The summer had left spring far behind, when Gifford Woodhouse came to Ashurst.
He could not stay in Lockhaven; the tragedy of John Ward had thrown a shadow upon him. The people did not forget that he was Mrs. Ward"s friend, and they made no doubt, the bolder ones said, that Lawyer Woodhouse was an infidel, too. So he decided to take an office in Mercer.
This would make it possible for him to come back to Ashurst every Sat.u.r.day, and be with his aunts until Monday.
Perhaps he did not know it, but Lockhaven shadows seemed deeper than they really were because Mercer was only twelve miles from Lois Howe.
Not that that could mean anything more than just the pleasure of seeing her sometimes. Gifford told himself he had no hope. He searched her occasional letters in vain for the faintest hint that she would be glad to see him. "If there were the slightest chance of it," he said, with a sigh, "of course I"d know it. She promised. I suppose she was awfully attached to that puppy."
However, in spite of hopelessness, he went to Mercer, and soon it became a matter of course that he should drop in at the rectory every Sunday, spending the evening with Helen after Dr. Howe and Lois had gone to church.
Helen never went. "I cannot," she said to Gifford once; "the service is beautiful and stately, and full of pleasant a.s.sociations, but it is outside of my life. If I had ever been intensely religious, it would be different, I suppose,--I should care for it as a sacred past; but it was never more than pleasant. What I called my spiritual life had no reality to me. And now, surely, I cannot go, when I have no faith at all."
"I think you will go, some day, Helen," Gifford said thoughtfully; "the pendulum has to swing very far away from the extreme which you have seen before the perfect balance comes. And I think you make a mistake when you say you have no faith. Perhaps you have no creed, but faith, it seems to me, is not the holding of certain dogmas; it is simply openness and readiness of heart to believe any truth which G.o.d may show."
They were sitting on the porch at the rectory; the fragrant dusk of the garden was beginning to melt into trembling light as the moon rose, and the last flush of sunset faded behind the hills. Helen had a soft white wrap over her black dress, but Gifford had thought it was cool enough to throw a gray shawl across her feet; he himself was bareheaded, and sat on the steps, clasping his knees with his hands.
"Perhaps so," Helen said, "but I think I am like a person who walks along in the dark, yet looks toward the east. I will not comfort myself with little candles of memory or desire, and say, "This is light!" Perhaps light will never come to my eyes, but I will wait, for I believe there is light somewhere."
It was much for Helen to say this. No one had guessed what was behind her reserve on such subjects; perhaps no one had very greatly cared.
"Gifford!" she said suddenly. He looked up, surprised at her tone.
"Yes, Helen?"
"I wish," she said, "I wish you were as happy as you deserve to be."
He knew what she meant, and would not repay her confidence by pretending not to understand. "Well, I"m not as happy as I desire, perhaps, but no doubt I"m as happy as I deserve."
"No," she answered, "you are not. And oh, Gifford, there is so much sorrow in the world, the only thing which makes life possible is love, because that is the only thing which does not change."
"I am afraid it can never be for me," he said, after a moment"s silence, "except the joy of giving love."
"Why?" she asked gently.
Gifford did not speak; he rose, and began to pace up and down in front of the porch, crossing and recrossing the square of light which fell from the open hall door. "I ought not to talk about it," he said at last.
"I"ve got it down at the very bottom of my life, a sort of foundation stone on which to build n.o.ble things. Your words make it spring up into a whole palace of beauty; but it is in the air,--it is in the air! You know what I mean: it must always be giving with me; she will never care.
She never could, having loved once. And it is curious, Helen, but in a certain paradoxical way I"m content she shouldn"t. She would not be the woman she is, if she could love twice."
Helen smiled in the darkness. "Gifford"--she began.
But he interrupted her, flinging his head back, in impatient despair.
"No, it cannot be, or it would have been, don"t you see? Don"t encourage me, Helen; the kindest thing you can do is to kill any hope the instant it shows its head. There was a time, I was fool enough to think--it was just after the engagement was broken. But I soon saw from her letters there was no chance for me."
"But Gifford,"--Helen almost forgot to protect Lois, in her anxiety to help him,--"you must not think that. They were never engaged."
Gifford stood still and looked at her; then he said something in a low voice, which she could not hear.
"I must not say another word," she said hurriedly. "I"ve no right even to speak as I did. But oh, Gifford, I could not see you lose a chance of happiness. Life is so short, and there is so much sorrow! I even selfishly wanted the happiness of your joy, for my own sake."
Still Gifford did not speak; he turned sharply on his heel, and began his restless walk. His silence was getting unbearable, when he stopped, and said gently, "I thank you, Helen. I do not understand it all, but that"s no matter. Only, don"t you see, it doesn"t make any difference? If she had been going to care, I should have known it long ago."
This was very vague to Helen; she wondered if Lois had refused him again.
But Gifford began to talk quietly of his life in Mercer, and she did not venture to say anything more. "After all, they must work out their own salvation," she thought. "No one can help them, when they both know the facts."
She listened a little absently to Gifford, who was speaking of the lack of any chance for advancement in Mercer. "But really," he added, "I ought not to go too far away from my aunts, now; and I believe that the highest development of character can come from the most commonplace necessities of life." Helen sighed; she wondered if this commonplace of Ashurst were her necessity? For again she was searching for her place in the world,--the place that needed her, and was to give her the happiness of usefulness; and she had even thought vaguely that she might find some work in Lockhaven, among John"s people, and for them. They both fell into the silence of their own thoughts, until the rector and his daughter came back from church, and Gifford went home.
That next week was a thoughtful one with Gifford Woodhouse; Helen"s words had stirred those buried hopes, and it was hard to settle back into a life of renunciation. He was strangely absent-minded in his office. One day Willie Denner, who had come to read law, and was aspiring to be his clerk, found him staring out of the window, with a new client"s papers lying untouched before him. After all, he thought, would it be wrong, would it trouble Lois (he had said he should never trouble her), if he just told her how the thought of her helped him, how she was a continual inspiration in his life? "If I saw it bothered her, I could stop," he argued.
And so, reasoning with himself, he rode over from Mercer late that Sat.u.r.day night. The little ladies were, as usual, delighted to see him.
These weekly visits were charming; their nephew could be admired and fussed over to their hearts" content, but was off again before they had time to feel their small resources at an end. The next morning he dutifully went to church with them. Sunday was a proud day for the Misses Woodhouse; each took an arm of the young man, whose very size made him imposing, and walked in a stately way to the door of St. Michael"s. They would gladly have been supported by him to their pew, but it would have been, Miss Deborah said, really flaunting their nephew in the faces of less fortunate families, for Ashurst could not boast of another young man.
Miss Ruth wore her new bonnet that day in honor of his presence. She had taken it from the bandbox and carefully removed its wrapping of tissue paper, looking anxiously at the clouds as she smoothed the lavender strings and pinched the white asters on the side, before she decided that it was safe to wear it.
Gifford looked up the rectory lane as they drew near the church, and Miss Deborah noticed it. "Giff, dear," she asked, "did you observe, last Sunday, how ill poor little Lois looked?"
"No," he said, somewhat startled.
"Ah, yes," said Miss Ruth, nodding her head so that the white asters trembled, "she has never really gotten over that disappointment about young Forsythe."
"But she was not engaged to him," responded Gifford boldly.
"Not engaged," Miss Deborah admitted, "but she fully expected to be.
He did not treat her honorably; there is no doubt of that. But her affections were unalterably his."
"How do you know that?" demanded her nephew.
"Why, my dear child," said Miss Ruth, "there is no doubt of it. Adele Dale told dear Deborah the whole story. Of course she had it from Lois."
"Not that it makes the slightest difference in my position," Gifford thought, as he sat crowding down the pain of it, and looking at Lois, sitting in the rosy light of the window of the left transept. "I am just where I was before, and I"ll tell her, if it does not seem to bother her."
After church, there was the usual subdued gossip about the door, and while Gifford waited for his aunts, who had something to say to the rector, he listened to Mrs. Dale, who said in her incisive voice, "Isn"t it too bad Helen isn"t here? I should think, whether she wanted to or not, she"d come for her husband"s sake." Even the apology of death had not made Mrs. Dale pardon John Ward.
But Mr. Dale mildly interjected,--"She would stay away for his sake, if she did not really want to come."
To which Mrs. Dale responded, "Fudge!"
Miss Deborah also spoke of her absence to Lois. "Sorry dear Helen is not here, but of course Gifford will see her to-night. He does so enjoy his evenings with her. Well, they are both young--and I have my thoughts!"
So, with the utmost innocence, Miss Deborah had planted the seeds of hopelessness and jealousy in the hearts of both these young people.
Gifford spent the rest of the long, still Sunday wandering restlessly through the house, and changing his mind about speaking to Lois every few minutes. Lois was very distant that evening at the rectory, so Gifford talked mostly to Helen. There was no chance to say what he had intended, and he made none.
"Well," he said to himself as he went home, not caring to stay and talk to Helen when Lois had gone to church,--"well, it is all a muddle. I don"t understand about there being no engagement, but I cannot help remembering that she cared, though I have no business to. And she cares yet. Oh, what a confounded idiot I am!"
He told his aunts he was going to make an early start the next morning.
"I shall be off before you are up. I guess Sarah will give me something to eat. And, aunt Deborah, I don"t know that I can get over next week."
The little ladies protested, but they were secretly very proud that his business should occupy him so much.