THERE BEGINS CONFUSION.
I Henry VI.; iv.--1.
Fred Rangely began to find himself in the condition of being controlled
by circumstances, instead of himself controlling them. Nor with all his
astuteness could he decide how far he was being managed by Mrs.
Staggchase, or led on by Miss Merrivale. He went about in a state of
continual astonishment at the extent to which he had committed himself
with the latter, and fell into that dangerous mental condition where
one seems passively to regard his own actions rather than to direct
them. Rangely had been so long settled in the conviction that he was to
marry Ethel Mott, even the not infrequent rebuffs of that lady
producing in his mind only temporary misgiving, that his present doubts
bewildered him. He was less of a coxcomb than might seem to follow from
this statement, albeit there was no timidity and little burning passion
in his feeling toward her. His was simply the cool masculine assurance
of a man selfish enough to regard even love in a cold-blooded manner.
He approved of his own choice socially, financially, and aesthetically;
and since he loved himself rather more for having selected Ethel, he
fell into the not unnatural error of supposing himself to be in love
with her.
His entanglement with Miss Merrivale, on the other hand, was largely a
matter of vanity. What had begun as an idle flirtation, designed to
kill the leisure of summer days in the mountains, was continued from a
half-conscious fear that he should appear at a disadvantage by breaking
it off. It so keenly wounded Rangely's self-love to be thought ill of
by a woman, that he was often forced to play at devotion which he not
only did not feel but of which the simulation was almost wearisome to
him. Nevertheless he was not, in this instance, without a shrewd
appreciation of all the possibilities of the situation. He said to
himself philosophically, that if worst came to worst and the fates had
really decided to marry him to Miss Merrivale, she had money, good
looks, and a fair position, and might on the whole prove more
manageable as a wife than one so clever and so high spirited as Ethel.
Miss Merrivale, on her part, was foolishly and fondly in love with the
broad-shouldered egotist. She had made up her mind from a variety of
causes that she should, on the whole, prefer to marry in Boston,
although in reality this meant simply that she wanted to marry Fred
Rangely. She pored over his books in secret, talked to him of them with
a want of comprehension only made tolerable by the fervor of her
admiration, and took pains to show him that she regarded him as the
literary hope of his generation of novelists. In vulgar parlance, she
flung herself at his head; and in such a case a girl's success may be
said to depend almost wholly on opportunity and the extent of her
lover's vanity.
Rangely had vanity enough and Mrs. Staggchase supplied the opportunity.
If a feminine mind could ever properly be called spherical, that
epithet should be applied to Mrs. Staggchase's inner consciousness. She
was so sufficient unto herself, she so absolutely scored success or
failure simply as a matter of her own sensations that her self-poise
was perfect. She had even the quality, rare in a woman, of being almost
indifferent whether others shared her opinions or not. She was content
with the knowledge that she had succeeded in doing what she wished,
while often the results and effects were so subtile and remote as to be
imperceptible to others. Life was to her a toy with which she amused
herself, and she found her chief enjoyment in trying experiments upon
it of which the results were intangible to all but herself.
In the present case it amused Mrs. Staggchase and gave her some
feminine satisfaction as well, to think that Rangely should marry
Frances Merrivale. By promoting this marriage into which she was aware
that he had no intention of being drawn, she avenged herself upon him
for having presumed to show attentions to another while she honored him
with her intimate friendship. It was not so much the nature of the
punishment which pleased her as the fact that she was able to constrain
him to her will. She found an ungenerous satisfaction in proving to
herself that it lay within her power to do with him what she would; and
if this conclusion did not inevitably follow from the premises, her
logic was at least satisfactory to herself, and that was sufficient to
determine her course of action. She found some pleasure, too, in
feeling that she was taking away a lover from Ethel Mott, for whom she
had a dislike which in another woman would have been petty but which in
Mrs. Staggchase was merely intellectual, since she was not a woman
without understanding that one of her sex must feel the loss of even an
admirer for whom she has no love. She did not share Rangely's mistake
of supposing that Ethel would marry him, yet it was distinctly her
intention that Miss Mott should not have the satisfaction of
undeceiving him, but that Fred should carry through life the regretful
and tantalizing conviction that he had thrown away this chance. It
required only a little cleverness in bringing together the young man
and Miss Merrivale, with a little skill in dropping now and then a word
assuming his devotion to her guest, and Mrs. Staggchase's plan was
evidently in a fair way of accomplishment.
On the morning of the day of her luncheon, for instance, she had
managed that Rangely should take Frances to some of the studios. The
girl had little acquaintance with artistic life, but it attracted her
by that romantic flavor which it is so apt to have for the uninitiated.
"I should think," she observed, as they walked along in the bright
sunny morning, "that you would want to go to the studios all the time,
if you know so many artists. I'm sure I should."
"Oh, it very soon gets to be an old story," was his answer. "One studio
is very like another."
"But their work? That must be awfully interesting."
"Yes, to a novice, but that soon gets to be an old story too. An artist
is only a man who puts paint or charcoal on cardboard or canvas with
more or less cleverness, just as an author is a man who has more or
less skill in getting ink on to paper."
Miss Merrivale laughed, with more glee than comprehension.
"You are always so witty," she said. "I don't wonder your books sell. I
think that girl who couldn't tell which man she liked best was just too
funny for anything. I can't for the life of me see how you think of
such things, anyway."
"The trouble isn't to think what to say, but to tell what not to say."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Now of course an artist just sees
things, and all he has to do is to make pictures of them; but you have
to make up things."
"But we see things too," the novelist responded, smiling upon her, and
reflecting that she was looking uncommonly pretty that morning.
"Oh, but that's different. Now you never knew a girl who was hesitating
which of two lovers to choose, and she wouldn't tell you how she felt
if you did; but there it is all in your book so natural that every girl
says to herself that's just the way she should feel."
The flattery was too evidently sincere not to be pleasing. So long as
praise is genuine, few men are so exacting as to insist that it be also
intelligent.
"Thank you," he said; "you at least understand the art of saying nice
things. Though that," he added, with his warmest smile, "is perhaps
only natural in one who must have had so many nice things said to her."
She laughed, her ready, girlish laugh, which always seemed to him so
young; and they climbed the crooked stairs of Studio Building, their
breath hardly being any longer sufficient for much speech.
"I'm going to take you to Arthur Fenton's first," Rangely observed, as
they paused to rest on one of the landings. "These stairs are awful. I
wonder how he gets his elderly sitters up here."
Miss Merrivale seated herself upon a bench benevolently placed on the
landing.
"They sit down here, of course," she responded.
"This is a sort of life-saving station," he remarked, seating himself
beside her.
"Oh, Mr. Rangely, how awfully funny you are."
"It's my trade; I have to be to earn my living. Now you and I are the
only survivors from a wreck."
"Alone on a desert island?"
"Life-saving stations are not generally on desert islands; but I hope
you wouldn't mind so very much if it were."
She looked at him with bright eyes, and then let her glance fall.
"That would depend," she responded demurely.
"Upon what? How I behaved?"
"Oh, of course you'd behave well."
"Of course; but how would I have to behave to make you contented on a
desert island?"
She shot him a keen quick glance from beneath her bent brows.
"I never said I should be contented."
"But you implied it."
She whirled her muff over and over upon her two hands like the wheel of
a squirrel cage, regarding it intently with her pretty head on one side.
"No, I didn't imply it either. I don't believe I could be contented."
"Not even with me?"
She flushed, but evidently not with displeasure.
"Why with you more than anybody else?" she softly inquired, with great
apparent artlessness.
"Because," he began, "I should"--He was going to add, "be so fond of
you," but reflected that this was perhaps going a little too fast and
too far, and concluded instead--"take such good care of you."
Perhaps it was because approaching footsteps sounded on the stairs
below them; perhaps it was because her subtile feminine sense
appreciated the fact that he was on his guard; but for some reason or
for no reason she tossed her head and rose to her feet.
"I am fortunately not obliged to go so far as a desert island to get
taken care of," she said.
Her companion was not unwilling that the talk should be broken in upon.
He smiled to himself as he followed her lead, and in a moment more he
was knocking at the door of Fenton's studio, which was well up toward
the roof. There was no response, and, as Fred rapped the second time, a
carpenter who was at work on the casing of a door near by looked up,
and said,--
"Mr. Fenton has a sitter, sir."
"He is in then?" said Rangely.
"Yes," answered John Stanton, straightening himself up, with his plane
in his hand, "but since Mrs. Herman went in half an hour ago, he hasn't
opened the door to anybody."
"Mrs. Herman?" echoed Rangely, in astonishment.
"Yes, sir."
It was a capricious fate which brought John Stanton to tangle the web
of Fenton's life. His brother Orin's relations with artists had given
John a sort of acquaintanceship with them at second-hand, a kind of
vicarious proprietorship in the privileges of art circles. He had long
known Fenton by sight, while that he recognized Mrs. Herman also was
the result of accident. He had been standing with Orin a few days
before on a street corner, when the sculptor had lifted his hat to Mrs.
Herman and named her in answer to John's question. There had not been
in his honest mind the faintest tinge of suspicion when he saw her
enter the studio, and he never had any intimation of the mischief he
had clone in mentioning her name to Rangely.
Fred and Miss Merrivale went on to Tom Bentley's curio-crowded rooms,
while the sound of their knock still lingered in the double ears of the
two people who sat confronting each other within the studio, with looks
on the one hand sullen; on the other, pleading. Fenton's picture of
_Fatima_ was finished, yet Ninitta continued to come to the studio. His
brief passion, which had been more than half mere intellectual
curiosity how far his power over the Italian could go, had ended with
that curiosity. In its place was a gradually increasing hatred for this
woman, who seemed to assert a claim upon him, this model whom he never
had loved, and whom he could now scarcely tolerate, since he had ceased
to respect her. He cursed himself vehemently after the fashion of such
offenders, when eager, vibrating passion has given place to a sense of
irksome obligations, but more vigorously still did he upbraid fate, to
whose score he set down all annoyance.
As for Ninitta, she, perhaps, no more truly loved Fenton than he had
cared for her, but she clung to him as a frightened child might clutch
the arm of one with whom it has wandered into the darkness of some
vault beset with pitfalls. Ninitta's moral sense was of the most
rudimentary character. She was, perhaps, incapable of appreciating an
ethical principle, and her spiritual life never soared beyond the
crudest emotions and the simplest questions of personal feeling. She
had come to live without the guidance of a priest, and this fact, in
itself, had left her without moral support. She had now no particular
consciousness of having done wrong, although she was moved by the fear
of the consequences of the discovery of her transgression.
It has been said that Ninitta's affection for her husband might have
been more enduring had he been less gentle with her. She came of a race
of peasants whose women understood masculine superiority in the old
brutal, physical sense, and whenever Herman bore patiently with his
wife's caprices he lessened a respect which he could have retained only
at the expense of a blow. With all Arthur Fenton's soft and caressing
ways toward Ninitta, there was always an instinctive masterfulness in
his attitude toward any woman and especially since he had tired of her
did he keep Mrs. Herman figuratively at his feet. The more strongly her
appealing attitude seemed to press upon him claims which he could not
satisfy and had no mind to acknowledge, the more harsh he became, and
the more she bent before him. The language of brutality was one which
she Understood by inherited instinct.
"But why," Fenton was saying impatiently, when Rangely's knock startled
them, "do you come here, when I haven't sent for you? There's somebody
at the door, now, and we haven't even the shadow of an excuse, since
the picture is done."
"I wanted to see you," Ninitta answered humbly, her plain face working
with her effort to keep back the tears. "It is so lonely at home, and
they take even Nino away from me."
The artist started up impatiently, and took his wet palette from the
stand beside him.
"Well!" he said, answering as she had spoken, in Italian, "you must be
anxious that your husband shall know of your coming here, or you would
not take such pains to have him find it out."
He began painting sullenly, putting in the last touches upon the
background of the portrait of a beautiful girl. The lovely face of
Damaris Wainwright, so pathetic, so pure, and so noble, looking at him
from the canvas stung him inwardly into an impotent fury. His fine
sense of the fitness of things was outraged by the presence of Ninitta
beside the spiritual personality which shone upon him from the
portrait. He could even feel the incongruity between himself and his
work, though this appealed to his sense of humor as the other aroused
his anger.
Ninitta watched in silence a moment; then she rose from her seat, her
wrap falling away from her shoulders. Her tears were done, and a white
look of intense feeling showed the despair that she felt. All the
isolation which tortured her, that pain which souls like hers, blind,
groping, and helpless, are least able to bear, had left its stamp upon
her. Perhaps even her sin had been a desperate and only half-conscious
attempt once more to draw in sympathy really near a human heart. She
had learned little from the changed conditions into which the fates of
her life had brought her, but she had been separated, in mind no less
than in body, from her own kind without being fitted for other
companionship. She was utterly and fatally alone, and a terrible sense
of her remoteness from all human fellowship smote her now at Arthur's
cruelty. She hesitated an instant, supporting herself by the arms of
the big carved chair in which she had been sitting; then, with an
impulsive gesture, she threw her arms above her head, wringing her
hands together.
"Oh, my God!" she cried, "what shall I do?"
Fenton turned quickly toward her.
"Oh, _mon Dieu!_" was his inward comment; "what a divine pose! What a
glorious figure! But ah, how tiresome she is!" Then, aloud, he said:
"Come, come, don't be foolish, Ninitta! You know as well as I do that
there is no danger, if you are only careful."
And putting aside his palette again, he soothed her with soft words
until she was calm enough to be sent home.
When she was gone, he shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his hands
with a deprecatory gesture.
"After all," he soliloquized aloud, "it is difficult for civilization
to get on without the sultan's sack and bowstring."