PLIGHTED TROTH.
"Helen, you seem tired," John said as I met him at the door--at first I
peeped out from behind it, I remember, as if I feared the
bogey-man--"Have you been too hard at work?"
"I've been out all the afternoon," I said, "and I suppose I am rather
tired, but it was pleasant and warm; and I wore a veil."
There was a little awkward pause after I had ushered him to the
reception room, and then, guiding the talk through channels he thought
safe, he spoke about his law work, the amusing things that happen at
the office, his gratifying progress in his profession.
"Oh," I said, "talking of the law reminds me--some stupid paper was
left here to-day."
I found with some difficulty and handed to him the stiff folded legal
cap the man had brought.
He glanced through it with apprehensive surprise, skipping the long
sentences to the end.
"Why, this is returnable to-morrow," he said; "Nelly, I had no idea you
were in such urgent money troubles; why didn't you send for me at once;
this morning?"
"Oh, if that's all--I've had so many duns that I'm tired of them: tired
to death of them."
"But this isn't a dun," he began in the unnaturally quiet tone of a man
who is trying to keep his temper and isn't going to succeed. "It is a
court order; and people don't ignore court orders unless they want to
get into trouble. This paper calls you to court to-morrow morning in
supplementary proceedings."
"I don't know what they are."
"You don't want to know what they are. You mustn't know. It's an ordeal
so terrible that most creditors employ it only as a last resort,
especially against a woman. This plaintiff, being herself a woman, is
less merciful."
"Why is it so terrible? I have no money; they can't make me pay what I
haven't got, can they? Is it the Inquisition?"
"Yes, of a sort; it's an inquiry into your ability to pay, and almost
no question that could throw light upon that is barred. You'll be asked
about your business in New York, your income and expenses, your family
and your father's means. It will be a turning inside out of your most
intimate affairs."
"Why, I should expect all that," I said.
"But, Nelly--" he hesitated. "You're alone here?"
He had not before alluded to Mrs. Whitney, though I suppose he
understood that she had gone; I appreciated his delicacy.
"I'm afraid you'll be asked about that," he went on; "asked, I mean,
how a young woman without money maintains a fine apartment. They'll
inquire about your servants, the daily expenses of your table, your
wine bills, if you ever have any; then they'll question you about your
visitors, their character and number, and try to wring admissions from
you, and to give sinister shades to innocent relations. The reporters
will all be there, a swarm of them. You're a semi-public character,
more's the pity, and some lawyers like to be known for their severity
to debtors. What a field day for the press! The beautiful Miss Winship
in supplementary proceedings--columns of testimony, pages of
pictures--! Ugh! In a word, the experience is so severe that you cannot
undergo it."
"I don't see how it's to be helped; is it a crime to live alone?" I
said. "I won't ask Uncle Timothy for money--and have Aunt Frank know
about it."
Again he hesitated, then he said more slowly, but plumping out the last
words in a kind of desperation: "I've heard a woman--once--asked if she
had a lover--to pay the money, you know."
I didn't understand at first; then a flush deepened upon my face.
"They wouldn't dare! This woman knows all about me; why, she's Meg Van
Dam's dressmaker; Mrs. Whitney's too--" I said.
"I've heard it done," John repeated patiently. "You must pardon me. I
didn't want to go into this phase of it, but it may explain what, with
your permission, I am about to do. Now, before I go--for I must go at
once to find this attorney, at his house, the Democratic Club,
anywhere--I must be frank with you."
He was already at the door, where he turned and faced me, looking
almost handsome in his sturdy manliness, his colour heightened by
excitement.
"I must tell you one thing," he went on very slowly. "I haven't in all
the world a fraction of the money called for by this one bill; but in a
way I have made some success. I am beginning to be known. If I myself
offer terms, so much cash down, so much a month, pledging my word for
the payment, the woman's lawyer will agree. She'll be glad to get the
money in that way, or in any way. But I must guard your reputation. I
shall tell plaintiff's counsel that you are my affianced wife, that I
didn't know how badly you were in debt--both statements are true--and
that I assume payment. I wish to assure you that, in thus asserting our
old relation, I shall not presume upon the liberty I am obliged to
take."
I think I have treated John badly; yet he brought me help. And he had
no thought of recompense. Since he has seen how useless it was, he has
ceased to pester me with love making, but has been simply, kindly
helpful. And I have been so lonely, so harassed and tormented.
It was far enough from my thoughts to do such a thing, but as I stood
dumbly looking at him, it flashed upon me that here, after all, was the
man who had always loved me, always helped me, always respected me. I
almost loved him in return. Why not try to reward his devotion, and
throw my distracted self upon his protection?
"I would not have you tell a lie for me, John," said I uncertainly,
holding out my hands and smiling softly into his eyes.
"I don't understand--" he stood irresolute, yet moved, I could see, by
my beauty. "Do you mean--" and he slowly approached, peering from under
his contracted brows as if trying to read my eyes.
"I mean that I have treated you very badly; and that I am sorry," I
whispered, hiding my head with a little sigh upon his shoulder; and
after a time he put his arms about me gently as if half afraid, and was
silent. I felt how good he was, how strong and patient, and was at
peace. I knew I could trust him.
So we stood for a little while at the dividing line between the future
and the past. I do not know what were his thoughts, but I had not been
so much at rest for a long, long time-not since I came from home to New
York.
Then with a sigh of quiet content, he said in a low and gentle voice:--
"It's a strange thing to hurry away now, Nelly; but you know I have so
much to do before I can rest tonight. I must speak of this: Now--now
that we are to belong to each other always--I must know exactly about
all your affairs, so that I can arrange them. There are other debts?"
The word grated upon my nerves, I had been so glad to forget.
"Yes, I'm afraid I owe a lot of money, but must we--just to-night?" I
asked.
"I'm afraid it's safest. It is not alone that you will be able to
forget the matter sooner if you confide in me now, but how can we know
that these proceedings will not be repeated if I don't attend promptly
to everything? Some one else may bring suit tomorrow, and another the
next day, giving you no peace. I'm sorry, but it is the best way. Tell
me everything now, and I will arrange with them all, and need never
mention the subject again. Then you can be at peace."
"Well, if I must--"
It seemed impossible to go on. Even the thought of how good he was and
how he had taken up my burden when it was too heavy for my own strength
made it harder to face the horrible business.
"--I owe ten dollars to Kitty Reid, and about twenty-five to Cadge," I
admitted. "I didn't mean to borrow of them, but I had to do it, just
lately--"
"Poor child!" said John, stroking my hand with his big, warm paw, as he
would a baby's. "Poor child!"
"I've bills somewhere for everything else--"
It was like digging among the ruins of my past greatness to pull out
the crumpled papers from my writing desk, reminding me of the gay
scenes that for me were no more; but John quietly took them from me,
and began smoothing them and laying them in methodical piles and making
notes of amounts and names.
"I've refused all these to Uncle Timothy; he's been worrying me with
questions--" I said desperately.
"Three florists, two confectioners," he enumerated, as if he had not
heard me.
"--Women eat sweets by the ton, but lately there have been few of 'em
in this house. Then here are the accounts for newspaper clippings, you
know; Shanks and Romeike; but they're trifles."
"You must have been a good customer," John said, glancing about the
dishevelled flat--I hadn't had the heart to rearrange it since Mrs.
Whitney left. "From the look of the place, I believe you would have
bought a mummy or a heathen god, if anybody had suggested it to you."
"I have a little heathen god--Gautama; alabaster--and a mummied cat."
"And you're very fond of that? But no matter. Shoemaker and milliner
and furniture man; that makes eleven."
He lengthened his list on the margin of a newspaper.
"Well, I never paid Van Nostrand for that painting, and I've even
forgotten how much he said it would be. And there's a photograph
bill--a perfectly scandalous one--and another dressmaker; Mrs. Edgar; I
went back to her after Meg's woman got crusty, but she never'll sue me.
And the Japanese furniture shop and--another photographer--and here's
the bill for bric-a-brac--that's sixteen. The wine account--there is
one, but it ought to be Mrs. Whitney's; for entertaining. I suppose Pa
and Ma would say that was a very wicked bill, now wouldn't they,
Schoolmaster?"
"They would indeed, Helen 'Lizy; I'm not sure that I don't agree with
them. By the way, does your father know about all this?"
"Yes, a little. I've begged him for money, but he won't mortgage the
farm. And Judge Baker knows. He wants me to come back to his house, but
of course I won't do it. I guess he's sent for Father; Pa's coming East
soon, on a cattle train pass."
"A cattle train!"
John stabbed the paper viciously, then he said more gently:--
"A cattle train is cold comfort for a substantial farmer at his time of
life; and I don't think we will let him mortgage."
That young man will need discipline; but I imagine he was thinking less
about my poor old father than about--well, I needn't have mentioned the
Baker house, but what does he really know of how I came to leave it?
Perhaps suspicion and bitter memories made my retort more spirited than
it need have been.
"We won't discuss that, please," I said with hauteur; "and we won't be
too emphatic about what is past. It _is_ past. I'll find out what is a
proper scale of expenditure for a young lawyer's wife in New York, and
I shall not exceed it. I've been living very economically for the
sphere that seemed open to me. Perhaps I ought not to have tried it;
but I think you should blame those who lured me into extravagance and
then deserted me. I've had a terrible, terrible experience! Do you know
that? And I was within an ace of becoming an ornament of the British
peerage. Did you know that?"
"Yes; I don't blame you for refusing, either; some girls don't seem to
have the necessary strength of mind. No; I'm not blaming anybody for
anything. Nelly, next week it will be a year since our first betrothal;
do you remember? Haven't you, after all, loved me a little, all the
time?"
He looked at me wistfully.
"At least," I said, "I didn't love Lord Strathay."
I didn't think it necessary to correct him as to my refusal of the Earl.
"We'll see if Kitty won't take you in again until we can be married,"
he said, jabbing the paper again and changing the subject almost
brusquely. "If you don't want to go back to your aunt, that'll be
better than a boarding house, won't it? You pay the girls out of this,
and I'll look after the other bills. There's a good fellow. Now, then
what's No. 18?"
I fingered with an odd reluctance the little roll of bills he handed
me, though it was like a life buoy to a drowning sailor.
"You'd better," he said, with quiet decision, cutting short my
hesitation. "The girls won't need to know where it comes from, or that
I know anything about it. It's ever so much nicer that way, don't you
think?"
I put the money with my pride into my pocket, and continued sorting out
bills from the rubbish. In all we scheduled over forty before we gave
it up. Besides the Van Nostrand painting and one or two accounts that
probably escaped us, I found that I owed between $4,000 and $5,000.
"That is the whole of my dowry, John," I said.
"I would as willingly accept you as a portionless bride," he declaimed
in theatrical fashion; and then we both broke into hysterical laughter.
"Never mind," he said, at last, wiping his eyes. "I never dreamed that
all this rubbish about you could cost so much; I ought to have had my
eyes open. But now we aren't going to worry one little worry, are we?
I'll straighten it all out in time. And now I really must go."
And so he went away with a parting kiss, leaving me very happy. I don't
know that I love him; or rather I know that I don't--but I shall be
good to him and make him so happy that he'll forget all the trouble I
have cost him. Dear old unselfish, patient John!
And I am more content and less torn by anxiety than I have been for
many a long day. It is such a relief!
And so I'm thinking it over. Even from the selfish standpoint I have
not done so badly. John is developing wonderfully. He is not so
destitute of social finesse as when he came, his language is better,
his bearing more confident. He makes a good figure in evening dress. He
will be a famous success in the law, and, with a beautiful wife to help
him, he should go far. He may be President some day, or Minister to the
Court of St. James, or a Justice of the Supreme Court.
Whatever his career, I shall help him. I have the power to do things in
the world as well as he. And once married, I may almost choose my
friends and his associates. The women will no longer fear me so much.
He shall not regret this night's work.
So that is settled. I am so relieved, and more tired than I have ever
guessed a woman could be. Tired, tired, tired!
I'm sure it is the best thing I could do, now; but--Judge Baker is
right! What was it he said? "A loveless marriage,"--Oh, well, since I
broke Ned Hynes's heart by setting a silly little girl to drive him
away, and broke my own by breaking his, I haven't much cared what
becomes of me; only to be at peace.
It will be a relief to move out of this accursed flat, where I have
spent the gloomiest hours of my life.
BOOK V.
THE END OF THE BEGINNING.
(From the Shorthand Notes of John Burke.)
CHAPTER I.
THE DEEDS OF THE FARM.
Sunday, June 13.
In three days it will be a year since Helen promised to marry me, and
on that anniversary she will be my wife.
It is strange how exactly according to my plan things have come
about--and how differently from all that I have dreamed.
She is the most beautiful woman in the world; she is to be my wife
sooner than I dared to hope--and--I must be good to her. I must love
her.
Did I ever doubt my love until she claimed it five days ago with such
confidence in my loyalty? In that moment, as I went to her, as I took
her in my arms, as I felt that she needed me and trusted me, with the
suddenness of a revelation I knew--
It was hard to meet Ethel--and Milly and Mrs. Baker afterwards.
To-day, in preparing to move to our new home, I came across the rough
notes I wrote last December, when the marvel of Helen's beauty was
fresh to me. As I read the disjointed and half incredulous words I had
set to paper, I found myself living over again those days of Faery and
enchantment.
Custom has somewhat dulled the shock of her beauty; I have grown
quickly used to her as the most radiantly lovely of created beings; my
mind has been drawn to dwell upon moral problems and to sorrow at
seeing her gradually become the victim of her beauty--her nature, once
as fine as the outward form that clothes it, warped by constant
adulation, envy and strife; until--
But it is a miracle! As unbelievable, as unthinkable as it was on the
very first day when that glowing dream of loveliness made manifest
floated toward me in the little room overlooking Union Square, and I
was near swooning with pure delight of vision.
Beautiful; wonderful! She didn't love me then and she doesn't now; but
the most marvellous woman in the world needs me--and I will not fail
her.
I wish I could take her out of the city for a change of mental
atmosphere. She shrinks from her father's suggestion of a summer on the
farm. But in time her wholesome nature must reassert itself; she must
become, if not again the fresh, light-hearted girl I knew a year ago, a
sweet and gracious woman whose sufferings will have added pathos to her
charm.
And even now she's not to be judged like other women; before the
shining of her beauty, reproach falls powerless. It is my sacred task
to guard her--to soothe her awakening from all that nightmare of
inflated hopes and vain imaginings. Kitty Reid and---yes, and little
Ethel--will help me.
Kitty is a good fellow.
"Why, cert.," she said when I begged her last Wednesday to take care of
Helen. "Married! Did you say married? Oh, Cadge, quit pegging shoes!"
Jumping up from the drawing table, Kitty left streams of India ink
making her beastesses all tigers while she called to Miss Bryant, who
was pounding viciously upon a typewriter:--
"Cadge, did you hear? Cadge! The Princess is going to be married.
'Course you remember, Mr. Burke, Cadge is going to be married herself
Saturday."
"Don't be too sure of it," returned Miss Bryant, "and do let me finish
this sentence. Ten to one Pros. or I'll be grabbed off for an
assignment Saturday evening 'fore we can be married. But the Princess
is different; she has leisure. Burke, shake!"
She sprang up to take my hand, her eyes shining with excitement.
Kitty hurried with me to the Nicaragua, where she pounced upon Helen,
her red curls madly bobbing.
"What a bride you'll make!" she cried fondly. "Going to be married from
the den, aren't you? Oh, I'm up to my eyes in weddings; Cadge simply
won't attend to anything. But what have you been doing to yourself?
Come here, Helen."
She pushed the proud, pale beauty into a chair, smothering her with
kisses and the piles of cushions that seem to add bliss to women's joys
and soften all their griefs.
"Tired, aren't you?" she purred. "Needed me. Now just you sit and talk
with Mr. Burke and I'll pack up your brittle-brae in three no-times.
Clesta,--where's that imp?"
She called to the little combination maid and model who had accompanied
us.
"Clesta's afraid of you, Helen. 'Why'd ye fetch me 'long?' she
whimpers. 'Miss Kitty, why'd ye fetch me 'long?' Huh, I 'member how you
used to have his picture with yours in a white and gold frame!"
Helen scarcely replied to Kitty's raptures. She laid her head back
half-protestingly among her cushions, showing her long, exquisite
throat. For an instant she let her shadowy lashes droop over the
everchanging lustre of her eyes. I couldn't help thinking of a great,
glorious bird of heaven resting with broken wing.
"Poor little Princess!" said Kitty, who hardly comes to Helen's
shoulder. Then we all laughed.
Kitty stayed at the Nicaragua that night, and when I came Thursday
afternoon she stopped me outside the door, to say:--
"I wouldn't let Helen talk too much; she's nervous."
"Can you tell me what is the matter with her?" I asked. "I don't think
she's well."
"Oh, nothing. You know--she's been worrying." Then loyal Kitty spoke
purposely of commonplaces. "General must have danced her off her feet.
Darmstetter's death upset her terribly, too. She never will speak of
it. But she'll be as right as right with me. Bring her 'round as soon
as the man comes for the trunks. You've only to head up a barrel of
dishes, quick, 'fore Clesta gets in any fine work smashing 'em."
As I passed through the hall, littered with trunks and packing cases,
to the dismantled parlour, Helen looked up from a mass of old letters
and dance cards.
"I'm sorting my--souvenirs," she said.
The face she lifted was white, only the lips richly red, with a shade
of fatigue under the haunting eyes. The graceful figure in its
close-fitting dress looked a trifle less round than it had done earlier
in the winter, and one fair arm, as it escaped from its flowing sleeve,
was almost thin.
"Dear," I said wistfully, for something in her drooping attitude smote
me to remorse and inspired me with tenderness; "will you really trust
your life to me?"
She leaned towards me, and beauty breathed about her as a spell. I bent
till my lips caressed her perfumed hair; and then--I saw among the
rubbish on her desk something that made me interrupt the words we might
have spoken.
"What's that?" I asked. "Not--pawn tickets?"
"For a necklace," she said; "and this--this must be my diamond--"
"Pawned and not paid for!"
She offered me the tickets, only half understanding, her great eyes as
innocent as they were lovely.
"I had forgotten," she said. "I only found them when I came to--"
She brushed the rubbish of her winter's triumphs and disappointments to
the floor, and turned from it with a little, disdainful movement.
"I had to pay the maids," she said simply.
"Nelly, why--why didn't you come to me sooner?"
With a bump against the door, Clesta sidled into the room awestruck and
smutched, bearing a tray.
"Miss Kitty said," she stammered, "as how I should make tea." And as
soon as she had found a resting place for her burden, the frightened
girl made a dash for the door.
Before Helen had finished drinking, there was a stir in the hall, and
then the sound of a familiar voice startled us.
"Wa-al, Helen 'Lizy," it said. "How ye do, John? Don't git up; I can
set till ye're through."
And Mr. Winship himself stood before us, stoop-shouldered, roughly
dressed from the cattle cars, his kindly old eyes twinkling, his good
face all glorified by the honest love and pride shining through its
plainness.
"Why, Father!" cried Helen with a start.
She looked at him with a nervous repugnance to his appearance, which
she tried to subdue. He did not seem to notice it.
"Wa'n't lookin' for me yit-a-while, was ye?" he asked. "Kind o' thought
I'd s'prise ye. Did s'prise the man down in the hall. Didn't want to
let me in till I told him who I was. Little gal in the entry says ye're
movin'; ye do look all tore up, for a fac'."
Mr. Winship has grown old within the year. His hair has whitened and
his bushy eyebrows; but the grip of his hand, the sound of his homely
speech, seemed to wake me from some ugly dream. Here we were together
again in the wholesome daylight, Father Winship, little Helen 'Lizy and
the Schoolmaster, and all must yet be well.
Mr. Winship sighed with deep content as he sank into a chair, his eyes
scarcely leaving Helen. He owned himself beat out and glad of a dish of
tea; but when Clesta had served him in her scuttling crab fashion, he
would stop in the middle of a sentence, with saucer half lifted, to
gaze with perplexed, wistful tenderness at his stately daughter.
She is the child of his old age; I think he must be long past sixty,
and fast growing feeble. The instinct of father love has grown in him
so refined that he sees the soul and not the envelope. Grand and
beautiful as she is to others, to him she is still his little Nelly.
He would not even own that he thought her altered.
"I d'know," he said, a shade of anxiety blending with the old fond
pride. "Fust-off, Sis didn't look jes' nat'ral, spite of all the
picters she's sent us; but that was her long-tailed dress, mebbe. W'en
she's a young one, Ma was all for tyin' back her ears and pinchin' her
nose with a clo'espin--to make it straight or so'thin'; but I says to
Ma, w'en Helen 'Lizy lef' home, 'don't ye be one mite afeard,' I says,
'but what them bright eyes'll outshine the peaked city gals.' Guess
they have, sort o', eh, Sis; f'om what John's been writin'?"
"I don't know, Father."
"Don't ye--don't ye want t' hear 'bout the folks? Brought ye heaps o'
messages. Frenchy, now--him that worked for us--druv over f'om the
Merriam place to know 'f 'twas true that city folks made a catouse over
ye. He'd heard the men readin' 'bout ye in the papers.
"'Wa-al,' I says to Frenchy, 'Helen 'Lizy was al'ays han'some.'
"'D'know 'bout zat,' says Frenchy, only he says it in his lingo, 'but
she was one vair cute li'l gal.'
"'Han'some as a picter,' I tol' him; 'an' cutes' little tyke y'ever
see.'"
"How is Mother?" asked Helen constrainedly.
"Ma's lottin' on havin' ye home; wants t' hear all 'bout the good
times. School done? All packed and ready for a start, ain't ye? But ye
don't seem to be feeling any too good. Don't New York agree with ye,
Sissy? Been studying too hard?"
"She is a goot organism; New York agrees vit her," I said. "Wasn't that
how poor old Darmstetter put it, Nelly? Mr. Winship, Nelly has
overworked, but with your consent, she is about to let a tyrannical
husband take care of her."
At my heedless mention of Darmstetter, Helen's white face grew whiter.
Her trembling hand strayed, seeking support.
"Al'ays s'posed you'n' Sis'd be marryin' some day," said Mr. Winship,
dubiously watching her, while he stroked his beard; "but seems mos's if
ye'd better wait a spell, till Ma's chirked her up some. Han'some place
here."
His eyes examined the luxurious, disordered room.
"These here things ain't yourn, Sis?"
"Not all of them."
"I ain't refusin' to let Sis marry, if ye're both sot on't," he
conceded. Then he caught sight of the Van Nostrand painting, and his
slow glance travelled from it to Helen. "That done for you, Sis? I
never helt with bare necks. Yes, Sis can marry, if she says so, though
Ma wants her home. But she ain't been writin' real cheerful. She--she's
asked for money, that's the size on't. An' here ye are up in arms an'
she nigh sick. I don't want nothing hid away f'om me; how come ye
livin' in a place like this?"
He rose laboriously, surveying through the open doorway the beautiful
hall and the dining-room; while I interposed some jesting talk on other
matters, for I had hoped to get Helen out of the Nicaragua before her
father's arrival, and still hoped to spare him knowledge of our worst
troubles.
"If Sis has been buyin' all this here, I ain't denying that I'll feel
the expense," he said, sticking to the subject; "but I guess we can
manage."
Fumbling for his wallet, he drew some papers from it and handed them to
Helen, adding:--
"There, Sis; there they are."
"Money, Father?" she asked with indifference. "I don't believe I need
any."
"Don't ye? Ye wrote 'bout mortgagin'. I didn't want to do it, 'count o'
Ma, partly; but we kep' worryin' an' worryin' 'bout ye. Ma couldn't
sleep o' nights or eat her victuals; an fin'lly--'Ezry,' she says, 'we
was possessed to let Helen 'Lizy, at her age, an' all the chick or
child we got, go off alone to the city. Ezry,' she says, 'you go fetch
her home. Like's not Tim can let ye have the money,' she says; 'his
wife bein' an own cousin, right in the family, y'know.' So I've brought
the deeds, Sis, an'--"
"What!" cried Helen, starting up. "The deeds of the farm? Let me see!"
She reached out a shaking hand for the papers.
"I'll pay you back!" she cried. "Why didn't you come sooner? How much
can you get? How much money?"
"Not much more'n three thousan', I'm afeared, on a mortgage; cap'tal's
kind o' skeery--but Tim--"
"Three thousand dollars!"
Laughing hysterically, she fell back in her chair.
"I had ought 'a come sooner; an' three thousan' ain't a gre't deal, I
don't suppose, here in the city; but it's been spend, spend--not that I
grutch it--an' things ain't so flourishin' as they was. I'm gittin' too
old to manage, mebbe--"
"Mr. Winship," I said, "Nelly has told you the truth; she doesn't need
money; she--"
"Three thousand will save me!" Helen cried. "I can pay a little to
everybody. I can hold out, I can--"
"Please, Miss--the furniture--"
Behind Clesta appeared two men who gaped at Helen in momentary
forgetfulness of their errand.
Helen's creditors have proved more than reasonable, with the exception
of the furniture people; their demands were such that there seemed no
alternative but to surrender the goods. As the men who came for them
advanced into the room, stammering questions about the articles they
were to remove, Helen struggled to her feet and started to meet them,
then stopped, clutching at a table for support. Their eyes never left
her face.
"Are they takin' your things, Sis?" asked Mr. Winship.
Her feverish glance answered him.
"What's to pay?" he inquired.
"Want to keep the stuff, Boss?" asked the head packer.
"Yes," I said, seeing her distress, and resolving desperately to find
the means, somehow.
"It ain't none o' your look-out," interposed Mr. Winship. "Sis ain't
a-goin' to be beholden to her husband, not till she's married. Ezry
Winship al'ays has done for his own, an' he proposes to do, jes' as
fur's he's able. Sis'll tell ye I hain't stented her--What's to pay?"
I couldn't see all his savings go for gauds!
"You may take the goods," I said to the men, with sudden revulsion of
feeling. "There's no room for them," I added gruffly to Mr. Winship,
"in our--the rooms--where we are to live."
"All right, Boss," said the head packer; "which gent speaks for the
lady?"
"Father!" Helen gasped.
"What's to pay?" insisted Mr. Winship.
"Take the goods," I repeated.
"All right, Boss;" and the two men went about their work, still
glancing at us with sidelong looks of curiosity.
Helen gazed at me with eyes that stabbed. Then slowly her glance
dulled. She dropped on a packing box and sat silent--a bowed figure of
despair--forgetting apparently that she was not alone.
Mr. Winship made no further attempt to interfere with events. He stood
by Helen's side, puzzled and taciturn.
I, too, was silent, reproaching myself for the brutality of my action,
unable to decide what I should have done or ought to do. Helen herself
had suggested that we give up the furniture, and I had not mourned the
necessity, for I hated the stuff, with its reminders of the General and
the Whitney woman and Bellmer and the Earl and all those strange people
that I used to see around her. But I might have known that she could
not, all at once, wean herself from the trumpery.
A minute later Clesta ushered in the man who was to take the trunks,
and when I had given him his directions, I asked:--
"Shall we go, Nelly?"
"If ye ain't reconciled to movin'--" Mr. Winship began.
But Helen answered neither of us. Her eyes were bent upon the floor,
and a look, not now of resentment, but of--was it fear?--had slowly
crept upon her face. Her hands were clenched.
Darmstetter! Instinct--or memory of my careless words spoken but a
little earlier--told me the truth. The growing pallor of her cheek
spoke her thought. How that tragedy haunts her! The face I looked upon
was at the last almost ghastly.
"Nelly--" I said, very gently.
She looked around with the slow bewilderment that I once saw on the
face of a sleep-walker. Her eyes saw through us, and past us, fixed
upon some invisible horror. She was heedless of the familiar scene, the
figures grouped about her. Then there came a sudden flush to her face,
a quick recoil of terror; she shuddered as if waking from a nightmare.
"Why do we stay here?" she cried starting up with sudden, panic
strength. "Let's get out of this horrible place! Let's go! Oh, let's
go! Let's go!"
And so it was, in sorrow and with dark forebodings, that we left the
gay rooms where Helen had so passionately enjoyed her little flight in
the sunshine.
The drive through the streets was at first silent. Shutting her eyes,
she leaned back in the carriage. Sometimes she shuddered convulsively.
"Where ye goin'?" Mr. Winship asked at last, peering out at the
carriage window. Indeed the trip to Fourteenth Street seemed
interminable to me, and I didn't wonder at his impatience.
The simple question broke down Helen's reserve.
"Anywhere!" she sobbed, breaking into violent, hysterical tears. "I
didn't want to stay there! I didn't want the furniture! I didn't want
it! I don't want money! Father, you needn't mortgage!"
"We'll talk 'bout that some other time," said Mr. Winship soothingly.
"Nevermind now, Sissy."
"Ye'll take good care of Helen 'Lizy?" he said to Cadge and Kitty when
we had half carried her up the long flights of stairs to the studio. He
seemed to take no notice of the strange furnishings of the loft, but
his furrowed brow smoothed itself as he looked into the hospitable
faces of the two girls.
"Ye'll take good care of her?" he repeated simply. "I'm afeard my
daughter ain't very well."
"We will; we will!" they assured him eagerly; and indeed it seemed that
Helen had found her needed rest, for she bade us good night almost
cheerfully.
CHAPTER II.
CADGE'S ASSIGNMENT.
"You say Winship is around at your place?" asked Judge Baker Friday
morning. I had before told him about the approaching marriage. "The
dear old boy! I am very glad."
"He wants to talk with you about a mortgage," I said bluntly. "Can you
dissuade him? I think the situation in its main features is no secret
to you."
The Judge frowned in surprise. "You don't mean that she--"
"Of course Helen has refused her father's offer. We have so arranged
everything that no help from him is needed, but he may be rather
obstinate, for I'm afraid she wrote to him, suggesting--I mean, she now
regrets it," I added.
"Ah, those regrets! Those regrets!" He sat silent for a moment,
thinking deeply. "That phase of an otherwise rosy situation is
unfortunate. I will do my best with Winship, and you must explain to me
your proposed arrangements; for I claim an uncle's privilege to be of
use to Nelly, and she, with perhaps natural reticence, has acquainted
me only partially with her affairs. I rejoice to hear that she now
wishes to spare her father, but--you will pardon me, Burke?--she was
hasty; she was hasty. It is easier to set forces of love or hate moving
than to check them in motion. Sometimes I think, Burke, that people
were in certain ways less reckless in the good old days when they had
perpetually before their eyes the vision of a hair-trigger God, always
cocked and ready to shoot if they crossed the line of duty. But Nelly
is coming bravely through a severe test of character. May I offer you
both my heartiest--"
It was just at that happy moment that the office boy announced Mr.
Winship to share the Judge's kind wishes; and by good luck in came also
Mrs. Baker, but a moment behind him.
"Why, Ezra!" she chirped in a flutter of amazed cordiality at sight of
her husband's visitor. "You in New York? Why, for Nelly's wedding, of
course! John Burke, why've you kept us in the dark these months and
months? I'm--I'm really ashamed of you!"
Her plump gloved hands seized Mr. Winship's, while her small, swift,
bird-like eyes looked reproach at me.
"Patience, Mrs. Baker; patience!" rejoined the Judge. "Is not an
engaged man entitled to his secrets? Has it escaped your memory how,
once upon a time, you and I--."
"There, now, Bake! Stop, can't you?" she interrupted with vehement good
nature; and I ceased to intrude upon the three old friends.
That afternoon, when I sought Helen at the studio, I was more surprised
than I should have been, and wonderfully relieved to discover the
result of their conference.
Ignorant of any quarrel and overflowing with anxiety, Helen's father
had unbosomed his anxieties about her health and accomplished what no
diplomacy could have done. Mrs. Baker had flown with him to the studio,
where, constrained by his presence, Helen had submitted to an
incredible truce with her aunt.
"I told Tim'thy an' Frances we'd eat Sunday dinner with 'em," Mr.
Winship told me; "an' they say you'n' Sis had ought to be married f'om
their house. Good idee, seems to me, though Sis here don't take to it,
somehow."
"Oh, I suppose I can endure Aunt Frank," said Helen, making savage dabs
at Cadge's typewriter; "if you wish it--you and John."
She was making a great effort for her father's sake, and I could not
exclaim against her chilly reception of the olive branch.
"It'll please Ma, w'en she comes to hear 'bout it; she thinks a sight
of Frank Baker," urged Mr. Winship.
"'Fraid I'll have to tackle someb'dy else 'bout that money," he went on
after a pause; "Tim'thy says he ain't got a cent loose, jest now. I did
kind o' want to keep it quiet, keep it to the fambly like, but I can
git it; I can git th' money; on'y it'll take time."
"Why, Father, I begged you not to try," said Helen impatiently. "I
don't need money; ask John."
"W'at you've spent can't come on John," declared Mr. Winship; "I'll
have to be inquirin' 'round. But I'm glad to see ye lookin' brighter'n
you did yist'day, Sissy; Tim'thy's wife'll have an eye on ye. She's
comin' here agin to-morrer, she says, to a weddin'. You didn't tell me
'bout any one gittin' married--not in sich a hurry, not to-morrer.
W'ich gal is it?"
"Wouldn't think it was Cadge, would you?" laughed Kitty, staggering
into the room under the weight of a big palm. "Next chum I have, it'll
be in the contract that, in case of emergency, she helps run her own
wedding. 'Course Helen's all right with me--or will be, once Caroline
Bryant's disposed of."
In spite of the confusion of the wedding preparations, Helen did do
credit to Kitty's nursing; and last evening, when there came the climax
of all the bustle, she seemed stronger even than on Friday.
It was a night to remember!
The big Indians of the canvasses peeped grimly from ambushes of flowers
and tall ferns, as the studio door opened and Kitty came running to
meet me, her cheeks flushed and her curls in a hurricane.
"'Most time for the minister," she cried breathlessly, "and not a sign
of Cadge! Not a sign! And I want to tell you--Helen's sorry we invited
the General, but she won't come, so that's no matter; but the
Bakers--do they like him?"
"Like the minister?"
"Like Ned Hynes?" panted Kitty. "When we asked 'em yesterday, I forgot,
but he'll be here. Pros. and he belong to a downtown club--'At the Sign
of the Skull and Crossbones'--or something--"
"Well?"
"Oh, it's all right, but I thought I'd tell you. If only Cadge'd come!
That's what eating me!" Kitty groaned. "But do you see our Princess?
All she needed was me to make her comfy. Shall I get you the least
little bit of colour, out of a box, Helen? Or--no; you're too lovely.
But come, you must have some roses."
As Helen joined us, very pale in her shimmering dress, with her hair
like an aureole about her head, she looked a tall, white Grace, a
swaying lily shining in the dusky place. Almost with the old reverence
I whispered:--
"You are the most beautiful of woman!"
"Do I please you, Sir?" she said, smiling as she moved away again with
Kitty. "Won't you see to Father? He's come without his necktie."
"Sho, Sis!" said Mr. Winship; "don't my beard hide it? Declare I clean
forgot."
Soon Helen returned to pin a flower at my button-hole.
"Where _can_ Cadge be?" she cried gaily; but her hands shook and she
dropped the rose. "Do you suppose she's interviewing a lunatic asylum?"
What had changed her voice and burned fever spots in her cheeks? I
wasn't so indifferent as I had seemed to Kitty's news. Had she told
Helen, too, that Ned Hynes--what was he to my betrothed?
"Can't you rest somewhere and just show for the ceremony?" I said,
"Nelly, you're not strong."
"There's not a place big enough for a mouse. But did you mean it? Do I
really look well to-night? Am I just as beautiful as I was three-four
months ago, or have I--"
"Oh, do slip out and 'phone the _Star_! I can feel my hair whitening,"
whispered Kitty, turning to me hastily, as a couple of women entered.
"See, folks are beginning to come."
I went out into the warm and rainy night, but there was no Cadge at the
_Star_ office. By the time I had returned with this information, the
eyry held a considerable gathering. Mrs. Baker had arrived, and her two
daughters; but I had no time to wonder at Milly's coming, for behind me
entered Mrs. Van Dam and then, among a group of strangers, I noticed
Hynes.
Involuntarily, at sight of him, my eyes turned to Helen; but not a
muscle of her face betrayed deeper feeling than polite pleasure as she
helped Kitty receive the wedding guests, greeting the General
cordially, Hynes with graciousness.
Kitty's welcome to Mrs. Van Dam would have been irresistibly funny, if
I had had eyes to see the humour.
"Cadge promised to be home early," she sputtered, "but probably she's
telling some one this minute: 'Oh, I'll be there in time; I don't need
much--not much more than the programme.'
"Can't _you_ guess where she is, Pros.?" she implored in an undertone,
as her brother approached us. "If the minister gets here before Cadge
does, I'll cut her off with a shilling."
"What an interesting place!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Dam, examining her
surroundings through her quizzing glasses. "I've heard so much about
your paintings, Miss Reid. And what an astonishing girl, this Miss
Bryant! Where can she be? Helen, you sly girl, I hear news about you."
"Oh, very likely Miss Bryant is out of town," Reid answered for her
with a quiet smile. "She'll show up after the paper goes to press, if
not sooner."
"On her wedding day! The girl's a genius! And when may that be? When
will the--ah--when will the paper go to press?"
"They take copy up to two o'clock for the second edition. But she maybe
here at any moment."
The General stared at him with amazement.
"Oh, you don't know Cadge," sighed Kitty, "if you think she'd be jarred
by her own wedding. But we must do something. Everybody's here and
waiting. Sing, Helen, won't you? Oh, do sing."
Helen had not joined in the rapid conversation. Now she smiled assent
with stately compliance. Undulating across the studio, she returned
with a mandolin--not the one I remembered, but a pretty bit of
workmanship in inlaid wood. Bending above this, she relieved the wait
by merry, lilting tunes like the music of a bobolink, while Kitty
fidgetted in and out, the puckers in her forehead every minute growing
deeper.
While I listened to the gladsome music, my glance strayed to Milly, but
she was almost hidden by the curtains of the tepee; and then to Ned,
who sat with his face turned partly away from us. I noticed that he
looked gaunt, and I found a bitter satisfaction in the thought that,
perhaps, in Helen's "three-four months" he had not seen, until that
night, either of the women with whose lives his own had been entangled.
"Just one more," begged Kitty, when Helen stopped. "You're my only
hope; do sing, Helen."
Dropping the mandolin, Helen began without accompaniment "The King of
Thule:"--
"'There stood the old carouser,
And drank the last life glow;
And hurled the hallowed goblet
Into the tide below.
"He saw it plunging and filling,
And sinking deep in the sea;
Then fell his eyelids forever,
And never more drank he!'"
It was the ballad she had sung at Christmas--in what different mood!
Then her voice had been as carefree as a bird's carol, but now it lent
to the limpid simplicity of the air a sobbing, shuddering sweetness--an
almost weird intensity that strangely affected her listeners.
When she had finished, something like a gasp went through the room.
With a heart-breaking coldness I felt that I was her only unmoved
auditor, or--no; Ned seemed studying with weary disapproval the pattern
of his shoes.
"Love and death; and at a wedding!" Mrs. Van Dam shivered. "Something
more cheerful, Helen."
"Let's go--let's go and eat up Cadge's spread; that'd be cheerful,"
sniffed Kitty, her hot, nervous hand patting Helen's shoulder. "The
Princess's tired. But we must do something."
"Eat the wedding supper before the wedding. Original, I must say!"
But the General willingly enough helped Kitty to marshal us into the
crowded little dining-room; where Helen and I found ourselves beside
Mr. Winship and Ethel. Her father accepted Helen's music with as little
surprise as he had shown at her beauty.
"Comin' home pretty soon, ain't ye," he asked, "to give us some hymn
tunes Sunday evenings? W'at'll I git for ye? Must be hungry after so
much singing."
"I'm afraid I wasn't in voice to-night," said she rather wearily.
"Not in voice!" protested Ethel with shy enthusiasm; "why, Nelly, I
never before heard even you sing like that; it was-it was-oh, it was
wonderful!"
I dared not look at her, yet I saw every movement of the slight little
figure--saw the blush of eagerness that mounted even to the blonde
little curls about her forehead; and, retreating impatiently, I tried
to follow Mr. Winship's example, as he waited on the company with a
quaintly fine courtesy. Indeed, he made quite a conquest of the
General, who presently, after chatting with him for some time with keen
interest, asked abruptly:--
"Why haven't we had him here before? So interesting, such an original!
Room here for you, Milly. Some salad, please, Mr. Hynes."
Hynes's pinched face took colour. With alacrity he obeyed the General's
orders, fetching plates and glasses, and hovering about the group that
included Milly and her mother, until Mrs. Baker's face began to wear a
disturbed flush, though Milly's small, white features remained
impassive.
I watched the little drama with dawning comprehension. Then Ned did
not--Helen--it was really Ethel's sister with whom he longed to make
peace, while I--Ethel--
Helen's voice roused me.
"Can't we go into the other room?" she asked. "I'm tired; can't we go
and sit quietly together?"
With the fading of the glow and colour left by the music, she looked
indeed tired, almost haggard. In spite of the regal self possession
with which she rose, drawing Ethel with her, I knew in the face of
Milly's triumph-yes, I had known before--why her restless spirit had
spurred her on to such flights of folly; why she had--she brings no
love to me; has she perhaps offered pity?
We turned together to the door, but there was a sound of hurrying feet,
and Miss Bryant rushed before us, followed by a big bearded giant of a
man.
"Forbear and eat no more till my necessities be served," she declaimed,
advancing to the table. "Food has not passed my lips to-day; or--not
much food."
"Cadge!" gasped Helen with a choking laugh, sinking again upon her
chair.
Reid calmly extended a plate of salad to his betrothed, while Kitty
groaned, scandalized:--
"You mustn't eat now! You mustn't! Where've you been? Look at the state
you're in! _Don't_ eat, Cadge; you must dress this minute!"
"Bridgeport," returned Miss Bryant, grinning benevolently on the
wedding guests, her wet hair clinging about her face, her shirt waist
dampened with the raindrops that trickled from her hatbrim. "Driving an
antelope to a racing sulky. If _I_ bear marks, y'ought to see the
antelope; _and_ the sulky! Seven column picture, Kitty; I've made a
lay-out. You must get right at it--antelope kicking the atmosphere into
small pieces--"
"Cadge," suggested Reid, mildly, "our train leaves at midnight."
"We'll make it; but this story must come out whether or not 'Mrs.
Prosper K. Reid' does. Won't dress, but--say, just you show my wedding
gown, Kitty; not for publication but as an evidence--more salad, Pros."
Kitty ran and brought a billowy mass of fleecy white stuff, and Cadge
stood, devouring salad, over the dainty thing, gesticulating at it with
her fork and explaining its beauties:--
"You can see for yourselves it's swell. Mrs. Edgar fitted me at the
_Star_ office, with furious mug-makers pounding on the door."
"With _what_?" gasped the General.
"Mug-makers; alleged artists; after an old photo. Anyhow, it's money in
Mrs. Edgar's pocket. One of her biggest customers owes her a lot, she
says, and she can't get a cent; needed cash to pay her rent; little boy
ill, too. My, but I'm hungry! Can't I eat while I'm being married?"
I felt Helen start; I remembered that I had seen Mrs. Edgar's name
among her bills. Poor girl!
And then the wedding; and the practical Cadge surprised us all.
All her soul was shining in her eyes as she said, "I will." She looked
upon Pros. with the shy love of a girl who has loved but once. For a
brief minute we saw the depth, the earnestness, the affection that in
her seek so often the mask of frivolity, and I wouldn't be surprised if
more than one tempest-tossed soul envied her peace, her love, her
certitude.
The ceremony was short. The giant, who proved to be Big Tom, gave away
the bride. As the couple rushed off for a brief honeymoon, the newly
made Mrs. Reid--still with the shimmer of tears in her beautiful
eyes--tried hard to resume her old manner.
"'Member, Kitty," she called back from the stairway in a voice that
trembled, "you can't make that antelope cavort too lively. Brown'll
send photographs in the morning."
Soon only Mr. Winship and I were left with Kitty and Helen and the
painted Indians.
"What a Cadge!" said Helen languidly, as she walked with us to the
door. "But she's the best girl in the world."
I believe she's pretty nearly right. I haven't always done Miss Bryant
justice. My mind dwelt upon the lovely picture she had made of trust
and happiness; and I wondered whether my own wife would show shining,
happy eyes like hers when--In my restless dreams the vision of them
lingered, grotesquely alternating with a swaying figure driving a
shadowy antelope--a figure that was sometimes Helen's and sometimes
little Ethel's--until I waked--
And thus began to-day--it has been the hardest day in a hard week.
It is three hours now, maybe, since we returned from Mrs. Baker's
Sunday dinner. A love feast after a feud is trying, but Helen was
brave. Mrs. Baker is too honest for diplomacy, and at first I watched
Helen nervously, as she sat in the familiar library, a red spot in each
cheek, pitting a quiet hauteur against the embarrassed chirpings of her
aunt and Milly's sphynx-like silence.
But little by little the cordiality of the Judge and of his tactful
sister, helped by Ethel's radiant delight and Mr. Winship's pleasure in
the visit, gave another flavour to the dinner than that of the fatted
calf, and warmed the atmosphere out of its chill reminiscence of the
encounter with Hynes.
The children, too, were a resource, though for a minute Joy was a
terror. Baker, junior, was offering me a kodak picture, when she came
running up to look at it.
"You can have it," said Boy; "it's clearer than the one you liked the
other day."
"Thath me!" cried Joy, with a fiendish hop and skip. "Me'n Efel on 'e
thidewalk. Mither Burke, you like me'n Efel?"
"I like you very much."
"Efel too, or o'ny me? Mr. Burke, w'y you don't like Efel too?"
Like Ethel--the shy little wild flower! Like Ethel!
"Say, Mr. Burke," said Boy opportunely, "here's an envelope to put it
in."
"W'at I like," Mr. Winship said, his frosty blue eyes twinkling with
enjoyment, "is to see Sis here gittin' a good dose o' home folks; do
her more good'n med'cine."
And almost he seemed right, for, as the minutes wore on, a brighter
colour rose to Helen's cheeks, and the marvellous charm she knows so
well how to use held us fascinated. She waged a war of jests with the
Judge and fell back into her old caressing ways with Miss Baker. Ethel
could scarcely contain her happiness, and even Milly showed signs of
melting.
I brought Helen away as early as I could--as soon as we had completed
plans for a quiet wedding next Wednesday.
"I hope you're proud of her, Ezra," declared Mrs. Baker as we took
leave; "she told you she's refused a title? But there! All foreigners
break their wives' hearts--Nelly's a sensible girl! You didn't expect,
though, to find New York crazy over her?"
"Oh, I don't know; Helen 'Lizy's ma was a hansome girl; Sis here had
ought to be satisfied if she wears a half as well."
"Come again thoon to thing to Joy," lisped the baby; "Joy loveth you
tho muth."
Helen buried her face in the yellow curls, and when she turned away her
eyes were wet.
I stayed at the studio only long enough to beg Kitty to see that her
charge rests. Just as we were parting at the door, Helen turned full on
me her great, lambent eyes.
"Do you love me?" she asked suddenly.
"Why, I loved you," I replied, "when you were a little freckled Nelly
in pigtails."
And that, at least, is true! God help me to be kind to the most
beautiful woman in the world!
CHAPTER III.
"P. P. C."
June 21, 19--.
Helen and I were to have been married just a year ago. To-day I have
been going over her own story of her life--of her meeting with
Darmstetter, of the blight he cast upon her, of her growth in
loveliness, her brief fluttering in the sunshine, her failure, her
supping with sorrow, her death.
I must bring to a close the record of this miracle.
This who was the most extraordinary woman that ever lived, was also
little Nellie Winship. Again as I remember her as she was--a thing of
such vital force that no man could be unmoved in her presence, of such
supernal loveliness that words can never tell of it--again I feel that
I must be in an ugly dream. But this bit of paper, blotted with tears
and stained with wine and ashes, tells me that there was no mistake.
She had seemed in high spirits that Sunday at the Bakers', though she
was tired when we returned to the studio. Mr. Winship and I made no
stop. Pros. and Cadge were enjoying their brief honeymoon trip and so
Kitty and Helen were left together.
Monday morning I went first to the rooms I had taken; Kitty was to be
there later, arranging our little furniture. She was to live with us
for a time and care for Nelly. But when I reached the office, there lay
on my desk a telegram.
"Helen is ill; come," it read.
Cadge met me at the studio door, white-faced, strangely, silently
gentle. From a tumbled heap among the cushions of the tepee came a
voice like Kitty's, moaning. Cadge tried to speak, but could only point
to the little bedroom.
There, in the straight white dress she wore at the wedding, Helen lay,
as if sleeping, upon a couch. Floods of shining hair fell about her
shoulders. In the white dignity of death her face was marvellous. All
trace of stress and strain had left it, replaced by an enigmatic calm.
She looked not merely beautiful, but Beauty's self vouchsafed to mortal
eyes.
I do not know how long I gazed. Vaguely, between Kitty's sobs, I heard
the ticking of a watch.
"For another woman of such loveliness," at length said a reverent voice
behind me, "we must wait the final evolution of humanity."
Dr. Upton, one of Reid's friends whom I had seen at the wedding, had
reached the house before me. He had been examining a glass, a spoon and
some other objects so quietly that I had not heard. He said that Helen
had been dead some hours.
Mechanically I listened, but it was not until afterward that I
understood the full purport of his speech or of Kitty's story of the
night and morning. Their words reached me as if spoken from some great
distance by the people who live in dreams.
Kitty had come to us; she stood in the doorway, white and shaking.
"Helen--Helen's head ached," she sobbed, "and she begged me to brush
her hair, but when I began, she said it hurt, and told me to stop; then
she fell to writing. I coaxed her to come to bed, for I thought she was
ill; but she called me 'Kathryn' and then I knew I couldn't manage her.
Oh, I was wicked, wicked; but I was afraid of her, always--you know. So
I--oh, how could I?--I fixed a screen against the light and lay down,
meaning to try again in a few minutes; but the instant my head touched
the pillow I must have dropped asleep. The last thing I said was:
'Shall I tell Morphy you're coming?' I was so tired that I don't know
whether she answered. And this morning--oh, I can't believe it; Oh,
Helen, Helen!"
"And this morning?" prompted Dr. Upton.
"This morning when--when I waked and saw her on the couch, I wondered
why she hadn't come to bed; but I dropped a shawl over her and tiptoed
out. It wasn't until half-past eight that I tried--oh, I can't! I
can't! Don't ask me!"
Kitty's voice was lost in hysterical chokings.
Dr. Upton handed me Helen's visiting card. Below the name was scrawled:
"P. P. C."
"It was found pinned to Miss Reid's bedspread," he said; "is that Miss
Winship's handwriting?"
"Yes," I answered. The shaky letters were unrecognisable.
"Don't you see! To say farewell," wailed Kitty. "She's done it a
hundred times when she started for school before I was up. Barnard is
so far. Oh, I can't bear it! How could you, Helen?"
"Don't, Kitty," said Cadge, drawing her from the room.
The doctor motioned me to a table behind the screen of which Kitty had
spoken. There Helen had sat, there lay her writing case, the key sealed
in an envelope addressed to me. Picking up a slip of paper torn from a
letter pad, he asked:--
"Is this also Miss Winship's writing?"
He held it out to me and I read the single line:--
"Don't tell Father."
Dazed, half-comprehending, I repeated: "Yes."
Upton had found nothing else, except Helen's watch, open beside the
writing case, and a glass that still held a little sherry. At this he
looked with sombre intelligence and set it carefully aside.
Nothing in the room had been disturbed. Helen's chair had the look of
having been pushed from the table as she rose but a minute before. Near
it on an easel stood the Van Nostrand picture, smiling--smiling, as if
it had seen no tragedy. On the floor was a little ash as of charred
paper.
In a few minutes Mrs. Reid and Kitty returned with Mr. Winship. Through
the fog that enveloped me I saw with dull curiosity that they had told
him something that he didn't understand.
He could not believe Helen dead, but knelt by her side and coaxed her
to wake, rubbing her fair, slender hands between his leathery palms and
calling her by every pet name of her childhood.
"It's on'y your ol' Dad, Sis," he crooned. "Jes' come to fetch ye t'
yer Ma; that's all. I know yer tired--plum tired out; but Ma 'n' me'll
take care on ye." It was pitiful to hear him.
He desisted at last and looked back at us with a mien of anger.
"Do suthin', some o' ye," he snarled, "'stid o' standin' round like
gumps! Speak to me, Poppet; tell yer ol' Pap w'at ails ye. Fetch some
hot water, you gals! Ain't ye got no sense? Rub her feet; an' her
hands. Speak to me, Sissy--why don't ye?"
As the truth slowly won over him, he straightened himself, one hand
still clasping Helen's cold one.
"It's sudden; sudden," he said. "Doctor, w'at ailed my little Nelly?"
Still numbly inquisitive, I waited. The old man couldn't see the truth,
the horrible truth. What would the doctor say?
It was Cadge's voice that broke the silence; gentle, assured, yet with
a note almost of defiance.
"We think--in fact, Helen overstudied," she said. "We've been much
worried about her."
Dr. Upton turned abruptly. Cadge's irregular, mobile face for once was
still, its quiet demand bent full upon him. His answering look refused
her, but the effort was obvious with which he spoke to the broken man
waiting his verdict.
"Miss Winship--your daughter--" he began.
The words died. Cadge's steady black eyes controlled him.
"Wa-al?"
The doctor bowed his head over Helen. I was listening again to her
watch that ticked insistently. "Don't tell Father! Don't tell Father!"
it said over and over, over and over, louder and louder, until the
words echoed from every corner of the room.
They must hear! That was why she had left it!
"I ast ye w'at ailed my little girl."
"Cardiac asthenia--heart failure," said Dr. Upton, abruptly.
Kitty threw herself upon Cadge, kissing her convulsively, while Mr.
Winship persisted:--
"Sis was first-rate yist'day; w'at fetched the attack on?"
As gently as Cadge herself, Dr. Upton answered:--
"Mr. Winship, your daughter wasn't so strong as she seemed. There was
much in her condition to cause anxiety. I'll be back in an hour," he
added, moving hastily, as Reid entered, toward the door.
Could I let him shoulder the responsibility of concealment? And if I
refused? Publicity--an inquest? At last I was alive to the situation;
in silent gratitude I wrung Upton's hand, but he took no notice of me.
As he passed Reid he growled:--
"Your wife's a good woman to tie to, Pros. She's all right. Lucky she
was telegraphed for."
Cadge had begun to talk in low tones to Mr. Winship. He did not seem to
listen, but the quiet voice soothed him. Gradually his gray, set
features relaxed, though he would not submit to be led from the bedside.
"Ma was right," he said at last, broken and querulous. "We'd never
ought to have let her come to the city. Ye say she'll be famous? Sissy,
my poor little Poppet, w'at good to ye is fame; w'at good is all your
studyin'?"
* * * * *
I did not open Helen's writing case for weeks; not until after my
return from the dreary journey West with Mr. Winship.
Stunned by the shock of her death, bearing not only my grief but the
knowledge that her father and mother must hold me in part responsible
for her fatal coming to New York, I could not face the secret of her
choice of death rather than marriage with me.
It was a hot July night when I turned the key that guarded the secret.
I found the story of the Bacillus, the curse that killed Darmstetter,
that killed Helen. With it was a letter that I have read a thousand
times--this letter that I am now reading. The scent of roses still
breathes from it. On the last page there are splashes of wine.
This is what it says:--
JOHN: I cannot bear it. Prof. Darmstetter gave me death when he gave me
beauty.
I am not a coward; but what is left? I am tired, wretched; there is no
place for me.
The Bacillus has defeated every wish it has aroused. It has refused me
love, ambition, honest work. From men it has compelled fear; from women
hate; it has cut me off from my kind.
You saw Ned smiling into Milly's pale eyes. I should not have cared, I
who was to marry you, but--I love him; you know it--you have known it
since my heart broke, since I tore it out and swore to reign, to
dazzle, to be Queen of the world.
You know what came of my ambitions. The world treated my beauty as a
menace; it struck me down. Then I asked to earn my bread; but without
you I might have starved. You were my refuge--and you--you love a
cripple!
Why didn't I guess? I would have been glad, for Ethel is a dear child,
and I had given you sorrow enough. I did not love you; I do not think I
have pretended to love you. But can no man help seeming to care for
me--help caring while he is with me? Ned told me he did not love; but
you, you I trusted; you would have married me, not letting me know--
Ethel limps, she is plain. Plain as I was when you adored my ugly face,
my freckles. Does beauty kill love, or do men see beauty only where
they love? Little brown partridges, little brown partridges--
The Bacillus is a cheat; every woman to her lover is the most beautiful!
Ethel's good. You would have found me conspicuous, an annoyance among
people who shrink from the extraordinary. I have been fond of Ethel.
I was marrying you to get my debts paid--you knew that--but there was
more. You must believe--you know there was more. I thought you loved
me. Was that strange? How many times have you spoken to me of love? I
wanted to show my gratitude, to make you happy, since happiness was not
for me. I would have tried; I would have buried my own misery; buried
everything but the sense of your goodness. I would have given you the
co-operation of a clever woman. I would have given you the affection
you know I have always felt. I would have worked, planned, compelled
success for you.
But that's over. Ethel is a dear child. I will not stand between you
and Ethel.
Don't pity me. I need no pity. I would endure yesterday and to-day a
thousand times for the sake of the first hour of my beauty. Would I
change now to be like Ethel, to be white putty like Milly--to have your
love, or Ned's? Beauty--I can die with it sooner than drown it in tears.
Don't tell Father. He will suffer; but less than if I went home to eat
my heart out in repinings, to grow old and ugly, cursing the world. I
have lived too long. I am already less beautiful.
If I could destroy the secret! Death, leaving that behind, is
crucifixion. But I was the first, I was the first! That dead face so
gray and old--"Delilah!" it mows at me. I keep my promise! I haven't
robbed you, you shall have your fame! I, too, I shall never be
forgotten!
John, take the secret. Keep my word for me. If you doubt the discovery,
try it on an enemy. If you think my sorrow could have been avoided,
offer the Bacillus as a wedding gift to--.
Give Milly, who has Ned's love, my beauty? Would it turn him from her?
If I thought it--But even for that, there shall be no other! It shall
go first. Forever and forever my name, my face,--
"Delilah!" It grins, it gibbers. Wait for no tests. Print quick!
To-morrow, to-day--it's almost day. Give him what he wants,
John--"Delilah!"
Why do you come back, dead face, dead eyes? Haven't I promised? You
shall have print, type, a million circulation! Go away, you're dead!
What's fame to youth, health, life? It's you who rob and kill. I won't
look--I won't! If I wake Kitty, could she help? I won't look, I'm going
mad!
Gone! I must hurry. He might come back. Shall I leave the secret? It's
life for life, we're even. If beauty were cheap, who'd care for it?
It's death to be first, but afterwards--nothing! If I burned it--but
no--I promised--.
Why not?
"Delilah!" Your health, dead eyes! I haf put t'e bacillus of perfect
vine into t'e new grape juice, and I svear it's--Prosit, dead
eyes!--here's a P.P.C.; quickest goodby--Poor Kitty! You'll be sorry
for the most beautiful woman in the--
The Bacillus of Beauty has had its victim.
Why do I keep the wine-splashed, rose-breathing letter? Why read over
and over the fragments of Helen's journal? Better remember my little
school-mate as she was before the poison stung her. Might she, with
time and contact with life, have reacted against the virus, or must
such loveliness be fatal to what is best in woman? Who can answer?
Helen is dead, Darmstetter is dead, and the Bacillus--
The Bacillus shall have no other victim.
We who were near to Helen have been slow to recover from the shock and
the bitterness of her death. Her father and mother have nothing to hold
them to life; they are uprooted. Ned has grieved for her with bitter
self-reproach, though he is happy with Milly. Ethel and I--
But to-night I can think only of Helen.
THE END.