The Waking of Helen

"The Waking of Helen" is a poignant novella by Lucy Maud Montgomery that delves into themes of love, self-discovery, and transformation. The story follows Helen, a young woman who feels trapped in her mundane existence and yearns for a deeper meaning in her life. As she navigates her emotions and relationships, Helen's journey of awakening leads her to confront her fears and aspirations, ultimately inspiring her to embrace her true self. Montgomery’s lyrical prose and rich character development capture the complexities of human experience, making this tale a compelling exploration of personal growth and emotional resilience.

• Short story

								
Robert Reeves looked somewhat curiously at the girl who was waiting on
him at his solitary breakfast. He had not seen her before, arriving at
his summer boarding house only the preceding night.

It was a shabby farmhouse on the inland shore of a large bay that was
noted for its tides, and had wonderful possibilities of light and
shade for an impressionist. Reeves was an enthusiastic artist. It
mattered little to him that the boarding accommodations were most
primitive, the people uncultured and dull, the place itself utterly
isolated, as long as he could revel in those transcendent sunsets and
sunrises, those marvellous moonlights, those wonderful purple shores
and sweeps of shimmering blue water.

The owner of the farm was Angus Fraser, and he and his wife seemed to
be a reserved, uncouth pair, with no apparent interest in life save to
scratch a bare living out of their few stony acres. He had an
impression that they were childless and was at a loss to place this
girl who poured his tea and brought in his toast. She did not resemble
either Fraser or his wife. She was certainly not beautiful, being very
tall and rather awkward, and dressed in a particularly unbecoming dark
print wrapper. Her luxuriant hair was thick and black, and was coiled
in a heavy knot at the nape of her neck. Her features were delicate
but irregular, and her skin was very brown. Her eyes attracted
Reeves's notice especially; they were large and dark and full of a
half-unconscious, wistful longing, as if a prisoned soul behind them
were vainly trying to reveal itself.

Reeves could find out nothing of her from herself, for she responded
to his tentative questions about the place in the briefest fashion.
Afterwards he interviewed Mrs. Fraser cautiously, and ascertained that
the girl's name was Helen Fraser, and that she was Angus's niece.

"Her father and mother are dead and we've brought her up. Helen's a
good girl in most ways--a little obstinate and sulky now and then--but
generally she's steady enough, and as for work, there ain't a girl in
Bay Beach can come up to her in house or field. Angus calculates she
saves him a man's wages clear. No, I ain't got nothing to say against
Helen."

Nevertheless, Reeves felt somehow that Mrs. Fraser did not like her
husband's niece. He often heard her scolding or nagging Helen at her
work, and noticed that the latter never answered back. But once, after
Mrs. Angus's tongue had been especially bitter, he met the girl
hurrying along the hall from the kitchen with her eyes full of tears.
Reeves felt as if someone had struck him a blow. He went to Angus and
his wife that afternoon. He wished to paint a shore picture, he said,
and wanted a model. Would they allow Miss Fraser to pose for him? He
would pay liberally for her time.

Angus and his wife had no objection. They would pocket the money, and
Helen could be spared a spell every day as well as not. Reeves told
Helen of his plan himself, meeting her in the evening as she was
bringing the cows home from the low shore pastures beyond the marsh.
He was surprised at the sudden illumination of her face. It almost
transfigured her from a plain, sulky-looking girl into a beautiful
woman.

But the glow passed quickly. She assented to his plan quietly, almost
lifelessly. He walked home with her behind the cows and talked of the
sunset and the mysterious beauty of the bay and the purple splendour
of the distant coasts. She listened in silence. Only once, when he
spoke of the distant murmur of the open sea, she lifted her head and
looked at him.

"What does it say to you?" she asked.

"It speaks of eternity. And to you?"

"It calls me," she answered simply, "and then I want to go out and
meet it--and it hurts me too. I can't tell how or why. Sometimes it
makes me feel as if I were asleep and wanted to wake and didn't know
how."

She turned and looked out over the bay. A dying gleam of sunset broke
through a cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the
spirit of the shore personified--all its mystery, all its uncertainty,
all its elusive charm.

She has possibilities, thought Reeves.

Next day he began his picture. At first he had thought of painting her
as the incarnation of a sea spirit, but decided that her moods were
too fitful. So he began to sketch her as "Waiting"--a woman looking
out across the bay with a world of hopeless longing in her eyes. The
subject suited her well, and the picture grew apace.

When he was tired of work he made her walk around the shore with him,
or row up the head of the bay in her own boat. He tried to draw her
out, at first with indifferent success. She seemed to be frightened of
him. He talked to her of many things--the far outer world whose echoes
never reached her, foreign lands where he had travelled, famous men
and women whom he had met, music, art and books. When he spoke of
books he touched the right chord. One of those transfiguring flashes
he delighted to evoke now passed over her plain face.

"That is what I've always wanted," she said hungrily, "and I never get
them. Aunt hates to see me reading. She says it is a waste of time.
And I love it so. I read every scrap of paper I can get hold of, but I
hardly ever see a book."

The next day Reeves took his Tennyson to the shore and began to read
the Idylls of the King to her.

"It is beautiful," was her sole verbal comment, but her rapt eyes said
everything.

After that he never went out with her without a book--now one of the
poets, now some prose classic. He was surprised by her quick
appreciation of and sympathy with the finest passages. Gradually, too,
she forgot her shyness and began to talk. She knew nothing of his
world, but her own world she knew and knew well. She was a mine of
traditional history about the bay. She knew the rocky coast by heart,
and every old legend that clung to it. They drifted into making
excursions along the shore and explored its wildest retreats. The girl
had an artist's eye for scenery and colour effect.

"You should have been an artist," Reeves told her one day when she had
pointed out to him the exquisite loveliness of a shaft of light
falling through a cleft in the rocks across a dark-green pool at their
base.

"I would rather be a writer," she said slowly, "if I could only write
something like those books you have read to me. What a glorious
destiny it must be to have something to say that the whole world is
listening for, and to be able to say it in words that will live
forever! It must be the noblest human lot."

"Yet some of those men and women were neither good nor noble," said
Reeves gently, "and many of them were unhappy."

Helen dismissed the subject as abruptly as she always did when the
conversation touched too nearly on the sensitive edge of her soul
dreams.

"Do you know where I am taking you today?" she said.

"No--where?"

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