HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER
Decidedly Gloria was coming to the front again--in the newspapers, at
all events. The South American question was written about, telegraphed
about, and talked about, every day. The South American question was for
the time the dispute between Gloria and her powerful neighbour, who was
supposed to cherish designs of annexation with regard to her. It is a
curious fact that in places like South America, where every State might
be supposed to have, or indeed might be shown to have, ten times more
territory than she well knows what to do with, the one great idea of
increasing the national dignity seems to be that of taking in some vast
additional area of land. The hungry neighbour of Gloria had been an
Empire, but had got rid of its Emperor, and was now believed to be
anxious to make a fresh start in dignity by acquiring Gloria, as if to
show that a Republic could be just as good as an Empire in the matter of
aggression and annexation. Therefore a dispute had been easy to get up.
A frontier line is always a line that carries an electric current of
disputes. There were some questions of refugees, followers of Ericson,
who had crossed the frontier, and whose surrender the new Government of
Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties,
of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about
separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of
quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers
the South American question.
What did it all mean? There were threats of war. Diplomacy had for some
time believed that the great neighbour of Gloria wanted either war or
annexation. The new Republic desired to vindicate its title to
respectability in the eyes of a somewhat doubtful and irreverent
population, and if it could only boast of the annexation of Gloria the
thing would be done. The new government of Gloria flourished splendidly
in despatches, in which they declared their ardent desire to live on
terms of friendship with all their neighbours, but proclaimed that
Gloria had traditions which must be maintained. If Gloria did not mean
resistance, then her Government ought certainly not to have kept such a
stiff upper lip; and if Gloria did mean resistance was she strong enough
to face her huge rival?
This was the particular question which puzzled and embarrassed the
Dictator. He could methodically balance the forces on either side. The
big Republic had measureless tracts of territory, but she had only a
comparatively meagre population. Gloria was much smaller in extent--not
much larger, say, than France and Germany combined--but she had a denser
population. Given something vital to fight about, Ericson felt some hope
that Gloria could hold her own. But the whole quarrel seemed to him so
trivial and so factitious that he could not believe the reality of the
story was before the world. He knew the men who were at the head of
affairs in Gloria, and he had not the slightest faith in their national
spirit. He sometimes doubted whether he had not made a mistake, when,
having their lives in his hand, and dependent on his mercy, he had
allowed them to live. He had only to watch the course of events
daily--to follow with keen and agonising interest the telegrams in the
papers--telegrams often so torturingly inaccurate in names and facts and
places--and to wait for the private advices of his friends, which now
came so few and so far between that he felt certain he was cut off from
news by the purposed intervention of the authorities at Gloria.
One question especially tormented him. Was the whole quarrel a sham so
far as Gloria and her interests were concerned? Was Gloria about to be
sold to her great rival by the gang of adventurers, political,
financial, and social, who had been for the moment entrusted with the
charge of her affairs? Day after day, hour after hour, Ericson turned
over this question in his mind. He was in constant communication with
Sir Rupert, and his advice guided Sir Rupert a great deal in the framing
of the despatches, which, of course, we were bound to send out to our
accredited representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria. But he did not
venture to give even Sir Rupert any hint of his suspicions that the
whole thing was only a put-up job. He was too jealous of the honour of
Gloria. To him Gloria was as his wife, his child; he could not allow
himself to suggest the idea that Gloria had surrendered herself body and
soul to the government of a gang of swindlers.
Sir Rupert prepared many despatches during these days of tension.
Undoubtedly he derived much advantage from such schooling as he got from
the Dictator. He perfectly astonished our representatives in Orizaba and
in Gloria by the fulness and the accuracy of his local knowledge. His
answers in the House of Commons were models of condensed and clear
information. He might, for aught that anyone could tell to the contrary,
have lived half his life in Gloria and the other half in Orizaba. For
himself he began to admire more and more the clear impartiality of the
Dictator. Ericson seemed to give him the benefit of his mere local
knowledge, strained perfectly clear of any prejudice or partisanship.
But Ericson certainly kept back his worst suspicions. He justified
himself in doing so. As yet they were only suspicions.
Sir Rupert dictated to Soame Rivers the points of various despatches.
Sir Rupert liked to have a distinct savour of literature and of culture
in his despatches, and he put in a certain amount of that kind of thing
himself, and was very much pleased when Soame Rivers could contribute a
little more. He was becoming very proud of his despatches on this South
American question. Nobody could be better coached, he thought. Ericson
must certainly know all about it--and he was pretty well able to give
the despatches a good form himself--and then Soame Rivers was a
wonderful man for a happy allusion or quotation or illustration. So Sir
Rupert felt well contented with the way things were going; and it may be
that now and again there came into his mind the secret, half-suppressed
thought that if the South American question should end, despite all his
despatches, in the larger Republic absorbing the lesser, and that thus
Ericson was cut off from any further career in the New World, it would
be very satisfactory if he would settle down in England; and then if
Helena and he took to each other, Helena's father would put no
difficulties in their way.
Soame Rivers copied, amended, added to, the despatches with,
metaphorically, his tongue in his cheek. The general attitude of Soame
Rivers towards the world's politics was very much that of tongue in
cheek. The attitude was especially marked in this way when he had to do
with the affairs of Gloria. He copied out and improved and enriched the
graceful sentences in which his chief urged the representatives of
England to be at once firm and cautious, at once friendly and reserved,
and so on, with a very keen and deliberate sense of a joke. He could
see, of course, with half an eye, where the influence of Ericson came
in, and he should have dearly liked, but did not venture, to spoil all
by some subtle phrase of insinuation which perhaps his chief might fail
to notice, and so allow to go off for the instruction of our
representative in Gloria or Orizaba. Soame Rivers had begun to have a
pretty strong feeling of hatred for the Dictator. It angered him even to
hear Ericson called 'the Dictator.' 'Dictator of what?' he asked himself
scornfully. Because a man has been kicked out of a place and dare not
set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There
happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society
concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out
of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on
the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him
'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' people asked. 'Because he has been
kicked out--don't you see?' was the answer. But Soame Rivers did not
give forth that witticism in the presence of Sir Rupert or of Sir
Rupert's daughter.
Meanwhile, the Dictator was undoubtedly becoming a more important man
than ever with the London public. The fact that he was staying in London
gave the South American question something like a personal interest for
most people. A foreign question which otherwise would seem vague,
unmeaning, and unintelligible comes to be at least interesting and
worthy of consideration, if not indeed of study, if you have under your
eyes some living man who has been in any important way mixed up in it.
The general sympathy of the public began to go with the young Republic
of Gloria and against her bigger rival. A Republic for which an
Englishman had thought of risking his life--which he had actually ruled
over--he being still visible and so the front just now in London, must
surely be better worthy the sympathy of Englishmen than some great, big,
bullying State, which, even when it had a highly respectable Emperor,
had not the good sense to hold possession of him.
So the Dictator found himself coming in for a new season of popularity.
One evening he accompanied the Langleys to a theatre where some new and
successful piece was in its early run, and when he was seen in the box
and recognised, there was an outbreak of cheers from the galleries and
in somewhat slow sequence from the pit. The Dictator shrank back into
the box; Helena's eyes flashed up to the galleries and down to the pit
in delight and pride. She would have liked the orchestra to strike up
the National Anthem of Gloria, and would have thought such a performance
only a natural and reasonable demonstration in favour of her friend and
hero. She leaned back to him and said:
'You see they appreciate you here.'
'They don't understand a bit about our Gloria troubles,' he said. 'Why
should they? What is it to them?'
'How ungracious!' Helena exclaimed. 'They admire you, and that is the
way in which you repay them.'
'I know how little it all means,' Ericson murmured, 'and I don't know
that I represent just now the cause of Gloria in her quarrel. I want to
see into it a little deeper.'
'But it is generous of these people here. They think that Gloria is
going to be annexed--and they know that you have been Gloria's patriot
and Dictator, and therefore they applaud you. Oh, come now, you must be
grateful--? you really must--and you must own that our English people
can be sympathetic.'
'I will admit all you wish,' he said.
Helena drew back in the box, and instinctively leaned towards her
father, who was standing behind, and who seldom remained long in a box
at a theatre, because he generally had so many people to see in other
boxes between the acts. She was vexed because Ericson would persist in
treating her as a child. She did not want him to admit anything merely
because she wished him to admit it. She wanted to be argued with, like a
rational human being--like a man.
'What a handsome dark woman that is in the box just opposite to us,' she
said, addressing her words rather to Sir Rupert than to the Dictator.
'She _is_ very handsome. I don't know her--I wonder who she is?'
'I seem to know her face,' Sir Rupert said, 'but I can't just at the
moment put a name to it.'
'I know her face well and I _can_ put a name to it,' the Dictator said.
'It is Miss Paulo--Dolores Paulo--daughter of the owner of Paulo's
Hotel, where I am staying.'
'Oh, yes, of course,' Sir Rupert struck in; 'I have seen her and spoken
with her. She is quite lady-like, and I am told well educated and clever
too.'
'She is very well educated and very clever,' Ericson said 'and as
well-bred a woman as you could find anywhere.'
'Does she go into society at all? I suppose not,' Helena said coldly.
She felt a little spiteful--not against Dolores; at least, not against
Dolores on Dolores' own account--but against her as having been praised
by Ericson. She thought it hard that Ericson should first have treated
her, Helena, as a child with whom one would agree, no matter what she
said, and immediately after launch out into praise of the culture and
cleverness of Miss Paulo.
'I don't fancy she cares much about getting into society,' Ericson
replied. 'One of the things I admire most about Paulo and his daughter
is that they seem to make their own life and their own work enough for
them, and don't appear to care to get to be anything they are not.'
'Is that her father with her?' Sir Rupert asked.
'Yes, that is her father,' Ericson answered. 'I must go round and pay
them a visit when this act is over.'
'I'll go, too,' Sir Rupert said.
'Oh, and may not I go?' Helena eagerly asked. She had in a moment got
over her little spleen, and felt in her generous, impulsive way that she
owed instant reparation to Miss Paulo.
'No, I think you had better not go rushing round the theatre,' Sir
Rupert said. 'Mr. Ericson will go first, and when he comes back to take
charge of you, I will pay my visit.'
'Well,' Helena said composedly, and settling herself down in her chair,
'I'll go and call on her to-morrow.'
'Certainly, by all means,' her father said.
Ericson gave Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under
it--she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the
curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit Miss Paulo.
'Who has just come into the back of that girl's box?' Sir Rupert
asked--who was rather short-sighted and hated the trouble of an
opera-glass.
'Oh, it's Mr. Hamilton,' his daughter, who had the eyes of an eagle, was
able to tell him.
'Hamilton? Oh, yes, to be sure; I've seen him talking to her.'
'He seems to be talking to her now pretty much,' said Helena.
'Oh, the curtain is going up,' Sir Rupert said, 'and Ericson is rushing
away. Hamilton stays, I see. I'll go and see her after this act.'
'And I'll go and see her to-morrow,' were the words of his daughter.
In a moment Ericson came in. The piece was in movement again. Helena
kept her eyes fixed on Miss Paulo's box. She was puzzled about Hamilton.
She had very little prejudice of caste or class, and yet she could not
readily admit into her mind the possibility of a man of her own social
rank who had actually wanted to marry _her_, making love soon after to
the daughter of an hotel-keeper. But why should she fancy that Hamilton
was making love to Miss Paulo? He was very attentive to her, certainly,
and did not seem willing to leave her box; but was not that probably
part of the chivalry of his nature--and the chivalry of his training
under the Dictator--to pay especial attention to a girl of low degree?
The Dictator, she thought to herself with a certain pride in him and for
him, had not left his box to go to see anyone but Miss Paulo.
When the curtain fell for the next time, Sir Rupert went round in his
stately way to the box where Dolores and her father and Hamilton were
sitting. Then Helena seized her opportunity, and suddenly said to
Ericson:
'I want you to tell me all about Miss Paulo. Dolores--what a pretty
name!'
'She is a very clever girl,' he began.
'But not, I hope, a superior person? Not a woman to be afraid of?'
'No, no; not in the least.'
'Does Mr. Hamilton see much of her?' Helena had now grown saucy again,
and looked the Dictator full in the face, with the look of one who means
to say: 'You and I know something of what happened before _that_.'
Ericson smiled, a grave smile.
'He has to see her now and again,' he said.
'Has to see her? Perhaps he likes to see her.'
'I am sure I hope he does. He must be rather lonely.'
'Are men ever lonely?'
'Very lonely sometimes.'
'But not as women are lonely. Men can always find companionship. Do look
at Mr. Hamilton--how happy _he_ seems!'
'Hamilton's love for _you_ was deep and sincere,' the Dictator said,
with an almost frowning earnestness.
'And now behold,' she replied, with sparkling and defiant eyes. 'See!
Look there!'
Then Sir Rupert came back to the box and the discussion was brought to
an end.
Hamilton came into the box and paid a formal visit, and said a few
formal words. The curtain fell upon the last act, and Sir Rupert's
carriage whirled his daughter away. Helena sat up late in her bedroom
that night. She was finding out more and more with every day, every
incident, that the conditions of life were becoming revolutionised for
her. She was no longer like the girl she always had been before. She
felt herself growing profoundly self-conscious, self-inquiring. She who
had hitherto been the merest creature of impulse--generous impulse,
surely, almost always--now found herself studying beforehand every word
she ought to speak and every act she ought to do. She lay awake of
nights cross-examining herself as to what precise words she had spoken
that day, as to what things she had done, what gestures even she had
made, in the vain and torturing effort to find out whether she had done
anything which might betray her secret. It seemed to her, with the
touching, delightful, pitiful egotism of which the love of the purest
heart is capable, that there was not a breathing of the common wind that
might not betray to the world the secret of her love. She had in former
days carried her disregard for the conventional so far that malign
critics, judging purely by the narrowest laws, had described her as
unwomanly. Nor were all these harsh and ill-judging critics women--which
would have been an intelligible thing enough. It is gratifying to
discourage vanity in woman, to set down as unwomanly the girl who has
gathered all the men around her. It is soothing to mortified feeling to
say that the successful girl simply 'went for' the men, and compelled
them to pay attention to her. But there were men not unfriendly to her
or to Sir Rupert who shook their heads and said that Helena Langley was
rather unwomanly. If they could have seen into her heart now, they would
have known that she was womanly enough in all conscience. She succumbed
in a moment to all the tenderest weaknesses and timidities of woman.
Never before had she cared one straw whether people said she was
flirting with this, that, or the other man--and the curious thing is
that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her
of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of
some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she
found that she was in love--in love--in love, and with a man who did not
seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt,
therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and
also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded as a suspicious
eye. Every chance question addressed suddenly to her seemed like a
question driven at her, to get at the heart of her mystery. A man slowly
recovering from some wound or other injury which has shattered for the
time his nervous power, will, when he begins to walk slowly about the
streets, start and shudder if he sees someone moving rapidly in his
direction, because he is seized with an instinctive and horrible dread
that the rapid walker is sure to come into collision with him. Helena
Langley felt somewhat like that. Her nerves were shaken; her framework
of joyous self-forgetfulness was wholly shattered; she was conscious and
nervous all over--in every sudden word or movement she feared an attack
upon her nerves. What would it matter to the world--the world of
London--even if the world had known all? Two ladies would meet and say,
'Oh, my dear, do you know, that pretty and odd girl Helena Langley--Sir
Rupert's daughter--has fallen over head and ears in love with the
Dictator, as they call him--that man who has come back from some South
American place! Isn't it ridiculous?--and they say he doesn't care one
little bit about her.' 'Well, I don't know--he might do a great deal
worse--she's a very clever girl, _I_ think, and she will have lots of
money.' 'Yes, if her father chooses to give it to her; but I'm told she
hasn't a single sixpence of her own, and Sir Rupert mightn't quite like
the idea of her taking up with a beggarly foreign exile from South
America, or South Africa, or wherever it is.' 'But, my dear, the man
isn't a foreigner--he is an Englishman, and a very attractive man too. I
think _I_ should be very much taken by him if I were a girl.' 'Well, you
surprise me. I am told he is old enough to be her father.' 'Oh, good
gracious, no; a man of about forty, I should think; just the right age
of man for a girl to marry; and really there are so _few_ marrying men
in these days that even girls with rich fathers can't always be
choosers, don't you know?'
Now, the way in which these two ladies might have talked about Helena's
secret, if they could have discovered it, is a fair illustration of the
vapid kind of interest which society in general would have taken in the
whole story. But it did not seem thus to Helena. To her it appeared as
if the whole world would have cried scorn upon her if it had found out
that she fell in love with a man who had given her no reason to believe
that he had fallen in love with her. Outside her own closest friends,
society would not have cared twopence either way. Society is interested
in the marriages of girls who belong to its set--or in their subsequent
divorces, if such events should come about. But society cares nothing
whatever about maiden heart-throbbings. It is vaguely and generally
assumed that all girls begin by falling in love with the wrong person,
and then soberise down for matrimony and by matrimony, and that it does
not matter in the least what their silly first fancies were. Even the
father and mother of some particular girl will not take her early
love-fancies very seriously. She will get over it, they say
contentedly--perhaps with self-cherished, half-suppressed recollection
of the fact that he and she have themselves got over such a feeling and
been very happy, or at least fairly happy, after, in their married
lives.
But to Helena Langley things looked differently. She was filled with the
conviction that it would be a shame to her if the world--her world--were
to discover that she had fallen in love with a man who had not fallen in
love with her. The world would have taken the news with exactly the same
amount of interest, alarm, horror, that it would have felt if
authoritatively informed that Helena Langley had had the toothache. In
the illustration just given of a morbid, nervous condition, the sufferer
dreads that anyone moving rapidly in his direction is going to rush in
upon him and collide with him. But the rapid mover is thinking not at
all of the nervous sufferer, and would be only languidly interested if
he were told of the suffering, and would think it an ordinary and
commonplace sort of suffering after all--just what everybody has at one
time or another, don't you know?
Was Helena unhappy? On the whole, no--decidedly not. She had found her
hero. She had found out her passion. A new inspiration was breathed into
her life. This Undine of the West End, of the later end of the outworn
century had discovered the soul that was in her formerly undeveloped
system. She had come in for a possession like the possession of a
throne, which brings heavy responsibility and much peril and pain with
it, but yet which those who have once possessed it will not endure to be
parted from. She could follow _his_ fortunes--she could openly be his
friend--she felt a kind of claim on him and proprietorial right over
him. She had never felt any particular use in her existence before,
except, indeed, in amusing herself, and, let it be added in fairness to
the child, in giving pleasure to others, and trying to do good for
others.
But now she had found a new existence. She had come in for her
inheritance--for her kingdom--the kingdom of human love which is the
inheritance of all of us, and which, when we come in for it, we would
never willingly renounce, no matter what tears it brings with it. Helena
Langley had found that she was no longer a thoughtless, impulsive girl,
but a real woman, with a heart and a hero and a love secret. She felt
proud of her discovery. Columbus found out that he had a heart before he
found out a new world; one wonders which discovery was the sweeter at
the time.