When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything
repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must
pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house
was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought
her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt
like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into
his box.
The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth,
ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird
which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly
entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to
peck forwards as she said: 'Well?' 'Well, here we are!' replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became
proportionately cold.
'So I see,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular
manner. 'And what sort of a time have you had?' 'Oh, very good,' replied Helena, still more coolly.
'H'm!' Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar
sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she
forbore to question.
'You look well,' she said.
Helena smiled ironically.
'And are you ready for your supper?' she asked, in the playful,
affectionate manner she had assumed.
'If the supper is ready I will have it,' replied her daughter.
'Well, it's not ready.' The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and
regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued,
'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm,
like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after
a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. What will
you have?' 'The full list of your capacious larder,' replied Helena.
Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
'Will you have cocoa or lemonade?' she asked, coming to the point
curtly.
'Lemonade,' said Helena.
Presently Mr Verden entered--a small, white-bearded man with a gentle
voice.
'Oh, so you are back, Nellie!' he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
'As you see, Pater,' she answered.
'H'm!' he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on
tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father's quiet 'H'm!'
her mother's curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can
never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless
pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will
not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of
offence upon it.