Helen Vardons Confession

Helen Vardon's Confession R. Austin Freeman
1922

Prologue
To every woman there comes a day (and that all too soon) when she
receives the first hint that Time, the harvester, has not passed her by
unnoticed. The waning of actual youth may have passed with but the
faintest regret, if any; regret for the lost bud being merged in the
triumph at the glory of the opening blossom. But the waning of
womanhood is another matter. Old age has no compensations to offer
for those delights that it steals away. At least, that is what I understand
from those who know, for I must still speak on the subject from hearsay,
having received from Father Time but the very faintest and most
delicate hint on the subject.
I was sitting at my dressing-table brushing out my hair, which is of a
docile habit, though a thought bulky, when amidst the black tress--
blacker than it used to be when, I was a girl--I noticed a single white
hair. It was the first that I had seen, and I looked at it dubiously,
picking it out from its fellows to see if it were all white, and noticing
how like it was to a thread of glass. Should I pluck it out and pretend
that it was never there? Or should I, more thriftily--for a hair is a hair
after all, and enough of them will make a wig--should I dye it and hush
up its treason?
I smiled at the foolish thought. What a to-do about a single white hair! I
have seen girls in their twenties with snow-white hair and looking as
sweet as lavender. As to this one, I would think of it as a souvenir from
the troubled past rather than a harbinger of approaching age; and with
this I swept my brush over it and buried it even as I had buried those
sorrows and those dreadful experiences which might have left me
white-headed years before.

But that glassy thread, buried once more amid the black, left a legacy of
suggestion. Those hideous days were long past now. I could look back
on them unmoved--nay, with a certain serene interest. Suppose I should
write the history of them? Why not? To write is not necessarily to
publish. And if, perchance, no eye but mine shall see these lines until
the little taper of my life has burned down into its socket, then what
matters it to me whether praise or blame, sympathy or condemnation,
be my portion. Posterity has no gifts to offer that I need court its
suffrages.

BOOK I--TRAGEDY
Chapter I
The Crack of Doom
THERE is no difficulty whatever in deciding upon the exact moment at
which to open this history. Into some lives the fateful and significant
creep by degrees, unnoticed till by the development of their
consequences the mind is aroused and memory is set, like a
sleuth-hound, to retrace the course of events and track the present to its
origin in the past. Not so has it been with mine. Serene, eventless, its
quiet years had slipped away unnumbered, from childhood to youth,
from youth to womanhood, when, at the appointed moment, the voice
of Destiny rang out, trumpet-tongued; and behold! in the twinkling of
an eye all was changed.
"Happy," it has been said, "is the nation which has no history!" And
surely the same may be said with equal truth of individuals. So, at any
rate, experience teaches me; for the very moment wherein I may be said
to have begun to have a history saw a life-long peace shattered into a
chaos of misery and disaster.
How well I remember the day--yea, and the very moment--when the
blow fell, like a thunderbolt crashing down out of a cloudless sky. I had
been sitting in my little room upstairs, reading very studiously and

pausing now and again to think over what I had read. The book was
Lecky's "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," and the period
on which I was engaged was that of Queen Anne. And here, coming
presently upon a footnote containing a short quotation from "The
Spectator," it occurred to me that I should like to look over the original
letter. Accordingly, laying aside my book, I began to descend the
stairs--very softly, because I knew that my father had a visitor--possibly
a client--with him in his study. And when I came to the turn of the stair
and saw that the study door was ajar, I stepped more lightly still,
though I stole down quickly lest I should overhear what was being said.
The library, or book-room as we called it, was next to the study, and to
reach it I had to pass the half-opened door, which I did swiftly on