BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE.
Love's Labor's Lost; ii.--I.
Fenton had returned to Boston with his bride, but as yet Helen had not
seen him. One morning late in March, however, he came to call.
"I could not come before," he said after the first greeting, "'I have
married a wife,' and the amount of arrangement and adjustment implied
in that statement is simply astounding."
"I am glad to see you at last," she returned. "And your wife, is she
well?"
"My wife," replied he, with a little hesitancy over the unfamiliar
term, "is well. Cannot you come to see us before that dreadful
reception through which I am to be dragged? I'd like you to know Edith
in a different way from the crowd."
Helen crossed the room and sat down in her favorite chair by the
window.
"He ought to understand," was her thought. "Why cannot he see that it
is impossible for his wife and me to harmonize. We have no common
ground."
"I shall be glad to," she said aloud, inwardly shrinking at the need of
speaking disingenuously to one with whom she had so long been upon
terms of frankness. "I will come very soon; to-day or to-morrow.
To-day, though, I must go and see my bas-relief. It is all ready to be
cut for the furnace; I only want to take a last look at it, to be sure
that every thing is right. If it will not bore you," she added, a
little hesitatingly, "you might come too; it is your last chance to
find fault to any advantage, for any changes must be made at once."
"I'd like to go," answered her friend, looking at his watch, "if I can
get back to luncheon. Yes, there's plenty of time."
"Benedick, the married man," laughed Helen. "That I should ever live to
see this air of domesticity!"
They crossed the Common, chatting idly, and both conscious that the
frankness of their old intercourse was somehow lacking; that it was
necessary to begin a new adjustment upon a basis different from the
former one. They talked upon indifferent subjects, of what had occurred
during the three weeks of Arthur's absence, playing the part of
amiability without pleasure, endeavoring to simulate the old relations
which no longer had real existence.
"Oh, Arthur," Helen laughed, suddenly, "let's not go on in this way!
Let us quarrel, or something. Say a wicked epigram; do any thing,
only don't be so eminently amiable!"
"My head is as empty of ideas," he returned laughing, in his turn, "as
is a modern title-page of punctuation points. Besides, Edith has
forbidden wicked epigrams."
"Does she therefore suppose she can suppress them?"
"Oh, I don't know," responded Fenton, good-humoredly. "I am not in as
epigrammatic a frame of mind as I was."
"'Tis a good sign."
"Yes; a sign I am growing inane and respectable."
"I can imagine you one about as easily as the other."
"That is bitter-sweet; a compliment and a flout."
"If I had said that," Helen observed, smiling, "you would have
retorted, with a look of gloomy solemnity, that most things in life are
bitter-sweet; unless, indeed, you felt called upon to phrase it that it
had the advantage of most earthly matters by not being wholly bitter."
"Was I ever guilty of such commonplace attempts at epigrams as that?"
returned Arthur. "If so it is certainly a good thing that I have given
up repartee for matrimony."
"Oh, that is brilliant beside many of your attempts, I assure you. And
as for your giving them up--I reserve my decision."
"You shall see, skeptic," he said lightly. "I expect to change the face
of the whole world if necessary."
"It is a common error of ardent temperaments," she returned pleasantly,
but with evident sincerity, "to assume that a state of feeling can
change the world."
"But I must, I will," he began eagerly. Then the light died out of his
face and he ended with a shrug.
Helen put up her hand with an impulsive gesture, as if about to speak.
Then letting her arms fall by her side, she turned to unlock the studio
door, which by this time they had reached.
The bas-relief was still shrouded in its damp envelopes, which Helen
carefully removed, keeping Fenton away, that he might first see the
work as a whole, and not lose its legitimate effect by catching
fragmentary glimpses as it was uncovered. When at last it was fully
disclosed, she called him to her as she stood before it.
"By Jove! That's stunning!" he exclaimed, after an instant's pause,
which gave him time to see it fairly. "Helen, you have outdone
yourself! That figure is simply superb. I hadn't an idea you would come
out so well. I'm wonderfully proud of you."
"You are more amiable than ever," she responded; but her flushed cheek
showed that she was touched by his earnest praise. "For that figure I
have to thank Ninitta's posing. She is an inspiration."
"But Ninitta did not inspire that splendid head," observed Arthur,
pointing with his cane at the December, "and you evidently did that
_con amore_. By Jove! It's Grant Herman, as I live!"
As he spoke he turned and saw Ninitta on the threshold.
"Shall you want me to-day?" the latter asked of Helen.
"What made that girl look so savage?" Fenton questioned as the door
closed behind the model.
"She perhaps chooses to be jealous of me," Helen replied composedly.
"_Elle a peutêtre raison_."
"Perhaps."
"You say that too calmly by half," was his gay response. "Yet as every
work a woman does has a man for its end--I learned that from the
classics; Penelope, you know, and even washwoman Nausicaä--I suppose it
is fair to assume this had. Only who is the man?"
Helen flushed slightly. She recalled the ambition with which she had
begun this work, to make the man beside her praise its completion; and
she was conscious that before she finished it was the praise of Herman
for which she strove.
"It is filthy lucre that inspires me," she replied steadily. "I need no
other incentive."
They walked about the studio, talking of the bas-relief as seen from
different points; of how it was to be cut for firing; and on the safe
ground of art they forgot all personal constraints, until the striking
of a clock aroused Fenton to a sense of the flight of time.
"I must go," he said. "I am no end glad I came. The truth is I am not
very well acquainted with this married man, and it is comfortable to
slip back occasionally into a familiar bachelor mood. However," he
continued with his brightest smile, "I like the Benedick far better
than I should ever have dreamed possible; and his wife is charming. And
I want to say, too," he added, "that I have a thousand times thanked
you for taking that vial before I went to be married. I'm in a spasm of
virtuousness just now, and it is pleasant to remember that I did not
have it that day."
They went down stairs and out into the soft, spring-like day,
sauntering homeward in a happy and accordant mood. Arthur urged Helen's
going home to lunch with himself and Edith, but to Helen the morning
was far too precious to be ended in a possibly inharmonious meeting
with Mrs. Fenton.
And that afternoon Herman sent for Mrs. Greyson in all haste. Ninitta
had vented her jealous rage upon the bas-relief, destroying the head of
December which she heard Fenton say must have been done _con
amore_, and the beautiful May for which she herself had posed.