Helen looked cautiously down at the cigarette she held; it still smoked languidly. She raised it to her lips and drew a whiff. Then, after that, she dared a further effort. "Well?" she repeated.
Gerald laughed a trifle nervously. "I asked you," he reminded her.
She was able, testing her strength, as a tight-rope walker slides a careful foot along the rope, to go on. "Oh, I see. And do you care about her?"
Gerald was silent for another moment, and she guessed that he had run his hand through his hair and rumpled it on end.
"She really is a little dear, isn"t she?" he then said. "You mayn"t find her interesting--though I really do; and she may be like _eau rougie_; but, as you said, it"s a pleasant draught to have beside one. She is gentle and wise and good, and she seems to take her place here very sweetly, doesn"t she? She seems really to belong here, don"t you think so?"
Helen could not answer that question. "Do you want me to tell you whether you care for her?" she asked.
He laughed. "I suppose I do."
"And, on the whole, you hope I"ll tell you that you do."
"Well, yes," he a.s.sented.
The dreadful steeling of her will at the very verge of swooning abysses gave an edge to her voice. She tried to dull it, to speak very quietly and mildly, as she said: "I must have all the facts of the case before me, then. I confess I hadn"t suspected it was a case."
"Which means that you"d never dreamed I could fall in love with Miss Jakes." Gerald"s tone was a little rueful.
"Oh--you have fallen in love with her?"
"Why, that"s just what I"m asking you!" he laughed again. "Or, at least, not that exactly, for of course it"s not a question of being in love.
But I think her wise and good and gentle, and she cares for me--I think; and it seems almost like the finger of destiny--finding her here. Have you any idea how much money she has? It must be quite a lot," said Gerald.
Helen was ready with her facts. "A very safe three thousand a year, I believe. Not much, of course, but quite enough for what you want to do.
But," she added, after the pause in which he reflected on this sum--it was a good deal less than he had taken for granted--"I don"t think that Althea would marry you on that basis. She is very proud and very romantic. If you want her to marry you, you will have to make her feel that you care for her in herself." It was her own pride that now steadied her pulses and steeled her nerves. She would be as fair to Gerald"s case as though he were her brother; she would be too fair, perhaps. Here was the pitfall of her pride that she did not clearly see.
Perhaps it was with a grim touch of retribution that she promised herself that since he could think of Althea Jakes, he most certainly should have her.
"Yes, she is proud," said Gerald. "That"s one of the things one so likes in her. She"d never hold out a finger, however much she cared."
"You will have to hold out both hands," said Helen.
"You think she won"t have me unless I can pretend to be in love with her? I"m afraid I can"t take that on."
"I"m glad you can"t. She is too good for such usage. No," said Helen, holding her scales steadily, "perfect frankness is the only way. If she knows that you really care for her--even if you are not romantic--if you can make her feel that the money--though a necessity--is secondary, and wouldn"t have counted at all unless you had come to care, I should say that your chances are good--since you have reason to believe that she has fallen in love with you."
"It"s not as if I denied her anything I had to give, is it?" Gerald pondered on the point of conscience she put before him.
"You mean that you"re incapable of caring more for any woman than for Althea?"
"Of course not. I care a great deal more for you," said Gerald, again rather rueful under her probes. "I only mean that I"m not likely to fall in love again, or anything of that sort. She can be quite secure about me. I"ll be her devoted and faithful husband."
"I think you care," said Helen. "I think you can make her happy."
But Gerald now came and sat on the corner of the writing-table beside her, facing her, his back to the window. "It"s a tremendous thing to decide on, isn"t it, Helen?"
She turned her eyes on him, and he looked at her with a gaze troubled and a little groping, as though he sought in her further elucidations; as though, for the first time, she had disappointed him a little.
"Is it?" she asked. "Is marriage really a tremendous thing?"
"Well, isn"t it?"
"I"m not sure. In one way, of course, it is. But people, perhaps, exaggerate the influence of their own choice on the results. You can"t be sure of results, choose as carefully as you will; it"s what comes after that decides them, I imagine--the devotion, the fidelity you speak of. And since you"ve found some one to whom you can promise those, some one wise and good and gentle, isn"t that all that you need be sure of?"
Gerald continued to study her face. "You"re not pleased, Helen," he now said. It was a curious form of torture that Helen must smile under.
"Well, it"s not a case for enthusiasm, is it?" she said. "I"m certainly not displeased."
"You"d rather I married her than Frances Pickering?"
"Would Frances have you, too, irresistible one?"
"Oh, I don"t think so; pretty sure not. She would want a lot of things I can"t give. I was only wondering which you"d prefer."
Helen heard the clamour of her own heart. Frances! Frances! She is trivial; she will not take your place: she will not count in his life at all. Althea will count; she will count more and more. She will be his habit, his _haus-frau_, the mother of his children. He is not in love with her; but he will come to love her, and there will be no place for friendship in his life. Hearing that clamour she dragged herself together, hating herself for having heard it, and answered: "Althea, of course; she is worth three of Frances."
Gerald gave a little sigh. "Well, I"m glad we agree there," he said.
"I"m glad you see that Althea is worth three of her. What I do wish is that you cared more about Althea."
What he was telling her was that if she would care more about Althea, he would too, and she wondered if this, also, were a part of pride; should she help him to care more for Althea? A better pride sustained her; she felt the danger in these subtleties of her torment. "I like Althea," she said. "I, too, think that she is wise and good and gentle. I think that she will be the best of wives, the best of wives and mothers. But, as I said, I don"t feel enthusiasm; I don"t feel it a case for enthusiasm."
"Of course it"s not a case for enthusiasm," said Gerald, who was evidently eager to range himself completely with her. "I"m fond, and I"ll grow fonder; and I believe you will too. Don"t you, Helen?"
"No doubt I shall," said Helen. She got up now and tossed her cigarette into the waste-paper basket, and stood for a moment looking past Gerald"s head at the snowy island, now half dissolved in blue, as though its rivers had engulfed it. They were parting, he and she, she knew it, and yet there was no word that she could say to him, no warning or appeal that she could utter. If he could see that it was the end he would, she knew, start back from his shallow project. But he did not know that it was the end and he might never know. Did he not really understand that an adoring wife could not be fitted into their friendship? His innocent unconsciousness of inevitable change made Helen"s heart, in its deeper knowledge of human character, sink to a bitterness that felt like a hatred of him, and she wondered, looking forward, whether Gerald would ever miss anything, or ever know that anything was gone.
Gerald sat still looking up at her as though expecting some further suggestion, and as her eyes came back to him, she smiled to him with deliberate sweetness, showing him thus that her conclusions were all friendly. And he rose, smiling back, rea.s.sured and fortified. "Well," he said, "since you approve, I suppose it"s settled. I shan"t ask her at once, you know. She might think it was because of what I"d guessed. I"ll lead up to it for a day or two. And, Helen, you might, if you"ve a chance, put in a good word for me."
"I will, if I"ve a chance," said Helen.
Gerald, as if aware that he had taken up really too much of her time, now moved towards the door. But he went slowly, and at the door he paused. He turned to her smiling. "And you give me your blessing?" he asked.
He was most endearing when he smiled so. It was a smile like a child"s, that caressed and cajoled, and that saw through its own cajolery and pleaded, with a little wistfulness, that there was more than could show itself, behind. Helen knew what was behind--the sense of strangeness, the affection and the touch of fear. She had never refused that smile anything; she seemed to refuse it nothing now, as she answered with a maternal acquiescence, "I give you my blessing, dear Gerald."
CHAPTER XV.
It was still early. When he had left her, Helen looked at her watch; only half-past ten. She stood thinking. Should she go out, as usual, take her place in a long chair under the limes, close her eyes and pretend to sleep? No, she could not do that. Should she sit down in her room with Dante and a dictionary? No, that she would not do. Should she walk far away into the woods and lie upon the ground and weep? That would be a singularly foolish plan, and at lunch everybody would see that she had been crying. Yet it was impossible to remain here, to remain still, and thinking. She must move quickly, and make her body tired. She went to her room, pinned on her hat, drew on her gloves, and, choosing a stick as she went through the hall, pa.s.sed from the grounds and through the meadow walk to a long road, climbing and winding, whose walls, at either side, seemed to hold back the billows of the woodland.
The day was hot and dusty. The sky was like a blue stone, the green monotonous, the road glared white. Helen, with the superficial fretfulness of an agony controlled, said to herself that nothing more like a bad water-colour landscape could be imagined; there were the unskilful blots of heavy foliage, the sleekly painted sky, and the sunny road was like the whiteness of the paper, picked out, for shadows, in niggling cobalt. A stupid, bland, heartless day.
She walked along this road for several miles and left it to cross a crisp, gra.s.sy slope from where, standing still and turning to see, she looked down over all the country and saw, far away, the roofs of Merriston House. She stood for a long time looking down at it, the hot wind ruffling her skirts and hair. It was a heartless day and she herself felt heartless. She felt herself as something silent, swift, and raging. For now she was to taste to the full the bitter difference between the finality of personal decision and a finality imposed, fatefully and irrevocably, from without. She had thought herself prepared for this ending of hope. She had even, imagining herself hardened and indifferent, gone in advance of it and had sought to put the past under her feet and to build up a new life. But she had not been prepared; that she now knew. The imagination of the fact was not its realisation in her very blood and bones, nor the standing ready, armed for the blow, this feel of the blade between her ribs. And looking down at the only home she had ever had, in moments long, sharp, dream-like, her strength was drained from her as if by a fever, and she felt that she was changed all through and that each atom of her being was set, as it were, a little differently, making of her a new personality, through this shock of sudden hopelessness.
She felt her knees weak beneath her and she moved on slowly, away from the sun, to a lonely little wood that bordered the hill-top. In her sudden weakness she climbed the paling that enclosed it with some difficulty, wondering if she were most inconveniently going to faint, and walking blindly along a narrow path, in the sudden cool and darkness, she dropped down on the moss at the first turning of the way.