Lady Pickering could hardly have borne to suspect that Gerald preferred to flirt with Miss Jakes rather than with herself; that he preferred to marry her was nothing of an affront. Althea herself was very soon to return to America for a month with Aunt Julia and the girls, settle business matters and see old friends before turning her face, this time for good, to the country that was now to be her home.
Franklin was gone, and Gerald and Helen were left, and all that Gerald more and more meant, all that was bright and alien too--the things of joy and the things of adjustment and of wonder--effaced poor Franklin while it emphasised those painful truths that he had seen and shown her and that she had only been able to protest against. The thought of Franklin came hardly at all, though the truths he had put before her lingered in a haunting sense of disappointment with herself; she had failed Franklin in deeper, more subtle ways than in the mere shattering of his hopes.
Althea had never been a good business woman; her affairs were taken care of for her in Boston by wise and careful cousins; but she found that Gerald, in spite of his air of irresponsibility, was a very good business man, and it was he who pointed out to her, with cheerful and affectionate frankness, that her fortune was not as large as she, with her heretofore unexacting demands on it, had imagined. It was only when Althea took for granted that it could suffice for much larger, new demands, that Gerald pointed out the facts of limitation; to himself, he made this clear and sweet, the facts were amply sufficient; there was more than enough for his sober wants. But Althea, sitting over the papers with him in the library, and looking rather vague and wistful, realised that if Gerald"s wants were to be the chief consideration many of her own must, indeed, go unsatisfied. Gerald evidently took it perfectly for granted that her wants would be his. Looking up at the flat and faded portraits of bygone Digbys, while this last one, his charming eyes lifted so brightly and so intelligently upon her, made things clear, looking up, over his head, at these ancestors of her affianced, Althea saw in their aspect of happy composure that they, too, had always taken it for granted that their wives" wants were just that--just their own wants. She couldn"t--not at first--lucidly articulate to herself any marked divergence between her wants and Gerald"s; she, too, wanted to see Merriston House restored and made again into a home for Digbys; but Merriston House had been seen by her as a means, not as an end. She had seen it as a centre to a larger life; he saw it as a boundary beyond which they could not care to stray. After the golden bliss of the first days of her new life there, as Gerald"s promised wife, there came for her a pause of rather perplexed reaction in this sense of limits, this sense of being placed in a position that she must keep, this strange sense of slow but sure metamorphosis into one of a succession of Mrs. Digbys whose wants were their husbands".
"Yes, yes, I quite see, dear," she said at intervals, while Gerald explained to her what it cost to keep up even such a small place. "What a pity that those stocks of mine you were telling me about don"t yield more. It isn"t much we have, is it?"
"I think it"s a great deal," laughed Gerald. "It"s quite enough to be very happy on. And, first and foremost, when it"s a question of happiness, and since you are so dear and generous, I shall be able to hunt at last and keep my own horses. I"m sick of being dependent on my friends for a mount now and then. Not that you"ll have much sympathy with that particular form of happiness, I know," he added, smiling, as he put his hand on her shoulder and scanned the next doc.u.ment.
Althea was silent for a moment. She hardly knew what the odd shock that went through her meant; then she recognised that it was fear. To see it as that gave her courage; at all events, love Gerald as she did, she would not be a coward for love of him. The effort was in her voice, making it tremulous, as she said: "But, Gerald, you know I don"t like hunting; you know I think it cruel."
He looked at her; he smiled. "So do I, you nice dear."
"But you won"t pain me by doing it--you will give it up?"
It was now his turn to look really a little frightened. "But it"s in my blood and bones, the joy of it, Althea. You wouldn"t, seriously, ask me to give it up for a whim?"
"Oh, it isn"t a whim."
"A theory, then."
"I think you ought to give it up for a theory like that one. Yes, I even think that you ought to give it up to please me."
"But why shouldn"t you give up your theory to please me?" He had turned his eyes on his papers now, and was feigning to scan them.
"It is a question of right and wrong to me."
Gerald was silent for a moment. He was not irritated, she saw that; not angry. He quite recognised her point, and he didn"t like her the less for holding to it; but he recognised his own point just as clearly, and, after the little pause, she found that he was resolute in holding to it.
"I"m afraid I can"t give it up--even to please you, dear," he said.
Althea sat looking down at the papers that lay on the table; she saw them through tears of helpless pain. There was nothing to be done and nothing to be said. She could not tell him that, since he did not love her sufficiently to give up a pleasure for her sake, she must give him up; nor could she tell him that he must not use her money for pleasures that she considered wrong. But it was this second impossible retort--the first, evidently, did not cross his mind--that was occupying Gerald. He was not slow in seeing delicacies, though he was slow indeed in seeing what might have been solemnities. The position couldn"t strike him as solemn; he couldn"t conceive that a woman might break off her engagement for such a cause; but he did see his own position of beneficiary as delicate.
His next words showed it: "Of course I won"t hunt here, if you really say not. I could go away to hunt. The difficulty is that we want to keep horses, don"t we? and if I have a hunter it will be rather funny never to use him at home."
Althea saw that it would be rather funny. "If you have a hunter I would far rather you hunted here than that you went away to hunt."
"Perhaps you"d rather I had a horse that couldn"t hunt. The hunter would be your gift, of course. I could just go on depending on my friends for a mount, though that would look funny, too, wouldn"t it?"
"If you will hunt, I want to give you your hunter."
"In a sense it will be using your money to do something you disapprove of." Gerald was smiling at her as though he felt that he was bringing her round to reasonableness. "Perhaps that"s ugly."
"Please don"t speak of the money; mine is yours."
"That makes me seem all the dingier, I know," said Gerald, half ruefully, yet still smiling at her. "I do wish I could give it up, just to please you, but really I can"t. You must just shut your eyes and pretend I"m not a brute."
After this little encounter, which left its mark on Althea"s heart, she felt that Gerald ought to be the more willing to yield in other things and to enter into her projects. "Don"t you think, dear," she said to him a day or two after, when they were walking together, "don"t you think that you ought soon to be thinking of a seat in Parliament? That will be such a large, worthy life for you."
Gerald, as they walked, was looking from right to left, happily, possessively, over the fields and woods. He brought his attention to her suggestion with a little effort, and then he laughed. "Good gracious, no! I"ve no political views."
"But oughtn"t you to have them?"
"You shall provide me with them, dear."
"Gladly; and will you use them?"
"Not in Parliament," laughed Gerald.
"But seriously, dear, I hope you will think of it."
He turned gay, protesting, and now astonished eyes upon her. "But I can"t think of it seriously. Old Battersby is a member for these parts, and his seat is as firm as a rock."
"Can"t you find another seat?"
"But, my dear, even if I had any leaning that way, which I haven"t, where am I to find the time and money?"
"Give less time and money to hunting," she could not repress.
But, over the sinking of her heart, she kept her voice light, and Gerald, all unsuspecting, answered, as if it were a harmless jest they were bandying, "What a horrid score! But, yes, it"s quite true; I want my time for hunting and farming and studying a bit, and then you mustn"t forget that I enjoy dabbling at my painting in my spare moments and have the company of my wise and charming Althea to cultivate. I"ve quite enough to fill my time with."
She was baffled, perplexed, and hurt. Her thoughts fixed with some irony on his painting. Dabble at it indeed. Gerald had shown her some of his sketches and they had hardly seemed to Althea to merit more than that description. Her own tastes had grown up securely framed by books and lectures. Her speciality was early Italian art. She liked pictures of Madonnas surrounded by exquisite accessories--all of which she accurately remembered. She didn"t at all care for j.a.panese prints, and Gerald"s sketches looked to her rather like j.a.panese prints. She really didn"t imagine that he intended her to take them seriously, and when he had brought them out and shown them to her she had said, "Pretty, very pretty indeed, dear; really you have talent, I"m sure of it. With hard work, under a good master, you might have become quite a painter." She had then seen the little look of discomfiture on Gerald"s face, though he laughed good-humouredly as he put away his sketches, saying to Helen, who was present, "I"m put in my place, you see."
Althea had hastened to add, "But, dear, really I think them very pretty.
They show quite a direct, simple feeling for colour. Don"t they, Helen?
Don"t you feel with me that they are very pretty?"
Helen had said that she knew nothing about pictures, but liked Gerald"s very much.
It was hard now to be asked to accept this vagrant artistry instead of the large, political life she had seen for him. And what of the London drawing-room?
"You must keep in touch with people, Gerald," she said. "You mustn"t sink into the country squire for ever."
"Oh, but that"s just what I want to sink into," said Gerald. "Don"t bother about people, though, dear. We can have plenty of people to stay with us, and go about a bit ourselves."
"But we must be in London for part of the year," said Althea.
"Oh, you will run up now and then for a week whenever you like," said Gerald.
"A week! How can one keep in touch with what is going on in a week?
Can"t we take a little house there? One of those nice little old houses in Westminster, for example?"
"A house, my dear! Why, you don"t want to leave Merriston, do you? What would become of Merriston if we had a house in London--and of all our plans? We really couldn"t manage that, dear--we really couldn"t afford it."
Yes, she saw the life very distinctly, now; that of the former Mrs.
Digbys--that of cheerful squiress and wise helpmate. And, charmed though she was with her lover, Althea was not charmed with that prospect. She promised herself that things should turn out rather differently. What was uncomfortable already was to find that her promises were becoming vague and tentative. There was a new sense of bondage. Bliss was in it, but the bonds began to chafe.