Chapter IX: Book III: Co-Partner with Nature (1)

XXIII

Helen received the heart-breaking news from Alfonse with a degree of control which surprised even Uncle Peabody. Her questions were few, but so vital in their directness that by the time she had learned the nature and the seriousness of the accident, and the location of the cottage where her husband's body lay, she was hurrying to the scene of the calamity.

"Do you know where to reach an American or English surgeon?" she promptly asked Uncle Peabody, and his affirmative reply as he hastened to the telephone was the last word she heard as she left the villa.

Once in the cottage, she followed the guidance of the weeping, awe-struck peasants, who silently pointed out to her the room of death. She opened the door, and crossed the room with a firm step. Sinking to her knees beside the bed, she buried her face for a brief moment in her hands--then she rose quickly to her feet. With the help of the woman who had entered with her, she lifted Inez' inert figure from across her husband's body.

"She has fainted, poor child!" she said, quietly, divining that the girl's insensibility was not serious. "Let us take her into the next room."

Leaving the woman to provide for Inez' necessities, and giving her instructions how to act, Helen turned from the improvised cot to go back to Jack. His hands were still warm, but she could find no perceptible pulsation. She loosened his collar and moved his head a little to one side, discovering the wound for the first time. A cry of pain burst from her as she drew back sick and dizzy, her lips quivering and tears starting to her eyes. Then she leaned over him again, gently washing away the slight flow of blood with a moist cloth which one of the women handed her.

"Look!" she cried, pathetically, to Uncle Peabody, who entered the room a moment later, pointing to the wound and gazing into his eyes with her own distended by her suffering and her sense of helplessness.

Uncle Peabody put his arm about her, and rested his other hand upon Armstrong's wrist. "Dr. Montgomery will be here in a moment, Helen," he said, quietly, feeling instinctively that this was no time for words of sympathy. "I caught him at the Grand Hotel, and there was a motor-car at the door."

"He is dead!" was Helen's response, piteous in its intensity.

"Perhaps not, dear," replied Uncle Peabody, soothingly. "Let us stand by the window until the doctor comes."

Helen refused to suffer herself to be led away from her husband's side.

"I can't," she said, simply, shaking her head; "I must watch over him."

Then she turned back to resume her self-appointed vigil, and suddenly found herself looking into his open eyes.

"Jack!" she cried, seizing his face in her hands as she again sank upon her knees--"oh, Jack!"

She could find no other words in the revulsion which swept over her. Her cry quickly brought Uncle Peabody, and the women drew near to behold the miracle of the dead brought to life; but all except Helen fell back as the doctor entered.

"He lives, doctor!" she exclaimed exultantly, her face radiant with joy.

"Then there is hope," he replied, with a reassuring smile, as he began the examination of his patient.

Helen followed every motion as the doctor proceeded, encouraged by the confidential little nods he made at the conclusion of each process, as if answering in the affirmative certain questions which he put to himself. Armstrong again opened his eyes as the doctor carefully investigated the depth of the wound, and his lips moved slightly. Helen impulsively drew nearer, but the sound was barely articulate.

The doctor drew back the lids and peered intently into his open eyes, nodding again to himself. At length he turned to the silent group about him, who so eagerly waited for the verdict.

"Will he live?" was Helen's tense question as she seized his arm.

Dr. Montgomery looked into the upturned face with a kindly smile. "I hope so, Mrs. Armstrong," he answered, quietly. "It is a severe concussion of the brain, and we must await developments."

"Are there unfavorable signs?" asked Uncle Peabody, anxiously.

"No; quite the contrary so far. There is no fracture of the skull, and the normal size of the pupils shows no serious injury to the brain."

"The unconsciousness is due simply to the concussion?"

"Exactly."

"Then what do you fear?"

"There is always danger of meningitis. We can tell nothing about this until later."

"Will it be safe to move him?" asked Helen.

"Yes; and you had better do so. I must dress and sew up the wound, and then he can be carried home on a stretcher. Suppose you leave me alone with him now, while I make his head a bit more presentable."

Helen's buoyancy was contagious as she and Uncle Peabody started to leave the room, but Jack's voice recalled them.

"It is--the symbolism--of the period," he muttered, incoherently.

"It is all right," the doctor replied to Helen's startled, unspoken interrogation. "He is delirious, and will be so for days."

Satisfied with the explanation, they passed through the door into the next room, where they found Inez sitting weakly in an arm-chair, her hair dishevelled, her face white as marble, supported by the woman in whose care she had been left.

Helen hurried to her. "He is not dead!" she cried, joyfully--"do you hear, Inez? Jack is alive, and the doctor thinks he will recover!"

Inez answered with a fresh flood of tears. "Oh, Helen! Helen!" she murmured, clinging impulsively to her arm.

Helen's recovery came much more spontaneously than did Inez'. With the one the pendulum had made a completed swing, and the depths at one extreme had been offset by the heights at the other. Inez, however, was hopelessly distraught by the accumulated weight of a multitude of emotions: the physical shock of the accident, the horror of the situation as it first burst upon her with unmitigated force, the involuntary tearing from her heart of the mask it had worn for so many months--and now the painful joy of the reaction. She rested in her chair, almost an inert mass, in total collapse of mind and body.

"I could not help it, Helen," she murmured, piteously, as her friend pushed back the dishevelled hair from her hot forehead.

"Of course you could not, dear," Helen cried, smiling through her tears of joy at the obvious relief her words gave. "Oh, I am so happy, Inez!"

Helen's face grew pale again as her thoughts returned to those first awful moments, which now seemed so long ago. "I really thought him dead, Inez," she continued, after a moment's silence. "We could not have endured that, could we, dear? Now we will take him to the villa and nurse him back to health and strength. How strange it will seem to him not to be able to do things for himself!"

"Is he--badly hurt?" ventured Inez.

"The doctor can't tell yet, but he feels encouraged."

"Is he--conscious?"

"Not wholly--and the doctor says he will be delirious for days."

"Oh," replied Inez, again relaxing.

Dr. Montgomery quietly entered the room, carefully closing the door after him. "All goes well," he replied to the questions before they were put to him. "The patient is resting quietly and may be moved as soon as a stretcher can be secured. Your villa is near by, I think Mr. Cartwright said?"

"The stretcher is being prepared," replied Uncle Peabody, answering the doctor's question, "and I have sent for two strong men."

"Good. Have I another patient here?" Dr. Montgomery turned to Inez.

"She is suffering only from the shock," answered Helen.

"Let me take you both home in my motor-car," suggested the doctor.

"Take Miss Thayer," Helen replied, quickly.

"Oh no!" Inez shuddered; "I can never enter one of those awful things again!"

Dr. Montgomery smiled indulgently. "It will really be better, Miss Thayer, and I will personally guarantee your safe arrival."

"I would rather walk beside the stretcher," Helen continued; "there might be something I could do."

The doctor bowed as he acquiesced. "Your husband will require very little to be done for him for some days, Mrs. Armstrong," he said; "but if you prefer to stay near him your suggestion is better than mine."

"Did he speak again, doctor?" asked Helen.

"Yes," he replied, with a professional shrug; "but he said nothing. You must pay no attention to his ramblings. His mind will remain a blank until Nature supplies the connecting link. In the mean time he will require simply quiet and rest."

Uncle Peabody's stretcher was soon ready for service, and the still unconscious burden was gently lifted upon it and carried with utmost tenderness up the hill to the villa, where old Giuseppe and the maids received the party with unaffected joy at the good news that their master would survive the accident that had befallen him. With the aid of the trained nurse they found awaiting them, Armstrong was carefully transferred from the stretcher to his own bed, Inez was made comfortable in her room, and the doctor sat down upon the veranda with Helen and Uncle Peabody, who welcomed a moment's rest after the wearing experience of the past hour.

"Tell us the probabilities of the case, Dr. Montgomery," said Uncle Peabody. "Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were planning to return to Boston soon, and now it will of course be necessary to rearrange their plans."

"Naturally," assented the doctor. "I will tell you all I can. These cases are somewhat uncertain, but the patient's delirium will surely last for several days. Then comes a slow period of convalescence, during which time the body repairs much more rapidly than the mind. You cannot count on less than two months, even with everything progressing favorably."

Uncle Peabody glanced over to where Helen was sitting.

"I don't care how long it takes," she replied to his implied interrogation, "so long as he gets well."

Dr. Montgomery smiled as he rose to take his leave. "My patient is evidently in good hands," he said. "The nurse will do all that needs to be done until I return in the course of an hour or two."

Helen and Uncle Peabody sat in silence for some moments after the doctor departed. There was nothing further to be done for the present, as both Jack and Inez were resting as comfortably as could be expected under the circumstances, and absolute quiet was the one thing needful.

"Well," said Uncle Peabody, at length, "it is the unexpected which has happened again."

"Yes," Helen assented without looking up; "if it keeps on happening with such startling regularity I shall begin to expect it, and then your theory will lose its point."

Uncle Peabody was in a thoughtful rather than an argumentative mood.

"If I was not afraid you would think me heartless, Helen, I would say that I believe I see the hand of Providence in this."

She looked up quickly.

"Of course, assuming that Jack recovers," he hastened to add.

"I am afraid my philosophy is hardly equal to this test," Helen replied, unsympathetically. "I am supremely happy that the affair is not so serious as it seemed at first, but I can't see anything particularly providential in the injury poor Jack has sustained, nor in the suffering he must pass through at best."

"Is it not just possible that this long period of convalescence, which Dr. Montgomery says is inevitable, may bring him to himself again?"

Helen smiled sadly. "It was the work at the library which brought him to himself, uncle. A separation from those influences which so strongly affected him there may result in a return to the old self I knew before we came here; but that is not his real self."

"If he returns to that condition, no matter what brings it about, will it not simplify matters?"

"I can't see how," replied Helen, seriously. "If I had never known this new development in Jack's nature, I should of course be quite content to have him return to his former self; but having seen him as he really is, I could never accept any condition which allows him no development of his higher and stronger personality. It would not be fair either to him or to me."

Uncle Peabody regarded Helen curiously. "Let me make myself clearer," he said, with considerable emphasis. "Only this very morning you were discussing with me the final outcome of what appeared to be a domestic tragedy. Your husband was controlled by the spell of the old-time learning which had reached out from its antiquity to grasp a modern convert. You were convinced that Miss Thayer's sentiments toward your husband had developed into affection, and you stated in so many words that if Jack did not reciprocate this affection he really ought to do so, because she was the one woman in the world qualified by nature to be his wife. In the presence of this overwhelming condition you very generously planned--and I expressed to you how much I admired your spirit--to eliminate yourself, and to sacrifice your own happiness in order to enable your husband to accomplish his destiny."

"You are making sport of me--it is most unkind!" she cried, reproachfully.

"You know I wouldn't do that," insisted Uncle Peabody. "I am merely presenting a simple statement of the case in order to prove my original assertion. Please let me continue. Just as the crisis seems to be at hand this accident occurs. In a most unexpected manner Jack is instantly divorced from the influences which have drawn him away from you. The break between him and Miss Thayer has been accomplished naturally, and he has been placed in his wife's hands to be nursed back to health--during which experience you both will come to know each other far better than ever before. Again I say--I believe I see the hand of Providence in the whole affair."

Helen waited to make quite sure that Uncle Peabody had finished. "I wonder if it is I who always see things differently," she said, "or if a man's viewpoint is of necessity different from a woman's. I love Jack more than I can ever express--and this accident has brought that devotion nearer to the surface than I have dared to let it come for many weeks. I have suffered in seeing him drawn away from me, and in realizing that I was becoming less and less essential to his life. Yet, through it all, I have understood. I have suffered to think that any other woman could be more to him than I am, but my love has not blinded my eyes to what I have actually seen. These are conditions which cannot be changed, even by this accident. Suppose it does separate him from all those influences which have brought about the crisis, as you call it; suppose that because of this separation, and the physical weakness through which he must pass, Jack turns to me as before, and for the time being believes that I am more to him than all else in the world--will this change the conditions themselves?"

"Do you mean that you would not accept this change in him?"

"I mean that I would not take advantage of it," replied Helen, firmly. "I have seen the development which has taken place in Jack from the moment of our first meeting down to the present time. Even with the sorrow it has cost me I admire that development. Had I possessed equal possibilities, all would have been well. As I did not, it would be the act not of love but of tyranny to stand between him and his grander potentiality."

"But suppose that as Jack recovers he comes to a realization that his obsession has been a mistake--that your love and companionship really mean more to him than anything he can get elsewhere?"

"That would be a retrogression, after what I have seen him pass through. As I just said, if I possessed the ability to rise to him, what you suggest might be a possibility; but I would never consent to have him assume a lower plane than that upon which he belongs simply that I may retain my claim."

Helen rose as she spoke and walked slowly down the veranda. Uncle Peabody watched her retreating figure, and studied her face as she returned and leaned against one of the pillars in silence.

"Why do you think it would force him to take a lower plane?" he asked, pointedly.

Helen turned abruptly and looked at him with an expression of frank surprise. "Why do I think so?" she repeated. "What a foolish question!"

"Still, I ask you for an answer," Uncle Peabody insisted.

"Because he is so far ahead of me in every way," Helen answered, simply.

"Suppose this is not true?"

"But it is."

"Why are you so positive?"

"Because it is quite apparent to every one--to Jack, to Cerini, and even to myself."

Uncle Peabody rose and stood beside her, taking her face between his hands and looking kindly into her eyes.

"You are not so far behind him as you think," he said, firmly. "Whatever the distance between you may have been when you were first married, the trials I have seen you endure have wrought changes at least as great as those you have noticed in Jack. You are a brave, strong woman, Helen, and your development has been from within outward. I wish I could say as much for him."

"You are trying to give me courage, you dear old comforter," Helen replied, unconvinced but with a grateful smile.

"I am trying to show you yourself as you really are, my child," Uncle Peabody replied, "and to help you to recognize an act of Providence when one falls your way."

XXIV

Dr. Montgomery's approximate estimate of the duration of Armstrong's delirium proved to be only a few days shorter than the actual fact. In less than a week all anxiety regarding any possible complications was set at rest by the doctor's report that his patient was progressing normally and as well as could be expected. The skull had sustained no injury, and the brain suffered only from the concussion. The household became accustomed to the still figure, which gave evidence of its returning strength only by the increasing frequency of incoherent ramblings, the voice developing in firmness as the days progressed.

Inez was about again by this time, and with sunken eyes and ashen face shared with Helen the privilege of watching beside the patient during the last week of his unconsciousness. But it was a different Inez from the serious but happy and alert girl who had sat beside Armstrong in the automobile when it had crashed against the wall. The burden of bearing her secret alone, during all these weeks, had been in itself a wearing experience, but this was as nothing compared with the agony of soul through which she had since passed. The very struggle with herself, and the sense of personal sacrifice she experienced, had previously served in her own mind to sanctify her affection and to justify its existence. Now that she had allowed her passion to burst from her control, all justification was at an end. Her womanhood and sense of right seemed to separate themselves from her weaker emotions, and to judge and condemn them without mitigation.

It was natural that Helen should attribute her changed condition to the horror of the accident itself; yet Inez knew that the scene which was enacted in her mind over and over again until it almost drove her mad was that of her own shameless disloyalty. She shuddered as it returned to her even now while sitting beside Armstrong's bed; she shrank from Helen's sympathetic caress and her thoughtful solicitude. If she could only cry out and proclaim to them all the unworthy part she had performed, she would feel some sense of relief in the self-abasement it must bring to her.

Armstrong's delirious wanderings were a sore trial to Inez, but she accepted and bore them with the unflinching courage of an ascetic. The sound of his voice, the undirected, expressionless gaze of his eyes, the uncertainty of what each disconnected sentence might call to mind--all drove fresh barbs into a soul already tortured by self-condemnation. At first his mind had seemed to center itself upon his wife and his enforced separation from her.

"When it is finished," he had murmured, tossing from side to side and finally raising his hand as if reaching out to some one--"when it is finished she will understand."

"She does understand, dear," Helen had cried out, seizing his hand and pressing it to her lips; but instantly he withdrew it, and his words again became incoherent and meaningless.

At another time, when both Helen and Inez were sitting near by, his eyes opened, and he seemed to be looking directly at his wife.

"She refuses to continue the work, Helen," he said, as she sprang to his side, believing that at last his mind had cleared--"you were quite wrong, do you not see?"

Helen looked at Inez quickly, noting the swift color which suffused her pale face, but before a word could be spoken the invalid had relapsed into his former condition. Inez made an excuse to escape from the room for a moment. "You were quite wrong--do you not see?" she repeated Armstrong's words to herself. Was he simply rambling, or had the subject been brought up for previous discussion? Inez' conscience, sensitive from the load already resting upon it, quivered with new apprehensiveness. Yet Helen's attitude toward her had in no way changed--in fact, the awful anxiety of the first suspense, together with the later mutual responsibilities which they had shared, had seemed to Inez to draw them even more closely to each other. She tried to gain an answer to her inward questionings from Helen's face as she re-entered the room, but found there nothing but cordiality and friendliness.

"He must be getting nearer and nearer to a return of consciousness," Helen had said, quite naturally; "but how he wanders!" She looked over affectionately to her husband, still and helpless, but breathing with the steady regularity of convalescence. "Sometimes it is about his work at the library--sometimes it is about me. What agony of spirit he must be passing through if he realizes any of it!"

"He loves you, Helen," Inez cried, impulsively--"he loves you now, just as he always has!"

"Of course." Helen looked up questioningly from her fancy work. She was not yet ready to take Inez into her confidence. "What a strange remark, dear! Is it not quite natural that my husband should love me?"

Helen's smiling face, as she asked her simple but disconcerting question, completely unnerved Inez.

"He has been so worried about the time which his work compelled him to be away from you," Inez replied, at length, trying to conceal her confusion. "He finished the first draft of the book the day of the accident. His first thought, after he put down his pen, was to return to the villa, that he might surprise you at lunch."

"Cerini!" called Armstrong.

Helen placed her hand upon his forehead soothingly.

"I owe it to my wife--" the invalid continued; "but I shall come back--come back."

"Yes, dear, you shall go back," she answered, quietly, resting her cheek against his--"you shall go back."

"When it is finished--" Armstrong murmured, again subsiding into silence.

So the days passed, one by one, differing little, each from the other, yet filled with many and conflicting emotions on the part of the faithful watcher by the bedside. With all its pain, Helen welcomed this period during which she could work out her problem with the unconscious help of the rambling, disconnected sentences which escaped from her husband's lips. Sometimes they were full of tenderness for her; again they were reproaches, levelled at himself for his neglect; but most frequently they made reference to his work in some of its various stages. Alternately her heart was touched by his apparent affection for her, and the wound again torn open by his appeal to or dependence upon Inez. But through it all came the one conviction, which needed but this strengthening reassurance to make her determined path seem certain--that whatever drew him away from his work and back to her was a sense of duty, and that alone.

Helen questioned Dr. Montgomery upon the ordinary phenomena in cases such as this.

"His mutterings may be absolutely meaningless," he replied to her questions, "or they may be thoughts or actual repetitions of conversations which he has previously had."

"In the latter case, would he be likely to repeat them correctly?"

"Yes, provided he repeats them at all."

"And these thoughts or conversations, if correctly repeated, would presumably indicate his convictions at the time they occurred?"

"His convictions at the time they occurred," Dr. Montgomery assented; "but their reliability as normal expressions would depend upon his mental condition at the time the thoughts occurred or the words were spoken."

Armstrong's recovery came unexpectedly, even after the long days of waiting. The perfect July day was drawing to a close, and Helen had watched the sinking sun from the window beside his bed. It was all so beautiful! The world seemed full of glorious hopefulness and promise, and her heart filled to overflowing at the thought that for her, who loved it so, that promise no longer held good. She turned to the silent figure lying upon the bed. Would he ever realize what she had gone through and must still endure for him? She sank upon her knees, burying her face in the counterpane, as if to shut out the overpowering grandeur, which produced so sad a contrast. Suddenly she felt a hand resting upon her head, and a voice spoke her name.

She looked up quickly straight into her husband's eyes, now wide open and filled with an expression so full of love and devotion that her heart sprang forth in eager response. It was the expression which his face had worn when she had first confessed her love for him, and the intervening months, with their brief joy and their long sorrow, were obliterated on the instant. Once more he was the devoted, thoughtful, irresistible lover, and Helen felt the weight of years roll off her tired shoulders, leaving her the happy, buoyant girl, proud of having won this strong man's affection. She gazed at him silently, fearing lest the eyes close again, and unwilling to lose a moment of their present significance; but they remained open.

"Helen," Armstrong repeated, still looking intently at her, "be patient, dear. I know how shamefully I have neglected you, I know how much I have hurt you; but my work is nearly finished now. Then, believe me, all will be as before."

The voice was calm and sustained. There was no hesitation, no rambling. Still, she did not fully comprehend that he was himself again.

"Yes, dear," she replied, humoring him; "then all will be as before."

He could not see the sharp pain which showed in her face as she spoke, nor did he realize how her heart wished that it might be so.

"I must get up," he continued, after a moment's silence. "What time is it? I shall be late at the library."

"You have finished your work for to-day, Jack," she answered, quietly.

"Have I?" he asked, simply.

His glance slowly wandered about the room. "Is it not morning?" he queried, at length.

"It is afternoon," she replied, turning toward the window. "See--the sun is just sinking behind San Miniato."

"Afternoon?" he queried, vaguely--"afternoon, and I still in bed?"

"You have not been well," she volunteered, guardedly, carefully following the doctor's injunctions. "Don't bother now; you will be feeling much better in the morning."

"Not well?" Armstrong's mind was groping around for some familiar landmark upon which to fasten. "I was at the library--was it this morning?--Cerini was there, Miss Thayer was there--where is Miss Thayer?"

"She went out only a moment ago. But don't try to think about it now. It will be much better for you to do that later."

He weakly acquiesced and closed his eyes, still holding her hand firmly grasped in his own. The doctor found him gently sleeping, with Helen watching patiently beside him, when he entered the room an hour later.

She held up her disengaged hand warningly. "He is himself again," she whispered.

"Good!" replied Dr. Montgomery, with satisfaction. "Tell me about it."

"That is splendid," he said, when she had recounted the details; "he is progressing famously. You won't be able to keep him from questioning, but try to let the awakening come as gradually as possible."

The morning brought renewed strength to the invalid. The nurse called Helen as soon as Armstrong wakened, and he plied her with countless interrogations. Uncle Peabody came in to see him immediately after a light breakfast had been served, but Inez, upon one pretext or another, delayed entering the sick-room.

"It will be better for him to become accustomed to his new conditions," she urged, when Helen suggested her going to see him. "You and Mr. Cartwright should have these first moments with him. Later I shall be only too glad to help in any way I can."

But Armstrong himself was not to be denied.

"There is more to all this than you are telling me," he said, petulantly, at last, after learning from Helen and Uncle Peabody such details as he could draw forth regarding the duration of his illness and its general nature. "I remember now leaving the library in the motor-car with Miss Thayer. We went--where did we go? Oh yes; to San Domenico. Then we came home. Did we come home?" he asked, with uncertainty in his voice; but before an answer could be given he had himself supplied the connecting link.

"I have it!" he cried, raising himself upon his elbow--"there was an accident. Alfonse tried to take that turn at the foot of the hill, and we smashed against the wall."

"Yes," Helen assented, trying to calm his rising excitement, "there was an accident, and you were badly hurt; but you are nearly well now. Please go slowly, Jack, or you will undo all that your long rest has accomplished. There is plenty of time."

"But Miss Thayer," he replied, not heeding her admonition and glancing about searchingly. "Where is Miss Thayer? She was injured, too?"

"Not seriously," Helen reassured him.

"Then where is she?"

"I don't know exactly, but she is not far away."

"You have not sent her away while I have been ill?" he asked, with a touch of his former suspicion.

"No, Jack." All of the tired, strained tone came back in Helen's voice as she turned away from the bed to conceal her disappointment.

Armstrong sensed it all as he had failed to do at other times since the gap had begun to widen.

"I did not mean that, Helen," he said, and reaching over he took her hand and drew her to him; "I really did not mean it."

"It is all right, Jack," Helen replied, withdrawing her hand and trying to smile; "I will find Inez and send her to you." And before he could remonstrate she had left the room.

While he waited Armstrong had a brief moment of introspection. Again he had wounded her, and for no cause. He had enjoyed the short period since his awakening, particularly on account of the tender and affectionate care Helen had given him, which she had for a long time withheld because of his own self-centred interest. It was with real regret that he found this little visit with his wife so abruptly brought to an end, yet he himself had forced the termination. He must fight against this unfortunate attribute, he told himself, and show Helen his real feelings toward her.

His reveries were interrupted by Inez' entrance. Silently she stood beside him, holding out her hand, which he quietly grasped for a moment and then released. He wondered at the color in her face and at her apparent unwillingness to meet his glance.

"They tell me we have been through an accident together," he said, slowly. "Thank God it was I who was injured and not you."

Inez turned from him, closing her eyes involuntarily. "Don't speak of it!" she cried, impulsively; "it was too awful!"

"But it is all over now."

"All but the memory," she replied, faintly. "Let us forget it, I beg of you."

"I was going to ask you for some of the details," Armstrong continued, "which you alone can give."

"Oh, I beg of you," she repeated; "I could not bear it."

"Then by all means let us forget it," he replied, curiously affected by the girl's emotion. "Perhaps some time later you will feel more like talking about it. You see, I can remember nothing after the crash against the wall."

"Thank God!" cried Inez, passionately, turning away her head.

"I suppose it is better so," Armstrong assented, still wondering at the intensity of her emotion. "But when one has had a whole fortnight of his life blotted out, he naturally feels a bit of curiosity concerning what happened during all that time."

"You must excuse me, Mr. Armstrong. You don't know how this tortures me, and I really cannot bear it."

Armstrong watched the girl as she turned and fairly fled from the room, completely mystified by her extraordinary attitude.

"What in the world can have happened?" he asked himself; and then he settled back on the pillow and tried to answer his own question.

XXV

There is no place like the sick-room for self-examination and introspection. In the still monotony of the slow-passing days, the invalid's mind is freed from the conventions of every-day complexities, and can view its problems with a veracity and a clearness at other times impossible. As Armstrong's convalescence continued, he marshalled before him certain events which had occurred since his arrival in Florence, and examined them with great minuteness. Some of these seemed trivial, and he wondered why they came back at this time and forced themselves upon him with such persistence; some of them were important, and he realized that Helen had much of which she might justly complain.

His eyes followed her as she moved about the room, quick to anticipate each wish or necessity, and sweetly eager to respond; yet he distinctly felt the barrier between them. He was conscious now that this barrier had existed for some time, and he found it difficult to explain to himself why he had only recently become aware of it. Helen's conversations with him came back with renewed force and vital meaning. He had resented it when she had told him that his work at the library had made him indifferent to everything else, yet she had been quite right in what she said. He had wilfully misunderstood her efforts to bring him back to himself, and had openly blamed her for faults which existed only in his own neglect. He had accused her of being jealous of his intimacy with Miss Thayer, yet her attitude toward Inez was a constant refutation. He had treated her even with incivility and unpardonable irritability.

The fault was his, he admitted, yet were there not extenuating circumstances? No one could have foreseen how completely engrossed he was to become in his work, or the extent of the mastery which the spell of this old-time learning was to gain over him. Naturally, he would have avoided it had he foreseen it; but once under its influence he had been carried forward irresistibly, unable to withdraw, unwilling to oppose. And yet he had boasted of his strength!

"You have become infinitely bigger and stronger and grander," Helen had said to him, even when her heart was breaking, "and I admire you just so much the more."

Armstrong winced as these words came home to him. With so much real cause for complaint and upbraiding, Helen had gently tried to show him his shortcomings, tempering her comment with expressions full of loyalty and affection.

But on one point she had been wholly wrong. It was natural that she should have misinterpreted the intimacy which a community of interests had brought about between Miss Thayer and himself. Inez was, of course, much stronger intellectually than Helen, and by reason of this was far better fitted to assist him in his own intellectual expressions. But their intimacy had never extended beyond this even in thought or suggestion. Helen had insisted that Inez was in love with him, and he had tried to show her the absurdity of her suspicion. Here, at least, he had been in the right. Throughout their close association, and even after Helen had spoken, he had never discovered the slightest evidence that any such affection existed. The still unexplained remarks of the contessa's might or might not be significant. Emory, of course, was prejudiced, and his comments did not require serious consideration. Miss Thayer's refusal to continue the work, the comparative infrequency of her visits to his sick-chamber--in fact, everything went to show how far Helen had wandered from the actual facts.

Armstrong found some comfort in this conclusion. With Helen so unquestionably wrong in this hypothesis, it of course went without saying that she was equally wrong in what she had said later. She believed that he had a career before him. 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. When the right time came he would take up these two points specifically with her and show her the error which had misled her.

This self-examination covered several days. At first Armstrong found himself unable to think long at a time without becoming mentally wearied; but by degrees his mind gained in vigor, and proved fully equal to the demands made upon it. The details of what had happened on the day of the accident came back to him one by one up to the point of the accident itself, but he felt annoyed that he could not learn more of this. From Helen, Uncle Peabody, and the doctor he knew of the early belief that he had been killed and of the excitement caused by his revived respiration. Of his period of delirium, the nurse had given him more information than the others; but of the break between the moment when the car struck the wall, and the time when Helen arrived upon the scene, Miss Thayer alone held the key. Armstrong's curiosity regarding this interval was, perhaps, heightened by the evident aversion which she felt to discussing it. To mention the subject in her presence was certain to drive her from the room, her face blazing with color, her body trembling in every nerve.

The patient was able to move about a little by this time, and at the close of each day he found relief from the monotony of his room and the veranda by short walks in the garden, rich in its midsummer gorgeousness of color. A couch had been placed near the retaining wall, so that he could rest upon it whenever he felt fatigued. Between his solicitude concerning the situation with Helen, and his determination to discover from Miss Thayer the occasion of her remarkable attitude, his thoughts were fully occupied.

On this particular afternoon Armstrong had thrown himself upon the couch, and for a moment closed his eyes. With no warning he saw a scene enacted before his mental vision in which he himself was the central figure. He was lying still and lifeless upon the grass by the roadside at the foot of the hill. Four other figures were in the picture. He recognized Inez, but the other women and the boy he had never seen. The figures moved about, as in a kinetoscope. One of the women ran into the cottage and returned with a basin of water. Inez knelt beside him and bathed his forehead. He could see the tense expression on her face. She seemed to speak to the women, but he could distinguish no words. Then he saw himself lifted and carried into the cottage. At this point the picture disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

Armstrong opened his eyes when he found the picture gone, and sat up, gazing about him excitedly. He saw Inez crossing the veranda and called to her abruptly.

"Tell me," he cried, as she hastened to obey the summons and before she reached him, "who carried me into the cottage after the accident?"

The girl paled at the suddenness and intensity of the question. "There were four of us," she said, faintly--"two peasant women, a boy, and myself."

Armstrong passed his hand over his forehead and gazed at Inez intently. So far, then, his vision had been correct. Breathlessly he pursued his interrogations.

"Before that did one of the women bring some water from the cottage, and did you kneel beside me and bathe my face?"

"Yes. Who has told you?"

"Then it all happened just like that?"

"Like what?" Inez was trembling, vaguely apprehensive.

Armstrong rose. "Why, as you have just said," he replied. "You know I have been trying to get you to tell me about it."

"You are unkind," Inez retorted, quickly. "You know how much all mention of this pains me, yet you persist."

"Forgive me." Armstrong controlled himself and held out his hand kindly. "I don't mean to hurt you, believe me, but my mind is ever searching out that connecting link. You won't tell me about it, so I suppose I shall never find it."

She started to reply, but as quickly checked herself. "There is nothing for me to tell," she said, at length, without looking up. "I will send Helen to you," she added, as she hastened away.

Armstrong again threw himself upon the couch, and, trying to assume the same position, closed his eyes in a vain endeavor to summon back the vision he had seen. If it had only continued a little longer he might have learned all! The fugitive nature of his quest proved a fascination, and day after day he exerted every effort to gratify his whim.

Inez clearly avoided him. Whether or not this was apparent to the other members of the family he could not tell, but it was quite obvious to him. There must be some reason beyond what he knew, and he had almost stumbled upon it! Another week passed by, more rapidly than any since his convalescence began because of the determination with which he pursued his baffling problem.

Again he lay upon his couch in the garden, his eyes closed, but with his mind fixed upon its one desire. Suddenly he felt the presence of some one. A thrill of expectation passed through him, but he dared not open his eyes lest the impression should disappear. For what seemed a long time he was conscious of this person standing beside him, and he knew that whoever it might be was gazing at him intently. Then he felt a hand gently take his arm, which was hanging over the side of the couch, and, raising it carefully, place it in a more comfortable position. Then the hand rested for a moment on his forehead.

Opening his eyes a little, as if by intuition, he saw Miss Thayer tiptoeing along the path toward the house. He closed his eyes again, and as he did so he felt a sudden return of the subconscious impression.

Now, in his mind's eye he saw a cheaply furnished room, and Miss Thayer leaning, with ashen face and dishevelled hair, against a closed door. He saw her sink upon the floor and pass through a paroxysm of grief. She murmured some incoherent words, and then stood erect, looking straight at him as he lay upon the bed. Then she lifted his arm, just as she had a moment before, and covered his hand with kisses, sobbing the while with no attempt at control.

"Speak to me!" he seemed to hear her say. "Tell me that you are not dead!" He could feel the intensity of her gaze even as he lay there. "Jack, my beloved; you are mine, dear--do you hear?--and I am yours." Beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "How I have loved you all these weeks!... Now I can tell you of it, dear--it will do no harm!"

Held by a force he could not have broken had he wished, Armstrong watched the progress of the tragedy.

"My darling, my beloved!" he heard Inez whisper; "open your eyes just once, and tell me that I may call you mine if only for this one terrible moment.... This is our moment, dear--no one can take it from us!... Have you not seen how I have loved you, how I have struggled to keep you from knowing it?... Jack! Jack! this is the beginning and the end!"

He could endure the scene no longer. With a look of horror on his face, he sprang to his feet and glanced about him. He was alone in the garden. He stumbled rather than walked to the retaining wall, and rested against it for support.

"Great God!" he cried, aloud, "have I regained my mind only to lose it again?"

He glanced toward the house. There was no one in sight, but Helen was playing Debussy's "Claire de Lune" upon the piano in the hall, and the sound of the music soothed him.

"Dreams--hallucinations," he repeated to himself. "God! what an experience!"

XXVI

With Armstrong's convalescence progressing so satisfactorily, Helen returned to her music with a clear conscience. She was determined that the influence upon him of her personal presence should be reduced as nearly as possible to a minimum. Naturally, during the period of his illness and the attendant weakness, she had been with him almost constantly; naturally he had turned to her with what seemed to be his former affection. But the die was cast, and the accident which for the time being interrupted the progress of events predestined to occur could in no way prevent their final accomplishment. Helen thought often of Uncle Peabody's optimistic suggestion that the present condition was bound to straighten matters out, but she refused to be buoyed up by false hopes, only to suffer a harder blow when once again Armstrong became what she believed to be himself. She saw no gain in tuning up the heart-strings to their former pitch, when neither she nor Jack could again play upon them with any degree of harmony.

Helen was with her husband for whatever portion of the day he needed her, whether it was to read aloud to him, or to converse, or to wander about the garden. She served each meal to him with her own hands, and watched the progress of his improvement so carefully that nothing remained undone. Yet, with deliberate intention, she was with him no more than this. Whenever she found him interested in something or with some one who engaged his attention for the time being, she slipped away so quietly that he scarcely noticed it and devoted herself to her own interests, which she was desperately trying to make fill the void in her life. Her music was her greatest solace, for in it she found a response to her every mood. In the dim-lit hall of the villa she sat for hours at the piano, her fingers running over the keys, her mind pondering upon her complex problem--each action apparently separated from the other, yet in exact accord. Sometimes it was a nocturne of Chopin's, sometimes an impromptu of Schubert's; but always she found in the unspoken, poetic expression of the composer's soul an answering sympathy which was lacking in other forms more tangible.

Inez interrupted one of these communions, when Helen supposed herself alone with Debussy. Lately she had found herself turning to the charm and mystery of his atmosphere, the strangeness of his idiom, the vagueness of his rhythms, and the fugitive grace and fancy of his harmonic expression with an understanding and a surrender which she had never before felt. The music reflected upon her its delicate perception of nature in all its moods--the splash of the waves upon the shore, the roaring of the surf, the gloom of the forests relieved by the moonlight on the trees.

"Don't, Helen--I beg of you!" Inez exclaimed, suddenly. "Say it to me, but don't torture me with those weird reproaches. Every note almost drives me wild!"

"Why, Inez, dear!" cried Helen, startled by the girl's words no less than by the suddenness of the interruption. "What in the world do you mean? You should have told me before if my playing affected you so."

"I love it, Helen," she replied; "but lately it has hurt me through and through. I can hear your voice echoing in every note you strike, and I feel its bitter reproach."

Helen tried to draw Inez beside her, but the girl sank upon the floor, resting her elbows on Helen's knees and looking up into her face with tense earnestness.

"You have been terribly unstrung these days, dear," Helen replied, "and you are unstrung now or you would not discover what does not exist. It is your instinctive sympathy for poor Melisande that makes you feel so--you see her, as I do, floating resistlessly over the terraces and fountains, the plaything of Fate, a phantom of love and longing and uncertainty. That is what you feel, dear."

Helen took Inez' face between her hands and looked into her eyes for a moment. "People call it mystical and unreal," she continued, "but I believe that some of us have it in our own lives, don't you?"

Inez did not reply directly, and struggled to escape the searching gaze.

"Helen," she said, abruptly, "I simply cannot stay on here; I shall go mad if I do. Each time I suggest going you say that you need me, and it seems ungrateful, after all you have done for me, to speak as I do. But you cannot understand. I am not myself, and I am getting into a condition which will make me a burden to you instead of a help."

"I do need you, dear," Helen replied, quietly, "but certainly not at the expense either of your health or your happiness. The effects of the accident have lasted much longer than I thought they would. I wanted you to be quite recovered before you left us."

"If the accident were all!" moaned Inez, burying her face in Helen's lap.

Helen made no response, but laid her hand kindly upon Inez' head. After a few moments the girl straightened up. Her eyes burned with the intensity of her sudden resolve, and she spoke rapidly, as if fearful that her courage would prove insufficient for the task she had set for herself to do.

"Helen!" she cried, "I am going to tell you something which will make you hate me. You will want me to leave you, and our friendship will be forever ended."

"Wait, dear," urged Helen--"wait until you are calmer; then, if you choose, tell me all that you have in your heart."

"No; I must tell you now. I love Jack, Helen--do you understand? I love your husband, and, fight it as I do, I cannot help it. Think of having to make a confession like that!"

Helen's face lighted up with glad relief.

"I am so glad that you have told me this," she said, quietly.

Inez gazed at Helen in wonder, amazed by her calmness and her unexpected words.

"But I must tell you more," she continued, wildly; "I have loved him for weeks--almost since I first came here!"

"I know you have, Inez." Helen pressed a kiss upon the girl's forehead. "I have known it for a long time; but I have also seen your struggle against it, and your loyalty to me--and to him."

"You have known it?" Inez asked, faintly. Then her voice strengthened again. "But you have not known all! I did fight against it, as you say, and I was loyal until"--her voice broke for a moment--"until that day of the accident--in the cottage--I thought him dead--"

"Yes," encouraged Helen, eagerly.

"Until then I was loyal, but when I was alone with him, and thought him dead, I--oh, Helen, you will hate me as I hate myself--then I kissed him, and I told him of my love, and I--"

"Yes, I know, dear," Helen interrupted, her voice full of tenderness. "No one can blame you for what you did under such awful circumstances. I suspected what had happened when I found you where you had fainted across his body. But you can't imagine how glad I am that you have told me all this. I felt sure you would, some day."