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Helen Kemble's character was simple and direct She was one who lived vividly in the passing hour, and had a greater capacity for deep emotions than for retaining them. The reputation for constancy is sometimes won by those incapable of strong convictions. A scratch upon a rock remains in all its sharpness, while the furrow that has gone deep into the heart of a field is eventually almost hidden by a new flowering growth. The truth was fully exemplified in Helen's case; and a willingness to marry her lifelong lover, prompted at first by a spirit of self-sacrifice, had become, under the influence of daily companionship, more than mere assent. While gratitude and the wish to see the light of a great, unexpected joy come into his eyes remained her chief motives, she had learned that she could attain a happiness herself, not hoped for once, in making him happy.
He was true to his word, after the interview described in the preceding chapter. He did not consciously reveal the unappeased hunger of his heart, but her intuition was never at fault a moment.
One Indian-summer-like morning, about the middle of October, he went over to her home and said, "Helen, what do you say to a long day's outing? The foliage is at its brightest, the air soft as that of June. Why not store up a lot of this sunshine for winter use?"
"Yes, Helen, go," urged her mother. "I can attend to everything."
"A long day, did you stipulate?" said the girl in ready assent; "that means we should take a lunch. I don't believe you ever thought of that."
"We could crack nuts, rob apple-orchards, or if driven to extremity, raid a farmhouse."
"You have heard too much from the soldiers about living off the country. I'd rather raid mamma's cupboard before we start. I'll be ready as soon as you are."
He soon appeared in his low, easy phaeton; and she joined him with the presentiment that there might be even greater gladness in his face by evening than it now expressed. While on the way to the brow of a distant hill which would be their lunching place, they either talked with the freedom of old friends or lapsed into long silences.
At last he asked, "Isn't it a little odd that when with you the sense of companionship is just as strong when you are not talking?"
"It's a comfort you are so easily entertained. Don't you think I'm a rather moderate talker for a woman?"
"Those that talk the most are often least entertaining. I've thought a good deal about it—the unconscious influence of people on one another. I don't mean influence in any moral sense, but in the power to make one comfortable or uncomfortable, and to produce a sense of restfulness and content or to make one ill at ease and nervously desirous of escape."
"And you have actually no nervous desire to escape, no castings around in your mind for an excuse to turn around and drive home?"
"No one could give a surer answer to your question than yourself.
I've been thinking of something pleasanter than my enjoyment."
"Well?"
"That your expression has been a very contented one during the last hour. I am coming to believe that you can accept my friendship without effort. You women are all such mysteries! One gets hold of a clew now and then. I have fancied that if you had started out in the spirit of self-sacrifice that I might have a pleasant time, you would be more conscious of your purpose. Even your tact might not have kept me from seeing that you were exerting yourself; but the very genius of the day seems to possess you. Nature is not exerting herself in the least. No breath of air is stirring; all storms are in the past or the future. With a smile on her face, she is just resting in serene content, as you were, I hope. She is softening and obscuring everything distant by an orange haze, so that the sunny present may be all the more real. Days like these will do you good, especially if your face and manner reveal that you can be as truly at rest as Nature."
"Yet what changes may soon pass over the placid scene!"
"Yes, but don't think of them."
"Well, I won't—not now. Yes, you are becoming very penetrating. I am not exerting myself in the least to give you a pleasant time. I am just selfishly and lazily content."
"That fact gives me so much more than content that it makes me happy."
"Hobart, you are the most unselfish man I ever knew."
"Nonsense!"
They had reached their picnic-ground—the edge of a grove whose bright-hued foliage still afforded a grateful shade. The horse was unharnessed and picketed so that he might have a long range for grazing. Then Martine brought the provision basket to the foot of a great oak, and sat down to wait for Helen, who had wandered away in search of wild flowers. At last she came with a handful of late-blooming closed gentians.
"I thought these would make an agreeable feature in your lunch."
"Oh, you are beginning to exert yourself."
"Yes, I have concluded to, a little. So must you, to the extent of making a fire. The rest will be woman's work. I propose to drink your health in a cup of coffee."
"Ah, this is unalloyed," he cried, sipping it later on.
"The coffee?"
"Yes, and everything. We don't foresee the bright days any more than the dark ones. I did not dream of this in Virginia."
"You are easily satisfied. The coffee is smoky, the lunch is cold, winter is coming, and—"
"And I am very happy," he said.
"It would be a pity to disturb your serenity."
"Nothing shall disturb it to-day. Peace is one of the rarest experiences in this world. I mean only to remember that our armies are disbanded and that you are at rest, like Nature."
She had brought a little book of autumn poems, and after lunch read to him for an hour, he listening with the same expression of quiet satisfaction. As the day declined, she shivered slightly in the shade. He immediately arose and put a shawl around her.
"You are always shielding me," she said gently.
"One can do so little of that kind of thing," he replied, "not much more than show intent."
"Now you do yourself injustice." After a moment's hesitancy she added, "I am not quite in your mood to-day, and even Nature, as your ally, cannot make me forget or even wish to forget."
"I do not wish you to forget, but merely cease to remember for a little while. You say Nature is my ally. Listen: already the wind is beginning to sigh in the branches overhead. The sound is low and mournful, as if full of regret for the past and forebodings for the future. There is a change coming. All that I wished or could expect in you was that this serene, quiet day would give you a respite—that complete repose in which the wounded spirit is more rapidly healed and strengthened for the future."
"Have you been strengthened? Have you no fears for the future?"
"No fears, Helen. My life is strong in its negation. The man who is agitated by hopes and fears, who is doomed to disappointments, is the one who has not recognized his limitations, who has not accepted well-defined conditions."
"Hobart, I'm going to put you on your honor now. Remember, and do not answer hastily," and her gaze into his face was searching. Although quiet and perfectly self-controlled, the rich color mounted to her very brow.
"Well, Helen," he asked wonderingly.
"Imagine it possible," she continued with the same earnest gaze, "that you were a woman who has loved as I have loved, and lost as I have. The circumstances are all known, and you have only to recall them. If a man had loved you as you have loved me—"
"But, Helen, can you not believe in a love so strong that it does not ask—"
By a gesture she checked him and repeated, "But if a man had loved you as you have loved me—remember now, on your honor—would you permit him to love with no better reward than the consciousness of being a solace, a help, a sort of buffer between you and the ills of life?"
"But, Helen, I am more than that: I am your friend."
"Indeed you are, the best a woman ever had, or I could not speak as I am doing. Yet what I say is true. From the first it has been your sleepless aim to stand between me and trouble. What have I ever done for you?"
"In giving me your friendship—"
Again she interrupted him, saying, "That virtually means giving you the chance for continued self-sacrifice. Any man or woman in the land would give you friendship on such terms, YOUR terms with me. But you do not answer my question; yet you have answered it over and over again. Were you in my place with your unselfish nature, you could not take so very much without an inevitable longing to return all in your power."
He was deeply agitated. Burying his face in his hands, he said hoarsely, "I must not look at you, or my duty may be too hard. Ah, you are banishing peace and serenity now with a vengeance! I recognize your motive—whither your thoughts are tending. Your conscience, your pity, your exaggerated gratitude are driving you to contemplate a self-sacrifice compared with which mine is as nothing. Yet the possibility of what you suggest is so sweet, so— oh, it is like the reward of heaven for a brief life!" Then he bowed his head lower and added slowly, as if the words were forced from him, "No, Helen, you shall not reward me. I cannot take as pay, or 'return,' as you express it, the reward that you are meditating. I must not remember in after years that my efforts in your behalf piled up such a burdensome sense of obligation that there was but one escape from it."
She came to his side, and removing his hands from his face, retained one of them as she said, gently, "Hobart, I am no longer a shy girl. I have suffered too deeply, I have learned too thoroughly how life may be robbed of happiness, and for a time, almost of hope, not to see the folly of letting the years slip away, unproductive of half what they might yield to you and me. I understand you; you do not understand me, probably because your ideal is too high. You employed an illustration in the narrowest meaning. Is heaven given only as a reward? Is not every true gift an expression of something back of the gift, more than the gift?"
"Helen!"
"Yes, Hobart, in my wish to make you happier I am not bent on unredeemed self-sacrifice. You have been the most skilful of wooers."
"And you are the divinest of mysteries. How have I wooed you?"
"By not wooing at all, by taking a course which compelled my heart to plead your cause, by giving unselfish devotion so unstintedly that like the rain and dew of heaven, it has fostered a new life in my heart, different from the old, yet sweet, real, and precious. I have learned that I can be happier in making you happy. Oh, I shall be no martyr. Am I inconstant because time and your ministry have healed the old wound—because the steady warmth and glow of your love has kindled mine?"
He regarded her with a gaze so rapt, so reverent, so expressive of immeasurable gratitude that her eyes filled with tears. "I think you do understand me," she whispered.
He kissed her hand in homage as he replied, "A joy like this is almost as hard to comprehend at first as an equally great sorrow. My garden teaches me to understand you. A perfect flower-stalk is suddenly and rudely broken. Instead of dying, it eventually sends out a little side-shoot which gives what bloom it can."
"And you will be content with what it can give?"
"I shall be glad with a happiness which almost terrifies me. Only
God knows how I have longed for this."
That evening the old banker scarcely ceased rubbing his hands in general felicitation, while practical, housewifely Mrs. Kemble already began to plan what she intended to do toward establishing Helen in the adjoining cottage.
Now that Martine believed his great happiness possible, he was eager for its consummation. At his request the 1st of December was named as the wedding day. "The best that a fireside and evening lamp ever suggested will then come true to me," ha urged. "Since this can be, life is too short that it should not be soon."
Helen readily yielded. Indeed, they were all so absorbed in planning for his happiness as to be oblivious of the rising storm. When at last the girl went to her room, the wind sighed and wailed so mournfully around the house as to produce a feeling of depression and foreboding.