Helen lies staring out of the window. There is no curtain to shut out
the glaring sunlight, which is causing the fumes to rise from the
broiling humanity below.
Metropolitan poverty suggests to me sounds and smells. I could endure
sights. What one sees, one knows. There is no longer room for the
imagination--that is capable of so much that is more horrible than
reality. But a sound!
A woman in the room below us cries, "Don't!" She may be speaking
excitedly to her child--or that brute, her husband, may have her by the
hair preparing to cut her throat.
Just now, Helen hears a chair knocked over in the dark hall outside her
door. It does not occur to her that someone has stumbled in the
darkness; she thinks someone has knocked someone down in the hall. There
is no more noise, and she carries on the thought still farther. She
says, "One of them is being strangled, and that is why it is still."
With this thought, a face she has seen once in the doorway opposite
comes to her mind; an evil, loathsome face. She at once associates it
with the silent murder that is being done in the hall. She has not the
slightest doubt that this is a fact. She does not stir. She would not if
the evil man with the loathsome face came in to strangle her. She would
be perfectly quiet because she would know of nothing else to do.
Some one raps on her door. It is the man with the loathsome face, she
knows. She does not speak. Her eyes are fixed in a sort of fascination
on the door. The knob turns; she still stares as the door opens. There
is an eeriness in watching a slowly opening door when one knows nothing
of the one who is impelling it.
A man enters. It is not the man of the evil face. It is Everet; but the
outward effect is the same, upon her. She does not speak. She watches
him as he comes toward the bed. He does not speak to her. He stands at
the bedside looking down at her. She lies motionless, looking up into
his face.
Slowly his eyes fill with tears. He takes the slim, transparent hand
that lies inert on the grimy quilt, and bowing over it lifts it to his
lips. He kisses it as though it were the hand of a princess. There is a
reverence, a homage in the act that he never showed to Helen Braine in
her proudest days,--the homage that helplessness and misery command.
Helen makes no sign. Everet walks to the window and looks down into the
fiery street. There is a woman, half-clothed, drunk in the gutter. He
turns away with a shudder. He stands in the middle of the floor for a
moment, looking at the figure in the bed. She does not speak. After a
moment of indecision, he hurries from the room. He sends a telegram;
gets some wine and other things his judgment suggests may be useful, and
hurries back to the room he has left.
He knocks off the neck of the bottle--having no more convenient means of
opening it. He finds a cracked tea cup in a cupboard, and pours a little
of the wine into it. He goes to Helen and raises her a little by
slipping his arm under her shoulders. She is as light as a little child.
His hand trembles as he holds the cup to her lips. She drinks and lies
back on the pillow without speaking.
After a time she eats a little of what Everet has brought. He looks
about the bare room uncertainly. He has a desire to make it more
habitable while she is in it. Nothing can be done. He draws a chair to
the bed and sits in it. Taking Helen's hand he speaks for the first
time; he says:
"You have been very ill?"
She does not reply.
After a pause, he says gently:
"You do not want to talk, dear?"
She shakes her head. Everet remains quietly by her, holding the shadowy
little hand.
As evening comes, the sounds in the street become less collective and
more individual. They seem more aggressive.
There is no candle, no lamp to light. He does not go out for candles
because he does not want to leave her. He sits on in the darkness. Now
and then when one sound comes more sharply or loudly than another, the
thin fingers tighten over his. He holds the hand close, and murmurs:
"Poor child! And you have endured all this alone."
There is no response, and silence falls again.
After an hour they hear a step in the hall. Helen knows the step. If it
were not for the darkness Everet would see the relentless gleam that
springs into her eyes. The door opens and Braine hurries into the room.
He stands, bewildered at finding darkness. He can only see objects dimly
through the gloom. Everet throws his arm around him, and leads him to
the bed. He leaves him standing there, and hurries from the apartment.
Braine sinks on his knees beside Helen. He throws his strong arms about
the frail figure, and lifts her to his heart.
There is not a sound, there in the darkness, save the heavy, tremulous
breaths drawn by Braine.
He holds her so. He gives her no caress, says no word of endearment. His
emotions have carried him beyond such forms. He only holds her close to
his heart, tightening his arms about her from time to time, as though in
a sudden terror lest she be spirited from him.
That she is utterly unresponsive he does not note. If he did he would
not care now. He has but one thought: "This is Helen, Helen, Helen."
Everet finds them so when he re-enters the room. He brings candles with
him and lights them. He first notices the expression on Helen's face. It
paralyzes him for the moment; then he looks fearfully and furtively at
Braine. He is oblivious of Helen's expression. He knows only _Helen_.
"And now?"
Everet looks about and pauses. He forgets that Helen has not spoken
since he entered the room in the morning. Of course he does not know
what has passed between the two.
Braine seems utterly helpless, and looks at Everet in reply. Everet says
quietly:
"You remembered to bring things as I wired you?"
Braine nods and points to the package on the chair.
Everet had asked Braine in his telegram to bring something that Helen
could travel in. He knew that in a certain room, in a certain little
white house, were certain beautiful belongings of Helen's; treasured for
what? Such a time as this, perhaps.
Everet unrolls the things. Braine has been fortunate enough to select
something suitable.
Everet says in a business-like way:
"She must leave here, at once--a hotel, or home?"
"Home."
"Very well; she must be dressed, you know. You had better assist her
while I see about a carriage in which to get her away from this place."
He points to the garments, saying:
"There they are, Braine."
He is impressed with the conviction that Braine does not comprehend much
now.
He leaves the room. Braine goes to the bed, and says, in a voice too
full of tenderness, joy, love, to be very comprehensible:
"Can you be dressed now, dear?"
She looks at him without replying. He thinks she has not heard, and
repeats the question. She does not answer. He says, lovingly, with a
caress:
"You shall not be annoyed, dearest. You need not talk. I will help you."
She is absolutely passive. She assists herself very little. She does not
make any instinctive motion that will help, but obeys Braine's least
suggestion like an automaton.
The gown is of a style worn more than five years before, and hangs oddly
on the attenuated figure, that once filled out its graceful curves. Its
richness contrasts strangely with the dingy room.
Is there a trace of the old Helen? Very little. The beauty of her eyes
will never disappear; the grace of her least gesture will remain--but
the hard bitterness, the desperate expression is hers too.
Braine does not notice it. He only sees that other trace of Helen.
She seems to be in no pain, but utterly exhausted as he lays her back
on the pillow, while they wait for Everet. Her eyes never wander from
his face. He interprets their expression by his own emotions, and smiles
back at her in response. There seems nothing peculiar in her silence.
Even he finds it an effort to speak.
They hear Everet spring up the stairs. He knocks and comes in, as Braine
bids him. He says, with a smile:
"You are ready to go?" looking at Helen.
Braine replies:
"Yes."
Helen makes no movement to help herself. Braine takes her in his arms
and carries her, with no resistance on her part, to the carriage below.
She is but a feather-weight. He draws her to him so that she rests with
the utmost ease against his shoulder.
Everet sits opposite. He appears oblivious of everything but the
lamp-posts in the street, but he furtively watches Helen's face. Its
expression is terrifying him. He is thinking of the future of the friend
who sits opposite. He does not dare interpret this changeless
expression.
At the station he suggests that he remain in the city. Braine grasps his
hand in mute appeal:
"I--I feel so helpless, powerless in some way, Everet."
Everet presses his hand, replying:
"Just as you wish, old fellow--I was only thinking of you."
And so this friend goes with them.
He enters this man's house with this man's wife--the wife whom five
years ago he took away.
On the journey, Everet is seldom near them: when he is, he is bright,
helpful, tender. Helen has never once spoken. She helps herself in no
way. Braine cares for her like a child. She is perfectly passive.
Her continued silence has at last forced itself upon Braine's mind. Now
that he stops to think, he knows that he has not heard her voice. He is
amazed at first. He looks up at her in a startled way, as the thought
comes to him. She is looking vacantly out of the window. He asks her a
question. She turns her head and looks in his face. She makes no reply.
There is no inquiry expressed in her countenance.
For the first time he realizes the expression of her deep, beautiful
eyes. He feels an icy hand clutch at his heart. He is speechless for a
moment; then he leans near her. With a world of anguish and appeal in
his voice, he says:
"Helen!"
She does not reply; she only looks in his face. Her expression never
varies; and it is no look of insanity. It is the only expression Braine
will ever see there, and in that instant he is aware of the fact.
He turns to the window and sits staring out. Once he draws a long,
quivering breath, that escapes again, flutteringly. In the sigh all the
anguish of a lifetime is expressed.
Was there a change for an instant in the expression of the woman's face?
If so, it was the shadow of a smile that flitted across it--the old,
sphinx-like smile. But perhaps it was not there. If so, it was only
suggested.
For the rest of the journey there is silence between the two men. The
woman is the same.
When they leave the train at the little station there is a conveyance
waiting to take them to the cottage. Braine carries Helen as he has done
before.
The three drive silently down the road in the twilight. The two men are
thinking of a scene years ago, in which the same characters figured, but
oh, so differently!
As Everet glances at the silent figure through the dusk, he feels his
whole body shaken by some powerful emotion. That woman, ominously
still, with white face, deeply brooding, relentless eyes, haggard,
shadowy and worn, is the woman he once admired as the most perfect type
of what womanhood was meant by God to be; now she is what sin alone can
make a woman, and he remembers with exquisite remorse that the sin which
wrought this ruin was in part his.
The two men are thinking of that lost time. The woman--who can guess
what the woman is thinking?
They drive through the lane to the house. Apparently neither scene nor
time, nor circumstance is impressing her. She looks off over the purple
hills into nothingness.
Braine lifts her out and carries her within the cottage, placing her
gently in a chair. He says eagerly, while unfastening her wraps:
"Things will not be like this, you know, dearest. In just a few days it
will be different."
He speaks hurriedly as though anxious to convey to her that she is not
to live in poverty; as though to reassure her; as though to ward off
reproach.
Everet stands apart. After a time, when Braine has gone into the next
room, he approaches the woman in the chair. He stands by her side. She
looks up at him. The relentless look leaves her eyes; her expression,
aside from that, is the same. She does not speak. He takes her hand in
his and holds it for a moment; then says gently:
"Good-bye, Helen."
No answer. He lays her hand tenderly in her lap, and leaves the room. He
never sees her again.
In the next room he grasps Braine's hands, saying in a husky voice:
"I am going, dear Braine. I shall not return. God bless you."
Braine looks in his face, and Everet sees that he has acquired a new
expression, one that will be constant. The old restlessness,
wistfulness, hope, feverishness are gone. Patience is there, instead.
The men stand with clasped hands for a moment; then Everet goes out the
door, carrying with him the memory of two faces, a man's and a woman's;
one tragic in its patience; one tragic in its gloom. They are the faces
of the only man and the only woman he has ever loved.
These three who have sinned and been sinned against! These three with a
common guilt! Two, with a mutual repentance. The other--a woman!
Helen, sitting alone, her eyes rest on the desk with its collar-boxed
pigeon-holes. Does it suggest something to her? Perhaps. The same,
shadowy, enigmatic smile crosses her face, and is gone.