I was not expected: no one met me at the station, and, finding no conveyance, I walked on myself to the place, and entered the grounds not more than an hour before sunset. Everything was curiously calm and at peace except the breakers, which moaned against the rocks below as the tide came in. The shadows were long upon the grass, and looked like things that had felt life all day, but now had coiled themselves up for sleep. Beyond the trees the fiery sun still shone, gilding the stately house with gold and resting lovingly upon the roses which clambered riotously over embrasures and abutments, lighting up the piazzas and columns with their bloom. I recognized a change at once in the aspect of the place: more windows and doors were open than formerly, and the porticoes showed signs of careless occupancy with their chairs and afghans, tables and a litter of books, papers and work. I stood before the door, gazing through the wide-columned vista of the hall, and the infinite seemed open before my eyes as I saw the blue and opal-tinted sea. But still there was no sound except the murmur from the shore, and nothing stirred except the sunbeams as they climbed the carved balustrade of the great staircase and gleamed on the frozen faces of a marble group in a niche. I did not ring at first, for it seemed as if my mother or Helen must come out—that they were close at hand, picking roses on the terrace or descending from their rooms. But it was Mills who presently issued from the dining-room and saw me. He greeted me as if I were one of the family, and ushered me into the library as he had done at the time of my first visit years before.
Sitting there quietly, I seemed for the first time to realize the fact of old Mr. Raymond's death. I saw his chair by the fireplace, and the low seat on which Helen and I had sat together many and many a time. I had not grieved at the old man's death, but had felt that weeping for the dead might sometimes be a less dreary task than bearing with the living; yet here I could not see these beautiful inanimate things, once his intimate surroundings, without a thrill of regret that he was gone.
A shadow fell across the doorway, and a young girl came in, one of the sunset gleams reflected from some of the endless mirrors of the house falling on her and lighting up her face. My first thought was, "She is almost a woman:" my second was, "I had never expected she would be so beautiful."
We had not spoken yet: she ran up to me eagerly and looked into my face, and I clasped her hands. When I saw that she was crying there seemed to me but one way of greeting the child. I took her in my arms and kissed her. It seemed strange, I think, to neither of us that we should meet in this way. But when we looked at each other now, I felt a curious glow over my face, and she hung her head and was blushing vividly, as I had never suspected the pale little Helen I had once known so well, with her aspect of almost severe purity, could ever blush. There was a new sort of beauty about her: a soft richness of tint and texture seemed added to cheek and lip, and the old imperious concentration of her glance was, for the moment, quite gone. Still, although I could easily see that she was frightened at her own temerity in allowing my more than brotherly freedom, I could not find it in my heart to repent it.
"Where is my mother, Helen?" I asked, taking her hand in mine to reassure her, for I saw that something was embarrassing her very much. "It seems I was not expected to-day?"
"Not so late as this," she explained; and presently I was talking freely with her, and she was listening without a particle of self-consciousness in her manner. It appeared that my mother and Mr. Floyd had gone out to drive, but would presently return to tea—that my mother had been longing for me, and they had all wondered why I had delayed coming. This was all very pleasant, uttered in the sweetest voice by my young hostess, and when she asked me if I would go out and see the sunset from the terrace, it was very easy to say that I would follow her anywhere.
She was a shy child still, I discovered, despite her tall figure, her pretty womanly shape and elegant air. My manhood was too recent a possession not to be rejoiced in when I saw that a woman's blushes came and went as she felt the weight of my glance. We went out of doors and saw the surges breaking on the shore, but the waves seemed happy that night, and lisped joyfully like children at their play. There was no voice of sorrow in all Nature: the birds circling about their nests began glad strains, then hushed them only to break forth again into fresh confused and joyful beginnings which they were too sleepy to finish. We talked of sorrow and loss, yet I think neither of us was very sorrowful, although Helen's tears flowed unchecked as she poured forth the simple narrative of her grandfather's last days—how he had never been so tender, so self-forgetful, as then; how he could not do enough to show his deep love for her; and then how, in the night, all at once, without a last look, word or caress, he was gone and his tenderness was but a memory.
"I felt at first," said Helen, "as if there were no longer anything for me to do in the world. It seemed a treason to poor grandpa that I saw how beautiful the crocuses were as they blossomed in the beds on the terrace here, and when the mayflowers came I did not dare to pick them except to put them on his grave. Then, you know, as not even papa knows, that with all my reverence for my grandfather I had still had a terrible sense of responsibility mingled with my love for him; and not even yet can I go out a few hours for a drive or a ride without my feeling every now and then, through all my pleasure with papa, a sudden pang of dread. After such times I run to his room: it is easy enough to believe then that he no longer has any need of me."
"You were all alone at first, Helen, until my mother came to you? Two weeks alone! It seems dreadful."
"Georgy Lenox was here, you know."