The House of Helen. Corra Harris

trifle higher over the little runt of a town.

      There was a slight pause. You must have a moment in which to adjust yourself to the incredible, especially when you have not been thinking about anything so far removed.

      “Shannon?” she asked in an exclamatory tone.

      “Yes; it is. You can’t imagine how it looks to me after two years away from it, how it compares with the big places I have seen—dried up, sun-baked, no atmosphere, no culture.”

      She said nothing. What can you say when you hear a man blaspheming the very cradle where he was rocked in infancy. Besides, the contempt seemed to include her. She was a part of it, and she loved it.

      “I saw a handsome plant of some sort blooming in a tin bucket on Mrs. Flitch’s front porch the other day. That’s what I mean,” he went on.

      “But what do you mean?” she asked, regarding him vaguely.

      “Well, the bucket was tinware, as I said, and published on it, still in red letters, was the red label of a superior shortening.” He laughed.

      “She is so fond of flowers,” Helen expounded gravely.

      His eyes snickered at her. “But the bucket,” he exclaimed, “the tin bucket, the old tin bucket with the red label—with a gardenia blooming in it. Naïve, I’ll admit, but about as appropriate as sticking an ostrich plume over the kitchen sink.”

      Helen made a hasty mental inventory of the Adams flower pots and thanked heaven they were correct.

      “The people here do not think; they merely gossip,” he went on. “They have no ideas, no purely mental conceptions. They do not know what is going on in the mind of the world, how men’s views of life are changing and broadening.”

      She did not follow him, but she felt the wind of the world beneath her wing.

      “Two years here made no difference. You don’t grow. You don’t develop. But away in a university, where your business is to get what’s going and learn to think, two years change a man. I am a stranger here now. My own father and mother do not know me.”

      “Oh, George, yes, they do!” she exclaimed consolingly.

      Then she caught his eye and perceived that he was in no need of consolation. He was boasting, prouder than otherwise of being this stranger. “It’s a fact; they make me feel like a whited sepulcher,” he complained.

      “But you don’t,” she exclaimed loyally, but really in great trepidation lest he might be this awful thing.

      “Of course not,” he returned, pleased to have excited her anxiety. “But what would my father think if he knew I am interested in socialism, that my best friends in the university are radicals?”

      She was not competent to express an opinion. She was not skilled in politics.

      “And what would my mother think if she knew that I no longer accept the Scriptures literally as she does, as you all do in this town; that I know the Bible to be fragments of history and tradition, much of it mythical, the priestly literature of the Jews, gathered from dreams and hearsay, and interpreted to control the lives and liberties of men.”

      “Oh, George! you must not say such things. You are a member of the church. I remember the Sunday morning when you were baptized.”

      “A public bath! And there is no ‘the Church,’ Helen; did you know that—unless it’s the world; that’s the big church,” said this grand young man, delivered from the faith of his fathers.

      This was awful. She stared at him through tears, but not with any shrinking; rather her heart yearned toward him. There is no doubt about this—all women, however young, have wings and a sort of clucking mind, spiritually speaking.

      He was moved by the sight of these tears to a loftier, transient mood of himself. He turned so as to face her, seized her hand, bent his brows upon her in a strained, long look. It was powerful, this gaze. She trembled. Her hand became icy in his hot palm. He tightened his clasp upon it.

      “Listen, Helen,” in the deep bass tones of a terrific emotion, “I wish you to know me as I am. I would not take advantage of a girl like you. I will keep nothing from you. It is necessary if—if my hopes are realized.” He left her in this suspense while he bowed his head and struggled to stem his tide. “I am not a good man,” he began. It was the opening sentence of a proclamation, not a confession, as if he had said: “I have a cloven foot and am proud of it.” “But I have my convictions, and no man on God’s green earth is more faithful to his convictions.”

      She was holding her breath, only letting it out when she could hold it no longer in a soft sigh, and taking in another for the next sigh. If you are doing it for exercise you call it “deep breathing.”

      “And I have my ideals,” he added impressively.

      She was relieved. If he was not an entirely good man, he could not be a bad one; he had “convictions” and he had “ideals.” What more could she ask?

      “For example, I believe in the freedom of love,” he announced, and waited for this shocking piece of news to take effect.

      The effect was marvelous. Her cheeks bloomed scarlet. Nature flung a wreath of palest pink upon her forehead—only for an instant; then this aurora of love’s emotion faded. “I am afraid I don’t know much about love,” she said faintly, lowering her eyes before his gaze.

      He leaned back, gratified. He had her secret; but she had not got his meaning. The dear little innocent! He was tempted to kiss her.

      This was really the case. She had not recognized the phrase. There was no use for it in Shannon. The worst thing she had ever heard was Sammy Duncan swearing at the cat. Her reading had been sternly censored. Mrs. Adams took no morning paper, “on account of Helen”; a magazine, yes; and there were Scott’s novels. These had been the girl’s text books of love. She had never even read the Song of Solomon. Mrs. Adams had forbidden her this richer scriptural food. “You won’t understand it,” the mother had said. And Helen obediently skipped it when she turned the pages of her Bible. She had secretly wondered why Solomon was in the Bible anyway. He was not a proper person, if one believed the preacher, and one must do that. Neither was David all he should have been by all accounts. But here she veered again and merely learned her Psalms, making no inquiries into the author’s private life, which was very ladylike of her. In short, brought up according to a standard of innocence which amounted to a deformity, at this moment she was stripped of every weapon by which she might have defended herself against an iniquitous doctrine.

      George decided not to go too fast with his teaching on this subject, for he was determined that she should learn it and accept it. He kissed her hand instead and told her that she was all there was of love so far as he was concerned.