by A. A. Milne
"It is a beauty," said Helen, pouring hot water from the urn into the teapot, with a hand which trembled.
Ronnie wheeled a third chair up to the low tea-table, opposite his own particular seat, leaned his 'cello up against it, sat down, put his elbows on his knees, and glowed at it with enthusiasm.
"I knew you would say so, darling. Ever since I bought it, after choosing your organ at Zimmermann's, I have been thinking of themoment when I should show it to you; though an even greater moment is coming for us soon, Helen."
"Yes, Ronnie."
"Look how the two silver strings shine in the firelight. I call it the Infant of Prague."
"Why the 'Infant'?"
"Because it is a hundred and fifty years old; and because you have to be so careful not to bump its head, when you carry it about."
Helen put her hand to her throat.
"I think it is a foolish name for a violoncello," she said, coldly.
"Not at all," explained Ronnie. "It seems to me more appropriate every day. My 'cello is the nicest infant that ever was; does what it's told, gives no trouble, and only speaks when it's spoken to!"
Helen bent over the kettle. It was boiling. She could hear the water bubbling; the lid began making little tentative leaps. Without lifting her eyes, she made the tea.
Ronnie talked on volubly. It was so perfect to be back in his own chair; to watch Helen making tea; and to have the Infant safely there to show her.
Helen did not seem quite so much interested or so enthusiastic as he had expected.
Suddenly he remembered Aubrey's joke.
Helen at that moment was handing him his cup of tea. He took it, touching her fingers with his own as he did so; a well-remembered little sign between them, because the first time it had dawned upon Helen that Ronnie loved her, and wanted her to know it, was on a certain occasion when he had managed to touch her fingers with his, as she handed him a cup of tea.
He did so now, smiling up at her. He was so happy, that things were becoming a little dream-like again; not a nightmare—that would be impossible with Helen so near—but an exquisite dream; a dream too perfectly beautiful to be true.
"Darling," he said, "I brought the Infant home in a canvas bag. We must have a proper case made for it. Aubrey said you would probably want to put it into a bassinet! I suppose he thought your mind would be likely to run on bassinets. But the Infant always reminds me of the darkest horse-chestnut you ever saw in a bursting bur; so I intend to have a case of polished rosewood made for it, lined with white velvet."
Helen laughed, wildly.
"I have not the smallest desire, Ronald, to put your 'cello into a bassinet!" she said.
It dawned upon Ronnie that Helen was not pleased.
"It was a silly joke of Aubrey's. I told him so. I said I should tell you he said it, not I. Let's talk of something else."
He turned his eyes resolutely from the 'cello, and told her of his manuscript, of the wonderful experiences of his travels, his complete success in finding the long grass thirteen feet high, and the weird, wild setting his plot needed.
Suddenly he became conscious that Helen was not listening. She sat gazing into the fire; her expression cold and unresponsive.
Ronnie's heart stood still. Never before had he seen that look on Helen's face. Were his nightmares following him home?
For the first time in his life he had a sense of inadequacy. Helen was not pleased with him. He was not being what she wanted.
He fell miserably silent.
Helen continued to gaze into the fire.
The Infant of Prague calmly reflected the golden lamplight in the wonderful depths of its polished surface.
Suddenly an inspiration came to Ronnie. Brightness returned to his face.
He stood up.
"Darling," he said, "I told you that an even greater moment was coming for us."
She rose also, and faced him, expectant.
He put out his hand and lifted the Infant.
"Helen, let's go to the studio, where I first told you I felt sure I could play a 'cello. We will sit there in the firelight as we did on that last evening, seven months ago, and you shall hear me make the Infant sing, for the very first time."
Then the young motherhood in Helen, arose and took her by the throat.
"Ronald!" she said. "You are utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish! I am ashamed of you!"
They faced each other across the table.
Every emotion of which the human soul is capable, passed over Ronnie's countenance—perplexity, amazement, anger, fury; grief, horror, dismay.
She saw them come and go, and come again; then, finally, resolve into a look of indignant misery.
At last he spoke.
"If that is your opinion, Helen," he said, "it is a pity I ever returned from the African jungle. Out there I could have found a woman who would at least have given me a welcome home."
Then his face flamed into sudden fury. He seized the cup from which he had been drinking, and flung up his hand above his head. His upper lip curled back from his teeth, in an angry snarl.
Helen gazed at him, petrified with terror.
His eyes met hers, and he saw the horror in them. Instantly, the anger died out of his. He lowered his hand, carefully examined the pattern on the cup, then replaced it gently in the saucer.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I ought not to have said that—about another woman. There is but one woman for me; and, welcome or no welcome, there is but one home."
Then he turned from her, slowly, deliberately, taking his 'cello with him. He left the room, without looking back. She heard him cross the hall, pause as if to pick up something there; then pass down the corridor leading to the studio.
Listening intently, she heard the door of the studio close; not with a bang—Ronnie had banged doors before now—but with a quiet irrevocability which seemed to shut her out, completely and altogether.
Sinking into the chair in which she had awaited his coming with so much eagerness of anticipation, Helen broke into an uncontrollable paroxysm of weeping.
A Friend In Deed
Precisely how long she remained alone in her sitting-room, Helen never knew; but it cannot have been the long hours it seemed, seeing that Simpkins did not appear to fetch the tea-tray, nor did Nurse send down any message from the nursery.
Helen had wept herself into the calm of exhaustion, and was trying to decide what her next move should be, when the hoot of a motor sounded in the park. In another moment she heard it panting at the door. Then the bell pealed.
With the unfailing instinct of her kind, to hide private grief and show a brave front to the world, Helen flew to the mirror, smoothed her tumbled hair, put away her damp handkerchief; and, standing calmly beside the mantel-piece, one foot on the fender, awaited her unexpected visitor.
She heard voices in the hall, then Simpkins opened the door and tried to make an announcement, but some unseen force from behind whirled him away, and a broad-shouldered young man in an ulster, travel-stained and dishevelled, appeared in his stead, shut the door upon Simpkins, and strode into the lamplight, his cloth cap still on the back of his head, his keen dark eyes searching Helen's face eagerly.
His cap came off before he spoke to her; but, with his thick, short-cropped hair standing on end, a bare head only added to the wildness of his appearance.
He stopped when he reached the tea-table.
"Where's Ronnie?" he said, and he spoke as if he had been running for many miles.
"My husband is in the studio," replied Helen, with gentle dignity.
"What's he doing?"
"I believe he is playing his 'cello."
"Oh, lor! That wretched Infant! Is he all right?"
"So far as I know."
"What time did he get here?"
"At half-past four."
The dishevelled young man glanced at the clock.
"Oh, lor!" he said again. "To think I've travelled night and day and raced d
own from town in a motor to get here first, and he beat me by an hour and a half! However, if he's all right, no harm's done."
He dropped into Ronnie's chair, and rumpled his hair still further with his hands.
"I must try to explain," he said.
Then he lifted a rather white, very grubby face to Helen's. His lips twitched.
"I'm dry," he said; and dropped his face into his hands.
Helen rang the bell.
"Bring whisky and soda at once," she ordered, the instant Simpkins appeared in the doorway.
Then she crossed over, and laid her hand lightly on her visitor's broad shoulder.
"Don't try to explain," she said kindly, "until you have had something. I am sure I know who you are. You appear in all sorts of cricket and football groups in Ronnie's dressing-room. You are Ronnie's special chum, Dick Cameron."
Dick did not lift his head. As a matter of fact, at that moment he could not. But, though his throat contracted, so that speech became impossible, in his heart he was saying: "What a woman! Lor, what a woman! Ninety-nine out of a hundred would have offered me tea—and tea that had stood an hour; and the hundredth would have sent for a policeman! But she jumps instantly to whisky and soda; and then walks across and makes me feel at home. Eh, well! We shall save old Ronnie between us."
She administered the whisky and soda when it appeared; sitting gently beside him, in exceeding friendliness.
The rugged honesty of the youth appealed to her. His very griminess seemed but an earnest of his steadfast purpose, and suited her present mood of utter disillusion with the artistic and the beautiful.
Dick's look of keen alertness, his sense of forceful vigour, soon returned to him.
He stood up, surveyed himself in the glass, then turned with a rueful smile to Helen.
"It was both kind and brave of you, Mrs. West," he said, "not to send for a policeman."
Helen laughed. "I think I know an honest man when I see him, Dr. Dick. You must let me use the name by which I have always heard of you. Now, can you explain more fully?"
"Certainly," said Dick, getting out of his ulster, and sitting down. "But I must begin by asking a few more questions. Did you get your cousin's letter yesterday morning? It was absolutely essential you should receive it before Ronnie reached home. I hoped you would act upon it at once."
Helen gazed at him, aghast.
"I did receive my cousin's letter," she said.
"Was it quite explicit, Mrs. West?"
"It was absolutely explicit."
"Ah! Then on that point I admit I have wronged him. But you must excuse me if I say that I am inclined to consider your cousin a liar and a scoundrel."
Helen's face was white and stern. "I am afraid I have long known him to be both, Dr. Dick."
"Then you will not wonder that when I found he was not keeping his word to me, and bringing Ronnie home, I dashed off in pursuit."
"Was there ever any question of his returning with my husband?"
It was Dick's turn to look perplexed.
"Of course there was. In fact, he gave me his word in the matter. I mistrusted him, however, and the more I thought it over, the more uneasy I grew. Yesterday morning, the day he was to have crossed with Ronnie, I called at his flat and found he was expected back there to-day. I should dearly have liked to wait and wring his neck on arrival, but naturally Ronnie's welfare came first. I could not catch the night boat at the Hague, but I dashed off via Brussels, crossed from Boulogne this morning, reached London forty minutes too late for the 3 o'clock train to Hollymead. There was no other until five, and that a slow one. So I taxied off to a man I know in town who owns several cars, borrowed his fastest, and raced down here, forty miles an hour. Even then I got here too late. However, no harm has been done. But you will understand that prompt action was necessary. What on earth was your cousin's little game?"
"It is quite inexplicable to me," said Helen, slowly, "that you should have any knowledge of my cousin's letter. Also, you have obviously been prompt, but I have not the faintest idea why prompt action was necessary."
"Didn't your cousin give you my message?"
"Your name was not mentioned in his letter."
"Did he tell you of Ronnie's critical condition?"
"He said Ronnie told him he had never felt fitter in his life, and added that he looked it."
Dick leapt to his feet, walked over to the window, and muffled a few remarks about Aubrey Treherne, in the curtains. Nevertheless Helen heard them.
"Is—Ronnie—ill?" she asked, with trembling lips.
Dick came back.
"Ronnie is desperately ill, Mrs. West. But, now he is safely at home, within easy reach of the best advice, we will soon have him all right again. Don't you worry."
But "worry" scarcely expressed Helen's face of agonised dismay.
"Tell me—all," she said.
Dick sat down and told her quite clearly and simply the text of his message to her through Aubrey, explaining and amplifying it with full medical details.
"Any violent emotion, either of joy, grief or anger, would probably have disastrous results. He apparently came to blows with your cousin during the evening he spent at Leipzig. Ronnie gave him a lovely thing in the way of lips. One recalls it now with exceeding satisfaction. When I saw your cousin afterwards he appeared to have condoned it. But it may account for his subsequent behaviour. Fortunately this sort of thing— "Dick glanced about him appreciatively—"looks peaceful enough."
Helen sat in stricken silence.
"It augurs well that he was able to stand the pleasure of his home-coming," continued Dr. Dick. "He must be extraordinarily better, if you noticed nothing unusual. Possibly he slept during the night-crossing. Also, I gave him some stuff to take on the way back, intended to clear his brain and calm him generally. Did he seem to you quite normal?"
Then Helen rose and stood before him with clasped hands.
"He seemed to me quite normal," she said, "because I had no idea of anything else. But now that I know the truth, of course I realise at once that he was not so. And, oh, Dr. Dick, I had a terrible scene with Ronnie!"
Dick stood up.
"Tell me," he said.
"I told Ronnie that he was utterly, preposterously, and altogether selfish, and that I was ashamed of him."
"Whew! You certainly did not mince matters," said Dr. Dick. "What had poor old Ronnie done?"
"He had talked, from the moment of his return, of very little save the 'cello he has brought home. He had suggested that it might amuse me to put it into a bassinet. Then when at last tea was over, he proposed, as the most delightful proceeding possible, that we should adjourn to the studio, and that I should sit and listen while he made a first attempt to play his 'cello—which, by the way, he calls, the 'Infant of Prague,' explaining to me that it is the nicest infant that ever was."
"Oh, that confounded Infant!" exclaimed Dr. Dick. "I have hated it from the first! But really, Mrs. West "—he looked puzzled—"all this was no doubt enthusiasm misplaced. But then Ronnie always is a perfect infant himself, where new toys are concerned. You can hardly realise how much he has looked forward to showing you that 'cello. His behaviour also proved a decided tendency to self-absorption; but there the artistic temperament comes in, which always creates a world of its own in which it dwells content, often at the expense of duties and obligations connected with outer surroundings. We all know that this is Ronnie's principal failing. But—excuse me for saying so—it hardly deserved quite so severe an indictment from you."
Helen wrung her hands.
Suddenly Dr. Dick took them both, firmly in his.
"Why don't you tell me the truth?" he said.
Then Helen told him.
She never could remember afterwards exactly how she told him, and no one but Helen ever knew what Dr. Dick said and did. But, months later—when in her presence aspersions were being cast on Dick for his indomitable ambition, his ruthless annihilation of all who stood in his way
, his utter lack of religious principle and orthodox belief—Helen, her sweet face shadowed by momentary sadness, her eyes full of pathetic remembrance, spoke up for Ronnie's chum. "He may be a bad old thing in many ways," she said; "I admit that the language he uses is calculated to make his great-aunt Louisa, of sacred memory, turn in her grave! But—he is a tower of strength in one's hour of need."
"No," said Dick, after a while, gazing straight before him into the fire, his chin in his hands; "I can't believe Ronnie knew it. He was just in the condition to become frantically excited by such news. He would have been desperately anxious about you; wild that you should have gone through it alone, and altogether absorbed in the idea of coming home and seeing his child. The Infant of Prague would have had its shining nose put completely out of joint. I don't believe Ronnie ever had your letter. Write to the Poste Restante at Leipzig, and you will receive it back."
"Impossible," said Helen. "He opened and read it that evening in Aubrey's flat. He told Aubrey the news, and Aubrey mentioned it in his letter to me."
Dick looked grave.
"Well then," he said, "old Ronnie is in an even worse case than I feared. I think we should go at once and look him up. I told my friend's chauffeur to wait; so, if further advice is needed to-night, we can send the car straight back to town with a message. Where is Ronnie?"
"He took his 'cello, and went off to the studio. I heard him shut the door."
"Show me the way," said Dr. Dick.
With his hand on the handle of the sitting-room door, he paused.
"I suppose you—er—feel quite able to forgive poor old Ronnie, now?" he asked.
The yearning anguish in Helen's eyes made answer enough.
They crossed the hall together; but—as they passed down the corridor leading to the studio—they stopped simultaneously, and their eyes sought one another in silent surprise and uncertainty.
The deep full tones of a 'cello, reached them where they stood; tones so rich, so plaintively sweet, so full of passion and melody, that, to the anxious listeners in the dimly lighted corridor, they gave the sense of something weird, something altogether uncanny in its power, unearthly in its beauty.