HELEN'S JOURNAL.
Sitting down this morning to make a beginning towards the fulfilment
of my promise to my husband, I ask myself if I am indeed the same
person as I was when he left me. It seems to me that a great gulf lies
between me and that time, and that the experience which I have gained
of human nature and of the possibilities of life has completely
changed me. With all the relief which the absence of Alston's friend
has given me there is a great pang of pain for Alston himself, and a
horrid sense of a barrier of concealment between us. I have allowed
so many days to elapse before I force myself into commencing this
self-communing, in sheer uncertainty of what my line of duty is, and
though I am now tolerably clearly convinced that neither now nor ever
must I reveal to Alston what has passed, the conviction invests my
task of writing to him with great pain and difficulty. Somehow we seem
to be doubly parted; first by distance, then by secret. Will this
additional sense of parting yield even to his return? How shall I bear
to see him take up his relations with Warren just where he dropped
them, and to know, as I do know, how his confidence is betrayed? Not
in business matters, I daresay; so far as I understand anything about
them, there is no likelihood that Alston's interests and Warren's
could ever clash, and so far he is safe. It would do my husband such
harm in every way to know what has occurred; his own frankness and
loyalty of nature could hardly withstand so great a shock; the world
would be changed for him. No, he shall never know it; I will trust to
the chapter of accidents, or rather, I should say, to the beneficence
of Providence, to preserve us harmless from his false friend.
But my journal, to which he looked forward with such pleasure, and
which I determined should be so frank and free and full a record of my
life, telling it all out to him in so far as one human heart can break
the bar of its solitude in words to another--what has become of that?
To keep any freshness and any truth in it at all, I must make this
record of what has passed for myself, waiting it indeed, but laying it
by as a thing that is done with--as a chronicle of the truth for
reference, for precisely that which must not be brought into my
letters to Alston is that relief for the feelings and the fears which
must be hidden from him. What are these fears? How often I ask myself
that question, and I never find an answer! The man has gone; not alone
has he pledged his word--he could hardly expect me to set much store
by that; but he knows it is for his own interest, for his own safety,
for the future preservation of the good relations between him and
Alston, which, false as all pretext to friendship is on his part, are,
nevertheless, valuable to him, that he should keep his promise to
me--that he should remain away; that he should never attempt to see me
or to communicate with me while I am alone. A thousand times a day I
tell myself this; I strive to feel my freedom; I recall the oppression
of his presence: I remember my dislike to him long before I knew the
secret unconscious origin it had; and I ask myself why I do not exult,
why I am not able to bear with more than composure anything which has
led to such an emancipation? But it is not so. The presence of the
enemy seems to hem me in, an evil influence is in the air I breathe;
no effort frees me from this morbid terror, of which I am half
ashamed, while I write this secret record no eyes but my own are ever
to see. How cleverly, how skilfully this man has carried out this
sudden and complete change of all his plans; how reasonably he seems
to have accounted for leaving New York! No one seems surprised, and I
am quite certain not the slightest shade of suspicion that his
departure is of any consequence to me has presented itself to the mind
of any of our common acquaintance, though the close tie between him
and Alston is perfectly well known. It is just this power, this
influence over others, which makes me so afraid of him even now. What
if on Alston's return he took some other means of alienating him from
me! The feminine inferiority, the absence of a power of understanding
business matters, will serve him no longer: he won't try to revive
that theory when Alston returns; he shall find that I have
administered every affair which he left in my charge too well to be
set down as an incapable for the future; but he may try a more subtle
means. I believe the love of a man like Warren is half passion, half
hatred, and that the hatred swallows up the passion when it is
effectually checked. Whence that notion has come to me, I know not,
but it has come, and with it a fear of this man's hatred, greater, if
possible, than my horror of his love.
There, I have recorded it, and now I will try to turn my mind from
it--I will try to write to Alston a cheery letter, a pious fraud.
When you told me, dearest Alston, that my letters were to take the
form of a journal, I remember thinking of the passage in our pet book,
the _Vicar of Wakefield_, in which Dr. Primrose describes the
vicissitudes of primroses' existence, and summoning them up in
migrations from the blue bed to the brown. My journal, if I keep it at
all within the actual sense of the term, would record nothing more
strange or exciting. I migrate from the nursery to the parlour, from
the parlour to the park, from the park to the nursery; but my chief
sojourn is in the latter place. I never could have imagined that a
baby could give one so much to do, even when one is assisted, as I am,
by the most capable of nurses, concerning whom I have a lot to tell
you presently; neither could I have believed that a baby could be so
interesting. We made up our minds, you remember, that we were not
going to plague our neighbours, and make fools of ourselves, by
advancing the claims of this remarkable infant to be quite the finest,
the most intelligent, and the most precocious that ever existed.
Bearing this resolution in mind, I endeavoured to be a very rational
mother, but I protest, quite genially, that I do not want any society
except baby's, until the kind Fates send me that of baby's papa.
The child has become so strong and healthy that I am no longer in the
least uneasy about her; therefore she is a pure unmitigated pleasure
to me; and the real truth is that if I am to tell you all about my
daily life, I fear you will suffer from the plethora of baby. Of
course, I read and work, and visit and receive some people
sometimes--not many and not often; and, of course, I get out and do
some shopping. I bought the loveliest pelisse, yesterday, that ever
was seen out of Paris, and I believe it came from there; and then,
again, even shopping has come to mean baby--the pelisse was for her,
not for me. I play the piano, sometimes, a little--nurse says baby is
beginning to take notice of music. But after all this is not my life,
you know; it is only the outside of it, and one shell is very like
another.
Of course I miss you frightfully, more and more every day, but I do
not feel helpless. I made up my mind, you know, that I never would
yield to that helpless feeling, from which I have seen so many women
suffer who are guarded as I am by the care and love and generosity of
good men, from every trouble from which one human being can shield
another, and so I have kept my promise made to myself. When there is
anything to make up my mind about, I make up my mind promptly; when
there is anything to do, I do it at once, to the best of my ability;
if I make mistakes I don't fret over them, but I think I shall manage
them better next time, and I don't get discouraged. I daresay I shall
see in the end how very good for me this parting between us proved.
Don't suppose I am going back upon what you laughed at me for, and
called my jealous susceptibility. I have got over all that, but I
really am going to say that you will find me ever so much more useful,
ever so much more of a companion; because I shall have had this little
interval for exercising my judgment as well as my taste, for exerting
my discretion as well as gratifying my fancies. Hitherto, your
indulgence and affection have limited me to the less useful and less
strengthening of these processes; so when you come home, dearest
Alston, you will have to tell me all about business, and you will find
I shall understand it quite as well, and take quite as much pleasure
in it, as in our old discussions on books and music and pictures and
acting.
Writing that word 'acting' reminds me of our baby's new nurse--rather
an inconsequent style of writing this, you will perhaps say, for a
woman who is claiming a newly-developed talent for business; but it is
what you asked for. Baby's nurse is the oddest woman, and such a
treasure! I will tell you how she came to me, and really it is not out
of proportion, for it was certainly the most striking event in my life
since you left me. She came in answer to my advertisement--she was the
first candidate, her name is Bessie Jenkins, her husband is somewhere
in the Western States. They had misfortunes, and were obliged to part
for a while, like ourselves. I suppose it was that likeness in
unlikeness which attracted me towards the good woman from the first.
She spoke with a hearty love and a hearty sorrow of her absent husband
and her dead baby, only a day or two dead when she came to me, and I
shall never forget her face when she took our little Mary in her arms,
and saw how delicate the child was. The very way she said: 'This won't
do you don't understand babies, ma'am;' put aside the food which
Jessie and I had been messing up unskilfully; and made some mysterious
alterations in the way the child's clothes were put on, made me feel
that the right person had been sent to me. Dr. Clark just looked at
her and said, 'She will do; make sure of her, Mrs. Griswold;' and I
asked her if she could come to me at once--if she could stay that very
night; she said she would, and went and fetched her things on the
spot.
We are quite friends--we were from the beginning--and she takes almost
as much care of me as of little Mary; even that she does cleverly, and
has avoided making any jealousy or confusion in the house, which was
just what I dreaded, you know, when the doctor told me I must have a
nurse. Mrs. Jenkins is a good-looking woman, tall, large, active, with
a very fair skin, and fine, honest, gray eyes. She says she does not
know exactly how old she is, and I believe her--she looks about
five-and-twenty; she is very well spoken for a woman of her class, and
not at all ignorant. We have long talks in the nursery and in our
drives--for I never go out without nurse and baby; it is so horribly
dull to drive out alone; and I find I learn a good deal from her about
the realities of life as they exist for women who have not been taken
the care of that you have taken of me.
After all, dearest Alston, what a very little bit of trouble I have
known in my life--just those dark days when poor papa's affairs went
badly, and you came and brightened them up with that blessed, steady
light which has shone on all my pathway since. Why are people's
history so different? Is mine to be always an exception? Some time
before you left me, and when I was much less thoughtful than I am now,
I have occasionally felt afraid that I was too happy; there seemed
such deep peace, of such settled certainty, in our lives. I hardly
understand all the talk in books and in speech about the turbulence
and the transitoriness and the perpetual change which mark human
existence all over the world; while your absence has taken away that
deep tranquillity, it has not touched, of course, the real happiness
of my life. I would not have you think me discontented, and, perhaps,
this little shake is good for me--will be good for us both. This is a
lesson which Mrs. Jenkins, in her good, quiet, homely, honest way,
impresses on me very often. It does one good to see a person who has
had plenty of trouble of a sternly material kind, as well as a great
sorrow, bear them with the ready submission and cheerful courage of
this poor woman; and many a time when I see her with our baby in her
arms and at her breast, where her dead child once lay, I ask myself
how I should have faced such a life as hers.
I have said before that we are great friends; she has formed a really
strong affection for me--it is like the kind of thing one hears about
the Irish people in old times. I fancy she would not shrink from any
sacrifice for me. She is extremely curious about you, and never tired
of hearing me tell how I came to know you first, and the story of my
girlhood; and I talk to her about all these things; so you will have
no difficulty in believing that our new nurse is an exceptional
person, and that, though she is homely in speech and manner, there is
no real inferiority in her. Don't laugh at me when I say that I am
quite sure you and she will be great friends. There is, at least, one
very strong bond of union between you: Mrs. Jenkins has a ruling
passion--it is for the drama. I found that out very soon.
You know we agreed that the nursery was to be made into a very pretty
and cheerful room, so that baby's nurse, if we had the good fortune to
find a good one, should be thoroughly comfortable, and feel herself at
home. Looking about through the house for such things as I could spare
to ornament her domain, on the day after Mrs. Jenkins's arrival, I
came upon a lot of photographs in a drawer in the study--they were
likenesses of all the actors and actresses whom, I verily believe, you
have seen in the whole course of your life. I had no notion you had
such a collection; and you need not be frightened, I have not deprived
you of them, I have only taken such as have duplicates--there are a
good many. I put them all into the photograph-book which belonged to
me when I was a girl, and made it over for nursery use. Who knows how
soon Mrs. Jenkins will find out that her wonderful nurseling takes
notice of pictures as well as of music? Two or three days after, I
asked her if she liked her rooms, if she was quite comfortable, and so
forth. She replied, with great delight, that she had never been so
comfortable in her life, and expressed peculiar pleasure at finding
some pictures about. I found she had been eagerly investigating the
contents of the photograph-book, and she surprised me not a little by
running glibly over the names of all the portraits. As I hadn't
written them in--for one very good reason among others, that I had no
notion of who are represented by several of their numbers--I could not
understand how she came to know who all these theatrical ladies and
gentlemen were. It came out then; the theatre is a celestial vision to
Mrs. Jenkins; to see a play is the greatest enjoyment of which she is
capable.
She says that she knows a good play from a bad one as well as any one
in the world, and is a first-rate judge of acting; but she would much
rather see a bad play than none at all, which I take as a mark of
enthusiasm, if true, that does not justify much faith in her critical
faculty. I think she knows every play that has been produced in New
York in her time. If she hasn't seen she has read them; she knows all
about the 'castes,' as she calls it, is a perfect chronicle of the
successes and the failures of the actors and actresses who have come
here from London and Paris, and has, among her possessions, a huge
scrap-book, of which she is inordinately proud, crammed with newspaper
critiques, squibs, old playbills, and gaudy woodcuts, which represent
her prime favourites as it is devoutly to be hoped they never did
appear upon any stage. Mrs. Jenkins is not an American by birth; she
was born in Hampshire and reared in London; and though she has been in
America since her fifteenth year, she seems to have enjoyed a good
deal of her favourite amusement even at that early age. I am, however,
positive that she was never employed in any capacity in connection
with the stage herself, if only because she speaks of the fact with
considerable regret.
One portrait in the photograph-book has so special an attraction for
her, that I took it out and put it in a little upright frame, which
she keeps on her dressing-table. This slight act of kindness has, it
appears, particularly touched her heart; and yesterday, when I
mentioned that I should be despatching my letter to you this morning,
she begged me to ask you to be sure and go to see the original of this
beloved portrait, a certain Miss Clara Montressor, who is at present
playing at one of the London theatres. The theatre in question is
called the Thespian; you may perhaps know it, but I am so deplorably
ignorant of such matters that I really do not know whether I am
talking to you of a first-rate or a fifth-rate establishment. I
disguised my ignorance, for Mrs. Jenkins's harmless enthusiasm and
true believership amuses me so much that I would not snub her for the
world; and when she assured me that she has heard tell that Miss Clara
Montressor is quite the finest actress in existence, I did not allow
her to perceive that I had never heard Miss Clara Montressor's name.
If you can at all conveniently get anywhere near to confirming Mrs.
Jenkins's belief, pray do so; at all events, let your reply to this
contain an assurance that you have beheld the prodigy. I should not
like baby's nurse to be prejudiced against baby's papa by supposing
that he could be in London without seeing Miss Clara Montressor and
appreciating the advantage as it deserves.
This young lady is one craze; but Mrs. Jenkins has another, rather an
abstract one, for she has never seen its object, who is no less a
person than the famous actor, Bryan Duval. She has followed his career
with most amusing zeal, and has told me all about his best characters
and his peculiar points, until I feel that he too is an old
acquaintance. How heartily you would have laughed if you could have
been present, unseen, at baby's bedtime yesterday! I had just heard a
piece of information which I knew would be productive of unbounded
delight to Mrs. Jenkins, and I took that favourable opportunity, when
she is always thoroughly disposed for a chat, to tell her about it.
She had been rather low all day--she sometimes is, I observe, when she
gets a letter from her husband (he is not like you, Alston, though she
loves him)--and I knew I should cheer her up by telling her, what no
doubt you know as well as we know it here, that Bryan Duval is coming
to New York. You never saw anything so absurd as her delight, which
appeared to be thoroughly shared by baby, judging by the kicking and
crowing of that young lady in consequence of the additional dangling
and tossing which her nurse bestowed upon her in her pleasure. I told
her not only that she could go to see him, but that she might
accompany me--we can manage to put baby in commission for that little
time--and I even hinted at the possibility of her unknown idol
presenting himself in the flesh at our house. I suppose you will have
made this gentleman's acquaintance in London; do be sure and tell me
if so, and whether he is really the very charming man in society which
he has the name of being here. Mrs. Sinclair said, in speaking of him
to-day, that he was one of the very few great actors whom it did to
know off the stage, but that he was thoroughly satisfactory. 'So
unlike either authors or painters, you know,' added Mrs. Sinclair, in
that bored manner of hers; 'they never do, dear, out of print and off
canvas; but Bryan Duval is charming!' Charming doesn't mean very much,
for every one says it, and everybody means by it something different
from what everybody else means. If you say Bryan Duval is 'charming,'
I shall know the value of the verdict, and be quite sure that I shall
find him so, for of course we shall know him here, whether you have
made his acquaintance in London or not. If you have, dear Alston, give
him a letter of introduction to me, for I really think I am slightly
bitten by the popular enthusiasm, and though I cannot say, like Mrs.
Sinclair, that I am 'dying to know him,' it would be very pleasant,
and I should at once call upon his wife, of whom I have heard a great
deal.
I have nothing particularly interesting to communicate respecting
household affairs; everything is going on very well and very quietly.
Of course, my dearest Alston, you will expect that this letter should
contain some reference to the commission with which you charged Mr.
Warren on the day of your departure, and which he immediately
fulfilled. Will you pardon me if I make my reference to it a brief one
in proportion to its importance and to the large share which I know it
has had in your thoughts? Our parting is too new, the sense of its
inevitable duration weighs too heavily upon me. I am obliged to set my
face too steadfastly to overcome the nervousness, the anxiety, and the
loneliness involved in dwelling upon it to admit of my saying all that
I feel, or even any part of it, with regard to the contents of the
letter which your friend handed to me. If I said all, if I said any,
it would come to the same thing--that letter is like you, Alston; it
is an absolute fulfilment, a complete realisation of the estimate
which I have formed of you. If by any horrible decree of Fate the
occasion should ever arise on which it would be my doom and my duty to
act upon the instructions, and to carry out the provisions, contained
in that letter, I should do so with a proud and full sense that they
are worthy of you, that they are such last words, such last
instructions, as, if I could have chosen, I should have asked of you.
And now I must pass away from this subject. I am unequal to saying
more about it. When I can say what I have felt, with my head on your
shoulder and my hand in yours, you will know what the receipt and the
reading of that letter was to me. The other commission with which you
charged Mr. Warren, I fear, I received in a different spirit--one
which made it difficult for me to bow my own will completely to yours,
to substitute your judgment unrepiningly for my own. Happily no
occasion has yet arisen to oblige me to have recourse to Mr. Warren's
advice or assistance. I have needed neither. All external matters,
with which alone he could have any concern, have passed along very
smoothly, nor can I, at present, foresee any possible contingency in
which it would be necessary for me to apply to him; should any such
arise, you may rest assured that I shall strictly conform to your
instructions. It was rather hard for me, my dear husband, to be told
by that one friend of yours, concerning whom we are not entirely of
one opinion, that my letters to you were to pass through his hands.
Did I not know that you are quite above such a futile and foolish
exercise of power, such experimenting in the pliability of the human
will, had we not often discussed the contemptible folly of the patient
Griselda, and quite made up our minds as to what we thought of
Geraint, I might have supposed for a moment that you had imposed this
restriction upon me as a sort of test, as well as a significant hint
to me that thus far and no farther I might go in our domestic
relations. I might have thought you meant to say, 'I like Warren, you
don't; you will have to give in to my liking.' This would have been a
calculation and an act of a domestic tyrant; therefore an
impossibility to you. I accept the restriction in a perfectly frank
and candid spirit, and absolute loyalty towards you. Some day you will
perhaps tell me--when you find that I am capable of being more of a
companion to you than I have hitherto been--what is the precise nature
of your present business, and the exact character of the complication
which has rendered it necessary that my letters should not go direct
from your own house in New York to your own address in London; and I
have no doubt that I shall entirely recognise the force of the reason.
If, however, you should never tell me, if for any reason conceivable
or unconceivable by me it should remain impossible for you to confide
this to me, I shall be perfectly satisfied that the motive not to be
explained is one which does no discredit to you, and is wholly
uninfluenced with any slight to me. And now, dear Alston, I pass from
the subject either for ever or until such time as you choose to resume
it. I wonder if you will be provoked with my pertinacity if I tell you
that I have discovered that Mr. Warren has very few such partial
friends as you are. The fact is, he is not much liked by men, and he
is, generally speaking, as much disliked by their wives as he is by
me. I think no polish of manner, no external surface, brightness, or
gallantry of that kind which, when looked into by a keen-eyed woman,
is much more insulting than complimentary, has ever enabled him to
conceal from women in general the sentiment which all right-minded
women must resent, and which would render neglect, even rudeness, from
Mr. Warren, the most acceptable line of treatment he could adopt
towards a woman. Mrs. Sinclair was talking of him yesterday. I did not
introduce the subject, and I kept my own opinion to myself. I should
regard it as a kind of side wind of disloyalty to you, my dearest, if
I allowed anybody but yourself to know the difference that exists
between us on that point, to suspect that your friend was not my
friend. Mrs. Sinclair spoke of him pretty roundly, and saying a great
many things which were untrue, I daresay, she said one in which I
believed. It was that Mr. Warren was, in her opinion, an unsafe friend
and an exceedingly dangerous enemy. I pray that we may never have him
for an enemy! I wish to God, and with a growing earnestness, that we
had never had him for a friend!
At this point in my letter, dearest Alston, I was interrupted by a
visit, and now I fear that I shall have to finish this up hurriedly in
time for the mail. My unexpected visitor was Thornton Carey. He sat
with me a long time. I didn't like to hint to him that his coming was
a little imprudent, in one sense, as curtailing my time for writing to
you--that, however, I can take up again; in another sense, his visit
was exceedingly apropos. You will be delighted to hear how admirably
your generous intentions towards him have been realised. Can I ever
thank you sufficiently for all you have done for him, indeed for every
one dear to me, from my father to the merest acquaintance whom I have
ever recommended to your good offices? Thornton looks remarkably well,
and so far from complaining of hard work in his new office, he says he
hasn't half enough to do but judging from the account he gave me of
his duties, I should say most men would consider they had a tolerably
fair share of labour and responsibility in his post of librarian at
New Orleans. He has taken to his occupation with enthusiasm; in that
respect (only) he reminded me very strongly of Tom Pinch, when he set
to work so vehemently about making a catalogue of his unknown
employer's books in the Temple chambers. He seems to have grown fond
of the very outside of his charge; and when we were talking of our
childish days together, and I reminded him of the awful quarrel we had
because he tore the red-and-gold cover of my _Arabian Nights_, he
regarded me with the most comical horror, as though I had suddenly dug
up and brought to light the corpse of a victim, and produced it in the
sight of its murderer, after the fashion of, 'You don't mean to say,
Helen,' he said, 'that even in my most cub-like and uncivilised days I
ever tore a book?' I laughed as I little thought I should ever laugh
during your absence; but I thought we were both very near tears
occasionally during our interview, for, of course, we talked of our
friendlessness until we respectively found the best of all friends in
you. I wonder if Thornton Carey has any chance of being a great man
some day--in his own studious scientific line, I mean? How nice it
would be if he did turn into a great man, and it was all your
doing--for so it would be! No man could work without tools; you have
put his into his hand. Do you know even I had no notion how hopeless
he was, how severely he felt the restriction of poverty, and that
narrow sphere from which there seemed no chance of escape, until you
opened the barrier with the golden key? I suppose I understand most
things better now; and though I always felt very much for him, and had
a dim notion that he was a case of what I have heard you call 'wasted
force,' I have only come to see it clearly since he has been talking
to me.
How earnestly I thank you for all your goodness to my old friend! It
seems, he says, the most absurd of all possible ideas that he could
ever be able to express his feelings otherwise than by, or even by,
words. There is small chance that he should ever be able to prove his
gratitude or repay his obligation to you--not that he ever wishes it
ever to be repaid; I do believe him to be one of those few noble men
who can bear obligation nobly; but should the opportunity ever come,
he would snatch at it gladly. He said a great deal to me which I feel
I cannot repeat, partly because he would not like it, and partly
because you could not bear it. I never met any one who can so ill
endure to be thanked as you, my dear Alston. I have seen you carry
that sometimes to an almost ungracious extent. So when Thornton meets
you he will not try to thank you--he will leave that to me; you will
accept the substitute, won't you?
We had one more laugh, he and I, before I had to send him away, in
order that I might get time just to finish this. It was over our
recollections of the time when we took great delight in the fable of
the Lion and the Mouse. He and I differed in opinion in those days--he
wanted to be the lion, I preferred being the mouse; we agreed just now
that Fate had turned us both into mice, and put the kindest of lions
in our way. May God keep him from any net, or any need of nibblers!
Of course I am looking out very anxiously for all sorts of details
about your daily life. I should like to know that you are exceedingly
comfortable, very well looked after, and enjoying yourself when you
are not immersed in business; but I don't think I want to hear that
you like London very much, that you find the time flies, and that your
quarters are sufficiently snug to prevent your remembering home very
constantly, and missing me at every turn. This is not small-minded, is
it? And even if it were, you would not care, Alston, for it has
nothing to do with my mind, but everything to do with my heart. I do
not say, for my own part,
'There is na luck about the house,'
but there is no joy, and there is a constant sense of waiting;
nothing seems particularly well worth doing, and my life, comfortable,
well-ordered, and not useless as it is, has established itself on a
very dead level. I am not going to mope, however, or to be
discontented, or anything but cheerful, than what you would have me,
until the time comes when the waiting will be over, and I can say,
once more,
'His very foot has music in't
As he comes up the stair.'
And now I must shut this up, sealing it with a kiss from baby, and one
from your own HELEN.
Helen Griswold sealed her letter, placed it in a large envelope, on
which she wrote, with a strange shrinking repugnance, Trenton Warren's
New York address, despatched it by a special messenger to his office,
and went immediately to her child. A nervous flurry had come upon her
while writing the last lines of her letter, and it was only by a
determined struggle with herself that she kept off a passionate fit of
crying; but she put it down, and went into the nursery with a calm
face. This woman was growing apace. By what mysterious process? She
talked cheerfully to Mrs. Jenkins, and taking the baby, who was
sleepy, in her arms, rocked it to rest. The monotonous movement had a
quieting influence upon herself, and by degrees her cheerfulness was
restored.
That night, when Helen Griswold was in her own room, she wrote for a
while in the private memorandum-book in which we have already seen her
record the circumstances which had given a double current and meaning
to her life. Having made a few cursory notes of the main points of her
letter to her husband, laying special stress upon the mention of
Trenton Warren, she went on to note in her duplicate chronicle the
principal event of the day--this was Thornton Carey's visit.
'I wonder,' she wrote, 'why it is that a pure and unmitigated
pleasure, one totally unassociated with any pain, one perfectly free
from any drawback, should not avail to crush, at least for a time, the
oppressing pain and dread which has been troubling me of late. If I
have, as I believe I have, a relentless enemy in Trenton Warren, I
have a friend upon whose fidelity I may rely, whose love I can trust
with all my heart, and accept with all my conscience, to oppose to
him. My friend is a cleverer man than my enemy; he surpasses him by
all the distance which makes a gentleman to surpass a man who is not a
gentleman; his will is as steadfast; his courage is, or I am much
mistaken, far more high; of his devotion to me I have many years'
experience; of his devotion to Alston I have the guarantee of a nature
large enough and good enough to contain that great virtue, gratitude;
and yet there is no reassurance, there is no consolation, there is no
rest for me in all this knowledge. I don't think it would come, if
even I should tell Thornton what is in my heart; and that I could not
do! I could not bear that lie should know that such a profanation had
ever overtaken me as the avowal of this man's hideous love; the mere
remembrance of it seems to stain my soul, as it troubles my repose; it
has gotten into my life like a bad influence. When I awake in the
morning, I think not of Alston, but of Warren, and I welcome sleep
because it shuts out the hateful remembrance. I must shake this off,
or I shall turn the fancied evil into a real one, and give my own
fears their worst fulfilment.'