Desmond Coke

“ She had thought it all altered beyond recognition: fiction merely based on fact. But now she realised that all the parts of it which mattered—Zoë's ambitions, her husband's repression—were true, truer than she ever knew indeed: whilst all the variations—names, place, ages, children, work—made no real difference at all. In all life it is the soul alone that matters, for there lies happiness and all those others are mere accidents. And the soul of Zoë was the soul of Helena; the life of Helena, the life of Zoë. ”

“ Those who had not seen it scoffed; those who had, till reminded of the music-stool seen dimly through the figure, half-believed the Blue Lady to be an alias of Lord Bancourt. Then, as one by one they realised that what had passed was in very truth a ghost, the guests hushed their laughter, until the babel sank almost into silence.
It was in such a lull that Bobby entered. "Why, what a stony séance!" he exclaimed. "Missing me? or seen a ghost?"
"Yes—so delightful! The Blue Lady actually came," said Lady Silthirsk, who alone seemed totally unruffled. ”

“ The natives, attracted by my cries, my haste, and the limp mass over my shoulder—conceiving it, as I later ascertained, to be a bag of treasure, in which they would share—hurriedly, if nervously, drew in; and as the first of the monkeys bore down on us, snarling and stiff of tail, we pushed our frail bark on to the waves, with much chattering, alarm, and splashing from the swarthy but white-livered boatmen.
Perhaps it was this last—the splashing—which, after some minutes, brought Brand back to life again. ”

“ Helena thought that she had finished, when she suddenly began again. "I've been alone a good deal these three years, and I have thought a lot about marriage. Oh, not for myself, no" (she spoke so sadly that Helena relented for a moment) ; "but because my life now is so different from the one I spent with Hubert, and that makes one think. You know, if I'd my life to live again, I'd live it all alone—I'm afraid, yes, I'd sacrifice Hubert: men are born to marry, not to live with sisters!—but I'd have my life-work." ”

“ She realised the pathos of a life in which—as with her, in the days gone by—one sense of wrong after another would always wreck his happiness and wreck the life of any one he loved. It had been her; now it was Helena; there always would be, must be, a victim to his tragical self-centred brooding. And he would not be happy, ever. He would stand alone upon the dignity of his achievement; alone, he would distress himself that nobody considered his work, him; alone, upon his deathbed, he would understand too late that he had never lived at all. ”

“ I didn't want a woman-writer. I hate that type of woman. You were a simple, jolly girl when I first married you, and now—writing this popular clap-trap!—you must see, Helena, it isn't fair?" His stern air melted almost to appeal.
She would not allow herself to listen but forced the argument on to a safer plane. "This one," she said, "has nothing to do with an author at all, there can't be all those terrible misunderstandings. Oh, don't you see, Hubert," she cried, "that if I wrote another book, all obviously fiction, these horrid gossips may believe at last the other was all like that too? ”

“ Lady Silthirsk kissed her. "I don't ask anything, you little goose, except that you should be just humanly kind to poor Bobby—I think he'll do the rest!"
"I'll try," said Elfrida dubiously.
Her aunt, she reflected, was not of a nature to see how terrible it would be if people should believe her to be "angling" for Lord Bancourt. Better that he should choose some one else than that he should marry her on such a rumour! ”

“ Helena tried to arouse herself. "Leave him?" she said dully. "Surely there's some other way? Even if he didn't mind, think of—— You talk about agony, but how can you advise me to do this, when you know how his friends——"
"Nothing would hurt him," said Ruth earnestly, "nothing in all the world—that is the awful part—so much as this blow to his pride, this shattering of all his life-work. He thinks—he told me so—he thinks this book of yours was just a fluke, an amateur attempt; that you can never do another. ”

“ Within two years from marriage they had told upon Hubert Brett.
And so had come into being that pot-boiler, confessed to Helena with such solemnity on the wide, prudent, spaces of the Heath.
At first he had thought that it would be a hardship to exchange his own realistic method, his studies of character, for those banalities of plot and action independent of all motive, which wearied him even when read, boiled down, in a magazine. But slowly his mood of cynical disdain changed to a real enjoyment, for any task is splendid so soon as a man gets at firm grips with it. ”

“ Ruth looked very earnest. "Leave him," she said again, "unless you're fond enough of him to give up your career. I tell you—I know—you can not have both, with Hubert."
"You cannot serve God and Mammon," murmured Helena. She did not know that she had said it. She sank down into her chair again and forced her numb brain to thought.
"Don't break all his illusions," she heard Ruth saying, miles away. "Be gentle with him if you're fond of him. You know how sensitive he is. Your books, you say, sell better. How do you think he could ever endure that, he who—I tell you—is nothing but a child? ”

“ Helena sighed, a sigh of despair; then she got up with more energy than during all these days, buoyed by a resolve.
Anything was better than inaction. Even a row would not be so awful as this freezing calmness! She would do something—must!
She took his advice. She went to the telephone and left a message with the Studio porter. She asked Mr. Alison to tea.
Then she went back to the drawing-room, and as she tidied the neglected flowers there was on her tight-pressed lips the whole eternal mystery of the sphinx-woman. ”

“ Helena told no one about hers. And it was much more thrilling than those early Devonshire affairs, which largely hinged on the exact position of a fast-decaying mole.
The secret differed too from those of many wives in this, that it was all about a woman; a woman she had never met, a woman she could never meet.
For over a year now, since causeries and lectures on assorted topics began to fit into a shapeless enough whole—a something that explained or might explain what Helena called "Things"—she had put stray thoughts down into a shilling diary. ”

“ Contemptible enough perhaps to a superior eye, the salad of quite disconnected lectures, random talks with a young artist-friend, and pencilled passages from Mudie books, that formed this home curriculum; but as in health, contentment, as with life itself, the will to be is almost everything, and Helena was quite resolved to learn.
Her sole worry, in all the excitement of this onward surge into a fuller life whose endless spaces thrilled and terrified, was that her husband would not bear her company. Oh, he was much too clever. She knew that. She never blamed him. ”

“ Poor, timid, self-sacrificing Ruth never could understand what her brother's tempers were about. She tried so hard not to stand up against him!
"Oh, damn!" cried Hubert, and strode madly up and down the room.
It was all very futile, quite familiar.
She looked as pained as usual. "What is it, Hugh?" she gently asked.
"Of course you've given in," he flung at her. "You always do. You're always in the right: you are so keen to be! You wouldn't make me cross for worlds! It's just your damned humility I can't endure. No man on earth could possibly endure it." ”

“ Hallam met it with a scornful laugh. "Old maid!" she cried. "That is a preposterous idea you've got out of your comic papers."
"They're all I've ever read, histories and them," Helena said mildly; raising who shall say how many bitter doubts in the breast of a theorist.
"You're nothing but a child, my darling girl," the mother said more gently; "and even if you weren't, there's no disgrace in being what you call an old maid. Some of the world's best women have been that. You've got to think of far more serious matters than that before you can possibly decide on such a step as marriage;" ”

“ He drew her to him and kissed her very lovingly. "Oh, Helena," he murmured, close beside her ear, "if only you knew how I've missed you, how miserable I've been, how I have loathed myself. You splendid people think we horrid selfish beasts don't realise our vices. Oh yes, we do though, those of us who think, but we hope no one else observes them. I knew that I had bullied Ruth, sacrificed her life to mine, and I vowed when I married you—but what's the use? You never change your nature, and I'm just a selfish swine."
"Don't say such awful things, Hugh," she said gently. ”

“ My dear Ruth, I've had a classic homily on Marriage!"
Ruth stiffened visibly. "Marriage? Then I suppose you asked him in to give you his advice?"
"Really," said Hubert in another voice, "I imagine you can't object, now, to what I ask my pals in for?—supposing that I did."
She smoothed all that kind of thing away with a restful gesture.
"My dear boy, you know I've no objection, as you call it, to anything at all you do. You are a man. I'm only your guest. I've no right to object. But I am naturally interested. ”

“ He takes other steps. If he is a man of few friends, he will risk everything upon a coin's fall. "Heads I do, and tails I don't," he mutters weakly, groping in his pocket. Up spins the penny. Heads it is! "Heads I do," he murmurs once again; and adds, pathetically firm, "But all the same, I don't think I will." He has been helped to his decision.
If he has friends, he will use one of them in place of the penny. Every man, almost, has one trusted friend whose advice he does not take in all moments of perplexity.
Kenneth Boyd stood, so to speak, as Hubert's penny. ”

“ In any case, till she was twenty, Helena had no plays, novels, or man-friends. Her reading was all lives, histories, and comic papers. Her days were spent with relatives or younger friends, when she was not alone.
She grew up an oddly fine tribute to the system, thus underlining the depressing axiom which comes at length to all who study education: that those who are going to be nice will turn out nice, whatever way you train their youth, and much the same about the nasty. She was simple, healthy, buoyant, cheerful, natural; everything that Hubert thought. ”

“ Hallam, always frail and white, seemed to shrink visibly beneath this trouble. She held out a thin hand to the puzzled Helena, and drew her down beside her on the sofa.
"Look here, dear," she said gently; "I want to talk seriously to you. Life isn't so easy as you think. I've kept you here, safe from all worries and responsibilities and guarded you so that everything has seemed quite simple; but there are worries and responsibilities. You've got to live your life now, you see, Helena, and you will have to learn the habit of making quick choices whether you go this way or that. ”

“ Hubert, on the other hand, looked old for his age and self-conscious as only a man can look at his own wedding, but yet unusually handsome. He had not recovered from the dismal farce of a bachelor dinner, where nobody had liked the champagne, the idea of speeches had fizzled out, and every one had gone home before ten o'clock. He was pale and nervous. Yet Helena's relatives decided quite honestly, and in fact unexpectedly, that he was a good-looking man, and even Helena was quite surprised. ”

“ For one thing, Hubert almost instantly relented, the next day to be precise, about poor Mr. Alison. She, giving way in turn, had said she would appease the vicar's wife and golfers by seeing less of him. So all that stupid fuss was over.
This, however, was not the real Consolation. No, she had a secret.
Helena Brett's secret was not a typically wifely one. It was based, rather, on her childish games. Every little girl has secrets—to the scorn of boys—and when, like Helena, she is an only child, she has them to herself. ”

“ Were it but a machine, it doubtless would attain the same result from each book, whether put before it by a Fleet Street expert or a Stafford tyro. Because it is an Art, however, and all Art is merely the expression of an individual emotion, it follows that each book must react on every critic in a different way. These notices, so pompous with The Times or Stafford News above them, are not worked out with prayer by the whole paper's staff; they stand for one opinion, no less—and no more—than the opinion of a woman-reader over the tea-tray. ”