though each was well aware that the artifice was entirely futile.
“All alone?” Sarah asked, when she had recovered from the first shock of the hall’s magnificence.
“Yes,” said Helen. “It’s Georgiana’s afternoon out, and uncle’s away, and I haven’t got any new servants yet.”
“Mr. Ollerenshaw away! No one ever heard of such a thing! If you knew him as well as we do, you’d have fainted with surprise. It ought to be in the paper. Where’s he gone to?”
“He’s gone to Derby, to try to buy some property that he says is going very cheap there. He’s been gone three days now. He got a letter at breakfast, and said he must go to Derby at once. However, he had to finish his rents. The trouble is that his rents never are finished, and I’m bothered all the time by people coming with three and sixpence, or four shillings, and a dirty rent-book! Oh! and the dirt on the coins! My dear, you can’t imagine! There’s one good thing. He will have to come back for next week’s rents. Not that I’m sorry he’s gone. It gives me a chance, you see. By the time he returns I shall have my servants in.”
“Do tell me what servants you’re going to have?”
“Well, I went to that agency at Oldcastle. I’ve got a German butler. He speaks four languages, and has beautiful eyes.”
“A German butler!”
If it had been a German prince Sarah could not have been more startled nor more delighted.
“Yes, and a cook, and two other maids; and a gardener and a boy. I shall keep Georgiana as my own maid.”
“My child, you’re going it!”
“My child, I came here to go it.”
“And–and Mr. Ollerenshaw is really pleased?”
Helen laughed. “Uncle never goes into raptures, you know. But I hope he will be pleased. The fact is, he doesn’t know anything about these new servants yet. He’ll find them installed when he returns. It will be a little treat for him. My piano came this morning. Care to try it?”
“Rather!” said Sarah. “Well, I never saw anything like it!” This was in reference to her first glimpse of the great drawing-room. “How you’ve improved it, you dear thing!”
“You see, I have my own cheque-book; it saves worry.”
“I see!” said Sarah, meaningly, putting her purse on the piano, her umbrella on a chair, and herself on the music-stool.
“Shall we have tea?” Helen suggested, after Sarah had performed on the Bechstein.
“Yes. Let me help you, do, dearest.”
They wandered off to the kitchens, and while they were seated at the kitchen-table, sipping tea, side by side, Sarah said:
“Now if you want an idea, I’ve got a really good one for you.”
“For me? What sort of an idea?”
“I’ll tell you. You know Mrs. Wiltshire is dead.”
“I don’t. I didn’t even know there was a Mrs. Wiltshire.”
“Well, there was, and there isn’t any longer. Mrs. Wiltshire was the main social prop of the old rector. And the annual concert of the St. Luke’s Guild has always been held at her house, down at Shawport, you know. Awfully poky! But it was the custom since the Flood, and no one ever dared to hint at a change. Now the concert was to have been next week but one, and she’s just gone and died, and the rector is wondering where he can hold it. I met him this morning. Why don’t you let him hold it here? That would be a splendid way of opening your house–Hall, I beg its pardon. And you could introduce the beautiful eyes of your German butler to the entire neighbourhood. Of course, I don’t know whether Mr. Ollerenshaw would like it.”
“Oh!” said Helen, without blenching, “uncle would do as I wish.”
She mused, in silence, during a number of seconds.
“The idea doesn’t appeal to you?” Sarah queried, disappointment in her tones.
“Yes, it does,” said Helen. “But I must think it over. Now, would you care to see the rest of the house?”
“I should love to. Oh dear, I’ve left my handkerchief with my purse in the drawing-room.”
“Have mine!” said Helen, promptly.
But even after this final proof of intimate friendship, there still remained an obstinate trifle of insincerity in their relations that afternoon. Helen was sure that Sarah Swetnam had paid the call specially to say something, and that the something had not yet been said. And the apprehension of an impending scene gradually took possession of her nerves and disarranged them. When they reached the attics, and were enjoying the glorious views of the moorland in the distance and of Wilbraham Water in the immediate foreground, Helen said, very suddenly:
“Will the rector be in this afternoon?”
“I should say so. Why?”
“I was thinking we might walk down there together, and I could suggest to him at once about having the concert here.”
Sarah clapped her hands. “Then you’ve decided?”
“Certainly.”
“How funny you are, Nell, with your decisions!”
In Helen’s bedroom, amid her wardrobe, there was no chance of dangerous topics, the attention being monopolised by one subject, and that a safe one.
At last they went out together, two models of style and deportment, and Helen pulled to the great front door with a loud echoing clang.
“Fancy that place being all empty. Aren’t you afraid of sleeping there while your uncle is away?”
“No,” said Helen. “But I _should_ be afraid if Georgiana wasn’t afraid.”
After this example of courageous introspection, a silence fell upon the pair; the silence held firm while they got out of the grounds and crossed Oldcastle-road, and took to the Alls field-path, from which a unique panorama of Bursley–chimneys, kilns, canals, railways, and smoke-pall–is to be obtained. Helen was determined not to break the silence. And then came the moment when Sarah Swetnam could no longer suffer the silence; and she began, very cautiously:
“I suppose you’ve heard all about Andrew and Emanuel Prockter?”
Helen perceived that she had not been mistaken, and that the scene was at hand. “No,” said she. “What about them?”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve not heard?”
“No. What about?”
“The quarrel between those two?”
“Emanuel and Mr. Dean?”
“Yes. But you must have heard?”
“I assure you, Sally, no one has told me a word about it.” (Which was just as true as it was untrue.)
“But they quarrelled up here. I _did_ hear that Andrew threw Emanuel into your lake.”
“Who told you that?”
“It was Mrs. Prockter. She was calling on the mater yesterday, and she seemed to be full of it–according to the mater’s account. Mrs. Prockters’ idea was that they had quarrelled about a woman.”
(“Mrs. Prockter shall be repaid for this,” said Helen to herself.)
“Surely Emanuel hasn’t been falling in love with Lilian, has he?” said Helen, aloud. She considered this rather clever on her part. And it was.
“Oh, no!” replied Sally, positively. “It’s not Lilian.” And there was that in her tone which could not be expressed in ten volumes. “You know perfectly well who the woman is,” Helen seemed to hear her say.
Then Helen said: “I think I can explain it. They were both at our house the day we removed.”
“Oh, _were_ they?” murmured Sarah, in well-acted surprise.
“And Mr. Dean fell off some steps that Emanuel was supposed to be holding. I _thought_ he was furious–but not to that point. That’s probably the secret of the whole thing. As for Mr. Dean having pushed Emanuel into the lake, I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Then how was it that Emanuel had a cold and had to stay in bed?”
“My dear, to have a cold it isn’t necessary to have been thrown into Wilbraham Water!”
“That’s true,” Sarah admitted.
“However,” Helen calmly proceeded, “I’ll find out all about it and let you know.”
“How shall you find out?”
“I shall make Emanuel tell me. He will tell me anything. And he’s a dear boy.”
“Do you see him often up here?” Sarah inquired.
“Oh, yes!” This was not true. “We get on together excellently. And I’m pretty sure that Emanuel is not–well–interested in any other woman. That’s why I should say that they have not been quarrelling about a woman. Unless, of course, the woman is myself.” She laughed, and added: “But I’m not jealous. I can trust Emanuel.”
And with marvellous intrepidity she looked Sarah Swetnam in the face.
“Then,” Sarah stammered, “you and Emanuel–you don’t mean—-“
“My dear Sally, don’t you think Emanuel is a perfectly delightful boy?”
“Oh, _yes_!” said Sarah.
“So do I,” said Helen.
“But are you—-“
“Between ourselves,” Helen murmured. “Mind you, between _ourselves_–I could imagine stranger things happening.”
“Well,” said Sarah, “this _is_ news.”
“Mind, not a syllable!”
“Oh, of course not.”
“By the way,” Helen asked, “when are Andrew and Lilian going to get married?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. One confidence for another, my dear; they don’t always hit it off.”
“What a pity!” Helen remarked. “Because if ever two people were suited to each other in this world, they are. But I hope they’ll shake down.”
They arrived at the rector’s.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE CONCERT
On another afternoon a middle-aged man and a young-hearted woman emerged together from Bursley Railway Station. They had a little luggage, and a cab from the Tiger met them by appointment. Impossible to deny that the young-hearted one was wearing a flowered silk under a travelling mantle. The man, before getting into the cab, inquired as to the cost of the cab. The gold angel of the Town Hall rose majestically in front of him, and immediately behind him the Park, with the bowling-green at the top, climbed the Moorthorne slope. The bowling season was of course over, but even during the season he had scarcely played. He was a changed person. And the greatest change of all had occurred that very morning. Throughout a long and active career he had worn paper collars. Paper collars had sufficed him, and they had not shocked his friends. But now he wore a linen collar, and eleven other linen collars were in his carpet-bag. Yet it has been said, by some individual who obviously lacked experience of human nature, that a man never changes the style of his collar after forty.
The cab drove up to Hillport, and deposited flowered silk and one bag at the residence of Mrs. Prockter. It then ascended higher, passing into the grounds of Wilbraham Hall, and ultimately stopping at the grandiose portals thereof, which were wide open.
The occupant of the cab was surprised to see two other cabs just departing. The next moment he was more than surprised–he was startled. A gentleman in evening dress stood at the welcoming doors, and on perceiving him this gentleman ran down the steps, and, with a sort of hurried grace, took his carpet-bag from him, addressing him in broken English, and indicating by incomprehensible words and comprehensible signs that he regarded him, the new arrival, as the light of his eyes and the protector of the poor and of the oppressed. And no sooner had he got the new arrival safe into the hall than he stripped him of hat, coat, and muffler, and might have proceeded to extremes had not his attention been distracted by another vehicle.
This vehicle contained the aged rector of Bursley.
“Ha! Mr. Ollerenshaw!” cried the divine. “Your niece told me only yesterday that you were still in Derby buying property, and would not be back.”
“I’ve bought it, parson,” said James.
“Ha! ha!” said the divine, rubbing his hands. He stooped habitually, which gave him the air of always trying to glimpse at his toes over the promontory of his waist. And as James made no reply to the remark, he repeated: “Ha! ha! So you decided to come to my concert, eh?”
“I only heard of it yesterday,” said James.
“Well,” said the divine, “I’m afraid they’ll be waiting for me. Ha! ha! This way, isn’t it? Fine place you’ve got here. Very fine! Noble!”
And he disappeared through the double doors that led to the drawing-room, which doors were parted for him by a manikin whose clothes seemed to be held together by new sixpences. During the brief instant of opening, a vivacious murmur of conversation escaped like gas from the drawing-room into the hall.
James glanced about for his bag–it was gone. The gentleman in evening dress was out on the steps. Disheartened by the mysterious annihilation of his old friend the bag, James, weary with too much and too various emotion, went slowly up the grand staircase. In his bedroom the first thing he saw was his bag, which had been opened and its contents suitably bestowed. Thus his hair-brushes were on the dressing-table. This miracle completed his undoing. He sat down on an easy-chair, drew the eider-down off the bed, and put it on his knees, for the temperature was low. He did not intend to go to sleep. But he did go to sleep. It was simply a case of nature recovering from emotions.
He slept about an hour, and then, having brushed his wispish hair, he descended the stairs, determined to do or die. Perhaps he would not have plumped himself straight into the drawing-room had not the manikin clad in sixpences assumed that the drawing-room was his Mecca and thrown open the doors.
A loud “Hush!” greeted him. The splendid chamber was full of women’s hats and men’s heads; but hats predominated. And the majority of the audience were seated on gilt chairs which James had never before seen. Probably there were four or five score gilt chairs. At the other end of the room the aged rector sat in an easy-chair. Helen herself was perched at the piano, and in front of the piano stood Emanuel Prockter. Except that the room was much larger, and that, instead of a faultless evening dress, Emanuel wore a faultless frock-coat (with the rest of a suit), the scene reminded James of a similar one on the great concertina night at Mrs. Prockter’s.
Many things had happened since then. Still, history repeats itself.
“O Love!” exclaimed Emanuel Prockter, adagio and sostenuto, thus diverting from James a hundred glances which James certainly was delighted to lose.
And Helen made the piano say “O Love!” in its fashion.
And presently Emanuel was launched upon the sea of his yearnings, and voyaging behind the hurricane of passion. And, as usual, he hid nothing from his hearers. Then he hove to, and, as it were, climbed to the main-topgallant-sail in order to announce:
“O Love!”
It was not surprising that his voice cracked. Emanuel ought to have been the last person to be surprised at such a phenomenon. But he was surprised. To him the phenomenon of that cracking was sempiternally novel and astounding. It pained and shocked him. He wondered whose the fault could be? And then, according to his habit, he thought of the pianist. Of course, it was the fault of the pianist. And, while continuing to sing, he slowly turned and gazed with sternness at the pianist. The audience must not be allowed to be under any misapprehension as to the identity of the culprit. Unfortunately, Emanuel, wrapped up, like the artist he was, in his performance, had himself forgotten the identity of the culprit. Helen had ceased to be Helen; she was merely his pianist. The thing that he least expected to encounter when gazing sternly at the pianist was the pianist’s gaze. He was accustomed to flash his anger on the pianist’s back. But Helen, who had seen other pianists at work for Emanuel, turned as he turned, and their eyes met. The collision disorganised Emanuel. He continued to glare with sternness, and he ceased to sing. A contretemps had happened. For the fifth of a second everybody felt exceedingly awkward. Then Helen said, with a faint, cold smile, in a voice very low and very clear:
“What’s the matter with you, Mr. Prockter? It wasn’t my voice that cracked.”
The minx!
There was a half-hearted attempt at the maintenance of the proprieties, and then Wilbraham Hall rang with the laughter of a joke which the next day had become the common precious property of all the Five Towns. When the aged rector had restored his flock to a sense of decency Mr. Emanuel Prockter had vanished. In that laughter his career as a singer reached an abrupt and final conclusion. The concert also came to an end. And the collection, by which the divine always terminated these proceedings, was the largest in the history of the Guild.
A quarter of an hour or twenty minutes later all the guests, members, and patrons of the St. Luke’s Guild had left, most of them full of kind inquiries after Mr. Ollerenshaw, the genial host of that so remarkably successful entertainment. The appearances and disappearances of Mr. Ollerenshaw had been a little disturbing. First it had been announced that he was detained in Derby, buying property. Indeed, few persons were unaware that, except for a flying visit in the middle, of two days, to collect his rents, James had spent a fortnight in Derby purchasing sundry portions of Derby. Certainly Helen had not expected him. Nor had she expected Mrs. Prockter, who two days previously had been called away by telegram to the bedside of a sick cousin in Nottingham. Nor had she expected Lilian Swetnam, who was indisposed. The unexpected ladies had not arrived; but James had arrived, as disconcerting as a ghost, and then had faded away with equal strangeness. None of the departing audience had seen even the tassel of his cap.
Helen discovered him in his little room at the end of the hall. She was resplendent in black and silver.
“So here you are, uncle!” said she, and kissed him. “I’m so glad you got back in time. Can you lend me sixpence?”
“What for, lass?”
“I want to give it to the man who’s taking away the chairs I had to hire.”
“What’s become of that seven hundred and seventy pound odd as ye had?”
“Oh,” she said, lightly, “I’ve spent that.” She thought she might as well have done with it, and added: “And I’m in debt–lots. But we’ll talk about that later. Sixpence, please.”
He blenched. But he, too, had been expensive in the pursuit of delight. He, too, had tiresome trifles on his mind. So he produced the sixpence, and accepted the dissipation of nearly eight hundred pounds in less than a month with superb silence.
Helen rang the bell. “You see, I’ve had all the bells put in order,” she said.
The gentleman in evening dress entered.
“Fritz,” said she, “give this sixpence to the man with the chairs.”
“Yes, miss,” Fritz dolefully replied. “A note for you, miss.”
And he stretched forth a charger on which was a white envelope.
“Excuse me, uncle,” said she, tearing the envelope.
“Dinna’ mind me, lass,” said he.
The note ran:
“I must see you by the Water to-night at nine o’clock. Don’t fail, or there will be a row.–
A.D.”
She crushed it.
“No answer, Fritz,” said she. “Tell cook, dinner for two.”
“Who’s he?” demanded James when Fritz had bowed himself out.
“That’s our butler,” said Helen, kindly. “Don’t you like his eyes?”
“I wouldna’ swop him eyes,” said James. He could not trust himself to discuss the butler’s eyes at length.
“Don’t be late for dinner, will you, uncle?” she entreated him.
“Dinner!” he cried. “I had my dinner at Derby. What about my tea?”
“I mean tea,” she said.
He went upstairs again to his room, but did not stay there a moment. In the corridor he met Helen, swishing along.
“Look here, lass,” he stopped her. “A straight question deserves a straight answer. I’m not given to curiosity as a rule, but what is Emanuel Prockter doing on my bed?”
“Emanuel Prockter on your bed!” Helen repeated, blankly. He saw that she was suffering from genuine surprise.
“On my bed!” he insisted.
The butler appeared, having heard the inquiry from below. He explained that Mr. Prockter, after the song, had come to him and asked where he could lie down, as he was conscious of a tendency to faint. The butler had indicated Mr. Ollerenshaw’s room as the only masculine room available.
“Go and ask him how he feels,” Helen commanded.
Fritz obeyed, and returned with the message that Mr. Prockter had “one of his attacks,” and desired his mother.
“But he can’t have his mother,” said Helen. “She’s at Nottingham. He told me so himself. He must be delirious.” And she laughed.
“No, her isn’t,” James put in. “Her’s at wum” (home).
“How do you know, uncle?”
“I know,” said James. “Her’d better be sent for.”
And she was sent for.
CHAPTER XXVII
UNKNOTTING AND KNOTTING
When Mrs. Prockter arrived it was obvious to Helen, in spite of her wonderful calm upon discovering James Ollerenshaw’s butler and page, that the lady was extremely ill-at-ease. And Helen, though preoccupied herself by matters of the highest personal importance, did what she could to remedy a state of affairs so unusual. Probably nobody, within the memory of that generation, had ever seen Mrs. Prockter ill-at-ease. Helen inquired as to the health of the sick relative at Nottingham, and received a reply in which vagueness was mingled with hesitancy and a blush. It then became further obvious to the perspicuous Helen that Mrs. Prockter must have heard of her stepson’s singular adventure, and either resented Helen’s share in it, or was ashamed of Emanuel’s share in it.
“You know that Emanuel is here?” said Helen, with her most diplomatic and captivating smile.
But Mrs. Prockter did not know. “I thought Mr. Ollerenshaw wanted me,” Mrs. Prockter explained, “so I came as quickly as I could.”
“It was I who wanted to speak to you,” said Helen. “The truth is that Emanuel is lying on uncle’s bed, unwell or something, and he expressed a wish to see you. He was singing at the concert—-“
“So sorry I wasn’t able to be here,” Mrs. Prockter inserted, with effusive anxiety.
“We missed you awfully,” Helen properly responded. “The rector was inconsolable. So was everybody,” she added, feeling that as a compliment the rector’s grief might be deemed insufficient. “And he had a breakdown.”
“Who? Emanuel?”
“Yes. I was accompanying him, and I am afraid it was my fault. Anyhow, he didn’t finish his song. And then we missed him. He had asked the butler to let him lie down somewhere, and uncle found him in his bedroom. I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“Oh, my dear girl,” said Mrs. Prockter, regaining somewhat her natural demeanour in a laugh, “if it’s only one of Emanuel’s singing breakdowns, we needn’t worry. Can I go up and talk sense to him? He’s just like a child, you know.”
“Let me take you up,” cried Helen.
And the two women ascended the grand staircase. It was the first time the grand staircase had been used with becoming dignity since Mrs. Prockter had used it on her visit of inspection. That staircase and Mrs. Prockter were made for each other.
No sooner had they disappeared than James popped out of his lair, where he had been hiding, and gazed up the staircase like a hunter stalking his prey. The arrival of the page in sixpences put him out of countenance for a moment, especially when the page began to feed the hall-fire in a manner contrary to all James’s lifelong notions of feeding fires. However, he passed the time by giving the page a lesson.
Helen tapped at the bedroom door, left Mrs. Prockter to enter, and descended the stairs again.
“Is her up there with him?” James asked, in a whisper.
Helen nodded.
“Ye’d better ask her stop and have something to eat wi’ us,” said James.
Helen had to reconcile James Ollerenshaw to the new scale of existence at Wilbraham Hall. She had to make him swallow the butler, and the page, and the other servants, and the grand piano–in themselves a heavy repast–without counting the evening dinner. Up to the present he had said nothing, because there had been no fair opportunity to say anything. But he might start at any moment. And Helen had no reason to believe that he had even begun the process of swallowing. She argued, with a sure feminine instinct and a large experience of mankind, that if he could only be dodged into tacitly accepting the new scale for even a single meal, her task would be very much simplified. And what an ally Mrs. Prockter would be!
“Tell cook there will be three to dinner,” she said to the page, who fled gleefully.
After a protracted interval Mrs. Prockter reappeared.
She began by sighing. “The foolish boy is seriously damaged,” said she.
“Not hurt?” Helen asked.
“Yes. But only in his dignity. He pretends it’s his throat, but it isn’t. It’s only his dignity. I suppose all singers are children, like that. I’m really ashamed to have to ask you to let him lie there a little, dear Miss Rathbone; but he is positively sure that he can’t get up. I’ve been through these crises with him before, but never one quite so bad.”
She laughed. They all laughed.
“I’ll let him lie there on one condition,” Helen sweetly replied. “And that is that you stay to dinner. I am relying on you. And I won’t take a refusal.”
Mrs. Prockter looked sharply at James, and James blushed.
“James,” she exclaimed, “you’ve told her. And you promised you wouldn’t till to-morrow.”
“Nay!” said James. “I’ve said nowt! It’s you as has let it out, _now_, missis!”
“Told me what, Mrs. Prockter?” Helen asked, utterly unexpectant of the answer she was to get.
“My dear girl,” said the elder dame, “do not call me Mrs. Prockter. I am Mrs. Ollerenshaw. I am the property that your uncle has been buying at Derby. And he is my sick relative at Nottingham. We preferred to do it like that. We could not have survived engagements and felicitations.”
“Oh, you wicked sinners! You–you terrible darlings!” Helen burst out as soon as she could control her voice.
Mrs. Ollerenshaw wept discreetly.
“Bless us! Bless us!” murmured James, not to beseech a benediction, but simply to give the impression (quite false) that, in his opinion, much fuss was being made about nothing.
The new scale of existence was definitely accepted. And in private Mrs. Ollerenshaw entirely agreed with Helen as to the merits of the butler.
After dinner James hurried to his lair to search for a book. The book was not where he had left it, on his original entry into Wilbraham Hall. Within two minutes, the majority of the household staff was engaged in finding that book. Ultimately the butler discovered it; the butler had been reading it.
“Ay!” said James, opening the volume as he stood in front of the rich, expensive fire in the hall. “Dickens–Charles Dickens–that’s the chap’s name. I couldn’t think of it when I was telling you about th’ book th’ other day. I mun’ go on wi” that.”
“Couldn’t you play us something?” responded his wife.
In the triumph of concertinas over grand pianos, poor Emanuel, lying wounded upstairs, was forgotten. At five minutes to nine Helen stole, unperceived, away from the domestic tableau. She had by no means recovered from her amazement; but she had screened it off by main force in her mind, and she was now occupied with something far more important than the blameless amours of the richest old man in Hillport.
By Wilbraham Water a young man was walking to and fro in the deep autumn night. He wore a cap and a muffler, but no overcoat, and his hands were pushed far down into the pockets of his trousers. He regarded the ground fixedly, and stamped his feet at every step. Then a pale grey figure, with head enveloped in a shawl, and skirts carefully withdrawn from the ground, approached him.
He did not salute the figure, he did not even take his hands out of his pockets. He put his face close to hers, and each could see that the other’s features were white and anxious.
“So you’ve come,” said he, glumly.
“What do you want?” Helen coldly asked.
“I want to speak to you. That’s what I want. If you care for Emanuel Prockter, why did you play that trick on him this afternoon?”
“What trick?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. So I’ll thank you not to beat about the bush. The plain fact is that you don’t care a pin for Prockter.”
“I never said I did.”
“You’ve made every one believe you did, anyhow. You’ve even made me think so, though all the time I knew it was impossible. An ass like that!”
“What do you want?” Helen repeated.
They were both using a tone intended to indicate that they were enemies from everlasting to everlasting, and that mere words could not express the intensity of their mutual hatred and scorn. The casual distant observer might have conceived the encounter to be a love idyll.
There was a short silence.
“I broke off my engagement last night,” Andrew Dean muttered, ferociously.
“Really!” Helen commented.
“You don’t seem to care.”
“I don’t see what it has to do with me. But if you talked to Lilian Swetnam in the same nice agreeable manner that you talk to me, I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that she broke with you.”
“Who told you _she_ broke?” Andrew demanded.
“I guessed,” said Helen. “You’d never have had the courage to break it off yourself.”
Andrew made a vicious movement.
“If you mean to serve me as you served Emanuel,” she remarked, with bitter calm, “please do it as gently as you can. And don’t throw me far. I can only swim a little.”
Andrew walked away.
“Good-night,” she called.
“Look here!” he snarled coming back to her “What’s the matter with you? I know I oughtn’t to have asked Lilian to marry me. Everybody knows that. It’s universally agreed. But are you going to make that an excuse for spoiling the whole show? What’s up with you is pride.”
“And what is up with you?” she inquired.
“Pride,” said he. “How could I know you were in love with me all the time? How could—-“
“You couldn’t,” said Helen. “I wasn’t. No more than you were with me.”
“If you weren’t in love with me, why did you try to make me jealous?”
“Me try to make you jealous!” she exclaimed, disdainfully. “You flatter yourself, Mr. Dean!”
“I can stand a good deal, but I can’t stand lies, and I won’t!” he exploded. “I say you did try to make me jealous.”
He then noticed that she was crying.
The duologue might have extended itself indefinitely if her tears had not excited him to uncontrollable fury, to that instinctive cruelty that every male is capable of under certain conditions. Without asking her permission, without uttering a word of warning, he rushed at her and seized her in his arms. He crushed her with the whole of his very considerable strength. And he added insult to injury by kissing her about forty seven times. Women are such strange, incalculable creatures. Helen did not protest. She did not invoke the protection of Heaven. She existed, passively and silently, the unremonstrating victim of his disgraceful violence.
Then he held her at arm’s length. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you try to make me jealous?”
“Yes.”
Later, as they walked by the lake, he ejaculated: “I’m an awful brute!”
“I like you as you are,” she replied.
But the answer was lacking in precision, for at that moment he was being as tender as only an awful brute can be.
“Of course,” she said, “we mustn’t say anything about it yet.”
“No,” he agreed. “To let it out at once might make unpleasantness between you and the Swetnams.”
“Oh!” she said, “I wasn’t thinking of that. But there’s another love-affair in the house, and no house will hold two at once. It would be nauseating.”
That is how they talk in the Five Towns. As if one could have too much love, even in a cottage–to say nothing of a Wilbraham Hall! Mrs. Ollerenshaw placidly decided that she and James would live at the Hall, though James would have preferred something a size smaller. As I have already noticed, the staircase suited her; James suited her, too. No one could guess why, except possibly James. They got on together, as the Five Towns said, “like a house afire.”
Helen and Andrew Dean were satisfied with a semi-detached villa in Park-road, with a fine view of the gold angel. Women vary, capricious beings! Helen is perfectly satisfied with one servant. But she dresses rather better than ever.
THE END
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