Helena looked round the pond.

"I can swim," she said tranquilly.

"I should jump in after you--and we'd both go down together. No, but--listen to me, dear Helena! Why won't you marry me? You say sometimes--that you care for me a little."

The boy's tone faltered.

"Why won't I marry you? Perhaps because you ask me so often," said Helena, laughing. "Neglect me--be rude to me--cut me at a dance, and then see."

"I couldn't--it matters too much."

"Dear Peter! But can't you understand that I don't want to commit myself just yet? I want to have my life to myself a bit. I'm like the miners and the railway men. I'm full of unrest! I can't and won't settle down just yet. I want to look at things--the world's like a great cinema show just now--everything passing so quick you can hardly take breath. I want to sample it where I please. I want to dance--and talk--and make experiments."

"Well--marrying me would be an experiment," said Peter stoutly. "I vow you'd never regret it, Helena!"

"But I can't vow that you wouldn't! Let me alone, Peter. I suppose some time I shall quiet down. It doesn't matter if I break my own heart. But I won't take the responsibility of anybody else's heart just yet."

"Well, of course, that means you're not in love with anybody. You'd soon chuck all that nonsense if you were."

The young, despairing voice thrilled her. It was all experience--life--drama--this floating over summer water--with a beautiful youth, whose heart seemed to be fluttering in her very hands.

But she was only thrilled intellectually--as a spectator. Peter would soon get over it. She would be very kind to him, and let him down easily.

They drifted silently a little. Then Peter said abruptly:

"Well, at least, Helena, you might promise me not to dance with Jim Donald again!"

"Peter--my promises of that kind--are worth nothing! ... I think it's getting late--we ought to be going home!" And she gave the rudder a turn for the shore.

He unwillingly complied, and after rowing through the shadow of the woods, they emerged on a moonlit slope of lawn, where was the usual landing-place. Two persons who had been strolling along the edge of the water approached them.

"Who is that with Buntingford?" asked Dale.

"My new chaperon. Aren't you sorry for her?"

"I jolly well am!" cried Peter. "She'll have a dog's life!"

"That's very rude of you, Peter. You may perhaps be surprised to hear that I like her very much. She's a little dear--and I'm going to be awfully good to her."

"Which means, of course, that she'll never dare to cross you!"

"Peter, don't be unkind! Dear Peter--make it up! I do want to be friends.

There's just time for you to say something nice!"

For his vigorous strokes were bringing them rapidly to the bank.

"Oh, what's the good of talking!" said the boy impatiently. "I shall be friends, of course--take what you fling me. I can't do anything else."

Helena blew him a kiss, to which he made no response.

"All right!--I'll bring you in!" said Lord Buntingford from the shore.

He dragged the boat up on the sandy edge, and offered a hand to Helena.

She stumbled out, and would have fallen into the shallow water but for his sudden grip upon her.

"That was stupid of me!" she said, vexed with herself.

He made no reply. It was left to Mrs. Friend to express a hope that she had not sprained her foot.

"Oh, dear no," said Helena. "But I'm cold. Peter, will you race me to the house? Give me a fair start!"

Peter eagerly placed her, and then--a maiden flying and a young god pursuing--they had soon drawn the eyes and laughter of all the other guests, who cheered as the panting Helena, winner by a foot, dashed through the drawing-room window into the house.

Helena and Mrs. Friend had been discussing the evening,--Helena on the floor, in a white dressing-gown, with her hair down her back. She had amused herself with a very shrewd analysis--not too favourable--of Geoffrey French's character and prospects, and had rushed through an eloquent account of Peter's performances in the war; she had mocked at Lady Maud's conventionalities, and mimicked the "babe's" simpering manner with young men; she had enquired pityingly how Mrs. Friend had got on with the old Canon who had taken her in to dinner, and had launched into rather caustic and, to Mrs. Friend's ear, astonishing criticisms of "Cousin Philip's wine"--which Mrs. Friend had never even dreamt of tasting. But of Cousin Philip himself there was not a word. Mrs. Friend knew there had been an interview between them; but she dared not ask questions. How to steer her way in the moral hurricane she foresaw, was what preoccupied her; so as both to do her duty to Lord B. and yet keep a hold on this strange being in whose good graces she still found herself--much to her astonishment.

Then with midnight Helena departed. But long after she was herself in bed, Mrs. Friend heard movements in the adjoining room, and was aware of a scent of tobacco stealing in through her own open window.

Helena, indeed, when she found herself alone was, for a time, too excited to sleep, and cigarettes were her only resource. She was conscious of an exaltation of will, a passionate self-assertion, beating through all her veins, which made sleep impossible. Cousin Philip had scarcely addressed a word to her during the evening, and had bade her a chilly good-night.

Of course, if that was to be his attitude it was impossible she could go on living under his roof. Her mother could not for a moment have expected her to keep her word, under such conditions ... And yet--why retreat? Why not fight it out, temperately, but resolutely? "I lost my temper again like an idiot, this morning--I mustn't--mustn't--lose it. He had jolly well the best of it."

"Self-determination"--that was what she was bent on. If it was good for nations, it was good also for individuals. Liberty to make one's own mistakes, to face one's own risks--that was the minimum. And for one adult human being to accept the dictation of another human being was the only sin worth talking about. The test might come on some trivial thing, like this matter of Lord Donald. Well,--she must be content to "find quarrel in a straw, where honour is at stake." Yet, of course, her guardian was bound to resist. The fight between her will and his was natural and necessary. It was the clash of two generations, two views of life. She was not merely the wilful and insubordinate girl she would have been before the war; she saw herself, at any rate, as something much more interesting. All over the world there was the same breaking of bonds; and the same instinct towards _violence_. "The violent taketh by force." Was it the instinct that war leaves, and must leave, behind it--its most sinister, or its most pregnant, legacy? She was passionately conscious of it, and of a strange thirst to carry it into reckless action. The unrest in her was the same unrest that was driving men everywhere--and women, too--into industrial disturbance and moral revolt. The old is done with; and the Tree of Life needs to be well shaken before the new fruit will drop.

Wild thoughts like these ran through her mind. Then she scoffed at herself for such large notions, about so small a thing. And suddenly something checked her--the physical recollection, as it were, left tingling in her hand, of the grasp by which Buntingford had upheld her, as she was leaving the boat. With it went a vision of his face, his dark, furrowed face, in the moonlight.

"The saddest man I know." Why and wherefore? Long after she was in bed, she lay awake, absorbed in a dreamy yet intense gathering together of all that she could recollect of Cousin Philip, from her childhood up, through her school years, and down to her mother's death. Till now he had been part of the more or less pleasant furniture of life. She seemed to be on the way to realize him as a man--perhaps a force. It was unsuspected--and rather interesting.

CHAPTER VII

The drought continued; and under the hot sun the lilacs were already pyramids of purple, the oaks were nearly in full leaf, and the hawthorns in the park and along the hedges would soon replace with another white splendour the fading blossom of the wild cherries.

It was Sunday morning, and none of the Beechmark party except Mrs.

Friend, Lady Luton and her seventeen-year-old daughter had shown any inclination to go to church. Geoffrey French and Helena had escorted the churchgoers the short way across the park, taking a laughing leave of them at the last stile, whence the old church was but a stone's throw.

There was a circle of chairs on the lawn intermittently filled by talkers. Lord Buntingford was indoors and was reported to have had some ugly news that morning of a discharged soldiers' riot in a neighbouring town where he owned a good deal of property. The disturbance had been for the time being suppressed, but its renewal was expected, and Buntingford, according to Julian Horne, who had been in close consultation with him, was ready to go over at any moment, on a telephone call from the town authorities, and take what other "specials" he could gather with him.

"It's not at all a nice business," said Horne, looking up from his long chair, as Geoffrey French and Helena reappeared. "And if Philip is rung up, he'll sweep us all in. So don't be out of the way, Geoffrey."

"What's the matter? Somebody has been bungling as usual, I suppose," said Helena in her most confident and peremptory tone.

"The discharged men say that nobody pays any attention to them--and they mean to burn down something."

"On the principle of the Chinaman, and 'roast pig,'" said French, stretching himself at full length on the grass, where Helena was already sitting. "What an extraordinary state of mind we're all in! We all want to burn something. I want to burn the doctors, because some of the medical boards have been beasts to some of my friends; the soldiers over at Dansworth want to burn the town, because they haven't been made enough of; the Triple Alliance want to burn up the country to cook their roast pig--and as for you, Helena--"

He turned a laughing face upon her--but before she could reply, a telephone was heard ringing, through the open windows of the house.

"For me, I expect," exclaimed Helena, springing up. She disappeared within the drawing-room, returning presently, with flushed cheeks, and a bearing of which Geoffrey French at once guessed the meaning.

"Donald has thrown her over?" he said to himself. "Of course Philip had the trump card!"