Colonel Wimpole did not like Lucerne, and as he strolled along the shady
side of the street, he unconsciously looked up at the sky or down at the
pavement rather than at the houses and the people. He disliked the
tourists, the buildings, the distant scenery and the climate, and could
give a reason for each separate aversion. Excepting the old tower, which
was very much like a great many other old towers, he maintained that the
buildings were either flat and dull, or most modernly pretentious. The
tourists were tourists, and that alone condemned them beyond redemption.
The climate was detestable, and he was sure that every one must think
so. As for the scenery, with its prim lake, its tiresome snow
mountains, and its toy trees, he said that it was little better than a
perpetual chromolithograph, though at sunset it occasionally rose to the
dignity of a transparent 'landscape' lamp-shade. The colonel's views of
places were not wholly without prejudice. Being a very just man, where
men and women were concerned, he allowed himself to be as unfair as he
chose about inanimate things, from snow mountains to objects of art.
It was the pretension of Switzerland, he said, to please and to attract.
Since it neither attracted him nor pleased him, he could not see what
harm there could be in saying so. The Rigi's feelings could not be hurt
by a sharp remark, nor could Mount Pilatus be supposed to be sensitive.
He never abused Switzerland where any Swiss person could hear him. The
same things, he said, were true of objects of art. If they failed to
please, there could be no reason for their existence, or for not saying
so, provided that the artist were not present. As for the latter, the
charitable colonel was always willing to admit that he had done his
best. It was gratuitous to suppose that any man should wilfully do
badly what he could do well.
The colonel strolled slowly through the back streets, keeping in the
shade. The day was hot, and he felt something like humiliation at
having allowed himself to yield to circumstances and come out of the
house earlier than usual. He would certainly not have acknowledged that
he had been driven from the hotel by the fear of his sister's curiosity,
but he would have faced a hotter sun rather than be obliged to meet her
inquisitive questions again.
It was true that, being alone, he had to meet himself, and discuss with
himself the painful little scene which had taken place that afternoon,
for he was not one of those people who can get rid of unpleasant
difficulties simply by refusing to think about them. And he examined
the matter carefully as he went along, staring alternately at the sky
and at the pavement, while his stick rang sharply in time with his light
but still military step. He did not see the people who passed, but many
of them looked at him, and noticed his face and figure, and set him down
for a gentleman and an old soldier, as he was.
At first sight it seemed ridiculous that Sylvia should be in love with
him; then it seemed sad, and then it seemed childish. He remembered the
tragedy of Ninon de l'Enclos and her son, and it was horrible until he
recalled an absurd story of a short-sighted young man who had fallen in
love with his grandmother because his vanity would not allow him to wear
spectacles. At this recollection, Colonel Wimpole smiled a little,
though he was obliged to admit that Sylvia's eyes had always been very
good. He wished, for a moment, that he were quite old already, instead
of being only on the edge of old age. It would have been more easy to
laugh at the matter. He was glad that he was not ten years younger, for
in that case he might have been to blame. As he was turning into the
main street, he caught sight of his own reflexion in the big plate glass
window of a shop. He stopped short, with a painful sensation.
Had the image been that of a stranger, he should have judged the
original to be a young man. The figure he saw was tall and straight and
active, dressed in the perfection of neatness and good taste. The straw
hat shaded the upper part of the face, but the sunlight caught the
well-cut chin and gilded the small, closely trimmed moustache.
The colonel was extremely annoyed, just then, by his youthful
appearance. He stopped and then went close to the plate glass window,
till he could see his face distinctly in it, against the shadows of the
darkened shop. He was positively relieved when he could clearly
distinguish the fine lines and wrinkles and grey hairs, which he saw
every morning in his mirror when he shaved. It was the sunshine playing
with shadow that had called up the airy reflexion of his departed youth
for a moment. Sylvia could never have seen him as he had appeared to
himself in the window.
He looked a little longer. A lady in black was talking with the
shopkeeper, and a short young man stood beside her. Colonel Wimpole's
fingers tightened suddenly upon the familiar silver knob of his stick,
his face grew a little pale, and he held his breath.
The lady turned quietly, walked to the window, followed by the
shopkeeper and the young man, and pointed to a miniature which lay among
a great number of more or less valuable antiquities and objects of art,
all of them arranged so as to show them to an undue advantage. She
stood quite still, looking down at the thing she wanted, and listening
to what the shopkeeper said. The colonel, just on the other side of the
thick plate glass, could hear nothing, though he could have counted the
heavy lashes that darkly fringed the drooping lids as the lady kept her
eyes upon the miniature. But his heart was standing still, for she was
the woman he had loved so long and well, and he had not known that she
was to pass through Lucerne. The short young man beside her was her son,
and Colonel Wimpole knew him also, and had seen him from time to time
during the nineteen years of his life. But he scarcely noticed him now,
for his whole being was intent upon the face of the woman he loved.
She was dark, though her hair had never been jet black, and her
complexion had always reminded the colonel of certain beautiful roses of
which the smooth cream-coloured leaves are very faintly tinged with a
warm blush that bears no relation to pink, but which is not red either,
a tint without which the face was like marble, which could come in a
moment but was long in fading as a northern sunset, and which gave
wonderful life to the expression while it lasted. The lady's features
were bold and well cut, but there were sad lines of lifelong weariness
about the curved mouth and deep-set eyes; and there was a sort of
patient but not weak sadness in all her bearing, the look of those who
have tired but have not yielded, who have borne a calm face against a
great trouble from without and a true heart against a strong temptation
from within.
She was neither tall nor short, neither heavy nor light in figure, a
woman of good and strong proportion, and she was dressed in black,
though one small jewelled ornament and a coloured ribbon in her hat
showed that she was not in mourning.
The elderly man at the window did not move as he watched her, for he
felt sure that she must presently look up and meet his eyes. Then he
would go in. But it did not happen just in that way, for her son
recognized him first, a dark youth, very squarely built, with a heavy
face and straight eyebrows that met over his nose. When he saw the
colonel he smiled, lifted his hat, and spoke to his mother. The lady
started perceptibly and seemed to press the handle of her black parasol
to her side. Several seconds passed after that, before the fringed lids
were lifted, and the two looked at each other fixedly through the thick
glass. A soft, slow smile smoothed and illuminated the lady's face, but
Colonel Wimpole felt that he was paler than before, and his lips moved,
unconsciously pronouncing a name which he had never spoken carelessly
during two and twenty years. Nor, in that long time, had he ever met
Helen Harmon suddenly, face to face, without feeling that his cheeks
grew pale and that his heart stood still for a moment.
But his pulse beat quite regularly again when he had entered the shop
and stood before her, extending his hand to meet hers, though he felt
that he was holding out his heart to meet her heart, and he was full of
unexpected happiness. So, in dim winter days, the sun shines out in a
sudden glory, and spring is in the air before her time, for an hour; but
afterwards it is cold again, and snow falls before night. Many a far
glimpse of the flower-time had gladdened the colonel's heart before now,
but the promised summer had never come.
The two stood still for a moment, hand in hand, and their eyes lingered
in meeting, just a second or two longer than if they had been mere
friends. That was all that a stranger could have seen to suggest that
Richard Wimpole had loved Helen Harmon for twenty-two years, and the
young man at her side did not even notice it. He shook hands with the
colonel in his turn, and was the first to speak.
"One meets everybody in Lucerne," he observed, in a tactless
generalization.
"I certainly did not hope to meet you," answered the colonel, smiling.
"It is true that the cross-roads of Europe are at Lucerne if they are
anywhere. My sister and I are taking Sylvia Strahan home from Japan.
Of course we stopped here."
"Oh, of course!" laughed young Harmon. "Everybody stops here. We have
been here ever so long, on our way to Carlsbad, I believe."
His mother glanced at him nervously before she spoke, as though she were
not sure of what he might say next.
"I am thinking of buying a miniature," she said. "Will you look at it
for me? You know all about these things. I should like your advice."
The dealer's face fell as he stood in the background, for he knew the
colonel, and he understood English. But as she spoke, Mrs. Harmon was
thinking more of Wimpole than of the miniature; and he, when he
answered, was wondering how he could succeed in being alone with her for
one half-hour--one of those little half-hours on which he lived for
weeks and months after they were past.
Mrs. Harmon's manner was very quiet, and there was not often very much
change in her expressions. Her laugh was low, regretful, and now and
then a little bitter. Sometimes, when one might have expected a quick
answer, she said nothing at all, and then her features had a calm
immobility that was almost mysterious. Only now and then, when her son
was speaking, she was evidently nervous, and at the sound of his voice
her eyes turned quickly and nervously towards his face, while the
shadows about the corners of her mouth deepened a little, and her lips
set themselves. When he said anything more witless than usual, she was
extraordinarily skilful and quick to turn his saying to sense by a clear
explanation. At other times she generally spoke rather slowly and even
indolently, as though nothing mattered very much. Yet she was a very
sensible woman, and not by any means unpractical in daily life. Her
tragedy, if it were one, had been slow and long drawn out.
First, a love which had been real, silent, and so altogether
unsuspected, even by its object, that Richard Wimpole had never guessed
it even to this day. Then a marriage thrust upon her by circumstances,
and which she had accepted at last in the highest nobility of honest
purpose. After that, much suffering, most scrupulously covered up from
the world, and one moment of unforgotten horror. There was a crooked
scar on her forehead, hidden by the thick hair which she drew down over
it. When she was angry it turned red, though there was no other change
in her face. Then a little while, and her husband's mind had gone.
Even then she had tried to take care of him, until it had been hopeless,
and he had become dangerous. The mercy of death seemed far from him,
and he still lived, for he was very strong. And all along there had
been the slowly increasing certainty of another misfortune. Her son,
her only child, had been like other children at first, then dull and
backward, and in the end, as compared with grown men, deficient. His
mind had not developed much beyond a boy's; but he was unusually strong,
he had learned to apply his strength, and had always excelled in
athletic sports. One might have been deceived at first by the sharp
glance of his eyes, but they were not bright with intelligence. The
young man's perfect physical health alone made them clear and keen as a
young animal's; but what they saw produced little reaction of
understanding or thought.
Nor was that all that Helen Harmon had borne. There was one other
thing, hardest of any to bear. By an accident she had learned at last
that Richard Wimpole had loved her, and she had guessed that he loved
her still. He had fancied her indifferent to him; and Harmon had been
his friend in young days. Harmon had been called fast, even then, but
not vicious, and he had been rich. Wimpole had stood aside and had let
him win, being diffident, and really believing that it might be better
for Helen in the end. He thought that she could make anything she chose
of Harmon, who was furiously in love with her.
So the two had made the great mistake, each meaning to do the very best
that could be done. But when Harmon had gone mad at last, and was in an
asylum without prospect of recovery, and Helen found herself the
administrator of his property for her son, it had been necessary to go
through all his disordered papers, and she had found a letter of
Wimpole's to her husband, written long ago. Had it been a woman's
letter, she would have burned it unread. But it was a duty to read
every paper which might bear upon business matters, from the beginning,
and she naturally supposed that Harmon must have had some reason for
keeping this one. So she read it.
It had been written in the early days of her husband's courtship. He,
too, had been generous, then, with impulses of honour in which there had
been, perhaps, something of vanity, though they had impelled him to do
right. There had been some conversation between the friends, and Harmon
had found out that Wimpole loved Helen. Not being yet so far in love as
he was later, he had offered to go away and let the young colonel have a
chance, since the latter had loved her first. Then Wimpole had written
this letter which she found twenty years later.
It was simple, grateful, and honourably conceived. It said what he had
believed to be the truth, that Helen did not care for him, that Harmon
was quite as good as he in all ways, and much richer, and it finally and
definitely refused the offer of 'a chance.' There was nothing tragic
about it, nor any high-flown word in its short, clear phrases. But it
had decided three lives, and the finding of it after such a long time
hurt Helen more than anything had ever hurt her before.
In a flash she saw the meaning of Wimpole's life, and she knew that he
loved her still, and had always loved her, though in all their many
meetings, throughout those twenty years, he had never said one word of
it to her. In one sudden comprehension, she saw all his magnificent
generosity of silence. For he had partly known how Harmon had treated
her. Every one knew something of it, and he must have known more than
any one except the lawyer and the doctor whom she had been obliged to
consult.
And yet, in that quick vision, she remembered, too, that she had never
complained to him, nor ever said a word against Harmon. What Wimpole
knew, beyond some matters of business in which he had helped her, he had
learned from others or had guessed. But he had guessed much. Little
actions of his, under this broad light of truth, showed her now that he
had often understood what was happening when she had thought him wholly
in ignorance.
But he, on his side, found no letter, nor any unexpected revelation of
her secret; and still, to him, she seemed only to have changed
indifference for friendship, deep, sincere, lasting and calm.
She kept the old letter two days, and then, when she was alone, she read
it again, and her eyes filled, and she saw her hands bringing the
discoloured page towards her lips. Then she started and looked at it,
and she felt the scar on her forehead burning hot under her hair, and
the temptation was great, though her anger at herself was greater.
Harmon was alive, and she was a married woman, though he was a madman.
She would not kiss the letter, but she laid it gently upon the
smouldering embers, and then turned away, that she might not see it
curling and glowing and blackening to ashes on the coals. That night a
note from the director of the asylum told her that her husband was in
excellent bodily health, without improvement in his mental condition.
It was dated on the first of the month.
After that she avoided the colonel for some time, but when she met him
her face was again like marble, and only the soft, slow smile and the
steady, gentle voice showed that she was glad to see him. Two years had
passed since then, and he had not even guessed that she knew.
He often sought her, when she was within reach of him, but their meeting
to-day, in the fashionable antiquary's shop, at the cross-roads of
Europe, was altogether accidental, unless it were brought about by the
direct intervention of destiny. But who believes in destiny nowadays?
Most people smile at the word 'fate,' as though it had no meaning at
all. Yet call 'fate' the 'chemistry of the universe' and the sceptic's
face assumes an expression of abject credulity, because the term has a
modern ring and smacks of science. What is the difference between the
two? We know a little chemistry: we can get something like the perfume
of spring violets out of nauseous petroleum, and a flavour of
strawberries out of stinking coal-tar; but we do not know much of the
myriad natural laws by which our bodies are directed hither and thither,
mere atoms in the everlasting whirlpool of all living beings. What can
it matter whether we call those rules chemistry or fate? We shall submit
to them in the end, with our bodies, though our souls rebel against them
ever so eternally. The things that matter are quite different, and the
less they have to do with our bodies, the better it is for ourselves.
Colonel Wimpole looked at the miniature and saw that it was a modern
copy of a well-known French one, ingeniously set in an old case, to fit
which it had perhaps been measured and painted. He looked at the dealer
quickly, and the man expressed his despair by turning up his eyes a very
little, while he bent his head forward and spread out his palms,
abandoning the contest, for he recognized the colonel's right to advise
a friend.
"What do you think of it?" asked Mrs. Harmon.
"That depends entirely on what you mean to do with it, and how much you
would give for it," answered the colonel, who would not have let her buy
an imitation under any circumstances, but was far too kind-hearted to
ruin the shopkeeper in her estimation.
"I rather liked it," was the answer. "It was for myself. There is
something about the expression that pleases me. The lady looks so
blindly happy and delighted with herself. It is a cheerful little thing
to look at."
The colonel smiled.
"Will you let me give it to you?" he asked, putting it into her hand.
"In that way I shall have some pleasure out of it, too."
Mrs. Harmon held it for a moment, and looked at him thoughtfully, asking
herself whether there was any reason why she should not accept the
little present. He was not rich, but she had understood from his first
answer that the thing was not worth much, after all, and she knew that
he would not pay an absurd price for it. Her fingers closed quietly
upon it.
"Thank you," she said. "I wanted it."
"I will come back this afternoon and pay for it," said the colonel to
the dealer, as the three went out of the shop together a few moments
later.
During the little scene, young Harmon had looked on sharply and
curiously, but had not spoken.
"How are those things made, mother?" he asked, when they were in the
street.
"What things?" asked Mrs. Harmon, gently.
"Those things--what do you call them? Like what Colonel Wimpole just
gave you. How are they made?"
"Oh, miniatures? They are painted on ivory with very fine brushes."
"How funny! Why do they cost so much money, then?"
His questions were like those of a little child, but his mother's
expression did not change as she answered him, always with the same
unvarying gentleness.
"People have to be very clever to paint them," she said. "That is why
the very good ones are worth so much. It is like a good tailor, my
dear, who is paid well because he makes good coats, whereas the man who
only knows how to make workmen's jackets earns very little."
"That's not fair," said young Harmon. "It isn't the man's fault if he
is stupid, is it?"
"No, dear, it isn't his fault, it's his misfortune."
It took the young man so long to understand this that he said nothing
more, trying to think over his mother's words, and getting them by
heart, for they pleased him. They walked along in the hot sun and then
crossed the street opposite the Schweizerhof to reach the shade of the
foolish-looking trees that have been stuck about like Nuremberg toys,
between the lake and the highway. The colonel had not spoken since they
had left the shop.
"How well you are looking," he said suddenly, when young Harmon had
relapsed into silence. "You are as fresh as a rose."
"A rose of yesterday," said Helen Harmon, a little sadly.
Quite naturally, Colonel Wimpole sighed as he walked along at her elbow;
for though he did not know that she had ever loved him, he remembered
the letter he had written to the man she had afterwards married, and he
was too much a man himself not to believe that all might have been
different if he had not written it.
"Where are you stopping?" he asked, when they had gone a few steps in
silence.
Mrs. Harmon named a quiet hotel on the other side of the river.
"Close to us," observed the colonel, just as they reached the new
bridge.
They were half-way across when an exclamation from young Harmon
interrupted their conversation, which was, indeed, but a curiously stiff
exchange of dry information about themselves and their movements, past,
planned, and probable. For people who are fond of each other and meet
rarely are first of all anxious to know when they may meet again. But
the boy's cry of surprise made them look round.
"Jukes!" he exclaimed loudly. "Jukes!" he repeated, more softly but
very emphatically, as though solely for his own benefit.
'Jukes' was his only expression when pleased and surprised. No one knew
whether he had ever heard the word, or had invented it, and no one could
ever discover what it meant nor from what it was derived. It seemed to
be what Germans call a 'nature-sound,' by which he gave vent to his
feelings. His mother hated it, but had never been able to induce him to
substitute anything else in its place. She followed the direction of
his eager glance, for she knew by his tone that he wanted what he saw.
She expected to see a pretty boat, or a big dog, or a gorgeous posted
bill. Archie had a passion for the latter, and he often bought them and
took them home with him to decorate his own particular room. He loved
best the ones printed in violent and obtrusive colours. The gem of his
collection was a purple woman on a red ground with a wreath of yellow
flowers.
But Mrs. Harmon saw neither advertisement nor dog, nor boat. She saw
Sylvia Strahan. She knew the girl very well, and knew Miss Wimpole, of
course. The two were walking along on the other side of the bridge,
talking together. Against the blaze of the afternoon sun, reflected
from the still lake, they could hardly have recognized the colonel and
the Harmons, even if they had looked that way.
"It's Sylvia, mother," said Archie, glaring at the girl. "But isn't she
grown! And isn't she lovely? Oh, Ju-u-ukes!"
His heavy lips thickened outwards as he repeated the mysterious
ejaculation, and there was more colour than usual in his dark face. He
was but little older than Sylvia, and the two had played together as
small children, but he had never shown any special preference for her as
a playmate. What struck him, now, was evidently her beauty. There was
a look in his eyes, and a sort of bristling of the meeting eyebrows that
reminded Helen of his father, and her white lids quivered for an instant
at the recollection, while she felt a little chill run through her.
The colonel also saw.
"Shall we cross over and speak to them?" he asked in a low voice. "Or
shall we just go on?"
"Let us go on," answered Helen. "I will go and see them later.
Besides, we have passed them now. Let us go on and get into the shade;
it is dreadfully hot here."
"Won't you stop and speak to them, mother?" asked Archie Harmon, in a
tone of deep disappointment. "Why, we have not seen them for ever so
long!"
"We shall see them by and by," answered his mother. "It's too hot to go
back now."
The young man turned his head and lagged a little, looking after the
girl's graceful figure, till he stumbled awkwardly against a curbstone.
But he did not protest any more. In his dull way, he worshipped his
mother as a superior being, and hitherto he had always obeyed her with a
half-childish confidence. His arrested intelligence still saw her as he
had seen her ten years earlier, as a sort of high and protecting wisdom
incarnate for his benefit, able to answer all questions and to provide
him with unlimited pocket-money wherewith to buy bright-coloured posters
and other gaudy things that attracted him. Up to a certain point, he
could be trusted to himself, for he was almost as far from being an
idiot as he was from being a normally thinking man. He was about as
intelligent and about as well informed as a rather unusually dull
schoolboy of twelve years or thereabouts. He did not lose his way in
the streets, nor drop his money out of his pockets, and he could speak a
little French and German which he had learned from a foreign nurse,
enough to buy a ticket or order a meal. But he had scarcely outgrown
toys, and his chief delight was to listen to the stories his mother told
him. She was not very inventive, and she told the same old ones year
after year. They always seemed to be new to him. He could remember
faces and names fairly well, and had an average recollection of events
in his own life; but it was impossible to teach him anything from books,
his handwriting was the heavy, unformed scrawl of a child, and his
spelling was one long disaster.
So far, at least, Helen had found only his intellectual deficiency to
deal with, and it was at once a perpetual shame to her and a cause of
perpetual sorrow and sympathy. But he was affectionate and docile
enough, not cruel as some such beings are, and certainly not vicious, so
far as she could see. Dull boys are rarely mischievous, though they are
sometimes cruel, for mischief implies an imagination which dulness does
not possess.
Archie Harmon had one instinct, or quality, which redeemed him from
total insignificance and raised him above the level of an amiable and
harmless animal. He had a natural horror of taking life, and felt the
strongest possible impulse to save it at any risk to himself. His
mother was never quite sure whether he made any distinction between the
value of existence to a man, and its worth to an animal, or even to an
insect. He seemed not to connect it with its possessor, but to look
upon it as something to be preserved for its own sake, under all
circumstances, wherever it manifested itself. At ordinary times he was
sufficiently cautious for his own safety, and would hesitate to risk a
fall or scratch in climbing, where most boys would have been quite
unaware of such possibilities. But at the sight of any living thing in
danger, a reckless instinct to save it took possession of him, and his
sluggish nature was roused to sudden and direct activity, without any
intermediate process of thought. He had again and again given proof of
courage that might have shamed most men. He had saved a child from
drowning in the North River, diving after it from a ferryboat running at
full speed, and he had twice stopped bolting horses--once, a pair with a
heavy brougham in the streets of New York, and once, in the park, a
dog-cart driven by a lady. On the first of these two occasions he had
been a good deal cut and bruised, and had narrowly escaped with his
life. His mother was too brave not to be proud of his deeds, but with
each one her fears for his own daily safety increased.
He was never violent, but he occasionally showed a strength that
surprised her, though he never seemed to care about exhibiting it. Once,
she had fallen and hurt her foot, and he had carried her up many stairs
like a child. After that, she had felt now and then as men must feel who
tame wild beasts and control them.
He worshipped her, and she saw that he looked with a sort of pity on
other women, young or old, as not worthy to be compared with her in any
way. She had begun to hope that she might be spared the humiliation of
ever seeing him in love, despised or pitied, as the case might be, by
some commonplace, pretty girl with white teeth and pink cheeks. She
feared that, and she feared lest he should some day taste drink, and
follow his father's ways to the same ruin. But as yet he had been like
a child.
It was no wonder that she shuddered when, as he looked at Sylvia
Strahan, she saw something in his face which had never been there before
and heard that queer word of his uttered in such a tone. She wondered
whether Colonel Wimpole had heard and seen, too, and for some time the
three walked on in silence.
"Will you come in?" asked Mrs. Harmon, as they reached the door of her
hotel.
The colonel followed her to her little sitting-room, and Archie
disappeared; for the conversation of those whom he still, in his own
thoughts, regarded as 'grown-up people' wearied him beyond bearing.
"My dear friend," said Colonel Wimpole, when they were alone, "I am so
very glad to see you!"
He held one of her hands in his while he spoke the conventional words,
his eyes were a little misty, and there was a certain tone in his voice
which no one but Helen Harmon had ever heard.
"I am glad, too," she said simply, and she drew away her hand from his
with a sort of deprecation which he only half understood, for he only
knew that half of the truth which was in himself.
They sat down as they had sat many a time in their lives, at a little
distance from each other, and just so that each had to turn the head a
little to face the other. It was easier to talk in that position
because there was a secret between them, besides many things which were
not secrets, but of which they did not wish to speak.
"It is terribly long since we last met," said the colonel. "Do you
remember? I went to see you in New York the day before we started for
Japan. You had just come back from the country, and your house was in
confusion."
"Oh yes, I remember," replied Mrs. Harmon. "Yes, it is terribly long;
but nothing is changed."
"Nothing?" The colonel meant to ask her about Harmon, and she
understood.
"Nothing," she answered gravely. "There was no improvement when the
doctor wrote, on the first of last month. I shall have another report
in a day or two. But they are all exactly alike. He will just live on,
as he is now, to the end of his life."
"To the end of his life," repeated the colonel, in a low voice, and the
two turned their heads and looked at each other.
"He is in perfect health," said Mrs. Harmon, looking away again.
She drew out a long hat-pin and lifted her hat from her head with both
hands, for it was a hot afternoon, and she had come into the
sitting-room as she was. The colonel noticed how neatly and carefully
she did the thing. It seemed almost unnecessary to do it so slowly.
"It is so hot," she said, as she laid the hat on the table.
She was pale now, perhaps with the heat of which she complained, and he
saw how tired her face was.
"Is this state of things really to go on?" he asked suddenly.
She moved a little, but did not look at him.
"I am not discontented," she said. "I am not--not altogether unhappy."
"Why should you not be released from it all?" asked the colonel.
It was the first time he had ever suggested such a possibility, and she
looked away from him.
"It is not as if it had all been different before he lost his mind," he
went on, seeing that she did not answer at once. "It is not as if you
had not had fifty good reasons for a divorce before he finally went mad.
What is the use of denying that?"
"Please do not talk about a divorce," said Mrs. Harmon, steadily.
"Please forgive me, if I do, my dear friend," returned the colonel,
almost hotly; for he was suddenly convinced that he was right, and when
he was right it was hard to stop him. "You have spent half your life in
sacrificing all of yourself. Surely you have a right to the other half.
There is not even the excuse that you might still do him some good by
remaining his wife in name. His mind is gone, and he could not
recognize you if he saw you."
"What should I gain by such a step, then?" asked Helen, turning upon him
rather suddenly. "Do you think I would marry again?" There was an
effort in her voice. "I hate to talk in this way, for I detest the idea
of divorce, and the principle of it, and all its consequences. I
believe it is going to be the ruin of half the world, in the end. It is
a disgrace, in whatever way you look at it!"
"A large part of the world does not seem to think so," observed the
colonel, rather surprised by her outbreak, though in any case excepting
her own he might have agreed with her.
"It would be better if the whole world thought so," she observed with
energy. "Do you know what divorce means in the end? It means the
abolition of marriage laws altogether; it means reducing marriage to a
mere experiment which may last a few days, a few weeks, or a few months,
according to the people who try it. There are men and women, already,
who have been divorced and married again half a dozen times. Before the
next generation is old that will be the rule and not the exception."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Colonel Wimpole. "I hope not!"
"I know you agree with me," said Mrs. Harmon, with conviction. "You
only argue on the other side because--" She stopped short.
"Why?" He did not look at her as he asked the question.
"Because you are my best friend," she answered, after a moment's
hesitation, "and because you have got it into your head that I should be
happier. I cannot imagine why. It would make no difference at all in
my life--now."
The last word fell from her lips with a regretful tone and lingered a
little on the air like the sad singing of a bell's last note, not broken
by a following stroke. But the colonel was not satisfied.
"It may make all the difference, even now," he said. "Suppose that
Harmon were to recover."
Helen did not start, for the thought had been long familiar to her, but
she pressed her lips together a little and let her head rest against the
back of her chair, half closing her eyes.
"It is possible," continued the colonel. "You know as well as I do that
doctors are not always right, and there is nothing about which so little
is really certain as insanity."
"I do not think it is possible."
"But it is, nevertheless. Imagine what it would be, if you began to
hear that he was better and better, and finally well, and, at last, that
there was no reason for keeping him in confinement."
Mrs. Harmon's eyes were quite closed now, as she leaned back. It was
horrible to her to wish that her husband might remain mad till he died,
yet she thought of what her own life must be if he should recover. She
was silent, fighting it out in her heart. It was not easy. It was hard
even to see what she should wish, for every human being has a prime
right of self-preservation, against which no argument avails, save that
of a divinely good and noble cause to be defended. Yet the moral
wickedness of praying that Harmon might be a madman all the rest of his
life frightened her. Throughout twenty years and more she had faced
suffering and shame without flinching and without allowing herself one
thought of retaliation or hatred. She had been hardened to the struggle
and was not a woman to yield, if it should begin again, but she shrank
from it, now, as the best and bravest may shrink at the thought of
torture, though they would not groan in slow fire.
"Just think what it might be," resumed Colonel Wimpole. "Why not look
the facts in the face while there is time? If he were let out, he would
come back to you, and you would receive him, for I know what you are.
You would think it right to take him back because you promised long ago
to love, honour, and obey him. To love, to honour, and to obey--Henry
Harmon!"
The colonel's steady grey eyes flashed for an instant, and his gentle
voice was suddenly thick and harsh as he pronounced the last words. They
meant terribly much to the woman who heard them, and in her distress she
leaned forward in her seat and put up her hands to her temples, as
though she had pain, gently pushing back the heavy hair she wore so low
on her forehead. Wimpole had never seen her so much moved, and the
gesture itself was unfamiliar to him. He did not remember to have ever
seen her touch her hair with her hands, as some women do. He watched
her now, as he continued to speak.
"You did all three," he said. "You honoured him, you loved him, and you
obeyed him for a good many years. But he neither loved, nor honoured,
nor cherished you. I believe that is the man's part of the contract, is
it not? And marriage is always called a contract, is it not? Now, in
any contract, both parties must do what they have promised, so that if
one party fails, the other is not bound. Is not that true? And, Heaven
knows, Harmon failed badly enough!"
"Don't! Please don't take it that way! No, no, no! Marriage is not a
contract; it is a bond, a vow--something respected by man because it is
sacred before God. If Henry failed a thousand times more, I should be
just as much bound to keep my promise."
Her head sank still more forward, and her hands pushed her hair straight
back from the temples.
"You will never persuade me of that," answered the colonel. "You will
never make me believe--" He stopped short, for as he watched her, he
saw what he had never seen before, a deep and crooked scar high on her
forehead. "What is that?" he asked suddenly, leaning towards her, his
eyes fixed on the ugly mark.
She started, stared at him, dropping her hands, realized what he had
seen, and then instantly turned away. He could see that her fingers
trembled as she tried to draw her hair down again. It was not like her
to be vain, and he guessed at once that she had some reason other than
vanity for hiding the old wound.
"What is that scar?" he asked again, determined to have an answer. "I
never saw it before."
"It is a--I was hurt long ago--" She hesitated, for she did not know
how to lie.
"Not so very long ago," said the colonel. "I know something about
scars, and that one is not many years old. It does not look as though
you had got it in a fall either. Besides, if you had, you would not
mind telling me, would you?"
"Please don't ask me about it! I cannot tell you about it."
The colonel's face was hardening quickly. The lines came out in it stern
and straight, as when, at evening, a sudden frost falls upon a still
water, and the first ice-needles shoot out, clear and stiff. Then came
the certainty, and Wimpole looked as he had looked long ago in battle.
"Harmon did that," he said at last, and the wrathful thought that
followed was not the less fierce because it was unspoken.
Helen's hands shook now, for no one had ever known how she had been
wounded. But she said nothing, though she knew that her silence meant
her assent. Wimpole rose suddenly, straight as a rifle, and walked to
the window, turning his back upon her. He could say things there, under
his breath, which she could not understand, and he said them, earnestly.
"He did not know what he was doing," Helen said, rather unsteadily.
The colonel turned on his heels at the window, facing her, and his lips
still moved slowly, though no words came. Helen looked at him and knew
that she was glad of his silent anger. Not realizing what she was
thinking of, she wondered what sort of death Harmon might have died if
Richard Wimpole had seen him strike her to the ground with a cut-glass
decanter. For a moment the cloak of mercy and forgiveness was rent from
head to heel. The colonel would have killed the man with those rather
delicate looking hands of his, talking to him all the time in a low
voice. That was what she thought, and perhaps she was not very far
wrong. Even now, it was well for Harmon that he was safe in his asylum
on the other side of an ocean.
It was some time before Wimpole could speak. Then he came and stood
before Helen.
"You will stay a few days? You do not mean to go away at once?" he
said, with a question.
"Yes."
"Then I think I shall go away now, and come and see you again later."
He took her hand rather mechanically and left the room. But she
understood and was grateful.