XVIII.

BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE.

Love's Labor's Lost; ii.--I.

Fenton had returned to Boston with his bride, but as yet Helen had not seen him. One morning late in March, however, he came to call.

"I could not come before," he said after the first greeting, "'I have married a wife,' and the amount of arrangement and adjustment implied in that statement is simply astounding."

"I am glad to see you at last," she returned. "And your wife, is she well?"

"My wife," replied he, with a little hesitancy over the unfamiliar term, "is well. Cannot you come to see us before that dreadful reception through which I am to be dragged? I'd like you to know Edith in a different way from the crowd."

Helen crossed the room and sat down in her favorite chair by the window.

"He ought to understand," was her thought. "Why cannot he see that it is impossible for his wife and me to harmonize. We have no common ground."

"I shall be glad to," she said aloud, inwardly shrinking at the need of speaking disingenuously to one with whom she had so long been upon terms of frankness. "I will come very soon; to-day or to-morrow.

To-day, though, I must go and see my bas-relief. It is all ready to be cut for the furnace; I only want to take a last look at it, to be sure that every thing is right. If it will not bore you," she added, a little hesitatingly, "you might come too; it is your last chance to find fault to any advantage, for any changes must be made at once."

"I'd like to go," answered her friend, looking at his watch, "if I can get back to luncheon. Yes, there's plenty of time."

"Bened.i.c.k, the married man," laughed Helen. "That I should ever live to see this air of domesticity!"

They crossed the Common, chatting idly, and both conscious that the frankness of their old intercourse was somehow lacking; that it was necessary to begin a new adjustment upon a basis different from the former one. They talked upon indifferent subjects, of what had occurred during the three weeks of Arthur's absence, playing the part of amiability without pleasure, endeavoring to simulate the old relations which no longer had real existence.

"Oh, Arthur," Helen laughed, suddenly, "let's not go on in this way!

Let us quarrel, or something. Say a wicked epigram; do any thing, only don't be so eminently amiable!"

"My head is as empty of ideas," he returned laughing, in his turn, "as is a modern t.i.tle-page of punctuation points. Besides, Edith has forbidden wicked epigrams."

"Does she therefore suppose she can suppress them?"

"Oh, I don't know," responded Fenton, good-humoredly. "I am not in as epigrammatic a frame of mind as I was."

"'Tis a good sign."

"Yes; a sign I am growing inane and respectable."

"I can imagine you one about as easily as the other."

"That is bitter-sweet; a compliment and a flout."

"If I had said that," Helen observed, smiling, "you would have retorted, with a look of gloomy solemnity, that most things in life are bitter-sweet; unless, indeed, you felt called upon to phrase it that it had the advantage of most earthly matters by not being wholly bitter."

"Was I ever guilty of such commonplace attempts at epigrams as that?"

returned Arthur. "If so it is certainly a good thing that I have given up repartee for matrimony."

"Oh, that is brilliant beside many of your attempts, I a.s.sure you. And as for your giving them up--I reserve my decision."

"You shall see, skeptic," he said lightly. "I expect to change the face of the whole world if necessary."

"It is a common error of ardent temperaments," she returned pleasantly, but with evident sincerity, "to a.s.sume that a state of feeling can change the world."

"But I must, I will," he began eagerly. Then the light died out of his face and he ended with a shrug.

Helen put up her hand with an impulsive gesture, as if about to speak.

Then letting her arms fall by her side, she turned to unlock the studio door, which by this time they had reached.

The bas-relief was still shrouded in its damp envelopes, which Helen carefully removed, keeping Fenton away, that he might first see the work as a whole, and not lose its legitimate effect by catching fragmentary glimpses as it was uncovered. When at last it was fully disclosed, she called him to her as she stood before it.

"By Jove! That's stunning!" he exclaimed, after an instant's pause, which gave him time to see it fairly. "Helen, you have outdone yourself! That figure is simply superb. I hadn't an idea you would come out so well. I'm wonderfully proud of you."

"You are more amiable than ever," she responded; but her flushed cheek showed that she was touched by his earnest praise. "For that figure I have to thank Ninitta's posing. She is an inspiration."

"But Ninitta did not inspire that splendid head," observed Arthur, pointing with his cane at the December, "and you evidently did that _con amore_. By Jove! It's Grant Herman, as I live!"

As he spoke he turned and saw Ninitta on the threshold.

"Shall you want me to-day?" the latter asked of Helen.

"What made that girl look so savage?" Fenton questioned as the door closed behind the model.

"She perhaps chooses to be jealous of me," Helen replied composedly.

"_Elle a peutetre raison_."

"Perhaps."

"You say that too calmly by half," was his gay response. "Yet as every work a woman does has a man for its end--I learned that from the cla.s.sics; Penelope, you know, and even washwoman Nausicaa--I suppose it is fair to a.s.sume this had. Only who is the man?"

Helen flushed slightly. She recalled the ambition with which she had begun this work, to make the man beside her praise its completion; and she was conscious that before she finished it was the praise of Herman for which she strove.

"It is filthy lucre that inspires me," she replied steadily. "I need no other incentive."

They walked about the studio, talking of the bas-relief as seen from different points; of how it was to be cut for firing; and on the safe ground of art they forgot all personal constraints, until the striking of a clock aroused Fenton to a sense of the flight of time.

"I must go," he said. "I am no end glad I came. The truth is I am not very well acquainted with this married man, and it is comfortable to slip back occasionally into a familiar bachelor mood. However," he continued with his brightest smile, "I like the Bened.i.c.k far better than I should ever have dreamed possible; and his wife is charming. And I want to say, too," he added, "that I have a thousand times thanked you for taking that vial before I went to be married. I'm in a spasm of virtuousness just now, and it is pleasant to remember that I did not have it that day."

They went down stairs and out into the soft, spring-like day, sauntering homeward in a happy and accordant mood. Arthur urged Helen's going home to lunch with himself and Edith, but to Helen the morning was far too precious to be ended in a possibly inharmonious meeting with Mrs. Fenton.

And that afternoon Herman sent for Mrs. Greyson in all haste. Ninitta had vented her jealous rage upon the bas-relief, destroying the head of December which she heard Fenton say must have been done _con amore_, and the beautiful May for which she herself had posed.

XIX.