VIIIHELEN, OR SEMIRAMIS?
Professor Julian Serlenever intended to marry, and up to the age of forty-five clung bravely to this resolve. He was a well-known authority on Assyria, had written successful books, read impressive papers, and was precisely at that point in his career when much was expected of him. His mode of life fluctuated between periods of incessant and engrossing labour, and spells of “butterflying” in smart society.
The Professor was well off, and a world-wide traveller. When in London he occupied comfortable chambers in Whitehall Court, and was a member of the Athenæum and other clubs. Returning from Egypt, where he had spent the winter—working on an important book—he, so to speak, fell! Among the crowd of Anglo-Indians on board the steamer which he joined at Port Said, was Miss Helen Thursby, a popular girl among her fellow-passengers, handsome, lively, good-natured, and accomplished. She played accompaniments, amused children,interested their mothers, and fascinated men, both young and old.
Their charming new acquaintance made no secret of the fact that for the last two years she had been a governess in Simla, and was now returning to England, before joining her only near relative, a married brother in Canada.
The Professor, although hardened by many London seasons, was immensely attracted by the young lady’s bright eyes, her sympathetic manner and light-hearted gaiety. Together they played chess and bridge, and together they promenaded the decks, whilst complacent matrons looked on and approved. Julian Serle was a celebrity, a well-bred, good-looking little man, with, it was said, considerable private means.
“It would be a capital match for the girl. Much better for her to marry and settle in London than to rough it on a ranch in Canada.”
Ultimately, a moonlit Mediterranean night proved to be the undoing of Julian. As he smoked, and paced the deck alone, he had been meditating on Miss Thursby. What an agreeable companion Helen would be! So intelligent, sensible, charming. He had no near relations, merely a hungry, extravagant nephew, his heir. Why not marry and make himself a home, before he fell into the sere and yellow? Miss Thursby was clever; she would be a stimulating helpmate—one who could type and copy, and was interested in Assyria. Yes! Helen would be his Egeria, and his inspiration.
That same lovely night, leaning over the bulwarks, he spoke; deplored his lonely life, his lack of belongings, and figuratively laid himself and his fortune at his lady’s remarkably neat feet.
“I am not,” he pleaded, “the usual style of musty fossilised old professor; we will enjoy life together,and when I am working you can still have your own friends and amusements. And I think I can promise that you shall never be bored.”
His lady-love listened to him with shining eyes, and accepted his proposal with joy. Perhaps the little man beside her was not precisely her ideal. Her ideal had been someone in India, who was too poor to marry a penniless girl, and had subsequently taken a well-dowered wife. However, she had completely recovered from that heart attack, and honestly liked her present suitor.
Six weeks after the steamer had docked at Tilbury, the pair were married in London, and subsequently established themselves in a nice roomy flat in South Kensington.
All their friends crowded to call. The bride, though poor, was well connected, the bridegroom a popular celebrity, and the newly-married couple lived in a perpetual round of dinners and social entertainment. Serle had a large circle of distinguished contemporaries: philosophers, men of letters, and men of affairs.
This agreeable condition continued for months. Helen Serle was so hospitable and attractive that visitors invaded the flat from morning to night. She was invited to theatres, concerts, lectures, and dances, yet never neglected her home or husband, but wrote and typed industriously—that is to say, when Julian had a working fit—and found ample leisure for music, theatres, and other pleasures.
The Professor had at first joinedcon amorein the social whirl—he was a man who did nothing by halves. Lately he had been seized by a feverish inspiration, and was engrossed in a book, “The Life of Semiramis,” on which he had worked fitfully for years, in the hope that it would be hismagnum opus. Resolved to secure leisure, he turned his back uponLondon, let the flat for six months, and retired to Brighton. But here his fate was no better! Helen had such a faculty for picking up acquaintances and coming across friends, that his precious time was broken into for hours and days and weeks!
From Brighton he fled to the Athens of the North. Here, alas, matters were worse, for literary society fell upon the author, so to speak, as one man! Dinners, from which he could not absent himself, were given in his honour. He was invited to read papers, and to lecture on his most notable subjects—“Sardinapolis,” and “Alexander the Great in Assyria.”
In short, his work was absolutely at a standstill. Summer was coming, but “The Life of Semiramis,” and her reign of forty-two years, was not advancing to any appreciable degree. Strong measures were his only resource. And in response to an advertisement, he secured a temporary home in a far-distant village in the south of England. It was off a main line, and buried in the country. Servants, dog, poultry, and pony were included with a most delightful furnished cottage. Helen Serle was enchanted. Edinburgh was a little bit too literary for her; she enjoyed the change from the thunder of trams in Princes Street to the cooing of pigeons in the woods, and fell in love at first sight with the cottage, the garden, and the village. Alas, in a place whose name he had never heard till he had rented “Meadow-sweet,” the Professor encountered an acquaintance—Canon Simpson, an old college friend, who happened to be staying at the Rectory.
“I say, fancy seeingyouhere, Serle!” he exclaimed, as he held out an eager hand. “I caught sight of you in church; and when I told the Rector who you were, he was most frightfully excited. He and his wife hope to see a lot of you. You know hehas been to the Holy Land, and to Nineveh. Everyone for miles round is coming to call on Mrs. Serle.”
For the moment Mrs. Serle’s husband felt paralysed and speechless. Like the dove from the ark, would he never find a place for the sole of his foot? When he thought of his book, his notes, his elaborate bits of description, all clamouring to be copied out, and polished up, he was struck with a brain storm. “Desperate ills require desperate remedies.” If the whole country was threatening to call, and the cottage was to be overrun with visitors, there were precisely two alternatives: one to return to Meadow-sweet, and begin to pack—the other ... and the other he seized on. Clenching his hand on his stick, with his guilty eyes fastened on the ground, he jerked out:
“Er—ah! Strictly between ourselves, my dear old fellow, we don’t want any visitors; or rather visitors—er—are not likely to wantus! The lady who is staying with me is——” Here the colour mounted to his hair. “Well, I need say no more.” And with a shrug of his shoulders, the celebrity turned away.
To do his conscience justice, Julian Serle felt miserably hot and uncomfortable, as he faced towards home; he had insinuated a most terrible lie—but there was nothing else for it! He would allow the neighbours to suppose that Helen was his mistress—since no other defence would secure complete privacy and isolation. After all, what did it matter in this God-forsaken part of the world, where they did not know a soul? And it was only for three months. Then Helen could return home, meet all her old friends, and as many new ones as she liked!
At first Mrs. Serle was supremely indifferent to the lack of callers. In fact, she never gave them a thought. The pony and trap, the dog, the garden and the poultry, kept her delightfully engaged. Shehad a weekly box from Mudie’s, some interesting embroidery, plenty of correspondence, and half a dozen new songs. After two or three weeks these pleasures began to pall, and she realised the want of a companion of her own sex, with whom to discuss new stitches, new novels, and new songs. Julian, plunged in the records of Semiramis and her times, and surrounded by stacks of musty old books, had no thought for anything but his absorbing work, and—as an occasional relaxation—a little trout-fishing.
But, once Helen had seen to the housekeeping, the flowers, and accomplished a certain amount of typing, her hours were her own, and proved both empty and solitary. As she walked out with the dog, or drove “Fat Tom,” the bay pony, she noticed that the neighbourhood was well populated. Within half a mile were two large places, whose gates delivered and received motors. There were also various country houses, where she caught sight of green lawns, and gatherings of active white-clad figures, playing tennis. Helen Serle loved tennis, and was quite a notable performer.
Strange that not a soul had come to look them up. And yet they had been at Beckwell a whole month. The villagers, too, seemed funny people. Their manners were surly, their answers brief to rudeness. And how they stared! (Perhaps her rather daring French hats and very smart high-heeled shoes lent some colour to her husband’s lie.) Mrs. Serle was not unaccustomed to being looked at, nor did she disdain a certain amount of respectful admiration, but in the expression of these people’s eyes lay curiosity, aversion, and contempt. The servants of the cottage—two well-trained maids and a gardener-groom—had, at first, been civil and satisfactory. Now they were off-hand and almost insolent; and yet she treated them well, and gave little trouble. Indeed, shedusted the drawing-room and did the lamps herself, partly to fill up her time. Nevertheless, the cook scowled, Annie flounced and slammed doors, and once she had been overpowered by a suspicion that the groom-gardener had winked at her! She turned and confronted him with a flaming face—and he had never repeated this enormity.
Latterly Annie had been openly impertinent, and one day when her mistress asked her what she meant by saying, “Good enough foryou!” with arms akimbo, she replied, “Oh, you know what I mean well enough, and only for Miss Mills and me bein’ with her so long, and my promisin’ I’d do my best, I’d have been out of this the very day you come in. Up to now I’ve always lived with respectable people, and I’ve got my own character to think of. And Jim—that’s my young man—says he don’t half like it!”
“What do you mean?” cried Helen, white with anger. “I insist on knowing!”
But Annie merely turned her back, and began to arrange the ornaments on the chimney-piece.
“Answer me, Annie.”
“What’s the good of telling you what youknow?” said Annie over her shoulder.
“You cannot remain here!” said her mistress breathlessly. “You must leave at once. Go now and pack your things.”
“Only too glad to be out of it,” was Annie’s retort, as with a toss of her head she tramped from the room.
Julian Serle was deep in meditation over the particular neat insertion of a “purple patch,” when his wife burst in upon him in a condition of extraordinary excitement.
“Oh, Julian, what do you think! That girl Ann has been most outrageously insolent. I found her just now trying on my best hat; and when I remonstrated,she said the most awful things—insinuating—I can’t tell you what. I think she must be crazy, for I’m sure she doesn’t drink. Anyhow, she shall depart within the hour. So please give me one pound, thirteen shillings, and four pence.”
“Oh, nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Why mind her, Nell? It’s only her ignorance. The mental calibre of these rustics is abnormally low.”
“No, no, it’snother ignorance!” retorted his wife. “On the contrary, Annie implies that she knows a great deal on some subject aboutus—but what it is she refuses to divulge.”
“But, my dear, how will you manage without her?”
“Oh, I’ll get in the laundress’s sister. I hear she’s been in service. Sooner than keep Annie, I would do the work myself.”
That afternoon Annie departed. As she bounced into the room to receive her wages, she said with a touch of sarcasm:
“I’ll not trouble you for a character. A character from this house would be no use to me—and only stand in my way. I hear you are getting Maggie King as parlourmaid—and when she comes there will be a pair of you!”
Then, seizing the one pound, thirteen shillings, and four pence, she swept out, to where a ruddy-faced young man was waiting to carry her box. He accorded Mrs. Serle a sort of up-and-down glare, and was presumably the “Jim, who didn’t half like it!”
After this little domestic storm, things subsided at the cottage. Maggie King proved humble and amenable, but her mistress noticed that she and the cook were barely on speaking terms—and that Maggie took her meals alone in the pantry.
One evening, as they sat in the garden after dinner, Helen said to her husband:
“Julian, don’t you think it very odd that not a soul has called?”
“Well, no, my dear; the fact is—they know who I am, and that I’m desperately busy, and only here for absolute peace and seclusion. They understand how hard I am working.”
“Yes, of course, that’s all right. But what aboutme? I’m not clamouring for a rush of callers, or chatterers; but tea in the garden, and a game of tennis, or even a walk with another woman would not disturb you. Do you know that I’ve not spoken to one of my sex for eight weeks? I really don’t want to grumble, dear—but it’s rather dreary for me. And I cannot understand why not even the parson’s wife has called—though I’m a regular attendant at church. I expect they’ve had an infectious disease in this house—and that not very long ago. The neighbours are afraid to come near us. What is your idea?”
“Um! Um!”—taking his cheroot out of his mouth and looking at it thoughtfully. “Maybe so. There may be something in what you say.”
Then he suddenly picked up theSpectator, and she resumed her embroidery with a sigh. After a few moments’ dead silence the author raised his eyes cautiously over the paper, and gravely surveyed his wife. The expression on his face was rather anxious and doubtful. As Helen caught his eye, she said:
“How soon do you think the book will be finished?” She had actually come to hate the great work! Solitude, silence, and loneliness had quenched her earlier enthusiasm.
“I am just commencing the last chapter but one.”
“Thank goodness!” she exclaimed with heartfelt satisfaction.
“I’m hoping that this work will definitely decide my position as an authority on Assyrian matters, and rank me with Blair, Usher, and Clinton. If so, mylabours will not have been in vain”; and he smiled with easy assurance.
“But, Julian dear, do you think that it was worth it?”
“Worth what?”
“I mean sacrificing hours, days, and months, to a dusty, sandy old subject—that can only interest a comparatively small public?”
He put down his paper and stared as if he could not believe his ears.
“You miss so much,” she continued boldly. “Think of the beautiful summer you have wasted, stuffing indoors, from morning till night; only creeping out now and then to do a little fishing. Think of our friends, that we have scarcely seen for six months. You are sacrificing your best hours and days to the memory of a dead woman—a woman who has been dead nearly four thousand years! Even so, I am most frightfully jealous of her!”
“My dear girl, you’re talking the greatest nonsense! I thoroughly appreciate the beauty of the world. As for society, I have you—a host in yourself. If I had not taken determined measures, and buried myself here, this book of mine wouldneverhave been finished.”
“But I thought you were almost at the last chapter?” she protested, with tears in her voice.
“That’s true. But the complete work has to be carefully revised—rather a big job! However, when it is ready for the printers, you and I will go off, and have a couple of gay weeks in Paris.”
The long, empty days lagged on. Mrs. Serle, as she walked or gardened, felt more and more solitary and depressed. Alas, for the time when she rode high on the crest of popularity! She could not have believed it possible that she would have pined so incessantly for the society of one of her own sex. Wasthere something strange about the house they lived in? Was there anything peculiar about herself? Why did people cross the road when they saw her? Why had she a whole pew to herself in church? The situation presented was an extraordinary puzzle! Yet she dared not seek further enlightenment from Julian, for just now he was so immersed in his book that he scarcely snatched his meals. Her enlightenment came from another quarter.
For lack of amusement, it was her custom to drive far afield, the dog seated beside her as sole companion. In a remote country road she happened upon a lady resting on a bank with a bicycle beside her. She was evidently in distress, as she looked ghastly pale, and had taken off a boot.
“Can I help you in any way?” inquired Mrs. Serle, as she pulled up.
For a moment the stranger did not reply. Her pale face became crimson. At last she said:
“I’ve had a tumble off my bicycle. We went over a loose stone, and I’m afraid I’ve sprained my ankle. If you can give me a lift back to Beckwell I shall be awfully obliged.”
“Yes, with pleasure,” said Mrs. Serle. “The pony will stand, and I will get out and help you.”
Within five minutes the stranger, her bicycle, and the deposed dog were packed into the cart, and the Good Samaritan drove off.
For a long time her companion confined her conversation to monosyllables. Miss Piggott, the rector’s sister-in-law, had no desire to talk to the pretty young woman who shared the Professor’s address—but not his name. Strange to say, she wasnot“made up”!
“I suppose you live at Beckwell?” enquired Mrs. Serle.
“Yes, in the red house just as you come into the village.”
“It’s a pretty place, but extraordinarily dull. Do you know, I have been here three months, and have not spoken to a soul? I hope you won’t mind my saying that the residents of Beckwell are not very sociable to strangers.”
“No, I suppose we’re not,” murmured the other, who looked self-conscious, and uncomfortable.
“I can’t tell you how I am longing to depart, for I feel as if I should soon grow into a potato! You see, my husband is completely engrossed in his book—working alone all day. As it’s rather an important piece of literature, I never disturb him, and have rather a lonely time. I cannot understand what I have done to be ostracised!”
Mrs. Serle was allowing weeks of accumulated bitterness to find an outlet at last!
“We have come to the conclusion that there must have been smallpox or something in the house, and that is the reason that no one has ever come near us. Perhaps you can tell me if this is the case?”
“No,” replied Miss Piggott, “there has never been a case of smallpox in the village—as far as I know. But I think if you ask Mr. Serle,hewill explain the reason why you have no visitors.”
“I have asked my husband.”
“Yourhusband!” interrupted the other, “yourhusband!”
“Certainly my husband. What else did you think he was?” And she pulled up the pony, and surveyed her companion with blazing eyes.
“Oh, this is most embarrassing!” bleated Miss Piggott. “ThatIshould be called upon to explain matters is too—too—bad!” and her face exhibited bright red patches on its high cheek-bones. Never in a life of fifty years had she found herself in such a desperate situation.
“But please do enlighten me,” urged Mrs. Serle. “I shall be so grateful to you if you will.”
“Well then—I suppose—Imust! A few days after you arrived here, Canon Simpson met Mr. Serle in the village. It seems they were old college friends, and when the Canon told your—er—husband, that we were all so pleased to have him amongst us, and were hoping to make your acquaintance, he gave the Canon to understand that—you were—er—not hiswife!”
“What?” cried Mrs. Serle, and her voice was so loud and shrill that it startled the dog and pony.
“At any rate, that is what heimplied, and wished to imply!”
“But I am his wife! We were married at St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington, a year ago; and there were nearly three hundred people at our wedding.”
“Then what did hemean?”
“I think I can explain,” she said, suddenly whipping up Fat Tom. “He wanted absolute solitude and leisure in order to finish his book. We left our flat in London for Brighton; but there we seemed to have as many friends as ever—people, especially my women pals, running in and out all day. We went to Edinburgh, and there the literary world lionised him. At last, when in despair, he saw an advertisement of Beckwell, and we moved here. When Canon Simpson accosted him, and told him that all the neighbourhood was coming to call, I expect he felt desperate, and just closed the door with my good name! Oh yes, I see everything so plainly now. Why people look over my head, and cross the street! Why Annie was insolent. Why I was not invited to help at the bazaar; and why young men kiss their hands to me! I understand why my husband was anxious to turn the conversation when I complained of being dull; and was so full of excuses for theneighbours. He holds my reputation at a lower price than his book. Well—we shall see about that!”
“I think he has behaved disgracefully, in a most shocking manner,” burst out her companion, “and I’m not at all surprised that you are upset.”
“Upset!” repeated the other, with an hysterical laugh. “I shall not be as much ‘upset’ as Julian, when we have squared up accounts.
“Well, here we are. I think this is your house.” She drew up as she spoke, helped the lady to descend, and lifted out the bicycle. “I am immensely obliged to you,” she said, cutting short the other’s voluble thanks; “ifIhave given you a lift—youhave opened my eyes.”
Then, without another word, she got into the cart and drove away.
All that evening Helen was strangely white and silent; she complained of having a violent headache, and soon retired.
The Professor, unaware of the Sword of Damocles that was suspended above his head, started early next morning for London, in order to have an interview with his publisher. When he returned it was nine o’clock at night, and an appetising little supper awaited him. As soon as it was concluded he withdrew as usual into the study. The fire was out. The grate was full of ashes and scraps of paper—it looked as if a large bundle of manuscripts had recently been burnt!
“Hullo, Nellie,” he called to her. “Someone has been having a bonfire in here!”
She entered, closed the door carefully behind her, and set her back against it. “Whodo you think? What do you suppose it is that has been burnt?” she asked. Her face looked rigid and strained as she confronted him. “Yesterday I discovered why noone came near me. Julian, you have been guilty of the basest and most dishonourable conduct. In order to enjoy complete isolation, I have been humiliated before the world, my reputation has been sacrificed to the book. My good name has counted as nothing, in comparison with Semiramis!” She put her hand to her throat, and swallowed. “I shall send a copy of our marriage certificate to the parson, and request him to publish the truth.”
“So this is your revenge!” cried the Professor, who was trembling from head to foot. “For what was a mere ruse, to keep people at bay, and prevent tribes of women swarming in and out all day long, and disturbing me with their damned giggling, and shrill, high voices. Another wife would have thrown herself heart and soul into her husband’s task—instead of beingjealousof his labour. This book, which you have burnt, meant everything to me. I have had the subject in my mind ever since I was a lad at Oxford. Now it is all gone,” and his face quivered with emotion, “my toil, my notes, that I have been collecting for years!” He completely broke down as he added, “It is as if you had murdered my child.”
“You should never have married me,” she answered, wholly unmoved; “and I will now leave you to replace Semiramis with some other monumental work. I have cabled to my brother, and taken my passage in the Empress line for Quebec. This is good-bye.”
“So be it,” he groaned, as he sank into a chair, and bowed his head in his hands. “So be it—so be it!”
But matters were not altogether as desperate as the Professor had been led to believe. The day before she left England Mrs. Serle posted to her husband the priceless manuscript that she had merely pretendedto destroy, and his relief and joy were naturally beyond description.
Before Julian Serle abandoned Beckwell—which he did almost immediately—in figurative sackcloth and ashes, he went and confessed himself to the parson, and received the severe admonition which he most undoubtedly deserved. Subsequently the guilty man returned to his flat in London—to a home which was empty, not to say desolate. He was miserably unhappy, and missed his wife at every turn; her friends, yes, and his own, were full of insistent and embarrassing enquiries, to which he replied with a very halting tale about Helen having received a sudden and imperative summons to Montreal. Her absence weighed upon him heavily; after all, a live Helen was ten times more to him than a long-defunct Semiramis! So leaving his precious book to see itself through the press, he took ship for Canada, where he sought out his outraged consort, abased himself appropriately—and received a full pardon.