Across the Stream Part 36

"Is there an answer, my lord?" asked the boy. "I brought a form down in case."

"Well done. Yes, there is an answer."

Archie hesitated a moment before directing the form to Helena. Then he wrote:

"Deepest sympathy with the terrible news. Command me in all ways. Your devoted Archie."

"Send that at once, will you?" he said.

When the boy had gone Archie read the telegram again, which was from Jessie, and told him that Lord Harlow had been killed at the front. Then he smothered his face in his bent elbow, and lay shaking with laughter.

CHAPTER XIII

On a September morning, some fortnight later, Archie was waiting in the drawing-room at Oakland Crescent for Helena's entry. He had seen her twice since her husband's death, and it struck him now that she always kept him waiting when she asked him to come and see her, and ascribed to that the very probable motive that she expected thereby to increase his eagerness for her coming. Certainly he wanted her to come, because he was much interested and amused in the conventional little comedy she was playing, and he looked forward to the third act, on which the curtain would presently ring up. In the interval he sat very serenely smiling to himself, and tickling the end of his nose with three white feathers that he had received in the street to-day. That always diverted him extremely; a rude young woman would come up (she was invariably square and plain, and had a k.n.o.bby face like a chest of drawers) and say, "Aren't you ashimed not to be serving your country? You're a coward, you are," and then she would give him a white feather. He had quite a collection of them now; there were nine already which he carefully kept in his stud-box, and these three all in one day were a splendid haul.

He had, to occupy his mind very pleasantly, the remembrance of his previous interviews with Helena, which formed the two existing acts of the comedy. In the first she had come in, looking deliciously pretty in her deep mourning, and, with her head a little on one side, had held out both her hands to him. They had stood with hands clasped for quite a long time, and then Archie kissed her because he was rather tired of holding her hands, and because he enjoyed kissing anything so pretty.

That had caused a break, and they sat down side by side, and Helena made some queer movements in her throat, which seemed to Archie to be designed to convey the impression that she was repressing her emotion.

But they did not quite fulfil their design; they looked rather as if they were due to the desire to pump up rather than keep down. Then Helena gave a long sigh.

"Oh, Archie," she said, "I am utterly broken-hearted. It was so sudden, so terribly sudden. I shall never get over it. Think! We had been married only a fortnight, and next day I got a letter from him, after I knew he was dead. Such a sweet little letter, so cheerful and so loving."

Archie expected something of this sort: its conventionality, its utter insincerity, amused him enormously. And, wanting more of it, he said just the proper sort of thing to encourage her to give it him.

"Oh, my dear," he said, "but how you will love and cherish that letter!

I don't suppose you were once out of his thoughts all the time he was in France."

She shook her head.

"I am sure of it," she said. "Ah, what a privilege to have been loved as I was loved by such a n.o.ble, manly heart. I must always think of that, mustn't I?"

Archie took her hand again. The touch of those soft, cool fingers gave him pleasure; so, too, did the answering pressure of them.

"Yes, indeed," he said. "And you must remember, too, that it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

She repeated the quotation in a dreamy meditative voice.

"Yes, that is so true: it does me good to think of that," she said. "And I mustn't think of him as dead really. He is just as living as ever he was. He was so fond of you too. We often spoke of you. And his quaint, quiet humour!..."

That was the general note of the first act: it had been short, for the conversation suitable to it was necessarily limited. The second showed a great advance in scope and variety of topics. Also the _tempo_ was quite changed: instead of its being _largo_, it was at least _andante con moto_.

This time, after again keeping him waiting, she had entered with a smile.

"What a comfort you are, Archie!" she said. "I have been looking forward to seeing you again. Somehow you understand me, which n.o.body else does.

I feel all the time that neither darling Jessie, whenever I see her, which isn't often, for she is so busy, nor daddy quite understand me. I mean to be brave, and not lose courage, not lose gaiety even, and I think--I think that they both misjudge me. They expect me to be utterly broken. So I was at first, as you know so well, but I tried to take to heart what you said, and force myself not to despair. I feel I oughtn't to do that: I must take the burden of life up again with a smile."

Her hand lay open on her knee; as she said this, she turned it over towards him, making an invitation that seemed unconscious. He slipped his long brown fingers into that rosy palm. She was astonishingly like a girl he met a night or two ago.

"I must get over this awful feeling of loneliness," she said, "and you are helping me so deliciously to do so. Daddy is busy all day; I scarcely see him. Jessie is busy also. I think she enjoys washing up knives and forks and plates for soldiers, though of course that doesn't make it any less sweet of her to do it. But, anyhow, she hasn't got much time for me. I wish--no, I suppose it's wrong to wish that."

"Well, confess, then," said Archie, smiling at her.

"Yes, dear father-confessor, though I ought to say boy-confessor, for you look so young! Well, I'll confess to you. I--I'm sure you won't be shocked with me. I wish Jessie cared for me a little more. She is my sister, after all. But I daresay it's my fault. I haven't got the key to her heart. And, with Jessie and daddy so full of other affairs, I do feel lonely. But when you are here I don't. I don't know what I should have done without you, Archie. I think I might have killed myself."

This was glorious. Archie gave a splendid shudder.

"Don't talk like that," he said, in a tone of affectionate command. "You don't know how it hurts."

"Ah, I'm sorry. It was selfish of me. Do you forgive me?"

"You know I do," said he.

She had brought into the room with her a long envelope, and rather absently she took out from it an enclosure of papers.

"I got this to-day from the lawyers," she said. "It's about my darling's will, I think. I wonder if you would help me to understand it, I am so stupid at figures."

She slid a little closer to him, leaning her hand on his shoulder and looking over him as he read. The doc.u.ment required, as a matter of fact, very little exercise of intelligence. The house in Surrey where they had spent the week of the honeymoon was hers; and so was a very decent income of L15,000 a year, left to her without any condition whatever for her life; it was hers absolutely. The disposition of the rest of his fortune depended on whether she had a child. The details of that were not given: his lawyer only informed her what was hers.

She hid her face on the hand that rested on Archie's shoulder.

"Oh, Archie, I can never go back to that house," she said, "at least not for a long time. It would be tearing open the old wound again."

"Yes, I understand that," said he, with another pressure of his fingers.

And, thinking of the L15,000 a year without conditions, he had a wild temptation to console her further by quoting--

"Let us grieve not, only find Strength in what remains behind."

But he refrained: though, apparently, there was no limit to Helena's insincerity, there might be some in her acceptance of the insincerity of others.

"Oh, you do understand me so well," she said. "And, Archie, I want to ask a horribly selfish thing of you, but I can't help it. I am all alone now, except for you. You won't go out to the war, will you? I don't think I could bear it if you did."

It was quite easy for him to promise that, but an allusion to the misconception he might incur made his acquiescence sound difficult and n.o.ble.

Since then, up to the day when he was now expecting her entry for the third act, he had thought over the whole situation with the imaginative vision which absinthe inspired. He had not the slightest doubt in his mind that Helena, according to her capacity for loving, was in love with him, and that she thought he was still in love with her. But, when he considered it all, he found he had no longer the slightest intention of marrying her, even though she had L15,000 a year for life without conditions attached. Plenty of money was no doubt a preventive of discomfort in this life, and he felt it was fine of him not to be attracted by so ign.o.ble a bait. But no amount of money would really compensate for the inseparable companionship of Helena, with her foolishness, her apparent inability to understand that her insincerities, so far from being convincing and beautiful, were no more than the most puerile and transparent counterfeits. Certainly she aroused the ardour of his senses, but how long would that last? And, even while it lasted, how could it compare with his ardour for his absinthe-coloured dreams, and the ecstasy of his communion with the spirit that had made its home in him? She would interrupt all that; and, as a companion, she could not compare with his father. She would always be wanting to be caressed and made much of and admired and taken care of. It would soon become most horribly tedious.

There was a further reason against marrying her, which was as potent as any. He would forfeit his revenge on her, if he did that. Once, dim ages ago, it seemed, and on another plane of existence, he had loved her, and she, knowing it, had fed his devotion with smiles and glances, and at the end had chosen him whose body now decayed in some graveyard of North France, already probably desecrated by the on-swarming Germans. Now it was Archie's turn; already, he was sure, she expected to marry him, and she would learn that he had not the least intention of doing so. That delightful situation might easily be arrived at in the third act for which he was waiting now.

This time she came with flowers in her hand, and presently, as they sat side by side on the sofa talking, she put one into his b.u.t.ton-hole.

Instantly he interrupted himself in what he was saying and kissed it.

She gave him that long glance which he had once thought meant so much.

It had not meant much then, from her point of view, but it meant a good deal more now. But to Archie it had pa.s.sed from being a gleam of wonder to a farthing dip.

"Oh, you foolish boy!" she said.

He almost thought he heard Martin laugh.

"I don't see anything foolish about it," he said. "At least, if it's foolish, I've always been foolish."