The Philistines | Page 8

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."
"You are grateful," Fenton returned, in the same tone. "You know I
kept you from being bored to death."
"I have a cousin, Miss Wainwright," pursued Miss Dimmont, "whose
picture we want you to paint."
"If she is as good a subject as her cousin," Fenton answered, "I shall be
delighted to do it."
The president had, meantime, got somewhat ponderously upon his feet,
half a century of good living not having tended to increase his natural
agility, and remarked that the company were, he was sure, extremely
grateful to Mr. Fenwick, for his very intelligent interpretation of the
poem read.
"Did he interpret it?" Fenton whispered to Mrs. Staggchase. "Why
wasn't I told?" "Hush!" she answered, "I will never let you sit by me
again if you do not behave better."
"Sitting isn't my metier, you know," he retorted.
The president went on to say that the lines of thought opened by the
poem were so various and so wide that they could scarcely hope to
explore them all in one evening, but that he was sure there must be
many who had thoughts or questions they wished to express, and to
start the discussion he would call upon a gentleman whom he had
observed taking notes during the reading, Mr. Fenton.
"The old scaramouch!" Fenton muttered, under his breath. "I'll paint his
portrait and send it to Punch."
Then with perfect coolness he got upon his feet and looked about the
parlor.
"I am so seldom able to come to these meetings," he said, "that I am not
at all familiar with your methods, and I certainly had no idea of saying
anything; I was merely jotting down a few things to think over at home,
and not making notes for a speech, as you would see if you examined
the paper."
At this point Miss Dimmont gave a cough which had a sound strangely

like a laugh strangled at its birth.
"The poem is one so subtile," Fenton continued, unmoved; "it is so
clever in its knowledge of human nature, that I always have to take a
certain time after reading it to get myself out of the mood of merely
admiring its technique, before I can think of it critically at all. Of
course the bit about 'an artist whose religion is his art' touches me
keenly, for I have long held to the heresy that art is the highest thing in
the world, and, as a matter of fact, the only thing one can depend upon.
The clever sophistry of Bishop Blougram shows well enough how one
can juggle with theology; and, after all, theology is chiefly some one
man's insistence that everybody else shall make the same mistakes that
he does."
Fenton felt that he was not taking the right direction in his talk, and that
in his anxiety to extricate himself from a slight awkwardness he was
rapidly getting himself into a worse one. It was one of those odd
whimsicalities which always came as a surprise when committed by a
man who usually displayed so much mental dexterity, that now, instead
of endeavoring to get upon the right track, he simply broke off abruptly
and sat down.
His words had, however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest
from the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the
Church of the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization with
which Mrs. Fenton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man,
with abundant auburn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and
hands, and eyes of eager enthusiasm, which showed how the result of
New England Puritanism had been to implant in his soul the true martyr
spirit. Fenton was never weary of jeering at Mr. Candish's uncouthness,
his jests serving as an outlet, not only for the irritation physical ugliness
always begot in him, but for his feeling of opposition to his wife's
orthodoxy, in which he regarded the clergyman as upholding her. The
rector's self-sacrificing devotion to truth, moreover, awakened in the
artist a certain inner discomfort. To the keenly sensitive mind there is
no rebuke more galling than the unconscious reproof of a character
which holds steadfastly to ideals which it has basely forsaken. Arthur
said to himself that he hated Candish for his ungainly person. "He is so
out of drawing," he once