Part 16
"Can you be dressed now, dear?"
She looks at him without replying. He thinks she has not heard, and repeats the question. She does not answer. He says, lovingly, with a caress:
"You shall not be annoyed, dearest. You need not talk. I will help you."
She is absolutely passive. She assists herself very little. She does not make any instinctive motion that will help, but obeys Braine's least suggestion like an automaton.
The gown is of a style worn more than five years before, and hangs oddly on the attenuated figure, that once filled out its graceful curves. Its richness contrasts strangely with the dingy room.
Is there a trace of the old Helen? Very little. The beauty of her eyes will never disappear; the grace of her least gesture will remain--but the hard bitterness, the desperate expression is hers too.
Braine does not notice it. He only sees that other trace of Helen.
She seems to be in no pain, but utterly exhausted as he lays her back on the pillow, while they wait for Everet. Her eyes never wander from his face. He interprets their expression by his own emotions, and smiles back at her in response. There seems nothing peculiar in her silence. Even he finds it an effort to speak.
They hear Everet spring up the stairs. He knocks and comes in, as Braine bids him. He says, with a smile:
"You are ready to go?" looking at Helen.
Braine replies:
"Yes."
Helen makes no movement to help herself. Braine takes her in his arms and carries her, with no resistance on her part, to the carriage below. She is but a feather-weight. He draws her to him so that she rests with the utmost ease against his shoulder.
Everet sits opposite. He appears oblivious of everything but the lamp-posts in the street, but he furtively watches Helen's face. Its expression is terrifying him. He is thinking of the future of the friend who sits opposite. He does not dare interpret this changeless expression.
At the station he suggests that he remain in the city. Braine grasps his hand in mute appeal:
"I--I feel so helpless, powerless in some way, Everet."
Everet presses his hand, replying:
"Just as you wish, old fellow--I was only thinking of you."
And so this friend goes with them.
He enters this man's house with this man's wife--the wife whom five years ago he took away.
On the journey, Everet is seldom near them: when he is, he is bright, helpful, tender. Helen has never once spoken. She helps herself in no way. Braine cares for her like a child. She is perfectly passive.
Her continued silence has at last forced itself upon Braine's mind. Now that he stops to think, he knows that he has not heard her voice. He is amazed at first. He looks up at her in a startled way, as the thought comes to him. She is looking vacantly out of the window. He asks her a question. She turns her head and looks in his face. She makes no reply. There is no inquiry expressed in her countenance.
For the first time he realizes the expression of her deep, beautiful eyes. He feels an icy hand clutch at his heart. He is speechless for a moment; then he leans near her. With a world of anguish and appeal in his voice, he says:
"Helen!"
She does not reply; she only looks in his face. Her expression never varies; and it is no look of insanity. It is the only expression Braine will ever see there, and in that instant he is aware of the fact.
He turns to the window and sits staring out. Once he draws a long, quivering breath, that escapes again, flutteringly. In the sigh all the anguish of a lifetime is expressed.
Was there a change for an instant in the expression of the woman's face? If so, it was the shadow of a smile that flitted across it--the old, sphinx-like smile. But perhaps it was not there. If so, it was only suggested.
For the rest of the journey there is silence between the two men. The woman is the same.
When they leave the train at the little station there is a conveyance waiting to take them to the cottage. Braine carries Helen as he has done before.
The three drive silently down the road in the twilight. The two men are thinking of a scene years ago, in which the same characters figured, but oh, so differently!
As Everet glances at the silent figure through the dusk, he feels his whole body shaken by some powerful emotion. That woman, ominously still, with white face, deeply brooding, relentless eyes, haggard, shadowy and worn, is the woman he once admired as the most perfect type of what womanhood was meant by God to be; now she is what sin alone can make a woman, and he remembers with exquisite remorse that the sin which wrought this ruin was in part his.
The two men are thinking of that lost time. The woman--who can guess what the woman is thinking?
They drive through the lane to the house. Apparently neither scene nor time, nor circumstance is impressing her. She looks off over the purple hills into nothingness.
Braine lifts her out and carries her within the cottage, placing her gently in a chair. He says eagerly, while unfastening her wraps:
"Things will not be like this, you know, dearest. In just a few days it will be different."
He speaks hurriedly as though anxious to convey to her that she is not to live in poverty; as though to reassure her; as though to ward off reproach.
Everet stands apart. After a time, when Braine has gone into the next room, he approaches the woman in the chair. He stands by her side. She looks up at him. The relentless look leaves her eyes; her expression, aside from that, is the same. She does not speak. He takes her hand in his and holds it for a moment; then says gently:
"Good-bye, Helen."
No answer. He lays her hand tenderly in her lap, and leaves the room. He never sees her again.
In the next room he grasps Braine's hands, saying in a husky voice:
"I am going, dear Braine. I shall not return. God bless you."
Braine looks in his face, and Everet sees that he has acquired a new expression, one that will be constant. The old restlessness, wistfulness, hope, feverishness are gone. Patience is there, instead.
The men stand with clasped hands for a moment; then Everet goes out the door, carrying with him the memory of two faces, a man's and a woman's; one tragic in its patience; one tragic in its gloom. They are the faces of the only man and the only woman he has ever loved.
These three who have sinned and been sinned against! These three with a common guilt! Two, with a mutual repentance. The other--a woman!
Helen, sitting alone, her eyes rest on the desk with its collar-boxed pigeon-holes. Does it suggest something to her? Perhaps. The same, shadowy, enigmatic smile crosses her face, and is gone.
XLI.
The cottage is still the old familiar white cottage at the foot of the lane. The dog on the step is Helen's dog. The bed of sweet-williams is still tended by Braine. The same old desk sits in the corner, at which the same earnest, grave man works, but all else is different.
There is no longer the seductiveness of shining cleanliness alone, but there have been added the proper settings of the Helen of long ago.
The cottage is dainty within;--rich with soft carpets and heavy hangings. It impresses one as a little incongruous at first, on entering with the impression of simplicity gained outside; but the feeling quickly wears off, and one is satisfied with the charm.
All was done in a week's time. She did not have to wait.
She apparently has been unimpressed with the change. She has accepted the luxury as she did the apparent poverty. Braine has no way of knowing whether it pleases her or not; whether she has a desire that he may make himself happy by gratifying her or not.
She sits always in one place--on a luxuriously soft, roomy chair in the window, with the flower-bed just in front of her. She sits half reclining here, from morning till night.
Braine attends to every want. He dresses her as deftly as a woman, in the morning; at night he assists her again.
She requires no waiting on. He stands for moments beside her sometimes, longing to hear her signify a desire that he may fulfil it. She wants nothing.
Sometimes her presence drives him nearly mad. He sits at the desk hour after hour, feeling her dark, brooding eyes fixed upon him. He endures it until he feels his senses swimming, and then sometimes looks up with a smile, terrible in its effort and pathos. He looks up to meet the relentless gaze that follows him from morning till night. Never a word, never a motion. Silence, passivity always.
She looks at one other thing--the sweet-williams in front of the window. Her expression may not change; it may be the relief that he experiences, when he knows that her eyes are not upon him, but he fancies that the gaze is less terrible, less forbidding when she looks at the flowers. For this reason, he brings her a fragrant little bunch each morning, each evening. He lays them in her lap. He never sees her touch them, but she never rejects them. She accepts them as she does everything else, in utter silence, passively.
Those brought in the morning are withered at night, and those brought at night, faded by day--but he never throws them away. They have been near her. They have touched her gown--possibly she has touched them with her hands. It is possible she has touched them with her lips--those lips he never dares kiss. At any rate he keeps the withered flowers. He puts them away, each little faded bunch, in a drawer in the strange little desk.
Sometimes he raises his head from his writing to speak. He meets her glance, and is dumb. Sometimes he thinks she must be lonely, and reads to her,--reads until the fascination of her eyes draws his glance from the pages, and he looks up with the feeling of horror and oppression that now possesses him. Sometimes he longs for the sound of her voice. Indeed, sometimes the longing becomes so intense that he clenches his hands, and the perspiration stands in great beads upon his forehead.
Sometimes he sits in the twilight, the silent figure near, and thinks of the tones of a voice long ago. He tries to recall the intonation she gave to his name, and certain phrases she used. He wonders if the tones are just right in his memory.
At these times he thinks every moment:
"Will she speak? She is about to speak now. In a moment she will speak my name." And he sits breathlessly, with his head partly turned. There is never a word, never a sound, never a motion.
He is working in his flower-bed. He puts down his trowel and hurries in, suddenly possessed with the idea--"She may feel like speaking, and I not be there." Or while he is at work among the flowers he looks up to find her looking at him.
Her dog is at her feet. She never notices him, never touches him. Braine can no longer find a trace of Helen, his wife, in this woman. He tries in vain to recall her expression.
This evening he is standing at the little gate leading to the lane. He leans on it in the sweet silence, that the birds are emphasizing. He is looking off into the far-away, his white hair touched by the setting sun.
Is it the effect of the dying light, or is his face different? His dark eyes have grown dreamy with their absent look. There is a half smile on his firm, tender lips; an expression of resignation, which is not dogged but cheerful; an expression that impels the squirrel on the rail of the fence to stay where he is, and the dog to poke his black nose into his master's hand.
He turns toward the house, stooping over the sweet-williams to gather the accustomed bunch. He goes into the cottage with them in his hand, the same half-smile on his lips.
In the doorway he pauses. He stands gazing at the figure in the chair by the window. What has come over him? He brushes his hand slowly across his eyes. Helen sits by the window. Where is the terrible face that has haunted him all these months?
He goes nearer. She is asleep. The setting sun burnishes the gold of her hair until it is like the aureole of a saint. It frames the face not of the woman who has sat in silence so long, but of the woman who loved him in his youth. The same sweet mouth with its tender smile. The wife of his youth, of his love, of his happiness, of his poverty, of his eminence, of--
He is at her side. The sun has lowered a little, and the delicate flush on her face is going with it.
He bends near her till his lips touch her tender ones that seem to invite.
He leans heavily against her chair. He lays the sweet-williams gently in her dead hands, as the sun sets behind the hill.
* * * * *
Juggernaut has passed over his soul and Helen's.
THE END.
* * * * *
"_A brainy little volume._"--Providence Telegram.
MIDNIGHT TALKS
At the Club.
Reported by AMOS K. FISKE.
Contents: _The "Owl Party;" Temperance; The Shepherdless Sheep; Sunday Observance; Religion; Political Immorality; Superstition and Worship; The Scriptures as a Fetich; Irish-Americans; Moses and the Prophets; Ancient Scriptures; Value of Human Evidence; Power of Personality; Discussions Applied; Usefulness of Delusion; The Faith Defended; Toleration and Enlightenment; Comfort in Essential Truths._
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"The 'Owl Party' of four who do most of the talking, are a bright and brainy quartette."--_Buffalo Express._
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"Keen insight, clear discernment, strong convictions, and distinct individuality of thought.... Attractive to those who wish to be nourished through their intelligence rather than through their prejudices."--_The Christian Union, N. Y._
* * * * *
Works of Biography
PUBLISHED BY
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT,
_30 Lafayette Place, New York._
Sir Philip Sidney: His Life and Times. By Mrs. S. M. Henry Davis, Author of "Norway Nights and Russian Days." _Steel portrait_ of Sidney.
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Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. By Wm. Osborne Stoddard, Secretary to President Lincoln.
"Graphic and entertaining ... as rich in incident as any romance, and sparkling with wise wit and racy anecdote. It comprises a large mass of valuable and judiciously epitomized information."--_Harper's Monthly._
Henry Ward Beecher: His Personality, Career and Influence in Public Affairs. By John R. Howard. _With portraits._
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"Gives a well-proportioned view of Beecher's whole career, and is enriched with many personal reminiscences, anecdotes and letters accumulated by Mr. Howard during his forty years of intimate friendship and twenty of close association in literary and business matters with Mr. Beecher, as his publisher."--_Brooklyn Times._
Bismarck: His Authentic Biography. By George Hezekiel. _Historical Introduction_ by Bayard Taylor. _Profusely Illustrated: New Map, etc._
"Noteworthy for the fullness of its details and the great variety of hitherto unknown facts and incidents that are recorded in it."--_N. Y. Sun._
Bryant and His Friends: A Memoir of Wm. Cullen Bryant, and Reminiscences of the best-known Knickerbocker Writers--Irving, Halleck, Paulding, Cooper, Dana, etc., etc. By James Grant Wilson. _Illustrated_ with portraits and manuscript fac-similes.
"A standard volume of literary history."--_Boston Traveller._
Life and Letters of John H. Raymond. Organizer and First President of Vassar College. Edited by Harriet Raymond Lloyd. _Steel Portrait._ Ex. cloth, beveled,
"A book, the charm of which it is not easy to express.... This admirably judicious record of a wholly and singularly beautiful, strong, wise, consecrated life."--_Chicago Advance._
* * * * *
Choice Works of Fiction,
PUBLISHED BY
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT,
_30 Lafayette Place, New York._
ANONYMOUS. A Palace-Prison; or, the Past and the Present. Sanity Amid the Insane.
HENRY WARD BEECHER. Norwood: a Tale of Village Life in New England.
ALEXANDRE BIDA. Aucassin and Nicolette: The Lovers of Provence. Song-Story, from French of XIIth Century, trans. by A. R. Macdonough. _Illustrated by_ Bida.
HELEN CAMPBELL. Under Green Apple Boughs. _Illustrated._
JULIUS CHAMBERS. On a Margin. A Novel of Wall Street and Washington.
CHAS. M. CLAY. The Modern Hagar. Southern View of the War.
ALICE C. HALL. Miss Leighton's Perplexities. A Love Story.
WM. J. HARSHA. Ploughed Under: The Story of an Indian Chief.
JULIAN HAWTHORNE. Dust. A Novel. _With Portrait and Illustrations._
NATHAN C. KOUNS. Dorcas: A Tale of the Catacombs. _Illustrated by_ Will Low.
ORPHEUS C. KERR (R. H. NEWELL). There Was Once a Man. (Inverted Darwinism.) _Illustrated._
MRS. A. G. PADDOCK. The Fate of Madame La Tour. Mormonism in Utah.
BLANCHE ROOSEVELT. Stage-Struck: or, She Would be an Opera Singer.
ALBION W. TOURGEE. Murvale Eastman: Christian Socialist; Hot Plowshares; A Royal Gentleman; Figs and Thistles; A Fool's Errand; Bricks Without Straw. _Illustrated._ John Eax, and other Stories; Black Ice.
WM. A. WILKINS. The Cleverdale Mystery: The Political Machine and its Wheels.
GEO. F. WILLIAMS. Bullet and Shell: A Story of War as the Soldier Saw it. _Illustrated_ by Edwin Forbes.
* * * * *
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
Says CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER:
"Mr. Theodore S. Van Dyke, a graduate of a New England college, has lived nearly twenty years in Southern California, and hunted, fished and tramped over every acre of it. He is the most competent, accomplished, and level-headed historian California ever had. He has a very practical turn, and is thoroughly up in agriculture, horticulture, the problem of immigration, etc. Besides all this, he has uncommon powers of description and a genuine literary gift. It is not claiming too much to say that he is on the Pacific coast what John Burroughs is on the Atlantic. But he has more humor than Burroughs, and an equally keen instinct of nature. His former book on 'Southern California' is altogether the best that has been written, and it is so because Mr. Van Dyke has the literary art, which is the art of seeing things as they are."
Southern California: Its Valleys, Hills and Streams; its Animals, Birds and Fishes; its Gardens, Farms and Climate.
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The Still Hunter: A Popular Treatise on Deer Stalking.
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"Altogether the best and most complete American book we have yet seen on any branch of field sports."--_New York Evening Post._
Millionaires of a Day: An Inside History of the Great Southern California Boom.
"A witty and entertaining, but withal valuable and shrewd description of real and fanciful growth of a most favored land."--_Detroit Tribune._
Rifle, Rod and Gun in California: A Sporting Romance.
"Crisp and readable throughout, and, at the same time, gives a full and truthful technical account of our Southern California game, afoot, afloat, or on the wing."--_San Francisco Alta California._