"I have done just such a thing myself," observed Wimpole, thoughtfully, for he remembered the miniature he had bought for Helen that afternoon.
"I suppose I was an idiot, since you say--"
"I said nothing of the kind, my dear! How can you accuse me of calling you an idiot? Really, Richard, you behave very strangely to-day! I don"t know what can be the matter with you. First, you manage to make Sylvia cry her eyes out--Heaven knows what dreadful thing you said to her! And now you deliberately accuse me of calling you an idiot. If this sort of thing goes on much longer, there will be an end of our family happiness."
"This is not one of my lucky days," said the colonel, resignedly, and he laid down the folded newspaper. "How much did the hat cost? I will return the money to Mrs. Harmon, and explain."
Miss Wimpole looked at him with grat.i.tude and admiration in her face.
"It was eighty francs," she answered. "Richard, I did not call you an idiot. In the first place, it would have been totally untrue, and in the second place, it would have been--what shall I say? It would have been very vulgar to call you an idiot, Richard. It is a vulgar expression."
"It might have been true, my dear, but I certainly never knew you to say anything vulgar. On the other hand, I really did not a.s.sert that you applied the epithet to me. I applied it to myself, rather experimentally. And poor Archie Harmon is not so bad as that, either."
"If he is not idiotic--or--or something like it, why do you say "poor"
Archie?"
"Because I am sorry for him," returned the colonel. "And so are you,"
he added presently.
Miss Wimpole considered the matter for a few seconds; then she slowly nodded, and came up to him.
"I am," she said. "Richard, kiss me."
That was always the proclamation of peace, not after strife, for they never quarrelled, but at the close of an argument. It was done in this way. The colonel rose, and stood before his sister; then both bent their heads a little, and as their cool grey cheeks touched, each kissed the air somewhere in the neighbourhood of the other"s ear. They had been little children together, and their mother had taught them to "kiss and make friends," as good children should, whenever there had been any difference; and now they were growing old together, but they had never forgotten, in nearly fifty years, to "kiss and make friends" when they had disagreed. What is childlike is not always childish.
The colonel resumed his seat, and there was silence for a few minutes.
The folded newspaper lay on the table unread, and he looked at it, scarcely aware that he saw it.
"I think Archie Harmon must have fallen in love with Sylvia," he said at last. "That is the only possible explanation. She has grown up since he saw her last, and so has he, though his mind has not developed much, I suppose."
"Not at all, I should say," answered Miss Wimpole. "But I wish you would not suggest such things. The mere idea makes me uncomfortable."
"Yes," a.s.sented the colonel, thoughtfully. "We will not talk about it."
Suddenly he knew what he was looking at, and he read the first head-lines on the paper, just visible above the folded edge. The words were "Harmon Sane," printed in large capitals. In a moment he had spread out the sheet.
The big letters only referred to a short telegram, lower down. "It is reported on good authority that Henry Harmon, who has been an inmate of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum for some years, is recovering rapidly, and will shortly be able to return to his numerous friends in perfect mental health."
That was all. The colonel searched the paper from beginning to end, in the vain hope of finding something more, and read the little paragraph over and over again. There was no possibility of a mistake. There had never been but one Henry Harmon, and there could certainly be but one in the Bloomingdale asylum. The news was so sudden that Wimpole felt his heart stand still when he first read it, and as he thought of it he grew cold, and shivered as though he had an ague.
It had been easier to think of Harmon"s possible recovery before he had seen that scar on Helen"s forehead. For many years he had borne the thought that the woman he had silently loved so long was bound to a man little better than a beast; but it had never occurred to him that she might have had much to bear of which he had known nothing, even to violence and physical danger. The knowledge had changed him within the last hour, and the news about Harmon now hardened him all at once in his anger, as hot steel is chilled when it has just reached the cutting temper, and does not change after that.
The colonel was as honourable a man as ever shielded a woman"s good name, or rode to meet an enemy in fair fight. He was chivalrous with all the world, and quixotic with himself. He had charity for the ways of other men, for he had seen enough to know that many things were done by men whom no one would dare to call dishonourable, which he would not have done to save his own life. He understood that such a lasting love as his was stronger than himself, yet he himself had been so strong that he had never yielded even to its thoughts, nor ever allowed the longing for a final union with Helen at all costs to steal upon his unguarded imagination.
He was not tempted beyond his strength, indeed, and in his apparent perfection, that must be remembered. In all those years of his devoted friendship Helen had never let him guess that she could have loved him once, much less that she loved him now, as he did her, with the same resolution to hide from her inward eyes what she could not tear from her inmost heart. But it is never fair to say that if a man had been placed in a certain imaginary position, he might have been weak. So long as he has not broken down under the trials and burdens of real life, he has a right to be called strong.
The colonel set no barrier, however, against the devotion to Helen"s welfare which he might honourably feel and show. In day-dreams over old books he had envied those clean knights of a younger time, who fought for wives not theirs so openly and bravely, and so honestly that the spotless women for whom they faced death took l.u.s.tre of more honour from such unselfish love. And for Helen"s sake he had longed for some true circ.u.mstance of mortal danger in which to prove once more how well and silently an honest man can die to save an innocent woman.
But those were dreams. In acts he had done much, though never half of what he had always wished to do. The trouble had all come little by little in Helen"s existence, and there had not been one great deciding moment in which his hand or head could have saved her happiness.
Now it seemed as though the time were full, and as if he might at last, by one deed, cast the balance by the scale of happiness. He did not know how to do it, nor whither to turn, but he felt, as he sat by the table with the little newspaper in his hand, that unless he could prevent Harmon from coming back to his wife, his own existence was to turn out a miserable failure, his love a lie, and his long devotion but a worthless word.
His first impulse was to leave Lucerne that night and reach home in the shortest possible time. He would see Harmon and tell him what he thought, and force from him a promise to leave Helen in peace, some unbreakable promise which the man should not be able to deny, some sort of bond that should have weight in law.
The colonel"s nostrils quivered, and his steady grey eyes fixed themselves and turned very light as he thought of the interview and of the quiet, hard words he would select. Each one of them should be a retribution in itself. He was the gentlest of men, but under great provocation he could be relentless.
What would Harmon answer? The colonel grew thoughtful again. Harmon would ask him, with an intonation that would be an insult to Helen, what right Wimpole had acquired to take Helen"s part against him, her lawful husband. It would be hard to answer that, having no right of his own to fight her battles, least of all against the man she had married.
He might answer by reminding Harmon of old times. He might say that he at least resigned the hope of that right, when Harmon had been his friend, because he had believed that it was for Helen"s happiness.
That would be but a miserably unsatisfactory answer, though it would be the truth. The colonel did not remember that he had ever wished to strike a man with a whip until the present moment. But the sight of the cut on Helen"s forehead had changed him very quickly. He was not sure that he could keep his hands from Harmon if he should see him. And slowly a sort of cold and wrathful glow rose in his face, and he felt as though his long, thin fingers were turning into steel springs.
Miss Wimpole had taken up a book and was reading. She heard him move in his chair, and looked up and saw his expression.
"What is the matter with you, Richard?" she enquired, in surprise.
"Why?" He started nervously.
"You look like the destroying angel," she observed calmly. "I suppose you are gradually beginning to be angry about Sylvia"s hat, as I was. I don"t wonder."
"Oh yes--Sylvia"s hat; yes, yes, I remember." The colonel pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes. "I mean, it is perhaps the heat. It"s a warm day.
I"ll go to my room for a while."
"Yes, do, my dear. You behave so strangely to-day--as if you were going to be ill."
But the colonel was already gone, and was stalking down the corridor with his head high, his eyes as hard as polished grey stones, and his nervous hands clenched as they swung a little with his gait.
His sister shook her head energetically, then slowly and sadly, as she watched him in the distance.
"How much more gracefully we grow old than men!" she said aloud, and took up her book again.
CHAPTER VI
Helen had not seen the paragraph about Harmon. She rarely read newspapers, and generally trusted to other people to learn what they contained. The majority read papers for amus.e.m.e.nt, or for the sort of excitement produced on nervous minds by short, strong shocks often repeated. There are persons who ponder the paper daily for half an hour in absorbed silence, and then lift up their voices and cackle out all they have read, as a hen runs about and cackles when she has laid an egg. They fly at every one they see, an unnatural excitement in every tone and gesture, and ask in turn whether each friend has heard that this one is engaged to be married, and that another is dead and has left all his money to a hospital. When they have asked all the questions they can think of, without waiting for an answer, they relapse into their normal condition, and become again as other men and women are.
Very few really read the papers in order to follow the course of events for the mere sake of information. Mrs. Harmon was more or less indifferent to things that neither directly concerned her nor appealed to her tastes and sympathies.
Her letters were brought to her before she had left the sitting-room after the colonel had gone away, and she looked at the addresses on them carelessly, pa.s.sing them from one hand to the other as one pa.s.ses cards.
One arrested her attention, among the half-dozen or so which she had received. It was the regular report from the asylum, posted on the first of the month. But it was thicker than usual; and when she tore open the envelope, rather nervously and with a sudden antic.i.p.ation of trouble, a second sealed letter dropped from the single folded sheet contained in the first. But even that one sheet was full, instead of bearing only the few lines she always received to tell her that there was no change in her husband"s condition.
There had been a change, and a great one. Since last writing, said the doctor, Harmon had suddenly begun to improve. At first he had merely seemed more quiet and patient than formerly; then, in the course of a few days, he had begun to ask intelligent questions, and had clearly understood that he had been insane for some time and was still in an asylum. He had rapidly learned the names of the people about him, and had not afterwards confused them, but remembered them with remarkable accuracy. Day by day he had improved, and was still improving. He had enquired about the state of his affairs, and had wished to see one or two of his old friends. More than once he had asked after his wife, and had evidently been glad to hear that she was well. Then he had written a letter to her, which the doctor immediately forwarded. So far as it was possible to form a judgment in the case, the improvement seemed to promise permanent recovery; though no one could tell, of course, whether a return to the world might not mean also a return to the unfortunate habit which had originally unbalanced Harmon"s mind, but from which he was safe as long as he remained where he was.
It was not easy for Helen to read to the end of such a letter: it shook in her hands as she went on from one sentence to the next, and the sealed envelope slipped from her knees to the floor while she was reading. When she had got to the end, she stared a moment at the signature, and then folded the sheet, almost unconsciously, and drew her nail sharply along the folds, as though she would make the paper feel what she felt, and suffer as she suffered, in every nerve of her body, and in every secret fibre of her soul.
She had not believed a recovery possible. Now that it was a fact, she knew how utterly beyond probability she had thought it; and immediately the great problem rose before her, confusing, vast, terrifying. But before she faced it she must read Harmon"s letter.