The Bell in the Fog

The Bell in the Fog

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories
by Gertrude Atherton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
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Title: The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories
Author: Gertrude Atherton
Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #14256]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: GERTRUDE ATHERTON]
The
Bell in the Fog

And Other Stories
By Gertrude Atherton
Author of "Rulers of Kings" "The Conqueror" etc.
New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers :: 1905
To The Master
Henry James

Contents
I. THE BELL IN THE FOG
II. THE STRIDING PLACE
III. THE DEAD AND THE COUNTESS
IV. THE GREATEST GOOD OF THE GREATEST NUMBER
V. A MONARCH OF A SMALL SURVEY
VI. THE TRAGEDY OF A SNOB
VII. CROWNED WITH ONE CREST
VIII. DEATH AND THE WOMAN
IX. A PROLOGUE (TO AN UNWRITTEN PLAY)
X. TALBOT OF URSULA

I
The Bell in the Fog

I
The great author had realized one of the dreams of his ambitious youth,
the possession of an ancestral hall in England. It was not so much the
good American's reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to
consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation of the
mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic aloofness of walls that have
sheltered, and furniture that has embraced, generations and generations
of the dead. To mere wealth, only his astute and incomparably modern
brain yielded respect; his ego raised its goose-flesh at the sight of
rooms furnished with a single check, conciliatory as the taste might be.
The dumping of the old interiors of Europe into the glistening shells of
the United States not only roused him almost to passionate protest, but
offended his patriotism--which he classified among his unworked
ideals. The average American was not an artist, therefore he had no
excuse for even the affectation of cosmopolitanism. Heaven knew he
was national enough in everything else, from his accent to his lack of
repose; let his surroundings be in keeping.
Orth had left the United States soon after his first successes, and, his art
being too great to be confounded with locality, he had long since
ceased to be spoken of as an American author. All civilized Europe
furnished stages for his puppets, and, if never picturesque nor
impassioned, his originality was as overwhelming as his style. His
subtleties might not always be understood--indeed, as a rule, they were
not--but the musical mystery of his language and the penetrating charm
of his lofty and cultivated mind induced raptures in the initiated,
forever denied to those who failed to appreciate him.
His following was not a large one, but it was very distinguished. The
aristocracies of the earth gave to it; and not to understand and admire
Ralph Orth was deliberately to relegate one's self to the ranks. But the
elect are few, and they frequently subscribe to the circulating libraries;
on the Continent, they buy the Tauchnitz edition; and had not Mr. Orth
inherited a sufficiency of ancestral dollars to enable him to keep rooms
in Jermyn Street, and the wardrobe of an Englishman of leisure, he
might have been forced to consider the tastes of the middle-class at a

desk in Hampstead. But, as it mercifully was, the fashionable and
exclusive sets of London knew and sought him. He was too wary to
become a fad, and too sophisticated to grate or bore; consequently, his
popularity continued evenly from year to year, and long since he had
come to be regarded as one of them. He was not keenly addicted to
sport, but he could handle a gun, and all men respected his dignity and
breeding. They cared less for his books than women did, perhaps
because patience is not a characteristic of their sex. I am alluding,
however, in this instance, to men-of-the-world. A group of young
literary men--and one or two women--put him on a pedestal and kissed
the earth before it. Naturally, they imitated him, and as this flattered
him, and he had a kindly heart deep among the cere-cloths of his
formalities, he sooner or later wrote "appreciations" of them all, which
nobody living could understand, but which owing to the sub-title and
signature answered every purpose.
With all this, however, he was not utterly content. From the 12th of
August until late in the winter--when he did not go to Homburg and the
Riviera--he visited