"That is not quite just, Helen," he said; and afterward, Helen acknowledged this.

She put her hands into his, when he turned to go home, and searched his face with sad, eager eyes. "You are going to see him,--oh, Giff, you'll see John!" she said.

Lois saw them talking, as they came to the rectory door, with a dull feeling of envy. Gifford never seemed to care to talk much to her. What was that Miss Deborah had said of his once caring for Helen? She had the good sense to be ashamed of herself for remembering it, but a thought which comes even into an unwilling mind cannot be driven away without leaving its impress; the point of view is subtilely and unconsciously changed. She was not altogether cordial to Gifford, when he said good-by to her, which he was quick to feel. "He thinks only of Helen," she said to herself. "I suppose he has forgotten anything he ever said to me, and my promise, too. I'm ready enough with promises," she thought, with a bitter little smile. But even this memory could not keep that happiness which Gifford had seen from shining in her eyes; and when she went up-stairs, Helen noticed it.

Perhaps because of Gifford's gentle reproof, she roused herself to say, as he had done, "You are very happy, Lois?"

"Oh, I am, I am!" she cried impulsively, "Oh, Helen, I have something to tell you." A very little sympathy in her cousin's voice brought her eager confidence to her lips. "Oh, Helen, a letter has come!"

"John?" she hardly breathed. For one exquisite moment, which had yet its background that he had not been strong, Helen misunderstood her.

"No, it's only something about me," Lois answered humbly.

"Tell me," Helen said gently. "If anything makes you happy, you know I'll be glad."

Lois twisted her fingers together, with a nervous sort of joy. "I've just heard," she said; "Mrs. Forsythe has just written to me."

"And she is very well?" Helen asked. She had almost forgotten her cousin's grief and anxiety about Mrs. Forsythe. It all seemed so long ago and so unimportant.

"No, no," Lois said, "she says she's very sick; but oh, Helen, d.i.c.k Forsythe is engaged to be married!"

Helen looked puzzled. "I don't understand."

"Never mind," Lois cried joyously, "he is, and I am so happy!"

CHAPTER x.x.x.

When the summer had faded into autumn, Ashurst had not yet recovered from the social earthquake of discovering that it had the scandal of an unhappy marriage within its decorous borders. There had been nothing which had so shaken the foundation of things since Gertrude Drayton had run away with her dancing-master, who, it was more than suspected, had left a wife in France. That sensation lasted a long time, for William Denner's face was a constant reminder of his grief; but by and by it faded, and, as Gertrude never came back to Ashurst, people even said very kindly things about her.

But Helen Ward continued to live among them.

Indeed, the excitement was so great at first that Miss Deborah did not remember for some time to write to Gifford that d.i.c.k Forsythe was engaged to a New York girl. "She really could scarcely blame him," she had added, "for he could hardly be expected to keep his engagement with Lois after this disgraceful affair in her family."

Gifford read that part of the letter again, dizzy with happiness and pain. "How she must suffer!" he said to himself. "The cur! Ah, she never could have married him; she must have discovered his contemptible nature."

His first impulse was to hurry to Ashurst. "Not for my own sake," he reasoned, "but just to be there. I would never show that I knew how he had treated her. She should not have an instant's mortification in my presence. But she might just see, without being told, that I loved her through it all."

He even rose, and began to study a time-table; but he frowned a little and put it down, and went and looked out of the window a while. "Helen would be more unhappy if she thought I were not here to look after Ward.

Yes, I must wait till he gets stronger. Perhaps next month"--

Then, shaking himself together, with a revulsion of common sense, "As she is unhappy, she won't care whether I'm there or not, or may be she'd rather I wasn't!"

Yet, though he could not easily subdue the desire to rush to Ashurst, the thought that Helen's sorrow would be a little greater if she could not think of him as near her husband, helped to keep him at his post.

But it might have been good for Helen to have had the young man's frank and healthy understanding of her position. She was growing every day more lonely and self-absorbed; she was losing her clear perceptions of the values of life; she became warped, and prejudiced, and very silent. She even fancied, with a morbid self-consciousness which would have been impossible before, that she had never possessed the love of her uncle and cousin, and had always been an alien. This subtile danger to her generous nature was checked in an unexpected way.

One afternoon, late in September, she went as usual, alone, to the graveyard on East Hill. The blue haze lay like a ribbon through the valley and across the hills; the air was still, and full of the pungent fragrance of burning brush, and yellow leaves rustled about her feet. The faded gra.s.s had been beaten down by the rain, and was matted above the graves; here and there a frosted weed stood straight and thin against the low soft sky; some late golden-rod blazed along the edge of the meadow among the purple asters, and a single stalk of cardinal flowers flashed out beside the lichen-covered wall; but all the rest of the world was a blur of yellow and gray. Helen sat down on a stone, and listened to the small wood sounds around her. A beech leaf, twisted like the keel of a fantastic boat, came pattering down on the dead leaves; a bird stirred in the pine behind her, and now and then a cricket gave a m.u.f.fled chirp.

It was here Mr. Dale found her, her head resting forlornly on her hands; she was absently watching a gray squirrel who had ventured from his cover in the wall, and was looking at her with curious twinkling eyes.

"My dear," said Mr. Dale gently, "they told me at the rectory they thought you were up here, so I came to see if you would let me walk home with you."

Helen started as he spoke, and the squirrel scampered away. "Did you come for that?" she said, touched in spite of her bitter thoughts.

Mr. Dale pushed his broad-brimmed hat back on his head, so that his face seemed to have a black aureola around it. "Yes," he replied, regarding her with anxious blue eyes,--"yes. I am grieved to have you so much alone; yet I know how natural it is to desire to be alone."

Helen did not answer.

"I hope," he went on, hesitating, "you will not think I intrude if I say--I came because I wanted to say that I have a great respect for your husband, Helen."

Helen turned sharply, as though she would have clasped his hands, and then put her own over her face, which was quivering with sudden tears.

Mr. Dale touched her shoulder gently. "Yes, a great respect. Love like his inspires reverence. It is almost divine."

Helen's a.s.sent was inaudible.

"Not, my dear," the old man continued, "that I do not regret--yes, with all my heart I deplore--the suffering for you both, by which his love is proved. Yet I recognize with awe that it is love. And when one has come so near the end of life as I have, it is much to have once seen love. We look into the mysteries of G.o.d when we see how divine a human soul can be. Perhaps I have no right to speak of what is so sacredly yours, yet it is proper that you should know that the full meaning of this calamity can be understood. It is not all grief, Helen, to be loved as you are."

She could not speak; she clung to him in a pa.s.sion of tears, and the love and warmth she had thought she should never feel again began to stir about her heart.

"So you will be strong for him," Mr. Dale said gently, his wrinkled hand stroking her soft hair. "Be patient, because we have perhaps loved you too much to be just to him; yet your peace would teach us justice. Be happier, my dear, that we may understand him. You see what I mean?"

Helen did see; courage began to creep back, and her reserve melted and broke down with a storm of tears, too long unshed. "I will try," she said brokenly,--"oh, I will try!" She did not say what she would try to do, but to struggle for John's sake gave her strength and purpose for all of life. She would so live that no one could misunderstand him.

Mr. Dale walked home with her, but he did not speak to her again of her sorrow. The impulse had been given, and her conscience aroused; the harder struggle of coming back to the daily life of others she must meet alone. And she met it bravely. Little by little she tried to see the interests and small concerns of people about her, and very gradually the heavy atmosphere of the rectory began to lighten. Dr. Howe scarcely knew how it was that there was a whist party in his library one Friday evening; rather a silent one, with a few sighs from the Misses Woodhouse and a suspicious dimness in Mr. Dale's eyes. The rector somehow slipped into the vacant chair; he said he thought he was so old whist would not hurt him, if they were willing to teach him. But as he swept the board at the first deal, and criticised his partner's lead at the second, instruction was deemed superfluous.

By degrees, Lois and Helen came nearer together. There was no explanation: the differences had been too subtile for words, at least on Lois's side, and to have attempted it would have made a vague impression harden into permanence.

No one recognized an effort on Helen's part, and she only knew it herself when she realized that it was a relief to be with Mr. Dale. He understood; she could be silent with him. So she came very often to his little bas.e.m.e.nt office, and spent long mornings with him, helping him label some books, or copying notes which he had intended "getting into shape" these twenty years. She liked the stillness and dimness of the small room, with its smell of leather-covered volumes, or whiff of wood smoke from the fireplace.

Mrs. Dale rarely disturbed them. "If Helen finds any pleasure in that musty old room," she said, one cold January morning, "I'm sure I'm glad.

But she would be a great deal more sensible and cheerful if she'd sit up in the parlor with me, if she didn't do anything more than play patience.

But then, Helen never was like other people."

And so she left her niece and her husband, with a little good-natured contempt in her eyes, and went up to her own domains. Mr. Dale was arranging some plants on a shelf across one of the windows, and Helen was watching him. "They generally die before the winter is out," he said, "but perhaps with you to look after them they'll pull through."

He was in his flowered dressing-gown, and was standing on tiptoe, reaching up for one of the mildewed flower-pots. "These are orange plants," he explained proudly. "I planted the seeds a month ago, and see how they've grown." He put his gla.s.ses on and bent down to examine them, with an absorbed look. The pot that held the six spindling shoots had streaks of white mould down its sides, and the earth was black and hard with the deluge of water with which Mr. Dale's anxious care usually began the season. He began now to loosen it gently with his penknife, saying, "I'm sure they'll flourish if you look after them."

"I will if I'm here, uncle Henry," she replied.

"Ah, my dear," he said, looking at her sharply, "you are not thinking of that hospital plan again?"

"Yes," she answered, "I cannot help it. I feel as though I must be of some use in the world." She was standing in the stream of wintry sunshine which flooded the narrow window, and Mr. Dale saw that some white threads had begun to show in the bronze-brown waves of her hair. "Yes," she continued, "it is so hard to keep still. I must do something, and be something."