“There should be somebody to help it,” said Helen.
“Ah! Should be!” said George. “—Well, it’s a comfort it will soon be over!”
“Is it?” returned Helen almost sharply. “—But he’s not your brother, and you don’t know what it is to lose him! Oh, how desolate the world will be without my darling!”
And again her tears found way.
“All that I can do to make up for the loss, dearest Helen,” said George,—
“Oh George!” she cried, starting to her feet, “is there NO hope? I don’t mean of his getting better—that we do know the likelihoods of—but is there no hope of SOME TIME seeing him again? We know so little about all of it! MIGHT there not be some way?”
But George was too honest in himself, and too true to his principles, to pretend anything to Helen. Hers was an altogether different case from Leopold’s. Here was a young woman full of health and life and hope, with all her joys before her! Many suns must set before her sun would go down, many pale moons look lovely in her eyes, ere came those that would mock her with withered memories—a whole hortus siccus of passion-flowers. Why should he lie to HER of a hope beyond the grave? Let the pleasures of the world be the dearer to her for the knowledge that they must so soon depart; let love be the sweeter for the mournful thought that it is a thing of the summer, and that when the winter comes it shall be no more! But perhaps George forgot one point. I will allow that the insects of a day, dying in a moment of delightful fruition, are blessed; but when the delicate Psyche, with her jewel-feathered wings, is beat about by a wind full of rain until she lies draggled in the dirt; when there are no more flowers, or if there be, the joy of her hovering is over, and yet death comes but slowly; when the mourners are going about the streets ere ever the silver cord is loosed; when the past looks a mockery and the future a blank;—then perhaps, even to the correlatives of the most triumphant natural selection, it may not merely seem as if something were wrong somewhere, but even as if there ought to be somebody to set wrong right. If Psyche should be so subdued to circumstance as to accept without question her supposed fate, then doubly woe for Psyche!
But if George could not lie, it was not necessary for him to speak the truth: silence was enough. A moment of it was all Helen could endure. She rose hastily, left the wintered summer-house, and walked back to the sick-chamber. George followed a few paces behind, so far quenched that he did not overtake her to walk by her side, feeling he had no aid to offer her. Doubtless he could have told her of help at hand, but it was help that must come, that could neither be given nor taken, would not come the sooner for any prayer, and indeed would not begin to exist until the worst should be over: the nearest George came to belief in a saving power, was to console himself with the thought that TIME would do everything for Helen.