"I couldn"t have reconciled myself," said Franklin, "to the idea of a man, who could take Lady Pickering seriously, marrying Althea. I can"t quite reconcile myself to the idea of a man who could, well, be so devoted to Lady Pickering, marrying Althea. He"s your friend, I know, Miss Buchanan, as well as your relative, but you know what I feel for Althea, and you"ll forgive my saying that if I"m not big enough for her he isn"t big enough either; no, upon my soul, he isn"t."
Helen"s eyes dwelt on him. She knew that, with all the forces of concealment at her command, she wanted to keep from Mr. Kane the blighting irony of her own inner comments; above everything, now, she dreaded lest her irony should touch one of Mr. Kane"s ideals. It was so beautiful of him to think himself not big enough for Althea, that she was well content that he should see Gerald in the same category of unfitness. Perhaps Gerald was not big enough for Althea; Gerald"s bigness didn"t interest Helen; the great point for her was that Mr. Kane should not guess that she considered Althea not big enough for him. "If Gerald is the lucky man," she said, after the pause in which she gazed at him; "if she cares enough for Gerald to marry him, then I think he will make her happy; and that"s the chief thing, isn"t it?"
Mr. Kane could not deny that it was, and yet, evidently, he was not satisfied. "I believe you"ll forgive me if I go on," he said. "You see it"s so tremendously important to me, and what I"m going to say isn"t really at all offensive--I mean, people of your world and Mr. Digby"s world wouldn"t find it so. I"ll tell you the root of my trouble, Miss Buchanan. Your friend is a poor man, isn"t he, and Althea is a fairly rich woman. Can you satisfy me on this point? I can give Althea up; I must give her up; but I can hardly bear it if I"m to give her up to a mere fortune-hunter, however happy he may be able to make her."
Helen"s cheeks had coloured slightly. "Gerald isn"t a mere fortune-hunter," she said. "People of my world do think fortune-hunting offensive."
"Forgive me then," said Franklin, gazing at her, contrite but unperturbed. "I"m very ignorant of your world. May I put it a little differently. Would Mr. Digby be likely to fall in love with a woman if she hadn"t a penny?"
She had quite forgiven him. She smiled a little in answering. "He has often fallen in love with women without a penny, but he could hardly marry a woman who hadn"t one."
"He wouldn"t wish to marry Althea, then, if she had no money?"
"However much he would wish it, I don"t think he would be so foolish as to do it," said Helen.
"Can"t a man worth his salt work for the woman he loves?"
"A man well worth his salt may not be trained for making money," Helen returned. She knew the question clamouring in his heart, the question he must not ask, nor she answer: "Is he in love with Althea?" Mr. Kane could never accept nor understand what the qualified answer to such a question would have to be, and she must leave him with his worst perplexity unsolved. But one thing she could do for him, and she hoped that it might soften a little the bitterness of his uncertainty. The sunlight suddenly had failed, and a slight wind pa.s.sed among the boughs overhead. Helen got upon her feet, straightening her hat and putting back her hair. It was time to be going homewards. They went down the path and climbed over the palings, and it was on the hill-top that Helen said, looking far ahead of her, far over the now visible roofs of Merriston:
"I"ve known Gerald Digby all my life, and I know Althea, now, quite well. And if Gerald is to be the lucky man I"d like to say, for him, you know--and I think it ought to set your mind at rest--that I think Althea will be quite as lucky as he will be, and that I think that he is worthy of her."
Franklin kept his eyes on her as she spoke, and though she did not meet them, her far gaze, fixed ahead, seemed in its impersonal gravity to commune with him, for his consolation, more than an answering glance would have done. She was giving him her word for something, and the very fact that she kept it impersonal, held it there before them both, made it more weighty and more final. Franklin evidently found it so. He presently heaved a sigh in which relief was mingled with acceptance--acceptance of the fact that, from her, he must expect no further relief. And presently, as they came out upon the winding road, he said: "Thanks, that"s very helpful."
They walked on then in silence. The sun was gone and the wind blew softly; the freshness of the coming rain was in the air. Helen lifted her face to them as the first slow drops began to fall. In her heart, too, the fierceness of her pain was overcast. Something infinitely sad, yet infinitely peaceful, stilled her pulses. Infinitely sad, yet infinitely funny too. How small, how insignificant, this tangle of the whole-hearted and the half-hearted; what did it all come to, and how feel suffering as tragic when farce grimaced so close beside it? Who could take it seriously when, in life, the whole-hearted were so deceived and based their loves on such illusion? To feel the irony was to acquiesce, perhaps, and acquiescence, even if only momentary, like the lull and softness in nature, was better than the beating fierceness of rebellion. Everything was over. And here beside her went the dear ungainly dog. She turned her head and smiled at him, the raindrops on her lashes.
"You don"t mind the rain, Miss Buchanan?" said Franklin, who had looked anxiously at the weather, and probably felt himself responsible for not producing an umbrella for a lady"s need.
"I like it." She continued to smile at him.
"Miss Buchanan," said Franklin, looking at her earnestly and not smiling back, "I want to say something. I"ve seemed egotistic and I"ve been egotistic. I"ve talked only about my own troubles; but I don"t believe you wanted to talk about yours, did you?" Helen, smiling, slightly shook her head. "And at the same time you"ve not minded my knowing that you have troubles to bear." Again she shook her head. "Well, that"s what I thought; that"s all right, then. What I wanted to say was that if ever I can help you in any way--if ever I can be of any use--will you please remember that I"m your friend."
Helen, still looking at him, said nothing for some moments. And now, once more, a slight colour rose in her cheeks. "I can"t imagine why you should be my friend," she said. "I feel that I know a great deal about you; but you know nothing about me, and please believe me when I say that there"s very little to know."
Already he knew her well enough to know that the slight colour, lingering on her cheek, meant that she was moved. "Ah, I can"t believe you there," he said. "And at all events, whatever there is to know, I"m its friend. You don"t know yourself, you see. You only know what you feel, not at all what you are."
"Isn"t that what I am?" She looked away, disquieted by this a.n.a.lysis of her own personality.
"By no means all," said Franklin. "You"ve hardly looked at the you that can do things--the you that can think things."
She didn"t want to look at them, poor, inert, imprisoned creatures. She looked, instead, at the quaint, unexpected, and touching thing with which she was presented--Mr. Kane"s friendship. She would have liked to have told him that she was grateful and that she, too, was his friend; but such verbal definitions as these were difficult and alien to her, as alien as discussion of her own character and its capacities. It seemed to be claiming too much to claim a capacity for friendship. She didn"t know whether she was anybody"s friend, really--as Mr. Kane would have counted friendship. She thought him dear, she thought him good, and yet she hardly wanted him, would hardly miss him if he were not there.
He touched her, more deeply than she perhaps quite knew, and yet she seemed to have nothing for him. So she gave up any explicit declaration, only turning her eyes on him and smiling at him again through her rain-dimmed lashes, as they went down the winding road together.
CHAPTER XVI.
It was Althea who, during the next few days, while Gerald with the greatest tact and composure made his approaches, was most unconscious of what was approaching her. Everybody else now saw quite clearly what Gerald"s intentions were. Althea was dazed; she did not know what the bright object that had come so overpoweringly into her life wanted of her. She had feared--sickeningly--with a stiffening of her whole nature to resistance, that he wanted to flirt with her as well as with Lady Pickering. Then she had seen that he wasn"t going to flirt, that he was going to be her friend, and then--this in the two or three days that followed Gerald"s talk with Helen--that he was going to be a dear one.
She had only adjusted her mind to this grave joy and wondered, with all the perplexity of her own now recognised love, whether it could prove more than a very tremulous joy, when the final revelation came upon her.
It came, and it was still unexpected, one afternoon when she and Gerald sat in the drawing-room together. It was very warm, and they had come into the cooler house after tea to look at a book that Gerald wanted to show her. It had proved to be not much of a book after all, and even while standing with him in the library, while he turned the musty leaves for her and pointed out the funny old ill.u.s.trations he had been telling her of, Althea had felt that the book was only a pretext for getting her away to himself. He had led her back to the drawing-room and he had said, "Don"t let"s go out again, it"s much nicer here. Please sit here and talk to me."
It was just the hour, just such an afternoon as that on which poor Franklin had arrived; Althea thought of that as she and Gerald sat down on the same little sofa where she and Franklin had sat. And, in a swift flash of a.s.sociation, she remembered that Franklin had wanted to kiss her, and had kissed her. They had left Franklin under the limes with Helen; he had been reading something to Helen out of a pamphlet, and Helen had looked, though rather sleepy, kindly acquiescent; but the memory of the past could do no more than stir a faint pity for the present Franklin; she was wishing--and it seemed the most irresistible longing of all her life--that Gerald Digby wanted to kiss her too. The memory and the wish threw her thoughts into confusion, but she was still able to maintain her calm, to smile at him and say, "Certainly, let us talk."
"But not about politics and philanthropy to-day," said Gerald, who leaned his elbow on his knee and looked quietly yet intently at her; "I want to talk about ourselves, if I may."
"Do let us talk about ourselves," said Althea.
"Well, I don"t believe that what I"m going to say will surprise you. I"m sure you"ve seen how much I"ve come to care about you," said Gerald.
Althea kept her eyes fixed calmly upon him; her self-command was great, even in the midst of an overpowering hope.
"I know that we are real friends," she returned, smiling.
Her calm, her cool, sweet smile, like the light in the shaded room, were very pleasing to Gerald. "Ah, yes, but that was only a step, you see,"
he smiled back. He did not let her guess his full confidence, he took all the steps one after the other in their proper order. He couldn"t give her romance, but he could give her every grace, and her calm made him feel, happily and securely, that grace would quite content her.
"You must see," he went on, still with his eyes on hers, "that it"s more than that. You must see that you are dearer than that." And then he brought out his simple question, "Will you be my wife?"
Althea sat still and her mind whirled. Until then she had been unprepared. Her own feeling, the feeling that she had refused for days to look at, had been so strong that she had only known its strength and its danger to her pride; she had had no time to wonder about Gerald"s feeling. And now, in its freedom, her feeling was so joyous that she could know only its joy. She was dear to him. He asked her to marry him.
It seemed enough, more than enough, to make joy a permanent thing in her life. She had not imagined it possible to marry a man who did not woo and urge, who did not make her feel the ardour of his love. But, now, breathlessly, she found that reality was quite different from her imagination and yet so blissful that she could feel nothing wanting in it. And she could say nothing. She looked at him with her large eyes, gravely, and touched, a little abashed by their gaze, he took her hand, kissed it, and murmured, "Please say you"ll have me."
"Do you love me?" Althea breathed out; it was not that she questioned or hesitated; the words came to her lips in answer to the situation rather than in questioning of him. And it was hardly a shock; it was, in a subtle way, a further realisation of exquisiteness, when the situation, in his reply, defined itself as a reality still further removed from her imagination of what such a situation should be.
Holding her hand, his gay brown eyes upon her, he said, after only the very slightest pause, "Miss Jakes, I"m not a romantic person, you see that; you see the sort of person I am. I can"t make pretty speeches, not when I"m serious, as I am now. When I make pretty speeches, I"m only flirting. I like you. I respect you. I"ve watched you here in my old home and I"ve thought, "If only she would make it home again." I"ve thought that you"d help me to make a new life. I want to come and live here, with you, and do the things I told you about--the things that needed money."
His eyes were on hers, so quietly and so gravely, now, that they seemed to hold from her all ugly little interpretations; he trusted her with the true one, he trusted her not to see it as ugly. "You see, I"m not romantic," he went on, "and I can only tell you the truth. I couldn"t have thought of marrying you if you hadn"t had money, but I needn"t tell you that, if you"d had millions, I wouldn"t have thought of marrying you unless I cared for you. So there it is, quite clear and simple. I think I can make you happy; will you make me happy?"
It was exquisite, the trust, the truth, the quiet gravity, and yet there was pain in the exquisiteness. She could not look at it yet distinctly for it seemed part of the beauty. It was rarer, more dignified, this wooing, than commonplace protestations of devotion. It was a large and beautiful life he opened to her and he needed her to make it real. They needed each other. Yet--here the pain hovered--they needed each other so differently. To her, he was the large and beautiful life; to him, she was only a part of it, and a means to it. But she could not look at pain. Pride was mounting in her, pride in him, her beloved and her possession. Before all the world, henceforth, he would be hers. And the greatness of that pride cast out lesser ones. He had discriminated, been carefully sincere; her sincerity did not need to be careful, it was an unqualified gift she had to make him. "I love you," she said. "I will make it your home."
And again Gerald was touched and a little confused. He kissed her hand and then, her eyes of mute avowal drawing him, he leaned to her and kissed her cheek. He felt it difficult to answer such a speech, and all that he found to say at last was, "You will make me romantic, dear Althea."
That evening he sought Helen out again; but he need not have come with his news, for it was none. Althea"s blissful preoccupation and his gaiety had all the evening proclaimed the happy event. But he had to talk to Helen, and finding her on the terrace, he drew her hand through his arm and paced to and fro with her. She was silent, and, suddenly and oddly, he found it difficult to say anything. "Well," he ventured at last.
"Well," Helen echoed in the darkness.
"It"s all settled," said Gerald.
"Yes," said Helen.
"And I"m very happy."
"I am so glad."
"And she is really a great dear. Anything more generously sweet I"ve never encountered."
"I"m so glad," Helen repeated.