The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  Archie had not spoken either since he intimated that he had alluded to steppings and crawlings, and now he paused for a moment in the middle of the room, breathing just a little quickly and bewildered as with some dazzling light. Ever since he had put his arm round the girl and taken her hand in his, he had had that sense of sinking into sunlit waters, where he arrived at his true and naked self. Now he had swum up again, and he was clothed in black coat and white shirt, and Helena was standing a step apart from him, and every one else at the edge of the room was very far away. Instantly a mingling of wild consternation and triumph seized him.

  “Oh, Helena, were we doing that all by ourselves?” he said. “How frightful! Let’s get out of it. But wasn’t it divine? May we do it again soon? Or will they have nothing but crawlings?”

  It appeared that crawlings were to be the next item, and Archie noticed that in the crowd that now came about them again a particular man had his eye on them, and was unmistakably burrowing towards them.

  “Yes, Archie; of course we will,” said the girl. “Go and see your aunt, and ask if we may have another waltz ever so soon. Oh, here’s Lord Harlow; I want to introduce you.”

  This was done, and Lord Harlow turned to Helena again.

  “I feel as if I had been present at some Bacchic festival,” he said in a very precise voice. “But you should have vine-leaves in your hair, and er—your partner a tunic and a thyrsus. I feel myself as prosaic as a Bradshaw. But may I be your Bradshaw?”

  Helena looked from one to the other; if she had had a tail she would certainly have been switching it.

  “Ah, do,” she said. “A Bradshaw is quite indispensable. Archie, go and get a thyrsus—will a poker do, Lord Harlow?—and persuade Mrs. Morris to have another waltz before long.”

  Now that the sheer animal exhilaration of that adorable waltz, which quite precluded talking, was over, it seemed perfectly suitable, as she plodded along the weary way of the fox-trot, to talk again, and in answer to Lord Harlow, who had not caught Archie’s name, she said:

  “Yes, Lord Davidstow. Surely I told you about him” (she knew that she had purposely not done so). “He is Lady Tintagel’s son, with whom I am staying.”

  Lord Harlow quietly assimilated this as he turned slowly round.

  “And does he do other things as well as he dances?” he asked.

  “I think he does,” said she, “though I never really thought about it. When people are such dears as Archie, one doesn’t consider what they do. They just are.”

  “He certainly is. He appears very much alive.”

  “Yes, he’s madly alive.”

  She gave him a swift glance, and, guessing she had gone far enough on that tack, she put about.

  “I think it’s possible to be too much alive,” she said. “It’s like a hot-water bottle that is too hot: it burns you. But you can’t help being carried off your feet by it—I don’t mean the hot-water bottle.”

  He paused a moment for the purpose of phrasing.

  “I must weight you with a Bradshaw,” he said. “That will keep you to earth. We can’t spare you.”

  Helena laughed.

  “You say things too neatly,” she said. “What a delicious notion! What have you done all day?”

  “I have waited for this evening.”

  “And I hope it doesn’t disappoint you now that it has come,” she said.

  “It is up to my highest expectations just now,” said he.

  Suddenly it flashed into Helena’s mind that this was the temperature of his wooing. He was engaged in that now: those neat and proper sentences, turned as on a lathe, were the expression of it, they and the mild pleased glances that he gave her; and yet, discreet and veiled as it all was, she divined that, according to his nature and his years, it was love that inspired it. She found it quite easy to adjust herself to that level, and if his kiss (when the time came for that) was of the same respectful and finished quality, she could deal with that too. But she wondered how Archie would make love… It was necessary to fox-trot a little longer, and, while trotting, trot also conversationally, and with intention she let herself press a little more against his arm.

  “Oh, I am glad of that,” she said lightly. “It is such a dreadful pity when people are disappointed. But I think I would sooner anticipate something nice and fail to get it, than not anticipate at all. Can you imagine not looking forward to the delicious things you want?”

  “Do you want very much?” he asked.

  “Yes, everything. And I want it not only for myself but for everybody.”

  She made the mental note that he was very shy, for he had nothing in response to this, except that his shirt creaked. But that suited her very well; she did not want him to follow this up, just yet.

  Meantime the sedate marchings and retreats and occasional revolution of the fox-trot went decorously on. The room was very full, and, when there was nowhere to march to, they stopped where they were and marked time and rocked a little to and fro. Then perhaps a narrow lane opened in front of them, and they waddled down it, brushing shoulders against the hedges. She had seen Archie go to Mrs. Morris, after which he had appeared for a moment in the gallery where the band was, and now he was back again, standing near the door and watching her. She gave him little glances from time to time, elevated her eyebrows as if in deprecation of this unexhilarating performance, or smiled at him, guessing that he had arranged for another waltz.

  At last the end came, the fox-trotters ceased to clutch each other, and walked away with about as much Terpsichorean fervour as they had been dancing with. Dull though the last twenty minutes had been from that standpoint, Helena felt quite satisfied with it, while motion—or perhaps emotion—had made her partner hot; he gently wiped his forehead with a very fine cambric handkerchief.

  “Perfectly delicious,” he said. “I should have liked that to go on for ever. And how long shall I have to wait before it begins again?”

  Archie had sidled through the crowd up to them.

  “Helena, we’re going to have another waltz at once,” he cried. “Don’t let us waste any of it.”

  She laid her hand on his arm.

  “We?” she said. “Are you quite certain?”

  “May I say ‘we’ also?” asked Lord Harlow.

  She turned towards him, but her hand still rested on Archie, and he felt the slight pressure from her fingertips.

  “Oh, I was only teasing my cousin,” she said. “I had promised him another waltz. But, later, may I borrow my Bradshaw again?”

  The band struck up, setting her a-tingle for the repetition of what had gone before.

  “Oh, Archie, come on,” she cried. “Au revoir, Bradshaw.”

  Alert for movement, with the heady tune of the waltz already mounting into them like wine, they stepped off on to the floor. It was like stepping on to some moving platform; it and the tune, without any conscious effort of their own, seemed to carry them away. But Archie had one question to ask before he abandoned himself.

  “Bradshaw?” he said. “I thought you told me his name was Harlow.”

  She gave a little bubble of laughter.

  “Oh, that was only a joke,” she said. “He told me that you and I were like a Bacchic festival, and he felt as prosy as a Bradshaw in consequence.”

  “But what does it matter to him what we are like?” asked he.

  “Well, it was a compliment; he meant it nicely,” said she. “Don’t let us talk; it rather spoils it.”

  * * * *

  Helena reviewed those manoeuvres when she got home that night, and she congratulated herself on the neatness and efficiency of her dispositions. She felt sure that she had stirred up a livelier ferment in Lord Harlow, and had also managed to inspire him with a vague distrust and jealousy of her intimacy with Archie. She suspected that he was a little sluggish in his emotions, and this would serve admirably as a stimulant. She quite realized that she had not yet brought him up to the point of proposing to her, for his inured bac
helor habits would want a good deal of breaking; but it was clear to her that she had made a crack in them, and that the judicious use of Archie might be profitably used to widen that crack. Under the influence merely of her charms, he might hold together for a long time yet, and she wanted him, if she could have it entirely her own way, to propose to her about the end of the season. The effect of Archie constantly with her would be cumulative: it was not a wedge that would cause him to fly into splinters forthwith; it would just widen the crack, prevent it closing again, and then widen it a little more.

  And meanwhile it was extremely pleasant always to have this wedge in her hand, to hammer from time to time, as it suited her main plan, and at others to stroke and play with. She was not in love with Archie, but it made her purr to see that he was certainly falling in love with her, to dab him with sheathed claws, to wish that he had those material advantages which had made her choose the elder man. It clearly served her purpose to use him, and the using of him gave her pleasure. But the pleasure was secondary—it was the assistance he gave her in breaking up Lord Harlow that was of primary importance.

  * * * *

  Archie brought all his gaiety and charm to bear on his love-making. Falling in love did not appear to him, at this stage, anything but the most exhilarating, almost hilarious experience. The flirtation that Helena seemed to be having with Lord Harlow amused him enormously; not for a moment did he believe that Helena meant anything. Lord Harlow was not the only man on whom Helena exercised the perfectly legitimate attraction of her extreme prettiness and her enthusiastic child-like enjoyment.

  “Oh, every one is so kind and so awfully nice,” she said to him one day as they returned from an early morning ride. “I love them all by the handful.”

  “Including the Bradshaw?” asked he.

  “Yes, certainly including the Bradshaw. Don’t you like him? He likes you so much.”

  Archie considered this.

  “I don’t know if I like him or not,” he said. “I don’t think I ever thought about it. He doesn’t matter. But you matter awfully to him. Did you know that you are the most outrageous flirt, Helena?”

  “Archie, how horrid of you!” said she. “Just because I like people, and to a certain extent they like me. Why should I be cross and unpleasant to people, as if it was wicked to like them?”

  “Well, if you’ll give me long odds I will bet you that the Bradshaw asks you to—to be his ‘ABC’ before the end of the season,” said Archie.

  “My dear, what nonsense!” said she, with a sudden thrill of pleasure. “What can have put that into your head?”

  “I can see it. That’s the way a man like the Bradshaw looks at a girl when his—his affections are engaged. He looks as if a very dear aunt was dead. He has amour triste.”

  That certainly hit off a type of gaze to which Helena felt that she had been subjected, and she laughed.

  “Well, I’ll give you five to one in half-crowns,” she said.

  “Don’t. Some day I shall have twelve and sixpence.”

  They turned and cantered back along the soft track. The dew of night had not yet vanished from the grass, and the geometric looking plane-leaves, the rhododendrons, and the flower-beds were still varnished with moisture, and, early though it was, riders and foot-passengers were plentiful. Probably the day would be hot, for the heat haze, purplish-brown in the distance, was beginning to form in the air, softly veiling the further view. Presently they dropped again into a walking-pace, and Helena, whose mind had been busy on Archie’s description of a certain sort of love-lorn look, spoke of a subject suggested by it.

  “How do you think Jessie is?” she asked.

  “That’s exactly what my mother asked me last night,” said he. “She’s rather silent and preoccupied, isn’t she?”

  “That struck me,” said the girl. “I thought perhaps she wasn’t very well, but she told me there was nothing the matter. Darling Jessie is so reserved. She never tells me anything. Certainly she looks well: do you think she has anything on her mind?”

  “I don’t see what she could have. But it’s odd that it has struck all of us.”

  Helena sighed and shook her head with a pretty, unreproachful air.

  “I sometimes wish that Jessie would make more of a friend of me,” she said. “I try so hard to get close to her, but all the time I feel she is keeping me at arm’s length. It would be lovely to have a sister who would admit me to her own, own self. But I always have to tap, so to speak, at Jessie’s door, and she so often says she won’t open it.”

  “Was she always like that?” asked Archie, seeing that Helena’s eyes were dim and bright.

  “Yes, but lately I think it has been worse. I wish Jessie would let me in. However, I am always waiting, and I think Jessie knows that. It is no use pressing for confidence, is it? One can only wait.”

  This picture, so simply and pathetically conveyed by Helena of herself waiting, a little dim-eyed, for Jessie to admit her, was very convincing, and Archie wondered at the contrast between the two sisters, the one so childlike in her confidence that all the world was her friend, the other holding herself rather detached, rather aloof, without that welcoming charm of manner that surely was the expression of an adorable mind. It was not wholly the light of his dawning love that invested the sketch with such tender colouring, for there was a great finish and consistency in Helena’s presentation of herself which might have deceived the most neutral and heart-whole of observers.

  Such was the first impression: then suddenly some instinct that lay below the surface surged up in rebellion against it, and washed the tender colouring out. It told him that the impression was a false one, that Jessie, so far from being callous and self-centred, as was the suggestion conveyed by Helena’s words, was of faithful and golden heart. And then, looking idly over the crowd that was growing thick on the broad gravel walk, he suddenly caught sight of Jessie herself looking at them. She was some little distance behind the rails that separated the ride from the path, and she instantly looked away, spoke to a girl who was with her, and strolled on. But Archie felt quite sure that she had seen them.

  He turned to Helena.

  “Surely that is Jessie,” he said to her, pointing with his whip.

  Helena had seen her also, and she smiled rather sadly, rather wistfully.

  “Yes,” she said. “But she doesn’t want us, Archie.”

  And at that the instinct which had spoken to him so emphatically a moment before sank out of hearing again, and the colour returned to Helena’s deft little sketch.

  CHAPTER VIII

  It was four o’clock on an afternoon of mid-July, and the westering sun had begun to blaze into the drawing-room windows of Colonel Vautier’s house in Oakland Crescent. It was pleasant enough there in the winter, for the room, being small, was easily heated; but in the summer, with even greater ease it grew oven-like, and Helena, sitting by the open window for the sake of any air that might possibly wander into the dusty crescent, was obliged to pull down the blinds. She had tried sitting in her father’s study, but that had an infection of stray cigar-smoke about it which she did not want to catch, and the dining-room and her own bedroom, since they faced the same way as the drawing-room, presented no counter-attractions. So, reluctantly, she was compelled to sit here, while Jessie, with a book in her hand, sat at the other end of the room. Jessie had a slight attack of hay-fever, and from time to time indulged in a fit of sneezing. It seemed to Helena that she was being very inconsiderate: it was always possible to stifle a sneeze. But Jessie never thought about other people. Helena, by way of waiting patiently at Jessie’s door (according to the tender image she had fashioned for Archie’s benefit) had just expressed this opinion slightly veiled, and she was pleased to see that at this moment Jessie left the room. A sound of sneezing from outside indicated that at last her sister had grasped how exceedingly unpleasant her hay-fever was for other people. Then there came the sound of ascending steps, and she guessed that Jessie had gone t
o her bedroom. The floors were wretchedly thin and ill-constructed; you could, from any room in the house, hear movements from any other room, especially since Colonel Vautier and Jessie had such solid, resounding steps when they went anywhere.

  Left to herself, Helena cleared her decks, and enumerated her cause of complaint against Providence, who ought to have been so kind to an innocent, loving little soul. In the first place, her father had finished his irrigation business in Egypt unexpectedly soon, and instead of arriving in London not before September, had come two months earlier than the most pessimistic daughter could have expected. The news of his approaching arrival had provoked a perfect conspiracy against Helena’s comfort and her plans, for every one, including Cousin Marion, who had been so insistent on the girls’ staying with her till he got home, had taken it for granted that they would at once rejoin him. Surely it would have been sufficient for Jessie to go (and she did Jessie the justice of allowing that she was perfectly ready to do so), leaving Helena to help Cousin Marion in the answering of her letters in the morning for some half-hour, in the entertaining of her numerous guests, and in accompanying her to any of those pleasant gaieties which swarmed about that desirable house. But instead, Cousin Marion had been quite unaware, to all appearance, of the hints Helena had subtly suggested, and Archie had been equally uncomprehending. When she had said, “This house seems so much more like my home than any other,” he had certainly glowed with pleasure, but had not thought it was meant to have any application with regard to her going back to Oakland Crescent. No one had taken her hints; it had occurred to nobody how suitable it was that Jessie should go to look after her father, and Helena remain to look after her cousin. But since her hints were not taken, Helena, like the excellent tactician she was, had retreated in preference to standing her ground and suffering defeat. She had to retreat, and she retreated with exactly the proper mixture of regret at leaving Grosvenor Square and of joy at her father’s premature return. And when his taxi cab drew up palpitating at the door, it was she who ran down the three concrete steps from the front-door and across the awful little dusty yard called the front garden, with its cinder path that circulated round one laurel-bush, and flung herself into his arms, and helped the parlour-maid to carry in his bag, while Jessie waited in the narrow entrance that reeked of the ascending fumes of dinner, for the parlour-maid, as usual, had left open the door at the head of the kitchen stairs.