever into his musings came the thought of Helen it rankled like a poisoned barb. For he secretly believed that Helen loved him, and although if a man humiliates himself in the eyes of the woman he loves it is as bitter as death; yet to prove unworthy in the sight of her who hopelessly loves him, contains a more subtly envenomed shaft, which wounds that most sensitive spot in a sensuous man's nature--his vanity.

x.x.xIV.

HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY.

Love's Labor's Lost; i.--I.

That evening Helen too sat at home, alone and full of resistless thoughts.

She had put the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the _Flight of the Months_, completing the work with scarcely less success than at first, and in three days she was to sail for Europe. She had not allowed Dr. Ashton's death to interrupt her work, the necessity of avoiding unpleasant gossip which would be provoked by the disclosure of her relations with the dead man, being sufficient reason why she should not change her outward life. She quietly and rapidly completed the preparations for departure, and already the feeling of severance from familiar scenes cast its sadness over her.

Leaving the studio to-day, she had gone down to speak with Herman, whom she wished to take the responsibility of the firing of the bas-relief.

When she had finished this errand she turned to a figure in terra-cotta whose freshness showed that it had but recently come from the kiln.

"What is this?" she asked. "I have never seen it."

"It is a Pasht," the sculptor returned. "I modeled it as a wedding present for Arthur Fenton, but luckily I did not get it done in time."

"Why 'luckily?'"

"Because I should be sorry to have given him any thing so closely connected with the Pagans, as things have turned out."

Helen did not need to ask explanations of these words, although she did not know how complete the breach between Fenton and his former friends had become.

"I am glad I am going away," she exclaimed with a sigh.

"Going away?" he echoed, dropping his modeling tools.

"Yes, I sail Sat.u.r.day."

She spoke with perfect composure, yet her glance was averted. She was painfully conscious of having concealed the fact from him until this moment.

He came towards her, his eyes fixed upon her face.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, almost fiercely. "Why do you go?"

"I mean to study in Rome," she replied faintly. "I always told you that I hoped to go some day."

"But why do you go now? Why have you concealed it from me? Are you afraid of my--of my love? If any one must go it should be I; I have no right to drive you away."

"You are not driving me away; I--it is better that I should go."

"But why go now? Now you are free, and I have a right to claim you."

"No," Helen said in a voice suddenly firm, but which yet showed her inward agitation, "no; there is Ninitta. I have suffered too much myself to be willing to try to come to happiness over any woman's heart. It is better that I should go."

"Ninitta!" Herman burst out. "She has no claim; she will not even care; she--"

"No," interrupted Helen, laying her hand upon his arm. "You cannot say that; you know it is not true. You can see as well as I that Ninitta is pining her life out over your neglect. We are not free to break her heart when you yourself taught her to love."

"I have never been unkind to her," he said, a little defiantly; "except perhaps when she acted like a mad woman and broke your figures."

"In love," returned Helen, smiling faintly, and glad to take refuge in generalities, "sins of commission, as compared with the deadly sin of omission, are mere venial offenses. It is not what you have done, but what you have left undone."

"But what can I do? I cannot force myself to love her?"

"You have made her love you."

"But I outgrew her centuries ago."

"The price of growth is always to outgrow," replied Helen.

She was struggling hard to keep the conversation away from dangerous levels. She felt that she must seem heartless, but none the less she went on bravely.

"And after all what is outgrowing? It is a question of moods, of--"

But her courage failed her. Her voice trembled, she turned away from him and walked down the studio, stopping here and there as if to examine a cast or a figure, invisible through the tears which welled up in her eyes. The sculptor followed close behind her, until she put her hand upon the great Oran rug which hung before the door.

"Then you leave me," he broke out bitterly. "You make Ninitta a pretext for escaping me. You might have told me that you did not care for me. I would not have molested you."

She turned to him suddenly, and he was startled by the whiteness of her face, for she was pale to the very lips.

"Do you think it is easy for me to go," she cried pa.s.sionately, "to give you up when I love you! You should help me, not make it harder.

Isn't it better to part now while we have nothing to regret than to live with a wrong between us?"

"But what wrong will be between us? Surely that boyish mistake need not blight both our lives."

"Can we help it?" she asked sadly.

"We will help it! Are we merely puppets then, to be bandied about helplessly? I told her I loved her; it is no longer true, and why is the pledge that followed binding?"