In a little room high up in the house, her very own sitting-room, heaped with roses and heliotrope and carnations, its windows looking out to the Surrey hills and a gurgling brook—blue as steel in the winter cold, its snow-white banks edged with irregular shrubberies icicle-hung, Helen and Latham sat in close conference.
A glorious fire flamed on the broad hearth in the corner. Helen had inherited her father’s love of fires. When the war came, crippling their servant staff both at Curzon Street and at Deep Dale, and making the replenishing of coal cellars arduous, and posters on every hoarding admonished patriotism to economize fuel, Richard Bransby had installed a gas-fire in his library. Helen had opposed this, she had so loved the great mixed fire of logs and of coal before which so many of her childhood’s gloamings had been spent, so many of her acute young dreams dreamed, but for once the father had not yielded to her. In one particular the gas-fire had appealed to him—it minimized the intrusions of servants when he best liked to have his “den” to himself. Humbly born, but with none of the excrescent caddishness of smaller-soulednouveaux riches, he had no liking for the visible presence of his domestic retinue, and when servants were ill-trained and imperfectly unobtrusive, little irritated him more than to have them about, and, except by Helen, he was a man easily irritated. So gas had replaced wood and anthracite in his room. But not so in Helen’s. She meant well by her country, but the logs piled high on her hearth. The patriotisms of youth are apt to be thoughtless, in every country. Often Youth makes the great sacrifice—England needs no telling of that—but Age makes the ten thousand daily burnt-offerings that in their infinite aggregate heap high in the scale of a people’s devotion; and, perhaps, win as tender approval from the Angel that records.
The morning sun streamed in riotously. A room could not be prettier or more cozy. It made a brilliant background to the slender, black-clad girl-figure, and the handsome, middle-aged man, dressed as carefully as she—in a gray morning suit—and almost as slender. Dr. Latham took every care of his figure.
“I hope you are not going to be angry with me,” Helen said, looking at him a little ruefully.
“My dear child!”
“Because, you see, I have brought you here under false pretenses.”
“False pretenses!” her old friend laughed contentedly, “that’s actionable.”
“I’m not ill. It isn’t about my health I want to see you.”
“Then I’ve lost a very attractive patient,” he mocked at her in affectionate retort.
“Don’t joke—please. It is very serious.”
“So you wrote.”
“And I didn’t say I was ill. But, of course, that would be what you thought, when I begged you to come for a few days, and knowing how busy you always are, and asking you to say nothing to Aunt Caroline or any one, but just seem to be on an ordinary visit.”
“I was delighted to come,” he assured her gravely. “And, as it happens, I did not think you were ill.”
“No?”
“No.”
“How was that, Dr. Latham?”
“Can’t say in the least; but I didn’t. And—now—well—tell me.”
“It’s about something you once said.”
He wondered if it were something he had said about Angela Hilary. He hoped not. He had said some very foolish things—but that was long ago—before he really knew that radiant woman. “Something I once said?” he echoed a little anxiously.
Helen nodded.
“I am afraid I don’t remember. What was it?”
“That night that——” But she choked at the words. For a moment she could not speak. Latham gave her time. He was used to giving people time—and especially women. Presently she went on, finding another way to put it—“That last night—when you spoke of the dead coming back. You said that if two people loved each other very dearly, and one was left behind and needed the one who had gone, he would come back.”
“I said he might try,” Latham corrected her gently.
“You were right.”
“What do you mean?” The man was half amused, half startled, but the physician was anxious.
“Daddy—Daddy is trying to come back to me,” she said very simply.
“Miss Bransby!” For a moment he wondered if Angela had been taking this overwrought child to materializing circles or trumpet mediums or some other such bosh. But no, Angela wouldn’t. She did the wildest things—small things—but in the important things she had the greatest good sense: he had proved it.
“Oh,” Helen assured him, “I am sure of it—I am sure of it. There’s something he wants me to do, but I can’t understand what it is. That is why I asked you to come here—I thought you might help me.”
Latham was moved, and perturbed. “My dear child,” he began lamely.
But Helen could brook no interruption now. Her words came fast enough, now she had started. “For weeks,” she insisted breathlessly, “I’ve had this feeling—for weeks I’ve known that he was doing his utmost to tell me something. At first I tried to put it aside. I thought it was my grief or my longing for him that deceived me into thinking this—but I couldn’t. It always came back stronger than ever—until to-day when I suddenly realized—I can’t tell you just how—there is something he wantsmeto doin the library.”
“My dear, my dear, my idle remarks have put these ideas in your head.” The doctor was thoroughly alarmed for her now, though still he could detect no hint of illness or disorder. “You are overwrought.”
“No, no!” the girl cried. “It isn’t that. It’s the strain of not being able to understand—it’s almost more than I can bear. Oh, Dr. Latham, can’t you help me to find out what it is that Daddy wants me to do?”
He studied her gravely—puzzled, troubled, strange thoughts surging in his mind. She seemed perfectly normal. And he knew that while love, religious mania, money troubles, filled insane asylums almost to bursting, that the percentage of patients so incarcerated as the result of spiritualism was almostnil, and quite negligible—general rumor notwithstanding. (Rumor’s a libelous jade.) He felt less sure of a right course than he often did. And he said sadly, but with little conviction, “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Miss Bransby.”
“But surely——” She rose and stood before him, her eyes flushed with entreaty, her clasped hands stretched toward him in pleading.
He rose too and laid a grave arm about her slight shoulder, saying tenderly, “What I said that night—it was no more than an idle speculation—I had no ground for it. And, naturally, your great grief coming so soon afterwards impressed my words upon your mind.”
“Oh, no——” Helen said, her tears gathering.
“Come! come!” Latham coaxed her. “You’re imagining things.”
She pulled from his arm, and moved to the window, answering him almost violently, “No, no!It’s too vivid—it’s too real!”
“But surely,” he urged, “if your father could bring you to this house, direct you to the library—you said the library?”—she nodded her head emphatically—“he could tell you what he wanted you to do there. You have had to bear a great sorrow—it has unsettled you and given you this delusion—a delusion that comes to so many people who have lost what you have lost; you must conquer it!”
Perhaps he might have convinced and influenced her more, had he been more convinced himself, had she convinced and influenced him less. She persisted with him, wearily. “But—don’t you see? I thought you would see. Oh, please try to see. If I lose this—I lose—everything. I was so sure it was about Hugh—I was so sure Daddy was going to bring him back to me.” She sat down by the fire crying piteously now.
Latham’s own eyes felt odd. He knelt down on the hearthrug, and gathered her hands into his. “Poor child!” It was all he could say. What else was there to say?
She looked at him desperately. “Then you don’t believe?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he admitted—very softly.
He saw her mouth quiver, and then the sobs came thick and fast, and she hid her face on his shoulder.
She seemed quite herself at luncheon, and Latham was the life and the jest of the table. Women are bred so; and such is the craft of his trade.
Even Stephen watching jealously—he had known of thetête-à-têteof the morning—learned nothing. And Caroline Leavitt rejoiced and was grateful to see the girl so much more nearly herself.
But still Stephen watched—and waited.
At twilight he found Helen alone in the library. He joined her almost timidly, fearing she might drive him away. He sensed well enough that she wished to be alone. But she neither welcomed nor dismissed him.
“I didn’t know you were ill, Helen,” he said, seating himself where he could see her face well.
“I am not ill,” she replied, a little impatiently, rising and crossing the room, and standing at the window, facing it, not him.
“But you sent for Latham.”
Helen made no answer.
Stephen persisted, “And you carried him off to your room after breakfast, and said plainly enough, that you wished to be undisturbed there.”
“Yes, and I meant it. But it was to talk to him of something quite different from my health.”
“May I know what it was?” Pryde asked, going to the window, looking at her searchingly with his keen, speculative eyes.
“You, Stephen? No.” She could scarcely have spoken more coldly. And again she crossed the room, and stood looking down into the fire this time, her face once more out of the range of his eyes.
Pryde bit his lip, but he made no further bid for her confidence. He knew it would be useless—and worse. Neither spoke again for some time. Only the tick-tick of the grandfather’s clock, rewound and set now, touched the absolute silence. At last he said, “Helen.”
“Yes.” She turned and faced him, but both her voice and her face were cold and discouraging. He was risking too much, he was rasping his cousin; and he knew it. But for the life of him he could not desist. Such moments come to men sometimes, and against the impulse the firmest will is helpless.
“Do you remember losing a little blue shoe, years ago?” he began.
“I? No.”
“You did—the day we first came here. I found it. And I kept it. I have it still. I’ve always had it. I had it at Oxford.”
Helen sat down wearily, looking bored.
“I loved that little blue shoe, even the day I found and kept it—because it was yours. I have treasured it all these years—because it was yours. I shall keep it always.”
The girl shrugged her shoulders a little unkindly. “Well,” she said indifferently, “I don’t suppose it would fit me now.”
Her irresponsiveness stung him. He crossed to her quickly and laid a masterful hand on her chair. “Have you thought over what I told you?—about what I feel—about what Uncle Dick wished?”
She answered him then, and anything but indifferently. “Not now, Stephen,” she said impatiently, “I can’t talk of that now.”
“But you must.”
“Must?”
Her voice should have warned him. There was anger in it, contempt even, indignation, no quarter. And it was final. Not so do coquettes parry and fence and invite. Not so do women who love, or are learning to love, postpone the hour they half fear, the joy they hesitate to reveal or confess. Perfectly, too, Stephen caught the portents of her tone, but he was past warning. Love and impatience goaded him. He had reached his Rubicon, and he must cross it, or go down in it, engulfed and defeated. A vainer man would have taken alarm and retreated definitely from sure discomfiture and chagrin. A man who loved less would have spared the girl and himself. A wiser man, more self-contained, would have waited. Stephen Pryde plunged on, and plunged badly—every word an offense, every tone provocation.
“Can’t you see how vital this is to me?” he demanded roughly, his voice as impatient as hers had been, and altogether lacking her calm. “I must know what you are going to do, I must know.” He could not even deny himself the dire word the most obnoxious a man can use to a woman. A blow from his hand, if she loves him enough, a woman may forgive, in time half forget—some women (the weakest type and the strongest)—but “must” never.
Helen Bransby smiled, and looked up at Pryde squarely, with a sigh of resignation—and of something else too. “Oh! if you must know now, if I ‘must’ tell you, I must.” Then the longing in his face smote her, and the thought of her father quickened her gentleness, as it always did, and she stayed her sting. “Are you certain,” she concluded earnestly, almost kindly, “that it was Daddy’s wish that we should be married—you and I?”
“Quite certain,” Pryde answered in a firm voice. But his hands were trembling.
“I want to do everything he wanted,” Helen said wistfully.
The man turned away, even took a few steps from her, to grapple a moment with his own mad emotion. He felt victory in his grasp—victory hot on his craven fear, victory after despair, victory after hunger and thirst. He swung round and came back reaching towards her—his face transfigured, his voice clarion sweet, his eyes flashing,andbrimming. “Helen——”
She motioned him back. “Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I can’t do this. I told Daddy, when he was here, that it was Hugh or no one for me. Even to please him then I couldn’t change. I can’t change now.”
“And Hugh—that’s the only reason?” Pryde persisted doggedly. But he spoke breathlessly now, for a fear had chilled in on his ardor: did she suspect him? had she found anything? What had she and Latham said to each other? “Is that the only reason, Helen?” he besought her again.
“Yes,” she replied, considering him gravely.
“Then perhaps in time,” he begged.
She rose impatiently and crossed to another seat, speaking as she went. His nearness annoyed her.
“No, Stephen, never.”
He blanched, but again he would have spoken, but Helen gave him no time. “Now, please,” she said very clearly, “leave me here for a little while—I want to be alonehere.”
“No,” he exclaimed peremptorily, with sudden fear. “No, I can’t leave you here—not in this room, anywhere else, but not here. This room is bad for you. Come.”
“You are to go,” she told him quietly, “and now, please.”
“Why—why do you want to be alone—here?” he pleaded.
She answered him gently. “Just to think of Daddy. You know I haven’t been here since——”
His love, his tenderness reasserted his manhood then. “Of course—forgive me—I understand—I did not mean to speak sharply—but I hate to see you grieve so.” For a moment he stood looking down on her bowed head. Then he just touched her hand—it lay on the back of her chair—lingeringly, reverently, and said again as he went from the room, “I hate to see you grieve so.”
The girl sat bowed and brooding. After a time she rose and moved about the familiar place, touching old trifles, recalling old scenes. She stood a long time by the bookcase gazing at the volumes he had loved and handled, peering with brimming eyes at their well-known titles. She did not touch the jade Joss, but she lingered at it longest, choking, trembling. Then her face cleared—transfigured. A rapt look came over it—a look of love, longing, great expectation. Men have turned such looks to the bride of an hour. Mothers have bent such looks on the babe first, and new come, at their breast. She reached out her young arms in acceptance, obedience, greeting, entreaty—and said to the air—to the room—“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here.”
But no father came to her call, no companion from the void to her tryst. She waited, feeling, or thinking that she felt, the air touch her hair, brush her face, cool but kindly, and once cross her lips. She waited, but only the light air, or her fancy of it, came.
She knelt down by the old chair in which she had seen him last until she had seen him in his majesty, on the floor, in the hall. She laid her head on the seat that had been his, and wept there softly, disappointed, overwrought.
Some one was coming; some one very much of this world. High heels clattered on the inlaid hall floor, silk sounded crisply, and an expensive Persian perfume—attar probably—came in as a hand turned the knob on the other side and pushed the door open, and with the perfume the silken frou-frou, a jumble of several furs, lace and pearls, and Angela in a very big hat and a chinchilla coat. She closed the door behind her—an odd thing for an unexpected, uninvited guest to do, and she closed it quietly, for her very quietly. She tip-toed across the room stealthily, caught sight of Helen and screamed.
At the sound of some one coming Helen had risen to her feet and pulled herself together with the quick pluck of her sex. But she was still too overwrought to grasp entirely the strangeness of her friend’s behavior. Mrs. Hilary was dumfounded. She had thought Helen in London. She had crept into the house through a side door, come through the halls secretly and as silently as such shoes and so much silk and many draperies could, meeting no one and hoping neither to be seen nor heard. Her errand was particularly private. She had not been surprised to find the library door unlocked, for she had not been deeper in the house than the drawing-room since Mr. Bransby’s death. She and Mrs. Leavitt were far from intimate. And Mrs. Hilary had not heard of the taboo Helen had placed on the father’s room. She was dumfounded to find Helen here, and bitterly disappointed. But she noticed little amiss with the girl. Each was too agitated to realize the agitation of the other.
Helen pulled herself together and waited, Angela pulled herself together and gushed; each with the woman’s shrewd instinct to appear natural and much as usual.
Angela supplemented her cry of dismay with an even shriller cry of enthusiastic delight.
“My dearest Helen! How perfectly lovely!”
“This is a surprise,” Helen said more quietly. Of the two she was the less surprised and far the more pleased.
“Yes—isn’t it—a surprise?”
“You didn’t expect to see me?” What had brought Angela rushing into this room, then?
Mrs. Hilary saw her blunder as soon as she made it, even while she was making it almost. She was greatly confused—a thing that did not often befall Angela Hilary. She and embarrassment rarely met.
“No,” she stammered. “No—I—uh—yes, yes, I came over to——” She was utterly at a loss now. “Well,” she went on desperately, “I happened to be passing——” She broke off suddenly, looking anxiously at the window, and then looked away from it pointedly, and hurried on with, “I came to see if, by any chance, it was you Margaret McIntyre caught a glimpse of in the grounds yesterday. But—I—I didn’t see you when I came in here. It’s so dark here, after the hall. When did you come? Are you going to stay long?”
“I came suddenly—on an impulse—to find something. I may stay. I may go back to-morrow. I don’t know. But I haven’t unpacked much.”
Mrs. Hilary seized on the pretext this offered to get rid of Helen. She had been searching her excited mind for one wildly for some moments. “Then,” she said sharply, “you must see at once that your things are properly unpacked. Nothing spoils things like being crushed in trunks. And, as for chiffons! Go at once.”
“But,” Helen began.
“At once. I insist. You must not let me keep you. I shall be all right here, and when you have finished——” She was pushing Helen towards the door.
“Don’t be absurd, Angela,” the girl laughed—freeing herself, “my things can wait—I may not unpack them at all.”
“Are you sure—sure they can wait?” Mrs. Hilary said lamely.
“Of course I am sure, you absurdity. Besides, tea must be ready in the drawing-room. Angela, Dr. Latham is here.”
Angela dimpled and flushed. “Oh! is he—is he really?”
Helen nodded.
Angela sat down and opened her vanity bag. She propped the mirror up on the table, shook out her powder puff, tried it on one cheek, refilled and applied it liberally, thinking, thinking, as she beautified. How could she get rid of Helen? She wanted to see Horace Latham, of course, but she had something much more important to attend to first. Latham could wait—for once in a way. As she piled on powder, and flicked it off, another idea came to her. She seized it. “You go along now, dear, and I’ll follow you.”
Helen shook her head. “You will stop prinking and come with me, now.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Hilary said reluctantly, letting Helen take her arm and lead her to the door. At the door she cried, “Oh! Oh!” pressed her hand to her side and staggered back to a chair. She did it beautifully. It scarcely could have been done better.
“What is it, Angela?” Helen was thoroughly alarmed.
“Oh! the whole room is swimming.”
“My dear——”
“You must think I am awfully silly.” She could only just speak.
“You poor thing—of course I don’t. Perhaps a glass of water——”
Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently—far too violently for so ill a woman.
“I’ll get Dr. Latham.”
“Please don’t,” the invalid said sharply, and then, “I’m not well enough to see a doctor,” she wailed.
“But I’m worried about you, Angela.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. It’s only the pain, the pain and the faintness, the horrid faintness. If only I had some smelling salts,” she moaned.
“There are some in my dressing-case,” Helen said quickly. “I’ll ring.”
“Oh no, no, you mustn’t!” Mrs. Hilary cried. “I—I—can’t let Barker see me like this. No, no! Don’t do that. Couldn’t you get them yourself, dear? Couldn’t you? Do you mind?”
“Why, no—of course not.” Helen was puzzled—and a little amused. How absurd Angela was—even when ill.
“How long will it take you?” Mrs. Hilary asked faintly.
“About two minutes.”
“That will do nicely,” the sick woman said with sudden cheerfulness. “Helen,” she cried fretfully as the other turned to go, “don’t hurry. You are not to hurry. Promise me you won’t hurry. It drives me crazy to have people hurry.”
Helen studied her friend for a moment, shook a puzzled and a now somewhat suspicious head, and went slowly out.
As the door closed the fainting one bounced up, searched the room rapidly with her sharp American eyes, rushed to the window, threw it open, and leaned out far over the sill.
“It’s all right, thank goodness, at last! Come in!” she called in a shrill whisper.
A brown hand clasped the sill in a moment. In another a khaki-clad man swung up into the room. Hugh had come home.
Not the spick and span serviceless subaltern of eight months ago, but a sergeant, battered and brown—his uniform worn and faded, his face thin and alert. Hugh Pryde’s face had never been that before.
“My, but I’ve had a time,” Angela Hilary told him.
Once in the familiar room he looked about it quickly, heaved a great sigh of relief, threw his cap on the table, and laid his hands on the back of a chair affectionately, as if greeting an old friend.
Mrs. Hilary shut the window carefully. “Did any one see you come through the garden?” she asked.
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Quite.”
“Well, thank Heaven for that much.”
“Helen?” he begged. “No danger of her seeing me?” he added.
“No—no—of course not,” Angela replied promptly. “I told you she was in town.”
Hugh sighed. “I want to see her—but I mustn’t.”
“Of course you mustn’t.” Mrs. Hilary was plainly shocked at the very idea. “Of course not—but I’m sure she’d want to see you, if she knew—and, if she hadn’t been in town, she might help you. Do you know? I almost wish she’d come in by accident, and find you.”
Hugh drew a sharp breath. “No, no!” he said quickly, “I promised not to see her until I could show that I was innocent.”
“Well, now that youarein this room, I hope you can prove it quickly. This atmosphere of conspirator is wearing me to a frazzle. I’m so jumpy my powder won’t half stick on, and that’s awful. And every time I see a policeman the cold chills run up and down my spine, and I speckle all over with goose-flesh. This morning one of them came to see me about a dog license and I was so terrified I went wobbly and almost fainted away in his arms. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and have some tea.” She turned to go, elated and dimpling—like the child that she was.
“Mrs. Hilary!” Hugh delayed her. She turned back to him. “You’ve been a dear.”
“I always am.”
He caught her hands. “I’ve a lot to thank you for. You know I can’t say things—I never could. But I want you to know how I appreciate it.”
“Oh! that’s nothing,” she said gayly. “You mustn’t thank me. It wasn’t kindness. It’s just sheer creature weakness; it’s simply that I don’t seem able to resist a uniform, I never could. There was a German band in ’Frisco——” But she heard a light step in the hall. “Good gracious! I’m forgetting Dr. Latham. Good luck!” she cried hysterically and sped from the room, as Helen stood in the door.
Angela Hilary was half crying, half laughing, when she danced into the drawing-room. The tea still stood on the low table, steam still hissed from the kettle. But only Latham was there, alone, on the hearthrug. She swept him a low curtsey, caught him by the shoulders and swung him into the center of the room, whistling a ravishing melody in three-four time. He put his arm about her gravely, and they waltzed on and on until Barker cried, “Oh lor!” in the doorway.
“It’s all right,” Angela told her. “It’s callisthenics. Dr. Latham R-Xed for my health. I’ve a touch of gout, Barker.” But Barker had fled giggling.
“You’ve more than a touch of the devil,” the physician corrected her severely. Angela giggled too at that, a sweeter, more seductive giggle than Barker’s.
“Mein kleiner Herr Doktor!” she began sweetly. They were still standing where they had been when Barker arrested their waltzing. Latham caught her and shook her. “Bitte erlauben Sie! ich bin nicht eine Ihrer armen Kranken und verbitte mir Auftreten. Jetzt sind Sie erzürnt, über nichts, wahrhaftig nichts. Ach! die Männer, wie sind Sie dumm!” She poured out at him. It irritated the Englishman to be chattered to in intimate German, and Angela Hilary delighted in doing it. She had done it to him many times more than once, and the more he squirmed the more eloquent, the swifter grew her German. She had spoken to him in the hated language all through an otherwise dull dinner-party, a dour Bishop on her other side, an indignant and very bony suffragette just across the table. She had done it at Church Parade, and at Harrods (she had dragged him out shopping twice), in the Abbey and in the packed stalls of the Garrick.
“Hush, or I’ll make you,” he warned her now. He intended her to say, “How?” And she knew it and smiled. But she said nothing of the sort—but, almost gravely, “Oh! but I’m happy!”
“You look it.”
“So happy. So glad.”
“It suits you,” he said. “Do you know, I rather intend to try it myself.”
“It?”
“Happiness.”
Angela flushed. “Shall we dance some more?” she said quickly.
Latham picked her up and put her into a chair. “Barker’s face was enough. I prefer to avoid Mrs. Leavitt’s.”
Mrs. Hilary looked up at him wickedly. “Please, must I stay-put?”
“Must you what?”
“Insular Englishman, ‘stay-put’ is graphic American. By the way, why do you dislike Americans so?”
“I should like you even better as a British subject,” he admitted.
Angela Hilary turned to the fire and spoke into it. “Oh, this war—this wretched war! But, do you know, Dr. Latham,” swinging back to him—she could not keep turned from him long—“do you know, I’ve been thinking.” Latham smiled indulgently. “Oh! I think a great deal, a very great deal.”
“When?”
“Well—for one thing—I think most all night—every night.”
He let the enormity pass. “And this last cogitation, of which you were about to speak——”
“When you interrupted me rudely.”
“When I interrupted you with flaming interest. It was about our present war, I apprehend.”
“I was thinking what a lot of good people were getting out of it—different people such different good. I don’t suppose there’s any one who hasn’t reaped some real benefit from it, if they’d stop and think.”
Horace Latham shook his head slowly. “I wonder.”
“Oh, I don’t; I’m sure.”
He studied the fire flames gravely for a time. Then he sighed, shook off the mood her words had called forth, and turned to her lightly.
“And what benefit has Mrs. Hilary reaped from the war?”
She knitted her brows, and sat very still. Suddenly her face kindled and her lips quivered mutinously.
“I know. I’ve learned how to spell sugar.”
Latham laughed. This woman who spoke three other tongues as fluently and probably as erratically as she did English, and whose music was such as few amateurs and not all professionals could approach, was an atrocious speller, and every one knew it who had ever been favored with a letter from her. Latham had been favored with many. He had waste-paper-basketed them at first—but of late he did not.
“I can!!” she insisted. “S-U-G-A-R. There! Sugar, color, collar, their, reign, oh! what I’ve suffered over those words! I spent a whole day once at school hunting for ‘sword’ in the dictionary (I do think of all the silly books dictionaries are the silliest), and then I never found it. Think of shoving awinto sword. Who wants it? I don’t. Nobody needs it. Silly language.”
“Which language can your high wisdomship spell the least incorrectly?” he asked pleasantly.
“Mein werter Herr Doktor, das Buchstabiren ist mir Nebensache. Ich sprache vier Sprachen flissend—Sie kaum im Stande sind nur eine zu stammeln doch glauben Sie dass eine Frau ohne Fehler sei wenn sie richtig Englisch schreibt und nur an die drei k’s denkt—wir man in Deutschland zu sagen pflegt—Kirche, Kinder und Küche,” she said in a torrent.
“You are ill,” he said, “I am going to prescribe for you.”
“What?” She made a wry face. “What?”
“This,” he gathered her into his arms and kissed her swiftly—and then again—more than once.
At last she pushed him away. “It took some doing,” she told herself in the glass that night. But to him she said gravely, “To be taken only three times a day—after meals.”
“No fear!” Her physician cried, “To be taken again and again!” And it was.
The chatterbox was silent and shy. But Horace Latham had a great deal to tell her. He had only begun to say it, haltingly at first, then swifter and swifter, man dominating and wooing his woman, when Angela cried imploringly, “Hush!”
He thought that she heard some one coming. But it was not that. Angela Hilary was planning her wedding-dress. He hushed at her cry, and sat studying her face. Presently she fell to knotting and unknotting his long fingers.
“Silk has most distinction,” she said to the fire, “and satin has its points. Oh, yes, satin has points, but I think velvet, yes—velvet and white fox.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded her lover.
Angela giggled.
For a long time neither spoke, or moved. Then Hugh held out his arms, and Helen came into them. And still neither spoke. The old clock ticked the moments, and the beat of their hearts throbbed tremblingly.
At last they spoke, each at the same instant.
“Helen”—“Hugh.”
She lifted her hand from his shoulder, and fondled his face.
Of course, she spoke first, when either could speak beyond that first syllable.
“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she said. “I thought you were never coming back to me.”
He caught her hands and held them against his heart.
“I couldn’t come, Helen. You know that—not until I had made things right.”
The glad blood rushed to her face. “Oh! Hugh,” she cried, “then you have made things right, you have found out? I am so glad, so glad!”
“Why no, dear,” he faltered, “not yet. But that’s why I’ve come.”
She paled a little, but her voice and her eyes were brave. “It doesn’t matter—nothing matters, now that you have come back to me. Oh, I’m so glad—I’ve missed you so, Hugh—I’ve missed you so”—the bravery had died in a little girlish wail.
“My dear”—it was all he could say.
“Where have you been all these months?” she asked, pushing him to a chair, and kneeling beside him, her arms on his knee.
“When I left here that night”—he laid a hand on her hair—“and had to give up my commission, I went straight to a recruiting office—and joined up as a private, under another name.”
“And now,” she said with a soft laugh, laying her cheek against the stripes on his sleeve, “you’re a sergeant. You have been to the front?” The young voice was very proud as she said it. Her man had given battle.
“I went almost at once.”
“And I never knew.” How much she had missed!
“It wasn’t until a few weeks ago I learned of Uncle Dick’s death,” Hugh said gently.
“He died that night, Hugh,” Helen whispered—“just there—in the hall.”
“Yes—I know,” he nodded, his arm on her shoulder. Neither said more for a space. Presently he told her, “I’ve had luck out there. I have been recommended for a commission.”
“I think I like this best,” the girl said, stroking his sleeve. “But it’s splendid that you’ve won through the ranks. That’s the kind of commission worth having—the only kind.”
“But I can’t accept it until I can tell them who I am. That’s why I got leave—to come back and try and clear myself. I didn’t know until I reached England that I had been published as a deserter—that there was a warrant for my arrest.”
“You didn’t know that?” Helen said, in her surprise rising to her feet.
“No—Uncle Dick promised to arrange matters—he must have died before he had the chance—of course he did—but I never thought of that. So now I’ve got to clear my name—of two pretty black things—or give myself up,” he said, rising and standing beside her, face to face.
She shuddered a little, and she could not keep all her anxiety out of her voice.
“And you think you can clear yourself? You have some plan?”
“Not a plan exactly,” he shook his head gropingly, “only a vague sort of—I don’t know what to call it.”
Helen was bitterly disappointed. “Why, what do you mean?” she asked wistfully.
“Helen,” he said awkwardly, diffidently. “You mustn’t think me quite mad—but I don’t know that I can make you understand—only—well—all these months out there—I have been haunted by an idea—oh! Helen, strange things have come to many of us out there—at night—in the trenches—lying by our guns waiting—in the thick of the fight even—things that will never be believed by those who didn’t see them—never forgotten, or doubted again, by those who did. I don’t know how it came to me—or when exactly—but somehow I came to believe that, yes, toknowit, that, if I could come back to this room, I would find something to prove my innocence. I don’t know how, I didn’t know how, but the thing was so strong I couldn’t resist it.”
Helen Bransby’s heart stood still. Something fanned on her face. She stood before Hugh almost transfixed. Slowly, reluctantly even, her eyes left his face, and moved mechanically until they halted and rested on a green-and-pink toy blinking in the sunset. Sunset was fast turning to twilight. The room was flooded and curtained with shadows.
“I always felt,” Hugh continued, “that when I got to this room something would come to me.” Then his manner changed abruptly, the scorn of the modern man mocking and scoffing the embryo seer, and he said bitterly, “I dare say I’ve been a fool—but it all seemed so real—so vivid—so real.” His last words were plaintive with human longing and uncertainty.
“I know,” she smiled a little, but her voice was deeply earnest.
Hugh regarded her in amazement. “You know?” he said breathlessly, catching her hand.
“Yes.” She seemed to find the rest difficult to say. He waited tensely, and with a long intaking of breath she went on, “Hugh, did you ever think where this feeling might come from?”
“Well—no,” he replied lamely, “how could I? It was an impression, I dare say, just because this room was so much in my thoughts.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” Helen said staunchly. “Hugh, I have had this feeling too.”
“You, Helen!”
“Yes.I have it now—strongly. For a long time I’ve felt that there was something that I could do—something I must do—something that would make things right for you.”
“But, my dear”—Hugh was frightened, anxious for her.
“That’s why I came down here a few days ago. Why I came to this room an hour ago——” she hurried on—“all at once, in London, I knew that there was something in this room that would clear you.”
Hugh was baffled—and strangely impressed. “That is curious,” he said very slowly.
“Hugh,” she whispered clearly, “don’t you realize where this feeling—that we both have—comes from?”
He shook his head slowly—puzzled—quite in the dark.
“Think!”
Again a slow shake of the head.
“Daddy—Daddy is trying to help us!”
Too amazed to speak, too stunned to think, Hugh Pryde stood rigid—dumfounded. Helen was breathing rapidly, her breast rising and falling in great heaves, waves of alternate shadow and sunset veiling and lighting her face, her eyes far off and set, her hands reaching out to——
“Helen, my dear——” he said, brought to himself by her strangeness.
“Oh!” she cried fiercely, great longing fluting her voice—she was more intensely nervous than her companion had ever seen any one before, and he had seen hundreds of untried boys on the eve of battle—“Oh! it must be so. Why should the same thought come to us both—you at the front—I in London—come—so—vividly? And without any reason!—I am sure it’s Daddy.”
At the sight of her exaltation all his cocksure masculinity reasserted itself. He laid a patronizing, affectionate hand on her arm. “Don’t distress yourself with this, dear,” he said soothingly, “I can’t let you. Our both having the same feeling must have been only a coincidence.”
She shook off his hand with gentle impatience, the sex impatience of quick woman with man’s dullness, a delicate rage as old as the Garden of Eden. “No, no,” she said chidingly. “It wasn’t only that—it wasn’t only that.”
Her earnestness shook him a little—and perhaps his wish did too: any port in a storm, even a supernatural one!
“But if Uncle Dick could bring us to this room,” he asked slowly, “why doesn’t he show us what to do?”
“He will,” she said—almost sternly—“he will—now that he has brought us here—why, that proves it! Don’t you see? I see!—now that he has brought us here—He will come to us.” She sank down into a low chair near the writing-table, her eyes rapt, riveted on space.
Again masculine superiority reasserted itself, and something creature-love, and chivalry too—jostling aside the “almost I am persuaded” that the moment before had cried in his soul, and Hugh put a pitying hand on her shoulder, saying,
“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Helen, but that’s impossible.” Thought-transference, spiritual-wireless—um—well, perhaps—butghosts!—perish the folly!
Helen looked up, and, at something in her face, he took his hand from her shoulder. The girl shivered. And in another moment the khaki-clad man shivered too—rather violently. “How cold it is here,” he said, and repeated somewhat dreamily—“How cold!”
“Yes,” Helen echoed in an unnatural voice, “cold.”
“I must have left the window open,” Hugh said with an effort. He went to the casement. “No,” he said with a puzzled frown. “I did close it—tight.” He crossed to Helen again and stood looking down on her—worried and at sea. She sighed and looked up—almost he could see her mood of exaltation, or emotion, or whatever it was, pass. She spoke to him in a clear, natural voice. “What are we going to do, Hugh? We must do something.”
“I don’t know,” he said hopelessly—and began moving restlessly about the room.
Suddenly Helen sat upright and gave a swift half-frightened look over her shoulder.
“Hugh!”
He came to her at once. “Yes.”
“Don’t think me hysterical—but we don’tknowthat Daddy couldn’t come back—wecan’t be sure. What if he were here, in this room now, trying to tell us something, and we couldn’t understand?”
“Helen, my dearest,” Hugh deprecated.
“Wait,” she whispered, rising slowly. “Wait!” For an instant she stood erect, her slim height carved by the last of the sunshine out of the shadows—trance-like, rigid. But at that sybil-moment Stephen Pryde opened the door softly and came through it. The girl’s taut figure quivered, relaxed, and with a moan—“No—no—I—no—no——” she sank down again and buried her face in her hands.
Richard Bransby come from the dead could scarcely have confounded Stephen more than the sight of Hugh did. For a moment of distraught dismay the elder brother stood supine and irresolute on the threshold. Then forcing himself to face dilemma, and to deal with it, if possible, as such natures do at terribly crucial moments—until they reach their breaking point—he called his brother by name.
Hugh swung round with a glad exclamation of surprise, and held out his hand. Stephen gripped it; and, when he could trust his voice, he said,
“I had no idea you were here.”
Helen rose and went to them eagerly. “He has come back to us, Stephen, he has been to France—he has been offered a commission—he has proved himself,” she poured out in one exultant breath.
“I am glad to see you, Hugh, very glad——” Stephen said gravely, “but you shouldn’t have come.”
“Why not?” the girl demanded.
Stephen turned to her then; he had paid no attention to her before, scarcely had known of her presence.
“The warrant,” he said to her sadly. “Hugh,” at once turning again to him, “didn’t you know that there was a warrant out for your arrest?”
“I only heard of it a day or two ago.”
“Then you must realize what a risk you run in coming here. Why did you take such a chance?”
“He came to clear himself,” Helen interposed.
“What?” Stephen cried, his dismay undisguised, but the others were too overwrought to catch it. “What?” Stephen repeated huskily.
“He believes—and so do I——” Helen answered—“that there is something in this room that will prove his innocence.”
“In this room?” Stephen Pryde’s voice trembled with fear; fear so obvious that only the intensest absorption could have missed it.
“Yes,” Helen said firmly.
Stephen controlled himself with a great effort—it was masterly—“What—what is it?” he forced himself to ask, turning directly to Hugh and looking searchingly into his eyes.
“I don’t know—yet,” Hugh said regretfully. Stephen gave a breath of relief, and sat down; his legs were aching from his mental anxiety and tension. “But,” Hugh went on, “I am certain I can find something that will clear me, if Helen will allow me to search this room.”
Hugh search this room! At that suggestion, panic, such as even yet he had not known, in all these hideous months of hidden panic, caught Stephen Pryde and shook him, man as he was and man-built, as if palsy-stricken. Neither Helen nor Hugh could possibly have overlooked a state so pitiful and so abject, if either had looked at him at that moment. But neither did.
“Allow!” the girl said scornfully, both hands on Hugh’s shoulders. “Allow! Me allow you! You are master here,” she added proudly.
Once more Stephen Pryde commanded himself. It was bravely done. Hugh’s head was bent over Helen—the woman Stephen loved—Hugh’s lips were lingering on her hair. Stephen commanded himself, and spoke with quiet emphasis—
“No—no! You must not do that.”
“Why not?” Helen said sharply, turning a little in Hugh’s arm.
“Don’t you see?” Stephen answered smoothly, his eyes very kind, his voice affectionate and solicitous. “Every moment you stay here, Hugh, you run a great risk. You must get away, at once, to some safe place, and then—I’ll make the search for you. Indeed I intended doing so.”
“No—no—that wouldn’t be right,” Hugh said impulsively, not in the least knowing why he said it. “I don’t know why,” he added slowly, “but that wouldn’t be right.” As he spoke he turned his head and looked over his shoulder almost as if listening to some one from whose prompting he spoke. The movement of his head was unusual and somehow suggested apprehension. And he spoke hesitatingly, automatically, as if some one else threw him the word.
“What are you looking at?” Stephen said uneasily.
Hugh turned back with an awkward laugh. “Ah—um—nothing,” he said lamely.
Often life seems one long series of interruptions; and, more often than not, interruptions are petty and annoying. That it is our inconsequential acquaintances who interrupt us most frequently is easily enough understood—far more easily understood than accepted. But it is much more difficult to understand how often some crisis is transmuted or decided by some very minor personality, and a personality in no way concerned in the crucial thing it decides or alters.
Stephen was determined that Hugh should go—and go now.
Hugh was determined to stay, at all cost, until he had searched, and exhausted search of, this room to which both he and Helen had been so stupendously impressed.
Helen wished him to stay, but feared his staying. Her will in the matter swung an unhappy pendulum to and fro between the two wills of the brothers.
Hugh, Helen, and Stephen, and of all the world they alone, were vitally interested in the pending decision and in its consequences. How that decision would have gone, left to them, can never be known.
Barker the inept, and old Morton Grant fated an intruder at Deep Dale, interrupted, and, so to speak, decided the issue.
“Nothing,” Hugh had replied evasively to his brother’s “What are you looking at?” and had gone to the window, as if to avoid further question. Stephen, unsatisfied, was following him persistently when Barker opened the door and announced, “Mr. Grant.” Helen started to check her, but Stephen with a quick gesture, stayed her, and before she could speak speech was too late. Barker blundered out, and Grant came timidly in.
The old clerk had aged and broken sadly in eight months. Very evidently he was more in awe of Stephen Pryde than at the worst of times he had been of Richard Bransby. He stood awkwardly just inside the room, and fumbled with his hat, and fumbled for words.
“Good—er—good-afternoon, Mr. Pryde. How do you do, Miss Bransby? I trust——”
Stephen interrupted him sharply. “Well, Grant?”
“Er—I—I—am very sorry to intrude on you like this——”
“Yes, yes; but what do you want?” Stephen snapped.
“It’s—it’s about Mr. Hugh, sir.”
Stephen and Helen exchanged a quick look, she all apprehension, he trying to hide his elation, trying to look anxious too. Hugh turned at his name and came toward the others.
“About me? Well, here I am. What about me, Grant?”
The old man was amazed and moved. “Mr. Hugh,” he stammered, letting his inseparable hat fall into a chair. “God bless me—itisMr. Hugh.”
“Accurate as ever, Grant, eh?” Hugh chaffed him, smiling with boyish friendliness.
Morton Grant went to him eagerly, almost as if about to verify his own eyesight by touch.
“You are all right, sir? You are well?”
“Never better.”
“I am glad, sir. I’m very glad indeed,” the old man said brokenly.
Stephen Pryde had had enough of this. “Yes, yes, yes,” he interrupted testily; “but why are you here, Grant? You said it was about Hugh.”
“It is, sir,” the clerk answered quickly, recalled to his errand; “the—the authorities came to the office to-day, searching for him.”
“Well, that’s cheerful,” Hugh commented.
Helen gave a little sob.
“It appears,” Grant continued, “that he has been seen and recognized lately. They thought we might have news of him.”
Stephen turned to Hugh curtly, but still trying to hide his triumph.
“You see the risks you are running.”
“What did you tell them, Grant?” Hugh asked.
“I said we knew nothing of your whereabouts, sir. Then I came directly here.”
“Were you followed?” Stephen asked sharply.
The question and the idea took Grant aback. “I—I don’t think so, sir!” he said feebly. “It never occurred to me that such a thing was possible. I’ve never had any experience with the police,” he apologized sadly.
“Your common sense should have told you not to come,” Stephen said brutally.
“I dare say, sir,” Grant admitted piteously; “but it seemed to me to be the only thing I could do.”
“You must go back at once,” Stephen ordered.
“Very good, sir,” Grant agreed meekly.
“And if you are questioned again——”
For the first time in his life, Morton Grant interrupted an employer. And he did it brusquely and with determined self-assertion.
“I shall say that I have seen nothing of Mr. Hugh—absolutely nothing.”
Hugh went to him with outstretched hand; but Helen was there first.
“Oh yes, that’s fine—fine,” Stephen said briskly.
Helen caught Grant’s arm in her hands, and thanked him without a word—with swimming eyes. But Hugh spoke.
“Thank you, Grant.”
Grant paid no attention to Stephen Pryde, and Helen he gave but an embarrassed scant look. Hugh’s hand he took in his. He was much affected, and the old voice shook.
“Mr. Hugh—I want you to know—I’ve always wanted you to know—that telling Mr. Bransby about the—about the shortage—was the hardest thing I ever did. But I had to do it.”
Hugh pressed the hand he held. “I know, Grant,” he said cordially. “And you were quite right to tell him.”
“God bless you, Mr. Hugh.” Morton Grant felt for his handkerchief. He thought he was filling up for a cold.
“God bless you, Grant,” the young fellow said, still holding the old clerk’s hand.
Stephen Pryde intervened sharply. “Come, come, Grant, you mustn’t waste time like this.”
“Very good, sir, I’ll—I’ll go at once.” But at the door he turned and lingered a moment to say to Hugh,
“I hope—I trust that everything will be all right for you, sir.”
“That ought to convince you that I am right,” Stephen said imperatively to his brother, as the door closed behind Grant. “Youmustget away from here now—the quicker the better.”
“But I can’t go now, Stephen,” the younger man pled; “I simply can’t go until—not yet——”
“They are certain to come here for you,” Stephen insisted; “they are certain to do that.”
“But before they can come I will have searched.”
But Stephen interrupted again, more sharply.
“Besides, Latham is in the house. He may come into this room at any minute—we couldn’t ask him to be a party to this. By Jove! no; he mustn’t see you; now I think of it, he suspects something already; he was questioning me shrewdly yesterday. I didn’t like it then, I like it very much less now. The coast’s quite clear,” he said, looking through the door. “Go up to my room—you will be safe there. Go! Go now. I’ll come to you presently, and we can talk things over—arrange everything.”
Hugh Pryde hesitated. It seemed to him that some strong impulse forbade him to leave the room. He looked at Helen, but she seemed as hesitating as he, and at last he muttered something about, “Another word to old Grant, the old brick,” and went reluctantly into the hall.