A Woman's Reason. William Dean Howells
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and flung off the kind clinging arms, as if their pity stifled her, and fled up and down the verandah, a storm' of grief that beat forth in thick sobs, and escaped in desolate moans.
Mrs. Butler did not try to stay her, or even to approach her, as she wavered to and fro, and wrung her hands, or pressed them to her streaming eyes. At last, after many moments, as long as hours of common life, Helen suddenly checked herself, and dried the tears that drenched her face. There had come the lull which must succeed such a passion. She stopped before Mrs. Butler, and asked in a husky, changed voice, "Isn't there any train up tonight?"
"Why, Helen—"
"Because if there is, I must take it. I know what you will say, but don't say it. If you try to stop me, I will walk. I am going home."
It was too soon yet for her to realize that she should never go home again, but the word went to the mother-heart that ached for her with the full measure of its tragic irony, and she perceived with a helpless throe of compassion how alone in the world this fair young stricken creature stood.
Ray had sent word to his English friend that he should not join him again on board the yacht that night, briefly explaining the trouble that kept him, and promising to see him again on the morrow. He directed the yacht to put into Salem, as had been arranged, and instructed his men to tell Lord Rainford about the trains for Boston. He was with Captain Butler and the awe-stricken girls in the parlor, while Mrs. Butler kept Helen on the verandah, and he had gathered from the captain such part of the story as he had not already divined.
" Edward !" called Mrs. Butler from without, and he went to her where she stood with Helen, now perfectly silent and tearless. "Miss Harkness wishes to go home tonight. I shall go with her. Mr. Butler has just got home, and—" She hesitated to say before Helen's affliction that he had had too hard a day already, and she could not let him incur the further excitement and fatigue; but Ray seemed to know.
"Captain Butler had better stay here," he said promptly, "and let me go. We haven't time for the seven o'clock at Beverley," he added, glancing at his watch, " but we can catch the eight o'clock express at Salem if we start at once."
"I am ready," said Helen quietly. "My trunk can come to-morrow. I haven't even unlocked it."
Ray had turned away to ring the stable bell. "Jerry, put my mare into the two-seated phaeton. Don't lose any time," he called out, stopping Jerry's advance up the walk for orders, and the phaeton was at the steps a minute or two after Mrs. Butler appeared in readiness to go.
Helen went into the lighted dining-room, where Captain Butler and the girls had fearfully grouped themselves, waiting what motion of farewell she should make. Her face was pale, and somewhat stern. She went round and kissed them, beginning and ending with Marian, and she did not give way, though they each broke out crying at her touch, or at her turning from them. When she came to the Captain, she put out her arms, and took him into them, and pressed herself to his breast in a succession of quick embraces, while he hid his face, and could not look at her.
"Good-bye all," she said, in a firm tone, and went out and got into the phaeton, where Mrs. Butler was sitting. Ray sprang to the place beside the driver. "Salem, Jerry. Quick!" and they flew forward through the evening air, cold and damp in currents, and warm in long stretches over the smooth road. She smelt the heavy scent of the spircea in the swampy places, and of the milkweed in the sand. She said no, she was not chilly, to Mrs. Butler; and from time to time they talked together: about the days beginning to get a little shorter now, and its not being so late as it seemed. Once Ray struck a match and looked at his watch, and the driver looked at Ray, who said, "All right," and did not say anything else during the drive. Again, after silence, Helen spoke—
"You know I wouldn't let you come with me, if I could help it, Mrs. Butler."
"You couldn't help it, dear," answered the other. "Don't talk of it."
The station was a blur and dance of lights; she was pushed into the train as it moved away. She sat next the window in the seat with Mrs. Butler, and Ray in the seat before them. He did not look round, nor did Mrs. Butler sit very close, or take her hand, or try in any futile way to offer her comfort. The train seemed to go forward into the night by long leaps. Once it stopped somewhere on the track remote from a station, and Ray went out with some other passengers to see what had happened. Helen was aware of a wild joy in the delay, and of a wish that it might last forever. She did not care to know what had caused it. As the cars drew into the Boston depot, she found her handkerchief, soaked with tears, in her hand, and she pulled down her veil over her swollen eyes.
At her own door, she said, "Well, Margaret," like a ghostly echo of her wonted greetings, and found Margaret's eyes red and swollen too.
"I knew you would come, Miss Helen," said Margaret. "I told them you never would let the night pass over your head."
"Yes, I would come, of course," answered Helen. She led the way back into the library, where there were lights, and where the study-lamp burnt upon the table at which last night she had sat with her father. Then, while the others stood there, she took up the lamp, and pushed open the drawing-room doors, as she had seen him do, and, as she felt, with something of his movement, and walked forward under the dimly-burning gas to the place where she had known he would be lying. Everything had been done decorously, and he appeared, as they say, very natural. She stood with the lamp lifted high, and looked down at the face, slowly and softly wiping the tears, and shaken now and then with a sob. She did not offer to kiss or touch him. She turned from the clay out of which he had departed, and walked back to the library, where it seemed as if he should meet her, and speak to her of what had happened.
There were Mrs. Butler and Mr. Ray, and behind them there was Margaret. She felt how pitifully she must be looking at them. Someone caught the lamp, which had grown so light, from her hand, and someone had thrown up the window. That was right; she should not faint now; and now she was opening her eyes, and Ray's arm was under her neck, where she lay upon the floor, and Mrs. Butler was dashing her face with cologne.
IV.
In those days Helen came to understand what her father had meant by saying, that after her mother and her little brothers died, the house seemed full of them, and that it did not make him afraid. Now that he had died, the house seemed full of him, and she was not afraid. She grew to be weak and sore, and almost blind from weeping; but even when she cowered over the dead face, and cried and moaned to it, it seemed something earthly and perishable in her love bewailing only the earthly and perished part of him, while what was really himself beheld her grief with a high, serene compassion, and an intelligence with some immortal quiet in her own soul. Whatever it was, whether the assurance of his life after death, or the mere blind effect of custom, prolonging his presence, as the severed nerves refer sensation to the amputated limb, and rehabilitate and create it anew, this sense of his survival and nearness to her was so vivid at times that she felt as if she might, could she but turn quickly enough, see him there before her; that the inward voice must make itself audible—the airy presence tangible. It was strongest with her that first night, but it did not cease for long afterwards. He was with her as she followed him to the grave; and he came back with her to the house from which they had borne him.
In this sense of his survival, which neither then nor afterwards had any fantastic quality to her, she seemed to draw nearer to him than ever before. He understood now, he knew the depth and truth of her love, through all her vanities and follies. Something inexpressibly sweet and dear was in this consciousness, and remained always, when its vividness had faded with the keen anguish of her grief. Such things, the common experience of all bereavement, are hard to put in words. Said, they seem crude and boastful, and more than what is felt; but what is felt is more than can ever be said.
Captain Butler came up the morning after Helen's return home, and he and Mrs. Butler remained in the house with her till all was over. Marian came up too, and Ray was there with his silent vigilance, from which everything seemed done without his agency. Helen had but to weep, to sorrow up and down the house; they gave her anguish way, and did not mock it with words of comfort. When the tempests