Helen with the High Hand | Page 5

Railway Station. Destiny
hesitated while Susan waited for James's recognition and James waited

for Susan's recognition. Both of them waited too long. Destiny averted
its head and drew back, and the relatives passed on their ways without
speaking. James observed with interest a girl of twenty by Susan's
side--her daughter. This daughter of Susan's was now sharing the park
bench with him. Hence the hidden drama of their meeting, of his
speech, of her reply.
"And what's your name, lass?"
"Helen."
"Helen what?"
"Helen, great-stepuncle," said she.
He laughed; and she laughed also. The fact was that he had been aware
of her name, vaguely. It had come to him, on the wind, or by some
bird's wing, although none of his acquaintances had been courageous
enough to speak to him about the affair of Susan for quite twenty years
past. Longshaw is as far from Bursley, in some ways, as San Francisco
from New York. There are people in Bursley who do not know the
name of the Mayor of Longshaw--who make a point of not knowing it.
Yet news travels even from Longshaw to Bursley, by mysterious
channels; and Helen Rathbone's name had so travelled. James
Ollerenshaw was glad that she was just Helen. He had been afraid that
there might be something fancy between Helen and
Rathbone--something expensive and aristocratic that went with her
dress and her parasol. He illogically liked her for being called merely
Helen--as if the credit were hers! Helen was an old Ollerenshaw
name--his grandmother's (who had been attached to the household of
Josiah Wedgwood), and his aunt's. Helen was historic in his mind. And,
further, it could not be denied that Rathbone was a fine old Five Towns
name too.
He was very illogical that afternoon; he threw over the principles of a
lifetime, arguing from particulars to generals exactly like a girl. He had
objected, always, to the expensive and the aristocratic. He was proud of
his pure plebeian blood, as many plebeians are; he gloried in it. He

disliked show, with a calm and deep aversion. He was a plain man with
a simple, unostentatious taste for money. The difference between
Helen's name and her ornamental raiment gave him pleasure in the
name. But he had not been examining her for more than half a minute
when he began to find pleasure in her rich clothes (rich, that is, to him!).
Quite suddenly he, at the age of sixty, abandoned without an effort his
dear prejudice against fine feathers, and began, for the first time, to take
joy in sitting next to a pretty and well-dressed woman. And all this, not
from any broad, philosophic perception that fine feathers have their
proper part in the great scheme of cosmic evolution; but because the
check dress suited her, and the heavy, voluptuous parasol suited her,
and the long black gloves were inexplicably effective. Women grow
old; women cease to learn; but men, never.
As for Helen, she liked him. She had liked him for five years, ever
since her mother had pointed him out on the platform of Knype
Railway Station. She saw him closer now. He was older than she had
been picturing him; indeed, the lines on his little, rather wizened face,
and the minute sproutings of grey-white hair in certain spots on his
reddish chin, where he had shaved himself badly, caused her somehow
to feel quite sad. She thought of him as "a dear old thing," and then as
"a dear old darling." Yes, old, very old! Nevertheless, she felt maternal
towards him. She felt that she was much wiser than he was, and that
she could teach him a great deal. She saw very clearly how wrong he
and her mother had been, with their stupidly terrific quarrel; and the
notion of all the happiness which he had missed, in his solitary,
unfeminised, bachelor existence, nearly brought into her eyes tears of a
quick and generous sympathy.
He, blind and shabby ancient, had no suspicion that his melancholy
state and the notion of all the happiness he had missed had tinged with
sorrow the heart within the frock, and added a dangerous humidity to
the glance under the sunshade. It did not occur to him that he was an
object of pity, nor that a vast store of knowledge was waiting to be
poured into him. The aged, self-satisfied wag-beard imagined that he
had conducted his career fairly well. He knew no one with whom he
would have changed places. He regarded Helen as an extremely

agreeable little thing, with her absurd air of being grown-up. Decidedly
in five years she had tremendously altered. Five years ago she had been
gawky. Now ... Well, he was proud of her. She had called him
great-stepuncle, thus conferring on him a