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Nellie L. McClung - "Sowing Seeds in Danny"

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The Philistines

A >> Arlo Bates >> The Philistines



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THE PHILISTINES

BY

ARLO BATES







The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
_All's Well that Ends Well_; iv.--3




DEDICATION.


To my three friends who, by generously acting as amanuenses,
have made it possible that the book should be finished, I take
pleasure in gratefully dedicating




"This is no square temple to the gate of which thou canst
arrive precipitately; this is no mosque to which thou canst come
with tumult but without knowledge."
_Persian Religious Hymn_.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER

I. IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING
II. SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE
III. IN WAY OF TASTE
IV. NOW HE IS FOR THE NUMBERS
V. 'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL
VI. THE INLY TOUCH OF LOVE
VII. THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME
VIII. A NECESSARY EVIL
IX. THIS IS NOT A BOON
X. THE BITTER PAST
XI. THE GREAT ASSAY OF ART
XII. WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED
XIII. THIS "WOULD" CHANGES
XIV. THE SHOT OF ACCIDENT
XV. LIKE COVERED FIRE
XVI. WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE
XVII. THE HEAVY MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
XVIII. HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY
XIX. HOW CHANCES MOCK
XX. VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE
XXI. A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN
XXII. HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH
XXIII. AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND
XXIV. THERE BEGINS CONFUSION
XXV. AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT
XXVI. O, WICKED WIT AND GIFT
XXVII. UPON A CHURCH BENCH
XXVIII. BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE
XXIX. CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH
XXX. THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED
XXXI. PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP
XXXII. HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY
XXXIII. A BOND OF AIR
XXXIV. WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED
XXXV. HEARTSICK WITH THOUGHT
XXXVI. FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL AND EVER
XXXVII. A SYMPATHY OF WOE




THE PHILISTINES


I


IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING.
I Henry IV.; v.--I.

When Arthur Fenton, the most outspoken of all that band of protesting
spirits who had been so well known in artistic Boston as the Pagans,
married Edith Caldwell, there had been in his mind a purpose, secret
but well defined, to turn to his own account his wife's connection with
the Philistine art patrons of the town. Miss Caldwell was a niece of
Peter Calvin, a wealthy and well-meaning man against whom but two grave
charges could be made,--that he supposed the growth of art in this
country to depend largely upon his patronage, and that he could never
be persuaded not to take himself seriously. Mr. Calvin was regarded by
Philistine circles in Boston as a sort of re-incarnation of Apollo,
clothed upon with modern enlightenment, and properly arrayed in
respectable raiment. Had it been pointed out that to make this theory
probable it was necessary to conceive of the god as having undergone
mentally much the same metamorphosis as that which had transformed his
flowing vestments into trousers, his admirers would have received the
remark as highly complimentary to Mr. Peter Calvin. To assume identity
between their idol and Apollo would be immensely flattering to the son
of Latona.

Fenton understood perfectly the weight and extent of Calvin's
influence, yet, in determining to profit by it, he did not in the least
deceive himself as to the nature of his own course.

"Honesty," he afterward confessed to his friend Helen Greyson, who
scorned him for the admission, "is doubtless a charming thing for
digestive purposes, but it is a luxury too expensive for me. The gods
in this country bid for shams, and shams I purpose giving them."

So well did he carry out his intention, that in a few years he came to
be the fashionable portrait-painter of the town; the artist to whom
people went who rated the worth of a picture by the amount they were
required to pay for it, and the reputation of the painter in
conventional circles; the man to whom a Boston society woman inevitably
turned when she wished the likeness of her charms preserved on canvas,
and when no foreigner was for the moment in vogue and on hand.

The steps by which Fenton attained to this proud eminence were obvious
enough. In the first place, he persuaded Mr. Calvin to sit to him. Mr.
Calvin always sat to the portrait painters whom he endorsed. This was a
sort of official recognition, and the results, as seen in the
needlessly numerous likenesses of the gentleman which adorned his
Beacon Hill mansion, would have afforded a cynic some amusement, and
not a little food for reflection. Once launched under distinguished
patronage, Fenton was clever enough to make his way. He really was able
to paint well when he chose, a fact which was, on the whole, of less
importance in his artistic career than were the adroitness of his
address, and his ready and persuasive sympathy. The qualifications of a
fashionable doctor, a fashionable clergyman, and a fashionable
portrait-painter are much the same; it is only in the man-milliner that
skill is demanded in addition to the art of pleasing.

As usually happens in such a case, Fenton's old friends avoided him, or
found themselves left in the distance by his rapid strides toward fame
and fortune. Then such of them as still came in contact with him made
his acquaintance in a new character, and learned to accept him as a
wholly different man from the one they had supposed themselves to know
in the days when he was never weary of pouring forth tirades against
the Philistinism he had now embraced. They admired the skill with which
he painted stuffs and gowns, but among themselves they agreed that the
old-time vigor and sincerity were painfully lacking in his work; and if
they grumbled sometimes at the prices he got, it is only just to
believe that it was seldom with any real willingness to pay, in the
sacrifice of convictions and ideals, the equivalent which he had given
for his popularity.

Fenton was one morning painting, in his luxuriously appointed studio,
the portrait of a man who was in the prime of life, and over whom
vulgar prosperity had, in forming him, left everywhere her finger marks
plainly to be seen. He was tall and robust, with light eyes and blonde
whiskers, and a general air of insisting upon his immense superiority
to all the world. That he secretly felt some doubts of the perfection
of his social knowledge, there were indications in his manner, but on
the whole the complacency of a portly bank account overcame all
misgivings of this sort. His character might have been easily inferred
from the manner in which he now set his broad shoulders expansively
back in the armchair in which he was posing, and regarded the artist
with a patronizing air of condescending to be wonderfully entertained
by his conversation.

"You are the frankest fellow I ever saw," he said, smiling broadly.

"Oh, frank," Fenton responded; "I am too frank. It will be the ruin of
me sooner or later. It all comes of being born with a habit of being
too honest with myself."

"Honesty with yourself is generally held up as a cardinal virtue."

"Nonsense. A man is a fool who is too frank with himself; he is always
sure to end by being too frank with everybody else, just from mere
habit."

Mr. Irons smiled more broadly still. He by no means followed all
Fenton's vagaries of thought, but they tickled his mental cuticle
agreeably. The artist had the name of being a clever talker, and with
such a listener this was more than half the battle. The men who can
distinguish the real quality of talk are few and far to seek; most
people receive what is said as wit and wisdom, or the reverse, simply
because they are assured it is the one or the other; and Alfred Irons
was of the majority in this.

Fenton painted in silence a moment, inwardly possessed of a desire to
caricature, or even to paint in all its ugliness, the vulgar mouth upon
which he was working. The desire, however, was not sufficiently strong
to restrain him from the judicious flattery of cleverly softening and
refining the coarse lips, and he was conscious of a faint amusement at
the incongruity between his thought and his action.

"And there is the added disadvantage," he continued the conversation as
he glanced up and saw that his sitter's face was quickly, in the
silence, falling into a heavy repose, "that frankness begets frankness.
My sitters are always telling me things which I do not want to know,
just because I am so beastly outspoken and sympathetic."

"You must have an excellent chance to get pointers," responded the
sitter, his pale eyes kindling with animation. "You've painted two or
three men this winter that could have put you up to a good thing."

"That isn't the sort of line chat takes in a studio," Fenton returned,
with a slight shrug. "It isn't business that men talk in a studio. That
would be too incongruous."

Irons sneered and laughed, with an air of consequence and superiority.

"I don't suppose many of you artist fellows would make much of a fist
at business," he observed.

"Modern business," laughed the other, amused by his own epigram, "is
chiefly the art of transposing one's debts. The thing to learn is how
to pass the burden of your obligations from one man's shoulders to
those of another often enough so that nobody who has them gets tired
out, and drops them with a crash."

His sitter grinned appreciatively.

"And they don't tell you how to do this?"

"Oh, no. The things my sitters tell me about are of a very different
sort. They make to me confidences they want to get rid of; things you'd
rather not hear. Heavens! I have all I can do to keep some men from
treating me like a priest and confessing all their sins to me."

Mr. Irons regarded the artist closely, with a curious narrowing of the
eyes.

"That must give you a hold over a good many of them," he said. "I shall
be careful what I say."

Fenton laughed, with a delightful sense of superiority. It amused him
that his sitter should be betraying his nature at the very moment when
he fancied himself particularly on his guard.

"You certainly have no crimes on your conscience that interfere with
your digestion," was his reply; "but in any case, you may make yourself
easy; I am not a blackmailer by profession."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," Mr. Irons answered, easily; "only of course
you are a man who has his living to make. Every painter has to depend
on his wits, and when you come in contact with men of another class
professionally it would be natural enough to suppose you would take
advantage of it."

The "lady's finger" in Fenton's cheek stood out white amid the sudden
red, and his eyes flashed.

"Of course a sitter," he said in an even voice, which had somehow lost
all its smooth sweetness, "is in a manner my guest, and the fact that
his class was not up to mine, or that he wasn't a gentleman even,
wouldn't excuse my taking advantage of him."

The other flushed in his turn. He felt the keenness of the retort, but
he was not dexterous enough to parry it, and he took refuge in coarse
bullying.

"Come, now, Fenton," he cried with a short, explosive laugh, "you talk
like a gentleman."

But the artist, knowing himself to have the better of the other, and
not unmindful, moreover, of the fact that to offend Alfred Irons might
mean a serious loss to his own pocket, declined to take offence.

"Of course," he answered lightly, and with the air of one who
appreciates an intended jest so subtile that only cleverness would have
comprehended it, "that is one of the advantages I have always found in
being one. I think I needn't keep you tied down to that chair any
longer to-day. Come here and see how you think we are getting on."

And the sitter forgot quickly that he had been on the very verge of a
quarrel.




II

SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE.
Measure for Measure; v.--I.

When dinner was announced that night, Mrs. Arthur Fenton had not
appeared, but presently she came into the room with that guilty and
anxious look which marks the consciousness of social misdemeanors. She
was dressed in a gown of warm primrose plush, softened by draperies of
silver-gray net. It was a costume which her husband had designed for
her, and which set off beautifully her brown hair and creamy white
skin.

"I hope I have not kept you waiting long," she said, "but I wanted to
dress for Mrs. Frostwinch's before dinner, and I was late about getting
home."

There was a certain wistfulness in her manner which betrayed her
anxiety lest he should be vexed at the trifling delay. Arthur Fenton
was too well bred to be often openly unkind to anybody, but none the
less was his wife afraid of his displeasure. He was one of those men
who have the power of making their disapproval felt from the simple
fact that they feel it so strongly themselves. The most oppressive of
domestic tyrants are by no means those who vent their ill-nature in
open words. The man who strenuously insists to himself upon his will,
and cherishes in silence his dislike of whatever is contrary to it, is
oftener a harder man to live with than one who is violently outspoken.
Fenton was hardly conscious of the absolute despotism with which he
ruled his home, but his wife was too susceptible to his moods not to
feel keenly the unspoken protest with which he met any infringement
upon his wishes or his pleasure. Tonight he was in good humor, and his
sense of beauty was touched by the loveliness of her appearance.

"Oh, it is no matter," he answered lightly. "How stunning you look.
That topaz," he continued, walking toward her, and laying his finger
upon the single jewel she wore fastened at the edge of the square-cut
corsage of her gown, "is exactly right. It is so deep in color that it
gives the one touch you need. It was uncommonly nice of your Uncle
Peter to give it to you."

"And of you to design a dress to set it off," returned she, smiling
with pleasure. "I am glad you like me in it."

"You are stunning," her husband repeated, kissing her with a faint
shade of patronage in his manner. "Now come on before the dinner is as
cold as a stone. A cold dinner is like a warmed-over love affair; you
accept it from a sense of duty, but there is no enjoyment in it."

Mrs. Fenton smiled, more from pleasure at his evident good nature than
from any especial amusement, and they went together into the pretty
dining-room.

Fenton acknowledged himself fond of the refinements of life, and his
sensitive, sensuous nature lost none of the delights of a well-
appointed home. He lived in a quiet and elegant luxury which would have
been beyond the attainment of most artists, and which indeed not
infrequently taxed his resources to the utmost.

The table at which the pair sat down was laid with exquisite damask and
china, the dinner admirable and well served. The dishes came in hot,
the maid was deft and comely in appearance, and the master of the
house, who always kept watch, in a sort of involuntary self-
consciousness, of all that went on about him, was pleasantly aware that
the most fastidious of his friends could have found nothing amiss in
the appointment or the service of his table. How much the perfect
arrangement of domestic affairs demanded from his wife, Fenton found it
more easy and comfortable not to inquire, but he at least appreciated
the results of her management. He never came to accept the smallest
trifles of life without emotion. His pleasure or annoyance depended
upon minute details, and things which people in general passed without
notice were to him the most important facts of daily life. The
responsibility for the comfort of so highly organized a creature, Edith
had found to be anything but a light burden. Only a wife could have
appreciated the pleasure she had in having the most delicate shades in
her domestic management noted and enjoyed; or the discomfort which
arose from the same source. It was delightful to have her husband
pleased by the smallest pains she took for his comfort; to know that
his eye never failed to discover the little refinements of dress or
cookery or household adornment; but wearing was the burden of
understanding, too, that no flaw was too small to escape his sight.
Mrs. Fenton's friends rallied her upon being a slave to her
housekeeping; few of them were astute enough to understand that, kind
as was always his manner toward her, she was instead the slave of her
husband.

The room in which they were dining was one in which the artist took
especial pleasure. He had panelled it with stamped leather, which he
had picked up somewhere in Spain; while the ceiling was covered with a
novel and artistic arrangement of gilded matting. Among Edith's wedding
gifts had been some exquisite jars of Moorish pottery, and these, with
a few pieces of Algerian armor, were the only ornaments which the
artist had admitted to the room. The simplicity and richness of the
whole made an admirable setting for the dinner table, and as the host
when he entertained was willing to take the trouble of overlooking his
wife's arrangements, the Fentons' dinner parties were among the most
picturesquely effective in Boston.

"I have two big pieces of news for you," Mrs. Fenton said, when the
soup had been removed. "I have been to 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
mind than abstract theories, and she was considering what he had told
her of Mrs. Greyson and Grant Herman, a sculptor for whom she had a
warm admiration, and a no less strong liking.

However we busy ourselves with high aims, with learning, or art, or
wisdom, or ethics, personal human interests appeal to us more strongly
than anything else. Human emotions respond instinctively and quickly to
any hint of the emotional life of others. Nothing more strikingly shows
the essential unity of the race than the readiness with which all minds
lay aside all concerns and ideas which they are accustomed to consider
higher, to give attention to the trifling details of the intimate
history of their fellows. Quite unconsciously, Edith had gathered up
many facts, insignificant in themselves, concerning the relations of
Mrs. Greyson and Herman, and she now found herself suddenly called upon
to reconsider whatever conclusions they had led her to in the light of
this new development. The sculptor's marriage with an ex-model had
always been a mystery to her, and she now endeavored to decide in her
mind whether it were possible that her husband could be right in
putting the responsibility upon Helen Greyson. The form of his remark
seemed to her to hint that the Italian's claim upon Herman had been of
so grave a nature as to imply serious complications in their former
relations; but she strenuously rejected any suspicion of evil in the
sculptor's conduct.

"I am sure, Arthur," she said, hesitatingly, "there can have been
nothing wrong between Mr. Herman and Ninitta. I have too much faith in
him."

"To put faith in man," was his answer, "is only less foolish than to
believe in woman. I didn't, however, mean to imply anything very
dreadful. The facts are enough, without speculating on what is nobody's
business but theirs. I wonder how he and Helen will get on together,
now she is coming home? Mrs. Herman is a jealous little thing, and
could easily be roused up to do mischief."

"I do not believe Helen had anything to do with their marriage," Edith
said, with conviction. "It was a mistake from the outset."

"Granted. That is what makes it so probable that Helen did it. Grant
isn't the man to make a fool of himself without outside pressure, and
in the end a sacrifice to principle is always some ridiculous
tomfoolery that can't be come at in any other way. However, we shall
see what we shall see. What time are you going to Mrs. Frostwinch's?"

"I am going to the Browning Club at Mrs. Gore's first. Will you come?"

"Thank you, no. I have too much respect for Browning to assist at his
dismemberment. I'll meet you at Mrs. Frostwinch's about ten."




III

IN WAY OF TASTE.
Troilus and Cressida; iii.--3.

One of the most curious of modern whims in Boston has been the study of
the poems of Robert Browning. All at once there sprang up on every hand
strange societies called Browning Clubs, and the libraries were
ransacked for Browning's works, and for the books of whoever has had
the conceit or the hardihood to write about the great poet. Lovely
girls at afternoon receptions propounded to each other abstruse
conundrums concerning what they were pleased to regard as obscure
passages, while little coteries gathered, with airs of supernatural
gravity, to read and discuss whatever bore his signature.

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