And now, pierced by his pity, Franklin could rise to all she needed of him. The old faith sustained him, too. One didn't love some one for all one's life like that, to be left quite dispossessed. Many things were changed, but many still held firm; and though, deep in his heart, sick with its relinquishment, Helen's words seemed to whisper, 'Some things can't be joys when they come too late,' he could answer himself as he had answered her, putting away the irony and scepticism of disenchantment—'It's wonderful the way joy can grow,' and draw strength for himself and for his poor Althea from that act of affirmation.
'Why, of course I love you, Althea, dear,' he said. 'How can you ask me that? I've always loved you, haven't I? You knew I did, didn't you, or else you wouldn't have sent? You knew I wasn't bound if you were free. I understand it all.' And smiling at her so that she should forget for ever that she had had a new fear, he added, 'And see here, dear, you mustn't delay a moment in letting Gerald know. Come, write him a note now, and I'll have it sent to his club so that he shall hear right away.'
CHAPTER XXIX.
Helen woke next morning after unbroken, heavy slumbers, with a mind as vague and empty as a young child's. All night long she had been dreaming strange, dreary dreams of her youth. There had been no pain in them, or fear, only a sad lassitude, as of one who, beaten and weary, looks back from a far distance at pain and fear outlived. And lying in her bed, inert and placid, she felt as if she had been in a great battle, and that after the annihilation of anæsthetics she had waked to find herself with limbs gone and wounds bandaged, passive and acquiescent, in a world from which all large issues had been eliminated for ever.
It was the emptiest kind of life on which her eyes opened so quietly this morning. She was not even to be life's captive. The little note which had come to her last night from Franklin and now lay beside her bed had told her that. He had told her that Althea had taken him back, and he had only added, 'Thank you, dear Helen, for all that you have given me and all that you were willing to give.'
In the overpowering sense of sadness that had been the last of the day's great emotions Helen had found no mitigation of relief for her own escape. That she had escaped made only an added bitterness. And even sadness seemed to be a memory this morning, and the relief that came, profound and almost sweet, was in the sense of having passed away from feeling. She had felt too much; though, had life been in her with which to think or feel, she could have wept over Franklin.
Sometimes she closed her eyes, too much at peace for a smile; sometimes she looked quietly about her familiar little room, above Aunt Grizel's, and showing from its windows only a view of the sky and of the chimney-pots opposite, a room oddly empty of associations and links; no photographs, few books, few pictures; only the vase of flowers she liked always to have near her; her old Bible and prayer-book and hymnal, battered by years rather than by use, for religion held no part at all in Helen's life; and two faded prints of seventeenth-century battleships, sailing in gallant squadrons on a silvery sea. These had hung in Helen's schoolroom, and she had always been fond of them. The room was symbolic of her life, so insignificant in every outer contact, so centred, in her significant self, on its one deep preoccupation. But there was no preoccupation now. Gerald's image passed before her and meant nothing more than the other things she looked at, while her mind drifted like an aimless butterfly from the flowers and the prints to the pretty old mirror—a gift of Gerald's—and hovered over the graceful feminine objects scattered upon the chairs and tables. The thought of Gerald stirred nothing more than a mild wonder. What a strange thing, her whole life hanging on this man, coloured, moulded by him. What did such a feeling mean? and what had she really wanted of Gerald more than he had given? She wanted nothing now.
It was with an effort—a painful, dragging effort—that she roused herself to talk to Aunt Grizel, who appeared at the same time as her breakfast. Not that she needed to act placidity and acquiescence before Aunt Grizel; she felt them too deeply to need to act; the pain, perhaps, came from having nothing else with which to meet her.
Aunt Grizel was amazed, distressed, nearly indignant; she only was not indignant because of a pity that perplexed even while it soothed her. She, too, had had a letter from Franklin that morning, and only that morning had heard of the broken engagement and of how Franklin faced it. She did not offer to show Helen Franklin's letter, which she held in her hand, emphasising her perplexity by doubling it over and slapping her palm with it. 'She sent for him, then.' It was on Althea that she longed to discharge her smothered anger.