After the door had closed, Helen stood a moment by the table,
motionless. Then she sat down by the feeble light of the taper and
wrote upon a sheet of paper her husband's address and one
word--'forgiven.' She looked at the writing fixedly for a minute or
two, and then rang the bell.
"Have this telegram sent at once, please, and bring me a lamp and
dinner," she said to the servant.
With the lamp came Archie, following it with a sort of interest, as
children do.
"You must have been in the dark ever so long, mother," he said, and just
then he saw her white face. "You are not looking all right," he
observed.
Helen smiled, from force of habit, rather wearily. The servant began to
set the table, moving stealthily, as though he were meditating some
sudden surprise which never came. He was a fairly intelligent Swiss,
with an immense pink face and very small blue eyes.
Helen watched him for a moment, and sighed. The man was intellectually
her son's superior, and she knew it. Any one else might have smiled at
the thought, as grotesque, but it had for her the cruel vividness of a
misfortune that had saddened all of her life which her husband had not
embittered. She envied, for her son, the poor waiter's little powers of
mental arithmetic and memory.
"What's the matter, mother?" asked Archie, who sat looking at her.
"Nothing, dear," she answered, rousing herself, and smiling wearily
again. "I am a little tired, perhaps. It has been a hot day."
"Has it? I didn't notice. I never do--at least, not much. I say,
mother, let's go home! I'm tired of Europe, and I know you are. Let's
all go home together--we and the Wimpoles."
"We shall be going home soon," said Helen.
"I thought you meant to go to Carlsbad first. Wasn't it to Carlsbad we
were going?"
"Yes, dear. But--here comes dinner--we will talk about it by and by."
They sat down to table. In hotels abroad Helen always dined in her
rooms, for she was never quite sure of Archie. He seemed strangely
unconscious of his own defect of mind, and was always ready to enter
boldly into conversation with his neighbours at a foreign hotel dinner
table. His childish ignorance had once or twice caused her such
humiliation as she did not feel called upon to bear again.
"I don't know why we shouldn't talk about it now," began Archie, when he
had eaten his soup in silence, and the servant was changing his plate.
"We shall be alone, after dinner," answered his mother.
"Oh, the waiter doesn't care! He'll never see us again, you know, so
why shouldn't we say anything we like before him?"
Mrs. Harmon looked at her son and shook her head gravely, which was an
admonition he always understood.
"Did you see anything you liked, to-day?" she asked incautiously, by way
of changing the conversation.
"Rather!" exclaimed Archie, promptly. "I met Sylvia Strahan--jukes!"
Helen shuddered, as she saw the look in his face and the glitter in his
eyes.
"I wish you could remember not to say 'jukes' every other minute,
Archie," she said, for the thousandth time.
"Do you think Sylvia minds when I say 'jukes'?" asked the young man,
suddenly.
"I am sure she thinks it a very ugly and senseless word."
"Does she? Really?" He was silent for a few moments, pondering the
question. "Well," he resumed at last, in a regretful tone, "I've always
said it, and I like it, and I don't see any harm in it. But, of course,
if Sylvia doesn't like it, I've got to give it up, that's all. I'm
always going to do what Sylvia likes, now, as long as I live. And what
you like, too, mother," he added as an apologetic and dutiful
afterthought. "But then, you're pretty sure to like the same things,
after all."
"You really must not go on in this way about Sylvia, my dear," said
Helen. "It is too absurd."
Archie's heavy brows met right across his forehead as he looked up with
something like a glare in his eyes, and his voice was suddenly thick and
indistinct, when he answered.
"Don't call it absurd, mother. I don't understand what it is, but it's
stronger than I am. I don't want anything but Sylvia. Things don't
amuse me any more. It was only to-day--"
He stopped, for he was going to tell her how he had found no pleasure in
his toys, neither in the blocks, nor in the tin soldiers, nor in the
little papier-mache lady and gentleman in the painted cart. But he
thought she did not know about them, and he checked himself in a sudden
shame which he had never felt before. A deep red blush spread over his
dark face, and he looked down at his plate.
"I'm a man, now," he said, through his teeth, in a rough voice.
After that, he was silent for a time, but Helen watched him nervously.
She, too, saw that he was a man, with almost less than a boy's mind, and
her secret terror grew. She could not eat that evening, but he did not
notice her. They dined quickly and then they sat down together, as they
usually did, quite near to each other and side by side. She could
sometimes teach him little things which he remembered, when everything
was quiet. He generally began to talk of something he had seen, and she
always tried to make him understand it and think about it. But this
evening he said nothing for a long time, and she was glad of his
silence. When she thought of the telegram she had sent, she had a sharp
pain at her heart, and once or twice she started a little in her chair.
But Archie did not notice her.
"I say, mother," he began, looking up, "what becomes of all the things
one forgets? Do they--do they go to sleep in one's head?"
Mrs. Harmon looked at him in surprise, for it was by far the most
thoughtful question he had ever asked. She could not answer it at once,
and he went on.
"Because you always tell me to try and remember, and you think I could
remember if I tried hard enough. Then you must believe the things are
there. You wouldn't expect me to give you what I hadn't got, would you?
That wouldn't be fair."
"No, certainly not," answered his mother, considerably puzzled.
"Then you really think that I don't forget. You must think I don't
remember to remember. Something like that. I can't explain what I mean,
but you understand."
"I suppose so, my dear. Something like that. Yes, perhaps it is just
as you say, and things go to sleep in one's head and one has to wake
them up. But I know that I can often remember things I have forgotten
if I try very hard."
"I can't. I say, mother, I suppose I'm stupid, though you never tell me
so. I know I'm different from other people, somehow. I wish you would
tell me just what it is. I don't want to be different from other
people. Of course I know I could never be as clever as you, nor the
colonel. But then you're awfully clever, both of you. Father used to
call me an idiot, but I'm not. I saw an idiot once, and his eyes turned
in, and he couldn't shut his mouth, and he couldn't talk properly."
"Are you sure that your father ever called you an idiot, Archie?"
Helen's lips were oddly pale, and her voice was low. Archie laughed in
a wooden way.
"Oh, yes! I'm quite sure," he said. "I remember, because he hit me on
the back of the head with the knob of his stick when he said so. That
was the first time. Then he got into the way of saying it. I wasn't
very big then."
Helen leaned back and closed her eyes, and in her mind she saw the word
'forgiven' as she had written it after his name,--'Henry Harmon, New
York. Forgiven.' It had a strange look. She had not known that he had
ever struck the boy cruelly.
"Why did you never tell me?" she asked slowly.
"Oh, I don't know. It would have been like a cry-a-baby to go running
to you. I just waited."
Helen did not guess what was coming.
"Did he strike you again with the knob of his stick?" she asked.
"Lots of times, with all sorts of things. Once, when you were off
somewhere for two or three days on a visit, he came at me with a poker.
That was the last time. I suppose he had been drinking more than
usual."
"What happened?" asked Helen.
"Oh, well, I'd grown big then, and I got sick of it all at once, you
know. He never tried to touch me again, after that."
Helen recalled distinctly that very unusual occasion when she had been
absent for a whole week, at the time of a sister's death. Harmon had
seemed ill when she had returned, and she remembered noticing a great
change in his manner towards the boy only a few months before he had
become insane.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"I hit him. I hit him badly, a good many times. Then I put him to bed.
I knew he wouldn't tell."
Archie smiled slowly at the recollection of beating his father, and
looked down at his fist. Helen felt as though she were going mad
herself. It was all horribly unnatural,--the father's cruel brutality to
his afflicted son, the son's ferocious vengeance upon his father when he
had got his strength.
"You see," continued Archie, "I knew exactly how many times he had hit
me altogether, and I gave all the hits back at once. That was fair,
anyhow."
Helen could not remember that he had ever professed to be sure of an
exact number from memory.
"How could you know just how many times--" She spoke faintly, and
stopped, half sick.
"Blocks," answered Archie. "I dropped a little blot of ink on one of my
blocks every time he hit me. I used to count the ones that had blots on
them every morning. When they all had one blot each, I began on the
other side, till I got round again. Some had blots on several sides at
last. I don't know how many there were, now; but it was all right, for
I used to count them every morning and remember all day. There must
have been forty or fifty, I suppose. But I know it was all right. I
didn't want to be unfair, and I hit him slowly and counted. Oh,"--his
eyes brightened suddenly,--"I've got the blocks here. I'll go and get
them, and we can count them together. Then you'll know exactly."
Helen could not say anything, and Archie was gone. She only half
understood what the blocks were, and did not care to know. There was an
unnatural horror in it all, and Archie spoke of it quite simply and
without any particular resentment. She was still half dazed when he
came back with the mysterious box in which he kept his toys.
He set it down on the floor at her feet and knelt beside it, feeling for
the key in his pocket.
"I don't care if you see all the things now," he said. "They don't
amuse me any more."
Nevertheless, she saw the blush of shame rising to his forehead as he
bent down and put the key into the lock.
"I don't care, after all," he said, before he lifted the lid. "It's
only you, mother, and you won't think I was a baby just because they
amused me. I don't care for them any more, mother. Indeed I don't; so
I may as well make a clean breast of it and tell you. Besides, you must
see the blocks. All the blots are there still, quite plain, and we can
count them, and then you'll always remember, though I shan't. Here they
are. I've carried them about a long time, you know, and they're getting
pretty old, especially the soldiers. There isn't much paint left on
them, and the captain's head's gone."
Helen leaned forward, her elbow on her knees, her chin resting on her
hand, her eyes dim, and her heart beating oddly. It seemed as though
nothing were spared her on that day.
Archie unpacked the toys in silence, and arranged the blocks all on one
side in a neat pile, while on the other he laid the soldiers and the
little cart, with the few remaining toys. Helen's eyes became riveted
on the bits of wood. There were about twenty of them, and she could
plainly distinguish on them the little round blots which Archie had
made, one for each blow he had received. He began to count, and Helen
followed him mechanically. He was very methodical, for he knew that he
was easily confused. When he had counted the blots on each block, he
put it behind him on the floor before he took another from the pile. He
finished at last.
"Sixty-three--ju--!" He checked himself. "I forgot. I won't say
'jukes' any more. I won't. There were sixty-three in all, mother.
Besides, I remember now. Yes; there were sixty-three. I remember that
it took a long time, because I was afraid of not being fair."
Again he smiled at the recollection, with some satisfaction, perhaps, at
his conscientious rectitude. With those hands of his, it was a wonder
that he had not killed his father. Helen sat like a stone figure, and
watched him unconsciously, while her thoughts ground upon each other in
her heart like millstones, and her breath half choked her.
He swept all the blocks back in front of him, and, by force of habit, he
began to build a little house before he put them away. She watched his
strong hands, that could do such childish things, and the bend of his
athletic neck. His head was not ill-shaped nor defective under the
thick short hair.
"Did he always strike you on the head, Archie?" she asked suddenly.
He knocked the little house over with a sweep of his hand and looked up.
"Generally," he said quietly. "But it doesn't matter, you know. He
generally went for the back of my head because it didn't make any mark,
as I have such thick hair, so I hit him in the same place. It's all
right. It was quite fair. I say, mother, I'm going to throw these
things away, now that you know all about them. What's the good of
keeping them, anyway? I'm sure I don't know why I ever liked them."
"Give them to me," answered Helen. "Perhaps some poor child might like
them."
But she knew that she meant to keep them.
"Well, there isn't much paint on those tin soldiers, you know. I don't
believe any child would care for them much. At least not so much as I
did, because I was used to them. Of course that made a difference. But
you may have them, if you like. I don't want them any more. They're
only in the way."
"Give them to me, for the present."
"All right, mother." And he began to pack the toys into the box.
He did it very carefully and neatly, for the habit was strong, though
the memory was weak. Still Helen watched him, without changing her
attitude. He sighed as he put in the last of the tin soldiers.
"I suppose I shall really never care for them again," he said.
He looked at them with a sort of affection and touched some of the
things lightly, arranging them a little better. Then he shut the lid
down, turned the key, and held it out to his mother.
"There you are," he said. "Anyhow, the blocks helped me to remember.
Sixty-three, wasn't it, mother?"
"Sixty-three," repeated Helen, mechanically.
Then, for the second time on that evening, she turned her face to the
cushion of her chair, and shook from head to foot, and sobbed aloud. She
had realized what the number meant. Sixty-three times, in the course of
years, had Henry Harmon struck his son upon the head. It was strange
that Archie should have any wits at all, and it was no wonder that they
were not like those of other men. And it had all been a secret, kept by
the child first, then by the growing boy, then by the full-grown man,
till his thews and sinews had toughened upon him and he had turned and
paid back blow for blow, all at once. And last of all the father had
struck her, with a thought of revenge, perhaps, as well as in passion,
because he dared not raise his hand against his strong son.
Again she saw the words of her telegram, 'Henry Harmon, New York.
Forgiven,' and they were in letters of fire that her tears could not
quench. She had not known how much she was forgiving. Archie knelt
beside her in wonder, for he had never seen her cry in his life. He
touched her arm lovingly, trying to see her face, and his own softened
strangely, growing more human as it grew more childlike.
"Don't, mother! Please don't cry like that! If I had thought you would
cry about it, I'd never have told you. Besides, it couldn't have hurt
him so very much--"
"Him!"
Helen's voice rang out, and she turned, with a fierce light in her angry
eyes. In a quick movement her arms ran round Archie's neck and drew him
passionately to her breast, and she kissed his head, again and again,
always his head, upon the short, thick hair, till he wondered, and
laughed.
When they were quiet again, sitting side by side, her battle began once
more, and she knew that it must all be fought over on different ground.
She had forgiven Henry Harmon, as well as she could, for her own wrongs;
but there were others now, and they seemed worse to her than anything
she had suffered. It was just to think so, too, for she knew that at
any time she could have left Harmon without blame or stain. It had been
in her power, but she had chosen not to do it.
But the boy had been powerless and silent through long years. She had
never even guessed that his father had ever struck him cruelly. At the
merest suspicion of such a thing she would have turned upon her husband
as only mothers do turn, tigresses or women. But Archie had kept his
secret, while his strength quietly grew upon him, and then he had paid
the long score with his own hands. Out of shame, Harmon had kept the
secret, too.
Yet she had said in one word that she forgave him, and the word
determined the rest of her life. A suffering, a short, sad respite, and
then suffering again; that was to sum the history of her years. She
must suffer to the end, more and more.
And all at once it seemed to her that she could not bear it. For
herself she might have forgiven anything. She had pardoned all for
herself, from the first neglect to the scar on her forehead. But it was
another matter to forgive for Archie. Why should she? What justice
could there be in that? What right had she to absolve Harmon for his
cruelty to her child?
She must ask Archie if he forgave his father. She could no longer decide
the question alone, and Archie had the best of rights to be consulted.
Wimpole's words came back to her, asking whether it could do Archie any
good to be under the same roof with his father; and all at once she saw
that her whole married life had been centred in her son much more than
in herself.
Besides, he must be told that his father had recovered, for every one
must know it soon, and people would speak of it before him, and think it
very strange if he were ignorant of it. She hid from herself the
underthought that Archie must surely refuse to live with his father,
after all that had passed, and the wild hope of escape from what she had
undertaken to do, which the suggestion raised.
She sat silent and thoughtful, her tears drying on her cheeks, while her
son still knelt beside her. But without looking at him, she laid her
hand on his arm, and her grasp tightened while she was thinking.
"What is it, mother? What is it?" he asked again and again.
At last she let her eyes go to his, and she answered him.
"Your father is well again. By this time he must have left the asylum.
Shall we go back to him?"
"I suppose we must, if he's all right," answered Archie, promptly.
Helen's face fell suddenly, for she had expected a strong refusal.
"Can you forgive him for all he did to you?" she asked slowly.
"I don't see that there's much to forgive. He hit me, and I hit him just
as often; so we're square. He won't hit me now, because he's afraid of
me. I hate him, of course, and he hates me. It's quite fair. He
thinks I'm stupid, and I think he's mean; but I don't see that there's
anything to forgive him. I suppose he's made so. If he's all right
again, I don't see but what we shall have to go and live with him again.
I don't see what you're going to do about it, mother."
Helen buried her face in her hands, not sobbing again, but thinking.
She did not see 'what she was going to do about it,' as Archie expressed
the situation. If she had not already sent the telegram, it would have
been different. The young man's rough phrases showed that he had not
the slightest fear of his father, and he was ignorant of what she
herself had suffered. Much she had hidden from him altogether, and his
dulness had seen nothing of the rest. He supposed, if he thought
anything about it, that his mother had been unhappy because Harmon drank
hard, and stayed away from home unaccountably, and often spoke roughly
and rudely when he had been drinking. To his unsensitive nature and
half-developed mind these things had seemed regrettable, but not so very
terrible, after all. Helen had been too loyal to hold up Harmon as an
example of evil to his son, and the boy had grown up accustomed to what
disgusted and revolted her, as well as ignorant of what hurt her; while
his own unfinished character was satisfied with a half-barbarous
conception of what was fair so far as he himself was concerned. He had
given blow for blow and bruise for bruise, and on a similar
understanding he was prepared to return to similar conditions. Helen saw
it all in a flash, but she could not forgive Harmon.
"I can't! I can't!" she repeated aloud, and she pressed Archie's arm
again.
"Can't--what, mother?" he asked. "Can't go back?"
"How can I, after this? How can I ever bear to see him, to touch his
hand,--his hand that hurt you, Archie,--that hurt you so much more than
you ever dream of?"
There were tears in her voice again, and again she pressed him close to
her. But he did not understand.
"Oh, that's all right, mother," he answered. "Don't cry about me! I
made it all right with him long ago. And I don't suppose he hurt me
more than I dreamed of, either. That's only a way of talking, you know.
It used to make me feel rather stupid. But then, I'm stupid anyway; so
even that didn't matter much." And Archie smiled indifferently.
"More than you think, more than you know!" She kissed his hair. "It was
that--it may have been that--it must have been--I know it was--"
She was on the point of breaking down again.
"What?" he asked with curiosity. "What do you mean? I don't
understand."
Helen's voice sank low, and she hardly seemed to be speaking to her son.
"Your father made you what you are," she said, and her face grew cold
and hard.
"What? Stupid?" asked Archie, cheerfully. Then his face changed, too.
"I say, mother," he went on, in another voice, "do you think I'm so dull
because he hit me on the head?"
Helen repented her words, scarcely knowing why, but sure that it would
have been better not to speak them. She did not answer the question.
"That's what you think," said Archie. "And it's because I'm not like
other people that you say it's absurd of me to want to marry Sylvia
Strahan, isn't it? And that's my father's doing? Is that what you
think?"
He waited for an answer, but none came at once. Helen was startled by
the clear sequence of ideas, far more logical than most of his
reasonings. It seemed as if his sudden passion for Sylvia had roused
his sluggish intelligence from its long torpor. She could not deny the
truth of what he said, and he saw that she could not.
"That's it," he continued. "That's what you think. I knew it."
His brows knitted themselves straight across his forehead, and his eyes
were fixed upon his mother's face, as he knelt beside her. She had not
been looking at him, but she turned to him slowly now.
"And that's why you ask whether I can forgive him," he concluded.
"Can you?"
"No."
He rose to his feet from his knees easily, by one movement, and she
watched him. Then there was a long silence and he began to walk up and
down.
Helen felt as if she had done something disloyal, and that he had given
the answer for which she had been longing intensely, as an escape from
her decision, and as a means of freedom from bondage to come. She could
ask herself now what right she had to expect that Archie should forgive
his father. But, instead, she asked what right she could have had to
give Archie so good a reason for hating him, when the boy had not
suspected that which, after all, might not be the truth. She had made
an enormous sacrifice in sending the message of forgiveness for her own
wrongs, but it seemed to her, all at once, that in rousing Archie's
resentment for his own injuries she had marred the purity of her own
intention.
Indeed she was in no state to judge herself, for what Archie had told
her was a goad in her wound, with a terror of new pain.
"You cannot forgive him," she said mechanically and almost to herself.
"Why should I?" asked Archie. "It means Sylvia to me. How can I
forgive him that?"
And suddenly, without waiting for any answer, he went out and left her
alone.
After a long time, she wrote this letter to her husband:
DEAR HENRY,--I am very glad to hear of your recovery, and I have
received your letter to-day, together with the doctor's. I have
telegraphed the one word for which you asked, and you have probably got
the message already. But I must answer your letter as well as I can, and
say a great many things which I shall never say again. If we are to
meet and try to live together, it is better that I should speak plainly
before I see you.
You asked a great deal of me, and for myself I have done what you asked.
I do not say this to make it seem as though I were making a great
sacrifice and wished you to admit it. We were not happy together; you
say that it was your fault, and you ask me to forgive you. If I
believed that you had been in full possession of your senses till you
were taken ill, I do not think that forgiveness could be possible. You
see, I am frank. I am sure that you often did not know what you said
and did, and that when you did know, you could not always weigh the
consequences of your words and actions. So I will try to forget them.
That is what you mean by being forgiven, and it is the only meaning
either you or I can put upon the word. I will try to forget, and I will
bear no malice for anything in the past, so far as I am concerned.
Never speak of it, when we meet, and I never will. If you really wish
to try the experiment of living together again, I am willing to attempt
it, as an experiment.
But there is Archie to be considered, and Archie will not forgive you.
By a mere chance, to-day, after I had sent my telegram, he told me that
you used to strike him cruelly and often because his dulness irritated
you. You struck him on the head, and you injured his brain, so that his
mind has never developed fully and never can.
I do not think that if I were a man, as he is, I could forgive that.
Could you? Do you expect that I should, being his mother? You cannot.
You and he can never live under the same roof again. It would perhaps
be harder for you, feeling as you must, than for him; but in any case it
is not possible, and there is only one arrangement to be made. We must
put Archie in some place where he shall be safe and healthy and happy,
and I will spend a part of the year with you and a part with him. I
will not give him up for you, and I am not willing to give you up for
him. Neither would be right. You are my husband, whatever there may
have been in the past; but Archie is my child. It will be harder for me
than for him, too.
You say that I might have got a divorce from you, and you do me the
justice to add that you believe I have never thought of it. That is
true, but it is not a proof of affection. I have none for you. I told
you that I should speak plainly, and it is much better. It would be an
ignoble piece of comedy on my part to pretend to be fond of you. I was
once. I admired you, I suppose, and I liked you well enough to marry
you, being rather ignorant of the world and of what people could feel.
If you had really loved me and been kind to me, I should have loved you
in the end. But, as it turned out, I could not go on admiring you long,
and I simply ceased to like you. That is our story, and it is a sad
one. We made the great mistake, for we married without much love on
either side, and we were very young.
But it was a marriage, just the same, and a bond which I never meant to
break and will not break now. A promise is a promise, whatever happens,
and a vow made before God is ten times a promise. So I always mean to
keep mine to you, as I have kept it. I will do my best to make you
happy, and you must do your part to make it possible.
After all, that is the way most people live. True love, lasting
lifetimes and not changing, exists in the world, and it is the hope of
it that makes youth lovely and marriage noble. Few people find it, and
the many who do not must live as well as they can without it. That is
what we must do. Perhaps, though the hope of love is gone, we may find
peace together. Let us try.
But not with Archie. There are things which no woman can forgive nor
forget. I could not forgive you this if I loved you with all my heart,
and you must not expect it of me, for it is not in my power. The harm
was not done to me, but to him, and he is more to me than you ever were,
and far more to me than myself. I will only say that. There can be no
need of ever speaking about it, but I want you to understand; and not
only this, but everything. That is why I write such a long letter.
It must all be perfectly clear, and I hope I have made it so. It was I
who suffered for the great mistake we made in marrying, but you are
sorry for that, and I say, let us try the experiment and see whether we
can live together in peace for the rest of our lives. You are changed
since your illness, I have no doubt, and you will make it as easy as you
can. At least, you will do your best, and so shall I.
Have I repeated myself in this letter? At least, I have tried to be
clear and direct. Besides, you know me, and you know what I mean by
writing in this way. I am in earnest.
God bless you, Henry. I hope this may turn out well. HELEN.
It was ten o'clock when she had finished. She laid her hand upon the
bell, meaning to send her letter to the post office by a servant; but
just then the sound of laughing voices came up to her through the open
window, and she did not ring. Looking out, she saw that there were
still many people in the street, for it was a warm evening. It was only
a step from her hotel to the post office, and if she went herself she
should have the satisfaction of knowing positively that the letter was
safe. She put on a hat with a thick veil, and went out.