THE SHOT OF ACCIDENT.
Othello; iv.--I.
It was not often that Arthur Fenton permitted himself to be
ill-tempered at home. He had too keen an appreciation of good taste to
allow his dark humors to vent themselves upon the heads of those with
whom he lived.
"A man is to be excused for being cross abroad," he was wont to
observe, "but only a brute is peevish at home."
On the morning following his conversation with Damaris Wainwright,
however, he was decidedly out of sorts, and proved but ill company for
his wife at the breakfast table. She ventured some simple remark in
relation to a plan which Mr. Candish had for the re-decoration of the
Church of the Nativity, and her husband retorted with an open sneer.
"Oh, don't talk about Mr. Candish to me," he said. "He is that obsolete
thing, a clergyman."
"I supposed," Edith responded good-naturedly, "that a question of
artistic decoration would interest you, even if it was connected with a
church."
"I hate anything connected with a religion," Fenton observed savagely.
"A religion is simply an artificial scheme of life, to be followed at
the expense of all harmony with nature."
It was evident to Edith that her husband was nervous and irritable, and
with wifely protective instinct she attributed his condition to
overwork. She did not take up the challenge which he in a manner flung
down. She seldom argued with him now; she cast about in her mind for a
safe topic of conversation, and, by ill-luck, hit upon the one least
calculated to restore Arthur to good humor and a sane temper.
"Helen was in last evening," she said. "She is troubled about Ninitta;
but I think it is because she isn't used to her ways."
Fenton started guiltily.
"What about Ninitta?" he demanded.
"Helen says she acts strangely, as if she had something on her mind;
and that she complains bitterly that her husband doesn't care for her."
Arthur shrugged his shoulders. He was on his guard now, and perfectly
self-possessed.
"No?" he said, inquiringly. "Why should he?"
"Why should he?" echoed his wife indignantly. Then she recovered
herself, and let the question pass, saying simply: "That would lead us
into one of our old discussions about right and wrong."
"Those struggles and quibbles between right and wrong," Fenton retorted
contemptuously, "have ceased to amuse me. They were interesting when I
was young enough for them to have novelty, but now I find grand
passions and a strong will more entertaining than that form of
amusement."
Edith raised her clear eyes to his with a calmness which she had
learned by years of patient struggle.
"And yet," she answered, "the people whom I have found most true, most
helpful, and even most comfortable, have been those who believed these
questions of right and wrong the most vital things in the universe."
"Oh, certainly," was the reply. "A superstition is an admirable thing
in its place."
He rose from the table as he spoke, and stood an instant with his hand
upon the back of his chair, looking at her in apparent indecision. She
saw that he was troubled, and she longed to help him, but she had
learned that his will was definite and unmanageable, and she secretly
feared that her inquiry would be fruitless when she asked,--
"What is it that troubles you this morning, Arthur? Has anything gone
wrong?"
"Things are always wrong," replied he. Then, with seeming irrelevance,
he added: "People are so illogical! They so insist that a man shall
think in the beaten rut. They are angry because I don't like the taste
of life. Good Heavens! Why haven't I the same right to dislike life
that I have to hate sweet champagne? If other people want to live and
to drink Perrier Jouet, I am perfectly willing that they should, but,
for my own part, I don't want one any more than the other."
What he said sounded to Edith like one of the detached generalities he
was fond of uttering, and if she had learned that beneath his seemingly
irrelevant words always lay a connecting thread of thought, she had
learned also that she could seldom hope to discover what this cord
might be. To understand his words, now, it would have been necessary
for her to be aware of the net spread for him by Irons, the struggle in
his mind as he talked with Miss Wainwright, and the effort he was now
making to bring himself up to the firmness needed for the important
interview with Mr. Hubbard which lay before him. In the sleepless hours
of the night, Fenton had gone over the ground again and again; he had
painted to himself the baseness of the thing he meant to do, and all
his instincts of loyalty, of taste, of good-breeding, rose against it;
but none the less did he cling doggedly to his determination. His
purpose never wavered. His decision had been made, and this summing up
of the cost did not shake him; it only made him miserable by the keen
appreciation it brought him of the bitter humiliation fate--for so he
viewed it--was heaping upon his head.
The strength and weakness which are often mingled in one character,
like the iron and clay in the image of the prophet's vision, make the
most surprising of the many strange paradoxes of human life. Fenton was
sensuous, selfish, yielding, yet he possessed a tenacity of purpose, a
might of will, which nothing could shake. He looked across the table
now, at his sweet-faced, clear-eyed wife, with a dreadful sense of her
purity, her honor, her remoteness; it cut him to the quick to think
that the breach of trust he had in view would fill her mind with
loathing; yet the possibility of therefore abandoning his purpose did
not occur to him. Indeed, such was his nature, that it might be said
that the possibility of abandoning his deliberately formed intention,
on this or on any other grounds, did not for him exist.
It was one of the peculiarities which he shared with many sensitive and
sensuous natures, that his first thought in any unpleasant situation
was always a reflection upon the bitterness of existence. He always
thought of the laying down of life as the easiest method of escape from
any disagreeable dilemma. He was infected with the distaste of life,
that disease which is seldom fatal, yet which in time destroys all save
life alone. He thought now how he hated living, and the inevitable
reflection came after, how easy it were to get out of the coil of
humanity. A faint smile of bitterness curled his lips as he recalled a
remark which Helen Greyson had once quoted to him as having been made
of him by her dead husband. "He'll want to kill himself, but he won't.
He's too soft-hearted, and he'd never forget other people and their
opinions." He had acknowledged to himself that this was true, and he
wondered whether Mrs. Greyson appreciated its justice.
The thought of Helen brought up the old days when he had been so
frankly her friend that he had told her everything that was in his
heart except those things which vanity bade him conceal lest he fall in
her estimation.
It was so long since he had known a friend on those intimate terms
under which it makes no especial difference what is said, since even in
silence the understanding is perfect, and the pleasure of talking
depends chiefly on the exchange of the signs of complete mutual
comprehension, that the old days appealed to him with wonderful power.
There is an immeasurable and soothing restfulness in such intercourse,
especially to a man like Fenton, in whom exists an inner necessity
always to say something when he talks; and as he recalled them now,
something almost a sob rose in Arthur's throat. Many men suppose
themselves to be cultivating their intellect when they are only, by the
gratification of their tastes, quickening their susceptibilities; and
Fenton's whole self-indulged existence had resulted chiefly in
rendering him more sensitive to the discomforts of a universe in the
making of which other things had been considered besides his pleasure.
He looked across the breakfast table at his wife. He noted with
appreciation the beautiful line of her cheek outlined against the dark
leather of the wall behind her. He felt a twinge of remorse for coming
so far short of her ideal of him. He knew how resolutely she refused to
see his worst side, and he reflected with philosophy half bitter and
half contemptuous, that no woman ever lived who could wholly outgrow
the feeling that to believe or to disbelieve a thing must in some
occult way affect its truth. At least she had fulfilled all the
unspoken promises, so much more important than vows put into words
could be, with which she had married him. A remorseful feeling came
over his mind, and instantly followed the instinctive self-excuse that
she could never suffer as keenly as he suffered, no matter how greatly
he disappointed her.
"People are to be envied or pitied," he said aloud, "not for their
circumstances, but for their temperaments."
Edith looked up inquiringly. He went round to where she was sitting,
smiling to think how far she must be from divining his thought.
"I stayed at the club too late last night," he said, stooping to kiss
her smooth white forehead in an unenthusiastic, habitual way which
always stung her. "Some of the fellows insisted upon my playing poker,
and I got so excited that I didn't sleep when I did get to bed."
Edith sighed, but she made no useless remonstrances.
Walking down to his studio, carefully dressed, faultlessly booted and
gloved, and, as Tom Bently was accustomed to say, "too confoundedly
well groomed for an artist," Fenton tried in vain to determine how he
should manage the important conversation with Mr. Hubbard. He had
racked his brains in the night in vain attempts to solve this problem,
but in the end he was forced to leave everything for chance or
circumstances to decide.
When Stewart Hubbard sat before him, Fenton was conscious of a tingling
excitement in every vein, but outwardly he was only the more calm. A
close observer might have noticed a nervous quickness in his movements,
and a certain shrillness in his voice, but the sitter gave no heed to
these tokens, which he would have regarded as of no importance had he
seen them. The talk was at first rather rambling, and was not kept up
with much briskness on either side. Fenton, indeed, was so absorbed in
the task which lay before him that he hardly followed the other's
remarks, and he suddenly became aware that he had lost the thread of
conversation altogether, so that he could not possibly imagine what the
connection was when Hubbard observed,--
"Yes, it is certainly the hardest thing in the world for one being to
comprehend another."
Fenton rallied his wits quickly, and retorted with no apparent
hesitation,--
"It is so. Probably a cat couldn't possibly understand how a human
mother can properly bring up a child when she has no tail for her
offspring to play with."
"That wasn't exactly what I meant," the other returned, laughing; "but
what a fellow you are to give an unexpected turn to things."
"Do you think so?" the artist said. Then, with a painful feeling of
tightness about the throat, and a soberness of tone which he could not
prevent, he added,--"That is a reason why I have always felt that I was
one of those comparatively rare persons whom wealth would adorn, if
somebody would only show me an investment to get rich on."
"You are one of those still rarer persons who would adorn wealth," Mr.
Hubbard retorted, ignoring the latter part of the artist's remark.
"Only that you are so astonishingly outspoken, that you might cause a
revolution if you had Vanderbilt's millions to add weight to your
words. It doesn't do to be too honest."
The sigh which left Fenton's lips was almost one of relief, although he
felt that this first attempt to turn the talk into financial channels
had failed.
"No," he replied. "Civilized honesty consists largely in making the
truth convey a false impression, so that one is saved a lie in words
while telling one in effect."
"It is strange how we cling to that old idea that as long as the letter
of what we say is true it is no matter if the spirit be false," was Mr.
Hubbard's response. "I thought of it yesterday at the meeting of the
committee on the statue, when we were all sitting there trying to get
the better of each other by telling true falsehoods."
"How does the statue business come on?" Fenton asked.
"Not very fast. I am sure I wish I was out of it. America always was a
trouble, and this time is no exception to the rule."
"I hope," Arthur said, speaking with more seriousness, "that Grant
Herman will be given the commission. He's all and away the best man."
He had secretly a feeling that he was putting an item on the credit
side of his account with the sculptor in urging his fitness for this
work.
"It is hard to do anything with Calvin and Irons. I've always been for
Herman, but I don't mind telling you in confidence that I stand alone
on the committee."
"Isn't there any way of helping things on? Wouldn't a petition from the
artists do some good?"
"It might. But if you get up one don't let me know. I'd rather be able
to say that I had no knowledge of it if it came before us."
Fenton smiled and continued his painting. With a thrill half of
triumph, half of rage, he became aware that he was this morning
succeeding admirably in getting just the likeness he wanted in the
sitter's portrait. He had feared lest his excitement should render him
unfit for work, but it had, on the contrary, spurred him up to unusual
effectiveness. The thought came into his mind of the price at which he
was buying this skill, and it was characteristic that the reflection
which followed was that at least, if he caused Hubbard to lose money by
betraying the secret he hoped to get from him, he was, to a degree,
repaying him by painting a portrait which could under no other
circumstances be so good.
It was no less characteristic of Fenton's mental habits that he looked
upon himself as having committed the crime against his sitter which had
yet to be carried out. In his logic, the legitimate, however distorted,
legacy from Puritan ancestors, the sin lay in the determination; and he
would have held himself almost as guilty had circumstances at this
moment freed him from the disagreeable necessity of going on with his
attempt. Doubtless in this fact lay in part the explanation of the
firmness of his purpose. He would still have suffered in self-respect,
since abandonment of his plan, even if voluntary, would not alter the
fact that he had in intention been guilty. He would have said that
theoretically there was no difference between intention and commission,
and however casuists might reason, he took a curious delight in being
scrupulously exacting with himself in his moral requirements, the fact
that he held himself in his actions practically above such
considerations naturally making this less difficult than it otherwise
would have been. Every man has his private ethical methods, and this
was the way in which Arthur Fenton's mind held itself in regard to that
right of which he often denied the existence.
"I suppose," he remarked at length, with deliberate intent of
entrapping Hubbard into some inadvertent betrayal of his secret, "that
you business men have no sort of an idea how ignorant a man of my
profession can be in regard to business. I had a note this morning from
a broker whom I've been having help me a little in a sort of infantile
attempt at stock gambling, and he advises me to find a financial
kindergarten and attend it."
"I dare say he is right," the other returned, smiling. "You had better
beware of stock gambling, if you are not desirous of ending your days
in a poorhouse."
"But what can one do? It is only the men of large experience and so
much capital that they do not need it who have a chance at safe
investments."
He felt that he was bungling horribly, but he knew no other way of
getting on in his attempt. He was terrified by the openness of his
tactics. It seemed to him that any man must be able to perceive what he
was driving at, but he desperately assured himself that after all
Hubbard could not possibly have any reason to suspect him of a design
of pumping him.
"Oh, there are plenty of safe investments," the sitter said, as if the
matter were one of no great moment. Then, looking at his watch, he
added, "I must go in fifteen minutes. I have an engagement."
Fenton dared not risk another direct trial, but he skirted about the
subject on which his thoughts were fixed. His attempts, however, though
ingenious, were fruitless; and he saw Hubbard step down from the dais
where he posed, with a baffled sense of having failed utterly.
"The country is really beginning to look quite spring-like," he said,
as he stood by while his sitter put on his overcoat.
He spoke in utter carelessness, simply to avoid a silence which would
perhaps seem a little awkward; but the shot of accident hit the mark at
which his careful aim had been vain.
"Yes, it is," the other responded. "I was out of town with Staggchase
yesterday, looking at some meadows we talk of buying for a factory
site, and I was surprised to see how forward things are."
Yesterday Mrs. Staggchase had casually mentioned to Fred Rangely that
her husband had gone to Feltonville; and at the St. Filipe Club in the
evening, as they were playing poker, Rangely had excused the absence of
Mr. Staggchase, who was to be of the party, by telling this fact.
After Hubbard was gone, Fenton stood half dizzy with mingled exultation
and shame. He exulted in his victory, but he felt as if he had
committed murder.
And that evening Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson received a note from Mr.
Irons, in which Feltonville was mentioned.