Across the Stream

by E. F. Benson

The sense of wooden unreality soon began to close in again on Archie, with that utter absence of feeling which was so far more terrible than any feeling could be, that soulless insensitiveness as of a live consciousness that knew it was dead, and he rose from the table after Helena had delivered him from the consequence of some outrageous declaration, and went across to a side-table where were placed syphons and spirits. But now, instead of pouring himself out a glass of soda-water, he half filled his tumbler with whisky, and but added a cream of bubble on the top of it. Immediately almost his sense of touch with life returned; there stole back into himself and the figures of Colonel Vautier and Jessie the perception of their several identities, and into Helena the love with which he had endowed her. But that, and all that it implied, was better than feeling nothing at all. He knew, too, that when Jessie spoke to him, or looked at him, her voice and her eyes held for him a supreme and infinite sympathy. He could not reach it, but he knew it was there. Perhaps when he got used to those new conditions of nightmare existence, he could make it accessible, get into touch with it. At present he scarcely wanted it; he wanted nothing so long as this perception of life still ran in his brain, except Helena. He thought that she rather pitied him too, but it was not her pity he wanted, for it was she who had brought her pity on himself.

They played two or three rubbers; Jessie's miserly greed was assuaged by precisely the sum that Archie had won from Helena, and Colonel Vautier, after seeing him out, went back to his study to indulge himself in the cigar which was not permitted in the drawing-room, and the two sisters were left there. Helena's brain had long been busy, beneath the habitual jests of their game, over her future relations with Jessie, and she had come to the conclusion that the sooner they talked the matter out the better. She found that it affected her comfort to be practically not on speaking terms with her sister, and, since she had no shrinking from what might be a painful interview for others, she had made up her mind to ascertain exactly how Jessie meant to behave to her in the few weeks for which they would be in close daily and hourly contact, for Lord Harlow had expressed his mind very clearly about an early date for their wedding, and Helena entirely agreed with him.

Jessie, on her part, could scarcely manage to think about her sister at all. With Archie in front of her all evening she had barely been conscious of anything but his bitter and miserable disillusionment, his awakening from the dream that had become so real to him. She was still seated at the card-table, and with that need for trivial employment which so often accompanies emotional crises, she was building a house with the cards they had been using, devoting apparently her whole faculties to its breathless construction. The strong, beautiful hands which Archie had never noticed hovered over it, alighting with their building materials, putting each card delicately and firmly in place, and her grave face watched the ascending stories, as if Babylon the Great was rising again for the marvel of mankind. Then Helena sat down by her, and, leaning her arm on the table, caused a vibration that demolished Babylon from garret to cellar.

"Oh, Jessie, I'm so sorry," she said, and she was; the fall of an ingenious card-house was the sort of thing that provoked her pity.

Jessie swept the cards together and seemed about to get up.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "It is bed-time, isn't it?"

Helena put her head wistfully on one side.

"Aren't you being horribly unkind to me?" she said. She did not suppose it was much use playing on the pathetic stop, that made, as a general rule, so insincere a bleating in her sister's ears, but it was worth trying.

"I don't think there is any use in talking, Helena," she said. "If I am unkind, if I can't bear what you have done, it is because I simply can't help it."

Helena fingered the debris of the card-house with those more delicate fingers that could caress and claw so exquisitely. Essentially, she cared not one atom what Jessie thought of her, but she wanted not to be uncomfortable for the next few weeks.