Helena Brett's Career Part 9

Jerningham lives next the golf club house, an envied site, and holds success in games has always been the first precursor of a nation's downfall. Escott knows exactly who should marry what; whilst Ferguson can quite explain the Post-Impressionists, but fails to understand the Royal Academy--peculiar in a Scotchman. Yes, every single one of them has some outstanding gift or knowledge, making him a pleasant man to meet.

So out he goes, post-haste, to search a quality, and wishes now that he had not spent all that extra money upon his symbolic turret. He knows a better secret, now, of how real individuality is gained. It consists not in bricks and mortar nor in any latticed garden-work--though these may be its outward signs--but in a being different. He hurries out and buys the works of Chesterton and Bernard Shaw as a beginning.

Helena, of course, was predisposed to it since Devonshire.

She did not long to become different, so much: she hankered to cease being ignorant.

Hubert was so clever, but that discouraged more than it helped her. He talked quite brilliantly about such deep things, but he would not explain. He laughed and said she was a jolly child. He always treated her rather as one and certainly they had great fun together, but she longed to be clever without getting old, and when she had told him so, he simply laughed and said she ought to be content to have such quaint ideas.

"It's far better," he added, "to be original than clever. Don't you worry your dear little head with dull ideas and facts."

But Helena did worry.

She had now, apart from her old desire for self-development and knowledge about life, all these dull lonely hours to fill; and as she went about, slowly getting to know the people near, she found like our enthusiast that every one of them was full of something--some vital, all-absorbing topic, if nothing more than golf or their own handicap.

And that, she saw at once, was what she had to have if she wished ever to make her life really full. She could not go to matinees, like some, or Hubert missed her all the afternoon; and if they went to an At Home, he always dashed away at five, which looked so rude, and people--she felt sure--said afterwards that she could not have much hold over him, so soon. She tried novels, but these she really could not understand.

Hubert watched cynically her attempts to get at grips with a s.e.x-novel more s.e.xual than is expected even in these days of censorships and free advertis.e.m.e.nt.

"But, Hubert," she said finally, "why did she do that? Wasn't she fond of her husband? He seems quite nice. Do these terrible things really happen?"

"Oh no," he answered, as one would speak to a child. "Of course they never happen really."

Helena looked puzzled. "Then why do people write or read them?" she asked.

"My dear girl," he answered in the heavy-father manner that gave him such pleasure, "if you could answer that, you would have solved one of the most interesting problems about human nature!"

So then she was puzzled again and laid aside the book half read, before she got even to the chapter that was really censured and commonly read first.

Not that way, she saw, lay illumination.

At last she tried another road. "You know," she said reflectively one night, during those long hearthside chats that neither really would have changed for any other social form, "I like all the people here and so on, but they're terribly busy, aren't they, and I always feel I've sort of come too late."

"How sort of?" he replied indulgently.

"Well, I've got no real friends and you're busy so much with your dull old work. Don't you know anybody?--really know, I mean--old friends, who aren't too far away?"

Hubert thought for a few moments. "It sounds absurd," he said at last, "but I was such a hermit till I met you that I don't believe I've got a single woman friend."

Helena, he noticed, was not flattered in the least degree. That sort of thing was what made her so splendid. He told himself that a woman who was womanly would be a bore about the house, and smiled adoringly on his own child-like specimen, who waited silently, as though quite sure that he would find a friend in the same way that after some time he had found her brooch. But there was a long pause and he made no suggestions.

"Well, what about men then?" she added simply. "I don't mind."

And he was once again enchanted by her navete.

"You shall have the pick of all my man-friends," he said, and then puzzled her by laughing.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, you're so perfect, dearest!" he said, and got up and kissed her.

It needed some thought, none the less. Of his old pals--he suddenly remembered that he had been married over a year now, and not seen any one of them or wanted to--there were not many who lived near, and some of these ... well, they were all right in their way, but vaguely he felt they were not quite fit to introduce to any one so sweet as his girl-wife.... Marriage frequently turns cynics into sentimentalists.

(The converse can be well ignored.)

"I know," he cried suddenly.

"I felt sure you would," she said. It was just these remarks that made her such an excellent companion. "Who is it then?"

"Old Boyd--old Kenneth Boyd. He's just the very man you'd like. One feels so awfully at home with him, he's restful you know; old-friend-in-five-minutes sort of fellow. Oh and," he added, "I forgot just for the moment! There is a wife too."

"I think I'm almost sorry," said Helena reflectively. "I don't think he sounds the sort of person who'd be much good unless alone. But I'm so silly with words. I never can explain and I expect I'm wrong."

There seemed, at any rate, some wisdom in her cryptic estimate.

The dinner-party was not a success.

Helena was so charming to Kenneth Boyd that Hubert, almost beyond himself with pride and refraining with difficulty from kissing her when she was too especially delicious, wondered why on earth he had so long delayed showing his old friends how sweetly original a little simpleton he had secured in spite of all their jeers. Kenneth, over a gla.s.s of port from the local grocer, was absolute enthusiasm and delighted his host till he turned suddenly and said; "Now own that I was absolutely right?" With the wives, however, it was different. Mrs. Boyd said afterwards to her husband: "Just the poor little undeveloped fool one would expect any one so conceited to take as his wife!" whilst Helena thought her a rude pig, and neither was too subtle in concealing her opinion.

This instinct of hostility was fatal to any real union between the households. Hubert noted with amus.e.m.e.nt how, at each fresh encounter, the two wives became more and more affectionately cold, and soon kissed on meeting.

He turned, with Helena still urging him, to other possibilities.

It was then that he thought of Geoffrey Alison.

"Geoffrey Alison," exclaimed Hubert with far more conviction than about Kenneth Boyd. "He really _is_ the man! Amusing, clever, full of energy, and too young to be really busy." This in a condescending way.

"Why, how old is he?" she enquired. "I want some one, you know, who is cleverer than me and can tell me things at galleries and places."

He smiled at her. "Well, I think he could tell you things, he must be twenty-nine by now. Besides, I was able once to do him a good turn, he is a sort of protege; so he'd be only too glad to take you about and as you call it, tell you things at galleries and places. He's pretty good on art."

The word protege was rolled upon his tongue; the episode of Geoffrey Alison had pleased him a good deal; but Helena did not seem rea.s.sured.

"Oh, thank you!" she said, girlishly for these days when she had begun duly to expand as wished. "If he'd think he was doing it as a great favour, just to pay you back, I'd rather look at pictures and things by myself and puzzle out their meaning. It's only I've begun so late."

She paused for a moment, and then without enthusiasm, almost sulkily; "What did you do for him?"

Hubert embarked on it with gusto.

"Why, it wasn't really very much. It was just after my first book came out, when I was twenty-six or so and he was at the Varsity or somewhere. I suppose he read a notice or heard the book was selling or something. Anyhow, he wrote me a most charming letter, the first I ever had from any stranger, congratulating me on my success and asking, if you please, how I had managed it as he heard I was young and he wanted to become an author too! I answered all the usual stuff about hard work and so on, which I see now he must have thought astounding twaddle if he really was at Oxford, and told him when he came to Town I'd like to meet him and perhaps could give him a few introductions.

As a matter of fact," he went on after brief reflection, "I never did the last because I don't believe in it; but he came round at nights and talked to me and always said I had encouraged him a lot just when a little bucking-up was needed."

"And did he?" was Helena's sole comment.

Hubert at times could not follow her mind, fledgeling though it was, in all its flights. "Did he what, dear?"

"Why, did he become an author?" answered Helena, with that impatient tolerance which women keep for these occasions.

"Oh no," he said, vaguely annoyed, now, that he had not guessed it.

"Rather not! He's an artist now. Not terribly successful, you know, but getting along. I don't think you would care much for his pictures, though."

Secretly, within his mind he reconstructed Alison, remembering now some not too pleasant drawings that he had brought along one night; wondering if he had mentioned him too soon. But he saw only a keen, harmless youth of the artistic type; a white man, certainly, who, even if he had a morbid side, would never show it to a girl--or to his benefactor's wife.