A Woman's Reason. William Dean HowellsЧитать онлайн книгу.
are nothing but a comfort and a help to me. Poor child! You mustn't be worried by my looks. I shall be all right in the morning. Come, come!"
"But weren't you perplexed somehow about business? Weren't you thinking about those accounts?"
"No, my dear."
"What were you thinking of?"
"Well, Helen, I was thinking of your mother and your little brothers."
"Oh !" said Helen, with the kind of recoil which the young must feel even from the dearest dead. "Do you often think of them?"
"No, I believe, not often. Never so much as tonight, since I first lost them; the house seemed full of them then. I suppose these impressions must recur."
"Oh, doesn't it make you feel strange?" asked Helen, cowering a little closer to him.
"Why should it? It doesn't make me feel strange to have your face against mine."
"No, but— O don't, don't talk of such things, or I can't endure it! Papa, papa! I love you so, it breaks my heart to have you talk in that way. How wicked I must be not to like you to think of them! But don't, tonight! I want you to think of me, and what we are going to do together, and about all our plans for next winter, and for that new house, and everything. Will you? Promise!"
Her father pressed her cheek closer against his, and she felt the fond smile which she could not see in the dark. He gave her his promise, and then began to talk about her going down to the Butlers', which it seemed the Captain had urged further after she had bidden him goodnight. The Captain was going to stay in Boston a day or two, and Mr. Harkness thought he might run down with him at the end of' the week. Helen did not care to go, but with this in view she did not care to say so. She let her father comfort her with caressing words and touches, as when she was a child, and she frankly stayed her weakheartedness upon his love. She was ashamed, but she could not help it, nor wish to help it. As she rested her head upon his pillow she heard his watch ticking under it; in this sound all the years since she was a little girl were lost. Then his voice began to sink drowsily, as it used to do in remote times, when she had wearied him out with her troubles. He answered at random, and his talk wandered so that it made her laugh. That roused him to full consciousness of her parting kiss. "Goodnight," he said, and held her hand, and drew her down by it again, and kissed her once more.
III.
Helen woke the next morning with the overnight ache still at her heart: she wondered that she could have thought of leaving her father; but when she opened her shutters and let in the light, she was aware of a change that she could not help sharing. It was the wind that had changed, and was now east; the air was fresh and sparkling; the homicidal sunshine of the day before lay in the streets and on the house fronts as harmless as painted sunshine in a picture. Another day might transform all again; the tidal wave of life that the sea had sent from its deep cisterns out over the land might ebb as quickly, and the world find itself old and haggard, and suffering once more ; but while it lasted, this respite was a rapture.
Helen came down with something of it in her face, the natural unreasoned and unreasoning hopefulness of young nerves rejoicing in the weather's mood; but she began at breakfast by asking her father if he did not think it was rather crazy for her to be starting off for Beverley the very day after she had got home for good, and had just unpacked everything. She said she would go only on three conditions:—first, that he felt perfectly well; second, that he would be sure to come down on Saturday; and third, that he would be sure to bring her back with him on Monday.
"I don't think I could stand Marian Butler in her present semi-fluid state more than three days; and I wouldn't consent to leave you, papa, except that while you're worrying over business, you'd really rather not have me about. Would you f"
Her father said he always liked to have her about .
"O yes; of course," said Helen. "But don't you see, I'm trying to make it a virtue to go, and I can't go unless I do?"
He laughed with her at her hypocrisy. They agreed that this was Thursday the 15th, and that he should come down on Saturday the 17th, and that he would let nothing detain him, and that he would come in time for dinner, and not put it off, as he would be sure to do, till the last train. Helen gave him a number of charges as to his health, and his hours of work, and bade him, if he did not feel perfectly well, to telegraph her instantly. When he started downtown, she made him promise to drive home. After the door closed upon him, she wondered that she had ever allowed herself to think of leaving him, and indignantly dismissed the idea of going to Beverley; but she went on and packed her trunk so as to have it ready when the express-man came for it. She could easily send him away, and besides, if she did not go now, there was no hope of getting her father off for a holiday and a little change of scene. She quitted the house in time to catch the noon train, and rode drearily down to Beverley, but not without the comfort of feeling herself the victim of an inexorable destiny. All the way down she was in impulse rushing back to Boston, and astonishing Margaret by her return, and telling her father that she found she could not go, and being fondly laughed at by him. She was almost in tears when the brakeman shouted out the name of the station, and if Marian Butler had not been there with her phaeton, in obedience to the Captain's telegram announcing Helen's arrival, she would have hidden herself somewhere, and taken the next train back to town. As it was, she descended into the embrace of her friend, who was so glad to see her that she tried to drive through the train, just beginning to move off, on the track that crossed their road, and had to be stopped by the baggage-master, who held the pony's nose till the train was well on its way to Portland. At the door of the cottage, when the pony had drawn up the phaeton there, with a well-affected air of being driven up, Mrs. Butler met Helen with tender and approving welcome, and said that they could never have hoped to get her father to come unless she had come first. "This change in the weather will be everything for him, and you mustn't worry about him," she said, laying a soothing touch upon Helen's lingering anxieties. "If he has any business perplexities, you may be sure he'd rather have you out of the way. I have seen something of business perplexities in my time, my dear, and I know what they are. I shall telegraph to Mr. Butler to bring your father in the same train with him, and not give him any chance of slipping through his fingers."
Mrs. Butler was one of those pale, slight ladies, not easily imaginable apart from the kind of soft breakfast shawl which she wore, and which harmonized with the invalid purple under her kind eyes, the homes of habitual headache; and the daughters of the marriage Captain Butler had made rather late in life with a woman fifteen years younger than himself, were as unlike their mother as their father was. These large, warm blondes invited all the coolness they could with their draperies, and stood grouped about her, so many statues of health and young good looks and perpetual good-nature, with bangs and frizzes over their white foreheads, and shadowing their floating, heavily-lashed blue eyes. When alone they often tended in behavior to an innocent rowdiness; they were so amiable, and so glad, and so strong, that they could not very well keep quiet, and when quiet, especially in their mother's presence, they had a knowingly quelled look: in their father's presence they were not expected nor liked to be quiet. They admired Helen almost as much as they admired their mother. She was older than any of them, except Marian, and was believed to be a pattern of style and wisdom, who had had lots of offers, and could marry anybody. While Helen and their mother talked together, they listened in silence, granting their superiority, with the eager humility of well-bred younger girlhood; and Marian went to see about lunch.
Mr. Ray was coming to lunch, and Helen was to see him with Marian for the first time since their engagement. He was a man she had not known very well in Harvard, though he was of the class she had danced through with. He was rather quiet, and she had not formed a flattering opinion of him; some of the most brilliant fellows liked him, but she had chosen to think him dull. That was some years ago, and she had not often met him since; he had been away a great deal.
His quiet seemed to have grown upon him, when he appeared, or it might have been the contrast of his composure with the tumult of the young girls that gave it such a positive effect. He seemed the best of friends with them all, but in his