The letter, the task of writing the important letter, had occupied her thoughts for many months, sometimes as ominous, often as a ray of hope, occasionally as a burden, but always as a sacred duty—a pilgrimage to a shrine. She had begun its composition and had destroyed what she had written time and again. And every time she had put off its completion, waiting for a happier mood. When did autumn begin? Mrs. Kane’s almanac said the twenty-second of September. And that was but a few days off. Well, she would obey the promptings of her heart and do it now. It was an evening when Margaret had decided to take an inventory of their belongings to see what they required in the way of dresses for the coming season, and she had retired early, leaving Helène to herself. She sat down determined to get it done with once for all. At the end of an hour the letter was finished, all but the date and signature. She read it over carefully, and although she was not satisfied she decided it would have to do.
Surely he would understand! She wondered what he was doing in Cleveland, and if he ever thought of his friend of the Carpathians. Perhaps he had found some rich and beautiful girl of his own country!
And his mother and sister? Was the Ruth he had spoken of like the girls who came to Madame Lucile’s—free and lively and gay and often slangy? Was his mother like Mrs. Van Dusen, with her haughty air and jewelled fingers?
These and the like questions she put to herself only to add to her hesitancy of purpose and distress of heart. She had learned much but she was still a child and knew very little of life, especially of life in America.
The greatest of all teachers, the omnipotent opener of all eyes and all minds, had not yet come to her. Love may be blind, but it is a wonderful magician for opening the heart’s far-seeing eyes. It may be blind to the object of its passion, but as a teacher it takes the highest rank. Helène did not know this. She was alone in the world—without a home, without a father or mother, without even her birthright. In this land of her adoption she was still a stranger. She could but follow the impulses of her heart blindly. She did not realize it, but it was love that led her. And Monday would be the twenty-second!
CHAPTER XXVI
VERY soon after he had entered on his administrative duties in connection with the business his father had bequeathed him, John Morton had found that one thing was certain—he must give his whole heart and mind to the work, or things would go wrong. Judge Lowell had put it to him characteristically when he said: “You must either attend strictly to the executive work, or pay some one else to do it for you. A leader cannot sit astraddle.” Morton had not believed him, at first, but it was not long before he found, to his sorrow, that the judge was right; and then he knuckled down to the system.
When he began gradually to master the fundamental principles of generalship underlying the direction of so gigantic an enterprise, he experienced a curious sense of elation and self-satisfaction. Nothing pleased him more than to notice the admiration in the eyes of the old warhorses of his father’s army. The knottiest of problems, he found, would yield to earnest thought and tactful work.