“Ah!” sighed Helen, “I’m always doomed to suffer for his sins! I thought that perhaps a little bit of fun would help me to forget my troubles.”
Poor Helen was still grovelling at the foot of her mountain.
Large tears stood in her soft eyes. The farmer gave her a quick glance, then looked away, and busied himself with the little cushion of moss that still lay in his broad palm. At heart he was more than half a Puritan, and hated jigs and feastings as lustily as did the Gideons and Grace-be-heres of Cromwell’s day. But he was far too tender-natured a man to bear the sight of a woman’s tears.
But for that unfortunate allusion which her father had made to Robert Clarris, Rhoda would have set her face as a flint against going to the fête. But his tone of pity stirred up all her old resentment. Why was this young wife, lovely and foolish, left without her lawful protector? Had she not said truly that she was doomed to suffer for his sins? After all, it was scarcely her fault, perhaps, that she was not elevated by her trial. To “erect ourselves above ourselves” is a bliss that we do not all reach. And it is a bliss which bears such a close relationship to pain, that one has no right to be hard on a fellow-mortal who chooses the lower ground.
Thoughts like these were passing through Rhoda’s mind, while Helen still wept silently. But it did not occur to Miss Farren that the truest kindness that can be done to another is to raise him. She forgot that it is better to stretch out a hand and say, “Friend, come up higher,” than to step down to his level. At that moment she thought only of pacifying Helen. Of late her cousin had grown very dear to her, partly, perhaps, for the sake of her little child. Her whole soul recoiled from the harvest-feast. She hated the clownish merriment, and the dancing and drinking; and yet, to please Helen, she was willing to endure much that was distasteful.
“If you would promise not to dance, Helen,” she began, hesitatingly. Her father looked up in undisguised astonishment.
“Why, Rhoda,” he said, “I didn’t think anything in the world would have made you go!”
“O Rhoda, how good of you to give way!” cried Helen, brightening. “Of course I’ll promise. It’s just like her, Uncle: she was always the most unselfish girl on earth! She doesn’t despise me because I’m weak-minded, and like a little bit of pleasure. Ah, how kind she is!”
The farmer said no more. He had a great reverence for his daughter, and would not take the matter out of her hands. But he went indoors with a grave face; and Helen followed him in a flutter of delight.
As Rhoda lingered that evening in the dewy twilight, she began to charge herself with cowardice. It would have been hard to have held out against Helen’s desires. And yet—for Helen’s own sake—ought she not to have been firm? Most of us suffer if we stifle our instincts; and hers had told her that this feast was no place for her cousin.