Chapter 2

"Not so very long ago," said the colonel. "I know something about scars, and that one is not many years old. It does not look as though you had got it in a fall either. Besides, if you had, you would not mind telling me, would you?""Please don't ask me about it! I cannot tell you about it."The colonel's face was hardening quickly. The lines came out in it stern and straight, as when, at evening, a sudden frost falls upon a still water, and the first ice-needles shoot out, clear and stiff. Then came the certainty, and Wimpole looked as he had looked long ago in battle."Harmon did that," he said at last, and the wrathful thought that followed was not the less fierce because it was unspoken.Helen's hands shook now, for no one had ever known how she had been wounded. But she said nothing, though she knew that her silence meant her assent. Wimpole rose suddenly, straight as a rifle, and walked to the window, turning his back upon her. He could say things there, under his breath, which she could not understand, and he said them, earnestly."He did not know what he was doing," Helen said, rather unsteadily.The colonel turned on his heels at the window, facing her, and his lips still moved slowly, though no words came. Helen looked at him and knew that she was glad of his silent anger. Not realizing what she was thinking of, she wondered what sort of death Harmon might have died if Richard Wimpole had seen him strike her to the ground with a cut-glass decanter. For a moment the cloak of mercy and forgiveness was rent from head to heel. The colonel would have killed the man with those rather delicate looking hands of his, talking to him all the time in a low voice. That was what she thought, and perhaps she was not very far wrong. Even now, it was well for Harmon that he was safe in his asylum on the other side of an ocean.It was some time before Wimpole could speak. Then he came and stood before Helen."You will stay a few days? You do not mean to go away at once?" he said, with a question."Yes.""Then I think I shall go away now, and come and see you again later."He took her hand rather mechanically and left the room. But she understood and was grateful.CHAPTER IIIWhen Archie Harmon disappeared and left the colonel and his mother together, she supposed that he had gone to his room to sleep, for he slept a great deal, or to amuse himself after his fashion, and she did not ask him where he was going. She knew what his favourite amusement was, though he did his best to keep it a secret from her.There was a certain mysterious box, which he had always owned, and took everywhere with him, and of which he always had the key in his pocket. It took up a good deal of space, but he could never be persuaded to leave it behind when they went abroad.To-day he went to his room, as usual, locked the door, took off his coat, and got the box out of a corner. Then he sat down on the floor and opened it. He took out some child's building-blocks, some tin soldiers, much the worse for wear, for he was ashamed to buy new ones, and a small and gaudily painted tin cart, in which an impossible lady and gentleman of papier-mâché, dressed in blue, grey, and yellow, sat leaning back with folded arms and staring, painted eyes. There were a few other toys besides, all packed away with considerable neatness, for Archie was not slovenly.He sat cross-legged on the floor, a strong grown man of nearly twenty years, and began to play with his blocks. His eyes fixed themselves on his occupation, as he built up a little gateway with an arch and set red-legged French soldiers on each side of it for sentinels. He had played the same game a thousand times already, but the satisfaction had not diminished. One day in a hotel he had forgotten to lock the door, and his mother had opened it by mistake, thinking it was that of her own room. Before he could look round she had shut it again, but she had seen, and it had been like a knife-thrust. She kept his secret, but she lost heart from that day. He was still a child, and was always to be one.Yet there was perhaps something more of intelligence in the childish play than she had guessed. He was lacking in mind, but not an idiot; he sometimes said and did things which were certainly far beyond the age of toys. Possibly the attraction lay in a sort of companionship which he felt in the society of the blocks, and the tin soldiers, and the little papier-mâché lady and gentleman. He felt that they understood what he meant and would answer him if they could speak, and would expect no more of him than he could give. Grown people always seemed to expect a great deal more, and looked at him strangely when he called Berlin the capital of Austria and asked why Brutus and Cassius murdered Alexander the Great. The toy lady and gentleman were quite satisfied if their necks were not broken in the cunningly devised earthquake which always brought the block house down into a heap when he had looked at it long enough and was already planning another.Besides, he did all his best thinking among his toys, and had invented ways of working out results at which he could not possibly have arrived by a purely mental process. He could add and subtract, for instance, with the bits of wood, and, by a laborious method, he could even do simple multiplication, quite beyond him with paper and pencil. Above all, he could name the tin soldiers after people he had met, and make them do anything he pleased, by a sort of rudimentary theatrical instinct that was not altogether childish.To-day he built a house as usual, and, as usual, after some reflexion as to the best means of ruining it by taking out a single block, he pulled it down with a crash. But he did not at once begin another. On the contrary, he sat looking at the ruins for a long time in a rather disconsolate way, and then all at once began to pack all the toys into the box again."I don't suppose it matters," he said aloud. "But of course Sylvia would think me a baby if she saw me playing with blocks."And he made haste to pack them all away, locking the box and putting the key into his pocket. Then he went and looked through the half-closed blinds into the sunny street, and he could see the new bridge not far away."I don't care what mother thinks!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to find her again."He opened his door softly, and a moment later he was in the street, walking rapidly towards the bridge. At a distance he looked well. It was only when quite near to him that one was aware of an undefinable ungainliness in his face and figure--something blank and meaningless about him, that suggested a heavy wooden doll dressed in good clothes. In military countries one often receives that impression. A fine-looking infantry soldier, erect, broad shouldered, bright eyed, spotless, and scrupulously neat, comes marching along and excites one's admiration for a moment. Then, when close to him, one misses something which ought to go with such manly bearing. The fellow is only a country lout, perhaps, hardly able to read or write, and possessed of an intelligence not much beyond the highest development of instinct. Drill, exercise, and the fear of black bread and water under arrest, have produced a fine piece of military machinery, but they could not create a mind, nor even the appearance of intelligence, in the wooden face. In a year or two the man will lay aside his smart uniform and go back to the class whence he came. One may give iron the shape and general look of steel, but not the temper and the springing quality.Archie Harmon looked straight ahead of him as he crossed the bridge and followed the long street that runs beside the water, past the big hotels and the gaudy awnings of the provincially smart shops. At first he only looked along the pavement, searching among the many people who passed. Then as he remembered how Colonel Wimpole had seen him through a shop window, he stopped before each of the big plate glass ones and peered curiously into the shadows within.At last, in a milliner's, he saw Sylvia and Miss Wimpole, and his heavy face grew red, and his eyes glared oddly as he stood motionless outside, under the awning, looking in. His lips went out a little, as he pronounced his own especial word very softly."Jukes!"He stood first on one foot and then on the other, like a boy at a pastry cook's, hesitating, while devouring with his eyes. He could see that Sylvia was buying a hat. She turned a little each way as she tried it on before a big mirror, putting up her hands and moving her arms in a way that showed all the lines of her perfect figure.Archie went in. He had been brought up by his mother, and chiefly by women, and he had none of that shyness about entering a women's establishment, like a milliner's, which most boys and many men feel so strongly. He walked in boldly and spoke as soon as he was within hearing."Miss Sylvia! I say! Miss Sylvia--don't you know me?"The question was a little premature, for Sylvia had barely caught sight of him when he asked it. When she had recognized him, she did not look particularly pleased."It's poor Archie Harmon, my dear," said Miss Wimpole, in a low voice, but quite audibly."Oh, I have not forgotten you!" said Sylvia, trying to speak pleasantly as she gave her hand. "But where in the world did you come from? And what are you doing in a milliner's shop?""I happened to see you through the window, so I just came in to say how do you do. There's no harm in my coming in, is there? You look all right. You're perfectly lovely."His eyes were so bright that Sylvia felt oddly uncomfortable."Oh no," she answered, with an indifference she did not feel. "It's all right--I mean--I wish you would go away now, and come and see us at the hotel, if you like, by and by.""Can't I stay and talk to you? Why can't I stay and talk to her, Miss Wimpole?" he asked, appealing to the latter. "I want to stay and talk to her. We are awfully old friends, you know; aren't we, Sylvia? You don't mind my calling you Sylvia, instead of Miss Sylvia, do you?""Oh no! I don't mind that!" Sylvia laughed a little. "But do please go away now!""Well--if I must--" he broke off, evidently reluctant to do as she wished. "I say," he began again with a sudden thought, "you like that hat you're trying on, don't you?"Instantly Sylvia, who was a woman, though a very young one, turned to the glass again, settled the hat on her head and looked at herself critically."The ribbons stick up too much, don't they?" she asked, speaking to Miss Wimpole, and quite forgetting Archie Harmon's presence. "Yes, of course they do! The ribbons stick up too much," she repeated to the milliner in French.A brilliant idea had struck Archie Harmon. He was already at the desk, where a young woman in black received the payments of passing customers with a grieved manner."She says the ribbons stick up too much," he said to the person at the desk. "You get them to stick up just right, will you? The way she wants them. How much did you say the hat was? Eighty francs? There it is. Just say that it's paid for, when she asks for the bill."The young woman in black raked in the note and the bits of gold he gave her, catching them under her hard, thin thumb on the edge of the desk, and counting them as she slipped them into her little drawer. She looked rather curiously at Archie, and there was still some surprise in her sour face when he was already on the pavement outside. He stopped under the awning again, and peered through the window for a last look at the grey figure before the mirror, but he fled precipitately when Sylvia turned as though she were going to look at him. He was thoroughly delighted with himself. It was just what Colonel Wimpole had done about the miniature, he thought; and then, a hat was so much more useful than a piece of painted ivory.In a quarter of an hour he was in his own room again, sitting quite quietly on a chair by the window, and thinking how happy he was, and how pleased Sylvia must be by that time.But Sylvia's behaviour when she found out what he had done would have damped his innocent joy, if he had been looking through the windows of the shop, instead of sitting in his own room. Her father, the admiral, had a hot temper, and she had inherited some of it."Impertinent young idiot!" she exclaimed, when she realized that he had actually paid for the hat, and the angry blood rushed to her face. "What in the world--" She could not find words."He is half-witted, poor boy," interrupted Miss Wimpole. "Take the hat, and I will manage to give his mother the money.""Betty Foy and her idiot boy over again!" said Sylvia, with all the brutal cruelty of extreme youth. "'That all who view the idiot in his glory'--" As the rest of the quotation was not applicable, she stopped and stamped her little foot in speechless indignation."The young gentleman doubtless thought to give Mademoiselle pleasure," suggested the milliner, suavely. "He is doubtless a relation--""He is not a relation at all!" exclaimed Sylvia in English, to Miss Wimpole. "My relations are not idiots, thank Heaven! And it's the only one of all those hats that I could wear! Oh, Aunt Rachel, what shall I do? I can't possibly take the thing, you know! And I must have a hat. I've come all the way from Japan with this old one, and it isn't fit to be seen.""There is no reason why you should not take this one," said Miss Wimpole, philosophically. "I promise you that Mrs. Harmon shall have the money by to-night, since she is here. Your Uncle Richard will go and see her at once, of course, and he can manage it. They are on terms of intimacy," she added rather primly, for Helen Harmon was the only person in the world of whom she had ever been jealous."You always use such dreadfully correct language, Aunt Rachel," answered the young girl. "Why don't you say that they are old friends? 'Terms of intimacy' sounds so severe, somehow.""You seem impatient, my dear," observed Miss Wimpole, as though stating a fact about nature."I am," answered Sylvia. "I know I am. You would be impatient if an escaped lunatic rushed into a shop and paid for your gloves, or your shoes, or your hat, and then rushed off again, goodness knows where. Wouldn't you? Don't you think I am right?""You had better tell them to send the hat to the hotel," suggested Aunt Rachel, not paying the least attention to Sylvia's appeal for justification."If I must take it, I may as well wear it at once, and look like a human being," said Sylvia. "That is, if you will really promise to send Mrs. Harmon the eighty francs at once.""I promise," answered Miss Wimpole, solemnly, and as she had never broken her word in her life, Sylvia felt that the difficulty was at an end.The milliner smiled sweetly, and bowed them out."All the same," said Sylvia, as she walked up the street with the pretty hat on her head, "it is an outrageous piece of impertinence. Idiots ought not to be allowed to go about alone.""I should think you would pity the poor fellow," said Miss Wimpole, with a sort of severe kindliness, that was genuine but irritating."Oh yes! I will pity him by and by, when I'm not angry," answered the young girl. "Of course--it's all right, Aunt Rachel, and I'm not depraved nor heartless, really. Only, it was very irritating.""You had better not say anything about it to your Uncle Richard, my dear. He is so fond of Archie's mother that he will feel very badly about it. I will break it to him gently.""Would he?" asked Sylvia, in surprise. "About herself, I should understand--but about that boy! I can't see why he should mind.""He 'minds,' as you call it, everything that has to do with Mrs. Harmon."Sylvia glanced at her companion, but said nothing, and they walked on in silence for some time. It was still hot, for the sun had not sunk behind the mountains; but the street was full of people, who walked about indifferent to the temperature, because Switzerland is supposed to be a cold country, and they therefore thought that it was their own fault if they felt warm. This is the principle upon which nine people out of ten see the world when they go abroad. And there was a fine crop of European and American varieties of the tourist taking the air on that afternoon, men, women, and children. The men who had huge field-glasses slung over their shoulders by straps predominated, and one, by whom Sylvia was particularly struck, was arrayed in blue serge knickerbockers, patent-leather walking-boots, and a very shiny high hat. But there were also occasional specimens of what she called the human being--men in the ordinary garments of civilization, and not provided with opera-glasses. There were, moreover, young and middle-aged women in short skirts, boots with soles half an inch thick, complexions in which the hue of the boiled lobster vied with the deeper tone of the stewed cherry, bearing alpenstocks that rang and clattered on the pavement; women who, in the state of life to which Heaven had called them, would have gone to Margate or Staten Island for a Sunday outing, but who had rebelled against providence, and forced the men of their families to bring them abroad. And the men generally walked a little behind them and had no alpenstocks, but carried shawls and paper bundles, badges of servitude, and hoped that they might not meet acquaintances in Lucerne, because their women looked like angry cooks and had no particular luggage. Now and then a smart old gentleman with an eyeglass, in immaculate grey or white, threaded his way along the pavement, with an air of excessive boredom; or a young couple passed by, in the recognizable newness of honeymoon clothes, the young wife talking perpetually, and evidently laughing at the ill-dressed women, while the equally young husband answered in monosyllables, and was visibly nervous lest his bride's remarks should be overheard and give offence.Then there were children, obtrusively English children, taken abroad to be shown the miserable inferiority of the non-British world, and to learn that every one who had not yellow hair and blue eyes was a 'nasty foreigner,'--unless, of course, the individual happened to be English, in which case nothing was said about hair and complexion. And also there were the vulgar little children of the not long rich, repulsively disagreeable to the world in general, but pathetic in the eyes of thinking men and women. They are the sprouting shoots of the gold-tree, beings predestined never to enjoy, because they will be always able to buy what strong men fight for, and will never learn to enjoy what is really to be had only for money; and the measure of value will not be in their hands and heads, but in bank-books, out of which their manners have been bought with mingled affection and vanity. Surely, if anything is more intolerable than a vulgar woman, it is a vulgar child. The poor little thing is produced by all nations and races, from the Anglo-Saxon to the Slav. Its father was happy in the struggle that ended in success. When it grows old, its own children will perhaps be happy in the sort of refined existence which wealth can bring in the third generation. But the child of the man grown suddenly rich is a living misfortune between two happinesses: neither a worker nor an enjoyer; having neither the satisfaction of the one, nor the pleasures of the other; hated by its inferiors in fortune, and a source of amusement to its ethic and æsthetic betters.Sylvia had never thought much about the people she passed in a crowd. Thought is generally the result of suffering of some kind, bodily or intellectual, and she had but little acquaintance with either. She had travelled much, and had been very happy until the present time, having been shown the world on bright days and by pleasant paths. But to-day she was not happy, and she began to wonder how many of the men and women in the street had what she had heard called a 'secret care.' Her eyes had been red when she had at last yielded to Miss Wimpole's entreaties to open the door, but the redness was gone already, and when she had tried on the hat before the glass she had seen with a little vanity, mingled with a little disappointment, that she looked very much as usual, after all. Indeed, there had been more than one moment when she had forgotten her troubles because the ribbons on the new hat stuck up too much. Yet she was really unhappy, and sad at heart. Perhaps some of the people she passed, even the women with red faces, dusty skirts, and clattering alpenstocks, were unhappy too.She was not a foolish girl, nor absurdly romantic, nor full of silly sentimentalities, any more than she was in love with Colonel Wimpole in the true sense of the word. For she knew nothing of its real meaning, and, apart from that meaning, what she felt for him filled all the conditions proposed by her imagination. If one could classify the ways by which young people pass from childhood to young maturity, one might say that they are brought up by the head, by the imagination, or by the heart, and one might infer that their subsequent lives are chiefly determined by that one of the three which has been the leading-string. Sylvia's imagination had generally had the upper hand, and it had been largely fed and cultivated by her guardian, though quite unintentionally on his part. His love of artistic things led him to talk of them, and his chivalric nature found sources of enthusiasm in lofty ideals, while his own life, directed and moved as it was by a secret, unchanging and self-sacrificing devotion to one good woman, might have served as a model for any man. Modest, and not much inclined to think of himself, he did not realize that although the highest is quite beyond any one's reach, the search after it is always upward, and may lead a good man very far.Sylvia saw the result, and loved it for its own sake with an attachment so strong that it made her blind to the more natural sort of humanity which the colonel seemed to have outgrown, and which, after all, is the world as we inherit it, to love it, or hate it, or be indifferent to it, but to live with it, whether we will or not. He fulfilled her ideal, because it was an ideal which he himself had created in her mind, and to which he himself nearly approached. Logically speaking, she was in a vicious circle, and she liked what he had taught her to like, but liked it more than he knew she did.Sylvia glanced at Miss Wimpole sideways. She knew her simple story, and wondered whether she herself was to live the same sort of life. The idea rather frightened her, to tell the truth, for she knew the aridity of the elderly maiden lady's existence, and dreaded anything like it. But it was very simple and logical and actual. Miss Wimpole had loved a man who had been killed. Of course she had never married, nor ever thought of loving any one else. It was perfectly simple. And Sylvia loved, and was not loved, as she told herself, and she also must look forward to a perpetually grey life.Then, suddenly, she felt how young she was, and she knew that the colonel was almost an old man, and her heart rebelled. But this seemed disloyal, and she blushed at the word 'unfaithful,' which spoke itself in her sensitive conscience with the cruel power to hurt which such words have against perfect innocence. Besides, it was as if she were quarrelling with what she liked, because she could not have it, and she felt as though she were thinking childishly, which is a shame in youth's eyes.Also, she was nervous about meeting him again, for she had not seen him since she had fled from the room in tears, though he had seen her on the bridge. She wished that she might not see him at all for a whole day, at least, and that seemed a very long time.Altogether, when she went into the hotel again, she was in a very confused state of mind and heart, and was beginning to wish that she had never been born. But that was childish, too.CHAPTER IVHelen Harmon was glad when the colonel was gone. She went to a mirror, fixed to the wall between the two windows of the room, and she carefully rearranged her hair. She could not feel quite herself until she knew that the scar was covered again and hidden from curious eyes. Then she sat down, glad to be alone. It had been a great and unexpected pleasure to see Wimpole, but the discovery he had made, and the things he had said, had disturbed and unnerved her.There had been conviction in his voice when he had said that Harmon might recover, and the possibility of a change in her husband's condition had crossed her mind more than once. She felt that a return to such a state of things as had made up her life before he had become insane, would kill her by slow torture. It was of no use any longer to tell herself that recovery was impossible, and to persuade herself that it was so by the mere repetition of the words. Words had no more weight, now.She thought of her freedom since that merciful deliverance. It was not happiness, for there were other things yet to be suffered, but it was real freedom. She had her son's affliction to bear, but she could bear it alone and go and come with him as she pleased. She contrasted this liberty with what she had borne for years.The whole history of their married life came back to her, the gradual progress of it from first to last, if indeed it had yet reached the end and was not to go back to the beginning again.First there had been the sort of half-contented resignation which many young women feel during the early months of married life, when they have made what is called by the world a good match, simply because they saw no reason for not marrying and because they were ashamed to own that they cared for a man who did not seem to be attached to them. Sometimes the state lasts throughout life, a neutral, passionless, negative state, in which the heart turns flat and life is soon stale, a condition in which many women, not knowing what pain is, grow restless and believe that it must be pleasanter to be hurt than to feel nothing.Henry Harmon had been handsome, full of life and nerve and enthusiasm for living, a rider, a sportsman, more reckless than brave and more brave than strong-minded, with a gift for being, or seeming to be, desperately in love, which had ultimately persuaded Helen to marry him in spite of her judgment. He turned pale when he was long near her, his eyes flashed darkly, his hands shook a little, and his voice trembled. An older woman might have thought it all rather theatrical, but he seemed to suffer, and that moved Helen, though it did not make her really love him. Women know that weakness of theirs and are more afraid of pitying an importunate suitor than of admiring him. So Helen married Harmon.Disillusionment came as daylight steals upon dancers in a ballroom. At first it was not so painful as might have been imagined, for Helen was not excessively sensitive, and she had never really loved the man in the least. He grew tired of her and left her to herself a good deal. That was a relief, at first, for after she had realized that she did not love him, she shrank from him instinctively, with something very like real shame, and to be left alone was like being respected."Mrs. Blank's husband is neglecting her," says one."She does not seem to care; she looks very happy," answers another.And she is temporarily happy, because Mr. Blank's neglect gives her a sense of bodily relief, for she knows that she has made a mistake in marrying him. It was so with Helen, and as she was not a changeable nor at all a capricious person, it might have continued to be so. But Harmon changed rapidly in the years that followed. From having been what people called fast, he became dissipated. He had always loved the excitement of wine. When it failed him, he took to stronger stuff, which presently became the essential requisite of his being. He had been said to be gay, then he was spoken of as wild, then as dissipated. Some people avoided him, and every one pitied Helen. Yet although he ruined his constitution, he did not wreck his fortunes, for he was lucky in all affairs connected with money. There remained many among his acquaintances who could not afford to disapprove of him, because he had power.He drank systematically, as some men do, for the sake of daily excitement, and Helen learned to know tolerably well when he was dangerous and when he might be approached with safety. But more than once she had made horrible mistakes, and the memories of them were like dreams out of hell. In his drunkenness her face recalled other days to him, and forgotten words of passion found thick and indistinct utterance. Once she had turned on him, white and desperate in her self-defence. He struck her on the forehead with a cut-glass decanter, snatched from her toilet table. When she came to herself hours afterwards, it was daylight. Harmon was in a drunken sleep, and the blood on his face was hers.She shuddered with pain from head to foot when she thought of it. Then had come strange lapses of his memory, disconnected speech, even hysterical tears, following senseless anger, and then he had ceased to recognize any one, and had almost killed one of the men who took care of him, so that it was necessary to take him to an asylum, struggling like a wild beast. Twice, out of a sense of duty, she had been to see whether he knew her, but he knew no one, and the doctors said it was a hopeless case. Since then she had received a simple confirmation of the statement every month, and there seemed to be no reason for expecting any change, and she felt free.Free was the only word she could find, and she applied it to herself in a sense of her own, meaning that she had been liberated from the thraldom in which she had lived so many years face to face with his brutality, and hiding it from the world as best she could, protecting and defending his name, and refusing pity as she would have refused money had she been poor. People might guess what she suffered, but no one should know it from her, and no one but herself could tell the half of what she underwent.Yet, now that it was all over, Wimpole suggested that it might begin again, unless she took measures to defend herself. But her heart revolted at the idea of a divorce. She wondered, as she tried to test herself, whether she could be as strong if the case really arose. It never occurred to her to ask whether her strength might not be folly, for it lay in one of those convictions by which unusual characters are generally moved, and conviction never questions itself.It was not that in order to be divorced she must almost necessarily bring up in public and prove by evidence a certain number of her many wrongs. The publicity would be horrible. Every newspaper in the country would print the details, with hideous head-lines. Even her son's deficiency would be dragged into the light. She should have to explain how she had come by the scar on her forehead, and much more that would be harder to tell, if she could bring her lips to speak the words.Nevertheless, she could do that, and bear everything, for a good cause. If, for instance, Archie's future depended upon it, or even if it could do him some good, she could do all that for his sake. But even for his sake, she would not be divorced, not even if Harmon were let out of the asylum and came back to her.Some people, perhaps many, could not understand such a prejudice, or conviction, now that all convictions are commonly spoken of as relative. But will those who do not understand Helen Harmon consider how the world looked upon divorce as recently as five and twenty years ago? Nothing can give a clearer idea of the direction taken by social morality than the way in which half the world has become accustomed to regard marriage as a contract, and not as a bond, during the lifetime of people now barely in middle age.Twenty-five or thirty years ago divorces were so rare as to be regarded in the light of very, uncommon exceptions to the general rule. The divorce law itself is not yet forty years old in England, nor twenty years old in France. In Italy there is no civil divorce whatever at the present day, and the Catholic Church only grants what are not properly divorces, but annullations of marriage, in very rare cases, and with the greatest reluctance.Even in America, every one can remember how divorce was spoken of and thought of until very recently. Within a few years it was deemed to be something very like a disgrace, and certainly a profoundly cynical and immoral proceeding. To-day we can most of us count in our own acquaintance half a dozen persons who have been divorced and have married again. Whatever we may think of it in our hearts, or whatever our religious convictions may be on the subject, it has become so common that when we hear of a flagrant case of cruelty or unfaithfulness, by which a man or woman suffers, the question at once rises to our lips, 'Why does he not divorce his wife?' or 'Why does she not divorce her husband?' We have grown used to the idea, and, if it does not please us, it certainly does not shock us. It shocked our fathers, but we are perfectly indifferent.Of course there are many, perhaps a majority, who, though not Roman Catholics, would in their own lives put up with almost anything rather than go to the divorce court for peace. Some actually suffer much and ask for no redress. But there are very many who have not suffered anything at all, excepting the favourite 'incompatibility of temper,' and who have taken advantage of the loose laws in certain states to try a second matrimonial experiment. In what calls itself society, there seems still to be a prejudice against a third marriage for divorced persons, but at the present rate of so-called progress this cannot last long, and the old significance of the word marriage will be quite lost before our great grandchildren are dead; in other words, by the end of the next century, at the furthest.There are various forms of honourable political dreaming and of dishonourable political mischief-making nowadays, which we are accustomed to call collectively 'socialism.' Most of these rely for their hope of popular success upon their avowed intention of dividing property and preventing its subsequent accumulation. Marriage is an incentive of such accumulation, because it perpetuates families and therefore keeps property together by inheritance. Therefore most forms of socialism are at present in favour of divorce, as a means of ultimately destroying marriage altogether. A proverb says that whosoever desires the end, desires also the means. There is more truth in the saying than morality in the point of view it expresses. But there are those who desire neither the means nor the end to which they lead, and a struggle is coming, the like of which has not been seen since the beginning of the world, and of which we who are now alive shall not see the termination.The Civil War in the United States turned upon slavery incidentally, not vitally. The cause of that great fight lay much deeper. In the same way the Social War, which is coming, will turn incidentally upon religion, and be perhaps called a religious war hereafter, but it will not be declared for the sake of faith against unbelief, nor be fought at first by any church, or alliance of churches, against atheism. It will simply turn out that the men who fight on the one side will have either the convictions or the prejudices of Christianity, or both, and that their adversaries will have neither. But the struggle will be at its height when the original steady current of facts which led to inevitable strife has sunk into apparent insignificance under the raging storm of conflicting belief and unbelief. The disadvantage of the unbelievers will lie in the fact that belief is positive and assertive, whereas unbelief is negative and argumentative. It is indeed easier to deny than to prove almost anything. But that is not the question. In life and war it is generally easier to keep than to take, and besides, those who believe 'care,' as we say, whereas those who deny generally 'care' very little. It is probable, to say the least of it, that so long as the socialists of the near future believe assertively that they have discovered the means of saving humanity from misery and poverty, and fight for a pure conviction, they will have the better of it, but that when they find themselves in the position of attacking half of mankind's religious faith, having no idea, but only a proposition, to offer in its place, they will be beaten.That seems far from the question of divorce, but it is not. Before the battle, the opposing forces are encamped and intrenched at a little distance from each other, and each tries to undermine the other's outworks. Socialism, collectively, has dug a mine under Social Order's strongest tower, which is called marriage, and the edifice is beginning to shake from its foundations, even before the slow-match is lighted.To one who has known the world well for a quarter of a century, it seems as though the would-be destroyers of the existing order had forgotten, among several other things, the existence of woman, remembering only that of the female. They practically propose to take away woman's privileges in exchange for certain more or less imaginary 'rights.' There is an apparent justice in the 'conversion,' as it would be called in business. If woman is to have all the rights of man, which, indeed, seem reducible to a political vote now and then, why should she keep all the privileges which man is not allowed? But tell her that when she is allowed to vote for the president of the United States once in four years, no man shall be expected to stand up in a public conveyance to give her a seat, nor to fetch and carry for her, nor to support her instead of being supported by her, nor to keep her for his wife any longer than he chooses, and the 'conversion' looks less attractive.The reason why woman has privileges instead of rights is that all men tacitly acknowledge the future of humanity to be dependent on her from generation to generation. Man works or fights, and takes his rights in payment therefor, as well as for a means of working and fighting to greater advantage. And while he is fighting or working, his wife takes care of his children almost entirely. There is not one household in a hundred thousand, rich or poor, where there is really any question about that. It sounds insignificant, perhaps, and it looks as though anybody could take care of two or three small children. Those who have tried it know better, and they are women. Now and then rich mothers are too lazy to look after their children themselves. To do them such justice as one may, they are willing to spend any amount of money in order to get it well done for them, but the result is not encouraging to those who would have all children brought up 'by the state.' Even if it were so, who would bring them up? Women, of course. Then why not their own mothers? Because mothers sometimes--or often, for the sake of argument--do not exactly know how. Then educate the mothers, give them chances of knowing how, let them learn, if you know any better than they, which is doubtful, to say the least of it.Moreover, does any man in his senses really believe that mothers, as a whole, would submit and let their children be taken from them to a state rearing-house, to be brought up under a number on a ticket by professional baby-farmers, in exchange for the 'right' to vote at a presidential election, and the 'right' to put away their husbands and take others as often as they please, and the 'right' to run for Congress? Yet the plan has been proposed gravely.There seems to be a good deal to be said in favour of the existing state of things, after all, and particularly in favour of marriage, and therefore against divorce; and it is not surprising that woman, whose life is in reality far more deeply affected by both questions than man's life is, should have also the more profound convictions about them.Woman brings us into the world, woman is our first teacher, woman makes the world what it is, from century to century. We can no more escape from woman, and yet continue to live our lives as they should be lived, than we can hide ourselves from nature. We are in her care or in her power during more than half our years, and often during all, from first to last. We are born of her, we grow of her, as truly as trees and flowers come of the mother earth and draw their life from the soil in which they are planted. The man who denies his mother is a bad man, and the man who has not loved woman is a man in darkness.Man is not really unjust to woman in his thoughts of her either, unless he be a lost soul, but he has not much reason in respect of her nor any justice in his exactions. Because within himself he knows that she is everything and all things for the life and joy of men, therefore he would seem perfect in her eyes; and he rails against whatsoever in her does not please him, as a blot upon the lustre of his ideal, which indeed he would make a glorified reflexion of his own faults. When he is most imperfect, he most exacts her praise; when he is weakest, she must think him most strong; when he fails, she must call failure victory, or at the least she must name it honourable defeat; she must not see his meanness, but she must magnify the smallest of his generosities to the great measure of his immeasurable vanity therein; she must see faith in his unfaithfulness, honour in his disgrace, heroism in his cowardice, for his sake; she must forgive freely and forgettingly such injury as he would not pardon any man; in one word, she must love him, that in her love he may think and boast himself a god.It is much to ask. And yet many a woman who loves a man with all her heart has done and daily does every one of those things, and more; and the man knows it, and will not think of it lest he should die of shame. And, moreover, a woman has borne him, a woman has nursed him, a woman taught him first; a woman gives him her soul and her body when he is a man; and when he is dead, if tears are shed for him, they are a woman's.If we men are honest, we shall say that we do not give her much for all that, not much honour, not much faith. We think we do enough if we give her life's necessities and luxuries in fair share to the limit of our poverty or wealth; that we give much, if we love her; too much, if we trust her altogether.It is a wonder that women should love, seeing what some men are and what most men may be when the devil is in them. It is a wonder that women should not rise up in a body and demand laws to free them from marriage, for one-half the cause that so many of them have.But they do not. Even in this old age of history they still believe in marriage, and cling to it, and in vast majority cry out against its dissolution. No man ever believes in anything as a woman who loves him believes in him. Men have stronger arms, and heads for harder work, but they have no such hearts as women. And the world has been led by the heart in all ages.Even when the great mistake is made, many a woman clings to the faith that made it, for the sake of what might have been, in a self-respect of which men do not dream. Even when she has married with little love, and taken a man who has turned upon her like a brute beast, her marriage is still a bond which she will not break, and the vow made is not void because the promise taken has been a vain lie. Its damnation is upon him who spoke it, but she still keeps faith.So, when her fair years of youth lay scattered and withered as blown leaves along the desert of her past, Helen Harmon, wisely or unwisely, but faithfully and with a whole heart, meant to keep that plighted word which is not to be broken by wedded man and woman 'until death shall them part.'

"Not so very long ago," said the colonel. "I know something about scars, and that one is not many years old. It does not look as though you had got it in a fall either. Besides, if you had, you would not mind telling me, would you?"

"Please don't ask me about it! I cannot tell you about it."

The colonel's face was hardening quickly. The lines came out in it stern and straight, as when, at evening, a sudden frost falls upon a still water, and the first ice-needles shoot out, clear and stiff. Then came the certainty, and Wimpole looked as he had looked long ago in battle.

"Harmon did that," he said at last, and the wrathful thought that followed was not the less fierce because it was unspoken.

Helen's hands shook now, for no one had ever known how she had been wounded. But she said nothing, though she knew that her silence meant her assent. Wimpole rose suddenly, straight as a rifle, and walked to the window, turning his back upon her. He could say things there, under his breath, which she could not understand, and he said them, earnestly.

"He did not know what he was doing," Helen said, rather unsteadily.

The colonel turned on his heels at the window, facing her, and his lips still moved slowly, though no words came. Helen looked at him and knew that she was glad of his silent anger. Not realizing what she was thinking of, she wondered what sort of death Harmon might have died if Richard Wimpole had seen him strike her to the ground with a cut-glass decanter. For a moment the cloak of mercy and forgiveness was rent from head to heel. The colonel would have killed the man with those rather delicate looking hands of his, talking to him all the time in a low voice. That was what she thought, and perhaps she was not very far wrong. Even now, it was well for Harmon that he was safe in his asylum on the other side of an ocean.

It was some time before Wimpole could speak. Then he came and stood before Helen.

"You will stay a few days? You do not mean to go away at once?" he said, with a question.

"Yes."

"Then I think I shall go away now, and come and see you again later."

He took her hand rather mechanically and left the room. But she understood and was grateful.

CHAPTER III

When Archie Harmon disappeared and left the colonel and his mother together, she supposed that he had gone to his room to sleep, for he slept a great deal, or to amuse himself after his fashion, and she did not ask him where he was going. She knew what his favourite amusement was, though he did his best to keep it a secret from her.

There was a certain mysterious box, which he had always owned, and took everywhere with him, and of which he always had the key in his pocket. It took up a good deal of space, but he could never be persuaded to leave it behind when they went abroad.

To-day he went to his room, as usual, locked the door, took off his coat, and got the box out of a corner. Then he sat down on the floor and opened it. He took out some child's building-blocks, some tin soldiers, much the worse for wear, for he was ashamed to buy new ones, and a small and gaudily painted tin cart, in which an impossible lady and gentleman of papier-mâché, dressed in blue, grey, and yellow, sat leaning back with folded arms and staring, painted eyes. There were a few other toys besides, all packed away with considerable neatness, for Archie was not slovenly.

He sat cross-legged on the floor, a strong grown man of nearly twenty years, and began to play with his blocks. His eyes fixed themselves on his occupation, as he built up a little gateway with an arch and set red-legged French soldiers on each side of it for sentinels. He had played the same game a thousand times already, but the satisfaction had not diminished. One day in a hotel he had forgotten to lock the door, and his mother had opened it by mistake, thinking it was that of her own room. Before he could look round she had shut it again, but she had seen, and it had been like a knife-thrust. She kept his secret, but she lost heart from that day. He was still a child, and was always to be one.

Yet there was perhaps something more of intelligence in the childish play than she had guessed. He was lacking in mind, but not an idiot; he sometimes said and did things which were certainly far beyond the age of toys. Possibly the attraction lay in a sort of companionship which he felt in the society of the blocks, and the tin soldiers, and the little papier-mâché lady and gentleman. He felt that they understood what he meant and would answer him if they could speak, and would expect no more of him than he could give. Grown people always seemed to expect a great deal more, and looked at him strangely when he called Berlin the capital of Austria and asked why Brutus and Cassius murdered Alexander the Great. The toy lady and gentleman were quite satisfied if their necks were not broken in the cunningly devised earthquake which always brought the block house down into a heap when he had looked at it long enough and was already planning another.

Besides, he did all his best thinking among his toys, and had invented ways of working out results at which he could not possibly have arrived by a purely mental process. He could add and subtract, for instance, with the bits of wood, and, by a laborious method, he could even do simple multiplication, quite beyond him with paper and pencil. Above all, he could name the tin soldiers after people he had met, and make them do anything he pleased, by a sort of rudimentary theatrical instinct that was not altogether childish.

To-day he built a house as usual, and, as usual, after some reflexion as to the best means of ruining it by taking out a single block, he pulled it down with a crash. But he did not at once begin another. On the contrary, he sat looking at the ruins for a long time in a rather disconsolate way, and then all at once began to pack all the toys into the box again.

"I don't suppose it matters," he said aloud. "But of course Sylvia would think me a baby if she saw me playing with blocks."

And he made haste to pack them all away, locking the box and putting the key into his pocket. Then he went and looked through the half-closed blinds into the sunny street, and he could see the new bridge not far away.

"I don't care what mother thinks!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to find her again."

He opened his door softly, and a moment later he was in the street, walking rapidly towards the bridge. At a distance he looked well. It was only when quite near to him that one was aware of an undefinable ungainliness in his face and figure--something blank and meaningless about him, that suggested a heavy wooden doll dressed in good clothes. In military countries one often receives that impression. A fine-looking infantry soldier, erect, broad shouldered, bright eyed, spotless, and scrupulously neat, comes marching along and excites one's admiration for a moment. Then, when close to him, one misses something which ought to go with such manly bearing. The fellow is only a country lout, perhaps, hardly able to read or write, and possessed of an intelligence not much beyond the highest development of instinct. Drill, exercise, and the fear of black bread and water under arrest, have produced a fine piece of military machinery, but they could not create a mind, nor even the appearance of intelligence, in the wooden face. In a year or two the man will lay aside his smart uniform and go back to the class whence he came. One may give iron the shape and general look of steel, but not the temper and the springing quality.

Archie Harmon looked straight ahead of him as he crossed the bridge and followed the long street that runs beside the water, past the big hotels and the gaudy awnings of the provincially smart shops. At first he only looked along the pavement, searching among the many people who passed. Then as he remembered how Colonel Wimpole had seen him through a shop window, he stopped before each of the big plate glass ones and peered curiously into the shadows within.

At last, in a milliner's, he saw Sylvia and Miss Wimpole, and his heavy face grew red, and his eyes glared oddly as he stood motionless outside, under the awning, looking in. His lips went out a little, as he pronounced his own especial word very softly.

"Jukes!"

He stood first on one foot and then on the other, like a boy at a pastry cook's, hesitating, while devouring with his eyes. He could see that Sylvia was buying a hat. She turned a little each way as she tried it on before a big mirror, putting up her hands and moving her arms in a way that showed all the lines of her perfect figure.

Archie went in. He had been brought up by his mother, and chiefly by women, and he had none of that shyness about entering a women's establishment, like a milliner's, which most boys and many men feel so strongly. He walked in boldly and spoke as soon as he was within hearing.

"Miss Sylvia! I say! Miss Sylvia--don't you know me?"

The question was a little premature, for Sylvia had barely caught sight of him when he asked it. When she had recognized him, she did not look particularly pleased.

"It's poor Archie Harmon, my dear," said Miss Wimpole, in a low voice, but quite audibly.

"Oh, I have not forgotten you!" said Sylvia, trying to speak pleasantly as she gave her hand. "But where in the world did you come from? And what are you doing in a milliner's shop?"

"I happened to see you through the window, so I just came in to say how do you do. There's no harm in my coming in, is there? You look all right. You're perfectly lovely."

His eyes were so bright that Sylvia felt oddly uncomfortable.

"Oh no," she answered, with an indifference she did not feel. "It's all right--I mean--I wish you would go away now, and come and see us at the hotel, if you like, by and by."

"Can't I stay and talk to you? Why can't I stay and talk to her, Miss Wimpole?" he asked, appealing to the latter. "I want to stay and talk to her. We are awfully old friends, you know; aren't we, Sylvia? You don't mind my calling you Sylvia, instead of Miss Sylvia, do you?"

"Oh no! I don't mind that!" Sylvia laughed a little. "But do please go away now!"

"Well--if I must--" he broke off, evidently reluctant to do as she wished. "I say," he began again with a sudden thought, "you like that hat you're trying on, don't you?"

Instantly Sylvia, who was a woman, though a very young one, turned to the glass again, settled the hat on her head and looked at herself critically.

"The ribbons stick up too much, don't they?" she asked, speaking to Miss Wimpole, and quite forgetting Archie Harmon's presence. "Yes, of course they do! The ribbons stick up too much," she repeated to the milliner in French.

A brilliant idea had struck Archie Harmon. He was already at the desk, where a young woman in black received the payments of passing customers with a grieved manner.

"She says the ribbons stick up too much," he said to the person at the desk. "You get them to stick up just right, will you? The way she wants them. How much did you say the hat was? Eighty francs? There it is. Just say that it's paid for, when she asks for the bill."

The young woman in black raked in the note and the bits of gold he gave her, catching them under her hard, thin thumb on the edge of the desk, and counting them as she slipped them into her little drawer. She looked rather curiously at Archie, and there was still some surprise in her sour face when he was already on the pavement outside. He stopped under the awning again, and peered through the window for a last look at the grey figure before the mirror, but he fled precipitately when Sylvia turned as though she were going to look at him. He was thoroughly delighted with himself. It was just what Colonel Wimpole had done about the miniature, he thought; and then, a hat was so much more useful than a piece of painted ivory.

In a quarter of an hour he was in his own room again, sitting quite quietly on a chair by the window, and thinking how happy he was, and how pleased Sylvia must be by that time.

But Sylvia's behaviour when she found out what he had done would have damped his innocent joy, if he had been looking through the windows of the shop, instead of sitting in his own room. Her father, the admiral, had a hot temper, and she had inherited some of it.

"Impertinent young idiot!" she exclaimed, when she realized that he had actually paid for the hat, and the angry blood rushed to her face. "What in the world--" She could not find words.

"He is half-witted, poor boy," interrupted Miss Wimpole. "Take the hat, and I will manage to give his mother the money."

"Betty Foy and her idiot boy over again!" said Sylvia, with all the brutal cruelty of extreme youth. "'That all who view the idiot in his glory'--" As the rest of the quotation was not applicable, she stopped and stamped her little foot in speechless indignation.

"The young gentleman doubtless thought to give Mademoiselle pleasure," suggested the milliner, suavely. "He is doubtless a relation--"

"He is not a relation at all!" exclaimed Sylvia in English, to Miss Wimpole. "My relations are not idiots, thank Heaven! And it's the only one of all those hats that I could wear! Oh, Aunt Rachel, what shall I do? I can't possibly take the thing, you know! And I must have a hat. I've come all the way from Japan with this old one, and it isn't fit to be seen."

"There is no reason why you should not take this one," said Miss Wimpole, philosophically. "I promise you that Mrs. Harmon shall have the money by to-night, since she is here. Your Uncle Richard will go and see her at once, of course, and he can manage it. They are on terms of intimacy," she added rather primly, for Helen Harmon was the only person in the world of whom she had ever been jealous.

"You always use such dreadfully correct language, Aunt Rachel," answered the young girl. "Why don't you say that they are old friends? 'Terms of intimacy' sounds so severe, somehow."

"You seem impatient, my dear," observed Miss Wimpole, as though stating a fact about nature.

"I am," answered Sylvia. "I know I am. You would be impatient if an escaped lunatic rushed into a shop and paid for your gloves, or your shoes, or your hat, and then rushed off again, goodness knows where. Wouldn't you? Don't you think I am right?"

"You had better tell them to send the hat to the hotel," suggested Aunt Rachel, not paying the least attention to Sylvia's appeal for justification.

"If I must take it, I may as well wear it at once, and look like a human being," said Sylvia. "That is, if you will really promise to send Mrs. Harmon the eighty francs at once."

"I promise," answered Miss Wimpole, solemnly, and as she had never broken her word in her life, Sylvia felt that the difficulty was at an end.

The milliner smiled sweetly, and bowed them out.

"All the same," said Sylvia, as she walked up the street with the pretty hat on her head, "it is an outrageous piece of impertinence. Idiots ought not to be allowed to go about alone."

"I should think you would pity the poor fellow," said Miss Wimpole, with a sort of severe kindliness, that was genuine but irritating.

"Oh yes! I will pity him by and by, when I'm not angry," answered the young girl. "Of course--it's all right, Aunt Rachel, and I'm not depraved nor heartless, really. Only, it was very irritating."

"You had better not say anything about it to your Uncle Richard, my dear. He is so fond of Archie's mother that he will feel very badly about it. I will break it to him gently."

"Would he?" asked Sylvia, in surprise. "About herself, I should understand--but about that boy! I can't see why he should mind."

"He 'minds,' as you call it, everything that has to do with Mrs. Harmon."

Sylvia glanced at her companion, but said nothing, and they walked on in silence for some time. It was still hot, for the sun had not sunk behind the mountains; but the street was full of people, who walked about indifferent to the temperature, because Switzerland is supposed to be a cold country, and they therefore thought that it was their own fault if they felt warm. This is the principle upon which nine people out of ten see the world when they go abroad. And there was a fine crop of European and American varieties of the tourist taking the air on that afternoon, men, women, and children. The men who had huge field-glasses slung over their shoulders by straps predominated, and one, by whom Sylvia was particularly struck, was arrayed in blue serge knickerbockers, patent-leather walking-boots, and a very shiny high hat. But there were also occasional specimens of what she called the human being--men in the ordinary garments of civilization, and not provided with opera-glasses. There were, moreover, young and middle-aged women in short skirts, boots with soles half an inch thick, complexions in which the hue of the boiled lobster vied with the deeper tone of the stewed cherry, bearing alpenstocks that rang and clattered on the pavement; women who, in the state of life to which Heaven had called them, would have gone to Margate or Staten Island for a Sunday outing, but who had rebelled against providence, and forced the men of their families to bring them abroad. And the men generally walked a little behind them and had no alpenstocks, but carried shawls and paper bundles, badges of servitude, and hoped that they might not meet acquaintances in Lucerne, because their women looked like angry cooks and had no particular luggage. Now and then a smart old gentleman with an eyeglass, in immaculate grey or white, threaded his way along the pavement, with an air of excessive boredom; or a young couple passed by, in the recognizable newness of honeymoon clothes, the young wife talking perpetually, and evidently laughing at the ill-dressed women, while the equally young husband answered in monosyllables, and was visibly nervous lest his bride's remarks should be overheard and give offence.

Then there were children, obtrusively English children, taken abroad to be shown the miserable inferiority of the non-British world, and to learn that every one who had not yellow hair and blue eyes was a 'nasty foreigner,'--unless, of course, the individual happened to be English, in which case nothing was said about hair and complexion. And also there were the vulgar little children of the not long rich, repulsively disagreeable to the world in general, but pathetic in the eyes of thinking men and women. They are the sprouting shoots of the gold-tree, beings predestined never to enjoy, because they will be always able to buy what strong men fight for, and will never learn to enjoy what is really to be had only for money; and the measure of value will not be in their hands and heads, but in bank-books, out of which their manners have been bought with mingled affection and vanity. Surely, if anything is more intolerable than a vulgar woman, it is a vulgar child. The poor little thing is produced by all nations and races, from the Anglo-Saxon to the Slav. Its father was happy in the struggle that ended in success. When it grows old, its own children will perhaps be happy in the sort of refined existence which wealth can bring in the third generation. But the child of the man grown suddenly rich is a living misfortune between two happinesses: neither a worker nor an enjoyer; having neither the satisfaction of the one, nor the pleasures of the other; hated by its inferiors in fortune, and a source of amusement to its ethic and æsthetic betters.

Sylvia had never thought much about the people she passed in a crowd. Thought is generally the result of suffering of some kind, bodily or intellectual, and she had but little acquaintance with either. She had travelled much, and had been very happy until the present time, having been shown the world on bright days and by pleasant paths. But to-day she was not happy, and she began to wonder how many of the men and women in the street had what she had heard called a 'secret care.' Her eyes had been red when she had at last yielded to Miss Wimpole's entreaties to open the door, but the redness was gone already, and when she had tried on the hat before the glass she had seen with a little vanity, mingled with a little disappointment, that she looked very much as usual, after all. Indeed, there had been more than one moment when she had forgotten her troubles because the ribbons on the new hat stuck up too much. Yet she was really unhappy, and sad at heart. Perhaps some of the people she passed, even the women with red faces, dusty skirts, and clattering alpenstocks, were unhappy too.

She was not a foolish girl, nor absurdly romantic, nor full of silly sentimentalities, any more than she was in love with Colonel Wimpole in the true sense of the word. For she knew nothing of its real meaning, and, apart from that meaning, what she felt for him filled all the conditions proposed by her imagination. If one could classify the ways by which young people pass from childhood to young maturity, one might say that they are brought up by the head, by the imagination, or by the heart, and one might infer that their subsequent lives are chiefly determined by that one of the three which has been the leading-string. Sylvia's imagination had generally had the upper hand, and it had been largely fed and cultivated by her guardian, though quite unintentionally on his part. His love of artistic things led him to talk of them, and his chivalric nature found sources of enthusiasm in lofty ideals, while his own life, directed and moved as it was by a secret, unchanging and self-sacrificing devotion to one good woman, might have served as a model for any man. Modest, and not much inclined to think of himself, he did not realize that although the highest is quite beyond any one's reach, the search after it is always upward, and may lead a good man very far.

Sylvia saw the result, and loved it for its own sake with an attachment so strong that it made her blind to the more natural sort of humanity which the colonel seemed to have outgrown, and which, after all, is the world as we inherit it, to love it, or hate it, or be indifferent to it, but to live with it, whether we will or not. He fulfilled her ideal, because it was an ideal which he himself had created in her mind, and to which he himself nearly approached. Logically speaking, she was in a vicious circle, and she liked what he had taught her to like, but liked it more than he knew she did.

Sylvia glanced at Miss Wimpole sideways. She knew her simple story, and wondered whether she herself was to live the same sort of life. The idea rather frightened her, to tell the truth, for she knew the aridity of the elderly maiden lady's existence, and dreaded anything like it. But it was very simple and logical and actual. Miss Wimpole had loved a man who had been killed. Of course she had never married, nor ever thought of loving any one else. It was perfectly simple. And Sylvia loved, and was not loved, as she told herself, and she also must look forward to a perpetually grey life.

Then, suddenly, she felt how young she was, and she knew that the colonel was almost an old man, and her heart rebelled. But this seemed disloyal, and she blushed at the word 'unfaithful,' which spoke itself in her sensitive conscience with the cruel power to hurt which such words have against perfect innocence. Besides, it was as if she were quarrelling with what she liked, because she could not have it, and she felt as though she were thinking childishly, which is a shame in youth's eyes.

Also, she was nervous about meeting him again, for she had not seen him since she had fled from the room in tears, though he had seen her on the bridge. She wished that she might not see him at all for a whole day, at least, and that seemed a very long time.

Altogether, when she went into the hotel again, she was in a very confused state of mind and heart, and was beginning to wish that she had never been born. But that was childish, too.

CHAPTER IV

Helen Harmon was glad when the colonel was gone. She went to a mirror, fixed to the wall between the two windows of the room, and she carefully rearranged her hair. She could not feel quite herself until she knew that the scar was covered again and hidden from curious eyes. Then she sat down, glad to be alone. It had been a great and unexpected pleasure to see Wimpole, but the discovery he had made, and the things he had said, had disturbed and unnerved her.

There had been conviction in his voice when he had said that Harmon might recover, and the possibility of a change in her husband's condition had crossed her mind more than once. She felt that a return to such a state of things as had made up her life before he had become insane, would kill her by slow torture. It was of no use any longer to tell herself that recovery was impossible, and to persuade herself that it was so by the mere repetition of the words. Words had no more weight, now.

She thought of her freedom since that merciful deliverance. It was not happiness, for there were other things yet to be suffered, but it was real freedom. She had her son's affliction to bear, but she could bear it alone and go and come with him as she pleased. She contrasted this liberty with what she had borne for years.

The whole history of their married life came back to her, the gradual progress of it from first to last, if indeed it had yet reached the end and was not to go back to the beginning again.

First there had been the sort of half-contented resignation which many young women feel during the early months of married life, when they have made what is called by the world a good match, simply because they saw no reason for not marrying and because they were ashamed to own that they cared for a man who did not seem to be attached to them. Sometimes the state lasts throughout life, a neutral, passionless, negative state, in which the heart turns flat and life is soon stale, a condition in which many women, not knowing what pain is, grow restless and believe that it must be pleasanter to be hurt than to feel nothing.

Henry Harmon had been handsome, full of life and nerve and enthusiasm for living, a rider, a sportsman, more reckless than brave and more brave than strong-minded, with a gift for being, or seeming to be, desperately in love, which had ultimately persuaded Helen to marry him in spite of her judgment. He turned pale when he was long near her, his eyes flashed darkly, his hands shook a little, and his voice trembled. An older woman might have thought it all rather theatrical, but he seemed to suffer, and that moved Helen, though it did not make her really love him. Women know that weakness of theirs and are more afraid of pitying an importunate suitor than of admiring him. So Helen married Harmon.

Disillusionment came as daylight steals upon dancers in a ballroom. At first it was not so painful as might have been imagined, for Helen was not excessively sensitive, and she had never really loved the man in the least. He grew tired of her and left her to herself a good deal. That was a relief, at first, for after she had realized that she did not love him, she shrank from him instinctively, with something very like real shame, and to be left alone was like being respected.

"Mrs. Blank's husband is neglecting her," says one.

"She does not seem to care; she looks very happy," answers another.

And she is temporarily happy, because Mr. Blank's neglect gives her a sense of bodily relief, for she knows that she has made a mistake in marrying him. It was so with Helen, and as she was not a changeable nor at all a capricious person, it might have continued to be so. But Harmon changed rapidly in the years that followed. From having been what people called fast, he became dissipated. He had always loved the excitement of wine. When it failed him, he took to stronger stuff, which presently became the essential requisite of his being. He had been said to be gay, then he was spoken of as wild, then as dissipated. Some people avoided him, and every one pitied Helen. Yet although he ruined his constitution, he did not wreck his fortunes, for he was lucky in all affairs connected with money. There remained many among his acquaintances who could not afford to disapprove of him, because he had power.

He drank systematically, as some men do, for the sake of daily excitement, and Helen learned to know tolerably well when he was dangerous and when he might be approached with safety. But more than once she had made horrible mistakes, and the memories of them were like dreams out of hell. In his drunkenness her face recalled other days to him, and forgotten words of passion found thick and indistinct utterance. Once she had turned on him, white and desperate in her self-defence. He struck her on the forehead with a cut-glass decanter, snatched from her toilet table. When she came to herself hours afterwards, it was daylight. Harmon was in a drunken sleep, and the blood on his face was hers.

She shuddered with pain from head to foot when she thought of it. Then had come strange lapses of his memory, disconnected speech, even hysterical tears, following senseless anger, and then he had ceased to recognize any one, and had almost killed one of the men who took care of him, so that it was necessary to take him to an asylum, struggling like a wild beast. Twice, out of a sense of duty, she had been to see whether he knew her, but he knew no one, and the doctors said it was a hopeless case. Since then she had received a simple confirmation of the statement every month, and there seemed to be no reason for expecting any change, and she felt free.

Free was the only word she could find, and she applied it to herself in a sense of her own, meaning that she had been liberated from the thraldom in which she had lived so many years face to face with his brutality, and hiding it from the world as best she could, protecting and defending his name, and refusing pity as she would have refused money had she been poor. People might guess what she suffered, but no one should know it from her, and no one but herself could tell the half of what she underwent.

Yet, now that it was all over, Wimpole suggested that it might begin again, unless she took measures to defend herself. But her heart revolted at the idea of a divorce. She wondered, as she tried to test herself, whether she could be as strong if the case really arose. It never occurred to her to ask whether her strength might not be folly, for it lay in one of those convictions by which unusual characters are generally moved, and conviction never questions itself.

It was not that in order to be divorced she must almost necessarily bring up in public and prove by evidence a certain number of her many wrongs. The publicity would be horrible. Every newspaper in the country would print the details, with hideous head-lines. Even her son's deficiency would be dragged into the light. She should have to explain how she had come by the scar on her forehead, and much more that would be harder to tell, if she could bring her lips to speak the words.

Nevertheless, she could do that, and bear everything, for a good cause. If, for instance, Archie's future depended upon it, or even if it could do him some good, she could do all that for his sake. But even for his sake, she would not be divorced, not even if Harmon were let out of the asylum and came back to her.

Some people, perhaps many, could not understand such a prejudice, or conviction, now that all convictions are commonly spoken of as relative. But will those who do not understand Helen Harmon consider how the world looked upon divorce as recently as five and twenty years ago? Nothing can give a clearer idea of the direction taken by social morality than the way in which half the world has become accustomed to regard marriage as a contract, and not as a bond, during the lifetime of people now barely in middle age.

Twenty-five or thirty years ago divorces were so rare as to be regarded in the light of very, uncommon exceptions to the general rule. The divorce law itself is not yet forty years old in England, nor twenty years old in France. In Italy there is no civil divorce whatever at the present day, and the Catholic Church only grants what are not properly divorces, but annullations of marriage, in very rare cases, and with the greatest reluctance.

Even in America, every one can remember how divorce was spoken of and thought of until very recently. Within a few years it was deemed to be something very like a disgrace, and certainly a profoundly cynical and immoral proceeding. To-day we can most of us count in our own acquaintance half a dozen persons who have been divorced and have married again. Whatever we may think of it in our hearts, or whatever our religious convictions may be on the subject, it has become so common that when we hear of a flagrant case of cruelty or unfaithfulness, by which a man or woman suffers, the question at once rises to our lips, 'Why does he not divorce his wife?' or 'Why does she not divorce her husband?' We have grown used to the idea, and, if it does not please us, it certainly does not shock us. It shocked our fathers, but we are perfectly indifferent.

Of course there are many, perhaps a majority, who, though not Roman Catholics, would in their own lives put up with almost anything rather than go to the divorce court for peace. Some actually suffer much and ask for no redress. But there are very many who have not suffered anything at all, excepting the favourite 'incompatibility of temper,' and who have taken advantage of the loose laws in certain states to try a second matrimonial experiment. In what calls itself society, there seems still to be a prejudice against a third marriage for divorced persons, but at the present rate of so-called progress this cannot last long, and the old significance of the word marriage will be quite lost before our great grandchildren are dead; in other words, by the end of the next century, at the furthest.

There are various forms of honourable political dreaming and of dishonourable political mischief-making nowadays, which we are accustomed to call collectively 'socialism.' Most of these rely for their hope of popular success upon their avowed intention of dividing property and preventing its subsequent accumulation. Marriage is an incentive of such accumulation, because it perpetuates families and therefore keeps property together by inheritance. Therefore most forms of socialism are at present in favour of divorce, as a means of ultimately destroying marriage altogether. A proverb says that whosoever desires the end, desires also the means. There is more truth in the saying than morality in the point of view it expresses. But there are those who desire neither the means nor the end to which they lead, and a struggle is coming, the like of which has not been seen since the beginning of the world, and of which we who are now alive shall not see the termination.

The Civil War in the United States turned upon slavery incidentally, not vitally. The cause of that great fight lay much deeper. In the same way the Social War, which is coming, will turn incidentally upon religion, and be perhaps called a religious war hereafter, but it will not be declared for the sake of faith against unbelief, nor be fought at first by any church, or alliance of churches, against atheism. It will simply turn out that the men who fight on the one side will have either the convictions or the prejudices of Christianity, or both, and that their adversaries will have neither. But the struggle will be at its height when the original steady current of facts which led to inevitable strife has sunk into apparent insignificance under the raging storm of conflicting belief and unbelief. The disadvantage of the unbelievers will lie in the fact that belief is positive and assertive, whereas unbelief is negative and argumentative. It is indeed easier to deny than to prove almost anything. But that is not the question. In life and war it is generally easier to keep than to take, and besides, those who believe 'care,' as we say, whereas those who deny generally 'care' very little. It is probable, to say the least of it, that so long as the socialists of the near future believe assertively that they have discovered the means of saving humanity from misery and poverty, and fight for a pure conviction, they will have the better of it, but that when they find themselves in the position of attacking half of mankind's religious faith, having no idea, but only a proposition, to offer in its place, they will be beaten.

That seems far from the question of divorce, but it is not. Before the battle, the opposing forces are encamped and intrenched at a little distance from each other, and each tries to undermine the other's outworks. Socialism, collectively, has dug a mine under Social Order's strongest tower, which is called marriage, and the edifice is beginning to shake from its foundations, even before the slow-match is lighted.

To one who has known the world well for a quarter of a century, it seems as though the would-be destroyers of the existing order had forgotten, among several other things, the existence of woman, remembering only that of the female. They practically propose to take away woman's privileges in exchange for certain more or less imaginary 'rights.' There is an apparent justice in the 'conversion,' as it would be called in business. If woman is to have all the rights of man, which, indeed, seem reducible to a political vote now and then, why should she keep all the privileges which man is not allowed? But tell her that when she is allowed to vote for the president of the United States once in four years, no man shall be expected to stand up in a public conveyance to give her a seat, nor to fetch and carry for her, nor to support her instead of being supported by her, nor to keep her for his wife any longer than he chooses, and the 'conversion' looks less attractive.

The reason why woman has privileges instead of rights is that all men tacitly acknowledge the future of humanity to be dependent on her from generation to generation. Man works or fights, and takes his rights in payment therefor, as well as for a means of working and fighting to greater advantage. And while he is fighting or working, his wife takes care of his children almost entirely. There is not one household in a hundred thousand, rich or poor, where there is really any question about that. It sounds insignificant, perhaps, and it looks as though anybody could take care of two or three small children. Those who have tried it know better, and they are women. Now and then rich mothers are too lazy to look after their children themselves. To do them such justice as one may, they are willing to spend any amount of money in order to get it well done for them, but the result is not encouraging to those who would have all children brought up 'by the state.' Even if it were so, who would bring them up? Women, of course. Then why not their own mothers? Because mothers sometimes--or often, for the sake of argument--do not exactly know how. Then educate the mothers, give them chances of knowing how, let them learn, if you know any better than they, which is doubtful, to say the least of it.

Moreover, does any man in his senses really believe that mothers, as a whole, would submit and let their children be taken from them to a state rearing-house, to be brought up under a number on a ticket by professional baby-farmers, in exchange for the 'right' to vote at a presidential election, and the 'right' to put away their husbands and take others as often as they please, and the 'right' to run for Congress? Yet the plan has been proposed gravely.

There seems to be a good deal to be said in favour of the existing state of things, after all, and particularly in favour of marriage, and therefore against divorce; and it is not surprising that woman, whose life is in reality far more deeply affected by both questions than man's life is, should have also the more profound convictions about them.

Woman brings us into the world, woman is our first teacher, woman makes the world what it is, from century to century. We can no more escape from woman, and yet continue to live our lives as they should be lived, than we can hide ourselves from nature. We are in her care or in her power during more than half our years, and often during all, from first to last. We are born of her, we grow of her, as truly as trees and flowers come of the mother earth and draw their life from the soil in which they are planted. The man who denies his mother is a bad man, and the man who has not loved woman is a man in darkness.

Man is not really unjust to woman in his thoughts of her either, unless he be a lost soul, but he has not much reason in respect of her nor any justice in his exactions. Because within himself he knows that she is everything and all things for the life and joy of men, therefore he would seem perfect in her eyes; and he rails against whatsoever in her does not please him, as a blot upon the lustre of his ideal, which indeed he would make a glorified reflexion of his own faults. When he is most imperfect, he most exacts her praise; when he is weakest, she must think him most strong; when he fails, she must call failure victory, or at the least she must name it honourable defeat; she must not see his meanness, but she must magnify the smallest of his generosities to the great measure of his immeasurable vanity therein; she must see faith in his unfaithfulness, honour in his disgrace, heroism in his cowardice, for his sake; she must forgive freely and forgettingly such injury as he would not pardon any man; in one word, she must love him, that in her love he may think and boast himself a god.

It is much to ask. And yet many a woman who loves a man with all her heart has done and daily does every one of those things, and more; and the man knows it, and will not think of it lest he should die of shame. And, moreover, a woman has borne him, a woman has nursed him, a woman taught him first; a woman gives him her soul and her body when he is a man; and when he is dead, if tears are shed for him, they are a woman's.

If we men are honest, we shall say that we do not give her much for all that, not much honour, not much faith. We think we do enough if we give her life's necessities and luxuries in fair share to the limit of our poverty or wealth; that we give much, if we love her; too much, if we trust her altogether.

It is a wonder that women should love, seeing what some men are and what most men may be when the devil is in them. It is a wonder that women should not rise up in a body and demand laws to free them from marriage, for one-half the cause that so many of them have.

But they do not. Even in this old age of history they still believe in marriage, and cling to it, and in vast majority cry out against its dissolution. No man ever believes in anything as a woman who loves him believes in him. Men have stronger arms, and heads for harder work, but they have no such hearts as women. And the world has been led by the heart in all ages.

Even when the great mistake is made, many a woman clings to the faith that made it, for the sake of what might have been, in a self-respect of which men do not dream. Even when she has married with little love, and taken a man who has turned upon her like a brute beast, her marriage is still a bond which she will not break, and the vow made is not void because the promise taken has been a vain lie. Its damnation is upon him who spoke it, but she still keeps faith.

So, when her fair years of youth lay scattered and withered as blown leaves along the desert of her past, Helen Harmon, wisely or unwisely, but faithfully and with a whole heart, meant to keep that plighted word which is not to be broken by wedded man and woman 'until death shall them part.'

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