The Pagans Part 23

"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 a.s.sumed 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 dispa.s.sionate reasoning whatever a.s.sault 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.s, 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 l.u.s.ter 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.

XXVII.

WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE.

Hamlet; i.--2.

Dr. Ashton came in too full of his own interview with Arthur to notice particularly if his wife showed signs of agitation.

"My dear," he said, throwing himself into a chair, "it is at once one of the latest and the wisest of my reflections that you had better consider a newly married man as an entire stranger and form his acquaintance quite from the foundation, wholly unbiased by any notion you had of him as a bachelor."

"His wife," responded Helen quietly, "has been dining with me, so I understand something of the situation. But how did Arthur behave?"

"Like any husband who does not care to quarrel with his wife even when he disapproves of her. It is upon that principle that matrimonial felicity depends. Do you say Mrs. Fenton has been here?"

"Yes; she came to me for sympathy and I administered it by telling her that I am your wife."

"The devil! I beg your pardon; but, Helen, it was precisely because I knew she was sure to remember this Frontier sc.r.a.pe that I wanted her not to know. She will be very hard on you."

"Christianity is always hard," returned she; "but what difference does it make; it was only a question of time. She is sweet and pure and good, Will, but her religion holds her in bands stronger than steel. I couldn't long keep step with one in chains. It might as well come now as any time."

Her husband looked at her with evident interest not unmixed with admiration.

"She provokes me to do and to say childish things," Helen continued, "just to shock her. I told her bluntly the other day that I had been telling a falsehood, and she had the impertinence to look shocked. I am not sure that I did not go so far as to say I 'lied,' a word that hardly holds the place in English that it did in the good days of Mrs.

Opie. She would have been reconciled if I had said I told what I hoped was true."

"I should have told her," laughed Dr. Ashton, "that I only used truth as the Egyptians used straw in bricks, the smallest possible quant.i.ty that will hold the rest together."

"I cannot see why Arthur married her," Helen said musingly.

"Oh, as to that, an idle man will fall in love with any pretty woman who will snub him."

"But Arthur isn't idle, and she doesn't snub him."

"Very well; he married her because he fell in love for no reason but the weakness of our s.e.x."

"Love seems generally to be regarded by the masculine mind in the light of a weakness."

"Isn't it?" her husband returned. "Love is the condition of desiring the impossible, and if that is not a weakness, what becomes of logic?"

"I am tired of logic," she said, rising abruptly. "I am tired of every thing. Let us have supper. I want a gla.s.s of wine. I am sure I tried to be kind to Mrs. Fenton. I would have helped her if I could; but how could I a.s.sist her unless she chose to let me, and that, too, knowing who I am."

"I never knew you to be other than kind," was the grave reply, which brought to Helen's cheek a faint flush of pleasure.

The servant came in with supper, and the slender gla.s.ses were filled with Rhine wine.

"I could not help thinking," Dr. Ashton said, lifting his gla.s.s,--"I drink to your very good health, my dear--I could not help thinking of my wedding gift to Arthur, that he asked me for it, I mean."

"I thought of it, too, when his wife told me the story. It is well she does not know that of you."

"Oh, it wouldn't matter," he said carelessly. "She couldn't feel a greater horror of me than she does already. Do you see the mark of Cain on my forehead, Helen?"

"Isn't it droll," she returned, with a smile half pensive, half humorous, "to feel ourselves suddenly tried by new standards and found so wanting. I am not sure but dramatic propriety demands that I should poison Mrs. Fenton. I have that vial, you know."