CINDERELLA
Helena tried not to look as though she minded when Hubert came down,
glorious in evening dress at six o'clock.
"It _is_ an early start," she said cheerfully.
"Yes," he replied; "but that means I shall be home all the earlier.
The dinner begins at seven and I shan't make a long speech--trust
me--so you can expect me back not later than half past ten or eleven at
the very latest."
He just restrained himself from saying once more that he thought her
stupid not to go across to the Institute instead of moping all alone
till then. Even so his farewell was a little cold for, though he kept
silence, he could not help feeling she had been selfish over the whole
business. Her air of martyrdom had rubbed some gilt off the occasion's
splendour.
As for Helena, having waved him gaily out of sight, she did not return
and give way to a natural sorrow, as he imagined, typically penitent so
soon as he had parted from her. She looked, it is true, hard and
thoughtful for a moment. Then she laughed almost happily. What did it
matter really? It would only be one evening alone, one lecture
missed;--and who was Mrs. Boyd? Why of course any one really nice
would be glad that her husband had been honoured by these beastly Kit
Kats, whoever they might be.
She sat down and wrote a long letter--about everything else in the
world--to her lonely mother, who after all never had any one at all to
dine with her, unless you counted clergymen.
That finished, it was dinner-time and that was fun because she had
ordered or brought in all her pet kickshaws--shrimps, dough-nuts and so
forth--which Hubert always vetoed, describing them expansively as dirty
feeding. Men, she decided, got so little out of life; always beef and
cabbages and yesterday to-morrow....
It was really quite a philosophic meal. She often was alone, for some
big part indeed in every day, but there was something in this first
lonely dinner that made a curious break and gave, as the French say, to
think. She thought of her old life in Devonshire; she thought of her
ambitions towards self-development when she decided upon marriage; she
thought without pride of herself as she was at present; and she thought
of Hubert.
She had reached the dough-nut course, and also the conclusion that they
were an odd couple but probably most couples were, when the front door
bell sounded, as it always did, through the whole little house.
Helena looked at the clock. Ten minutes to eight! No parcel-post.
What could it be, possibly? Not Hubert back? She felt a quick shame
of the dough-nut.
It was beneath the table safely before Lily entered.
"Please'm," said the maid, "it's Mr. Alison wants to speak to you."
Helena went out into the hall. "Hullo," she said, hoping he had not
expected dinner. "Have you been to the Institute? What was it like?"
"Been," he laughed. "No! It's only ten to eight. This is an
eight-o'clocker, you know. G. K. S. will never stand things at the
ordinary time!"
This was a blow. Helena, not letting herself think of all that she was
missing, had yet fancied that it was safely over. And it had not even
begun... "Oh," was all that she said.
"I went along," Geoffrey Alison proceeded quickly, as though every
instant counted, "because I am a steward so had to be early, and asked
just out of curiosity where you were sitting. They said, so to speak,
you weren't! I knew you both intended coming so I ran across. I've
got two tickets just returned, so if----"
"How very kind of you," said Helena, feeling that she could almost slay
him; "but it wasn't that we couldn't get in. Hubert at the last moment
found that he wasn't free, so we sent our seats back. He suddenly
remembered he was dining out." She tried to make it sound as though
there had not been a tiff.
"Dining out?" repeated Geoffrey Alison, "Well then, you're free to come
along like all the other ones?"
"Oh no, thank you; I don't think I will," said Helena. She had not
forgotten about Mrs. Boyd.
"But you simply _must_," replied the other, pulling out his watch.
"They'll be beginning if we don't make haste. You couldn't miss this
possibly; it's far the best of the whole series. Old Dr. Kenyon, too,
thinks art is a disease and intends asking questions. It will be
tremendous. Come along or you will make us late."
"But I'm not tidy or anything," said Helena. Definite objections are
the first steep steps down from refusal to complaisance.
He recognised this. "So much the better," he cried in prompt triumph.
"Unprepared things are always the best sport. You don't need wraps;
it's like a summer night and you look very smart. Come on! Your
husband won't object. It will be simply grand. We'll have a picnic
causerie!"
Helena was swept away. Bother Mrs. Boyd and every one! It really
would be fun and she would be so bored at home. Hubert had told her
she should go. Besides--did she feel dimly, ever so little even, that
she was somehow getting even with him? Let us pass quickly on, with
all the charity that we can muster....
The Institute was packed. This was clearly a great night.
Helena, directly she entered the room, full of an excitement that had
almost the sensation of magnetic waves, was glad that she had come.
And as they found their seats, the chairman and the speaker entered.
That evening, as Mr. Alison had promised, was the jolliest of the whole
of the series. She even enjoyed merely looking at this G. K. Shaw.
He was ever such a big man, who swelled genially outward and then ended
unexpectedly in quite a savage beard. He looked so comfortable and
friendly that she felt certain all the nice things he meant to say (you
could tell from his eyes) got somehow twisted all wrong in that horrid
beard.
Certainly, to judge by mere words, there was a lot with which she could
not sympathise and some she could not understand. If only Hubert had
been free!
He said, for instance, that conventional Religion was man's excuse to
the Almighty: that faith was the power of believing what we could not
prove untrue: and that churches should possibly be built, because of
unemployment, but left empty for the glory of their Maker. All this
puzzled her, and Mr. Alison would only chuckle, while most others
grunted. Then the lecturer got round to Art and said that life was the
Creator's masterpiece. He roughly defined Art as that which never
found its way to paper. He admitted the existence of a body of
literature and paintings. He did not for a moment wish to conceal the
existence of the Royal Academy. One corn-crake, however, did not cause
a winter: and he wished to-night to speak only about Art. The modern
out-look was parochial and men failed to see even the parish for
looking at the clergymen. An Artist had no fatherland. He had the key
of the World: for paint was thicker than blood. No two nations had
ever agreed on armaments or treaties: but all admitted that Farnese was
greater than Phil May. The worry with the world to-day was not that it
was old: it was a million years too young. No man troubled with the
future, because he knew that it must some day be the past. Religion
hinted at the future: Art alone interpreted the present. Five thousand
years had thrown mud at the workman: Brangwyn proved him the sole
dignified thing left in a dead-level age. For centuries they had
destroyed old ruined tenements, and Bone had shown them to be the only
kind that ought to be allowed. Art dealt with the beautiful and live;
the Church with what was gloomy and decayed. You could not make people
wicked by Act of Parliament; the plain man was an artist when he shaved
his face. Art was to the English what death had been to the Egyptians,
but London was full of things that no one ever spoke about. There was,
for instance, the Imperial Institute. It was better to be beautiful
than dead. Some of those he met were neither. He wished that they
were both. He should be glad if any one would raise objections, for
their mutual advantage. Every one was right and nobody was ever wrong.
There had been ever so much more than that, she knew; but this was all
she could recall when finally he took his seat, and now, already, she
was not altogether sure how it had been connected. She was not by any
means convinced but she was tremendously encouraged. New vistas of an
unsuspected length and freshness opened out from a drab world, whilst
the fat, bearded man was speaking. Sometimes she supposed he must be
very funny?
"Capital, capital," murmured Mr. Alison, and only that. He usually had
such a lot to say, too! She was disappointed.
But now grimly and deliberately there uprose an elderly man of stern
broad face and a respectable frock-coat. He must apologise for letting
his heavy periods drop on the top of the last speaker's brilliant
flippancies, but truth, he regretted to say, was truth.
"That's old Kenyon," her neighbour whispered gleefully.
The doctor, having said so much of calm preface as due to a visitor,
suddenly blazed out into a quicker time and a more violent mood. So
far, he said, from Art being a religion, it was a disease.
(Sensation.) He proved this at some length, largely in the dead
languages, with extracts read from small pamphlets which (he announced)
he had the honour to have contributed to various of the famous
Monthlies.
The soldier-type, he argued, was the most essentially male, 'and it was
furthest-moved from the artistic. He went so far, in conclusion, as to
say that literary creation was only possible to a hybrid creature
half-male and half-female, of whichever sex.
The general feeling was that this was rude to Mr. G. K. Shaw.
The famous author rose, however, blandly and swung his body round to
Dr. Kenyon.
"Now there'll be some fun," said Geoffrey Alison.
"I consider," said Mr. G. K. Shaw quite gravely, holding his beard
steady, "that the last speaker's mongrel theory of literature is
plausible and valuable. I am, however, puzzled as to how he accounts
for his own admirable pamphlets?"
Which certainly was fun and everybody laughed, to the annoyance of old
Dr. Kenyon, who was thenceforth nicknamed "Mongrel" and shortly after
moved to Wimbledon.
But beyond all this, Helena found a vague excitement in the evening.
It was not like those other causeries at six o'clock; she wished they
always could take place at eight. The mere fact, too, of having come
so on the moment's spur lent quite a new attraction. As Geoffrey
Alison had hinted, picnics are more romantic than a dinner-party and
this had bulked into almost an adventure.
He saw her home. The speeches had been long and it was half-past ten
already, but all was darkness in the little house.
Helena had quite a feeling of nervousness at the idea of switching on
light after light, alone. "Come along in," she said simply.
"Hubert'll be here in half a moment. Then he'll give you a drink, and
we will all exchange experiences!" All rancour had gone; yet--well,
she would rather like to show Hugh that his absence didn't mean she
merely sat and cried! Women _are_ human--and women.
"No, I don't think I will, thanks very much," he said.
His face and tone puzzled her. "Don't say _you_'re busy, now!" she
cried. "It's a regular disease."
"Oh no, I never work at night," he answered. "Artists can't very well.
That is the one advantage of our job!"
"Well don't be tiresome then, and come on in," she said, holding the
door open. "Hugh will be furious if he knows you're just gone. So
don't be stupid. _I_ was tame, just now!"
"If you really mean it," he replied almost solemnly and entered.
"Of course I do," she laughed. "Should I invite you, otherwise? How
curious you are! Come into the dining-room and then when Hugh comes,
he can give you--Oh no, let's come into here!" She hastily pointed to
the drawing-room.
Geoffrey Alison went in, puzzled, thinking.
He did not know, and she had only just remembered, about that dough-bun.