CONFESSIONAL
"What's the matter with Emanuel Prockter?" Helen asked; meaning, what
were the implied faults of Emanuel Prockter.
There was defiance in her tone. She had risen from the table, and she
had sat down again, and she seemed by her pose to indicate that she had
sat down again with a definite purpose, a purpose to do grievous harm to
the soul's peace of anybody who differed from the statements which she
was about to enunciate, or who gave the wrong sort of answers to her
catechism. She was wearing her black mousseline dress (theoretically
"done with"), which in its younger days always had the effect of rousing
the _grande dame_ in her. She laid her ringless hands, lightly clasped,
on a small, heavy, round mahogany table which stood in the middle of the
little drawing-room, and she looked over James's shoulder into the
vistas of the great drawing-room. The sombre, fading magnificence of the
Wilbrahams--a magnificence of dark woods, tasselled curtains, reps, and
gilt--was her theatre, and the theatre suited her mood.
Still, Jimmy Ollerenshaw, somewhat embittered by the catastrophe of the
afternoon, conceived that he was not going to be brow-beaten.
"What's the matter with Emanuel Prockter," said he, "is as he's probably
gotten a cold by this."
"Yes, and you're glad!" Helen retorted. "You think he looked a fool
after he'd been in the water. And you were glad."
"I dunna think," said James, "I'm sure."
"But why should you be glad? That's what I want to know."
James could not sagaciously reply to this query. He merely scratched his
head, tilting one of his Turkish caps to that end.
"The fact is," she cried, with a grammatical carelessness which was
shocking in a woman who had professed to teach everything, "every one
has got their knives into Emanuel Prockter. And it's simply because he's
good-looking and well-dressed and sings beautifully."
"Good-looking!" murmured James.
"Well, isn't he?"
"He's pretty," said James.
"No one ever said he had a lot of brains--"
"I never did," James put in.
"But what does that matter? He _is_ polite. He does know how to behave
himself in polite society. If Andrew Dean pushed him into the water,
that wasn't his fault. Andrew is stronger than he is, but that's no
credit to Andrew Dean. It's to his discredit. Andrew Dean is nothing but
a bully--we all know that. He might have pushed you into the water, or
me."
"He might," James admitted, "if I'd been silly enough to get between the
water and him."
"And I should like to know who looked a fool when Andrew Dean fell off
those steps. And just listen to the language the man used. I will say
this for Emanuel Prockter--I never heard him swear."
"No," said James. "He wears gloves. He even wears 'em when he takes his
bath of a November afternoon."
"I don't care who knows it," Helen observed, hotly, "I like Emanuel
Prockter."
"There's nobody as dunna' know it," said James. "It's the talk of Bosley
as you've set your cap at him."
"I don't wear caps," said Helen. "I'm not a servant."
"Hat, then," James corrected himself. "Ye'll not deny as you wear hats,
I reckon. I've seen ye in forty."
"I know who started that tale," Helen exploded. "Andrew Dean started
that tale."
"No," said James. "It was Mrs. Prockter, I'm thinking."
"Has Mrs. Prockter spoken to you about me and--and Emanuel?"
James hesitated. But the devil-may-care, agreeably vicious Ollerenshaw
impulses were afoot in him, and he did not hesitate long.
"Her has," said he.
"What a ridiculous, fat old woman she is, with her fancies!"
Frankly, James did not like this. He was in a mind to resent it, and
then a certain instinct of self-preservation prompted him to seek cover
in silence. But in any battle of the sexes silence is no cover to the
male, as he ought to have known.
Helen pursued him behind his cover. "I wonder who _she's_ setting her
cap at! I suppose you'll not deny that _she_ wears a cap?"
It was quite a long time since James Ollerenshaw had blushed; but he
blushed at these words. Nothing could have been more foolish, inept, on
his part. Why should he blush because Helen expressed a vague, hostile
curiosity as to the direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap? What had the
direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap to do with him? Yet blush he did. He
grew angry, not--curiously enough--with Helen, but with himself and with
Mrs. Prockter. His anger had the strange effect of making him an arrant
coward. He got up from his chair, having pushed away his cup towards the
centre of the table. As tea was over he was within his rights in doing
so.
"I mun be getting to work again," he muttered.
"Please do wait a minute, uncle," she said, imperiously. "Can't you see
I want to talk to you? Can't you see I've got something on my mind?"
Deliberately challenged in this way, the formidable James was no more
than a sheep to the shearer. Until he met Helen, he had perhaps never
received deliberate, audacious challenges, and even now he was far from
being accustomed to them. So he just stood foolishly near his chair.
"I can't talk to you while you're standing up," she said.
So he sat down. How simple it ought to have been for him to exert
authority over Helen, to tell her fiercely that he had no intention of
being talked to like that, and that if she persisted in such tactics the
front door was at her entire disposal! She had no claim on him. Yet he
ate his humble pie and sat down.
"So they are saying that there is something between Emanuel Prockter and
me, are they?" she recommenced, in a new, mollified voice, a voice that
waved the white flag over her head.
"It wouldna' surprise me to hear as they were," said James.
"And supposing there _was_ something between us, uncle, should you
mind?"
"I don't know as I should mind," said he. "And I don't know as it 'ud
matter a brass button if I did mind."
"What should you do, uncle?"
"I should do as I've always done," said he; "eat and sleep and take my
walks abroad. Them as wants to marry will marry, and they will marry
what suits 'em. But I shall tak' my meat and drink as usual."
"Would you come to the wedding?"
"I've only got a funeral suit," said he. "But I'd buy me some togs if
Emanuel 'ud tak' this place off my hands at what I gave."
"Would you give me a wedding-present?"
"I'd give thee some advice. It's what thou'rt most in need of."
His tone was gloomy and resigned.
She slipped round the table and sat on the arm of his chair.
"You are a horrid old thing," she told him--not for the first time. "I
_am_ in need of advice. And there's no one can give it me but you."
"Nay, nay!" he recoiled. "There's Sarah Swetnam. You're as thick as
thieves."
"She's the very last person I can go to," said Helen.
"And why?"
"Why! Because Andrew is engaged to her sister, of course. That's the
awful part of it."
"Ay?" he questioned.
"Yes. Because, you see, it's Andrew Dean that I'm in love with."
She said it in very pert and airy accents. And then the next moment she
put James into terrible consternation by crying, and clutching his arm.
He saw that she was serious. Light beat down upon him. He had to blink
and collect himself.
"I' thy place, lass," he said, "I should keep that to mysen."
"But I can't, uncle. That is, I haven't done. Andrew knows. You don't
understand how much I'm in love with him. I've--he's--"
"Thou'st not kissed him?"
"Not exactly--but--"
"He's been kissing you in mistake for his other young woman?"
Helen nodded.
"Helen, what 'ud thy mother say?"
"It was because of Andrew Dean that I came to live in Bursley," said
she. "I knew I shouldn't see him often enough if I stayed in Longshaw.
So I came here. You know we had always liked each other, I _think_, ever
since he spent two years at Longshaw at Spitz Brothers'. Then I didn't
see him for some time. You know how rude and awkward he is. Well, there
was a coolness. And then we didn't see each other for another long time.
And then when I next saw him I knew I really _was_ in love with him. (Of
course, I never said anything to mother. One doesn't, you know. And she
was so taken up with her own affairs, poor dear!) And I thought he was
really fond of me. I thought so because he was so cross and queer. He's
like that, you know. And, after all, it was not that that made him cross
and queer. It was just because he was as good as engaged to Lilian, and
he didn't like to tell me. And I never knew. How could I guess? I'd
never heard there was anything between him and Lilian. And besides,
although he was cross and queer, he said things to me that he oughtn't
to have said, considering how he was carrying on with Lilian. It was
then that I settled on coming to Bursley. There was no _reason_ why I
should stay in Longshaw. I saw him again in Longshaw, _after_ he was
engaged to Lilian, and yet he never told me! And then, when I come here,
the first thing I hear is that he's engaged to Lilian. It was that
afternoon when Sarah called; do you remember, uncle?"
He remembered.
"I saw Mr. Dean that night, and somehow I told him what I thought of
him. I don't know how it began; but I did. He said he couldn't help
being engaged to Lilian. He said it was one of those engagements that go
on by themselves, and you can't stop them. He wanted to stop it. But he
was engaged before he knew where he was--so he says. He said he
preferred me, and if he'd known--So of course I was obliged to be very
angry with him. That was why I didn't speak to him at first at Mrs.
Prockter's; at least, that was partly why. The other reason was that he
had accused me of running after Emanuel--of all people! I had been, you
know. But what had that got to do with Andrew, seeing that he was
engaged to Lilian? Besides, I'd been doing it on purpose. And he was so
_insolent_. And then, to crown all, Mrs. Prockter makes me dance with
him. No wonder I fainted! He is the rudest, _rudest_, crudest man I ever
knew."
She wiped her eyes.
"H'm!" mused James.
"He'll simply kill poor little Lilian!" She sobbed.
"What's that got to do with you, if you and Emanuel has got nothing to
do with him? It isn't you as'll be hung when Lilian's murdered."
"Can't you see he mustn't marry Lilian?" Helen burst out. "Silly little
thing! How can she understand him? She's miles beneath him."
"Is there anybody as does understand him?" James asked.
"I do," said she. "And that's flat. And I've got to marry him, and you
must help me. I wanted to tell you, and now I've told you. Don't you
think I've done right in being quite open with you? Most girls are so
foolish in these things. But I'm not. Aren't you glad, uncle?"
"Glad inna' the word," said he.
"_You must help me_," she repeated.