Across the Stream

by E. F. Benson

Before the door opened she saw Jessie's face flame with colour, and laughed to herself at the defencelessness of love. Next moment Archie launched himself into the room.

"Hullo! What fine orchids!" he said. "Who sent you them, Helena? I bet you the Bradshaw did. What a thing it is to have opulent admirers! I wish I had got some."

But since that evening, now nearly a week ago, Jessie had not spoken to Helena except when mere manners in the presence of other people required it. That was a tiresome, uncomfortable situation. In a big house it would not have mattered much, for they could easily have sat in different rooms; but here it made an awkwardness in the narrow existence. But Helena had the consolation of knowing that she had not merely knocked at Jessie's door, but had battered it in. The secret chamber stood open to her, and the shrine in it was revealed before unpitying eyes.

Here, then, were two grievances against the world, that might have taxed the patience of Job, and certainly super-taxed the patience of Helena. On the top of these, Ossa on Pelion, was perched an anxiety that had begun seriously to trouble her, for already it was the middle of July and Lord Harlow had as yet said nothing which suggested that he was going to propose to her. She knew that she charmed and captivated him, who had never looked seriously at a girl twice (nor at poor Daisy once); but he was undeniably a long time making up his mind, and Helena, though accustomed to repose the greatest confidence in herself, did not feel sure that she would prove equal to defeating the long-standing habit of celibacy. Even the continuous use of Archie in the capacity of a wedge seemed to make no impression, and she was beginning to be desperately afraid that the wedge would turn in her hand, and ask her to marry him before Lord Harlow succumbed. This would be a very awkward situation; most inauspicious developments might follow, for it would be tragic if she accepted Archie, and Lord Harlow proposed immediately afterwards, while, if she refused Archie, it would be a crown of tragedy if Lord Harlow did not propose at all. She had determined, in fact, if Archie proposed first, to ask him to wait for his answer.

A little breeze was stirring now, and Helena pulled up the blind to let it and the sun enter together, rather than endure this stifling stagnancy any longer, and gazed with the profoundest disgust at the mean outlook. The house stood in the centre of a small curve of three-storied buildings; in front was its little square of cindery walk with the one laurel in the middle, and a row of iron palings with a gate that would not shut which separated it from the road. On the other side of that was a small demilune of a garden, which gave the place the title of Crescent, and beyond that a straight row of houses all exactly alike. A milkman was going his rounds with alto cries, and slovenly cooks and parlour-maids came out of area gates with milk-jugs in their hands. A lean and mournful cat, with dirty, dishevelled fur, as unlike as possible to the sleek, smart mouser she had seen at the station, sat on a gate-post, blinking in the sun, and every now and then uttering a faint protest against existence generally. Helena could have found it in her heart to mew in answer.

The hot afternoon wore itself away, and presently the parlour-maid came in to lay a table for tea. This entailed a great many comings-in and a great many goings-out, and she usually left the door open, so that there oozed its way up the stairs a mixed smell of cigars and incipient cooking. The cigar smell came from the little back room adjoining the dining-room where Colonel Vautier, with tropical habits, spent the hour after tiffin (it seemed that he could not say "lunch") in dozings and smokings. Meantime the parlour-maid came in and out, now with a large brass tea-tray, to place on the table, now with plates and cups and saucers to put on it. She breathed strongly through her nose, and wore a white apron with white braces over her sloping shoulders.

From outside, during these trying moments, there came the sound of a motor-horn, and immediately afterwards the soft crunch of gravel below a motor's wheels. From where she sat, Helena could look out of the window, and from her torpid discontent she leaped with a bound into a state of alert expectancy. She hazarded, so to speak, all the small change she had in her pocket. For a moment she put her slim fingers in front of her eyes and thought intensely. Then she spoke to the parlour-maid.

"Take a tray of tea to Colonel Vautier in his study," she said, "and say that I have got a headache and told you to bring his tea to him there. Tell Miss Jessie"—Helena paused a moment—"tell her that a friend of mine has come to see me, and that I want to talk to him privately here. That's all: now open the door, and say that I am in."

Helena rushed to the looking-glass above the fire-place, and disarranged her hair a little. She took a book at random out of the shelves, and sat down with it. She heard a little stir in the hall below, and had a moment of agony in thinking that her father's door had opened. Then the stairs creaked under ascending footsteps, and her visitor was announced.

"Who?" she said, as the parlour-maid spoke his name, and then he entered.