"Helen! little Helen a belle?"
"You would have thought so. She presided at the table, and the old men were in ecstasies over her beauty, grace and grand manners. Mr. Floyd was so happy and proud he could not keep his eyes from her."
"She is only fifteen," observed Georgy, a little dissatisfaction clouding her lovely face. "She is too young to be in society. But she has everything, can do everything: it has always been so. Oh, if I were that girl!—I suppose you are in love with her, Floyd."
"I in love with Helen?" I did not say any more. Helen was a tall, slim girl now, but with a frigid air about her which indisposed me to admiration. How different from Georgy, whose smile and glance thawed reserve and drew me close to her! I did not define the meaning of the warm lovelight in her eyes, nor ask whether it was a perpetual fire, a lure to all men, or merely a sign for me. Sitting beside her, I was conscious of an atmosphere emanating as it were from the warmth and kindness of her smile and glance—an atmosphere which in itself was delicious and complete, predisposing me to dreamy, happy silence. To be near her was to feel in a high degree the beauty and power of woman: full of loveliness as were the arch, mobile face, the glorious hair, the eyes with their life and tenderness, the perfect lips, they were but a small part of her charm, which seemed to breathe from the statuesque pose of bust and neck and head, and the supple grace of her every movement.
She questioned me minutely concerning Mr. Floyd. He was no longer in office now, but was spending his time at The Headlands with Mr. Raymond and Helen until I should be ready in July to sail with him for Europe. It was quite easy to perceive that the moment we touched upon this new subject Georgy's composure and gayety were alike banished, and as I knew that reasons existed which made The Headlands and Helen's society forbidden ground for her, I would have changed to other topics; but she kept on pertinaciously in her questionings until, with all my wish to please her, I grew weary.
It was quite as well, however, that my first enchantment should be a little abated before I left her, and I went away thinking for a time more about her curiosity concerning Helen and Mr. Floyd than about the rose on her cheeks and the light in her eyes. I had no intention of bidding her a final good-bye when I shook hands with her, but it fell out that more than two years were to pass before I looked upon her face again.
I think my mental equilibrium was perhaps a little disturbed by this interview with her. She had—perhaps carelessly, perhaps with some faint suggestion of truth—said some things which I could not forget. Had she not told me she liked me better than anybody else? What did she mean? how much did she mean? I knew that she spoke heedlessly at times—that she possessed no intellectual discipline, no mental accuracy to measure the force of her words. I knew, too, that coquetry and feminine instinct impelled her to use her strongest weapons against any masculine adversary. Yet, subtracting all these influences from her speech, it was still left fraught with delicious meaning. I had no wish to wrong Jack, but my vanity was tickled by the suggestion that I had something which was my own hidden treasure. I found a line which suited the sentimental nature of my thoughts. "The children of Alice call Bertram father." I used to repeat it to myself with exquisite pain, and think of the time when I should see Jack with his wife beside him, their children at their feet. "The children of Alice call Bertram father." I was impressed with the deep romance of common life, and wrote more bad verses at that period than I would have confessed to my dearest friend.
Harry Dart, who was the closest observer of our coterie, was not long in making the discovery that I was despondent about something, and presently taxed me with being in love with Georgy Lenox. I found myself terribly vexed with him, and also with myself, but not on my own account. I could not reply to his raillery. It seemed to me horribly unfair for him to steal my shadow of a secret and then proclaim it aloud; but I was not so badly off but that I could stand what he said about myself. In fact, I was glad to be held up to ridicule, and, thus disillusionized, see my fault in its true colors. It seemed to me unworthy of Harry to attack a defenceless girl in this way, engaged, too, as she was to his cousin. Had I not known him all my life as well as I knew myself, I should have suspected that something underlay his malice—that she had injured him in some way, and that he was ungenerous enough thus to gratify an unreasonable spite.
Jack and I were out one evening, and returning entered our sitting-room together, and found Harry there with two or three men not belonging to the college, and among them Thorpe. It was evident to me that they changed their subject as we entered, but the talk at once flowed again, and Harry excelled as usual in quaint fancies, happy repartees and sharp flings at all of us while he lay stretched out in my reclining-chair smoking before the fire. Jack had evidently been to see Georgy, and looked dreamy and content, and joined the circle instead of going at once to his books. Thorpe made allusion once or twice to his pleasant abstraction, but Jack was indifferent, and even after the visitors were gone he sat looking at the fire with a sort of smile on his face.
"Well, old fellow," said I after a time, "don't waste all that pleasant material for dreams on yourself."