Helena sat down to wait for Peter, who would be sure to find her wherever she hid herself. This spot was dear to her, as those places where life has consciously grown to a nobler stature are dear to men and women. It was here that within twenty-four hours of her last words with Philip Buntingford, she had sat wrestling with something which threatened vital forces in her that her will consciously, desperately, set itself to maintain. Through her whole ripened being, the passion of that inner debate was still echoing; though she knew that the fight was really won. It had run something like this:
"Why am I suffering like this?
"Because I am relaxed—unstrung. Why should I have everything I want—when others go bare? Philip went bare for years. He endured—and suffered. Why not I?
"But it is worse for me—who am young! I have a right to give way to what
I feel—to feel it to the utmost.
"That was the doctrine for women before the war—the old-fashioned women. The modern woman is stronger. She is not merely nerves and feeling. She must never let feeling—pain—destroy her will! Everything depends upon her will. If I choose I can put this feeling down. I have no right to it. Philip has done me no wrong. If I yield to it, if it darkens my life, it will be another grief added to those he has already suffered. It shan't darken my life. I will—and can master it. There is so much still to learn, to do, to feel. I must wrench myself free—and go forward. How I chattered to Philip about the modern woman!—and how much older I feel, than I was then! If one can't master oneself, one is a slave—all the same. I didn't know—how could I know?—that the test was so near. If women are to play a greater and grander part in the world, they must be much, much greater in soul, firmer in will.
"Yet—I must cry a little. No one could forbid me that. But it must be over soon."
Then the letters from Beechmark had begun to arrive, each of them bringing its own salutary smart as part of a general cautery. No guardian could write more kindly, more considerately. But it was easy to see that Philip's whole being was, and would be, concentrated on his unfortunate son. And in that ministry Cynthia Welwyn was his natural partner, had indeed already stepped into the post; so that gratitude, if not passion, would give her sooner or later all that she desired.
"Cynthia has got the boy into her hands—and Philip with him. Well, that was natural. Shouldn't I have done the same? Why should I feel like a jealous beast, because Cynthia has had her chance, and taken it? I won't feel like this! It's vile!—it's degrading! Only I wish Cynthia was bigger, more generous—because he'll find it out some day. She'll never like me, just because he cares for me—or did. I mean, as my guardian, or an elder brother. For it was never—no never!—anything else. So when she comes in at the front door, I shall go out at the back. I shall have to give up even the little I now have. Let me just face what it means.
"Yet perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Cynthia isn't as mean-spirited as I think.
"It's wonderful about the boy. I envy Cynthia—I can't help it. I would have given my whole life to it. I would have been trained—perhaps abroad. No one should have taught him but me. But then—if Philip had loved me—only that was never possible!—he would have been jealous of the boy—and I should have lost him. I never do things in moderation. I go at them so blindly. But I shall learn some day."