The Helpmate Part 25

Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and hostess of the night before.

"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays.

"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had not.

"How you ever could--" she began, but he stopped her.

"Oh well, we needn't go into that."

It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to the discussion.

She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned, somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannays--detestable people.

She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into life.)

"Did you expect me to enjoy it?" she replied to the first eager question.

"No, I don't know that I did. _I_ should have enjoyed it very much indeed."

"I don't believe you."

"Was there anybody there that you disliked so much?"

"The Hannays were there. It was enough."

"You liked Mr. Gorst?"

"Yes. He was different."

"Poor Charlie. I'm glad you liked him."

"I don't like him any better for meeting him there, my dear."

"Don't say that to Walter, Nancy."

"I have said it. How Walter can care for those people is a mystery to me."

"He ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't. Lawson Hannay has been a good friend to him."

"Do you mean that he's under any obligation to him?"

"Yes. Obligations, my dear, that none of us can ever repay."

"It's intolerable!" said Anne.

"Is it? Wait till you know what the obligations are. That man you dislike so much stood by Walter when your friends the Eliotts, my child, turned their virtuous backs on him--when none of his own people, even, would lend him a helping hand. It was Lawson Hannay who saved him."

"Saved him?"

"Saved him. Moved heaven and earth to get him out of that woman's clutches."

Anne shook her head, and put her hands over her eyes to dispel her vision of him. Edith laughed.

"You can't see Mr. Hannay moving heaven?"

"No, really I can't."

"Well, _I_ saw him. At least, if he didn't move heaven, he moved earth.

When nothing else could shake her hold, he bought her off."

"Bought--her--off?"

"Yes, bought her--paid her money to go. And she went."

"He owes him money, then?"

"Money, and a great many other things beside. You don't like it?"

"I can't bear it."

"Of course you can't. It hurts your pride. It hurt mine badly. But my pride has had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay."

Anne raised her head as if she refused to lower her pride an inch to him.

She was trying to put the whole episode behind her, as it had come before her. She had nothing whatever to do with it. Edith, of course, had to be grateful. _She_ was not bound by the same obligation. But she was determined that they should be quit of the Hannays. She would make Walter pay back that money.

Meanwhile Edith's eyes filled with tears at the recollection. "Lawson Hannay may not have been a very good man himself--I believe at one time he wasn't. But he loved his friend, and he didn't want to see him going the same way."

"The same way? That means that, if it hadn't been for Mr. Hannay, he would never have met her."

"Mr. Hannay did his best to prevent his meeting her. He knew what she was, and Walter didn't. He took him off in his yacht for weeks at a time, to get him out of her way. When she followed him he brought him back.

When she persecuted him--well, I've told you what he did."

Anne lifted her hand in supplication, and rose and went to the open window, as if, after that recital, she thirsted for fresh air. Edith smiled, in spite of herself, at her sister-in-law's repudiation of the subject.

"Poor Mr. Hannay," said she, "the worst you can say of him now is that he eats and drinks a little more than's good for him."

"And that he's married a wife who sets him the example," said Anne, returning from the window-sill refreshed.

"She keeps him straight, dear."

"Edith! I shall never understand you. You're angelically good. But it's horrible, the things you take for granted. 'She keeps him straight!'"

"You think I take for granted a natural tendency to crookedness. I don't--I don't. What I take for granted is a natural tendency to straightness, when it gets its way. It doesn't always get it, though, especially in a town like Scale."

"I wish we were out of it."

"So did I, dear, once; but I don't now. We must make the best of it."

"Has Walter paid any of that money back to Mr. Hannay?"