CHICANE
He came downstairs early, as he had done after a previous sleepless
night--also caused by Helen.
That it would be foolish, fatuous, and inexcusable to persevere further
in his obstinacy against Helen, this he knew. He saw clearly that all
his arguments to her about money and the saving of money were
ridiculous; they would not have carried conviction even to the most
passive intelligence, and Helen's intelligence was far from passive.
They were not even true in fact, for he had never intended to leave any
money to Helen's mother; he had never intended to leave any money to
anybody, simply because he had not cared to think of his own decease; he
had made no plans about the valuable fortune which, as Helen had too
forcibly told him, he would not be able to bear away with him when he
left Bursley for ever; this subject was not pleasant to him. All his
rambling sentences to Helen (which he had thought so clever when he
uttered them) were merely an excuse for not parting with money--money
that was useless to him.
On the other hand, what Helen had said was both true and convincing; at
any rate, it convinced him.
He was a miser; he admitted it. Being a miser, he saw, was one way of
enjoying yourself, but not the best way. Again, if he really desired to
enrich Helen, how much better to enrich her at once than at an uncertain
date when he would be dead. Dead people can't be thanked. Dead people
can't be kissed. Dead people can't have curious dainties offered to them
for their supper. He wished to keep Helen; but Helen would only stay on
one condition. That condition was a perfectly easy condition for him to
fulfil. After paying eight thousand pounds (or a bit less) for Wilbraham
Hall, he would still have about ten times as much money as he could
possibly require. Of course, eight thousand pounds was a lot of coin.
But, then, you can't measure women (especially when they are good cooks)
in terms of coin. For instance, it happened that he had exactly £8,000
in shares of the London and North Western Railway Company. The
share-certificates were in his safe; he could hold them in his hand; he
could sell them and buy Wilbraham Hall with the proceeds. That is to
say, he could exchange them for Helen. Now, it would be preposterous to
argue that he would not derive more satisfaction from Helen than from
those crackling share-certificates.
Wilbraham Hall, once he became its owner, would be a worry--an awful
worry. Well, would it? Would not Helen be entirely capable of looking
after it, of superintending it in every way? He knew that she would! As
for the upkeep of existence in Wilbraham Hall, had not Helen proved to
him that its cost was insignificant when compared to his income? She
had.
And as to his own daily manner of living, could he not live precisely as
he chose at Wilbraham Hall? He could. It was vast; but nothing would
compel him to live in all of it at once. He could choose a nice little
room, and put a notice on the door that it was not to be disturbed. And
Helen could run the rest of the mansion as her caprice dictated.
The process of argument was over when Helen descended to put the
finishing touches to a breakfast which she had evidently concocted with
Georgiana the night before.
"Breakfast is ready, uncle," she called to him.
He obeyed. Flowers on the table once more! The first since her
departure! A clean cloth! A general, inexplicable tuning-up of the
meal's frame.
You would now, perhaps, have expected him to yield, as gracefully as an
old man can. He wanted to yield. He hungered to yield. He knew that it
was utterly for his own good to yield. But if you seriously expected
him to yield, your knowledge of human nature lacks depth. Something far
stronger than argument, something far stronger than desire for his own
happiness, prevented him from yielding. Pride, a silly self-conceit, the
greatest enemy of the human race, forbade him to yield. For, on the
previous night, Helen had snubbed him--and not for the first time. He
could not accept the snub with meekness, though it would have paid him
handsomely to do so, though as a Christian and a philosopher he ought to
have done so. He could not.
So he put on a brave face, pretended to accept the situation with
contented calm, and talked as if Canada was the next street, and as if
her going was entirely indifferent to him. Helen imitated him.
It was a lovely morning; not a cloud in the sky--only in their hearts.
"Uncle!" she said after breakfast was done and cleared away.
He was counting rents in his cashbox in the front parlour, and she had
come to him, and was leaning over his shoulder.
"Well, lass?"
"Have you got twenty-five pounds in that box?"
It was obvious that he had.
"I shouldna' be surprised," said he.
"I wish you'd lend it me."
"What for?"
"I want to go over to Hanbridge and book my berth, definitely, and I've
no loose cash."
Now here was a chance to yield. But no.
"Dost mean to say," he exclaimed, "as ye havena' booked your berth? When
does th' steamer sail?"
"There's one from Glasgow next Saturday," said she--"the _Saskatchewan_.
I secured the berth, but I didn't pay for it."
"It's a rare lot of money," he observed.
"Oh," she said, "I didn't want all that for the fare. I've other things
to pay for--railway to Glasgow, etc. You will lend it me, won't you?"
Her fingers were already in the cashbox. She was behaving just like a
little girl, like a spoilt child. It was remarkable, he considered, how
old and mature Helen could be when she chose, and how kittenish when she
chose.
She went off with four five-pound notes and five sovereigns. "Will you
ask me to come back and cook the dinner?" she smiled, ironically,
enchantingly.
"Ay!" he said. He was bound to smile also.
She returned in something over two hours.
"There you are!" she said, putting a blue-green paper into his hand.
"Ever seen one of these before?"
It was the ticket for the steamer.
This staggered him. A sensible, determined woman, who disappears to buy
a steamer-ticket, may be expected to reappear with a steamer-ticket. And
yet it staggered him. He could scarcely believe it. She was going, then!
She was going! It was inevitable now.
"The boat leaves the Clyde at ten in the morning," she said, resuming
possession of the paper, "so we must go to Glasgow on Friday, and stop
the night at an hotel."
"We?" he murmured, aghast.
"Well," she said, "you surely won't let me travel to Glasgow all alone,
will you?"
"Her's a caution, her is!" he privately reflected.
"You can come back on Saturday," she said; "so that you'll be in time to
collect your rents. There's an express to Glasgow from Crewe at 1.15,
and to catch that we must take the 12.20 at Shawport."
She had settled every detail.
"And what about my dinner?" he inquired.
"I'm going to set about it instantly," laughed she.
"I mean my dinner on Friday?" he said.
"Oh, _that_!" she replied. "There's a restaurant-car from Crewe. So we
can lunch on the train."
This idea of accompanying her to Glasgow pleased him intensely.
"Glasgow isna' much i' my line," he said. "But you wenches do as ye
like, seemingly."
Thus, on the Friday morning, he met her down at Shawport Station. He was
in his best clothes, but he had walked. She arrived in a cab, that
carried a pagoda of trunks on its fragile roof; she had come straight
from her lodgings. There was a quarter of an hour before train-time. He
paid for the cab. He also bought one second-class single and one
second-class return to Glasgow, while she followed the porter who
trundled her luggage. When he came out of the booking-office (minus
several gold pieces), she was purchasing papers at the bookstall, and
farther up the platform the porter had seized a paste-brush, and was
opening a cupboard of labels. An extraordinary scheme presented itself
to James Ollerenshaw's mind, and he trotted up to the porter.
"I've seen to the baggage myself," said Helen, without looking at him.
"All right," he said.
The porter touched his cap.
"Label that luggage for Crewe," he whispered to the porter, and passed
straight on, as if taking exercise on the platform.
"Yes, sir," said the porter.
When he got back to Helen of course he had to make conversation with a
nonchalant air, in order to hide his guilty feelings.
"So none of 'em has come to see you off!" he observed.
"None of whom?"
"None o' yer friends."
"No fear!" she said. "I wouldn't have it for anything. I do hate and
loathe good-byes at a railway station. Don't you?"
"Never had any," he said.
The train was prompt, but between Shawport and Crewe it suffered delays,
so that there was not an inordinate amount of time to spare at the
majestic junction.
Heedless, fly-away creature that she was, Helen scurried from the North
Stafford platform to the main-line platform without a thought as to her
luggage. She was apparently so preoccupied with her handbag, which
contained her purse, that she had no anxiety left over for her heavy
belongings.
As they hastened forward, he saw the luggage being tumbled out on to the
platform.
The Glasgow train rolled grandiosely in, and the restaurant-car came to
a standstill almost exactly opposite the end of the North Stafford
platform. They obtained two seats with difficulty. Then, as there was
five minutes to wait, Jimmy descended from the car to the asphalte and
peeped down the North Stafford platform. Yes, her luggage was lying
there, deserted, in a pile. He regained the carriage.
"I suppose the luggage will be all right?" Helen said, calmly, just as
the guard whistled.
"Ay!" said he, with the mien of a traveller of vast experience. "I saw
'em bringing all th' N.S. luggage over. It were th' fust thing I thought
of."
As a liar he reckoned he was pretty good.
He glanced from the window as the train slid away from Crewe, and out of
the tail of his eye, in the distance, over the heads of people, he had a
momentary glimpse of the topmost of Helen's trunks safely at rest on the
North Stafford platform.
He felt safe. He felt strangely joyous. He ate largely, and made very
dry, humorous remarks about the novelty of a restaurant on wheels.
"Bless us!" he said, as the express flashed through Preston without
stopping. "It's fust time as I've begun a bottle o' Bass in one town and
finished it in another."
He grew positively jolly, and the journey seemed to be accomplished with
the rapidity of a dream.