Juggernaut: A Veiled Record

Sometimes he sits in the twilight, the silent figure near, and thinks of the tones of a voice long ago. He tries to recall the intonation she gave to his name, and certain phrases she used. He wonders if the tones are just right in his memory.

At these times he thinks every moment:

"Will she speak? She is about to speak now. In a moment she will speak my name." And he sits breathlessly, with his head partly turned. There is never a word, never a sound, never a motion.

He is working in his flower-bed. He puts down his trowel and hurries in, suddenly possessed with the idea – "She may feel like speaking, and I not be there." Or while he is at work among the flowers he looks up to find her looking at him.

Her dog is at her feet. She never notices him, never touches him. Braine can no longer find a trace of Helen, his wife, in this woman. He tries in vain to recall her expression.

This evening he is standing at the little gate leading to the lane. He leans on it in the sweet silence, that the birds are emphasizing. He is looking off into the far-away, his white hair touched by the setting sun.

Is it the effect of the dying light, or is his face different? His dark eyes have grown dreamy with their absent look. There is a half smile on his firm, tender lips; an expression of resignation, which is not dogged but cheerful; an expression that impels the squirrel on the rail of the fence to stay where he is, and the dog to poke his black nose into his master's hand.

He turns toward the house, stooping over the sweet-williams to gather the accustomed bunch. He goes into the cottage with them in his hand, the same half-smile on his lips.

In the doorway he pauses. He stands gazing at the figure in the chair by the window. What has come over him? He brushes his hand slowly across his eyes. Helen sits by the window. Where is the terrible face that has haunted him all these months?

He goes nearer. She is asleep. The setting sun burnishes the gold of her hair until it is like the aureole of a saint. It frames the face not of the woman who has sat in silence so long, but of the woman who loved him in his youth. The same sweet mouth with its tender smile. The wife of his youth, of his love, of his happiness, of his poverty, of his eminence, of —

He is at her side. The sun has lowered a little, and the delicate flush on her face is going with it.

He bends near her till his lips touch her tender ones that seem to invite.

He leans heavily against her chair. He lays the sweet-williams gently in her dead hands, as the sun sets behind the hill.

Juggernaut has passed over his soul and Helen's.