SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE.
Measure for Measure; v.--I.
When dinner was announced that night, Mrs. Arthur Fenton had not
appeared, but presently she came into the room with that guilty and
anxious look which marks the consciousness of social misdemeanors. She
was dressed in a gown of warm primrose plush, softened by draperies of
silver-gray net. It was a costume which her husband had designed for
her, and which set off beautifully her brown hair and creamy white skin.
"I hope I have not kept you waiting long," she said, "but I wanted to
dress for Mrs. Frostwinch's before dinner, and I was late about getting
home."
There was a certain wistfulness in her manner which betrayed her
anxiety lest he should be vexed at the trifling delay. Arthur Fenton
was too well bred to be often openly unkind to anybody, but none the
less was his wife afraid of his displeasure. He was one of those men
who have the power of making their disapproval felt from the simple
fact that they feel it so strongly themselves. The most oppressive of
domestic tyrants are by no means those who vent their ill-nature in
open words. The man who strenuously insists to himself upon his will,
and cherishes in silence his dislike of whatever is contrary to it, is
oftener a harder man to live with than one who is violently outspoken.
Fenton was hardly conscious of the absolute despotism with which he
ruled his home, but his wife was too susceptible to his moods not to
feel keenly the unspoken protest with which he met any infringement
upon his wishes or his pleasure. Tonight he was in good humor, and his
sense of beauty was touched by the loveliness of her appearance.
"Oh, it is no matter," he answered lightly. "How stunning you look.
That topaz," he continued, walking toward her, and laying his finger
upon the single jewel she wore fastened at the edge of the square-cut
corsage of her gown, "is exactly right. It is so deep in color that it
gives the one touch you need. It was uncommonly nice of your Uncle
Peter to give it to you."
"And of you to design a dress to set it off," returned she, smiling
with pleasure. "I am glad you like me in it."
"You are stunning," her husband repeated, kissing her with a faint
shade of patronage in his manner. "Now come on before the dinner is as
cold as a stone. A cold dinner is like a warmed-over love affair; you
accept it from a sense of duty, but there is no enjoyment in it."
Mrs. Fenton smiled, more from pleasure at his evident good nature than
from any especial amusement, and they went together into the pretty
dining-room.
Fenton acknowledged himself fond of the refinements of life, and his
sensitive, sensuous nature lost none of the delights of a
well-appointed home. He lived in a quiet and elegant luxury which would
have been beyond the attainment of most artists, and which indeed not
infrequently taxed his resources to the utmost.
The table at which the pair sat down was laid with exquisite damask and
china, the dinner admirable and well served. The dishes came in hot,
the maid was deft and comely in appearance, and the master of the
house, who always kept watch, in a sort of involuntary
self-consciousness, of all that went on about him, was pleasantly aware
that the most fastidious of his friends could have found nothing amiss
in the appointment or the service of his table. How much the perfect
arrangement of domestic affairs demanded from his wife, Fenton found it
more easy and comfortable not to inquire, but he at least appreciated
the results of her management. He never came to accept the smallest
trifles of life without emotion. His pleasure or annoyance depended
upon minute details, and things which people in general passed without
notice were to him the most important facts of daily life. The
responsibility for the comfort of so highly organized a creature, Edith
had found to be anything but a light burden. Only a wife could have
appreciated the pleasure she had in having the most delicate shades in
her domestic management noted and enjoyed; or the discomfort which
arose from the same source. It was delightful to have her husband
pleased by the smallest pains she took for his comfort; to know that
his eye never failed to discover the little refinements of dress or
cookery or household adornment; but wearing was the burden of
understanding, too, that no flaw was too small to escape his sight.
Mrs. Fenton's friends rallied her upon being a slave to her
housekeeping; few of them were astute enough to understand that, kind
as was always his manner toward her, she was instead the slave of her
husband.
The room in which they were dining was one in which the artist took
especial pleasure. He had panelled it with stamped leather, which he
had picked up somewhere in Spain; while the ceiling was covered with a
novel and artistic arrangement of gilded matting. Among Edith's wedding
gifts had been some exquisite jars of Moorish pottery, and these, with
a few pieces of Algerian armor, were the only ornaments which the
artist had admitted to the room. The simplicity and richness of the
whole made an admirable setting for the dinner table, and as the host
when he entertained was willing to take the trouble of overlooking his
wife's arrangements, the Fentons' dinner parties were among the most
picturesquely effective in Boston.
"I have two big pieces of news for you," Mrs. Fenton said, when the
soup had been removed. "I have been to call on Mrs. Stewart Hubbard
this afternoon, and Mr. Hubbard is going to have you paint him. Isn't
that good?"
Her husband looked up in evident pleasure.
"That isn't so bad," was his reply. "He'll make a stunning picture, and
the Hubbards are precisely the sort of people one likes to have
dealings with. Is he going at it soon?"
"He is coming to see you to-morrow, Mrs. Hubbard said. The picture is
to be her birthday present. I told her you were so busy I didn't know
when you could begin."
"I would stretch a point to please Mr. Hubbard. I am almost done with
Irons, vulgar old cad. I wish I dared paint him as bad as he really
looks."
"But your artistic conscience won't let you?" she queried, smiling. "He
is a dreadful old creature; but he means well."
"People who mean well are always worse than those who don't mean
anything; but I can make it up with Hubbard. He looks like Rubens' St.
Simeon. I wish he wore the same sort of clothes."
"You might persuade him to, for the picture. But my second piece of
news is almost as good. Helen is coming home."
"Helen Greyson?"
"Helen Greyson. I had a letter from her today, written in Paris. She
had already got so far, and she ought to be here very soon."
"How long has she been in Rome?" Fenton asked.
He had suddenly become graver. He had been intimate with Mrs. Greyson,
a sculptor of no mean talent, in the days when he had been a fervid
opponent of people and of principles with whom he had later joined
alliance, and the idea of her return brought up vividly his parting
from her, when she had scornfully upbraided him for his apostasy from
convictions which he had again and again declared to be dearer to him
than life.
"It is six years," Mrs. Fenton answered. "Caldwell was born the March
after she went, and he will be six in three weeks. Time goes fast. We
are getting to be old people."
Fenton stared at his plate absently, his thoughts busy with the past.
"Has Grant Herman been married six years?" he asked, after a moment.
"Grant Herman? Yes; he was married just before she sailed; but what of
it?"
Fenton laid down the fork with which he had been poking the bits of
fish about on his plate. He folded his arms on the edge of the table,
and regarded his wife.
"It is astonishing, Edith," he observed, "how well one may know a woman
and yet be mistaken in her. For six years I have supposed you to be
religiously avoiding any allusion to Helen's love for Grant Herman, and
it seems you never knew it at all."
It was Mrs. Fenton's turn to look up in surprise.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
Her husband laughed lightly, yet not very joyously.
"Nothing, if you will. Nobody ever told me they were in love with each
other, but I am as sure that Helen made Herman marry Ninitta as if I
had been on hand to see the operation."
"Made him marry her? Why should he marry her if he didn't want to?"
"Oh, well, I don't know anything about it. I know Ninitta followed
Herman to America, for she told me so; and I am sure he had no idea of
marrying her when she got here. Anybody can put two and two together, I
suppose, especially if you know what infernally Puritanical notions
Helen had."
"Puritanical?"
The artist leaned back in his chair and smiled at his wife in his
superior and tantalizing fashion.
"She thought she'd outgrown Puritanism," he returned, "but really she
was, in her way, as much of a Puritan as you are. The country is full
of people who don't understand that the essence of Puritanism is a
slavish adherence to what they call principle, and who think because
they have got rid of a certain set of dogmas they are free from their
theologic heritage. There never was greater rubbish than such an idea."
Mrs. Fenton was silent. She had long ago learned the futility of
attempting any argument in ethics with Arthur, and she received in
silence whatever flings at her beliefs he chose to indulge in. She had
even come hardly to heed words which in the early days of her married
life would have wounded her to the quick. She had readjusted her
conception of her husband's character, and if she still cherished
illusions in regard to him, she no longer believed in the possibility
of changing his opinions by opposing them.
Her thoughts were now, moreover, occupied with the personal problem
which would in any case have appealed more strongly to the feminine
mind than abstract theories, and she was considering what he had told
her of Mrs. Greyson and Grant Herman, a sculptor for whom she had a
warm admiration, and a no less strong liking.
However we busy ourselves with high aims, with learning, or art, or
wisdom, or ethics, personal human interests appeal to us more strongly
than anything else. Human emotions respond instinctively and quickly to
any hint of the emotional life of others. Nothing more strikingly shows
the essential unity of the race than the readiness with which all minds
lay aside all concerns and ideas which they are accustomed to consider
higher, to give attention to the trifling details of the intimate
history of their fellows. Quite unconsciously, Edith had gathered up
many facts, insignificant in themselves, concerning the relations of
Mrs. Greyson and Herman, and she now found herself suddenly called upon
to reconsider whatever conclusions they had led her to in the light of
this new development. The sculptor's marriage with an ex-model had
always been a mystery to her, and she now endeavored to decide in her
mind whether it were possible that her husband could be right in
putting the responsibility upon Helen Greyson. The form of his remark
seemed to her to hint that the Italian's claim upon Herman had been of
so grave a nature as to imply serious complications in their former
relations; but she strenuously rejected any suspicion of evil in the
sculptor's conduct.
"I am sure, Arthur," she said, hesitatingly, "there can have been
nothing wrong between Mr. Herman and Ninitta. I have too much faith in
him."
"To put faith in man," was his answer, "is only less foolish than to
believe in woman. I didn't, however, mean to imply anything very
dreadful. The facts are enough, without speculating on what is nobody's
business but theirs. I wonder how he and Helen will get on together,
now she is coming home? Mrs. Herman is a jealous little thing, and
could easily be roused up to do mischief."
"I do not believe Helen had anything to do with their marriage," Edith
said, with conviction. "It was a mistake from the outset."
"Granted. That is what makes it so probable that Helen did it. Grant
isn't the man to make a fool of himself without outside pressure, and
in the end a sacrifice to principle is always some ridiculous
tomfoolery that can't be come at in any other way. However, we shall
see what we shall see. What time are you going to Mrs. Frostwinch's?"
"I am going to the Browning Club at Mrs. Gore's first. Will you come?"
"Thank you, no. I have too much respect for Browning to assist at his
dismemberment. I'll meet you at Mrs. Frostwinch's about ten."