A NECESSARY EVIL.
Julius Caesar; ii.--2.
"Oh, I assure you that my temper has been such for a week that my
family have threatened to have me sent to a nervine asylum," Ethel Mott
observed to Fred Rangely, who was calling on her, ostensibly to inquire
after her health, some trifling indisposition having kept her housed
for a few days. "What with my cold and my vexation at losing things I
wanted to go to, I have been positively unendurable."
"That's your way of looking at it," he responded; "but I hardly fancy
that anybody else found it out. But what has there been to lose, except
the Throgmorton ball?"
"Well, first there was the concert Saturday night."
"Do you care so much about the Symphonies, then? I thought you were the
one girl in Boston who doesn't pretend to care for music."
"Oh, but we have lovely seats this year, and the nicest people all
about us, you know. Thayer Kent and his mother are directly behind us."
"Where he can lean forward and talk to you," interrupted Rangely,
jealously.
"Yes," she said, nodding with a gleam of mischievous laughter in her
dark eyes. "And I do have a nice time at the Symphonies. Besides, I
don't in the least object to the music, you know."
Fred fixed his gaze on a large old-fashioned oil painting on the
opposite wall, a copy from some of the innumerable pastorals which have
been made in imitation of Nicholas Poussin. It was of no particular
value, but it was surrounded by a beautiful carved Venetian frame, and
was one of those things which confer an air of distinction upon a
Boston parlor, because they are plainly the art purchases of a bygone
generation.
"But you have, of course, had no end of girls running in to see you,"
he observed.
"Yes; but, then, that didn't make up for the Throgmorton ball. You ask
what else there was to lose; I should think that was enough. Why, Janet
Graham says she never had such a lovely time in her life."
"Is Miss Graham engaged to Fred Gore?" Rangely asked.
Ethel's gesture of dissent showed how little she would have approved of
such a consummation.
"No, indeed," she returned. "Fred Gore only wants Janet's money,
anyway; and she can't abide him, any more than I can."
"Then, you have the correct horror of a marriage for money."
"I think a girl is a fool to let a man marry her for her money. She'd
much better give him her fortune and keep herself back. Then she'd at
least save something. I don't approve of people's marrying for money
anyway; although, of course," she added, with a twinkle in her eye, "I
think it is wicked to marry without it."
There shot through Rangely's mind the reflection that Thayer Kent had
not an over-abundance of this world's goods; and to this followed the
less pleasant thought that he was himself in the same predicament.
"But Jack Gerrish hasn't anything," he said, aloud.
"But Janet has enough, so she can marry anybody she wants to," was the
reply; "and Jack Gerrish is too perfectly lovely for anything."
The visitor laughed, but he was evidently not at his ease. He was
always uncomfortably conscious that Ethel had not the slightest
possible scruple against laughing at him, and he was not a little
afraid of her well-known propensity to tease. Ethel regarded him with
secret amusement. A woman is seldom displeased at seeing a man
disconcerted by her presence, even when she pities him and would fain
put him at his ease. It is a tribute to her powers too genuine to be
disputed, and while she may labor to overcome the man's feeling, her
vanity cannot but be gratified that he has it.
"Did you ever know anything like the way Elsie Dimmont is going on with
Dr. Wilson?" Ethel said, presently, by way of continuing the
conversation. "I can't see what she finds to like in him. He's as
coarse as Fred Gore, only, of course, he's cleverer, and he isn't
dissipated."
"Wilson isn't a half bad fellow," Rangely replied, rather
patronizingly. "Though, of course, I can understand that you wouldn't
care for that kind of a man."
"Am I so particular, then?"
"Yes, I think you are."
"Thank you for nothing."
"Oh, I meant to be complimentary, I assure you. Isn't it a compliment
to be thought particular in your tastes?"
"That depends upon how you are told. Your manner was not at all
calculated to flatter me. It said too plainly that you thought me
captious."
"But I don't."
"Of course you wouldn't own it," Ethel retorted, playing with a
tortoise-shell paper-cutter she had picked up from the table by which
she sat; "but your manner was not to be mistaken. It betrayed you in
spite of yourself."
Rangely knew how foolish he was to be affected by light banter like
this, but for his life he could not have helped it. The fact that Ethel
knew how easily she could tease him lent a tantalizing sparkle to her
eyes. She smiled mockingly as he vainly tried to keep the flush from
rising in his cheeks.
"You are singularly fond of teasing," he observed, in a manner he
endeavored to make cool and philosophical.
"Now you are calling me singular as well as captious."
"The girl who is singular," returned he, in an endeavor to turn the
talk by means of an epigram which only made matters worse for him, "the
girl who is singular runs great risk of never becoming plural."
Ethel laughed merrily, her glee arising chiefly from a sense of the
chance he was giving her to work up one of those playful mock quarrels
which amused her and so thoroughly teased her admirer.
"Upon my word, Mr. Rangely," she said, assuming an air of indignant
surprise, "is it your idea of making yourself agreeable to tell an
unfortunate girl that she is destined to be an old maid? I could stand
being one well enough, but to be told that I've got to be is by no
means pleasant."
He knew she was playing with him, but he could not on that account meet
her on her own ground. He endeavored to protest.
"You are trying to make me quarrel."
"Make you quarrel?" she echoed. "I like that! Of course, though, to be
so full of faults that you can't help abusing me is one way of making
you quarrel."
"How you do twist things around!" exclaimed he, beginning to be
thoroughly vexed.
She pursed up her lips and regarded him with an expression more
aggravating than words could have been. She had been for several days
deprived of the pleasure of teasing anybody, and her delight in vexing
Rangely made his presence a temptation which she was seldom able to
resist. She was unrestrained by any regard for the young author which
should make her especially concerned how seriously she offended him;
and when she now changed the conversation abruptly, it was with a
forbearing air which was anything but soothing to his nerves.
"Don't you think," she asked, "that Mr. Berry was absurd in the way he
acted about playing at Mrs. West's?"
"No, I can't say that I do," the caller retorted savagely. "Mrs. West
gives out that she is going to give the neglected native musicians at
last a chance to be heard, and then she invites them to play their
compositions in her parlor. Westbrooke Berry isn't the man to be
patronized in any such way. Just think of her having the cheek to give
to a man whose work has been brought out in Berlin an invitation which
is equivalent to saying that he can't get a public hearing, but she'll
help him out by asking her guests to listen to him. Heavens! Mrs. West
is a perfectly incredible woman."
Ethel smiled sweetly. In her secret heart she agreed with him; but it
did not suit her mood to show that she did so.
"You seem bound to take the opposite view of everything to-day," she
said, in tones as sweet as her smile; "or perhaps it is only that my
temper has been ruined by my cold. I told you it had been bad."
He rose abruptly.
"If everything is to put us more at odds," he said, rather stiffly,
"the sooner I withdraw, the better. I am sorry I have fallen under your
displeasure; it is generally my ill luck to annoy you."
And in a few moments he was going down the street in a frame of mind
not unusual to him after a call upon Miss Mott, from whose house he was
apt to come away so ruffled and irritated that nothing short of a
counteracting feminine influence could restore his self-complacency.
This office of comforter usually fell to the lot of Mrs. Frederick
Staggchase. Indeed, his fondness for this lady was so marked as to give
rise to some question among his intimates whether he were not more
attached to her than to the avowed object of his affection.
An hour after he had made his precipitate retreat from Ethel's, he
found himself sitting in the library at Mrs. Staggchase's, with his
hostess comfortably enthroned in a great chair of carved oak on the
opposite side of the fire. The conversation had somehow turned upon
marriage. There is always a certain fascination, a piquant if faint
sense of being upon the borderland of the forbidden, which makes such a
discussion attractive to a man and woman who are playing at making love
when marriage stands between them.
"But, of course," Rangely had said, "two married people can't live at
peace when one of them is in love with somebody else."
Mrs. Staggchase clasped with her slender hand the ball at the end of
the carved arm of the chair in which she was sitting, looking absently
at the rings which adorned her fingers. She possessed to perfection the
art of being serious, and the air with which she now spoke was
admirably calculated to imply a deep interest in the subject under
discussion. "I do not understand," she observed, thoughtfully, "why a
man and woman need quarrel because they happen to be married to each
other, when they had rather be married to somebody else. It wouldn't be
considered good business policy to pull against a partner because one
might do better with some other arrangement; and it does seem as if
people might be as sensible about their marriage relations as in their
business."
Her companion glanced at her, and then quickly resumed his intent
regard of the fire beside which he sat.
"But people are so unreasonable," he remarked.
Mrs. Staggchase assented, with a characteristic bend of the head, and a
movement of her flexible neck. She looked up with a smile.
"I think Fred and I are a model couple," she said. "Fred came into my
room this noon, just as I had finished my morning letters.
'Good-morning,' he said, 'I hope you weren't
frightened.'--'Frightened?' I said, 'what at?'--'Do you mean to say you
didn't know I was out all night?'--'I hadn't an idea of it,' said I.
He'd been playing cards at the club all night, and had just come in. He
says that the next time, he shan't take the trouble to expose himself."
Rangely laughed in a somewhat perfunctory way.
"But if that is a model fashion of living, what becomes of the old
notions of kindred souls, and all that sort of thing?" he asked. "I
shouldn't want my wife"--
He paused, rather awkwardly, and Mrs. Staggchase took up the sentence
with a smile of amusement, in which there was no trace of annoyance.
She was too well aware how completely she was mistress of the
situation, in dealing with Rangely, to be either vexed or embarrassed
in talking with him.
"To be as frank with another man as I am with you?" she finished for
him. "Oh, very likely not. You have all the masculine jealousy which is
aroused in an instant by the idea that a woman should be at liberty to
like more than one man. You are half a century behind us. Marriage as
you conceive it is the old-fashioned article, for the use of families
in narrow circumstances intellectually as well as pecuniarily. Love in
a cottage is necessary, because people under those conditions can't
live unless they are extravagantly devoted to each other. Marriage with
us is just what it ought to be, an arrangement of mutual convenience.
Fred and I suit each other perfectly, and are sufficiently fond of each
other; but there are sides of his nature to which I do not answer, and
of mine that he does not touch. He finds somebody who does; I find
somebody on my part. You, for instance."
Rangely leaned back in his chair, and clasped his plump white fingers,
regarding Mrs. Staggchase with a smile of amusement and admiration.
"You are so awfully clever," was his response, "that you could really
never be uncommonly fond of anybody. You'd analyze the whole business
too closely."
She laughed slightly, and went on with what she was saying, without
heeding his interruption.
"Fred and I make good backgrounds for each other, and, after all, that
is what is required. You answer to my need of companionship in another
direction, and since that side of my nature is unintelligible to my
husband, he is not defrauded, while I should be if I starved my desire
for such friendship, to please an idea like yours, that a wife should
find her all in her husband. Fortunately, Mr. Staggchase is a broader
man than you are."
"Thank you," Rangely retorted, with a faint tinge of annoyance visible,
despite his air of jocularity. "Arthur Fenton says a broad man is one
who can appreciate his own wife. If Mr. Staggchase does that"--
"Come," interrupted Mrs. Staggchase, smiling with the air of one who
has had quite enough of the topic, "don't you think the subject is
getting to be unfortunately personal? I have a favor to ask of you."
Rangely was too well aware of the uselessness of trying to direct the
conversation to make any attempt to continue the talk, which, moreover,
had taken a turn not at all to his liking. He settled himself in his
chair, in an attitude of easy attention.
"I am always delighted to do you a favor," he said. "It isn't often I
get a chance."
The relations between these two were not easy to understand, unless one
accepted the simplest possible theory of their friendship. It was, on
the part of Mrs. Staggchase, only one of a succession of platonic
intimacies with which her married life had been enriched. She found it
necessary to her enjoyment that some man should be her devoted admirer,
always quite outside the bounds of any possible love-making, albeit
often enough she permitted matters to go to the exciting verge of a
flirtation which might merit a name somewhat warmer than friendship.
She was a brilliant and clever woman who allowed herself the luxury of
gratifying her vanity by encouraging the ardent attentions of some man,
which, if they ever became too pressing, she knew how to check, or, if
necessary, to stop altogether. She was fond of talking, and she frankly
avowed her conviction that women were not worth talking to. She liked
an appreciative masculine listener with whom she could converse, now in
a strain of bewildering frankness, now in a purely impersonal and
intellectual vein, and who, however he might at times delude himself by
misconstruing her confidences into expressions of personal regard, was
clever enough to comprehend the little corrective hints by which, when
necessary, she chose to undeceive him.
Analyzed to its last elements, her feeling, it must be confessed, was
pretty nearly pure selfishness; but she was able, without effort, and
by half-unconscious art, to throw over it the air of being
disinterested friendship. Such a nature is essentially false, but
chiefly in that it gives to a passing mood the appearance of a
permanent sentiment, and, while seeking only self-gratification, seems
actuated by genuine desire to give pleasure to another.
The attitude of Rangely toward Mrs. Staggchase was, perhaps, no more
unselfish, and was certainly no more noble, but his sentiment was at
least more genuine. He was flattered by her preference, and he was
bewildered by her cleverness. He liked to believe himself capable of
interesting her, and without in the most remote degree desiring or
anticipating an intrigue, he was ready to go as far as she would allow
in his devotion. He was constantly tormented by a vague phantom of
conquest, which danced with will-o'-the-wisp fantasy before him, and
from day to day he endeavored to discover how deeply in love she was
willing he should fall. He was really fond of her, a fact that did not
prevent his entertaining a half-hearted passion for Ethel Mott, the
result of this mixture of emotion being that he was the slave, albeit
with a difference, of either lady with whom he chanced to be. That he
was the plaything of Mrs. Staggchase's fancy he was far from realizing,
although from the nature of things he naturally regarded his fondness
for Miss Mott as the permanent factor in the case. He even felt a
certain compunction for the regret he supposed Mrs. Staggchase would
feel when he should decide formally to transfer his allegiance to her
rival; a misgiving he might have spared himself had he been wise enough
to appreciate the situation in all its bearings. The lady understood
perfectly how matters stood, but Rangely was her junior, and, besides,
no man in such a case ever comprehends that he is being played with.
"It is in regard to the statue of _America_ that I want you to be
useful," Mrs. Staggchase said, replying to her visitor's proffer of
service with a smile. "Do you know what the chances are in regard to
the choice of a sculptor?"
"Why, I suppose Grant Herman will have the commission."
"But I think not."
"You think not? Who will then?"
"That is just it. Mr. Hubbard has been backing Mr. Herman; and Mr.
Irons, who never will agree to anything that Mr. Hubbard wants, is
putting up the claims of this new woman, just to be contrary."
"What new woman? Mrs. Greyson?"
"Yes. Mrs. Frostwinch told me all about it yesterday. Now there is a
young man that we are interested in"--
"Who is 'we'?" interrupted Rangely.
"Oh, Mrs. Frostwinch, and Mrs. Bodewin Ranger, and a number of us."
"But whom have you got on the committee?"
"Mr. Calvin; and don't you see that Mr. Calvin's name in a matter of
art is worth a dozen of the other two."
"Yes," Rangely assented, rather doubtfully, "in the matter of giving
commissions it certainly is."
Mrs. Staggchase smiled indulgently, playing with the ring in which
blazed a splendid ruby, and which she was putting on and off her finger.
"If you think," she said, "that you are going to entrap me into a
discussion of the merits of art and Philistinism, you are mistaken. I
told you long ago that I was a Philistine of the Philistines,
deliberately and avowedly. The true artistic soul which you delight to
call Pagan is only the servant of Philistinism, and I own that I prefer
to stand with the ruling party. As, indeed," she added, with a
mischievous gleam in her eye, "do many who will not confess it."
Rangely flushed. The thrust too closely resembled reproaches which in
his more sensitive moments he received at the hand of his own inner
consciousness, so to speak, not to make him wince. He felt himself,
besides, becoming involved in a painful position. He had long been the
intimate friend of Grant Herman, and felt that the sculptor had a right
to expect whatever aid he could give him in a matter like this.
"But who," he asked, "is your _protege?_"
"His name," Mrs. Staggchase replied, "is Orin Stanton. He is a fellow
of the greatest talent, and he has worked his way"--
Rangely put up his hand in a gesture of impatience.
"I know the fellow," he said. "He made a thing he called _Hop Scotch_,
of which Fenton said the title was far too modest, since he'd not only
scotched the subject but killed it."
"One never knew Mr. Fenton to waste the chance of saying a good thing
simply for the sake of justice," Mrs. Staggchase observed, with
unabated good humor. "But you are to help us in the _Daily Observer_,
and there is to be no discussion about it. Since you know you are too
good-natured not to oblige me in the end, why should you not do it
gracefully and get the credit of being willing."
And then, being a wise woman, she disregarded Rangely's muttered
remonstrance and turned the conversation into a new channel.