Helen with the High Hand Part 26

"Yes. Because, you see, it's Andrew Dean that I'm in love with."

She said it in very pert and airy accents. And then the next moment she put James into terrible consternation by crying, and clutching his arm.

He saw that she was serious. Light beat down upon him. He had to blink and collect himself.

"I' thy place, la.s.s," he said, "I should keep that to mysen."

"But I can't, uncle. That is, I haven't done. Andrew knows. You don't understand how much I'm in love with him. I've--he's--"

"Thou'st not kissed him?"

"Not exactly--but--"

"He's been kissing you in mistake for his other young woman?"

Helen nodded.

"Helen, what 'ud thy mother say?"

"It was because of Andrew Dean that I came to live in Bursley," said she. "I knew I shouldn't see him often enough if I stayed in Longshaw.

So I came here. You know we had always liked each other, I _think_, ever since he spent two years at Longshaw at Spitz Brothers'. Then I didn't see him for some time. You know how rude and awkward he is. Well, there was a coolness. And then we didn't see each other for another long time.

And then when I next saw him I knew I really _was_ in love with him. (Of course, I never said anything to mother. One doesn't, you know. And she was so taken up with her own affairs, poor dear!) And I thought he was really fond of me. I thought so because he was so cross and queer. He's like that, you know. And, after all, it was not that that made him cross and queer. It was just because he was as good as engaged to Lilian, and he didn't like to tell me. And I never knew. How could I guess? I'd never heard there was anything between him and Lilian. And besides, although he was cross and queer, he said things to me that he oughtn't to have said, considering how he was carrying on with Lilian. It was then that I settled on coming to Bursley. There was no _reason_ why I should stay in Longshaw. I saw him again in Longshaw, _after_ he was engaged to Lilian, and yet he never told me! And then, when I come here, the first thing I hear is that he's engaged to Lilian. It was that afternoon when Sarah called; do you remember, uncle?"

He remembered.

"I saw Mr. Dean that night, and somehow I told him what I thought of him. I don't know how it began; but I did. He said he couldn't help being engaged to Lilian. He said it was one of those engagements that go on by themselves, and you can't stop them. He wanted to stop it. But he was engaged before he knew where he was--so he says. He said he preferred me, and if he'd known--So of course I was obliged to be very angry with him. That was why I didn't speak to him at first at Mrs.

Prockter's; at least, that was partly why. The other reason was that he had accused me of running after Emanuel--of all people! I had been, you know. But what had that got to do with Andrew, seeing that he was engaged to Lilian? Besides, I'd been doing it on purpose. And he was so _insolent_. And then, to crown all, Mrs. Prockter makes me dance with him. No wonder I fainted! He is the rudest, _rudest_, crudest man I ever knew."

She wiped her eyes.

"H'm!" mused James.

"He'll simply kill poor little Lilian!" She sobbed.

"What's that got to do with you, if you and Emanuel has got nothing to do with him? It isn't you as'll be hung when Lilian's murdered."

"Can't you see he mustn't marry Lilian?" Helen burst out. "Silly little thing! How can she understand him? She's miles beneath him."

"Is there anybody as does understand him?" James asked.

"I do," said she. "And that's flat. And I've got to marry him, and you must help me. I wanted to tell you, and now I've told you. Don't you think I've done right in being quite open with you? Most girls are so foolish in these things. But I'm not. Aren't you glad, uncle?"

"Glad inna' the word," said he.

"_You must help me_," she repeated.

CHAPTER XXIII

NOCTURNAL

Many things which previously had not been plain to James Ollerenshaw were plain to him that night, as, in the solitude of his chosen room, he reflected upon the astonis.h.i.+ng menu that Helen had offered him by way of supplement to his tea. But the chief matter in his mind was the great, central, burning, blinding fact of the endless worry caused to him by his connection with the chit. He had bought Wilbraham Hall under her threat to leave him if he did not buy it. Even at Trafalgar-road she had filled the little house with worry. And now, within a dozen hours of arriving in it, she had filled Wilbraham Hall with worry--filled it to its farthest attic. If she had selected it as a residence, she would have filled the Vatican with worry. All that James demanded was a quiet life; and she would not let him have it. He wished he was back again in Trafalgar-road. He wished he had never met Helen and her sunshade in the park.

That is to say, he a.s.serted to himself positively that he wished he had never met Helen. But he did not mean it.

And so he was to help her to wrest Andrew Dean from Lilian Swetnam! He was to take part in a shameful conspiracy! He was to a.s.sist in ruining an innocent child's happiness! And he was deliberately to foster the raw material of a scandal in which he himself would be involved! He, the strong, obstinate, self-centred old man who had never, till Helen's advent, done anything except to suit his own convenience!

The one bright spot was that Helen had no genuine designs on Emanuel Prockter. As a son-in-law, Andrew Dean would be unbearable; but Emanuel Prockter would have been--well, impossible. Andrew Dean (he mused) was at any rate a man whom you could talk to and look at without feeling sick.

When he had gazed at the affair from all points of view, and repeated to himself the same deep moral truths (such as "There's no doing nowt wi' a young woman afore she's forty") about thirty-nine times, and pitied himself from every quarter of the compa.s.s, he rose to go to bed; he did not expect to sleep. But the gas was not yet in order, and he had only one candle, which was nearly at its latter end. The ladies--Helen and Georgiana--had retired long since.

He left his little room, and was just setting forth on the adventure of discovering his bedchamber, when a bell rang in the bowels of the house. His flesh crept. It was as if--

The clock struck twelve, and shook the silent tower.

Then he collected his powers of memory and of induction, and recognised in the sound of the bell the sound of the front door bell. Some one must be at the front door. The singular and highly-disturbing phenomena of distant clanging, of thrills, and of flesh-creepings were all resolved into the simple fact that some one was at the front door.

He went back into his little room; instead of opening the front door like a man, he opened the window of the little room, and stuck out the ta.s.sel of his cap.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

"It's I, Mr. Ollerenshaw," said a voice, queenly and nervous.

"Not Mrs. Prockter?" he suggested.

"Yes."

"I reckon ye'd like to come in," he said.

She admitted the desire with a laugh which struck him as excessively free. He did not know whether to be glad or sorry that Helen had departed to bed. He did not even know whether to be glad or sorry that Mrs. Prockter had called. But he vividly remembered what Helen had said about caps.

Naturally, he had to let her in. He held the candle in his left hand, as he opened the door with his right, and the ta.s.sel of his cap was over his eye.

"You'll think I'm in the habit of calling on you at night," said Mrs.

Prockter, as she slid through the narrow s.p.a.ce which James allotted to her, and she laughed again. "Where is dear Helen?"

"She's gone to bed, missis," said James, holding high the candle and gazing at the generous vision in front of him. It wore a bonnet, and a rich Paisley shawl over its flowered silk.

"But it's only ten o'clock!" Mrs. Prockter protested.

"Yes. But her's gone to bed."

"Why," Mrs. Prockter exclaimed, changing the subject wilfully, "you are all straight here!" (For the carpets had been unrolled and laid.)

And she sat down on a ma.s.sive Early Victorian mahogany chair about fifteen feet from the dying fire, and began to fan herself with her hands. She was one of your women who are never cold.

James, having nothing to say, said nothing, following his custom.