Gerald laughed. "How you see things, and say them! Poor Miss Jakes!--that"s her name, isn"t it? She sounds tame."
"She is tame."
"Is she young, pretty?"
"Not young, about my age; not pretty, but it"s a nice face; wistful, with large, quite lovely eyes. She knows a lot about everything, and has been everywhere, and has kept all her illusions intact--a queer mixture of information and innocence. It"s difficult to keep one"s mind on what she"s saying; there is never any background to it. She wants something, but she doesn"t know whether it"s what other people want or whether it"s what she wants, so that she can"t want anything very definitely."
Gerald still laughed. "How you must have been taking her in!"
"I suppose I must have been, though I didn"t know it. But I did like her, you know. I liked her very much. A gla.s.s of water is a nice thing sometimes."
"Nicer than _eau rougie_; I"m afraid she"s _eau rougie_."
"_Eau rougie_ may be nice, too, if one is tired and thirsty and needs mild refreshment, not altogether tasteless, and not at all intoxicating.
She was certainly that to me. I was very much touched by her kindness."
"I shall be touched if she"ll take Merriston. I"m fearfully hard up. I suppose it would only be a little let; but that would be better than nothing."
"She might stay for the winter if she liked it. I shan"t try to make her like it, but I"ll do my best to make her stay on if she does, and with a clear conscience, for I think that her staying will depend on her seeing me."
"Wouldn"t that mean that she"d be a great deal on your hands?"
"I shouldn"t mind that; we get on very well. She will be here next week, you know. You must come to tea and meet her."
"Well, I don"t know. I don"t think that I"m particularly eager to meet her," Gerald confessed jocosely.
"You"ll have to meet her a good deal if you are to see much of me," said Helen; on which he owned that, with that compulsion put upon him, he and Miss Jakes might become intimates.
Gerald Digby was a young man who did very little work. He had been vaguely intended, by an affectionate but haphazard family, for the diplomatic service, but it was found, after he had done himself some credit at Eton and Oxford, that the family resources didn"t admit of this obviously suitable career for him; and an aged and wealthy uncle, who had been looked to confidently for succour, married at the moment, most unfeelingly, so that Gerald"s career had to be definitely abandoned. Another relation found him a berth in the City, where he might hope to ama.s.s quite a fortune; but Gerald soon said that he far preferred poverty. He thought that he would like to paint and be an artist; he had a joyful eye for delicate, minute forms of beauty, and was most happily occupied when absorbed in j.a.panese-like studies of transient loveliness--a bird in flight, a verdant gra.s.shopper on a wheat-blade, the tangled festoons of a wild convolvulus spray. His talent, however, though genuine, could hardly supply him with a livelihood, and he would have been seriously put to it had not his father"s death left him a tiny income, while a half-informal secretaryship to a political friend, offered him propitiously at the same time, gave him leisure for his painting as well as for a good many other pleasant things. He had leisure, in especial, for going from country-house to country-house, where he was immensely in demand, and where he hunted, danced, and acted in private theatricals--usually in company with his cousin Helen. Helen"s position in life was very much like his own, but that she hadn"t even an informal secretaryship to depend upon. He had known Helen all his life, and she was almost like a sister, only nicer; for he a.s.sociated sisters with his own brood, who were lean, hunting ladies, pleasant, but monotonous and inarticulate.
Helen was very articulate and very various. He loved to look at her, as he loved to look at birds and flowers, and he loved to talk with her. He had many opportunities to look and talk. They stayed at the same houses in the country, and in London, when she was with old Miss Buchanan, he usually saw her every day. If he didn"t drop in for a moment on his way to work at ten-thirty in the morning, he dropped in to tea; and if his or Helen"s day were too full to admit of this, he managed to come in for a goodnight chat after a dinner or before a dance. He enjoyed Helen"s talk and Helen"s appearance most of all, he thought, at these late hours, when, a little weary and jaded, in evening dress and cloak, she lit her invariable cigarette, and mused with him over the events and people of the day. He liked Helen"s way of talking about people; they knew an interminable array of them, many involved in enlivening complications, yet Helen never gossiped; the musing impersonality and impartiality with which she commented and surmised lifted her themes to a realm almost of art; she was pungent, yet never malicious, and the tolerant lucidity of her insight was almost benign.
Her narrow face, leaning back in its dark aureole of hair, her strange eyes and bitter-sweet lips--all dimmed, as it were, by drowsiness and smoke, and yet never more intelligently awake than at these nocturnal hours--remained with him as most typical of Helen"s most significant and charming self. It was her aspect of mystery and that faint hint of bitterness that he found so charming; Helen herself he never thought of as mysterious. Mystery was a mere outward a.s.set of her beauty, like the powdery surface of a moth"s wing. He didn"t think of Helen as mysterious, perhaps because he thought little about her at all; he only looked and listened while she made him think about everything but herself, and he felt always happy and altogether at ease in her presence. There seemed, indeed, no reason for thinking about a person whom one had known all one"s life long.
And Helen was more than the best of company and the loveliest of objects; she was at once comrade and counsellor. He depended upon her more than upon any one. Comically helpless as he often found himself, he asked her advice about everything, and always received the wisest.
He had had often, though not so much in late years, to ask her advice about girls, for in spite of his financial ineligibility he was so engaging a person that he found himself continually drawn to the verge of decisive flirtations. His was rarely the initiative; he was responsive and affectionate and not at all susceptible, and Helen, who knew girls of her world to the bone, could accurately gauge the effect upon him of the pleading coquetry at which they were such adepts. She could gauge them the better, no doubt, from having herself no trace of coquetry. Men often liked her, but often found her cold and cynical, and even suspected her of conceit, especially since it was known that she had refused many excellent opportunities for establishing herself in life. She was also suspected by many of abysmal cleverness, and this reputation frightened admiring but uncomplicated young men more than anything else. Now, when her first youth was past, men more seldom fell in love with her and more frequently liked her; they had had time to find out that if she were cold she was also very kind, and that if abysmally clever, she could adapt her cleverness to pleasant, trivial uses.
Gerald, when he thought at all about her, thought of Helen as indeed cold, clever, and cynical; but these qualities never oppressed him, aware from the first, as he had been, of the others, and he found in them, moreover, veritable shields and bucklers for himself. It was to some one deeply experienced, yet quite unwarped by personal emotions, that he brought his recitals of distress and uncertainty. Lady Molly was a perfect little dear, but could he go on with it? How could he if he would? She hadn"t any money, and her people would be furious; she herself, he felt sure, would be miserable in no time, if they did marry.
They wouldn"t even have enough--would they, did Helen think?--for love in a cottage, and Molly would hate love in a cottage. They would have to go about living on their relations and friends, as he now did, more or less; but with a wife and babies, how could one? Did Helen think one could? Gerald would finish dismally, standing before her with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets and a ruffled brow of inquiry. Or else it was the pretty Miss Oliver who had him--half alarmed, half enchanted--in her toils, and Gerald couldn"t imagine what she was going to do with him. For such entanglements Helen"s advice had always shown a way out, and for his uncertainties--though she never took the responsibility of actual guidance--her reflective questionings, her mere reflective silences, were illuminating. They made clear for him, as for her, that recklessness could only be worth while if one were really--off one"s own bat, as it were--"in love"; and that, this lacking, recklessness was folly sure to end in disaster. "Wait, either until you care so much that you must, or else until you meet some one so nice, so rich, and so suitable that you may," said Helen. "If you are not careful you will find yourself married to some one who will bore you and quarrel with you on twopence a year."
"You must be careful for me," said Gerald. "Please warn and protect."
And Helen replied that she would always do her best for him.
It had never occurred to Gerald to turn the tables on Helen and tell her that she ought to marry. His imagination was not occupied with Helen"s state, though once, after a conversation with old Miss Buchanan, he remarked to Helen, looking at her with a vague curiosity, that it was a pity she hadn"t taken Lord Henry or Mr. Fergusson. "Miss Buchanan tells me you might have been one of the first hostesses in London if you hadn"t thrown away your chances."
"I"m all right," said Helen.
"Yes, you yourself are; but after she dies?"
Helen owned, with a smile, that she could certainly do with some few thousands a year; but that, in default of them, she could manage to sc.r.a.pe along.
"But you"ve never had any better chances, have you?" said Gerald rather tentatively. He might confide everything in Helen, but he realised, as a restraining influence, that she never made any confidences, even to him, who, he was convinced, knew her down to the ground.
Helen owned that she hadn"t.
"Your aunt thinks it a dreadful pity. She"s very much worried about you."
"It"s late in the day for the poor dear to worry. The chances were over long ago."
"You didn"t care enough?"
"I was young and foolish enough to want to be in love when I married,"
said Helen, smiling at him with her half-closed eyes.
And Gerald said that, yes, he would have expected that from her; and with this dismissed the subject from his mind, taking it for granted that Helen"s disengaged, sustaining, and enlivening spinsterhood would always be there for his solace and amus.e.m.e.nt.
CHAPTER VII.
Helen was on one side of her and Mr. Digby sat in an opposite corner of the railway carriage, and they were approaching the end of the journey to Merriston House on a bright July day soon after Althea"s arrival in England. She had met Mr. Digby at Helen"s the day before and had suggested that he should come with them. Gerald had remarked that it might be tiresome if she hated Merriston, and he were there to see that she hated it; but Althea was so sure of liking it that her conviction imposed itself.
Mr. Digby and Helen were both smoking; they had asked her very solicitously whether she minded, and she had said she didn"t, although in fact she did not like the smell of tobacco, and Helen"s constant cigarette distressed her quite unselfishly on the score of health. The windows were wide open, and though the gale that blew through ruffled her smooth hair and made her veil tickle disagreeably, these minor discomforts could not spoil her predominant sense of excitement and adventure. Mr. Digby"s presence, particularly, roused it. He was so long, so limp, so graceful, lounging there in his corner. His socks and his tie were of such a charming shade of blue and his hair such a charming shade of light mouse-colour. He was vague and blithe, immersed in his own thoughts, which, apparently, were pleasant and superficial.
When his eyes met Althea"s, he smiled at her, and she thought his smile the most engaging she had ever seen. For the rest, he hardly spoke at all, and did not seem to consider it inc.u.mbent on him to make any conversational efforts, yet his mere presence lent festivity to the occasion.
Helen did not talk much either; she smoked her cigarette and looked out of the window with half-closed eyes. Her slender feet, encased in grey shoes, were propped on the opposite seat; her grey travelling-dress hung in smoke-like folds about her; in her little hat was a bright green wing.
Althea wondered if Mr. Digby appreciated his cousin"s appearance, or if long brotherly familiarity had dimmed his perception of it. She wondered how her own appearance struck him. She knew that she was very trim and very elegant, and in mere beauty--quite apart from charm, which she didn"t claim--she surely excelled Helen; Helen with her narrow eyes, odd projecting nose, and small, sulkily-moulded lips. Deeply though she felt the fascination of her friend"s strange visage, she could but believe her own the lovelier. So many people--not only Franklin Winslow Kane--had thought her lovely. There was no disloyalty in recognising the fact for oneself, and an innocent satisfaction in the hope that Mr.
Digby might recognise it too.
The day that flashed by on either side had also a festive quality: blue skies heaped with snowy clouds; fields brimmed with breeze-swept grain, green and silver, or streaked with the gold of b.u.t.ter-cups; swift streams and the curves of summer foliage. It was a country remote, wooded and pastoral, and Althea, a connoisseur in landscapes, was enchanted.
"Do you like it?" Helen asked her as they pa.s.sed along the edge of a little wood, glimpses of bright meadow among its clearings. "We are almost there now, and it"s like this all about Merriston."
"I"ve hardly seen any part of England I like so much," said Althea. "It has a sweet, untouched wildness rather rare in England."
"I always think that it"s a country to love and live in," said Helen.
"Some countries seem made only to be looked at."
Althea wondered, as she then went on looking at this country, whether she were thinking of her girlhood and of her many journeys to Merriston.
She wondered if Mr. Digby were thinking of his boyhood. Ever since seeing those two together yesterday afternoon she had wondered about them. She had never encountered a relationship quite like theirs; it was so close, so confident, yet so untender. She could hardly make out that they liked each other; all that one saw was that they trusted, so that it had something of the businesslike quality of a partnership. Yet she found herself building up an absurd little romance about their past. It might be, who knew, that Mr. Digby had once been in love with Helen and that she had refused him; he was poor, and she had said that she must marry money. Althea"s heart tightened a little with compa.s.sion for Mr.
Digby. Only, if this ever had been, it was well over now; and more narrowly observing Mr. Digby"s charming and irresponsible face, she reflected that he was hardly the sort of person to ill.u.s.trate large themes of pa.s.sion and fidelity.
A fly was waiting for them at the station, and as they jolted away Gerald remarked that she was now to see one of the worst features of Merriston; it was over an hour from the station, and if one hadn"t a motor the drive was a great bore. Althea, however, didn"t find it a bore. Her companions talked now, their heads at the windows; it had been years since they had traversed that country together; every inch of it was known to them and significant of weary waits, wonderful runs, feats and misadventures at gates and ditches; for their reminiscences were mainly sportsmanlike. Althea listened, absorbed, but distressed. It was Gerald who caught and interpreted the expression of her large, gentle eyes.
"I don"t believe you like fox-hunting, Miss Jakes," he said.