第37章 THE RECKONING August, 1902(1)

I

"The marriage law of the new dispensation will be: THOU SHALT NOT BE UNFAITHFUL--TO THYSELF."A discreet murmur of approval filled the studio, and through the haze of cigarette smoke Mrs.Clement Westall, as her husband descended from his improvised platform, saw him merged in a congratulatory group of ladies.Westall's informal talks on "The New Ethics" had drawn about him an eager following of the mentally unemployed--those who, as he had once phrased it, liked to have their brain-food cut up for them.The talks had begun by accident.Westall's ideas were known to be "advanced," but hitherto their advance had not been in the direction of publicity.He had been, in his wife's opinion, almost pusillanimously careful not to let his personal views endanger his professional standing.Of late, however, he had shown a puzzling tendency to dogmatize, to throw down the gauntlet, to flaunt his private code in the face of society; and the relation of the sexes being a topic always sure of an audience, a few admiring friends had persuaded him to give his after-dinner opinions a larger circulation by summing them up in a series of talks at the Van Sideren studio.

The Herbert Van Siderens were a couple who subsisted, socially, on the fact that they had a studio.Van Sideren's pictures were chiefly valuable as accessories to the mise en scene which differentiated his wife's "afternoons" from the blighting functions held in long New York drawing- rooms, and permitted her to offer their friends whiskey-and-soda instead of tea.Mrs.Van Sideren, for her part, was skilled in making the most of the kind of atmosphere which a lay-figure and an easel create; and if at times she found the illusion hard to maintain, and lost courage to the extent of almost wishing that Herbert could paint, she promptly overcame such moments of weakness by calling in some fresh talent, some extraneous re-enforcement of the "artistic" impression.It was in quest of such aid that she had seized on Westall, coaxing him, somewhat to hiswife's surprise, into a flattered participation in her fraud.It was vaguely felt, in the Van Sideren circle, that all the audacities were artistic, and that a teacher who pronounced marriage immoral was somehow as distinguished as a painter who depicted purple grass and a green sky.The Van Sideren set were tired of the conventional color- scheme in art and conduct.

Julia Westall had long had her own views on the immorality of marriage; she might indeed have claimed her husband as a disciple.In the early days of their union she had secretly resented his disinclination to proclaim himself a follower of the new creed; had been inclined to tax him with moral cowardice, with a failure to live up to the convictions for which their marriage was supposed to stand.That was in the first burst of propagandism, when, womanlike, she wanted to turn her disobedience into a law.Now she felt differently.She could hardly account for the change, yet being a woman who never allowed her impulses to remain unaccounted for, she tried to do so by saying that she did not care to have the articles of her faith misinterpreted by the vulgar.In this connection, she was beginning to think that almost every one was vulgar; certainly there were few to whom she would have cared to intrust the defence of so esoteric a doctrine.And it was precisely at this point that Westall, discarding his unspoken principles, had chosen to descend from the heights of privacy, and stand hawking his convictions at the street-corner!

It was Una Van Sideren who, on this occasion, unconsciously focussed upon herself Mrs.Westall's wandering resentment.In the first place, the girl had no business to be there.It was "horrid"--Mrs.Westall found herself slipping back into the old feminine vocabulary--simply "horrid" to think of a young girl's being allowed to listen to such talk.The fact that Una smoked cigarettes and sipped an occasional cocktail did not in the least tarnish a certain radiant innocency which made her appear the victim, rather than the accomplice, of her parents' vulgarities.Julia Westall felt in a hot helpless way that something ought to be done--that some one ought to speak to the girl's mother.And just then Una glided up.

"Oh, Mrs.Westall, how beautiful it was!" Una fixed her with large limpid eyes."You believe it all, I suppose?" she asked with seraphicgravity.

"All--what, my dear child?"

The girl shone on her."About the higher life--the freer expansion of the individual--the law of fidelity to one's self," she glibly recited.

Mrs.Westall, to her own wonder, blushed a deep and burning blush."My dear Una," she said, "you don't in the least understand what it's allabout!"

Miss Van Sideren stared, with a slowly answering blush."Don't YOU, then?" she murmured.