Across the Stream

"Ah, my dear," she said, "how lovely to see you! And don't be cross with me for coming to meet you if it bores you to be met at the station. But I did want to welcome you. And where's Jessie? There she is! Jessie darling, what fun!"

Archie did not look as if he was at all bored to be met at the station.

"That's perfectly ripping of you," he said. "I am glad you came. We've been baked and boiled all the way from Silorno. And the crossing! I thought it was always calm in the summer."

"Archie, don't allude to it," said Jessie.

Helena took her sister's arm.

"Darling Jessie, I am so sorry," she said. "Archie's a wretch for mentioning it. Now you go straight to the motor and sit there quietly. Archie and I will see to your luggage."

If Archie, as is probable, drew the contrast he was intended to draw between the sisters, Helena on her side drew another between him and Lord Harlow. There he stood, looking eagerly at her as they waited the emergence of their trunks, face and neck and hands so tanned by the sun that every one else looked ill and anaemic by him. He was tall and lithe and slender, with the quick movements of some wild animal, and in his brown face his blue eyes shone like transparent turquoises. He seemed an incarnation of sun and sea and wholesome virility, and, as the thought of the rather heavy Kalmuck face of Lord Harlow, and staid aspect suitable to his forty years, she almost wondered whether, in her estimate made this morning, she had allowed enough for personal charm. But there had been other factors as well, and who knew whether below this engaging exterior there were not planted the seeds of tragic outcome? But it was certainly pleasant to reflect that his exuberance of young manhood would, she made no doubt, be all hers if she made up her mind to want it. In any case, was there another girl in London who had so attractive a second string to her bow?

Archie had, on the appearance of one of their pieces of luggage, insinuated himself into the crowd and Helena was left outside, when a sight odd to see at a station attracted her attention. Beyond, the platform lay empty, and out of some porter's shed there, there bounded a big tabby cat with a mouse in its mouth. Its tail switched, its eyes gleamed with the joy of the successful hunter; but it did not prepare to eat the mouse immediately. It trotted a little farther off, lay down, and, depositing its prey, dabbed at it softly with velvet paws and sheathed claws. It even let it run a few inches away from it, and then gently shepherded it back again. Once it let it seem to escape altogether, gave it a start of at least a couple of yards, while it watched it with quivering shoulders, and then playfully bounded in the air, and reminded it that it was not its own master. Then there came a dismal little squeak as from a slate-pencil; the poor mouse's troubles were over, and a pleased cat blinked in the sun and licked its lips.

Helena followed this gruesome little drama with an interest that surprised and even rather shocked her. She was altogether on the side of the cat; the cat, according to its lights, was not being cruel, it was merely doing the natural thing with a mouse. It happened to like teasing its prey, letting it think that it had escaped, sheathing the claws that had caught it, and playing with it. There was nothing horrible about it: the cat was doing as nature intended it to do. She was rather sorry for the mouse, but that is what came of being a mouse… And there was Archie, triumphant, with a porter and his rescued luggage. Archie had a way with officials: he smiled at them in a confident, friendly way, and they always did what he wanted and never searched his traps.

* * * * *

There was a dance somewhere that night, but Helena, letting the fact be reluctantly dragged out of her that there was such a thing, only said how nice it would be to go to bed early.

"Are you tired, dear?" asked Lady Tintagel.

Helena made a little deprecating face, the face of the prettiest little martyr in the cause of truth ever beheld.

"No, I can't exactly say I am," she said. "I think – I think I was speaking on behalf of Archie and Jessie."

"But I'm not tired either," said he. "Let's go to somebody's dance. I can't dance an atom, but Helena shall teach me. There's nothing like practice in public. What dance is it, by the way?"

"Oh, that's all right," said she. "It's your Uncle and Aunt Toby. But,

Archie, I'm sure you're tired."

"But I'm not, I tell you. It's whether you want to go."

Lady Tintagel struck in.

"If you all go on being so unselfish," she said, "you will never settle anything. Try to be selfish for one moment Helena; it won't hurt. Do you want to go?"

"Enormously," said she, with a sign of resignation.

"And you, Archie?"

"Dying for it. Let's call a taxi."

"And you, Jessie?"

"I should hate it," said Jessie very confidently.

The matter, of course, was settled on those lines, and Helena was duly credited with having wanted to go enormously, but with having done her utmost to efface herself for the sake of others. This was precisely the end she had in view all along, and now, having had the dance, so to speak, forced on her, she was quite free to enjoy herself. She had produced precisely the impression she wanted on Archie and his mother, and, though it was likely that Jessie, with her long familiarity with such manoeuvres, was not equally unenlightened, she knew, by corresponding familiarity, Jessie's loyalty. She gave a little butterfly kiss to Cousin Marion, and a murmur of delighted thanks, and went to her sister to finish up this very complete little picture.

"Darling Jessie," she said, "go to bed soon and sleep well. I shall tiptoe in, in the morning, and, if you're still asleep, I shall tell them not to wake you till you ring. May I do that, Cousin Marion?"

Jessie understood all this perfectly well, and her mouth had that curve in it that might or might not be a smile.

"Good-night," she said. "Have a nice dance, and teach Archie well."

To speak of luck is often nothing more than another mode of expressing the success that usually attends foresight; chance favours the wise calculation. Helena last night had dropped the most casual hint to Lord Harlow that she was probably going to this dance to-night, but she was satisfied that he had been attending, and was not unprepared to see him there. Even if she had not been able to come, she suspected that he would do so, and her absence would have been delightfully explained to him afterwards. But there he was, not dancing, but standing about near the door of the ball-room, and quite obviously interested in arrivals. Undoubtedly he saw the brilliant entry of herself and Archie, but she contrived to put a few of the crowd between herself and him as she passed near him, and for the present gave him no more than a glance and a smile, a downdropt eye, and then one glance again, and passed with Archie into the ball-room. There an ordinary old-fashioned waltz was in progress, and not one of those anaemic strollings about which were becoming popular, and she slid off with her radiant partner on to a floor not overfull. She had a moment's misgiving when she remembered that Archie had said he couldn't dance, for it would vex her to appear in the clutch of a bungler; but, after all, Archie could hardly be awkward if he tried. Immediately all her fears vanished, for they had hardly gone up the short side of the room before she knew that if any one was the bungler it was she. She might have guessed, from seeing him walk and move, that he could dance; what she could not have guessed was that anybody could dance like this. They floated, they glided; it was the floor surely that moved under them; it was the wind of that swinging, voluptuous tune that wafted them on as in some clear eddy of sunlit water.

"But, my dear, you said you couldn't dance," she exclaimed.

"Oh, this sort of thing," said he. "I meant the steppings and crawlings of the new style."

Helena was too content to talk; her whole being glowed with the satisfaction of this flowing movement. The floor got ever emptier: lines of expectant fox-trotters and bunny-huggers stood round the wall, but none of them objected to watching for a little longer the entrancing couple who now had the floor almost to themselves. Couple after couple dropped off and stood looking, and to Helena's gleaming eyes they passed in streaks of black and white and many-coloured hues as she and Archie moved ever more freely and largely over the untenanted space. She could just see the faces of friends as she passed, and knew that Lord Harlow had come in and was standing by the door. There was no question of luck in that; he was but doing what she knew he was obliged to do. Then the web of sound that poured out of the gallery grew more brightly coloured as it quickened to its close, and still Archie and she moved without effort as if they were part of it and of each other. And then the whole fabric of that divine dream of melody and motion was shattered, for the dance was over.

Archie had not spoken either since he intimated that he had alluded to steppings and crawlings, and now he paused for a moment in the middle of the room, breathing just a little quickly and bewildered as with some dazzling light. Ever since he had put his arm round the girl and taken her hand in his, he had had that sense of sinking into sunlit waters, where he arrived at his true and naked self. Now he had swum up again, and he was clothed in black coat and white shirt, and Helena was standing a step apart from him, and every one else at the edge of the room was very far away. Instantly a mingling of wild consternation and triumph seized him.

"Oh, Helena, were we doing that all by ourselves?" he said. "How frightful! Let's get out of it. But wasn't it divine? May we do it again soon? Or will they have nothing but crawlings?"

It appeared that crawlings were to be the next item, and Archie noticed that in the crowd that now came about them again a particular man had his eye on them, and was unmistakably burrowing towards them.

"Yes, Archie; of course we will," said the girl. "Go and see your aunt, and ask if we may have another waltz ever so soon. Oh, here's Lord Harlow; I want to introduce you."

This was done, and Lord Harlow turned to Helena again.

"I feel as if I had been present at some Bacchic festival," he said in a very precise voice. "But you should have vine-leaves in your hair, and er – your partner a tunic and a thyrsus. I feel myself as prosaic as a Bradshaw. But may I be your Bradshaw?"

Helena looked from one to the other; if she had had a tail she would certainly have been switching it.

"Ah, do," she said. "A Bradshaw is quite indispensable. Archie, go and get a thyrsus – will a poker do, Lord Harlow? – and persuade Mrs. Morris to have another waltz before long."

Now that the sheer animal exhilaration of that adorable waltz, which quite precluded talking, was over, it seemed perfectly suitable, as she plodded along the weary way of the fox-trot, to talk again, and in answer to Lord Harlow, who had not caught Archie's name, she said:

"Yes, Lord Davidstow. Surely I told you about him" (she knew that she had purposely not done so). "He is Lady Tintagel's son, with whom I am staying."

Lord Harlow quietly assimilated this as he turned slowly round.

"And does he do other things as well as he dances?" he asked.

"I think he does," said she, "though I never really thought about it.

When people are such dears as Archie, one doesn't consider what they do.

They just are."

"He certainly is. He appears very much alive."

"Yes, he's madly alive."