HELENA
Love, according to the Greek proverb quoted by Plutarch, is the
offspring of the rainbow and the west wind, that delicious west wind, so
full of hope and youth in all its breathings--that rainbow that we may,
if we will, pursue for ever, and which we shall never overtake. Helena
Langley, although she was a fairly well-read girl, had probably never
heard of the proverb, but there was something in her mood of mind at
present that might seem to have sprung from the conjunction of the
rainbow and the west wind. She was exalted out of herself by her
feelings--the west wind breathed lovingly on her--and yet she saw that
the rainbow was very far off. She was beginning to admit to herself that
she was in love with the Dictator--at all events, that she was growing
more and more into love with him; but she could not see that he was at
all likely to be in love with her. She was a spoilt child; she had all
the virtues and no doubt some of the defects of the spoilt child. She
had always been given to understand that she would be a great
match--that anybody would be delighted to marry her--that she might
marry anyone she pleased provided she did not take a fancy to a royal
prince, and that she must be very careful not to let herself be married
for her money alone. She knew that she was a handsome girl, and she
knew, too, that she had got credit for being clever and a little
eccentric--for being a girl who was privileged to be unconventional, and
to say what she pleased and whatever came into her head. She enjoyed the
knowledge of the fact that she was allowed to speak out her mind, and
that people would put up with things from her which they would not put
up with from other girls. The knowledge did not make her feel
cynical--it only made her feel secure. She was not a reasoning girl; she
loved to follow her own impulses, and had the pleased conviction that
they generally led her right.
Now, however, it seemed to her that things had not been going right with
her, and that she had her own impulses all to blame. She had taken a
great liking to Mr. Hamilton, and she had petted him and made much of
him, and probably got talked of with him, and all the time she never had
the faintest idea that he was likely to misunderstand her feelings
towards him. She thought he would know well enough that she admired him
and was friendly and free with him because he was the devoted follower
of the Dictator. And at first she regarded the Dictator himself only as
the chief of a cause which she had persuaded herself to recognise and
talked herself into regarding as _her_ cause. Therefore it had not
occurred to her to think that Hamilton would not be quite satisfied with
the friendliness which she showed to him as the devoted follower of
their common leader. She went on the assumption that they were sworn and
natural comrades, Hamilton and herself, bound together by the common
bond of servitude to the Dictator. All this dream had been suddenly
shattered by the visit of Ericson, and the curious mission on which he
had come. Helena felt her cheeks flushing up again and again as she
thought of it. It had told her everything. It had shown her what a
mistake she had made when she lavished so much of her friendly
attentions on Hamilton--and what a mistake she had made when she failed
to understand her own feelings about the Dictator. The moment he spoke
to her of Hamilton's offer she knew at a flash how it was with her. The
burst of disappointment and anger with which she found that he had come
there to recommend to her the love of another man was a revelation that
almost dazzled her by its light. What had she said, what had she done?
she now kept asking herself. Had she betrayed her secret to him, just at
the very moment when it had first betrayed itself to her? Had she
allowed him to guess that she loved him? Her cheeks kept reddening again
and again at the terrible suspicion. What must he think of her? Would he
pity her? Would he wonder at her--would he feel shocked and sorry, or
only gently mirthful? Did he regard her only as a more or less
precocious child? What had she said--how had she looked--had her eyes
revealed her, or her trembling lips, or her anger, or the tone of her
voice? A young man accustomed to ways of abstinence is tempted one
sudden night into drinking more champagne than is good for him, and in a
place where there are girls, where there is one girl in whose eyes above
all others he wishes to seem an admirable and heroic figure. He gets
home all right--he is apparently in possession of all his senses; but he
has an agonised doubt as to what he may have said or done while the
first flush of the too much champagne was still in his spirits and his
brain. He remembers talking with her. He tries to remember whether she
looked at all amazed or shocked. He does not think she did; he cannot
recall any of her words, or his words; but he may have said something to
convince her that he had taken too much champagne, and for her even to
think anything of the kind about him would have seemed to him eternal
and utter degradation in her eyes. Very much like this were the feelings
of Helena Langley about the words which she might have spoken, the looks
which she might have given, to the Dictator. All she knew was that she
was not quite herself at the time: the rest was mere doubt and misery.
And Helena Langley passed in society for being a girl who never cared in
the least what she said or what she did, so long as she was not
conventional.
To add to her concern, the Duchess of Deptford was announced. Now Helena
was very fond of the beautiful and bright little Duchess, with her
kindly heart, her utter absence of affectation, and her penetrating
eyes. She gathered herself up and went to meet her friend.
'My! but you are looking bad, child!' the genial Duchess said. She may
have been a year and a half or so older than Helena. 'What's the matter
with you, anyway? Why have you got those blue semicircles round your
eyes? Ain't you well?'
'Oh, yes, quite well,' Helena hastened to explain. 'Nothing is ever the
matter with _me_, Duchess. My father says Nature meant to make me a boy
and made a mistake at the last moment. I am the only girl he knows--so
he tells me--that never is out of sorts.'
'Well, then, my dear, that only proves the more certainly that Nature
distinctly meant you for a girl when she made you a girl.'
'Dear Duchess, how _do_ you explain that?'
'Because you have got the art of concealing your feelings, which men
have not got, anyhow,' the Duchess said, composedly. 'If you ain't out
of sorts about something--and with these blue semicircles under your
lovely eyes--well, then, a semicircle is not a semicircle, nor a girl a
girl. That's so.'
'Dear Duchess, never mind me. I am really in the rudest health----'
'And no troubles--brain, or heart, or anything?'
'Oh, no; none but those common to all human creatures.'
'Well, well, have it your own way,' the Duchess said, good-humouredly.
'You have got a kind father to look after you, anyway. How is dear Sir
Rupert?'
Helena explained that her father was very well, thank you, and the
conversation drifted away from those present to some of those absent.
'Seen Mr. Ericson lately?' the Duchess asked.
'Oh, yes, quite lately.' Helena did not explain how very lately it was
that she had seen him.
'I like him very much,' said the Duchess. 'He is real sweet, I think.'
'He is very charming,' Helena said.
'And his secretary, young--what is his name?'
'Mr. Hamilton?'
'Yes, yes, Mr. Hamilton. Don't you think he is just a lovely young man?'
'I like him immensely.'
'But so handsome, don't you think? Handsomer than Mr. Ericson, I think.'
'One doesn't think much about Mr. Ericson's personal appearance,' Helena
said, in a tone which distinctly implied that, according to her view of
things, Mr. Ericson was quite above personal appearance.
'Well, of course, he is a great man, and he did wonderful things; and he
was a Dictator----'
'And will be again,' said Helena.
'What troubles me is this,' said the Duchess, 'I don't see much of the
Dictator in him. Do you?'
'How do you mean, Duchess?' Helena asked evasively.
'Well, he don't seem to me to have much of a ruler of men about him. He
is a charming man, and a brainy man, I dare say; but the sort of man
that takes hold at once and manages things and puts things straight all
of his own strength--well, he don't seem to be quite that sort of
man--now, does he?'
'We haven't seen him tried,' Helena said.
'No, of course; we haven't had a chance that way, but it seems to me as
if you could get some kind of notion about a man's being a great
commander-in-chief without actually seeing him directing a field of
battle. Now I don't appear to get that impression from Mr. Ericson.'
'Mr. Ericson wouldn't care to show off probably. He likes to keep
himself in the background,' Helena said warmly.
'Dear child, I am not finding any fault with your hero, or saying that
he isn't a hero; I am only saying that, so far, I have not discovered
any of the magnetic force of the hero--isn't magnetic force the word? He
is ever so nice and quiet and intellectual, and I dare say, as an
all-round man, he's first-class, but I have not yet struck the
Dictatorship quality in him.'
The Duchess rose to go away.
'You see, there's nothing in particular for him to do in this country,'
Helena said, still lingering on the subject which the Duchess seemed
quite willing to put away.
'Is he going back to his own country?' the Duchess asked, languidly.
'His own country, Duchess? Why, _this_ is his own country.' Wrapped as
she was in the fortunes of Gloria, Helena, like a genuine English girl,
could not help resenting the idea of any Englishman acknowledging any
country but England. Especially she would not admit that her particular
hero could be any sort of foreigner.
'Well--his adopted country I mean--the country where he was Dictator. Is
he going back there?'
'When the people call him, he will go,' Helena answered proudly.
'Oh, my dear, if he wants to get back he had better go before the people
call him. People forget so soon nowadays. We have all sorts of exiles
over in the States, and it don't seem to me as if anybody ever called
them back. Some of them have gone without being called, and then I think
they mostly got shot. But I hope your hero won't do that. Good-bye,
dear; come and see me soon, or I shall think you as mean as ever you can
be.' And the beautiful Duchess, bending her graceful head, departed, and
left Helena to her own reflections.
Somehow these were not altogether pleasant reflections. Helena did not
like the manner in which the Dictator had been discussed by the Duchess.
The Duchess talked of him as if he were just some ordinary adventurer,
who would be forgotten in his old domain if he did not keep knocking at
the door and demanding readmittance even at the risk of being shot for
his pains. This grated harshly on her ears. In truth, it is very hard to
talk of the loved one to loving ears without producing a sound that
grates on them. Too much praise may grate--criticism of any kind
grates--cool indifferent comment, even though perfectly free from
ill-nature, is sure to grate. The loved one, in fact, is not to be
spoken of as other beings of earth may lawfully and properly be spoken
of. On the whole, the loving one is probably happiest when the name of
the loved one is not mentioned at all by profane or commonplace lips.
But there was something more than this in Helena's case. The very
thought which the Duchess had given out so freely and so carelessly had
long been a lurking thought in Helena's own mind. Whenever it made its
appearance too boldly she tried to shut it down and clap the hatches
over it, and keep it there, suppressed and shut below. But it would come
up again and again. The thought was, Where is the Dictator? She could
recognise the bright talker, the intellectual thinker, the clever man of
the world, the polished, grave, and graceful gentleman, but where were
the elements of Dictatorship? It was quite true, as she herself had
said, had pleaded even, that some men never carry their great public
qualities into civil life; and Helena raked together in her mind all
manner of famous historical examples of men who had led great armies to
victory, or had discovered new worlds for civilisation to conquer, and
who appeared to be nothing in a drawing- or a dining-room but ordinary,
well-behaved, undemonstrative gentlemen. Why should not the Dictator be
one of these? Why, indeed? She was sure he must be one of these, but was
it not to be her lot to see him in his true light--in his true self?
Then the meeting of that other day gave her a keen pang. She did not
like the idea of the Dictator coming to her to make love by deputy for
another man. It was not like him, she thought, to undertake a task such
as that. It was done, of course, out of kindness and affection for Mr.
Hamilton--and that was, in its way, a noble and a generous act--but
still, it jarred upon her feelings. The truth was that it jarred upon
her feelings because it showed her, as she thought, how little serious
consideration of her was in the Dictator's mind, and how sincere and
genuine had been his words when he told her again and again that to him
she seemed little more than a child. It was not that feeling which had
brought up the wish that she could see the Dictator prove himself
a man born to dictate. But that wish, or that doubt, or that
questioning--whatever it might be--which was already in her mind was
stirred to painful activity now by the consciousness which she strove to
exclude, and could not help admitting, that she, after all, was nothing
to the Dictator.
That night, like most nights when she did not herself entertain, Helena
went with her father to a dinner party. She showed herself to be in
radiant spirits the moment she entered the room. She was dressed
bewitchingly, and everyone said she was looking more charming than ever.
The fashion of lighting drawing-rooms and dining-rooms gives ample
opportunity for a harmless deception in these days, and the blue
half-circles were not seen round Helena's eyes, nor would any of the
company in the drawing-room have guessed that the heart under that
silken bodice was bleeding.