Helena

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

* * * * *

The day grew hotter. Lodge and Julian Horne went off for a swim in the cool end of the lake. Peter still slept, looking so innocent and infantine in his sleep that no one had the heart to wake him. French and Helena were left together, and were soon driven by the advancing sun to the deep shade of a lime-avenue, which, starting from the back of the house, ran for half a mile through the park. Here they were absolutely alone. Lady Mary's prying eyes were defeated, and Helena incidentally remarked that Mrs. Friend, being utterly "jacked up," had been bullied into staying in bed till luncheon.

So that in the green sunflecked shadow of the limes, Geoffrey had—if Helena so pleased—a longer tête-à-tête before him, and a more generous opportunity, even, than the gods had given him on the lake. His pulses leapt; goaded, however, by alternate hope and fear. But at least he had the chance to probe the situation a little deeper; even if prudence should ultimately forbid him anything more.

Helena had chosen a wooden seat round one of the finest limes. Some books brought out for show rather than use, lay beside her. A piece of knitting—a scarf of a bright greenish yellow—lay on the lap of her white dress. She had taken off her hat, and Geoffrey was passionately conscious of the beauty of the brown head resting, as she talked, against the furrowed trunk of the lime. Her brown-gold hair was dressed in the new way, close to the head and face, and fastened by some sapphire pins behind the ear. From this dark frame, and in the half light of the avenue, the exquisite whiteness of the forehead and neck, the brown eyes, so marvellously large and brilliant, and yet so delicately finished in every detail beneath their perfect brows, and the curve of the lips over the small white teeth, stood out as if they had been painted on ivory by a miniature-painter of the Renaissance. Her white dress, according to the prevailing fashion, was almost low—as children's frocks used to be in the days of our great-grandmothers. It was made with a childish full bodice, and a childish sash of pale blue held up the rounded breast, that rose and fell with her breathing, beneath the white muslin. Pale blue stockings, and a pair of white shoes, with preposterous heels and pointed toes, completed the picture. The mingling, in the dress, of extreme simplicity with the cunningest artifice, and the greater daring and joie de vivre which it expressed, as compared with the dress of pre-war days, made it characteristic and symbolic:—a dress of the New Time.

Geoffrey lay on the grass beside her, feasting his eyes upon her—discreetly. Since when had English women grown so beautiful? At all the weddings and most of the dances he had lately attended, the brides and the débutantes had seemed to him of a loveliness out of all proportion to that of their fore-runners in those far-off days before the war. And when a War Office mission, just before the Armistice, had taken him to some munition factories in the north, he had been scarcely less seized by the comeliness of the girl-workers:—the long lines of them in their blue overalls, and the blue caps that could scarcely restrain the beauty and wealth of pale yellow or red-gold hair beneath. Is there something in the rush and flame of war that quickens old powers and dormant virtues in a race? Better feeding and better wages among the working-classes—one may mark them down perhaps as factors in this product of a heightened beauty. But for these exquisite women of the upper class, is it the pace at which they have lived, unconsciously, for these five years, that has brought out this bloom and splendour?—and will it pass as it has come?

Questions of this kind floated through his mind as he lay looking at
Helena, melting rapidly into others much more peremptory and personal.

"Are you soon going up to Town?" he asked her presently. His voice seemed to startle her. She returned evidently with difficulty from thoughts of her own. He would have given his head to read them.

"No," she said hesitatingly. "Why should we? It is so jolly down here.
Everything's getting lovely."

"I thought you wanted a bit of season! I thought that was part of your bargain with Philip?"

"Yes—but"—she laughed—"I didn't know how nice Beechmark was."