The Helpmate Part 14

"My dear f.a.n.n.y," she said, "why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you--"

"That he was that sort. I didn't know there was such a delightful man in Scale. What have you all been dreaming of?"

Mrs. Eliott tried to look both amiable and intelligent. In the presence of Mr. Majendie's robust reality it was indeed as if they had all been dreaming. Her instinct told her that the spirit of pure comedy was destruction to the dreams she dreamed. She tried to be genial to her guest's accomplishment; but she felt that if Mr. Majendie's talents were let loose in her drawing-room, it would cease to be the place of intellectual culture. On the other hand she perceived that Miss Proctor's idea was to empty that drawing-room by securing Mr. Majendie for her own.

Mrs. Eliott remained uncomfortably seated on her dilemma.

Sounds of laughter reached her from below. The men were unusually late in returning to the drawing-room. They appeared a little flushed by the hilarious festival, as if Majendie had had on them an effect of mild intoxication. She could see that even Dr. Gardner was demoralised. He wore, under his vagueness, the unmistakable air of surrender to an unfamiliar excess. Mr. Eliott too had the happy look of a man who has fed loftily after a long fast.

"Anne dear," said Majendie, as they walked back the few yards between Thurston Square and Prior Street, "we shan't have to do that very often, shall we?"

"Why not? You can't say we didn't have a delightful evening."

"Yes, but it was very exhausting, dear, for me."

"You? You didn't show much sign of exhaustion. I never heard you talk so well."

"Did I talk well?"

"Yes. Almost too well."

"Too much, you mean. Well, I had to talk, when n.o.body else did. Besides, I did it for a purpose."

But what his purpose was Majendie did not say.

Anne had been human enough to enjoy a performance so far beyond the range of her antic.i.p.ations. She was glad, above all, that Walter had made himself acceptable in Thurston Square. But when she came to think of what was, what must be known of him in Scale, she was appalled by his incomprehensible ease of att.i.tude. She reflected that this must have been the first time he had dined in Thurston Square since the scandal. Was it possible that he did not realise the insufferable nature of that incident, the efforts it must have cost to tolerate him, the points that had been stretched to take him in? She felt that it was impossible to exaggerate the essential solemnity of that evening. They had met together, as it were, to celebrate Walter's return to the sanct.i.ties and proprieties he had offended. He had been formally forgiven and received by the society which (however f.a.n.n.y Eliott might explain away its action) had most unmistakably cast him out. She had not expected him to part with his indomitable self-possession under the ordeal, but she could have wished that he had borne himself with a little more modesty.

He had failed to perceive the redemptive character of the feast, he had turned it into an occasion for profane personal display.

Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party had not saved him; on the contrary, he had saved the dinner-party.

CHAPTER VIII

Anne was right. Though Majendie was, as he expressed it, "up to her designs upon his unhappy soul," he remained unconscious of the part to be played by Mrs. Eliott and her circle in the scheme of his salvation. From his observation of the aristocracy of Thurston Square, it would never have occurred to him that they were people who could count, whichever way you looked at them.

Meanwhile he was a little disturbed by his own appearance as a heavenward pilgrim. He was not sure that he had not gone a little too far that way, and he felt that it was a shame to allow Anne to take him seriously.

He confided his scruples to Edith.

"Poor dear," he said, "it's quite pathetic. You know, she thinks she's saving me."

"And do you mind being saved?"

"Well, no, I don't mind a little of it. But the question is, how long I can keep it up."

"You mean, how long she'll keep it up?"

He laughed. "Oh, she'll keep it up for ever. No possible doubt about that. She'll never tire. I wonder if I ought to tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"That it won't work. That she can't do it that way. She's wasting my time and her own."

"Oh, what's a little time, dear, when you've all eternity in view?"

"But I haven't. I've nothing in view. My view, at present, is entirely obscured by Anne."

"Poor Anne! To think she actually stands between you and your Maker."

"Yes, you know--in her very anxiety to introduce us."

They looked at each other. Her sainthood was so accomplished, her union with heaven so complete, that she could afford herself these profaner sympathies. She was secretly indignant with Anne's view of Walter as unpresentable in the circles of the spiritual _elite_.

"It never struck her that you mightn't need an introduction after all; that you were in it as much as she. That's the sort of mistake one might expect from--from a spiritual parvenu, but not from Anne."

"Oh, come, I don't consider myself her equal by a long chalk."

"Well, say she does belong to the peerage; you're a gentleman, and what more can she require?"

"She can't see that I am (If I am. You say so). She considers me--spiritually--a bounder of the worst sort."

"That's her mistake. Though I must say you sometimes lend yourself to it with your horrible profanity."

"I can't help it, Edie. She's so funny with it. She _makes_ me profane."

"Dear Walter, if you can think Anne funny--"

"I do. I think she's furiously funny, and horribly pathetic. All the time, you know, she thinks she's leading me upward. Profanity's my only refuge from hypocrisy."

"Oh no, not your only refuge. You say she thinks she's leading you. Don't _let_ her think it. Make her think you're leading her."

"Do you think," said Majendie, "she'd enjoy that quite so much?"

"She'd enjoy it more. If you took her the right way. The way I mean."

"What's that?"

"You must find out," said she. "I'm not going to tell you everything."

Majendie became thoughtful. "My only fear was that I couldn't keep it up.

But you really don't think, then, that I should score much if I did?"

"No, my dear, I don't. And as for keeping it up, you never could. And if you did she'd never understand what you were doing it for. That's not the way to show you're in love with her."

"But that's just what I don't want her to see. That's what she hates so much in me. I've always understood that in these matters it's discreeter not to show your hand too plainly. You see, it's just as if we'd never been married, for all she cares. That's the trouble."