When the summer had faded into autumn, Ashurst had not yet recovered from
the social earthquake of discovering that it had the scandal of an
unhappy marriage within its decorous borders. There had been nothing
which had so shaken the foundation of things since Gertrude Drayton had
run away with her dancing-master, who, it was more than suspected, had
left a wife in France. That sensation lasted a long time, for William
Denner's face was a constant reminder of his grief; but by and by it
faded, and, as Gertrude never came back to Ashurst, people even said very
kindly things about her.
But Helen Ward continued to live among them.
Indeed, the excitement was so great at first that Miss Deborah did not
remember for some time to write to Gifford that Dick Forsythe was engaged
to a New York girl. "She really could scarcely blame him," she had added,
"for he could hardly be expected to keep his engagement with Lois after
this disgraceful affair in her family."
Gifford read that part of the letter again, dizzy with happiness and
pain. "How she must suffer!" he said to himself. "The cur! Ah, she never
could have married him; she must have discovered his contemptible
nature."
His first impulse was to hurry to Ashurst. "Not for my own sake," he
reasoned, "but just to be there. I would never show that I knew how he
had treated her. She should not have an instant's mortification in my
presence. But she might just see, without being told, that I loved her
through it all."
He even rose, and began to study a time-table; but he frowned a little
and put it down, and went and looked out of the window a while. "Helen
would be more unhappy if she thought I were not here to look after Ward.
Yes, I must wait till he gets stronger. Perhaps next month"--
Then, shaking himself together, with a revulsion of common sense, "As she
is unhappy, she won't care whether I'm there or not, or may be she'd
rather I wasn't!"
Yet, though he could not easily subdue the desire to rush to Ashurst, the
thought that Helen's sorrow would be a little greater if she could not
think of him as near her husband, helped to keep him at his post.
But it might have been good for Helen to have had the young man's frank
and healthy understanding of her position. She was growing every day more
lonely and self-absorbed; she was losing her clear perceptions of the
values of life; she became warped, and prejudiced, and very silent. She
even fancied, with a morbid self-consciousness which would have been
impossible before, that she had never possessed the love of her uncle and
cousin, and had always been an alien. This subtile danger to her generous
nature was checked in an unexpected way.
One afternoon, late in September, she went as usual, alone, to the
graveyard on East Hill. The blue haze lay like a ribbon through the
valley and across the hills; the air was still, and full of the pungent
fragrance of burning brush, and yellow leaves rustled about her feet. The
faded grass had been beaten down by the rain, and was matted above the
graves; here and there a frosted weed stood straight and thin against the
low soft sky; some late golden-rod blazed along the edge of the meadow
among the purple asters, and a single stalk of cardinal flowers flashed
out beside the lichen-covered wall; but all the rest of the world was a
blur of yellow and gray. Helen sat down on a stone, and listened to the
small wood sounds around her. A beech leaf, twisted like the keel of a
fantastic boat, came pattering down on the dead leaves; a bird stirred in
the pine behind her, and now and then a cricket gave a muffled chirp.
It was here Mr. Dale found her, her head resting forlornly on her hands;
she was absently watching a gray squirrel who had ventured from his cover
in the wall, and was looking at her with curious twinkling eyes.
"My dear," said Mr. Dale gently, "they told me at the rectory they
thought you were up here, so I came to see if you would let me walk home
with you."
Helen started as he spoke, and the squirrel scampered away. "Did you come
for that?" she said, touched in spite of her bitter thoughts.
Mr. Dale pushed his broad-brimmed hat back on his head, so that his face
seemed to have a black aureola around it. "Yes," he replied, regarding
her with anxious blue eyes,--"yes. I am grieved to have you so much
alone; yet I know how natural it is to desire to be alone."
Helen did not answer.
"I hope," he went on, hesitating, "you will not think I intrude if I
say--I came because I wanted to say that I have a great respect for your
husband, Helen."
Helen turned sharply, as though she would have clasped his hands, and
then put her own over her face, which was quivering with sudden tears.
Mr. Dale touched her shoulder gently. "Yes, a great respect. Love like
his inspires reverence. It is almost divine."
Helen's assent was inaudible.
"Not, my dear," the old man continued, "that I do not regret--yes, with
all my heart I deplore--the suffering for you both, by which his love is
proved. Yet I recognize with awe that it is love. And when one has come
so near the end of life as I have, it is much to have once seen love. We
look into the mysteries of God when we see how divine a human soul can
be. Perhaps I have no right to speak of what is so sacredly yours, yet it
is proper that you should know that the full meaning of this calamity can
be understood. It is not all grief, Helen, to be loved as you are."
She could not speak; she clung to him in a passion of tears, and the love
and warmth she had thought she should never feel again began to stir
about her heart.
"So you will be strong for him," Mr. Dale said gently, his wrinkled hand
stroking her soft hair. "Be patient, because we have perhaps loved you
too much to be just to him; yet your peace would teach us justice. Be
happier, my dear, that we may understand him. You see what I mean?"
Helen did see; courage began to creep back, and her reserve melted and
broke down with a storm of tears, too long unshed. "I will try," she said
brokenly,--"oh, I will try!" She did not say what she would try to do,
but to struggle for John's sake gave her strength and purpose for all of
life. She would so live that no one could misunderstand him.
Mr. Dale walked home with her, but he did not speak to her again of her
sorrow. The impulse had been given, and her conscience aroused; the
harder struggle of coming back to the daily life of others she must meet
alone. And she met it bravely. Little by little she tried to see the
interests and small concerns of people about her, and very gradually the
heavy atmosphere of the rectory began to lighten. Dr. Howe scarcely knew
how it was that there was a whist party in his library one Friday
evening; rather a silent one, with a few sighs from the Misses Woodhouse
and a suspicious dimness in Mr. Dale's eyes. The rector somehow slipped
into the vacant chair; he said he thought he was so old whist would not
hurt him, if they were willing to teach him. But as he swept the board
at the first deal, and criticised his partner's lead at the second,
instruction was deemed superfluous.
By degrees, Lois and Helen came nearer together. There was no
explanation: the differences had been too subtile for words, at least on
Lois's side, and to have attempted it would have made a vague impression
harden into permanence.
No one recognized an effort on Helen's part, and she only knew it
herself when she realized that it was a relief to be with Mr. Dale. He
understood; she could be silent with him. So she came very often to his
little basement office, and spent long mornings with him, helping him
label some books, or copying notes which he had intended "getting
into shape" these twenty years. She liked the stillness and dimness of
the small room, with its smell of leather-covered volumes, or whiff of
wood smoke from the fireplace.
Mrs. Dale rarely disturbed them. "If Helen finds any pleasure in that
musty old room," she said, one cold January morning, "I'm sure I'm glad.
But she would be a great deal more sensible and cheerful if she'd sit up
in the parlor with me, if she didn't do anything more than play patience.
But then, Helen never was like other people."
And so she left her niece and her husband, with a little good-natured
contempt in her eyes, and went up to her own domains. Mr. Dale was
arranging some plants on a shelf across one of the windows, and Helen was
watching him. "They generally die before the winter is out," he said,
"but perhaps with you to look after them they'll pull through."
He was in his flowered dressing-gown, and was standing on tiptoe,
reaching up for one of the mildewed flower-pots. "These are orange
plants," he explained proudly. "I planted the seeds a month ago, and see
how they've grown." He put his glasses on and bent down to examine them,
with an absorbed look. The pot that held the six spindling shoots had
streaks of white mould down its sides, and the earth was black and hard
with the deluge of water with which Mr. Dale's anxious care usually began
the season. He began now to loosen it gently with his penknife, saying,
"I'm sure they'll flourish if you look after them."
"I will if I'm here, uncle Henry," she replied.
"Ah, my dear," he said, looking at her sharply, "you are not thinking of
that hospital plan again?"
"Yes," she answered, "I cannot help it. I feel as though I must be of
some use in the world." She was standing in the stream of wintry sunshine
which flooded the narrow window, and Mr. Dale saw that some white threads
had begun to show in the bronze-brown waves of her hair. "Yes," she
continued, "it is so hard to keep still. I must do something, and be
something."
Mr. Dale stopped digging in his flower-pots, and looked at her without
speaking for a moment; then he said, "I wonder if you will not be
something nobler by the discipline of this quiet life, Helen? And are you
not really doing something if you rouse us out of our sleepy satisfaction
with our own lives, and make us more earnest? I know that cannot be your
object, as it would defeat itself by self-consciousness, but it is true,
my dear."
She did not speak.
"You see," he went on, in his gentle voice, "your life cannot be negative
anywhere. You have taken a stand for a vital principle, and it must make
us better. Truth is like heat or light; its vibrations are endless, and
are endlessly felt. There is something very beautiful to me, Helen,
speaking of truth, that you and your husband, from absolutely opposite
and extreme points, have yet this force of truth in your souls. You have
both touched the principle of life,--he from one side, you from the
other. But you both feel the pulse of God in it!"
"You know," she said gratefully, "you understand"--She stopped abruptly,
for she saw Lois coming hurriedly along the road, and when she opened the
gate she ran across the snowy lawn to Mr. Dale's office, instead of
following the path. There was something in her face which made Helen's
heart stand still.
She could not wait for her to reach the door, but went out bareheaded to
meet her.
Lois took her hands between her own, which were trembling. "Gifford has
sent a dispatch. I--I came to bring it to you, Helen."
Her cousin put out her hand for the telegram.
"I'm afraid John is ill," Lois said, the quick tears springing to her
eyes.
"Give it to me," said Helen.
Reluctantly Lois gave her the dispatch, but she scarcely looked at it.
"Uncle Henry," she said, for Mr. Dale had followed her, and stood in
speechless sympathy, his white hair blowing about in the keen wind, "I
will go to Mercer now. I can make the train. Will you let me have your
carriage?"
Her voice was so firm and her manner so calm Lois was deceived. "She does
not understand how ill John is," she thought.
But Mr. Dale knew better. "How love's horror of death sweeps away all
small things," he said, as he sat alone in his study that night,--"time,
hope, fear, even grief itself!"
His wife did not enter into such analysis; she had been summoned, and had
seen to wraps and money and practical things, and then had gone crying
up-stairs. "Poor child," she said, "poor child! She doesn't feel it yet."
A calamity like this Mrs. Dale could understand; she had known the sorrow
of death, and all the impatience which had stood between Helen and
herself was swept away in her pitying sympathy.
As for Lois, Helen had not forbidden her, and she too had gone to Mercer.
Helen had not seemed even to notice her presence in the carriage, and she
dared not speak. She thought, in a vague way, that she had never known
her cousin before. Helen, with white, immovable face, sat leaning
forward, her hand on the door, her tearless eyes straining into the
distance, and a tense, breathless air of waiting about her.
"May I go to Lockhaven with you?" Lois asked softly; but Helen did not
answer until she had repeated the question, and then she turned with the
start of one suddenly wakened, and looked at her.
"Oh, you are here?" she said. "You were good to come, but you must not go
further than Mercer." Then she noticed that the window beside Lois was
open, and leaned forward to close it. After that, she lapsed again into
her stony silence.
When they reached the station, it was she who bought the ticket, and then
again seemed startled to find the girl by her side. "Good-by," she said,
as Lois kissed her, but there was no change in her face, either of relief
or regret, when her cousin left her.
How that long slow journey passed Helen never knew. She was not even
conscious of its length. When Gifford met her, she gave him one
questioning look.
"Yes," he said tenderly, "you are in time. He would not let me send
before, Helen; and I knew you would not come unless I said, 'John sends
for you.'"
"No," she answered. He told her, in their quick ride to the parsonage,
that this had been the third hemorrhage, and John had not rallied; but it
was not until the night before that he had known the end was inevitable
and near, and had sent for his wife.
Oh, the strangeness of those village streets! Had she ever been away?
These months in Ashurst were a dream; here only was reality and death.
Alfaretta could not speak as she met them at the gate, but ran by Helen's
side, and furtively kissed her hand. There was a light burning in the
study, but Helen stood at the table in the hall and took off her bonnet
and cloak.
"I will go and tell him you are here," Gifford said, trying to detain her
as she turned to go up-stairs.
"He knows," she said calmly, and left Gifford and the servant standing in
the entry.
She did not even pause at the door; there seemed no need to gather
strength for the shock of that meeting; she was all strength and love.
The room was lighted only by the fire, and the bed was in shadow.
There were no words; those empty, dying arms were stretched out to her,
and she gathered him close to her heart.
The house was strangely silent. Again and again Gifford crept up to the
door, but all was quite still; once he heard that soft sound which a
mother makes when she soothes her baby on her breast, and again a low
murmur, which died away as though even words were an intrusion.
All that long winter day, Gifford, in his intense anxiety lest Helen
should not come in time, and his distress for the sorrow of this little
household, had been calmed and comforted by John's serene courage. He
knew that death was near, but there was an exultant look in his fading
eyes, and sometimes his lips moved in grateful prayer. Perhaps his
physical extremity had dulled his fears for his wife's salvation into a
conviction that his death was to be the climax of God's plans for her. He
was bewildered at the temptation of greater joy at the prospect of her
presence than gratitude that God should save her soul alive. But he never
for one moment doubted she would come to tell him she had found the
light.
The night wore heavily on. Gifford stationed himself upon the stairs,
outside the door; the doctor came, and then went quietly down to John's
study, and found a book to while away the time. And then they waited.
When the first faint lightening of the sky came and the chill of dawn
began to creep through the silent house, Helen came out of the closed
room. She put her hand upon Gifford's shoulder. "Go and rest," she said;
"there is no need to sit here any longer. John is dead."