CHAPTER XVII
And Helen went home, let herself into her fine house, took off her things and sat down before the library fire.
She really had imported a maid, an ex-modiste of mature years, who would be of service to her in the choosing of her clothes and dressing herself properly. She could hear this woman now moving about in the next room getting out her things. She was practicing dressing for the evening, because now she had a purpose and a future in view which some years hence might involve toilettes and magnificence.
It certainly does change a woman to lose her husband. It buries her or brings her out. I suppose if Helen’s husband had been properly and providentially parted from her by death, she might have retired sorrowfully into her widow’s state and effaced herself or devoted herself quite differently to good works. But the passing of George Cutter left no such sanctities to dignify her. On the contrary she had been abandoned on account of her virtues and stupid devotion to home. She was like Job. She held on to her integrity and was sustained, as he was, by her conceit.
But unlike Job, who suffered considerable financial losses during this period, she had come into a considerable estate. She had been paid off by this deflecting husband. Money will sustain your pride and courage as an outraged woman when mere faith in God may leave you exalted in the ditch of every worldly misfortune. Helen had remained the proper resurrection period flat on her back in bed, not from histrionic design; but she was actually able to rise on the third day. My belief is that everything in the Scriptures is true, if you adjust yourself to the way it is true. Thus, if you will not waste your vital forces in emotional dissipations of grief when overtaken by sorrow or humiliation, if you are really willing to live again normally, three days down will usually put you on your feet with sufficient courage and strength for the performance. It is no use to send for the doctor. In cases of this kind a physician is a sort of psychic drug you take, which requires a repetition of his soothing presence. Thrice fortunate are they who dare to discover that the wings of adversity are the strongest wings upward in human affairs.
Helen, penguin bred, had acquired this serene flying power. She had been absolved from a depressing devotion to an ignoble man. She came out of her travail informed with pride, the cold fury which good women, scorned, feel, and with a determination to have what she had always wanted and could not have as a wife.
She leaned back in her chair before the library fire, clasped her hands over her head and looked anticipatingly at the ceiling, a queer expression on this formerly merely dutiful woman’s face, like a song in her eyes, like faith that smooths the brow, like a hope that lifted and sweetened the corners of her mouth; there were no shadows of fear to dim this gentle effulgence of eyes, lips and brow.
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.
Helen finally went to her room to practice her evening toilette. At five o’clock she was dressed and standing before the mirror studying this cream-colored frock of crêpe, that clung to her figure like long folded wings. It was not “trimmed.” She insisted upon a certain primness, as good women do who have no sense of style.
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.