GERTRUDE ATHERTON
The
Bell in the Fog
And Other Stories
By
Gertrude Atherton
Author of
"Rulers of Kings" "The Conqueror" etc.
New York and London
Harper & Brothers
Publishers :: 1905
To
The Master
Henry James
Contents
III. THE DEAD AND THE COUNTESS
IV. THE GREATEST GOOD OF THE GREATEST NUMBER
V. A MONARCH OF A SMALL SURVEY
I
The Bell in the Fog
I
he great author had realized one of the dreams of his ambitious youth,the possession of an ancestral hall in England. It was not so much thegood American's reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing toconsort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation ofthe mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic aloofness of walls thathave sheltered, and furniture that has embraced, generations andgenerations of the dead. To mere wealth, only his astute andincomparably modern brain yielded respect; his ego raised itsgoose-flesh at the sight of rooms furnished with a single check,conciliatory as the taste might be. The dumping of the old interiors ofEurope into the glistening shells of the United States not only rousedhim almost to passionate protest, but offended his patriotism—which heclassified among his unworked ideals. The average American was not anartist, therefore he had no excuse for even the affectation ofcosmopolitanism. Heaven knew he was national enough in everything else,from his accent to his lack of repose; let his surroundings be inkeeping.
Orth had left the United States soon after his first successes, and, hisart being too great to be confounded with locality, he had long sinceceased to be spoken of as an American author. All civilized Europefurnished stages for his puppets, and, if never picturesque norimpassioned, his originality was as overwhelming as his style. Hissubtleties might not always be understood—indeed, as a rule, they werenot—but the musical mystery of his language and the penetrating charmof his lofty and cultivated mind induced raptures in the initiated,forever denied to those who failed to appreciate him.
His following was not a large one, but it was very distinguished. Thearistocracies of the earth gave to it; and not to understand and admireRalph Orth was deliberately to relegate one's self to the ranks. But theelect are few, and they frequently subscribe to the circulatinglibraries; on the Continent, they buy the Tauchnitz edition; and hadnot Mr. Orth inherited a sufficiency of ancestral dollars to enable himto keep rooms in Jermyn Street, and the wardrobe of an Englishman ofleisure, he might have been fo