Across the Stream

by E. F. Benson

Helena had made something of a sensation during these last weeks. She was not beautiful, but she was quite enchantingly pretty, and her mind had the qualities which might rightly be supposed to underlie that delicious face and inform those slim, graceful limbs. Nothing seemed to mar her good-nature and her superb gift of enjoying herself. It was worth while being agreeable to everybody, and if her lot happened for an hour or two a day to be cast with elderly bores, she was indefatigable in her attention to them at the time, and in telling their friends afterwards how immensely she had enjoyed talking to them. It paid to do that sort of thing, provided that it was done with a gaiety that made it appear genuine and spontaneous: if your appreciation came bubbling out of you, no one suspected you of design, and she seemed the most designless, delicious girl in London, for it is next to impossible to see through an object that dazzles you. To crown all these gifts, she had the intensest power of enjoying herself, and there is not another key that unlocks so many doors. In this whirl and mill-race of entertainment which characterized the last gay summer that London would see for long, there was no time to make friends, but only to take the scalps of enthusiastic acquaintances. That perhaps was lucky for her.

But Helena, as she finished her breakfast, recalled her mind from these shining experiences, except in so far as they bore on the theme that insistently occupied her. There was no doubt, especially after that quiet talk in the paved garden outside the ball-room last night, that Bertie Harlow was dazzled, according to plan. Heaven only knew when he had last been to a ball, for he was close on forty (Helena had naturally looked him up in a Peerage, since she liked to know about her friends), and she felt pretty certain that he had danced with no one but her. You could perhaps hardly call his share of the performance dancing; he had "stepped a measure," and twice trodden on her toe; but, after all, it did not matter whether your husband danced or not, since naturally, when those relations had been arrived at, he would not dance with you. Many women no doubt, when they were married, would think it an advantage that their husbands did not dance, since then they would not dance with anybody else. But it was not in Helena's nature prospectively to grudge him such amusements, should he desire them, when once she had got him. But she had to get him first, and to do that she had to keep him dazzled. He must not get accustomed to her.

Helena had a very strong belief in the desirability of simplifying life. This did not in the least imply that she thought there was anything attractive in the simple life: her simplification amounted to this, that she formulated exactly what she wanted, and then without deflection of aim did the very best with her efficient armoury of weapons to get it; while the second clause in the simplification of life was to find out what irritated or bored you, and with all your power eliminate it from your existence. If you could not get what you wanted without getting something that bored you, it was merely necessary to ascertain how the balance between these conflicting interests lay. As practically applied to the case in hand, she was aware that Lord Harlow bored her, though not badly, and that his nose irritated her. That she would almost certainly get used to, while on the other side of the scale were quantities of things she liked. She liked immense wealth, position, and the liberty she would undoubtedly enjoy if she married this amiable man, whom so many had tried to capture. That in itself was an incentive to her pride, and, without being a snob, she saw no objection to being a Marchioness.

But here the simplification ended, and a complication intruded itself. It was not so long ago that she had sat under the stone-pine with Archie, and seen his face glow in the darkness as he drew on his cigarette. In point of attractiveness there was naturally no comparison between her cousin and this amiable middle-aged man; but, owing to the impossibility of even the most limited polyandry, it was clearly no use to think of marrying them both, and all that was left was to choose between them, supposing, as she most sincerely did, that it was, or soon would be, for her to choose. Certainly she was not in love with Archie, if she took as an example of that the ridiculous symptoms exhibited by Daisy Hollinger, who by some strange freak was in love with Lord Harlow. Helena had behaved very wisely over that, for she had instantly seen the advantage of becoming great friends, in her sense of the word, with poor Daisy, who poured out to her a farrago of amorous imbecility, and Helena was sure that she was not in love with Archie like that. Anything so insane seemed incomprehensible to her (and was).

But Archie was a dear—she had quite wished he would kiss her that night, of course in a cousinly fashion, which she would have scorned to be offended with, whereas she did not in the least look forward to the moment when Lord Harlow would kiss her. Apart from that, the simplification of life came in again, and against Archie there were certain items which it would be imprudent to disregard. His father was a drunkard, and Archie himself had been consumptive as a child. Consumption ran in families, for Archie's brother had died of it; and so perhaps did drunkenness, though she did Archie the justice of trying and failing to remember that she had ever seen him drink wine at all. These were serious objections in a husband.

There was another, perhaps not less serious. She knew from Cousin Marion that Uncle Jack had lately lost a great deal of money; there was even the question of shutting up or letting the London house next winter. Of course, if she married Archie, they could not spend the winter down at Lacebury, or live with poor Uncle Jack; but London, as wife of an impoverished son, would be very different from London as the wife of a very wealthy man who, so to speak, was nobody's son. Finally, there were certain stories that Cousin Marion had told her about queer messages and communications that had come to Archie, while he was still a child, from his dead brother. That seemed to Helena's practical mind pure nonsense, and yet she had been pleased to hear that, since he was but young in his teens, these rather uncomfortable phenomena had ceased. She felt that she did not believe in them; but, though they had no real existence, she disliked the thought of them. And, though it was so long since there had been any repetition of them, they might (though they were all nonsense) crop up again. She had no belief in ghosts, but she would not willingly have slept in a haunted room. The dead were dead, whereas she was very much alive.

Well, it was time to dress and go down to Cousin Marion. This long, frank meditation (for she was always frank with herself, which perhaps was the reason that she had so little of that commodity to spare for other people) had helped considerably to clear her mind and provoke simplification. And, like a good housewife who will permit no waste of what can possibly be used, she thought she would have a very useful function for Archie to perform when he arrived that evening.

She found Lady Tintagel busy with her morning's post. There was a quantity of invitations, most of which, owing to press of others, had to be declined, and Helena having marked each of those with an "Accept" or "Refuse," laid them aside to answer. There was one, where the Russian dancers were to perform, which she very much regretted having to say "no" to, since that evening was already filled, and wondered if by any contrivance it would be possible to manage it. A glance at Lady Tintagel's engagement book showed her that the prohibiting acceptance was for a dinner and concert at Lady Awcock's, where all that was stately and Victorian spent evenings of unparalleled dreariness. Helena had already produced the most favourable impression on Lady Awcock by listening to her practically endless dissertations on political society forty years ago, and she thought she could manage it.

"And shall I enter all the invitation you accept in your engagement-book, Cousin Marion?" she asked.

"Yes, my dear, will you? That's really all I have for you this morning.
What will you do with yourself?"