A Rose of Yesterday

by F. Marion Crawford

"Yes. You see that you can do nothing to hinder me. He has my message already. The matter is decided."

She bent her head again, looking down into the rushing water as though tired of arguing.

"You are a saint," said the colonel. "I could not have done that."

"Perhaps I could not, if I had waited," answered Helen, in a voice so low that he could hardly hear the words. "But it is done now," she added, still lower, so that he could not hear at all.

Wimpole had been a man of quick decisions so long as he had been a soldier, but since then he had cultivated the luxury of thinking slowly. He began to go over the situation, trying to see what he could do, not losing courage yet, but understanding how very hard it would be to keep Helen from sacrificing herself.

And she peered down at the black river, that rushed past with a cruel sound, as though it were tearing away the time of freedom, second by second. It was done, now, as she had said. She knew herself too well to believe that even if she should toss the letter into the stream, she would not write another in just such words. But the regret was deep, and thrilled with a secret, aching pulse of its own, all through her, and she thought of what life might have been, if she had not made the great mistake, and of what it still might be if she did not go back to her husband. The man who stood beside her loved her, and was ready to give everything, perhaps even to his honour, to save her from unhappiness. And she loved him, too, next to honour. In the tranquil life she was leading, there could be a great friendship between them, such as few people can even dream of. She knew him, and she knew herself, and she believed it possible, for once in the history of man and woman. In a measure, it might subsist, even after she had gone back to Harmon, but not in the same degree, for between the two men there would be herself. Wimpole would perhaps refuse altogether to enter Harmon's door or to touch Harmon's hand. And then, in her over-scrupulousness, during the time she was to spend with Archie, she knew that she should hesitate to receive freely a man who would not be on speaking terms with the husband whom she had taken back, no matter how she felt towards Wimpole.

Besides, he had told her that he loved her, and that made a difference, too. So long as the word had never been spoken, there had been the reasonable doubt to shield her conscience. His old love might, after all, have turned to friendship, which is like the soft, warm ashes of wood when the fire is quite burned out. But he had spoken at last, and there was no more doubt, and his quiet words had stirred her own heart. He had begun by telling her that he had many things to say; but, after all, the one and only thing he had said which he had never said before was that he loved her.

It was enough, and too much, and it made everything harder for her. We speak of struggles with ourselves. It would really be far more true to talk of battles between our two selves, or even sometimes between our threefold natures,--our good, our bad, and our indifferent personalities.

To Helen, the woman who loved Richard Wimpole was not the woman who meant to go back to Henry Harmon; and neither, perhaps, was quite the same individual as the mother of poor Archie. The three were at strife with one another, though they were one being in suffering. For it is true that we may be happy in part, and in part be indifferent; but no real pain of the soul leaves room for any happiness at all, or indifference, while it lasts. So soon as we can be happy again, even for a moment, the reality of the pain is over, though the memory of it may come back now and then in cruel little day-dreams, after years. Happiness is composite; pain is simple. It may take a hundred things to make a man happy, but it never needs more than one to make him suffer. Happiness is, in part, elementary of the body; but pain is only of the soul, and its strength is in its singleness. Bodily suffering is the opposite of bodily pleasure; but true pain has no true opposite, nor reversed counterpart, of one unmixed composition, and the dignity of a great agony is higher than all the glories of joy.

"Promise me that you will not do anything to hinder me," said Helen at last.