disfigured (to her eyes) by a grin of pleasure instead
of a pleased smile; and a man’s eyes were regarding
her with an unwinking stare of admiration. She
was not facing her old playmate, her old friend and
lover, but a being whose only consciousness reached
back but months, through scenes, associations coarse
and vulgar like himself. She felt this with an
intuition that was overwhelming. She could not
utter another syllable, much less speak of the sacred
love of the past. “O God!” she moaned
in her heart, “the man has become a living grave
in which his old self is buried. Oh, this is
terrible, terrible!”
As the truth grew upon her she sprang away, wringing
her hands and looking upon him with an indescribable
expression of pity and dread. “Oh,”
she now moaned aloud, “if he had only come back
to me mutilated in body, helpless! but this change—”
She fled from the room, and Nichol stared after her
in perplexed consternation.
“Forward! Company A”
When Mrs. Kemble was left alone with Captain Nichol’s
parents in the sitting-room, she told them of Helen’s
plan of employing the photograph in trying to recall
their son to himself. It struck them as an unusually
effective method. Mrs. Kemble saw that their
anxiety was so intense that it was torture for them
to remain in suspense away from the scene of action.
It may be added that her own feelings also led her
to go with them into the back parlor, where all that
was said by Nichol and her daughter could be heard.
Her solicitude for Helen was not less than theirs for
their son; and she felt the girl might need both motherly
care and counsel. She was opposed even more strenuously
than her husband to any committal on the daughter’s
part to her old lover unless he should become beyond
all doubt his former self. At best, it would be
a heavy cross to give up Martine, who had won her
entire affection. Helen’s heart presented
a problem too deep for solution. What would—what
could—Captain Nichol be to her child in
his present condition, should it continue?
It was but natural, therefore, that she and her husband
should listen to Helen’s effort to awaken memories
of the past with profound anxiety. How far would
she go? If Nichol were able to respond with no
more appreciative intelligence than he had thus far
manifested, would a sentiment of pity and obligation
carry her to the point of accepting him as he was,
of devoting herself to one who, in spite of all their
commiseration and endeavors to tolerate, might become
a sort of horror in their household! It was with
immense relief that they heard her falter in her story,
for they quickly divined that there was nothing in
him which responded to her effort. When they
heard her rise and moan, “If he had only come
back to me mutilated in body, helpless! but this change—”
they believed that she was meeting the disappointment
as they could wish.
