dreaming of that dream, and lays all his prayer before it; and when he meets with the maiden who will honor such effort, he forgets everything else in his life, and gives her all his heart, and studies to ‘worship her by years of noble deeds.’ For a woman who loves love, the heart of such a man is a lifetime’s treasure; for his passion is of the soul, and does not die; and all that he has done has been really but a training of himself for that great consecration. If he be a true artist, all his days have been spent in learning to wrestle with himself, to rouse himself and master his own heart; until at last his very being has become a prayer, and his soul like a great storm of wind that sweeps everything away in its arms. Perhaps that hunger has possessed him so that he never even wakens in the dead of night without finding it with him in all its strength; it rouses him in the morning with a song, and when midnight comes and he is weary, it is a benediction and a hand upon his brow. All the time, because he has a man’s heart and knows of his life’s great glory, his longing turns to a dream of love, to a vision of the flying perfect for which all his life is a search. There is a maiden who dwells in all the music that he hears, and who calls to him in the sunrise, and flings wide the flowers upon the meadows; she treads before him on the moonlit waters and strews them with showers of fire. If his soul be only strong enough, perhaps he waits long years for that perfect woman, that woman who loves not herself, but loves love; and all the time the yearning of his heart is growing, so that those who gaze at him wonder why his eyes are dark and sunken. He knows that his heart is a treasure-house which he himself cannot explore, and that in all the world he seeks nothing but some woman before whom he might fling wide its doors.”
Helen had been leaning on the table, holding her hands in front of her; towards the end they were trembling so much that she took them away and clasped them in her lap. When he ceased her eyes were lowered; she could not see how his were fixed upon her, but she knew that her bosom was heaving painfully, and that there were hot tears upon her cheeks. He added slowly: “I have told you all that I think about life, my dear friend, and all that I think about love; so I think I have told you all that I know.” And Helen lifted her eyes to his and gazed at him through her tears.
“You tell _me_ of such things?” she asked. “You give such advice to _me_!”
“Yes,” said the other, gently, “why not to you?”
“Mr. Howard,” Helen answered, “do you not know what I have done, and how I must feel while I listen to you? It is good that I should hear such things, because I ought to suffer; but when I asked you for your advice I wished for something hard and stern to do, before I dared ever think of love, or feel myself right again.”
Mr. Howard sat watching her for a moment in silence, and then he answered gently, “I do not think, my dear friend, that it is our duty as struggling mortals to feel ourselves right at all; I am not even sure that we ought to care about our rightness in the least. For God has put high and beautiful things in the world, things that call for all our attention; and I am sure that we are never so close to rightness as when we give all our devotion to them and cease quite utterly to think about ourselves. And besides that, the love that I speak of is not easy to give, Miss Davis. It is easy to give up one’s self in the first glow of feeling; but to forget one’s self entirely, and one’s comfort and happiness in all the little things of life; to consecrate one’s self and all that one has to a lifetime of patience and self-abnegation; and to seek no reward and ask for no happiness but love,–do you not think that such things would cost one pain and bring a good conscience at last?”
Helen’s voice was very low as she answered, “Perhaps, at last.” Then she sat very still, and finally raised her deep, earnest eyes and leaned forward and gazed straight into her companion’s. “Mr. Howard,” she said, “you must know that YOU are my conscience; and it is the memory of your words that causes me all my suffering. And now tell me one thing; suppose I were to say to you that I could beg upon my knees for a chance to earn such a life as that; and suppose I should ever come really to love someone, and should give up everything to win such a treasure, do you think that I could clear my soul from what I have done, and win rightness for mine? Do you think that you–that YOU could ever forget that I was the woman who had wished to sell her love for money?”
Mr. Howard answered softly, “Yes, I think so.”
“But are you sure of it?” Helen asked; and when she had received the same reply she drew a long breath, and a wonderful expression of relief came upon her face; all her being seemed to rise,–as if all in an instant she had flung away the burden of shame and fear that had been crushing her soul. She sat gazing at the other with a strange look in her eyes, and then she sank down and buried her head in her arms upon the table.
And fully a minute passed thus without a sound. Helen was just lifting her head again, and Mr. Howard was about to speak, when an unexpected interruption caused him to stop. The front door was opened, and as Helen turned with a start the servant came and stood in the doorway.
“What is it, Elizabeth?” Helen asked in a faint voice.
“I have just been to the post office,” the woman answered; “here is a letter for you.”
“Very well,” Helen answered; “give it to me.”
And she took it and put it on the table in front of her. Then she waited until the servant was gone, and in the meantime, half mechanically, turned her eyes upon the envelope. Suddenly the man saw her give a violent start and turn very pale; she snatched up the letter and sprang to her feet, and stood supporting herself by the chair, her hand shaking, and her breath coming in gasps.
“What is it?” Mr. Howard cried.
Helen’s voice was hoarse and choking as she answered him: “It is from Arthur!” As he started and half rose from his chair the girl tore open the letter and unfolded the contents, glancing at it once very swiftly, her eyes flying from line to line; the next instant she let it fall to the floor with a cry and clutched with her hands at her bosom. She tried to speak, but she was choking with her emotion; only her companion saw that her face was transfigured with delight; and then suddenly she sank down upon the sofa beside her, her form shaken with hysterical laughter and sobbing.
Mr. Howard had risen from his chair in wonder; but before he could take a step toward her he heard someone in the hall, and Mr. Davis rushed into the room. “Helen, Helen!” he exclaimed, “what is the matter?” and sank down upon his knees beside her; the girl raised her head and then flung herself into his arms, exclaining incoherently: “Oh, Daddy, I am free! Oh, oh–can you believe it–I am free!”
Long after her first ecstasy had passed Helen still lay with her head buried in her father’s bosom, trembling and weeping and repeating half as if in a dream that last wonderful word, “Free!” Meanwhile Mr. Davis had bent down and picked up the paper to glance over it.
Most certainly Arthur would have wondered had he seen the effect of that letter upon Helen; for he wrote to her with bitter scorn, and told her that he had torn his love for her from his heart, and made himself master of his own life again. He bid her go on in the course she had chosen, for a day or two had been enough for him to find the end of her power over him, and of his care for her; and he added that he wrote to her only that she might not please herself with the thought of having wrecked him, and that he was going far away to begin his life again.
The words brought many emotions to Mr. Davis, and suggested many doubts; but to Helen they brought but one thought. She still clung to her father, sobbing like a child and muttering the one word “Free!” When at last the fit had vented itself and she looked up again, she seemed to Mr. Howard more like a girl than she ever had before; and she wiped away her tears laughingly, and smoothed back her hair, and was wonderfully beautiful in her emotion. She introduced Mr. Howard to her father, and begged him to excuse her for her lack of self-control. “I could not help it,” she said, “for oh, I am so happy–so happy!” And she leaned her head upon her father’s shoulder again and gazed up into his face. “Daddy dear,” she said, “and are you not happy too?”
“My dear,” Mr Davis protested, “of course I am glad to hear that Arthur is himself again. But that is not finding him, and I fear–“
“Oh, oh, please don’t!” Helen cried, the frightened look coming back upon her face in a flash. “Oh please do not tell me that–no, no! Do let me be happy just a little while–think of it, how wretched I have been! And now to know he is safe! Oh, please, Daddy!” And the tears had welled up in Helen’s eyes again. She turned quickly to Mr. Howard, her voice trembling. “Tell me that I may be happy,” she exclaimed. “You know all about it, Mr. Howard. Is it not right that I should be happy just a little?”
As her friend answered her gently that he thought it was, she sat looking at him for a moment, and then the cloud passed over. She brushed away her tears, and put her arms about her father again.
“I cannot help it,” she went on, quickly, “I must be happy whether I want to or not! You must not mind anything I do! For oh, think what it means to have been so wretched, so crushed and so frightened! I thought that all my life was to be like that, that I could never sing again, because Arthur was ruined. Nobody will ever know how I felt,–how many tears I shed; and now think what it means to be free–to be free,–oh, free! And to be able to be good once more! I should go mad if I thought about it!”
Helen had risen as she spoke, and she spread out her arms and flung back her head and drank in a deep breath of joy. She began singing, half to herself; and then as that brought a sudden idea into her mind she ran to the window and shut it quickly. “I will sing you my hymn!” she laughed, “_that_ is the way to be happy!”
And she went to the piano; in a minute more she had begun the chorus she had sung to Arthur, “Hail thee Joy, from Heaven descending!” The flood of emotion that was pent up within her poured itself out in the wild torrent of music, and Helen seemed happy enough to make up for all the weeks of suffering. As she swept herself on she proved what she had said,–that she would go mad if she thought much about her release; and Mr. Howard and her father sat gazing at her in wonder. When she stopped she was quite exhausted and quite dazed, and came and buried her head in her father’s arms, and sat waiting until the heaving of her bosom had subsided, and she was calm once more,–in the meantime murmuring faintly to herself again and again that she was happy and that she was free.
When she looked up and brushed away her tangled hair again, perhaps she thought that her conduct was not very conventional, for she begged Mr. Howard’s pardon once more, promising to be more orderly by and by. Then she added, laughing, “It is good that you should see me happy, though, because I have always troubled you with my egotisms before.” She went on talking merrily, until suddenly she sprang up and said, “I shall have to sing again if I do not run away, so I am going upstairs to make myself look respectable!” And with that she danced out of the room, waking the echoes of the house with her caroling:
“Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough!”
Lus-tig im Leid, sing’ich von Lieb-e!
CHAPTER XIII
“Some one whom I can court
With no great change of manner,
Still holding reason’s fort,
Tho waving fancy’s banner.”
Several weeks had passed since Helen had received the letter from Arthur, the girl having in the meantime settled quietly down at Oakdale She had seen few of her friends excepting Mr. Howard, who had come out often from the city.
She was expecting a visit from him one bright afternoon, and was standing by one of the pillars of the vine-covered porch, gazing up at the blue sky above her and waiting to hear the whistle of the train. When she saw her friend from the distance she waved her hand to him and went to meet him, laughing, “I am going to take you out to see my stream and my bobolink to-day. You have not seen our country yet, you know.”
The girl seemed to Mr. Howard more beautiful that afternoon than he had ever known her before, for she was dressed all in white and there was the old spring in her step, and the old joy in her heart. When they had passed out of the village, she found the sky so very blue, and the clouds so very white, and the woods and meadows so very green, that she was radiantly happy and feared that she would have to sing. And she laughed:
“Away, away from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs!”
And then interrupted herself to say, “You must not care, Mr. Howard, if I chatter away and do all the talking. It has been a long time since I have paid a visit to my friends out here, and they will all be here to welcome me.”
Even as Helen spoke she looked up, and there was the bobolink flying over her head and pouring out his song; also the merry breeze was dancing over the meadows, and everything about her was in motion.
“Do you know,” she told her companion, “I think most of the happiness of my life has been out in these fields; I don’t know what made me so fond of the country, but even when I was a very little thing, whenever I learned a new song I would come out here and sing it. Those were times when I had nothing to do but be happy, you know, and I never thought about anything else. It has always been so easy for me to be happy, I don’t know why. There is a fountain of joy in my heart that wells up whether I want it to or not, so that I can always be as merry as I choose. I am afraid that is very selfish, isn’t it, Mr. Howard? I am trying to be right now, you know.”
“You may consider you are being merry for my sake at present,” said the man with a laugh. “It is not always so easy for me to be joyful.”
“Very well, then,” smiled Helen; “I only wish that you had brought your violin along. For you see I always think of these things of Nature with music; when I was little they were all creatures that danced with me. These winds that are so lively were funny little fairy-men, and you could see all the flowers shake as they swept over them; whenever I heard any music that was quick and bright I always used to fancy that some of them had hold of my hands and were teaching me to run. I never thought about asking why, but I used to find that very exciting. And then there was my streamlet–he’s just ahead here past the bushes–and I used to like him best of all. For he was a very beautiful youth, with a crown of flowers upon his head; there was a wonderful light in his eyes, and his voice was very strong and clear, and his step very swift, so it was quite wonderful when you danced with him. For he was the lord of all the rest, and everything around you got into motion then; there was never any stopping, for you know the streamlet always goes faster and faster, and gets more and more joyous, until you cannot bear it any more and have to give up. We shall have to play the Kreutzer Sonata some time, Mr. Howard.’
“I was thinking of that,” said the other, smiling.
“I think it would be interesting to know what people imagine when they listen to music,” went on Helen. “I have all sorts of queer fancies for myself; whenever it gets too exciting there is always one last resource, you can fly away to the top of the nearest mountain. I don’t know just why that is, but perhaps it’s because you can see so much from there, or because there are so many winds; anyway, there is a dance–a wonderfully thrilling thing, if only the composer knows how to manage it. There is someone who dances with me–I never saw his face, but he’s always there; and everything around you is flying fast, and there comes surge after surge of the music and sweeps you on,–perhaps some of those wild runs on the violins that are just as if the wind took you up in its arms and whirled you away in the air! That is a most tremendous experience when it happens, because then you go quite beside yourself and you see that all the world is alive and full of power; the great things of the forest begin to stir too, the trees and the strange shapes in the clouds, and all the world is suddenly gone mad with motion; and so by the time you come to the last chords your hands are clenched and you can hardly breathe, and you feel that all your soul is throbbing!”
Helen was getting quite excited then, just over her own enthusiasm; perhaps it was because the wind was blowing about her. “Is that the way music does with you?” she laughed, as she stopped.
“Sometimes,” said Mr. Howard, smiling in turn; “but then again while all my soul is throbbing I feel my neighbor reaching to put on her wraps, and that brings me down from the mountains so quickly that it is painful; afterwards you go outside among the cabs and cable-cars, and make sad discoveries about life.”
“You are a pessimist,” said the girl.
“Possibly,” responded the other, “but try to keep your fountain of joy a while, Miss Davis. There are disagreeable things in life to be done, and some suffering to be borne, and sometimes the fountain dries up very quickly indeed.”
Helen was much more ready to look serious than she would have been a month before; she asked in a different tone, “You think that must always happen?”
“Not quite always,” was the reply; “there are a few who manage to keep it, but it means a great deal of effort. Perhaps you never took your own happiness so seriously,” he added with a smile.
“No,” said Helen, “I never made much effort that I know of.”
“Some day perhaps you will have to,” replied the other, “and then you will think of the creatures of nature as I do, not simply as rejoicing, but as fighting the same battle and daring the same pain as you.”
The girl thought for a moment, and then asked: “Do you really believe that as a fact?”
“I believe something,” was the answer, “that makes me think when I go among men and see their dullness, that Nature is flinging wide her glory in helpless appeal to them; and that it is a dreadful accident that they have no eyes and she no voice.” He paused for a moment and then added, smiling, “It would take metaphysics to explain that; and meanwhile we were talking about your precious fountain of joy.”
“I should think,” answered Helen, thoughtfully, “that it would be much better to earn one’s happiness.”
“Perhaps after you had tried it a while you would not think so,” replied her companion; “that is the artist’s life, you know, and in practice it is generally a very dreadful life. Real effort is very hard to make; and there is always a new possibility to lure the artist, so that his life is always restless and a cruel defeat.”
“It is such a life that you have lived, Mr. Howard?” asked Helen, gazing at him.
“There are compensations,” he replied, smiling slightly, “or there would be no artists. There comes to each one who persists some hour of victory, some hour when he catches the tide of his being at the flood, and when he finds himself master of all that his soul contains, and takes a kind of fierce delight in sweeping himself on and in breaking through everything that stands in his way. You made me think of such things by what you said of your joy in music; only perhaps the artist discovers that not only the streamlets and the winds have motion and meaning, but that the planets also have a word for his soul; and his own being comes suddenly to seem to him a power which it frightens him to know of, and he sees the genius of life as a spirit with eyes of flame. It lifts him from his feet and drags him away, and the task of his soul takes the form of something that he could cry out to escape. He has fought his way into the depths of being at last, and lie stands alone in all his littleness on the shore of an ocean whose waves are centuries–and then even while he is wondering and full of fear, his power begins to die within him and to go he knows not how; and when he looks at himself again he is like a man who has had a dream, and wakened with only the trembling left; except that he knows it was no dream but a fiery reality, and that the memory of it will cast a shadow over all the rest of his days and make them seem trivial and meaningless. No one knows how many years he may spend in seeking and never find that lost glory again.”
Mr. Howard had been speaking very intensely, and when he stopped Helen did not reply at once, but continued gazing at him. “What is the use of such moments,” she asked at last, “if they only make one wretched?”
“At least one may keep the memory,” he replied with a smile, “and that gives him a standard of reality. He learns to be humble, and learns how to judge men and men’s glory, and the wonderful things of men’s world,–so that while they are the most self-occupied and self-delighted creatures living he may see them as dumb cattle that are grazing while the sunrise is firing the hilltops.”
“You have had such moments yourself?” asked Helen.
“A long time ago,” said the other, smiling at the seriousness with which she spoke. “When you were telling me about your musical fancies you made me remember how once when I was young I climbed a high hill and had an adventure with a wind that was very swift and eager. At first I recollect I tried not to heed it, because I had been dull and idle and unhappy; but I found that I could not be very long in the presence of so much life without being made ashamed, and that brave windstorm put me through a course of repentance of the very sternest kind before it let me go. I tried just to promise that I would be more wide-awake and more true, but it paid not the least attention to that; and it would hear no arguments as to the consequences,–it came again and again with a furious burst, and swept me away every time I tried to think; it declared that I had been putting off the task of living my life long enough, and that I was to attend to it then and there. And when I gave myself up as demanded, it had not the least mercy upon me, and each time that I protested that I was at the end of my power it simply whirled me away again like a mad thing. When at last I came down from the hillside I had quite a new idea of what living meant, and I have been more respectful before the winds and other people of genius ever since.”
Helen felt very much at home in that merry phantasy of her companion’s, but she did not say anything; after a moment’s waiting the other went on to tell her of something else that pleased her no less. “I remember,” he said, “how as I came down I chanced upon a very wonderful sight, one which made an impression upon me that I have not forgotten. It was a thicket of wild roses; and I have always dreamed that the wild rose was a creature of the wind and fire, but I never knew so much about it before. After that day I have come seriously to believe it would be best if we prudent and timid creatures, who neither dare nor care anything for the sake of beauty,–if we simply did not ever see the wild rose. For it lives only for a day or two, Miss Davis, and yet, as I discovered then, we may live all our years and never get one such burst of glory, one such instant of exultation and faith as that. And also I seriously think that among men and all the wonderful works of men there is nothing so beautiful and so precious as that little flower that none of them heeds.”
Mr. Howard glanced at the girl suddenly; she had half stopped in her walk, and she was gazing at him with a very eager look in her bright eyes. “What is it?” he asked her, and Helen exclaimed, “Oh, I am so glad you mentioned it! I had forgotten–actually forgotten!”
As her friend looked puzzled, the girl went on with her merriest laugh, “I must tell you all about it, and we shall be happy once more; for you turn down this path towards the woods, and then you must go very quietly and hold your breath, and prepare yourself just as if you were going into a great cathedral; for you want all your heart to be full of expectation and joy! It is for only about one week in the year that you may see this great sight, and the excitement of the first rapture is best of all. It would be so dreadful if you were not reverent; you must fancy that you are coming to hear a wonderful musician, and you know that he’ll play for you, but you don’t know just when. That’s what I used to pretend, and I used to come every day for a week or two, and very early in the morning, when the dew was still everywhere and the winds were still gay. Several times you go back home disappointed, but that only makes you more eager for the next time; and when you do find them it is wonderful–oh, most wonderful! For there is a whole hedge of them along the edge of the wood; and you may be just as madly happy as you choose and never be half happy enough, because they are so beautiful!”
“These are wild roses?” asked the other, smiling.
“Yes,” said Helen, “and oh, think how many days I have forgotten them, and they may have bloomed! And for three years I have not been here, and I was thinking about it all the way over on the steamer.” They had come to the path that turned off to the woods, and Helen led her companion down it, still prattling away in the meantime; when they came to the edge of the woods she began walking upon tip toe, and put her fingers upon her lips in fun. Then suddenly she gave a cry of delight, for there were the roses for a fact, a whole hedge of them as she had said, glowing in the bright sun and making a wonderful vision.
The two stopped and stood gazing at them, the girl’s whole soul dancing within her. “Oh do you know,” she cried suddenly, “I think that I could get drunk with just looking at roses! There is a strange kind of excitement that comes over one, from drinking in the sight of their rich red, and their gracefulness and perfume; it makes all my blood begin to flow faster, and I quite forget everything else.” Helen stood for a few moments longer with her countenance of joy; afterwards she went towards the flowers and knelt down in front of them, choosing a bud that was very perfect. “I always allow myself just one,” she said, “just one for love,” and then she bent over it, whispering softly:
“Hush,’tis the lullaby time is singing, Hush and heed not, for all things pass.”
She plucked it and held it up before her, while the wind came up behind her and tossed it about, and tossed her skirts; Helen, radiant with laughter, glanced at her companion, saying gaily, “You must hold it very lightly, just like this, you know, with one finger and a thumb; and then you may toss it before you and lose yourself in its perfectness, until it makes all your soul feel gracious. Do you know, Mr. Howard, I think one could not live with the roses very long without becoming beautiful?”
“That was what Plato thought,” said the other with a smile, “and many other wise people.”
“I only wish that they might bloom forever,” said the girl, “I should try it.”
Her companion had been lost in watching her, and now as she paused he said: “Sometimes, I have been happy with the roses, too, Miss Davis. Here is some music for your flower.” She gazed at him eagerly, and he recited, half laughingly:
“Wild rose, wild rose, sing me thy song, Come, let us sing it together!–
I hear the silver streamlet call
From his home in the dewy heather.”
“Let us sing the wild dance with the mountain breeze, The rush of the mountain rain,
And the passionate clasp of the glowing sun When the clouds are rent again.”
“They tell us the time for the song is short, That the wings of joy are fleet;
But the soul of the rose has bid me sing That oh, while it lasts ’tis sweet!”
Afterwards Helen stood for a moment in silence; then a happy idea came to her mind, and she turned towards the hedge of roses once more and threw back her head upon the wind and took a deep breath and began singing a very beautiful melody.
As it swelled out Helen’s joy increased until her face was alight with laughter, and very wonderful to see; she stood with the rose tossing in one of her hands, and with the other pressed upon her bosom,–“singing of summer in full-throated ease.” One might have been sure that the roses knew what she was saying, and that all about her loved her for her song.
Yet the girl had just heard that the wings of joy are fleet; and she was destined to find even then that it was true. For when she stopped she turned to her companion with a happy smile and said, “Do you know what that is that I was singing?” When he said “No,” she went on, “It is some wild-rose music that somebody made for me, I think. It is in the same book as the ‘Water Lily’ that I played you.” And then in a flash the fearful memory of that evening came over the girl, and made her start back; for a moment she stood gazing at her friend, breathing very hard, and then she lowered her eyes and whispered faintly to herself, “And it was not a month ago!”
There was a long silence after that, and when Helen looked up again the joy was gone out of her face, and she was the same frightened soul as before. Her lips were trembling a little as she said, “Mr. Howard, I feel somehow that I have no right to be quite happy, for I have done nothing to make myself good.” Then, thinking of her friend, she added, “I am spoiling your joy in the roses! Can you forgive me for that?” As he answered that he could, Helen turned away and said, “Let us go into the woods, because I do not like to see them any more just now.”
They passed beneath the deep shadows of the trees, and Helen led Mr. Howard to the spring where she had been with Arthur. She sat down upon the seat, and then there was a long silence, the girl gazing steadfastly in front of her; she was thinking of the last time she had been there, and how it was likely that the pale, wan look must still be upon Arthur’s face. Mr. Howard perhaps divined her thought, for he watched her for a long time without speaking a word, and then at last he said gently, as if to divert her attention, “Miss Davis, I think that you are not the first one whom the sight of the wild rose has made unhappy.”
Helen turned and looked at him, and he gazed gravely into her eyes. For at least a minute he said nothing; when he went on his voice was much changed, and Helen knew not what to expect “Miss Davis,” he said, “God has given to the wild rose a very wonderful power of beauty and joy; and perhaps the man who looks at it has been dreaming all his life that somewhere he too might find such precious things and have them for his own. When he sees the flower there comes to him the fearful realization that with all the effort of his soul he has never won the glory which the wild rose wears by Heaven’s free gift; and that perhaps in his loneliness and weakness he has even forgotten all about such high perfection. So there rises within him a yearning of all his being to forget his misery and his struggling, and to lay all his worship and all his care before the flower that is so sweet; he is afraid of his own sin and his own baseness, and now suddenly he finds a way of escape,–that he will live no longer for himself and his own happiness, but that his joy shall be the rose’s joy, and all his life the rose’s life. Do you think, my dear friend, that that might please the flower?”
“Yes,” said Helen wonderingly, “it would be beautiful, if one could do it.”
The other spoke more gently still as he answered her, his voice trembling slightly: “And do you not know, Miss Davis, that God has made _you_ a rose?”
The girl started visibly; she whispered, “You say that to me, Mr. Howard? Why do you say that to _me_?”
And he fixed his dark eyes upon her, his voice very low as he responded: “I say it to you,–because I love you.”
And Helen shrank back and stared at him; and then as she saw his look her own dropped lower and lower and the color mounted to her face. Mr. Howard paused for a moment or two and then very gently took one of her hands in his, and went on:
“Helen,” he said,–“you must let me call you Helen–listen to me a while, for I have something to tell you. And since we both of us love the roses so much, perhaps it will be beautiful to speak of them still. I want to tell you how the man who loves the flower needs not to love it for his own sake, but may love it for the flower’s; how one who really worships beauty, worships that which is not himself, and the more he worships it the less he thinks of himself. And Helen, you can never know how hard a struggle my life has been, just to keep before me something to love,–how lonely a struggle it has been, and how sad. I can only tell you that there was very little strength left, and very little beauty, and that it was all I could do to remember there was such a thing as joy in the world, and that I had once possessed it. The music that moved me and the music that I made was never your wild-rose singing, but such yearning, restless music as you heard in the garden. I cannot tell you how much I have loved that little piece that I played then; perhaps it is my own sad heart that finds such breathing passion in it, but I have sent it out into the darkness of many a night, dreaming that somewhere it might waken an echo. For as long as the heart beats it never ceases to hunger and to hope, and I felt that somewhere in the world there must be left some living creature that was beautiful and pure, and that might be loved. So it was that when I saw you all my soul was roused within me; you were the fairest of all God’s creatures that I had ever seen. That was why I was so bitter at first, and that was why all my heart went out to you when I saw your suffering, and why it is to me the dearest memory of my lifetime that I was able to help you. Afterwards when I saw how true you were, I was happier than I had ever dared hope to be again; for when I went back to my lonely little home, it was no longer to think about myself and my sorrow and my dullness, but to think about you,–to rejoice in your salvation, and to pray for you in your trouble, and to wait for the day when I might see you again. And so I knew that something had happened to me for which I had yearned, oh so long and so painfully!–that my heart had been taken from me, and that I was living in another life; I knew, dear Helen, that I loved you. I said to myself long ago, before you got Arthur’s letter, that I would wait for the chance to say this to you, to take your hand in mine and say: Sweet girl, the law of my life has been that all my soul I must give to the best thing that ever I know; and that thing is you. You must know that I love you, and how I love you; that I lay myself at your feet and ask to help you and watch over you and strengthen you all that I may. For your life is young and there is much to be hoped for in it, and to my own poor self there is no longer any duty that I owe. My heart is yours, and I ask for nothing but that I may love you. Those were the words that I first meant to say to you, Helen; and to ask you if it pleased you that I should speak to you thus.”
Mr. Howard stopped, and after he had waited a minute, the girl raised her eyes to his face. She did not answer him, but she put out her other hand and laid it very gently in his own.
There was a long silence before the man continued; at last he said, “Dear Helen, that was what I wished to say to you, and no more than that, because I believed that I was old, and that my heart was dying within me. But oh, when that letter came from Arthur, it was as if I heard the voice of my soul crying out to me that my life had just begun, that I had still to love. As I came out here into the forest with you to-day, my soul was full of a wondrous thought, a thought that brought more awe and rapture than words have power to tell; it was that this precious maiden was not made to be happy alone, but that some day she and all her being would go out to someone, to someone who could win her heart, who could love her and worship her as she deserved. And my soul cried out to me that _I_ could worship you; the thought wakened in me a wilder music than ever I had heard in my life before. Here as I kneel before you and hold your hands in mine, dear Helen, all my being cries out to you to come to me; for in your sorrow your heart has been laid bare to my sight, and I have seen only sweetness and truth. To keep it, and serve it, and feed it upon thoughts of beauty, would be all that I could care for in life; and the thought of winning you for mine, so that all your life I might cherish you, is to me a joy which brings tears into my eyes. Oh, dearest girl, I must live before you with that prayer, and tell me what you will, I must still pray it. Nor do I care how long you ask me to wait; my life has now but one desire, to love you in such a way as best may please you, to love you as much as you will let me. Helen, I have told all myself to you, and here as we gaze into each other’s eyes our souls are bare to each other. As I say those words they bring to me a thought that sweeps away all my being,–that perhaps the great sorrow you have known has chastened your heart so that you too wish to forget yourself, and worship at the shrine of love; I see you trembling, and I think that perhaps it may be that, and that it needs only a word of mine to bring your soul to me! What that thought is I cannot tell you; but oh, it has been the dream of my life, it has been the thing for which I have lived, and for which I was dying. If I could win you for mine, Helen, for mine–and take you away with me, away from all else but love! The thought of it chokes me, and fills me with mighty anguish of yearning; and my soul burns for you, and I stretch out my arms to you; and I cry out to you that the happiness of my life is in your hands–that I love you–oh, that I love you!”
As the man had been speaking he had sunk down before Helen, still clasping her hands in his own. A great trembling had seized upon the girl and her bosom was rising and falling swiftly; but she mastered herself with a desperate effort and looked up, staring at him. “You tell me that you love me,” she gasped, “you tell me that I am perfect! And yet you know what I have done–you have seen all my wrongness!”
Her voice broke, and she could not speak a word more; she bowed her head and the trembling came again, while the other clasped her hands more tightly and bent towards her. “Helen,” he said, “I call you to a sacred life that forgets all things but love. Precious girl, my soul cries out to me that I have a right to you, that you were made that I might kneel before you; it cries out to me, ‘Speak the word and claim her, claim her for your own, for no man could love her more than you love her. Tell her that all your life you have waited for this sacred hour to come; tell her that you have power and life, and that all your soul is hers!’ And oh, dear heart, if only you could tell me that you might love me, that years of waiting might win you, it would be such happiness as I have never dared to dream. Tell me, Helen, tell me if it be true!”
And the girl lifted her face to him, and he saw that all her soul had leaped into her eyes. Her bosom heaved, and she flung back her head and stretched wide her arms, and cried aloud, “Oh, David, I do love you!”
He clasped her in his arms and pressed her upon his bosom in an ecstasy of joy, and kissed the lips that had spoken the wonderful words. “Tell me,” he exclaimed, “you will be mine?” And she answered him, “Yours!”
For that there was no answer but the clasp of his love. At last he whispered, “Oh, Helen, a lifetime of worship can never repay you for words like those. My life, my soul, tell me once more, for you cannot be mine too utterly; tell me once more that you are mine!”
And suddenly she leaned back her head and looked into his burning eyes, and began swiftly, her voice choking: “Oh, listen, listen to me!–if it be a pleasure to you to know how you have this heart. I tell you, wonderful man that God has given me for mine, that I loved you the first word that I heard you speak in the garden. You were all that I knew of in life to yearn for–you were a wonderful light that had flashed upon me and blinded me; and when I saw my own vileness in it I flung myself down on my face, and felt a more fearful despair than I had ever dreamed could torture a soul. I would have crawled to you upon my knees and groveled in the dirt and begged you to have mercy upon me; and afterwards when you lifted me up, I could have kissed the ground that you trod. But oh, I knew one thing, and it was all that gave me courage ever to look upon you; I heard the sacred voice of my womanhood within me, telling me that I was not utterly vile, because it was in my ignorance that I had done my sin; and that if ever I had known what love really was, I should have laughed at the wealth of empires. To win your heart I would fling away all that I ever cared for in life–my beauty, my health, my happiness–yes, I would fling away my soul! And when you talked to me of love and told me that its sacrifice was hard, I–I, little girl that I am–could have told you that you were talking as a child; and I thought, ‘Oh, if only this man, instead of urging me to love another and win my peace, if only _he_ were not afraid to trust me, if only he were willing that I should love _him!_’ And this afternoon when I set out with you, do you know what was the real thing that lay at the bottom of my heart and made me so happy? I said to myself, ‘It may take months, and it may take years, but there is a crown in life that I may win–that I may win forever! And this man shall tell me my duty, and night and day I shall watch and pray to do it, and do more; and he will not know why I do it, but it shall be for nothing but the love of him; and some day the worship that is in his heart shall come to me, tho it find me upon my death-bed.’ And now you take me and tell me that I have only to love you; and you frighten me, and I cannot believe that it is true! But oh, you are pilot and master, and you know, and I will believe you–only tell me this wonderful thing again that I may be sure–that in spite of all my weakness and my helplessness and my failures, you love me–and you trust me–and you ask for me. If that is really the truth, David,–tell me if that is really the truth!”
David whispered to her, “Yes, yes; that is the truth;” and the girl went on swiftly, half sobbing with her emotion:
“If you tell me that, what more do I need to know? You are my life and my soul, and you call me. For the glory of your wonderful love I will leave all the rest of the world behind me, and you may take me where you will and when you will, and do with me what you please. And oh, you who frightened me so about my wrongness and told me how hard it was to be right–do you know how easy it is for me to say those words? And do you know how happy I am–because I love you and you are mine? David–my David–my heart has been so full,–so wild and thirsty,–that now when you tell me that you want all my love, it is a word of glory to me, it tells me to be happy as never in my life have I been happy before!”
And David bent towards her and kissed her upon her beautiful lips and upon her forehead; and he pressed the trembling form closer upon him, so that the heaving of her bosom answered to his own. “Listen, my love, my precious heart,” he whispered, “I will tell you about the vision of my life, now when you and I are thus heart to heart. Helen, my soul cries out that this union must be perfect, in mind and soul and body a blending of all ourselves; so that we may live in each other’s hearts, and seek each other’s perfection; so that we may have nothing one from the other, but be one and the same soul in the glory of our love. That is such a sacred thought, my life, my darling; it makes all my being a song! And as I clasp you to me thus, and kiss you, I feel that I have never been so near to God. I have worshiped all my days in the great religion of love, and now as the glory of it burns in my heart I feel lifted above even us, and see that it is because of Him that we love each other so; because He is one, our souls may be one, actually and really one, so that each loses himself and lives the other’s life. I know that I love you so that I can fling my whole self away, and give up every thought in life but you. As I tell you that, my heart is bursting; oh! drink in this passion of mine, and tell me once more that you love me!”
Helen had still been leaning back her head and gazing into his eyes, all her soul uplifted in the glory of her emotion; there was a wild look upon her face,–and her breath was coming swiftly. For a moment more she gazed at him, and then she buried her face on his shoulder, crying, “Mine–mine!” For a long time she clung to him, breathing the word and quite lost in the joy of it; until at last she leaned back her head and gazed up into his eyes once more.
“Oh, David,” she said, “what can I answer you? I can only tell you one thing, that here I am in your arms, and that I am yours–yours! And I love you, oh, before God I love you with all my soul! And I am so happy–oh, David, so happy! Dearest heart, can you not see how you have won me, so that I cannot live without you, so that anything you ask of me you may have? I cannot tell you any more, because I am trembling so, and I am so weak; for this has been more than I can bear, it is as if all my being were melting within me. But oh, I never thought that a human being could be so happy, or that to love could be such a world of wonder and joy.”
Helen, as she had been speaking, had sunk down exhaustedly, letting her head fall forward upon her bosom; she lay quite limp in David’s arms, while little by little the agitation that had so shaken her subsided. In the meantime he was bending over the golden hair that was so wild and so beautiful, and there were tears in his eyes. When at last the girl was quiet she leaned back her head upon his arm and looked up into his face, and he bent over her and pressed a kiss upon her mouth. Helen gazed into his eyes and asked him:
“David, do you really know what you have done to this little maiden, how fearfully and how madly you have made her yours? I never dreamed of what it could mean to love before; when men talked to me of it I laughed at them, and the touch of their hands made me shrink. And now here I am, and everything about me is changed. Take me away with you, David, and keep me–I do not care what becomes of me, if only you let me have your heart.”
The girl closed her eyes and lay still again for a long time; when she began to speak once more it was softly, and very slowly, and half as if in a dream: “David,” she whispered, “_my_ David, I am tired; I think I never felt so helpless. But oh, dear heart, it seems a kind of music in my soul,–that I have cast all my sorrow away, and that I may be happy again, and be at peace–at peace!” And the girl repeated the words to herself more and more gently, until her voice had died away altogether; the other was silent for a long time, gazing down upon the perfect face, and then at last he kissed the trembling eyelids till they opened once again.
“Sweet girl,” he whispered, “as God gives me life you shall never be sorry for that beautiful faith, or sorry that you have laid bare your heart to me.” Long afterwards, having watched her without speaking, he went on with a smile, “I wonder if you would not be happier yet, dearest, if I should tell you all the beautiful things that I mean to do with you. For now that you are all mine, I am going to carry you far away; you will like that, will you not, precious one?”
He saw a little of an old light come back into Helen’s eyes as he asked that question. “What difference does it make?” she asked, gently.
David laughed and went on: “Very well then, you shall have nothing to do with it. I shall take you in my arms just as you are. And I have a beautiful little house, a very little house among the wildest of mountains, and there we shall live this wonderful summer, all alone with our wonderful love. And there we shall have nature to worship, and beautiful music, and beautiful books to read. You shall never have anything more to think about all your life but making yourself perfect and beautiful.”
The girl had raised herself up and was gazing at him with interest as he spoke thus. But he saw a swift frown cross her features at his last words, and he stopped and asked her what was the matter. Helen’s reply was delivered very gravely. “What I was to think about,” she said, “was settled long ago, and I wish you would not say wicked things like that to me.”
A moment later she laughed at herself a little; but then, pushing back her tangled hair from her forehead, she went on seriously: “David, what you tell me of is all that I ever thought of enjoying in life; and yet I am so glad that you did not say anything about it before! For I want to love you because of _you_, and I want you to know that I would follow you and worship you and live in your love if there were nothing else in life for you to offer me. And, David, do you not see that you are never going to make this poor, restless creature happy until you have given her something stern to do, something that she may know she is doing just for your love and for nothing else, bearing some effort and pain to make you happy?”
The girl had put her hands upon his shoulders, and was gazing earnestly into his eyes; he looked at her for a moment, and then responded in a low voice: “Helen, dearest, let us not play with fearful words, and let us not tempt sorrow. My life has not been all happiness, and you will have pain enough to share with me, I fear, poor little girl.” She thought in a flash of his sickness, and she turned quite pale as she looked at him; but then she bent forward gently and folded her arms about him, and for a minute more there was silence.
There were tears standing in David’s eyes when she looked at him again. But he smiled in spite of them and kissed her once more, and said: “Sweetheart, it is not wrong that we should be happy while we can; and come what may, you know, we need not ever cease to love. When I hear such noble words from you I think I have a medicine to make all sickness light; so be bright and beautiful once more for my sake.”
Helen smiled and answered that she would, and then her eye chanced to light upon the ground, where she saw the wild rose lying forgotten; she stooped down and picked it up, and then knelt on the grass beside David and pressed it against his bosom while she gazed up into his face. “Once,” she said, smiling tenderly, “I read a pretty little stanza, and if you will love me more for it, I will tell it to you.
“‘The sweetest flower that blows
I give you as we part,
To you, it is a rose,
To me, it is a heart.'”
And the man took the flower, and took the hands too, and kissed them; then a memory chanced to come to him, and he glanced about him on the moss-covered forest floor. He saw some little clover-like leaves that all forest-lovers love, and he stooped and picked one of the gleaming white blossoms and laid it in Helen’s hands. “Dearest,” he said, “it is beautiful to make love with the flowers; I chanced to think how I once _wrote_ a pretty little poem, and if you will love me more for it, I will tell it to _you_.” Then while the girl gazed at him happily, he went on to add, “This was long before I knew you, dear, and when I worshiped the flowers. One of them was this little wood sorrel.
I found it in the forest dark,
A blossom of the snow;
I read upon its face so fair,
No heed of human woe.
Yet when I sang my passion song
And when the sun rose higher,
The flower flung wide its heart to me, And lo! its heart was fire.”
Helen gazed at him a moment after he finished, and then she took the little flower and laid it gently back in the group from which he had plucked it; afterwards she looked up and laughed. “I want that poem for myself,” she said, and drew closer to him, and put her arms about him; he gazed into her upraised face, and there was a look of wonder in his eyes.
“Oh, precious girl,” he said, “I wonder if you know what a vision of beauty God has made you! I wonder if you know how fair your eyes are, if you know what glory a man may read in your face! Helen, when I look upon you I know that God has meant to pay me for all my years of pain; and it is all that I can do to think that you are really, really mine. Do you not know that to gaze upon you will make me a mad, mad creature for years and years and years?”
Helen answered him gravely: “With all my beauty, David, I am really, really yours; and I love you so that I do not care anything in the world about being beautiful, except because it makes you happy; to do that I shall be always just as perfect as I may, thro all those mad years and years and years!” Then, as she glanced about her, she added: “We must go pretty soon, because it is late; but oh, before we do, sweetheart, will you kiss me once more for all those years and years and years?”
And David bent over and clasped her in his arms again,
Sie ist mir ewig, ist mir
immer, Erb und Eigen, ein und all!
END OF PART I
PART II
“When summer gathers up her robes of glory, And like a dream of beauty glides away.”
CHAPTER I
“Across the hills and far away,
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day
The happy princess follow’d him.”
It was several months after Helen’s marriage. The scene was a little lake, in one of the wildest parts of the Adirondacks, surrounded by tall mountains which converted it into a basin in the land, and walled in by a dense growth about the shores, which added still more to its appearance of seclusion. In only one place was the scenery more open, where there was a little vale between two of the hills, and where a mountain torrent came rushing down the steep incline. There the underbrush had been cleared away, and beneath the great forest trees a house constructed, a little cabin built of logs, and in harmony with the rest of the scene.
It was only large enough for two or three rooms downstairs, and as many above, and all were furnished in the plainest way. About the main room there were shelves of books, and a piano and a well-chosen music-library. It was the little home which for a dozen years or more David Howard had occupied alone, and where he and Helen had spent the golden summer of their love.
It was late in the fall then, and the mountains were robed in scarlet and orange. Helen was standing upon the little piazza, a shawl flung about her shoulders, because it was yet early in the morning. She was talking to her father, who had been paying them a few days’ visit, and was taking a last look about him at the fresh morning scene before it was time for him to begin his long homeward journey.
Helen was clad in a simple dress, and with the prettiest of white sun bonnets tied upon her head; she was browned by the sun, and looked a picture of health and happiness as she held her father’s arm in hers. “And then you are quite sure that you are happy?” he was saying, as he looked at her radiant face.
She echoed the word–“Happy?” and then she stretched out her arms and took a deep breath and echoed it again. “I am so happy,” she laughed, “I never know what to do! You did not stay long enough for me to tell you, Daddy!” She paused for a moment, and then went on, “I think there never was anybody in the world so full of joy. For this is such a beautiful little home, you know, and we live such a beautiful life; and oh, we love each other so that the days seem to fly by like the wind! I never even have time to think how happy I am.”
“Your husband really loves you as much as he ought,” said the father, gazing at her tenderly.
“I think God never put on earth another such man as David,” replied, the girl, with sudden gravity. “He is so noble, and so unselfish in every little thing; I see it in his eyes every instant that all his life is lived for nothing but to win my love. And it just draws the heart right out of me, Daddy, so that I could live on my knees before him, just trying to tell him how much I love him. I cannot ever love him enough; but it grows–it grows like great music, and every day my heart is more full!”
Helen was standing with her head thrown back, gazing ahead of her; then she turned and laughed, and put her arm about her father again, saying: “Haven’t you just seen what a beautiful life we live? And oh, Daddy, most of the time I am afraid because I married David, when I see how much he knows. Just think of it,–he has lived all alone ever since he was young, and done nothing but read and study. Now he brings all those treasures to me, to make me happy with, and he frightens me.” She stopped for a moment and then continued earnestly: “I have to be able to go with him everywhere, you know, I can’t expect him to stay back all his life for me; and that makes me work very hard. David says that there is one duty in the world higher than love, and that is the duty of labor,–that no soul in the world can be right for one instant if it is standing still and is satisfied, even with the soul it loves. He told me that before he married me, but at first when we came up here he was so impatient that he quite frightened me; but now I have learned to understand it all, and we are wonderfully one in everything. Daddy, dear, isn’t it a beautiful way to live, to be always striving, and having something high and sacred in one’s mind? And to make all of one’s life from one’s own heart, and not to be dependent upon anything else? David and I live away off here in the mountains, and we never have anything of what other people call comforts and enjoyments–we have nothing but a few books and a little music, and Nature, and our own love; and we are so wonderfully happy with just those that nothing else in the world could make any difference, certainly nothing that money could buy us.”
“I was worried when you wrote me that you did not even have a servant,” said Mr. Davis.
“It isn’t any trouble,” laughed Helen. (David’s man lived in the village half a mile away and came over every day to bring what was necessary.) “This is such a tiny little cottage, and David and I are very enthusiastic people, and we want to be able to make lots of noise and do just as we please. We have so much music, you know, Daddy, and of course David is quite a wild man when he gets excited with music.”
Helen stopped and looked at her father and laughed; then she rattled merrily on: “We are both of us just two children, for David is so much in love with me that it makes him as young as I am; and we are away off from everything, and so we can be as happy with each other as we choose. We have this little lake all to ourselves, you know; it’s getting cold now, and pretty soon we’ll have to fly away to the south, but all this summer long we used to get up in the morning in time to see the sun rise, and to have a wonderful swim. And then we have so many things to read and study; and David talks to me, and tells me all that he knows; and besides all that we have to tell each other how much we love each other, which takes a fearful amount of time. It seems that neither of us can ever quite realize the glory of it, and when we think of it, it is a wonder that nobody ever told. Is not that a beautiful way to live, Daddy dear, and to love?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Davis, “that is a very beautiful way indeed. And I think that my little girl has all that I could wish her to have.”
“Oh, there is no need to tell me that!” laughed Helen. “All I wish is that I might really be like David and be worth his love; I never think about anything else all day.” The girl stood for a moment gazing at her father, and then, looking more serious, she put her arm about him and whispered softly: “And oh, Daddy, it is too wonderful to talk about, but I ought to tell you; for some day by and by God is going to send us a new, oh, a new, new wonder!” And Helen blushed beautifully as her father gazed into her eyes.
He took her hand tenderly in his own, and the two stood for some time in silence. When it was broken it was by the rattling of the wagon which had come to take Mr. Davis away.
David came out then to bid his guest good-by, and the three stood for a few minutes conversing. It was not very difficult for, Helen to take leave of her father, for she would see him, so she said, in a week or two more. She stood waving her hands to him, until the bumping wagon was lost to sight in the woods, and then she turned and took David’s hand in hers and gazed across the water at the gorgeous-colored mountains. The lake was sparkling in the sunlight, and the sky was bright and clear, but Helen’s thoughts took a different turn from that.
All summer long she had been rejoicing in the glory of the landscape about her, in the glowing fern and the wild-flowers underfoot, and in the boundless canopy of green above, with its unresting song-birds; now there were only the shrill cries of a pair of blue-jays to be heard, and every puff of wind that came brought down a shower of rustling leaves to the already thickly-covered ground.
“Is it not sad, David,” the girl said, “to think how the beauty should all be going?”
David did not answer her for a moment. “When I think of it,” he said at last, “it brings me not so much sadness as a strange feeling of mystery. Only stop, and think of what that vanished springtime meant–think that it was a presence of living, feeling, growing creatures,–infinite, unthinkable masses of them, robing all the world; and that now the life and the glory of it all is suddenly gone back into nothingness, that it was all but a fleeting vision, a phantom presence on the earth. I never realize that without coming to think of all the other things of life, and that they too are no more real than the springtime flowers; and so it makes me feel as if I were walking upon air, and living in a dream.”
Helen was leaning against a post of the piazza, her eyes fixed upon David intently. “Does that not give a new meaning to the vanished spring-time?” he asked her; and she replied in a wondering whisper, “Yes,” and then gazed at him for a long time.
“David,” she said at last, “it is fearful to think of a thing like that. What does it all mean? What causes it?”
“Men have been asking that helpless question since the dawn of time,” he answered, “we only know what we see, this whirling and weaving of shadows, with its sacred facts of beauty and love.”
Helen looked at him thoughtfully a moment, and then, recollecting something she had heard from her father, she said, “But, David, if God be a mystery like that, how can there be any religion?”
“What we may fancy God to be makes no difference,” he answered. “That which we know is always the same, we have always the love and always the beauty. All men’s religion is but the assertion that the source of these sacred things must be infinitely sacred, and that whatever may happen to us, that source can suffer no harm; that we live by a power stronger than ourselves, and that has no need of us.”
Helen was looking at her husband anxiously; then suddenly she asked him, “But tell me then, David; you do not believe in heaven? You do not believe that our souls are immortal?” As he answered her in the negative she gave a slight start, and knitted her brows; and after another pause she demanded, “You do not believe in revealed religion then?”
David could not help smiling, recognizing the voice of his clerical father-in-law; when he answered, however, he was serious again. “Some day, perhaps, dear Helen,” he said, “I will tell you all about what I think as to such things. But very few of the world’s real thinkers believe in revealed religions any more–they have come to see them simply as guesses of humanity at God’s great sacred mystery, and to believe that God’s way of revealing Himself to men is through the forms of life itself. As to the question of immortality that you speak of, I have always felt that death is a sign of the fact that God is infinite and perfect, and that we are but shadows in his sight; that we live by a power that is not our own, and seek for beauty that is not our own, and that each instant of our lives is a free gift which we can only repay by thankfulness and worship.”
He paused for a moment, and the girl, who had still been gazing at him thoughtfully, went on, “Father used to talk about those things to me, David, and he showed me how the life of men is all spent in suffering and struggling, and that therefore faith teaches us—“
“Yes, dearest,” the other put in, “I know all that you are going to say; I have read these arguments very often, you know. But suppose that I were to tell you that I think suffering and struggling is the very essence of the soul, and that what faith teaches us is that the suffering and struggling are sacred, and not in the least that they are some day to be made as nothing? Dearest, if it is true that the soul makes this life what it is, a life of restless seeking for an infinite, would it not make the same life anywhere else? Do you remember reading with me Emerson’s poem about Uriel, the seraph who sang before God’s throne,–how even that could not please him, and how he left it to plunge into the struggle of things imperfect; and how ever after the rest of the seraphim were afraid of Uriel? Do you think, dearest, that this life of love and labor that you and I live our own selves needs anything else to justify it? The life that I lived all alone was much harder and more full of pain than this, but I never thought that it needed any rewarding.”
David stopped and stood gazing ahead of him thoughtfully; when he continued his voice was lower and more solemn. “These things are almost too sacred to talk of, Helen,” he said; “but there is one doubt that I have known about this, one thing that has made me wonder if there ought not to be another world after all. I never sympathized with any man’s longing for heaven, but I can understand how a man might be haunted by some fearful baseness of his own self,–something which long years of effort had taught him he could not ever expiate by the strength of his own heart,–and how he could pray that there might be some place where rightness might be won at last, cost what it would.”
The man’s tone had been so strange as he spoke that it caused Helen to start; suddenly she came closer to him and put her hands upon his shoulders and gazed into his eyes. “David,” she whispered, “listen to me a moment.”
“Yes, dear,” he said, “what is it?”
“Was it because of yourself that you said those words?”
He was silent for a moment, gazing into her anxious eyes; then he bowed his head and said in a faint voice, “Yes, dear, it was because of myself.”
And the girl, becoming suddenly very serious, went on, “Do you remember, David, a long time ago–the time that I was leaving Aunt Polly’s–that you told me how you knew what it was to have something very terrible on one’s conscience? I have not ever said anything about that, but I have never forgotten it. Was it that that you thought of then?”
“Yes, dear, it was that,” answered the other, trembling slightly.
Helen stooped down upon her knees and put her arms about him, gazing up pleadingly into his face. “Dearest David,” she whispered, “is it right to refuse to tell me about that sorrow?”
There was a long silence, after which the man replied slowly, “I have not ever refused to tell you, sweetheart; it would be very fearful to tell, but I have not any secrets from you; and if you wished it, you should know. But, dear, it was long, long ago, and nothing can ever change it now. It would only make us sad to know it, so why should we talk of it?”
He stopped, and Helen gazed long and earnestly into his face. “David,” she said, “it is not possible for me to imagine you ever doing anything wrong, you are so good.”
“Perhaps,” said David, “it is because you are so good yourself.” But Helen interrupted him at that with a quick rejoinder: “Do you forget that I too have a sorrow upon my conscience?” Afterwards, as she saw that the eager remark caused the other to smile in spite of himself, she checked him gravely with the words, “Have you really forgotten so soon? Do you suppose I do not ever think now of how I treated poor Arthur, and how I drove away from me the best friend of my girlhood? He wrote me that he would think of me no more, but, David, sometimes I wonder if it were not just an angry boast, and if he might not yet be lonely and wretched, somewhere in this great cold world where I cannot ever find him or help him.”
The girl paused; David was regarding her earnestly, and for a long time neither of them spoke. Then suddenly the man bent down, and pressed a kiss upon her forehead. “Let us only love each other, dear,” he whispered, “and try to keep as right as we can while the time is given us.”
There was a long silence after that while the two sat gazing out across the blue lake; when Helen spoke again it was to say, “Some day you must tell me all about it, David, because I can help you; but let us not talk about these dreadful things now.” She stopped again, and afterwards went on thoughtfully, “I was thinking still of what you said about immortality, and how very strange it is to think of ceasing to be. Might it not be, David, that heaven is a place not of reward, but of the same ceaseless effort as you spoke of?”
“Ah, yes,” said the other, “that is the thought of ‘the wages of going on.’ And of course, dear, we would all like those wages; there is no thought that tempts me so much as the possibility of being able to continue the great race forever; but I don’t see how we have the least right to demand it, or that the facts give us the least reason to suppose that we will get it. It seems to me simply a fantastic and arbitrary fancy; the re-creating of a worn-out life in that way. I do not think, dearest, that I am in the least justified in claiming an eternity of vision because God gives me an hour; and when I ask Him the question in my own heart I learn simply that I am a wretched, sodden creature that I do not crowd that hour with all infinity and go quite mad at the sight of the beauty that He flings wide before me.”
Helen did not reply for a while, and then she asked: “And you think, David, that our life justifies itself no matter how much suffering may be in it?”
“I think, dearest,” was his reply, “that the soul’s life is struggle, and that the soul’s life is sacred; and that to be right, to struggle to be right, is not only life’s purpose, but also life’s reward; and that each instant of such righteousness is its own warrant, tho the man be swept out of existence in the next.” Then David stopped, and when he went on it was in a lower voice. “Dear Helen,” he said, “after I have told you what I feel I deserve in life, you can understand my not wishing to talk lightly about such things as suffering. Just now, as I sit here at my ease, and in fact all through my poor life, I have felt about such sacred words as duty and righteousness that it would be just as well if they did not ever pass my lips. But there have come to me one or two times, dear, when I dared a little of the labor of things, and drank a drop or two of the wine of the spirit; and those times have lived to haunt me and make me at least not a happy man in my unearned ease. There come to me still just once in a while hours when I get sight of the gleam, hours that make me loathe all that in my hours of comfort I loved; and there comes over me then a kind of Titanic rage, that I should go down a beaten soul because I have not the iron strength of will to lash my own self to life, and tear out of my own heart a little of what power is in it. At such times, Helen, I find just this one wish in my mind,–that God would send to me, cost what it might, some of the fearful experience that rouses a man’s soul within him, and makes him live his life in spite of all his dullness and his fear.”
David had not finished, but he halted, because he saw a strange look upon the girl’s face. She did not answer him at once, but sat gazing at him; and then she said in a very grave voice, “David, I do not like to hear such words as that from you.”
“What words, dearest?”
“Do you mean actually that it sometimes seems to you wrong to live happily with me as you have?”
David laid his hand quietly upon hers, watching for a minute her anxious countenance. Then he said in a low voice: “You ought not to ask me about such things, dear, or blame me for them. Sometimes I have to face the very cruel thought that I ought not ever to have linked my fate to one so sweet and gentle as you, because what I ought to be doing in the world to win a right conscience is something so hard and so stern that it would mean that I could never be really happy all my life.”
David was about to go on, but he stopped again because of Helen’s look of displeasure. “David,” she whispered, “that is the most unloving thing that I have ever heard from you!”
“And you must blame me, dear, because of it?” he asked.
“I suppose,” Helen answered, “that you would misunderstand me as long as I chose to let you. Do you not suppose that I too have a conscience,–do you suppose that I want any happiness it is wrong for us to take, or that I would not dare to go anywhere that your duty took you? And do you suppose that anything could be so painful to me as to know that you do not trust me, that you are afraid to live your life, and do what is your duty, before me?”
David bent down suddenly and pressed a kiss upon the girl’s forehead. “Precious little heart,” he whispered, “those words are very beautiful.”
“I did not say them because they were beautiful,” answered Helen gravely; “I said them because I meant them, and because I wanted you to take them in earnest. I want to know what it is that you and I ought to be doing, instead of enjoying our lives; and after you have told me what it is I can tell you one thing–that I shall not be happy again in my life until it is done.”
David watched her thoughtfully a while before he answered, because he saw that she was very much in earnest. Then he said sadly, “Dearest Helen, perhaps the reason that I have never been able all through my life to satisfy my soul is the pitiful fact that I have not the strength to dare any of the work of other men; I have had always to chafe under the fact that I must choose between nourishing my poor body, or ceasing to live. I have learned that all my power–and more too, as it sometimes seemed,–was needed to bear bravely the dreadful trials that God has sent to me.”
Helen paled slightly; she felt his hand trembling upon hers, and she remembered his illness at her aunt’s, about which she had never had the courage to speak to him. “And so, dear heart,” he went on slowly, “let us only be sure that we are keeping our lives pure and strong, that we are living in the presence of high thoughts and keeping the mastery of ourselves, and saying and really meaning that we live for something unselfish; so that if duty and danger come, we shall not prove cowards, and if suffering comes we should not give way and lose our faith. Does that please you, dear Helen?”
The girl pressed his hand silently in hers. After a while he went on still more solemnly: “Some time,” he said, “I meant to talk to you about just that, dearest, to tell you how stern and how watchful we ought to be. It is very sad to me to see what happens when the great and fearful realities of life disclose themselves to good and kind people who have been living without any thought of such things. I feel that it is very wrong to live so, that if we wished to be right we would hold the high truths before us, no matter how much labor it cost.”
“What truths do you mean?” asked Helen earnestly; and he answered her: “For one, the very fearful fact of which I have just been talking–that you and I are two bubbles that meet for an instant upon the whirling stream of time. Suppose, sweetheart, that I were to tell you that I do not think you and I would be living our lives truly, until we were quite sure that we could bear to be parted forever without losing our faith in God’s righteousness?”
Helen turned quite white, and clutched the other’s hands in hers; she had not once thought of actually applying what he had said to her. “David! David!” she cried, “No!”
The man smiled gently as he brushed back the hair from her forehead and gazed into her eyes. “And when you asked for sternness, dear,” he said, “was it that you did not know what the word meant? Life is real, dear Helen, and the effort it demands is real effort.”
The girl did not half hear these last words; she was still staring at her husband. “Listen to me, David,” she said at last, still holding his hand tightly in hers, her voice almost a whisper; “I could bear anything for you, David, I know that I could bear _anything_; I could really die for you, I say that with all my soul,–that was what I was thinking of when you spoke of death. But David, if you were to be taken from me,–if you were to be taken from me–” and she stopped, unable to find a word more.
“Perhaps it will be just as well not to tell me, dear heart,” he said to her, gently.
“David,” she went on more strenuously yet, “listen to me–you must not ever ask me to think of that! Do you hear me? For, oh, it cannot be true, it cannot be true, David, that you could be taken from me forever! What would I have left to live for?”
“Would you not have the great wonderful God?” asked the other gently–“the God who made me and all that was lovable in me, and made you, and would demand that you worship him?” But Helen only shook her head once more and answered, “It could not be true, David,–no, no!” Then she added in a faint voice, “What would be the use of my having lived?”
The man bent forward and kissed her again, and kissed away a little of the frightened, anxious look upon her face. “My dear,” he said with a gentle smile, “perhaps I was wrong to trouble you with such fearful things after all. Let me tell you instead a thought that once came to my mind, and that has stayed there as the one I should like to call the most beautiful of all my life; it may help to answer that question of yours about the use of having lived. Men love life so much, Helen dear, that they cannot ever have enough of it, and to keep it and build it up they make what we call the arts; this thought of mine is about one of them, about music, the art that you and I love most. For all the others have been derived from things external, but music was made out of nothing, and exists but for its one great purpose, and therefore is the most spiritual of all of them. I like to say that it is time made beautiful, and so a shadow picture of the soul; it is this, because it can picture different degrees of speed and of power, because it can breathe and throb, can sweep and soar, can yearn and pray,–because, in short, everything that happens in the heart can happen in music, so that we may lose ourselves in it and actually live its life, or so that a great genius can not merely tell us about himself, but can make all the best hours of his soul actually a part of our own. This thought that I said was beautiful came to me from noticing how perfectly the art was one with that which it represented; so that we may say not only that music is life, but that life is music. Music exists because it is beautiful, dear Helen, and because it brings an instant of the joy of beauty to our hearts, and for no other reason whatever; it may be music of happiness or of sorrow, of achievement or only of hope, but so long as it is beautiful it is right, and it makes no difference, either, that it cost much labor of men, or that when it is gone it is gone forever. And dearest, suppose that the music not only was beautiful, but knew that it was beautiful; that it was not only the motion of the air, but also the joy of our hearts; might it not then be its own excuse, just one strain of it that rose in the darkness, and quivered and died away again forever?”
When David had spoken thus he stopped and sat still for a while, gazing at his wife; then seeing the anxious look still in possession of her face, he rose suddenly by way of ending their talk. “Dearest,” he said, smiling, “it is wrong of me, perhaps, to worry you about such very fearful things as those; let us go in, and find something to do that is useful, and not trouble ourselves with them any more.”
CHAPTER II
“O Freude, habe Acht!
Sprich leise,
Dass nicht der Schmerz erwacht!”
It was late on the afternoon of the day that Helen’s father had left for home, and David was going into the village with some letters to mail. Helen was not feeling very well herself and could not go, but she insisted upon his going, for she watched over his exercise and other matters of health with scrupulous care. She had wrapped him up in a heavy overcoat, and was kneeling beside his chair with her arms about him.
“Tell me, dear,” she asked him, for the third or fourth time, “are you sure this will be enough to keep you warm?–for the nights are so very cold, you know; I do not like you to come back alone anyway.”
“I don’t think you would be much of a protection against danger,” laughed David.
“But it will be dark when you get back, dear.”
“It will only be about dusk,” was the reply; “I don’t mind that.”
Helen gazed at him wistfully for a minute, and then she went on: “Do you not know what is the matter with me, David? You frightened me to-day, and I cannot forget what you said. Each time that it comes to my mind it makes me shudder. Why should you say such fearful things to me?”
“I am very sorry,” said the other, gently.
“You simply must not talk to me so!” cried the girl; “if you do you will make me so that I cannot bear to leave you for an instant. For those thoughts make my love for you simply desperate, David; I cry out to myself that I never have loved you enough, never told you enough!” And then she added pleadingly, “But oh, you know that I love you, do you not, dear? Tell me.”
“Yes, I know it,” said the other gently, taking her in his arms and kissing her.
“Come back soon,” Helen went on, “and I will tell you once more how much I do; and then we can be happy again, and I won’t be afraid any more. Please let me be happy, won’t you, David?”
“Yes, love, I will,” said the man with a smile. “I do not think that I was wise ever to trouble you.”
Helen was silent for a while, then as a sudden thought occurred to her she added: “David, I meant to tell you something–do you know if those horrible thoughts keep haunting me, it is just this that they will make me do; you said that God was very good, and so I was thinking that I would show him how very much I love you, how I could really never get along without you, and how I care for nothing else in the world. It seems to me to be such a little thing, that we should only just want to love; and truly, that is all I do want,–I would not mind anything else in the world,–I would go away from this little house and live in any poor place, and do all the work, and never care about anything else at all, if I just might have you. That is really true, David, and I wish that you would know it, and that God would know it, and not expect me to think of such dreadful things as you talk of.”
As David gazed into her deep, earnest eyes he pressed her to him with a sudden burst of emotion. “You have me now, dearest,” he whispered, “and oh, I shall trust the God who gave me this precious heart!”–He kissed her once more in fervent love, and kissed her again and again until the clouds had left her face. She leaned back and gazed at him, and was radiant with delight again. “Oh–oh–oh!” she cried. “David, it only makes me more full of wonder at the real truth! For it is the truth, David, it is the truth–that you are all mine! It is so wonderful, and it makes me so happy,–I seem to lose myself more in the thought every day!”
“You can never lose yourself too much, little sweetheart,” David whispered; “let us trust to love, and let it grow all that it will. Helen, I never knew what it was to live until I met you,–never knew how life could be so full and rich and happy. And never, never will I be able to tell you how much I love you, dearest soul.”
“Oh, but I believe you without being told!” she said, laughing. “Do you know, I could make myself quite mad just with saying over to myself that you love me all that I could ever wish you to love me, all that I could imagine you loving me! Isn’t that true, David?”
“Yes, that is true,” the man replied.
“But you don’t know what a wonderful imagination I have,” laughed the girl, “and how hungry for your love I am.” And she clasped him to her passionately and cried, “David, you can make me too happy to live with that thought! I shall have to think about it all the time that you are gone, and when you come back I shall be so wonderfully excited,–oh–oh, David!”
Then she laughed eagerly and sprang up. “You must not stay any longer,” she exclaimed, “because it is getting late; only hurry back, because I can do nothing but wait for you.” And so she led him to the door, and kissed him again, and then watched him as he started up the road. He turned and looked at her, as she leaned against the railing of the porch, with the glory of the sunset falling upon her hair; she made a radiant picture, for her cheeks were still flushed, and her bosom still heaving with the glory of the thought she had promised to keep. There was so much of her love in the look which she kept upon David that it took some resolution to go on. and leave her.
As for Helen, she watched him until he had quite disappeared in the forest, after which she turned and gazed across the lake at the gold and crimson mountains. But all the time she was still thinking the thought of David’s love; the wonder of it was still upon her face, and it seemed to lift her form; until at last she stretched wide her arms, and leaned back her head, and drank a deep draft of the evening air, whispering aloud, “Oh, I do not dare to be as happy as I can!” And she clasped her arms upon her bosom and laughed a wild laugh of joy.
Later on, because it was cold, she turned and went into the house, singing a song to herself as she moved. As she went to the piano and sat down she saw upon the rack the little springtime song of Grieg’s that was the first thing she had ever heard upon David’s violin; she played a few bars of it to herself, and then she stopped and sat still, lost in the memory which it brought to her mind of the night when she had sat at the window and listened to it, just after seeing Arthur for the last time. “And to think that it was only four or five months ago!” she whispered to herself. “And how wretched I was!”
“I do not believe I could ever be so unhappy again,” she went on after a while, “I know that I could not, while I have David!” after which her thoughts came back into the old, old course of joy. When she looked at the music again the memory of her grief was gone, and she read in it all of her own love-glory. She played it through again, and afterwards sat quite still, until the twilight had begun to gather in the room.
Helen then rose and lit the lamp, and the fire in the open fire-place; she glanced at the clock and saw that more than a quarter of an hour had passed, and she said to herself that it could not be more than that time again before David was back.
“I should go out and meet him if I were feeling quite strong,” she added as she went to the door and looked out; then she exclaimed suddenly: “But oh, I know how I can please him better!” And the girl went to the table where some of her books were lying, and sat down and began very diligently studying, glancing every half minute at the clock and at the door. “I shall be too busy even to hear him!” she said, with a sudden burst of glee; and quite delighted with the effect that would produce she listened eagerly every time she fancied she heard a step, and then fixed her eyes upon the book, and put on a look of most complete absorption.
Unfortunately for Helen’s plan, however, each time it proved to be a false alarm; and so the fifteen minutes passed completely, and then five, and five again. The girl had quite given up studying by that time, and was gazing at the clock, and listening to its ticking, and wondering very much indeed. At last when more than three-quarters of an hour had passed since David had left, she got up and went to the door once more to listen; as she did not hear anything she went out on the piazza, and finally to the road. All about her was veiled in shadow, which her eyes strove in vain to pierce; and so growing still more impatient she raised her voice and called, “David, David!” and then stood and listened to the rustling of the leaves and the faint lapping of the water on the shore.
“That is very strange,” Helen thought, growing very anxious indeed; “it is fearfully strange! What in the world can have happened?” And she called again, with no more result that before; until with a sudden resolution she turned and passed quickly into the house, and flinging a wrap about her, came out and started down the road. Occasionally she raised her voice and shouted David’s name, but still she got no reply, and her anxiety soon changed into alarm, and she was hurrying along, almost in a run. In this way she climbed the long ascent which the road made from the lake shore; and when she had reached the top of it she gathered her breath and shouted once more, louder and more excitedly than ever.
This time she heard the expected reply, and found that David was only a few rods ahead of her. “What is the matter?” she called to him, and as he answered that it was nothing, but to come to him, she ran on more alarmed than ever.
There was just light enough for her to see that David was bending down; and then as she got very near she saw that on the ground in front of him was lying a dark, shadowy form. As Helen cried out again to know what was the matter, her husband said, “Do not be frightened, dear; it is only some poor woman that I have found here by the roadside.”
“A woman!” the girl echoed in wonder, at the same time giving a gasp of relief at the discovery that her husband was not in trouble. “Where in the world can she have come from, David?”
“I do not know,” he answered, “but she probably wandered off the main road. It is some poor, wretched creature, Helen; she has been drinking, and is quite helpless.”
And Helen stood still in horror, while David arose and came to her. “You are out of breath, dear,” he exclaimed, “why did you come so fast?”
“Oh, I was so frightened!” the girl panted. “I cannot tell you, David, what happens in my heart whenever I think of your coming to any harm. It was dreadful, for I knew something serious must be the matter.”
David put his arm about her and kissed her to quiet her fears; then he said, “You ought not to have come out, dear; but be calm now, for there is nothing to worry you, only we must take care of this poor woman. It is such a sad sight, Helen; I wish that you had not come here.”
“What were you going to do?” asked the girl, forgetting herself quickly in her sympathy.
“I meant to come down and tell you,” was David’s reply; “and then go back to town and get someone to come and take her away.”
“But, David, you can never get back over that rough road in the darkness!” exclaimed Helen in alarm; “it is too far for you to walk, even in the daytime–I will not let you do it, you must not!”
“But dear, this poor creature cannot be left here; it will be a bitter cold night, and she might die.”
Helen was silent for a moment in thought, and then she said in a low, trembling voice: “David, there is only one thing to do.”
“What is that, dear?” asked the other.
“We will have to take her home with us.”
“Do you know what you are saying?” asked the other with a start; “that would be a fearful thing to do, Helen.”
“I cannot help it,” she replied, “it is the only thing. And it would be wicked not to be willing to do that, because she is a woman.”
“She is in a fearful way, dear,” said the other, hesitatingly; “and to ask you to take care of her–“
“I would do anything sooner than let you take that walk in such darkness as this!” was the girl’s reply; and with that statement she silenced all of his objections.
And so at last David pressed her hand, and whispered, “Very well, dear, God will bless you for it.” Then for a while the two stood in silence, until Helen asked, “Do you think that we can carry her, poor creature?”
“We may try it,” the other replied; and Helen went and knelt by the prostrate figure. The woman was muttering to herself, but she seemed to be quite dazed, and not to know what was going on about her. Helen did not hesitate any longer, but bent over and strove to lift her; the woman was fortunately of a slight build, and seemed to be very thin, so that with David’s help it was easy to raise her to her feet. It was a fearful task none the less, for the poor wretch was foul with the mud in which she had been lying, and her wet hair was streaming over her shoulders; as Helen strove to lift her up the head sunk over upon her, but the girl bit her lips together grimly. She put her arm about the woman’s waist, and David did the same on the other side, and so the three started, stumbling slowly along in the darkness.
“Are you sure that it is not too much for you?” David asked; “we can stop whenever you like, Helen.”
“No, let us go on,” the girl said; “she has almost no weight, and we must not leave her out here in the cold. Her hands are almost frozen now.”
They soon made their way on down to where the lights of the little cottage shone through the trees. David could not but shrink back as he thought of taking their wretched burden into their little home, but he heard the woman groan feebly, and he was ashamed of his thought. Nothing more was said until they had climbed the steps, not without difficulty, and had deposited their burden upon the floor of the sitting room; after which David rose and sank back into a chair, for the strain had been a heavy one for him.
Helen also sprang up as she gazed at the figure; the woman was foul with every misery that disease and sin can bring upon a human creature, her clothing torn to shreds and her face swollen and stained. She was half delirious, and clawing about her with her shrunken, quivering hands, so that Helen exclaimed in horror: “Oh God, that is the most dreadful sight I have ever seen in my life!”
“Come away,” said the other, raising himself from the chair; “it is not right that you should look at such things.”
But with Helen it was only a moment before her pity had overcome every other emotion; she knelt down by the stranger and took one of the cold hands and began chafing it. “Poor, poor woman!” she exclaimed; “oh, what misery you must have suffered! David, what can a woman do to be punished like this? It is fearful!”
It was a strange picture which the two made at that moment, the woman in her cruel misery, and the girl in her pure and noble beauty. But Helen had no more thought of shrinking, for all her soul had gone out to the unfortunate stranger, and she kept on trying to bring her back to consciousness. “Oh, David,” she said, “what can we do to help her? It is too much that any human being should be like this,–she would have died if we had not found her.” And then as the other opened her eyes and struggled to lift herself, Helen caught an incoherent word and said, “I think she is thirsty, David; get some water and perhaps that will help her. We must find some way to comfort her, for this is too horrible to be. And perhaps it is not her fault, you know,–who knows but perhaps some man may have been the cause of it all? Is it not dreadful to think of, David?”
So the girl went on; her back was turned to her husband, and she was engrossed in her task of mercy, and did not see what he was doing. She did not see that he had started forward in his chair and was staring at the woman; she did not see him leaning forward, farther and farther, with a strange look upon his face. But there was something she did see at last, as the woman lifted herself again and stared first at Helen’s own pitying face, and then vaguely about the room, and last of all gazing at David. Suddenly she stretched out her arms to him and strove to rise, with a wild cry that made Helen leap back in consternation:–“David! It’s David!”
And at the same instant David sprang up with what was almost a scream of horror; he reeled and staggered backwards against the wall, clutching with his hands at his forehead, his face a ghastly, ashen gray; and as Helen sprang up and ran towards him, he sank down upon his knees with a moan, gazing up into the air with a look of agony upon his face. “My God! My God!” he gasped; “it is my Mary!”
And Helen sank down beside him, clutching him by the arm, and staring at him in terror. “David, David!” she whispered, in a hoarse voice. But the man seemed not to hear her, so overwhelmed was he by his own emotion. “It is Mary,” he cried out again,–“it is my Mary!–oh God, have mercy upon my soul!” And then a shudder passed over him, and he buried his face in his arms and fell down upon the floor, with Helen, almost paralyzed with fright, still clinging to him.
In the meantime the woman had still been stretching out her trembling arms to him, crying his name again and again; as she sank back exhausted the man started up and rushed toward her, clutching her by the hand, and exclaiming frantically, “Mary, Mary, it is I–speak to me!” But the other’s delirium seemed to have returned, and she only stared at him blankly. At last David staggered to his feet and began pacing wildly up and down, hiding his face in his hands, and crying helplessly, “Oh, God, that this should come to me now! Oh, how can I bear it–oh, Mary, Mary!”
He sank down upon the sofa again and burst into fearful sobbing; Helen, who had still been kneeling where he left her, rushed toward him and flung her arms about him, crying out, “David, David, what is the matter? David, you will kill me; what is it?”
And he started and stared at her wildly, clutching her arm. “Helen,” he gasped, “listen to me! I ruined that woman! Do you hear me?–do you hear me? It was I who betrayed her–I who made her what she is! _I–I!_ Oh, leave me,–leave me alone–oh, what can I do?”
Then as the girl still clung to him, sobbing his name in terror, the man went on, half beside himself with his grief, “Oh, think of it–oh, how can I bear to know it and live? Twenty-three years ago, –and it comes back to curse me now! And all these years I have been living and forgetting it–and been happy, and talking of my goodness–oh God, and this fearful madness upon the earth! And I made it–I–and _she_ has had to pay for it! Oh, look at her, Helen, look at her–think that that foulness is mine! She was beautiful,–she was pure,–and she might have been happy, she would have been good, but for me! Oh God in heaven, where can I hide myself, what can I do?”
Helen was still clutching at his arm, crying to him, “David, spare me!” He flung her off in a mad frenzy, holding her at arm’s length, and staring at her with a fearful light in his eyes. “Girl, girl!” he cried, “do you know who I am–do you know what I have done? This girl was like you once, and I made her love me–made her love me with the sacred fire that God had given me, made her love me as I made _you_ love me! And she was beautiful like you–she was younger than you, and as happy as you! And she trusted me as you trusted me, she gave herself to me as you did, and I took her, and promised her my love–and now look at her! Can you wish to be near me, can you wish to see me? Oh, Helen, I cannot bear myself–oh, leave me, I must die!”
He sank down once more, weeping, all his form shaking with his grief; Helen flung her arms about his neck again, but the man seemed to forget her presence. “Oh, think where that woman has been,” he moaned; “think what she has seen, and done, and suffered–and what she is! Was there ever such a wreck of womanhood, ever such a curse upon earth? And, oh, for the years that she has lived in her fearful sin, and I have been happy–great God, what can I do for those years,–how can I live and gaze upon this crime of mine? I, who sought for beauty, to have made this madness; and it comes now to curse me, now, when it is too late; when the life is wrecked,–when it is gone forever!”
David’s voice had sunk into a moan; and then suddenly he heard the woman crying out, and he staggered to his feet. She was sitting up again, her arms stretched out; David caught her in his own, gazing into her face and crying, “Mary, Mary! Look at me! Here I am–I am David, the David you loved.”
He stopped, gasping for breath, and the woman cried in a faint voice, “Water, water!” David turned and called to Helen, and the poor girl, tho scarcely able to stand, ran to get a glass of it; another thought came to the man in the meantime, and he turned to the other with a sudden cry. “If there were a child!” he gasped, “a child of mine somewhere in the world, alone and helpless!” He stared into the woman’s eyes imploringly.
She was gazing at him, choking and trying to speak; she seemed to be making an effort to understand him, and as David repeated his agonizing question she gave a sign of assent, causing a still wilder look to cross the man’s face. He called to her again to tell him where; but the woman seemed to be sinking back into her raving, and she only gasped faintly again for water.
When Helen brought it they poured it down her throat, and then David repeated his question once more; but he gave a groan as he saw that it was all in vain; the wild raving had begun again, and the woman only stared at him blankly, until at last the wretched man, quite overcome, sank down at her side and buried his head upon her shrunken bosom and cried like a child, poor Helen in the meantime clinging to him still.
It was only when David had quite worn himself out that he seemed to hear her pleading voice; then he looked at her, and for the first time through his own grief caught sight of hers. There was such a look of helpless woe upon Helen’s face that he put out his hand to her and whispered faintly, “Oh, poor little girl, what have _you_ done that you should suffer so?” As Helen drew closer to him, clinging to his hand in fright, he went on, “Can you ever forgive me for this horror–forgive me that I dared to forget it, that I dared to marry you?”
The girl’s answer was a faint moan, “David, David, have mercy on me!” He gazed at her for a moment, reading still more of her suffering.
“Helen,” he asked, “you see what has come upon me–can you ask me not to be wretched, can you ask me still to live? What can I do for such a crime,–when I look at this wreck of a soul, what comfort can I hope to find?” And the girl, her heart bursting with grief, could only clasp his hands in hers and gaze into his eyes; there was no word she could think of to say to him, and so for a long time the two remained in silence, David again fixing his eyes upon the woman, who seemed to be sinking into a kind of stupor.
When he looked up once more it was because Helen was whispering in his ear, a new thought having come to her, “David, perhaps _I_ might be able to help you yet.”
The man replied in a faint, gasping voice, “Help me? How?” And the girl answered, “Come with me,” and rose weakly to her feet, half lifting him also. He gazed at the woman and saw that she was lying still, and then he did as Helen asked. She led him gently into the other room, away from the fearful sight, and the two sat down, David limp and helpless, so that he could only sink down in her arms with a groan. “Poor, poor David,” she whispered, in a voice of infinite pity; “oh, my poor David!”