BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE.
Love's Labor's Lost; ii.--1.
Edith Fenton did not, however, follow Helen's advice and go to bed. She
went to her room and exchanged her dinner gown for a wrapper, and then
sat down before the wood fire in her chamber to wait for Arthur's
return.
It is a dismal vigil when a wife watches for her husband and questions
herself of the love between them. It was Edith's conviction that it is
a wife's duty to love her husband till death; not alone to fulfil her
wifely obligations, to preserve an outward semblance of affection, but
to love him in her heart according to the vows she has taken at the
altar. Had one told her that the limit of human power lay at
self-deception, and that, while it was possible to cheat one's self
into the belief of loving, affection could not be constrained, she
would with perfect honesty have replied as she had answered Helen in
her allusion to St. Theresa. She said to herself to-night, with
unshaken conviction and the concentration of all her will, that she
would not cease to love Arthur; but she could not wholly ignore the
difference between the unquestioning affection she had once given him
and this love whose force lay in her will.
A picture of Caldwell, painted a year ago just before his long hair had
been sacrificed at his boyish entreaties, hung over her mantel. She
looked up at it while her lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears.
The keenly sensitive soul instead of becoming hardened to suffering
feels it more and more sharply. The powers of endurance become worn
out, and to the pain is added a sense of injustice. Since it suffered
yesterday the heart claims the right to be happy to-day, and feels
wronged that this is denied it. With all her endurance, and with all
her faith, Edith could scarcely repress the feeling of passionate
protest which rose in her bosom. She said to herself that she had done
all, and been all, that lay in her power; that there was no sacrifice
in life she was not ready to make to preserve her husband's love; and
the most cruel pang of all she felt in thinking of her boy. For
herself, it seemed to her, she could have borne anything; but that the
atmosphere of the home in which her son was reared should fall short in
anything of the utmost ideal possibilities caused her intolerable
anguish. It seemed to her a cruel wrong to Caldwell that the love and
confidence between his parents should not be perfect. It is probable
that more of her personal pain was covered by this pity for her son
than she was aware; but as she looked up at his picture she felt almost
as if he were half-orphaned by this estrangement between herself and
Arthur, which it were vain for her to attempt to ignore.
It was after midnight when she heard the street door open and close;
and a moment later came her husband's tap.
"I saw the light in your room, as I came down street," he said. "What
on earth kept you up so late?"
"I was waiting," Edith replied, "to talk with you."
He came across the chamber, and regarded her a moment curiously; then
he turned away with a slight shrug of the shoulders.
"You will perhaps excuse me," he said, "if I make myself comfortable. I
am pretty tired."
He went to his dressing-room, coming back a moment later in smoking
jacket and slippers, cutting a cigar as he walked. The reaction from
the excitement of the evening already showed itself in the darkened
circles beneath his eyes, and the pallor of his lips.
"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked, carelessly. "We've been having the
deuce of a time at the club, and my nerves have all gone to pieces. I
tell you, Edith," he went on, a sudden spark of excitement showing in
his eyes, "I've had a tremendous row, but I've beaten. I made them pass
a vote of censure on the Executive Committee, and then Herman got them
to instruct the Secretary to send out a printed notice taking back that
vote of theirs; and then I offered my resignation, and they voted
unanimously not to accept it."
"I am so glad!" Edith responded warmly. "That censure was so
outrageous. Tell me all about it."
She was so pleased to find herself talking cordially and intimately
with her husband that she forgot for the moment what she had meant to
say to him. She listened with eager interest while he gave her a
picturesque version of the exciting scene at the club. Edith hardly
realized how little of the old familiarity there was now between
herself and Arthur. It was his nature to be communicative. He enjoyed
talking, partly from his pleasure in words and the delight he found in
effective and picturesque phrasing, and partly because it pleased his
vanity to excite attention and to produce striking effects. He had an
inveterate habit of telling his most intimate and inner experiences in
some sort of fantastic disguise. The very vain man is apt to be either
extremely reticent or very communicative. The only secrets which Fenton
kept well were those which his vanity guarded. As desire for admiration
and attention provoked him to continual revelations, so the fear that
the disclosure of a secret would react to his disadvantage could cause
him to be silent.
From the feeling that his wife disapproved of much that he told her had
grown up in Fenton's mind, at first, an irritated desire to shock and
startle her as much as possible. As there came into his life, however,
things which he knew she would view not only with disapproval but with
abhorrence, and especially since his entanglement with Ninitta, he had
grown constantly more guarded in his speech. Edith felt keenly the loss
of the old familiar talks, though, womanlike, she invented a thousand
excuses to prevent herself from believing in the growing estrangement
of her husband. To-night she yielded herself to the pleasure of the
moment, and she had almost forgotten both the sad thoughts of her vigil
and the fear that troubled her, as she listened to Arthur's animated
words. It was not until he rose as if to say good-night, that her mind
came back suddenly to the matter of which she wished to speak.
It was in a very different mood, however, from that in which she would
have spoken half an hour before, that she now brought up the thing that
had been troubling her. She hesitated a little how to question her
husband without seeming to jar upon the friendly tone in which they had
been talking. He was watching her keenly, wondering why she had waited
for his coming, and speculating whether it were possible that she might
altogether have forgotten what she meant to say. He thought she was
about to speak, and anticipated her by saying,--
"Really, Edith, it would be hard to find, even in Boston, a more
incongruous company than we gathered together at dinner to-night."
"There was a good deal of variety," she returned; adding defensively,
"but then they fitted together pretty well."
"What a funny old party Miss Penwick is," Arthur went on, inwardly
gathering himself up for a rapid retreat. "Almost as soon as she had
said, 'how do you do' she asked me what I thought the object of life
was."
"How very like her; what did you tell her?"
"Oh, I said I supposed the object of life is to transform the crude
animal and vegetable substances of our food into passions and petty
sentiments."
Edith laughed absently, her thoughts elsewhere.
"And she looked dreadfully puzzled," Fenton continued, "as to whether
she ought to be shocked or not. But bless me, how late it is!
Good-night, my dear."
He stretched up his arms in a yawn. Edith turned quickly toward him.
"Arthur," she said abruptly, but with the kindness of her softened
mood, "are you painting Ninitta?"
He gave her a startled glance and sat down again in his chair. There
ran through his mind a sudden pang of fear, but he said to himself
instantly that Edith was not one to suspect evil, and she could not
possibly know the truth.
"Painting Ninitta?" he returned. "Why do you ask that?"
"Because Fred Rangely told Helen at dinner to-night that you were."
"Where did he get his information?" asked Fenton, with a feeling of
tightness in his throat as he remembered how Rangely had knocked at his
door that morning.
"He said," was Edith's answer, "that a carpenter told him Mrs. Herman
was in the studio to-day; and I remembered seeing her wrap there last
week."
Fenton felt the insecurity of a man about whom all things totter in the
shock of an earthquake, but he refused to yield to fear. He wondered
how much was to be inferred from the fact that an unknown mechanic was
aware of Mrs. Herman's visits. He had an overwhelming sense of being
trapped, and he inwardly gnashed his teeth with rage against Ninitta
and against fate.
But he felt the supreme importance of self-control, and he was
outwardly collected as he asked,--
"What did Helen say to him?"
"She said," answered Edith, with an exquisite note of sadness in her
voice, "that you must be making a portrait for a surprise to her
husband."
The artist's heart gave a bound and he caught eagerly at this
suggestion, which afforded him a means of escape.
"Helen is too shrewd by half," he said, with a smile. "It is for
Grant's birthday and nobody was to know. As a matter of fact," he
added, his invention quickly leaping to the refinements of details in
his falsehood, "I fancy Ninitta really wants it for the _bambino_, as
she calls him."
He smiled with relief as he went on, and rose again to his feet.
"Deception," he observed, with his natural lightness of manner, "is the
bane of married life, but marital felicity is impossible without
discreet reserves. It wasn't my secret, you see, so I didn't feel at
liberty to tell you."
"You were perfectly right," she answered. "The truth is," she
continued, hesitatingly, "I was afraid you had persuaded Ninitta to sit
for the _Fatima_, you know you said once that she was the only model in
Boston who was what you wanted."
"Did I say that? What a dreadful memory you have. I should expect Grant
to make a burnt sacrifice of me if I had beguiled her into such an
indiscretion. He won't even have her sit to himself since she was
married."
"Of course not," rejoined Edith, emphatically. "Poor Grant! He can't be
very happy with Ninitta. She never can get the taint of Bohemia out of
her blood."
Arthur laughed and flung his cigar end into the fire.
"You speak," he said, "as if that were a hopeless poison."
He stood smiling to himself an instant. He had pushed off one slipper
and was endeavoring to pick it up, using his foot like a hand. He was
in that state of high excitement when he would have found relief in the
wildest and most boisterous actions; and it pleased him to be able
still to retain the appearance of his ordinary calm.
"Modern civilization," he observed, "consists largely in learning to
live without the use of either truth or the toes. Good-night, my dear.
I want to get a nap before the church bells begin to ring."
He stooped and kissed her, and went to his chamber. He closed the door
and began to recite with exaggerated gestures a fragment from
_Macbeth_. The varied emotions of the evening had set every nerve
quivering. He was so excited that he was not even despondent over the
collapse of Princeton Platinum stock, although this meant to him
desperate financial straits. He knew that he was in no condition to
consider anything calmly; but half the remainder of the night he tossed
upon a sleepless bed, reacting the scene at the club, reflecting upon
his narrow escape from the discovery of his relations with Ninitta,
resolving to begin her portrait at once, and thinking a thousand
confused things which made his brain seem to him filled with whirling
masses of fiery thought-clouds.
It was really only just before the church bells began to ring that he
fell asleep at last, to dreams hardly less vivid than his waking
reflections.