Helen was sitting on a pile of crimson cushions in the stern of a
Canadian canoe, while from the middle of the boat Martin, with
shirt-sleeves rolled up over his brown elbows, paddled her gently along
the reaches of the upper river at Cambridge. The dryness and heat of
this glorious summer had made the river very low in places, and his feet
also were bare, with flannel trousers rolled up to the knee, for again
and again he had to get out to pull the boat round snags or over shoals
where the depth did not allow it to pass with the draught of two
passengers. To the right, across a stretch of meadow stained brown with
length of summer suns, rose the tower of Grantchester church, embowered
in trees, and the booming of the mill sounded drowsily through the still
air. Close to the river, however, a vivider tone of colour prevailed,
tresses of water-side foliage dabbled in the stream, and tall, slender
trees made a shelter from the heat, where cows, a classical example (and
so not appealing to Martin, who splashed water at them) of unbustling
life, chewed the cud and looked with large incurious eyes at the gliding
constellation of the twins. Between them in the boat were packages
containing lunch, for Martin had taken a complete day off his studies in
recalcitrant languages and was devoting himself to Helen, who was
staying with an aunt, Lady Susan Arne. Dr. Arne, her husband, was tutor
at King’s, at which seat of learning Martin pursued his antipathetic
labours, and had the reputation of being the greatest authority living
on the metres of Greek choruses.
Helen had left Chartries a couple of days after the crisis in her
love-affair, at the suggestion of her uncle, to whom she had confided
it.
“I will walk back with you to the vicarage, Helen,” he had said, “and
persuade your father, in case he needs persuasion, to let you go away at
once. Your being with him just now only keeps the wound open. Go away;
it will heal better so. Just now, after that scene, you can only torture
each other by your remaining there. Poor, dear child!”
“Yes; but ‘poor father,’ too,” said Helen.
“Certainly. Come to Chartries, if you like.”
Helen took his arm.
“That is so good of you, Uncle Rupert,” she said; “but I think I should
like to go quite away, if father will let me. I think I should like to
go to Cambridge. Martin is there. And Martin is so good for one, if one
is, well, not very happy.”
“Yes; that is a good plan. You can stay with Susan. My dear, I’m more
sorry for you than I can tell you, and also I am as sorry for your
father. You and I both know him, and we both love him, and, though we
are made very differently, we know how--how splendid he is. And how
big.”
“I know,” said she. “I feel that if I could only persuade myself he was
narrow I should care less. But his huge, singlehearted devotion to--to
God cannot possibly be called narrow.”
They walked on in silence a little.
“But that is all I can do for you, Helen,” said he. “Nobody can really
help you except yourself; we can only alleviate things a bit. You have
made your choice, absolutely, I gather?”
“Am I being a selfish, egotistic little brute, Uncle Rupert?” she asked.
“Not according to my view, which is that when a thing concerns you so
intimately and vitally as this it is nobody else’s business. Not even
your father’s,” he added.
A good deal of persuasion, as Lord Flintshire found, was needed. At
first his brother would not hear of Helen’s going, for he said that her
departure was shirking the situation. What made him yield was the
suggestion that the situation, if not shirked, might make her really
ill. And a hurried interchange of telegrams led to her arrival at
Cambridge the next evening.
* * * * *
The expedition to-day had started rather silently, and Martin decided
that, as Helen did not at present want to talk about her affairs, the
best thing to do was to be completely futile, foolish, and garrulous.
For years he and Helen had adopted this method of treating each other’s
depression, and it was sufficient for one to say “Hump. Play the fool,”
for the other to understand that until further notice he had to talk
rot. This was a device, by the way, which neither had ever employed when
Mr. Challoner was in a similar mood. He would probably not have
understood it.
Martin stood up in the boat, which had stuck, and peered into the water.
“The great thing,” he remarked, “as the White Knight said, is to guide
against the bites of sharks. He had steel anklets. Ow! why do they take
the sharpest stones in the world and place them where I want to step.
I’m bleeding like a pig.”
He stood precariously on the other foot and examined the injury.
“A pig,” he remarked, fatuously, “that has not yet had its throat cut.
Helen, how fat you must be getting. You weigh tons. We’ll have to throw
the lunch overboard. Or perhaps it would be simpler if you stepped
ashore for a moment. You can easily step on to the bank from there.”
He pulled the canoe over the shoal and took it where she could get in
again. She laid her hand on his shoulder as she stepped in.
“You darling,” she said. “You can stop now. I’m better.”
“That’s good work,” said Martin. “Because, really I was beginning to run
rather dry. You mightn’t have thought it.”
“I didn’t. I had no idea of it. I thought there was any amount more.”
“I can manage ten minutes more, if you like,” said Martin.
“No; I’m going to talk now. Martin, if you look suddenly grave like that
I shall begin to laugh.”
“Well, give me a couple of minutes,” said the outraged Martin. “We
always have an interval after the rot before we begin to talk.
Otherwise, you know, we always laugh. One always laughs at anything
abrupt. Don’t you know the story of the man who was suddenly told his
wife was dead? Just like that. He said, ‘Oh, how shocking!’ and burst
into shrieks of laughter. And he was really devoted to her, and never
smiled again for years.”
Helen gave up all attempts at gravity, and the two foolish twins laughed
till they were completely exhausted, while the Canadian canoe went
slowly circling round and round down the river.
So they landed and lunched, as Martin refused to drag the boat any more
till he had eaten and by degrees recovered themselves. Then, taking to
the canoe again, they paddled and talked.
“It has been dreadful at home, Martin,” said she. “Father hardly speaks
at all. He has been very gentle since that scene with Frank and me, yet
even that was hardly so bad as his silence and quietness now. He is
suffering horribly, too; I am sure of it. Sometimes I see him looking at
me with a sort of appeal in his eyes like a dumb animal. That is the
worst of all; I feel such a brute.”
“You suffer, too,” said Martin, quickly.
“I know; but though they all--Uncle Rupert, Lady Sunningdale--think I am
right, that doesn’t make me feel less of a brute. Besides, there is no
‘right’ about it. I can’t give him up, and father can’t bear it. And
every evening he uses the prayer for Jews, Turks, and infidels.”
Martin frowned.
“That is not good manners,” he said, “with you there.”
“Oh, Martin, manners don’t come into it. The truth of father’s beliefs
is so overwhelmingly real to him that he can’t think of anything else.
That light is so strong that he can see nothing but it. It is soberly
the whole world to him.”
“But it isn’t as if Frank was immoral,” said Martin.
“I believe he would mind that less,” said she.
Martin swung the canoe round a half-submerged tree-trunk, where the
water sucked and gurgled.
“But how unreasonable,” he cried. “Frank can’t help his want of belief.
But we can all, in some degree, help making brutes of ourselves.”
Helen sat up suddenly, causing the boat to rock.
“I can’t live my life on other people’s lines,” she said, “any more than
I expect others to live theirs on my lines. ‘I am I.’ I remember Frank
quoting that to me the Sunday he walked back with me from Chartries.
That has been like leaven; it has fermented and expanded within me. But,
after all, is it only another way of saying ‘I shall be as selfish as I
please’?”
“Of course not. That is what people think who haven’t got any
individuality of their own. Lots of people haven’t. They are like
mirrors slightly cracked, which reflect with certain dimnesses and
distortions what is put opposite them. They say individuality is
selfishness. What bosh!”
“Aunt Susan hasn’t got any,” remarked Helen, letting the conversation
drift away a little. “It is that which makes her so restful. Her mind is
like a cushion. It is quite soft, and if you lean on it you make great
dents in it.”
Martin remained quite serious, staring at the water with vacant black
eyes.
“Poor father!” he said at length. “Just think; you and me, Helen. He
must find us awfully trying.”
“I know; and he continues to love us so. It is that which makes it so
dreadful. Oh, Martin, do get through your stupid examination. Do turn
out satisfactory, as I’ve been so eminently the reverse.”
Martin transferred his gaze to his sister.
“I really don’t think there’s much chance of it,” he said.
“Of your getting through?”
“I might manage that. But there are other things. The career I propose,
for instance.”
“But he’s reconciled to that,” said Helen. “That’s nothing new.”
Martin paddled on without answering this, and Helen looked at him rather
closely.
“There is something more,” she said. “What is it? Is there not something
more?”
He brought the boat up to the bank in Byron’s pool, where they were to
disembark.
“Yes, there is,” he said. “At least, there may be. There is no use in my
telling you now. If it happens, if I am sure it is going to happen, I
will tell you beforehand. I promise you that. And now I think we won’t
talk any more about it.”
But a sudden uneasiness seized the girl.
“Promise me one thing,” she said. “Promise me it is nothing
disgraceful.”
Martin looked rather injured.
“No; I have not been stealing hens,” he said. “And it is compatible with
the highest character.”
Helen looked at him a moment in silence.
“Then I’m not afraid,” she said. “And I will try not to guess at it
until you tell me.”
The afternoon was intensely hot, and having arrived here, they settled
that a boat under trees was far more to the point than walking under the
blaze of the sun, and Helen merely reclined more recumbently on a pile
of cushions.
“I think we will go for a walk to-morrow, Martin,” she said, “instead of
to-day.”
“That may be. By the way, I met last week that nice girl who was down at
Chartries on the Sunday when I got into so many rows. What was her
name?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Helen.
“Yes, you have. Oh, I know--Miss Pl---- Oh, yes,--Stella Plympton.”
Helen did not answer for a moment.
“Well, I shall go to sleep,” she said. “Martin!”
“Well?”
“You did that remarkably badly,” she said; “a cow could give you points
in dissimulation. You remembered her name perfectly.”
* * * * *
Dr. Arne, at whose house on the Trumpington Road Helen was staying, was
probably as nearly happy as is possible to the sons of men, who have so
marked a genius for discontent. Whether his happiness was worth much and
what it all came to is another question; but happy he was,--an affair of
immense importance not only to himself, but to all on whom his
imperturbable serenity shone. For Providence had endowed him with an
apparently insatiable curiosity about the chorus-metres in Greek plays,
and also with an intuitive perception as regards this extremely
difficult and no doubt fascinating branch of knowledge, which had proved
itself capable of being trained into something approaching the
perfection of acumen. His intellectual ambitions were thus completely
satisfied, and being without any passion but this, which the fact that
he was tutor of his college enabled him to gratify without stint, there
was really no possible chink at which the bitter wind of discontent
could enter and make draughts. The same good fortune had attended his
marriage, for he had wooed and won a woman of good birth and breeding,
whose only desire, as far as he was aware, was to make her husband not
happy,--he was that already,--but comfortable. Extremely edible meals
were offered to his notice at hours of his choosing, no sacrilegious
hand ever disturbed the papers in his study, his wife walked with him
after lunch, and, unless they had people dining with them or were
themselves bidden to other feasts, played picquet with him after dinner.
His mode of progression along roads was naturally a little quicker than
hers, his play of the hand at cards a shade less mediocre, and in
consequence he lived in an atmosphere of slight domestic superiority.
The same atmosphere, though not domestic, surrounded him in his studies,
for, to make a rough statement of the matter, he knew rather more about
Greek chorus-metres than anybody else had ever done. His bodily health,
moreover, if not exuberant,--he would have found exuberance very
trying,--was excellent; he appeared, in fact, to be as immune to the
frailties and disorders of the flesh as he was to any unsatisfied
cravings of the spirit. He was also childless; and though he was not
consciously grateful for this, he was aware that he desired neither more
distractions, anxieties, or even joys than he possessed in such
completeness.
Lady Susan Arne had been compared by her niece to a cushion; and,
indeed, the superficial similarity--not, indeed, in point of looks, for
Lady Susan was remarkably well-favoured--in the nature of the two was
extremely striking when once it had been pointed out. It was true that
if one leaned on Lady Susan’s mind there was no firm resistance, only a
large dent seemed to have been made in hers. But Helen, with a certain
impatience in her survey, had overlooked the existence of a permanent
dent there, a thing entirely foreign to cushions. She, Helen, it is
true, might lean and make a dent, and that the next person who, so to
speak, shook Aunt Susan up, or leaned upon her in another place, would
(still in Helen’s view) efface the first dent; but in a corner of her,
where no one ever thought of leaning or looking, there was a permanent
and uneffaceable dent. This was made in the first place by the
ungratified yearning for a child of her own; it was now daily renewed by
the knowledge of its impossibility. There was in her, in fact, a
potential vitality which under other circumstances might have made of
her a woman, not a housekeeper, and have given her points more directly
in contact with life than were picquet and constitutionals. As it was,
she had experienced none of the divine unsatisfiedness which fulness of
life alone brings with it; she knew only the content of a rather empty
existence. And Helen, judging with the impatience of youth, which is
akin to the impatience of kittens or puppies with inanimate objects that
will not come and play with them, had overlooked this. For, in truth,
Aunt Susan was not inanimate; tucked away in a corner of the cushion was
a real, live thing that groped for life and light, and she, the
individual, was like a room made ready for the reception of
guests,--chairs and tables in order, games put out for their
entertainment, but until the guests began to arrive the room was in
darkness. Aunt Susan stood there, match-box in hand, so to speak,
waiting for the first ring at the bell to light up her tapers and shew
how orderly, how fragrant, how charming (a little old-fashioned, too)
her room was, how thoughtfully arranged for the pleasure of others. But
no ring had yet come at her door-bell, and she still stood there, very
patient and still smiling, but still waiting.
Lady Susan, on Helen’s arrival, knew only vaguely that something
uncomfortable had happened at the vicarage; but Helen, the first evening
she was there, had confided to her, rather as one may confide on cold
nights to one’s pillow or to bedclothes tucked round the neck, the
history of the last few days. But she neither knew nor would have
guessed it possible that the news had kept Aunt Susan awake half the
night, and that while she herself was up the river with Martin her aunt
had gone about her household businesses and taken her walk with her
husband in such a tremor of excitement that he had to hurry after her,
instead of hanging on his step to wait for her. In all these tranquil
years at Cambridge she had never been brought into contact with a thing
that moved her like this. The gentle ministrations in which her years
were passed had not touched her emotions, which, had not her yearnings
for a child kept them alive, would probably long ago have fossilised.
But those yearnings had nourished and rendered mature their sweet,
delicate sensitiveness, and now when they were aroused, though even in
this second-hand manner, they responded instantly, gently vibrating, not
with a crackle of dry autumn leaves, but like foliage of aspen in the
breath of spring.
Helen got back to this house of quiet towards five in the afternoon,
and found her aunt and Dr. Arne at tea on the lawn behind the house. The
latter, however, soon went indoors to enjoy--literally enjoy--his couple
of hours’ work before dinner, after forewarning them as to possible
dampness on the grass after sunset.
“And have you enjoyed yourself, dear?” asked Aunt Susan, pleasantly;
“and was the lunch I gave you really sufficient? Dear Martin has always
such a beautiful appetite. It is a pleasure to see him eat his dinner.”
“Yes, dear aunt, we had heaps. And it was all so good, and so
beautifully done up. Exactly like you.”
Aunt Susan, who always looked like a kind, little, animated Dresden
shepherdess, flushed a little.
“And so you had a nice day?” she said. “And no upsets? Martin is so
reckless on water. Dear Helen, is it quite wise to take off your hat? It
may turn suddenly chilly.”
Helen laughed, and threw it on the grass.
“No; no upsets, and quite wise, Aunt Susan. But a nice day? There was
everything to make it nice externally; but one’s nice days are made
inside one, I think. And just now my machine for making nice days creaks
and groans; it is out of order.”
Aunt Susan, though far too shy to take the initiative, was longing for
the least thing that could be considered an introduction of this topic.
“Do you know, dear, I lay awake half the night thinking of you and your
trouble,” she said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” cried Helen. “I ought not to have told you so late
last night. Selfish little pig I am!”
Aunt Susan patted her hand gently.
“Dear, it was delicious,” she said, “lying awake and thinking about you.
I am afraid I actually enjoyed it. Not that I am not very, very sorry
for you and your father and Lord Yorkshire; but when I said it was
delicious, I meant it was so real, so alive, so very interesting. I
don’t think I have lain awake more than a few minutes in the last couple
of years, and that was when your uncle had the influenza. And then it
was only his cough that kept me awake; I was not anxious, for he had it
very slightly. Now, if you do not mind talking about it, do tell me
more. You told me just the facts. Tell me what you feel. How does it
touch,--I am so stupid at saying things,--not what you will _do_ only,
your actions, but yourself?”
The question implied a perception with which Helen had not credited her
aunt.
“Ah, what a difference there is between them!” she said, quickly. “One’s
actions may so frightfully belie one. What one does is so often a parody
of one’s best. One’s worst part acts, while one’s best does nothing,
turns its face to the wall, like Hezekiah. Or, or”--she was still kindly
trying to explain to this dear little Dresden shepherdess--“one’s
actions are often like an unsympathetic repetition of something one has
really said, which gives quite a different meaning to it. Do you
understand?” she asked, eagerly.
“Yes, dear, quite,” said Lady Susan. “Surely everybody understands that.
All the same it is our business if we are kind and good at all not to be
harsh or hard in what we do.”
Suddenly Helen’s eyes were opened. In a flash she saw that she had been
doing what she deprecated, and hitherto had judged Aunt Susan merely by
her actions. With the impatience that was so very characteristic of her,
she had observed her ordering dinner, taking the walk, playing picquet,
and otherwise having a great deal of rather fragrant leisure with which
she did nothing. From this she had drawn the conclusion that there was,
so to speak, no one really there, only a punctual little domestic
automaton. She had been so taken up with the fact that others did not
understand her, did not allow for her individuality, that she had as yet
never taken the trouble to consider whether these others also had not
their own individuality equally to be respected. Aunt Susan, she would
have said offhand, had none, yet she was referring to as a mere
commonplace what was still to Helen a blinding discovery. And she went
on talking with a freedom and a certainty of being understood that she
associated only with the beloved twin.
“Well, it is just that,” she said. “Any one,--you, Uncle David,--any one
may say it is merely heartless, merely selfish of me to go my own way,
to pay no attention to the wish--ah, it is much stronger than that--of
my father. Or you may think that I don’t really know how strong his
objection to my marriage is. I do know, I fully know. And knowing that,
knowing also that he is my father, that I owe nearly everything to him,
that he loves me and I love him, I am going to do, you may say, _as I
choose_, throwing away all the love and the care he has spent on me,
repudiating my debts to him. But I don’t. Oh, Aunt Susan, I don’t throw
away his love or repudiate my debts. It is not fair to say that. Simply
I can’t help it--I must. Something has come which is stronger than
everything else. Ah, Aunt Susan, you know what it is.”
Lady Susan’s delicate little china-looking face flushed suddenly.
“Yes, dear, I know,” she said. “At least I know some of it. We women are
meant to be wives and mothers. I know half of what a woman longs to
know. And the half I know, dear Helen, is so very fine that it is worth
making some little sacrifice for it.”
“Sacrifice?” asked the girl.
“Yes. I cannot tell you in great language what I mean, because I am not
great in any way, so I will give you my advice in one short word. Wait.
Love is so good that it will not spoil by being kept; it will only get
more mature, more exquisite. And in the mean time you will have proved
yourself a good daughter, too.”
“But why--why?” asked the girl. “Nothing will ever change what father
feels about it, nor what I feel. It only means that for six months more,
or for a year more, or however long I wait, he and I will go through
dreadful days. It is awful at home, Aunt Susan; you have no idea how
awful. If it would get any better with waiting, I would do as you
suggest.”
The older woman was still smiling in the habitual way which Helen had so
often thought so meaningless, so objectless. But now, as she looked, she
saw there was a very cheerful patience about the smile which somehow she
had not noticed before.
“It is true it may not get better with waiting,” she said, “for it is
possible it may not. But you will have done your best, not only thought
your best. You will have made your action not, as you say, the parody
of yourself, but the faithful expression of your very best self. You
will have put your speech into no unsympathetic mouth, but into the
mouth of a fine actor.”
Another current seized the girl, sweeping her impetuously away. She laid
her hand on her aunt’s knee.
“Are you unhappy, Aunt Susan?” she asked. “Oh, I hope not. I always
thought you were so contented, so--so occupied with all the duties you
do so well.”
Lady Susan, with the only movement of impatience that she had made
perhaps for years, swept her hand away.
“Ah, that is because you are young,” she said, “and because you think
that any one who feels an impulse must act on it, if she wants to
realise her life. It is not so. You know what I have always called you
and Martin, the Volcanoes--dear Volcanoes. When you feel pressure you
burst, and scatter burning ashes anywhere and everywhere, and say with
great good-humour, ‘But I am I. If I want to burst, I must.’ And when
you see an old woman like me, just getting through the day’s work, day
after day, week after week, with a little dinner-party here, and a
little walk there, and a little ordering of the household all through,
you think ‘Is that all? Is that life?’ And I answer you, ‘Yes; that is
life.’”
Helen was silent a moment, suddenly aware that for the time it was
perhaps wiser to listen and attend than talk about her own
individuality.
“Tell me, tell me,” she said.
“My dear, there is very little to tell,” she said. “But you in your
heyday do not allow, it seems to me, for the fact of other quiet people
living and feeling perhaps just as much as you do. Because you feel a
thing you scream. You will learn to feel a thing, we hope, without
screaming. I think young people tend to scream rather more than we used.
They call it living their own lives. That possibly may be a mistaken,
or, anyhow, a misleading name for it.”
Again Helen had no reply. But this did not seem to her at all like want
of individuality. There was no screaming, it is true, and no assertion,
but just as certainly there was “something there.” And, to do her
justice, she respected that. But her aunt paused also, waiting for her
answer, and after a minute she spoke.
“Live your own life, then, in talk with me,” she said. “Let me
understand it. It is quite true, Aunt Susan, I have judged as if there
was no other view than mine, while the whole time my complaint--no, not
that exactly, but you understand--has been that other people behave as
if there was no other view than theirs! About you, for instance. I
didn’t know, I didn’t guess. I thought you were--you were what you
appeared.”
Lady Susan seemed to repent of her hasty movement, and recaptured
Helen’s soft, brown-skinned hand.
“Yes, dear, I am,” she said, quietly. “At least, I choose to let that be
my outward expression of myself, the expression by which you, Martin,
anybody, may judge me. That certainly is my affair, and nobody else’s.”
She ceased stroking Helen’s hand a moment and looked up at her.
“But, dear, would you like to come inside me a moment? There is only one
thing there, but it fills my house. Oh, Helen, if I had had a child!”
At that all the girl’s nature rose.
“Ah, dear aunt, dear aunt!” she said.
Lady Susan’s pretty patient smile did not leave her lips, nor did any
tear come to her eyes. The sorrow was too old and too eternally alive
for her to weep over it now. And she went on quite quietly:
“If only I had been given the chance even to be made as unhappy as you
are making your father, dear, I should have loved it so. But it was
denied me, and by no fault of mine. So I am learning, I hope, not to
grumble. Ah, but it is hard sometimes, and I think I miss the joys of
love as you would count joys, Helen, less than I miss what you would
count its sorrows. But those are its opportunities. Dear, its
possibilities in self-denial and self-abandonment. That is Love
triumphant, not crowned with roses, but crowned with sharp, beloved
thorns. And the tragedy of love is when there is none for whom it can
sacrifice itself.”
She stroked Helen’s hand again gently.
“Make yourself complete, dear,” she said; “there I am entirely at one
with you. But, remember, our souls are like rose-trees, I think. You cut
and prune them, if you are a wise gardener, for you know that by the
cutting, the renunciation, you do not check or hinder your development,
but you encourage it. You will be the more fragrant, the fuller of
blossom by that which you might hastily say was a piece of cruelty, a
stunting of your growth.”
Her kind eyes looked away from Helen, and out over the sun-baked lawn,
bordered with flower-beds, in which, clearly to comply with preconceived
notions of a garden on the part of a gardener, lobelias were set in a
formal row in front, and behind them terrible, speckled calceolarias and
hard, crude geraniums. That garden had often seemed to Helen very
typical of her aunt: it was orderly and completely conventional. Beyond
Dr. Arne’s study windows looked from the red-brick house across the
grass, and from where they sat she could see him at a table littered
with books and manuscripts, with head bent over his work, or rising now
and then to consult some book of reference which he took from the
volume-lined walls. That sight, also, had often seemed to her very
typical; the Cambridge professor was at his work (as, indeed, it was
most right and proper that he should be), but that to him was all. His
little life was bounded with books; on all sides stretched limitless
deserts of particles and chorus-metres. But now, for the first time,
Helen knew how erroneous all her judgments with regard to Aunt Susan had
been,--for a real heart beat there, and it was somebody, somebody very
distinct and individual, who ordered dinner and played picquet. Her life
was not negative, emotionless; it was only her own obtuseness of
perception that had so labelled it. Instead it was sad; in spite of all
its quiet cheerfulness it was as sad as the level rays of the sun
striking hazily across the lawn; as sad as the grey spires of Kings
which rose against the clear, hot blue of the sky.
And the pathos of it suddenly moved her. Was that all that the good
fairies had brought to her aunt’s cradle, just to grow quietly and
gently old, she, who might have been so fine, missing all the joy and
riot of life, missing, too, the crown of womanhood? “To live, to live!”
that demand was battering at her doors with buffets that made the panels
start. Yet here was the dear aunt, who had heard often the same
insistent visitor, old, but sweet and unembittered, though it had never
been given to her to let him in, knowing all she had missed, yet not
soured at having missed it.
“Oh, Aunt Susan,” she cried, forgetting herself, forgetting all else in
a young creature’s somewhat insolent pity for the old, “is it not too
sad? Is it not too terribly sad? Is that everybody’s fate, just to get
older and older----“
Then, with the strong, unconscious egotism of her years:
“And me?” she said. “Will that happen to me, too?”
“What? Sadness? Yes, dear Helen, I hope so. No woman is worth very much
until she has been through a good deal of sadness, a great deal of
wanting what she cannot get. I hope you will go through that. But, dear,
if you turn bitter under it, you had almost better not have lived; and
certainly you had better die, for death is better than bitterness. But
if you take the love and the sadness, which is inseparable, from life
without bitterness, it strengthens and cleanses you. And you will
certainly emerge from it a far finer creature than if you had never been
through it. Emerge? Ah, it may last to the day of your death; but what
then? What does that matter?”
There was a long silence, and the shadows grew and lengthened on the
grass as Helen sat unseeing, but absorbed, gazing wide-eyed in front of
her. She felt ashamed, humiliated at her own blindness; she had thought
of her aunt as some dweller in the valley, while she herself was
climbing the snowfields far above with eager, untiring foot. But now at
the summit, or near it, she saw sitting the quiet, patient figure, so
high up that she had not seen her before.
Then, in her gentle voice, Aunt Susan broke in on her reverie.
“There, dear,” she said, “the sun has set; let us go in. And do tell me,
Helen, before you go home, what you decide to do about this very
difficult choice that is before you. Of course, you will not give Lord
Yorkshire up. I think that would be very wrong. Do not be hasty; do not
judge quickly. But do confide in me again, if you can. It is a great
privilege, you know, for old people to be confided in by the young.
Come, it is time to dress; there are a few people to dinner. Ah, Martin
comes, too. I had quite forgotten. Dear me, how careless! I must go and
see if there is enough to eat.”
Helen rose and gave her a great, tempestuous hug.
“You dear, you dear,” she said.
And then Aunt Susan, after her excursion into realities, hurried to the
kitchen, the excellent housekeeper again.
* * * * *
There must have been something in the conjunctivity of the
twins--except, indeed, at the vicarage at Chartries--which disposed the
beholder to indefensible levity. London had felt their spell, and even
Cambridge, it appeared, that home of sweet and sober seriousness, went a
little off its head about them. The spell, whatever it was, lay in their
combination. Helen alone, it is true, could rouse that impulse of social
gaiety which is evoked so easily by a girl’s beauty and high spirits,
and Martin could make other people enjoy themselves by the sight of his
own enormous power that way; but it was when they were together that
resistance was clearly hopeless, and it is worthy of record that
to-night, after dinner, Dr. Arne and a professor of poetry, with their
respective wives and the twins played “Ghosts” in the garden. Why these
elderly people did it they could not have told you; but Martin proposed
“Ghosts,” Helen explained it in three sentences, and the studious shades
were awakened and appalled by wild shrieks.
For the night was dark and moonless, and while five out of these six
foolish people hid in asparagus beds, behind tree-trunks, in the
wood-shed, and in other black and dreadful places, the professor of
poetry (selected by lot) was in honour bound to make the complete
circuit of the garden, conscious that at any moment a ghost with
curdling yells might spring out on him, or even worse, scuttle quickly
up behind him, or perhaps, worst of all, he might suddenly be conscious
of a small, crouching figure by his side which accompanied him in awful
silence, ready to break forth into who knew what hideous and babbling
speech? Thus one eye had to be kept on this dreadful object, while
simultaneously the whole attention had to be on the alert in case of
some new reverent from the bushes. The professor was a man on whom, as
far as was known, the imputation of cowardice had never yet been laid,
but at the first attempt to make the black circuit of the garden he
found he could not possibly face the corner by the wood-shed, his nerves
being already utterly unstrung by a vague form that groaned among the
gooseberry bushes. He paused while still a few yards distant from this
dreadful being, and then fled with flying coat-tails back to the house,
where in the safety of the lit drawing-room he wiped the dews of
strangling anguish from his forehead and called lamentably on his
courage.
“‘Not a glimmer from the worm, in the darkness thick and hot,’” he half
moaned to himself. “Oh, this will never do! I am aware it is probably
only Dr. Arne, and I am not really frightened of him. Come, come.”
And, with his heart in his mouth, he set out again on his fascinating
and abhorred errand, murmuring again, “‘In the darkness thick and hot.
In the darkness thick and hot. In the dark----’ Oh, dear me, what is
that?”
The poor professor suffered for his momentary panic, for Helen had, in
his hour of weakness in the drawing-room, changed her place to behind a
large flower-tub, which had concealed nobody before. Consequently, he
approached it inattentively, without caution or misgiving, to be
confronted, shuddering, by a flapping form which gasped and panted.
He made a fruitless appeal.
“Dear Miss Helen,” he said, “I can’t go on. I really do not think it
would be right. My work will suffer. But is it Dr. Arne among the
gooseberry bushes or is it Martin? I think I could run as fast as Dr.
Arne, but if----“
Hoots of unearthly laughter assailed him on the other side.
* * * * *
Afterwards they played “Dumb Crambo.” Lady Susan, in a college cap and a
dust-coat of Martin’s, was Alfred letting the cakes burn. At another
time Dr. Arne found himself to be Cleopatra, with Helen as Mark Antony.
He chose his dresses from Helen’s wardrobe--they were much too large
for him--with immense care, and subsequently applied a paper-weight, in
the form of a snake, to his bosom. The professor of poetry became a
prize-fighter, his wife, a godly and virtuous woman hitherto,
unexpectedly turned out to be Peace the murderer, and did a deed of
blood with immense gusto and a paper-knife. Yet, all the time, nobody
asked himself why he did these silly things; the twins had said it was
to be so, and that was enough. At their order, too, it seemed as if the
golden gates of youth had swung open, and the tired and the patient and
the elderly and the wise were bidden to enter once more and be children
again.
* * * * *
Helen’s visit to Cambridge had been restricted by no statute of
limitations in regard to time, and the days passed on, the vague “few
nights” growing to a week, and the week to a magnified fortnight. For
these quiet, uneventful hours in which (except when the twin was with
her) even the ticking of clocks seemed muffled had an extraordinary and
growing charm for her, since she had learned that behind the outward
placidity in her aunt there lay a very real inward life in which she
longed without possibility of satisfaction and suffered without
bitterness. That somehow to the girl seemed to lift up and consecrate
Aunt Susan’s homely little employments, which, so sweetly and patiently
performed, became symbols and signs of a very beautiful character, and
that which Helen had thought dull, unperceptive, unemotional, was now
lit from within, as it were, by the uncomplaining cheerfulness which
gave such gentle, unquestioning welcome to the limitations set about
her. For Lady Susan, so her niece had now learned, had not from her own
defective eyesight set her horizons so close about her; circumstances,
childlessness had imposed them, and that being so, she had taken up her
place in the narrowed circle with resignation so cheerful that it could
scarcely be called by that rather depressing name. In fact, the gentle
old lady was put on a pedestal in the girl’s mind, and offerings of
incense were made her, a position which now and then she found slightly
embarrassing, for Helen, in her first moment of understanding and in the
reaction from her previous hasty and mistaken judgment, was one torrent
of warm-hearted sympathy, and was disposed to magnify into heroism the
performance of those common tasks, just because she had before labelled
them trivial.
But from home--she must begin taking up her own little burdens at
once--there came no word for her. She herself wrote regularly to her
father, but morning after morning passed, bringing its posts, and still
no answer came to her. Once she saw among the letters laid out for Aunt
Susan one addressed in the brisk, scholarly handwriting, and could not
help glancing at her aunt’s face as she read it. But she said nothing to
Helen, and replaced the letter in its envelope with a troubled little
sigh. Martin, also, she knew had heard from him, but there had been no
message for her, no mention even of her. This omission, this intentional
disregard of her, though it hurt her, made her sorry also, not for
herself, but for him. It was inhuman, but she knew that it was the depth
and earnestness of his feeling about her engagement that made him
inhuman. On the other hand, she heard constantly from Frank, who hinted
that if not a day, at any rate a season might be ever so vaguely
indicated to which he could look forward.
The term was drawing to its close, and Martin would go home in a few
days’ time. It was understood that Helen would go with him; and as the
day of departure got near, she knew that her decision must be made, so
far as it concerned herself, as to whether she should put off her
marriage for some definite time, and do the daughter’s part to her
father, living at home, obeying him, performing her parish duties as
before, making _amende_, as far as she could, for the great act of
disobedience which she was going to commit. Practically, she did not see
the use of it; no good, as far as she could judge, would come of it;
yet, in a way, Aunt Susan was right, the meaning of it, the sentiment of
it, was sound. It would not be easy; it would be full of sustained
effort, of sustained self-repression. Intercourse would be crammed with
misunderstanding, the atmosphere would be full of frictional
disturbances, but she saw there would be a certain moral gain to set
against this. Also, and this, too, had a very sensible weight with her,
there would be gain to her in the completeness of which her aunt had
spoken. Ever since she had consciously woke to her own individuality her
eagerness for her own improvement and enlargement had been of a very
vivid sort. And perhaps the most excellent way of all had been here set
before her to compass that, not by working for it, but by apparently
limiting, maiming, discouraging it. That was a very simple, very
elementary suggestion, yet it had never occurred to her in this
connection. And it was, well, less crude than the other method.
The evening before her departure she took the opportunity provided by
Dr. Arne’s going to his chorus-metres after tea to talk to her aunt
again. It had been a chilly day, touched with the autumnal sadness of
early-falling leaves, and early-falling dusk, and the window-panes
streamed. Though it was still August, a fire burned in the grate, and
she sat down on the floor by her aunt’s chair.
“Father has not written to me once since I came here,” she said. “He has
written to you and to Martin I know, but there has never been a message
to me. I don’t say this in any complaint, Aunt Susan; but what is one to
do when that happens?”
Lady Susan shut the book she was reading. She had been expecting Helen
to mention this, but was unwilling to open the subject herself.
“I know he has not, dear,” she said, “and I think it very wrong of him.
I have told him so. But don’t let it hurt you, Helen. If other people,
yes, misbehave, there is never anything to be done except to go on
‘behaving’ one’s self. And never let what other people do hurt you. For
nothing can really hurt us except what we do ourselves.”
“Ah, but in a way I have done it,” said the girl. “At least, it is in
consequence of what I have done.”
“No; your father is wrong, I think,” said Lady Susan, with gentle
decision. “And now, dear, as you are going away to-morrow, I want to ask
you something. You go home with Martin, do you not? And then? Have you
made up your mind?”
“Yes,” she said. “I will not give up Frank, but I will put it all off
till next May. Of course, if he wishes, he is absolutely free.”
“Ah,” said Aunt Susan, gently. “It is likely he would wish that, I
suppose.”
Helen laughed.
“Well, no; not very. But till then I shall live at home, if father will
let me, and try in every way to please him.”
Her voice trembled a little.
“And I hope he will accept that,” she said. “And I hope he will be good
to me and forgive me.”
Lady Susan stroked her hair in silence a moment.
“You have chosen right, dear,” she said.