Then came the experience with Cerini and Miss Thayer. She was a woman, truly, and subject to a woman’s physical frailties, yet she was intellectually strong, and could not so have yielded to anything but a controlling power. Here, then, was a second personality affected in a like manner as himself by the same influences. He did not try to explain it; he accepted it as an evidence that this influence, whatever it was, existed and made itself manifest. From that moment he merged his own individuality into those to whom Cerini with gentle suasion introduced him. The librarian incited him by his own enthusiasm, and then directed him along the paths which he himself so loved to tread.
But Cerini did not foresee the extremes to which his pupil’s devotion would carry him. Day by day Armstrong felt himself becoming more and more separated from all about him, and more and more amalgamated with those forces which had preceded him. The society of any save those who acted and thought as he did failed to appeal to him. His affection for Helen suffered no change, except that she became less necessary to him. As the work progressed the intervals away from the library seemed longer, and he found it more difficult to enter into the life about him. Then came an irritability, entirely foreign to his nature, which he could not curb.
Yet through it all he was entirely conscious of what was happening. He compared himself more than once to a man in a trance, painfully alive to all the preparations going on about him for his own entombment, yet unable to cry out and put a stop to it all. He wished that Helen would object to his absences and force him to become a part of her life again. He wished that Miss Thayer would tire of the work and leave him alone in it. In contemplating either event he suffered at the mere thought of what such an interruption would mean to him, he knew that he would interpose strenuous objections—yet in a way he longed for the break to come.
Armstrong had been in one of these inexplicably irritable moods when Uncle Peabody crossed him in his plan for the moonlight ride to San Miniato. As a matter of fact, it was only because Miss Thayer had complained of a headache as they left the library that the idea of a ride had occurred to him at all; and to have Mr. Cartwright calmly propose that she drop out of the planned excursion struck him as a distinct intrusion upon his own prerogatives. The automobile fever was out of his blood now; the motor-car had become to him merely a convenience, and no longer an exhilaration. It was quite inevitable that Miss Thayer should acquiesce in Uncle Peabody’s suggestion—in fact, she could do nothing else; yet at the library she accepted even his slightest suggestion without question, and Armstrong preferred this latter responsive attitude. All in all, he would have been glad to find some excuse for giving up the ride altogether; but none offered itself, so, with every movement an obvious protest, he had helped Helen into the tonneau and stepped in after her.
Helen was hardly in a happier frame of mind, yet she found herself so eager for this time alone with her husband that she raised none of the obstacles which she would have done a month earlier. It was a perfect June evening, with the air cooled enough by the light wind to make the breeze raised by the speed of the car agreeable to the face. The moon was just high enough to cause deep shadows to fall across the roadway and merge into fantastic shapes as the machine approached and passed over them. The peasants were out-of-doors, and expressed their contentment by snatches of song, rendered in the rich, melodious voices which are the natural heritage of this light-hearted people. The toil of the day was over, and they were entering into a well-earned riposo before the duties of the next sunrise claimed their strength.
“How peaceful this is!” Helen exclaimed, turning to her husband. The breeze had blown back the lace scarf from her head, and the moon fell full upon her luxuriant hair, lighting her upturned face. “All nature is at rest and peace, and the people reflect the contentment of the land.”
“Your uncle is becoming very dictatorial,” replied Armstrong, quite at variance with her mood.
“Why, Jack!”
Helen was mildly reproachful, yet she instinctively felt the necessity of being cautious. Perhaps she could make him forget his resentment.
“Uncle Peabody only meant to give us an opportunity to be by ourselves. We have had so few.”