The Helpmate Part 4

Edith's hand was on the sleeve of Majendie's coat, caressing it. She looked up at Anne.

"And what," said she, "do you think of my little brother, on the whole?"

"I think he says a great many things he doesn't mean."

"Oh, you've found that out, have you? What else have you discovered?"

The gay question made Anne's eyelids drop like curtains on her tragedy.

"That he means a great many things he doesn't say? Is that it?"

Majendie, becoming restive under the flicker of Edith's cheerful tongue, withdrew the arm she cherished. Edith felt the nervousness of the movement; her glance turned from her brother's face to Anne's, rested there for a tense moment, and then veiled itself.

At that moment they both knew that Edith had abandoned her glad a.s.sumption of their happiness. The blessings of them all were upon Nanna as she came in with the tea-tray.

Nanna was sly and shy and ceremonial in her bearing, but under it there lurked the privileged audacity of the old servant, and (as poor Majendie perceived) the secret, terrifying gaiety of the hymeneal devotee. The faint sound of giggling on the staircase penetrated to the room. It was evident that Nanna was preparing some horrid and tremendous rite.

She set her tray in its place by Edith's couch, and cleared a side table which she had drawn into a central and conspicuous position. The three, as if humouring a child in its play, feigned a profound ignorance of what Nanna had in hand.

She disappeared, suppressed the giggling on the stairs, and returned, herself in jubilee let loose. She carried an enormous plate, and on the plate Anne's wedding-cake with all its white terraces and towers, and (a little shattered) the sugar orange blossoms and myrtles of its crown. She stood it alone on its table of honour, and withdrew abruptly.

The three were stricken dumb by the presence of the bridal thing. Nanna, listening outside the door, attributed their silence to an appreciation too profound for utterance.

They looked at it, and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, ma.s.sed themselves in her companions' minds as one vast sensation of discomfort.

As usual when he was embarra.s.sed, Majendie laughed.

"It's the very spirit of dyspepsia," he said. "A cold and dangerous thing. _Must_ we eat it?"

"_You_ must," said Edith; "Nanna would weep if you didn't."

"I don't think I can--possibly," said Anne, who was already reaping her sowing to the winds of emotion in a whirlwind of headache.

"Let's all eat it--and die," said Majendie. He hacked, laid a ruin of fragments round the evil thing, scattered crumbs on all their plates, and buried his own piece in a flower-pot. "Do you think," he said, "that Nanna will dig it up again?"

Anne turned white over her tea, pleaded her headache, and begged to be taken to her room. Majendie took her there.

"Isn't Anne well?" asked Edith anxiously, when he came back.

"Oh, it's nothing. She's been seedy all day, and the sight of that cake finished her off. I don't wonder. It's enough to upset a strong man.

Let's ring for Nanna to take it away."

He rang. When Nanna appeared Edith was eating her crumbs ostentatiously, as if unwilling to leave the last of a delicious thing.

"Oh, Nanna," said she, "that's a heavenly wedding-cake!"

Majendie was reminded of the habitual tender perfidy of that saint, his sister. She was always lying to make other people happy, saying that she had everything she wanted, when she hadn't, and that her spine didn't hurt her, when it did. When Edith was too exhausted to lie, she would look at you and smile, with the sweat of her torture on her forehead. He knew Edith, and wondered how far she had lied to Anne, and what she had done it for. He had a good mind to ask her; but he shrank from "das.h.i.+ng her down the first day."

But Edith herself dashed everything down the first five minutes. There was nothing that _she_ shrank from.

"I'm sorry for poor Anne," said she; "but it's nice to get you all to myself again. Just for once. Only for once. I'm not jealous."

He smiled, and stroked her hair.

"I was jealous--oh, furiously jealous, just at first, for five minutes.

But I got over it. It was so undignified."

"It didn't show, dear."

"I didn't mean it to. It wouldn't have been pretty. And now, it's all over and I like Anne. But I don't like her as much as you."

"You must like her more," he said gravely. "She'll need it--badly."

Edith looked at him. "How can she need it badly, when she has you?"

"You're a good woman, and I'm a mere mortal man. She's found that out already, and she doesn't like it."

"Wallie, _dear_, what do you mean?"

"I mean exactly what I say. She's found it out. She's found _me_ out.

She's found everything out."

"Found out? But how?"

"It doesn't matter how. Edie, why didn't you tell her? You said you would."

"Yes--I said I would."

"And you told me you had."

"No. I didn't tell you I had."

"What did you tell me, then?"

"I told you there was nothing to be afraid of, that it was all right."

"And of course I thought you'd told her."

"If I had told her it wouldn't have been all right; for she wouldn't have married you."

Majendie scowled, and Edith went on calmly.

"I knew that--she as good as told me so--and I knew _her_."

"Well--what if she hadn't married me?"

"That would have been very bad for both of you. Especially for you."

"For me? And how do you know this isn't going to be worse? For both of us. It's generally better to be straight, and face facts, however disagreeable. Especially when everybody knows that you've got a skeleton in your cupboard."