He hesitated. On any other day he would have smiled, but just now he was as deeply disturbed as Helen herself, and the absurd incident of the hat assumed a tremendous importance.
“Well? What did he do?” Helen’s nerves were on edge, and she spoke almost sharply.
“He paid for the hat,” answered Wimpole, with an air of profound sorrow, and even penitence, as if it had been all his fault. “And then he went off, before they knew it.”
Helen bit her lip, for it trembled. He had not told the story very clearly or connectedly, but she understood. Archie had just been talking to her strangely about Sylvia, and she had seen that he had fallen in love with his old playmate, and she was afraid. And now, she was horribly ashamed for him. It was so stupid, so pitifully stupid.
The colonel, guessing what greater torment was tearing at her heart, sat still in a rather dejected attitude, waiting for her to speak, but not watching her.
The matter which had brought him was certainly not very terrible in itself, but it stirred and quickened all the ever-growing pain for her son which was a part of her daily life. It knitted its strength to that of all the rest, to hurt her cruelly, and the torture was more than she could bear.
She turned suddenly in her seat and half buried her face against the back of the chair, so that Wimpole could not see it, and she bit the coarse velvet savagely, trying to be silent and tearless till he should go away. But he knew what she was doing. If he had not spoken, she could still have kept back the scalding tears awhile. But he did speak, and very gently.
“Helen — dear Helen — what is it?”
“My heart is breaking,” she said, almost quietly.
But then the tears came, and she shook once or twice, like an animal that has a deep wound but cannot die. The tears came slowly, and burned her like drops of fire. She kept her face turned away.
Wimpole was beside her and held her passive hand. It twitched painfully as it lay in his, and every agonized movement of it shot through him, but he could not say anything at first. Besides, she knew he was there and would help her if he could. At last he spoke his thought.
“I will keep him from you,” he said. “He shall not come near you.”
Her hand tightened upon his, instantly, and she sat up in her chair, turning her face to him, quite white in the dusk, by the open window.
“Then you know?” she asked.
“Yes. It is in the Paris paper to-day. But it is only a report. I do not believe it is true.”
She rose, mastering herself, as she withdrew her hand, and steadied herself a moment against the chair beside him.
“It is true,” she said. “He has recovered. He has written to me.”
Wimpole felt as if he had been condemned to death without warning.
“When?” he managed to ask.
“I got the letter this afternoon.”
Their voices answered each other, dull and colourless in the gloom, and for some moments neither spoke. Helen went to the window and leaned upon the broad marble sill, breathing the evening air from the lake, and Wimpole followed her. The electric lamps were lighted in the street, glaring coldly out of the grey dusk, and many people were moving slowly along the pavement below, in little parties, some gay, some silent.
“That is why I did not let you come up,” said Helen, after a long time. “But now — since you know—” She stopped, still hesitating, and he tried to see her expression, but there was not enough light.
“Yes?” he said, with a question, not pressing her, but waiting.
“Since you know,” she answered at last, “you can guess the rest.”
A spasm of pain half choked her, and Wimpole put out his hand to lay it gently upon her arm, but drew it back again. He had never done even that much in all those years, and he would not do it now.
“I will keep him from you,” he said again.
“No. You must not do that.” Her voice was steady again. “He will not come to me against my will.”
Wimpole turned sharply as he leaned on the window-sill beside her, for he did not understand.
“You cannot possibly be thinking of writing to him, of letting him come back?”
“Yes,” she said. “That is what I am thinking of doing.”
She hardly dared think that she still could hesitate, now that Wimpole was beside her. If he had not come, it might have been different. But he was close to her now, and she knew how long and well he had loved her. Alone, she could have found reasons for refusing ever to see Harmon again, but they lost their look of honour now that this man, who was everything to her, was standing at her elbow. Exaggerating her danger, she feared lest Wimpole should influence her, even unintentionally, if she left the question open. And he, for her own happiness and honourably setting all thoughts of himself aside, believed that he ought to use whatever influence he had, to the utmost.
“You must not do it,” he said. “I implore you not to think of it. You will wreck your life.”
She did not move, for she had known what he would say.
“If you are my friend,” she answered, after a pause, “you should wish me to do what is right.”
It was a trite commonplace, but she never tried to be original, at any time, and just then the words exactly expressed her thought. He resented it.
“You have done more than enough of that sort of right already. It is time you thought a little of yourself. I do not mean only of your happiness, but of your safety. You are not safe with that man. He will drink again, and he may kill you.”
She turned her white face deliberately towards him in the gloom.
“And do you think I am afraid of that?” she asked slowly.
There was a sort of reproach in the tone, and a great good pride with it. Wimpole did not know what to say, and merely bent his head gravely.
“Besides,” she added, “he is in earnest. He is sorry. He was mad then, and he asks me to forgive him now. How can I refuse? He was really mad, really insane. No one can deny it. Shall I?”
“You can forgive him without going back to him. Why should you risk your life?”
“It is the only way of showing him that I forgive him, and my life will not be in danger.”
“Do you think that you can ever be happy again, if you go back to him?” asked Wimpole.
“My happiness is not the question. The only thing that matters is to do right.”
“It seems to me that right is more or less dependent on its results—”
“Never!” cried Helen, almost fiercely, and drawing back a little against the side of the window. “If one syllable of that were true, then we could never know whether we were doing right or not, till we could judge the result. And the end would justify the means, always, and there would be no more right and wrong at all in the world.”
“But when you know the results?” objected Wimpole. “It seems to me that it may be different.”
“Then it is fear! Then one is afraid to do right because one knows that one risks being hurt! What sort of morality would that be? It would be contemptible.”
“But suppose that it is not only yourself who may be hurt, but some one else? One should think of others first. That is right, too.” He could not help saying that much.
Helen hesitated a moment.
“Yes,” she answered presently. “But no one else is concerned in this case.”
“I will leave your friends out of the question,” said Wimpole. “Do you think it will do Archie any good to live under the same roof with his father?”
Helen started perceptibly.
“Oh, why did you say that!” she exclaimed in a low voice, and as she leaned over the window-sill again she clasped her hands together in a sort of despairing way. “Why did you say that!” she repeated.
Wimpole was silent, for he had not at first realized that he had found a very strong argument. As yet, being human, she had thought only of herself, in the first hours of her trouble. He had recalled all her past terrors for her unfo
rtunate son, and the memory of all she had done to keep him out of his father’s way in old days. He had been a mere boy, then, and it had been just possible, because his half-developed mind was not suspicious. Now that he was grown up, it would be another matter. The prospect was hideous enough, if Harmon should take a fancy to the young man, and make him his companion, and then fall back into his old ways.
“Why did you say it? Why did you make me think of that?” Helen asked the questions almost piteously. “I should have to send Archie away — somewhere, where he would be safe.”
“How could he be safe without you?” The argument was pitilessly just.
But, after all, her life and happiness were at stake. Wimpole saw right in everything that could withhold her from the step to which she had evidently made up her mind.
“And if I refuse to go back to my husband, what will become of him?” she asked, still clasping her hands hard together.
“He could be properly taken care of,” suggested Wimpole.
“And would that be forgiveness?” Helen turned to him again energetically.
“It would be wisdom, at all events.”
“Ah, now you come back to your argument!” Her voice changed. “You are pressing me to do what is wise, not what is right. Don’t do that! Please don’t do that!”
“Do you forgive him?” asked the colonel, very gravely.
Again she paused before answering him.
“Why should you doubt it?” she asked in her turn. “Don’t you see that I wish to go back to him?”
“You know what I mean. It is not the same thing. You are a very good woman, and by sheer force of goodness you could make an enormous sacrifice for the sake of what you thought right.”
“And would not that be forgiveness?”
“No. If you freely forgave him, it would be no sacrifice, for you would believe in him again. You would have just the same faith in Harmon which you had on the day you married him. If forgiveness means anything, it means that one takes back the man who has hurt one, on the same real, inward terms with oneself on which one formerly lived with him. You cannot do that, for it would not be sane.”
“No, I cannot quite do that,” Helen answered, after a moment’s thought. “It would not be true to say that I had even thought I could. But then, if you put it in that way, it would be hard to forgive any one, and it would generally be foolish. There is something wrong about your way of looking at it.”
“I am not a woman,” said Wimpole, simply. “That is what is the matter. At the same time, I do not see how you, as a woman, are ever going to reconcile what you believe to be your duty to Harmon with what is certainly your duty to your son.”
“I must,” said Helen. “I must.”
“Then you must do it before you write to Harmon, for afterwards it will be impossible. You must decide first what you will do with Archie to keep him out of danger. When you have made up your mind about that, if you choose to sacrifice yourself, nobody can prevent you. At least you will not be ruining him, too.”
He saw no reason for not putting the case plainly, since what he said was true. Yet as he felt his advantage, he knew that by pressing it he was increasing her perplexity. In all his life he had never been in so difficult a position. She stood close beside him, her arm almost touching his, and he had loved her all his life, as few men love, with an honesty and purity that were more than quixotic. What there was left, he could have borne for her sake, even to seeing her united again with Henry Harmon. But the thought of the risk she was running was more than he could bear. He would use argument, stratagem, force, anything, to keep her out of such a life; and when he had succeeded in saving her, he would be capable of denying himself even the sight of her, lest his conscience should accuse him of having acted for himself rather than for her alone.
He remembered Harmon’s face as he had last seen it, coarse, cunning, seamed with dissipation, and he looked sideways at Helen, white, weary, bruised, a fast fading rose of yesterday, as she had called herself. The thought of Harmon’s touch was more than he could bear.
“You shall not do it!” he exclaimed, after a long silence. “I will make it impossible.”
Almost before he spoke the last words, he had repented them. Helen drew herself up and faced him, one hand on the window-sill.
“Colonel Wimpole,” she said, “I know that you have always been my best friend. But you must not talk in that way. I cannot allow even you to come between me and what I think is right.”
He bent his head a little.
“I beg your pardon,” he answered, in a low voice. “I should have done it — not said it.”
“I hope you will never think of it again,” said Helen.
She left the window, and felt in the dark for matches, on the table, to light a small candle she used for sealing letters. It cast a faint light up to her sad face. Wimpole had stayed by the window, and watched her now, while she looked towards him over the little flame.
“Please go, now,” she said gravely. “I cannot bear to talk about this any longer.”
CHAPTER VIII
AFTER THE DOOR had closed, Helen stood a moment by the table, motionless. Then she sat down by the feeble light of the taper and wrote upon a sheet of paper her husband’s address and one word— ‘forgiven.’ She looked at the writing fixedly for a minute or two, and then rang the bell.
“Have this telegram sent at once, please, and bring me a lamp and dinner,” she said to the servant.
With the lamp came Archie, following it with a sort of interest, as children do.
“You must have been in the dark ever so long, mother,” he said, and just then he saw her white face. “You are not looking all right,” he observed.
Helen smiled, from force of habit, rather wearily. The servant began to set the table, moving stealthily, as though he were meditating some sudden surprise which never came. He was a fairly intelligent Swiss, with an immense pink face and very small blue eyes.
Helen watched him for a moment, and sighed. The man was intellectually her son’s superior, and she knew it. Any one else might have smiled at the thought, as grotesque, but it had for her the cruel vividness of a misfortune that had saddened all of her life which her husband had not embittered. She envied, for her son, the poor waiter’s little powers of mental arithmetic and memory.
“What’s the matter, mother?” asked Archie, who sat looking at her.
“Nothing, dear,” she answered, rousing herself, and smiling wearily again. “I am a little tired, perhaps. It has been a hot day.”
“Has it? I didn’t notice. I never do — at least, not much. I say, mother, let’s go home! I’m tired of Europe, and I know you are. Let’s all go home together — we and the Wimpoles.”
“We shall be going home soon,” said Helen.
“I thought you meant to go to Carlsbad first. Wasn’t it to Carlsbad we were going?”
“Yes, dear. But — here comes dinner — we will talk about it by and by.”
They sat down to table. In hotels abroad Helen always dined in her rooms, for she was never quite sure of Archie. He seemed strangely unconscious of his own defect of mind, and was always ready to enter boldly into conversation with his neighbours at a foreign hotel dinner table. His childish ignorance had once or twice caused her such humiliation as she did not feel called upon to bear again.
“I don’t know why we shouldn’t talk about it now,” began Archie, when he had eaten his soup in silence, and the servant was changing his plate.
“We shall be alone, after dinner,” answered his mother.
“Oh, the waiter doesn’t care! He’ll never see us again, you know, so why shouldn’t we say anything we like before him?”
Mrs. Harmon looked at her son and shook her head gravely, which was an admonition he always understood.
“Did you see anything you liked, to-day?” she asked incautiously, by way of changing the conversation.
“Rather!” exclaimed Archie, promptly. “I met Sy
lvia Strahan — jukes!”
Helen shuddered, as she saw the look in his face and the glitter in his eyes.
“I wish you could remember not to say ‘jukes’ every other minute, Archie,” she said, for the thousandth time.
“Do you think Sylvia minds when I say ‘jukes’?” asked the young man, suddenly.
“I am sure she thinks it a very ugly and senseless word.”
“Does she? Really?” He was silent for a few moments, pondering the question. “Well,” he resumed at last, in a regretful tone, “I’ve always said it, and I like it, and I don’t see any harm in it. But, of course, if Sylvia doesn’t like it, I’ve got to give it up, that’s all. I’m always going to do what Sylvia likes, now, as long as I live. And what you like, too, mother,” he added as an apologetic and dutiful afterthought. “But then, you’re pretty sure to like the same things, after all.”
“You really must not go on in this way about Sylvia, my dear,” said Helen. “It is too absurd.”
Archie’s heavy brows met right across his forehead as he looked up with something like a glare in his eyes, and his voice was suddenly thick and indistinct, when he answered.
“Don’t call it absurd, mother. I don’t understand what it is, but it’s stronger than I am. I don’t want anything but Sylvia. Things don’t amuse me any more. It was only to-day—”
He stopped, for he was going to tell her how he had found no pleasure in his toys, neither in the blocks, nor in the tin soldiers, nor in the little papier-mâché lady and gentleman in the painted cart. But he thought she did not know about them, and he checked himself in a sudden shame which he had never felt before. A deep red blush spread over his dark face, and he looked down at his plate.
“I’m a man, now,” he said, through his teeth, in a rough voice.
After that, he was silent for a time, but Helen watched him nervously. She, too, saw that he was a man, with almost less than a boy’s mind, and her secret terror grew. She could not eat that evening, but he did not notice her. They dined quickly and then they sat down together, as they usually did, quite near to each other and side by side. She could sometimes teach him little things which he remembered, when everything was quiet. He generally began to talk of something he had seen, and she always tried to make him understand it and think about it. But this evening he said nothing for a long time, and she was glad of his silence. When she thought of the telegram she had sent, she had a sharp pain at her heart, and once or twice she started a little in her chair. But Archie did not notice her.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 869