Helen with the High Hand | Page 8

condescendingly. "I'd made up my mind. I
arranged things with Mr. Bratt. He quite agreed with me. He took out a
licence at the registrar's, and one Saturday morning--it had to be a
Saturday, because I'm busy all the other days--I went out with mother
to buy the meat and things for Sunday's dinner, and I got her into the
registrar's office--and, well, there she was! Now, what do you think?"
"What?"
"Her last excuse was that she couldn't be married because she was
wearing her third-best hat. Don't you think it's awfully funny?"

"That's as may be," said James. "When was all this?"
"Just recently," Helen answered. "They sailed from Glasgow last
Thursday but two. And I'm expecting a letter by every post to say that
they've arrived safely."
"And Susan's left you to take care of yourself!"
"Now, please don't begin talking like mother," Helen said, frigidly.
"I've certainly got less to take care of now than I had. Mother quite saw
that. But what difficulty I had in getting her off, even after I'd safely
married her! I had to promise that if I felt lonely I'd go and join them.
But I shan't."
"You won't?"
"No. I don't see myself on a farm in Manitoba. Do you?"
"I don't know as I do," said James, examining her appearance, with a
constant increase of his pride in it. "So ye saw 'em off at Glasgow. I
reckon she made a great fuss?"
"Fuss?"
"Cried."
"Oh yes, of course."
"Did you cry, miss?"
"Of course I cried," said Helen, passionately, sitting up straight. "Why
do you ask such questions?"
"And us'll never see Susan again?"
"Of course I shall go over and see them," said Helen. "I only meant that
I shouldn't go to stop. I daresay I shall go next year, in the holidays."
CHAPTER IV

INVITATION TO TEA
They were most foolishly happy as they sat there on the bench, this
man whose dim eyes ought to have been waiting placidly for the ship
of death to appear above the horizon, and this young girl who imagined
that she knew all about life and the world. When I say that they were
foolishly happy, I of course mean that they were most wisely happy.
Each of them, being gifted with common sense, and with a certain
imperviousness to sentimentality which invariably accompanies
common sense, they did not mar the present by regretting the tragic
stupidity of a long estrangement; they did not mourn over wasted years
that could not be recalled. It must be admitted, in favour of the Five
Towns, that when its inhabitants spill milk they do not usually sit down
on the pavement and adulterate the milk with their tears. They pass on.
Such passing on is termed callous and cold-hearted in the rest of
England, which loves to sit down on pavements and weep into
irretrievable milk.
Nor did Helen and her great-stepuncle mar the present by worrying
about the future; it never occurred to them to be disturbed by the
possibility that milk not already spilt might yet be spilt.
Helen had been momentarily saddened by private reflections upon what
James Ollerenshaw had missed in his career; and James had been
saddened, somewhat less, by reminiscences which had sprung out of
Helen's laugh. But their melancholies had rapidly evaporated in the
warmth of the unexpected encounter. They liked one another. She liked
him because he was old and dry; and because he had a short laugh, and
a cynical and even wicked gleam of the eye that pleased her; and
because there was an occasional tone in his voice that struck her as
deliciously masculine, ancient, and indulgent; and because he had
spoken to her first; and because his gaze wandered with an admiring
interest over her dress and up into the dome of her sunshade; and
because he put his chin in his palm and leant his head towards her; and
because the skin of his hand was so crinkled and glossy. And he liked
her because she was so exquisitely fresh and candid, so elegant, so
violent and complete a contrast to James Ollerenshaw; so absurdly

sagacious and sure of herself, and perhaps because of a curve in her
cheek, and a mysterious suggestion of eternal enigma in her large and
liquid eye. When she looked right away from him, as she sometimes
did in the conversation, the outline of her soft cheek, which drew in at
the eye and swelled out again to the temple, resembled a map of the
coast of some smooth, romantic country not mentioned in geographies.
When she looked at him--well, the effect on him astonished him; but it
enchanted him. He was discovering for the first time the soul of a girl.
If he was a