Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.)

BREAKFAST

He had an unsatisfactory night—that is to say, in the matter of sleep. In respect of sagacity he rose richer than he had lain down. He had clearly perceived, about three a.m., that he was moving too much in circles which were foreign to him, and which called him "Jimmy." And at five a.m., when the first workmen's car woke bumpily the echoes of the morn, he had perceived that Mrs. Prockter's plan for separating Emanuel and Helen by bringing them together was not a wise plan. Of course, Helen must not marry Emanuel Prockter. The notion of such a union was ludicrous. (In spite of all the worry she was heaping upon him, he did not see any urgent reason why she should marry anybody.) But the proper method of nipping the orange-blossom in the bud was certainly to have a plain chat with Helen, one of those plain chats which can only occur, successfully, between plain, common-sense persons. He was convinced that, notwithstanding Mrs. Prockter's fears, Helen had not for an instant thought of Emanuel as a husband. It was inconceivable that she, a girl so utterly sensible, should have done so. And yet—girls! And Mrs. Prockter was no fool, come to think of it. A sterling creature. Not of his world, but nevertheless—At this point he uneasily dozed.

However, he determined to talk with Helen that morning at breakfast. He descended at half-past seven, as usual, full of a diplomatic intention to talk to Helen. She was wholly sensible; she was a person to whom you could talk. Still, tact would be needed. Lack of sleep had rendered his nervous system such that he would have preferred to receive tact rather than to give it. But, happily, he was a self-controlled man.

His post, which lay scattered on the tiles at the foot of the front door, did not interest him. He put it aside, in its basket. Nor could he work, according to his custom, at his accounts. Even the sight of the unfilled-in credit-slips for the bank did not spur him to industry. There can be no doubt that he was upset.

He walked across the room to the piles of Helen's books against the wall, and in sheer absence of mind picked one up, and sat on a chair, on which he had never before sat, and began to read the volume.

Then the hurried, pretentious striking of the kitchen clock startled him. Half-an-hour had passed in a moment. He peeped into the kitchen. Not a sign of breakfast! Not a sign of the new servant, with her starched frills! And for thirty years he had breakfasted at eight o'clock precisely.

And no Helen! Was Helen laughing at him? Was Helen treating him as an individual of no importance? It was unimaginable that his breakfast should be late. If anybody thought that he was going to—No! he must not give way to righteous resentment. Diplomacy! Tact! Forbearance!

But he would just go up to Helen's room and rap, and tell her of the amazing and awful state of things on the ground-floor. As a fact, she herself was late. At that moment she appeared.

"Good-morning, uncle."

She was cold, prim, cut off like China from human intercourse by a wall.

"Th' servant has na' come," said he, straining to be tolerant and amicable. He did his best to keep a grieved astonishment out of his voice; but he could not.

"Oh!" she murmured, calmly. It was nothing to her, then, that James's life should be turned upside down! And she added, with icy detachment: "I'm not surprised. You'll never get servants to be prompt in the morning when they don't sleep in the house. And there's no room for Georgiana to sleep in the house."

Georgiana! Preposterous name!

"Mrs. Butt was always prompt. I'll say that for her," he replied.

This, as he immediately recognised, was a failure in tact on his part. So when she said quickly: "I'm sure Mrs. Butt would be delighted to come back if you asked her," he said nothing.

What staggered his intellect and his knowledge of human nature was that she remained absolutely unmoved by this appalling, unprecedented, and complete absence of any sign of breakfast at after eight o'clock.

Just then Georgiana came. She had a key to the back door, and entered the house by way of the scullery.

"Good-morning, Georgiana," Helen greeted her, going into the scullery—much more kindly than she had greeted her uncle. Instead of falling on Georgiana and slaying her, she practically embraced her.

A gas cooking-stove is a wondrous gift of Heaven. You do not have to light it with yesterday's paper, damp wood, and the remains of last night's fire. In twelve minutes not merely was the breakfast ready, but the kitchen was dusted, and there was a rose in a glass next to the bacon. James had calmed himself by reading the book, and the period of waiting had really been very short. As he fronted the bacon and the flower, Helen carefully shut the scullery door. The Manchester Guardian lay to the left of his plate. Thoughtful! Altogether it was not so bad.

Further, she smiled in handing him his tea. She, too, he observed, must have slept ill. Her agreeable face was drawn. But her blue-and-white-striped dress was impeccably put on. It was severe, and yet very smooth. It suited her mood. It also suited his. They faced each other, as self-controlled people do face each other at breakfast after white nights, disillusioned, tremendously sensible, wise, gently cynical, seeing the world with steady and just orbs.

"I've been reading one o' your books, lass," he began, with superb amiability. "It's pretty near as good as a newspaper. There's summat about a law case as goes on for ever. It isna' true, I suppose, but it might be. The man as wrote that knew what he was talking about for once in a way. It's rare and good."

"You mean Jarndyce v. Jarndyce?" she said, with a smile—not one of her condescending smiles.

"Ay," he said, "I believe that is the name. How didst know, lass?"

"I just guessed," she answered. "I suppose you don't have much time for reading, uncle?"

"Not me!" said he. "I'm one o' th' busiest men in Bosley. And if ye don't know it now, you will afore long."

"Oh!" she cried, "I've noticed that. But what can you expect? With all those rents to collect yourself! Of course, I think you're quite right to collect them yourself. Rent-collectors can soon ruin a property." Her tone was exceedingly sympathetic and comprehending. He was both surprised and pleased by it. He had misjudged her mood. It was certainly comfortable to have a young woman in the house who understood things as she did.

"Ye're right, lass," he said. "It's small houses as mean trouble. You're never done—wi' cottage property. Always summat!"

"It's all small, isn't it?" she went on. "About how much do the rents average? Three-and-six a week?"

"About that," he said. She was a shrewd guesser.

"I can't imagine how you carry the money about," she exclaimed. "It must be very heavy for you."

"I'll tell you," he explained. "I've got my own system o' collecting. If I hadn't, I couldna' get through. In each street I've one tenant as I trust. And the other tenants can leave their rent and their rent books there. When they do that regular for a month, I give 'em twopence apiece for their children. If they do it regular for a year, I mak' 'em a present of a wik's rent at Christmas. It's cheaper nor rent-collectors."

"What a good idea!" she said, impressed. "But how do you carry the money about?"

"I bank i' Bosley, and I bank i' Turnhill, too. And I bank once i' Bosley and twice i' Turnhill o' Mondays, and twice i' Bosley o' Tuesdays. Only yesterday I was behind. I reckon as I can do all my collecting between nine o'clock Monday and noon Tuesday. I go to th' worst tenants first—be sure o' that. There's some o' 'em, if you don't catch 'em early o' Monday, you don't catch 'em at all."

"It's incredible to me how you can do it all in a day and a half," she pursued. "Why, how many houses are there?"

"Near two hundred and forty i' Bosley," he responded. "Hast forgotten th' sugar this time, lass?"

"And in Turnhill?" she said, passing the sugar. "I think I'll have that piece of bacon if you don't want it."

"Over a hundred," said he. "A hundred and twenty."

"So that, first and last, you have to handle about sixty pounds each week, and all in silver and copper. Fancy! What a weight it must be!"

"Ay!" he said, but with less enthusiasm.

"That's three thousand a-year," she continued.

Her tone was still innocuously sympathetic. She seemed to be talking of money as she might have talked of counters. Nevertheless, he felt that he had been entrapped.

"I expect you must have saved at the very least thirty thousand pounds by this time," she reflected, judicially, disinterestedly—speaking as a lawyer might have spoken.

He offered no remark.

"That means another thirty pounds a week," she resumed. Decidedly she was marvellous at sums of interest.

He persisted in offering no remark.

"By the way," she said, "I must look into my household accounts. How much did you tell me you allowed Mrs. Butt a week for expenses?"

"A pound," he replied, shortly.

She made no comment. "You don't own the house, do you?" she inquired.

"No," he said.

"What's the rent?"

"Eighteen pounds," he said. Reluctant is a word that inadequately describes his attitude.

"The worst of this house is that it has no bathroom," she remarked. "Still, eighteen pounds a year is eighteen pounds a year."

Her tone was faultless, in its innocent, sympathetic common sense. The truth was, it was too faultless; it rendered James furious with a fury that was dangerous, because it had to be suppressed.

Then suddenly she left the table.

"The Kiel butter at a shilling a pound is quite good enough, Georgiana," he heard her exhorting the servant in the scullery.

Ten minutes later, she put ten sovereigns in front of him.

"There's that ten-pound note," she said, politely (but not quite accurately). "I've got enough of my own to get on with."

She fled ere he could reply.

And not a word had he contrived to say to her concerning Emanuel.

THE WORLD

A few days later James Ollerenshaw was alone in the front room, checking various accounts for repairs of property in Turnhill, when twin letters fell into the quietude of the apartment. The postman—the famous old postman of Bursley, who on fine summer days surmounted the acute difficulty of tender feet by delivering mails in worsted slippers—had swiftly pushed the letters, as usual, through the slit in the door; but, nevertheless, their advent had somehow the air of magic, as, indeed, the advent of letters always had. Mr. Ollerenshaw glanced curiously from his chair, over his spectacles, at the letters as they lay dead on the floor. Their singular appearance caused him to rise at once and pick them up. They were sealed with a green seal, and addressed in a large and haughty hand—one to Helen and the other to himself. Obviously they came from the world which referred to him as "Jimmy." He was not used to being thrilled by mere envelopes, but now he became conscious of a slight quickening of pulsation. He opened his own envelope—the paper was more like a blanket than paper, and might have been made from the material of a child's untearable picture-book. He had to use a stout paper-knife, and when he did get into the envelope he felt like a burglar.

The discerning and shrewd ancient had guessed the contents. He had feared, and he had also hoped, that the contents would comprise an invitation to Mrs. Prockter's house at Hillport. They did; and more than that. The signature was Mrs. Prockter's, and she had written him a four-page letter. "My dear Mr. Ollerenshaw." "Believe me, yours most cordially and sincerely, Flora Prockter."

Flora!

The strangest thing, perhaps, in all this strange history is that he thought the name suited her.

He had no intention of accepting the invitation. Not exactly! But he enjoyed receiving it. It constituted a unique event in his career. And the wording of it was very agreeable. Mrs. Prockter proceeded thus: "In pursuance of our plan"—our plan!—"I am also inviting your niece. Indeed, I have gathered from Emanuel that he considers her as the prime justification of the party. We will throw them together. She will hear him sing. She has never heard him sing. If this does not cure her, nothing will, though he has a nice voice. I hope it will be a fine night, so that we may take the garden. I did not thank you half enough for the exceedingly kind way in which you received my really unpardonable visit the other evening," etc.

James had once heard Emanuel Prockter sing, at a concert given in aid of something which deserved every discouragement, and he agreed with Mrs. Prockter; not that he pretended to know anything about singing.

He sat down again, to compose a refusal to the invitation; but before he had written more than a few words it had transformed itself into an acceptance. He was aware of the entire ridiculousness of his going to an evening party at Mrs. Prockter's; still an instinct, powerful but obscure (it was the will-to-live and naught else), persuaded him by force to say that he would go.

"Have you had an invitation from Mrs. Prockter?" Helen asked him at tea.

"Yes," said he. "Have you?"

"Yes," said she. "Shall you go?"

"Ay, lass, I shall go."

She seemed greatly surprised.

"Us'll go together," he said.

"I don't think that I shall go," said she, hesitatingly.

"Have ye written to refuse?"

"No."

"Then I should advise ye to go, my lass."

"Why?"

"Unless ye want to have trouble with me," said he, grimly.

"But, uncle——"

"It's no good butting uncle," he replied. "If ye didna' mean to go, why did ye give young Prockter to understand as ye would go? I'll tell ye why ye changed your mind, lass. It's because you're ashamed o' being seen there with yer old uncle, and I'm sorry for it."

"Uncle!" she protested. "How can you say such a thing? You ought to know that no such idea ever entered my head."

He did know that no such idea had ever entered her head, and he was secretly puzzling for the real reason of her projected refusal. But, being determined that she should go, he had employed the surest and the least scrupulous means of achieving his end.

He tapped nervously on the table, and maintained the silence of the wounded and the proud.

"Of course, if you take it in that way," she said, after a pause, "I will go."

And he went through the comedy of gradually recovering from a wound.

His boldness in accepting the invitation and in compelling Helen to accompany him was the audacity of sheer ignorance. He had not surmised the experiences which lay before him. She told him to order a cab. She did not suggest the advisability of a cab. She stated, as a platitude, the absolute indispensability of a cab. He had meant to ride to Hillport in the tramcar, which ran past Mrs. Prockter's gates. However, he reluctantly agreed to order a cab, being fearful lest she might, after all, refuse to go. It was remarkable that, after having been opposed to the policy of throwing Helen and Emanuel together, he was now in favour of it.

On the evening, when at five minutes past nine she came into the front room clad for Mrs. Prockter's party, he perceived that the tramcar would have been unsuitable. A cab might hold her. A hansom would certainly not have held her. She was all in white, and very complicated. No hat; simply a white, silver-spangled bandage round her head, neck, and shoulders!

She glanced at him. He wore his best black clothes. "You look very well," said she, surprisingly. "That old-fashioned black necktie is splendid."

So they went. James had the peculiar illusion that he was going to a belated funeral, for except at funerals he had never in his life ridden in a cab.

When he descended with his fragile charge in Mrs. Prockter's illuminated porch, another cab was just ploughing up the gravel of the drive in departure, and nearly the whole tribe of Swetnams was on the doorstep; some had walked, and were boasting of speed. There were Sarah Swetnam, her brother Ted, the lawyer, her brother Ronald, the borough surveyor, her brother Adams, the bank cashier, and her sister Enid, aged seventeen. This child was always called "Jos" by the family, because they hated the name "Enid," which they considered to be "silly." Lilian, the newly-affianced one, was not in the crowd.

"Where's Lilian?" Helen asked, abruptly.

"Oh, she came earlier with the powerful Andrew," replied the youthful and rather jealous Jos. "She isn't an ordinary girl now."

Sarah rapidly introduced her brothers and sisters to James. They were all very respectful and agreeable; and Adams Swetnam pressed his hand quite sympathetically, and Jos's frank smile was delicious. What surprised him was that nobody seemed surprised at his being there. None of the girls wore hats, he noticed, and he also noticed that the three men (all about thirty in years) wore silk hats, white mufflers, and blue overcoats.

A servant—a sort of special edition of James's Georgiana—appeared, and robbed everybody of every garment that would yield easily to pulling. And then those lovely creatures stood revealed. Yes, Sarah herself was lovely under the rosy shades. The young men were elegantly slim, and looked very much alike, except that Adams had a beard—a feeble beard, but a beard. It is true that in their exact correctness they might have been mistaken for toast-masters, or, with the slight addition of silver neck-chains, for high officials in a costly restaurant. But great-stepuncle James could never have been mistaken for anything but a chip of the early nineteenth century flicked by the hammer of Fate into the twentieth. His wide black necktie was the secret envy of the Swetnam boys.

The Swetnam boys had the air of doing now what they did every night of their lives. With facile ease, they led the way through the long hall to the drawing-room. James followed, and en route he observed at the extremity of a side-hall two young people sitting with their hands together in a dusky corner. "Male and female created He them!" reflected James, with all the tolerant, disdainful wisdom of his years and situation.

A piano was then heard, and as Ronald Swetnam pushed open the drawing-room door for the women to enter, there came the sound of a shocked "S-sh!"

Whereupon the invaders took to the tips of their toes and crept in as sinners. At the farther end a girl was sitting at a grand piano, and in front of the piano, glorious, effulgent, monarchical, stood Emanuel Prockter, holding a piece of music horizontally at the level of his waist. He had a white flower in his buttonhole, and, adhering to a quaint old custom which still lingers in the Five Towns, and possibly elsewhere, he showed a crimson silk handkerchief tucked in between his shirt-front and his white waistcoat. He had broad bands down the sides of his trousers. Not a hair of his head had been touched by the accidental winds of circumstance. He surveyed the couple of dozen people in the large, glowing room with a fixed smile and gesture of benevolent congratulation.

Mrs. Prockter was close to the door. "Emanuel is just going to sing," she whispered, and shook hands silently with James Ollerenshaw first.

SONG, SCENE AND DANCE

Every head was turned. Emanuel coughed, frowned, and put his left hand between his collar and his neck, as though he had concealed something there. The new arrivals slipped cautiously into chairs. James was between Helen and Jos. And he distinctly saw Jos wink at Helen, and Helen wink back. The winks were without doubt an expression of sentiments aroused by the solemnity of Emanuel's frown.

The piano tinkled on, and then Emanuel's face was observed to change. The frown vanished and a smile of heavenly rapture took its place. His mouth gradually opened till its resemblance to the penultimate vowel was quite realistic, and simultaneously, by a curious muscular co-ordination, he rose on his toes to a considerable height in the air.

The strain was terrible—like waiting for a gun to go off. James was conscious of a strange vibration by his side, and saw that Jos Swetnam had got the whole of a lace handkerchief into her mouth.

The gun went off—not with a loud report, but with a gentle and lofty tenor piping, somewhere in the neighbourhood of F, or it might have been only E (though, indeed, a photograph would have suggested that Emanuel was singing at lowest the upper C), and the performer slowly resumed his normal stature.

"O Love!" he had exclaimed, adagio and sostenuto.

Then the piano, in its fashion, also said: "O Love!"

"O Love!" Emanuel exclaimed again, with slight traces of excitement, and rising to heights of stature hitherto undreamt of.

And the piano once more, in turn, called plaintively on love.

It would be too easy to mock Emanuel's gift of song. I leave that to people named Swetnam. There can be no doubt Emanuel had a very taking voice, if thin, and that his singing gave pleasure to the majority of his hearers. More than any one else, it pleased himself. When he sang he seemed to be inspired by the fact, to him patent, that he was conferring on mankind a boon inconceivably precious. If he looked a fool, his looks seriously misinterpreted his feelings. He did not spare himself on that evening. He told his stepmother's guests all about love and all about his own yearnings. He hid nothing from them. He made no secret of the fact that he lived for love alone, that he had known innumerable loves, but none like one particular variety, which he described in full detail. As a confession, and especially as a confession uttered before many maidens, it did not err on the side of reticence. Presently, having described a kind of amorous circle, he came again to: "O Love!" But this time his voice cracked: which made him angry, with a stern and controlled anger. Still singing, he turned slowly to the pianist, and fiercely glared at the pianist's unconscious back. The obvious inference was that if his voice had cracked the fault was the pianist's. The pianist, poor thing, utterly unaware of the castigation she was receiving, stuck to her business. Less than a minute later, Emanuel's voice cracked again. This time he turned even more deliberately to the pianist. He was pained. He stared during five complete bars at the back of the pianist, still continuing his confession. He wished the audience to understand clearly where the blame lay. Finally, when he thought the pianist's back was sufficiently cooked, he faced the audience.

"I hope the pianist will not be so atrociously clumsy as to let my voice crack again," he seemed to be saying.

Evidently his reproof to the pianist's back was effectual, for his voice did not crack again.

And at length, when Jos had communicated her vibration to all her family, and every one had ceased to believe that the confession would ever end, the confession did end. It ended as it had begun, in an even, agreeable tenor piping. Emanuel was much too great an artist to allow himself to be carried away by his emotion. The concluding words were, "Oh, rapture!" and Emanuel sang them just as if he had been singing "One-and-eleven-pence three-farthings."

"Oh, rats!" said Jos, under cover of the impassioned applause.

"It was nearly as long as Jarndyce v. Jarndyce," observed Adams, under the same cover.

"What!" cried James, enchanted. "Have you been reading that too?"

Adams Swetnam and great-stepuncle James had quite a little chat on the subject of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. Several other people, including the hostess, joined in the conversation, and James was surprised at the renown which Jarndyce v. Jarndyce seemed to enjoy; he was glad to find his view shared on every hand. He was also glad, and startled, to discover himself a personality in the regions of Hillport. He went through more formal introductions in ten minutes than he had been through during the whole of his previous life. It was a hot evening; he wiped his brow. Then iced champagne was served to him. Having fluttered round him, in her ample way, and charmingly flattered him, Mrs. Prockter left him, encircled chiefly by young women, in order to convey to later arrivals that they, and they alone, were the authentic objects of her solicitude. Emanuel Prockter, clad in triumph, approached, and questioned James, as one shrewd man of business may question another, concerning the value in the market of Wilbraham Hall.

Shortly afterwards a remarkable occurrence added zest to the party. Helen had wandered away with Sarah and Jos Swetnam. She reentered the drawing-room while James and Emanuel were in discussion, and her attitude towards Emanuel was decidedly not sympathetic. Then Sarah Swetnam came in alone. And then Andrew Dean came in alone.

"Oh, here's Andrew, Helen!" Sarah exclaimed.

Andrew Dean had the air of a formidable personage. He was a tall, heavy, dark young man, with immense sloping shoulders, a black moustache, and incandescent eyes, which he used as though he were somewhat suspicious of the world in general. If his dress had been less untidy, he would have made a perfect villain of melodrama. He smiled the unsure smile of a villain as he awkwardly advanced, with out-stretched hand, to Helen.

Helen put her lips together, kept her hands well out of view, and offered him a bow that could only have been properly appreciated under a microscope.

The episode was quite negative; but it amounted to a scene—a scene at one of Mrs. Prockter's parties! A scene, moreover, that mystified everybody; a scene that implied war and the wounded!

Some discreetly withdrew. Of these was Emanuel, who had the sensitiveness of an artist.

Andrew Dean presently perceived, after standing for some seconds like an imbecile stork on one leg, that the discretion of the others was worthy to be imitated. At the door he met Lilian, and they disappeared together arm in arm, as betrothed lovers should. Three people remained in that quarter of the drawing-room—Helen, her uncle, and Sarah Swetnam.

"Why, Nell," said Sarah, aghast, "what's the matter?"

"Nothing," said Helen, calmly.

"But surely you shake hands with Andrew when you meet him, don't you?"

"That depends how I feel, my dear," said Helen.

"Then something is the matter?"

"If you want to know," said Helen, with haughtiness, "in the hall, just now—that is—I—I overheard Mr. Dean say something about Emanuel Prockter's singing which I consider very improper."

"But we all——"

"I'm going out into the garden," said Helen.

"A pretty how-d'ye-do!" James muttered inaudibly to himself as he meandered to and fro in the hall, observing the manners and customs of Hillport society. Another couple were now occupying the privacy of the seat at the end of the side-hall, and James noticed that the heads of this couple had precisely the same relative positions as the heads of the previous couple. "Bless us!" he murmured, apropos of the couple, who, seeing in him a spy, rose and fled. Then he resumed his silent soliloquy. "A pretty how-d'ye-do! The chit's as fixed on that there Emanuel Prockter as ever a chit could be!" And yet James had caught the winking with Jos Swetnam during the song! As an enigma, Helen grew darker and darker to him. He was almost ready to forswear his former belief, and to assert positively that Helen had no sense whatever.

Mrs. Prockter loomed up, disengaged. "Ah, Mr. Ollerenshaw," she said, "everybody seems to be choosing the garden. Shall we go there? This way."

She led him down the side-hall. "By the bye," she murmured, with a smile, "I think our plan is succeeding."

And, without warning him, she sat down in the seat, and of course he joined her, and she put her head close to his, evidently in a confidential mood.

"Bless us!" he said to himself, apropos of himself and Mrs. Prockter, glancing about for spies.

"It's horrid of me to make fun of poor dear Emanuel's singing," pursued Mrs. Prockter. "But how did she take it? If I am not mistaken, she winked."

"Her winked," said James; "yes, her winked."

"Then everything's all right."

"Missis," said he, "if you don't mind what ye're about, you'll have a daughter-in-law afore you can say 'knife'!"

"Not Helen?"

"Ay, Helen."

"But, Mr. Ollerenshaw——"

Here happened an interruption—a servant with a tray of sustenance, comprising more champagne. James, prudent, would have refused, but under the hospitable urgency of Mrs. Prockter he compromised—and yielded.

"I'll join ye."

So she joined him. Then a string of young people passed the end of the side-hall, and among them was Jos Swetnam, who capered up to the old couple on her long legs.

"Oh, Mrs. Prockter," she cried, "what a pity we can't dance on the lawn!"

"I wish you could, my dear," said Mrs. Prockter.

"And why can't ye?" demanded James.

"No music!" said Jos.

"You see," Mrs. Prockter explained, "the lawn is at the far end of the garden, and it is impossible to hear the piano so far off. If it were only a little piano we could move it about, but it's a grand piano."

In James's next speech was to be felt the influence of champagne. "Look here," he said, "it's nobbut a step from here to the Green Man, is it?"

"The Green Man!" echoed Mrs. Prockter, not comprehending.

"Ay, the pub!"

"I believe there is an inn at the bend," said Mrs. Prockter; "but I don't think I've ever noticed the sign."

"It's the Green Man," said James. "If you'll send some one round there, and the respex of Mr. Ollerenshaw to Mr. Benskin—that's the land-lord—and will he lend me the concertina as I sold him last Martinmas?"

"Oh, Mr. Ollerenshaw!" shrieked Jos. "Can you play for dancing? How perfectly lovely it would be!"

"I fancy as I can keep your trotters moving, child," said he, gaily.

Upon this, two spinsters, the Misses Webber, wearing duplicates of one anxious visage, supervened, and, with strange magic gestures, beckoned Mrs. Prockter away. News of the episode between Andrew Dean and Helen had at length reached them, and they had deemed it a sacred duty to inform the hostess of the sad event. They were of the species of woman that spares neither herself nor others. Their fault was, that they were too compassionate for this world. Promising to send the message to Mr. Benskin, Mrs. Prockter vanished to her doom.

Within a quarter of an hour a fête unique in the annals of Hillport had organised itself on the lawn in the dim, verdurous retreats behind Mrs. Prockter's house. The lawn was large enough to be just too small for a tennis-court. It was also of a pretty mid-Victorian irregularity as regards shape, and guarded from the grim horizons of the Five Towns by a ring of superb elms. A dozen couples, mainly youngish, promenaded upon its impeccable surface in obvious expectation; while on the borders, in rustic chairs, odd remnants of humanity, mainly oldish, gazed in ecstasy at the picturesque ensemble. In the midst of the lawn was Mrs. Prockter's famous weeping willow, on whose branches Chinese lanterns had been hung by a reluctant gardener, who held to the proper gardener's axiom that lawns are made to be seen and not hurt. The moon aided these lanterns to the best of her power. Under the tree was a cane chair, and on the cane chair sat an ageing man with a concertina between his hands. He put his head on one side and played a few bars, and the couples posed themselves expectantly.

"Hold on a bit!" the virtuoso called out. "It's a tidy bit draughty here."

He put the concertina on his knees, fumbled in his tail-pocket, and drew forth a tasselled Turkish cap, which majestically he assumed; the tassel fell over his forehead. He owned several Turkish caps, and never went abroad without one.

Then he struck up definitely, and Mrs. Prockter's party had resolved itself, as parties often do, into a dance. In the blissful excitation caused by the ancient and jiggy tunes which "Jimmy" played, the sad episode of Helen Rathbone and Andrew Dean appeared to be forgotten. Helen danced with every man except Andrew, and Andrew danced with every woman except Helen. But Mrs. Prockter had not forgotten the episode; nor had the Misses Webber. The reputation of Mrs. Prockter's entertainments for utter correctness, and her own enormous reputation for fine tact, were impaired, and Mrs. Prockter was determined that that which ought to happen should happen.

She had a brief and exceedingly banal interview with Helen, and another with Andrew. And an interval having elapsed, Andrew was observed to approach Helen and ask her for a polka. Helen punctiliously accepted. And he led her out. The outraged gods of social decorum were appeased, and the reputations of Mrs. Prockter and her parties stood as high as ever. It was well and diplomatically done.

Nevertheless, the unforeseen came to pass. For at the end of the polka Helen fainted on the grass; and not Andrew but Emanuel was first to succour her. It was a highly disconcerting climax. Of course, Helen, being Helen, recovered with singular rapidity. But that did not lighten the mystery.

In the cab, going home, she wept. James could scarcely have believed it of her.

"Oh, uncle," she half whispered, in a voice of grief, "you fiddled while Rome was burning!"

This obscure saying baffled him, the more so that he had been playing a concertina and not a fiddle at all. His feelings were vague, and in some respects contradictory; but he was convinced that Mrs. Prockter's scheme for separating Helen and the Apollo Emanuel was not precisely succeeding.

THE GIFT

After that night great-stepuncle James became more than a celebrity—he became a notoriety in Bursley. Had it not been for the personal influence of Mrs. Prockter with the editor of the Signal, James's exploits upon the concertina under weeping willows at midnight would have received facetious comment in the weekly column of gossip that appears in the great daily organ of the Five Towns on Saturdays. James, aided by nothing but a glass or two of champagne, had suddenly stepped into the forefront of the town's life. He was a card. He rather liked being a card.

But within his own heart the triumph and glory of James Ollerenshaw were less splendid than outside it. Helen, apparently ashamed of having wept into his waistcoat, kept him off with a kind of a rod of stiff politeness. He could not get near her, and for at least two reasons he was anxious to get near her. He wanted to have that frank, confidential talk with her about the general imbecility of her adorer, Emanuel Prockter—that talk which he had failed to begin on the morning when she had been so sympathetic concerning his difficulties in collecting a large income. Her movements from day to day were mysterious. Facts pointed to the probability that she and Emanuel were seeing each other with no undue publicity. And yet, despite facts, despite her behaviour at the party, he could scarcely believe that shrewd Helen had not pierced the skin of Emanuel and perceived the emptiness therein. At any rate, Emanuel had not repeated his visit to the house. The only visitors had been Sarah Swetnam and her sister Lilian, the fiancée of Andrew Dean. The chatter of the three girls had struck James as being almost hysterically gay. But in the evening Helen was very gloomy, and he fancied a certain redness in her eyes. Though Helen was assuredly the last woman in the world to cry, she had, beyond doubt, cried once, and he now suspected her of another weeping.

Even more detrimental to his triumph in his own heart was the affair of the ten-pound note, which she had stolen (or abstracted if you will) and then restored to him with such dramatic haughtiness. That ten pounds was an awful trial to him. It rankled, not only with him, but (he felt sure) with her. Still, if she had her pride, he also had his. He reckoned that she had not rightly behaved in taking the note without his permission, and that in returning the full sum, and pretending that he had made it necessary for her to run the house on her own money, she had treated him meanly. The truth was, she had wounded him—again. Instincts of astounding generosity were budding in him, but he was determined to await an advance from her. He gave her money for housekeeping, within moderation, and nothing more.

Then one evening she announced that the morrow would be her birthday. James felt uneasy. He had never given birthday presents, but he well knew that presents were the correct things on birthdays. He went to bed in a state of the most absurd and causeless mental disturbance. He did not know what to do. Whereas it was enormously obvious what to do.

He woke up about one o'clock, and reflected, with an air of discovery: "Her tone was extremely friendly when she told me it was her birthday to-morrow. She meant it as an advance. I shall take it as an advance."

About half-past one he said to himself: "I'll give her a guinea to spend as she likes." It did genuinely seem to him a vast sum. A guinea to fritter away!

However, towards three o'clock its vastness had shrunk.

"Dashed if I don't give the wench a fiver!" he exclaimed. It was madness, but he had an obscure feeling that he might have had more amusement if he had begun being mad rather earlier in life.

Upon this he slept soundly till six o'clock.

His mind then unfortunately got entangled in the painful episode of the ten-pound note. He and Helen had the same blood in their veins. They were alike in some essential traits. He knew that neither of them could ever persuade himself, or herself, to mention that miserable ten-pound note again.

"If I gave her a tenner," he said, "that would make her see as I'd settled to forget that business, and let bygones be bygones. I'll give her a tenner."

It was preposterous. She could not, of course, spend it. She would put it away. So it would not be wasted.

Upon this he rose.

Poor simpleton! Ever since the commencement of his relations with Helen, surprise had followed surprise for him. And the series was not ended.

The idea of giving a gift made him quite nervous. He fumbled in his cashbox for quite a long time, and then he called, nervously:

"Helen!"

She came out of the kitchen into the front room. (Dress: White muslin—unspeakable extravagance in a town of smuts.)

"It's thy birthday, lass?"

She nodded, smiling.

"Well, tak' this."

He handed her a ten-pound note.

"Oh, thank you, uncle!" she cried, just on the calm side of effusiveness.

At this point the surprise occurred.

There was another ten-pound note in the cashbox. His fingers went for a stroll on their own account and returned with that note.

"Hold on!" he admonished her for jumping to conclusions. "And this!" And he gave her a second note. He was much more startled than she was.

"Oh, thank you, uncle!" And then, laughing: "Why, it's nearly a sovereign for every year of my life!"

"How old art?"

"Twenty-six."

"I'm gone dotty!" he said to his soul. "I'm gone dotty!" And his eyes watched his fingers take six sovereigns out of the box, and count them into her small white hand. And his cheek felt her kiss.

She went off with twenty-six pounds—twenty-six pounds! The episode was entirely incredible.

Breakfast was a most pleasing meal. Though acknowledging himself an imbecile, he was obliged to acknowledge also that a certain pleasure springs from a certain sort of imbecility. Helen was adorable.

Now that same morning he had received from Mrs. Prockter a flattering note, asking him, if he could spare the time, to go up to Hillport and examine Wilbraham Hall with her, and give her his expert advice as to its value, etc. He informed Helen of the plan.

"I'll go with you," she said at once.

"What's in the wind?" he asked himself. He saw in the suggestion a device for seeing Emanuel.

"The fact is," she added, "I want to show you a house up at Hillport that might do for us."

He winced. She had said nothing about a removal for quite some time. He hated the notion of removal. ("Flitting," he called it.) It would mean extra expense, too. As for Hillport, he was sure that nothing, except cottages, could be got in Hillport for less than fifty pounds a year. If she thought he was going to increase his rent by thirty-two pounds a year, besides rates, she was in error. The breakfast finished in a slight mist. He hardened. The idea of her indicating houses to him! The idea of her assuming that—— Well, no use in meeting trouble half-way!

THE HALL AND ITS RESULT

"Yes," said Mrs. Prockter, gazing about her, to James Ollerenshaw, "it certainly is rather spacious."

"Rather spacious!" James repeated in the secret hollows of his mind. It was not spacious; it was simply fantastic. They stood, those two—Mrs. Prockter in her usual flowered silk, and James in his usual hard, rent-collecting clothes—at the foot of the double staircase, which sprang with the light of elegance of wings from the floor of the entrance-hall of Wilbraham Hall. In front of them, over the great door, was a musicians' gallery, and over that a huge window. On either side of the great door were narrow windows which looked over stretches of green country far away from the Five Towns. For Wilbraham Hall was on the supreme ridge of Hillport, and presented only its back yard, so to speak, to the Five Towns. And though the carpets were rolled up and tied with strings, and though there were dark rectangular spaces on the walls showing where pictures had been, the effect of the hall was quite a furnished effect. Polished oak and tasselled hangings, and monstrous vases and couches and chairs preserved in it the appearance of a home, if a home of giants.

Decidedly it was worthy of the mighty reputations of the extinct Wilbrahams. The Wilbrahams had gradually risen in North Staffordshire for two centuries. About the Sunday of the Battle of Waterloo they were at their apogee. Then for a century they had gradually fallen. And at last they had extinguished themselves in the person of a young-old fool who was in prison for having cheated a pawnbroker. This young-old fool had nothing but the name of Wilbraham to his back. The wealth of the Wilbrahams, or what remained of it after eight decades of declension, had, during the course of a famous twenty years' law-suit between the father of the said young-old fool and a farming cousin in California, slowly settled like golden dust in the offices of lawyers in Carey-street, London. And the house, grounds, lake, and furniture (save certain portraits) were now on sale by order of the distant winner of the law-suit. And both Mrs. Prockter and James could remember the time when the twin-horsed equipage of the Wilbrahams used to dash about the Five Towns like the chariot of the sun. The recollection made Mrs. Prockter sad, but in James it produced no such feeling. To Mrs. Prockter, Wilbraham Hall was the last of the stylish port-wine estates that in old days dotted the heights around the Five Towns. To her it was the symbol of the death of tone and the triumph of industrialism. Whereas James merely saw it as so much building land upon which streets of profitable and inexpensive semi-detached villas would one day rise at the wand's touch of the man who had sufficient audacity for a prodigious speculation.

"It 'ud be like living in th' covered market, living here," James observed.

The St. Luke's Market is the largest roof in Bursley. And old inhabitants, incapable of recovering from the surprise of marketing under cover instead of in an open square, still, after thirty years, refer to it as the covered market.

Mrs. Prockter smiled.

"By the way," said James, "where's them childer?"

The old people looked around. Emanuel and Helen, who had entered the proud precincts with them, had vanished.

"I believe they're upstairs, ma'am," said the fat caretaker, pleating her respectable white apron.

"You can go," said Mrs. Prockter, curtly, to this vestige of grandeur. "I will see you before I leave."

The apron resented the dismissal, and perhaps would have taken it from none but Mrs. Prockter. But Mrs. Prockter had a mien, and a flowered silk, before which even an apron of the Wilbrahams must quail.

"I may tell you, Mr. Ollerenshaw," she remarked, confidentially, when they were alone, "that I have not the slightest intention of buying this place. Emanuel takes advantage of my good nature. You've no idea how persistent he is. So all you have to do is to advise me firmly not to buy it. That's why I've asked you to come up. He acknowledges that you're an authority, and he'll be forced to accept your judgment."

"Why didn't ye say that afore, missis?" asked James bluntly.

"Before when?"

"Before that kick-up (party) o' yours. He got out of me then as I thought it were dirt cheap at eight thousand."

"But I don't want to move," pleaded Mrs. Prockter.

"I'm asking ye why ye didn't tell me afore?" James repeated.

Mrs. Prockter looked at him. "Men are trying creatures!" she said. "So it seems you can't tell a tarradiddle for me?" And she sighed.

"I don't know as I object to that. What I object to is contradicting mysen."

"Why did you bring Helen?" Mrs. Prockter demanded.

"I didna'. She come hersen."

They exchanged glances.

"And now she and Emanuel have run off."

"It looks to me," said James, "as if your plan for knocking their two heads together wasna' turning out as you meant it, missis."

"And what's more," said she, "I do believe that Emanuel wants me to buy this place so that when I'm gone he can make a big splash here with your niece and your money, Mr. Ollerenshaw! What do you think of that?"

"He may make as much splash as he's a mind to, wi' my niece," James answered. "But he won't make much of a splash with my money, I can promise ye." His orbs twinkled. "I can promise ye," he repeated.

"To whom do you mean to leave it, then?"

"Not to his wife."

"H'm! Well, as we're here, I suppose we may as well see what there is to be seen. And those two dreadful young people must be found."

They mounted the stairs.

"Will you give me your arm, Mr. Ollerenshaw?"

To such gifts he was not used. Already he had given twenty-six pounds that day. The spectacle of Jimmy ascending the state staircase of Wilbraham Hall with all the abounding figure of Mrs. Prockter on his arm would have drawn crowds had it been offered to the public at sixpence a head.

They inspected the great drawing-room, the great dining-room, the great bedroom, and all the lesser rooms; the galleries, the balconies, the panellings, the embrasures, the suites and suites and suites of Georgian and Victorian decaying furniture; the ceilings and the cornices; the pictures and engravings (of which some hundreds remained); the ornaments, the clocks, the screens, and the microscopic knick-knacks. Both of them lost count of everything, except that before they reached the attics they had passed through forty-five separate apartments, not including linen closets. It was in one of the attics, as empty as Emanuel's head, that they discovered Emanuel and Helen, gazing at a magnificent prospect over the moorlands, with the gardens, the paddock, and Wilbraham Water immediately beneath.

"We've been looking for you everywhere," Helen burst out. "Oh, Mrs. Prockter, do come with me to the end of the corridor, and look at three old distaffs that I've found in a cupboard!"

During the absence of the women, James Ollerenshaw contradicted himself to Emanuel for the sweet sake of Emanuel's stepmother. Little by little they descended to the earth, with continual detours and halts by Helen, who was several times lost and found.

"I've told him," said James, quietly and proudly. "I've told him it's no use to you unless you want to turn it into a building estate."

They separated into two couples at the gate, with elaborate formalities on the part of Emanuel, which Uncle James more or less tried to imitate.

"Well?" murmured James, sighing relief, as they waited for the electric tram in that umbrageous and aristocratic portion of the Oldcastle-road which lies nearest to the portals of Wilbraham Hall. He was very pleased with himself, because, at the cost of his own respect, he had pleased Mrs. Prockter.

"Well?" murmured Helen, in response, tapping on the edge of the pavement the very same sunshade in whose company James had first made her acquaintance. She seemed nervous, hesitating, apprehensive.

"What about that house as ye've so kindly chosen for me?" he asked, genially. He wanted to humour her.

She looked him straight in the eyes. "You've seen it," said she.

"What!" he snorted. "When han I seen it?"

"Just now," she replied. "It's Wilbraham Hall. I knew that Mrs. Prockter wouldn't have it. And, besides, I've made Emanuel give up all idea of it."

He laughed, but with a strange and awful sensation in his stomach.

"A poor joke, lass!" he observed, with the laugh dead in his throat.

"It isn't a poor joke," said she. "It isn't a joke at all."

"Didst thou seriously think as I should buy that there barracks to please thee?"

"Certainly," she said, courageously. "Just that—to please me."

"I'm right enough where I am," he asserted, grimly. "What for should I buy Wilbraham Hall? What should I do in it?"

"Live in it."

"Trafalgar-road's good enough for me."

"But it isn't good enough for me," said she.

"I wouldna' ha' minded," he said, savagely—"I wouldna' ha' minded going into a house a bit bigger, but—"

"Nothing is big enough for me except Wilbraham Hall," she said.

He said nothing. He was furious. It was her birthday, and he had given her six-and-twenty pounds—ten shillings a week for a year—and she had barely kissed him. And now, instantly after that amazing and mad generosity, she had the face to look cross because he would not buy Wilbraham Hall! It was inconceivable; it was unutterable. So he said nothing.

"Why shouldn't you, after all?" she resumed. "You've got an income of nearly five thousand a year." (Now he hated her for the mean manner in which she had wormed out of him secrets that previously he had shared with no one.) "You don't spend the twentieth part of it. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with it? You're getting an old man." (Cold horrors!) "You can't take it with you when you leave the Five Towns, you know. Whom shall you leave your money to? You'll probably die worth a hundred thousand pounds, at this rate. You'll leave it to me, of course. Because there's nobody else for you to leave it to. Why can't you use it now, instead of wasting it in old stockings?"

"I bank my money, wench," he hissingly put in.

"Old stockings!" she repeated, loudly. "We could live splendidly at Wilbraham Hall on two thousand a year, and you would still be saving nearly three thousand a year."

He said nothing.

"Do you suppose I gave up my position at school in order to live in a poky little hole at eighteen pounds a year? What do you think I can do with myself all day in Trafalgar-road? Why, nothing. There's no room even for a piano, and so my fingers are stiffening every day. It's not life at all. Naturally, it's a great privilege," she pursued, with a vicious inflection that reminded him perfectly of Susan, "for a girl like me to live with an old man like you, all alone, with one servant and no sitting-room. But some privileges cost too dear. The fact is, you never think of me at all." (And he had but just given her six-and-twenty pounds.) "You think you've got a cheap housekeeper in me—but you haven't. I'm a very good housekeeper—especially in a very large house—but I'm not cheap."

She spoke as if she had all her life been accustomed to living in vast mansions. But James knew that, despite her fine friends, she had never lived in anything appreciably larger than his own dwelling. He knew there was not a house in Sneyd-road, Longshaw, worth more than twenty-five pounds a year. The whole outbreak was shocking and disgraceful. He scarcely recognised her.

He said nothing. And then suddenly he said: "I shall buy no Wilbraham Hall, lass." His voice was final.

"You could sell it again at a profit," said she. "You could turn it into a building estate" (parrot-cry caught from himself or from Emanuel), "and later on we could go and live somewhere else."

"Yes," said he; "Buckingham Palace, likely!"

"I don't—" she began.

"I shall buy no Wilbraham Hall," he reiterated. Greek had met Greek.

The tram surged along and swallowed up the two Greeks. They were alone in the tram, and they sat down opposite each other. The conductor came and took James's money, and the conductor had hardly turned his back when Helen snapped, with nostrils twitching:

"You're a miser, that's what you are! A regular old miser! Every one knows that. Every one calls you a miser. If you aren't a miser, I should like you to tell me why you live on about three pounds a week when your income is ninety pounds a week. I thought I might do you some good. I thought I might get you out of it. But it seems I can't."

"All!" he snorted. It was a painful sight. Other persons boarded the car.

At tea she behaved precisely like an angel. Not the least hint of her demeanour of the ineffable affray of the afternoon. She was so sweet that he might have given her twenty-six Wilbraham Halls instead of twenty-six pounds. He spoke not. He was, in a very deep sense, upset.

She spent the evening in her room.

"Good-bye," she said the next morning, most amiably. It was after breakfast. She was hatted, gloved and sunshaded.

"What?" he exclaimed.

"Au revoir," she said. "All my things are packed up. I shall send for them. I think I can go back to the school. If I can't, I shall go to mother in Canada. Thank you very much for all your kindness. If I go to Canada, of course I shall come and see you before I leave." He let her shake his hand.

For two days he was haunted by memories of kidney omelettes and by the word "miser." Miser, eh? Him a miser! Him! Ephraim Tellwright was a miser—but him!

Then the natty servant gave notice, and Mrs. Butt called and suggested that she should resume her sway over him. But she did not employ exactly that phrase.

He longed for one of Helen's meals as a drunkard longs for alcohol.

Then Helen called, with the casual information that she was off to Canada. She was particularly sweet. She had the tact to make the interview short. The one blot on her conduct of the interview was that she congratulated him on the possible return of Mrs. Butt, of which she had heard from the natty servant.

"Good-bye, uncle," she said.

"Good-bye."

She had got as far as the door, when he whispered, brokenly: "Lass—"

Helen turned quickly towards him.