Читать книгу The Invisible Foe - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 11

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The years sped.

In the autumn of 1916 Helen was twenty.

The governess had left three years ago. Helen had found her a curate, and had given her her silver abundant.

Already that curate had had preferment. Richard Bransby had contrived that, but Helen had instigated.

Stephen and Hugh had gone, in due course, from the tutor to Harrow, from Harrow to Oxford.

Stephen would have preferred education more technical, and Hugh would have preferred none.

Hugh was not lazy, but he had little thirst for learning and none for tables, declensions or isms.

Stephen, might he have followed his own bent, would have studied only those things which promised to coach him toward aviation in all its branches and corollaries. But Richard was not to be handled, and to the school and the ’varsity he chose the boys went.

Being there, Stephen worked splendidly—took honors and contrived to gain no little of the very things he desired. He had carpentry at Harrow—and excelled in it. And at Magdalen he bent physics and chemistry to his particular needs. At both places his conduct and his industry were exemplary.

Hugh barely passed into Harrow, and barely stayed there. He ran and he boxed, and at that glorified form of leap-frog which public schools dignify as “hurdles” he excelled. But he was lax and mischievous, and twice he only just escaped expulsion. His stay at Oxford was brief and curtailed. The authorities more than hinted to Bransby that his younger nephew was not calculated to receive or to give much benefit at Oxford.

Hence the brothers began on the same day a severe novitiate at the great shipbuilding and shipping offices.

Strangely enough they both did well. Hugh had a happy knack of jumping to the right conclusions, and he got his first big step up from dreaming in his sleep the correct solution of a commercial tangle that was vexing his uncle greatly.

That Hugh’s mind had worked so in his sleep, accomplishing what it had failed to finish when normally awake, as human minds do now and then, proved that at core he was interested in the business his careless manner had sometimes seemed to indicate that he took too lightly. And this pleased and gratified Richard Bransby even more than the elucidation of a business difficulty did. As an evidence of the peculiar psychological workings of human intelligence it interested Bransby not at all.

Stephen worked hard and brilliantly. From the first he had dreams of inducing his uncle to add the building of aircraft to their already enormous building of ships. He nursed his dream and it nursed his patience and fed his industry. Morton Grant watched over both young men impartially and devotedly. All his experience was sorted and furbished for them. All his care and solicitude were shared between them and the business.

At the first beat of Kitchener’s drum Hugh begged to follow the flag. And when Bransby at last realized that the war would not “be over by Christmas” he withdrew his opposition, and Hugh was allowed to join the army. He had not done ill in the O. T. C. at Harrow. He applied for a commission and got it. But it was understood that at the end of the war he would return to the firm. Richard Bransby would tolerate nothing else.

There had been no talk—no thought even—of soldiering for Stephen. He was nearly thirty, and seemed older. Never ill, he was not too robust. He was essential now to his uncle’s great business concern. And “Bransby’s” was vitally essential to the Government and to the prosecution of the war: no firm in Britain more so. Stephen was no coward, but soldiering did not attract him. He had no wish to join the contemptible little army, destined saviors of England. Had he wished to do so, the Government itself and the great soldier-dictator would have forbidden it. Emphatically Hugh belonged in the army. As emphatically Stephen did not; but did, even more emphatically, belong in the great shiphouse.

Time and its passing had changed and developed the persons with whom this history is concerned—as time usually does—along the lines of least resistance.

Helen had “grown up” and, no longer interested, even intermittently, in dolls—“Gertrude” and her band quite forgotten—introduced a dozen new interests, a score of new friends into the home-circle. Guests came and went. Helen flitted from function to function, and took her cousins with her, and sometimes even Bransby himself. Aunt Caroline was a sociable creature for all her Martha-like qualities. She was immensely proud of the ultra-nice gowns Helen ordered and made her wear, and quite enjoyed the dinners and small dances they occasionally gave in return for the constant hospitalities pressed upon the girl and her cousins.

Helen was as flower-like as ever. She loved her father more than all the rest of the world put together, or had until recently—but after him her keenest interest, until recently, was in her own wonderful frocks. She had a genius for clothes, and journeyed far and wide in quest of new and unusual talent in the needlework line. But above all, her personality was sweet and womanly. In no one way particularly gifted, she had the great general, sweeping gift of charm. And her tender, passionate devotion to her father set her apart, lifted her above the average of nice girlhood—perfumed her, added to her charm of prettiness and gracefulness, a something of spiritual charm not to be worded, but always felt and delightful to feel.

Between the girl and the father was one of the rare, beautiful intimacies, unstrained and perfect, that do link now and then just such soft, gay girl-natures to fathers just so rigid and still. And, as it usually is with such comrades, in this intimate and partisan comradeship Helen the gentle was the dominant and stronger ruling, with a gay tyranny, that sometimes swung to a sweet insolence and a caressing defiance that were love-tribute and flattery, the man of granite and quiet arrogance.

Wax to Helen, Richard Bransby was granite and steel to others. Grant, still his man Friday and, even more than indispensable Stephen, his good right-hand, trusted but ruled, still stood, as he always had and always would, in considerable awe of him. But the years had sweetened Bransby—the Helen-ruled years. He had always striven to be a just man—in justice to himself—but his just-dealing was easier now and kindlier, and he strove to be just to others for their sakes rather than for his own. It was less a duty and more an enjoyment than it had been: almost even a species of stern self-indulgence. Once it had been a penance. It was penance no longer. With good men penances conscientiously practised tend to grow easy and even agreeable. The devout penitent and the zealot need to find new substitutes periodically for old scourges smooth-worn.

Caroline’s fussinesses amused Richard more than they irritated him. And Helen no longer was sole in his love. He loved the boys—both of them. Stephen he loved with pride and some reservation. Their wills clashed not infrequently, and on one matter always. Hugh, who often compelled his disapproval, he loved almost as an own son.

Latham found him a more tractable patient than of old. Horace Latham had reached no slight professional importance now; owned his place on Harley Street, made no daily rounds, studied more than he practised, had an eloquent bank account, and “consulted” more often than he directly practised.

Helen’s little coterie of friends and acquaintances found him an amiable, if not a demonstrative, host. Even Angela Hilary he suffered suavely, if not eagerly.

A Mrs. Hilary had bought a bijou place near theirs a few years ago, and cordial, if not intimate, relations had been established quickly between Helen Bransby and the rich, volatile American widow in accordance with the time-honored rule that opposites attract. But some things they had in common, if only things of no higher moment than chiffons and a pretty taste in hospitality. Both danced through life—rather. But theirs was dancing with all the difference. Helen never romped. Her dancing, both actual and figurative, was seemly and slow as the dance on a Watteau fan—thistle-down dignified—minuet. Angela’s, fine of its sort, was less art and more impulse, and yet more studied, less natural. It almost partook of the order of skirt-dancing. Both dancings were pretty to watch, Helen’s the prettier to remember. For the matter of that both dancers were pretty to watch. Helen Bransby at twenty was full as lovely as her childhood had promised. She had been exquisitely loved, and love feeds beauty and adds to it. Angela Hilary had the composite comeliness so characteristic of the well-circumstanced American woman: Irish eyes, a little shrewder, a little harder, than the real thing, hands and feet Irish-small, skin Saxon-fair, soft, wayward hair Spanish-dark, French chic, a thin form Slavic-svelt and Paris-clad, the wide red mouth of an English great-grandmother, and a self-confidence and a social assurance to which no man ever has attained, or ever will, and no woman either not born and bred between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate—a daring woman, never grotesque; daring in manner, more daring in speech, most daring of all in dress; but never too daring—for her; fantastic, never odious—least of all gross. Each of her vagaries suited her, and the most surprising of all her unexpected gowns became and adorned her: an artificial, hot-house creature, she was the perfectly natural product of civilization at once extravagant, well-meaning and cosmopolitan, if insular too, and she had a heart of gold. A great many people laughed at Mrs. Hilary, especially English people, and never suspected how much more she laughed at them, or how much more shrewdly and with how much more cause—some few liked her greatly, and every one else liked her at least a little; every one except Horace Latham. Latham was afraid of her.