THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME.
Measure for Measure; iv.--4.
Ninitta had not gone shopping. She was posing for Arthur Fenton, at his
studio. Even the presence of her boy could not wholly make up to the
Italian for the loss of all the old interest and excitement of her life
as a model. The boy was with his nurse or at the kindergarten for long
hours during which Ninitta, who had few of the resources with which an
educated woman would have filled her time, mingled longings for her old
life with blissful gloatings over Nino's beauty and cleverness. Her
husband was always kind, but since his marriage delicacy of sentiment
had made him shrink from having his wife pose even for himself, while
naturally no thought of her doing so for another would have been
entertained for a moment.
Ninitta had been so long in the life, to pose had been so large a part
of her very existence, that she hardly knew how to do without the
old-time flavor. Mrs. Fenton had perceived something of this without at
all appreciating the strength of the feeling of the sculptor's wife,
and she had at one time tried to interest Ninitta in what might perhaps
be called missionary work among the models of Boston, a class of whose
calling Edith held views which her husband was not wholly wrong in
calling absurdly narrow. She was met at once by the difficulty that it
was impossible to make Ninitta see that missionary work was needed
among the models, and the effort resulted in nothing except to convince
Mrs. Fenton that she could do little with the Italian.
Just how Arthur Fenton had persuaded her to pose without her husband's
knowledge, Ninitta could not have told; and the artist himself would
have assured any investigator, even that speculative spirit which held
the place left vacant by the dismissal of his conscience, that he had
never deliberately tried to entice her. He had talked to her of the
picture he was painting for a national competitive exhibition, it is
true, and dwelt upon the difficulty of procuring a proper model; he had
met her on the street one day and taken her into his studio to see it;
he had regretted that it was impossible to ask her; and of a hundred
apparently blameless and trivial things, the result was that this
morning, while Helen and Herman were walking across the Common to find
her, Ninitta was lying amid a heap of gorgeous stuffs and cushions in
Fenton's studio, while he painted and talked after his fashion.
It is as impossible to trace the beginnings of any chain of events as
it is to find the mystery of the growth of a seed. Whatever Arthur
Fenton's faults, he certainly believed himself to be one who could not
betray a friend. The ideal which he vaguely called honor, and which
served him as that ultimate ethical standard which in one shape or
another is necessary to every human being, forbade his taking advantage
of any one whose friendship he admitted. His instinct of
self-indulgence had, however, made him so expert a casuist that he was
able to silence all inner misgivings by arguing that the demands of art
were above all other laws. He reasoned that Ninitta's posing could do
no possible harm to Grant Herman, while the success of his _Fatima_
depended upon it; and since art was his religion, he came at last to
feel as if he were nobly sacrificing his prejudices to his highest
convictions in violating for the sake of art his principle which
forbade his deceiving her husband.
Least of all, in asking the Italian to pose, had Fenton been actuated
by any intention of tempting her to evil. He needed a model for the
_Fatima_ as he needed his canvas and brushes; and his satisfaction at
having induced Ninitta to serve his purpose was in kind much the same
as his pleasure that his brushes and canvas were exactly what he wanted.
But it is always difficult to tell to what an action may lead; and most
of all is it hard to foresee the consequences which will follow from
the violation of principle. Perhaps the air of secrecy with which
Ninitta found it necessary to invest her coming, had an intoxicating
effect upon the artist; perhaps it was simply that his persistent
egotism moved him to test his power. Men often feel the keenest
curiosity in regard to the extent of their ability to commit crimes
into which they have yet not the remotest intention of being betrayed;
and especially is this true in their relations to women. Men of a
certain vanity are always eager to discover how great an influence for
evil they could exercise over women, even when they have not the nerve
or the wickedness to exert it. A man must be morally great to be above
finding pleasure in the belief that he could be a Don Juan if he chose;
and moral grandeur was not for Arthur Fenton.
From whatever cause, the fact was, that as he painted this morning and
reflected, with a complacency of which he was too keen an analyst not
to know he should have been ashamed, how he had secured the model he
desired despite her husband, the speculation came into his mind how far
he could push his influence over Ninitta. At first a mere impersonal
idea, the thought was instantly, by his habit of mental definiteness,
realized so clearly that his cheek flushed, partly, it is to be said to
his credit, with genuine shame. He looked at the beautiful model, and
turned away his eyes. Then, hardly conscious of what he was doing, he
laid down his palette, and took a step forward.
At that instant the studio bell rang sharply. He started with so
terrible a sense of being discovered in a crime, that his jaw trembled
and his knees almost failed under him.
Then instantly he recovered his self-possession, although his heart was
beating painfully, and looked up at the clock.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed. "I had no idea how late it was! It is that
beastly Irons for his last sitting. I'd forgotten all about him."
Ninitta rose from her position and hurried toward the screen behind
which she dressed.
"Don't let him in," she said. "He knows me."
The bell rang again, as they stood looking at each other.
"I will try to send him off," Arthur said. "Dress as quickly as you
can."
She retreated behind the screen while he went to the door and unlocked
it. Instantly Irons stepped inside.
"You must excuse me," the artist said. "I'll be ready for you in
fifteen minutes. I have a model here, and got to painting so busily
that I forgot the time. Come back in a quarter of an hour."
"Oh, I don't mind," Irons said, advancing into the studio. "I'll look
round until you are ready."
"But I never admit sitters when I have a model," Fenton protested,
standing before him. "I shall have to ask you to go."
The other stopped and looked at the artist with suspicion in his eyes.
"What a fuss you make," he commented coarsely. "No intrigue, I suppose?"
A hot flush sprang into Fenton's face. He tried to assume a haughty
air, but the consciousness of being entrapped in a misdemeanor had not
left him. The need of getting Mrs. Herman out of the studio unseen
would have been awkward at any time; when to this was added the sense
of guilt and shame which was begotten of the base impulse to which he
had almost yielded, the situation became for him painfully embarrassing.
"I am not in the habit of carrying on intrigues with my models," he
replied, haughtily. "Or," he added, regaining self-possession, "of
discussing my affairs with others."
Mr. Irons laughed in a significant way which made Arthur long to kill
him on the spot, and, stepping past Fenton, he walked further into the
studio.
"Don't put on airs with me," he said. "Your looks give you away. You've
been up to some mischief."
He paused an instant before the unfinished picture on the easel, then
when the artist coolly took the canvas and placed it with its face to
the wall, he turned with deliberate rudeness and craned his neck so
that he could look behind the screen. A leering smile came over his
coarse features. Without a word he went over to the most distant corner
of the studio, where he apparently became absorbed in studying a sketch
hanging on the wall.
There was a dead silence of some moments. Fenton was literally
speechless with rage, yet, too, his quick wit was busy devising some
way of escape from the unpleasant predicament in which he found
himself. He did not speak, nor did Mr. Irons turn until Ninitta had
completed her toilet and slipped hastily out. As the door closed after
her, Irons wheeled about and confronted the indignant artist with a
smile of triumphant glee.
"Sly dog!" he said.
Fenton advanced a step toward his tormentor with his clenched hand half
raised as if he would strike.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Do you call yourself a gentleman?"
"Oh, come, now," the other responded, with an easy wave of the hand,
"no heroics, if you please. They won't go down with me. She's a
devilish fine woman, and I don't blame you."
"I tell you," began Fenton, "you"--
"Oh, of course, of course. I know all that. But sit down while I say
something to you."
As if under the constraining influence of a nightmare, Fenton obeyed
when Mr. Irons, having seated himself in an easy chair, waved him into
another with a commanding gesture. The artist felt himself to have lost
his place as the stronger of the two, of which he had hitherto been
proudly conscious, and he sat angrily gnawing his lip while his
tormentor regarded him with smiling malice.
"Do you remember telling me one day," Irons asked, fixing his narrow
eyes on the other's disturbed face, "that you could make your sitters
tell you things?"
Fenton stared at his questioner in angry silence, but did not answer.
"Now, if," continued Irons; "I say if, you observe,--if Stewart Hubbard
should chance to tell you where the new syndicate mean to locate their
mills, it might be a mighty good thing for you."
Still Fenton said nothing, but his regard became each moment more
wrathful.
"Of course," the sitter continued, with an assumption of airy lightness
which grated on every nerve of the hearer, "you are not in a position
to turn such knowledge to advantage; but I am, and I am always inclined
to help a bright fellow like you when there is a good chance. So if you
should come to me and say that the mills are to be so and so, I'd do
all I could to make things pleasant for you. I happen to belong to a
syndicate myself that has bought a mill privilege at Wachusett, and it
is important to us to have the new railroad go our way, and we'd like
to know how far the other fellows' plans are dangerous to our
interests, don't you see."
Still Fenton did not speak. He had grown very pale, and his lips were
set firmly together. His hands clasped the arms of his chair so
strongly that the blood had settled under the middle of the nails. Mr.
Irons looked at him with narrow, piercing eyes. He paused a moment and
then went on.
"You are perfectly capable of keeping a secret," he said in a hard,
deliberate tone, "so I don't in the least mind telling you what we
should do. Your sitters always tell you things, you know; and you are
to be trusted. The case is here; our syndicate stand in with the
railroad corporation and ask the Railroad Commissioners for a
certificate of exigency, to authorize laying the new branch out through
Wachusett. Now we have information that Staggchase and Stewart Hubbard
and that set, are planning to spring a petition asking for special
legislation locating the road somewhere else. Of course, they'll have
to get it in under a suspension of the rules, but they can work that
easily enough. The Commissioners will have to hold on, then, until the
Legislature finishes with that petition."
He paused again, with an air which convinced the artist that he was
going on with this elaborate explanation to cover his awkwardness.
Fenton did not speak, and his visitor continued,--
"The Commissioners might settle the matter now, but they won't, and
we've got to have the fight, I suppose; so, of course, you can see how
it is for our interest to know just what we are fighting."
He rose as he spoke, and with an air of deliberation, buttoned his
overcoat, which he had not removed.
"I don't think you feel like painting this morning," he observed, "and
I'll come in again. I'll leave you to think over what I have said."
Fenton rose also, regarding him with fierce, level eyes.
"And suppose," he said, "that I call you a damned scoundrel, and forbid
you ever to set foot in my studio again?"
The other laughed, with the easy assurance of a bully who feels himself
secure.
"Oh, you won't," he replied. "If you did,--well, I am on the committee
for the new statue, and have to see Herman now and then you know, and I
should, perhaps, ask him why his wife poses for you. Good morning."
And with a chuckling laugh, he took himself out.