Helen did not answer for a moment.
“Well, I shall go to sleep,” she said. “Martin!”
“Well?”
“You did that remarkably badly,” she said; “a cow could give you points in dissimulation. You remembered her name perfectly.”
Dr. Arne, at whose house on the Trumpington Road Helen was staying, was probably as nearly happy as is possible to the sons of men, who have so marked a genius for discontent. Whether his happiness was worth much and what it all came to is another question; but happy he was,—an affair of immense importance not only to himself, but to all on whom his imperturbable serenity shone. For Providence had endowed him with an apparently insatiable curiosity about the chorus-metres in Greek plays, and also with an intuitive perception as regards this extremely difficult and no doubt fascinating branch of knowledge, which had proved itself capable of being trained into something approaching the perfection of acumen. His intellectual ambitions were thus completely satisfied, and being without any passion but this, which the fact that he was tutor of his college enabled him to gratify without stint, there was really no possible chink at which the bitter wind of discontent could enter and make draughts. The same good fortune had attended his marriage, for he had wooed and won a woman of good birth and breeding, whose only desire, as far as he was aware, was to make her husband not happy,—he was that already,—but comfortable. Extremely edible meals were offered to his notice at hours of his choosing, no sacrilegious hand ever disturbed the papers in his study, his wife walked with him after lunch, and, unless they had people dining with them or were themselves bidden to other feasts, played picquet with him after dinner. His mode of progression along roads was naturally a little quicker than hers, his play of the hand at cards a shade less mediocre, and in consequence he lived in an atmosphere of slight domestic superiority. The same atmosphere, though not domestic, surrounded him in his studies, for, to make a rough statement of the matter, he knew rather more about Greek chorus-metres than anybody else had ever done. His bodily health, moreover, if not exuberant,—he would have found exuberance very trying,—was excellent; he appeared, in fact, to be as immune to the frailties and disorders of the flesh as he was to any unsatisfied cravings of the spirit. He was also childless; and though he was not consciously grateful for this, he was aware that he desired neither more distractions, anxieties, or even joys than he possessed in such completeness.
Lady Susan Arne had been compared by her niece to a cushion; and, indeed, the superficial similarity—not, indeed, in point of looks, for Lady Susan was remarkably well-favoured—in the nature of the two was extremely striking when once it had been pointed out. It was true that if one leaned on Lady Susan’s mind there was no firm resistance, only a large dent seemed to have been made in hers. But Helen, with a certain impatience in her survey, had overlooked the existence of a permanent dent there, a thing entirely foreign to cushions. She, Helen, it is true, might lean and make a dent, and that the next person who, so to speak, shook Aunt Susan up, or leaned upon her in another place, would (still in Helen’s view) efface the first dent; but in a corner of her, where no one ever thought of leaning or looking, there was a permanent and uneffaceable dent. This was made in the first place by the ungratified yearning for a child of her own; it was now daily renewed by the knowledge of its impossibility. There was in her, in fact, a potential vitality which under other circumstances might have made of her a woman, not a housekeeper, and have given her points more directly in contact with life than were picquet and constitutionals. As it was, she had experienced none of the divine unsatisfiedness which fulness of life alone brings with it; she knew only the content of a rather empty existence. And Helen, judging with the impatience of youth, which is akin to the impatience of kittens or puppies with inanimate objects that will not come and play with them, had overlooked this. For, in truth, Aunt Susan was not inanimate; tucked away in a corner of the cushion was a real, live thing that groped for life and light, and she, the individual, was like a room made ready for the reception of guests,—chairs and tables in order, games put out for their entertainment, but until the guests began to arrive the room was in darkness. Aunt Susan stood there, match-box in hand, so to speak, waiting for the first ring at the bell to light up her tapers and shew how orderly, how fragrant, how charming (a little old-fashioned, too) her room was, how thoughtfully arranged for the pleasure of others. But no ring had yet come at her door-bell, and she still stood there, very patient and still smiling, but still waiting.
Lady Susan, on Helen’s arrival, knew only vaguely that something uncomfortable had happened at the vicarage; but Helen, the first evening she was there, had confided to her, rather as one may confide on cold nights to one’s pillow or to bedclothes tucked round the neck, the history of the last few days. But she neither knew nor would have guessed it possible that the news had kept Aunt Susan awake half the night, and that while she herself was up the river with Martin her aunt had gone about her household businesses and taken her walk with her husband in such a tremor of excitement that he had to hurry after her, instead of hanging on his step to wait for her. In all these tranquil years at Cambridge she had never been brought into contact with a thing that moved her like this. The gentle ministrations in which her years were passed had not touched her emotions, which, had not her yearnings for a child kept them alive, would probably long ago have fossilised. But those yearnings had nourished and rendered mature their sweet, delicate sensitiveness, and now when they were aroused, though even in this second-hand manner, they responded instantly, gently vibrating, not with a crackle of dry autumn leaves, but like foliage of aspen in the breath of spring.
Helen got back to this house of quiet towards five in the afternoon, and found her aunt and Dr. Arne at tea on the lawn behind the house. The latter, however, soon went indoors to enjoy—literally enjoy—his couple of hours’ work before dinner, after forewarning them as to possible dampness on the grass after sunset.
“And have you enjoyed yourself, dear?” asked Aunt Susan, pleasantly; “and was the lunch I gave you really sufficient? Dear Martin has always such a beautiful appetite. It is a pleasure to see him eat his dinner.”
“Yes, dear aunt, we had heaps. And it was all so good, and so beautifully done up. Exactly like you.”