Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.)

CONFESSIONAL

"What's the matter with Emanuel Prockter?" Helen asked; meaning, what were the implied faults of Emanuel Prockter.

There was defiance in her tone. She had risen from the table, and she had sat down again, and she seemed by her pose to indicate that she had sat down again with a definite purpose, a purpose to do grievous harm to the soul's peace of anybody who differed from the statements which she was about to enunciate, or who gave the wrong sort of answers to her catechism. She was wearing her black mousseline dress (theoretically "done with"), which in its younger days always had the effect of rousing the grande dame in her. She laid her ringless hands, lightly clasped, on a small, heavy, round mahogany table which stood in the middle of the little drawing-room, and she looked over James's shoulder into the vistas of the great drawing-room. The sombre, fading magnificence of the Wilbrahams—a magnificence of dark woods, tasselled curtains, reps, and gilt—was her theatre, and the theatre suited her mood.

Still, Jimmy Ollerenshaw, somewhat embittered by the catastrophe of the afternoon, conceived that he was not going to be brow-beaten.

"What's the matter with Emanuel Prockter," said he, "is as he's probably gotten a cold by this."

"Yes, and you're glad!" Helen retorted. "You think he looked a fool after he'd been in the water. And you were glad."

"I dunna think," said James, "I'm sure."

"But why should you be glad? That's what I want to know."

James could not sagaciously reply to this query. He merely scratched his head, tilting one of his Turkish caps to that end.

"The fact is," she cried, with a grammatical carelessness which was shocking in a woman who had professed to teach everything, "every one has got their knives into Emanuel Prockter. And it's simply because he's good-looking and well-dressed and sings beautifully."

"Good-looking!" murmured James.

"Well, isn't he?"

"He's pretty," said James.

"No one ever said he had a lot of brains—"

"I never did," James put in.

"But what does that matter? He is polite. He does know how to behave himself in polite society. If Andrew Dean pushed him into the water, that wasn't his fault. Andrew is stronger than he is, but that's no credit to Andrew Dean. It's to his discredit. Andrew Dean is nothing but a bully—we all know that. He might have pushed you into the water, or me."

"He might," James admitted, "if I'd been silly enough to get between the water and him."

"And I should like to know who looked a fool when Andrew Dean fell off those steps. And just listen to the language the man used. I will say this for Emanuel Prockter—I never heard him swear."

"No," said James. "He wears gloves. He even wears 'em when he takes his bath of a November afternoon."

"I don't care who knows it," Helen observed, hotly, "I like Emanuel Prockter."

"There's nobody as dunna' know it," said James. "It's the talk of Bosley as you've set your cap at him."

"I don't wear caps," said Helen. "I'm not a servant."

"Hat, then," James corrected himself. "Ye'll not deny as you wear hats, I reckon. I've seen ye in forty."

"I know who started that tale," Helen exploded. "Andrew Dean started that tale."

"No," said James. "It was Mrs. Prockter, I'm thinking."

"Has Mrs. Prockter spoken to you about me and—and Emanuel?"

James hesitated. But the devil-may-care, agreeably vicious Ollerenshaw impulses were afoot in him, and he did not hesitate long.

"Her has," said he.

"What a ridiculous, fat old woman she is, with her fancies!"

Frankly, James did not like this. He was in a mind to resent it, and then a certain instinct of self-preservation prompted him to seek cover in silence. But in any battle of the sexes silence is no cover to the male, as he ought to have known.

Helen pursued him behind his cover. "I wonder who she's setting her cap at! I suppose you'll not deny that she wears a cap?"

It was quite a long time since James Ollerenshaw had blushed; but he blushed at these words. Nothing could have been more foolish, inept, on his part. Why should he blush because Helen expressed a vague, hostile curiosity as to the direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap? What had the direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap to do with him? Yet blush he did. He grew angry, not—curiously enough—with Helen, but with himself and with Mrs. Prockter. His anger had the strange effect of making him an arrant coward. He got up from his chair, having pushed away his cup towards the centre of the table. As tea was over he was within his rights in doing so.

"I mun be getting to work again," he muttered.

"Please do wait a minute, uncle," she said, imperiously. "Can't you see I want to talk to you? Can't you see I've got something on my mind?"

Deliberately challenged in this way, the formidable James was no more than a sheep to the shearer. Until he met Helen, he had perhaps never received deliberate, audacious challenges, and even now he was far from being accustomed to them. So he just stood foolishly near his chair.

"I can't talk to you while you're standing up," she said.

So he sat down. How simple it ought to have been for him to exert authority over Helen, to tell her fiercely that he had no intention of being talked to like that, and that if she persisted in such tactics the front door was at her entire disposal! She had no claim on him. Yet he ate his humble pie and sat down.

"So they are saying that there is something between Emanuel Prockter and me, are they?" she recommenced, in a new, mollified voice, a voice that waved the white flag over her head.

"It wouldna' surprise me to hear as they were," said James.

"And supposing there was something between us, uncle, should you mind?"

"I don't know as I should mind," said he. "And I don't know as it 'ud matter a brass button if I did mind."

"What should you do, uncle?"

"I should do as I've always done," said he; "eat and sleep and take my walks abroad. Them as wants to marry will marry, and they will marry what suits 'em. But I shall tak' my meat and drink as usual."

"Would you come to the wedding?"

"I've only got a funeral suit," said he. "But I'd buy me some togs if Emanuel 'ud tak' this place off my hands at what I gave."

"Would you give me a wedding-present?"

"I'd give thee some advice. It's what thou'rt most in need of."

His tone was gloomy and resigned.

She slipped round the table and sat on the arm of his chair.

"You are a horrid old thing," she told him—not for the first time. "I am in need of advice. And there's no one can give it me but you."

"Nay, nay!" he recoiled. "There's Sarah Swetnam. You're as thick as thieves."

"She's the very last person I can go to," said Helen.

"And why?"

"Why! Because Andrew is engaged to her sister, of course. That's the awful part of it."

"Ay?" he questioned.

"Yes. Because, you see, it's Andrew Dean that I'm in love with."

She said it in very pert and airy accents. And then the next moment she put James into terrible consternation by crying, and clutching his arm. He saw that she was serious. Light beat down upon him. He had to blink and collect himself.

"I' thy place, lass," he said, "I should keep that to mysen."

"But I can't, uncle. That is, I haven't done. Andrew knows. You don't understand how much I'm in love with him. I've—he's—"

"Thou'st not kissed him?"

"Not exactly—but—"

"He's been kissing you in mistake for his other young woman?"

Helen nodded.

"Helen, what 'ud thy mother say?"

"It was because of Andrew Dean that I came to live in Bursley," said she. "I knew I shouldn't see him often enough if I stayed in Longshaw. So I came here. You know we had always liked each other, I think, ever since he spent two years at Longshaw at Spitz Brothers'. Then I didn't see him for some time. You know how rude and awkward he is. Well, there was a coolness. And then we didn't see each other for another long time. And then when I next saw him I knew I really was in love with him. (Of course, I never said anything to mother. One doesn't, you know. And she was so taken up with her own affairs, poor dear!) And I thought he was really fond of me. I thought so because he was so cross and queer. He's like that, you know. And, after all, it was not that that made him cross and queer. It was just because he was as good as engaged to Lilian, and he didn't like to tell me. And I never knew. How could I guess? I'd never heard there was anything between him and Lilian. And besides, although he was cross and queer, he said things to me that he oughtn't to have said, considering how he was carrying on with Lilian. It was then that I settled on coming to Bursley. There was no reason why I should stay in Longshaw. I saw him again in Longshaw, after he was engaged to Lilian, and yet he never told me! And then, when I come here, the first thing I hear is that he's engaged to Lilian. It was that afternoon when Sarah called; do you remember, uncle?"

He remembered.

"I saw Mr. Dean that night, and somehow I told him what I thought of him. I don't know how it began; but I did. He said he couldn't help being engaged to Lilian. He said it was one of those engagements that go on by themselves, and you can't stop them. He wanted to stop it. But he was engaged before he knew where he was—so he says. He said he preferred me, and if he'd known—So of course I was obliged to be very angry with him. That was why I didn't speak to him at first at Mrs. Prockter's; at least, that was partly why. The other reason was that he had accused me of running after Emanuel—of all people! I had been, you know. But what had that got to do with Andrew, seeing that he was engaged to Lilian? Besides, I'd been doing it on purpose. And he was so insolent. And then, to crown all, Mrs. Prockter makes me dance with him. No wonder I fainted! He is the rudest, rudest, crudest man I ever knew."

She wiped her eyes.

"H'm!" mused James.

"He'll simply kill poor little Lilian!" She sobbed.

"What's that got to do with you, if you and Emanuel has got nothing to do with him? It isn't you as'll be hung when Lilian's murdered."

"Can't you see he mustn't marry Lilian?" Helen burst out. "Silly little thing! How can she understand him? She's miles beneath him."

"Is there anybody as does understand him?" James asked.

"I do," said she. "And that's flat. And I've got to marry him, and you must help me. I wanted to tell you, and now I've told you. Don't you think I've done right in being quite open with you? Most girls are so foolish in these things. But I'm not. Aren't you glad, uncle?"

"Glad inna' the word," said he.

"You must help me," she repeated.

NOCTURNAL

Many things which previously had not been plain to James Ollerenshaw were plain to him that night, as, in the solitude of his chosen room, he reflected upon the astonishing menu that Helen had offered him by way of supplement to his tea. But the chief matter in his mind was the great, central, burning, blinding fact of the endless worry caused to him by his connection with the chit. He had bought Wilbraham Hall under her threat to leave him if he did not buy it. Even at Trafalgar-road she had filled the little house with worry. And now, within a dozen hours of arriving in it, she had filled Wilbraham Hall with worry—filled it to its farthest attic. If she had selected it as a residence, she would have filled the Vatican with worry. All that James demanded was a quiet life; and she would not let him have it. He wished he was back again in Trafalgar-road. He wished he had never met Helen and her sunshade in the park.

That is to say, he asserted to himself positively that he wished he had never met Helen. But he did not mean it.

And so he was to help her to wrest Andrew Dean from Lilian Swetnam! He was to take part in a shameful conspiracy! He was to assist in ruining an innocent child's happiness! And he was deliberately to foster the raw material of a scandal in which he himself would be involved! He, the strong, obstinate, self-centred old man who had never, till Helen's advent, done anything except to suit his own convenience!

The one bright spot was that Helen had no genuine designs on Emanuel Prockter. As a son-in-law, Andrew Dean would be unbearable; but Emanuel Prockter would have been—well, impossible. Andrew Dean (he mused) was at any rate a man whom you could talk to and look at without feeling sick.

When he had gazed at the affair from all points of view, and repeated to himself the same deep moral truths (such as "There's no doing nowt wi' a young woman afore she's forty") about thirty-nine times, and pitied himself from every quarter of the compass, he rose to go to bed; he did not expect to sleep. But the gas was not yet in order, and he had only one candle, which was nearly at its latter end. The ladies—Helen and Georgiana—had retired long since.

He left his little room, and was just setting forth on the adventure of discovering his bedchamber, when a bell rang in the bowels of the house. His flesh crept. It was as if—

Then he collected his powers of memory and of induction, and recognised in the sound of the bell the sound of the front door bell. Some one must be at the front door. The singular and highly-disturbing phenomena of distant clanging, of thrills, and of flesh-creepings were all resolved into the simple fact that some one was at the front door.

He went back into his little room; instead of opening the front door like a man, he opened the window of the little room, and stuck out the tassel of his cap.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

"It's I, Mr. Ollerenshaw," said a voice, queenly and nervous.

"Not Mrs. Prockter?" he suggested.

"Yes."

"I reckon ye'd like to come in," he said.

She admitted the desire with a laugh which struck him as excessively free. He did not know whether to be glad or sorry that Helen had departed to bed. He did not even know whether to be glad or sorry that Mrs. Prockter had called. But he vividly remembered what Helen had said about caps.

Naturally, he had to let her in. He held the candle in his left hand, as he opened the door with his right, and the tassel of his cap was over his eye.

"You'll think I'm in the habit of calling on you at night," said Mrs. Prockter, as she slid through the narrow space which James allotted to her, and she laughed again. "Where is dear Helen?"

"She's gone to bed, missis," said James, holding high the candle and gazing at the generous vision in front of him. It wore a bonnet, and a rich Paisley shawl over its flowered silk.

"But it's only ten o'clock!" Mrs. Prockter protested.

"Yes. But her's gone to bed."

"Why," Mrs. Prockter exclaimed, changing the subject wilfully, "you are all straight here!" (For the carpets had been unrolled and laid.)

And she sat down on a massive Early Victorian mahogany chair about fifteen feet from the dying fire, and began to fan herself with her hands. She was one of your women who are never cold.

James, having nothing to say, said nothing, following his custom.

"I'm not ill-pleased," said Mrs. Prockter, "that Helen is out of the way. The fact is—it was you that I wanted to have a word with. You'll guess what about?"

"Mr. Emanuel?" James hazarded.

"Precisely. I had to put him to bed. He is certainly in for a very serious cold, and I trust—I fervently trust—it may not be bronchitis. That would mean nurses, and nothing upsets a house more than nurses. What happened, Mr. Ollerenshaw?"

James set the candle down on another Early Victorian chair, there being no occasional table at hand, and very slowly lowered himself to a sitting posture on a third.

"I'll tell you what happened, missis," he said, putting his hands on his knees.

And he told her, beginning with the loss of the ship and ocean, and ending with Helen's ever memorable words: "You must help me."

"That's what happened, missis," he said, grimly.

She had punctuated his recital by several exclamations, and when he had finished she gave rein to her sentiments.

"My dear Mr. Ollerenshaw," she said, in the kindest manner conceivable, "how I sympathise with you! How I wish I could help you!"

Her sympathy was a genuine comfort to him. He did not, in that instant, care a fig for Helen's notion about the direction of caps. He was simply and humanly eased by the sweet tones of this ample and comely dame. Besides, the idea of a woman such as Mrs. Prockter marrying a man such as him was (he knew) preposterous. She belonged to a little world which called him "Jimmy," whereas he belonged to a little world of his own. True, he was wealthy; but she was not poor—and no amount of money (he thought) could make a bridge to join those two worlds. Nevertheless, here she was, talking to him alone at ten o'clock at night—and not for the first time, either! Obviously, then, there was no nonsense about her, whatever nonsensical world she belonged to.

She ran over with sympathy. Having no further fear of Helen making trouble in her own family, she had all her feelings at liberty to condone with James.

The candle, throwing a small hemisphere of feeble radiance in the vastness of the dim hall, sat on its chair between them.

"I can help you," she said, suddenly, after grunts from James. "I'm calling on the Swetnams the day after to-morrow. I'll tell them about—about to-day, and when Mrs. Swetnam asks me for an explanation of it, I will be mysterious. If Lilian is there, Mrs. Swetnam will certainly get her out of the room. Then I will just give the faintest hint that the explanation is merely jealousy between Emanuel and Mr. Dean concerning—a certain young lady. I shall treat it all as a joke; you can rely on me. Immediately I am gone Lilian will hear about it. She will quarrel with Andrew the next time she sees him; and if he wishes to be free, he may be."

She smiled the arch, naughty, pleasantly-malign smile of a terribly experienced dowager. And she seemed positively anxious that James should have Andrew Dean for a son-in-law.

James, in his simplicity, was delighted. It appeared to him a Mephistophelian ingenuity. He thought how clever women were, on their own ground, and what an advantage they had in their immense lack of scruple.

"Of course," said she, "I have always said that a marriage between Andrew Dean and Lilian would be a mistake—a very serious mistake. They are quite unsuited to each other. She isn't in love with him—she's only been flattered by his attentions into drawing him on. I feel sorry for the little thing."

At a stroke, she had converted a shameful conspiracy into an act of the highest virtue. And her smile changed, too—became a good smile, a smile on which a man might depend. His heart went out to her, and he contemplated the smile in a pleased, beatific silence.

Just then the candle—a treacherous thing—flamed up and went out.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Prockter.

And James had not a match. He never smoked. And without an atlas of the Hall, showing the location of match-boxes, he saw no hope of finding a match.

The fire was as good as gone. A few cinders burnt red under the ash, showing the form of the chimney-piece, but no more.

"An ye got a match?" he asked her.

"No," she said, drily, "I don't carry matches. But I can tell you I don't like being in the dark at all." Her voice came to him out of nothing, and had a most curious effect on his spine. "Where are you, Mr. Ollerenshaw?"

"I'm a-sitting here," he replied.

"Well," said she, "if you can't find a match, I think you had better lead me to the door. I certainly can't find my way there myself. Where is your hand?"

Then a hand touched his shoulder and burnt him. "Is that you?" asked the voice.

"Ay!" he said.

And he took the hand, and the hand squeezed his hand—squeezed it violently. It may have been due to fear, it may have been due to mere inadvertence on the part of the hand; but the hand did, with unmistakable, charming violence, squeeze his hand.

And he rose.

"What's that light there?" questioned the voice, in a whisper.

"Where?" he whispered also.

"There—behind."

He turned. A luminance seemed to come from above, from the unseen heights of the magnificent double staircase. As his eyes grew accustomed to the conditions, he gradually made out the details of the staircase.

"You'd better go and see," the whispering voice commanded.

He dropped the hand and obeyed, creeping up the left wing of the staircase. As he faced about at the half-landing, he saw Helen, in an orange-tinted peignoir, and her hair all down her back, holding a candle. She beckoned to him. He ascended to her.

"Who's there?" she inquired, coldly.

"Mrs. Prockter," he murmured.

"And are you sitting together in the dark?" she inquired, coldly.

The story that the candle had expired seemed feeble in the extreme. And for him the word "cap" was written in letters of fire on the darkness below.

He made no attempt to answer her question.

SEEING A LADY HOME

Those words of Helen's began a fresh chapter in the life of her great-stepuncle, James Ollerenshaw. They set up in him a feeling, or rather a whole range of feelings, which he had never before experienced. At tea, Helen had hinted at the direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap. That was nothing. He could not be held responsible for the direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap. He could laugh at that, even though he faintly blushed. But to be caught sitting in the dark with Mrs. Prockter, after ten o'clock at night, in his own house; to have the fact pointed out to him in such a peculiar, meaningful tone as Helen employed—here was something that connected him and Mrs. Prockter in a manner just a shade too serious for mere smiling. Here was something that had not before happened to him in his career as rent-collector and sage.

Not that he minded! No, he did not mind. Although he had no intention whatever of disputing the possession of Mrs. Prockter with her stepson, he did not object to all the implication in Helen's remarkable tone. On the contrary, he was rather pleased. Why should not he sit with a lady in the dark? Was he not as capable as any man of sitting with a lady in the dark? He was even willing that Helen should credit him, or pretend to credit him, with having prearranged the dark.

Ah! People might say what they chose! But what a dog he might have been had he cared to be a dog! Here he was, without the slightest preliminary practice, successfully sitting with a lady in the dark, at the first attempt! And what lady? Not the first-comer! Not Mrs. Butt! Not the Mayoress! But the acknowledged Queen of Bursley, the undisputed leader of all that was most distinguished in Bursley society! And no difficulty about it either! And she had squeezed his hand. She had continued to squeeze it. She, in her rich raiment, with her fine ways, and her correct accent, had squeezed the hand of Jimmy Ollerenshaw, with his hard old clothes and his Turkish cap, his simple barbarisms, his lack of style, and his uncompromising dialect! Why? Because he was rich? No. Because he was a man, because he was the best man in Bursley, when you came down to essentials.

So his thoughts ran.

His interest in Helen's heart had become quite a secondary interest, but she recalled him to a sense of his responsibilities as great-stepuncle of a capricious creature like her.

"What are you and Mrs. Prockter talking about?" she questioned him in a whisper, holding the candle towards his face and scrutinising it, as seemed to him, inimically.

"Well," he said, "if you must know, about you and that there Andrew Dean."

She made a brusque movement. And then she beckoned him to follow her along the corridor, out of possible earshot of Mrs. Prockter.

"Do you mean to say, uncle," she demanded, putting the candle down on a small table that stood under a large oil-painting of Joshua and the Sun in the corridor, "that you've been discussing my affairs with Mrs. Prockter?"

He saw instantly that he had not been the sage he imagined himself to be. But he was not going to be bullied by Helen, or any other woman younger than Mrs. Prockter. So he stiffly brazened it out.

"Ay!" he said.

"I never heard of such a thing!" she exploded, but still whispering.

"You said as I must help ye, and I'm helping ye," said he.

"But I didn't mean that you were to go chattering about me all over Bursley, uncle," she protested, adopting now the pained, haughty, and over-polite attitude.

"I don't know as I've been chattering all over Bursley," he rebutted her. "I don't know as I'm much of a chatterer. I might name them as could give me a start and a beating when it comes to talking the nose off a brass monkey. Mrs. Prockter came in to inquire about what had happened here this afternoon, as well she might, seeing as Emanuel went home with a couple o' gallons o' my water in his pockets. So I told her all about it. Her's a very friendly woman. And her's promised to do what her can for ye."

"How?"

"Why, to get Andrew Dean for ye, seeing as ye're so fixed on him, wi' as little gossip as maybe."

"Oh! So Mrs. Prockter has kindly consented to get Andrew Dean for me! And how does she mean to do it?"

James had no alternative; he was obliged to relate how Mrs. Prockter meant to do it.

"Now, uncle," said Helen, "just listen to me. If Mrs. Prockter says a single word about me to any one, I will never speak either to her or you again. Mind! A single word! A nice thing that she should go up to Swetnam's, and hint that Andrew and Emanuel have been fighting because of me! What about my reputation? And do you suppose that I want the leavings of Lilian Swetnam? Me! The idea is preposterous!"

"You wanted 'em badly enough this afternoon," said he.

"No, I didn't," she contradicted him passionately. "You are quite mistaken. You misunderstood me, though I'm surprised that you should have done. Perhaps I was a little excited this afternoon. Certainly you were thinking about other things. I expect you were expecting Mrs. Prockter this evening. It would have been nicer of you to have told me she was coming."

"Now, please let it be clearly understood," she swept on. "You must go down and tell Mrs. Prockter at once that you were entirely in error, and that she is on no account to breathe a word about me to any one. Whatever you were both thinking of I cannot imagine! But I can assure you I'm extremely annoyed. Mrs. Prockter putting her finger in the pie!.... Let her take care that I don't put my finger into her pie! I always knew she was a gossiping old thing, but, really—"

"Mr. Ollerenshaw!" A prettily plaintive voice rose from the black depths below.

"There! she's getting impatient for you!" Helen snapped. "Run off to her at once. To think that if I hadn't happened to hear the bell ring, and come out to see what was the matter, I should have been the talk of Bursley before I was a day older!"

She picked up the candle.

"I must have a light!" said James, somewhat lamely.

"Why?" Helen asked, calmly. "If you could begin in the dark, why can't you finish in the dark? You and she seem to like being in the dark."

"Mr. Ollerenshaw!" The voice was a little nearer.

"Her's coming!" James ejaculated.

Helen seemed to lose her courage before that threat.

"Here! Take this one, then!" said she, giving James her candle, and fleeing down the corridor.

James had the sensation of transacting a part in a play at a theatre where the scenery was absolutely realistic and at the same time of a romantic quality. Moonlight streaming in through the windows of the interminable corridor was alone wanting to render the illusion perfect. It was certainly astonishing—what you could buy with seven thousand two hundred and fifty pounds! Perhaps the most striking portion of the scenery was Helen's peignoir. He had not before witnessed her in a peignoir. The effect of it was agreeable; but, indeed, the modern taste for luxury was incredible! He wondered if Mrs. Prockter practised similar extravagances.

While such notions ran through his head he was hurrying to the stairs, and dropping a hail of candle-grease on the floor. He found Mrs. Prockter slowly and cautiously ascending the stairway. If he was at the summit of Mont Blanc she had already reached Les Grands Mulets.

"What is it?" she asked, pausing, and looking up at him with an appealing gesture.

"What's what?"

"Why have you been so long?" It was as if she implied that these minutes without him were an eternity of ennui. He grew more and more conceited. He was already despising Don Juan as a puling boy.

"Helen heard summat, and so she had come out of her bedroom. Her's nervous i' this big house."

"Did you tell her I was here, Mr. Ollerenshaw?"

By this time he had rejoined her at Les Grands Mulets.

"No," he said, without sufficiently reflecting.

"She didn't hear me call out, then?"

"Did ye call out?" If he was in a theatre, he also could act.

"Perhaps it's just as well," said Mrs. Prockter, after a momentary meditation. "Under the circumstances she cannot possibly suspect our little plot."

Their little plot! In yielding to the impulse to tell her that Helen was unaware of her presence in the house he had forgotten that he had made it excessively difficult for him to demolish the said plot. He could not one moment agree with enthusiasm to the plot, and the next moment say that the plot had better be abandoned. Some men, doubtless, could. But he could not. He was scarcely that kind of man. His proper course would have been to relate to Mrs. Prockter exactly what had passed between himself and Helen, and trust to her common sense. Unhappily, with the intention of pleasing her, or reassuring her, or something equally silly, he had lied to her and rendered the truth impracticable. However, he did not seem to care much. He had already pushed Helen's affairs back again to quite a secondary position.

"I suppose ye think it'll be all right, missis," he said, carelessly—"ye going up to Mrs. Swetnam's o' that 'n, and—"

"Rely on me," said she, silencing him. Thus, without a pang, he left Helen to her fate. They had touched the ground-floor. "Thank you very much, Mr. Ollerenshaw," said Mrs. Prockter. "Good-night. I'll make the best of my way home."

Curious, how sorry he felt at this announcement! He had become quite accustomed to being a conspirator with her in the vast house lighted by a single candle, and he did not relish the end of the performance.

"I'll step along wi' ye," said he.

"Oh, no!" she said. "I really can't allow—"

"Allow what?"

"Allow you to inconvenience yourself like that for me."

"Pooh!" said he.

And he, who had never in his life seen a lady to her door, set out on the business as though he had done nothing else every night of his life, as though it was an enterprise that did not require practice.

He opened the door, and put the candle on the floor behind it, where he could easily find it on returning. "I'll get a box o' matches from somewhere while I'm out," said he.

He was about to extinguish the candle when she stopped him. "Mr. Ollerenshaw," she said, firmly, "you haven't got your boots on. Those slippers are not thick enough for this weather."

He gazed at her. Should he yield to her? The idea of yielding to her, for the mere sake of yielding to her, presented itself to him as a charming idea. So he disappeared with the candle, and reappeared in his boots.

"You won't need a muffler?" she suggested.

Now was the moment to play the hardy Norseman. "Oh, no!" he laughed.

This concern for his welfare, coming from such a royal creature, was, however, immensely agreeable.

She stood out on the steps; he extinguished the candle, and then joined her and banged the door. They started. Several hundred yards of winding pitch-dark drive had to be traversed.

"Will you kindly give me your arm?" she said.

She said it so primly, so correctly, and with such detachment, that they might have been in church, and she saying: "Will you kindly let me look over your Prayer Book?"

When they arrived at the gas-lit Oldcastle-road he wanted to withdraw his arm, but he did not know how to begin withdrawing it. Hence he was obliged to leave it where it was.

And as they were approaching the front gate of the residence of Mr. Buchanan, the Scotch editor of the Signal, a perfect string of people emerged from that front gate. Mrs. Buchanan had been giving a whist drive. There were sundry Swetnams among the string. And the whole string was merry and talkative. It was a fine night. The leading pearls of the string bore down on the middle-aged pair, and peered, and passed.

"Good-night, Mrs. Prockter. Good-night, Mr. Ollerenshaw."

Then another couple did the same. "Good-night, Mrs. Prockter. Good-night, Mr. Ollerenshaw."

And so it went on. And the string, laughing and talking, gradually disappeared diminuendo in the distance towards Bursley.

"I suppose you know you've done it this time?" observed Mrs. Prockter.

It was a dark saying, but James fully understood it. He felt as though he had drunk champagne. "As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!" he said to himself. And deliberately squeezed the royal arm.

Nothing violent happened. He had rather expected the heavens to fall, or that at least Mrs. Prockter would exclaim: "Unhand me, monster!" But nothing violent happened.

"And this is me, James Ollerenshaw!" he said to himself, still squeezing.

GIRLISH CONFIDENCES

One afternoon Sarah Swetnam called, and Helen in person opened the great door to the visitor.

"I saw that frock in Brunt's three days ago," Helen began, kissing the tall, tightbound, large-boned woman.

"I know you did, Nell," Sarah admitted. "But you needn't tell me so. Don't you like it?"

"I think it's a dream," Helen replied, quickly. "Turn round." But there was a certain lack of conviction in her voice, and in Sarah's manner there was something strained. Accordingly, they both became extravagantly effusive—or, at any rate, more effusive than usual, though each was well aware that the artifice was entirely futile.

"All alone?" Sarah asked, when she had recovered from the first shock of the hall's magnificence.

"Yes," said Helen. "It's Georgiana's afternoon out, and uncle's away, and I haven't got any new servants yet."

"Mr. Ollerenshaw away! No one ever heard of such a thing! If you knew him as well as we do, you'd have fainted with surprise. It ought to be in the paper. Where's he gone to?"

"He's gone to Derby, to try to buy some property that he says is going very cheap there. He's been gone three days now. He got a letter at breakfast, and said he must go to Derby at once. However, he had to finish his rents. The trouble is that his rents never are finished, and I'm bothered all the time by people coming with three and sixpence, or four shillings, and a dirty rent-book! Oh! and the dirt on the coins! My dear, you can't imagine! There's one good thing. He will have to come back for next week's rents. Not that I'm sorry he's gone. It gives me a chance, you see. By the time he returns I shall have my servants in."

"Do tell me what servants you're going to have?"

"Well, I went to that agency at Oldcastle. I've got a German butler. He speaks four languages, and has beautiful eyes."

"A German butler!"

If it had been a German prince Sarah could not have been more startled nor more delighted.

"Yes, and a cook, and two other maids; and a gardener and a boy. I shall keep Georgiana as my own maid."

"My child, you're going it!"

"My child, I came here to go it."

"And—and Mr. Ollerenshaw is really pleased?"

Helen laughed. "Uncle never goes into raptures, you know. But I hope he will be pleased. The fact is, he doesn't know anything about these new servants yet. He'll find them installed when he returns. It will be a little treat for him. My piano came this morning. Care to try it?"

"Rather!" said Sarah. "Well, I never saw anything like it!" This was in reference to her first glimpse of the great drawing-room. "How you've improved it, you dear thing!"

"You see, I have my own cheque-book; it saves worry."

"I see!" said Sarah, meaningly, putting her purse on the piano, her umbrella on a chair, and herself on the music-stool.

"Shall we have tea?" Helen suggested, after Sarah had performed on the Bechstein.

"Yes. Let me help you, do, dearest."

They wandered off to the kitchens, and while they were seated at the kitchen-table, sipping tea, side by side, Sarah said:

"Now if you want an idea, I've got a really good one for you."

"For me? What sort of an idea?"

"I'll tell you. You know Mrs. Wiltshire is dead."

"I don't. I didn't even know there was a Mrs. Wiltshire."

"Well, there was, and there isn't any longer. Mrs. Wiltshire was the main social prop of the old rector. And the annual concert of the St. Luke's Guild has always been held at her house, down at Shawport, you know. Awfully poky! But it was the custom since the Flood, and no one ever dared to hint at a change. Now the concert was to have been next week but one, and she's just gone and died, and the rector is wondering where he can hold it. I met him this morning. Why don't you let him hold it here? That would be a splendid way of opening your house—Hall, I beg its pardon. And you could introduce the beautiful eyes of your German butler to the entire neighbourhood. Of course, I don't know whether Mr. Ollerenshaw would like it."

"Oh!" said Helen, without blenching, "uncle would do as I wish."

She mused, in silence, during a number of seconds.

"The idea doesn't appeal to you?" Sarah queried, disappointment in her tones.

"Yes, it does," said Helen. "But I must think it over. Now, would you care to see the rest of the house?"

"I should love to. Oh dear, I've left my handkerchief with my purse in the drawing-room."

"Have mine!" said Helen, promptly.

But even after this final proof of intimate friendship, there still remained an obstinate trifle of insincerity in their relations that afternoon. Helen was sure that Sarah Swetnam had paid the call specially to say something, and that the something had not yet been said. And the apprehension of an impending scene gradually took possession of her nerves and disarranged them. When they reached the attics, and were enjoying the glorious views of the moorland in the distance and of Wilbraham Water in the immediate foreground, Helen said, very suddenly:

"Will the rector be in this afternoon?"

"I should say so. Why?"

"I was thinking we might walk down there together, and I could suggest to him at once about having the concert here."

Sarah clapped her hands. "Then you've decided?"

"Certainly."

"How funny you are, Nell, with your decisions!"

In Helen's bedroom, amid her wardrobe, there was no chance of dangerous topics, the attention being monopolised by one subject, and that a safe one.

At last they went out together, two models of style and deportment, and Helen pulled to the great front door with a loud echoing clang.

"Fancy that place being all empty. Aren't you afraid of sleeping there while your uncle is away?"

"No," said Helen. "But I should be afraid if Georgiana wasn't afraid."

After this example of courageous introspection, a silence fell upon the pair; the silence held firm while they got out of the grounds and crossed Oldcastle-road, and took to the Alls field-path, from which a unique panorama of Bursley—chimneys, kilns, canals, railways, and smoke-pall—is to be obtained. Helen was determined not to break the silence. And then came the moment when Sarah Swetnam could no longer suffer the silence; and she began, very cautiously:

"I suppose you've heard all about Andrew and Emanuel Prockter?"

Helen perceived that she had not been mistaken, and that the scene was at hand. "No," said she. "What about them?"

"You don't mean to say you've not heard?"

"No. What about?"

"The quarrel between those two?"

"Emanuel and Mr. Dean?"

"Yes. But you must have heard?"

"I assure you, Sally, no one has told me a word about it." (Which was just as true as it was untrue.)

"But they quarrelled up here. I did hear that Andrew threw Emanuel into your lake."

"Who told you that?"

"It was Mrs. Prockter. She was calling on the mater yesterday, and she seemed to be full of it—according to the mater's account. Mrs. Prockters' idea was that they had quarrelled about a woman."

("Mrs. Prockter shall be repaid for this," said Helen to herself.)

"Surely Emanuel hasn't been falling in love with Lilian, has he?" said Helen, aloud. She considered this rather clever on her part. And it was.

"Oh, no!" replied Sally, positively. "It's not Lilian." And there was that in her tone which could not be expressed in ten volumes. "You know perfectly well who the woman is," Helen seemed to hear her say.

Then Helen said: "I think I can explain it. They were both at our house the day we removed."

"Oh, were they?" murmured Sarah, in well-acted surprise.

"And Mr. Dean fell off some steps that Emanuel was supposed to be holding. I thought he was furious—but not to that point. That's probably the secret of the whole thing. As for Mr. Dean having pushed Emanuel into the lake, I don't believe a word of it."

"Then how was it that Emanuel had a cold and had to stay in bed?"

"My dear, to have a cold it isn't necessary to have been thrown into Wilbraham Water!"

"That's true," Sarah admitted.

"However," Helen calmly proceeded, "I'll find out all about it and let you know."

"How shall you find out?"

"I shall make Emanuel tell me. He will tell me anything. And he's a dear boy."

"Do you see him often up here?" Sarah inquired.

"Oh, yes!" This was not true. "We get on together excellently. And I'm pretty sure that Emanuel is not—well—interested in any other woman. That's why I should say that they have not been quarrelling about a woman. Unless, of course, the woman is myself." She laughed, and added: "But I'm not jealous. I can trust Emanuel."

And with marvellous intrepidity she looked Sarah Swetnam in the face.

"Then," Sarah stammered, "you and Emanuel —you don't mean——"

"My dear Sally, don't you think Emanuel is a perfectly delightful boy?"

"Oh, yes!" said Sarah.

"So do I," said Helen.

"But are you——"

"Between ourselves," Helen murmured. "Mind you, between ourselves—I could imagine stranger things happening."

"Well," said Sarah, "this is news."

"Mind, not a syllable!"

"Oh, of course not."

"By the way," Helen asked, "when are Andrew and Lilian going to get married?"

"I don't know. No one knows. One confidence for another, my dear; they don't always hit it off."

"What a pity!" Helen remarked. "Because if ever two people were suited to each other in this world, they are. But I hope they'll shake down."

They arrived at the rector's.