Corra Harris

“ It is astonishing what terrible things a man can be thinking, while he looks at you frankly and laughs honestly and takes your food like a brother. Certainly Cutter would have been astonished if he had known what was passing through the mind of his guest as they talked and laughed together at this table. But it is a question if Helen would have been moved. She did not know this man, but she felt him like a darkness, in no way personal to her, but there, with George frisking around like an ambitious spark in this blackness. ”

“ But I doubt if there is a single biography to be found of a merely good woman, because for some reason goodness does not distinguish women, and for another reason, while it may make them useful, dependable and absolutely essential to others, it does not make them sufficiently interesting to hold the reader’s attention or the world’s attention. You never heard of one being knighted for virtue. It is not done. You never saw a monument raised to just one woman who was invincibly good and faithful in the discharge of her intimate private duties as a wife or a mother. ”

“ Why swagger in print about being married? It is not a thing to boast about, but to be humble about, and to entreat the prayers of all Christian people, that they may behave themselves, keep their vows and do the square thing by each other and society.
George and Helen returned to Shannon and their new home on Wiggs Street the last of October.
Helen was far more beautiful than she had ever been, with that sedate air young wives acquire before they are becalmed by the stupefying monotony of love, peace and duty. The lines in George’s handsome young face were firmer. ”

“ Such a wife cannot always choose her partner nor the card she must play. It is a skin game, matrimonially speaking, and sometimes the one skinned is the husband, more frequently it is the wife, even if it is only the gossips who do the skinning.
Helen made her way through such reflections as these, not as I have written them down in words, but as one walking through the dark in a dangerous place, with cautious steps and outstretched hands, feeling the edges of strange abysses with her feet, touching unknown things that might be alive with reptilian life. ”

“ The perfect woman, in his opinion, should have loveliness, health, and only a rudimentary intelligence. He was very tired, indeed, of the rhinestone sparkle of feminine wit.
“It is the same with the building and furnishing of a house,” Helen showed up again. “They hire an architect and a decorator. And then they hire a landscape gardener. And when the whole scene inside and out is laid, they live in it as if they had planned it and achieved it. But they have bought every line, every shadow, and all the perspective—things that you feel and see, but cannot touch. ”

“ Nature knows her business. The whole world, the heavens and the earth and the fullness thereof is an incantation made to ensnare lovers to her purpose. And not a word grows anywhere to betray this charm. You may be strong or weak, wise or simple, cynical, disillusioned, protected with all the knowledge of men, but there is no escape. Nature gets you at last; on honor or dishonor you [42] must pay your debt to her in love. When you are done, nothing remains but your dust, a handful of something with which to fertilize love again—a little retail economy Nature makes in her procreating plans. ”

“ You know by your own experience, if you are a married woman, that you always sit on the side of your bed when you are dramatizing the sadder prospects of going on doing your duty by this husband—or of not doing it. You chose the bed instead of a chair because of a potential sense of prostration. You prepare yourself to fall back in a storm of tears or to sink upon your knees in prayer for strength to bear this “cross.” The more modern woman is said frequently to rise unshriven, stride majestically across the room and stare at her own proudly rebellious reflection in the mirror. ”

“ Seeing George thus, enhanced by ten additional years, you naturally want to know what changes have taken place in Helen.
Sometimes a slender, fair woman might be seen in Cutter’s limousine, waiting at the curb before the bank. But if you saw her, you scarcely noticed her, because there was nothing distinguishing in her appearance. She always sat very still with her hands folded, her lips closed so tightly that they appeared to be primped, and with her eyes wide open, very blue like curtains drawn before windows, concealing every thought and feeling within. ”

“ Adams’ reflections were strangely mixed, what with that sundown feeling she had of her own youth and the anxieties of a mother growing stronger every moment. She would like to know, for example, if Helen had seen George Cutter. Had she gone by the bank for the pass book? But even when she caught sight of this book lying on the dresser, with the ends of many checks sticking out of it, she did not put the question. Love is a wound too painful to be dressed with the tenderest words when it is first made, much less scraped with a question. ”

“ George started to smoke, tilted his chin up, expelled a twin bugle of smoke from his nostrils, narrowed his eyes and stared into the immensity of the night. He was very handsome posed like this, and knew it.
Men are much more presumptuously vain than women. They can be vain with no preparation, in their shirt sleeves, with a three days’ stubble of beard on their faces and no hair at all on their heads. Their vanity seems to be a sort of rooster-tail instinct, with which they have been endowed so that they may do the work of the world and waste no time primping. ”

“ Every bloom to be was so sweetly foretold to her in this warm air. She could not give it up. There must be something to live for and love. She suffered most from the breaking of this habit of loving. And the shock she had of discovering that she still loved her husband disturbed her more than the possible attitude Shannon might assume toward her. She was that far from suspecting, you understand, the imaginary activities of gossips who are never contented with the bare facts, but must invent explanations of these facts according to their fancies. ”

“ If she could be induced to live the life she would have to live. He admitted it was a sort of puppet existence. But as necessary to his success as the dummies in a shop window are to advertise the owner’s trade. Ten thousand women did it all the time, liked it. Still Helen was not one of them. She was removed by nature, every instinct, from that class. He was half a mind to give up the whole thing. At this moment, Helen [145] looked across at him. There was a hint of tears in her eyes, a fugitive smile on her lips as if this smile pleaded with him for a certain forgiveness. ”

“ The self-bereaved husband climbed aboard, walked magnificently up the aisle of the car to his section, sat down, rumbled a command to the porter and heaved a sigh.
He was immensely relieved. The worst of it was over. He had suffered some, but he was feeling very fit now, animated. He was done with the past. He was headed for New York, the city that whetted a man’s senses and ambitions. He had worked hard. The world owed him something for that. No place like New York for collecting what the world owed a fellow, and so on and so forth. ”

“ Whatever he became, back here in that quiet house Helen would always be his wife. She was not the woman to think of a divorce.
Well, he had been a fool not to have understood all along that Helen would be true to herself as usual, to her own convictions, whatever they were. And he was no longer one of these convictions. Life was a mess, anyhow. If a man failed, he had poverty pawing at his door. ”

“ If you ask me, I should point to the prevailing type of modern woman as an example of what mere Nature does for a woman. She is a brilliant creature, ready to show the iridescent wings of her charms to all men, not one man; a childless wife, ready to sue for her liberty and alimony on the slightest provocation; an ambitious person, futilely active, who farms out her home to servants that she may become the dupe and handmaiden of politicians. ”

“ For the next three days Helen remained in bed. She was not ill; but she was not able to face life on her feet. When your whole existence has been absorbed by the life of another person—his will, his desires and his habits have determined your every act—it is not so easy to have freedom and the pursuit of your own happiness suddenly thrust upon you. It is necessary to acquire new motives and new interests.
Besides, Helen was obliged to face the humiliation of her abandonment. So, as I have said, she remained in bed, very quiet, very pale, very submissive to Maria’s ministrations. ”

“ Adams knew that her daughter could not do better in a worldly way than to marry this young man. But when it came to the pinch, she forgot the world and thought anxiously of Helen. She was a good mother. Her instinct, sharpened by years of living in a world where love plays havoc with hopes and happiness, warned her that while George might settle down in business and become eminently successful, she doubted if he could be domesticated in the strictly marital virtues. ”

“ When Helen and George became engaged in August the Carrol house was simply an old gray farmhouse, overtaken years ago by the spreading skirts of Shannon, but never assimilated. This was due to the fact that when Wiggs Street was lengthened, it must be made straight whatever happened. The old house was left far to one side on a wide lawn. No one lived in it. Altheas and [98] roses bloomed among the weeds, like gentle folk who have lost their station in life and make common lot with the mean and the poor. Grass grew between the bricks of the walk which led to the front door. ”

“ When you are in love, everything is important and everything is secret. You become a consummate actor and liar in vain, because the whole world knows your secret almost as soon as you do.
That evening at the dinner table, George was so gay, so full of himself, so ready to laugh and make a joke that Mrs. Cutter was beside herself with pride and happiness. ”

“ What follies love imposed upon youth! He had loved her and taken her, when she belonged to another kind of man, when he might have been happy with another kind of woman. Now he no longer loved her, and the other woman might give him pleasure, but never peace or happiness.... He supposed, after all, there must be something moral about happiness. Well, then, why had he missed happiness with Helen? Heaven knew she was made of every virtue. ”

“ Witnesses spring from the very ground to swear to your guilt, even if you have gone into your closet to taste a pleasant fault. Even if, as in Helen’s case, the evidence is flimsy and circumstantial, there is always an eye that sees, an ear that hears, a tongue to tell what happened or what apparently happened. The deeper truth—the innocence of the wicked, the guilt of the saints—remains hidden save from the omniscience of the Almighty. ”

“ The woman will be profoundly different. This is why writers of mere fiction have discarded the young girl heroine. Nothing can make her interesting but a tragedy, until she develops her human perversities and attributes, which may require more years than the tale can afford.
Helen walked sedately through Wiggs Street, as if every window of every house was an eye that observed her. But when she came to the end, where this street entered the public square, her gait changed, much as your voice changes inflection according to the tune you sing. ”

“ From this day George Cutter spent his spare time in and about the Adams cottage. You might have inferred that he was a homeless man. He accompanied Helen to such entertainments as society consisted of in Shannon, chiefly picnics and fishing excursions at this season of the year. He was by nature an importunate lover, and he was in love. He did not ask himself whether Helen would make a suitable wife for such a man as he was, and would become. He did not know what kind of man he was. He only knew that he wanted this girl, and that no other man should have her. ”

“ The conversation of lovers in fiction rarely tallies with what they actually say to each other in real life. I have read the dialogue of many a brilliant courtship in a novel, but never as an eavesdropper or observer have I known two people in love to utter a single sentence which was sensible or that even escaped absurdity, if you repeated it along with other gossip you have to tell. ”

“ It is the perpetual insurrection of life everlasting in the terms of love, which are never peaceful terms.
Some time during this August, probably the latter part, Helen wore her third degree hat and the new frock. This hat lies now in an old trunk above the attic stairs in the house of Helen. I have seen it. A leghorn with a wide floppy brim, stiff, a little askew and out of shape, as you would be yourself if you had lain so long without so much as a breath of wind to stir you. There is a good deal of lace and ribbon on it and a wreath of wild roses. ”

“ She always missed her cue.
Nevertheless, Shippen had the shock of his swift life when he was presented to Mrs. Cutter that evening.
The weather was very cold. A bright fire burned in the grate. A chandelier of four lights overhead left scarcely a shadow in this cheap little parlor. Everything in it glared. The white walls stared you out of countenance. The golden-oak piano turned a broadside of yellow brilliance across the flowered rug. The whatnot showed off. The spindle-back sofa fairly twinkled varnish. Inanimate things can sometimes produce the impression of tittering excitement. ”

“ I would not discourage any woman who is preparing to make of herself a sacrifice wholly acceptable to her husband and family, but it is my honest conviction that it will not pay her in this present world. And that she will wind up like the sundown saint of herself, respected, held in affectionate regard, maybe, but unhonored and unsung. ”

“ Here was Helen, for example, seated beside this young man, all whiteness and sweetness, eyes so blue that even in this moonlit darkness they showed like sunlit skies, lips pink, parted like the petals of a rose, teeth like pearls glistening between—the very emblem of loveliness; and yet she was in an anguish of uncertainty, lest he did not and never would care for her. I don’t know—this may be one of the scurvy tricks Nature [55] plays on women to keep them humble. ”

“ Helen had known how to dress in the happy, wild-rose period of her youth; but how can you keep up the flaunting, flowing sweetness of your draperies when you are no longer a girl to be won, but have become a wife who has been reduced to her duties and her virtues? ”

“ Once she caught the steady, dark gaze of a woman seated directly opposite her, but at a distant table. She lifted her own glance and hurried by this overhead route back to the bunch of violets in the vase on her own table. She could not have told why she did this, probably for the same reason one flinches and draws back from the sudden flash of a brilliant flame. She sat staring at the violets, wondering about this woman, not intelligently, with a sort of amazement which was not pleasant. Never before had she seen such a fury of commanding beauty. She thought she must be tall. ”

“ And yet it is very important, this primer talk, these watching eyes of lovers who place the profoundest significance upon the most trivial act, or even the wavering of a glance between them.
I merely say this in passing, as a challenge to the reader, who may feel a trifle let down, disappointed at the above record of what took place between George and Helen on that day. What I have written is the artless truth of love, not the fabricated philosophy of love, because there is no such philosophy. Love is a state of being beyond our academic powers to expound. ”

“ He turned so as to face her, seized her hand, bent his brows upon her in a strained, long look. It was powerful, this gaze. She trembled. Her hand became icy in his hot palm. He tightened his clasp upon it.
“Listen, Helen,” in the deep bass tones of a terrific emotion, “I wish you to know me as I am. [59] I would not take advantage of a girl like you. I will keep nothing from you. It is necessary if—if my hopes are realized.” He left her in this suspense while he bowed his head and struggled to stem his tide. “I am not a good man,” he began. ”

“ Mrs. Shaw said.
Helen said “Thank you” for the simple reason that she could not pretend to be glad of anything. A mania for veracity makes you inelastic, uncouth and ungraceful socially.
Mrs. Flitch asked her when she was expecting “George.” It was a shot in the dark, and she did not mean it. But she was a woman whose very instinct could aim accurately at your vulnerable point.
“I am not expecting Mr. Cutter at all,” Helen replied.
Mrs. Flitch had to take this answer, which was too frank to excite suspicion. But she did want to know if Helen expected to make her home in New York. ”

“ To be loved does make a woman happy, but it never endows her with her own peace, only protection. There is a difference, if you know how to read it, between love and hope in her face. The former is conferred and may be taken away: the latter is an act of faith and cannot be dimmed or destroyed. Helen had this look of “anticipation,” as some physicians call it, a mark which Nature confers upon women like a meek distinction. ”

“ But the chief reason I have recorded what happened on this day is because it was by this accident of maternal jealousy that Helen came into possession of her house. So far from believing in any sort of orderly destiny, my belief is that the Fates which change and control our lives are as uncertain as the flight of birds. The world about us is filled with contending forces. ”

“ For the gentlest woman, wronged, may suddenly change into a virago after you have made sure that she will endure anything. But if she ever breaks, it is like any other form of hysteria, incurable. She will be subject to verbal frenzies upon the slightest provocation so long as she lives.
For one instant Helen stood upon the threshold of her parlor, speechless with amazement. ”

“ Some women live and die so virginal that they never know why other women wear a rose, or display the sparkle of a jewel upon their breast. If they put on these invitations to love it is merely copying the universal feminine custom. They do not know how to mean the rose or catch the sparkle of the jewel in their manner.
Helen wore no invitations. She was simply anxious to look the mistress of this establishment, never to be mistaken for a dutiful servant. ”