The Pagans Part 19

"But Ninitta is gone!" exclaimed the sculptor, suddenly recalled to present difficulties. "I have not been able to find her since the day she did this."

"Gone!" echoed Helen in dismay; "and you cannot find her?"

Herman related in detail the steps he had taken to trace Ninitta, all of which had thus far proved unavailing. He had endeavored to avoid publicity, but he already began to fear that it would be necessary to call detectives to his aid.

"Not yet," Helen said. "Let me try first. Have you seen Mr. Fenton?"

"No; why? I have been very cautious. I have told n.o.body but Fred Rangely."

Helen reflected a moment. Her woman's instinct told her that it was not likely Ninitta would put any great distance between herself and the sculptor. The model could have but few acquaintances in the city, and as she would need support it seemed probable she might try posing for some of the artists. As this thought crossed her mind, Helen remembered that Ninitta had promised to pose for Fenton when no longer wanted for the has-relief. It was therefore possible that Fenton might know something of the whereabouts of the missing girl; and in any case Helen had been so used to consulting the artist in any perplexity, that it was but natural for her thoughts to turn to him now.

"Let me try," she repeated. "It will be less likely to excite talk if I look for her; she was my model. Trust the search to me for a day or two."

He was only too glad to do so; glad to be released from the burden of anxiety, as by virtue of some subtle faith in Mrs. Greyson he was; glad of any thing in which he might obey her; glad above all of any bond of common interest which might draw them nearer to each other, even if it were search for the woman who stood between them.

On her way homeward Helen went into Studio Building, but before she had climbed half way to Fenton's room, she encountered Dr. Ashton.

"It is of no use," was his greeting. "He isn't in. His wife has probably taken him to church."

"He was at church this morning," Helen answered, putting her hand into the one Dr. Ashton extended. "I saw him."

"Did you go to church? What a lark."

"It was rather a lark," she a.s.sented; "only I got wretchedly blue before the service was done."

"What church was it? Mrs. Fenton looks as if she'd poise dizzily on high church alt.i.tudes like the angel on St. Angelo."

"So she does; she goes to the Nativity."

"How did Arthur look?"

"Amused at first; then bored; then cross; and finally, when the sermon was well under way, indignant."

"And his wife?"

"His wife, Will," Helen said with a sudden enthusiasm, "looked like a saint. She really believes all these fables. I wish I did."

"It will be some fun to watch Arthur's conversion and backsliding," Dr.

Ashton observed, "if he really gets far enough along to be able to backslide. Where are you going?"

"To see Arthur. I have an errand."

"Do you object to my walking with you?" he asked with a deference rare enough to attract her notice.

The sun was setting, and the trees on the Common, as yet showing but faintest signs of coming buds, stood out against the saffron sky. The long shadows stretched softly over the dull ground, while every slight prominence was gilded and transfigured by the golden glow which flooded from the west. The atmosphere had that peculiar brilliancy characteristic of the season, while the cool and bracing air was full of that champagne-like exhilaration in which lies at once the fascination and the fatality of the New England climate.

It was some time before either broke the silence.

"How I wish," at length began Helen wistfully.

"That shows," spoke her husband, as she left the sentence unfinished, "that you are still under forty. When you have quadrupled your decades you'll thank your stars for deliverances and ask for nothing more."

"When I get to that stage, then," she returned, "I'll take poison."

"Is that a hint?"

"Life is bad enough now," she continued without heeding the interruption, "but better a bitter savor than none at all."

"You should devote yourself to cultivating the approval of conscience as I do. I only do what I think to be right, you know."

"But think right whatever you do."

"Not quite that," returned the Doctor with a laugh, "but the approval of my conscience--or of my reason, which stands in its place--is necessary to my happiness, so I change my principles whenever my acts don't accord with them."

"So do a great many persons," she responded; "perhaps most of us, for that matter, only we are seldom honest enough to own it."

"By the way," queried her companion, as they approached her destination, "how came Mrs. Fenton so quickly domesticated at the Church of the Nativity?"

"There is a young man there--a deacon or a monk; I never know these high church terms; they are usually faded out pieces of Romanism--that once wrote an article which enjoyed the honor of being interred in the Princeton Review when her uncle was one of its editors."

They reached the doorsteps and Dr. Ashton said good-by. Then he turned back.

"By the by," he said. "I walked up with you to make you invite me to supper again. I enjoyed the last time very much."

"Did you?" returned his wife, rather carelessly. "Come to-morrow--no, not until Thursday night."

"Very well. I am to dine here then, and I'll come and give you an account of my visit."

XXIII.

HEART-SICK WITH THOUGHT.

Two Gentlemen of Verona; i.--I.

The Fentons were just going to dinner when Helen arrived, and she was persuaded to dine with them. She was not without some curiosity to observe her friend in his new relations, and she also found herself attracted by Edith, although the two women had apparently little in common.

The talk at dinner flowed on easily enough, Arthur conversing in the strain which of old Helen had been pleased to call "amiable," and which fretted her by being conventional and not wholly sincere. She liked the artist best when he spoke without restraint, even though she might not agree with his extravagances and often detected a trace of artificiality in his clever epigrams. It seemed to her that the whole tendency of Edith's influence upon her husband was towards restraint, yet she could not be sure whether the ultimate result upon Fenton's character might not be beneficial.

"It depends upon Arthur himself," Helen mused. "If he is strong enough to endure the struggle of adapting his honest belief to her honest belief, he will be the better for it. I hope his love of ease will not make him evade the difficulty. It never used to occur to me how little I really know Arthur, so that I cannot tell how this will be."

When the host was enjoying his after dinner cigar, which by especial indulgence upon the part of Edith he was allowed to smoke in the parlor, Helen disclosed the object of her visit.

"Do you remember," she asked, "that model who posed for my May, and was to come to you next week?"

"Ninitta? Of course. What of her?"