"After me," Newton answered. "I come next at the bat."
Ignorant of this and other by-play, however, Helen thoroughly enjoyed the first days of the party. On the frontier, amusement is a home-made product, and shares the superiority of domestic jams, jellies, and pickles over the article of commerce. They caught the fickle damsel Pleasure coming and going, reaping the satisfaction of both spectator and entertainer. By day they skated, drove, or curled on a rink which the male guests laid out; nights, they sang, danced, played games, and romped like children.
Apart from a certain freedom in their intercourse, which she attributed to long acquaintance, Helen found nothing objectionable in the demeanor of her new friends during those first few days. On the contrary, she thought them a trifle dull. Their preglacial and ponderous humor excited her risibility; she laughed as often at as with them. At other times she could not but feel that they regarded her as alien, a pretty pagan without their social pale, and she would revolt against their enormous egotism, insolent national conceit. She broke many a lance on that impregnable shield.
"You English," she flashed back when, one evening, Newton reflected on American pronunciation of certain English family names—"you English remind me of the Jews, with their sibboleth and shibboleth. Is your aristocracy so doubtful of its own identity that it is compelled to hedge itself against intrusion by the use of passwords. You may call 'Cholmondeley' 'Chumley,' if you choose, but we commit no crime in pronouncing it as spelled."
Again, when Edith Newton rallied her on some crude custom which she maintained was peculiarly American, Helen delivered a sharp riposte. "No, I never saw it done at home; but I have heard that it is quite common among English emigrants on transatlantic liners." Such tiffs were, however, rare; and, to do them justice, men and women hastened to sacrifice national conceit on the altars of her wounded susceptibilities.
Offence came later, and on quite another score. At first she liked the attentions paid her; the gallantry of the men put her on better terms with herself, renewed the confidence which had diminished to the vanishing-point during her months of loneliness. But when constant association thawed the reserve natural to first acquaintance, and freedom evolved into familiarity, her instincts took alarm. Distressed, she observed the other women to see if she had been singled out. But no, they seemed quite comfortable under similar attentions, and they rallied her when she unfolded her misgivings at afternoon tea.
"You shouldn't be so pretty, my dear," Mrs. Jack said, laughing. "What can the poor men do?" Then they made fun of her scruples, satirizing conventions and institutions which she had always regarded as necessary, if not God-ordained.
"Marriage," Edith Newton once cynically exclaimed, "is merely a badge of respectability, useful as a shield from the slings and arrows." Then, from the depths of her own degeneracy, she evolved the utterance: "Men are all beasts beneath the skin. Wise women use them for pleasure or profit."
Helen revolted at that; it transcended her mutiny. But few people are made of martyr stuff—perhaps fortunately so; martyrs are uncomfortable folk, and, wise in her eternal generation, nature sprinkles them lightly over the mass of common clay. The average person easily takes the color of environment, so why not Helen? Thinking that perhaps she was a little prudish, she stifled her fears, tried to imitate the nonchalance of the others. She even made a few tentative attempts at daring. Alas! as well expect a rabbit to ruffle it with wolves. Such immediate and unwelcome results followed that she retired precipitously behind ramparts of blushing reserve. But the damage was done. Thereafter Chapman, Newton, Rhodes, one or another, was constantly at her elbow; she was unpleasantly conscious that, having let down her fences, they looked upon her as free game.
The thought stirred her to fight. Chapman she disposed of with a single rebuff that sent him back to Mrs. Jack's side. But Newton proved unmanageable. Impervious to snubs, his manner conveyed his idea that her modesty was simply a blind for the others. His familiarities bordered on license. A good singer, he always asked her to play his accompaniments of evenings, and she would sicken as he used the pretence of turning a leaf to lean heavily upon her shoulder. At other times he made occasion to touch her—would pick threads from her jacket; lean across her to speak to her neighbor at table.