A GREAT CHANGE
"Helen Rathbone," said Uncle James one Tuesday afternoon, "have ye been
meddling in my cashbox?"
They were sitting in the front room, Helen in a light-grey costume that
cascaded over her chair and half the next chair, and James Ollerenshaw
in the deshabille of his Turkish cap. James was at his desk. It is
customary in the Five Towns, when you feel combative, astonished, or
ironic towards another person, to address that other person by his full
name.
"You left the key in your cashbox this morning, uncle," said Helen,
glancing up from a book, "while you were fiddling with your safe in your
bedroom."
He did not like the word "fiddling." It did not suit either his dignity
or the dignity of his huge Milner safe.
"Well," he said, "and if I did! I wasn't upstairs more nor five minutes,
and th' new servant had na' come! There was but you and me in th'
house."
"Yes. But, you see, I was in a hurry to go out marketing, and I
couldn't wait for you to come down."
He ignored this remark. "There's a tenpun' note missing," said he.
"Don't play them tricks on me, lass; I'm getting an oldish man. Where
hast hidden it? I mun go to th' bank." He spoke plaintively.
"My dear uncle," she replied, "I've not hidden your ten-pound note. I
wanted some money in a hurry, so I took it. I've spent some of it."
"Spent some of it!" he exclaimed. "How much hast spent?"
"Oh, I don't know. But I make up my accounts every night."
"Lass," said he, staring firmly out of the window, "this won't do. I let
ye know at once. This wunna' do." He was determined to be master in his
own house. She also was determined to be master in his own house.
Conflict was imminent.
"May I ask what you mean, uncle?"
He hesitated. He was not afraid of her. But he was afraid of her
dress--not of the material, but of the cut of it. If she had been Susan
in Susan's dowdy and wrinkled alpaca, he would have translated his just
emotion into what critics call "simple, nervous English"--that is to
say, Shakespearean prose. But the aristocratic, insolent perfection of
Helen's gown gave him pause.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.
"I merely didn't think of it," she said. "I've been very busy."
"If you wanted money, why didn't you ask me for it?" he demanded.
"I've been here over a week," said she, "and you've given me a pound and
a postal order for ten shillings, which I had to ask for. Surely you
must have guessed, uncle, that even if I'd put the thirty shillings in
the savings bank we couldn't live on the interest of it, and that I was
bound to want more. Something like seventy meals have been served in
this house since I entered it."
"I gave Mrs. Butt a pound a wik," he observed.
"But think what a good manager Mrs. Butt was!" she said, with the
sweetness of a saint.
He was accustomed to distributing satire, but not to receiving it. And,
receiving this snowball full in the mouth, he did not quite know what to
do with it; whether to pretend that he had received nothing, or to call
a policeman. He ended by spluttering.
"It's easy enough to ask for money when you want it," he said.
"I hate asking for money," she said. "All women do."
"Then am I to be inquiring every morning whether you want money?" he
questioned, sarcastically.
"Certainly, uncle," she answered. "How else are you to know?"
Difficult to credit that that girl had been an angel of light all the
week, existing in a paradise which she had created for herself, and for
him! And now, to defend an action utterly indefensible, she was
employing a tone that might be compared to some fiendish instrumental
device of a dentist.
But James Ollerenshaw did not wish his teeth stopped, nor yet extracted.
He had excellent teeth. And, in common with all men who have never taken
thirty consecutive repasts alone with the same woman, he knew how to
treat women, how to handle them--the trout!
He stood up. He raised all his body. Helen raised only her eyebrows.
"Helen Rathbone!" Such was the exordium. As an exordium, it was
faultless. But it was destined to remain a fragment. It goes down to
history as a perfect fragment, like the beginning of a pagan temple that
the death of gods has rendered superfluous.
For a dog-cart stopped in front of the house at that precise second,
deposited a lady of commanding mien, and dashed off again. The lady
opened James's gate and knocked at James's front door. She could not be
a relative of a tenant. James was closely acquainted with all his
tenants, and he had none of that calibre. Moreover, Helen had caused a
small board to be affixed to the gate: "Tenants will please go round to
the back."
"Bless us!" he murmured, angrily. And, by force of habit, he went and
opened the door. Then he recognised the lady. It was Sarah Swetnam,
eldest child of the large and tumultuously intellectual Swetnam family
that lived in a largish house in a largish way higher up the road, and
as to whose financial stability rumour always had something interesting
to say.
"Is Miss Rathbone here?"
Before he could reply, there was an ecstatic cry behind him: "Sally!"
And another in front of him: "Nell!"
In the very nick of time he slipped aside, and thus avoided the
inconvenience of being crushed to pulp between two locomotives under
full steam. It appeared that they had not met for some years, Sally
having been in London. The reunion was an affecting sight, and such a
sight as had never before been witnessed in James's house. The little
room seemed to be full of fashionable women, to be all gloves, frills,
hat, parasol, veil, and whirling flowers; also scent. They kissed,
through Sally's veil first, and then she lifted the veil, and four
vermilion lips clung together. Sally was even taller than Helen, with a
solid waist; and older, more brazen. They both sat down. Fashionable
women have a manner of sitting down quite different from that of
ordinary women, such as the wives of James's tenants. They only touch
the back of the chair at the top. They don't loll, but they only escape
lolling by dint of gracefulness. It is an affair of curves, slants,
descents, nicely calculated. They elaborately lead your eye downwards
over gradually increasing expanses, and naturally you expect to see
their feet--and you don't see their feet. The thing is apt to be
disturbing to unhabituated beholders.
Then fashionable women always begin their conversation right off. There
are no modest or shy or decently awkward silences at the start. They
slip into a conversation as a duck into water. In three minutes Helen
had told Sarah Swetnam everything about her leaving the school, and
about her establishment with her great-stepuncle. And Sarah seemed
delighted, and tapped the tiles of the floor with the tip of her
sunshade, and gazed splendidly over the room.
"And there are your books there, I see!" she said, in her positive, calm
voice, pointing to a few hundred books that were stacked in a corner.
"How lovely! You remember you promised to lend me that book of
Thoreau's--what did you call it?--and you never did!"
"Next time you come I'll find it for you," said Helen.
Next time she came! This kind of visit would occur frequently, then!
They were talking just as if James Ollerenshaw had been in Timbuctoo,
instead of by the mantelpiece, when Sally suddenly turned on him.
"It must be very nice for you to have Nell like this!" She addressed him
with a glowing smile.
They had never been introduced! A week ago they had passed each other in
St. Luke's-square without a sign. Of the Swetnam family, James "knew"
the father alone, and him slightly. What chiefly impressed him in Sarah
was her nerve. He said nothing; he was tongue-tied.
"It's a great change for you," proceeded Sarah.
"Ay," he agreed; "it's that."