The Awakening of Helena Ritchie

Summary

A Parisian siren, still smelling of lilacs and gunpowder, drifts into the monochrome hush of Old Chester clutching a grief too loud for words; her husband’s champagne-soaked hands have stilled their child forever. She trades the Seine’s moon-drenched boulevards for Pennsylvania dust, letting a sleek American opportunist install her in a clapboard hiding place where whispers travel faster than telegrams. The town’s moral weather vane, a crusty patriarch with cider on his breath, sniffs impropriety and sends his grandson—the village’s only versifier with ink-stained fingernails and a heart full of Keats—into her orbit. One blunt confession later, the boy-poet’s pulse stops in a garret, leaving Helena shackled to a fresh ghost. Salvation arrives disguised as an orphan: David, a towheaded enigma delivered by an elderly parson whose eyes hold galaxies of mercy and judgment in equal measure. Just as the widow’s frostbitten soul begins to thaw, the opportunist demands the child’s eviction; she must choose between the mirage of respectability and the grubby, breathing miracle now calling her “mother.” Her refusal detonates the last bridge to her old life, yet the parson, archangel in a frayed collar, still questions whether a lie-laden heart can rear a truth-telling boy. Helena surrenders, plans exile, but the clergyman’s final test—an infant smuggled in traveling paper—reveals grace to be less sermon than ransom. Coach wheels turn; the woman once drowning in absinthe and guilt rides toward an unmapped dawn, the child’s sleepy weight against her ribs the only passport she needs.

Synopsis

To the village of Old Chester comes Helena Richie in search of balm for a broken heart. Her dissolute husband, in a drunken rage, has killed their little child. This tragedy induces Helena to listen to the pleadings of Lloyd Pryor to leave Paris, where the Richies are living, and come to America with him. Pryor makes frequent visits to Helena in the little home he establishes for her in Chester, and the townspeople accept the statement that he is her brother. Old Benjamin Wright, however, has his own suspicions as to the relations between the two. His interest is more than a casual one, for his grandson, Sam Wright, a young poet, is in love with Helena. The old man tells him his belief with regard to Mrs. Richie. Sam asks her whether the suspicion has any foundation, and when she admits that it has he kills himself. Dr. Lavendar, the kindly old minister, has in his charge a child who needs a home. He has decided to send the little boy, David, to Mrs. Richie for a trial visit. She welcomes the boy, who fills the place in her heart left vacant by the death of her own child. Her heart becomes bound up in the boy, though she is torn by conflicting emotions by the thought of her own false position. Helena's husband has been in such feeble health, owing to his dissipations, that she has constantly expected his death to release her so that she and Pryor may be married. Finally the long-expected event happens, but Pryor has tired of her. His promise of marriage has been nothing but a ruse to get her to elope with him. Looking about for an excuse to break the bonds which have become irksome to him, he tells her that she must give up David. She refuses and he says she must choose between the child and himself. Realizing Pryor's unworthiness, she clings to the child, and Pryor leaves her. Helena goes to Dr. Lavendar, tells him the truth about her past relations with Pryor, and asks him to let her keep the child with her always. The old man's answer is: "Can you teach him to tell the truth, you who have lived a lie? Can you make him brave, you who could not endure? Can you make him honorable, you who have deceived all?" Helena is silent in the face of this accusation. She decides to give David up and to leave Old Chester. She tells Dr. Lavendar that on her way to the station next day she will come to bid David goodbye. Next day at the rectory Dr. Lavendar asks her to take with her a parcel which she will find wrapped up in the coach. She promises, and in the coach finds the package to be little David, all wrapped up for traveling. Her willingness to sacrifice her own happiness for the boy has proved her worthiness to keep him, and Helena and little David leave Old Chester to find peace among new surroundings.