CHAPTER VI
GROWTH
Helena, when a year's passing had worn away the novelty of keeping house and made its process slower, was naturally rather bored at times, when Hubert was shut up with his work. No one could have been happier so long as she was with her husband; she still thought him immensely clever, which is most good for married happiness; still found their walks and treats the very greatest fun; but in the winter especially, there were so many gaps of idle loneliness.
Luckily the remedy was near at hand.
To a girl almost bursting with the ashamed desire for self-development a garden suburb must be Paradise indeed. There is a natural connection between New Art cottages with gardens round, and (let us say) enthusiasms. The ordinary man—that tame myope who gratefully accepts life as it is—contentedly exists in squares, crescents and straight lines; breathing the common air and never worrying at all whether his house, which may be number 246, has individuality or not. But the enthusiast, whom others call by a less noble title, is of a different sort. He holds that what we see and breathe, especially when young, we are. His children, then, must have a quite uncommon setting; not grown like the sordid brats in 245 "desirable villas" adjoining. No, they must live where there is air and a big back-yard patch; where the word garden throws a soft glamour over muddied and unfinished roads; where everything is beautiful and man himself is not so vile.
For, after all, he asks, what really wicked man would ever trouble to live out at a tube's end? No! Vice ever lurks among the fogs and shrubless rabbit-warrens of mid-London. It would not flourish in a garden suburb.
So out he goes, and sees to it that his house shall have something different from all the other small white dwellings round about him. An architect might say that there was neither use nor fitness in his timbered turret at the north-east corner, but he himself knows just why it is there. He knows that he has flung his little pebble, all he can avail, upon the heap that some day, we all hope, will crush the soul-destroying isms out of life, and make of man, not a type in monotone, but a great hive of multi-coloured individuals.
So far, so good; but more remains to tell.
He settles proudly underneath his turret and waits for the great change to start. The neighbours call and he discovers they are cultured. They are very cultured. And he—with a sick horror he knows at length that he is not. All these people here have something different, not a mere turret—something different about themselves. Menzies believes that eating sheep is murder in the sight of Heaven, and the same with cows. Du Cane will not let his children wear boots, because the notion is not Greek. Farren is convinced that you must sleep with your feet to the south and your head, of course, in the opposite direction. Blythe-Egerton believes in ghosts but says they can't have clothes. Jerningham lives next the golf club house, an envied site, and holds success in games has always been the first precursor of a nation's downfall. Escott knows exactly who should marry what; whilst Ferguson can quite explain the Post-Impressionists, but fails to understand the Royal Academy—peculiar in a Scotchman. Yes, every single one of them has some outstanding gift or knowledge, making him a pleasant man to meet.
So out he goes, post-haste, to search a quality, and wishes now that he had not spent all that extra money upon his symbolic turret. He knows a better secret, now, of how real individuality is gained. It consists not in bricks and mortar nor in any latticed garden-work—though these may be its outward signs—but in a being different. He hurries out and buys the works of Chesterton and Bernard Shaw as a beginning.
Helena, of course, was predisposed to it since Devonshire.
She did not long to become different, so much: she hankered to cease being ignorant.
Hubert was so clever, but that discouraged more than it helped her. He talked quite brilliantly about such deep things, but he would not explain. He laughed and said she was a jolly child. He always treated her rather as one and certainly they had great fun together, but she longed to be clever without getting old, and when she had told him so, he simply laughed and said she ought to be content to have such quaint ideas.
"It's far better," he added, "to be original than clever. Don't you worry your dear little head with dull ideas and facts."
But Helena did worry.
She had now, apart from her old desire for self-development and knowledge about life, all these dull lonely hours to fill; and as she went about, slowly getting to know the people near, she found like our enthusiast that every one of them was full of something—some vital, all-absorbing topic, if nothing more than golf or their own handicap. And that, she saw at once, was what she had to have if she wished ever to make her life really full. She could not go to matinées, like some, or Hubert missed her all the afternoon; and if they went to an At Home, he always dashed away at five, which looked so rude, and people—she felt sure—said afterwards that she could not have much hold over him, so soon. She tried novels, but these she really could not understand. Hubert watched cynically her attempts to get at grips with a sex-novel more sexual than is expected even in these days of censorships and free advertisement.
"But, Hubert," she said finally, "why did she do that? Wasn't she fond of her husband? He seems quite nice. Do these terrible things really happen?"
"Oh no," he answered, as one would speak to a child. "Of course they never happen really."
Helena looked puzzled. "Then why do people write or read them?" she asked.
"My dear girl," he answered in the heavy-father manner that gave him such pleasure, "if you could answer that, you would have solved one of the most interesting problems about human nature!"
So then she was puzzled again and laid aside the book half read, before she got even to the chapter that was really censured and commonly read first.
Not that way, she saw, lay illumination.
At last she tried another road. "You know," she said reflectively one night, during those long hearthside chats that neither really would have changed for any other social form, "I like all the people here and so on, but they're terribly busy, aren't they, and I always feel I've sort of come too late."
"How sort of?" he replied indulgently.
"Well, I've got no real friends and you're busy so much with your dull old work. Don't you know anybody?—really know, I mean—old friends, who aren't too far away?"
Hubert thought for a few moments. "It sounds absurd," he said at last, "but I was such a hermit till I met you that I don't believe I've got a single woman friend."
Helena, he noticed, was not flattered in the least degree. That sort of thing was what made her so splendid. He told himself that a woman who was womanly would be a bore about the house, and smiled adoringly on his own child-like specimen, who waited silently, as though quite sure that he would find a friend in the same way that after some time he had found her brooch. But there was a long pause and he made no suggestions.
"Well, what about men then?" she added simply. "I don't mind."
And he was once again enchanted by her naïveté.
"You shall have the pick of all my man-friends," he said, and then puzzled her by laughing.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Oh, you're so perfect, dearest!" he said, and got up and kissed her.
It needed some thought, none the less. Of his old pals—he suddenly remembered that he had been married over a year now, and not seen any one of them or wanted to—there were not many who lived near, and some of these ... well, they were all right in their way, but vaguely he felt they were not quite fit to introduce to any one so sweet as his girl-wife.... Marriage frequently turns cynics into sentimentalists. (The converse can be well ignored.)
"I know," he cried suddenly.
"I felt sure you would," she said. It was just these remarks that made her such an excellent companion. "Who is it then?"
"Old Boyd—old Kenneth Boyd. He's just the very man you'd like. One feels so awfully at home with him, he's restful you know; old-friend-in-five-minutes sort of fellow. Oh and," he added, "I forgot just for the moment! There is a wife too."
"I think I'm almost sorry," said Helena reflectively. "I don't think he sounds the sort of person who'd be much good unless alone. But I'm so silly with words. I never can explain and I expect I'm wrong."
There seemed, at any rate, some wisdom in her cryptic estimate.
The dinner-party was not a success.
Helena was so charming to Kenneth Boyd that Hubert, almost beyond himself with pride and refraining with difficulty from kissing her when she was too especially delicious, wondered why on earth he had so long delayed showing his old friends how sweetly original a little simpleton he had secured in spite of all their jeers. Kenneth, over a glass of port from the local grocer, was absolute enthusiasm and delighted his host till he turned suddenly and said; "Now own that I was absolutely right?" With the wives, however, it was different. Mrs. Boyd said afterwards to her husband: "Just the poor little undeveloped fool one would expect any one so conceited to take as his wife!" whilst Helena thought her a rude pig, and neither was too subtle in concealing her opinion.
This instinct of hostility was fatal to any real union between the households. Hubert noted with amusement how, at each fresh encounter, the two wives became more and more affectionately cold, and soon kissed on meeting.
He turned, with Helena still urging him, to other possibilities.
It was then that he thought of Geoffrey Alison.
"Geoffrey Alison," exclaimed Hubert with far more conviction than about Kenneth Boyd. "He really is the man! Amusing, clever, full of energy, and too young to be really busy." This in a condescending way.
"Why, how old is he?" she enquired. "I want some one, you know, who is cleverer than me and can tell me things at galleries and places."
He smiled at her. "Well, I think he could tell you things, he must be twenty-nine by now. Besides, I was able once to do him a good turn, he is a sort of protégé; so he'd be only too glad to take you about and as you call it, tell you things at galleries and places. He's pretty good on art."
The word protégé was rolled upon his tongue; the episode of Geoffrey Alison had pleased him a good deal; but Helena did not seem reassured.
"Oh, thank you!" she said, girlishly for these days when she had begun duly to expand as wished. "If he'd think he was doing it as a great favour, just to pay you back, I'd rather look at pictures and things by myself and puzzle out their meaning. It's only I've begun so late." She paused for a moment, and then without enthusiasm, almost sulkily; "What did you do for him?"
Hubert embarked on it with gusto.
"Why, it wasn't really very much. It was just after my first book came out, when I was twenty-six or so and he was at the Varsity or somewhere. I suppose he read a notice or heard the book was selling or something. Anyhow, he wrote me a most charming letter, the first I ever had from any stranger, congratulating me on my success and asking, if you please, how I had managed it as he heard I was young and he wanted to become an author too! I answered all the usual stuff about hard work and so on, which I see now he must have thought astounding twaddle if he really was at Oxford, and told him when he came to Town I'd like to meet him and perhaps could give him a few introductions. As a matter of fact," he went on after brief reflection, "I never did the last because I don't believe in it; but he came round at nights and talked to me and always said I had encouraged him a lot just when a little bucking-up was needed."
"And did he?" was Helena's sole comment.
Hubert at times could not follow her mind, fledgeling though it was, in all its flights. "Did he what, dear?"
"Why, did he become an author?" answered Helena, with that impatient tolerance which women keep for these occasions.
"Oh no," he said, vaguely annoyed, now, that he had not guessed it. "Rather not! He's an artist now. Not terribly successful, you know, but getting along. I don't think you would care much for his pictures, though."
Secretly, within his mind he reconstructed Alison, remembering now some not too pleasant drawings that he had brought along one night; wondering if he had mentioned him too soon. But he saw only a keen, harmless youth of the artistic type; a white man, certainly, who, even if he had a morbid side, would never show it to a girl—or to his benefactor's wife.
Yes, it was excellent. He had feared sometimes that she must be lonely in the mornings or from five to seven, and Alison, he knew, was of the work-when-I-feel-in-the-mood brigade (yes, it had certainly been Oxford), for he had finally been forced to tell him he was absolutely never free till after dinner-time.
He was the very man indeed. He spent his days in galleries, museums, theatres; wanted not only something new, like the Athenians, but every blessed new thing going; and if a heretic therefore on Art, was full of knowledge and when he cared to, could be very nice.
Helena thought him very nice indeed.
Of course he was ever so much cleverer than she was; she need not have feared that; and yet he did not seem to mind how elementary the thing was that she wished to see. He came with her and would explain it all. And he was nearly always free. Hubert had said that he was too young to be busy, and yet she felt slightly puzzled. If Geoffrey Alison could be so nice to friends, of whom he must have several, it did seem odd that Hubert never could afford a morning for his wife, when he had only one! But maybe Mr. Alison had not got many friends as yet or wasn't as nice to them all?
At any rate life up at Hampstead was far less boring now. Sometimes on days when there was not much house-keeping to do, they would go by tube or 'bus to Trafalgar Square and spend long hours in the National Gallery or twenty minutes in the Tate to see the Watts room and three of the statues. At other times they would just ramble on the Heath, and prim Mrs. Herbertson, the vicar's wife, amused Helena one day enormously by thinking Mr. Alison was Hubert.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear Mrs. Brett!" she exclaimed, when Helena laughingly told her the mistake; "but seeing you two about upon the Heath so often in the mornings, I quite thought——! You must forgive my stupidity, please?" And she smiled a false smile.
Helena thought this delicious, considering that Hugh was tall and broad and dark and looked like a celebrity at once, whilst Mr. Alison was rather short and slim, not one half so good-looking—funny-looking, somehow, even when quite serious—with fair hair always a wee bit too long!
"Won't Hugh be convulsed?" she asked.
"I don't think I should tell him," he said, to her absolute surprise.
"But why on earth not?" she enquired.
He would not tell her. In other things he was so kind; unlike her husband, he would try to fill her gaps in education; but here he was quite firm. He only let her force him to say that Hubert was a splendid fellow but a curious sort of devil—which she had learnt already, although she did not think that Mr. Alison should say so. He added that you never knew. And finally she gave it up, quite angry.
But she said nothing to her husband and Mrs. Herbertson might easily have made the same mistake again, except that she learnt Hubert was not a church-goer—an atheist, she called him—and cut Helena entirely. This left the young couple free, without social remorse, to make the most wonderful excursions on Hubert's one free day. All Sunday; the afternoon walk; meal-times; after dinner—such was what Hubert gave her, and for the rest, always half-conscious of his selfishness, he felt delighted to think whilst working that Helena would not be bored. She was so busy, dear little simpleton, with this chimæra of her education!
It was Geoffrey Alison who first took her to causeries and lectures (she learnt almost at once to recognise a causerie, because the seats cost more), which took place at the Institute, conveniently after tea. Surprisingly good men came down—or up?—to speak, and spoke on a variety of subjects. Helena, always too nervous to air her knowledge before Hubert who was so clever and looked upon her (she knew) as a child, gradually began to juggle chaotically in her brain with such terms as Ethics, Syndicalism, Molecules, Collectivism, and Eugenics. It was all most difficult, she told herself, but frightfully worth while.
"Odd of her, this thirst for culture, isn't it?" said Hubert smilingly to Kenneth Boyd, on one of their rare meetings away from the hostile wives; "but it's quite harmless and it keeps them quiet."
Kenneth Boyd spoke gloomily. "Not always," he said. Perhaps he knew more of Woman, even though he never wrote about her. "Sometimes it has the opposite effect."
"Oh, I know what you mean," Hubert replied, not caring to be patronised; "but Helena is not that sort. She doesn't want the Vote. She's such a charming little innocent," and he laughed, half love but half pity.
"Really?" said the enigmatic Boyd. His thoughts had taken a far ampler sweep, and he spoke almost darkly.
Hubert did not answer. He was still thinking of the Vote. Most men persistently whittle down Woman's whole platform to a mere splinter convenient for smashing.
"Why," he elaborated, "if she were given it, she wouldn't know what she had got to do with it."
CHAPTER VII
THE CULT OF USELESSNESS
Helena certainly had small ambition towards the life political, even as anything no more exalted than a latch-key voter. She had been compelled to read politics in Devonshire but like a schoolboy who is forced to chapel, found it very dull, and took another course at the first opportunity. She could not think, she said, to Hubert's joy, how grown men even took the trouble of electing members who had no influence over their own party and spent most of the time in childishly hindering the other.
She did, however, wish to gain her self-respect.
She met, now, people vastly cleverer than those who had made her feel ignorant at home, so that her growing knowledge in no way kept pace with her aspirations. Those old vague yearnings for something which she used to call Being Herself were stronger now and in a form more definite. She had learnt, in the first year of her married life, all that a woman could learn about keeping house, but she still felt a fool. She knew that this was not enough for her, whatever it might be for others. She still loved to hear Hubert talking when he embarked on Art or some really big subject; but she wished to do more than listen.
And she was learning, too.
Those who give their time to that most wonderful and noblest of all trades, the making of a man, have lately come by the belief that children have been taught quite wrongly. They have been stuffed with knowledge before their bodies were grown to receive it. A deluge of facts has been poured upon them, seated at their little desks, and most of it has gone out through the open window into God's fresh air, where they ought to have been themselves. They have almost burst with learning—and never learnt to learn. They have known all Euclid at thirteen: forgotten everything by thirty-one. They have been specialists at seventeen and city clerks at twenty-three.
Mrs. Hallam, that crusted theorist and advocate of the old way, unconsciously had done a curiously modern thing. She had kept her daughter back, given her a healthy body, a mind anxious to expand and able. Now, at twenty-two, Helena began to specialise—in learning and in life. She had been kept back: now she leapt forward the better.
Contemptible enough perhaps to a superior eye, the salad of quite disconnected lectures, random talks with a young artist-friend, and pencilled passages from Mudie books, that formed this home curriculum; but as in health, contentment, as with life itself, the will to be is almost everything, and Helena was quite resolved to learn.
Her sole worry, in all the excitement of this onward surge into a fuller life whose endless spaces thrilled and terrified, was that her husband would not bear her company. Oh, he was much too clever. She knew that. She never blamed him. He had no need for all her causeries and things. She would be dull to argue with; and yet——
Yet it is only human, only feminine, when one has got a clever husband and is adventuring on the long road of Art, to wish that he should take one's hand.
And she was proud of him.
Her simple mind had not yet probed the inwardness of Mrs. Herbertson's "mistake." It did not seem peculiar to her that Mr. Alison should be seen always, and he only, as her companion at the Institute. It merely was that she wished it might sometimes have been Hubert. She longed to hear his views on all of it, and it would be nice, too, to show him. It looked so odd that he would never come, when quite old-looking women brought husbands triumphantly along!
At length, when fifteen months of lectures gave her a new confidence, she tackled him point-blank one afternoon while they were walking on the Heath.
He looked at her reproachfully, as though he were a master who had just been asked for a half-holiday.
"My dear girl," he said, "is that quite logical?"
She knew at once that hope was dead. It always was when logic once appeared. She never had a chance.
"I don't know why not," she said gaily, for nowadays she did not go back to her kennel quite so easily. They had been married for two years.
Hubert was forced to put the thing in words.
"Well you see, my dear," he started, slowly, "I dare say other husbands have got their work finished by six o'clock. In fact"—and he brightened visibly—"that is really why they fixed that hour, I dare say. City men are back. But it's my best work-hour, you know."
"Is it?" laughed Helena, and looked at him. Then, as he did not seem to see the joke, "The morning is, you know, if I ask you to come out shopping. I'm afraid, Hugh, you're just a little naughty!" And she shook her finger.
"No," he said shortly, still not very much amused, for once, at her nice childish ways. "They both are.... It's not much for a man to work, just two short goes at it, and I simply can't spare the time, however much I'd like to. I mustn't go out between tea and dinner when I'm on a book."
"You used to, though," persisted Helena, "in Devonshire."
It is a rash wife who recalls to her husband the days of single life.
"Very likely," he answered impatiently; "but we weren't married then. I can't afford it now."
The rash wife had it, full between the eyes; a brutal blow provoked by her incaution; and she reeled.
"Can't afford it, Hugh?" she repeated, with a vague sense of being accused. "Why, do I cost so much? Do I cost more than Ruth?"
He had not looked for anything quite as direct as that. He had blurted it out and now, as often, felt ashamed. He laughed and said in a much kinder tone:
"Don't you worry your dear head about things like that. We shall be all right. You won't find the man in possession by our fireside yet, when you come home from market!"
Now it was her turn not to be amused. "No, but tell me," she said. "I'd much rather know. Are we honestly hard up?"
"What a practical little thing it's getting," he said, patting her on the back as they strode onward, always heralded by the long white dog with its straight tail, as proud as a drum-major. "Well, if you really want to know," he went on, "we are and have been, but we shan't be. Listen!" He turned about and about, his finger to his mouth, upon the empty spaces, clearly once more in the best of spirits. "Never tell a soul—and least of all the High-Art Alison—but I am doing a pot-boiler!"
"What, something worse than you need?" she blurted out in her astonishment.
He laughed at that. "Yes, if you put it so! Anyhow, something to make money."
"But won't the critics hate that?" she asked seriously.
Hubert Brett, for a man who had been almost too kindly reviewed, was always very hard on critics.
"Now listen," he said, "and I'll tell you something. The public has a natural suspicion of literary criticism. It only reads the stuff to see what to avoid. If it sees some book is called sincere, painstaking, artistic, a masterpiece, or anything like that, it passes on until it comes to something labelled crude and elementary. Then it gets out its library list. Think of the two best-selling novelists to-day, and then think what the critics say of them! They are a journalistic joke. Yes, the more the dear critics hurl abuse, the more the darling public rushes out to Boot's. I'm sick of good reviews and rotten sales. I'm not doing it because I married you, not I; but I want columns of abuse and half a million copies!"
She loathed it, always, when he talked like this. She never knew quite what he meant. She hoped he was not really writing a pot-boiler.
"No, but honestly," she said, "why are things worse than in the old days? Your books sell just as well. Do tell me or I shall ask Ruth."
"Well," he said, but this time without rancour, merely telling her what she had asked, "you see a house, even a hen-run like ours, always costs ever so much more than rooms—rates and things like servants, don't you see—and then Ruth used to make a bit with curious bazaar stuff all gummed on to tins."
It was a mere backwash of his thought, as he drew the question out to a solution—nothing more. He never thought of a comparison. Why, if the thing had ever come to that, Helena had her allowance....
But it went home to her, whose early days had bred a diffidence to die only with the years. Ruth had helped him, then!
"I wish I could do something," she said. "I feel so useless!" She had forgotten her bold attack with which this dialogue had started, and her whole mind was filled now with its self-reproach.
Hubert felt a sudden shame. The words threw back his memory to those first hours in London when the vast City crowd had made her say; "It makes me feel so useless!" Dear little girl, what happy, jolly days she had brought to his life since then! And yet she thought that she was useless....
She seemed so upset. His one idea was consolation. She must not think he longed for Ruth again, in even one respect!
Perhaps at a less flustered time he might have thought of all that she did in the house; those charming little meals, hot always at however variable times; the pretty bowls of flowers; everything so dainty—green and white—so different from the grimy lodgings.
But now he did not think of that. He took her arm instinctively in his and spoke what came into his mind.
"Dear little girlie," he said kindly, "I love you to be useless."
But she was not consoled.
CHAPTER VIII
A SCENE IN THE HOME
Hubert Brett could never quite escape from business; he analysed himself too much. His action sprung from impulse, education, ancestry, whatever source philosophers may choose to say, but it was followed by a sequel due to his own introspection. He tended in this way to set up something like a chain—a sequence of states which might almost be expected after any given act.
He might have owned, found in a candid vein, that selfishness was his besetting fault. It had been so—this would be his excuse, if he indeed admitted what certainly he knew—it had been so from birth; at any rate since he recalled himself an only son and younger than his only sister, pampered and indulged so far as even a small child could wish. He always had got what he wanted. Hence naturally sprang a sort of self-centredom, a tendency to think first of what he desired, something which, well, hang it all, no, it wasn't selfishness, but merely that self-confidence which all men who meant to get things done must first of all possess....
None the less, every now and then (he noticed it more, since Helena had been with him), he did, he knew, do things no doubt quite justifiable if one were thinking only of success, efficiency, and so forth; but rather beastly from the other person's—from Helena's—standpoint. It was so easy, when defending your own interests (and otherwise you'd get no work done ever), to be thoughtless, irritable, mean.
About those lectures or whatever they were of the poor little girl's, for instance....
Ought he, came the doubt when he was back in his own den at one minute past five o'clock—ought he to have given in to her for once, if she was really so immensely keen to take him? After all there often were days when he had finished work easily by six o'clock; whole months, even, between books, when he did no work after tea; but there was such a thing as System, and though a married man, he was quite bachelor enough to love this time of solitude with pipe and books. Helena was sweet; no man could ever have been luckier about his wife; but he saw her for much more than one-half the day and all of it on Sundays.
Yes really, he could not see that she had any right to look for more. Perhaps those City men took their wives to these precious causeries, but they were ever so much more away. Oh yes, he saw a lot of her and however much she might complain, he knew that she was really lucky....
All the same, as he never had and the dear child wanted it, perhaps——?
Whereat Hubert, having worked comfortably around his usual circle—Selfishness, Remorse, Ample Self-Excuse, and Noble Expiation—got up, feeling very light of heart, and went back to the drawing-room.
Helena was startled. She never thought of tragedies, she had known none in her well-sheltered days, or she might easily have feared that there was something wrong. Never in these two years and more had he come back, once gone, till dinner-time. Many modern wives might have resented such a sudden entry. Luckily this specimen was in no more compromising a position than that of eating the last jam sandwich, a thing she never could resist before Lily came and took away the tea. She waved it at him without shame.
"Hullo!" she said. "Why what's brought you back?"
He smiled indulgently. He liked her to be young.
"Look here, Helena," he said, "I've been feeling I was a bit of a brute about those causeries of yours. I could easily spare an evening some day, if you'd like me to. Let's see the list and then we'll fix on one."
Many modern wives, again, might have been tiresome about an amende honourable indeed but so obviously planned. Not Helena, however. She leapt to get the circular, all thrilled excitement and babbling gratitude.
Hubert ran a proud finger down the list. "Hullo," he said in unflattering surprise. "They've got some quite good men."
He had always utterly ignored her ventures in self-education. He did not, for one thing, approve of them; and he had vaguely thought they were connected with the parish church, Pleasant Sunday Evenings, and everything like that.
"I'm so glad you're pleased," she put in, quite without irony.
"That's the one we'll do together," he said, and read out—"'January 29: Art as a Religion.—G. K. Shaw.' And only ten days off, too!"
It was the best, far, on the list; he would perhaps be called on, as a local author, to make some remarks; and he might meet the lecturer....
"Oh, but how splendid!" she cried, duly grateful. "Just the very one I wanted you to come to. You really are a dear! And that's a late one too, at eight o'clock, because the lecturer objected, so your old work won't suffer after all!"
She talked of it for days to come, what great fun it would be, till Hubert felt even more guilty. He had never realised how much she felt the fact of his not coming. He had not ever heard, you see, dear Mrs. Boyd say: "What! No husband again? I don't think you keep him in at all good order; does she, Kenneth?"—as one who should say, "You have no power over him, at all!" He did not guess how lonely she had felt sometimes when Geoffrey Alison could not escort her. Still he saw her great keenness now and told himself he would have gone to these lectures before—if only he had known they were not University Extension.
He was distinctly flattered by the way she harped upon this small concession. Little things like that had a curious power of making Hubert Brett well satisfied with life.
She could see that afresh, six mornings later.
He was opening his letters, a process which made breakfast quite a nervous time for her, because one small reverse—no more than an unflattering review—upset him so and sometimes ruined his whole morning's work, which meant he would be silent and depressed at lunch-time.
To-day, however, having opened first the only letter in an unknown hand as promising the most adventure, he said with real exhilaration:
"Ah, that's encouraging. That bucks one up!"
"What, good news, Hugh dear?" she inquired, delighted.
"Yes, the Kit Kat Club has asked me as its guest of honour."
Inwardly she was a little disappointed; she had hoped it would be some money.
"How excellent!" she said, good wife; and then, "What is the Kit Kat Club?"
"Why, it's a well-known literary club," he answered, slightly hurt. "They meet"—he read the card again—"at Lewisham."
"Capital!" she said: not because she had ever heard of Lewisham as a great literary centre, but because he was so terrifically pleased. "And when is it to be?"
"Very short notice," he said, looking once more at the invitation. "This very Tuesday, January 29th. Lucky we never dine out!"
"But Hugh," she began, oh so disappointed, and then stopped. She had told every one—well, Mrs. Boyd—that she was bringing Hugh this time....
He understood. "Why, it's the lecture or debate," he said. "I am sorry." There clearly was no question which should go. Then, much more gently, remembering her keenness: "Never mind, little girl: we'll find another nice debate. Let's see the list and we will pick one now."
Treats, of course, are seldom a success the second time. Helena, now, did not dash for the list. In fact Hubert, looking up, saw that great tears were rolling down her cheeks.
She could have killed herself for shame. It only proved how difficult it was to be grown up, if you began too late!
And Hubert was not even touched by it. The silly action had no sanction in success.
He got up angrily, without a word, but making it clear that he had thought her selfish. He sat on the armchair and took up the Spectator. This announced that breakfast was now over.
Helena felt that his rebuke was thoroughly deserved. What must he think of her, when they took place each week and he had offered to come to another? Of course he didn't know about that rude pig, Mrs. Boyd!
"Hugh dear," she said, also getting up, "I am so sorry; I feel such a beast. It's only I was disappointed. Of course my meeting's simply nothing. I ought to have been glad about the Kit Kats, and I am."
Some men, after that, would possibly have changed their minds and taken her to her dear meeting; but to Hubert nothing came before success.
"That's a dear unselfish little wife," he answered soothingly and gave her a forgiving kiss. The episode was closed.
"You're sure it is the twenty-ninth of this month?" she therefore angered him by asking. Helena could not believe in Fate being so brutal.
"Well, there's the card," he answered brusquely.
She took it up, filled with an abrupt, unchristian desire to tear it into fragments. It had a silly black cat in silhouette upon it and she had thought he would come at last....
"Why Klub with a K?" she did allow herself to ask.
"Just a literary conceit, I suppose," he answered, trying to control his voice; and that silenced her, because she had no theories as to what a literary conceit might be.
But Hubert could not quite allow the matter to rest there. He felt that she was thinking he had acted selfishly and he must prove to her that everything would be all right. What odd disguises can Remorse assume!
"You can get Alison to take you," he threw out. "He's sure to be going."
"Oh no," answered Helena. "I told him you were coming. He'll be booked. No, I shan't go at all."
Face Mrs. Boyd exultant? No, not she. Afterwards, if needed, some excuse. But anyhow not that! She had said she was bringing Hubert.
"That's silly, my dear." He did not often call her that. "Alison will take you gladly, I know, or if not you can go alone. You often have before."
"Yes," she retorted, "but not when I've told every one that you were taking me. I have a little pride."
He shut his paper and got up. He never could bear scenes.
"Just as you like," he said, trying to speak evenly. "It's your concern. I was only thinking of your comfort. Whatever you do won't hurt me."
A man can escape everything except himself; and so it chanced that Hubert Brett felt a brute twice, repented twice, about one causerie.
He felt it most acutely in his little room.
He very nearly went back to her now, a second time, and said so; but then he remembered what a nasty scene it had been, about nothing. Of course in the old anti-marriage days it had been his pet theory that every wedded pair inevitably—by force of Nature, which meant every one to dwell apart—ended in continued rows; but it had seemed so quite impossible with Helena. Perhaps it always did!...
So sweet and pliable and ignorant of life she had been—yes, this was a new Helena and more like the old Ruth!
No, he would not go back.
He would be hanged if he encouraged her.
CHAPTER IX
CINDERELLA
Helena tried not to look as though she minded when Hubert came down, glorious in evening dress at six o'clock.
"It is an early start," she said cheerfully.
"Yes," he replied; "but that means I shall be home all the earlier. The dinner begins at seven and I shan't make a long speech—trust me—so you can expect me back not later than half past ten or eleven at the very latest."
He just restrained himself from saying once more that he thought her stupid not to go across to the Institute instead of moping all alone till then. Even so his farewell was a little cold for, though he kept silence, he could not help feeling she had been selfish over the whole business. Her air of martyrdom had rubbed some gilt off the occasion's splendour.
As for Helena, having waved him gaily out of sight, she did not return and give way to a natural sorrow, as he imagined, typically penitent so soon as he had parted from her. She looked, it is true, hard and thoughtful for a moment. Then she laughed almost happily. What did it matter really? It would only be one evening alone, one lecture missed;—and who was Mrs. Boyd? Why of course any one really nice would be glad that her husband had been honoured by these beastly Kit Kats, whoever they might be.
She sat down and wrote a long letter—about everything else in the world—to her lonely mother, who after all never had any one at all to dine with her, unless you counted clergymen.
That finished, it was dinner-time and that was fun because she had ordered or brought in all her pet kickshaws—shrimps, dough-nuts and so forth—which Hubert always vetoed, describing them expansively as dirty feeding. Men, she decided, got so little out of life; always beef and cabbages and yesterday to-morrow....
It was really quite a philosophic meal. She often was alone, for some big part indeed in every day, but there was something in this first lonely dinner that made a curious break and gave, as the French say, to think. She thought of her old life in Devonshire; she thought of her ambitions towards self-development when she decided upon marriage; she thought without pride of herself as she was at present; and she thought of Hubert.
She had reached the dough-nut course, and also the conclusion that they were an odd couple but probably most couples were, when the front door bell sounded, as it always did, through the whole little house.
Helena looked at the clock. Ten minutes to eight! No parcel-post. What could it be, possibly? Not Hubert back? She felt a quick shame of the dough-nut.
It was beneath the table safely before Lily entered.
"Please'm," said the maid, "it's Mr. Alison wants to speak to you."
Helena went out into the hall. "Hullo," she said, hoping he had not expected dinner. "Have you been to the Institute? What was it like?"
"Been," he laughed. "No! It's only ten to eight. This is an eight-o'clocker, you know. G. K. S. will never stand things at the ordinary time!"
This was a blow. Helena, not letting herself think of all that she was missing, had yet fancied that it was safely over. And it had not even begun... "Oh," was all that she said.
"I went along," Geoffrey Alison proceeded quickly, as though every instant counted, "because I am a steward so had to be early, and asked just out of curiosity where you were sitting. They said, so to speak, you weren't! I knew you both intended coming so I ran across. I've got two tickets just returned, so if——"
"How very kind of you," said Helena, feeling that she could almost slay him; "but it wasn't that we couldn't get in. Hubert at the last moment found that he wasn't free, so we sent our seats back. He suddenly remembered he was dining out." She tried to make it sound as though there had not been a tiff.
"Dining out?" repeated Geoffrey Alison, "Well then, you're free to come along like all the other ones?"
"Oh no, thank you; I don't think I will," said Helena. She had not forgotten about Mrs. Boyd.
"But you simply must," replied the other, pulling out his watch. "They'll be beginning if we don't make haste. You couldn't miss this possibly; it's far the best of the whole series. Old Dr. Kenyon, too, thinks art is a disease and intends asking questions. It will be tremendous. Come along or you will make us late."
"But I'm not tidy or anything," said Helena. Definite objections are the first steep steps down from refusal to complaisance.
He recognised this. "So much the better," he cried in prompt triumph. "Unprepared things are always the best sport. You don't need wraps; it's like a summer night and you look very smart. Come on! Your husband won't object. It will be simply grand. We'll have a picnic causerie!"
Helena was swept away. Bother Mrs. Boyd and every one! It really would be fun and she would be so bored at home. Hubert had told her she should go. Besides—did she feel dimly, ever so little even, that she was somehow getting even with him? Let us pass quickly on, with all the charity that we can muster....
The Institute was packed. This was clearly a great night.
Helena, directly she entered the room, full of an excitement that had almost the sensation of magnetic waves, was glad that she had come. And as they found their seats, the chairman and the speaker entered.
That evening, as Mr. Alison had promised, was the jolliest of the whole of the series. She even enjoyed merely looking at this G. K. Shaw.
He was ever such a big man, who swelled genially outward and then ended unexpectedly in quite a savage beard. He looked so comfortable and friendly that she felt certain all the nice things he meant to say (you could tell from his eyes) got somehow twisted all wrong in that horrid beard.
Certainly, to judge by mere words, there was a lot with which she could not sympathise and some she could not understand. If only Hubert had been free!
He said, for instance, that conventional Religion was man's excuse to the Almighty: that faith was the power of believing what we could not prove untrue: and that churches should possibly be built, because of unemployment, but left empty for the glory of their Maker. All this puzzled her, and Mr. Alison would only chuckle, while most others grunted. Then the lecturer got round to Art and said that life was the Creator's masterpiece. He roughly defined Art as that which never found its way to paper. He admitted the existence of a body of literature and paintings. He did not for a moment wish to conceal the existence of the Royal Academy. One corn-crake, however, did not cause a winter: and he wished to-night to speak only about Art. The modern out-look was parochial and men failed to see even the parish for looking at the clergymen. An Artist had no fatherland. He had the key of the World: for paint was thicker than blood. No two nations had ever agreed on armaments or treaties: but all admitted that Farnese was greater than Phil May. The worry with the world to-day was not that it was old: it was a million years too young. No man troubled with the future, because he knew that it must some day be the past. Religion hinted at the future: Art alone interpreted the present. Five thousand years had thrown mud at the workman: Brangwyn proved him the sole dignified thing left in a dead-level age. For centuries they had destroyed old ruined tenements, and Bone had shown them to be the only kind that ought to be allowed. Art dealt with the beautiful and live; the Church with what was gloomy and decayed. You could not make people wicked by Act of Parliament; the plain man was an artist when he shaved his face. Art was to the English what death had been to the Egyptians, but London was full of things that no one ever spoke about. There was, for instance, the Imperial Institute. It was better to be beautiful than dead. Some of those he met were neither. He wished that they were both. He should be glad if any one would raise objections, for their mutual advantage. Every one was right and nobody was ever wrong.
There had been ever so much more than that, she knew; but this was all she could recall when finally he took his seat, and now, already, she was not altogether sure how it had been connected. She was not by any means convinced but she was tremendously encouraged. New vistas of an unsuspected length and freshness opened out from a drab world, whilst the fat, bearded man was speaking. Sometimes she supposed he must be very funny?
"Capital, capital," murmured Mr. Alison, and only that. He usually had such a lot to say, too! She was disappointed.
But now grimly and deliberately there uprose an elderly man of stern broad face and a respectable frock-coat. He must apologise for letting his heavy periods drop on the top of the last speaker's brilliant flippancies, but truth, he regretted to say, was truth.
"That's old Kenyon," her neighbour whispered gleefully.
The doctor, having said so much of calm preface as due to a visitor, suddenly blazed out into a quicker time and a more violent mood. So far, he said, from Art being a religion, it was a disease. (Sensation.) He proved this at some length, largely in the dead languages, with extracts read from small pamphlets which (he announced) he had the honour to have contributed to various of the famous Monthlies.
The soldier-type, he argued, was the most essentially male, 'and it was furthest-moved from the artistic. He went so far, in conclusion, as to say that literary creation was only possible to a hybrid creature half-male and half-female, of whichever sex.
The general feeling was that this was rude to Mr. G. K. Shaw.
The famous author rose, however, blandly and swung his body round to Dr. Kenyon.
"Now there'll be some fun," said Geoffrey Alison.
"I consider," said Mr. G. K. Shaw quite gravely, holding his beard steady, "that the last speaker's mongrel theory of literature is plausible and valuable. I am, however, puzzled as to how he accounts for his own admirable pamphlets?"
Which certainly was fun and everybody laughed, to the annoyance of old Dr. Kenyon, who was thenceforth nicknamed "Mongrel" and shortly after moved to Wimbledon.
But beyond all this, Helena found a vague excitement in the evening. It was not like those other causeries at six o'clock; she wished they always could take place at eight. The mere fact, too, of having come so on the moment's spur lent quite a new attraction. As Geoffrey Alison had hinted, picnics are more romantic than a dinner-party and this had bulked into almost an adventure.
He saw her home. The speeches had been long and it was half-past ten already, but all was darkness in the little house.
Helena had quite a feeling of nervousness at the idea of switching on light after light, alone. "Come along in," she said simply. "Hubert'll be here in half a moment. Then he'll give you a drink, and we will all exchange experiences!" All rancour had gone; yet—well, she would rather like to show Hugh that his absence didn't mean she merely sat and cried! Women are human—and women.
"No, I don't think I will, thanks very much," he said.
His face and tone puzzled her. "Don't say you're busy, now!" she cried. "It's a regular disease."
"Oh no, I never work at night," he answered. "Artists can't very well. That is the one advantage of our job!"
"Well don't be tiresome then, and come on in," she said, holding the door open. "Hugh will be furious if he knows you're just gone. So don't be stupid. I was tame, just now!"
"If you really mean it," he replied almost solemnly and entered.
"Of course I do," she laughed. "Should I invite you, otherwise? How curious you are! Come into the dining-room and then when Hugh comes, he can give you—Oh no, let's come into here!" She hastily pointed to the drawing-room.
Geoffrey Alison went in, puzzled, thinking.
He did not know, and she had only just remembered, about that dough-bun.