A woman in armor :: :: University of Virginia Library

No soul was in the house save herself. She
had kindled a few sticks in the blackened grate,
but the blaze, after rising to look around the
chill room, sunk into low spirits and died. She
had no heart to invoke it again. She hardly
knew that her flesh was cold; bitter darkness
and silence seemed her best refuges.

If she had been on no mental rack, the sudden
noises which may always be heard in an
empty house might have set her nerves quivering.
But she heard no quiet step up-stairs, no
whispers along the blinds, no stirs or rappings
at back-doors. The Genius of the Home Helen
had made sat with her face mantled that night.
Even Puck was gone—Puck who sets mischief
brewing. The precious Place was blotted
from the earth. She had no home.

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Before Nina and George came to her she had
lived a bright, hopeful life—what unconventional
people call a “Bohemian” life. She was not
bound to place. The future was all before her,
and talent strong within her. She meant to go
to the Old World and study her art there, and
her spirit would have carried her, too. She
saved money for this purpose till Nina and
George were cast upon her care, creating a revolution
in her nature. She made them the root
of her ambitions and hopes thereafter, and
learned to love as consecrated the little spot of
earth where their lives and her life grew together.

Now, sitting by the ashes of her black hearth,
she felt like them who return from weary warfare,
and find only their tottering chimneys
standing to show where the enemy passed.

Days eddied through her head, making her
review again and again every circumstance of
her flight.

She saw herself shooting past hills and woods
with Georgie on her breast; now watching the
engine's red eye as they rounded a curve; now
wondering what waited for them beyond the
darkness. She had taken a new route which
had its terminus in a coal and iron region—because
a wild place would be a cheaper and, perhaps,
a surer refuge than a city.

She saw herself carrying the sleeping boy off
the train into raw daylight, and stepping into a
little box of a station where men in red woollen

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE ARREST. DOLOROSA. THE ESCAPE.

[Description: 494EAF. Illustration page. Tripartate image. The first image, "The Arrest," shows a well-dressed woman flanked by two men. One of the men is showing her a piece of paper and has his hand on her shoulder. A little boy is clinging to the woman's waist and his feet do not reach the ground. The second man appears to be about to touch the boy on the shoulder. The second image is of a woman sitting on the floor in a darkend room. She is resing her upper body on a chair and has her head buried in her arms in a posture of despair. In the third image a woman is being driven away in a horse-drawn wagon. She is looking back over her shoulder. ]

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shirts spat at the stove and stared at her. When
she asked where she was they told her she was
at Mary Ann Station; and when she tried to
hire a conveyance into the country they bestirred
themselves to call another red-shirted man, who
drove a loaded ox-cart, to the door.

She saw the slow, bovine stare which this
man fixed on her when she assured him she had
no folks in them parts, but was seeking boarding
in some family. She heard his gradually
stated intention of taking her down to his old
woman, and the creaking of the loaded cart as
they started.

She saw George's full cheeks shaking with
the jolting of the cart, his frightened eyes opened
suddenly to see a cliff rising above the road,
and a ravine yawning below, for it wound like a
ribbon along the waist of a mountain.

She saw the smelting furnace which they
passed, its massive supports of stone, its open
side exposing roaring fires and hissing metal,
and half-naked men darting here and there, and
singing. The frost on the mountain, the glitter
of bits of ice far down in the ravine, were
yet before her eyes. She started violently
again, lest the cart should be jerked over that
frightful brink by the switching oxen, and again
the old man reassured her.

She saw the tiny hut in the great hollow to
which he took her. It was built of logs and
chinked with mud, and it had one room and a loft.

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She saw his old woman, a bent and uncomely
and broken-toothed creature, to whom Nature
had been kinder in soul than in body.

She reviewed her short sojourn in this place;
her daily efforts to think some way clear for
Nina's boy, her close clinging to him, her nightly
weariness, the old woman's questions and cossetings,
George's darling ways, their swift walks
in the windy hollow, even their breakfasts
of corn-bread and coffee came to her mind.
The solemn pines rose above her till they pricked
the sky far up.

Again she saw a man riding down the cart-road,
and knew he was coming after her. And
before he could proclaim her arrest, again she
crouched with George on the attic floor, kissing
him and praying over him, and wondering fiercely
if she hadn't better stab him!

She saw the polite officer who arrested her
for abduction; the old woman's fear and flying
cap-frills; the departure from the hut, with that
old pair looking sorrowfully after George and
her.

She saw their return over the crude road;
the scene after their arrival; the insolent face of
G. Guest, Esq. Again he taunted her unintelligibly,
and turned her sick by his grasp on
George's little shoulder. She heard the quiet
counsel of Myron D. Chancery, and felt vaguely
that he was her friend, who hinted that she was
to hope for something in the future. She heard

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the compromise effected by him, the patronizing
dismissal of G. Guest, Esq., and George's heart-breaking
shrieks as they carried him away.
Oh, Nina's baby! Those were Nina's hands
reaching to her; Nina's wide eyes straining to
her; Nina's heart in his little body, almost
bursting again! Where was the baby now?
Who undressed him to-night? Why, he had
never gone to sleep out of her arms before since
his soul had consciousness. Was he smothered
down by some impatient nurse? Was he calling
his mamma and his Toola and suffering as only
bereft childhood can suffer? She dared not
think of that. It made her want to go fiercely
into the streets and denounce a people who
leave young children at the mercy of a licentious
and unnatural father.

She saw herself coming into the deserted house
—into the dark—into desolation.

Here she sat, by her dead home, too broken
for action, yet fighting her griefs on the ground.

She must get up and gird for work. Tomorrow
she would go her round giving lessons,
and trying not to resent the curious looks, the
questions, the grating sympathy she met. Mrs.
Stokesbury-Jones, that social sun, would probably
be clouded by floating rumors, and all the
lesser lights would shine from on high upon her.

But she must be doing. She must earn
money. Necessity was laid upon her now.
Expenses had overflowed her income, and the

108

tug and strain to meet demands could not be
shirked. Neither did she wish to lie down in
the harness.

“Whether I die or not,” this weary girl told
herself as her forehead sunk to the very ground,
“makes no difference now. I will pull on the
best I can. I am wounded through and through,
and I can never get better! But many a soldier
has bled under his armor. My armor will be
taken off some day, and I shall be washed and
comforted. Get up, Helen Dimmock, and go
ahead.”

So Helen Dimmock got up and tried to go
ahead. She threw a light over the room, and
put out her hand to make the place cheerful.

It was too hard.

Dry sobs tore her throat. She clenched her
hat.

“I cannot stay here alone now! Oh, let me
get away! To the church—anywhere! Billy
will go with me. Oh, I'm so alone!”