Helen with the High Hand by Arnold Bennett (good beach reads txt) 📕

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For two days he was haunted by memories of kidney omelettes and by the word "miser." Miser, eh? Him a miser! Him! Ephraim Tellwright was a miser--but _him_!

Then the natty servant gave notice, and Mrs. Butt called and suggested that she should resume her sway over him. But she did not employ exactly that phrase.

He longed for one of Helen's meals as a drunkard longs for alcohol.

Then Helen called, with the casual information that she was off to Canada. She was particularly sweet. She had the tact to make the interview short. The one blot on her conduct of the interview was that she congratulated him on the possible return of Mrs. Butt, of which she had heard from the natty servant.

"Good-bye, uncle," she said.

"Good-bye."

She had got as far as the door, when he whispered, brokenly: "Lass--"

Helen turned quickly towards him.


CHAPTER XVII


DESCENDANTS OF MACHIAVELLI

Yes, she turned towards him with a rapid, impulsive movement, which expressed partly her sympathy for her old uncle, and partly a feeling of joy caused by the sudden hope that he had decided to give way and buy Wilbraham Hall after all.

And the fact was that, in his secret soul, he had decided to give way; he had decided that Helen, together with Helen's cooking, was worth to him the price of Wilbraham Hall. But when he saw her brusque, eager gesture, he began to reflect. His was a wily and profound nature; he reckoned that he could read the human soul, and he said to himself:

"The wench isn't so set on leaving me as I thought she was."

And instead of saying to her: "Helen, lass, if you'll stop you shall have your Wilbraham Hall," in tones of affecting, sad surrender, he said:

"I'm sorry to lose thee, my girl; but what must be must."

And when he caught the look in her eyes, he was more than ever convinced that he would be able to keep Helen without satisfying her extremely expensive whim.

Helen, for her part, began to suspect that if she played the fish with sufficient skill, she would capture it. Thus they both, in a manner of speaking, got out their landing-nets.

"I don't say," James Ollerenshaw proceeded, in accents calculated to prove to her that he had just as great a horror of sentimentality as she had--"I don't say as you wouldn't make a rare good mistress o' Wilbraham Hall. I don't say as I wouldn't like to see you in it. But when a man reaches my age, he's fixed in his habits like. And, what's more, supposing I _am_ saving a bit o' money, who am I saving it for, if it isn't for you and your mother? You said as much yourself. I might pop off any minute--"

"Uncle!" Helen protested.

"Ay, any minute!" he repeated, firmly. "I've known stronger men nor me pop off as quick as a bottle o' ginger-beer near the fire." Here he gazed at her, and his gaze said: "If I popped off here and now, wouldn't you feel ashamed o' yerself for being so hard on your old uncle?"

"You'll live many and many a year yet," Helen smiled.

He shook his head pessimistically. "I've set my heart," he continued, "on leaving a certain sum for you and yer mother. I've had it in mind since I don't know when. It's a fancy o' mine. And I canna' do it if I'm to go all around th' Five Towns buying barracks."

Helen laughed. "What a man you are for exaggerating!" she flattered him. Then she sat down.

He considered that he was gradually winding in his line with immense skill. "Ay," he ejaculated, with an absent air, "it's a fancy o' mine."

"How much do you want to leave?" Helen questioned, faintly smiling.

"Don't you bother your head about that," said he. "You may take it from me as it's a tidy sum. And when I'm dead and gone, and you've got it all, then ye can do as ye feel inclined."

"I shall beat her, as sure as eggs!" he told himself.

"All this means that he'll give in when it comes to the point," she told herself.

And aloud she said: "Have you had supper, uncle?"

"No," he replied.

The next development was that, without another word, she removed her gloves, lifted her pale hands to her head, and slowly drew hatpins from her hat. Then she removed her hat, and plunged the pins into it again. He could scarcely refrain from snatching off his own tasselled Turkish cap and pitching it in the air. He felt as if he had won the Battle of Hastings, or defeated the captain of the bowling club in a single-handed match.

"And to think," he reflected, "that I should ha' given in to her by this time if I hadn't got more sense in my little finger than--" etc.

"I think I'll stay and cook you a bit of supper," said Helen. "I suppose Georgiana is in the kitchen?"

"If her isn't, her's in the back entry," said Jimmy.

"What's she doing in the back entry?"

"Counting the stars," said Jimmy; "and that young man as comes with the bread helping her, most like."

"I must talk to that girl." Helen rose.

"Ye may," said Jimmy; "but th' baker's man'll have th' last word, or times is changed."

He was gay. He could not conceal his gaiety. He saw himself freed from the menace of the thraldom of Mrs. Butt. He saw himself gourmandising over the meals that Helen alone could cook. He saw himself trotting up and down the streets of Bursley with the finest, smartest lass in the Five Towns by his side. And scarcely a penny of extra expenditure! And all this happy issue due to his diplomatic and histrionic skill! The fact was, Helen really liked him. There could be no doubt about that. She liked him, and she would not leave him. Also, she was a young woman of exceptional common sense, and, being such, she would not risk the loss of a large fortune merely for the sake of indulging pique engendered by his refusal to gratify a ridiculous caprice.

Before she had well quitted the room he saw with clearness that he was quite the astutest man in the world, and that Helen was clay in his hands.

The sound of crockery in the scullery, and the cheerful little explosion when the gas-ring was ignited, and the low mutter of conversation that ensued between Helen and Georgiana--these phenomena were music to the artist in him. He extracted the concertina from its case and began to play "The Dead March in Saul." Not because his sentiments had a foundation in the slightest degree funereal, but because he could perform "The Dead March in Saul" with more virtuosity than any other piece except "The Hallelujah Chorus." And he did not desire to insist too much on his victory by filling Trafalgar-road with "The Hallelujah Chorus." He was discretion itself.

When she came back to the parlour (astoundingly natty in a muslin apron of Georgiana's) to announce supper, she made no reference to the concert which she was interrupting. He abandoned the concertina gently, caressing it into its leather shell. He was full to the brim with kindliness. It seemed to him that his life with Helen was commencing all over again. Then he followed the indications of his nose, which already for some minutes had been prophesying to him that in the concoction of the supper Helen had surpassed herself.

And she had. There was kidney ... No, not in an omelette, but impaled on a skewer. A novel species of kidney, a particularity in kidneys!

"Where didst pick this up, lass?" he asked.

"It's the kidneys of that rabbit that you've bought for to-morrow," said she.

Now, he had no affection for rabbit as an article of diet, and he had only bought the rabbit because the rabbit happened to be going past his door (in the hands of a hawker) that morning. His perfunctory purchase of it showed how he had lost interest in life and meals since Helen's departure. And lo! she had transformed a minor part of it into something wondrous, luscious, and unforgettable. Ah, she was Helen! And she was his!

"I've asked Georgiana to make up my bed," Helen said, after the divine repast.

"I'll tell ye what I'll do," he said, in an ecstasy of generosity, "I'll buy thee a piano, lass, and we'll put it in th' parlour against the wall where them books are now."

She kept silence--a silence which vaguely disturbed him.

So that he added: "And if ye're bent on a bigger house, there's one up at Park-road, above th' Park, semi-detached--at least, it's the end of a terrace--as I can get for thirty pounds a year."

"My dearest uncle," she said, in a firm, even voice, "what _are_ you talking about? Didn't I tell you when I came in that I had settled to go to Canada? I thought it was all decided. Surely you don't think I'm going to live in a poky house in Park-road--the very street where my school was, too! I perfectly understand that you won't buy Wilbraham Hall. That's all right. I shan't pout. I hate women who pout. We can't agree, but we're friends. You do what you like with your money, and I do what I like with myself. I had a sort of idea I would try to make you beautifully comfortable just for the last time before I left England, and that's why I'm staying. I do hope you didn't imagine anything else, uncle. There!"

She kissed him, not as a niece, but as a wise, experienced nurse might have kissed a little boy. For she too, in her way, reckoned herself somewhat of a diplomatist and a descendant of Machiavelli. She had thought: "It's a funny thing if I can't bring him to his knees with a tasty supper--just to make it clear to him what he'll lose if he loses me."

James Ollerenshaw had no sleep that night. And Helen had but little.


CHAPTER XVIII


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