“I hope you harvested a few fresh ideas for winter work? We ought to
have something to show after so laborious a summer.”
“I have: I am going to write a novel or a play. I cannot decide which;
but rather lean toward the latter, and, being particularly happy, feel
inclined to write a tragedy;” and something beside the daring of an
ambitious author sparkled in the eyes Canaris fixed upon his patron. It
looked too much like the expression of a bondman about to become a
freeman to suit Helwyze; but he replied, as imperturbably as ever,—
“Try the tragedy, by all means: the novel would be beyond you.”
“Why, if you please?” demanded Canaris, loftily.
“Because you have neither patience nor experience enough to do it well.
Goethe says: ‘In the novel it is _sentiments_ and _events_ that are
exhibited; in the drama it is _characters_ and _deeds_. The novel goes
slowly forward, the drama must hasten. In the novel, some degree of
scope may be allowed to chance; but it must be led and guided by the
sentiments of the personages. Fate, on the other hand, which, by means
of outward, unconnected circumstances, carries forward men, without
their own concurrence, to an unforeseen catastrophe, can only have place
in the drama. Chance may produce pathetic situations, but not tragic
ones.’”
Helwyze paused there abruptly; for the memory which served him so well
outran his tongue, and recalled the closing sentence of the
quotation,—words which he had no mind to utter then and there,—“Fate
ought always to be terrible; and it is in the highest sense tragic, when
it brings into a ruinous concatenation the guilty man and the guiltless
with him.”
“Then you think I _could_ write a play?” asked Canaris, with affected
carelessness.
“I think you could act one, better than imagine or write it.”
“What, I?”
“Yes, you; because you are dramatic by nature, and it is easier for you
to express yourself in gesture and tone, than by written or spoken
language. You were born for an actor, are fitted for it in every way,
and I advise you to try it. It would pay better than poetry; and that
stream _may_ run dry.”
Gladys looked indignant at what she thought bad advice and distasteful
pleasantry; but Canaris seemed struck and charmed with the new idea,
protesting that he would first write, then act, his play, and prove
himself a universal genius.
No more was said just then; but long afterward the conversation came
back to him like an inspiration, and was the seed of a purpose which,
through patient effort, bore fruit in a brilliant and successful career:
for Canaris, like many another man, did not know his own strength or
weakness yet, neither the true gift nor the power of evil which lay
unsuspected within him.
So the old life began again, at least in outward seeming; but it was
impossible for it to last long. The air was too full of the electricity
of suppressed and conflicting emotions to be wholesome; former relations
could not be resumed, because sincerity had gone out of them; and the
quiet, which reigned for a time, was only the lull before the storm.
Gladys soon felt this, but tried to think it was owing to the contrast
between the free, happy days she had enjoyed so much, and uttered no
complaint; for Felix was busy with his play, sanguine as ever, inspired
now by a nobler ambition than before, and happy in his work.
Helwyze had flattered himself that he could be content with the harmless
shadow, since he could not possess the sweet substance of a love whose
seeming purity was its most delusive danger. But he soon discovered “how
bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes;”
and, even while he made no effort to rob Canaris of his treasure, he
hated him for possessing it, finding the hatred all the more poignant,
because it was his own hand which had forced Felix to seize and secure
it. He had thought to hold and hide this new secret; but it held him,
and would not be hidden, for it was stronger than even his strong will,
and ruled him with a power which at times filled him with a sort of
terror. Having allowed it to grow, and taken it to his bosom, he could
not cast it out again, and it became a torment, not the comfort he had
hoped to find it. His daily affliction was to see how much the young
pair were to each other, to read in their faces a hundred happy hopes
and confidences in which he had no part, and to remember the confession
wrung from the lips dearest to him, that his death would bring to them
their much-desired freedom.
At times he was minded to say “Go,” but the thought of the utter blank
her absence would leave behind daunted him. Often an almost
uncontrollable desire to tell her that which would mar her trust in her
husband tempted him; for, having yielded to a greater temptation, all
lesser ones seemed innocent beside it; and, worse than all, the old
morbid longing for some excitement, painful even, if it could not be
pleasurable, goaded him to the utterance of half truths, which irritated
Canaris and perplexed Gladys, till she could no longer doubt the cause
of this strange mood. It seemed as if her innocent hand gave the touch
which set the avalanche slipping swiftly but silently to its destructive
fall.
One day when Helwyze was pacing to and fro in the library, driven by the
inward storm which no outward sign betrayed, except his excessive pallor
and unusual restlessness, she looked up from her book, asking
compassionately,—
“Are you suffering, sir?”
“Torment.”
“Can I do nothing?”
“Nothing!”
She went on reading, as if glad to be left in peace; for distrust, as
well as pity, looked out from her frank eyes, and there was no longer
any pleasure in the duties she performed for Canaris’s sake.
But Helwyze, jealous even of the book which seemed to absorb her, soon
paused again, to ask, in a calmer tone,—
“What interests you?”
“‘The Scarlet Letter.’”
The hands loosely clasped behind him were locked more closely by an
involuntary gesture, as if the words made him wince; otherwise unmoved,
he asked again, with the curiosity he often showed about her opinions of
all she read,—
“What do you think of Hester?”
“I admire her courage; for she repented, and did not hide her sin with a
lie.”
“Then you must despise Dimmesdale?”
“I ought, perhaps; but I cannot help pitying his weakness, while I
detest his deceit: he loved so much.”
“So did Roger;” and Helwyze drew nearer, with the peculiar flicker in
his eyes, as of a light kindled suddenly behind a carefully drawn
curtain.
“At first; then his love turned to hate, and he committed the
unpardonable sin,” answered Gladys, much moved by that weird and
wonderful picture of guilt and its atonement.
“The unpardonable sin!” echoed Helwyze, struck by her words and manner.
“Hawthorne somewhere describes it as ‘the want of love and reverence for
the human soul, which makes a man pry into its mysterious depths, not
with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold,
philosophical curiosity. This would be the separation of the intellect
from the heart: and this, perhaps, would be as unpardonable a sin as to
doubt God, whom we cannot harm; for in doing this we must inevitably do
great wrong both to ourselves and others.’”
As she spoke, fast and earnestly, Gladys felt herself upon the brink of
a much-desired, but much-dreaded, explanation; for Canaris, while owning
to her that there _was_ a secret, would not tell it till Helwyze freed
him from his promise. She thought that he delayed to ask this absolution
till she was fitter to bear the truth, whatever it might be; and she had
resolved to spare her husband the pain of an avowal, by demanding it
herself of Helwyze. The moment seemed to have come, and both knew it;
for he regarded her with the quick, piercing look which read her purpose
before she could put it into words.
“You are right; yet Roger was the wronged one, and the others deserved
to suffer.”
“They did; but Hester’s suffering ennobled her, because nobly borne;
Dimmesdale’s destroyed him, because he paltered weakly with his
conscience. Roger let his wrong turn him from a man into a devil, and
deserves the contempt and horror he rouses in us. The keeping of the
secret makes the romance; the confession of it is the moral, showing how
falsehood can ruin a life, and truth only save it at the last.”
“Never have a secret, Gladys: they are hard masters, whom we hate, yet
dare not rebel against.”
His accent of sad sincerity seemed to clear the way for her, and she
spoke out, briefly and bravely,—
“Sir, _you_ dare any thing! Tell me what it is which makes Felix obey
you against his will. He owns it, but will not speak till you consent.
Tell me, I beseech you!”
“Could you bear it?” he asked, admiring her courage, yet doubtful of the
wisdom of purchasing a moment’s satisfaction at such a cost; for, though
he could cast down her idol, he dared not set up another in its place.
“Try me!” she cried: “nothing can lessen my love, and doubt afflicts me
more than the hardest truth.”
“I fear not: with you love and respect go hand in hand, and some sins
you would find very hard to pardon.”
Involuntarily Gladys shrunk a little, and her eye questioned his
inscrutable face, as she answered slowly, thinking only of her husband,—
“Something very mean and false _would_ be hard to forgive; but not some
youthful fault, some shame borne for others, or even a crime, if a very
human emotion, a generous but mistaken motive, led to it.”
“Then this secret is better left untold; for it would try you sorely to
know that Felix _had_ been guilty of the fault you find harder to
forgive than a crime,—deceit. Wait a little, till you are accustomed to
the thought, then you shall have the facts; and pity, even while you
must despise, him.”
While he spoke, Gladys sat like one nerving herself to receive a blow;
but at the last words she suddenly put up her hand as if to arrest it,
saying, hurriedly,—
“No! do not tell me; I cannot bear it yet, nor from you. He shall tell
me; it will be easier so, and less like treachery. O sir,” she added, in
a passionately pleading tone, “use mercifully whatever bitter knowledge
you possess! Remember how young he is, how neglected as a boy, how
tempted he may have been; and deal generously, honorably with him,—and
with me.”
Her voice broke there. She spread her hands before her eyes, and fled
out of the room, as if in his face she read a more disastrous confession
than any Felix could ever make. Helwyze stood motionless, looking as he
looked the night she spoke more frankly but less forcibly: and when she
vanished, he stole away to his own room, as he stole then; only now his
usually colorless cheek burned with a fiery flush, and his hand went
involuntarily to his breast, as if, like Dimmesdale, he carried an
invisible scarlet letter branded there.
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