Read Ebook: The Philistines by Bates Arlo

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Ebook has 1877 lines and 100260 words, and 38 pages

"He is coming to see you to-morrow, Mrs. Hubbard said. The picture is to be her birthday present. I told her you were so busy I didn't know when you could begin."

"I would stretch a point to please Mr. Hubbard. I am almost done with Irons, vulgar old cad. I wish I dared paint him as bad as he really looks."

"But your artistic conscience won't let you?" she queried, smiling. "He is a dreadful old creature; but he means well."

"People who mean well are always worse than those who don't mean anything; but I can make it up with Hubbard. He looks like Rubens' St. Simeon. I wish he wore the same sort of clothes."

"You might persuade him to, for the picture. But my second piece of news is almost as good. Helen is coming home."

"Helen Greyson?"

"Helen Greyson. I had a letter from her today, written in Paris. She had already got so far, and she ought to be here very soon."

"How long has she been in Rome?" Fenton asked.

He had suddenly become graver. He had been intimate with Mrs. Greyson, a sculptor of no mean talent, in the days when he had been a fervid opponent of people and of principles with whom he had later joined alliance, and the idea of her return brought up vividly his parting from her, when she had scornfully upbraided him for his apostasy from convictions which he had again and again declared to be dearer to him than life.

"It is six years," Mrs. Fenton answered. "Caldwell was born the March after she went, and he will be six in three weeks. Time goes fast. We are getting to be old people."

Fenton stared at his plate absently, his thoughts busy with the past.

"Has Grant Herman been married six years?" he asked, after a moment.

"Grant Herman? Yes; he was married just before she sailed; but what of it?"

Fenton laid down the fork with which he had been poking the bits of fish about on his plate. He folded his arms on the edge of the table, and regarded his wife.

"It is astonishing, Edith," he observed, "how well one may know a woman and yet be mistaken in her. For six years I have supposed you to be religiously avoiding any allusion to Helen's love for Grant Herman, and it seems you never knew it at all."

It was Mrs. Fenton's turn to look up in surprise.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Her husband laughed lightly, yet not very joyously.

"Nothing, if you will. Nobody ever told me they were in love with each other, but I am as sure that Helen made Herman marry Ninitta as if I had been on hand to see the operation."

"Made him marry her? Why should he marry her if he didn't want to?"

"Oh, well, I don't know anything about it. I know Ninitta followed Herman to America, for she told me so; and I am sure he had no idea of marrying her when she got here. Anybody can put two and two together, I suppose, especially if you know what infernally Puritanical notions Helen had."

"Puritanical?"

The artist leaned back in his chair and smiled at his wife in his superior and tantalizing fashion.

"She thought she'd outgrown Puritanism," he returned, "but really she was, in her way, as much of a Puritan as you are. The country is full of people who don't understand that the essence of Puritanism is a slavish adherence to what they call principle, and who think because they have got rid of a certain set of dogmas they are free from their theologic heritage. There never was greater rubbish than such an idea."

Mrs. Fenton was silent. She had long ago learned the futility of attempting any argument in ethics with Arthur, and she received in silence whatever flings at her beliefs he chose to indulge in. She had even come hardly to heed words which in the early days of her married life would have wounded her to the quick. She had readjusted her conception of her husband's character, and if she still cherished illusions in regard to him, she no longer believed in the possibility of changing his opinions by opposing them.

Her thoughts were now, moreover, occupied with the personal problem which would in any case have appealed more strongly to the feminine mind than abstract theories, and she was considering what he had told her of Mrs. Greyson and Grant Herman, a sculptor for whom she had a warm admiration, and a no less strong liking.

However we busy ourselves with high aims, with learning, or art, or wisdom, or ethics, personal human interests appeal to us more strongly than anything else. Human emotions respond instinctively and quickly to any hint of the emotional life of others. Nothing more strikingly shows the essential unity of the race than the readiness with which all minds lay aside all concerns and ideas which they are accustomed to consider higher, to give attention to the trifling details of the intimate history of their fellows. Quite unconsciously, Edith had gathered up many facts, insignificant in themselves, concerning the relations of Mrs. Greyson and Herman, and she now found herself suddenly called upon to reconsider whatever conclusions they had led her to in the light of this new development. The sculptor's marriage with an ex-model had always been a mystery to her, and she now endeavored to decide in her mind whether it were possible that her husband could be right in putting the responsibility upon Helen Greyson. The form of his remark seemed to her to hint that the Italian's claim upon Herman had been of so grave a nature as to imply serious complications in their former relations; but she strenuously rejected any suspicion of evil in the sculptor's conduct.

"I am sure, Arthur," she said, hesitatingly, "there can have been nothing wrong between Mr. Herman and Ninitta. I have too much faith in him."

"To put faith in man," was his answer, "is only less foolish than to believe in woman. I didn't, however, mean to imply anything very dreadful. The facts are enough, without speculating on what is nobody's business but theirs. I wonder how he and Helen will get on together, now she is coming home? Mrs. Herman is a jealous little thing, and could easily be roused up to do mischief."

"I do not believe Helen had anything to do with their marriage," Edith said, with conviction. "It was a mistake from the outset."

"Granted. That is what makes it so probable that Helen did it. Grant isn't the man to make a fool of himself without outside pressure, and in the end a sacrifice to principle is always some ridiculous tomfoolery that can't be come at in any other way. However, we shall see what we shall see. What time are you going to Mrs. Frostwinch's?"

"I am going to the Browning Club at Mrs. Gore's first. Will you come?"

"Thank you, no. I have too much respect for Browning to assist at his dismemberment. I'll meet you at Mrs. Frostwinch's about ten."

IN WAY OF TASTE. Troilus and Cressida; iii.--3.

One of the most curious of modern whims in Boston has been the study of the poems of Robert Browning. All at once there sprang up on every hand strange societies called Browning Clubs, and the libraries were ransacked for Browning's works, and for the books of whoever has had the conceit or the hardihood to write about the great poet. Lovely girls at afternoon receptions propounded to each other abstruse conundrums concerning what they were pleased to regard as obscure passages, while little coteries gathered, with airs of supernatural gravity, to read and discuss whatever bore his signature.

A genuine, serious Boston Browning Club is as deliciously droll as any form of entertainment ever devised, provided one's sense of the ludicrous be strong enough to overcome the natural indignation aroused by seeing genuine poetry, the high gift of the gods, thus abused. The clubs meet in richly furnished parlors, of which the chief fault is usually an over-abundance of bric-a-brac. The house of Mrs. Gore, for instance, where Edith was going this evening, was all that money could make it; and in passing it may be noted that Boston clubs are seldom of constitutions sufficiently vigorous to endure unpleasant surroundings. The fair sex predominates at all these gatherings, and over them hangs an air of expectant solemnity, as if the celebration of some sacred mystery were forward. Conversation is carried on in subdued tones; even the laughter is softened, and when the reader takes his seat, there falls upon the little company a hush so deep as to render distinctly audible the frou-frou of silken folds, and the tinkle of jet fringes, stirred by the swelling of ardent and aspiring bosoms.

The reading is not infrequently a little dull, especially to the uninitiated, and there have not been wanting certain sinister suggestions that now and then, during the monotonous delivery of some of the longer poems, elderly and corpulent devotees listen only with the spiritual ear, the physical sense being obscured by an abstraction not to be distinguished by an ordinary observer from slumber. The reader, however, is bound to assume that all are listening, and if some sleep and others consider their worldly concerns or speculate upon the affairs of their neighbors, it interrupts not at all the steady flow of the reading.

Once this is finished, there is an end also of inattention, for the discussion begins. The central and vital principle of all these clubs is that a poem by Robert Browning is a sort of prize enigma, of which the solution is to be reached rather by wild and daring guessing than by any commonplace process of reasoning. Although to an ordinary and uninspired intellect it may appear perfectly obvious that a lyric means simply and clearly what it says, the true Browningite is better informed. He is deeply aware that if the poet seems to say one thing, this is proof indisputable that another is intended. To take a work in straightforward fashion would at once rob the Browning Club of all excuse for existence, and while parlor chairs are easy, the air warm and perfumed, and it is the fashion for idle minds to concern themselves with that rococo humbug Philistines call culture, societies of this sort must continue.

Once it is agreed that a poem means something not apparent, it is easy to make it mean anything and everything, especially if the discussion, as is usually the case, be interspersed with discursions of which the chief use is to give some clever person or other a chance to say smart things. When all else fails, moreover, the club can always fall back upon allegory. Commentators on the poets have always found much field for ingenious quibbling and sounding speculation in the line of allegory. Let a poem be but considered an allegory, and there is no limit to the changes which may be rung upon it, not even Mrs. Malaprop's banks of the Nile restraining the creature's headstrong ranging. Only a failure of the fancy of the interpreter can afford a check, and as everybody reads fiction nowadays, few people are without a goodly supply of fancies, either original or acquired.

Although Fenton had declined to go to Mrs. Gore's with his wife, he had finished his cigar when the carriage was announced, and decided to accompany her, after all. The parlors were filling when they arrived, and Arthur, who knew how to select good company, managed to secure a seat between Miss Elsie Dimmont, a young and rather gay society girl, and Mrs. Frederick Staggchase, a descendant of an old Boston family, who was called one of the cleverest women of her set.

"Is Mr. Fenwick going to read?" he asked of the latter, glancing about to see who was present.

"Yes," Mrs. Staggchase answered, turning toward him with her distinguished motion of the head and high-bred smile. "Don't you like him?"

"I never had the misfortune to hear him. I know he detests me, but then I fear, that like olives and caviare, I have to be an acquired taste."

"Acquired tastes," she responded, with that air of being amused by herself which always entertained Fenton, "are always the strongest."

"And generally least to a man's credit," he retorted quickly. "What is he going to inflict upon us?"

"Really, I don't know. I seldom come to this sort of thing. I don't think it pays."

"Oh, nothing pays, of course," was Fenton's reply, "but it is more or less amusing to see people make fools of themselves."

"'No more wine? then we'll push back chairs, and talk.'"

For something over an hour, the monotonous voice of the reader went dully on. Fenton drew out his tablets and amused himself and Miss Dimmont by drawing caricatures of the company, ending with a sketch of a handsome old dowager, who went so soundly to sleep that her jaw fell. Over this his companion laughed so heartily that Mrs. Staggchase leaned forward smilingly, and took his tablets away from him; whereat he produced an envelope from his pocket and was about to begin another sketch, when suddenly, and apparently somewhat to the surprise of the reader, the poem came to an end.

There was a joyful stir. The dowager awoke, and there was a perfunctory clapping of hands when Mr. Fenwick laid down his volume, and people were assured that there was no mistake about his being really quite through. A few murmurs of admiration were heard, and then there was an awful pause, while the president, as usual, waited in the never-fulfilled hope that the discussion would start itself without help on his part.

"How cleverly you do sketch," Miss Dimmont said, under her breath; "but it was horrid of you to make me laugh."

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