The Helpmate | Page 8

that Walter was not looking by any means too happy

himself.
"It doesn't matter; only, we don't want to dash her down, first thing, do
we?"
"No--no. Dear Edith. And there's Nanna--how sweet of her--and Kate,
and Mary, too."
The old nurse stood on the doorstep to welcome them; her
fellow-servants were behind her, smiling, at the door. Interested faces
appeared at the windows of the house opposite. At the moment of
alighting Anne was aware that the eyes of many people were upon
them, and she was thankful that she had married a man whose
self-possession, at any rate, she could rely on. Majendie's manner was
perfect. He avoided both the bridegroom's offensive assiduity and his
no less offensive affectation of indifference. It had occurred to him that,
in the circumstances, Anne might find it peculiarly disagreeable to be
stared at.
"Look at Nanna," he whispered, to distract her attention. "There's no
doubt about her being glad to see you."
Nanna grasped the hands held out to her, hanging her head on one side,
and smiling her tremorous, bashful smile. The other two, Kate and
Mary, came forward, affectionate, but more self-contained. Anne
realised with a curious surprise that she was coming back to a
household that she knew, that knew her and loved her. In the last week
she had forgotten Prior Street.
Majendie watched her anxiously. But she, too, had qualities which
could be relied on. As she passed into the house she had held her head
high, with an air of flinging back the tragic gloom like a veil from her
face. She was not a woman to trail a tragedy up and down the staircase.
Above all, he could trust her trained loyalty to convention.
The servants threw open two doors on the ground floor, and stood back
expectant. On such an occasion it was proper to look pleased and to
give praise. Anne was fine in her observance of each propriety as she

looked into the rooms prepared for her. The house in Prior Street had
not lost its simple old-world look in beautifying itself for the bride. It
had put on new blinds and clean paint, and the smell of spring flowers
was everywhere. The rest was familiar. She had told Majendie that she
liked the old things best. They appealed to her sense of the fit and the
refined; they were signs of good taste and good breeding in her
husband's family and in himself. The house was a survival, a protest
against the terrible all-invading soul of Scale on Humber.
For another reason, which she could not yet analyse, Anne was glad
that nothing had been changed for her coming. It was as if she felt that
it would have been hard on Majendie if he had been put to much
expense in renovating his house for a woman in whom the spirit of the
bride had perished. The house in Prior Street was only a place for her
body to dwell in, for her soul to hide in, only walls around walls, the
shell of the shell.
She turned to her husband with a smile that flashed defiance to the
invading pathos of her state. Majendie's eyes brightened with hope,
beholding her admirable behaviour. He had always thoroughly
approved of Anne.
Upstairs, in the room that was her own, poor Edith (the cause, as he felt,
of their calamity) had indeed prepared for them with joy.
Majendie's sister lay on her couch by the window, as they had left her,
as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly
injured spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a
little while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality.
The flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions,
gave to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw
into vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its
temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched
them. Edith, in her motionless beauty, propped on her cushions, had
acquired a dominant yet passionless presence, as of some regal woman
of the earth surrendered to a heavenly empire. You could see that,
however sanctified by suffering, Edith had still a placid mundane
pleasure in her white wrapper of woollen gauze, and in her long lace

scarf. She wore them with an appearance of being dressed appropriately
for a superb occasion.
The sign of her delicacy was in her hands, smoothed and wasted with
inactivity. Yet they had an energy of their own. The hands and the
weak, slender arms had a surprising way of leaping up to draw to her
all beloved persons who bent above her couch. They leapt