Helen was sitting on a pile of crimson cushions in the stern of a Canadian canoe, while from the middle of the boat Martin, with shirt-sleeves rolled up over his brown elbows, paddled her gently along the reaches of the upper river at Cambridge. The dryness and heat of this glorious summer had made the river very low in places, and his feet also were bare, with flannel trousers rolled up to the knee, for again and again he had to get out to pull the boat round snags or over shoals where the depth did not allow it to pass with the draught of two passengers. To the right, across a stretch of meadow stained brown with length of summer suns, rose the tower of Grantchester church, embowered in trees, and the booming of the mill sounded drowsily through the still air. Close to the river, however, a vivider tone of colour prevailed, tresses of water-side foliage dabbled in the stream, and tall, slender trees made a shelter from the heat, where cows, a classical example (and so not appealing to Martin, who splashed water at them) of unbustling life, chewed the cud and looked with large incurious eyes at the gliding constellation of the twins. Between them in the boat were packages containing lunch, for Martin had taken a complete day off his studies in recalcitrant languages and was devoting himself to Helen, who was staying with an aunt, Lady Susan Arne. Dr. Arne, her husband, was tutor at King’s, at which seat of learning Martin pursued his antipathetic{170} labours, and had the reputation of being the greatest authority living on the metres of Greek choruses.

Helen had left Chartries a couple of days after the crisis in her love-affair, at the suggestion of her uncle, to whom she had confided it.

“I will walk back with you to the vicarage, Helen,” he had said, “and persuade your father, in case he needs persuasion, to let you go away at once. Your being with him just now only keeps the wound open. Go away; it will heal better so. Just now, after that scene, you can only torture each other by your remaining there. Poor, dear child!”

“Yes; but ‘poor father,’ too,” said Helen.

“Certainly. Come to Chartries, if you like.”

Helen took his arm.

“That is so good of you, Uncle Rupert,” she said; “but I think I should like to go quite away, if father will let me. I think I should like to go to Cambridge. Martin is there. And Martin is so good for one, if one is, well, not very happy.”

“Yes; that is a good plan. You can stay with Susan. My dear, I’m more sorry for you than I can tell you, and also I am as sorry for your father. You and I both know him, and we both love him, and, though we are made very differently, we know how—how splendid he is. And how big.”

“I know,” said she. “I feel that if I could only persuade myself he was narrow I should care less. But his huge, singlehearted devotion to—to God cannot possibly be called narrow.”

They walked on in silence a little.

“But that is all I can do for you, Helen,” said he. “Nobody can really help you except yourself; we can{171} only alleviate things a bit. You have made your choice, absolutely, I gather?”

“Am I being a selfish, egotistic little brute, Uncle Rupert?” she asked.

“Not according to my view, which is that when a thing concerns you so intimately and vitally as this it is nobody else’s business. Not even your father’s,” he added.

A good deal of persuasion, as Lord Flintshire found, was needed. At first his brother would not hear of Helen’s going, for he said that her departure was shirking the situation. What made him yield was the suggestion that the situation, if not shirked, might make her really ill. And a hurried interchange of telegrams led to her arrival at Cambridge the next evening.

 

The expedition to-day had started rather silently, and Martin decided that, as Helen did not at present want to talk about her affairs, the best thing to do was to be completely futile, foolish, and garrulous. For years he and Helen had adopted this method of treating each other’s depression, and it was sufficient for one to say “Hump. Play the fool,” for the other to understand that until further notice he had to talk rot. This was a device, by the way, which neither had ever employed when Mr. Challoner was in a similar mood. He would probably not have understood it.

Martin stood up in the boat, which had stuck, and peered into the water.

“The great thing,” he remarked, “as the White Knight said, is to guide against the bites of sharks. He had steel anklets. Ow! why do they take the{172} sharpest stones in the world and place them where I want to step. I’m bleeding like a pig.”

He stood precariously on the other foot and examined the injury.

“A pig,” he remarked, fatuously, “that has not yet had its throat cut. Helen, how fat you must be getting. You weigh tons. We’ll have to throw the lunch overboard. Or perhaps it would be simpler if you stepped ashore for a moment. You can easily step on to the bank from there.”

He pulled the canoe over the shoal and took it where she could get in again. She laid her hand on his shoulder as she stepped in.

“You darling,” she said. “You can stop now. I’m better.”

“That’s good work,” said Martin. “Because, really I was beginning to run rather dry. You mightn’t have thought it.”

“I didn’t. I had no idea of it. I thought there was any amount more.”

“I can manage ten minutes more, if you like,” said Martin.

“No; I’m going to talk now. Martin, if you look suddenly grave like that I shall begin to laugh.”

“Well, give me a couple of minutes,” said the outraged Martin. “We always have an interval after the rot before we begin to talk. Otherwise, you know, we always laugh. One always laughs at anything abrupt. Don’t you know the story of the man who was suddenly told his wife was dead? Just like that. He said, ‘Oh, how shocking!’ and burst into shrieks of laughter. And he was really devoted to her, and never smiled again for years.”{173}

Helen gave up all attempts at gravity, and the two foolish twins laughed till they were completely exhausted, while the Canadian canoe went slowly circling round and round down the river.

So they landed and lunched, as Martin refused to drag the boat any more till he had eaten and by degrees recovered themselves. Then, taking to the canoe again, they paddled and talked.

“It has been dreadful at home, Martin,” said she. “Father hardly speaks at all. He has been very gentle since that scene with Frank and me, yet even that was hardly so bad as his silence and quietness now. He is suffering horribly, too; I am sure of it. Sometimes I see him looking at me with a sort of appeal in his eyes like a dumb animal. That is the worst of all; I feel such a brute.”

“You suffer, too,” said Martin, quickly.

“I know; but though they all—Uncle Rupert, Lady Sunningdale—think I am right, that doesn’t make me feel less of a brute. Besides, there is no ‘right’ about it. I can’t give him up, and father can’t bear it. And every evening he uses the prayer for Jews, Turks, and infidels.”

Martin frowned.

“That is not good manners,” he said, “with you there.”

“Oh, Martin, manners don’t come into it. The truth of father’s beliefs is so overwhelmingly real to him that he can’t think of anything else. That light is so strong that he can see nothing but it. It is soberly the whole world to him.”

“But it isn’t as if Frank was immoral,” said Martin.

“I believe he would mind that less,” said she.{174}

Martin swung the canoe round a half-submerged tree-trunk, where the water sucked and gurgled.

“But how unreasonable,” he cried. “Frank can’t help his want of belief. But we can all, in some degree, help making brutes of ourselves.”

Helen sat up suddenly, causing the boat to rock.

“I can’t live my life on other people’s lines,” she said, “any more than I expect others to live theirs on my lines. ‘I am I.’ I remember Frank quoting that to me the Sunday he walked back with me from Chartries. That has been like leaven; it has fermented and expanded within me. But, after all, is it only another way of saying ‘I shall be as selfish as I please’?”

“Of course not. That is what people think who haven’t got any individuality of their own. Lots of people haven’t. They are like mirrors slightly cracked, which reflect with certain dimnesses and distortions what is put opposite them. They say individuality is selfishness. What bosh!”

“Aunt Susan hasn’t got any,” remarked Helen, letting the conversation drift away a little. “It is that which makes her so restful. Her mind is like a cushion. It is quite soft, and if you lean on it you make great dents in it.”

Martin remained quite serious, staring at the water with vacant black eyes.

“Poor father!” he said at length. “Just think; you and me, Helen. He must find us awfully trying.”

“I know; and he continues to love us so. It is that which makes it so dreadful. Oh, Martin, do get through your stupid examination. Do turn out satisfactory, as I’ve been so eminently the reverse.”{175}

Martin transferred his gaze to his sister.

“I really don’t think there’s much chance of it,” he said.

“Of your getting through?”

“I might manage that. But there are other things. The career I propose, for instance.”

“But he’s reconciled to that,” said Helen. “That’s nothing new.”

Martin paddled on without answering this, and Helen looked at him rather closely.

“There is something more,” she said. “What is it? Is there not something more?”

He brought the boat up to the bank in Byron’s pool, where they were to disembark.

“Yes, there is,” he said. “At least, there may be. There is no use in my telling you now. If it happens, if I am sure it is going to happen, I will tell you beforehand. I promise you that. And now I think we won’t talk any more about it.”

But a sudden uneasiness seized the girl.

“Promise me one thing,” she said. “Promise me it is nothing disgraceful.”

Martin looked rather injured.

“No; I have not been stealing hens,” he said. “And it is compatible with the highest character.”

Helen looked at him a moment in silence.

“Then I’m not afraid,” she said. “And I will try not to guess at it until you tell me.”

The afternoon was intensely hot, and having arrived here, they settled that a boat under trees was far more to the point than walking under the blaze of the sun, and Helen merely reclined more recumbently on a pile of cushions.{176}

“I think we will go for a walk to-morrow, Martin,” she said, “instead of to-day.”

“That may be. By the way, I met last week that nice girl who was down at Chartries on the Sunday when I got into so many rows. What was her name?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Helen.

“Yes, you have. Oh, I know—Miss Pl—— Oh, yes,—Stella Plympton.”

Helen did not answer for a moment.

“Well, I shall go to sleep,” she said. “Martin!”

“Well?”

“You did that remarkably badly,” she said; “a cow could give you points in dissimulation. You remembered her name perfectly.”

 

Dr. Arne, at whose house on the Trumpington Road Helen was staying, was probably as nearly happy as is possible to the sons of men, who have so marked a genius for discontent. Whether his happiness was worth much and what it all came to is another question; but happy he was,—an affair of immense importance not only to himself, but to all on whom his imperturbable serenity shone. For Providence had endowed him with an apparently insatiable curiosity about the chorus-metres in Greek plays, and also with an intuitive perception as regards this extremely difficult and no doubt fascinating branch of knowledge, which had proved itself capable of being trained into something approaching the perfection of acumen. His intellectual ambitions were thus completely satisfied, and being without any passion but this, which the fact that he was tutor of his college enabled him to gratify without stint, there was really no possible{177} chink at which the bitter wind of discontent could enter and make draughts. The same good fortune had attended his marriage, for he had wooed and won a woman of good birth and breeding, whose only desire, as far as he was aware, was to make her husband not happy,—he was that already,—but comfortable. Extremely edible meals were offered to his notice at hours of his choosing, no sacrilegious hand ever disturbed the papers in his study, his wife walked with him after lunch, and, unless they had people dining with them or were themselves bidden to other feasts, played picquet with him after dinner. His mode of progression along roads was naturally a little quicker than hers, his play of the hand at cards a shade less mediocre, and in consequence he lived in an atmosphere of slight domestic superiority. The same atmosphere, though not domestic, surrounded him in his studies, for, to make a rough statement of the matter, he knew rather more about Greek chorus-metres than anybody else had ever done. His bodily health, moreover, if not exuberant,—he would have found exuberance very trying,—was excellent; he appeared, in fact, to be as immune to the frailties and disorders of the flesh as he was to any unsatisfied cravings of the spirit. He was also childless; and though he was not consciously grateful for this, he was aware that he desired neither more distractions, anxieties, or even joys than he possessed in such completeness.

Lady Susan Arne had been compared by her niece to a cushion; and, indeed, the superficial similarity—not, indeed, in point of looks, for Lady Susan was remarkably well-favoured—in the nature of the two was extremely striking when once it had been pointed out.{178} It was true that if one leaned on Lady Susan’s mind there was no firm resistance, only a large dent seemed to have been made in hers. But Helen, with a certain impatience in her survey, had overlooked the existence of a permanent dent there, a thing entirely foreign to cushions. She, Helen, it is true, might lean and make a dent, and that the next person who, so to speak, shook Aunt Susan up, or leaned upon her in another place, would (still in Helen’s view) efface the first dent; but in a corner of her, where no one ever thought of leaning or looking, there was a permanent and uneffaceable dent. This was made in the first place by the ungratified yearning for a child of her own; it was now daily renewed by the knowledge of its impossibility. There was in her, in fact, a potential vitality which under other circumstances might have made of her a woman, not a housekeeper, and have given her points more directly in contact with life than were picquet and constitutionals. As it was, she had experienced none of the divine unsatisfiedness which fulness of life alone brings with it; she knew only the content of a rather empty existence. And Helen, judging with the impatience of youth, which is akin to the impatience of kittens or puppies with inanimate objects that will not come and play with them, had overlooked this. For, in truth, Aunt Susan was not inanimate; tucked away in a corner of the cushion was a real, live thing that groped for life and light, and she, the individual, was like a room made ready for the reception of guests,—chairs and tables in order, games put out for their entertainment, but until the guests began to arrive the room was in darkness. Aunt Susan stood there, match-box in hand, so to speak,{179} waiting for the first ring at the bell to light up her tapers and shew how orderly, how fragrant, how charming (a little old-fashioned, too) her room was, how thoughtfully arranged for the pleasure of others. But no ring had yet come at her door-bell, and she still stood there, very patient and still smiling, but still waiting.

Lady Susan, on Helen’s arrival, knew only vaguely that something uncomfortable had happened at the vicarage; but Helen, the first evening she was there, had confided to her, rather as one may confide on cold nights to one’s pillow or to bedclothes tucked round the neck, the history of the last few days. But she neither knew nor would have guessed it possible that the news had kept Aunt Susan awake half the night, and that while she herself was up the river with Martin her aunt had gone about her household businesses and taken her walk with her husband in such a tremor of excitement that he had to hurry after her, instead of hanging on his step to wait for her. In all these tranquil years at Cambridge she had never been brought into contact with a thing that moved her like this. The gentle ministrations in which her years were passed had not touched her emotions, which, had not her yearnings for a child kept them alive, would probably long ago have fossilised. But those yearnings had nourished and rendered mature their sweet, delicate sensitiveness, and now when they were aroused, though even in this second-hand manner, they responded instantly, gently vibrating, not with a crackle of dry autumn leaves, but like foliage of aspen in the breath of spring.

Helen got back to this house of quiet towards five{180} in the afternoon, and found her aunt and Dr. Arne at tea on the lawn behind the house. The latter, however, soon went indoors to enjoy—literally enjoy—his couple of hours’ work before dinner, after forewarning them as to possible dampness on the grass after sunset.

“And have you enjoyed yourself, dear?” asked Aunt Susan, pleasantly; “and was the lunch I gave you really sufficient? Dear Martin has always such a beautiful appetite. It is a pleasure to see him eat his dinner.”

“Yes, dear aunt, we had heaps. And it was all so good, and so beautifully done up. Exactly like you.”

Aunt Susan, who always looked like a kind, little, animated Dresden shepherdess, flushed a little.

“And so you had a nice day?” she said. “And no upsets? Martin is so reckless on water. Dear Helen, is it quite wise to take off your hat? It may turn suddenly chilly.”

Helen laughed, and threw it on the grass.

“No; no upsets, and quite wise, Aunt Susan. But a nice day? There was everything to make it nice externally; but one’s nice days are made inside one, I think. And just now my machine for making nice days creaks and groans; it is out of order.”

Aunt Susan, though far too shy to take the initiative, was longing for the least thing that could be considered an introduction of this topic.

“Do you know, dear, I lay awake half the night thinking of you and your trouble,” she said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” cried Helen. “I ought not to have told you so late last night. Selfish little pig I am!”{181}

Aunt Susan patted her hand gently.

“Dear, it was delicious,” she said, “lying awake and thinking about you. I am afraid I actually enjoyed it. Not that I am not very, very sorry for you and your father and Lord Yorkshire; but when I said it was delicious, I meant it was so real, so alive, so very interesting. I don’t think I have lain awake more than a few minutes in the last couple of years, and that was when your uncle had the influenza. And then it was only his cough that kept me awake; I was not anxious, for he had it very slightly. Now, if you do not mind talking about it, do tell me more. You told me just the facts. Tell me what you feel. How does it touch,—I am so stupid at saying things,—not what you will do only, your actions, but yourself?”

The question implied a perception with which Helen had not credited her aunt.

“Ah, what a difference there is between them!” she said, quickly. “One’s actions may so frightfully belie one. What one does is so often a parody of one’s best. One’s worst part acts, while one’s best does nothing, turns its face to the wall, like Hezekiah. Or, or”—she was still kindly trying to explain to this dear little Dresden shepherdess—“one’s actions are often like an unsympathetic repetition of something one has really said, which gives quite a different meaning to it. Do you understand?” she asked, eagerly.

“Yes, dear, quite,” said Lady Susan. “Surely everybody understands that. All the same it is our business if we are kind and good at all not to be harsh or hard in what we do.”

Suddenly Helen’s eyes were opened. In a flash she saw that she had been doing what she deprecated, and{182} hitherto had judged Aunt Susan merely by her actions. With the impatience that was so very characteristic of her, she had observed her ordering dinner, taking the walk, playing picquet, and otherwise having a great deal of rather fragrant leisure with which she did nothing. From this she had drawn the conclusion that there was, so to speak, no one really there, only a punctual little domestic automaton. She had been so taken up with the fact that others did not understand her, did not allow for her individuality, that she had as yet never taken the trouble to consider whether these others also had not their own individuality equally to be respected. Aunt Susan, she would have said offhand, had none, yet she was referring to as a mere commonplace what was still to Helen a blinding discovery. And she went on talking with a freedom and a certainty of being understood that she associated only with the beloved twin.

“Well, it is just that,” she said. “Any one,—you, Uncle David,—any one may say it is merely heartless, merely selfish of me to go my own way, to pay no attention to the wish—ah, it is much stronger............