UPON A CHURCH BENCH.
Much Ado about Nothing; iii.--3.
Herman did not see Helen for several days after the reception, but she
came down to the studio Sunday afternoon to begin the repairing of her
mutilated bas-relief. The sculptor heard her step pass his door, and
felt a thrill at the sound for which he had longingly waited every
waking hour since he had heard Helen go out upon the night of Ninitta's
disappearance.
He waited what seemed to him a long time, forcing himself to perform
certain trifling things needful in the studio, yet Mrs. Greyson had
only been able to get fairly to work before she heard his footstep, and
then his tap upon her door.
He entered the studio almost hesitatingly, and after the usual
greetings stood looking gravely at the disfigured clay.
"I began to think you were never coming to restore it," he remarked,
breaking at last the silence.
"I could not bear to touch it," she returned, not caring to confess
that she had also wished to avoid him until time should have restored
his usual self-control. "But I determined yesterday to begin this
morning, only strangely enough I went to church for the first time
since I came from Europe."
"Ah!" returned Herman smiling. "I often go to church when I am not too
busy."
"I hardly supposed that a Pagan was guilty of going to any church where
he could not worship Pasht."
"One can worship whatever deity he pleases in whatever temple, I
suppose," was his rejoinder. "I'm catholic in my tastes. I do not so
much mind what people worship, if they are only sincere about it."
"It must be a great comfort to believe every thing, if one only could."
"There is often danger," he observed, "that we assume it to be a
weakness to believe any thing."
"It is, I'm afraid," replied she, turning her face from him and
seemingly intent upon her modeling.
"At least we believe in work," Herman answered, "else we are not
artists. You certainly find joy and support in your art."
"Yes," Helen said with a sigh; "but I fancy the joy of creation, great
as it is, can never be so satisfying to a woman as to a man. It is
humiliating to confess--or it is presumptuous to boast, I am not sure
which--but a woman is never so fully an artist as a man. He is in great
moments all artist; but a woman is never able to lay herself aside even
in her most imaginative moods."
"I cannot think you wholly right," her master returned smiling; "but to
go back a little, at least faith is woman's peculiar province and
prerogative. We seem nowadays to pride ourselves upon being superior to
belief in any thing; but it is really a poor enough hypocrisy. If we
really believed nothing, should we ever give up a single selfish desire
or combat any impulse that seizes us. For my part, I am glad to find
men better than their professions. But this," he added with his genial
smile, "is more of a sermon, very likely, than you heard at church."
"I at least agree with it better than the one I heard at church this
morning. The preacher patronized the Deity so that he shocked me."
"That troubles me at church," Herman assented; "preachers are so
irreverent."
Helen stepped back to observe the effects of the work she was doing.
"Do you think," she ventured, "that it would be possible for me to
induce Ninitta to pose again for the May? If I told her that I am not
angry, that I understand, and that----"
"But Ninitta is gone!" exclaimed the sculptor, suddenly recalled to
present difficulties. "I have not been able to find her since the day
she did this."
"Gone!" echoed Helen in dismay; "and you cannot find her?"
Herman related in detail the steps he had taken to trace Ninitta, all
of which had thus far proved unavailing. He had endeavored to avoid
publicity, but he already began to fear that it would be necessary to
call detectives to his aid.
"Not yet," Helen said. "Let me try first. Have you seen Mr. Fenton?"
"No; why? I have been very cautious. I have told nobody but Fred
Rangely."
Helen reflected a moment. Her woman's instinct told her that it was not
likely Ninitta would put any great distance between herself and the
sculptor. The model could have but few acquaintances in the city, and
as she would need support it seemed probable she might try posing for
some of the artists. As this thought crossed her mind, Helen remembered
that Ninitta had promised to pose for Fenton when no longer wanted for
the has-relief. It was therefore possible that Fenton might know
something of the whereabouts of the missing girl; and in any case Helen
had been so used to consulting the artist in any perplexity, that it
was but natural for her thoughts to turn to him now.
"Let me try," she repeated. "It will be less likely to excite talk if I
look for her; she was my model. Trust the search to me for a day or
two."
He was only too glad to do so; glad to be released from the burden of
anxiety, as by virtue of some subtle faith in Mrs. Greyson he was; glad
of any thing in which he might obey her; glad above all of any bond of
common interest which might draw them nearer to each other, even if it
were search for the woman who stood between them.
On her way homeward Helen went into Studio Building, but before she had
climbed half way to Fenton's room, she encountered Dr. Ashton.
"It is of no use," was his greeting. "He isn't in. His wife has
probably taken him to church."
"He was at church this morning," Helen answered, putting her hand into
the one Dr. Ashton extended. "I saw him."
"Did you go to church? What a lark."
"It was rather a lark," she assented; "only I got wretchedly blue
before the service was done."
"What church was it? Mrs. Fenton looks as if she'd poise dizzily on
high church altitudes like the angel on St. Angelo."
"So she does; she goes to the Nativity."
"How did Arthur look?"
"Amused at first; then bored; then cross; and finally, when the sermon
was well under way, indignant."
"And his wife?"
"His wife, Will," Helen said with a sudden enthusiasm, "looked like a
saint. She really believes all these fables. I wish I did."
"It will be some fun to watch Arthur's conversion and backsliding," Dr.
Ashton observed, "if he really gets far enough along to be able to
backslide. Where are you going?"
"To see Arthur. I have an errand."
"Do you object to my walking with you?" he asked with a deference rare
enough to attract her notice.
The sun was setting, and the trees on the Common, as yet showing but
faintest signs of coming buds, stood out against the saffron sky. The
long shadows stretched softly over the dull ground, while every slight
prominence was gilded and transfigured by the golden glow which flooded
from the west. The atmosphere had that peculiar brilliancy
characteristic of the season, while the cool and bracing air was full
of that champagne-like exhilaration in which lies at once the
fascination and the fatality of the New England climate.
It was some time before either broke the silence.
"How I wish," at length began Helen wistfully.
"That shows," spoke her husband, as she left the sentence unfinished,
"that you are still under forty. When you have quadrupled your decades
you'll thank your stars for deliverances and ask for nothing more."
"When I get to that stage, then," she returned, "I'll take poison."
"Is that a hint?"
"Life is bad enough now," she continued without heeding the
interruption, "but better a bitter savor than none at all."
"You should devote yourself to cultivating the approval of conscience
as I do. I only do what I think to be right, you know."
"But think right whatever you do."
"Not quite that," returned the Doctor with a laugh, "but the approval
of my conscience--or of my reason, which stands in its place--is
necessary to my happiness, so I change my principles whenever my acts
don't accord with them."
"So do a great many persons," she responded; "perhaps most of us, for
that matter, only we are seldom honest enough to own it."
"By the way," queried her companion, as they approached her
destination, "how came Mrs. Fenton so quickly domesticated at the
Church of the Nativity?"
"There is a young man there--a deacon or a monk; I never know these
high church terms; they are usually faded out pieces of Romanism--that
once wrote an article which enjoyed the honor of being interred in the
Princeton Review when her uncle was one of its editors."
They reached the doorsteps and Dr. Ashton said good-by. Then he turned
back.
"By the by," he said. "I walked up with you to make you invite me to
supper again. I enjoyed the last time very much."
"Did you?" returned his wife, rather carelessly. "Come to-morrow--no,
not until Thursday night."
"Very well. I am to dine here then, and I'll come and give you an
account of my visit."