HELENA BRETT'S CAREER

BY

DESMOND COKE

AUTHOR OF THE BOOKS ON THE PAGE OPPOSITE

[Transcriber's note: this list has been moved to the end of this etext]

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
3, WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1913

TO

ARTHUR WAUGH,

CRITIC, PUBLISHER, AND FRIEND,
WHO STARTED ME AS NOVELIST
AND HAS NEVER FAILED SINCE
WITH ENCOURAGEMENT,
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
IN GRATITUDE.

PREFATORY POSTSCRIPT

In these thin-skinned days when the words libel and traitor drift on every breeze, it may be "wise" (I am told at the last), to make it plain that my Author, Publisher, and Artist do not represent real people! So be it, then: the men, as also women, in this unromantic comedy of married life are all imagined; but in declaring them not to be individuals, I would not be thought to admit that they are non-existent ... or universal. Such men have been and will be—self-centred authors, unscrupulous publishers, vulgar-minded artists—nor does a paragon make the best food for fiction: but there are also Others. Logic still permits one to avoid Libel without confessing Treachery, and I am little likely to "attack" my own profession or two others from which I draw some of my nearest friends. We are told that there are black sheep in every fold; but it is still possible that a few among the others may be white. It pleases some of us to think so.

DESMOND COKE

CONTENTS

PART I

HOW IT HAPPENED

PART II

HUBERT BRETT'S WIFE

PART III

HELENA BRETT'S CAREER

PART I

HOW IT HAPPENED

HELENA BRETT'S CAREER

CHAPTER I

ADVICE

"Of course," said Kenneth Boyd, with the abrupt conviction of one whose argument is off the point at issue, "it's absolutely obvious. You ought to marry."

The man who ought to marry was no more pleased to hear it than most of his kind. He scowled angrily: then smiled, as though contempt were a more fit reply. He was tall, broad, firm-looking, with smooth dark hair still low upon his forehead, and certainly looked in no need of drastic remedies.

He knocked his pipe out on the grate before he answered, but when the words came, they burst forth like an explosion.

"You married men," he cried, turning the attack, "are just like parrots. You can only say one thing. You're worse than parrots: you're gramophones—or parrots with a gramophone inside. You're always saying one thing, 'Marry!' and you say it jolly long. I honestly believe you've got a Trades Union, unless it's merely nasty feeling! That probably is it. You hate to see others as happy as you used to be!"

Whereat, comforted, he stretched his long legs and lay back on the deep chair in a better humour.

"No," said the other gently. "We hate to see them miserable and know they'll never realise man's one chance of happiness till it's too late."

He spoke in very earnest tones and looked almost anxiously across at his friend, now quite happy again with the flushed sensation of having achieved something at any rate not too far from an epigram. A peaceful smile played round the big mouth which alone betrayed weakness in his pale, clear-cut face.

How young he was in some ways, Kenneth Boyd reflected—in self-complacency, for one! And yet, in others, how much too settled and fixed for his years. Here he was, a ten-year resident of these rooms—comfortable enough, yes—looked after by a sister; turning out his yearly novel, no worse but no better than the one before; an old bachelor at thirty-five, and yet too young to speak of marriage as anything except a rather tasteless joke!

He watched him anxiously, as he might watch his patients at the hospital, and wondered whether he was beyond helping.

Hubert Brett said nothing. He was angry.

Why, he was wondering, had he telephoned for Boyd to come along at all? He always had asked Boyd, of course, even in the dear old Oxford days, when he was in a difficulty. Boyd's great forehead, thick chin, and deep voice gave him a sort of solid, comfortable air: and he was never sympathetic.... Probably his medical work—it was not nice, quite, to think of it like that—made him a restful person to consult? He always smoothed you down and made you feel that what you meant to do would be entirely for the best.

But he had been off form to-night....

Marry, indeed! Why, that had nothing to do with the case at all. It was Ruth's maddening stupidity that had made him ask Kenneth in. These rows with one's sister were horrible—and bad for work.... Besides, they used to be such pals as kids: it wasn't nice, now, to be quarrelling like any costermonger and his wife. Yet each absurd quarrel was followed by one more absurd.

What had it been all about to-night? He had forgotten that already. The actual row was a surprise. Ruth had started this one. He had not seen it coming, even, till they were both on their feet.

She was so maddening, you see!

He didn't mind an egoist. He sometimes thought, in moments of depression, he was one himself (but he did not believe in introspection). It was an egoist who claimed to be a martyr that aroused his anger.

Ruth was always claiming to have sacrificed herself. She didn't matter. No one must consider her. She hadn't married. She gave her life up willingly to her dear brother. If he trod on her sometimes, she only liked to feel that he was free to wing his way to fame. And all that sort of stuff ... when all the while, she never did a single thing he wanted, but in the most selfish way made everything as hard as it could be for his work, when she herself was doing nothing! What a fuss if he was half an hour or so late for their lonely meal! How could it matter? He was in the middle of a paragraph, sometimes: and what did she do after dinner, anyhow? Nothing but play Patience, while he went back to work! How could it make any difference at what hour she dined?...

Probably to-night had been some trifle of that sort: he had forgotten, really; but at the end of it she had stood up and said, for the first time: "Well, I can always be turned out. There's no real reason why we should live together."

"The first sensible remark you've made," he had replied, made elementary by anger, and gone out to telephone to Boyd.

Why, after all, did they live together? Would he be happier without her? Or would a cook-housekeeper be worse? How did other men get on? Most of them, somehow, seemed to marry.... Boyd would know, though—he went to so many homes. But Boyd might say that it was not quite fair on Ruth.... That was nonsense, though. Brothers weren't ever meant or bound to keep their sisters, and thirty-eight was not too old for women to get married. It was the fashionable age. Nobody now cared for girls. Only Ruth never wanted to go out, or, if she did, it was to some quite silly show where he could not be seen.... Well, he would see what Boyd said. That was the best way.

And Boyd, having listened to the passionate recital in an owlish silence, had answered: "It's quite obvious. You ought to marry!" Just what those idiots of doctors always said. Marriage and golf were their only two ideas, even for any one with liver.

"Why ought I to marry?" he blazed out suddenly, to the surprise of his friend, who could not follow his thought during the long pause.

"Why, my dear fellow? Because you're stagnating—because it is life's second stage—because you've got beyond the first—because each of your books is exactly like the last——"

This ceased to be theory. Hubert was in arms at once.

"I don't see that," he said in a hard voice, almost sulkily. "As a matter of fact, several of the critics went out of their way to call The Bread of Idleness new, original, etcetera."

"Yes," replied Kenneth Boyd, who secretly enjoyed wounding just deeply enough his friend's self-esteem; "the plot was different, but its heroine the same. You had her in Wandering Stars; you had her in Life; you've had her in them all. There is a Hubert Brett type no less than a Gibson Girl."

"I still don't see, even so," Hubert icily replied, "exactly why I have to marry."

Kenneth Boyd smiled unseen. "Because to widen your art, you must widen your idea of woman. If you really know one woman, they say, then you can know them all."

A good deal of the author's self-esteem returned. He looked relieved. So that was all, was it?

"If you know them all, as I do, by study," he answered, "you don't want to know one."

And now indeed Kenneth Boyd peered at him seriously, as at a patient very critical.

"That sort of remark," he said, "just shows that you know nothing about women and ought to marry one."

Hubert laughed. "Dear old Kenneth!" and there was pity in his voice. "Perhaps I should, if I knew nothing of them really. But I'm afraid I know too much."

His counsellor made no reply. He always knew when he had failed. He also knew, from long experience, the only weapon that availed when once the hard line came round Brett's weak lips. He waited prudently, while they both smoked, and then he grasped it firmly.

"Well, it's a pity, Hubert," he said gaily, as though he had abandoned his attempt and could afford by now to laugh at it, "because you'd not only solve the sister problem but—look at the advertisement! 'Famous Author Weds.' 'Mr. Hubert Brett, the Novelist, who is to be married this week. Photo by Bassano.' 'Mr. Brett's beautiful young wife.' 'Mrs. Brett, wife of the celebrated author, opens a bazaar.'"

"Oh, shut up," cried Hubert quite youthfully, and made some pretence at throwing a tobacco-pouch, but did not seem displeased.

"Then," went on the remorseless friend, "she is at parties every day, and universally admired. Who is she? everybody naturally asks. Why, the wife of Hubert Brett. Have you read his new novel? If not, do."

"You must think me a conceited fool," Hubert put in, "if you imagine I swallow all that." Sometimes he suspected Boyd of sneering. Mrs. Boyd, he knew, disliked him. She had often tried a snub. She was a very brainless woman....

Kenneth Boyd dropped his manner of burlesque.

"All the same," he said, falling back into the old vein, "a wife does a lot in one's career, you know. She has so much more time for making friends. I always look on mine as my best canvasser! Why, man" (and now he shamelessly threw off the mask), "you simply don't know what you're missing. When I look back on my old single days, I hardly can believe that it was me or how I could have been such an almighty ass as to have wasted all those ghastly years. Perhaps, though, I shouldn't enjoy our life now so much, if I'd not had a good mouthful of the other. Good lord—the discomfort; the loneliness; the want of any one who really cares; the feeling that there's nothing permanent; the frantic writing round to make sure you won't have a lonely evening; the sick despair when some one fails and you sit moping by your fire or wander out among a crowd of laughing couples, damnably alone; the lack of any purpose in life; the constant cadging round for somebody to save you from a Soho restaurant. Good lord, it simply can't be true I had five years of it, and now...! Of course, Hubert, I know what you'll say. We're all different; you're not that sort; you never feel all this; you wouldn't feel as I do, if you married. But you do—you would. We're all utterly the same, deep down. You novelists forge little differences to help out your stories, but I tell you, deep down, men are all the same. We all get lonely, we all get sad and hopeless as the years go on, we want just one who values us more than the rest, who cares for our success, who smoothes away our failures. We can't, any one of us, get on alone. You're only shy, that's all. You funk proposing—you'd feel such a fool! But what's all that? There must be lots of jolly girls about. Just you fix on one, get married, and then come and settle down near us, out Hampstead way. Think of it! No climbing back into a grimy lodging—sorry, old man, but I mean the fogs. If you could just see Hampstead in a winter sunset! Then a nice little home, all new and clean; tea all put ready for you by your wife; the kiddies keen to see you; that's the one way, I tell you, for all men to come home. We're not different, a bit. We all want—you want—love and comradeship; we want another thing beside ourselves, in whose success we can feel proud; we want our wife, our children, and we want our home. And that's exactly what you want, my boy!"

Carried along midway, he suddenly became self-conscious and collapsed with the last sentence.

Hubert ironically clapped his hands. "Splendid, splendid! You ought to write advertisements; I'm sure the Garden City would pay a big premium. Title, 'The New Home!'"

He was much too absorbed to notice the hurt look that came over the other's face. Kenneth Boyd had been expensively educated, as a boy, in all English ideals. He never had dared, until just now, to show his Self to any one except his wife. Now, when it was mocked at, he felt a hideous shame, a terrible resentment. And he had only wished to help his friend!

Hubert contentedly passed on to the analysis of his own state, a plea for his own attitude. "I am different, though," he said, "all the same. You can't understand. My job, for one thing, is so different. I must be left alone to do it. I don't 'come home,' as you so poetically put it; I'm there all the time. So would your 'kiddies' be, and they'd be a damned bore. Just when I was dying to get on with my new book, they'd be what you call 'keen to see me' and squall if I wouldn't. Oh, I can see it all. I've too much imagination, far, to need to marry; I've been through it all a thousand times, without. I can see my dear wife, as you call her, filthily jealous of my work and grudging every minute that I took for it. It's all so different for you fellows who go off to work. You've got your hours of solitude all free for business and then you come back to tea, if you're a slacker, as you've just described. But nobody ever believes that novelists do any work; it's just their hobby in spare moments! Any one may interrupt and there is no harm done. My dear wife would buzz in and out and ask me what I liked for lunch.... Oh, yes, I can see it all."

"You've no idea of it at all," said Kenneth Boyd almost passionately in his deep, sincere-sounding voice.

"And as to loneliness," Hubert went on, utterly ignoring him, "I see too many people as it is. I'm always booked. I absolutely curse them sometimes when I feel I haven't seen them for a century and they'll be getting huffy. Constant companion and all that stuff, indeed? No, thanks! Shall I tell you my idea of bliss?"

"This, I suppose?" the other asked, waving his pipe-stem pitilessly around the untidy room, where school football-groups mingled with Burne-Jones survivals from the Oxford age; where books usurped chairs, sofa, floor, piano-top; where no intrusive female hand was suffered, clearly, with methodic duster.

"No," answered Hubert, "though I'm fond of it. It's good enough for me as home. No, my idea of bliss is just an afternoon when I've no teas, appointments, duties, anything; when I am really free. Then I put on my very oldest suit and get out right along the river, Richmond way—Kew, Putney, anywhere—and stretch my lungs and look at the old book-shops and enjoy the river. That's when I'm happy, you see! I look at the river, out by Richmond Bridge, broad and festive and the sun upon it; everything all full of life; and I feel free, and that's the time I take a deep breath in—or by the sea, of course—and say, 'Thank God that I'm alive!'"

"And thank God you're alone?" his friend enquired. He looked across at him, no longer by now as at a patient, but as he might have at a curious specimen inside a labelled bottle.

Hubert was quite pleased to have this opportunity for self-analysis thrust on him. He liked to be thought peculiar but wished to be sincere. He reflected a little, then slowly blew out a funnel of smoke with energy behind it.

"Yes," he said, "and thank God I'm alone."

CHAPTER II

"WHY MEN MARRY"

Hubert shut the door after his visitor with no deep feeling of regret. He managed to refrain from slamming it.

He was angry still.

Men are peculiar about their troubles. Woman, popularly thought to be a sieve with secrets, will crush a worry down, grapple silently and fight with it, nor ever let her very nearest know that it is there. Perhaps heroic centuries of motherhood have taught her to endure her own pain with a smile, where she can scarce bear to conceal another's folly? The man, in any case, is different. Tell him what Mrs. Tomkins stupidly said about the vicar: he will not breathe it to a living soul. Quite possibly he will not even listen to the end.... But let him have some small upset, some crisis where decision must be made, not a big choice—nothing like those he makes off-hand each day up in his city office—and you shall see him stripped of his pretence to all reserve or strength. Long time, like Homeric heroes, he sits tossing thought hither and thither. Nothing emerges from this exercise: it is a mere convention. He must think a little: people always do; but he knows well enough that not this way lies decision. He takes other steps. If he is a man of few friends, he will risk everything upon a coin's fall. "Heads I do, and tails I don't," he mutters weakly, groping in his pocket. Up spins the penny. Heads it is! "Heads I do," he murmurs once again; and adds, pathetically firm, "But all the same, I don't think I will." He has been helped to his decision.

If he has friends, he will use one of them in place of the penny. Every man, almost, has one trusted friend whose advice he does not take in all moments of perplexity.

Kenneth Boyd stood, so to speak, as Hubert's penny. He always sat and listened stolidly to his friend's trouble: then he answered "Heads" or "Tails," as it seemed best to him; went back, braced by the contrast, to his Hampstead home; and left Hubert to decide whether or no he would take the spin as final.

In this case, as he sat down, Hubert said to himself with vehemence, poking the fire fiercely, that he would not. He had asked Kenneth whether it would be mean to turn Ruth out, as she herself suggested—and he had at once embarked on a long rigmarole about dear wives, winter sunsets, kiddies, teapots, and all sorts of things....

With a last jab at the fire he dismissed the interview just over from his mind and settled down to think. He never ought to have asked that monomaniac along. He might have guessed what he would say.

Ruth was a nuisance, frankly; she jarred upon him constantly: their life was one long quarrel nowadays; but—how would solitude affect his work?

That was the big question.

To Hubert Brett his work was life, and nothing much else counted. He was a man who valued success less for its achievement than for its reward. He liked to be pointed out as one who wrote (he often was, in little country places); he enjoyed meeting men and women whose names were famous far and wide; he loved press-cuttings, revelled in his photograph when reproduced, and was almost physically upset when he received a real old-fashioned, slashing review. To anything of this sort he always replied, quoting the opinions of some other papers, and "relying on the editor's sense of justice to give his letter publicity." Papers, in fact, that liked neither his novels nor his letters, had ceased to notice the first-named, hoping to avoid the last: and he was glad of this decision. Letters from unknown readers were shown to all his friends, who also had the privilege of reading the longest reviews, left out upon his mantel-piece; though when they took them up he would always protest, "Oh, that'll bore you: it's only a few stray press-cuttings." He liked at dinner-parties to sit next women who had read his books (the dear, kind, tactful sex!), and asked him how he wrote. He had, in fact, published his first book under a pseudonym (his father, as a clergyman, naturally objecting to the real name being used), but found that no one recognised him as the author under his own different name. He therefore, on his father's death, had paid some pounds and taken the name Brett permanently as his own for ordinary use. His sister, who was like most women in being petulant as to trifles but mild about the things that matter, had submitted from being Ruth Brettesley to become mere Ruth Brett. Now, when he dined out, Hubert often found that women next him would ask if he was "the author." It never had occurred to him, of course, that they were coached by an ideal hostess.

It may be well imagined, then, that he now hesitated before taking any step that might affect his very methodical arrangements about writing. His sister, once thrown over (he told himself), would never return. She would marry or something. Women were like cats: they always did. She would not stray about uncomfortably until he wanted her again. No; she would make a home: and he, as the years went on, would find himself alone....

He had lit a pipe, and drew at it mechanically, but he was far too rapt to taste it. Kenneth Boyd's words on that one point had certainly gone home. His eyes fixed on a glowing cavern of red embers, he saw unroll before him a grisly panorama of the days to be.

He could see himself, bereft of Ruth's care, moving to a bachelor flat where they "did for" one; happy enough perhaps, at first, in solitude, and working well—happy and working until illness came. Then he saw the change. Ruth, he admitted, had been quite splendid—like her old self—when he had been ill. That was when you wanted a woman about.... Then, as Kenneth had said, he would grow older. He could see himself climbing, more and more shakily each year, the long flight to his flat; too settled far by now to move even to a lower floor. He could see the porters and people saluting—oh, so respectfully!—till he was past, and then imitating his old, broken shuffle. He could see himself turning on with fumbling hands the light he used to switch on so gaily as he dashed in thirty years ago. He could see himself all alone at night, when it was too cold for an old man to walk about and no one wanted him; sitting there with weary eyes tight closed, thinking of the friends that he would like to see, the friends all dead or—married.... And finally he could see himself climb those stairs, so full of memories, for the last time, and stagger in for the last time to that small room where he had had such jolly parties in the years gone by, and ring and have just strength to gasp out, "I must have a doctor." Yes, and that old wreck lying there, alone but for a nurse he hated, longing for sympathy, love—even Ruth's!—yes, that too would be him. And then——

For one moment the knock on his door startled him. He was like a small child who, waked suddenly, continues a bad dream. He thought that they had come with that cheap, humble coffin which he had just seen borne up the long stairs.... He very nearly cried out, "Bring it in," not realising that he was the corpse.

"Why, it's you, Ruth!" he cried in vague annoyance.

"Of course it is," she laughed. "Who else would it be, you stupid boy? Perhaps you mean, though, you don't want me?"

"Of course I always want you, old girl." This hideous geniality, he felt, was the worst part of their whole constant warfare, recalling by an empty mockery that they had once been such devoted chums; still could be, possibly, if they were only parted. "I'm not working," he added almost grudgingly, as though he wished he had got that excuse.

But Ruth, indecision personified, still hovered restlessly in mid-carpet. "Are you quite sure you're not, Hugh?" she said. "If you are, do say so. I've been alone all the evening till now, so it won't hurt me to go on like that till bedtime. I am used to it, you see!" and she smiled patiently.

Hubert looked at her, wondering why she possessed this curious gift of annoying him. Did she try, or was she really meaning to be kind? Her face, set and hard already, gave no hint. She smiled with her lips but her eyes did not light up. There was something tragic in her looks. She was not ugly, yet she meant absolutely nothing. She was just a passable statue, into which the artist had failed somehow to put any life. She smiled doggedly with her lips, and she clearly was not happy. She had never lived.

She went on wanly smiling reassurance at him, as one who should say, "I am not to be considered," till he schooled his voice to answer. Whatever happened, he would not have another scene on this night which seemed in some way big with a decision.

"It'll be nice to have a little chat, old girl," he said genially. "Sit down and make yourself comfy."

She moved timidly towards an armchair with the mien of a scolded, nervous child. "If you're quite, quite sure?" she quavered. "I wish I felt certain you hadn't been just thinking you would settle down, now Mr. Boyd had gone. I should be absolutely happy with my Patience."

"Boyd was in great form," Hubert answered. He could not trust himself to assure her further.

"What did he say then?" and she let herself down into the chair staidly. She was not like a woman of thirty-eight. Women of thirty-eight nowadays are young, almost unfashionably young, and Ruth was pathetically old. She had given her youth to her mother: she was prepared to lavish the rest of life upon her brother, asking in return nothing except that he would not be what she tearfully and often called unkind to her.

"Say?" answered Hubert, far more comfortably. "What didn't he say? My dear Ruth, I've had a classic homily on Marriage!"

Ruth stiffened visibly. "Marriage? Then I suppose you asked him in to give you his advice?"

"Really," said Hubert in another voice, "I imagine you can't object, now, to what I ask my pals in for?—supposing that I did."

She smoothed all that kind of thing away with a restful gesture.

"My dear boy, you know I've no objection, as you call it, to anything at all you do. You are a man. I'm only your guest. I've no right to object. But I am naturally interested. Of course, though, if you'd rather not tell me what Mr. Boyd said"—she paused, "we'll talk of something else."

"No we won't," cried Hubert, with a sudden passion. "I'm sick to death of all this constant friction."

"Friction!" and she raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. Otherwise her sad face remained expressionless, but her hands clasped each other tensely under an old-fashioned shawl.

"Yes, friction. That's the only word. You know, Ruth, I don't want to be a brute. You know what pals we were as kids, what pals we still are" (he forced the words out), "and that's why I intend to have it out. It isn't good enough. You know what a row we had over dinner. That's why I asked Boyd along. How do you expect a man to write when he's just had a row that's brought his soul red-hot into his throat? And you weren't very cheery company! So naturally I asked Boyd in. I often do that or go out myself or else pretend to work, because I simply can't endure your company a moment longer."

And now his sister leapt up to her feet. When she came to life it was always sudden.

"Hubert!" she cried in tearful reproach. She only called him Hubert at such moments.

He signalled her down without any ceremony.

"For goodness' sake," he said, and it was nearly stronger, "don't let's have a row." He took a moment to calm himself and then said levelly, "Look here, old girl, I want to thrash this matter out once and for all. It's no use killing love in this world, is it? It's rare enough, God knows. We've been such good pals, you and I, and now we are—like this." He pointed at her, and she fell back dully on her chair.

"We don't mean it really," she said, fumbling for her handkerchief.

Hubert spoke seriously. "We do, though. Anyhow, we should in time. It's just like other habits. It grows. It grows quickly, too. We never used to fight at all, you know."

"I never fight now," she protested, very near to tears. "I've always given in."

Poor, timid, self-sacrificing Ruth never could understand what her brother's tempers were about. She tried so hard not to stand up against him!

"Oh, damn!" cried Hubert, and strode madly up and down the room.

It was all very futile, quite familiar.

She looked as pained as usual. "What is it, Hugh?" she gently asked.

"Of course you've given in," he flung at her. "You always do. You're always in the right: you are so keen to be! You wouldn't make me cross for worlds! It's just your damned humility I can't endure. No man on earth could possibly endure it."

"I can't help my nature," she sobbed into her handkerchief. "I do my best to please you. I try to fall into your ways, I'm sure."

Hubert came up to her presently and touched her on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Ruth," he said. "It was my fault. I lost my temper. I was a cad to swear but somehow—oh, I don't know," and he sank down upon the chair again. "I suppose really it's just what Boyd has often said, brother and sister weren't ever made to live together. He says all relatives have a natural antipathy to one another and——"

"I'm sure I haven't," interrupted Ruth.

This time he ignored her. "It's all so difficult," he said in a new tone, as though embarking upon an analysis. "I know you're wanting just to please me, Ruth; you are an awfully good sort; you'll make somebody a splendid wife some day; but just because you are my sister, I suppose, I get annoyed when you begin asking whether you can come in and saying you don't want to if——"

"You'd be much more annoyed if I came in without," said Ruth, with an unwonted spirit.

Hubert rose to the attack. "You mean it's just my nature, and not you? I'd get annoyed whichever way it was? I'm just a selfish sort of cross-grained swine?"

"I didn't say so, you know I didn't; you're simply twisting my words round."

Grown men and women, by some odd irony, are never nearer childhood than when in a temper. Hubert realised abruptly how ridiculous it was. Once more he dropped his voice and dragged the conversation with a wrench back to the point at issue.

"I was only telling you," he said with dignity, "what Boyd said, as you asked to know. He said all this"—once more he waved his hand—"was a mistake, and that I ought to marry."

He threw it out at her like a threat at a naughty child. She would not like it if he took her at her word and really turned her out.

But even sisters can surprise a man. "Oh Hugh," she cried, forgetting all their differences, "do you mean you are really thinking——? Only, do let it be some one really nice, who'll make you as happy as you deserve to be."

He was too flustered to feel touched. "But wouldn't you mind?" he asked; and in spite of his efforts, surprise appeared in it.

"Mind?" She came across to him, sat on his chair-arm, and took his hand in hers. "How little you know me, old boy, really! Of course I shouldn't mind. You must never, never consider me at all! Do you imagine I expect you to remain a bachelor your whole life long, just to look after me? I shall find work to do or something; and anyhow, what is my life by the side of your career?"

Hubert at moments felt a brute, and this was one of them. He knew that he should thank her, kiss her, yet he could do neither. He found himself wondering in a dazed, abstract way, as often in these past years, whether she was really genuine or whether it was just a woman's bluff to make him feel his shaft had fallen short. If she was quite sincere, he felt almost aggrieved. The end of their long life together seemed to mean so little to her....

"No," he said automatically, not realising how inadequate it was; and then, "Well, old girl, I really think perhaps now I ought to work." He patted her hand in a perfunctory way as he released his own from it. "We've had our little chat and it's your bedtime, I am sure."

"Yes," answered Ruth, and hesitated.

"Hugh," she said presently, "aren't I to know who it is?" Her tone was more patient than aggrieved, but he read something of the other into it.

"Who what is?" he replied, although he guessed her meaning.

"Who you think of marrying. Who's suddenly put the idea into your head." She waited a few moments; then, as he said nothing, she added almost slyly, "Well, I think I know! I've not forgotten Devonshire yet, and what a lot there was in your letters about Miss—Miss—I forget her name."

"Oh, that Miss Hallam, you mean," came the icy answer.

It chilled even her exuberance. Her rare gaiety died quickly, and she looked the martyr once again.

"I see you don't mean to tell me," she said. "Very well. Of course I had no right to ask. I thought you'd like to let me know." She sighed. "I wish men weren't so terribly reserved."

"And I wish," he retorted, "that women weren't so horribly imaginative."

But she had shut the door. She always went abruptly, never said good night. He had told her, long ago, that those words broke up his evening and made him think of bed instead of work.

To-night indeed, after her going, although he had said he must do some writing, he sat quietly where he had been and gazed into the fire. He was not, however, thinking about bed. He was wondering whether all women were so crude and vulgar with their brothers. Ruth was the last person who would ever have said that about Miss Hallam to anybody else. Just because he chanced to write and say that he had met a jolly sort of girl...!

It is a stale truism about good advice, that most natures must reject it before they see their way to its acceptance. Self-pride demands that it shall be their own idea.

Just as Hubert had scoffed at his friend's idea of loneliness, which now indeed seemed such a ghastly spectre, so did he next work slowly back to the very words of his sister that had angered him the most.

For by now his mental questioning had spread across a chasm dreaded for long years and flaunted itself gaily in a narrow field.

The first step was so clear by now.

Of course he had sworn always that he would not marry, but that was true of the past only. One changed every now and then.... He was at the age when one grew lonely, when one naturally married. Sisters were a big mistake. He could not endure year after year of silly quarrels like the one just past. With a wife he would start fresh. She wouldn't irritate him like Ruth: he wouldn't see through all her motives; they need not fight for years.... Besides, he must find some one less irritating, less selfish, than Ruth.... And as to Ruth, she said herself that she was game to go. She probably preferred it. The whole thing was her own suggestion.... Yes, she was right; they certainly could not go on like this. Yet if she went—that loneliness when he got old, was ill...! Kenneth had talked a lot of drivel but he probably was right about stagnation. He found, himself, his work was getting stale.... And then the help that she——

But who?

Hubert flung himself across the chasm, refusing doggedly to see it, and found himself, flushed and excited, in the little field beyond.

Who could he marry, possibly? The question lent quite a new thrill to life. It was a big adventure, even if one never did it....

He hated clever women. He was sure of that. Hated them, at any rate, as wives. Mrs. Kenneth Boyd was one, and when he dined with them, she always waited till he had thrown out a theory, quite impromptu, possibly exaggerated rather, about something, and then said, "Really, Mr. Brett? But how unusual!" or something of the sort. No, he could not bear that. He thought that type an insult to his sex. He liked a woman to be rather silly—well, not that quite—no, but shallow. He liked her to have not too many views herself: he hated suffragettes and things, of course; but just to have the brains to understand one's own ideas. That was where the girl Ruth had mentioned was so splendid. She saw the fun of things; she even saw the fun of her name, Helena Hallam; but also she could enter into the plot of a book directly you had told it her, and be immensely interested in hearing about people you met at the Authors' Club. She was almost too ignorant, of course—knew nothing about life—but her naïve remarks amused him: so what did it matter?

That really was the sort of woman he would like to marry. Some one who would be interested in his work but know she hadn't got the brain to interfere; some one who'd look on his work-hours as sacred, because given to a thing she couldn't do to save her very life.

Ruth was annoying about that, and silly. If he read her out a chapter, she would usually say, "I think it's quite good, old boy; but I never feel you're made for fiction. I suppose essays never sell, though, and plays are quite impossible?" It was too stupid. She had said that even about Wandering Stars, which had sold close upon five thousand copies! Not—of course—that he valued his novels according to their sales....

The girl in Devonshire had been so different. He smiled, recalling her simplicity. She had thought him so clever to write, even before she had seen a word of it! And when he read her out a chapter, she wanted to know just how long it had taken him, asked to see how much he had corrected, and clearly looked upon the whole thing as a miracle.

Thinking of her now he had a curiously vital image of her personality. She was so fresh, so natural, so unspoilt, so splendidly a thing of life. She had never been to London. How she would love to see it; how gorgeous it would be to show! How different from taking out Ruth, who always said that the streets smelt of petrol and she had neuralgia and wished they could live in the country, but of course he must choose! How different altogether! How different when the lights were lit and curtains drawn! He still remembered how she sat, with one foot underneath her body, and smiled through those curiously bright eyes, as though always contentedly awaiting the next jolly thing that life could not possibly fail to bestow upon her. Ruth was so hideously gloomy and apologetic. She expected the worst but she never minded.

Yes, there was no doubt that was just the sort of sensible, unsloppy, cheerful girl that he would like to marry. She would be nice to have about the house. She wouldn't want the vote or anything. She thought so much of his work that she would never grumble, like Ruth, if he had a long bout at it. She'd take up needle-work or something. She had such a happy nature. And then at nights they'd sit and have great, jolly, sociable talks beside the fire, and he'd read out his books to her. Possibly, now and then, she would see some mistake—not in the book itself, but in a woman's dress or something: women were so good at details—and he would learn a lot, as Kenneth said, from seeing how her refreshingly simple mind regarded things. And then—she was a child—they would play games and laugh and roast chestnuts and all that sort of thing. He could imagine quite a jolly evening. The past hour seemed like a nightmare by the side of it.

He got up and mixed a whisky and soda.

Really by now he wished he had thought of all this in Devonshire! He had said to himself then, watching her, that somebody someday would be a lucky man—the girl was so herself, somehow. But it had not occurred to him that he could be the man.

Now, probably, he would never see the Hallams again. Mrs. Hallam, of course, had said they must meet soon in London, but every one always said that and it was five weeks now since his return. He had not, naturally, ever written.

Of course—there was another thrill in this idea—he could go down to Devonshire again with any false excuse trumped up; but even as this came into his head, his fatally quick fancy, over-exercised, saw him proposing to Miss Hallam, pouring out the sentimental stuff that a love-scene demanded; perhaps—who knows?—even feeling bound to kneel in the manner beloved of conventional romance!

Then, with a swift gesture, he suddenly drained his whisky and soda to its dregs, put the glass down jauntily as men do on the stage, and walked, feeling younger than for ten whole years, to his writing-desk. He gave a happy laugh as he took out some paper.

For he had got a great idea. He was going to propose to Miss Hallam on paper! He was going to write it all down and see if it looked awful rubbish.... He was enjoying himself to-night in a quite new way.

"DEAR MISS HALLAM," he began and added "My" in front. Then as he saw the meaning that might bear he laughed again. He knew it was not right just now to laugh, and marked it as an interesting fact. Then, nervous of detection, he took a new sheet and started—

"MY DEAR MISS HALLAM,

"You will be surprised to hear from me.

"The fact of the matter is—I find myself getting very bald now that I really have to use my pen for something that matters!—I have been thinking a lot of my jolly days in Devonshire, the tennis, the sea-walks, the picnics, everything with all of you, and (if I'm allowed to say it) especially with you yourself."

Here he leant back and read what he had written. It was not literature but he felt satisfied. He took up his pen again and wrote—

"I don't know that it's usual, but I am rather reserved and not too romantic, so that I am writing to ask whether you could think of being my wife. There has never been any one in my whole life of whom I have thought as I have thought of you these last five weeks. I could never tell you how I feel in words, and I see now that I can't on paper, but if you think in any way that you could grow fond of me, I am convinced that we could be immensely happy. I don't know that I have much to offer you; but if you talk to your mother about this, as no doubt you will, you must assure her that I can give you a comfortable home and that I hope, as the years go by, to make myself something of a name.

"I will say no more now. I shouldn't have dared say so much, if I had not thought that we got on rather well last month, and that if you did not welcome this letter, you would at any rate be able to forgive it.

"Yours,
"HUBERT BRETT."

It was not certainly at all like any of the love-letters that he had written in fiction or read in the police-reports; but he had not inwardly approved of either. This seemed to him quite adequate. She was the sort of girl who wouldn't care for sentiment. He honestly believed she would write back sensibly and just say "Yes."

It is to be remarked that no question remained as to posting the letter or not, so soon as it was finished. He had begun it to see how it looked: now he felt that it was something fated. He must see what happened. Without waiting even to put on a hat, he hurried out to an adjacent pillar-box and dropped the letter in with hardly more emotion than if it had been an ordinary bill.

Going up to bed, without repentance for the night's wild work, and in fact oddly calm for any one in his position, he heard a curious noise inside his sister's room.

He stopped and listened at the door.

She was obviously sobbing.

Hubert suddenly felt softened towards her. So she cared, after all! She felt the separation after these long years!

Had he sometimes wronged her? Had he been impatient? Was she really fond of him; trying to consult his wishes and not to irritate him? Was he growing selfish?...

He very nearly tapped and went in to console her. Then he reflected that she almost certainly would engineer another scene, and that always gave him a bad night.

CHAPTER III

"WHY WOMEN WED"

Helena had never thought much about marriage. There was no reason indeed why she should, for she was young and to her it still appeared, like death to a small child, as something she was sure to reach some day but need not worry with just now.

She was, in fact, nineteen, but her ideas were those of nineteen fifty years ago or of fourteen to-day. Devonshire, for one thing, has slept on in its soft air, not much disturbed by any modern turmoil; and for another, Helena's mother had ideas. These, briefly put, consisted in not letting her daughter have any.

It is, however, only human, from Eve downwards, to defy authority and search for knowledge. Helena, knowing that it was her lot to marry, naturally felt some interest in the habit. Whenever she came on allusions to it, she stocked them in her brain, all in a healthy and quite natural way, wondering in an abstract manner whether it would be thus or thus with her. She never dared to talk about it to her mother. She had once mentioned her own hypothetic marriage, only to be told that girls did not speak of such things in fun, and it would be quite time enough when the occasion rose, and had she given the canary its clean water?

Mrs. Hallam was a loving mother with stern theories. Her own childhood had been a season of repression, yet she was satisfied enough with her morals as opposed to those of many round her. She intended, therefore, to repeat the process. She had no patience—this was her favourite expression—with the licence of young girls to-day: the manner in which they read any novel, went to any play. She had no patience with this rubbish about ignorance not being innocence. Of course it was; or if it wasn't, it had very much the same result, and that was everything. Girls read these trashy novels and got a notion that grown men and women spent their whole lives falling in and out of love. They naturally tried it and began flirtation as a sort of duty. If a girl knew nothing, she did not know what to do. If she had no notion what flirtation meant, she clearly couldn't do it—especially if she saw no men till she was safely beyond her teens.

In any case, till she was twenty, Helena had no plays, novels, or man-friends. Her reading was all lives, histories, and comic papers. Her days were spent with relatives or younger friends, when she was not alone.

She grew up an oddly fine tribute to the system, thus underlining the depressing axiom which comes at length to all who study education: that those who are going to be nice will turn out nice, whatever way you train their youth, and much the same about the nasty. She was simple, healthy, buoyant, cheerful, natural; everything that Hubert thought. And who shall blame her if she was a little immature?

Hubert's letter was a real excitement in her cloistered life.

She had enjoyed her meeting with him. Men were a novelty, and to her an author was still that thing of wonder which he appeared to a suburban hostess twenty years ago. She thought him marvellously clever at first sight, and rather alarming. Later, she thought him easy to get on with and amusing. He played tennis well, liked finding crabs, and Mother did not seem to mind them talking. It was quite a jolly change. She finally thought him a dear and missed him when he left for Town.

And now—this letter!

Nothing ever could be less expected. She read it and re-read, not knowing really what she ought to do. She was just as excited and laughed as gaily as he one day before—vaguely infected, no less, with a thrill of irresponsible adventure.

Now, indeed, was the moment to collect all the vague tit-bits she had garnered as to marriage and fit them into a connected whole. She knew so little, really, of this thing that he suggested, and Mother, she knew, would not help her. The comic papers were curious about it. They looked on all men who married as fools, sure to repent; all women who didn't as ludicrously tragic. The old maid was a figure to be as much mocked and pitied as the old bachelor was to be envied.

Well, if this were so, it must be jolly hard for women to find a man who would marry! (Logic teaches that absurd premises will often lead to sensible conclusions.)

She knew vaguely that one Asked Mamma. There was a book even called that in the old locked case in the big library. She also knew, however, that she must battle this thing out herself. Her mother would say no; what nonsense! Of that she felt sure. It was for her, then, to decide.

Lock up your Danäe, stern mothers, in all the towers that man's wit may devise; yet if she is born with a strong resolve knit on her pudgy, slobbered, baby face, you cannot possibly prevail. You battle with the forces of uncounted Time.

Mrs. Hallam sat happily in her white drawing-room and read the new Queen, while Helena, up in her bedroom, wrestled with the letter which her mother luckily had not seen arrive.

Of course it would be a big change, she supposed? Home was a bit dull, but she had got quite used to it and one knew what to do. Having a house must be an awful business, and yet—rather thrilling! Probably Mr. Brett would make a big name; he was so immensely clever; and then they'd have a great big house, and she'd ask Mother as a guest and give her all the things she liked and said she never got in her own house! She laughed at the idea. The whole thing was tremendously amusing.

As Hubert had thought, she was laudably unsloppy. Mrs. Hallam had never let her guess that there was any sentiment in the whole world beyond maternal love. That was the heart's whole duty for a girl who was an only child that had not even seen her father.

Yes, summing it all up, she really felt the chief thing was about women having to marry or else be a joke, whereas men were a huge lark if they did. Imagine if, in all her life, she never met another man who would be fool enough! Home was very nice, of course, but horribly monotonous. She might read novels now, oh yes; the ones that Mother chose; but it was just the others that she longed to read. She felt vaguely (for self-development is among the instincts natural to Man), that there was something being kept from her. She had not been meant, ever, to remain so ignorant. She felt that Mr. Brett would not wish to keep her back in the way Mother had. Besides, if she remained at home, some day her mother would die, and she be left—that dreaded thing—an old maid, all alone, for every one to mock. Nobody would want her then! Wouldn't it be awful to feel you had thrown away a chance that lots of women, she had gathered, never got? Fancy being Helena Hallam, that absurd name, all your life! H. H., one of her uncles had called her stupidly, and she had said then that it sounded like poor Miss Jowett in the village, whom everyone called "old J. J.," because her name was Jane. Oh yes, she would end at last as old H. H.—poor old H. H.—pottering about in her prim little garden with an antiquated, rat-like dog dragging itself crookedly along behind her. All the village poor would be so sorry when she died.

She shuddered at the thought. She always wanted to put poor J. J.'s old dog, the one with the pink satin bow, out of its misery. It would be kind, she knew. She could with the air-gun, but Mother had seemed really shocked.

She suddenly decided at this point that her thoughts had become depressing and not really helpful towards a decision. Without giving herself time to feel alarmed, she rose abruptly and went to the drawing-room.

She knew instinctively she must be firm.

This was the first thing ever that had really mattered, mattered to her as a separate person with a life to live, and she believed she knew already what she ought to do. She would listen, of course, to Mother's views—she owed that from a real love and gratitude—but she would not be bullied any longer.

She entered the room feeling herself in some way on a different footing. The latent, undeveloped thing that would be Helena had surged towards birth at a mere spark from the outer world.

"Mother," she began, quite simply, "I've had a letter from Mr. Brett. He has asked me to marry him and I think I rather shall."

Mrs. Hallam dropped her Queen. She did not often find herself surprised.

"You've what, dear?" she asked blankly. Then not waiting for any reply, "What do you know about marriage, my dear child? What do you know about Mr. Brett?"

"I don't want to be an old maid," answered Helena, playing her best card at once.

Mrs. Hallam met it with a scornful laugh. "Old maid!" she cried. "That is a preposterous idea you've got out of your comic papers."

"They're all I've ever read, histories and them," Helena said mildly; raising who shall say how many bitter doubts in the breast of a theorist.

"You're nothing but a child, my darling girl," the mother said more gently; "and even if you weren't, there's no disgrace in being what you call an old maid. Some of the world's best women have been that. You've got to think of far more serious matters than that before you can possibly decide on such a step as marriage;" and searching frantically for objections which she felt sure must exist, she fell back on her first thought. "What do you know about Mr. Brett?"

"I liked him better than any of the men I've met."

"You've not met any yet," snapped Mrs. Hallam; she had no patience with this nonsensical idea. Then, as her girl was silent, she realised that here too she had flung out a taunt mainly against her own theories.

Mrs. Hallam loved Helena with real devotion, and it was a torture now to feel that possibly her care had all been a mistake; had all been shipwrecked by the unexpected action of an extraordinary man. She knew for a fact—she had taken care—that she and he had not indulged in any sentimental rubbish. Mr. Brett had seemed to hate all that, and she had for this very reason asked him round so often. Helena and he had been like boy and girl, brother and sister, playing games or finding their dear jelly-fish and crabs together, whilst he had talked to her in just the way to broaden her views out a bit yet not stretch them too far. And now——!

It really was provoking. The silly girl—all girls were silly—would of course exalt him into the fine figure of her first love, the real man for her, the man that she was not allowed to marry....

Mrs. Hallam, always frail and white, seemed to shrink visibly beneath this trouble. She held out a thin hand to the puzzled Helena, and drew her down beside her on the sofa.

"Look here, dear," she said gently; "I want to talk seriously to you. Life isn't so easy as you think. I've kept you here, safe from all worries and responsibilities and guarded you so that everything has seemed quite simple; but there are worries and responsibilities. You've got to live your life now, you see, Helena, and you will have to learn the habit of making quick choices whether you go this way or that. Life is full of cross-roads, you will find, and not all of them lead right. You can't marry the first man you meet just because he asks you to. Later on you might meet some one who, you would then see, is the man you ought to have married.... I don't want to put such terrible ideas into your head, dear child; I've never spoken to you of them, but such things have occurred and may occur again."

Helena was really quite excited. This was the first, almost, she had ever heard of life and it seemed utterly tremendous. She was tired of having choices made for her. She felt a call to the cross-roads. She waited silently for more.

"You see, dear," went on Mrs. Hallam, pressing her child to her as though she could not at all afford to let her go and be left all alone, "you're young, very young, and though I've never told you, very beautiful. You need not fear about being an old maid!" whereat, half laughing and half crying, she kissed Helena, too dazed almost to respond. "That will be possibly life's most important choice. Don't make it, darling child, until you're fit for it. Stay with me," and there was a pathetic appeal in her words, "stay with me till I've taught you how to be reliant. You are a child still; I've kept you young; I hope I have been right; you're not fit to go out and grapple with the world. Stay with me, Helena; tell Mr. Brett that he must wait, and stay here, in your home, until I've made you strong enough to take your part in life."

"Stay here?" Helena repeated automatically.

For one brief moment the barred gates had swung open and she had gained a glimpse at life, its dangers and responsibilities perhaps, but all its splendid thrill and glorious chance. The few cold words from her prim mother had conjured up a rich glowing picture to this girl, who for years had chafed at the narrow round, longing for something—she knew not what, but something broader, something where she could be much more herself—longing, she knew now, for freedom and for life.

Mrs. Hallam looked at her with pain in her eyes.

"Aren't you happy, haven't you been happy here?" she asked.

"Why of course I have, you dearest of dear old mums," cried Helena, and pressed her lips against her mother's cheek; "but——," and she hesitated.

"But——?" asked her mother, smiling sadly. How ridiculous, how almost tragic, it all was! She threw back her mind to her own first romance and wondered where the man was now. "But——? Tell me, dear. I shall quite understand and I am sure you need not feel afraid of me!"

Helena thought deeply. Words were so difficult.

"But——," she said once again; and then, suddenly inspired, she started rapidly; "Well, it is what you said just now. I—I must live my own life. I want—I want to grow. I've not grown since I was fifteen. I felt so silly, like a child, when I was talking to—to Mr. Brett, and I am twenty now." She said this most imposingly.

"And so," said Mrs. Hallam, trying not to smile, "you want to marry Mr. Brett because he made you feel so silly when you talked to him?"

Helena flushed, still sensitive to ridicule. "I want to marry Mr. Brett," she said with dignity, "because he is clever, and being a fool, I admire cleverness more than anything in the whole world, and I believe he'd let me expand."

"Do you mean I have kept you back?" asked her mother, in low, earnest tones. She had accused herself.

"No, you've been splendid." Helena patted her hand. "No girl ever had such a good mother.... And now you are going to be good about this too, and not be troublesome and try to keep me here!" She jumped up and stood facing her, excitement and expectancy.

Mrs. Hallam was suddenly conscious of her weakness.

It had been so easy to be strong when she was dealing with a child—and she had kept Helena a child. Now, in this moment, she realised that she was dealing with a woman, a woman of a stronger will. Something, Mr. Brett perhaps, had altered Helena. Even her way of talking had changed in an instant.

"Expand" and "troublesome"——! She looked up and saw before her no longer an obedient child, but a girl almost bursting with the desire to live at nearly any cost.

Mrs. Hallam was naturally alarmed. She knew that any contest of the wills was useless. She fell back upon pathos.

"Helena dear," she said weakly, "you're twenty now. I don't want to dictate to you, to treat you as a child. You have the right, as you say, to live your own life. But do you think it right," and now her voice grew very feeble, very plaintive, "after I've done all I have for you, not to think of me at all?"

"What do you mean?" asked Helena with quite an emphasis upon the second word. She felt a dim mistrust of this new tone. She had been kindlier to opposition, for indeed at the moment she almost longed to fight.

Mrs. Hallam, anxious to explain, to justify once and for all, began again at the beginning.

"All these years, dear child, though you did not, could not of course guess it, I've been moulding you according to a theory of my own; not a new theory but what is far better, one that has stood the test of centuries. I wanted to form your character, your will, before you were brought face to face with life. That process is not quite complete yet, although you seem to think it is." She spoke the last words rather bitterly, then with a sudden change to gentleness, went on, "But even if it had been, do you think that when I've given up the best years of my life to you, it is fair for you to dash away, leaving me alone, and not to give me the reward of spending a few pleasant years with the dear child I have helped to form?"

She smiled lovingly, but Helena looked coldly back at her. It was the other's point of view, to her, which was not fair.

"I don't see that," she answered almost fiercely, surprised at her own words, oddly unlike herself of one hour ago and many years before. "That's not living your own life a bit. You didn't give those best years of your life to your mother. I shall often see you, and I expect you did yours. You gave the best years of your life to your daughter, you say, and I want to give my best years to mine."

Mrs. Hallam loathed excitement, thinking it bad form; but now she raised her voice. "My dear!" she cried. "Where did you get these most extraordinary notions? Was it from this Mr. Brett?"

"You said you liked all his ideas so much," laughed Helena, "and yet you're shocked because I want to marry him!"

"There is a difference, dear," retorted Mrs. Hallam, her calmness regained, "between liking a man's ideas and caring for him as a son-in-law."

Helena, however, in her new mood wanted something more direct than generalities. "What have you got against him then?" she flashed.

Mrs. Hallam spread her thin hands soothingly. "Nothing, dear, absolutely nothing. Do not let us have a scene. I thought him a charming man; possibly rather self-centred, but clever, cultured, and with, I am sure, good motives. I feel certain he will do extremely well. If you had wished to marry him in five years—but at twenty——!" She spoke as though it were fourteen.

"Well," remarked Helena slowly, as though reviewing the whole situation from impartial ground, "I suppose the wedding won't be to-morrow. Don't you usually wait a bit?"

Her mother noticed that there was no hypothesis—no "wouldn't be"—about it. She saw no good in a conflict. The girl was twenty, the man probably twelve or more years older; there was nothing, she almost regretfully admitted, to be said against him; they had seemed good chums. Most mothers would have been delighted, for he was making himself a name as a novelist. Yet she was not, for he had come with this preposterously worded letter to wreck all her plans. She had thought him so safe, from the mere fact that he had no romance or sentiment about him. He was so safe, yes, for Helena; a real platonic friendship; opening her eyes a little to the bigger world outside, but altogether to be trusted not to put ridiculous ideas into her head. He was the first man with whom she had ever trusted Helena at all alone, and now——!

"Mother," laughed Helena, suddenly clasping her fondly round the neck, "I can see from your cross face you do mean to be troublesome! Now just be good instead and say that we may be at any rate engaged? It will be such fun, and we can see then how we feel about it."

Mrs. Hallam by now knew with all certainty that she was weak. She felt a vague sense of relief that Helena had asked permission; at one moment she had not expected that.... If she refused it, what would be the end? Possibly elopement, suicide, or some other of those awful means that modern girls employed so freely.... Whereas if she said yes, she still retained her grip as mother and might use what authority she had to disillusion slowly this girl, who looked on her engagement as mere fun.

"Very well, my own dear daughter," she said and suddenly found herself crying.

To Helena also things had turned out otherwise than she expected. She had not ever thought that she would get her mother's leave. For one moment it was almost a shock! She felt suddenly thrust out beyond recall upon a journey all mysterious to her. She was not sure, now, that she ever meant to do more than assert her right to do just as she wanted.

Did she want to marry Hubert Brett? She was not really sure.

She wanted certainly to get away from Home....

Five more years of this—that was what her mother hinted at—five more years of being ignorant, of seeing no one, knowing nothing about anything that mattered, being just your mother's daughter—five more wasted years!...

So that, after having dried her mother's tears and told her, very truly, how much she had always and would always love her, she hurried upstairs to her writing-desk with quite a new sensation of life being a most vital and palpitating thing. Her days had been all terribly alike: this was so different and thrilling!

The only thing was—how did one begin?

She wished she had asked Mother. She couldn't very well go down and ask her now. Besides, she might just change her mind.

"Mr." looked so stiff like that; yet she did not like, quite, to call him Hubert yet.

She gave a little laugh of excitement. What fun it all was! She wondered if other people felt like this, when they were getting married. They probably knew all about it?

Oh yes, of course; she'd go by his letter....

But no; because when he wrote they were not engaged!

So finally she thought it best to leave a blank and start straight off—

"I really don't know at all what I ought to say. I am no good at letters and this is very difficult, but I too enjoyed all our walks and things, and if you really want to marry me I don't see why we shouldn't be engaged. I liked you very much down here and hope I shall make you happy. Mother doesn't seem very keen about it, I think she thinks I am too young though I am twenty, but she has given her consent and will, I am sure, come round to it, so don't worry.

"I'm afraid you'll think this letter very stupid, but you know how ashamed I always was of my ignorance. I seem to know nothing! It is very nice indeed of any one like you to care for me.

"Yours,
"HELENA HALLAM.

"P.S.—You won't be able to tease me any more about my name, afterwards!"

Perhaps to any real anthologist or expert of love-letters this would seem but little better than the attempt it answered; yet if success must be judged by results, it cannot have been much amiss, since for the first time in his life Hubert Brett was melted to a display of ridiculous emotion. "Dear little girl!" he murmured aloud and kissed the last words before her signature.

As for Helena, having run out to the village and posted the letter unread by her mother—a cause of yet further misgiving to the theorist—she began to wonder ever so little whether she had done quite wisely.

From somewhere (who can say whence, since some things are inborn in Man?) she had got the notion, possibly ridiculous, that courting and proposals were quite different from this. Even in the Lives and comic papers men knelt and that sort of thing. She felt she had been cheated rather of Romance.

As things were, with her so ignorant and Mother like that, it was all a little of a worry.

But it was also a way out....

CHAPTER IV

HYMEN

If Hubert had known how difficult a job it was to get married, he would never have attempted it. Or so at least he told himself. All Boyd's advice, all his own misgivings about lonely age, all Ruth's scenes, would not have driven him to so much real hard work that had no definite connection with his mapped and beloved life-career.

He always had imagined that the thing took half an hour, and even then was managed by some luckless friend you roped in as best man. And here he was, worried all day about presents, relatives, guests, leases, settlements, and heaven itself even probably could not say what else, till he despaired about his autumn work.

Ruth, in particular, drove him almost frantic.

He was absolutely certain she loathed his marrying, and yet to judge from the outside, nothing in the whole world could have pleased her more than making the arrangements. She would talk for forty minutes about buying six new pairs of socks. Her air of Willing Service maddened him. When she had nothing else to do, she would divide her time between telling him that he was a cold lover and assuring him that there was no need whatsoever to worry about her. She would be all right. He mustn't think of her....

"I don't," he would hurl back at length, firmly convinced of her hypocrisy (he was a great believer in his intuitions), at which point she usually cried. Then he would go out and shake the pictures crooked by slamming the door. At their next meeting, all forgiveness, Ruth would take up again the subject of those socks.

Finally he abandoned all idea of finishing his novel. This would be the first blank autumn since he started writing. He felt cross with Fate.

In all this, romanticists will no doubt be gratified to hear, Helena was the sole consolation.

He was pleased with her—and he was pleased with his own cleverness in having lit upon her. If marriage was essential to him, he felt sure she was just the very girl to be a wife who wouldn't get upon his nerves. The more he saw of her, the more he liked her; and that, too, was encouraging. She had, of course, come up to London with her mother, no less busy than himself, and her delight with the great shapeless place—its crowds, its fogs, its lights—was beautiful to see. She never wanted to be taken to theatres or show-places; the spectacle of London being London was enough for her, as it should be, indeed, for any one. She loved the ceaseless motion, the sense of something getting done; the whole feeling of energy massed in a little space seemed to inspire this girl used only to the sleepy, uneventful fields.

"Well, and how do you like it? How does it strike you?" he asked, as from an omnibus he showed her, for the first time, that thrilling crowd which passes, ant-like, this way and that, seemingly purposeless yet always full of purpose, past the Bank of England. He loved to hear her quaint, unformed ideas.

Helena thought for a moment. "It makes me feel so useless," she replied.

She was a delightful child, Hubert told himself—unspoilt, original, and modest. When he forgot about his ruined novel, he certainly was happy. His unhid admiration helped a little to melt Mrs. Hallam, who was still looking pathetically for the absolute objection which she felt sure she ought at last to find. And all this while the day was coming near.

Mrs. Hallam had rather naturally planned that the wedding should take place in Devonshire; but the bridegroom had been so hideously shocked, and Helena thought a London wedding so much better "fun," that Mrs. Hallam, already feeling nobody, had given in to them with a weak smile. She did not mind where it took place, so long as they were happy and it was really for the best. Besides, she had a brother who lived in a big house in Langham Place. He always had been very mean, and was a bachelor, and it was time altogether that he did something for the family....

On the last night, however, before the wedding-day, she tuned herself at bedtime to a final effort. She was sad and depressed: they had talked long downstairs; her own instinct would have been to cry or go to sleep; but she decided that, for her own later peace of mind if for no higher motive, she must do something far less pleasant. So along she went to the second-best spare-room in the mean brother's house.

"Helena dear," she said, to meet her daughter's startled look, "I've come along, although we've had our talk downstairs, because I feel I can't sleep till I have asked you a question."