CHAPTER VIIIAfter the door had closed, Helen stood a moment by the table, motionless. Then she sat down by the feeble light of the taper and wrote upon a sheet of paper her husband's address and one word--'forgiven.' She looked at the writing fixedly for a minute or two, and then rang the bell."Have this telegram sent at once, please, and bring me a lamp and dinner," she said to the servant.With the lamp came Archie, following it with a sort of interest, as children do."You must have been in the dark ever so long, mother," he said, and just then he saw her white face. "You are not looking all right," he observed.Helen smiled, from force of habit, rather wearily. The servant began to set the table, moving stealthily, as though he were meditating some sudden surprise which never came. He was a fairly intelligent Swiss, with an immense pink face and very small blue eyes.Helen watched him for a moment, and sighed. The man was intellectually her son's superior, and she knew it. Any one else might have smiled at the thought, as grotesque, but it had for her the cruel vividness of a misfortune that had saddened all of her life which her husband had not embittered. She envied, for her son, the poor waiter's little powers of mental arithmetic and memory."What's the matter, mother?" asked Archie, who sat looking at her."Nothing, dear," she answered, rousing herself, and smiling wearily again. "I am a little tired, perhaps. It has been a hot day.""Has it? I didn't notice. I never do--at least, not much. I say, mother, let's go home! I'm tired of Europe, and I know you are. Let's all go home together--we and the Wimpoles.""We shall be going home soon," said Helen."I thought you meant to go to Carlsbad first. Wasn't it to Carlsbad we were going?""Yes, dear. But--here comes dinner--we will talk about it by and by."They sat down to table. In hotels abroad Helen always dined in her rooms, for she was never quite sure of Archie. He seemed strangely unconscious of his own defect of mind, and was always ready to enter boldly into conversation with his neighbours at a foreign hotel dinner table. His childish ignorance had once or twice caused her such humiliation as she did not feel called upon to bear again."I don't know why we shouldn't talk about it now," began Archie, when he had eaten his soup in silence, and the servant was changing his plate."We shall be alone, after dinner," answered his mother."Oh, the waiter doesn't care! He'll never see us again, you know, so why shouldn't we say anything we like before him?"Mrs. Harmon looked at her son and shook her head gravely, which was an admonition he always understood."Did you see anything you liked, to-day?" she asked incautiously, by way of changing the conversation."Rather!" exclaimed Archie, promptly. "I met Sylvia Strahan--jukes!"Helen shuddered, as she saw the look in his face and the glitter in his eyes."I wish you could remember not to say 'jukes' every other minute, Archie," she said, for the thousandth time."Do you think Sylvia minds when I say 'jukes'?" asked the young man, suddenly."I am sure she thinks it a very ugly and senseless word.""Does she? Really?" He was silent for a few moments, pondering the question. "Well," he resumed at last, in a regretful tone, "I've always said it, and I like it, and I don't see any harm in it. But, of course, if Sylvia doesn't like it, I've got to give it up, that's all. I'm always going to do what Sylvia likes, now, as long as I live. And what you like, too, mother," he added as an apologetic and dutiful afterthought. "But then, you're pretty sure to like the same things, after all.""You really must not go on in this way about Sylvia, my dear," said Helen. "It is too absurd."Archie's heavy brows met right across his forehead as he looked up with something like a glare in his eyes, and his voice was suddenly thick and indistinct, when he answered."Don't call it absurd, mother. I don't understand what it is, but it's stronger than I am. I don't want anything but Sylvia. Things don't amuse me any more. It was only to-day--"He stopped, for he was going to tell her how he had found no pleasure in his toys, neither in the blocks, nor in the tin soldiers, nor in the little papier-mâché lady and gentleman in the painted cart. But he thought she did not know about them, and he checked himself in a sudden shame which he had never felt before. A deep red blush spread over his dark face, and he looked down at his plate."I'm a man, now," he said, through his teeth, in a rough voice.After that, he was silent for a time, but Helen watched him nervously. She, too, saw that he was a man, with almost less than a boy's mind, and her secret terror grew. She could not eat that evening, but he did not notice her. They dined quickly and then they sat down together, as they usually did, quite near to each other and side by side. She could sometimes teach him little things which he remembered, when everything was quiet. He generally began to talk of something he had seen, and she always tried to make him understand it and think about it. But this evening he said nothing for a long time, and she was glad of his silence. When she thought of the telegram she had sent, she had a sharp pain at her heart, and once or twice she started a little in her chair. But Archie did not notice her."I say, mother," he began, looking up, "what becomes of all the things one forgets? Do they--do they go to sleep in one's head?"Mrs. Harmon looked at him in surprise, for it was by far the most thoughtful question he had ever asked. She could not answer it at once, and he went on."Because you always tell me to try and remember, and you think I could remember if I tried hard enough. Then you must believe the things are there. You wouldn't expect me to give you what I hadn't got, would you? That wouldn't be fair.""No, certainly not," answered his mother, considerably puzzled."Then you really think that I don't forget. You must think I don't remember to remember. Something like that. I can't explain what I mean, but you understand.""I suppose so, my dear. Something like that. Yes, perhaps it is just as you say, and things go to sleep in one's head and one has to wake them up. But I know that I can often remember things I have forgotten if I try very hard.""I can't. I say, mother, I suppose I'm stupid, though you never tell me so. I know I'm different from other people, somehow. I wish you would tell me just what it is. I don't want to be different from other people. Of course I know I could never be as clever as you, nor the colonel. But then you're awfully clever, both of you. Father used to call me an idiot, but I'm not. I saw an idiot once, and his eyes turned in, and he couldn't shut his mouth, and he couldn't talk properly.""Are you sure that your father ever called you an idiot, Archie?"Helen's lips were oddly pale, and her voice was low. Archie laughed in a wooden way."Oh, yes! I'm quite sure," he said. "I remember, because he hit me on the back of the head with the knob of his stick when he said so. That was the first time. Then he got into the way of saying it. I wasn't very big then."Helen leaned back and closed her eyes, and in her mind she saw the word 'forgiven' as she had written it after his name,--'Henry Harmon, New York. Forgiven.' It had a strange look. She had not known that he had ever struck the boy cruelly."Why did you never tell me?" she asked slowly."Oh, I don't know. It would have been like a cry-a-baby to go running to you. I just waited."Helen did not guess what was coming."Did he strike you again with the knob of his stick?" she asked."Lots of times, with all sorts of things. Once, when you were off somewhere for two or three days on a visit, he came at me with a poker. That was the last time. I suppose he had been drinking more than usual.""What happened?" asked Helen."Oh, well, I'd grown big then, and I got sick of it all at once, you know. He never tried to touch me again, after that."Helen recalled distinctly that very unusual occasion when she had been absent for a whole week, at the time of a sister's death. Harmon had seemed ill when she had returned, and she remembered noticing a great change in his manner towards the boy only a few months before he had become insane."What did you do?" she asked."I hit him. I hit him badly, a good many times. Then I put him to bed. I knew he wouldn't tell."Archie smiled slowly at the recollection of beating his father, and looked down at his fist. Helen felt as though she were going mad herself. It was all horribly unnatural,--the father's cruel brutality to his afflicted son, the son's ferocious vengeance upon his father when he had got his strength."You see," continued Archie, "I knew exactly how many times he had hit me altogether, and I gave all the hits back at once. That was fair, anyhow."Helen could not remember that he had ever professed to be sure of an exact number from memory."How could you know just how many times--" She spoke faintly, and stopped, half sick."Blocks," answered Archie. "I dropped a little blot of ink on one of my blocks every time he hit me. I used to count the ones that had blots on them every morning. When they all had one blot each, I began on the other side, till I got round again. Some had blots on several sides at last. I don't know how many there were, now; but it was all right, for I used to count them every morning and remember all day. There must have been forty or fifty, I suppose. But I know it was all right. I didn't want to be unfair, and I hit him slowly and counted. Oh,"--his eyes brightened suddenly,--"I've got the blocks here. I'll go and get them, and we can count them together. Then you'll know exactly."Helen could not say anything, and Archie was gone. She only half understood what the blocks were, and did not care to know. There was an unnatural horror in it all, and Archie spoke of it quite simply and without any particular resentment. She was still half dazed when he came back with the mysterious box in which he kept his toys.He set it down on the floor at her feet and knelt beside it, feeling for the key in his pocket."I don't care if you see all the things now," he said. "They don't amuse me any more."Nevertheless, she saw the blush of shame rising to his forehead as he bent down and put the key into the lock."I don't care, after all," he said, before he lifted the lid. "It's only you, mother, and you won't think I was a baby just because they amused me. I don't care for them any more, mother. Indeed I don't; so I may as well make a clean breast of it and tell you. Besides, you must see the blocks. All the blots are there still, quite plain, and we can count them, and then you'll always remember, though I shan't. Here they are. I've carried them about a long time, you know, and they're getting pretty old, especially the soldiers. There isn't much paint left on them, and the captain's head's gone."Helen leaned forward, her elbow on her knees, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes dim, and her heart beating oddly. It seemed as though nothing were spared her on that day.Archie unpacked the toys in silence, and arranged the blocks all on one side in a neat pile, while on the other he laid the soldiers and the little cart, with the few remaining toys. Helen's eyes became riveted on the bits of wood. There were about twenty of them, and she could plainly distinguish on them the little round blots which Archie had made, one for each blow he had received. He began to count, and Helen followed him mechanically. He was very methodical, for he knew that he was easily confused. When he had counted the blots on each block, he put it behind him on the floor before he took another from the pile. He finished at last."Sixty-three--ju--!" He checked himself. "I forgot. I won't say 'jukes' any more. I won't. There were sixty-three in all, mother. Besides, I remember now. Yes; there were sixty-three. I remember that it took a long time, because I was afraid of not being fair."Again he smiled at the recollection, with some satisfaction, perhaps, at his conscientious rectitude. With those hands of his, it was a wonder that he had not killed his father. Helen sat like a stone figure, and watched him unconsciously, while her thoughts ground upon each other in her heart like millstones, and her breath half choked her.He swept all the blocks back in front of him, and, by force of habit, he began to build a little house before he put them away. She watched his strong hands, that could do such childish things, and the bend of his athletic neck. His head was not ill-shaped nor defective under the thick short hair."Did he always strike you on the head, Archie?" she asked suddenly.He knocked the little house over with a sweep of his hand and looked up."Generally," he said quietly. "But it doesn't matter, you know. He generally went for the back of my head because it didn't make any mark, as I have such thick hair, so I hit him in the same place. It's all right. It was quite fair. I say, mother, I'm going to throw these things away, now that you know all about them. What's the good of keeping them, anyway? I'm sure I don't know why I ever liked them.""Give them to me," answered Helen. "Perhaps some poor child might like them."But she knew that she meant to keep them."Well, there isn't much paint on those tin soldiers, you know. I don't believe any child would care for them much. At least not so much as I did, because I was used to them. Of course that made a difference. But you may have them, if you like. I don't want them any more. They're only in the way.""Give them to me, for the present.""All right, mother." And he began to pack the toys into the box.He did it very carefully and neatly, for the habit was strong, though the memory was weak. Still Helen watched him, without changing her attitude. He sighed as he put in the last of the tin soldiers."I suppose I shall really never care for them again," he said.He looked at them with a sort of affection and touched some of the things lightly, arranging them a little better. Then he shut the lid down, turned the key, and held it out to his mother."There you are," he said. "Anyhow, the blocks helped me to remember. Sixty-three, wasn't it, mother?""Sixty-three," repeated Helen, mechanically.Then, for the second time on that evening, she turned her face to the cushion of her chair, and shook from head to foot, and sobbed aloud. She had realized what the number meant. Sixty-three times, in the course of years, had Henry Harmon struck his son upon the head. It was strange that Archie should have any wits at all, and it was no wonder that they were not like those of other men. And it had all been a secret, kept by the child first, then by the growing boy, then by the full-grown man, till his thews and sinews had toughened upon him and he had turned and paid back blow for blow, all at once. And last of all the father had struck her, with a thought of revenge, perhaps, as well as in passion, because he dared not raise his hand against his strong son.Again she saw the words of her telegram, 'Henry Harmon, New York. Forgiven,' and they were in letters of fire that her tears could not quench. She had not known how much she was forgiving. Archie knelt beside her in wonder, for he had never seen her cry in his life. He touched her arm lovingly, trying to see her face, and his own softened strangely, growing more human as it grew more childlike."Don't, mother! Please don't cry like that! If I had thought you would cry about it, I'd never have told you. Besides, it couldn't have hurt him so very much--""Him!"Helen's voice rang out, and she turned, with a fierce light in her angry eyes. In a quick movement her arms ran round Archie's neck and drew him passionately to her breast, and she kissed his head, again and again, always his head, upon the short, thick hair, till he wondered, and laughed.When they were quiet again, sitting side by side, her battle began once more, and she knew that it must all be fought over on different ground. She had forgiven Henry Harmon, as well as she could, for her own wrongs; but there were others now, and they seemed worse to her than anything she had suffered. It was just to think so, too, for she knew that at any time she could have left Harmon without blame or stain. It had been in her power, but she had chosen not to do it.But the boy had been powerless and silent through long years. She had never even guessed that his father had ever struck him cruelly. At the merest suspicion of such a thing she would have turned upon her husband as only mothers do turn, tigresses or women. But Archie had kept his secret, while his strength quietly grew upon him, and then he had paid the long score with his own hands. Out of shame, Harmon had kept the secret, too.Yet she had said in one word that she forgave him, and the word determined the rest of her life. A suffering, a short, sad respite, and then suffering again; that was to sum the history of her years. She must suffer to the end, more and more.And all at once it seemed to her that she could not bear it. For herself she might have forgiven anything. She had pardoned all for herself, from the first neglect to the scar on her forehead. But it was another matter to forgive for Archie. Why should she? What justice could there be in that? What right had she to absolve Harmon for his cruelty to her child?She must ask Archie if he forgave his father. She could no longer decide the question alone, and Archie had the best of rights to be consulted. Wimpole's words came back to her, asking whether it could do Archie any good to be under the same roof with his father; and all at once she saw that her whole married life had been centred in her son much more than in herself.Besides, he must be told that his father had recovered, for every one must know it soon, and people would speak of it before him, and think it very strange if he were ignorant of it. She hid from herself the underthought that Archie must surely refuse to live with his father, after all that had passed, and the wild hope of escape from what she had undertaken to do, which the suggestion raised.She sat silent and thoughtful, her tears drying on her cheeks, while her son still knelt beside her. But without looking at him, she laid her hand on his arm, and her grasp tightened while she was thinking."What is it, mother? What is it?" he asked again and again.At last she let her eyes go to his, and she answered him."Your father is well again. By this time he must have left the asylum. Shall we go back to him?""I suppose we must, if he's all right," answered Archie, promptly.Helen's face fell suddenly, for she had expected a strong refusal."Can you forgive him for all he did to you?" she asked slowly."I don't see that there's much to forgive. He hit me, and I hit him just as often; so we're square. He won't hit me now, because he's afraid of me. I hate him, of course, and he hates me. It's quite fair. He thinks I'm stupid, and I think he's mean; but I don't see that there's anything to forgive him. I suppose he's made so. If he's all right again, I don't see but what we shall have to go and live with him again. I don't see what you're going to do about it, mother."Helen buried her face in her hands, not sobbing again, but thinking. She did not see 'what she was going to do about it,' as Archie expressed the situation. If she had not already sent the telegram, it would have been different. The young man's rough phrases showed that he had not the slightest fear of his father, and he was ignorant of what she herself had suffered. Much she had hidden from him altogether, and his dulness had seen nothing of the rest. He supposed, if he thought anything about it, that his mother had been unhappy because Harmon drank hard, and stayed away from home unaccountably, and often spoke roughly and rudely when he had been drinking. To his unsensitive nature and half-developed mind these things had seemed regrettable, but not so very terrible, after all. Helen had been too loyal to hold up Harmon as an example of evil to his son, and the boy had grown up accustomed to what disgusted and revolted her, as well as ignorant of what hurt her; while his own unfinished character was satisfied with a half-barbarous conception of what was fair so far as he himself was concerned. He had given blow for blow and bruise for bruise, and on a similar understanding he was prepared to return to similar conditions. Helen saw it all in a flash, but she could not forgive Harmon."I can't! I can't!" she repeated aloud, and she pressed Archie's arm again."Can't--what, mother?" he asked. "Can't go back?""How can I, after this? How can I ever bear to see him, to touch his hand,--his hand that hurt you, Archie,--that hurt you so much more than you ever dream of?"There were tears in her voice again, and again she pressed him close to her. But he did not understand."Oh, that's all right, mother," he answered. "Don't cry about me! I made it all right with him long ago. And I don't suppose he hurt me more than I dreamed of, either. That's only a way of talking, you know. It used to make me feel rather stupid. But then, I'm stupid anyway; so even that didn't matter much." And Archie smiled indifferently."More than you think, more than you know!" She kissed his hair. "It was that--it may have been that--it must have been--I know it was--"She was on the point of breaking down again."What?" he asked with curiosity. "What do you mean? I don't understand."Helen's voice sank low, and she hardly seemed to be speaking to her son."Your father made you what you are," she said, and her face grew cold and hard."What? Stupid?" asked Archie, cheerfully. Then his face changed, too. "I say, mother," he went on, in another voice, "do you think I'm so dull because he hit me on the head?"Helen repented her words, scarcely knowing why, but sure that it would have been better not to speak them. She did not answer the question."That's what you think," said Archie. "And it's because I'm not like other people that you say it's absurd of me to want to marry Sylvia Strahan, isn't it? And that's my father's doing? Is that what you think?"He waited for an answer, but none came at once. Helen was startled by the clear sequence of ideas, far more logical than most of his reasonings. It seemed as if his sudden passion for Sylvia had roused his sluggish intelligence from its long torpor. She could not deny the truth of what he said, and he saw that she could not."That's it," he continued. "That's what you think. I knew it."His brows knitted themselves straight across his forehead, and his eyes were fixed upon his mother's face, as he knelt beside her. She had not been looking at him, but she turned to him slowly now."And that's why you ask whether I can forgive him," he concluded."Can you?""No."He rose to his feet from his knees easily, by one movement, and she watched him. Then there was a long silence and he began to walk up and down.Helen felt as if she had done something disloyal, and that he had given the answer for which she had been longing intensely, as an escape from her decision, and as a means of freedom from bondage to come. She could ask herself now what right she had to expect that Archie should forgive his father. But, instead, she asked what right she could have had to give Archie so good a reason for hating him, when the boy had not suspected that which, after all, might not be the truth. She had made an enormous sacrifice in sending the message of forgiveness for her own wrongs, but it seemed to her, all at once, that in rousing Archie's resentment for his own injuries she had marred the purity of her own intention.Indeed she was in no state to judge herself, for what Archie had told her was a goad in her wound, with a terror of new pain."You cannot forgive him," she said mechanically and almost to herself."Why should I?" asked Archie. "It means Sylvia to me. How can I forgive him that?"And suddenly, without waiting for any answer, he went out and left her alone.After a long time, she wrote this letter to her husband:DEAR HENRY,--I am very glad to hear of your recovery, and I have received your letter to-day, together with the doctor's. I have telegraphed the one word for which you asked, and you have probably got the message already. But I must answer your letter as well as I can, and say a great many things which I shall never say again. If we are to meet and try to live together, it is better that I should speak plainly before I see you.You asked a great deal of me, and for myself I have done what you asked. I do not say this to make it seem as though I were making a great sacrifice and wished you to admit it. We were not happy together; you say that it was your fault, and you ask me to forgive you. If I believed that you had been in full possession of your senses till you were taken ill, I do not think that forgiveness could be possible. You see, I am frank. I am sure that you often did not know what you said and did, and that when you did know, you could not always weigh the consequences of your words and actions. So I will try to forget them. That is what you mean by being forgiven, and it is the only meaning either you or I can put upon the word. I will try to forget, and I will bear no malice for anything in the past, so far as I am concerned. Never speak of it, when we meet, and I never will. If you really wish to try the experiment of living together again, I am willing to attempt it, as an experiment.But there is Archie to be considered, and Archie will not forgive you. By a mere chance, to-day, after I had sent my telegram, he told me that you used to strike him cruelly and often because his dulness irritated you. You struck him on the head, and you injured his brain, so that his mind has never developed fully and never can.I do not think that if I were a man, as he is, I could forgive that. Could you? Do you expect that I should, being his mother? You cannot. You and he can never live under the same roof again. It would perhaps be harder for you, feeling as you must, than for him; but in any case it is not possible, and there is only one arrangement to be made. We must put Archie in some place where he shall be safe and healthy and happy, and I will spend a part of the year with you and a part with him. I will not give him up for you, and I am not willing to give you up for him. Neither would be right. You are my husband, whatever there may have been in the past; but Archie is my child. It will be harder for me than for him, too.You say that I might have got a divorce from you, and you do me the justice to add that you believe I have never thought of it. That is true, but it is not a proof of affection. I have none for you. I told you that I should speak plainly, and it is much better. It would be an ignoble piece of comedy on my part to pretend to be fond of you. I was once. I admired you, I suppose, and I liked you well enough to marry you, being rather ignorant of the world and of what people could feel. If you had really loved me and been kind to me, I should have loved you in the end. But, as it turned out, I could not go on admiring you long, and I simply ceased to like you. That is our story, and it is a sad one. We made the great mistake, for we married without much love on either side, and we were very young.But it was a marriage, just the same, and a bond which I never meant to break and will not break now. A promise is a promise, whatever happens, and a vow made before God is ten times a promise. So I always mean to keep mine to you, as I have kept it. I will do my best to make you happy, and you must do your part to make it possible.After all, that is the way most people live. True love, lasting lifetimes and not changing, exists in the world, and it is the hope of it that makes youth lovely and marriage noble. Few people find it, and the many who do not must live as well as they can without it. That is what we must do. Perhaps, though the hope of love is gone, we may find peace together. Let us try.But not with Archie. There are things which no woman can forgive nor forget. I could not forgive you this if I loved you with all my heart, and you must not expect it of me, for it is not in my power. The harm was not done to me, but to him, and he is more to me than you ever were, and far more to me than myself. I will only say that. There can be no need of ever speaking about it, but I want you to understand; and not only this, but everything. That is why I write such a long letter.It must all be perfectly clear, and I hope I have made it so. It was I who suffered for the great mistake we made in marrying, but you are sorry for that, and I say, let us try the experiment and see whether we can live together in peace for the rest of our lives. You are changed since your illness, I have no doubt, and you will make it as easy as you can. At least, you will do your best, and so shall I.Have I repeated myself in this letter? At least, I have tried to be clear and direct. Besides, you know me, and you know what I mean by writing in this way. I am in earnest.God bless you, Henry. I hope this may turn out well. HELEN.It was ten o'clock when she had finished. She laid her hand upon the bell, meaning to send her letter to the post office by a servant; but just then the sound of laughing voices came up to her through the open window, and she did not ring. Looking out, she saw that there were still many people in the street, for it was a warm evening. It was only a step from her hotel to the post office, and if she went herself she should have the satisfaction of knowing positively that the letter was safe. She put on a hat with a thick veil, and went out.CHAPTER IXColonel Wimpole looked positively old that evening when he went down to dinner with his sister and Sylvia. His face was drawn and weary and the lids hung a little, in small wrinkles; but down in his grey eyes there was a far-off gleam of danger-light.Sylvia looked down when she met him, and she was very silent and grave at first. At dinner she sat between him and Miss Wimpole, and for some time she scarcely dared to glance at him. He, on his part, was too much preoccupied to speak much, and she thought he was displeased. Nevertheless, he was more than usually thoughtful for her. She understood by the way he sat, and even by the half-unconscious shrinking of the elbow next to her, that he was sorry for her. At table, seated close together, there is a whole language in one's neighbour's elbow and an unlimited power of expression in its way of avoiding collisions. Very perceptive people understand that. Primarily, in savage life, the bold man turns his elbows out, while the timid one presses them to his sides, as though not to give offence with them. Society teaches us to put on some little airs of timidity as a substitute for the modesty that few feel, and we accordingly draw in our elbows when we are near any one. It is ridiculous enough, but there are a hundred ways of doing it, a hundred degrees of readiness, unwillingness, pride, or consideration for others, as well as sympathy for their troubles or in their successes, all of which are perfectly natural to refined people, and almost entirely unconscious. The movement of a man's jaws at dinner shows much of his real character, but the movement of his elbows shows with fair accuracy the degree of refinement in which he has been brought up.Sylvia was sure that the colonel was sorry for her, and the certainty irritated her, for she hated to be pitied, and most of all for having done something foolish. She glanced at Wimpole's tired face, just when he was looking a little away from her, and she was startled by the change in his features since the early afternoon. It needed no very keen perception to see that he was in profound anxiety of some kind, and she knew of nothing which could have disturbed him deeply but her own conduct.Under the vivid light of the public dining table, he looked old. That was undeniable, and it was really the first time that Sylvia had definitely connected the idea of age with him. Just beyond him sat a man in the early prime of strength, one of those magnificent specimens of humanity such as one sees occasionally in travelling but whom one very rarely knows in acquaintance. He could not have been more than twenty-eight years old, straight in his seat, broad-shouldered, with thick, close, golden hair and splendid golden beard, white forehead and sunburned cheeks, broad, well-modelled brows and faultless nose, and altogether manly in spite of his beauty. As he leaned forward a little, his fresh young face appeared beside the colonel's tired profile, in vivid contrast.For the first time, Sylvia realized the meaning of Wimpole's words, spoken that afternoon. He might almost have been her grandfather, and he was in reality of precisely the same age as her father. Sylvia looked down again and reflected that she must have made a mistake with herself. Youth can sometimes close its eyes to grey hair, but it can never associate the idea of love with old age, when clearly brought to its perceptions.For at least five minutes the world seemed utterly hollow to Sylvia, as she sat there. She did not even wonder why she had thought the colonel young until then. The sudden dropping out of her first great illusion left a void as big and as hollow as itself.She turned her head, and looked once more, and there, again, was the glorious, unseamed youth of the stranger, almost dazzling her and making the poor colonel look more than ever old, with his pale, furrowed cheeks and wrinkled eyelids. She thought a moment, and then she was sure that she could never like such a terribly handsome young man; and at the same instant, for the first time in her life, she felt that natural, foolish, human pity which only extreme youth feels for old age, and she wondered why she had not always felt it, for it seemed quite natural, and was altogether in accordance with the rest of her feelings for the colonel, with her reverence for his perfect character, her admiration for his past deeds, her attachment to his quiet, protective, wise, and all-gentle manliness. That was her view of his qualities, and she had to admit that though he had them all, he was what she called old. She had taken for love what was only a combination of reverence and attachment and admiration. She realized her mistake in a flash, and it seemed to her that the core had withered in the fruit of the universe.Just then the colonel turned to her, holding his glass in his hand."We must not forget that it is your birthday, my dear," he said, and his natural smile came back. "Rachel," he added, speaking to his sister across the young girl, "let us drink Sylvia's health on her eighteenth birthday."Miss Wimpole usually took a little thin Moselle with the cold water she drank. She solemnly raised the glass, and inclined her head as she looked first at Sylvia and then at the colonel."Thank you," said Sylvia, rather meekly.Then they all relapsed into silence. The people at the big table talked fast, in low tones, and the clattering of dishes and plates and knives and forks went on steadily and untunefully all around. Sylvia felt lonely in the unindividual atmosphere of the Swiss hotel. She hated the terribly handsome young man, with a mortal hatred, because he made the colonel look old. She could not help seeing him whenever she turned towards Wimpole. At last she spoke softly, looking down at her plate."Uncle Richard," she said, to call his attention.He was not really her uncle, and she almost always called him 'colonel,' half playfully, and because she had hated the suggestion of age that is conveyed by the word 'uncle.' Wimpole turned to her quietly."Yes, my dear," he said. "What is it?""I suppose I was very foolish to-day, wasn't I?" asked Sylvia, very low indeed, and a bright blush played upon her pretty face.The colonel was a courteous man, and was also very fond of her."A woman need never be wise when she is lovely," he said in his rather old-fashioned way, and he smiled affectionately at the young girl. "It is quite enough if she is good."But she did not smile. On the contrary, her face became very grave."I am in earnest," she said, and she waited a moment before saying more. "I was very foolish," she continued, thoughtfully. "I did not understand--or I did not realize--I don't know. You have been so much to me all my life, and there is nobody like you, of course. It seemed to me--I mean, it seems to me--that is very much like really caring for some one, isn't it? You know what I mean. I can't express it.""You mean that it is a good deal like love, I suppose," answered the colonel, speaking gravely now. "Yes, I suppose that love is better when people believe each other to be angels. But it is not that sort of thing which makes love what it is.""What is it, then?" Sylvia was glad to ask any question that helped to break through the awkwardness and embarrassment she felt towards him."There are a great many kinds of love," he said; "but I think there is only one kind worth having. It is the kind that begins when one is young, and lasts all one's life.""Is that all?" asked Sylvia, innocently, and in a disappointed tone."All!" The colonel laughed softly, and a momentary light of happiness came into his face, for that all was all he had ever had. "Is not that enough, my dear?" he asked. "To love one woman or man with all one's heart for thirty or forty years? Never to be disappointed? Never to feel that one has made a mistake? Never to fear that love may grow old because one grows old oneself? Is not that enough?""Ah, yes! That would be, indeed. But you did not say all those other things at first.""They are just what make a life-long love," answered the colonel. "But then," he added, "there are a great many degrees, far below that. I am sure I have seen people quite really in love with each other for a week."Sylvia suddenly looked almost angry as she glanced at him."That sort of thing ought not to be called love at all!" she answered energetically. "It is nothing but a miserable flirtation,--a miserable, wretched, unworthy flirtation.""I quite agree with you," said Wimpole, smiling at her vehemence."Why do you laugh?" she asked, almost offended by his look. His smile disappeared instantly."You hit the world very hard, my dear," he answered."I hate the world!" cried Sylvia.She was just eighteen. Wimpole knew that she felt an innocent and instinctive repulsion for what the world meant to him, and for all the great, sinful unknown. He disliked it himself, with the steady, subdued dislike which is hatred in such natures as his, both because it was contrary to his character, and for Sylvia's sake, who must surely one day know something of it. So he did not laugh at her sweeping declaration. She hated the world before knowing it, but he hated it in full knowledge. That was a bond of sympathy like any other. To each of us the world means both what we know, and what we suspect, both what we see and the completion of it in the unseen, both the outward lives of our companions which we can judge, and their inward motives, which we dimly guess.But on this evening Sylvia felt that the world was particularly odious, for she had suffered a first humiliation in her own eyes. She thought that she had lowered herself in the colonel's estimation, and she had discovered that she had made a great mistake with herself about him."I hate the world!" she repeated, in a lower tone, almost to herself, and her eyes gleamed with young anger, while her delicate, curving lips just showed her small white teeth.Wimpole watched her face."That is no reason for hating yourself," he said gently.She started and turned her eyes to him. Then she blushed and looked away."You must not guess my thoughts," she answered. "It is not kind.""I did not mean to. I am sorry.""Oh--you could not help it, of course. I was so foolish to-day."The blush deepened, and she said nothing more. The colonel returned to his own secret trouble, and on Sylvia's other side Miss Wimpole was silently planning a charitable institution of unusual severity, while she peeled an orange with the most scrupulous neatness and precision.
CHAPTER VIII
After the door had closed, Helen stood a moment by the table, motionless. Then she sat down by the feeble light of the taper and wrote upon a sheet of paper her husband's address and one word--'forgiven.' She looked at the writing fixedly for a minute or two, and then rang the bell.
"Have this telegram sent at once, please, and bring me a lamp and dinner," she said to the servant.
With the lamp came Archie, following it with a sort of interest, as children do.
"You must have been in the dark ever so long, mother," he said, and just then he saw her white face. "You are not looking all right," he observed.
Helen smiled, from force of habit, rather wearily. The servant began to set the table, moving stealthily, as though he were meditating some sudden surprise which never came. He was a fairly intelligent Swiss, with an immense pink face and very small blue eyes.
Helen watched him for a moment, and sighed. The man was intellectually her son's superior, and she knew it. Any one else might have smiled at the thought, as grotesque, but it had for her the cruel vividness of a misfortune that had saddened all of her life which her husband had not embittered. She envied, for her son, the poor waiter's little powers of mental arithmetic and memory.
"What's the matter, mother?" asked Archie, who sat looking at her.
"Nothing, dear," she answered, rousing herself, and smiling wearily again. "I am a little tired, perhaps. It has been a hot day."
"Has it? I didn't notice. I never do--at least, not much. I say, mother, let's go home! I'm tired of Europe, and I know you are. Let's all go home together--we and the Wimpoles."
"We shall be going home soon," said Helen.
"I thought you meant to go to Carlsbad first. Wasn't it to Carlsbad we were going?"
"Yes, dear. But--here comes dinner--we will talk about it by and by."
They sat down to table. In hotels abroad Helen always dined in her rooms, for she was never quite sure of Archie. He seemed strangely unconscious of his own defect of mind, and was always ready to enter boldly into conversation with his neighbours at a foreign hotel dinner table. His childish ignorance had once or twice caused her such humiliation as she did not feel called upon to bear again.
"I don't know why we shouldn't talk about it now," began Archie, when he had eaten his soup in silence, and the servant was changing his plate.
"We shall be alone, after dinner," answered his mother.
"Oh, the waiter doesn't care! He'll never see us again, you know, so why shouldn't we say anything we like before him?"
Mrs. Harmon looked at her son and shook her head gravely, which was an admonition he always understood.
"Did you see anything you liked, to-day?" she asked incautiously, by way of changing the conversation.
"Rather!" exclaimed Archie, promptly. "I met Sylvia Strahan--jukes!"
Helen shuddered, as she saw the look in his face and the glitter in his eyes.
"I wish you could remember not to say 'jukes' every other minute, Archie," she said, for the thousandth time.
"Do you think Sylvia minds when I say 'jukes'?" asked the young man, suddenly.
"I am sure she thinks it a very ugly and senseless word."
"Does she? Really?" He was silent for a few moments, pondering the question. "Well," he resumed at last, in a regretful tone, "I've always said it, and I like it, and I don't see any harm in it. But, of course, if Sylvia doesn't like it, I've got to give it up, that's all. I'm always going to do what Sylvia likes, now, as long as I live. And what you like, too, mother," he added as an apologetic and dutiful afterthought. "But then, you're pretty sure to like the same things, after all."
"You really must not go on in this way about Sylvia, my dear," said Helen. "It is too absurd."
Archie's heavy brows met right across his forehead as he looked up with something like a glare in his eyes, and his voice was suddenly thick and indistinct, when he answered.
"Don't call it absurd, mother. I don't understand what it is, but it's stronger than I am. I don't want anything but Sylvia. Things don't amuse me any more. It was only to-day--"
He stopped, for he was going to tell her how he had found no pleasure in his toys, neither in the blocks, nor in the tin soldiers, nor in the little papier-mâché lady and gentleman in the painted cart. But he thought she did not know about them, and he checked himself in a sudden shame which he had never felt before. A deep red blush spread over his dark face, and he looked down at his plate.
"I'm a man, now," he said, through his teeth, in a rough voice.
After that, he was silent for a time, but Helen watched him nervously. She, too, saw that he was a man, with almost less than a boy's mind, and her secret terror grew. She could not eat that evening, but he did not notice her. They dined quickly and then they sat down together, as they usually did, quite near to each other and side by side. She could sometimes teach him little things which he remembered, when everything was quiet. He generally began to talk of something he had seen, and she always tried to make him understand it and think about it. But this evening he said nothing for a long time, and she was glad of his silence. When she thought of the telegram she had sent, she had a sharp pain at her heart, and once or twice she started a little in her chair. But Archie did not notice her.
"I say, mother," he began, looking up, "what becomes of all the things one forgets? Do they--do they go to sleep in one's head?"
Mrs. Harmon looked at him in surprise, for it was by far the most thoughtful question he had ever asked. She could not answer it at once, and he went on.
"Because you always tell me to try and remember, and you think I could remember if I tried hard enough. Then you must believe the things are there. You wouldn't expect me to give you what I hadn't got, would you? That wouldn't be fair."
"No, certainly not," answered his mother, considerably puzzled.
"Then you really think that I don't forget. You must think I don't remember to remember. Something like that. I can't explain what I mean, but you understand."
"I suppose so, my dear. Something like that. Yes, perhaps it is just as you say, and things go to sleep in one's head and one has to wake them up. But I know that I can often remember things I have forgotten if I try very hard."
"I can't. I say, mother, I suppose I'm stupid, though you never tell me so. I know I'm different from other people, somehow. I wish you would tell me just what it is. I don't want to be different from other people. Of course I know I could never be as clever as you, nor the colonel. But then you're awfully clever, both of you. Father used to call me an idiot, but I'm not. I saw an idiot once, and his eyes turned in, and he couldn't shut his mouth, and he couldn't talk properly."
"Are you sure that your father ever called you an idiot, Archie?"
Helen's lips were oddly pale, and her voice was low. Archie laughed in a wooden way.
"Oh, yes! I'm quite sure," he said. "I remember, because he hit me on the back of the head with the knob of his stick when he said so. That was the first time. Then he got into the way of saying it. I wasn't very big then."
Helen leaned back and closed her eyes, and in her mind she saw the word 'forgiven' as she had written it after his name,--'Henry Harmon, New York. Forgiven.' It had a strange look. She had not known that he had ever struck the boy cruelly.
"Why did you never tell me?" she asked slowly.
"Oh, I don't know. It would have been like a cry-a-baby to go running to you. I just waited."
Helen did not guess what was coming.
"Did he strike you again with the knob of his stick?" she asked.
"Lots of times, with all sorts of things. Once, when you were off somewhere for two or three days on a visit, he came at me with a poker. That was the last time. I suppose he had been drinking more than usual."
"What happened?" asked Helen.
"Oh, well, I'd grown big then, and I got sick of it all at once, you know. He never tried to touch me again, after that."
Helen recalled distinctly that very unusual occasion when she had been absent for a whole week, at the time of a sister's death. Harmon had seemed ill when she had returned, and she remembered noticing a great change in his manner towards the boy only a few months before he had become insane.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"I hit him. I hit him badly, a good many times. Then I put him to bed. I knew he wouldn't tell."
Archie smiled slowly at the recollection of beating his father, and looked down at his fist. Helen felt as though she were going mad herself. It was all horribly unnatural,--the father's cruel brutality to his afflicted son, the son's ferocious vengeance upon his father when he had got his strength.
"You see," continued Archie, "I knew exactly how many times he had hit me altogether, and I gave all the hits back at once. That was fair, anyhow."
Helen could not remember that he had ever professed to be sure of an exact number from memory.
"How could you know just how many times--" She spoke faintly, and stopped, half sick.
"Blocks," answered Archie. "I dropped a little blot of ink on one of my blocks every time he hit me. I used to count the ones that had blots on them every morning. When they all had one blot each, I began on the other side, till I got round again. Some had blots on several sides at last. I don't know how many there were, now; but it was all right, for I used to count them every morning and remember all day. There must have been forty or fifty, I suppose. But I know it was all right. I didn't want to be unfair, and I hit him slowly and counted. Oh,"--his eyes brightened suddenly,--"I've got the blocks here. I'll go and get them, and we can count them together. Then you'll know exactly."
Helen could not say anything, and Archie was gone. She only half understood what the blocks were, and did not care to know. There was an unnatural horror in it all, and Archie spoke of it quite simply and without any particular resentment. She was still half dazed when he came back with the mysterious box in which he kept his toys.
He set it down on the floor at her feet and knelt beside it, feeling for the key in his pocket.
"I don't care if you see all the things now," he said. "They don't amuse me any more."
Nevertheless, she saw the blush of shame rising to his forehead as he bent down and put the key into the lock.
"I don't care, after all," he said, before he lifted the lid. "It's only you, mother, and you won't think I was a baby just because they amused me. I don't care for them any more, mother. Indeed I don't; so I may as well make a clean breast of it and tell you. Besides, you must see the blocks. All the blots are there still, quite plain, and we can count them, and then you'll always remember, though I shan't. Here they are. I've carried them about a long time, you know, and they're getting pretty old, especially the soldiers. There isn't much paint left on them, and the captain's head's gone."
Helen leaned forward, her elbow on her knees, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes dim, and her heart beating oddly. It seemed as though nothing were spared her on that day.
Archie unpacked the toys in silence, and arranged the blocks all on one side in a neat pile, while on the other he laid the soldiers and the little cart, with the few remaining toys. Helen's eyes became riveted on the bits of wood. There were about twenty of them, and she could plainly distinguish on them the little round blots which Archie had made, one for each blow he had received. He began to count, and Helen followed him mechanically. He was very methodical, for he knew that he was easily confused. When he had counted the blots on each block, he put it behind him on the floor before he took another from the pile. He finished at last.
"Sixty-three--ju--!" He checked himself. "I forgot. I won't say 'jukes' any more. I won't. There were sixty-three in all, mother. Besides, I remember now. Yes; there were sixty-three. I remember that it took a long time, because I was afraid of not being fair."
Again he smiled at the recollection, with some satisfaction, perhaps, at his conscientious rectitude. With those hands of his, it was a wonder that he had not killed his father. Helen sat like a stone figure, and watched him unconsciously, while her thoughts ground upon each other in her heart like millstones, and her breath half choked her.
He swept all the blocks back in front of him, and, by force of habit, he began to build a little house before he put them away. She watched his strong hands, that could do such childish things, and the bend of his athletic neck. His head was not ill-shaped nor defective under the thick short hair.
"Did he always strike you on the head, Archie?" she asked suddenly.
He knocked the little house over with a sweep of his hand and looked up.
"Generally," he said quietly. "But it doesn't matter, you know. He generally went for the back of my head because it didn't make any mark, as I have such thick hair, so I hit him in the same place. It's all right. It was quite fair. I say, mother, I'm going to throw these things away, now that you know all about them. What's the good of keeping them, anyway? I'm sure I don't know why I ever liked them."
"Give them to me," answered Helen. "Perhaps some poor child might like them."
But she knew that she meant to keep them.
"Well, there isn't much paint on those tin soldiers, you know. I don't believe any child would care for them much. At least not so much as I did, because I was used to them. Of course that made a difference. But you may have them, if you like. I don't want them any more. They're only in the way."
"Give them to me, for the present."
"All right, mother." And he began to pack the toys into the box.
He did it very carefully and neatly, for the habit was strong, though the memory was weak. Still Helen watched him, without changing her attitude. He sighed as he put in the last of the tin soldiers.
"I suppose I shall really never care for them again," he said.
He looked at them with a sort of affection and touched some of the things lightly, arranging them a little better. Then he shut the lid down, turned the key, and held it out to his mother.
"There you are," he said. "Anyhow, the blocks helped me to remember. Sixty-three, wasn't it, mother?"
"Sixty-three," repeated Helen, mechanically.
Then, for the second time on that evening, she turned her face to the cushion of her chair, and shook from head to foot, and sobbed aloud. She had realized what the number meant. Sixty-three times, in the course of years, had Henry Harmon struck his son upon the head. It was strange that Archie should have any wits at all, and it was no wonder that they were not like those of other men. And it had all been a secret, kept by the child first, then by the growing boy, then by the full-grown man, till his thews and sinews had toughened upon him and he had turned and paid back blow for blow, all at once. And last of all the father had struck her, with a thought of revenge, perhaps, as well as in passion, because he dared not raise his hand against his strong son.
Again she saw the words of her telegram, 'Henry Harmon, New York. Forgiven,' and they were in letters of fire that her tears could not quench. She had not known how much she was forgiving. Archie knelt beside her in wonder, for he had never seen her cry in his life. He touched her arm lovingly, trying to see her face, and his own softened strangely, growing more human as it grew more childlike.
"Don't, mother! Please don't cry like that! If I had thought you would cry about it, I'd never have told you. Besides, it couldn't have hurt him so very much--"
"Him!"
Helen's voice rang out, and she turned, with a fierce light in her angry eyes. In a quick movement her arms ran round Archie's neck and drew him passionately to her breast, and she kissed his head, again and again, always his head, upon the short, thick hair, till he wondered, and laughed.
When they were quiet again, sitting side by side, her battle began once more, and she knew that it must all be fought over on different ground. She had forgiven Henry Harmon, as well as she could, for her own wrongs; but there were others now, and they seemed worse to her than anything she had suffered. It was just to think so, too, for she knew that at any time she could have left Harmon without blame or stain. It had been in her power, but she had chosen not to do it.
But the boy had been powerless and silent through long years. She had never even guessed that his father had ever struck him cruelly. At the merest suspicion of such a thing she would have turned upon her husband as only mothers do turn, tigresses or women. But Archie had kept his secret, while his strength quietly grew upon him, and then he had paid the long score with his own hands. Out of shame, Harmon had kept the secret, too.
Yet she had said in one word that she forgave him, and the word determined the rest of her life. A suffering, a short, sad respite, and then suffering again; that was to sum the history of her years. She must suffer to the end, more and more.
And all at once it seemed to her that she could not bear it. For herself she might have forgiven anything. She had pardoned all for herself, from the first neglect to the scar on her forehead. But it was another matter to forgive for Archie. Why should she? What justice could there be in that? What right had she to absolve Harmon for his cruelty to her child?
She must ask Archie if he forgave his father. She could no longer decide the question alone, and Archie had the best of rights to be consulted. Wimpole's words came back to her, asking whether it could do Archie any good to be under the same roof with his father; and all at once she saw that her whole married life had been centred in her son much more than in herself.
Besides, he must be told that his father had recovered, for every one must know it soon, and people would speak of it before him, and think it very strange if he were ignorant of it. She hid from herself the underthought that Archie must surely refuse to live with his father, after all that had passed, and the wild hope of escape from what she had undertaken to do, which the suggestion raised.
She sat silent and thoughtful, her tears drying on her cheeks, while her son still knelt beside her. But without looking at him, she laid her hand on his arm, and her grasp tightened while she was thinking.
"What is it, mother? What is it?" he asked again and again.
At last she let her eyes go to his, and she answered him.
"Your father is well again. By this time he must have left the asylum. Shall we go back to him?"
"I suppose we must, if he's all right," answered Archie, promptly.
Helen's face fell suddenly, for she had expected a strong refusal.
"Can you forgive him for all he did to you?" she asked slowly.
"I don't see that there's much to forgive. He hit me, and I hit him just as often; so we're square. He won't hit me now, because he's afraid of me. I hate him, of course, and he hates me. It's quite fair. He thinks I'm stupid, and I think he's mean; but I don't see that there's anything to forgive him. I suppose he's made so. If he's all right again, I don't see but what we shall have to go and live with him again. I don't see what you're going to do about it, mother."
Helen buried her face in her hands, not sobbing again, but thinking. She did not see 'what she was going to do about it,' as Archie expressed the situation. If she had not already sent the telegram, it would have been different. The young man's rough phrases showed that he had not the slightest fear of his father, and he was ignorant of what she herself had suffered. Much she had hidden from him altogether, and his dulness had seen nothing of the rest. He supposed, if he thought anything about it, that his mother had been unhappy because Harmon drank hard, and stayed away from home unaccountably, and often spoke roughly and rudely when he had been drinking. To his unsensitive nature and half-developed mind these things had seemed regrettable, but not so very terrible, after all. Helen had been too loyal to hold up Harmon as an example of evil to his son, and the boy had grown up accustomed to what disgusted and revolted her, as well as ignorant of what hurt her; while his own unfinished character was satisfied with a half-barbarous conception of what was fair so far as he himself was concerned. He had given blow for blow and bruise for bruise, and on a similar understanding he was prepared to return to similar conditions. Helen saw it all in a flash, but she could not forgive Harmon.
"I can't! I can't!" she repeated aloud, and she pressed Archie's arm again.
"Can't--what, mother?" he asked. "Can't go back?"
"How can I, after this? How can I ever bear to see him, to touch his hand,--his hand that hurt you, Archie,--that hurt you so much more than you ever dream of?"
There were tears in her voice again, and again she pressed him close to her. But he did not understand.
"Oh, that's all right, mother," he answered. "Don't cry about me! I made it all right with him long ago. And I don't suppose he hurt me more than I dreamed of, either. That's only a way of talking, you know. It used to make me feel rather stupid. But then, I'm stupid anyway; so even that didn't matter much." And Archie smiled indifferently.
"More than you think, more than you know!" She kissed his hair. "It was that--it may have been that--it must have been--I know it was--"
She was on the point of breaking down again.
"What?" he asked with curiosity. "What do you mean? I don't understand."
Helen's voice sank low, and she hardly seemed to be speaking to her son.
"Your father made you what you are," she said, and her face grew cold and hard.
"What? Stupid?" asked Archie, cheerfully. Then his face changed, too. "I say, mother," he went on, in another voice, "do you think I'm so dull because he hit me on the head?"
Helen repented her words, scarcely knowing why, but sure that it would have been better not to speak them. She did not answer the question.
"That's what you think," said Archie. "And it's because I'm not like other people that you say it's absurd of me to want to marry Sylvia Strahan, isn't it? And that's my father's doing? Is that what you think?"
He waited for an answer, but none came at once. Helen was startled by the clear sequence of ideas, far more logical than most of his reasonings. It seemed as if his sudden passion for Sylvia had roused his sluggish intelligence from its long torpor. She could not deny the truth of what he said, and he saw that she could not.
"That's it," he continued. "That's what you think. I knew it."
His brows knitted themselves straight across his forehead, and his eyes were fixed upon his mother's face, as he knelt beside her. She had not been looking at him, but she turned to him slowly now.
"And that's why you ask whether I can forgive him," he concluded.
"Can you?"
"No."
He rose to his feet from his knees easily, by one movement, and she watched him. Then there was a long silence and he began to walk up and down.
Helen felt as if she had done something disloyal, and that he had given the answer for which she had been longing intensely, as an escape from her decision, and as a means of freedom from bondage to come. She could ask herself now what right she had to expect that Archie should forgive his father. But, instead, she asked what right she could have had to give Archie so good a reason for hating him, when the boy had not suspected that which, after all, might not be the truth. She had made an enormous sacrifice in sending the message of forgiveness for her own wrongs, but it seemed to her, all at once, that in rousing Archie's resentment for his own injuries she had marred the purity of her own intention.
Indeed she was in no state to judge herself, for what Archie had told her was a goad in her wound, with a terror of new pain.
"You cannot forgive him," she said mechanically and almost to herself.
"Why should I?" asked Archie. "It means Sylvia to me. How can I forgive him that?"
And suddenly, without waiting for any answer, he went out and left her alone.
After a long time, she wrote this letter to her husband:
DEAR HENRY,--I am very glad to hear of your recovery, and I have received your letter to-day, together with the doctor's. I have telegraphed the one word for which you asked, and you have probably got the message already. But I must answer your letter as well as I can, and say a great many things which I shall never say again. If we are to meet and try to live together, it is better that I should speak plainly before I see you.
You asked a great deal of me, and for myself I have done what you asked. I do not say this to make it seem as though I were making a great sacrifice and wished you to admit it. We were not happy together; you say that it was your fault, and you ask me to forgive you. If I believed that you had been in full possession of your senses till you were taken ill, I do not think that forgiveness could be possible. You see, I am frank. I am sure that you often did not know what you said and did, and that when you did know, you could not always weigh the consequences of your words and actions. So I will try to forget them. That is what you mean by being forgiven, and it is the only meaning either you or I can put upon the word. I will try to forget, and I will bear no malice for anything in the past, so far as I am concerned. Never speak of it, when we meet, and I never will. If you really wish to try the experiment of living together again, I am willing to attempt it, as an experiment.
But there is Archie to be considered, and Archie will not forgive you. By a mere chance, to-day, after I had sent my telegram, he told me that you used to strike him cruelly and often because his dulness irritated you. You struck him on the head, and you injured his brain, so that his mind has never developed fully and never can.
I do not think that if I were a man, as he is, I could forgive that. Could you? Do you expect that I should, being his mother? You cannot. You and he can never live under the same roof again. It would perhaps be harder for you, feeling as you must, than for him; but in any case it is not possible, and there is only one arrangement to be made. We must put Archie in some place where he shall be safe and healthy and happy, and I will spend a part of the year with you and a part with him. I will not give him up for you, and I am not willing to give you up for him. Neither would be right. You are my husband, whatever there may have been in the past; but Archie is my child. It will be harder for me than for him, too.
You say that I might have got a divorce from you, and you do me the justice to add that you believe I have never thought of it. That is true, but it is not a proof of affection. I have none for you. I told you that I should speak plainly, and it is much better. It would be an ignoble piece of comedy on my part to pretend to be fond of you. I was once. I admired you, I suppose, and I liked you well enough to marry you, being rather ignorant of the world and of what people could feel. If you had really loved me and been kind to me, I should have loved you in the end. But, as it turned out, I could not go on admiring you long, and I simply ceased to like you. That is our story, and it is a sad one. We made the great mistake, for we married without much love on either side, and we were very young.
But it was a marriage, just the same, and a bond which I never meant to break and will not break now. A promise is a promise, whatever happens, and a vow made before God is ten times a promise. So I always mean to keep mine to you, as I have kept it. I will do my best to make you happy, and you must do your part to make it possible.
After all, that is the way most people live. True love, lasting lifetimes and not changing, exists in the world, and it is the hope of it that makes youth lovely and marriage noble. Few people find it, and the many who do not must live as well as they can without it. That is what we must do. Perhaps, though the hope of love is gone, we may find peace together. Let us try.
But not with Archie. There are things which no woman can forgive nor forget. I could not forgive you this if I loved you with all my heart, and you must not expect it of me, for it is not in my power. The harm was not done to me, but to him, and he is more to me than you ever were, and far more to me than myself. I will only say that. There can be no need of ever speaking about it, but I want you to understand; and not only this, but everything. That is why I write such a long letter.
It must all be perfectly clear, and I hope I have made it so. It was I who suffered for the great mistake we made in marrying, but you are sorry for that, and I say, let us try the experiment and see whether we can live together in peace for the rest of our lives. You are changed since your illness, I have no doubt, and you will make it as easy as you can. At least, you will do your best, and so shall I.
Have I repeated myself in this letter? At least, I have tried to be clear and direct. Besides, you know me, and you know what I mean by writing in this way. I am in earnest.
God bless you, Henry. I hope this may turn out well. HELEN.
It was ten o'clock when she had finished. She laid her hand upon the bell, meaning to send her letter to the post office by a servant; but just then the sound of laughing voices came up to her through the open window, and she did not ring. Looking out, she saw that there were still many people in the street, for it was a warm evening. It was only a step from her hotel to the post office, and if she went herself she should have the satisfaction of knowing positively that the letter was safe. She put on a hat with a thick veil, and went out.
CHAPTER IX
Colonel Wimpole looked positively old that evening when he went down to dinner with his sister and Sylvia. His face was drawn and weary and the lids hung a little, in small wrinkles; but down in his grey eyes there was a far-off gleam of danger-light.
Sylvia looked down when she met him, and she was very silent and grave at first. At dinner she sat between him and Miss Wimpole, and for some time she scarcely dared to glance at him. He, on his part, was too much preoccupied to speak much, and she thought he was displeased. Nevertheless, he was more than usually thoughtful for her. She understood by the way he sat, and even by the half-unconscious shrinking of the elbow next to her, that he was sorry for her. At table, seated close together, there is a whole language in one's neighbour's elbow and an unlimited power of expression in its way of avoiding collisions. Very perceptive people understand that. Primarily, in savage life, the bold man turns his elbows out, while the timid one presses them to his sides, as though not to give offence with them. Society teaches us to put on some little airs of timidity as a substitute for the modesty that few feel, and we accordingly draw in our elbows when we are near any one. It is ridiculous enough, but there are a hundred ways of doing it, a hundred degrees of readiness, unwillingness, pride, or consideration for others, as well as sympathy for their troubles or in their successes, all of which are perfectly natural to refined people, and almost entirely unconscious. The movement of a man's jaws at dinner shows much of his real character, but the movement of his elbows shows with fair accuracy the degree of refinement in which he has been brought up.
Sylvia was sure that the colonel was sorry for her, and the certainty irritated her, for she hated to be pitied, and most of all for having done something foolish. She glanced at Wimpole's tired face, just when he was looking a little away from her, and she was startled by the change in his features since the early afternoon. It needed no very keen perception to see that he was in profound anxiety of some kind, and she knew of nothing which could have disturbed him deeply but her own conduct.
Under the vivid light of the public dining table, he looked old. That was undeniable, and it was really the first time that Sylvia had definitely connected the idea of age with him. Just beyond him sat a man in the early prime of strength, one of those magnificent specimens of humanity such as one sees occasionally in travelling but whom one very rarely knows in acquaintance. He could not have been more than twenty-eight years old, straight in his seat, broad-shouldered, with thick, close, golden hair and splendid golden beard, white forehead and sunburned cheeks, broad, well-modelled brows and faultless nose, and altogether manly in spite of his beauty. As he leaned forward a little, his fresh young face appeared beside the colonel's tired profile, in vivid contrast.
For the first time, Sylvia realized the meaning of Wimpole's words, spoken that afternoon. He might almost have been her grandfather, and he was in reality of precisely the same age as her father. Sylvia looked down again and reflected that she must have made a mistake with herself. Youth can sometimes close its eyes to grey hair, but it can never associate the idea of love with old age, when clearly brought to its perceptions.
For at least five minutes the world seemed utterly hollow to Sylvia, as she sat there. She did not even wonder why she had thought the colonel young until then. The sudden dropping out of her first great illusion left a void as big and as hollow as itself.
She turned her head, and looked once more, and there, again, was the glorious, unseamed youth of the stranger, almost dazzling her and making the poor colonel look more than ever old, with his pale, furrowed cheeks and wrinkled eyelids. She thought a moment, and then she was sure that she could never like such a terribly handsome young man; and at the same instant, for the first time in her life, she felt that natural, foolish, human pity which only extreme youth feels for old age, and she wondered why she had not always felt it, for it seemed quite natural, and was altogether in accordance with the rest of her feelings for the colonel, with her reverence for his perfect character, her admiration for his past deeds, her attachment to his quiet, protective, wise, and all-gentle manliness. That was her view of his qualities, and she had to admit that though he had them all, he was what she called old. She had taken for love what was only a combination of reverence and attachment and admiration. She realized her mistake in a flash, and it seemed to her that the core had withered in the fruit of the universe.
Just then the colonel turned to her, holding his glass in his hand.
"We must not forget that it is your birthday, my dear," he said, and his natural smile came back. "Rachel," he added, speaking to his sister across the young girl, "let us drink Sylvia's health on her eighteenth birthday."
Miss Wimpole usually took a little thin Moselle with the cold water she drank. She solemnly raised the glass, and inclined her head as she looked first at Sylvia and then at the colonel.
"Thank you," said Sylvia, rather meekly.
Then they all relapsed into silence. The people at the big table talked fast, in low tones, and the clattering of dishes and plates and knives and forks went on steadily and untunefully all around. Sylvia felt lonely in the unindividual atmosphere of the Swiss hotel. She hated the terribly handsome young man, with a mortal hatred, because he made the colonel look old. She could not help seeing him whenever she turned towards Wimpole. At last she spoke softly, looking down at her plate.
"Uncle Richard," she said, to call his attention.
He was not really her uncle, and she almost always called him 'colonel,' half playfully, and because she had hated the suggestion of age that is conveyed by the word 'uncle.' Wimpole turned to her quietly.
"Yes, my dear," he said. "What is it?"
"I suppose I was very foolish to-day, wasn't I?" asked Sylvia, very low indeed, and a bright blush played upon her pretty face.
The colonel was a courteous man, and was also very fond of her.
"A woman need never be wise when she is lovely," he said in his rather old-fashioned way, and he smiled affectionately at the young girl. "It is quite enough if she is good."
But she did not smile. On the contrary, her face became very grave.
"I am in earnest," she said, and she waited a moment before saying more. "I was very foolish," she continued, thoughtfully. "I did not understand--or I did not realize--I don't know. You have been so much to me all my life, and there is nobody like you, of course. It seemed to me--I mean, it seems to me--that is very much like really caring for some one, isn't it? You know what I mean. I can't express it."
"You mean that it is a good deal like love, I suppose," answered the colonel, speaking gravely now. "Yes, I suppose that love is better when people believe each other to be angels. But it is not that sort of thing which makes love what it is."
"What is it, then?" Sylvia was glad to ask any question that helped to break through the awkwardness and embarrassment she felt towards him.
"There are a great many kinds of love," he said; "but I think there is only one kind worth having. It is the kind that begins when one is young, and lasts all one's life."
"Is that all?" asked Sylvia, innocently, and in a disappointed tone.
"All!" The colonel laughed softly, and a momentary light of happiness came into his face, for that all was all he had ever had. "Is not that enough, my dear?" he asked. "To love one woman or man with all one's heart for thirty or forty years? Never to be disappointed? Never to feel that one has made a mistake? Never to fear that love may grow old because one grows old oneself? Is not that enough?"
"Ah, yes! That would be, indeed. But you did not say all those other things at first."
"They are just what make a life-long love," answered the colonel. "But then," he added, "there are a great many degrees, far below that. I am sure I have seen people quite really in love with each other for a week."
Sylvia suddenly looked almost angry as she glanced at him.
"That sort of thing ought not to be called love at all!" she answered energetically. "It is nothing but a miserable flirtation,--a miserable, wretched, unworthy flirtation."
"I quite agree with you," said Wimpole, smiling at her vehemence.
"Why do you laugh?" she asked, almost offended by his look. His smile disappeared instantly.
"You hit the world very hard, my dear," he answered.
"I hate the world!" cried Sylvia.
She was just eighteen. Wimpole knew that she felt an innocent and instinctive repulsion for what the world meant to him, and for all the great, sinful unknown. He disliked it himself, with the steady, subdued dislike which is hatred in such natures as his, both because it was contrary to his character, and for Sylvia's sake, who must surely one day know something of it. So he did not laugh at her sweeping declaration. She hated the world before knowing it, but he hated it in full knowledge. That was a bond of sympathy like any other. To each of us the world means both what we know, and what we suspect, both what we see and the completion of it in the unseen, both the outward lives of our companions which we can judge, and their inward motives, which we dimly guess.
But on this evening Sylvia felt that the world was particularly odious, for she had suffered a first humiliation in her own eyes. She thought that she had lowered herself in the colonel's estimation, and she had discovered that she had made a great mistake with herself about him.
"I hate the world!" she repeated, in a lower tone, almost to herself, and her eyes gleamed with young anger, while her delicate, curving lips just showed her small white teeth.
Wimpole watched her face.
"That is no reason for hating yourself," he said gently.
She started and turned her eyes to him. Then she blushed and looked away.
"You must not guess my thoughts," she answered. "It is not kind."
"I did not mean to. I am sorry."
"Oh--you could not help it, of course. I was so foolish to-day."
The blush deepened, and she said nothing more. The colonel returned to his own secret trouble, and on Sylvia's other side Miss Wimpole was silently planning a charitable institution of unusual severity, while she peeled an orange with the most scrupulous neatness and precision.