Helen of Troy; and Rose

“Shall we talk of something else?”

Edith went to the window. Her eyes did not shine so much when she came back--perhaps his courage and self-command were overcoming the magic. It seemed like it, for her voice was not so gay. To begin with, it had sounded very gay, as if she would like to dance and play games. This was probably what she had done with father. She had bewitched him completely. Mr. Flinders had said so.

“Your father told me, Leslie,” said Edith when she returned from the window, “that you were very fond of soldiers. I, too, am very fond of soldiers, so I thought perhaps you would like to see some I bought this morning--they are two cavalry regiments; both the generals have cocked hats and swords.”

“Are there guns?” asked Leslie with forgetful rapture.

“Yes, there are guns and gun-carriages. Shall I clear this table? There, you know how to fasten them on perhaps! Will you show me how?”

Leslie regained his knowledge of the situation.

“They are very easy to put on,” he said. “You run them along like this. Are they imitation, or can they go off?”

“They can go off with peas,” said Edith kindly.

Leslie’s face flushed--real guns that could go off with peas were excellent and sane amusements even for an enchantress. By-and-by he forgot her profession, and began to order her about. They played contentedly for an hour, then the clock struck six. Leslie counted it. “Shortly after six, my poor dear boy, they will let you come home,” his Aunt Etta had said. He put down the general and pushed the table away; his lips quivered.

“You’re--you’re almost nice,” he said. “I wonder you can break up a home.”

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” cried Edith, but she did not offer to touch him; she only turned shining and appealing eyes to him. Her eyes were too much; they should not have been so kind when she was so wicked.

“I shall never see the soldiers again,” he said mournfully.

“But, Leslie, they are yours; I bought them for you,” she pleaded “Indeed, indeed, I bought them for you this morning.”

“Lestranges don’t take bribes,” said Leslie coldly; still he looked at the general and the best gun--it was a very good gun.

“But it isn’t a bribe,” explained the enchantress. “Won’t you even take the general and the gun⁠--”

Leslie’s chest heaved. He looked across the table at her.

“Will you give up my father?” he asked. “If you’ll give him up I’ll take--I’ll take both the general and the gun.”

“Oh, but, Leslie, I couldn’t--he’d be so unhappy⁠--”

“No, he wouldn’t,” said Leslie firmly. “He’d get used to it in time; there are lots of things he has--me and Aunt Etta, and a new cuckoo clock I gave him for his last birthday. Oh, give him up--give him up--!”

The tears came suddenly now; all the controlled terrors, the pent-up agony, the puzzled situation, the fearful prospects, rushed to the top of the child’s mind: it was like the over-filling of a cup. He flung himself face downwards on the sofa, dragging the tablecloth after him and covering the carpet with defeated soldiers. Edith knelt beside him trying to soothe and comfort him, but his little clenched hands pushed her away. The general with his cocked hat and the best gun lay on her lap, and bitter tears fell on them--bitter, unavailing tears; and so Horace found them shortly after six.

He carried his sobbing little boy away, and Edith sat and wept over the soldiers alone and uncomforted.

“I wonder how she can have managed to upset him so,” said Etta; “but I thought this afternoon that she hardly looked as if she could manage a delicate highly-strung child. She has sent him into a really dangerous fit of crying.”

As for Horace, he went to his study and smoked a strong cigar. He was puzzled and disappointed. Edith had been so certain she could win the little chap over, and the boy hadn’t cried while he was there. Edith must have done something stupid; she had been upset enough herself, poor girl; but he did not go back and comfort her--she must have done something stupid.

VI

“It all depends upon what you mean by a successful marriage,” Lady Walton had remarked earlier in the day. “You have now, my dear Edith, been married ten years; you look ten years younger than you are; your husband spends all his evenings at home, and you have an excellent staff of servants. I really do not see what more you can ask!”

“I don’t suppose we often see why other people should ask more than they have,” Edith replied. “Other people ought to be satisfied, and yet other people aren’t.”

“I don’t wish to talk metaphysics,” said Lady Walton; “it reminds me of the time when I fell downstairs on the back of my head and had concussion of the brain. I suppose you mean you haven’t any children? Neither had I, and I have never regretted it.”

Lady Walton was one of those people who always thought that what she did not object to was not objectionable; she felt this very strongly.

“My own faults, which I can excuse quite easily and always see reasons for,” she went on after a pause, “would annoy me excessively in a younger generation--even my virtues would seem weak and tame imitation in some pudding-faced young girl. I should have known better what to do with a boy who would have been certain to die if he had been satisfactory, and equally certain to live if he was not. No, my dear Edith, let us be thankful we have both been spared a tiresome and difficult vocation. An unhappy marriage is often made bearable by such additions, but a really happy marriage can dispense with them.”

“Oh, a really happy marriage!” Edith had murmured.

“My dear,” her aunt had replied briskly, “you are one of those unfortunate people who ask too much, and do not take steps to get it. You should do one or the other. What your husband needs is something to shake him. It is a pity you are not a delicate woman; you might try nerves. I suppose you are too high and mighty to stoop to flirtation.”

“I should do it so badly,” said Edith, laughing, “and besides I’m forty.”

“You have such a tiresome habit of remembering your own age,” her aunt replied; “it even makes me remember mine. I will take a nap.”

Edith had left her and gone home. It was something, she reflected, to have a home, and--every one would have agreed--such a comfortable home.

She had had a difficult life these past ten years; she had not only to make her husband happy which had been her unswerving purpose from the first, but she had had to watch her failure, and accept the lower level of opportunity allowed to her--and make him contented; she had, at least, done this.

Miss Lestrange had taken Leslie slowly and vaguely away; there was still a talk of his return home--there would always be a talk of it. Meanwhile the boy, his aunt, and an excellent tutor (almost as amenable as Mr. Flinders) divided their time between Mallows and Brighton. The boy had been definitely delicate; a determined effort to send him to Harrow failed, and he was taken away once more by his aunt and tutor. Oxford remained; he was now quite strong enough for Oxford. Still Miss Lestrange held him back; she could not follow him to Oxford.

From time to time he visited his father. The tie between them had never ceased to be strong; but for Edith there had never been a second chance. The boy was beautiful as his mother had been, and suspicious with all the hard, cramping suspicion of a weak nature. Edith’s unvarying sweetness and companionableness roused a sharp antagonism in him; she was “trying to get round him,” as his aunt had said. He fought Edith because he could so easily have loved her; he pushed her away from him because he wanted to confide in her. He treated her with a studied polite insolence which made her dumb before him.

Horace Lestrange looked from one to the other wistfully; something was wrong. Etta said it was Edith’s fault, and Edith said nothing, and the boy said nothing; so it ended in Horace saying nothing too. He merely went down by himself for week-ends to Mallows, and felt that his marriage had been, not a failure exactly, but not very definitely a success.

He had indeed frequently felt tenderness for his wife, and he always felt friendship. She was his most delightful fireside and holiday companion; they read the same books, laughed at the same things; but they hardly lived the same life. He missed his boy with a kind of dull ache that would have been difficult to fathom; and if it wasn’t Edith’s fault--well--it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for her. Edith stood with her hand on the mantelpiece gazing into the study fire; on one side of it sat her husband, glancing through the evening paper; and, on the other, the boy on one of his occasional visits (lately they had been much more frequent) to his London home. He was half-smoking cigarette after cigarette, and as Edith turned her attention to him she was struck afresh by the expression in his eyes. It was the tyrannical selfish face of a pleasure-seeker. She compared it, with a sharp pang of disappointment, to the controlled, honest manliness of her husband’s expression. Couldn’t they have made his boy more like him--have put something better than hungry discontent into Leslie’s beautiful eyes?

“I’m going out,” said the boy suddenly.

His father looked up from his paper with evident disappointment.

“I thought Esdaile was coming in for bridge?” he said quickly.

“I think, if you will excuse me, I’ll go out,” his son repeated, with a politeness which did not conceal his evident intention.

His father eyed him curiously for a moment, then he said:

“Musical comedy?”

The boy flushed scarlet.

“Do you wish to know where I am going, sir?” he asked with angry irony.

Edith interposed quickly.

“If you are going, Leslie,” she said, “would you mind telephoning for me, to Esdaile, not to come? It’s no use his coming if we aren’t going to play bridge.”

Leslie never willingly looked at Edith; he did not do so now. He merely raised his eyebrows, because he was annoyed at being asked to do anything for anybody else, and replied:

“Most certainly, if you wish it.”

His father returned to the newspaper; the boy stalked in a turmoil of offence and pricked conscience out of the room. If you want to be very angry, people who attempt to meet you with patience and kindness are mere fuel for the flame. Leslie had broken up a bridge four; he was going to do something wrong; and nobody told him not to, or attempted to interfere with him in any way. It was all extremely tiresome.

The two left together exchanged a long look of sympathy and understanding.

“He’s very young,” said Edith softly. “That’s all, Horace--only very young.”

“He’s confoundedly cool,” said his father gloomily, “spoiling a bridge four like that, and got up specially because he said he wanted it! It’s so deuced difficult to know what the fellow does want nowadays.”

“What made him blush like that, Horace, when you said ‘musical comedy’?” said his wife, sitting opposite him, and holding up a fire-screen between her face and the fire.

“Oh, it’s some nonsense Etta’s been writing me; she thinks he comes up here to meet a woman. No doubt he’s got some queer boy adoration in his head, but it can’t be anything serious at his age.”

“Is it a--what kind of a woman?” asked his wife.

“Oh, some wonderful American beauty, old enough to be his mother--the star of some touring company. It seems she has turned the heads of all the London youths together. I told Etta she’d far better leave the matter alone. It isn’t as if the boy’s prospects were dazzling; he’ll have plenty, of course, in time, but he’s got nothing now but his mother’s money, and this person isn’t likely to marry him for five hundred a year. In three years’ time, well--he’ll have forgotten her name.”

“But--but her influence mightn’t be good?” Edith persisted.

“I don’t know,” said Horace reflectively. “Some of her type are quite unscrupulous, no doubt, but not all of them. Anyhow, I did do something; I sent her a note, just giving the facts of the boy’s expectations quite plainly, and asking her what she meant to do about it. I might have called to see her--Etta wanted me to--but I didn’t see the good. Musical comedy ladies are not in my line.”

“And you didn’t tell me, Horace?”

Edith lifted the fire-screen a little; he could not see her face; in her voice there was a touch of reproach, not more--the friendly reproach of a comrade who has been left out of a consultation.

“No. I don’t know why I told you now, but it seemed natural somehow when you asked.”

“I am glad it seemed natural,” said Edith quietly.

In most married lives there is one who understands, and one who is content to be understood. Edith read her husband’s mind as if it were a well-known book. She knew his motives, his honest scruples, his studious chivalry, his quiet reticence. She knew when he suffered because the marks of it were on her own heart; she knew when he was contented, puzzled, worried, or pleased; and he knew nothing whatever about her, except that she was always sweet to him, and only occasionally (as we are told all women are) unreasonable. That he was sitting opposite a woman now whose heart was very nearly broken, who had fed in secret on sharp misery and long, ineffectual pain, had never even dimly touched his imagination.

Lady Walton had supposed that Edith might have a difficult time, but that the quiet routine of married life would soon stifle the unnatural hunger of her heart. Nothing had been stifled except expression. Edith had thrust her own pain out of sight with strong hands; she had shut love and anguish out of her eyes--she had schooled her lips not to quiver and held her voice steady against the invasions of emotion; she had taken stones for bread, and received them with pleased acquiescence, as if, after all, her preference had always been for stones.

But when it came to Horace’s pain, to the unstilled longing of his heart, which she could have stilled; to the silent, patient endurance, which she could have stirred into something resembling passionate joy; then her life rose up against her, and the bitter waters of intense and heavy anguish passed over her soul. Ah, the sickening pressure of those hours! While he lay beside her sleeping quietly, she clenched her hands, and quivered with the sobs she dared not free. And then with haggard eyes she watched the slow day dawn over London, the day which would be--as all other days to her--the resetting of her life to sober pain. He thought her a sensible, level-headed, unemotional woman, and she was a creature born of flame and tears!

The hand that held the fire-screen shook a little.

“You mustn’t let yourself worry about it,” said Horace kindly, “or I shall be sorry I’ve told you. Honestly, I don’t think it will become a serious matter. There’s the evening post. I rather imagine that extremely fancy envelope may be from the lady herself. My correspondents are usually less stimulating in their notepaper.”

He read it, frowned in a puzzled way, and tossed it over to Edith. It ran:

“Well, what do you make of that, my dear?” said Horace Lestrange, feeling after his matches. “Seems to let us out, doesn’t it?”

Edith let the paper fall into her lap and looked into the fire.

“Poor woman!” she said very gently. “Do you know, Horace, she reminds me just a little of Helen of Troy. Helen used to talk like that, as if the soul had been eaten out of her words. I think a woman must be very unhappy to write like that.”

“It is time you went to bed, Edith; you look tired,” said her husband. “Just throw that letter on the fire, will you?”

She threw the letter on to the fire and watched it burn.

“Poor woman!” she whispered to herself again. “Poor woman!”

Horace got up and opened the door for her. He was very much relieved, but he felt a pang of compunction at the same time. He had been a fool to tell Edith; it seemed to upset her; the facts of life--love’s tragedies--ought to be kept from good women. Then he went back to his paper.

VII

Like many people who believe in an over-ruling Providence, Miss Lestrange never left anything to it. On the contrary, when her plans succeeded, she remarked triumphantly that it was the will of heaven; and when they failed, she said nothing about it, and tried again. It is usually supposed that plans which play the part of Providence fail very easily, but this is not really so; it is only the result of the plan that fails--carefully combined arrangements made with due knowledge of the forces of life seldom fail. What fails is what we expected to win from such combinations. You plant, water, and gain your increase, and what you thought were the golden apples of the Hesperides taste like dust.

This is what happened to Miss Lestrange. She gave a whole-hearted devotion to Leslie; she kept him away from what she honestly believed to be adverse influences; she cared for the delicate little boy until he became as strong as the average youth; she made her home his home; people always referred to him as “your dear boy.”

This was the palace of her dreams, but the monarch had abdicated, and the palace without its King is a Court in mourning.

Leslie was vaguely dissatisfied; he had worshiped his Aunt Etta with an ignorant devotion all his life; he had given her the love of a child and the warm-hearted loyalty of a boy. Now he was grown up. He was nineteen, and he would probably never be quite as old again--in any case, he would never feel such unbroken confidence in his own judgment--and what did his aunt appear? A small, faded, old-fashioned woman, who said “No” to his wishes.

There is a time in every boy’s life when he looks very narrowly at his own parents; very often they are the barriers at the gates of his imaginary Paradise, and he regards them as barriers; but if there is solid stuff in the youth, the tie is strong enough to hold. His parents are, of course, wrong, their opinions are worthless, their ideas are effete and purely mirth-inspiring. But they are his parents. They are people who love him with a strange love; they are ignorant people, but he forgives them, and one day discovers that he himself belongs to this inferior branch of humanity, and is giving his life up for his sons, who regard him in his turn with affectionate depreciation.

Leslie loved his father with a deep natural love, which time turned into an irritated need. He had come to the conclusion that women were all very well, but that feminine relations were a jealous bore, and that--you must see life.

So he saw life. Saw it immaturely and unwisely--or rather he may have been said not to see it, but with the rush of youth’s music in his ears he ran blindfold, and Life mocked him to her heart’s content, and gave him pebbles for diamonds and dross for gold, till she blunted alike his discrimination and his growth.

Miss Lestrange stood by watching him with incompetent agony. She had seen these things happen before to other people’s boys, and she had always known why. The mothers were silly, the boys were unlicked cubs--they had been spoilt from the first. Now she was not quite so sure. Perhaps such things happened just out of misfortune, unhappiness, blunders that must come, accidents of the type which are said to haunt families who live according to the best regulations.

Lines came into Miss Lestrange’s placid face, she lost sleep, appetite, and repose. She woke with vague terrors, she was haunted by impotent fears. There was nothing to be done, and she hadn’t the strength to do nothing. Finally, the whole story focused on one notorious lady of musical comedy. The youth of London gave her desperate homage and adoration; she was old enough to be their mother; but they did not keep these gifts for their mothers, they gave them to Anastasia Falaise, and she accepted them with easy laughter.

Miss Lestrange wrote to her brother, and her brother replied heartlessly that it was “all right.”

Leslie went on worshipping at this popular shrine; he was continually absent from Mallows; if he was present he was silent when he wasn’t irritable. He never mentioned the lady’s name, but he wrote to her every day; she wrote to him sometimes, and vague ideas, resisted by common sense, prompted Miss Lestrange to tamper with their correspondence. This correspondence flourished even more conspicuously after the ineffective efforts of Leslie’s father. It was evident to Miss Lestrange that there was no help to be met in that quarter, so she attacked the citadel itself. With nervous incoherence she implored Leslie to come abroad, to give up this absurd infatuation. Leslie raised youth’s deadly standard of silence. He blocked her utterance with a gloomy stare.

Finally, he observed that he did not know what she meant, and left the room. Young men and even old ones are to be congratulated on this gift of absence; it is a very effective weapon. Leslie did not return for some time; when he did, Miss Lestrange said nothing further on the subject, for she had stayed in the room.

Finally, goaded to desperation, she committed an unprecedented error. She may, indeed, have been described as completely losing her head. She went to call one day by appointment on Anastasia Falaise.

Anastasia was staying in a famous London hotel. She had a charming sitting-room; it was littered with presentations, and she sat shaded by pink blinds with easy indolence in a large armchair.

Miss Lestrange’s first impression may be given as it flashed into her mind, “No woman of that type has any right to be so beautiful.” Anastasia showed neither youth nor years in her face; she might as easily have been thirty as fifty; she had no lines about her eyes and mouth or marring her low Greek forehead. Her wide-set dark eyes looked like some perennial mysterious spring of life. Her face and neck and hands were the color of warm ivory; her black hair was natural, but as nobody believed it, she would sometimes--to confirm it--let coil after coil fall to her knees. She had beauty as some men have genius, and she used it with more shrewdness and common sense than this other gift is often used. She had no particular wish to please Miss Lestrange, so she simply stared at her.

Miss Lestrange was vaguely uncomfortable; she felt that she was with an extraordinary person, and that she had lowered herself to the same level by doing an extraordinary thing. This was the kind of woman she knew how to snub; she did not know how to appeal to her.

“I think you know my nephew, Leslie Lestrange,” she began, blushing a little at her companion’s insolent, inanimate beauty.

“There are half-a-dozen photographs of him, and the contents of several jewelers’ shops, I should fancy, just behind you,” observed Anastasia. “Have you come to retrieve them? I told him that unless his people were whole-sale jewelers he had better try a less expensive amusement.”

“His family is one of the oldest in England,” said Miss Lestrange impressively.

“Well, he’s young enough,” observed the imperturbable beauty. She had a slight American intonation which Miss Lestrange found strangely aggravating; it annoyed her almost beyond the power of speech.

“I have always taken the greatest interest in my nephew’s concerns,” she continued. “I have brought him up from his babyhood. I stand to him in the place of his parents.”

“And yet I had a very sensible letter from his father the other day,” interrupted Anastasia, and she laughed a low velvety laugh of pure pleasure (which Miss Lestrange promptly mistook for vulgar impertinence). “I think it is the most sensible letter I ever had, and I answered it. I guess he hasn’t sent you here, has he?”

“My brother married regrettably a second time,” said Miss Lestrange coldly, “a woman of no family connections, singularly unsuited to bring up a delicate and sensitive child; even her husband has never pressed the point.”

“You don’t say,” observed Anastasia, narrowly regarding her exquisite fingers. “Poor disconnected lady, I feel quite sorry for her!”

“On the contrary,” replied Miss Lestrange, “she has, I think, been very fortunate; a marriage of that kind for a girl in Edith Walton’s position, and at her age--she was thirty at the time--does not happen every day over here.”

Anastasia suddenly woke up for the first time; she opened her great eyes wide and looked at Miss Lestrange. It was a look so vital, so amazingly keen, staring out of the soft, mysterious, velvety dullness, that Miss Lestrange jumped.

Then Anastasia sank back into her usual attitude of inspired indolence.

“What did you say her name was?” she asked languidly. “Haddlestone? I knew some people called that once--way out West.”

“No, Walton,” repeated Miss Lestrange distinctly; “but it really hardly matters what her name is, I think, to the subject under discussion.”

“Were you discussing anything?” Anastasia asked calmly. “I wasn’t. I am merely wasting my time. However, I won’t waste any more of it. What do you want?” and her voice suddenly turned brisk and business-like.

“I want you,” said Miss Lestrange with a sudden quiver of pathetic middle-aged passion, “to let my boy go. You are a beautiful woman; what does one boy more or less matter to you--a practically penniless boy, too? Send him about his business, like a--like a kind-hearted woman.”

“How do you know I am a kind-hearted woman?” Anastasia asked curiously.

“Because,” said Miss Lestrange, rising to her feet, “you have all the advantages on your side; you can easily afford to be.”

“Well, I do call that cute!” drawled Anastasia. “That’s the best thing you’ve said yet, only it’s not true. However, we needn’t go into that. Now, Miss Lestrange, you’ve made a great mistake; if you had left the matter in your brother’s hands you’d never have heard of it again--that is to say, you wouldn’t seriously have heard of it. But, somehow or other, you’ve put an idea into my head; well, that was a mistake. I have very few ideas, and I always act upon them. I’m going to act right now; but I don’t want an audience--so, good-by!”

Anastasia rose too. She was head and shoulders above her companion, and Miss Lestrange drew a long breath at the sight of her majestic swaying figure. This was a woman to wreck kingdoms, and why should she bother her head about a boy--a boy like Leslie, whose connections she didn’t even know, whose disabilities she must, of course, see? It was all very odd. The two women looked at each other for a moment.

“I can’t understand you,” said Miss Lestrange at last, a little helplessly, “and I don’t see that I can offer you anything you want in exchange for what I ask.”

“You can’t,” said Anastasia; “nobody can offer me what I want except chocolates. Fortunately, I’m still very fond of chocolates. Well, good-by, Miss Lestrange; I’m sorry I can’t oblige you, but I’ve got to be amused, and I am going to amuse myself with your nephew.”

“Oh, amuse yourself as much as you like,” murmured Miss Lestrange, holding out her hand in farewell, “but don’t marry him!”

“I guess you’re going to be disappointed,” observed Anastasia, as her companion, reaching the door, turned to look back at her. “I guess you’re going to feel disconnected, too!”

Miss Lestrange didn’t know what her hostess meant, but she had said all she had to say and done all she could do. There was nothing more to act upon, and she knew that she had failed.

Suddenly Miss Lestrange felt old and helpless; something that had always accompanied her--a sense of the inherent dignity and interest of her position--which made her observe the world blandly, as one who has a right to a front seat on a grand-stand--left her. She felt as if she was, after all, only one of the crowd, liable to be pushed and jogged by elbows, even liable to be thrust permanently aside. She stood quite still in the finely upholstered lounge of the big hotel, and a waiter came up and asked her if he could bring her anything.

“Yes,” said Miss Lestrange, sitting down at one of the many little tables scattered about. “You may bring me a cup of tea. Perhaps,” she said to herself, “that was what I wanted. I have missed my tea.”

VIII

Edith hardly turned her head to say “Come in!” to the timid knock at her door. She was sitting at her desk, doing accounts, and puzzled as usual by her immaculate predecessor’s example--an example which, “as the most sensible of women,” she tried hard to follow, but she was frequently overcome by the invincible malice of pounds, shillings, and pence.

The pause, however, that followed arrested her attention, and she turned to meet the eyes of her step-son with a thrill of astonishment. He had never before voluntarily entered her private boudoir, and there was an air about his whole person which betokened the unusual, though he suppressed what he could only consider a weakness as well as he could.

Edith saw in a moment that she must suppress it too. “I’m so glad you have come,” she said; “now you can do this horrid sum for me. I am trying to balance my accounts, and though I can see quite plainly what I’ve spent and what I had to spend, they obstinately refuse to have anything to do with each other.”

Leslie looked over her shoulder; he was pleased to point out her mistake--it was a very obvious one--and it at once put him at his ease. He felt there could be nothing very formidable in a woman who could make such a silly mistake in quite a simple sum.

He sat down beside her, smiling and looking so utterly unlike the glum, discontented youth she was accustomed to see that Edith could barely conceal her astonishment.

“I’ve got an awful lot to say to you,” he volunteered at last. “What a jolly little room you have here--just the kind of things I like!”

“Well, you must come and like them a little oftener,” said his step-mother with a friendly smile.

He glanced at her uneasily.

“I expect I must seem an awful ass to you,” he remarked with sudden candor.

Edith shook her head.

“Dear no,” she said, “nor am I a very terrible person either, when you come to know me!”

“Oh, you,” said the boy, flushing scarlet--“you’re ripping! I can’t think why I’ve never noticed it before.”

Edith concealed a smile at this belated tribute; she wondered what he was going to notice next.

“Would you mind,” he began anxiously--“are you quite sure you wouldn’t mind, if I came here regularly--in between terms at Oxford, I mean--instead of going to Mallows?”

Edith gasped. Then she said very gently and gravely:

“My dear Leslie, this is your home.”

He got up and walked about; she hadn’t used her advantage over him; she hadn’t even made him look a fool. He was almost willing to acknowledge that he was one.

“I think I’d like to tell you all about it,” he began, “if you’re sure I sha’n’t bore you?”

“No, you won’t bore me,” said his companion.

“I daresay you know--I daresay you may have heard some talk about--about Anastasia Falaise? Of course, you don’t know what she’s like; people talk such confounded rot about her, especially women. You should hear Aunt Etta. They say she’s old; of course, it’s all jealousy. She may be twenty-five--that’s older than me, of course--I’m not quite twenty,” (his nineteenth birthday had taken place a week previously), “but then what’s five years?”

His step-mother was not prepared to say off-hand what five years were; they might be such different things; so she looked at the boy sympathetically and shook her head.

“People talk such beastly stuff about age,” the youth continued fiercely, “and not knowing your own mind; why, of course, I know she’s perfect. Why, Edith--Cleopatra, and Mary Queen of Scots, and Helen of Troy--they couldn’t have been anything to Anastasia--she’s--she’s--well, the poets are all really idiots; none of them describe her decently!”

Edith looked as if she quite believed this; in her heart of hearts she thought that the poets had under-estimated Horace, but that was very probably because they were, generally speaking, men.

“Do you know, I can’t believe in my luck, Edith--I can’t really; she might have married princes, and she’s fond of me,” cried the boy.

Edith’s eyes filled with sudden tears. The boy was very beautiful, young, exquisitely shaped, with light curls and bright brown eyes, and for the first time she was seeing his face alive and eager with the joy of life!

“I can quite believe it, Leslie,” she said gently.

“And she’s promised to marry me,” he exclaimed exultantly, “in three years’ time.”

His step-mother jumped. This was not what she had been prepared to hear. It came with a sudden shock. Horace had said the woman was old enough to be the boy’s mother, and Horace was certain to be right.

“Oh, Leslie!” she murmured, holding out her hands, vaguely troubled and distressed. “Oh, Leslie!”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said the boy, rising, “you’ll like her, I know; and, fancy, Aunt Etta--well--I can hardly believe it; she tried to come between us, and actually went and asked Anastasia to give me up. All my life she’s tried to keep me away from dad and you--and now--now Anastasia! I can’t forgive her,” said Leslie, “and I shouldn’t think you would.”

He took one of Edith’s hands and kissed it.

“Oh, my dear boy,” she whispered, “you don’t know, you don’t understand how she loved you! You see you did make a mistake, didn’t you? Just a little one that didn’t matter really about me; don’t make another which may matter terribly about your Aunt Etta. Ah, Leslie, she’s given up her life for you--she meant it all for the best. You see she--she loves you. Try to forgive her!”

“I’d have forgiven her if she’d told me,” said the boy, “but she did it on the sly. Father did it, too--he wrote some stupid letter; but then he told me he was going to--he didn’t deceive me.”

The boy choked suddenly.

“Do you know,” he said, “I sometimes think you and dad have been most awfully kind to me.”

Edith’s quivering lips smiled, and her eyes shone as they had done ten years ago through happy tears as she stood to welcome Horace’s little son.

“Oh, Leslie, Leslie!” she murmured.

He was not a demonstrative young man, so he kicked at a footstool, and gave rather a foolish laugh.

“Well, it’ll all be different now,” he said. “Anastasia is most awfully keen on my being nice to you and dad. She slanged me fearfully for not living at home--pitched into me right and left.”

“Did she?” said Edith thoughtfully. “I wonder why?”

“Oh, she’s so awfully clever and generous, you know.” The boy went on: “She said she was sure I’d been misunderstanding you all along, and that the least I could do was to make it up to you now.”

Edith suddenly rose to her feet, then she sat down again, but her hands trembled, and there was a look of surprise in her eyes.

“Have you,” she asked, “a picture of her to show me, Leslie?”

The boy laughed shamefacedly.

“I have her miniature,” he said; he drew out a little velvet case and tossed it with a pretence of indifference into Edith’s lap. She held it for a moment as if she dreaded what might meet her eye, and then, opening it quickly, she gazed at the exquisite familiar face.

“Oh, Leslie,” she cried, “it is Helen of Troy!”

The boy was delighted.

“Well, she’s the most beautiful woman in the world to me,” he said. “I’m glad you like it!”

His step-mother sat staring as if spellbound at the little velvet case; the boy took it from her unresisting hands.

“If you feel like this about her, Edith,” he said, “will you say something to my father for me--something, I mean, about her being everything she ought to be, you know, and it not mattering her being a little older than me--and really twenty-five is not very old, is it?”

“I am forty,” said Edith irrelevantly.

Leslie looked up compassionately.

“Well,” he said reassuringly, “you aren’t really old yet, you know, Edith.”

“No, I’m not really old yet,” agreed his step-mother.

Helen of Troy was forty-two.

A long silence followed. The boy began to fidget: he thought he would go and choose some flowers for Anastasia. He looked hesitatingly at Edith.

“Promise you’ll do your best for me?” he asked, leaning over her.

Edith raised her eves to his; they were strangely sad and tender.

“Yes, Leslie,” she said. “I promise you that I will do my best for you.”

He kissed her and went out of the room.

IX

Anastasia was dressed to go out in the Park. It was an exquisite day of early spring. Winter had lingered longer than usual and the green world had been for some time pining and cheerless, an unfilled canvas waiting for its artist--the sun. The park was a shimmering sea of verdant new-born foliage and young spring flowers. Crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths made summer in the midst of London.

Everybody who was anybody wandered or drove or motored in its precincts, or sat on the green chairs under the trees and looked at each other’s clothes, and speculated why So-and-so was--or was not--with somebody else; and somehow or other spring struck a note of freshness into even the stalest speculations, and did its best to prick the heart towards beauty and delight.

Anastasia was dressed to join the distinguished throng. It was her world, and she knew that she would be followed by whispers, criticisms, and speculation, even as she would be joined by groups of privileged young men, very good-looking, well-dressed, ardent, and most terribly silly--and she knew that none of this would amuse her very much, and yet that if it failed her, and when it failed her, there would be nothing else. She was dressed in white and orange, and as she looked at the superb curves of her figure, at the classical white face and wide dark eyes, at the huge coils of her magnificent black hair, she smiled a little. “Keats to-day,” she said to herself, “ye ardent marigolds!”

Then she turned round and faced Edith Lestrange.

“I came up unannounced,” said Edith. “I said you expected me. I don’t know whether you did. Oh, Helen--Helen; it’s you!”

Helen of Troy stood quite still, her arms dropped to her sides, and as she stood there a change came over her face; it was the same face, and yet the years came out in it--the suppressed, ignored, and baffled years; she could no more have passed--even with gullible youth--for twenty-five.

Edith came forward, her hands outstretched.

“Oh, Helen,” she said with a quiver in her voice, “am I so old you don’t remember me--twenty years ago?”

“Don’t!” said Helen of Troy.

She moistened her lips and put her hands up to her throat, then suddenly she began to laugh at first, just her old velvety laugh of music, and then suddenly distorted, bitter laughter--terrible to listen to--like harmony run mad.

“Oh, I remember you!” she cried between the gusts of her laughter. “I remember you all right, Edith.”

Edith came forward quietly; her face was very white and her eyes looked drawn and tired, but she drew the orange and white figure shaking with its bitter laughter to the sofa and sat down beside her.

“I know--I know,” she whispered gently; “don’t laugh so, Helen.”

“It’s all so funny,” laughed Helen of Troy, “so ghastly, ridiculously, agonizingly funny, and he might be your own son or mine, my dear--only we haven’t any!”

“We haven’t any,” repeated Edith. “Now, Helen, give me your hand. See, it’s very cold--and now your other hand! The years have made no difference--nothing has made any difference. You should have come to see me. When did you first know I was his step-mother?”

Helen had found her self-control again; she leaned back on the sofa-cushion with yielded hands and half-shut eyes, gazing at her companion.

“Oh, not till Miss Lestrange came. I wasn’t going to marry him, or give him another thought, you know; I was going to laugh him off gently, and then she let out suddenly about you--and I saw!”

“What did you see?” asked Edith almost sternly.

“I saw your life,” said Helen of Troy, opening her eyes and fixing them on her companion’s face. “I saw your life, Edith, and I see it now.”

“I don’t think you do,” said Edith calmly, “because you have not acted as if you did. Do you suppose I want to wreck the boy’s career?”

“He’ll wreck his own career,” said Helen scornfully. “One rock or another, or else some one must wrap him in cotton-wool. He’s a spoilt peach--just that soft, little rotten spot a woman sees at once. I don’t feel guilty. Of course, I saw what the she-cat had done--cut him adrift from you, and made your marriage a divided thing. I remembered everything you thought about love and marriage, and I guessed quickly enough you’d had your heart caught between two stones, and were having it crushed out of you. I thought if I used the boy he’d heal it all in three years. You only wanted your little chance, my dear, to make him love you from the bottom of his shallow little soul, and if your husband saw that, why, I suppose, even he would be convinced that things weren’t your fault.”

“How do you know he thinks things are my fault now?” asked Edith quickly.

“Have you ever known a man who didn’t hold the woman who loves him personally responsible for all the rubs of life?” asked Helen dryly.

Edith did not answer--she smiled a little. After a moment’s pause she said:

“You’re my friend, Helen?”

“Don’t speak as if I had dozens,” said Helen. “I’ve only had one, and I don’t forget.”

“Then you’ll laugh him away very gently--so gently that it won’t reach very far down?” cried Edith.

“There isn’t very far to reach,” replied Helen irritably. “I don’t see why you always want to be saving people pain; pain does good.”

“Does it?” asked Edith. Her eyes met Helen of Troy’s; they looked a long time into each other’s eyes.

“No,” said Helen at last, “it starves, it ages, it embitters, it doesn’t do good.”

“Well, I’d rather have it done to me than do it to other people,” said Edith. “It’s rather more responsibility than I care to undertake.”

“Oh, I don’t know!” said Helen of Troy with a reckless gesture; “it’s a game like any other game. I wanted to pay back your score for you. I knew you’d never do it. I kept out of your way, I never let on, and I didn’t suppose you’d find out for a day or two. I’m going to-morrow. I thought the little fool couldn’t tell you enough for you to work on, the first time he had spoken to you for years.”

“He showed me your miniature,” said Edith gravely.

Helen laughed.

“My face is my fortune,” she said grimly. “Edith, I’ve made a lot of money!”

“Yes, dear--yes,” said Edith; and she spoke soothingly as you speak to a hurt child.

“I’ve made a lot of money,” repeated Helen of Troy. Then she looked away towards the window and the swaying pots of flowers alive in the sunshine. “And I’ve made nothing else,” she said with a little bitter laugh.

Edith did not speak, and the room seemed filled with an unanswerable silence. Helen of Troy got up at last and moved restlessly to and fro.

“I ought to be in the Park,” she said. “I’ve made heaps of engagements. It doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t your husband love you, Edith?”

“Oh, my dear--my dear!” murmured Edith, “don’t ask me that.”

“But that’s just what I’m going to ask you,” said Helen, coming to a stop in front of her friend. “Don’t pretend--with your eyes! Why, they were so sad when you came in, I thought--I thought--the pain in them would break everything in the room.”

“My husband,” said Edith quietly, “is the best man in the world.”

“As bad as that?” asked Helen, lifting her eyebrows. “Why, my dear, you might as well have married an institution or a reformatory outright.”

“No, not like that,” Edith said quickly; “he’s a dear!”

“Something can generally be done with a dear,” said Helen reflectively, “even a good dear. Edith, an idea has just occurred to me. The chief difference between a bad man and a good is that you know what a bad man wants and you don’t know what a good man wants.”

Edith smiled.

“I think you always know what the man you love wants, but you can’t always give it to him,” she said.

“Tell me about it,” Helen demanded briefly. And she sat down on the sofa again.

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Edith. “His first wife died a year after their marriage, and he is satisfied with that. He wants a sober, matrimonial kind of tie, with no romance. I have supplied more than he needed, but he does not know it.”

“And you thought when you married him⁠--”

“Oh, don’t ask me what I thought,” cried Edith passionately. “I dreamed--and the people who dream get cast into pits. But all this is beside the point, Helen. You’ve got to give this boy up, you know--and do it so that he will not blow his brains out, or make some unprofitable spectacle of himself to Etta and Horace. You haven’t said you would yet, you know.”

“I never knew any one so fond of promises; you ought to belong to a law court or a registry or something,” said Helen impatiently. “Why should I give the boy up? He is pretty and pleases my fancy. I can assure you my fancy is very particular; it’s a great thing to get it pleased.”

“You are going to do it because you want to please me more,” said Edith imperturbably.

“Don’t you see, you stupid woman, that it’ll settle your hash?” Helen broke in; “the boy’ll find out somehow that you’re in it⁠--”

“I shall tell him,” Edith interposed quietly.

“Oh, my Aunt Maria!” groaned Helen of Troy, “my sainted Aunt Maria! You’ll tell him? And what good do you suppose that’ll do?”

“I’m not responsible for results,” said Edith. “But I’ve got to tell him.”

“I’m glad I know nothing of the obligations of virtue,” said Helen. “I understand paying for my fun, but I don’t see why you should pay for other people’s.”

“I couldn’t deceive Horace or the boy,” said Edith, “to save myself. I don’t mind deceiving people at all for any other reason. Half of life is mutually tolerated deceit, but not for purposes of self-protection; that I don’t like, nor, my dear Helen, do you!”

Helen did not reply to this; she merely nibbled her pen, which she had taken up from an inlaid desk beside her.

“I suppose you are going to bully me into this thing?” she observed after a pause.

“Dear me, yes,” said Edith, “that’s what I’m here for!”

Helen laughed.

“Very well, then, my dear,” she said; “without waiting to reflect on the wits of the Lestrange family (and always excepting its head, who had, I imagine, more than a suspicion of the fact), allow me to remark that they should have a goose for their coat-of-arms. I’ve been married twice, and so far as I know the second ceremony still holds good. For professional purposes I do not lay much stress upon my husband’s existence; privately, we prefer our own lives to each other’s. I don’t need any pity. I never cared for either of my husbands, but I managed both beautifully. What do you want me to say to your step-son now? I may as well observe that in three years’ time he would take it much better.”

Edith hesitated.

“I think you ought to tell him that you’re forty-two,” she said at length.

Helen threw back her head and laughed.

“It isn’t twenty years ago,” she murmured. “It’s ten minutes. Now, Edith, if you’ll take my advice you’ll not decide this yourself. You seem to have overlooked for the moment the fact of your husband’s existence. Does he know what happened twenty minutes--years ago--I mean?”

“Oh, yes,” said Edith; “I told him.”

“Very well, then,” said Helen of Troy. “I happen to know that Leslie is dining out to-night. I will, therefore, invite myself to dinner with you. Do you trust me, Edith?”

“You’re a most unscrupulous woman,” said Edith. “Still, you can’t do much harm with a mere meal, so if you like we’ll risk it.”

Helen stooped towards her and kissed her.

“After all,” she said, “I’ve had something out of my life. I’ve had this.”

X

Horace was slightly surprised on coming down dressed for dinner to meet in his wife’s sitting-room a lady of such widely-spread picture-postcard fame. He had already seen Anastasia twice in the musical comedy which she had made famous, but his wife’s introduction arrested him.

“Horace,” she said, “this is Helen of Troy.”

For a moment he was baffled by memory, and then suddenly the old sacrifice of the impetuous girl who was now his strangely sensible wife came back to him. He held out his hand at once.

“I am most happy to meet Helen of Troy,” he said, smiling.

There was no one at dinner, and the house-hold dignity, the little vivid picture of delicate repose lived long in Anastasia’s memory. Horace was an excellent host, and Edith was a loadstone for other people’s minds. She drew out their best with a silent magnetic skill, hardly participating so much as forming an atmosphere in which it was very pleasant and easy to speak.

“I always could say anything to Edith,” observed Anastasia to her host, “but I had quite supposed that I should have to talk to you.”

Horace laughed.

“We’re so simple and dull,” he said. “We are like an old tune to a practised singer; we give her an easy swing.”

“Oh, you’re not dull,” said Anastasia; “it’s rather an art to be as simple as all this, and I’ve never met it in my own people. We’re smart, we’re clever, we’re attractive, we’re the most charming people in the world, but we’re not simple.”

“You can’t expect a young nation to have the quality of an old shoe,” said Horace. “English people have done the same things for a very long time. They stand on the basis of habit. Now all the Americans I ever met wanted to be individual, personal, impressive--and they very often were. When they were not, it was rather a strain to listen to them; but we don’t want, as a rule, to be like that; it amuses us to have people do it for us; but I expect that in our heart of hearts we don’t think it very solid. There’s something in finding such an easy old track, and knowing that among your own class you’ll find the same talk, the same purpose, the same genre. I’m not sure it isn’t good for conversation as well, because it makes you less self-conscious. You start with so much that can be taken for granted.”

Helen gave him a good deal of attention; she was thinking the man out; he wasn’t in the least like his son, nor had she expected him to be. She had imagined him to be good, solid, dull, and probably a shrewd man of business; now she saw that only her first two adjectives held. He might not see everything, but he saw what he looked at. The trouble really began in his never having looked at his wife. He had accepted her, proposed to her, married her, and she had done all the rest. The chances were that she would go on doing it till she died, unless some one interfered.

“What he wants,” said Helen of Troy to herself, as she continued the conversation, “is a shaking, and that is what he is going to get.”

After dinner Horace accompanied them to his smoking-room, and Anastasia cleared the field.

“Edith,” she said, “do you remember my giving you an old silk shawl when we stayed on the lakes; it was pretty, and warm, and soft, and fresh, like one of the little clouds we used to see hover over the lovely garden? I have an idea I want that shawl back to keep always; do you know where it is?”

Edith shook her head.

“At the bottom of one of my old trunks I expect, where I keep my treasures,” she said. “I could send it to you, perhaps.”

“I want it right away,” said Anastasia calmly, in the tone which took for granted that what she wanted right away would be immediately forthcoming.

Edith laughed.

“And I’m to get it?” she asked.

“You’re to get it,” said Anastasia, “and you needn’t hurry back, for I want to talk to your husband about his boy.”

Horace looked at Edith affectionately.

“She can share all that,” he said.

“You’re very kind,” said Anastasia, with hidden irony, “but anyway I want that shawl.”

Edith left them.

“Now, Mr. Lestrange,” said Anastasia, suddenly sitting up and fixing him with her eyes, “I’m not going to talk to you about your son much. I’ll say this, and then I’ll leave the subject alone. He’s not like you. I guess he’s like that picture you’ve got on the mantelpiece--the face is selfish, tyrannical, weak and mean. Hush! I see you’re going to tell me she’s dead. I know she’s dead, and Edith’s alive. She’s alive! How long are you going to keep the living woman buried and the dead woman taking all her share of life? How long is Edith to play second fiddle to a memory which isn’t even true? If your first wife had lived you’d have been worn tired of her by now. Do you suppose she’d have said, ‘I’ll give my heart and every quivering nerve to serve this man’s comfort? I’ll starve every sense I have got to give him friendship, since he’s so blind he won’t take more? I’ll not let pain, or time, or just resentment for a wrong he has allowed to take place against me make me bitter, or old, or blunted’? Would your dead wife have acted this way, Horace Lestrange?”

Horace looked at his patent leather shoes fixedly. Once he tried to interrupt her, but the tense sharpness of her voice struck his down into silence. Something stirred in his heart that was not all anger and indignation--it was pain--it was recognition! So he breathed hard and said nothing. And for a moment the pitiless voice was still. Anastasia was watching him.

“When a man looks down at his shoes, you’re moving him,” she observed to herself. “You can’t tell which way he’s going, but he’s being moved.”

Then she went on:

“I came here expecting to find you selfish and stupid,” she said; “and you’re neither. You’re a live man, and yet you’ve lived with this woman ten years and not loved her; you’ve looked at her and not seen her; you’ve taken all she had to give, and you’ve never counted what it cost her to give it to you. Oh, you’re slow, you English--you’re slow!”

“We’re quick to act,” interrupted the man opposite her gently. He was still looking at his shoes, and he spoke very quietly, but Anastasia suddenly thrilled; she was not accustomed to be thrilled by anything a man said.

“I suppose that’s the meaning of English history,” she thought to herself; aloud she merely deepened her note of scorn:

“Quick?” she said. “Mr. Lestrange--ten years? I’m afraid it’s not quick enough. Do you know what happens when a woman is unhappy too long? She gets used to it. The habit of unhappiness sets in, the heart gets eaten up, she gets haggard, and old, and sad; and not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can make the queen take to her throne again! (That’s my own alteration, and rather a good one.) The truth of the whole matter, Mr. Lestrange, is that you’ve made a domestic hack of a woman who had the spirit of Joan of Arc⁠--”

“What on earth are you saying about Joan of Arc?” asked Edith’s voice suddenly.

Anastasia started. Horace never turned his head.

“I was saying,” said Anastasia, “that she was burned alive at a stake by the English intellect and the French nerves!”

“I’ve found the shawl,” said Edith, “but the pink’s turned almost gray in twenty years.”

Anastasia laughed shortly. Edith looked quickly at her husband; in a moment she knew that something had taken place--the very room seemed tense with recent passion. A look of anxiety came into her eyes. What had Helen said or done? She tried to stem the silence with the thin stream of talk which is against the current of thought.

Anastasia rose and held out her hand.

“I’ve got to get home in time to oversee my packing. I leave to-morrow,” she said, “and I’m going to write your boy a line, Mr. Lestrange; don’t you or Edith worry. I’ll make things as easy as I can, and youth’s elastic. It doesn’t break quickly. He won’t do anything violent, you can depend on that; he talks conversational suicide, and that’s pretty safe. Just whistle me a taxi, will you?”

They went out into the hall with her.

Horace said nothing. Once his eyes met hers. Horace’s eyes were blazing with fairly steady anger, but it was not all anger. Edith looked white and tired.

“Am I never going to see you again, Helen?” she murmured.

“In twenty years’ time,” said her friend. “Shan’t I make a nice old woman?”

Horace shook hands with her, and suddenly Helen of Troy smiled at him--it was a golden, appealing, melting smile. Her eyes took it up and held his in a kind of friendly laughter. Horace smiled back grimly.

“I am sure,” he said, “I needn’t wish you success.”

“You think I’ve got it?” she asked.

“Yes. I think you’ve got it,” said Horace Lestrange.

Then Edith kissed her, and standing together in the soft May weather the husband and wife watched her drive off into the night. Helen of Troy did not look back at them. She knew that they stood there together and loneliness was at her heart like a knife. What were all the shadows that surrounded her--the easy captives, the shallow victims of her radiant beauty--to that quiet union of strength? Countless, countless, they thronged the courts of memory, and unreal as the false dawn heralding the long gray hours they passed away.

“Oh, my God!” said Helen of Troy. “My men fight for me, but they leave me, and they never give me rest!”

“I’m very tired,” said Edith gently to her husband. “I think, if you don’t want me, I’ll go upstairs.”

“Come into my study just one moment,” he urged. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Once more the anxiety flashed back into his wife’s eyes. What had happened? What had Helen said? She followed him quickly into his room and closed the door.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to talk to you,” said her husband suddenly, and at the sound of his voice it seemed to Edith as if the whole earth changed.

In a moment she was held--she was immersed--she was lifted into uncontrollable joy. His arms were round her and his kisses were on her hair, her cheek, her forehead, quick as his tears.

“Oh, Edith,” he murmured, “my darling, all these years!”

“No, no Horace,” she cried, struggling desperately against his pity, against the terrible tenderness which seemed to drown the weak resistance of her heart. “I was never unhappy. Did she tell you I was unhappy? Why, I’ve been--you’ve been--oh, Horace, Horace! You’ve been pitying me--I can’t bear that, you know--not that--let me go.”

“Pitying you!” he laughed; he turned her face back with his hand and gazed into her eyes.

“I love you,” he said quickly. “I love you best--do you understand?”

And suddenly all the sad habit of the years fell from her, the weariness, the dull fret, the days of sober agony--they were as though they had never been.

The miracle of love swept her tears down into an ocean of bliss and carried them into laughing waters. Horace pressed his lips to hers; and they were all lost--the long intolerable hours--in the simplification of a kiss.

ROSE