THE WIT OF HELEN.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16152, 29 November 1924, Page 19 (Supplement)

THE WIT OF HELEN.

A SHORT STORT. (By Sylvia Thompson.') The rift in the Forster lute probably began, subtly, almost imperceptibly, when Helen made on epigram on their honeymoon. They were spending their honeymoon at Dtnard, whioh George had ohosen after three days in Paris as a gsy and bracing place in which to celebrate the aftermath of a successful marriage. (One of those satisfactory marriages where the ceremony and the trousseau are both achieved in Hanover Square.) Helen had not meant to make an epigram; it. had slipped out quite inadvertently when she and George were sitting under the outside awning of the patisserie opposite the Casino. (The Casino reminded her of her wedding-cake; it \Vas so monstrously white and ornate in this thick sunshine.) She had observed a certain couple passing in a fiacre, and, pausing in the degustation df her ilfth foie -gras sandwich, had made a remark that was both witty and apposite (which two qualities in the algebra of conversation are generally held to equal an epigram). At her words George’s handsome length, which had been lolling in a ohalr on the other side of the small marble-topped table, stiffened; he took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked suspiciously at her, ns though he suddenly doubted the reality of her complexion or the auburn softness of her hair.

He was a guardsman with a “gunrdee” face—fair moustache, blue eyes, short, straight nose, and square chin, and his mind worked straightforward because it had not the ability to zig-zag. But be was very charming—and Helen was in love with him—he was so good-looking, and his companionship was like being in a wellkept walled garden With a temperate blue sky overhead. As be looked at her Helen was conscious that her remark had been neither welcomed nor understood.

“I don’t quite follow, darling—what exactly d’you mean?”

Tim rose-petal flush deepened in her checks —she prodded the remaining half of her sandwich with a fork. ; “Just what I said—l mean I didn't mean anything in particular." He crossed one knee over the other and pulled his Panama hat farther down on ills forehead, so that his blue eyes watched her from under Us Shadow—somewhat apprehensively. “Frankly, darling, I don’t see much sense in it—l don’t like you saying that sort of thingj.it sounds as if you were trying to be clever, like Bernard Shaw, or Dennis Bradley, or some fellow like that.” His gaze so obviously added that her beauty was quite enough. That was what he had fallen in love with, three months ago, in London; her really lovely face, with the delicate complexion and auburn hair and wide grey eyes—and the topping way she moved on the tennis court and when she danced. Someone had said to him that she was supposed to be rather a “highbrow,” but he had never noticed it in her; she had been perfectly normal and sweet when they were engaged. She showed none of that tendency to discuss literature and sex, which he had noticed so often in really “highbrow"' young women. (Two subjects which George affirmed were “all very well in the right place.") They had agreed that they liked Galsworthy’s novels—and children. That was enough. Helen wondered what imp had woken in the tranquil well-being she had attained by her marriage With George —had prompted that flash of words from her lips which a moment before had been content to move in mastication or platitude. She had anticipated in her life with this lovable and assured oreature an ordered happiness—a life of pleasurable duties and a few dutiful pleasures (such as the watching of cricket, and visits to George’s' rather numerous relations in Leicestershire) ; she had hoped that all craving for wit and wisdom would be stilled in the placid luxuriance of her days. She was tired of “clever people”—of the endless chatter about books and politics and plays and “social problems.” And so far her anticipation had been healthily fulfilled. George was a darling; their days were spent in a glow of energetic leisure; golfing, bathing, playing tennis —dancing, gambling, not N too strenuously, in the evenings. They had run into several friends in Dinard, so that their mutual amiability was occasionally alleviated by general chatter. Nice people, thought Helen, with a pleasant, breezy way of doing and saying nothing of any importance. She liked the sunny triviality of this life—the sparkling blue sea, the excellent food of the hotel, the sunny streets with alluring, expensive little shops peeping from Under white awnings. It was rather like being "The Happiest Girl in the World” in a magazine story -. And now she had made that silly epigram! She hoped George would forget it—it had been inharmonious. George looked at his watch and got up. “If we’re playing tennis before lunch we’d better go—our court’s booked for 11.30.” They strolled up the street, from the Casino toward the Tennis Club. Helen pointed suddenly to a small handbag of green and gold beads in a shop window. “Oh, darling—isn’t that too attractive?” George flashed down at her a charmingly indulgent smile. “Naughty person,” he said, “always seeing something you want.” Now, lie felt, she. was being her own delicious and normal self.

11. Six months later the Forsters were settled in Berkshire, in the small hut enchanting place that George had inherited from an aunt (a Queen Anne house of weathered rose-red bricks—with wide windows, rising from a velvety smooth sea of green lawns, on which two cedar trees near the house seemed moored like gigantic dark ships. And here Helen had her second and more serious lapse. She began to write a book. At first George, did not suspect. He noticed that therd were half-hours and hours when Helen seemed pre-occu-pied at her writing table; that almost every day there were intervals when she was neither golfing nor hunting nor receiving guests, nor returning the innumerable calls of the local “county," nor busying herself with house and garden-—when she would retire mysteriously to he'.’ boudoir. He did not say anything because he knew that these days women demanded a certain amount of freedom. lie thought that probably she was writing “gossipy letters” to her friends —feminine weaknesses, gossip and letterwriting—one must be tolerant. Then one evening—it was the evening after the local Hunt, Ball (Helen had refused to come out that day, had said she was too tired, and had only driven him to I he Meet in Hie morning)—George found out, He strolled, glowing and bespattered to the eyes with mud, into the library, (lie had taken off his hoots in the outer hall, for his mother hud been stern in the

matter of muddy boots.) Helen was not in the room—she had gone up to see that his hot bath was run on—but George perceived, witli a slight frown, a litter of papers on the writing table. (He always somewhat resented writing tables, which were, apt to look “messy” and “spoil the look of a room.”) He strode in his stockinged feet to the table, intending to “try and put it straight.” He gaped at the litterwhy foolscap? And all the pages covered with Helen’s handwriting and numbered! He realised—she was writing a story! Good Lord—this was what she had been doing. Anyway, why couldn’t she tell him? Writing stories —as if there was any need for her to write anything! Helen came into the room, to be greeted by a pained glance from above the muddy white stook.* “What is it, darling? Why are you looking so sad and pathetic?” She came and put her hands on his shoulders. “Haven’t you had a good day, darling?” “Better than you .have,” said George, glancing down at the writing table. “Oh —that’s just my novel. I—l just started it to amuse myself ” George, hearing the inflection of guilt in her casual tones, felt himself more than ever justified. He strode away from her across the room, and stood with his back to the fireplace, his feet wide apart,, flicking his muddy coat-tails before the blazing logs.

Helen thought: “Oh, dear, my sweet, simple George is going to behave like all the angry husbands he’s seen on the stage." She sank into an armchair, drapped the fllmy draperies of her tea-gown deflantly round herself, and- waited, her mouth solemn, her grey eyes, fixed on her husband.

“Wliat’s started you writing a novel ?"

“Just—just to amuse myself, darling ”

“Aren’t you amused enough? Aren’t we doing pleijty of, entertaining and going out, and isn’t there enough for you to do about the place?” (“He’ll burn his coat-tails,” thought Helen, “if he flicks them so angrily.") She protested: “But, George—it isn't really anything serious. I mean it doesn’t mean that I'm not hnppv and contented —it’s just a sort of diversion, like smoking a pipe is to you.” Cfeorge briskly stroked his fair moustache, first one side and then the other, with an impatient touch. “Don't start talking nonsense, my dear. It isn’t at all the same. Can’t think what should drive you to do such a thing." He squared his shoulders' and fidgeted with his stock. Helen wondered just what had driven her to It. It was true she was quite happy and contented, and she loved the house, and the easy, assured life. And she cared for the country more than George did in a way—for the wet woods and the downs rolling to bare horizons under the pale winter skies, and the green of her own lawns, and their damp fragrance when one walked out in the morning. And she wasn’t bored with George and the people they saw. It was such a sane, healthy life, and she hadn’t felt for one, second the desire to live again among those who complacently dubbed themselves “the intelligentzia,” implying themselves to be an “aristocracy of brains” (and thus excusing the often effete quality of their morals and physique). But she had felt, too, that George wouldn’t understand—that it would worry him. But then it was such fun writing, and the diversion had made her appreciate more fully the good sense of her everyday life. She must try and make him realise that there was no harm in it.

“George, d’you really mind most dreadfully?” He fixed his blue eyes on her, frowning judicially. (He couldn't imagine why any woman so astoundingiy pretty should go mixing herself up with this sort of thingl) “Well —it’s a bit of a reflection on me, isn’t it? Looks as if I didn't treat you well, or something. Most women who write books always seem to have a past or a rotten time. It isn’t natural for a woman who's got a husband and a whole lot of other things to do. I don’t like it—l don’t like the look of the whole thing. You’ll find yourself in Parliament if you don’t look out.” During dinner George was still gloomy. Helen could tell how upset he was by ttie unusual length of time he stayed by himself over hiis port. She went into the library and took her manuscript out of a drawer. If he really minded. Poor George l ! She couldn’t do it if it made him unhappy. She walked slowly towards the lire.

“No, darling—don’t do that.” George appeared in the doorway. Apparently he had relented; the port wine had sopthed him, perhaps. lie didn’t want t-o bo hard on her. Poor Helen!

“Don’t burn It, my dear. Perhaps I was a bit harsh about it, I was so awfully surprised. You may as well finish it, as you’ve done a good bit. Oughtn’t to do anything by halves." ‘‘Shouldn’t you truly mind, George, if I publish it? It’s —it’s quite an amusing book.” George, in hlis revived amiability, determined, as the thing had gone so far, to countenance even the publcity of publishing. “So long as you don’t write under your own name,” he said. Helen came and kissed him reassuringly on his square chin. “All right, darling—lit shall only say on the cover ‘by Helen’!"

111. The book was disastrously a success. Up to the date of publication George had been tranquil and affectionate, and when the unpleasiing subject was conspicuous in his mind, either through the sight of a piece of foolscap or by a letter to Helen from her publisher, ho was rather consciously forbearing. Also Helen had lately been peculiarly enchanting, and wlith a pleasing zest had occupied herself planning out a new rose garden, in helping at the village women’s instilute, in going up to town, and dining out with him, and ordering herself clothes. The book was half forgotten and almost forgiven, and then 'it was published.

George had not asked to read it—this he felt might make Helen realise the fundamental significance of such perpetrations. But when, stacked on his own breakfast table, he saw six printed copies with'tlie title and “By Helen” printed staringly in red on flic glossy paper jackets, an angry porosity made hum seize one copy and take it away into the library. Helen, corning into the room, found five copies where she had left six. She wondered what on earth George would make of the thing—a quizzical series of episodes strung on a slender narrative, the episodes touched with a light, glistening mockery. Later in the day, when George did not appear at luncheon, she wondered less amusedly what his verdict would lie. Could such a thing really spoil—-—? Of course, she knew that George, like many men of iiis delightful, hut inflexibly narrow, outlook, could lie roused to incomprehensible or seemingly irrelevant. That was what tier butterfly of a hook would seem to him —somewhat incomprehensible and absolutely irrelevant In her’existence.

At dinner he appeared, as usual freshly shaved, in a dinner jacket

Helen hud put on a frook of pale rose taffeta, which he liked best among Her dressoA. (Kite remembered how in Paris he hah been with her when they were shown the model; how he had agreed with the vendeuse, “Ca, o-’est toot-ah-lay pour Mndohm.”) Now lie did not glance at her or her frock, but sat opposite Iter, the other aide of tlie oval polished table, eating very deliberately and staring into his plate, ills fair moustache and his eyebrows seemed all three to be frowning. “He’s behaving like a naughty little boy," thought Helen, “after all, there’s no reason why 1 shouldn’t write a book if it amuses me.”

“But only in one brief phrase did he express his feelings—at the end of dinner. Helen had heard George’s father use the phrase In connection with wireless, with the reduction of armaments, with the idea of inoculation; the same jutting of the underlip, the same lowering prophetic gaze of toe blue eyes, the same grufflmg tones. , “I don't like it,” said George, “I don’t Ike it at all.”

And the reviews only made the situation -worse. “Helen’s writing is delightful, fresh, amusing,” said one review. A Sunday paper said: “This Is toe brightest and most entertaining novel of toe year. We wonder who ‘Helen’ can he." Another paper said: “This is a really witty book” —and quoted extracts. A “literary” weekly said: “The wit of ‘Helen’ is exquisite, never- coarse or heavy. ‘Helen’ is like some delicate and apprehensive little spider hidden mysteriously in the intriguing and shimmering web of narrative that she has spun.” George found this latter Press cutting. Helen was startled by his sudden enraged entrance into the pantry where she was arranging flowers. “What the devil does this chap mean by calling you a something and what-not ‘little spider’?” Helen protested, suddenly between tears and laughter. “But —but, George, darling—he’s only a reviewer. . . .” “Well, he can be a comedian for all I care, I’ll knock his beastly brains out. -. . .”

“But, George. . . .” She dropped toe daffodils and scissors and turned appealingly towards him. “George. . that’s supposed to be a compliment,” “What? Galling you a spider? I’ve had enough of this. If you -wanted to have a literary career you shouln’t have married. You ought to be living in Chelsea or somewhere like that. ... I don’t like my wife publishing a lot of queer remarks that ordinary people don’t understand. Oh I I can see, it’s clever and amusing—and all that. But if I want t-o listen to clever talk I can go to my club, and if I want amusing I can go off to a music-hall in Paris. . . Anyway, Helen, think it over; I’m going oif abroad—and perhaps you’ll feel a bit more reasonable when I come hack.”

Helen was frightened; she realised the extent of her husband's obstinancy and delorpiination and did not attempt to argue. Gc-orgo departed the next day. It was typical of him that he should, in his fury of outraged conventionality, join an expedition to Central Africa. It was typical of Helen, desperately unhappy and realising her own mistake (which was in not completely identifying herself with the life that she had chosen with George), to let him go believing that she cared more for her novel-writing than for him.

TV. George went away in April, and he did not return until the following January. By this time he was frightened —of what might have happened of his own obstinancy in leaving Helen like that. She might have run away. He travelled down t-o toe house in Berkshire, looking very much the “bronzed and weary traveller”—with an apprehensive look in his blue eyes. Supposing Helen wern’t there. She hadn’t written a word. He had telegraphed that lie was coming. lie found Helen seated before the blazing log-fire in the library. She was pale, but more astoundingly pretty than ever. He kissed her, and for to? Jlrst time in his life the complaorni and handsome George would have liked to kfe-k himself—and ween in rcpentencc. WhsJt a fool he had been!

They looked at esu-.h other quietly —in a strange, choking happiness. Then Helen smiled through Uor absurd tears.

“George, I’ve got the most awful confession to make—something even tnorc—more horribly public—than a novel."

“Darling—if you’ve written a dictionary I don't mind now.” “Well, George—it isn’t quite that. I’ll show it to you.” George supposed vaguely she must have painted a picture or something. . . . Well, anyway, what did that matter? He followed her upstairs—topping the way her auburn hair -grew at the nape of her neck!! He followed her along the corridor to what had been “toe blue spare room”—probably she had rigged herself up a studio; it was a nice, light room.

She opened the door and led him an holding his hand in hers.

“There," she said. “Isn't it too queer and ridiculous—it’s a baby, my darling, and he happened three weeks ago—and he’s called George Gordon—because I know you admire General Gordon so much. . .” George gazed and stared into the white, fresh depth of toe cradle, gradually bending closer and closer over the slumbering object. “By Jove!!” he said. There seemed nothing else to say.

“No. darling,” she said —“not by J-ovc —by George."