Part 15 (1/2)
”Like learning to pick pockets,” she interpolated.
”Besides,” Herman continued, ”we over-estimated in the beginning both his character and his talent. He found he couldn't do what was expected of him, and he was weak enough to do then what was most comfortable instead of what seemed to him highest. It is what nine men out of ten do.”
”Of course,” Helen a.s.sented, ”but after all it has come about by his giving in on one thing after another. There was always a good deal that is attractive about him, but he never showed much moral stamina. He could never have married as he did if he had possessed fine instincts.”
”And his wife?” Ashe inquired.
”Oh, he married a New York girl, who”--
”There, there,” broke in Herman good-naturedly. ”It is just as well not to go into a characterization of Mrs. Rangely. I own that there isn't much good to be said of her; so it is as well to let her pa.s.s.”
”Well, so be it,” his wife a.s.sented, smiling. ”I have only to say,” she added, turning to her cousin, ”that when Grant declines to have a woman discussed it is equivalent to a condemnation more severe”--
”Nonsense,” protested Herman. ”Don't believe her, Ashe. As for Mrs.
Rangely, it's enough to say that she is merely an imitation in most things, and that she has called out the worst of her husband's nature instead of the best. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm afraid it's true.”
Mrs. Herman looked at him with a smile which seemed to tease him for having been betrayed into saying a thing so much more severe than were his usual judgments. Then with true feminine instinct she brought the talk back to its most significant point.
”Why did you ask about his wife?” she inquired of Philip.
”I--I did not know,” he returned, so evidently disconcerted that she did not press the matter.
Had Helen been a gossip she might have added that Rangely had acquired the reputation of being always philandering with some woman or other.
Before his marriage he had been the slave of Mrs. Staggchase, and now, after devotion to all sorts of society women, he had come to be counted as one of the train of admirers who offered their devotion at the shrine of Mrs. Wilson. Where a Frenchwoman prides herself on the intensity of the devotion of some man not her husband, an American of the same type glories in the number of slaves that her charms ensnare.
In either case the root of the matter is vanity rather than pa.s.sion.
The American fas.h.i.+on is at once the more demoralizing and the less dangerous. Mrs. Wilson in the early days of her married life had tried to make her husband jealous by allowing the desperate attentions of a single lover. She never repeated the experiment. The lover went abroad to recover from the sting of having been made hopelessly ridiculous, and Mrs. Wilson learned that in marrying she had found a master.
Fortunately she had married for love, and no woman loves a man less for finding him able to control her. In these days Mrs. Wilson amused himself by having a troop of admirers, and perhaps prided herself upon being able to outdo the wiles of the other women of her set in securing and holding her captives; but she discussed them with her husband with the utmost frankness, mocking them to their faces if they made a step across the line which she drew for them. They were kept in a state of marked but respectful admiration. It was expected of them that they should pretend to be consumed by a pa.s.sion as violent as they might please, but always a pa.s.sion which was hopeless, which asked for no reward but to be allowed to continue; which found in mere admission to her presence joy enough at least to keep it alive.
It may be that Rangely had more vanity than the rest of Mrs. Wilson's followers, or it may be that he was more resolute. Certain it is that he was more presuming than the rest, and that his devotion had not failed to produce a good deal of talk. Little as Mrs. Herman was accustomed to pay attention to social gossip, she had not failed to hear tattle about Elsie Wilson; and while she probably did not much heed it, she was at heart too conscientious not to feel shame and irritation. That a woman in the position of Mrs. Wilson should allow herself to give rise to vulgar gossip moved her to deep disapproval; while she could not but feel contempt for the man who neglected his own wife to wait upon the caprices of one whom Helen looked upon as a heartless and vain creature.
Behind the question which Ashe had asked about Rangely lay an incident which had occurred the day previous. He was now called upon to see Mrs.
Wilson frequently in relation to matters connected with the election, and with that instinct which was inborn she had carelessly exercised upon him her arts of fascination. There is a certain sort of woman in whom the mere presence of anything masculine awakens the rage for conquest. It is as impossible for such women not to exert their fascinations as it is for a magnet to cease to attract. It is the destiny of woman to love, and dangerous is she who is inspired only with the desire to be loved, the woman who instead of loving man loves love. Elsie was saved from being such a monster by the fact that she had a husband strong enough to subdue and control her nature; but nothing could prevent her from trying her wiles on every man she met.
Philip was too completely unsophisticated to understand, and too much absorbed by his pa.s.sion for another woman to respond to the cunning attractions of Mrs. Wilson; yet it is not impossible that she so far influenced him as to render him unconsciously jealous of another man.
He had surprised Rangely kissing the hand of that lady with an air of devotion so warm that the blood of the young deacon rose in resentment which he supposed to be entirely disapproval. He was in a state of mind which made him especially sensitive to any suggestion of love; and the sight of any man caressing the hand of a beautiful woman could not but set his heart throbbing with disconcerting rapidity. In his world even the touch of a woman's fingers was almost a forbidden thing, and to kiss them an act not to be so much as imagined. Philip dared not think, or to define to himself what significance he attached to this incident.
An unsophisticated man is often suspicious from the simple fact that he is forced to distrust his judgment. He is unable to estimate the value of appearances, and in the end often falls the victim of errors which might seem to arise from malevolence or low-mindedness, when in reality they are the inevitable fruit of ignorance.
As Philip stood confronted with Mrs. Wilson after Rangely had left the room it seemed to him that he read unspeakable things in her glance.
His clerical bias with its unholy blight of asceticism, his ignorance of the world, made him a victim of a misapprehension which brought the blood to his cheeks. His hostess looked at him curiously, and then burst into a laugh.
”Upon my word,” she cried, ”I believe you are shocked! You are really too delicious!”
He flushed hotter yet, and there came over him a helpless sense of being alike unable to understand this brilliant creature or to cope with her.
”But--but,” he stammered, ”I--I”--