WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE.
Hamlet; i.--2.
"Oh, this is completely captivating," Mrs. Frostwinch said, as she sat
down to luncheon in Edith Fenton's pretty dining-room, and looked at
the large mound-like bouquet of richly tinted spring leaves which
adorned the centre of the table. "That is the advantage of having
brains. One always finds some delightful surprise or other at your
house."
"Thank you," Edith returned, gayly; "but at your house one always has a
delightful surprise in the hostess, so you are not forced to resort to
makeshifts."
Helen Greyson, the third member of the party, smiled and shook her head.
"Really," she said, "is one expected to keep up to the level of
elaborate compliment like that? I fear I can only sit by in admiring
silence while you two go on."
"Oh, no," the hostess responded. "Mrs. Frostwinch is to talk to you.
That is what you people are here for. I am only to listen."
Edith had invited Helen and Mrs. Frostwinch to take luncheon with her,
and she had really done it to bring these two more closely together.
She was fond of them both, and the effect of her life in the world into
which her marriage had introduced her had been to render her capable of
judging both these women broadly. She admired them both, and while her
feeling of affection had by circumstances been more closely cemented
with Helen, she felt that a strong friendship was possible between
herself and Mrs. Frostwinch should the lines of their lives ever fall
much together.
The modern woman, particularly if she be at all in society, has
generally to accept the possibilities of friendship in place of that
gracious boon itself. The busy round of life to-day gives ample
opportunity for judging of character, so that it is well nigh
impossible not to feel that some are worthy of friendship, some
especially gifted by nature with the power of inspiring it, while, on
the other hand, there are those who repel or with whom the bond would
be impossible. But friendship, however much it be the result of eternal
fitness and the inevitable consequence of the meeting of two harmonious
natures, is a plant of slow growth, and few things which require time
and tranquillity for their nourishment flourish greatly in this age of
restlessness and intense mental activity. The radical and unfettered
Bohemian, or such descendants of that famous race as may be supposed
still to survive, attempts to leap over all obstacles, to create what
must grow, and to turn comradeship into friendship simply because one
naturally grows out of the other; the more conservative and logical
Philistine recognizes the futility of this attitude, and in his too
careful consistency sometimes needlessly brings about the very same
failure by pursuing the opposite course.
Edith was not of the women who naturally analyze their own feelings
toward others over keenly, but one cannot live in a world without
sharing its mental peculiarities. The times are too introspective to
allow any educated person to escape self-examination. The century which
produced that most appalling instance of spiritual exposure, the
"_Journal Intime_" which it is impossible to read without blushing that
one thus looks upon the author's soul in its nakedness, leaves small
chance for self-unconsciousness. Edith could not help examining her
mental attitude toward her companions, and it was perhaps a proof of
the sweetness of her nature that she found in her thought nothing of
that shortcoming in them, or reason for lack of fervor in friendship
other than such as must come from lack of intercourse.
Perhaps some train of thought not far removed from the foregoing made
her say, as the luncheon progressed,--
"Really, it seems to me as if life proceeded at a pace so rapid
nowadays that one had not time even to be fond of anybody."
"It goes too fast for one to have much chance to show it," Helen
responded; "but one may surely be fond of one's friends, even without
seeing them."
"If you will swear not to tell the disgraceful fact," Mrs. Frostwinch
said, "I'll confess that I abhor Walt Whitman; but that one dreadful,
disreputably slangy phrase of his, 'I loaf and invite my soul,' echoes
through my brain like an invitation to Paradise."
Edith smiled.
"If Arthur were here," she returned, "he would probably say that you
think you mean that, but that really you don't."
"My dear," Mrs. Frostwinch answered, with her beautiful smile and a
characteristic undulation of the neck, "your husband, although he is
clever to an extent which I consider positively immoral, is only a man,
and he does not understand. Men do what they like; women, what they
can. There may be moral free will for women, although I've ceased to be
sure of that even; but socially no such thing exists. Do we wear the
dreadful clothes we are tied up in because we want to? Do we order
society, or our lives, or our manners, or our morals? Do we"--
"There, there," interrupted Helen, laughing and putting up her hand. "I
can't hear all this without a protest. If it is true I won't own it. I
had rather concede that all women are fools"--
"As indeed they are," interpolated Mrs. Frost-winch.
"Than that they are helpless manikins," continued Helen. "In any other
sense, that is," she added, "than men are."
"My dear Mrs. Greyson," the other said, leaning toward her, "you take
the single question of the relation of the sexes, and where are we? I
wouldn't own it to a man for the world, but the truth is that men are
governed by their will, and women are governed by men; and, what is
more, if it could all be changed to-morrow, we should be perfectly
miserable until we got the old way back again; and that's the most
horribly humiliating part of it."
"It is easy to see that you are not a woman suffragist," commented
Edith.
"Woman suffrage," echoed the other, her voice never for an instant
varied from its even and highbred pitch; "woman suffrage must remain a
practical impossibility until the idea can be eradicated from society
that the initiative in passion is the province of man."
"Brava!" cried the hostess. "Mr. Herman ought to hear that epigram. He
asked me last night if he ought to put an inscription in favor of woman
suffrage on the hem of the _America _he is modelling."
Helen turned toward her quickly.
"Is Mr. Herman making a model of the _America_?" she asked. "Has he the
commission?"
"He hasn't the commission, because nobody has it, but he has been asked
by the committee to prepare a model."
"That is"--began Helen. "Strange," she was going to say, but
fortunately caught herself in time and substituted "capital. It is good
to think that Boston will have one really fine statue."
"Aren't you in that, Mrs. Greyson?" Mrs. Frostwinch asked.
"No," Helen answered. "I am really doing little since I came home. I am
waiting until the time serves, I suppose."
She spoke without especial thought of what she was saying, desiring
merely to cover any indications which might show the feeling aroused by
what she had just heard and the decision she had just taken to have
nothing to do with the contest for the statue of _America_, although
she had begun a study for the figure.
"I admire you for being able to make time serve you instead of serving
time like the rest of us," Mrs. Frostwinch said.
"I shouldn't hear another call you a time server without taking up the
cudgels to defend you," responded Edith.
Mrs. Frostwinch smiled in reply to this. Then she turned again to Helen.
"To tell the truth, Mrs. Greyson," she observed, "I am glad you are not
concerned in this statue, for I am myself one of a band of conspirators
who are pushing the claims of a new man."
"Is there a new sculptor?" Helen asked, smiling. "That is wonderful
news."
"Yes; we think he is the coming man. His name is Stanton; Orin Stanton."
"Oh," responded Helen, with involuntary frankness in her accent.
Mrs. Frostwinch laughed with perfect good nature.
"You don't admire him?" she commented. "Well, many don't. To say the
truth, I do not think anybody alive, if you will pardon me, Mrs.
Greyson, knows the truth about sculpture. Perhaps the Greeks did, but
we don't, even when we are told. I know the Soldiers' Monument on the
Common is hideous beyond words, because everybody says so; but they
didn't when it was put up. Only a few artists objected then."
"And the fact that a few artists have brought everybody to their
opinion," Edith asked, "doesn't make you feel that they must be right;
must have the truth behind them?"
"No; frankly, I can't say that it does," Mrs. Frostwinch responded.
She leaned back in her chair, a soft flush on her thin, high-bred face.
Her figure, in a beautiful gown of beryl plush embroidered with gold,
seemed artistically designed for the carved, high-backed chair in which
she sat, and both her companions were too appreciative to lose the
grace of the picture she made.
"I cannot see that it is bad," she went on. "Mr. Fenton has proved it
to me, and even Mr. Herman, who seems, so far as I have seen him, the
most charitable of men, when I asked him how he liked it, spoke with
positive loathing of it. I can't manage to make myself unhappy over it,
that's all. And I believe I am as appreciative as the average."
To Helen there was something at once fascinating and repellent in this
talk. She was attracted by Mrs. Frostwinch. The perfect breeding, the
grace, the polish of the woman, won upon her strongly, while yet the
subtile air of taking life conventionally, of lacking vital
earnestness, was utterly at variance with the sculptor's temperament
and methods of thought. She no sooner recognized this feeling than she
rebuked herself for shallowness and a want of charity, yet even so the
impression remained. To the artistic temperament, enthusiasm is the
only excuse for existence.
"I think Mrs. Fenton is right," she said. "The few form the correct
judgment, and the many adopt it in the end because it is based on
truth. It seems to me," she continued, thoughtfully, "that the prime
condition of effectiveness is constancy, and only that opinion can be
constant that has truth for a foundation, because no other basis would
remain to hold it up."
"That may be true," was the reply, "if you take matters in a
sufficiently long range, but you seem to me to be viewing things from
the standpoint of eternity."
The smile with which she said these last words was so charming that
Helen warmed toward her, and she smiled also in replying,--
"Isn't that, after all, the only safe way to look at things?"
"What deep waters we are getting into," Edith commented. "And yet they
say women are always frivolous."
"The Boston luncheon," returned Mrs. Frost-winch, "is a solemn assembly
for the discussion of mighty themes. Yesterday, at Mrs. Bodewin
Ranger's, we disposed of all the knotty problems relating to the lower
classes."
"I didn't know but it might be something about my house. The last time
Mrs. Greyson lunched here we solemnly debated what a wife should do
whose husband did not appreciate her."
She spoke brightly, but there was in her tone, an undercurrent of
feeling which touched Helen, and betrayed the fact that this return to
the old theme was not wholly without a cause. Mrs. Greyson divined that
Edith was not happy, and with the keenness of womanly instinct she
divined also that there was not perfect harmony between Mrs. Fenton and
her husband. She looked up quickly, with an instinctive desire to turn
the conversation, but found no words ready.
Edith had at the moment yielded to a woman's craving for sympathy. An
incident which had happened that forenoon troubled and bewildered her.
She had been down town, and remembering a matter of importance about
which she had neglected to consult her husband in the morning, she had
turned aside to visit his studio, a thing she seldom did in his working
hours. She found him painting from a model, and she was kept waiting a
moment while the latter retired from sight. She thought nothing of
this, but as she stood talking with Arthur, her glance fell upon a wrap
which she recognized as belonging to Mrs. Herman, and which had been
carelessly left upon the back of a chair in sight. Even this might not
have troubled her, had it not been that when she looked questioningly
from the garment to her husband, she caught a look of consternation in
his eyes. His glance met hers and turned aside with that almost
imperceptible wavering which shows the avoidance to be intentional; and
a pang of formless terror pierced her.
All the way home she was tormented by the wonder how that wrap could
have come in her husband's studio, and what reason he could have for
being disturbed by her seeing it there. She was not a woman given to
petty or vulgar jealousy, and she had from the first left the artist
perfectly free in his professional relations to be governed by the
necessities or the conveniences of his profession. She could not
to-day, however, rid herself of the feeling that some mystery lay
behind the incident of the morning. She began to frame excuses. She
speculated whether it were possible that Arthur were secretly painting
the portrait of his friend's wife, to produce it as a surprise to them
all. She said to herself that Ninitta naturally knew models, and might
easily have enough of a feeling of comradeship remaining from the time
when she had been a model herself, to lend or give them articles of
dress. Unfortunately, she knew how Ninitta kept herself aloof from her
old associates since the birth of her child, and the explanation did
not satisfy her.
No faintest suspicion of positive evil entered Edith's mind. She was
only vaguely troubled, the incident forming one more of the trifles
which of late had made her very uneasy in regard to her husband. She
told herself that she had confidence in Arthur; but the woman who is
forced to reflect that she has confidence in her husband has already
begun, however unconsciously, to doubt him.
"The question is profound enough," Mrs. Frostwinch answered Edith's
words in her even tones, which somehow seemed to reduce everything to a
well-bred abstraction. "Of course the thing for a Woman to do is to
remain determinedly ignorant until it would be too palpably absurd to
pretend any longer; and then she must get away from him as quietly as
possible. The evil in these things is, after all, the stir and the
talk, and all the unpleasant and vulgar gossip which inevitably attends
them."
Poor Edith cringed as if she had received a blow, and to cover her
emotion she gave the signal for rising from the table. But as she did
so, her eyes met those of Helen, and the truth leaped from one to the
other in one of those glances in which the heart, taken unaware,
reveals its joy or its woe with irresistible frankness. Whatever words
Edith and Helen might or might not exchange thereafter, the story of
Mrs. Fenton's married life and of the anguish of her soul was told in
that look; and her friend understood it fully.