CHAPTER 18 The Withered Heart!
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After bringing Mrs. Hardy back to her home, and seeing that her mind, though still not entirely clear, continued in its improved condition, the doctor went on to her husband's place of business, and informed him of the favourable change which had taken place. The news was not received with such warmly-uttered pleasure as the doctor had expected. Mr. Hardy had many questions to ask, and doubts to be removed. Was it not rather precipitate to bring his wife home? Would it not have been wiser to have waited a few days, to see if the favourable change continued? He did not like the means used in her "temporary restoration," as he called it. It was his opinion, that it would never do to leave Helen and her mother together. They would mutually enervate each other.
The doctor thought differently, and charged Mr. Hardy on no account to interrupt their fellowship, but to leave Helen to deal with her mother as her own heart might dictate.
"Depend upon it,' said he, "she is wiser, in this matter, from pure love — than either you or I in the pride of our reason. Let them alone. Her hand has already opened a window in her mother's soul, through which light is streaming. She has done more in an hour, than I could have accomplished in weeks — more, probably, than I could have accomplished in years. Helen is the true physician in this case; and we must not interfere with her in the slightest degree. You may blame her for disobedience, in having left school without your permission; but I see a kind Providence in the act; and you may well be thankful, even while you blame."
Mr. Hardy tried not to see this Providence, because he did not wish to see it. He had resolved that Helen should go back to school; and, up to this time, he still meant to keep his resolve. But this new aspect of things was like the placing of a huge barrier in his way. The impulse to leap over this barrier, at all hazards, was very strong; but, against the physician's injunctions he dared not act in a matter, where, if evil consequences followed, his reputation in the eyes of the world must suffer deeply.
Mr. Hardy was always ready to make a virtue of necessity. He never yielded, so long as there remained any hope of accomplishing his ends; but when the last hope failed, and acquiescence was inevitable — the man put on a new exterior, and sought for compensation in the good opinion of others.
Finding that the doctor was decided, and was even beginning to manifest surprise at his evident unwillingness to accede to the requirements of the case, he gave up all opposition, saying —
"You ought to know best, Doctor, and I leave all in your hands. I am in the habit of viewing every matter that comes up for consideration on all sides, and forming my own judgment from my own reason. Of course, I cannot always be right. Questions will arise, wherein the judgment of others is superior to mine; and this, no doubt, is one of them. What is best for my wife and child — is the problem to solve. Their good is the high end we both have in view. To gain this, I am ready to make any sacrifice, however great. Ah, Doctor! you should not wonder, with so much at stake, that I should at times have many a doubt, or that I hesitate to act, where the action proposed does not accord with my own convictions. My wife and child are both dear to me. I separated them — an act that smote my heart with inconceivable pain — because I saw that they were doing each other immense injury. The necessity that requires them again to be thrown together in even a greater mutual dependence, I cannot but regard as a serious calamity; and I tremble as I look forward to the consequences."
After this speech, uttered with a tone and manner even more deceptive than his language — the doctor gave Mr. Hardy credit for a great deal more than he deserved. But the latter was a skilled actor — so skilled, that very few of those who met him in business or in social fellowship, could penetrate the habitual mask, or dream of the cold selfishness that coiled itself, like a stinging serpent, below the kind and congenial exterior of his life.
Still the doctor was not altogether deceived. He had seen and heard enough to put him on his guard, and to satisfy him that Mr. Hardy, if not an unfeeling husband and father, was at least a mistaken one; and he knew that ignorance often works as fearful evils, as design. He believed that he had discovered in Helen's separation from her mother, the exciting cause of this temporary alienation of mind; and he never yielded, for an instant, to the father's idea, that any possible injury could arise from their more intimate association and mutual dependence. Every now and then Mr. Hardy would introduce the subject by query or suggestion, but the doctor always met him on the threshold, and settled it without argument.
There was a change in Helen which surprised her father, and by the very power of a new aspect, compelled a modified treatment. He had parted with her a weak, weeping child, whose very suffering was a temptation to his love of power — she had come to her home a calm, reserved, self-reliant woman, whose step, and deportment, and tone of voice, commanded a respect that he almost felt it a humiliation to yield. The fire had penetrated to the centre of her being; but in suffering — she had been changed, and now came forth purer in feeling, clearer in perception, and stronger in powers of endurance. Her first requirement, on coming home from the Asylum, was that the stranger she had found in her mother's place should at once leave, and on no account be seen by Mrs. Hardy, except as a visitor. The doctor demurred; but Helen's answer, in which she gave her reason for what she required, instantly brought the physician over to her side; and the woman, after due explanations were made, retired from the house without having been seen by its mistress.
The latter was in no condition to resume the duties of her household. The light of reason had indeed broken through the cloudy veil, but it did not yet burn with a clear radiance. She required the wisest and the kindest treatment. Had she been left to her husband's blind discipline, it would have been needful to return her to the Asylum in less than a week.
As it was, the veil over her reason grew thinner every hour, and the light came in stronger. Things did not progress agreeably to the judgment of Mr. Hardy, who suffered all the while from an impatient desire to put forth his hand and interrupt their movement. But Helen was quiet and firm, and the doctor very watchful and quick to admonish; so that through the loving care of the one, and the wise supervision of the other, the blind home-tyrant was kept from doing the harm to which his persistent self-will was constantly prompting him.
Happily, nothing occurred to interrupt the gradual return of Mrs. Hardy to the mental health which had been so seriously impaired; and when both mind and body were so far restored that she could fill her old place in the household, she found an arm to lean upon, which was strong to support her feeble steps. Helen did not, on the restoration of her mother, recede from the active position she had taken, but maintained the womanly character so suddenly developed, and steadily, as at the beginning, kept her place by her mother's side, and between her and her father's will.
Mr. Hardy found himself baffled in almost every attempt to turn his daughter from the line of conduct which her heart's instinct led her to pursue. She never met him in open opposition, and never so directly disregarded his commands, or suggestions, as to give room for his strong self-will to lift itself in stubborn power. The mild, even, calm self-possession that was rarely lost — the singular force and clearness of all the reasons she gave for her conduct, when questioned — gradually inspired a feeling of respect and confidence, that took its place in his mind even despite the opposition of a meanly selfish pride.
Nothing more was said about sending Helen away to school, although Mr. Hardy did not admit to himself, for a single moment, that he had abandoned the purpose. He waited, from day to day, and from week to week, the occurrence of a good opportunity for announcing his will in that particular. But the opportunity never occurred. There was something about Helen that always put a seal upon his lips, whenever his perverse self-will prompted him to utter the sentence of exile from home. And so he had to content himself with design in the place of action. To have given up the former, would have been to acknowledge that John Hardy was wrong — but John Hardy was "always right." Circumstances, which alter cases, were wrong in the present instance; and he yielded to the power of outward events over which he had no control.
Time wore on; and no further aberration of mind took place. Every day Helen gained a new and stronger influence, and came in more and more protectingly between the arbitrary will of her father — and the more sensitive members of the household. Even against his own convictions and purposes, did she bend the former; and even while he meant to resist her influence, she often led him in the way she wished him to go, passive almost as a little child.
Back to its former condition of thought and feeling, the mind of Mrs. Hardy did not come. The work of restoration went on steadily to a certain point, and there progression ceased. A deep pulse less quiet seemed to have fallen on her spirit. She moved about the house, and among her children, with a placid, absent demeanour. Her voice never rose above an even tone, nor gave a sign of emotion. It seemed as if every green thing in her heart had been withered; as if all the goodly trees had cast their leaves, and the singing birds found shelter no longer amid their branches.
At intervals, more or less remote from each other, a variableness would appear in Mrs. Hardy's state of feeling. It did not rise above the usual dead level, but sank below it. A deep gloom, traceable to no apparent cause, would gather over her mind, and for days — sometimes for weeks — she would not rise from her bed; or, if wooed by her daughter's gentle entreaties to come forth and join the family, it was with a ray less countenance and eyes so sad that the heart ached to look into them. And so the months went by — lovely children springing up around the mother, and claiming her devoted attention, yet not seeming to have the power of entering her heart beyond its pillared vestibule.
Alas, for the home which Mr. Hardy had so fondly desired! — the home, so beautiful in imagination, as, looking down the vista of years, he had pictured its pleasures, and seen himself happiest of the happy, amid his wife and children! How lovely had been the ideal — how cold and sad the reality! What a terrible disappointment to all his hopes! He had been too eager and too selfish — trampling underfoot the tender plants which alone could in after time have borne the fruit he coveted. He had desired a home, with love-fires shining in perpetual radiance; but his cold, proud nature could not stoop to join in the work of kindling these fires, or in keeping them brightly burning. He demanded love and obedience; but his stern voice had in it no magical power. They came not at his call!
If Mr. Hardy, during all the long years of painful discipline thus passed through by himself and his wife, saw his error in a single instance, pride allowed no pent-up repentant impulse to ripple in sunlight and promise over his feelings. As he had commenced — he meant to go through to the last. "John Hardy had begun right — and John Hardy would end right."
In the eyes of the world — he was a mild, consistent, gentlemanly, benevolent man; and as he was in the eyes of the world, so he was in his own eyes. Often he would return to the past — often retrace his career from the beginning — reviewing the strange, unreasonable conduct of his wife, from the very day he proposed having a home of his own, up to the present period — and in all the troubled passages of their lives — he saw himself as a martyr, and his wife as a stubborn self-willed being, who, because she could not have her own way, made clouds and darkness to gather in perpetual gloom around their dwelling. All this, he thought over again and again, but pride and self-love kept his perceptions dim. Not once did he go out of his own consciousness, and so enter into the feelings and consciousness of his wife as to realize anything of her peculiar states, needs, or feelings. And so, over and over again, the conviction was reproduced, that "John Hardy was right!" And when "John Hardy was right with himself," no rock could be more firmly based. He was a moral Gibraltar!
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