Helen with the High Hand Part 10

Helen shut the trunk with a snap, then opened it and shut it again. And then she rose, smoothing her hair.

"I scarcely know Lilian," she said, coldly. "And I don't know your mother at all. But I must call and congratulate the child. No, Andrew Dean didn't breathe a word."

"I may tell you as a dreadful secret, Nell, that we aren't any of us in the seventh heaven about it. Aunt Annie said yesterday: 'I don't know that I'm so set up with it as all that, Jane' (meaning mother). We aren't so set up with it as all that."

"Why not?"

"Oh, we aren't. I don't know why. I pretend to be, lest Lilian should imagine I'm jealous."

It was at this point that the voice of James Ollerenshaw announced a young man.

The remainder of that afternoon was like a bewildering dream to James Ollerenshaw. His front room seemed to be crowded with a mult.i.tude of peac.o.c.ks, that would have been more at home under the sun of Mrs.

Prockter's lawns up at Hillport. Yet there were only three persons present besides himself. But decidedly they were not of his world; they were of the world that referred to him as "old Jimmy Ollerenshaw," or briefly as "Jimmy." And he had to sit and listen to them, and even to answer coherently when spoken to. Emanuel Prockter was brilliant. He had put his hat on one chair and his cane across another, and he conversed with ducal facility. The two things about him that puzzled the master of the house were--first, why he was not, at such an hour, engaged in at any rate the pretence of earning his living; and, second, why he did not take his gloves off. No notion of work seemed to exist in the minds of the three. They chattered of tennis, novels, music, and particularly of amateur operatic societies. James acquired the information that Emanuel was famous as a singer of songs. The topic led then naturally to James's concertina; the talk lightly caressed James's concertina, and then Emanuel swept it off to the afternoon tea-room of the new Midland Grand Hotel at Manchester, where Emanuel had lately been. And that led to the Old Oak Tree tea-house in Bond-street, where, not to be beaten by Emanuel, Sarah Swetnam had lately been.

"Suppose we have tea," said Helen.

And she picked up a little bra.s.s bell which stood on the central table and tinkled it. James had not noticed the bell. It was one of the many little changes that Helen had introduced. Each change by itself was a nothing--what is one small bell in a house?--yet in the ma.s.s they amounted to much. The bell was obviously new. She must have bought it; but she had not mentioned it to him. And how could they all sit at the tiny table in the kitchen? Moreover, he had no fancy for entertaining the whole town of Bursley to meals. However, the immediate prospect of tea produced in James a feeling of satisfaction, even though he remained in perfect ignorance of the methods by which Helen meant to achieve the tea. She had rung the bell, and gone on talking, as if the tea would cook itself and walk in on its hind legs and ask to be eaten.

Then the new servant entered with a large tray. James had never seen such a servant, a servant so entirely new. She was wearing a black frock and various parts of the frock, and the top of her head, were covered with stiffly-starched white linen--or was it cotton? Her ap.r.o.n, which had two pockets, was more elaborate than an antimaca.s.sar. Helen coolly instructed her to place the tray on his desk; which she did, brushing irreverently aside a number of rent books.

On the tray there was nothing whatever to eat but a dozen slices of the thinnest conceivable bread and b.u.t.ter.

Helen rose. Emanuel also rose.

Helen poured out the tea. Emanuel took a cup and saucer in one hand and the plate of bread and b.u.t.ter in the other, and ceremoniously approached Sarah Swetnam. Sarah accepted the cup and saucer, delicately chose a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter and lodged it on her saucer, and went on talking.

Emanuel returned to the table, and, reladen, approached old Jimmy, and old Jimmy had to lodge a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter on his saucer. Then Emanuel removed his gloves, and in a moment they were all drinking tea and nibbling bread and b.u.t.ter.

What a fall was this from kidney omelettes! And four had struck! Did Helen expect her uncle to make his tea off a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter that weighed about two drachms?

When the alleged tea was over James got on his feet, and silently slid into the kitchen. The fact was that Emanuel Prockter and the manikin airs of Emanuel Prockter made him positively sick. He had not been in the kitchen more than a minute before he was aware of amazing matters in the conversation.

"Yes," said Helen; "it's small."

"But, my child, you've always been used to a small house, surely. I think it's just as quaint and pretty as a little museum."

"Would you like to live in a little museum?"

A laugh from Emanuel, and the voice of Helen proceeding:

"I've always lived in a small house, just as I've taught six hours a day in a school. But not because I wanted to. I like room. I daresay that uncle and I may find another house one of these days."

"Up at Hillport, I hope," Emanuel put in. James could see his mincing imbecile smile through the kitchen wall.

"Who knows?" said Helen.

James returned to the front room. "What's that ye're saying?" he questioned the company.

"I was just saying how quaint and pretty your house is," said Sarah, and she rose to depart. More kissings, flutterings, swishings! Emanuel bowed.

Emanuel followed Miss Swetnam in a few minutes. Helen accompanied him to the gate, where she stayed a little while talking to him. James was in the blackest gloom.

"And now, you dear old thing," said Helen, vivaciously bustling into the house, "you shall have your _tea_. You've behaved like a perfect angel."

And she kissed him on the cheek, very excitedly, as he thought.

She gave him another kidney omelette for his tea. It was even more adorable than the former one. With the taste of it in his mouth, he could not recur to the question of the ten-pound note all at once. When tea was over she retired upstairs, and remained in retirement for ages.

She descended at a quarter to eight, with her hat and gloves on. It appeared to him that her eyes were inflamed.

"I'm going out," she said, with no further explanation.

And out she went, leaving the old man, stricken daft by too many sensations, to collect his wits.

He had not even been to the bank!

And the greatest sensation of all the nightmarish days was still in reserve for him. At a quarter-past eight some one knocked at the door.

He opened it, being handier than the new servant. He imagined himself ready for anything; but he was not ready for the apparition which met him on the threshold.

Mrs. Prockter, of Hillport, asked to be admitted!

CHAPTER XI

ANOTHER CALL

Mrs. Prockter was compelled to ask for admission, because James, struck moveless and speechless by the extraordinary sight of her, offered no invitation to enter. He merely stood in front of the half-opened door.

"May I come in, Mr. Ollerenshaw?" she said, very urbanely. "I hope you will excuse this very informal call. I've altered my dinner hour in order to pay it."

And she smiled. The smile seemed to rouse him from a spell.

"Come in, missis, do!" he conjured her, warmly.

He was James; he was even Jimmy; but he was also a man, very much a man, though the fact had only recently begun to impress itself on him. Mrs.

Prockter, while a dowager--portly, possibly fussy, perhaps slightly comic to a younger generation--was still considerably younger than James. With her rich figure, her excellent complexion, her carefully-cherished hair, and her apparel, she was a woman to captivate a man of sixty, whose practical experience of the s.e.x extended over nine days.

"Thank you," said she, gratefully.

He shut the front door, as if he were shutting a bird in a cage; and he also shut the door leading to the kitchen--a door which had not been shut since the kitchen fire smoked in the celebrated winter of 1897. She sat down at once in the easy-chair.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, in relief. And then she began to fan herself with a fan which was fastened to her person by a chain that might have moored a steamer.

James, searching about for something else to do while he was collecting his forces, drew the blind and lighted the gas. But it was not yet dark.

"I wonder what you will think of me, calling like this?" she said, with a sardonic smile.