Helena Brett's Career Part 13

As for Helena, having waved him gaily out of sight, she did not return and give way to a natural sorrow, as he imagined, typically penitent so soon as he had parted from her. She looked, it is true, hard and thoughtful for a moment. Then she laughed almost happily. What did it matter really? It would only be one evening alone, one lecture missed;--and who was Mrs. Boyd? Why of course any one really nice would be glad that her husband had been honoured by these beastly Kit Kats, whoever they might be.

She sat down and wrote a long letter--about everything else in the world--to her lonely mother, who after all never had any one at all to dine with her, unless you counted clergymen.

That finished, it was dinner-time and that was fun because she had ordered or brought in all her pet kickshaws--shrimps, dough-nuts and so forth--which Hubert always vetoed, describing them expansively as dirty feeding. Men, she decided, got so little out of life; always beef and cabbages and yesterday to-morrow....

It was really quite a philosophic meal. She often was alone, for some big part indeed in every day, but there was something in this first lonely dinner that made a curious break and gave, as the French say, to think. She thought of her old life in Devonshire; she thought of her ambitions towards self-development when she decided upon marriage; she thought without pride of herself as she was at present; and she thought of Hubert.

She had reached the dough-nut course, and also the conclusion that they were an odd couple but probably most couples were, when the front door bell sounded, as it always did, through the whole little house.

Helena looked at the clock. Ten minutes to eight! No parcel-post.

What could it be, possibly? Not Hubert back? She felt a quick shame of the dough-nut.

It was beneath the table safely before Lily entered.

"Please'm," said the maid, "it's Mr. Alison wants to speak to you."

Helena went out into the hall. "Hullo," she said, hoping he had not expected dinner. "Have you been to the Inst.i.tute? What was it like?"

"Been," he laughed. "No! It's only ten to eight. This is an eight-o'clocker, you know. G. K. S. will never stand things at the ordinary time!"

This was a blow. Helena, not letting herself think of all that she was missing, had yet fancied that it was safely over. And it had not even begun... "Oh," was all that she said.

"I went along," Geoffrey Alison proceeded quickly, as though every instant counted, "because I am a steward so had to be early, and asked just out of curiosity where you were sitting. They said, so to speak, you weren't! I knew you both intended coming so I ran across. I've got two tickets just returned, so if----"

"How very kind of you," said Helena, feeling that she could almost slay him; "but it wasn't that we couldn't get in. Hubert at the last moment found that he wasn't free, so we sent our seats back. He suddenly remembered he was dining out." She tried to make it sound as though there had not been a tiff.

"Dining out?" repeated Geoffrey Alison, "Well then, you're free to come along like all the other ones?"

"Oh no, thank you; I don't think I will," said Helena. She had not forgotten about Mrs. Boyd.

"But you simply _must_," replied the other, pulling out his watch.

"They'll be beginning if we don't make haste. You couldn't miss this possibly; it's far the best of the whole series. Old Dr. Kenyon, too, thinks art is a disease and intends asking questions. It will be tremendous. Come along or you will make us late."

"But I'm not tidy or anything," said Helena. Definite objections are the first steep steps down from refusal to complaisance.

He recognised this. "So much the better," he cried in prompt triumph.

"Unprepared things are always the best sport. You don't need wraps; it's like a summer night and you look very smart. Come on! Your husband won't object. It will be simply grand. We'll have a picnic causerie!"

Helena was swept away. Bother Mrs. Boyd and every one! It really would be fun and she would be so bored at home. Hubert had told her she should go. Besides--did she feel dimly, ever so little even, that she was somehow getting even with him? Let us pa.s.s quickly on, with all the charity that we can muster....

The Inst.i.tute was packed. This was clearly a great night.

Helena, directly she entered the room, full of an excitement that had almost the sensation of magnetic waves, was glad that she had come.

And as they found their seats, the chairman and the speaker entered.

That evening, as Mr. Alison had promised, was the jolliest of the whole of the series. She even enjoyed merely looking at this G. K. Shaw.

He was ever such a big man, who swelled genially outward and then ended unexpectedly in quite a savage beard. He looked so comfortable and friendly that she felt certain all the nice things he meant to say (you could tell from his eyes) got somehow twisted all wrong in that horrid beard.

Certainly, to judge by mere words, there was a lot with which she could not sympathise and some she could not understand. If only Hubert had been free!

He said, for instance, that conventional Religion was man's excuse to the Almighty: that faith was the power of believing what we could not prove untrue: and that churches should possibly be built, because of unemployment, but left empty for the glory of their Maker. All this puzzled her, and Mr. Alison would only chuckle, while most others grunted. Then the lecturer got round to Art and said that life was the Creator's masterpiece. He roughly defined Art as that which never found its way to paper. He admitted the existence of a body of literature and paintings. He did not for a moment wish to conceal the existence of the Royal Academy. One corn-crake, however, did not cause a winter: and he wished to-night to speak only about Art. The modern out-look was parochial and men failed to see even the parish for looking at the clergymen. An Artist had no fatherland. He had the key of the World: for paint was thicker than blood. No two nations had ever agreed on armaments or treaties: but all admitted that Farnese was greater than Phil May. The worry with the world to-day was not that it was old: it was a million years too young. No man troubled with the future, because he knew that it must some day be the past. Religion hinted at the future: Art alone interpreted the present. Five thousand years had thrown mud at the workman: Brangwyn proved him the sole dignified thing left in a dead-level age. For centuries they had destroyed old ruined tenements, and Bone had shown them to be the only kind that ought to be allowed. Art dealt with the beautiful and live; the Church with what was gloomy and decayed. You could not make people wicked by Act of Parliament; the plain man was an artist when he shaved his face. Art was to the English what death had been to the Egyptians, but London was full of things that no one ever spoke about. There was, for instance, the Imperial Inst.i.tute. It was better to be beautiful than dead. Some of those he met were neither. He wished that they were both. He should be glad if any one would raise objections, for their mutual advantage. Every one was right and n.o.body was ever wrong.

There had been ever so much more than that, she knew; but this was all she could recall when finally he took his seat, and now, already, she was not altogether sure how it had been connected. She was not by any means convinced but she was tremendously encouraged. New vistas of an unsuspected length and freshness opened out from a drab world, whilst the fat, bearded man was speaking. Sometimes she supposed he must be very funny?

"Capital, capital," murmured Mr. Alison, and only that. He usually had such a lot to say, too! She was disappointed.

But now grimly and deliberately there uprose an elderly man of stern broad face and a respectable frock-coat. He must apologise for letting his heavy periods drop on the top of the last speaker's brilliant flippancies, but truth, he regretted to say, was truth.

"That's old Kenyon," her neighbour whispered gleefully.

The doctor, having said so much of calm preface as due to a visitor, suddenly blazed out into a quicker time and a more violent mood. So far, he said, from Art being a religion, it was a disease.

(Sensation.) He proved this at some length, largely in the dead languages, with extracts read from small pamphlets which (he announced) he had the honour to have contributed to various of the famous Monthlies.

The soldier-type, he argued, was the most essentially male, 'and it was furthest-moved from the artistic. He went so far, in conclusion, as to say that literary creation was only possible to a hybrid creature half-male and half-female, of whichever s.e.x.

The general feeling was that this was rude to Mr. G. K. Shaw.

The famous author rose, however, blandly and swung his body round to Dr. Kenyon.

"Now there'll be some fun," said Geoffrey Alison.

"I consider," said Mr. G. K. Shaw quite gravely, holding his beard steady, "that the last speaker's mongrel theory of literature is plausible and valuable. I am, however, puzzled as to how he accounts for his own admirable pamphlets?"

Which certainly was fun and everybody laughed, to the annoyance of old Dr. Kenyon, who was thenceforth nicknamed "Mongrel" and shortly after moved to Wimbledon.

But beyond all this, Helena found a vague excitement in the evening.

It was not like those other causeries at six o'clock; she wished they always could take place at eight. The mere fact, too, of having come so on the moment's spur lent quite a new attraction. As Geoffrey Alison had hinted, picnics are more romantic than a dinner-party and this had bulked into almost an adventure.

He saw her home. The speeches had been long and it was half-past ten already, but all was darkness in the little house.

Helena had quite a feeling of nervousness at the idea of switching on light after light, alone. "Come along in," she said simply.

"Hubert'll be here in half a moment. Then he'll give you a drink, and we will all exchange experiences!" All rancour had gone; yet--well, she would rather like to show Hugh that his absence didn't mean she merely sat and cried! Women _are_ human--and women.

"No, I don't think I will, thanks very much," he said.

His face and tone puzzled her. "Don't say _you_'re busy, now!" she cried. "It's a regular disease."

"Oh no, I never work at night," he answered. "Artists can't very well.

That is the one advantage of our job!"

"Well don't be tiresome then, and come on in," she said, holding the door open. "Hugh will be furious if he knows you're just gone. So don't be stupid. _I_ was tame, just now!"

"If you really mean it," he replied almost solemnly and entered.

"Of course I do," she laughed. "Should I invite you, otherwise? How curious you are! Come into the dining-room and then when Hugh comes, he can give you--Oh no, let's come into here!" She hastily pointed to the drawing-room.

Geoffrey Alison went in, puzzled, thinking.