Helena Brett's Career

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

ADVICE

"Of course," said Kenneth Boyd, with the abrupt conviction of one whose argument is off the point at issue, "it's absolutely obvious. You ought to marry."

The man who ought to marry was no more pleased to hear it than most of his kind. He scowled angrily: then smiled, as though contempt were a more fit reply. He was tall, broad, firm-looking, with smooth dark hair still low upon his forehead, and certainly looked in no need of drastic remedies.

He knocked his pipe out on the grate before he answered, but when the words came, they burst forth like an explosion.

"You married men," he cried, turning the attack, "are just like parrots. You can only say one thing. You're worse than parrots: you're gramophones—or parrots with a gramophone inside. You're always saying one thing, 'Marry!' and you say it jolly long. I honestly believe you've got a Trades Union, unless it's merely nasty feeling! That probably is it. You hate to see others as happy as you used to be!"

Whereat, comforted, he stretched his long legs and lay back on the deep chair in a better humour.

"No," said the other gently. "We hate to see them miserable and know they'll never realise man's one chance of happiness till it's too late."

He spoke in very earnest tones and looked almost anxiously across at his friend, now quite happy again with the flushed sensation of having achieved something at any rate not too far from an epigram. A peaceful smile played round the big mouth which alone betrayed weakness in his pale, clear-cut face.

How young he was in some ways, Kenneth Boyd reflected—in self-complacency, for one! And yet, in others, how much too settled and fixed for his years. Here he was, a ten-year resident of these rooms—comfortable enough, yes—looked after by a sister; turning out his yearly novel, no worse but no better than the one before; an old bachelor at thirty-five, and yet too young to speak of marriage as anything except a rather tasteless joke!

He watched him anxiously, as he might watch his patients at the hospital, and wondered whether he was beyond helping.

Hubert Brett said nothing. He was angry.

Why, he was wondering, had he telephoned for Boyd to come along at all? He always had asked Boyd, of course, even in the dear old Oxford days, when he was in a difficulty. Boyd's great forehead, thick chin, and deep voice gave him a sort of solid, comfortable air: and he was never sympathetic.... Probably his medical work—it was not nice, quite, to think of it like that—made him a restful person to consult? He always smoothed you down and made you feel that what you meant to do would be entirely for the best.

But he had been off form to-night....

Marry, indeed! Why, that had nothing to do with the case at all. It was Ruth's maddening stupidity that had made him ask Kenneth in. These rows with one's sister were horrible—and bad for work.... Besides, they used to be such pals as kids: it wasn't nice, now, to be quarrelling like any costermonger and his wife....