Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  He put out his hand to take hers, and she met it readily. In her haste to come out with her letter she had not even taken the time to put on gloves, and her warm, firm fingers closed upon his thin hand as though they were the stronger.

  “I must go,” she said. “It is very late.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. I want to thank you, for wishing to help me — and for everything. I know that you would do anything for me, and I like to feel that you would. But there is nothing to be done. Henry will answer my cable, and then I shall go to him.”

  “It is as though you were dying, and I were saying good-bye to you, Helen.”

  “That would be easier,” she answered, “for you and me.”

  She pressed his hand with a frank, unaffected pressure, and then withdrew her own. He sighed as he turned from the dark water to cross the quiet street with her. The people who had been walking about had gone home suddenly, as they do in provincial places, and the electric light glared and blinked upon the deserted, macadamized road. There was something unwontedly desolate, even the air, for the sky was cloudy, and a damp wind came up from the lake.

  Without a word the two walked to the post office, and as Wimpole saw the irrevocable message dropped into the slit, his heart almost stopped beating. A faint smile that was cruelly sad to see crossed Helen’s white face; a reflexion of the bitter victory she had won over herself against such great odds.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE TWO WALKED slowly and silently along the pavement to the hotel, the damp wind following them in fitful gusts and chilling them as they went. They had no words, for they had said all to each other; each knew that the other was suffering, and both knew that their lives had led them into a path of sadness from which they could not turn back. They walked wearily and unwillingly, side by side, and the way seemed long, and yet too short, as it shortened before them.

  At the lighted porch of the hotel they paused, reluctant to part.

  “May I see you to-morrow?” asked Wimpole, in a dull voice.

  “Yes, I must see you before I go,” Helen answered.

  In the light of the lamps he saw how pale she was, and how very tired, and she looked at him and knew from his face how he was suffering for her. They joined hands and forgot to part them when their eyes had met. But they had nothing to say, and they had only to bid each other a good night which meant good-bye to both, though they should meet ever so often again.

  The porter of the hotel stood in the doorway a few steps above them and watched them with a sort of stolid interest. The lamplight gleamed upon his gilt buttons, and the reflexion of them made Helen aware of his presence. Then he went into the entrance, and there was nobody else about. Voices came with broken laughter from the small garden adjacent to the hotel, where there was a café, and far away, at the end of the entrance hall, the clerk pored over his books.

  Still Wimpole held Helen’s hand.

  “It is very hard,” he said.

  “It is harder than you know,” she answered.

  For she loved him, though he did not know it, and she felt as well as he did that she was losing him. But because she was Harmon’s wife and meant to stand by her husband, she would not call it love in her heart, though she knew her own secret. She would hardly let herself think that it was much harder for her than for Wimpole, though she knew it. Temptation is not sin. She had killed her temptations that day, and in their death had almost killed herself.

  The sacrifice was perfect and whole-hearted, brave as true faith, and final as death itself.

  “Good night,” said Wimpole, and his voice broke.

  Helen still had strength to speak.

  “Neither you nor I shall ever regret this,” she answered, but she looked long at him, as though she were not to see him again.

  He pressed her hand hard and dropped it. Once more she looked at him and then turned slowly and left him standing there.

  The porter of the hotel was facing her on the steps. Neither she nor Wimpole had noticed that he had come back and was waiting for them to part. He held a telegram in his hand, and Helen started slightly as she saw it, for she knew that it must be Harmon’s answer to her word of forgiveness.

  “Already!” she exclaimed faintly, as she took it.

  She turned back to Wimpole, and met his eyes again, for he had not moved.

  “It is Henry’s answer,” she said.

  She opened the envelope, standing with her back to the light and to the porter. Wimpole breathed hard, and watched her face, and knew that nothing was to be spared to either of them on that day. As she read the words, he thought she swayed a little on her feet, and her eyes opened very wide, and her lips were white. Wimpole watched them and saw how strangely they moved, as if she were trying to speak and could not. He set his teeth, for he believed that even the short message had in it some fresh insult or injury for her.

  She reeled visibly, and steadied herself against one of the pillars of the porch, but she was able to hold out the thin scrap of paper to Wimpole as he moved forwards to catch her. He read it. It was a cable notice through the telegraph office from Brest.

  “Your message number 731 Henry Harmon New York not delivered owing to death of the person addressed.”

  Wimpole read the words twice before their meaning stunned him. When he knew where he was, his eyes were still on the paper, and he was grasping Helen’s wrist, while she stood stark and straight against the pillar of the porch. She lifted her free hand and passed it slowly across her forehead, opening and shutting her eyes as if waking. The porter stared at her from the steps.

  “Come,” said Wimpole. “Let us go out again. We can’t stay here.”

  Helen looked at him, only half comprehending. Even in the uncertain light he could see the colour returning to her face, and he felt it in his own. Then her senses came back all at once with her own clear judgment and decision, and the longing to be alone, which he could not understand, as he tried to draw her away with him.

  “No, no!” she cried, resisting. “Let me go, please let me go! Please!”

  He had already dropped her wrist.

  “Come to-morrow,” she added quickly.

  And all her lost youth was in her as she lightly turned and went from him up the steps. Again he stood still, following her with his eyes, but an age had passed, with Harmon’s life, between that time and this.

  He understood better, when he himself was alone, walking far on, through the damp wind, by the shore of the lake, past the big railway station, just then in one of its fits of silence, past the wooden piers built out into the lake for the steamers, and out beyond, not counting his steps, nor seeing things, with bent head, and one hand catching nervously at the breast of his coat.

  He understood Helen, for he also had need of being alone to face the tremendous contrast of the hour and to digest in secret the huge joy he was ashamed to show to himself, because it was for the death of a man whose existence had darkened his own. Because Harmon was suddenly dead, the sleeping hope of twenty years had waked with deep life and strength. Time and age were rolled away like a mist before the morning breeze, the world was young again, and the rose of yesterday was once more the lovely flower of to-day.

  Yet he was too brave a man, and too good, to let himself rejoice cruelly in Harmon’s death, any more than he would have gloried, in his younger days, over an enemy fallen in fight. But it was hard to struggle against this instinct, deep rooted and strong in humanity ages before Achilles dragged Hector round the walls of Troy. Christianity has made it mean to insult the dead and their memory. For what we call honour comes to us from chivalry and knighthood, which grew out of Christian doings when men believed; and though non-Christian people have their standards of right and wrong, they have not our sort of honour, nor anything like it, and cannot in the least understand it.

  But Wimpole was made happy by Harmon’s death, and he himself could not deny it. That was another matter, and one over which he had no control. His satis
faction was in the main disinterested, being on Helen’s behalf; for though he hoped, he was very far from believing that she would marry him, now that she was a widow. He had not even guessed that she had loved him long. It was chiefly because his whole nature had been suffering so sincerely for her sake during the long hours since he had read the paragraph in the paper, that he was now so immensely happy. He tried to call up again the last conversation in the dark, by the river; but though the words both he and she had spoken came back in broken echoes, they seemed to have no meaning, and he could not explain to himself how he could possibly have stood there, wrenching at the cold iron rail to steady his nerves, less than half an hour ago. It was incredible. He felt like a man who has been in the delirium of a fever, in which he has talked foolishly and struck out wildly at his friends, and who cannot believe such things of himself when he is recovering, though he dimly remembers them, with a sort of half-amused shame for his weakness.

  Wimpole did not know how long he wandered by the lake in the windy darkness, before he felt that he had control of speech and action again and found himself near the bridge, going towards his hotel. It was less than half an hour, perhaps, but ever afterwards, when he thought of it, he seemed to have walked up and down all night, a hundred times past the railway station, a hundred times along the row of steamboat piers, struggling with the impression that he had no right to be perfectly happy, and fighting off the instinct to rejoice in Harmon’s death.

  But Helen had fled to her own room and had locked the door upon the world. To her, as to Wimpole, it would have seemed horrible to be frankly glad that her husband was dead. But she had no such instinct. She had been dazed beyond common sense and speech by the sudden relief from the strain she had borne so strongly and bravely. She had been dazzled by the light of freedom as a man let out of a dark prison after half a lifetime of captivity. She had been half stunned by the instant release of all the springs of her nature, long forced back upon themselves by the sheer strength of her conscience. And yet she was sorry for the dead man.

  Far away in her past youth she remembered his handsome face, his bright eyes, his strong vitality, his pleasant voice, and the low ringing tone of it that had touched her and brought her to the ruin of her marriage, and she remembered that for a time she had half loved him and believed love whole. She is a hard and cruel woman who has not a little pitiful tenderness left for a dead past, — though it be buried under a hideous present, — and some kind memory of the man she has called dear.

  Helen thought of his face as he was lying dead now, white and stony, but somehow, in her kindness, it became the face of long ago, and was not like him as when she had seen him last. The touch of death is strangely healing. She had no tears, but there was a dim softness in her eyes, for the man who was gone; not for the man who had insulted her, tortured her, struck her, but for the husband she had married long ago.

  The other, the incarnate horror of her mature life, had dropped from existence, leaving his place full of the light in which she was thereafter to live, and in the bright peace she saw Wimpole’s face, as he waited for her.

  In the midst of her thoughts was the enigmatic spectre of the world, the familiar tormentor of those with whom the world has anything to do — a vast, disquieting question-mark to their actions. What would the world say, when she married Wimpole?

  What could it say? It knew, if it knew anything of her, that her husband had been little better than a beast — no better; worse, perhaps. It knew that Wimpole was a man in thousands, and perhaps it knew that he had been faithful to her mere name in his heart during the best of his years. She had no enemies to cast a shadow upon her future by slurring her past.

  Yet she had heard the world talk, and the names of women who had married old friends within the first year of widowhood were rarely untouched by scandal. She did not fear that, but in her heart there was a sort of unacknowledged dread lest Wimpole, who was growing old in patience, should be patient to the end out of some over-fine scruple for her fair name.

  Then came the thought of her new widowhood and rebuked her, and with the old habit of fighting battles against her heart for her conscience, she turned fiercely against her long-silent love that was crying freedom so loudly in her ears. Harmon just dead, not buried yet, perhaps, and she already thinking of marriage! Said in those words, it seemed contemptible, though all her loyalty to her husband had been for a word’s sake, almost since the beginning.

  But then, again, as she closed her eyes to think sensibly, she set her lips to stay the smile at her scruples. Her loyalty had been all for the vow, for the meaning of the bond, for the holiness of marriage itself. It had not been the loyalty of love for Harmon, and Harmon being dead, its only object was gone. The rest, the mourning for the unloved dead, was a canon of the world, not a law of God. For decency, she would wear black for a short time, but in her heart she was free, and free in her conscience.

  To the last, she had borne all, and had been ready to bear more. Her last word had gone at once, with the message of forgiveness he had asked, and though he had been dead before it reached him he could not have doubted her answer, for he knew her. If she had been near him, she would have been with him to the end, to help him, and to comfort him if she could. She had been ready to go back to him, and the letter that was to have told him so was already gone upon its fruitless journey, to return to her after a long time as a reminder of what she had been willing to bear. She could not reproach herself with any weakness or omission, and her reason told her plainly that although she must mourn outwardly to please the world, it would be folly to refuse her heart the thought of a happiness for which she had paid beforehand with half a lifetime of pain.

  When that was all at once and unmistakably clear to her, she let her head sink gently back upon the cushion of the chair, her set lips parted, and she softly sighed, as though the day were done at last and her rest had come. As she sat there, the lines of sorrow and suffering were smoothed away and the faint colour crept slowly and naturally to her cheeks, as her eyes closed by slow degrees under the shaded light of the lamp. One more restful sigh, her sweet breath came slower and more evenly, one hand fell upon her knee with upward palm and loosened fingers that did not move again; she was asleep.

  CHAPTER XIII

  SO ENDS THE history of a day unforgotten in the memories of the men and women, young and old, for whom it chanced to be life’s turning-point. Looking back into the full, past years through which the fight has been fought, most of us still know one day and hour in which the tide of battle turned; we see the faces that rose up against us, and those that stood beside us in the struggle; we hear the words spoken which cheered us to the great charge, or turned our hearts cold and our daring to fear; even our bodily hearts, handfuls of wandering atoms of which not one is left in us from those times, answer the deep memory and beat loud, or fail, as those other atoms did in the decisive instant when one blow more meant victory, and one blow less, defeat.

  Helen’s last letter to her husband came back to her like a ghost, after many weeks, when she was going over Harmon’s papers. There it lay, unopened, as she had sealed it, full of the words that had seemed to cost her life — the promise to pay a debt not justly owed, which no man could claim now. She burned it unread, for she knew every line of it by heart. To read it, even to glance at the writing, she thought, would rouse some pride in her for what she had done and stir a sort of gladness in her soul, because the man was dead and she was safe from him forever. She would not let herself feel such things. Unconsciously she had fought with herself for a principle, not, as most of us do, for the intimate satisfaction of having done right, which is in itself a reward, an object, and an aim for ambition, and therefore not wholly unselfish, not wholly noble, though often both high and worthy.

  Right, as we understand it, is the law for each individual, the principle is for all mankind; and as the whole is greater than any of its parts, so is the principle greater than the law. The law says, “Whosoe
ver sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” But the Blood which was shed for all men required of man no lawful avenging.

  Moreover, law and all forms of law are only deductions made by the intelligence from the right instincts of the people’s heart. Laws which are evolved out of existing circumstances, backwards, as it were, to correct bad results, are rarely anything more than measures of expediency and have not much lasting power. They are medicines, not nourishment for humanity — a cure for the sick, not a rule of life for the sound and whole.

  When such enactments of law-givers tend against those impulses which spring from the roots of human feeling, taking into consideration the happiness of the few and not the good of the many, they are bad medicines for the world. The instant, quick release by divorce from all troubles, great and small, between man and wife, is no better than that other instant, quick relief from bodily pain, which is morphia, a material danger no longer at all dim or shadowy.

  We are a cowardly generation, and men shrink from suffering now, as their fathers shrank from dishonour in rougher times. The Lotus hangs within the reach of all, and in the lives of many “it is always afternoon,” as for the Lotus Eaters. The fruit takes many shapes and names; it is called Divorce, it is called Morphia, it is called Compromise, it is designated in a thousand ways and justified by ten thousand specious arguments, but it means only one thing: Escape from Pain.

  Soft-hearted and weak-nerved people ask why humanity should suffer at all, and they hail every invention, moral or material, which can make life easier for the moment, as a heaven-sent blessing. Why should we be uncomfortable, even an hour, when a little dose of poison can create a lazy oblivion? That is the drunkard’s reasoning, the opium-eater’s defence, the invalid’s excuse. It is no argument for men who call themselves the world’s masters.