Part 15

Braine turns to him with the grave, sad smile that is now the only smile his face knows. He walks slowly. There is none of the energy and spring in his step that belonged to Braine the statesman. The face is still handsome--it will always be that. No expression can entirely change his features, but it is a sombre face. His figure stoops a little. Mental burdens are apt to bow the shoulders far more quickly than physical ones.

Braine has grayed at the temples; it will be but a little time before the brown of his hair will have disappeared.

Everet has got off the train just now, at the tumble-down little station, and as he and Braine walk leisurely down the country road, he covertly notes every detail of his friend's appearance.

There is still a dignity in Braine's figure and movement. No stoop, no length of time can deform that, any more than it can change the attraction of his face. These things were not the ornamentations but the substance of the man. All thought of dishonor in this man was acquired--and it was a hard thing to learn. Honesty and uprightness of mind were innate. It is his natural self that has remained by him in the crisis.

With the woman, things were different.

The two men stroll on through the mellow glow, the setting sun lending its fiery touch to the hedge-rows, turning the gray of the road to a more cheerful yellow. A bob-white calls from the wood on the left; a wood-pecker is warily at work in an apple-tree in the orchard on the right. Sweet evening odors, evening sounds, evening winds, surround the men like a benediction.

Braine stops once in the road and looks off over a yellow field--a field of grain half cut. A man still works there among the sweet-smelling sheaves. A comely woman has just passed through the bars beyond, and is crossing to the man who works. There is a leisurely vigor in his movements that only strong men know at resting time. He sees the woman and stands erect, awaiting her, his rugged, positive form outlined against the flushing sky, that seems to terminate the whole earth in the field behind him. He does not meet her. She comes to him. If there is anything save the rabbits in the grain to see, the man and woman do not know. The man must be a poet--for he does not kiss her lips. The man who binds the sheaves instinctively knows that passion and the hour are incongruous. He takes her face between his hands and looks into her eyes, and as the sun with one last peep sinks below the hill into nothing, he lends to the two the brightest ray left him, and they stand in a rosy sea for a little minute--these two! And the day is done.

Braine stands with shaded eyes. The strong hand, slightly browned, trembles a little. As they walk on, he breaks the stillness gently:

"I could be happy here." There is a wistfulness in his voice.

Everet touches the hand at his side. There is the peculiar gentleness in the touch that some men have. The two go on, hand in hand. The greatness of friendship lies in its simplicity. Neither speaks again until they turn into a worn foot-path at the right, and follow it to a small white house beyond.

Braine lives here. A little house set in a patch of orchard, a flower-bed here near the door--an old-fashioned bed where sweet-william reigns supreme--that shows the conscientious care of some one who loves--something. On the step, Helen's dog. Very little things? Yes. Magnificent in their commonplaceness. These things that are the care and companions of a great mind--a lonely man, who has controlled by his intellect the thought and act of millions, directly or indirectly! Who would not be a flower--or a dog?

With old time courtesy Braine enters and stands in the narrow little doorway to welcome Everet. He makes no apology. He sees nothing to demand it, though the cane chairs are not the poems in upholstery that are in Everet's rooms; though the bench at the side serves in place of luxurious divans. There are no carpets on the floor, but the shining whiteness of the boards is seductive.

There is a desk in one corner--there is something familiar in its look. It has collar boxes for pigeon-holes. It has an atmosphere of industry about it. Evidently the lonely man is not an idle man.

Braine says to the clean boy in the next room:

"We will have some supper now--I do not dine any more," with a smile and a nod at Everet.

Everet makes no remark. The scene is impressing him strangely. The odors of the orchard waft through the door; a cricket under the window keeps up a drowsy tune.

The two men sit side by side on the door-step while their supper is made ready for them. Neither says very much.

"Are you not lonely here, dear fellow?"

Braine looks up, and he ceases to stroke Helen's dog. He replies gently:

"Yes, I am often lonely."

"Do you have nothing to occupy your days?"

"Oh, yes. The days are not bad." He nods in the direction of the desk; pats Helen's dog; glances at his flowers.

"And the nights?"

Braine smiles and does not reply. There are tears that cause heart-ache, but there are smiles that cause heart-break.

After a time they go in to supper. It is a frugal one--suggesting how adequate the food of the mind may be.

There is wine for Everet--who keeps his friend company, however, in drinking water.

After a time they sit together in the twilight. There has been a long silence between them. Presently Everet says:

"Do you want to hear?"

Braine nods.

"She does not live in the house where I established her. She is independent of my care. She no longer comes to me for sympathy. She no longer needs me as a friend. She is rich, powerful, beautiful, cold, commanding. She has a salon. The brilliant men of the country may be found there, a few of the women. She rules the statesman, the poet, the pagan, the minister--all but the Christian and the conventional. If her life is not irreproachably virtuous, now, no one suggests the doubt, because whenever they decide to acknowledge the truth they may no longer visit her. Conventional women know her. They never acknowledge her. They never repudiate her; they never mention her; they are afraid of her. Their husbands' interests are too often in her hands, sometimes their own--or their lovers'. She rules, she reigns. She lifts her finger and great men obey, and she lifts it only for those who pay. She has two sources of income--her wits and a lover. She acknowledges the wits and not the lover; consequently her satellites do the same. How long this state of things will continue, depends on the wits and the lover."

He ceases to speak. He looks at Braine. His sombre face is gray. Everet says:

"Do you know why I am telling you this? Because I am going to drag you from this place where you have buried your greatness and your talents. I am going to show you that this woman you mourn is not worth it, that--"

Braine raises his hand:

"Don't say that." There is firmness and meaning in the tone. "Perhaps this woman is not worth it--but Helen is. I have not buried my talents. I am not an idle man. I am trying to accomplish something that will in some degree indemnify those I have wronged. I do not mourn for the woman alone, but for my sin. My sin was in making my Helen the woman you tell me of. She has no sins to answer for. _I_ am responsible. Some day she will come back to me--"

He speaks dreamily, looking into the purple dusk,

"Some day she will come back, and I will take her in my arms and have my wife, my Helen, Helen of the old good days again. She shall not live so--" looking, about the little room. "All my wealth is being saved for her. She shall not live like this, but amid the surroundings that Helen loves, and with me. She will be so grateful for the rest and peace, after the strife and hurry. We may both be old," wistfully. "I am old now; but it will happen--she will come back."

He stops and seems to continue the thread of his thought to himself.

Everet says nothing. His face is turned the other way--though the dusk would hide its expression. After a time the two men say good night.

XXXVII.

It is another summer evening, like that of four years ago, and Everet is again with Braine at the little cottage. He is impressed less with the sorrow than with the rugged strength of the man who rises from his flower-bed to greet him.

"Work is good for you," he says, scanning the face of his friend; "and the work is good, too. I did not believe it possible that the man of action, relinquishing action as you have done, could become a power as the man of thought. But you have wrought that miracle."

"The work is effective, then?"

"More. It is inspiring. Your printed words do not draw men to you as your eloquence did, and you take no personal part in directing human endeavor, but you are influencing others to action as you never did before, and instead of one great Edgar Braine, filling the eye of the public, we have thousands inspired by him to do his work for the betterment of the land and the time. My friend, I once tried to draw you from the solitude in which you were wasting yourself, as I supposed; I have no wish now to draw you from a seclusion in which you are doing a nobler work than in your most active days."

"Thank you, Everet--and thank God! I have atonement to make, you know, and it is encouraging to know that I am making it."

And so the two talk on of public matters, with no further reference to the more sensitive matters of personal feeling, until the clean boy has served the supper, and they have finished it. Then, as they sit together in the open air, Braine says:

"And now, Everet?"

Everet understands, and takes a preparatory long breath. He begins:

"I told you I had come from New York instead of Washington?"

"Yes."

"Well, she is there."

"Yes?" as Everet pauses.

"Yes. She could not remain in Washington any longer. She has been in New York for six months now."

"What is she doing?"

Everet does not reply for a moment; then he continues:

"The last year she was there was a disastrous one for her. The old set were enraged by certain of her desperate exploits in finance, and she did not get on with the new. It was impossible for her to remain there any longer, so she sought a new field in New York."

He is reluctant to say more, and pauses again.

"Well?" Braine speaks obstinately. "Go on."

"She went to New York and began living on a large scale--she still lives on a large scale--but Helen is a fine-grained woman to her finger tips, no matter what she has done. The Washington politician is bad enough, but the New York politician is a good deal worse--to a woman. When Helen sinks to the street commissioner and the sheriff, she is to be pitied. And it will come to that. Now that she has left the field that she was so long mistress of, she will not be able to reach the superior villains--no: that is hard on them. I'll call them men--we're all men."

He looks meditatively into the darkness.

"No, Helen cannot carry on transactions with her kind any more, and she must use these others." Then, continuing grimly, "How she will bring herself to assimilate with--"

"Everet--you--you are speaking of Helen."

There is no anger in the tone. It is a tone rather of tenderness and surprise.

Everet bites his lip, and says:

"Forgive me, Braine. I--forgot it."

After a time, Braine asks:

"Do you think it would be of any use to go to her, Everet? I would tell her that I loved her just the same, you know, and want her back; or do you think I had better wait awhile,--until she is ready to return of herself?"

He speaks with the old, wistful intonation.

Everet replies earnestly:

"No, Braine. It is better for you to--wait. It would do no good for you to go. There is no use in your putting yourself in the way of affront--"

"I should not mind that," quickly.

"No--not if it would do any good. But it would be useless. I know what I say, Braine. I--I have seen her. She would not return--she would not see you."

Braine sighs heavily.

After a time, he leaves Everet to smoke a last cigar, and goes to his work at his desk, from which he does not rise till morning.

XXXVIII.

A year later.

"How do you feel to-day?"

"The same."

Helen keeps her eyes fixed on the handle of the cracked wash-pitcher.

The physician looks at her curiously for a moment. After a little he says:

"Have you no friends?"

"None;" without ceasing to study the cracked pitcher. As usual, the woman leaves no chance for further questions.

As he rises to go, the physician says gravely:

"I think if you could force yourself to arouse, you could throw off this--this--disease that is sapping your vitality. It is more a disease of the mind, I think, than the body."

"Doubtless."

The physician says:

"Well, good-day," lingering a moment longer.

"Good-day," from the bed.

He has attended this woman, who is on his charity list, for two months, and he has never heard her utter more than one sentence at a time--and seldom a sentence of more than one word. She has looked in his face once. He will never forget that look. Since then, she has studied the wall, or the broken window, or some other object. He may speak for five minutes at a time, and she makes no sign that she hears him unless he asks a question.

He cannot decide what is the matter with her. She lies here day after day, apparently unattended--indeed he is not certain but that she is starving, though she has said, "Nothing," when he has inquired if there was anything that she needed, anything he could do for her.

He has made inquiries of the Irish woman below, of the Dutchman across the hall, and the Italian above, but he only hears below that she's "wan av yer foine ladies," and across the hall and above he has heard--no matter what.

He has discovered that the daughter of the old-iron man in the cellar goes in once a day, and is paid ten cents for it--or used to be; now she goes for sweet charity. He can learn no more. He calls only occasionally now. He can do nothing for her. He does not know what is the matter with her.

As she lies here alone after he has gone, she clasps her thin hands, with a weak movement, and gives a little moan indicative of weakness, of pain, of sorrow perhaps--perhaps all three. After a time she says aloud:

"_He_ is to blame for it all."

The old gleam is in her eyes. The old relentless expression in her tone.

She turns her face to the grimy wall, with a smothered groan. She lies with her eyes shut, while the dusk closes in. The night-sounds in the street reach her through the open window. The room is hot and stuffy; the odors are intolerable. They are intolerable in their suggestions. It is not the subtle perfume that arouses an emotion--but what the perfume suggests; it is not the fume that disgusts--but what it suggests. _These_ fumes suggest a Chinese restaurant, an unclean bedroom, a garbage barrel, a swill cart, and the stale memory of bad tobacco. All this is tinctured with the Dutchman's cheese over the way.

A child is bawling in the street. The Italian above is beating his monkey; a coal-heaver is cursing his wife, and has just thrown a bottle at his brat, which accounts for one less sound,--for one more silence suddenly occurring. And Helen lies on a bed assorting these sounds and smells. Helen! Patrician Helen! Helen of dainty habit! Fastidious Helen! Braine's wife! Braine's Helen!

"D'ye want anythin'?" The old-iron man's daughter thrusts her kindly, dirty face inside the door.

"Nothing."

XXXIX.

Everet and Braine are walking down the road from the station. Everet is talking earnestly. Braine is listening eagerly. Disappointment is written on his face.

"You have found _no_ clew?"

"None." Everet speaks hopelessly.

"Don't speak in that tone. A woman like Helen cannot drop out of existence without leaving some trace. What was the last you discovered?"

"I found a place where she had lived--a comfortable flat. She had lived there--" He hesitates.

Braine says quietly:

"Say it."

"With a man called McPhelan--you know who he is, I presume."

"Good God!"

Braine stops in the road and looks helplessly into Everet's face. He moans:

"Don't say that, Everet! Don't say that! Not Helen! It was not she. It was some other."

"And after all, dear Braine, what is the difference? A Sixth Ward politician, or a member of the cabinet."

He has thrown his arm across Braine's shoulders. His tone is one of tenderest sympathy, but there is a certain sternness in it.

Braine's strong body trembles like a weak child's. He says, hoarsely:

"I must go and find her. I _must_, Everet."

"No, no. No one could do more than I can in such a matter. I will look until I find her, or know that she is dead. I will obey your least direction, your slightest wish in this, but grant what I ask of you. Don't go to find her. Think, Braine! Think what it would be to learn such things from strangers; think what it would be to learn the details of so pitiful a life from those who cared nothing for your grief. It is right you should know them--but hear them from me. I love you. I loved Helen--the Helen _you_ have known. You surely can bear these things better from me."

"Yes, yes. God bless you, Everet. You're the truest friend a man ever had. But promise me, promise me you will leave no stone unturned?"

"I promise."

XL.

Helen lies staring out of the window. There is no curtain to shut out the glaring sunlight, which is causing the fumes to rise from the broiling humanity below.

Metropolitan poverty suggests to me sounds and smells. I could endure sights. What one sees, one knows. There is no longer room for the imagination--that is capable of so much that is more horrible than reality. But a sound!

A woman in the room below us cries, "Don't!" She may be speaking excitedly to her child--or that brute, her husband, may have her by the hair preparing to cut her throat.

Just now, Helen hears a chair knocked over in the dark hall outside her door. It does not occur to her that someone has stumbled in the darkness; she thinks someone has knocked someone down in the hall. There is no more noise, and she carries on the thought still farther. She says, "One of them is being strangled, and that is why it is still." With this thought, a face she has seen once in the doorway opposite comes to her mind; an evil, loathsome face. She at once associates it with the silent murder that is being done in the hall. She has not the slightest doubt that this is a fact. She does not stir. She would not if the evil man with the loathsome face came in to strangle her. She would be perfectly quiet because she would know of nothing else to do.

Some one raps on her door. It is the man with the loathsome face, she knows. She does not speak. Her eyes are fixed in a sort of fascination on the door. The knob turns; she still stares as the door opens. There is an eeriness in watching a slowly opening door when one knows nothing of the one who is impelling it.

A man enters. It is not the man of the evil face. It is Everet; but the outward effect is the same, upon her. She does not speak. She watches him as he comes toward the bed. He does not speak to her. He stands at the bedside looking down at her. She lies motionless, looking up into his face.

Slowly his eyes fill with tears. He takes the slim, transparent hand that lies inert on the grimy quilt, and bowing over it lifts it to his lips. He kisses it as though it were the hand of a princess. There is a reverence, a homage in the act that he never showed to Helen Braine in her proudest days,--the homage that helplessness and misery command.

Helen makes no sign. Everet walks to the window and looks down into the fiery street. There is a woman, half-clothed, drunk in the gutter. He turns away with a shudder. He stands in the middle of the floor for a moment, looking at the figure in the bed. She does not speak. After a moment of indecision, he hurries from the room. He sends a telegram; gets some wine and other things his judgment suggests may be useful, and hurries back to the room he has left.

He knocks off the neck of the bottle--having no more convenient means of opening it. He finds a cracked tea cup in a cupboard, and pours a little of the wine into it. He goes to Helen and raises her a little by slipping his arm under her shoulders. She is as light as a little child. His hand trembles as he holds the cup to her lips. She drinks and lies back on the pillow without speaking.

After a time she eats a little of what Everet has brought. He looks about the bare room uncertainly. He has a desire to make it more habitable while she is in it. Nothing can be done. He draws a chair to the bed and sits in it. Taking Helen's hand he speaks for the first time; he says:

"You have been very ill?"

She does not reply.

After a pause, he says gently:

"You do not want to talk, dear?"

She shakes her head. Everet remains quietly by her, holding the shadowy little hand.

As evening comes, the sounds in the street become less collective and more individual. They seem more aggressive.

There is no candle, no lamp to light. He does not go out for candles because he does not want to leave her. He sits on in the darkness. Now and then when one sound comes more sharply or loudly than another, the thin fingers tighten over his. He holds the hand close, and murmurs:

"Poor child! And you have endured all this alone."

There is no response, and silence falls again.

After an hour they hear a step in the hall. Helen knows the step. If it were not for the darkness Everet would see the relentless gleam that springs into her eyes. The door opens and Braine hurries into the room.

He stands, bewildered at finding darkness. He can only see objects dimly through the gloom. Everet throws his arm around him, and leads him to the bed. He leaves him standing there, and hurries from the apartment.

Braine sinks on his knees beside Helen. He throws his strong arms about the frail figure, and lifts her to his heart.

There is not a sound, there in the darkness, save the heavy, tremulous breaths drawn by Braine.

He holds her so. He gives her no caress, says no word of endearment. His emotions have carried him beyond such forms. He only holds her close to his heart, tightening his arms about her from time to time, as though in a sudden terror lest she be spirited from him.

That she is utterly unresponsive he does not note. If he did he would not care now. He has but one thought: "This is Helen, Helen, Helen."

Everet finds them so when he re-enters the room. He brings candles with him and lights them. He first notices the expression on Helen's face. It paralyzes him for the moment; then he looks fearfully and furtively at Braine. He is oblivious of Helen's expression. He knows only _Helen_.

"And now?"

Everet looks about and pauses. He forgets that Helen has not spoken since he entered the room in the morning. Of course he does not know what has passed between the two.

Braine seems utterly helpless, and looks at Everet in reply. Everet says quietly:

"You remembered to bring things as I wired you?"

Braine nods and points to the package on the chair.

Everet had asked Braine in his telegram to bring something that Helen could travel in. He knew that in a certain room, in a certain little white house, were certain beautiful belongings of Helen's; treasured for what? Such a time as this, perhaps.

Everet unrolls the things. Braine has been fortunate enough to select something suitable.

Everet says in a business-like way:

"She must leave here, at once--a hotel, or home?"

"Home."

"Very well; she must be dressed, you know. You had better assist her while I see about a carriage in which to get her away from this place."

He points to the garments, saying:

"There they are, Braine."

He is impressed with the conviction that Braine does not comprehend much now.

He leaves the room. Braine goes to the bed, and says, in a voice too full of tenderness, joy, love, to be very comprehensible: