CHAPTER VIII
It was four o'clock on an afternoon of mid-July, and the westering sun had begun to blaze into the drawing-room windows of Colonel Vautier's house in Oakland Crescent. It was pleasant enough there in the winter, for the room, being small, was easily heated; but in the summer, with even greater ease it grew oven-like, and Helena, sitting by the open window for the sake of any air that might possibly wander into the dusty crescent, was obliged to pull down the blinds. She had tried, sitting in her father's study, but that had an infection of stray cigar-smoke about it which she did not want tocatch, and the dining-room and her own bedroom, since they faced the same way as the drawing-room, presented no counter-attractions. So, reluctantly, she was compelled to sit here, while Jessie, with a book in her hand sat at the other end of the room. Jessie had a slight attack of hay-fever, and from time to time indulged in a fit of sneezing. It seemed to Helena that she was being very inconsiderate: it was always possible to stifle a sneeze. But Jessie never thought about other people. Helena, by way of waiting patiently at Jessie's door (according to the tender image she had fashioned for Archie's benefit) had just expressed this opinion slightly veiled, and she was pleased to see that at this moment Jessie left the room. A sound of sneezing from outside indicated that at last her sister had. grasped how exceedingly unpleasant her hay-fever was for other people. Then there came the sound of ascending steps, and she guessed that Jessie had gone to her bedroom. The floors were wretchedly thin and ill-constructed; you could, from any room in the house, hear movements from any other room, especially since Colonel Vautier and Jessie had such solid, resounding steps when they went anywhere.
Left to herself, Helena cleared her decks, and enumerated her cause of complaint against Providence, who ought to have been so kind to an innocent, loving little soul. In the first place, her father had finished his irrigation business in Egypt unexpectedly soon, and instead of arriving in London not before September, had come two months earlier than the most pessimistic daughter could have expected. The news of his approaching arrival had provoked a perfect conspiracy against Helena's comfort and her plans, for every one, including Cousin Marion, who had been so insistent on the girls' staying with her till he got home, had taken it for granted that they would at once rejoin him. Surely it would have been sufficient for Jessie to go (and she did Jessie the justice of allowing that she was perfectly ready to do so), leaving Helena to help Cousin Marion in the answering of her letters in the morning for some half-hour, in the entertaining of her numerous guests, and in accompanying her to any of those pleasant gaieties which swarmed about that desirable house. But instead, Cousin Marion had been quite unaware, to all appearance, of the hints Helena had subtly suggested, and Archie had been equally uncomprehending. When she had said, "This house seems so much more like my home than any other," he had certainly glowed with pleasure, but had not thought it was meant to have any application with regard to her going back to Oakland Crescent. No one had taken her hints; it had occurred to nobody how suitable it was that Jessie should go to look after her father, and Helena remain to look after her cousin. But since her hints were not taken, Helena, like the excellent tactician she was, had retreated in preference to standing her ground and suffering defeat. She had to retreat, and she retreated with exactly the proper mixture of regret at leaving Grosvenor Square and of joy at her father's premature return. And when his taxicab drew up palpitating at the door, it was she who ran down the three concrete steps from the front-door and across the awful little dusty yard called the front garden, with its cinder path that circulated round one laurel-bush, and flung herself into his arms, and helped the parlour-maid to carry in his bag, while Jessie waited in the narrow entrance that reeked of the ascending fumes of dinner, for the parlour-maid, as usual, had left open the door at the head of the kitchen stairs.
There was a grudge against Providence even deeper than this unnecessary transplanting of herself to Oakland Crescent, when she might so comfortably have flourished in Grosvenor Square. Archie had dined with them two nights ago, before taking her on to a dance, and in the interval that followed dinner, when her father and Archie remained downstairs, she had a painful scene with Jessie. Jessie, according to Helena's public version, had misunderstood her in the cruellest manner, but she knew that her real complaint here was not that her sister had cruelly misunderstood her, but had, in fact, cruelly understood her, which was more intolerable than any misunderstanding could have been. She could have borne a misunderstanding very patiently, but to be understood was of the nature of an exposure, of a kind scarcely decent, and impossible to forget.
It had begun so stupidly, so innocuously. She had but left a few orchids on her dressing-table, and Jessie, who naturally was not going to the dance, but was remaining at home to keep her father company, most kindly offered to get them for her. She came down again so ominously silent that Helena had asked her what the trouble was, and it appeared that Jessie had seen on the dressing-table the card of Lord Harlow with a safety-pin attached to it.
"Yes, darling, why not?" Helena had said. "He sent me those lovely orchids—thank you so much for getting them. He is going to be there to-night, and as he sent expressly for them from Harlow, naturally I shall wear them. It would be rude not to, don't you think?"
Jessie did not reply, and Helena repeated her question. For answer, Jessie had said in that soft rich voice which was the only thing that Helena envied her:
"You revolt me."
Helena became quite cool and collected. She might represent herself as being tearful and pathetic at the thought of Jessie's unkindness, but that attitude was useless with Jessie alone, and she never adopted it.
"Oh! May I ask why I revolt you?" she asked.
"Certainly, although you know already. Archie is in love with you."
Helena adopted the phrases of affection. She did so simply to irritate her sister.
"Darling, how delicious you are!" she said. "But mayn't I wear a flower from Tom, Dick, or Harry for that reason? I don't grant the reason for a moment; but, even if I did, what then? Besides, Archie hasn't given me any flowers, and one must have flowers at a dance."
But Jessie refused to be irritated. Helena's speech seemed to have exactly the opposite effect on her: she became gentle and apologetic.
"I'm sorry I said that you revolted me," she said. "It was thoughtless and stupid. But, O Helena, you are so thoughtless too. Do forgive me for questioning you, but—but are you intending to marry Lord Harlow if he asks you? If so, do make it clear to Archie, before things get worse, that you have no thought of him. You like him, don't you? You might save his suffering."
This was the understanding, not the misunderstanding, that was so cruel. But Helena was quite capable of being cruel too. She smelled her orchids, and pinned them into her gown. Simultaneously she heard feet on the stairs, and Archie's resonant laugh. She got up.
"I might almost think you were jealous of Archie's affection for me, darling," she said, in her most suave tones.
Before the door opened she saw Jessie's face flame with colour, and laughed to herself at the defencelessness of love. Next moment Archie launched himself into the room.
"Hullo! What fine orchids!" he said. "Who sent you them, Helena? I bet you the Bradshaw did. What a thing it is to have opulent admirers! I wish I had got some."
But since that evening, now nearly a week ago, Jessie had not spoken to Helena except when mere manners in the presence of other people required it. That was a tiresome, uncomfortable situation. In a big house it would not have mattered much, for they could easily have sat in different rooms; but here it made an awkwardness in the narrow existence. But Helena had the consolation of knowing that she had not merely knocked at Jessie's door, but had battered it in. The secret chamber stood open to her, and the shrine in it was revealed before unpitying eyes.
Here, then, were two grievances against the world, that might have taxed the patience of Job, and certainly super-taxed the patience of Helena. On the top of these, Ossa on Pelion, was perched an anxiety that had begun seriously to trouble her, for already it was the middle of July and Lord Harlow had as yet said nothing which suggested that he was going to propose to her. She knew that she charmed and captivated him, who had never looked seriously at a girl twice (nor at poor Daisy once); but he was undeniably a long time making up his mind, and Helena, though accustomed to repose the greatest confidence in herself, did not feel sure that she would prove equal to defeating the long-standing habit of celibacy. Even the continuous use of Archie in the capacity of a wedge seemed to make no impression, and she was beginning to be desperately afraid that the wedge would turn in her hand, and ask her to marry him before Lord Harlow succumbed. This would be a very awkward situation; most inauspicious developments might follow, for it would be tragic if she accepted Archie, and Lord Harlow proposed immediately afterwards, while, if she refused Archie, it would be a crown of tragedy if Lord Harlow did not propose at all. She had determined, in fact, if Archie proposed first, to ask him to wait for his answer.
A little breeze was stirring now, and Helena pulled up the blind to let it and the sun enter together, rather than endure this stifling stagnancy any longer, and gazed with the profoundest disgust at the mean outlook. The house stood in the centre of a small curve of three-storied buildings; in front was its little square of cindery walk with the one laurel in the middle, and a row of iron palings with a gate that would not shut which separated it from the road. On the other side of that was a small demilune of a garden, which gave the place the title of Crescent, and beyond that a straight row of houses all exactly alike. A milkman was going his rounds with alto cries, and slovenly cooks and parlour-maids came out of area gates with milk-jugs in their hands. A lean and mournful cat, with dirty, dishevelled fur, as unlike as possible to the sleek, smart mouser she had seen at the station, sat on a gate-post, blinking in the sun, and every now and then uttering a faint protest against existence generally. Helena could have found it in her heart to mew in answer.
The hot afternoon wore itself away, and presently the parlour-maid came in to lay a table for tea. This entailed a great many comings-in and a great many goings-out, and she usually left the door open, so that there oozed its way up the stairs a mixed smell of cigars and incipient cooking. The cigar smell came from the little back room adjoining the dining-room where Colonel Vautier, with tropical habits, spent the hour after tiffin (it seemed that he could not say "lunch") in dozings and smokings. Meantime the parlour-maid came in and out, now with a large brass tea-tray, to place on the table, now with plates and cups and saucers to put on it. She breathed strongly through her nose, and wore a white apron with white braces over her sloping shoulders.
From outside, during these trying moments, there came the sound of a motor-horn, and immediately afterwards the soft crunch of gravel below a motor's wheels. From where she sat, Helena could look out of the window, and from her torpid discontent she leaped with a bound into a state of alert expectancy. She hazarded, so to speak, all the small change she had in her pocket. For a moment she put her slim fingers in front of her eyes and thought intensely. Then she spoke to the parlour-maid.
"Take a tray of tea to Colonel Vautier in his study," she said, "and say that I have got a headache and told you to bring his tea to him there. Tell Miss Jessie"—Helena paused a moment—"tell her that a friend of mine has come to see me, and that I want to talk to him privately here. That's all: now open the door, and say that I am in."
Helena rushed to the looking-glass above the fireplace, and disarranged her hair a little. She took a book at random out of the shelves, and sat down with it. She heard a little stir in the hall below, and had a moment of agony in thinking that her father's door had opened. Then the stairs creaked under ascending footsteps, and her visitor was announced.
"Who?" she said, as the parlour-maid spoke his name, and then he entered.
She rose from her chair, with a smile that was almost incredulous.
"But how lovely of you!" she said. "I am delighted. What a business you must have had to find your way to our dear little slum."
Her hopes rose high: he looked like a man who had made up his mind. He was clearly nervous, but it was the nervousness of a man who has definitely sat down in the dentist's chair, and has resolved to get rid of that aching. He sat down in the chair Helena indicated, and looked round the room. It really was rather pretty. Helena had the knack of projecting her graceful self into any room she much used. Archie had sent a hamper of roses only this morning.
"Slum?" he said. "I should like to live in this slum."
Helena looked at him gravely.
"Well, there is a spare room," she said, "which we can let you. You won't mind a gurgling cistern next door, will you? But wasn't it lovely? Daddy came home a whole month earlier than I had expected, so I flew back here to be with him. Cousin Marion wanted me to stop with her, and let Jessie come back. It was sweet of her to want me, but how could I remain when Daddy was here? Tea?"
She gave him his cup, and continued her careful prattle.
"So of course I flew here," she said. "Sometimes I rather wish that a fairy-prince would descend, and pick up the house, and put it somewhere where there weren't quite so many barrel-organs; but one gets accustomed to everything. I think Daddy and Jessie must be out. They planned going out together, I know, and I haven't seen either of them since lunch. They are such dears! They are so much to each other! Sometimes I should get a little bit jealous of each of them, if I allowed myself to. Ah! do have one of those little cakes. They are made in the house; you probably smelled them as you came upstairs. How lucky I asked the cook to make some to-day. Sometimes she is cross, and won't; but to-day she was kind. Did she have a brain-wave, do you think, and know that you were coming?"
He ate one of the little cakes which really came from the pastry-cook's just round the corner, and while his mouth was full, Helena proceeded with her talented conversation. She was working at full horse-power, she wanted to dazzle without intermission.
"I daresay all the people who were so friendly will find their way here in time," she said, "but will you pity me, just in a superficial way, sometimes during August? Darling daddy has so much to do at the Colonial Office, or the Irrigation Office, or whatever it is, that he will have to be here all August."
"But he won't keep you in London?" asked he.
Helena laughed.
"Certainly he won't, for I shall keep myself," she said. "I shall try to persuade Jessie to go down to Lacebury with Cousin Marion, and I think I shall succeed. And where will you be? Up in Scotland, I suppose."
He put down the end of the cigarette which Helena had given him. He was less likely, if he was smoking, to smell the faint odour of cigar that had mounted the stairs. But, as a matter of fact, he would not have noticed the smell of burned feathers just then.
He turned to her quickly.
"I shall be—wherever you will permit me to be," he said. "But, wherever that is, mayn't we be together? I want never to be away from you any more. I want nothing else in the world but that."
Helena raised dewy eyes to him.
"Do you mean …?" she began. "Do you mean …?"
"Yes. And I want your answer."
"That is, 'yes,' too," she said.
She had an almost irresistible desire to burst into peals of laughter, but it was not so difficult to transform that into an aspect of radiant happiness. He kissed her, and she could feel his hands laid on her shoulders, trembling. And, out of sheer gratitude, she found herself able to respond quite passably, for the innate respectability of passion touched her. He had paid her the sincerest compliment that a man can pay a girl, in expressing his desire to have her always with him, to be the father of her children, to renounce such freedom as had been his, and to take in exchange for it a devoted slavery. And, since it was exactly that which she had set her purpose to accomplish, it was no wonder that she was content.
But, as soon as he had left her, without translating into the sphere of practical arrangements the when and how of their mutual pledge, Helena, after one tiptoe dance round the drawing-room, sat down again and was instantly immersed in those considerations. He would have liked to dine with them that night, but Archie was coming, and so, before he called again next morning, it was necessary to indulge in careful thought so as to produce a spontaneous suggestion next day. On her face she wore the happiness of child-like smiles, and throughout her meditations that never faded. Occasionally it was as if the sun was withdrawn behind some fleece of a summer cloud; but, if there had been a machine for the registration of her internal sunshine, there would scarcely have been a break in the record of serene hours.
Archie occupied her first; she was sorry for Archie, because the blow that this would be to him glanced back on to her. She had long ago made up her mind not to marry him if she could succeed in the quest now accomplished, but she regretted that now she would never see his eyes glow as he blurted out—she knew he would blurt it out, and probably kiss her with that light, rough eagerness which was so characteristic of him—the tale of his love. Not so many weeks ago, at Silorno, she had determined to marry him, but that was before the wider horizon opened to her. If he had proposed to her then she would certainly have accepted him, but she felt, though so much finer a future had now dawned on her, a sort of grudge against him for not having done so. That made the thought of telling him not unpleasant to her; there was an excitement in the thought of seeing his blank face—would it be blank? She thought so—when he heard her news. Perhaps the sight of how much it hurt him would hurt her also, but that pain would somehow enfold a rapture, for it would be clear how much he wanted her. But why had he not kissed her, when they sat on that last evening in the dark garden at Silorno? All might have been different then. Never till this afternoon had a man kissed her, and that kiss had struck her as being a little prim and proper. Archie would not and could not have been prim, he would have been quick and impulsive; there would have been something romantic about it, for with him she could have supplied that gleam of romance herself.
There had been fleecy clouds during this part of her meditation, and they gathered again, ever so light, as she thought of Cousin Marion and Jessie. Everybody was so clever nowadays, and she was afraid that Cousin Marion had seen that Archie was in love with her, even as Jessie had done. It would be tiresome if they behaved censoriously about it, and replied frigidly to congratulations, and made cold faces at the wedding. But she thought she could get round Cousin Marion, who, from experience, she knew was very easily convinced, but Jessie was more clear-sighted.… And then, with a sense of refreshment, she remembered how Jessie had betrayed herself not so many days ago. Thereat the sun came out quite serenely again, and remained out when she thought of her father. He loved shooting, and Helena determined that he should enjoy quantities of shooting. He loved all sorts of the nice things that money made so easily procurable, comfort and good cigars and riding and bathrooms attached to bedrooms. Certainly there should be a delicious room for him in all her houses; she would name it "daddy's room." The filial sentimentality of this quite overcame her, and she murmured "darling daddy," and felt just as if she had sacrificed herself for him and made this marriage in order to secure him a comfortable old age. Bertie and he would get on excellently together: they could talk about tiger-shooting, and temples, and exotic affairs—for Bertie was a great traveller, and, if he wanted to travel again, she had no intention of being an apron-stringing wife. Marriage became a sacrilege rather than a sacrament if it was an affair of watchdogs on the leash, ready to follow up trails. And again she softly applauded the nobility of her sentiments.
There was a faint stir and rattle of crockery in the room below, which implied that the parlour-maid was removing her father's tea. Helena knew all the noises of the house, down to the gurgling sound of tooth-cleaning that came from her father's bedroom, which showed that he was nearly dressed, and now, correctly interpreting the chink of plate and tea-cup, she was certain of finding him in his study with his after-tea cigar. Very likely Jessie had gone there too; for she often took the evening paper in to her father and read him the news, and Helena hoped that this was the case to-day. She could let Jessie know the event of the afternoon with less embarrassment if there was somebody else present. She could tell her father about it much more easily than she could tell Jessie alone. She would sit close to him, and whisper and hide her head … her sense of drama would make it all quite simple.
She fastened one of the cream-coloured roses that Archie had brought her into the front of her dress and went down to her father's room. It was a stale little apartment, dry and brown and smoked like a kippered herring, furnished chiefly with books and files and decorated with the produce of oriental bazaars, spears and shells and things suggestive of mummies. He was in a big basket chair close to the window, and in the window-seat, as she had hoped, sat Jessie, with the evening paper.
Helena had not forgotten that she had sent a message to him that she had a headache, and to Jessie, that a friend had come to see her with a wish for a private conversation. She made these little plans quickly perhaps but always coolly, and remembered them afterwards. Sometimes a little delicate adjustment was necessary, but she seldom got caught out.…
"Darling daddy," she said, "may I pay you a little visit? Or are you and Jessie engrossed in something I shan't understand?"
"No, come in, dear," said he. "How's the headache?"
She hovered for a moment like some bright bird, and then perched herself on the arm of his chair, between him and her sister.
"It's quite gone, ever so many thanks," she said. "I think I must have had a little snooze just before tea, which took it away. And then, as I told Jessie, somebody came here especially to have a little talk to me. Daddy, how delicious your cigar smells!"
"And who was your visitor?" he asked.
"Lord Harlow," said she very softly, and paused.
Jessie had put down her paper, and Helena could feel that she was listening in tense expectation. She did not look round, but firmly laid her hand on Jessie's, clasping it. The other she tucked into her father's arm, and leaned her head against his shoulder.
"Daddy, I had a long talk to him," she said, "and he is coming here again to-morrow morning. At least, he did the talking, and I only spoke when he had said what he had come to say. Oh, my dear, I am so happy, so awfully, awfully happy."
Helena felt that she had done that quite beautifully. If she had thought about it for ever so long, she could not have improved on it. A few boisterous ejaculations from her father followed, and, finding that Jessie had disengaged her hand, she completed the circle round her father's arm. Then presently she rose, with smiling and suffused face, just kissed him, and left the room.
"Well, I'm sure that's the best bit of news I've heard for a long time," he said. "Certainly he is a good deal older than she, but there's no harm in that. I was twenty years older than your mother, Jessie. And what do you think of it all?"
"I think Helena will be very happy," said Jessie.
"So do I, and I'm sure she deserves to be. If she's as kind and loving to her husband as she has been to her father, we shan't hear any complaints. Dear me! What a bit of news!"
He was silent a moment.
"How we old folk get out of touch with young people!" he said. "If I had been told to guess who it was who would ask Helena to be his wife, I should have said it was Archie. Didn't you think that Archie was very fond of her?"
Mixed with Jessie's misery for Archie's sake, and with her bitter contempt for her sister, was a pity for Helena, as deep as the sea, that she could be what she was. She could wear the roses Archie had sent her, and not be burned alive by them.…
"I never thought that Helena really cared for him," she said quietly.
"No? Well, you were more clear-sighted than I. But I fancy Marion thought so too. He's dining with us to-night, isn't he? Or will Helena put him off? And are we to say anything to him about it?"
"I expect Helena will tell us what she wishes," said Jessie.
He laughed.
"No doubt she will. She—what's the phrase?—she pulls the strings in this piece, doesn't she? Bless me, it's after six o'clock. We might go across the bridge and have a stroll in Battersea Park. I expect Helena will like to be left alone. Yes; what is it?"
The parlour-maid had come in, with the request that Colonel Vautier would go to see Helena for a minute now, or some time before dinner. Accordingly he went upstairs, in high good humour, stumbling on the carpet-rods.
"Oh, daddy, how sweet of you to come to me at once!" she said. "Archie's dining here to-night, and I think I will tell him my news myself. He's such a dear; it would hurt him to hear it from anybody else."
Colonel Vautier felt that he had perhaps not been so wrong after all.
"Yes, my dear, that is kind and thoughtful of you," he said.
"So I'll tell him as soon as he gets here," said she. "Will you and Jessie be very kind and let me have two minutes with him?"
Helena's eyes wandered away a minute, and returned rather dewy to her father's face.
"Perhaps you would tell Jessie for me," she said.
She opened her eyes very wide, in a sort of childlike bewilderment.
"I wonder why Jessie is so cold to me," she said. "I must have vexed her somehow without meaning it. I feel sad about it. She did not say one word when I told you and her my news; she did not kiss me.…"
"Jessie is never very demonstrative," said her father, intending to speak to Jessie about this.
"No; perhaps that's all. Thank you ever so much, daddy."
She watched them going out together, and thought what a pity it was that some people were so frank as to say that others revolted them, even though they apologized afterwards. It never paid to be coarse and rude like that.…
Helena, according to her plan, was in the drawing-room among his roses when Archie arrived.
"It was delicious of you to send them," she said. "And I've got—something for you."
"Hurrah!" said Archie. "What is it?"
She had put a half sovereign and a half-crown on the corner of the mantel-piece, and handed it to him.
"A tip?" he said.
"No; a bet. I am poor but honest."
He looked at the money.
"Twelve and six?" he said. "When did you bet me twelve-and-six?"
Helena came a step closer to him. Even in the middle of London there was something of sea-wind and open spaces about Archie.
"Oh, you stupid boy!" she said. "How many half-crowns is that?"
Suddenly Archie remembered the wager he had made with her one morning in the Park, that Lord Harlow would propose to her before the end of the season. He pocketed the money with a shout of laughter.
"Ha! I knew I should win," he said, "but it wasn't nice of me to laugh. I take back the laugh. Poor old Bradshaw! Did he mind much?"
Helena looked at him, still standing close to him, smiling and in silence. She really found him most attractive at that moment, and she wondered with how changed a face he would presently look at her.
"Yes, he proposed to me this afternoon," she said, still smiling, and still looking at him.
"Well, poor old Bradshaw!" said Archie once more. But he did not say it with quite the same confidence.
She laid her hand, that soft hand with sheathed claws, on his arm.
"Archie, aren't you going to wish me happiness?" she asked.
The lines of his laughter still lingered on his handsome mouth, but now they were merely stamped there and meant nothing.
"Wish you happiness?" he rapped out in a hard, snappish voice.
"Yes: isn't it usual between friends?"
"Do you mean you've accepted him?" he asked.
"Yes, my dear. Haven't I told you?"
"Is it a joke?" he asked. "Shall I laugh?"
Helena moved a little away from him, and rang the bell. Archie looked so strange. She had expected something far more moving and dramatic than this wooden immobility.
"Tell Colonel Vautier and Miss Jessie that Lord Davidstow has come," she said to the parlour-maid.
Archie said nothing till the door had closed again. He felt that he was made of wood, that everything was made of wood, he and Helena and the roses he had sent, and the Persian rug on which he stood. And when he spoke, it was as if a machine in his mouth said the words which had nothing whatever to do with him.
"I congratulate you," he said. "I hope you will be very happy."
Colonel Vautier entered; he had been to the cellar to get out a bottle of champagne in which to drink the health of Helena and the man she had chosen.
"Good evening, my dear Archie," he said. "I know Helena has told you her news."
Archie shook hands, and then his eyes went back to Helena again. She had never looked more entrancingly pretty, but she was made of wood. And then Jessie came in; they were all there, and dinner was ready, and down they went. In this wooden world, everything went on in precisely the same way as it had done when people were made of flesh and blood. Some cunning mechanical contrivance enabled them to talk and smile and eat: food tasted the same and so did the champagne in which presently they drank Helena's health. It was the same prickly, bubbly stuff, with a little sting in it, that he so seldom drank. But it unfroze the surface of the stricture that bound him, as when the first stir of a thawing wind moistens the surface of ice. He began to feel again, to be conscious that somewhere within him was a deep well of the waters of pain. But anything was better than that cataleptic insensibility, which was like being unconscious, and, all the time, knowing that he was unconscious.
They were not going out that night, and after dinner they sat down to a rubber of bridge, in which as usual Helena took Archie as a partner, because she always insisted that she could form some idea of the principles on which he played, whereas the other two but wandered in a starless and Cimmerian gloom when mated with him. But Helena claimed that her spiritual affinity with Archie enabled her to perceive that, when he declared hearts, he wished her to understand that he hadn't got any, and that she would do well to declare something different. "Bridge, properly understood," Archie had enunciated once, "is a form of poker: you must bewilder and terrify your adversary. And then the fun begins, and you get fined." What added to the hilarity was the concentrated seriousness which Jessie and her partner brought to bear on the game, and the miser's greed and avaricious eye with which Jessie was popularly supposed to see her score mounting. All these jokes, these squibs of light-hearted nonsense, were there to-night, but there was nothing behind them. It was as if they were spoken from habit; a frigid rehearsal of some pithless drama was going on; they were tinsel flowers stuck into arid and seedless ground, and sprang no longer from the warm earth.
The sense of wooden unreality soon began to close in again on Archie, with that utter absence of feeling which was so far more terrible than any feeling could be, that soulless insensitiveness as of a live consciousness that knew it was dead; and he rose from the table after Helena had delivered him from the consequence of some outrageous declaration, and went across to a side-table where were placed syphons and spirits. But now, instead of pouring himself out a glass of soda-water, he half filled his tumbler with whisky, and but added a cream of bubble on the top of it. Immediately almost his sense of touch with life returned; there stole back into himself and the figures of Colonel Vautier and Jessie the perception of their several identities, and into Helena the love with which he had endowed her. But that, and all that it implied, was better than feeling nothing at all. He knew, too, that when Jessie spoke to him, or looked at him, her voice and her eyes held for him a supreme and infinite sympathy. He could not reach it, but he knew it was there. Perhaps when he got used to those new conditions of nightmare existence, he could make it accessible, get into touch with it. At present he scarcely wanted it; he wanted nothing so long as this perception of life still ran in his brain, except Helena. He thought that she rather pitied him too, but it was not her pity he wanted, for it was she who had brought her pity on himself.
They played two or three rubbers; Jessie's miserly greed was assuaged by precisely the sum that Archie had won from Helena, and Colonel Vautier, after seeing him out, went back to his study to indulge himself in the cigar which was not permitted in the drawing-room, and the two sisters were left there. Helena's brain had long been busy, beneath the habitual jests of their game, over her future relations with Jessie, and she had come to the conclusion that the sooner they talked the matter out the better. She found that it affected her comfort to be practically not on speaking terms with her sister, and, since she had no shrinking from what might be a painful interview for others, she had made up her mind to ascertain exactly how Jessie meant to behave to her in the few weeks for which they would be in close daily and hourly contact, for Lord Harlow had expressed his mind very clearly about an early date for their wedding, and Helena entirely agreed with him.
Jessie, on her part, could scarcely manage to think about her sister at all. With Archie in front of her all evening she had barely been conscious of anything but his bitter and miserable disillusionment, his awakening from the dream that had become so real to him. She was still seated at the card-table, and with that need for trivial employment which so often accompanies emotional crises, she was building a house with the cards they had been using, devoting apparently her whole faculties to its breathless construction. The strong, beautiful hands which Archie had never noticed hovered over it, alighting with their building materials, putting each card delicately and firmly in place, and her grave face watched the ascending stories, as if Babylon the Great was rising again for the marvel of mankind. Then Helena sat down by her, and, leaning her arm on the table, caused a vibration that demolished Babylon from garret to cellar.
"Oh, Jessie, I'm so sorry," she said, and she was; the fall of an ingenious card-house was the sort of thing that provoked her pity.
Jessie swept the cards together and seemed about to get up.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "It is bed-time, isn't it?"
Helena put her head wistfully on one side.
"Aren't you being horribly unkind to me?" she said. She did not suppose it was much use playing on the pathetic stop, that made, as a general rule, so insincere a bleating in her sister's ears, but it was worth trying.
"I don't think there is any use in talking, Helena," she said. "If I am unkind, if I can't bear what you have done, it is because I simply can't help it."
Helena fingered the debris of the card-house with those more delicate fingers that could caress and claw so exquisitely. Essentially, she cared not one atom what Jessie thought of her, but she wanted not to be uncomfortable for the next few weeks.
"Ah, that is it?" she added. "You are satisfied to hate and detest me because you can't help it. That seems to you a final and unanswerable excuse. But nobody else may do anything because she can't help it."
"But you could have helped what you have done," said Jessie. "You made Archie think you cared for him. You let him fall in love with you on that assumption."
"He let himself fall in love with me," said Helena. "That was not my fault. Besides …"
She wae silent a moment, weaving delicate spider-threads in her mind. She really wanted to propitiate Jessie just now, otherwise she would certainly have reminded her that she, anyhow, had allowed herself to fall in love with Archie, though she would not say that that was Archie's fault. It would have been amusing to suggest that, but it did not seem to tend towards reconciliation. She bent her graceful head a little lower over the fallen card-house. It had collapsed with tragic suddenness, even as Archie had collapsed.
"Besides," she went on, "it was open to Archie to propose to me. He did not. We were several weeks together at Silorno. And then I came to London and met Bertie. Was it my fault that I fell in love with him? I think you are horribly unkind to me."
Jessie came a step nearer.
"Are you in love with him?" she asked. "If you tell me you are in love with him …"
"Do you think I should marry him if I was not?" asked Helena, looking the picture of limpid, childlike innocence.
Jessie made no reply. She could not say that she believed Helena was in love with him, though she was assuredly going to marry him. She could not tell a lie of that essential kind; merely the words would not come.
"If I have wronged you in any way, Helena," she said at length, "I am most sincerely sorry for it. I ask your forgiveness unconditionally."
Helena rose, wreathed in tender smiles and liquid eyes.
"Darling, you have my forgiveness with all my heart," she said. "And may I ask you one thing? Will you try to feel a little more kindly towards me? If you only knew how your unkindness hurts me."
But Jessie, lying awake that night, striving, with all the sincerity that permeated her from skin to marrow, to make the effort that Helena had asked of her, made no headway at all. She utterly distrusted and disbelieved her. And somewhere, lying beneath the darkness of the windless night, was Archie, for whose happiness she would have given her heart's last blood. But all of it would not help him one atom while he, in the perverse dispensations of destiny, wanted only what he could not get, Helena's love. He could not get it because it did not exist. She did not love; the faculty had been denied her.
Suddenly she felt frightened about Archie. He had sunk somewhere out of reach this evening; a lid had shut down on him. Once or twice it had seemed to lift for a moment, and she remembered what made it lift.