CHAPTER IV
Helen, as Lady Sunningdale had mentioned, had to start back again for her Sunday-school soon after lunch. They had all moved out under the cedar on the lawn, and when she arose, Lord Yorkshire also got up and offered himself as an escort. This was perfectly agreeable to the girl, though she wondered exactly how high Aunt Clara’s eyebrows would rise if she knew that her niece might have been found walking on Sunday afternoon with a young man who could not possibly be brought under the elastic bonds of cousinship. But the eyebrows of Lady Sunningdale, who, it must be supposed, was chaperone, remained low and level, and the two started.
Frank had been admirably entertaining in his own way during lunch, capping the extravagancies of Lady Sunningdale with incongruities that rivalled her own, and giving wings of epigram and paradox to his speech; but Helen had received a very distinct impression that under his flippancy, which Martin imitated so faithfully, there lay something of sterling and very human solidity. And this unknown factor interested her quite apart from and much more than his conversational fireworks, which were as obviously superficial to the essential “he” as his eyebrow or moustache. Perhaps he also knew the unimportance of their leadings, for certainly, as soon as they were alone, such coruscations died slowly down, and it seemed to Helen that a very pleasant mellow light, restful after fireworks, took its place.
“I think it is unkind of you not to admit me into the school itself,” he was saying. “Why am I to be debarred from the knowledge of Ur of the Chaldees? Geography has an enormous fascination for me. I can pore for hours over maps of countries which I have never seen and almost certainly shall never see, just reading the names of unheard of places with gusto.”
“Ah, you feel that, too,” she said. “Martin always tells me I am a gypsy. Certainly I want to wander, to go on just for the sake of going on. The exploration, that is the point. And I think it is the playing at exploration that is so fascinating in a map. Dictionaries, too,—new words. And, best of all, new books with new ideas.”
“There is one thing better,” said he; “I cap your new books with new people, new ideas.”
The personal note entered, however slightly, into this, and Helen was silent a moment.
“Ah, but new books implies new people,” she said. “Nothing can be more real than the people in some books.”
“Quite true; and nothing can be less real than some people in real life. Do you know what I mean? One wonders with some people if there is anybody there. My impression is that there often isn’t.”
“I have an aunt——“ Helen began, and stopped, feeling that it was not quite kind to lay Aunt Clara on the dissecting-table.