IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING.
I. Henry IV.; v.--I.
Notwithstanding her previous visit, Mrs. Fenton found it no easy matter
to guide Helen to the place where Ninitta had taken refuge.
The poorer classes of foreigners in any city are led by similarity of
language and occupations to gather into neighborhoods according to
their nationality, and the Italians are especially clannish. The
fruit-venders and organ-grinders form separate colonies, each
distinguished by the peculiarities incident to the calling of its
inhabitants, the crooked courts in the fruit-sellers' neighborhood
being chiefly marked to outward observance by the number of two-wheeled
hand-carts which, out of business hours, are crowded together there.
Ninitta was found in a room tolerably clean for that portion of the
city, the old fruit woman who was its mistress having retained more of
the tidiness of thrifty peasant ancestors than most of her class. One
room was made to accommodate the mother and seven children, and during
the absence of the former from home the premises were left in charge of
a girl just entering her teens, who, when Helen and Edith reached the
place, was engaged in preparing the family dinner of maccaroni. The
younger members of the family had just returned from school, and were
noisily clamoring for their share, and all together relating the
incidents of the day.
Upon a bed in one corner lay the object of their search, her face
flushed, her hair disordered, her eyes wild and vacant. To all
appearances she was in a high fever, and she took no heed of Edith, who
approached the bed and spoke to her. At the sound of Mrs. Greyson's
voice, however, the sick girl gave a cry and raised herself into a
sitting posture.
"No, no!" she exclaimed in Italian, excitedly, "I will not! I will
not!"
Helen drew off her gloves and sat down upon the dingy bed beside
Ninitta, regarding her with pitying eyes.
"You shall not," she answered, in the girl's own language. "You need do
nothing but what you choose."
The soft tone seemed to calm Ninitta. She allowed Helen to arrange the
soiled and crumpled pillows, and yielded when her self-constituted
nurse wished her to lie down again. The latter procured a bowl of
water, and with her handkerchief bathed the sick girl's face, soothing
her with womanly touches which waked in Edith a new feeling of sympathy
and tenderness. Mrs. Greyson's white fingers, contrasting strongly with
the Italian's clear dark skin, smoothed the tangled hair from the hot
forehead, and all the while her rich, pure voice murmured comforting
words, of little meaning in themselves, perhaps, but sweet with the
sympathy and womanhood which spoke through them.
Edith meanwhile was not idle. She applied herself to hushing the
boisterous children, and to bringing something like quiet out of the
tumult of the crowded room. She assisted the girl with her maccaroni,
gravely listening to the principles which governed its equitable
distribution, with her own hands giving the grimy little children the
share belonging to each. An air of comfort seemed to come over the
frowsy room after Edith had quietly set a chair straight here, picked
up something from the floor there, and arranged the ragged shade at the
window. Even the little Italians, half barbarians as they were, felt
the change, and were more subdued.
Ninitta, too, was calmed and soothed, and, with Helen's cool hand upon
her hot brow, she sank presently into a drowse.
"Mrs. Fenton," Helen whispered, fanning her sleeping patient, "Ninitta
cannot remain here. I must take her home with me. I think she had
better run the risk of being moved than to be ill in this crowded
room."
"But," remonstrated Edith, somewhat aghast at this summary procedure,
"you do not even know what is the matter with her."
"No," Helen returned lightly, "but I shall probably discover."
"Not by finding it something contagious, I hope," her friend said,
laying her hand upon Mrs. Greyson's forehead with a slight, caressing
touch.
"Can you get me a hack?" Helen asked of the girl who kept the house.
But the girl had no idea how to obtain one of those vehicles, which she
had been accustomed to see driving about with a certain awe, but
without the hope of ever being able to do more than admire them from a
distance, unless, indeed, she should have the great good fortune of
going to a funeral, when perhaps she might even ride in one, as did
little Sally McMann of the next court, when her mother died. Mrs.
Fenton therefore went herself for the carriage, finding remonstrance in
vain to change her companion's decision.
During her absence Ninitta awakened, and, while seeming more rational,
was less quiet than before. She repulsed her visitor with angry looks
and muttered defiance. Knowing perfectly well the cause of the girl's
agitation, Helen knew, also, that it was best to go directly to the
root of the matter, and she did so unshrinkingly.
"You are wrong," she said in Ninitta's ear. "It is you he loves. You
are to go home with me because he wishes it."
At first the sick girl seemed to gather no meaning from these words,
but as Helen repeated the assurance again and again, in different
phrases and with Herman's name, she became passive, as if she at least
caught the spirit if not the actual significance.
Mrs. Fenton had some difficulty in finding a carriage, and by the time
she returned Ninitta had yielded herself submissively to Helen's
guidance.
Mrs. Greyson saw that her charge was carefully protected against the
cold, a matter which the mildness of the day rendered easy, and,
supported by the two ladies, the model was able to walk down stairs to
the carriage.
During the drive homeward Helen lay back thinking hotly, and flushed
with excitement. Ninitta sank into a doze, and Mrs. Fenton sat looking
at her friend with the air of one who has discovered in an acquaintance
characteristics before wholly unsuspected. She hesitated a little, and
then, mastering her shyness, she bent forward and kissed Helen's hand.
The other submitted in silence. Indeed, the exaltation of her mood
seemed to lift her above her surroundings so that she felt a strange
remoteness from her companion. Yet she was conscious of a vague twinge
of annoyance at Edith's act, although she could neither have excused
nor defined the feeling. Mrs. Fenton not infrequently aroused in her a
curious mingling of attraction and repulsion; and it was under the
influence of the latter that she answered brusquely her friend's next
remark.
"How did you quiet Ninitta?" Edith asked.
"By telling her lies," returned Helen wearily and laconically.
"What!"
"She is in no condition to be dealt with rationally," continued Mrs.
Greyson, in a tone explanatory, but in no way defensive, "so I said
whatever would soothe her."
Edith sat in silent dismay. Apparently the woman before her, by whose
generous self-forgetfulness she had been touched, was perfectly
untroubled by the idea of speaking a falsehood, a state of mind so
utterly beyond Edith's experience as to be incomprehensible to her. She
could not bring herself to remonstrate, but it pained her that such
philanthropy should be stained by what she considered so wrong.
Mrs. Fenton was perhaps equally mistaken in her opinion of Helen's
regard for truth and of her philanthropy. Mrs. Greyson had a deep
repugnance to falsehood, and Arthur Fenton had often good-humoredly
jeered at what he called her Puritanic scrupulousness in this respect.
On an occasion such as at present, however, the use of an untruth would
cause her not even a second thought, her reason so strongly supporting
her course as even to overcome her instincts; a fact which a moralist
might deplore but which still remains a fact.
Her philanthropy, upon the other hand, although seeming to Edith so
disinterested, was largely instigated by a desire to aid Grant Herman.
Just what she wished or expected him to do, she could not have told,
her actions being no more regulated by strict logic than those of most
women; but she felt that it was the office of friendship to see, if
possible, that no harm came to the Italian through the jealousy which
both herself and Herman knew to be but too well founded. She determined
to take Ninitta home and do for her all that was necessary, in order
that the sculptor be spared the remorse which would pursue him if harm
came to his old betrothed. She was not without a secret feeling,
moreover, scarcely acknowledged to herself, that she owed some
reparation to the girl whose lover's heart she had won, no matter how
undesignedly.
Reaching home, she got Ninitta to bed and sent for Dr. Ashton. Then she
dispatched a note to Grant Herman, saying:
"Ninitta is with me; give yourself no uneasiness."