NOT LONG A-DOING.
It was night when Usk arrived at Lauterbach. At the little station,
far down in the valley below, Queen Ernestine’s solemn Syrian
major-domo and several of the Schwarzwald-Molzau servants had met him
with horses and pack-mules, and they had ridden up and up all through
the hours of the spring evening. When they reached the tiny table-land
on which the Bergschloss stood, it was too dark to distinguish
anything but towering peaks on every hand shutting out the stars, with
a gleam of whiteness at one side, cast by the waterfall which filled
the air with such a tumult of sound that Usk wondered how the dwellers
on the plateau ever heard each other speak. He was to learn later that
those who were accustomed to the noise did not even hear it, and that
they could distinguish other sounds as though it had not been. Even
now Helene, lying awake in one of the turret-rooms of the Schloss, the
twinkling lights of which showed its position against the dark
mountains, heard the sound of the horses’ feet as they passed, and
said to herself, “He is come, then, at last!” But although Usk, as he
rode under the walls of the castle, wondered for a moment which was
Helene’s room, he thought no more of her that night after reaching the
smaller house, called Luisenruh, after its builder, the mother of the
present Grand-Duke, where his aunt was staying. Queen Ernestine had
much to ask him about his parents and his work in London, and he had
to tell her the various incidents of his journey, and as if by a tacit
understanding they held aloof from the delicate matter which had
brought him to Lauterbach.
In the morning, however, he found that they were to join the
Grand-Duchess and her daughter at the Schloss for the late breakfast;
and he walked with the Queen through the gardens, which adjoined each
other so nearly that few people could have told where the grounds of
the cottage ended and those of the Schloss began, and learned from a
servant who was sent to meet them that the meal was served in the
Chinese pavilion. There were several of these summer-houses dotted
about in the gardens--a Greek temple, a hermitage, a Persian mosque,
an Arcadian shepherd’s hut, all absurdly incongruous in their
architecture as in their names, but affording pleasant retreats in hot
or wet weather, and fine views of the mountains and the waterfall at
all times. In the Chinese pavilion, which had a range of pointed roofs
one above another, with little bells hung at every possible extremity,
the visitors found the Grand-Duchess, whose nervousness was concealed
under a restless activity which would have been called bustling in a
lady of lower rank. Helene, very thin and bright-eyed, with a red spot
in either cheek, was propped up with pillows on a couch which
commanded the finest of the views.
“What do you think of my mountains?” she demanded eagerly of Usk, as
soon as she had greeted him, and she smiled with pleasure over his
answer that they looked jolly. “You can’t know them properly by only
seeing them from this distance,” she went on. “I shall show you all my
own special views and paths, and all the things I used to discover.”
“No mountain-climbing just yet, Lenchen!” said the Grand-Duchess. “You
are to walk a little every day as soon as you are rested from the
journey, you know, but it must be only about the gardens, where the
paths are level.”
“Walking where the paths are level! Why, mamma, in a fortnight I shall
be bicycling again. We will keep the level paths for that. I want to
take Lord Usk up the mountains, and see all my friends.”
But in spite of Helene’s eagerness for exertion, it was long before
she could attempt the mountains. Naturally enough, when the excitement
of returning to her favourite scenes, and of welcoming Usk, had
passed, she seemed to lose strength, and to the anxious eye of her
mother appeared actually worse than she had been at Nice. Almost in
desperation, the Grand-Duchess threw herself upon Usk for help, and
adopted him as the natural sharer of her anxieties with a calmness
that surprised him.
“You must help me to save her,” she said. “Here are the doctor’s
directions, and I look to you to carry them out.”
Somewhat amused though he was at being turned into a sick-nurse, Usk
accepted the position, which he found to be no sinecure, and which
made him feel by turns horribly cruel and a good deal of a fool.
Helene was to live almost entirely in the open air, it seemed, and to
take exercise at stated hours and for a fixed period of time. If she
grew tired too soon, it was his duty to pretend not to notice it, and
to talk to her as she walked until she forgot it too. Or if, as
sometimes happened, she was ready to wander on when the stated time
was over, he was obliged to induce her to rest, which could
occasionally only be done by pretending that he himself was tired. It
struck him once, when he was hurrying after his patient with a rug,
because she would not sit down anywhere but on the grass, that his
position was a good deal less romantic than might have been expected
from his conversation with his mother. Helene talked to him as
naturally as if he had been her brother, and he could not flatter
himself that her frank pleasure in his society, and her readiness to
turn to him for everything she wanted done, sprang from any stronger
feeling than pure friendliness. His uncle and the Grand-Duchess must
have been mistaken, he decided, and the fact produced in him curiously
mixed sensations. On the one hand, when Helene was better, nothing
more would be expected of him, and he could go his way in peace; but,
on the other, he felt that he had to some extent been fooled when he
was induced to screw himself up to the performance of a tremendous
exploit which now appeared quite unnecessary. But he grew genuinely
fond of Helene in a brotherly way, and was as proud as her mother when
she began to show unmistakable signs of returning health. When she
refused breakfast one day, and the Grand-Duchess only waited until she
was out of sight to weep, Usk showed no disappointment. His prescience
was rewarded in the course of the morning, when Helene confessed
suddenly that she was “so hungry,” and asked him to fetch her
something to eat. Then there was the day when for the first time an
expedition was undertaken beyond the grounds, and Helene proudly
introduced him to one of her friends, the wife of a goatherd who lived
on the mountain-side. The good woman set before her visitors a meal of
black bread and goats’ milk; and this simple fare, which Usk privately
thought very nasty, Helene ate and enjoyed, and the Grand-Duchess wept
again, but this time her tears were of joy.
Now that Helene was sufficiently recovered to take longer walks, her
mother thought it advisable to consider the conventions once more. At
first she succeeded in putting a veto on any distant expeditions by
the plea that Helene would overtask her strength, but when Usk had
suggested taking a pony with them, on which she could ride when she
was tired, it was necessary to provide suitable companions. Neither
the Grand-Duchess nor the Queen were equal to the exertion involved,
but the former invited her youngest son and his wife to pay a visit to
Lauterbach. Prince Franz Immanuel had been educated in England, and
Usk and he had been contemporaries at Eton for some years, so that
they had many interests in common, while Princess Theresia, the
daughter of Félicia’s uncle, Don Florian of Arragon, was so fond of
things English that she was known at the Pannonian Court as the
Anglomaniac. To her the Grand-Duchess had divulged her scheme
concerning Usk and Helene as soon as it was formed, hoping to gain one
firm ally, and the event proved that her object had been attained. The
elder children of the Grand-Duchess, to whom the secret had not been
revealed, were already writing from their married homes to inquire
suspiciously why “that man Mortimer’s nephew” was being thrown so much
with Lenchen, and prophesying that complications would occur; but
Princess Resi was an ardent supporter of the match, and insisted that
her husband should share her views. He had been inclined at first to
adopt the natural Schwarzwald-Molzau attitude, and scout the idea of a
_mésalliance_; but he and his wife were a most devoted couple, and
she fairly talked him over. Plied all day and every day with arguments
in favour of love-matches, unequal marriages, unions in which the
parties were of different nationalities, and harassed by the
unreasonable conduct of Princess Resi, who insisted on taking any
opposition as a reflection on herself or her mother, whose admission
into the house of Albret-Arragon had only been secured by her immense
dowry, he yielded at last, and when they arrived at Lauterbach his
wife had him well in hand. He was further cheered by finding that Usk
showed no signs of undue elation, and that the intercourse between him
and Helene was of so free and brotherly a nature as to suggest that
the Grand-Duchess’s plan had miscarried.
Prince Franz and his wife were ideal companions on the expeditions
Helene loved. Princess Resi’s Anglomania was of so pronounced a
character as to degenerate occasionally into caricature, especially in
the matter of the costumes she adopted for climbing; but she made it a
point of honour to do as much as her husband, and they followed Helene
uncomplainingly into all the nooks and corners of the mountains. So
tireless was Helene herself that Prince Franz unhesitatingly expressed
his opinion that she had never been ill at all, and that her ailments
had simply been assumed as an excuse for leaving Nice and returning to
her beloved Lauterbach, but his wife reproved him for this in private.
She understood from the Grand-Duchess, she said, that Helene’s
recovery was almost entirely due to Usk’s care of her, and the
firmness with which he had carried out the doctor’s orders, and if
things of that kind were said, he would think her friends grudged him
his fitting reward. Even now, said Princess Resi, she thought his
feelings must have been wounded in some way, for she took care that he
had an opportunity nearly every day of speaking to Helene, but it was
clear he had not done it yet.
As for Usk, about this time he wrote to his mother alluding gloomily
to Miss Jones, without specifying which Miss Jones he meant, and
advised her to make up her mind to welcome that young lady into the
family after all. It is possible that he was influenced by an incident
from which he drew, perhaps, larger deductions than he should have
done.
He was mounting the stairs which led to the morning-room at the
Schloss one day when he heard a sound as of paper being torn
violently, and then Prince Franz’s voice raised in protest.
“What in the world are you doing, Lenchen? That paper is mine.”
“Then you had no business to bring it here. It’s a shame!” The
stove-door clanged, and there was a sound of fire-irons. “As if I
would let it lie about for him to see! She must be wickeder than I
could ever have imagined it possible for a woman to be, to go and
break his heart----”
Usk stood hesitating on the threshold as Helene, with a flushed face,
rose from her knees before the stove. It had not struck him at first
that he was one of the persons alluded to, but now the truth was
clear. It was something about Félicia that she had been unwilling for
him to see, and of late he had thought less and less about Félicia,
and might almost be said to have forgotten her. Helene read in his
face that he had heard and understood, but she misread the blankness
of his expression when he realised the change which had come over his
mind.
“The new guide-book has come. Wouldn’t you like to look at it?” she
asked, beckoning him into the library. No sooner were they out of
earshot of Prince Franz than she turned to him with tears in her eyes.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I only wished to save you pain.”
“You are very good,” said Usk, “but I don’t quite understand----”
“Oh, it was a portrait of the Princess Félicia, and an interview with
her, in an American paper, and I knew it would bring it all back to
you--all the pain. If----if----” she hesitated--“if it would comfort
you at all to talk to me about her, please do. I am so very sorry for
you.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t,” said Usk, feeling rather guilty.
“I thought if you felt that it wasn’t her fault--that she was coerced
by her family--it might comfort you to say so.”
“It was something much more vulgar than that--simply the desire for a
crown.” Usk spoke with momentary fierceness, born of recollection.
“Ah, you are bitter. I do not wonder. You have borne it all in such
silence. I have felt for you, but I did not like to say anything, lest
you might be beginning to forget. I hoped you might still be able to
believe the best of her, for that is always a comfort, isn’t it?”
“But you don’t,” objected Usk.
“How could I, when she has made my friend suffer?” demanded Helene
passionately. “But I would if it would comfort you,” she added.
“You are too kind,” said Usk, with sufficient moodiness to satisfy
her; and when he was alone he told himself again that he had been
brought here on a fool’s errand. When Helene sent him the ring, she
only meant to assure him of her sympathy under the treatment he had
met with from Félicia.
Hence it was somewhat disconcerting to Usk when his uncle appeared
suddenly on the scene, for whereas he was quite satisfied to go on
from day to day enjoying the present and not troubling about the
future, it was only too probable that Cyril would look to hear
something definite. He met the party as they came down from the
mountains one evening, sunburnt and hungry after a long day’s
wandering. The two girls had decorated themselves and the pony with
wreaths of flowers, and even Prince Franz’s Tyrolese hat was
ornamented with a garland which he was forbidden to remove on pain of
his wife’s severe displeasure. Usk, in consideration of his
nationality, was allowed to escape with a buttonhole, which Helene had
made up for him with great care; and Princess Resi’s obedient husband
hinted that he would not mind being an Englishman too for once.
“But this is treason, disloyalty!” cried Theresia. “How shall we
punish him, Lenchen? Oh, I know! If you say another word, Franz, we
will put a wreath round your neck as well. We have plenty of flowers
left.”
“You have, indeed,” said a new voice, as Cyril came face to face with
them at a turn of the path. “Princess Helene might be posing as
Flora.”
Helene smiled shyly from her high seat on the pony, where she was
holding the luncheon-basket heaped up with flowers, and offered him a
mountain-rose for his coat.
“After this mark of favour, I think I ought to be allowed to lead the
pony,” said Cyril. “Usk, the Princess will dispense with your services
for the present.”
Usk looked round in apprehension, fearing that his uncle had
misunderstood the state of affairs, but Helene spoke hastily, lest his
feelings might be hurt.
“Oh, please, if you would not mind Lord Usk’s walking on the other
side,” she said anxiously to Cyril. “The pony knows him so well.”
Cyril smiled, and allowed Usk to retain his position. “Surely there
can be no fear of the pony’s running away?” he said. “Even music seems
to have no effect upon him. I found my way to you by hearing your
singing far above me. I hope I did not put a stop to it?”
“We were pretending to be peasants,” said Theresia, “but we had left
off singing before we met you, Count. We are getting so near the
castle, you see.”
“Arcadian peasants, surely?” said Cyril, with an involuntary glance at
Prince Franz’s hat. “And is the Princess Helene sorry to leave the
upland meadows and the flowers, and come back to reality?”
“Oh no; we are bringing the flowers with us, you see,” answered
Princess Resi for her.
“Which things are an allegory,” said Cyril; but what he meant he did
not explain just then. He spent the evening at the Schloss with Queen
Ernestine and Usk, watching all that went on without seeming to do so,
and gaining a much clearer idea of the state of affairs than his
nephew gave him credit for possessing. When they returned to
Luisenruh, and the Queen had gone indoors, he suggested to Usk that
they should smoke in the garden, and Usk could not think of any
sufficient reason for declining.
“Well?” said Cyril at last, when Usk had exhausted himself in the
endeavour to confine the conversation to general subjects. “Any news,
Usk? Have you settled anything?”
Usk’s first impulse was to feign ignorance, but he knew it would be no
use. “With Princess Helene, do you mean?” he asked. “No; I haven’t
settled anything, because there’s nothing to settle. You were all
mistaken. She only cares for me just as she does for her brother.”
“This is really very strange,” said Cyril gravely. “I should have
thought the girl’s own mother ought to know the state of her feelings,
but of course the girl herself must know it better. Do you say she
told you this plainly? In that case, surely you would have found it
better to leave at once? You have your father’s dignity to think of as
well as your own, you know.”
“I’m afraid she might make herself ill again if I wasn’t here to look
after her,” explained Usk anxiously; and Cyril was seized with a
violent fit of coughing, due, he remarked, to something wrong with his
cigar. “But she didn’t tell me all this,” Usk added, with some
reluctance. “I saw it for myself.”
“You mean you have never proposed to her yet? But you must, you know.
It will be merely a formality, of course, since you are aware what the
answer will be, and you can go away immediately afterwards.”
“But,” objected Usk, “she might be afraid--of giving me pain----”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you. Oh, you mean she might accept
you for fear of hurting your feelings by refusing? That would put you
in a very awkward position, certainly. Your feelings have not changed,
I suppose?”
“How could they?” was the tragic reply. “Félicia is still--nothing
can----”
“Nothing can undo the fact of her intervention in your life, you mean?
Quite so. When you start with an absolute impossibility of that kind,
it simplifies matters, if only in the direction of cutting off one way
of escape. Otherwise I should have thought---- I may be at fault in
such a delicate matter, but if you were each prepared to marry out of
pure tenderness for the other’s feelings, it seems to put it on rather
a fair footing, doesn’t it?”
“No doubt it all strikes you as awfully funny, but----”
“My dear Usk, far from it! I fully appreciate the seriousness of a
situation in which it is equally difficult for you to propose or not
to propose, to be accepted or refused. I never remember coming across
anything quite like it before. If you see any way in which I can help
you, pray tell me. How you and Princess Helene are ever to learn each
other’s real sentiments while sparing each other’s feelings, I don’t
know. Unless, perhaps, you were to intimate that you intended to
serenade her one night, and I took your place, _à la_ Cyrano. But I
am getting rather old to play Romeo, and, besides, your aunt might
object.”
Usk growled angrily but incoherently, then turned to his uncle.
“Why you should think it funny I don’t know,” he said, with some
inconsistency. “I don’t. But what I want to know is, why should I
propose to her at all? Why not simply go away?”
“But I thought her health would suffer? You don’t think so now?
Because you have been received here as a suitor accepted by her
parents, and it would be a blackguardly thing to do. It would be a
cruel slur on the lady herself, and a most undeserved insult to the
Grand-Duke and Duchess. Surely your father’s son is bound to be a
gentleman, Usk?”
Even in the darkness Cyril was conscious of the start with which his
nephew flung up his head. “You don’t understand,” said Usk coldly. “I
am only anxious to do what is best for her. But think of it, Uncle
Cyril,” his tone changed suddenly; “she is such a child, so young. I
don’t believe she has ever thought of this kind of thing at all.”
“Girls have a habit of growing into women very much more suddenly than
you would expect. At least you might try if she understands.”
“I don’t like to disturb her. She has been so perfectly happy lately.”
“My dear Usk, this idyllic life in meads of asphodel is very nice, but
it can’t last always. Little Helene must learn to come down into
reality like that pleasant sister-in-law of hers, and she will do it
with a much better grace than you think. She will bring the flowers
with her, as Princess Franz said, if only you will let her.”
“But why not let things go on as they are? We might drift into an
understanding at last, without making such a fuss about it.”
“Because the rest of the world is not standing still while you are
drifting. In plain English, we must begin to make arrangements for
Michael and Félicia’s wedding. Things are so far advanced that it’s
safe to go to work quietly. It is not expedient that they should be
married in Thracia, as they are both Protestants. They can’t be
married at Vindobona, for the same reason, and therefore Molzau, as
the seat of his family, is the natural place. Unless you have any
objection, I should prefer to get you out of the way first. You have
no particular wish to hang about at the ceremony, have you?”
“I? No, indeed!” Usk shuddered. “Well, I’ll speak to her somehow, and
get something settled, but I shall always feel myself the biggest
blackguard on the face of the earth.”
All the next day Usk went about with a remorsefully resolute
expression, which was correctly interpreted not only by his uncle but
by Princess Theresia, who was sympathetically prepared to give him
every possible assistance. The wanderings of the four young people led
them that day into one of the most difficult parts of the mountains,
and about noon they left the pony at the hut of one of the
Grand-Duke’s gamekeepers, since it would only be an encumbrance in
their climb. The girls were very tired when they approached the hut
again in the evening, and, to her husband’s alarm, Princess Resi
seemed even more exhausted than her sister-in-law. She hung heavily on
his arm, and walked so slowly that Usk and Helene were soon out of
sight in front.
“You are much more tired than Lenchen,” said Prince Franz. “You must
ride instead of her, or at least you must take turns.”
“I won’t! Why, it would spoil everything. No, you are not to shout to
them, Franz. I won’t have you interrupt them.” Then, as he looked at
her in astonishment, “He has been making up his mind to do it all day,
and he shall have his chance.”
“To speak to Helene, do you mean? Well, I hope you see now that even
an Englishman feels a little diffidence in the presence of a daughter
of Schwarzwald-Molzau?”
“Because he has taken so long about it, you mean? Franz, it does
surprise me to see how foolish even a rather nice man, such as
yourself, can be!”
“At least I’m not too dull to see that your fatigue has suddenly
disappeared in the heat of argument.”
“Ah, you only _see_. I _know_, and I know just what his feelings are.”
Prince Franz received this assurance with a shout of laughter, but he
consented to lag behind with his wife. Usk and Helene had not noticed
their considerate conduct, however. Helene was keeping up bravely, in
spite of her fatigue, laying plans for fresh expeditions, and
wondering why her companion received them in such a half-hearted way.
He did not seem to be listening, she thought, and at last he broke
into one of her sentences.
“Take my hand here, won’t you? It’s a stiff bit.” Then a few moments
of silence, and he spoke again suddenly. “I’m afraid I shan’t be here
much longer. My uncle was saying last night that I ought to be off.”
This was the plan Usk had devised, after much cogitation, for breaking
the ice, and preparing Helene for the proposal which was bound to be
so startling to her, but its immediate effect alarmed him. He felt her
stumble, and a shiver ran through the arm which was passed through
his. Presently she said wearily--
“I am so tired--so terribly tired. Do you think you could leave me
here, and fetch the pony from the hut? I feel as if I could not walk
any farther.”
Much perplexed, and wondering guiltily whether his announcement was to
blame for this sudden exhaustion, Usk sought out a large stone by the
wayside.
“Of course. Sit here, and I will bring the pony to you in a minute.
What an idiot I was not to see that we were going too far for you! But
you will catch cold.”
He felt in the inner pocket of his jacket for the warm scarf his
mother had placed there, adjuring him always to wear it in the
mountains, and wrapped it round Helene’s neck, tucking the ends into
her coat and buttoning it. She pushed his hands away.
“Oh, don’t! I can’t bear it!” she cried, then added hastily, “I shall
be too hot, I mean.”
“I am a brute!” thought Usk, lingering near her, but she bade him go
with a gesture which aroused in him something of indignation. Helene
to treat him in this way! Then he realised the truth of his uncle’s
words. She was a woman, after all.
Usk made short work of the climb to the gamekeeper’s hut, and himself
helped to saddle the pony. Helene had not been alone five minutes when
the clatter of hoofs on the stones announced his return. She began to
apologise for her rudeness in a gentle, tired voice from which all
ring of happiness had departed, but he seemed to have no time to
listen to her. He had her mounted and well on the homeward way before
he would speak, in his new-born terror lest Prince and Princess Franz
should come up and interrupt them.
“I want to ask your advice, Princess,” he began. “I am in trouble--in
a difficulty.”
“Oh, if I could help you,” she said, with a quick return of pleasure.
“It’s about a man who--whom I know. He can’t make up his mind what to
do. May I tell you about him?” She gave him a breathless permission,
and he went on. “This man was in love with a girl, awfully lovely and
all that, and she--jilted him for some one else. Then he met another
girl, and got very fond of her, but he felt that he never could love
any one again as he had loved the first girl. And it seemed to him
that it wasn’t fair to ask the second girl to love him when he
couldn’t care for her as he ought. I can’t tell you exactly how he
felt about it----”
“Perhaps I can,” she said. “The first girl was so beautiful that she
had only to command, and it was a joy to him to obey. She seemed to
know the right thing to be done, as if she had been a prophetess, and
the second girl was only a poor little thing to whom he had been kind.
She could not advise him, and he would never think of asking her for
advice. But because he had been kind to her, he pitied her, and cared
for her in a sort of way----” her voice thrilled with pain.
“No, no!” cried Usk. “It’s not that. He really is awfully fond of her,
but he can’t feel that it would be fair to ask her to marry him when
he doesn’t love her as he did the first girl.”
“He adored the first, and the other he is only--fond of?” said Helene.
“I think the second girl should be asked whether that is enough for
her.”
“Is it, Lenchen?” He looked up at her as he walked beside the pony.
“One thing I must know first,” she said hastily. “See, she comes to
you again, the Princess Félicia, and holds out her hands. She says,
‘I am free. I hardened my heart against you for the sake of a crown,
but I find that I cannot live without you. I have always loved you
best, and I have broken loose and come back to you. Take me.’ And you
would, would you not?”
“Rather not!” cried Usk. “She has broken me of that kind of thing. I
should only want to know what she expected to gain by it.”
“You.”
“But that’s not enough for her. She despises me, you see. And I come
and offer you what she despises. Do you wonder I’m ashamed?”
“And I accept it,” said Helene. “Does it seem to you very
poor-spirited to be content with what you offer me? Perhaps it is,
but--I can’t do without you. All my strength seems to forsake me when
you are away. The day you left Nice, when we met you on your way to
the station, I was praying--oh, so earnestly!--that the good God would
change your mind, and make you decide to stay. It would have been a
miracle, you say? But why not? I knew I could not hold out against my
parents and Ivan Petrovitch if you were gone. But you went away, and I
seemed to have no power to resist. I allowed papa to tell Ivan
Petrovitch that I would marry him, and I prayed that I might die soon,
before the day could come. Do you wonder, then, that I am content now?
But listen to me, please.” She laid her hand on his shoulder as he
walked beside her. “I am glad you have told me all your feelings,
because it relieves me from one of my fears, at least. I am content,
but I am not satisfied. I shall not be satisfied until you can tell me
from your heart that you love me best.”
“But really, you know,” protested Usk, “it’s simply that I can’t help
knowing that if I had to live the time over again since last August I
should do exactly the same--as regards Félicia, I mean.”
“I know--and I want you to be able to say, ‘If I had known Helene
then, I should have loved her best.’ It sounds impossible, does it
not? and you are honest; you will not say it does not. But let me try.
Do not steel your heart against me, that is all I ask. You promise,
then?” as Usk took her hand and pressed his lips to it. “And you will
say nothing of this to any one? It is our secret, yours and mine.”
“I feel as if every one ought to know how wretchedly, miserably
ashamed I feel beside you,” he muttered.
“So? I would have liked you to feel proud--and just a little pleased,”
and Helene smiled at him with trembling lips. Usk looked at her as if
he hardly realised the meaning of her words, then his strained
expression relaxed, and he smiled too.
“This part of the path is rather steep. I think I ought to hold you on
the pony,” he said, and did so.
“There’s one thing I want to ask you,” said Helene presently.
“To the half of my kingdom, such as it is! Only let me hear it.”
“You have a Christian name, haven’t you? I want to have a name for you
that other people don’t use--not to have to call you after a place,
like a king in Shakespeare. Do you think Cordelia called her husband
‘France’?”
“My Christian name is Edmund,” said Usk gravely.
“Oh, and Edmund in ‘King Lear’ is so horrible! I couldn’t call you
that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s a family name, you see. But as you’re such a
Shakespearean scholar, have you ever read ‘Henry V.’?”
“I don’t think so. No; I’m sure I haven’t. But I will, as soon as I
get home.”
“Oh no; you needn’t,” hastily. “There’s a fellow in that called Nym--a
delightful person--and Nym was short for Edmund, you know. That’s a
name you can have quite to yourself, if you like it.”
“Yes; I like it. But I shall only use it when we are alone, lest other
people should find it out. Nym!--I believe it is the name of a horrid
person after all,” as Usk smiled involuntarily. “Then I shall call you
by it all the same, just to punish you. Well, Nym, do you still think
you must go away soon?”
“Not without you. I shall want you to help me with my election when I
get back to England. I’m sure I could never get through it alone.”
“Oh, do you mean that I may help you--really help you--in your
parliamentary work? What may I do? I know so little.”
“Oh, you can help me with my speeches--look up references, and that
sort of thing,” said Usk vaguely. “And you could canvass, of course.”
“Canvass? But that is to ask people to vote for you, is it not? And
the English great ladies allow the voters to kiss them, don’t they?”
“_You_ had better not, unless you want me to fight the voters all
round. No; the way of going to work nowadays is to get at the
electors’ wives, and make them promise to influence their husbands.”
“I see. I am to say to them, ‘You must tell your husband to vote for
mine, because I am the person who knows best, and I can assure you how
good he is.’”
“You are nothing but a child after all,” laughed Usk. “And a few
minutes ago I thought you had turned into a woman who was quite a
stranger to me.”
“A child for you to love, and a woman to love you,” said Helene, very
low.