Helena | Page 4

they're awfully nice girls--most of them," said Mrs. Friend, with a little, puzzled wrinkling of the brow.
"Ripping! Done splendid war work and all that. But the older generation, now that things have begun again, are jolly well up a tree--how to fit the new to the old. I have some elderly relations at Oxbridge--a nice old professor and his wife. Not stick-in-the-muds at all. But they tell me the world there--where the young women are concerned--seems to be standing on its head. Well!--as far as I can gather--I really know her very slightly--my little cousin Helena's in just the same sort of stage. All we people over forty might as well make our wills and have done with it. They'll soon discover some kind device for putting us out of the way. They've no use for us. And yet at the same time"--he flung his cigarette into the wood-fire beside him--"the fathers and mothers who brought them into the world will insist on clucking after them, or if they can't cluck themselves, making other people cluck. I shall have to try and cluck after Helena. It's absurd, and I shan't succeed, of course--how could I? But as I told you, her mother was a dear woman--and--"
His sentence stopped abruptly. Mrs. Friend thought--"he was in love with her." However, she got no further light on the matter. Lord Buntingford rose, and lit another cigarette.
"I must go and write a letter before post. Well, you see, you and I have got to do our best. Of course, you mustn't try and run her on a tight rein--you'd be thrown before you were out of the first field--" His blue eyes smiled down upon the little stranger lady. "And you mustn't spy upon her. But if you're really in difficulties, come to me. We'll make out, somehow. And now, she'll be here in a few minutes. Would you like to stay here--or shall I ring for the housemaid to show you your room?"
"Thank you--I--think I'll stay here. Can I find a book?"
She looked round shyly.
"Scores. There are some new books"--he pointed to a side-table where the obvious contents of a Mudie box, with some magazines, were laid out--"and if you want old ones, that door"--he waved towards one at the far end of the room--"will take you into the library. My great-grandfather's collection--not mine! And then one has ridiculous scruples about burning them! However, you'll find a few nice ones. Please make yourself at home!" And with a slight bow to her, the first sign in him of those manners of the grand seigneur she had vaguely expected, he was moving away, when she said hurriedly, pursuing her own thought:
"You said Miss Pitstone was very good-looking?"
"Oh, very!" He laughed. "She's exactly like Romney's Lady Hamilton. You know the type?"
"Ye-es," said Mrs. Friend. "I think I remember--before the war--at Agnew's? My husband took me there once." The tone was hesitating. The little lady was clearly not learned in English art. But Lord Buntingford liked her the better for not pretending.
"Of course. There's always an Emma, when Old Masters are on show. Romney painted her forty or fifty times. We've got one ourselves--a sketch my grandfather bought. If you'll come into the hall I'll show it you."
She followed obediently and, in a rather dark corner of the hall, Lord Buntingford pointed out an unfinished sketch of Lady Hamilton--one of the many Bacchante variants--the brown head bent a little under the ivy leaves in the hair, the glorious laughing eyes challenging the spectator.
"Is she like that?" asked Mrs. Friend, wondering.
"Who?--my ward?" laughed Lord Buntingford. "Well, you'll see."
He walked away, and Mrs. Friend stayed a few minutes more in front of the picture--thinking--and with half an ear listening for the sound of a motor. She was full of tremors and depression. "I was a fool to come--a fool to accept!" she thought. The astonishing force of the sketch--of the creature sketched--intimidated her. If Helena Pitstone were really like that--"How can she ever put up with me? She'll just despise me. It will be only natural. And then if things go wrong, Lord Buntingford will find out I'm no good--and I shall have to go!"
She gave a long sigh, lifting her eyes a little--against her will--to the reflection of herself in an old mirror hanging beside the Romney. What a poor little insignificant figure--beside the other! No, she had no confidence in herself--none at all--she never had had. The people she had lived with had indeed generally been fond of her. It was because she made herself useful to them. Old Mrs. Browne had professed affection for her,--till she gave notice. She turned with a shiver from the recollection of an odious scene.
She went bade to the drawing-room and thence to the library, looking wistfully, as she passed