NOCTURNAL - Helen with the High Hand

Page 91 of 111

She ran over with sympathy. Having no further fear of Helen making trouble in her own family, she had all her feelings at liberty to condone with James.

The candle, throwing a small hemisphere of feeble radiance in the vastness of the dim hall, sat on its chair between them.

"I _can_ help you," she said, suddenly, after grunts from James. "I'm calling on the Swetnams the day after to-morrow. I'll tell them about--about to-day, and when Mrs. Swetnam asks me for an explanation of it, I will be mysterious. If Lilian is there, Mrs. Swetnam will certainly get her out of the room. Then I will just give the faintest hint that the explanation is merely jealousy between Emanuel and Mr. Dean concerning--a certain young lady. I shall treat it all as a joke; you can rely on me. Immediately I am gone Lilian will hear about it. She will quarrel with Andrew the next time she sees him; and if he _wishes_ to be free, he may be."

She smiled the arch, naughty, pleasantly-malign smile of a terribly experienced dowager. And she seemed positively anxious that James should have Andrew Dean for a son-in-law.

James, in his simplicity, was delighted. It appeared to him a Mephistophelian ingenuity. He thought how clever women were, on their own ground, and what an advantage they had in their immense lack of scruple.

"Of course," said she, "I have always said that a marriage between Andrew Dean and Lilian would be a mistake--a very serious mistake. They are quite unsuited to each other. She isn't in love with him--she's only been flattered by his attentions into drawing him on. I feel sorry for the little thing."

At a stroke, she had converted a shameful conspiracy into an act of the highest virtue. And her smile changed, too--became a _good_ smile, a smile on which a man might depend. His heart went out to her, and he contemplated the smile in a pleased, beatific silence.

Just then the candle--a treacherous thing--flamed up and went out.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Prockter.

And James had not a match. He never smoked. And without an atlas of the Hall, showing the location of match-boxes, he saw no hope of finding a match.

The fire was as good as gone. A few cinders burnt red under the ash, showing the form of the chimney-piece, but no more.

"An ye got a match?" he asked her.

"No," she said, drily, "I don't carry matches. But I can tell you I don't like being in the dark at all." Her voice came to him out of nothing, and had a most curious effect on his spine. "Where are you, Mr. Ollerenshaw?"

"I'm a-sitting here," he replied.

"Well," said she, "if _you_ can't find a match, I think you had better lead me to the door. I certainly can't find my way there myself. Where is your hand?"

Then a hand touched his shoulder and burnt him. "Is that you?" asked the voice.

"Ay!" he said.

And he took the hand, and the hand squeezed his hand--squeezed it violently. It may have been due to fear, it may have been due to mere inadvertence on the part of the hand; but the hand did, with unmistakable, charming violence, squeeze his hand.

		Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. Eur pides