Miss Wimpole was walking up and down the little sitting-room in
considerable perplexity. When she was greatly in doubt as to her future
conduct, she puckered her elderly lips, frowned severely, and talked to
herself with an occasional energetic shaking of the head. She always
did up her hair very securely and neatly, so that this was quite safe.
Women who are not sure of their hairpins carry their heads as carefully
as a basket of eggs and do not bend them if they have to stoop for
anything.
Talking to oneself is a bad habit, especially when the door is open,
whether one be swearing at something or examining one's own conscience.
But Miss Wimpole could not help it, and the question of returning the
price of the hat to Archie Harmon's mother was such a very difficult
one, that she had forgotten to shut the door.
"Most impossible situation!" she repeated aloud. "Most terrible
situation! Poor boy! Half idiotic--father mad. Most distressing
situation! If I tell his mother, I shall hurt her feelings dreadfully.
If I tell Richard, I shall hurt his feelings dreadfully. If I tell
nobody, I shall break my promise to Sylvia, besides putting her in the
position of accepting a hat from a young man. Ridiculous present, a
hat! If it had only been a parasol! Parasols are not so ridiculous as
hats. I wonder why! Perfectly impossible to keep the money, of course.
Even Judas Iscariot--dear me! Where are my thoughts running to?
Shocking! But a terrible situation. It was dear, too--eighty francs!
We must get it into Mrs. Harmon's hands somehow--"
"Why must you get eighty francs into Mrs. Harmon's hands?" enquired the
colonel, laying his hat upon a chair.
The door had been open, and he had heard her talking while he was in the
corridor. She uttered an exclamation as she turned and saw him.
"Oh--well--I suppose you heard me. I must really cure myself of talking
when I am alone! But I was not saying anything in particular."
"You were saying that you must manage to pay Mrs. Harmon eighty francs.
It is very easy, for she happens to be here and I have just seen her."
"Oh, I know she is here!" cried Miss Wimpole. "I know it to my cost!
She and that--and her son, you know."
"Yes, I knew. But what is the matter? What is the trouble?"
"Oh, Richard! You are so sensitive about anything that has to do with
Mrs. Harmon!"
"I?" The colonel looked at her quietly.
"Yes. Of course you are, and it is quite natural and I quite
understand, and I do not blame you in the least. But such a dreadful
thing has happened. I hardly know how I can tell you about it. It is
really too dreadful for words."
Wimpole sat down and fanned himself slowly with the Paris _Herald_. He
was still rather pale, for his nerves had been shaken.
"Rachel, my dear," he said mildly, "don't be silly. Tell me what is the
matter."
Miss Wimpole walked slowly once round the room, stopped at the window
and looked through the blinds, and at last turned and faced her brother
with all the energy of her seasoned character.
"Richard," she began, "don't call me silly till you hear. It's awful.
That boy suddenly appeared in a shop where Sylvia was buying a hat, and
paid for it and vanished."
"Eh? What's that?" asked Wimpole, opening his eyes wide. "I don't
think I quite understood, Rachel. I must have been thinking of
something else, just then."
"I daresay you were," replied his sister, severely. "You are growing
dreadfully absent-minded. You really should correct it. I say that
when Sylvia was buying a hat, just now, Archie Harmon suddenly appeared
in the shop and spoke to us. Then he asked Sylvia whether she liked the
hat she was trying on, and she said she did. Then he went off, and when
we wished to pay we were told that the hat had been paid for by the
young gentleman. Now--"
The colonel interrupted and startled his sister by laughing aloud at
this point. He could not help it, though he had not felt in the least
as though he could laugh at anything for a long time, when he had
entered the room. Miss Wimpole was annoyed.
"Richard," she said solemnly, "you surprise me."
"Does it not strike you as funny?" asked the colonel, recovering.
"No. It is--it is almost tragic. But perhaps," she continued, with a
fine point of irony, "since you make so light of the matter, you will be
good enough to return to Mrs. Harmon the price of the hat purchased by
her half-witted boy for your ward."
"Don't call him half-witted, Rachel," said the colonel. "It's not so
bad as that, you know."
"I cannot agree with you," replied his sister. "Only an idiot would
think of rushing into a shop where a lady is buying something, and
suddenly paying for it. You must admit that, Richard. Only an idiot
could do such a thing."
"I have done just such a thing myself," observed Wimpole, thoughtfully,
for he remembered the miniature he had bought for Helen that afternoon.
"I suppose I was an idiot, since you say--"
"I said nothing of the kind, my dear! How can you accuse me of calling
you an idiot? Really, Richard, you behave very strangely to-day! I
don't know what can be the matter with you. First, you manage to make
Sylvia cry her eyes out--Heaven knows what dreadful thing you said to
her! And now you deliberately accuse me of calling you an idiot. If
this sort of thing goes on much longer, there will be an end of our
family happiness."
"This is not one of my lucky days," said the colonel, resignedly, and he
laid down the folded newspaper. "How much did the hat cost? I will
return the money to Mrs. Harmon, and explain."
Miss Wimpole looked at him with gratitude and admiration in her face.
"It was eighty francs," she answered. "Richard, I did not call you an
idiot. In the first place, it would have been totally untrue, and in
the second place, it would have been--what shall I say? It would have
been very vulgar to call you an idiot, Richard. It is a vulgar
expression."
"It might have been true, my dear, but I certainly never knew you to say
anything vulgar. On the other hand, I really did not assert that you
applied the epithet to me. I applied it to myself, rather
experimentally. And poor Archie Harmon is not so bad as that, either."
"If he is not idiotic--or--or something like it, why do you say 'poor'
Archie?"
"Because I am sorry for him," returned the colonel. "And so are you,"
he added presently.
Miss Wimpole considered the matter for a few seconds; then she slowly
nodded, and came up to him.
"I am," she said. "Richard, kiss me."
That was always the proclamation of peace, not after strife, for they
never quarrelled, but at the close of an argument. It was done in this
way. The colonel rose, and stood before his sister; then both bent
their heads a little, and as their cool grey cheeks touched, each kissed
the air somewhere in the neighbourhood of the other's ear. They had
been little children together, and their mother had taught them to 'kiss
and make friends,' as good children should, whenever there had been any
difference; and now they were growing old together, but they had never
forgotten, in nearly fifty years, to 'kiss and make friends' when they
had disagreed. What is childlike is not always childish.
The colonel resumed his seat, and there was silence for a few minutes.
The folded newspaper lay on the table unread, and he looked at it,
scarcely aware that he saw it.
"I think Archie Harmon must have fallen in love with Sylvia," he said at
last. "That is the only possible explanation. She has grown up since
he saw her last, and so has he, though his mind has not developed much,
I suppose."
"Not at all, I should say," answered Miss Wimpole. "But I wish you
would not suggest such things. The mere idea makes me uncomfortable."
"Yes," assented the colonel, thoughtfully. "We will not talk about it."
Suddenly he knew what he was looking at, and he read the first
head-lines on the paper, just visible above the folded edge. The words
were 'Harmon Sane,' printed in large capitals. In a moment he had spread
out the sheet.
The big letters only referred to a short telegram, lower down. "It is
reported on good authority that Henry Harmon, who has been an inmate of
the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum for some years, is recovering rapidly,
and will shortly be able to return to his numerous friends in perfect
mental health."
That was all. The colonel searched the paper from beginning to end, in
the vain hope of finding something more, and read the little paragraph
over and over again. There was no possibility of a mistake. There had
never been but one Henry Harmon, and there could certainly be but one in
the Bloomingdale asylum. The news was so sudden that Wimpole felt his
heart stand still when he first read it, and as he thought of it he grew
cold, and shivered as though he had an ague.
It had been easier to think of Harmon's possible recovery before he had
seen that scar on Helen's forehead. For many years he had borne the
thought that the woman he had silently loved so long was bound to a man
little better than a beast; but it had never occurred to him that she
might have had much to bear of which he had known nothing, even to
violence and physical danger. The knowledge had changed him within the
last hour, and the news about Harmon now hardened him all at once in his
anger, as hot steel is chilled when it has just reached the cutting
temper, and does not change after that.
The colonel was as honourable a man as ever shielded a woman's good
name, or rode to meet an enemy in fair fight. He was chivalrous with
all the world, and quixotic with himself. He had charity for the ways
of other men, for he had seen enough to know that many things were done
by men whom no one would dare to call dishonourable, which he would not
have done to save his own life. He understood that such a lasting love
as his was stronger than himself, yet he himself had been so strong that
he had never yielded even to its thoughts, nor ever allowed the longing
for a final union with Helen at all costs to steal upon his unguarded
imagination.
He was not tempted beyond his strength, indeed, and in his apparent
perfection, that must be remembered. In all those years of his devoted
friendship Helen had never let him guess that she could have loved him
once, much less that she loved him now, as he did her, with the same
resolution to hide from her inward eyes what she could not tear from her
inmost heart. But it is never fair to say that if a man had been placed
in a certain imaginary position, he might have been weak. So long as he
has not broken down under the trials and burdens of real life, he has a
right to be called strong.
The colonel set no barrier, however, against the devotion to Helen's
welfare which he might honourably feel and show. In day-dreams over old
books he had envied those clean knights of a younger time, who fought
for wives not theirs so openly and bravely, and so honestly that the
spotless women for whom they faced death took lustre of more honour from
such unselfish love. And for Helen's sake he had longed for some true
circumstance of mortal danger in which to prove once more how well and
silently an honest man can die to save an innocent woman.
But those were dreams. In acts he had done much, though never half of
what he had always wished to do. The trouble had all come little by
little in Helen's existence, and there had not been one great deciding
moment in which his hand or head could have saved her happiness.
Now it seemed as though the time were full, and as if he might at last,
by one deed, cast the balance by the scale of happiness. He did not
know how to do it, nor whither to turn, but he felt, as he sat by the
table with the little newspaper in his hand, that unless he could
prevent Harmon from coming back to his wife, his own existence was to
turn out a miserable failure, his love a lie, and his long devotion but
a worthless word.
His first impulse was to leave Lucerne that night and reach home in the
shortest possible time. He would see Harmon and tell him what he
thought, and force from him a promise to leave Helen in peace, some
unbreakable promise which the man should not be able to deny, some sort
of bond that should have weight in law.
The colonel's nostrils quivered, and his steady grey eyes fixed
themselves and turned very light as he thought of the interview and of
the quiet, hard words he would select. Each one of them should be a
retribution in itself. He was the gentlest of men, but under great
provocation he could be relentless.
What would Harmon answer? The colonel grew thoughtful again. Harmon
would ask him, with an intonation that would be an insult to Helen, what
right Wimpole had acquired to take Helen's part against him, her lawful
husband. It would be hard to answer that, having no right of his own to
fight her battles, least of all against the man she had married.
He might answer by reminding Harmon of old times. He might say that he
at least resigned the hope of that right, when Harmon had been his
friend, because he had believed that it was for Helen's happiness.
That would be but a miserably unsatisfactory answer, though it would be
the truth. The colonel did not remember that he had ever wished to
strike a man with a whip until the present moment. But the sight of the
cut on Helen's forehead had changed him very quickly. He was not sure
that he could keep his hands from Harmon if he should see him. And
slowly a sort of cold and wrathful glow rose in his face, and he felt as
though his long, thin fingers were turning into steel springs.
Miss Wimpole had taken up a book and was reading. She heard him move in
his chair, and looked up and saw his expression.
"What is the matter with you, Richard?" she enquired, in surprise.
"Why?" He started nervously.
"You look like the destroying angel," she observed calmly. "I suppose
you are gradually beginning to be angry about Sylvia's hat, as I was. I
don't wonder."
"Oh yes--Sylvia's hat; yes, yes, I remember." The colonel passed his
hand over his eyes. "I mean, it is perhaps the heat. It's a warm day.
I'll go to my room for a while."
"Yes, do, my dear. You behave so strangely to-day--as if you were going
to be ill."
But the colonel was already gone, and was stalking down the corridor
with his head high, his eyes as hard as polished grey stones, and his
nervous hands clenched as they swung a little with his gait.
His sister shook her head energetically, then slowly and sadly, as she
watched him in the distance.
"How much more gracefully we grow old than men!" she said aloud, and
took up her book again.