"Are you inside, Mr. Rice?" she called.
"Come and see for yourself," invited the pupil.
"I only wanted to know if the light was being wasted."
"Well, it's not. Come in."
Helen obeyed the invitation. She was used to two kinds of behavior from men; they either overlooked her altogether, or paid her stressed attentions, in private.
Of the alternatives, she preferred to be insulted; she could always give back as good as she got, while she was braced by any kind of personal experience.
She liked Stephen Rice, because he treated her exactly as he treated other girls—with a casual frankness. He was smoking, as he pitched clothing into an open suitcase, and he made no apology for his state of undress, as his underwear satisfied his own standard of decency. Although he did not appeal to Helen, who liked a man's face to betray some trace of intellect, or spirit, he was generally accepted as unusually handsome, on the evidence of heavy regular features, and thick waving hair, which grew rather too low on his brow.
"Like dogs?" he asked, shaking out a confusion of ties.
"Let me," remarked Helen, taking them from him, with kind firmness. "Of course I like dogs. I've looked after them."
"Then that's a bad mark to you. I loathe women who boss dogs. You set them showing off in Parks. Like the blasted centurion, who said come and he cometh. I always want to bite them, since the dogs are too gentlemanly to do their own job."
"Yes, I know," nodded Helen, who agreed, on principle, when it was possible. "But my dogs used to boss me. They had a secret understanding to all pull at once, in different directions. The wonder is I didn't develop into a starfish."
Stephen shouted with laughter.
"Good for them. Like to see something special in the way of dogs? I bought him, today, from a farmer."
Helen looked around the untidy room.
"Where is he?" she asked. "Under the bed?"
"Is that where you sleep? Inside the bed, you cuckoo."
"Oo. Suppose he has fleas?"
"Suppose he hasn't? Come, Otto."
Stephen raised a corner of the eider-down, and an Alsatian peeped out.
"Bit shy," explained Stephen. "I say, what price old Miss Warren when she sees him? She won't allow a dog inside the house."
"Why?" asked Helen.
"Afraid of them."
Oh, no, she can't be. It's the other way round. People are afraid of her, because she's so formidable."
"That's only her make-up. She's a hollow funk. Put her in a jam, and she'd smash." She's got the wind up now, over this gorilla gent. By the way, are you afraid of him?"
"Of course not." Helen laughed. "Perhaps, I might be a bit if I was alone. But no one could feel nervous in a house full of people."
"I don't agree. It all depends on the people. You'll always find a weak link. Miss Warren is one. She'd let you down.
"But there's safety in numbers," persisted Helen. "He wouldn't dare to come here. D' you want any sewing done?"
"No, thank you, my dear. The godly Mrs. Oates has kept me sewn up. In more sense than one, by the way. Now, there's a character, if you like. You can bank on her—if there's not a bottle about."
"Why—does she drink?"
Stephen only laughed in reply.
"Look here, you'd better clear out," he advised, "before Miss Warren raises hell. This is the bachelor's room."
"But I'm not a lady. I'm Staff," explained Helen indignantly. "And they're waiting tea for you."
"You mean, Simone is waiting. Old Newton is wolfing down the tea-cake." Stephen pulled on his coat. "I'll take the pup down with me. Introduce him to the family, and make us two to one, in the muffin handicap."
"Surely you don't call that large thing a pup," cried Helen, as the Alsatian followed his master into the bathroom.
"He's quite young, really." Stephen's voice was positively tender. "I love dogs—and hate women. Reason. Remind me to tell you the story of my life."
Helen felt slightly forlorn when his whistle died away in the distance. She knew she would miss the pupil. But a second glance around the untidy room reminded her that his absence would mean less work, so she resolved to leave all regret to Simone.
Her tea was calling her downstairs to the kitchen. Not stopping to clear away any litter, she hurried to her own room, and took off her coat, and shoes. As the order for closed shutters only included the basement, ground-floor and first-floor, her own casement banged open to the wind.
In spite of her haste, she could not resist the luxury of lingering there, looking out over the valley, just to enjoy the sense of contrast. She could see only a spongy blackness. It seemed to stir and creep before the breath of the breeze. Not a gleam shone from any window of the sparsely sprinkled cottages.
"I wonder where I stood, looking across at the Summit," she wondered. "It seemed such a long way off, then. And now, I'm inside, safe."
She was visited by no prescience to warn her that—since her return—there had been certain trivial incidents which were the first cracks in the walls of her fortress. Once they were started, nothing could stop the process' of disintegration; and each future development would act as a wedge, to force the fissures into ever-widening breaches, letting in the night.
CHAPTER III. A FIRESIDE STORY
Helen went down to the kitchen, by the back way—a spiral of steep steps, broken up into flights at each floor, by a small landing, where a door connected it with the main staircase. It was covered with the original linoleum—brown-and-biscuit, and small-patterned—like an old-fashioned tile, but still in excellent condition.
To Helen, this dingy back way down represented the essence of romance. It was a delicate filament connecting her with the glamour of the past, and revived memories of spacious and leisured days.
She had been brought up in a tiny mansion-flat, with no room to keep a maid, a hat-box, or a cat. The perambulator was housed in the bathroom, and the larder was thoughtfully built in the only spare recess, which happened to be next to the stove.
When Helen reached the basement-hall, she could hear the welcome rattle of china and see the glow of the kitchen fire through the frosted glass panels of the door. Mrs. Oates was drinking tea from her saucer as she made herself another piece of toast.''
She was a tall, strapping woman, broad-shouldered and muscular, with an ugly, underhung face. She did not wear uniform, and her afternoon skirt was protected by an apron of red and black Welsh flannel.
"I heard you running down all them steep steps," she said. "You're free to use the front."
"Yes I know" replied Helen. "But back-stairs remind me of my granny's house. The servants and the children were never allowed to go up the front way, because of wearing out the carpet."
"Go on," remarked Mrs. Oates politely.
"Yes, indeed, and it was the same with the jam. Pots and pots of it, but the strawberry and raspberry were only for the elders. All the children had to eat was rhubarb, or ginger-and-marrow. How cruel we grown-ups were then."
"Not you. You should say 'them grown-ups.'"
"'Them grown-ups,'" repeated Helen meekly, accepting the correction. "I've come to invite myself to tea, as your husband is away."