The Philistines | Page 5

call on Mrs. Stewart Hubbard
this afternoon, and Mr. Hubbard is going to have you paint him. Isn't
that good?"
Her husband looked up in evident pleasure.
"That isn't so bad," was his reply. "He'll make a stunning picture, and
the Hubbards are precisely the sort of people one likes to have dealings
with. Is he going at it soon?"
"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