"What an absurd woman you are."
"But do say that you like absurd women better than solemn ones."
"I shall say nothing of the sort. Sometimes absurdity is delightful, and sometimes solemnity--not that I find Miss Jakes in the least solemn. It would do you a world of good to let her inform your mind a little."
"Oh, please, I don"t want to be informed, it might make my back look like that. My foot really is a little hurt, you know. Is it swollen?"
Gerald looked down, laughing, but very unsympathetic, at the perilous heel and pinched, distorted toe. "Really, I can"t say."
"Do sit down, there is plenty of room, and tell me you aren"t cross with me."
"I"m not at all cross with you, but I"m not going to sit down beside you," said Gerald. "I"m going to take you and your ankle back to the house and then find Miss Jakes and go on talking."
"You may make _me_ cross," said Lady Pickering, rising and leaning her arm on his.
"I don"t believe I shall. You really respect me for my strength of character."
"Wily creature!"
"Foolish child!" They were standing in the path, laughing at each other, far from displeased with each other, and it was fortunate that neither of them perceived among the trees Althea, pa.s.sing again at a little distance, and glancing round irrepressibly to see if Gerald had indeed followed her; even Lady Pickering might have been slightly discomposed, for when Gerald said "Foolish child!" he completed the part expected of him by lightly stooping his head and kissing her.
He then took Lady Pickering back to the house, established her in a hammock, and set off to find Althea. He knew that he had kept her waiting--if she had indeed waited. And he knew that he really was a little cross with Frances Pickering; he didn"t care to carry flirtation as far as kissing.
Althea, however, was nowhere to be found. He looked in the house, heard that she had been there but had gone out again; he looked in the garden; he finally went back to the woods, an uncomfortable surmise rising; and finding her nowhere there, he strolled on into the meadows. Then, suddenly, he saw her, sitting on a rustic bench at a bend of the little brook. Her eyes were bent upon the running water, and she did not look up as he approached her. When he was beside her, her eyes met his, reluctantly and resentfully, and he was startled to observe that she had wept. His surmise returned. She must have seen him kiss Frances. Yet even then Gerald did not know why it should make Miss Jakes weep that he should behave like a donkey.
"May I sit down here?" he asked, genuinely grieved and genuinely anxious to find out what the matter was.
"Certainly," said Althea in chilly tones.
He was a little confused. It had something to do with the kissing, he felt sure. "Miss Jakes, I"m afraid you"ll never believe me a serious person," he said.
"Why should you be serious?" said Althea.
"You are angry with me," Gerald remarked dismally.
"Why should I be angry?"
He raised his eyebrows, detached a bit of loosened wood from the seat, and skipped it over the water. "Well, to find me behaving like a child again."
"I should reserve my anger for more important matters," said Althea. She was angry, or she hoped she was, for, far more than anger, it was misery and a pa.s.sion of shame that surged in her. She knew now, and she could not hide from herself that she knew; and yet he cared so little that he had not even kept his promise; so little that he had stayed behind to kiss that most indecorous woman. If only she could make him think that it was only anger.
"Ah, but you are angry, and rather unjustly," said Gerald. His eyes were seeking hers, rallying, pleading, perhaps laughing a little at her. "And really, you know, you are a little unkind; I thought we were friends--what?"
She forced herself to meet those charming eyes, and then to smile back at him. It would have been absurd not to smile, but the effort was disastrous; her lips quivered; the tears ran down her cheeks. She rose, trembling and aghast. "I am very foolish. I have such a headache. Please don"t pay any attention to me--it"s the heat, I think."
She turned blindly towards the house.
The pretence of the headache was, he knew it in the flash of revelation that came to him, on a par with Frances"s ankle--but with what a difference in motive! Grave, a little pale, Gerald walked silently beside her to the woods. He did not know what to say. He was a little frightened and a great deal touched.
"Mr. Digby," Althea said, when they were among the trees again--and it hurt him to see the courage of her smile--"you must forgive me for being so silly. It is the heat, you know; and this headache--it puts one so on edge. I didn"t mean to speak as I did. Of course I"m not angry."
He was ready to help her out with the most radiant tact. "Of course I knew it couldn"t make any real difference to you--the way I behaved.
Only I don"t like you to be even a little cross with me."
"I"m not--not even a little," she said.
"We are friends then, really friends?"
His smile sustained and rea.s.sured her. Surely he had not seen--if he could smile like that--ever so lightly, so merrily, and so gravely too.
Courage came back to her. She could find a smile as light as his in replying: "Really friends."
CHAPTER XIV.
Gerald, after Althea had gone in, walked for some time in the garden, taking counsel with himself. The expression of his face was still half touched and half alarmed. He smoked two cigarettes and then came to the conclusion that, until he could have a talk with Helen, there was no conclusion to be come to. He never came to important conclusions unaided. He would sleep on it and then have a talk with Helen.
He sought her out next morning on the first opportunity. She was in the library writing letters. She looked, as was usual with her at early morning hours, odd to the verge of ugliness. It always took her some time to recover from the drowsy influences of the night. She was dimmed, as it were, with eyelids half awake, and small lips pouting, and she seemed at once more childlike and more worn than later in the day.
Gerald looked at her with satisfaction. To his observant and appreciative eye, Helen was often at her most charming when at her ugliest.
"I"ve something to talk over," he said. "Can you give me half an hour or so?"
She answered, "Certainly," laying down her pen, and leaning back in her chair.
"Your letters aren"t important? I may keep you for a longish time.
Perhaps we might put it off till the afternoon?"
"They aren"t in the least important. You may keep me as long as you like."
"Thanks. Have a cigarette?" He offered his case, and Helen took one and lighted it at the match he held for her, and then Gerald, lighting his own, proceeded to stroll up and down the room reflecting.
"Helen," he began, "I"ve been thinking things over." His tone was serene, yet a little inquiring. He might have been thinking over some rather uncertain investment, or the planning of a rather exacting trip abroad. Yet Helen"s intuition leaped at once to deeper significances.
Looking out of the window at the lawn, bleached with dew, the trees, the distant autumnal uplands, while she quietly smoked her cigarette, it was as if her sub-consciousness, aroused and vigilant, held its breath, waiting.
"You know," said Gerald, "what I"ve always really wanted to do more than anything else. As I get older, I want it more and more, and get more and more tired of my shambling sort of existence. I love this old place and I love the country. I"d like nothing so much as to be able to live here, try my hand at farming, paint a little, read a little, and get as much hunting as I could."
Helen, blowing a ring of smoke and watching it softly hover, made no comment on these prefatory remarks.
"Well, as you know," said Gerald, "to do that needs money; and I"ve none. And you know that the only solution we could ever find was that I should marry money. And you know that I never found a woman with money whom I liked well enough." He was not looking at Helen as he said this; his eyes were on the shabby old carpet that he was pacing. And in the pause that followed Helen did not speak. She knew--it was all that she had time to know--that her silence was expectant only, not ominous.
Consciousness, now, as well as sub-consciousness, seemed rushing to the bolts and bars and windows of the little lodge of friendship, making it secure--if still it might be made secure--against the storm that gathered. She could not even wonder who Gerald had found. She had only time for the dreadful task of defence, so that no blast of reality should rush in upon them.
"Well," said Gerald, and it was now with a little more inquiry and with less serenity, "I think, perhaps, I"ve found her. I think, Helen, that your nice Althea cares about me, you know, and would have me."
Helen sat still, and did not move her eyes from the sky and trees. There was a long white cloud in the sky, an island floating in a sea of blue.
She noted its bays and peninsulas, the azure rivers that interlaced it, its soft depressions and radiant uplands. She never forgot it. She could have drawn the snowy island, from memory, for years. All her life long she had waited for this moment; all her life long she had lived with the sword of its acceptance in her heart. She had thought that she had accepted; but now the sword turned--horribly turned--round and round in her heart, and she did not know what she should do.
"Well," Gerald repeated, standing still, and, as she knew, looking at the back of her head in a little perplexity.