William Dana Orcutt

“ Helen exclaimed, turning to her husband. The breeze had blown back the lace scarf from her head, and the moon fell full upon her luxuriant hair, lighting her upturned face. “All nature is at rest and peace, and the people reflect the contentment of the land.”
“Your uncle is becoming very dictatorial,” replied Armstrong, quite at variance with her mood.
“Why, Jack!”
Helen was mildly reproachful, yet she instinctively felt the necessity of being cautious. Perhaps she could make him forget his resentment.
“Uncle Peabody only meant to give us an opportunity to be by ourselves. We have had so few.” ”

“ His face assumed an expression of still greater concern. “I have, indeed, been more culpable than I realized. Is it not enough if I tell you that you are all wrong—that I do not love any one except the one person I have a right to love?”
Helen smiled sadly. “No, Jack,” she replied, kindly but firmly, “it is all too clear. When you return to your real life, as you must do, you will return to your real self as well. Then you will know that I have saved you from the greatest mistake of all. You and Inez are meant for each other, and always have been.” ”

“ From the moment the Armstrongs arrived, Giuseppe’s admiration for Helen knew no bounds. To him she was the personification of all that was perfection. Not that he expressed it, even to Annetta—he would have forgotten mass on Good Friday sooner than so forget his place. It was rather that devotion which is born and not made—occasionally, but not often, found in those who enter so intimately into the life of those they serve, yet who must always feel themselves apart from it. ”

“ Do you not see that I was right that day at the library? You are even more beautiful than when I saw you before. There is a new strength in your face. You are a creation of the master-artist, like a marvellous painting which intoxicates the senses.”
Helen had no answer, but the old man continued:
“I have just left your husband and his sister-worker. They are not beautiful—they represent the wisdom which one finds in books. The world needs both, my daughter. Be content.”
And without waiting for a reply Cerini disappeared in the crowd of guests as suddenly as he had come. ”

“ Inez felt her face burn with the suddenness of the accusation. She hesitated, and in that moment’s hesitation De Peyster had his answer. Still he was not satisfied. He must hear the words spoken.
“You told me last time that there was no one else,” he said, reproachfully, “and I know you spoke the truth. Now there must be some one, and if there is I am entitled to know it. So long as my love for you cannot harm you, no power on earth can take it away from me; but if there is another who has a better right than I, that is a different matter. Tell me, Inez—I insist—do you love some one else?” ”

“ Cerini had said the same thing, Miss Thayer had said so—and Armstrong himself believed, in the consciousness of having completed an unusual piece of work, that such a possibility might exist. He felt no conceit, but rather that overpowering sense of hopefulness which comes to a man as a result of successful endeavor—not yet crowned, but completed to his own satisfaction. If this career was to be his, he could not follow Helen’s assumption that it must separate them. That was, of course, as ridiculous as her feelings about Inez. Success for him must mean the same to her, his wife. ”

“ Oh, Inez”—Helen’s face became tense in her earnestness—“we girls think we know a whole lot about marriage. We anticipate it—we dread it; but, when one actually enters into her new estate, she knows how infinitely more it is to be anticipated, if happy, than her fondest dream. But if unhappy—then her dread must have been infinitesimal compared with the reality.”
“‘Marriage is either a complete union or a complete isolation,’” quoted Inez.
“As I tell you, Jack and I understand each other perfectly,” Helen continued, confidently, “and that means so much to a girl. ”

“ The intellectual strength of her husband had won Helen’s profoundest admiration, even though it was beyond her understanding. She longed to be able to enter into it and respond to it as Inez did, yet she felt her limitations. But her love had increased in its intensity by passing through the fire. The man she knew now was infinitely stronger and grander than ever before, and in the light of this new development of character she questioned whether her affection would not suffer a shock if Jack were to become again the man she had known in Boston. ”

“ Having dropped his engrossing law-practice, he yearned to take advantage of this opportunity, now near at hand, to devote himself to the girl he had won, and at the same time to gratify this long-cherished wish to study more deeply into the work of those early humanists who had foreshadowed and brought about that mighty thought revolution, the wonderful breaking-away from the deadly pall of ignorance into the light and joyousness and richness of intellectual life known as the Renaissance. Helen would no longer fail to understand them when she saw them face to face. ”

“ When she turned and saw him looking at her, she smiled guiltily.
“We are leaving the old life behind us,” she said. “With all the philosophy you have tried to teach me, I have not fully realized until now what a change it means.”
“Do you regret it?” he asked her, half rebellious that even a passing shadow should mar the completeness of their happiness.
Helen quickly became herself again, and threw back her head with a merry laugh at the seriousness of his interrogation. “Regret it! How foolish even to ask such a question! ”

“ De Peyster no sooner became conscious of her change of manner than he seized it as a long-awaited opportunity. Beginning where he had left off at the last attack, he rehearsed the history of his affection from the day he had first met her until the present moment. For the first time Inez experienced a sympathy toward him rather than a sorrow for herself. He was, even with his limitations, so deadly in earnest, his devotion was so unquestionable, his very persistency was so unlike his other characteristics, seeming a part of a stronger personality, that it forced her admiration. ”

“ He had overlooked the cardinal element in the humanistic creed that knowledge without love meant death and isolation. Instead of singling out and joining together the beauties for which humanism stood, he had embraced and emphasized its limitations.
“I am an impostor!” Armstrong exclaimed, no longer able to endure his mental lashing in silence—“an arrant impostor! I have set myself up as a modern apostle, I have written platitudes upon intellectual supremacy and the religion of knowledge, when the one single personal attribute to which I can justly lay claim is insufferable academic arrogance. ”

“ He despised himself for his attitude. What wretched thing had come between him and this girl whom he had idolized, and prevented him from extending even [164] the common sympathy which belonged to any one who needed it? What malevolent power forced him to be the cause of this sorrow and yet forbade him the privilege of assuaging it? This was not the lesson learned from the humanists. Why should not he be able to give out to those around him the reflection of that true happiness which their work first taught the world?
Helen opened her eyes suddenly and looked full into his. ”

“ You are his wife, and, as you say, it is your privilege to share with your husband any development, but it must be along a path which you are able to tread. I mean this in no unkind way, my daughter. I doubt not that you, perhaps, in all other ways, are quite capable of doing so, but this one single portion of his life it is quite impossible that you should share.”
Helen had no response. Her heart told her that all Cerini said was literally true. She felt herself to be absolutely unfitted to understand or to supplement that particular expression of her husband’s character. ”

“ Here, within these old walls, I am not limited by the world’s conventions, so perhaps I disregard them more than is right. Those whom I love signify nothing to me as to their personal appearance or their families or their personalities except in so far as these attributes may be expressions of themselves. Life to me would not be worth the living if in debating whether or not I ought to do a certain thing I was obliged to consider also what the world would think or what some other person might think. ”

“ For humanism, my daughter, is not only the love of antiquity: it is the worship of it—a worship carried so far that it is not limited to adoration alone, but which forces one to reproduce. By the same token the humanist is the man who not only knows intimately the ancients [55] and is inspired by them: it is he who is so fascinated by their magic spell that he copies them, imitates them, rehearses their lessons, adopts their models and their methods, their examples and their gods, their spirit and their tongue. ”

“ It seems to me that you might come to an appreciation of each other’s interests by becoming familiar with them.—I wonder if you realize what a man your husband is?”
Helen leaned over and kissed her impulsively. “I realize more than I ever intend to let him know, dear child. He would become unbearably conceited were he even to guess how much he has already become to me. I really did not want to marry him—or to marry any one—but he swept away every objection, just as he always does, and now I find myself wondering how in the world I ever existed without him. ”

“ Helen laughed bitterly to herself. She was reaping the rich returns now—rich in sorrow and pain and suffering.
Perhaps she could have forced the crisis to come when Inez’ confession to De Peyster had been disclosed by Emory. Jack’s conduct at that time had almost brought Helen’s resentment to the breaking-point; but what Inez had told her afterward had made her feel more in sympathy with him, even though she understood him no better than before. “Your husband is a god among them all,” Inez had said; “you will be so proud of him—so proud that he belongs to you.” ”

“ Her eyes, looking out into the distance even as she spoke, reflected the calm, satisfied contentment of the moment, while in the brown [44] depths of the other’s one could read an ungratified ambition, an uncertainty not yet explained. Inez Thayer’s face was attractive, Helen’s was beautiful—that beauty which one feels belongs naturally to the person possessing it without the necessity of analysis. ”

“ Helen cried, beseechingly. “You must not say such things. I am not strong enough to stop you, and every word adds to the pain.”
“Then there is pain!” cried Emory, fiercely. “At last I know it from your own lips. And if there is pain it gives me the right to protect you from it.”
“Oh, Phil!” Helen sank helplessly into a chair.
“I have the right,” Emory repeated. “My love, which you cast aside when you accepted him, now gives it to me; my loyalty in surrendering you to him for what I thought was your happiness now gives it to me ”

“ Even though I am unable to appreciate it, you know how interested I am in anything which adds to your happiness—and I am so proud of you, dear! That was one reason why I was glad that Inez could spend a little time with us. She, at least, can help you.”
“She can indeed,” replied Armstrong, frankly, “and she has already. I have never seen a girl with such natural intellectual gifts. Her arguments are so logical, her reasoning so clear, that I find even her disagreements most entertaining. What a pity she is not a man!” [85]
“I knew you would like her,” answered Helen. ”

“ The sharp contrast of his two great devotions came to John Armstrong as he stood at the cross-roads on the edge of San Domenico. The one had exerted so powerful an influence on what he was to-day—the other must influence his future to an extent even greater. The one, in spite of the personality with which he had clothed it, was as musty and antiquated as the ancient tomes he loved to study; the other, as she stood there, her cheeks aglow after the brisk walk, her face animated with enthusiastic delight, seemed the personification of present reality. ”

“ The contessa regarded him critically.
“There are many kinds of men,” she began, “and to a woman of the world it is a necessity to classify those whom she meets.”
“Indeed?” queried Armstrong. “You are throwing some most interesting side-lights upon a subject which my education has entirely overlooked.”
“Am I?” Amélie asked, innocently. “But your education has been so far developed in other directions that you can easily recognize the importance of what I say. A woman who meets the world face to face must be able to estimate the elements against which she has to contend.” ”

“ Helen was visibly disappointed. “I thought I had an idea,” she said, slowly, “but I was wrong. Inez used the word ‘humanities’ a few moments ago, and I once heard President Eliot say that this was simply another name for a liberal education—teaching men to drink in the inspiration of all the ages and to seek to make their age the best.”
“You are not wrong, Helen,” continued Armstrong, “unless you understand President Eliot to mean that the ages which have come since these great men lived have been able to add particularly to what has gone before. All that is included in what Cerini says.” ”

“ Helen felt the color come to her face as the contessa’s words recalled her own sorrow, which for the moment she had forgotten. The freedom with which her guest spoke of her personal affairs repelled her, yet there was a subtle attraction which Helen could not help feeling.
“You are very pessimistic on the subject of marriage,” she ventured.
“Not at all,” the contessa insisted, calmly. “Husbands are selfish brutes, all of them; but they are absolutely necessary to give one respectability. ”