"Which are your favourites?"
"Lilies of the valley." Althea spoke kindly, as she might have spoken to a rather importunate child; his questions, indeed, were not original.
Gerald tried to mend the tameness of the effect that he was making.
"Yes, only the florists have rather spoiled them, haven"t they? My favourites are the wilder ones--honeysuckle, gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus, bell-heather. Helen always makes me think of gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus and bell-heather, she is so solitary and delicate and strong." He wanted Althea to realise that his real appreciation was for types very different from Lady Pickering. She smiled kindly, as if pleased with his simile, and he went on. "You are like pansies, white and purple pansies."
It was then that Althea blushed. Gerald noticed it at once. Experienced flirt as he was he was quick to perceive such symptoms. And, suddenly, it occurred to him that perhaps the reason she disapproved so much was the wish--unknown to herself, poor little innocent--that some one would flirt a little with her. He felt quite sure that no one had ever flirted with Althea. Helen had told him of Mr. Kane"s hopeless suit, and they had wandered in rather helpless conjecture about the outside of a case that didn"t, from their experience of cases, seem to offer any possibilities of an inside. Gerald had indeed loudly laughed at the idea of Mr. Kane as a wooer and Helen had smiled, while a.s.suring him that wooing wasn"t the only test of worth. Gerald was rather inclined to think it was. He was quite sure, though, that however worthy Mr. Kane might be he had never made any one blush. He was quite sure that Mr.
Kane was incapable of flirting, and it pleased him now to observe the sign of susceptibility in Althea. It was good for women, he felt sure, to be made to blush sometimes, and he promised himself that he would renew the experiment with Althea. All the same it must be very unemphatically done; there would be something singularly graceless in venturing too far with this nice pansy, for though she might, all unaware, want to be made to blush, she would never want it to be because of his light motives.
Meanwhile Althea was in dread lest he should see her discomposure and her bliss. He did not see further than her discomposure.
They rehea.r.s.ed theatricals all the next day--he, Helen, Lady Pickering, and the girls--and Lady Pickering was very naughty. Gerald, more than once, had caught Althea"s eye fixed, repudiating in its calm, upon her.
It had been especially repudiating when Frances, at tea, had thrown a bun at him.
"Do you know, Miss Jakes," he said to her after dinner, when, to Lady Pickering"s discomfiture, as he saw, he joined Althea on her little sofa, "do you know, I suspect you of being dreadfully bored by all of us. We behave like a lot of children, don"t we?" He was thinking of the bun.
"Indeed! I think it charming to be able to behave like a child, if one feels like one," said Althea, coldly and mildly.
"Don"t you ever feel like one? Do you always behave like a gentle muse?"
"Do I seem to behave like a muse? How tiresome I must be," smiled Althea.
"Not tiresome, rather impressive. It"s like looking up suddenly from some nocturnal _fete_--all j.a.panese lanterns and fireworks--and seeing the moon gazing down serenely and unseeingly upon one; it startles and sobers one a little, you know."
"I suppose you are sober sometimes," said Althea, continuing to smile.
"Lord, yes!" Gerald laughed. "Really and truly, Miss Jakes, I"m only playing at being a child, you know. I"m quite a serious person. I like to look at the moon."
And again Althea blushed. She looked down, sitting straightly in the corner of their sofa and turning her fan slowly between her fingers, and, feeling the sense of gracelessness in this too easy success, Gerald went on in a graver tone. "I wish you would let me be serious with you sometimes, Miss Jakes; you"d see I"d quite redeem myself in your eyes."
"Redeem yourself? From what?"
"Oh! from all your impression of my frivolity and folly. I can talk about art and literature and the condition of the labouring cla.s.ses as wisely as anybody, I a.s.sure you."
He said it so prettily that Althea had to laugh. "But what makes you think I can?" she asked, and, delighted with the happy result of his appeal, he said that Helen had told him all about her wisdoms.
He sounded these wisdoms next day when he asked her to walk with him to the village. He told her, as they walked, of the various projects for using his life to some advantage that he had used to make--projects for improved agricultural methods and the bettering of the conditions of life in the country. Althea had read a great deal of political economy.
She had, indeed, ground at it and mastered it in the manner advised by Franklin to Helen. Gerald found her quiet comments and criticisms very illuminating, not only of his theme, but of his own comparative ignorance. "But, Miss Jakes, how did you come to understand all this?"
he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; and she said, laughing a little at the impression she had made, that she had only read, gone to a few courses of lectures, and had a master for one winter in Boston. Gerald looked at her with new interest. It impressed him that an unprofessional woman should take anything so seriously. "Have you gone into other profound things like this?" he asked; and, still laughing, Althea said that she supposed she had.
Her sympathy for those old plans of his, based on such understanding, was really inspiring. "Ah, if only I had the money," he sighed.
"But you wouldn"t care to live in the country?" said Althea.
"There"s nowhere else I really care to live. Nothing would please me so much as to spend the rest of my life at Merriston, dabbling at my painting and going in seriously for farming."
"Why don"t you do it?"
"Why, money! I"ve got no money. It"s expensive work to educate oneself by experience, and I"m ignorant. You show me how ignorant. No; I"m afraid I"m to go on drifting, and never lead the life I best like."
Althea was silent. She hardly knew what she was feeling, but it pressed upon her so, that she was afraid lest a breath would stir some consciousness in him. She had money, a good deal. What a pity that he had none.
"Now you," Gerald went on, "have all sorts of big, wise plans for life, I"ve no doubt. It would interest me to hear about them."
"No; I drift too," said Althea.
"You can"t call it drifting when you read and study such a lot."
"Oh yes, I can, when there is no real aim in the work. You should hear Mr. Kane scold me about that."
Gerald was not interested in Mr. Kane. "I should think, after all you"ve done, you might rest on your oars for a bit," he remarked. "It"s quite enough, I should think, for a woman to know so much. If you liked to do anything, you"d do it awfully well, I"m sure."
Ah, what would she not like to do! Help you to steer to any port you wanted was the half-articulate cry of her heart.
"She really is an interesting little person, your Althea," Gerald said to Helen. "You were wrong not to find her interesting. She is so wise and calm and she knows such a lot."
"I"m too ignorant to be interested in knowledge," said Helen.
"It"s not mere knowledge, it"s the gentle temperateness and independence one feels in her."
Helen, somehow, did not feel them, or, at all events, felt other things too much to feel them preeminently. It was part of her unselfconsciousness not to guess why Althea"s relation to her had slightly changed. She could hardly have followed with comprehension the suffering instability of her friend"s character, nor dream that her own power over her was so great, yet so resented; but something in their talk about Mr. Kane had made Helen uncomfortable, and she said no more now, not wishing to emphasise any negative aspect of her att.i.tude to Althea at a time when their relation seemed to have become a little strained. And she was pleased that Gerald should talk about political economy with Althea--it was so much better than flirting with Frances Pickering.
No one, indeed, unless it were Franklin Kane, gave much conjecture to Gerald"s talks with his hostess. Lady Pickering noticed; but she was vexed, rather than jealous. She couldn"t imagine that Gerald felt anything but a purely intellectual interest in such talks. It was rather as if a worshipper in some highly ritualistic shrine, filled with appeals to sight and hearing, had unaccountably wandered off into a wayside chapel. Lady Pickering felt convinced that this was mere vagrant curiosity on Gerald"s part. She felt convinced that he couldn"t care for chapels. She was so convinced that, moved to emphatic measures, she came into the open as it were, marched processions and waved banners before him, in order to remind him what the veritable church was for a person of taste. Sometimes Gerald joined her, but sometimes he waved a friendly greeting and went into the chapel again.
So it was that Althea suddenly found herself involved in that mute and sinister warfare--an unavowed contest with another woman for possession of a man. How it could be a real contest she did not know; she felt sure that Lady Pickering did not love Gerald Digby, that she herself loved him she had not yet told herself, and that he loved neither of them was obvious. It seemed a mere struggle for supremacy, in which Lady Pickering"s role was active and her own pa.s.sive. For when she saw that Lady Pickering looked upon Gerald as a prey between them, that she seized, threatened and allured, she herself, full of a proud disdain, drew away, relinquished any hold, any faintest claim she had, handed Gerald over, as it were, to his pursuer; and as she did this, coldly, gravely, proudly, she was not aware that no tactics could have been more effective. For Gerald, when he found himself pursued, and then dropped by Althea at the feet of the pursuer, became more and more averse to being seized. And what had been a gracefully amorous dialogue with Lady Pickering, became a slightly malicious discussion. "Well, what _do_ you want of me?" he seemed to demand of her, under all his grace. Lady Pickering did not want anything except to keep him, and to show Althea that she kept him. And she was willing to go to great lengths if this might be effected.
Gerald and Althea, walking one afternoon in the little wood that lay at the foot of the lawn, came upon Lady Pickering seated romantically upon a stone, her head in her hands. She said, looking up at them, with pathetic eyes of suffering, that she had wrenched her ankle and was in agony. "I think it is sprained, perhaps broken," she said.
Now both Althea and Gerald felt convinced that she was not in agony, and had perhaps not hurt her ankle at all. They were both a little embarra.s.sed and a little ashamed for her.
"Take my arm, take Miss Jakes"s," said Gerald. "We will help you back to the house."
"Oh no. I must sit still for a little while," said Lady Pickering." I couldn"t bear to stir yet. It must be only a wrench; yes, there, I can feel that it is a bad wrench. It"s only that the pain has been so horrible, and I feel a little faint. Please sit down here for a moment, Gerald, beside me, and console me for my sufferings."
It was really very shameless. Without a word Althea walked away.
"Miss Jakes--we"ll--I"ll follow in a moment," Gerald called after her, while, irritated and at a loss, he stood over Lady Pickering. "Have you really hurt it?" was his first inquiry, as Althea disappeared.
"Why does she go?" Lady Pickering inquired. "I didn"t mean that she was to go. Stiff, _guindee_ little person. One would really think that she was jealous of me."
"No, I don"t think that one would think that at all," Gerald returned.
Lady Pickering was pushed beyond the bounds of calculation, and when quite sincere she was really charming. "O Gerald," she said, looking up at him and full of roguish contrition, "how unkind you are! And how horribly clear sighted. It"s I who am jealous! Yes, I really am. I can"t bear being neglected."
"I don"t see why you should," said Gerald laughing, "and I certainly shouldn"t show such bad taste as to neglect you. So that it is jealousy, pure and simple. Is your ankle in the least hurt?"
"Really, I don"t know. I did tumble a little, and then I saw you coming, and felt that I wanted to be talked to, that it was my turn."