The Pagans Part 10

He went on to speak of the figure, adding suggestions of treatment, feeling and posing; and as he talked he was conscious of needlessly prolonging the conversation for the mere pleasure of being near this woman, and of secretly cherishing some vague feeling that not only would Ninitta be safe under Mrs. Greyson's guardianship, but that some solution of the complexities in which he found himself involved would result from bringing together the two women so closely connected with his life.

He went away into his own studio at length, but Helen had scarcely got fairly to work before he reappeared with Ninitta.

Ninitta was much the same in outward appearance as upon the previous day, but between this morning's mental state and that of yesterday there was a great gulf. The Italian's character was a strange if not wholly unique mixture of simplicity and worldly wisdom. All her experiences, her life as a model in various parts of the world, her hardships and successes, while teaching her only too sharply the follies and vices of mankind, had never for an instant shaken her faith in Grant Herman. He was her G.o.d. It is even doubtful if any thing he could have done would have destroyed her belief in his integrity and n.o.bility of soul. When he left her, she acquiesced, it is true, but with a wild pa.s.sion of anguish. She knew he misjudged, but she chose to phrase it to herself that he was deceived; his rashness and hot-headedness were to her only so many fresh evidences of his greatness of character. She was not the first woman who has vaguely felt that unreasoning jealousy and pa.s.sion are admirable or even essential attributes of virility, and who has worshiped a man as much for his faults as for his virtues.

To the dream of meeting Herman with the proofs that he had been deceived, Ninitta had clung unyieldingly through the dreary years since the death of Hoffmeir, who had been kind to her for the sake of his shattered friendship with Herman, and for the sake, too, of his own hopeless love for herself. It was from mingled shyness and pride that Ninitta had waited for a summons from the sculptor after she had reached Boston; but when she had at last gone to his studio it was with keen emotion. She had not considered that both herself and her old-time lover had changed in the seven years of separation. She had not reflected that believing her false he could not but have endeavored to forget her. She could not know that contact with the world, if it had not made him ashamed of his youthful enthusiasm, had at least showed him how the marriage he had contemplated would have appeared in the eyes of worldly wisdom, and had so educated him that reason was less helpless before pa.s.sion than of old.

But to-day Ninitta was a different woman, changed by the agony of a night into which had been compressed the bitterness of years. She had been too sharply wounded at being greeted by a hand-shake in place of the too well remembered kisses, with commonplace kind inquiries instead of an embrace, not to realize at least how entirely the relations between herself and Herman were changed. She did not understand the alteration, it is true. To do that would have required not only a knowledge of facts of which she could have no cognizance, but far keener powers of reason than were centered in Ninitta's shapely head.

Only of one thing she was sure; there the instinct of her s.e.x stood her in good stead. She was convinced that some other woman had won the sculptor's love from her. When she came into Helen's studio this morning she watched sharply for some token which should show her the relations in which the two artists stood to each other; but she could detect nothing significant. Mrs. Greyson was intent only upon her work, and whatever the sculptor may have felt at the meeting of Helen and Ninitta, he made no outward sign.

The model showed a quickness of comprehension in taking the pose required, and the shoulder she bared was of so exquisite mold that Helen's keenest artistic powers were aroused. Ninitta understood the art of posing as a painter knows the use of brush and colors; she had for it an inborn capacity impossible except in the child of an art land. Moved by the inspiration of that most beautiful bust, Mrs.

Greyson worked enthusiastically, scarcely noticing when her master left the room, an indication of indifference which the model did not fail to note.

XII.

WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED.

Hamlet; iv.--7.

It was February, and the night but one before the day fixed for Arthur Fenton's marriage. He was spending the evening with Mrs. Greyson, and it chanced that Grant Herman and Fred Rangely were also there. The sculptor went seldom to the house of his pupil, and when he did visit her, he satisfied some fine, secret delicacy by taking always a friend with him. Helen was sufficiently Bohemian or sufficiently unworldly to care little if people criticised her way of living. She had inherited a small property which made her comfortable and independent; and she declined being hampered by a chaperon.

"My art is my chaperon," she wrote to an elderly relative who wished to come to Boston and matronize her. "A woman who is daring enough to be an artist is regarded as bold enough to take care of herself, I suppose. At least n.o.body troubles me, and I ask nothing more."

On the present occasion Arthur Fenton asked leave to light his cigar, and although Herman felt this something of a profanation, it was not long before he and Rangely added their wreaths to the smoke garlands which hung upon the air, and had not the hostess become somewhat accustomed to tobacco in foreign _ateliers,_ it is to be doubted if she could have complacently endured the fumes which arose.

All subjects of heaven and earth came drifting into the talk, and at length something evoked from Rangely his opinion of Emerson.

"Emerson was great," he said, "Emerson often recalled Goethe in Goethe's cooler and more intellectual moods; but Emerson lacked the loftiness of vice; he was eternally narrow."

"'The loftiness of vice,'" echoed the hostess. "What does that mean? It sounds vicious enough."

"Emerson," Rangely returned, "knew only half of life. He never had any conception of the pa.s.sionate longing for vice _per se;_ the thrill, the glow which comes to some men at the splendid caress of sin in her most horrible shape. Do you see what I mean? He couldn't imagine the ecstasy that may lie in mere foulness."

"No," replied Helen, "I'm afraid I don't quite see. Though I am sure I ought to be shocked. Do you mean that he should have been vicious?"

"Certainly not; but it was his limitation not to be tempted; not to be able to project himself into a personality which riots in wickedness far more intensely than a saint follows righteousness."

"If you mean that he could not have been wicked if he tried, that, I own, was in a sense a limitation."

"Yes; and a fatal one. No man can be wholly great who understands only one half of human impulses."

"But what do you mean by wickedness?" demanded Herman, a little combatively.

"Oh," laughed Rangely, "I'm not to be entrapped into giving metaphysical and theological definitions. I mean what we are expected to call wickedness, conventionally speaking. I've an old cad of a parson in my new play and I am trying to decide if it will do to have him advocate a grand scheme for reforming the world by reversing definitions and calling those things men choose to do virtues, and dubbing whatever man detests, vices."

"That is rather more clever than orthodox," Helen laughed. "How is your play getting on, Mr. Rangely?"

"Oh, fairish, thank you. The trouble is that the drama went out of fashion long ago. First they replaced it by dresses and scenery, but now every thing has given way to souvenir programmes; so I've got to write up to a souvenir or I sha'n't make any thing out of the play."

"I hoped you were above such mercenary considerations."

"I am trying to make myself so," he retorted. "I think about three successful plays would be tonic enough to bring my conscience up to proper art levels."

Herman had taken little part in this colloquy, smoking in silence, and regarding his companions. Fenton had thus far been even more quiet, scarcely contributing a word to the conversation; and the sculptor's thoughts turned upon the handsome young fellow, sitting in one of his favorite twisted att.i.tudes in a German chair, his beardless face paler than usual, though a red spot glowed in either cheek, and his dilated pupils betrayed his excitement. He was smoking steadily, but with little apparent knowledge of either his cigar or his surroundings.

"Upon my word," mused Herman. "A cheerful looking man for a bridegroom he is. If he were going to the scaffold he could hardly seem more melancholy. What in the world is the matter with him? I wonder if he has been dragged into a marriage he doesn't like. How Mrs. Greyson watches him."

Helen was indeed watching Fenton closely, although to a less keen observer than Herman her surveillance would hardly have been apparent.

She, too, was thinking of Fenton's downcast air, and knowing him more intimately than did the sculptor, she reasoned less doubtfully, although perhaps not more accurately than the latter concerning what was pa.s.sing in the mind of her silent friend.

"He surely loves Miss Caldwell," she thought, "but he is so foolish. He is thinking now that he will never meet these comrades again as an unhampered man. He feels just now all he is giving up. I should like him better to remember what he is gaining. Are all men inherently selfish, I wonder. It is well for Miss Caldwell's peace of mind that she cannot see him now. Perhaps when he is with her he sees only the other side; I am sure I hope so."

She turned away with a sigh, and saw Herman looking at her. Their eyes met in one of those brief glances of intelligence which serve as fine fibers to knit people together.

The conversation soon turned upon the opinion a certain critic had expressed concerning a picture then on exhibition.

"Bah!" cried Fenton suddenly; "what does he know about art?--he is bow-legged!"

"Hallo!" exclaimed Rangely, "have you waked up? I thought we were safe from you for the whole evening."

"It is never safe to count on his silence," Herman said. "He has probably been meditating some stinging epigram against woman. We shall have something wild directly."

"No; I've nothing to say against women now," Arthur returned, rising, "for I want Mrs. Greyson to sing. I wish you'd stop poisoning the air with those confounded cigarettes, Fred. The use of cigarettes degrades smoking to the level of the small vices, and I object to it on principle."

He opened the piano as he spoke, and without demur Helen allowed him to lead her to the instrument.

"If you do not mind," she said a little diffidently, turning to her guests after she had seated herself, "I should like to have the gas lowered a trifle. It may seem a little sentimental, but I do not like to be looked at too keenly when I sing."

The flames of the gas jets were dimmed, and Helen struck a few soft chords. Herman listened intently. He had heard Fenton praise Mrs.

Greyson's singing, but he was entirely unprepared for what was to come, and he never forgot the thrill of that experience.

An unpretending, flowing prelude; then suddenly the tones of the singer.

Helen's voice was a rich, fibrous mezzo-soprano; and the music she sang, half chant, half melody, was evidently an improvisation. The words were the exquisite song which opens Sh.e.l.ley's _h.e.l.las:_

I strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow,-- They were plucked from Orient bowers, By the Indian billow.

Be thy sleep Calm and deep, Like theirs who fell; not ours who weep.

Away, unlovely dreams!

Away, false shapes of sleep!

Be his, as Heaven seems, Clear and bright and deep!

Soft as love and calm as death, Sweet as summer night without a breath.