The others now were coming in, and Helen only shook her head, smiling on and quite unconvinced as she said, taking her chair, and reaching out her hand to shake Althea"s, "I"m afraid the inessentials matter most, then, in human intercourse."
From these fortuitous encounters Helen gathered the impression by degrees that though Mr. Kane might not find her satisfactory, he found her, in her incommunicativeness, quite as interesting as Thomas the footman. He spent as much time in endeavouring to probe her as he did in endeavouring to probe Baines, even more time. He would sit beside her garden-chair looking over scientific papers, making a remark now and then on their contents--contents as remote from Helen"s comprehension as was the housing of the Berlin poor from Thomas"s; and sometimes he would ask her a searching question, over the often frivolous answer to which he would carefully reflect.
"I gather, Miss Buchanan," he said to her one afternoon, when they were thus together under the trees, "I gather that the state of your health isn"t good. Would it be inadmissible on my part to ask you if there is anything really serious the matter with you?"
"My state of health?" said Helen, startled. "My health is perfectly good. Who told you it wasn"t?"
"Why, n.o.body. But since you"ve been here--that"s a fortnight now--I"ve observed that you"ve led an invalid"s life."
"I am lazy, that"s all; and I"m in rather a bad temper," Helen smiled; "and it"s very warm weather."
"Well, when you"re not lazy; when you"re not in a bad temper; when it"s cold weather--what do you do with yourself, anyway?" Franklin, now that he had fairly come to his point, folded his papers, clasped his hands around his knees and looked expectantly at her.
Helen returned his gaze for some moments in silence; then she found that she was quite willing to give Mr. Kane all he asked for--a detached sincerity. "I can"t say that I do anything," she replied.
"Haven"t you any occupation?"
"Not unless staying about with people is an occupation," Helen suggested. "I"m rather good at that--when I"m not too lazy and not too out of temper."
"You don"t consider society an occupation. It"s only justifiable as a recreation when work"s done. Every one ought to have an occupation.
You"re not alive at all unless you"ve a purpose that"s organising your life in some way. Now, it strikes me," said Franklin, eyeing her steadily, "that you"re hardly half alive."
"Oh, dear!" Helen laughed. "Why, pray?"
"Don"t laugh at it, Miss Buchanan. It"s a serious matter; the most serious matter there is. No, don"t laugh; you distress me."
"I beg your pardon," said Helen, and she turned her head aside a little, for the laugh was not quite genuine, and she was suddenly afraid of those idiotic tears. "Only it amuses me that any one should think me a serious matter."
"Don"t be cynical, Miss Buchanan; that"s what"s the trouble with you; you take refuge in cynicism rather than in thought. If you"d think about it and not try to evade it, you"d know perfectly well that there is nothing so serious to you in all the world as your own life."
"I don"t know," said Helen, after a little pause, sobered, though still amused. "I don"t know that I feel anything very serious, except all the unpleasant things that happen, or the pleasant things that don"t."
"Well, what"s more serious than suffering?" Mr. Kane inquired, and as she could really find no answer to this he went on: "And you ought to go further; you ought to be able to take every human being seriously."
"Do you do that?" Helen asked.
"Any one who thinks must do it; it"s all a question of thinking things out. Now I"ve thought a good deal about you, Miss Buchanan," Franklin continued, "and I take you very seriously, very seriously indeed. I feel that you are very much above the average in capacity. You have a great deal in you; a great deal of power. I"ve been watching you very carefully, and I"ve come to the conclusion that you are a woman of power. That"s why I take it upon myself to talk to you like this; that"s why it distresses me to see you going to waste--half alive."
Helen, her head still turned aside in her chair, looked up at the green branches above her, no longer even pretending to smile. Mr. Kane at once startled and steadied her. He made her feel vaguely ashamed of herself, and he made her feel sorry for herself, too, so that, funny as he was, his effect upon her was to soften and to calm her. Her temper felt less bad and her nerves less on edge.
"You are very kind," she said, after a little while. "It is very good of you to have thought about me like that. And you do think, at all events, that I am half alive. You think I have wants, even if I have no purposes."
"Yes, that"s it. Wants, not purposes; though what they are I can"t find out."
She was willing to satisfy his curiosity. "What I want is money."
"Well, but what do you want to do with money?" Franklin inquired, receiving the sordid avowal without a blink.
"I really don"t know," said Helen; "to use what you call my power, I suppose."
"How would you use it? You haven"t trained yourself for any use of it--except enjoyment--as far as I can see."
"I think I could spend money well. I"d give the people I liked a good time."
"You"d waste their time, and yours, you mean. Not that I object to the spending of money--if it"s in the right way."
"I think I could find the right way, if I had it." She was speaking with quite the seriousness she had disowned. "I hate injustice, and I hate ugliness. I think I could make things nicer if I had money."
Franklin now was silent for some time, considering her narrowly, and since she had now looked down from the branches and back at him, their eyes met in a long encounter. "Yes," he said at length, "you"d be all right--if only you weren"t so wrong. If only you had a purpose--a purpose directed towards the just and the beautiful; if only instead of waiting for means to turn up, you"d created means yourself; if only you"d kept yourself disciplined and steady of aim by some sort of hard work, you"d be all right."
Helen, extended in her chair, an embodiment of lovely aimlessness, kept her eyes fixed on him. "But what work can I do?" she asked. She was well aware that Mr. Kane could have no practical suggestions for her case, yet she wanted to show him that she recognised it as a case, she wanted to show him that she was grateful, and she was curious besides to hear what he would suggest. "What am I fit for? I couldn"t earn a penny if I tried. I was never taught anything."
But Mr. Kane was ready for her, as he had been ready for Jim Betts.
"It"s not a question of earning that I mean," he said, "though it"s a mighty good thing to measure yourself up against the world and find out just what your cash value is, but I"m not talking about that; it"s the question of getting your faculties into some sort of working order that I"m up against. Why don"t you study something systematically, something you can grind at? Biology, if you like, or political economy, or charity organisation. Begin at once. Master it."
"Would Dante do, for a beginning?" Helen inquired, smiling rather wanly.
"I brought him down, with an Italian dictionary. Shall I master Dante?"
"I should feel more comfortable about you if it was political economy,"
said Franklin, now smiling back. "But begin with Dante, by all means.
Personally I found his point of view depressing, but then I read him in a translation and never got even as far as the Purgatory. Be sure you get as far as the Paradise, Miss Buchanan, and with your dictionary."
CHAPTER XIII.
Franklin had all his time free for sitting with Helen under the trees.
Althea"s self-reproach, her self-doubt and melancholy, had been effaced by the arrival of Gerald Digby, and, at that epoch of her life, did not return at all. She had no time for self-doubt or self-reproach, no time even for self-consciousness. Franklin had faded into the dimmest possible distance; she was only just aware that he was there and that Helen seemed, kindly, to let him talk a good deal to her. She could not think of Franklin, she could not think of herself, she could think of n.o.body but one person, for her whole being was absorbed in the thought of Gerald Digby and in the consciousness of the situation that his coming had created. From soft exhilaration she had pa.s.sed to miserable depression, yet a depression far different from the stagnant melancholy of her former mood; this was a depression of frustrated feeling, not of lack of feeling, and it was accompanied by the recognition of the fact that she exceedingly disliked Lady Pickering and wished exceedingly that she would go away. And with it went a brooding sense of delight in Gerald"s mere presence, a sense of delight in even the pain that his indifference inflicted upon her.
He charmed her unspeakably--his voice, his smile, his gestures--and she knew that she did not charm him in any way, and that Lady Pickering, in her very foolishness, did charm him, and the knowledge made her very grave and careful when she was with him. Delight and pain were hidden beneath this manner of careful gravity, but, as the excitement of Franklin"s presence had at first done--and in how much greater degree--they subtly transformed her; made her look and speak and move with a different languor and gentleness.
Gerald himself was the first to feel a change, the first to become aware of an aroma of mystery. He had been indifferent indeed, though he had obeyed Helen and had tried not only to be very courteous but to be very nice as well. Now, finding Althea"s grave eyes upon him when he sometimes yielded to Lady Pickering"s allurements, finding them turned away with that look of austere mildness, he ceased to be so indifferent, he began to wonder how much the little Puritan disapproved and how much she really minded; he began to make surmises about the state of mind that could be so aloof, so gentle, and so inflexible.
He met Althea one afternoon in the garden and walked up and down with her while she filled her basket with roses. She was very gentle, and immeasurably distant. The sense of her withdrawal roused his masculine instinct of pursuit. How different she was from Frances Pickering! How charmingly different. Yes, in her elaborate little dress of embroidered lawn, with her elaborate garden hat pinned so neatly on her thick fair hair, she pleased him by the sense of contrast. There was charm in her lack of charm, attraction in her indifference. How impossible to imagine those grave eyes smiling an alluring smile--he was getting tired of alluring smiles--how impossible to imagine Miss Jakes flirting.
"It"s very nice to see you here," he said. "I have so many nice memories about this old garden. You don"t mind my cigarette?"
Althea said that she liked it.
"There is a beautiful spray, Miss Jakes. Let me reach it for you."
"Oh, thank you so much."
"You are fond of flowers?"
"Very fond."