“Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
Naturally there was considerable agitation in the Roberts family on
account of Helen's strange behavior; early the next morning Mrs.
Roberts was at her niece's door, trying to gain admittance. This
time she did not have to knock but once, and when she entered she
was surprised to see that Helen was already up and dressing. She had
been expecting to find the girl more prostrated than ever, and so
the discovery was a great relief to her; she stood gazing at her
anxiously.
“Helen, dear,” she said, “I scarcely know how to begin to talk to
you about your extraordinary--”
“I wish,” interrupted Helen, “that you would not begin to talk to me
about it at all.”
“But you must explain to me what in the world is the matter,”
protested the other.
“I cannot possibly explain to you,” was the abrupt reply. Helen's
voice was firm, and there was a determined look upon her face, a
look which quite took her aunt by surprise.
“But, my dear girl!” she began once more.
“Aunt Polly!” said the other, interrupting her again, “I wish
instead of talking about it you would listen to what I have to say
for a few moments. For I have made up my mind just what I am going
to do, and I am going to take the reins in my own hands and not do
any arguing or explaining to anyone. And there is no use of asking
me a word about what has happened, for I could not hope to make you
understand me, and I do not mean to try.”
As Helen uttered those words she fixed her eyes upon her aunt with
an unflinching gaze, with the result that Mrs. Roberts was quite too
much taken aback to find a word to say.
Without waiting for anything more Helen turned to the table. “Here
is a letter,” she said, “which I have written to Mr. Harrison; you
know his address in New York, I suppose?”
“His address?” stammered the other; “why,--yes, of course. But what
in the world--”
“I wish this letter delivered to him at once, Aunt Polly,” Helen
continued. “It is of the utmost importance, and I want you to do me
the favor to send someone into the city with it by the next train.”
“But, Helen, dear--”
“Now please do not ask me anything about it,” went on the girl,
impatiently. “I have told you that you must let me manage this
affair myself. If you will not send it I shall simply have to get
someone to take it. He must have it, and have it at once.”
“Will it not do to mail it, Helen?”
“No, because I wish him to get it this morning.” And Helen put the
letter into her aunt's hands, while the latter gazed helplessly,
first at it, and then at the girl. There is an essay of Bacon's in
which is set forth the truth that you can bewilder and master anyone
if you are only sufficiently bold and rapid; Mrs. Roberts was so
used to managing everything and being looked up to by everyone that
Helen's present mood left her quite dazed.
Nor did the girl give her any time to recover her presence of mind.
“There is only one thing more,” she said, “I want you to have
breakfast as soon as you can, and then to let me have a carriage at
once.”
“A carriage?” echoed the other.
“Yes, Aunt Polly, I wish to drive over to Hilltown immediately.”
“To Hilltown!” gasped Aunt Polly with yet greater consternation, and
showing signs of resistance at last; “pray what--”
But Helen only came again to the attack, with yet more audacity and
confidence. “Yes,” she said, “to Hilltown; I mean to go to see
Arthur.”
For answer to that last statement, poor Mrs. Roberts had simply no
words whatever; she could only gaze, and in the meantime, Helen was
going calmly on with her dressing, as if the matter were settled.
“Will Mr. Howard be down to breakfast?” she asked.
“As he is going away to-day, I presume he will be down,” was the
reply, after which Helen quickly completed her toilet, her aunt
standing by and watching her in the meantime.
“Helen, dear,” she asked at last, after having recovered her
faculties a trifle, “do you really mean that you will not explain to
me a thing of what has happened, or of what you are doing?”
“There is so much, Aunt Polly, that I cannot possibly explain it
now; I have too much else to think of. You must simply let me go my
way, and I will tell you afterwards.”
“But, Helen, is that the right way to treat me? Is it nothing to
you, all the interest that I have taken in this and all that I have
done for you, that you should think so little of my advice?”
“I do not need any advice now,” was the answer. “Aunt Polly, I see
exactly what I should do, and I do not mean to stop a minute for
anything else until I have done it. If it seems unkind, I am very
sorry, but in the meantime it must be done.”
And while she was saying the words, Helen was putting on her hat;
then taking up her parasol and gloves she turned towards her aunt.
“I am ready now,” she said, “and please let me have breakfast just
as soon as you can.”
The girl was so much preoccupied with her own thoughts and purposes
that she scarcely even heard what her aunt said; she went down into
the garden where she could be alone, and paced up and down
impatiently until she heard the bell. Then she went up into the
dining room, where she found her aunt and uncle in conversation with
Mr. Howard.
Helen had long been preparing herself to meet him, but she could not
keep her cheeks from flushing or keep from lowering her eyes; she
bit her lips together, however, and forced herself to look at him,
saying very resolutely, “Mr. Howard, I have to drive over to
Hilltown after breakfast, and I wish very much to talk to you about
something; would you like to drive with me?”
“Very much indeed,” said he, quietly, after which Helen said not a
word more. She saw that her aunt and uncle were gazing at her and at
each other in silent wonder, but she paid no attention to it. After
eating a few hurried mouthfuls she excused herself, and rose and
went outside, where she saw the driving-cart which had been bought
for her use, waiting for her. It was not much longer before Mr.
Howard was ready, for he saw her agitation.
“It is rather a strange hour to start upon a drive,” she said to
him, “but I have real cause for hurrying; I will explain about it.”
And then she stopped, as her aunt came out to join them.
It was only a moment more before Mr. Howard had excused himself, and
the two were in the wagon, Helen taking the reins. She waved a
farewell to her aunt and then started the horse, and they were
whirled swiftly away down the road.
All the morning Helen's mind had been filled with things that she
wished to say to Mr. Howard. But now all her resolution seemed to
have left her, and she was trembling very much, and staring straight
ahead, busying herself with guiding the horse. When they were out
upon the main road where they might go as fast as they pleased
without that necessity, she swallowed the lump in her throat and
made one or two nervous attempts to speak.
Mr. Howard in the meantime had been gazing in front of him
thoughtfully. “Miss Davis,” he said suddenly, turning his eyes upon
her, “may I ask you a question?”
“Yes,” said Helen faintly.
“You heard all that I said about you last night?”
And Helen turned very red and looked away. “Yes, I heard it all,”
she said; and then there was a long silence.
It was broken by the man, who began in a low voice: “I scarcely know
how, Miss Davis, I can apologize to you--”
And then he stopped short, for the girl had turned her glance upon
him, wonderingly. “Apologize?” she said; she had never once thought
of that view of it, and the word took her by surprise.
“Yes,” said Mr. Howard; “I said so many hard and cruel things that I
cannot bear to think of them.”
Helen still kept her eyes fixed upon him, as she said, “Did you say
anything that was not true, Mr. Howard?”
The man hesitated a moment, and then he answered: “I said many
things that I had no right to say to you.”
“That is not it,” said Helen simply. “Did you say anything that was
not true?”
Again Mr. Howard paused. “I am quite sure that I did,” he said at
last. “Most of what I said I feel to have been untrue since I have
seen how it affected you.”
“Because it made me so ashamed?” said Helen. And then some of the
thoughts that possessed her forced their way out, and she hurried on
impetuously: “That was the first thing I wanted to tell you. It is
really true that you were wrong, for I am not hard-hearted at all.
It was something that my--that people were making me do, and all the
time I was wretched. It was dreadful, I know, but I was tempted,
because I do love beautiful things. And it was all so sudden, and I
could not realize it, and I had nobody to advise me, for none of the
people I meet would think it was wrong. You must talk to me and help
me, because I've got to be very strong; my aunt will be angry, and
when I get back perhaps Mr. Harrison will be there, and I shall have
to tell him.”
Then the girl stopped, out of breath and trembling with excitement;
Mr. Howard turned abruptly and fixed his dark eyes upon her.
“Tell him,” he said. “Tell him what?”
“That I shall not marry him, of course,” answered Helen; the other
gave a start, but she was so eager that she did not even notice it.
“I could not lose a minute,” she said. “For it was so very dreadful,
you know.”
“And you really mean not to marry him?” asked the other.
“Mean it!” echoed the girl, opening her eyes very wide. “Why, how in
the world could you suppose--” And then she stopped short, and
laughed nervously. “Of course,” she said, “I forgot; you might
suppose anything. But, oh, if I could tell you how I have suffered,
Mr. Howard, you would understand that I could never have such a
thought again in the world. Please do understand me, for if I had
really been so base I should not come to you as I do after what I
heard. I cannot tell you how dreadfully I suffered while I was
listening, but after I had cried so much about it, I felt better,
and it seemed to me that it was the best thing that could have
happened to me, just to see my actions as they seemed to someone
else,--to someone who was good. I saw all at once the truth of what
I was doing, and it was agony to me to know that you thought so of
me. That was why I could not rest last night until I had told you
that I was really unhappy; for it was something that I was unhappy,
wasn't it, Mr. Howard?”
“Yes,” said the other, “it was very much indeed.”
“And oh, I want you to know the truth,” Helen went on swiftly.
“Perhaps it is just egotism on my part, and I have really no right
to tell you all about myself in this way; and perhaps you will scorn
me when you come to know the whole truth. But I cannot help telling
you about it, so that you may advise me what to do; I was all
helpless and lost, and what you said came last night like a
wonderful light. And I don't care what you think about me if you
will only tell me the real truth, in just the same way that you did;
for I realized afterwards that it was that which had helped me so.
It was the first time in my life that it had ever happened to me;
when you meet people in the world, they only say things that they
know will please you, and that does you no good. I never realized
before how a person might go through the world and really never meet
with another heart in all his life; and that one can be fearfully
lonely, even in a parlor full of people. Did you ever think of that,
Mr. Howard?”
Mr. Howard had fixed his keen eyes upon the girl as she went
breathlessly on; she was very pale, and the sorrow through which she
had passed had left, “I have been so cold and wicked, that
you will soon scorn me altogether.”
“I do not think that is possible,” said her companion, gently, as he
saw the girl choking back a sob.
“Well, listen then,” Helen began; but then she stopped again. “Do
you wish me to tell you?” she asked. “Do you care anything about it
at all, or does it seem--”
“I care very much about it, indeed,” the other answered.
“However dreadful it may seem,” said Helen. “Oh, please know that
while I have been doing it, it has made me utterly wretched, and
that I am so frightened now that I can scarcely talk to you; and
that if there is anything that I can do--oh, absolutely anything--I
will do it!” Then the girl bit her lips together and went on with
desperate haste, “It's what you said about what would happen if
there were someone else to love me, and to see how very bad I was!”
“There is some such person?” asked the man, in a low voice.
“Yes,” said she. “It is someone I have known as long as I can
remember. And he loves me very much indeed, I think; and while I was
letting myself be tempted in this way he was very sick, and because
I knew I was so bad I did not dare go near him; and yesterday when
he heard I was going to marry this man, it almost killed him, and I
do not know what to fear now.”
Then, punishing herself very bravely and swallowing all her bitter
shame, Helen went on to tell Mr. Howard of Arthur, and of her
friendship with him, and of how long he had waited for her; she
narrated in a few words how he had left her, and then how she had
seen him upon the road. Afterwards she stopped and sat very still,
trembling, and with her eyes lowered, quite forgetting that she was
driving.
“Miss Davis,” said the other, gently, seeing how she was suffering,
“if you wish my advice about this, I should not worry myself too
much; it is better, I find in my own soul's life, to save most of
the time that one spends upon remorse, and devote it to action.”
“To action?” asked Helen.
“Yes,” said the other. “You have been very thoughtless, but you may
hope that nothing irrevocable has happened; and when you have seen
your friend and told him the truth just as you have told it to me, I
fancy it will bring him joy enough to compensate him for what he has
suffered.”
“That was what I meant to do,” the girl went on. “But I have been
terrified by all sorts of fancies, and when I remember how much pain
I caused him, I scarcely dare think of speaking to him. When I saw
him by the roadside, Mr. Howard, he seemed to me to look exactly
like you, there was such dreadful suffering written in his face.”
“A man who lives as you have told me your friend has lived,” said
the other, “has usually a very great power of suffering; such a man
builds for himself an ideal which gives him all his joy and his
power, and makes his life a very glorious thing; but when anything
happens to destroy his vision or to keep him from seeking it, he
suffers with the same intensity that he rejoiced before. The great
hunger that was once the source of his power only tears him to
pieces then, as steam wrecks a broken engine.”
“It's very dreadful,” Helen said, “how thoughtless I was all along.
I only knew that he loved me very much, and that it was a vexation
to me.”
Mr. Howard glanced at her. “You do not love him?” he asked.
“No,” said Helen, quickly. “If I had loved him, I could never have
had a thought of all these other things. But I had no wish to love
anybody; it was more of my selfishness.”
“Perhaps not,” the other replied gently. “Some day you may come to
love him, Miss Davis.”
“I do not know,” Helen said. “Arthur was very impatient.”
“When a man is swift and eager in all his life,” said Mr. Howard,
smiling, “he cannot well be otherwise in his love. Such devotion
ought to be very precious to a woman, for such hearts are not easy
to find in the world.”
Helen had turned and was gazing anxiously at Mr. Howard as he spoke
to her thus. “You really think,” she said, “that I should learn to
appreciate Arthur's love?”
“I cannot know much about him from the little you have told me,” was
the other's answer. “But it seems to me that it is there you might
find the best chance to become the unselfish woman that you wish to
be.”
“It is very strange,” the girl responded, wonderingly, “how
differently you think about it. I should have supposed I was acting
very unwisely indeed if I loved Arthur; everyone would have told me
of his poverty and obscurity, and of how I must give up my social
career.”
“I think differently, perhaps,” Mr. Howard said, “because I have
lived so much alone. I have come to know that happiness is a thing
of one's own heart, and not of externals; the questions I should ask
about a marriage would not be of wealth and position. If you really
wish to seek the precious things of the soul, I should think you
would be very glad to prove it by some sacrifice; and I know that
two hearts are brought closer, and all the memories of life made
dearer, by some such trial in the early days. People sneer at love
in a cottage, but I am sure that love that could wish to live
anywhere else is not love. And as to the social career, a person who
has once come to know the life of the heart soon ceases to care for
any kind of life that is heartless; a social career is certainly
that, and in comparison very vulgar indeed.”
Helen looked a little puzzled, and repeated the word “vulgar”
inquiringly. Mr Howard smiled.
“That is the word I always use when I am talking about high life,”
he said, laughing. “You may hurl the words 'selfish' and 'worldly'
at it all you please, and never reach a vital spot; but the word
'vulgar' goes straight to the heart.”
“You must explain to me why it is that,” said Helen, with so much
seriousness that the other could not help smiling again.
“Perhaps I cannot make anyone else see the thing as I do,” was his
reply. “And yet it seems rery simple. When a man lives a while in
his own soul, he becomes aware of the existence of a certain
spiritual fact which gives life all its dignity and meaning; he
learns that this sacred thing demands to be sought for, and
worshiped; and that the man who honors it and seeks it is only
hailed as gentleman, and aristocrat, and that he who does not honor
it and seek it is vulgar, tho he be heir of a hundred earls, and
leader of all society, and lord of millions. Every day that one
lives in this presence that I speak of, he discovers a little more
how sacred a thing is true nobility, and how impertinent is the
standard that values men for the wealth they win, or for the ribbons
they wear, or for anything else in the world. I fancy that you, if
you came once to love your friend, would find it very easy to do
without the admiration of those who go to make up society; they
would come to seem to you very trivial and empty people, and
afterwards, perhaps, even very cruel and base.”
Mr. Howard stopped; but then seeing that Helen was gazing at him
inquiringly once more he added, gravely, “One could be well content
to let vain people strut their little hour and be as wonderful as
they chose, if it were not for the painful fact that they are eating
the bread of honest men, and that millions are toiling and starving
in order that they may have ease and luxury. That is such a very
dreadful thing to know that sometimes one can think of nothing else,
and it drives him quite mad.”
The girl sat very still after that, trembling a little in her heart;
finally she asked, her voice shaking slightly, “Mr. Howard, what can
one do about such things?”
“Very little,” was the reply, “for they must always be; but at least
one can keep his own life earnest and true. A woman who felt such
things very keenly might be an inspiration to a man who was called
upon to battle with selfishness and evil.”
“You are thinking of Arthur once more?” asked the girl.
“Yes,” answered the other, with a slight smile. “It would be a happy
memory for me, to know that I have been able to give you such an
ideal. Some of these days, you see, I am hoping that we shall again
have a poet with a conviction and a voice, so that men may know that
sympathy and love are things as real as money. I am quite sure there
never was a nation so ridiculously sodden as our own just at
present; all of our maxims and ways of life are as if we were the
queer little Niebelung creatures that dig for treasure in the bowels
of the earth, and see no farther than the ends of their shovels; we
live in the City of God, and spend all our time scraping the gold of
the pavements. Your uncle told me this morning that he did not see
why a boy should go to college when he can get a higher salary if he
spends the four years in business. I find that there is nothing to
do but to run away and live alone, if one wants really to believe
that man is a spiritual nature, with an infinite possibility of
wonder and love; and that the one business of his life is to develop
that nature by contact with things about him; and that every act of
narrow selfishness he commits is a veil which he ties about his own
eyes, and that when he has tied enough of them, not all the pearl
and gold of the gorgeous East can make him less a pitiable wretch.”
Mr. Howard stopped again, and smiled slightly; Helen sat gazing
thoughtfully ahead, thinking about his way of looking at life, and
how very strange her own actions seemed in the light of it.
Suddenly, however, because throughout all the conversation there had
been another thought in her consciousness, she glanced ahead and
urged the horse even faster. She saw far in the distance the houses
of the place to which she was bound, and she said nothing more, her
companion also becoming silent as he perceived her agitation.
Helen had been constantly growing more anxious, so that now the
carriage could not travel fast enough; it seemed to her that
everything depended upon what she might find at Hilltown. It was
only the thought of Arthur that kept her from feeling completely
free from her wretchedness; she felt that she might remedy all the
wrong that she had done, and win once more the prize of a good
conscience, provided only that nothing irretrievable had happened to
him. Now as she came nearer she found herself imagining more and
more what might have happened, and becoming more and more impatient.
There was a balance dangling before her eyes, with utter happiness
on one side and utter misery on the other; the issue depended upon
what she discovered at Hilltown.
The two sat in silence, both thinking of the same thing, as they
whirled past the place where Helen had seen Arthur before. The girl
trembled as she glanced at it, for all of the previous day's
suffering rose before her again, and made her fears still more real
and importunate. She forced herself to look, however, half thinking
that she might see Arthur again; but that did not happen, and in a
minute or two more the carriage had come to the house where he
lived. She gave the reins to Mr. Howard, and sprang quickly out; she
rang the bell, and then stood for a minute, twitching her fingers,
and waiting.
The woman who kept the house, and whom Helen knew personally, opened
the door; the visitor stepped in and gasped out breathlessly, “Where
is Arthur?” Her hands shook visibly as she waited for the reply.
“He is not in, Miss Davis,” the woman answered.
“Where is he?” Helen cried.
“I do not know,” was the response. “He has gone.”
“Gone!” And the girl started back, catching at her heart. “Gone
where?”
“I do not know, Miss Davis.”
“But what--” began the other.
“This will tell you all I know,” said the woman, as she fumbled in
her apron, and put a scrap of crumpled paper into Helen's trembling
hands.
The girl seized it and glanced at it; then she staggered back
against the wall, ghastly pale and almost sinking. The note, in
Arthur's hand, but so unsteady as to be almost illegible, ran thus:
“You will find in this my board for the past week; I am compelled to
leave Hilltown, and I shall not ever return.”
And that was all. Helen stared at it and stared again, and then let
it fall and gazed about her, echoing, in a hollow voice, “And I
shall not ever return!”
“That is all I can tell you about it,” went on the woman. “I have
not seen him since Elizabeth was here yesterday morning; he came
back late last night and packed his bag and went away.”
Helen sank down upon a chair and buried her face in her hands, quite
overwhelmed by the suddenness of that discovery. She remained thus
for a long time, without either sound or motion, and the woman stood
watching her, knowing full well what was the matter. When Helen
looked up again there was agony written upon her countenance. “Oh,
are you sure you have no idea where I can find him?” she moaned.
“No, Miss Davis,” said the woman. “I was asounded when I got this
note.”
“But someone must know, oh, surely they must! Someone must have seen
him,--or he must have told someone!”
“I think it likely that he took care not to,” was the reply.
The thought was a death-knell to Helen's last hope, and she sank
down, quite overcome; she knew that Arthur could have had but one
motive in acting as he had,--that he meant to cut himself off
entirely from all his old life and surroundings. He had no friends
in Hilltown, and having lived all alone, it would be possible for
him to do it. Helen remembered Mr. Howard's saying of the night
before, how the sight of her baseness might wreck a man's life
forever, and the more she thought of that, the more it made her
tremble. It seemed almost more than she could bear to see this
fearful consequence of her sin, and to know that it had become a
fact of the outer world, and gone beyond her power. It seemed quite
too cruel that she should have such a thing on her conscience, and
have it there forever; most maddening of all was the thought that it
had depended upon a few hours of time.
“Oh, how can I have waited!” she moaned. “I should have come last
night, I should have stopped the carriage when I saw him! Oh, it is
not possible!”
Perhaps there are no more tragic words in human speech than “Too
late.” Helen felt just then as if the right even to repentance were
taken from her life. It was her first introduction to that fearful
thing of which Mr. Howard had told her upon their first meeting; in
the deep loneliness of her own heart Helen was face to face just
then with FATE. She shrank back in terror, and she struggled
frantically, but she felt its grip of steel about her wrist; and
while she sat there with her face hidden, she was learning to gaze
into its eyes, and front their fiery terror. When she looked up
again her face was very white and pitiful to see, and she rose from
her chair and went toward the door so unsteadily that the woman put
her arm about her.
“You will tell me,” she gasped faintly--“you will tell me if you
hear anything?”
“Yes,” said the other gently, “I will.”
So Helen crept into the carriage again, looking so full of
wretchedness that her companion knew that the worst must have
happened, and took the reins and silently drove towards home, while
the girl sat perfectly still. They were fully half way home before
she could find a word in which to tell him of her misery. “I shall
never be happy in my life again!” she whispered. “Oh, Mr. Howard,
never in my life!”
When the man gazed at her, he was frightened to see how grief and
fear had taken possession of her face; and yet there was no word
that he could say to soothe her, and no hope that he could give her.
When the drive was ended, she stole silently up to her room, to be
alone with her misery once more.