CHAPTER III

"WHY WOMEN WED"

Helena had never thought much about marriage. There was no reason indeed why she should, for she was young and to her it still appeared, like death to a small child, as something she was sure to reach some day but need not worry with just now.

She was, in fact, nineteen, but her ideas were those of nineteen fifty years ago or of fourteen to-day. Devonshire, for one thing, has slept on in its soft air, not much disturbed by any modern turmoil; and for another, Helena's mother had ideas. These, briefly put, consisted in not letting her daughter have any.

It is, however, only human, from Eve downwards, to defy authority and search for knowledge. Helena, knowing that it was her lot to marry, naturally felt some interest in the habit. Whenever she came on allusions to it, she stocked them in her brain, all in a healthy and quite natural way, wondering in an abstract manner whether it would be thus or thus with her. She never dared to talk about it to her mother. She had once mentioned her own hypothetic marriage, only to be told that girls did not speak of such things in fun, and it would be quite time enough when the occasion rose, and had she given the canary its clean water?

Mrs. Hallam was a loving mother with stern theories. Her own childhood had been a season of repression, yet she was satisfied enough with her morals as opposed to those of many round her. She intended, therefore, to repeat the process. She had no patience--this was her favourite expression--with the licence of young girls to-day: the manner in which they read any novel, went to any play. She had no patience with this rubbish about ignorance not being innocence. Of course it was; or if it wasn't, it had very much the same result, and that was everything. Girls read these trashy novels and got a notion that grown men and women spent their whole lives falling in and out of love. They naturally tried it and began flirtation as a sort of duty. If a girl knew nothing, she did not know what to do. If she had no notion what flirtation meant, she clearly couldn't do it--especially if she saw no men till she was safely beyond her teens.

In any case, till she was twenty, Helena had no plays, novels, or man-friends. Her reading was all lives, histories, and comic papers. Her days were spent with relatives or younger friends, when she was not alone.

She grew up an oddly fine tribute to the system, thus underlining the depressing axiom which comes at length to all who study education: that those who are going to be nice will turn out nice, whatever way you train their youth, and much the same about the nasty. She was simple, healthy, buoyant, cheerful, natural; everything that Hubert thought. And who shall blame her if she was a little immature?

Hubert's letter was a real excitement in her cloistered life.

She had enjoyed her meeting with him. Men were a novelty, and to her an author was still that thing of wonder which he appeared to a suburban hostess twenty years ago. She thought him marvellously clever at first sight, and rather alarming. Later, she thought him easy to get on with and amusing. He played tennis well, liked finding crabs, and Mother did not seem to mind them talking. It was quite a jolly change. She finally thought him a dear and missed him when he left for Town.

And now--this letter!

Nothing ever could be less expected. She read it and re-read, not knowing really what she ought to do. She was just as excited and laughed as gaily as he one day before--vaguely infected, no less, with a thrill of irresponsible adventure.

Now, indeed, was the moment to collect all the vague tit-bits she had garnered as to marriage and fit them into a connected whole. She knew so little, really, of this thing that he suggested, and Mother, she knew, would not help her. The comic papers were curious about it. They looked on all men who married as fools, sure to repent; all women who didn't as ludicrously tragic. The old maid was a figure to be as much mocked and pitied as the old bachelor was to be envied.

Well, if this were so, it must be jolly hard for women to find a man who would marry! (Logic teaches that absurd premises will often lead to sensible conclusions.)

She knew vaguely that one Asked Mamma. There was a book even called that in the old locked case in the big library. She also knew, however, that she must battle this thing out herself. Her mother would say no; what nonsense! Of that she felt sure. It was for her, then, to decide.

Lock up your Danäe, stern mothers, in all the towers that man's wit may devise; yet if she is born with a strong resolve knit on her pudgy, slobbered, baby face, you cannot possibly prevail. You battle with the forces of uncounted Time.

Mrs. Hallam sat happily in her white drawing-room and read the new _Queen_, while Helena, up in her bedroom, wrestled with the letter which her mother luckily had not seen arrive.

Of course it would be a big change, she supposed? Home was a bit dull, but she had got quite used to it and one knew what to do. Having a house must be an awful business, and yet--rather thrilling! Probably Mr. Brett would make a big name; he was so immensely clever; and then they'd have a great big house, and she'd ask Mother as a guest and give her all the things she liked and said she never got in her own house! She laughed at the idea. The whole thing was tremendously amusing.

As Hubert had thought, she was laudably unsloppy. Mrs. Hallam had never let her guess that there was any sentiment in the whole world beyond maternal love. That was the heart's whole duty for a girl who was an only child that had not even seen her father.

Yes, summing it all up, she really felt the chief thing was about women having to marry or else be a joke, whereas men were a huge lark if they