Helen woke next morning after unbroken, heavy slumbers, with a mind as
vague and empty as a young child's. All night long she had been dreaming
strange, dreary dreams of her youth. There had been no pain in them, or
fear, only a sad lassitude, as of one who, beaten and weary, looks back
from a far distance at pain and fear outlived. And lying in her bed,
inert and placid, she felt as if she had been in a great battle, and
that after the annihilation of anaesthetics she had waked to find herself
with limbs gone and wounds bandaged, passive and acquiescent, in a world
from which all large issues had been eliminated for ever.
It was the emptiest kind of life on which her eyes opened so quietly
this morning. She was not even to be life's captive. The little note
which had come to her last night from Franklin and now lay beside her
bed had told her that. He had told her that Althea had taken him back,
and he had only added, 'Thank you, dear Helen, for all that you have
given me and all that you were willing to give.'
In the overpowering sense of sadness that had been the last of the day's
great emotions Helen had found no mitigation of relief for her own
escape. That she had escaped made only an added bitterness. And even
sadness seemed to be a memory this morning, and the relief that came,
profound and almost sweet, was in the sense of having passed away from
feeling. She had felt too much; though, had life been in her with which
to think or feel, she could have wept over Franklin.
Sometimes she closed her eyes, too much at peace for a smile; sometimes
she looked quietly about her familiar little room, above Aunt Grizel's,
and showing from its windows only a view of the sky and of the
chimney-pots opposite, a room oddly empty of associations and links; no
photographs, few books, few pictures; only the vase of flowers she liked
always to have near her; her old Bible and prayer-book and hymnal,
battered by years rather than by use, for religion held no part at all
in Helen's life; and two faded prints of seventeenth-century
battleships, sailing in gallant squadrons on a silvery sea. These had
hung in Helen's schoolroom, and she had always been fond of them. The
room was symbolic of her life, so insignificant in every outer contact,
so centred, in her significant self, on its one deep preoccupation. But
there was no preoccupation now. Gerald's image passed before her and
meant nothing more than the other things she looked at, while her mind
drifted like an aimless butterfly from the flowers and the prints to the
pretty old mirror--a gift of Gerald's--and hovered over the graceful
feminine objects scattered upon the chairs and tables. The thought of
Gerald stirred nothing more than a mild wonder. What a strange thing,
her whole life hanging on this man, coloured, moulded by him. What did
such a feeling mean? and what had she really wanted of Gerald more than
he had given? She wanted nothing now.
It was with an effort--a painful, dragging effort--that she roused
herself to talk to Aunt Grizel, who appeared at the same time as her
breakfast. Not that she needed to act placidity and acquiescence before
Aunt Grizel; she felt them too deeply to need to act; the pain, perhaps,
came from having nothing else with which to meet her.
Aunt Grizel was amazed, distressed, nearly indignant; she only was not
indignant because of a pity that perplexed even while it soothed her.
She, too, had had a letter from Franklin that morning, and only that
morning had heard of the broken engagement and of how Franklin faced it.
She did not offer to show Helen Franklin's letter, which she held in her
hand, emphasising her perplexity by doubling it over and slapping her
palm with it. 'She sent for him, then.' It was on Althea that she longed
to discharge her smothered anger.
Helen was ready for her; to have to be so ready was part of the pain.
'Well, in a sense perhaps, it was all she could do, wasn't it? when she
found that she couldn't go on with Gerald, and really wanted Franklin at
last.'
'Rather late in the day to come to that conclusion when Mr. Kane was
engaged to another woman.'
'Well--he was engaged to another woman only because Althea wouldn't have
him.'
'Oh!--Ah!' Aunt Grizel was non-committal on this point. 'She lets him
seem to jilt you.'
'Perhaps she does.' Helen's placidity was profound.
'I know Mr. Kane, he wouldn't have been willing to do that unless
pressure had been brought to bear.'
'Pressure was, I suppose; the pressure of his own feeling and of
Althea's unhappiness. He saw that his chance had come and he had to take
it. He couldn't go on and marry me, could he, Aunt Grizel? when he saw
the chance had come for him to take,' said Helen reasonably.
'Well,' said Aunt Grizel, 'the main point isn't, of course, what the
people who know of your engagement will think--we don't mind that. What
we want to decide on is what we think ourselves. I keep my own counsel,
for I know you'd rather I did, and you keep yours. But what about this
money? He writes to me that he wants me to take over from him quite a
little fortune, so that when I die I can leave you about a thousand a
year. He has thought it out; it isn't too much and it isn't too little.
He is altogether a remarkable man; his tact never fails him. Of course
it's nothing compared with what he wanted to do for you; but at the same
time it's so much that, to put it brutally, you get for nothing the
safety I wanted you to marry him to get.'
Helen's delicate and weary head now turned on its pillow to look at Aunt
Grizel. They looked at each other for some time in silence, and in the
silence they took counsel together. After the interchange Helen could
say, smiling a little, 'We mustn't put it brutally; that is the one
thing we must never do. Not only for his sake,' she wanted Aunt Grizel
to see it clearly, 'but for mine.'
'How shall we put it, then? It's hardly a possible thing to accept, yet,
if he hadn't believed you would let him make you safe, would he have
gone back to Miss Jakes? One sees his point.'
'We mustn't put it brutally, because it isn't true,' said Helen,
ignoring this last inference. 'I couldn't let you take it for me unless
I cared very much for him; and I care so much that I can't take it.'
Aunt Grizel was silent for another moment. 'I see: it's because it's all
you can do for him now.'
'All that he can do for me, now,' Helen just corrected her.
'Wasn't it all he ever could do, and more? He makes you safe--of course
it's not what I wanted for you, but it's part of it--he makes you safe
and he removes himself.'
Aunt Grizel saw the truth so clearly that Helen could allow her to seem
brutal. 'It's only because we could both do a good deal for each other
that doing this is possible,' she said.
She then roused herself to pour out her coffee and butter her toast, and
Miss Buchanan sat in silence beside her, tapping Franklin Winslow Kane's
letter on her palm from time to time. And at last she brought out her
final decision. 'When I write to him and tell him that I accept, I shall
tell him too, that I'm sorry.'
'Sorry? For what?' Helen did not quite follow her.
'That it's all he can do now,' said Aunt Grizel; 'that he is removing
himself.'
It was her tribute to Franklin, and Helen, even for the sake of all the
delicate appearances, couldn't protest against such a tribute. She was
glad that Franklin was to know, from Aunt Grizel, that he, himself, was
regretted. So that she said, 'Yes; I'm glad you can tell him that.'
It was at this moment of complete understanding that the maid came in
and said that Mr. Digby was downstairs and wanted to see Miss Helen. He
would wait as long as she liked. There was then a little pause, and Aunt
Grizel saw a greater weariness pass over her niece's face.
'Very well,' she spoke for her to the maid. 'Tell Mr. Digby that some
one will be with him directly,' and, as the door closed: 'You're not fit
to see him this morning, Helen,' she said; 'not fit to pour balms into
his wounds. Let me do it for you.'
Helen lay gazing before her, and she was still silent. She did not know
what she wanted; but she did know that she did not want to see Gerald.
The thought of seeing him was intolerable. 'Will you pour balms?' she
said. 'I'm afraid you are not too sorry for Gerald.'
'Well, to tell you the truth, I'm not,' said Aunt Grizel, smiling a
little grimly. 'He takes things too easily, and I confess that it does
rather please me to see him, for once in his life, "get left." He needed
to "get left."'
'Well, you won't tell him that, if I let you go to him instead of me?
You will be nice to him?'
'Oh, I'll be nice enough. I'll condole with him.'
'Tell him,' said Helen, as Aunt Grizel moved resolutely to the door,
'that I can't see anybody; not for a long time. I shall go away, I
think.'