THERE BEGINS CONFUSION.
I Henry VI.; iv.--i.
Alone in her own room, Edith relieved her overwrought feelings by a
burst of tears, brief, indeed, but bitter. Like her husband, she felt
that this incident, although not assuming the guise of a quarrel, was
an opening wedge in the unity of their affection. Unlike Arthur,
however, she thought of it with self-reproach and misgiving. She did
not for an instant consider the possibility of having taken a different
position in regard to Dr. Ashton, yet in a womanly, illogical way, she
felt that she should have learned her husband's wishes before so
vehemently declaring her own views.
She heard the artist and his guest go in to dinner, and the thought
flashed upon her that this was the first time her husband had dined
without her since their marriage. She wondered if he remembered it,
and, remembering, regretted. She longed for companionship, for some
friend into whose sympathetic ear she could pour her story, from whom
she might ask advice. She reflected sadly how far she was removed from
her intimate friends. Of her new acquaintances many had been most kind
to her, but towards none of them, not even to her relatives, had she
been so strongly drawn as to wish now to go to them for confidence and
sympathy; unless, came a second thought, it were Mrs. Greyson. She was
a widow, Edith reflected, and had evidently suffered much, while the
strength of her character was evident from her dealing with the Italian
girl. It would be no disloyalty to go to her; there had been no words
spoken between husband and wife which could not be told a friend, and
Edith felt that she needed the advice of a woman more versed in the
intricacies of life than herself.
She dressed herself for walking, and slipped noiselessly out of the
house.
Mrs. Greyson was at dinner, and was naturally surprised at seeing her
caller, but she had both too much tact and too much breeding to ask
explanations.
"I do hope you have not dined," she said. "I am so much alone that it
is a perfect delight to me to have company. My dinner is a little like
a picnic, but if you will only consider how great a favor you are doing
me by sharing it, the consciousness of philanthropy ought to make it
palatable."
Neither lady mentioned Arthur, although his name was uppermost in the
thoughts of both. They sat down together in Helen's tiny dining-room,
and served by her only maid, had a charming meal. The hostess exerted
herself to entertain her guest, wisely judging that what Edith said in
calmness she would be far less likely to regret than words uttered in
the unguarded moments of her excitement. She told Mrs. Fenton stories
of her studio life both in Boston and abroad, she led Edith on to speak
of her own travels and experiences, until the latter almost forgot that
she was dining in one house and her husband in another. It was not
until the coffee was reached, coffee made as only Helen could make it,
that the subject of the visit was really broached.
"How is Mr. Fenton?" Helen asked deliberately, believing the time had
come for such a question.
The face of the other fell. She experienced a pang at the consciousness
of having been gay and happy, forgetful of her husband and her trouble.
"He is well," she answered falteringly.
"Why did you not bring him with you?" continued Mrs. Greyson lightly,
yet with a secret determination to know the cause of her guest's
evident disturbance.
"He did not know I was coming," Edith responded in a low voice. "That
is what I came to talk about. I thought you might understand; but it
involves a third person, and perhaps I ought not to tell you. I am
sure, though," she went on, gaining confidence now that the ice was
broken, "that I can trust you. A friend of Arthur's came to dine
to-night, and just as the door-bell rang, I found him to be the man I
once saw commit murder in Paris."
"Murder!" exclaimed Helen, turning white. "Commit murder?"
"Consent to it," corrected Edith, unconsciously a little pleased to
have produced so great an effect upon her usually self-possessed
friend. "He looked on while Frontier took poison, without trying to
prevent him."
"But that," Mrs. Greyson said slowly, "is hardly the same thing as
murder."
"It is quite as bad," Edith protested earnestly. "It makes me shudder
to think of his dining alone with Arthur at this moment. Who knows what
might happen!"
"Nothing tragic, I think," Helen replied smiling. "He does not go about
with pistols in his belt, I suppose.'
"It is awful to me," Edith continued, with increasing excitement, too
much stirred to notice the sarcasm. "I told Arthur I could not sit down
with a murderer, and just at that moment we heard his step, and I ran
away upstairs; and then I felt dreadfully, and I came to you."
"I thank you for your confidence. But what do you mean to do? What will
Arthur tell him?"
"The truth, I hope."
"He is scarcely likely to say to the guest he has himself invited that
you think him a murderer," answered her friend, smiling again, "and I
am not sure that he would even look at this quite so severely as you
do."
"How else can he look at it?" demanded Edith. "How else can any one
look at it? Isn't it murder to take human life, and if one does not
prevent suicide when he might, isn't it the same as if he did it
himself?"
"We will not get into a discussion," Helen replied gently. "I feel
about it as you do; though I believe very differently. But I see
perfectly well how a man might be strictly honest in thinking that it
was the privilege of any human being to lay aside his life when he is
weary of it; and I do not presume to condemn others for feeling what I
only think I believe."
"Think you believe!" cried the other in horror. "You do not think you
believe that murder is right?"
"Assuredly not; but as there are so many related points upon which we
do not agree, would it not be better to talk of this particular case
than of general belief?"
"But it is impossible for any one to believe as you say," persisted
Edith; "simply impossible. No one can believe that wrong is right."
"But each has his own standard."
Against this Edith protested, but Helen returned no answer. She
regretted being involved in such a debate, and resolved to let the
discussion go no further. They sat in silence a moment, and then Edith
again spoke.
"I do not know what to do," she said. "Of course Arthur cannot know
that man any longer. You were in Paris at the time Frontier died, were
you not? Did you ever know----"
She broke off suddenly, remembering that she had not intended
disclosing the name of her guest.
"Dr. Ashton?" Helen returned, fixing her eyes upon her companion, and
unconsciously speaking with a deliberation which gave especial weight
to her words. "Yes; I know him. We went to Paris together."
"Together! Was he a friend of your husband? How did you know whom I
meant?"
There was no perceptible pause before Helen answered; but meanwhile she
determined to throw aside all concealment. She could no longer stand
before Arthur Fenton's wife with the humiliation of even a tacit
deception between them. She felt a spirit of defiance rising within
her. Who was this woman that she assumed the right to judge them all by
standards for whose narrowness only contempt was possible! At least she
would rise above all conventional prejudices, and no longer tacitly
ask, as by silence she had done, exemption from the harsh judgments of
Mrs. Fenton's creed.
Helen was too womanly not to shrink from this disclosure, and she had
been too thoroughly educated in the faith by which Edith lived not to
understand just how her life would appear seen through the latter's
belief. Disconnected with a question relating to the marriage relation
and by implication casting reflection upon her delicacy and even purity
of life as a woman separated from her lawful husband, Helen could have
met with dispassionate reasoning whatever assault Edith made upon her.
This point was too vital, it touched too closely the core of her
woman's nature, and although she retained perfectly her self-control,
there was a pulse of passion in her voice when she spoke.
"Dr. Ashton," she said unflinchingly, "is my husband."
"What?" cried Edith.
"We have not found it convenient to live together," Helen continued,
with increasing calmness, a faint tinge of contempt creeping into her
voice, "and so since my return from Europe I have taken my mother's
name to avoid gossip. Dr. Ashton and I are very good friends still."
"And did Mr. Fenton know this?" asked the other, very pale.
"Certainly; although you understand that it is not a matter which we
discuss with the world at large. I pass, I believe, as a widow; though
I have never done or said any thing to give color to that idea."
It is doubtful if Helen fully comprehended the effect of these words
upon her guest. Every fiber of Edith's being tingled. All her most
sacred principles seemed outraged. She in some remote way felt,
moreover, as if to hear without protest so lax notions of the
responsibilities of marriage was to stain her womanhood and dim the
luster of her modesty.
"How dared he introduce you to me?" she cried. "You are the wife of a
murderer and you defend his crime; you pretend to be a widow, you
ignore your marriage----"
"Stop," the hostess said with dignity. "We need not go over the ground.
Mr. Fenton made us acquainted, I presume, because he agrees with me in
seeing nothing wrong in my position, however unconventional it may be.
You will see that if I had been ashamed of the fact I could easily have
kept it from your knowledge."
But Edith made her no answer. She was too much overwhelmed by the
various emotions which the disclosure of the evening had aroused.
Edith was, from Helen's point of view, fatally narrow, it is true; but
the latter might have reflected that the limitations of her friend's
vision were the faiths of the Christian world, and that her tenacity
arose not from obstinacy but sincerity. It is an age when belief and
doubt are brought face to face so sharply that the shock disturbs by
its jar the most ordinary affairs of life.
Edith was pure, high minded, simple souled, and for the rest she was
honest and earnest. Her creeds were vitalized by the warm fervor with
which she clung to them, and what more could be demanded of her?
She quitted the dining-room, and soon Helen heard the outer door close
behind her. The night gathered, and the lonely woman left behind sat
long in sad reverie, until the door was again opened to admit Dr.
Ashton.