The Comforters

‘Why, don’t think of it,’ — Edwin looked surprised, as if he had written the cheque a long-forgotten twenty years ago.

Ernest fumbled the gift into his pocket and in his nervousness exaggerated his effeminate movements. Blandly the brother spoke of the ballet, of the famous dancers he had seen; this for goodwill; Ernest knew that his brother had withdrawn for many years since into a life of interior philosophy, as one might say. The arts had ceased to nourish Edwin. It was sweet of him to talk of ballet, but it put Ernest out dreadfully, and altogether he had to go home to bed. Next day he remembered the cheque, looked at it, took it to Eleanor.

‘Fifty pounds! How mean! Your brother is rich enough to invest!’ Ernest was vexed at her tone.

‘Do modify your exclamation marks,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t want to invest in the school, don’t you see? He tried so hard to be nice. Fifty pounds is a generous gift.’

Eleanor bought a dress, black grosgrain with a charming backward swish which so suited her lubricious poise that Ernest felt better. With the money left over from the dress Eleanor paid down a deposit for an amber bracelet.

‘Wouldn’t your brother be dismayed if he knew how his sacred money was being spent?’

‘No, he would not be angry at all,’ Ernest said, ‘not even surprised.’

For the fourth time Helena murmured, ‘Edwin has been in retreat for two weeks.’

‘When he returns,’ Ernest said, ‘you must tell him the whole story, much the best way.

‘First we shall settle the business. I never tell Edwin my troubles until they are over.

‘I feel there is nothing more to worry about. Hogarth was really scared, poor bilious little bloke he was. I pulled a gorgeous bluff.’

‘If he was scared there must be something in our suspicions. Laurence was right.’

‘Does it matter if we never know exactly what your mother’s been doing, so long as we put an effective stop to it?’

‘I should like to know a little more,’ said Helena. ‘But Mother is very deep, Ernest. So deep, and yet in her way so innocent. I must say. I feel it a shortcoming on my part that I can’t accept her innocence without wondering how it works. I mean, those diamonds in the bread, and where she gets her income from. It’s a great defect in me, Ernest, but I’m bound to wonder, it’s natural.—’

‘Perfectly natural, dear,’ said Ernest, ‘and I shouldn’t reproach myself.’

‘Oh you have nothing to reproach yourself about, Ernest dear.’

Ernest had meant to imply, ‘I shouldn’t reproach myself if I were you’, but he did not correct her impression. A light rain had started to pat the windows.

‘Let’s employ a firm of private detectives and be done with it,’ he suggested.

‘Oh no, they might find out something,’ she said quite seriously.

Ernest, who hated getting wet, departed soon after dinner in case the shower should turn into a steady drencher.

He had been gone nearly half an hour and it was nine-thirty, Helena thinking of saying her rosary, and of bed with a hot-water bottle since it was chilly, when the doorbell rang. Presently the middle-aged housekeeper put her head round the drawing-room door.

‘Who is it, Eileen?’

‘Mrs Hogg. I’ve sat her in the hall. She wants to see you. She said she saw the drawing-room light.’ This Eileen knew Mrs Hogg; she was the one whose marriage was long ago precipitated by Laurence, his reading of her love letters. Though she had only recently returned to the Manders’ service after much lively knocking about the world, she retained sufficient memory of her kitchen-girl days and especially of Mrs Hogg to resent that woman’s appearances at the house, her drawing-room conferences with Lady Manders.

‘I was just going to bed, Eileen. I thought an early night —’

‘I’ll tell her,’ said Eileen, disappearing.

‘No, send her up,’ Helena called out.

Eileen put her head round the door again with the expression of one who demands a final clear decision.

‘Send her up,’ Helena said, ‘but tell her I was just going to bed.’ An absurd idea came into Helena’s mind while she heard the tread of footsteps ascending the stairs. She thought, ‘How exhilarating it is to be myself’, and the whole advantage of her personality flashed into her thoughts as if they were someone else’s — her good manners and property, her good health, her niceness and her modest sense and charity; and she felt an excitement to encounter Mrs Hogg. She felt her strength; a fine disregard, freedom to take sides with her mother absolutely if necessary.

It was hardly necessary. Mrs Hogg was docile. She began by apologizing for her previous visit about Laurence’s letter. ‘My nerves were upset. I’d been overdoing things at St Philumena’s. Some days as many as a hundred and thirty pilgrims —’Of course, Georgina,’ Helena said.

Georgina went on to explain that she’d been thinking things over. Clearly, she had misread that letter from Master Laurence. It was all a joke, she could see that now.

‘You never should have read it in the first place. It wasn’t addressed to you.

‘I did it for the best,’ said Mrs Hogg dabbing her eyes.’ And she handed the letter to Helena.

‘What’s this?’ Helena said.

‘Laurence’s letter. You can see for yourself how I was misled.’

Helena tore it in two and tossed it on the fire.