Some note in her voice and the closeness of connection between her
words and the thought in his own mind that he certainly must be able to
do what Irons asked, arrested Fenton's attention.
"Yes," he returned, his air of sincerely meaning what he said being by
no means wholly unreal; "that is because I am unworthy of them."
Miss Wainwright smiled. The self-detraction seemed delicate, and the
unexpectedness of the reply amused her.
"That is perhaps a modest thing to say, Mr. Fenton," she responded,
"but the truth must be--if you'll pardon my saying anything so
personal--that you are very sympathetic."
The artist moved backward a step from his easel, regarding his work
with that half-shutting of the eyes and turning of the head which seems
to be an essential of professional inspection.
"Even so," persisted he, "a sympathetic person is one whose emotions
are fickle enough to give place to whatever others any sudden accident
brings up; and if one's feelings are so transient, how can he be worthy
of confidence?"
"I can't argue with you," Damaris replied, smiling and shaking her
head, "but all the same I don't agree with what you say."
"Oh, I hoped you wouldn't when I said it," Fenton threw back lightly.
He went on with his work, outwardly tranquil, as if he had no thought
beyond the perfect shading of the cheek he was painting; but his mind
was in a tumult. He thought how easy it is to deceive; how constantly,
indeed, we do deceive whether we will or no; how foolish it is to rule
our lives by standards which rest so largely on mere seeming; how--Bah!
Why should he pretend to himself? He was not really concerned with
generalities or great moral principles. He was trying to decide whether
he should worm a secret out of Hubbard to throw as a sop to that vile
cursed cad, Irons, to keep his foul mouth shut about Ninitta. Heavens!
What a tangle he had got into simply because he wanted a decent model
for his picture! The abominable prudery and hypocrisy of the time lay
behind the whole matter. But this would never do. He must work now; not
think of these exciting things. It was hardly a brief moment before to
his last words he added aloud,--
"Did what you said mean that I was to be favored with a confidence?"
A painful, deep problem was weighing upon her heart, wearing away her
reason and her life alike. She had almost been ready to ask advice of
the artist, although she by no means knew him well enough to render so
intimate a conversation other than strange.
"Not necessarily," was her reply to Fenton's question.
She found it after all impossible to utter anything definite upon the
subject which lay so near her heart. She even felt a dim wonder whether
she had really ever seriously contemplated speaking of it, even never
so remotely.
"I was thinking," she continued, "of the point the conversation had
reached this morning when I left my friend at the door downstairs."
"It was some great moral problem, I think you said," Fenton responded,
trying to recall accurately what she had told him earlier in the
sitting of a talk she had had with a friend on her way to the studio.
"The object of life, or something of that sort. Well, the object of
life is to endure life, I suppose, just as the object of time is to
kill time."
"We had got so far in our talk as to decide," Miss Wainwright went on,
too much absorbed in recalling the interview she was relating to notice
the painter's words, "he decided, that is, not I--that the only thing
to do is to enjoy the present and to let the future go; but I object
that one cannot help dreading what might come."
She spoke, of course, solely with reference to her own inner
experiences, but Fenton, with the egotism which is universal to
humanity, received the words in their application to his own case. If
he could but determine what would come, he might decide how to act in
this hard present. Yet, whatever that future might be, he must at any
cost extricate himself from this coil which pressed so cruelly upon him.
"Even so he would be right," he answered her words. "Happiness in this
world consists, at best, in a choice of evils, and at least one may
make of the present a sauce _piquante_ to cover the flavor of the dread
of the future."
"You take a more desperate view of the matter than my friend," Miss
Wainwright said, sighing bitterly. "His only fear is that I shall lose
everything by not making sure of whatever present happiness is
possible."
Fenton glanced at her curiously, aware no less from her tone and manner
than from her words that the conversation was touching her as well as
himself through some keen personal experience. A feeling of sharp and
irritating remorse stung him from the thought that he, whose whole
sensuous nature strove for selfish joyousness in life, was discussing
this question from his own standpoint, while the pale, lovely girl
before him was regarding the whole problem from the high plane of duty.
Instinctively he set himself to justify his position against hers; to
demonstrate that his Pagan, selfish philosophy was the true guide.
"Oh," he cried out with sudden vehemence, waving his palette with a
gesture of supreme impatience, "I do take a desperate view! Life is
desperate, and the most absurd of all the multitudinous ways of making
it worse is to waste the present in dreading the future. I've no
patience with the notion that seems to be so many people's creed, that
we can do nothing nobler than to be as miserable as possible. It is a
dreadful remainder of that awful malady of Puritanism. Besides, where
is the logic of supposing we shall be better prepared for any
misfortune that may come if we can only contrive to dread it enough
beforehand. Good heavens! We all need whatever strength we can get from
happiness whenever it comes, as much as a plant needs the sunshine
while it lasts. You wouldn't prepare a delicate plant for cloudy days
by keeping it in the shadow; and I think one is simply an idiot who
keeps in the shade to accustom himself to-day after to-morrow's storm."
His excitement increased as he went on. He was arguing against the
coward sense that he had deserved the troubles which had come upon him.
He was saying in as plain language as the conditions of the
conversation would allow, that he had been right in gratifying his
desires; in living as he wished without too closely considering the
consequences which were likely to follow. He spoke with a bitter
earnestness born of the intense strain under which he was laboring; and
he did not consider how his words might or might not affect his hearer.
The thought came into his mind how he had deliberately sacrificed his
convictions in marrying Edith Caldwell and going over to Philistinism;
and he reflected that this decision had shaped his life. Already his
course was determined; it was idle to ignore the fact.
Why should he hesitate from squeamish scruples to do what Irons asked
when to meet the consequences of the latter's anger would not only be
supremely disagreeable but contrary to his whole theory of life?
It was one of Fenton's peculiarities that he never knowingly shrank
from telling himself the truth about his thoughts and actions with the
most brutal frankness. Indeed, it might not be too much to say that
this self-honesty was a sort of fetish to which he made expiatory
sacrifices in the shape of the most cruelly disagreeable admissions
before his inner consciousness. He constantly settled his moral
accounts by setting down on the credit side "Self-contempt to balance,"
a method of mental bookkeeping by no means rare, albeit seldom carried
on in connection with such clear powers of moral discrimination as
Fenton possessed when he chose to exercise them.
"If you chance on ill-luck," he ran on, arguing aloud with himself
concerning the possible consequences of betraying Mr. Hubbard's trust,
"you'll be glad you were happy while it was possible; and if the fates
make you the one person in a million, by letting you get through life
decently, you surely can't think it would be better to spend it moping
until you are incapable of enjoying anything."
The form of his speech was still that of one talking simply from the
point of view of his hearer. It did not for a moment occur to Damaris
Wainwright that in all he had said there had been anything but a
perfectly disinterested discussion of the principles involved in her
own questions and in her own perplexities. Yet, as a matter of fact,
his words were but the surface indications of the conflict going on in
his own mind. He was arguing down his disinclination to accept the
obvious and dishonorable means of escaping from an unpleasant position;
he was fighting against the better instincts of his nature, and trying
to convince himself that the easy course was the one to be chosen, the
one logically following from the conclusions forced upon him by his
study of life.
"But duty!" she interposed, rather timidly, as he paused.
She was confused by his persistent ignoring of all the standards by
which she was accustomed to judge, and she threw out the question as
one in desperation brings forward a last argument, half foreseeing that
it will be useless.
"Duty!" he echoed, fiercely. "Life is an outrage, and what duty can
take precedence of righting it as far as we can. That old fool of a
Ruskin--I beg your pardon, Miss Wainwright, if you're fond of him--did
manage to say a sensible thing when he told a boarding-school full of
girls that their first duty was to want to dance. To allow that there
is any duty above making the best of life is a species of moral
suicide."
She looked at him with an expression of profoundest feeling. She was
too little used to arguments of this sort to discern that the whole
matter was involved in the definition one gave to the phrase "The best
of life," and that to assume that this meant mere selfish or sensuous
enjoyment, was to beg the whole question. She was carried away by the
dramatic fashion in which he ended, dashing down his palette and
throwing himself into a chair.
"There!" he exclaimed, with an air of whimsical impatience. "Now I've
got so excited that I can't paint! That's what comes of having
convictions." The struggle was over. He brushed all doubts and
questions aside. There was but one thing to do, and, disagreeable as it
might be, he must accept the situation. The mention of the word "duty"
reminded him that he had long ago settled in his own mind the folly of
being bound down by superstitions masquerading under grand names as
ethical principles. The duty of self-preservation was above all others.
He must defend himself, no matter if he did violate the principles by
which fools allowed their lives to be narrowed and hampered. He would
set himself to work upon Hubbard to-morrow, and get this unpleasant
thing over.
His sitter came down from the dais upon which she had been sitting, and
held out her hand.
"You have decided my life for me," she said, in a low voice, "and I
thank you."
Those who knew her perplexities had argued with her in vain; and this
stranger, talking to his own inner self, had said the final word which
had moved her to a conclusion they had not been able to force upon her.
He looked up with a smile, as he pressed her hand, but he said nothing;
refraining from adding, as he might have done truthfully,--
"And I have decided my own."