His summer had been passed at Newport, a
place which Edith by no means liked, and where her ideas of propriety
and religion were constantly offended, especially in regard to the
sanctity of marriage. He entertained sumptuously, spent money freely at
the clubs, and, in a word, tried to be no less a man of fashion than an
artist.
The result was beginning to be disastrous. Living pretty closely up to
his income, a few losses and a speculation or two which turned out
unlucky, were sufficient to embarrass him seriously. It was the old
trite and dreary story of extravagance and its inevitable consequence;
and as Fenton had no talent for finance, his struggles rather made
matters worse than bettered them, as the efforts of a fly to escape
from the web, even although they may damage the net, are apt to end
also in binding the victim more securely.
The truth was that the painter, like many another man endowed with
imaginative gifts, had little practical knowledge of affairs beyond a
talent for spending money; and it is amazing how stupid a clever man
can contrive to be when he is taken out of his sphere. For such men
there is no safety save in keeping out of debt, and once the balance
was on the wrong side of his account, Fenton, self-poised as he was,
lost his head. It troubled and worried him to be in debt even when he
could see his way clear to paying everything, and now that matters
began to get too complicated to be settled by plain and obvious
arithmetic, he was miserable.
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