A Woman's Reason. William Dean Howells
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she took up courses of reading; she felt that life was a serious affair. On his return, Robert at first seemed to her more boyish, more brotherly than before. But in talking with him certain facts of his history came out that showed him a very brave and manly fellow, and good, too. This gave her pause; so keen an observer of human nature at once discerned in this young man, who did not brag of his experiences, nor yet affect to despise them as trifles, but honestly owned that at one time he was scared, and that at another he would have given everything to be ashore, an object worthy of her closest and most reverent study. She proceeded to idealize him, and to stand in awe of him. Oh yes! with a deep sighing breath, and a long dreamy look at him —he! What he had been through must have changed the whole world to him. After that night in the typhoon—well, nothing could ever have been the same to her after that. He must find all the interests at home sickeningly mean. This was the tone she took with him, driving him to despair. When he again urged his suit, she said that she could not see why he should care for her. At the same time she wanted to ask him why he did not wear his uniform ashore, instead of that unnatural civil dress that he seemed so anxious to make himself ridiculous in. Being pressed for some sort of answer, she said that she had resolved never to marry. After this Robert went off very melancholy upon his third cruise. But she wrote him such kind and sympathetic letters that he came home from this cruise, which was a short one, more fondly in love than ever, but more patiently, more pleasingly in love; and he now behaved so sensibly, with so much apparent consideration for her uncertainty of mind, that she began to think seriously of him. But though she liked him ever so much, and respected him beyond anything, the very fact that she was wondering whether she could ask him to leave the navy or not, and where and how they should live, seemed sufficient proof to her that she did not care for him in the right way. Love, she knew, did not consider ways and means; it did not stop to argue; it found in itself its own reason and the assurance of a future. It did not come after years of shilly-shallying, and beating about the bush, and weighing this and that, and scrutiny of one's emotions. If she loved Robert so little as to care what happened after they were married, she did not love him at all. Something like this, but expressed with infinite kindness was what she had written from Rye Beach to Robert stationed at Portsmouth. She ended by leaving the case in his hands. She forbade him to hope, but she told him that there had been a time, a moment, when she thought that she might have loved him.
Robert took all this awry. He did not deign to ask her when this mysterious moment was, far less whether it might ever recur; he did not answer one of her arguments; he did not even come over to Rye Beach to combat and trample on her reasons. He wrote her a furious, foolish reply, in which he agreed with her that she had never loved him, and never would, and he bade her farewell. He managed to exchange with a friend who was bemoaning his hard lot in being ordered away from his young wife to the China station, and he sailed with their blessing three days after getting Helen's letter. She only learned of his departure by chance.
The old man held the letter in his hand, after reading it, for so long a time, that at last Helen looked up. "It seems to me you take it pretty coolly, papa," she said, her lips quivering.
"Yes, yes. Poor Robert! poor boy!" sighed her father. Then while she bridled indignantly at his misplaced compassion, he added, "I'm sorry, Helen. I think you would have come to like him. Well, well! If you are contented, my dear—"
"How can you say such a thing, papa?" cried Helen, astonished that he should have taken what he understood of her letter just as Robert had done, "when you know,—when you know I—" but Helen could not finish what she was going to say. She could not own that she thought her letter susceptible of quite a different answer. She set her lips and tried to stop their trembling, while her eyes filled.
Her father did not notice. "My dear," he said presently, " will you ask Margaret to make me a cup of tea? I feel unpleasantly weak."
"Why, papa!" cried Helen, flying to the bell, "why didn't you tell me before, instead of letting me worry you with all this foolishness? why didn't you say you were not so well?"
"I wasn't thinking of it," said her father, meekly accepting her reproof. "It's nothing. The wind has changed, hasn't it? I feel the east a little."
"You're chilly?" Helen was now tempted to be really harsh with him for his remissness, but she did not stay from running after the wrap, soft and light, which she had brought back from the sea-side with her, and had thrown down with her bag in the hall, and though she bemoaned his thoughtlessness, as she flung it over him, still she did not pour out upon him all the self-reproach in her heart. She went and hurried Margaret with the tea, and then set an old-fashioned teapot beside the sofa, and when the tea came, she drew up her chair, and poured it for him. She offered to pull down the window, but he made her a sign to let it be; and in fact, it was not cooler without than within, and no chill came from the little yard, on whose lofty walls the sunset was beginning to burn in tender red light. She poured herself a cup of tea when she came back, and when she had made her father repeat again and again that he felt much better, she began to see the absurdity of being tragic about Robert at this late day, when she had so often refused him before without the least tragedy. This, to be sure, was not quite like the other refusals; not so one-sided; but really, except for Robert's own sake, what had she to be sorry for, and why should she pity his towering dudgeon? An ache, faint and dull, made itself felt deep in her heart, and she answered sadly, "Well," to her father's tentative "Helen."
He did not go on, and she asked presently, "What is it, papa?"
"Oh, nothing. There was something I was going to speak to you about. But it will do another time." Helen recollected that once or twice before this her father had begun in the same way, and postponed whatever he had been going to say in the same fashion. It was not a thing to be curious about, and she had never pressed him to speak. She knew that he would speak when he really thought best . But she wondered now a little if his mind were still running upon Robert. .
"Was it something in regard to—to—me, papa? "
"Why, yes. Yes; indirectly."
"Well, then, don't think of it anymore. I shall not . I'm sorry I worried you about it."
"About what, my dear?" asked her father, who could not have followed her.
"Robert!" said Helen, abruptly.
"Oh! I wasn't thinking about Robert."
"Because, if you were, papa, I want to tell you that I am quite reconciled to have everything end as it has done. Robert and I will always be good friends. You needn't be troubled about that."
"Oh yes, certainly," assented her father, closing his eyes.
Helen sat looking at him, as if she would like to go on. But she was a little ashamed, and a little piqued that her father should shut his eyes in that way while she was talking of Robert. He had taken the whole affair rather oddly. She had been prepared to defend Robert if her father were angry with him, as she expected; but instead of being angry, he had really seemed to side with Robert, and had somehow, by his reticence, implied that he would have been glad to have her humble herself to Robert.
"If you wish to sleep, papa," she said with a dignity wasted upon him, for he still lay with his eyes closed, "I will go away."
"I'm drowsy," said her father. "But don't go, Helen. Sit down here."
He made a motion for her to sit beside him, and after an instant's further resentment she drew up her chair, and laid her beautiful head down upon the cushion by his. She gave him a kiss, and dropped a large tear against his withered cheek, and wiped it away with her handkerchief, and then she hid her face again, and wept peacefully till all her tears were gone. At last she lifted her face, and dried her eyes, and sat dreamily watching the red sunset light creeping up the wall on which the wisteria clambered. It rose slowly, leaf by leaf, till it lit an airy frond at top, that swayed in it like a pennon. Suddenly it leaped from this and left it dark, and a shiver coursed through the next rank of foliage. It somehow made her think of a ship going down below the horizon, and the waves running along the sky where the streamers had just hung. But Robert must have been out of sight of land for two days and more before that .
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