The Helpmate | Page 9

now to her
brother and his wife, and sank, fatigued with their effort. Two frail,
nervous hands embraced Majendie's, till one of them let go, as she
remembered Anne, and held her, too.
Anne had been vexed, and Majendie angry with her; but anger and
vexation could not live in sight of the pure, tremulous, eager soul of
love that looked at them out of Edith's eyes.
"What a skimpy honeymoon you've had," she said. "Why did you go
and cut it short like that? Was it just because of me?"
In one sense it was because of her. Anne was helpless before her
question; but Majendie rose to it.
"I say--the conceit of her! No, it wasn't just because of you. Anne
agreed with me about Scarby. And we're not cutting our honeymoon
short, we're spinning it out. We're going to have another one, some day,
in a nicer place."
"Anne didn't like Scarby, after all?"
"No, I knew she wouldn't. And she lived to own that I was right."
"That," said Edith, laughing, "was a bad beginning. If I'd been you,
Anne, whether I was right or not, I'd never have owned that he was."
"Anne," said Majendie, "is never anything but just. And this time she
was generous."
Edith's hand was on the sleeve of Majendie's coat, caressing it. She
looked up at Anne.

"And what," said she, "do you think of my little brother, on the whole?"
"I think he says a great many things he doesn't mean."
"Oh, you've found that out, have you? What else have you discovered?"
The gay question made Anne's eyelids drop like curtains on her
tragedy.
"That he means a great many things he doesn't say? Is that it?"
Majendie, becoming restive under the flicker of Edith's cheerful tongue,
withdrew the arm she cherished. Edith felt the nervousness of the
movement; her glance turned from her brother's face to Anne's, rested
there for a tense moment, and then veiled itself.
At that moment they both knew that Edith had abandoned her glad
assumption of their happiness. The blessings of them all were upon
Nanna as she came in with the tea-tray.
Nanna was sly and shy and ceremonial in her bearing, but under it there
lurked the privileged audacity of the old servant, and (as poor Majendie
perceived) the secret, terrifying gaiety of the hymeneal devotee. The
faint sound of giggling on the staircase penetrated to the room. It was
evident that Nanna was preparing some horrid and tremendous rite.
She set her tray in its place by Edith's couch, and cleared a side table
which she had drawn into a central and conspicuous position. The three,
as if humouring a child in its play, feigned a profound ignorance of
what Nanna had in hand.
She disappeared, suppressed the giggling on the stairs, and returned,
herself in jubilee let loose. She carried an enormous plate, and on the
plate Anne's wedding-cake with all its white terraces and towers, and (a
little shattered) the sugar orange blossoms and myrtles of its crown.
She stood it alone on its table of honour, and withdrew abruptly.
The three were stricken dumb by the presence of the bridal thing.

Nanna, listening outside the door, attributed their silence to an
appreciation too profound for utterance.
They looked at it, and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling
yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement
and of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed
its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like
innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and
formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding
symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, massed themselves
in her companions' minds as one vast sensation of discomfort.
As usual when he was embarrassed, Majendie laughed.
"It's the very spirit of dyspepsia," he said. "A cold and dangerous thing.
Must we eat it?"
"You must," said Edith; "Nanna would weep if you didn't."
"I don't think I can--possibly," said Anne, who was already reaping her
sowing to the winds of emotion in a whirlwind of headache.
"Let's all eat it--and die," said Majendie. He hacked, laid a ruin of
fragments round the evil thing, scattered crumbs on all their plates, and
buried his own piece in a flower-pot. "Do you think," he said, "that
Nanna will dig it up again?"
Anne turned white over her tea, pleaded her headache, and begged to
be taken to her room. Majendie took her there.
"Isn't Anne well?" asked Edith anxiously, when he came back.
"Oh, it's nothing. She's been seedy all day, and the sight of that cake
finished her off. I don't wonder. It's enough to upset a strong man. Let's