Chapter 39

THE DEEDS OF THE FARM.

Sunday, June 13.

In three days it will be a year since Helen promised to marry me, and on that anniversary she will be my wife.

It is strange how exactly according to my plan things have come about--and how differently from all that I have dreamed.

She is the most beautiful woman in the world; she is to be my wife sooner than I dared to hope--and--I must be good to her. I must love her.

Did I ever doubt my love until she claimed it five days ago with such confidence in my loyalty? In that moment, as I went to her, as I took her in my arms, as I felt that she needed me and trusted me, with the suddenness of a revelation I knew--

It was hard to meet Ethel--and Milly and Mrs. Baker afterwards.

To-day, in preparing to move to our new home, I came across the rough notes I wrote last December, when the marvel of Helen's beauty was fresh to me. As I read the disjointed and half incredulous words I had set to paper, I found myself living over again those days of Faery and enchantment.

Custom has somewhat dulled the shock of her beauty; I have grown quickly used to her as the most radiantly lovely of created beings; my mind has been drawn to dwell upon moral problems and to sorrow at seeing her gradually become the victim of her beauty--her nature, once as fine as the outward form that clothes it, warped by constant adulation, envy and strife; until--

But it is a miracle! As unbelievable, as unthinkable as it was on the very first day when that glowing dream of loveliness made manifest floated toward me in the little room overlooking Union Square, and I was near swooning with pure delight of vision.

Beautiful; wonderful! She didn't love me then and she doesn't now; but the most marvellous woman in the world needs me--and I will not fail her.

I wish I could take her out of the city for a change of mental atmosphere. She shrinks from her father's suggestion of a summer on the farm. But in time her wholesome nature must reassert itself; she must become, if not again the fresh, light-hearted girl I knew a year ago, a sweet and gracious woman whose sufferings will have added pathos to her charm.

And even now she's not to be judged like other women; before the shining of her beauty, reproach falls powerless. It is my sacred task to guard her--to soothe her awakening from all that nightmare of inflated hopes and vain imaginings. Kitty Reid and---yes, and little Ethel--will help me.

Kitty is a good fellow.

"Why, cert.," she said when I begged her last Wednesday to take care of Helen. "Married! Did you say married? Oh, Cadge, quit pegging shoes!"

Jumping up from the drawing table, Kitty left streams of India ink making her beastesses all tigers while she called to Miss Bryant, who was pounding viciously upon a typewriter:--

"Cadge, did you hear? Cadge! The Princess is going to be married. 'Course you remember, Mr. Burke, Cadge is going to be married herself Saturday."

"Don't be too sure of it," returned Miss Bryant, "and do let me finish this sentence. Ten to one Pros. or I'll be grabbed off for an assignment Saturday evening 'fore we can be married. But the Princess is different; she has leisure. Burke, shake!"

She sprang up to take my hand, her eyes shining with excitement.

Kitty hurried with me to the Nicaragua, where she pounced upon Helen, her red curls madly bobbing.

"What a bride you'll make!" she cried fondly. "Going to be married from the den, aren't you? Oh, I'm up to my eyes in weddings; Cadge simply won't attend to anything. But what have you been doing to yourself? Come here, Helen."

She pushed the proud, pale beauty into a chair, smothering her with kisses and the piles of cushions that seem to add bliss to women's joys and soften all their griefs.

"Tired, aren't you?" she purred. "Needed me. Now just you sit and talk with Mr. Burke and I'll pack up your brittle-brae in three no-times. Clesta,--where's that imp?"

She called to the little combination maid and model who had accompanied us.

"Clesta's afraid of you, Helen. 'Why'd ye fetch me 'long?' she whimpers. 'Miss Kitty, why'd ye fetch me 'long?' Huh, I 'member how you used to have his picture with yours in a white and gold frame!"

Helen scarcely replied to Kitty's raptures. She laid her head back half-protestingly among her cushions, showing her long, exquisite throat. For an instant she let her shadowy lashes droop over the everchanging lustre of her eyes. I couldn't help thinking of a great, glorious bird of heaven resting with broken wing.

"Poor little Princess!" said Kitty, who hardly comes to Helen's shoulder. Then we all laughed.

Kitty stayed at the Nicaragua that night, and when I came Thursday afternoon she stopped me outside the door, to say:--

"I wouldn't let Helen talk too much; she's nervous."

"Can you tell me what is the matter with her?" I asked. "I don't think she's well."

"Oh, nothing. You know--she's been worrying." Then loyal Kitty spoke purposely of commonplaces. "General must have danced her off her feet. Darmstetter's death upset her terribly, too. She never will speak of it. But she'll be as right as right with me. Bring her 'round as soon as the man comes for the trunks. You've only to head up a barrel of dishes, quick, 'fore Clesta gets in any fine work smashing 'em."

As I passed through the hall, littered with trunks and packing cases, to the dismantled parlour, Helen looked up from a mass of old letters and dance cards.

"I'm sorting my--souvenirs," she said.

The face she lifted was white, only the lips richly red, with a shade of fatigue under the haunting eyes. The graceful figure in its close-fitting dress looked a trifle less round than it had done earlier in the winter, and one fair arm, as it escaped from its flowing sleeve, was almost thin.

"Dear," I said wistfully, for something in her drooping attitude smote me to remorse and inspired me with tenderness; "will you really trust your life to me?"

She leaned towards me, and beauty breathed about her as a spell. I bent till my lips caressed her perfumed hair; and then--I saw among the rubbish on her desk something that made me interrupt the words we might have spoken.

"What's that?" I asked. "Not--pawn tickets?"

"For a necklace," she said; "and this--this must be my diamond--"

"Pawned and not paid for!"

She offered me the tickets, only half understanding, her great eyes as innocent as they were lovely.

"I had forgotten," she said. "I only found them when I came to--"

She brushed the rubbish of her winter's triumphs and disappointments to the floor, and turned from it with a little, disdainful movement.

"I had to pay the maids," she said simply.

"Nelly, why--why didn't you come to me sooner?"

With a bump against the door, Clesta sidled into the room awestruck and smutched, bearing a tray.

"Miss Kitty said," she stammered, "as how I should make tea." And as soon as she had found a resting place for her burden, the frightened girl made a dash for the door.

Before Helen had finished drinking, there was a stir in the hall, and then the sound of a familiar voice startled us.

"Wa-al, Helen 'Lizy," it said. "How ye do, John? Don't git up; I can set till ye're through."

And Mr. Winship himself stood before us, stoop-shouldered, roughly dressed from the cattle cars, his kindly old eyes twinkling, his good face all glorified by the honest love and pride shining through its plainness.

"Why, Father!" cried Helen with a start.

She looked at him with a nervous repugnance to his appearance, which she tried to subdue. He did not seem to notice it.

"Wa'n't lookin' for me yit-a-while, was ye?" he asked. "Kind o' thought I'd s'prise ye. Did s'prise the man down in the hall. Didn't want to let me in till I told him who I was. Little gal in the entry says ye're movin'; ye do look all tore up, for a fac'."

Mr. Winship has grown old within the year. His hair has whitened and his bushy eyebrows; but the grip of his hand, the sound of his homely speech, seemed to wake me from some ugly dream. Here we were together again in the wholesome daylight, Father Winship, little Helen 'Lizy and the Schoolmaster, and all must yet be well.

Mr. Winship sighed with deep content as he sank into a chair, his eyes scarcely leaving Helen. He owned himself beat out and glad of a dish of tea; but when Clesta had served him in her scuttling crab fashion, he would stop in the middle of a sentence, with saucer half lifted, to gaze with perplexed, wistful tenderness at his stately daughter.

She is the child of his old age; I think he must be long past sixty, and fast growing feeble. The instinct of father love has grown in him so refined that he sees the soul and not the envelope. Grand and beautiful as she is to others, to him she is still his little Nelly.

He would not even own that he thought her altered.

"I d'know," he said, a shade of anxiety blending with the old fond pride. "Fust-off, Sis didn't look jes' nat'ral, spite of all the picters she's sent us; but that was her long-tailed dress, mebbe. W'en she's a young one, Ma was all for tyin' back her ears and pinchin' her nose with a clo'espin--to make it straight or so'thin'; but I says to Ma, w'en Helen 'Lizy lef' home, 'don't ye be one mite afeard,' I says, 'but what them bright eyes'll outshine the peaked city gals.' Guess they have, sort o', eh, Sis; f'om what John's been writin'?"

"I don't know, Father."

"Don't ye--don't ye want t' hear 'bout the folks? Brought ye heaps o' messages. Frenchy, now--him that worked for us--druv over f'om the Merriam place to know 'f 'twas true that city folks made a catouse over ye. He'd heard the men readin' 'bout ye in the papers.

"'Wa-al,' I says to Frenchy, 'Helen 'Lizy was al'ays han'some.'

"'D'know 'bout zat,' says Frenchy, only he says it in his lingo, 'but she was one vair cute li'l gal.'

"'Han'some as a picter,' I tol' him; 'an' cutes' little tyke y'ever see.'"

"How is Mother?" asked Helen constrainedly.

"Ma's lottin' on havin' ye home; wants t' hear all 'bout the good times. School done? All packed and ready for a start, ain't ye? But ye don't seem to be feeling any too good. Don't New York agree with ye, Sissy? Been studying too hard?"

"She is a goot organism; New York agrees vit her," I said. "Wasn't that how poor old Darmstetter put it, Nelly? Mr. Winship, Nelly has overworked, but with your consent, she is about to let a tyrannical husband take care of her."

At my heedless mention of Darmstetter, Helen's white face grew whiter. Her trembling hand strayed, seeking support.

"Al'ays s'posed you'n' Sis'd be marryin' some day," said Mr. Winship, dubiously watching her, while he stroked his beard; "but seems mos's if ye'd better wait a spell, till Ma's chirked her up some. Han'some place here."

His eyes examined the luxurious, disordered room.

"These here things ain't yourn, Sis?"

"Not all of them."

"I ain't refusin' to let Sis marry, if ye're both sot on't," he conceded. Then he caught sight of the Van Nostrand painting, and his slow glance travelled from it to Helen. "That done for you, Sis? I never helt with bare necks. Yes, Sis can marry, if she says so, though Ma wants her home. But she ain't been writin' real cheerful. She--she's asked for money, that's the size on't. An' here ye are up in arms an' she nigh sick. I don't want nothing hid away f'om me; how come ye livin' in a place like this?"

He rose laboriously, surveying through the open doorway the beautiful hall and the dining-room; while I interposed some jesting talk on other matters, for I had hoped to get Helen out of the Nicaragua before her father's arrival, and still hoped to spare him knowledge of our worst troubles.

"If Sis has been buyin' all this here, I ain't denying that I'll feel the expense," he said, sticking to the subject; "but I guess we can manage."

Fumbling for his wallet, he drew some papers from it and handed them to Helen, adding:--

"There, Sis; there they are."

"Money, Father?" she asked with indifference. "I don't believe I need any."

"Don't ye? Ye wrote 'bout mortgagin'. I didn't want to do it, 'count o' Ma, partly; but we kep' worryin' an' worryin' 'bout ye. Ma couldn't sleep o' nights or eat her victuals; an fin'lly--'Ezry,' she says, 'we was possessed to let Helen 'Lizy, at her age, an' all the chick or child we got, go off alone to the city. Ezry,' she says, 'you go fetch her home. Like's not Tim can let ye have the money,' she says; 'his wife bein' an own cousin, right in the family, y'know.' So I've brought the deeds, Sis, an'--"

"What!" cried Helen, starting up. "The deeds of the farm? Let me see!"

She reached out a shaking hand for the papers.

"I'll pay you back!" she cried. "Why didn't you come sooner? How much can you get? How much money?"

"Not much more'n three thousan', I'm afeared, on a mortgage; cap'tal's kind o' skeery--but Tim--"

"Three thousand dollars!"

Laughing hysterically, she fell back in her chair.

"I had ought 'a come sooner; an' three thousan' ain't a gre't deal, I don't suppose, here in the city; but it's been spend, spend--not that I grutch it--an' things ain't so flourishin' as they was. I'm gittin' too old to manage, mebbe--"

"Mr. Winship," I said, "Nelly has told you the truth; she doesn't need money; she--"

"Three thousand will save me!" Helen cried. "I can pay a little to everybody. I can hold out, I can--"

"Please, Miss--the furniture--"

Behind Clesta appeared two men who gaped at Helen in momentary forgetfulness of their errand.

Helen's creditors have proved more than reasonable, with the exception of the furniture people; their demands were such that there seemed no alternative but to surrender the goods. As the men who came for them advanced into the room, stammering questions about the articles they were to remove, Helen struggled to her feet and started to meet them, then stopped, clutching at a table for support. Their eyes never left her face.

"Are they takin' your things, Sis?" asked Mr. Winship.

Her feverish glance answered him.

"What's to pay?" he inquired.

"Want to keep the stuff, Boss?" asked the head packer.

"Yes," I said, seeing her distress, and resolving desperately to find the means, somehow.

"It ain't none o' your look-out," interposed Mr. Winship. "Sis ain't a-goin' to be beholden to her husband, not till she's married. Ezry Winship al'ays has done for his own, an' he proposes to do, jes' as fur's he's able. Sis'll tell ye I hain't stented her--What's to pay?"

I couldn't see all his savings go for gauds!

"You may take the goods," I said to the men, with sudden revulsion of feeling. "There's no room for them," I added gruffly to Mr. Winship, "in our--the rooms--where we are to live."

"All right, Boss," said the head packer; "which gent speaks for the lady?"

"Father!" Helen gasped.

"What's to pay?" insisted Mr. Winship.

"Take the goods," I repeated.

"All right, Boss;" and the two men went about their work, still glancing at us with sidelong looks of curiosity.

Helen gazed at me with eyes that stabbed. Then slowly her glance dulled. She dropped on a packing box and sat silent--a bowed figure of despair--forgetting apparently that she was not alone.

Mr. Winship made no further attempt to interfere with events. He stood by Helen's side, puzzled and taciturn.

I, too, was silent, reproaching myself for the brutality of my action, unable to decide what I should have done or ought to do. Helen herself had suggested that we give up the furniture, and I had not mourned the necessity, for I hated the stuff, with its reminders of the General and the Whitney woman and Bellmer and the Earl and all those strange people that I used to see around her. But I might have known that she could not, all at once, wean herself from the trumpery.

A minute later Clesta ushered in the man who was to take the trunks, and when I had given him his directions, I asked:--

"Shall we go, Nelly?"

"If ye ain't reconciled to movin'--" Mr. Winship began.

But Helen answered neither of us. Her eyes were bent upon the floor, and a look, not now of resentment, but of--was it fear?--had slowly crept upon her face. Her hands were clenched.

Darmstetter! Instinct--or memory of my careless words spoken but a little earlier--told me the truth. The growing pallor of her cheek spoke her thought. How that tragedy haunts her! The face I looked upon was at the last almost ghastly.

"Nelly--" I said, very gently.

She looked around with the slow bewilderment that I once saw on the face of a sleep-walker. Her eyes saw through us, and past us, fixed upon some invisible horror. She was heedless of the familiar scene, the figures grouped about her. Then there came a sudden flush to her face, a quick recoil of terror; she shuddered as if waking from a nightmare.

"Why do we stay here?" she cried starting up with sudden, panic strength. "Let's get out of this horrible place! Let's go! Oh, let's go! Let's go!"

And so it was, in sorrow and with dark forebodings, that we left the gay rooms where Helen had so passionately enjoyed her little flight in the sunshine.

The drive through the streets was at first silent. Shutting her eyes, she leaned back in the carriage. Sometimes she shuddered convulsively.

"Where ye goin'?" Mr. Winship asked at last, peering out at the carriage window. Indeed the trip to Fourteenth Street seemed interminable to me, and I didn't wonder at his impatience.

The simple question broke down Helen's reserve.

"Anywhere!" she sobbed, breaking into violent, hysterical tears. "I didn't want to stay there! I didn't want the furniture! I didn't want it! I don't want money! Father, you needn't mortgage!"

"We'll talk 'bout that some other time," said Mr. Winship soothingly. "Nevermind now, Sissy."

"Ye'll take good care of Helen 'Lizy?" he said to Cadge and Kitty when we had half carried her up the long flights of stairs to the studio. He seemed to take no notice of the strange furnishings of the loft, but his furrowed brow smoothed itself as he looked into the hospitable faces of the two girls.

"Ye'll take good care of her?" he repeated simply. "I'm afeard my daughter ain't very well."

"We will; we will!" they assured him eagerly; and indeed it seemed that Helen had found her needed rest, for she bade us good night almost cheerfully.