When he was fourteen he remarked, in that strained voice that he believed hid any emotion:
“I say, Mother, a lot of fellows at our school have fathers and mothers who live apart––most of the fellows side with their mothers!”
These words nearly made Helen ill. She could make no reply. She looked dumbly at the boy facing her with a new and awful revealment. She understood that he wanted her to know, wanted to comfort her; and she knew, with terrifying certainty, that she could not deceive him––she was at his mercy!
She was wise enough to say nothing. But after that she felt his suddenly acquired strength. It was shown in his tenderness, his cheerfulness, his companionship, and, thank God! in his silence.
But while Helen gloried in her boy she still was loyal to the traditions of marriage, and her little world never got behind her screen. She had divorced her husband because he desired it––then she went on alone. When her husband died away from home, his body was brought to her. It had been his last request and she paid all respect to it with her boy close beside her. And then she forgot––really, in most cases––the things that she had been remembering. She erected over her dead husband, not a stone, but a living unreality. It answered the purpose for which it was designed; 128 it made it possible for her to live rather a full life, be a comrade to her son––a friend indeed––and to share all his joys and many of his confidences, and to impress upon him, so she trusted, that he must not sacrifice anything for her.
Why should he, indeed? Had she not interests enough to occupy her? The sight of a widowed mother draining the life-blood from her children had always been a dreadful thing to Helen Northrup, and so well had she succeeded in her determination to leave Brace free that the subject rarely came into the minds of either.
But Brace’s latest move had disturbed Helen not a little. It startled her, made her afraid, as that remark of his in his school days had done. Did he chafe under ties that he loved but found that he must flee from for awhile? Why did he and Kathryn not marry? Were they considering her? Was she blinded?
Helen had been going over all this for days before the visit of Kathryn, and during the night preceding the call she had awakened in great pain; she had had the pain before and it had power to reduce her to cowardice. It seemed to dare her, while she lay and suffered, to confide in a physician!
There was an old memory of one who had suffered and died from–––“Find out the truth about me!” each dart of fire in the nerves cried, and when the pain was over Helen Northrup had not dared to meet the challenge and go to Manly or another! At first she tried to reason with herself; then she compromised.
“After all, it is so fleeting. I’ll rest, take better care of myself. I’m not so young as I was––Nature is warning me; it may not be the other.”