← catalogue

Helena

by Mrs. Humphry Ward · English · Gutenberg #13071 · 436,830 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Helena
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Helena

Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward


        
Release date: August 1, 2004 [eBook #13071]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13071

Credits: Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELENA ***

                                 HELENA

                          BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

     AUTHOR OF LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER, MISSING, ELIZABETH'S CAMPAIGN, ETC.

                                  1919




CHAPTER I


"I don't care a hang about the Middle Classes!" said Lord Buntingford,
resting his head on his hand, and slowly drawing a pen over a printed
sheet that lay before him. The sheet was headed "Middle Class Defence
League," and was an appeal to whom it might concern to join the founders
of the League in an attempt to curb the growing rapacity of the
working-classes. "Why should we be snuffed out without a struggle?" said
the circular. "We are fewer, no doubt, but we are better educated. Our
home traditions are infinitely superior. It is on the Middle Classes that
the greatness of England depends."

"Does it?" thought Lord Buntingford irritably. "I wonder."

He rose and began to pace his library, a shabby comfortable room which he
loved. The room however had distinction like its master. The distinction
came, perhaps, from its few pictures, of no great value, but witnessing
to a certain taste and knowledge on the part of the persons, long since
dead, who hung them there; from one or two cases of old Nankin; from its
old books; and from a faded but enchanting piece of tapestry behind the
cases of china, which seemed to represent a forest. The tapestry, which
covered the whole of the end wall of the room, was faded and out of
repair, but Lord Buntingford, who was a person of artistic sensibilities,
was very fond of it, and had never been able to make up his mind to spare
it long enough to have it sent to the School of Art Needlework for
mending. His cousin, Lady Cynthia Welwyn, scolded him periodically for
his negligence in the matter. But after all it was he, and not Cynthia,
who had to live in the room. She had something to do with the School, and
of course wanted jobs for her workers.

"I hope that good woman's train will be punctual," he thought to himself,
presently, as he went to a window and drew up a blind. "Otherwise I shall
have no time to look at her before Helena arrives."

He stood awhile absently surveying the prospect outside. There was first
of all a garden with some pleasant terraces, and flights of stone steps,
planned originally in the grand style, but now rather dilapidated and
ill-kept, suggesting either a general shortage of pelf on the part of the
owner--or perhaps mere neglect and indifference.

Beyond the garden stretched a green rim of park, with a gleam of water in
the middle distance which seemed to mean either a river or a pond, many
fine scattered trees, and, girdling the whole, a line of wooded hill.
Just such a view as any county--almost--in this beautiful England can
produce. It was one of the first warm days of a belated spring. A
fortnight before, park and hills and garden had been deep in snow. Now
Nature, eager, and one might think ashamed, was rushing at her neglected
work, determined to set the full spring going in a minimum of hours. The
grass seemed to be growing, and the trees leafing under the spectator's
eyes. There was already a din of cuckoos in the park, and the nesting
birds were busy.

The scene was both familiar and unfamiliar to Lord Buntingford. He had
been brought up in it as a child. But he had only inherited the Beechmark
property from his uncle just before the war, and during almost the whole
of the war he had been so hard at work, as a volunteer in the Admiralty,
that he had never been able to do more than run down once or twice a year
to see his agent, go over his home farm, and settle what timber was to be
cut before the Government commandeered it. He was not yet demobilized, as
his naval uniform showed. There was a good deal of work still to do in
his particular office, and he was more than willing to do it. But in a
few months' time at any rate--he was just now taking a fortnight's
leave--he would be once more at a loose end. That condition of things
must be altered as soon as possible. When he looked back over the years
of driving work through which he had just passed to the years of
semi-occupation before them, he shrank from those old conditions in
disgust. Something must be found to which he could enslave himself again.
Liberty was the great delusion--at least for him.

Politics?--Well, there was the House of Lords, and the possibility of
some minor office, when his Admiralty work was done. And the whole
post-war situation was only too breathless. But for a man who, as soon as
he had said Yes, was immediately seized with an insensate desire to look
once more at all the reasons which might have induced him to say No,
there was no great temptation in politics. Work was what the nation
wanted--not talk.

Agriculture and the Simple Life?--Hardly! Five years of life in London,
four of them under war conditions, had spoilt any taste for the country
he had ever possessed. He meant to do his duty by his estate, and by the
miscellaneous crowd of people, returned soldiers and others, who seemed
to wish to settle upon it. But to take the plunge seriously, to go in
heart and soul for intensive culture or scientific dairy-farming, to
spend lonely winters in the country with his bailiffs and tenants for
company--it was no good talking about it--he knew it could not be done.

And--finally--what was the good of making plans at all?--with these new
responsibilities which friendship and pity and weakness of will had
lately led him to take upon himself?--For two years at least he would not
be able to plan his life in complete freedom.

His thoughts went dismally off in the new direction. As he turned away
from the window, a long Venetian mirror close by reflected the image of a
tall man in naval uniform, with a head and face that were striking rather
than handsome--black curly hair just dusted with grey, a slight chronic
frown, remarkable blue eyes and a short silky beard. His legs were
slender in proportion to the breadth of his shoulders, and inadequate in
relation to the dignity of the head. One of them also was slightly--very
slightly--lame.

He wandered restlessly round the room again, stopping every now and then
with his hands in his pockets, to look at the books on the shelves.
Generally, he did not take in what he was looking at, but in a moment
less absent-minded than others, he happened to notice the name of a
stately octavo volume just opposite his eyes--

"Davison, on Prophecy."

"Damn Davison!"--he said to himself, with sudden temper. The outburst
seemed to clear his mind. He went to the bell and rang it. A thin woman
in a black dress appeared, a woman with a depressed and deprecating
expression which was often annoying to Lord Buntingford. It represented
somehow an appeal to the sentiment of the spectator for which there was
really no sufficient ground. Mrs. Mawson was not a widow, in spite of the
Mrs. She was a well-paid and perfectly healthy person; and there was no
reason, in Lord Buntingford's view, why she should not enjoy life. All
the same, she was very efficient and made him comfortable. He would have
raised her wages to preposterous heights to keep her.

"Is everything ready for the two ladies, Mrs. Mawson?"

"Everything, my Lord. We are expecting the pony-cart directly."

"And the car has been ordered for Miss Pitstone?"

"Oh, yes, my Lord, long ago."

"Gracious! Isn't that the cart!"

There was certainly a sound of wheels outside. Lord Buntingford hurried
to a window which commanded the drive.

"That's her! I must go and meet her."

He went into the hall, reaching the front door just as the pony-cart drew
up with a lady in black sitting beside the driver. Mrs. Mawson looked
after him. She wondered why his lordship was in such a flurry. "It's this
living alone. He isn't used to have women about. And it's a pity he
didn't stay on as he was."

Meanwhile the lady in the pony-cart, as she alighted, saw a tall man, of
somewhat remarkable appearance, standing on the steps of the porch. Her
expectations had been modest; and that she would be welcomed by her
employer in person on the doorstep of Beechmark had not been among them.
Her face flushed, and a pair of timid eyes met those of Lord Buntingford
as they shook hands.

"The train was very late," she explained in a voice of apology.

"They always are," said Lord Buntingford. "Never mind. You are in quite
good time. Miss Pitstone hasn't arrived. Norris, take Mrs. Friend's
luggage upstairs."

An ancient man-servant appeared. The small and delicately built lady on
the step looked at him appealingly.

"I am afraid there is a box besides," she said, like one confessing a
crime. "Not a big one--" she added hurriedly. "We had to leave it at the
station. The groom left word for it to be brought later."

"Of course. The car will bring it," said Lord Buntingford. "Only one
box and those bags?" he asked, smiling. "Why, that's most moderate.
Please come in."

And he led the way to the drawing-room. Reassured by his kind voice
and manner, Mrs. Friend tripped after him. "What a charming man!"
she thought.

It was a common generalization about Lord Buntingford. Mrs. Friend had
still--like others--to discover that it did not take one very far.

In the drawing-room, which was hung with French engravings mostly after
Watteau, and boasted a faded Aubusson carpet, a tea-table was set out.
Lord Buntingford, having pushed forward a seat for his guest, went
towards the tea-table, and then thought better of it.

"Perhaps you'll pour out tea--" he said pleasantly. "It'll be your
function, I think--and I always forget something."

Mrs. Friend took her seat obediently in front of the tea-table and the
Georgian silver upon it, which had a look of age and frailty as though
generations of butlers had rubbed it to the bone, and did her best not
to show the nervousness she felt. She was very anxious to please her
new employer.

"I suppose Miss Pitstone will be here before long?" she ventured, when
she had supplied both the master of the house and herself.

"Twenty minutes--" said Lord Buntingford, looking at his watch.
"Time enough for me to tell you a little more about her than I
expect you know."

And again his smile put her at ease.

She bent forward, clasping her small hands.

"Please do! It would be a great help."

He noticed the delicacy of the hands, and of her slender body. The face
attracted him--its small neat features, and brown eyes. Clearly a
lady--that was something.

"Well, I shouldn't wonder--if you found her a handful," he said
deliberately.

Mrs. Friend laughed--a little nervous laugh.

"Is she--is she very advanced?"

"Uncommonly--I believe. I may as well tell you candidly she didn't want
to come here at all. She wanted to go to college. But her mother, who was
a favourite cousin of mine, wished it. She died last autumn; and Helena
promised her that she would allow me to house her and look after her for
two years. But she regards it as a dreadful waste of time."

"I think--in your letter--you said I was to help her--in modern
languages--" murmured Mrs. Friend.

Lord Buntingford shrugged his shoulders--

"I have no doubt you could help her in a great many things. Young people,
who know her better than I do, say she's very clever. But her mother and
she were always wandering about--before the war--for her mother's health.
I don't believe she's been properly educated in anything. Of course one
can't expect a girl of nineteen to behave like a schoolgirl. If you can
induce her to take up some serious reading--Oh, I don't mean anything
tremendous!--and to keep up her music---I expect that's all her poor
mother would have wanted. When we go up to town you must take her to
concerts--the opera--that kind of thing. I dare say it will go all
right!" But the tone was one of resignation, rather than certainty.

"I'll do my best--" began Mrs. Friend.

"I'm sure you will. But--well, we'd better be frank with each other.
Helena's very handsome--very self-willed--and a good bit of an heiress.
The difficulty will be--quite candidly--_lovers_!"

They both laughed. Lord Buntingford took out his cigarette case.

"You don't mind if I smoke?"

"Not at all."

"Won't you have one yourself?" He held out the case. Mrs. Friend did not
smoke. But she inwardly compared the gesture and the man with the
forbidding figure of the old woman in Lancaster Gate with whom she had
just completed two years of solitary imprisonment, and some much-baffled
vitality in her began to revive.

Lord Buntingford threw himself back in his arm-chair, and watched the
curls of smoke for a short space--apparently in meditation.

"Of course it's no good trying the old kind of thing--strict chaperonage
and that sort of business," he said at last. "The modern girl won't
stand it."

"No, indeed she won't!" said Mrs. Friend fervently. "I should like to
tell you--I've just come from ----" She named a university. "I went to
see a cousin of mine, who's in one of the colleges there. She's going to
teach. She went up just before the war. Then she left to do some war
work, and now she's back again. She says nobody knows what to do with the
girls. All the old rules have just--_gone_!" The gesture of the small
hand was expressive. "Authority--means nothing. The girls are entering
for the sports--just like the men. They want to run the colleges--as they
please--and make all the rules themselves."

"Oh, I know--" broke in her companion. "They'll just allow the wretched
teachers and professors to teach--what their majesties choose to learn.
Otherwise--they run the show."

"Of course, they're awfully _nice_ girls--most of them," said Mrs.
Friend, with a little, puzzled wrinkling of the brow.

"Ripping! Done splendid war work and all that. But the older generation,
now that things have begun again, are jolly well up a tree--how to fit
the new to the old. I have some elderly relations at Oxbridge--a nice old
professor and his wife. Not stick-in-the-muds at all. But they tell me
the world there--where the young women are concerned--seems to be
standing on its head. Well!--as far as I can gather--I really know her
very slightly--my little cousin Helena's in just the same sort of stage.
All we people over forty might as well make our wills and have done with
it. They'll soon discover some kind device for putting us out of the way.
They've no use for us. And yet at the same time"--he flung his cigarette
into the wood-fire beside him--"the fathers and mothers who brought them
into the world will insist on clucking after them, or if they can't cluck
themselves, making other people cluck. I shall have to try and cluck
after Helena. It's absurd, and I shan't succeed, of course--how could I?
But as I told you, her mother was a dear woman--and--"

His sentence stopped abruptly. Mrs. Friend thought--"he was in love with
her." However, she got no further light on the matter. Lord Buntingford
rose, and lit another cigarette.

"I must go and write a letter before post. Well, you see, you and I have
got to do our best. Of course, you mustn't try and run her on a tight
rein--you'd be thrown before you were out of the first field--" His blue
eyes smiled down upon the little stranger lady. "And you mustn't spy upon
her. But if you're really in difficulties, come to me. We'll make out,
somehow. And now, she'll be here in a few minutes. Would you like to stay
here--or shall I ring for the housemaid to show you your room?"

"Thank you--I--think I'll stay here. Can I find a book?"

She looked round shyly.

"Scores. There are some new books"--he pointed to a side-table where
the obvious contents of a Mudie box, with some magazines, were laid
out--"and if you want old ones, that door"--he waved towards one at
the far end of the room--"will take you into the library. My
great-grandfather's collection--not mine! And then one has ridiculous
scruples about burning them! However, you'll find a few nice ones. Please
make yourself at home!" And with a slight bow to her, the first sign in
him of those manners of the _grand seigneur_ she had vaguely expected, he
was moving away, when she said hurriedly, pursuing her own thought:

"You said Miss Pitstone was very good-looking?"

"Oh, very!" He laughed. "She's exactly like Romney's Lady Hamilton. You
know the type?"

"Ye-es," said Mrs. Friend. "I think I remember--before the war--at
Agnew's? My husband took me there once." The tone was hesitating. The
little lady was clearly not learned in English art. But Lord Buntingford
liked her the better for not pretending.

"Of course. There's always an Emma, when Old Masters are on show. Romney
painted her forty or fifty times. We've got one ourselves--a sketch my
grandfather bought. If you'll come into the hall I'll show it you."

She followed obediently and, in a rather dark corner of the hall, Lord
Buntingford pointed out an unfinished sketch of Lady Hamilton--one of the
many Bacchante variants--the brown head bent a little under the ivy
leaves in the hair, the glorious laughing eyes challenging the spectator.

"Is she like that?" asked Mrs. Friend, wondering.

"Who?--my ward?" laughed Lord Buntingford. "Well, you'll see."

He walked away, and Mrs. Friend stayed a few minutes more in front of the
picture--thinking--and with half an ear listening for the sound of a
motor. She was full of tremors and depression. "I was a fool to come--a
fool to accept!" she thought. The astonishing force of the sketch--of the
creature sketched--intimidated her. If Helena Pitstone were really like
that--"How can she ever put up with me? She'll just despise me. It will
be only natural. And then if things go wrong, Lord Buntingford will find
out I'm no good--and I shall have to go!"

She gave a long sigh, lifting her eyes a little--against her will--to the
reflection of herself in an old mirror hanging beside the Romney. What a
poor little insignificant figure--beside the other! No, she had no
confidence in herself--none at all--she never had had. The people she had
lived with had indeed generally been fond of her. It was because she made
herself useful to them. Old Mrs. Browne had professed affection for
her,--till she gave notice. She turned with a shiver from the
recollection of an odious scene.

She went bade to the drawing-room and thence to the library, looking
wistfully, as she passed through it, at the pleasant hall, with its old
furniture, and its mellowed comfort. She would like to find a home here,
if only they would put up with her. For she was very homeless.

As compared with the drawing-room, the library had been evidently lived
in. Its books and shabby chairs seemed to welcome her, and the old
tapestry delighted her. She stood some minutes before it in a quiet
pleasure, dreaming herself into the forest, and discovering an old castle
in its depths. Then she noticed a portrait of an old man, labelled as by
"Frank Holl, R. A.," hanging over the mantelpiece. She supposed it was
the grandfather who had collected the books. The face and hair of the old
man had blanched indeed to a singular whiteness; but the eyes, blue under
strong eyebrows, with their concentrated look, were the eyes of the Lord
Buntingford with whom she had just been talking.

The hoot of a motor startled her, and she ran to a window which commanded
the drive. An open car was rapidly approaching. A girl was driving it,
with a man in chauffeur's uniform sitting behind her. She brought the car
smartly up to the door, then instantly jumped out, lifted the bonnet, and
stood with the chauffeur at her side, eagerly talking to him and pointing
to something in the chassis. Mrs. Friend saw Lord Buntingford run down
the steps to greet his ward. She gave him a smile and a left hand, and
went on talking. Lord Buntingford stood by, twisting his moustache, till
she had finished. Then the chauffeur, looking flushed and sulky, got into
the car, and the girl with Lord Buntingford ascended the steps. Mrs.
Friend left the window, and hurriedly went back to the drawing-room,
where tea was still spread. Through the drawing-room door she heard a
voice from the hall full of indignant energy.

"You ought to sack that man, Cousin Philip. He's spoiling that beautiful
car of yours."

"Is he? He suits me. Have you been scolding him all the way?"

"Well, I told him a few things--in your interest." Lord Buntingford
laughed. A few words followed in lowered tones.

"He is telling her about me," thought Mrs. Friend, and presently caught a
chuckle, very merry and musical, which brought an involuntary smile to
her own eyes. Then the door was thrown back, and Lord Buntingford ushered
in his ward.

"This is Mrs. Friend, Helena. She arrived just before you did."

The girl advanced with sudden gravity and offered her hand. Mrs. Friend
was conscious that the eyes behind the hand were looking her all over.

Certainly a dazzling creature!--with the ripe red and white, the
astonishing eyes, and brown hair, touched with auburn, of the Romney
sketch. The beautiful head was set off by a khaki close cap, carrying a
badge, and the khaki uniform, tunic, short skirt, and leggings, might
have been specially designed to show the health and symmetry of the
girl's young form. She seemed to walk on air, and her presence
transformed the quiet old room.

"I want some tea badly," said Miss Pitstone, throwing herself into a
chair, "and so would you, Cousin Philip, if you had been battling with
four grubby children and an idiot mother all the way from London. They
made me play 'beasts' with them. I didn't mind that, because my roaring
frightened them. But then they turned me into a fish, and fished for me
with the family umbrellas. I had distinctly the worst of it." And she
took off her cap, turning it round on her hand, and looking at the dints
in it with amusement.

"Oh, no, you never get the worst of it!" said Lord Buntingford, laughing,
as he handed her the cake. "You couldn't if you tried."

She looked up sharply. Then she turned to Mrs. Friend.

"That's the way my guardian treats me, Mrs. Friend. How can I take him
seriously?"

"I think Lord Buntingford meant it as a compliment--didn't he?" said Mrs.
Friend shyly. She knew, alack, that she had no gift for repartee.

"Oh, no, he never pays compliments--least of all to me. He has a most
critical, fault-finding mind. Haven't you, Cousin Philip?"

"What a charge!" said Lord Buntingford, lighting another cigarette. "It
won't take Mrs. Friend long to find out its absurdity."

"It will take her just twenty-four hours," said the girl stoutly. "He
used to terrify me, Mrs. Friend, when I was a little thing ... May I have
some tea, please? When he came to see us, I always knew before he had
been ten minutes in the room that my hair was coming down, or my shoes
were untied, or something dreadful was the matter with me. I can't
imagine how we shall get on, now that he is my guardian. I shall put him
in a temper twenty times a day."

"Ah, but the satisfactory thing now is that you will have to put up with
my remarks. I have a legal right now to say what I like."

"H'm," said Helena, demurring, "if there are legal rights nowadays."

"There, Mrs. Friend--you hear?" said Lord Buntingford, toying with his
cigarette, in the depths of a big chair, and watching his ward with eyes
of evident enjoyment. "You've got a Bolshevist to look after--a real
anarchist. I'm sorry for you."

"That's another of his peculiarities!" said the girl coolly, "queering
the pitch before one begins. You know you _might_ like me!--some people
do--but he'll never let you." And, bending forward, with her cup in both
hands, and her radiant eyes peering over the edge of it, she threw a most
seductive look at her new chaperon. The look seemed to say, "I've been
taking stock of you, and--well!--I think I shan't mind you."

Anyway, Mrs. Friend took it as a feeler and a friendly one. She stammered
something in reply, and then sat silent while guardian and ward plunged
into a war of chaff in which first the ward, but ultimately the guardian,
got the better. Lord Buntingford had more resource and could hold out
longer, so that at last Helena rose impatiently:

"I don't feel that I have been at all prettily welcomed--have I, Mrs.
Friend? Lord Buntingford never allows one a single good mark. He says I
have been idle all the winter since the Armistice. I haven't. I've worked
like a nigger!"

"How many dances a week, Helena?--and how many boys?" Helena first made a
face, and then laughed out.

"As many dances--of course--as one could stuff in--without taxis. I
could walk down most of the boys. But Hampstead, Chelsea, and Curzon
Street, all in one night, and only one bus between them--that did
sometimes do for me."

"When did you set up this craze?"

"Just about Christmas--I hadn't been to a dance for a year. I had been
slaving at canteen work all day"--she turned to Mrs. Friend--"and doing
chauffeur by night--you know--fetching wounded soldiers from railway
stations. And then somebody asked me to a dance, and I went. And next
morning I just made up my mind that everything else in the world was
rot, and I would go to a dance every night. So I chucked the canteen and
I chucked a good deal of the driving--except by day--and I just
dance--and dance!"

Suddenly she began to whistle a popular waltz--and the next minute the
two elder people found themselves watching open-mouthed the whirling
figure of Miss Helena Pitstone, as, singing to herself, and absorbed
apparently in some new and complicated steps, she danced down the whole
length of the drawing-room and back again. Then out of breath, with a
curtsey and a laugh, she laid a sudden hand on Mrs. Friend's arm.

"Will you come and talk to me--before dinner? I can't talk--before _him_.
Guardians are impossible people!" And with another mock curtsey to Lord
Buntingford, she hurried Mrs. Friend to the door, and then disappeared.

Her guardian, with a shrug of the shoulders, walked to his writing-table,
and wrote a hurried note.

"My dear Geoffrey--I will send to meet you at Dansworth to-morrow by the
train you name. Helena is here--very mad and very beautiful. I hope you
will stay over Sunday. Yours ever, Buntingford."

"He shall have his chance anyway," he thought, "with the others. A fair
field, and no pulling."




CHAPTER II


"There is only one bathroom in this house, and it is a day's journey to
find it," said Helena, re-entering her own bedroom, where she had left
Mrs. Friend in a dimity-covered arm-chair by the window, while she
reconnoitred. "Also, the water is only a point or two above freezing--and
as I like boiling--"

She threw herself down on the floor by Mrs. Friend's side. All her
movements had a curious certainty and grace like those of a beautiful
animal, but the whole impression of her was still formidable to the
gentle creature who was about to undertake what already seemed to her the
absurd task of chaperoning anything so independent and self-confident.
But the girl clearly wished to make friends with her new companion, and
began eagerly to ask questions.

"How did you hear of me? Do you mind telling me?"

"Just through an agency," said Mrs. Friend, flushing a little. "I wanted
to leave the situation I was in, and the agency told me Lord Buntingford
was looking for a companion for his ward, and I was to go and see Lady
Mary Chance--"

The girl's merry laugh broke out:

"Oh, I know Mary Chance--twenty pokers up her backbone! I should have
thought--"

Then she stopped, looking intently at Mrs. Friend, her brows drawn
together over her brilliant eyes.

"What would you have thought?" Mrs. Friend enquired, as the silence
continued.

"Well--that if she was going to recommend somebody to Cousin Philip--to
look after me, she would never have been content with anything short of a
Prussian grenadier in petticoats. She thinks me a demon. She won't let
her daughters go about with me. I can't imagine how she ever fixed upon
anyone so--"

"So what?" said Mrs. Friend, after a moment, nervously. Lost in the big
white arm-chair, her small hand propping her small face and head, she
looked even frailer than she had looked in the library.

"Well, nobody would ever take you for my jailer, would they?" said
Helena, surveying her.

Mrs. Friend laughed--a ghost of a laugh, which yet seemed to have some
fun in it, far away.

"Does this seem to you like prison?"

"This house? Oh, no. Of course I shall do just as I like in it. I have
only come because--well, my poor Mummy made a great point of it when she
was ill, and I couldn't be a brute to her, so I promised. But I wonder
whether I ought to have promised. It is a great tyranny, you know--the
tyranny of sick people. I wonder whether one ought to give in to her?"

The girl looked up coolly. Mrs. Friend felt as though she had been
struck.

"But your _mother_!" she said involuntarily.

"Oh, I know, that's what most people would say. But the question is,
what's reasonable. Well, I wasn't reasonable, and here I am. But I make
my conditions. We are not to be more than four months in the year in this
old hole"--she looked round her in not unkindly amusement at the bare
old-fashioned room; "we are to have four or five months in London, _at
least_; and when travelling abroad gets decent again, we are to go
abroad--Rome, perhaps, next winter. And I am jolly well to ask my friends
here, or in town--male and female--and Cousin Philip promised to be nice
to them. He said, of course, 'Within limits.' But that we shall see. I'm
not a pauper, you know. My trustees pay Lord Buntingford whatever I cost
him, and I shall have a good deal to spend. I shall have a horse--and
perhaps a little motor. The chauffeur here is a fractious idiot. He has
done that Rolls-Royce car of Cousin Philip's balmy, and cut up quite
rough when I spoke to him about it."

"Done it what?" said Mrs. Friend faintly.

"Balmy. Don't you know that expression?" Helena, on the floor with her
hands under her knees, watched her companion's looks with a grin. "It's
_our_ language now, you know--English--the language of us young people.
The old ones have got to learn it, as _we_ speak it! Well, what do you
think of Cousin Philip?"

Mrs. Friend roused herself.

"I've only seen him for half an hour. But he was very kind."

"And isn't he good-looking?" said the girl before her, with enthusiasm.
"I just adore that combination of black hair and blue eyes--don't you?
But he isn't by any means as innocent as he looks."

"I never said--"

"No. I know you didn't," said Helena serenely; "but you might have--and
he isn't innocent a bit. He's as complex as you make 'em. Most women are
in love with him, except me!" The brown eyes stared meditatively out of
window. "I suppose I could be if I tried. But he doesn't attract me.
He's too old."

"Old?" repeated Mrs. Friend, with astonishment.

"Well, I don't mean he's decrepit! But he's forty-four if he's a
day--more than double my age. Did you notice that he's a little lame?"

"No!"

"He is. It's very slight--an accident, I believe--somewhere abroad. But
they wouldn't have him for the Army, and he was awfully cut up. He used
to come and sit with Mummy every day and pour out his woes. I suppose she
was the only person to whom he ever talked about his private affairs--he
knew she was safe. Of course you know he is a widower?"

Mrs. Friend knew nothing. But she was vaguely surprised.

"Oh, well, a good many people know that--though Mummy always said she
never came across anybody who had ever seen his wife. He married her when
he was quite a boy---abroad somewhere--when there seemed no chance of his
ever being Lord Buntingford--he had two elder brothers who died--and she
was an art student on her own. An old uncle of Mummy's once told me that
when Cousin Philip came back from abroad--she died abroad--after her
death, he seemed altogether changed somehow. But he never, _never_ speaks
of her"--the girl swayed her slim body backwards and forwards for
emphasis--"and I wouldn't advise you or anybody else to try. Most people
think he's just a bachelor. I never talk about it to people--Mummy said I
wasn't to--and as he was very nice to Mummy--well, I don't. But I thought
you'd better know. And now I think we'd better dress."

But instead of moving, she looked down affectionately at her uniform and
her neat brown leggings.

"What a bore! I suppose I've no right to them any more."

"What is your uniform?"

"Women Ambulance Drivers. Don't you know the hostel in Ruby Square? I
bargained with Cousin Philip after Mummy's death I should stay out my
time, till I was demobbed. Awfully jolly time I had--on the whole--though
the girls were a mixed lot. Well--let's get a move on." She sprang up.
"Your room's next door."

Mrs. Friend was departing when Helena enquired:

"By the way--have you ever heard of Cynthia Welwyn?"

Mrs. Friend turned at the door, and shook her head.

"Oh, well, I can tot her up very quickly--just to give you an idea--as
she's coming to dinner. She's fair and forty--just about Buntingford's
age--quite good-looking--quite clever--lives by herself, reads a great
deal--runs the parish--you know the kind of thing. They swarm! I think
she would like to marry Cousin Philip, if he would let her."

Mrs. Friend hurriedly shut the door at her back, which had been slightly
ajar. Helena laughed--the merry but very soft laugh Mrs. Friend had first
heard in the hall--a laugh which seemed somehow out of keeping with the
rest of its owner's personality.

"Don't be alarmed. I doubt whether that would be news to anybody in this
house! But Buntingford's quite her match. Well, ta-ta. Shall I come and
help you dress?"

"The idea!" cried Mrs. Friend. "Shall I help you?" She looked round
the room and at Helena vigorously tackling the boxes. "I thought you
had a maid?"

"Not at all. I couldn't be bored with one."

"Do let me help you!"

"Then you'd be my maid, and I should bully you and detest you. You must
go and dress."

And Mrs. Friend found herself gently pushed out of the room. She went to
her own in some bewilderment. After having been immured for some three
years in close attendance on an invalided woman shut up in two rooms, she
was like a person walking along a dark road and suddenly caught in the
glare of motor lamps. Brought into contact with such a personality as
Helena Pitstone promised to be, she felt helpless and half blind. A
survival, too; for this world into which she had now stepped was one
quite new to her. Yet when she had first shut herself up in Lancaster
Gate she had never been conscious of any great difference between herself
and other women or girls. She had lived a very quiet life in a quiet home
before the war. Her father, a hard-working Civil Servant on a small
income, and her mother, the daughter of a Wesleyan Minister, had brought
her up strictly, yet with affection. The ways of the house were
old-fashioned, dictated by an instinctive dislike of persons who went
often to theatres and dances, of women who smoked, or played bridge, or
indulged in loud, slangy talk. Dictated, too, by a pervading "worship of
ancestors," of a preceding generation of plain evangelical men and women,
whose books survived in the little house, and whose portraits hung upon
its walls.

Then, in the first year of the war, she had married a young soldier, the
son of family friends, like-minded with her own people, a modest,
inarticulate fellow, who had been killed at Festubert. She had loved
him--oh, yes, she had loved him. But sometimes, looking back, she was
troubled to feel how shadowy he had become to her. Not in the region of
emotion. She had pined for his fondness all these years; she pined for it
still. But intellectually. If he had lived, how would he have felt
towards all these strange things that the war had brought about--the
revolutionary spirit everywhere, the changes come and coming? She did not
know; she could not imagine. And it troubled her that she could not find
any guidance for herself in her memories of him.

And as to the changes in her own sex, they seemed to have all come about
while she was sitting in a twilight room reading aloud to an old woman.
Only a few months after her husband's death her parents had both died,
and she found herself alone in the world, and almost penniless. She was
not strong enough for war work, the doctor said, and so she had let the
doors of Lancaster Gate close upon her, only looking for something quiet
and settled--even if it were a settled slavery.

After which, suddenly, just about the time of the Armistice, she had
become aware that nothing was the same; that the women and the girls--so
many of them in uniform!--that she met in the streets when she took her
daily walk--were new creatures; not attractive to her as a whole, but
surprising and formidable, because of the sheer life there was in them.
And she herself began to get restive; to realize that she was not
herself so very old, and to want to know--a hundred things! It had taken
her five months, however, to make up her mind; and then at last she had
gone to an agency--the only way she knew--and had braved the cold and
purely selfish wrath of the household she was leaving. And now here she
was in Lord Buntingford's house--Miss Helena Pitstone's chaperon. As she
stood before her looking-glass, fastening her little black dress with
shaking fingers, the first impression of Helena's personality was upon
her, running through her, like wine to the unaccustomed. She supposed
that now girls were all like this--all such free, wild, uncurbed
creatures, a law to themselves. One moment she repeated that she was a
fool to have come; and the next, she would not have found herself back
in Lancaster Gate for the world.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Helena was putting on a tea-gown, a
white and silver "confection," with a little tail like a fish, and a
short skirt tapering down to a pair of slim legs and shapely feet. After
all her protestations, she had allowed the housemaid to help her unpack,
and when the dress was on she had sent Mary flying down to the
drawing-room to bring up some carnations she had noticed there. When
these had been tucked into her belt, and the waves of her brown hair had
been somehow pinned and coiled into a kind of order, and she had
discovered and put on her mother's pearls, she was pleased with herself,
or rather with as much of herself as she could see in the inadequate
looking-glass on the toilet-table. A pier-glass from somewhere was of
course the prime necessity, and must be got immediately. Meanwhile she
had to be content with seeing herself in the eyes of the housemaid, who
was clearly dazzled by her appearance.

Then there were a few minutes before dinner, and she ran along the
passage to Mrs. Friend's room.

"May I come in? Oh, let me tie that for you?" And before Mrs. Friend
could interpose, the girl's nimble fingers had tied the narrow velvet
carrying a round locket which was her chaperon's only ornament. Drawing
back a little, she looked critically at the general effect. Mrs. Friend
flushed, and presently started in alarm, when Helena took up the comb
lying on the dressing-table.

"What are you going to do?"

"Only just to alter your hair a little. Do you mind? Do let me. You look
so nice in black. But your hair is too tight."

Mrs. Friend stood paralysed, while with a few soft touches Helena
applied the comb.

"Now, isn't that nice! I declare it's charming! Now look at yourself. Why
should you make yourself look dowdy? It's all very well--but you can't be
much older than I am!"

And dancing round her victim, Helena effected first one slight
improvement and then another in Mrs. Friend's toilette, till the little
woman, standing in uneasy astonishment before the glass to which Helena
had dragged her, plucked up courage at last to put an end to the
proceedings.

"No, please don't!" she said, with decision, warding off the girl's
meddling hand, and putting back some of the quiet bands of hair. "You
mustn't make me look so unlike myself. And besides--I couldn't live up to
it!" Her shy smile broke out.

"Oh, yes, you could. You're quite nice-looking. I wonder if you'd mind
telling me how old you are? And must I always call you 'Mrs. Friend'? It
is so odd--when everybody calls each other by their Christian names."

"I don't mind--I don't mind at all. But don't you think--for both our
sakes--you'd better leave me all the dignity you can?" Laughter was
playing round the speaker's small pale lips, and Helena answered it
with interest.

"Does that mean that you'll have to manage me? Did Cousin Philip
tell you you must? But that--I may as well tell you at once--is a vain
delusion. Nobody ever managed me! Oh, yes, my superior officer in the
Women's Corps--she was master. But that was because I chose to make her
so. Now I'm on my own--and all I can offer--I'm afraid!--is an
alliance--offensive and defensive."

Mrs. Friend looked at the radiant vision opposite to her with its hands
on its sides, and slowly shook her head.

"Offensive--against whom?"

"Cousin Philip--if necessary."

Mrs. Friend again shook her head.

"Oh, you're in his pocket already!" cried Helena with a grimace. "But
never mind. I'm sure I shall like you. You'll come over to my side soon."

"Why should I take any side?" asked Mrs. Friend, drawing on a pair of
black gloves.

"Well, because"--said Helena slowly--"Cousin Philip doesn't like some of
my pals--some of the men, I mean--I go about with--and we _may_ quarrel
about it. The question is which of them I'm going to marry--if I marry
any of them. And some of them are married. Don't look shocked! Oh,
heavens, there's the gong! But we'll sit up to-night, if you're not
sleepy, and I'll give you a complete catalogue of some of their
qualifications--physical, intellectual, financial. Then you'll have the
_carte du pays_. Two of them are coming to-morrow for the Sunday. There's
nobody coming to-night of the least interest. Cynthia Welwyn, Captain
Vivian Lodge, Buntingford's cousin--rather a prig--but good-looking. A
girl or two, no doubt--probably the parson--probably the agent. Now you
know. Shall we go down?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The library was already full when the two ladies entered. Mrs. Friend was
aware of a tall fair woman, beautifully dressed in black, standing by
Lord Buntingford; of an officer in uniform, resplendent in red tabs and
decorations, talking to a spare grey-haired man, who might be supposed to
be the agent; of a man in a round collar and clerical coat, standing
awkward and silent by the tall lady in black; and of various other girls
and young men.

All eyes were turned to Helena as she entered, and she was soon
surrounded, while Lord Buntingford took special care of Helena's
companion. Mrs. Friend found herself introduced to Lady Cynthia Welwyn,
the tall lady in black; to Mr. Parish, the grey-haired man, and to the
clergyman. Lady Cynthia bestowed on her a glance from a pair of prominent
eyes, and a few civil remarks, Mr. Parish made her an old-fashioned bow,
and hoped she had not found the journey too dusty, while the clergyman,
whose name she caught as Mr. Alcott, showed a sudden animation as they
shook hands, and had soon put her at her ease by a manner in which she at
once divined a special sympathy for the stranger within the gates.

"You have just come, I gather?"

"I only arrived this afternoon."

"And you are to look after Miss Helena?" he smiled.

Mrs. Friend smiled too.

"I hope so. If she will let me!"

"She is a radiant creature!" And for a moment he stood watching the girl,
as she stood, goddess-like, amid her group of admirers. His eyes were
deep-set and tired; his scanty grizzled hair fell untidily over a
furrowed brow; and his clothes were neither fresh nor well-brushed. But
there was something about him which attracted the lonely; and Mrs. Friend
was glad when she found herself assigned to him.

But though her neighbour was not difficult to talk to, her surroundings
were so absorbing to her that she talked very little at dinner. It was
enough to listen and look--at Lady Cynthia on Lord Buntingford's right
hand, and Helena Pitstone on his left; or at the handsome officer with
whom Helena seemed to be happily flirting through a great part of dinner.
Lady Cynthia was extremely good-looking, and evidently agreeable, though
it seemed to Mrs. Friend that Lord Buntingford only gave her divided
attention. Meanwhile it was very evident that he himself was the centre
of his own table, the person of whom everyone at it was fundamentally
aware, however apparently busy with other people. She herself observed
him much more closely than before, the mingling in his face of a kind of
concealed impatience, an eagerness held in chains and expressed by his
slight perpetual frown, with a courtesy and urbanity generally gay or
bantering, but at times, and by flashes--or so it seemed to her--dipped
in a sudden, profound melancholy, like a quenched light. He held himself
sharply erect, and in his plain naval uniform, with the three Commander's
stripes on the sleeve, made, in her eyes, an even more distinguished
figure than the gallant and decorated hero on his left, with whom Helena
seemed to be so particularly engaged, "prig" though she had dubbed him.

As to Lady Cynthia's effect upon her host, Mrs. Friend could not make up
her mind. He seemed attentive or amused while she chatted to him; but
towards the end their conversation languished a good deal, and Lady
Cynthia must needs fall back on the stubby-haired boy to her right, who
was learning agency business with Mr. Parish. She smiled at him also, for
it was her business, Mrs. Friend thought, to smile at everybody, but it
was an absent-minded smile.

"You don't know Lord Buntingford?" said Mr. Alcott's rather muffled voice
beside her.

Mrs. Friend turned hastily.

"No--I never saw him till this afternoon."

"He isn't easy to know. I know him very little, though he gave me this
living, and I have business with him, of course, occasionally. But this I
do know, the world is uncommonly full of people--don't you find it
so?--who say 'I go, Sir'--and don't go. Well, if Lord Buntingford says 'I
go, Sir'--he does go!"

"Does he often say it?" asked Mrs. Friend. And the man beside her noticed
the sudden gleam in her quiet little face, that rare or evanescent sprite
of laughter or satire that even the dwellers in Lancaster Gate had
occasionally noticed.

Mr. Alcott considered.

"Well, no," he said at last. "I admit he's difficult to catch. He likes
his own ways a great deal better than other people's. But if you do
catch him--if you do persuade him--well, then you can stake your bottom
dollar on him. At least, that's my experience. He's been awfully
generous about land here--put a lot in my hands to distribute long
before the war ended. Some of the neighbours about--other
landlords--were very sick--thought he'd given them away because of the
terms. They sent him a round robin. I doubt if he read it. In a thing
like that he's adamant. And he's adamant, too, when he's once taken a
real dislike to anybody. There's no moving him."

"You make me afraid!" said Mrs. Friend.

"Oh, no, you needn't be--" Mr. Alcott turned almost eagerly to look at
her. "I hope you won't be. He's the kindest of men. It's extraordinarily
kind of him--don't you think?"--the speaker smilingly lowered his
voice--"taking on Miss Pitstone like this? It's a great responsibility."

Mrs. Friend made the slightest timid gesture of assent.

"Ah, well, it's just like him. He was devoted to her mother--and for his
friends he'll do anything. But I don't want to make a saint of him. He
can be a dour man when he likes--and he and I fight about a good many
things. I don't think he has much faith in the new England we're all
talking about--though he tries to go with it. Have you?" He turned upon
her suddenly.

Mrs. Friend felt a pang.

"I don't know anything," she said, and he was conscious of the agitation
in her tone. "Since my husband died, I've been so out of everything."

And encouraged by the kind eyes in the plain face, she told her story,
very simply and briefly. In the general clatter and hubbub of the table
no one overheard or noticed.

"H'm--you're stepping out into the world again as one might step out of
a nunnery--after five years. I rather envy you. You'll see things fresh.
Whereas we--who have been through the ferment and the horror--" He broke
off--"I was at the front, you see, for nearly two years--then I got
invalided. So you've hardly realized the war--hardly known there was a
war--not since--since Festubert?"

"It's dreadful!" she said humbly--"I'm afraid I know just nothing
about it."

He looked at her with a friendly wonder, and she, flushing deeper, was
glad to see him claimed by a lively girl on his left, while she fell
back on Mr. Parish, the agent, who, however, seemed to be absorbed in
the amazing--and agreeable--fact that Lord Buntingford, though he drank
no wine himself, had yet some Moet-et-Charidon of 1904 left to give to
his guests. Mr. Parish, as he sipped it, realized that the war was
indeed over.

But, all the time, he gave a certain amount of scrutiny to the little
lady beside him. So she was to be "companion" to Miss Helena
Pitstone--to prevent her getting into scrapes--if she could. Lord
Buntingford had told him that his cousin, Lady Mary Chance, had chosen
her. Lady Mary had reported that "companions" were almost as difficult
to find as kitchenmaids, and that she had done her best for him in
finding a person of gentle manners and quiet antecedents. "Such people
will soon be as rare as snakes in Ireland"--had been the concluding
sentence in Lady Mary's letter, according to Lord Buntingford's laughing
account of it. Ah, well, Lady Mary was old-fashioned. He hoped the young
widow might be useful; but he had his doubts. She looked a weak vessel
to be matching herself with anything so handsome and so pronounced as
the young lady opposite.

Why, the young lady was already quarrelling with her guardian! For the
whole table had suddenly become aware of a gust in the neighbourhood of
Lord Buntingford--a gust of heated talk--although the only heated person
seemed to be Miss Pitstone. Lord Buntingford was saying very little; but
whatever he did say was having a remarkable effect on his neighbour.
Then, before the table knew what it was all about, it was over. Lord
Buntingford had turned resolutely away, and was devoting himself to
conversation with Lady Cynthia, while his ward was waging a fresh war of
repartee with the distinguished soldier beside her, in which her
sharpened tones and quick breathing suggested the swell after a storm.

Mrs. Friend too had noticed. She had been struck with the sudden
tightening of the guardian's lip, the sudden stiffening of his hand lying
on the table. She wondered anxiously what was the matter.

In the library afterwards, Lady Cynthia, Mrs. Friend, and the two
girls--his daughter and his guest--who had come with Mr. Parish, settled
into a little circle near the wood-fire which the chilliness of the May
evening made pleasant.

Helena Pitstone meanwhile walked away by herself to a distant part of the
room and turned over photographs, with what seemed to Mrs. Friend a
stormy hand. And as she did so, everyone in the room was aware of her, of
the brilliance and power of the girl's beauty, and of the energy that
like an aura seemed to envelop her personality. Lady Cynthia made several
attempts to capture her, but in vain. Helena would only answer in
monosyllables, and if approached, retreated further into the dim room,
ostensibly in search of a book on a distant shelf, really in flight. Lady
Cynthia, with a shrug, gave it up.

Mrs. Friend felt too strange to the whole situation to make any move. She
could only watch for the entry of the gentlemen. Lord Buntingford, who
came in last, evidently looked round for his ward. But Helena had already
flitted back to the rest of the company, and admirably set off by a deep
red chair into which she had thrown herself, was soon flirting
unashamedly with the two young men, with Mr. Parish and the Rector,
taking them all on in turn, and suiting the bait to the fish with the
instinctive art of her kind. Lord Buntingford got not a word with her,
and when the guests departed she had vanished upstairs before anyone knew
that she had gone.

"Have a cigar in the garden, Vivian, before you turn in? There is a moon,
and it is warmer outside than in," said Lord Buntingford to his cousin,
when they were left alone.

"By all means."

So presently they found themselves pacing a flagged path outside a long
conservatory which covered one side of the house. The moon was cloudy,
and the temperature low. But the scents of summer were already in the
air--of grass and young leaf, and the first lilac. The old grey house
with its haphazard outline and ugly detail acquired a certain dignity
from the night, and round it stretched dim slopes of pasture, with oaks
rising here and there from bands of white mist.

"Is that tale true you told me before dinner about Jim Donald?" said Lord
Buntingford abruptly. "You're sure it's true--honour bright?"

The other laughed.

"Why, I had it from Jim himself!" He laughed. "He just made a joke of it.
But he is a mean skunk! I've found out since that he wanted to buy
Preston out for the part Preston had taken in another affair. There's a
pretty case coming on directly, with Jim for hero. You have heard of it."

"No," said Buntingford curtly; "but in any case nothing would have
induced me to have him here. Preston's a friend of mine. So when Helena
told me at dinner she had asked him for Saturday, I had to tell her I
should telegraph to him to-morrow morning not to come. She was angry,
of course."

Captain Lodge gave a low whistle. "Of course she doesn't know. But I
think you would be wise to stop it. And I remember now she danced all
night with him at the Arts Ball!"




CHAPTER III


There was a light tap on Mrs. Friend's door. She said "Come in" rather
unwillingly. Some time had elapsed since she had seen Helena's fluttering
white disappear into the corridor beyond her room; and she had nourished
a secret hope that the appointment had been forgotten. But the door
opened slightly. Mrs. Friend saw first a smiling face, finger on lip.
Then the girl slipped in, and closed the door with caution.

"I don't want that 'very magnificent three-tailed Bashaw' to know we are
discussing him. He's somewhere still."

"What did you say?" asked Mrs. Friend, puzzled.

"Oh, it's only a line of an old poem--I don't know by whom--my father
used to quote it. Well, now--did you see what happened at dinner?"

Helena had established herself comfortably in a capacious arm-chair
opposite Mrs. Friend, tucking her feet under her. She was in a white
dressing-gown, and she had hastily tied a white scarf round her loosened
hair. In the dim light of a couple of candles her beauty made an even
more exciting impression on the woman watching her than it had done in
the lamp-lit drawing-room.

"It's war!" she said firmly, "war between Buntingford and me. I'm sorry
it's come so soon--the very first evening!--and I know it'll be beastly
for you--but I can't help it. I _won't_ be dictated to. If I'm not
twenty-one, I'm old enough to choose my own friends; and if Buntingford
chooses to boycott them, he must take the consequences." And throwing her
white arms above her head, her eyes looked out from the frame of
them--eyes sparkling with pride and will.

Mrs. Friend begged for an explanation.

"Well, I happened to tell him that I had invited Lord Donald for Sunday.
I'll tell you about Lord Donald presently--and he simply--behaved like a
brute! He said he was sorry I hadn't told him, that he couldn't have
Donald here, and would telegraph to him to-morrow--not to come. Just
think of that! So then I said--why? And he said he didn't approve of
Donald--or some nonsense of that sort. I was quite calm. I reminded him
he had promised to let me invite my friends--that was part of the
bargain. Yes--he said--but within limits--and Donald was the limit. That
made me savage--so I upped and said, very well, if I couldn't see Donald
here, I should see him somewhere else--and he wouldn't prevent me. I
wasn't going to desert my friends for a lot of silly tales. So then he
said I didn't know what I was talking about, and turned his back on me.
He kept his temper provokingly--and I lost mine--which was idiotic of me.
But I mean to be even with him--somehow. And as for Donald, I shall go up
to town and lunch with him at the Ritz next week!"

"Oh, no, no, you can't!" cried Mrs. Friend in distress. "You can't
treat your guardian like that! Do tell me what it's all about!" And
bending forward, she laid her two small hands entreatingly on the
girl's knee. She looked so frail and pitiful as she did so, in her
plain black, that Helena was momentarily touched. For the first time
her new chaperon appeared to her as something else than a mere receiver
into which, or at which, it suited her to talk. She laid her own hand
soothingly on Mrs. Friend's.

"Of course I'll tell you. I really don't mean to be nasty to you. But all
the same I warn you that it's no good trying to stop me, when I've made
up my mind. Well, now, for Donald. I know, of course, what Cousin Philip
means. Donald ran away with the wife of a friend of his--of
Buntingford's, I mean--three or four weeks ago."

Mrs. Friend gasped. The modern young woman was becoming altogether too
much for her. She could only repeat foolishly--"ran away?"

"Yes, ran away. There was no harm done. Sir Luke Preston--that's the
husband--followed them and caught them--and made her go back with him.
But Donald didn't mean any mischief. She'd quarrelled with Sir
Luke--she's an empty-headed little fluffy thing. I know her a little--and
she dared Donald to run away with her--for a lark. So he took her on. He
didn't mean anything horrid. I don't believe he's that sort. They were
going down to his yacht at Southampton--there were several other friends
of his on the yacht--and they meant to give Sir Luke a fright--just show
him that he couldn't bully her as he had been doing--being sticky and
stupid about her friends, just as Cousin Philip wants to be about
mine--and quarrelling about her dress-bills--and a lot of things. Well,
that's all! What's there in that?"

And the girl sat up straight, dropping her slim, white feet, while her
great eyes challenged her companion to say a word in defence of her
guardian. Mrs. Friend's head was turning.

"But it was surely wrong and foolish--" she began. Helena
interrupted her.

"I daresay it was," she said impatiently, "but that's not my affair. It's
Lord Donald's. I'm not responsible for him. But he's done nothing that I
know of to make _me_ cut him--and I won't! He told me all about it quite
frankly. I said I'd stick by him--and I will."

"And Sir Luke Preston is a friend of Lord Buntingford's?"

"Yes--" said Helena unwillingly--"I suppose he is. I didn't know. Perhaps
I wouldn't have asked Donald if I'd known. But I did ask him, and he
accepted. And now Buntingford's going to insult him publicly. And that I
won't stand--I vow I won't! It's insulting me too!"

And springing up, she began a stormy pacing of the room, her white gown
falling back from her neck and throat, and her hair floating behind her.
Mrs. Friend had begun to collect herself. In the few hours she had passed
under Lord Buntingford's roof she seemed to herself to have been passing
through a forcing house. Qualities she had never dreamed of possessing or
claiming she must somehow show, or give up the game. Unless she could
understand and get hold of this wholly unexpected situation, as Helena
presented it, she might as well re-pack her box, and order the village
fly for departure.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions?" she said presently, as the
white skirts swept past her.

"Mind! Not a bit. What do you want to know?"

"Are you in love with Lord Donald?"

Helena laughed.

"If I were, do you think I'd let him run away with Lady Preston or
anybody else? Not at all! Lord Donald's just one of the men I like
talking to. He amuses me. He's very smart. He knows everybody. He's no
worse than anybody else. He did all sorts of plucky things in the war. I
don't ask Buntingford to like him, of course. He isn't his sort. But he
really might let me alone!"

"But you asked him to stay in Lord Buntingford's house--and without
consulting--"

"Well--and it's going to be _my_ house, too, for two years--if I can
possibly bear it. When Mummy begged me, I told Buntingford my conditions.
And he's broken them!"

And standing still, the tempestuous creature drew herself to her full
height, her arms rigid by her side--a tragic-comic figure in the dim
illumination of the two guttering candles.

Mrs. Friend attempted a diversion.

"Who else is coming for the week-end?"

Instantly Helena's mood dissolved in laughter. She came to perch herself
on the arm of Mrs. Friend's chair.

"There--now let's forget my tiresome guardian. I promised to tell you
about my 'boys.' Well, there are two of them coming--and Geoffrey French,
besides a nephew of Buntingford's, who'll have this property and most of
the money some day, always supposing this tyrant of mine doesn't marry,
which of course any reasonable man would. Well--there's Peter Dale--the
dearest, prettiest little fellow you ever saw. He was aide-de-camp to
Lord Brent in the war--_very_ smart--up to everything. He's demobbed, and
has gone into the City. Horribly rich already, and will now, of course,
make another pile. He dreadfully wants to marry me--but--" she shook her
head with emphasis--"No!--it wouldn't do. He tries to kiss me sometimes.
I didn't mind it at first. But I've told him not to do it again. Then
there's Julian--Julian Horne--Balliol--awfully clever"--she checked off
the various items on her fingers--"as poor as a rat--a Socialist, of
course--they all are, that kind--but a real one--not like Geoffrey
French, who's a sham, though he is in the House, and has joined the
Labour party. You see"--her tone grew suddenly serious--"I don't reckon
Geoffrey French among my boys."

"He's too old?"

"Oh, he's not so very old. But--I don't think he likes me very much--and
I'm not sure whether I like him. He's good fun, however--and he rags
Julian Horne splendidly. That's one of his chief functions--and another
is, to take a hand in my education--when I allow him--and when Julian
isn't about. They both tell me what to read. Julian tells me to read
history, and gives me lists of books. Geoffrey talks economics--and
philosophy--and I adore it--he talks so well. He gave me Bergson the
other day. Have you ever read any of him?"

"Never," said Mrs. Friend, bewildered. "Who is he?"

Helena's laugh woke the echoes of the room. But she checked it at once.

"I don't want _him_ to think we're plotting," she said in a
stage-whisper, looking round her. "If I do anything I want to spring
it on him!"

"Dear Miss Pitstone--please understand!--I can't help you to plot against
Lord Buntingford. You must see I can't. He's my employer and your
guardian. If I helped you to do what he disapproves I should simply be
doing a dishonourable thing."

"Yes," said Helena reflectively. "Of course I see that. It's awkward. I
suppose you promised and vowed a great many things--like one's godmothers
and godfathers?"

"No, I didn't promise anything--except that I would go out with you, make
myself useful to you, if I could--and help you with foreign languages."

"Goody," said Helena. "Do you _really_ know French--and German?" The tone
was incredulous. "I wish I did."

"Well, I was two years in France, and a year and a half in Germany when I
was a girl. My parents wanted me to be a governess."

"And then you married?"

"Yes--just the year before the war."

"And your husband was killed?" The tone was low and soft. Mrs. Friend
gave a mute assent. Suddenly Helena laid an arm round the little
woman's neck.

"I want you to be friends with me--will you? I hated the thought of a
chaperon--I may as well tell you frankly. I thought I should probably
quarrel with you in a week. That was before I arrived. Then when I saw
you, I suddenly felt--'I shall like her! I'm glad she's here--I shan't
mind telling her my affairs.' I suppose it was because you looked
so--well, so meek and mild--so different from me--as though a puff would
blow you away. One can't account for those things, can one? Do tell me
your Christian name! I won't call you by it--if you don't like it."

"My name is Lucy," said Mrs. Friend faintly. There was something so
seductive in the neighbourhood of the girl's warm youth and in the new
sweetness of her voice that she could not make any further defence of her
"dignity."

"I might have guessed Lucy. It's just like you," said the girl
triumphantly. "Wordsworth's Lucy--do you remember her?--'A violet by a
mossy stone'--That's you exactly. I _adore_ Wordsworth. Do you care
about poetry?"

The eager eyes looked peremptorily into hers.

"Yes," said Mrs. Friend shyly--"I'm very fond of some things. But you'd
think them old-fashioned!"

"What--Byron?--Shelley? They're never old-fashioned!"

"I never read much of them. But--I love Tennyson--and Mrs. Browning."

Helena made a face--

"Oh, I don't care a hang for her. She's so dreadfully pious and
sentimental. I laughed till I cried over 'Aurora Leigh.' But now--French
things! If you lived all that time in France, you must have read French
poetry. Alfred de Musset?--Madame de Noailles?"

Mrs. Friend shook her head.

"We went to lectures. I learnt a great deal of Racine--a little Victor
Hugo--and Rostand--because the people I boarded with took me to
'Cyrano'!"

"Ah, Rostand--" cried Helena, springing up. "Well, of course he's _vieux
jeu_ now. The best people make mock of him. Julian does. I don't care--he
gives me thrills down my back, and I love him. But then _panache_ means a
good deal to me. And Julian doesn't care a bit. He despises people who
talk about glory and honour--and that kind of thing. Well--Lucy--"

She stopped mischievously, her head on one side.

"Sorry!--but it slipped out. Lucy--good-night."

Mrs. Friend hurriedly caught hold of her.

"And you won't do anything hasty--about Lord Donald?"

"Oh, I can't promise anything. One must stand by one's friends. One
simply must. But I'll take care Cousin Philip doesn't blame you."

"If I'm no use, you know--I can't stay."

"No use to Cousin Philip, you mean, in policing me?" said Helena, with a
good-humoured laugh. "Well, we'll talk about it again to-morrow.
Good-night--Lucy!"

The sly gaiety of the voice was most disarming.

"Good-night, Miss Pitstone."

"No, that won't do. It's absurd! I never ask people to call me Helena,
unless I like them. I certainly never expected--there, I'll be
frank!--that I should want to ask you--the very first night too. But I do
want you to. Please, Lucy, call me Helena. _Please_!"

Mrs. Friend did as she was told.

"Sleep well," said Helena from the door. "I hope the housemaid's put
enough on your bed, and given you a hot water-bottle? If anything scares
you in the night, wake me--that is, if you can!" She disappeared.

Outside Mrs. Friend's door the old house was in darkness, save for a
single light in the hall, which burnt all night. The hall was the feature
of the house. A gallery ran round it supported by columns from below, and
spaced by answering columns which carried the roof. The bedrooms ran
round the hall, and opened into the gallery. The columns were of yellow
marble brought from Italy, and faded blue curtains hung between them.
Helena went cautiously to the balustrade, drew one of the blue curtains
round her, and looked down into the hall. Was everybody gone to bed? No.
There were movements in a distant room. Somebody coughed, and seemed to
be walking about. But she couldn't hear any talking. If Cousin Philip
were still up, he was alone.

Her anger came back upon her, and then curiosity. What was he thinking
about, as he paced his room like a caged squirrel? About the trouble she
was likely to give him--and what a fool he had been to take the job? She
would like to go and reason with him. The excess of vitality that was in
her, sighing for fresh worlds to conquer, urged her to vehement and
self-confident action,--action for its own sake, for the mere joy of the
heat and movement that go with it. Part of the impulse depended on the
new light in which the gentleman walking about downstairs had begun to
appear to her. She had known him hitherto as "Mummy's friend," always to
be counted upon when any practical difficulty arose, and ready on
occasion to put in a sharp word in defence of an invalid's peace, when a
girl's unruliness threatened it. Remembering one or two such collisions,
Helena felt her cheeks burn, as she hung over the hall, in the darkness.
But those had been such passing matters. Now, as she recalled the
expression of his eyes, during their clash at the dinner-table, she
realized, with an excitement which was not disagreeable, that something
much more prolonged and serious might lie before her. Accomplished
modern, as she knew him to be in most things, he was going to be "stuffy"
and "stupid" in some. Lord Donald's proceedings in the matter of Lady
Preston evidently seemed to him--she had been made to feel it--frankly
abominable. And he was not going to ask the man capable of them within
his own doors. Well and good. "But as I don't agree with him--Donald was
only larking!--I shall take my own way. A telegram goes anyway to Donald
to-morrow morning--and we shall see. So good-night, Cousin Philip!" And
blowing a kiss towards the empty hall, she gathered her white skirts
round her, and fled laughing towards her own room.

But just as she neared it, a door in front of her, leading to a
staircase, opened, and a man in khaki appeared, carrying a candle. It was
Captain Lodge, her neighbour at the dinner-table. The young man stared
with amazement at the apparition rushing along the gallery towards
him,--the girl's floating hair, and flushed loveliness as his candle
revealed it. Helena evidently enjoyed his astonishment, and his sudden
look of admiration. But before he could speak, she had vanished within
her own door, just holding it open long enough to give him a laughing nod
before it shut, and darkness closed with it on the gallery.

"A man would need to keep his head with that girl!" thought Captain
Lodge, with tantalized amusement. "But, my hat, what a beauty!"

Meanwhile in the library downstairs a good deal of thinking was going on.
Lord Buntingford was taking more serious stock of his new duties than he
had done yet. As he walked, smoking, up and down, his thoughts were full
of his poor little cousin Rachel Pitstone. She had always been a
favourite of his; and she had always known him better than any other
person among his kinsfolk. He had found it easy to tell her secrets, when
nobody else could have dragged a word from him; and as a matter of fact
she had known before she died practically all that there was to know
about him. And she had been so kind, and simple and wise. Had she perhaps
once had a _tendresse_ for him--before she met Ned Pitstone?--and if
things had gone--differently--might he not, perhaps, have married her?
Quite possibly. In any case the bond between them had always been one of
peculiar intimacy; and in looking back on it he had nothing to reproach
himself with. He had done what he could to ease her suffering life.
Struck down in her prime by a mortal disease, a widow at thirty, with her
one beautiful child, her chief misfortune had been the melancholy and
sensitive temperament, which filled the rooms in which she lived as full
of phantoms as the palace of Odysseus in the vision of Theoclymenus.

She was afraid for her child; afraid for her friend; afraid for the
world. The only hope of happiness for a woman, she believed, lay in an
honest lover, if such a lover could be found. Herself an intellectual,
and a freed spirit, she had no trust in any of the new professional and
technical careers into which she saw women crowding. Sex seemed to her
now as always the dominating fact of life. Votes did not matter, or
degrees, or the astonishing but quite irrelevant fact, as the papers
announced it, that women should now be able not only to fit but to plan a
battleship. Love, and a child's clinging mouth, and the sweetness of a
Darby and Joan old age, for these all but the perverted women had always
lived, and would always live.

She saw in her Helena the strong beginnings of sex. But she also realized
the promise of intelligence, of remarkable brain development, and it
seemed to her of supreme importance that sex should have the first
innings in her child's life.

"If she goes to college at once, as soon as I am gone, and her brain and
her ambition are appealed to, before she has time to fall in love, she
will develop on that side, prematurely--marvellously--and the rest will
atrophy. And then when the moment for falling in love is over--and with
her it mayn't be a long one--she will be a lecturer, a member of
Parliament perhaps--a Socialist agitator--a woman preacher,--who
knows?--there are all kinds of possibilities in Helena. But she will have
missed her chance of being a woman, and a happy one; and thirty years
hence she will realize it, when it is too late, and think bitterly of us
both. Believe me, dear Philip, the moment for love won't last long in
Helena's life. I have seen it come and go so rapidly, in the case of some
of the most charming women. For after all, the world is now so much
richer for women; and many women don't know their own minds in time, or
get lost among the new landmarks. And of course all women can't marry;
and thank God, there are a thousand new chances of happiness for those
who don't. But there are some--and Helena, I am certain, will be one--who
will be miserable, and probably wicked, unless they fall in love, and are
happy. And it is a strait gate they will have to pass through. For their
own natures and the new voices in the world will tempt them to this side
and that. And before they know where they are--the moment will have
gone--the wish--and the power.

"So, dear Philip, lend yourself to my plan; though you may seem to
yourself the wrong person, and though it imposes--as I know it will--a
rather heavy responsibility on you. But once or twice you have told me
that I have helped you--through difficult places. That makes me dare to
ask you this thing. There is no one else I can ask. And it won't be bad
for you, Philip,--it is good for us all, to have to think
intimately--seriously--for some other human being or beings; and owing
to circumstances, not your own fault, you have missed just this in
life--except for your thoughts and care for me--bless you always, my
dear friend.

"Am I preaching? Well, in my case the time for make-believe is over. I
am too near the end. The simple and austere soul of things seems to
shine out--

"And yet what I ask you is neither simple, nor austere! Take care of
Helena for two years. Give her fun, and society,--a good time, and every
chance to marry. Then, after two years, if she hasn't married--if she
hasn't fallen in love---she must choose her course.

"You may well feel you are too young--indeed I wish, for this business,
you were older!--but you will find some nice woman to be hostess and
chaperon; the experiment will interest and amuse you, and the time will
soon go. You know I _could_ not ask you--unless some things were--as they
are. But that being so, I feel as if I were putting into your hands the
chance of a good deed, a kind deed,--blessing, possibly, him that gives,
and her that takes. And I am just now in the mood to feel that kindness
is all that matters, in this mysterious life of ours. Oh, I wish I had
been kinder--to so many people!--I wish--I wish! The hands stretched out
to me in the dark that I have passed by--the voices that have piped to
me, and I have not danced--

"I mustn't cry. It is hard that in one of the few cases when I had the
chance to be kind, and did not wholly miss it, I should be making in the
end a selfish bargain of it--claiming so much more than I ever gave!

"Forgive me, my best of friends--

"You shall come and see me once about this letter, and then we won't
discuss it again--ever. I have talked over the business side of it with
my lawyer, and asked him to tell you anything you don't yet know about my
affairs and Helena's. We needn't go into them."

"One of the few cases where I had the chance to be kind." Why, Rachel
Pitstone's life had been one continuous selfless offering to God and man,
from her childhood to her last hour! He knew very well what he had owed
her--what others had owed--to her genius for sympathy, for understanding,
for a compassion which was also a stimulus. He missed her sorely. At that
very moment, he was in great practical need of her help, her guidance.

Whereas it was _he_--worse luck!--who must be the stumbling and
unwelcomed guide of Rachel's child! How, in the name of mystery, had the
child grown up so different from the mother? Well, impatience wouldn't
help him--he must set his mind to it. That scoundrel, Jim Donald!




CHAPTER IV


Mrs. Friend passed a somewhat wakeful night after the scene in which
Helena Pitstone had bestowed her first confidences on her new companion.
For Lucy Friend the experience had been unprecedented and agitating. She
had lived in a world where men and women do not talk much about
themselves, and as a rule instinctively avoid thinking much about
themselves, as a habit tending to something they call "morbid." This at
least had been the tone in her parents' house. The old woman in Lancaster
Gate had not been capable either of talking or thinking about herself,
except as a fretful animal with certain simple bodily wants. In Helena,
Lucy Friend had for the first time come cross the type of which the world
is now full--men and women, but especially women, who have no use any
longer for the reticence of the past, who desire to know all they
possibly can about themselves, their own thoughts and sensations, their
own peculiarities and powers, all of which are endlessly interesting to
them; and especially to the intellectual _élite_ among them. Already,
before the war, the younger generation, which was to meet the brunt of
it, was an introspective, a psychological generation. And the great war
has made it doubly introspective, and doubly absorbed in itself. The mere
perpetual strain on the individual consciousness, under the rush of
strange events, has developed men and women abnormally.

Only now it is not an introspection, or a psychology, which writes
journals or autobiography. It is an introspection which _talks_; a
psychology which chatters, of all things small and great; asking its
Socratic way through all the questions of the moment, the most trivial,
and the most tremendous.

Coolness, an absence of the old tremors and misgivings that used
especially to haunt the female breast in the days of Miss Austen, is a
leading mark of the new type. So that Mrs. Friend need not have been
astonished to find Helena meeting her guardian next morning at breakfast
as though nothing had happened. He, like a man of the world, took his cue
immediately from her, and the conversation--whether it ran on the return
of Karsavina to the Russian Ballet, or the success of "Abraham Lincoln";
or the prospects of the Peace, or merely the weddings and buryings of
certain common acquaintances which appeared in the morning's _Times_--was
so free and merry, that Mrs. Friend began soon to feel her anxieties of
the night dropping away, to enjoy the little luxuries of the breakfast
table, and the pleasant outlook on the park, of the high, faded, and yet
stately room.

"What a charming view!" she said to Lord Buntingford, when they rose from
breakfast, and she made her way to the open window, while Helena was
still deep in the papers.

"You think so?" he said indifferently, standing beside her. "I'm afraid I
prefer London. But now on another matter--Do you mind taking up your
duties instanter?"

"Please--please let me!" she said, turning eagerly to him.

"Well--there is a cook-housekeeper somewhere--who, I believe, expects
orders. Do you mind giving them? Please do not look so alarmed! It is the
simplest matter in the world. You will appear to give orders. In reality
Mrs. Mawson will have everything cut and dried, and you will not dare to
alter a thing. But she expects you or me to pretend. And I should be
greatly relieved if you would do the pretending?"

"Certainly," murmured Mrs. Friend.

Lord Buntingford, looking at the terrace outside, made a sudden
gesture--half despair, half impatience.

"Oh, and there's old Fenn,--my head gardener. He's been here forty
years, and he sits on me like an old man of the sea. I know what he
wants. He's coming up to ask me about something he calls a herbaceous
border. You see that border there?"--he pointed--"Well, I barely know a
peony from a cabbage. Perhaps you do?" He turned towards her hopefully;
and Mrs. Friend felt the charm, as many other women had felt it before
her, of the meditative blue eyes, under the black and heavy brow. She
shook her head smiling.

He smiled in return.

"But, if you don't--would you mind--again--pretending? Would you see the
old fellow, some time this morning--and tell him to do exactly what he
damn pleases--I beg your pardon!--it slipped out. If not, he'll come into
my study, and talk a jargon of which I don't understand a word, for half
an hour. And as he's stone deaf, he doesn't understand a word I say.
Moreover when he's once there I can't get him out. And I've got a bit of
rather tough county business this morning. Would you mind? It's a great
deal to ask. But if you only let him talk--and look intelligent--"

"Of course I will," said Mrs. Friend, bewildered, adding rather
desperately, "But I don't know anything at all about it."

"Oh, that doesn't matter. Perhaps Helena does! By the way, she hasn't
seen her sitting-room."

He turned towards his ward, who was still reading at the table.

"I have arranged a special sitting-room for you, Helena. Would you like
to come and look at it?"

"What fun!" said Helena, jumping up. "And may I do what I like in it?"

Buntingford's mouth twisted a little.

"Naturally! The house is at your disposal. Turn anything out you
like--and bring anything else in. There is some nice old stuff about,
if you look for it. If you send for the odd man he'll move anything.
Well, I'd better show you what I arranged. But you can have any other
room you prefer."

He led the way to the first floor, and opened a door in a corner of the
pillared gallery.

"Oh, jolly!" cried Helena.

For they entered a lofty room, with white Georgian panelling, a few
pretty old cabinets and chairs, a chintz-covered sofa, a stand of stuffed
humming-birds, a picture or two, a blue Persian carpet, and a large
book-case full of books.

"My books!" cried Helena in amazement. "I was just going to ask if
the cases had come. How ever did you get them unpacked, and put here
so quickly?"

"Nothing easier. They arrived three days ago. I telephoned to a man I
know in Leicester Square. He sent some one down, and they were all
finished before you came down. Perhaps you won't like the arrangement?
Well, it will amuse you to undo it!"

If there was the slightest touch of sarcasm in the eyes that travelled
from her to the books, Helena took it meekly. She went to the
bookshelves. Poets, novelists, plays, philosophers, economists, some
French and Italian books, they were all in their proper places. The books
were partly her own, partly her mother's. Helena eyed them thoughtfully.

"You must have taken a lot of trouble."

"Not at all. The man took all the trouble. There wasn't much."

As he spoke, her eye caught a piano standing between the windows.

"Mummy's piano! Why, I thought we agreed it should be stored?"

"It seemed to me you might as well have it down here. We can easily hire
one for London."

"Awfully nice of you," murmured Helena. She opened it and stood with her
hand on the keys, looking out into the park, as though she pursued some
thought or memory of her own. It was a brilliant May morning, and the
windows were open. Helena's slim figure in a white dress, the reddish
touch in her brown hair, the lovely rounding of her cheek and neck, were
thrown sharply against a background of new leaf made by a giant beech
tree just outside. Mrs. Friend looked at Lord Buntingford. The thought
leaped into her mind--"How can he help making love to her himself?"--only
to be immediately chidden. Buntingford was not looking at Helena but at
his watch.

"Well, I must go and do some drivelling work before lunch. I have given
Mrs. Friend _carte blanche_, Helena. Order what you like, and if Mrs.
Mawson bothers you, send her to me. Geoffrey comes to-night, and we shall
be seven to-morrow."

He made for the door. Helena had turned suddenly at his last words, eye
and cheek kindling.

"Hm--" she said, under her breath--"So he has sent the telegram."

She left the window, and began to walk restlessly about the room, looking
now at the books, now at the piano. Her face hardened, and she paid no
attention to Mrs. Friend's little comments of pleasure on the room and
its contents. Presently indeed she cut brusquely across.

"I am just going down to the stables to see whether my horse has arrived.
A friend of mine bought her for me in town--and she was to be here early
this morning. I want, too, to see where they're going to put her."

"Mayn't I come too?" said Mrs. Friend, puzzled by the sudden clouding of
the girl's beautiful looks.

"Oh, no--please don't. You've got to see the housekeeper! I'll get my hat
and run down. I found out last night where the stables are. I shan't be
more than ten minutes or so."

She hurried away, leaving Mrs. Friend once more a prey to anxieties. She
recalled the threat of the night before. But no, _impossible_! After all
the kindness and the forethought! She dismissed it from her mind.

The interview with the housekeeper was an ordeal to the gentle
inexperienced woman. But her entire lack of any sort of pretension was in
itself ingratiating; and her manner had the timid charm of her character.
Mrs. Mawson, who might have bristled or sulked in stronger hands, in
order to mark her distaste for the advent of a mistress in the house she
had been long accustomed to rule, was soon melted by the docility of the
little lady, and graciously consented to see her own plans approved _en
bloc_, by one so frankly ignorant of how a country house party should be
conducted. Then it was the turn of old Fenn; a more difficult matter,
since he did genuinely want instructions, and Mrs. Friend had none to
give him. But kind looks, and sympathetic murmurs, mingled with honest
delight in the show of azaleas in the conservatory carried her through.
Old Fenn too, instead of resenting her, adopted her. She went back to the
house flushed with a little modest triumph.

Housewifely instincts revived in her. Her hands wanted to be doing. She
had ventured to ask Fenn for some flowers, and would dare to arrange them
herself if Mrs. Mawson would let her.

Then, as she re-entered the house, she came back at a bound to reality.
"If I can't keep Miss Pitstone out of mischief, I shan't be here a
month!" she thought pitifully; and how was it to be done?

She found Helena sitting demurely in the sitting-room, pretending to read
a magazine, but really, or so it seemed to Mrs. Friend, keeping both eyes
and ears open for events.

"I'm trying to get ready for Julian--" she said impatiently, throwing
away her book. "He sent me his article in the _Market Place_, but it's so
stiff that I can't make head or tail of it. I like to hear him talk--but
he doesn't write English."

Mrs. Friend took up the magazine, and perceived a marked item in the
table of contents--"A New Theory of Value."

"What does it mean?" she asked.

"Oh, I wish I knew!" said Helena, with a little yawn. "And then he
changes so. Last year he made me read Meredith--the novels, I mean. _One
of Our Conquerors_, he vowed, was the finest thing ever written. He
scoffed at me for liking _Diana_ and _Richard Feverel_ better, because
they were easier. And _now_, nothing's bad enough for Meredith's 'stilted
nonsense'--'characters without a spark of life in them'--'horrible
mannerisms'--you should hear him. Except the poems--ah, except the poems!
He daren't touch them. I say--do you know the 'Hymn to Colour'?" The
girl's eager eyes questioned her companion. Her face in a moment was all
softness and passion.

Mrs. Friend shook her head. The nature and deficiencies of her own
education were becoming terribly plain to her with every hour in
Helena's company.

Helena sprang up, fetched the book, put Mrs. Friend forcibly into an
arm-chair, and read aloud. Mrs. Friend listened with all her ears, and
was at the end, like Faust, no wiser than before. What did it all mean?
She groped, dazzled, among the Meredithian mists and splendours. But
Helena read with a growing excitement, as though the flashing
mysterious verse were part of her very being. When the last stanza was
done, she flung herself fiercely down on a stool at Mrs. Friend's feet,
breathing fast:

"Glorious!--oh, glorious!--

"Look now where Colour, the soul's bridegroom, makes
The House of Heaven splendid for the Bride."

She turned to look up at the little figure in the chair, half laughing,
half passionate: "You do understand, don't you?" Mrs. Friend again shook
her head despairingly.

"It sounds wonderful--but I haven't a notion what it means!" Helena
laughed again, but without a touch of mockery.

"One has to be taught--coached--regularly coached. Julian coached me."

"What is meant by Colour?" asked Mrs. Friend faintly.

"Colour is Passion, Beauty, Freedom!" said Helena, her cheek glowing. "It
is just the opposite of dulness--and routine--and make-believe. It's what
makes life worth while. And it is the young who feel it--the young who
hear it calling--the young who obey it! And then when they are old, they
have it to remember. Now, do you understand?"

Lucy Friend did not answer. But involuntarily, two shining tears stood in
her eyes. There was something extraordinarily moving in the girl's
ardour. She could hardly bear it. There came back to her momentary
visions from her own quiet past--a country lane at evening where a man
had put his arm round her and kissed her--her wedding-evening by the sea,
when the sun went down, and all the ways were darkened, and the stars
came out--and that telegram which put an end to everything, which she had
scarcely had time to feel, because her mother was so ill, and wanted her
every moment. Had she--even she--in her poor, drab, little life--had her
moments of living Poetry, of transforming Colour, like others--without
knowing it?

Helena watched her, as though in a quick, unspoken sympathy, her own
storm of feeling subsiding.

"Do you know, Lucy, you look very nice indeed in that little black
dress!" she said, in her soft, low voice, like the voice of an
incantation, that she had used the night before. "You are the neatest,
daintiest person!--not prim--but you make everything you wear refined.
When I compare you with Cynthia Welwyn!"

She raised her shoulders scornfully. Lucy Friend, aghast at the
outrageousness of the comparison, tried to silence her--but quite in
vain. Helena ran on.

"Did you watch Cynthia last night? She was playing for Cousin Philip with
all her might. Why doesn't he marry her? She would suit his autocratic
ideas very well. He is forty-four. She must be thirty-eight if she is a
day. They have both got money--which Cynthia can't do without, for she is
horribly extravagant. But I wouldn't give much for her chances. Cousin
Philip is a tough proposition, as the American says. There is no getting
at his real mind. All one knows is that it is a tyrannical mind!"

All softness had died from the girl's face and sparkling eyes. She sat on
the floor, her hands round her knees, defiance in every tense feature.
Mrs. Friend was conscious of renewed alarm and astonishment, and at last
found the nerve to express them.

"How can you call it tyrannical when he spends all this time and thought
upon you!"

"The gilding of the cage," said Helena stubbornly. "That is the way women
have always been taken in. Men fling them scraps to keep them quiet. But
as to the _real_ feast--liberty to discover the world for themselves,
make their own experiments--choose and test their own friends--no, thank
you! And what is life worth if it is only to be lived at somebody's
else's dictation?"

"But you have only been here twenty-four hours--not so much! And you
don't know Lord Buntingford's reasons--"

"Oh, yes, I do know!" said Helena, undisturbed--"more or less. I told you
last night. They don't matter to me. It's the principle involved that
matters. Am I free, or am I not free? Anyway, I've just sent that
telegram."

"To whom?" cried Mrs. Friend.

"To Lord Donald, of course, asking him to meet me at the Ritz next
Wednesday. If you will be so good"--the brown head made her a ceremonial
bow--"as to go up with me to town--we can go to my dressmaker's
together--I have got heaps to do there--then I can leave you somewhere
for lunch--and pick you up again afterwards!"

"Of course, Miss Pitstone--Helena!--I can't do anything of the sort,
unless your guardian agrees."

"Well, we shall see," said Helena coolly, jumping up. "I mean to tell him
after lunch. Don't please worry. And good-bye till lunch. This time I am
really going to look after my horse!"

A laugh, and a wave of the hand--she had disappeared. Mrs. Friend was
left to reflect on the New Woman. Was it in truth the war that had
produced her?--and if so, how and why? All that seemed probable was that
in two or three weeks' time, perhaps, she would be again appealing to the
same agency that had sent her to Beechmark. She believed she was entitled
to a month's notice.

Poor Lord Buntingford! Her sympathies were hotly on his side, so far as
she had any understanding of the situation into which she had been
plunged with so little warning. Yet when Helena was actually there at her
feet, she was hypnotized. The most inscrutable thing of all was, how she
could ever have supposed herself capable of undertaking such a charge!

The two ladies were already lunching when Lord Buntingford appeared,
bringing with him another neighbouring squire, come to consult him on
certain local affairs. Sir Henry Bostock, one of those solid, grey-haired
pillars of Church and State in which rural England abounds, was first
dazzled by Miss Pitstone's beauty, and then clearly scandalized by some
of her conversation, and perhaps--or so Mrs. Friend imagined--by the
rather astonishing "make-up" which disfigured lips and cheeks Nature had
already done her best with.

He departed immediately after lunch. Lord Buntingford accompanied him to
the front door, saw him mount his horse, and was returning to the
library, when a white figure crossed his path.

"Cousin Philip, I want to speak to you."

He looked up at once.

"All right, Helena. Will you come into the library?"

He ushered her in, shut the door behind her, and pushed forward an
arm-chair.

"You'll find that comfortable, I think?"

"Thank you, I'd rather stand. Cousin Philip, did you send that telegram
this morning?"

"Certainly. I told you I should."

"Then you won't be surprised that I too sent mine."

"I don't understand what you mean?"

"When this morning you said there would be seven for dinner to-night, I
of course realized that you meant to stick to what you had said about
Lord Donald yesterday; and as I particularly want to see Lord Donald, I
sent the new groom to the village this morning with a wire to him to say
that I should be glad if he would arrange to give me luncheon at the Ritz
next Wednesday. I have to go up to try a dress on."

Lord Buntingford paused a moment, looking apparently at the cigarette
with which his fingers were playing.

"You proposed, I imagine, that Mrs. Friend should go with you?"

"Oh, yes, to my dressmaker's. Then I would arrange for her to go
somewhere to lunch--Debenham's, perhaps."

"And it was your idea then to go alone--to meet Lord Donald?" He
looked up.

"He would wait for me in the lounge at the Ritz. It's quite simple!"

Philip Buntingford laughed--good-humouredly.

"Well, it is very kind of you to have told me so frankly, Helena--because
now I shall prevent it. It is the last thing in the world that your
mother would have wished, that you should be seen at the Ritz alone with
Lord Donald. I therefore have her authority with me in asking you either
to write or telegraph to him again to-night, giving up the plan. Better
still if you would depute me to do it. It is really a very foolish
plan--if I may say so."

"Why?"

"Because--well, there are certain things a girl of nineteen can't do
without spoiling her chances in life--and one of them is to be seen about
alone with a man like Lord Donald."

"And again I ask--why?"

"I really can't discuss his misdoings with you, Helena. Won't you trust
me in the matter? I thought I had made it plain that having been devoted
to your mother, I was prepared to be equally devoted to you, and wished
you to be as happy and free as possible."

"That's an appeal to sentiment," said Helena, resolutely. "Of course I
know it all sounds horrid. You've been as nice as possible; and anybody
who didn't sympathize with my views would think me a nasty, ungrateful
toad. But I'm not going to be coaxed into giving them up, any more than
I'm going to be bullied."

Lord Buntingford surveyed her. The habitual slight pucker--as though of
anxiety or doubt--in his brow was much in evidence. It might have meant
the chronic effort of a short-sighted man to see. But the fine candid
eyes were not short-sighted. The pucker meant something deeper.

"Of course I should like to understand what your views are," he said at
last, throwing away one cigarette, and lighting another.

Helena's look kindled. She looked handsomer and more maenad-like than
ever, as she stood leaning against Buntingford's writing-table, her arms
folded, one slim foot crossed over the other.

"The gist of them is," she said eagerly, "that _we_--the women of the
present day--are not going to accept our principles--moral--or
political--or economic--on anybody's authority. You seem, Cousin Philip,
in my case at any rate, to divide the world into two sets of people,
moral and immoral, good and bad--desirable and undesirable--that kind of
thing! And you expect me to know the one set, and ignore the other set.
Well, we don't see it that way at all. We think that everybody is a
pretty mixed lot. I know I am myself. At any rate I'm not going to begin
my life by laying down a heap of rules about things I don't
understand--or by accepting them from you, or anybody. If Lord Donald's a
bad man, I want to know why he is a bad man--and then I'll decide. If he
revolts my moral sense, of course I'll cut him. But I won't take anybody
else's moral sense for judge. We've got to overhaul that sort of thing
from top to bottom."

Buntingford looked thoughtfully at the passionate speaker. Should
he--could he argue with her? Could he show her, for instance, a letter,
or parts of it, which he had received that very morning from poor Luke
Preston, his old Eton and Oxford friend? No!--it would be useless. In her
present mood she might treat it so as to rouse his own temper--let alone
the unseemliness of the discussion it must raise between them. Or should
he give her a fairly full biography of Jim Donald, as he happened to know
it? He revolted against the notion, astonished to find how strong certain
old-fashioned instincts still were in his composition. And, after all, he
had said a good deal the night before, at dinner, when Helena's
invitation to a man he despised as a coward and a libertine had been
first sprung upon him. There really was only one way out. He took it.

"Well, Helena, I'm very sorry," he said slowly. "Your views are very
interesting. I should like some day to discuss them with you. But the
immediate business is to stop this Ritz plan. You really won't stop it
yourself?"

"Certainly not!" said Helena, her breath fluttering.

"Well, then, I must write to Donald myself. I happen to possess the means
of making it impossible for him to meet you at the Ritz next Wednesday,
Helena; and I shall use them. You must make some other arrangement."

"What means?" she demanded. She had turned very pale.

"Ah, no!--that you must leave to me. Look here, Helena"--his tone
softened--"can't we shake hands on it, and make up? I do hate quarrelling
with your mother's daughter."

Involuntarily, through all her rage, Helena was struck by the extreme
sensitiveness of the face opposite her--a sensitiveness often disguised
by the powerful general effect of the man's head and eyes. In a calmer
mood she might have said to herself that only some past suffering could
have produced it. At the moment, however, she was incapable of anything
but passionate resentment.

All the same there was present in her own mind an ideal of what the
action and bearing of a girl in her position should be, which, with the
help of pride, would not allow her to drift into mere temper. She put her
hands firmly behind her; so that Buntingford was forced to withdraw his;
but she kept her self-possession.

"I don't see what there is but quarrelling before us, Cousin Philip, if
you are to proceed on these lines. Are you really going to keep me to
my promise?"

"To let me take care of you--for these two years? It was not a promise to
me, Helena."

The girl's calm a little broke down.

"Mummy would never have made me give it," she said fiercely, "if she
had known--"

"Well, you can't ask her now," he said gently. "Hadn't we better make the
best of it?"

She scorned to reply. He opened the door for her, and she swept
through it.

Left to himself, Buntingford gave a great stretch.

"That was strenuous!"--he said to himself--"uncommonly strenuous. How
many times a week shall I have to do it? Can't Cynthia Welwyn do
anything? I'll go and see Cynthia this afternoon."

With which very natural, but quite foolish resolution, he at last
succeeded in quieting his own irritation, and turning his mind to a
political speech he had to make next week in his own village.




CHAPTER V


Cynthia Welwyn was giving an account of her evening at Beechmark to her
elder sister, Lady Georgina. They had just met in the little drawing-room
of Beechmark Cottage, and tea was coming in. It would be difficult to
imagine a greater contrast than the two sisters presented. They were the
daughters of a peer belonging to what a well-known frequenter of great
houses and great families before the war used to call "the inferior
aristocracy"--with an inflection of voice caught no doubt from the great
families themselves. Yet their father had been an Earl, the second of his
name, and was himself the son of a meteoric personage of mid-Victorian
days--parliamentary lawyer, peer, and Governor of an Indian Presidency,
who had earned his final step in the peerage by the skilful management of
a little war, and had then incontinently died, leaving his family his
reputation, which was considerable, and his savings, which were
disappointingly small. Lady Cynthia and Lady Georgina were his only
surviving children, and the earldom was extinct.

The sisters possessed a tiny house in Brompton Square, and rented
Beechmark Cottage from Lord Buntingford, of whom their mother, long since
dead, had been a cousin. The cottage stood within the enclosure of the
park, and to their connection with the big house the sisters owed a
number of amenities,--game in winter, flowers and vegetables in
summer--which were of importance to their small income. Cynthia Welwyn,
however, could never have passed as anybody's dependent. She thanked her
cousin occasionally for the kindnesses of which his head gardener and his
game-keeper knew much more than he did; and when he said
impatiently--"Please never thank for that sort of thing!" she dropped the
subject as lightly as she had raised it. Secretly she felt that such
things, and much more, were her due. She had not got from life all she
should have got; and it was only natural that people should make it up to
her a little.

For Cynthia, though she had wished to marry, was unmarried, and a secret
and melancholy conviction now sometimes possessed her that she would
remain Cynthia Welwyn to the end. She knew very well that in the opinion
of her friends she had fallen between two stools. Her neighbour, Sir
Richard Watson, had proposed to her twice,--on the last occasion some two
years before the war. She had not been able to make up her mind to accept
him, because on the whole she was more in love with her cousin, Philip
Buntingford, and still hoped that his old friendship for her might turn
to something deeper. But the war had intervened, and during its four
years she and Buntingford had very much lost sight of each other. She had
taken her full share in the county war work; while he was absorbed body
and soul by the Admiralty.

And now that they were meeting again as of old, she was very conscious,
in some undefined way, that she had lost ground with him. Uneasily she
felt that her talk sometimes bored him; yet she could not help talking.
In the pre-war days, when they met in a drawing-room full of people, he
had generally ended his evening beside her. Now his manner, for all its
courtesy, seemed to tell her that those times were done; that she was
four years older; that she had lost the first brilliance of her looks;
and that he himself had grown out of her ken. Helena's young unfriendly
eyes had read her rightly. She did wish fervently to recapture Philip
Buntingford; and saw no means of doing so. Meanwhile Sir Richard, now
demobilized, had come back from the war bringing great glory with him, as
one of the business men whom the Army had roped in to help in its vast
labour and transport organization behind the lines. He too had reappeared
at Beechmark Cottage. But he too was four years older--and dreadfully
preoccupied, it seemed to her, with a thousand interests which had
mattered nothing to him in the old easy days.

Yet Cynthia Welwyn was still an extremely attractive and desirable
woman, and was quite aware of it, as was her elder sister, Lady
Georgina, who spent her silent life in alternately admiring and
despising the younger. Lady Georgina was short, thin, and nearly
white-haired. She had a deep voice, which she used with a harsh
abruptness, startling to the newcomer. But she used it very little.
Cynthia's friends, were used to see her sitting absolutely silent behind
the tea-urn at breakfast or tea, filling the cups while Cynthia handed
them and Cynthia talked; and they had learned that it was no use at all
to show compassion and try to bring her into the conversation. A quiet
rather stony stare, a muttered "Ah" or "Oh," were all that such efforts
produced. Some of the frequenters of the cottage drawing-room were
convinced that Lady Georgina was "not quite all there." Others had the
impression of something watchful and sinister; and were accustomed to
pity "dear Cynthia" for having to live with so strange a being.

But in truth the sisters suited each other very fairly, and Lady Georgina
found a good deal more tongue when she was alone with Cynthia than at
other times.

To the lively account that Cynthia had been giving her of the evening at
Beechmark, and the behaviour of Helena Pitstone, Lady Georgina had
listened in a sardonic silence; and at the end of it she said--

"What ever made the man such a fool?"

"Who?--Buntingford? My dear, what could he do? Rachel Pitstone was his
greatest friend in the world, and when she asked him just the week before
she died, how could he say No?" Lady Georgina murmured that in that case
Rachel Pitstone also had been a fool--

"Unless, of course, she wanted the girl to marry Buntingford. Why,
Philip's only forty-four now. A nice age for a guardian! Of course it's
not proper. The neighbours will talk."

"Oh, no,--not with a chaperon. Besides nobody minds anything odd
nowadays."

Cynthia meanwhile as she lay stretched in a deep arm-chair, playing with
the tea-spoon in her shapely fingers, was a pleasant vision. Since coming
in from the village, she had changed her tweed coat and skirt for a
tea-frock of some soft silky stuff, hyacinth blue in colour; and
Georgina, for whom tea-frocks were a silly abomination, and who was
herself sitting bolt upright in a shabby blue serge some five springs
old, could not deny the delicate beauty of her sister's still fresh
complexion and pale gold hair, nor the effectiveness of the blue dress in
combination with them. She did not really want Cynthia to look older, nor
to see her ill-dressed; but all the same there were many days when
Cynthia's mature perfections roused a secret irritation in her sister--a
kind of secret triumph also in the thought that, in the end, Time would
be the master even of Cynthia. Perhaps after all she would marry. It did
look as though Sir Richard Watson, if properly encouraged, and
indemnified for earlier rebuffs, might still mean business. As for Philip
Buntingford, it was only Cynthia's vanity that had ever made her imagine
him in love with her. Lady Georgina scoffed at the notion.

These fragmentary reflections, and others like them were passing rapidly
and disconnectedly through the mind of the elder sister, when her ear
caught the sound of footsteps in the drive. Drawing aside a corner of the
muslin curtain beside her, which draped one of the French windows of the
low room, she perceived the tall figure and scarcely perceptible limp of
Lord Buntingford. Cynthia too saw him, and ceased to lounge. She quietly
re-lit the tea-kettle, and took a roll of knitting from a table near her.
Then as the front bell rang through the small house, she threw a scarcely
perceptible look at her sister. Would Georgie "show tact," and leave her
and Philip alone, or would she insist on her rights and spoil his visit?
Georgina made no sign.

Buntingford entered, flushed with his walk, and carrying a bunch of
blue-bells which he presented to Lady Georgina.

"I gathered them in Cricket Wood. The whole wood is a sea of blue. You
and Cynthia must really go and see them."

He settled himself in a chair, and plunged into tea and small talk as
though to the manner born. But all the time Cynthia, while approving his
naval uniform, and his general picturesqueness, was secretly wondering
what he had come about. For although he was enjoying a well-earned leave,
the first for two years, and had every right to idle, the ordinary
afternoon call of country life, rarely, as she knew, came into the scheme
of his day. The weather was beautiful and she had made sure that he would
be golfing on a well-known links some three miles off.

Presently the small talk flagged, and Buntingford began to fidget. Slowly
Lady Georgina rose from her seat, and again extinguished the flame under
the silver kettle. Would she go, or would she not go? Cynthia dropped
some stitches in the tension of the moment. Then Buntingford got up to
open the door for Georgina, who, without deigning to make any
conventional excuse for her departure, nevertheless departed.

Buntingford returned to his seat, picked up Cynthia's ball of wool, and
sat holding it, his eyes on the down-dropped head of his cousin, and on
the beautiful hands holding the knitting-needles. Yes, she was still very
good-looking, and had been sensible enough not to spoil herself by paint
and powder, unlike that silly child, Helena, who was yet so much
younger--twenty-two years younger, almost. It seemed incredible. But he
could reckon Cynthia's age to a day; for they had known each other very
well as children, and he had often given her a birthday present, till the
moment when, in her third season, Cynthia had peremptorily put an end to
the custom. Then he had gone abroad, and there had been a wide gap of
years when they had never seen each other at all. And now, it was true,
she did often bore him, intellectually. But at this moment, he was not
bored--quite the contrary. The sunny cottage room, with its flowers and
books and needlework, and a charming woman as its centre, evidently very
glad to see him, and ready to welcome any confidences he might give her,
produced a sudden sharp effect upon him. That hunger for something denied
him--the "It" which he was always holding at bay--sprang upon him, and
shook his self-control.

"We've known each other a long time, haven't we, Cynthia?" he said,
smiling, and holding out her ball of wool.

Cynthia hardly concealed her start of pleasure. She looked up, shaking
her hair from her white brow and temples with a graceful gesture, half
responsive, half melancholy.

"So long!" she said--"it doesn't bear thinking of."

"Not at all. You haven't aged a bit. I want you to help me in something,
Cynthia. You remember how you helped me out of one or two scrapes in the
old days?"

They both laughed. Cynthia remembered very well. That scrape, for
instance, with the seductive little granddaughter of the retired village
school-master--a veritable Ancient of Days, who had been the witness of
an unlucky kiss behind a hedge, and had marched up instanter, in his
wrath, to complain to Lord Buntingford _grand-père._ Or that much worse
scrape, when a lad of nineteen, with not enough to do in his Oxford
vacation, had imagined himself in love with a married lady of the
neighbourhood, twenty years older than himself, and had had to be packed
off in disgrace to Switzerland with a coach:--an angry grandfather
breathing fire and slaughter. Certainly in those days Philip had been
unusually--remarkably susceptible. Cynthia remembered him as always in or
out of a love-affair, while she to whom he never made love was
alternately champion and mentor. In those days, he had no expectation of
the estates or the title. He was plain Philip Bliss, with an artistic and
literary turn, great personal charm, and a temperament that invited
catastrophes. That was before he went to Paris and Rome for serious work
at painting. Seven years he had been away from England, and she had never
seen him. He had announced his marriage to her in a short note containing
hardly any particulars--except that his wife was a student like himself,
and that he intended to live abroad and work. Some four years later, the
_Times_ contained the bare news, in the obituary column, of his wife's
death, and about a year afterwards he returned to England, an enormously
changed man, with that slight lameness, which seemed somehow to draw a
sharp, dividing line between the splendid, impulsive youth who had gone
abroad, and the reserved, and self-contained man of thirty-two--pessimist
and dilettante--who had returned. His lameness he ascribed to an accident
in the Alps, but would never say anything more about it; and his friends
presently learned to avoid the subject, and to forget the slight signs of
something unexplained which had made them curious at first.

In the intervening years before the war, Cynthia felt tolerably sure that
she had been his only intimate woman friend. His former susceptibility
seemed to have vanished. On the whole he avoided women's society. Some
years after his return he had inherited the title and the estates, and
might have been one of the most invited men in London had he wished to
be; while Cynthia could remember at least three women, all desirable, who
would have liked to marry him. The war had swept him more decidedly than
ever out of the ordinary current of society. He had made it both an
excuse and a shield. His work was paramount; and even his old friends had
lost sight of him. He lived and breathed for an important Committee of
the Admiralty, on which as time went on he took a more and more important
place. In the four years Cynthia had scarcely seen him more than half a
dozen times.

And now the war was over. It was May again, and glorious May with the
world all colour and song, the garden a wealth of blossom, and the nights
clear and fragrant under moon or stars. And here was Philip again--much
more like the old Philip than he had been for years--looking at her with
those enchanting blue eyes of his, and asking her to do something for
him. No wonder Cynthia's pulses were stirred. The night before, she had
come home depressed--very conscious that she had had no particular
success with him at dinner, or afterwards. This unexpected _tête-à-tête_,
with its sudden touch of intimacy, made up for it all.

What could she do but assure him--trying hard not to be too
forthcoming--that she would be delighted to help him, if she could? What
was wrong?

"Nothing but my own idiocy," he said, smiling. "I find myself guardian to
an extremely headstrong young woman, and I don't know how to manage her.
I want your advice."

Cynthia lay back in her chair, and prepared to give him all her mind. But
her eyes showed a certain mockery.

"I wonder why you undertook it!"

"So do I. But--well, I couldn't help it. We won't discuss that. But what
I had very little idea of--was the modern girl!" Cynthia laughed out.

"And now you have discovered her--in one day?" He laughed too, but
rather dismally.

"Oh, I am only on the first step. What I shall come to presently, I don't
know. But the immediate problem is that Helena bombed me last night by
the unexpected announcement that she had asked Donald--Lord Donald--for
the week-end. Do you know him?" Cynthia's eyebrows had gone up.

"Very slightly."

"You know his reputation?"

"I begin to remember a good deal about him. Go on."

"Well, Helena had asked that man, without consulting me, to stay at my
house, and she sprang the announcement on me, on Thursday, the
invitation being for Saturday. I had to tell her then and there--that he
couldn't come."

"Naturally. How did she take it?"

"Very ill. You see, in a rash moment, I had told her to invite her
friends for week-ends as she pleased. So she holds that I have broken
faith, and this morning she told me she had arranged to go up and lunch
with Donald at the Ritz next week--alone! So again I had to stop it. But
I don't play the jailer even decently. I feel the greatest fool in
creation." Cynthia smiled.

"I quite believe you! And this all happened in the first twenty-four
hours? Poor Philip!"

"And I have also been informed that Helena's 'views' will not allow
her--in the future--to take my advice on any such questions--that
she prefers her liberty to her reputation--and 'wants to understand
a bad man.' She said so. It's all very well to laugh, Cynthia! But
what am I to do?"

Cynthia, however, continued to laugh unrestrainedly. And he joined in.

"And now you want advice?" she said at last, checking her mirth. "I'm
awfully sorry for you, Philip. What about the little chaperon?"

"As nice a woman as ever was--but I don't see her preventing Helena from
doing anything she wants to do. Helena will jolly well take care of that.
Besides she is too new to the job."

"She may get on better with Helena, perhaps, than a stronger woman,"
mused Cynthia. "But I am afraid you have got your work cut out. Wasn't it
very rash of you?"

"I couldn't help it," he repeated briefly. "And I must just do my best.
But I'd be awfully grateful if you'd take a hand, Cynthia. Won't you come
up and really make friends with her? She might take things from you that
she wouldn't from me."

Cynthia looked extremely doubtful.

"I am sure last night she detested me."

"How could you tell? And why should she?"

"I'm twenty years older. That's quite enough."

"You scarcely look a day older, Cynthia."

She sighed, and lightly touched his hand, with a caressing gesture he
remembered of old.

"Very nice of you to say it--but of course it isn't true. Well, Philip,
I'll do what I can. I'll wander up some time--on Sunday perhaps. With
your coaching, I could at least give her a biography of Jim Donald. One
needn't be afraid of shocking her?"

His eyebrows lifted.

"Who's shocked at anything nowadays? Look at the things girls read and
discuss! I'm old-fashioned, I suppose. But I really couldn't talk about
Donald to her this morning. The fellow is such a worm! It would come
better from you."

"Tell me a few more facts, then, about him, than I know at present."

He gave her rapidly a sketch of the life and antecedents of Lord Donald
of Dunoon--gambler, wastrel, _divorcé_, et cetera, speaking quite
frankly, almost as he would have spoken to a man. For there was nothing
at all distasteful to him in Cynthia's knowledge of life. In a woman of
forty it was natural and even attractive. The notion of a discussion of
Donald's love-affairs with Helena had revolted him. It was on the
contrary something of a relief--especially with a practical object in
view--to discuss them with Cynthia.

They sat chatting till the shadows lengthened, then wandered into the
garden, still talking. Lady Georgina, watching from her window upstairs,
had to admit that Buntingford seemed to like her sister's society. But if
she had been within earshot at the last five minutes of their
conversation, she would perhaps have seen no reason, finally, to change
her opinion. Very agreeable that discursive talk had been to both
participants. Buntingford had talked with great frankness of his own
plans. In three months or so, his Admiralty work would be over. He
thought very likely that the Government would then give him a modest
place in the Administration. He might begin by representing the Admiralty
in the Lords, and as soon as he got a foot on the political ladder
prospects would open. On the whole, he thought, politics would be his
line. He had no personal axes to grind; was afraid of nothing; wouldn't
care if the Lords were done away with to-morrow, and could live on a
fraction of his income if the Socialists insisted on grabbing the rest.
But the new world which the war had opened was a desperately interesting
one. He hadn't enough at stake in it to spoil his nerve. Whatever
happened, he implied, he was steeled--politically and intellectually.
Nothing could deprive him either of the joy of the fight, or the
amusement of the spectacle.

And Cynthia, her honey-gold hair blown back from her white temples by the
summer wind, her blue parasol throwing a summer shade about her, showed
herself, as they strolled backwards and forwards over the shady lawn of
the cottage, a mistress of the listening art; and there is no art more
winning, either to men or women.

Then, in a moment, what broke the spell? Some hint or question from her,
of a more intimate kind?--something that touched a secret place, wholly
unsuspected by her? She racked her brains afterwards to think what it
could have been; but in vain. All she knew was that the man beside her
had suddenly stiffened. His easy talk had ceased to flow; while still
walking beside her, he seemed to be miles away. So that by a quick common
impulse both stood still.

"I must go back to the village," said Cynthia. She smiled, but her face
had grown a little tired and faded.

He looked at his watch.

"And I told the car to fetch me half an hour ago. You'll be up some time
perhaps--luncheon to-morrow?--or Sunday?"

"If I can. I'll do my best."

"Kind Cynthia!" But his tone was perfunctory, and his eyes avoided her.
When he had gone, she could only wonder what she had done to offend him;
and a certain dreariness crept into the evening light. She was not the
least in love with Philip--that she assured herself. But his sudden
changes of mood were very trying to one who would like to be his friend.

Buntingford walked rapidly home. His way lay through an oak wood, that
was now a revel of spring; overhead, a shimmering roof of golden leaf and
wild cherry-blossom, and underfoot a sea of blue-bells. A winding path
led through it, and through the lovely open and grassy spaces which from
time to time broke up the density of the wood--like so many green floors
cleared for the wood nymphs' dancing. From the west a level sun struck
through the trees, breaking through storm-clouds which had been rapidly
filling the horizon, and kindling the tall trees, with their ribbed grey
bark, till they shone for a brief moment like the polished pillars in the
house of Odysseus. Then a nightingale sang. Nightingales were rare at
Beechmark; and Buntingford would normally have hailed the enchanted
flute-notes with a boyish delight. But this evening they fell on deaf
ears, and when the garish sunlight gave place to gloom, and drops of rain
began to patter on the new leaf, the gathering storm, and the dark
silence of the wood, after the nightingale had given her last trill, were
welcome to a man struggling with a recurrent and desperate oppression.

Must he always tamely submit to the fetters which bound him? Could he do
nothing to free himself? Could the law do nothing? Enquiry--violent
action of some sort--rebellion against the conditions which had grown so
rigid about him:--for the hundredth time, he canvassed all ways of
escape, and for the hundredth time, found none.

He knew very well what was wrong with him. It was simply the imperious
need for a woman's companionship in his life--for _love_. Physically and
morally, the longing which had lately taken possession of him, was
becoming a gnawing and perpetual distress. There was the plain fact. This
hour with Cynthia Welwyn had stirred in him the depths of old pain. But
he was not really in love with Cynthia. During the war, amid the
absorption of his work, and the fierce pressure of the national need, he
had been quite content to forget her. His work--and England's strait--had
filled his mind and his time. Except for certain dull resentments and
regrets, present at all times in the background of consciousness, the
four years of the war had been to him a period of relief, almost of
deliverance. He had been able to lose himself; and in that inner history
of the soul which is the real history of each one of us, that had been
for long years impossible.

But now all that protection and help was gone; the floodgates were
loosened again. His work still went on; but it was no longer absorbing;
it no longer mattered enough to hold in check the vague impulses and
passions that were beating against his will.

And meanwhile the years were running on. He was forty-four, Helena
Pitstone's guardian, and clearly relegated already by that unmanageable
child to the ranks of the middle-aged. He had read her thought in her
great scornful eyes. "What has your generation to do with mine? Your
day is over!"

And all the while the ugly truth was that he had never had his "day"--and
was likely now to miss it for good. Or at least such "day" as had shone
upon him had been so short, so chequered, so tragically wiped out, it
might as well never have dawned. Yet the one dear woman friend to whom in
these latter years he had spoken freely, who knew him through and
through--Helena Pitstone's mother--had taken for granted, in her quiet
ascetic way, that he had indeed had his chance, and must accept for good
and all what had come of it. It was because she thought of him as set
apart, as debarred by what had happened to him, from honest love-making,
and protected by his own nature from anything less, that she had asked
him to take charge of Helena. He realized it now. It had been the notion
of a fanciful idealist, springing from certain sickroom ideas of
sacrifice--renunciation--submission to the will of God--and so forth.

It was _not_ the will of God!--that he should live forsaken and die
forlorn! He hurled defiance, even at Rachel, his dear dead friend, who
had been so full of pity for him, and for whom he had felt the purest and
most unselfish affection he had ever known--since his mother's death.

And now the presence of her child in his house seemed to represent a
verdict, a sentence--of hers upon him, which he simply refused to accept
as just or final. If Rachel had only lived a little longer he would have
had it out with her. But in those last terrible days, how could he either
argue--or refuse?

All the same, he would utterly do his duty by Helena. If she chose to
regard him as an old fogy, well and good--it was perhaps better so. Not
that--if circumstances had been other than they were---he would have been
the least inclined to make love to her. Her beauty was astonishing. But
the wonderful energy and vitality of her crude youth rather repelled than
attracted him.

The thought of the wrestles ahead of him was a weariness to an already
tired man. Debate with her, on all the huge insoluble questions she
seemed to be determined to raise, was of all things in the world most
distasteful to him. He would certainly cut a sorry figure in it; nothing
was more probable.

The rain began to plash down upon his face and bared head, cooling an
inner fever. The damp wood, the soft continuous dripping of the
cherry-blossoms, the scent of the blue-bells,--there was in them a
certain shelter and healing. He would have liked to linger there. But
already, at Beechmark, guests must have arrived; he was being missed.

The trees thinned, and the broad lawns of Beechmark came in sight.
Ah!--there was Geoffrey, walking up and down with Helena. _Suppose_ that
really came off? What a comfortable way out! He and Cynthia must back it
all they could.




CHAPTER VI


"Buntingford looks twice as old as he need!" said Geoffrey French,
lighting a cigarette as he and Helena stepped out of the drawing-room
window after dinner into the May world outside--a world which lay steeped
in an after-glow of magical beauty. "What's wrong, I wonder! Have you
been plaguing him, Helena?" The laughing shot was fired purely at random.
But the slight start and flush it produced in Helena struck him.

"I see nothing wrong with him," said Helena, a touch of defiance in her
voice. "But of course it's extraordinarily difficult to get on with him."

"With Philip!--the jolliest, kindest chap going! What do you mean?"

"All right. It's no good talking to anybody with a _parti pris_!"

"No--but seriously, Helena--what's the matter? Why, you told me you only
began the new arrangement two days ago."

"Exactly. And there's been time already for a first-class quarrel. Time
also for me to see that I shall never, never get on with him. I don't
know how we are to get through the two years!"

"_Well_!" ejaculated her companion. "In Heaven's name, what has he
been doing?"

Helena shrugged her shoulders. She was striding beside him like a young
Artemis--in white, with a silver star in her hair, and her short skirts
beaten back from her slender legs and feet by the evening wind. Geoffrey
French, who had had a classical education, almost looked for the quiver
and the bow. He was dazzled at once, and provoked. A magnificent
creature, certainly--"very mad and very handsome!"--he recalled
Buntingford's letter.

"Do tell me, Helena!" he urged.

"What's the good? You'll only side with him--and _preach_. You've done
that several times already."

The young man frowned a little.

"I don't preach!" he said shortly. "I say what I think--_when_ you ask
me. Twice, if I remember right, you told me of some proceeding of yours,
and asked me for my opinion. Well, I gave it, and it didn't happen to be
yours. But that isn't preaching."

"You gave so many reasons--it _was_ preaching."

"Great Scott!--wasn't it more polite to give one's reasons?"

"Perhaps. But one shouldn't _burst_ with them. One should be sorry to
disagree."

"Hm. Well--now kindly lay down for me, how I am to disagree with you
about Philip. For I do disagree with you, profoundly."

"There it is. Profoundly--that shows how you enjoy disagreeing. Why can't
you put yourself at my point of view?"

"Well, I'll try. But at least--explain it to me."

Helena threw herself into a garden chair, under a wild cherry which rose
a pyramid of silver against an orange sky. Other figures were scattered
about the lawns, three or four young men, and three or four girls in
light dresses. The air seemed to be full of laughter and young voices.
Only Mrs. Friend sat shyly by herself just within the drawing-room
window, a book on her knee. A lamp behind her brought out the lines of
her bent head and slight figure.

"I wonder if I like you well enough," said Helena coolly, biting at a
stalk of grass--"well enough, I mean, to explain things. I haven't made
you my father confessor yet, Geoffrey."

"Suppose you begin--and see how it answers," said French lazily, rolling
over on the grass in front of her, his chin in his hands.

"Well, I don't mind--for fun. Only if you preach I shall stop. But, first
of all, let's get some common ground. You admit, I suppose, that the war
has changed the whole position of women?"

"Yes--with reservations."

"Don't state them!" said Helena hastily. "That would be preaching.
Yes, or No?"

"Yes, then,--you tyrant!"

"And that means--doesn't it--at the very least--that girls of my own age
have done with all the old stupid chaperonage business--at least nearly
all--that we are to choose our own friends, and make our own
arrangements?--doesn't it?" she repeated peremptorily.

"I don't know. My information is--that the mothers are stiffening."

A laughing face looked up at her from the grass.

"Stiffening!" The tone was contemptuous. "Well, that may be so--for babes
of seventeen--like that one--" her gesture indicated a slight figure in
white at the edge of the lawn--"who have never been out of the
school-room--but--"

"You think nineteen makes all the difference? I doubt," said Geoffrey
French coolly, as he sat up tailor-fashion, and surveyed her. "Well, my
view is that for the babes, as you call them, chaperonage is certainly
reviving. I have just been sitting next Lady Maud, this babe's mother,
and she told me an invitation came for the babe from some great house
last week, addressed to 'Miss Luton and partner'--whereon Lady Maud wrote
back--'My daughter has no partner and I shall be very happy to bring
her.' Rather a poke in the eye! Then there are the women of five or six
and twenty who have been through the war, and are not likely to give up
the freedom of it--ever again. That's all right. They'll take their own
risks. Many of them will prefer not to live at home again. They'll live
with a friend--and visit their people perhaps every day! But, then
there's _you_, Helena--the betwixt and between!--"

"Well--what about me?"

"You're neither a babe--nor a veteran."

"I'm nineteen and a half--and I've done a year and a half of war work--"

"Canteen--and driving? All right. Am I to give an opinion?"

"You will give it, whatever I say. And it's you all over--to give it,
before you've allowed me to explain anything."

"Oh, I know your point of view--" said Geoffrey, unperturbed--"know it by
heart. Haven't you dinned it into me at half a dozen dances lately?
No!--I'm entitled to my say--and here it is. Claim all the freedom you
like--but as you're _not_ twenty-five, but nineteen--let a good fellow
like Buntingford give you advice--and be thankful!"

"Prig!" said Helena, pelting him with a spray of wild cherry, which he
caught and put in his button-hole. "If that isn't preaching, I should
like to know what is!"

"Not at all. Unbiased opinion--civilly expressed. If you really were an
emancipated young woman, Helena, you'd take it so! But now--" his tone
changed--"let's come to business. What have you and Philip been
quarrelling about?"

Helena straightened her shoulders, as though to meet certain disapproval.

"Because--I asked Lord Donald to spend the week-end here--"

"You didn't!"

"I did; and Cousin Philip wired to him and forbade him the house.
Offence No. 1. Then as I intended all the same to see Jim, I told him I
would go up and lunch with him at the Ritz. Cousin Philip vows I shan't,
and he seems to have some underhand means of stopping it--I--I don't
know what--"

"Underhand! Philip! I say, Helena, I wonder whether you have any idea how
people who really know him think about Buntingford!"

"Oh, of course men back up men!"

"Stuff! It's really silly--abominable too--the way you talk of him--I
can't help saying it."

And this time it was Geoffrey's turn to look indignant. His long face
with its deeply set grey eyes, a rather large nose, and a fine brow under
curly hair, had flushed suddenly.

"If you can't help it, I suppose you must say it. But I don't know why I
should stay and listen," said Helena provokingly, making a movement as
though to rise. But he laid a hand on her dress:

"No, no, Helena, don't go--look here--do you ever happen to notice
Buntingford--when he's sitting quiet--and other people are talking
round him?"

"Not particularly." The tone was cold, but she no longer threatened
departure.

"Well, I just ask you--some time--to _watch_. An old friend of his
said to me the other day--'I often feel that Buntingford is the
saddest man I know.'"

"Why should he be?" asked Helena imperiously.

"I can't tell you. No one can. It's just what those people think who know
him best. Well, that's one fact about him--that his _men_ friends feel
they could no more torment a wounded soldier, than worry Buntingford--if
they could help it. Then there are other facts that no one knows unless
they've worked in Philip's office, where all the men clerks and all the
women typists just adore him! I happen to know a good deal about it. I
could tell you things--"

"For Heaven's sake, don't!" cried Helena impatiently. "What does it
matter? He may be a saint--with seven haloes--for those that don't cross
him. But _I_ want my freedom!"--a white foot beat the ground
impatiently--"and he stands in the way."

"Freedom to compromise yourself with a scoundrel like Donald! What _can_
you know about such a man--compared with what Philip knows?"

"That's just it--I _want_ to know--" said Helena in her most stubborn
voice. "This is a world, now, in which we've all got to know,--both the
bad and the good of it. No more taking it on trust from other people! Let
us learn it for ourselves."

"Helena!--you're quite mad!" said the young man, exasperated.

"Perhaps I am. But it's a madness you can't cure." And springing to her
feet, she sent a call across the lawn--"Peter!" A slim boy who was
walking beside the "babe" of seventeen, some distance away, turned
sharply at the sound, and running across the grass pulled up in front
of Helena.

"Well?--here I am."

"Shall we go and look at the lake? You might pull me about a little."

"Ripping!" said the youth joyously. "Won't you want a cloak?"

"No--it's so hot. Shall we ask Miss Luton?"

Peter made a face.

"Why should we?"

Helena laughed, and they went off together in the direction of a strip of
silver under distant trees on which the moon was shining.

French walked away towards the girlish figure now deserted.

Helena watched him out of the corner of her eyes, saw the girl's eager
greeting, and the disappearance of the two in the woody walk that
bordered the lawn. Then she noticed a man sitting by himself not far
away, with a newspaper on his knee.

"Suppose we take Mr. Horne, Peter?"

"Don't let's take anybody!" said the boy. "And anyway Horne's a nuisance
just now. He talks you dead with strikes--and nationalization--and labour
men--and all that rot. Can't we ever let it alone? I want to talk to
_you_, Helena. I say, you are ripping in that dress! You're just
_divine_, Helena!" The girl laughed, her sweetest, most rippling laugh.

"Go on like that, Peter. You can't think how nice it sounds--especially
after Geoffrey's been lecturing for all he's worth."

"Lecturing? Oh well, if it comes to that, I've got my grievance too,
Helena. We'll have it out, when I've found the boat."

"Forewarned!" said Helena, still laughing. "Perhaps I won't come."

"Oh, yes, you will," said the boy confidently. "I believe you know
perfectly well what it's about. You've got a guilty conscience,
Miss Helena!"

Helena said nothing, till they had pushed the boat out from the reeds
and the water-lilies, and she was sitting with the steering ropes in
her hands opposite a boy in his shirt sleeves, with the head and face
of a cherub, and the spare frame of an athlete, who was devouring her
with his eyes.

"Are you quite done with the Army, Peter?"

"Quite. Got out a month ago. You come to me, Helena, if you want any
advice about foreign loans--eh? I can tell you a thing or two."

"Are you going to be very rich?"

"Well, I'm pretty rich already," said the boy candidly. "It seems beastly
to be wanting more. But my uncles would shove me into the Bank. I
couldn't help it."

"You'll never look so nice as you did in your khaki, Peter. What have you
done with all your ribbons?"

"What, the decorations? Oh, they're kicking about somewhere."

"You're not to let your Victoria Cross kick about, as you call it," said
Helena severely. "By the way, Peter, you've never told me yet--Oh, I saw
the bit in the _Times_. But I want _you_ to tell me about it. Won't you?"

She bent forward, all softness, her beautiful eyes on her companion.

"No!" said Peter with energy--"_never_!"

She considered him.

"Was it so awful?" she asked under her breath.

"For God's sake, don't ask questions!" said the boy angrily. "You know I
want to forget it. I shall never be quite right till I do forget it."

She was silent. It was his twin brother he had tried to save--staggering
back through a British barrage with the wounded man on his
shoulders--only to find, as he stumbled into the trench, that he had been
carrying the dead. He himself had spent six months in hospital from the
effects of wounds and shock. He had emerged to find himself a V. V. and
A. D. C. to his Army Commander; and apparently as gay and full of fun as
before. But his adoring mother and sisters knew very well that there were
sore spots in Peter.

Helena realized that she had touched one. She bent forward presently, and
laid her own hand on one of the hands that were handling the sculls.

"Dear Peter!"

He bent impetuously, and kissed the hand before she could withdraw it.

"Don't you play with me, Helena," he said passionately. "I'm not a child,
though I look it ... Now, then, let's have it out."

They had reached the middle of the pond, and were drifting across a
moonlit pathway, on either side of which lay the shadow of deep woods,
now impenetrably dark. The star in Helena's hair glittered in the light,
and the face beneath it, robbed of its daylight colour, had become a
study in black and white, subtler and more lovely than the real Helena.

"Why did you do it, Helena?" said Peter suddenly.

"Do what?"

"Why did you behave to me as you did, at the Arts Ball? Why did you cut
me, not once--but twice--three times--for that _beast_ Donald?"

Helena laughed.

"Now _you're_ beginning!" she said, as she lazily trailed her hand in the
water. "It's really comic!"

"What do you mean?"

"Only that I've already quarrelled with Cousin Philip--and
Geoffrey--about Lord Donald--so if you insist on quarrelling too, I shall
have no friends left."

"Damn Donald! It's like his impudence to ask you to dance at all. It made
me sick to see you with him. He's the limit. Well, but--I'm not going to
quarrel about Donald, Helena--I'm not going to quarrel about anything.
I'm going to have my own say--and you can't escape this time--you witch!"

Helena looked round the pond.

"I can swim," she said tranquilly.

"I should jump in after you--and we'd both go down together. No,
but--listen to me, dear Helena! Why won't you marry me? You say
sometimes--that you care for me a little."

The boy's tone faltered.

"Why won't I marry you? Perhaps because you ask me so often," said
Helena, laughing. "Neglect me--be rude to me--cut me at a dance, and
then see."

"I couldn't--it matters too much."

"Dear Peter! But can't you understand that I don't want to commit myself
just yet? I want to have my life to myself a bit. I'm like the miners and
the railway men. I'm full of unrest! I can't and won't settle down just
yet. I want to look at things--the world's like a great cinema show just
now--everything passing so quick you can hardly take breath. I want to
sample it where I please. I want to dance--and talk--and make
experiments."

"Well--marrying me would be an experiment," said Peter stoutly. "I vow
you'd never regret it, Helena!"

"But I can't vow that you wouldn't! Let me alone, Peter. I suppose some
time I shall quiet down. It doesn't matter if I break my own heart. But I
won't take the responsibility of anybody else's heart just yet."

"Well, of course, that means you're not in love with anybody. You'd soon
chuck all that nonsense if you were."

The young, despairing voice thrilled her. It was all
experience--life--drama--this floating over summer water--with a
beautiful youth, whose heart seemed to be fluttering in her very hands.
But she was only thrilled intellectually--as a spectator. Peter would
soon get over it. She would be very kind to him, and let him down easily.
They drifted silently a little. Then Peter said abruptly:

"Well, at least, Helena, you might promise me not to dance with Jim
Donald again!"

"Peter--my promises of that kind--are worth nothing! ... I think it's
getting late--we ought to be going home!" And she gave the rudder a turn
for the shore.

He unwillingly complied, and after rowing through the shadow of the
woods, they emerged on a moonlit slope of lawn, where was the usual
landing-place. Two persons who had been strolling along the edge of the
water approached them.

"Who is that with Buntingford?" asked Dale.

"My new chaperon. Aren't you sorry for her?"

"I jolly well am!" cried Peter. "She'll have a dog's life!"

"That's very rude of you, Peter. You may perhaps be surprised to hear
that I like her very much. She's a little dear--and I'm going to be
awfully good to her."

"Which means, of course, that she'll never dare to cross you!"

"Peter, don't be unkind! Dear Peter--make it up! I do want to be friends.
There's just time for you to say something nice!"

For his vigorous strokes were bringing them rapidly to the bank.

"Oh, what's the good of talking!" said the boy impatiently. "I shall be
friends, of course--take what you fling me. I can't do anything else."

Helena blew him a kiss, to which he made no response.

"All right!--I'll bring you in!" said Lord Buntingford from the shore.

He dragged the boat up on the sandy edge, and offered a hand to Helena.
She stumbled out, and would have fallen into the shallow water but for
his sudden grip upon her.

"That was stupid of me!" she said, vexed with herself.

He made no reply. It was left to Mrs. Friend to express a hope that she
had not sprained her foot.

"Oh, dear no," said Helena. "But I'm cold. Peter, will you race me to the
house? Give me a fair start!"

Peter eagerly placed her, and then--a maiden flying and a young god
pursuing--they had soon drawn the eyes and laughter of all the other
guests, who cheered as the panting Helena, winner by a foot, dashed
through the drawing-room window into the house.

Helena and Mrs. Friend had been discussing the evening,--Helena on the
floor, in a white dressing-gown, with her hair down her back. She had
amused herself with a very shrewd analysis--not too favourable--of
Geoffrey French's character and prospects, and had rushed through an
eloquent account of Peter's performances in the war; she had mocked at
Lady Maud's conventionalities, and mimicked the "babe's" simpering manner
with young men; she had enquired pityingly how Mrs. Friend had got on
with the old Canon who had taken her in to dinner, and had launched into
rather caustic and, to Mrs. Friend's ear, astonishing criticisms of
"Cousin Philip's wine"--which Mrs. Friend had never even dreamt of
tasting. But of Cousin Philip himself there was not a word. Mrs. Friend
knew there had been an interview between them; but she dared not ask
questions. How to steer her way in the moral hurricane she foresaw, was
what preoccupied her; so as both to do her duty to Lord B. and yet keep a
hold on this strange being in whose good graces she still found
herself--much to her astonishment.

Then with midnight Helena departed. But long after she was herself in
bed, Mrs. Friend heard movements in the adjoining room, and was aware of
a scent of tobacco stealing in through her own open window.

Helena, indeed, when she found herself alone was, for a time, too excited
to sleep, and cigarettes were her only resource. She was conscious of an
exaltation of will, a passionate self-assertion, beating through all her
veins, which made sleep impossible. Cousin Philip had scarcely addressed
a word to her during the evening, and had bade her a chilly good-night.
Of course, if that was to be his attitude it was impossible she could go
on living under his roof. Her mother could not for a moment have expected
her to keep her word, under such conditions ... And yet--why retreat? Why
not fight it out, temperately, but resolutely? "I lost my temper again
like an idiot, this morning--I mustn't--mustn't--lose it. He had jolly
well the best of it."

"Self-determination"--that was what she was bent on. If it was good for
nations, it was good also for individuals. Liberty to make one's own
mistakes, to face one's own risks--that was the minimum. And for one
adult human being to accept the dictation of another human being was the
only sin worth talking about. The test might come on some trivial thing,
like this matter of Lord Donald. Well,--she must be content to "find
quarrel in a straw, where honour is at stake." Yet, of course, her
guardian was bound to resist. The fight between her will and his was
natural and necessary. It was the clash of two generations, two views of
life. She was not merely the wilful and insubordinate girl she would
have been before the war; she saw herself, at any rate, as something
much more interesting. All over the world there was the same breaking of
bonds; and the same instinct towards _violence_. "The violent taketh by
force." Was it the instinct that war leaves, and must leave, behind
it--its most sinister, or its most pregnant, legacy? She was
passionately conscious of it, and of a strange thirst to carry it into
reckless action. The unrest in her was the same unrest that was driving
men everywhere--and women, too--into industrial disturbance and moral
revolt. The old is done with; and the Tree of Life needs to be well
shaken before the new fruit will drop.

Wild thoughts like these ran through her mind. Then she scoffed at
herself for such large notions, about so small a thing. And suddenly
something checked her--the physical recollection, as it were, left
tingling in her hand, of the grasp by which Buntingford had upheld her,
as she was leaving the boat. With it went a vision of his face, his dark,
furrowed face, in the moonlight.

"The saddest man I know." Why and wherefore? Long after she was in bed,
she lay awake, absorbed in a dreamy yet intense gathering together of all
that she could recollect of Cousin Philip, from her childhood up, through
her school years, and down to her mother's death. Till now he had been
part of the more or less pleasant furniture of life. She seemed to be on
the way to realize him as a man--perhaps a force. It was unsuspected--and
rather interesting.




CHAPTER VII


The drought continued; and under the hot sun the lilacs were already
pyramids of purple, the oaks were nearly in full leaf, and the hawthorns
in the park and along the hedges would soon replace with another white
splendour the fading blossom of the wild cherries.

It was Sunday morning, and none of the Beechmark party except Mrs.
Friend, Lady Luton and her seventeen-year-old daughter had shown any
inclination to go to church. Geoffrey French and Helena had escorted the
churchgoers the short way across the park, taking a laughing leave of
them at the last stile, whence the old church was but a stone's throw.
There was a circle of chairs on the lawn intermittently filled by
talkers. Lord Buntingford was indoors and was reported to have had some
ugly news that morning of a discharged soldiers' riot in a neighbouring
town where he owned a good deal of property. The disturbance had been for
the time being suppressed, but its renewal was expected, and Buntingford,
according to Julian Horne, who had been in close consultation with him,
was ready to go over at any moment, on a telephone call from the town
authorities, and take what other "specials" he could gather with him.

"It's not at all a nice business," said Horne, looking up from his long
chair, as Geoffrey French and Helena reappeared. "And if Philip is rung
up, he'll sweep us all in. So don't be out of the way, Geoffrey."

"What's the matter? Somebody has been bungling as usual, I suppose," said
Helena in her most confident and peremptory tone.

"The discharged men say that nobody pays any attention to them--and they
mean to burn down something."

"On the principle of the Chinaman, and 'roast pig,'" said French,
stretching himself at full length on the grass, where Helena was already
sitting. "What an extraordinary state of mind we're all in! We all want
to burn something. I want to burn the doctors, because some of the
medical boards have been beasts to some of my friends; the soldiers over
at Dansworth want to burn the town, because they haven't been made enough
of; the Triple Alliance want to burn up the country to cook their roast
pig--and as for you, Helena--"

He turned a laughing face upon her--but before she could reply, a
telephone was heard ringing, through the open windows of the house.

"For me, I expect," exclaimed Helena, springing up. She disappeared
within the drawing-room, returning presently, with flushed cheeks, and a
bearing of which Geoffrey French at once guessed the meaning.

"Donald has thrown her over?" he said to himself. "Of course Philip had
the trump card!"

Helena, however, said nothing. She took up a book she had left on the
grass, and withdrew with it to the solitary shelter of a cedar some yards
away. Quiet descended on the lawns. The men smoked or buried themselves
in a sleepy study of the Sunday papers. The old house lay steeped in
sunshine. Occasional bursts of talk arose and died away; a loud cuckoo in
a neighbouring plantation seemed determined to silence all its bird
rivals; while once or twice the hum of an aeroplane overhead awoke even
in the drowsiest listener dim memories of the war.

Helena was only pretending to read. The telephone message which had
reached her had been from Lord Donald's butler--not even from Lord Donald
himself!--and had been to the effect that "his lordship" asked him to say
that he had been obliged to go to Scotland for a fortnight, and was very
sorry he had not been able to answer Miss Pitstone's telegram before
starting. Helena's cheeks were positively smarting under the humiliation
of it. Donald _daring_ to send her a message through a servant, when she
had telegraphed to him! For of course it was all a lie as to his having
left town--one could tell that from the butler's voice. He had been
somehow frightened by Cousin Philip, and was revenging himself by
rudeness to _her_. She seemed to hear "Jim" and his intimates discussing
the situation. Of course it would only amuse them!--everything amused
them!--that Buntingford should have put his foot down. How she had
boasted, both to Jim and to some of his friends, of the attitude she
meant to take up with her guardian during her "imprisonment on parole."
And this was the end of the first bout. Cousin Philip had been easily
master, and instead of making common cause with her against a ridiculous
piece of tyranny, Lord Donald had backed out. He might at least have been
sympathetic and polite--might have come himself to speak to her at the
telephone, instead--

Her blood boiled. How was she going to put up with this life? The irony
of the whole position was insufferable. Geoffrey's ejaculation for
instance when she had invited him to her sitting-room after breakfast
that he might look for a book he had lent her--"My word, Helena, what a
jolly place!--Why, this was the old school-room--I remember it
perfectly--the piggiest, shabbiest old den. And Philip has had it all
done up for you? Didn't know he had so much taste!" And then, Geoffrey's
roguish look at her, expressing the "chaff" he restrained for fear of
offending her. Lucy Friend, too, Captain Lodge, Peter--everybody--no one
had any sympathy with her. And lastly, Donald himself--coward!--had
refused to play up. Not that she cared one straw about him personally.
She knew very well that he was a poor creature. It was the _principle_
involved:--that a girl of nineteen is to be treated as a free and
responsible being, and not as though she were still a child in the
nursery. "Cousin Philip may have had the right to say he wouldn't have
Jim Donald in his house, if he felt that way--but he had no right
whatever to prevent my meeting him in town, if I chose to meet
him--that's _my_ affair!--that's the point! All these men here are in
league. It's _not_ Jim's character that's in question--I throw Jim's
character to the wolves--it's the freedom of women!"

So the tumult in her surged to and fro, mingled all through with a
certain unwilling preoccupation. That semi-circular bow-window on the
south side of the house, which she commanded from her seat under the
cedar, was one of the windows of the library. Hidden from her by the old
bureau at which he was writing, sat Buntingford at work. She could see
his feet under the bureau, and sometimes the top of his head. Oh, of
course, he had a way with him--a certain magnetism--for the people who
liked him, and whom he liked. Lady Maud, for instance--how well they had
got on at breakfast? Naturally, she thought him adorable. And Lady Maud's
girl. To see Buntingford showing her the butterfly collections in the
library--devoting himself to her--and the little thing blushing and
smiling--it was simply idyllic! And then to contrast the scene with that
other scene, in the same room, the day before!

"Well, now, what am I going to do here--or in town?" she asked herself in
exasperation. "If Cousin Philip and I liked each other it would be
pleasant enough to ride together, to talk and read and argue--his brain's
all right!--with Lucy Friend to fall back upon between whiles--for just
these few weeks, at any rate, before we go to town--and with the
week-ends to help one out. But if we are to be at daggers-drawn--he
determined to boss me--and I equally determined not to be bossed--why,
the thing will be _intolerable_! Hullo!--is that Cynthia Welwyn? She
seems to be making for me."

It was Lady Cynthia, very fresh and brilliant in airy black and white,
with a purple sunshade. She came straight over the grass to Helena's
shady corner.

"You look so cool! May I share?"

Helena rather ungraciously pushed forward a chair as they shook hands.

"The rest of your party seem to be asleep," said Cynthia, glancing at
various prostrate forms belonging to the male sex that were visible on a
distant slope of the lawn. "But you've heard of the Dansworth
disturbances?--and that everybody here may have to go?"

"Yes. It's probably exaggerated--isn't it?"

"I don't know. Everybody coming out of church was talking of it. There
was bad rioting last night--and a factory burnt down. They say it's begun
again. Buntingford will probably have to go. Where is he?"

Helena pointed to the library and to the feet under the bureau.

"He's waiting indoors, no doubt, in case there's a summons."

"No doubt," said Helena.

Cynthia found her task difficult. She had come determined to make friends
with this thorny young woman, and to smooth Philip's path for him if she
could. But now face to face with Helena she was conscious that neither
was Philip's ward at all in a forthcoming mood, nor was her own effort
spontaneous or congenial. They were both Buntingford's kinswomen, Helena
on his father's side, Cynthia on his mother's, and had been more or less
acquainted with each other since Helena left the nursery. But there was
nearly twenty years between them, and a critical spirit on both sides.

Conversation very soon languished. An instinctive antagonism that neither
could have explained intelligibly would have been evident to any shrewd
listener. Helena was not long in suspecting that Lady Cynthia was in some
way Buntingford's envoy, and had been sent to make friends, with an
ulterior object; while Cynthia was repelled by the girl's ungracious
manner, and by the gulf which it implied between the outlook of forty,
and that of nineteen. "She means to make me feel that I might have been
her mother--and that we have nothing in common!"

The result was that Cynthia was driven into an intimate and possessive
tone with regard to Buntingford, which was more than the facts warranted,
and soon reduced Helena to monosyllables, and a sarcastic lip.

"You can't think," said Cynthia effusively--"how good he is to us
two. It is so like him. He never forgets us. But indeed he never
forgets anybody."

Helena raised her eyebrows, as though the news astonished her, but she
was too polite to contradict.

"He sends you flowers, doesn't he?" she said carelessly.

"He sends us all kinds of things. But that's not what makes him so
charming. He's always so considerate for everybody! The day you were
coming, for instance, he thought of nothing but how to get your room
finished and your books in order. I hope you liked it?"

"Very much." The tone was noncommittal.

"I don't suppose he told you how he worked," said Cynthia, smiling. "Oh,
he's a great dear, Philip! Only he takes a good deal of knowing."

"Did you ever see his wife?" said Helena abruptly.

Cynthia's movement showed her unpleasantly startled. She looked
instinctively towards the library window, where Buntingford was now
standing with his back to them. No, he couldn't have heard.

"No, never," she said hurriedly, in a low voice. "Nobody ever speaks to
him about her. She was of course not his equal socially."

"Is that the reason why nobody speaks of her?"

Cynthia flushed indignantly.

"Not that I know of. Why do you ask?"

"I thought you put the two things together," said Helena in her most
detached tone. "And she was an artist?"

"A very good one, I believe. A man who had seen her in Paris before her
marriage told me long ago--oh, years ago--that she was extraordinarily
clever, and very ambitious."

"And beautiful?" said Helena eagerly.

"I don't know. I never saw a picture of her."

"I'll bet anything she was beautiful!"

"Most likely. Philip's very fastidious."

Helena meditated.

"I wonder if she had a good time?" she said at last.

"If she didn't, it couldn't have been Philip's fault!" said Cynthia, with
some vigour.

"No, really?"

The girl's note of interrogation was curiously provoking, and Cynthia
could have shaken her.

Suddenly through the open French windows of the library, a shrill
telephone call rang out. It came from the instrument on Buntingford's
desk, and the two outside could see him take up the receiver.

"Hullo!"

"It's a message from Dansworth," said Cynthia, springing to her feet.
"They've sent for him."

"Yes--yes--" came to them in Buntingford's deep assenting voice, as he
stood with the receiver to his ear. "All right--In an hour?--That's it.
Less, if possible? Well, I think we can do it in less. Good-bye."

Helena had also risen. Buntingford emerged.

"Geoffrey!--Peter!--Horne!--all of you!"

From different parts of the lawn, men appeared running. Geoffrey French,
Captain Lodge, Peter, and Julian Horne, were in a few instants grouped
round their host, with Helena and Cynthia just behind.

"The Dansworth mob's out of hand," said Buntingford briefly. "They've set
fire to another building, and the police are hard pressed. They want
specials at once. Who'll come? I've just had a most annoying message from
my chauffeur. His wife's been in to say that he's got a
temperature--since eight o'clock this morning--and has gone to bed. She
won't hear of his coming."

"Funk?" said French quietly,--"or Bolshevism?"

Buntingford shrugged his shoulders. "We'll enquire into that later.
There are two cars--a Vauxhall and a small Renault--a two-seater. Who
can drive?"

"I think I can drive the Renault," said Dale. "I'll go and get it at
once. Hope I shan't kill anybody."

He ran off. The other men looked at each other in perplexity. None of
them knew enough about the business to drive a high-powered car without
serious risk to their own lives and the car's.

"I'll go and telephone to a man I know near here," said Buntingford,
turning towards the house. "He'll lend us his chauffeur."

"Why not let me drive?" said a girl's half-sarcastic voice. "I've driven
a Vauxhall most of the winter."

Buntingford turned, smiling but uncertain.

"Of course! I had forgotten! But I don't like taking you into danger,
Helena. It sounds like an ugly affair!"

"Lodge and I will go with her," said French, eagerly. "We can stop the
car outside the town. Horne can go with Dale."

The eyes of the men were on the girl in white--men half humiliated, half
admiring. Helena, radiant, was looking at Buntingford, and at his
reluctant word of assent, she began joyously taking the hat-pins out of
her white lace hat.

"Give me five minutes to change. Lucky I've got my uniform here! Then
I'll go for the car."

Within the five minutes she was in the garage in full uniform, looking
over and tuning up the car, without an unnecessary word. She was the
professional, alert, cheerful, efficient--and handsomer than ever,
thought French, in her close-fitting khaki.

"One word, Helena," said Buntingford, laying a hand on her arm, when all
was ready, and she was about to climb into her seat. "Remember I am in
command of the expedition--and for all our sakes there must be no divided
authority. You agree?"

She looked up quietly.

"I agree."

He made way for her, and she took her seat with him beside her. French,
Lodge, Jones the butler, and Tomline the odd man, got in behind her. Mrs.
Friend appeared with a food hamper that she and Mrs. Mawson had been
rapidly packing. Her delicate little face was very pale, and Buntingford
stooped to reassure her.

"We'll take every care of her. Don't be alarmed. It's always a woman
comes to the rescue, isn't it? We're all ashamed. I shall take some
lessons next week!"

Helena, with her hand on the steering wheel, nodded and smiled to her,
and in another minute the splendid car was gliding out of the garage
yard, and flying through the park.

Cynthia, with Mrs. Friend, Lady Maud Luton, and Mrs. Mawson, were left
looking after them. Cynthia's expression was hard to read; she seemed to
be rushing on with the car, watching the face beside Buntingford, the
young hands on the wheel, the keen eyes looking ahead, the play of talk
between them.

"What a splendid creature!" said Lady Maud half-unwillingly, as she and
Cynthia walked back to the lawn. "I'm afraid I don't at all approve of
her in ordinary life. But just now--she was in her element."

"Mother, you must let me learn motoring!" cried the girl of seventeen,
hanging on her mother's arm. She was flushed with innocent envy. Helena
driving Lord Buntingford seemed to her at the top of creation.

"Goose! It wouldn't suit you at all," said the mother, smiling. "Please
take my prayer-book indoors."

The babe went obediently.

The miles ran past. Helena, on her mettle, was driving her best, and
Buntingford had already paid her one or two brief compliments, which she
had taken in silence. Presently they topped a ridge, and there lay
Dansworth in a hollow, a column of smoke gashed with occasional flame
rising above the town.

"A big blaze," said Buntingford, examining it through a field-glass.
"It's the large brewery in the market-place. Hullo, you there!" He hailed
a country cart, full of excited occupants, which was being driven rapidly
towards them. The driver pulled up with difficulty.

Buntingford jumped out and went to make enquiries.

"It's a bad business, Sir," said the man in charge of the cart, a small
farmer whom Buntingford recognized. "The men in it are just mad--they
don't know what they've done, nor why they've done it. But the soldiers
will be there directly. There's far too few police, and I'm afraid
there's some people hurt. I wouldn't take ladies into the town if I was
you, Sir." He glanced at Helena.

Buntingford nodded, and returned to the car.

"You see that farm-house down there on the right?" he said to Helena as
they started again. "We'll stop there."

They ran down the long slope to the town, the smoke carried towards them
by a westerly wind beginning to beat in their faces,--the roar of the
great bonfire in their ears.

Helena drew up at the entrance of a short lane leading to a farm on the
outskirts of the small country town--the centre of an active
furniture-making industry, for which the material lay handy in the large
beechwoods which covered the districts round it. The people of the farm
were all standing outside the house-door, watching the fire and talking.

"You're going to leave me here?" said Helena wistfully, looking at
Buntingford.

"Please. You've brought us splendidly! I'll send Geoffrey back to you as
soon as possible, with instructions."

She drove the car up to the farm. An elderly man came forward with whom
Buntingford made arrangements. The car was to be locked up. "And you'll
take care of the lady, till I send?"

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"I'll come back to you, as soon as I can," said French to Helena. "Don't
be anxious about us. We shall get into the market-hall by a back way and
find out what's going on. They've probably got the hose on by now.
Nothing like a hose-pipe for this kind of thing! Congratters on a
splendid bit of driving!"

"Hear, hear," said Buntingford.

They went off, and Helena was left alone with the farm people, who made
much of her, and poured into her ears more or less coherent accounts of
the rioting and its causes. A few discontented soldiers, an unpopular
factory manager, and a badly-handled strike:--the tale was a common one
throughout England at the moment, and behind and beneath the surface
events lay the heaving of that "tide in the affairs of men," a tide of
change, of restlessness, of revolt, set in motion by the great war.
Helena paced up and down the orchard slope behind the house, watching the
conflagration which was beginning to die down, startled every now and
then by what seemed to be the sound of shots, and once by the rush past
of a squadron of mounted police coming evidently from the big country
town some ten miles away. Hunger asserted itself, and she made a raid on
the hamper in the car, sharing some of its contents with the black-eyed
children of the farm. Every now and then news came from persons passing
along the road, and for a time things seemed to be mending. The police
were getting the upper hand; the Mayor had made a plucky speech to the
crowd in the market-place, with good results; the rioters were wavering;
and the soldiers had been stopped by telephone. Then following hard on
the last rumour came a sudden rush of worse news. A policeman had been
killed--two injured--the rioters had gained a footing in the market-hall,
and driven out both the police and the specials--and after all, the
soldiers had been sent for.

Helena wandered down to the gate of the farm lane opening on the main
road, consumed with restlessness and anxiety. If only they had let her go
with them! Buntingford's last look as he raised his hat to her before
departing, haunted her memory--the appeal in it, the unspoken message.
Might they not, after all, be friends? There seemed to be an exquisite
relaxation in the thought.

Another hour passed. Geoffrey French at last! He came on a motor bicycle,
and threw himself off beside her, breathless.

"Please get the car, Helena, and I'll go on with you. The town's safe.
The troops have arrived, and the rioters are scattering. The police have
made some arrests, and Philip believes the thing is over--or I shouldn't
have been allowed to come for you!"

"Why not?" said Helena half-indignantly, as they hurried towards the
barn in which the car had been driven. "Perhaps I might have been of
some use!"

"No--you helped us best by staying here. The last hour's been pretty bad.
And now Philip wants you to take two wounded police to the Smeaton
Hospital--five miles. He'll go with you. They're badly hurt, I'm
afraid--there was some vicious stone-throwing."

"All right! Perhaps you don't know that's my job!"

French helped her get out the car.

"We shall want mattresses and stretcher boards," said Helena, surveying
it thoughtfully. "A doctor too and a nurse."

"Right you are. They've thought of all that. You'll find everything at
the market-hall,--where the two men are."

They drove away together, and into the outer streets of the town, where
now scarcely a soul was to be seen, though as the car passed, the windows
were crowded with heads. Police were everywhere, and the market-place--a
sorry sight of smoky wreck and ruin--was held by a cordon of soldiers,
behind which a crowd still looked on. French, sitting beside her, watched
the erect girl-driver, the excellence of her driving, the brain and skill
she was bringing to bear upon her "job." Here was the "new woman" indeed,
in her best aspect. He could not but compare the Helena of this
adventure--this competent and admirable Helena--with the girl of the
night before. Had the war produced the same dual personality in thousands
of English men and English women?--in the English nation itself?

They drew up at the steps of the market-hall, where a group of persons
were standing, including a nurse in uniform. Buntingford came forward,
and bending over the side of the car, said to Helena:

"Do you want to be relieved? There are several people here who could
drive the car."

She flushed.

"I want to take these men to hospital."

He smiled at her.

"You shall."

He turned back to speak to the doctor who was to accompany the car.
Helena jumped out, and went to consult with the nurse. In a very short
time, the car had been turned as far as possible into an ambulance, and
the wounded men were brought out.

"As gently as you can," said the doctor to Helena. "Are your
springs good?"

"The car's first-rate, and I'll do my best. I've been driving for nearly
a year, up to the other day." She pointed to her badge. The doctor nodded
approval, and he and the nurse took their places. Then Buntingford jumped
into the car, beside Helena.

"I'll show you the way. It won't take long."

In a few minutes, the car was in country lanes, and all the smoking
tumult of the town had vanished from sight and hearing. It had become
already indeed almost incredible, in the glow of the May afternoon,
and amid the hawthorn white of the hedges, the chattering birds that
fled before them, the marvellous green of the fields. Helena drove
with the deftness of a practised hand, avoiding ruts, going softly
over rough places.

"Good!" said Buntingford to her more than once--"that was excellent!"

But the suffering of the men behind overshadowed everything else, and it
was with a big breath of relief that Buntingford at last perceived the
walls of the county hospital rising out of a group of trees in front of
them. Helena brought the car gently to a standstill, and, jumping out,
was ready to help as a V. A. D. in the moving of the men. The hospital
had been warned by telephone, and all preparations had been made. When
the two unconscious men were safely in bed, the Dansworth doctor turned
warmly to Helena:

"I don't know what we should have done without you, Miss Pitstone! But
you look awfully tired. I hope you'll go home at once, and rest."

"I'm going to take her home--at once," said Buntingford. "We can't do
anything more, can we?"

"Nothing. And here's the matron with a message."

The message was from the mayor of Dansworth. "Situation well in hand. No
more trouble feared. Best thanks."

"All right!" said Buntingford. He turned smiling to Helena. "Now we'll go
home and get some dinner!"

The Dansworth doctor and nurse remained behind. Once more Buntingford got
into the car beside his ward.

"What an ass I am!" he said, in disgust--"not to be able to drive the
car. But I should probably kill you and myself."

Helena laughed at him, a new sweetness in the sound, and they started.

Presently Buntingford said gently:

"I want to thank you,--for one thing especially--for having waited so
patiently--while we got the thing under."

"I wasn't patient at all! I wanted desperately to be in it!"

"All the more credit! It would have been a terrible anxiety if you had
been there. A policeman was killed just beside us. There was a man with a
revolver running amuck. He just missed French by a hair-breadth."

Helena exclaimed in horror.

"You see--one puts the best face on it--but it might have been a terrible
business. But what I shall always remember most--is your part in it"

Their eyes met, hers half shy, half repentant, his full of a kindness she
had never yet seen there.




CHAPTER VIII


"Oh, what a jolly day! We've had a glorious ride," said Helena, throwing
herself down on the grass beside Mrs. Friend. "And how are you? Have you
been resting--or slaving--as you were _expressly_ forbidden to do?"

For Mrs. Friend had been enjoying a particularly bad cold and had not
long emerged from her bedroom, looking such a pitiful little wreck, that
both Lord Buntingford and Helena had been greatly concerned. In the five
weeks that had now elapsed since her arrival at Beechmark she had stolen
her quiet way into the liking of everybody in the house to such an extent
that, during the days she had been in bed with a high temperature, she
had been seriously missed in the daily life of the place, and the whole
household had actively combined to get her well again. Mrs. Mawson had
fed her; and Lucy Friend was aghast to think how much her convalescence
must be costing her employer in milk, eggs, butter, cream and chickens,
when all such foods were still so frightfully, abominably dear. But they
were forced down her throat by Helena and the housekeeper; while Lord
Buntingford enquired after her every morning, and sent her a reckless
supply of illustrated papers and novels. To see her now in the library or
on the lawn again, with her white shawl round her, and the usual
needlework on her knee, was a pleasant sight to everybody in the house.

The little lady had not only won this place for herself by the sweet and
selfless gift which was her natural endowment; she was becoming the
practical helper of everybody, of Mrs. Mawson in the house, of old Fenn
in the garden, even of Buntingford himself, who was gradually falling
into the habit of letting her copy important letters for him, and keep
some order in the library. She was not in the least clever or
accomplished; but her small fingers seemed to have magic in them; and her
good will was inexhaustible.

Helena had grown amazingly fond of her. She appealed to something
maternal and protecting in the girl's strong nature. Since her mother's
death, there had been a big streak of loneliness in Helena's heart,
though she would have suffered tortures rather than confess it; and
little Lucy Friend's companionship filled a void. She must needs respect
Lucy's conscience, Lucy's instincts had more than once shamed her own.

"What are you going to wear to-night?" said Mrs. Friend, softly smoothing
back the brown hair from the girl's hot brow.

"Pale green and apple-blossom."

Lucy Friend smiled, as though already she had a vision of the
full-dress result.

"That'll be delicious," she said, with enthusiasm.

"Lucy!--am I good-looking?"

The girl spoke half wistfully, half defiantly, her eyes fixed on Lucy.

Mrs. Friend laughed.

"I asked that question before I had seen you."

"Of whom?" said Helena eagerly. "You didn't see anybody but Cousin Philip
before I arrived. Tell me, Lucy--tell me at once."

Mrs. Friend kept a smiling silence for a minute. At last she said--"Lord
Buntingford showed me a portrait of you before you arrived."

"A portrait of me? There isn't one in the house! Lucy, you deceiver, what
do you mean?"

"I was taken to see one in the hall."

A sudden light dawned on Helena.

"The Romney? No! And I've been showing it to everybody as the loveliest
thing going!"

"There--you see!"

Helena's face composed itself.

"I don't know why I should be flattered. She was a horrid minx. That no
doubt was what the likeness consisted in!"

Mrs. Friend laughed, but said nothing. Helena rose from the grass,
pausing to say as she turned towards the house:

"We're going to dance in the drawing-room, Mawson says. They've
cleared it."

"Doesn't it look nice?"

Helena assented. "Let me see--" she added slowly--"this is the third
dance, isn't it, since I came?"

"Yes--the third."

"I don't think we need have another"--the tone was decided, almost
impatient--"at least when this party's over."

Mrs. Friend opened her eyes.

"I thought you liked to dance every week-end?"

"Well--ye-es--amongst ourselves. I didn't mean to turn the house
upside-down every week."

"Well, you see--the house-parties have been so large. And besides there
have been neighbours."

"I didn't ask _them_," said Helena. "But--we won't have another--till we
go to Town."

"Very well. It might be wise. The servants are rather tired, and if they
give warning, we shall never get any more!"

Mrs. Friend watched the retreating figure of Helena. There had indeed
been a dizzy succession of week-end parties, and it seemed to her that
Lord Buntingford's patience under the infliction had been simply
miraculous. For they rarely contained friends of his own; his lameness
cut him off from dancing; and it had been clear to Lucy Friend that in
many cases Helena's friends had been sharply distasteful to him. He
was, in Mrs. Friend's eyes, a strange mixture as far as social
standards were concerned. A boundless leniency in some cases; the
sternest judgment in others.

For instance, a woman he had known from childhood had lately left her
husband, carried off her children, and joined her lover. Lord Buntingford
was standing, stoutly by her, helping her in her divorce proceedings,
paying for the education of the children, and defending her whenever he
heard her attacked. On the other hand, his will had been iron in the
matter of Lord Donald, whose exposure as co-respondent in the
particularly disreputable case had been lately filling the newspapers.
Mrs. Friend had seen Helena take up the _Times_ on one of the days on
which the evidence in this case had appeared, and fling it down again
with a flush and a look of disgust. But since the day of the Dansworth
riot, she had never mentioned Lord Donald's name.

Certainly the relations between her and her guardian had curiously
changed. In the first place, since her Dansworth adventure, Helena had
found something to do to think about other than quarrelling with "Cousin
Philip." Her curiosity as to how the two wounded police, whom she had
driven to the County Hospital that day, might be faring had led to her
going over there two or three times a week, either to relieve an
overworked staff, or to drive convalescent soldiers, still under
treatment in the wards.

The occupation had been a godsend to her, and everybody else. She still
talked revolution, and she was always ready to spar with Lord
Buntingford, or other people. But all the same Lucy Friend was often
aware of a much more tractable temper, a kind of hesitancy--and
appeasement--which, even if it passed away, made her beauty, for the
moment, doubly attractive.

Was it, after all, the influence of Lord Buntingford--and was the event
justifying her mother's strange provision for her? He had certainly
treated her with a wonderful kindness and indulgence. Of late he had
returned to his work at the Admiralty, only coming down to Beechmark for
long week-ends from Friday to Monday. But in these later week-ends he had
gradually abandoned the detached and half-sarcastic attitude which he had
originally assumed towards Helena, and it seemed to Lucy Friend that he
was taking his function towards her with a new seriousness. If so, it had
affected himself at least as much as the proud and difficult girl whose
guidance had been so hurriedly thrust upon him. His new role had brought
out in him unexpected resources, or revived old habits. For instance he
had not ridden for years; though, as a young man, and before his
accident, he had been a fine horseman. But he now rode whenever he was at
Beechmark, to show Helena the country; and they both looked so well on
horseback that it was a pleasure of which Lucy Friend never tired to
watch them go and to welcome them home.

Then the fact that he was a trained artist, which most of his friends had
forgotten, became significant again for Helena's benefit. She had some
aptitude, and more ambition--would indeed, but for the war, have been a
South Kensington student, and had long cherished yearnings for the Slade.
He set her work to do during the week, and corrected it with professional
sharpness when he reappeared.

And more important perhaps than either the riding or the drawing, was the
partial relaxation for her benefit of the reserve and taciturnity which
had for years veiled the real man from those who liked and respected him
most. He never indeed talked of himself or his past; but he would discuss
affairs, opinions, books--especially on their long rides together--with a
frankness, and a tone of gay and equal comradeship, which, or so Mrs.
Friend imagined, had had a disarming and rather bewildering effect on
Helena. The girl indeed seemed often surprised and excited. It was
evident that they had never got on during her mother's lifetime, and that
his habitual bantering or sarcastic tone towards her while she was still
in the school-room had roused an answering resentment in her. Hence the
aggressive mood in which, after two or three months of that half-mad
whirl of gaiety into which London had plunged after the Armistice, she
had come down to Beechmark.

They still jarred, sometimes seriously; Helena was often provocative and
aggressive; and Buntingford could make a remark sting without intending
it. But on the whole Lucy Friend felt that she was watching something
which had in it possibilities of beauty; indeed of a rather touching and
rare development. But not at all as the preliminary to a love-affair. In
Buntingford's whole relation to his ward, Lucy Friend, at least, had
never yet detected the smallest sign of male susceptibility. It suggested
something quite different. Julian Horne, who had taken a great fancy to
Helena's chaperon, was now recommending books to her instead of to
Helena, who always forgot or disobeyed his instructions. With a little
preliminary lecture, he had put the "Greville Memoirs" in her hands by
way of improving her mind; and she had been struck by a passage in which
Greville describes Lord Melbourne's training of the young Queen Victoria,
whose Prime Minister he was. The man of middle-age, accomplished, cynical
and witty, suddenly confronted with a responsibility which challenged
both his heart and his conscience--and that a responsibility towards an
attractive young girl whom he could neither court nor command, towards
whom his only instrument was the honesty and delicacy of his own
purpose:--there was something in this famous, historical situation which
seemed to throw a light on the humbler situation at Beechmark.

Four o'clock! In another hour the Whitsuntide party for which the house
stood ready would have arrived. Helena's particular "pals" were all
coming, and various friends and kinsfolk of Lord Buntingford's; including
Lady Mary Chance, a general or two, some Admiralty officials, and one or
two distinguished sailors with the halo of Zeebrugge about them. The
gathering was to last nearly a week. Mrs. Mawson had engaged two extra
servants, and the master of the house had resigned himself. But he had
laid it down that the fare was to be simple--and "no champagne." And
though of course there would be plenty of bridge, he had given a hint to
Vivian Lodge, who, as his heir-apparent, was his natural aide-de-camp in
the management of the party, that anything like high play would be
unwelcome. Some of Helena's friends during the latter week-ends of May
had carried things to extremes.

Meanwhile the social and political sky was darkening in the June England.
Peace was on the point of being signed in Paris; but the industrial war
at home weighed on every thinking mind. London was dancing night after
night; money was being spent like water; and yet every man and woman of
sense knew that the only hope for Britain lay in work and saving.
Buntingford's habitual frown--the frown not of temper but of
oppression--had grown deeper; and on their long rides together he had
shown a great deal of his mind to Helena--the mind of a patriot full of
fear for his country.

A man came across the lawn. Lucy Friend was glad to recognize Geoffrey
French, who was a great favourite with her.

"You are early!" she said, as they greeted.

"I came down by motor-bike. London is hateful, and I was in a hurry to
get out of it. Where is Helena?"

"Gone to change her dress. She has been riding."

Frank mopped his brow in silence for a little. Then he said with the
half-mischievous smile which in Lucy Friend's eyes was one of his chief
physical "points."

"How you and Philip have toned her down!"

"Oh, not I!" said Lucy, her modesty distressed. "I've always admired her
so! Of course--I was sometimes surprised--"

Geoffrey laughed.

"I daresay we shall all be surprised a good many times yet?" Then he
moved a little closer to the small person, who was becoming everybody's
confidante. "Do you mind telling me something--if you know it?" he said,
lowering his voice.

"Ask me--but I can't promise!"

"Do you think Helena has quite made up her mind not to marry Dale?"

Mrs. Friend hesitated.

"I don't know--"

"But what do you think?"

She lifted her gentle face, under his compulsion, and slowly, pitifully
shook her head.

Geoffrey drew a long breath.

"Then she oughtn't to ask him here! The poor little fellow is going
through the tortures of the damned!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Isn't there anything we can do?" cried Mrs. Friend.

"Nothing--but keep him away. After all he's only the first victim."

Startled by the note in her companion's voice, Mrs. Friend turned to look
at him. He forced a smile, as their eyes met.

"Oh, we must all take our chance! But Peter's not the boy he was--before
the war. Things bowl him over easily."

"She likes him so much," murmured Lucy. "I'm sure she never means to
be unkind."

"She isn't unkind!" said Geoffrey with energy. "It's the natural fated
thing. We are all the slaves of her car and she knows it. When she was in
the stage of quarrelling with us all, it was just fun. But if Helena
grows as delicious--as she promised to be last week--" He shrugged his
shoulders, with a deep breath--"Well,--she'll have to marry somebody some
day--and the rest of us may drown! Only, if you're to be umpire--and she
likes you so much that I expect you will be--play fair!"

He held out his hand, and she put hers into it, astonished to realize
that her own eyes were full of tears.

"I'm a mass of dust--I must go and change before tea," he said abruptly.

He went into the house, and she was left to some agitated thinking.

An hour later, the broad lawns of Beechmark, burnt yellow by the May
drought, were alive with guests, men in khaki and red tabs, fresh from
their War Office work; two naval Commanders, and a resplendent
Flag-Lieutenant; a youth in tennis flannels, just released from a city
office, who seven months earlier had been fighting in the last advance of
the war, and a couple of cadets who had not been old enough to fight at
all; girls who had been "out" before the war, and two others, Helena's
juniors, who were just leaving the school-room and seemed to be all aglow
with the excitement and wonder of this peace-world; a formidable
grey-haired woman, who was Lady Mary Chance; Cynthia and Georgina Welwyn,
and the ill-dressed, arresting figure of Mr. Alcott. Not all were
Buntingford's guests; some were staying at the Cottage, some in another
neighbouring house; but Beechmark represented the headquarters of a
gathering of which Helena Pitstone and her guardian were in truth the
central figures.

Helena in white, playing tennis; Helena with a cigarette, resting between
her sets, and chaffing with a ring of dazzled young men; Helena talking
wild nonsense with Geoffrey French, for the express purpose of shocking
Lady Mary Chance; and the next minute listening with a deference graceful
enough to turn even the seasoned head of a warrior to a grey-haired
general describing the taking of the Vimy Ridge; and finally, Helena,
holding a dancing class under the cedars on the yellow smoothness of the
lawn, after tea, for such young men as panted to conquer the mysteries of
"hesitation" or jazzing, and were ardently courting instruction in the
desperate hope of capturing their teacher for a dance that night:--it was
on these various avatars of Helena that the whole party turned; and Lady
Mary indignantly felt that there was no escaping the young woman.

"Why do you let her smoke--and paint--and _swear_--I declare I heard her
swear!" she said in Buntingford's ear, as the dressing-bell rang, and he
was escorting her to the house. "And mark my words, Philip--men may be
amused by that kind of girl, but they won't marry her."

Buntingford laughed.

"As Helena's guardian I'm not particularly anxious about that!"

"Ah, no doubt, she tells you people propose to her--but is it true?"
snapped Lady Mary.

"You imagine that Helena tells me of her proposals?" said Buntingford,
wondering.

"My dear Philip, don't pose! Isn't that the special function of a
guardian?"

"It may be. But, if so, Helena has never given me the chance of
performing it."

"I told you so! Men will flirt with her, but they _don't_ propose to
her!" said Lady Mary triumphantly.

Buntingford, smiling, let her have the last word, as he asked Mrs. Friend
to show her to her room.

Meanwhile the gardens were deserted, save for a couple of gardeners and
an electrician, who were laying some wires for the illumination of the
rose-garden in front of the drawing-room, and Geoffrey French, who was in
a boat, lazily drifting across the pond, and reading a volume of poems by
a friend which he had brought down with him. The evening was fast
declining; and from the shadow of the deep wood which bordered the
western edge of the pond he looked out on the sunset glow as it climbed
the eastern hill, transfiguring the ridge, and leaving a rich twilight in
the valley below. The tranquillity of the water, the silence of the
woods, the gentle swaying of the boat, finally wooed him from his book,
which after all he had only taken up as a protection from tormenting
thoughts. Had he--had he--any chance with Helena? A month before he would
have scornfully denied that he was in love with her. And now--he had
actually confessed his plight to Mrs. Friend!

As he lay floating between the green vault above, and the green weedy
depths below, his thoughts searched the five weeks that lay between him
and that first week-end when he had scolded Helena for her offences. It
seemed to him that his love for her had first begun that day of the
Dansworth riot. She had provoked and interested him before that--but
rather as a raw self-willed child--a "flapper" whose extraordinary beauty
gave her a distinction she had done nothing to earn. But every moment in
that Dansworth day was clear in memory:--the grave young face behind the
steering-wheel, the perfect lips compressed, the eyes intent upon their
task, the girl's courage and self-command. Still more the patient Helena
who waited for him at the farm--the grateful exultant look when he said
"Come"--and every detail of the scene in Dansworth:--Helena with her most
professional air, driving through soldiers and police, Helena helping to
carry and place the two wounded men, and that smiling "good-bye" she had
thrown him as she drove away with Buntingford beside her.

The young man moved restlessly; and the light boat was set rocking. It
was curious how he too, like Lucy Friend, only from another point of
view, was beginning to reflect on the new intimacy that seemed to be
developing between Buntingford and his ward. Philip of course was an
awfully good fellow, and Helena was just finding it out; what else was
there in it? But the jealous pang roused by the thought of Buntingford,
once felt, persisted. Not for a moment did French doubt the honour or the
integrity of a man, who had done him personally many a kindness, and had
moreover given him some reason to think---(he recalled the odd little
note he had received from Buntingford before Helena's first
week-end)--that if he were to fall in love with Helena, his suit would be
favourably watched by Helena's guardian. He could recall moreover one or
two quite recent indications on Buntingford's part--very slight and
guarded--which seemed to point in the same direction.

All very well: Buntingford himself might be quite heart-whole and might
remain so. French, who knew him well, though there was fourteen years
between them, was tolerably certain--without being able to give any very
clear reason for the conviction--that Buntingford would never have
undertaken the guardianship of Helena, had the merest possibility of
marrying her crossed his mind. French did not believe that it had ever
yet crossed his mind. There was nothing in his manner towards her to
suggest anything more than friendship, deepening interest, affectionate
responsibility--all feelings which would have shown themselves plainly
from the beginning had she allowed it.

But Helena herself? It was clear that however much they might still
disagree, Buntingford had conquered her original dislike of him, and was
in process of becoming the guide, philosopher, and friend her mother had
meant him to be. And Buntingford had charm and character, and
imagination. He could force a girl like Helena to respect him
intellectually; with such a nature that was half the battle. He would be
her master in time. Besides, there were all Philip's endless
opportunities of making life agreeable and delightful to her. When they
went to London, for instance, he would come out of the shell he had lived
in so long, and Helena would see him as his few intimate friends had
always seen him:--as one of the most accomplis

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/13071