I couldn't see all his savings go for gauds!
"You may take the goods," I said to the men, with sudden revulsion of feeling. "There's no room for them," I added gruffly to Mr. Winship, "in our--the rooms--where we are to live."
"All right, Boss," said the head packer; "which gent speaks for the lady?"
"All right, Boss;" and the two men went about their work, still glancing at us with sidelong looks of curiosity.
Helen gazed at me with eyes that stabbed. Then slowly her glance dulled. She dropped on a packing box and sat silent--a bowed figure of despair--forgetting apparently that she was not alone.
Mr. Winship made no further attempt to interfere with events. He stood by Helen's side, puzzled and taciturn.
I, too, was silent, reproaching myself for the brutality of my action, unable to decide what I should have done or ought to do. Helen herself had suggested that we give up the furniture, and I had not mourned the necessity, for I hated the stuff, with its reminders of the General and the Whitney woman and Bellmer and the Earl and all those strange people that I used to see around her. But I might have known that she could not, all at once, wean herself from the trumpery.
A minute later Clesta ushered in the man who was to take the trunks, and when I had given him his directions, I asked:--
"If ye ain't reconciled to movin'--" Mr. Winship began.
But Helen answered neither of us. Her eyes were bent upon the floor, and a look, not now of resentment, but of--was it fear?--had slowly crept upon her face. Her hands were clenched.
Darmstetter! Instinct--or memory of my careless words spoken but a little earlier--told me the truth. The growing pallor of her cheek spoke her thought. How that tragedy haunts her! The face I looked upon was at the last almost ghastly.
She looked around with the slow bewilderment that I once saw on the face of a sleep-walker. Her eyes saw through us, and past us, fixed upon some invisible horror. She was heedless of the familiar scene, the figures grouped about her. Then there came a sudden flush to her face, a quick recoil of terror; she shuddered as if waking from a nightmare.
"Why do we stay here?" she cried starting up with sudden, panic strength. "Let's get out of this horrible place! Let's go! Oh, let's go! Let's go!"