The girl went up to her room just as completely full of exultation
as she had been upon the night before, yet more comfortable in the
conviction that there would be no repetition of that night's worry.
Yet even as the thought occurred to her, it made her tremble; and as
if some fiend had arranged it especially for her torment, as she
passed down the hall a nurse came silently out of one of the rooms,
and through the half open doorway Helen fancied that she heard a low
moan. She shuddered and darted into her own room and locked the
door; yet that did not exclude the image of the sufferer, or keep it
from suggesting a train of thought that plunged the girl into
misery. It made her think of Arthur, and of the haggard look that
had been upon his face when he left her; and all Helen's angry
assertions that it was not her fault could not keep her from
tormenting herself after that. Always the fact was before her that
however sick he might be, even dying, she could never bear to see
him again, and so Arthur became the embodiment of her awakening
conscience.
The result was that the girl slept very little that night, spending
half of it in fact alternately sitting in a chair and pacing the
room in agitation, striving in vain to find some gleam of light to
guide her out of the mazes in which she was lost. The gray dawn
found her tossing feverishly about upon her pillow, yearning for the
time when she had been happy, and upbraiding herself for having been
drawn into her present trouble.
When she arose later on, she was more pale and wearied than she had
been upon the morning before; then she had at least possessed a
resolution, while this time she was only helpless and despairing.
Thus her aunt found her when she came in to greet her, and the
dismay of the worthy matron may be imagined.
However, being an indefatigable little body, she set bravely to work
again; first of all, by rebuking the girl for her weakness she
managed to rouse her to effort once more, and then by urging the
necessity of seeing people and of hiding her weakness, she managed
to obtain at last a semblance of cheerfulness. In the meantime Mrs.
Roberts was helping her to dress and to remove all traces of her
unhappiness, so that when Helen descended to breakfast she had
received her first lesson in one of the chief tasks of the social
regime:
“Full many in the silent night
Have wept their grief away;
And in the morn you fancy
Their hearts were ever gay.”
And Helen played her part so well that Mrs. Roberts was much
encouraged, and beamed upon her across the table. As a matter of
fact, because her natural happiness was not all crushed, and because
playing a part was not easy to the girl, she was very soon
interested in the various plans that were being discussed. When Mr.
Harrison called later on and proposed a drive, she accepted with
genuine pleasure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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