Part 10

"Yes, I know, but there was nothing the matter, you see. Mrs. Case is here because Susanne thought she ought to have a few weeks in which to get accustomed to the house--"

"A few weeks--I don't know, Helen--" He looks anxious and doubtful. She says quickly:

"Yes, yes, Ed. A--few weeks--_I_ know," decisively and encouragingly. She has not been honest with him as to the time of her coming peril. She has had one wild desire to have him away, out of town, anywhere, that he may not be worried or annoyed by her; that the approach of the crisis may not interrupt his work.

Her tone reassures him, and he remembers his appointment, and that he will be late. He says, tenderly:

"I will be home soon, dear. I have an appointment with Grayson now, but will come home as soon as we are through."

She nods cheerfully, and says:

"All right! don't neglect anything for me, Ed--it is not necessary. Isn't to-night the affair at Dalget's?"

"Yes, but I'm not going."

She lays her hand on his arm appealingly:

"Go, Ed. Please go. I want you to. I--"

Suddenly she stops. Braine thinks, by the expression of her face that she is dying, it is so drawn and old, in a moment. She draws a long, quivering sigh of agony. Her fingers clutch his arm convulsively. She makes no sound, not the least moan, nothing but that sigh that goes to his heart.

Braine watches her, holding his breath. She has slipped to her knees, and is clinging with the grip of a strong man to him. He is panic stricken, horrified, and cries in an awful voice:

"Helen--Helen!" And she lies limp and white in his arms. He is quivering in every limb. He covers her moist hand with kisses. There are tears in his eyes, and he cries aloud with a groan: "Great God!"

Helen hears him and opens her eyes. She smiles dreamily, and makes a weak little movement to touch his face. She says in a faint, comfortable voice:

"It's over now, Ed. Go to Grayson."

His face grows harsh, and he says in a sudden fury:

"Damn Grayson!"

She smiles. There is a certain comfort in that ebullition. She lies on the divan, and Braine wanders around the room, aimlessly. The languor she feels is possessing him almost. He is oppressed with a sense of impending disaster and his utter helplessness in face of it.

The situation seems to become actual to him for the first time. He feels some frantic desire to avert this horrible something that must happen. He feels suddenly like a weak, helpless child, and is seized with a desire to throw himself at her feet, and weep and be comforted.

In another moment, he feels like a great, strong man, with a desire to throw his arms about her, and prove his power to avert every agony of hers. The next moment he is on his knees beside her, imploring forgiveness in an incoherent, frenzied way, for this guilt that suddenly oppresses him! He feels like a criminal, and keeps saying brokenly:

"Oh Helen, forgive me! forgive me!"

She is half asleep, and opens her eyes to smile at him. She says, dreamily:

"I--I never loved you as I do now. If it had not been for your wretchedness, I could have exulted in that agony."

Braine covers her hands with kisses. He dares not kiss her face. She looks like a beautiful white saint. He touches her hands reverently. He draws the folds of her gown closer about her.

Presently she says:

"Ask Mrs. Case to come here. You go down-stairs now, if you won't go out. I will call you if I want you."

He protests, but resistance seems to excite her, and he obeys. He does not go down-stairs, however. He stays in the corridor just outside her door. For hours he walks tirelessly back and forth. Once in a while he hears that terrible sigh of suffering, and he leans heavily against the wall. The sweat springs out on his forehead in great drops. His suffering seems, for the moment, as terrible as hers. Once he groans aloud, and at once remembers that she has not made the faintest moan, and says between his teeth:

"Good God! A man could not endure that."

The nurse comes to the door now and then, sometimes calling him in, and then he kneels by the still, white woman, who gives his hands little weak, responsive pressures, and smiles at him. He remains until she motions him away, imperatively.

Night has settled. The lights are ablaze through the house. Dobson has spoken to him, and said that dinner was ready, and he has not heard him. He walks back and forth, back and forth, in the corridor. The heavy sighs sob more frequently through the half open door. Once Mrs. Case comes and tells him to send for the physician, and he gives the order, incoherently saying:

"Dr. Frame, and tell him to bring some more with him."

At this, Mrs. Case smiles quietly. The time passes fitfully. He looks at his watch once, and it is 8:30, and all is quiet in Helen's room.

In what seems to him but the next moment, he hears her make some moaning exclamation, and a slight rustling and moving about occurs. The agony lasts for what he thinks is three quarters of an hour, but when he looks at his watch again, it is only 8:40.

Helen's dog comes to the foot of the stairs, and looks up, and Braine leans over the balusters, and looks down at it. Once, he whispers down to it, as though it were a human being:

"It's terrible, isn't it?" and walks on, back and forth, through the hall again.

The physician came an hour ago. Braine knows that the nurse has been to her dinner, and feels a sudden violent disgust and aversion for her that she can eat.

Dr. Frame did not bring "some more," but after a time he comes into the dressing-room, where Braine now is, and sends for a colleague. Braine turns pale, but asks no questions, as he gives the order.

How the time drags! He pauses now and then in his walk, and leans weakly against something. He suddenly realizes that his brows are drawn, and his forehead scowled, and his hands clenched, and his teeth set. He is made conscious of it by hearing himself groan aloud, and then he relaxes for an instant until he hears a sound in the next room, again, and he finds himself experiencing so sharp an agony that he throws himself on the divan with his head in the cushions where she has lain.

He is in her dressing-room now and there is an odor of her presence in all the atmosphere. Her gown lies on a chair; in front of the dressing table lies a twisted handkerchief that tells the story of a moment of agony. He looks about at these things, and says under his breath:

"Oh, my God!"

The other physician has been in the next room for a long time now. Braine looks at his watch. It is past three. He tries to think how long this has lasted. He cannot remember whether it was to-day or yesterday that he came in here.

He stands in a half-daze in the middle of the floor, trying to recollect when. Suddenly an unearthly shriek comes from the next room. He stiffens like a wooden man. He puts his hands to his throat, and makes a peculiar metallic sound.

There is silence in the next room. He stands staring at the closed door. He thinks nothing. In a moment he hears another scream that causes his heart to give one wild bound, and then to seem pulseless. The silence in the room is intense. He stares fixedly at the door. The stillness is terrible. Gradually he becomes impressed that the woman--Helen, his wife, is dead.

He does not move. His mind begins to work. He sees a face like the dawn, a primrose face, with eyes as clear and untroubled as a child's; her hair a sunny glory in a little dismal room.

He feels the touch of a cool, soft hand, a touch as comfortable and calm as that of an angel's wing. Then comes to him the memory of a time when the touch of that hand thrilled him as no other touch on earth or in heaven could do; of the time when the sweet, loving girl became a glowing woman, intoxicating him, making him drunk with joy: and he again experiences that first sensation of proprietorship and possession.

And suddenly there appears to him the figure of a woman with a ghastly, drawn face, a face that he does not know, with staring eyes that gleam glassily, and accuse. He feels the touch of a rigid hand, cold and unresponsive. His eyes seem starting from his head.

The door opens, and one of the physicians stands looking at him in a startled way. There is something frightful in this man, with clenched hands, the veins like whip cords on his neck and forehead, and his ghastly face.

Braine says in a strange voice:

"Helen--"

"Lives; the child is dead."

XXIII.

[From Helen's Diary.]

_In the mountains near Mauch Chunk, August, 18--._ This is the first time for months I have felt like writing. We have been here since June. After my illness I had a great longing to get away, away, away; anywhere out of the excitement, away from the furniture, the servants, the surroundings that seemed to have become so hateful to me that if I looked upon them I must shriek. It seemed as though I should never be strong enough to go.

Edgar was as anxious to get away with me as I was to go. A great change has taken place in him. He has ever been good and thoughtful, but it is impossible to describe the lengths to which his affection drives him now. If his business has been pressing, these last months must have been disastrous to him, for he has hardly left my side for an hour. There is a new expression in his eyes when he looks at me. He seems to feel as if he were guilty of some terrible crime against me, and to be ever trying to expiate it. Sometimes this amuses me a little, but his earnestness makes me almost feel unhappy at times.

Once in a while, if we have been sitting quietly alone, he will look at me silently for a time, and then say with almost a groan:

"Oh, if you only knew, Helen! If you only knew all that I suffered in those weeks!"

I was very ill for a long time. He seems hardly to realize that I am again well and safe. I would never dare let him know the agony of mind as well as body, that I endured so long.

I feel differently, too, about some things. I think that whatever regret Edgar felt at first, and before my confinement, he suffered a keen disappointment and unhappiness at the loss of the child. He has made but one allusion to it, but he betrayed his deep feeling then, unconsciously.

It is strange; but after all my longing for the child, before it became a longing likely to be gratified, the relief that I experienced when I knew that I had none is indescribable.

At first I would burst out sobbing for very joy and relief. I cannot understand my feeling. I sometimes think if circumstances had been different, and Edgar had had the same emotions in regard to it that he has now, perhaps I should have felt differently. I am impressed, for some reason, that this aversion I have is abnormal. But it is so strong that it has decided one thing: I have had my last child. Nothing on earth can ever bring back the old feeling. That is something for which women in my position have no time. The horrible feeling of lost time and opportunity that I experienced in those months will never be forgotten. I will never live through it again. If I ever find it likely to become a necessity, I will kill myself at the outset, without a moment's hesitation. So this is settled for ever and ever.

I intimated as much to Edgar, involuntarily, the other night, and I think he felt a little hurt. I regretted that I had betrayed the feeling when I saw that it made him unhappy. I thought he would feel as I did about it. I presume he does, in some degree. I made some remark to the effect that people in our position could not afford to lose time in that way, and he said:

"But, dear, what would become of the people if all thought so?"

I told him that there were plenty whose talents lay principally in that direction, and that that part of life's work should be apportioned to them, and strictly confined to the lesser people.

He began a little argument, but saw that it did not please me, and changed the subject. But he said something that impressed me with its truth, for all that.

He said something to the effect that the "industry" was already confined too strictly to "lesser people;" that what the country needed to save it was high-bred, fine and _greater_ fathers and mothers, instead of _lesser_; that if there was ever an "industry" that _should_ be confined to the superior of the land, it was child-rearing. Perhaps this is so--I felt so too, once, and determined to do a duty in this direction that would be a loved duty. It is different now. It will never happen again--and I live through it. The suffering is not what I flinch from. I'm not cowardly. It is not that. But _it will never happen again_, if there is a means on earth to prevent it, even though the means be suicide.

I wonder if my character is degenerating? Am I as good a woman as I was when I married Edgar? I do not know. I only know how I feel now, and it is not so comfortable to feel in that way as to feel in the old way. Am I deteriorating? If so, what is the cause?

XXIV.

The Braines have been back in Washington for a month. Politics recalled Braine, and Braine recalled Helen. When she began to think of returning to the Washington house where she had endured one year of absolute wretchedness as an initiation, she was overwhelmed with distaste for the move, but she resolved to keep her repugnance to herself, and fight the feeling down.

She wondered once if she had rather return to the cottage in Thebes, but dismissed the idea quickly and impatiently. She knew that the meagre, provincial life would be intolerable to her now. She wanted the luxuries of the Washington house, but shrank from the thought of having to go thither to find them. She made up her mind to the inevitable, however, and they returned as late as business would allow.

The night of her return when she first entered the house she felt faint and weak for a moment, as a host of wretched memories arose, connected with every portion of the place. But she brought her will to bear, and Braine did not notice her distress.

He seemed affected differently. He seemed almost like a boy in his enthusiasm over their return, and went from room to room, showing her certain changes he had made surreptitiously during the summer for her surprise.

He pauses in the library, and suddenly takes Helen in his arms. He says:

"I cannot analyze the feeling that I experience; the peculiar gladness I have at returning here with you well and happy. Though I suffered agony in sympathy with the suffering you endured here, the experience seems to have endeared the place to me. You will never know what your counsel and help during those months meant to me. Our achievements shall now begin in earnest. Oh, Helen, Helen, the joy of striving and accomplishing for you is the dearest one of my life. To see you honored and admired and envied, and to know it comes through my exertions will be my supreme happiness."

"Am _I_ not your supreme happiness?"

"Yes, and therefore less than all for you would mean supreme wretchedness for me."

There has been a wistful note in his voice, and he is tender beyond all imagining. They seem very near to each other this night of their return, and this new marriage somehow lessens Helen's feeling of disquietude, and reassures her. She finds herself looking forward with a certain delight and satisfaction to this winter when she will establish her social supremacy, that she may stand beside this man who is just becoming supreme in another field, and seem worthy to share some of the honors accorded him.

They have sat below by the library fire, far into the night. They have discussed the situation. They have planned the details of the campaign, and their confidence in each other, and the feeling of each that the advancement of the other is in his or her hands, has already won the fight.

The servants are in bed; the silence of the great house has not been broken for hours, save by the low, earnest, wooing tones of the man and woman in the soft light of the rare room. The woman in a half-dream of delight, as rosy visions of the future are conjured up by the man whose voice of the lover always intoxicates her senses; a dainty woman, a regal woman, a woman whose least motion suggests the patrician, morally, mentally, physically; a woman subtle in her frankness and simplicity, dignified in her naïveté; a woman perfectly matched with the man. And he, a man whose very presence suggests power and grace of mind; a temperament wherein reverence predominates, if audacity dominates; a man who must lend good, even to the worst, and make the worst seem not tolerable, but acceptable. And none in looking on him can decide whether his mind is responsible for his charming person, or the reverse.

All the room is in shadow save where they two sit, and as he takes the soft, shaded light in his hands, and conducts the woman to her door, my imagination plays a sudden trick; the room is one of statelier times, and one becomes a "bold, brave knight," the other one, "my lady."

XXV.

"Do you see Bogart and Mrs. Stevens?"

Gladys Grayson drops the question into Helen's ear as she stands listlessly leaning against the conservatory entrance.

Everet is looking away for the moment. Gladys has come up with Dalzel, the young congressman.

Helen looks at her inquiringly:

"Bogart and Mrs. Stevens? Where?"

Mrs. Grayson gives a silvery little laugh, and just lifts her eyebrows.

"Everywhere," with a comprehensive wave of her pretty hand.

Everet and Dalzel are talking together. Helen looks a little bewildered, and Mrs. Grayson looks a little amused, and a good deal contemptuous--or shocked, perhaps. She nods towards the conservatory, and at the moment a man and woman come from the shadow of a palm, towards the quartette, engrossed in conversation--at least, Bogart is. Mrs. Stevens is engrossed in looking charming. Gladys continues in little spasmodic asides:

"Every one in the room--" they are nearer, and she lowers her voice, "is talking about it. It is disgraceful."

"What?"

"Why, the very apparent _affaire_ between them."

Helen stares--then looks at Mrs. Stevens. Gladys says under her breath, between her teeth:

"Don't stare at her in that way, you goose. She will come over here in a minute, and ask if the enamel on her neck is chipping."

Helen lowers her eyes. Gladys continues:

"Things are so _very_ apparent, you know."

Mrs. Stevens is coming leisurely toward them. "There is a story of a little dinner." Mrs. Stevens is here. Gladys bows with her accustomed hauteur, with which she meets every one but the initiated, and without the suspicion of discourtesy in her manner, turns away on Dalzel's arm.

Mrs. Stevens begins to talk volubly to Helen and Everet. Helen is disconcerted. She has none of the studied, courteous rudeness that is her friend's stock-in-trade, with which to carry off a thing of this kind gracefully. She replies a little helplessly to Mrs. Stevens, and moves away as quickly as she can.

Mrs. Stevens perceives the slight--it amuses her a little. Later, when she is alone with Bogart, she mentions it, and remarks that "these _ingénues_ try one's patience terribly."

Bogart says "Yes;" and thinks, "but they are delicious to teach."

Everet seldom leaves Helen's side. When he is not with her, he is watching her. The house is too crowded for comfort, and Helen has not had enough experience yet to enjoy it. She always feels a little bewildered after one o'clock, and remarks to Everet as he stands by her while she leans back in a chair, wearily, that she always feels as though she ought to be in bed after eleven. She laughs, a sweet, excited little laugh as she looks up at him. He wonders how long so charming a child will retain her naïveté in such an atmosphere.

She delights him. There is a simplicity about her manner and expression that fascinates him--and yet she is a polished woman of the world. She is surely that, but the difference between herself and other women of the world is--that she is not a worldly woman.

Once, during the evening, Braine is near her, and says with suppressed elation:

"You are charming to-night, Helen. I have never seen you more beautiful. Everet is strongly attracted."

Helen looks up quickly. She says with a little deprecation in her tone, and a little entreaty in her eyes;

"He only admires me as he does other nice looking women, Ed. Indeed, you need not mind. I will keep out of his way, if you don't like it."

Braine listens at first in surprise, then bursts into a low, happy laugh. He covertly presses her hand, and says, as he moves away to make room for Everet, who is coming with an ice for Helen:

"I don't mind, I assure you. You needn't take pains to keep out of his way. I am perfectly satisfied with my wife. I am delighted that this man is so interested as he is--only be cautious, dear; don't let it be too obvious to others--you understand?"

Helen does not understand, but Everet is at her side, and she has to turn to him, and say something, or listen to him.

Her mind runs on Braine's few words, and they trouble her. While she answers the questions of this one and that, and makes trite, witty, serious, politic, or straightforward little speeches, as one case or another demands, she is turning over Braine's words in her mind.

Perhaps Everet is one who can be of service to Edgar, and he thinks it as well for her to be civil. She is a little piqued at his last words--"be cautious, don't let it be too apparent to others--" as though she were likely to permit an aggression on Everet's part more quickly in private than she would in public. It wounds her a little that he should have said so thoughtless a thing. It would be terrible if he _thought_ so _horrible_ a thing.

As she sees Braine from to time to time in the crowd, she notices that the worried, anxious expression she has noted for the last week, is no longer on his face. He is charming to-night. His personality has never so strongly impressed her, or apparently other people either.

Everet notices how her glance follows Braine's flexile figure, that is full of strength and dignity, and once, remarks with a smile, and a little amusement in his tone:

"You are a great admirer of your husband?"

She looks up at him, and says quite innocently,

"I love him."

Everet's smile becomes one of approval, almost of tenderness.

At last she is near Braine again, and says a little wistfully:

"May we not go home soon?"

He looks at the flushed, weary face, beautiful in its ennui and excitement, and says:

"At once if you wish it," and suddenly the desire possesses him to have her in the carriage, alone, quite to himself, in his arms, and he seems a little impatient while Everet folds her wrap about her, and is asking which is her "day."

Helen says with an airy little informality that she has no day for her friends--the _days_ are theirs.

As they step out into the cold air, Braine draws Helen's furs still closer about her throat. There is a tenderness and passion in his action that she has missed these last weeks. It delights her, and causes the hot blood to surge over her face and neck, leaving her in a quivering little ecstacy, for a moment after she is in the carriage.

Braine, standing outside, is pushing her gown about her, and pulling the rug over her lap as he directs the coachman. And Helen is saying in husky little trebles, so that only he hears:

"Ed.--Ed."

Some one at this moment runs down the steps to say some nearly forgotten thing to Braine, and as he talks he is acknowledging Helen's little appeals by covert pressure of the hand that is inside the coupé. Finally he gets in, and closes the door.

As they roll away, Braine draws her into his arms. It seems to both that they have been waiting all night for this moment. After a time, Braine says: