A Whirl Asunder
Gertrude Atherton
Psychological Romance
Published 1895
Synopsis
A Whirl Asunder follows Clive, an Englishman who arrives in late‑19th‑century California intending to marry his fiancée, Mary Gordon, but soon finds his plans unsettled by the spirited heiress Helena Belmont. Clive’s exhausting journey across the rugged landscape of the United States is accompanied by his growing sense of disillusionment. His encounter with Helena introduces a dynamic tension between duty to his fiancée Mary, and his growing desire for Helena, as her unconventional behavior and magnetic personality challenge both his expectations and the social customs of 19th‑century California. As Clive becomes increasingly drawn to Helena, he must confront the emotional turmoil that threatens his engagement, illustrating the clash between societal expectations and individual longing.
Novel Excerpt
Clive was thirty-four, ten years older than Mary Gordon. He recalled the day he had proposed to her. She had come down the steps of her father’s house, in a blue gown and garden hat, and they had gone for a walk in the woods. She was not a clever woman, and she had only the white and pink and brown, the rounded lines of youth, no positive beauty of face or figure; but with the blind instinct of his race he had turned almost automatically to the type of woman who, time out of mind, has produced the strong-limbed, strong-brained men that have made a nation insolently great. She reminded him of his mother, with her even sweetness of nature, her sympathy, her large maternal suggestion. He had known her since her early girlhood and grown fonder of her each year. She rested him, and had the divine feminine faculty of making him feel a better and cleverer man than he was in the habit of thinking himself else where.
She had accepted him with the sweetest smile he had ever seen, and he had wondered if other men were as fortunate. For two years he saw much of her, then she went to America, and he had plunged into his work and his man’s life, not missing her as consistently as he had expected, but caring for her none the less. The Saturday mail brought him, unintermittingly, a letter eight pages long, neatly written, and describing in detail the daily life of her family, and of the strange people about them. They were calm, affectionate, interesting letters, which Clive enjoyed, and to which he replied with a hurried scrawl, rarely covering more than one page. An Englishwoman does not expect much, but Mary occasionally hinted sadly that a longer letter would make her happier; whereupon his conscience hurt him and he wrote her two pages.
He enjoyed these two years, despite hard work; he was popular with men and women, and much was popular with him that adds to the keener pleasures of life. When the time came to pack his boxes and go to America he puffed a large regretful rack from his last pipe of freedom; but it did not occur to him to ask release. For the matter of that, although he had come to regard Mary Gordon as the inevitable rather than the desired, he had felt for her the strong tenderness which such men feel for such women, which endures, and never in any circumstance turns to hate.