BOOK I MASTER OF FATE (continued 3)

“No; they sailed for home last week.”

“Why don’t you stay in Florence for a while and help Helen exercise the automobile?” suggested Armstrong. “Miss Thayer and I are working every day at the library, and it will prevent her becoming lonesome.”

Helen looked inquiringly at her husband. This suggestion from him, and to Phil Emory of all men! The times had indeed altered! She saw that Emory was observing her, and felt the necessity of relieving the tension.

“You must not put it on that score, Jack,” she said, quietly. “I am not at all lonely, but I should be very glad to have Phil join us to-morrow. What do you say, Phil?”

“I should like nothing better. But tell me about this work, Armstrong. Are you really boning down to arduous labor on your honeymoon?”

“It is a bit out of the ordinary, is it not?” admitted Jack, uncertain whether or not Emory’s question contained a reproach. “I would not dare do it with any one except Helen, but she understands the necessity. I don’t know when I shall get another chance.”

“Jack is accomplishing wonders in his work,” explained Helen, anxious to have Emory feel her entire sympathy; “you must have him tell you about it. In the mean time, while he is improving himself mentally, Uncle Peabody and I are entering somewhat into the social frivolities of Florence. To-morrow we are going to a reception to be given to the Count of Turin and the Florentine Dante Society at the Villa Londi. Jack scorns these functions, but you will be quite in your element. We will take you with us.”

“It is not that I ‘scorn’ these things, as you say, Helen,” protested Armstrong. “You give any one an entirely wrong idea. They are all right enough in their own way, but I can get these at home. This chance at the library, however, is one in a lifetime, and I feel that I must improve it.”

“Of course,” replied Helen, “that is what I meant to say.”

Emory glanced from one to the other quietly. “I shall be most happy to go if you are quite sure I won’t interfere with the plans you have already made. You know I am not on speaking terms with Italian.”

“You won’t have to be,” Uncle Peabody assured him. “These Italians speak English so well that you will be ashamed of your ignorance. You will have no difficulty in making yourself understood.”

Helen was rebellious at heart that Jack should have suggested Emory to relieve her loneliness. It was enough that he was willing to be away from her so much without taking it for granted and referring to it in such a matter-of-fact way. Inez as well came in for her share of the resentment, her very silence during the discussion serving to aggravate Helen’s discomfiture. Helen deliberately turned the conversation.

“I can’t help thinking of poor Ferdy, Phil. Have you heard from him since you left him at Aix?”

“No, but I should have heard if all had not been going well.”

“What is the matter with De Peyster?” asked Armstrong.

“Oh, you did not hear what Phil told me about him before dinner, Jack. He has been very ill, and Phil took him over to Aix for a cure.”

It was the first time De Peyster’s name had been mentioned since his abrupt departure, and Inez flushed deeply as she listened.

“What was the trouble, Emory?” asked Armstrong, innocently.

“He came pretty near having pneumonia,” replied Emory. “He was hard hit with a girl somewhere over here, and was thrown down, I suspect. Then he grew careless and was a pretty sick chap when I ran across him in Paris.”

Armstrong had no idea of the result of his question. He glanced hastily at Inez and gulped down half a glass of wine, nearly choking himself in the process.

“There you go!” exclaimed Uncle Peabody, quite understanding the situation and wishing to relieve the embarrassment. “You will drown yourself one of these fine days if you don’t listen to my teachings and profit by Mr. Emory’s example.”

But Emory was quite unconscious of the delicate ground upon which he trod. The days and nights he had spent with De Peyster were still strongly impressed upon his mind.

“I thought you might know something about this, Helen,” he continued, “for Ferdy mentioned your name and Miss Thayer’s several times while he was delirious. I could not make out anything he said, he was so incoherent. Later, when he began to improve, I asked him about it, but he evidently did not care to talk. But how stupid I have been!” He broke off suddenly and turned to Miss Thayer. “Here I have been sitting beside you all this time and never once offered my congratulations!”

Inez drew back from the proffered hand. The color left her face as suddenly as it had come. “What do you mean?” she stammered.

“Why, De Peyster told me you were engaged,” Emory said, quite taken aback. “Have I said something I ought not to? He said you told him so.”

“Mr. De Peyster had no right to say that!” Inez cried, fiercely, almost breaking into tears.

Emory was most contrite. “Ten thousand pardons,” he apologized. “You must forgive me, Miss Thayer. Ferdy never suggested that it was a secret at all—and now I have given the whole thing away!”

Emory wished himself half-way across the Atlantic.

“I am very much annoyed,” replied Inez, still struggling to contain herself—“not with you, but with Mr. De Peyster.”

“But she is not engaged,” Armstrong insisted, with decision.

“I think Inez had better be left to settle that point herself, Jack,” Helen interrupted, pointedly.

“Then why does she not settle it?”

“I will settle it.” Inez sat up very straight in her chair, her tense features making her face look drawn in its ashy paleness.

“Jack has no right to force you into any such position, Inez,” Helen protested, indignantly; “he is forgetting himself.”

“De Peyster is responsible for the whole thing.” Emory struggled to step in between the clash of arms. “I recall the very words. ‘Phil, old chap,’ he said, ‘you remember Miss Thayer? She is engaged. She told me she had found some one whom she loved better than her life.’ Can you blame me for making such a consummate ass of myself?”

Armstrong’s intense interest had taken him too deeply into the affair for him to heed Helen’s protests.

“You never said anything of the kind, did you, Miss Thayer?”

“I am not engaged,” replied Inez, very firmly, “and I cannot understand why Mr. De Peyster should have put me in this uncomfortable position.”

“Of course not,” assented Armstrong, with evident satisfaction. “De Peyster is a fool. I will tell him so the next time I see him.”

“I think we had better change the subject,” said Helen, rising, her face flushed with indignation. “The methods of the Inquisition have no place at a modern dinner-table.”

XI

Inez Thayer had congratulated herself upon her success in keeping her secret. Since her searching self-examination and the harrowing experience during De Peyster’s brief visit she had spent many hours inwardly debating the proper steps to take in order to solve her problem. She was certain that no one knew the real state of affairs, and with this certainty the only danger lay in its effect upon herself. But she knew all too well that this danger was indeed a real one. Day by day her admiration for Armstrong increased, and with that admiration her affection waxed stronger and stronger. Those hours together at the library—when they were quite alone, when his face, in their joint absorption in their work, almost touched hers, when his hand rested unconsciously for a moment upon her own—were to her moments in the Elysian Fields, and she quaffed deeply of the intoxicating draught. What harm, she argued to herself, since her companion was oblivious to her hidden sentiments—what disloyalty to her friend, since the pain must all be hers? And the pain was hers already—why not revel in its ecstasy while it lasted?

With her conscience partially eased by her labored conclusions, Inez threw herself into a complete enjoyment of her work. Helen’s attitude toward her had not in any way altered, and she was still apparently entirely agreeable to the arrangement. Her suggestion to join them in their labors was the only evidence which Inez had seen that perhaps her friend was becoming restless, even though not ready to raise any objections; but when Helen herself gave up the idea, after her single visit to the library, Inez was convinced that she had misunderstood her motive. Nothing remained, therefore, but to accept her previous argument that she was simply following the inexorable guidance of Fate, with herself the only possible victim. It was uncomfortable, it was wearing, but she could not, she repeated over and over again, remove herself from the exquisite suffering of her surroundings until she was absolutely obliged to do so.

The episode at the dinner-table completely shattered the structure she had built, and its sudden demolition stunned her. This she vaguely realized as she and Helen left the men at the table and walked to the veranda for their coffee. Their departure was in itself an evidence of new and strained conditions, as both Helen and Jack regarded the coffee-and-cigar period as the best part of every dinner and a part to be enjoyed together. Helen had not yet acquired the Continental cigarette habit, but, as she had once expressed it, “Men are so good-natured right after dinner, when they are stuffed, and so happy when they are making silly little clouds of smoke!”

Inez hesitatingly passed her arm around her friend’s waist, and when Helen drew her closely to her she rested her head against her shoulder, relaxing like a tired child.

“Who would have expected this outcome of such a happy day?” Inez queried, sadly, as the two girls seated themselves upon the wicker divan.

“Jack was a brute!” exclaimed Helen, almost savagely.

“It is all my own fault, Helen; but I could not tell them so in there.”

Helen appeared astonished. “How do you mean? Are you really engaged, after all?”

“No, no, Helen; but you see when Ferdy urged me so hard for an answer I had to tell him something.”

Inez glanced up at Helen to see how she took her explanation.

“So you told him you were engaged?”

“Not exactly that, but—”

“That you loved some one better than your life?”

Inez shrank a little as she answered. “Something like that,” she admitted.

“And it was not true?”

Inez laughed nervously. “What an absurd question, Helen! You know I have seen almost no one since I came here.”

“Except Jack,” said Helen, impulsively.

Inez sprang to her feet. “What do you mean, Helen? You don’t accuse me of being in love with your husband, do you?”

Helen pulled her down beside her again. “Don’t be tragic, dear,” she said, quietly. “I admit that the suggestion is unkind, after the display Jack made of himself at the table. I am provoked with him myself.”

“Helen,”—Inez spoke abruptly, after a moment’s silence—“I think I ought to leave Florence.”

“Don’t be absurd, Inez. You are worked up over this miserable affair, but you will forget all about it in the morning—when you get back to your work at the library.”

“No; this time I really mean what I say. I ought to have gone when my visit was up a fortnight ago; but you were so sweet in urging me to stay, and the work had developed with such increasing interest, that I have just stayed on and on.”

“I am sorry if you regret having stayed, dear. It certainly seemed to be for the best.”

“But see what it has brought on you, Helen.”

“I am not proud of my husband’s behavior, I admit; but you have even greater cause to feel annoyed than I.”

Inez seemed to be drifting hopelessly in her attempt to find the right thing to say.

“I have felt that I ought to go for a long time.”

“A long time?” Helen echoed. “Has Jack behaved as badly as this before?”

“Not that; it is the library work which makes me feel so.”

“I don’t wonder you are getting tired of it.”

“Tired of it! Oh, Helen, I wish you could get as much joy out of anything as I do out of this work. Tired of it!” Inez laughed aloud at the absurdity of the suggestion. Then she grew serious again. “I know I ought to leave it, yet I cannot force myself to make the break.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Helen, quietly, watching intently the struggle through which the girl was passing.

“I know you don’t, and I don’t believe I could make any one understand it,” replied Inez, helplessly.

“You talk about it in this mysterious way just as Jack does,” continued Helen. “There must be some sort of spell about it, for you both are changed beings since your first visit to the library.”

“Then you have noticed it?” Inez looked up anxiously.

“Of course I have noticed it,” admitted Helen, frankly. “How could I help it when you yourself feel it so strongly?”

“Do you blame me for it?”

“Why should I blame you, Inez? Is there any reason why I should blame any one?”

“No, except that the work takes your husband away from you so much.”

“But I can’t hold you responsible for that, can I? It is the work which draws you both, is it not—not each the other?”

Inez moved uneasily and withdrew her hand from Helen’s lap. “Of course it is the work,” she answered, quietly; “but, frankly, would you not rather have it discontinued?”

“No,” replied Helen, without hesitation; “but I sincerely wish Jack might be less completely absorbed by it. I have no intention of opposing it, and I am willing to sacrifice much for its success, yet I see no reason why it should so wholly deprive me of my husband.”

“It has opened up an entirely new world for me.” Inez seemed suddenly obsessed by a reminiscent thought. Her troubled expression changed into one of rapt ecstasy. Helen watched the transformation, deeply impressed by the strange new light which she saw in the girl’s eyes. “I must be more impressionable than I supposed,” she continued, “for it all seems so real. I can see Michelangelo’s face as I read his letters; I can see his lips move, his expression change—I can even hear his voice. I have watched him fashion the great David out of the discarded marble; I have heard his discussions with Pope Julius and Pope Leo; I have witnessed his struggle with Leonardo at the Palazzo Vecchio. The events come so fast, and the letters give such minute information upon so many topics, that I actually feel myself in the midst of it all. I know Vittoria Colonna as well as Michelangelo ever did, and I know far better than he why she refused to marry him. All these great characters, and others, live and move and converse with us these mornings at the library.” Inez paused to get her breath. She was talking very fast. “I know it sounds uncanny,” she went on, “but there is something in the very atmosphere which makes me forget who or what I am. Cerini comes and stands beside us, rubbing his hands together and smiling, and yet we hardly notice him. He is a part of it all. What he says seems no more real than the conversations and the communions we have with the others who died centuries ago. I realize how inexplicable all this must sound to you, because I find myself absolutely unable to explain it to myself. It must be a spell, as you say, but I have no strength to break it.”

“It must be something,” Helen admitted, gravely, “to affect both you and Jack the same way. I wonder what it is?”

Inez paid no heed to the interrogation. “You should see your husband, Helen, when he is at his work. You don’t really know him as you see him here.”

Helen felt herself impressed even more strongly than she had been during her visit to the library. Inez spoke with the same intensity and conviction which at that time had overwhelmed her previously conceived plans.

“Cerini said the same thing—” she began.

“Cerini is right,” Inez interrupted. “Your husband is a god among them all. He is not a mere student, searching for facts, but one of those great spirits themselves, looking into their lives and their characters with a power and an intimacy which only a contemporary and an equal could do. Cerini says that his book will be a masterpiece—that it will place him among the great savants of his time. No such work has been produced in years; and you will be so proud of him, Helen—so proud that he belongs to you! Is it not worth the sacrifice?”

As her friend paused Helen bowed her head in silence. “So proud that he belongs to you,” Inez had just said. Did he belong to her—had he ever belonged to her? The new light in Inez’ eyes, the intensity of her words, both convinced and controlled her. What was she, even though his wife, to stand in the way of such a championship? What were the conventions of commonplace domestic life in the presence of this all-compelling genius? She felt her resentment against Jack become unimportant. With such absorption it was but natural that he should not act like other men.

The sound of voices in the hall brought both girls to themselves.

“Dare we come out?” asked Uncle Peabody, cautiously, pausing at the door. “These back-sliders are very repentant, and I will vouch for their good behavior.”

“There is only one of us who requires forgiveness,” added Armstrong, frankly, advancing to the divan. “I owe you both an apology; first of all to my wife, for not heeding her good advice, and then to my ‘sister-worker,’ as Cerini calls her, for adding to her discomfiture.”

“If Inez will forgive you, I will cheerfully add my absolution,” replied Helen, forcing a smile.

“I was really afraid that I was going to lose my right-hand man,” continued Armstrong by way of explanation, “and my work must then have come to an abrupt conclusion.”

“You give me altogether too much credit,” replied Inez. “The work is already so much a part of yourself that you could not drop it if you lost a dozen ‘sister-workers.’”

“It must never come to that, Jack,” added Helen, seriously. “Inez will surely stay until the book is completed, and I shall do what little I can to help it to a glorious success.”

“You are a sweet, sympathizing little wife.” Armstrong placed his hand affectionately upon her shoulder. “Your interest in it will be all that I need to make it so.”

Emory and Uncle Peabody instinctively glanced at each other, and for a moment their eyes met. It was but an instant, yet in that brief exchange each knew where the other stood.