Helena Brett's Career Part 3

Just because he chanced to write and say that he had met a jolly sort of girl...!

It is a stale truism about good advice, that most natures must reject it before they see their way to its acceptance. Self-pride demands that it shall be their own idea.

Just as Hubert had scoffed at his friend's idea of loneliness, which now indeed seemed such a ghastly spectre, so did he next work slowly back to the very words of his sister that had angered him the most.

For by now his mental questioning had spread across a chasm dreaded for long years and flaunted itself gaily in a narrow field.

The first step was so clear by now.

Of course he had sworn always that he would not marry, but that was true of the past only. One changed every now and then.... He was at the age when one grew lonely, when one naturally married. Sisters were a big mistake. He could not endure year after year of silly quarrels like the one just past. With a wife he would start fresh. She wouldn't irritate him like Ruth: he wouldn't see through all her motives; they need not fight for years.... Besides, he must find some one less irritating, less selfish, than Ruth.... And as to Ruth, she said herself that she was game to go. She probably preferred it. The whole thing was her own suggestion.... Yes, she was right; they certainly could not go on like this. Yet if she went--that loneliness when he got old, was ill...! Kenneth had talked a lot of drivel but he probably was right about stagnation. He found, himself, his work was getting stale.... And then the help that she----

But who?

Hubert flung himself across the chasm, refusing doggedly to see it, and found himself, flushed and excited, in the little field beyond.

Who could he marry, possibly? The question lent quite a new thrill to life. It was a big adventure, even if one never did it....

He hated clever women. He was sure of that. Hated them, at any rate, as wives. Mrs. Kenneth Boyd was one, and when he dined with them, she always waited till he had thrown out a theory, quite impromptu, possibly exaggerated rather, about something, and then said, "Really, Mr. Brett? But how unusual!" or something of the sort. No, he could not bear that. He thought that type an insult to his s.e.x. He liked a woman to be rather silly--well, not that quite--no, but shallow. He liked her to have not too many views herself: he hated suffragettes and things, of course; but just to have the brains to understand one's own ideas. That was where the girl Ruth had mentioned was so splendid.

She saw the fun of things; she even saw the fun of her name, Helena Hallam; but also she could enter into the plot of a book directly you had told it her, and be immensely interested in hearing about people you met at the Authors' Club. She was almost too ignorant, of course--knew nothing about life--but her nave remarks amused him: so what did it matter?

That really was the sort of woman he would like to marry. Some one who would be interested in his work but know she hadn't got the brain to interfere; some one who'd look on his work-hours as sacred, because given to a thing she couldn't do to save her very life.

Ruth was annoying about that, and silly. If he read her out a chapter, she would usually say, "I think it's quite good, old boy; but I never feel you're made for fiction. I suppose essays never sell, though, and plays are quite impossible?" It was too stupid. She had said that even about _Wandering Stars_, which had sold close upon five thousand copies! Not--of course--that he valued his novels according to their sales....

The girl in Devonshire had been so different. He smiled, recalling her simplicity. She had thought him so clever to write, even before she had seen a word of it! And when he read her out a chapter, she wanted to know just how long it had taken him, asked to see how much he had corrected, and clearly looked upon the whole thing as a miracle.

Thinking of her now he had a curiously vital image of her personality.

She was so fresh, so natural, so unspoilt, so splendidly a thing of life. She had never been to London. How she would love to see it; how gorgeous it would be to show! How different from taking out Ruth, who always said that the streets smelt of petrol and she had neuralgia and wished they could live in the country, but of course _he_ must choose!

How different altogether! How different when the lights were lit and curtains drawn! He still remembered how she sat, with one foot underneath her body, and smiled through those curiously bright eyes, as though always contentedly awaiting the next jolly thing that life could not possibly fail to bestow upon her. Ruth was so hideously gloomy and apologetic. She expected the worst but she never minded.

Yes, there was no doubt that was just the sort of sensible, unsloppy, cheerful girl that he would like to marry. She would be nice to have about the house. She wouldn't want the vote or anything. She thought so much of his work that she would never grumble, like Ruth, if he had a long bout at it. She'd take up needle-work or something. She had such a happy nature. And then at nights they'd sit and have great, jolly, sociable talks beside the fire, and he'd read out his books to her. Possibly, now and then, she would see some mistake--not in the book itself, but in a woman's dress or something: women were so good at details--and he would learn a lot, as Kenneth said, from seeing how her refreshingly simple mind regarded things. And then--she was a child--they would play games and laugh and roast chestnuts and all that sort of thing. He could imagine quite a jolly evening. The past hour seemed like a nightmare by the side of it.

He got up and mixed a whisky and soda.

Really by now he wished he had thought of all this in Devonshire! He had said to himself then, watching her, that somebody someday would be a lucky man--the girl was so herself, somehow. But it had not occurred to him that he could be the man.

Now, probably, he would never see the Hallams again. Mrs. Hallam, of course, had said they must meet soon in London, but every one always said that and it was five weeks now since his return. He had not, naturally, ever written.

Of course--there was another thrill in this idea--he could go down to Devonshire again with any false excuse trumped up; but even as this came into his head, his fatally quick fancy, over-exercised, saw him proposing to Miss Hallam, pouring out the sentimental stuff that a love-scene demanded; perhaps--who knows?--even feeling bound to kneel in the manner beloved of conventional romance!

Then, with a swift gesture, he suddenly drained his whisky and soda to its dregs, put the gla.s.s down jauntily as men do on the stage, and walked, feeling younger than for ten whole years, to his writing-desk.

He gave a happy laugh as he took out some paper.

For he had got a great idea. He was going to propose to Miss Hallam on paper! He was going to write it all down and see if it looked awful rubbish.... He was enjoying himself to-night in a quite new way.

"DEAR MISS HALLAM," he began and added "My" in front. Then as he saw the meaning that might bear he laughed again. He knew it was not right just now to laugh, and marked it as an interesting fact. Then, nervous of detection, he took a new sheet and started--

"MY DEAR MISS HALLAM,

"You will be surprised to hear from me.

"The fact of the matter is--I find myself getting very bald now that I really have to use my pen for something that matters!--I have been thinking a lot of my jolly days in Devonshire, the tennis, the sea-walks, the picnics, everything with all of you, and (if I'm allowed to say it) especially with _you_ yourself."

Here he leant back and read what he had written. It was not literature but he felt satisfied. He took up his pen again and wrote--

"I don't know that it's usual, but I am rather reserved and not too romantic, so that I am _writing_ to ask whether you could think of being my wife. There has never been any one in my whole life of whom I have thought as I have thought of you these last five weeks. I could never tell you how I feel in words, and I see now that I can't on paper, but if you think in any way that you could grow fond of me, I am convinced that we could be immensely happy. I don't know that I have much to offer you; but if you talk to your mother about this, as no doubt you will, you must a.s.sure her that I can give you a comfortable home and that I hope, as the years go by, to make myself something of a name.

"I will say no more now. I shouldn't have dared say so much, if I had not thought that we got on rather well last month, and that if you did not welcome this letter, you would at any rate be able to forgive it.

"Yours, "HUBERT BRETT."

It was not certainly at all like any of the love-letters that he had written in fiction or read in the police-reports; but he had not inwardly approved of either. This seemed to him quite adequate. She was the sort of girl who wouldn't care for sentiment. He honestly believed she would write back sensibly and just say "Yes."

It is to be remarked that no question remained as to posting the letter or not, so soon as it was finished. He had begun it to see how it looked: now he felt that it was something fated. He must see what happened. Without waiting even to put on a hat, he hurried out to an adjacent pillar-box and dropped the letter in with hardly more emotion than if it had been an ordinary bill.

Going up to bed, without repentance for the night's wild work, and in fact oddly calm for any one in his position, he heard a curious noise inside his sister's room.

He stopped and listened at the door.

She was obviously sobbing.

Hubert suddenly felt softened towards her. So she cared, after all!

She felt the separation after these long years!

Had he sometimes wronged her? Had he been impatient? Was she really fond of him; trying to consult his wishes and not to irritate him? Was he growing selfish?...

He very nearly tapped and went in to console her. Then he reflected that she almost certainly would engineer another scene, and that always gave him a bad night.

CHAPTER III

"WHY WOMEN WED"

Helena had never thought much about marriage. There was no reason indeed why she should, for she was young and to her it still appeared, like death to a small child, as something she was sure to reach some day but need not worry with just now.

She was, in fact, nineteen, but her ideas were those of nineteen fifty years ago or of fourteen to-day. Devonshire, for one thing, has slept on in its soft air, not much disturbed by any modern turmoil; and for another, Helena's mother had ideas. These, briefly put, consisted in not letting her daughter have any.

It is, however, only human, from Eve downwards, to defy authority and search for knowledge. Helena, knowing that it was her lot to marry, naturally felt some interest in the habit. Whenever she came on allusions to it, she stocked them in her brain, all in a healthy and quite natural way, wondering in an abstract manner whether it would be thus or thus with her. She never dared to talk about it to her mother.

She had once mentioned her own hypothetic marriage, only to be told that girls did not speak of such things in fun, and it would be quite time enough when the occasion rose, and had she given the canary its clean water?

Mrs. Hallam was a loving mother with stern theories. Her own childhood had been a season of repression, yet she was satisfied enough with her morals as opposed to those of many round her. She intended, therefore, to repeat the process. She had no patience--this was her favourite expression--with the licence of young girls to-day: the manner in which they read any novel, went to any play. She had no patience with this rubbish about ignorance not being innocence. Of course it was; or if it wasn't, it had very much the same result, and that was everything.